Dwarves

Yesterday, I brought two DVD’s home from the video store: Bad Santa, a film recommended by an ex-girlfriend, and The Station Agent, a film I tried to drag you to on several occasions.

I watched Bad Santa first. It was occasionally funny, but mostly crude and unpleasant. It tried way too hard to be shocking.

Bad Santa is about two con-men, one of whom is a dwarf. Every Christmas, they work as ‘Santa and his Elf’ at a different department store. Then, on Christmas Eve, they rob the store’s safe by hiding the aforementioned elf/dwarf somewhere in the building and using him to disable the alarm system (and, yes, he has to do it in under 30 seconds!).

Much of the supposed humour comes from having Santa being…well, bad. He drinks, he smokes, he swears, he vomits, he pees in his jolly red suit and, when he makes love… let’s just say that he enters by the back-door rather than by the chimney. When Santa’s not doing that, he and the dwarf/elf exchange foul-mouthed insults.

I think the dwarf stuff is supposed to be funny: dwarf dressed up as tiny snow-mannequin; dwarf wriggling about in air vents; dwarf sliding down an escalator; dwarf dropping from ceiling; dwarf being kicked in the nuts; dwarf swearing. The problem is, I didn’t find the dwarf stuff amusing at all. In fact, I felt kind of sorry for Tony Cox, the little actor in question; you see, in the DVD Special Feature, The Making of Bad Santa, he laments the lack of good roles for dwarves, but praises Bad Santa by saying, “Roles like this just don’t come around, not in the 20 years I’ve been in acting.” If this is the best role in two decades, being a dwarf actor must be really depressing. Of course, the residuals probably help compensate for the frustration.

Then, I popped in The Station Agent. Now here’s the really odd thing, Beauty. Until the opening frame of the film, it had never occurred to me that, in a bizarre coincidence, I had yanked two ‘dwarf’ movies off the shelf. And to make it even odder, as I was starting The Station Agent, CityTV was playing Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me; Verne Troyer, as ‘Mini-Me’ was running around doing the standard dwarf shtick (and, yes, Heather Graham reminded me of you although, I have to admit, you are considerably more attractive). The paucity of good dwarf roles is the subject of much discussion on the Internet, and is summed up rather nicely in this article in Backstage.

Well, The Station Agent is the antidote to all of this. It’s a really lovely film, Beauty. Patient, tender, unhurried, thoughtful and respectful. And the cinematography is gorgeous, especially since it was shot on Super 16 and made for a half a million dollars. I’m not sure if you are a fan of Michelle Williams, from Dawson’s Creek, but she is luminous in the film as the protagonist’s burgeoning love interest.

The film is about Finn, an anti-social and diffident loner whose dwarfism only adds to his self-consciousness and isolation. A railway aficionado, he works at the local model-train store until his friend, the store's aging proprietor, dies. In his will, the old man leaves Finn an abandoned railway station in Newfoundland, New Jersey, an isolated and bucolic part of the state. There, to his initial consternation, Finn attracts the attention, and affection, of a group of fellow loners: a garrulous Cuban-American who has taken over his sick father’s hot-dog truck; a scatter-brained artist who has separated from her husband and is still coping with death of her son; the local librarian whose boorish boyfriend has left her pregnant and alienated; and a local child who is both charming and alarmingly direct.

Although The Station Agent is partly about the detachment triggered by Finn’s dwarfism, it is also about the slow process by which friendships are forged, about finding love in the most unlikely of places and, I think, about what you have called effortlessness. I’d like to see it again, but this time with you.

Wishing

Maybe it’s a measure of my insecurity, or merely a predictable response to love, but I often find myself wishing that I were more: more attractive, more youthful, more accomplished. Then, as my thinking goes, you would find me more compelling.

And, horribly - if I am to be totally honest with myself and with you - there have been times that I’ve wished you were more, too: more mature, more focused, more self-directed. Then, according to my flawed logic, the barriers between us would evaporate, you’d be self-actualized and more fully yourself and…well, yes, you’d find me more compelling.

However, here is a hard and beautiful fact: If any of the above were true – if they had ever been true, I wouldn’t know you at all. Given the circumstances by which we met, if I had been at any other stage in my life, or my career, then our paths would never have crossed. And if you had been any of the things that I’ve occasionally wished you were, you would have had no need of me. And so, the long, slow arc of our friendship would never have been drawn.

