C.A. Lang's Blog, page 8

Like, totally serial.

Now that things are back to normal, whatever that means, I’m really, REALLY needing to write. This will be complicated by the fact that I have a book of jazz chord melodies due to arrive on Tuesday and will also start building an actual repertoir . . . however, the good part about being in a building like this is that I can’t play guitar at all hours, so there are some times of the day when all I’ll be able to do is write.

The thing is this: yes, there’s a sequel to Blightcross nearly ready to write, but there’s also a serial in my head. I’ve even started outlining it and for whatever reason it’s coming out a lot easier than the novel at the moment. I don’t want to reveal exactly what it is at this point, only that it’s really cool and will be once again mashing together seemingly disparate elements in fantasy. And of course it’ll be related to the world of Blightcross.

Do I try to sell it? Or do I post it on here for free?

If it’s good, it’s good promotion. But if it’s good enough for that, why isn’t it good enough to sell?

To be honest, the short fiction market is something I can’t stand dealing with. There are so many magazines, the competition seems a billion times tougher than with novels, and I’ve never ever been able to pique the interest of even the smallest 4theluv short fiction market. This serial is just something really fun and cool and since I already have a novel published to sell, I’m not in the same mode of clawing for legitimacy as I would otherwise be. So maybe I should just post it for free.

Thoughts?

Ermahgerd. I exist again. Plus bonus rant: The Wagon Thing.

There. After 2 weeks with no TV and no internets, it’s back. I have too much backed-up nattering so I’ll keep this section in point form. Yes, things are THAT serious that I need to sectionalize this post.

–Owning my own place, awesome.

–Got a finger-wagging for not parking properly. Looks like I may end up being that guy in the building. I play guitar. I listen to two of the most hated genres of music–jazz and death metal. And I cook curry all the time. And I’d be totally happy to fill in the pool and save $100 a month on strata fees. I already pay for a YMCA membership. Why would I want to pay for old ladies to have a pool to sit around? Yes, I am a difficult person. This is why room mates are never a possibility.

–Young men need to tie their fucking shoes and stop dragging their feet when they walk. I’m serious. This is getting out of hand. Maybe girls nowadays see the dress and deportment of a toddler as “fun,” but let me tell you girls, there’s nothing fun about a man-child in an oversized, horizonal-striped tank-top with skinny arms, untied bulky skate shoes, and a dumbfounded look on his face, who can’t even pick up his feet when he walks. Grow up!

–Obsessed with this song right now:

I mean to be honest, blues is way way way way done. I hear (insert 80s blues sacred cow, many of them Canadian) and just feel this pathetic vibe from it. It’s got no staying power. This of course does not apply to real blues, like Long John Baldry. Ehhhhh, maybe even Eric Clapton, but only if some psycho had a gun to my head and made me listen to either him or Jimmy Page. I could actually enjoy it if I chose Clapton. At any rate, Billy Gibbons has enough personality to make the idiom work. I love this new song. I just don’t want to hear their old shit constantly on the radio. Or George Thorogood. Sweet Jesus. That came on right after the ZZ Top song, and I just thought that this Bad To The Bone bullshit was the most pussy-ass song I’ve ever heard. The best part about this moment was watching a slob in a rusted van drive by who apparently had the same radio station on and was blasting it. And he was so into it.

–You know you’re a difficult person when (#27): after two weeks of having no internets, the thing that excites you is that now you can research psychotherapists in your city.

–RICE PROTEIN. LOVE IT. THAT IS ALL.

–Actually no, listen up: who cares that it’s gritty? It’s protein powder. It’s not a restaurant meal. It just seems to work so much better, at least for me. Also: do not listen to companies pushing expensive rice protein because they say it’s “raw.” ALL RICE PROTEIN IS RAW. MANY THINGS LABELLED AS “RAW” IN SPECIALTY PRODUCTS AREN’T HEATED IN THE FIRST PLACE. Rice protein comes from separating the protein from the starch using enzymes. The process is sensitive to heat and can’t work, even if some evil “pharmaceutical” company wants to boil the fuck out of it for no reason, if it’s heated. I’ve still yet to hear a reason why raw enthusiasts think everything normal is heated at random, regardless of how the product is actually made.

The Wagon Thing.

