Author: Nicolas Demers

Movie Review: What The Bleep Do We Know

Tag line: “It’s time to get wise!”

Uh-huh.

I heard about this movie from a friend of mine, who’d seen it, loved it, and urged me to go see it for myself. From the online trailer, and a couple of reviews I’d read, it looked like your typical pretentious yet shallow New Age fluff, and thus a complete waste of my time. Hell, I’d already suffered through half an hour of Waking Life, people! Nobody should have to endure that twice.

Tag line: “It’s time to get wise!”

Uh-huh.

I heard about this movie from a friend of mine, who’d seen it, loved it, and urged me to go see it for myself. From the online trailer, and a couple of reviews I’d read, it looked like your typical pretentious yet shallow New Age fluff, and thus a complete waste of my time. Hell, I’d already suffered through half an hour of Waking Life, people! Nobody should have to endure that twice.

But: This friend is an even bigger skeptic than I am, and every time we saw each other he asked if I’d seen it. When I answered no, he kept insisting I had to see it. Okay, obviously somebody somewhere was missing something, and I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t me. I trusted my friend’s judgement so, even though my expectations weren’t high, I decided I had to go see it for myself. Keep an open mind, right?

My verdict: Bleah. Where do I even start? How about with the lazy, lazy writing? There’s no story here. Most of the movie is taken up by talking heads babbling a lot of platitudes about the wonders and mysteries of Quantum Mechanics and the human mind. Most of what isn’t talking heads is pretty special effects, of atomic nuclei and galaxies and… a sort of wormhole thingy, which maybe was supposed to represent quantum tunneling? I don’t know. Oh, and a shimmering grid occasionally overlaid on the “normal” world, vanishing and reappearing at random, that was supposed to symbolize how illusory the real world is. It looks just like the Enterprise-D’s holodeck grid, except that grid was yellow and this one is blue. A blatant ripoff, in my opinion.

The rest of the movie was taken up by a paper-thin parable, further driving home the messages of the talking heads. The characters are completely two-dimensional, and even that’s probably generous: there’s the Hard-Nosed Skeptic, who eventually starts believing in spite of her better judgement… and for some reason was written as speech-impaired (possibly hearing-impaired as well, though that wasn’t consistently portrayed. More sloppy writing); there’s her roommate (or lover? again, that part wasn’t clear), the Somewhat Ditzy But Nice And Well-Meaning Believer; and you’ve got the Inexplicably Wise Basketball-Playing Kid, who appears out of nowhere to spout yet more wisdom at the Skeptic and coax her “down the rabbit hole.” Viewers may identify with one or more of them to some extent, because they’re so archetypal (to be charitable), but they have no way to really connect with them, or understand what makes them tick. But then, we’re not supposed to connect with these characters. They—along with the talking heads—exist only to serve as mouthpieces for the movie’s Big Message.

And what is that message? The usual New Agey clichés: The denial of objective reality (‘cos we create our own reality, inside our minds and by interacting with the universe, because of quantum); the need for a “new paradigm;” the glorification of mystery over knowledge, and childlike wonder over skepticism; cool-sounding myths that are highly suspect (though not provably false), like the one about Native Caribbean people at first not being able to see Colombus’ ships on the ocean because they’d never seen ships like that before; cool-sounding myths that are provably false, like Transcendental Meditation reducing crime rates. And through it all, very complex topics like QM and cognitive science being either misrepresented or mangled into sweet-tasting sound bites to support these mystical beliefs.

I walked out of the theatre after about 45 minutes; I’d been checking my watch and rolling my eyes for… well, pretty much all of the movie up to that point, really, but the mention of Transcendental Meditation was the last straw.

So what was I supposed to get out of this movie? That the world is a strange and exciting place? Yes, it certainly is. But I already knew that, from reading legitimate science books. That we can be slaves to our own perceptions and assumptions? That it wouldn’t hurt to look at the world with wonder and fresh eyes from time to time? You won’t find me disagreeing. But I believe that movies like What The Bleep Do We Know? are more a distraction than anything else. One may watch it and feel suitably enlightened or at least pleasantly confused, but ultimately the movie offers no genuine substance. Instead it shows some seriously exciting science, hopelessly distorted into a colourful kaleidoscopic jumble that gives lay people only the illusion of understanding. Do you want to see the world and appreciate its beauty? Do you want to change your life, become more than who you are now? Then go out there and do it. You don’t need to waste your time with this vapid mystical fluff. The world is exciting enough without filling your head with other people’s fantasies. As the late, great, Douglas Adams wrote, “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

Better Than Cursing The Darkness

Winter’s officially already here. Oh, I know the solstice isn’t for another three weeks. Technically, this is still autumn. But autumn’s gorgeous show is long over; the leaves have almost all fallen off the trees, and the remaining ones are dead yellows or browns. When the clouds clear up I can see snow on the North Shore mountains; even at ground level the temperature’s dipped below freezing for the last few nights.

