Important Things to Me

Time has passed my Great Great Grand.

I lived in Thunder Bay and earned my certification to teach Grades 4-12 in Ontario. I traveled in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal, and India for the MEI Academy. And most significantly, my long term relationship with L. ended last year.

Some of the most important things that I have learned about myself have been tied up in this relationship and I censored myself from writing about them in this blog -since it is public. Now I understand why there isn't a great piece of literature that has been accused of being "too honest". It is is a difficult thing to do. I think a great writer feels a part of something bigger, making it easy to sacrifice comfort now for truth eternal.

My heart was shattered but in that good way that has shown me that I am built for happiness. That I believe in love now more than ever. And that there is no gain without risk and that I would gladly put my heart on the line to lose harder next time. Hopefully, by being myself, I'll attract someone with the same small town heart. Someone who like to cuddle and can't relate to John Updike's self-destructive characters.

It was instructive to see a friend who was going through a recent break up. I've been so busy being a nomad that I missed her entire relationship. I spoke to her when they had met and now, almost a year later, when it had ended. She was devastated but it seemed like a week to me. Easy for me to lauigh off, I was invested in her as my friend and never saw this guy. It laid it out so simply for me. I'm only interested in what my friends have created. Everything else is the glanced-over bio.

Open and Closed Questions

49 Up is an incredible concept. It's the seventh documentary in a series that visits the lives of 14 British folk since they were children. The film crew has interviewed them every seven years since they were seven.

This is the only one I have seen in this beautiful format and I was surprised to see how many subjects (some of whom have dropped out of the project) reflect on how much they dislike taking part. Every seven years it's a reminder of how their lives haven't turned out the way they envisioned. A confrontation most of us can avoid since, as a whole, humans love justifying their present lives and block out our past in the healthy way a censor would take all of the deaths out of children's book.

I would think the subjects would be aware that they were simply the documented examples of a process that happens to us all. Unfortunately, the director/interviewer has shit for brains.

If you listen to the few times that he leaves his question in the edit you can pick up how many closed questions he asks. I think he should take his camera around during the day to record how many shitty conversations he must have.

The difference between a closed and open question. A closed question has an answer built in, causing the person asked to squirm in the confines of making someone else's choice.

Aren't you happy to be reading this? 


That shitty question implies "happy" as the dominant emotion you should be feeling and you should respond in a simplified "yes" or "no" format, knowing I want you to say yes.

What do you think of what I have written?


This open question allows you to say what you think and feel instead of fit what you think and feel into my shitty closed question box.

Closed questions have their place but to use them in a documentary series about people's personal lives crushes their own spirits and casts the whole project in the mind of the documenter. "Don't you want to be married?" is very different than "I'd like to know if you have any strong feelings about marriage. What does it make you think or feel?"

Sigh. Once again I have proved that every film would have been better if those assholes would get out of the way and let me do it all.

Thoughts on Photography

What intrigues me about a photo is the relationship between the subject and the person behind the lens.

This explains why I find advertisements and models so boring. It's a narrow range of relationships playing out over and over. The subject does their best to look pretty, serious, excited, etc. The photographer attempts to capture a predetermined emotion in order to move product. Certainly, this is an interesting relationship but, due to its abundance, I find it the least compelling.

The purpose of photography is to make a permanent record of a fleeting moment. We desire careful control over these eternal moments, often grinding out anything interesting in place of capturing a banal agreement between photographer and subject that things 'look nice'. I would much prefer photographs of arguments from a child's point of view to a family photo.

I like candid shots in which a photographer captures a subject's spontaneous relationship to something else. Although now we are too wise to the beauty of these images and must plan them as well.

If a photo is a snapshot of the relationship between photographer and subject then what is a "selfie"? Surely, not ourselves through our own eyes but through the eyes of some imaginary photographer encouraging us to add another safely constructed image to the archive.

The Torture of Minnows

Today, as I sat in an ice fishing hut, I watched a young, skilled fisherman use a sharp knife to slice up a pike and a walleye. He sat with a board on his lap as he went about his work in a casual and inviting manner. The two adults nodding with appreciation. The two children were riveted. The four-year old leaned in, inches from the face of the pike, straining to see it's teeth as the father held the mouth open.

