A kind of hangover

Almost a week has passed since the ugliest day in Vancouver history, a scene far surpassing in shock and horror the post-Cup riots of ’94. Downtown merchants are literally picking up the pieces. Citizens have purged themselves of their shock and grief by signing the plywood that temporarily shielded smashed-in storefronts. The perpetrators are engaged in a frenzy of ass-covering to seduce a naive public into believing how sorry they are.

I want to just push the whole thing aside. At this moment, I don't feel anything, and I don’t want to. That disturbs me. I wonder if I am getting hardened, which seems like the way we're supposed to be.


Everyone is crying for justice, saying we know who you are, we've seen your faces on videos and your idiotic gloating on Facebook and Twitter. But I have a sickened feeling that very few of these louts will be brought to justice. Why? Because they almost never are. Not to real justice, the kind that might make them actually feel some remorse.

As I struggle to make sense of this madness, some of the comments I’m hearing are disturbing. The word “anarchist” is bandied about, though no one seems to know quite what it means. Social critics claim these hooligans are predominantly young, white, middle-class kids (one can hardly call them men) from the suburbs, bored, dehumanized by too many video games and too much porn and violence and Tweeting instead of talking, and just waiting for an opportunity to practice their gleeful ugliness.


For that was the thing that horrified me: how jubilant they were. This was NOT an angry mob scene triggered by a hockey defeat, not by a long shot, but a pathetically narcissistic parade, a twisted celebration of themselves and their miserable lack of moral values. These guys were jumping around and mugging for the hundreds of cameras the gawkers were holding up, sneering and swaggering as they smashed plate glass and ran off with high-end loot that soon appeared on Craigslist. They wanted their appalling destruction posted on YouTube so they could be famous, wanted it to "go viral", that disturbing phrase that no one seems to notice or mind.


And those “bystanders”: hadn’t the cops repeatedly ordered them to disperse? What where they doing standing around blocking police access? This was a great photo-op, a one-of-a-kind experience, a chance to watch history in the making. Many of them openly cheered the rioters on. In fact, in some cases it was hard to tell the thugs from the “audience”. It was one big ugly fracas without boundaries. The few who tried to stop the smashing and burning were taking their lives into their hands: no police officer would condone that kind of vigilante justice, yet now these people are being praised as heroes.


I hate to sound like an old crank who's out of touch. Perhaps my boomer mentality is beginning to seem creaky. In the 1950s, the beatniks rebelled against the dehumanization of society. Then came the hippies, an explosion of social protest followed by the appalling polyester retreat of the '70s. Looking back at it now, even in times of revolution and ferment the culture seemed cozy and tame. Kids at least saw their parents once in a while. They weren't permanently parked with electronic babysitters that would eventually become a substitute for human contact.


I'm not against technology, in fact resistence is impossible in a totally-mechanized society, but a whole generation has been swept into a whitewater current that they don't understand. It's moving so fast that no one even knows what it's about. There is no context for the Facebook revolution, nor the skin-creeping sight of thousands of gawkers clicking photos and taking videos of the hideous circus being played out before their eyes.

"It was like a movie," people said of the apocalypse on 9-11. In other words, it wasn't real. My daughter is a TV reporter, and for several hours she was at ground zero. For her it was real enough: screams and flames and fumes, and hooting, grandstanding bastards jumping around like apes and having the time of their lives.

How did they end up this way? Is anyone born like that? Will they eventually go from petty crime (if this can be called petty) to something more serious? Or will they go on to become the kind of sociopathic lawyer or corporate mogul that invariably makes it to the top?

(Note. I had hoped to publish this in the Vancouver Sun, but, as always, the Fates relegated it to obscurity and I am shouting into a vacuum.)

Linus 1 - 8 (the horses)

Things fall apart

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart.

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,

Transformed utterly:

        A terrible beauty is born.

(Excerpts from poetry by W. B. Yeats)

I don't know how to feel

And yet, I do. It's a stepped-on, violated feeling. It's as if the city has been raped. And I'm not even in the heart of the damage. In the core of the heartbreak, small businesses are contemplating the possibility of permanently going under. Suddenly, a flood of high-end goods has appeared on Craigslist, Louis Vuitton bags and Manolo Blahniks and such, at bargain prices as the thugs seek to quickly unload their "hot" goods for a profit.

My only consolation is that these people are incredibly stupid, which means they will eventually be caught. Or so I hope. They ruined Vancouver's "moment", our chance to prove once and for all that 1994 was an unrepeatable fluke, and forever tainted the world's view of our beautiful city.

The foreign press has referred to us as a "backwater fishing village". Rioting over an "ice hockey game" has turned us into a laughingstock. I feel heavy, as if I weigh about 500 pounds. There is something like a stone sitting on my heart.

