Category Archives: Dimestore Philosophy

Luke Perry: Only the Good Die Young

There’s a point we come to where we realize invincibility just isn’t a thing. For many people, one step toward that is when they have a child and they start feeling this responsibility to this tiny vulnerable human.

But then there’s another phase, the reckoning v2.0.

For me, I’ve had a few friends and such on the peripheries of my life die in recent years, my parents too. But I remember a moment from when I was eight or ten or so, when my mother’s best friend, Dorothy, died of the flu after calling her mother to say she wasn’t well and needed some ginger ale. She was dead on the floor when her mother arrived, maybe age 40.

I reflected on Dorothy this year as I got ready for a flu shot, age 45, because I knew I would be on four flights and a train during flu season in Italy and it was the responsible thing to do. I remembered how alive she was, how fun she was, then how dead she was.

So it happens that today Luke Perry died, and I find myself indescribably sad tonight. (I really shouldn’t have watched A Star is Born tonight. Wow. Holy oversight.)

The artist as a smoldering young man

When I was a about 16, 17, Beverly Hills 90210 was THE THING. Jason Priestley was a Vancouver (but really Tsawwassen) boy and it was required to watch our GUY on what was the hottest show on TV. And then Luke Perry was cast, and Brandon looked like a schmuck next to this intolerably cool surfer.

At that time, programming for our age group really missed the mark. Very little spoke to us, and that show was the breakaway hit that was to teen programming what The Breakfast Club was to us nearly a decade before.

And whatever the rest of the cast was, Luke Perry was a complex character that brought the real. He was a fuck-up that we all related to and we wanted to see him come out on the other side. Yeah, he was hot, but he had soul, too.

The next generation got Tim Riggins and Friday Night Lights. We had Dylan McKay.

I remember where I was when I found out that George Michael died. I can’t remember who came first, him or Carrie Fisher in that Christmas that sucked, just after my dad’s death, but George was the guy I turned to with a broken heart. His songs about insecurity and abandonment and loss really spoke to me, but when he died, I felt betrayed and angry. In a way, he drank himself to death and sort of lost the plot well before he died.

And other people have died since, but okay, it’s depression, it’s suicide, it’s alcohol, it’s drugs, it’s irresponsibility.

He was one of the few men who really did have that James Dean quality to him.

Luke Perry, though, by all accounts was relatively healthy, wasn’t known as an addict or alcoholic. He had a stroke. Something people over 45 die from because of age, because they had some butter, because they needed to jog a bit more or something, or because a blood vessel just said, “oops, sorry” and the brain glitched. It’s a variation on the death that’s coming for us all, and he didn’t cause it.

And why I’m sad tonight is, I know he’s not the last. I know this is when it begins in earnest, when my youth falls away and the people and fabric of my life slowly slip into the goodnight.

Every generation reaches this point, when it starts, like a roller coaster peaking before the arms-up-screaming unstoppable descent.

I guess I’m taken aback by this feeling that, somehow, I lost maybe the last of my innocence today.

And, of course, I’m alone on a mountain in Albania for it once again, not among friends, not in a place where I can small-talk with others who understand.

But this is the real Luke Perry, apparently; someone who was infectiously kind and funny.

I know, I’m a writer, I’m supposed to be the one who finds the words for these strange bubbling feelings inside. But today I can’t, I’m struggling. It’s about something much bigger than Luke Perry. It’s a kind of rite of passage that I didn’t want to see coming, a ride I don’t wanna pay admission for.

It’s about feeling more grown-up than I ever, ever wanted to feel. I’ve already buried my parents, so feeling grown-up has been on my mind the last 2.5 years.

The reckoning v2.0, indeed.

And yeah, it’s about Luke Perry, too. It’s about the guy who was bad but good, sexy but smart, cool but affectionate. And it’s about the guy just seven years older than me who’ll be six feet under later this week, all because a blood vessel stopped doing its job.

Here’s where I come up with some brilliant closing that makes sense of it all and gives us food for thought and something to make it all a little easier to swallow.

But no, there’s none of that. No “gather ye rosebuds while ye may” wisdom or how good it is to burn out than to fade away. Just some teary eyes, a half-glass of wine left to drink, and dark of night already fallen here on my Albanian mountain. I’ll sleep, wake, and pretend to be a grown-up again, going through the motions on my workday. Because that’s what grown-ups do, and because death is apparently part of my very adult life now.

Lost in Time: Thoughts on Photography, Time, and Us

It’s the start of a hot spring day here in Bulgaria, my way-station of the month. Work is chaos right now, and I took a break this morning, a fluke. About to close the Netflix tab, I saw a clip of the movie Kodachrome, starring Ed Harris, a long-time favourite.
And just like that, I’m falling down memory lane. “Kodachrome”? I couldn’t resist.
In college, I took journalism and photojournalism during the days of film processing with chemicals and darkrooms. My skills were proficient enough that I was hired to be a photolab staffer to supervise other students needing a hand in the dark. For $10.85 an hour, a king’s ransom in the day, I helped others with dodging, burning, processing, drying.

This was my front yard for two years in Victoria, BC, Canada. Kinda I loved living there.


That was the first year of my college program, but the second time in my educational career that I was the last class in one campus before the school transferred to a new, expensive building. The first was high school, where we were the last class in the old senior high, built in the ‘30s, and the next year, my graduation year, the first class in the shiny new 1990 building, with the reek of off-gassing carpet glue.
The next year was the flipside to that. I attended community college in an old warehouse row in the industrial district. It was so run down some areas were considered unsafe. In photojournalism, the darkroom work happened in a decrepit lab. Blackcloth was taped to ceiling tiles to prevent light seepage destroying our photography work. The lab, to put it succinctly, was a shithole. Bad air circulation meant the acrid sulphur of developer and fixer would burn the lungs by the end of a long day. But, still, a night lost to the photo lab was magic for me. A shitty push-button tape player bleeding music, dodging photos. Hours got devoted to creating magic on a blank page through light and chemistry.
The next year, we moved to a new multi-million-dollar campus with a high-tech lab. The old lab, only the freaks like me would see daylight bleed away as time slipped through our hands with hours on end of playing with imagery. In the high-tech new lab, where no blackcloth was needed on the ceiling and where fans whisked the carcinogenic air away, one had to book a couple weeks in advance for time on the fancy new enlargers. There was no slack for those too distracted to clear out by the time the next eager photog ambled in to process and print their rolls. It was a tense and greedy place where the photojournalism kids had stand-offs with the new fancy students in the just-launched Fine Arts and Mixed Media programs.
By then, I’d gotten a weekend job halfway between home and school, printing photos in a Kodak lab. It made me picky about film brands. Fuji was great on nature. Better blues and greens. Kodak was fantastic in portraiture, capitalizing on warmth. Lesser-known Agfa could be great at either but needed a skilled printing hand to correct for a predilection toward cyan tones. I stayed on there for two years, graduating and segueing into a full-time printing gig with the shop.
My boss was a narcissist who thought the world owed him everything. He felt like the big shot in town because his shop was the go-to with many pros. But his “nice guy” act was just that. When the shop was closed, he was demanding and cruel. When I got injured in my second year of printing in his lab, he thought I was lying and launched a complaint against the Worker’s Compensation Board, since I was injured on the job and he was penalized during my compensation pay. But dude caused it by leaving a stapler on the ground, which I’d later step on, rolling my foot and shredding every muscle in my ankle, putting me on crutches for nearly two months.
I had doctors on my side. He lost. I won. But I knew I never wanted to work for him again.
Between that and being trapped at home, I began looking for an escape from my life. See, I couldn’t even drive my car without hurting my foot, so I was stuck in my rural home. None of my city friends took the time of day to visit me. I was 21 and felt dead to the world.
Feeling sorry for myself, I considered leaving Vancouver. Within a week, I was at the library, sending letters to every potential employer in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. The north. The land time forgot.
The resumes went out end of day Tuesday. Friday morning, I had a call. Three days later, the manager flew down for a conference in Vancouver. Three weeks later, I drove 30 hours north, through autumnal British Columbia, got room and board in the Yukon, and became manager of a photography lab.

