Late but not Wrong: Sometimes it's not Worth Being Right

On Wednesday night, the Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks will step on the ice to put to rest a collective 80 years of futility, misery, and failure. Each team will seek to lift 35 lbs of Lord Stanley’s silver from the finely manicured hands of the NHL’s grinning marionette, league commissioner Gary Bettman, and, more importantly, lift itself from the nadir of mediocrity, gnawing doubt, and loserdom that has plagued it like rust and boll weevils in a rye wheat field ripe for the harvest.
Vancouver heads into the series having left its playoff feeblemindedness in the past with the seventh game, double overtime victory over the Chicago Blackhawks that, moments before Alex Burrows knuckled a slap shot past Chicago Blackhawks goaltender, Cory Crawford, seemed just another doomed effort that would leave local fans writhing in agony like a badly rolled joint in the hands of a high school dropout flogging week old mangoes to overweight hippies and naturopathic medicine majors on Vancouver’s nudist Wreck Beach. But, in a game that the former East Coast Hockey League player nearly single handedly carried for the home team, the Canucks finally put their old lady Mother Bates in the fruit cellar where she belongs. Since then, they have got down to some serious grave digging. The Nashville Predators, done in 6. The San Jose Sharks gone in 5.
Nevertheless, Vancouver fan finds himself gripped by a strange mix of hysterical optimism and crushing fear and trepidation. For a town that plunged into rioting in the streets following its game 7 loss to the New York Rangers in the 1994 final, nothing is more important than winning the Cup this time around and planning a parade that doesn’t involve chasing the local media to the Hooters’ rooftop in a haze of teargas and bitter, unhinged looting. For most fans, closing out this series will be bigger than the Olympic men’s ice hockey victory last year, simply because it will provide the validation that Canada’s paranoid westernmost province craves; yes, a Stanley Cup victory will elevate Vancouver and BC to the rarified glory of being a place in Canada that truly matters, in the way that Montreal and the overwhelming (past) dominance of the Canadiens matter, or Toronto and the 92/93 Jays’ World Series victories matter to the nation. The feelings of doubt and alienation that gnaw at the heart of Canucks’ fan will be but an ugly and receding dream if Luongo, Kesler, Bieksa, and the Sedin twins perform as they have for the better part of this post season. But if they don’t, and Milan Lucic and his Bruins rob them and their fans of the prize, then beware. Beware the fear and bewilderment, the awful gnashing of teeth, the mad rush to Robson St, and the ugly burning sensation reserved only for losers who were expected to win.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: H1N1 CURE

Look. Listen. Let's keep this short. Ah! Just like SARS, Y2K, or sailing off the edge of a flat world, we are in the grips of yet another crisis. But! Fear not. This time your intrepid correspondent has nailed down a failsafe cure. Yes! I am the purveyor of salvation from the insidious pig disease. Come one, come all to the altar of healing. To wit, from the Cassell Dictionary of Superstitions by David Pickering:

Modern medicine still has trouble dealing with flu epidemics and in former times the imaginations of the superstitious were taxed to the full in trying to find cures for what was all too often a fatal complaint. Here are some of 100%, fool proof, iron clad cures, I am certain:

1) Wrapping the patient in warm and still bloody animal skins
2) Placing a hot brick soaked in vinegar and rubbed with garlic on the patient's
chest
Ingesting one or more of the following (more is better):
3) Egg yolks spiced up with a few live lice
4) The urine of a seven-year-old girl or a little soot
5) A few fat slugs and dog faeces, which could if desired be made more palatable by
combining them with oysters dissolved in milk and wine.

Yes! Superstition rears its beautiful head. May you live in interesting times. Remember. Death is at your door and it is snorting like a pig with a runny nose. No amount of hand sanitizer can save you now. So. Bring on the blood soaked skins and dog shit--children, pregnant women and professional athletes first, of course.

It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding *

Wolf: Of all animals the wolf is perhaps the most feared in terms of superstition, being a favourite disguise of the DEVIL and everywhere linked with evil. In times gone by, the mere sight of a wolf was supposed to be enough to render a man dumb, assuming that the wolf saw the man first, and similarly even saying the word ‘wolf’ risked an imminent encounter with one…On a more optimistic note…eating a dish of wolf’s meat will prevent a person from seeing ghosts. Sleeping with a wolf’s head under the pillow will ward off nightmares…
--David Pickering, Dictionary of Superstitions

Look. Listen. The wolf always runs in a pack, but when he is hungry, he runs bolder. A Chinese man said this on Magnum P.I., season 7, episode 16. Yes. I am deep into superstition now. An odd twist, but life is twisted, no? Let me up, I’ve had enough—Tom Petty said that, and I believe him. My life is twisted like a rabbit in flight and I fear there is no solace between here and where I will fall, bleeding in the snow. Ah! But what could one fear in the lotus land of plenty? Plenty I am sure. For these passing years, my life has been a hard corner, but things pass and come to pass, and now, I fear even I must go to ground. How long lord, how long (1)?
But what can I say here that will call off the pack; where are the golden promises to redeem? No. this is the long journey to the end of the night (2) and I know that these things are only faced alone. I am tired. The wolves are at the door and I am nearly struck dumb. Misfortune. There is no appeasing it. Pile the fire high and leave me here to die. There are some things that words cannot explain. Ford Maddox Ford may have written the saddest story ever told (3). Maybe. More than me have suffered, but we only feel our own pain. Indulge me. I feel quite lost. So. It is the wolf and me. Life will go on—but not perhaps for either of us. I miss the friends that I have gathered and the path that I have lost. I feel dumb—frozen with the fear. Where have I come from and where can I go? The ghosts are at the door. There must be some kind of way out of here; I can’t get no relief (4). Please. Even the wretched resent the maudlin. I am too sad to live, but too dumb to die. Let the wolves lick my face: i'm ready Ma. it's only a little bleeding left.
* Bob Dylan
1 Hunter S. Thompson
2 Celine
3 The Good Soldier
4 All Along the Watchtower, Bob Dylan

THERE'S NO ESCAPE FROM GRACELAND

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
--Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Look. Listen. One cannot learn to forget. Memory is a two edged blade forged somewhere in the chaos between heaven and hell. An irony, I think, that chaos offers such a clean and cruel restraint. Where would we be without memory, friend? Ignorant. Blissful. Is this why the gods invented wine? If so, surely for themselves, and surely, to be a god is to live beyond remembering.

