I hope you’ll accept this rather weak, shallow and opportunistic explanation for this week’s blog. You see my wife Mac and I have been moving into our new townhouse. Is there a more loathsome task? That is a rhetorical question and in case you’re not good with rhetoric, the answer is NO! I should acknowledge lest you think I am just a miserable old man ..
I have read and reread this story twenty times over the years since, each time remembering different moments, different smells, different people, each time travelling back in Time. I had no idea how precious it would become because I had no idea that my memory would fade, would falter. I am so thankful that I wrote.
What always amazed me about these true crime stories was that they happened while the rest of us were going about our everyday business, completely unaware of the drama unfolding, sometimes right beside us. A McDonald’s parking lot in Chilliwack BC was were this story begins. It was mid afternoon.
I could hear them both gasp. It was -12C and I had shimmied out to the end of the extension at the 120’ height of the crane, without gloves, without a safety harness on an extension which was just an inverted triangle.
“I’ve taught her how to love. How to love with all her heart. Taught her to understand that it can be painful sometimes. I know she’ll be very sad when I die but I hope she’ll understand that it is the best way to live, it’s the only way to live. To be in love is okay, tears and all, it’s okay.”
My family matters to me. Stay the hell away from it. Don’t you dare co opt one of the greatest words in the English language for your corporate purpose. Show some bloody respect and leave ‘family’ alone! Leave my family alone.
Throughout my adult life I have been asked to run for various political positions and my answer has always been ‘no’. Like a hard NO! I suppose many who know me might be surprised at that.
Baby boomers loved their hair. The longer the better, a generational counter culture rejection of all things that had come before. And what did we care? We were young and we were always going to be young! I trusted my hair.
Writing for profit is a fool’s game. I don’t, I write for myself. Some of my writing is profound, some is important, but most of it is neither of those two things. I am at my best as an observational humourist, filtering the mundane through the ‘amusing’ lens and writing.
David Sedaris is a great American observational humourist and he has unknowingly guided me as I spelunked my way through many a dark, confusing writing tunnel. He taught me to stop worrying about inspiration. He says that human beings are very funny, hilarious at times. The knack he says is to get better at seeing it. He is right, if I have grown as a writer it is because I am better now at ‘seeing’ us as we are, simple and complex, shallow and profound, tragic and hilarious. We are endlessly fascinating, a never ending source of writing inspiration.
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