The Lonely Side of Following One's Bliss

Irish Times Pub, Bastion Square, Victoria, B.C.

Years ago I was walking across a rain dappled campus at the University of Victoria. I had spent a wearying week trying to find out why my student loan money hadn't been transferred to my bank account. Without the money I couldn't pay for my courses and get on with focusing on school. 

At the time, I was walking behind two professors or men in tweed (I assumed they were academics), one holding a black umbrella for both of them. They were bearded, slim fellows, one slightly bald. Heads slightly down, rain pattering on the fabric, they were chatting about Joseph Campbell and his famous line: Follow your bliss. 

Joseph Campbell

It was late afternoon and for some reason I decided to follow these  men. Maybe it was the comfort I felt in being near their company, that they were discussing a subject I knew quite well and yet didn't know. I knew the standard works of Joseph Campbell. I had read the Hero With a Thousand Faces and referenced him in the two theatre history papers I had written the year before. His advice, however, of 'follow your bliss' was not so much a result of his work and research but a lesson from his life. From what I understood, Campbell traveled the world and pieced together his ideas about myth through literature, philosophy and psychology. In the presence of a baffled business student, someone wavering between following his father, a captain of industry or doing what he loved, he told the young man to do pursue the latter. This meant becoming an artist and as it turned out, the student when on to brighter and better things instead of going into the family firm.

It was a significant discussion to overhear because I asked myself whether I knew anything about following my bliss. Absolutely nothing, was the response. An hour later, I went to the university library and dropped out of all my courses. The money wasn't supposed to arrive, it was a sign. I really couldn't stand what I was doing, namely theatre. I thought it was something I wanted but it wasn't. And it wasn't my 'bliss'.

I celebrated with a meal at my favourite Victoria pub and the next day found a job at a liquor store. I never felt such relief in my life. I had gone out on a limb and there was a safety net waiting.

I still don't know if it was the right decision but I figured it was a start. I eventually left Victoria for Vancouver and Vancouver for Niagara with the intention of Following my bliss. 

Winery Barrel Cellar, Vineland, ON.

For a long time I thought this bliss I was seeking was involved in the wine industry. That misconception, fortunately was laid to rest after a grueling harvest week as a cellar hand at a Vineland winery in the fall of 2011. I had to quit the job because of health reasons and ended up moving out of my apartment, my mother having suggested I cut my losses and house sit for her and my step-father in Essex County. (I should note I went after the winery for misrepresentation and managed to get a three-week severance pay.)

In Kingsville, I got a part-time job and applied for E.I. and managed to coast through the rest of the year and into the next. I returned to my writing and worked every morning before heading to work in the afternoon, completing a book which I am now marketing. 

This was my bliss.

But I've learned something, it has been lonely. 

My days and nights like last year are like my days and nights now. I come home, I have dinner. I watch a little t.v. to unwind then I write or read. I repeat these patterns now and then looking for opportunities to get out of the house.

Last night I went to a poetry event to read a poem that had been shortlisted for a Bookfest contest in nearby Windsor. Initially I was excited at the prospect of sharing my work to a large audience but as the day drew closer I felt that old hesitation again and the day of the reading, actually wished I could stay home instead of go out. 

It was a nice evening, the clouds were hovering over the lake and when I arrived in Windsor, I got lost, driving in the rain, finding myself on Riverside, gazing back at the bridge, a red sunset going down on the river, on the towers of Detroit, the drops on my windshield almost pink. I could have stayed there but I continued on, finding a parking place, finding the venue, a worn down bar on University Ave.

Walking in from the rain, smelling the fried food, hearing the murmur of conversations, I was a little disappointed as I glanced at the crowd. I have been writing since I was sixteen, doing my best to perfect the craft, something I started out doing for fun, little by little realizing it is the only thing that makes me happy. But every writer's group I've ever attended in Ontario, every poetry reading event or get together I meet only older people. 

No difference last night. Most of the writers I encountered were wrinkled and grey. Some were teachers, some professors, writing their part-time passion. They drank their beer, they chuckled and shared stories. When someone familiar walked through the door, there was always a person waiting to shake their hands and welcome them. I had a beer and sat at a table off to the side, the only seat available.

I was looking forward to the evening to meet some fellow writers that were about my age but once again that hope was dashed (and I intuitively knew this before I left the house). I listened to the other poets read, all the while drinking my beer, looking out the window, wishing I could leave. When it was my turn, I read my poem. It was well received, my prefacing it with a humorous story to both relax the audience and myself. In the main, I was proud of my effort and though I didn't win and it wasn't so much that I hoped to win, to be first or anything, I just wanted the opportunity to read my poem at the BookFest and potentially meet other people, hopefully my own age.

Strange now to think about those two professors this evening, to think about dropping out of UVIC, how every time I go out to be involved in my 'bliss', I meet senior citizens instead of my peers. Yes, I think I have followed my bliss but strange how it has lead me here to South Western Ontario. I feel like I'm part of a prank no one has let me in on. Campbell said to follow your bliss and doors will open for you where you didn't know doors would be. What doors? I keep asking, I see only the same walls.

I think about those famous writers in New York or France, artists who got together at salons and read their works and shared. I've never quite experienced that. I wonder if I will. 

In Kingsville, there are no writer's groups. Here, most of the people my age are married with kids. All the pretty women have wedding rings, usually diamonds, probably wed to a greenhouse owner or the son of one. 

