A buddy of mine does broadcasty stuff. Radio, bloggery, etcetera, and he put out a call recently on Facebook for interesting local stories – local to our city, our province, or what have you. I responded with heartening stories of:

a) A friend of mine who’s involved in fighting human trafficking through the ACT. They’re screening a film in a couple of cities this weekend about human trafficking in Red Deer.

b) Another friend who volunteers with St. John Ambulance and recently received an award for a whopping 638 patient care hours, which doesn’t even include the time he spends filling out forms, sitting in an ambulance, etc.

And I am SO PROUD of my friends that it immediately occurred to me to pimp them to Tyler as potential story ideas. I could probably name a bunch more people involved in similar activism and/or volunteerism, people who are brilliant and passionate and vocal about their causes, people who make a difference.

Notice how I can’t pimp myself for a local story idea.

It’s not that I don’t feel strongly about things. Like, the Haiti earthquake? Fuck that shit! People are still calling plastic tarps home down there! Ground-level ozone? Let’s put a stop to it! LOTS of things. I feel strongly about female circumcision, male circumcision, Chinese bloggers, endangered insects, the destruction of the world’s rainforests, breast cancer, Bangladeshi flooding, American chestnut treets, sweatshops, children dying of preventable waterborne diseases, debilitating nerve illnesses, natives displaced by gigantic hydroelectric projects, crying babies on airplanes, the plight of political refugees, artists whose work is suppressed by cruel dictators, victims of sexual abuse, amputees, and big cats kept in small circus cages.

I mean, I’m not made of stone. Many things in the modern world hurt my feelings. But for some reason (overwhelming laziness?) I never actually get out of the house and support any of these causes. Maybe it’s that I don’t care enough. Maybe it’s that I have no skills I can donate to a cause. Maybe it’s that I feel like I’m not going to make a difference. The $50 I raise for supporting, you know, cystic fibrosis research or whatever, isn’t going to cure some guy with CF; it’s probably going to the charity’s CEO. Or to like the company who catered the walk or something. If I volunteer for a three-hour shift at the ticket table to a film about saving the whales, how many whales does that save? Three hours’ worth of whale, that can’t be much. Half a blowhole?

So what I want to know is, of my friends who get out there and do their thing, and I know there are many of you who want to heal the evils of the world, how do you do it? How do you remain unaffected by the apathy and cruelty of everything that exists? How can I start helping the causes I care about? Is it in you, that passion, or can I learn it? Because it kills me to know that my apparently unfeeling immobility will end with me dying without ever having made a difference to anyone or anything.

An old friend often says he lives in his mind, and that, I think, is the essence of our friendship – we’re comfortable living the life of the mind while in one another’s presence. When you live that way all you do is think, and we think aloud as we please, uncensored and unplanned. But either of us could tell you that it is a teense bit hermitty and it can be, after a while, hard to get out of the house.

Hobbies are a good stepping stone on the whole living-somewhere-other-than-in-my-head path, and my new hobby – nay, my new obssession – is painting. (And by obssession, let me clarify: I mean I think about it a lot, not actually touch brush to canvas.) (I’m working up to that with pastels.) (Well, I’m working up to something.) (Look, shut up.)

Many of the things I am ‘painting’ (see above for how I don’t actually paint) right now are inspired by drawings in old books – I’d say about a third of my physical book collection is illustrated, and probably half of the books I have on my computer. Lots are from the public domain, like the one I’m currently freaking out over (over which I am freaking out? Wait, that still ends in a preposition. Over which I am out fr… leave me alone, I’M NOT AN ENGLISH MAJOR), entitled ‘Curious Creatures in Zoology,’ by John Ashton.

What I especially love is how Mr. Ashton has grouped real animals willy-nilly with, um, less real animals. I mean, sting rays are ridiculous-looking and they exist in real life; the cockatrice doesn’t, but it doesn’t for some reason look any less ridiculous. And if an explorer came back in hysterics describing an ostrich, it would be approximately as credible as a gryphon or a basilisk (or less so, in my humble opinion; I’m sure I’d have assumed he’d been eating sketchy mushrooms or something).

I think these would be hella fun to paint. If I ever get around to it, I’ll post photos up here or on SodaCraze. In the meantime, I’m still working on getting out of the house and am going to Vegas for a couple of days! See y’all when I get back, unless I’ve been mauled by a white tiger or drown in the Bellagio fountain or get tangled up with gangsters or bodyslammed by Celine Dion or any of the other wacky things that might happen.