Category: Uncategorized

Friday the 13th (2019)

full moon

Okay, folks!  We’re totally screwed! Today is Friday the 13th and tomorrow is the full moon.  And this means– to those who believe the vast, ineffable universe is directed directly at them — that bad stuff is coming down the road.  Personally, I don’t believe the vast, ineffable universe is directed directly at me.  However, I have a healthy respect for folk wisdom– even when it’s wrong.  My assumption is folk wisdom had to come from somewhere.  For example, my mother used to say, “Eat your fish.  It’s brain food!”  I have no idea how she arrived at that conclusion, but come to find out, recent medical science has proven she was absolutely right: eating fish diminishes the risk of dementia.  Obviously, Mom wasn’t privy to research that hadn’t even happened yet; she was just tapping into the folk tales of the time.  And even though I didn’t understand what was going on, this cowboy took it on faith and ate his fish.

Even the most hardcore existentialists among us have to admit our world is full of coincidence, events that are connected for no apparent reason — except they are.  Stop to look in a shop window and some idiot runs a red light through the crosswalk where you would have been standing if you hadn’t stopped to look in a shop window.  Sound familiar?  This stuff happens all the time.  The big question – that nobody’s ever been able to answer — is Why?  So, we make it up.  We assign arbitrary reasons for our actions and events, to satisfy our burning need to make sense of our existence.

Ever since Lucy (Australopithecus) and her girlfriends decided to go for a stroll in Ethiopia 3 million years ago, humans have been trying to get the inside edge on fate, destiny or whatever you want to call it.  We’ve observed the stars, consulted oracles, rolled old bones and cut open chickens.  We’ve danced, prayed, chanted and offered sacrifices to our gods.  We’ve looked for omens and carried lucky charms.  And although it sounds silly in the glaring light of 21st century science, one has to wonder where this stuff came from.  The laws of probability alone say it can’t all be the work of shysters and charlatans.  Some of it must be, (Dare I say it?) based on some long-lost “Eat your fish” facts.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet tells Horatio,

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

And I believe him.  We have not reached the pinnacle of human knowledge.  In fact, we’re not even close.  There’s tons of stuff we haven’t figured out yet.  Five hundred years ago, if you had suggested that diseases were caused by itty-bitty bugs that no one could see, you’d have been burned for a witch.  It’s not outrageous to imagine that, five hundred years from now, people might think we’re barbarians for not understanding the power of the #13 or the effect the moon has on human behaviour.

Here’s a thought.  It’s a scientific fact that the gravity of the moon controls the ebb and flow of the Earth’s oceans, and it’s a scientific fact that the human brain is 73% water.  Think about it!

I’m not saying yea or nay on this whole full moon/Friday the 13th thing, but sometimes it’s a good idea to just take a little bit on faith and metaphorically eat our fish.

3 Dangerous Lies

crossed-fingers

We all lie: it’s built into our psyche.  I’m pretty sure that somewhere back in caveman days, somebody looked around and said, “Does this sabretooth pelt make me look fat?”  And her mate grunted the equivalent of, “No, darling!  It’s perfect.”  Thus our species continued populating the Earth.  Personally, I think lying is an essential part of civilization.  It gets us through social situations, keeps our friends and enemies in line and helps us not look like jerks – most of the time.  Plus, in general, lying is no big deal.  The rewards are large and the consequences quite small.  However, sometimes lies can be dangerous.  These are the lies we tell ourselves.  Here are just three examples.

1 – Remember, back in school when Brittany, Class President, hooked you into helping with the Annual Charity Drive because “It’ll be fun!”  And remember how is wasn’t because, while she and her friends were up at the dance, “collecting” non-perishable food items, you spent the evening down in the school basement, working your ass off, sorting cans of tuna and packages of macaroni.  Remember that?  So how come you’re phoning everybody in the family (on both sides) and saying, “We’re doing Christmas at our house this year.  C’mon over for dinner.  It’ll be fun!”

2 — Normally, this lie comes right after some celebrity TV know-it-all has created a beautiful gingerbread sculpture shaped like the British House of Parliament.  You watched them fashion this marvel — from finding fresh ginger at the local farmer’s market to carving out the wooden molds on a lathe.  They’ve spun sugar to a transparent sheen for the windows and even installed battery-operated lights – all in less than 30 minutes!  So, you say to yourself, “That looks easy” and go out a buy a Gingerbread House kit from the grocery store.  Two weekends and three Gingerbread House kits later, your own mother won’t speak to you, the kids have filed a restraining order and whatever’s left of the gingerbread mess is sitting in the corner – where you threw it.

