In my imagination “The Internet” descended from the deep reaches of the universe and settled upon our planet like a mist. We began to interact with this powerful and mysterious entity without any real understanding of how it was going to effect us, or even if it was going to effect us. Most of us just assumed it was going to make things better, amplifying potential in a good, rather than harmful way.

However, it hasn’t exactly worked out that way. The astonishing gifts we’ve enjoyed have come with tremendous penalties, the primary of which might be a massive, unacknowledged mental health crisis.

I don’t know about you, but I have never seen as many declarations of anxiety and depression in my life as I now see on a regular basis online. It’s not at all uncommon for me to have multiple chat windows open at once, each one a conversation with a friend in crisis. This is highly subjective of course, and that people now have the means and social sanction to communicate their feelings might be something to celebrate, or, as my intuition suggests,  it could be something in the disembodied interactions we’ve been reducing ourselves to that’s causing this articulated spike in mental health problems.

It seems that the more we inhabit the abstracted realm of The Internet, the more certain we become of our beliefs. This is highly ironic to me, because we all know that amidst the spin and swirl of disinformation, fake news and uncanny algorithms, we should be as skeptical of claims to truth and certainty as we’ve ever been.

Take the White Power symbols that have been in the news.

As you may be aware, the symbol that you always thought meant “OK,” might now mean White Power.

This transition took place about a year ago on 4Chan, where it was conceived as a conscious lie. What I mean by that is that it wasn’t a White Power sign. The intent was to take an existing symbol and change it’s meaning, thus confusing the public and media and further eroding the idea of public trust.

Regardless, once this meme was in the blood stream there was no way to know what the use of the symbol meant. Did the person know it was a white power sign? Were they just saying “OK!?” Were they making a joke? Were they communicating racist ideology?

The first instance of this that I saw was of White House Advisor Zina Bash during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

Based on this image, people thought she was a White Supremacist.

Bash is of Mexican and Jewish heritage, and this photo that was widely circulated was a high resolution screen capture of a video, so she was in motion, not in a fixed, posed position. Claims that she was communicating a racist message seemed to me ambiguous at best. But people I know, like and respect saw this photograph, and others like it,

as crystal clear evidence of racist intent. Where I saw nothing but ambiguity, they saw none.

It felt like looking at the Neckar’s Cube, like some optical illusion was at play and the mechanics of our brains were prohibiting us from seeing the same thing.

There was simply no consensus on what was real. We were living two different stories when looking at the images. Where I was looking at what was directly in front of me, my friends were looking at circumstance, or perhaps subtext, seeing this single image as part of a much greater and evolving narrative.

Perhaps I am antique in my thinking, but when I see stories like these, I look for a kind of “courtroom proof.” If I have doubt, I am unwilling to prosecute the reputation and livelihood of the person being judged, even if they might still be suspicious to me. Maybe that makes me unwilling to act, and if so that is a sin I will one day have to answer for. Regardless, online a “thing” is true if it has momentum, if it supports the continuance of a passionately held belief, not if it meets some “clinical” standard of proof.

As our shared sense of truth and morality fall away– and disagreement leads to suspicion, if not flat-out contempt– we fearlessly share our certainties, but shamefully keep our uncertainties sheltered within, anxious that we’ll be attacked rather than supported by those whom we would love, and that, well that’s making us all feel a little jumpy and untethered.

I used to spend an awful lot of time in taverns.

Typically, I’d take my place amidst a stretch of solitary men drinking at a long bar. The conversation was a slow background rumbling, almost like distant thunder, and it lasted all night.

Sports.

The weather.

Women.

TV.

The past.

Strangers who had no expectation of seeing one another again, with little in common beyond the drink in front of them, making a conscious effort not to be alone, to try in some way, to connect. These conversations were beautiful to me, and I’ve come to miss them.

As a substitute, I’ve taken to listening to Sports Talk radio at night. The other day was a call-in show out of Toronto. Lacey from Oshawa had a few things to say about the Blue Jays. She was stubbornly defending third baseman Josh Donaldson:

“ Josh is far and away the greatest Blue Jay, and just because he’s injured the team shouldn’t quit on him! He’s given them everything, and now they just want to abandon him? That’s just so crappy. You can’t treat people like that. It’s wrong.”

