This narrative emerged, writing about Harry Sanderson’s recollected state of mind as a ten-year-old, who had just suffered a deeply traumatic event, an assault on himself and the killing of his dog Gypsy. He blames himself for Gypsy’s agonizing fate, the dog protecting him from the predations of a violent itinerant, who had forced the two of them into the forest above the E&N Railroad line in Chemainus.
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Harry was so traumatized and ashamed by what he judged his own cowardice, that he never told anyone what had really happened. He simply said Gypsy vanished into the woods, then howled in terror and agony, and could not be found anywhere afterward.
The first person he told this truncated version of his story to was his mother, who consoled him as best she could, and tried to assure Harry that Gypsy might find his way home. After that, Harry would sublimate the tale of Gypsy’s disappearance into someone else’s story: His imaginary friend Art had been accosted in the woods above Chemainus, and heard his dog being killed. Then the imaginary Art moved away.
At this point The Mural Gazer will zero in on Harry’s need to confront the truth of what happened in that forest, now known as The Hermit’s Trail. In the time remaining he must expiate his guilt and sorrow by, at long-last, remembering and making his terrible confession, one he’d partially made to Charlie Abbott, the legendary hermit whose trail is part of Chemainus’s mind-scape.
Saw a picture the other day of an Albertan wearing a baseball cap with Let’s Make Canada Great Again emblazoned on its peak.
I suppose it’s not surprising that a Trumpian brand of nationalism is spreading north of the 49th. There will always be a segment of the population drawn to what is essentially a fascist ethic. It’s sad to see, though. Our saving grace – for the time being – is we don’t have an egoistic personality of Trumpian MAGAtude to incite Canadian worshipers to the kind of nonsense exhibited in Washington DC recently.
Before the madness takes root here, we should consider what the historic ‘greatness’ this Albertan proclaims consists of, then compare it to a version of greatness that isn’t a lie.
When, in the mid-16th Century, Jacques Cartier ‘claimed’ the territories he had explored for King Francis I of France, he was ignoring the fact that the land was already occupied. ‘Ignored’ doesn’t quite describe the Eurocentric hubris and nascent French nationalism of that historic moment. The fact that the land was already inhabited simply didn’t occur to him, which is tantamount to saying the original ‘owners’ were not really considered people.
That to me is not a mark of greatness; it’s a mindset that resulted in despicable acts of genocide by colonizing nations the world over. ‘Greatness’ today – true greatness – will be the successful reconciliation, and genuine recognition that we have much to learn from and share with resurgent First Nations across this land.
The name ‘Canada’ is a Europeanization of the Iroquoian word kanata, meaning village. It’s a crowning irony that the very hunting-gathering cultures our Canadian ancestors almost destroyed, and which still face pervasive discrimination to this day, gave our country its name.
Having confiscated huge swaths of ‘free land’, including approximately 25 million square kilometres in North America, the world’s colonizing nations prospered during the transformation of the global economy in the 18th and 19th Centuries. And the economic ‘greatness’ of this continent and the European homelands of its settlers, was in large part due to the vast resources that could be extracted, grown and eventually manufactured here.
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But plundering, not living in harmony with or even sustainably managing the land, was the order of the day. As the industrial and consumerist revolutions took off, fuelled by an insatiable greed for more and more ‘raw materials’ clawed and hacked form the motherlodes appropriated in North America and all over the colonized world, the toll on the environment became increasingly ominous.
So the ‘greatness’ of North America has been based in part on the economic equivalent of an environmental reverse mortgage taken out on our continent… oh, I forgot, it wan’t really our continent to begin with, so in truth it’s a reverse mortgage taken out of other peoples’ land. Any way you look at it, the ‘greatness’ we’re so proud of in that equation is unsustainable, and to think of making ourselves ‘great again’ through that kind of rapacious appropriation doesn’t take us to paradise. It’s a fool’s dream.
So what could that misguided Albertan possibly aspire to as a form of ‘greatness’ not morally corrupt and environmentally disastrous? What would give us true pride?
