Rod Amis - Unbound

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NEW ORLEANS - I can't begin to express how I felt on Tuesday, during my brief "check-in" to retrieve my mail and get my pal Matt to print my CV for me for a(nother) job I was trying to find here, to discover that BINYAVANGA ("The Binj") WAINAINA had won the Caine Prize in African Writing. There was pride, yes; I had helped him get the Caine awards committee to accept that some of us Internet publishers were actually serious about what it is we do here, had staying power and knew good writing when it banged us across the snout. That hurdle alone had surprised and pleased us both, as his was the first Internet-only writing the committee had ever accepted.

When I received the e-mail that Binj had made the final cut, I was ecstatic. It was the kind of validation I've always (not so secretly) wanted for this journal. I had always asserted that our standards and practices were competitive with the print world, now there was concrete, prestigious outside confirmation.

So imagine being me on Tuesday, tracing a sudden spike in our numbers (page hits) to the referrer site --- the BBC. Imagine seeing that Binj's bio shot from G21 was on that BBC page and reading the accompanying article. [The current link shows photos taken at the awards. On deadline, they had rushed out the earlier piece. I know that drill too well.]

YES!!! He had won the prize for best African writing of 2002, the first Internet writer to ever do so, and I had edited, published and placed that writing in nomination for the Caine.

Picture young Rod falling off Matt's chair, laughing hysterically, almost crying and wanting to dance down our potholed New Orleans streets. I deadpanned to Matt: "Well, guess what? Binj won."

I sent out an announcement e-mail with the URL of the BBC article to the people on our mailing list. Then I went back to preparing my CV and walking down North Ramparts Street, penniless again, to drop it off to an anonymous person who would never know the giant elation I was carrying in my breast.

I had had a conversation with my dear Barbara during the previous weekend about the fact that there is something about the G21 and how all the work I put into it should be able to support me --- something I have just been unable to grasp. I am nagged by the feeling that that undefined something is staring me right in the face but that I cannot see it. Try as I might, I cannot see it. It drives me nuts!

I know in my heart-of-hearts that there is real value here, that this is exactly what I am meant to do, but I cannot see how to make it pay for itself or me and that frustrates me to no end.

So I have sustained myself on our ephemeral successes, ethereal awards and the sense of accomplishment. I keep throwing away other chances and opportunities in favor of this obsession with keeping this magazine alive, no matter what. I keep thinking that one day I shall wake up and the thunderbolt will strike that quickens me with the knowledge of how The World's Magazine will support me and itself. Every morning only silence comes back as the response.

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The same Tuesday morning that I discovered Binj's victory, I received a "sermon" about myself from ROBIN MILLER, whose words have appeared in these pages over the years. Robin's assessment of me hasn't changed much over those years. I don't think it ever will. He believes that I don't like joy. He thinks that much like Kurt Vonnegut, he says, I am simply trying to kill myself slowly. The difference between me and Vonnegut, in Robin's view, is that I am also torturing myself along the way.

In Robin's view, I have ignored any number of women who would have gladly spent more time with me, I have pushed those people away who care most about me being happy and I have chosen rather to live a harder life than "settle" for a comfortable one. He said I probably wouldn't listen to his sermon, but that he would deliver it anyway. He's done so a couple of times in the past

You'd be hard pressed to find a man who doesn't believe he's misunderstood by someone. There are those paradigmatic guys whose wives don't understand them. There are the guys whose parents never understood them and the guys whose co-workers don't understand them. Feeling misunderstood is part and parcel of being human.

But nobody ever makes the list. Nobody ever explicitly says what the misunderstandings are all about. Until now.

THINGS PEOPLE MISUNDERSTAND ABOUT ROD

1. - It is possible to constantly move around and stay in one place simultaneously. Though I've bounced around the country and the world these last few years, I've always stayed in one place. You can find me on these pages week after week because, as I've always insisted, this is where I really live both emotionally and spiritually. Geographical locations in meatspace don't take as well for me. If you use that as the given, I've stayed in one place for over a decade now.
   
   
2. - If you believe you are ugly, no one can convince you otherwise. My friend Felicity Ussher comments, about my arrival in London, that she was surprised to find what a shy person I actually am. She expected someone exuberant and open and affectionate. I'm not, for the most part. I'm actually rather reserved.

   There's a reason I hide behind these Web pages.

   Like most writers, I'm simply happier being alone and being able to concentrate on my craft. I consider preparing and designing these pages a large part of that craft. Some weeks it shows more than others.

   Unless I'm around people I really know and trust, I'm very shy. Very shy. Long time readers will remember that I was the child who would hide in the closet when my parents would have guests at their house.
   
   

3. - Even if you are eccentric, you still undergo normative pressures. They are not fun. I can't tell you how many people believe I'd be happier if I were exactly like they are themselves. I hear that all the time. Robin Miller is only one of the scores of people who believe my life would improve immediately if I were more like him and less like myself.

   He could be correct. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt on that count, as, at bottom, I'm not a very happy man. I was an unhappy child who grew up to be, with the exception of intermittent moments of rainbow technicolor bliss, an unhappy adult.

   One of my close friends in college asked, at the time of our 25th reunion event, if I was still "eccentric". The operative word here is "still".
   
   

4. - Rod chases women (as he says at the bottom of the page) in the same way that a fly pursues a spider. I've always believed that women choose men, not the other way around. They let us think we have some influence on the decision, but my personal experience has been that every woman who ever was with me knew in advance that she would be. Many have told me as much. Whether I actively pursued a woman or not had little to do with her final decision. So, I wait for someone to come along and "catch" me again. I want to be caught.