The voice was familiar, and as I listened I realized that I knew her. Lacey from Oshawa was part of a group of patients I did pulmonary reahb with at a facility in Toronto. She was so thin then, and so angry, and every single day she wore a Blue Jays jersey with Josh Donaldson’s name on the back.

Her path had been difficult, and the heavy veil of sadness and pain that shrouded her was rarely lifted. Maybe at Bingo, if she got a line, she might allow herself a thin, bitter smile, but that was about it. She simply could not bring herself to socialize, and what we found out about her was through observation and hearsay, all of which reduced to this: when she fell ill and became incapacitated her husband left with their young son. That was how her life had worked out.

As I listened to her on the radio, hearing her speak more than I had in the two months we shared at rehab, I heard a stronger, braver voice. She was– with this phone call decrying a lack of loyalty to somebody doing their best in the face of physical limitations– making a conscious effort not to be alone. She was reaching out, and it felt like a miracle that I got to witness this, that I got to imagine her recovered and at home, fully herself now, and fighting for somebody she loved.

I don’t much like the food here at Pulmonary Rehab.

The hatred of hospital food is pretty much a universal, and so I imagined that all the other residents would share my point of view. But no, I was dead wrong. The people I spoke with liked the food, even the simulated pork thing that had been pressed to make it look like ribs.

The reasons for this are simple enough. Many of the people here– by virtue of their condition– are unable to work and have little money. Many of them are older and live alone, lacking the will, funds or ability to attentively feed themselves, and are thus entirely grateful when a meal is delivered to them three times a day. This food, regardless of its quality and regardless of whether it’s “Instagrammable” or not, is a good thing.

Its presence is a relief, a daily stress crossed-out.

People enter into this program eroded and depressed, little more than shadows of who they once were. On Fridays we’re allowed to go home for the weekend, but not everybody does. Some people are too sick or live too far away, but others stay because they have nothing they want to return to.

One man, heavy with sad eyes, said to me as he settled in before the TV, “Why would I want to go home and just sit there, staring at my four walls? I like it better here.”

Sometimes people forget just how breakingly lonely illness can be.

But soon enough, people are reanimated. Men who wouldn’t make eye contact when they entered are shortly cracking wise, singing along to the oldies while working out, and women who hadn’t played cards in years are laughing together over Euchre.

Collected from disparate lives and thrown together in common cause, we get to know one another gradually, through the honesty of proximity rather than the spin of words. You see the pain first, because you know the pain, too. But gradually, that’s chipped away to reveal the person lost inside, the person capable of joy and wonder. It’s a gift, this, and all of us here gathered beneath the mortal cloud of our illness become family, and will linger as family long after each one of us has stepped out the door and receded back into the mysterious worlds from which we came.

Heather:

When I was initially diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease I characterized it as an act of terror.  By doing that I abnegated any responsibility for my circumstance. I did nothing wrong—there was nothing I could do to have prevented the disease, it was like getting on a bus that just happened to have a bomb on it.  I did not feel weak.  I did not feel that I was to blame.  It was a random, utterly arbitrary occurrence that just happened to have victimized me.  It would not come back.

When it did come back, my sense of disease as terrorism intensified.  It became a manifestation of fear.  Cancer was the terrorist bomb that could explode within my body at any moment.  I became jittery and tentative—vigilant to anything out of the ordinary.  I lived in fear, and I lived quietly, unwilling to make commitments to people or things, I locked myself indoors for worry of the terrorist threat within my body.

I am trying to stop that.

As always,

Anderson

He was one of the boys I grew up with in Ottawa, and he was a great guy. Modest, kind and good at everything, he was well liked, the sort of person you always wanted around. Parents watching him grow felt proud, confident and happy in the future that was unfolding before him. He was like all the other pure and wonderful boys we grew up amidst, and whenever I saw him, I saw the happy reflection of all of us who grew up together in that neighbourhood, smiling back.

He jumped from the Alexandra Street bridge last week, falling 120 feet before landing in about six feet of water and then pulling himself to the rocks along shore. Using the word miracle, the police officers said that they had never seen a person survive such a high fall into such shallow water.

The Alexandra Street bridge, which was built around 1900, connects Ottawa to the city that lies directly across the river, Hull, Quebec. I cannot express to you just how important Hull was to teenagers growing up in Ottawa during the 1980’s. At the time, Ottawa was a very conservative, even timid place. There were rules that governed everything and an almost soviet conformity enveloped the city like a cloud. However, in Hull the drinking age was 18, you could buy beer at corner stores and bars stayed open until 3:00am. We flocked there by the thousands, crossing the Alexandra bridge like we were a part of some migratory pattern.

