I know that I'll feel more like me again, in Weyburn, with its sunny days and semiarid climate. I was thinking this morning that at the moment I feel like one of these giant over watered coastal coniferous trees, top-heavy and ponderous. They grow huge, but have hardly any root system. They do not need roots, because roots are something a tree sends down to find water. When water is plentiful, successful trees just don't bother. However, when a big wind blows they fall right over.
By contrast, prairie trees are sort of scritchy and shrubby and short. The wind blows all the time, so the wild ones mostly just manage to cling to the least windy sides of coulees and ravines, and often appear tilted. But they have huge and extensive root systems. They are stubbornly alive - they clutch the earth with everything they have, hold the soil together, seek out every last drop of water no matter how deep they have to dig, and are very very hard to blow over, or even pull out with heavy equipment. I'm by nature and up-bringing much more a prairie tree than I am a coastal tree.
It will certainly be novel stimuli to re-learn to view a rain as a welcome relief from sun, instead of how it is now, the complete opposite.
Everything is moving fast at the Weyburn end - my mother located a condo for sale in her building, which will be perfect. Knowing her, I doubt she'll let anyone else have even a fighting chance at it.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Oozing toward the move
The process of decluttering seems endless, but progress has definitely been made. I now have three empty and mostly cleaned up rooms, awaiting painting. I have thrown out massive volumes of accumulated life detritus. The Canadian Diabetes Association's Clothesline pickup service must be liking me these days. We have dated regularly for more than a month. They have carted off more than a dozen, perhaps as many as twenty huge trash bags filled with what were once treasures and may well be for someone else, "clothing and small household items."
In the end, no one wanted to buy my edited furniture within the time frame I had for selling it, so I had it hauled away. It worked out better this way - I had one potential "buyer" come by to see an antique drop leaf desk I'd been using as a phone center, but it turned out she was not interested in "buying" at all - she already had a condo full of furniture and enjoyed going to strangers' homes just to stare at their belongings. This creeped me (an introvert) out so much that I decided to circle my wagons and simply jettison.
And what a difference a few days can make.
Up until Monday, I was still thinking I'd be moving to Barrie, Ontario.
I phoned my mother, age 85 and holding, on her birthday on Tuesday. A church-going Catholic, she has always considered herself to have been especially lucky to have been born on St. Patrick's Day (no matter that she's not Irish, but is a mainly Polish-French mixture). I've mentioned her before, here. About her being Catholic, she might be the only Catholic woman on the planet who has exhibited apparent life-long immunity to what is supposedly universal catholic guilt.
Anyway, I made one of my obligatory phone calls to her on her birthday and found myself asking her what she thought of the idea of me moving to the city she's living in; Weyburn, Saskatchewan.
Clearly the idea has been rolling around in my undermind for a long time. So it finally emerged.
There is background to this: a low hum of discontent all my life with our relationship, a "breakup" with her about 20 years ago, no resolution but a definite truce.. probably all falling under ordinary Mother/Daughter life-long tension. Anyway, I consider myself a grown-up now, and she doesn't seem nearly as big or scary or mean or unfair as she used to when I was a child stuck on a farm with her as my only companion.
My needs are simple. I need time to write, a sunny window, mornings that are clear instead of cloudy, a place where I can live clutter-free in every sense, cheaply, without necessarily having to go out to work just to support a business in order to have it support me back. I need an external environment that feels safe, unlike Vancouver these days with it's gangland shootings at the current rate of about one per day.
Weyburn is this funny little city in the southern part of Saskatchewan where you can see nothing for miles and miles except ... miles and miles. Oh, and a huge upside down bowl of transparent blue sky filled with sunshine most of the year. I must not forget to mention the extraordinary skyscape available to one's photon-starved eyeballs in southern Sask.
It has been the crucible for a few prominent Canadians - Tommy Douglas, former premier of the province and architect of Canada's health care system, and W.O. Mitchell, beloved and famous Canadian humorist and author. I met both of them personally at various times. Tommy Douglas visited our home when I was a child. My father, who rarely got excited about anything, loved this man and his vision, and would have taken a bullet for him. I met W.O. Mitchell later in life, at a dinner party in the home of his nephew. I remember that no one else in the room (about 10 people altogether, maybe) could get a word in edgewise, but that no one seemed to mind. He went on at considerable length about the enormous size of earthworms in Calgary.
Weyburn is also somewhat famous for being the location of a huge mental hospital. In the 1950's it was a scary place where someone we knew worked, I think as an orderly; for some reason our family was friendly with this man, Ab Ruler, and his family. One time he took us all up a shady treed laneway to the "mental hospital" and showed us around a little. We even watched a movie there, The Ten Commandments. The hospital was able to house 900 patients, a capacity equal to a tenth of the entire population of the city, a size that seems very disproportionate to the actual incidence of mental illness in the general population, then and now. It must have represented a collection center for all mental illness patients in Western Canada east of the mountains, and a source of income for many people during the desperate dust-bowl 1930's. LSD experiments were conducted there, in the 50's, 60's... It seems the place was closed as late as 1971.
Anyway, back to the phone call.
I found these words tumbling out of my mouth: "What do you think of the idea of me moving to Weyburn, Mom?" followed quickly thereafter by "I don't want to live with you."
She was taken aback a bit, but very quickly found her footing and sounded delighted with the idea. She started planning immediately. There were condos for sale up the street. She knew a real estate agent I could contact. She knew a spa in town, maybe they'd like to hire me if I wanted to work. The new current under the surface, a swift clear current of feeling, one I can ride until it's over, is that I'm the Oldest Daughter, and can help her remain independent, something she cares desperately about, until it's time for her to make an exit. This current feels congruent with the gravitational pull I have anyway of moving further east, back out from under the cloud, fog, rain and grey dreariness of the Wet Coast.
So, it looks like some day soon I'll be living in a small city, pop. 10,000 and holding, with average age that I think must be older than middle-aged, a speed limit of 40 km. Back to the roots. Arriving "home," just a bit burnt out, with nothing but myself, a laptop, a couple of flash drives, a few special books, in a position (I hope) to be able to take a year off, soak up sun and do what I need to do next.
In the end, no one wanted to buy my edited furniture within the time frame I had for selling it, so I had it hauled away. It worked out better this way - I had one potential "buyer" come by to see an antique drop leaf desk I'd been using as a phone center, but it turned out she was not interested in "buying" at all - she already had a condo full of furniture and enjoyed going to strangers' homes just to stare at their belongings. This creeped me (an introvert) out so much that I decided to circle my wagons and simply jettison.
And what a difference a few days can make.
Up until Monday, I was still thinking I'd be moving to Barrie, Ontario.
I phoned my mother, age 85 and holding, on her birthday on Tuesday. A church-going Catholic, she has always considered herself to have been especially lucky to have been born on St. Patrick's Day (no matter that she's not Irish, but is a mainly Polish-French mixture). I've mentioned her before, here. About her being Catholic, she might be the only Catholic woman on the planet who has exhibited apparent life-long immunity to what is supposedly universal catholic guilt.
Anyway, I made one of my obligatory phone calls to her on her birthday and found myself asking her what she thought of the idea of me moving to the city she's living in; Weyburn, Saskatchewan.
Clearly the idea has been rolling around in my undermind for a long time. So it finally emerged.
There is background to this: a low hum of discontent all my life with our relationship, a "breakup" with her about 20 years ago, no resolution but a definite truce.. probably all falling under ordinary Mother/Daughter life-long tension. Anyway, I consider myself a grown-up now, and she doesn't seem nearly as big or scary or mean or unfair as she used to when I was a child stuck on a farm with her as my only companion.
My needs are simple. I need time to write, a sunny window, mornings that are clear instead of cloudy, a place where I can live clutter-free in every sense, cheaply, without necessarily having to go out to work just to support a business in order to have it support me back. I need an external environment that feels safe, unlike Vancouver these days with it's gangland shootings at the current rate of about one per day.
Weyburn is this funny little city in the southern part of Saskatchewan where you can see nothing for miles and miles except ... miles and miles. Oh, and a huge upside down bowl of transparent blue sky filled with sunshine most of the year. I must not forget to mention the extraordinary skyscape available to one's photon-starved eyeballs in southern Sask.
It has been the crucible for a few prominent Canadians - Tommy Douglas, former premier of the province and architect of Canada's health care system, and W.O. Mitchell, beloved and famous Canadian humorist and author. I met both of them personally at various times. Tommy Douglas visited our home when I was a child. My father, who rarely got excited about anything, loved this man and his vision, and would have taken a bullet for him. I met W.O. Mitchell later in life, at a dinner party in the home of his nephew. I remember that no one else in the room (about 10 people altogether, maybe) could get a word in edgewise, but that no one seemed to mind. He went on at considerable length about the enormous size of earthworms in Calgary.
Weyburn is also somewhat famous for being the location of a huge mental hospital. In the 1950's it was a scary place where someone we knew worked, I think as an orderly; for some reason our family was friendly with this man, Ab Ruler, and his family. One time he took us all up a shady treed laneway to the "mental hospital" and showed us around a little. We even watched a movie there, The Ten Commandments. The hospital was able to house 900 patients, a capacity equal to a tenth of the entire population of the city, a size that seems very disproportionate to the actual incidence of mental illness in the general population, then and now. It must have represented a collection center for all mental illness patients in Western Canada east of the mountains, and a source of income for many people during the desperate dust-bowl 1930's. LSD experiments were conducted there, in the 50's, 60's... It seems the place was closed as late as 1971.
Anyway, back to the phone call.
I found these words tumbling out of my mouth: "What do you think of the idea of me moving to Weyburn, Mom?" followed quickly thereafter by "I don't want to live with you."
She was taken aback a bit, but very quickly found her footing and sounded delighted with the idea. She started planning immediately. There were condos for sale up the street. She knew a real estate agent I could contact. She knew a spa in town, maybe they'd like to hire me if I wanted to work. The new current under the surface, a swift clear current of feeling, one I can ride until it's over, is that I'm the Oldest Daughter, and can help her remain independent, something she cares desperately about, until it's time for her to make an exit. This current feels congruent with the gravitational pull I have anyway of moving further east, back out from under the cloud, fog, rain and grey dreariness of the Wet Coast.
