Hold (a) Fast

(A version of following article was published in the November/December of live magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com)

The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but the quickest way to end a conversation between Christians is to suggest a fast. No one—excepting perhaps small children with food aversions—wants to do it. The word is more likely to conjure memories of yellow lab requisition forms and having blood drawn than a divine encounter. Fasting is an old school spiritual discipline that seems out of step with the current era. Unless, of course, you’re a fitness guru chronicling your progress on Instagram—then Intermittent Fasting (IF) is all the rage. We might be willing to fast for medical necessity or physical transformation, but spiritual formation is a harder sell. We don’t know exactly what we’ll find there. Besides, fasting is optional and its effects are more intangible than Instagramable.

Though, perhaps, if our situations are particularly dire, we might consider it as a desperate Hail Mary ploy; a last ditch effort to get God to move when we have exhausted every other option. Even then, though—even when all is darkening around us—the fridge seems more comforting than the fast. The reason for this is simple, fasting removes your natural coping mechanisms so that only God remains. All the noise of life fades into the background as the near constant reminder of hunger points to the One you are seeking. Fasting is travelling a narrow path at a high altitude. Each step—each moment—requires both concentration and exertion. It’s physical effort for a spiritual result. When you think about it, there isn’t much else like it. 

And, like many of the ways of God, fasting is a paradox. It is the conscious effort of subverting physical needs for the purpose of being fed. It is a moment within a moment. A secret thing between you and God. A conversation. A communion. A snuggle under His arm for comfort and rest. It is pressing pause on all that is pressing. The meals to be made, the chores to do, and the errands to run all fade into lower resolution while the spiritual conversation comes into sharper focus. It is an exchange of priorities. It is an act of faith that agrees that, ‘Man doesn’t live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ We can hear those words from Jesus and trust that they are true—it is another thing to hunger to hear the Word speaking particularly to us alone

The trouble with the spiritual disciplines is that we turn them into religious duties because we do not know what they are for. We get caught up in the details— wondering if we can still have our coffee during a fast so as to avoid a caffeine headache—rather than rejoicing in the freedom being loosed in our lives. It is in the heart of God to free His people from every chain that binds, every burden that crushes with its weight, and every evil oppression that torments.  It is not His heart to tie us up with the legalistic details of when and how.

Is not the time without eating which I choose, a time to take off the chains of sin, and to take the heavy load of sin off the neck? Is it not a time to let those who suffer under a sinful power go free, and to break every load from their neck? (Isaiah 58:6 NLV)

The purpose—as always—is freedom. It is our mental gymnastics—the never ending internal monologue— that convinces us that the spiritual disciplines are about lack, rather than abundance. We fast to feast because the words proceeding from the mouth of God are better.

You sly boots! You got me dialoguing!

If you're a writer and you find yourself on the internet browsing for advice about how to be a better writer; a more successful writer; you'll come across a range of suggestions from self-described industry insiders that will span the distance between Somewhat Helpful/Mildly Misleading all the way to Gag-Inducing and everything in between. Personally, I think that stuff is mostly a waste of time;--at least, I've wasted a lot of time and spent a good deal of my insecurity finding out that much of the advice is just flat out wrong. (The same principle can be applied to every Women's Magazine article you've ever read, incidentally.) But, in the interest of being more helpful than the previous appears, I say the following:

The quantity of your unseen writing should dwarf the quantity of your seen writing.

Now, most of the time, that isn't so much a goal as it is the reality of the situation; particularly in the beginning--but it is actually a good thing, though it doesn't feel that way. Every writer wants his or her words to be read. And, I hate the idea of wasting hours on pages and pages that will never be seen by another person. This, however, is the way that it should be. Most of writing is never seen. It is edited, deleted, left forgotten and mouldering in a file somewhere on an old laptop. Scenes without backstory or future. Conversations replete with witticisms that no one will ever chuckle at. Paragraphs and poems, odes and epics all doomed, like that proverbial wildwood flower, to blush unseen. Thousands and thousands of words that are never read or seen by anyone else save the author.   It is easy to regard the hours spent on those un-feted words as a waste of time, but they were not. They were the workout. They were the practice that was necessary to produce the final result. The character sketches, the descriptive settings, the opening lines that never reached their closing curtain--all essential in building the skill and refining the artistic eye that produces the one thing worth showing to someone else.

A couple of days ago, I spent most of my workday playing around with dialogue--attempting to write a perfectly comprehensible conversation without any helpful speech tags. No explanation of who is speaking, or helpful adverbs to direct your imagination. Is it comprehensible? You be the judge.

Otherwise, it will never be read by anyone.

“Is it shallow of me to think that I don’t think that I could ever be in a serious relationship with a guy who has an Instagram account?”

“Of course you couldn’t. That isn’t shallow. It’s a strike against shallowness— judgemental, sure, —but not shallow. Guys worth having don’t have Instagram accounts. Preferably they have no social media. But if anything, it’s Twitter—and probably Facebook because we all got those before we realized what we were getting into. But now we’re all too far into the social media honeycomb to get unstuck. No one can claim ignorance. But Instagram for manly men is just not a thing.”

“That was my thought as well.”

“Just out of curiosity, whose Instagram did you see and think, ‘Pass’?”

“Is that really important right now?”

“These thoughts don’t come out of a vacuum. Last night I posted on Facebook that the inventor of three quarter length sleeves should be banished from civilized society, along with whoever created the open-toed boot.”