But these are heady thoughts, and I am not sure I’m ready to go down such perilous roads these days. The sun is burning hotter than I remember, and the line where the ocean meets the sky is clear but thankfully far away—for me at least—and this is good. Shalom.

But speaking of the horizon, the King of Pop has stepped across it and now lives in the dubious shadow of memory. I was sure that Michael Jackson was a freak and a pederast, but, in recent days, I’ve heard that perhaps he was closer to a martyr. Jesus. A friend I cannot name expounded on this theory at length, and while it burned a little bile going down, it is not…without merit. Martyrs need a crowd. Freaks demand a mirror and an audience demands a sacrifice of the freakish. Empires rest on the shoulders of slaves. Like the sequined man, gladiators ruled Rome from the pits and Emperors knelt with eunuchs, whores, and children. Rome forgot about the Empire, and the Empire forgot it. Enter the Barbarians, cloaked in darkness. 600 years of looking, neither forward nor backwards, but simply blindly. And now, now, slaves, eunuchs, whores, pimps and freaks run rampant…Children—I’m not so sure. Ah. But that is another thread, to be saved for another time. Now, we have long had our own Empire, and it is a white-columned mansion with 23 rooms, never to be uninhabited. No. It is a place where the ghosts of our memory tread without refuge or remand.

Perhaps it is my own Graceland where my memory and Michael Jackson collide. Because I remember a Thriller poster on the wall, and the smoke and Vincent Price’s inimitable tones shuddering from a cassette tape in the home stereo when my mother and father were not home. And I remember the electricity of being a child and hearing bass lines that made my heart jump, and that feeling of pure cool that his music sweated. So what? I was a fan. Sure. But I was also a child. And in my child’s mind, Michael Jackson made me feel good. Alive. Excited. On the verge of something hazy but forceful, raw but assured. But now? Frankly, I feel irritated and at odds with nearly everyone. I have heard the tributes and they ring hollow. What are they celebrating? Who are they remembering? The star that I knew at 8, has been a white shadow for these years since. Was Michael Jackson at 50 anything of what he was at 23? Maybe a most fitting funeral would be for the death of his music—but that is tricky too. His music died, as I suspect he did, long ago. Yet it will live on. Simultaneous death and life. Reverence and revulsion. Black and white. The present and the past. Remembering and forgetting. How strange to find such parallels with a one-gloved man. But they are there, like wisdom in despair.

So, friend, the King is dead. Did he bleed for you and I? In the end, I suspect not, but perhaps he bled because of you and I. Does this earn mercy? Forgiveness? It certainly seems so. But how can you forgive what you don’t know? This seems of some importance. We fear monsters, define monsters, by not knowing them. And we make monsters in the same way. Michael Jackson was our monster and he will be remembered in as much a right as he has earned. But forgiven only in as much as we think he deserves or in as much as we forget.

I guess what I’m saying is that remembering what was so thrilling and endless and cool and seeing it cast against what became so abject, putrid and wretched is grating. And I am part of this, which is a suffering of its own kind, I suppose. I too, peered at the spectacle, and am, in some small way, part of the making of the spectacle. And this is unsettling, because it reminds me of the darkness of my own generation, steeped in the incense of a Roman orgy. There is a shadow over the Empire, and, without due care, it will swallow us, one and all.

In sum, Michael Jackson and his fans and the media at large have robbed me of the Michael Jackson that I remember; for that I am bitter. And if I really want to admit it, I am bitter, because in losing this memory, I lose a little of what it was to be young—without monsters.

SAILOR ON HORSEBACK

“We may lose ourselves again,” said Nikita moodily. He was gloomy because of the intense longing he felt for the vodka; and the tea, the only thing that could quench that longing, had not yet been offered to him.

At the bottom of his mind, Vasily Andreyevich knew that the dawn could be nowhere near; but he began to feel more and more afraid and he chose to both deceive himself and to find himself out.
Leo Tolstoy, Master and Man

Look. Listen. When the longing comes, it is deep and vicious in the purest Russian sense. Yes, the Russians. The people who, in modern history, twice slaughtered the beasts of the fields, poisoned their own wells, and scorched the land to dust in the face of fear and oppression. Yes. Eat our dust you French and Germans. And so fear and longing are bred in Leo’s bones.

But we all have our advancing armies in the darkness, Churchill’s black dog, and the dull ache that strikes beneath the ribs. Where do they come from? How can they cut across the fields and track us down? What dog creeps with such silence and determination? Why does my heart tick over one day and thud the next? If I knew this place, this art, this malady, I would surely track, hunt and medicate my way through it, but as it is, I know only when it is too late and the clash of metal, lonesome howls and bitter taste of a penny under the tongue are upon me. This, friend, is when it is too late.

I told someone the other day that I was a sailor on horseback. It may have solicited much laughter, but it was no joke to me. No. I stole this moniker from a biography of Jack London. Jack London wrote more in 20 years than most men, and a damn lot of it was better than most men write in a lifetime. He had talent to burn and he burned every ounce of it to cinders before he dropped the pen (and the hammer) at age 40. There was a black dog scratching at the door when they found him. But he was a sailor on horseback, and had spent a life running. There are many places to run, and the sea and the range are two of the most trying, I think. Sea to sea, Korea to the West Indies, California to Alaska. He covered miles like words cover ideas. And then he stopped. Dead. So laughter is not appropriate. I said as much and promptly emptied 3 boilermakers at the bar. Fuck the laughter, I thought.

So I suppose I should get down to the nut of all of this. The longing. The Five W’s of it. What, where, when, who, why. The Five fingers of reason and being, dictated in order, because I am tired and I want to get some things straight. Longing to be what you can no longer be. Wishing to be somewhere where you aren’t. Trying to get back to when things were simpler and more pure and forward to when you can just sit back and the sun shines and maybe a fish splashes and you don’t have to look over your shoulder or even ahead, but just listen to wind and you breathe. The people who you miss and you love and you haven’t met yet. The wondering why it’s so hard to wake up in the morning and so hard to go to bed at night. This is longing, and maybe more than just I have felt it.

When the horrors of the Ministry of Love are dawning on Orwell’s Winston Smith, in anguish he cries out to his tormentor, “I understand how; I want to know why.” And that is the question that remains. Why this day or that, these people or those, this feeling or another? Why do I stand naked in the night drinking whiskey by the light of the streetlamp outside my window? Why read compulsively; with what hopes in mind? Why have I been piling up all these words since the day I was born and where am I going to put them? What am I waiting for and when will it come? Who will be left and who will be there when I find it? These are the things that the black dog sometimes says to me when she sits, her head upon my lap with dreaming brown eyes staring up into my mind. Sometimes we sit in silence, but after too long, she and I get restless and we walk. She always takes her place, content to trot at my heels, nipping at me from time to time.

But I said once that there were going to be better moments in this writing too, and I’ll be damned if there aren’t. So, that said, I will tell you that the black dog runs away from time to time, the shadow lifts, the clashing armies stand at bay, and the light shines just right. Sometimes it is in people’s eyes: you know who you are. Other times it is when the road stretches out and the wheel plays beneath the hands. And when the moon is right and the night is silent there are places you can find that you thought you had all but forgotten…And then, then you can look over your shoulder and there is the place and the person and the thing you were missing, and it is not the black dog, it’s something else, just back enough to be a white, warm blur. And you look and you smile and you feel that you are not alone and that there is a sense to the life that casts itself on you like a spell. The sense that all can be right and good and true. And it is a moment of essence, wonder, and hope; you are mortal but happy and you want to look again. But remember, as Tom Petty, a man who bleeds mortality once said, You can look back, but it’s best not to stare.

A Line is an Infinite Number of Points

Memory works in strange ways/cuts you down then makes you pay/one day you’ll be walking fine/the next day lightning hits you from behind…

Blue Rodeo, Last to Know

Look, listen. Forget about betting on football, politics, or the next move that you will make. Forget about the blunders and the calculations. Forget the bile and the choler. Forget about the sorrow, the twisting, the pain and the horror. There will be time for these things later in this life and in the next and the next. Perhaps the past is a shadow, empty, but at your heels. Perhaps it is like water, receding but sometimes flooding above the waterline. It may be the stuff of memory or the stuff of forecasts. It may be a black dog in the night. But never mind wondering about that for a moment and know that it is simply there, crystalline like sugar and salt: frozen perfection.

And so I find myself steeped in it this night of all nights. The fog hangs low on the city and some strange hand has clenched my brain, grasping with wispy fingers. Oh well. It will not relent, so I will. I have memories too, and most of the time I keep them at bay—cynicism works and when that fails there are more brutal remedies. But tonight I feel too tired to fight and maybe it is just and so that I do not. So I will indulge myself, my memories, and perhaps some things that are good and holy. I’m sure I told you there would be heroes; it may be that now is their time.

I remember driving across this country, East to West, roof racks loaded with the detritus of life much younger than this. I remember two girls curled up in the back seat while the sun set low over the green haze of a Northern Ontario forest cut by the grey ribbon of a road that unwound infinitely. I remember eyes and the lights in eyes and the lights in the lights of those eyes that shone like promises that could not be broken. Yes. I am slipping down a sentimental road, but hell, the night is dark and long and the fire burns low in everyone from time to time. Perhaps sentiment is not so bad when nothing else will do.

So I remember what my children can’t, and it teases my mind with the precision of a scalpel. There are photographs somewhere, but none are more real or honest than those in my brain. I prefer it this way; the colours are brighter and the lines more blurred. There can be everything if I can just piece it together. They were beautiful, self-contained and doubtless. Maybe I was too. Fear was just a number, and one that I had not yet been dealt. I remember the road and the long stretch of the sun on Lake Superior and the crooked cut of the rain in a sudden thunder headed cloud burst out above the Prairies. I remember the giant teepee and the truck stops and the cigarette smoke curling around my fingers. The cold in the night in Banff, when all the sleeping bags and winter coats and blankets and piles of sheets were barely enough, but the morning was a flashing of green on green of certain slants of light through the trees. Picnic tables, kindling, pajamas, mugs, sunglasses, roadmaps, and the incessant questions about if we would get a dog. Mountain passes, switchbacks, long arcing curves, the wheel sliding through my fingers, roadside stops, braided hair, and tired fists clenched in squinting eyes. Sagebrush in the sand, motels, gas stations, and more questions. Smiling faces. I see anticipation and expectation, hope in the wilderness. The dawn of the city. Good friends waiting. Cold bottles of beer. A warm heat rising from a street. A first home with a sunken living room and a slate fireplace. Sleep walking children. The first day of school. Pinatas in the park. I have a beard and then I don’t. My hair is long and then it isn’t. Jobs, ladders, the floor of a welder’s shop. Ground bits of steel. Daughters’ first friends. Laundry, waffles, neighbours across the fence. Tears. These parts of something from then transport themselves here on occasion. I do not ask, but time delivers.

I see memory in the face of my two children and for a moment all is good. And that is enough for today. I told you there would be heroes. And there will be tomorrows, but one day those will be less in number than the yesterdays. That is the sad tipping of life. The Hemingway moment. The laying on of impossible odds. But that day is not today. No. There are more windmills at which to tip and the knife of my brain is not dulled. But tonight, tonight the knife is sheathed and that is okay, I think. Pa liao, pa liao (let be, let be).