There is something I must write about before that stone crushes me, and I want to preface it by saying that this represents strictly my own perceptions of a situation I was not directly involved in. Last night I talked to my daughter, an intrepid, multi-award-winning reporter who was in the thick of the riot, smelled the smoke and heard the screams.

For several hours I lost touch with her, and as it turned out, she was indeed stuck in the worst of it, walking along alone without even a cameraman for protection. Since she's an attractive blonde who weighs 104 pounds, she could have been raped or killed.

I talked to her on the phone yesterday and heard her desperate disillusionment. Even as the game started and the thousands of spectators mobbed in the downtown, she felt the hairs on her neck stand up. She went back to the office and said, "We've got to get ready, guys. There's going to be a riot." Everyone was sure she was crazy. They brushed her off, even felt offended.

But she read the crowd correctly. She believes this would have happened, win or lose. Those thugs were just waiting for an opportunity. They were not even watching the screen. The air was electric, the crowd tensed for an explosion such as we've never seen.

Now she feels vindicated. But (and this is strictly my own opinion, not anything she told me: if anyone tries to get her in trouble over this I will scream blue murder) what happens in situations like this is that the other person, the person who refused to believe in the possibility of horrific damage, is embarrassed. So that means SHE embarrassed THEM by being correct! This kind of rare gift, not just of perception but of individual courage, does not lead to rewards, but to ostracism and humiliated silence.

What sort of world is it where such unusual, invaluable sensitivity is shunted aside and ignored, then swept under the rug like a source of embarrassment? She cried, "Fire! Fire!" and everyone said, "Chill out, there's no fire. You're just a killjoy."

Even the cops missed it. I don't care what anyone says: the cops bungled it.  They made a hash of it and won't even admit it! My daughter alone knew exactly what was coming, and everyone told her she was crazy. 

I don't know how to feel. Or perhaps I do. Every time I think of the situation I get a sick feeling. This has added a new layer to the shock and disgust. Who knows how much of this hell could have been prevented, but it wasn't. It wasn't, because they told her she was crazy. Crazy for being able to perceive and understand the enormity of the coming storm.

A 9-11 in my neigborhood

No matter what you've heard on the news about "riots in Vancouver", it was infinitely worse. After we lost the Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins last night, the hooligans in the city must have decided it warranted rioting, looting and general mayhem. It looked a war zone, with burning cars, smashed-in store fronts, tear gas, explosions, and thousands of people rampaging, or just standing around watching the spectacle and refusing to go home. I haven't seen anything like that since 9-11.

Worst of all, my daughter, an intrepid news reporter, was caught in it. I saw her doing an interview with horrified Canucks fans early on in the riot, then that was it. Didn't see her again. I couldn't reach her on her cell, and her cleaning lady was filling in for the babysitter who had to go home. I called her mother-in-law, and she didn't know anything either. My husband Bill kept saying, she's OK, she can take care of herself, but these images were right out of hell, and it went on and on and on and just got worse and worse.

These hooligans jumped around and yelled and waved at the camera in delight, loving the attention. After losing to the Bruins, they were determined to have their fun. Hundreds of cops wearing gas masks formed phalanxes with shields, threw tear gas and pepper spray, brought in dogs and horses, but these criminals had bombs and fire and knives and no conscience and didn't care who they hurt or whose property they destroyed.

I sat through hours of this as it continued to escalate. I felt panicky and helpless. They kept saying things like, "We lost Rob Brown", meaning someone had grabbed the camera and smashed it on the ground or the camera person was sucked into the mob and pulled away, but I kept thinking, "Don't say 'lost'." I got furious with Bill who just sat there impassive, not saying anything, not reacting at all. He had more reaction to the hockey game.

Finally after more than 3 hours of watching the mayhem (with people lying on the ground badly injured and bleeding, no medical help anywhere, and rumors someone had been killed), I had the idea to call the news office,certain it would be a busy signal or automated system. Someone was there! They told me they had seen my daughter somewhere in the building, that she was OK.

I got an email from her this morning saying an intern had driven her home (the parkade had been locked down, her Blackberry stolen, public transit stalled, and it was nearly impossible to leave the downtown on foot with so much blocked off, though the police kept begging the gawkers to disperse). I sensed her weariness and disillusion. She had been in that mess,that chaos generated by citizens of Vancouver, inhaling the fumes and hearing the screams.

The gawkers may have looked blameless, but they were choking up the streets, blocking police access, providing an audience for the hooligans as they smashed everything in sight, and holding up all their little devices so they could be the first to post all this hell on YouTube or sell it to the media. Of all the horrible images from that night, this was one of the most disturbing. These weren't even rioters, just bystanders, but they had to get in on the bonanza. This was reality TV at its most dramatic, not to mention marketable.

