das Flussboot

Tragedy in Comedic Accessories: Thoughts on _Romeo and Juliet_ at this year's Shakespeare in the Park, Toronto Chapter

2010-08-01T19:27:00.002-04:00

A big, eager crowd gathered last night for the annual presentation of a Shakespearean play at High Park. The first un-sweaty day in a long string of sauna-nights probably had something to do with it. It was going to be a good show, the audience and actors were mutually excited by each other.

The Framing

I think the most notable aspect of the direction was the framing of the play. It opened with contemporary characters as tourists at a train station in Verona. The station master opens her copy of the eponymous play and the trunk that says, 'Romeo and Juliet Players' (or something like that) and distributes the costumes within to the travelers. They reluctantly or with ironic expressions or giddy eagerness don the period clothes and start to riff off lines from play--the players play. Thus presenting the entire play as a play within a play.

This device--play-within-a-play--is one that Shakespeare himself used (the players in A Midsummer Nights Dream acting out Pyramus and Thisbe, for instance, or the acting troupe in Hamlet performing Claudius' treachery before the court.) The plot significance of this device in Hamlet is to draw out Claudius' admittance of guilt. But it's the metaphoric significance that is more interesting. The play-within-a-play makes self-conscious the audience to its role as audience--they are watching the play's audience being an audience. At the same time, by making the players themselves an audience, the off-stage audience become the on-stage audience too, both looking at the play-within-a-play together. Real life and stage life circles into each other, thus making manifest the idea "all the world's a stage" (Shakespeare's As You Like It.)

For the first quarter of the performance, we were reminded through ironic on-stage changes of costume and moments of actors coming out of character to wink conspiratorially at the audience (the most obvious and naive display of this being the conductor looking for the right page in her copy of the play to read from) that the players themselves know that it's a play, that they are hip to the whole make-believe nature of play-acting.

This trendy sophistication of turning the finger towards one's self and chuckling, as if to preempt any derisive laughter from any audience, is familiar (I see this on TV a lot) and frankly tiresome. Of course we know it's a play, and we know it's make believe. Why do artists, especially actors, feel the need to be sardonic and ironic about their work? Why must art cow and apologize for itself, fairly begging through self-directed laughter to be allowed a bit a space in the realm of the serious and important? We, the audience, are there voluntarily, after all, to enjoy the show. The flattery of acting as if the players are ingratiating themselves to us, was something I found unappealing, sycophantic, like watching a grown man go down on all fours and bat his lashes at me like some canine school-man-girl. It was a bit gross.

But all was not lost

And this has partly to do with the direction, but mostly, I think, to do with the play itself: it demands seriousness and a mature capacity for feeling. The story of two lovers, young and impetuous and fearlessly passionate, the familial pressures, death of children--these are real sources of conflict. The performance stopped being self-mocking and too-cool-for-school, and started to take itself seriously by forgetting the audience.

It's only in this way that the audience can also forget itself and become immersed in the story. Self-consciousness prevents people from giving over to the narrative, putting themselves into another's shoes. If all you can think about is yourself, you can't think about anybody else. That's why the finger-pointing irony, the "seeing through the fiction" device, deployed at the start of the play is destructive to the purpose of the play, which is to draw in the audience so that they may live out the lives of the characters vicariously, and experience the catharsis enabled by the (fictional) tragedy.

By the half way mark, I was all in. Knowing what was going to happen, as did everyone else, made the scenes between the lover more poignant, heartrending. I don't know why, but I never really believed the love between Juliet and her Romeo when I was younger. It just smacked of adolescent idealism and fantasy to me. But now an older and hopefully more mature and experienced person, I found that their undiluted passion true, honest. They never laugh at their feelings for each other or make light of it or try to dismiss it as a passing fancy.

The director, however, attempted to be hiply ironic about it for first balcony scene, which bugged the hell out of me and Diana, by making the characters seem naive and awkward. Audience members were laughing during the "O Romeo, Romeo. Wherefore art thou Romeo?" monologue. "Wherefore" here means "why," not "where." So there is double meaning in Juliet's plaintive questioning: why Romeo instead of another man, and why does Romeo have to be Romeo (Montague).

And haven't we all asked questions like this during and after a failing or failed relationship? Why is he or she like this or that? Why do I love him or her? Why couldn't he or she be different? Why isn't this working or why didn't it work? Etc. These are the not-funny questions about relationships, arguably the most important thing in life, really.