3 — Once again, this lie started in school.  Your term project was due at the end of the semester, and that was three months away.  Three months!  That’s a lifetime when you’re a teenager.  So, you decided to do a kick-ass/best ever treatise on the Pre-Cambrian Shield – complete with rock samples, charts, hand-drawn illustrations and a working model of a Canadian glacier because, you say to yourself, “I’ve got plenty of time.”  And you keep saying that for the next 2 months and 27 days while your project slowly melts away like that glacier you’re never going to build.  Finally, you end up with 10 pages (double-spaced) that you borrowed from an encyclopedia (no Wikipedia in those days) a Xeroxed copy of an aerial photograph of Ontario and couple of stones from your garden . . . .

Well, folks!  Today is the 4th of December, and Christmas is exactly three weeks away.  Just sayin’!

 

My Bookshelf

bookshelf

Books are complicated things.  They are like perfect lovers, hiding in plain view, keeping their secrets carefully between the covers.  When we speak of them, they hold our gaze with memories, but we never tell the whole story – do we?  We cautiously avoid those delicate evenings, getting to know each other; the stolen afternoons; the nights, together alone in the darkness, page after page until, exhausted, we sleep.  And those tiny lies and excuses we make to shut the world out when we simply can’t resist one more intimate embrace.  Our books are the sly smile we have when we think no one is looking, and they belong to us, just as we belong to them — sworn sacred to be faithful.

Last week my eBuddy CJ Hartwell went to her bookshelf and ….  She tells a better tale than I do, and you can read it here: Hartwell’s Books.  But she showed us her books and told us more than who they are.  It’s a fascinating idea to look through a few reflections to see ourselves because the truth is nothing reveals who we are quite as clearly as revealing the things we love.  So I went to my bookshelf and discovered — it was mostly ex-lovers — long kept and long remembered – from a time so young and strong I may never leave it.

Glory Road – Robert A Heinlein
I found this book in a used bookstore when the world and I still had a use for such things.  This is a love story, thinly disguised as science fiction.  I confess it took me a few years and few readings before I could appreciate that.

A World Lit Only By Fire – William Manchester
The history of medieval Europe without the hard-sleighing of scholarship.  I take this with me every time I go to Europe.  It’s not the Europe I see — but the one I imagine, cleverly peeking out of the stones and the streets.  Lost footsteps, echoing across the centuries.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I grew up a prisoner of the vast North American prairie.  Ivan and I know what it’s like to be lost and alone in the inescapable wilderness, and we also understand that sometimes there is no glorious, indomitable human spirit.  Sometimes there is only survival.

History of England for Public Schools
My father’s textbook, circa 1930.  I still use it to keep those pesky Stuarts kings in line.

Tai Pan – James Clavell
This was a best-seller when I was a kid, so I read it.  Then I read King Rat; then I read Shogun; then I read Noble House, etc., etc.  I keep Tai Pan because it’s a better adventure than King Rat and not so long and involved as Shogun or Noble House.  Plus, back when I had visions of being a scholar, I thought “The Duality of Character in the Novels of James Clavell” would be a marvelous dissertation.

Shibumi – Trevanian
Nicholai Hel is a skilled assassin who has spent half a lifetime isolating himself from the madness of the modern world, but … it intrudes – it always intrudes.  So, the question remains: can we ever truly separate ourselves from the faceless somebodies who think they have a better idea for the world?  Probably not, but we can become such a badass nobody messes with us.

The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
A wise person once said, “To believe in the heroic makes heroes.”  This is the third, fourth or even fifth copy of a book I won as a prize in grade school.  I keep it because I might be too old to believe in Tarzan, Treasure Island or Sanders of the River (Not!!!) but Bilbo Baggins is a good place to hide my hopeless belief in heroics.

Cabbage Town – Hugh Garner
This is a novel so out of print and out of fashion that you have to fight with Google to even find it.  It’s Canadian literature from before CanLit became a closed shop and people like me didn’t have to go to America and Great Britain to get published – but I’m not bitter.  It’s one of the reasons I’ve spent my life doing what I do.

And two extras:

Dutch-English/ English-Dutch Dictionary
I keep this handy for when Google Translate runs amok.

The Woman in the Window – WD Fyfe
Of course, I have my own book on my bookshelf.  D’uh!