Heart of Man

The lowest point in the spiritual cycle comes after the Paradise, after the Fall, but long before Redemption. This is a time that seems made for reflection, and yet reflection leads to only one conclusion: you are broken and you must change. This is an awful place to be, though we have all been there. By now we should know the cycle, know that joy comes with the morning. It is true that you must change the way you live. But you have, you must, and you have, many times. There is a positive trajectory to your life and there is great cause for hope. Yet, if we choose not to hope there remains a difficult alternative.

We don't do what we know that we should do. Instead we do the wrong that we know we should not do. But, not always. We have good days too, governed by wisdom. This time, there was something that pulled us away from wisdom, and that is in fact always pulling, sometimes lightly that we can resist, sometimes with overwhelming force. In desperation I want to cut myself loose for once and for all. I will cut all my bonds, but I won't stop there: I will cut out every corrupted part of me. What is left will be complete and beautiful. It seems tantalizing, and possible. So, putting away hope in the status quo I reach for the surgeon's knife.

Where to begin? Some of the cords trailing away from me are so clearly black, and these are severed easily enough, though always leaving a dangling root. How close to the flesh do I dare to cut? After the first simple strokes the task becomes convoluted. There are no clear lines any more. And I remember something that I once heard: "If your eye causes you to sin, then cut it out; if it is your right hand, then cut it off." So. This is not going to be a surgery without complications. Still, it is my soul that we are talking about. The prospect of complete freedom from the shadow is worth both eyes, or many right hands. I'm ready.

Then, with the knife point an inch from my eye, the greater part of me screaming in protest, I remember something else that I read: "that the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man." Now I know the true cost of complete spiritual freedom. It explains why there are no survivors of the surgery alive today. Good and evil within us appear to have a tense but symbiotic relationship. That one is the host and the other the parasite is an article of faith only. There is little within us or throughout the created order to reassure that faith, but without it there would be nothing but chaos.

We do have some control over our spiritual trajectory. It is a matter of degrees, not absolutes, but it is movement towards the dominance of one extreme over the other. The image of the angel and the demon on opposing shoulders is surprisingly applicable to everyday life. With little difficulty, I can imagine a being who is myself but also given completely over to evil, devoid of any of the good within me. It is an ugly and depraved being, but without a doubt it is me. More happily I can also imagine what I would look like, finally free and good, a being far nobler and more beautiful than I, but just as clearly me. The two beings are not visitors from heaven and hell perched on my shoulders, but they are one hundred feet tall, and intimately personal.

I have no idea if we will one day have to forsake one of these completely and become the other. That part of the process, if it occurs at all, occurs away from mortal eyes. Here on earth there is no knife or laser precise enough to sever us from evil (or good), for who can survive an incision straight through the heart? A person with half a heart is no person at all. The earth remains therefore a dangerous place, and living here remains a matter of life or death. It is best, then, to keep both eyes and both hands.

"You must change the way you live" is not a moral imperative, but an inescapable fact. With this realization, hope has returned, but with it more responsibility than we might have hoped.

Not Smoking Breaks

In my city, we have demonized an activity that was once commonplace and acceptable. I refer, of course, to smoking. Smoking used to be cool, in the days of black and white movies, but now pulling out a cigarette is shorthand for “I have money to burn and I can’t read warning labels.” I’m not writing to attack or defend the institution of smoking. Personally, I have smoked more cigarettes with my ear than with my mouth. That’s another story that I do not wish to recall at this moment.

The cynical might wonder if some people take up smoking just for the breaks. Every couple hours, or more frequently for the more hopelessly enslaved, smokers trudge outside for a breath of “fresh air”. Employers on a whole tend to tolerate these breaks, and I believe they are wise to do so. Freshness of air aside, a couple minutes on the hour to catch one’s breath—figuratively, at least—makes the rest of the hour productive. This is at least true of office work, which rarely brings forth a sweat, but often brings forth a headache.

I have taken to stepping outside myself, to take a few minutes and not smoke. Sometimes I even walk around the building. On my sanctioned lunch break, I’ll even walk around the block, which is dominated by the Winnipeg Technical College. There is a retention pond and an open field teeming with grasshoppers. The retention pond, with a busy highway behind it, may not have stunning beauty but it often has geese. In the suburbs one has to take what one can get.

In my specific case, these breaks may not improve productivity at work at all. Walking in the open air, watching the geese fly around and recalling the names of clouds, my thoughts are pushed to broader, loftier spheres. I contemplate all that I know of the world, or perhaps my own problems and concerns. Sometimes there is a wonderful revelation, but usually just a sense of being part of a large and fascinating world. Either way, when I return to whatever it is that sits on my desk, it seems mundane and insignificant by comparison. I return less motivated than before!