So I wasn't laughing and I don't think it should have been directed in order to illicit laughter. There's nothing but cynicism in laughing at the only thing that redeems life: human relationships (the major theme of King Lear according to, I believe though I may be mistaken, Tony Tanner. And admittedly a topic of the best jokes and scenes of comedy in my own life. Hmm.)

Back to the frame

Back to the frame: the play ends as is written with the death of the two lovers. But then the director chose to have a actors break out into an ensemble dance. Now dancing is a metaphor of order and harmony, used in comedies with their happy endings to symbolize the idea that All's Well That Ends Well. Tragedies do not end well. That's sort of the point.

So the abrupt rise of the dead lovers and the upturning of the sorrowful visages of the grief stricken parents and friar in the Capulet crypt, was, well, abrupt. And then bizarre.

What did the director mean by ending the tragedy in comedy? It's either boldly Absurdist or a pandering to the audiences need, or the perceived audiences' need, for happy endings to the point where she tacked on this spin and twirl backed up by samba melodies. Or perhaps it was not so badly and bad-tastely calculated.

(The director was Vikki Anderson, Dora award winner and founder of her own theatre company. She's no rube.)

The play opened with the play-within-a-play device, with the actors as nonchalant and mostly happy tourists on the stage. It closes with a light hearted dance. Tragedy ensued within these bookends of levity. Is she suggesting a sense of life? That life sucks sometimes but that sad stuff should be view as being sandwiched between happy stuff? That whatever crap storm happens, life should start and end well . . . and start and end well again, presumably, because, after all, the audience will pack up their picnics and go back to their real lives, and the show will start all over again tomorrow night and the night after that.

This is probably a more generous line of thinking. But I fear--and it might just be my cynicism rearing its knowing and ugly head--that she felt the need, in light of it being summer and Shakespeare in the Park theatre series almost exclusively putting on comedies each year to keep the mood sunny and balmy and seasonal, to squeeze Tragedy into Comedy's pied costume. The effect was less pied and more splotchy and messy at times.

She tried to do too much at once and created this sort of multi-phyla creature. I feel that the play's successes were in spite of her attempt to be everything and cool rather than because of a developed and sophisticated aesthetic. The play shone through in the end, the ill-conceived framing notwithstanding.

Despite all that, I really enjoyed myself. I felt the catharsis, and the al fresco wine drinking and la vache qui rit eating and friends meeting and friends chatting, it was, as it is every year, all part of the Dream in High Park experience. I would recommend it to all Torontonians to check it out.

Movie Review - Star Trek

2009-05-27T12:54:00.007-04:00

Bad Robot productions? said my movie companion. Yes, where had I seen that before? As the opening of Star Trek streaked past at lightening pace, the question got lost. Afterwards, I remembered it's a J.J.Abrams production company, the same man that brought us Felicity, Alias, Lost, Mission Impossible 3, and Cloverfield (which I enjoyed, though many people have said otherwise, for it's highly limited and cinematically experimental point of view).

I wasn't surprised to see Abrams named as the director for this latest Star Trek movie. It was fast paced, plot-driven, and, cinematography-wise, stunning. He casted contemporary and familiar actors, not mega-star types that would muddy the screen with images of their past films they would unwittingly carry over, but young working actors that are in the public eye from peripheral successes. Take for instance Harold (or John Cho) from Harold and Kumar as Sulu, or Anton Yelchin from the well marketed but terribly made movie Charlie Barlett (a Ferris Bueller wannbe) playing Chekov, or Sylar from Heroes playing Spock--an impressive feat of persuasion and chance-taking by Abrams, I thought. But then again, he knows that people love familiarity.

He also had simple, simple-to-the-point-of-ironic, humour in the film which hasn't always been successful or easy in other Star Trek movies. For instance, after the young Kirk drives his mother's boyfriend's (?) car over a cliff, the pursuing police officer points stoically, with an amusing lack of expression due to his robotic face, and says--what else could he say?--"What is your name, citizen?" Or when Sulu turns to Kirk when asked what sort of hand-to-hand combat training he's had and says, "Fencing." Or when Spock returns to the deck calm and ready to serve after a revealing heart-to-heart with his father, and Kirk say something like, "You see. I knew you'd come around," giving Spock a clap on the shoulder that made full use of the Dolby digital surround sound of the theatre. So cliche and yet I rubbed my arm wryly on Spock's behalf.