Once upon a time, I lived in the Yukon, and my big brother came for a visit.


I had hoped it would be the start of a life of adventure and photography. But “life”? Not so much. A year? Yes.
A year, then adventure would come to a halt.
Strangled by bad finances and the high northern cost of living, I schlepped back to Vancouver, got involved with an ex, fell into old routines, and began a decade and a half of treading water while life happened to me, rather than me happening on life.
I managed another Kodak lab, but something was already changing in 1996 – the internet had been born and photography was beginning to go digital. My lab, after nearly two years, announced it was closing. Within a decade, most labs would hear their death knell ring.
Time rolls on and everything ends for some other beginning.
This fall will be the third anniversary of me going all-in on the adventurous life I once hoped I was starting. Almost 24 years to the week I drove north, and I’ll be 45, instead of 21. Back then, my life was ahead of me. These days, I’m probably half-way through life. Maybe more. Who knows, right?

And then I went nomad.


After schlepping back to Vancouver, I slowly lost most of who I was. Feeling beat down and without options, in 2012, I decided to leave once again, moving to Victoria, on Vancouver Island. Three years later, I went nomad, which has been a journey back to who I was, and a reckoning of who I’m becoming, as I travel the world.
But I think we all lose ourselves along the way in life.
Sometimes, I think our lives become a whirlpool. Round and round it goes. Spinning, uncontrolled. We get caught in current and can’t get out. It was like that, for me.
Maybe it still is, sometimes. Maybe that’s just adulthood. Maybe that’s why I played such a desperation move in going nomad.
People ask me why I went on the lam. Like there’s some easy reason. “To travel,” that’s the easy answer. “Because I can,” that’s the other.
Time, though. That’s the complicated answer. Too little of it. Too much of it. Stopping it, wasting it, loving it. Time.
But I think sometimes, if you stop, sit, listen to the wind, stare at the world around you, you can’t help but witness time flitting past you, slipping away, falling into the void. Time stops for none of us. We know this. I’m not sure, though, that we understand it. We take it for granted.
I know I did. I do. It’s a failing and a habit, both human nature and a default setting.
There I was, sitting on the sidelines of life – injured back, unhealthy, living removed from everyone I cared about in my little island home, watching life happen through a picture window to the street outside, and online.
All the while, I seemed to be losing my grasp on what world existed. In Europe, right-wing politics and Nazi fervour seemed to be stoking fires in small pockets. At home, we were more divisive than we’d ever been in my lifetime. Around the globe, the environment was out of control. Tipping points were happening in the march toward climate change, points from which some experts said we couldn’t claw our way back.

Portugal’s Porto Ribeira seems stopped in time.


Age seems to be a curse, as we grow older. It takes age to show us that time is a gift, that experiences – good and bad – are precious. Time is a filter through which we see our lives, through which we learn and grow and move forward.
Urgency and fear, regret and loss, those are the sorts of emotions that have landed me here in this sleepy Bulgarian neighbourhood.  They’re emotions that clutch onto us as we age. They’re cumulative emotions, compiling steeper as every year passes.
There’s nothing wrong with being moved by such emotions, as long as there’s hope and optimism somewhere down the road too. Of course there are those; one doesn’t pack everything they own in a bag without a little hope and optimism tucked away.
Kodachrome, the film that tripped me down memory lane, has Ed Harris as a celebrated photographer, speaking to some peers, about what it is that drives them to be photographers. Harris says…

“We’re all so frightened by time, the way it moves on and the way things disappear. That’s why we’re photographers. We’re preservationists by nature. We take pictures to stop time, to commit moments to eternity. Human nature made tangible.”

In a way, perhaps that’s why I’m travelling too. The tangibility of who and what we are.
The other day I walked through Old Town Plovdiv and there, just without warning, without signs, was this graveyard of Roman ruins. Toppled, fallen, broken columns, all carved and weathered for the better part of 2,000 years, built in the 2nd century under Emperor Hadrian, once a gate to the city, a throughway on the Silk Road into Europe, en route to Rome.
It stopped me in my tracks. It’s one thing to see ruins that are celebrated – fenced in, paid admission for, documented, touted. But it’s quite another to happen upon the wreckage of time, a reminder of once-great societies that now lie as detritus on a roadside. Just… there. Beaten and eaten by the winds and weather of centuries past.

Ruins by the roadside in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.


On the one hand, this leaves me with a sense that nothing I do matters, because it all slips away anyhow. When you look at the care and work that went into creating these columns that once were palatial but now lie fragmented and forgotten, it’s easy to dismiss today’s pressures and stresses as silly obligations we’ve brought upon ourselves. We deem things as urgent, unmissable, unneglectable, but the reality is, it just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t.
Delusions of grandeur seem born of empires. Doesn’t matter how great they become, eventually they’re covered by the sands of time and forgotten, or cited as a curiosity from an age long gone.
But on the other hand, there’s something left of them. Here we are, 2,000 years on, marvelling at the traces they’ve left, the lives they lived, the accomplishments they made. What will remain of me? What legacy will I have left? A hundred years from now, as someone who will never have children, will anyone remember my name? Or will I have blown away on the winds of time too? I like to think I’ve changed a person or two in my lifetime. I like to believe the Butterfly Effect, that I’m a cascading ripple on the pond of life.
In the film Ed Harris scoffs at digital photography. He dismisses our society as taking more photographs than ever but leaving no record of them. We’re making “digital dust,” he says.
Perhaps that’s a reflection of our society.
We are the creators of the  “disposable” society. Single-use. Never before in history has it occurred to people that a product’s virtue is that it can only be used once. What have we become? What a strange time.
As I walk through history, through streets cobbled centuries ago, this travel life of mine leaves me caught between worlds. In one world, I panic over the legacies I dream of leaving, and in the other I realize none of it matters… that we’re nothing but memories on the wind.
So I live life two ways. Sometimes, I try to suck the marrow from daily life, enjoying as much as I can, worried that if I sleep, I’ll miss everything that matters.
Other days, I’m blissfully content that nothing matters more than doing nothing and watching the world happen. Those days, I enjoy being an observer in a world that doesn’t need me and won’t remember me when I’m gone.
Sometimes, that’s a sad thought. Other times, it’s downright freeing.
Luckily, life is never absolute. We can be this way, then that. Time may be a construct, but as sure as the sun crosses the sky, the time, like daylight, falls away from us. As your time slips away today, ask yourself if you’re using it as best you can. Not compared to others, not compared to what’s expected of you. Are you using time in a way you enjoy? Maybe that’s seated on a park bench. Maybe it’s staring at a coffee as the sun beats down on you and people brush past in their obligated lives.
Maybe, like me, it’s typing as the day’s heat builds and fatigue kicks in, before, finally, the sofa beckons me for nap time. When I’m dust on the wind, I don’t think it’ll matter that I took a nap at 5:46pm on April 26th, 2018. Do you?

