journal features

it's come to this: Saturday night at the DMV

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-five years and one million words

Toronto, 2003.05.11

Last night at around 8:00 that I decided I needed to get out of the apartment. So I went to office (across the parking lot) to use the Internet connection there to check on the listings for the new X-men movie. I eventually decided against seeing the film on my own (I've never seen the point of watching a movie in a cinema on your own), and wound up tinkering around on the 'net for a couple of hours.

Then I remembered that I'd never gotten around to correcting my address with the provincial ministry of health or the driver's license people. So I looked up how to do on their respective web sites, and discovered that I could use a kiosk in the same mall where the cinema happens to be. What's more, the kiosk was supposedly available until 1 AM. Ever the optimist, I headed over to see if it was true. And sure enough, at 10:30 on a Saturday night, I found the thing and successfully changed my addresses.

I know what you're thinking: how does he stand the blazing pace of his white-hot social calendar?

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner