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Update – July 7th

A slightly bitter-tasting but substantial smörgåsbord for you today, dear reader…

  1. The last week and-a-bit has been a little hard on me. Found out over a week ago that a good work-friend I hadn’t been in touch with for a couple of years had passed away in his sleep. By the time I’d found out, the memorial had already happened. Everything that could be done or said had been done and said. And so, one has no choice in this situation but to simply accept the fact that, like it or not, sad or happy, the last chapter in a sub-plot has been written without my consent or input. I think the thing which upsets me most about sudden deaths is the lack of control. I’ve had relatives who have died of cancer or carried on weakly after a stroke, and it was clear to everyone that the pen nib of fate was scratching out the last bits of their narrative; as the living bereaved, we had time to digest what was happening in our own way. With Trent – my friend and workmate – I was left with nothing but the unavoidable metric truth of his death.


  2. Foolishly, perhaps owing to my Chinese astrological tendencies (Dog), I’ve been patiently waiting for a response from a Toronto lit mag to get back to me on a short fiction submission I’d mailed to them almost a year ago. Owing to fatigue, I finally emailed the editor last week, only to find out from his response that “We would have responded to that a very long time ago, so I’m assuming it got lost in the mail/E-mail. I’m also assuming it was our response that got lost, and not your submission, as the title sounds familiar. “. So, in other words, I’d wasted a year not submitting the (admittedly solid) piece elsewhere. This upset me to no end. Nobody likes to be rejected – something I’ve accustomed myself to – but in this case I was left wondering whether they’d actually bothered to send anything out. I don’t lose incoming mail, nor is my email spam filter so prejudiced as to reject anything addressed directly to me (unless of course they put something like “rejection letter for Cialis” in the subject header). I drank a lot that night and complained bitterly to friends who consoled me, particularly those who caught my Facebook status message: “Matt wonders what could be worse than finding out a form rejection letter with your name on it got lost in the mail.”


  3. Not willing to let “the shit” (he says, in the collective sense) get me down, I continued to revise the novel, having finished going through to the (current) ending, thus completing my first full pass on the book as a whole. I immediately went back to the beginning, which I’d barely looked at in months, and started full-revision #2. I think it’s coming together nicely, and the feedback I’ve received on excerpts given to my peers in the writing group I run have been very positive. I just wish there was someone I could bribe in order to get one of my short fiction pieces published, because it’s a bit of a hindrance approaching an editor with a novel having a big fat “0” in the previously-published department. I’m also looking at doing more story submissions to non-Canadian publishers, as I find the atmosphere in this country a little stifling. Make of that what you will.


  4. A good tonic for these doldrums was to be had when my wife and I took a drive through the Niagara peninsula (after an absurdist trip to Niagara Falls – don’t bother asking – thankfully, we had two good friends to help us drink away the memories). We both love wine, and as firm supporters of Canadian wineries it was great to get out (only an hour’s drive from the city) and see the vinyards, the countryside, and quaff vast amounts of the best vino North America has to offer. So much so, in fact, that I’ve considered starting a new blog specifically geared towards Canadian wine. We shall see.
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God Is In The Details

A new documentary, if it can be called that, has been recently released through a limited selection of venues in the U.S. and Canada. I’m not interested in naming it, though a cursory glimpse of recent newspapers will make it clear which I’m referring to. It takes the Michael Moore approach (in other words, disingenuously removing anything which does not conform to a frustratingly partisan point of view) in an attempt to prove its thesis that there is a systemic (nay conspiratorial) effort to discredit scientists who believe in creationism (more specifically, the recently-minted term “intelligent design” or “ID” for short) by those in the scientific establishment who extol the findings of Darwin.

Reading the paper Friday morning, my wife commented on an interview with the film’s host and narrator, Ben Stein. She took note of his perspective on the debate and thought it was interesting. I was less than enthusiastic (if not hostile toward Stein), though to be honest his interview wasn’t that bad (unlike the film, which has been almost universally derided with contempt outside of evangelical circles). What upset me is that I actually think there is a debate to be had (if not owed) between secularists and Creationists.

I’m not a religious person. I was raised a quasi-Catholic, but found myself too interested in other streams of thought to figure that any one system of belief – secular humanism being one in a series of legitimate choices – had the copyright on truth. I’m very comfortable calling myself Agnostic, though these days wary of those who would have the public believe that Agnosticism is simply a less-assured branch of Atheism. I respect Atheists. I just wish more Atheists would respect Agnostics.

