Human geography, or Groundhog Day revisited

Looking back, this sort of turned into a dream journal. Was thinking of it again after some dreams from the other night.

The one I remember now was a variant on my recurring “vacation” dream, where I’ve been travelling somewhere and it feels like I’ve been away from home for a really long time, so much so that the vacation starts to feel like the new normal. In this dream, I was with some sort of group and had to get my stuff packed up to check out of the hotel so we could leave. Went down to the lobby to find out what the checkout time was, and somehow ended up a fair distance from the hotel, where a guy who I didn’t know told me the group had to leave by 9:00. Then he started insulting me for no reason that I could see. As I walked back to the hotel, several guys on bikes rode up to me and provided what seemed to be some kind of escort, although I couldn’t tell whether they were trying to help me or to trap me. They asked me questions, my responses to which they relayed back to someone else by walkie-talkie. One of the questions had to do with how it was I didn’t know when the checkout time was. I replied that I often have a mental map of how things are, but then I get distracted and lose contact with people, and I assume wrongly that the map won’t have changed in the meantime.

As often happens, that last comment sounds less profound now than it did to me in the dream, partly because I’ve forgotten the exact wording, and partly because ideas from dreams often sound profound in context but sound either banal or nonsensical in real life, much like ideas you come up with when you’re stoned. Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” is a good example (both with regard to dreams and being stoned) – it really wasn’t one of his better poems, and it’s probably for the best that he “forgot” most of it, if indeed that’s what happened.

So anyway, this year has had its share of things I could get bummed out about, but I think my attitude is starting to become more positive and my approach more dynamic. I’m looking for work again – had a couple of interviews for posted positions, and making a list of other places to contact. My last job was great in some ways. I loved being able to write for a living, and the nature of the task really got me to focus on how to communicate complicated facts and concepts to a wide audience using as few words as possible. And I got to learn a lot about one area of the law, doing more legal analysis than I did while working at the law firm. But it was a mistake for me to think of working remotely for an employer halfway across the country as something I could do for more than a short period of time, and I should have just kept doing it on a freelance basis while I looked for something ongoing and close to home (or at least something I would relocate for). Oh well. No point in beating myself up over past mistakes – either I can learn from them or I can’t.

On the other hand, I’ve started doing some of the things that I kept talking about without doing them. Along with a friend, I took a comedy writing course and did ticket selling and ushering for a theatre festival. And after visiting my sister and seeing the life she’s made for herself, I vowed to seek out groups of people I could be friends with. I have a few individual close friends and several more casual acquaintances, but it’s been a while since I’ve been part of a social group, and I really need that in my life. Haven’t quite yet found an activity that lends itself to that, but the goal is to find something to volunteer on that I can do for an extended period of time rather than a one-off like a festival. This is also combined with the job search to a degree, both in the sense that an office job will surround me with a group of people, and also in the sense that volunteering may provide contacts who can tell me about job opportunities, which was how I got my most recent job.

At least my life feels a bit different from the way it did the last few years, when the world and the people around me kept changing while I stayed the same. I feel like I’m starting to move / change / grow as well – maybe not totally up to speed, but in my own way and on my own terms, I’m getting closer to where I want to be.

I dream of Rudy

You know that recurring dream most people seem to have? The one where you're in a course, and it's getting close to the end of the term, and you realize you haven't read any of the materials or done any of the assignments or gone to any of the classes? And you wonder whether you might end up flunking horribly?

I'm guessing Rudy Giuliani is feeling a little bit like that right now.

I wanna be a stand-up comedian

Dammit, I could do it. The whole "fear of public speaking" thing has never been that much of a problem for me. Being face-to-face with individual people -- sure, that can be terrifying. Talking to a large group -- well, I guess my love of words and my secretly gigantic ego work in tandem in situations like that.

The shaving razor's cold, and it stings

One of the things I find fascinating about people is the degree to which they can be incredibly self-aware of their flaws. So often, they're able to articulate accurately and in some detail what it is that they're doing wrong, and what they could do to change it. And then they go and keep doing exactly what they were doing before!

(That description applies to me as much as it applies to anyone I know. My life feels like the movie "Groundhog Day," except for the fact that it's the world around me that changes and I'm the one who stays the same. Which I guess means my life is exactly UNlike the movie "Groundhog Day." Whatever. It's my metaphor and I'll strain it to the breaking point if I want to.)

