I was looking for something today when it occurred to me that since I moved (plus also since I was born) I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of time just looking for stuff. Part of it is because I have an inordinate amount of belongings. Part of it (OK, most of it) is that I can’t pack. Behold the box of mystery, one of two dozen or so scattered around my apartment like the boxes in Super Mario Brothers:

That’s an Oil of Olay daily facial cloths box, so about four by five inches, give or take. I opened it worriedly and found:

1. Two compasses from various boxes of Kellogg’s cereal (one Toucan Sam, one Crackle)
2. A ‘Students Make Sense’ button from the a U of A career fair, year unknown
3. An electronic address-book keychain, Christmas present from mother, year unknown
4. Stack of 21 St. Albert Transit bus passes
5. Eyeshadow applicator
6. Floppy disk labelled ‘web page’
7. Magnetic LED badge, red and white, reading ‘Don’t mess with Texas’ and safety instructions
8. Mints from Eaton Centre promotion, year unknown, containing 13 mints
9. Sample size Estee Lauder facial masks (cleansing, moisturizing)
10. Pack of cherry Halls, two consumed
11. Scrap of giftwrap, already-used
12. BC Gas LED keychain, red
13. Sample size Estee Lauder ‘Beyond Paradise’ perfume
14. Sample size Oil of Olay hand lotion
15. Citizen dress watch, Christmas present from father, 2004
16. Two bobbypins
17. One silver earring
18. Ticket stub for ‘The Last Samurai’
19. One adhesive bandage
20. One plate for crimping iron, whereabouts of iron itself unknown
21. Article about how to be obnoxious

So, uh, yeah. All the other boxes lying around the place will probably have a similarly random assortment of oddness inside. This explains a lot about me, I think. About how I think, about how I talk, why I don’t have any sort of attention span, why I can’t live in a one-bedroom apartment, and why I spent all my time hunting for things. Disorganized much?

It’s not so much that he’s my cutest cousin (though if you’re getting nitpicky, he really is and always has been), but that his female parental unit actually takes photos of him, unlike all the other cousins. So here’s baby Nate again, aged approximately nine months.

Did your mood improve at all? :-)

I think the title says it all.

You must watch this video.

I don’t know what happens if you don’t, but it won’t be pleasant.

(Solange: you at least have to watch this video!)

Read the article, laughed, closed the window.

Read the article again, went to Google, looked up ‘Discovery Place.’ I actually thought it was called ‘Discovery Peak,’ but no, Discovery Place is the one that turns out to be a block and a half from my place.

The bears obviously aren’t going to wait till I move to Fort Mac. They’re coming for me now.

Awesome.

Last week I discovered that the Words and Pants Festival (or whatever it’s called) had invited one of my favourite authors, William Gibson, to speak here in Calgary. And I had a frisson of excitement that lasted about a nanosecond - or even smaller, like a femtosecond. On the surface, this seems like a very strange thing. Surely (the argument goes) you would leap at any opportunity to see your hero in the flesh?

And I’d be all, “No, actually, and don’t call me Shirley.” Heh. No, but seriously, there are heroes I want to meet and heroes I don’t. Given the opportunity to meet Shackleton, Attenborough, or Darwin, I’d jump ‘em with overintimate questions, photo ops (”Ernie, smile!”), an autograph book, and possibly a sperm donation cup (”Right here, Chas.”). But writers… writers are different. I’ve never fully understood why the life of a fiction writer - the writer as a person - should be of such supreme indifference to me.

Does it matter to me that a writer who writes a love story set in 1850s Russia was born in London in 1954, and is therefore going purely from conjecture as to the language, costumes, etc? Or that a writer who produces a novel about an epic trek across the Australian outback weighs 500 pounds and has never, in fact, left his Rhode Island apartment? No, not really, either case. Or (entering the realm of the purely hypothetical) say there’s a man in prison for, e.g., underage sexual assault, and he writes a new ‘Lolita’ for the 21st century; in the next cell, some white-collar dummy who’s been sent up the river for tax evasion writes a similar book. Do I care who wrote which book? Would I be more likely to read the first book (because it speaks from experience) or the second book (because he happens to be the more talented writer)? The answer is, the author’s identity wouldn’t affect my decision. In fact, I would go out of my way to not find out who wrote it.

Leaving the purely hypothetical, I find myself back mentally gazing at my crowded shelves: Nabokov left Russia and came to America. Don’t care. Amis wasn’t born till after the great Stalinist purges. Don’t care. Faulkner actually lived in the south. That’s nice. And Terry Pratchett raises carnivorous plants… big deal. To me, the life of a writer has no impact on his fiction, and the writer as a person should (if possible) stay the hell out of his writing. If I wanted an autobiography, I’d buy one (and I have - and most writers live really dull lives).

So William Gibson - as a live, breathing, speaking human being at the Vertigo Theatre - means nothing to me except as the carrier of the brain that produced some of my favourite books. He holds no particular celebrity, no special glow. I’ll buy his stuff, but I don’t feel any particular need to show up and raise my hand during the Q&A session to point out that his fly is open. I don’t know. I’ve gotten into some pretty acrimonious debates about the whole ‘writer as a person’ issue.

I often remind myself that Stephen Crane (author of ‘The Red Badge of Courage’) never saw a battlefield in his life. He had the right idea, I think, to see pictures in his head and just write them down. In the world of fiction, I will always value the imagination over the man.

I think most people know my precise opinions on your average west-coast granola-crunching, crystal-gazing, tree-hugging, earth-worshipping, chakra-balancing, I-can-see-your-aura, hemp-smoking hippydippy dopes.

But I went ahead and got my palm read on Granville Island anyway. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, mainly out of curiosity and a sincere desire that some people somewhere have a shred of psychic ability that they can accurately combine with a knowledge of hand biomechanics.

It was amusingly accurate for current stuff - she described the layout and decoration of my apartment, correctly predicted that I don’t have a TV, mentioned my driving (”You are a very bad driver.” (prods palm with crystal on a stick) You speed.”), discussed my fundamental art/science dichotomy with kind of eerie precision, knew that I wrote fiction and predicted that one work would be published by next year, knew that I used to be in basic research and hated it, and am now in management (but she didn’t know that I hate that too, because she claims I’m a natural leader), and mentioned that my personal philosophy has changed drastically in the last year. Which is true.

As for the future stuff, I guess we’ll have to see… there’s money in my future very shortly, she said, whether I choose to stay in my current field or move to ‘the one you know you desire’ (oilsands?), and there’s love when I’m about 29 - which makes perfect sense, since I was 14 1/2 when I fell in love for the first time, so why shouldn’t it be another 14 1/2 years before I fall again? And I’m supposed to be relatively accident and illness-free from now on (the cross-lines in my lifeline indicating crappy circumstances end right around now). My temper is supposed to get positively mercurial; my natural desire to save the world will apparently fade; my green thumb, which I actually rather pride myself on, will be given full scope. Maybe that means I get a house with a big yard? (Or maybe it means I go crazy and get garden duty at Alberta Hospital.)

All in all, it was rather fun and reassuring to hear so many things confirmed sight unseen and to have so many positive predictions for my future. (Oh, and it’s nice to know that I get to do the deed again before I die. Snap!)