Matthew Huebert

Almost-Robbings

2011-07-05T00:00:00-07:00

Almost-Robbings

I wanted pizza, so I left my apartment and began walking to an Italian restaurant just down the street.

Three blocks in, a guy angled toward me on the street. He was young and dirty and I thought I heard him mumble about money, but I wasn’t sure.

He looked like a fellow who had approached me last Sunday. I was drinking coffee in the sun on a sidewalk when he asked me for money. In truth I had only brought along the exact coins necessary for a cup of coffee, but he didn’t believe me. He pointed at my coffee, and kept asking. There was contempt in his voice and eyes. I repeated that I had no money until he left.

I was thinking about Sunday and then, when he was a few feet away, his hand went in his jacket and a sudden bad feeling appeared and my body broke into a run just before he reached arm’s length.

At first I wasn’t sure what had happened, and I felt silly as I realized people were watching. I’d crossed a threshold, and made an irrevocable statement with my body: “I don’t trust this man, so I’m running away from him”. I thought I’d made a mistake, and I didn’t want to offend anybody.

But as I ran I soon heard a shopkeeper yell for police, and when I looked back I saw five or six people gathered near her shop with concerned faces. Some of them were staring at me, others were staring at the man, who was now ambling up the street in the opposite direction.

It didn’t take me long to reach the restaurant. I arrived, greeted the owner, ordered a beer, and didn’t tell anyone what had happened. I enjoyed excellent thin-crust pizza, and was soon lost in conversation with a professor of engineering from Colorado who was in town for a conference. Then I began my walk home.

I was a block from my apartment when I noticed the streetlights. Weeks earlier, city representatives had knocked on my apartment window to ask what I thought of the neighbourhood. I told them I liked it, but that I wished it was more secure. In particular, I told them about a nearby street that was poorly lit and therefore especially uncomfortable at night. To my surprise, within a week they had fixed and installed streetlights up and down the entire street.

It was now nearing 9:00 pm, and on the corner of that well-lit street were two young men. Their clothes and posture made me feel slightly uncomfortable, but I had seen them in my neighbourhood before, and besides, there were bright lights and someone else was approaching on a bicycle. Not feeling particularly vulnerable, I kept walking.

I was on the opposite sidewalk, but the street was narrow, so we were about ten feet apart as we passed by each other and I heard the word “plata” (local slang for money). At the same time, in my peripheral vision I saw a pair of feet move towards me. Before I knew what was happening, I felt my body run again.

Again, I felt silly. Had the other guy made me paranoid? I thought maybe they had stomped on the ground to poke fun at me, to have a laugh at an excitable white foreigner. I thought that perhaps I’d look back and see smiles, and I’d smile too and then keep walking. But when I looked back—SHIT, they were running too! Here, in the middle of a city, in the middle of civilization as I knew it, two adult human beings were engaging the facilities of their legs to physically intercept my body.

It was now a game of velocity. I felt like a chicken on a farm as I picked up the pace, bewildered, and shouted into the air.

The boy on the bicycle was passing us now. He looked surprised, but he kept his mouth shut and kept pedalling, and I didn’t blame him.

At some point I remembered that I had seen something shiny in a hand, so I looked back to see if it was a gun, but it turned out to just be a bottle of alcohol. Soon their footsteps died down and I looked back once more, and they were just standing there now, staring at me, but I didn’t slow down. We were close to my apartment, and I didn’t want them to see where I lived.

I tore around the corner and began to fumble with my keys. The process to enter my apartment was awful. First, you had to unlock a big metal gate, and you had to turn the key until the bolt clicked four times. Then, you had to feel in the dark of the shadow to find the keyhole for the heavy wooden door, find the correct key on the key ring, and turn that key until it clicked twice. And then you had to use the first key to lock the gate behind you, too. I hated those doors. I always imagined that if something bad was going to happen to me, it would be right there while I fumbled with my keys, trapped between the gate and the door.

But finally the gate and door were behind me, unlocked and opened and unlocked and opened and closed and locked and closed and locked again, and I was inside, safe and stunned and panting with my back slumped against the wall. I felt like I was living out some kind of movie scene, and then I felt a little silly for comparing my life to a movie scene. Really, for the rest of my life, will I always be comparing the most dramatic moments of my life to movie scenes? I’m not sure how I feel about that. But my heart was still beating too fast for me to care.

