Tag Archives: knowing yourself

Truth as a Sitcom

Posted on by

If there is truth in a contrived show with a laugh-track, then what? It’s just drinks from there on. Isn’t it? Or am I wrong?

Ali has a hard time saying goodbye

Or to be more opaque, the rich are always looking for discount deals. And they don’t need them. That’s the point of being rich. And if anything, they’re greedier for the deals than anyone else. Or am I wrong?

Venice canals

As far as I understand it, we have only two options: a. Have nothing and dream of having something OR b. Have everything and dream of having something else. Or am I wrong?

Graffiti art outside Brooklyn prison

I Have An Expiration Date Too

Posted on by

I’ve been hearing the rabbits screaming at night. Have you been hearing that? I was told that it’s just the dogs killing them.

As soon as the veil goes down, that’s when I thought I would know something. But then it wasn’t that. I was just pretending, and that was it.

I’m here. I think I know that. I mean, I look back and remember most things. But I remember who I thought I would be. And I’m good. Almost.

Who I say I think I am

Posted on by

I try to think about who I am and what I know, but I don’t know what any of that means. It’s a thing off in the distance, someplace that I thought I might have been, even convinced myself of that, and have now lost.

I know what I want to be. No, that’s a lie too. Even if I said that I knew what I want, or that I thought that I knew that, I wouldn’t. The more I think that I know the who and what, the more I’m further from it because I think that. It’s a façade.

Confidence is the thing, believing in those lies is what makes you that you in you. The deeper you get, the further you are from the same. A gosh-darned paradox!

And so…something else. Drugs and whores! No confusion there. Or all confusion. Signs of it all gone awry. At least it’s not a façade. Or the façade of facades. Good copy anyway.

Proud as I’m Allowed to Be

Posted on by

I lent her my car and then needed it to go out to the graduation. We drove together and kissed goodbye.

I ended up in a misshapen entourage of graduates as they exited the cathedral and watched them make a mockery of decorum and distancing protocols. They were having fun and the school had to let it all go.

They took me along, and I should have left at my first opportunity, but I’ve always been told it’s a free world, and so I stayed until I had had enough of my mistakes.

The judge accepted all of this, as did my counsel. But not me. I think about what happened and what could have been.

Writing Process: Knowing Something Clearly

Posted on by

I feel like I know something now, something with clarity. Or just not so lost. Might have even got somewhere. Probably not. But I feel like that.

I’ve never known who the hell I am, and now I’m thinking that I just might. I am a white male, and an older one at that. But that’s not it. I’m not even an asshole, like so many people have said. I know that’s just them being lost and new.

I have come to somewhere and I know something about that. It’s not much but it feels like it might be something. I just hope that I can sell and then get that Malibu estate, be surrounded by beautiful people and complain about the masses.

And how great it was getting to where I got.

Writing Process: Finding My Self

Posted on by

Reviewing my notes for the Young Chronicles section of this blog reminds me of how little I had a sense of who I was as a young man. More to the point, it makes me realize how much I remain the same person. My sense of self lost in mist.

I am a writer. I know that. I’ve been writing for 37 years – novel after screenplay after novel – but remain unpublished. I’ve also taught for 22 years and enjoyed that. But I feel more the actor on that stage. I do not belong there, as administrations remind me again and again.

It is not that I need praise for my work. That isn’t it at all. Writing is definitively the most comfortable place in this world, a refuge from the blur and nonsense, where I truly know who I am. But it is fleeting. I come back to here, this blog, and think that maybe I’m not.

Young Chronicles: Hitchhiking Summer 1983

Posted on by

I hitchhiked across Canada in the summer of 1983 in search of something. I told everyone that I was looking for Canada’s soul – sad but true – but it was clearly more about me.

10,000 miles and 110 different rides later, I can’t say I found anything much but laziness and fear. Not to say that I didn’t try. I stayed at Cavendish Beach in Prince Edward Island, buying enough peanut butter, jam, bread and juice for three days and thinking, “Okay, I’m going to really dig into self-reflection now.”

Sad, lonely view from my tent at Cavendish Beach, PEI

But I didn’t. I just read, wrote nonsense and walked around, counting down until I could eat another sandwich and have another juice. I was marking time, nothing more.

Trying to look confident and cool at Mile Zero in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

I did two things with regularity on the trip: take self-portraits and write nonsense. This was my path to becoming a writer and developing a sense of self. That’s what I told myself.

Self-portrait on the side of the road in Prince Edward island

But it all rang hollow. I was closed. To myself and everyone around me. The writing was horrendous drivel, and I just kept looking down the road to see what might be next.

Writing Process: Not Knowing Myself

Posted on by

This blog has been effective at turning over the rocks from my childhood, dreams and half-realized works. The Young Chronicles in particular has been telling as it reveals my lack of identity; I distinctly remember having clarity when I was eight years old and then none on my hitchhiking trip eleven years later.

Pretending to be confident and cool somewhere in Saskatchewan

I was always on edge, unsure of where I was, scared to camp alone, scared on the side of the road, scared of riding in stranger’s cars. I wanted to be somewhere else and, when I got there, somewhere else again.

I found vague clarity a few years later in between tree-planting seasons, camping with my cat Popo in the Gulf Islands, reading dawn to dusk, but still scared of sounds in the night and the dark waters, of being alone, but nevertheless running away from others.

My little log cabin on Ahmic Lake. Scared even there.

That’s as close to a sense of self as I have ever come.

Writing Process: Unconscious Self

Posted on by

I want to write like music. I want to write in a sustained sound. I want to write in a loop that goes around, on and on. I want to write with never-ending tension. I want to write like the opening of a door, the scuffle of feet, the distant sound of something coming soon.

My Bloody Valentine, Hammerstein Ballroom, 2010

I want to write like I dream and see my mother, looking young and sharp, in the car with me to the airport, our bags overflowing out the back, a starship flier picking us up before we even get there, continents vanishing in steam.

View from Crown Mountain, BC

I want to write like it was left unsaid, like eyes see. I want to write in a burrow, like roots to rocks. I want to write words that mean something else in their unconscious self.

Documenta 2017, Kassel, Germany

I want to write like I thought I would.