For me and my friends, sheltered, underaged kids who only knew optimistic, suburban existences, the unfettered liberty of Hull was a small glimpse into what we imagined the realm of adults could be. It was a place full of potential. Every time we crossed that bridge we felt that a “first” might take place– the narratives of our lives just then beginning to take shape. It was a never-never land where we could dip our feet into the future, while still returning home each night to the safe nest our parents had constructed.

To this day the bridge has the steely permanence of an antique.

Cantilevered, it vibrates when you pass over it, as if an echo of all the trains that once crossed. Our transits, often by foot or bike, were always made at night. With the water in view beneath the cross-hatched metal and the wind, now feeling slightly alien and hostile pushing at you, a feeling of vulnerable and solitude presided. With untethered blackness above and beneath, and the ghostly hum of the bridge moving up through your body, you were in limbo, as if moving from one realm into the next.

It was here on the Alexandra bridge, perhaps feeling lost between these two worlds, where our dear friend decided to step off. He did not do it at night, but during the prosaic, naked day. What was taking place in his heart at that moment must have been indescribably mysterious and painful, a motivating state of mind that’s bleakly impenetrable to the rest of us, who only by the grace of God, have remained on solid ground.

May he forgive himself everything, and find peace in this living world where he will be forever loved. And may he always remember that he pulled himself to shore. The miracle of his life was of his own creation.

August 15, 2014

Dear J-Law:

It’s me, Michael Murray again, just writing you a quick note to wish you a most excellent and happy birthday! It must feel incredible to be just turning 24, having already won an Academy Award and been nominated for a few others, all the while being utterly adored by absolutely everybody on the planet, including the Chinese, who are known to be cautious with their affection.

Chinese people never seem to like me. I don’t know why but I’m starting to think it might be because I’m really good at ping-pong and that they’re just a really insecure people. Any thoughts?

I would like to play ping-pong with you- we’d be a great match! ( I am gifted at puns)

At any rate, I have to say, I’d really like to feel incredible like you must feel all the time. It must be pretty cool, that feeling. Sometimes I feel depressed. Like right now, as I think about the insecure Chinese and how they hate me, I’m also realizing that I’m old enough to be your father! Funny, that, because it really feels like there’s great chemistry between us. If we starred in a movie together I think we’d become the next great couple.

Jennichael.

Do you know what helps depression? Touching. If you were to touch me I would feel less depressed. It’s a medical fact. It’s called Touch Therapy.

There’s also Sensual Touch Therapy for the people who really care.

It was a real shame about Robin Williams, don’t you think?

Anyway, I don’t want to be a drag on your big day, my depression isn’t that bad! I only get down because I’m sensitive and feel life more than most people! I just wanted to give you a big shout-out and wish you an incredible birthday full of much happiness, health, joy and success, and to let you know that Touch Therapy really works. It does, it saves lives. You are beautiful, staggeringly beautiful, and I bet you have cool, soft hands that smell like poems.

I would love to hang with you if you’re in Toronto for the Film Festival next month!

Michael Murray

PS: Bradley Cooper (pretentious name) is much older than you. Did you sleep with him when you made Silver Lining Playbook? I have seen that movie 24 times, once for every year you’ve been alive.

One of the repeating themes I’ve encountered is that people cannot believe that somebody who made them laugh so much could possibly have such a sad and broken interior. There’s an obvious lack of empathy in such a position, in that these people cannot see a life beyond the surface one that they so greedily absorbed. To be a celebrity in our culture is to give up one’s interior, becoming a vessel in which the schizophrenic projections of the public push everything else out. It must get awfully stormy in there, and in the end celebrities exist as sacrifices to our need, the actual person (or self) tossed beautiful and adored into the raging, all-consuming volcano of our culture.

Williams himself said that in America they really do mythologize people when they’re dead, and prophetically, he’s now being mythologized. His death means whatever we need it to mean. For some people, it’s a clarion call to awaken the public to the insidious dangers of depression, to others it’s about the dark weight that many comedians carry with them on stage. Everybody seems to have something very real and personal that they feel in his death, but usually end up cannibalizing Williams in an attempt to find some sort of meaning, and perhaps even redemption, in this small, solitary and very sad act.

