An Open Letter to Proud Aryans Thinking of Moving to the Calgary Region

Now then, I know you folks have gotten a lot of bad ink in the way of your intolerance and violence, that you “don’t play well” with certain “kinds” of people, particularly Jews and blacks and gays. Yet I’m willing to give you the benefit of certain doubts re: your relocation plans, especially considering the Aryan Guard’s desperate promise of rent subsidies. But might I make a suggestion or two. First: I know you proud Aryans are an industrious people, you like to work. And no one likes a long commute to work. Yet Calgarians suffer the fifth longest average commute-to-work distance (in kilometres) of all Canadian metropolitan dwellers. Kind of a bummer, I know. But you deserve to know all the facts. Second, and perhaps more important: according to 2006 StatsCan, Alberta has the third highest visible minority population among Canadian provinces, the vast majority of it settled in Calgary and Edmonton. Not only that, but Alberta’s visible minority population is growing three times faster than its general population, meaning that for every one of you proud Aryans that moves to Calgary, three nonwhites will show up too. Since 2001, Calgary’s visible minority population has increased by almost fifty percent. It is now the Canadian city with the fourth highest such population. Soon the place will be as colourful as a rainbow. I’m not sure about Aryans’ feelings on rainbows. Which brings me roundabout to my second suggestion. Now, while I imagine some of the stories about your intolerance and violence toward certain “kinds” of people may be a tad exaggerated (by both sides) for propaganda purposes, I also imagine there’s some truth to the notion that — for whatever reason — you don’t particularly like these certain “kinds” of people. So why not avoid them? Instead of Calgary, try a place like Trout Lake, a town about six hundred miles almost due north of Calgary, a quaint and culturally homogenous locale with beautiful hiking trails and great fishing. On the other hand, if I’m being utterly naïve and you are in fact interested in Calgary for its booming immigrant population — for whatever reason — might I suggest some places where Jews and blacks and gays are even more prevalent, such as Tel Aviv, Israel; Harare, Zimbabwe; and Provincetown, U.S.A. I hear they all have breathtaking sunsets this time of year. Though I should tell you that Zimbabwean inflation and unemployment are a tad high at the moment. Caveat emptor. And happy househunting.

Thank Odd I Still Have My Sense Of Humour

I am sown soil under mounds of manure. The flower under the shit, with the crushing weight of heartbreak the impetus for my blossoming. I’ve dragged my mind through the shit and muck of mental dystopia for months now, my beleaguered body along for the ride like a child stuck in a car with a smoking, drinking adult. I’ve surrendered completely to neurosis and paranoia and yes even anger. I’ve punched myself. I’ve punched walls. I’ve trashed bookshelves and overturned desks and engaged in suicidal ideation and generally done everything I’d hoped not to do. But anger issues can bare their fangs when you least expect, and also when you most expect. The trick is to not give in. I have not learned the trick. Sure, I’ve learned how to do the trick some of the time. But this isn’t the major leagues, when you can fail seven out of ten times and still be a star. This is real life, when one slip-up can lead to fatal stupidity. I know this because I’ve seen it in visions. Not like supernatural or psychic visions or even psychotic delusions. Just visual imaginings of situations I’m familiar with taken to perhaps gruesome and far-fetched but by no means illogical conclusions, based on levels of anger and fundamentals of physics. Scars the shit out of me. Ha, that was supposed to be scares the shit . . . Great typo, Freudian and everything. My anger sure has scarred the shit out of me. Anyway, I feel like a pitcher who’s struggling with his stuff in danger of losing the lead but guts it out and there’s runners on second and third with two out and their three hitter at the plate with a three and two count and this next few days or weeks or months is that three-two pitch for me. I can’t miss the plate, can’t walk the bases loaded for the cleanup hitter. But I can’t just groove the pitch either. I must be sensible with it. After all, I can strike the batter out and get out of the inning. Shit happens, runners get on base, runs even score. But I will protect the lead. I am sown soil under mounds of manure. The flower under the shit, with the crushing weight of heartbreak the impetus for my blossoming. I will burst forth into the open arms of sunlight and warmth and love and I will make peace with my neurosis and paranoia and yes even my anger by cutting my pinky finger off. That should really scar the shit out of me.