Winter’s officially already here. Oh, I know the solstice isn’t for another three weeks. Technically, this is still autumn. But autumn’s gorgeous show is long over; the leaves have almost all fallen off the trees, and the remaining ones are dead yellows or browns. When the clouds clear up I can see snow on the North Shore mountains; even at ground level the temperature’s dipped below freezing for the last few nights.

It does make for pretty mornings, though, with frost on the ground sparkling in the sunlight. Good thing, because Vancouver winters are distinctly lacking in prettiness; not a lot of snow falls (at least, not in the lower mainland), so you don’t get lovely white landscapes like, say, in Ottawa. Here everything’s grey or brown and depressing. And let’s not forget the long nights, which are a lot darker that Ottawa’s because of the lack of snow. Then again, the clouds do reflect the urban lights more; so, yay for light pollution, but I’m not sure the dark orangey-red night sky is all that cheery.

But then, that’s what Christmas lights are for. I put mine up last night, for only the second year since I moved out West. Until last year I was never much into the holidays; I’ve always loathed the intense commercialism, and of course couldn’t get behind the religious traditions. But then I watched my TV boyfriend get all worked up about Chrismukkah… and damned if a completely made up uber-holiday didn’t sound perfect for me! So I went out and bought lights. And it feels good to see them shining out there. Maybe because part of me likes to participate in the season’s rituals, but mainly because… they’re bright. And having lights outside my place, shining through the night, is better than having nothing at all. That’s what it comes down to, right? Strip away the rituals and traditions, and it’s just about driving the night away, making your own light at a time of the year when light is in very short supply.

…This I Know, For The Bling-Bling Tells Me So

So I’m driving to work this morning, grooving to La bottine souriante, when a car pulls up next to me at a red light. I don’t really pay attention, until I see the guy in the front passenger’s side pulling down his window, specifically trying to get my attention. What the hell? Do I know him? A quick memory scan turns up negative. Has he spotted my rainbow flag bumper sticker and now wants to cruise me? He’s cute, young, with a nice smile and dark spiky hair… and wearing a huge-ass, gaudy gold crucifix, which he’s holding up with a hand graced by an equally huge-ass, equally gaudy gold ring. Get down with your gangsta self, white boy!

So I’m driving to work this morning, grooving to La bottine souriante, when a car pulls up next to me at a red light. I don’t really pay attention, until I see the guy in the front passenger’s side pulling down his window, specifically trying to get my attention. What the hell? Do I know him? A quick memory scan turns up negative. Has he spotted my rainbow flag bumper sticker and now wants to cruise me? He’s cute, young, with a nice smile and dark spiky hair… and wearing a huge-ass, gaudy gold crucifix, which he’s holding up with a hand graced by an equally huge-ass, equally gaudy gold ring. Get down with your gangsta self, white boy! But wait, he’s not just holding up the crucifix, he’s actually kissing it, in between trying to tell me something which I can’t hear because my window is still up.

Whoah. Is this is how the young queers dress and cruise nowadays? Okay, so the light’s still red, and I’m kind of curious (and kind of apprehensive) about this grinning freak. I roll down the window, and finally hear what he has to say.

“Jesus loves you!”

Oh. Well, that’s great. And Santa loves you too. So this wasn’t about my rainbow flag sticker, but my “Born OK The First Time” sticker, and Darwin fish.

Message delivered, my new hit-and-run missionary friend rolls up his window and, the light having turned green, we drive off in different directions.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these people? Did they just see a passing heathen, ripe for witnessing, and just unloaded their little catch phrase, which of course I have not heard a million times before, not in person, in print, on TV, on the Net, not me, because I was raised by wolves—atheist wolves, in fact—and have only just this week rejoined civilization. Then they move on, their bellies full of the warm glow of a job well done, having earned another brownie point from Jesus. Not interested in a dialogue. Or even in an argument. Not interested in wondering if this brain-dead tactic actually works. Because I can tell you right now, Gentle Reader, that it did not work on me. Not today, and none of the other times that shit’s been pulled. Did I get all misty-eyed at the thought that some imaginary resurrected being loves me, me personally? Did I suddenly develop a driving urge to immediately explore the holy books relating the story of this Jesus character?