Of course, I’m ruling out random encounters like a traffic accident which, given your driving record, is not beyond the realm of possibility. Or that we might have met at the crossroads of our shared passions: at a movie perhaps, or cruising Indigo, or reading beside one another at Moonbeam.

But I don’t really believe that.

If I have any faith at all, it is a deep and abiding belief that everything must happen exactly as it does, that nothing is wasted or random or meaningless - not even the most sweetly coincidental or brutally tragic. That is not an easy thing for me to accept, given my experience. But, in the end, I think that’s what makes our individual experience so lush and precious. It’s the inarguable fact that we can’t be anything other than what we are, and our experience nothing but what it has been.

I’m not saying that I might not suddenly become more successful, or that I might not harden my physique with some new training regimen (although getting younger seems unlikely, barring unforeseen medical advances). And, I’m not suggesting that your self-confidence won’t blossom, or that you won’t ultimately find your groove. On the contrary, I know you will and, in the meantime, I’ll do everything I can to help.

I just mean that my childish instinct - to wish that things were other than they are - is just that: a foolish immaturity that’s blind to the breathtaking beauty of what is, and what must be.

If I am, alternately, content and happy, stunned and thrilled, moved and motivated, by the mere fact of you – by your presence, your friendship and your love – then it behooves me to embrace all of the circumstances that led us to this point.

So, if I have a wish, let it not be a desire to be something other than what I am. Let me wish to be even more fully myself – and a good, loving, accepting friend to you.

Slow

Lately, I've been concerned about the increasingly 'virtual' nature of my communication, especially with my friends. I'm not just afraid of becoming housebound or idle. Rather, I feel as though, in the process of becoming more accessible, I've lost something ill-defined and precious.

Increasingly, my exchanges are partial and incomplete, uncommitted and half-hearted: iChats amongst competing Buddies, conversations curtailed by cellphones. Communions interrupted. Confessions disturbed. Depth sacrificed for breadth. It's an insidious slide into attention-deficit dialogue - one in which no thought is fully developed, no conversational thread completely unspooled. No subtlety realized, no patience applied. Talking with the tilt of a the head. Talking while walking away. Lingering, but with one foot across the technological transom. Cocktail chatter... but without charm, booze and decolletage. Graceless grunting to a toneless ear. ttyl. lol. btw. brb. ic. omg. And I don't know why they dubbed it 'call waiting'; the 'call' never waits...I do.

I play along - churlish not to. After all, it's the new idiom, and look at the benefits! Eternal connectedness, and companionship. Yet it leaves me cold and unsatisfied. More than anything, I am disturbed by my own irritation when, in the flush of multiple MSN , one of my Messengers asks a meditative question - something serious or heartfelt. I feel anger, impatience and resentment. Do they expect me to ignore the bratty bouncing of the icon?

I hate my mental laziness, Beauty - and I hate how I've acquiesced to a distracted notion of intimacy. That's why camping holds such appeal. Or gardening with you. Or Pablum shopping with best friend. There's a 'slow food' movement and a 'slow school' movement. Maybe I need a 'slow friend' movement.

Maybe this explains the rise of blogs. Is it possible that blogs compensate for our lost, unhurried conversations?

Momentum

I feel an odd momentum building, and I'm not sure if it's just in me, or in the world in general. Maybe it's just the intoxicating effect of summer, and blessed reappearance of low-rise everything. Or, maybe something more serious is afoot. As Joni sang:

And I feel myself a cog
In something turning
And maybe it's the time of year
Yes, and maybe it's the time of man
And I don't know who I am
But life is for learning

That's pretty much how I feel these days. Must be a hormonal imbalance.

Still, it's hard to avoid the signs of impending...well, I'm not sure what. Let's just say that I feel like a seedpod - ready to burst and scatter. Okay, that didn't come out exactly as I'd intended. Take a moment to purge that absurd image from your imagination, and let me try again.

You see, my brain is burning - so much so that I'm having a hard time keeping track of the shimmering creative and personal threads I want to pursue. I know you're aware of it - I have a sneaking suspicion that I've been an intense little companion these last few weeks (although you do run with an nominally intense crowd, so maybe you're inured to it). I have used you as my primary outlet, and that's probably unfair. Hard cheese for you, my dear. You just happen to be the only person I care about that isn't living far away, having babies, or writing books. So don't start now, okay?

