A Crafted Life

Reposted with some edits from May 2009

During a visit Zak I fell into discussions about deeper issues as we worked. The practice of Buddhism is a frequent topic when we get together. As practiced by most Westerners Buddhism is a discipline, rather than a religion, since there is no worship and no affirmation of a deity.

And, in fact this is apparently exactly what the Buddha in mind. He was not concerned with religion or the hereafter. When some of his students came to him, saying they were leaving because he had not told them what happened after death, he asked, "Did I ever say I would address the question of the hereafter?"

"No, Master, you did not," they answered.

"No," he replied. "I only said I would teach you to deal with suffering, and it is suffering that leads you to worry about the hereafter."

As I see it (and I am no scholar) my practice of Buddhism serves to discipline body and mind, encourages me to live a useful life, and helps as I struggle to grasp the nature of reality. By the time you are in your late 60s and have lost grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, children, siblings, cousins, friends, co-workers and colleagues you begin to realize that we are all temporary manifestations of energy in an unending dance of cosmic energy. We wink in and out like lightening bugs on a summer night.

When I grasped the nature of reality, and accepted the nature of birth and death I found a visceral sense of being at one with the universe. I think that is what is referred to as enlightenment. It's not some sanctified state of bliss, or any kind of holiness. It is knowing to your core that this is the moment you have now, and with it you build your life as a carpenter builds a house with wood and a box of nails. It is the knowledge that we create our own reality. We find (and we see) what we look for.

You can fret over past hurts, wrongs and anxieties or worry about what tragedy may come tomorrow. You can spend your time struggling to control others or in amassing things which mean nothing. When you bang your life together with greed, selfishness or resentment the character you build is as plain to the onlooker as is a house thrown together by a disinterested carpenter. The character of the craftsman is revealed by the work. Even a simple house is beautiful when crafted with care.

I've come to feel that the more you attempt to explain the peace that comes with living in the moment the less understandable it is. You cannot absorb it from someone else, buy it or attach yourself to it. You can only learn it by practicing it. You practice by attending to the moment, and by letting go of your expectations that it is someone else's responsibility to provide you with happiness. You practice it by bringing your thoughts back to the now and living in the moment at hand with discipline and responsibility.

Too Many Days Like This One

When will this insanity stop?

My cousin Nan said we don't have the problem with mass shootings in Canada like they do in the US because Canadians are just nicer people. I beg to differ. We've had a half dozen school shootings in the past 40 years, but only two which resulted in multiple deaths, one in 1989 when a mentally ill former student decided competition from women students was the reason he had failed his courses, and shot 28 female students, killing 14 before killing himself. The other was in 1992 in which four people died, shot by a former professor who had been a colleague in the engineering dept. But in 110 years 28 people (students, faculty and staff) have died in school shootings in Canada. Most of these were single fatalities and the result of someone settling a grudge or a dispute with a gun.

The USA and Canada are very alike in culture and demographics. We basically have the same early British and French roots, and demographically we have much the same immigrant populations. Our populations watch the same TV shows, see the same movies, play the same video games.

This "niceness" argument can be refuted by looking at the gun homicide rates in each country. In 1975 Canada's gun homicide rate was 3.03 per 100,000, about the same as the gun homicide rate in the USA between 2008-2010, which was 2.98 per 100,000. In 1975 Canada had dozens of different gun laws on the books, none of which had much impact on crime or gun homicides. But in 1977 Canada put gun controls into place that required a firearms acquisition certificate (FAC) in order to purchase any firearm, and introduced controls on the selling of ammunition. Applicants were required to pass a basic criminal record check before receiving the FAC.

Since 1977 gun homicides have steadily dropped and are now down 80% from what they were before gun controls, to 0.76 per 100,000. Let's put that into perspective, in the USA=over 10,000 people murdered with a gun in 2010, in Canada, 170.

Hardly any guns are used in the commission of crimes (like robbery) in Canada, 94 of those 170 deaths were gang related. We had four gun homicides in Calgary in 2012, a city of over a million people. One of the four gun deaths here last year was a young woman was shot at a gang party where someone decided to settle a drug score and she got in the way. The rest were as a result of domestic violence, which is surely one of the best arguments for not having a gun at hand in the home.