So, it looks like some day soon I'll be living in a small city, pop. 10,000 and holding, with average age that I think must be older than middle-aged, a speed limit of 40 km. Back to the roots. Arriving "home," just a bit burnt out, with nothing but myself, a laptop, a couple of flash drives, a few special books, in a position (I hope) to be able to take a year off, soak up sun and do what I need to do next.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Progress toward "impeccablization"
Yesterday I managed to get a lot done: I figured out how to post to Craig's list and supplied some pictures to it of furniture I have to clear out in order to attractively "stage" my "home" for a quick and favourable sale. I started cleaning off a large mirrored door I once painted to match the wall, in order to make the hallway not look like such a long tunnel. I still like the shortened look more, but realize the home buyer might not enjoy the prospect of de-painting the mirror some day. Anything to leave no trace of me behind...
I "swabbed the deck" - meaning, I physically hauled several large flower and plant pots and balcony furniture down to the dumpster (from where people eventually made them their own), and washed the railing and floor. It's an extensive balcony, wrapping all the way around a corner.
I think it's been at least 6 years since I've touched that balcony. I used to like to keep a garden on it, sit out amidst the flowers on a plastic chair beside a plastic table, sipping a coffee in the morning and watching bees do their thing, carve out and maintain a peaceful urban oasis. One day I found a package of cigarettes out there. It appeared that someone who had no business on my balcony had climbed up to hang out, enjoy my second-floor garden, or maybe try to break in, had become interrupted, and left abruptly without actually smoking. The cigarettes were a mystery, in that neither I nor the roommate I had at the time smoked. Whoever it was (and it could not have been anyone who belonged on my balcony, in my urban oasis), the experience managed to put me off gardening entirely. From that point on the garden was never restored. I never enjoyed hanging out on the balcony anymore, knowing that it was too exposed, too vulnerable to feel like my private refuge.
Mold grows amazingly well in this climate, and there was no shortage of it, clinging impossibly to even shiny painted surfaces. It was a bit of a dirty mess, but nothing that several pails of warm water with bleach, a scrub brush, and some springtime energy couldn't handle. Now it's spotless and I feel victorious over that part of my tiny world.
Being very active all day like this is certainly easier than it would have been a year ago, when I weighed 25 pounds more.
I "swabbed the deck" - meaning, I physically hauled several large flower and plant pots and balcony furniture down to the dumpster (from where people eventually made them their own), and washed the railing and floor. It's an extensive balcony, wrapping all the way around a corner.
I think it's been at least 6 years since I've touched that balcony. I used to like to keep a garden on it, sit out amidst the flowers on a plastic chair beside a plastic table, sipping a coffee in the morning and watching bees do their thing, carve out and maintain a peaceful urban oasis. One day I found a package of cigarettes out there. It appeared that someone who had no business on my balcony had climbed up to hang out, enjoy my second-floor garden, or maybe try to break in, had become interrupted, and left abruptly without actually smoking. The cigarettes were a mystery, in that neither I nor the roommate I had at the time smoked. Whoever it was (and it could not have been anyone who belonged on my balcony, in my urban oasis), the experience managed to put me off gardening entirely. From that point on the garden was never restored. I never enjoyed hanging out on the balcony anymore, knowing that it was too exposed, too vulnerable to feel like my private refuge.
Mold grows amazingly well in this climate, and there was no shortage of it, clinging impossibly to even shiny painted surfaces. It was a bit of a dirty mess, but nothing that several pails of warm water with bleach, a scrub brush, and some springtime energy couldn't handle. Now it's spotless and I feel victorious over that part of my tiny world.
Being very active all day like this is certainly easier than it would have been a year ago, when I weighed 25 pounds more.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Adrienne and my cranky leg
I think I lucked out at Sherwood Physiotherapy... a few weeks ago someone dropped by and left off a resumé. Once in awhile people leave resumés, usually for a reception job, but this one was from a PT. I checked it over and liked what I saw. New grad but a mature thirty-two years of age, already through one career as a professional dancer, experience with sports injuries, has already done a research project.
It seemed curious that she would pick my practice to apply to, so I gave her a call to find out more. We decided to meet so I could show her the clinic, then go for coffee. Turns out she wanted to work from my space in order to be convenient for all the dancers that live in the 'hood, where yoga and dance studios are everywhere. She had done her homework, had moved into the neighbourhood three weeks earlier, and decided to aim for employment at my place, which is the only PT clinic for blocks and blocks.
To call it a "clinic" is a bit presumptuous of me... It's more like a room in a nice office suite. A non-PT practitioner also has a practice in that suite, who I get along with quite well. Our practices have no overlap, other than we share the cost of a receptionist. My practice is one-on-one, carefully teasing the pain out of people while accompanying them for one or a few sessions.
It was dreadfully slow in Feb, so there was nothing for her to pick up, but this week is going better. She will take over my normal Wednesday off. See patients. Help pay some of the overhead.
We have been busy getting some promo material together, chatting about pain, treatment... I loaned her some books, the treatment manual I developed. Today she tried out some manual therapy on me.
Well, all I've got to say is the woman has hands on her that are like butter. My cranky right leg (which has been cranky for over 50 years) very much liked what she did to it. It's still working with what she was able to get it to let go of. It feels like it has little happy faces mixed with 7-up bubbles running through its vessels instead of blood. Walking home it felt like it was looser, stronger, longer and didn't get as tired as the left leg did, so I know my S1 cortex must have neuroplasticized a fair bit.
My cranky leg/ankle foot stems from a sprain at age 5. Age 5. I vaguely remember that it hurt for what felt like months. It was never handled, never cared for, never treated.
Lucky for me, I have the right mix of receptors or something, because it never gave rise to CRPS or fibromyalgia or anything. Most of the time it hasn't "hurt", exactly. It just felt shrunken and tight, like the antigravity suit was a bit too tight in the leg zone. No amount of yoga ever helped. Nothing I learned to do (to or with it, on my own) in over 50 years, almost 40 of which was spent being a PT, helped. OMPT certainly didn't help - in fact it made it hurt a lot for awhile. I saw a massage therapist who helped the pain, but my sense of it feeling "wrong" remained. I figured out a lot of my imaginative tape techniques by using my own leg to practice on.
This is all a big lead up to what happened today. I had let Adrienne watch me treat a few people, with their permission of course.. so today she wanted to practice a tarsal tunnel treatment, and knee treatment. Long story short, the work she did felt remarkable, and still does; all the Barrett Dorko characteristics of correction (fondly referred to as C's of C) - warmth, softening, effortless(!) movement (quite a bit of that - twitching, pulsing etc.), surprise (I've not had those sorts of results from other practitioners who've worked on me) - developed during the session. It was like my leg had been waiting for this for a very long time and was more than ready to have its nerves treated instead of its bones and muscles and joints.
So, I'm sold on Adrienne. So's my leg. Here's a little write-up about her that I attached to my website. I feel really good about the prospect, when the time comes, of leaving my practice, and all the people who've come to it for 15 years, in her very, very good hands.
It seemed curious that she would pick my practice to apply to, so I gave her a call to find out more. We decided to meet so I could show her the clinic, then go for coffee. Turns out she wanted to work from my space in order to be convenient for all the dancers that live in the 'hood, where yoga and dance studios are everywhere. She had done her homework, had moved into the neighbourhood three weeks earlier, and decided to aim for employment at my place, which is the only PT clinic for blocks and blocks.
To call it a "clinic" is a bit presumptuous of me... It's more like a room in a nice office suite. A non-PT practitioner also has a practice in that suite, who I get along with quite well. Our practices have no overlap, other than we share the cost of a receptionist. My practice is one-on-one, carefully teasing the pain out of people while accompanying them for one or a few sessions.
It was dreadfully slow in Feb, so there was nothing for her to pick up, but this week is going better. She will take over my normal Wednesday off. See patients. Help pay some of the overhead.
We have been busy getting some promo material together, chatting about pain, treatment... I loaned her some books, the treatment manual I developed. Today she tried out some manual therapy on me.
Well, all I've got to say is the woman has hands on her that are like butter. My cranky right leg (which has been cranky for over 50 years) very much liked what she did to it. It's still working with what she was able to get it to let go of. It feels like it has little happy faces mixed with 7-up bubbles running through its vessels instead of blood. Walking home it felt like it was looser, stronger, longer and didn't get as tired as the left leg did, so I know my S1 cortex must have neuroplasticized a fair bit.
My cranky leg/ankle foot stems from a sprain at age 5. Age 5. I vaguely remember that it hurt for what felt like months. It was never handled, never cared for, never treated.
Lucky for me, I have the right mix of receptors or something, because it never gave rise to CRPS or fibromyalgia or anything. Most of the time it hasn't "hurt", exactly. It just felt shrunken and tight, like the antigravity suit was a bit too tight in the leg zone. No amount of yoga ever helped. Nothing I learned to do (to or with it, on my own) in over 50 years, almost 40 of which was spent being a PT, helped. OMPT certainly didn't help - in fact it made it hurt a lot for awhile. I saw a massage therapist who helped the pain, but my sense of it feeling "wrong" remained. I figured out a lot of my imaginative tape techniques by using my own leg to practice on.
This is all a big lead up to what happened today. I had let Adrienne watch me treat a few people, with their permission of course.. so today she wanted to practice a tarsal tunnel treatment, and knee treatment. Long story short, the work she did felt remarkable, and still does; all the Barrett Dorko characteristics of correction (fondly referred to as C's of C) - warmth, softening, effortless(!) movement (quite a bit of that - twitching, pulsing etc.), surprise (I've not had those sorts of results from other practitioners who've worked on me) - developed during the session. It was like my leg had been waiting for this for a very long time and was more than ready to have its nerves treated instead of its bones and muscles and joints.
So, I'm sold on Adrienne. So's my leg. Here's a little write-up about her that I attached to my website. I feel really good about the prospect, when the time comes, of leaving my practice, and all the people who've come to it for 15 years, in her very, very good hands.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
More about making progress
So, today was a serious book day. I spent all morning sifting the remaining 25% of the total, which took hours. I was able to list a few more. I have 144 listed, 5 purchased and off the list.