Greeting Cards You'd Rather Not Receive

(cover) Sorry For Your Loss
(inside) And for the damage to your window and door. But we appreciate the DVD and stereo and plasma TV set! Thanks a bunch!
Signed,
Anonymous

(cover) Thank You!
(inside) Your girlfriend was very hospitable and warm. And moist. An absolute pleasure to ravage in a drunken one-night stand. Thank you for arguing with her earlier that day and calling her a boring wallflower.
Signed,
One Guy You’ll Never Meet

(cover) Everyone Has Problems
(inside) But you can never seem to handle yours! And it’s so much fun to watch, we all agree! Thanx for being such a fuckup!
Signed,
Your Co-workers

(cover) Happy Confirmation
(inside) Now you know, now we know: you have lung cancer, you smoker you.
Signed,
Your Life Insurance Company

(cover) Congratulations Daddy!
(inside) Remember me? No? That’s okay, I remember you! That night in the empty subway car. Well, empty except for us . . . We need to talk. Call me. 89 86 43 1
Signed,
Fulda Burstyn
p.s. I have loads of the necessary antibiotics.

(cover) You’re A True Friend
(inside) The kind who doesn’t realize he’s being robbed blind.
Signed,
Anonymous

(cover) Printemps [colour image of blossoming magnolia tree]
(inside) For some reason the time of year you fucking frogs are rudest.
Signed,
We English Pigdogs


(cover) God Is Beautiful
(inside) But for some reason he chose to steal your beautiful, loving, uninsured wife ripe with child via gruesome auto accident. Suck it up, buttercup.
Signed,
Your Life Insurance Company

(cover) Merry Christmas
(inside) You fucking Jew.
Signed,
Mel Gibson

(cover) Felice Año Nuevo, Peace On Earth
(inside) And peese on you, Señor Gringo
Signed,
Every Local Who’s Ever Smiled At You

(cover) Happy Anniversary!
(inside) Bet you never expected to hear from me again! One year later and I’m still glad I dumped your sorry ass! Hope you’re still breathing and heartbroken!
Signed,
Evelyn Icee

(cover) Thinking Of You
(inside) Constantly. Obsessively. Neurotically. Can’t get you out of my mind. Can’t perform basic tasks. Can’t focus. Can’t go ten minutes without wanting to talk to you and see what you’re doing and ask if I can come over and maybe we can work things out and if not today then maybe tomorrow and why won’t you return my calls and I don’t even know why I want you anymore but for some reason I still do. Won’t you have me back?
Signed,
Fulda Burstyn

(cover) You Are Invited!
(inside) But you’re not wanted! Come, but expect no hospitality. Participate, but expect no cooperation. And then leave, knowing you were invited!
Signed,
Several Of Your Peers Who’d Rather Not Be Named

(cover) I’ll Never Forget The Day I First Saw You
(inside) I’ve jacked off to you every night since.
Signed,
Another Guy You’ll Never Meet


(cover) Happy Chanukah
(inside) You fucking Gentile.
Signed,
Every Orthodox Jew Out There

(cover) Congratulations On Your Baby!
(inside) Too bad it’s dead!
Signed,
The Guy She Left For You

(cover) Holiday Greetings
(inside) High time for suicide!
Signed,
Your Psychiatrist

(cover) I Love You
(inside) But I love him more.
Signed,
See ya

(cover) Get Well Soon
(inside) Oh yeah, I forgot. You’re terminal. Sorry.
Signed,
Your wife

(cover) I Want To . . .
(inside) Rape you.
Signed,
Your Samesex Boss

(cover) Happy Birthday!
(inside) Too bad you’re dead!
Signed,
The Guy Who Killed You And Stole Your Wife And Kid And House And Job and Car And Dog

(cover) Happy Haemorrhoidectomy!
(inside) It may have hurt at first my friend, but things sure worked out in the end!
Signed,
All Your Nosy Colleagues

dim cry from black hole

Boy have I got the motivations. I am so eager to put something down (on paper) that I got the jitters. I’m even writing outside the bounds of good grammar, but I don’t care! I walked out of class that morning thinking I was finished school forever. No more essays, no more exams. Exams I despised the most. Hate being put on the spot. Maybe that's a reason why I have no stamina for regular blogging. The good news is I’m still not writing exams--though I continue to take advantage of my access to paid-for education. The bad news is, an old nemesis is back: waking up early. I despise it. I loathe waking up early like I loathe despising things. (I have been known to love to loathe, however.) Utter helplessness overcomes my body when I wake up most mornings, and when I don’t have to get out of bed, it’s all good. When I am forced to rise by some heinously early engagement--a class, a dentist or doctor’s appointment, an expedition to the passport office, an early lunch date, a church sermon, a phone call one must take to break up with one’s girlfriend--it’s all bad. Nothing worse than having to relinquish that warm foetal state. The jarring coldness of the new day takes me back to that first jarring coldness which I cannot possibly remember. The first day of class.