If these breaks are bad for productivity, they are at least good for actual quality of life. A change in scenery and a breath of outside air is a good reminder of the present moment, that I’m actually in a certain place, at a certain time. It is true that when I try to imagine myself from far away, I start with the now-familiar opening screen of Google Earth—but such are the times. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think there’s time to head outside to not smoke one more time before bed...

We ask too little of the world...

(from July 16, 2008)

It looks like looming thundershowers. Dark clouds, intermittent sunlight, and waiting trees. The fifth floor is the ideal balcony height. Close enough to reach out and touch the trees, high enough to catch sunlight and grow tomatoes and peppers. Well, actually just one pepper, so it looks like the little plant is putting all its effort into this one magnum opus, its only child. On evenings such as this I revert to my most common state, perplexity. The world is absolutely fascinating. It’s mesmerizing. My mind and this world are such an unlikely duo, and yet what a dynamic match! So many things warrant a lifetime dedicated to their study and appreciation. Among the most amazing are plant life, human cities, clouds, birds, cars and our minds. We value novelty too much and we ask too little of the world. Imagine if a thunderstorm only happened once every thousand years. Imagine the news coverage, the enraptured tears of those lucky enough to witness the miracle. Why does the world stop and take notice of a baby only when it is born with four arms and four legs? When did we stop being amazed at the ones with two arms and two legs?

Another source for endless speculation and fascination are the structures of the world, and I mean the structures between people. Between individuals or between nations, the struggle is always for power. The rich do everything they can to stay that way, and even the help that they provide serves them more than anyone else. It is hard to imagine things any other way. Poor countries have to develop their own industry and identity. Weak people need to find their own voice. In both cases, this is to the detriment of the powerful. The powerful can quash these efforts and they often do. They do it as if they had the right. They even make laws that supposedly give them the right. I have to think that in the end, power belongs to those with the most audacity.

Yet, we ask too little of the world. The powerful and audacious are selling themselves short. It’s a silly goal, in the end, to control things. There are better ways to live out your time, no? If the world fascinates you, you’ll always have things to learn. If helping people makes you happy, you’re in luck; you couldn’t have been born into a better world. But if you want to possess it all, contentment is much more precarious, more is the one thing that will always be wanting.

So, after reading about atrocity upon atrocity committed by people against people, systems to which I owe my comfort while others owe their distress, it hurts me but not yet to the core. We ask too little of the world, and so the imbalance between rich and poor seems greater. What do the rich have over the poor? More comfort, to be sure. Respite, but not freedom from death. More education but no more wisdom. Fewer worries but also more worries, a worry shift from healthy children to home security. If we asked more of the world, more than just money, my theory is that the money problems would ease up as well. Imagine if people started living as if they mattered, everyone else mattered, and the world was pretty good the way it is. Happier people are more generous, right? If money isn’t the focus of life it should be easier to part with.

What we call development might be more than getting power and money to the poor by prying it from the rich by a conscientious--or guilty--few within their own ranks. It might be development as a human race, development as if people mattered. If there is hope for us, it lies within ourselves. Better technology, but better distribution of the technology we do have. Better education, but education to celebrate curiosity and wisdom. Better health, but healthier lifestyles. There are people who really need development to stave off early and widespread death, and they are living in certain places, and there are people who need development to grow as people, and they are found everywhere.

Moments, Time and Scale

All moments are not equal, and great swaths of time may pass by unnoticed until a sudden, radiant instant adds new meaning. I cannot speak for others, but I have an instinctive notion that the spiritual value of things does not square up with any measurement known to our world. That is to say, things that are physically larger are need not be spiritually so; things that are physically closer need not spiritually so; feelings that are emotionally more intense need not be spiritually so; actions that demand much of our time need not offer much to our spirit, while actions that demand little of our time may offer much indeed.

I was sitting at my desk at work—as I often do, out of habit and necessity—when there came a starling revelation. I enjoy almost every part of my day more than that time spent working at work. For example, sleeping is much better, far more restful. Sadly, I retain few memories from my time spent sleeping, and those memories that I do retain involve too many flying monkeys for me to trust them completely. Yet, between sleeping and working the greatest part of my day is divided. After the mundane and routine necessities of eating and preparing food, washing body, clothes and bathroom, there remains only a thin crust for higher pursuits.

The trip to and from work, cycling along the streets of Winnipeg, is more invigorating than the long hours between the trips. In the morning I leave downtown, and pass through the older neighbourhoods and into the suburbs. The trees shrink in size and finally disappear, cars drive ever faster, green gives way to grey, and it always seems to me a decent into hell. This feeling affects my perception of the hours that await me in the office. The return to the city centre after work is one of the certain joys of my day. Though the roads are flat, it seems like an ascent—not into paradise, but at least to an earth full of purpose.

