Twist…WAIT FOR IT

There is a curious tree I found; a maple, rooted into the gently sloping lawn of the Uxbridge Quaker Meeting House. The tree must be at least 150 years old, judging from its circumference and height. Its leaves, and those of its neighbours, make an impressive canopy, volleying the hot sun's rays up top to maintain shaded cool underneath. Today, there is a light, sensual breeze from the west, rolling along the meeting house lawn, flinging perfume from the hay fields and the fence-line forest that it tripped through on its approach. I sit on the porch steps, thinking and trying to come to terms with myself, when I notice that the great trunk of the tree appears to be twisted. It is as if a great hand reached down and gave the tree a clockwise quarter turn giving its outer bark the unmistakably ropey look of a twisted towel or a whip of licorice.

I have never seen anything like this. I imagine the tree has weathered 150 years of storms, gust fronts, and all of the daily winds that have pushed against it, stressing it at the perfect angle to give it this unique texture. Remarkable tree. Its trunk is mighty and straight; twisted, but not bowed or bent. 

Remarkable.

I wonder, when the tree was a freshly planted sapling, did it know what was coming? Did it set its roots in deep in wise preparation before shooting upward? Was it sifting out subtle waves of indifference, complicity, and arrogance in the air before its very first fall, and therefore nonplussed with each added ring?

I wonder. I'm having a hard enough time grokking existence, especially if it means repeating the unnecessary loops of insanity mankind seems keen for. 

Blah, blah, blah…oh give me strength...

OKAY, I DON'T WANT TO WRITE ANY MORE OF THIS SHIT. SO EVERYONE GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER. THIS MEANS YOU. MAKE AN EFFORT. 

      I CAN'T LIVE LIKE THIS ANY MORE.

I'M GOING TO FINISH MY COFFEE.

 I'M GOING TO GO FOR A BIKE RIDE, 

AND WHEN I GET BACK, I EXPECT YOU ALL TO HAVE SORTED YOURSELVES OUT AND DECIDED TO STOP

 BEING

TOTAL 

DICKS.

DON'T MAKE ME HAVE TO COME OVER THERE.

There. That feels better.

No Big Deal

I am shocked, I think. Stunned at least. I know I can overreact at times, so I'm trying to take what I just witnessed and consider that there may be a story that I am not aware of. Perhaps. Perhaps.

June 28th, just after 1pm, I drive my van, loaded with my bike and bunch of my gear, on my way to house sitting for friends. I drive through a lovely part of the world, north east of Toronto. It is full of lush green fields that appear to be draped over hills and ravines like carpets held in place by trees and farm fences. It's beautiful. At least, I think it is. I turn east off of Brock Road, onto the 9th Concession. I look in my rearview mirror and see a small, dark blue car, possibly 50 meters behind me. I notice the driver put her hand out the window and throw some white things out over the roof so they land on the shoulder of the road. I can't believe it. I pull over, roll down my window and make the universal, What the hell was that? motion with my hands. She sees me, slows and stops. I pull up beside her and we speak through her open passenger-side window. 

She is young, a line of two or three lip piercings on her lower left lip. She is dressed in scrubs. She is defensive and portrays as being justified in her actions. 

"Do you even know what it was?" she says.

She leaves. I go back to look.

Latex gloves. She threw latex gloves out of her car window. She threw them as if she was scattering petals of daisies. 

Daaaling

There is a copse of trees on the west side of this house between the deck and the rail fence that delineates the property line. There are several impressive spruce trees, white pines, and a couple significant maples, all in and around three stories high. It's a nice mini-forest and is home to the predictable cadre of southern Ontario fauna. The trees shade the house late in the afternoon and a small fish pond tucked deeper in beyond the deck. Normally, when the wind is light, you might not notice the trees, at least in particular, but yesterday, when the wind was fierce and relentless, the trees were, for me in my own little mind, quite entertaining.

Up front here, we have the spruce trees stage left, and the white pines more central and stage right. The maples, the only deciduous in the bunch, are in the back. The maples are fully leafed out. I can see their tops between the pyramidical shapes of the pines and the spruces. The pines are the least impressive of the bunch. Their needles are more sparsely arrayed, possibly due to these trees being shaded by a manitoba maple from next door. Fucker. But the spruces! These spruces are something. They stand like grand ladies gathering around the martini table while the rest of the world suffers under prohibition. It is as if their arms, shoulders, necks, are dripping with green, lush ermines and heavy lace. The wind made the party go, and the spruces waved and twisted with passion and elegance, and a touch of being totally  blasted. The pines were, well, perhaps the pines were handling catering. They hardly moved at all. Their sparse regalia, inept at catching the wind, left them the dullards of the fête. The maples in back? The maples were insane. Their leaves were catching all of the wind. They looked to be on acid, or red twizzlers at least. You know those party stories where so-and-so danced on the table with a soup terrine? Maples. Bending and twisting like crazy. 