Kingsville, I have no complaints though sometimes I feel like I'm in exile. It is a pleasant, rustic little town, a place you would want to raise a family or retire but not for someone in between everything. There are wrap around porches and new subdivisions, and people at the beach and the park. On a sunny, Sunday afternoon in autumn, it is a safe place to be. There is little excitement here, the liquor store closes at six most days and the bars are filled with retirees.

Queen St., Kingsville, ON.

I wish I had something optimistic in mind to finish here but I don't know. I think about my guitar teacher who told me that to do what you love, you must sacrifice. I never asked him how long or what the sacrifice entailed, I assumed it was something significant. 

I look up at the window now, there's a reflection of my face lit by my laptop screen in the glass. I almost swore it was a ghost. 

And I think to myself, if I saw Joseph Campbell now, even his ghost, I'd throw my shoe at him.

Movies Made for a Sunday Afternoon

Growing up, I still remember my father flicking through the channels on a Sunday, drinking his beers, happening on some old western or James Bond film. At commercials, depending on the season, he'd go back to a football game or eventually find a soccer match and stay there.

I still snippets of those movies in my mind. Often times I never saw the ending because the game took precedence or something else came up, someone in the neighborhood rang the door and I was off playing hockey in the street or baseball in the park

Now it seems I have time on my hand to write blogs and remember. And though there should be other things I could be doing, I feel a little nostalgic for those fragmented films I saw, pieces that I got to know half-way through and would have to pick up the remainders after renting them in my early twenties or thirties. 

And some new favorites, of course. 

I'm well aware of the plethora of movies lists made by film buffs. There's list for every category: best films, best comedies and westerns and villains and heroines and stars and laughs, everything topping out at a hundred and after that, well, it's something more personal. This isn't an attempt at list making, more of a reminiscing, a reconsideration of what I think are the best films made for a Sunday afternoon. 

What kind of Sunday? Well, I guess that depends on the film?

Peter o'Toole and Omar Sharif in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a perennial favorite of stations with nothing else to show. I believe this is one of the most frequently aired movies of all time. In my childhood, it was on every season, usually a Sunday. Again, I saw it the first few times in pieces. The scene at the river where Sundance tells Butch he can't swim. Butch, of course, can't help laughing. They've been running for their lives, staying ahead of the law. "What are you crazy," he finally says after a good chuckle, "the fall will probably kill you."

Along with the above, I have to say Lawrence of Arabia and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. So here we are, starting off with Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Jack Nicholson - all these great actors that brightened our lives on a lazy Sunday. And these movies are all quite long too. So if you don't have any distractions on a Sunday you don't have to worry about missing something. Lawrence of Arabia, especially, I found always starts about noon and ends closer to four. It's a great movie to watch in late fall or winter. There's a desert on your screen but it's chilly outside. And yes, there is no gold in Akaba.

Then there are the other classics as well like the Godfather Part II which must be savored on a Sunday. I love that scene where the young Corleone unscrews the light bulb before taking out the don. One of cinema's greatest and yet most enduring movie moments. 

Shane

One mustn't forget the westerns which are a fallback on the weekends. I remember seeing the ending of Shane before I ever saw the beginning, the little boy running off, crying 'Shane! Come back!' to the mysterious stranger as he rides off. A beautiful moment. Then there's Unforgiven which to me is an October movie. It's best to pop it in or find it on the tube on an overcast day in order to appreciate the mood it casts. And if it rains towards the end of the movie, even better. I'm certain it is Eastwood's best though I'll admit, I saw many a-spaghetti western on a Sunday as my father went back and forth between a Buffalo Bills game or a Manchester United match.  The Good, The Bad and The Ugly will also do and yes... Fistful of Dollars. 

Then there are the romantic comedies. It Happened One Night is a great spring film along with the endearing You've Got Mail and When Harry Met Sally (the latter two Meg Ryan's best before she botoxed her lips).  

The former film, though is lesser know and is a Capra classic, long overshadowed by the infamous Christmas flick, It's A Wonderful Life (also a good Sunday afternoon film done by the same director). But It Happened One Night is not only a Pride-and-Prejudice-they-love-each-other-but-hate-each-other-first type of film, it's a good road and buddy movie. In fact there's a bit of that old class divide going on as well. If you've see basic, modern road rom coms like Leap Year, Chasing Liberty (poor Matthew Goode), The Proposal and so on one must see the one that inspired it (though you should also read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice considering it has pretty much set the standard for all romantic comedies whether you like to admit it or not).

But I digress. 

Cool Hand Luke is another essential before I move away from the classics along with the Wizard of Oz, The African Queen (with The Pride and Prejudice thing going on, I should have included it above) and From Here to Eternity with its now parodied kiss on the beach scene. All are amazing movies in the middle of a Sunday. 

Spartacus

Then there are the old sword and sandal romps, just as jovial as the westerns. Think of movies like Spartacus (not to be confused with the series),The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur. We have nothing in modern cinema to compare these films too. Gladiator is just Braveheart (another Sunday gem) redone in togas while 300 is a celluloid comic strip on steroids, all cheese with no calcium. In fact I think it is one of the most vapid and over the top movies ever made. It's so bad it doesn't know it's bad (unlike Troy).

Then there are the great fantasy adventure movies like The Princess Bride, The Fellowship of the Ring (the rest of the trilogy is terrible... I'm sorry...just endless fighting and scenes with Frodo battling with himself...boring...and Gollum who always sounded like someone addicted to nasal sprays), Star Wars (more sci-fi of course), The Goonies (not a fantasy but a kid's fantasy so it counts) and The Neverending Story which is a masterpiece in itself. 