The entire process feels like molting. Molting is something that often comes as a surprise to a human primate, because we have no fur, really.. yet, most animals molt, and I think we do too, although more in a symbolic, non-conscious way perhaps. I tried to explain this recently to someone.
Last night, while in a wound-up, sleepless state, brought on no doubt by being preoccupied with trying to hold it together on the surface while feeling like everything is falling apart inside, and writing about it, sort of.. I wrote, regarding the mountain of books, "No one wants them - I can't even give them away.
Ha. What a difference a day makes.
I had noticed that whenever I put out a few loads of books they did seem to vanish fast. I accepted that. The neighbourhood is full of dumpster divers patrolling at all hours of the day and night, looking for anything they might be able to sell. This morning I took out a few bags full, went back in, came back out with a bag of garbage not five minutes later. Much to my surprise I found a car parked with its doors open, and a woman and two teenage girls merrily chattering and rapidly scooping up the books, putting them into the car. "Good" I said. "Someone is taking the books." She was about 40, very smiley and merry. "Oh yes, I've been finding piles of books here every day for the last three days. I've been coming over to rescue them! I love books! My mother loves books! I just live over there.." and she gestured across the alley.
So, it turns out that she's lived across the alley from me, a single mom raising her daughters, for years, since before I ever moved into my place. I told her I had a whole pile more and that she was welcome to them. Together we lugged the books over to her place and stacked them on the floor. About 6 round trips with my two plastic baskets and two cloth shopping bags for her. She was ecstatic. She was planning to go to massage school now that her children were nearly launched into life. Many of my discards were books she wanted but would have had a hard time affording, perhaps. Plus, she knows people who know people who can sell them for 50 cents each, or whatever, to raise money for battered women's projects, at used-clothing stores, etc. So hey, letting go of this burden is a good thing that benefits this very nice, nurturing woman and her social network, and helps feed her dream of being a self-sustaining body worker person in some community in the interior some day. It's all good.
A woman I know commented to me recently that I was good at manifesting. I said, "Well, I don't believe in that. But I do believe that situations do emerge, which require resolution, and that resolution of situations is a natural phenomenon." "Oh," she said.
The entire process feels like molting. Molting is something that often comes as a surprise to a human primate, because we have no fur, really.. yet, most animals molt, and I think we do too, although more in a symbolic, non-conscious way perhaps. I tried to explain this recently to someone.
Apparently even primates molt, so I don't see why it would be outside the world of symbolic or even otherwise non-conscious expression of the human neuromatrix. I think another metaphor would be ripened compost - if it can't decompose any more, it either needs to support growth (die to itself while helping transform something into something else -birthing) or else it needs more scraps to take apart (feeding). If it doesn't move somehow, back into a flow, it is a waste of perfectly good nature. Human lives are long but still all too short to be wasted on regret or stasis. That's how I've always lived the one I've got, at least. A molt: when one's life no longer fits one comfortably, time to move it to a new sleeping nest. It's the human primate way.Molting seems to be a not-very-enjoyable process for everyone who does it. Insects are at their most vulnerable as they push themselves out of their cocoons. Snakes have to strip themselves out of their own skins by first slashing their face skin on a rock. Birds look absolutely awful when they are partly molted. Dogs shed. Cats shed. Monkeys molt. It's a price critters have to pay. They don't look attractive while molting, and they must feel quite itchy and preoccupied. This all feels familiar to me on a mental level just now.
Last night, while in a wound-up, sleepless state, brought on no doubt by being preoccupied with trying to hold it together on the surface while feeling like everything is falling apart inside, and writing about it, sort of.. I wrote, regarding the mountain of books, "No one wants them - I can't even give them away.
Ha. What a difference a day makes.
I had noticed that whenever I put out a few loads of books they did seem to vanish fast. I accepted that. The neighbourhood is full of dumpster divers patrolling at all hours of the day and night, looking for anything they might be able to sell. This morning I took out a few bags full, went back in, came back out with a bag of garbage not five minutes later. Much to my surprise I found a car parked with its doors open, and a woman and two teenage girls merrily chattering and rapidly scooping up the books, putting them into the car. "Good" I said. "Someone is taking the books." She was about 40, very smiley and merry. "Oh yes, I've been finding piles of books here every day for the last three days. I've been coming over to rescue them! I love books! My mother loves books! I just live over there.." and she gestured across the alley.
So, it turns out that she's lived across the alley from me, a single mom raising her daughters, for years, since before I ever moved into my place. I told her I had a whole pile more and that she was welcome to them. Together we lugged the books over to her place and stacked them on the floor. About 6 round trips with my two plastic baskets and two cloth shopping bags for her. She was ecstatic. She was planning to go to massage school now that her children were nearly launched into life. Many of my discards were books she wanted but would have had a hard time affording, perhaps. Plus, she knows people who know people who can sell them for 50 cents each, or whatever, to raise money for battered women's projects, at used-clothing stores, etc. So hey, letting go of this burden is a good thing that benefits this very nice, nurturing woman and her social network, and helps feed her dream of being a self-sustaining body worker person in some community in the interior some day. It's all good.
A woman I know commented to me recently that I was good at manifesting. I said, "Well, I don't believe in that. But I do believe that situations do emerge, which require resolution, and that resolution of situations is a natural phenomenon." "Oh," she said.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Making progress
The story of this month of February was the story of climbing back up out of winter, fighting off inertia, figuring out how to start a seller account on Amazon and plowing through my biggest problem first - what feels like thousands of books, but which only add up to.. well, maybe one thousand. Which is still a lot of books to deal with.
I soon found out that I couldn't become a seller on Amazon.com. As a Canadian I do not have that privilege. I'm restricted to Amazon.ca. Okie-doakie. As I started to list I realized there was absolutely no point in listing any book for anything less than $20. It costs nearly that much to mail a book somewhere. One has to buy mailing boxes or padded envelopes, some bubble wrap to keep the book safe, etc. Postage varies according to how heavy or big the book is, but rarely will come in under $10.
I learned some things fast - like that I was going to have to face the fact that it would be necessary to toss out most of them. No one wants them - I can't even give them away. Unbelievable. This took some getting used to. I'm ordinarily a resilient person, but these books were my friends, lovingly collected over at least a decade, most of them read or at least scanned, all of them worth another go, some of them worth a great deal more time spent lingering lovingly over their content. It created great disquiet, having to get started on the painful job of deconstructing my library collection. I never expected I'd ever move again as long as I lived, you see. I thought it was safe to start letting things like books accumulate. I had no idea I'd become seasonally affectively disordered to the point of being E-ffectively disordered as well. And realizing the situation and that I had to escape it.
I keep thinking maybe this is what it's like to be old and facing demise. One has a lifetime of treasured moments that one simply cannot share with anyone anymore. One has lost one's ability to do so. Maybe one's life has gone up in a house fire, along with all the pictures. Maybe one loses one's own mind, and the memories have deleted themselves. Maybe everyone in one's particular circle, including family members, is horribly killed in a war or something, and one finds oneself alone in the world. Now, picture yourself having to be the one to deliberately destroy these relationships, be the agent of one's own severance away from the minds of so many others, be the bad guy. Every time I picked up a book, checked it out to see if it was worth any money on Amazon, then put it onto the Keep, Sell, or Toss pile, I felt like I was killing or saving or selling another of my own friends. Only about 1 book in 10 is worth any money, therefore worth listing. I am keeping only about one book in 40. (This is the grief talking.)
It wasn't all bad though - what a happy surprise to learn that a single ortho text I had (and had absolutely no attachment to) was unavailable except for a few listed as "used-good condition", for around $600. I laughed out loud! I listed mine for $100 (I have no idea what I had paid for it new) and it was snapped up within hours. A really old (decades old) joint physiology text I lugged around through several moves sold - I'll be sending it off tomorrow. It's Vol 2 - Vol 1 and 3 are still for sale.
There are other surprises. Some books I bought for 4 or 5 dollars used are worth much much more these days. Alrighty then. They are listed. I started this venture a week ago, and have sent off 5 books so far, made about $200. A side benefit is that I stared a special account for this and have learned to do online banking now. (I feel so modern. It's the pride talking.)
Every day I haul out the less fortunate to the back alley, two bags full. I have two nifty bright colored shopping baskets I bought long ago on a trip to Central America. They are made out of some absolutely indestructible plastic woven into bright stripes and have sturdy handles. I use them for recycle containers usually, but now they are for hauling books I must discard. I still have three large stacks of books to go through, each one as tall as my waist. I've managed to get rid of two half height bookcases about a yard wide. My neighbour snapped them up to hold shoes in her hallway. I'm about three-quarters through the book mountain. (This is the relief talking.)
This whole chapter of life is very much about relief mixed in with regret. It makes me realize that in fact, it is entirely within the capacity of the human system to be able to feel two conflicting emotions, fully, at once, and stretch oneself enough to be able to contain both, and find whatever it takes inside to plow along, move forward anyway. Even if it feels like swimming through quicksand. One simply says to oneself, You can do this. It won't be much longer. Think how much easier life will be once you live in a sunny climate again.
So, by now if you've been reading along, you may be thinking, strange woman, bonded to her books instead of to a family or to other people. Well, in fact, I think I must have seen this whole parting thing and the pain it brings, way in advance, long before I ever experienced any of the joy bonding to others supposedly brings, while still a child. Generally, I've seen that the parting part of intimately relating seems to last a lot longer and be a lot less pleasant than the joining and developing part. At least in my experience. Therefore I have always had a cautious heart - never let it get too attached to any person. Enjoyed friends but never got overly attached. But books - books and cats - those were different stories entirely. I have been very incautious about bonding to both. Both are still capable of breaking my heart, right to this day, when the inevitable parting comes. Perhaps one day I will learn to not be so attached to them either.
My fantasy is to move completely unencumbered by "stuff." Have everything on my computer contained in a couple flash drives. Move into a new space with lots of windows and never again accumulate. Bare walls, bare floor. Painted plain white.
Truth is more like I'll still have boxes of stuff to move. But it will be like the old days when I was a student - just a few boxes: some changes of clothing, some kitchen stuff, some personal things, photos, and maybe 4 boxes of books, the laptop. But no furniture. Sleep on the floor for awhile. Buy a new desk top computer at the other end. Read books online instead. Live light.