My Pony Broke My Neck While I Rode Side Saddle

What will I do? Where will I go?

Scarlett O’Hara

Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.

Rhett Butler

Wait! Tomorrow's another day.

Scarlett O’Hara

Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

Look, Listen. Like life, football is a cruel and brutal sport and gambling on it is even worse. The Carolina Panthers must feel something like that sick nag with the hide scraping ribs and frothing lips that Scarlett O’Hara whipped to death on the doorstep of her father’s colonial mansion, Tara. The Panthers were beaten like stray cats on Saturday, and only drunken gamblers saw it coming. There is no one I pity less than Jake Delhomme and his 5 pathetic turnovers that probably turned over 50 million dollars or more in legal bets and just as much off the table.

Now, I don’t give one damn for any of those sick panthers that slouched off the field against the laughing stock of the playoffs, the Phoenix Cardinals. No. They folded like Confederates in the path of General Sherman and took a licking that they deserved. Thank god that I put no money on those cheap punks, though I would have if I had not been badly disillusioned previously by so many teams in the final weeks of the season. It is better to invest your money in a ponzi racket than place one cent against the bookies. They know more than the South has ever lost and are more vicious and exacting in their numbers.

This is all that I have to say this week. Perhaps this blog can be resurrected, but I will need a serious sure shot, and these things are hard to come by, especially in these mean times. I cannot stomach the world today: something is wrong and I lack the patience to put my finger on it. Perhaps I need a small vacation. Somewhere small, warm, safe and nice. A place perched on the edge of the sea, still forgotten, still lost. Save your money, ignore the newspapers, forget about love, and stockpile smarts while you still have them. If you think that the drunk is bad, wait for the hangover. We live in dangerous times; don’t say that you weren’t warned. Everyone has felt their hearts sink into their boots, gamblers or not, and the road is not pretty. Many are called and many are punished. It is not enough to be rude and thoughtless. You have to be prepared to cut your own throat and those of your neighbours without even waiting for the cock to crow thrice. Peter is staring down the barrel now, and it is not a pretty sight. There is more room in the potters’ field, and there are many bodies yet to be buried. Trust only yourself, and still keep one hand behind your back. I have seen the dawn and it is as blood red as ever. For those who have faith in the big show (i.e. the Olympics), there will be no return. Real estate developers and hair dressers roam the corridors of city hall. There is no honour among thieves. None. The writing is on the wall and only clichés can deaden its sting. But the pain is already here; it has always been here. Everything before was just a postponement. I am serious and you should be too. Thank god for Tom Petty and Irish whiskey. These things have never done wrong. Ever. Il giocare, non e male, ma e male il perdere (there is no harm in playing but great harm in losing).

ANATHEMA IN BLUE

Vote: (n) the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Ambrose Beirce, The Devil's Dictionary

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Bertrand Russell

Look. Listen. It is long in the night and the fire is low, in the hearth and in my heart. Yes. I got beaten like a blind dog in predicting the decline of Stephen Harper and his automatons. What can i say? I was not expecting anything but a minority government for the Conservatives, but I didn't think the Bastards would get 17 more seats. Well, well. Vote splitting and panic voters in the rest of Canada aside, the Quebecois and the Newfoundlanders saved us from ourselves once again, and for that there is something to be thankful for. The rest of the feckless who could have spared this country from another year or two of the cold, dumb leadership of a man who lest we forget, wanted to join the coalition of the willing (and this simply is the single and only point necessary to bar Harper from any kind of governance, never mind that of our country), but they didn't...well, the people get the government they deserve, but I resent having it foisted on me. Yes, I know my grapes are sour, and to the victor go the spoils, but I am in no mood to apologize or roll on this one. The fruits of folly sometime fall late, and the spoils of this election are already rotten on the vine. One or two years down the road we will look back on this as a wasted opportunity. The slow crawl of environmental evils looming on the horizon will not be dealt with, the economy will get worse, foreign affairs will continue to wither, and general democracy will not be served or furthered. So it goes, I guess. There is something to be learned from this botched operation, but tonight is not the time. No. No matter how Harper spins it, most Canadians have typically sat on their hands again and the Conservative victory is simply one of resounding default. It reminds me of all those hopeless years of betting on the Kansas City Chiefs, only to have Marty Schottenheimer screw me on the point spread time and again with his inevitably conservative play calling. There is something pathetic about an electorate that never really goes for broke when it all comes down, but after all, this campaign was largely wasted from the start and full of sound and fury signifying nothing. But now I am rambling, and to be honest have no stomach for this rotten, shrunken corpse of an election.

There is plenty of blame to go around, though I could care less about it now. We have had an election for no reason, and we are saddled with many MPs who exist for no reason but to consume the dead corpse of politics in this country. So Stockwell Day can take his sentimental watch and shove it up his ass, Stephane Dion can get back to practising his English and Jack Layton can keep running madly from promise to promise. When the real reckoning comes it will be ugly and brutal, a real whipping for many who deserve nothing less.

But when I look at the map of Canada and see the blue sea of Alberta and Saskatchewan and the aping ridings in BC, I cannot help but feel depressed and disgusted. One day the tar sands will run into dry desert, pine beetles will bore into the eyeballs of the backward and blind, and Alberta and BC will once again be more than just intellectual wastelands. Ugh. I want a one way ticket to Quebec and I want it now. I will leave this place without even shaking the dust of my shoes and make a beeline straight across the northern US until I reach Vermont and head back North. One day soon the West will have seen the last of me, and I will not stop moving fast, hard and bitterly until I arrive in a place where people take politics seriously.

When I drag myself out of this low, analysis will come, and I feel it stirring viciously in my belly. But for now, you will have to excuse me, because I am going to draw the shade, bolt the door, crank up some serious rhythm and blues and drink Irish whiskey until my eyeballs bleed. Out.