Then, there are times of communion with other people. It is with family around the table, with great minds through books, or with friends in an apartment, restaurant, or a bar. Beyond this, the greatest times I have known were spent creating or helping others. On rare occasions, greater still, are moments where I am doing nothing at all, except walking, thinking, looking, or listening, and long stretches of time seem to come together and resonate. This is when I am reminded again, I am a bell, and had almost forgotten for it had been so long since I was last lifted and struck.

Occasionally I read articles about the newest ideas in physics, which are unintelligible but fascinating. Some scientists, if it can still be called a science, believe that there are many universes beyond our own. Personally, I find the idea repulsive. The universe is already far too big, and my mind refuses the idea that all of that is one among many. After looking at the sky mapped out on Google Earth, I got an impression of just how many worlds we can see between each of the commonly visible stars. Perhaps we are highly irrational, but we give our planet more importance in our minds and hearts than its size and position would seem to dictate. Perhaps it is we humans who have defined spiritual value for ourselves, in which case our self-centered approach is understandable and pragmatic.

As with great spaces, so with long stretches of time. I would hesitate to predict how long it would take to tell the story of the entire planet to an alien race. If pressed, I would say between ten to fifteen minutes. Mercifully, we do not need to be concerned with this any more than we are concerned about our irrelevance upon the Andromeda galaxy. We are in the business of living our lives; we are here and it is now. Therefore, it makes sense to take the pragmatic approach: to accept that we are the ones who have decided, and still decide, where meaning and purpose lie.

This is not to say that spiritual richness is whatever we want it to be. We could ascribe great value to money and power, and people certainly do. However, the definitions that have stood the test of time are more ambitious, calling us to seek out that which is good but also within our reach here and now. This is why we still need God, because he is bigger than the universe in a different way than the physicist’s world of many worlds is bigger. We need him to be greater, but also within our reach. Most of the world’s religions give us something to that effect, not always God, but something both transcendent and immanent.

Only the rejection of that wisdom has led us off the track in the last few years. We have learned fascinating new truths about the scale of our world over space and time. With better scientific understanding of our insignificant place in celestial geography and history, we have carried these insights too far beyond the proper reach of science. Now we are saying that those times and distances really matter! Even though we know in our hearts that 1969 was more important than any one year plucked from the Precambrian period. Even though we know in our hearts that 70 kg of human being has a greater purpose than 70 kg of limestone. Do we not see that accepting a reality beyond the time and distance we can observe is both wise and pragmatic? While religious beliefs may often be irrational, some form of religion is surely our only means of holding on to any reason at all.

Traffic

I read an article the other day about traffic signs. Sometimes the number of signs guiding people through the act of driving seems ridiculous. It’s at the point where people don’t even watch the road any more. As a pedestrian, if I’m crossing the street and the traffic light turns green, I run for my life! People don’t look around, they look at the lights. Perhaps the most defensive drivers still look at the road ahead of them. There was a town that removed almost all of its traffic signs, took down curbs, and let people walk and cycle all over the place. The result was fewer accidents, less traffic congestion, and a more attractive town. People felt that the roads less safe, and drove more cautiously to compensate. Even in the busiest cities people drive cautiously in parking lots. I think it’s only because the rules aren’t as clear. It requires thinking, which means our brains don’t fall asleep.

People get so impatient if they have to wait even two seconds while driving! Yet these same people can handle 20 seconds of waiting in a supermarket lineup, or 20 minutes of waiting at a restaurant. We’re an impatient society at the best of times, but why does driving bring our very worst? My theory is that social interaction is severely limited on the road. When we are face to face in a lineup, or walking down the street, it is clear that the old lady ahead of you is just that—an old lady, a human being. If you want you can say “excuse me.” You can even strike up a conversation.

Let us look, in contrast, at the language available to us in cars. Vehicles have no faces, so there is no sharing of emotions. Body language is minimal, and the messages we can send all come across as impatient. By inching forward, we indicate a desire to go. So, we have to turn to the spoken word…

A few years ago I made an effort to learn some Mandarin Chinese. I didn’t get very far, but I do remember that there is great potential to be misunderstood if you don’t pronounce words properly. “Horse” and “mother” are famously similar and it is easy to imagine an unintentional insult. However, how much greater is the potential for miscommunication in the language of cars, known as Honk. Unlike Chinese, Honk is atonal—in fact all words are spoken with the same loud, sharp inflection. There is only one vowel, E, and no consonants.

To see the potential for confusion, let’s look at the conjugation of the verb “to go” in Honk:

I go – E
You go – E
He/she/it goes – E
We go – E
You (plural) go – E
They go – E

As if that wasn’t ambiguous enough, look at the translations from English to Honk for the following common words and phrases:

Be careful – E
Fuck you – E
Go ahead – E
Go to hell – E
Hello – E
Sorry – E
Watch out – E

The words for “hello” and “fuck you” are so similar that people generally remain silent rather than risk offence. There is no chance for philosophical discussion, or even chatting about the weather. The words for “rain” and “sun” are so similar, and once again their pronunciation is similar to “fuck you”. With such a weak language, there is no wonder that social interaction between drivers is minimal. Most maintain a surly silence.