Never mind the humour. The key observation to make about J.J.Abrams' series or films is this: he's a story teller and he tells it fast. And he uses young actors on the rise to tell it. It's what keeps people on the edge of their seats. It's not just the story that seems to be leaping over an edge, but everyone on screen seems to be excited and ready to make the leap with him. He's got the American-underdog-slash-prodigal-son story line delivered by American-underdog-just-coming-into-the-spotlight actors. Sure, he's formulaic, but Abrams has shown himself to be a master wielder of equations, coming up with imaginative variations on old and tried themes over and over again. This is his genius.

If you think following a formula is for hacks and half-wits, try hacking a romantic novel with its strict rules on content and narrative arcs. It's hard as Fabio's butt. The difficulty lies in not ever becoming ironic or blank-brained faced with the rigid frames of the genre: you can never make fun of it and you must be just imaginative enough but never literary/unfamiliar.

Now, I noticed that even Abrams could not resist a little poking fun in the end: he had Kirk strut onto the commanding deck in the final scene and gave us that full frontal "look at this!" shot of him sitting effetely prissily cross-legged like William Shatner. But they were gentle pokes, digs the audience was primed to chuckle along with because the rest of the movie was so magnificently cozily familiar.

Overall, a two enthusiastic thumbs up, the best Sci-Fi film of the year. So far.

In the running: Transformers and G.I. Joe coming soon this summer.

Annals of Sci-Fi: A Primitive Heaven - The Final Season of Battlestar Galactica

2009-05-27T12:23:00.007-04:00

Finally, after many months of waiting while working on my MFA, I finally sat down and watched the final season of Battlestar Galactica. What words of praise and pleasure, what confessions of satisfaction and wish fulfillment can I offer as tribute that hasn't already been proffered? (Rhetorical question can be so useful.)

So I will only make 4 relatively small objection and reservations about story choices.

One, was the pastoral ending. The gross primitivism that was propagated by "going back to nature" bored me to tears. Was this really the best solution they could find? Really? It's so cliche to look with that sepia lens of nostalgia upon the distant, "natural" past with the longing that is myopic and infantile (or geriatric).

Are we to believe that these people who are used to indoor plumbing, whiskey, ice, glasses as opposed to gourd dippers, modern shelter and central heating, people who probably don't know the first thing about arable land, farming food, raising livestock, people who are used to "jumping" through space, having rubber soled shoes (where are they going to get rubber?), toothpaste for their toothbrush (where's the drug store? the plastic for the toothbrush? the fluoride for the paste?)--I could go on and on here so I'll stop--can any intelligent viewer take seriously this "solution"? (I love rhetorical questions.)

Two, was Gaelan killing Tory. I liked that the murder of the chief's wife was finally addressed/known by another person. But the murder of Tory seemed to me to be an endorsement for a ethics summed up by "an eye for an eye". This, too, is a bit sophomoric. Are we to believe that the death of Tory is only an instance of two characters colliding or a greater ethical proposition by the writers? Given that the whole episode felt like a laying out of moral and political ideals and tenets, I think it would be foolish to assume that Gaelan taking vengeance wasn't also a moral message.

Three, was who was Daniel and why wasn't his character developed? The great thing about Battlestar is that they never forget a storyline or a character and they never let either of those go to waste. So I was surprised that they would introduce such an enigmatic character like a malformed cylon and then drop it. It's unprecedented by nearly four seasons of habitual efficiency and care shown by the show's writers.

And lastly, four, was Kara Thrace. What were we supposed to think about her disappearance at the end? That she was a guardian angel . . . who happened to go through intense anxiety and agony over finding Earth after she returned to the Galactica early in the season? That she was never real . . . but real to herself, and to everyone around her, so real in fact that she held a gun to Roseline's head and burned her own corpse? (Did I mention my affection for rhetorical questions?)

In any case, in spite of all these trivial objections and niggling questions, Battlestar Galactica has been one of the greatest television experiences of my life. It was one of those rare moments when mythic proportioned story line, always captivating and almost involuntarily entertaining, was combined with legend-sized, fascinating characters.

I frakking loved every minute of it.

The Oeuvre of Alice Munro

2009-05-23T14:24:00.002-04:00

I'm currently reading Alice Munro's first collection of short stories called Dance of the Happy Shades. My enthusiasm for it drove me to purchase nearly every collection of short stories she's ever published. The volumes now sit on my floor in my bedroom waiting for my perusing eyes.

The idea for studying a single writer's body of work came to me from Pam Painter's revision class at Emerson College. Choosing Alice Munro had to do in part with her being considered the best short story writer in the last century, in other part with Anni Shamin, a fellow writer, who mentioned planning to do this very thing: read all of Alice Munro during the summer.