MR. HARPER'S ANGST

The great philosophical question used to be ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ Today, the real question is: ‘Why is there nothing rather than something?’
Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime

…and as he looked and saw her well known pleasant smile, he felt death come again. This time there was no rush. It was a puff, as of a wind that makes a candle flicker and the flame go tall…So this was how you died, in whispers that you did not hear.
Ernest Hemmingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Look. Listen. Many things have gone wrong these days passed and many deserve their fate, while others are still suckling the optimism of bewilderment, not yet sure that the raw and intemperate days of doom are indeed theirs. Perhaps I fall into both categories, first for betting that the Dallas Cowboys would cover a 5.5 point spread in Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals, and second for putting good money on the 4-1 Carolina Panthers to cover the 1.5 point spread against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Carolina left me shaking my head, but I will admit that putting my money on a team with a career low life corner back (Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones) and a mentally ill wide receiver (Terrell Owens) who, in last week’s post-game press conference, very nearly simultaneously broke into tears and hallelujahs as he declared himself God’s instrument of football, was a terminally dumb maneuver that cost me an otherwise flawless bet. In either case, my losses are cheap and insignificant in the face of the other losers out on the heath, howling in the winter winds. But for others, recent days have been days of a greater nothingness, and while I am playing for fun, they are in it for keeps, and one suspects that there will be much less cracking of bones and much more licking of wounds and gnashing of teeth around some fires in the long days to come.

Yes. Stephen Harper has watched his ‘brilliant tactics’ fail as the economy slides and Canadians peel off in the polls like blisters in the sun. He and he alone—for this is a man who prides himself on his iron grasp and penultimate control of his party and (as he once imagined) this country—bears the blame. What must have seemed like such a clever opportunity to finally grasp the ring of majority power that he so cravenly desired has turned into a nightmare of existential proportion. Yes indeed Mr. Harper, after tomorrow, you may have so much less of something that it can and will only seem like nothing to you, as you chew on the cinders of another minority government and the secret knowledge that you are your ilk are not really wanted around here. Let’s be clear. Since the day he called this doomed election, Harper has lost credibility by bending his own fixed election rules; cutting off his feet in Quebec; pissing off artists; presiding over cautious estimates for the cost of the war in Afghanistan that have ballooned to somewhere at or above $18 billion; watching the economy falter while telling people to buy stocks and not to worry; and even losing much of the senior citizen vote. And it gets worse: the numbers in the polls have fallen substantially to as little as a 5 point lead over the Liberals, and if any of the citizens backing the Jackal or Elizabeth May get nervous come voting time, this could shrink considerably more.

How did what seemed like something, so catastrophically become so much nothing? Well, Mr. Harper, though claiming to be a historian of hockey (which I doubt, but more of that later), also admits to not being interested in studying history or philosophy, which explains a lot. See. An interest in history and the leaders of the past, along with the fundamental curiosity and the desire to understand that is rooted in philosophy would have been of great help to Mr. Harper, for he would have the ability to step down from his economist’s, moralizing throne and understand that he is attempting to govern people, not numbers or sheep, and these people have interests beyond the scope of what he has determined to be important. And this is his undoing. Undoubtedly he has crafted a plan, but it is inflexible and resolutely determined: there can be no change with Mr. Harper, because, as any conservative at heart, he does not believe in change. Now, putting aside history and philosophy for a moment, even if he were simply a student of Canada’s game, possibly he would see the folly of his ways through basic, analogous thought: to wit, hockey, like politics, is a game of fluidity. When played at its most beautiful and highest levels, it is one of the most unpredictable, fast changing, and artistic of sports. For the set pieces of football, soccer, and basketball, and the rigidity of the baseball diamond are largely absent from hockey. Positional play and strategy are second to the speed and creativity of the 12 players on the ice—and this demands the ability to change, just as real, breathing constituents at the heart of any election demand change.

But I suspect that Mr. Harper has other things on his mind beside hockey. He is the emperor in a dying campaign—one which, on those heady late summer days, seemed so promising—perhaps still unable to hear the winds of death or the majority of people in Canada whispering his fate. And oh! how the idea of anything less than a majority government must freeze and gall his thin blood as he broods over what must be a gnawing and bitter, deeply personal question: Why is there nothing, rather than something?

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF A LITERARY EDUCATION or THE NIGHT OF THE SNAKE

In The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell recounts a curious pehenomenon of animal behavior. Newly hatched chickens, bits of eggshells still clinging to their tails, will dart for cover when a hawk flies overhead; yet they remain unaffected by other birds. Furthermore, a wooden model of a hawk, drawn forward along a wire above their coop, will send them scurrying (if the model is pulled backward, however, there is no response). “Whence,” Campbell asks, “this abrupt seizure by an image to which there is no counterpart in the chicken’s world? Living gulls and ducks, herons and pigeons, leave it cold; but the work of art strikes some very deep chord!”
Wilfred L. Guerin, A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature

Serpent (snake, worm): Symbol of energy and pure force (cf. libido); evil, corruption, sensuality; destruction; mystery; wisdom; the unconscious.

Look. Listen. I know it is untimely for another diatribe on politics, and, in particular, woefully late for a post-mortem of the US vice-presidential debate, already so thankfully distant in that rear view mirror of the mind. I know also that some of you may have gained the impression from our last conversation that I had turned over a new leaf—a kind of optimism and generosity seemed to infuse my writing (I think) like a fragrant dream on a midsummer day. Well that too is behind me and although I am at this moment listening to Bob Dylan live at Budokan at extreme volume, that is as far as my magnanimity extends. But it is not my fault. No. I tried. Even as the debate whimpered up from the South on Thursday evening, I tried to avert my eyes and ears and lay low for a change. There seemed nothing worth seeing. So. Turn a page. Think laterally. I walked out on the Canadian election debate, and didn’t even bother cranking up the US one. I skipped the morning paper these past two days. Alas, it has all been for nought, for a scant 48 (mostly drunken) hours later, I am drawn back to these people with a craven, degenerate fascination that I wish upon no one. Yes. It truly is a cross, and one, that on nights like these, with Palin reruns bleating away on my monitor, seems, despite its hollowness to the core, awfully heavy to bear.