Never in the long record of evolution has there been species that could consider its actions and circumstances, look into the future, and consciously proclaim: ‘What we have done and are doing is neither morally acceptable nor sustainable.’ Humanity is the first life-form that can deliberately adopt an ethic that goes beyond the cruelty and ultimately self-destructive impulses summed up in the phrase, ‘survival of the fittest’, or more aptly in the 21st Century, ‘bloating of the richest’.
Our only chance is to adopt lifestyles and technologies that allow us to live in harmony with each other and the environment, and which prove what intelligent, morally upright creatures we really are. That’s something no species or civilization has ever attempted, and – as with every historic challenge – it requires courage, vision and generosity of its champions, the true hallmarks of greatness.
Well into retirement age, it’s time for me to ask what I want to achieve in this final phase of my literary career? What it means to be a 21st Century writer? It’s never been an easy vocation; and that truism has never been more applicable than it is on the cusp of this New Year.
I began my working career as a reporter, hammering out stories on an Underwood typewriter; I’m writing this introspective on my laptop, standing up in my dining room, occasionally interrupted by the ‘Ding!’ of another email landing in my in-box; I could just as easily be thumb-writing in ‘Notes’ on my iPhone, in the middle of a busy intersection or at a socially distanced café.
Conclusion: The world has changed. If we writers don’t adapt to the blizzard of social and technological innovation that’s whipping round us, we will lose our vital role as voices in the storm. In a future post I want to go into more detail about just how vital the role of literature is, and how sorry a loss it will be, if we fail to rise to the challenges of the times, but for now I’m going to map out how I want to go about adapting to our new reality, not the why of it.
I’ll begin with my oft-repeated, favourite saying: Writing isn’t about writing. It’s about delving into meaningful experiences and sharing those adventures with appreciative audiences. And it’s not about ‘books’ in any clearly defined sense of the word, it’s about insinuating our ways into the minds of audiences.
Please note the use of the world ‘audience’ instead of ‘readers’ in that last paragraph. Ultimately literature comes down to books in some form or another, of course. But my minimalist definition of a book is: A code of squiggles and dots on a series of pages or screens; or a vocalization of those squiggles and dots into words and sentences, which any creature other than a human would interpret as the grunting and growling of an animal suffering terminal indigestion.
The allure of literature, its special place in the arts pantheon, is its symbolic delivery. Every reader or listener has to make up the presented story in his or her own imagination. Until then, books are inert lumps of masticated wood and ink on library and bookstore shelves, or confusing assemblages of wires and circuits in peoples briefcases and pockets. Reading and its derivatives are creative acts as much as the art of writing.
Alas, getting people to choose reading over the plethora of other media available to them has become an increasingly hard sell, especially if you define literature as a subset of entertainment. Think about it! A hundred and fifty years ago there were no radios, no televisions, computers, video games, the Internet, virtual realities, movie theatres – and so on. Candle light story-telling, live theatre, and parlour music or pub songs were the free-time activities people turned to, and books the only transportable repositories of thought and entertainment.
That unique portability has long-since been overwhelmed by powerful broadcast media, and I believe authors and publishers are increasingly going to have to seek out niche audiences, and find affordable, widely dispersed channels for sharing literature in this crazed new world. Books are going to have to connect seamlessly to digital media and keep up with the fast paced bursts of attention modern audiences give new ideas.
Learning how to effectively use new media has become part of my creative process, and I hope to share my successes and pratfalls as I go. I don’t see digital technology as a replacement for ‘books’, but as an essential adjunct. My upcoming edition of The Boy From Under is my third run at what I have dubbed Direct-to-Web publishing, the first edition (now offline) was my inaugural run. My second effort is a novel in progress, The Mural Gazer.
I’ll celebrate if, late in life, I can become a crotchety advocate of new media as the neural network for modern fiction and creative writing… Heck! I’ll celebrate even if my only achievement is to get literary types to stop using Underwood typewriters and quill pens as their trademark symbols in this frenetic here-and-now!
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Words are such fascinating things! So versatile. So nuanced. So ultimately… meaningless? That thought comes to mind as I attempt a review of my 50-plus years as a writer. I occasionally analyze what has become for me a habit, and as I begin a rewrite of my novel The Boy From Under, I feel it’s time for a look through the microscope and see where this impulse lives in my DNA.