It's Not Just Where I Go, It's What I Leave Behind

This is a whopping 2,200 words. I’ve written it more for me than you, but I hope you too can enjoy it.
photo5When I leave on a jetplane to my unpredictable life abroad, I see myself doing a few things to officially close the door on my past.
Chief among them will be editing those who cast influence upon my life. I don’t want to ruffle feathers now, but I suspect many people who are loosely termed as “friends” of mine through social media will find themselves excised from my digital life, while I’ll choose others to be amplified and omnipresent.
I’ve made some big, long sacrifices to find myself on the road upon which I’m travelling. I’ve set goals, I’ve accomplished them. I’ve changed my worldview and fought through a lot of personal doubt. I’ve removed some excuses from my realm and have fought hard to overcome all kinds of odds. Some of those in my life are a large part of why and how I was able to beat those odds.

A Dream Takes Shape

Travel-dream-479x640

From flowliving.com.


If you’d asked me three years ago whether I thought I could do what I’m about to do — sell everything, travel for five years — I would’ve laughed at you. My health was bad, my debt was choking me, and I barely had faith I could hack it in Victoria, let alone in worldwide travelling.
But then I started demanding more of myself, convincing myself I had the power to change my situation from the unfulfilling, scary life it was, and instead fashioning something amazing from it. At the time, I was only hoping to pick a cheap country and move abroad as a desperate means to get some retirement savings in the bank.
But then it seemed like that wasn’t enough. It was a big world, how could I pick one country? Maybe I could see more of the world while still saving money.
Then some friends of mine were all out there travelling the globe. Duane was living as a digital nomad — short trips home, then back out around the world again. Jason was on a more-than-a-year trip, doing everything from looking for bats in Austin, Texas, to making the trek up to Everest Base Camp. Nadia was scuba diving her way through oceans all over the planet, creating magical marine photography.
These weren’t famous folks or celebrities, people with major Instagram accounts or book deals. They are simply friends who decided to go a different route than your average bear.
These are some of the people who inspired me to think I could do more than just escape for a while. I could drop everything, get the hell out, and cross off items one after another off my bucket list. Now on the horizon is the dream of not only travelling the world, but the possibility of doing so debt-free. What? That’s insane, but this week I’ll have finally paid off nearly 75% of the debt choking me when I moved here.

Recognizing Regret — And Ending It

Haruki-Murakami-Famous-QuotesMy birthday will fall in the week I leave the country, and this is for deeply personal reasons that I can sort of give voice to, but you’ll never understand it the way I feel it.
I’ll be 42 the week I leave. When my mother was that age, she had 15 years left to live. She had no idea of that, then. Nor did we. This weekend, two acquaintances in my age group are in hospitals battling cancers that could claim their lives. Now that’s a fight that takes everything you got. I know — I watched as the days ticked away to my mother’s cancer death.
Much of what led me to Victoria in the first place was reading the posthumous blog post by my friend Derek Miller. It went viral the world over, thanks to the simple, clear way he explained he was sorry he was dying, sad he would miss so much to come, but that, given his choices and his family, he had left this life with no regrets.8469916ee4caece12e76d122b77d8c32
I knew, reading his words, that my Vancouver life was clouded with regret. In the year that followed, I chose to end that regret by moving here. In my new Victoria life, that regret is lifting, but it’s because I’ve done the hard work to make it rise, and also only because I’m leaving on this trip soon. My travels will end a lot of the regrets I’ve had — because it will mark me becoming the person I’d dreamed I’d be, as far back as when I was 15.

How Our Friends Define Us

People tell you that success in life is often about “who you know,” and I suspect many people interpret this to mean that it’s about whether you’ve got an Elon Musk or Bill Gates in your phone as a contact, but I think it’s much more than that… while also being much simpler.
I think “who we know” translates to what we see as humanly possible, demonstrated by those in our lives. It’s those people we’re friends with who defy odds, challenge assumptions, or conquer obstacles. They’re folks who show us the realm of our possibility, our strength. If we allow them to inspire us, then we can change who we are simply because of who and what they project.
1e6063aa328c2793401ab2c5857007faAs my time here draws to a close, I’m trying to be patient with some of those in my digital world. They’re not really “friends” but they’re also not people I’m quite ready to kick out of my online life yet. Maybe some only because it’d complicate business/other friends. For some, it’s because I’m hoping they finally realize they can CHOOSE to change their life. Thing is, it means first getting over the sense of being powerless under adversity.
But come that day I’m leaving on a jetplane, the only folk I want left are the dreamers. Those who might not think everything is possible, but a hell of a lot of it is. I want people who aren’t defined by limits around them but instead are inspired by potential.

Feeling The Fear, Doing It Anyway

I can’t for a moment pretend I’m not completely terrified about my journey. I get mini-anxiety attacks even now, if I’m being honest. But then I get heart flutters of giddy excitement.
how-to-make-your-travel-dreams-come-true-by-Natasha-von-Geldern-world-travelerStill, I know there will be weepy nights when I feel a million miles from all I’ve loved, when I miss everything from the smell in the air and seasonal weather through to the cracks in familiar sidewalks. I know I’ll sometimes cower under covers, hugging the only comfort item I’m bringing with me –my Quatchi teddybear — as I fight back tears and rage with PMS in some unknown city in a foreign land.
But then I’ll wake and put on pants and steel myself to face another day, and something spellbinding but small will happen — maybe just an old man with a cart offering me a flower or a pastry as he waves off my money, or I stumble into a five-centuries-old church not “grand” enough for an admission price, or some quiet night as I’m perched on a rooftop in some city’s Old Town, staring out over rooftops that barely changed since the Renaissance, as the sun sets, as it has hundreds of thousands of times since.
And I’ll realize then what I know now: Everything in life is a push-pull. Sacrifice feeds accomplishment, and accomplishment requires sacrifice. I can’t have one without the other.
I can’t have the dream of seeing the world and philosophically transforming myself down to the core of who I am, unless I’m prepared to walk away from everything that has shaped me into who I am today. That, my friends, is the price of admission for the big show.

The Price Worth Paying

There is nothing I want more in life than to survive off writing what I want to write. Not client work, not web copy. But things like this filled with thoughtful pauses found in the myriad moments which comprise who we are.
Whether I do that through a monetized blog or it’s by way of writing a monster best-seller, it doesn’t matter. That’s what I want to do — survive solely off my writing.
ef13506c37c8141725f610c91cb8538eFor that, I cannot have the “But how will you do that” type folks who sort of believe it’s possible but doubt that they could know anyone first-hand who’s capable of eking that existence out, as if it’s some superhero-esque feat . I cannot have those folks around me, the ones I see constantly wondering why a Bad Thing has happened to them, when they could instead simply choose to accept it while they learn something about themselves in the process.
I need the dreamers. The believers. The inspirers.
For a long time, I was lost in the “why” of adversity and never understood how to learn and grow from it, that fires forging me would temper me in the future versus ever again being so badly burnt by misfortune.
Today, I’m blessed by the gift of adversity. Nothing but struggle for over a decade served to teach me that life is a constant fight but it’s the magic of the moments in between that make it so worth fighting for.