I remember thinking of The Beggar Maid, the only complete volume of Munro's stories I had read and wondering how much of her I could take. Perhaps it's because I read the book as assigned reading and perhaps as a class we talked all the magic out of it. But the prospect of a Munro summer didn't quite appeal to me.

That is, not until I started reading Dance of the Happy Shades. Almost all of the stories are written from the child to young adult's perspective. Yet Munro manages to never devolve into the Young Adult category. They also have a sense of humour, which I did not expect from Munro. And the writing. The writing. It is the epitome of fine.

After meeting Anthony De Sa, whose linked short stories were so well embraced by Canadian readers, and my recently sprung but ever deepening infatuation with Munro, also a Canadian short story writer, I can't help but feel a buoyancy about my future as a writer. You gotta take hope that feeds your ambition where you can get it.

Anthony De Sa and "Barnacle Love" - A Numbers Dream

2009-05-22T08:44:00.009-04:00

"I had never written before."

Was I, were we, supposed to believe this from Anthony De Sa, 40, whose 1st book, a collection of short stories called Barnacle Love, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize last year (the American equivalent would probably be the Pulitzer)?

I was there along with a 17 other University College alumni (University of Toronto), for the monthly book club. The club is unique for having the author of the book also attend the meeting.

Here's the rest of his incredulous tale of numbers:

5 years ago, De Sa took a year off from teaching English to high school students, a sabbatical year. A teacher for 19 years, he loves it. At the time he had three small children: a 4, 3 , and a 1 and a half year old. His wife told De Sa that he had to do something with himself. "Get out of the house," she told him, adding, "Why don't you take a writing course?"

De Sa, 35, enrolled in his 1st creative writing workshop at Humber College in Toronto. This is when he uttered the fantastic-to-the-point-of-unbelievable admission: "I'd never written before."

(I think I actually laughed out loud here. And I didn't apologetically cover my mouth, either.)

When his turn came in class, he wrote his 1st short story called "Only a Boy". The reaction of his instructor and classmates was so positive ("Wow," was the sound bite that stuck with De Sa) that he stayed up until three in the morning sending his first story out to over 50 different literary journals.

He got 18 rejections. Danforth Review accepted it for $50. Canadian dollars. A couple of days later, 2 more publishers called to accept his story for publication. De Sa got to work and pumped out 2 more stories and had those published. His fourth story called "Shoeshine Boy", now the subject of his novel-in-progress, was sent only to Descant, a highly respected literary magazine out of the University of Toronto. He didn't hear from them.

2 months passed before he got a call from Emily Shorthouse who had read "Shoeshine Boy" as a Descant intern and now working at the highly respected Bukowski literary agency. The story, she said, "haunted her" and she could not forget it after all this time. Would he please send her a manuscript.

De Sa he had nothing and said yes anyway. Lies of this kind of entirely justified, as far as I and he was concerned, in the face of such glittering opportunity. For 3 weeks, he holed himself up in his cottage and wrote furiously, pumping out 240 pages.

3 more weeks of editing with his agent later, she asked him what his novel was about. He didn't have one. "Everyone's got a novel," she insisted impatiently, waving away his stunned expression. "Write me a 1 page summary of what your novel is about."

This synopsis combined with his 5 stories were sent out 8 publishing houses in Canada, including Doubleday. All but 1, wanted his manuscript, igniting a bidding war between the 7 largest publishers in Canada for Anthony De Sa's stories.

De Sa chose Doubleday for it's excellent editor. He wrote 7 more short stories and revised the collection through 17 drafts.

They ran an unprecedented 5000 hard cover copies of Barnacle Love, a number unheard of for a short story collection.

2 things to keep in mind: one, people in the publishing industry consider good a sale of 500 copies for a short story collection, and two, only 2 books, yes, 2 books, of short stories were published in Canada in 2008, one of which was Anthony De Sa's.

All the HCs are sold out and the book is now in trade paperback with publication set in the States, and incredible difficult country to crack into publication wise, and in many countries across Europe. (Wish I had the exact number here.)

Barnacle Love also became one of the 3 books that his publisher nominated for the Giller Prize. (Each publishing house is allowed three nominations from it's catalogue every year.) De Sa was eventually short listed for the Prize. Joseph Boyden's Through Black Spruce, a novel, won in the end.

De Sa recounted this memorable snapshot at the end of the prize giving night: the guests were directed into a lounge area, and he found himself sitting in the middle of a sofa surrounded by the top 3 names in Canadian literature--Margaret Atwood to his right, Michael Ondaatji to his left, and Alice Munro, with her feet on top of the coffee table, in front of him.