For me, Science, Art, and Religion are the same; they each aim to spelunk the chasm between knowing and not knowing. To investigate the disparity between the I and the not I in the universe. I’ve never been prepared to declare that there is or isn’t a higher intelligence/level of consciousness at play in the unfathomable orchestration we find ourselves surrounded by, whether it exists only for mankind to perceive or something more holistic and all-embracing.

I’m frustrated that, in this age of elaborate misinformation, the only time an interesting perspective is given publicity it’s usually loaded with so much subjectivity and partisan half-truth that it’s tainted with suspicion before it even comes to the table of debate. And this is my problem with this documentary. The dice of its argument are so loaded from the start that it negates intelligent discussion from the start.

One cannot talk about this without referring to previous unsuccessful efforts by the current United States government, endorsing “intelligent design” to be taught in science classrooms as a legitimate alternative, and that the theory of evolution be referred to as a “current theory”. The problem being, procedurally speaking, there’s nothing remotely scientific about “ID”, whereas Darwinism and the theory of evolution are demonstrable, regardless that there are many disagreements on the details. As a result of this meddling on behalf of the Bush administration, scientists across America took to the streets (or the web, at least) denouncing the idea, aided by the burgeoning Atheist movement, driven by the likes of Richard Dawkins.

In other words, the water in this wading pool is poisoned.

The question of Darwinism’s compatibility with the idea of a higher intelligence/consciousness, if such a thing exists, is not a zero sum game. One does not, theoretically, eliminate the other’s existence. I would love nothing more than an open discussion on the subject, if only to highlight the limits of understanding in both Science and Religion and perhaps find perspectives which intelligently respect opposite approaches. Unfortunately, given the current climate, this isn’t likely to happen outside of a university campus, and in the case of the documentary released last week, the prospects of we – the intelligent public, of which I include you, dear reader – being treated to such a thing without the deck being stacked by partisan ideologues of either side of the argument is slim.

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Of Men and U-Boat Commanders

I was explaining to someone last week – a female friend who was stressed about a commitment she’d made, only to find afterwards that it was impossible to fulfil even though it was very important – how I would approach the problem. Yes, to be fair, I was drinking, just in case you think I speak this freely/condescendingly in general.

“There’s a thing about guys. Some, not all. But, when men are under pressure, we immediately think we’re U-Boat commanders.”

“What?” she asked, understandably perplexed.

I explained what U-Boats are, particularly within the context of the classic German WWII film, Das Boot. You see, once a man over the age of 25 has seen that film (or, for that matter, similar films such as The Hunt For Red October, or quite frankly any movie involving a submersible military vessel with men yelling at each other inside of it) he has a perfectly tailored example which appeals to our testosterone-laden imaginations.

And thus, when men find themselves under pressure, it’s easy for them to transpose the tense life/death struggle they’ve seen onto their comparatively mundane situations.

I told her that, as a U-Boat commander, your first responsibilities are to your country and your crew. This meant sacrificing one’s honour, if need be. That, for the greater good (i.e. posterity) it would probably be best to own up to her inability to satisfy the terms of her commitment and either state this immediately to the other party, or, better still, come up with a ruse that is so ingenious that it fools everyone and saves both honour and embarrassment while preserving the integrity of country (you) and your crew (your reputation).

So, as a breezy aside, next time you find yourself being metaphorically torpedoed (whether by others or yourself), remember the stoic lessons of the heavily burdened U-Boat commander. Or, at the very least, run out and rent Das Boot or Master and Commander for inspiration.

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On Kludges

[I’m finally picking up a thread I started a few years ago, eventually posted here, it being the third in a long series of posts which became this blog. -ed]

kludge or kluge

n. Slang

  1. A system, especially a computer system, that is constituted of poorly matched elements or of elements originally intended for other applications.
  2. A clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem.

[From ironic use of earlier kluge, smart, clever, from spelling pronunciation of German kluge, from Middle High German kluc, from Middle Low German klōk.]

(citation)

We all have serviceable jobs. However, from a worldwide perspective, only a very (very) tiny portion of us make a living which converges with who we really are and what we really believe in, whether this be political, spiritual, therapeutic or what have you.

What we (the majority “we”) want to do outside of the constricts of these so-called irreconciled longings – what we really want to do with our lives, in other words – turns out to be a cliché when you look at it from a rather cool, pragmatic point of view.

I want to be a stock investor.

I want to be a painter.

I want to have my own business.

But it’s a serviceable cliché. Clichés are the kludges of creative logic. We plug something into our jury-rigged formula which sounds derived and worn, and yet it’s necessarily there because without it our goals would be vulnerable without a better substitute in the short term, and let’s face it, even a better short term substitute would still be a kludge. Everything we do to substitute the wisdom of experience in order to find an intelligent, if temporary, solution to an existential problem (whether it be driven from an agnostic, partisan, or ephemerally creative impulse) is a kludge. Get used to it.