Maybe that's why I began this blog. To spare you the necessity of listening to me buzzing with endlessly enthusiasm about whatever particular bee might have found its way into my bonnet. I just dump my thoughts in here, comforted by the quaint conceit that you'll rush home to read the most recent installment. Then, when get together, you politely pretend that you've perused and appreciated my scribblings. It works for me if it works for you.

But don't kid yourself that this turbulent emotional typhoon is somehow an anomaly, and that it will simply exhaust itself in time. The truth is, the last few years have been the anomaly. In fact, if I'm to be completely honest, the anomaly has lasted for over a decade. But I think it is finally coming to an end. And if I'm not headed for a shattering nervous breakdown, the storm could be kind of fun…for me at least.

Once upon a time, I burned this brightly on a daily basis. I think it was pretty hard on the people close to me. I'm sure it cost me at least one potential wife; Liz married someone whose emotional arcs weren't quite so steep, or so precipitous. She found it exhausting to be dragged around by every new passion I'd hysterically adopted. Julie handled me much better - beautifully, really - but she did it my anchoring my heart to her solid sense of ease and contentment. When she died, I externalized everything within me and fled to South America: A perfect place for a soul that was determined to make manifest the most extreme elements of its imagination. There, I became Gato Gringo Loco, the crazy gringo cat - a perfect avatar for both my tempo and my time.

But, in eventually, I had to return - at least, I believed I did. Once back in Canada, my imagination calcified and my passion withered. Grief will do that. Once, I’d been filled with such hope, with the wild conviction that everything would work out, despite destiny's twists and turns. But the hard smack of tragedy knocked me from my optimistic perch. And it seemed pointless to climb back up. I suppose you could say I lost my faith: in love, in destiny, in romance, and in dreams.

Since then, I’ve settled for something so meagre - a less risky, less passionate, less emotionally ambitious life. Instead of trusting in grace and coincidence, I let myself be guided by the predictable, and the safely conventional. In retrospect, maybe that’s what I needed to hold myself together. Or maybe I was simply a coward. Maybe I was mistaken. Regardless, it’s the path I followed. And in the end, I barely recognized myself.

You know what they say about frogs? That if you put one in a pot of boiling water, it’ll jump out; but if you place it in tepid water, and slowly raise the temperature, the poor creature will sit there oblivious - until it boils to death. Well, I was the opposite case. A frog put in tepid water, the temperature slowly and inexorably reduced, until it found itself bound and immobile, its heart frozen and unresponsive.

Recently, however, I have begun to thaw. To stretch the metaphor to the breaking point, can a frozen frog be reheated and come back to life? Maybe the metaphor’s not so farfetched after all.

I’m not sure what's responsible for the thawing. Maybe the imminent death of a friend. Maybe the birth of my best friend’s child. Maybe you. Maybe all of those things.

But now, for the first time in a long time, I feel coincidence afoot and hope in my heart. After I wrote you (below, in Breath) about my struggle to remain honest and open and raw, I found this article in the Globe. And minutes later, I received an email from a friend overseas. He always signs his missives with three quotations, but I had never bothered to read them before. This time, I did:

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy,now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
-Talmud

It is only by following your deepest instincts that you can lead a rich life and if you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct then your life will be safe, expedient and thin.
- Katherine Butler Hathaway

To be a warrior
Is to be genuine
In every moment of your life.
- Chogyam Trungpa

I’m not sure where the momentum is coming from, Beauty, nor how long it will last. But for now, at least, it's here. And so are you.

Breath

It was cool and sunny this morn, so I got up early and zipped down to Bloor St. for breakfast. I stumbled across lots of lovely stuff in the Globe And Mail, and wished you'd been there to hand the paper to (as a distraction while I stole and ate your toast). I suppose this is the next best thing (after a yawning gulf).

The Globe article was about Tony Hendra, a satirical writer whose work I grew up with; he has written a book dedicated to a monk.

