as I live a few more questions

Tuesday Morning Musical Interlude: How Many

The song "How Many" by Luba has been running through my head all day, and the lyrics go like this:

It has been raining
for so long
I have been praying
for a break in the storm
but in the thunder
I hear your name
and it takes me under
underneath all this pain
and I've got to get on with my life
but I don't know how
tell me...
how many rivers to cross
how many crosses to bear
how many miles till I get there

Fantasy And Reality

(click photo to see original size on Flickr)

I actually feel a little sorry for Britney Spears.  Apparently she checked into rehab in Antigua, checked herself out after less than 24 hours, flew back to the U.S., shaved her head and got a couple of tattoos.  The linked report also states that Britney landed up at L.A.'s Cedars-Sinai hospital emergency room early Saturday morning, but was discharged.

What's magnifying the situation and making it worse, is that she's a celebrity and plays out her life (and her troubles) in front of the paparazzi's cameras.   That's why I highlighted that particular, poignant quote from the gossip coverage.  Fame is a double-edged sword. 

And I wonder how long Elizabeth Arden will continue to market Britney's Midnight Fantasy, especially when the fantasy has come apart at the seams.

November is the Cruelest Month

As usual, somebody else notices the changes before I do. 

I complain to my shrink about my indecisiveness, my fatigue, my irritability, my lack of motivation so strong that I spend a few extra hours of each day in bed rather than at my research or my housecleaning.  The shrink gently reminds me that these are symptoms of depression, and suddenly my synapses make the connection: Oh shit, here I am again.

Several events over the past two months, which in the grand context of things are rather insignificant, may have contributed to this.  I missed a flight to Ottawa to visit some friends, because I screwed up on my 24-hour-clock to 12-hour-clock calculations.  I got into a minor fender-bender with my car, which is currently in the shop while I drive a 2007-shitbox-Cobalt for a rental.  But Iooking back, the one thing I notice is this: as the seasons shifted and the days became shorter and cloudier, my mood seemed to get darker too.

The good news is that I caught it early -- very early -- this time around.  So three weeks ago, I rented a portable full-spectrum light for Seasonal Affective Disorder, and set it up over my computer monitor.  I leave it on and bask in the faux-sunlight for about an hour every morning as I have my breakfast coffee and gulp down my antidepressant medication while surfing the morning's news on the Internet.   (I know, I know, the news is depressing; but I'd rather be well-informed on world events than blissfully ignorant.  And besides, I'm a librarian and we have to keep up-to-date to field reference questions.)

And so far, even though it is still early, it seems to have some benefit for me.  At the end of the month's rental, I can choose to purchase and keep the S.A.D. lamp, and I probably will.  My shrink thinks that any Seasonal Affective Disorder I might have is only an add-on to my regular old plain vanilla depression, so I obviously can't toss out the anti-depressants.  But I may have found another key to fighting back the clouds.

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...

Montreal shooter Kimveer Gill's profile page on VampireFreaks

Thanks to Google cache (so look at it while you still can), you can view the online profile of Kimveer Gill, the goth gunman who opened fire on students at Dawson College in Montreal yesterday.  Some chilling stuff here, including a picture of a gravestone with his name on it, and the results of the following "personality tests" (click image for larger size):

read more | digg story

Feeling The Gap

I've been trying to get a handle on what's wrong with me lately, and I kinda sorta touch on it in this post I made to the Dave Cullen Brokeback Mountain community forum ten days ago:

People have been talking a lot on this forum about finding or meeting a soul-mate, a love you are destined to be with. And I had a thought about this.

At 42, I finally feel like I've worked through all the emotional and mental crap (well, almost all of it) that comes with being raised in a society where you church and your family imprint on you that gay = wrong.

But I look around me and I see this: half of the potentially soul-mateable men ouit there are stuck somewhere along in their process. They're stuck in the closet, or stuck living an elaborate double life that they think no one else knows about. Or they're taking drugs or booze or sex to dull the pain of their lives, and they get stuck there. Or they killed themselves as teenagers, or later as adults, because they couldn't deal with the mismatch between what their society expected and what they wanted.

What I'm trying to say is this: that even though I might, for the first time in my life, actually be ready to meet--and appreciate--Mr. Soulmate, who's to say that Mr. Soulmate isn't still wandering around out there, stuck somewhere, unavailable? I realize that this sort of thing could happen just as easily with straight relationships. But somehow it seems that the bumps of growing up gay either force you to become mature quickly, or keep you stuck and immature.

Not sure if any of this makes sense, but I think it might be why I feel that maybe there's nobody out there for me. I'm not depressed about it--at least, not much or not often. But it is something I've thought about since I've seen the movie Brokeback Mountain. What if the perfect guy for me is living in some sham marriage and doing guys on the side just to feel some pleasure in his miserable Ennisy life? He and I would never connect.

And I'm not saying that I would WANT to connect with someone who still has so much work ahead of him left to do. (As if I wanted another make-work project.)

But what I guess I'm trying to say is, I can feel that gap, that absence--that space where somebody should be, and isn't.

Which probably explains why I'm listening to Mark Weigle on my headphones and quietly crying in front of my PC at work, tucked away in the back office where nobody can see me cry.

Round And Around We Go

Our reference desk computer is, for the second time this week, infected with the WORM_BOTOB.A virus. I've spent the last two evenings working to try and fix a friend's computer which we both thought had picked up a virus. Turns out his cable modem was operating poorly, so it wasn't a virus after all.

It's been non-stop like this all week, running from fire to fire, ever since I got back from holidays. That rested feeling sure didn't last very long.

"You look so sweet and unbitter"

Just a quick note before I pop out my contacts and go to bed.