During the hey-days of the late 90’s/early 21st century “dot com” stock craze there became a rather fashionable meme* on the website Slashdot which continues today, mind you in a more cynical context which is meant to demonstrate the shortsightedness of wishful thinking. An example of which is:

1) Create automobile out of plastic bags
2) …
3) Profit!

Which is to say, when it comes to what we really want to do with our lives, we have the idea and we have the motivation, but quite often we know sweet nothing about what happens in between them.

When people who aren’t writers (let alone novelists) think about writing a novel, they are essentially thinking:

1) Hey, I got a good story in my head.
2) …
3) Fame!

Trust me. I speak from the perspective of someone who has heard this in many frightening ways.

However, lest I appear to cast scorn unduly upon a tiny fragment of people (or even a single profession), this situation applies to anybody who wants to get involved in anything they have absolutely no experience in, yet which they feel inexplicably motivated to follow: plumbing, tango dancing, astrophysics.

The trick is to fill in the “2)” with something which works enough so that when you know better, you can revise it. So, if step 2) on the path of someone who wants to open up a bistro is “find a storefront”, you can be sure that it will be revised soon after they make the commitment with the likes of “…and get a bank loan, find a contractor, file permits with the city, draw a floorplan, tell your wife you won’t be seeing her for several more hours a day for the next year…”, etc..

Not only does the kludge which glues the first and third items together (as a plan, dream, goal) expand and contract the more we involve ourselves in the initial commitment, the goal itself (whether it be fame, fortune, or a more Buddhist sense of completeness) is informed and thus evolves as the task itself expands and contracts through the process. In other words, aside from the initial idea, everything after it is but a temporary placeholder, marking time until such a point where we can re-evaluate the situation.

Kludges, aside from their current and (rather too) strictly technological definition, are substitutes for the reality of experience: wisdom. And yet kludges never totally disappear, regardless of how much we accomplish or evolve through the process. We refine them as our initial naiveties are refined. As a result, the kludges become smaller, less detrimentally crutch-like, and less embarrassingly round pegs in the otherwise squared holes of knowledge.

[* I want it noted that I’ve gone 2 years and 227 posts without using the much abused term “meme”. It is my hope, however, that “kludge” will be saved from a purely technical threshold of meaning -ed]

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“The thing is, Morris dancing and incest aside, it’s hard to criticise something unless you’ve tried it.”


– Jay Rayner, restaurant critic, on his week-long vegan diet
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Flight of the искра

I did it. I ordered it. My first medium-format (6×6) camera: the Iskra (or искра in Russian, meaning “spark”). I wait for it. Info on this camera here and here. It was reasonably priced (I swear) and since I was looking for an introductory medium-format camera to work with I figured it was the best.

From J. M. Serrano’s site:

This extraordinary Russian folding 6×6 rangefinder medium format camera, fundamentally inspired on the formidable elite camera Agfa Super Isolette, made between 1954 and 1957 (known as Super Speedex in United States), owes its name to the underground newspaper founded by Lenin in 1900, whose letters in cyrillic characters appear engraved in red colour and in a prominent size on the front of the camera, just on the block constituted by lens and bellows.

A total of 38,722 units were made between 1960 and 1963.

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May (pt. 3: Revision)

I took a train to Montréal for the second-last weekend in May.

I love the city, in particular its colour, zest, and architecture. There are also some great bands coming from there. However, to be fair, taking the train was a substantial part of the reason; four hours each way with which I could exclusively devote to reading War and Peace and, most importantly, working on the novel.

So, it was a work/reflect/relax sort of trip – the sort of thing to help tie up some loose threads in my head while occasionally practising my French. I caught a couple of bands at a cool venue called Zoo Bizarre, went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, ate, slept, drank, and mostly walked around with the aimless ambition of understanding how the city is laid-out.

As I write this, the novel is in good shape. The ending is almost complete and I’m beginning to see it more clearly in my head from beginning-to-end (as opposed to visualizing it as a bunch of sorted chapters). I also managed to get through a good chunk of War and Peace – such a good book, yet so heavy on the everyday details.

I wish I could say that I entered June with revelations and wisdom, but those are two things you can’t just extract from the ether. I still have a lot of things rolling around my head that need figuring out, creatively-speaking. For me, sometimes it’s better having several balls to juggle rather than one to contemplate soley. I know, from previous experience, that (to paraphrase the witches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth) doors open for those who decide to knock.

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