He hardly spoke a word. What did they talk about? "Everyday crap!" No, they don't talk about writing. And, no, De Sa never talks about his writing either.

I want to leave you with 3 salient facts I came away with at the end of the evening with De Sa:

One, if you're going to write a collection of short stories, make them linked short stories; it mimics the feel of a novel, which is what people prefer to read.

Two, if you are split between writing a novel and writing a collection of short stories, write a novel; you have a hell of a better chance of getting published.

Three, if a father of three small children with a wife and a full time career can write a book, well then . . . .

Quote of the Day

2009-05-20T11:29:00.003-04:00

"An intolerable neural itch." - W.H. Auden on the sex drive

Politeness as Payback

2009-05-20T08:34:00.013-04:00

After returning from Boston and finishing up my first year as an MFA student at Emerson, I went to visit my old Alma mater for a job. Scott, formerly Mr. Cowle, my old high school history teacher, who taught Canadian history, nothing of which found purchase in my memory, is the director of the summer school program. I'd been in touch with him about a summer teaching post since March.

I was overwhelmed by the warm welcome I received. My physics and finite teacher, Mr. Hall, whose Christian name alludes me and is now the vice-principle of the high school division, gave me a big ol' smile and hug. Chris Starkey, my gym teacher, gave me a thermos coffee mug, an alumni pin and a photo album of the last high school reunion. Dan Milkovich used to teach me English kept me in his classroom during lunchtime and talked to me about getting married to an English woman named Carolyn and being feared by Grade Nine students. The terrifying Tom Gough, the man who made Dan nearly jump out of his skin when he blustered, which was no infrequent back in the day and once directed squarely at me, asked me to come and sit in on a seminar by a student in his creative writing class.

A pestering pattern has begun to emerge.

It started with Laura McGivern, my Grade Nine English teacher, who sought me out in the middle of my meeting with Scott that I eventually managed to have after two hours had already passed visiting with all my other teachers since walking through the front door of the school, to ask if I wouldn't mind coming down to her classroom and reading the first chapter of the novel she's been working on.

Laura was a young, blond, newly trained teacher when she first began working at my high school. She was pretty enough and jumpy enough that she became an easy target for my classmates, fourteen and over-privileged and rabid. As if we didn't have enough ammunition with her navy blue eyeliner applied too heavily on her bottom lid in the fashion of the early eighties and her habit of pouting when she tried to be a disciplinarian, which made her seem contradictory and clownish, her husband was a police officer.

Even at that age, or perhaps because of it, the kinky image of the young blond teacher smacking her husband's law enforcing tush with his baton wearing nothing but her eyeliner incensed our hormone-driven energy and relentless appetite for teasing.

Over the course of the year, we wore her down and eventually, one day, made her run out of the classroom crying like a girl. I remember laughing and smugly shaking my head with the rest of them. It astonishes me now the capacity for cruelty by kids. Still more, their appetite for enjoying it.

It was a suspense thriller. I read the first chapter. She had be read dialogue and even a sex scene, which made me slightly uncomfortable and required me to remind myself that I was no longer her student, that I was an adult now. Still, in the small, preserved corner of my mind, the fourteen year old imp watched through slitted, glittering eyes this moment of the adult-me reading Mrs. McGivern's suspense thriller sex scene with howling delight. I gave her some criticisms off the cuff with a perfectly straight, mature face.

But that's not a point here. Later that week, while working at my mother's shop, a woman named Sharon started chatting with me while purchasing some things and when she discovered that I was studying creative writing, she brought me two short stories of her own for me to read and critique.

I'm not quite sure how I'll handle the next offering of unsolicited stories and novel excerpts. There are two things at work here: insincerity and cowardice. I don't actually want to read these stories, but I rather than refusing their invitations for my criticism, I say, "Thank you."

I've toyed with the suspicion that this guilt-ridden politeness is the burden borne in my adulthood for being such a twat as a teenager. But then again, this seems to emit the faint but noisome smell of Jesus-envy or Puritan morality that makes me put a lid on it.

Random Annoyances - Paying for Book Readings in Toronto

2009-05-19T09:04:00.002-04:00

Perhaps I've been spoiled. Living in Boston, an intellectually thriving city that boasts such a dense gathering of ready resident writers that the supply of them exceeds the demand to hear them read, I've never had to pay a book reading.