No. No, I did not. But was I pissed at the interruption of a kick-ass Franco-Canadian musical moment? Why, yes I was. Was I filled with disdain for the hiphop missionary, and all missionaries like him, repeating words that had no meaning outside their religion, unable to see any points of view besides their own? I believe that was the case as well. Was I motherfucking creeped out by the crazily compulsive kissing of the crucifix? I will not deny this. And was I more grateful than ever for leaving the baggage of faith behind, having seen—as if I needed another reminder—how it can mess people up? You better believe that’s a yes.

Between Québec And Toronto

I’ve lived in Vancouver for over eight years, having moved here from Ottawa—where I was born and spent all my life—and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. In fact, I believe moving out here was the best thing that happened to me since I came out of the close twelve years ago. I’ve changed a lot in that time and, looking back, I feel very far away from Ottawa, and the me who lived there.

I’ve lived in Vancouver for over eight years, having moved here from Ottawa—where I was born and spent all my life—and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. In fact, I believe moving out here was the best thing that happened to me since I came out of the close twelve years ago. I’ve changed a lot in that time and, looking back, I feel very far away from Ottawa, and the me who lived there. From where I’m sitting it sometimes feels as though very little changed for me in those first four years after coming out, and even less in the two decades that came before. As though the only important decision I made in Ottawa was to eventually get the hell out, and find a place—the only place—where I could be who I needed to be. I have to force myself to remember there was a lot more to those four years than coming out and dreams of the West Coast.

I remember my graduation, in June of ’92. I’d come out to myself less than two weeks before, and still felt completely lost. The ceremony wasn’t helping, either. All the other graduands seemed so sure of themselves, what they wanted, where they were going. But me? I had no clue, and no confidence that I could handle it all. Nothing I’d gone through so far had prepared me for this. My life—safe, routine, familiar—was being turned upside down and for the moment I had no one to talk to. I was alone.

At some point in the following weeks I got the idea to go on a short trip by myself, to shake up my routine and hopefully give me a bit of perspective and confidence. After some thought I decided on Québec, a few hours away by train. Familiar enough—I’d been there a couple of times when I was much younger—but still far from my everyday life. So I travelled there in early August, staying at the Université Laval residences. I did the tourist thing by day—the Zoo, the Aquarium, Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Île d’Orléans, exploring the narrow streets of Vieux Québec—and wrote in my diary by night. There was a lot of self-doubt, confusion and loneliness in those entries… but also joy at this new adventure, and hope (or at least wishes) for the future. When I came home I felt a bit more relaxed, a bit more sunburned, a bit more confident, a bit more determined.True, I wasn’t changed as much as I would have liked… but I’d taken that important first step.

That fall I came out to Ottawa’s gay community, and my immediate family. And then, one by one, to some of my friends and classmates. I was nervous as hell the first few times, but with each person I told the fear got a little weaker and I got a little stronger.

And I became politicized. I read up on queer issues, got in touch with my anger and joined activist groups. Tentatively, at first; for a long time after coming out I lacked the confidence to pull my weight and be more than an observer.

I stopped going to church; for years I’d been going more or less out of inertia, and I suppose it was only after I came out as gay that I could also come out as a non-Catholic. For a while I flirted with Wicca, then began a gradual slide towards atheism.

And I stayed in school. For the first year after coming out I took higher-division Physics courses, thinking I could go on to a Master’s. Then I realized Computer Science was more my thing, and began a new degree in the fall of ’93.

I don’t remember exactly at what point I thought of moving to the West Coast, but the more I thought about it, the more appealing it seemed: the mountains, the sea, the unknown… and, just as importantly, it was far away from Ottawa. By late ’95 I was feeling a growing need to leave, make a fresh start somewhere else. I’d changed a lot, grown, and made friends I’d miss, but Ottawa held too many painful memories, of loneliness and need and failure, both before and after coming out. I also wanted to do graduate studies, but preferably not in Ottawa. I applied to a number of universities and, to my delight, was accepted in the Master’s program in Comp Sci at Simon Fraser University.

