While I was driving through an intersection, another car took a left turn in front of me, a left turn that would have probably killed us both were it not for my quick-braking reaction. I ended up stopped in the middle of the intersection like an idiot, staring at the person who, in another world, had caused my death.

Novels would have me wrapped in epiphany now, celebrating my new lease on life. It turns out that today looks a lot like yesterday. I thank God for not separating my spirit and my body, but other than that, I’m the same person.

This, of course, is the latest in a long line of things Gregory House has said that I agree with.

Attribution and License for the above photo.

Have you ever noticed that some people have ideas lodged in their heads that they seem to come back to all the time?

You’ll convince them that another way is indeed better, and they’ll agree, but later be back to the original idea. After a while you sort of pick your battles, but even then it’s not really worth it.

At work, there are certain things we do all the time. We do these certain things every day. Most people here have developed a method of doing these things, a way of (for instance), writing descriptions for tools of different sorts. After a while there’s a sort of community lexicon for these things.

There are, however, a few people who resist change. Though I should say they resist changing by constantly changing. Or, they cannot seem to do the same thing the same way twice. They’re immune to the community lexicon no matter how long they work here.

I alternately find this annoying and fascinating (I have a deep ambivalence to caring about such things) and sometimes wonder: why do some people settle into patterns and adopt informal standardisations while other people seem to resist them at the atomic level?

In reading — and editing — some old posts today, I’ve come to see that my style of blogging has changed. From the beginning, it was a semi-personal narrative. SOmething for the world to see, if you will. My own place, centered around me, where I can say things that I might otherwise never have the chance to say.

There are posts on this blog from almost the very beginning of my writings on the internet. Imported from Blogger and other places. I like to read them every once in a while. It’s a sort of self-checkup, or a state of the person measurement. Have I lost touch with anything? Am I radically different in any way? Have I stayed the course?

It’s odd, really.

Three years ago, I had heard the name Noam Chomsky (for instance), but really had no idea what he wrote, or what he believed. I hadn’t encountered that yet. My study of the pysical sciences (albeit an off-and-on flirtation rather than a serious study) hadn’t brought me to the inescable conclusion that the earth at least looks monstrously old.

I probably wouldn’t have used the word “monstrously”.

If I were pressed, I’d have to say that I don’t particularly like looking back. Not, of course, because my history is so completely devoid of merit that I can’t bear the sight of my former self, but because it’s pretty useless. Do you know anyone so enamoured of the past they can’t envision a future that doesn’t resemble it? I’d rather not be that person.

I’ve done very good things. I’ve done very bad things. I am not, however, trapped in the glare of either. By God’s grace, I move forward; but in moving forward I also look back. To guage, or to measure, or to plumb.

Call it what you like. I don’t mind.

In a whole blog comprised of what some might mercilessly call navel-gazing, I reserve this short time to glance over my shoulder and contemplate.

I’ve changed, you see. Not in the way that some of you like I might mean, as if I’m somehow qualified to say, “I’m better!” I don’t know. Sometimes I think that. Sometimes I even want that. Yet, I am different in some way, in some etherial sense I can’t put my finger on.

Maybe you know how this is, one day looking back and seeing that you’re just not that person anymore, not just in ways that can be readily qualified as “good” and “bad”, but in ways much more subtle. In ways that defy symmetry.

Here’s the difference between now and then: I’m not going to tell you how. I’ll let you guess, if you even care, which I really can’t be sure of.

There’s an entire series of posts before this one. I can vouch for their honesty — if that means anything to you — but you’ll have to read them for yourself.

Find some time when you’re bored.

There’s this action no-one likes taking, and I mean no-one. It’s not a hard thing, really, but it stings.

Admit you’re the problem, see how that feels, see if I’m right. Look at yourself as clearly as you can — and let’s be honest, not particularly clearly even then — and you will notice this. You’re the problem.

You’re not always the problem, of course: there are genuine instances where you’ve been acted upon and had no fault in it. I’d guess that those instances are rare.

If you call it fault, or blame, or something like that, fine. Call it that. But in doing so, don’t reduce everything to a set of sums, to percentages, to balances and counter-balances. Have you found a way to rightly apportion that force of will that entangles us all? Congratulations; in thinking flawed so deeply, you’re the problem.

But what came before? How did you get to this place? And even, if you could see all the connections, tenuous or otherwise, would your trifling intellect begin to comprehend the permutations? The primaries, the secondaries, the tertiaries (or the framework of numbers forces upon them)?

Sometimes I imagine the world like strings, every man and woman trailing them wherever they walk. Like marionettes with countless hands pulling in countless directions. Like a fabric, maybe, shifting in the present, reaching hesitantly into the near future, somewhere into the far, being laid down in the past.

Can you control the things that come before, that determine what comes after? Can you identify them and disentangle yourself?

Do you have free will?

Sometime in the future you may admit — privately, publicly, it matters not — that you’re the problem. That there’s an answer you need to find to yourself. That you are the only thing you can change. And that when you change you, you change the future.

Or do you?

Maybe you’ll admit you’re the problem and see a tiny gossamer strand reaching back to these words.

But you probably won’t.

It’s been brought to my attention that I use this blog to complain about things a lot. Oh, okay, it wasn’t brought to my attention: I noticed as I was reading that there were a lot of posts essentially bitching about things. The remedy, I think, is to post something positive right now. And in order to do that, I’m going to make a list.

Things I Like

• CBC Radio 1: For those of you in the US, there’s NPR. For us in Canada, there’s CBC Radio 1. All the stuff the other stations won’t play goes here. No commercial pressure leads, I think, to much better programming. Insightful commentary, excellent in-depth news, and radio documentaries (why have I heard so few radio documentaries in my lifetime?) When I get in my car in the morning CBC Radio 1 is the default station.
• Zeugma: If you haven’t already heard, Laura and I adopted a cat. Not just any cat, mind you, but the cutest cat in the whole wide world. I’m usually a fan of short-haired cats, but Zeugma is a medium-hair grey, and still in the kitten stage of running-around-and-playing-with-everything. If it moves, Zeugma will bat a paw at it.
• Nasi Goreng: Best food in the world. Really. Easy to make, painless to store, and spiced with curry. How could I not love a dish so fine?
• Wordplay: I like puns. I like good puns and bad puns and puns that make you groan. Puns, however, aren’t all. I like other kinds of wordplay, like double meanings, irony, sarcasm, that sort of thing.
• Kretek cigarettes: Yum. That’s all I have to say. There are quite a few good things in this world, and Kretek cigarettes are definitely one of the top.
• Friends who give me espresso machines: Best gift ever. Period. I am now well on my way to being an Italian coffee expert. Coming up soon: latte art courtesy of WikiHow.
• WikiHow: Now that I mention it, WikiHow is — after Wikipedia — the wiki I most often visit. You should, too.
• My sister Becca: She does a great job at work. And is delightful to work with.
• And last, but not least, Laura: If there’s ever a moment I say to myself, “Why did I marry you?”, you should hit me with a bear or something, because that’s crazy talk.

You know what weddings are all about? Weddings are all about stress. Let me explain. Yesterday, I left work early, as delivery men from both Sears and Jysk were showing up. Show up they did, both of them late, and I spent the rest of the evening assembling furniture, which isn’t as therapeutic as it may sound. In fact, by the time I had figured out how the TV stand and the couch fit together, I had spent three hours bolting things together, deciphering schematics cleverly encrypted with 128-bit stupidity, and wondering why so much extra hardware had been crammed into the little plastic bags, until I longed for the sweet embrace of death.

Then I got into work to discover everyone calling for their tools, and every tool not done or done wrong. Hyperbole, but it stands. In the midst of this I discovered that money is going to be a little tight for the first few months of marriage because OSAP — predictably, I might add — thinks that we don’t actually need any money for food and whatnot.

Of course, some of you are going to be saying, “Well, then you shouldn’t have bought that bed and that furniture.” But of course they were both a donation from my parents, bless their moneyed souls, and not a cash donation. And I will not beg money from them; things tight, but we’ll survive just fine. For the first time I understand why finances are the ruination of many an otherwise sound relationship.

We will find ourselves, after the honeymoon, in a house full of semi-nice things, with a few thin dimes to rub together. At least for the first few weeks. Add to that the inevitable tension of getting used to — for me at least — having another person around the house whose needs I have to consider, whose well-being I am entrusted with, and you have the makings of a rocky road. It’s scary too: are my shoulders broad enough for this?

Something is going to blind-side us. The time is ripe. I mean, me and Laura love eachother and we’ll make it through whatever comes, but it’s all too simple right now. The challenges seem straightforward, and life seems to generally dislike being straightforward. So I’m waiting to get hit by a bus.

All this to say that I may well be fraying and wearing thin, but this is going to happen. It will, and if I find myself taking a bus in the chest, it will be for love. I’m a big ball of hope that no bus will come, and that the rewards of the tension will be legion, and that in all of this there will be a knot of blessing.

But I still can’t wait for it all to just be… over.

Every time I see someone browsing a celebrity gossip site or reading one of those magazines, I ask myself why people will willingly concern themselves with the private lives of other people, something manifestly none of their business, rather than paying attention to things that directly affect their lives, such as being involved in the workings of government.

I wonder sometimes if stupidity is a disease, or maybe some sort of meme. Yeah I understand that expecting everyone to be smart is a bit of a tall order, and that even the smartest people have issues on which they’re pretty boneheaded; but is it so much to ask that people pay attention to something that actually matters?

Every time I see one of my sisters, especially, I die a little inside. I ask myself if my caring about things is an anomaly. Am I the freak here?