“What prompted that?”

“Someone posted a video where I was wearing a three quarter length sleeved shirt. They should also be banished.”

“Did you get rid of the shirt?”

“No,  because I need it for choir performances. So I’ll just be wearing it like an A-hole for many holidays and special occasions to come. Whose Instagram were you creeping and determined it would never work?”

“Shane’s.”

“The video editing guy?”

“Yeah—it’s tragic.”

“That is tragic. Wait, maybe it was for his work? Instagram accounts for work are okay.”

“He has one of those, too. This was personal.”

“Maybe you should make an exception. He’s heart-stoppin’ handsome. Like, not usually seen in real life.”

“It appears he thinks so, too.”

“Vanity is unattractive is a man—worse than in women. I don’t know why. Still, that's a shame.Maybe you are being too harsh? He seems worth further investigation—you know, just to be sure.”

“He goes on beach holidays and takes artful pictures of his muscle definition.”

“Never mind. Scrape him off. Don’t be me with the three quarter length sleeve equivalent of a boyfriend.”

“Since we’re not dating, done and done.”

“He was dancing around it, though.”

“Maybe, but I think he got distracted taking a picture of himself in black and white.”

“What’s his account? Maybe I should follow it.”

“Nice.”

“Maybe he dabbles in photography?”

“Everyone with an Instagram account dabbles in photography.”

“That’s not entirely true. I follow yours. The last thing that you posted was a picture of a plant you killed.”

“That was photo realism.”

“Yeah, well, that’s really not the point of Instagram.”

“So you can see how Shane and I wouldn’t be a great fit. He understands Instagram. I don’t.”

“He could light your dead plants better. Looks like you overwatered—“

“I did not over water. I gave it the same amount it had been happily imbibing for months. It just did that for no reason. That was the whole point of the post. It was a hashtag #whatthehellplant hashtag #someplantsaresuicidal kind of thing. And, what’s with this reversal? At first you said, of course I couldn’t date a guy with an Instagram account.”

“No, I said you couldn’t be in a serious relationship with a guy with an Instagram account.”

“You said I should ‘scrape him off’.”

“I was overzealous. I didn’t remember what he looked like until I looked him up again just now. It might be worth it. Besides, he could really punch up your Instagram account. Get you a few more followers; maybe you could crack the fifties.”

“Nice.”

“Look, I get it. No one is perfect and vanity is a failing and it looks like it might be his.”

“One doesn’t usually lead with the failing.”

“Vanity isn’t incurable. In the next ten years or so, his looks will start to fade, and the filter use will increase as his Instagram usage decreases…”

“But until then, I can’t compete with that. I’d feel insecure and unattractive. I don’t want to be the one in the relationship with the good personality.”

“Oh—I thought you were just turned off by his vanity. I didn’t realize it was because of your vanity.”

“My insecurity—not my vanity.”

“Other side the coin, kitten. That’s just the other side of the coin."

Advent: Love in Pretendovia

"Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it."

'Tis the season of the Christmas special.


Netflix has been trimming Hallmark's grass in these last few years; producing the kind of saccharine love stories accessorized by holly that are as addictive and unsatisfying as the boxes of over-sweet waxy chocolates that also glut the month. And, like that box of chocolates, without knowing the precise nature of the filling of these films, we all know exactly what we're going to get.

Due to the fact that I get offended at bad writing that makes it to the big screen, it wasn't until I was sick last year that I finally watched several of these movies in a row. None were particularly memorable and there was an incognito prince kicking around in a couple of them. The female protagonist is always klutzy with glossy, salon-worthy hair; a fish out of water in the paper thin backdrop kingdom/quaint village/Christmas 'miracle' setting. Her prince/village inn manager/soup kitchen owner(?)/single dad/brusque-handyman-with-a-heart-of-gold male lead is inevitably a cardboard cut-out of a man, but with less to say for himself. But let us not forget the antagonists. These movies have their stock villains, too--generally a sleek, beautiful woman. But not too beautiful. Our villainess isn't a klutz either, and most of her characterization is accomplished by the presence of a large, designer purse which is how you know she's both shallow and bad for our cardboard fellow who cares passionately for the homeless/stray dogs/motherless children, etc.


There are twinkle lights and cabs called in the wake of misunderstandings. And, perhaps the line of succession in the little remembered European country of Pretendovia is threatened by some unworthy Pretender and the climatic moment inevitably occurs on Christmas Eve as the clock strikes midnight. And yes, there is Christmas Eve monologuing. Resolution is swift; the nefarious Gucci-clad greyhound of a woman sent packing, and the music swells.  Somehow Christmas has been saved--; and hopefully all within a tidy ninety minute time frame.

These films have little to do with Christmas other than giving the set decorator a theme in which to work, but they do provide an empty sugary treat of a romance story for a cold winter evening. And, really, considering the fact that Hollywood doesn't seem to bother making love stories anymore, it isn't any wonder that we find ourselves scratching that cultural itch with less fulfilling means. The season seems to lend itself well to the notion of romance--it being cold outside and all. But there is more to it than that. We expect magic at Christmas. And what, more than love, is closer to our ideas of magic?

Love--unlike its counterfeit, lust--is not about ourselves. It is almost the only thing that isn't these days. Love is the demotion of self on another's behalf. Love is selfless while paradoxically being the most fulfilling emotion that we can experience.