Lessons Are Gold

B782gkuIgAAIt39I’ll never be an optimist. I’ll never not fear or worry about life. I don’t believe that’s viable. Not for me. It sets people up for disappointments, I find. Instead, I favour pragmatic realism. I understand that both good and bad befall us. I know struggle often sucks. I accept bad moods and depression when they find me, because they’re valuable tools in the human condition.
But that crap’s on a clock, man. Tick-tock, start moving past it and fast. Like when I blew out my knee at the end of February. I allowed myself to be angry, depressed, and scared — for a couple days. But then I tempered that with determination and resolve. Somehow, I’d make it work out.
In the end, that injury has taught me two things that might become massively instrumental in preventing back and knee blow-outs when I’m travelling.
How much is a lesson like that worth? A month of inconvenience? More? Arguably, yes.

Who Am I? Who Are You?

In the end, there’s no way to clue other people into those epiphanies that transform us from naysayers to unbridled dreamers. There’s no surefire trick, no guaranteed route. Somehow, something unlocks that for you, and you figure it out.
45b04566ef8d638140f813c822e578dfFor me, it had to get darker and harder after my move to Victoria before I found a way to claw out of that. But I did that. I had the support of friends, but I was the one with the heavy lifting.
Years ago I heard a quote — “It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.” It is the single most important quote I have ever, ever heard.
For a long time, I saw world travellers as being a specific kind of person. Luckily, I’ve learned there is no one kind of traveller. I have my friends to thank for that lesson.
When I watched my friends Jason, Duane, and Nadia circumnavigating the globe, I realized something important: None of them did it the same way. None of them did it the way I would, if I could. And none of them would travel the way I will.
I realized I didn’t have to follow their model. I didn’t have to be an adventurer of the Patagonia-wearing mountain-climbing ilk, or a big-city fan. I didn’t have to challenge nature, confront extremes, or embrace big fears.
I could eat, drink, meander my way around the planet. I could stop in strange places and simply be a part of them, if only for a day or a week. Take a piece of it with me, leave a piece of my soul behind for the next traveller. That, I could do. And I could share it with readers back home.

Look to the Little Stars

An ex-lover once told me his favourites were the little stars in the sky. The ones you squinted hardest to see, often outshone by the big ones nearby. I always liked them too.
These days, I have what I call “The Park Bench Theory” about life. In it, any day including a moment of pause (often found on a park bench or a seaside log or a museum step) is a fine day well-lived. I don’t need the big fancy days. I don’t need the black-tie events. For me, the best of life comes in the simplest moments.
david-glaser-quote-if-only-there-were-a-longer-time-between-epiphanyHere in Victoria, I’ve learned to understand what makes me tick. What I love. What I crave. Where I dream of. Knowing that, well, it’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s essentially the secret to life, after all.
Some people go their whole lives without ever finding th passion or want that makes them tick. I’m lucky. I not only know what my passion is, but I will have a five-year master class that will help transform me into the kind of writer I’ve only ever dreamt of being.
And I can hardly wait, even if it’s a road I’ll journey alone.*
*But no traveller is ever alone. It’s a voyage made possibly by endless strangers all conspiring to get us where we need to be. We are, indeed, shaped by who we know. Even strangers.

Hobbling Through Enlightenment

Note: Yeah, I have a new shiny travel blog, but I’ll still turn back here for slice-of-life postings I like to do that are not about the travels.
Crutches. Painkillers. Icebags. Elevation. These are the cornerstones of my weekend and the week ahead. Maybe the next two. God forbid it last longer than that.
Meniscus issues, it seems. I say “seems” because x-rays loom. My crazy-ass former-rugby-team-doc chiro tried a (painful) trick of pushing what seemed like a meniscus flap back into where it belonged. Two days later, I can bend my knee 90 degrees again. Not any further, and not without strain, but that’s a start. (Pro tip: If it’s a “rugby team cure,” expect to cry like a baby or punch the doc. Guy’s lucky I didn’t belt him.)
This gimp knee means that, for now, Netflix is my god.
elevated and iced
Today’s viewing includes the VICE doc “All This Mayhem” about the Pappas brothers and their skateboarding rise to glory and drugs/crime-fuelled crushing defeats. It’s about a blend of tragedy and redemption. Angst, attitude, and all the inevitable pitfalls that come from confusing being a student in life with being a victim of it.
We lived on the cusp of hoods and lifestyles when I grew up. A former vacationing area for the big city became an early suburb, filled with new families and financially-challenged folks who were living on the outskirts. It was an area made of equal parts the gentrifying invading forces along with the mainstay white trash.
I was offered my first drugs at 8 years old, but somehow I stayed on the fluffy-angelic line of the divide in the years to come. My brother toyed with the angst and everything else that came from the disenfranchisement of the suburbs. We were equal parts the product of our upbringing.
We were never in the leagues of those who really went astray. I remember a lot of those in my youth who were really, really angry. Some went on to crime and drugs, others went on to bleak places that were more internal than external. Some just died young.
I dealt with enough stupidity in my teens, just like a lot of other folks did. These “happy family” types piss me off sometimes even now because I’ve never really experienced that. It’s a weird world, tight-knit families.
I love my family but it was a broken family, still kinda is. Divorce, bad communications, everyone’s got their issues. The North American Way. But good, fine people, and I love them.
I didn’t really become angry until later, and I don’t really know what started it. I just got there and stayed there. I had all this stupidity happen where the easy reactions were bitterness and blame. Year after year of bitterness and blame.
These people who tell you they had some brilliant moment where it all made sense, I don’t really understand ‘em. For me, enlightenment is a gleaming of insight that takes me time and time again. The anger and confusion sort of wear away in the constant adversity like a river carving away at rock. Epiphanies make for better writing, POOF MAGIC, but I suspect most of us don’t have that change-of-state moment and instead we learn through time and repetition.
I learn more all the time, daily. Constant growth. Life is school, man. Like this knee thing right now. I’m reacting and responding better than I expected.
I mean, this is the sort of thing that throws a wrench in the travel-the-world plan. This was NOT an adversity I expected added to my list as the seven-month countdown begins. Yeah, I cried. Then I got over it. Later this week I need to find a course of action. That’s how it rolls.
That resilience, I’m not the only person who’s got it. There’s a lot of us who rock it, and I think for most of us it’s because we’ve been shit-kicked by fortune one way or another time and time again. Eventually we just realize it ain’t personal, it ain’t malicious, it’s just life.
BOOM, adversity. BOOM, overcome it. BOOM, onward. That’s life.
It’s funny, you know. A lot of the people I know who were once angry as a way of being, a lot of ‘em have gone on to become the mellow, easy-going people I like to know. They’ve been on the “dark side” and realized that perspective was a lot of the problem.
Yeah, my leg’s fucked up. Oops. That really sucks. Know what’d be worse? Being broke with a fucked up leg. Or having it happen when abroad. That’d be bad. Maybe it happening now means I change something, improve myself, and reduce the odds of such a thing happening later. Who knows. Maybe this is a catalyst for changes I need in fitness and health. I suspect it is, because I’m feeling motivated.
Adversity is the biggest teacher there is. Necessity of change is the mother of invention. Those are truisms for a reason.
I feel sorry sometimes for folks who have these smooth-sailing lives and then BOOM, some huge thing happens and they just crumble. It’s a hard road through it for them. Sometimes I see them becoming bitter and hardened as a result.
Everyone needs to open their eyes and see how hard others often have it. They need to look for examples of the extremes we can overcome when we focus and ditch the victim complexes.
Shit happens to us all. We’re allowed to cry a little and get a bit angry, but odds are we learn more about who we are as a result of those fluctuations. The trick is in the bounce-back.
So I have to bounce now. I gotta weather this little patch of suck-ass luck with my knee, find a few positives, make a plan to overcome it, and do everything I can to avoid feeling sorry for myself or acting like a victim.
If you think that’s easy for me, or for anyone else, you’re a moron. It’s not easy. But it’s doable, and it’s a choice. It’s a lot of self-talk, deep breathing, and weathering through periods of feeling like everything’s hopeless. Because that happens to us all. That’s the mindset. That’s the challenge.
It’s also where the victory comes too, though. So, yeah, this blows a little, but methinks I’ll get past this. I have something to prove to myself.
I also have the fortune of knowing it’s my own stupidity that caused my injury, from when I heard the little voice in my head saying “No, don’t sit like that, you know your knee hates it–” and chose to ignore it.
I caused this. Now I have to solve this. That’s the school of fucking up. It’s also “Success in Adulthood 101.” It’s called responsibility. Like my favourite saying goes, life’s tough — get a helmet.
(Or a crutch. Check.)
crutch