A few days later I was working quietly in my apartment, finishing up some things before going out for dinner. It was about 7:30 PM, and I wanted pizza. I was nervous about going to dinner late, but I was being more careful on the streets now and 7:30 PM was really not that late.

Suddenly my peaceful work was interrupted by horrible sounds of a screaming woman. The sounds were so unexpected and outlandish that I immediately assumed it was a troupe of college students having a laugh, because of all screaming I have ever encountered, drunk party-goers account for most. But the screaming was so horrifying, and went on for so long, that it didn’t take much reflection for me to realize that there was likely a darker explanation.

I approached the bars of my apartment gate with caution, but was relieved when I saw a couple of women standing on the sidewalk across the street. It was obvious that whatever had happened was over, and people were now in spectator-mode. I unlocked the gate and walked over and started talking.

It turns out a girl had been walking all by herself on that very same patch of road where my own chase had ended, when two men attacked and began to beat her. Because of her loud screaming, people from the neighbourhood rushed to help, and were able to apprehend the assailants on a nearby block. But not before they beat and tore the purse away from their female victim.

A few minutes later, I set off for dinner, safe with the knowledge that additional police presence due to the beating would make for a safe walk.

Introducing Overlap.me

2011-06-25T00:00:00-07:00

Given that it appears Overlap.me has escaped the obscurity of a private beta and launched, ever-so-softly, into the public consciousness, I figure I should explain what it is and why I’ve built it. Continue Reading →

Methods of Mattering

2011-04-18T00:00:00-07:00

Methods of Mattering

Behold, a short overview of the bountiful opportunities for deriving meaning from modern life.

By Number:

Forcefully decide that from today forward, a higher or lower value of some number X will correspond to more or less Mattering in your life.

X may be drawn from financial, physical, or social phenomena, but it must be a single number that can be checked regularly.

Question: What number should I select?

Dollars in an account and pounds on a scale are reliable numerical workhorses which have provided millions of people with Mattering for millennia. On the internet, “Follower Counts” and “Friend Lists” present exciting new digital opportunities.

Woe to the man who subjects himself to deep thought every time he needs a pick-me-up! Beneath the grotesque simplicity of a single integer lies untold power.

By Story:

Some individuals cannot find even one number in any aspect of their life which is on a positive trajectory. In these cases, we recommend Story-Mattering.

Select some narrative involving human drama—ideally an on-going narrative, with new additions to the story being released each week—and self-identify with a character therein.

Upon simple repetition of this narrative, one’s experience of Mattering should be heightened.

Question: What kind of story should I pick?

Stories of characters who repeat the same mistakes over and over—doing the same damn fool things again and again, week after week, year after year—are particularly effective, because they make one’s own lack of progress in life feel normal.

Royalty and religion alike have found Story-Mattering technique to work especially well on others.

By Delegation to Ultimate Authority:

This technique requires a strong imagination, but once rooted can persist for generations.

Begin by deeply and unconditionally accepting the ultimate authority of some universal but invisible Entity. (It will be easier for your children to relate to the Entity if you give it an easy to pronounce name.)

From today forward, this invisible Entity shall be responsible for all earthly occurrences, and one must acknowledge and speak of this daily. No detail is too small to overlook! If a light occurs in the sky which you have not seen before, it was the Entity. If a light occurs in the sky which you have seen before, it was the Entity. If a dog, which you knew to be a friendly dog, suddenly bites a cow, and the cow dies, it was the Entity. If a dog, which you knew to be a friendly dog, rushes up and licks your face in a friendly manner when you arrive home, it was the Entity.

Whenever one witnesses the Entity at work, one must call the neighbours and acknowledge the work of the Entity—with deeply furrowed brows.

Having established the Entity as fact, it will be short work to accept one’s own portion of Mattering as a mere consequence, a side-effect, of one’s special relationship to said Entity.

By Unreflective Demand:

Declare “I Matter” while imagining oneself kicking a football very hard or, if one is ambitious and in good physical condition, while actually kicking a football very hard.

