Continue reading »]]>

This year, the happy couple bought each other cages.

I never want to hear another single person complain about Valentine’s Day.

You have no reason to complain. You’re single! If anything, you should be happy.

Being single on Valentine’s Day is like being an atheist during Easter Mass. You have no obligations and tomorrow the chocolate goes on sale. No one is making you buy or do anything and it’s not like you’re the one the priest is molesting. You only have to worry about your own feelings. People in relationships have to worry about someone else’s feelings. And their own. It’s not like being in a relationship makes those feelings magically vanish. If anyone should complain, it’s the couples.

Think about the mascot for this holiday.

A fat, naked child who shoots people through the heart with an arrow.

When people are unattached they tend to look at people in relationships as being blessed or better off or some such shit. They feel like Valentine’s Day is an ostentatious cruelty performed on them by couples. They could not be more wrong. It’s an ostentatious cruelty performed on couples by themselves.

Single people are upset because they have to look at all those commercials.

I have some news for you: So do I. And, unlike you, I’m actually expected to do something about it.

That Cupid character isn’t doing anything nice for anyone. He’s shooting them. If love was easy, Cupid would be giving backrubs instead of shooting people through the heart with arrows. Have you ever tried to dislodge an arrow?

Cat struck down by Cupid.

Neither have I. But it certainly doesn’t look pleasant.

The entire nature of romance is self-flagellation. If you actually enjoy doing it, it’s probably not romantic.

So while all the unfortunate victims of this pantless, pudgy sadist are sitting together in restaurants, wearing their hair shirts and trying to figure out what the fuck they’re doing, you get to be at home, eating your Cheetos in a sunggie. This is like Remembrance Day for Cupid’s prey. Instead of everyone trying to convince themselves that a bunch of people died in a ditch in some foreign hellhole for some good reason, people are trying to convince themselves that love is a painless, happy affair.

It’s a time to compare wounds. And unless you’ve got an arrow sticking out of your chest –maybe one that missed your heart and hit your lungs– you should just count your good fortune, celebrate your liberty and quit bitching. You’re single. You’re lucky.

It’s bad enough that you rub it in everyone’s face but now you demand sympathy for it?

Well boo fucking hoo. You don’t have an arrow through your heart.

How about you break off a little bit of that pity for the people who are impaled?

Continue reading »]]> As if a blogger needs a special day to talk about themselves . . .

But if I let one pass, I’ll probably have my blogging licence revoked.

2010 was a long year. Something like 365 days. And some of those days seemed to be of greater personal import than others.

I was married on March 4 and sold my first book on my birthday, May 3. But these are just markers. Both of those things never would have happened without a lot of little things done on a lot of unremarkable days.

There’s another day I remember. It happened between my marriage and my book sale. My memory paints it in the bright yellows and greens of spring.

My wife and I sat across the street from a now bankrupt bookstore, beneath the pale pink leaves of a blooming cherry blossom tree.

pic nicked from here

I said something I’d been thinking for a long time:

“I’m going to give up writing.”

It was not an easy thing to say. I’d been writing my whole life. But for the past couple years, it had got tougher and tougher.

I’d long ago given up any hope of ever selling a novel. Science fiction seemed like a battlefield where the best and brightest were being slaughtered almost daily. Writers I loved and respected were being cut from companies who needed to save a buck. Just today, I heard that Harlan Ellison has put his first typewriter up for sale. He needs the money.

Harlan Fucking Ellison.

The notion of making a living from writing was something I gave up on a long time ago. It hadn’t stopped me from writing. I’d finished four novels since I’d stopped submitting. The process was good and writing wasn’t something I aspired towards. It was just a part of who I was.

Then something changed. Hard to say what.

Writing is a solitary exercise. A long and lonely pursuit.

From start to finish, it takes me about a year to write a novel. That’s a year spent doing something that no one will ever see, read and has no reward other than the doing of it. I know some people participate in NaNoWriMo (whatever it’s called) and write a novel during the course of a month. While I have no problem with these people, such a concept is alien to me. I never have participated in that and never will. For me, a novel is not so much a thing of speed as one of endurance.