Take my exams and pass the lot

My dreams are getting sneakier.

Ever since I dropped Math partway through grade 12, I've had dreams that I'm still in a math class, but that I've skipped the class for most or all of the term and I've only just remembered I'm in it. And I wonder if I should go to it, or if it'd be too embarrassing to show up when I've missed most of the classes already. Maybe if I forget about it again, it will go away.

It's a variant on one of the classic anxiety dreams. In other dreams I sometimes become aware that I'm dreaming. Like one the other week where someone from my past showed up, and I thought it was an incredible coincidence, but then they asked me what significance I thought there was of them showing up in one of my dreams. For some reason I almost never figure out that the math dream isn't real, until I wake up, and even then I'm often momentarily panicked.

So the twist of last night's dream was that I was in a math class, but I'd been attending it regularly. I was writing a test, which I don't recall being particularly stressful or anything. And I thought to myself that this couldn't be a dream. Because I was actually attending a math class.

Celebrity weather channel

The other day my dad was bemoaning the state of TV weather reports, particularly the unstinting perkiness of the people giving them. So my idea was to add a bit of variety by hiring actors who could either be chosen on the basis of, or who could tailor their delivery to, the types of weather they were talking about.

Say, Alan Rickman:

"It's going to rain later today. Buckets and buckets of rain. Big dark clouds. You might as well just stay in and keep the blinds up, because it'll be so fucking miserable out there that there's no point going out."

Quote of the day

David Denby, writing in the New Yorker about the recently released films Bobby and Fast Food Nation:

"It's nice that liberals win elections now and then, but I'm not sure they should be allowed to make movies."

Discuss, with reference to these films, as well as others such as JFK and Dances With Wolves.

(Perhaps a friendly amendment to Denby's statement would change the ending to read "movies with Kevin Costner.")

Gotta get down to it ... shoulda been done long ago

This day last year my boss suggested my shyness was enough of an impediment to my job that I should consider seeing a therapist. I ended up following his advice. Ultimately, I ended up losing my job anyway -- I don't blame my boss for that, although I'm not sure whether I could've turned things around in enough time to save my job in any event.

So now I'm looking for work, but procrastinating like crazy just as I was while I was still employed. It's always hard to tell how much of the procrastination is because I'm nervous about talking to people. A large part of it is. I need to get back to my ex-boss, who spoke with me a couple of months back and gave me some useful advice. I need to contact a place that I was told a few months ago might be hiring. I need to call the woman who gave me her phone number last month. I'm scared that I've left things too late in all three cases. But I need to contact them anyway.

Today I learned that a guy who I went to university with died a couple of weeks ago. It was sudden -- an accident. He was probably around my age or a few years older. I understand the concept of people dying. My mom wasn't old by any stretch of the imagination. Still, people of my mom and dad's generation do get sick and die, and it's unusual but not quite as much of a shock as when it happens to people my age.

So, in case I needed any reminding, I need to start living. Not to mention getting my money's worth out of the therapy.

If you stand in the middle of the road, you get hit by traffic going both directions.

Watched A Very British Coup again, on DVD -- saw it on Masterpiece Theatre when it was first shown in '88.

The British do political drama better than North Americans do, that's for sure. Even as the plot becomes increasingly implausible and eventually ridiculous, it's still impeccably written (at least in terms of dialogue) and acted, particularly by Ray MacInally in the central role of sharp-tongued and strong-willed steelworker-turned-PM Harry Perkins. Just as the current BBC spy drama Spooks (Mi5 in North America, on those rare occasions when A&E gets its shit together and airs the damn thing) frequently overreaches itself, but always with more eloquence, wit, and style than its American equivalent 24.

And I'd forgotten the humour in it, perhaps contrasting it in my mind with the black comedy House of Cards, where Ian Richardson portrays the ambitious and devious backroom political fixer Francis Urquhart as an antihero worthy of Shakespeare's Richard III. But A Very British Coup is quite funny in its own right, in the same sense that a Shakespearean tragedy like Hamlet is funny.

An interesting side note is that the author of the book A Very British Coup has since gone on to serve briefly as a cabinet minister to Tony Blair. "Briefly" being the operative word, as he's been a backbencher for most of the Blair reign, and was one of the 49 Labour rebels who defeated a government bill about detention of terrorist suspects last year, which paved the way for this year's "coup" of sorts where Blair was forced to set a timetable for his resignation within a year. The spirit of Harry Perkins lives on in Britain. Even if it feels like Francis Urquhart is still in charge.

