Where were you?

EDIT [05/11/08]: In light of my recent plagiarism troubles, I would like to point out that the link at the beginning of this post will direct you to Bradgarten. The title and original concept are his, and I use them in the spirit of fun and fair use. I was hoping people would carry the idea to their own blog. I may not have been clear on that.

Sincerely,
Me

I will not entertain any bullshit about not knowing the candidates or what the parties stand for. It takes five minutes to look up a party’s website and get a basic understanding of the people running in a riding. Also, if you’ve been living in the province, you know if you like how it’s being run or not. If you do, vote for the incumbent. If not, vote for anyone else.

I will also not entertain bullshit about throw-away votes. Voting is not gambling. It’s deciding who you want to represent you, and since we live in a democracy, that means other people are free to disagree with your decision. And yes, since we’re dealing with more than two parties, the winner often has less than 50 percent of the vote. That doesn’t mean the system is broken. That’s just how math works. And often, the winner takes into account the spread of votes within their riding and uses that to guide their representative decisions.

The results of the election, while really not what I was hoping for, are much less irritating than the lowest voter turnout in Alberta’s history. Why do we bother with democracy when people in this province, and really, in this country, don’t seem to care one way or the other who is making the decisions? Let’s just hand it over to the politicians to decide who’s next in line (oh, wait…). Whether you realise it or not, to rail against the injustices of tyrannical societies and then fail to participate in the most basic democratic processes is an egregious form of hypocrisy. For no other reason, you should vote because you are free to do so in a blessedly fair election.

So I’m disappointed and angry. I had better hear 59 percent less complaining about what the government is doing (or failing to do) for the next four or five years.

This week is Canada’s Freedom to Read Week. While, as a rule, my reading list includes challenged or banned books, I like to make a point of reading something during this week in particular that has been frequently challenged or banned at some point in history. Admittedly, Canada is pretty laid-back when it comes to the content of books. The national boards in charge of censorship tend not to get in a twist about controversial content. The school curricula seem to recognize the importance of reading difficult books in the development of critical thinkers (and there are plenty of schools that encourage the development of critical thought). Nevertheless, there are books that come under pressure from parents, teachers, and generally concerned citizens.

What flakes my fingernails about people who challenge books is that they are largely not interested in wrestling with complex content. The offending points of the written material are taken out of context or not properly treated within context. It is easier to shove the book out of view than come to terms with it in any mature sense. Or to teach a child to treat it with any maturity. How can a child learn to be properly horrified by the realities of racism or to subvert true injustices if they are never exposed to such concepts in a way that can be internalized? Too much cannot be said about the benefits of vicarious experience. Where else will we learn understanding outside our own lives if we don’t become submerged in another’s story?

My life as a literate adult can hardly be called oppressed. As much as possible, I choose what I put in my brain, and I like to think I do so with reason and intelligence. But I didn’t become this way because I was protected from controversial reading material. I was allowed to read and encouraged to think about the content. This cannot be taken for granted. We owe it to ourselves as reasonable, intelligent people to continue to explore the reasons behind the controversy. To confront dangerous ideas fearlessly and allow them to be gloriously dangerous.

This banner links to the Freedom to Read website, which contains a list of frequently challenged material in Canada and ways to become involved in Freedom to Read activities.

Friends are totally exempt from the small talk situation and will tell you that you are an actual crazy person.

You may find yourself asking what the thing is. The thing is we live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. At the 53-and-a-half parallel. In the middle of the freaking prairies. And it’s the beginning of December. Except for a few unusual years in recent memory, this happens every year. We live in a place with one long season and three shorter seasons. That long season is, every year, winter. I think that if you have been living somewhere for more than, say, three years, the regular seasonal changes should not come as a surprise.

I’m not saying people have to like winter. For all I care, they can get together and have a big old “I hate winter” mope-fest. As long as it’s not within earshot.

Most obviously, interesting characters. Not lovable, occasionally barely likeable, but always someone/thing that compels me not to throw the book across the room.

Second, an appropriate storytelling style. The vehicle of storytelling should enhance the story. I’ve had perfectly good narratives ruined by the writing style, and I’ve had higher tolerance for boring stories because they were told well.

Finally, the appropriate ending. I hate endings that don’t make sense, happy or otherwise. When the story doesn’t flow to its appropriate conclusion, books get thrown and I resent the entire reading experience, no matter how much I enjoyed the rest of the book. I would much prefer a book that leaves a lot of the denouement up to me than a book that putters around getting to the sappy end. I want an ending that gives me as a reader a bit of credit. I’ve read enough to feel entitled to that.

For a couple of years, for one reason or another, I got sloppy about writing at all, even in my catch-all space. But writing has always been important to me. Especially creative writing. I have always been imaginative, and I have always loved the written word. There was no way I could not be a part of it. I recently came the conclusion that I needed to commit to it irrevocably because of the way I look at the world and because of the way I relate to words. Which means, for now, simply making it important enough to supplant other activities.

I write for a blog because it’s instantly gratifying, the content is mostly under my control, and it isn’t isolated. I write more meticulously and the ideas flow more easily when I’m writing for someone. And I do write for specific people; my favourite advice from Kurt Vonnegut is to always write for someone specific (I think he wrote for his sister). The sense of community and the exchange of ideas is also vital to me for any kind of development as a writer. I’m not sure I ever want to come up with something truly original (if it’s even possible), but I do want to take part in the great historical conversation of literature.

I am not objective about what I write. Objectivity is not one of my goals, and I don’t think it is necessarily the best thing for an author. I do strive to be detached and to allow criticism, even if I outright reject the criticism. I put effort into what I write, I know when I’ve put the words exactly where I wanted them, and dammit, I will take satisfaction in my work. But then, no one asked me to be self-effacing. It’s a silly leftover habit.

The inspiration (and title) for this tirade was taken from a post by melograna at Complicity. I have to admit my reaction took a totally different flavour than I meant it to when I first read the post this morning. In my attitudes towards writing, I’ve struggled, and I think come to terms, with just about every point that was made.

I do have a quarrel with one of melograna’s points: I do not believe it is self-indulgent to “write what [you] want to, and then offer it up to others”. It is a great writing exercise to write something you don’t want to or to impose a form on your writing or to write for absolute clarity, but it is not self-indulgent to allow ambiguity to enter your work if the words you used captured what you meant them to. That, to me, is the ultimate goal of a writer: to hit the balance between conveyance and conveyed. To say, “To Hell with the audience” in the writing while permitting their interpretations in the reading. Furthermore, to pretend that a blog, of all places, should be something more than your personal writing playground if that’s what you want it to be is… well, foreign to me. Naval-gazing, self-indulgence: these are useless concepts to me. You are putting whatever you choose out into the murky-misty Internet. This is your claim and you do not have to justify its borders (though you may have to defend them once in a while).

Ultimately, as a writer who has a blog (as opposed to a straight-up blogger), your responsibility is to what you have committed to writing. I want to stitch together phrases sometimes just for the way they sound, but often I want to share a momentary impression or a corner of my imaginary world. And always, I put myself in command and at the mercy of my beloved words.