Wednesday, July 28, 2004 

A snapshot of my life

I was making a campfire after dark on Saturday night when a large animal broke many twigs as it carefully walked through the woods toward me. I was in the woods on my parents’ property. I sat listening to it for a few minutes as it walked as close as its path would take it and then continued on, passing out of hearing range.

The next morning I spent forty minutes searching for the animal’s tracks as two angry jays squawked and darted from tree to tree in the canopy high overhead. Somewhere off in the distance I could barely hear an indigo bunting’s odd little song despite the jays’ chattering above. Finally I found a fresh deer trail in about the right spot, confirming my suspicions of the previous night.

That out of the way I made my way out of the forest, pausing for a moment at the edge. The field of wheat swaying before me was a great beige ocean beneath a blue sky that was impossibly huge. Funny how such a simple and expected sight could stun me with such unexpected beauty.

I followed the path made by dad’s four-wheeler to the ‘back’, the far western edge of the property. All through my childhood there had been a wide strip of uncultivated field between the fence and the crops. The strip was marked by three hills, the largest of which being the favourite. It was a gentle slope that peaked higher than any other point on the property. As a boy I had often hurled myself down it on a toboggan. When older I had regularly driven a four-wheeler so quickly up one side that I’d become airborne for a moment before touching down on the other. I’d sat there one evening as a teenager, watching the sun set with the girl I was dating at the time.

It was there I was heading. I had Walden in my hand and I planned to sit there in the long grass and read.

I hadn’t been back this way in years and I was surprised how dense the bush had become and how closely it now strained against the edge of the field. Topping the last rise before the strip, I found that the bush wasn’t the only thing to claim new ground. The strip was gone, plowed under and covered with wheat.

Frowning, I made my way down toward the fence. No use getting upset over a stupid strip of Earth, was there?

Dad later told me that they’d had to plow it under when the potatoes yields went down and the farmer we rent the land to had to switch to wheat.

Before I got to the fence, I noticed a brown furry ball on the top of a fence post at least fifty meters south of me. Puzzled, I squinted at it. Then I moved to see if it would. It did. It was a groundhog and when it saw me it turned and ran down the post, disappearing into the long grass. On closer inspection I found that the post, which was about chest-high, was all scratched up on one side. A groundhog hole was a few feet from the post and a well-trod dirt path stretched between them.

I’d never seen a groundhog do such a thing before and was thrilled.

A few moments later I was on my way up the hill I’d been heading to before. On the edge of the field was the trail of a deer that had passed the same way sometime in the last few days. On a distant hill on the other side of the fence a herd of light brown cattle stood like statues. On the wind I heard the triple note of a goldfinch.

Looking up I found it just as it seemed to drop from the sky. It sang and flapped and rose a few feet again, each of the three chirps coming with the beat of a wing. Then it pulled its wings in tight and dropped a few feet, before repeating the entire process again. It was as if it couldn’t bear to fly without singing, but couldn’t keep up both for long.

I got to the top and leaned back against an unscathed fence post. There was nowhere to sit.

Walden was open in my hands, but I couldn’t focus on it. I smiled because I knew that Thoreau would understand.

A sparrow landed on the top wire of the fence a few feet away from me and proceeded to hop toward me, its little eyes on me the entire time. With each hop the wings moved almost too quickly to see as the sparrow turned one hundred eighty degrees and moved barely an inch. I had to laugh.

What an excellent way to spend a morning.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004 

Lawyer takes aim at gun lobby rhetoric

"Strong gun control remains one of the core values that separate us from the United States," says Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby in an excellent article in today's Globe and Mail.

I agree with most of what he says, but there is one claim that is too bold.

"Canada had only 149 gun murders in 2002, compared with more than 10,800 in the United States -- proof that controls on firearms are effective." Don't forget that the overall population of the U.S. is significantly larger, that there are many cultural mores at work and that even aside from these and other factors, correlation does not imply causation. In other words, this is not proof. Aside from that, I'd agree that gun control has a huge impact on the amount of crime that takes place using firearms.

