The Pipe: Dream Space

Dreams take up space. They make a home in your heart, and reside there for a time. Sometimes they pass away, like friends you know you'll never see. And sometimes other dreams, like new friends, come by and make life exciting again. And sometimes, like old friends, they come back after a while, and you strike up a conversation you never thought you would have again.

Let me tell a story about myself. I was in high school, in a place that was so terribly out of touch with my inner landscape. I read books like an addict, devouring imagery and story and character like a starving child. I particularly liked books about fantasy and science fiction, because it was about things that never happened in Vulcan, Alberta, Canada. The middle of nowhere. I like books about fantasy, because they always had some farmboy character that started out where I was at, young and naive (and from the middle of nowhere), and through his adventures became strong and powerful and honorable.

I also was a cabin leader during the summers at a camp I had gone to in my childhood. I had begun the painful journey about understanding the evils of the world, the real life evils, through camp. I had campers that were difficult to deal with, kids that wouldn't listen and would commit bizarre acts, like trying to spray one's self with the fire extinguisher (no flames were present), randomly hitting people, and kids that would run away. I seemed to attract them, and through the many camp experiences I began to see that I could not ignore the pain that was present in their lives, and their inability to articulate it, or do anything about it. I knew then, in a way that I couldn't myself express at the time, that I wanted to be their witness. A witness to the stories you will not necessarily hear on the news, a witness to stories that usually don't have happy endings, a witness to things that would make your ears bleed.

And I also began to write, while in high school. I wrote fan fiction. Which, over time, became better fan fiction. I wrote essays that pushed the boundaries of my vocabulary, essays that would provoke my teachers to discussion about something other than the bland political facts that were being shoveled into my brain. I learned that I love Shakespeare, especially speaking it aloud, and especially Hamlet.

Finally I began to love coffee, an attraction that began in away only it could, in Germany, in Europe. My first drink, alcoholic, was a Cafe Amaretto. It was also the first experience I had with espresso. Luckily, my attraction was to the latter, not the former. I had many coffee shop discussions with passionate German youth, my own age, about politics, religion, and everything in between. We stayed past closing in coffee shops, the owner watching with a merry gleam in his eye. I wanted to be that owner. I wanted to provide that place where words could be bantered, and the lattes free flowing, and closing was when I decided to.

I took part of a writing program offered to high school students through the University of Calgary. It was called (W)rites of Passage. Clever, no? We were encouraged to write fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction. I immediately chose fiction, and pondered over the subject. My first inkling came from a discussion at camp. If I had a superpower, what would it be. Being the bleeding heart that I was at the time, I wanted (among other superpowers), the ability to be an empath, to feel other's emotions, and somehow transmute them (for good or ill). So, I began to write a short story. I wrote. Then I wrote some more. Then I realized it was close to the deadline, and I had written no short story, but a novella. Some 22 pages of times new roman 12pt font. Completely original.

There was a crowd of people, mostly family of the students that came to hear, that listened to an excerpt of that short story. It was official, we were told. This was an academic conference, and having present papers at it, we were officially published authors. Oh man, I felt it. It was a glow that I could have all my own. It was one of the best moments, day, of my life. Apparently, people even liked it.

So. I entered into university, on a degree that combined Business and English. Business for that coffee shop I would someday own, and English, so I could develop my writing. It was a beautiful dream, and my first year of university was bliss. It was a dream that I had.

Can you hear the "but"? But, life happened. I had a series of bad experiences once I began living on my own. I had some really good ones too, but they were intermixed with a story of addiction and broken hearts, and a search for a purpose. I became convinced that I should become a doctor. I thought that it would be the best thing that could do with this mythical "potential" I was told that I had. I appropriated the dream for myself with others. And for a time it flourished. I struggled though. I struggled with school, I found science hard. I found it harder than anything else that I had put my mind to up to that point. It didn't come naturally to me, like the way that words sometimes can. I had to force myself to learn things that I couldn't see a reasonable end to learning them. I failed a math course, when I never failed a course in my life. And I was too stubborn to see that this dream took up too much space.

