works of wanderlust

Category: wandering & thinking

  • raising calvin

    I grew up on a steady diet of Calvin & Hobbes. 

    The still-famous cartoon strip by Bill Watterson was a fixture in our local newspaper during the entirety of my teenage existence, one of the sole reasons I read the paper that I delivered door to door, clipping out my favourite strips and then later buying the collections in multiple formats of increasingly crisply bound volumes. You could say it was formative for me, and that would be an understatement by a mile.

    The Kid graduated from high school this week and tho they were not allowed to decorate or bedazzle their gowns, they were given free passes to flare up their mortarboard caps.  She spent a whole evening in the basement and emerged later that night proudly showing off a collage affixed to the top of her cap: it was a collection of Calvin & Hobbes comic strips, arranged and glued to her lid, spattered artfully with colour and sparkles, and ready for a quick stroll across the diploma stage.

    This was not a surprise to anyone who knows her.

    To lay claim to some kind of parenting methodology that led us to this moment, my daughter walking across her graduation threshold literally wearing a comic strip that went out of print more than a decade before she was  born, that would be foolish of me. I mean it’s simple, really. She likes Calvin & Hobbes because (a) it’s a great and timeless cartoon, (b) I had numerous copies in the house, and (c) I read them to her frequently until she could read them on her own and then she read them frequently.

    Then, too, don’t forget that I even drew my own comic strip for a few years and you would not be the least bit surprised to read that one of my major influences for that effort was Calvin & Hobbes.

    That influence, it swirled through the rooms of our house for decades.

    Now, maybe it is that I may have internalized some of the lessons of a comic strips character who I adored because, truth be told, I was nothing like him growing up. Calvin was defiant of authority in a way that I could never muster. Calvin was wise and deep and whip smart with a purpose that I merely aspired towards. Calvin brought everything to a life lived with existential abandon that defied everything I understood about the metaphorical box in which I was raised and out of which I feared to step out. Deep down I knew that I was not Calvin, but that not just maybe, certainly, there was something aspirational in that defiant little character and his life of epic adventure and freedom.

    As we were driving home from the ceremony, I racing to get her back to the house so she could dress for prom, she was holding her cap in her hand and she turns to me and says something like “You know why I put this on my cap, don’t you? I’m basically Calvin, you know that right, Dad? You raised me to turn into Calvin.”

    And what does that even mean? Are you a mischievous troublemaker? Are you a socially misaligned youth? Or are you a creative soul unbound by rules? A philosophical genius wise beyond her years? A dramatic soul unleashed by existential undercurrents? Or maybe a bit of everything all rolled into one?

    Calvin & Hobbes was formative for me because while I was not Calvin, then too I could pretend to be that guy, act the part, read the strips and embody the spirit of this quirky kid, not so much unlike a neurotic rule-following father-figure guy in not but a mask and striped shirt.  But whatever I made of myself, there could be a chance—a risk—an epic possibility that I influenced something else. Did I actually parent my own Calvin into being?

    Formative, indeed. Formative squared. 

  • leaning positive

    Angry sells.

    Have you noticed? You probably have. I mean, isn’t that why we are living in these unprecidented times? Angry people, rage, fails, and violence all seem to generate more clicks, more views, voter turnout?

    I wrote a couple weeks ago about the weird fluctuations in my traffic. Some days I get a lot of clicks and some days almost nothing. I tossed some advertising modules up on the site because, hell, if I’m going to start needing to deal with increased traffic I may as well turn that into bucks to pay my hosting fees.

    But, truth be told, I’m probably not angry enough. Not even close.

    Look. It’s simple.

    I’m not picking fights with other bloggers or accusing people of hate crimes or committing hate crimes (I hope) or tearing apart the creative works of others for my own self-agrandizement. (Although this is sort of a critique of the social zeitgeist, so there is an argument that I am being negative about negativity to promote positivity, blah, blah, whatever.) I’m doing none of that. I could. I mean it’s so easy to be mad and pissy and negative. And I’d get a helluva lot more traffic.