 

Newsflash: Treating addiction as a health problem is more productive than treating it as a justice problem

New Brunswick's Liberal Leader proposes that the province invest in more methadone programs for addicts, saying that a cost-benefit analysis shows that it would be more than worthwhile.
- 'N.B Liberals say methadone programs worthwhile'; globe and mail; tuesday, july 7, 2004
While there are some problems here the reporter doesn't clarify - statistical stuff mostly - this is encouraging.  Incidentally, I'd also like to know a little more about why I can trust a study done by the research unit of a political party.  (The fact that the results sound right to me is irrelevant.)

Monday, July 26, 2004 

Week 2 of Phase 2

Average daily servings of...
Grains (Rec. 6-11) - 7
Fruits (Rec. 2-4) - 2
Vegetables (Rec. 3-5) - 1
Meat & alt. (Rec. 2-3) - 2
Dairy (Rec. 2-3) - 2  

Average hours of sleep per night - 7  

Total time spent...
On the bike - 3 hours, 10 minutes
At the heavy bag - 23 minutes
Walking or hiking - 2 hours  

Days I stretched - 5
Days I did kempo drills - 3  

Calisthenics split:
Monday, Wednesday, Friday - Upper body
Tuesday, Thursday - Lower body
Daily - Core (abdominals & lower back)  

Average resting heart rate - 61

Fun fact:
Thursday night while stretching I learned that if suitably warmed up, from a standing position with my legs only slightly bent I can grasp my ankles and touch my forehead to my knees.  Without much difficulty.  However, I had never tried it before, so I don't know how difficult this is to begin with.

Monday, July 19, 2004 

The jock ethic revisited

"What about the jock ethic?  You know, winning isn't everything, it's the only thing..."

"That's not the real jock ethic, that's the jock ethic that people who don't know a hell of a lot about jocks believe.  The real jock ethic's a lot more complicated."
"My, we're a little touchy about the jock ethic, aren't we?"
"I didn't mean you," I said.
"Maybe you haven't outgrown the jock ethic yourself."
"Maybe it's not something to outgrow," I said.
- Brenda Loring and Spenser in Robert B. Parker's Mortal Stakes

Dave Matthews Band's Live at Fulsom Field was playing in the background as I opened the freezer door and took a package of chicken breasts out.  A quarter filled flat bottle of clear liquid lay behind where the chicken breasts had been.  It's been collecting frost for a while.
 
In my family, men have a drink while cooking.  Which isn't often.  My dad cooks if the meal involves venison or a barbecue.  But that's about it. 
 
After the chicken thawed I put some rice on to cook and peeled three cloves of garlic.  These I sliced up into thin pieces.  Into a pan went the garlic, the chicken breasts - each of which I'd cut in half - and a tablespoon of margarine.
 
I had the place to myself.  Shokes had gone to the gym.  I love it when I have the place to myself.  Maybe I'm odd, but I'm very comfortable by myself.  Three years ago I lived alone for four months while the woman I'd been seeing and living with had been on a co-op term at the neutrino observatory up in Sudbury.  I loved it.
 
In a bowl I combined lime juice, ground ginger and crushed red pepper.  The recipe calls for finely grated lime peel.  I'm too lazy for that.  
 
I looked back at the pan when it started sputtering.  I swore loudly, flipped the chicken, stirred the garlic up a little and added some more margarine.  It had all been on the verge of burning.  I'm forever doing that. 
 
I was surprised to find that the chicken was done by the time I'd peeled an orange.  Time seems to go faster when I'm cooking.  I took the pan off the heat for a moment, cut the orange lengthwise in half and then sideways into slices.  The slices went on the chicken and it all went back on the heat again, covered, to cook for another minute or so.
 
There's a question that has been occupying my mind for a while.  Lately, I've been thinking about it a lot. 
 
How am I supposed to be a man in today's world?
 
Sitting down to eat the meal I'd cooked myself, the question bubbled up again out of wherever such thoughts come from.
 
It may not seem like that significant a question.  Indeed, to many men I suppose it's not.  But I can't speak for them or about their experience.  Because we don't tend to talk about this.  I don't know why other men don't talk about it.  I know why I don't. 
 