Also going on during these past couple weeks: quitting the booze and the sugar all at once. Drinking nothing but spring water and coffee. Again, Sweet Jesus. Does that ever clear your mind.

Nothing good comes out of drinking. I’m a wine snob, I love it, and will likely be able, eventually, to enjoy it as a special treat. But the glorification of being a slave to this shit scares me. People think they’re heroes because they drink. Even I did to an extent. And now I don’t get it. The answer is probably buried in all that psychoanalysis stuff I’ve read, but who knows?

I’ve acted out a few writerly clichés. I won’t be specific but I’ve turned in crap written while drunk, and it wasn’t some artistic triumph but an embarrassment.

A few times I’ve wanted to quit drinking, but always justify it with the reality that it’s harder to socialize when you’re the one sober person. But then again, I’ve never cared that much about fitting in. Sometimes I worry about that fact, but in the end you’re better off alone than surrounded by people who will drag you down because they can’t relate to anyone unless they’re partying. I have a Nietzsche quote somewhere that touches on this point, but I’m going to avoid that tack for now. I mean everyone fakes it sometimes and tries to compromise in order to have a social life. Or maybe it’s just me. In any case, it doesn’t last long, so really there’s no point messing around with people you know are no good for you. If they’re actually good for you, it won’t matter that you don’t drink with them. Again this may seem obvious to the reader, but apparently it hasn’t been to me. I just assumed that since the majority of people I know are more interested in those kinds of things than, say, doing pull-ups or playing chess or writing books, that this was the way all people are and that compromise on my part was necessary.

It’s especially confounding when I’m in the position of helping people with fitness goals. Acquaintances often ask for help in losing weight, and since I’m not doing training as a job anymore, of course I like to do it to keep a semblance of what my skills in that area once were. But they always are unwilling to actually adjust their life–I can’t just throw a workout program at them and let them fail because they don’t actually want to live better and to their fullest potential. And let’s be honest–nobody lives to their fullest potential when surrounded by people who aren’t in that mode. And for most people who want a quick fix so they look really hot while they are in the bar, it’s entirely unrealistic to expect any real results. So I’m thinking I just have to save my efforts for people who have a good situation going and just honestly need professional help.

This also came up because I had no TV. It’s not a huge deal, but still a habit nontheless, and being forced to be without it for what seemed to be a long time made me reassess my automatic behaviours. Generally I mistrust anything automatic. This is not the same as gut. Gut knows all. Gut is what tells me my automatic thought/action is completely ridiculous. But that seems to turn off when drinking close every day.

So who knows how long it’ll last, but one thing is for sure: the difference is amazing. And I need to start writing very soon. Did I mention that I didn’t drink at all when I wrote Blightcross? This one needs to be even better, and no matter what some dumb artist cliché says, being impaired does not help you whatsoever.

Just some quick facts about what alcohol actually does:

–it increases estrogen. Yep, tough guy. That forty-pounder is actually turning you into a little girl.  As if looking in the mirror and noticing your gynocomastia wasn’t a hint.

–it kills brain cells.

–creates a plaque-like substance when it reacts with blood cells.

–uses up money that could otherwise be spent buying my book.

–increases risk of G.I. cancers. No, there is not enough resveratrol or polyphenols in wine to make it worth it. Just get a knotweed supplement, unless you’re just using the resveratrol thing as an excuse to drink.

–Impairs the immune system after about 3 drinks.

And of course there are the psychological side-effects. Everyone loves to knock antidepressants now due to side-effects, but alcohol causes suicidal thoughts, violent behaviour, depression, and any number of things that people throw against legitimate pharmaceuticals because doing so is in vogue, while they drink their faces off and screw up their minds for the sake of . . . I don’t even know anymore.

Not that I mean to preach. Actually, I probably do. Ah well.

OH YEAH.

Book signing in Vernon this Saturday. At Bookland. Bam.

Moving kinda sucks, book signings, and creepy villages.

I haven’t been able to do anything internet related due to having moved and, despite the nice door hanger that said my cable was functioning, it’s actually not. So my only link right now is my godawful outdated windows phone. I’ll pause while you laugh at the idea of someone actually using a windows phone.

