Tuesday, August 30, 2005

The persistence of loss.

My trip to Nanaimo in July placed me on a ferry for the first time in more years than I can remember, and placed me there just days after another ferry lost control and beached itself on a marina (or some such thing).

I took the book I had brought with me for the trip up to the top, outside deck, sat down, lit a cigarette, and started to read while I waited for the boat to depart.

When it did, I found myself unable to keep from thinking about the ferry that had gone out of control the few days prior. I also found myself thinking, with pretty much equal interest, about accidently driving into another ferry halfway through our journey, about our boat springing a leak and filling with water, and whether or not there would be anything good to eat at the cafeteria.

Barring the thoughts about food, I realized that one of the curses of adulthood is just how negative we become. I can recall riding the ferry dozens of times as a child, without a worry, without a care in the world. There was no chance that it would sink, no chance that it would cross the path of another boat, and certainly no chance that terrorists would come aboard and blow us all up. Because my parents were nearby, and nothing bad could ever happen to me.

Of course bad things happen to children all the time, and often those bad things happen *because* the parents are nearby, and not in spite of it. But kids don't know these things when they're kids. Thank god.

Years ago, in the middle of some ridiculous debate with my then-wife, she accused me of being naive. I agreed that I was and, in fact, was proud to be. I also hoped to be able to stay that way for as long as possible.

I'm far less naive now, which I think is unavoidable. I'm also a whole lot more bitter and a whole lot more jaded. Which is as disappointing as it is inevitable.

In spite of the comfort it gives (or maybe even because of the comfort it gives me) I feel a little bit more disappointed in myself, in the world around me, in life in general with each step I take towards a bleaker outlook on life. I know I'm not alone, because people keep telling me things like, "That's how the world works," and, "Get used to it, it doesn't get any better."

The reason for that disappointment is that I really and honestly believe that one of the greatest things we lose in our adulthood, thanks to the anger and disappointment we feel, is our ability to believe in things. In our ability to hope for something good. In our ability to close our eyes and feel, in our hearts, the possibility that we might somehow, some way have a happy ending.

We shroud ourselves in depression and disaffection, sometimes because it's what we've been taught how to do, sometimes because it's all we know how to do, sometimes because just so sick and fucking tired of being disappointed.

And I am. I am so sick and fucking tired of being disappointed. The problem is, it's also so fucking hard to have hope.

It's a bit like the story of the boy who cried wolf, but instead of crying wolf he tells you to cheer up, that your life is lovely, that your future holds wonderful things, and then he punches you in the face and runs away laughing.

After awhile you get tired of being punched in the face and just kick the kid in the stomach as soon as you see him.

One of the things that greatly appealed to me about the play I'm directing this season was the tone that it ended on. One of optimism. One of hope.

It's not an obvious, in your face, "they lived happily ever after" kind of ending. Instead, it's more of an allusion. An allusion that, somehow, things might be okay, if we just believe a little bit. In ourselves. In each other.

It's an idea that warms my heart just enough to remind me that there is still a little bit of hope tucked away inside this bitter and jaded shell, and that makes me kind of happy. It reminds me that there's still a little bit of my young naivety hanging on, and that means that it's not hopeless. That there is still a chance for me to believe again. In something, or someone, or just the idea that tomorrow might be better today.

That's something worth believing in, I think, if even only a little bit.

And something worth reminding people to believe in.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Tales of the potential kitty.

One of the coolest ideas I've stumbled upon in the last few years is the idea of Schrodinger's Cat.

Here's how Wikipedia explains it:

A cat is placed in a sealed box. Attached to the box is an apparatus containing a radioactive nucleus and a canister of poison gas. The experiment is set up so that there is a 50% chance of the nucleus decaying in one hour. If the nucleus decays, it will emit a particle that triggers the apparatus, which opens the canister and kills the cat. According to quantum mechanics, the unobserved nucleus is described as a superposition (mixture) of "decayed nucleus" and "undecayed nucleus". However, when the box is opened the experimenter sees only a "decayed nucleus/dead cat" or an "undecayed nucleus/living cat."

The question is: when does the system stop existing as a mixture of states and become one or the other? The purpose of the experiment is to illustrate that quantum mechanics is incomplete without some rules to describe when the wavefunction collapses and the cat becomes dead or remains alive instead of a mixture of both.


In a nutshell: Put a cat inside of a sealed box, that can not be tampered with from the outside. Inside the box with the cat is a device that, after one hour, has a 50/50 chance of killing the cat. After the hour is up, the cat is either alive or dead, but according to certain rules quantum physics, until the cat is actually observed in one state or the other, it is, in fact, in both states simultaneously.

Which I think we can all agree is kind of ridiculous.

The point of Schrodinger's cat was to criticize certain points of quantum mechanics. Certain points which are, I can assure you, quite over my head. But I think Schrodinger's Cat beautifully illustrates a part of day to day life as well.

Potentiality.

Every moment that is in front of you has potential. Until you seize the moment, make a choice, and take action, nothing is decided.