These days if you're male and openly questioning what that means, then it seems that you have issues with your sexuality or your gender identity.  So to openly wonder what it means to me to be a man feels very risky, because I don't have issues with either of those.  I'm comfortable in my attraction to women.  The gender I identify as is the same as my genetic sex.  But what I'm less sure about is what it means to be a man.
 
I have my opinions, but to voice them I have to risk people misunderstanding me for other reasons.  I have to risk you thinking that I'm talking about how "real men" should act.  Yes, homosexual and bisexual men are "real men".  No, I'm not saying a trangendered person isn't a "real man".  To me, sexual identity and chromosomal sex don't make you a man or prevent you from being one.  I'm interesting in how a man acts.  Not all men, or some men.  Just a man.  One man.  Me.  
  
That's important.  I'm only talking about me.  I'm not saying that other men should live the same way.
 
One of the most basic beliefs I hold is that there is no one right way to live.  As a consequence, I also believe that there is no one right way to be a man.  There are as many ways to be a man as there are men.  Which is why the question is so important to me.  If I can be any kind of man I choose, then I'd better be happy with my choice.
 
In addition, it's not as clear as it used to be.  It used to be that a man's path was practically etched in stone.  Finish school, get a job, get married, have kids, make money and give your kids a better life than you had growing up.  For all intents and purposes, we were bound to that path with chains.  That's not to say I don't want a family.  I do.  But when I have one, it will be because I choose it, not because I think I should have one.  I'm not bound to that path.
 
It was my dad's path and he has walked it well, never flinching from its hardships or complaining about them.  That - toughness - is a part of the old path too.  Don't show pain.  Don't show fear.  Don't show weakness.  Be strong for your family. 
 
Men defined themselves by their relationships.  Husband, father, provider, protector.  They didn't define themselves in terms of themselves.  Sound familiar?
 
But the old path doesn't work anymore because the world has changed.
 
The women's movement changed everything.  For the better, I feel I must add.  But the women's movement hasn't been followed by a corresponding men's movement.  Women have redefined what it means to be women, but men haven't done the same for themselves.  For the most part, we men are still working with the old paradigms even though the world has changed.
 
I'm not calling for a men's movement.  I'm not calling for anything.  I am nobody to tell others how to be men.  I'm just trying to find my way in the tangle. 
 
In my life, three men have taught me what I know about being a man.  The first was my dad.  A jock, a hunter and a family man, I learned what he had to teach me.  But even in the small rural town I grew up in, I knew that I needed to learn more. 
 
The second was my sensei.  A classically trained martial artist, he taught me more than just how to defend myself. 
 
The third, oddly enough, doesn't exist anywhere except in the heads of a few.  He's a fictional character created by Robert B. Parker.  He's a private detective - of all things - named Spenser.  A former boxer who likes to cook.  A former cop who wanted to do more than just throw people in prison.  A thug who can quote the classics as well as an English professor.  In one book - I can't remember which - he says something to the effect of, "It's not the ends that matter.  It's the means."  Spenser features in over thirty novels and I had read every one in print before ever going to University.
 
The common element in each man's life is a code of behaviour.
 
When cleaning out my room at my parents' house a couple weeks ago I came across a page covered with my scrawl.  Across the top was written: How to be a man.  The page was a bulleted list.  Of rules.  A code of behaviour.  Most of which is still relevant now.  Most of which I left behind when I went to University and have only started to return to in the last year or so.
 
I've spent most of the last five years of my life scheming and planning.  Trying to figure out how I can make the world a better place.  How I can do my part to save it.  From crime, from societal collapse, from environmental catastrophe.  I spent a long time going nuts trying to figure it out.  Finally I had to admit that whatever I did, it would never be enough.  One person cannot make such a difference.  What happens to someone who builds their identity around saving the world and then is forced to admit that nothing he does will change what will happen?
 
He becomes lost.  He questions what he should do.  How he should act.  Should he fall back on what his dad taught him?  On how to be a man?  That won't do.  But is there something to that?  Is there something to living by a code?
 