It’s more siege than blitzkrieg.

It’s also a matter of life or death. A book can kill you.

Unlike blogging, which is a matter of lighting up a pipe, having a coffee and jotting some shit down, noveling is an emotionally devastating process. You try to make the thing perfect and you fail. As you fail, you meet every imperfection in yourself. You’re not good enough, clever enough or strong enough to do it. You reach the end of your talent.

To start, it takes a lot of big ideas about yourself. By the end, all of these ideas are in tatters. Say goodbye to every delusion you had about your talent, strength and intelligence. These will starve to death in some ditch. The book is trying to murder you.  You’re just trying to outlast it.  You rope-a-dope.

I doubt it matters how much or how little talent you have. Every writer must push themselves beyond the edge of their ability, find everything they cannot do, and deal with that. By its very nature, the novel is bigger and stronger than the writer. You beat it or it beats you. If it beats you, you are no longer you. You’re fucking worthless.

You’ve bet your very notion of yourself on it. Now have fun.

When I told my wife that I was going to give up, I’d gone through this process again and again. I’d spent my whole adult life doing it. I’d sacrificed happiness, jobs and friendships to do it. My life was a machine designed to facilitate the writing of novels. And I just couldn’t see the point. Not any more.

In his speech to the National Book Foundation, Steven King said:

There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there’s a time when things can go either way.

His time was between 1971 and 1973. Mine was between 2008 and 2010.

The harsh sunlight of the real world had given me a sunburn long ago.

I’d endured even that. But then I saw skin cancer.

I’d been struggling through the same novel for a long time (one I now hope you someday get to read) and having finally finished the first draft, I had lost the last third of that book and the first half of another to a computer virus. Unable to give up but unable to go back and finish it, hating myself because it should be easy to do either and I could do neither, I found myself trapped in a creative limbo. The empty page terrified me. I turned to an old friend who gave me some good advice. I tried to follow it. It worked for a bit. Then it failed.

I failed.

Some people say there’s no such thing as writer’s block. These people can go fuck themselves.

Blocked up, thinking that I’d given the best years of my life to something that was its own reward and that reward was just a lot of mental torment, I finally sat beneath the cherry blossoms with my wife and said something that I’d been thinking for a long time:

“I give up.”

Then I sold a book I wrote and submitted about four years before.

When that happened, my roommate and best friend broke into tears. There was a lot of backslapping and congratulations. I have heard that I deserve this more times than I care to count. I have also heard that I never gave up and that people always knew this would happen for me.

These are all lies.

I gave up.

If someone knew this would happen, then they knew more than I.

And deserve’s got nothing to do with it.

A lot of books that deserve to be published, read and enjoyed never will be. Some that shouldn’t even have been written will make a fortune. A lot of writers who deserve a comfortable living have found themselves without a publisher. Many more will never find one.

And I’m supposed to feel like I deserve something? Like I’m somehow entitled to it?

I was supposed to know this would happen? I never thought it would.

And now that it has happened, I feel strangely ready for it.

I’m over a month into edits and an odd thing has happened. I remember the vigorous joy of writing. I have found the zone, my old home, and set up shop in it. I was not sure that I could or would. I feel like I’ve come home to myself. This is the first time I’ve really felt like me for a couple of years now.

No matter what happens, I know I won’t give up again.

And that one day in spring, sitting below the blooming cherry blossoms, is what 2010 means to me.  My new wife, my old life, both painted bright. Opening up to one while closing the door on the other. I never imagined that they would fuse but I’m happy they did. Even if I don’t deserve it. Deserve has nothing to do with it.

Happy 2011 and best of luck. I hope you understand when I say I hope you never get what you deserve too.

Continue reading »]]>

For as long as I can remember, my family has broke out Christmas crackers and eaten dinner in paper crowns.

The Christmas Cracker was invented in 1847 by a London baker named Tom Smith. These were originally called Cosaques after the crack of the Cossack’s whip.