Here's the part that struck me:

The book takes you by the hand and shows you, gently and clearly, what it means to love. Which is just what Father Joe did for Hendra. "Father Joe never taught me; that's too easy," says Hendra. "Rather, he always led me to an understanding of the core sin, the only sin, the sin before all the things we call sin, and that is selfishness, the self-centredness that keeps you being so deeply with yourself that you hate people: You want revenge. You want pleasure. You want to commit adultery. You have road rage, greed, whatever. It all comes from being trapped in this prison of self. It's not a difficult message to hear, but to understand it, to act it, that's really difficult. But he did." Adds Hendra, "To him, loving, which was the only way out of this prison, was not some mushy, hippy, lank-haired kind of feeling. It's a conscious effort to reach over those walls, to listen to people, to reach into other persons' selfishness. That's when good starts to happen."

I've been thinking a lot lately about Hendra's "core sin". Not that it isn't always at the back of my mind. I feel it moving in me constantly. I suppose that's why, every couple of years, I go through some kind of renewed interest in Buddhism. And why I still wander into churches despite my staus as a confirmed agnostic. How to cope with the distortions of ego: the eternal question, I suppose.

But why am I thinking about it more than usual? Hard to say. Part of it has to do with the documentary ideas I've been bandying about. I'm interested in Magic Hour - because of the incredible effect that time of day has on our perception, and on our inner life. And in trying to understand why certain qualities of light offer the promise of such grace, I started to enumerate all the things that had that effect on me. One, obviously, was light. But there were others...

Wait, you know, I'm wrong. I just checked. Yes, I'm wrong. (I hope you don't mind an emergent thought process)

As with many other things, this obsession with the 'sin of egotism' began, at least in its most recent form, with you.

You see, up above, before I broke off the sentence, I was about to list all the other things that moved me beyond ego, washed it away, and left me feeling vulnerable, open, honest, and awestruck - the antidote to selfishness. I was about to type "art", "wind", and "sex". Then I realized that I'd typed this exact same sentiment once before. So I went hunting, and there in my Sent Messages, was the following...in my answer to your DC email:

Nothing is about the visible, and the present. It's all about the past and the future. I've never had a single conversation with you that wasn't fraught with those complications (at least for me). I think that's why sex, and the post-coital state are so important (and maybe communing with nature {and maybe great art})...the few moments that are, through their sheer power, unencumbered by subtext. They are all text, in such big type, that's there's no room for 'sub'.

Not as eloquent as I might have liked - and I left out 'wind', 'large bodies of water', 'pets' (although they might fall under the 'communing with nature') and, of course, the hard fact of death - but I think the sentiment is on the mark. The point, and not an original one by any means (even to me) is that the distortions of ego are so powerful and omnipresent that they prevent us from seeing the world, our companions and - most egregiously - ourselves, except through the lens of our own selfishness. And then, every so often, in a flash, something corrects our vision, and we get a sudden glimpse of our place in the world, and the unspeakable grace of the things that surround us, of the people we only think we've known and understood.

The experiences that do this sometimes make us feel small (the startling scale of Newfoundland's geography, the sweep of a strong wind, the relentlessness of pounding surf, the uneasy horizon of the open sea, the fecund smell of emergent Spring, the tremulous fragility of late Autumn). Often, they remind us of our own mortality (the faces of the dead, especially the ones we've loved). Occasionally, they involve physical exhaustion (good sex and runner's high) and move us outside of time (sex and running again, and good art too). But, taken together, they have something else in common.

All of them, in their fullest expression and experience, require a complete loss of sovereignty. They demand an acknowledgment that the most precious things in life are, irrefutably, beyond our control - that our ego, for all its frenetic activity, can't secure, manipulate, control, or contain the things we most desire. These things are bigger than our imagination. And that's the source of both their beauty and their power.

So, if you hadn't figured it out already, that's where you come in. Not as an email interlocutor, but as an object of desire, a force of nature, an implacable corrective to my ego. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I relish your dismissiveness, welcome your erratic behaviour, or am masochistically attracted to your unattainablility (after all, these all might be 'sins of the ego' in their own right). On the contrary, I am have always been most moved by your generosity, your secret stillness, and your gentleness. You've disarmed me, utterly, with your fierce intelligence, irrepressible sparkle, breathtaking beauty, and surprising grace.

