Per-verse

 

Think how boring life would be

if everything was known ahead,

if living held no mystery

and all you needed to say was said

Imagine you woke to certainty

and went to bed with nothing at stake

Would nightly sleep more peaceful be

or would longing for mystery keep you awake?

Would you rather a floating fetus be

suspended unknowing in a safe soft womb,

knowing not dread nor comedy

nor what might happen from now until doom?

If all was known ahead of its time

who could bear eternity?

You gave me your word about everything

but I prefer delicious uncertainty

                                           -- A. Blair

Everyday Ghosts: A Tale for Halloween

Ghosts are restless spirits of people repressed or banished from history. Historical figures banished in one way will reappear somewhere else, haunting the places they used to flourish in when alive. Somehow they seem to redress retroactive cancelling. The more we censor the past the more we need ghosts, for re-balancing.

It's not only historic personalities but historic social habits that erupt again in our thoughts, haunting us like secret underground unconscious desires -- products of taboos.

On the morning of Halloween, at the laundromat I smelled cigarette smoke. I swear it was there, a ghostly odorous emanation, even though no one was smoking and the walls were plastered with “No Smoking” signs. The diagrams on these signs made the images of wasted lungs look like skeletons: very Halloween-ish, very appropriate for hallows-evening! The night before All Saints Day, night when the non-saintly ones get out and express themselves.

More ghostly things happened to me that day: at the cash machine outside the bank I put my card in ... and it disappeared. Some evil force stole it and left a creepy message: “insufficient funds”.

This meant less cash with which to buy Halloween candy for the trick-or-treaters. I knew I'd have bad luck at the store and sure enough, a black cat crossed my path. A free one! Just walking along! We rarely see a free cat since the “lock up your cat” lobby forced everyone to keep them indoors – for the sake of birds. The spooky crows in the trees overhead seemed real enough. They cawed raucously, jeering at the black cat, who vanished down a dank alley. These crows had spent the summer killing baby robins, for which cats got blamed – a criminality of crows they were, black against a darkening sky. They soon flew off, evaporating like shadowy wisps ...

Some people say ghosts are mere imaginings, products of our need to hang on to things we've lost, things like history and the habits that used to be robust choices in our personal lives ... let letting our cats go out. This seems to suggest that ghosts are “real”, and that whatever we ban comes back to haunt us.

In my town, the City Council decided it was wise to ban the statue of Canada's first Prime Minister because some aboriginal people didn't like walking past it. His statue's gone now, but Mr. Macdonald isn't: I saw a shadowy top-hatted frock-coated figure on Government Street the other night, flitting round a corner under the moon as the clock chimed midnight.

He'll stick around. History has a way of not going quietly.

  

                                            

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The Invasion of the History Snatchers?

The Canadian Museums Association wants government money to finance "indigenous-led reconciliation in the museum sector". ( Canadian Museums Association recommends 10 ways to decolonize heritage sector - Victoria Times Colonist )

The "museum sector" is one of the channels by which knowledge of History is delivered to the public. Indigenous groups want material artifacts now in museum collections to be returned to them, which sounds only reasonable (although which individuals actually own them isn't clear). Beyond material artifacts, however, they want "sovereignty" over material created about them, which includes accounts, photos and art produced by others. The proper owners of artistic and written works are their authors. 

Material "created about" aboriginals includes accounts of Canadians' shared past -- the story of the whole nation, by the whole nation. It's hard to record the history of Canada without writing about aboriginal people ... and everybody else. To say that only one in-group "owns" a story is censorship, a silencing of the speech of others. (Can you imagine a decree saying that only white people can write about white people??)

History as a subject should be presented in museums, archives and textbooks by professional historians, not by ideologues with a political purpose. (Personal memoir and fictional-imaginative narratives might be by anybody of course, and are protected as free speech.)

The government money for the reconciliation which the Museums Association wants more of, is taxpayers' money. Taxpayers come from every ethnic background and ancestry.

Imagine legislation saying "only Canadians of European ancestry are allowed to write about other Canadians of European ancestry" -- how would that go over? Let's make sure the equity and inclusion principle so proudly adopted in other contexts, prevails also in the matter of Canadians writing about their society and each other. Someone can feel they "own" their own culture, but they don't own somebody else's words. That's what "right to free speech" and copyright means.

Dr. Manners' Election Etiquette For Candidates and Voters

CANDIDATES:

Tell us what you would do in office; not what you think others should NOT do

Don't attack your opponents in the media; speak only about your own platform (voters like positivity)

Meet voters at doorsteps and gatherings; do not spend time digging into the historical past of other candidates' ancient emails so as to find something to shriek about (DON'T shriek, or jeer, insult and ridicule opponents, or attack voters' ancestries)

Never remove or deface opponents' flyers, posters or lawn signs

If you see someone else's lawn sign knocked onto the ground, stand it up again (wouldn't it be nice to know everyone else would do the same for you?)

If you claim any environmentalist intention in your literature, do not even HAVE a plastic lawn sign (hypocrisy is a turn-off)

Remember that personal conduct is more important than promises, in campaigning (character trumps ideology)

Avoid terminally-overused words like: privileged, marginalized, unsafe, vulnerable, and "people experiencing ..." whatever.  

Don't use (anti)social media to get your message out

VOTERS:

Look for and share what you support in a candidate's platform; don't harp on the one thing you disagree with

Personal conduct of candidates is more important than promises; vote for civility, not ideology. (Which would you prefer to see on Councils for the next four years?)

