December 1 2004 - world AIDS day

on a dark snowy December morning, Bhopal seems closer; scarier; more real. we move more slowly,
we have more time to ponder.

today we need to be kind, gentle.  it's all that's left in a torn world. we have everything
required to do so. it's surfacing as the only power we can wield. can it be an inherent right,
an obligation, a moral duty. God only knows that the suffer-ing can only pray to be late for
work in their warm car in a snowstorm...

perhaps my truths come out fuzzy but people recognize a sense of meaning in them
that their own sensibilities can muster. they know the snow does something but they're not sure why
nor how.

 

November 23, 2004

Notes from last night's Massey lecture by Ronald Wright
Lecture I: Gauguin's Questions    (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?)

THERE is an assumption that civilized people behave better than barbarians and that progress always moves forward.
Myths in our society are so fraught with meaning In the 70's we thought DDT was so great Ever since the Chinese invented gunpowder from petard to high explosives; however when the bang can blow up the world, we've progressed too much. "If man does not put an end to war, war will put an end to mankind" (author, ?) How long can our biosphere handle the rapid changes in the environment? it's about SCALE, it would have been able to handle the slow usage of fossil fuels but not at the rate we are now However the Devil of Scale has been with us since the stone age: The chap who figured out how to send the whole herd over the cliff might have been thought of as brilliant; however, they lived for a while then starved..."held the nuclear genie at bay but with the new tools we are developing we cannot predict the outcomes... biological weapons, cyber genetics etc. etc." Gauguin's questions: Where do we come from - if it is not true that a divine human fell, then something about apes, missed that but the audience laughed heartily
the geology in the bible didn't make sense but the Maya and another race were the first to know that time was more vast than thought. So and so determined that on October 23, 4004 at 9AM Man was created by the trinity. In the 1830's Charlese lyle published the principles of geology showing that the earth was 10X older than what the bible wrote. Under Queen Victoria, the earth aged very quickly. In 1863, 1871, Darwin published 'The descent of Man' Thomas Huxley, would rather acknowledge an ape for his grandfather than clergymen careless with the truth
By Gauguin, the first 2 questions were beginning to be answered. we leveraged evolution with VOICE. the human word orders our chaos.
clothing, shelter - moved beyond our ecology that made us and began to Make us. nature led a few apes into the environment and left them with the resources to ... collapsing of time: from the first chipped stone to manufacture of Iron took 3,000,000 years.

From the manufacture of Iron to the first nuclear bomb took only 3,000
100,000 years for new style cultural changes cause faster cultural changes
10,000 then thousands, and now, cultural changes happen within a lifetime.
the skills and morays from childhood are outdated by age 30 but i digress
the generation that saw fire maybe, but in general, most people didn't see changes in their lifetime.
apes, whales, elephants, have some culture but WE are the only ones where culture threatens to outstrip our resources after homoerectus the path is muddy experts can't agree - out of africa school - debate most heated about Neanderthal,  paleo-racism, they are always pictured as hairy and ugly but in fact we have no proof they were hairy at all.

Neanderthal means new man dale, a new man in the dale, the French thought they were German cause they had a thick skull. in 1959 origin of the Species published, solved a lot.
The MISSING LINK:
the new man fit the right role at the right time - we ARE animals but the fossils didn't help.
they are the first who buried their dead with flowers - brain bigger than ours!
23$ Ideas CD 44$
transcripts 416 205 7367

online forum:
https://www.anansi.ca/forum.cfm?forum_id=6&forum_view=index&list=1

 

 

 

 

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November 12, 2004
what's the point of using 'professionally' sounding jargon like 'basically' when you follow every sentence with 'Uhhhhh'

