On Blasphemy

Which do you suppose is more genuinely offensive to God - an unbeliever who, in a moment of pain, anger, or frustration unthinkingly uses an English word, also used to designate God, as a curse, or professed believers who routinely speak of the ways and purposes of God with such matter-of-fact certainty that one would think they "own" Him the way the mob "owns" a Judge, like a lab rat sliced open and pinned down under their microscope, all His secrets revealed?

I know it's not very respectful and all, but despite my best efforts, I can't help wondering if, on discovering him on the floor, anyone happened to ask " Micheal are you OK? Are you OK? Are you OK? Micheal?"

Time marches on, always, annoyingly, in the same direction. Winter is finally setting up camp, settling in for its months-long occupation. It seems unjust to complain - until this week things have been quite unseasonably gorgeous, for far longer than folks in this part of the world have any right to expect. Over a month ago, I recall, I was sitting in a Starbucks staring out over a parking lot, watching a dark, swirling spider-cloud loom over the city, dangling cold tentacles, lashing the afternoon shoppers with snow . I had just come back from the sun-drenched red-and-gold fall splendor of the east, and it felt, then, that I was already watching winter's armoured columns rolling in. It had been a good, long summer, but with a familiar, resigned sadness, we would have to hunker down, pull up our collars, and accept that it was over.

Its not so much winter, but the drab pre-winter that bugs me, like the drab post-winter that follows it - The time after the last sun-golden leaves have fluttered to the ground, the grass is dead, and nature starts to almost blend in with the concrete - before it all gets refinished in icy, sparkling white.

Now that it is truly here, I remember that winter has its beauty - A stark, sad beauty- one that mourns the loss of long, warm summer days and the fleeting colours of fall, a beauty that waits, filled with a quiet yearning for the renewed glories of spring.

Ghosts

I am in Kitchener for a DTS reunion. The “official” gatherings seem to be on the weekend, but in the meantime I have found a few faces from the past to revisit, and, thanks to my hostess’ acute sensibility to nostalgia, the reminiscing has begun. It’s strange. I feel detached from all this. I recognize familiar objects and faces, but…little remains of the base itself, in its place a slick, soulless condo development, the architectural equivalent of a smoking crater. The basic shape of the streets feels…familiar. The landscape is utterly transformed, yet it doesn’t feel like more than a decade since I was here. When I identify some old haunt, it seems perfectly ordinary, like the streets I walk everyday. People, too, have acquired lines on their faces, wives, husbands, babies, families. Yet, in some ways, it could seem like no time at all has passed. We are right back there, talking about the people, the place, that strange territory in time, space, and life that we mutually occupied thirteen years ago. In other ways, that once incredibly significant time seems perfectly unreal to me, as if unconnected, as if I am visiting places I’ve read about, meeting characters from a book. I suppose I must have mythologized these people, to some extent, yet so far, there have been few surprises. Few glaring discrepancies between the person in my memory and person as they now exist. The Characters are playing out their story arcs, and I recognize them instantly. And though I think I look different, and I FEEL very, very different, but they all recognize me. Thirteen years ago, at more or less this time of year, I was a gangly Nineteen-year old hopping off a bus in my thrift store leather jacket , lugging a battered guitar I couldn’t play. It’s funny. People keep bringing up their memories of those tumultuous months, and I remember it when they bring it up, but it still feels like all those things were experienced by someone else. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I was THERE. That skinny blond kid in the pictures is me.

I couldn’t see here from there, I couldn’t imagine it. But I can look back and see there from here, albeit at some distance. It’s an interesting view.

I step into my past, and I step into, literally, a different Identity. A different name. People here call me J.T. It was, initially, simply a device to differentiate me from another Jeremy, but it may have become a way for me to differentiate myself from the Jeremy I left behind in Edmonton, the one I tried to slip back into years later, but was unable to find. I picked up the name again, but the person, by that time, was long gone. And, in these parts, his initials seem to be the way he was remembered.

I have a bit of time here. I wander, taking pictures of ancient, mossy trees, old stone, and weathered brick. I remember why I love the east. Everything is older here. And, as I have long known, a thing usually needs a bit of history to have much character….

From July 1, 2008

Today Canada turns 140- something. Or so it says. I'm pretty sure its been calling itself 139 for years...but anyway. A couple days ago, my Father turned 70. Tomorrow, my brother turns 35. We are all getting older, me, us, our young nation, this ancient land, this vast, silent land that took our ancestors and gave them its loneliness.

I drove, yesterday. Sometimes Porthos just needs to run, and his owner with him. Just picked a direction and went, drove until I found a road that looked interesting, and followed it until I found a good place to stop. As it happened, I wound up driving into a storm. It sat there for hours, perched on the horizon like a hunting beast, the rest of the cloudless blue sky drenched in light, while I hurtled towards it in my little car. Eventually we begin to catch up to it, and that dark patch slowly swallows the sky, and the blazing summer afternoon becomes an odd-coloured twilight. I find a lake and stand on it. The little beach is deserted, sandcastles left half-made, pock-marked from the passing rain. Thunder rumbles intermittently in the distance, flickering through patches of cloud. Nervous ducks float on the lake, a gently rippling image of the half-lit sky.

I did this, turned the phone off and ran, because I had a sudden compelling need to be away from people, as I frequently do. On this empty lake in a mostly empty land...it all feels strangely unnecessary.

A wee bit of affirmation...

Considering the preceding ambivalence about the quality of my performance ...while affecting the audience is what is all about, really, it doesn't hurt when members of the audience go away and write their praise in public places, either.

"Trevor Schmidt’s Mockingbird Close, however, is the tightly written, well-explored highlight of both evenings. Like a Grimm fairy tale set in middle-class suburbia, it spins a dark, poetic tale of Iris and Hank’s routine suburban life gone horribly awry after their child disappears. Performers Jeremy Thomson and Tiana Leonty nail their multiple-personality performances, switching from creepy neighbour to lonely, horny neighbour and back. Schmidt has an uncanny knack for giving each brief little character snippet unexpected depth, too, making every encounter much more gripping. It’s the best show in the two night collection, and one of the most gripping one acts I’ve ever seen. "

PAUL BLINOV - Vue Weekly


There you have it. I'm going to stop talking about how much I suck now. The actor serves the story, after all, and if the story works...

I'm not sure how long I was There. Sucked into the story. Carried away. Caring about characters who are unknown to me, who don't even exist, who are inventions of the author's odd mind. Characters in circumstances that, I'm pretty sure, aren't even remotely possible, made to feel real, or at least feel real to me. This, a good story can do - transport its reader to another place, suspend time, put you in another world for a while, living other people's lives, seeing what they see and feeling what they feel...

Theatre, too, can do this. Last night a woman claimed it happened to her, watching our play, the one I'm in. She felt she was in the story, lost in it, carried away...

If so, then we're doing something right.

I wonder how many times I'll have to hear it before I start to believe it...