ART

a painting is more than just a vase of flowers. it is art that may or may not contain a vase of flowers.

a novel is more than just a story. it is art that may or may not contain a story.

a painting is made of marks that make shapes and colors. they must be beautiful marks even in the making of an ugly painting.

a novel is made of words that make ideas into sentences. they must be beautiful sentences even in the making of an ugly novel.

IED (NOT YOUR USUAL IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE DEVICE)

My sister judy and I shared a quality more or less identically, even though she was a shy quiet ‘good girl’ and I was an outspoken somewhat arrogant loner. (we were both ‘nice’ in our different ways.)  we both suffered increasingly into adolescence with Intermittent Explosive Disorder. This in spite of the fact that she was shy and quiet and obedient in church, in school, in the family, and as far as I know among her friends, and I was challenging and rebellious everywhere.

And when both of us became teenage parents in emotionally difficult circumstances this disorder was exacerbated and became very hard on our spouses and especially our children.

Neither my dad, who was mr. steady, nor my mom, who was shy and somewhat emotional and, I think, chronically slightly depressed, ever showed any signs of this disorder — neither did my shy older brother or my rather vivacious and talkative younger sister. Why, with all the genes we shared from a common gene pool, this should have so equally afflicted my sister and me and no others I have thought hard and long to understand. But still I do not. 

I do think that in some ways we haven’t developed in molecular genetics well enough, that the answer to this behavior still lies there, rather than in birth order or any other situational explanation.

SINK OR SWIM

there is a little bit of sink or swim in every aspect of the human world. at the risk of veering toward the fran liebowitz model, as harsh as it may seem, in the end it’s hard to be honest about the prospects of real people without admitting that some of them, through no fault of their own, are going to fail. they are going to fail in the usual (and unusual) ways that people do, in mundane (and spectacular) ways, and no amount of well-intentioned intervention is going to save them.

whether this profound result is unfair is beside the point. it is actual. darwin, in his infinite if accidental wisdom, explained more and broader aspects of the whole cosmic enterprise than he knew. it turns out that wherever you look, from higgs bosons to slugs to black holes, the lesson is endlessly there.

 IN PRAISE OF SUGAR

when i read the ‘information’ posted on various platforms online - even when i look at books about nutrition in a bookstore - i am struck by the lack of basic knowledge the average author has about the operation of the human body - an animal that shares the basic chemistry of life with all animals, from as small as a fruit fly to as large as a blue whale. all earth animals burn the same fuel to animate their lives and all the systems in their bodies. that fuel is glucose - grape sugar. there are supplemental needs, like protein for cell repair and production, fat for enzyme production (including cholesterol) and many trace minerals, but the basic moving and thinking and regulation of all the autonomic functions of the body, whether you are a fruit fly or a human, is fueled by sugar. so is your ability to think and read and understand these words.

i hear voices saying ‘yes, of course, but what about all the sugar added to the human diet?’ well, if the added sugar adds too many calories to an animal’s intake they will gain weight. yes! weight gain is just caused by a caloric intake from all sources greater than the expenditure to maintain daily activity. (think of a bear gorging on sugary fruit in the autumn.) but increasing sugar intake does not make a person sick by itself. sugar is not toxic to the human body (or any other body). we know this because it’s easy to get mice in controlled experiments to eat more sugar, or even only sugar. and their organs do not immediately fail, nor do they get sick.

this does not mean you should try living on pop, ice cream and candy. but people on their own will not crave that kind of diet and it is not seen outside controlled experiments. humans, like all animals, naturally know what to eat and managed to live healthy lives for millennia before the first ‘expert’ arrived to ‘save’ them. trying to make the general public forget this history is one of the prime demands of the so-called health movement. dogs and bears and fish and bugs are lucky they don’t have such a nuanced language and can’t read. and to my knowledge there are no dog or fish experts around to tell them what to do anyway.

so what should be our takeaway from all this modern industry, this wellness industry? it is corrupt and entirely self- serving and not to be trusted. ignore it all - you will only be ignoring someone else’s ignorance, not your own.

SIDES

There is something i learned early on — in my twenties — from having discovered Albert Camus and The Plague, that has remained more or less intact after a long life lived — that it is usually hard to understand what is going on in the world around you when strife is upon the land, but at the very least one should try not to be on the side of the executioners.

Suppose you walk into a mall with your daughter by your side and for no immediately apparent reason someone shoots her and she dies in your arms — what do you do? What is the most appropriate response? 