There's an episode of Angel where the title character says, "If in the end nothing we do matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do." 

That line has stuck with me for years, even though I didn't consciously understand what it meant when I first heard it.  It rung true, but I didn't know why.  In thinking a lot about this sort of thing in the last few months, it finally started to make sense.

To me, that's what it comes down to.  To paraphrase Parker, behaviour for its own sake.  In a word, honour.
 
The word sounds so archaic.  I guess that is so because we identify it with antiquated traditions.  With chivalry, with sportsmanship, with the old path of manhood.  It's gotten such a bad rap, but the concept is still a noble one.  Despite how it is sometimes used.  "She dishonoured the family," is a common excuse for abuse in certain countries overseas.  I know nothing of these men's honour except that it isn't for me. 

I want to reclaim the word.  I want to be able to proudly say that honour more than anything else is what has guided most of my behaviour in the last year and a half, even if I couldn't have articulated that at the time.  I can truthfully say it, but not proudly. 
 
To be honest, I'm embarassed.

 

Week 1 of Phase 2: by the numbers

Average daily servings of...
Grains (Rec. 6-11) - 8
Fruits (Rec. 2-4) - 3
Vegetables (Rec. 3-5) - 1
Meat & alt. (Rec. 2-3) - 3
Dairy (Rec. 2-3) - 2
 
Average hours of sleep per night - 7
 
Total time spent...
On the bike - 3 hours, 20 minutes
At the heavy bag (which I hung late Wednesday night) - 11 minutes
Walking or hiking - 5 hours
 
Days I stretched - 5
Days I did kempo drills - 2
 
Calisthenics split:
Monday, Wednesday, Friday - Upper body
Tuesday, Thursday - Lower body
Daily - Core (abdominals & lower back)
 
Average resting heart rate - 62

Saturday, July 10, 2004 

Maybe there's something left to sort out

Today started with oblivion broken by a series of brief and blurry glimpses of consciousness.

Cars zooming by outside my window. The television babbling in the other room. Then nothing.

The light blue of my walls, the light green of the sheet tacked up over my windows and the brown of my hardwood floors. All blurred together. Then nothing.

My feet crunched against the wall beside my bed. Legs curled up. Forearm under my head and pins and needles in the shoulder. Head on the edge of the bed. The inside of my mouth feeling as if sand had been poured into it. Then nothing.

"What time is it?" Actual thought. My first since the long train of it that kept me awake for far too long last night. Late night thoughts about the lack of objective right and wrong and the need for personal codes created by that lack. A groan. "I don't care." Then nothing.

Full consciousness. A full half hour of it. Spent looking at the ceiling or the insides of my eyelids. Trying to find the energy to stand.

Finally, I found it. Kicked clothes and piles of junk from my path as I walked across the room. Pulled the door open and found myself face to face with Houdini, Shokes' little grey cat. She was sitting on the top of the three steps from my room to the rest of the house.

She looked at me for a few seconds and then meowed.

"Hello," I said as I walked past her.

My face in the washroom mirror was a sight. Cheeks and chin shadowed with stubble, hair plastered to the sides of my head and light blue fatigue circles under my eyes.

The good news? I'm not hungover and won't be for a while.

The bad news? I feel like this and I'm not hungover.

I'm wrecked.

I've been sleeping terribly, eating terribly and feeling about the same. I wake up five minutes before I leave for work. I ride my bike fast all the way there and barely clock in on time. I spend the first half of the day trying not to fall asleep from boredom and fatigue. I eat crappy lunches because I didn't take the time to prepare a proper lunch the night before. Then I wonder why I have no energy to finish my shift. I get home intending to go to bed early, then get caught up in something else I'd rather do. Talking on MSN, going to a bar (and not drinking), going to a movie, watching television, net surfing, reading. Anything but anything productive. I'm frustrated and tired and irritable.

But something's building. A pressure of some sort. To make a change.

I'm afraid to post this. Afraid you'll read this and think, "Awww. The poor guy is a mess over Christa being in Australia."

That's not it. I won't deny that I miss her. I do. A lot. But she isn't what's wrong.

