Obligations...

For most of my adult life I have had a strong sense of obligation to other people. Partners, parents, children and even friends. Some I have embraced, some I have accepted, some I have chafed under.

Right now I am free of any sense of obligation and I am really ambivalent about ever placing myself in that position. Now at this point you might be thinking that I am talking about personal relationships but you'd be wrong.

What I am actually feeling ambivalent about is whether I will get the SSHRC scholarship I applied for. And that feeling is emanation out of a creeping sense of obligation and expectation. I will be obliged to successfully undertake and complete a PhD and expected to produce material that will be published. I will be driven by someone else's vision of my future.

So I find myself continually drawn to the image of escape form obligation and expectation. Find some job anywhere, doing whatever. Keep the writing and exploration just for me unfettered by the institutional ties that give but also receive much in return. A life free of quid pro quo.

Help! I'm becoming undetached!

So today I had my very last oral defence of a term paper for the MPhil. It went well but now I suddenly find myself in a quandary. You see, I applied for a SSHRC scholarship to fund my PhD. Once I had completed the application I set all consideration aside. Then I was informed my application had been approved by my university and sent to the national office in Ottawa. Momentary excitement followed by detachment as I focused on my term work.

As the semester moves along I begin to contemplate the need for options so I apply to CUSO and start looking for work teaching English overseas. Detach.

But now I have finished my term work and the end of April approaches. The end of April is the time when SSHRC announces who got funded [ and by implication who did not get funded]. I discovered today that I have become undetached and I cannot stop thinking about the difference between winning a SSHRC and not winning a SSHRC.

But all I can do is wait. Help! Somebody help me become detached again!

Kurt Vonnegut...

Kurt Vonnegut died this week, victim of the kind of tragic accident that was fodder for his writing style. Vonnegut had a biting satirical wit that he use to slice through the farcical nature of modern life. His was a no holds bars take no prisoners kind of writing that you either love or hate.

Personally, I loved his acerbic wit and insistence that life is too important to be taken all that seriously. I don't think I could actually choose a favourite novel by him but Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-5 both resonate with me more than all of the rest. Perhaps it is because they were the first two I read by him. Perhaps it is because I read them in the 1970's when I was living the counterculture lifestyle that included a commune on the west coast of Vancouver Island during the height of the antiwar movement that swept across North America. Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were the authors of the absurd that helped us deal with our frustration and anger at a society that did not reflect our values and that ignored our protests.

That he reemerged to write one last book is not surprising. I listened to an interview with him last year on Sounds Like Canada, with Shelagh Rogers. He was a true curmudgeon who spoke the truth with honesty and anger and a with that threatened to shrivel the objects of his scorn.
Vonnegut was of a generation of authors that we may never see again and that is our loss.

Return of the mushroom...

I was poking through some old pictures only computer when I came across some I took the year I arrived here to start my Masters. These were taken on my family property in August 2005. The woods are like a parkland, wild and interesting. We plan to maintain some trails through them but otherwise allow them to return to a wild state.

There is considerable wildlife on our property some of it harder to spot than others.


Here near where my son Evan is standing on the bridge, I plan to build a weir to create a pool from a small brook that runs through a black spruce bog behind our house.

The bridge is on the trail that leads to the valley where I will be building my cabin. My other big project is to repair the trail which runs through the bog.

This is the view...

In a few weeks I will be back home cutting logs for my cabin. This will be the view I will see most days. I have always wanted to have my own place that I can share with others but also use as a kind of sanctuary when I need to be away from the world.

One of the many blessings that our parents gave my sisters and me is the property we share at Black Bank. Those of you who have been there know what I mean. So I am taking full advantage of this.

My place will be rustic - with a well and an outhouse but none of the encumbrances of modern life such as television or the internet. It will be about simplicity and solitude in nature.

I will be posting progress reports over the summer - including videos on Youtube so stay in touch.