The Funny Thing About Progress

Here's the funny thing about progress: it keeps moving.

Six months ago, progress meant buying a camera to revive that facet of my creativity. Six months later and progress has evolved into making prints of the pictures I've taken. Six months from now and progress will be defined as the display and sale of same.

I can almost understand why people dislike progress. It's more work, for one thing, and despite the so-called Protestant work ethic which is a plague in North America almost no one is willing to admit that despite how little vacation people take the North American worker is pretty damn lazy. Going to the same place every day and taking a paycheque out of it every two weeks isn't work, just conformity to habit.

Or it could just be that, as I embark on yet another six-day work week, everyone else with their five-day weeks are starting to look like slackers.

There are times when it seems like progress of every sort has been put on hold. I scarcely have the time for housekeeping, let alone establishing myself in some mythical career as an artist-humanitarian. Still, I persist. Where once I would have quit, satisfied merely to be a consumer of culture, I am now pushing myself to become a supplier of culture, in every spare minute I can find.

The picture below represents the long, slow process involved in becoming me. Ruthlessly, I've been using my friends to get ahead. Disguised as a gift of art, this image is really my first commission. True, the friend for whom it is taken isn't paying for this work, but I'm treating it like it's a commission nonetheless. From it I am learning (in fact, re-learning) entrepreneurship; the fusing of my abilities with the wants and desires of another.

It's not an ideal shot, but it is better than previous shots, so I call that progress. I hope someday to look back on the angst it has caused me with the same amusement I now get from reading my old high school journals. Even in its eventual form I suppose it will always produce a kind of sentimental amusement in me, how for one agonising season I struggled to create for a friend something he might come to cherish.

For the first time in a long time I am staring success in the teeth and success still frightens me but this fear isn't going to stop me. I'm not afraid of the work, I'm afraid of not having work. I'm afraid I won't be able to afford my own comfort. I'm afraid of not finding the perfect picture. But I'm no longer afraid of progress.

And that, as they say, is progress.
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R.I.P. Harold Horwood

As is often the case when it comes to Canadian icons, today is the day I learned that Newfoundland writer, personality (if that's not redundant), and all-around muck-raker died on April 16th, 2006, in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.

He will be missed, but not as much as if he hadn't written so prolifically.

And so another writer passes into immortality...
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National Coming Out Day

Oh dear oh dear, two posts in one day. Normally I wouldn't be compelled to do this, but since it is National Coming Out Day I thought why not.

To any closet cases out there: you're only hurting yourself. That may well be what you're into, but if you come out you can find someone else to do it for you. And that, I am told, is really the bee's knees. Or the wasp's elbows, or whatever.

I came out in 1987, so long ago in fact that I just assume everyone knows. It's always a slight kick when someone new finds out -- the longer I''ve known them the bigger the kick I get. Plus, I really love the idea that I can pass for straight; it means people tell me what they really feel, which is often not what I'd be hearing if they knew. As bad as the homophobia is, the secret homophobia is worse, believe me.

Therefore, coming out is somewhat redundant in my case. As gay, that is.

I am, however, using this opportunity to come out as... A spinster.

No, not a DJ. And not a bachelor either, with its connotations of swinginess. An honest to goodness spinster. Since for me being single is identical to being sexless (come to think of it, so is being married), and since I've been single now for 4 (count 'em FOUR) years, I feel it is an empowering thing to say that I will likely never have sex again. The possibility that I will ever have another boyfriend is an even more far-fetched one. I'm lucky to meet a dozen gay men a year, and of those, maybe 11 will snarl at me. The 12th one is usually married.

That said, there's no reason for me to be bitter about it. At least not any more. To think that an important part of my life was over at the ripe old age of 32 has not been an easy one to accept. It took me less time to learn to like Renee Zellweger. Nevertheless, I have done just that.

It's a difficult enough thing to be a writer, what with all the insecurities, without having to also navigate some other guy's damage as well. Since I am given to grandiose expressions of either/or I figure I can either be a good writer or a good boyfriend, just not both. Until, that is, the introduction of a) the 30-hour day, or b) the un-damaged gay man. In neither case will I be holding my breath in wait.