    It’s an angry world and anger sells.

    The roaring twenties are roaring cuz everyone is pissed off all the time and roaring negative about damn near everything. It is almost performative. Like, people are hating on others for the lolz and the clicks. Literally.

    I do catch myself playing that game, too. Creeping into being mad.

    And I mean, look, honestly, you can be part of that obtusely unaware crowd of people who think rage and anger and being an asshole are somehow flags of independent thought rather that what they really are—the soup of the day—but I see through a lot of it, personally. That’s such an easy clear path to follow. It’s like lazy af and lit by a neon casino glow. It’s fake and wonderful and terrible and always so fucking lazy. But then what do I know. Maybe that’s just age writing. Hell, I’m creeping up on fifty. How did that happen? Yeah, maybe I am just naive. Maybe I just don’t want to lean into the clicks, huh?

    My truth is just that, as I wrote above, angry sells. And I’m not even close to angry enough to bank on this blog…

    …which was never the point when I started writing it. Still isn’t.

    If you have stumbled upon this site, congrats. The Algorithm doesn’t want you here. You have entered a place where there is nothing to be sold, nothing to be bought, nothing about which to tear off your shirt in a spitting rage. I have been trying—not always succeeding, but trying—to lean positive.

    That is not performative. That is just me. I’m not inclined to rage on differences, or tear down effort in any form or demand a level of quality that I could not first deliver myself (which is virtually never.) I am most just here to point and say huh, isn’t that thing that happened a thing that happened and wasn’t it mildly interesting?

    That doesn’t sell.

    But you are here reading it, so maybe there is hope for the world not being completely sold out to hate and anger, right?

  • already not famous

    The one-wayness of fame has got me thinking this past week.

    Now, to be clear, I could all-too-easily frame this in a way that could come across as very sour grapes. I’m not trying to be sour about it, but rather just hold up an observation and say—huh, isn’t that a curious thing that we just sort of take for granted. Almost all of us do. Even me, mostly. Except when I get a thought stuck in my craw like: 

    Fame is unidirectional.

    —and weird and fickle and imbalanced in a million little ways and really a strange artifact of some aging post-democratic late-stage-capitalist hellscaape, if I’m being honest. But for my point today, fame is oddly unidirectional.

    And if you don’t make stuff maybe you don’t even notice.

    But chances are, and here’s the thing, you are almost certainly a person who exists and may be worthy of a certain share of attention for whatever effort it is that you make each day when you wake up and do whatever it is that you do to fill each of your days. Yet, chances are also great that whatever it is that you do—stocking shelves at a grocery store, helping people file their taxes, building kitchen cupboards, delivering hot food to people’s doors, or integrating complex banking software systems—no one is really paying attention.

    On the other hand, certain people—famous people—go for coffee and wear a fashionable dress and there is a societal tidal wave of attention thown upon them. They make something, anything, and we all watch the trailer or throw money at the thing they made or sign up for notifications about it and give it our raw attention even before we know if its worth that all because of fame.

    And like I said, you are sitting there reading that and thinking, well… yeah. That’s fame. That’s just how it works. 

    And I’m sitting here writing and saying that, well sure, I know… but have you ever thought about how incredibly weird and strange that is?

    And yeah, maybe you don’t even care that no one is paying attention to your life. Maybe even that’s an optimal outcome of your actions. No one fucking look at me, you’re thinking. 

    Now. to be clear. I don’t even want to be famous. (That’s me saying that, believe it or not.) I’m not aiming for some kind of widespread name recognition or the attention and adulation of strangers around the world. That whole notion creeps me the hell out and I’m actually a fairly private guy who would crumble under the pressure of fame and too much attention.