Then there are the sleeper Sunday movies like American Graffiti and more recently (500) Days of Summer which are both good fun but also provide a good story. And the great comedies like the Marx Bros.' Duck Soup and  A Night at the Opera and the Monty Python masterpieces, Life of Brian and Holy Grail.

I must mention Fargo and Full Metal Jacket, both meant for a darker, more devious moods along with Psycho, Vertigo and Rear Window, all Sunday afternoon masterpieces by Hitchcock.  

Groundhog Day is good for February malaise.

The Return (Возврашение)

Enough of American films. 

There are numerous foreign titles that are equal to the above if not more complex and satisfying. A new favorite of mine is The Return, one of the greatest Russian films ever made. In it a father comes home to visit his family. His two sons are twelve and six respectively. The eldest admires his dad, forgives him for his absence while the younger is miffed and angered, still feeling abandoned. It is less about what is being said and more about how it is being said. The father takes the two boys on a trip to the north and it becomes more incredible from there. It is a film of silences and gorgeous cinematography with Russian's northern forests and wilderness taking pride of place in the movie. Unplug the phone, switch off your cell, tell your girlfriend to go to the mall if she's not into this kind of thing. This is movie making that absorbs and haunts. 

There's Das Boot (Director's Cut and if you have the time, the five-hour uncut version first shown on German television) and the lesser known Dutch film Black Book (another film about the second World War). The former is pure adrenaline and claustrophobia while the latter is dark magic, intrigue, romance, sex and thrills.

Famous fountain scene in La Dolce Vita

European classics also include Fellini's La Dolce Vita, Truffaut's 400 Blows, Bergman's Wild Strawberries and Kirosawa's Rashomon. These are perhaps four of the most important films made outside of the Hollywood paradigm and deserve to be viewed on a easy Sunday afternoon with no distractions and an open mind.

Lighter fair I recommend everyone's favourite foreign comedies or dramedies, Amelie and Life is Beautiful.

For my wild cars, I throw in Pedro Almodovar's Talk to Her and Volver along with Ridley's Scott's Prometheus and Blade Runner.

Though if I had to pick a favourite for best Sunday movie experience, it would be The Bourne Identity and/or The Bourne Supremacy. Ultimatum was good but these two are superior.

Remembering Regensburg

I seem to remember a pretty little city in the midst of Bavaria. It's unlike Munich, it's nowhere near like Nuremberg, a place unto itself really. 

At first when you get off the train, you think there's nothing much to this pretty city but many places are never quite amazing near their train stations. I think of Utrecht and Den Haag, I think of Trier and Koblenz curiously, cities where you have to travel further to find their beauty.

Regensburg... a city where the rivers Regen and Danube meet. In the ancient world, Radasbona, its Roman name and only upriver from Vindobona (or modern Vienna). 

Regensburg, a kind of a quiet, idyllic gem like Bamberg, places where the tourists don't quite go. Well, they do but mostly German and Austrian. For many foreigners, Germany is Munich and lederhosen, bier gärtenen and maybe Berlin if there's time. Maybe. Germany is oomp-pah-pah, Oktoberfest and Wagner's portly Brunhilde belting out the finale of The Ring with her horned-helmet and spear, her tonsils on display.

But there are other Germanies.

Regensburg belongs in that vast category of other Germanies. There are places like Baden Baden and Würzburg. There is Koblenz and Bonn where Beethoven was born.

But Beethoven left for Vienna (or ancient Vindabona). 

In fact there are so many Germanies one might lose count. And it's better to lose count in Regensburg, the place I seem to remember but I'm too lazy too forget. 

I don't want to forget. If there are places that exemplify Sunday strolls and meandering walks it is medieval Regensburg where every street (once you get beyond the Hauptbahnhof) has its own bewildering and cheerful charm. Looking at the leaning, half-drunken, pastel-coloured buildings, you can't help but think, yes, it only makes sense, the man who wrote the libretto for The Magic Flute must have been born here.

No, you don't think that but I do. Mozart had two librettists, one Bavarian, the other Venetian who provided the words to his most perfect of operas. Operas light and easy unlike Wagner's. On a Sunday in Regensburg one would rather hear Dove Sona instead of the end of the world brought to you by the world's favourite anti-semite, Hitler's beloved composer, Herr Richard. (Of course, I'm not talking Strauss.)

And that's just it, in Regensburg you forget that Germany once had a Nazi past. In cities like Cologne there is little left of the old town, everything new and urban and lined with railroad tracks. Cologne that was once bombed and leveled like Nuremberg and Hamburg and Munich. 

Regensburg got away unscathed. There is no bad conscience really here to be reminded of. Yes, not unlike nearby by Nuremberg where if you take the tram, you can go to Zeppelin Field and see the cement stands where the great and feeble dictator made forecasts for his thousand-year Reich. It must have been a beautiful place to be if you were a proud German, a National Socialist with dreams of lebensraum and new horizons. In a time of hopelessness there was a man named Hitler, half-criminal, half-artist who many historians have said was the director of Germany's greatest political tragedy. A piece of history, Zeppelin Field with its stands now littered with cigarette butts, a derelict relic with everywhere weeds and in the summer, rock concerts. Today, you have the odd idiot who will visit and stand at the podium where Hitler once stood, looking out and imagining himself a megalomaniac. 

But getting back to Regensburg. I think if there was a romantic comedy that ever needed a city it would be here but then it might ruin it. Barcelona is now over-populated with tourists too eager to relive a scene in the famous Woody Allen film. 

