journal features

disclocation

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Dubai, 2023.06.18

I'm having one of those 21st Century dislocation moments. A St Catharines farm boy talking to his South-African-born step-sister about my fishing in British Columbia with her husband when I visit my father... while I'm sitting on the tarmac in Dubai as I go the long way between my home in Tokyo and my employee's HQ in The Hague. Because some Russian dictator has started WWIII. On, of all days, father's day.

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