Other bits of progress: I have a real estate agent at the other end, and one at this end. I have a good reliable fix-it guy to handle minor repairs here, to help me get my place impeccable-ized. A young woman walked into my PT life and wants to work in my place. I might have even found a buyer for the practice, although it will take a good thorough investigation first. I would take these things as "signs" that I'm on the right track, if I believed in such things. It doesn't seem to help me sleep soundly at night, every night, however. Plenty of tossing and turning and that upheavaled feeling. I swear it feels worse at this age than it used to, way back a couple decades ago.
I soon found out that I couldn't become a seller on Amazon.com. As a Canadian I do not have that privilege. I'm restricted to Amazon.ca. Okie-doakie. As I started to list I realized there was absolutely no point in listing any book for anything less than $20. It costs nearly that much to mail a book somewhere. One has to buy mailing boxes or padded envelopes, some bubble wrap to keep the book safe, etc. Postage varies according to how heavy or big the book is, but rarely will come in under $10.
I learned some things fast - like that I was going to have to face the fact that it would be necessary to toss out most of them. No one wants them - I can't even give them away. Unbelievable. This took some getting used to. I'm ordinarily a resilient person, but these books were my friends, lovingly collected over at least a decade, most of them read or at least scanned, all of them worth another go, some of them worth a great deal more time spent lingering lovingly over their content. It created great disquiet, having to get started on the painful job of deconstructing my library collection. I never expected I'd ever move again as long as I lived, you see. I thought it was safe to start letting things like books accumulate. I had no idea I'd become seasonally affectively disordered to the point of being E-ffectively disordered as well. And realizing the situation and that I had to escape it.
I keep thinking maybe this is what it's like to be old and facing demise. One has a lifetime of treasured moments that one simply cannot share with anyone anymore. One has lost one's ability to do so. Maybe one's life has gone up in a house fire, along with all the pictures. Maybe one loses one's own mind, and the memories have deleted themselves. Maybe everyone in one's particular circle, including family members, is horribly killed in a war or something, and one finds oneself alone in the world. Now, picture yourself having to be the one to deliberately destroy these relationships, be the agent of one's own severance away from the minds of so many others, be the bad guy. Every time I picked up a book, checked it out to see if it was worth any money on Amazon, then put it onto the Keep, Sell, or Toss pile, I felt like I was killing or saving or selling another of my own friends. Only about 1 book in 10 is worth any money, therefore worth listing. I am keeping only about one book in 40. (This is the grief talking.)
It wasn't all bad though - what a happy surprise to learn that a single ortho text I had (and had absolutely no attachment to) was unavailable except for a few listed as "used-good condition", for around $600. I laughed out loud! I listed mine for $100 (I have no idea what I had paid for it new) and it was snapped up within hours. A really old (decades old) joint physiology text I lugged around through several moves sold - I'll be sending it off tomorrow. It's Vol 2 - Vol 1 and 3 are still for sale.
There are other surprises. Some books I bought for 4 or 5 dollars used are worth much much more these days. Alrighty then. They are listed. I started this venture a week ago, and have sent off 5 books so far, made about $200. A side benefit is that I stared a special account for this and have learned to do online banking now. (I feel so modern. It's the pride talking.)
Every day I haul out the less fortunate to the back alley, two bags full. I have two nifty bright colored shopping baskets I bought long ago on a trip to Central America. They are made out of some absolutely indestructible plastic woven into bright stripes and have sturdy handles. I use them for recycle containers usually, but now they are for hauling books I must discard. I still have three large stacks of books to go through, each one as tall as my waist. I've managed to get rid of two half height bookcases about a yard wide. My neighbour snapped them up to hold shoes in her hallway. I'm about three-quarters through the book mountain. (This is the relief talking.)
This whole chapter of life is very much about relief mixed in with regret. It makes me realize that in fact, it is entirely within the capacity of the human system to be able to feel two conflicting emotions, fully, at once, and stretch oneself enough to be able to contain both, and find whatever it takes inside to plow along, move forward anyway. Even if it feels like swimming through quicksand. One simply says to oneself, You can do this. It won't be much longer. Think how much easier life will be once you live in a sunny climate again.
So, by now if you've been reading along, you may be thinking, strange woman, bonded to her books instead of to a family or to other people. Well, in fact, I think I must have seen this whole parting thing and the pain it brings, way in advance, long before I ever experienced any of the joy bonding to others supposedly brings, while still a child. Generally, I've seen that the parting part of intimately relating seems to last a lot longer and be a lot less pleasant than the joining and developing part. At least in my experience. Therefore I have always had a cautious heart - never let it get too attached to any person. Enjoyed friends but never got overly attached. But books - books and cats - those were different stories entirely. I have been very incautious about bonding to both. Both are still capable of breaking my heart, right to this day, when the inevitable parting comes. Perhaps one day I will learn to not be so attached to them either.
My fantasy is to move completely unencumbered by "stuff." Have everything on my computer contained in a couple flash drives. Move into a new space with lots of windows and never again accumulate. Bare walls, bare floor. Painted plain white.
Truth is more like I'll still have boxes of stuff to move. But it will be like the old days when I was a student - just a few boxes: some changes of clothing, some kitchen stuff, some personal things, photos, and maybe 4 boxes of books, the laptop. But no furniture. Sleep on the floor for awhile. Buy a new desk top computer at the other end. Read books online instead. Live light.
Other bits of progress: I have a real estate agent at the other end, and one at this end. I have a good reliable fix-it guy to handle minor repairs here, to help me get my place impeccable-ized. A young woman walked into my PT life and wants to work in my place. I might have even found a buyer for the practice, although it will take a good thorough investigation first. I would take these things as "signs" that I'm on the right track, if I believed in such things. It doesn't seem to help me sleep soundly at night, every night, however. Plenty of tossing and turning and that upheavaled feeling. I swear it feels worse at this age than it used to, way back a couple decades ago.
Friday, February 06, 2009
Humans, the neotenous primate
Deric at Mindblog posted about this essay by Alison Gopnik titled Never-ending childhood.
Excerpts:
The essay ends with,
Excerpts:
"people will have to learn more and more. The best way to make it happen is to extend the period when we learn the most — childhood."
"We may remain children forever — or at least for much longer."
"Humans already have a longer period of protected immaturity — a longer childhood — than any other species. Across species, a long childhood is correlated with an evolutionary strategy that depends on flexibility, intelligence and learning."
"Children get to learn freely about their particular environment without worrying about their own survival — caregivers look after that."Well, ideally anyway... I think it's debatable. Lots of children all over the world now wander in streets having to be self-sufficient far too young. They get "old" far sooner than they should have to. Meanwhile, "chidren" elsewhere live and grow up to and through sexual maturity in socially reinforced and rewarded bubble zones of childhood and postadolescent protection, until they reach middle age.
The essay ends with,
"When we are all babies for ever, who will be the parents? When we're all children who will be the grown-ups?"Exactly. Who indeed.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Exceptionalism of the American kind
Human primate life is equal parts bio/psycho/social. Ordinarily I look at the bio part; sometimes the psycho aspect is interesting, but only very rarely (for this introvert) does the big-wide-world social matrix interest me enough to write something on it. This week, the Obama-thon had everyone, even me, glued to a TV set.
The Obama inauguration has come and gone leaving a very big wake. Ripples will come off that event for a long time. Probably nothing since the death of Princess Di has managed to rivet people's attention worldwide to such a single sustained focus for a couple whole days.
.....................
So, I heard Obama talk about American exceptionalism, and wondered what it was. I read a bit about it (including this), and have tried to figure out what its implications are.
As a Canadian, I see the US culture, its political construct, its way of organizing itself as a human primate troop, its behaviour and its impact, against a whole backdrop of older, tamer, more restrictive, certainly more ubiquitous, settled, and staid political systems, such as monarchy, or even dictatorship, where things settled into more less stable layers a long time ago. Boring, right? On the surface, the insistence on democracy sounds very very good, very refreshing. (I think 200+ years is a mere blink in social, human primate troop time.)
To me the term suggests pride in deliberate disinhibition of human potential, deliberately facilitated by a "human primate troop" (societal) political structure which accelerates movement between strata both laterally and vertically, horizontally and diagonally. It has always seemed to me that the "American Way" is self-congratulatory on its success at having developed a system that managed to un-lid human creativity, ingenuity, efficiency, adaptability, and effervescence. That is something everyone of every culture, country, age and color, is immediately addicted to. It's a manifestation of "people" power, and everyone wants to wear its symbols, eat the candy.
I watched Obama test the political part of the US electoral system, from the lowest P4 level deep down, on up to the pinnacle of the system, and prove it works - after all, he did go from being a potentially laid-back Hawaiian kid of a single mom, to being president of the US, in under 50 years. He proved that the idea that "anyone can become president" isn't just a myth - he figured out the trick!
He studied, took apart the political machine, analyzed it, and was able to convince a majority that he is willing to and can put it all back together again, in working order. This says something about him, his choices, how he was raised, for sure, but it also says a lot about a system that anyone, REALLY, not just theoretically, can learn to manipulate, leverage to advantage.
He must be the world's most successful extrovert. He represents the people of the entire planet. He still smokes. That's got to make the tobacco lobby happy. Clearly he can think and plot. Read and write. Make great speeches. And look good.
.........
The dark side I see in American exceptionalism is this: It may have created its own demise from the beginning, due directly to having deliberately laid in political dis-inhibition, permitting social "upward causation" instead of functioning as social inhibition, keeping a lid on things, the way other political systems do.
I think this memeplex (which had never really existed, prior, at a nation level, start to finish), emerged as a raging cachectic economic fireball which started out small, 200 odd years ago, but which is now consuming everything, including everyone everywhere who was ever mesmerized by the spectacle of a country that gets-things-done no matter how much it might cost, whose business is business, whose might has rested on seeing how fast it can transform "nature" (which it calls "resources") into another second artificial circulation system of other stuff/money that isn't alive and is therefore hard for nature to take apart again. Runaway growth. Poking holes in the planet as fast as possible to extract oil as fast as possible. Using up nature. It all set an unfortunate example for the rest of the peoples on the planet, and they copied. (Damn those human primate mirror neurons.)