Failure to communicate properly leads to misunderstanding. This is true in the office, on the construction site, or in relationships. On the road, the total inability to communicate guarantees misunderstanding. To compensate, the government gives us lines painted on the pavement and signs and lights that tell us exactly where and when to go, in hopes that we won’t need to talk to one another. It’s a reasonable way to control traffic, but it’s no way to live.

Names

Learn the names of children, for they will inherit the earth;
Learn the names of clouds, for they have covered us and they will cover them;
Learn the names of trees, for the clouds are quick to fade away;
Learn the names of mountains, for the trees wither and decay;
Learn the names of stars, for the mountains crumble into dust;
Learn the names of God, for even the stars explode.

I was reading through some notes that I set down while my grandpa was dying of cancer. “Learn the names of children,” I had exhorted myself. Grandpa was very good at knowing the names of children, and adults too. He greeted people by name and remembered the important details going on in their lives. Graduating, getting married, moving, raising children, he had something to ask. Later on, in conversation with the family, he would continue to talk about seemingly insignificant people by name. Several people who knew him only from his frequent morning trips to Tim Horton’s attended his funeral, because they had a bond with him. Grandpa learned people’s names, people who most of us would not have considered important. “Learn the names of children”, I had written to myself. A few index cards later, another exhortation—“Do not forget the lessons learned at the brink!” Almost a year later, I haven’t learned very many names of children at all. There are few children about whom I know any details at all. A name would be a starting place, for then I could call them when I see them, or ask about them when I see their parents. Without a name, these efforts are barely possible.

Names are more important even than that. Names are only words, special words with special meanings. Not boy but Andrew. Boy is nobody, Andrew is somebody. (Unless his name is Boy, which would be a different matter!) Names are only words, but how can we say “only” words? Words are the clothing of thoughts, and we have a hard time seeing thoughts naked. Without words, we can’t think about anything, and likewise without names, we can’t think about any one thing.

Since knowing names is important to learn or to care about someone or something, names carry a certain respect. Towards the end of the Lord of the Rings, the forces of Mordor are laying siege to the great city of Minas Tirith. They have built a great battering ram to break down the main door. Soon, we learn that the siege engine has a name—Grond. It has a name, and a history. The door doesn’t have a name. There is no question as to whether or not Grond will be able to break through the door. It took three hits, but there was never any doubt.

My grandpa was a shy man, and I am sure that asking people’s names did not come naturally to him. Yet, there is no doubt that it was worth the effort. For him, of course, learning names was more than just memorizing an actual, literal name as it might appear on a birth certificate. Names need to be filled with meaning, such as habits, history, and personality. In a very real way the best part of life is filling words and names with greater and deeper meaning.

Many people—me and my bride to be included—are better with faces than names. Almost everyone is good with faces, and I think that for what I am trying to say, faces are almost like names. A face is like a visual name, for it is specific, we can remember it, and we can fill it with meaning. But faces are harder to share than names. When someone remembers your face, but not your name, there is no hiding it, and the feelings are awkward on both sides. The exhortation still stands—“learn the names of children”. Learn the names of their mothers and fathers as well. And if you do forget a lesson learned at the brink, hope that you wrote it down.

Seventh Generation

This is the sort of thing I worry about all the time:



A demiurgic pelican named Alexander Pyes
Was pleased to paint with ketchup when he used up all his dyes
He painted an angelic flying squirrel with crimson eyes
And christened him Saint Francis underneath tomato skies

Pious Alexander felt Francisco would be blue
Without a red compatriot to sing a chorus to.
And so he had Saint Francis chant a spell, and lo, there grew,
From squirrelly head a stout hibiscus fresh with morning dew.

The newborn flower was a storyteller in her heart
She set to work with ardency and in the hero’s part
She cast a dour donkey once condemned to pull a cart
Who broke his chains and cantered off to undertake his art.

The donkey’s art was sculpture and his sculpting was quite nice
His knowing hooves brought forth from what was began as solid ice
An empty-hearted vulture with a spirit bent on vice
Who gorged his vestal stomach on a clan of frozen mice.

After he was sated he began a bawdy tale,
Centered round the exploits of a misbehaving whale
Whose name was Leighton Landau and whose skin was deathly pale;
Who muttered dark expletives in an ocean filled with ale.

Leighton was too lazy to conceive within his mind
A single thing beyond the shores in which he dined and wined.
So foolish was the ashen whale he actually opined
That he was born the greatest soul of his or any kind.

The truth of Landau’s lineage we presently review:
The beast who made his maker is too common for the zoo,
So goes the flower’story—if the flower only knew
She owes her soul to magic of the cousin of a shrew,
While Saint Francisco’s maker is a bird who long since flew
Away, I say, for Alex flies where I enjoin him to!