I found driving a cube van kind of fun. Not so much watching the gas gauge falling by the second, but backing one of those motherfuckers into a small space is sort of like that utterly infuriating in-flight refuelling sequence in the original Top Gun game for the NES. Although it sadly wasn’t quite as hard and I had to get my jollies from other challenges like loading a queen-size mattress and box spring down stairs and through bushes on my own, then get it into the truck. Very satisfying.

Also thrown into the mix: a book signing 200kms away in the middle of the move, along with some sordid events.

Lessons learned: Do not let people leave shit at your house. At the time it probably seems harmless, but it’ll be 1000x more aggravating when you’re hot, dehydrated, short on time, and left with a nearly empty rental property that’s never quite empty due to someone else’s crap you figured would be easy to ignore.

By that same token: the whole waste conscious thing is flawed. Hoarding is to be avoided at all costs. If you have to question it, chuck it. We live in a late-capitalist society based upon overproducton–the idea of eliminating waste by not throwing away crap is insane. Storing garbage in your house for fear of wasting does not save the environment. The fact is that more goods are produced than there is money available. For us bourgeois (even us bourgeois who want to play ultra-left–leftism nowadays is the height of bourgeois ideology…just sayin’), scarcity does not exist. Pretending that it does (for us anyway) is pathological. Throw shit away.

Oh yeah. Book stuff. Kamloops is a neat place. I’ve always found it fascinating. I love the industrial feel to it. The landscape is a lot like the south, which I love. Not sure why the Central Okanagan loses that feel. But despite that I loathe the sun, there’s something that grabs me about desert-ish areas. Blightcross itself might be a clue to this fact. Anyway, independant stores in small towns seem to be hit or miss as far as traffic goes, but given the slow period that had occurred during my signing, I did all right. Doubly so given the obscure nature of my genre. I got two people who had never heard of Dieselpunk to give my book a try, so it was worth 4 hours of driving in the middle of a move. The thing is that anyone who was interested in the novel was themselves an interesting person. It’s amazing the things people will tell an author assaulting them with an unsolicited pitch. One person who bought my book I sincerely hope takes my advice and writes what’s in her head. People will surprise you and some who you would otherwise ignore do have important things to say.

Bonus: In the time I was there I outsold Fifty Shades of Grey by a ratio of 3:1. Now if only that figure would apply everywhere…

Creepy villages? Ah yeah. Rural towns are fascinating. Some adapt and become hip, like Ymir (buh? google it!) and others just give off a creepy vibe. I passed a few on the way. It occurred to me that a neurotic author embroiled in sordid personal affairs and a property purchase stopping in one of these towns for gas and a leak would be a stock premise for a Stephen King novel. I’m not even joking. It totally had that vibe.

Anyway. Throw shit away. Please. Your home deserves more than to be a garbage dump. I tell clients to not treat themselves as a garbage dump by eating more than necessary for the sake of not wasting. The same goes for your house.

That is all.

Ex Libris Guest Post + Blightcross giveaway

 

 

Punk Appeal.

 

That is all.

Dieselpunk Décor

I was at the bank getting a draft for my down payment today. The teller asked me what I was going to do with my condo, since there’s no way anyone would be able to live with 1977 wallpaper and faux brickwork. Shudder. Anyway, I told her I wanted to redo it in an ultra modernist way. She told me about Restoration Hardware . I mention this because it was interesting that this normal person instantly latched onto the Indiana Jones thing when she explained the stuff you can get from this place. It took a lot for me to not mention my dieselpunk involvement. I mean it wasn’t exactly the kind of situation where I wanted to come off as that nerdy.

It was just neat to have, for once, to not need to explain the aesthetic. So in a way, it’s out there. Maybe it’s still a little obscure, but take a look at the stuff you can get from this place. It’s pricey but who cares. This place has everything you’d want if you’re trying to decorate in a steampunk/dieselpunk style. And the thing with those is that you can’t be cheap about it, because modernism ain’t cheap. Nor should it be.

Check out this coffee table, for instance.

And look at this office:

Not totally how I’d do it but mpressive nontheless.

The conversation reminded me that this is actually my own home and I can do anything I want. Anything. Before I’d thought it would be neat to dieselpunk the entire apartment, but something held me back from actually considering it. Almost like, ooh but someone else might not agree with it. Stupid, yes. But I never thought I’d be in this position, much less this soon. I’m only just now grasping the idea that I have zero people to consider in how I do it.

