100,000

That, my friends, is a very large number. But, it is quite meaningless - we learn at a young age that numbers must always be followed by units. So here is my unit - people.

100,000 people.

Dead. In Haiti - in a single day. As a direct result of earth's tectonic plates shifting.


When I was in Poland and Israel learning about how to provide an anti-Hate curriculum and using the Holocaust as my primary case, it was always emphasized how little the number 6 million means to people.

6,000,000 people. Dead. (And that's just the Jews). Did you actually feel anything?

What we were consistently told was that the stories of individuals needed to be shared so that people could understand not just the political and economic tragedy of losing 6 million people, but the enormous personal loss felt by those who survived them.

So, when we read in the news for the next week (until another minor celebrity dies and takes up more news coverage, or another Republican senate hopeful in the states is caught sleeping with a mistress) that 100,000 people died, I am going to try to think of it in much more than historical terms.

I will imagine my brother was one of them. That his love for graphic novels, his interest in educational psychology and how to interact with students that come from impoverished homes, his extensive knowledge of beer varieties was lost. Forever. That I will never see him again - that I will never hear him laugh. Or play video games. That we will never be drunk again. Never fight again.

And then I will add another character to the story. My friend, April. Who plays the baritone and alto saxophones just right. Who communicates so much joy with her laughter that spending a moment with her can brighten your entire day. Who always accuses me of looking at her breasts and then makes the intimate eye contact that searches are a little bit of confirmation. That loves the colour purple.

That my piano teacher, Sandra, with her wealth of knowledge about not only the piano and music in general, but also the importance of God and relationship, is to be lost forever. Her appreciation for hard work, and her absolute joy for the slightest improvement in one's ability to not only make music but the enjoy it...

I will try to imagine that the 100,000 Haitians that have died in the past 24 hours were my brother, my friend April, and my piano teacher Sandra. Because that is who died - they just lived in Haiti. And they have been lost... to somebody.

I will get to see these people again, and I will do what I can to grieve with the people in Haiti in the interim.

Make a love chain!

I think of what I would do without school to distract me.

Would I rejoice in who I am created as? Or would I find myself more frustrated and aware of the turmoil that exists between me and the environment that I exist in? Would fear become even more consuming, or would some hope manifest itself and raise me like air rising in boiling water? Am I even capable of that?

I have an unfortunate confession to make. I'm reading Twilight. I will admit that I am not really enjoying it - I find the writing poor, and the characters a little too obvious at this point. Edward points out that Bella always catches him by surprise; Bella reminds me of every reason that I am thankful I was never a seventeen year-old girl. She is predictable. Consumed by love.

But Edward did provide an interesting, and familiar, commentary. I'd like to type it out, but I can't manage to find the passage. Admittedly, I'm rather embarassed that I've even read it. This book really is trash...

Regardless, his commentary is similar to this.

I've seen a lot of movies. I've read a lot books, been to a lot of plays. Listened to plenty of music. All of these forms of expression talk about relationship. Deep, personal, and intimate relationship. Something that is inadequately described at all times but almost universally understood as holy. These movies, books, plays and all of this music allow me to think that I understand love. Because I do - just as well as anybody else, perhaps.

But then tonight, I saw my best friend hanging out with her fiance. I saw love and passion in their eyes. The way that they communicated with mere slight alterations in their eyes. The curvature of their mouth. Their understanding of each other with languages so-much-more important and so-much-less obvious that words; it astonished me. And I realized that I have absolutely no idea what it is to love somebody.

Love. I can act as a dictionary as well as most, I think. But, I have no capacity to provide experience.


I try and direct my life towards things that will matter to people around me when I am gone. I'm only 23, but I try to make this my focus. Somehow I always sense that death is one step forward, though in which sense I do not know. So I spend time reading books, writing music. Grieving. Things that I think make you eternal. Relationship is foremost among these ideas.

I sang at a wedding on New Years Eve where this idea was shared.

"Love is something that you can leave behind you when you die. It's that powerful..." - Fire Lame Deer, Rosebud Lakota.


I want to have experience in love.

I wonder if I will ever be so blessed.

Liquid Dreams.

"Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."

-Albert Schweitzer

Let me tell you about something that I know I am bad at. Love. I can't tell you much about it - but I know that I'm bad at it. I think it is something you have to experience and have to share to describe. And then you've got to battle with the restrictions of language - I hear it transcends words.

Just like lust (though Leonard Cohen is damn close to describing this).

I try my best not to be a smooshy, or sensitive. Its just not in me. I spent a lot of time in high school being immensely emotional as I was dealing with the reality of growing up. And so I have tried to purge myself of so much emotion.

Now when I encounter it, I am paralyzed. Concerned that it will bring back uncontrollable frustrations. Thoughts of suicide. And I never realize that it could completely alter my personage in the opposite direction; that, in some less-than-cliché form, I could be transformed by love. (Note: not Love.)

I have realized in the past weeks that I haven't an ounce of compassion in me.

I have tried to visualize this. If I were turned to liquid, and a chemist thought I was worthy of the effort, I could be distilled into my man different traits. There would be a jug of pride. A couple glasses of jealousy, one more full than the other (of course). A tumbler of anger, with some ice in it just to cool me down. An ounce of compassion.

I wish it were not so.

I have noted that my experience in teaching has made me more conservative. I was recently joking with a former colleague about how some parents should not be allowed to have children because they haven't any idea of how to raise them. Then we continued, saying that some people, particularly those with mental and physical ineptitude, should not be allowed to procreate because their children rarely turn out well.

I had this conversation. And I meant it when I was having it. And it has troubled me ever since.


An ounce of compassion.

I wish it were not so.