At the end of June ’96 a bunch of us from Outlook (Ottawa U GLB group) went down to Toronto for the Gay Pride weekend. Until then I’d only seen Ottawa’s relatively modest Pride parades, so I was really looking forward to this. The weekend started off with a trip to Canada’s Wonderland on Saturday. Great fun, and another first for me, though I was too afraid of heights and motion sickness to go on the wilder rides. The weather turned to rain in the middle of the day, but it was warm enough that after a while I didn’t even feel it. That night we took a walk through the gay ghetto—there were Pride flags everywhere—and made a brief stop at an incredibly crowded club.

On Sunday, Church Street was a riot of colour and noise, with people in all sorts of costumes, everyday clothes, or no clothes at all. Toronto is a different world; back in Ottawa I never saw more than one or two pairs of breasts a year at the parade. But here there were topless women left, right, and centre, as well as a few naked men (or just about naked; but really, what do you call someone wearing only (a) a leather harness, or (b) a translucent gown and cock ring?). The crowd was so thick I only caught a few glimpses of the huge, elaborate floats as the parade looped around the neighbourhood. That was fine, there was plenty to see. Church Street was closed off for a street fair kind of thing, and I spent the afternoon people-watching, checking out the booths, and trying to keep hydrated under the blazing sun.

In a way this weekend trip to Toronto felt similar to my earlier trip to Québec, both being preludes to something big and intimidating: my journey out of the closet, and moving across the country. Part of me was still worried that I wouldn’t be able to live on my own and it was nice to be reminded that, yes, I could handle it. These two nights in a youth hostel could be seen as a bit of a test, that I passed with flying colours. Then again, in hindsight I’m sure I was looking for patterns in all the wrong places. Though there was a nice superficial symmetry between the two trips, the differences far outweighed the similarities. I didn’t go to Toronto to reflect or work up my courage—though that was a nice side effect—but only to have fun, and connect with the greater community I was now a part of. Most importantly, I was different. For all my doubts and insecurities—still there after four years—I finally knew I had the strength to make it on my own.

And Vancouver was only five weeks away now! Over those five weeks I ping-ponged between excitement and terror as I said my goodbyes and packed and dreamed about my new life. I was massively nervous and insecure, but I never considered not leaving. I was doing the right thing: Vancouver was where I belonged now, not Ottawa.

But moving thousands of kilometers across the country wasn’t some kind of magical rebirth. It didn’t immediately remove all my issues and insecurities, no matter how much I would have liked it to. Just like I had before, I grew up and changed one step at a time. And I’ve only just come to wonder if maybe it didn’t matter where that happened. There was nothing special about Vancouver, or Ottawa, for that matter. I was doing pretty well by the time of my second fateful trip, and I think now I could have built a fine life pretty much anywhere, or continued to build it if I’d stayed in Ottawa.

That’s not to say I made a mistake eight years ago. It felt like the right thing to do then, and I don’t regret it one bit. Vancouver is my home now. But the truth is that I didn’t have to move here. At some point between Québec and Toronto I made a choice. Maybe it didn’t feel like much of one, but there it was. There were any number of roads open to me, not just the one that led to Vancouver. There’s not much point in playing what-if games and wondering how my past could have been different, but I can think about the future. And I can choose where the road out of Ottawa will lead me.

Four More Years

Well, that’s just fucking great. The chimp gets a second term and eleven anti-gay-marriage ballots passed. I guess Americans are happy electing (note: “electing”, not “re-electing”) a half-wit warmongering religious whackjob as long as it keeps the queers from getting married.

Well, that’s just fucking great. The chimp gets a second term and eleven anti-gay-marriage ballots passed. I guess Americans are happy electing (note: “electing”, not “re-electing”) a half-wit warmongering religious whackjob as long as it keeps the queers from getting married.

You know, before last night, I was all set to go like Stewie Griffin from Family Guy, in the episode where Meg pretends he’s her son and he gets sent to an aggressively multicultural foster home, and be all “Oh, Hosannah! It’s the lesser of two evils!” (That line always cracks me up.) But… yeah. The lesser of two evils conceded. And I don’t have the words to express how angry and depressed I am. Well, I guess I do, but that’s already been done. So I’ll just link to a much more eloquent blog, let out a Stewie-style “Blast!”, and sign off for now.