So it might take a while, but this apartment is getting the full dieselpunk transformation.

The trouble is that I can’t do it all at once. So I’ll need to have it all worked out so that it’s making the statement I want. I don’t even know how to do that, but I guess it’ll just start with paint . . .

The thing I can’t figure out is the flooring. Anything remotely wood-like is out.

I think one of the biggest challenges will be to avoid bogging it down with steampunk trinkets. I don’t want it to be a caricature. And as for artwork–I’ve always wanted an Alphonse Mucha painting but does that fit with the look I’m going for? I want a little less Indiana Jones and a lot more Bauhaus. Flowing lines in his work, which I absolutely love, still aren’t going to mesh well with the metallic, angular look I’m going to want.

These are the things that will keep me up at night. That and the next novel.

And while I’m rambling about buying stuff, I cannot miss the opportunity for these special edition Clockwork Angels books . . . I mean how awesome is that? It’s pretty steep but something so awesome is worth the expense. I’m going to trigger the independant thought alarm again and call out that stupid New Thought idea that you should blow money on “experiences” instead of “things.” I can have experiences for free. I can’t get something signed by Neil Peart for free. End of story, YOLOs. A head injury can erase the experience you paid for in half a second. But stuff and things last. Heh. How’s that for Taurus stereotypes . . .

It’s because I’m an immmigrant. And a couple songs.

I’m moving in less than a week and haven’t done anything. The boxes I rescued are still in my car. What did I do last night? Play guitar.

These are kind of random, but fun.

Cry Me A River came out of nowhere.

It took a lot longer than I’d planned. The only reason this matters is because I’d wanted to get to the gym this morning. Sunday mornings at the YMCA are the best because nobody is there. But by the time we were done, it was very late by my standards. Which is to say not that late at all. I’ve heard rumours that people often don’t even bother to go out until after midnight. Bizarre. Yes, I’m not joking. That was news to me.

Anyway, I mentioned on my friend’s way out that I wasn’t going to make it to the gym. By the way, she’s also a personal trainer. And Ukrainian. Like enough to have gone to Ukrainian school and mingled with others who are the same in such a way that they got to just ignore the English. The point is that I told her I wouldn’t make it to the gym, there was no way I was getting up at 6am,. And because I couldn’t make it to the gym at the time I always go, I wasn’t going to go at all–I’ve worn myself into a groove at a certain time at that gym. The same people are always there. I don’t want to crash someone else’s shift by going at a different time. It just seems obvious to me for some reason.

She laughed and said “It’s because you’re an immigrant.”

It wasn’t a joke either. Not having grown up among immigrants who were okay with being outside the English expectations (even though there were plenty of Russiand and Ukrainians in Nelson), things I thought were quirks I just explained to myself by assuming they were my own, not some subconscious cultural trait. In that way the English totally won–anything different about me as a Russian/Ukrainian person in a small mining town was surely my own fault, not the fault of the English just not understanding or wanting to understand. Now, I’m not actually an immigrant–3rd generation Canadian. But in some cultures the subconscious cues are more persistent. Even if the generation that raised you had no interest whatsoever in even acknowledging that they weren’t Scottish like everyone else.

So given that obliviousness, the glib comment my friend gave me was a lightbulb moment. Canada is only really English, French, and Germans. Telling ourselves that we are multicultural is just a sales pitch. Tolerance of other races is not the same as having a deep sense of diversity–English still do not understand the mindset of a Slavic person. So while they’re all going downtown on Chinese New Year and telling a news camera that they’re so happy they live in a diverse country, they’re still unable to understand the more stoic, thoughtful, and grounded nature of the Slavs they may know. This isn’t saying anybody is doing anything wrong–it’s just that these differences clash in subtle ways that can be a challenge.

I’m making myself qualified to say this not only as a repressed Russian/Ukrainian, but as someone who spent months and months reasearching for an historical novel I wrote a few years back. It was set during the Winnipeg general strike of 1919 and the main character was a Ukrainian jew who was caught up in the labour movement while the city was going bugshit crazy. After all that work, I submitted the novel twice and gave up. If anyone knows of a small Canadian press interested in a historical novel tarted up with a dash of paranomal/psychological thriller kind of stuff, let me know. At the time I figured, like writers always do, that nobody could possibly turn down such a high concept novel. Hah. Oy.