I can lay in bed for an hour wondering what to have for breakfast. And for that hour, every breakfast possibility is equally likely to come to reality. But the moment I grab the bowl and pour the cornflakes, the potentiality is gone and one particular course of action becomes fact, and then history.

Or, wait, here's a better analogy

It's like a game of russian roulette. One bullet in one chamber of a revolver. You spin the chamber, and put the gun to your head. In a sense, until you pull that trigger and find out for sure -- until you are actually able to observe the state of the chamber somehow -- it is simultaneously in both states at once. Kind of. In a sense.

Wait, forget that russian roulette thing. That's just gross.

But I think maybe you're getting the point by now anyway. So let's just drop the analogies.

As long as you're waiting to do something, as long as you're thinking about doing something, the potential exists for that thing to go in any of 1000 different directions. Once you do it, the potential is gone, and the cat is either alive or dead, no two ways about it.

That's the thing about life. Sometimes you make those choices, and everything just works out spectacularly, and you ask yourself how you could put that decision off for so goddamn long.

Other times, you wish you could have just held on to the potentiality, either because things didn't go the way you wanted, or were more complicated than you thought, or you just plain fucked up the choice somehow.

There's something sadly good about potentiality. There's something sadly good about just sitting within a situation where you have equal chances of success or failure.

Friday, August 26, 2005

I've long believed that publication, or exhibition, is a vital part of any creative process.

The creating itself occurs in a rather solitary place, and in rather a solitary piece of mind. But there is implied, I think, with any artistic endeavor, the hope that you might one day able to share it with others.

And I've often felt as if creating something with no intention of ever sharing it is a bit like masturbation. Sure, it's fun and all while it's happening, but when you get to the end of it, it's really kind of silly and pointless.

So what do you do when you start writing something that you know you could never publish, never exhibit, never share with the rest of the world. Because it's too close to you. Because it dips into biographical stuff that you can't deal with yourself, so you tuck it as far back in your mind and soul as is humanly possible. You can't share that kind of thing with people. They look at you funny afterwards.

But how can you *not* write it, when writing can be such a cathartic experience? Getting those things out in a private way, when it's just you and the page, allows you to deal with those things in a way, albeit a small one. But even small ways are better than no ways at all, and too often I feel like I have no way of dealing with the things that are bubbling and gurgling in my psyche.

The problem, I guess, stems from the rare possibility that this thing I write, which I could never show to another human being, might turn out to be really, really good.

What then?

Even if I was a perfect altruist, the knowledge that I had created something might shake people, or move them, or make them think about something or realize something, and that I was actively keep it away from them...that would be wrong. That would be perversely wrong.

Of course, I'm not a perfect altruist, so it would be my ego that got in the way. The ego that would want people to go, "Wow, he wrote that? That's fricking brilliant! Not only that, imagine the balls on him if he's got the nerve to actually publish / display that work! It's so intimate!"

I doubt I'll have to worry about it. Things that are this close to me rarely turn out that good. They are what they are, and that is a cathartic exercise, a way to vent my spleen onto the page and get rid of at least a few of the cancers that eat away at my soul.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

In the future...

...we will all be made up of 75% cheese, by volume.

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Resurrection

I opened up my still unfinished National Novel Writing month novel last week and actually wrote a few pages in it. And then I did the same thing tonight -- a few more pages of progress actually complete.

Those of you who know me know that this is almost unheard of. And those of you who don't know me, well, now you know that fact too.

It's not so much that I'm not a creative person. I think I'm a highly creative person. The problem is that I get far more excited about the "thinking about being creative" phase than the "actually sitting down and being creative" phase. By the time it comes to actually sitting down, I'm either distracted by liquor or video games. Or both, sometimes.

I know that creating a habit of sitting down and writing a little bit every day just involves, you know, doing it often enough to create a habit. But even knowing it has rarely ever allowed me to pull it off. I try for awhile, then something else gets in the way for a day or two, and then it's bloody hard to get back into it again, so I just let whatever project it was alone for a few months, before guilt finally brings me back.

I enjoy the creating when I create, but I still can't motivate myself to do it.

I'm waiting for an epiphany. A moment of sudden, shocking realization about my own mortality, and how fragile my own life is. With that realization, I think, should come the ability to do all the things I've always wanted to do. Create with complete abandon, knowing I need to get these ideas out now, before I die; quit smoking, because smoking isn't doing anything except shortening my life span; quit drinking so goddamn much, because what's the point of being alive if you're only ever going to see this wonderful, beautiful world through eyes clouded with liquor?

No epiphany as of yet. Clearly. Maybe there will never be one, and I'll simply continue down this path until the day I meet my end and go on to whatever strange and surreal things exist beyond this world.

But if that's the case, I fear that regardless of all the nice things that people might say at my funeral -- because you have no choice but to say nice things at funerals; it's some kind of bylaw -- what they'll all really be thinking is, "He had so much potential. He could have done so much.

"What a sad, sad disappointment his life turned out to be."

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Filler

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In immediate retrospect, I'm pretty sure I'm going to regret this...