This method, although rare, is highly effective in certain difficult cases.

By Comparison:

Avoid the true origins of Mattering at all costs! Think only of your neighbour’s Mattering, and how pale and foolish and spineless it is compared with your own.

Whenever your thoughts begin to drift towards your own sense of mattering, bring your focus back to your neighbour: what is she doing over there?

If necessary, use physical devices to enhance the power of your condescension. Many have found the back of a pick-up truck or even a milk-crate to be an effective platform from which to stare down at a sharp angle towards your neighbours and their so-called lives.

Trying

2011-03-27T00:00:00-07:00

Trying

This is where I learned to swim:

Photo: Aaron Wolcott

The pool is filled with algae because it was abandoned; it was abandoned because of war.

I didn’t experience this war; when my family moved to Nyankunde, Zaire (now DR Congo), it was 1987, and I was four years old. My parents had a teaching assignment, and we stayed for 10 months.

I was nineteen when the email arrived: “Wearing crowns of leaves and screaming war cries… tribal fighters overran a mission hospital in Nyankunde, killing patients as they lay in their beds.” I had spent the rest of my childhood in a small, quiet town in rural Saskatchewan.

It feels strange to have be connected to such unspeakable horrors. “During the massacre, militiamen would open up the belly of their victims and eat something directly from within the body.” It’s not something one forgets. I remembered her Nyankunde is 50km from the United Nations base in Bunia, which hits the news every so often.

In Nyankunde we had a black cat, Rascal Snoopy Jack Huebert. (My brother and sister and I each got to pick one name; mine was Jack.) When he got scared, he’d race into the fireplace and up to a hidden ledge inside the chimney. Sometimes we chased him there on purpose. He could stay up there for hours. “Through an open window, he saw dozens of women and children running toward the Congo mission compound from fields where they had been working since daybreak. Behind them were about 7,000 soldiers. Kakani closed windows and barricaded the intensive-care ward. Patients who could move were hidden under beds and in rafters… Hospital staff laid many on the floor to keep them safely away from stray bullets that peppered walls and windows.”

I remember my first baseball game. I hit the ball and didn’t know what to do. People were shouting directions but I couldn’t understand and then suddenly I was already out, they’d thrown the ball to first base. I had to walk off the field. I was crying and felt stupid. “Despite their efforts, the Ngiti went through the 250-bed hospital, killing in their beds all patients who resembled Hemas. The dead included ‘elderly, disabled, adults, and even a baby strapped to his mother’s back.’”

One time, our night watchman killed a snake outside the house in the middle of the night. He pounded it into the ground with a big stick. I was asleep. The rest of my family talked about the snake at breakfast. They had woken up and got to see it. I was disappointed I’d missed something so exciting. “After the massacre at the hospital, soldiers then went from house to house looking for anyone of Hema descent; often slitting their throats and throwing their bodies outside on the ground.”

At night it was pitch black, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The insects were loud. I don’t remember being scared though. My parents were always there and I felt safe with them. “Any remaining Hema man, woman or child, found hiding in houses or in the hospital were rounded up. They were stripped of their clothes, had their elbows tied behind their back and marched to a large house in the middle of the compound and then shut in.”

Sometimes a man would come by to sell warm goat’s milk from a rusty pot attached to his bicycle. But we ate porridge for breakfast, with powdered milk. I didn’t like milk anymore after living in Africa. “Soldiers would enter and mock the crowd who were pleading for water. They were given empty cups to drink their own urine. The soldiers told the imprisoned that ‘this was their death chamber and they were to suffer a slow and agonizing death, but surely all would die.’”

My best friend was Rachael. We played together all the time. We were the same age and my mom taught us kindergarten together. One day my brother teased me about her. I got mad at him. I thought he was the one who invented making fun of boys for being friends with girls. Before that we didn’t care, we just played together. We pretended that broomsticks were horses and galloped across the yard with them between our legs. “Survivors said the attackers were from the Ngiti and Lendu tribes, along with other allies. They killed people from the Bira, Hema and 16 other tribes living in Nyankunde.”

