I ended up raising $258.25 for the Princess Margaret Hospital Ride to Conquer Cancer from the show my friend Patrick MccAuley put on at his house on November 22, 2008. Before the show that day, I put a few finishing touches on an essay I wrote entitled “A Most Tripping Vindication of Altruism”, a piece of writing that had my usual hidden meanings and ostensibly disparate connections between ideas. After Barak Obama became President Elect, I thought the fashion had returned to talking up to people instead of down, to having their higher faculties appealed to, as opposed to their basest motivations and fears. I had also decided that I wanted tie my writing in with my training and fundraising for the Ride to Conquer Cancer.
So I laid the essay out into a zeen composed of a legal sized paper folded once in the middle—which I’ve done many times in my existence as a self-publishing writer. I despaired of figuring out how to instruct MSWord to feed the columns to conform to this format, so that the title page would be printed on the back of the flat paper with the body of the essay on top and the last page also on the back opposite the cover page. So I printed it off and simply cut the four quarters and glued them to another legal sized page in proper position with reference to the final product. Then I made dinner and watched an episode of Family Guy I had already seen, where Peter blames Meg for destroying the cable signal for the whole town. It was from very early in the first season before Mila Kunis was brought in to be the voice of Meg. Not the best episode, but at least it wasn’t the one where Lois learns karate, which, like the Beatles’ “Yesterday”, seems to always be playing somewhere in the world, and usually whenever I turn on the TV. I don’t even have cable.
Looking at the printout, I noticed an error in the title, “A Most Tripping Vindication or Altruism” which wouldn’t have been picked up by the spell check but surprising was not picked up by the grammar checker either. Cursing, I printed off another copy of the front page. Or tried to. I had hoped that if I selected just the first page that it would only print the first page and thus I would save myself the ink. Sadly this was not to be and it printed the entire article, from which I cut the front page and glued it in place of the erroneous one, which I threw out.
I packed a bag for myself with the template folded over and pressed between the pages of my notebook, which was just big enough to accommodate it. I also threw in my copy of Schulz and Peanuts, which I was taking every opportunity to read in time for the review deadline for Off the Shelf. I looked forward to reading the book on the bus ride to Staples, and then spending the bus ride back stapling the Sportchek Family and Friends coupons to the zeen, so that I would have something to give back to all those who showed up at the party to donate to my cause. I made it about half a block away from my house before I stopped in my tracks with the realization that though I had reprinted the front page, I had not done so before correcting the error! And crystal clarity of this realization was paradoxically characteristic of the absolute certainty I had of having made this mistake despite the apparent fog within which I had made it.
I have an acquaintance I met through a summertime afternoon on the Cornerstone Patio who, if it can be believed, is at least as absent-minded as I am. Every time we meet we each have some new tale to tell of our epic stupidity. When theorizing as to the cause of it, I have suggested that it is owing to the fact that we are preoccupied with complex and abstract ideas. James simply thinks it’s because we’re stupid, and I fear that he may be right. We have half-seriously joked about starting a support group called AA, for Absent-minded Anonymous. We would address each other by our first names and our last initials, in keeping with the difficulty we have remembering other people’s names—and even this is being optimistic.
But usually these epiphanies hit me when I’m halfway across the Heffernan Bridge, and not before, so I counted myself lucky when I about-faced and headed back home to reprint the article with the correction included. Fortunately, I hadn’t turned off the computer when I left, preferring instead to let it shut down on it’s own should just such a thing as this happened, in which I needed to restart the computer to account for some unpredicted but inevitable oversight. This time I made the correction before printing off the sheet, and I made sure there was only one piece of paper in the printer so that I wouldn’t waste quite so much ink this time. For the second time, I removed the previous cover page, threw it out, and taped the new corrected version to the template, and at last walked downtown to catch the bus. It usually takes me more than one attempt to leave the house at any given time.
It must have been just after six o’clock when I got off the bus at Scottsdale. The plan was (hopefully) to get the zeen printed off in time to make it back for the next bus downtown, as I hoped to arrive at Patrick’s by seven, so I could help ready the house for the show. As I made my way across Stone Rd., I was happy to see that there were very few cars in the parking lot at Staples, which of course meant that it wouldn’t be too crowded and I would be in an out fairly quickly.
There was an employee at the door talking to a customer. The customer walked away.
“No.” I said. “Are you guys closed?”
“Yes we are. We’re waxing the floor.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Uh…yes.”
“But…but…I have to make copies…”
“I’m sorry.”
“Is this something you usually do?
“No. But we’re always closed at six on Saturday night.”
I made him get a manager, and pleaded my case to her, that this was for a charity, for cancer research. They suggested the UPS store.
I walked to the UPS store and wondered what I was going to do. Would it matter? Should I just let it go? Was I not really just obsessing over getting my writing out to the world? But it seemed like a good thing to do, and it was hardly fair to myself to give up on the piece I had created for this evening while there might still be hope to get it “published”. I had done all this work already.
I 411ed Futureshop, but instead of patching me directly through like they usually do, they gave me two numbers and patched me through to neither, for whatever reason. This meant I would have walk over there to determine if the Futureshop, like Staples, had a copy centre. I was doubtful, but it was worth a try.
At the very least, it was open. I went in and asked at customer service. They didn’t have a copy centre.
“I can’t believe this.” I said. They seemed willing to listen to my tragic tale, so I told them of my travails with the Staples hours of operation.
“I would have made the same mistake.” A young woman said. “I can feel your stress.”
I felt apologetic for irresponsibly throwing off that energy. And older employee, probably my age, said, “Look, it’s for a charity…I don’t have any problem with using our photocopier.”
“Do you have legal-size paper?” I asked hopefully.
The young woman brought back a ream of paper from off the shelves. “This is all we have.” She said. It was letter sized.
My template, as you know, was legal sized. Not having foreseen the troubles I was currently having, I didn’t have a digital version of the file on either my phone or my keychain thumb-drive, and as I was complaining about this, it dawned on me.
“I should just take what I can get, right?”
“Right.” The manager said.
They fetched a paper cutter for me. Laying out the template, I saw there was a great deal of excess margin space. Making sure that all the columns were aligned on their reverse sides, I made significant cuts to the template, always aware that I couldn’t make a mistake as this hard copy was all I had of the document. I tried to maintain at least a marginal margin for the sake of readability, and the outside columns were right up the edge of the letter sized page I was using as a guide. Then I separated the columns and taped them to both sides of the guide sheet in their proper positions so the young woman behind the counter would understand how it worked.
Her first task was to shrink the template so it would fit, then she would have to join the to sides together in proper alignment for the fold to work properly, and in this fashion, the copier would be able to automatically create the double sided pages. The problem was, we kept losing a column of characters down the outside margins, and I was too stubborn to allow such a loss as it would greatly effect the clarity of the writing. And this was hardly silly unimportant stuff I was writing about. The writing, while highly philosophical, was also commemorative, with respect to an acquaintance I had in high school who later succumbed to brain cancer, leaving behind a wife and two little children. While we were expecting a younger crowd at the party, for whom some of this essay might conceivably be over their heads, it was also my hope that they might take the zeen home with them and leave it out where older eyes would see it and read it, and maybe follow the url at the end of the article.
In the past, and well into the present, I’ve been accused of being elitist with regard to my precocity as a writer. I’ve always thought this was unfair. Whenever I contemplate such remarks, which I frankly find hurtful, I think of that scene in the Hustler when Paul Newman, with two broken arms, is having a picnic with Piper Laurie. He holds forth on what it means to be great at something, and while I don`t recall the exact words Newman spoke, the gist, the lesson I have always taken from that famous scene is that I`m not trying to show what I can do. I`m trying to show what can be done. I`m not here to impress. I`m here to inspire.
This is why I was making such a pest of myself that night at Futureshop. I still hold to this idealism that a page of mine, like a drifting leaf, will carry itself on the wind and find itself in the hands of somebody who can make good use of it.
The young woman behind the counter could still feel my stress, with the clock ticking away to the start of the show. It seemed that whenever she had the article lined up properly, it didn’t co-ordinate with the top feeder on the printer. At one point, we allowed probably thirty pages go through before I realized that we were once again losing a column of characters. To make matters worse, the line up of customers was growing. This poor woman was going back and forth between the customers and this project. She repeated that she could still feel my stress, and probably with a dash of own. I wanted to tear myself away, go to the movie section and read the backs of DVDs for a while while this mess was sorted out without me. But I couldn’t leave.
Above all, I was becoming angered with the situation, and it was because I felt so impotent. Here these people were bending over backwards to help me, and I was becoming testy with them. My own words galloped back to me as I remembered telling my last girlfriend, that she hated people who helped her, and she was always needing help.
Maybe I was projecting. Projecting her projections.