Not even when T. Coraghessan Boyle came to the Harvard Book Store to read from his new book "Women", not even when the store had to set up television sets in other parts of the store so that the surplus of eager fans could still claimed to have inhabited the same air space as Boyle as they watched him read over a monitor, did they charge me for the reading. I got to see him in the flesh.

But here in Toronto, that doesn't seem to be the case. The demand far exceeds supply and they can charge you for it.

Take for instance, Chuck Palahniuk and his "Pygmy" Tour. Chuck's the guy who brought us "The Flight Club" and "Choke". He was here in Toronto to read from his eponymous book. The tickets, yes, tickets for the reading were sold out at $15 a pop. Larry King is coming to town to read from his new book and I would have to shell out $18 to see him. If I wanted to see him. Michael Ignatieff--distinguished professor, politician, writer, journalist, documentary filmmaker-- is gracing a brunch reading (I can't say enough about the tackiness of those two words being placed side by side.) For $40 you can eat eggs and hear him read his new book. The fee doesn't include the hardcover book "True Patriot Love", which attandees will feel great pressure to purchase and have signed after breaking bread with the man. I just want to add that you can save 50% off the cover price if you order your copy of Ignatieff's book ahead of time from Amazon.ca for the bargain price of $15, not including S&H. Neil Gaiman, $15. Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist Reading, $10. Students $5.

To be fair, there are a few readings that I am surprised are free. Miriam Toews and Anne Michaels, both highly acclaimed and widely published, will be reading at no cost, other than your time and travel expenses.

One might perhaps argue that rather than a simple microeconomics explanation of supply and demand, the true reason for event organizers to charge for events is that Torontonians are willing to pay to see their celebrity writers. Canadians, they might argue, value their writers more and hold them up to the same spotlight that shines on rock bands and movie stars.

I don't think so. I think rather it is the typically Canadian obsequious attitude that makes them think they ought to pay for everything, including readings.

Readings are opportunities for the writers to advertise their books in order to raise sales and fatten their royalties. In Toronto, people not only buy the books, but then pay for the advertisement to boot.

To me, this is like paying cover at a supermarket.

Quotes and Ideas - DeLillo's The Names

2009-05-18T11:02:00.002-04:00

"In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that be aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices" (DeLillo).

Two names immediately come to mind--Joyce, Woolf--though there are others. The irony of writing about madness and mimicing madness is that it demands from the writer a crytaline sanity and clarity of style. Only the most sane stylists are thus able to achieve this "final distillation of self."

The conclusion I come to with these two positions is this: if you question your sanity or mastery of your style, if you question whether you even have a style, don't write about madness or try to distill yourself. Be watery.

Random annoyance - Taking the stairs two at a time

2009-05-18T10:47:00.003-04:00

A man who takes the stairs two at a time. Inexplicably annoying. Where is he rushing to? Is his life really so important, so full of pressing obligations that he can't use the stairs as they were designed? Stairs--one of the oldest architectural innovation in history--why must he pretend to know how better to use it or make them more efficient? What gross egotism is this?

Arthur on Courage

2006-07-19T00:21:00.000-04:00

"You fascinate me, you know. And realize that I don’t use the word flippantly. I’ve been watching you during our past few meetings . . . You don’t give anything away do you? I cannot recall the last time I met anyone with such a firm and steady hold on their language—verbal or visual. Perhaps I never have. You have a stillness of carriage that transforms 'the roaring tumults of the mind into a steady, pendular quietude.' You calm me. Indeed, it is your stillness which is the only proof of the infinity beneath that mirror-like surface (no one unaware could create such a perfect veneer.) You seem to calculate everything you say and do, right down to the number of blinks of your eyes, the relaxed tendons of your hands, the smooth forehead surprised into furrows by nothing. We both know that the slightest unconscious gesture can offer crucial insight and you ensure only what you want others to know is known. The curtain is pulled aside every once in a while . . . almost unwittingly, but the carelessness, too, is calculated, I think. Even now as I say these things to you, which for you must be the greatest compliment because it so seldom observed, and rarer still explicitly understood, you look as you did when you sipped your coffee, or turned to hear the robin, or tilted your chin to catch the dappled sun. There are no degrees of pleasure in your expression. I told you I’ve been observing you. Don’t be alarmed, Belhor. I mean you no harm. I am simply fascinated.