As for the paper crown, this apparently takes its roots from the Roman Saturnalia festival, celebrated around December 25, when master and slave would reverse roles. Everyone would wear a freedman cap.  In Britain, this somehow morphed into a paper crown. I have no idea how.

Unlike my family’s other Christmas traditions, such as peeling Nan off the chandelier or carrying Father to bed, this is one that I actually enjoy.

Continue reading »]]> I took care of my Christmas shopping one day earlier than normal this year. (Normal is a funny word to apply here, since I don’t normally do any Christmas shopping.) But I know some people are out there looking for gifts.  And with today’s portable internets, maybe this quick guide can help these poor, wretched souls out.

Scent:

Buying scent is a good idea. I recommend Vulva Original for any seat sniffers you might know. Being the “erotic vaginal scent of a beautiful woman” it’s the perfume that even Father will enjoy.

Sight:

Why not stimulate the eyes by buying someone a DVD? Some cheery Christmas classics for the whole family include The Land of Silence and Darkness, Triumph of the Will and The Sinful Dwarf.

Sound:

Don’t buy anyone any music.  Instead buy them a harmonica or, as I like to call it, a hobo symphony.  Then kick them out of your house. If the gift is for a child you do not live with, make sure to buy them something especially loud and annoying. Like a harmonica playing hobo.

Touch:

A small square of velvet can provide hours of petting and touching pleasure for the imbecile on your gift list.

Taste:

If you had any of that, you wouldn’t be searching the internet for last minute gift ideas.  But never underestimate how far a bag of Sour Patch Kids and chocolate bar can go in alienating yourself from loved ones and ensuring that you will not be asked to participate in this idiotic charade again next year.

Good luck.

Continue reading »]]> To impress a selection of war criminals, our government recently spent a small fortune on an artificial lake and some wooden deck chairs.  Since the wife and I are not war criminals (yet) we were not allowed anywhere near this costly display.  So we decided to accept the next best thing: A trip to the Muskokas.

We were surprised to discover that real lakes and chairs are much larger than their fake counterparts.

Size is relative.

The trip was partly a much needed vacation and a chance for my wife to spend some time with my family so that she might ally with them against me.

How a real lake looks.

A few years ago, my parents sold their palatial Victorian mansion in Newcastle and moved to a resort compound in Huntsville.  Not only had the upkeep of their stately home become  difficult for a couple in their declining years, their rural deadwater of a village had become too populated.  What had once been a place where no buses ran became the end of the line.  It transformed from a bastion of rednecks into a bedroom community for Toronto.  My every childhood haunt has either been torn down, burnt to ash or turned into a subdivision.   Sometimes all three.

But the local Kick and Stab, where I was so routinely punched in the face, still remains.  I will dance on its grave yet.

Young Ryan Oakley in a favorite climbing tree.

There is something of a misconception amongst city folk that everyone who was not raised in a city is a suburbanite.  There just aren’t enough rural people in general and certainly not enough in the city to convince them that there is such a place as the country and that it has nothing to do with the suburbs.   It’s a hopeless sort of urban elitism as the word “sub” should attest.  But I am a country boy; raised around septic tanks, cast-iron stoves, farmland and forest.   I am relieved that my parents once again live in the boonies and that I can spend some time out there.

I occasionally crave that.

This was one of those moments.  There were factors known to all – the G20 etc.-, factors known to some -my roommate’s broken leg- and some altogether private reasons but this was a good time for me to get the hell out of the city.  Frankly, for the past month, I’ve wanted to walk into the woods with a knife, some matches and a fishing rod.  I would return when I felt good and ready to return.

Things did not come to that.  Instead, the wife and I got some bus tickets and headed north.  I was just as excited for her as for me.  She arrived in Canada some time ago and still hadn’t seen its natural beauty.  (Unless you count a day-trip to Hamilton.)   Being stuck in the city, she has developed a warped understanding of the Canadian character.  That’s not to assign a higher order of authenticity to country folk –I know them too well for that and, at any rate, this is Huntsville we’re talking about– but it is to say that one must see different things to get a complete picture.   She was going to see a lake, do some fishing and get bitten by a few mosquitoes.  All that is as Canadian as apple pie.