If you haven’t read Blightcross yet, a lot of this rambling is relevant to the novel. Subconsciously I must have been addressing this issue, especially if it was mentioned in the latest review.

Fascinating.

The candybar thing.

 

You know how abstinence educators do that exercise where they get kids to pass around a chocolate bar while they talk about how bad sex is, then by the end of it it’s all melted and gross, and they use that as a metaphor for whatever it is their point might be? I’m feeling like that candybar and it’s awesome. Of course, I’m talking about the internet exposure my dear publisher has arranged for me.

 

Three new links:

–Rick Brown’s review on The Examiner

–Another interview

–Bookworm Blues review

 

The thing I like about these reviews is that nearly any point they make, good or bad, highlights an actual decision I made, rather than an accident or oversight. I think that’s the most important thing in art–to make real what you had in your head exactly. I guess in some cases, chance can be an artistic decision too. But in those cases, like modernist compositions that include on the score instructions to just add in whatever the musician wants, it’s still a deliberate act, not just the artist doing it because he was distracted, tired, sloppy, or whatever.

That kind of gets me on a Kantian kick. I mean I know it’s not really taken seriously anymore. But I’ve always liked some aspects of his “categorical imperative.” If people followed it, we wouldn’t be so comfortable with mediocrity. Or so careless. At work today someone had left a copy of Psychology Today around. There was an article about new attitudes towards infidelity–they had statistics relating to different situations that contribute to the likelihood of cheating. Social groups, work, ability to handle conflict, and travel. To be fair, it all made sense and pretty much echoes common sense–more opportunity to cheat = more likelihood. But they were using this facet in another typically postmodern attempt to make people accept their bad behaviour instead of own it and change it. If we reduce behaviours to things like statistics and being “weakened” by long days of travelling for work, alcohol, or any other excuse, how does that figure in to the neat Kantian package I’m talking about?

These new ideas mean that people don’t cheat because anything is wrong. They do it because they have the opportunity and little else. Where’s the intent there? Do they really mean to normalize having no control over your life? Acting automatically towards no end seems to be the lowest state of human existence. At least if someone were to do something wrong as a way of acting out, they’d be doing something. That doesn’t fully work with Kant’s logic, but loosely I think you get the picture.

So because of that idea, I’ve always liked art that is as close as humanly possible to what the artist had in his head.

 

Anyway. I wonder how that O Henry is doing by now . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July is weird, someone likes my book, and Freud.

There’s a Katatonia song simply called July. I like it because for some reason I’ve attached it to the fact that for me things always seem to go haywire, or bugshit, if you prefer, around that month. You know,”batshit” used to be cool until it appeared in a Nickelback song because the only time you saw it in writing was from Stephen King. And the particular Nickelback song I’m referring to is so truthful yet so obnoxiously irritating, depressing, and puerile that it would please me to never have fun again just to spite people like those mentioned in the song. I’m off track, however. But suffice to say, that is why I will never use “batshit”and always use “bugshit.” Besides, batshit is just guano. Everybody’s over that. But what the hell is bugshit anyway?

I really don’t know if it’s the July song that makes me read too much into things or if this is really true. But 3 years in a row now, the song’s significance is renewed with weird, stupid shit happening on or about July. In a way, it’s kind of cool because I do get tired of the song after a while, and having it sound new again due to some asinine event happening at least adds another, more interesting dimension to the asinine event.

The difference this year is that I’m insulated from said weird, stupid shit by the fact that I’ve just gotten what I’d consider a pretty good review by Rick Brown on The Examiner.  

I mean that’s pretty big for me. And as I said in this interview at Nine Day Wonder, also conveniently appearing today, being anxious about your book definitely does not stop once it’s been published. It only really begins. So whatever else goes on right now, at least I have some decent reviews behind me to validate my existence. I’ve come to the point where it doesn’t matter how many people leave this book beneath a pile of junk mail beside their toaster oven. The publisher made a good decision. It worked out. I have actually created something of value to someone out of nothing but my own mind.

Don’t immediately pin that to narcissism–let me explain.