I gave up the life, with its unpredictability, of becoming a writer. I traded in one dream, set it aside for later, promising that I would come back to it after I was done being a doctor. And for a dream, being a doctor is a good one. It's intoxicating, I love House and Grey's Anatomy. I love hearing the expert words they speak, their quick judgments saving lives. I love the idea of being a doctor. But I hate having to learn to get there.

Intuition is often how I approach things, not concretely, not sequentially. I come upon things by the sides, around corners. I struggle with pushing details through my cranium. I can't encapsulate them and cage them, and set them in a row. So learning math is as hard as learning another language for me. Learning biochemistry is like living in another country. I can do it, but at the cost of an effort that takes a lot out of me. And it would herculean for me to do with an A grade.

So I'm realizing that as noble a dream being a doctor is, the rest of my life suffers. My art, as poor and scarce as it is, would wither while I pursue that dream. My relationships with people would be sacrificed. Time would (and has) become a thing I could never have. Sanity would probably be left behind.

And realizing that, saying it verbally, has lifted an immense weight off my shoulders. I've been thinking about letting this thing go for over a year. I've been wondering if I could do it and still be the person I want to be, and now I know.

And now I can have a conversation with an old friend.

I Can Believe in This Kind of Dream

One of the reasons I link to RLP is that he says things that make me light up inside. In a world of darkness, depression and cynicism, sometimes a dream is all you can have:

I’ve had a vision, you see. I’m a little embarrassed to say so because I’m not really a vision sort of guy, but I keep having this crazy idea that maybe the age of exclusivity is passing away. It’s passing away slowly, like racism and nationalism and indifference to the health of our environment, but it IS passing away. Religious exclusivism had its day, but the sun it setting and a new dawn awaits. There are now people in every spiritual tradition who are willing to admit that theirs is not the only way. These people will admit that the intelligence behind creation seems to work with different people in different ways and with a cultural language that fits them.

Imagine if the spiritual people, the dream keepers of the sacred, archetypal stories that arise from our collective unconscious, were to embrace one another and celebrate the ancient beauty of our various traditions. Imagine if we spiritual people held hands across the world and called for peace instead of causing religious wars, which is what we are doing right now.

If that were to happen, the people of our world might see us differently. They might see the beauty and necessity of caring for our myths and traditions. Even brother and sister scientist would celebrate our ancient stories which are, after all, our earliest attempts to understand the world around us.

Peace would be our hallmark, and we would preach that it is the birthright of everyone born on this planet. And we would be set free to pursue truth in all of its wondrous forms.

Wouldn’t that be amazing?

This man deserves props. Props to you RLP!

Introducing: the Holden

Holden is now hitched. He's a good friend of mine, yesterday he got freaking married to the girl of his dreams, his teenage sweetheart.

We all met at camp, and I had the distinct pleasure of living with him, after living in residence at university. We had a wild time at the basement suite we called Bag End. If I could go back there now, I probably would, the nostalgia is that strong.

Holden is an articulate and thoughtful writer. I've seen him grow and soak up writing like a sponge. He is an artist, and a true writer. I just piddle around on the net sometimes, but Holden will probably go all the way.

His blog is here. Read it

Finals!

And the leaf turns and midterm season turns into finals. This is the disadvantage of having 4/5 of my courses in core sciences. My writing time has steadily degraded as my instructors rush to make up time and pile on the workload. I've ended up having to hyper-organize my life to account for every hour of my day between 7am to midnite in order to cope.

And I think I'm just going to make it. If I hold true to the course I've plotted, I just might be able to avoid my B average become a B- or worse, and possibly, just possibly turn it into A's. God Willing.

Come December 15th, my life will be restored. I will no longer become a hermit, eschewing friend and familial contact. I can play video games again, I can actually read fiction. I will be able to breathe.

But not yet.

Now's the time to grit my teeth and turn into the gale.

School

Midterms = lack of writing

Current status: Sleep deprived, caffeine jacked, wild-eyed determined
Current plan: all-nighter at the Uni.
Current goal: Not to die on the Organic Chem midterm.

Que sera sera

Soapbox: The Temples are Empty in Burma

This post is not pretty. It has links to pictures that are not pleasant. This post is not going to make your day. This post is supposed to make you angry.