It is because there is a sense of expectation that precedes Christmas that we look for stories about love sought and attained. Even if it is only the thinnest suggestion of love from the feeblest of actors working with the tritest of scripts. We long for love stories all the same. We long for the magic that removes us from ourselves and places us in a better story.

 Advent-- the four weeks leading up to Christmas--are pregnant days. It is the preparatory season that deepens the joy of Christmas. It is the building of expectation that something wonderful is coming. There is a miracle due on December the 25th. There is hope that love will be born.

This love that we are all hoping for--reflected in romance-- is the manifest, incarnate love of God. Women in particular, look for romantic love to save them. As much as the current wave of feminists scream that women don't need men to save them; we can't seem to help but hoping that some particular man will. Not just anyone, either. It has to be the right one. People misuse the fairytales, too. Cinderella needed the prince to fall in love with her to rescue her from toiling away for people who did not love her. Love rescues us from indifference; from rejection. Love looks upon a masses and chooses you for your own self. Love is rescue, because it fills up the empty places where people and things are missing in our lives. Love makes the bleakest outlook bearable; love imparts meaning and purpose.

It is love that clothed the Word in flesh in at Christmas. It was love that brought Him to dwell among us; plucking us from the impossible problem that we have been living in.  Without this love-prompted departure from Heaven, we would still be stumbling about in the dark.


The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shined.
[...]
For to us a child is born
to us, a son is given; 
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called,
Wonderful Counsellor,
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.
(Isaiah 9:2,6)

The best of the Christmas-themed stories are all grounded in the need for a miracle; for the perspective of Heaven to break in and change the parameters of the possible; for love to break through. In Charles Dickens's, A Christmas Carol, the hard reality of dwelling in deep darkness is tangible in Bob Cratchit's cold hands and long hours, in Tiny Tim's sickliness and  Scrooge is not merely an old crank; but instead a man who has lived life according to his own morality of self. He has submitted his will to nothing and no one. It is only through an unwelcome encounter in which the  spiritual world clashed with his material world, does Scrooge come face to face with the agony of regret.

“You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"
"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” 

The miraculous coming of Jesus to earth is the answer that the world has been waiting for without knowing it. Light has dawned. Jesus is the antidote to regret; not for the hope of better actions but receiving from Him a living heart, rather than the one of stone engirded by the chains we make for ourselves.  The Netflix/Lifetime/Hallmark movies are saccharine without substance because they have no past tense--they acknowledge no real sorrow or regret. There is no danger of the story not resolving. As such, they can only offer a sugary confection that evaporates as soon as it is ingested.

The weighty joy of Christmas surpasses mere gaiety because there are stakes. There is evil. Mankind is fallen from glory. We are all in desperate need of saving from the shadow of sin that covers each one of us. Dwelling in darkness is to reside in fear. It is meaningless, direction-less, and characterized by confusion. Living there has externalities: hopelessness, faithlessness, lovelessness, joylessness. It is the reactionary world of addiction and abuse; abandonment and rejection. The stakes are real.
We are in desperate need of the Light of Christ.

That is why we expect miracles at Christmas--because we got One.

Things I thought about writing while mixing my metaphors.

"November is usually such a disagreeable month... as if the year had suddenly found out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it."

-L.M Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

It’s the beginning of November and I’m watching the snow falling on the roof of my garage and undoubtedly covering the gardenia plant that I nursed all through Canadian summer to the production of a solitary bud that has yet to open. I’ve given up hope that it will ever bloom and release the sweet, intoxicating scent known to that temperamental shrub that blesses gardening zones that fall in the double-digits. Really, I am amazed it has lasted this long, albeit abetted somewhat by my schlepping it into the garage late at night when the mercury is predicted to drop. I’m done with that, though. Time to let go and let God, as it were. There are some things that you cling to in October, that November buries at long last.  

October is a month of nostalgia. Even writing out the word, I remember the almost lost days of elementary school and writing out the date on the top right hand corner of my notebook page in the large, looping hand of my childhood penmanship. October lent itself to illumination. Pumpkins. Leaves. Black cats and jellyfish-shaped ghosts flitted around the dates that marked my education. It is a month that keeps giving. Thanksgiving and Halloween and warm sunshine with crisp apple cider scented wind as the unharvested crab apple crop softens on the branches of gnarled and naked trees and perfumes the air before splattering on the ground below. They’re mess makers, those trees, but forgiven once again come May when they adorn themselves in a luxurious display of blossoms.

But May is still a long way off, yet. There’s November to get through. November with its grey skies and flurries. Its blankets of snow that deflate into grey slush and tire tracks and melting footprints on sidewalks. November with its biting winds and hitched up shoulders. It’s easy to lose hope in November. It is easy to feel like I’ve gotten jammed up, somehow frozen in place and waiting for the sun come near enough to warm me back to life so that the sap runs again. November feels like going to bed and being tortured yet again by the thought that nothing happened today—just like yesterday. If the Christmas season didn’t follow on this clinical depression of a month, I’m not sure any of us would make it. I turned on my Christmas playlist this afternoon in an effort to keep the grey at bay. As though I were one of the little animals turned to stone in C.S Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe celebrating the return of Father Christmas to the land of perpetual winter. That is the astounding thing about stories, they tap into something real and primal—feelings that you didn’t know you had until something in your chest echoed back with perfect pitch the truth revealed in a story. Winter without Christmas—without celebration—is November. Process without the anticipation of hope is a sick land under a spell. The always winter, never Christmas of Narnia, is me if I turn my heart to stone;— incapable or unwilling to celebrate the goodness of God that is coming; indeed, that is already here. 

