A Little Off the Top, Sir!

I haven't had internet in the apartment for more than two weeks now, which explains why posts have halted. Though it has been annoying when I need to take advantage of conveniences I've gotten used to like internet banking and email, it has also been good because it has made me read a lot more and watch a lot of Cheers. I've also written a decent amount while I've been stuck without the internet. Not a ton, but probably more than I would have if I had it.

Last week was a pretty shitty one for the world. Here's something I wrote reflecting on that:

I have now read three novels by Timothy Findley.

First, I read The Wars. It made me think about the first World War in a different way, which in turn made me think about wars in a different way. It made me very sad. It was dark, but also realistic. The ending of the novel is at the same time empowering and disheartening, depending on how you look at it. “Not yet.” can mean believing in yourself and sticking to your beliefs in the face of insurmountable odds, but it can also mean that those odds will never be beaten and you succumbing to greater powers is inevitable. I guess I try to keep both of those things in mind.

The second of his novels which I read was Not Wanted on the Voyage, which also made me very sad. It made me mad at the way that world works. It made me mad at myself for being a part of that world. I think that if straight, white men are having a difficult time understanding their privilege and how it affects the world, they should read Not Wanted on the Voyage.

I have now just finished The Last of the Crazy People and once more, I am very sad. This book, as well as the last two, has had an undercurrent saying that the world is a fucked-up, flawed, and stupid place and that we are even more fucked-up, flawed, and stupid for trying to work and exist within it.

The sadness that is evoked in me from these novels is not the type of sadness that you experience while listening to a Smiths song. This is physical sadness. I can feel it in my chest and it affects my demeanor. I carry it around with me all day. I have felt pretty bad since I started reading this book.

But this is not a bad thing, because the ideas that Findley explores in his writing are truths of the human existence. All of the ideas and themes in The Wars, Not Wanted on the Voyage, and The Last of the Crazy People are the result of experiences and reactions to those experiences. This is not a guy writing sad stories because he’s sad, this is a guy writing real stories because the world is a fucked-up place and can be supremely terrible. Though we may not always experience it as such and shouldn’t always think about it in those terms, we should remember that sometimes.

I think that this is all the more prescient now, after two more young, black men were murdered by police this week. Common sense would dictate that after the many prominent cases of similar incidents within the last few years, police forces would, at bare minimum, at least instruct their officers to try to act with more restraint, but systematic racism is, of course, systematic and all cops are, of course, bastards.

To wit, from The Last of the Crazy People, which was part of what brought these ideas to mind, “Policemen were funny. They tried so hard to be nice, and yet they were so terribly stiff and cold and embarrassed that Hooker wanted to laugh at them.”

This is not an especially violent indictment of police officers and I certainly could have chosen a more powerful passage from any number of authors, especially by people of colour, but the fact that it came up in the book I was currently reading was a perfect coincidence.

Cops aren’t your fucking friend. You shouldn’t feel comfortable around them. Don’t trust them. They are here to enforce rules that you had no hand in creating or consenting to. They are scared of you being aware of the limits of their unduly gained power. It can feel like you are powerless to resist them, but being aware of what they can and can’t do is the best to start your fight against this powerlessness.

Fuck this world.