I slipped out of the social at a quarter to one, after the door prizes had been awarded and the pizza had been devoured. Ears slightly ringing and throat slightly hoarse (from the loud music and having to shout over it). Tonight was the annual fund-raising social for Swerve, the local queer newspaper. Retro 1970s and 1980s theme. A brief episode from the evening:

The Enneagram: A Brief Introduction

I first learned about the Enneagram in November 1997 at a workshop put on the Beginning Experience of Winnipeg.

I guess I'd better explain what Beginning Experience is. The Beginning Experience (B.E.) movement began in Texas in 1974, and has since spread to Canada, the U.S., Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. The purpose to B.E. is to help separated, divorced, and widowed people to work through their pain and grief, provide a safe space for them to work through their emotional healing and begin a process of self-awareness, and ultimately to free them to live again and love themselves, others and God. It is, at heart, a faith-based peer ministry, organized and led by former B.E. participants (of various Christian denominations) who have undergone some training and have become lay facilitators to help the newer participants through the first steps of the grief and healing process. I went because I had never dealt with my guilt and anger over the failure of my 2-1/2 year marriage in 1991.

B.E. consists of retreat weekends, as well as a weekly "levels" program, levels 1 through 4 of weekly classes. Lower levels focus on the failed/ended relatonship; upper levels tend to focus more on self-awareness and personal growth. After a participant completes level 4, there is a Level 5 available: Enneagram workshops.

I attended two 10-week sessions during 1997-1998 as part of a group of about 20 B.E. facilitators. Our workshop leader was a tiny French-Canadian Roman Catholic nun called Sister Thérèse, a member of the Holy Cross religious community and a co-founder of Contemplative Outreach Canada. I took lots of notes during the sessions, and put them away in a binder, along with my Myers-Briggs personality type stuff, etc. I had to put the Enneagram aside to deal with more pressing matters (i.e. burning out of my job AND coming out the closet to myself). I had other, much more serious, things to worry about than some silly personality system.

Last year, I decided to pull out my 1997/1998 Enneagram workshop notes and read through them again, and I was surprised at how much wisdom there was in what Sister Thérèse had said, and how that fit in with my previous readings on self-awareness (Anthony de Mello, for example). So I made the decision to contact her again. I have since been talking with her regularly as a sort of spiritual counsellor or "guru". I have learned a lot more about the Enneagram along the way, from Sr. Thérèse and from my readings, and what follows is my (admittedly amateur) attempt to explain "what's it all about":

Gay Sexual Ethics

The response I get is always the same when I tell my gay friends what I am reading: a guffaw, usually followed by a cheap joke. "Gay sexual ethics? Must be a short article."

(Aside: my friend Brian pointed me towards an interesting article on gay.com: "What's the link between sex and intimacy?", where five queer people talk about their experiences.)

Out of all the entries that I have made since I first started this weblog, which post do I think has had the most impact on my life?

It's the one where I quoted extensively from the article by Rev. Ron Rolheiser on 'moral loneliness' and my explanation of why I agreed—and disagreed—with Rolheiser's stance. That one post has sparked several conversations with other people (significantly, only by face-to-face or by private email, not via the comments section of this blog). Obviously this is a topic that either touches people deeply, or hits a raw nerve, or is completely disregarded as useless, outdated, 'old-fashioned'.

As I have said before, one of the things I like about being a librarian is kicking the tires on electronic databases that the Libraries has bought or is considering buying. Several weeks ago, during just such a tire-kicking session, I serendipitously came across an article written by Dr. Daniel Helminiak, a professor of psychology at the State University of West Georgia, where he teaches psychology and spirituality.

Moral Loneliness

Everybody should have a wise friend, the kind of friend who will listen as you spill out your troubles, and then ask the one single question that illuminates everything and makes your choices clearer. For me, that friend is Brian, whom I met six years ago at the Men's Discussion Group at Winnipeg's gay and lesbian resource centre, as I was going through my long-delayed coming-out process. Last year he moved away from Winnipeg, and although we keep in touch by phone and email (and he is often in Winnipeg on business), I do miss him.

Late last year, he mailed me a photocopy of an article from the Western Catholic Reporter, that addressed an issue we had been discussing at length: the expectations among many single gay men to have as many sexual conquests as possible... and then brag about it. In reality, it's no different from the skirt-chasing that many single (and married) straight men do.

I am definitely not judging anybody else for how much they do (or don't) have casual sex; I am certainly in no position to judge others, and I am no saint myself. But what I have only recently discovered is my sense of loneliness, a particular kind of loneliness. It's a loneliness that comes from realizing that your moral line — or your moral compass, if you prefer — is set differently (higher? straighter?? narrower???) from almost everybody else in your social circle. The loneliness that comes from having a personal moral viewpoint that doesn't match those around you.

Having a older, more experienced friend tell you that a fuck is equivalent to a handshake in the gay community. Starting to judge whether or not your night out at the bar was a success the same way that many around you do: by whether or not you picked someone up and took them home. Feeling the tension, caught between private scruples and public zeitgeist. Wondering if there's just something wrong with you; wondering if you should change. Peer pressure, in short. It sounds ridiculous, of course; but to someone who comes out late, and is eager to "fit in" and make friends within the community, the pressure to buy into a particularly widespread stereotype can be quite strong. (Packs of gay men have more in common with packs of teenaged girls than you might imagine.)

One of the reasons I miss Brian so much is that he was a friend whose moral line was drawn pretty close to mine (perhaps that's why he's one of my best friends). So when I opened the envelope and read the photocopied article he mailed me, I was amazed at how accurately the author described the tension I was living with. And then dismayed at how ineffectually he prescribed a solution.