24 January 2003

The long, dark mid-afternoon of the soul

Something written over a month ago that I never finished or posted. I've now snipped out most of the material that later reappeared in my belated, slightly dyspeptic x-mas letter, filled in a few gaps and finished it off. It's still a bit disjointed but, I think, a reasonable reflection of how I felt about life this past fall. Be assured, I'm not as depressed as I sound(ed).

That title sprang into my head the other day and I couldn't think of anything better to do with it so I figured it was time to write some sort of an update. It's only been five months. Another title I chanced upon recently is "Furious George, the Angry Little Monkey," a sorry tale of abuse and revenge featuring the Man with the Yellow Hat, his sailor pals, the local Catholic priest, and one vengeful, violated chimpanzee. Sure to be a Christmas classic.

I'd also enjoy writing a story somehow containing this phrase: "the rhythmic slap, slap, slap of Jake's pendulating testicles."

So it's a Thursday afternoon in early December. I'm home alone, with ninety minutes on my hands before I must collect Maddy from day care and meet a friend for a play date in the park. (There's snow on the ground but the sun is shining and the temperature has crept above freezing.) I've set up the laptop on the dining table (careful - my clumsy fingers are forever snapping off the 'G' key and launching it across the room) and Vita is perched on the back of the new couch, glaring at me for not playing with her. I have a strong espresso beside me, in my beloved Spandauer Weihnachtsmarkt 1995 mug. It feels good to write something again. Other than cover letters and short emails, I haven't written much of anything lately.

One of the reasons I haven't written since arrival is that we don't really have a computer at home. The desktop went to Annette's office, and will remain there until such time as she buys a new laptop with her computer allowance and I finish the basement to the point where a work space can be safely installed. In the meantime I've rather enjoyed being offline - one reads more books and watches more television - and can check my email at a public access terminal in the community centre across the street. Once or twice a week I sneak up to the university and do anything more complicated.

The big news is that (thanks to the miracle of timely parental assistance) we found a house we basically like in a neighbourhood we basically like, known as Hillhurst. This is one of maybe two or three areas in Calgary that feel even vaguely urban, where you can conceivably walk to more than one coffee shop. The rest of the city is a sprawling mess, the suburbs dating themselves like the rings of a tree: 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, expanding ever outwards into the prairie. In Hillhurst we range from 1910 to 1950, excepting of course a few new houses replacing old. We're close to downtown, just across the river, and not far from the university. I suppose it was the smart thing to do, though I dearly miss the irresponsibility of renting and I'm not thrilled with the costs.

Also in the good news column, Maddy is relatively content with her day care, located directly across the street in the community centre (right now I'm looking out the window watching the kids playing outside). Technically she's in full-time, though I tend to keep her down to about 25 hours per week. It's working out well.

Vita has settled in rather nicely. She goes outside on all but the coldest days and has, for the first time, grown a thick winter coat that Mads now enjoys brushing. The two of them act like old pals. The cat looks very good for ten.

So that's the good news. The bad news is that we're desperately broke, I need to find a job but I haven't the faintest clue what to do next, I'm having my usual stupid middle-aged-adolescent identity crisis, I don't particularly care for Calgary, and I miss Berlin terribly. Same old shit, slightly different wrapper.

The finality and permanence of our existence here terrifies me. In a long, apologetic, sorry-for-being-such-a-fuck-up-again email I sent to Annette, I wrote: "Probably it was just the dust settling after our move and my realizing that, damn, here we are, this is it, you've got your job, we've got our house, this is our life for the next X years. A bit scary for someone who would be an eternal exile if he had the choice (and the means)."

Somewhere recently I read a little aphorism along the lines of mid-life is when the decisions you thought you'd made for free turn out to have a price, and damn that really hit close to home. Here are the previous decade's decisions that I, while contemplating my current predicament, am beginning to think may have been terribly costly: turning down a full-ride graduate scholarship to Cambridge because I'd already committed to Washington, when I might have had more fun and a better chance of finishing my Ph.D. in the UK; turning down the CSIS (Canadian spooks) interview in the summer of 1992 when Annette and I were preparing to move to Chicago - it might have been an interesting career option; not pursuing the Foreign Service after my near-miss in 1990 (I was waiting for the offer when a public service hiring freeze shut the process down); blowing off my Ph.D. in Chicago; fucking around at Pivotal and refusing to believe that I needed to take my job or career seriously; not trying harder to write for my supper when I had the time and opportunity after moving to Berlin; not using proper birth control in early 2000 - no, wait, I'm actually pretty happy with how that all turned out.

I did attempt a re-entry into academic life in September, hanging around the strategic studies institute as a "research associate", attending an intelligence studies conference in Ottawa, bouncing around ideas of finishing my Ph.D. and embarking on a course of reading to prepare for future comp exams. It wasn't a huge success, and after a month I quietly disappeared from the campus. The Ottawa trip didn't do wonders for my ego, in retrospect. I enjoyed the conference, saw some old friends and acquaintances, learned a lot, but I felt like a freak with my strange non-status. Too old to be student, no real reason or purpose that I could easily define, every introduction came with an overly long explanation that sounded like an excuse. The expressions on peoples' faces told me enough. It was much the same around the university.

I haven't made any final decisions about the Ph.D. - I still want to talk to a few more people once I can figure out something to say that isn't just pointlessly vague generalities - but I'm increasingly getting the feeling there aren't any decisions to make. Financially it would be suicide, and at the end of it I'm not sure I'd be any further ahead than I am now in terms of viable, long-term employability. Even if money were not a factor I'm not certain it would be such a good idea - lots of complications for Annette and frankly, I don't know if my shit is any more together now than it was five or ten years ago. (I'm beginning to think that I've about used up my supply of second chances.) I've got more distractions and commitments with about the same attention span - and since it's something I'd be doing primarily for personal satisfaction only I'm not sure it's worth the risks to both of us. But I haven't absolutely killed the idea just yet. A conversation with one of the potential supervisors was very useful - he wasn't unkind, but he put things into the proper perspective and made me ask myself some hard questions about what I was thinking of doing, and why. The problem is that the answer still boils down to "well, because it isn't a corporate job." That didn't work in Chicago either.

There are really no viable alternatives to my working right now. Financially, it's unavoidable unless we win the lottery route or sell our kidneys. But it's been a very discouraging process, looking for a job. I'm aiming both high and low. The problem is, I'm in this weird place where aiming high won't get me very far, given my rather spotty record - let's admit the truth, everything I've done these past five years has been calculated to make me as unemployable as possible - but aiming low makes people suspicious. Who is this overqualified fuck-up? I could be left hanging in the middle.

And what of writing? Yes I should write. Not a day goes by that I don't think about it. But shit, for the past five years I've had the means, the opportunity and god knows the support and encouragement, and what have I actually produced... nothing, not one single word if you don't count a couple of letters to the editor. So there's no reason to suspect that I'm going to overcome my resistance. I think there's a certain key form of imagination that I wholly lack. I'm a good technician, I do some very witty marginalia, but the bigger canvas eludes me.

And one further indignity: we are driving my parents' old minivan. They gave it to us. A 1997 Dodge Caravan, silver. Try finding it in the Home Depot parking lot on a busy Saturday - which one might it be? I suppose we should be thankful, we'd be bankrupt if we had to make car payments right now and it's mighty useful when you're always hauling insulation and 2x4s back from the lumber yard. But once we're solvent and done with renovations I really, really want to trade it in for a Jetta wagon.