No, scratch that, lets pass a law: no films should never be allowed to be filmed in Regensburg. Let it remain sleepy and lovely, perfect and pristine. One should only recommend Regensburg to those who might appreciate it. For one must realize there are travelers and tourists. Tourists are easy to spot with their mildly torn maps and 'let's do everything' looks on their faces, like Vikings out to pillage but instead of swords and axes they have Nikons and Kodaks. 

Travelers are people who don't want to be seen, they want to remain inconspicuous and blend in. The don't carry the heavy cameras and wear panama hats or stand together in groups, following a leader. Tourists ride segues through towns and look quite stupid, as if there were on the way to becoming the chubby humans of Wall-E.

Travelers laugh at segue tourists, laughing alone or in a pair. You wish everyone who ever went everywhere was a traveler. Travelers don't arrive on a bus or place their hands behind their back and show off their portly belly while listening to the tour guide. No, they try to hide their Fodor's and Frommer, sneaking it out in restrooms or parks with no one around. Travelers are tidy and humble and hopefully keep to themselves.

I prefer to be a traveler. I prefer to wander and as I mention, Regensburg is a perfect place to meander. And moving along...

Of course, you must see the Dom, a wonder of French Gothic architecture. It is by far more beautiful and sacred than Cologne's. What makes it especially special is that it began in the 13th century and was completed in the 19th - though the towers had to be replaced in the 1950s. So when you look at the building you see history but more importantly man's ability to procrastinate. But why not take your time with something like this. If it takes 600 years to get it right, well, why not, damn it. Interesting to note it was Mad King Ludwig's father who finished the cathedral by adding the twin towers - Mad King Ludwig who too loved Wagner (always hard to escape Wagner in Bavaria). 

It's an easy to church look at it. It isn't monumental nor heavy like other Germany cathedrals. No, it appears almost light and feathery as if it might fly away.  The towers rise above the Domplatz and Residenzstraße with timeless ease as if the building was taking a deep breath. A building like a moment in Mozart.

Inside too, you get lost looking at the ceiling and sometimes, you might hear the organist tuning up his instrument (that didn't come out right...) so the music is haunting and wave-like, swimming through the vast space. 

What I liked was the statue of the laughing archangel, Gabriel. A gregarious smile, you figure there should be no serious silhouettes in such a space, in such a quaint, quiet, pretty city. No. This should be a place for belly laughs and beer and the angel has its right, let's look to him to set the tone for the rest of the day. 

And beer is necessary, of course, because you are in Bavaria. It would be unjust and uncivilized and woefully wrong to drink anything but. So there it is...

You leave the cathedral and look for a place that is just right. And that's part of being a traveler, you don't want to sit with other tourists and pose with them, with their wrinkled maps and over-sized cameras that look like they came from a movie set. No, you have to go and look further afield and seek a sanctified nook or uncover a hushed away cafe. You cross the bridge, the Steinerne Brücke and try to remember what your guidebook said. You remember something about it being built in the twelfth century and something else to that effect. And you pause to appreciate everything. You look back, there's the Dom always dominating the cityscape and landscape but despite your aesthetic appetite, the beautiful sunny day your stomach turns and yearns for something more substantial, i.e. food. 

For me, I found a place across the bridge called Alte Linde (Old Lindens) and the schnitzel was quite good along with the potatoes but I almost felt like a tourist, drinking the Paulaner bier, such a typical standby when one is in Bavaria. (And yes, there was the man with the large cannon-like camera snapping away at the scenery as if firing a salvo...)

You can't help but feel in need of something more personal, far away from the fanny-pack crowds that embarrass themselves. 

Still you can't help it. You wanted to take a picture of everything. An eager, eternal itch when you visit Regenburg. I know I couldn't resist walking back to the old city, seeing the beautiful Dom framed by the trees, near the river, the bridge in the foreground. You have to take a picture. It would be like turning away from the Mona Lisa just because it was too-famous. 

Thankfully one's camera eventually runs out of batteries and you're left to wander without framing every second, trying to capture what is always fleeting. 

Travelers look for perfect moments. I myself could have gone to Valhalla up the river to visit the busts of famous Germans in the kitsch-like temple built (once again) by Ludwig I. But that riverside ride in Regensburg would have cost me 23 euros (and would have made me a tourist). I'd rather have another beer. Maybe another two and still have enough for a snack later when I got back to Nuremberg. Or maybe something special before I left Regensburg.

And so I went looking but not looking because the perfect place eventually finds you. Sure enough...just after strolling past the Altes Rathaus, leaving the Kohlenmark, making my way up a small street (or 'gasse' auf Deutsche) I had strong feeling that I should stay. I ignored it at first, passing by the uncrowded café, seeing the empty chairs along the front window. I then turned around and thought, here's where I have to be for the next little while.

An assertive thought, but calmly confident. I like those instances in which you make a decision and right away you feel good about them, there's no turning back. And I was happy because I think if I had gone another further I would have regretted everything. 

So I took a seat, at first at the end of the second row but then thinking, it might rain, so I moved one table over to make sure I was fully under the awning. There was a mother and teenage daughter having a drink in the front row, one table over, the former smoking, the latter with her ice cream treat. The mother finished her smoke and wine and they left. I nursed my beer, a Thurn und Taxis brew made locally. Soon enough a young couple sat near me and chatted and she took her pictures and he put his arm lovingly over her shoulder. When they got up to leave after their quick drink, I pushed my table over just a little so they could get by and she thanked me. 