‘Aslan is on the move’ was the whispered hope of frozen Narnia. Despite the fact that nothing has melted yet, and the world looks as frozen and hopeless as it did yesterday, Aslan is on the move. Thank God for C.S Lewis and the truth of Narnia. A fantasy story about children and talking animals and a white witch who tells you what you want to hear in order to ensnare you into betraying that which is most dear; and the wonderful Lion who isn’t safe, but is good.

Writing that doesn’t reveal the truth is selling something. Perhaps unintentionally, but selling something, nonetheless, even if it is just an interpretation of the world. If it isn’t true down deep, it’s marketing. It’s despair or folly with a clickbait title—it’s the White Witch telling you what you want to hear in order to get something from you.

There are times when the truth is easy to see,—like the yellow brick road that Dorothy followed to reach the Emerald City and find the Wizard of Oz—it is a pathway laid clearly before our feet. And yet, there are other times, too; like the field of soporific poppies where the truth you want to walk on is a hidden thing and the very air itself an opium haze meant to lull you to a death like sleep. 

The truth—that golden path— desperately needed, desperately sought, but hidden amid the snares laid by a different witch. Funny isn’t it, that we expect the truth to lead us somewhere? The questions posed by the longing in our lives are waypoints on a map whose destination in marked with a cross. But no matter how long we’ve been searching and waiting and bearing up, the answers to the urgent feeling of longing within elude us. 

“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to search it out.” (Proverbs 25:2)

Strange to think that God has deliberately hidden things from us in order that we might discover nobility in searching the answers out. Writing is a means of searching. Flannery O’Conner once said that she wrote in order to discover what she was doing. Andrew Klavan, another author I admire, said he wrote fiction in order to work out his worldview and I find myself doing the same. There are places that I keep coming back to; ideas and ideals that become inevitable plot points or character traits because they mean something—profound or precious—to me. In every piece of writing, I see the themes emerging like a polaroid photo that gradually reveals a familiar face. At first they are only off-colour, misshapen unrecognizable blobs, but gradually as the the whole takes shape, the ideals come into focus. The ideas that are powerful to me both for good and ill are already present even in the execrable first drafts. They are in the DNA just waiting to be expressed. The problems that I don’t know the answers to; the truth that I am hungry to find. 

Someone asked me recently if I knew the ending of my novel Altruism in Gophers before I started writing it. My answer felt too close. I said I knew where I wanted to go, but I didn’t know how to get there. I could have been talking about myself, rather than the story. How can I as an author answer the questions posed by the characters and the plot when I don’t know the answers myself? 

Writing—for me—takes a very long time. Months go by without much measurable progress, except perhaps for the savage editing of great swaths of text, and a particular brand of self-loathing that I can’t get where I want to go. Providence and serendipity have to play their parts in fiction and in life—but not so heavy-handedly or the reader rolls her eyes at authorial convenience that cannot get within spitting distance of the truth. And yet, I am desperate for serendipity; for Providence to step in with a deus ex machina; lest I sink like Atreyu’s horse Artax into the Swamp of Sadness in The Neverending Story. The search for the truth of the matter is exhausting and costly. Perhaps only kings can afford it—or maybe it is the quest itself that makes a king.

Writing is a strange pilgrimage of discovery and creation. We write and fail and try again. Columbus set out on his voyage in order to find a new trade route to India and discovered North America instead. Sometimes—usually—the answer is different than what we expect. And usually, the search takes much longer than you ever thought possible when you started out: this searching for what God only knows. And it feels like the answers will be out of my grasp forever. But—I remind myself when I feel melancholy and in danger of writing a depressing poem—it’s just November and Christmastide is coming.

Why the Second Book Often Sucks

So--my book is out there. You might have noticed all my shameless self-promotion of late. (Altruism in Gophers now available on all Amazon marketplaces!) And while I've stepped into a bewildering new world in terms of marketing and independently publishing, I've also come to the end of a project. Something that only existed in my mind for several years is now a real book that anyone can buy.

Before you have anything published, whenever someone asks you what you're working on, it feels like you're describing a personal game of Pretend. You feel like a phoney playing at being a writer. And, it's easy to see why, really. Your mind is populated with imaginary people in pretend scenarios. Everything is made up.  Everything is happening in your mind alone until it ends up in a document on your computer that no one is reading but you. It's basically a given that you're going to crave a little outside validation every now and then.

If I'm telling the truth, which bourbon and late night blogging seem to spur, I might as well admit that I didn't want to go this way. I wanted to write a novel, submit it to a literary agent or twelve, get picked up by some kindred spirit type who would shop it around to the editors they knew at the big publishing houses while I plunked away on another story. Sooner or later, I'd get a congratulatory phone call and a paycheque and eventually I'd see my book stacked up on the tables at Costco when shopping in bulk for things I never knew I needed. That's how I wanted it to go. My dreams are small(ish).

That's not how it went.

While I personally prefer stories with satisfying resolutions, so far my own saga is more like a European art flick where nothing much ever happens, but damn, that main character is maddeningly compelling. (Actually, I don't watch those kinds of movies. I've moved into a purely escapist Action Adventure viewing era. I'm very happy here.)