The party went on for most of the day. The pines served, cleared tables, and sucked their teeth at the behavior of the guests. The spruces swayed and shimmied like kept women of the 1920's on a tear. And the maples never missed a beat, twisting back up when you thought for sure that they were down, or done.  The funny thing is that today, things in the copse are quiet; hangover quiet. Nobody is moving. Nobody is admitting to any questionable behavior, and nobody is looking at the white pines. Fucking white pines, standing there with a, Well of course you have a headache. What did you think was going to happen? You disgust me. All of you.

The maples are quiet and would like it very much if you could ask those birds to pipe down. The white pines have an unmistakable air of prickish righteousness about them. The spruces are as stately as ever. Their rich, lustrous branches hang with the vibrancy of jazz, and an unapologetic joie de vivre... But daaaling, if you wouldn't mind getting me a glass of seltzer, I would be much obliged.

Loops

The more I learn about what we are made of (humans), the more ridiculous being human seems to be. I shouldn't limit this to humans. The very essence of matter; this computer, airplanes, that shirt you are wearing, is all the same: Proton's with two up quarks and one down quark. Oh there's more, but for the sake of this argument, quarks will do. 

Quarks. Your shirt. 

I'm sure that it's a nice shirt. The curious detail is that the quarks in your shirt are the same as the quarks in the plastic jug that a woman uses to haul water in any drought-stricken region of Africa, and the same as the quarks in the diamond-encrusted second-hand of the fancy watch that any of the one-percent wears. Your shirt, and you, are composed of the same quarks as the staff of Doctors without Borders, and Beyonce, and as hard as this may be to believe, Donald Trump. 

So what?

Well, this is what: I don't think we are getting it. I think this kind of revelation is inconvenient for many because it means that their oppression is pointless. We all have the same quarks in our beating hearts. Yet, when I consider the daily news and the threads of history, I see the same insanity repeating itself: war, poverty, and struggle. Life shouldn't be this hard. How is it that in 2016 there are still so many without access to excellent education? How is it that anyone is without food? How is it that we have let the population get so out of control when all we have is this one planet? 

This is nuts. This is unsustainable and unnecessary. All of this suffering is unnecessary and that's the part that makes me angry. 

Pointless.

I would like to believe that we could change our paradigm to something more compassionate and sustainable. I would love to believe this, but change of this sort would mean a zeitgeist eagerness toward a completely new framework of what it means to be human on this planet. This would mean, taking our quarks and unsticking from these tiresome, convenient loops that no longer serve us. Frankly, I'm not sure if humans are up to the task though I would love to be proved wrong.

Shenanigans

I just finished reading Lisa Randall's, Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs. It blew my mind. I've always had a thing for the sky. When I look up at the moon, it's as if I'm seeing a wink from some offstage director telling me it's okay. It resets me. Perhaps it's the moon's clear reminder that I'm living on a planet that helps, and the central thread through this, the need for a reset is that the shenanigans that we're navigating here on earth are all man made.

Randall, in her book, gives us a thorough illustration of the universe with the intent to figure out the origin of the meteoroid (meteor is the streak of light) that caused the dinosaur extinction.  The idea is to take the data of the impact that happened (Chicxulub, Mexico) 66 million years ago, plus the previous four major impacts, and try to develop some kind of periodicity. Can we predict when the next one is coming? All this was fine, but I must admit, while reading the book I kept shaking my head, marveling at how vast the universe is. 

Wait. That's not right. We're not talking about a mall parking lot. How fucking vast, is better.

Consider the Oort cloud. Instead of water droplets, the Oort cloud is full of small, soon-to-be planets (planetesimals), in a bazillion years or so, and relatively established minor planets. The inner border of this cloud is anywhere from 1,000 to 50,000 AU from the sun, and the outer border is around 270,000 AU further. 

AU stands for astronomical unit which is basically the distance between the earth and the sun. The measurement is, 149, 597, 870.7 kilometers. Off you go and do the math! 

                            

You will never find where you parked your car.

Let's now consider power: Chunks of rock hurtling to earth at speeds around 13k/s, and exploding with the power of two megatons of TNT, or 100 kilotons. Or 200 kilotons. Some hit. Some explode above the surface. All of them cause some serious redecorating.  How about the solar wind? This is no refreshing breeze. This is magnetism streaming off of the sun at 400 k/s. This is too much. You can't even grok this because right now, you're picturing Wiley Coyote struggling to nail the Roadrunner with a couple sticks of dynamite and a push box. The scale is just too big. But it's real. So try.

Now, if your head has not already exploded, consider dark matter. If you can. Because we don't know what it is. Randall admits that there is a lot of it but we can't see it. We can't seem to peg it with our current, anthropic methods. There are theories, but that's all. So think outside the box: It could be God. It could be thought. It could be Nutella. I like the fact that right now, dark matter is nothing but possibility. It's humbling. When I think about it, most scientists are humble. The reason that they're scientists is because they are fascinated by it all. It's the rest of us that need to be reminded of the pure bigiosity of the universe. Perhaps if we were able to take it seriously, we would not be in this climate change predicament. We would get that we are a part of it, connected.