Then another mother and daughter came by, this one younger. This mother had shorter black hair unlike the other's who had been longer and this daughter was more restless wearing kiddie jean overalls, riding her red, pedal-less tiny bike. The mother ordered some mineral water and the daughter had milk. She then ordered a bowl of tomato soup and the little girl went off to play with the plastic flowers at the ceramic store display just further up the street. Their meal arrived and despite this, the mother still had to keep getting up to get her daughter. 

And of course everyone smiled. The people pulling up in taxis to stay at the hotel, with their rolling suitcases, wheels clicking on the cobbled stone smiled. The ice-cream-cone-eating-people passing by smiled, all the blonde and brunette families out for the day in Regensburg chuckled and glanced down at the curious little girl who also liked swatting the plastic triangle flags of the display.

And yes, it finally began to rain. And I thought, it should rain (Regen) at least once while one is visiting Regensburg. The drops tapped on the stone street, on the front tables with their white table cloths so the mother daughter duo came to sit in the place once occupied by the couple. I moved over one seat so we weren't cramped close and could breathe in our ever-sacred privacy. The mother thanked me, placing the little bike at her side.

The drops pattered on the awning and for a moment I felt like I was getting away with being part of everything, not being a traveler, that I faded a little behind the curtain of the rain, no one to see me. Lingering there at my table, taking my time, my second beer now, the scent of wet dust and stone, I thought of how the rest of my day was going to be out there, at the end of the street, far away and back towards the Hauptbahnhof.

And that's why I stayed for over an hour. It wasn't a matter of procrastinating, waiting out the rain, putting off the return but embracing the unfixed flow of a day. At the end of the street there was tomorrow and by sitting here, I put it off as long as I could, almost hoping to be left behind. (If only I had 600 years.)

The light of the sky went from dark grey to gold as the sun broke through the now-emptied embankments of clouds. And it's like dusk, you want that time of day to linger on; no one really wants the colours to change or the sky to darken, even if the stars are pretty and the moon might be full.

But there is a leave-taking in everything, a goodbye hint here and there. The mother and daughter beside me left after the former paid the bill and the latter scurried off to check on her favourite red and yellow plastic flowers, the wet street dimpled with tiny puddles. The mother, of course had to carry the tiny bike. When you are three years old there are more important matters to attend to and things are ineluctably left behind. 

For me, I talked a little to the server and she found out English was my mother tongue. Too bad, I thought I almost blended in. Almost. 

After that there isn't much left of Regensburg worth remembering. I know I saw the Dom again and stopped at a delicatessen to guy some wine. I had the exact change.

Little Known Nescio: The Life, Works and Times of Jan Hendrik Gröhloh

'Amsterdam really is just a village.'

There was once a man who was born and raised in Amsterdam who wrote the following line: Behalve den man, die de Sarphatistraat de mooiste plek van Europa vond, heb ik nooit een wonderlijker kerel gekend dan den uitvreter (Except for the man who thought Sarphatistraat was the most beautiful place in Europe, I've never met anyone peculiar than the freeloader).

The author of these lines wasn't a particularly famous man. No. Aside from a brief, bohemian-romantic existence in his late teens and early twenties, he lived very typically of the time. Being Dutch he had to be practical, had to be sensible and decent and consider the future. So he joined the Holland-Bombay Trading Company in 1904 and then some two years later, married a woman named Aagje Tiket. 

A job then marriage. The couple had four kids. All daughters actually. 

In his spare time he wrote only a handful of stories, and published them anonymously throughout the years, going by the name of 'Nescio', Latin for 'I don't know'. 

Yes, just a handful. 

Yet strange and beautiful wonder his slender volumes of stories are perhaps the most beautiful in the Dutch language, a language many people may not find particularly beautiful. They are the stories of youth, a portrait of the author and his artistic friends as young, carefree, careless men, their layabout lives until they all had to learn to grow up and get on with it. They are a little melancholy these stories, each one filled with this colourful bevy of curious souls, each soul fighting the inviolable future in their own romantic way.

Only a handful of stories, really prose poems, pages filled with episodic scenes, images, everything cast in vibrant, impressionistic gold - sunsets, canals, leaves and streets. Within his tales there are girls on trams you cannot kiss, lamps heedlessly burning at the end of day like 'wonderful mistakes' (een wonderlijk vergissing), friends out rambling in the country, conversations, voices complaining about God. These young men, these little Titans drinking jenever, never really knowing what happened to Japi, the freeloader (uitvreter) on his trip to Friesland. All of them alive, falling in and out of love.

One reads his stories and knows intimately if not intuitively these worlds without having lived them. One feels them and longs for them almost as much as the author might have. Like thinking about a friend you haven't spoken to or someone you once cared for but who lives far away. That's what you feel when you read him though you live now and he lived then. Nothing changes. 

A whole other world perfectly preserved, a place that existed nearly innocently in the early twentieth century. Back then most people had no cars but then women didn't have the right to vote (though their voices were getting louder and their presence known). There were still horses in the street, carriages going by and one could still walk in horse shit. Recorded music was relatively new though gramophones could only play a few minutes of music so people still flocked to concert halls (concertgebouwen) and sat in family parlors listening to a young prodigy play Schumann or Chopin.

The war wasn't even on the horizon  in the time of Nescio' youth though the Dutch lost to the British in the Boer Wars in 1902. 