Last night Nick, Laura, and I started moving stuff into our new place. It’s awesome to finally have enough room to, you know, set up a bedroom and all that sort of stuff. Tonight we go back for the heavy lifting, and hopefully we can get everything moved out.

On the wedding front, almost everything is done. The invites are a little late, but Elyssa is making them and we’re going to hand them out in person instead of mailing them, and people are asked to reply either by phone or via email. I’ll be checking my spam pretty closely over the next while.

We’re going to Cuba on our honeymoon.

We have the location, her dress, my clothes, the minister, the pre/post-marital counselling, the guest list, the honeymoon, the new house, transportation, ushers, bridesmaids and best men, registry at Canadian Tire, and all that sort of thing.

Laura is having something like five showers for her.

Two days back Candice and Peter and Nick took us out to the West Plains Bistro (expensive but excellent food), where even though we had to wait an unacceptably long time to be served, the mean was very enjoyable. And of course me and Peter geek talked. I love geek talking! Laura locked her keys in the car while the car was running and CAA had to come rescue her.

I have just enough money right now to pay rent. I can’t wait for next week’s paycheque and oh boy am I glad that I worked this week instead of lazing around and taking it off.

Me and Karibeth have very different taste in books. This is what she said, and I agree.

This afternoon I go taste-testing with Laura at the caterers. Thank heaven we don’t have to pay for that stuff, or you’d all be having crackers and jam.

To the victor, the spoils, yes? And one of those spoils is the ability to rewrite the struggle to something other than what it is. Moral superiority. A peace-loving people pushed to the brink by towering foes. A divine call. A regretful but necessary chain of events. Fate. Genetic superiority.

This is why the conquered must be assimilated. Not simply ruled, but assimilated until they have accepted the victor’s version of events, until a few generations forward, their children don’t even know their stories.

They must share your narrative. Or else your narrative is in danger, and if your narrative, then your empire.

This is why we lie to ourselves, sometimes. Because we are inventing a story about this and that to make sense of it, to put it in a particular order, to calm ourselves and believe in structure.

There is a structure to things, yes, but very rarely is it obvious; even then it is good to doubt your own perception. Structure is a thing of belief, yes, despite what you see.

Empires, nations, states, cities, and people all share this. The narrative that we suggest is the cause when really it is simply the effect.

The founders of the USA, for instance, are not the godlike figures that grace history books today: they were complex individuals with mostly economic motivations. The Boston Tea Party was not some great moral statement: it was an instinctive lashing out against monopoly. The War for Independence was not a sweeping revolution borne of righteousness and godly vigour: it was and always will be just another war in a world with a long history of wars, and like every war, it changed the face of history.

The founders of Rome, to give another example, may have been bringing culture to all points of the world, and peace, but their unshaken belief in the superiority of the Roman way of life was, simply, misplaced. They went their way and now the barbarians rule the world.

And no matter what they may have thought of themselves–along with the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Japanese, the Germans–history is unerringly critical. We do not share their narrative.

The spoils are short-lived.

Personal narratives have, in my experience, an even shorter shelf-life. When you ask “why” and invent an answer to that question, remember this; remember that there will come a day when all illusions fail, like you always knew they would.

I can answer to this, because I have created many stories. I’m good at it, really. I may not have the patience for writing anything longer than a few paragraphs, but I am possessed of certain ability to obsess about motivations.

My own, for instance, are not often clear. There are things I suspect, and other things that I have just begun to smell out, but they are like looking in a mirror and not understanding what I am seeing. This is my face, yes it is, but the cone of vision is not large enough: I can focus on a point and it escapes me quickly.

This itself is my narrative, you see. I am telling a story where I am good at telling stories about everyone but myself. But again, this is not entirely true; I am, like the Romans, not quite what I say I am.

Once, when I was young, I punched a hole in the bathroom wall. My parents have laboured under the delusion that I slipped on a wet floor ever since it happened, as that is what I told them happened, and despite themselves, they believed me. This is, of course, not what happened. I simply saw a wall and punched my fist through it.

Can you imagine the stories I came up with? I do not like things that hold me back. I abhor boundaries. I belong in the outdoors, a noble savage. I was angry and could not contain my rage. I went momentarily insane. I will become a boxer. More.

In retrospect things become increasingly twisted until they become suddenly very simple. There was a wall. There was a fist. I wanted to see what would happen, to test the limits of the drywall.

It was not very strong.

That is a story I’ve never before told anyone but Laura. But I still find it interesting. I remember punching it like an experiment, as if I this were some sort of obscene science. Mostly I remember the hole I left and how after I had tried to patch it up it was never very strong, how it kept collapsing in on itself.

I suppose the next owners of that house found that place by accident one day. I don’t know. At this point, I don’t really care.

To the victor, the spoils, then. There’s always this question who’s won and who’s lost. Whenever anyone asks me this question, I always point at them. You.

You have won.