If I stand in the middle of a room and turn in a complete circle it becomes evident to me almost immediately. No event stems from a single cause. Yet I never want this to be true. I suppose it’s because with a single cause the effect can be avoided in the future or punished to oblivion or blown away with the convenience of an explanation. We’re great believers that explanations are solutions…so having a single cause to blame for an event or effect makes things…easier. It’s the lone assassin theory of psychology. Not long ago I sat in the tangle of my blankets and considered cancer…my cancer…not for the first nor the last time and when the hairs on the back of my neck begin to stand up and shiver…I know I’ve arrived at the state I call “Very Fucked Up”. This is not something you want to wake your loved ones with in the middle of the night…no phone call…no nudging your partner.
Years ago I was driving in British Columbia somewhere that lower mainlanders refer to as the “interior” . I’ve always loved that concept. It conjures up lions and tigers and bears or mountains too tough to tame and strange people peeking from the bush on the side of the road..dressed in tourist rags and wearing ten year old dead Walkmans as totemic jewelry. But no, there was none of that on this particular trip. Instead there was a level crossing and one of the worlds longest trains commenced to pass before my eyes as I sat there…the only car on the road, it seemed. That train had two engines in front and two more in the middle so you know it was long and headed for the mountains (too tough to tame). If that train had a name it would have been Epiphany and of course, like some of the best Epiphanies..this one didn’t dawn on me for years. It was a simple thing. At one point, because the of the perspective and the length of that train, I couldn’t see the beginning or the end. Sat there in the summer sun with the top down and listened to clatter and clickety click of the wheels. I couldn’t go anywhere until it passed…and going back would not get me where I wanted to go and eventually the train would come to an end..light another cigarette and push the seat back. But…wake up in the centre of a cold dark night with cancer on your mind and you see that train going by…and going by …and going faster and it could go off the rails and you can’t start the damn car and you dropped the fucking lit cigarette onto your lap and it rolled under you…and there’s this huge black truck pulled up behind you so you can’t turn around anyway…and smoke is curling up from your crotch and the train wheels are roaring in your head and you are..very…fucked…up. Try explaining that to your pals. I preferred not to. I couldn’t find the words to explain what was happening to my mind…and I wanted the words to be normal sounding…with nice round vowels and reassuring consonants. All of the words in my head had sharp corners…I didn’t think I could say them…I thought I’d have to spit them.
I figured that if I could find a single cause…it would lead me straight out of “very fucked up” . Just putting that single cause out there ..everybody would go…”Oh…that” and understand and just like that the train would have passed and we could all move on. Well…no. The train does pass but the single cause isn’t there. I suppose it’s because it’s not the cancer that fucks me up…it’s the thought of trying to explain my life from the beginning of the train to the end…in terms of the cancer.
So much easier to blame it on the “nuclears”…if “blame” is the right word. Where I grew up the “nuclears’ were a big topic back in the day. Those suckers were the credible explanation for hens not laying…for the car not starting…for one cold too many last winter… for the colour of sunset for three days in a row last June…remember that? I like the idea of the “nuclears” being at the bottom of it all. It allows for a free flowing anger about man’s endeavours to be clever…about people messing around with stuff they shouldn’t be messing with and it absolves me. It permits me to say “It’s very fucked up” and not”I’m very fucked up”.
And sometimes that’s all I need to get back in my warm blankets and off to sleep.
And there’s this too…Each time I see that train in the middle of the night…I am more confident that it will pass. I realized that I didn’t have to explain it to anybody…it’s just me trying to understand it all. There are lots of different trains in all of our lives that make us stop and ask…”What did I do to deserve this?” and the answer really is…”Nothing” or “Everything” So what? That train doesn’t even know your name. Go back to sleep…wake up tomorrow…Keep going.
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