In Amsterdam, the year after Nescio married, there was an exhibit of a famous Noordt-Brabant-born artist. Famous but dead, little known in his lifetime. The son of a pastor, he worked for his uncle, an art dealer in The Hague and London before dabbling in religion only to find his love of painting in what would be the last seven years of his life. He traveled throughout The Netherlands, Belgium, England and France. Before he died he was in an institution and dreamed of returning to his native land. After a gunshot, said to be self-inflicted, his brother, an art dealer in Paris came to see him at his deathbed. Though they were both multilingual - as the Dutch tend to be - the two brothers spoke their native Nederlands, reminiscing about their far away land and lost childhood. The artist passed on, letting go of the pain, his lonely life and some time later, the brother unable to cope with his sibling's absence - no one to write him those beautiful letters - died in his own way, serene but solemnly.  

In Nescio, there is a troubled artist named Bavink who is in love with sun. And like Van Gogh he too was in love with the light and also was a heavy drinker. Bavink, like the great failure, went into a institution after cutting up his great, modern masterpiece into tiny pieces. Some believe Van Gogh cut off his own ear but it was only the lobe and again there is some speculation it wasn't self-inflicted. Maybe he was protecting his friend Gauguin from the authorities.

Bavink and Van Gogh. One might say there is a coincidence here or is it life and art simply doing their dance, wondering who precisely inspires who. 

(What came first, the art or the artist?)

But more than a painter, Nescio is a philosopher, always aware of the flux and flight of time, the changes incurred. He is a precursor of that erratic and joyful cynic Celine who would later write we are "nothing more than lamps on streets no walks down any more," that people are "sad when they go to bed" in his masterpiece Journey to The End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit). Nescio wrote something along those lines in a quaint tale of quiet desperation. 'And we thought it a shame to have to go to bed, people should stay up forever. That was one of the things we'd change.' (En we vonden dat 't zonde war naar bed te gaan, dat een mensch eigenlijk altijd op moest kunnen blijven. Ook dat zouden we veranderen.)

For the author lived his other life, the life of going to bed at a decent time successfully, eventually becoming a director of the company he started with back in 1904. A director some twenty years later in 1926 only to suffer a breakdown the following year for which he was hospitalized. Was it cognitive dissonance, being a man who lived two lives, one largely public and important, the other tiny and insular, a poet's interior life of angst and fragmented beauty? How could he be true to the two deities of his existence, the business and the artistic? Like being between the devil and God. 

It is no wonder these two figure so prominently in his story, the Little Poet (Dichtertje - Dichter being poet and tje being the dimunitive). Here a man who knows that because he is a poet only the pretty girls walk on the other side of the canal. Though the Little Poet is married to Coba he finds himself falling in love with the sister. And like life, he didn't notice the sister at first. How could he? Dora was fifteen when they first met but of course a beautiful girl is bound to become a beautiful woman, old enough  'to read edifying books, with chocolate in her mouth and the rest o the chocolate bar on the table' (Ze was nu zoo oud, dat ze verheven boeken las met een mondje vol chocla en de rest van de reep op't tafeltje.)

For the Little Poet's life, it doesn't end well. Between the devil and God, Coba and Dora... What can we say of the author, that he wanted to sacrifice a fictional life because that's what he wanted secretly for himself? 

Then in 1929, he Nescio, the man known as 'I don't know' had to tell the world who he was lest someone else receive all the credit for his works. So Jan Hendrik Frederik Gröhloh announced publicly he had penned the stories that concerned rebellious youths and wanderers, freeloaders and bohemians. There was some shock amongst his peers and colleagues but I'm sure they were probably suspicious. No man can keep an entire secret, fragments falling out here and there, scraps and sketches leaving a trail back to the source. 

One wonders if given the chance he could have forged a literary career. Nescio, nee Gröhloh was born the same year as Czech literary giant Franz Kafka  (1882) and was only four years younger than Robert Walser (1878), another genius storyteller of Swiss descent. Where could he have taken his career had writing won out over the practical and decent? Maybe nowhere. In 1937, ten years after his breakdown, the director of the Holland-Bombay Trading Company retired, exclaiming he was free after forty years of servitude, free of his 'valley of obligations'. But free to do what? His youth behind him, some friends dead, some alive and close to retirement, he didn't manage to write anything other a smaller handful of sketches and stories. What we have then is all he was capable of.

Today he is known in The Netherlands and little known elsewhere. While Tolstoy and Dickens, Shakespeare and Ibsen, Austen and Bronte and other literary gods command the shelves of bookstore and libraries, Nescio appears now in the English-speaking world on the periphery, slender, tidy but still well-spoken. His works are like luminous afternoons you've half-forgotten but they were still beautiful even though nothing monumental or dramatic happened but you want to go back to them nonetheless. You are nostalgic only because you remind yourself to be, having the photographs and snippets of conversation still circling in your head. 

Nescio/Gröhloh, like a business man you might see on a tram in modern day Amsterdam, newspaper in hand, a spring afternoon maybe outside the window, his younger version by the canal or in a boat, the Sint Nicolasskirk standing in the distance.

To Lvov: The Scandalous Roots of One's Slavic Past

St.Cyrill, St.Catharines

To Lvov. Which station
for Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew
gleams on a suitcase, when express
trains and bullet trains are being born. To leave
in haste for Lvov, night or day, in September
or in March. But only if Lvov exists,

- Adam Zagajewski

Before leaving for Europe, it was always my best intention to visit the ancestral countries of both my parents. 

As it turned out, there would be familial links to my father's side, relatives I could stay with in Holland, birthplaces I could see and visit and stories I could hear about. Naturally, there would be photo albums and memories. 

This would pose no problem. 

Unfortunately this wouldn't be the case when it came to my mother's roots; I had nothing to go on. 