But enough of this. I was not raised to be a milk sop and pity is something I can do without. So to the matter at hand: the buffoons, shady real estate dealers, Washington hair stylists, and the train wreck of Election ’08, that has so rapidly and badly listed into a kind of anti-gravitas previously reserved for beauty pageants and Las Vegas magic shows. These people are beyond stealing my thunder; no, they have absolutely sucked the electricity from the air and created a monumental vacuum that is astounding in its crystalline consistency and utter transparency. Now. Jean Baudrillard—if I had a religion, he would be its messiah—spoke often and eloquently of the transparency of evil, but please don’t tar his memory with my brush. I borrow his term only: the musings that follow will be mine and mine alone, so apologies.

There is a transparency of the evil today in that we see it each and every minute but look straight through it. We look through it, just as much as we look through the screens of our TVs and computers and into that kind of vacuous banality of the Sarah Palins of the world. It has become almost farcical in its blatancy and ubiquity, so much so that we laugh or shrug, but this is a crucial misjudgment, for it is still there, no less dangerous and that much less distant. No. There are no more Richard Nixons. Gone are the days of Nero, Hitler or Stalin. We have inherited an evil that apes, grins, and seems hopelessly deficient of presence. And this has made us a continent of fools, adrift and defeated, disarmed as it were, for satire and irony have lost any and all potency, and we too grin and ape and shrug, our resistance bereft of potency. It is all too clear to be seen anymore; the rules of the game have eased and become shiftless, and almost all that we should aggressively target and violently dismantle is shrouded in near invisibility. Now, it may be so easy to skewer someone like Sarah Palin, with her folksy charm, asinine eighth grade smirk and giggle, and her absolutely indigestible gimcrack politics, but that is the danger. Make no mistake, people like her and her minders are dangerous, and when the evil is diluted with such triviality and rank inanity, a trend that began with George W. Bush, the question becomes not how to fight tooth and nail against the dark forces that will damn us all, but instead, how to gently maneuver the village idiot away from the well. But it is exactly this kind of lulling transparency that makes our current situation as dire and frightening as at any other time in history, because for evil to triumph it is no longer necessary to beat people into submission or even craftily deceive them, but instead, the tedium of boredom and simple stupefaction will do.

Now I need to confess, while I was playing Jonah on Thursday—or maybe Peter, waiting for the cock to crow, stifling the red, angry demons in my ears—fleeing my fate as it were, something happened when I stumbled out from the local bar. For a variety of reasons, some no doubt questionable, I ended up in a basement apartment off Commercial Drive, smoking high grade weed with a friendly enough skateboarder. One thing led to another, and by the time we had Zappa (WakaJawaka) playing loud enough that conversation was rendered both unnecessary and moot, clearly the next logical step was to coax a 7 foot Boa constrictor out from under its heat lamp. Yes. I was assured that it had feasted heartily days before and so would be sedate and reasonable—or as reasonable as Boa constrictors get. My new found friend, let’s call him Adam—he was after all, hanging out with a serpent—prodded the Boa with a staff, or maybe it was a didgeridoo; in any case, the thing came uncoiling up the stick, tongue-a-flicker, its eyes beady and full of a kind of latent hostility that would have been disconcerting under other circumstances, but seemed vaguely natural and right on this particular night. After all, when the mood is fey and you are gripped by that dumb animal desire to dam the racing of your mind and the queasiness of your heart, a few stiff belts of Irish whisky and the motto whatever will be will be, are two things that I have found comforting, and if not entirely successful, at least worthwhile on some brute, honest level.

Ah. But where I am I going with this? What of Sarah Palin and transparency, whiskey and snakes? Well, well, I will tell you this: my understanding of and belief in the archetype, the primeval symbol, the root cipher was restored in this night. And these things, the archetypes, are important and fundamental to our understanding and ability to see many things with clarity, both good and evil. You know, I saw in that snake, coiled around my forearm, sliding across my bicep and contracting like mercilessness, something of the brutality of power and the real, vivid evil mythologized and sunk deep into our unconscious. This moment of recognition restored me to my senses in many ways. I was sober and clear-headed again. I felt the snake’s underbelly, rippled, satiated and striated with raw power. It was what I needed—the diamond of its head moving against my shoulder, dull but charged like a fist—to grasp what was eluding me, what was getting me down. I had to look into those blind, adamantine eyes, to understand that in the sideshow of politics, in the leering pantomime, I had lost touch with evil, with the image of evil, with the myth of evil. I had begun to look straight through it. And it all came to me, that I had been doing a little too much laughing, and moaning, and shrugging but now it was time to take stock and reinvest in words that I had once said but misplaced, something like this I think: there are some people that, when you get them down, you should just kick the shit out of… Dear reader, when all is said and done, that, I think, is the moral of this and most archetypal snake stories and one still worth remembering.