Each beast within this tale of tales knew not its rightful station,
For lordly Leighton Landau was the seventh generation
In this consecution of occasions of creation--
Is it not with barest prudence I look up and give oblation?


-

Folk Festival

Last week I began my new job at Neegan Burnside, a civil engineering firm in Winnipeg. They work in northern communities in Canada, water, wastewater and infrastructure stuff. No complex, technical, expensive stuff here, but a fair bit of travel around the province and beyond, and a tiny office. Small enough to know everyone’s name and probably a few other key facts as well. That first week though, I only worked two days, the week was cut short on both sides, by Canada day on Monday, and the Folk Festival on Thursday and Friday. The festival extended to Saturday and Sunday of course, but those days are off by default in this country, thanks to the blood spilled by our heroic forefathers over the centuries in defense of western civilization. Well, not my forefathers, though I’m sure that they performed other actions, such as plowing, in equally heroic fashion.

The thing that surprised me most about the Winnipeg Folk Festival was that I had never been before. Music was just the beginning. Well, music wasn’t actually the beginning, speaking chronologically. Days ended with music, and continued with more music at the camp site, but by using the cliché that something, music in this case, is ‘just the beginning’ I mean that there was a lot going on in addition. These additional items of interest were the natural setting, the crowds of people (and what an eclectic bunch), food, and the rather ambiguous ‘good times’. Incidentally, volunteering is the way to go. Volunteers get free admission, food, backstage access, and an embarrassing amount of praise regarding their indispensability. I for one was not indispensable, as Tavern Security. Why anyone would think that I would make a good bouncer is not within my capacity to fathom, but even further beyond that capacity is why 17 bouncers are needed at the beer gardens of a family-friendly celebration of folk music, peace and love.

One foolish idea that I had was that I would meet up with my cousins at the campground, and set up next to them. The campground is a vast field with over 70,000 tents, and there is no finding of anyone in specific. In fact, it is a rule throughout such an event that you cannot set out to find anyone in particular but if you wander around long enough you will find someone, an old friend or perhaps a new one. This is right out of Siddhartha—finding is better than seeking. The downfall of the seeker is the joy of the finder—the objects to be found are dynamically infinite, not only beyond count but in constant flux.

I was worried that it would be hard to transition from the last two months of random jobs, job hunting and music festival attendance to a regular office schedule. Time will tell, but the first full week wasn’t so bad. Still, it’s hard to get too excited about grey carpets, grey cubicle walls and fluorescent lights. While I’m not excited about those things, the people to work with, the huge part of my country that most people never see, and the problems to work on in that region, should keep me going for a while. I think that when it comes to finding the right place to be at the right time, at some point you just have to pick. One thing which I lack, and I know I’m not the only one in my generation, is depth of experience. We’re all about the breadth. I surprised myself with the realization that I didn’t want to travel around the world and do something different in a different place each year. I was also surprised by the force of that realization; it was a potent idea, potent enough to get me to stay in Winnipeg with no immediate plan to leave.

It seems to me that there are lots of ways to throw away vast stretches of time without actually living, but one in particular—refusal to leave home, see the world and chase dreams—gets a disproportionate amount of press. What about running around constantly without a home and failing to see much of anything on a meaningful level?

There’s this feature on the Facebook website that lets you show everyone a world map highlighted with all the places you’ve been. General disdain aside for all the extras on Facebook—it started as a brilliant networking site and I still use it to catch up with all sorts of people—there is something about that map that makes me uneasy. I don’t want to say that having a map like that is a terrible thing, so I will introduce an independent character to say it:

Soren the Angry Stegosaurus: I am angry! In part it is because I am being chased by bees. The bees here in the Cretaceous Period are much larger than the ones you know, and have a painful sting, but what stings me even more is the notion of a map to keep track of all the places that I have gone. In an absolute sense, such a thing is morally wrong. It is not resonant with the spiritual energies of the world and I find it abhorrent.

Now, I wouldn’t go nearly so far as Soren. If keeping track of the countries you have visited online makes you happy, more power to you. For me, I think it would end up reducing genuine life experiences to ticks on a check-list. I can’t figure out why that is so tempting. It must by a symptom of a wider condition, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Perhaps it is a desire to set quantifiable standards for a successful life, and see steady progress. People seem to be really insecure across the board. Ugly plants grow with confidence alongside pretty ones, and obnoxious animals like squirrels chatter as if they owned the place and never worry that perhaps there’s more to life than hoarding nuts and chattering. People though, they can’t receive enough outside affirmation to slake their insecurity. Even accomplished, confident people. A subject for future thought.