The idea that someone can value a product like this is pretty unique. On a superficial level, it’s just the fact that it has nothing to do with my personality, my appearance, or my social skills. I did not flirt, wink, fuck, lead-on, charm, lie, rip-off, undercut, bully or bargain my way in. Granted it’s not a NYT bestseller, but it’s out there and it works, and the only thing on which it was judged was the work I did. That might sound obvious to all 2 of you reading this, but in the realm of small-town Canada’s social bullshit, it’s kind of important. The drive to do anything of value in small town culture is dwindling in my generation and those following it. So if it seems weird to both of you that I would find titillating the idea of being valued for something you did rather than what you said, who you lied to, how you looked, or how dumb your victims were, it’s just the unfortunate fact that I’m a product of rural backwardness. Maybe them folks in New York City encounter that all the time. I don’t know, or care. The cliché of actions speaking louder than words is completely lost at this point. Just sayin’.  And that’s unfortunate.

As always on this blog,  and unapologetically, it comes back to Freud.

Death drives, or Thanatos, are based in the repetition of trauma, and destructive forces. They are rooted in the subconscious desire to revert to an immaterial state in order to avoid internal tension associated with stuff like . . . being alive, and reality. For all you psych majors out there–it means that people who can’t handle reality just want to be animals or rocks because it’s not upsetting to be an animal or rock because you can’t think of all the shit that makes sentient beings pissy once in a while. If you can’t deal, just find a way to avoid that internal stimuli and revert to an easy existence of mediocrity. The partier, the addict, the Nietzschean Last Man. YOLOs. Wait, what?

“But cranky author guy, I thought YOLO types were the epitome of living life to the fullest?”

Are they? What do YOLOs do? They buy stuff, they consume drugs, they destroy themselves in the name of living. They leave nothing behind, and have no desire to.

Think: which is more likely–”Man, I totally regret never doing acid,” or “I really should have learned to play that instrument/volunteer for that organization/write this or that thing that’s always been in me?”

What do people really wish they had done when they’re dying? Does it ever have anything to do with what our culture currently says is life-affirming? The answer is no.

Have you really ever heard anyone say they regretted not doing more drugs or failing to get raped in a taxi after an awesome life-affirming night of drugs? No? Then YOLO’s logic is void. End of story. This the subconscious’ way of dodging our conscience.

Eros is the sex drive, according to Freud. The real one. The one of creativity, coherence, positive contribution, and procreation. YOLOs may confuse this with their superego desires to have drunk sex in a night club toilet stall reeking of puke, but there are major differences. If you’re into astrology, Cancer and Taurus are good examples of Eros. Both are associated with the arts, but also banking, carpentry, music, the home, and generally anything constructive.

I’m even going to throw Ayn Rand into this mess again. YOLOs like to quote her, because superficially some quotes in isolation do appeal to death drives, since they encourage individualism and so on. But Rand’s thing, outside of all the controversy, amounted to productive achievement. Even though Rand probably would dislike psychoanalysis for its association with the left, she might appreciate that basic tenet I’m talking about.

So the point behind all that ranting is that sometimes, especially in a small town situation, it’s easy to lose sight of yourself as a creative person because nobody else gets what you’re doing, unless it’s being in a shitty bar band. But it shouldn’t matter what anyone thinks about you if their drives are centred around avoiding reality, rather than building it. And if that’s something that’s obvious to both of you awesome readers of my blog, then I apologize. It’s just not that obvious where I live.

Book Launch Day

 

 

Today I did my first real book signing. I was at Mosaic Books in downtown Kelowna for just two hours, and I was a little unprepared. No business cards. No poster. No clue. I thought publicity wasn’t an issue since so many people seemed interested, so I trusted that word of mouth was going to take care of it.

Word of mouth works . . . but you have to watch who you depend on for it. It works with people who are into whatever you’re doing. It doesn’t work with acquaintances who act interested when you see them but couldn’t be arsed when the time comes. Not a complaint, just a lesson in targeting the right audience. This will serve me well for upcoming signings.

For most of it, I felt like that tree in the forest again. But towards the end there was a crush of people who likely were all like “erm . . . was there something I was supposed to do today? Uhh. . .  Oh. OH. shit.”