If Obama can manage to turn something like this around, green up US citizenry, grow the country a bit of a conscience, help it find some smooth way to stop acting like a reckless teenager banging the whole planet around, every human on the planet will be grateful to him. He won't be just another poser filling a job slot, he'll have been for real.
The Obama inauguration has come and gone leaving a very big wake. Ripples will come off that event for a long time. Probably nothing since the death of Princess Di has managed to rivet people's attention worldwide to such a single sustained focus for a couple whole days.
.....................
So, I heard Obama talk about American exceptionalism, and wondered what it was. I read a bit about it (including this), and have tried to figure out what its implications are.As a Canadian, I see the US culture, its political construct, its way of organizing itself as a human primate troop, its behaviour and its impact, against a whole backdrop of older, tamer, more restrictive, certainly more ubiquitous, settled, and staid political systems, such as monarchy, or even dictatorship, where things settled into more less stable layers a long time ago. Boring, right? On the surface, the insistence on democracy sounds very very good, very refreshing. (I think 200+ years is a mere blink in social, human primate troop time.)
To me the term suggests pride in deliberate disinhibition of human potential, deliberately facilitated by a "human primate troop" (societal) political structure which accelerates movement between strata both laterally and vertically, horizontally and diagonally. It has always seemed to me that the "American Way" is self-congratulatory on its success at having developed a system that managed to un-lid human creativity, ingenuity, efficiency, adaptability, and effervescence. That is something everyone of every culture, country, age and color, is immediately addicted to. It's a manifestation of "people" power, and everyone wants to wear its symbols, eat the candy.
I watched Obama test the political part of the US electoral system, from the lowest P4 level deep down, on up to the pinnacle of the system, and prove it works - after all, he did go from being a potentially laid-back Hawaiian kid of a single mom, to being president of the US, in under 50 years. He proved that the idea that "anyone can become president" isn't just a myth - he figured out the trick!
He studied, took apart the political machine, analyzed it, and was able to convince a majority that he is willing to and can put it all back together again, in working order. This says something about him, his choices, how he was raised, for sure, but it also says a lot about a system that anyone, REALLY, not just theoretically, can learn to manipulate, leverage to advantage.He must be the world's most successful extrovert. He represents the people of the entire planet. He still smokes. That's got to make the tobacco lobby happy. Clearly he can think and plot. Read and write. Make great speeches. And look good.
.........
The dark side I see in American exceptionalism is this: It may have created its own demise from the beginning, due directly to having deliberately laid in political dis-inhibition, permitting social "upward causation" instead of functioning as social inhibition, keeping a lid on things, the way other political systems do.
I think this memeplex (which had never really existed, prior, at a nation level, start to finish), emerged as a raging cachectic economic fireball which started out small, 200 odd years ago, but which is now consuming everything, including everyone everywhere who was ever mesmerized by the spectacle of a country that gets-things-done no matter how much it might cost, whose business is business, whose might has rested on seeing how fast it can transform "nature" (which it calls "resources") into another second artificial circulation system of other stuff/money that isn't alive and is therefore hard for nature to take apart again. Runaway growth. Poking holes in the planet as fast as possible to extract oil as fast as possible. Using up nature. It all set an unfortunate example for the rest of the peoples on the planet, and they copied. (Damn those human primate mirror neurons.)
If Obama can manage to turn something like this around, green up US citizenry, grow the country a bit of a conscience, help it find some smooth way to stop acting like a reckless teenager banging the whole planet around, every human on the planet will be grateful to him. He won't be just another poser filling a job slot, he'll have been for real.
The Game he'll have to play, the thing that will keep all eyes riveted on him, is to stay suspended in mid-air (like this picture of him effortlessly playing basketball), so that no one spots his "tell", so that no one will know to the very last millisecond which way he is going to come down or which part will touch down first.
Mesmerize by continuous motion coupled with frequent reflection outward of attractive toothy grin, calm inner state, deliver all news (including the bad) in even soothing sedate studied tones, leave no stone unturned (take the oath twice just to make sure), report any progress, and obstacles, cheer on human creativity, ingenuity, efficiency, adaptability, and effervescence, but bend it toward solving social problems instead of making more of them through allowing the American memeplex to go unchecked with a social kind of "downward causation" - i.e., encouraging the sole objective of making more stuff/money => and fighting wars all over the place to maintain access to resources => to make stuff/money... etc.etc.
I'm so glad, if the perhaps overly optimistic US economic system had to fall apart some day, that it fell apart while Bush was still in office. The timing couldn't have been better, really, in that no one will ever be able to blame that on Obama. The political system may also collapse some day, but while it's still functional I'm glad that Obama is the one who has taken it on. It's as though he has volunteered to be the engineer on a freight train which has experienced sudden loss of brakes and is hurtling downhill. Maybe he can figure out how to steer it safely, maybe repair the brakes before it's too late... wishful thinking. The train looks like it's going to crash, but maybe he can save most of the passengers. At least he seems to care about them...
I say all this as someone from a more staid, less fast-moving, monarchist, pseudo- (by US standards) democracy slightly to the north of the US., with lots of resources, fewer people, which has never been in any great hurry to use them up completely as fast as possible. The pace is slower - we like to wait for nature to grow back a bit before we cut it down again..
Our head of state, Michaelle Jean, is a black first generation Haitian refugee, who (as far as I know) doesn't smoke. She was appointed to represent the queen.
Mostly she gets to travel and look good and attend tea parties, but if political trouble brews, as it did here last fall, she flies home, turns to page 57, section D paragraph 3, point viii, (or wherever) and does what's written in the traditional rulebook. Simple.
We have a protocol for everything, you see, and it saves everyone lots of stress, let's everyone get back to their respective tea parties.
The politicians of Canada are decidedly not noted for any creativity, ingenuity, efficiency, adaptability, and effervescence. They show up (usually) and (usually) keep things rolling along, but Canuck citizens are not required to participate in government in anything like the way US citizens are all expected to contribute. (I was amazed that the US ballots are several pages long, that each person who votes has to become familiar with every issue and its implications, that nothing much happens until and unless ordinary citizens haul themselves out to become informed about then vote on each item. Here, we, the Canuck citizens, hire politicians to do all that. We have all adopted our own versions of the "downward causation" tea party memeplex, instead, I suppose.)
I do not see that the citizens of the US have gotten much for their trouble so far. I see that, so far, the "democracy" they continue to have to pour effort and personal sacrifice into hasn't looked after them yet. Maybe it will start soon.
I also see that US citizens finally spotted someone who made them stop feeling tired and burnt out. Who has made them feel like maybe they can stop feeling oppressed, or like they maybe won't have to fight each other and the government for each and every scrap they have coming to them. Someone who might actually stop trying to hoover up all the remaining resources on the entire planet, and who might listen to them for a change, might try to re-route a few organized efforts their way to make ordinary lives a bit easier, less expensive, who might even help lighten the load on the whole planet for a change, make everything less expensive. Who might see "people" as integral bits of the earth, and the earth as the only place we all can ever "live." Who might see that it's time to stop acting like there's no tomorrow, now that there might not actually be much of a "tomorrow"...
Maybe even change the meaning of "exceptionalism" so that it more accurately reflects what US people are really all about, a very hard-working, self-democratized human primate troop, so we all get to see what kind of global conduct and capacity to carry responsibility they've really been training themselves for two centuries or thereabouts to have, and how they see what's going on/going down.
Can an entire human troop (the people of the US) lead all the other slower troops (every other country)? Can the supposedly less politically blind lead the presumably more blind? Out of a dangerous chasm it led everyone/everything into in the first place? Perhaps just by using up the planet faster than it could replenish itself?
I guess we'll all find out one day, in retrospect, if this is so. Maybe Obama will be able to arrange that. Meanwhile, I will continue to watch him, listen to him. I felt included in his address, because he included everybody, everywhere, and mentioned non-believers alongside other groups specified. It's a nice warm fuzzy to have one of one's primary groups be recognized, by name, by the newest politically alpha human primate of the entire world's human primate troop.
Additional reading:
1. Getting there from here (Atul Gawande on health care reform, New Yorker Jan 26/09)
2. Path dependence - definitions
3. Compatibilism from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
4. "If the world were a village of 1000 people"
5. American Exceptionalism - A Double Edged Sword (Lipset)
6. On America's Double Standard: The good and bad faces of exceptionalism by Harold Hongju Koh (2004)
Mesmerize by continuous motion coupled with frequent reflection outward of attractive toothy grin, calm inner state, deliver all news (including the bad) in even soothing sedate studied tones, leave no stone unturned (take the oath twice just to make sure), report any progress, and obstacles, cheer on human creativity, ingenuity, efficiency, adaptability, and effervescence, but bend it toward solving social problems instead of making more of them through allowing the American memeplex to go unchecked with a social kind of "downward causation" - i.e., encouraging the sole objective of making more stuff/money => and fighting wars all over the place to maintain access to resources => to make stuff/money... etc.etc.
I'm so glad, if the perhaps overly optimistic US economic system had to fall apart some day, that it fell apart while Bush was still in office. The timing couldn't have been better, really, in that no one will ever be able to blame that on Obama. The political system may also collapse some day, but while it's still functional I'm glad that Obama is the one who has taken it on. It's as though he has volunteered to be the engineer on a freight train which has experienced sudden loss of brakes and is hurtling downhill. Maybe he can figure out how to steer it safely, maybe repair the brakes before it's too late... wishful thinking. The train looks like it's going to crash, but maybe he can save most of the passengers. At least he seems to care about them...
I say all this as someone from a more staid, less fast-moving, monarchist, pseudo- (by US standards) democracy slightly to the north of the US., with lots of resources, fewer people, which has never been in any great hurry to use them up completely as fast as possible. The pace is slower - we like to wait for nature to grow back a bit before we cut it down again..
Our head of state, Michaelle Jean, is a black first generation Haitian refugee, who (as far as I know) doesn't smoke. She was appointed to represent the queen.