Anosmia

A multicoloured array of blankets lay sprawled across the grassy field, with folding chairs standing at intervals, unoccupied except by the sweaters and jackets of those whom caution or prudence had driven to heed the weather forecast and bring protection against the colder and wetter conditions which had not yet arrived. Many of those who had attended the church picnic, for that is indeed the setting in which we find ourselves, were playing a pick-up game of baseball. The distinctive sound of the ball being struck by the bat, which we are accustomed to describing with a word, crack, could be heard from an adjacent field, that word, adjacent, being used in this case to describe the location of the diamond-shaped field in relation to the array of blankets and folding chairs and barbeques. Under different circumstances it might have been the area occupied by the chairs and barbeques that would have been described as adjacent to the diamond-shaped baseball field, but the demands of our narrative require that the blanket, chair and barbeque area be treated as the centre of the scene, for it is there, among the handful of persons who remained in that area, that the first significant plot development will unfold. Of those who were not involved in the baseball game, nor engaged in that activity which has become for us a euphemism for undemanding activity of all kinds, a walk in the park, there was a group of elderly women, the sort ubiquitous in church congregations of the region, seated upon folding chairs, speaking in animated tones and taking grudging turns at listening, and at a distance a similarly ubiquitous circle of elderly men, speaking less often with lower animation, an environment that would facilitate listening should it come to pass that someone would have something to say, and again at a distance a younger man, who we can identify by the size of his nose, it being noticeably larger than average. The man with the large nose was looking at a book which he held in his hands, most likely a work of fiction, and sitting cross-legged, his back toward the barbeques, that is to say, less conventionally, his front away from the barbeques, it might at this point be told that these barbeques were under his supervision. There were three barbeques, though one was larger than the others, being used on this occasion to cook burgers and hot dogs, those being the most orthodox choices for an outdoor gathering in the middle of summertime, and what group more appropriate than a church to select the orthodox choices, if not to our religious institutions then to whom do we turn to oppose change, which while necessary must be met with some degree of challenge lest we find ourselves in a state of constant and uncontested flux. The meat had been placed on the grill some minutes prior, and had been flipped by the man with the large nose, who was now thoroughly engrossed in the book which was resting on his left knee, he turned another page at the precise moment that an elderly man from the ubiquitous circle, dressed in a green sweater came running over to the barbeques, and spoke to the younger man with some degree of alarm, The meat is burning, What, It smells like the meat is burning, the man with the large nose set aside the book, now drawn from his reading material and whatever images it evoked, by his duty as barbeque attendant which he seemed to be in danger of failing, he ascended to his feet rapidly, in a manner which might have reminded the man with the green sweater, or any other observer, of the coiled metallic objects used to store and convey elastic energy in many tools and mattresses, and inspected the claim of the man with the green sweater, its veracity was confirmed by the black appearance of many of the burgers and hot dogs, not so burned as to be inedible but enough to impart an unpleasant charcoal taste, after a moment the man with the green sweater spoke to the large-nosed man, Most of these are still good, I wasn’t paying attention, Didn’t you notice they were burning, I was too engrossed in my book, But didn’t you smell them, we could smell them burning way over there, the man with the green sweater said, pointing at the ubiquitous circle of elderly men over twenty-five yards away. The younger man replied, No, and narrowed his eyes in a manner that gave his expression a sense of puzzlement, he took a burnt hot dog up with the tongs and held it to his nose and sniffed deliberately, paused and repeated the action, he turned to look at the elderly man as the expression in his face changed from narrow-eyed perplexity to wide-eyed realization and fear, I am anosmic.

---

What can I say, I finished Blindness not to long ago, and I had a bit of free time. More to come, possibly.

Anosmia

Jose Saramago

BookCrossing

Today I was walking along the street with my friend Jesse on our way to sign for our new apartment, when I saw a book on a bus stop bench. I thought, "someone left a book here by accident." After reading the note taped to the cover, I realized that someone left the book there by design. The book is part of a phenomenon called "bookcrossing" that is defined in the following way:

bookcrossing n. the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.

The definition was added to the OED in 2004, a fact that seems to be a source of great pride for the BookCrossing people. There is a website.

The book I found was A Bird in the House by Margaret Laurence. It's short, so I'll read it quickly and "release" it again. Doing that is apparently pretty decent karma.

It's a little bit like the library, but with a greater measure of forced serendipity.

Challenging Conversations

I think that challenging conversations are an important part of life for people who don't want to stop learning or growing. The things we say can be divided into three categories:

1) Communication of facts
2) Genuine expression of love or kindness that is gratuitous to bare physical existence but not directly challenging.
3) Challenging conversation
4) Bullshit

A certain amount of (1) is necessary. This would include things like "we ran out of milk," or "the cat barfed on the rug."

I sometimes have a hard time with (2), and I suspect that others do as well. It could range from "thanks" to "girl you look so pretty to me, not unlike the Spanish city to me." Sometimes (2) feels like (4). I think a good litmus test is, if it feels obligatory, it's bullshit.

