plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

It’s that time again for the latest mid-life crisis. Number 15, I think? Still broken, still hurting from the inside out, still unfulfilled, still stuck in the not-knowing, still unable to function like a real person. If only I were a real boy... be careful what you wish for Pinocchio.

This is going to be very much a stream of consciousness post - to see if I can shake loose some of the cobwebs and spark some of the necessary cognitive functions.

Blurry

Puddle Of Mudd

LYRICS

Everything's so blurry
And everyone's so fake
And everybody's empty
And everything is so messed up
Pre-occupied without you
I cannot live at all
My whole world surrounds you
I stumble then I crawl

You could be my someone
You could be my scene
You know that I'll protect you
From all of the obscene
I wonder what you're doing
Imagine where you are
There's oceans in between us
But that's not very far

Can you take it all away
Can you take it all away
Well ya shoved it in my face
This pain you gave to me
Can you take it all away
Can you take it all away
Well ya shoved it in my face

Everyone is changing
There's none left that's real
To make up your own ending
And let me know just how you feel
Cause I am lost without you
I cannot live at all
My whole world surrounds you
I stumble then I crawl

You could be my someone
You could be my scene
You know that I will save you
From all of the unclean
I wonder what you're doing
I wonder where you are
There's oceans in between us
But that's not very far

Nobody told me what you thought
Nobody told me what to say
Everyone showed you where to turn
Told you when to runaway
Nobody told you where to hide
Nobody told you what to say
Everyone showed you where to turn
Showed you when to runaway

This pain you gave to me

You take it all
You take it all away
This pain you gave to me
You take it all away
This pain you gave to me
Take it all away
This pain you gave to me

They aren’t the greatest band in the world but they spoke to me at a certain point in my life - one that I felt and indeed feeel shortchanged on. Too many moving parts, too many variables, too many things unresolved, left unspoken and now there is only the hint of a connection in anonymous Sahara posts.

I am out of step with everyone around me. I am out of place and out of time - seemingly in many aspects of the phrase.  

I don’t know how to change it anymore - I don’t know how many more times my Phoenix can rise from the flames. Each time it gets a little harder and each time I am a little weaker. I am no longer at the point where character-building experiences are doing anything but breaking me down. 

I’ve been unable to write, academic style, fiction, blog, anything at all. I have been unable to read save for a few pages here and there. All I can ant to do is knit and wait for it to be summer so that I can knit outdoors in sunshine. 

I want to hide away from everyone and yet want to embrace everyone as well. I am a limping contradiction in just about every way. I am no longer able to function in the real world in any sort of meaningful way. 

I keep searching, reaching, yearning for something I can never have. 

And it’s tearing me in two...

Culture, Home, Identity and Purpose: or CHIP for Short

♫Hi ho hi ho hi ho, we're heading out to the punk rock show.
Colleagues and friends condescend with a smile, 
But this is my culture man, this is my home.
The dark huddled masses gather at the gate, 
The doors at 7, the show starts at 8.
A few precious hours in a space of our own, 
And when the band comes on, the only thing I really know:♫

Four Simple Words - Frank Turner

The whole sentiment is there right now.... I want nothing more than to be physically somewhere in my 20's dancing at the punk rock show. I want to be able to do it without the pain and aches and horribleness that always happens to me afterwards in my middle-aged body. But that isn't really what this post is about... what this post is actually about is culture and identity and home and purpose. Or maybe my lack of connection to any of those things right at this point in time. 

I was messaging with Elsie Gee the other night, and she mentioned something about "identity and purpose" after seeing a show with those themes running through it. She said she found it "thought provoking." My response was that it should be -"those are powerful words"...  Since saying that I have found myself coming back to it over and over again, my thoughts trying to make sense about why I do find those words so very powerful and what the hell my identity really is. 

The thing is, any identity that I can come up with for myself is entirely entwined in the other three portions of CHIP. Culture is a huge part of my identity, at least I think it is. That culture is weather-beaten and rock-formed in the land that I came from. I haven't lived there in seven years now, but when asked where I am from, my answer is always Newfoundland, if I answer a survey and they ask my country of origin, I always choose "Other" and type in Newfoundland. So I am culturally informed in my identity which is intrinsically tied to my home. 

I am still trying to make sense of what that means.  

Does that make figuring out the answer to my identity my purpose? I might need to drink some more to be able to continue this... 

(24 hours and a few drinks later...)