That's why I first called you 'Beauty' all those years ago. Because of that line from the Spirit of the West song. (By the way, did I ever tell you that I tracked down the statue they refer to?)

We made love upon a bed
That sagged down to the floor
In a room that had a postcard on the door
Of Marini's Little Man
With an erection on a horse
It always leaves me laughing
Leaves me feeling that of course if
Venice is sinking
I'm going under
'Cause beauty's religion
And it's Christened me with wonder.

I always loved those lines. I loved them before I met you. They summed up everything I believed in.

Then we met. And after that, each time I heard the song, you were beauty.

You have, always, Christened me with wonder.

When you gave me the song - when you remembered to give me the song - it shook me. Since then, I have struggled to find a place for you in my heart, to contain the idea of you, to hold you at arm's length, or to draw you close. But, of course, if Venice is sinking, I'm going under...

So, in a messy, confusing way, you are part of my larger exploration of the 'core sin' of selfishness. You've also led me to see, in Magic Hour, a universal expression of grace. Or to believe that a filmic meditation on the exact moment when stories move us to tears might, somehow, reveal our secret soul, stripped of ego. You were there, at that moment of inspiration, weren't you? And it was you who noticed what was written on the walls.

My father, deathly sick in the hospital, helpless and intubated, had an 'Inspiration Therapist'. Her job was to slide the tube down his damaged throat, remove it, clean it, adjust it, and then guide it down again. She kept him breathing. She was responsible for his 'inspiration'. She kept him alive.

Inspiration - c.1303, "immediate influence of God or a god," especially that under which the holy books were written, from O.Fr. inspiration, from L.L. inspirationem (nom. inspiratio), from L. inspiratus, pp. of inspirare "inspire, inflame, blow into," from in-"in" + spirare "breathe." Inspire in this sense is c.1340, from O.Fr. enspirer, from L. inspirare, a loan-transl. of Gk. pnein in the Bible. General sense of "influence or animate with an idea or purpose" is from 1390. Inspirational is 1839 as "influenced by inspiration;" 1884 as "tending to inspire."

Inspiration. Beauty. Muse. Your lovely breath.

Somehow, you've have taught me that the sin of selfishness hasn't just caused me to treat people badly, or to betray the principles around which I'd hoped to organize my life. More than that, you've helped me discover that my selfishness - what Hendra calls "the self-centredness that keeps you being so deeply with yourself" - has held me back from any genuine expression of myself, both artistically and personally.

If I've achieved less than I've wanted in life, it's because of an arrogant assumption that, for me, this could be possible without loss of control, without risk, without humility, and without fear. I'd come to believe that I'd already risked - and lost - enough.

For a long time, I've congratulated myself on my openness and honesty. But, really, I've just made a fetish of that pose. And if you didn't see this yourself (and I believe you did), at least you made me see it - and in such excruciating detail and clarity. I've often felt foolish in your presence, but not for any of the seemingly predictable reasons. Only because you've made me so keenly aware of my dishonesty, my reserve, my dissembling, my avoidance, my pride, my desire, and my fear.

"Father Joe never taught me; that's too easy," says Hendra. "Rather, he always led me to an understanding of the core sin, the only sin, the sin before all the things we call sin, and that is selfishness, the self-centredness that keeps you being so deeply with yourself that you hate people: You want revenge. You want pleasure. You want to commit adultery. You have road rage, greed, whatever. It all comes from being trapped in this prison of self. It's not a difficult message to hear, but to understand it, to act it, that's really difficult."

And you never 'taught' me, either, in any overt, or condescending way - the way I have, too often, tried to teach you. Instead, you've 'led' me, inadvertently or not, to a deeper realization. As Hendra says, "It's not a difficult message to hear, but to understand it, to act it, that's really difficult."

He's right about that. It is difficult. And I'll probably need help.

I'd love to have yours.

Yoga

Well, it had to happen eventually. I hurt my back doing hot yoga. It's my own fault. I twisted myself into a pretzel and I knew, even as I was doing it, that I was going to far. I was frustrated, and should have found some zen-like way of purging instead of snapping my back out.

Last time I went, the teacher was remarkably kind and patient - kind of loving, actually. She spoke slowly, demonstrated the moves, described them clearly, and then left lovely silent pauses while we adopted them. Then she'd encourage and correct in the most gentle of tones. She's the one who quoted Rilke, and the one to whom I promised the Dragon Princess.