There are two views through this microscope of mine: the pro and the con.
As a pro, I have achieved states of being I would never have experienced otherwise. I have surprised myself with inspired moments, and done my best to share emotional and intellectual highs and lows with readers. I’ve felt the verbal pyromaniac’s joy at igniting imaginations. I have made words work for me, pulling long trains of philosophical reasoning up steep hills and down dangerous grades. I have had meaningful fun.
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As a con, I have dragged my reluctant carcass to its work station, as if I had a ball and chain attached to my ankle. The urgent clatter of my keyboard has drowned out any real sense of celebration, as I hurried to file another story, making sure the facts fit whoever’s case I was trying to make. I have become lost in wildernesses of uninspired words drivelling toward ‘The End’ or, in forgotten journalistic jargon, -30-.
What I’m getting at, here, is writing for me as a way of life. Whether I’m up or down, I have no choice, I have to write, and in my more introspective moments, I do what I’m doing now: write about writing. I hope you won’t hurt yourself laughing, but the following image is a partial visualization of what I’m writing this moment. I sometimes sketch my thoughts before setting them to words, a reminder of why I chose literature rather than the visual arts as my goto discipline…
The point I’m trying to make, sharing that ‘idea map’, is: There should be way more spinning round in my head as I’m writing than I can possibly include in a story or article. My choices should be excruciatingly and wonderfully difficult. There should be plenty left over for future instalments!
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Some people walk right by Gwen’s place, and don’t even notice. They might be thinking about mortgages, or family problems, or jobs… or the latest national fixation, COVID-19. But Kirsten and friends weren’t distracted by any of that. The cold bright air made them happy, and the flutter of dark-eyed juncos at a feeder across the street… Until they were startled by the great, big, green Grinch nailed to the post under Gwen’s balcony. “Won’t steal my Christmas,” Kirsten pouted angrily, and everyone on the line agreed, even though Mrs. P, their daycare teacher, had to laugh. Snowmen, elves, and Santa himself crowded Gwen’s yard, too, fastened to sticks in the surrounding brick planter and tacked to the clapboard siding of her house. So Kirsten felt pretty sure that – as always – the Grinch would come to be a believer, too. It was Mrs. P who pointed to the painted rocks nestled in the grass along the planter wall. Kirsten figured they must be nice rocks, judging by their colours and shapes. “Life is short, eat dessert first,” Mrs. P read one. Kirsten agreed! “Less todos; more todays!” advised another. Kirsten’s favourite, though, was the one with the angel on it that said, “Believing is seeing!” Even though Mrs. P said “whoever wrote it got it wrong way round.”
About this Moment
Our neighbour, Gwen, loves Christmas, and goes all-out with decorations every year. This Moment was inspired when a gaggle of daycare kids all hanging onto a cord, with their daycare teacher in the lead, stopped to wonder at Gwen’s display. All I had to hand was my iPhone, so I took some pictures with that, and got one or two that were good enough to use. This is a fictional rendition. None of the names are real, and actual events have been interpreted to fit. Hope you enjoy.
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He’d never dived off Prospect Rock before, only jumped, legs and arms flailing, yelling like a banshee, anticipating the cold slap of the lake’s surface, and that alarming transition between this world and that… the world of summer sky, filled with clouds and birds and planes, and vastnesses; into that startling nether world of cold water pressing in, stifling your voice, forcing your limbs to straighten out, and your body into the shape of a dagger, plunged into an unknown. He’d never taken that shape, mid-air, hands clasped above – or, rather below – his head, feet pointed up into the sky, mind focused on the precise moment when he’d enter the water, not with a splash, but with a surgical penetration of the translucence between now and then, past and future tenses. Diving is a conscious act; jumping a wild, screeching, childish enthusiasm. You prepare to dive, imagine yourself arcing through space like a cormorant, parting the waters as if your steepled fingers could find the interstices between molecules, then point your flexing body into its precise curve through the fluidity of its new medium gracefully, missing the jagged formations imagined beyond the phenomenon revealed by light.
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Surely there’s enough room in the universe for everyone who has died.