Again, I am trying to come to grips with identity... it is a word that encompasses so much and yet I am unable to accurately define it in personal terms. There is racial identity, sexual identity, gender identity, political identity, social identity, religious identity, cultural identity and so many more. Each one means something different to each person and yet they are all tied together in this concept of personal identity. How can one word be big enough to encompass all of those concepts? How can something that is ultimately so personal be reflected in a simple pairing of words? 

I guess it comes down to the age old question of "who am I?" A question with no easy answers, and I guess, nor should they be easy. People are far too complex to just become a simple definition. Every is a culmination of the stories that have made up their lives, for good or bad. From the moment of consciousness, or perhaps before, a part of who we are is crafted by the environment that we exist in, that our parents existed in, and it becomes indelibly tattooed onto the souls of our beings, whether we like it or not.

Maybe that is why Judith Butler's early work resonates with me so strongly - ignoring the academic word games that she used to play with Zizek and others - her theory was that gender is performative .. this does not mean that gender is a conscious performance, but rather that gender is informed by everything that comes before it, The second that a doctor declares a baby girl or boy, there are centuries of traditional concepts that are immediately unconsciously applied into what being a boy or a girl means, long before the person has the opportunity to decide for themselves what they understand it to mean.

I think it goes beyond gender as well, though gender concepts certainly play a large role in what a self concept of identity can mean. I think all of identity is performative, to one extent or another. All identity is tied up in where you came from, where you cut your metaphorical teeth. Tied up in prefabricated concepts of home, of purpose, of love, of sex, of life... until you can eventually decipher the actual individual that is hiding in the middle of all these pre-informed concepts and finally become the person that has been inside yourself. 

Think about it... I was raised by liberal parents, and have become a feminist, even though society tells me that my gender is male. My sexuality is straight, if I have to pick a category, but I believe that all humans should be equal, regardless of gender or sexuality or creed or colour. But if I were born to another family, in another environment, I could have been racist, sexist or any other of the current negative connotations that run around my brain. If my parents had not been liberal (small l liberal), I would not have been raised with the values that I have. I could have been homophobic, ultra-right wing conservative, or anything other than I am today. I am informed by what came before me, as my parents were as they were before them and so on and so on...

We are all informed by the past, and with any luck, we are not doomed to repeat the mistakes that came before. 

So where does culture fit into this? 

My culture comes from a large island with a small population. Born and raised in an artistic world, came of age in a time of desperate unemployment, arriving at puberty just as the first phase of punk rock was dying and the birth of hardcore was beginning. Music completely informs my concept of culture, my concept of politics, my concept of person...

♫I'm all lost in the supermarket,
I can no longer shop happily,
I came in here for the special offer,
guaranteed personality... ♫

"Lost in the Supermarket" - The Clash

My concept of culture is  bound up in the middle class to poor, to working poor back to middle class again. I just happened to be fortunate enough to have been raised in a time and place where those concepts could be readily expressed through art and music and... tribe...

I have no official tribe... I am a Caucasian lad and by definition, a part of the majority where I came from. But I never really fit into that majority. I felt disenfranchised even when I was a child and that feeling only got worse as I hit puberty. It took a little bit of time, but eventually I found the people that I felt at home with... not that it wasn't rocky but the rockiness was somehow a part of it all. Some of those folks are still good friends today, some have disappeared off my radar, some have crossed my path in a not so nice fashion and some have shrugged off this mortal coil, but all of them have left a mark and were a part of me becoming who I am today. And later still, I found another tribe, on the edges of the tribe I was living in, and those people have become my heart and soul and family. Scattered the earth over but as much a part of me as my own blood relatives, and as important in my understanding of identity and culture and self as any other influence I have had in my life.

That may mean I am just really fucked up.... but I think it is more than that :) 

I guess that brings me to purpose.... and here I am a little at a loss... what is my purpose? Why am I here? I don't actually care about leaving any sort of legacy. I care about trying to be a good person, about caring for my friends and family and my fellow human beings. I want to be a better person... I want to provide security and shelter and love and safe-haven for my friends and family , I want them to be relaxed in my company, knowing they can rely on me... but is that my purpose? That is my desire... So do we as people have a purpose?