    Yet, there is a sweet spot somewhere between “literally no one notices or cares” and raw unflitered Taylor Swift ubiquity. I feel like with the quantity of effort that I’ve made over the years, the raw and unending production of effort that I put in—and here I want to tiptoe very carefully because I don’t want to say I deserve it or even that I’ve earned it, because I probably don’t and haven’t, but—there should be something more than nothing in this fame equation that we all take for granted. It’s just so unidirectional. 

    And to be fair, that’s not even really what got me thinking about this.

    I got to thinking about it because I was thinking about a piece of so-called advice that fluttered across my feed on social media suggesting that blah, blah, blah engagement in building a larger network of people was all about engaging back—and I thought to myself: you know what? The hell it is. Famous people, and here I mean truly famous people, don’t engage back. They are swamped by attention automatically. The rest of us claw for scraps.

    I mean here’s the thing: I watched Pedro Pascal’s dystopic sci fi zombie show but has he ever done me the honor of reading any of my dystopian science fiction? I listened to Rainn Wilson’s podcast and he seems like a great guy and would probably have enjoyed listening to a bit of mine in return. Did they tho?

    Tho even as I write it, and you read it, the whole premise sounds beyond absurd. Of course they haven’t—we’re both thinking it. That’s my point. The whole equation is unidirectional and we just take it all for granted. We don’t even question it, and you are likely shaking your head at the obnoxious notion I’m presenting. Who the fuck does this hoser think he is?!

    Brad, you’re yelling at your screen. These people we adore have worked their whole lives on a craft that has elevated them above the rest of us, they are the faces of industrial complexes of creation that have systematically built empires of high quality content for the masses to consume. It is their very purpose and they have earned our adoration and attention, you say.

    Sure.

    And I’m just asking why we are taking all of that for granted.

    Why haven’t we aspired to a meritocracy, even with the internet. Why haven’t more of us sought out unfamous voices with regularity? Why don’t we have systems that draw attention away even a little bit more strongly from the firehose of ugly fame and let a dribble escape for the rest of us? Or, if when we have made those systems in the past, why do we let them devolve into just another outlet for the already-famous. Arguably, social media could have been that but The Algorithms now decidedly shift attention to those who already have it, bootstrapping the pre-amplified voices into furies of inescapable commericalized, advertizing-laden sound so imbalanced that beyond a lottery of rare chance no one else can ever hope to be heard above it.

    That’s just how it is, you say.

    I know. I get it. I just—don’t.

  • unrebellious

    Rebels, huh?  To me,  if you’re asking, three guys sitting on their deck smoking weed seems like conformity. 

    Again. If you’re asking.

    I mean never mind that it’s legal now. Never mind that you can more easily buy a mind-altering substance in a neatly packed plastic sleeve right there at the corner store than you can buy a box of chocolate chip cookies. It just seems so much like conformity now. Everyone is doing it. What’s counter about blurring your thoughts and losing yourself into a cloud of smoke?

    We’ve mistaken substance abuse for rebellion, but it’s actually, to me at least, all kinda sorta just a different layer of the economy now, isn’t it?

    Me, if I wanted to conform I’d buy a brown suit and a bible and go to church on Sundays and pray for my neighbour’s soul.

    Or, if I wanted to conform, I’d sit at a desk job and attend meetings day after day after day, file some reports and then dutifuly die at my desk on a Thursday afternoon with a cold cup of coffee by my side.

    Of course, if I wanted to conform I could also do just that by dropping a gummy in the backyard while my ass warmed a lawnchair and the dog slept at my feet and me there falling into a nap of my own and dreaming of speeding a noisy motorcycle down the freeway.

    These are all basically the same damn things, aren’t they?

    You disagree? Nah.

    They feel different, but only just feel different. They aren’t really. That’s the illusion. That’s the trick. They used to be fresh and strange and counter, but if someone is earning money on your back—collecting a tithe, collecting a profit, collecting a tax—that’s just conformity after all, isn’t it?