What did happen was that I got ignored and rejected. At first it rocked my confidence, especially in light of the unimpressive fare that gets peddled as worthwhile reading these days. Then, the process made me cynical about the market and the gatekeepers of the industry who I couldn't respect but who had jobs and paycheques and bios on websites that other people managed for them. A lot of these industry professionals had blogs with advice to give. I read them and wondered if they realized how much they seemed to speak out of both sides of their mouths with conflicting advice.  The pathway to publishing a novel is like finding your way through a corn maze in the fog at night time with disembodied voices yelling advice at you like the audience on The Price is Right. Who are these people and how good is their advice?

"Write what you know," is the the most ubiquitous writing advice you'll come across. And yet, does J.K Rowling really know what it is like to be an orphaned wizard with a destiny? Are the writers of mysteries constantly encountering murders in real life and solving them? Did J.R.R Tolkien know the burden of the One Ring? Did Pat Conroy really have such a difficult and complex relationship with his father--? ...Never mind.

My point is, what good is telling me to  write what I know, if the market and its gatekeepers are actively looking for something else?  For a while it seemed that the book industry pros were clamouring for teenage paranormal love stories, ("not vampires though, so overdone"). Then, they all wanted dystopians possibly about you know, maybe some games where children are forced to fight to the death to avoid starvation, ("but with compelling characters with original voices in unique scenarios...").  Now, it's all gender-bending protagonists and resisting in the Age of Trump.

It's hard to catch a trend--; even if you want to.

And yet, all that to say that despite my burgeoning cynicism about the industry professionals and their opinions, I never wanted to self-publish. I didn't want to do it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I wanted someone who knew the standard of good writing and storytelling to tell me that I was meeting it. And secondly, having to market and distribute my book all by myself freaked me the hell out.

It still does. But here I am. And this level of the maze is just as confusing as the last. I think the reason that I prefer action movies to most other genres is that there is an expectation of narrative resolution somewhere around the two hour mark. Not so, in life. I've written a book. I've edited, formatted and published said book. (Altruism in Gophers! Buy it here!) But the resolution still hasn't arrived because while the project is creatively complete, I've got bills to pay and marketing is another animal entirely. Writers can blather on about writing for themselves--which is creatively necessary--but they still have to teeter between artistically beneficial and commercially viable. Do I cynically undertake to write the next paranormal gender fluid protagonist resisting a supposed tyrant in a dystopian world of gladiatorial matches where all the bad guys wear red ball caps? Or do I write what I'm actually interested in? It's a lot of pressure and I think it may be why sometimes an author's second book often doesn't live up to the vibrancy or quality of the first. The pressure is real. How to make a living. How to connect your work with the people who will enjoy it. And, what to write next that will satisfy all of these requirements?

(Art by Cody Andreasen)

I often say that I'd be willing to sell out if someone was willing to buy. I'm mostly joking. Especially in light of the fact that the one story I've written that never received even a single rejection and was accepted within a day or two of sending it was The Energy Trader.  I cynically included every single detail mentioned in the call for submissions and dashed off the script in a matter of hours. I created an absurd superhero story meant to lampoon the whole notion that stories and characters had to meet the parameters of identity politics. But turns out, since it technically checked all of the boxes, nobody seemed to notice it was a satire.

I guess there is something to be said for selling out.

How do I hate thee, Hair Salons? Let me count the ways.

(I published a previous version of this article earlier this week in which I tried to be measured and composed. Turns out, it did not nearly begin to cover the blood lust that I feel about my last visit to the hair salon. So--here is the 2.0 version. New. Improved. Rant-ier.)

1. You sell personal dissatisfaction.

I read an article in the newspaper a couple of weeks back about a woman's experience getting Botox. She described in several paragraphs what drew her interest in getting it done, but then, once she had; and realized she preferred her face with movement, suddenly the fact that that botox exists was the fault of 'male expectations of beauty'. I rolled my eyes and called bull roar on that conclusion. She got Botox because she thought she'd like to return to her face prior to the appearance of the horizontal forehead lines that everyone gets eventually. 'Male expectations of beauty' had nothing to do with it. Not once in the preambling paragraphs did she allude to any men who were telling her to iron out her skin. Let's be frank, it was her own expectations of how she wanted to look--her personal expectations of beauty--that prompted her to make the appointment.

I know because that is always what prompts my visits to the hair salon. Feeling personally dissatisfied and hoping that someone will know just the right colour, or just the right cut that will make me feel good. This is the chink in our feminine armour. This is the the deficiency that the beauty industry--not just hair, but make up and fashion--exploits in their marketing. If we just bought the right product, or got the right treatment, we will feel good about ourselves. It's never, ever the case. The post-purchasing high is so fleeting, it is almost non-existent.  So, when I accuse the hair salon of selling personal dissatisfaction, I also need to stop buying it. Because honestly? Washing my hair is usually the best thing I can to do improve my appearance; and that doesn't cost me nearly three hundred bucks.

2. Your magazines suck.

Who are these 'celebrities'? Does anyone know who any of these people are? Shouldn't there be some kind of standard as to what qualifies someone as a celebrity? Plus, if you're just going to publish pictures of people I don't know coming out of Starbucks, I might as well just look out the salon window. Can't we get a Canadian Living or a Bon Appetit? I could peruse some recipes. What about some long form journalism? I'm going to be sitting here for three hours. I could finally figure out what the Crimea Crisis was about.