That is a harder question. Those who have belief will tell you that our purpose is tied up in some god's will. I don't know about that. Those who are fundamentally scientific will tell you that our purpose is a part of the larger ecological chain... I am not sure about that either. I am unsure if there is an actual purpose out there for us. I fell that those who have artistic talent have an actual purpose, I think that those who have the ability to teach have a purpose, I feel that those who have the ability to create have a purpose, that those who are good parents have a purpose.... but what do I have? I am not a musician, I am not an artist, I am not a teacher... I am just a guy - a jack of many trades but a master of none... I don't fit nicely into any category or box... so what purpose do I have?

That question may be the one I am searching for the answers to...

Fuck this week...

This week has been a stressful one, my blood pressure is up, the tension through my shoulders and neck is bad enough to keep me awake at night and if that wasn't bad enough, I have been suffering through my first gout attack in 20 years... not much fun. Work is off the rails with crazy... and I am missing home in a vicious kind of way. This too shall pass, right?

I am once again stuck wondering what I want to be when I grow up, and reading back through some of my posts from when I was in Grad School. I was good at that, I mean really good.... not revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, but I was good at the reading, the interpreting, and the - well the just being in University. What I wasn't good at was the politics, and the publish or perish world, or the thoughts of spending 10 years working sessionals trying to obtain a tenure track... maybe I need more stick-to-it-ness, or maybe I am just not good at doing the same thing for long periods of time. I have been in my current occupation stream for 5 years, been with the same team for 4. This, for me, is something of an anomaly. Most of my working life, I was used to a six week gig here, a four week gig there, etc. And the techs/directors or the actors would change up, so life was constant learning or at least experiencing.

Then came school, more learning every day. I like that part, it makes me feel fulfilled and happy. For the first 3 1/2 years where I am now, I also got that feeling of learning something new everyday, and it was a pleasure to be at work. Now... well now I am still learning new things every day, but those new learnings are a little more like soul-crushing experiences. Learning things that either sound so crazy from the outset that no one could reasonably believe that they would be true, or things that just plain make a person crazy.

How does one find that happy balance? I put this to those who have been in the same business / workplace / whatever for extended periods of time? I am an incredibly loyal person, loyal to my team, to my friends, to  my family, etc. So how does one balance that loyalty with the need to not have one's soul obliterated on a daily basis?

And more importantly, how does one not drink to recover from each of those days?

I Want to Believe

♫I wish I was someone else
I'm confused, I'm afraid, I hate the loneliness
And there's nowhere to run to
Nothing makes any sense, but I still try my hardest

Take my hand
Please help me man
'Cause I'm looking for something to believe in
And I don't know where to start
And I don't know where to begin, to begin

If I was stupid or naive
Trying to achieve what they all call contentness
If people weren't such dicks and I never made mistakes
Then I could find forgiveness

Take my hand
Please help me man
'Cause I'm looking for something to believe in
And I don't know where to start
And I don't know where to begin, oh no

I can't be someone else
I don't feel that it's hopeless
I don't feel that I'm useless

I can't throw it all away
I need some courage to find my weakness
And with your love, I know with all my heart I can win

'Cause I'm looking for something to believe in
And I just need something to believe in
I'm looking for something to believe in
And I just need something to believe in♫

The Ramones - "Something to Believe In"

So, there is this organization that I have an interest in joining, because it is in my family history and would maybe feel closer to my grandfather than I was ever able to get when I was alive. The problem is that you have to believe in a god to be a member. Not THE GOD, but a god, which I can probably get my head around, if they were willing to accept the goddess and the god of Wiccan lore. The real problem comes with the next part, I also have to believe that the word / wisdom of this god/goddess was made known to man... ie - if I were Christian - the Bible, Muslim - the Qu'ran, Jewish - the Torah, etc, etc, etc. Wicca doesn't really have that and any book that professes to have that sort of knowledge in Wicca is usually condemned in some fashion or another, or is truly terribly written. I am not sure what to do with / about that... 

It has been kind of a lifelong search for me... a vision quest that began as soon as I understood that Christianity wasn't really for me... somewhere when I was nine or ten (excluding the brief bought of Jerusalem Syndrome I came down with after a visit to the Holy Land in 1984). I have studied many faiths, Have a BA focusing on Chinese Religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Religious Daosim and more) an MA focusing on a Butlerian look at Wicca, and an incomplete PhD in gender and Judaism, specifically, masculinity in Judaism. And yet, I cannot find anything that fits me correctly. Daoism makes a lot of sense to me, but it is a philosophy rather than a religion. Buddhism appeals except that I could never live out my days as a vegetarian. Jainism I find incredibly interesting but I have issues with the patriarchal nature of its current institutions. Christianity, well, I find the hypocrisy of the churches a little too much to bear, in particular for the big three but throughout many of the other branches as well. Unitarianism I quite enjoy in theory, but my experiences with Unitarian church did nothing to make me feel like I belonged there.   