While looking for podcasts on the CBC radio site, I stumbled across something very disturbing. I've been following the crisis in Burma, through the radio and through the net. I know of Burma from looking at the map when I was in grade school. I know that the the present junta (I had to wiki it), renamed it to Myanmar, and the capital city from Rangoon to Yangon. I know that the chief export of Burma is Buddhist monks and the corpses of students.

And now the corpses of Buddhist monks. Thousands of them.

Rwanda happened in my time, when I was in grade school, before I could really say or do anything about it. But this is happening now, as you read this. Remember the last time segment of a population was killed for their religion? We called it the Holocaust.

Elie Wiesel, a famous Holocaust survivor, said in an address in the White House in 1999,

"Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide-ranging experiments in good and evil."

It is our hands that can and must do something. If we don't, all the temples in Burma will be empty. Maybe it is already to late for that. God knows.

When I hear something about a kid I've worked with, when I've read something about the situation in Burma, the flickering hope I have in humanity gets a little smaller. The world is a little more hopeless today. People whose entire existence is devoted to peace, are killed for that devotion. They stood up to a government who has no soul, who finds human life worthless, and who would kill anyone who would stand up to them if they could. And they have.

Imagine a morning, where in Canada, or America for that matter, all the pastors and priests marched on Ottawa to protest human rights. Imagine then, if the RCMP and the military took them all, imprisoned them, shot them, and dumped the bodies in the Great Lakes.

Some days, I just feel that I am nothing more than a witness to our own depravity. My own included.

If God blesses the peacemakers, and calls them His Own, then the streets of heaven today are crowded in orange.

Here's what you can do:

email your MP

Email your PM

We Have Lost A Dragon

Every few weeks, I check to see what my favorite authors are up to. Terry Goodkind's novel is coming out on Nov. 13th, Neil Gaiman has made Beowulf, etc. And lastly, I almost always come to Robert Jordan. I've been following his blog. For those who don't know Robert Jordan has been writing one of the most epic fantasy fiction series in our time, The Wheel of Time. He has also been battling a blood disease since 2005. I learned today that he died on the 16th of this month.

I started to read Robert Jordan (aka, James "Jim" Rigney) when I was in grade 9. I would have been 15. I was so enraptured by his writing, it inspired me to write some of my own stuff. He has been a major muse to me; you can find on the right a link to a website where I started writing my own fan fiction with some of the people that have also come to know and love his work.

He was a Dragon in the truest sense, noble, larger than life and ferocious figure on the literary horizon. I wish my deepest condolences to his family. There is a space in my head and my heart that those books have filled, and now, it will never be complete.

Another blogger has written more eloquently how I feel about it:

"There was sadness, of course, and shock, because we had just received good news in the previous blog entry, but there was also … what? Disappointment? It would be a lie to say that I wasn’t heartsick at the thought that RJ wouldn’t be finishing the final volume in The Wheel of Time. Most of you I’m sure, felt it too. Just as he was honest with us until the end, so I will be honest here. I think we’re all sad, and at least a tiny bit frustrated, by not having A Memory of Light completed in the way we wanted and hoped for.

Before you think poorly of me, hear me out. Obviously, we can’t blame RJ for that. To do so is to show a lack of understanding of the way he worked and the way he fought this disease. Amyloidosis is a brutal disease and nobody could fight as hard as Jim Rigney. His blog is a testament to his fight and his dedication. He proved to us, right here, that he was Aiel to the core: “Till shade is gone, till water is gone, into the Shadow with teeth bared, screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder’s eye on the Last Day.” I don’t think there could be a stronger statement that defined RJ’s fight with the disease. When I say I was frustrated, it lasted only a fraction a second. It is, in part, our ability to overcome our negative emotions that makes us human to begin with. I took that frustration and fed it to the flame, and let the void surround me."

Amen to that.

There is a Room Upstairs, where a man with a great bushy beard and wide brimmed hat, and a twinkle in his eye, tells a long, rip-roaring yarn. He tells it, pipe in hand, next to a crackling fire, to other bards, who nod and learn forward with the hearing of the tale. He tells it in the company of Lewis, and Tolkien, and Homer.