I don’t think there are many, given even a moment to consider, who would include taking an automatic weapon and shooting everyone in the mall.

WHAT CANADIAN VOICES I ENJOY HAVE IN COMMON

i hear many voices commenting on current events in my usual radio wandering and there are a few that i really always appreciate:

the already mentioned michael byers from ubc; louise arbour, a jurist who has held many important positions in canadian and international law including justice of the supreme court and chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in the hague; and bob ray, an experienced political veteran who has been premier of ontario and subsequently held many offices representing canada at the federal level. 

what these observers probably most have in common is a belief that justice is the most important element of governance at every level and so, at this time in our political evolution, that interest is best served by principles operating most effectively in states and world organizations that ascribe to a policy of social democracy with a distributive economy. the largest body with an overall framework that supports that system is the present european union, a body not often credited with the great success it should be in ultimately overcoming the less noble ambitions of many of its members.

THREE SUSPICIOUS IDEAS

There are three ideas being promoted in discussions about combating global warming that I continue to be suspicious of — green hydrogen production, carbon capture (with the exception of trees and other natural solutions) and nuclear power. I have a hard time imagining anyone really wants to pursue these ideas who isn’t propelled by some ulterior motive (ultimately our favorite motive, the profit motive.) If you are not engaged in the present energy economy in more than just a consumer role the arguments made in favor of these ideas seem thin and wishful to the point of dishonesty. 

Next time you hear or read one of these voices do a quick background check to find out who they are and who they speak for. They certainly don’t speak for me and I don’t think they speak for the honest reality of the global situation we all face together.

A SIMPLE FACT OF ARRESTING CLARITY

lately i’ve been reading about the history of the middle east over the 65000 years since humans first came out of africa into the fertile crescent and it has basically been 65000 years of tribal thinking and warfare. closer to our time i have also read the history of the league of nations between the world wars and the active period of the UN during reconstruction, including the marshall plan, after the second world war, up to the present. with notable exceptions (the marshall plan for instance seems to have been enlightened even if almost unintentionally) it is sad how selfish the history of humans has been. in the current bloodbath, as always mostly of civilians, no matter how insistent and even rational some of the principals sound i can’t help being reminded of a simple fact of arresting clarity delivered to most of us by our parents by the time we were six years old - that ‘two wrongs do not make a right’ .

TIME

There is P-time and U-time. P-time is personal time. It started when you were conceived and it ends when you die. U-time is universal time. It started in this universe at the moment of the big bang and it will stop when all activity stops. I don’t think, at least superficially, this is a particularly hard concept to grasp but it does play hard with just about every religion I’ve ever heard about. 

Curious, that.

TIME IS RUNNING

if you are looking to find the least evolved most tribal people in the world, especially among our so-called leaders (as we are once again seeing at the moment) there is a woefully plentiful number of candidates. if, on the other hand, you are looking to find the calm intelligent rational pragmatists among us there is an unfortunate dearth of them in our time and, I suspect, really, any time in the past.

whether or not we will survive much longer depends on people being willing to identify with no group smaller than all mankind, including the biosphere, with all its varied life that sustains us.

I will leave the odds of that happening to your own imagination. but time is running out.

😶

i’ve always frowned on shameless self-promotion - i think i was intended for some slightly different planet - so you are probably not reading this, as you are probably not reading anything i’ve written over the course of these many years. 

TIME HAS NOT BEEN WAITING AROUND

when a cosmos commences it is a bound system whose rules of behaviour are being created simultaneously. there is no prior plan, no blueprint. the plan develops as the cosmos develops, influenced by local stimuli, so every cosmos could be different. and just as matter and energy are basic elements of our cosmos time is also a fundamental element. 

when all gradients in our universe have been resolved there will be no more energy remaining to cause further movement and when all activity ceases time also ceases. whether this will be because space has shrunk to nothing or thinned to zero density or in any other perhaps inconceivable way, time will cease. 

time has not been waiting around for something to happen. there is no time until something happens. time is created only and simultaneously as activity is created and it ceases when activity ceases. 

the cosmos is essentially a form of biology. 

INSIGHT

this life-long enquiry that has excited me and sustained me has led to some useful conclusions that can be credited to a basic combination of influences — darwinian evolution followed by the development of precise observations in molecular genetics has unlocked the fundamental principles of not just the origin of life and how life self-assembles but how everything in the universe, including the universe(s) itself, self-assembles. 

though we have invented zero, a profound limitation in human conceptual thought makes it difficult for us to imagine nothing. avoiding and ignoring this limitation has been the single most important obstruction in the advancement of our understanding of everything and realizing this has opened what could become a flood of reliable and useful information about concepts like space/time and how to live successfully on a finite little orb in the midst of an incalculably large and energetic event.

