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One of the reasons that moving to Montreal was so easy last year was Ebene the cat. She is chocolate and light brown and likes to sleep on my bed. Her other activities include, according to the season, outdoor hunting, stalking mice that sneak indoors, and fending off the other house cat, Giroffle.
At times I have toyed with the idea of asking my roommate if I can buy Ebene from him. That’s how much I have come to appreciate Ebene’s company. I’d love to have a cat like that when I eventually find my own apartment. But I almost immediately reject that idea every time it arises. Separating a cat from its true owner is not something to take lightly. And the mere suggesting of it would be a bit vulgar.
So I am going to get my own cat this summer. My girlfriend would also like to get a cat when she arrives. Since we will not be living together, it will be fun for me to visit her apartment and bring my cat along. That way, while we’re having a date, our two cats can also have a date, and they won’t become reclusive and anti-social. Surely a social life is important for cats, just as it is for us humans.
Here in Montreal, it has been raining. Last night it snowed, and this morning, it rained again. The streets are slushy and the sewers are working overtime. This is weird weather. I will have to ask if this is even remotely normal for Montreal. On the prairies, rain in January is practically unheard of.
Yesterday, I said hello to yet more Edmonton expatriates. Another potential expatriate is on his way, perhaps, in several months.
I like to think that a community is emerging. It’s not all Edmontonians, of course. And even those who are Edmontonian aren’t always 100% Edmontonian. Like me, there are many Edmontonians from other places. Yesterday, at the Stadium Art Movement show, there was representation from Edmonton’s French demographic. So when you put all these people together, you get incredible diversity. You’ve got people with ties to France, England, Germany, the United States, Turkey, and more.
If we can all go on collaborating artistically, supporting each other’s work and shows, maybe this could be a real something.
Someone yelled out, “From Montreal, we’re gonna take over the world!”
I couldn’t help but love the enthusiasm. Even on this drab and ridiculously ugly day (weather-wise), that infectious spirit lingers.
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I will have an updated draft of my book, Blind Spot, completed by January 24. That’s the self-imposed deadline I’m working to.
As I was walking through the busy EV Building at Concordia University today, I saw a man waving at a baby. I could see the baby in front of him on a computer screen. The man blew kisses at this baby, then waved again.
This was a touching moment, no doubt about it. Perhaps the man is father to the baby, and has to be away from home, and is missing the baby. Perhaps he is an uncle or some other kind of relative, saying hello to a new addition to the family.
Whatever it was, it was certainly an intimate moment. And so my second thought outside of the “oh, isn’t that adorable” reaction, was, why is this man having an intimate moment in a public building with hundreds of people around? It seemed weird.
Understand, I’m the sort of curmudgeon that still gets a litle dismayed to hear an entire conversation being conducted over a cell phone in the street or on the bus. When I want to talk to, say, my girlfriend, I retreat to the privacy of my room. There’s no way I want to discuss anything besides “See you later” or “Did you pick up the wine on your way home?” in full earshot of the public. Any cell phone call I make, I like to keep to a minute or two if there are strangers around.
That said, I have no qualms about expressing affection in public — provided that the person I’m affectionate about is ACTUALLY THERE.
So it seems to be technology as the intermediary that really freaks me out. Put a phone or computer between two people, and you remove one half of the exchange, and all a stranger sees is the bizarre spectacle of one human emoting to an apparent void. Or in the case of the computer, emoting to a person who you can see and maybe even hear, but who could be anywhere.
I am convinced that there is a slow change afoot in the way people see their public/private lives. I read today some words by the famous French essayist, Montaigne:
I owe a complete portrait of myself to the public. The wisdom of my lesson is wholly in truth, in freedom, in reality… of which propriety and ceremony are daughters, but bastard daughters.
These are courageous words. Montaigne figured that his particular gift to the public would be an unvarnished and complete depiction of his life, as it was truly was, along with all his thoughts and feelings. It was “the warts and all” idea of public expression. These days, it is easy to see all sorts of expressions of this sort, from blogs to YouTube clips to reality TV shows.
I once watched an episode of whatever show it was that featured Jessica Simpson and Nick, her husband. I watched as much of it as I could handle. It was hard not to feel a certain elitist disdain for these people. They were dull, inarticulate, stupid even. Why did they get a show? And who the hell is presumptuous enough to think that they even deserve their own show?! But there they were, nagging each other about the contents of the fridge, without even a trace of wit. And people watched.
The attraction of this might be this: “celebrities are just as dull and mediocre as the rest of us!” And indeed, that might be quite comforting to many.
And then there are blogs, which maybe come closest to the sort of idea Montaigne expressed. Now, I happen to think that aside from the fact that there are approximately 1,089,090 too many blogs in the world, that blogs are good. I have some favourite blogs and I check in on them about once a week. If I didn’t believe in blogs, I wouldn’t write one.
But I must admit, Montaigne’s notion of a full-on confessional is beyond me. There is no way I would fully reveal all the goings-on in my life in a public venue like this. My own feeling is that this is what close friends are for. But still, I’ve got to respect the people who use blogs in any way in Montaigne’s model. If they do it well, they are serving a vital human need… the need for us to not feel alone. To learn from each other. The need to understand ourselves.
