14 April 2010
09 April 2010
Le Temps retrouvé
The funny thing about living is that everyone thinks that they are living in the most modern of times. It's only obvious until your really stop to think about it.
By the close of the nineteenth century, the idea that one could expect things to get better seems like it had caught hold. Things were being invented , discovered and appreciated by wealthy and/or very lucky people.
There might have been the hope injustices that had been otherwise resolved would get better. But day to day life was still mostly dark, dirty, smelly and painful for nearly everyone.
When you start your day everyday by going to the bathroom in a bucket, or in a hole in the boards covering a pit filled with excrement like nearly everyone did in 1891, the world is bound to look differently.
In the fog of decades, centuries, and millenia, it's easy to overlook that those people only knew of their experience and a bit of what had gone on before them.
It's seems that the further back one goes in time, the greater the number of people there were that had no idea of what happened a thousand, a hundred or even fifty years prior.
To be certain there is an enormous amount of people living today that don't know much about what happened on the world's stage before their lifespans or during their lifespans, but as a percentage of the total that number must be smaller.
But I don't know if knowing all that just gives you something to think about while your waiting in line.
By the close of the nineteenth century, the idea that one could expect things to get better seems like it had caught hold. Things were being invented , discovered and appreciated by wealthy and/or very lucky people.
There might have been the hope injustices that had been otherwise resolved would get better. But day to day life was still mostly dark, dirty, smelly and painful for nearly everyone.
When you start your day everyday by going to the bathroom in a bucket, or in a hole in the boards covering a pit filled with excrement like nearly everyone did in 1891, the world is bound to look differently.
In the fog of decades, centuries, and millenia, it's easy to overlook that those people only knew of their experience and a bit of what had gone on before them.
It's seems that the further back one goes in time, the greater the number of people there were that had no idea of what happened a thousand, a hundred or even fifty years prior.
To be certain there is an enormous amount of people living today that don't know much about what happened on the world's stage before their lifespans or during their lifespans, but as a percentage of the total that number must be smaller.
But I don't know if knowing all that just gives you something to think about while your waiting in line.
Mourning
In my life, the death of a relationship has generally been a lot like the death of a loved-one. It's just a lot worse.
When Pépère died, each day I would feel a horrible weight of dread, of sadness, of loss. It made me wonder how would I ever get through a day with knowledge that he wasn't in the world somewhere for me, to love me no matter what I did.
Pépère didn't see me as someone born with
the original sin of being born to divorced parents. To him, I wasn't one of those "god-damned three kids" whose father ran away. I was his grandson. I wasn't an unfortunate reminder, a cause for screaming and fighting every night, a reason why things sucked, an excuse for "Dad" to be pissed-off.
I didn't have to belong to triple A. I had Pépère. He was always there with free road-side assistance. As a last resort, he could always tie a rope or chain to the bumper and tow the broken-down car home.
But while I got over the death of my grandfather, I never held out hope he would be coming back from the dead. At first I hated myself for learning how to get along without him, for catching myself when I realized that I hadn't throught of him in a week.
But gradually I came to understand that our relationship hadn't changed, only the way we spent time together had changed. Pépère was still always around but he become someone I spoke to in my heart. I still knew how he felt towards me, that the way we felt towards each other hadn't changed and wouldn't.
The death of a relationship with a woman was much worse. Two of the people who made up the relationship are still around, living and breathing. It's the third person in the relationship, the "we", that dies. It's the dreams, the potential future, the belonging that die.
The mourning is more tortuous because of the chance that something might change, the chance that the wound can be healed; what was rendered made whole. It takes the right tools to handle that kind of job; to staunch the bleeding and cauterize that wound.
Each relationship is an escape from loneliness; the chance for new life. There is an unbounded joy in the discovery that someone sees worth in me. As life wears on, that elation is tempered by disappointment, the dread that someone will learn the truth about me,all the way back to the roots of my inequity. They'll learn who the "real me" is and the facade will become harder to maintain and it's difficult to remember what spin of the truth was told to whom.
When Pépère died, each day I would feel a horrible weight of dread, of sadness, of loss. It made me wonder how would I ever get through a day with knowledge that he wasn't in the world somewhere for me, to love me no matter what I did.