Never remove or deface posters of candidates you disagree with (remember freedom of speech??)

Don't go to (anti)social media to get information 

Ignore what you dislike; echo what you do like (don't attack; only defend. Negativity is corrosive.)

As the World Shrinks - soap opera for our times

             (This story first appeared in Mad Swirl literary magazine:                          As the World Shrinks | Mad Swirl)

When Joe told his friend Jocelyn that he was seeing Dr. Dold, she laughed. Joe was affronted.

“Is it that funny to consult a shrink, I mean… therapist?”

“No. Sorry.” Then an extended after-giggle. “Sorry.”

Joe went anyway. His life was so empty of stress he felt abnormal, and could bear it no longer.

“My life is empty,” he told Dr. Dold, “or at least, lacking in certain things which others have.”

“How was your relationship with your parents, growing up?” asked the therapist, a middle-aged specialist in childhood trauma. The more suppressed the trauma, the better he liked it.

“Fine.”

“Did they split up?”

“No.”

“What work did they do?”

“They were scientists. Still are. Quietly devoted to their research.”

Dr. Dold tapped a note into his iPad. “So you were neglected.”

“No, they shared their enthusiasm with me.”

“Any siblings?”

“No, I was an only child, they were older parents. Being caught up in their careers they had married late.”

“Ah.” He tapped another note. What did ah mean, Joe wondered?

“You felt inferior?”

“To whom?”

“Them. Scientists. You’re literary, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes. They used to read stories to me. That’s what got me into storytelling, I guess.”

“So would you say you live in a fantasy world?”

“Yes and no. What writer doesn’t?” He paused. “What person doesn’t?”

“Were you late learning to read?”

“No.”

“Dyslexic?”

“No.”

“So, this immersion in stories is an escape from social anxiety.”

“Is it? I didn’t say I had social anxiety.”

“Denial,” murmered Dr. Dold, pecking again. “And do you have suicidal feelings?”

“No.”

“Friends?”

“They don’t either, as far as I know.”

“I meant … do you have friends?” (Avoidance, he pecked.)

“Sure.”

“What are your relationships like?”

“Untroubled. That’s why my life feels empty. It contains only one kind of thing: pleasant days and good fortune. It’s like I’m missing the true soap opera of life, the drama of dysfunction, disability and ‘difference’.”

“You are indeed! Tell me more,” said the therapist, leaning forward.

“When I meet friends for a drink, although I’m a professional storyteller I can’t match their tales of hysterical breakdown, epic strife, online betrayal, trolls, rivals, enemies.”

Dr. Dold shook his head in compassion. “We’ll leave it there. Come back the same time next week.”

•••

Next week, Dr. Dold asked about Joe’s work.

“Is your workplace diversified and inclusive?”

“Sure. I work from home, with all the diversion I want and including any projects I want. I also work for a magazine in an office two days a week.”

“Is it insufficiently diversified and inclusive?”

“No. It’s fine. Except for having to attend meetings about those very things.”

“And that’s not fine?” Dr. Dold’s bushy eyebrows shot up to his bushy hair. (Hypo-intersectional, he wrote.)

“Well… it’s a bit tiresome. They call them ‘awareness sessions’. I call it re-education camp.”

“Do you fit in?”

“Hell no, I zone out. It’s when I dream up my best thriller plots.”

“Do the others in the meeting notice that you’ve zoned out?”

“No. Too busy weeping and wailing and pledging ‘allyship’ to persons experiencing… whatever.” He stopped to consider. “Although the leader did say I contribute nothing. He says I don’t ‘share’.”

“Why not?”

“Nothing to share. No trauma, anxiety, disability. I told you. That’s why I’m here. What’s wrong with me?”

•••

At the next session Dr. Dold laid out a therapy plan. “Keep a trauma-diary,” he instructed. “You need to uncover your hidden PTSD. The hidden kind is the worst. It invades your mind-body, a silent virus taking over brain cells with happiness-fantasies. These multiply, until you live in a world of irresponsible contentment.”

Joe went home and followed these instructions. The diary he started however soon blended with his usual diary, which consisted of prospective plot outlines. He now came up with a new thriller, and bounced out of bed each morning anticipating the joy of writing it. It grew of its own volition. He showed Dr. Dold his plot notes (having no other notes in his therapy-diary).

“But I don’t understand these entries,” said Dr. Dold. “Where are your feelings of marginalization and depression?”

“My feelings are that my new story is an allegory about a swarm of ships meeting another swarm of ships on the high seas, which are shown on ancient maps as the Ocean of Words. Marginalization is indicated on the margin of the map, just here… see? It’s a battle of armadas, which as I’m sure you know means ships that are armed. There’s Allyship, Membership, Readership (because you have to make readers “see themselves”), and their retinue of Relationships. There’s Stewardship, and Their Worships: the lords of media correctness who, instead of mediating the moderate middle, fall off the edge of the map into an underworld of demons. The Island of Nature in the centre of the map is a flowery land of mild weather and balanced viewscapes.” Joe became increasingly excited as he described his story.

“You are mad,” said Dr. Dold.

“’Mad’? Isn’t that a rather non-technical term?”

“And your madness is overlaid with political non-correctness. Why are you even writing this book?”

“Because writing it gives me pleasure.”

“Pleasure? What’s pleasure got to do with anything?” Dr. Dold frowned in astonishment. “I think you need medication.” He reached for a notepad and pen (real ones, which astonished Joe in turn). “Here, take this to the pharmacy. Today. It’s an emergency.”