   I just think it's late in the day to pretend that my own behavior will affect the outcome of the mating ritual. It never has in the past.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS OF LIFE

Q: Why are we here? :

ROD: There were these two people, you see, who had one very steamy night of wild sex. They are called your parents now.

If by "we" you don't simply mean you and I, but also that entire collective known as the human race, the answer is a bit more complex. There is the scientific answer, of course, that has to do with how life evolved on this planet. Then there is the spiritual answer, which --- depending on your confession --- can run the span from glorifying an anthromorphic supreme being to working our way through stages of spiritual growth like an insect morphing its physical forms.

Some people even believe that the latter equation implies "purpose". That's so much foolishness, of course, as neither a tree nor a dog concerns itself with purpose. They just are.

Q: When will I find love? :

ROD: Maybe never. I'm sorry to be so blunt about it, but not everyone needs to find love. And lots of people just won't. But don't worry because it's a function of your consciousness to help convince you that you have found love so that you'll stop looking for it --- for a while.

By the time you realize that you were mistaken and deluded, you'll either be one of those people we call "heart-broken" or "divorced". Both situations are a messy business and your friends will dread having to be around you when you are going through these forms of insanity. Thankfully, nothing lasts forever.

Your mind will help you believe that your heart is no longer broken and/or that you married the wrong person. Then, even if you aren't meant to find love, you'll start looking for it again.

It's either that or you finally realize the truth: Love is something you shouldn't need to look for. The people who do love you are usually family or that surrogate family that orphaned people manage to meet who accept all of their faults and peccadillos.

The Biological Imperative dictates that you will want sex and companionship, but these can be had without deluding yourself about love. You can still get married. Arranged marriages have been standards of human existence and the propogation of the species for all of human history. People who never met until their wedding day have produced dynasties.

You can get companionship from a dog or a good friend.

People have gotten both love and companionship, even married as business arrangements, for centuries without bothering about whether love had anything to do with it. They always will. So can you.

Q: What is success?

ROD: You certainly picked the wrong person to ask a question like that! How the hell would I know?

If I had ANY idea what success was, would I be penniless and couch-surfing in New Orleans? Would I be living like Blanche DuBois? Of course not!

I can tell you what success is not. Go back and read the last year's worth of "Glass Houses" and you'll have the answer to that question.

If you wish to know what success is, I have three recommendations:

1. Ask the one person you might know who seems happiest. Then,
2. Ask your spiritual advisor, whoever that might be. Finally,
3. Ask a barber or a cabdriver. They know everything.

I suspect what you'll find is that each of these three respondents will tell you something that will posit the argument that you should be either more like they themselves or what they think of as their own ideal self. It will be a given that your own opinion of success is inconsequential, even worthless. That's why advice is free, though, isn't it?

My Last Headline

I got this far and realized that I had not finished this long "Glass House" entry. The "free advice" line seemed to be like a good point of closure, but it wasn't for me.

Matt told me today that the past only exists as long as it is in your head. Quite true. I once had a spiritual advisor in San Francisco who told me that I wore the past, my past and the past of the world, like a mantle. That might explain why I was so driven to go to Romuliana. Or why I am obsessed with history and its lessons, in general.

Here's the story:

I'm convinced that somewhere in the human past is the solution to my own conundrum.

Maybe it's right there in the legend of Gilgamesh. My alter ego, Khorsa, takes his name from Khorsabhad, the city where we found the first lock made by man. Harry Houdini liked that concept, too. My late grandfather must have known that I shared the birthdate of Houdini, because he implanted in my mind the notion that one could always ESCAPE.

I am at the end and beginning of something now.

I face the prospect of homelessness (again) by next Saturday. I have met an optimistic woman who I am approaching slowly because I suspect I might fall in love with her. She doesn't even suspect. I'm the fly pursuing the spider.

I am an unhappy child who became an unhappy adult.

Being a writer, like being a journalist, is one of the most morally reprehensible things you can do. It means that you eat life and dissect the souls and psyches of the people closest to you. Then you die. People talk about the clever turns of phrase you have made and how you had insights, but they like getting all of that entertainment, the storytelling, for as little money as they can possibly expend. Then you die. If you're as lucky as Sam Johnson, you end up with a Boswell who has assiduously collected your mots and explains to the world that you were not the misanthrope you appeared. That won't matter in your casket, of course.

I saw the film "Twelve Monkies" today. Excellent piece of work. I'll have to look for who the screenwriter was. Binj sent me an e-mail that I must keep the G21 up and running. He says that he wants to send me a wire from London. I'm very glad he's there, as much as my own time in that world capital was painful. Torturing myself until I die? I THINK NOT!

I remain a Knight Errant looking for a sovereign worthy of my services. Launcelot in rags. Launcelot in the last scenes of Boorman's "Excalibur".

Maybe I should concentrate on writing Matt's New Orleans book.... Well, I would if I could be caught by the woman to dedicate it to, whose shrine upon which I could make it my offering.

A great writer I know says that the Cosmic Question is NOT "Who am I?" The Cosmic Question, he says, is "Where are you?"

Search www.g21.net [ ] Our Link Partners the Web for

THINGS I WANT THIS WEEK

1. Cash money.

2. Employment that I can value and that values me.

3. The key to making The World's Magazine my sole pursuit.

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Thanks for coming back this week.

"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod

ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was also a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services. He wrote Web issues for MethodFive.com's Hyper newsletter.

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

This year he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. (Think: The Boy.) Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. Right now he's in the unenviable position of looking for both a job AND a place to live. He is not a happy camper. In his spare time, he chases women.

Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now. He wants out so bad he can taste it. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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