By contrast, today's teacher was a Nazi. She barked out the moves, chattered incessantly while I struggled to keep up, and constantly corrected everybody, and in the snarkiest, most hectoring of tones. It was like being in a Grade 4 spelling test: "Hold the pose! Keep your eyes to yourself! Don't fidget! Don't drink your water. Focus on yourself, not on other people."

So there I am, in this 105 degree heat, no room left except at the front where, not only can I not see anyone to use as a guide to the poses, but my shakey, stumbling, falling, sweating, wriggling performance is blocking the other, more adept practitioners from examining themselves in the mirror - a key component of the process.

In fact, several times I wobbled out of control and stumbled, breaking the pose and landing flat-footed with a 'clump'. Worse, this seemed to set off a domino effect, destabilizing those behind me, one at a time, until even the most experienced students (one, a teacher herself) stumbled too. My uncoordination was infectious. And if I hadn't been flushed and sweating already, I might have blushed.

So, when it came to the seated, pretzel-bending poses - the one thing I can do better than even the teacher by virtue of my double-jointedness - I puffed up my chest, grinned stupidly at the teacher, bent myself in half, and felt a ripping pain drive itself through my entire upper body.

And I couldn't move. Not at all. Shit, I could barely breath, it hurt so much. So there I sat, holding this incredibly awkward, and now painful pose, while everybody moved on to the next one. I slowly, gruntingly, unfolded myself and rolled, defeatedly, onto my back. That's the pose I held for the rest of the session.

The poses all have names: The Eagle, Warrior, Warrior Two. And now, Awkward Asshole Injured In His Arrogance.

But, to yoga's credit. I'm still up and walking around. That's not normally the case with one of these events. So maybe, before I damaged myself, the yoga had begun to have a salutary effect. To be honest, other than the bleeding spine, I feel really good. Considering that I've only been twice, the yoga seems to be having a remarkable effect, on my energy level, on my weight, and on how I feel merely walking about.

Remember the Pilades classes at the university that we talked about attending together? Maybe I should have made a real effort to go. The new cute Barista at Starbucks noticed that I was wet from head to toe, a soaking so complete that my grey shirt appeared, not wet, but a darker, heavier version of itself. She asked about it - probably afraid that I was in the midst of a heart attack, and hardly needed a jolt of caffeine to speed my imminent demise - and so we got talking (something I have been trying to engineer, without success, for a couple of weeks). She's at the university too, and took the Pilades classes. She recommends it highly, and suggested it might be a bit easier on my back. Lower impact which, right now, seems like a good idea.

Still, if my back heals a bit on the weekend, I'm still going to try the yoga thing again. I want to see if I can make any progress at all during the week that I've paid for. Ripping my back open was not the kind of progress I was hoping for.

Now, as for you, my dear...I am still floored by our conversation last night. I spent a good part of the day feeling bad because I hadn't given you credit for your intelligence but, upon reflection, I don't think it's entirely my fault. For a couple of reasons.

Reason #1:
How was I supposed to know you could write like that? Years ago, you pretty much refused to write, and would often do so only after I'd left - and then hand in your work before I had a chance to see what you'd done. Besides, you never really tried too hard, so what I've read has never really been your finest effort.

And then there's the email dilemma. Every so often, I get foolishly optimistic and write you a long, detailed email and not only do you almost never respond in kind but, mostly, you never even mention having received one. (yes, there was the long one from your sister’s, and it was fabulous, but you were drunk at the time and your writing talent was a bit hard to assess). So, maybe, if you had ever written me a string of coherent thoughts in an email, I might have had an inkling. Or, if you had ever let me read your blog.

Reason #2:
How was I supposed to know you were that smart? I get this weird sense that you have the most ferocious intelligence - genuine brilliance - and that you mask it entirely with silliness and distraction. You see, when I first met you, despite being quite captivating, pretty and funny, you seemed pretty superficial and giddy. A bit lacking in substance. Cute enough, and obviously smart, in a manipulative kind of way, but nothing completely out of the ordinary. And then, over time, these little comments slipped out. Little perceptions, sudden insights. All of which intimated that you might be a lot smarter than you'd seemed.