By "challenging conversation" I mean questions or arguments that force someone to defend their actions or opinions, or at least to think about them more closely. This kind of talk bugs some people all the time and all people some of the time. First, you have to think. Second, you may be placed in the awkward position of realizng that your deeds or opinions are stupid, and nobody likes that. Also, it can seem confrontational--it often is confrontational, especially when the person doing the challenging is not open to being challenged.

A certain amount of (4) is necessary as well. I include everything commonly referred to as "small talk" in this category. I accept that some amount of meaningless conversation is necessary to build rapport and make friends. What makes my day, though, is the unexpected challenge that brings a converstaion out of the realm of (4) and into (3). For example, imagine this hypothetical conversation where someone returns from working overseas and sees old acquantances for the first time:

A: When did you get back?
B: Last month.
A: How was the experience?
B: Good.
A: (pause)

In general, an awkward pause after a short, uninformative answer like "good" is a good sign that your conversation is deep into (4) territory.

B: It was a good experience. I learned a lot.

A (option 1): Good!

A (option 2): Why was it good? What did you learn?

If A goes with option 1, there is no harm done (unless we count wasted time as harm, which we should.) If A goes with option 2, we have created a challenging conversation. B will have to think before answering, and reflect on why the experience was "good" and what he or she learned. If B was just shovelling out (4) and hoping to continue in that vein, the transition into a challenging conversation will be like a slap in the eyes.

The other day Jehovah's Witnesses came to the door while I was painting. They got right into challenging conversation, by asking me what I thought of all the pain and suffering in the world. I gave my thoughts, basically that it's a necessary corrolary of having freedom, that without it we'd have nothing to do, and that an honest look at the world we live in suggests God may be a little more "Old Testament" than we'd prefer to think. Then I had to defend my ideas, and also defend why my beliefs about the Jesus, prophecies and the Bible did not line up with those of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Honestly, I didn't mind. If I can't even articulate my beliefs about these important issues and defend myself against Jehovah's Witnesses, then maybe I should convert. (I didn't convert.)

The only problem with those types is that they are usually there to challenge, not to learn or be challenged. I read in the paper once that the problem with the evangelical religions is that it changes people from students and observers of the world into "fixers"--that at the age of 5 they already have the answers to all of life's deepest questions. At the age of 5 I had all the answers, too. I wonder what happened in the interrim to make me so much dumber. Anyway, as long as I'm in a good mood I like to talk to missionaries as long as possible, because I figure most people like them less than I do and if they're talking to me they're not talking to anyone else. It's a service to the community.

I usually enjoy it when someone asks me a challenging question, or responds well to my challenging question. I agree that it may be uncomfortable, but I suspect the secret to a meaningful life is to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and to limit times of comfort to a minimum, like the breaks in between boxing rounds. This is, of course, easier said than meant.
Am I really prepared to live that way? By all means, challenge me on it.

25

There is no special song for 25, like there was for 24. I suppose I could write one, but it wouldn't be the same. Song or no song, that's how old I am now.

Not too long ago, I figured that by the age of 25, most people should have a pretty good idea of who they are and where they're going. Did that pan out in my case? I suppose it depends on how good an idea has to be to qualify as pretty good. If you set the bar at 14%, I think I'm almost there. The last month or so has been a real exercise in waiting, listening, and finding a path. When I came back from Mexico, there was no option that didn't attract me on some level. More international work, living in Montreal, travelling in Europe, working on a farm, working for a big engineering firm, these were all options that I turned away from only after much agonizing and a genuine sense of loss.

Earlier this week I decided I had found the job I wanted, and today it was offered to me. It's at a firm called Neegan Burnside. They are small, just 10 people, and they do small projects, and inspect water plants, almost exclusively up north. I would still be based in Winnipeg, but there will be a fair amount of travel. I'll be starting there soon--perhaps in a week or so. This means that the time of dabbling has been abandoned to the oblivion of future plans that never see the light of actuality. At the interview for this job, they were saying that they really need someone to start right away, and my intuition told me it was the way to go. So, finally I have a job, a plan, a direction, a sense of being on my way, where I should be--whatever that means--just in time for 25.

It may be noted that I am batting .500 for resolutions to major life questions today. While I polished off "where will I work?" quite soundly, I didn't fare so well with "where will I live?". See, there was this place that I was looking at, with my buddy Jesse, and damn, it was the kind of apartment that makes you say, "I like this apartment and would like to live in it." Ai, like Tantalus, stooping low to slake his thirst with the waters in which he is forever condemned to wade, I laid my claim to the apartment, only to find that it was already off the market. The view from the balcony was legendary. Kingdoms have fallen for meaner things. But the search will go on, for time will not suffer to wait.

