Tamir's barber of seven years and close friend; a deep reader of fiction, a published comic artist and a writer of unpublished short stories, raised on a farm in rural Alberta. Tamir calls him a therapist and teacher of literature from the barber's chair.
Where it appears 1
Connections
Created
Wrote
Stories told
- A closeted kid in 1980s rural Alberta
Tyler had a great childhood, with a huge extended family and great parents, but was in the closet with no role models, living a dark double life and feeling locked into a bad fate. Frankl…
- Ghosted by three close friends
About three years earlier, three of Tyler's nearest and dearest friends cut him off. He was bewildered and feared something about him was 'too much'. What finally smoothed him out was…
- The handmade anthology
When Tyler loves a short story, he cuts it from the spine of its book with a carpenter's knife and rebinds his favorites with Bible onion-skin paper, which acts like book glue. He built a…
- Tyler's first impression of Tamir
Seven years ago, after Tamir's first haircut, where he talked about a new Odyssey translation and his plans, Tyler told coworker Roland that Tamir was in that sweet, brief period when you…
- Learning Jewish culture through Singer
Growing up in rural Alberta, not raised in any church, Tyler learned about traditional Jewish life from Isaac Bashevis Singer's translated Yiddish stories. When he met Tamir and his Jewish…
- The ghostly blue stallion
At his isolated Alberta cabin, a huge blue roan stallion with no markings appeared on his fenced property, emerging from a fog bank and challenging the neighbor's horses. After his friends…
- Jazz cassettes in 1993
Spending a summer in the city at 21, Tyler walked into a secondhand CD and cassette shop and bought Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday tapes, thrilled to realize they had dozens of albums…
- Small-town loyalty that slaughtered him
In a small community you can't cut anyone off; they'll be at your cousin's wedding and at school the next day. Tyler entered the wider world extremely loyal and sentimental, unwilling to…
- Writing the stallion story in one sitting
Tyler walked straight from the forest where he lost the horse's trail back to the cabin and wrote for three hours, something he had never done before. He barely revised it, and everything…
- Escaping into books during hard times
In tough periods Tyler escaped into books instead of 16 hours of TV. A great story woke up his slowed-down thoughts and energy, and he came back with ideas he hadn't had the day before.
- Tyler's mock BetterHelp ad
Asked to improvise an ad for BetterHelp while Tamir refilled the tea, Tyler pitched himself instead: farm kids have great work ethic and he can pull a calf, so if civilization collapses he…
Words spoken
Everybody has a justification. Anger is its own justification.
If someone thinks they've got everything figured out, to my mind that's where they're going to stop. Their brain calcifies. It's way more fun to be sort of scratching your head sometimes, because it keeps your brain looking and listening.
Everybody has it. Everyone's life makes sense to them. That's the thing.
It taught me to kind of laugh while my feet are on fire.
When you're angry you don't have to think, and you don't have to admit fault. The self-righteousness is an easy exit off the highway: you're a dick, so I don't have to deal with you, goodbye.
A diary is feelings, a journal is thoughts.
I would rather experience something that I've never quite seen the like of before, even if it's like a six out of ten, than see another romantic comedy that's nine out of ten.
Any quality taken too far is negative.
You can do your half and then you cross your fingers for the rest.
I was taking lessons out of it of how to get through when the best I could do was just dog paddle to keep my head above water, and it even actually just taught me sometimes that's good enough, because sooner or later something's going to shift.
One of my favorite feelings in the world is stumbling across a singer or an author and realizing they just knock you on your ass, and you realize they have a whole back catalog that you now get to dive into.
We all had that space in our lives for like six months or four months or two years where we thought we could dictate the terms of our life, or we thought we got it all figured out, and then along comes the wrong girl, or along comes, you know, your mom gets sick.