How To be A Person: Odious Comparisons
January 17th, 2024
YVR Jan 4, 2024
This morning walking back from the gym through the gloom and rain I saw that someone had written in marker on a large hydro box “All comparison is odious”.
I compare myself frequently to others. On instagram, at the gym or even in conversation. Like when I feel someone losing interest in me. I shut up as soon as I realize it now. I didn’t always have this self-awareness. But I wonder in the shutting up do I diminish myself? Am I just deferring to someone more confident?
On the other hand, if I’m bored in conversation I’ll start acting out. Once I was being far too blunt with an old friend and they said “you’re kind of autistic in your honesty, aren’t you?” That was a good one. It’s also true.
Things I Don’t Like About Vancouver
- Traffic is terrible.
- No one does u-turns.
- No one knows how to drive.
- There’s bridges everywhere. And water ‘neath those bridges. This makes traffic — as I think I’ve mentioned — more terrible than any other place on Earth.
- Also, they don’t have sun. Ever.
I look out the window at the comings and goings of those tiny airplane support vehicles; turning left then right according to lines painted on wet tarmac. Beyond is Richmond BC. Or the Rich Mound as my brother calls it. A rich mound of sand; river delta, once farmland now houses all below sea level. When the big one hits this city and the airport will be the first to go.
A mother over to my left is telling her young charge repeatedly what a good job it is doing. It, I’ve decided, is also a pronoun. I used to do this; praise my children wildly for things completely natural/insignificant. There’s a difference between a child progressing as they should and a child arrested in their development. The parents of the latter are allowed to lose their shit if the kid stops drooling for once.
I read a Swedish parenting book and it was annoying in how the author compared her mostly American readership, I imagine, to the much more capable Swedish parent. According to her we are total idiots over here and we’re doing everything wrong when it comes to whelping progeny. The other thing I learned from this book was overt praise is just as helpful as blame. We need to prepare kids for the real world and giving them a false sense of incredibleness isn’t the way to do it. I stopped good-jobbing my kids immediately. I was still startled daily by all that they accomplished on the swings or at daycare or at the dinner table. With the first child at least it’s a fucking miracle when they stop shitting themselves or eat more of their pre-masticated slop than they mash into that weary high chair. But you push down the effusiveness just like, in my family, you do with emotions.
There’s an old dad in front of me. Or a young grandad. He’s three steps behind the kids. He’s French. The kids are adorable. He’ll be 70 when the girl is 20. Aging is a such a ripoff.
At the gym I saw a man my age or close to it. He looked like a million bucks. So lean and muscular. I wanted to ask him how he did it but I didn’t because I knew the answer would be so unsatisfying.
“I only drink smoothies made of boiled chicken and kale and I work out twice a day seven days a week.” He’d say and then he’d continue to want to talk about his exercise regiment well into the night and I’d put my hand up to stop him and call an Uber and on the way home I’d be looking out the window and think “That’s the biggest drawback to people with ab muscles is they always want to talk about their ab muscles.”
And how did I end up back at his place?
The final boarding call is made before boarding had even started.
I approach the gate personnel: “Was that the final call for boarding?”
“Can I please see your boarding pass, sir?”
“No, I know what my boarding pass says. Do you know what the announcer lady just broadcasted to gate B27?”
“Oh, I pressed the wrong button. Boarding will begin soon.”
“Terrific, my confidence is restored.”
Sometimes at an airport or a walk-in clinic or the cable company the customer service screams there’s plenty of top candidates for when the fascists take over and require their own Stasi.
Sun! The sun suddenly makes an appearance! I rush over to the large windows overlooking the tarmac as the sun streams in. This is the second time we’ve seen the sun since getting to Vancouver ten days ago. What a great day to fly.
While here I sat with a photographer named Rob for some new photos for my new website. What do you think about this one?
Photo: Rob Gilbert
In my ears Sam of the Talk Easy podcast is talking to Willem DaFoe about acting. And it’s edifying to hear Defoe speak of acting in spite of not exactly knowing how to describe what he does.
- He speaks of publicly creating opportunities. His time at the Wooster Group. And he uses the word practice. The practice is all. There’s no arrival, no final performance. Michael Phelps winning his 33 gold medals did the thing at the Olympics that he did in practice. The practice continues, the venue changes. This is supposed to take the pressure off.
— Willem truly doesn’t know what the stuff means. He feels irresponsible. Knowing what all the words mean is not as important as him being engaged, present and fully committed. It’s called a leap of faith. You’re diving into something you don’t exactly know what but the quality of going towards that thing is what’s important. If you know exactly where you’re going you tend to race towards it. Then it’s mapped but not lived.
— Everything is based on doing as opposed to showing. The audience can be with you and have a flavour of that experience. Rather than telling us something we already know. We are looking for the “Wow, I never thought of that.” That’s what you want. Give yourself to something or someone and then surprise them.
At the end of the interview I stop learning and start feeling sorry for myself comparing me to Sam the interviewer who was twenty the first time he interviewed Willem at TIFF. How does a twenty year old interview Willem Defoe at TIFF? And how does he have a great podcast that’s not entirely annoying on Malcolm Gladwell’s network? How do I not compare myself to that?
Suddenly an airport genius decides we’ve had enough of the sunshine and the view of the Rich Mound and lowers all the automatic blinds along the large windows. This is Vancouver in winter. We just can’t have sun, people. We just can’t. It’s not the Vancouver way.
Boarding finally starts for real and me and the kids sail passed the throngs of unwashed to our premium economy seats at the front of the plane (I require legroom goddammit. If I must pay extra due to height discrimination I will.) It’s amazing how little it takes for relativism to kick in. To Sam (I can’t remember his last name) I feel inadequate. But to the host of CBC’s Writers & Co., Eleanor Wachtel — the greatest interviewer alive — she probably doesn’t even know Sam’s first name let alone his last. To others waiting in zone five, they watch me swan past and resent me. Then they’ll resent me again when they see me stretched out in row two sipping a free OJ. What’s that saying again … about fighting for scraps at the bottom of the barrel?
As I luxuriate in my free premixed Ol’ Fashioned the rich mound disappears beneath us and is replaced by the Pacific Ocean before we make a u-turn (the pilot must be from Toronto) and head East. Ahh Toronto, how I miss your broad but ugly shoulders. Your jerk chicken, your clear blue skies, your lumbering street cars, your criminal premier. I shall soon be in your cold, dark embrace once more.
Let the comparisons to New York City begin.
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