"I wonder though if the effect is truly worth the effort. You create an aura of reserve and openness at once: the quality of being non-judgmental. That’s what people call it, anyway. More aptly, it ought to be called fearless contemplation: to entertain an idea without accepting it. [1] What I mean is . . . what defines that quality in a man which maintains poise in the presence of that unpredictable factor of human beings: free will? I used to have nightmares as a child. They always involved a mindless, bloodthirsty beast that was bent on hunting me down. No matter what I said or tried to show, it couldn’t be reasoned with. Appeals to the mind were knocked dead onto the dirt, where I was soon to follow, and then I would run for my life. I think you know this dream. It is not that you are not afraid, I think; you are human, after all; but that you don’t care that you are afraid. You simply don’t care about fear. My God . . . is this courage? How does one describe that serene condescension to one’s own fears of the unknown in each of us? How do you describe a man who accepts others as whole, separate entities apart from himself, as ends in themselves but still retain the ability to love? I used to think that peace and passion were antitheses. But that’s not it, is it? To understand what it means to live with other people in life, to understand the nature of human life—the messiness, the dependence, the contingency of human relationships—and yet never forgetting or denying the reality of love and friendship. To know it and still embrace it all . . . perhaps, this is the nature of Courage—to perceive keenly, to feel fear and set it aside, to truly know and still care. Yes, I suppose it is worth the effort, that surface of yours; it tells me everything, even things I don’t fully understand yet. I think I was wrong to describe it as a mirror. No . . . it is more transparent than ether and weightier than gold."

Notes:
1. Aristotle

Belhor on Integrity

2006-06-29T01:53:00.000-04:00

"Why won't you just say it, Arthur? You are always thinking far too much about whether or not you will mean what you say tomorrow. What does tomorrow matter if you mean it now? Why must you stand by it after an hour or two or twenty-four or a year? Truth is contextual. The context of this space and this time is all you need to consider when you speak. Speak! This obsession with integrity . . . Integrity! I will tell you what Integrity is. It is propaganda by cowards--a fancy name given to a guarantee which life implicitly tell them is impossible. It is consoling to think that the world they know today will be waiting for them in the morning. How safe. How sound. How blind. How can a human being that learns and changes and has a free will be expected to remain the same for ever? No one in their honest mind can. Anyone without the courage to know life as it is, does. Integrity is for those who cannot bear to understand that life is not going to obey their deepest desires for an immutable world, for people as static creatures with beliefs fortressed against reality, for minds that never change! What if you are persuaded to change your mind? Will you remain as you are in the face of reality giving you an alternative, an opposite, an idea that perhaps provokes emotions of fear, disgust, longing, or joy in order that you may retain your precious Integrity? Will you deny the mysteries and the complexities of what it means to be a human being, deny the broadening and deepening horizons, as mutable as you are mortal, to tell yourself at the end of the day that you always mean what you say, forever? Is it not enough, and indeed the only guarantee, that you meant what you said then? A chill comes over you, you say, to realize what I say now I may deny tomorrow. You will ask me about my harangue at some later date and I may say to you, “So what? That was yesterday.” Or I may not. It doesn’t matter, so long as I tell the truth as I know it now. This is how we are—perhaps the most wonderful and most horrible aspect of human nature. But if you want to have lived, and lived fully, embracing all that is wonderful and horrible about humanity, then you must accept, if not embrace, this aspect of your fellow Man, and, most importantly, about yourself. You are not an absolute. You are fluid. Embrace it. Revel in it! Speak! For God’s sake speak and mean it. For now. Believe me. I won’t hold it against you. You do believe me . . . don’t you?"

The Seven Virtues of Man: Monologues

2006-06-28T13:35:00.000-04:00

One day two men made a plan to meet for coffee in the local square. The square was not unlike Russell Square flanked on one side by a museum, on another by a university, and the third by a hotel featuring a now closed drawing room called the ____ Room, in honour of the famous London novelist and essayist. It was drawn through with gravel paths, shaded by tall willows and box-cut hedges. A small fountain could be heard through the foliage and forest green painted benches sat tucked inside small gardens for strollers' respite from the city bustle without.

A man sat on one these benches with a paper bag beside him. He was impeccably dressed in a dark pinstripe suit, crimson neck tie and a white shirt. His hair was black and combed and he wore a mustache curled to points as they slid down and up towards his ears. A black enameled cane with a golden pelican as a handle lent on the arm of the bench. His name was Belhor. He looked at this watch and a moment later saw the other man waving towards him. Right on time.

This other man was also impeccably dressed in a gray flannel suit, a powder blue tie and matching shirt. His name was Arthur. He sat down beside the pinstripe suit man who took out the coffees from the paper bag. They began a long discussion on the 7 virtues of man . . .