    If I wanted to rebel I’d quit my job and learn to cook my own food so I don’t need to tip a delivery guy for handing me a cardboard box or even the cute waitress just because she said some nice things to us sitting there at a table in her part time job. I’d make terrible art, spattering paint onto paper and pretending it had meaning when art has no meaning but what someone else wants it to mean and I’d keep it to myself for no one to see but me and hide it away to make people wonder how I spent all my free time. I’d write long novels that wandered through time and space and invented mindblowing ideas without care for purpose or practicality and then I’d promise to let everyone read them but secretly I would just keep writing them until I ran out of caring anymore and wrote something else instead.  If I wanted to rebel, to go out on the road of modern counter culture I’d find a trail that no one else was running and run on that even though there aren’t many of those left and the ones yet to be explored are often scorned for how foolhardy they are, how loose the footing, how vague the orientation. I’d run it anyways, and people would ask me if I was crazy and I would tell them that no, I just wanted to see something different and unexpected and that joining in the smoke up wasn’t my idea of a mind opening experience anyways. 

    And that’s how I would rebel because there ain’t nothing rebellious in much of anything these days, not even the things we got used to thinking of that way.

  • Tracks in the Mud

    There were imprints of multiple bike tire treads in the dried mud.

    This particular corner is not exactly technical, but it would inevitably pose a challenge for a novice off-road cyclist. The hairpin turn is at the lowest point of a narrow runoff trench, a kind of wrinkle in the landscape where water might escape down into the valley-proper but which now, in the late spring, was barely damp. The hairpin turn is to be found at the lowest point in a narrow trench down which the trail skirts a rapid descent and counterpart ascent leading to or from, depending on one’s perspective, the hairpin turn in question. That is to say, the hypothetical adventure cyclist may round a corner on the path and encounter a descending hill tracing down along the side of the trench and then at the bottom of the hill be made to take a sharp turn before ascending back up the far side of said trench to resume their slog through the river valley trail.  There is no other way around, save for taking a completely and altogether different path.

    There were imprints in the dried mud indicating that this represents a common scenario.

    But I was on foot.

    I rounded the corner and shortened my stride to accommodate the fifteen meters of downward grade, my hand instinctively brushing up towards the branches of the nearby trees as if I should, could, would grab a bit of the foliage if my feet slipped on a bit of loose dirt and knocked me off balance.

    I didn’t fall. Instead I found myself at the bottom of the hill down which I had just walked and the bottom of a second hill I was destined to climb and standing at a sharp hairpin corner down low in a wrinkle in the landscape looking towards the dried mud where a number of dried bike tire tread tracks had hardened into their familiar waffle-print patterns.  

    It was quiet. Unnervingly quiet. 

    The trail running in and through the landscape here, a hundred or so meters into the woods and away from the suburban neighbourhoods nearby, was already insulated from the usual hum of sound from the city. But somehow, the little rent in the path, this dip and turn and wrinkle was like descending between two soundproofing berms and completely shutting out whatever remaining noise had penetrated the woods. Here, I might just have found one of the quietest places in the city.

    The sunlight pinched down between the scraggly poplars. The air carried the heavy scent of the spring mulch rotting on the forest floor. The wind stirred now and then, just a trivial gust and enough to stir the newly budded leaves glowing that radiant green of freshly popped foliage.

    One path. Uncountable tread tracks traced through the dried mud. And me, on foot, looking down at the silent hairpin turn a hundred meters from civilization.

    For every person who descended into this trench there was one journey, but an infinite variety of paths. No one who entered this turn came into it at the same angle, speed or trajectory, and likewise, no one left it alike any other. Each path was unique. Each journey was personal. 

    I stepped past the dried tread tracks, glimpsing over my shoulder through the rift in space I had just traversed. That was mine. And I climbed back up the other side of the trail, back up and out of the wrinkle in the landscape, and tried to figure out exactly where I had ended up.