3. My annual appointments cost more than my car insurance.

There are no words for this. Just imagine a guttural scream of rage and pain.


4. A lawyer drew up my will for the same cost as partial highlights and hair cut.

Anyone considering law school should maybe go to beauty college instead. More lucrative.


5. You also want me to tip.

I didn't tip the lawyer. I feel somewhat bad about that now in comparison.


6. You put up cutesy little signs promising a teeny price increase every damn time I'm there.

So help me, I will rip down your stupid adorable sign!


7. I get charged extra for tin foil and a tablespoon of dye.

Now, I am not an unreasonable person. I understand that people have different types of hair and one person might require more dye or more tin foil than another. But presumably other individuals require less dye and less time in application. Yet both pay the same base price. A price, that the salon sets which allows them to make a profit regardless of occasional outlier with super thick, long hair. But, at nearly one hundred dollars an hour, one would think the salon is still making a tidy profit, no?


8. I get charged extra for my hair being blown dry.

Gotta love that the cost of the haircut only includes the shampoo and cut because there is nothing like spending big bucks at the salon only to walk out with wet hair. The salon I went to years ago before being gouged by my current salon had the gall to charge $8 for the use of their conditioner. Not some special 'deep' conditioner. Just the stuff that you use so you can comb your hair out. No one asked if I wanted conditioner. Just wash, rinse, and run it down the drain.


9. I get charged extra for the toner that brings about the desired colour result.

Not to quibble, but if toner is necessary to bring my hair to the desired colour--shouldn't that just be included in the 'colouring' cost?


10. Your salon is kind of a dump. This isn't some Enya-infused spa experience. It reeks of chemicals and I'm wearing a borrowed robe worn a thousand times before and getting the downdrafts from a neighbouring hair dryer.

During the course of writing this article I've had a (non-Enya-inspired) epiphany. Hair salons are the mechanic shops of the female grooming sphere. They play off our fear of not being pretty to sell us services that this vehicle doesn't need. They add in charges that should come standard and imply that it would be a terrible risk to go without.

There's the truth that cannot be denied: Abstinence is the answer, folks.

11. Scalp 'massage'? Are you kidding me? Torturous. We are all just enduring it.

'Scalping' is actually a very applicable term for the whole experience.

12. 'Complimentary' hand massage? Ha! (And also, why?)

How about including the cost of the extra tablespoon of dye, the foils, the toner, the conditioner and the blow dry, and just leaving my hands out of it, hmm?


13. Every appointment lasts three hours.

If this has to be the case, next time let's set up a DVD and get through the Lord of the Rings Trilogy while we're at it.

14. You offer me tea or coffee as though that makes up for it all.

The mechanic plays that game, too.

15. It. Doesn't.

Well done, hair salon. I am now Cortes. I am burning the ships. I am going to make my way in the new world without you. Does the market offer nothing between a ten dollar box of hair dye and the exorbitant prices salons charge? Surely there must be something. I'm going to find out what.

Infamous Day

My September 11, 2001 began in the dark. All days have that distinction, but generally I prefer to wait for the sun to signal my rising. But that morning I awoke at 4:40 a.m. for my opening shift at Starbucks. I struggled to shake off sleep as I moved around in the dark quiet of my parents house, pulling on my Starbucks-approved khakis and black collared shirt and tugging my hair into a ponytail. By 5:30 I was punching in and getting the coffee started for the early commuters. Calgary is two hours behind New York City. I was weighing coffee grounds while people were boarding airplanes. Starbucks plays canned music, not the radio, and so we were insulated from the information until a customer came in after the sun had risen and said, "I can't believe you guys are open. Two planes have crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York. One of the towers has fallen. It looks like it was on purpose. It looks like the US is under attack."

News like that is strange. I didn't know what to do with it. I think I had heard of the World Trade Center. I had certainly seen its distinctive silhouette in movies without really knowing what it was. Skyline shots of New York always featured it prominently. I had definitely seen the teaser trailer for Spiderman starring Tobey Maguire in which he traps a helicopter in a web strung between the two towers.

"It looks like the US is under attack."

I didn't know what to do with the information, but I felt sick. Apprehensive. Someone had successfully launched a sneak attack on America. 

"A day that will live in infamy." 

That's how Roosevelt described the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. September 11, 2001 was another infamous day. Who would do this and why? All of a sudden, the world was a different place and we were all in the dark as to why and how it had happened. I felt sicker still when one of our mentally ill 'customers' came in and said loudly and obnoxiously she was glad because she hated America. I had to walk to the back room because I couldn't stand to listen to her. I was nineteen and felt like a kid. Today I would have made her leave. 

Little did I know then that her raving would become a politically acceptable response in the decade that followed. My lunatic customer had a prescient sense of the coming zeitgeist.

My shift ended at 9:30 a.m. since it was also my second day of university. I walked across the parking lot to my parents Honda Prelude aware of the juxtaposition of the glorious morning of blue sky and golden leaves changing with the horror that was unfolding right then. A horror and uncertainty that had sent me--a distant Canadian--reeling. By the time I got home the second tower had fallen and the news was replaying the scenes of it crumbling. There were so many other scenes too. Scenes of people running through the streets of Manhattan as a tsunami of dust chased them. Shots of black specks falling from the towers that the horrified newscasters suddenly realized were people jumping to their deaths rather than stay in those towering infernos.

Other news, too. An explosion at the Pentagon that turned out to be another plane. All flights grounded over North America. Recordings of voicemails from passengers on the planes saying goodbye and I love you. A passenger revolt on Flight 93 that prevents the plane from being flown into the White House or the Capitol Building. 

I went to class that afternoon, but nothing was going on. The university administration had rolled TVs into the common areas and the twenty-four hour news coverage began in earnest. My memory of my first days in university is that of the image of the smouldering tower and the insane sight of a plane flying full speed toward a skyscraper. 

This morning looked just like that morning. Blue, blue sky. Green leaves lightening to a brilliant gold. September 11th. 

An infamous day.

An Authorial Gambit - Famous Opening Lines

My favourite way to browse for a new novel is to flip to the first page and read the opening sentence. To me, this is the author's big moment. These are the crucial few words that will prompt me to flip further; to read the back blurb, and finally to check the price to determine how interested I am in pursuing this story. Industry folks may talk a lot about having a good elevator pitch--a sum up of the story that can be delivered succinctly in the time it takes to step on at one floor and off at another--but I like opening lines. They're subtle in their revelations. They hint at a writer's style and priorities. They likely give some inkling to the themes that the story will encounter. Consider Pat Conroy's opening to The Prince of Tides: 

"Geography is my wound." 

Geography as wound is an interesting idea to mull over--individuals and stories not merely being shaped by where they take place, but injured by them. Immediately, I am given clues as to what kind of writer Conroy is, and what sort of story he will tell. Perhaps I am interested enough by this concept and its crafting to read further. (Spoiler: I was.) 

Margaret Mitchell grabbed the world's attention with the line:

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were." The nature of Scarlett O'Hara is the hinge upon which the entire plot of Mitchell's epic novel swings. When asked what Gone with the Wind was actually about, the author replied, 

'If Gone With the Wind has a theme it is that of survival. What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don't. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those that go under? I only know that survivors used to call that quality 'gumption.' So I wrote about people who had gumption and people who didn't.'

This author's Gambit is not the authorial gambit you're looking for.

An opening sentence might even tell you what kind of story you are holding in your hands. The obvious clue of Russian authorship aside, Leo Tolstoy's opener to Anna Karenina reveals its tragic nature.

 "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." 

Whereas George Orwell's famous sentence, "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.", immediately reveals its dystopian reality. 

Opening lines are the author's gambit. They are first overture in a relationship between reader and story.  And so, in honour of engaging opening lines, I humbly submit mine for your enjoyment.

The following is an excerpt from my new novel Altruism in Gophers. 

Chapter One - How the Damn Foolishness Began

The big-time bad decisions made in life aren’t made in a vacuum. If you are willing to look at the whole picture—dare to examine far enough backward—you’ll find there were a lot of little compromises that preceded them. There was an edifice of choices; a gallows upon which the final choice—the damn foolishness—was only the moment when you put your head through the noose. Few people get married with the assumption that they will commit adultery, but one thing does lead to another if you let it. Few drug addicts start out with heroin because who wants to be a heroin junkie? No one. You step on those paths believing you’re going somewhere else. But there are really only two actions in life. You are either building something or tearing it down. Creating or destroying. That’s it. The only question is how fast you are doing it. Maybe it’s Mach 5, or maybe it’s glacial, but it is happening one way or another. You think you’re treading water—going nowhere—but you aren’t.

Maybe that woman at the office has a really suggestive sense of humour and after a while she’s texting you, and calling to chat when your wife isn’t home. One thing predictably leads to another and the next thing you know, your life shatters to hell because you left your phone unlocked and your wife happened to glance at it when it dinged on the counter while she was washing the lettuce for dinner. It wasn’t leaving your phone unlocked that caused your life to tumble to the ground like a gigantic, wobbly Jenga tower. It was everything selfish and reckless that you did up to that point. The tricky part is that it never really looks like it at the time because—like in that Jenga game—you get away with precariousness for such an impossibly long time.

I didn’t commit adultery. I don’t have a heroin habit. Some people think what I did was a lot worse than either of those things, even though it was essentially a victimless crime. I’m not saying that to justify my behaviour. I’m just pointing out how screwed up the cultural moral sensibility has become.

The first block removed in my personal Jenga game was the news that my parents were moving out in order to separate from me—their son. I am aware that sons usually leave their parents somewhere around the time they get their first real job. (Or, for the folks living biblically, when they get married.) But I never got my first real job. I mean, I’ve had lots of jobs but I never arrived. I’ve never even felt like I was on the cusp of arriving. Instead, there I was, thirty-three and still living at home and, if I am going to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t even that unhappy about it. And, no, not because my mom makes my lunches; she hasn’t done that since I was ten. Rather, it is actually nice to live with people you don’t hate. My friend Robbie once roomed with a schizophrenic drug user who kept going off his meds and starting fires in his closet and trashing the place. Robbie didn’t know about those issues when they first became roommates. There is a crazy that you only find out about up close. While my parents are utterly helpless when it comes to operating their entertainment system, neither of them makes a habit of psychosis, threats, drug use or arson. It’s pleasant to share a meal around a table instead of eating alone, your dinner for one illuminated by the faint glow of the television set left on for the illusion of company. There is something snug and homey about making coffee and knowing my dad will finish off the pot while he talks about the Arian Heresy or the collapse of the Roman Empire or whatever ideas might be percolating in his thoughts.