The parents and I took her fishing off the dock and she caught her first fish.  I caught my millionth.

Funny enough, that’s not her first fish.  Her first fish was much larger than that and escaped my grip before we could get a picture.  That was, however, about the biggest I managed to catch.  But what the fish lacked in size they made up for in abundance.  We caught quite a few and returned them all to the lake.  It was great fun and the wife posted some pictures, which I retweeted.

Doing that somewhat predictably resulted in this.

Which my wife saw.

Suddenly the golf game I was trying to avoid seemed like a marvelous idea.

This also made it very clear why Tiger Woods is so motivated to play this ridiculous ”sport.”

I’m no sort of philander (one woman is more than enough) and actually enjoy being around my wife (for most of the month) so my golf game is terrible.  By the fourth hole, I’d completely given up keeping score.  I’d lost count of my number of shots right off the tee and it just seemed pointless.

I’m a bit better at swimming and enjoy it far more.

And my expertise in both sitting and standing beside a lake is unparalleled.

Though, I must admit, I had some stiff competition.

By evening, the wife and I were able to put aside our sitting contest and enjoy something she had never really seen before and I never get to see enough: The stars.  The night sky is the one thing that I constantly miss about the country.  Aside from being beautiful, the stars remind me of the utter futility of all human endeavor and the complete stupidity of all our problems.  When faced with the vast nihilism of space, the complete apathy it has for anything as insignificant as a planet full of humans, I always feel a mixture of humility and exaltation.  Exalted because it’s quite clear that every problem and solution we have is ours alone; humble because the outcome is so totally irrelevant.

I’m also reminded that space is massive.  Much bigger than an elephant, which is easily big enough.  It’s also quite old.  I think that the amount of time we have alive as measured against the age of the universe is about how big our bodies are when measured against its size.  And yet people are obsessed with living for a slightly longer period or extending their control over a bit more space.  They do some pretty awful and cowardly things in pursuit of both aims.  Seems absurd.

I stripped naked and went for a midnight swim, looking up at these stars.  No pictures of that.  There’s some things that a camera just won’t do justice to and other things that cold water shrinks.

Although I forgot to shave for the duration, the trip was a good one.  It’s always a pleasure to see my family.  this was even better than usual as it allowed them to get acquainted with the family’s newest member.  You basically don’t get enough of these pleasant moments.  And you won’t.  No matter how you cut it, the bulk of life is going to be unpleasant or indifferent with occasional periods of bad.  So, when things go your way, you’ve got to enjoy it.   The rest of the time, endurance is key.  Having some happy memories is a good way to get through.

Because, fuck it, one day we all wake up dead.

Not really dead - just napping on couch after work.

Continue reading »]]> It’s Canada Day and I usually like to mark the occasion with some flag vandalism, a rant against the nation state in general and this one in particular, and then spend the next six months sifting through a selection of insults, threats and various other comments.  I’m not in the mood this year.

Usually, my Canada Day post is a visceral  reaction to the idiotic, nationalistic exceptionalism that most Canadians feel.  They think this country is so much better, so much more free and so much more egalitarian than any other place on earth. Just like people do on any other place on earth.

This year, in Toronto at least, where white folks got a tiny taste of how Canada treats so many other people both here and abroad, not many people are feeling like that.

They want to.  I can sense this.  And I’m not one to kick my enemy when he’s down.  Not unless he’s trying to get back up.

So let me just slip one to the ribs here.

I’ll be attending today’s protest to have an independent inquiry into the events of the weekend (hopefully by Amnesty International) and I fully expect to hear the protesters singing the national anthem.  It’s not a practice I’m ever comfortable with but now, after that nation spent a drunken weekend chasing people about with sticks and on a day when our taxes are being raised, it now seems especially ludicrous to gather together and sing its praises.  But people will.

