Kevin

Me and the Camino? Why not…

I recently decided that I need to walk the Camino. In much the same way one lost in the desert decides they need water. It’s a long story.

I have been lost for a very long time. When one is visited by trauma in early life, one often gets misplaced from the life they would have lived had the trauma not occurred. I think I did a pretty good job these past few years rediscovering that long lost potential life.

Since around 2002, I’ve been writing. I believe writing to be my calling. I don’t know if I’m any good at it, but I know it makes me a better person. Does one have to be a master at something in order to believe that thing to be their calling? I don’t think so. I think it’s in the doing of the thing that one finds its true value, not in the quantifying of one’s ability in doing the thing. The possibility of kudos should not be the determining factor. My calling is writing. Because it is while I am writing that I feel most like the person I imagine myself to be. It defines me. I’m defined by it.

There was a time when I thought rediscovering my passion would be enough. I would find my happiness in doing the thing I was destined to do. Over the past decade, though, I discovered I couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s not enough to reach your calling and sit on your ass. One must always plow forward. One must always be in a state of learning and personal growth. Sure, getting BUM IN CHAIR is an awesome and integral part of being a writer. I know this because I practice it.

But discovering and embracing my calling was not enough. Not by a long-shot. I was still a severely damaged human being. I was just slightly happier because putting words to paper seemed to keep the demons at bay, even if only momentarily.

I now know I needed to do more. I needed to face the demons in my life. If you are ignoring trauma, it doesn’t go away. It feeds off of you. And it grows. And grows. And grows some more. The only way to euthanize it and take back your life is to pull it out from under the rocks and face it down.

I heard about the CAMINO years ago. I took part in the 2007 Great Canadian Winter Novel Marathon at the Pickering Public Library and two of the other participants were this dynamic woman and comical man who, together, formed this kind of Superhero Duo. They were writing a novel together. At the time, the concept kind of blew me away.

The duo were Sue Kenney and Bruce Pirrie. I later learned about the Camino through Sue. AND since I first heard about it, I knew I had to walk it. I knew in my heart. I knew in my soul. I knew in that place where you just know. The Camino called out to me. I’ve since learned that one really doesn’t choose the Camino. The Camino chooses you. When it is your time to take the walk, you will know. It will become not just thing that you once heard about, but this thumping thriving living breathing thing inside you…a force that tells you to cross an ocean. When the Camino knocks, you put down your things, find the nearest walking stick, and start waking. <<that was a fortunate spelling error–I accidentally left out the l in walking. I think it’s kind of apropos, though…don’t you.

Turns out, since the first time I met Sue, she has discovered her own new callings. She now guides tours through the Camino. CLICK HERE TO LEARN ABOUT HER MAY, 2014 GROUP CAMINO JOURNEY.

I have quite a bit of baggage to shed. And I have this rock I must leave along the Camino. I must leave it there, like others who find themselves lost in the desert must have a drink of water. I took the rock away with me when I left a Male Survivor Weekend of Recovery retreat. The rock is from a mountain top in Ohio, U.S.A. This summer, I had a moment when I knew I should leave it at our fire-pit in Muskoka, Ontario, Canada. But now I know I was wrong. Or, perhaps it only wanted to spend a season in Muskoka. Before I head for the Camino in May, I’m heading up to Muskoka to retrieve the rock.

You may think, “It’s only a rock. Why’s he making such a big deal?” A Weekend of Recovery retreat sees some thirty men participate in a fully interactive program to help them along the journey of recovery from the scars of sexual abuse. The larger group breaks down into smaller groups…and it is in these smaller groups that each participant chooses a rock from the grounds of the facility (which, for me, was at Hope Springs, in Peebles, Ohio). It is what these smaller groups do with the rocks that give them power and meaning. Each participant of the smaller group holds each rock in their hands. This symbolizes the strength we have together. Each participant walks away with a rock that was in the hands of each survivor in their small group.

Believe me…when I’m having a bad day, getting that rock out and holding onto it…it helps me to reflect on the weekend and what I learned there. I have been to Hope Springs two times. The first year, one of the other members in my small group actually gave me HIS rock. I’ve had it in my pocket every single day since October, 2011. I’m sure I’ll never be without it. But the rock I received the following year, I felt that I needed to plant it somewhere significant. And I thought maybe leaving it in that significant place would give all of us in that year’s small group a degree of power. I would be leaving a piece of US in that place.

I honestly thought Muskoka was the final resting place of that rock. But now I know differently. I’m walking the Camino to place it at the Cruz del Ferro site. This site is an iron cross atop an enormous pile of stones…stones left over the centuries by past pilgrims. This is the place I need to deliver my rock to…and in-turn deliver my brother survivors to.

I believe there is still room in Sue’s 2014 Journey. Click on the picture below to learn more.

A History of Me – Writing in the Darkness Without the Secret Handshake…

My first forays into writing were stories that always seemed to end with a fridge door opening and a head being chilled on a silver platter inside said fridge. I guess when I was seven or eight, I saw myself as a sort of horror writer. After all, who scared us shitless more than Stephen King? Although, for the life of me I can’t recall if I even read his works back then. Could I have simply heard of King and aspired to write like what I imagined he wrote like? Who knows. I just knew a good severed head was best served up, well, cold.