But still, I figured, surely if you were smart - really smart - eventually you'd show your hand. Surely you'd get tired of being treated like a child, and failing at things you could do in your sleep. But nope. No big reveal. Just a slow unfolding of your intellectual depth. Interest in an uncharacteristically serious film. A surprising political insight. A sudden, unguarded, penetrating comment. And with each of these, a revision of my assessment, and a deepening of my affection and respect.

But I still had no idea. How could I? When you allow your searing intelligence to show, it either manifests itself in flashes of anger and impatience (and is too easy to dismiss as 'bitchiness' and cruelty), or it's tossed of in a tangential, dismissive way, bound on either side by text messaging,cell-phoning, crushes on bois, Converse envy, and iPod covetousness. Not that any of these things are out of place in the character of a young woman but, I swear, you use them, as you do your 'like'-peppered conversational affectation, your flirtatiousness, and your angry avoidance of everything smacking of commitment, seriousness, and ambition (like slapping me verbally in the LCBO that time) to deliberately mask your grace and brilliance. Why, for god's sake. I gave you credit for lots of intelligence, and a kind of natural creative aesthetic, but I gave you no credit for competency because you never let me see any. Other than an ability to figure out computers and (occasionally, when you aren't deliberately trying to crash) driving. And, although you haven't let me see it, flying and scuba. But you dismissed even those.

And so, in some corrosively subliminal and unconscious way, maybe I came believe that at least part of your intelligence was pose. That maybe you were playing at being smart and creative, using brief flashes because that was all you had. And maybe I stopped expecting more from you, not because there wasn't an ever increasing flow of intelligence from you, but because it was so fitful, so inconsistent and so unreliable.

Sure, I encouraged you, claimed faith in you, and tried to stand by you in any endeavour to decided you might actually apply yourself. But, and I hate to admit it, I now realize that I had capped your potential in my own heart. How foolish of me. I should have known better. I am sorry, Beauty.

And that leads me to...

Reason #3:
For the moment, let's leave my best friend out of it, cause he's in a case by himself.

I've met a lot of smart people. I went to school with the people who have become Canada's novelists, filmmakers, pundits, journalists, poets, radio and television personalities, researchers, etc. They were all smart. And I've dated smart girls: a teacher, a book editor, an author and professor. (Julie was smart, maybe the smartest, but not in that easily visible way.) And they could all write. Kind of.

Here's the embarrassing thing for me to admit, especially given that I haven't written very much and have published even less: I am not that impressed by their writing. Arrogant, I know, but true. But when I read their stuff, I'm always surprised that, despite being bright people, they can't write any better than they do. This is very hard to admit. In fact, if I have an overarching flaw, it's probably this arrogance, and if I am destined to be reincarnated as a meal-worm, this is probably why. Nevertheless, it is how I feel, and have felt, my entire life.

So, I have less experience with competence than you might expect. And I don't, despite my arrogance, have a very good impression of my own. I am very needy and insecure. To give you just one example, I've always figured that you didn't respond to my blogs because they were so bad and so boring. (hmmm, if you haven't made it this far, I'm in trouble)

So how could I possibly have credited you with the kind of intelligence and competence you've so often, and angrily demanded? I've never credited anyone else with it, not even myself. And what right did you have to demand it when you've worked so assiduously to mask it, deny it, undercut it, and sabotage it.

Fuck you, Beauty. You could have given more than the barest of hints, you know. It would have saved a lot of time, doubt, and heartache.

You could have talked to me like an adult (me, not you!) more than a couple of times, at least. You could have let your intelligence fly unimpeded. You could have focused on a conversation as though you valued ideas as much as food and clothing. You could have....

You could have revealed yourself, is what you could have done.

Not in little dribs and drabs, but in the occasional shining burst. I mean, at some level, how can I complain? There's no one I'd rather do things with, share with, appreciate with, enjoy with. But, shit, now I have this awful feeling that there has always been so much more. And how do I access it? I've tried just shutting up and waiting. But that doesn't exactly provoke you to expand on your ideas. More likely, you text message, jump on the internet, or make idle chitchat. Not that every conversation has to be serious and exhausting, but don't I deserve to know what you think, and who you are? And if I don't, doesn't someone? Which leads me to...

