Monthly Archives: September 2005

Awakening: Introduction

Sharpen a blade too much
  and its edge will soon be lost
Fill a house with gold and jade
  and no one can pro­tect it
Puff your­self with hon­or and pride
  and no one can save you from a fall

—Verse Nine, Tao Te Ching

Every time I start to write, I’m led back to this. It would appear that it’s time to express myself. Perhaps I’m ready. It feels like I’m only scratch­ing the sur­face, try­ing to cov­er aspects of some­thing that I have yet to under­stand. In the show­er I decid­ed to split this into sev­er­al entries of a series, and in my room the lights are all on.

There’s been more insta­bil­i­ty in the last month than in the last three years of my life com­bined. Everything I knew, every­thing I believed in, has been turned upside-down. Although I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out what hap­pened, the fact of the mat­ter is that there was a long, drawn-out cri­sis. This cri­sis, which appears to have passed, still affects my thoughts, my actions, and my beliefs.

Even though I don’t com­plete­ly have my feet on the ground, it feels like I’m com­fort­able enough to explore what’s hap­pened now. This is not an easy task. A sin­gle, seem­ing­ly innocu­ous thought can end up break­ing the strands of the del­i­cate web I’m tread­ing.

If I can get it all down, I’ll know I’ve gone that far at least.

The Awakening Series

  1. Introduction
  2. Cause
  3. The Reborn Dreamer

Hurricane Katrina Left Me With Nothing

It’s Friday, and Hurricane Katrina, more than 2000 kilo­me­tres away, has thrown cold winds and scat­tered show­ers over parts of Southern Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick. As I step out­side to grill some­thing on the bar­beque, the cats quick­ly run to the screen door. They tem­porar­i­ly for­get that they’re ene­mies, that they nor­mal­ly can’t walk past each oth­er with­out a swipe or a hiss, and sit side-by-side to care­ful­ly smell the damp wind com­ing through.

People name hur­ri­canes after their for­mer lovers. The head­lines are always the same:

After cheat­ing with co-work­er, Hurricane Camille leaves 250 dead from Louisiana to Virginia

$400 mil­lion dol­lars in dam­age and 1145 fatal­i­ties as Hurricane Gordon weaves through the Caribbean and takes half my CD col­lec­tion with him before dis­ap­pear­ing in his Camaro.

The cats know that some­thing has hap­pened. They can tell that this weath­er is com­ing from some­where else, and that many have been affect­ed, the way some dogs know that their own­ers are dat­ing the wrong peo­ple and won’t stop defend­ing them with their lips drawn back in a snarl.

But all the cats can do is sit and sniff.