Dark & Beautiful: The Brain & Creativity

brainsbrainsbrainsThe human brain is a marvelous and terrifying thing.
I once heard that science knows as little about the deep sea as it does the human brain. The last frontiers. Is that true? Really, the only thing that matters is that I can buy its truthiness. Science can’t even really explain why some PMS makes me want to club a baby seal, but other times I’m fine. Hello?
Yesterday, for instance, I managed to be productive and focused, but inside I was terribly, terribly depressed and angry.
Fortunately, logically, I knew it was just hormones and weather. I realized there wasn’t an actual reason I should be either depressed OR angry, and I knew where I was in my cycle. The way I was feeling wasn’t rooted in reality, and I understood that, come morning, odds were highly likely the mood would vanish.
And poof, just like that, it’s gone. Today I’m hopeful, creative, charged, and just bought the domain name for the creative and existential project to consume the next half decade of my life. If that’s not optimistic, even at the low, low price of $8.99 per year, I don’t know what is.

Perspective

I mean, how many people have the opportunity to point at Planet Earth and go “I want that,” then set into motion the mechanics of taking on the whole wide world for five years with no roots, anywhere, no limits? One in 100,000? One in a million? Lucky, indeed.
It’s knuckle-cracking elbow-greasing time when it comes to this little going-Full-Nomad project of mine. A friend has offered to help me set up my blog. I’ve decided not to host that content here on The Cunt. This place has been great for me, and I’ll likely still use it to unleash my wrath and rail at the gods from time to time, but I’m in a different place now. I’m a different person now. I need a new creative home.
Despite my older, mellower ways, it’s pretty safe to say I’ll never be Mary Poppins. Nor would I want to be. I like my wrath and fury, my joy and faith. I like the mix of pathos that swirls in my brain. My yin to my yang is right there. I may tilt and pivot, vacillating from seeming extremes, but I’m usually able to hold onto a small measure of awareness that, whatever the tempest, life is generally a smooth-sailing place for me. Or at least a place I manage to navigate without peril.

Storms are Genesis

Chimp_Brain_in_a_jarEarlier, I saw a quote from Kurt Vonnegut about how it’s impossible to be a serious writer if you don’t suffer depression. I’m sure if he were to expound, he might have said something like it’s the variations of emotional themes which make great writers what they are.
They’ve loved, they’ve lost, they’ve lived to tell another tale.
Throughout history, writers have been the teller of the tales. They’ve kept the legends alive, passed the records of humanity from one generation to another. It wasn’t until humans began to write that we really had a record of not only the social structure but the emotional worlds in ages long past.
Writers record the human condition. We try to grasp what happens around us, record how it affects us, and inspire the next step. Today, different mediums allow for writing/recording/inspiring to happen visually, in audio, and of course on the page/stage/screen.
But all of it starts in the brain, when someone sees something and has a thing or two to say about it. Poof! A synapse fires, a thought is born, a project springs forth.
That inspiration and the ability to create something of where there was nothing, it blows my fucking mind.
The human brain is a marvellous and terrifying place, indeed.

The Psyche and the Fulcrum

Surviving nearly a year of dark, fearful deep depression baffles me. Survival didn’t seem an option then. I’m grateful my forays to bleakness are seldom now, rare even, and I’ve the faculties to buckle up and hang on until it’s over, which is never more than a day or two.
I have no illusions. Once I’m gone “Full Nomad,” there’ll be days where I find myself fatigued and homesick, wishing I had a bed all mine. But it’s days like today after I’ve told myself “It’ll be better tomorrow,” and I wake up, and it really is better, that convince me I’ve got this. I’ll have brief downs and see myself through them.

Done and Done

That’s another funny thing about the brain. The more we realize and act upon our strength, the more our brains can sell us on our toughness when needing a pep-talk down the road.
It’s fantastic we’re as resilient as we are. One of the greatest gifts ever given is adversity. It never feels that way at the time, but no matter what the loss or the price is, a healthy person will become better, stronger, more resilient as a result. I know I’m grateful to have proven already I’m “tough enough.”
Like the saying says, we don’t know how strong we are until we have to be strong.
That part is inspiring and comforting. What’s terrifying is the brain’s ability to shut out all hope and languish in darkness. Science needs to unlock mental illness. I’m glad it’s getting more attention.

And Now, More Mysterious Than Ever Before!

Strength and resilience aside, the flipside to the possibility of that terrifying darkness is the jaw-dropping experience of creation. Some brains conceive rocketships to the stars, incredible food combinations, cures for disease, life-changing books, or soul-charging songs. Poof! Magic. Inspiration, creation. And so the creative cycle continues.
With every new experience, a new creative door might open. I can’t begin to imagine what seeing the world and blowing my perception wide-open will do for my brain. What will I create? What will I learn? What will I experience? How will it influence my thoughts for the rest of my life? My creativity? How much will it increase my resilience?
I’ve already lived through incredible extremes of the human brain. Or like to think I have. In less than eight months, I start the project that I hope will shake me to my foundations and awaken me from my white middle-class life, and change my world-view for the rest of my days.
Waiting will be a bitch. Luckily, Trusty Brain shows me positives in proceeding slow and studiously, while laying proper groundwork for a long, successful journey.
Way to go, brain.
Brains

Stumbling Upon Epiphanies

Some moments hit us right in the feels.
For the first time in weeks, I took a morning coffee into the harbour and sat by the water’s edge, simmering in the moment before the inevitable descent of the day’s tourists. Sun dappling the water caused a hallucinatory disco ball effect as I sat lost in thought, bobbing on a wharf in the wake of early harbour traffic.
Somehow I sat for exactly long enough that I wound up stretching my calves on the stairs just as a couple in their late-50s, early-60s were walking past with their dog. The spaniel fell in love with me and wouldn’t budge, staring at me, smitten.
Naturally, Louie’s owners and I fell into chuckles and conversation, and soon she let slip they’d just found their land-legs after docking last night, the end of their six-month sail from New Zealand to here, Victoria.
Bucket list: Check.

photo 2 (1)

A gorgeous August sunset on Victoria’s Dallas Road.


And maybe that’s not on my bucket list, maybe it will be one day, but I allowed myself to kinda vibe off them. They oozed this surreal afterglow of “We Did It.” He told of how they had a humpback whale pod following behind them, playing in their wake, swimming alongside them. Humpback whales! A pod! Thank god for Go-Pro cameras. Coming to a Youtube near you.
They looked happy. A picture of contentment.
And that’s not me. Not today. I’m not a picture of contentment or happiness. I’m not deeply unhappy or sad, either. Just longing for something I can’t put a finger on.

Get Busy Livin’

It comes back to age and experience, living life. These people get it. It’s not about the money, the fame, the glory. It’s about where you go, how you get there, and what you see along the way. I think my age, 40, is when you start understanding those truths — if you’re lucky. I understand life comes with a “best before” date. I’m aware.
My mother died at 57. She didn’t get a retirement. There are no guarantees.
I know too many people my age working for their “retirement.” I want my work to be my life, and to feed my life. Travel, exploring, writing, photography. I get it now. Something looms for me: The anniversary of when I nearly died a decade ago, my head injury and scooter accident. It was Labour Day weekend, 2004. I learned then how precious life was. I wouldn’t say I squandered the next eight years, but they weren’t the years I’d have chosen if I could.
The last two years, though, I wouldn’t change much. They’ve been what they needed to be. A coming to terms, of sorts. A reprioritizing. A slow and steady waking. I can tell you now, the discontent of those first eight years fuels my growing reluctance to compromise now. I know what unhappiness is, and I don’t want it again. For me, contentment is a choice and I choose it more often these days.
I know we’re all works-in-progress. Some people are more focused on progress than others. Some know where they’re going, some don’t. I didn’t. Now I do.
Sufi mystics sitting in mountain caves will tell you it can take years of silence to find wisdom. They’ll tell you clarity isn’t a flick of a switch. It’s not being in darkness and opting to turn on a light. It’d be a pretty amazing world to live in if it were that simple. You don’t walk into a forest meadow and pronounce yourself ready for enlightenment.
Epiphanies just ain’t opt-in.

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Even doggies like the sunset. From Victoria’s Dallas Road.

A Serendipitous Intersection

So somehow I spent the exact amount of seconds sitting there and staring into sunlight dancing on the water, and plodded the causeway precisely slow enough, that I was there, stretching my calves on the steps, and just happened to meet Louie and his owners, provoking a conversation that led me to understanding exactly what it is I want, where I want to be, and how I want to get there.
It helped me strip away all that bullshit in between. The noise of obligation, the drain of a hard working schedule, the tasks that lie ahead.
If that windswept look of contentment, that be-here-now look of absolute satisfaction is something that comes from me staying on this path, working as hard as I have been, and keeping my eye on my goal, then I’m ready. I can do that. I can be that girl.
Like them, it’ll never be about the money for me. Obviously there’s a certain amount of money needed for an epic adventure like that, but there’s also a new world out there. A world where work is anywhere I need it to be, as long as there’s the internet and a computer to do it from. The world can be my office.
Times will come when I forget this clarity, this awareness. It’s in stopping to write about it that I hope I preserve it for just a little while longer.
I’m writing an ebook about the adventure leading to my life abroad and the evolution taking place inside me along that journey. Are you on my mailing list? That’s where you’ll get excerpts. (Or if you’re into my cooking, there will also be some recipes along the way.) Please sign up to follow along.

One Month Down, Eleven to Go: The State of the Steff

Why, hi there, you.
I’m just checking in. It’s a nice morning. My coffee cup is full. I thought, “Why don’t I go say hello to my minions?”
Yoo-hoo, minions! Hallo-o-o-o-o, minions.
Your friendly neighbourhood blogger is doing just fine, thankyouverymuch.
My year of Being Better is underway. I promised myself I wouldn’t make New Year’s Resolutions, and I didn’t. Instead, I would become a better version of myself by the year’s end. In, well, hopefully every way.
A better writer, a better exerciser, a better eater, a better sleeper, a better relaxer, a better coper, a better friend, a better daughter. You know. A better me.
We get so hell-bent on timers in this digitally-powered world we live in. We have reminders to set reminders. From iCal date-planning to the extreme, to actually CHOOSING to get Facebook and Twitter notifications, as if life wasn’t full enough of micro-management.
You know, if y’all like that shit so damned much, you can keep it. I set reminders for when missing something would cost me money. Otherwise, I roll with it. And I’ve never, ever had any smartphone notifications turned on besides texting. Because life is meant to be lived, not full of alarms.
On this quest of betterment, I’m not micro-managing myself. I’m not setting a timeline and measuring my progress constantly. Instead, I find myself now and then remembering where I was a year ago today (packing and panicking ahead of my move to Victoria), maybe 4 years ago today (just beginning to make progress after my first back injury), even 8 years ago today (recovering from a head injury).
What was life like at those times? What were my goals? How would I stack up now?
Uh… everything is better now. I’m better now. I have far to go, sure, but don’t we all?
I’m in a lucky place because I know exactly how far I’ve come on the inside. I need to be in a place now where that shows on the outside.
I need to eat better and exercise better because it’s not an option. Either I feel good and enjoy life again, or I continue hiding out in the Cave of Mordor (what I call my apartment).
I’m much further along both those paths than I expected to be just one month into the year. How very exciting, minions. Do you see my excitement? I see my excitement. Yes, I do.

Soon to be my shiny new bike.


2012 ended with an incredible gift: The complete, final realization that my bike is continuing to be the main reason my back issues exist.
There’s a point in chronic injury where pain or discomfort (whether a livable level or something debilitating) is so omnipresent that you just lose your ability to discern what improves it or hurts it. It’s when you’re so unable to tell what the spikes are from that you just don’t know what to change to move beyond that.
I rode an upright hybrid bike recently, and better yet, one fitted to my measurements taken by a great bike shop. This was like a Dutch-style bike with a step-thru frame, suspended front forks & seat, nice big tires with semi-slick tread, and elevated close-to-body almost-wrap-around handlebars, and it was almost a religious experience. All this pressure inside my back kind of fell away, the strain on my shoulder and neck reduced.*
To imagine cycling, that thing I love, being comfortable? Even painfree? Or… dare I even think it, beneficial?
This weekend, it looks like I can buy this bike. Let’s see.
Today, I’m showing my old bike, Mighty Murphy. (Named, of course, for Dervla Murphy, the old Irish travel writer who cycled Africa’s Ukimwi Road in her 60s.) Hoping it sells. It feels like I’m breaking up with my past. Like I’m stomping my foot and pulling a Gloria Gaynor moment. You’re not welcome ’round here no more!
And it’s kind of like that. The painful breakup of a relationship. That bike is two worlds for me. It’s the thing that makes me one of the rare people who can say I know what it’s like to lose 80 pounds through nothing but hard damned work and powered by ME, but it’s also the thing that makes me one of those rare people who can say they know what it’s like to live with chronic pain for more than four years.
“Love/hate” doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Had I not gotten sick at Christmas and laid low with a massive marathon of three seasons of The Wire plus an endless tirade of overrated TV on the PVR, my back wouldn’t have gotten the rest it needed so I could get on my bike in the new year and actually discern what was really going on inside me.
Then I had pain again, and I saw how I couldn’t stand straight when walking, and finally everything made sense.
Some might think the solution would be getting off the bike. But that’d be like telling me to live life without writing or photography or cooking. It’ll never, ever happen. I need that to be myself.
So. The new-ish me, the bettering me, the under-progress me is pretty pleased to be starting a new phase as “the urban cyclist” this weekend.
A shiny bike, a clean slate, and roads I’ve never seen before in a town that’s been my home for less than a year.
Being better, becoming better shouldn’t be an ordeal. You shouldn’t be punishing yourself for failing to meet expectations or demanding greater than what you’ve done. All progress is progress. Our lives are long. We can always keep becoming better. Growth has no end-point. Stop thinking you need to be the person you dream of being tomorrow, and be present in the moment while you’re getting yourself there. Maybe you’ll never be this person, this version of you again. Remember the moment.
Relax, grasshopper. Enjoy the ride. Like I am. Or soon will be.