X was enrolled in classes on a steam Thursday evening in the Louisiana Bayou, a bar on Peter Street. X’s mother Effie went into the men’s washroom with a white male, approx. 6”3’, slightly greying brown hair, blue-grey eyes, with a circular scar on the back of his right hand and a Kafka essay on his mind. Effie proceeded to enroll X in classes which would begin roughly nine months hence.

Later: If a tree falls in the woods and a mute dives out of the way, does the mute make a sound?

Reductio-Inversionists Anonymous

I tend to reduce things to what I like to think are pithy inversions. Here’s where an example would be ideal, but unfortunately I am at a temporary loss for examples. Better than being a temporary example for losses. Or maybe it’s the same thing, I don’t know.

So anyway, there’s a perfect example of my inclination for inversion, and on top of that my tendency to then equate (“maybe it’s the same thing”) the two opposites I’ve produced, essentially cancelling out everything I’ve just said. Very nihilistic. I’m a simple guy who likes to invert things in an attempt to come across as profound and nihilistic.

And that right there’s an example of my reductionist urges, my habit of denying all the issue’s layers, marginal factors, and subtle influences any validity. I’ve only just realized the nihilistic aspect.

What it boils down to is I usually just sound like an absurd wordsmith, which comes with a feeling of obsolescence.

Thing are no longer reducible to pithy inversions, or to single thoughts or ideas for that matter. For comedic or satiric purposes reduction may be an effective technique, but to consider what’s worth considering these days only within the framework of reductive inversion is too simplistic to render an adequate representation of postmodern reality, which is a pretentious way of attempting and failing to convey something I can’t quite pin down with words.

How about numbers. Numbers, strangely, capture the subtleties of human complexity in suspiciously reductionist-like ways. The percentage of the population that suffers from schizophrenia, depression, megalomania, heroin addiction, the percentage of the population that owns the most resources and the most money and the most houndstooth dinner jackets—these numbers evoke feelings. People feel for numbers. People trust numbers. I personally love statistics. Sports statistics in particular. You can really tell a lot about a person by their on-base percentage.

I am a reductio-inversionist and this is my story.

Thoughts come fast and indiscriminately, mostly drivel. I can’t be sure I haven’t heard any of it somewhere before, a few dim words of some conversation at another table in the restaurant overlooking the Elora Gorge, perhaps. I’ve heard lots of things in my time, and most of it—roughly 73%—is locked away with some key I’ll never lay eyes on in some closet I’ll never lay eyes on.

Memories which I no longer have continue to influence me in ways I’ll never understand. How’s that for fatuous reductionism? And of course: Memories which I no longer have continue to understand me in ways I’ll never influence.

I think I need some rehab.

Impressions

Sometimes, when the dark feels thick and too cold, I don’t want to go down the stairs. But if I turn on the light, the TV is down there, down in the rec room, and the laundry room is down there too, the warm white place and Mom in there folding things and singing soft songs. I ask her who she’s singing for. You and me, she says, and she keeps on folding, singing for both of us. She sings by herself when she thinks I’m not around. Mom does everything.

And the friendly comfy beanbag chair is down there, in front of the TV, and so is the big red couch with the funny rough feel to its cushions. Dad’s wine cellar is down there too. The laundry room is on one side of the TV and the wine cellar and Dad’s workshop on the other side. Dad’s workshop is cluttered and smells sweet and smooth, like sawdust and what makes things shiny. Varnish he says. He showed me the can and let me spread the varnish with a little paintbrush onto wood and it made the wood shiny. Behind the workshop is Dad’s wine cellar, where it’s dark the most, even with the lights on. There’s a wooden door with bars like a jail door but sometimes I open it and go in and play monsters. It’s good in there because it’s scary and there’s cobwebs. But I almost never go in anymore because once when I was in there I saw how dusty all the bottles were and I just wanted to clean one but it dropped and got wrecked all over the floor. Then, when we were going to the hospital so the doctor could fix my foot that I cut on the broken bottle, Mom shouted at me but Dad said not to shout. Then he told me not to ever go in his wine cellar ever again. So I hardly ever. And when I do I never touch the bottles, no matter how dusty they are.

