2006-04-20

The line has been cast, but no fish has come

Ahead of the traveller stretch the lonesome dunes of the North Sea coast. He stands between the unknown pilgrimage and the unmistakable pleasures of the tavern....If life is supposed to be a pilgrimage in which we, like the wayfarer, should neither tarry at the inn nor accumulate more than we can carry on our backs, why then are the strawberries so sweet, why then is the smiling woman in the window gifted with such infernal power in her beckoning?

~ Michael Ignatieff, The Needs of Strangers

Life, of late, has become more impossible, implausible, and infinitely more intense than I could scarcely imagine just three years ago. I mean this in both an immediate context and with a view of the passing of three solar returns. Three years ago I set out for Australia...no, that is not right, that was four and some years ago already! My, the passing of time quite overtakes us. Three years ago I was settling in Amsterdam, quite directionless and happy, penniless but with armloads of dreams. I had one job, if it can be called that, which amounted to me greeting youthful tourists and convincing them to see a comedy show that very evening. I was in love, or close to it, but even with that, even with the contented satiety that the warm arms of another can bring, there was no future I could imagine that included a successful me - or rather, I could imagine what being a successful individual (both creatively and materially) might look like, and that I might one day be him, but I could not fathom the steps it might take to bring this vision into a living breathing thing. In fact, I may not have even wanted to (address, that is, the fantastic gap between a satisfying but unspectacular reality and the opportunity cost involved in laying the groundwork for that future you dream about.)

Because in realizing the path you are on (which, in some ways, was quite wonderful,) is not the path that will ever lead you to the things you dream of, there is a certain amount of sacrifice that is required, which, much to the distress of those of us addled with the desire for immediate gratification, equals pain. This suffering we endure in the hope to be something greater post-metamorphosis.

Which sounds, I guess, like a big lead up to proclaim to the entire world that I have arrived; or paid my dues, perhaps, and over the past few weeks have enjoyed some universal acclaim. Of course, this is not the case. But upon discussing the past with a few notable others, I have gained perspective that is priceless.

In Amsterdam, I knew some of the things that I wanted - easy money, for example - but if no one handed that to me, if, for example, John Cusack never met me on the street, stumbled, stuttered, and begged me to be his stand-in (for I am his physical doppleganger), then I would excuse myself from the equation of dumb luck = easy money. I wanted to be a successful writer, but I just wanted it to be the case that I was a successful writer, without all the hard work such a scenario entails. Moreover, I wanted to tell others that I was a writer and for this to be true; nothing more, nothing less. Which, of course, is a recipe for disaster.

And, luckily for me, at some point I gave up on this 'gain without pain' approach I had to this whole amazingly endurable ordeal that is life. That happened when I moved here, to Vancouver, to do a job I considered beneath me, for less money than I had earned in a respectable while. I did this because there was a gap between where I stood and where I needed to be, and like an elastic band caught betwixt mere stretching and an unsustainable breaking point, I needed to catch up with reality. I had to start over. I had to begin at the beginning. I had to work hard, for the first time in my life, just because I could.

And...besides romanticizing the course of my own life, I now stand here totally befuddled at what possible point I could have been trying to make. As you can see from the quote above, I am reading Michael Ignatieff, and, besides the fact that his last name is eerily similar to my own, I think he will be the next Prime Minister of Canada for a host of other reasons to boot, among them his ability to weave a thread of thought from the genesis of idea through conclusion all the way to application, something I have aptly demonstrated here and now that I am sorely without.

But I will say this: there is a balance in my life that has never existed before, whereby on one side we have hard work and a more or less clear path toward success as I define it, and on the other, a sustainable future, satisfying the twin needs of physical and mental comfort, materially bright and creatively sated.

I hope to finish this thread another day.

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