I hit the average amount of sales for this situation, which is a big success given my situational shyness and the stack of Fifty Shades Of Grey in front of me. So, quite a success.

The coolest part of this was meeting fellow Tyche Books author Kevin Harkness, who just happened to be in the area today and stopped by the bookstore. He’s a neat guy with a good writer vibe and I really enjoyed the quick chat. I need to talk with more writers and readers of this stuff–my circle of people has nobody who even remotely gets this stuff and that’s why I constantly feel the need to justify everything I do. Anyway, his bookCity of Demonsis being released July 25. I suggest you check it out.

Also, my realtor showed up. And the elderly lady from whom I recently bought my condo. These instances of randomness more than made up for the large amount of people who seemed to have forgotten about it.

Anyway, it was very cool. I’m glad to have this under my belt. Pardon the cliché. Now I’m looking forward to the next one.

 

Reverse Vampires Are Just Normal People . . .

 

. . . . and people with Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder aren’t vampires but normal people who just feel gross when it’s too sunny.

White Is The New Black

So my 4 readers may recall the way I go on about summer and how I’m not as keen on it as the average person. There could be a reason behind this. It’s Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder. Actually I think one of those 4 readers might either be on vacation or have been sucked into Pinterest and has totally forgotten about reading other people’s thoughts in favour of a disjointed intravenous supply of wish-fulfillment simulacra.

Okay, so take a moment to laugh. I’ll patiently wait, since it’s dark out and I’m not as agitated as if it were 3pm on a clear day right now.

I used to scoff at this idea. Being that I’m prone to depression, although it’s been treated and it’s not a big deal, you’d think the idea wouldn’t have seemed so ridiculous. A family member of mine claimed to have this and to me it just seemed like someone over-dramatizing personal preference. I mean we all like different things, and just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s causing you some deep anguish, right? However . . .

Discomfort during the summer can be as real as S.A.D. is. Most people nowadays accept that S.A.D. is real, because everyone hates winter and it’s damned cool to have a scientician-verified reason to bitch about the weather 6 months of the year (I’m in Canada, remember) as opposed to just coming off as a whiny dick every day at your coffee break or at the bus stop. Then bring in natural health fads, which always have gut appeal–like the vitamin D craze. Winter is the prime scapegoat when it comes to environmentally-induced mental disorders.

Not anymore. Summer is a loudmouthed, overbearing jackass that can cause agitated depression. Oh, you S.A.D. people think you’ve got it bad because you’re lethargic during the winter? How about being constantly nervous, restless, and yet still at the same time depressed while everyone else is wearing crocs and getting drunk on a boat and being dehydrated and deluding themselves into thinking their full-body dry-heaves on the dance floor have anything to do with good taste? Bam. According to the googlemachine, somewhere between 1 and 5 percent of the population suffer from reverse S.A.D. So it’s obscure. But nontheless potentially quite real. On one hand, you might want to discount any new mental health label that seems too detailed or convenient for a minority because psychology is over-diagnosing in a lot of cases nowadays. On the other, maybe the societal norm to obey a command to enjoy during the summer is skewing our view of a very plausible brain chemistry situation.

This is an interesting condition because it’s complicated. And as 3 of you may know, I enjoy complicated things. It can either be due to the heat, or the light. For me, and my family member, it’s mostly the light. This is the most fascinating thing to me. Lots of people hate heat, but still find a way to enjoy summer because in reality, part of the fun of summer is finding a way to cool down by way of crowding the frozen-pudding wagon or donning your wool swimming trunks and taking a constitutional in the local swimming-hole. I’m not such a lameass that I discount that fun part of summer. But the quality of the light is subtle but huge. If you googlemachine this one, you see accounts of people who feel that summer sunlight cuts through them. Others define it as confining, or a prison.

Personally, the idea that the sunlight in summertime is oppressive is exactly what I’ve felt all my life. To me, springtime is great because it’s not oppressive but you still get the benefit of nice weather. But come summertime, I get a bit more nervous. When the sky is clear and the sun is broadsiding us, I feel like I’m in the tiniest prison cell. It’s not the heat–if it’s cloudy and there are thunderstorms (I fucking love thunderstorms!) and it’s 35 sticky humid degrees out, I’m ecstatic! I have so many good summertime memories associated with heavy cloud and forest fire haze and tunderstorms. Even tornadoes! But bring out that full-bore sunlight and I’m done. It’s like being on a forced march. A rifle at your back, trudging for an unknown  distance, with no idea when you’re allowed to stop.