A LIFE

there is a certain constancy to my life, from this morning reading in my cabin, a newly minted old man, stretching back to some of my earliest and most persistent memories as a very young child — I have always wanted to know what is real, what is not just my own musings or the disorganized musings of others, but what is actually out there, hiding in other crania and other galaxies. and somehow, through selfishness and good luck, I have managed to be able to do that.

and that has been so satisfying — perhaps even a good definition of happiness — being able to pursue one's own peculiar obsession. it does surprise me that in the end, given the opportunity, we all seem to be so very much our original selves.

THE GREAT HALL OF ADULTHOOD

sometime around when I was eighteen, already a father at seventeen with a mother who was sixteen, I had a kind of vision of the world that lay waiting for me just ahead that I can still see to this day. there was a long corridor stretching into the fading distance that contained a row of doors, all the doors leading off it on the same, the left, side. on each door there was lettered a title. I knew I was looking for one that could be for me, one that I could open to enter into an interesting future. what I didn't want to do was follow my dad, a decent guy by any metric, through the door labeled 'business'. I couldn't imagine caring about the things he cared about — which dish soap was selling the best, or toothpaste or laundry detergent, it all seemed so silly — but I thought a door labeled literature, or art, or music or theater or film, or even science, might be more like it.

the first one I came to said Art. I opened it and cautiously stepped into the short hallway it opened onto. at the other end was an open passage. I walked the few steps forward until I could see into the space beyond. the hallway opened onto a great vaulted room high and long, and in there on the floor, giant letters extending far along to my right spelled out B-U-S-I-N-E-S-S. so. I thought some moments before turning around and walking back the way I had come, carefully shutting the door labelled Art behind me as I reentered the original corridor.

in succession I opened the doors on the left ahead of me — Literature, Music, Theater, Film, Science. They all opened onto the Great Hall of Business.

I was at a loss. Then I had some serious thinking to do. 

in a way, I am still doing it.

SELF-IMPROVEMENT

improving extant versions of democracy and capitalism is a little like brain surgery — you have to make what could amount to massive changes while keeping the host alive during the process. this seems to me easier, safer and perhaps the only way to make changes in the present world order. the idea that we can throw out major chunks of the brain and drop in new ones while somehow keeping the host alive seems fraught with much greater danger and much less (diminishing to zero, really)   opportunity for success. in my time I have seen what war and depression and revolution does. no matter what gains are promised and even eventually made toward a more rational distributive order, if indeed there are any, the costs have proved enormous. any amount of discussion, however prolonged, in the final analysis will prove to have been safer and cheaper by any measure, including the cost in both lives and treasure. ditto our host planet.

STUMBLING ON SOMETHING OF A SURPRISE

after finishing The Bell Jar on my kindle, which was beautifully constructed of beautiful language, if maddening, the next book in the library turned out to be one of my own, Letters of Acceptance, and so I started in to reading it. I quickly discovered that it too was beautifully constructed of beautiful language, as unique in its way, and so I read on.

I am surprised at the number of languages I have constructed for the number of works I have written. as I say that my mind, if not my face, is smiling.

TIME WITH OTHERS

for as long as I can remember I've always had to pump up for humans. they are too stimulating. I want to engage but I think I appear as too intense, or even manic. it is just my way of hyper-vigilance and is natural to me. it causes a sudden rise in blood pressure and glucose and oxygen consumption, a kind of super-awareness that is expensive to maintain. 

I am probably somewhat along the spectrum for autism and so I have always been someone who needs to spend a great deal of time alone, where I have room to inhabit my own thoughts and grow in understanding this life - my life - and time to relax my body and mind fully. 

but I still cherish time with others.

THE JOB OF THE HUMAN

the job of any young human is to try to figure out who you inherently are and then find a way to make that useful, if possible.

you have been dealt a hand. you cannot turn it in to the dealer for a different hand and the devil is that one of the cards you have been dealt is the ability to play a hand, any hand, well or badly.

good luck, amigo.

MAN'S LEAVINGS

the massive ruins of man on earth are the embarrassing remains of a primitive and presumptuous ego. I would rather look for the farms and fields of necessity. they are not only useful, they are naturally more beautiful .