Pépère didn't see me as someone born with
the original sin of being born to divorced parents. To him, I wasn't one of those "god-damned three kids" whose father ran away. I was his grandson. I wasn't an unfortunate reminder, a cause for screaming and fighting every night, a reason why things sucked, an excuse for "Dad" to be pissed-off.I didn't have to belong to triple A. I had Pépère. He was always there with free road-side assistance. As a last resort, he could always tie a rope or chain to the bumper and tow the broken-down car home.
But while I got over the death of my grandfather, I never held out hope he would be coming back from the dead. At first I hated myself for learning how to get along without him, for catching myself when I realized that I hadn't throught of him in a week.
But gradually I came to understand that our relationship hadn't changed, only the way we spent time together had changed. Pépère was still always around but he become someone I spoke to in my heart. I still knew how he felt towards me, that the way we felt towards each other hadn't changed and wouldn't.
The death of a relationship with a woman was much worse. Two of the people who made up the relationship are still around, living and breathing. It's the third person in the relationship, the "we", that dies. It's the dreams, the potential future, the belonging that die.
The mourning is more tortuous because of the chance that something might change, the chance that the wound can be healed; what was rendered made whole. It takes the right tools to handle that kind of job; to staunch the bleeding and cauterize that wound.
Each relationship is an escape from loneliness; the chance for new life. There is an unbounded joy in the discovery that someone sees worth in me. As life wears on, that elation is tempered by disappointment, the dread that someone will learn the truth about me,all the way back to the roots of my inequity. They'll learn who the "real me" is and the facade will become harder to maintain and it's difficult to remember what spin of the truth was told to whom.
The First Woman
I woke up in a perfectly dark room which, when I opened the heavy drapes was cool upstairs bedroom within my suite at the Hotel Bonaventure in Montreal. I had slept the sleep of the dead for about fifteen hours.
The day before, I moved some of my belongings in the from the car like my twelve-string, some clothes and the portable CD player. I tried to nap but I was too wired from various caffeine delivery methods to really sleep. I spent some time in the parts of the city I knew, got room service and fell dead asleep at about 6pm.
The next day was a beautiful fall morning but not for George Harrison. Music Plus was featuring retrospectives and interviews with various celebrities to get their take of passing of the Beatles' lead guitarist. There was one guy, Daniel Boucher, who had some interesting things to say. The subtitle next to Daniel Boucher's name on the bottom of the screen was Interprete.
I chuckeled to myself and thought, "What a touchy-feely ridiculous title that was. Did that mean he was a singer? His accent was strong and a lot like my grandparents. I was sure if Interprete might have meant that he was one of those guys to reenacts history like that Plimoth Planation.
Anyway, I got up. I drove up rue Berri to St-Denis. I parked. I saw the scary poster of Blair (the exorcist). I went into the Red Dragon (for the first time). I spoke to a saleswoman about the products. I explain what I was doing in Montreal.
I explained that although I spoke French well from studying french literature in college and from my family. I didn't know how to ask a woman out on a date. She said that depended what I wanted to do on the date. I said, maybe go to dinner. She told me. I thank her.
I asked her out to dinner. She said no. I ask her was her name was. She said Ève. I had never heard that name said in French so I asked her to say it again. She repeated. I asked her how that was spelt.
She said, "È-v-e, t'sais? L'épouse d'Adam?"
Se rendre à l’église
It's almost impossible to explain the traditional place of the church in french-canadian society.
When Britain took control of New France in 1759, the only people who stayed did so because they didn't have choice. The upper class of New France's society acted how people with money have always acted. All the lawyers, administrators, and titled arstocrats left. A couple acres of snow, now ruled by the English wasn't much of choice compared to Paris.
Given the opportunity, any Frenchman would have chosen to do that instead of having to swear allegiance to the Crown of England. So pretty much anyone with an education.
Among other differences, the Crown of England was a protestant headpiece.
It was also the leader of the France's chief a rival for about five hundred years. Joan of Arc's fifteen minutes of fame happened during the Hundred Years War between England and France. The war that turned New France over to Britain was only Seven Years but that was long enough.