However, the one thing that seems universal is that everybody is declaring Robin Williams a genius. Although I am of the right age to have experienced the full sweep of his career, I was never much of a fan. I mean, I don’t have a favourite Robin William moment, and like a lot of people I saw a riot of pathology in his performance rather than genius. His need was so great and his onslaught so relentless, that I found it completely exhausting to watch him. He drained me, and I just wanted to hug him into stillness, letting him know that everything was going to be okay, even if it wasn’t.

His comedy was based on recognition rather than content. Middle-of-the-road and Baby Boomer friendly, he was an unfiltered convulsion of mimicry and pop culture references. He was elliptical, swinging from one character to the next before you could think about what he was actually saying, apparently being content in simply getting a reflex response from the audience instead of a contemplated one. You laughed because you recognized his characters, not so much because of what they were saying. It was nostalgic, even old-fashioned, and in a weird way I think Williams would have made for a fantastic silent movie star, so exaggerated was his stage personality. Creating the manic illusion of edge, Williams was safe and not very challenging. He had kind and vulnerable eyes, and always seemed to want to please us, for us to feel good about ourselves, and I think we loved him for that rather than his talent.

*************************************************

Heidi very sad.

Things not good.

All sky falling wet and grey, everything smell of cat.

Frostie the Snow Goat is gone.

Although Frostie did not live long, Frostie lived cute. Not how many breaths Frostie took, but how many times Frostie took breath away with cuteness! Now Heidi know she VERY, VERY cute, but Frostie took cute to different level. Frostie made wheelchair work for him! Most animal in wheelchair just look weak, like can’t defend meat or kill squirrel, but Frostie make you want to give him your meat! Very rare talent! When Frostie wear hoodie, not look like gimmick, look like real deal, like Frostie just want to stay warm!

Frostie was true fashion prodigy, Heidi think Frosty Lady Di of Snow Goats!

Frostie our candle in the wind.

When Frostie got rid of wheelchair, he showed us that he not need props to be cute. He have natural charisma and when Heidi see Frostie, cannot take eye off Frostie! Like when hunting, only instead of wanting to kill and eat red blood of Frostie, want to hug and cuddle Frostie! So cute!!!

Frostie was great inspiration to Heidi, always showing her new ways to maximize cuteness. Although Frostie only live two months, Frostie prove to be great leader, even Alpha. Heidi hurt so much right now, so very, very much, no meat steak or fetch can fill the emptiness Heidi feel inside.

Heidi need a minute.

Just want to say, Frostie good goat, very, very good goat!

LC!

Heidi Maynard-Murray

Open 24 hours a day, the place is large, impersonal and sloppy. The staff has nothing invested in either the customers or products, and you really do feel like you’re an anonymous cog in a massive, amoral industry. The lighting is economical and unflattering, the music bad and the absence of attentiveness, perhaps even love, is evident. It’s just not a place you really want to be, and as I made my way joylessly through the aisles– getting bumped repeatedly by the same man– I thought about everything that was wrong with it, my mood turning black.

As I waited in the line-up for the cash, I watched as an oozing package of chicken was dragged across the scanner. The cashier, dead-eyed and young, was indifferent, but the university-aged woman who was buying the chicken pointed it out to her, and without making eye contact the cashier sighed and quickly gave the scanner a wipe. She just didn’t care and was responding by rote, like an automaton, and for that shift was clearly not present in her body, never even bothering to look at the people in front of her. Naturally, this irritated me, and when it was my turn I made a point of looking at her directly. She didn’t see me at all. While looking away at some distant horizon, she mumbled the price I owed into her shoulder.

“No,” I said, “you’re speaking too quickly and too much to yourself for me to hear you.”

I’m not really sure if what I said registered, as just repeated herself, still remote and inattentive. I noticed now that she had a library book open, jammed in beside her cash register. Whenever she needed to get away from her life– which appeared to be always while working at the Metro– it was into this world she was escaping. I felt badly for my pissy mood and wanted very much for us to become human to one another, if for just one minute, and asked her what she was reading.

This startled her.

“The Calling,” she said, “it’s about the supernatural.”

“Are you enjoying it?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty good.”

“If you had supernatural powers, what would you do with them?”

“I’d bring my mom back to life,” she said.