The rec room is big and rectangular. Rec for rectangular, maybe. Christmas is in that room every year, with the big green spiky tree that Dad takes out of the box and puts together, the blue and green and red lights and shiny tinsel and candy canes and little ornaments we all put on, and the angel, white and pink plastic, scraping the ceiling. Dad is the only one tall enough to put it on. Every year there’s lots of presents, big and small and waiting. I wish they were all for me. I got a magician set once and a Light Bright and a yellow Tonka bulldozer and a Bearenstein Bears book and a soldier puzzle and a wooden block set and other stuff too. I hate getting clothes. I always get socks and underwear. I thought I would get new Star Wars men, so I burned all my old ones like they were in battle, but I never got new ones. I stole one from my friend because he had so many and I didn’t think he’d miss only one. It was one of the ones I burned. Maybe Santa found out I stole and that’s why I didn’t get any for Christmas.

Easter is also in the rec room, and there are chocolate eggs in pink and baby blue foil hidden under the red couch. I had baby blue jammies a long time ago, and I was wearing them and I saw a V shadow on the wood panel wall, long thin antenna things. The Easter Bunny’s ears! But it was dark down there. How could I see a shadow in the dark? Maybe it wants me to see. Maybe it’s lonely. I bet the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus get lonely. The Tooth Fairy too. No one ever gets to see them because they always come so late at night. They must not have a bedtime or else their mom is really nice and lets them stay up. Sometimes Mom lets me stay up and watch TV with her in her bed when it’s dark way down in the rec room and Dad is still in the hospital. She says he helps people there, so it’s OK if he’s late. She says I’m good company. She says if I go to bed right when she says it’s time to go to bed she’ll bring me ice cream from the kitchen. I like when she goes to the kitchen because I get to change the channels and watch what I want. I love to push the buttons. I can push them really fast and change the channels really fast. And when she comes back with my ice cream I love that too. Dad never gives me ice cream except once in the rec room, and I got sick.

I like to watch TV in Mom’s room at night, but I like it in the rec room too, because of the beanbag chair. I can curl up right in it and fall asleep. But I wouldn’t sleep down there for a whole night. No way. Maybe with the lights on. In the dark I always think there’s eyes watching me. Maybe because in one corner, beside the red couch, where the Christmas tree goes up at Christmas time, there’s a knothole at eye level, a little hole filled with dark. I can look into that dark because it’s behind the wall. It can’t get me from behind the wall. I like to stick my finger in, hoping it won’t get chopped off. Dad will bend down and put his finger in there but when he pulls it out, his finger’s gone! But then he puts his hand behind his back, and when he shows it to me again, his finger’s back! Dad likes to play with the hole. He’s a good trickster. But Mom gets mad. She says the hole is dirty and I shouldn’t stick anything where it doesn’t belong. She says that to Dad and she gives him a look.

The thick green carpet in the rec room is different from the thin brown stuff padding the stairs. I like to drag my feet when I walk through the rec room. It tickles, but not too much. Just enough to feel good. The carpet is soft and deep and hides things. Once, way past Easter, I found an Easter egg still in its foil hidden in the carpet. It must have been hidden there and no one ever found it until I stepped on it. It was squishy, but it still tasted good and chocolaty. I love chocolate, especially when it’s a surprise.