They want their rudely shattered delusion back in place.
These post-summit protests are an exercise in reassurance.  Many seem to feel heartbroken about the events of the weekend.  They feel like their boyfriend has broken up with them and now they don’t know what to do.  Mainly, they want everything back to normal.  This urge for a return to status quo is called reactionaryism.  They’re not terribly concerned that it was the status quo that created this situation in the first place.  They simply think: If you just stop drinking, everything can be like it was before! They want the police chief to resign.  A scapegoat.

As if any other police chef on the the planet would have handled things differently.

I can’t really blame them.  Change and loneliness is a frightening situation, especially for those who are dependent on the state for their livelihood.  The people are much like a battered housewife.  They want the husband to stop beating them, desire a return to a happier time and, lacking any self-esteem, are now eager to believe any Sunday morning apology they might get.  Yet it’s a dysfunctional relationship.  We saw an expression of that dysfunction –not its cause– over the weekend.  Our hubby, the state, might promise to quit drinking but can we believe him?  Has he earned our belief?

I don’t believe he has.

And yet, while I will not condemn black bloc tactics as their violence is nothing when measured against that of nations, I cannot ever endorse anyone ever purposely breaking something they cannot rebuild.  If you cannot install a window, you have no business breaking one.  Smashing is the easiest and most meaningless aspect of anarchism.  If we are ever going to leave the state behind, we must do the hard work and form better systems.  We must make ourselves less dependent on it so that we can leave.  Conflict will then arise, to be sure, but it will be on our home turf, not theirs, and we will have something to protect.  We need to be independent.

The first step, I suppose, is admitting that you have a problem.

That you might be suffering from a carefully cultivated Stockholm Syndrome.

I know the bulk of this city will accept the flowers and apology, then talk itself back into the lie, probably within the month, but I also know that some of you won’t.  I would urge those ones not to turn to the smashing of things but to the building of them.  We are hostages and breaking the dishes, while satisfying in the short-term, will accomplish nothing.  We need an escape plan and place to go to.  That is where we need to direct our energy.  Not towards politics but towards removing them from our lives.

Continue reading »]]>

I didn’t invite the internet to Valentines Day.  Sorry internet.

I actually like this strange holiday.  Not because its a celebration of romantic love –I celebrate my romantic love the old fashioned way: by fucking– but because it’s just so very sadistic towards lonely people.  In the depths of gloomy February, when you haven’t felt an amorous touch or heard a loving word in too long, every florist, shopkeeper and couple decides to rub their happiness in your face.  You get to feel like an orphan on Christmas morning.

What’s not to like about that?

On the day before Valentines Day, on February 13, I celebrate a much more important event to my romantic life.  It’s the one year anniversary of my first fart in front of Shalome.  Although it was unintentional (I might have been bending over or something) a noisy bit of gas escaped my backside.  I stood there aghast.

Farting has never improved a relationship.  It leads to nosepicking, sweatpants and dutch ovens.  Farts are the funeral bells of romance.

I almost ended the whole thing right there.  But, against all odds and my better judgement, we persisted in our certainly doomed relationship.  We just had to accept that mistakes happen while endeavouring that farting would never become routine.

A year later, I’m proud to say it hasn’t.

A lot of people seem to think love is about being as comfortable as possible with a person.  I disagree.  Love is about fear, crippling self-doubt and showing off.  Did Romeo and Juliet look comfortable to you?  Love is discomfort.

A relationship on the other hand, if it’s to last, needs a certain degree of comfort.  Working on all cylinders all the time will burn you out.  But it also needs respect.  You can tell how respectful you’re being by how uncomfortable you feel.

In a relationship, you should be comfortable enough to know that if you err, you will be forgiven but you should also have enough respect to never view forgiveness as permission.  It’s not.

So after that dark, farting day, I have never made a habit of farting in front of Shalome and she has paid me the same respect.  But, strangely, on our one year fartiversary, as if in some morbid celebration, she let one rip in her sleep.  There must have been some special magic in the air.  Gassy magic. Noisy, gassy magic.

With work, I can forgive her “little” mistake.  But that’s just the sort of guy I am:  A hero.