Ten years

Diary, Sept. 12, 1996

While Dad and P. stayed overnight at the hospital, L. slept at the house, where J. and I were. I was having a probably nonsensical dream at about 3:45 A.M. when Dad called. Mom had just died. Sighed a few times, then stopped breathing. L. drove us over to the hospital, and I cried a bit. Mom was still in the room, which was dimly lit, and Dad was playing a tape of gentle piano music. We sat and stood around, talked about and to Mom, cried, hugged each other. I'd become acclimatised to the inevitability of this, but it is a quite different feeling now. I got about an hour more sleep, then L. drove me back to UBC.

And here, I had two hours of 250, in the tutorial we were talking at points about different conceptions of time (some without past or future) and the ability to adjust to the idea of death and live comfortably alongside it. Not exactly why I came back and went to my classes today. ... I next ate lunch in the Place Vanier caf before a Geography lab led by a T.A. named R. I sharpened up my rusty graphing skills with the help of the girl next to me (X., a 4th-year Chem major...).

I have to say that it was really weird ('weird' being a dumb word) to see Mom lying there after she had died. It helped to finalize things for me, but it was as if Mom were simultaneously there and not there. I could accept that Mom was dead, but the body was not Mom. At one point I wondered to myself, Are there 5 people in the room, or 6? A few questions have kept rattling around in my head. I wouldn't say I grapple with them; it's more like they are grappling with me. The first is, Why? But I think I know that there is no reason. Another is, Where are you? I refuse to accept the simple, cold scientific explanation, or even some reassuring psychological explanation like "She will always be a part of who we are" (although I believe something along those lines is true). And a third question rises from the second one: (When and where) Will I ever see you again? Because I miss her. I miss her so much. It's too much to bear, saying that I'll never meet Mom again. I have to believe that I will.

Tell me to stop procrastinating.

At work, now in the strange limbo state of still being employed there but taking the last two weeks as holiday time, coming back into the office occassionally, and going to one last office event. So I'm not there, but still there.

It feels liberating. And damned lonely. Must be a bit like breaking up with a partner after a long relationship -- breaking up amicably enough that it's not like "Take all your stuff and get out NOW!" More of a long goodbye, your life and theirs gradually becoming less and less intertwined, but knowing that you can only play it out so long -- either there's a definite point of no return, or a point where you'll run out of excuses to keep going back. And then wondering what'll happen after that -- will you stay friends? Drift even further apart? Find that the attitudes that caused the breakup end up hardening into dogma? Maybe even get back together someday, either because you've both gained some perspective, or because you haven't?

And of course I'm not just moving from a job of several years, but from the place I've stayed for the longest continuous time except the house I grew up in. (At the same time as I'm looking for work.) That's the trickier bit. What to take, what to toss, what to sell or keep in the suite? So that's what I've been procrastinating about, and what's been producing the most anxiety.

Had a glut of anxiety dreams this morning. Interesting how they work for me. These ones featured terrifying situations, but framed in bizarrely comic contexts, and as part of some fictional stories, like in the dreams I was watching movies and making them up as I went along -- sometimes I knew the next twist, sometimes I didn't. The guy was only pretending to strangle me. Sure, a giant fish emerged from behind the door and ate someone, but it was a giant fish puppet, so the people laughed before they started screaming.

Anyway. That's enough wasting time for now. At least, enough wasting time this way. I'm sure I'll think of some other excuse.

How the Christ stole Grinchmas: some mid-August holiday blasphemy

The idea is essentially the same as Dr. Seuss' original story. The protagonist steals the trappings of Christmas from the villagers in order to teach them a lesson. But I've tinkered with a few details, after being inspired by accidentally transposing two parts of the title, early in the morning when I was trying to go back to sleep.

(My inspiration seems to be opposed to the idea that I should ever get any sleep. Or maybe it's trying to persuade me to get to bed earlier so I can get up at four in the morning and write parodies before I go to work. Well, inspiration, you're in luck -- I'll soon be unemployed, so for at least a while, you'll be able to set your own schedule! Although you should know that I will put you to work writing cover letters.)