The Daily Challenge of Being Kind

2006-06-26T21:01:00.000-04:00

"Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind." - Henry James

At the Hyundai dealership, Mo, in a most courteous and practiced professionalism, advised me to have $574 worth of automotive parts and labour invested into my car. A second opinion was in order, an opinion I'd hoped to avoid.

My dad's mechanic, Mr Oh, owns and operates his own shop in the back alley off Dundas, called O'Seho, a curious Irish-Korean appellation. I refrain from calling the gentleman by his Christian name, Seho, since he's old, like my dad, and he's Korean, like my dad. Mr Oh has been the family mechanic for our Chrysler K car (a most reliable automobile), the Dodge Caravan, the Honda Accord, and my Hyundai Elantra. Last summer, when I returned from London (UK), I had my wipers and tires replaced for the fraction of the cost quoted by Canadian Tire, aka Canadian Thieves. During this visit to Mr Oh's shop, alone without my father for the first time, I was made immediately comfortable by Mr Oh's quiet and unhurried demeanor and his son, Raymond Oh.

Raymond was happy to look at my breaks, but like his father, he had an unhurried and methodical way about him that transformed the eagerness to something resembling reefer amicability. He even spoke with a slight drawl. Time moved slower at O'Seho and the prices, lower. I got a great quote and was asked out on a date by Raymond, thoughtfully encouraged by the elderly, family friend gentleman who doubles as the shops account manager and match-maker yenta. It was my first date since returning to Toronto and B-list dating, I reasoned, was always a good idea to get you started. On the day, I waited twenty minutes before leaving the coffee shop. I never returned his many phone calls which included a message of some lame reason of being held up at the shop. I hoped I wouldn't have to return their within the next couple or many years. And behold the irony: less than a year later I have break problems and Raymond is the breaks man at O'Seho. Happily, though, everyone was cool, including Raymond. I didn't fail to notice the other mechanic call Raymond when he spotted me getting out of the car, instead of notifying Mr Oh, who owns the place. Never mind. Raymond gave me a quote that was almost half of Mo's and then I got a drive home from the yenta accountant.

At the end of the ride, the accountant had words for me. I've noted my thoughts, unspoken, in {}.

"I'm not sure if I should say anything {Go with that. But of course you'll say it anyway} But I'll say it anyway. {He's actually parking the car . . . Oh Jesus . . . } You know last year I pushed, I encouraged, Raymond to ask you out. He came to me after you came and asked me what I thought of you and I said she seems very nice and he thought you were nice, too. And you know I have a daughter. Did you know that. How old are you? Well mine is thirty-four and her mother and I are getting worried, you know. The older you get, you become petrified in your ways and your less and less likely to meet someone you fit with. I've known Mr Oh for a long time since Korea. In high school. So I think of Raymond almost like a son. So I worry that he's not dating. You understand? {Oh God. Don't look at your watch. Don't look at your watch. Nod. Nod!} So I encouraged him to ask you out. Then after you left last year, he didn't mention you again and I didn't say anything but then after a while I asked him what happened. He told me he was late. I said to the bastard, if you ask a woman out then you get there on time! {My thoughts exactly.} He said his father made him stay longer and I said to him then you tell your daddy that you need to get somewhere and you leave! {Oh I get it. He didn't want his dad to know he was going out on a date . . . So sad when that happens.} You know, Raymond never went to university. Did you know that? {Right . . . Where are you going with this? Shake your head with straight face.} Well he didn't! {Don't laugh. Straight face.} I think, you know, I pushed him to ask you out but he was intimidated, you know, Miss Kim. {Who the hell's Miss Kim? Oh God, he thinks I'm Kim! . . . Oh forget it.} Raymond's family goes to the same church as we do so I know his family. His sister blah blah . . . but Raymond is a really nice boy blah blah . . . {Man, this guy is going on. Oh Christ. Please end. End!} . . . You won't find jewels just lying on the sidewalk. {Well . . . } No! You won't find jewels that way. You have to go looking for them. {Lavalife sucks.} No definitely not. {I suppose. Nod.} Ok. Now not a word to anyone about this. {Who would I tell?} Ok, yes, yes, I'll see you tomorrow. Bye!"

As he drove off, I glimpsed his most self-satisfied face through the window as he smiled and waved magnanimously good-bye. I gave a friendly wave in return. He relieved his conscience and satisfied his need to impress wisdom, and I was kind enough to oblige him. I pick up my car in the morning with my mom.