But buried among the failed sheets, I found two pieces that were properly shrunk that had somehow fallen by the wayside. I taped them together and called the clerk’s attention to what I had done. For some reason, they still didn’t line up laterally—the bottom margin was thick on one side while the top margin was thick on the other—but none of the characters were lost, nor any clarity from the shrinkage. Lines were visible between the columns where they had been sliced by the paper cutter, but the document didn’t look that bad all things considered. It was reminiscent of an artsy volume from a small press–a little “ghetto”, as the kids call it.
I called a cab while the printer was still knocking off copies. Once again, it was a tense situation as my call may have been premature. I think my greatest difficulties in life result from always being in a hurry. Before leaving, I gave the two clerks and the manager coupons for Sportchek, also promising to make a post on my Princess Margaret blog, and to donate twenty dollars of my own money in Futureshop’s name. They said it wasn’t necessary to donate the money, but insisted on it as I probably would have ended up spending more on the copy run had Staples been open.
The cab arrived shortly. The stress of the situation was now taking it’s toll. I felt like weeping or screaming. I told the story to the driver in an attempt at therapy, in the hope that I could divest myself of these negative feeling before arriving at the show. We stopped at my house to get my harmonica case and equipment, as well as the beer. Even the tiny inconvenience of having to re-enter my debit information had me stressed, and the driver laughed at me before taking his leave.
Patrick hadn’t made it out to the beer store, but I was happy to share mine. He already had the attic cleaned up, as well as the sound system set up that was kindly donated by Mark Rodford of the Cornerstone. I felt slightly alien as I always do, and as in fact most people in general do when they find themselves in a situation with other people who are more relaxed than themselves. I ranted for a few minutes, but choosing my words carefully as I was aware of my current status as an ambassador to this cause.
At this point we were waiting for the first band to arrive. We had put them on the bill after the previous weekend when a friend of mine said she was thinking of getting her brother a gig for Christmas. I jumped on it right away, without having heard the band at all, perhaps trusting in Jess’s taste in music. As it turned out, Bleet did not disappoint. The were a duet of drums and bass, and they brought the house down. I was thoroughly impressed with their nuanced arrangements within the framework of hard rock (I’m a little bit of yesterday’s man when it comes to the sub-genres of heavy metal. I could be doing Bleet a grave injustice in my categorization. Such is not intended.)
As expected, the crowd was young. I wish I could say that I didn’t regard them with the suspicion of an older man, but I did, and would be surprised with this crop.
One young man who in any other instance I would have not given the time day owing to my own old prejudices impressed and embarrassed the hell out of me with his praise for what he was doing, and his knowledge of cancer and the odds we all stand of contracting it. This kid half my age took me to school. Another young man recognized a quote from Vonnegut I made use of in the essay, and expressed to me at length the effect that it had on his own way of seeing the world. He was also a jazz guitarist who was a fan of Ed Bickert. On the basis of this alone, I would have to say that those who say the youth of today aren’t worth much aren’t worth much themselves. Dragging the rest of us down, they are.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to perform with Patrick at the end of the show as we had planned. Peace officers had arrived to issue a warning, in the course of which involving themselves in an argument with one of the attendees that resulted in the issuing of a ticket for a noise complaint. Tensions were high. Threats were made of the issuing of assault charges for disrespecting the uniform. I had been forced in the past under worse circumstances to talk to the police while under the influence when others didn’t want to. In that previous instance, I had drawn on my training as an actor to get through an unpleasant and potentially dangerous situation. In this case, I drew on my experience as a security guard to empathise with the position of the peace officers who were expected to be authoritative in a dearth of respect. By the time a police cruiser arrived, we more or less saw eye to eye, agreeing that no challenge would be made by the peace officers to our future attempt to overturn the ticket. I also spoke with the young man who initially argued with the peace officer, advising him that in the future he treat authority figures as he would expect to be treated by them; as a blank slate.
We were all hanging around in the kitchen sharing our parts of the story. I was confident everything would turn out okay. Whatever my failings, I’m still gifted in some respects. I can talk to the police. I can listen to the young. I can ride my bike from Toronto to Niagara Falls, though I haven’t done that yet. What I’ve learned ultimately these days are the joys of living my life as an artist. I’m quitting drinking and devoting myself to life in general and the life of the artist in particular. I am mending he schism of my mind between what I want and what I can do to achieve it, in the course of helping others. I am living the life I always though I should be living. I made that invisible passage in the form of a simple realization while bent over a paper cutter at Futureshop.
Everything I hoped to be, I am.
admin The Princess Margaret Hospital Ride to Conquer Cancer