That’s a relief, I suppose. It means there might… just might… be a heaven out there, even a god, who only need occupy a tiny corner of the 13 billion light year breadth of measured space and time… and who knows what lies beyond the known, how far we’d have to travel in our transcendental spaceships to reach the ever expanding membrane of infinity.
Language can say things it’s impossible to comprehend. Thirteen billion light years, for example. Uncle Franklin tried to describe the speed of light for me once. “If I flicked on a light switch, here in Chemainus, say at the tip of Bare Point, you’d see the beam – it’s a wave, actually, but for the sake of argument, let’s say you’d see that beam in just over a second, if you were standing on the moon, say in the Sea of Tranquility… one-point-two-five-five seconds to be exact, that’s how long it would take.”
Uncky Frank couldn’t have understood that most nine year olds wouldn’t have a clue what the heck he was talking about, of course. Or what the speed of light had to do with my father’s coffin, making its slow progress down the centre aisle of our church, borne on the shoulders of six strong friends and relatives. He was just trying to describe, after the fact, the theoretical speed a soul could fly according to his own theory of special relativity.
Mum and Dad used to laugh at Uncky Frank and his ‘weirdo theories’. “He should leave the science to Einstein, and stick to building houses,” Dad said. “He’s good at that.”
“His inquiring mind takes him to strange places,” Mum agreed, as if Uncky Frank’s brain was a poorly trained Pitt bull yanking him around on its leash.
They loved him, though. He was everybody’s favourite uncle.
“Your dad isn’t very far away, once you know ‘C’,” he said, sitting beside me at the wake. “That’s the constant that stands for the speed of light in a vacuum,” he added, when I gave him a puzzled, pleading look. “Three hundred thousand kilometres per second.” He smiled benignly.
“How far is it from your head to your heart?” he persisted. “Show me.” I put my left hand over my heart; my right on top of my head. “That’s how far away your dad is from you, always,” Uncle Franklin said. “He’ll never leave, and – at the speed of light – he’ll be with you in an instant, whenever you need him.”
Uncky Frank had a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, on a special shelf next to his favourite armchair. He’d read it every evening, as if it was the world’s longest novel, from A to Z with occasional side-steps to look up an incomprehensible word in another article, then another word in the explanatory article, and another, and another, and so on.
“Unless someone’s reading it, these are just lumps of masticated wood, glue and fake leather, gathering dust,” he told me once. “Knowledge doesn’t reside in books. Squiggles on a page don’t mean anything until someone reads them.”
To his dying day Uncky Frank claimed to be an atheist. I visited him near the end. Gaunt, pallid, and weak as he was, he still smiled and gazed at me with his pale blue eyes. He could tell what I was thinking, and put his left hand over his heart; his right on top of his head. “That’s how far away from you I’ll be, if you ever need me,” he said.
I tried not to show it, but he laughed. “Just cause I’m what you call an atheist, doesn’t mean I don’t believe something. A few more days, and I’ll be gone, but I’ll live on in your memory,” he smiled benignly.
“And when I die?”
“You’ll live on in the memories of your friends, your colleagues, your family. And I’ll be a smidgen of that, which is enough for me.”
Uncky Frank bequeathed me his set Encyclopedia Britannica. I browse them from time to time, but there’s no reference to any history of mine in there, just antecedents. The speed of light hasn’t changed, though, and the time it takes a beam to get from Bare Point to the Sea of Tranquility on the moon.
End Note:
Writing is rarely a linear process. For example, this video has a typical pedigree. Yesterday I was working on Episode 43 of The Mural Gazer. In this scene Buddy paddles out onto Cowichan Lake, teetering on the brink of suicide. There, he encounters the spirit of Hong Hing, the Chinese merchant, bootlegger and gambling den operator, depicted in Chemainus Mural #4, who is tying to dissuade him. Although he’s alive and talking, Hong Hing is decked out as a deceased, oriental patriarch, and he’s floating to the forever-after on the mirror-calm surface of the moonlit lake.
I’m on aqua incognito for this description, so I started researching Chinese funerary traditions online, a fascinating glimpse into the rites of an ancient culture.
At the same time, I have been trying to get my head around Immanuel Kant’s metaphysical theory of Transcendental Ideals. Although that’s not the kind of subject matter you can throw undiluted into a novel, as a thematic undercurrent, I believe speculative philosophy enriches stories. And the rites I was learning about the Chinese belief in an afterlife, particularly the burning of Joss Paper and representations of things the deceased need to be happy in their new world, evoked by association Kantian proofs of god, heaven and immortality.
There’s no logic to the sequence that lead to The Speed of Light, but its origins do trace back to The Mural Gazer.
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I’m not a poet, but in this instance, a novelist composing a sonnet, taken from the mind of the protagonist in my current work-in-progress, The Mural Gazer. Buddy Hope has decided to take the final, life defining step of ending his life. But he’s not approaching this ‘task’ from the usual anguished trajectory. Instead, he sees it as a logical conclusion, a job that needs doing, almost as if it were a household chore.
I’ve been trying to figure out how he came to this conclusion. Many of us have contemplated the act of suicide, not as something we would actually do, but as a way of getting underneath, or behind, or into the meaning of life. That’s not where Buddy’s head is at. He’s simply tired, and doesn’t look forward to another thirty or so years dragging himself through a world that has no purpose, no sustainable joy.
To paraphrase someone very close to me, who chose Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID), Buddy isn’t living anymore, he’s just existing. He’s depressed at the prospect of carrying on, when every moment takes him farther from that time in life when he believed in his purpose as a father, a reporter, an armchair philosopher.
The question hanging in the air at this point in the novel is: Will Buddy’s recollections and contemplation heading toward his final act change his mind. He’s composed his parting letter, and left it on the dining nook table of the camper he’s been living in as his home-away-from-estranged-home. He’s saying his veiled goodbyes to family and friends, and is about to drive out of cell range to his chosen spot. Nothing he’s considered so far has dissuaded him from deploying EEK, his Emergency Exit Kit.
What Sense Reveals isn’t written to a particular person; it’s written to all the people he has known and loved.
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I have been reading two books lately that are giving rise to cognitive dissonance: Disloyal, a tell-all memoir by former Donald Trump acolyte Michael Cohen; and A New History of Western Philosophy, by Anthony Kenny.
There’s nothing anyone could write about Trump that would surprise me anymore, although Cohen’s account of the utter sleaziness of America’s president has confirmed in lurid detail the disgust I harbour toward this reptilian specimen. The word Cohen has not yet uttered, however, is almost more telling than what he has said.
Trump is portrayed as crass, vicious, misogynous, greedy, undisciplined… insane, pretty well sums up his character. I could have reeled off those epithets and more before reading what Cohen had to say. But the former ‘personal attorney to President Donald J. Trump’ has yet to attach the ideological label that explains the true threat Trump represents: The man is a fascist.
And what shocks me in Cohen’s account is how mesmerized Trump’s followers are by the bare-fisted power of ‘the Boss’, how overwhelmed they are by his all-consuming ego, which has become the ego of his political brand, the MAGA nation.
In true fascist form, Trump has latched onto the disgruntled facet of the American soul, and given it voice. He has justified for his followers all manner of bitterness and rebellion, and amplified their distrust of a political system that has certainly made itself worthy of condemnation. But the glaring irony of his presidency is that he, of all people, is the most ruthless user and abuser of average Americans. There’s only one American that truly counts in Trumpian logic: Donald J. Trump.
Trump has taken the US to the brink, and anyone who thinks the threat to democracy he represents was beaten in the recent American election is living a delusion. ‘The Divided States of America’ is an apt moniker for the US psyche right now.
Cohen’s book underscores the deviancy of a president who supposedly stood up for the common man in Middle America, while reaching out to other fascists of his ilk like Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kenny’s history of Western philosophy attempts a distillation of the thinking that has led from Ancient Greece to ‘Philosophy in the modern world’. It’s fascinating in its scope; daunting in the depths it alludes to. Right now I’m reading about Kantian logic, and how it plays out in the formulation of morality and ethics.
A central theme of this tome is the quest for moral knowledge and thereby certainty with regard to ethical behaviour. Over and over again, philosophers have attempted to apply reason in response to the question: What is morally right and wrong? And why should I obey the edicts of morality, rather than simply look out for my own interests?
Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’ comes down to a statement that moral behaviour is ultimately self interest taken to its logical extreme. I won’t go into a detailed discussion about a philosophical conclusion I haven’t yet fully understood, but the categorical imperative basically says that to act morally, I should always ask before doing something: What if everyone behaved that way?
For example, why shouldn’t I steal whenever I want something and it’s obvious I can take it without being punished, either because I’m cunning, or powerful, or both. The answer is: If everyone behaved that way, there would be no such thing as private property, and the social structure I rely on to lead a better life would collapse. So I’m acting in my own, and everyone else’s interests when I adhere to the edict: Don’t steal.
Kant’s is just one perspective in the history of morality in Western philosophy. The point is, there have been great thinkers throughout the ages trying to answer the fundamental questions about right and wrong, and find some basis for ethical behaviour.
If you have persevered this far, you probably have identified the cognitive dissonance I am experiencing reading Michael Cohen’s Disloyal at the same time as Anthony Kenny’s A New History of Western Philosophy. It comes down to this: What’s the point in enunciating philosophical statements about morality and ethics when, at the end of the day, it’s always the immoral and unethical pit bulls like Trump that come into power?
I’ll suggest a couple of answers, but with the disclaimer that I can’t resolve the conundrum for anyone else. You’ll have to come up with your own answers for behaving in what you believe is a moral and ethical manner.
First, it’s a mistake to conclude that Donald Trump is behaving immorally or amorally. He may not have formulated his moral code in comprehensible English, but clearly he believes that you take whatever you can get, by whatever means are available to you, without the least concern for the harm you do to others. Lying, bullying and cheating are techniques for achieving an end, and with few exceptions, other people are a means to your ends, not entities you need concern yourself with.
There are millions of people in the world who share Trump’s morals, and always will be.
So, for ‘morality’ in a less selfish, less brutal and dishonest form to survive, it must be articulated, and espoused, and championed by millions of others. Always, and every day.
Morality isn’t a ‘pillar’, in any physical sense of the word. It’s not something that exists outside human consciousness, that you can put in place, then walk away from, secure in the knowledge it will hold up your sky. Morality and ethics are ideas that have to be stood up for every day, and exemplified by people who believe as strongly in their moral codes as Trump and his associates believe in their’s.
That comes down to the responsibilities that are the obverse side to our charters of rights and freedoms. Morality isn’t comprised in vociferous complaining about the excesses of Donald J. Trump and his ultra-rich coterie. It’s about how we live our own lives, and try to persuade others about what’s right and wrong, fair and unfair in the world around us.
Cognitive dissonance is an essential state of mind, when you think about it.
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Thanks for checking out my first video post of Today’s Writes. This excerpt is taken from Episode 56 of my novel in progress, The Mural Gazer. At one level, it’s a philosophical but very personal take on suicide – not as a desperate act, but as the rational decision by a man who’s grown tired of living. So I don’t see it as a discussion of suicide per se, so much as an existential, inner conversation on the value of life without meaning.
Protagonist Buddy Hope is more sad than desperate. Sad, because purpose and meaning have drained out of is life, and the thought of continuing seems cowardly. He has arrived at this ‘to be or not to be’ moment, not in Shakespearean torment, but almost dutifully. The twisted irony of his circumstance is: his purpose in life has become to end it.
And what about those he’ll leave behind?
That becomes the real question. And Buddy doesn’t have an answer. He’s written his note. Said oblique goodbyes to his estranged wife, children, lover, and friends Bernice and Harry. But he knows his leaving will be a painful shock to them, and they will be left to struggle with the question: why? To wonder what they could have done to save him.
So another conundrum confronts him: Buddy realizes he has to commit a cowardly act, if he wants to discontinue his cowardly existence. His only consolation, if you can call it that? The belief that people will have to patch the fabric of their own consciousness with shared memories of him, and that mourning might, in a convoluted way, bring them together.
Is that a vain hope?
Today’s Writes are excerpts and reflections on some of my works in progress. They are an opportunity to share, and an invitation for people to participate in my story telling. Thank you for being here.