Perhaps we would not be living under this obsolete, ridiculous economic framework that depends on growth instead of sustainability:

Buying instead of being.

Because there is no point to this. We are hamstrung by ideologies and remarkable beliefs that keep us fearful, exhausted, and consuming as much as we can when in reality, all we have is each other. This is a fantastic planet to live on. We should stop sucking so badly at taking care of it. Make no mistake, we are sucking.

Shenanigans. 

The Arts

The Dean of Music at the University of Toronto gave a speech to welcome my younger son's cohort in 2012. He stood on the stage, surrounded by eager, passionate music students and began by mentioning (not exact words) the zeitgeist norm that anyone who chose a career in music these days had to be a couple notes short of a full octave. The kids laughed. The parents laughed. And as we parents were laughing, we looked down at our shoes and wondered if we were the worst parents ever and what would it take to get the boy all cozy in some business program? But the Dean kept speaking and we looked up from our shoes. We looked up because he explained that the problems of the world were not going to be solved by political posturing, and certainly not by corporate largess, but by the way we connect with each other on a soul level. And how do we do that? Through the arts. It would be the arts that would bring us all together on this planet. To study music was not foolish at all. It was actually essential. Everyone in that room breathed a sigh of relief. 

It was a good speech. I'm not sure if, when he wrote it, he knew just how right he was. I'm not sure if he was imagining how far things would slide on the planet. But the core of his message, whatever the scenario, was irrefutable: Humans are emotional beings. We are at our best when we are tapped in to that deeper part of ourselves that comes from the delight of a painting that catches our eye, a poem that puts words to our heartbreak, or a character in a play that seems to be speaking directly to us and making us laugh. It is our experiences with the arts(I consider nature as poetry) that help us define who we are. They draw us out, lay our emotions before us and weave them delicately into the grander tapestry of humanity. They give us the fire to narrow in on who we are on an authentic level. And when we are living authentic lives, we are passionate, vibrant, and fearless. 

I think there is no better time to ramp up the arts than right now. I agree with the Dean. I think it's essential. 

Flourish

Odd time to be human, although I guess the gig has been a bit bizarre right from the beginning. We work from a complex motherboard powered by our innate desire to grow, but I can't understand the continued oppression and judgement we tolerate. I can't understand, in a world where there IS enough food for all, and where we DO have the capacity to educate everyone, why we allow the shameful disparity that is our world right now. I believe that every problem comes down to communication: Humans, right now, are lousy communicators on an authentic level. This isn't always our fault in the beginning but later on, lack of resolve to do better is completely on us as individuals. 

This human gig goes something like this: We are born, we flourish, and then nurture, which entails cultivating/defending our ideals/morality frameworks. 'Seems simple enough but if the birth scenario(early years)misses its mark, trouble is ahead. Ideally, we are born to attentive parents who tease out our own unique personality through healthy mirroring and attachment. Without this, we are left struggling to flourish: failing to navigate the ego and the self. We can't know who we are without this and unless we are somehow driven to work at it, our efforts to have any perceptions/ideals worth cultivating will be half-hearted, unsure. Individuation, when we emerge in time(around 40) as whole and significant, will be rough. The best parts of our lives will be woven into the TV schedule, sale flyers, and the desire to have stuff.  That's not a exactly a worthy life tapestry. We are capable of more: agency and influence toward positive change.

Imagine being unleashed into the world without knowing who you are. How do you find out? How do you handle the fear and self doubt that fill the void within you? Well, you do a shitload of work. If you have kids, this is essential…unless you are a total emotionally inaccessible dick and you want the loop of your childhood to repeat in that of your own children. It's about words, and I've come up with four simple responsive statements that I think are essential to embrace from an early age:

1) "I'm not clear. Could you clarify…?"

2) "I agree because…"

3) "I disagree because…"

4) "I love you."

It takes guts to admit that you don't understand something, but if you're not drowning in self-doubt and can bring yourself to request it, clarification helps to reaffirm your strength and ability to contribute. To agree and to disagree are essential components of discourse but validating each with explanations moves the conversation ahead. Again, this is difficult without confidence.  And for some reason, I love you is challenging for people to say. Its scarcity is a weapon in some relationships, but if it's used with gravitas, allowing and honoring its inherent vulnerability, then we can connect our deeper selves. There is nothing more powerful.

Okay, now pan back and let's look at the whole world. Imagine our beautiful planet, populated with humans, each one solid in who they are. Each one authentic. Is that not a cool idea?  Here is where some of you will consider this tremendously simplistic…and it is. But I think it's essential. The concept of flourishing through communication is the only weapon against this needless and arbitrary oppression. It has to come from within. People solid in their right to live vibrant and productive lives do not tolerate tribal lunacy, corporate shenanigans, or political insanity, nor do they foist it on others. AND, they don't sit around on the sidelines heckling and pointing out failings. They get to work. They get this. We can all get this. This is the time when we MUST get this.

Get to know who you are. Really. The earth can not stand any more complicity. We need everyone plugged in and together as this story unfolds. It could be really cool. Or not. I mean it.