______________________

* Buying a bike isn’t a “Ooh, shiny. Look, it’s green!” thing. You need to get FITTED for it. The right bike for ME could be entirely wrong for YOU. I not only have been fitted by a fantastic bike shop, but I was referred there by my Ironman-competing masseur and I got my bike style approved by my physiotherapist. The last time I bought I bike, I bought what I thought was pretty. It’s cost me thousands of dollars in lost income, pain, and more. Do your research. Don’t listen to anyone except professionals. Period.

Enlightenment! Get Yer Enlightenment Here!

My friend Monica Hamburg posted a hilarious daily-deal from Ethical Deals on her Facebook page today. Oh, how I laughed.
Dude’s selling basically spiritual enlightenment for $129, a savings of 84%, you lucky motherfuckers. Act now or forever live in the dark. Free shipping.
You know why he’s selling “awakening” for 84% off? Because you can’t BUY ENLIGHTENMENT, chumps.

Shot by me. You’ll find enlightenment faster here than in a classroom.


It’s not a “Oh, shit! Wrong aisle! I was looking in aisle 7B, next to the Mexican food” scenario. Enlightenment doesn’t come with a t-shirt and a money-back guarantee. It’s not something you take a course for then suddenly you got ALL YOUR SHIT FIGURED OUT.
Are you kidding me?
You think THE MYSTERY OF LIFE comes in a 2-DVD pack with a bonus Afterlife pamphlet? You think it’s just that easy to understand? You think that’s why people have been asking “What’s the meaning of life?” since the time of Socrates and Plato? Because asshole on a Daily Deal site IS HOLDING ALL THE SECRETS, and you gotta pay $129 for that shit?
I heard someone say the average IQ is 85, so it suddenly makes sense why I want to slap people so much, but let’s see if I can overcome that and write this anyhow.
You don’t need no fucking enlightenment course. Anything you need to know about life has been written already. Hell, you can stick to 50 years of creative content in the 20th century and answer anything you need to know about life. For the price of a library card, you can attain Nirvana.
Ken Kesey, one of America’s greatestest writers EVER, once said something to the effect of, if you can’t find God in your backyard in Kansas, you won’t find him at Egypt’s pyramids either.  (“God” there is whatever you want it to be — enlightenment, awakening, meaning of life, whatever, man.)
Okay. Don’t gotta go to Egypt. And don’t live in Kansas, but I’ve got Wizard of Oz on the PVR, so I’m set, bitches.
The secret to life isn’t out there, it’s in you. Just like Jack Palance‘s gravelly old cowboy mutters in Billy Crystal‘s City Slickers, that the secret to life is, “One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that, and everything else don’t mean shit.”
That “one thing” is different for everyone. For you, maybe it’s butter chicken.
I won’t pretend I’ve mastered my one thing, but I’m closer to it now than I’ve ever been. And, like everyone should know, it’s not about attaining it, it’s about the chase.
Like Will Smith says in The Pursuit of Happyness, the constitution doesn’t promise finding happiness, only the pursuit of it.
For me, I find that’s the secret of life. Never stopping the search for more, never becoming stagnant, always trying to be better. Like a snowball rolling down a hillside. As long as it doesn’t stop, it just keeps growing.
I get that some people feel unhinged and lost, and that feeling overwhelms them. I get that others feel there’s no point to life, that they’re a cog on some wheel of stupidity and nothing matters, and they’re desperately hoping to find anything that will change that perception.
I kinda think accepting and embracing those bitter truths are a part of enlightenment too. Feeling small is good. It makes problems less traumatic. Feeling like the world will go on without you should free you from your panic, not increase it. Knowing it all comes down to you finding meaning in your own life is an empowering thing. If you’re not living for a reason, then that’s your choice, and either you accept that choice or you change it ASAP.
Enlightenment can happen in a parking lot, on a beach, in the dark of night while you’re in bed, staring at the ceiling in bed. It probably ain’t happening in a classroom or in front of a computer monitor, though.
“Enlightenment” is also about relinquishing some control and understanding that the good and bad come in waves, and living in the moment makes it less encompassing.
And that sounds easy but it’s not. There are a lot of factors in life that we can control — being in a place we like living, having the time to do things that make our heart feel full, choosing to live in the moment rather than What-If Land — and there are many that we cannot. No matter who dies on us, what tragedies befall us, there is always, always, always a life beyond that experience, and we have to dial up the courage of ancient explorers in order to travel to those new, scary lands of change. That ain’t easy to do, either.
But that’s what it’s about. That’s life. Constant change. Not all of the happy-happy, fun-fun variety, but all of the relevant, educational variety.
If you ain’t on the move and having new experience, you’re not living. You’re avoiding death.
There’s your enlightenment. On sale for 100% off, with free shipping and handling, all thanks to a blog and a library card, man.
Namaste, motherfuckers.

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Just Like a Cloudy Sunrise

Many a day this winter I have woken to find a cloudy morning outside the glass.
I’ll get up anyhow, resolved to walk the shore, and moments later I’m in pants, toque, and a jacket, out the door.
Living by the ocean is a gift most of us in this area cherish, but we have to live life too. Cloudy mornings seem like an invitation to linger under warm covers, dozing a little longer.
Those are the mornings my walk will be nearly deserted.

