The incident soon becomes the past and then history. Some try to craft the incident by bending the facts and the dialogue into an unrecognized form. Their lust for control grasps and attempts a broken view. There is a retroactive force that will call into question every past and present attempt at victory by these rulers. As flowers turn toward the sun, the past will strive to turn towards a sun which is rising in the sky of history.
The Challenge of Symbols
Really, it’s today
These shackles of sameness
The constant unceasing drone
To be so normal and plain
No celebration of difference
Diversity a crime
Cars gray, white or black
Handheld screens
Feeding blindness
As words no longer rhyme.
Who is Lord Huron?
A new release out today from Lord Huron – The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1. They used to be called albums or LPs, then CDs, now they are bundles of new songs to stream.
They are an Indie rock – Americana group with a difference. They have this full dreamy sound. If they were a painting they would be a Sam Francis colourful swirling vibrant landscape full of drips and splashes. They are playful with their melodies.
But they aren’t coming to Vancouver, only as far north as Seattle in October.
Music is sometimes a mood that blends with a point in time and the context we are situated in at a moment. For a brief period it breaks the drudgery and anxiety of a day. We become part of that music and the music becomes something more than us.
Cultural Vandalism
How can anything like this happen? Devoid of reasonable or critical thinking what will be next? This article brings a necessary voice on why this action is cultural vandalism.
Sometimes books just ‘click’
Reading Airplane Mode by Shahnaz Habib. Just about finished.
What a wonderful book. One would think of the typical traveller’s journal discussion but this book is not that. She moves travel into various domains that are expressions of concern and also delight.
As Europeans have used the term ‘discovered’ in their description of landing first on some land mass Shahnaz puts the term in to proper context. Pseudodiscovery. Europeans didn’t arrive first, someone was already there. You Europeans only discovered a way to colonize a culture by describing yourselves in such an elevated term.
From a unique Indian-Asian view this book a refreshing and will change the way you view your next journey out of your neighbourhood.
Culture
Wondering about it here.
St. Patrick’s Day
Every year my Irish cousin in Dublin sends us a St. Patrick’s Day card. Reminds us to wear green. This year the envelope’s postage stamp came as a surprise.
Canada these last few weeks
A very interesting view of what has been happening here.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0028v4x?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile
The Walled whatever
This is an excellent post that discusses our error in calling these large platforms walled gardens. They are anything but a garden. It is well worth the read. Joan Westenberg is an excellent writer.
Some excerpts:
“Direct distribution was the next casualty, as platforms and algorithms increasingly hide and punish the sharing of hyperlinks”
“Personal websites matter – now, more than ever – because we can see, clearly, with our own eyes, what happens when a handful of companies control and own the medium and the message.”
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/why-personal-websites-matter-more-than-ever/
And is this the beginning?
Really need to know more about this.
Something changed
Seems the world has changed, abruptly.
Byung-Chul Han has written “Without hope there can be no departure or revolution.” Erich Fromm writes “Is evolution driven by unconscious hope?”
If the constant communication of untruths creates angst, disharmony and chaos where will hope reside? We need to pause, to refresh and let those notions of hope take form. Hope resides in ourselves, with others and in our communities. Partake in the positive. We can move beyond the current situation with hope.
Vancouver Public Library and a kaffiyeh
“After a handful of complaints about pro-Palestinian symbols at library branches this summer, leadership enforced the policies and asked staff who were not Palestinian to stop wearing symbols including kaffiyehs and watermelon pins, which show support”
The Tyee.
My kaffiyeh was purchased in Jordan. It is a beautiful garment and very comfortable. Whether it shows support for Palestine will be an assumption of the viewer of my wearing the kaffiyeh. They are welcome to ask me. I would ask the leadership of VPL to visit the Middle East and see that more nationalities wear a kaffiyeh than just the Palestinians. Your conclusion of support hinges on ignorance.
The Christmas letter
Seems with the post office strike there will be a lack of sending and receiving Christmas cards and letters. It was a waning tradition at this point anyway.