Mostly she gets to travel and look good and attend tea parties, but if political trouble brews, as it did here last fall, she flies home, turns to page 57, section D paragraph 3, point viii, (or wherever) and does what's written in the traditional rulebook. Simple.
We have a protocol for everything, you see, and it saves everyone lots of stress, let's everyone get back to their respective tea parties.
The politicians of Canada are decidedly not noted for any creativity, ingenuity, efficiency, adaptability, and effervescence. They show up (usually) and (usually) keep things rolling along, but Canuck citizens are not required to participate in government in anything like the way US citizens are all expected to contribute. (I was amazed that the US ballots are several pages long, that each person who votes has to become familiar with every issue and its implications, that nothing much happens until and unless ordinary citizens haul themselves out to become informed about then vote on each item. Here, we, the Canuck citizens, hire politicians to do all that. We have all adopted our own versions of the "downward causation" tea party memeplex, instead, I suppose.)
I do not see that the citizens of the US have gotten much for their trouble so far. I see that, so far, the "democracy" they continue to have to pour effort and personal sacrifice into hasn't looked after them yet. Maybe it will start soon.
I also see that US citizens finally spotted someone who made them stop feeling tired and burnt out. Who has made them feel like maybe they can stop feeling oppressed, or like they maybe won't have to fight each other and the government for each and every scrap they have coming to them. Someone who might actually stop trying to hoover up all the remaining resources on the entire planet, and who might listen to them for a change, might try to re-route a few organized efforts their way to make ordinary lives a bit easier, less expensive, who might even help lighten the load on the whole planet for a change, make everything less expensive. Who might see "people" as integral bits of the earth, and the earth as the only place we all can ever "live." Who might see that it's time to stop acting like there's no tomorrow, now that there might not actually be much of a "tomorrow"...
Maybe even change the meaning of "exceptionalism" so that it more accurately reflects what US people are really all about, a very hard-working, self-democratized human primate troop, so we all get to see what kind of global conduct and capacity to carry responsibility they've really been training themselves for two centuries or thereabouts to have, and how they see what's going on/going down.
Can an entire human troop (the people of the US) lead all the other slower troops (every other country)? Can the supposedly less politically blind lead the presumably more blind? Out of a dangerous chasm it led everyone/everything into in the first place? Perhaps just by using up the planet faster than it could replenish itself?
I guess we'll all find out one day, in retrospect, if this is so. Maybe Obama will be able to arrange that. Meanwhile, I will continue to watch him, listen to him. I felt included in his address, because he included everybody, everywhere, and mentioned non-believers alongside other groups specified. It's a nice warm fuzzy to have one of one's primary groups be recognized, by name, by the newest politically alpha human primate of the entire world's human primate troop.
Additional reading:
1. Getting there from here (Atul Gawande on health care reform, New Yorker Jan 26/09)
2. Path dependence - definitions
3. Compatibilism from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
4. "If the world were a village of 1000 people"
5. American Exceptionalism - A Double Edged Sword (Lipset)
6. On America's Double Standard: The good and bad faces of exceptionalism by Harold Hongju Koh (2004)
Monday, January 12, 2009
Insular Winter Wallowing
I've been interested in the insular cortex for a long time now, thanks to Deric Bownd's Mindblog having introduced me to this brain part, and also the posts over there about Sandra Blakeslee's book, The Body has a Mind of its Own, about brain maps. Sandra Blakeslee follows the research of A.D.Craig, who studies the insula from the perspective of its relationship to ascending nociception. Awareness of what's going on on the inside of one's physicality and of oneself (whatever self is), is called interoception. The brain is continuously interocepting, and one can merely tune in if one wants. In my work, I teach people to become aware of their physicality, while mostly leaving it up to them to hook their new ability to perceive their physicality up to them"selves."
Deric Bownds has a new post, How do you feel - now? The anterior insula and human awareness, which describes a new Craig paper by the same name. The paper is in Nature Neuroscience Reviews. It's full of interesting ideas; like the hub of a bicycle wheel, spokes go everywhere from this paper. I haven't yet even begun to digest it, but might blog more about various spokes later.
Meanwhile, I found an old article, Flesh made Soul, by Sandra Blakeslee, on interoception and spirituality, which I found very interesting on re-read. (Here is a link to her articles page. You have to find Flesh made Soul, about fourth down the list at this time.) She talks about interoception and wonders if it has anything to do with spiritual feelings. She is an atheist, which I find reassuring.
I have been wallowing in my own insular cortices (one on each side and they do different things) for many weeks, and will continue to wallow into the indistinct future. Posts might be sparse for a little while as I sort through the prospect of pulling up an entire life that I had thought was finally settled, and moving on to a sunnier place. I will be back, but not right away, probably.
Deric Bownds has a new post, How do you feel - now? The anterior insula and human awareness, which describes a new Craig paper by the same name. The paper is in Nature Neuroscience Reviews. It's full of interesting ideas; like the hub of a bicycle wheel, spokes go everywhere from this paper. I haven't yet even begun to digest it, but might blog more about various spokes later.
Meanwhile, I found an old article, Flesh made Soul, by Sandra Blakeslee, on interoception and spirituality, which I found very interesting on re-read. (Here is a link to her articles page. You have to find Flesh made Soul, about fourth down the list at this time.) She talks about interoception and wonders if it has anything to do with spiritual feelings. She is an atheist, which I find reassuring.
I have been wallowing in my own insular cortices (one on each side and they do different things) for many weeks, and will continue to wallow into the indistinct future. Posts might be sparse for a little while as I sort through the prospect of pulling up an entire life that I had thought was finally settled, and moving on to a sunnier place. I will be back, but not right away, probably.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Vancouver photon levels
Pictures were taken today, at about 2 PM. Note the low light levels and black and white/colorlessness overall. Things could be worse, photon-wise, there could be no snow at all. At least with snow, photons bounce around some.
I don't know why I'm still living here. I do know I can't for very many more years.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
"Can I be ill and happy?"
A PT friend sent me a link to an article called Can I be ill and happy? about a book he is reading, Illness: Cry of the Flesh, by Havi Carel, a philosopher, also the author of the article.
A review of the book found on the sales page says (abbreviated):
Excerpt:
A review of the book found on the sales page says (abbreviated):
"This book is a tremendous achievement, as well as being a very moving personal document. It is a philosophical meditation on the nature of and social meaning illness, disease and death. It discusses philosophical and psychological literature, Epicurus, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. But it is also a personal memoir, it is about Carel's experience of being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, about what that meant for her presence in the world, about how she appeared in the eyes of others, and how she felt she appeared. It is about the encounter with medical professionals and their detached and external perspective on another's catastrophe; it is about the varied reactions of friends, some of whom couldn't maintain friendship. It is about how to confront the fact that all your assumptions about how your life is going to go: career, relationships, family, old age, can just be taken away. Carel was diagnosed with lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM), a rare disease that affects young women, and for which the progosis is about 10 years from the onset of symptoms. The sufferer experiences a progressive decline in lung-function over that time. Life may be extended by a heart-lung transplant, but that's, obviously, a difficult business. .... She uses Merleau-Ponty's ideas about embodied subjectivity throughout the book to explore what illness is like for the sick person and how powers and abilities that are invisible to and taken for granted by the well person become all too manifest to the sick (or disabled or ageing) person. All the time, she is constantly moving backwards and forwards between this theoretical discussion and the fact of her own experience: the first onset of symptoms, "denial", diagnosis, treatment, the foreclosure of plans, projects, possibilities. The phenomenology of social situations gets explored too: how people react, their sensitivities and insensitivities, callous reactions, stupid injunctions from ignorant people to try faddish diets of exercise routines."Another review.
Excerpt:
"The book seamlessly blends philosophical writings in illness (mainly those of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger) with phenomenology to privilege the first-person experience of illness. It begins with a discussion of what is meant by the phenomenology of illness, and by the end of the first chapter it is clear why Carel chose to adopt a phenomenological approach. We learn more about how the illness affects her on a personal basis, rather than a simple statistical charting of her decreasing lung function.Definitely looks like it would be worth a read. Looks like it will contain all sorts of extractable information useful to anyone embedded in a humanantigravitysuit complete with lifespan, whether short or long, coded into it.
Next, Carel examines the social world of illness. She suggests that rather than viewing illness through either the first or third person (depending on your relationship to it), it should be managed through what Buber calls the I-Thou encounter, of one person genuinely encountering another. Using this approach to illness, Carel argues that the principal exchange between doctors and patients should be more empathetic and compassionate, rather than based on the "objective" method most commonly associated with Western approaches to health and illness.
Later chapters examine death and what Carel terms "health within illness". Here, the philosophical discussion centres on Heidegger's characterisation of human existence as "being able to be". Carel asks whether ageing and illness means coming to terms with being unable to be. Given that somebody might be ill, does being ill mean that he or she is unable to have a good life?"
Monday, December 29, 2008
Sensory awareness
So, I've been noticing my skin and how it feels since I got back. Well, all along really, but one thing I realize is how much more I am aware of it. I expect that my brain had become quite bored with 18 years of sameness and craved some new kinesthetic input.
Differences:
Differences:
- I became quite used to wearing light loose clothing (and not much of it) in Hawaii. The big difference is footwear. I absolutely hated the idea, two mornings ago, of putting on socks and shoes for the trip home on the plane. I thought about wearing flipflops until the last second, in the boarding lounge, but decided that would require too much effort, so put the flipflops in the luggage and donned the socks and shoes. But guess what I saw in the lounge? At least two people had worn flipflops from their condos, and were sitting in the boarding lounge digging out and putting on their socks and shoes. The first idea would have been the better one, and socially facilitated to boot.
- Since I've been back, my feet, which have become reacquainted with the joys of perfect shoeless bareness and freedom and complete warmth, have been allowed to go without slippers. When they get cold, I can "feel" it, and they are put into slippers. I'm just more aware of my feet, period. They feel good!
- My skin still feels warm from having had a taste of sunshine and direct radiation on it, in all the parts that had some. Back mostly. My back still feels deliciously warm, in the zone where it became tanned.