I’m learning a lot about life, in a metaphorical sense, from such walks. Those low, cloudy, oppressive mornings often have the most dramatic and violent sunrises, a surprising contrast to the darkness that abounds.
I jokingly call them “Mornings by Mordor,” like it’s some kind of exterior decor practiced by a theatrical god.
For others, being anywhere else in the city, they’re likely not seeing any sunrise. Maybe tinges of red and gold on the horizon, but the sunrise is happening so low on the horizon, it’s for those blessed few of us able to make our way to the water’s edge for the show.
This shot included here (by me) was yesterday’s sunrise from Victoria’s Dallas Road. There are cliffs behind me, and even on the clifftops you could easily miss noticing what a stunning sunrise was going on down below. The clouds are low marine cloud, and the diffused light is as a result of a very thin bank of fog sitting on the coastal areas.
With the fog and the low ceiling, there’s all of 15 minutes of exposed sunrise, then poof, the sun’s lost behind clouds for what turned out to be another 4 or 5 hours.
There’s something to learn from this.
Your belief that your horizon is nothing but darkness is probably more perception than it is reality. For those who know where to look, there’s always something to look forward to, and the choice to do this or not is something that’s up to you.
I may not be happy about adversity when it strikes my life, but at least I’ve learned how to look for lessons in those moments, and I’ve tried to take the positives where I can imagine them.
As far as Mornings by Mordor go, a small part of me dreads the perfect blue-sky sunrises of the summer. How dull.
When I go home after another dark-world-sunrise, a part of me feels smug and superior. I had faith. I got a show. Everyone else is at home, grumbling in their slippers about how it looks like another dreary day out there.
Regardless of what our personal futures contain, there’s always a sun, there’s always a horizon, and there’s always a rising and a setting. Life goes on. Our dramas are pretty inconsequential in the big picture of it all.
When’s the last time you watched the sun rise for the sake of watching a sunrise?
It’s the best time of year to catch one. You’re up, ready to go. Unlike June, when it’s at 4 or 5am. Just… stop. 20, 30 minutes. Be there. Enjoy it. Clear your mind. Smile. You’re a cog on the wheel of it all.
Go find yourself an unexpected cloudy sunrise. It does the heart a world of good.
(And sometimes it’ll just be cloudy. But that can be beautiful too. Perspective, grasshopper.)

All We Need Is Love. No, Really.

(This is not a posting about politics, or the Democratic Convention, even if it starts out talking about that for a second, so bear with me.)
After last night’s Democratic National Convention speech, Michelle Obama’s gotten a big spotlight around the world for bringing a topic up that we don’t often treat with the respect it deserves — love.
Her speech last night played on the heartstrings about the idea of love. Love for a parent, for a family member, for those who sacrifice, for heroes, for idols. Love. Love for each other.
It’s an emotion we all feel, or it can be replaced by its antitheses — hate, anger, sorrow.
For a few minutes, though, Michelle Obama talked about this love idea. This thing that, once upon a time, we’d maybe feel for those around us. We’d fight for it. We’d protect it.
Love. This many-hallowed thing of ages long forgotten. The one emotion that probably transcends every culture, and even every species.
I watched an episode of PBS’ Nature last week in which a mama grizzly was frantically running all over an Alaskan wilderness reserve searching for her cub. After a few minutes’ footage of this heartbreaking search by a mother for a child, she found it, and the joy was indescribable.
Love is a product of biology, not humanity.
So we like to think we’re all about love as a society. We’re pumping out music about it, movies that claim to be about love, and we exalt things like marriage and parenthood because they’re based, in theory, upon love too.
But we’re kidding ourselves.
We’re not about love.
If it bleeds, it leads. Be scared. Be very, very scared. Long for yesterday. Blame someone. It wasn’t me. Don’t trust anyone. Lock your doors. Don’t talk to strangers. Keep outsiders out. Money talks.
In the media today is this evil, awful loop of distrust, fear, hate, and judgment that keeps spinning and spinning and spinning.
Oh, I’m sorry, did I say “in the media”? I meant spinning, period.
I’m on the internet. I see the rhetoric playing out in reality. I see the lies slung, the hate bounced, the judgment passing. By people, not media.
If you think all our problems are born in the media, you got another think coming. They’re just the mirror in front of us.
I wish it were easier to see the beginning of it all. People say Hard Copy was the beginning of the journalistic decline, but Ayn Rand wrote a whole book around the concept of bad journalism and what it says about us. See that “evil” book The Fountainhead for her look at Ellsworth Tooey and pandering to the masses. That’s seven decades ago.
Did debased journalism begin, then society crowd around it like a mass of hungry onlookers at an accident scene? Or have we always been that shitty?
We obsess over celebrities. Oh, they’re famous and pretty and rich, so therefore they’re wonderful. Quick, cut them down with gossip and mockery!
Like children building with blocks, when it comes to societal successes, we look for the quickest way to disassemble that which we just built up.
Yet we’re better than that.
This same awful race who lives and breathes the TMZ religion and who conceived the inequities which plague class divisions the world over is the same race that has done everything from putting a man on the moon to discovering penicillin.
When we’re not confronted with imminent threat, we forget that we’re all in this together. We lunge at each other and bring words and weapons to spar with.
I recall Bush saying “You’re either with us, or you’re against us” and suddenly it seems we’re all living life in much that way.
In the hours after 9-11 occurred, for one brief, eerily shining moment, nearly the whole world was united in a feeling of love and empathy. I don’t think Americans realize that. The whole world felt the pain of that horrible, horrible day, and I think anywhere you were, this wave of despondency hit because we realized we’d just seen the worst that humanity had to offer.
And from that place, in the dust of the hours in the days that followed, this overwhelming feeling of love and community came out of it, because everyone needed to feel together for a while. We needed to feel like we were more than just hatred.
That’s what I remember of those days. This inexplicable juxtaposition of feeling the most hate I’d ever felt, the most anger I’d ever known, and at the very same time feeling this outpouring of love and empathy I only wish I could carry with me every day.
While we are both these things, we are more often the worst of ourselves.
Last night, Michelle Obama reminded us of some of the things that are the best of who we are, who we could be. She reminded us of those who are great who walk through the door of opportunity then hold it open so that others may also experience greatness.
But this isn’t who we are now. Not often. Not anymore.
Instead of achieving greatness by surrounding ourselves with greatness, we’re often looking for ways to tear down others. We look for failings. We protect ourselves and attack everyone who isn’t like us.
We’re the Youtube generation. Everybody point and laugh.
We have been better than this before. We can be better than this now.
I’ve found myself so often watching this year’s election process down south and feeling rather brokenhearted. I am so saddened by who we have become. I’m tired of divisiveness. I hate the blame game. But this disease keeps spreading. We glom onto hate and fear like leaches sucking a bloated carcass.
Maybe it’s because everyone’s so financially stretched and the future seems bleak. Maybe everyone’s so tired of the struggle to keep our heads afloat that we see others as a threat to our security. Maybe we’re tired of being so aware of our personal failings that we need to spotlight others’.
I don’t know.
That’s who we are, six days a week, on a public level. Maybe at home with our families and our closest friends, we’re better people. In fact, I know most of us are.
But when it comes to being inclusive in society, when it comes to thinking big-picture about our nations and our places in the world, that’s where our humanity evaporates and many of us slide into a place we shouldn’t respect ourselves for in the morning.
And for a brief little while last night, a great speaker reminded us that we’ve been more. In times like the Great Depression, we were motivated by love for others, a belief of being in it together, and an aspiration of communal greatness.
We have had our moments of being something amazing.
Unfortunately, electing a guy into an office and telling him to fix everything, and then going on with life as usual for four years isn’t how amazing happens. Amazing happens when we all remember we’re a part of something bigger. It’s when we all give back with volunteering, generosity of spirit, by helping our fellow man, and looking for the best in every situation.
That’s how greatness happens.
And for a time, I’ll be hoping people are reminded of that for the remaining weeks in this American election.
We need to remember we can be great.
And then we need to become it.
Love is a very good place to start that quest.