So today when I received a Christmas “letter” from a friend via email it was a little different. No stamp to look at or try to see the postmark to calculate the number of days in transit; nothing of colour just a return to black and white. Then the message, and it was a joy to read it.
One forgets that the written word holds meaning and imagination, that the stories that are crafted create such wonderful memories and meanings. Not limited to 254 or 500 characters the words wove what 2024 was like and what 2025 might look like. It spoke of those things you knew about and gave you something to ponder about that you hadn’t heard of. Above all when you finished reading you knew this holiday season had begun and all that would happen is as exciting as the first one your remember.
Whatever the term you use, whatever you celebrate at the end of this month, may those family and friends be as close and as memorable as they always have been.
The Plague – Albert Camus
Pestilence is in fact very common, but we find it hard to believe in a pestilence when it descends upon us. There have been as many plagues in the world as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared. Dr Rieux was unprepared, as were the rest of the townspeople, and this is how one should understand his reluctance to believe. One should also understand that he was divided between anxiety and confidence. When war breaks out people say: ‘It won’t last, it’s too stupid.’ And war is certainly too stupid, but that doesn’t prevent it from lasting. Stupidity always carries doggedly on, as people would notice if they were not always thinking about themselves. In this respect, the citizens of Oran were like the rest of the world, they thought about themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they did not believe in pestilence.
Fukuyama had something
From the Literary Review of Canada November issue. I think this article by James Brooke-Smith sums up where we are today. It seems a reality that is very clear has now emerged.
“Checkmate against Fukuyama, then? Well, maybe check, but certainly not mate. In fact, some of the most intriguing sections of The End of History and the Last Man are the ones in which Fukuyama speculated on the possible conditions that might bring about the end of the end of history, not least because they foreshadowed much of what is happening today. Even back in the triumphalist atmosphere of the early ’90s, Fukuyama recognized that the principal threat to liberalism is economic inequality. He predicted that any future alternative to liberal democracy would emerge either from “those who for cultural reasons experience persistent economic failure” or from “those who are inordinately successful at the capitalist game”— what we would today call the economically “left behind” and the global billionaire class. These two groups exist at the radical edges of the liberal order because they have the most to gain from its discontinuation. They have already proven fertile ground for post-liberal, even anti-democratic political ideas, from far‑right authoritarianism to the secessionist fantasies of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who dream of a purer, more heroic form of capitalism in their offshore enclaves and future Martian colonies.”
Biking
Nothing really changes
Am only on Facebook to follow family and friends but saw a post by the Port of Vancouver about a proposed vehicle overpass in Burnaby. The CN trains stop traffic a number of times a day at a crossing and it creates traffic jams. They present their proposal in the happiest of terms as a benefit to the commuter.
When you look at the map for the proposal you do see another aspect that isn’t mentioned, that closing that crossing will give the railway the ability to build another track and stage their trains for delivery to the North Shore. Great benefit for CN as they have done this last year with the tracks at the Sperling bike/pedestrian overpass.
When I posted that possibility, from seeing the map, some individual starts the diatribe about who cares about that. You quickly realize why you don’t need to comment on anything given this level of discussion.
School again
Looks like ‘summer’ is soon to end for those returning to school. You know this next week will be busy with stores full of juvenile shoppers looking for everything. The difference this year is that so many school districts are restricting the use of smart phones. There will be some backlash from the students but what will be the voice of the teachers? Will it affect the social life of so many young people (really)? Technology sometimes needs to be told when and where it is suitable. It doesn’t have a carte blanche ticket to anywhere and anytime.
Literature
If someone were to ask me what my current interests were I would have to condense it to one – literature. What writing does to your mind is incredible. How one’s imagination can create those vivid pictures that are painted with the written word. The sentences are always painting. The better writing creates such an intricate world. Reading gives us the ability to create but it comes with effort.
Art is the need to create; but in its essence..it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands. R. W. Emerson, Essays 1841
Tinfoiling 