Reason #4:
Which isn't really a reason at all. It's a question. It might be rhetorical, but I don't whether it is or not. Cause its rhetoricalness depends entirely on the nature of your answer. The question is this:

Does anyone know?

Is there a single person on God's green earth who actually knows how intelligent you are. Do your folks? Does your boyfriend? Do your friends? Does anyone?

Please say yes. Tell me that it's just the nature of our relationship that leads you to hold back so much, to hide yourself behind affectation and distraction. Promise me that you have someplace to go where your competency is merely assumed. Where you can express yourself to the full depth of your ability. And where it would not come as a shock to someone who had heretofore, foolishly, thought they'd you figured out.

I'm sorry, Beauty. I won't make this mistake twice. But, to be honest, I don't know how to talk to you any more. I don't know how to NOT be impatient with you now. Lord knows, I was already impatient before. What to do now? What to fucking do now? How do I get you to talk to me like I know you can, and like you should?

I know you probably think I'm making to much off this. That I'm projecting.

You're wrong, and I think you know it.

That's why you are so angry so much of the time, isn't it? Cause you know you are smarter than everyone you talk to. And it exhausts you. Maybe that's why you distract yourself with a passing parade of flirtees. Because you've given up being regarded in the way you'd like. Maybe that's why you consistently invest your unresolved crushes with such power - in the hope that they might actually turn out to be your intellectual and creative equal. And when they fail, you merely adopt another hapless victim. Maybe that's why you suffer fools so gladly.

If I am wrong about this, you should really let me know. And if I'm right, you should let me know too. Or, do whatever the hell you please. Cause, despite how much I'd love to help you, it's clear that you don't need my help. Your Queen street journal laid it out pretty clearly last night. And with such clarity, grace and insight. You know already.

I had a dream last night. I was lying on my bed. You were on top of me. I wasn't moving. It was like a game. You made me stay perfectly still. You were breathtakingly gentle and tender. You kissed me, and held me, and slowly intertwined your arms and legs and fingers with mine. You didn't speak, but somehow you let me know, without it seeming ridiculous at all, that this was an kind of yoga - and that it was important for me to remain absolutely immobile, relaxed, open, and calm. And, as a reward, slowly and miraculously, you wound yourself around me, bound yourself to me, drew me in towards you, and pulled me tight until our limbs locked, knot-tight. And I could no longer move, even if I'd wanted to. And with your nose pressed against mine, your eyelashes fluttering against my lids, you opened your mouth and exhaled into mine, and I felt your body collapse against mine, into mine. And just like that, with nothing more - just the taste and feel of your breath - the dream went on and on. And then I woke, as slowly and carefully as I ever have.

Beauty, in some way that I can barely express and barely understand, you have pitted me against myself, disabled my ego, exposed my illusions, and directed my soul.

And you have taught me, rather belated, what respect in a relationship means. I love you for that, and I love you for yourself.

Rilke's Dragon Princess

This essay, by R. M. Rilke, is the most beautiful and inspiring prose I have ever read:

To speak of solitude again, it becomes always clearer that this is at bottom not something that one can take or leave. We are solitary. We may delude ourselves and act as thought this were not so. That is all. But delude ourselves and act as thought this were not so. That is all. But how much better it is to realize that we are so, yes, even to begin by assuming it. We shall indeed turn dizzy, then; for all points upon which our eye has been accustomed to rest are taken from us, there is nothing near any more and everything far is infinitely far. A person removed from his own room, almost without preparation and transition, and set upon the height of a great mountain range, would feel something of the sort: an unparalleled insecurity, an abandonment to something inexpressible would almost annihilate him. He would think himself falling or hurled out into space, or exploded into a thousand pieces: what a monstruous lie his brain would have to invent to catch up with and explain the state of his sense!

So for him who becomes solitary all distances, all measures change; of these changes many take place suddenly, and then, as with the man on the mountaintop, extraordinary imaginings and singular sensations arise that may seem to grow out beyond all bearing. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular, and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called "visions", the whole so-called "spirit-world", death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God.

But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished the existence of the individual; the relationship between one human being and another has also been cramped by it, as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed; it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experiance with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of a room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.

We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set bout us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we correspond, and over and above this, we have through thousands of years of accomodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.