I still remember my first ‘novel’ too. Marjoram. Great title, eh. Yep. Marjoram was a honkin’ huge used-to-be garage band. The main characters were embarrassingly fashioned after Bruno & Boots, the main characters of Gordon Korman’s Macdonald Hall series. Korman had just made an appearance in my Grade 7 or 8 classroom. This was in the late 70s. He helped reignite the love of words that Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl had instilled in me in my earlier life. And, I suppose, Stephen King (in spirit, if not in any other way). Marjoram was painstakingly written in pen. A whole spiral notebook. I actually received an A+ for the story, so some well-meaning if exasperated teacher took pity on my Korman-bedazzled eyes and gave me the mark for effort.

Fast forward through all the trauma, joy, sorrow, bad decisions, good decisions, craziness, zaniness, depression, elation and all the other ion and ness words…somewhere along the way, I well and truly lost my way. I didn’t find my way back to writing until 2002. I’ve been writing ever since. Non-stop. Once you teach the parrot to talk, you cannot teach him to shut up. You merely await his death.

With all that writing, I still haven’t really learned the handshake. I don’t know…maybe it’s the trauma and bad life choices…the lack of strength in my early years that allowed me to fail so totally as a normalian…but something stands in my way. Is it that I didn’t get a card-carrying membership into the League of Writers through some inexplicably random series of college or university courses. Is it that I am blinded by my own stubbornness to accept failure as a default that I don’t see that I’m actually doing fairly well? I don’t know. I can’t pinpoint what feels ‘wrong’ about this. I write every day. I no longer put pen to paper, but I definitely churn words out through my fingers onto the computer screen. Christ, I’m doing it right now. I just…I guess I still don’t know why I’m doing it. I feel as though I’m constantly pushing my books on unsuspecting readers…but as I reach out to them in one way, I pull away from them in another. I hope they won’t read my words. I hope they will read my words.

I’m nearing the end of my umpteenth novel. I use the term umpteenth because I’m too lazy to actually do the counting on my fingers. I haven’t a clue how many I’ve written. You see, I’m fairly disconnected. I’m sometimes so numb, I have a hard time remembering the character names on the novel I’m actually working on. Have you ever had to scroll back to find your main character’s name? I can’t have an intelligent conversation with a reader. They asked me where I came up with the idea for, say, John Doe, and I can’t for the life of me remember what novel John Doe was a character in. I’m hopeless.

Yet, I continue. There is something in the actually laying down of words that seems to get me through. I’ll take it. You know…I’ll own it. It’s better than not writing. It’s the act of writing I need…not the outcome. The outcome is for readers—potential, constant and imagined.

It just gets to be a lot to handle sometimes. This pre-winter time seems to be the most difficult for me. But you know what…I’m gonna just keep writing. Ever forward… then you don’t have to look back at what you’ve written, right. It’s like I’m dropping all these crumbs along the forest path so I won’t get lost in the darkness. Only thing is… some bastard keeps pickin’ up the crumbs. I’m writing…but it’s too dark in here to see the words…

While the Mundane Takes Place – Write, Write, Write!

Unless you’re some all-powerful deity, you have a little mundane in your life. It’s true. Even the movers and shakers of Hollywood and the Tower of Song get to partake from the Table of Mundanity. Nobody is exempt. It’s kind of like dying–nobody gets out alive. You don’t have to be a poet to know that simple truth. Life is dying. And dying is living.

It’s the middle road between birth and death that matters. And not just the glitzy stuff. There’s more to life than podiums and celebrations. So much of our living time is filled with simple moments of non-fabulousness. As a writer, I try to pay particularly close attention to these moments. I always found that it is in the simple less spectacular events where story hides. Like a crouching lion, the details lurk under the surface of our mundane downtime. It is when I’m bored or idle or daydreaming that I ask myself, “What can be found in this time?” “What universal truth, wisdom, parallel, insight, emotion can be found within this moment?”

When a writer connects with that part of us that is universal–that humanness that we all share–that is when the fireworks go off. You don’t necessarily reread a passage in a story where the most exciting seat-of-your-pants action happens. But if you find that one special sentence that crawls down inside you…that sentence you recognize and know could have come from your very heart…that’s the sentence you’re going to read and reread. You’re gonna fully relate. You’re gonna say an emphatic, “YEAH!” or “YES!” It could be a mundane part in the story where the main character slices into an apple with a paring knife. It could be the way light comes into a room and rallies dust motes to dance. These mundane moments captured for one great big universal AHHHH! That’s what I love about writing. About reading. We share the simple moments that go into a life…the moments that connect EVENT to EVENT. Just those mundane moments that are filled with the hidden knowledge and wonder of universal commonality.

Don’t overlook a thing when you’re putting a story together. To capture the heart of the reader, you will need to capture the essence of humanity. It’s not found in the glamorous and intriguing fabulousness of the EVENTS. It’s found in the things we do every day. The minutiae. That will capture your reader and allow them to step inside your story bus…just to see where it is you’re going to take them!