To compensate, I decided to do my own research and familiarize myself with the basics of my mother's culture. I bought a book about Ukraine and the Lonely Planet's guide to Eastern Europe. I read the novels of Mikhael Bulgakov. I even went online and investigated potential cities to visit such as Lviv (Lvov), Odessa and Kiev. I checked out accommodations and room prices through AirBnB; overall, they seemed fairly reasonable. I looked at trains and buses. I didn't foresee any major troubles in getting there and exploring.

Time is crucial in everything and I suppose the one thing that deterred my search for maternal roots when I arrived in Europe was the presence of the FIFA Cup. This would be an issue. In Munich, during Oktoberfest for instance, prices for rooms skyrocket to take advantage of the eager beer-swilling tourists. I expected the same from Ukraine and of Poland, the two countries that would be co-hosting the games.

Despite my research and intentions, despite my closeness on my trip, being at one point a mere hour away from the Polish border in Berlin, I never managed to forge a route into that mysterious, Slavic side of my identity. In truth, I will say I was a little disappointed in this regard, not so much in myself but circumstances. I had studied Russian for a year and before finalizing plans, daydreamed about walking through streets where the Cyrillic writing would be everywhere. I had been looking forward to making my way east, seeing the churches and sitting down in a restaurant, eating borsch and cabbage rolls in the land where it had first been concocted.   

Dostoevskyhaus, Baden Baden, Germany

Thankfully, there were familiar vestiges and reminders of Slavic culture in Germany. In Baden Baden, many of the tourist shops inform visitors that the staff within speak German, English and Russian. The woman who welcomed me at the Friedrichsbad spoke Russian. Not only this, the guiding signs in the facility are written in the three languages with French being the fourth. 

Outside the spa, just around the corner is the Dostoevskyhaus, named for Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) The great Russian novelist had visited the city with his wife Anna in August, 1867 during a tour of Europe. He gambled at the famous casino and based a novel on his erratic and hopeless experiences there (today the lower floor of the 'haus' is a real estate office). 

A peer of the troubled writer, Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) loved the city and urged fellow writers to join him there. There is a bust of him on the Lichtentaler Allee. 

Baden Baden famous Russian Church

Baden Baden also boasts its famous Russian Church as does Leipzig in Eastern Germany. 

And yet somehow, it was good but not good enough. Back in Canada now, I continually return to my pictures of The Netherlands and smile and think back nostalgically to my hours there. I have pictures of where my father lived in Amsterdam. I visited Haarlem where my Oma was born, having biked its streets and drank its beer. Strangely, despite all these beautiful experiences, it feels in-balanced as if I had been unfair to a part of myself and favoured one side over the other. 

Though maybe I have to come to terms with what I know and will never know because that's the way it has always been. When I think of the research I've done, my interest in Russian literature and language, it has always been my effort to reach out into the hazed past as opposed to have been brought up in it. A lot of course, has to do with my mother.

My mother's side of the family has so little to do with their heritage. Unlike my father, she, in her adult life had little contact with her parents, my grandfather dying when I was little, my grandmother living on the other side of the country. I can count on my two hands the times I sat with them and had a conversation. A solemn contrast to what I experienced with my father's family. We lived just around the corner from my Opa and Oma. I never heard Russian or Ukrainian spoken but I listened to Dutch conversations several times a week. I ate gouda cheese and other Dutch delicacies daily, thanks in part to the import store on Ontario St., Ramakers. 

It was only at Christmas that I had perogies and cabbage rolls at my aunts. 

My mother only recently told me that she had let herself become 'Broerse-fied', allowing her husband's Dutch culture to take pride of place before hers. For her, the past was laden with bad memories and misplaced dreams, family feuds and conflicts, ubiquitous skeletons creeping out of the closet. This is the reason why we never had a samnovar or Ukrainian decorations in our home and instead had teak furniture - wall unit, tables and so forth then popular in Scandinavia and those households with Northern European backgrounds. I remember the Delft tiles and the yellow, wooden clogs near the window. I remember the Breughel and Van Gogh prints in the hallway and living room.

Perhaps this is the reason she remembers so very little of her parents' world, where they come from. I learned in my late twenties from my eldest aunt the true origins of my grandmother and grandfather.

From what I have gathered, my grandmother's mother, Sophie (София) came from Western Ukraine, the city of Ternopil (Тернопiль), two hour east of Lviv (Львiв). Her mother died when Sophie was five. Her father passed on some seven  years later. She moved to Saskatchewan in 1919 with her step-parents, marrying my great-grandfather, Max (Максим) soon after.

My grandmother, Josie, was born in 1923 followed by her two sisters, Anna (1926) and Marrianne (1927). When she was four years old, her father killed himself. 

There is some speculation regarding Max's suicide but many believe he killed himself because he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. Others say it was the diagnosis compounded by depression. He learned that his wife was cheating on him. Sophie believed she didn't have much time to find a new husband and should start sooner. Without the support of his wife, Max slit his throat, feeling utterly alone in the world and certainly died feeling both betrayed and ashamed.

Following the funeral, Sophie married a man named Daniel (Данaйл), also of Ukrainian origin. Sophie had two more daughters, Olga and May. But apparently Dan couldn't keep it in his pants and made 'attempts' on my grandmother (whether my grandmother was raped or not has not come to light). Sophie, knowing that Dan couldn't corral his darker habits sold the family cow and gave my grandmother the money to start a new life in Toronto, Ontario. 