INVESTMENT IN THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITY

Gin: an alcoholic spirit distilled from grain or malt and flavoured esp. with juniper berries.
Canadian Oxford Dictionary

“You should have killed yourself last week,” he said to the deaf man. The old man motioned with his finger. “A little more,” he said. The waiter poured on into the glass…
Ernest Hemmingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Look. Listen. The bloodbath is upon us as the markets crash and in droves the moneylenders go to the mattresses. Yes. These are dark and futile times, when gold has never seemed more important and banks never more suspect. Well, fuck gold: I have an investment opportunity that is within reach and infinitely more fun than government bonds. Oh ho. You read right, now is the time to buy in; this is a bona fida, whip sharp idea that I’m so generously sharing. But I know, like any savvy opportunist, you want details. After all, we are beyond putting our hard earned money in the hands of Wall Street. No. The thieves are out of the temples and their lending tables reduced to kindling. They are bewildered and frightened, roaming the gutters like drowned rats and puny muggers; there is no hope to be found in them. Your currency is no good there, so either put it back under your mattresses or in your socks, or funnel it into the low risk, high reward plan that I have so fortuitously stumbled upon and am willing to share in these times of need. Ah yes, just call it my small contribution to the ‘audacity of hope…’

PHASE I: Let me tell you about the 1968 Ford Country Wagon Sedan. This is the king beast of cars, a tiger in a henhouse. If the American Dream were a man who rode among us, it would be his chariot. Yes. Nothing says dream like a 23 foot long, 8 seat station wagon with a 390 cubic inch, 5.1 litre, V8 engine. Imagine 3 tons of virgin steel; that’s right, pure, unadulterated, non-recycled steel smashed from the earth and smelted in the heartland with one singular destiny: the American automobile. Ah, you said it, William Blake: Tyger! Tyger! burning bright/In the forests of the night,/What immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful symmetry? What hand or eye, indeed. Well. Now more than ever, as the people cry out for stability, for hope, and for opportunity, it is time for the return of this monument to pride, this assuredness of power, this celebration of all that is good and true in the ingenious, glorious capitalist dream. I know, you are dismayed, I know the morning is already grown long and cold, and I know this all sounds like no more than a cheap ploy, a bluff, a last bitter turning of the screw, but, you see, I own this vehicle. Sure. I am not one of the silver-tongued; no, I will deliver because my word is bond and it is certifiable and guaranteed. Have faith. There are no empty promises here. This car is currently parked, waiting like a promise, ready to run the roads, speedometer tipping 120 km/h at the slightest levering of the foot, the wheel like a graceful woman in your arms, the night air rushing cool across the wind screen and the high beams penetrating every possibility. It is a dream to behold, sky blue optimism, a beacon and a symbol and it is ready to take us back to the Promised Land. This time there will be no wandering in the desert; no mumbling in our manna; no ashes and sack cloth. Nope. We are in the clear and all our troubles will recede and fade like dust on the highway.

PHASE II: Everybody loves gin. If this is not a scientific fact, then it should be (W. Churchill). Gin is a tasteful alcohol. It lacks pretensions. It is clear and smooth and blindingly powerful. Yes. Gin is much like the Ford Country Wagon Sedan—not flashy, but earthy; not glamorous, but dependable; not ostentatious, but singular—it is the ideal beverage, especially in the twisted, shattered wreck of America’s financial crisis. I recently met with someone—he prefers not to be named here for complicated legal reasons (let us call him my silent partner)—who is an expert in all things ‘ginnish’. His family operates a distillery somewhere west of Vancouver, turning high grade alcohol into a deliciously refreshing concoction that is distilled, bottled and distributed across much of our fair land. Now, due to brutally excessive and undeniably cruel taxation, this fine drink is currently restricted to the tables and bars of the upwardly mobile and terminally elite, but in times of uncertainty such as ours, my silent partner is understandably nervous. Now. I have never been motivated by personal gain—after all, I am a humanitarian of some note—and free enterprise has always lacked a certain, shall we call it benevolence, for me. But now I fear for our nation, our youth, our titans of business—all who have fallen prey to the mysterious forces of fate that are bent on destroying our wealth and incomprehensibly beating on our righteous economic systems like berserk sadists. No longer can I stand by and watch my people suffer. But besides the obvious you ask, what do gin and the Wagon have in common?

PHASE III: As I have made clear, the Wagon is a machine built for enterprise; it has a visceral essence of freedom and hope that is undeniable. America is crying out for innovation and a new entrepreneur to seize the reigns and whip the horses out of the moribund pits of despair and mirthlessness. Listen carefully, this is the nut. I have my trusty silent partner and a more than capable welder on hand and they have assured me that there is ample room to install a custom built gin still in the back of the wagon. Think about it. On one side a 70 litre gas tank, on the other, a 70 litre gin tub. Nothing could be more simple, more efficient, more beautiful. A roaming hope dispenser, arriving in a time of great need. Six seats up front for our staff—the shepherds of desire fulfilled. My silent partner. A ring master. Perhaps some girls clad in appropriate beach wear. Maybe even dancing monkeys. A bookie or two. Myself of course. Whatever the occasion demands, we will provide. No NFL tailgate party, no Frat or Sorority festival, no corporate event will go unvisited. These people are a ripe and captive audience, begging to be plucked from the vine. Breathtaking in its simplicity, our mission will cater to all those among us who are in need. My silent partner has assured me that 70 litres of high grade gin can be distilled in less than 4 meager hours—1 ½ hours to fire, 2 hours to distill—et voila, sweet, blissful sedation. The oppressive, restrictive, and as has been demonstrated time and time again, futile and unnecessary taxation, regulation, and oversight that has plagued our spirits and hopes for too long will be nothing more than a distant nightmare. And for the greener skeptics among us, have no fear. There will be no need for cups, bottles or other Earth polluting frivolities. No. We will pump gin straight into the mouths of our customers, a cool, salving, liquid benediction, sans packaging. Even greener, a simple engine conversion will enable us to run the wagon on gin tailings, the afterbirth of the distilling process. This stuff is like rocket fuel, burning with a terrifying efficiency that will put all other fuel efficient vehicles to shame. Yes. We will be kings of the interstate, ripping from Washington State to Colorado to the rust belt to the inner cities to the Hamptons. And once the idea catches on, well, we franchise and then anyone can do it for a modest fee. In these tumultuous times, the market is nearly infinite. Soon, no one will be left…unscathed.