I think of Vancouver in smoking ruins, and I feel heartsick. Memories of our jubilant celebration after the 2010 Olympics are still fresh in my mind. What went so horribly wrong? I'm no sports fan, but even I had a bit of Stanley Cup fever: you couldn't help but get caught up in it. The game was pretty depressing, but hey: that's the nature of sports. It's a competition, and one side wins, while the other side loses.

We teach our little league and junior hockey teams that they need to be good losers and practice sportsmanship. Then we give them this horrific example.Yes, most people were horrified, but somehow doing it at all crosses a social boundary that can never be quite as inviolate again.  


I don't know what to think or feel or say. I keep thinking everyone's just shrugging and saying, "Yeah, that's too bad about the Bruins." They think of it as a little horseplay that got out of hand. But this was a war zone, nothing less. A war zone in one of the most elegant, cultured, beautiful cities on earth.

From the weird to the strange

Strangeness leads to strangeness. I don't remember what inspired me to start painting, but it was at a time when I felt like I had nothing to lose: I badly needed some form of expression, a new one I hadn't tried before, and it didn't really matter whether I was any good at it or not.

At first I used plain paper gobbed up with poster paint, which soon became as wrinkled as a child's glitter-glue project, so switched to a sort of heavy stuff like construction paper. It turned depressingly brown after a few years. I fairly quickly stopped painting, realizing my brilliant works of art really weren't so hot. Mostly brush-stroke experiments, color patterns, nothing representational.

I just found scans of a few of them, and with my diabolical need to change things, I reversed the colors on a primitive program called, appropriately, Paint. Now they look eerily three-dimensional (I think) and say things (I think) they didn't say before (or did they?)

I recently tried painting again, this time with proper acrylics, brushes, etc., and got nowhere. It seems I have very little visual sense. My neurons are tangled around music, like Al Jolson's heartstrings around A-la-bammy.

So this is an experiment, a very weird one, which may be one-of-a-kind.

How far can I go?

When you keep a blog like this one, you have to ask yourself from time to time how much of yourself you're going to reveal.

I sometimes think that if I uncovered the real truth about this writer's journey, I might scare prospective writers away. For much of it has been painful beyond expression. And I do seem to carry it alone.

There are writer's groups, but the ones I've sampled are social gatherings and/or arenas of competition. Writers are by nature a solitary lot. Can the process really be shared, or even described? Do I even understand it myself?

I seem to have spent the past twenty-five years or so (or maybe it's more - I don't want to count) bashing my head against brick walls, while everyone tells me to just write for my own enjoyment. I doubt if they'd say that to a professional musician or a dancer or a brain surgeon, but they say it to me all the time.

Or just put out an ebook. But I want to win the Giller Prize! I really do.

That could be a factor, oh yes, my ambition, and my absolute fatal faith in my own work. Faith? Wait a minute, that must be wrong! But contrary to what people seem to think (people who, on encountering my discouragement, pat my hand and say, "There, there, Margaret, your writing really isn't that bad"), I believe fiercely in what I do. I think I am a damn good writer who has barely had a chance to prove herself.

So there.

I have more than paid my dues. People tell me it's tough all over. Yes. And this stuff just hits me directly in the self-esteem like a hard, unexpected punch to the solar plexus. The pain never really seems to end. Yet if you don't keep up a happy, jolly, optimistic face all the time, well then, hey, you might scare away a prospective publisher! So you have to assume a jolly, chirpy, superficial Facebook-like attitude. Or just stay off this topic altogether.

I know there are other areas of my life that cause me pain. This is called "the human condition" and I know I can't escape it. I tend to heap it all on one area, maybe because that gives me some form of guttering hope that some day it'll all be solved. All I need is success!

Well? If lack of success causes depression, and then you DO attain success. . .doesn't it follow? Or am I being simplistic again?

It causes me inordinate stress when people try to talk me out of my ambition. They're trying to make me feel better. But I don't want to feel better.

I want to feel different.

At the same time, I want somebody to "get it", a chronically frustrated need which I believe is behind a lot of this ennui. Yes, there is such a thing as existential pain, and I have drunk deep of it. I have come to believe that avoiding it costs too dearly. But most people seem to skate rapidly on top of it for a lifetime, or else make hay out of it, becoming vastly entertaining and provoking belly-laughs at how damn crazy this old life can be.

What it comes down to is this: we are the Facebook nation, offering shiny little tidbits of ourselves in a very public forum. We tweet and twitter and text and phone and dit and dot. Loneliness is said to be epidemic, but I don't see any. It only shows up on reality programs where people spill their agony, which apparently the rest of us find vastly entertaining.

