Month: August 2015

Chaos Addiction

Published on by Scott WilliamsLeave a comment

It dawned on my today, my life is like a sitcom. My day job is beyond chaotic, just the way I like it. Today alone I met with several agencies of law enforcement, spoke about naloxone and the growing Fentanyl issue with a group of colleagues, handed out harm-reduction supplies at one of the local tent villages, visited an ice cream social, sat in the sun, talked to a kid, laughed loud, and talked through intimate life details with people all day. After years of clinical counselling I have become an outreach worker, one more time. For some reason, this time it feels better, I’m enjoying the ride more, just trying to catch the waves.

I grew up on the prairies. Apparently my parents sinned in a past life and I didn’t move to the Left Coast of Canada until my thirties. I had no idea how different the weather was. Somehow I had imagined it would feel like the rest of Canada. It feels closer to San Francisco than Moose Jaw.

Oh, and there’s an ocean here. When you live on the prairies the ocean is something you see when you do your twice in a lifetime trip to Hawaii or Cancun. Some rich people I knew had the opportunity to see the ocean every year. I have always been a water baby and dream of retiring on a lake or river. The Nahanni, the Churchill, the Hood, Otter Rapids and warm lakes.

The ocean was different, spiritual. The energy scares me, invites and touches me, in ways that Trout Rapids never could. If you have ever been on the waves there is a feeling of zen, of presence. This mass lies beyond comprehension, powerful and apathetic and filled with things that want to bite my leg off. After the first panic attack, slowly at first and with growing realization, the ocean’s “aliveness” infects your presence. I have felt that same oneness during a 22 kilometre set of class-two rapids on the Clearwater River, in a cave while spelunking in Colorado, and on a solo water ski behind Rod’s boat. Connection. Go surfing one time and you will understand why people refer to this place as “Mother Earth”.

Somehow lost my connection with the earth. I drive, every day, past scenery which invites untold thousands to Canada with an apathy approaching the comatose. I can see Mount Baker from my house, if I care to look. I am a few hundred yards from the mighty Fraser River. It’s been spring here since January or February and I could usually care less. Turn on the air conditioning, it’s hot out there.

There is a sense of disconnection.

Chaos is intoxicating, though in a way more reminiscent of a drunken brawl than a glass of Pinot Noir. The pace and electronics of life are overwhelming, consuming. I may be able to escape the heat with the help of a little electricity and a Canadian Tire pool, but it is that same conductivity which has invaded my existence with constant noise and literally rewired me neurologically. That time before we all had cell phones, electronic toys, and the insipid drone of the global village, are long gone so we may as well put a fork in it. Pretending that things will somehow miraculously go back to when you were 104 pounds only leads to heartache and insecurity and a one-way ticket to Bittertown.

Complain all we wish, some of us are going to have to figure out how to remain zen in this insane place. It may be time to stop wishing for your ship to come in and wade out a bit to find it. Most of us aren’t going to win the lottery or run for president and will probably end up dying a slow emotional death if we don’t find out how to reach even a modicum of contentment in the here and now, and not just in the sweet bye and bye.

This summer I’m swinging a lot. It’s starting to look creepy when a dude my age spins in circles and tries to make the seat go all the way around, on the swing set next to your terrified 6 year-old. I no longer care.

Winter is coming, you have time for one last swim.

Batman Killed By Camry

Published on by Scott Williams3 Comments

Sad story on the Interweb today about the death of Batman. Leonard Robinson was a successful business man who, with no ulterior motive, spend a great deal of his cash impersonating Batman. He drove a Lamborghini, completely decked out in paraphernalia. He was pulled over by the cops in 2012, who must have obviously not understood that the Dark Knight was visiting kids parties and generally shedding joy throughout Gotham. I first read about him on Cracked.com. Lenny spent his money trying to make a small difference and would have remained in obscurity, just doing good things, if not for a viral video taken from a police dash-mounted camera.

Here’s the biography from Cracked:

Take Lenny B. Robinson, the Baltimore businessman who has poured more money than some of us make in a year into a full Batman costume and other gear to go entertain sick kids. He even bought a black Lamborghini and decked it out with bat symbols (though we suspect he would have done that anyway).

Via Washington Post
“In fact, doing that was the only reason I got rich in the first place.”

He spends about $25,000 a year on this little crusade, buying toys and gifts to give out to kids suffering from leukemia and equally awful diseases. Yes, he’s rich and he can do this kind of thing, but it’s still nice to see an example of a rich guy giving back when you hear so much about pro athletes and such blowing their fortunes on bullshit.

People like Leonard remind us that there are still people out there who care and share and give and love without any consideration of a financial windfall or of ending up on America’s Got Talent. I don’t know the full backstory and he may be as crazy as a bag of hammers but I doubt it. Good people make me want to be good people. And drive a Lamborghini.

I always wanted to be a superhero, many of us did. Life has a way of stripping our idealism and our special abilities and it’s very easy to forget that there was a time when we wanted to change the world. Here’s to you Batman. I always thought it would be a superhero who eventually figured out that you had no real superpowers but it was a Toyota. You were the hero we wanted, but not the one we deserved.

 

Inner Monologue

Published on by Scott Williams3 Comments

I have voices inside my head. Not the kind where you take medications, the other one. The voice we all have, the whisper telling you to go pee right now. That constant inner conversation rattling around inside every head. Well, not all the time, I’m a guy.

There was a time in my life when my inner monologue was much more insane. Anyone who has ever gone off the deep end can tell you, things can get very scary inside that dysfunctional brain of yours. The constant feeling of tension , the weird thoughts, the nattering stressful boredom sometimes makes you nuts. Sorry to get technical there. You may become so engrossed in the internal soap opera it’s virtually impossible to remain objective. Scary thing is, it’s all so… rational.

Only it isn’t.

Did I say it was a monologue? Maybe it is more accurate to describe the experience as a wave mixed with an emotional rush; broken words and feelings all tumbling towards the unknown. I pitched this idea to one of my editors, Lori, and here’s how she responded:

I’m thinking about the movie Constantine. Cynical chain-smoking John Constantine, the weird androgynous Gabriel ~ and how Constantine went down to hell to find that girl who’d committed suicide at the psych ward. That place of monologue or trauma is a lot like hell. Constantine was loosely based on a comic called HellBlazer. I think once we know that ‘place’ we can never unknow it. Kind of like how once we become awake, we can never become asleep again. But knowing it, I think this makes it so we understand the depth of its agony. I think that’s maybe why you counsel and I feel like I need to ‘go there’ with people. I’m drawing some possibly unconnected analogy to the movie, but it makes me feel better about it all. Hell blazers.

That’s why she’s one of my editors.

The quote says it this way, “If there wasn’t a hell we would invent one”.

Here’s Lori again.

I think it’s almost reductionist to call it trauma or cognitive distortion or monologue. It’s a ‘place’. A virtual rendering of hell. In some way if I can look at it as a place, I can leave it as well as revisit it. And if I have a hell blazing friend, they can remind me it’s an imaginary place and not a reality.

Immanuel Kant spoke of dueling alternate realities. There is the world as I perceive it, and the world as it really is. They are different. Right now you may be worrying about something completely irrational. You may even know it’s cray cray but continue to worry, nonetheless. What if that worst-case scenario thingy happened? We all are young enough to believe in the worst. Very bad things can happen to very good people. Maybe that person really doesn’t like you.

There’s the rub, as they say. A lifetime of experiences, often bad ones, disappointment and heartache and pain and unrequited love and low-fat products which went to your hips have convinced most of us that we need to micromanage our internal head space and believe the madness pouring through our defences and threatening to invite us to start cutting or drinking or checking out, one more time. Lori was absolutely right – there are times when we need to be reminded that this is a fantasy and you need to wake up.

She stole my ending. And if I have a hell blazing friend, they can remind me it’s an imaginary place and not a reality. I aspire to be that person, when I am able. Chances are this is something you could also get behind. We all need someone who can take our hand when we lose our way. Thanks Steve.

Perhaps there was a time when people could bear this load alone. I am fascinated by the strength and the sheer badassness of those who served this country in war, often many years ago. The man who could survive the soaked hell-traps in the trenches of The Great War. People long dead who simply would not lie down in front of oppression and hate. Frightened teenagers who cried “We shall overcome, someday”. Children crawling through the jungles in the name of a cause they neither understood nor cared anything about. Countless women in history who were raped and decided to continue living. I am not that person.

I desperately want to be that person.

When you are crazy it doesn’t hurt to have someone in your life who is further along the journey or is in possession of knowledge they need to teach you. I have those people in my life and this is the primary reason I am so passionate about learning. Some of us need to figure this out and if it isn’t me than it sure as hell better be you.

This is going to hurt but you should probably do it anyway. Give someone permission to call you on your crap. Take the time or pay the money or scam a priest if you need to, but just do it. I cannot tell you the numbers of people who have walked through the doors I haunt. We have six counselors working today and they are all very busy. It’s trendy to have a shrink so come on, you hipster.

There are periods in our life when we no longer possess enough information to make an informed choice about something very pressing and stressful. It is at these times when some of your friends come to see me, just to punch something that doesn’t punch back. I may as well be air-freshener (and if you know me you have probably heard me refer to myself as exactly that), you just need a place to unpack a lot of poop.

Lose long enough and it becomes impossible to think clearly; when your reality is someone’s definition of purgatory. Most of us just roll with the punches and pray that our Lottery Ticket will hit big.

That may be living but that is not a life.

Talk to someone. Those who are humble enough to be taught will usually find their way.

Lori: I read a good thing, I think it was on Psychology Today. They asked people about their fondest childhood memories, and invariably they were stories about screw ups. The listeners would smile knowingly and they’d all have a good laugh and share war stories afterwards. But people really valued others who would point out where they went off.

In retrospect of course.