Friends, may I call you investors? There is no downside. Wagon+still=gin. Gin=efficiency=bliss. These are desperate times and there is a yearning for something, anything to free us from the nagging, mendacious, hysterical sense of doom that is upon us. Together, we can dare to dream of a time when we are once again free from despair and uncertainty. There is hope in my enterprise and I call on you, I implore you—bring me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, and I will ease their pain. We are at risk of, even as some of us already are, awakening from the blissful slumber to a cold and merciless dawn, and this simply must not and cannot be. So. Join with me while there is still hope, and let our slumber, once more undisturbed and unaware, be-gin.

GOD SUFFER THE CHILDREN

I am a child. I last a while. You can’t conceive of the pleasure in my smile. You hold my hand, rough up my hair, it’s lots of fun to have you there. I gave to you now you give to me. I’d like to know what you’ve learned. The sky is blue and so is the sea. What is the colour when black is burned? What is the colour… You are a man, you understand. You pick me up and you lay me down again. You make the rules, you say what’s fair. It’s lots of fun to have you there…
Neil Young, I Am a Child

Look. Listen. In either a calculation of supreme arrogance or one of spineless incertitude, Stephen Harper has just announced his proposal to overhaul the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA). Either way, this is a gutless move, in the ilk of a purse snatcher or perhaps a savage drunk who beats his dog for barking. Yes. The champion of family values is showing the same crooked, sneering cynicism that is smug and dangerous, cowardly and brutal, and deserving of the wholehearted contempt of the nation. Now, I am no stranger to cynicism. I like it. It, I think, is one of the higher pleasures and it is not for the faint of heart. But neither is it for the heartless. Enter Stephen Harper. In a nut, lowering the age at which a youth, no, a child—and let’s not bandy words about here, because the whiskey is running low and I am feeling raw and vicious in this night both late and cold—can be sentenced to life in prison at the age of 14, is a proposal designed to capitalize on all the base and reactionary tendencies of the dumb and brutal, the simple and the resentful, the blind and the fearful. Further, its built-in concession to the people of Quebec, the people who would, and I hope still will, flay the moral skin off the Conservative Party and pummel Harper’s veneered face come election day, is nothing short of a base campaign promise that, beyond allowing the justice system to become two-tiered, threatens the fundamental concepts of a federalist nation. But that is another issue, and the long and the short of it is that I don’t even care about those things right now. No. If Harper and his supporters continue with their worn out agenda and proposed legislative muggings, I will be only too happy to migrate to Quebec, pull up the drawbridge when I get there, and swear fealty to Gilles Duceppe and all that is holy in his party.

But the night grows longer and colder here, and the shadows are just a little darker and who knows how long the bolted door will hold—so I will get straight to it. Harper’s proposal is most deeply cynical because he has once again drawn children into his sights and like any bully, believes that a thrashing of the weak will impress upon us that he is a firm, decisive man who believes in justice and the values of the family.

So first I ask you, since when is anyone justified in drawing a line between the people who have family values and those who don’t? Since when are any of us outside of the family values community? After all, I have parents and even siblings. I have aunts and uncles and cousins. Once upon a time, I had grandparents. I have children. Am I not a man of family values? I suspect if you examine your own lives, you may ask the same. Yet, there is a group of people who have declared some ideological and moral ascendancy, a kind of ‘divine right of the religious family,’ that qualifies them to tell you and me about values and what it is to be moral. And in this case, they are telling you about the value of our children.

And this is what is most depraved about Harper and his acolytes. His proposal does not reveal justice, punishment, or even revenge. No. This is about the degeneracy of a society that has systematically devalued its children and a man that while, in his sweater by his fireplace, with his children whose names one suspects he can’t quite remember, seeks to turn on our nation’s children with a loathing that is nakedly irrational and shallow. Yes. There is a loathing of children at the root of this gambit and it has grown like a death flower, sickly and cruel, and if it is not burned to its very roots, it will poison us all insidiously and eternally.

The problem belongs to us—the adults, the rational, the sane—but see what we have done. We have strung our children between two solitudes; parsed them out between the beautiful and the dark. We have fetishized their innocence and bemoaned their cruelty. We have denigrated their intellects and capitalized on their ignorance. We have infantilized them and sexualized them. They have been idealized, commercialized, marketed, bought, sold and traded—we have made them commodities, every last one. Children have become our hope and our bane, and we have shuffled them like cards, playing each one like we are guilty sharks at the table. We have praised them on the screens and at the dinner tables for their manners and their ability to parrot us, and damned them in the classrooms and in the streets for the pain and bewilderment of puberty and experience. We have cajoled, demanded, and threatened them to be like us and barred them from themselves and their identities. We pick them up and hold them aloft for the slightest of their achievements and plunge them into cold pools of ostracism for the slightest of their flaws. We have longed to be them and we have laughed at them for the transgression of not being more like us. We have cocooned them and fed them medicine and told them that they are unaccountable, and we have beaten them and exposed them and held them accountable for all. Children have become our glory and our shame, and for that we have made them pay. In short, we have worshipped them for everything we wish to be and damned them for all that we are.

And so it is the greatest temptation to thrust from us that which reminds us of our own guilt. And no, I am no idealist nor is this a Pollyannaish dream. I am aware of the depravity and the blackness of some of our young offenders, our child criminals. I know that they have stabbed, cut, shot and beaten and more. I know this like I know the evil depths of any man’s heart. But I also know a little about the biology and physiology of a child and about the statistical probability of a child committing a heinous crime, of a child being rehabilitated, and of a child being destroyed in an adult penal system. More importantly I, and many of you, am well acquainted with the blind stumbling of the adult, of the crippling suffering of the adult intellect, of the bewilderment of the adult mind, of the doubtful and precarious existence of a fully formed adult, and the despair of the long and inevitable adult journey into the night. In this life, I know something about chance and loss and anguish. And I have had the benefit of so much more opportunity, experience and time than any child I know.

So when I hear Stephen Harper so brazenly and coolly target our children and declare that these children, the same people he would deny sex education and so much other adult information, worthy of adult justice and the adult penal system, forgive me: forgive me, if I ask for children a second chance that I suspect most of us would beg and even kill to have.