These entertainers (for that is what they are) absorb all our toxins and vomit them up, so we can go on our merry way behind our plexiglass masks. Jesus, look at the hoarders and bipolars and fat people and drunks and fools. Thank God it has nothing to do with us.

This started out to be about my endless frustration in my chosen field (or maybe it chose me), and ended up here. Pretty bleak. So I guess I don't fit the slot I'm expected to fill.

If you feel "bad", that's "wrong". So you must strive and strive, and go out and party, and use cognitive techniques, until you feel "good" again. "Good" is "good". Anything else is unthinkable.

I'm sorry

These deserved their own post. Why am I so obsessed (today) with women's footwear? OK, what's the symbolism of women not being able to walk, only hobble? Of women sacrificing their health to a certain set standard (determined by men) of sexuality and "beauty"? I guess big hairy feet like mine will never be sexy. But at least I don't buy my shoes at Home Hardware (or fall off my heels).

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

Lenny Welch - Since I Fell For You

A brilliant, almost operatic performance of a truly great song. He owns this 100%.

Some day, my Prince will come

The things human beings do to themselves, and to each other.

I've always had a morbid curiosity about the ancient Chinese custom of footbinding: the practice of breaking all the bones of a little girl's feet, tightly bandaging them, and allowing the tissue to harden into a tiny slender hoof with very little circulation. With her crushed feet crammed into exquisitely-embroidered slippers, the little girl would be considered ravishing and, more importantly, marriageable. Feet longer than three inches (the ideal "golden lotus", comparing the foot to an inanimate object) were seen as uncouth. So mothers inflicted this horror on their daughters, just as it had been inflicted on them. Incredibly, this went on for a thousand years.

But what about this? What we now supposedly see as primitive, barbaric, and a form of systematic torture is still practiced today. I would not be surprised if women wearing these extreme heels (which, if they were even a tiny bit higher, would cause them to fall over backwards: perhaps even more erotically desirable than crunching around on the ends of your big toes) end up with serious or irreparable damage to their feet, even broken bones. Do podiatrists have to deal with these cases, or do women, secretly ashamed of the dark and fetish-y nature of their footwear, suffer in silence?

Just like those little girls who had to keep silence about the agony they lived with every day?

I could not find one picture of a Chinese girl or woman with bound feet who was smiling. Most bore a blank, stoic expression. There was nothing they could do. Their days were spent cutting dead flesh off their feet, removing gangrenous toes, and trying to kill the odor of decay that followed them around like a heavy fog.


Men found this scent arousing, and played around with the feet, inserting them into their rectums and such. I found a reference to this practice in a novel written by someone steeped in Chinese culture, so I can only surmise it's true.

While researching this ghastly topic in my usual obsessive way (hey, it's Monday, I'm trying to ditch a migraine, and the rain out there has no mercy), I discovered a tie-in to a familiar fairy tale, very much alive in the character of a wildly-popular Disney princess. This is something we feed our girl-children every day.

Fairy tales arise from a rich stew of culture going back countless centuries. All of them are somehow joined together, with eerie similarities across widely different parts of the world. Thus, stories from Asia often overlap with fairy tales from Eastern Europe or the United Kingdom.

We all know about Cinderella and the glass slipper. "Glass" may have been a misnomer, the result of a bad translation between a complex muddle of languages.

The common point in all these folk tales is the Prince's search for the maiden with a foot delicate enough to wear an impossibly tiny slipper.

A bound foot?

Of course Cinderella didn't have bound feet. Just teeny, tiny little feet. It's not the same thing at all. But consider this.

Cinderella was royalty forced to live as a household drudge, with exquisitely tiny feet that gave away her hidden status. A peasant girl didn't have feet like that. Oh, no. In fact, no girl did, unless her mother at some point grabbed her foot and forcefully cracked it in half, tying the ravaged halves together so the arch would buckle and the toes rot. All in the name of the "three-inch golden lotus": Cinderella's fabled glass slipper brought to life.

All this exists in the mists of antiquity. Women still cram their feet into bizarre, deforming footwear, but it's just because they want to. Or maybe because their boyfriends want them to.

Lots of men have foot fetishes. I've never understood why anyone would lust after stinky, sweaty toes with thick ugly yellowish nails on them (unless you get a pedicure every week). Something you walk on. So to speak.

I'm not drawing any comparisons. Teeny, teetering shoes with very high heels don't make a woman look desirable. Brown oxfords are just as effective.

Just ask any man.

(A post-script. As if this weren't gruesome enough, I found some photos of women whose feet had been permanently deformed by wearing "ordinary" high-heeled shoes. Not for the weak of stomach.)

Guess the celebrity feet! You're right. It's Kim Cattrall!

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%