Mom doesn’t like surprises. When I brought home the salamander that Dad showed me up at the cottage, Mom said get rid of it. I was going to keep it in the rec room because the carpet was so thick and deep, like grass. The salamander would’ve been happy, just like if he lived in the grass up at the cottage. But Mom didn’t like that idea. She made me open the jar and let the salamander go in the back yard. She said salamanders aren’t supposed to live in rec rooms, that rec rooms are proper family rooms, not wild jungles, and that little boys shouldn’t keep salamanders as pets, and then she made me wash my hands not just once but twice. Dad said Mom was absolutely right, but when he said it he winked at me. That means he doesn’t think Mom’s right, but he doesn’t want her to know that. Dad says it’s sometimes better to make someone think something, even if it’s not true, just for their own protection. What Mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her, he says. But I shouldn’t tell Mom that, because Dad says if I did it would complicate things, and I wouldn’t be doing him any favours. A favour is a good thing, Dad said. Favours teach trust and cooperation, he said. If you do someone a favour then one day they’ll do you one. It’s kind of like Christmas, only every day, and not just in the rec room. Sometimes Mom says to Dad, Do me a favour and piss off. I bet Mom and Dad do favours with each other all the time.

Mom is being busy at home doing everything. Busy like hell, she says when she doesn’t see me. If she isn’t busy in the laundry room, she’s busy in the kitchen, or outside in the garden, or upstairs in the bedroom. Dad is being busy at the hospital, not coming home. Busy like hell, Mom says. Do me a favour, she says because she’s so very busy. Go up to your room and play there until I’m done cleaning.

I think I want to go down to the rec room instead, where the TV is, and the beanbag chair, and the tickly carpet. That’s where my feet really want to go. But Mom grabs me before I can go down the stairs.

I said go up to your room, she says.

But—

You heard me.

Mom is always mad now, ever since she came home from the cottage and saw what was in the rec room.

My room is upstairs, beside the bathroom. There’s games and books and stuff, but I feel like just lying on my bed. My ceiling has glow-in-the-dark stickers of stars and planets and outer space stuff, but you can only see them at nighttime, in the dark. They make the dark less scary and more fun. I can see out the window from my bed, but it’s raining. Rain in summertime is stupid because it wrecks going outside because rains makes the sky get dark, but summertime is supposed to be bright. But rain makes things grow, so I guess it’s good. But still it’s stupid because you can’t go out and play.

I rub my bare feet over the floor, but it doesn’t tickle. It just feels rough and hot and yucky. I wish there was a knothole in my room to play with. Maybe there is. Mom won’t know, which is good, because what she knows hurts her. I start to feel around my wall for a knothole hiding under the wallpaper. It’s Bugs Bunny wallpaper. I wanted Spice Girls, but Mom wouldn’t let me get Spice Girls. She said they’re floozies. I think that’s what she said. When I asked what’s a floozy she said never mind, you’re not getting Spice Girls wallpaper. So Bugs Bunny’s OK, I guess. Maybe Bugs Bunny knows the Easter Bunny. Then the Easter Bunny won’t be so lonely.

Wait. What’s that in Elmer Fudd’s eye? I can fit my finger in. It feels cool and dusty and secret. I wonder if it bothers Elmer Fudd that my finger is all the way in his eye. I can wiggle it around. There’s lots of room in there behind the wall. It feels like a whole other room in there. I have to look. I have to see.

Elmer Fudd is just as tall as me. I can stand as tall as I am and look into his eye. I can see something through the hole, and I know what it is. It’s the rec room. It’s not dark. I can see myself with ice cream. Dad is in there too, and the lady from the hospital. Dad brought her home and said he’s entertaining her, and he gave me ice cream. I can eat as much as I want, right from the container. But soon I get sick. I don’t want to look anymore. I can see myself sitting on the very end of the couch. There’s no Christmas tree, no Easter eggs, just me and ice cream and Dad and his lady from the hospital. Then Mom comes home early from the cottage and finds Dad and his lady. Then I get sick on the red cushions and Mom and Dad get mad and start fighting and the lady from the hospital looks like she wants to be sick too. I run all the way to the upstairs bathroom because it’s right beside my room. I can hear them shouting and screaming from all the way in my room. I won’t go back to the rec room. I’ll just look at it through Elmer Fudd’s eye. It’s not dark in there but I wish it was. I wish I couldn’t see Mom and Dad getting wrecked.