- I feel better inside myself, whatever self is: my working hypothesis is that by stimulating the skin nerve endings with climatic warmth, and light, not just the ones in the eye-balls, there is a new congruence or even maybe reacquaintance of the visual sensory cortex with the kinesthetic sensory cortex, and some neuroplasticity has occurred, neuroplasticity of the most overdue sort. The thing is, I had gotten very very very far away from sunbathing. For so many reasons:
- Skin cancer. I don't care as much anymore about this, as I've gotten old enough that I imagine I will outlive the chances of it starting up then killing me.
- Having aged and fattened and become more shy about degree of body coverage. In Hawaii no one, and I mean no one, cares, or at least there is little or no gawking. The whole culture of the place is that the body is exactly where you live and operate from and it does not matter what it looks like. The culture there is not a snob, in other words.
- Here in Vancouver, even when it's hot out, it's such a rare event that most people are not in the habit of lying around in the sun. So the opportunities that do exist are missed, except I suppose for those with their own pool in their own yard to lie beside. Not a fact of life for most, so most everyone stays covered. Plus... it's always cool here, even on hot days, because as soon as you go in the shade or a cloud goes across, bam, it's immediately cold enough to be comfortable in ordinary cool-weather clothing and footwear. Poor brains! In cold climates they miss out on a lot of sensory integration! And then this behaviour gets reinforced by culture.
- I feel I reconnected to the sensory self I was as a child, with complete bodily freedom, few clothes and no shoes. More neuroplasticity there, through the arrow of time.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Luck
Back home again. Lots of snow here. The plane landed about midnight. There were no cabs. Lucky for me, after schlepping my three bags about a quarter mile outside the airport, I saw a cabbie sitting, waiting.. I approached him, learned he was waiting to pick up his daughter. He was a nice guy and took pity on me - he and his daughter took me to my place anyway, and he kept us entertained with stories about all the novelty involved with driving in heavy snow.
It seems the city literally ground to a halt. Everyone's holiday plans went awry. No one could travel in or out of the city, which was buried under two feet of snow delivered by sideways winds. The airport could only operate one runway. Taxi drivers who lived in areas that got socked in couldn't get out to go to work, so they just laid low. No grocery deliveries could be made. Nothing moved for days.
Meanwhile, I was carefree in Maui with little or no attachment to the holiday part of the season, and therefore no plans ruined, having a mytai Christmas eve with the other carefree grey-haired people under a roofed area under a tropical rain, letting rum internally massage my spirit into something a bit brighter. Lucky me.
Last night's flight coincided with a lull in the weather such that there was only a two hour delay instead of a two day delay. Lucky me again. I came into my peaceful apartment last night, about 1:30 AM, tried to not wake up any neighbours, felt my familiar surroundings around me once again, noted that all seemed well, that my neighbour had very kindly piled my mail neatly, had watered the plant, and had made the place look lived in, in exchange for the promise of a couple boxes of those decadent chocolate macadamia nuts. Lucky me yet again for having a wonderful neighbour. Hello place - how strangely familiar yet novel, both at the same time.
This morning I checked to see what damage had been inflicted on the diet plan - only one pound gained, in spite of a steady diet of chocolate macadamia nuts, eggs benedict and mytais. Not bad I think. And it's been very easy to climb right back onto the former plan again today. Yet more luck.
I walked to the grocery store this morning, about a half kilometer there and another back. I loved the coolness of the air - just as much as I loved the warmth in Maui. It isn't cold out - I mean, no need for hat or mitts, just cool against a face that is still warm from direct sun. The sky, while not blue, is definitely letting sun through in some places. Way less bird song. No wind. No roar of surf. Very hushed, bright, peaceful. "Bright" is a new adjective - snow makes a huge difference to the overall photon level. I could even see my shadow, rare in these foggy dark edgeless parts.. lucky lucky lucky.
Yes, I think it will be possible to get through this winter in pretty good shape for a change. I feel an inner congruence that I haven't sensed in a long long time. Luck, my old friend, welcome back into my life. More snow is expected, and no complete melt until February. Sounds crazy, I realize, but I sincerely hope that's true.
It seems the city literally ground to a halt. Everyone's holiday plans went awry. No one could travel in or out of the city, which was buried under two feet of snow delivered by sideways winds. The airport could only operate one runway. Taxi drivers who lived in areas that got socked in couldn't get out to go to work, so they just laid low. No grocery deliveries could be made. Nothing moved for days.
Meanwhile, I was carefree in Maui with little or no attachment to the holiday part of the season, and therefore no plans ruined, having a mytai Christmas eve with the other carefree grey-haired people under a roofed area under a tropical rain, letting rum internally massage my spirit into something a bit brighter. Lucky me.
Last night's flight coincided with a lull in the weather such that there was only a two hour delay instead of a two day delay. Lucky me again. I came into my peaceful apartment last night, about 1:30 AM, tried to not wake up any neighbours, felt my familiar surroundings around me once again, noted that all seemed well, that my neighbour had very kindly piled my mail neatly, had watered the plant, and had made the place look lived in, in exchange for the promise of a couple boxes of those decadent chocolate macadamia nuts. Lucky me yet again for having a wonderful neighbour. Hello place - how strangely familiar yet novel, both at the same time.
This morning I checked to see what damage had been inflicted on the diet plan - only one pound gained, in spite of a steady diet of chocolate macadamia nuts, eggs benedict and mytais. Not bad I think. And it's been very easy to climb right back onto the former plan again today. Yet more luck.
I walked to the grocery store this morning, about a half kilometer there and another back. I loved the coolness of the air - just as much as I loved the warmth in Maui. It isn't cold out - I mean, no need for hat or mitts, just cool against a face that is still warm from direct sun. The sky, while not blue, is definitely letting sun through in some places. Way less bird song. No wind. No roar of surf. Very hushed, bright, peaceful. "Bright" is a new adjective - snow makes a huge difference to the overall photon level. I could even see my shadow, rare in these foggy dark edgeless parts.. lucky lucky lucky.
Yes, I think it will be possible to get through this winter in pretty good shape for a change. I feel an inner congruence that I haven't sensed in a long long time. Luck, my old friend, welcome back into my life. More snow is expected, and no complete melt until February. Sounds crazy, I realize, but I sincerely hope that's true.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Last day
In a few more hours I will be sitting in Kahului airport waiting for my Westjet flight to begin. Then I'll wait several more hours inside the airplane waiting for it to land. That's going to be my life today. Other days are usually better. I must say, the last three weeks have been mostly splendid, from a nature/climate/weather point of view.
Here is what awaits me at the other end, from one of today's weathercams. Of course, it will be night time instead of daylight.
I'm interested in learning if I succumb to SAD this winter or if spending a whole pile of cash to get outside this physical fogbank will have helped me avoid the inner one.
Bye bye Hawaii. Mahalo for all the lovely warm sunny days, wavy palm trees, birds, flowers, photon showers and purple ocean gazing. Thanks for letting me experience several warm salty surf splashes and immersions. Thanks for the modest tan I'll have for at least a week after I get back. It's been a good slice.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Exercising permeable boundaries
Living for a few weeks in Maui has exposed my northern-acclimated brain to many new novel stimuli, one of which is the phenomenon of continuously open-to-the-outside glass slat windows. At first when the curtains billowed I would check to see if I had left the balcony door open, but no, it was closed, securely locked. In fact at first I didn't even realize there were banks of open slat windows along each side of the wall behind the drapes, that in fact one whole end of the condo was completely glass.
This makes for a bit of an adjustment, to constant fresh air and to continuous noise. The fresh air, I must admit, is very nice. Since the temperature is the same indoors and out, no problem. The noise took a bit more getting used to - not that people around here are noisy, with the exception, perhaps, of children having a marvelous time in the pool right outside - but I was not used to hearing every song from every bird, or every rustle of every bush as the breeze blows through. It's quite wonderful in many ways.
Fortunately, there is little or no crime here. I do keep the place locked, out of habit, and to minimize my own endogenous stress level, but I am very grateful that there is little to no exogenously caused stress around here. A very peaceful place indeed.
It occurred to me that I have yet to see any cats wandering around. I expect this goes a long way toward explaining why there are so many birds and why they all walk around as though they own the place. Truth is, they do.
I'm going to be a little sad to have to go back home on Saturday. I feel like I finally have arrived, not in Maui but to myself. Thanks in large part to Maui. Aloha, self. Peace.
This makes for a bit of an adjustment, to constant fresh air and to continuous noise. The fresh air, I must admit, is very nice. Since the temperature is the same indoors and out, no problem. The noise took a bit more getting used to - not that people around here are noisy, with the exception, perhaps, of children having a marvelous time in the pool right outside - but I was not used to hearing every song from every bird, or every rustle of every bush as the breeze blows through. It's quite wonderful in many ways.
Fortunately, there is little or no crime here. I do keep the place locked, out of habit, and to minimize my own endogenous stress level, but I am very grateful that there is little to no exogenously caused stress around here. A very peaceful place indeed.
It occurred to me that I have yet to see any cats wandering around. I expect this goes a long way toward explaining why there are so many birds and why they all walk around as though they own the place. Truth is, they do.
I'm going to be a little sad to have to go back home on Saturday. I feel like I finally have arrived, not in Maui but to myself. Thanks in large part to Maui. Aloha, self. Peace.
Monday, December 22, 2008
A touristy day in Lahaina, Maui Part III: my salute to the Hawai'ian flag
Ever since I got here I've seen lots of flags - Canadian, American, a blue one which I have yet to learn about, and one I learned about today, the Hawai'ian flag. Here is the history of the overthrow of the Hawai'ian monarchy by the US, from the point of view of the Hawai'ian indigenous people. In 1898, the Hawai'ian flag was lowered in a ceremony conducted by Arthur Waal, the postmaster, and a US flag was put up, right in the courtyard of Lahaina, where the banyan tree imported by the missionaries lives. In 1998, Hawai'ian pride rose, and the flag was resurrected at a ceremony marking the hundredth anniversary of its displacement.
This link depicts the flag's design and what is represented by it. This Wikipedia link mentions that
The story that goes with its return made my eyes wet, and still does, even now, hours and hours later.
First, we have the reluctant postmaster, ordered by his country to do some dominating behaviour to do with exchanging flags. So, he does. As graciously as possible.