The second place we differ is this: Hate speech and hate crime are not legally tolerated in Canada. Freedom of speech does not extend to the denigration of others, nor acts of hate, based on race, religion, culture, gender, sexual orientation etc. I have heard words come from the mouths of American politicians in this last campaign that would get them charged with hate speech in Canada.

Canada is a country of immigrants (I am one of them). In the 1970s the government adopted a policy of promoting acceptance of cultural diversity. Immigrants are encouraged to retain their ethnic identity, language and traditions while adopting Canadian social norms and cultural values.

Thus while it's encouraged that immigrants retain their religion, traditions and cultures, they are not allowed to bring their homeland's oppression of other religions, traditions and cultures with them. It's expected that everyone will live peacefully side by side with their neighbour.

Now, I was born early in the morning, but not yesterday morning, so I am not so naive as to imagine there is no prejudice here, no sad little White boy groups who think they are somehow superior because they are melanin challenged, or because they uphold "Cross and Crown" like weapons, but society as a whole does not tolerate such behaviour openly. When a White "supremacy" group announced a rally in Edmonton last year hundreds of protestors showed up to refute them. The few "supremacists" turned tail and ran as soon as they saw the waiting crowd. The KKK received the same reception a few years ago in Calgary when they came up from Idaho to "recruit". Faced with an actively hostile crowd they retreated rather than recruited.

Compassion is seen as a value here, and is expressed though the provision of universal medical care, and constant pressure exerted on the government to extend fair treatment to disadvantaged and vulnerable populations. Not that this is always successful mind you, but laws are set up to protect the citizen more than the corporate structure, and wealth is more equally distributed than in the US. Banking and mortgage regulations kept the Canadian real estate market from the chaos seen in the US market, and the resulting fiscal crash, and while the tax burden is somewhat heavier it is more equally distributed, and it includes medical and social benefits available across all strata of society.

Calgary made a decision a few years ago to eradicate homelessness and is well on its way to providing decent shelter for those who are hard to house, the mentally ill, the addict, the mentally challenged, elderly veterans, abused women, those who have for one reason or another found themselves living on the street without options. With it, counseling, a monthly income, job training if appropriate. Above all, dignity and compassion. Yes it costs money, but it costs society to ignore these people too. A society hardens its heart at a price.

In America the GOP has politically prospered by fostering hatred, division and paranoia for the past 40 years. The politicians who talk most loudly about individual freedoms are those who work the most aggressively to curb them and who work hardest to divide people along racial, cultural and class lines. Their list of who to heap contempt on; the "welfare queen", the unemployed bum, the 47%, the union lackey, the greedy pensioner, the sick child who needs medical care, the medicare leech, the illegal immigrant coming to suck at the freely flowing government teat, their litany of who to hate today goes on and on - everyone but "us" - you and me, especially me.

While right-wing American politicians cry we need to go back to the "good old days" when the Bible was (supposedly) the law of the land (it never was), what they really want to go back to is a time when the only power lay in the hands of the wealthiest, and everyone else had to knuckle under extreme privation or starve. They prey on paranoia fostered by 40 years of fear-mongering, of building an "us against them" mentality that has Americans patrolling their neighbourhoods with guns, shooting teens armed with a bag of candy bought from the corner store, and countless others armed to the teeth against an invasion of - who?

The mother of the mentally ill teenager who killed 26 small children and their teachers in an elementary school this week owned all these weapons because she had bought into the political paranoia that the government was going to collapse and there would be an "invasion". By whom one might wonder? Six year olds?

She knew her boy was unstable. A man who babysat him, even as a 10 year-old, had been cautioned never to turn his back or allow the boy to get out of sight. So what was she thinking giving him access to firearms of any kind? She paid the price every gun owner is far more at risk of paying than the person who does not have a gun in the home. A gun in the home increases the risk of a gun death, by homicide, suicide or accident twenty-two times over a home in which there is no firearm. Unfortunately she was not the only victim of her poor judgement and paranoia.

At some point Americans have to take their heads out of their political assholes. No, guns don't kill people, but people with guns do. If these crazed mass shooters had access only to a kitchen knife or a 2 x 4 they wouldn't have gotten far, because you have to get up close and personal to do damage with that kind of weapon, and none of them are that brave.