It isn’t all upside, though. There is a measure of societal judgment that accompanies living at home so long, but as any old person will tell you, the more you age, the less you care. There was a nine-month period when I was twenty-seven that it really bothered me, but after I got over that, I wore my residence like a badge of distinction. I was the punchline of so many jokes. I was the acceptable prejudice. I was an object of contempt to the sneering classes. Within a century, bachelors like myself had gone from being known as the respectable and unobtrusive sons who seamlessly and competently took over the running of the family homestead, to  cultural pariahs. It isn’t the same for girls. They can stay at home with their parents and nobody thinks anything of it. Nobody makes jokes about them living in their mom’s basement. It’s pretty sexist, if you think about it. We at-home boys really need some loser male suffragettes (suffragers?) to take up the cause. We won’t, though. Girls are much better at getting up in arms over bullshit nothings than we are. That is why you only see the really angry omega males in the dark corners of the internet railing against women while gorging on their masochistic pornography habit.

Those aren’t my people.

If guys are going to actually fight something, there’s probably going to be blood spilt, or else what’s the point? The right to live with our parents sans scorn hardly seems worth all that hullabaloo—blood crying out from the ground and whatnot. We want something worth fighting for—worth dying for, really—but even I can see that the right to live with Ma and Pop without mockery shouldn’t make that cut. What is worth blood and guts and death is the real question. Unfortunately, I’ve spent a good deal of time amassing a list of what doesn’t apply, rather than what does. I mean, I’ve got some inklings—certain intangibles like principles and so forth—but the call to die for your principles doesn’t come up as often as one might think, at least, not in Calgary. The worthy tangibles are people. A wife, if I had one. Kids. I occasionally craft daydreams about exacting a terrible revenge on those who threaten my imaginary family. But I don’t have a family. I just have dreams.

“Doesn’t it—you know—put a cramp on your love life?”

Everyone wants to know this, like it is any of their business. I see this question mark appear over a person’s head within sixty seconds of his finding out that I have lived at home into my thirties. As though living by myself would be some kind of guarantor of a happening lifestyle; like I’m Christian Slater in the ’90s or Will Smith in Bad Boys, and random scantily clad women are always showing up at my door in their lingerie at comedically inconvenient moments. Nobody really lives that life. None of my friends have, and not for lack of trying, either. Real life involves a lot less potential and a lot more humiliation and self-loathing. All the single people I know binge-watch Netflix in their underwear while glumly eating endless bowls of Cheerios for dinner. At least with my mom around I bother to wear clothes.

So—no, it barely affected my love life at all.

I’ve had relationships. In a fit of unqualified optimism a couple of years back (three years, two months and sixteen days, but who’s counting?), I even asked Cassandra if she wanted to marry me. She said yes with a blushing look about her and I felt—unoriginally—that I was the luckiest guy in the world. But while other newly engaged couples planned their nuptials, Cassandra and I inadvertently (yet painstakingly) undertook the destruction of Us. By the time we limped to our respective corners, our breakup was a textbook example of what David Foster Wallace was talking about when he wrote that acceptance was more a matter of fatigue than anything else.

So, neither my career nor my relationships have ever managed to generate any real traction. And since the Cassandra Incident, which escalated into a personal end of days, I’ve been content to weather the post-apocalyptic landscape alone. Alone is survivable. I reimagined myself as a confirmed bachelor of the black-and-white era of fedoras and nightcaps (the drink, not the kerchief from ’Twas the Night Before Christmas). I was Cary Grant or Clark Gable. Suave, witty and untethered by the romantic machinations of women who think not knowing what they want is an attractive quality. And inevitably, time just kept passing, as it does, without marker or notice and the next thing I knew I was being pushed out of the familial nest by my parents.

My dad refers to these confirmed bachelors as “beta males.” He subscribes to that anthropological theory about human interaction and relational hierarchy in which men and women have to strive to attain alpha status. Age does not confer it. It is only achieved through the selfless raising of children; the sacrificing of one’s own desires on the altar of parenthood for the success of the offspring. The beta members of the group are the unmarried juveniles. They may have great potential for alpha-hood, but they haven’t had to strive and self-sacrifice yet, so in beta-dom they shall remain. The only other category is the already mentioned anti-social omegas. They are at the bottom of the social ranking and are unlikely to do or accomplish much except occasionally take a shotgun into a mall and start firing in a hate-fuelled rampage. In such a scheme, it seemed to me that being a beta was A-okay. Especially in light of the fact that my attempt to join the alphas had been a colossal failure. Beta was my -dom. My mother didn’t see it that way, though. As I began to care less about my advancing age, she began to care more. She regarded it as a failing (possibly in her parenting), or a sign that I was intentionally avoiding maturity. I wasn’t. It’s just that things didn’t work out. They really didn’t work out.

Hooked? Want to read the back blurb? Flip through some more pages? Check out the price? Altruism in Gophers is available on (almost) all Amazon marketplaces. Check it out here:

https://www.amazon.com/Altruism-Gophers-Morgan-Wolf/dp/1983300187/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1534445321&sr=8-1&keywords=altruism+in+gophers