Corvids Are Cool

Every evening before dusk, I can see hundreds of crows flying past my workplace on their way to roost in Burnaby. They stream past, cawing to each other, either alone, in small groups, or in larger murders. (That’s the correct term, incidentally. A murder of crows, an unkindness of ravens, a parliament of rooks, a tiding of magpies—that last one probably referring to magpie counting rhymes. Damn, but Corvids have cool collective nouns.)

Every evening before dusk, I can see hundreds of crows flying past my workplace on their way to roost in Burnaby. They stream past, cawing to each other, either alone, in small groups, or in larger murders. (That’s the correct term, incidentally. A murder of crows, an unkindness of ravens, a parliament of rooks, a tiding of magpies—that last one probably referring to magpie counting rhymes. Damn, but Corvids have cool collective nouns.) Every once in a while I’ve just stood outside and watched them go past. The light’s fading and it’s nippy and sometimes I get bored (if there’s a long gap between groups) or annoyed by the rush-hour traffic or feel self-conscious standing there where the smokers gather during the day. There’s never anybody here this late but if someone I know comes along and asks what I’m doing, I’d feel silly answering, “I’m looking at the crows.” Ah, but then when they do come… I remember how stunned I was the first time I looked, really looked, at crows flying overhead. The birds aren’t out for murder, they’re out for fun, swooping around, mock-fighting, diving at buildings and pulling up at the last minute… All just for the thrill of it. Even in the middle of their commute, they find time for play. Amazing stuff. I could watch them for hours.

And then there are ravens. Back when Cayenta was located up at Discovery Park I’d sometimes hear their distinctive “Rrrrok!” coming from the treetops. (Amusingly, one time it sounded more like “Rrrrowf!”, as though the raven were barking. And maybe it was: they’re apparently very good mimics.) One afternoon I looked up from my desk and saw a raven right outside my (ground-level) window. Let me tell you, ravens are gorgeous creatures, twice as big as crows, with shiny black plumage and nasty-looking beaks. This one had a mouse (or some other small rodent) with it, still alive and feebly struggling; the raven circled its prey, slowly, in what I thought was a very dignified manner, every once in a while giving it a sharp peck. I felt kind of sorry for the little critter but hey, a bird’s gotta eat, and I was fairly desensitized anyway. Our cat back in Ottawa—a first-rate huntress—used to bring us a lot of “gifts.” Besides, I was absolutely fascinated by this beautiful black bird.

I don’t remember what happened after that. At some point I turned back towards my computer—and then the raven was gone, along with the mouse. Oh, well. That was the only time I ever saw a raven up close. In spite of what it was doing, I never thought of it as unkind.

A Moment of Patriotism

Fall is in full swing. Trees are reddening (and browning and yellowing and orangeing, and is that even a word? Orangeing? Orangening? I could look it up, but it’s more fun to speculate). I felt like writing something here, but it all came out so generic. The leaves are falling and the days are getting shorter and the birds are flying south and something about the changing seasons and maybe the circle of life, and then a rousing rendition of Turn! Turn! Turn!

Multicoloured Cocoon

Fall is in full swing. Trees are reddening (and browning and yellowing and orangeing, and is that even a word? Orangeing? Orangening? I could look it up, but it’s more fun to speculate). I felt like writing something here, but it all came out so generic. The leaves are falling and the days are getting shorter and the birds are flying south and something about the changing seasons and maybe the circle of life, and then a rousing rendition of Turn! Turn! Turn! Gah. Maybe I wasn’t that inspired after all.

(Problem: if I’m going to have a more bloggish feel to this Web site (ie: shorter, but more frequent, updates), I can’t just write something for the sake of writing. It has to have… substance. Or at least, style. Or a point. Or something. It can’t just be about what I had for lunch, or cleaning the appartment, or talking about people you don’t even know, stuff that would be boring to anyone but me. But on the other hand, I can’t keep writing these big long essays with deep insights and stuff that take months or years to finish (depending on how disciplined I feel). There’s got to be a happy medium; I just have to find it. But then I’ll probably have to rename that section. “Essays” sounds too… stuffy. Unspontaneous. I don’t know if that’s a word either. Making up words is doubleplusgood.)

So, fall. This weekend I went down to Como Lake Park to add to my Fall Foliage gallery, and got some gorgeous pics of a young maple tree showing off its red leaves. Wow. I ask you, is there anything more spectacular than a maple leaf’s unique fiery orange-red? And even though the colour actually has nothing to do with why it was picked for the Canadian flag, for just a moment, it made me feel all… patriotic.