There she met my grandfather. Pyotr (Пиотр) came from Russian stock. His family, it is said left Russia because of the Revolution and headed south to Buchovina (Буковина), a region now split between present day Ukraine and Romania. (In those days, the borders were tenuous. It is said that a man could have been born in the Austro-Hungarian empire, have been of Ukrainian background, been Polish and then an Ukrainian citizen and not have left his hometown during the eighty years of his life.)

My grandfather's family was broken up because my great-grandfather headed to Canada to start anew. He told his family (two sons, a daughter and wife) he would find relatives, find work, buy a home and send for them. Unfortunately, upon settling, he fell in love with another woman in Fort Francis, Ontario. After making his way with his family across the Atlantic, down the St.Lawrence, my grandfather came to seek out his father on a cold winter's night. His father welcomed him at the door with chilling words: "I never want to see you again in my life" and slammed the door on his eldest son. 

Pyotr's mother found work as a maid in Toronto. My grandfather worked a slave labor-like job in Port William. Eventually his mother saved enough money and was able to bring her three kids together.

Strange to think that my own paternal great-grandmother warned my future grandmother, Josie not to marry her son. There are even family tales that she cursed her eldest to a life of hardship and pain. 

Who believes in curses anyway? Josie married Pyotr. They had five kids, my mother the youngest.

Recently, my mother's only brother died. He was in late sixties. We weren't surprised. His wife of over thirty years passed away last year due to cancer. With couples who've lived together and loved each other so long, it is only inevitable that one goes right after the other.

St.George's, St.Catharines

The last time I saw my uncle I was twelve. I know nothing of him, just like the family. Instead, what I have to go on are the traces, the disappearing footprints in the snow that lead here and there, all them found through my own inclinations, following them, unsure if I want to keep going. I suppose this is the reason I add a veneer of myth to my life as if it might add some colour and depth to the little I have gleaned. Maybe I'm in love with the illusion of the culture, the far away traditions. Winter nights when I still lived in St.Catharines, I would take a walk through the Facer neighborhood, passing St.George and St.Cyril, looking up at the solemn, noble facades, up at the snow-whisked domes, looking through the glass front doors and dreaming about the cultures that built them, about the languages that trembled behind their walls.

When my grandfather died, the service was at St.George. The eulogy was in Ukrainian. My mother sat in the church, staring up at the icons not knowing what it all meant but also not wanting to. He was a cruel man, a closet alcoholic, the kind whose moods changed and out of nowhere he would pull out the strap because it made him happy to beat one of his kids. He was the kind of scheming man who burned the family home to collect insurance money. The insurance reps suspected this and only gave my grandfather a quarter of what the house was worth.

For my mother, he burned her favourite home, the place she most loved. 

But what can a man become, really? My grandfather walked away in the frosted night from his father, heeding his words and in turn became the father he despised. It could have been the curse. Later, my uncle stood by his father's tombstone, having waited hours for the grave diggers to rectify their mistake. They had dug up the wrong plot. The director of the cemetery was quite embarrassed, apologizing to my mother and aunt. For my uncle, it simply meant standing out in the March cold, smoking cigarette after cigarette, making sure the man who had tormented his life, the man who withheld any iota of kindness was six feet deep and in the right place.

And here I was, out on snowy evenings in St.Catharines, romanticizing a world so many try to escape from.

My friend is married to a Ukrainian woman. Her father, like my grandfather was a cruel man, he too an alcoholic. He had a past. He managed to elude Stalin, escaping a P.O.W. camp with his wife in Central Europe, making their way to France then Canada. In St.Catharines he helped build St.George's. He also went on to father three kids, my friend's wife the youngest.

To this day none of them talk to each other.

It is almost the same with my mother, the lines of communication are tenuous.

As for Nana, Josie, the one who had been the four-year old girl, the one who was taunted and teased by her classmates because her dad committed suicide, well, we fear she is near her end. Though, she's always been close to it. When I was living in British Columbia, she tried to kill herself with pills. I remember the hospital room in Surrey and how she spent the whole time wandering the halls, unable to talk to either me or my mother. She lived longer than her father but was never quite there. I'm sure at her funeral, there will be no need for a high collar to hide her wound.

When she goes, she'll leave nothing, her eldest daughter having drained her bank accounts to pay for her whims. The family has known about this, they talk about it but they do nothing. What can you do? I'm sure my aunt is still angry at her mother for not heeding Pyotr's mother's advice.

And when Josie goes, well, I'm sure another aunt will be in there to pick at the scraps when she is gone, looking for anything of value. That's what she did when my grandfather died. An aunt who once appeared on Oprah, who preached no sex before marriage. How ironic when her own teenage daughter was buying condoms at a pharmacy the week before.

Perhaps my oldest aunt is doing all of us a favour. Who wants anything left? When my grandfather died, his will was dispersed. All that remained was an 'education fund' but we only found out about this years later when I was going to school. Of course, with my mother's family, that $25,000 disappeared in one fail swoop, one aunt feeling she knew who 'deserved' the money and who didn't. (None of it went to those who were going to school, however...)

So yes...this is family. This is the legacy...

Maybe I'm glad there was nothing in the Ukraine for me to look for. I guess when I think of it, I'm glad I never made my way east, nothing further than Berlin, that I saw enough cultural icons in Baden Baden and Leipzig to satisfy my longings for a Slavic past. Beyond that, what could there be? Empty hopes, I'm sure. 

Nothing in Lvov, nothing in Ternopol or Odessa.

It's better when it's just a dream, empty churches I once passed in the winter, seeing my own breath disappear in front of me.