Recently I've been consoling a friend on his break-up. Having to cheer up a great guy who's in ruins has been a real eye-opener for me. In the interest of helping the world be a better place and creating for myself a bastion of progressivism I will gladly forego all of this torment for myself. No sacrifice is too great for a cause I believe in. But fear not. As long as there is porno I shall not go to bed unsated. Perhaps sex is best left to the professionals after all.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go find a bunch more cats and crochet me some doillies.
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Visiting "Another Country"

Given the type of work I do (which I am loath to name, at least here) I have ample time to read. Lest you should worry about me slacking off, the job entails alot of sitting and staring at walls; since sitting and staring at walls tends to make me brood on how much I hate my job, life, and so on, I decided -- for my own sanity -- to enliven the drudgery with a bit of reading.

I've read a great many books in this manner, and generally enjoyed them all, whether they be classic (Don Quixote, by Miguel Cervantes) or obscure (Clea's Moon, by Edward Wright), hilariously funny (Skinny Dip, by Carl Hiaasen), wistful (Bethel Merriday, by Sinclair Lewis), or sheer poetry (Billy Bathgate, by E. L. Doctorow).

What I never expected was to read a book that would change my life, so I guess I owe my job at least that much. Yet somehow even having to give my job that tiny, grudging bit of respect makes me hate it all the more. It's like getting a really cool Secret Santa present from a first-class a-hole: it doesn't make up for all the crap he's given you, just reminds you that he could be nice and isn't.

But I digress...

The book is called -- as you may have already guessed -- "Another Country", and it was written by James Baldwin. It's dated 1961, and if you, like most people, are harbouring the idea (promulgated by most conservatives) that the majority of the world's ills are modern in nature, think again. Baldwin's portrait is of a 1961 that seems more relevant today than most books being written tomorrow. In fact, I found myself forgetting its era entirely, until some slang would rear its groovy head and remind me.

The optimist in me feels that the misogyny and racism of 45 years ago is softer nowadays, and so the book preserves, as in amber, how harsh people must have once been. Of course, the pessimist in me usually bitch slaps the optimist before this kind of delusion gets too out of hand. Misogyny and racism are alive and well, they're just being more vehemently denied now is all. Oddly, there is almost no homophobia, except the imaginary kind, which today would be detectable only by the politically correct. I wish my life had as little homophobia as "Another Country" does.

At times it had me wondering about the internal battles Baldwin must have fought. As a black man (and a gay man) he would have had ample cause to hate whites (and to distrust straights). Yet his treatment of white guilt is as sensitive as his black characters are insensitive towards it. Ironically, the white characters are all sincerely grappling with their own racism, while the black characters seem to revel in the self-righteousness of theirs. In terms of the civil rights movement, the whites are all about Dr. King and the blacks are pure Malcolm X. Whether his depiction of this makes the author a wizard of empathy or a sell-out is a matter for debate.

While Baldwin is a master of dialogue, his characters are not; how they say what they say is peerless, but what they don't say speaks louder than what they do. Whenever it seems that understanding is about to erupt, someone gets mad, and the moment is lost. It's hard to believe that a writer this good would do a thing like that accidentally. That central human folly -- the mistaken belief that everyone feels just the same as you do about everything -- is present on every page, in every character.

Rufus, a young black man, opens the book. The whole of the narrative is hung on him, and he bears it, though it is a burden. It's difficult to discuss the plot without divulging, so I won't. Suffice it to say, it's not very often a thing comes along that is so perfect I won't deign to offer even one spoiler. It deserves to be enjoyed whole, sipped and gulped, whispered and shouted, read aloud and savoured in whatever rich voice your mind can conjure for its narrator, who never judges but merely presides.

Sometimes a book falls into your lap that mirrors what is happening in your life, and that's probably why "Another Country" is still haunting me. Though surely anyone could catch the wisdom that leaps from every page I didn't need to; its themes, its very message of it, leapt onto me and held on like brambles.

Of course, in an age of minimalist prose there is no treat like sitting down to a couple of hundred pages of poetry. Baldwin's descriptions of a vicious, dirty city are beautiful; he evokes beautiful people at their ugliest. White or black, rich or poor, gay or straight or anywhere in between, he transcends the usual soap operatic treatment of anyone. This is no mean feat, as any writer will tell you.

Clearly it was time for me to read a book about relationships -- all kinds, not just romantic -- and "Another Country" has much to say about relationships and inter-relationships. It's always a good time to read about race, especially if it brings one to a new level of understanding. The fact that it didn't say what I wanted it to say is, on balance, a good thing. As a writer I'm selfish, and look forward to one day putting those feelings of mine to paper.

Until then, I find myself awaiting the next paperback surprise...
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