Any coward can shoot a six-year-old from 10 feet away, or a stranger from 250 feet away, or 10 strangers, or 50, with your automatic weapon. On the same day a deranged man went into a school in China with a knife and attacked a class of 22 kindergarten age children. He injured four before he was stopped. All will recover. Not one of those children died.

But in the end, people are people. Canadians and Americans. Just like children can be brought up to be well-mannered, considerate and compassionate, they can also be brought up to be selfish, brutal and cruel. Depends on the parents and their peers, and what is expected and tolerated by society.

One man at the scene of this latest shooting said it best, "To all those who love your guns, I pray that you love your children more."

The Most Astounding Fact

Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?" This is his answer.

Gravity, Thou art a heartless bitch!

All around a most unsettling week. Where to start, small and work up, big and work down or sequentially? Let's go sequential, which begins wonderfully, with a lovely red early Christmas gift from our two sons. It went like this, "We are buying you a new car, what do you want?"

Well. That was a promising beginning.

A week ago today we headed for the new car store and after the usual to-and-froing and licenses and deciding on warranties and what-not on Monday we had this bright new red KIA Soul to drive home. Sweet. We have named it Salvador in honour of our late and beloved big red boy.

The timing of the KIA couldn't have been better. Tuesday at noon we had appointments at the specialist's dental clinic in the regional hospital all the way across town. We zipped across town in good time and I dropped Tony off at the front door 15 minutes prior to the appt and went to find a parking spot. Unfortunately there were no parking spots. The parkade was full.

I was directed to the parkade south of the medical school which is a four block walk away, and requires driving back into traffic, down the road, and negotiating a labyrinth of back roads before accessing the parkade. I drove around and around and around inside for 25 minutes waiting for a spot to open up. Finally parked, and hiked with my cane through the maze of hallways in the medical school to get to the hospital. The dental clinic is on the farthest end, so from the time I dropped Tony off until I reached the clinic was 45 minutes.

I walked in the door and the receptionist told me my husband had fallen down a flight of concrete stairs and was in the trauma unit with a possible skull fracture, broken bones and bleeding. I was wanted in the emergency department as quickly as possible.

The emergency department is in the opposite end of the hospital from the dental clinic. There is construction everywhere. The hallway to ER is blocked. I had to hunt around until I found a detour. I finally arrived and they said they don't know where he is, he hasn't arrived yet. (WTF?)

I sat there shaking for three or four minutes when about 10 people and a gurney came trundling down the hall, and on that gurney was my extremely bloody husband. I guess if you are going to fall down the stairs a hospital is a good place to do it. There were a couple of medical staff on the stairs with him when he fell, so he got immediate care. But they didn't move him until they'd stabilized his neck and spine and were at least trying to stop the bleeding which was coming from 20 cm (8 inch) gash on his head, where he had a lump the size of a baseball.

He had fabulous care, with a CT scan, full x-rays of head, neck, spine, arms, legs, all kinds of lab work, cardiac tests… He actually passed out on the stairs and tumbled down, since he was unconscious he didn't even try to protect himself, so he had no "protective" injuries but he broke his collarbone where he and a step collided and he is a mass of huge bruises from head to toe. It took 12 stitches to close the head wound.

About eight hours later I had to get the car from the parkade. It was cold, pitch dark, the medical school access was locked, so I had to walk several blocks through the snow (no sidewalks, no lights, no crosswalks and no signs) hunting for the parkade. By the time I found it I was so tired and stressed out I could not read the instructions on the machine which tells you how to pay for your parking. Finally a woman came along and seeing my distress asked if I needed help. I told her I hadn't a clue how to use the machine, so she did it for me, gave me my change, and told me how to redeem the ticket.

There were no signs saying how to get back to the hospital so I asked a policeman for directions. (He and his cruiser were in the middle of the road.) He told me I needed to turn right, and after doing that and going all the way round I realized I had actually needed to turn left. I retraced my steps and when I finally found my way back to the hospital, I missed the emergency pickup entrance (no lights, no signs) and had to drive all the way around again. By the time I found Tony and picked him up I was ready to head for the nearest bridge and jump.

The good news is that, after four days he is in slightly less pain than he was, and he is able to move around more easily. I am still shaking.

So, good news, new red car. Bad news, husband learns gravity is a heartless bitch.

We can change the world - we already have

This week's "super-storm", which hardly even qualified as a hurricane as far as wind speed is concerned, but which inundated New Jersey, Manhattan and other parts of the Eastern Seaboard, appears to have slapped a few people upside the head and made them realize that climate change is not just a "Liberal" conspiracy but a real threat.

No more talk about 50 or 100 years in the future when the world heats up, 2012 was the hottest year on record, after 2011, 2010 and 2009. We've had massive crop failures, and food prices are rising dramatically as a result.

How long are we going to continue to keep our heads in the sand? Time to think seriously about instituting energy policies which support the 350 Initiative, a worldwide movement to reduce the CO2 level in the atmosphere back to 350 parts per million, a point where we can avoid global climate catastrophe.

Green energy, wind, solar and water power, combined with conservation, new building codes which require new homes to be energy self-sufficient, and the kind of resolve that saw us through two world wars could see this problem solved in the next 25 years. Do we have a choice?

[David Attenborough]
We are a flexible and innovative species and we have the capacity to adapt and modify our behavior. Now, we most certainly have to do so if we're to deal with climate change. It's the biggest challenge we have yet faced.

[Bill Nye]
The same thing that keeps the Earth warm
CO2!
May make the Earth too warm
It holds in heat

Methane, Chloroflourocarbons, water vapor and
Carbon dioxide - they all trap heat

[Isaac Asimov]
It is important that the world get together
To face the problems which attack us as a unit

[Richard Alley]
The evidence is clear

[Nye]
The globe is getting too warm

[Alley]
We can avoid climate catastrophies
We can do this

[Nye]
We can change the world

[Alley]
Science offers us answers
To these huge challenges]

[Nye]
It's one global ecosystem

[Alley]
We can do this

[Nye]
We can change the world

Every single thing every one of us does
Affects everybody all over the world
It's one global ecosystem

Warm, wet, cold or dry
Climates all start in the sky

When the C02 is high, the temperature is high
Moving together in lock step
When the C02 is low, the temperature is low
Moving together

(refrain)

[Richard Alley]
Our use of fossil fuels for energy is pushing us towards a climate
unlike any seen in the history of civilization

Adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
Warms things up
The rise in C02
Comes from burning fossil fuels

When you burn them, add oxygen
That makes C02 that goes in the air
We're reversing the process by which they formed

[Asimov]
We're talking about something
That affects the entire Earth
Problems that transcend nations

(refrain)

Nothing's really as it seems

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.~ Groucho Marx

[Morgan Freeman]
So, what are we really made of?
Dig deep inside the atom
and you'll find tiny particles
Held together by invisible forces

Everything is made up
Of tiny packets of energy
Born in cosmic furnaces

[Frank Close]
The atoms that we're made of have
Negatively charged electrons
Whirling around a big bulky nucleus

[Michio Kaku]
The Quantum Theory
Offers a very different explanation
Of our world

[Brian Cox]
The universe is made of
Twelve particles of matter
Four forces of nature

That's a wonderful and significant story

[Richard Feynman]
Suppose that little things
Behaved very differently
Than anything big

Nothing's really as it seems
It's so wonderfully different
Than anything big

The world is a dynamic mess
Of jiggling things
It's hard to believe

[Kaku]
The quantum theory
Is so strange and bizzare Even Einstein couldn't get his head around it

[Cox]
In the quantum world
The world of particles
Nothing is certain
It's a world of probabilities

(refrain)

[Feynman]
It's very hard to imagine
All the crazy things
That things really are like

Electrons act like waves
No they don't exactly
They act like particles
No they don't exactly

[Stephen Hawking]
We need a theory of everything
Which is still just beyond our grasp
We need a theory of everything, perhaps
The ultimate triumph of science

(refrain)

[Feynman]
I gotta stop somewhere
I'll leave you something to imagine

Where *did* I put the flaming torches?

If more of us did this, fewer of us would end up old wrecks at 65 and 70. :) Don't worry, the subtitles are in Hebrew, but it's in English.

Where do I start? I have a tennis ball....

A little light Sanskrit

There's a word in Sanskrit, dukkha. It means suffering, the inability to adapt to change, and the inability to accept the impermanence of life and everything around us.

Of course being human we primarily think of ourselves as experiencing dukkha, but in the last couple of days I've seen something that's made me more aware that we are not alone in clinging to a past, and it makes me sad, because I know this is a story played out thousands of times a day, and probably many more.

Last February we lost our elderly cat Salvador, who was a boisterous and outrageous personality. It is no exaggeration to say that we are still mourning the absence of our enormous red "boy". The grief is still acutely painful at times, and for those who think that's over the top - well - that doesn't make it any less so. And if you don't understand it's because it wasn't your relationship, and the hole is not in your heart.

It was really only a matter of a couple of days after Sal's death that I knew I couldn't live without a cat, which is how Smoky came into our lives. The woman we got him from said he'd belonged to her neighbours, who grew tired of him, or bored or busy or whatever… and simply "threw him away" in the middle of an Alberta winter. She asked permission to take him in and find a new home for him, which is how he came to us.

From the beginning it was clear he prefers men and he absolutely loves our older son. When Ian arrives Smoky is all over him. Yesterday our younger son Zak arrived for his first visit since we got Smoky and Smoky spent almost the entire day and evening in Zak's arms. It was clear he was totally smitten. He spent the night sleeping at Zak's side, and now, when Zak is out with friends, Smoky is curled up in Zak's suitcase, on Zak's dirty clothes.

And it occurred to me that Smoky is in much the same position as we are. He's suffering the same grief that we're feeling. We're attentive, loving, replacements for a young man he loved very much, and who discarded him without the least thought for the pain and unsatisfied longing that will never ever be resolved in that stout and loving little heart. Their separation was as final for him as the death which parted us from Sal, but at least we understand old age, pain and death. There is no way for a small and completely devoted cat to understand how the person he loves could be so callous.

But there is this. Grief is impermanent too. We comfort each other, and in time our wounds will heal.

Richard Feynman - The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out

Some people are Beatles fans, here's one of the stars who could count me as a fan. Wish he was still around.

The two things people most want to know

When I watched this the first time I thought it was a hoot. The second time I watched it struck me differently. Mary Maxwell is 72, and though I'm certain a lot of what she said was for comic effect, her remarks seem more likely to apply to today's 85 year-old than the 70s crowd. But then she is speaking to an audience of people who provide professional caregiving services for the elderly in their homes. They aren't there to hear about how the newer generation of "old folks" are aging slower than their parents and grandparents, assuming they have taken care of themselves.

I look at my 71 year old husband, and even though he has significant health problems he has none of the doddering attributes of age Mary Maxwell talks of. He is not absent-minded, he is the "detail-man" of the household. He keeps track of the household accounts, my business accounts and a non-profit account he is treasurer of without the slightest problem. He is extremely pleasant and enjoyable to be with.

I complain that I cannot find the word I am looking for. He reminds me I've been complaining of this since I was 20. My head is a busy place, but generally working on a project or problem, not thinking about earrings or the hairdressers.

What I find is on the whole is basically we are not much different at 66 and 71 than we were at 20 and 25. Wiser, more settled, more compassionate and far richer in experience but we still prefer the company of one or two people over a crowd, and for a good portion of the day each of us needs to be entirely alone. We have no more interest in popular culture now than we did then, and aside from the news, PBS Science programs and the odd documentary we could probably live without TV, though we cannot say that about our computers, reader and ipad. Since he was a programmer back when computers were the size of Volkswagons we have always embraced computer technology. Also sworn at it a good deal, but still...

So, crack your jokes Mary. I like the short clips on her blog, where she hands out some fairly acid advice to people like the mother-in-law who didn't want to share her "treasured" family recipe for marinara sauce with the daughter-in-law she "doesn't trust". Mary concludes her advice by saying, "I've tasted your marinara sauce, and it's not worth fighting over." (or something of that ilk)

Mary blogs about being older with her characteristic dry wit here. I'm adding her to my blog roll because she is one funny lady and Lord knows I need a funny and LOLcats has just become too repetitive and predictable.

Seeing with the brain is called imagination...

Continuing with the theme, "Science is awesome". I should have titled this, An enchanted loom.

Everything is energy… in one form or another.

[Robert Winston]
It's amazing to consider that I'm holding in my hands
The place where someone once felt, thought, and loved
For centuries, scientists have been battling to understand
What this unappealing object is all about

[Vilayanur Ramachandran]
Here is this mass of jelly
You can hold in the palm of your hands
And it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space

[Carl Sagan]
The brain has evolved from the inside out
It's structure reflects all the stages through which it has passed

[Jill Bolte Taylor]
Information in the form of energy
Streams in simultaneously
Through all of our sensory systems

And then it explodes into this enormous collage
Of what this present moment looks like
What it feels like
And what it sounds like

And then it explodes into this enormous collage
And in this moment we are perfect
We are whole and we are beautiful

[Robert Winston]
It appears rather gruesome
Wrinkled like a walnut, and with the consistency of mushroom

[Carl Sagan]
What we know is encoded in cells called neurons
And there are something like a hundred trillion neural connections
This intricate and marvelous network of neurons has been called
An enchanted loom

The neurons store sounds too, and snatches of music
Whole orchestras play inside our heads

20 million volumes worth of information
Is inside the heads of every one of us
The brain is a very big place
In a very small space

No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain
We can change ourselves
Think of the possibilities

[Bill Nye]
Think of your brain as a newspaper
Think of all the information it can store
But it doesn't take up too much room
Because it's folded

[Oliver Sacks]
We see with the eyes
But we see with the brain as well
And seeing with the brain
Is often called imagination

[Various]

[Robert Winston]
It is the most mysterious part of the human body
And yet it dominates the way we live our adult lives
It is the brain

(Carl Sagan's lyrics written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan and Steven Soter)

The Poetry of Reality

Right now I am (obviously) enamored by the Symphony of Science Remixes featuring quotes and bits of lectures from the great minds of science set to synthesized music. The love of knowledge and thrill of discovery is evident in every song. Not just songs, but love songs... to the universe.

While most of the songs in the series focus on the works of astrophysicists and physicists biology is well represented. This song, which takes its title from Richard Dawkins' statement that, "Science is the poetry of reality" seems to represent most closely the work of two amazing scientists I am privileged to know, and even work with on a modest scale, neuro-geneticists Dr. Frank Lehmann-Horn, and Dr. Karin Jurkat-Rott, Division of Neurophysiology, Ulm University, who are constantly working to expand the edges of the known.

[Michael Shermer]
Science is the best tool ever devised
For understanding how the world works

[Jacob Bronowski]
Science is a very human form of knowledge
We are always at the brink of the known

[Carl Sagan]
Science is a collaborative enterprise
Spanning the generations
We remember those who prepared the way
Seeing for them also

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
If you're scientifically literate,
The world looks very different to you
And that understanding empowers you

Refrain:

[Richard Dawkins]
There's real poetry in the real world
Science is the poetry of reality

[Sagan]
We can do science
And with it, we can improve our lives

[Jill Tarter]
The story of humans is the story of ideas
That shine light into dark corners

[Lawrence Krauss]
Scientists love mysteries
They love not knowing

[Richard Feynman]
I don't feel frightened by not knowing things
I think it's much more interesting

[Brian Greene]
There's a larger universal reality
of which we are all a part

[Stephen Hawking]
The further we probe into the universe
The more remarkable are the discoveries we make

[Carolyn Porco]
The quest for the truth, in and of itself,
Is a story that's filled with insights

(Refrain)

[Greene]
From our lonely point in the cosmos
We have through the power of thought
Been able to peer back to a brief moment
After the beginning of the universe

[PZ Myers]
I think that science changes the way your mind works
To think a little more deeply about things

[Dawkins]
Science replaces private predjudice
With publicly verifiable evidence

(Refrain)

(Carl Sagan's lyrics written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan and Steven Soter)

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself

"We Are All Connected" was made from sampling Carl Sagan's Cosmos, The History Channel's Universe series, Richard Feynman's 1983 interviews, Neil deGrasse Tyson's cosmic sermon, and Bill Nye's Eyes of Nye Series, plus added visuals from The Elegant Universe (NOVA), Stephen Hawking's Universe, Cosmos, the Powers of 10, and more. It is a tribute to great minds of science, intended to spread scientific knowledge and philosophy through the medium of music.