What's wrong is my approach to life. I'm not sure how to put this, and in truth, I'm so frustrated trying to figure it out that I'm ready to throw things.

Let's put it this way. My approach is passive. You could call it the 'wait and see' approach to life. I wait for things to come my way. I don't pursue them.

However, there are a number of things I want out of life that will not just happen by themselves. I need to make them happen.

"So make them," you say.

That's the problem. I have twenty four years of inertia working against me. My life has been pretty good. While a lot of crappy things have happened, a lot more good things have.

Damn it! Do you see what I mean yet? My approach to life is so ingrained that it's even reflected in the way I think about my life. Good things have happened to me. Not, I've led a good life.

The passive approach is habitual and unconscious and has been reinforced too well for it to be easy for me to change the way I live.

But I have to. Because I can't go on feeling like the object of my life rather than the subject.

Friday, July 09, 2004 

Yawn

Twelve hour shifts suck.

Thursday, July 08, 2004 

Phone companies suck

Tell me, if you called your phone company and told them you were moving, wouldn't you expect them to change your billing address when they change your service address? Without having to be told?

I would too. In fact, I did.

So when I called my phone company today to find out why they didn't want my money, I was more than a little ticked to find out that not only did they want it, they'd been sending bills to my old address trying to get it.

I'm sure you're asking why on earth I'd mess with a good thing - not getting a monthly phone bill since I moved - but remember, credit ratings are important. And not paying your bill on time tends to fuck with those. (Unless there's a good reason like a clerical error on the part of the company you owe money to and you raise a ruckus to make sure that's noted.) What you should be asking is why it took me so long to call them.

The twit I talked to didn't seem to understand that I wasn't going to pay late charges for a mistake I didn't make, so I called back, talked to someone in complaints and got a credit added to my account and a note put in my file explaining why two consecutive bills weren't paid.

Stupid, stupid phone companies.

Monday, July 05, 2004 

"Who is this?"

The phone rang.

"Hello," I said.

"Hi," said a familiar female voice.

The single word carried that curious intonation of those who know you very well and expect you to recognize them right away because of how close the two of you are. Which is why I asked, "How are you?" instead of "Who are you?"

My mind raced through all the people who it could be and dismissed all of them.

"I'm good," she said.

I was at a loss.

"Who is this?"

She chuckled.

"This is Christa."

"Wha...!?"

I sat down. I had to.

It crossed my mind it might be her, but I dismissed the idea because she's in Australia. And doesn't have a phone. And has only been gone a - very, very long - week.

"How are you?" she asked.

"Well, I'm a little thunderstruck."

She laughed.

So did I.

She was on a pay phone at the student union at the University of Sydney.

Amazing the power some people have to drag us from the crappiest of moods.

 

Fuck you internet

Why am I still on my ass in front of this computer? It's not as if I'm doing anything interesting or fulfilling. I'm killing time. Can't I find anything more productive to do?

Argh.

Excuse me, I'm feeling particularly snarly right now.

 

Weeks 10 and 11: dissatisfied

The last two weeks I was very good. I worked out a lot more than I did the previous three weeks. There were no real changes to the workout routine though. Which is a pretty accurate way of describing the rest of my life right now. Which is something I've been thinking about for a while. Which is why the subhead of this post is what it is.

More on that in a future post.

My resting heartrate is currently 52. I can place my palms on the floor in front of my feet with my knees only slightly bent (to avoid injury). Muscles that had gone slack have firmed up and taken on definition I haven't seen since high school.

Looks as if I've achieved my goal of getting back into 'good shape' by July.

I think it's time to kick things up a notch or two. And I'm not just talking about exercise.

 

Radio sucks

I think I drove my mom crazy today.

I'd gone back to my parents' for the weekend to work on my room there (I'm redoing it this summer) and didn't come back to Guelph until today. On the drive back I listened to a CD for the first little while, then switched to the radio. But couldn't find a damn thing I liked. I spent most of the trip flipping stations.

Frustration.

 

Sigh

A week ago today Christa left for Australia.

I drove to her place in Mississauga early Monday morning and went with her and her family to do the airport thing.

I miss her.