After the dust settled, however, there was one titled member of French Aristrocracy that remained. L'Évêque remained to keep watch over the remaining habitants.
In the one hundred and fifty years from 1759 to to the 189o's when my great grandparent moved south to work in the spinning mills of Rhode Island, the only law that was really accepted was the law of the remaining French educated class.
In the west they were known as Robes Noirs (the Black Robes) as those monks (Des Moines) traveled as missionaries. In Lower Canada, the part of Canada downstream the St. Lawrence from Ontario what the Church had to say was more important than anything that the English lawmakers in Ottawa had to say.
When Britain took control of New France in 1759, the only people who stayed did so because they didn't have choice. The upper class of New France's society acted how people with money have always acted. All the lawyers, administrators, and titled arstocrats left. A couple acres of snow, now ruled by the English wasn't much of choice compared to Paris.
Given the opportunity, any Frenchman would have chosen to do that instead of having to swear allegiance to the Crown of England. So pretty much anyone with an education.
Among other differences, the Crown of England was a protestant headpiece.
It was also the leader of the France's chief a rival for about five hundred years. Joan of Arc's fifteen minutes of fame happened during the Hundred Years War between England and France. The war that turned New France over to Britain was only Seven Years but that was long enough.
After the dust settled, however, there was one titled member of French Aristrocracy that remained. L'Évêque remained to keep watch over the remaining habitants.
In the one hundred and fifty years from 1759 to to the 189o's when my great grandparent moved south to work in the spinning mills of Rhode Island, the only law that was really accepted was the law of the remaining French educated class.
In the west they were known as Robes Noirs (the Black Robes) as those monks (Des Moines) traveled as missionaries. In Lower Canada, the part of Canada downstream the St. Lawrence from Ontario what the Church had to say was more important than anything that the English lawmakers in Ottawa had to say.
As the last generation of immigrants from that culture to have the ghost of that memory, the obligation loomed large in my life even if when it wasn't part of my weekly routine.
I knew I was supposed to make the sign of the cross when I past a church. I knew I was supposed to go to confession on Saturday afternoon. I knew that I was supposed to give up candy for the forty days of Lent. I knew I was supposed to not eat for at least an hour before receiving communion at Mass.
These things were just common knowledge, that like knowing how to handle silverware properly separated us from those that weren't French.
05 April 2010
The World through Ken Kesey's Eyes
The October, November and December of 2001 were like an acid trip. The world all around me continued to exist in a clear and unimpaired way. I could hear it and I could see, so I knew it was there. I just wasn't in it.
There was no point in being in everyone else's reality. I had done my level best to succeed yet it still crashed down around me. In a flaming-stylie, like the Hindenburg in Lakehurst.
A large part of my mind had shut down and everything I encountered that Fall into Winter lacked a back-story. It had no information I could read that gave me any value on which to make a decision, any meaning for mind to stick a hook into.
The beautiful Wexford China dish that was my very aspirations, my hopes, the reality I had built had been smashed on the floor. All the pieces of the dish, mind you, were still there in front of me but it was impossible to discern any reason from what was really going on in its fragments.
Beautiful or ugly, enjoyable or dull, safe and dangerous were of equal interest. Recent past and long past had the same immediacy as the present.
And since in that state, all things existed for me in only three dimensions, it was very difficult to make good decisions.
There was no point in being in everyone else's reality. I had done my level best to succeed yet it still crashed down around me. In a flaming-stylie, like the Hindenburg in Lakehurst.
A large part of my mind had shut down and everything I encountered that Fall into Winter lacked a back-story. It had no information I could read that gave me any value on which to make a decision, any meaning for mind to stick a hook into.
The beautiful Wexford China dish that was my very aspirations, my hopes, the reality I had built had been smashed on the floor. All the pieces of the dish, mind you, were still there in front of me but it was impossible to discern any reason from what was really going on in its fragments.
Beautiful or ugly, enjoyable or dull, safe and dangerous were of equal interest. Recent past and long past had the same immediacy as the present.
And since in that state, all things existed for me in only three dimensions, it was very difficult to make good decisions.
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