The Colony of Unrequited Boredom

Life as a post-MA grad with little to do outside of re-editing a master's thesis is, to be frank and curt all in one place, woefully uninspiring.

A conversation with my brain might go like this:

Me: Hello?
Brain: Hullo.
Me: Is there anybody in there?
Brain: Well, am I answering you?
Me: What?
Brain: Am I answering you?
Me: Well... I suppose.
Brain: Right. Now presume there's no one in here.
Me: Right....
Brain: Well, who would answer you?
Me: That was my question.
Brain: But I answered you first.
Me: What?
Brain: Oh bother.

Where did it all go? Have I typed too many words? Why is the best idea I've come up with in weeks something as moronic and silly as "if you're early, does that mean you're still alive?"

Why am I now compelled to type "har, har"?

Have the Gods of All That Is Ripe and Critical and Inane and Stupid and Worthy of Writing About forsaken me? Is the Olypmian union on strike?

Listen: I get up most days. I read the news most days. I even watch movies most days. The other day, a "most" day, I watched Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut -- for the first time. I was engaged. I prepared my cortexes and vortexes and lumpy brain things for thoughts (it was going to be a flood). I drank some V8 (low sodium, of course; I do not want to become a human salt lick, though my dog probably wishes otherwise). I made some popcorn. I sat down, dimmed the lights, pressed play; Kubrick's last film, at last. My eyes were wide open for all of it, and, aside from my latent biological predisposition toward blinking, I took it all in.

And I have no thoughts on the matter.

None! Zippo! I watched, it came, it went, it sputtered, it rolled, and now I am filled with nothing but the giant sucking sound of complete mental aphonia. I am Ross Perot, full of enthusiasm, defeated at the polls. I have been deadened. I might as well become a mime -- a vapid, prosaic, uninspired mime.

Have I not travelled enough? I left the country last exactly one year ago. But I've since been to Toronto twice, Ottawa thrice, Montreal once, and Vancouver for a brief spell. Is the vastness of our country similarly vacant when it comes to the provision of inspiration? I think Richler, Atwood, Thomson, Cohen, and Haggis would attest otherwise. So would a bunch of other people I haven't bothered to write up here. Carr? I could go on.

Obviously I hold myself in too high esteem. I should not expect to be the "next" Richler or Johnson or Ralston Saul, even if such a thing could be picked out of next year's generational writers catalogue.

Still, I seem to remember being inspired at some point, even if the results were trite. I once wrote a nonsensical post about the Bush administration's liberal affectations. It was called, "How The White House Forgot About Nietzsche." As I've already mentioned, it was nonsense. But I felt good writing it. There were some ideas in my head I needed to put down, and out they came, eggs, baskets, and all.

How can I go on? Should I take up pottery? I always had an eye for colour. But clay, well, eh, no thanks. I like architecture; I'd rather make sandcastles. But math and I tend to disagree on fundamental precepts, and I hate the beach.

(Too much sand... yeah.)

Perhaps, taking a cue from what makes news, larceny and grand theft would be more my style. I recently had a two-hour conversation with a group of friends over pints; the topic of discussion: how to get rich, real quick. We started with a well-planned bait-and-switch involving the Canadian mint. We denigrated from there onto the idea of brewing our own beer and trying to sell it in pubs. We then gave up, paid our tab, and went home. A life of 'Costra Nostra,' it seems, ain't suited fa' me, ma.

(To answer the obvious: Movies cost money, and my social life is so dispiriting these days that I'd rather save them for fleeting "what ifs" and hollow aluminum chances at a date. I have plenty of music, all the music in the world, even, but I've given up writing anything sensical about it. Music exists on its own plane; we can document its history, its theory, and its people, but all of this really only amounts to math for animals, records for a deaf man, and the Mona Lisa shown around to a blind tour at the Louvre, unless the reader has actually listened to what you're writing about.)

So where to now? Here's an idea I can soundly steal from Western tradition: books. Books I already own, in fact, thus indicating I should probably read them. As Abraham Lincoln once said, "people who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like." Books are full of ideas and I'm need of a refill. So I'm reading Animal Farm. I haven't before, and it's a small tome. From a cost-benefit point of view, this should work out just fine. The irony is, of course, that I'm done my MA, cursing me as outlined above -- but only as a result of finishing my MA do I now have the time to take up the solution to the post-MA curse...

...I should make my next book Catch-22...

Inspiration, I await you!