Today was my fourth “shift” on my manuscript since the New York conference, but the first that felt like a genuine success. I enjoyed writing. I felt like I was on a roll. I was only at work for two solid hours, but they were productive and I didn’t slow down for a minute. I had a feeling it would take a while to get back into this manuscript, and events have borne out this feeling. This project has been going since October 2005. No wonder it sometimes feels like a burden. There is now quite a weight behind this damn book… weight of experience and of expectations. When I started, I was unemployed, single, and quite unhappy. Now I am a grad student, a freelancer for the Edmonton Journal, in a long-term relationship, and living in a different city. And yet the manuscript is still the same manuscript, with the same characters and more or less the same central story.
One of the most difficult things about working on a long project is keeping the enthusiasm for the project alive. I am glad to say that as of today, my enthusiasm is still very much alive.
One of the few solaces of getting older is increasing familiarity with the various challenges of life and your ability to deal with them. This year I saw no need to make any real New Year’s resolutions because quitting smoking was last year’s challenge and I overcame it. This year’s challenge is simply making money and I am confident I will rise to this one too.
Apart from ensuring my own wellbeing, the only other thing in life that makes me really anxious sometimes is environmental and social collapse. Few things are more annoying than a leftie on a soapbox, but there we go, I often feel like a leftie on a soapbox and I wish that America would show the leadership needed to address climate change. I read today that under the administration of Bush, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has actually sought to block California’s tougher vehicle emissions standards. California is appealing to the Supreme Court, and this will be an important ruling because so many other states are prepared to follow California’s lead.
The irony of the EPA trying to block environmental progress hardly needs to be pointed out.
The other thing about getting older (and this is not a solace) is the growing realization that people’s opinions are influenced by experience and family and only to a much lesser extent by facts and arguments. This is why change is so difficult. Environmental practices on an individual and collective basis are habit forming. Breaking habits is never easy. It is especially difficult when your social milieu reinforces your behaviour. For as long as I lived in Edmonton, I associated public transit use with being in a lower social class. Now that I’m back for a visit, I can see exactly why so many people would choose a car over the bus. This is the choice I made, and continue to make. And it is reinforced by friends, family, the desire to be a “someone.” Sure, my environmental beliefs should compel me to eschew the car. But I just cannot. And will not. Because taking the bus in Edmonton makes me miserable. It is an unpleasant and demoralizing experience. Until leaders make environmental choices pleasant, almost no one will make them.
I know that this attitude would get me into no end of arguments with fellow lefties. They would say, “Laurence, if everyone denied their personal responsibility and waited for leaders to act, change would never happen.” Lefties might say it is utterly hypocritical to believe in the science of climate change and cling so stubbornly to my beloved VW Golf.
The thing is, the hectoring attitude of the lefties will not bring about change either. Almost no one is prepared to “do the right thing” if it comes at considerable personal expense. And it also leads to unpleasant arguments about what exactly is the “right thing.” Can somebody judge somebody else for driving a car if he/she flies to Mexico every year for holiday? I drive a car, but I don’t eat meat. How does my carbon footprint add up? I really have no accurate means of knowing. Al Gore has been taking to task for flying around the world on his environmental crusade. But he also buys carbon offsets and claims to lead a carbon neutral lifestyle.
Pitting individual against individual will not work. This is why, again, I defend the right of people to drive, especially where leaders have failed to provide a truly viable alternative. I really don’t see how a problem as enormous as climate change can be solved by individuals. Whenever a truly positive change has come about, it has been because government enacted laws that compelled a change in behaviour. The creation of public healthcare is a wonderful example of this.
In the future, I’d like to see everyone given a quota of carbon emissions; every good and service ascribed a carbon value; and all individuals free to decide how they want to live within their quota. Thus, a car enthusiast can be free to drive to their heart’s content, but they could not do so IN ADDITION TO eating tons of meat and flying all over the world when the whim possessed them to do so.
Such a system would be fair and rational but still serve the individualized ethos that at this advanced stage in capitalism seems inescapable. But such a system can only be enacted by government. It would require an enormous number of new regulations and bureaucracy. I do hope that one day, a government will be courageous enough to pass such comprehensive measures.
One thing is for sure: as long as neo-conservatives are at the helm of both the United States and Canada, our respective countries have almost nowhere to go but backwards.
The philosopher, Jacques Ranciere, argues that democracy lies not in the hands of the state or the voting public, but in the zone of conflict between the two. He argues that it is a given that governments will act on behalf of the powerful members of society: the corporations, the rich business owners, the institutional elites. It is in vain to hope that the powerful in society can change their ways to better serve the interests of the poor, the middle class, the marginalized. For the most part, powerful people and groups have no other aim besides increasing the sum of their own power. What activists need to do is increase the zone of conflict against the powerful. There need to be more protests, more sit-ins, more concerted efforts to get into party politics and change the policies so that they reflect a wider set of interests. This struggle is eternal. It requires eternal vigilance and eternal willingness to fight for change. It is a theory of politics that utterly rejects the concepts of revolution, utopia and the like. For this reason, I find it a very practical theory and the one that comes closest to those views that I have adopted through my own political involvement and community participation.
Under this model, lefties are better off concentrating not on hectoring car owners and meat eaters and the like — the struggle against those with opposite views is practically unwinnable. The true focus for the left — just as it has been for the right — should be on making its presence known as much as possible among the true instruments of power. Responsible lefties cannot escape the pressing need to get elected, start companies, own newspapers and radio/TV stations, etc. They need to actually DO things in society; own things in society; be a force in society. And they need to do so with the knowledge that no perfect future awaits us. Just a future that requires the same level of struggle as every era of the past also required.
That is enough of my soapbox for one day.
