My Saudi Life (Part Three: In The Frame)

It isn’t always a good idea to do a self-examination. What you may discover will stay with you forever, unless you happen to find that you are quite comfortable with your very specific quirks and habits. In Canada, we have made a national obsession out of the constant seeking of selfhood. This has become harder and harder as the years go by and the population changes, with less of an Anglophilic way of regarding the world and our relationship to that elephant in our bed due south.

After I left the clerk and the store with my cheap lunch, I looked carefully at the world of Avenue du Parc and Rue Milton and noted the number of goatees that were framing certain chins. The summer heat had not encouraged any of us to bare our faces with razor blades, setting our faces free. When I finally made it home, I watched “An Evening with Kevin Smith”, the stalwart director of such classics as “Chasing Amy”, “Clerks” and “Dogma”. He still had the goatee, which was not a shock – imagine Silent Bob without it – but I was impressed with the number of fans in the college audiences that fired questions at him who were also sporting the beards in brief. So many of us are out there we must be a special breed. And we are taking over.