When a fish is cleaned the head remains eerily untouched while the rest of its dismembered body stretches out in a sloppy pile. The skilled fisherman cut open the stomach to reveal the sucker minnow used as bait. The other child eagerly scooped it up in his hand.

Not once did the children shirk at the blood or ask a question about the death of the fish. They were content, as were the adults, smiling and eager as they palmed two more minnows from the bucket, pushing the hooks through their bodies and setting the fishing rod back in place.

Hunger Games

I finished reading Hunger Games a while ago and I wanted to reflect on the author's (Suzanne Collins) use of violence. As I was reading the book I remember thinking that Collins' fight scenes seemed amateur. There was something about them that wasn't quite right. Later, I reflected on why her style seemed so unfamiliar to me.

In books like The Lord of the Flies, violence is portrayed as a force that is barely under the surface of civilization, waiting for its chance to boil up and over. The boys are sadistic and wild when left to their own devices. Similarly, the television series Spartacus depicts slaves forced to take part in the gladiatorial games. The characters show no reluctance once on the sand, easily tapping into their "inner monster" for scene after scene of computer animated throat slashing and decapitation.

What I came to realize about Hunger Games was that the author did not present violence as the beast that sleeps within us all. In Collins' story characters fight because of their relationships. All of these stories share the similarity of forcing their characters into a situation where there will be violent conflict. Collins' story proposes that people are most likely to be violent to protect the ones that they love. In contrast, the fiction written by male authors emphasizes the inevitability of the violent beast within us all. Is gender a useful category for analysis here? Are males trained to see violence as inevitable and females trained to see it as a last resort to protect our loved ones?

The Creature

Shortly after three AM he came downstairs and caught his wife running away. She turned to face him, still gripping the screen door, eyes flickering from the artificial glow of the small TV. It was difficult to imagine her as the woman who would hike over a glacier with a broken forearm a mere two years from this moment. She looked frail, built of cold fingers, thin wrists, and irresponsibly wild hair except for her eyes which were glowing white hot from an eerie inner furnace or the reflection of the TV. He flipped on the kitchen light, walking to the fridge in his matching pajamas. He owned seven pairs, one for each day of the week, even though he found them itchy and restrictive. Adherence to routine had saved the lives of so many of his patients. It was easy to imagine him as the author of Psychopathological Explorers of The Delusional Mind, right down to the thoughtful pose for the book jacket. She was tall and thin, he was taller and thinner. Together they looked like two lost locusts.

"Lime sherbet?" He asked, opening the freezer. The cottage had never been as silent, the television remained muted, and the chubby June bugs halted their clumsy assault on the window. It seemed entirely possible that they were the only two people awake in Wasaga Beach. He carefully placed two scoops in a dessert bowl while his mind blazed with plots to get between her and the door. They both knew that if she ran he could catch her before she reached the main road. They both knew she had stopped taking her medication.


The children were asleep. It might work in his favour if they were awake. He pulled a chair out from the kitchen table, allowing it to drag across the floor, sitting as casually as possible under the circumstances. If he hadn't woken up, if he hadn't had a craving, the woman he loved would be gone.

“Out for a walk?” he asked.


“No,” she said, watching him. He had yet to make eye contact.


“You could have lied.”


“I'm leaving.”


“You've made up your mind?” He waited two full spoons for an answer. “If you've made up your mind why don't you go?”


“You can't watch me all the time.” He considered this. That wasn't true. She could be committed again. They could start over in the long hallways, large pictorial schedules, and padded rooms.  He didn't want that; he wanted his wife.


“Can I talk to my wife?”


“I'm your wife.” she responded. He took a slow bite, leaving the spoon in his mouth, letting the flavour melt. He should have destroyed that picture. It was optimistic to think it could be buried beneath Polaroids and VHS tapes in the basement. She was compelled to find it. How many days had she snuck away to search the corners of this cottage? He watched her take her medication -how had she deceived him? These were errors in professional judgment and they stung him to the core. He smiled. He was practically the greatest psychopathologist of the delusional mind, once the German died he would be the unequivocal leader in his field. He had an outside shot at the Nobel. And it was he who had kept a promise to a lunatic for love. He was determined to redeem his error. The proper way to show his commitment would be to destroy the picture that held so much power over her mind. Shred and burn that image to set her free.


“I'm not going to force you to take any medication.” he said. “I'm here to remind you that you chose to take the medication. It was a long process and a choice that you made several times with a clear head before we-”


“Shut the fuck up.” she said, regretting it. She knew he was weighing her words, observing, dissecting and diagnosing them, building an expert opinion that would lead to her freedom or imprisonment. In an instant she saw the horrible labyrinth of medical literature that had always been between them, a grotesque maze of twisted steel corridors, her strongest convictions marching in endless circles, stepping over emotions, starved to death for attention. She looked at her husband, a man who loved a version of her deeply. In her hand she held the drawing, a deteriorating piece of gray construction paper marked by pastel crayons almost thirty years ago. The picture of the creature.


“What about Matty and Vicky? You're going to walk out on your family?”


“I already have.” she said. He shrugged, .


“You're still here.”


“No.”


“There must be something keeping you here.”


“You're not my first family.”


“You're sick. You need a safe place to rest and your medication.”


“I had a family in Oregon. A husband and two kids.”


“You've never been to Oregon.”


“I had a child in Oregon when I was seventeen.” She watched him finish his sherbet. “It's not a 
delusion. I had a family and I had to leave them and I have to leave again.” He looked at her. “You've always known that my records didn't add up. The medical-”


“What are you going to do? Say it. I'd like to hear you say it.”


“I'm going to find this.” She held up the picture.


“What is that?”


“You know what it is.”


“I'd like to hear you say it. I think it would be good to hear it out in the open.”


“This is the creature that I saw when I was seven,”


“Where?”


“You know where.” He kept his clinical silence, demanding her to continue. “In the forest. When I was in the car I looked out the window and saw it in the forest.”


“How old were you?”


“I told you.”


“Will you say it again?”


“I was seven.”


"If that's sounds normal to you then there's nothing I can do.” He said. “Did you want to leave a note for the children?"


"Tell them that I have to find it."


“Here.” He pulled out a chair. “This will take two minutes. I'll write the note, what should it say?”


“I have to find it.”


"Find what?" She gestured to the drawing in her hand. "I know," he said "but how do you want to tell them?" She paused, unable to say it aloud. He felt her hand on his leg. He put his arm around her as she started to sob.


"The creature. I have to find the creature."


“Why not sleep on it and we'll talk in the morning?" She sat up."The creature is going to be out there tomorrow." He was playing a dangerous game, reinforcing her delusions. "Come back to bed and we'll talk with clearer heads in the morning."


"I'm leaving." She walked back to the screen door. He tried to follow but he could not. He looked down. His leg had been handcuffed to the thick ornamental trim of the table. Panic ran through him. He might be able to free himself. He may be able to crack the oak table. If he could reach the bottom drawer he could get the meat cleaver to break the chain. It would take too much time. She would be out of sight. He couldn't reach the phone. He could yell for the neighbours. He prepared to yell.


"Goodbye." She turned to leave.


"Mom?" asked a voice from the stairs.

I Couldn't Sleep

I couldn't sleep. The world caught up to me today. I had been submerged in schoolwork, throwing myself into crafting the ultimate center of gravity lesson plan.

For inspiration, our teachers point us to a vast online archive of mediocrity. It's frightening. We have access to special Ontario teacher resource sites where, at the press of a button, we find hundreds of lesson plans jam-packed with boring. I'm going on the record here: these bland "educational" resources are joining Betamax as anecdotes to be brought up at history's wedding so we can all laugh at how crazy she was before she settled down. In my lifetime education will move online, dominated by a few resources that do learning right.


I realized this when I was asked to write several reflection papers on my education. It's hard to quantify what I learned in school but most of the skills I am currently using in my life (from needlepoint, to cooking, to bike repair, etc.) I got online. Maybe my education prepared me to be an independent learner  but there's also a case that

I stood up for Wikipedia in my class, arguing that it was more articulate and better sourced than our textbook. Some people laughed at this which didn't surprise me since technophobic teachers have been instilling the Great Fear of Wikipedia without ever visiting the site.

Wow. I can't sleep. I have to be careful because I'm a very passionate person. I throw myself into what I do. I think what is keeping me up tonight is my internal instinct to look up and make sure that I've thrown myself in the right direction.

I'm going to read some more of Doctorow' Little Brother and get some sleep. It would be nice to start eating breakfast and lunch, put myself into a nice routine, and stay up one night thinking about death in that useful, contemplative way, bringing perspective and resolve to my life.