_____________________________________________________________________________

from_______________________________________July 15 2004

9:30am
on a heavy rainy summer day, a group of people from many countries sit on the 3rd floor with an urban view of the Université of Montréal sitting on the south side of the mountain. it's smothered in fog, and one needs to know it's there to pick it out in the haze.
10:01am
some of the fog has lifted and the impressive white tower is now in clear view
10:20am revelation
many people don't actually MIND sitting in a classroom wasting their time. it doesn't bother them that they are being prevented from doing something more productive or effecient. amazing.
12:00
thick fog returns over the building.
i realize that fog makes me happy because it reminds me of summer vacations, which were spent mostly in fog.
1:30PM
now the building is gone completely and if i never knew it, it never existed. i could be in Paris, it could be Sacre Coeur. it's the kind of light heavy rain that doesn't really make you wet but you can see it falling and from inside it looks like thin snow. and the traffic seems louder although the air is heavy.
2:00
i work for a phone company.
u de m. is back
2:30
one day, people with any bodily hair, including on their heads, will look as unclean and unkempt as long armpit hair does now on women. everyone will be bald, not by evolution, but by choice. hair will be gratuitous.

 

 

 

Nov.1

what would i want her to read here ?
how much i love her ? 
oh the huge irony in only understanding a mother's love once you become one yourself.
i would tell her that she is who she is and who she is is nearly me. 
born confident, directed, outgoing and assertive, she will direct her destiny as i have mine,
and end up where she is meant to be. 
this means that she was meant to be.
and if what was meant to be does not come to be before me, 
she will continue to direct it.
this, i know for certain and for sure.

 

 

Oct. 21

you need a few good weirdos to make a great city, but not too many.

 

 

Oct. 05

met a guy the other day who thinks of life as terribly hard. 
when i pressed him for why, it turns out he simply feels he doesn't have enough time for himself. 
I don't have enough time for myself but I'd be hard-pressed to conclude life is hard. 
life is lots of things; short, stressful, tiring, mind-boggling, harried, but hard?

hard is losing your family in a terrorist attack
hard is being chased through swamps by Hutus who are out to kill you with a machete
hard is being left homeless cold and starving in a cesspool of slime after flash floods

i don't understand some people.
 

 

sept. 21

Searching for the American Dream

So this guy paints his old Caddie as a Canadian Flag with 'Looking for the American Dream' on the back and drives 27,000 miles across the US in search of the meaning of the American Dream. Along the way he meets all kinds of interesting people, many of whom roll down their car windows to shout comments to him. 
After listening to his conversation with Shelagh Rogers on CBC yesterday morning, I conclude that in large part, the American Dream is simply the freedom of spirit required to roll down your window and speak to the person in the car next to you.

 

august 17

a series of Independant Observations

my God, she's a SuperStar
moral of the story: DON'T GO TO SEE PEOPLE WHEN THEY'RE DRAGGING THEMSELVES OUT OF THE GUTTER,
GO TO SEE THEM IN THE PEAK OF THEIR CAREER
she reminded me of janis joplin or joni mitchell; timeless; talented beyond her years
watching her move so slowly, so delicately, so emphatically, was like watching a dance
i'd be disappointed if i made a mistake in my favorite song - it would bother me the rest of the show - which is one reason why it's her on stage and not me - why is SHE, there, she, not him, not her, but SHE? 
it's not very often that i see someone who i think is better than i am
and then the drums came out of the big red onion on the hobbit stage

 

 

august 16

elvis died 27 years ago.

what's it all about she asked?

two things, says i:

1- waiting for the lady and baby to completely cross the road
and
2- emails like this: "I have now one interesting meeting this week in my Outlook! Lunch with Louise and a glass of wine./Katya"



vacation photos soon.

 

july 28

what's to say that has not been said? 
everything, my way.

july 02

during a power outage in the rare sweltering July heat of 2004, mcdonald's employees toss a football over the expressway.

 

june 29


in the first half of 2003, Toyota sold 520,991 cars in the US alone.
imagine how many tubes of toothpaste  were thrown away in that time?

but i digress.

 

june 25


i guess most books could be summed up in one sentance or two. 

 

june 23


dispite the mild instability fleeting moments of panic and doubt associated with our recent house purchase and move,
dramatic change like this always injects a vibrant life force into me. this brings about renewed passion, focus, creativity,
and a general overall improvement in my psyche...
as is 

before

nearly two years after a small child dies, is the first time that i really understood what it means to liken life
to a dream.