I am not the things you think I am.

Under the skin...

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

I am becoming that which I admire the least; the monster that I detest, that I fight. I look in the mirror and am increasingly this being. I am evermore filled with the things I find most wretched in humanity. I am not the person you see.

Please, forgive me.

Know that I am weak. That I am fallen - broken - stretched out. And that I can do nothing to remove me from the bondage of my existence.

Please, forgive me.

Fearless?

Did I do this?

Well, there has been far too much happening in my life over the past two weeks to properly share in a single post, but let me try and give you a hint of it. I will surely expand on a couple of these things in the coming weeks, so if you're interested in anything that doesn't get adequately covered this time around, expect it in the near future.

First of all, I've got 6/7ths vegetarian; Sunday night meals are my only non-Vegetarian nights. I'm enjoying it thus far. I can offer an explanation in the near future regarding my dietary choice; but I think it has a great deal more to do with the world I live in that with myself.

Second, I've spent a great deal of time this past week looking at my humanity. Or, my subhumanity. It has been interesting. I don't know if I have learned anything new over the past week, but I can feel as though God is popping up in my life again. As I've said in the past, I don't know if I like this.

Third, New York Marriage Equality was voted down in the senate earlier this week. I don't think anger adequately describes my emotions. I'm so exhausted of rights being denied. On the plus side, some very articulate and powerful people spoke in favour of Gay Rights, hopefully offering some credit to the Gay Rights Movement. But I can sense the "movement" is losing momentum; it is falling to shambles because of disappointment. It is waiting for the opportunity to say that progress isn't taking place, but that we have arrived.

That "we" including heterosexuals.

Unfortunately, the topic of this blog post is none of the above. And there are at least two great opportunities to speak about something other than myself - a goal of mine for quite a while, but never actually accomplished.

Today is about me. Again.

This past week I was asked out on a date. By a man. By an attractive, friendly man, who is in my age cohort (actually perhaps a little young... but that is ok). You see, I've gotten used to being gay around my gay friends to the point that I am confident - confident enough to be desirous to some of these new friends of mine.

I don't wish to be desirous. Yet.

I told him that I needed to think about it. The honest response was that I didn't need any time - I know the answer is, and can only be, no. Despite my immense desire to be in a relationship right now, I can only offer the responsible answer of no.

I told him that he and I are at different stages with this whole thing. I may appear more confident in it, but I am not. I'm broken, confused, and lost in a foreign world - I can barely see my life two weeks from now at this point, let alone involving myself more heavily in somebody else's.

I have not told a LOT of people that I am gay. A lot of these people don't need to know that I am gay. But many do. Like my closest friends in Regina, and Saskatoon. Like my brother. My grandmother. My aunt. My parents and I still have to have a conversation where we mutually acknowledge it. My church has to discover it - and while I don't expect them to be ok with it, they need to know in advance.

I don't want to go out on dates with a boyfriend and be concerned about people discovering me; I don't want to be outed in a vulnerable environment where I have little control and even less confidence. I don't want to be concerned about who is going to "happen upon us" while we are out for coffee. I want to confident and comfortable on my own; and I don't want anybody thinking that they can help me do this.

I told one of my friends that this was a crisis. She laughed at me. I don't think she quite understands...

Time is the bastard here. If I had been asked this same question in six months, I would've answered differently. I would've avoided breaking somebody's heart.

Kicked with a boot meant for a big foot.

I get these moments, every now and then, that are kind of like kicks in the ass. Really swift, painful kicks, probably from an oversized boot; and, despite my sexual affinity for asses, they are actually not particularly enjoyable.

Today, I got two.

The first was in reading an article written by Shane Claiborne. This is a man that I feel I was born to hate - he is a radical lover of Christ in a way that I cannot even begin to imagine. He is a humble man, devoted to the service of the most hated and impoverished people that could be found in America, and he is an evangelical. And, he is doing everything that I find absolutely endearing in Christianity, and doing it loudly so that God is glorified and so that people can be liberated from suffering.

This only hours after mocking the very ideals of Christian worship in preparation for one of my music ensemble's participation in an Advent Service next weekend.

I am a bastard. And I have a tendency to get my foot stuck in my mouth. Usually an oversized foot. And, even in considering my sexual affinity for mouths, this is also usually painful.

The second moment came tonight. I often find myself attracted towards gay videos on Youtube - there is an enormous collection of videos composed by people telling their coming-out stories. These videos have been, at time, my only friend. And they really helped me normalize my homosexuality with my identity.

Tonight I watched a speech given by a high school student to his classmates. This student was gay, he was attending a Christian (perhaps Catholic?) school, and he was speaking, in Chapel, about his homosexuality.

And I claim to have a serious identity crisis in trying to reconcile God and Homosexuality! Here is a man speaking from a pulpit about being gay. Being gay in high school. And looking for a boyfriend, as a gay young adult, in high school, in front of all of his peers. During a Chapel service. Supported by staff and students. And being... proud? In high school?

This just seems entirely unimaginable to me.



But it happened.

This student was a good speaker - and presented a competent, well produced speech. He referenced friends, experiences, and moments in his life where he realized his own depravity and his own potential for great things. He talked about family, as though it was his goal in life to have a family. It seemed familiar, somehow.

And he did this all at the religious school. (seriously, this wasn't staged - this actually happened!)

How do I reconcile God with homosexuality? Is it possible? Do I want to? Can I escape this idea that he even might exist, and am I prepared for what the entails? Is anybody out there that knows about God, that isn't a frightening Christian, and that is interested in battling through this with me? I could name a few... but none of them are gay.

I think I need to connect with this gay community a bit. I just don't know how. And I am kind of... scared.