I hope this will be the last post for a while focused on me and figuring out my life. Since I'm 25, and have the questions of who I am and where I am going more or less licked (right...), I can focus on other people and the stories waiting to be told from the lives and environment around me. We'll see, but I do know that there is something liberating about focusing on the journey rather than worrying about gaining ground on any particular destination.

These are my last days at the Langside Ecological House. It's been a good run. More on this house later, I should think.

Dabbling and Settling

That’s right, I’ve decided to open up the blog again. Now each person can stay on top of my deeds and thoughts at his or her own discretion, or use that very same discretion to not read my web page and go get ice cream. Which reminds me, the other day I went to get ice cream at the BDI, which is pretty much the greatest place to get ice cream. The last night before I left for Mexico a year ago, and the first day that I got back to Winnipeg, I went to the BDI. Now I like the BDI and all, but it seems strange that I would have accorded it with such honour more typically reserved for a lover, best friend, or favoured horse. There was an ice cream place in Mexico called Tepoznieves that had very tasty ice cream and a full roster of flavours, including many named after gods and prayers.

I am back in Winnipeg now, in fact I have been for about a month now. Right now I am job hunting and looking for some way to settle down and make an honest living for a while. There is a lot of demand for people who do what I want to do—water & sanitation engineering—so it’s essentially a job hunt in the same way that buying pork chops at the grocery store is a wild boar hunt. However, I love mulling over options and I hate making decisions, so I’m really taking my time and going to a lot of job interviews, looking for something that is pointed in more or less the right direction. In the meantime, I did something smart and made a wise decision.

That decision was to work, here in downtown Winnipeg, at a house that was advertising in the WWOOF book. The house is an experiment in sustainable urban living, in that they are fixing up an abandoned house to be energy efficient, using salvaged or recycled material, and living in it, well, sustainably. “They” is a group of students, although only one is actually using the house as her Master’s thesis, and the others just live there. Now, I live there too. In fact, I work there in exchange for room and board, which is the perfect arrangement for a job hunter. I am working on assorted renovation projects; as an example, today I put rain barrels on the roof of a shed just like people do in Mexico. What the job lacks in the pay scale department, it makes up for in flexibility, and the overall grooviness of living with hippies.

If the term WWOOF in the above paragraph threw you for a loop, it is an acronym for “World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms” or something to that effect. A house downtown isn’t an organic farm, but for some reason it was listed in the book. The mysteries of life.

I got the WWOOF book because I wanted to work on an actual organic farm, and I still plan to, most likely after Folk Fest in early July. Folk Fest is this festival dedicated to folk music that happens every July. I’ve never been, but I won’t let that stop me. The hope is to have figured out where I will work as an engineer by that time, and peg a starting date. Then between now and that start date, there will be a certain, defined time that you might call “the time of dabbling”. During the time of dabbling, I will dabble in one or more very short-term projects before settling down to make an honest living.

In many ways, I am already into the time of dabbling. This job at the eco-friendly house will be about a month. Before that, right after I got back to Canada, I was in Calgary a couple days, then Cranbrook, and then Vancouver, and the other weekend my whole family went to Regina on account of my cousin Lester’s wedding. Future possible plans for the time of dabbling include, working on a farm in Quebec, going to Panama to build a dry toilet and rainwater collection system for my uncle and his family, or going to Italy and having me a butcher’s at the statues and old buildings, and maybe do some WWOOFing there too.

The dilemma is this: I am damn tired of moving around all the time, all breadth of experience and no depth, a spread footing where soil conditions call for an 8” hex pile. However, I would feel like a damn fool for not taking a free trip to Panama, and after I start working none of this will even be an option. Kind of, “now or never”. And by “never” I mean a couple years. What it comes down to is, too much freedom and not enough decisiveness. Because as much as we all love Braveheart, both for the guy who gets an arrow in his ass and for the inspiration of William Wallace and his fight for freedom, too much wide-open freedom can make a guy go nuts.

Maybe what I really mean is that freedom has to be held in check by a set of mostly arbitrary boundary conditions. Some people probably never give much of a thought to their boundary conditions. After graduating from, say, medical school, there would be nothing stopping a guy from being a janitor. It would only be outside his self-imposed boundary conditions, which would most likely have narrowed to cover only some kind of future as a doctor. A lot of these boundary conditions make good sense—for example, limiting oneself to driving straight ahead while crossing a bridge—but a lot of them are purely arbitrary. What’s really stopping you from selling everything and starting a new life in Morocco? When we say freedom, I think what we really mean is being in control and mindful of our boundary conditions.

That’s all to say nothing of the loss of freedom that comes when others choose your boundary conditions for you. And also to say nothing of responsibility, which is probably at the heart of most people’s answer to the Morocco question. For people who live in Morocco, the answer to the Morocco question is pure pragmatics.

So that’s basically where I am, and a gross over-simplification of why I’m having the devil of a time figuring out where to go next.


Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
-Lao-Tzu (from the Tao-te-Ching)

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