The Duck's Back

I’ve been doing well with my anger management lately, much better than I’ve been doing in my attempt at putting out regular blogs. I haven’t punched, kicked, or cursed anything for a long time. I can play video games and listen to the Blue Jays on the radio and wait for buses—historically, my three biggest agitators—without freaking out when things go wrong. Hooray for me! It could be that I’m repressing, but I don’t think so. I just feel calmer, more in control of my emotions, more able to let things go. More patient. And I don’t feel like a blowup is one frustrating moment away, which is how I often felt in the past. So I’m not walking on eggshells all the time. Instead, I’m learning how to interpret events in a better way, learning not to take the frustrating events so seriously or personally. I am becoming the duck’s back, so to speak, and those frustrating events the water sliding off me. I almost want to say I’m getting on a roll, but I don’t want to let my guard down. I know that at any time my patience may be tried. But now I see those times, those frustrating events, as opportunities to hone my patience. Humans aren’t born patient. Just look at the peckish infant who screams until mother offers her tit. Honing patience requires practice, and this world offers many opportunities to practise patience. Yet in the last month or two, I’ve rarely even felt angry. The only times I can remember getting angry were the times when I saw people littering. For some reason this really bugs me. I have a tough enough time seeing the city’s streets and sidewalks dotted with discarded containers and wrappers and whatnot, but when I actually see people flagrantly littering, like for example opening a pack of cigarettes and dropping the cellophane wrapper on the ground, I just want to grab them and yell at them and break all their fingers. Maybe punch them in the nose. I want to tell them how inconsiderate and lazy and arrogant they’re being. I want to punish them. But I don’t have that right. So I find myself stuck in that frustrated space between what I see and how I want to respond (but know I can’t).

I have serious issues with littering. Besides the obvious aesthetic and environmental problems it creates, I’m also bothered by the fact that litter is a great form of free advertising. How many times have you been walking along the street and suddenly out of nowhere you think, Boy, I sure would love a Big Mac right about now. Chances are you’ve just passed a McDonald’s wrapper flattened into a prominent display on the pavement. I can see those corporate executives sitting around their giant rectangular varnished oak table in Conference Room B, rubbing their hands together in glee at the idea of their products’ branded packaging lying in the gutters and on the sides of the roads, tempting passersby with subliminal reminders of their products—advertising for which the company doesn’t have to pay an extra dime!

Researchers at Australia’s Monash University, interested in how much “free” advertising litter actually produces, recently collected a week’s worth of branded litter from a nearby park and laid it all out side by side. The presumably smelly collage of wrappers, bottles, cigarette butts, etc. measured 30m². To put this in financial perspective, a billboard that size would cost an estimated $32,000 annually. And that was just a week’s worth of litter collected from a small park in Australia. Imagine how much annual advertising savings are produced through the littering of branded packaging worldwide. Billions? Trillions? And how much of that is being spent by the companies on cleaning up the mess? A lot less, I’m sure. Like, one hundred percent less. At the very least, these companies who profit from litter should use some of those savings to help fund the clean-up. A more drastic—and satisfying for me—measure might be to fine companies for littered packaging that bears their logo. And then use the collected fines to fund the clean-up. Sure, I know, the companies aren’t the ones actually littering, so why penalize them? My answer to that is: Because they can afford to pay the fine. Though I’m sure in the long run such a tactic (i.e., fines for logo’d litter) would probably just lead to logoless packaging. Which maybe isn’t such a bad idea.

But getting back to the litterers, the end users of the product who carelessly discard the packaging: what is going through their brains? Do they figure their mommies will clean up after them? Or have they just never learned to take responsibility for their actions? I think nothing goes through their brains. It doesn’t take much to crumple the refuse and put it in a pocket until a trashcan is within reach. When I see someone littering in public, I wonder if they also litter in their own home. Maybe they do; maybe they drink their soda and toss the empty can on the floor, expecting someone else to pick it up. And maybe someone else does pick it up. Whatever. That’s their prerogative. As the saying goes, people can do whatever they want in their own home. But public spaces are everyone’s property—mine, yours, hers, his. Ours. So I take it personally when people litter in public, like as though they’re littering on my property. (I’m aware of the difference between my own exclusive private property and my shared-with-everyone public property, but in this case I find that difference insignificant.) I should probably work on this reaction of mine. Because such thoughts make me feel vindictive, make me want to go to the litterer’s house and throw stuff on their lawn. Or yell at them. Or assault them. But if I do those things, I’m merely indulging my feelings of anger—the very thing I’m trying to learn not to do. These moments, when I see litterers litter, are perfect times for me to practise patience. To take a deep breath and try to become the duck’s back. Or maybe wish their littering bothered me as little as it bothers them.