There was a big coconut tree on the yard and sometimes you could watch local men climb it. We had a servant who would cut the grass by hand, swinging a machete. The grass made you itchy if you rolled in it. I wanted to have my own machete. “The attackers used rifles, machetes, knives, spears and arrows, said Kakani, head nurse in the intensive care ward… The modern, well-equipped hospital was left a burned-out shell, stripped of everything.”

I remember climbing up the big hill that overlooks Nyankunde, watching tall elephant grass for snakes. On the way down, I tripped and fell into a green and mushy cowpie. It made me cry. My mom and dad helped wipe it off, and we kept walking. “Their houses were emptied of belongings which were carried on the heads of Ngiti militiamen, across the hills to their distant villages… the line of people carrying away their belongings was like ‘a stream of ants going across the valley and over the hill.’”

I remember stepping on snails to hear the crushing sound of the shell and the squishing of the insides. I remember when I tried to climb a tree and a branch snapped, and white milky stuff oozed out, and I felt bad. I remember one time, I found a penny on a dirt road. “Among the dead was the mother of little Baraka Safari. She was killed two days after giving birth to the boy, who was found crying beside his mother’s body, survivors said. He was given a Kiswahili name that means ‘fortunate journey’ by those who carried him the 93 miles to Oicha.”

We visited Europe for three weeks on our way back to Canada. I remember sleeping in a chalet in the Swiss Alps and hearing cowbells and watching a hang-glider in the sky. There were yellow flowers in the meadow. The ceiling in the chalet was slanted. I had a featherbed blanket, it felt like four feet thick. It was cozy. “Hospital workers and patients fled into the jungle, eventually making their way through a rainforest to a sister hospital in Oicha over 100 miles away. They lived off rainwater and sugarcane during a trek that took nearly two weeks.”

It’s been twenty-three years since I learned to swim in that pool, nine since the massacre. It hasn’t been obvious what to learn from it all. I am a tiny sliver of a whole that I cannot comprehend, one seven-billionth of humanity, connected to Nyankunde by a tenuous thread of history. Nyankunde itself was a small blip in a massive, complicated war which killed over five million people. It’s disorienting to think about and usually I don’t. Usually, if it occurs to me at all, I just stare at myself in the mirror and don’t know what to say.

But even when thoughts remain silent or confused, I’m still left with a persistent inner tug.

It isn’t verbal, and it doesn’t come with instructions, but all the same, it’s a hard feeling to ignore. When I’m reading the news, or fixing a software bug, or designing a logo, or writing an email, the questions return…

Does this really matter?

What would?

I rarely have answers. I try to make sense of my actions, to visualize their consequence in the world, but paths of cause and effect are complex, my vision is limited, and no matter how much you learn, much of the world is inherently unpredictable.

So the most I can ever really say I’m doing, is trying.

Sources:
On the road to genocide
Massacre at Nyankunde
Jungle Trek Leads Missionaries To Safety After Congo Massacre

An App to Change the World (and pry yourself off Facebook)

2011-02-24T00:00:00-08:00

So I’m sitting at Startup Drinks in Vancouver last night when Delano Mandelbaum, the singular human force behind website monitoring tool BlameStella, lends me a productivity tip which I think might just change the world, if only it can be paired with a great user interface.

The trick is simple: whenever you find yourself consciously wasting your time (time, you recall? that precious gift of life that brilliant modern moguls make it their explicit goal to absorb, sponge-like…), switch your computer screen to grayscale. On a mac, you can either adjust these settings manually or use this applescript.

Life in grayscale is weird… disorienting, strange, foreign. You can’t help but realize something in your life isn’t.. quite.. right. It doesn’t take long for the subtle discomfort to nudge me back into the real-world or back to work.

Most of us can’t avoid social media, hell—we rely on it. The evil is not connectedness itself, it’s the trance-like suckage that turns two minute Facebook message replies into forty minute photo browsing escapades. With tens of thousands of engineers devoting their lives to various forms of computerized crack, the “focus” problem is only going to get worse.

We need a reminder: life online is life in monochrome.

But we have a problem: this approach is awkward without a good tool. I’d like a simple app that lets me list the websites I hate but can’t live without (perhaps the app could be called “Nemesis”?), and then forces my screen into grayscale whenever I visit them. Bonus points if it can turn my screen into an evil-looking blood-red monochrome for the worst offenders…