The tinkering also relates to something that's long rankled for me about the Grinch story. The Grinch learns that material possessions do not contain the true meaning of Christmas. And yet, how the Whos love those possessions! And the Grinch returns everything to the Whos at the end.

So, the story affirms the spiritual aspect of Christmas, but in a way that doesn't challenge the capitalist consumer culture that has been built on top of the original holiday. But then again, the Christians ripped the whole thing off from the Mithraists anyway. So perhaps in the apparent internal contradiction of Dr. Seuss' story, there's an unintentional point. But "Maybe Christmas, he thought, is a social construct" just doesn't quite have the same punchy quality....

I haven't bothered to rewrite the whole poem. Some spoofs are better off that way, as half-finished ideas.

Every Hah down in Hahville liked Grinchmas a lot.
But the Christ, who lived just above Hahville, did not.

The Christ hated Grinchmas! The whole Gmas season!
Now please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be, perhaps, that whole Santa Claus deal.
It could be that watered-down "holiday" spiel.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
Was the fact that they'd replaced the Church with the Mall.

But whatever the reason, the Mall or the Claus,
He stood there on Grinchmas Eve hating the Hahs,
Staring down from his cloud with His beatific glowers
At the town full of Grinchmas lights on office towers.

For He knew every Hah down in Hahville below,
Was busy now, driving to stores through the snow.
"And they're maxing their credit cards!" He sadly wails,
"Then the day after Grinchmas, there's Boxing Day sales!"
Then, not for the first time, nor that controversial,
He thought, "Grinchmas has become way too commercial!" ...

And THEN they'd do something He liked least of all!
Every Hah down in Hahville, the tall and the small,
Would sit very still, moving scarcely an inch.
They'd sit and they'd re-tell the tale of the Grinch!
Not just Seuss or Karloff, but much, much more scary:
They'd watch the Grinch movie, the one with Jim Carrey.

And the more the Christ thought of the whole Grinch franchise,
The more He thought, "I must cut it down to size!
Why, for forty-eight years I've put up with it now.
I MUST stop this Grinchmas from coming. But how?" ...

And He mused, with a mania fit for a mystic,
"They'll soon learn to be less materialistic!
They're just waking up! I know just what I'll see!
They'll realize that presents aren't necessar-ee!
They'll do what they used to do -- they'll worship ME!" ...

But this sound wasn't glad! Why, this sound sounded... mad!
And the Christ got so scared that he called for His Dad. ...

And He puzzled three hours, the temperature dropping,
Then the Christ thought of something that set His heart hopping.
"Well, why the heck SHOULDN'T folks worship by shopping?
It's a seasonal festival. I'm just the topping!"

And what happened then? Well, in Hahville it's told
That the Christ overcame His aversion to gold.
And He signed up the Hahs to a credit card plan --
Did the Grinch ever do THAT? No, Christ is da man!
He opened a Wal-Mart, which did really well,
Driving Hahs' stores to bankruptcy -- but what the hell.

Weird.

Ten years ago today was the last time I saw my mom. Sort of. It depends what I mean by that.

The last time I saw her conscious was at the end of August, the last time I saw her alive was Sept. 11, and the last time I saw her at all was Sept. 12, but in all three of those cases, it wasn't really her anymore. She went into the hospital on July 31, 1996, and was never the same person again after the operation she had the next day.

I guess the question is, do dreams count? She's in my dreams every once in a while, the circumstances varying quite a bit -- sometimes it's like nothing ever went wrong, sometimes it's like she recovered, sometimes it's like she survived but wasn't the same as before, sometimes it's like she died and came back.

She'd probably tell me to stop wasting time on philosophical questions like these, when I've got a lot of work to do looking for a new job and finishing up at my old one, and packing up to move. Certainly I've HEARD her many times in the last ten years, not in the sense of hearing her voice (it gets hard to remember just what she sounded like), but more in terms of knowing what she'd say in a situation, and repeating expressions of hers. More recently I've started to read her diary from when my sister and I were little kids. Hope to read more of it when I'm back at my dad's place this fall.

The paper... The paper....

Tossing out stuff from my office at work, starting with what I'm absolutely sure I don't need to keep for any reason. A good reminder of the utter futility of so much of what we do. Well, what I do, anyway.

Okay, everyone remember where we parked.

Continued from http://undrwatrmoonlyt.livejournal.com.