Ultimately, like the X-Files poster says - "I Want to Believe." I do, I really do. I am envious of those who can believe - who have a propensity for faith. I wan to know what that feels like because I am void in that area. I do believe in the power of nature, and that there maybe a great spirit or spirits that are the soul of the planet itself, but how would I articulate that to this organization? And do I believe in it strongly enough to demonstrate conviction in that belief?

I am truly lacking in this area. I think I am also lacking in the community aspect that a religion can provide. Again, this is nothing new. I have had excellent community around me for many stages of my life, but it was due to a common interest (music) or a common work-world (theatre) or a bacchanalian love of food and drink and/or sex. Those were/are the ties that keep/kept us together. 

I remember being in a creative writing class way back in high school, where Mr. Durant asked me if I believed in god. I told him that I didn't need to because (in a broad moment of bravado) I had faith in myself (I didn't) and I had faith in my friends (I still do). His response was that I was well on my way to being a cynic, because one or the both of those things would let me down eventually. I have certainly lost and found my faith in myself many times along the way, and I have no doubt it will happen again. I have certain friends in whom I will never lose faith, I have certain friends that I have absolutely lost faith in and there are many new friends that I will undoubtedly find faith in, has this made me cynical? No, I think that more than anything, institutions have made me cynical. People I still believe in, as much as many of them may suck. Institutions I have a huge issue in trusting / believing in. Which may seem a little strange, for the institutions are made up of people and are not entities unto themselves, so, therefore, I should be able to have faith in the people in those institutions...

I have never really been good at toeing the party line if it was contrary to my personal ethics and beliefs. Most religions/philosophies have a version of the Golden Rule, and the one that rings truest to my ears is "Do No Harm." It is straightforward - simple and remarkably easy and difficult to adhere to. After all, what is harm? Harm is different things to different people. To me, it means do not hurt anyone physically, or emotionally or spiritually. That is easier said than done. One can hurt another without being aware that they have done so. So I exert an effort to try and do no harm. I try to be charitable, I try to be empathetic, I try to be sage in my words and actions, but I am only human and I know I slip up in that repeatedly. I think the point is, however, much like quitting smoking... never quit quitting, or never stop trying to feel for others... 

Where does this ramble take me? Well, ultimately full circle...

♫'Cause I'm looking for something to believe in

And I just need something to believe in

I'm looking for something to believe in

And I just need something to believe in♫

Getting Back to Basics

(tonight's soundtrack provided by my favorite Bad Religion tracks)

So, why the renewed interest in blogging? Well, some of it comes from my mental state, some of it comes from reading my friend Catherine's "Dear Demented Diary" blog turned book, and some of it comes from the need to express myself beyond my day-to-day interactions ( I will and perhaps rekindle other day-to-day interactions). I have a lot to say about a lot of things, some of it is even sensible...
One of the things about my current job is that I feel I have to be muzzled to an extent - and I can promise you, you will read nothing about my current job within these pages, and I will probably be toning down the political rhetoric as much as I can stand it, but I am bound to slip up there from time to time... can't help it, I am a Newfoundlander after all, politics is firmly embedded in my word view.

wait, the wine bottle is empty, I should do something to rectify that situation...

OK, Petite Verdot opened, now... where was I...

tonight is probably going to be a lot of "stream of consciousness" - it seems the only way I can write right now. I have tried some fiction in the past little bit, but I lose the flow as soon as I stop writing and I seem to be unable to get back to the story that I have started.

I have been doing this blog thing on and off for - well, lets just say that there was no such thing as a blog when I started. When I started I carefully wrote all the HTML code manually, and had to find places to host the site. I have not done much regularly over the past few years. At times it was because I had no idea how to articulate what was in my head, at times it was because I was afraid of offending others. I tried writing pseudo-anonymously but I am not much good at that. What you see is what you get. I  am complex, but pretty straightforward when it comes down to it and hiding under a pseudonym just makes me feel uncomfortable.

A lot has happened since I was writing regularly. My Dad died, I have had a couple of promotions, I have done a lot of soul searching and have not found many answers. I co-own a house with my spouse, have two dogs and have suffered through some major physical trauma and come out on the other side of good... so far. I have watched the current regime erode many of my personal political beliefs, and I have struggled with losing pieces of my identity.