O Canada, terre de nos aïeux
Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux

(Second aside. I only knew the first stanza of the French and English versions. Then I looked up the rest of the lyrics, and they’re even more fiercely royalist, nationalist and Christian. Oy. Although I did get a giggle out of the first line of the third stanza: «De son patron, précurseur du vrai Dieu» Heh. The original version was French, after all. English Canadians, not so big on the Saint-Jean-Baptiste.)

Maple Fire

The days are getting shorter, and the sun’s lower in the sky. No more outdoor volleyball at work. But when you’ve got spectacles like this, I really can’t complain.

Left, Right, Left, Right

So. 51 days into the redesign, and where am I at?

It’s going pretty well, actually. I’ve converted all of the pages except the photo galleries to the new (provisional) design, and even those should be done very soon. That’s the easy part. Now that I’ve got the styles in place, I’ll be able to shuffle things around much more easily. CSS-based layouts are a godsend, they are. I’ve still got a lot to learn (no duh), but it doesn’t look so intimidating anymore.

So. 51 days into the redesign, and where am I at?

It’s going pretty well, actually. I’ve converted all of the pages except the photo galleries to the new (provisional) design, and even those should be done very soon. That’s the easy part. Now that I’ve got the styles in place, I’ll be able to shuffle things around much more easily. CSS-based layouts are a godsend, they are. I’ve still got a lot to learn (no duh), but it doesn’t look so intimidating anymore. At first, I was going to stick to my trusty old table-based layout; but when I tried to get a little fancier I ended up with massively nested tables, so I said “Fuck that noise!” and took the plunge. CSS all the way, baby. Haven’t looked back since. In fact, a while later, I decided to move the sidebar from left to right. All it took were a few changes in the stylesheet, and boom, all my pages had their sidebar on the right. Seriously, how awesome is that? If I hadn’t been enlightened before, that would have done it for sure.

But like I said, that’s the easy part. CSS and HTML, that’s just… coding (I always code my pages by hand). The real struggle will be designing graphics, because it means using a side of my brain that just hasn’t gotten much exercise. Left brain—analytical, logical, language oriented? No problemo. Right brain—intuitive, emotional? Ah. That’s a problemo. I’ll need to learn a whole new language. No, not even that (just showed my bias, right there), but much more basic—primal, if I may use the word—ways to express myself.

I think I got that particular revelation while visiting Web sites on Paleolithic art a couple weeks ago. The people living 20 or 30,000 years ago had no written language, and maybe not much of a spoken language, but they still produced some seriously kick-ass art. I have to watch myself here; can’t fall in the trap of thinking “Ooo, Cro-magnons were primitive and brutish, they had no left-brain thinking at all.” Which, well, is certainly very condescending and probably very wrong. But they must have had a very different mindset, and that’s something I need to explore.

My Coming Out Story

It happened in late May of 1992 and became official on May 28th, the day I started my diary to come out to myself on paper; I was seven weeks away from my 21st birthday, having just finished my first undergrad degree. Suddenly, without warning, denial took a permanent holiday and I accepted the simple truth: I was gay. Had been all along.

It happened in late May of 1992 and became official on May 28th, the day I started my diary to come out to myself on paper; I was seven weeks away from my 21st birthday, having just finished my first undergrad degree. Suddenly, without warning, denial took a permanent holiday and I accepted the simple truth: I was gay. Had been all along.

Of course, it wasn’t really “without warning” and looking back, I’m amazed it took so long for me to come out. I’d liked boys for years, fantasized about them with every spare neuron. It’s true that I’d never actually done anything about it… and denial is a powerful thing. Since I understand how pointless it is to obsess about wasted years, and even though I wish I’d done it earlier, I can only say I just wasn’t ready to face the truth.

So I was out to myself. but now what was I supposed to do? Who should I talk to? Where should I go to find other gay people? Too many questions. Internalized homophobia was really the least of my worries: I felt lost and confused, full of fears and self-doubts, and not just about this particular issue. In the first week of June I attended my graduation ceremony; though I was proud and happy to have completed my degree, everything intensified my insecurities. All the other graduands seemed so sure of themselves, of where they wanted to go, what they wanted to do. Me? I didn’t have a clue. Only that I was staying in school, postponing any major decisions about my life for as long as possible.