It has nothing to do with common physical discomfort–I do not burn in the sun, and as I said, I handle heat just fine. I can get a tan any high-maintenance ditz would die for. I never use sunscreen. Yet the reason I’m giving this disorder credence is because it actually is a physical reaction. When the sun is a certain way, it causes certain symptoms. Done. That’s it. Irrespective of anything else going on. Life happens all year round, but summer is fairly specific.

 

No whining. You just deal.

This actually makes me feel better. When I’m having a bad moment, I can usually tell that it’s not me but something related to depression, and separate me as a person from these thoughts and thus cancel them out and live normally. But in the summer, societal norms pressure me into thinking there’s something wrong with me since everyone loves summer and here I am feeling a bit off because of it. So in that case, I want to ignore my gut and assume that these sensations are due to some other psychological problem. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and maybe it’s not realistic to assume that summer must necessarily mean happiness and a sense of wellbeing for all.

My saving grace in this is running and hiking. I don’t shut myself away in the summer-that would drive me nuts despite that I’m a writer and am perfectly fine with being alone at the computer. When I run in the hottest, brightest weather, I feel like I’m conquering and overcoming. When I get home after 20k in 30 degree weather, I’m brown and exhausted and dehydrated and the shower I take after reviewing Garmin data is so rewarding and uplifting. The difference is that it’s much harder to be festive when it feels like you’re being stuffed in a tiny metal box in the Libyan desert because you were a shitty French Legionnaire. I’m thinking of a certain Jean Claude Van Damme movie here but I don’t remember which. I can’t speak for others with this tendency, but for me it’s not a time to bitch and moan, but just a time of focus and trying to keep grounded. And that does not involve much festivity. I put my head down and push through it. And everyone else is wondering why I can’t just drink beer and chill.

When autum comes, it feels like I can breathe. Things are pleasant. Winter comes and I’m happy, and it feels good to be  positive when everyone else is miserable because they, like myself in the summer, are not jibing with their environment. Everyone is sensitive to their environment in some way, and it shouldn’t be a big deal that some find one environment more oppressive than another.

Scientician stuff.

Brain chemistry is complicated. Basically you have seratonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. There are other neurotransmitters, but the fun part is that a good chunk of amino acids are precursors of two or three of those, and that levels of one can affect another. And different imbalances cause different shades of depression. Medical science can’t even really measure neurotransmitter levels in the brain very well, if at all. All that stuff about how antidepressants work is just theory–theory backed by some emprical evidence but in the end, we’re not measuring depressed patients’ levels of neurotransmitters. From my own personal experience, seratonin isn’t it. Yeah, everyone goes on about how great seratonin is, but summertime increases seratonin levels and I definitely am not better in the summer compared to other seasons. And I take a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. And it works very well. So what works for me isn’t going to work for a lot of people–many would find my treatment to cause too much anxiety.

Another interesting way to look at mood disorders is homeopathy. Regardless of whether or not you believe in it, there’s some interesting data in the Materia Medica. Symptom pictures for remedies like Nux Vomica’s depression and anxiety differ from that of Hypericum, which differ from Phosphorous, which differ from Argentum Nitricum. The detail and precision in these definitions are fascinating. An interesting one is Hypericum, or St. John’s Wort, which is a common herbal antidepressant. People don’t realize that it has MAO-inhibitor action, and that’s why it works. That’s a “pharmaceutical” action and can have side-effects. Just sayin’. Anyway, one symptom of Hypericum is light sensitivity. The Hypericum depression can also result from a head injury. With all the talk 100 years later about hockey players, depression, and head injuries, maybe we ought to stop assuming homeopathy is crap just because CBC’s Marketplace chose to run a biased report against it without even consulting Wikipedia as to how it works.

My point is that even chemically, since the change in light does affect melatonin and seratonin levels, the idea that summer sunlight could upset the constitution is valid.

So, if you made it through all that, drop a comment if you’re a bit off during the summer. It’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re no fun. It just means that the sun can be a dillhole sometimes. And you can’t blame yourself for the sun’s being a dillhole.