He writes about the event in a way that suggests he was of very mixed feelings about the whole idea. He describes the solemnity of the Hawai'ian people as they see their flag come down. He feels for them. Here is a piece he wrote about it, after the fact. (Hopefully the picture will enlarge if you click on it, so you can read his words.
Long story short, he takes their flag back to California with him, and looks after it. Presumably he dies at some point, and his son is given the job of looking after it. Perhaps the son, Arthur Waal Jr., is in a clutter-busting mood one day, or perhaps he gets wind of Hawai'ian Pride starting up... in any event, he contacts the appropriate authorities, and offers them back their flag, the original.
Fast forward to 2002. New ceremony. A Hawai'ian woman, possibly a relative of the old royal family, in any case, a Kupuna, an esteemed elder, Pua Lindsey, makes a speech, is given the flag back, and in the process of accepting the flag, tenderly puts a lei on it, and thanks Mr. Waal for having taken such good care of it all this time.
The lei is no ordinary lei - it is a luxurious beautiful stunning lei, about an inch and a half thick, constructed entirely of soft golden feathers. Here is the picture of that, to the left.
If you click on the picture you will be able to see a larger version (I hope), and will be able to read it and go all mushy like I did.
There is something about someone laying a soft infinitely gorgeous feather lei "gently" on a tattered flag - the original flag that came down when their sovereignty, their nationhood, was rudely yanked away merely to smooth out business bumps - the kindness with which the flag (if not the sovereignty it symbolizes at least the physical object itself) was restored by this man, this son who may have noted his father's sense of helplessness, perhaps even sense of guilt, who enacts a ceremony that likely gave him as much personal peace of mind as it evidently gave this gracious group of people who received it back so lovingly... there is something about this gentle action toward a physical object that symbolizes a nation and its betrayal, at the same time, that reconciles opposites somehow, that is a forgiveness and a redemption.
Something about this event makes me feel something, powerfully and fully, gives me goose bumps, makes me think that members of the human race, in spite of its many warts, can do some really beautiful things for one another. It all has to do with that word, "gentle," which seems synonymous with "noble" somehow. Which is more noble?
1. To give back something that never was yours to begin with? Um... no... it is kind, but not noble.
2. To accept that stolen object and all the betrayal it represents, back, in a very gracious way? With a simple, gentle action that simultaneously forgives the representative of the wrong-doers, forgives those ancestors who were duped, demonstrates loving regard for everything once attached to the original meaning of the object? But that lets go of the past? That lays "nature" (symbolized by a beautiful splendid lei) on top of an artifact of a civilization that once was? Without animosity? Yes. In my mind, this is "noble."
"Gentle" is how I've striven to learn to do my hands-on work and have succeeded. It's how the weather is here (mostly). It's how the flowers are here. It's something that ties in with how that child danced at the luau. It's something that was once cultivated as a desirable trait in people. I think I feel nostalgic for it, and would like to see the human race get back to valuing it again. There is something tremendously powerful and for today, at least, in my mind, interchangeable about "gentleness" and "nobleness" that has been buried deep beneath "might is right" for way too long.
This link depicts the flag's design and what is represented by it. This Wikipedia link mentions that
"The flag of Hawaii (Hawaiian: Ka Hae HawaiÊ»i) is the official standard symbolizing Hawaii as a U.S. state, as it previously had as a kingdom, protectorate, republic, and territory. It is the only state flag of the United States to have been flown under so many various forms of government and the only to feature the Union Flag of the United Kingdom, a relic of the period Hawaii considered itself a British protectorate (1794–1843)."At the museum today, I saw the original, the one that had been taken down in 1898, by the postmaster of the day, Arthur Waal. I've included my little photo of it, framed and in the museum in Lahaina.
The story that goes with its return made my eyes wet, and still does, even now, hours and hours later.
First, we have the reluctant postmaster, ordered by his country to do some dominating behaviour to do with exchanging flags. So, he does. As graciously as possible.
He writes about the event in a way that suggests he was of very mixed feelings about the whole idea. He describes the solemnity of the Hawai'ian people as they see their flag come down. He feels for them. Here is a piece he wrote about it, after the fact. (Hopefully the picture will enlarge if you click on it, so you can read his words.
Long story short, he takes their flag back to California with him, and looks after it. Presumably he dies at some point, and his son is given the job of looking after it. Perhaps the son, Arthur Waal Jr., is in a clutter-busting mood one day, or perhaps he gets wind of Hawai'ian Pride starting up... in any event, he contacts the appropriate authorities, and offers them back their flag, the original.
Fast forward to 2002. New ceremony. A Hawai'ian woman, possibly a relative of the old royal family, in any case, a Kupuna, an esteemed elder, Pua Lindsey, makes a speech, is given the flag back, and in the process of accepting the flag, tenderly puts a lei on it, and thanks Mr. Waal for having taken such good care of it all this time.
The lei is no ordinary lei - it is a luxurious beautiful stunning lei, about an inch and a half thick, constructed entirely of soft golden feathers. Here is the picture of that, to the left.
If you click on the picture you will be able to see a larger version (I hope), and will be able to read it and go all mushy like I did.
There is something about someone laying a soft infinitely gorgeous feather lei "gently" on a tattered flag - the original flag that came down when their sovereignty, their nationhood, was rudely yanked away merely to smooth out business bumps - the kindness with which the flag (if not the sovereignty it symbolizes at least the physical object itself) was restored by this man, this son who may have noted his father's sense of helplessness, perhaps even sense of guilt, who enacts a ceremony that likely gave him as much personal peace of mind as it evidently gave this gracious group of people who received it back so lovingly... there is something about this gentle action toward a physical object that symbolizes a nation and its betrayal, at the same time, that reconciles opposites somehow, that is a forgiveness and a redemption.
Something about this event makes me feel something, powerfully and fully, gives me goose bumps, makes me think that members of the human race, in spite of its many warts, can do some really beautiful things for one another. It all has to do with that word, "gentle," which seems synonymous with "noble" somehow. Which is more noble?
1. To give back something that never was yours to begin with? Um... no... it is kind, but not noble.
2. To accept that stolen object and all the betrayal it represents, back, in a very gracious way? With a simple, gentle action that simultaneously forgives the representative of the wrong-doers, forgives those ancestors who were duped, demonstrates loving regard for everything once attached to the original meaning of the object? But that lets go of the past? That lays "nature" (symbolized by a beautiful splendid lei) on top of an artifact of a civilization that once was? Without animosity? Yes. In my mind, this is "noble."
"Gentle" is how I've striven to learn to do my hands-on work and have succeeded. It's how the weather is here (mostly). It's how the flowers are here. It's something that ties in with how that child danced at the luau. It's something that was once cultivated as a desirable trait in people. I think I feel nostalgic for it, and would like to see the human race get back to valuing it again. There is something tremendously powerful and for today, at least, in my mind, interchangeable about "gentleness" and "nobleness" that has been buried deep beneath "might is right" for way too long.
A touristy day in Lahaina, Maui Part II: Monster of the plant world
The apparently famous banyan tree in Lahaina was remarkable. My pictures of it did not do it justice - did not show it in true character, but I have a link here to a picture someone put up a few years ago, that shows it quite effectively. Bear in mind, a few years ago. It's a monster tree. It looks scary to me - like a giant monster, a ginormous octopus or something, growing ever larger, eagerly reaching out its tentacles to take over Maui completely some day if suddenly one day all the people were to disappear and there were no one there to keep it pruned.. an explosion in slow biological motion. Check out the lateral branch pattern, that would just keep going if people didn't keep it pruned. If one of those dangling bits touches earth, it grows into a new trunk. It is a roof over the entire park, the size of a small city block. If no one cut those back continuously, pretty soon the "tree" would be an impenetrable thicket. May there always be gardeners on Maui and may they keep that thing under control until the end of time.
Under the picture appears this explanation:
Here is a wikipedia link re: the "strangler fig" or banyan tree. Some reasons I can see for it becoming popular, even revered, are:
Under the picture appears this explanation:
"The famous Banyan Tree located in courthouse square in the center of Lahaina was brought to Maui from India when the tree was a mere eight-feet tall. It was planted to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Lahaina's first Christian mission. It has become the central point of town under which you'll find meetings, craft shows, entertainment and almost anything else you can imagine. The tree now reaches a height of about 50 feet and extends over 200 feet from side to side."
Here is a wikipedia link re: the "strangler fig" or banyan tree. Some reasons I can see for it becoming popular, even revered, are:
- presumably it provides figs of some hopefully edible kind,
- it would likely provide fast-growing and endless supplies of firewood for cooking,
- it would provide shade and habitat for innumerable creatures.
A touristy day in Lahaina, Maui Part I
Today I had some energy to waste - such a luxury. I decided to be adventuresome and take the bus to Lahaina to see the Banyan tree. I saw it, and saw a great deal more as well (more about it later).
Took lots of pictures but most of them are pretty much a big yawn. Found a museum in the "Old Courthouse" that had one room devoted to the whaling industry, and taking photos was not prohibited, so I took shots of this and that. There was plenty of rusted out whaling and sailing paraphenalia there, and framed photos of how the blubber was removed from whales then cooked ... all kind of saddening, so I moved along. On one wall was an actual flipper or something, from a whale. (There was no explanatory sign that I could find.)
I was somewhat surprised to learn whales had hair on their flippers. I mean, I realize they are mammals, but I thought they did not do hair. They don't do hair the way seals do fur. It made me wonder if dolphins have hair.
Hair increases mechanoreception. It must make whales (at least this species, which I think are humpback) more sensitive to both their own movement and the movement of the environment against them. I've attached a picture of the whale part with hair.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Solstice Greetings V
At dawn today the surf was this beautiful lavender color again, while the sea itself was a burnished turquoise color.Time to go make some more Vitamin D now, while the sun is still over the pool. What I like to do is let the sun pierce my eyelids, just for short little periods - it feels so good. Then when I put my hands over my eyes, I can see colors inside them (visual cortex waking up, or else just ectopic firing) that I never see in Vancouver - deep indigos and violets and cobalt blues. Even deep greens, although there are lots of those in Vancouver, so they don't seem as novel.
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