Author: Patrick

School has been keeping me busy, so I haven’t been able to share news of someone who came to live with me last month—a wonderfully friendly and talkative black and white cat.

Luna is a rescue cat brought in off the streets by a good friend of the family who wasn’t going to be able to keep her permanently—her existing cat wasn’t too keen on the new guest. So now Luna, who I liked the moment we met, lives with me. I’d forgotten what it’s like to have a pet cat. I’m glad she’s here, and I hope she is as well.

As is always the case with a cat off the street, I can’t help but wonder how she ended up there. From what I was told about her initial condition—dreadful—she had been there since she was a kitten. Given her social demeanour, I don’t think she has a feral background, so she was either lost or abandoned. And if she was abandoned, I have nothing but scorn for whoever did it—whatever. What goes around comes around. But if she was lost, knowing how painful and sad it is to not know where your cat is, to whoever might be missing this delightful animal, please rest assured she is safe and loved and cared for, and will be for the rest of her life.

And now—pictures!

Luna enjoys sleeping in her claw scratching box of shredded cardboard.

When she’s not sleeping in it she likes to stretch out.

The back of the couch is also good for stretching out.

And when it’s dark she blends into the carpet.

On October 1st an American armed with legally purchased, owned, and modified semi‐automatic weaponry opened fire on a music festival crowd from the window of his 32nd floor Las Vegas hotel room. Fifty‐eight people were killed, 489 people were injured, and the gunman shot himself in the head before police used explosives to blow down the door to the room. It is currently the most deadly mass‐shooting in American history, and as horrific as it is to be able to rank such an event, it gets more horrific as it’s the only the second most deadly mass‐shooting perpetrated by a single gunman in the world.

Now, as to not cause yet another hypocritical Republican tantrum, there will be no politicizing the tragedy and discussing gun control in this post since now is not the time to have that discussion. So let’s ignore the just under a year and a half of time there’s been to not have the discussion since the last most deadly mass‐shooting in the United States. And we’ll certainly ignore how after airplanes were used as weapons on September 11th the Republicans created the Transportation Security Administration almost immediately to ensure airplanes couldn’t be turned into weapons again—and that the TSA spent $7.55 billion doing so in 2015 alone. That said, based on observing their inaction in the face of guns being used as weapons, and given the repeated context of these massacres, Republicans appear fine with Americans, and in the Las Vegas incident 4 Canadians, dying in mass‐shootings. They also appear fine with the victims dying at the hands of a fellow American. They even have a special, almost dismissive and diminutive term for the shooter: the lone wolf.

I’ve always been fascinated by the metaphor of the wolf—this vicious killing machine lurking in the dark woods ready to eat my face and all my family for the pure satisfaction of doing it, this fearful, despicable, wicked creature deserving of sneer and scorn—this big bad wolf. But I never saw any of this from the wolf. What I saw was a beautiful animal, potentially dangerous—yes, but no more dangerous than any other large predator, no more deserving of my hatred or mistrust than a polar bear (who sells pop in the winter) or a Bengal tiger (who sells gas all year ’round). One of humankind’s oldest animal friends, the dog, traces its roots back to either the first wolves who were not afraid of humans or the first humans who were not afraid of wolves—or as I like to think of it: the first animals who were not afraid of the other met somewhere in the middle.

But now it seems this ancient friendship is muddied, superseded as it were by the ever‐growing human need for control, for obedience. The wolves who did obey evolved into today’s dogs. The wolves who didn’t, didn’t. They’re still wolves. But they’ve also somehow become entangled within the descriptions of mass‐shootings and other incidents of single perpetrator domestic terrorism within the United States. I don’t care for the term lone wolf. It offends my inner wolf—the part of me who knows more people will be killed by their own countrymen in America before breakfast than wolves have since the turn of the century. Americans kill each other at an average rate of 44 murders per day. The number of confirmed fatal wolf attacks in America in the last 17 years: one.

I like wolves. Something of their story speaks to me—a biased one filled with vilification—something about being not only sought out but killed for what you were born into this world being. As someone who identifies as queer I have the good fortune of being able to in a country where I will not forfeit my freedom, personal safety, or life by doing so. In other parts of the world to be queer is to risk imprisonment or death. And as someone who identifies as a queer wolf, when I hear a shooter described in that same cliché way, as another solitary canis lupus, it offends me as much as if they said it was some crazy faggot on the roof with a rifle.

Let’s remember where the threat is coming from, ditch the euphemism, and address the issue by calling it out as what it is. Some of America’s own citizens are demonstrably more able and willing to kill each other in increasingly violent and numerous ways without any help from wolves, so the word you’re looking for when it comes time to describe the individual responsible for a mass‐shooting is terrorist.

I love when I find stuff like this in my drafts folder:

Today was my last day at work. Tomorrow I head out of town for my annual camping trip away from the city and mobile phone signals. In five days I’ll be back

And that’s all I’d written before I’m assuming I’d forgotten I was writing and turned off the computer before finishing the post. In my defence I know I’d been up for hours after getting home around midnight to pack for my trip the next day. I remember waking up and finding I had everything I needed ready to go—thank you past Patrick…

Now I’m back from camping and can’t help but also remember around this time last year I’d posted about looking deep into the sky while I was in Algonquin Park. I’d changed my stars, as I put it, and I knew I would return the following year another year closer to being finished design school—no more delays or procrastination!

But it didn’t happen. When 2017 started I was still working—I’d told myself there would be no school. It wasn’t feasible. I couldn’t afford it. My optimism for the future was converted slowly into tolerance for the present. I worked hard, got another raise, even applied for my manager’s job when it became available. And then the best thing at work happened that could have happened—I didn’t get the job. My plan to move forward into the present came to a dead stop.

Honestly—despite in retrospect it being the best thing that could have happened—I went into fuck it mode: where I half‐ass everything because why bother exerting any effort beyond what is minimally serviceable. Mediocrity for the masses is the name of the game anyway, so why be miserable as a precise instrument going nowhere when I can be content as a blunt stone sitting in a pile…

Light depression ensued. And then I remembered the future, my favourite thing. And then I remembered how life’s too short—and then immediately realized how wrong the expression is. Life isn’t too short. Life is too long. Life is too long to spend it unlived or unenjoyed or uncared for. Life is too long to spend rudderless or complacent. Life is too long to not do the things we want to try to do.

So when I said at the beginning of this post it was my last day at work it wasn’t only my last day before my camping trip, it was also my last day as an employee. Starting next week, the day after Labour Day, I am back in school. I’ve got some of my textbooks already, my ID card is on its way, I have a parking pass—it’s all very official. I’m going so much now I cannot not go anymore.

The only thing I’ve changed is the program: instead of graphic design I’ll be learning how to design renewable energy systems. Rather than perpetuating the problem of over‐consumption by producing endless corporate branding and marketing materials I’ll be helping to generate and distribute electricity ecologically and economically—though hopefully not to power the over‐production of endless corporate branding and marketing materials.

It’s exciting. It’s textbook future—solar panels, wind farms, and electric cars. It’s learning about the environment and how it and technology can work with each other instead of against each other. It’s about challenging myself and my world to be better. And it’s about the beginnings of a small apology to the planet and its inhabitants for a world I know I helped build through my own ignorance of the true cost of a way of life. I know I want to make a better place for all who live here—the forest is for everyone.

So let’s raise a glass to the future—again—since I’m pretty sure I’ve already been there.

Why else would I know it so well?