When classes started again in September, I decided it was time to get off my butt. I’d spent the summer getting my head together, and felt a bit more confident about things. I remembered seeing posters for a gay/lesbian/bi group at Ottawa U, but that had been a couple of semesters ago, so I didn’t know if they were still active. Of course, back in those days, there was no centre or Web site. However, the student info guide was helpful in other ways: I found out about GO-Info, Ottawa’s G/L monthly paper (now defunct), and several gay or gay-friendly bookstores. And in GO-Info, I learned about various discussion and support groups held by local queer organizations. That was exactly what I needed.

In mid-September I came out to my twin brother Martin. I’d been working up the nerve to hell him for a couple of months… and as I expected it went perfectly well. I told him, and that was that. I’d been hugely nervous before, needing to tell somebody, and here I was with a totally anticlimactic coming out.

A week later I went to my first gay discussion group. I’d chosen one that took place on Sunday afternoons, since all others were on weeknights and I wasn’t ready to come out to the rest of the family. I told my parents I was going to study on campus—a plausible lie, since I sometimes did do this.

I took the bus to the ALGO Centre, at 318 Lisgar just off Bank Street. As I walked up those stairs (stairs that would become very familiar), I knew I was entering a different world. A world where I could be myself; where I could spill my guts; a world of people like me, who knew what I was going through because they’d been there too.

We went out for coffee after the meeting. Later, at home, I explained the smell of cigarette smoke on my clothes by saying I’d gotten together with friends—this time, not a lie. I kept my excitement and brand-new optimism to myself. Partly it was habit… and partly, I didn’t think even Martin would understand.

And so began my life out of the closet. Over the next few months I came out to my immediate family, read quite a lot (and especially got interested in queer history), and very gradually became politicized. It was slow going—change only came one small step at a time—but at last I was on my way.

Atheism: A Brief Manifesto

Though I’ve been an atheist for a number of years, it’s not something I usually think about. It doesn’t come up in conversations much. It doesn’t influence my day-to-day life, my job, my choice of clothes, my choice of friends. There are no churches to go to, no holy books to read, no rituals to perform. In a perfect world my lack of faith in deities wouldn’t be any more of an issue than my lack of faith in space aliens or Santa Claus.

Though I’ve been an atheist for a number of years, it’s not something I usually think about. It doesn’t come up in conversations much. It doesn’t influence my day-to-day life, my job, my choice of clothes, my choice of friends. There are no churches to go to, no holy books to read, no rituals to perform. In a perfect world my lack of faith in deities wouldn’t be any more of an issue than my lack of faith in space aliens or Santa Claus. But this is not a perfect world, and I think there is quite a bit to say about faith, and lack thereof.

The bottom line is that I don’t trust faith as a way to know the truth, about gods or anything else. Faith is easy; lots of people have it. Lots of people following lots of different religions and spiritual paths, each believing with equal sincerity, and for basically the same reasons, that they’ve got the right one. So out of all the mutually exclusive belief systems out there, which should I choose? And how? It seems all anyone has to go on are tradition, hope and fear and wishful thinking. That’s not enough for me, though: just because it feels good doesn’t mean it’s true—no matter how much I might want it to be. So until I know the truth for sure, with something more reliable than my heart, I’ll just have to withhold belief. Simple as that.

This is not a bad place to be. I’ve been told that I need spirituality to have hope, give my life meaning, or be happy. However, I don’t agree. It’s true that, once upon a time, I used to wish for some kind of transcendental experience, something that would have brought to life the fantasy worlds I loved so much, and blessed my everyday existence with a little of their magic. But the truth is, there’s plenty of magic and wonder to be had right here in the real world. Not the cheap magic of theology and superstition, with their shallow stories and simplistic moralities, but the much richer awe and inspiration that comes from facing the world and investigating its secrets. There’s no need to dream of an afterlife when there’s so much to see and do in this life. The fact that it won’t last forever doesn’t make it any less special. Quite the opposite, in fact: here and now, I am alive, and this is my only shot at being alive, so I should make the most of it. That may not seem to be a terribly comforting philosophy, but it’s enough for me.

I’ve grown stronger since I lost my beliefs in gods and mysticism. Maybe it’s not the only factor, but I believe it’s been an important one. I don’t waste my energy on false hopes or irrational fears, and so am free to focus on who I am, where I am, and what I really need: to live and learn, and find meaning to life, unburdened by gods or demons. This is what atheism is to me.