I have watched some friends flame out, some crash and burn, some burn bridges that can never be fixed, and some exceed against all odds. I am at the age where our parents are in the process of shrugging off this mortal coil and it is hard, really fucking hard to not be there for each and everyone one who is going through it.

My brain continues to wander everywhere, though I am able to zero in with painful precision both when I want to and when I want to avoid it. If only I could learn to shut it down long enough to sleep though a night. night. I have a naturopath now, a chiropractor, a physiotherapist and will soon have a referral to Sports Medicine to try and get a holistic idea of whatever is going on with my body. All things are pointing in the right direction, but I remain a medical mystery...

I for realz miss university, and keep having all these thoughts about what I want to actually do my PhD in, as compared to what I started 6 years ago... it is a nice dream, but not practical at this point in time but I do have a few conversations I want to have with academic advisers before I move any further with them.

Maybe it is just because I am on vacation and I am not very good at relaxing that I am suddenly getting the writing urges, but I think it is more than that. There is a piece of me that has been missing since I broke my back all those years ago, and I have yet to find the exact correct outlet. Writing worked for a time but I perhaps lack the required discipline to make it work all the way. I am not good with artistry with my hands. My mind can always visualize something so much more than I am able to produce.

(Soundtrack shifted to Rise Against)

Today was the first step in getting back to nature since I was in Newfoundland at the end of April / early May. We hiked the Skyline trail in Gatineau Park, and it was pretty spectacular, Also I am spectacularly out of shape... so the big goal this staycation is three hikes on local trails, and at least one round of golf. We shall see how that goes...

Homelands

In reading Nikki's post about Australia becoming home for her, my own mind started to wander and wonder about that concept and what it means to me. I think my concept of home is skewed by two or three different interpretations. Home, or a part thereof will always be Newfoundland - a large part of that is because of the people, but it is also the rough geography and the majestic sea and the culture that is found there. But mostly it is the people. People like Patrick and LA, Jonjon and Bridgette, Kellie-Rae, Rus, Dennis, Tracey, and so on and so on.
It is the setting of people as home that draws me to my second interpretation - or rather is an extension of that concept. Home is where those people are, so there is home for me in Australia, there is home for me in Montreal, there is home for me in Vancouver and hell, there is even home for me in two places in California... one in a make-believe relationship that fell dramatically apart in a town I have never seen, and the other in another part of Cali, where I have also never been but seems as real and as welcoming to me as any place I have been.
Finally, there is where I have my house, my job, my marriage, my brother and his wife and kids and my mother and my close group of friends, here in Ottawa. All of this seems like it should be soothing, and satisfying, but what it really means is that I am "fractalized," with longings to be in all of these places and never really content in any of them. This may be the missing piece that I discussed yesterday.
Maybe it is part of the problem rather than the solution that for me, home is transitory based on where the people I love happen to be. Maybe it is a struggle of identity, or how I perceive that identity of home that causes the constant longing for what is not currently at hand... hell maybe it is the lack of ocean... I don't know. I just know I feel unsettled and I feel the need to move around. I know some truly amazing people all over this planet. and maybe I feel I just need to get out to see them in their "homes." But that reality is far away right now. Even co-ordinating the next trip back to Newfoundland seems daunting and expensive.
Even though I am home, I want to go home, to all of them... somehow bring all the homes together at the same time. Which is both spiritually and physically impossible to muster...

Many years, many lifetimes.... full circle

I've become impossible
holding on to when
when everything seemed to matter more
the two of us
all used and beaten up
watching fate as it flows down the path we
have chose

Nine Inch Nails - "We're in this together now"

It is kind of funny where life takes you, and kind of funny how everything circles back on itself eventually. I have been, for the last several years, living in a world I never could have imagined myself living in. It has been interesting, and painful, and wonderful, and fulfilling and yet strangely abstract and lacking in the most important of my traits, creativity.

I am good at my job, and mostly I enjoy it, but it is devoid of spiritual / creative satisfaction. I am not really sure how this happened. How did I become a bureaucrat? And better yet, how did I become good at it? 

I have been living in Ottawa for 6 years now... a blink of an eye and it has passed - with stretches that felt so incredibly long they might never end... and yet, here it is 2013 - 11 years since I began my reinvention as a human being.

I don't really recall many conscious decisions that lead me to today, but I am sure that I must have made them, for here I am. but there is a hole in the centre of my being... and I am unsure of how to fix it.