Lyrics:

[deGrasse Tyson]
We are all connected;
To each other, biologically
To the earth, chemically
To the rest of the universe atomically

[Feynman]
I think nature's imagination
Is so much greater than man's
She's never going to let us relax

[Sagan]
We live in an in-between universe
Where things change all right
But according to patterns, rules,
Or as we call them, laws of nature

[Nye]
I'm this guy standing on a planet
Really I'm just a speck
Compared with a star,
the planet is just another speck
To think about all of this
To think about the vast emptiness of space
There's billions and billions of stars
Billions and billions of specks

[Sagan]
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it
But the way those atoms are put together
The cosmos is also within us
We're made of star stuff
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself

Across the sea of space
The stars are other suns
We have traveled this way before
And there is much to be learned

I find it elevating and exhilarating
To discover that we live in a universe
Which permits the evolution of molecular machines
As intricate and subtle as we

[deGrasse Tyson]
I know that the molecules in my body are traceable
To phenomena in the cosmos
That makes me want to grab people in the street
And say, have you heard this??

(Richard Feynman on hand drums and chanting)

[Feynman]
There's this tremendous mess
Of waves all over in space
Which is the light bouncing around the room
And going from one thing to the other

And it's all really there
But you gotta stop and think about it
About the complexity to really get the pleasure
And it's all really there
The inconceivable nature of nature

Science Hurts

The time honored argument has been solved again by science.

It is claimed in certain circles that dogs are better than cats, and some believe it, much like some believe the scientific logic of Rush Limbaugh.

Unless of course one has a cat, then one tends to accumulate legitimate proofs such as Carl Sagan and Niels Bohr might produce, and which are compelling presented in this production, once you get past the hideous "cleaning the dog's tongue after-it-has-eaten-the-contents-of-the-baby's-diaper commercial". The product is a God-send for dog owners, please buy one immediately!

In science few questions of this importance are ever completely resolved, new knowledge may come to light, but it only adds to a growing body of evidence.

Who (or what) needs therapy?

I've been thumbing through decorating sites; Apartment Therapy (AT), House Beautiful, Style at Home, and Better Homes and Gardens.

There is no way of getting around it. Windowless living rooms like mine are not in vogue, nor are flowered sofas, dark bookcases, or those plastic pails the cat litter comes in when used as garbage cans. The matts on my artwork don't match, and the tops of the paintings don't line up. Cords dangle, intertwine and snake across the floor. Thank goodness, they are camouflaged somewhat by the cat hair that coils around them between vacuuming.

To qualify as "chic" at Apartment Therapy I'd need to reclaim the cast-offs we collected off curbs as impoverished newlyweds almost 50 years ago. The commenters at AT practically wet themselves with glee over furniture I would happily have let complete its trip to the dump 50 years if only I could have afforded what was in style at the time.

What I was hoping for on all these sites was some reassurance that with a minimum of tweaking I could at least go for "cottage" or an off-beat version of "shabby chic", but I think my decor and I are both beyond hope. It might be possible for the "chic" to endure the shape of the sofa if it were covered in chartreuse vinyl or recycled snow tires, but the extravagantly flowered silk fabric is unforgivable. Nothing good can be said at all for the (sob) matched chenille burgundy arm chairs. They are skirted, deeply comfortable and they rock. (What was I thinking?)

Our enormous 40-year-old coffee table has no glass, no metal and is not recycled from a bed frame or the gears from a box loader. It doesn't turn into a table for nine or a queen-sized guest bed. It simply squats on short feet and pretends to be a stack of books from Amazon for Giants.com. I have failed completely and utterly as a furniture-buying humanoid.

Dare I mention art? The pictures on our wall contain recognizable objects and/or humans/landscapes, which reveal our tastes (and those of our ancestors) as artistic goobers.

The new pinnacle of artistic creativity is an 8 x 10 foot paint chip someone drug a dirty burlap bag across. It's vital this gigantic "paint chip" not include any of the colours in the room. Looking at the choices, "Burlap dance 1 (blue)", "Burlap dance 2 (green)", "Burlap dance 3 (pink)" etc., one gets the feeling the artist just bought the miss-mixes at the Walmart for $3.00 per gallon to use as his/her base coat. In case you find my dots hard to connect, that damned flowered sofa encompasses every possible shade of muted blue, green, pink, rose and burgundy, plus ivory, a dozen browns and sly dashes of black. I can't find a single non-matching paint-chip/burlap-bag painting. This seems to indicate that no one plans to paint the nursery nuclear lime, at least not in our end of town.

But my decorating angst doesn't end in the living room. It gallops into the the kitchen/dining room with more than a little schadenfreude. Search as I might I don't see a single kitchen/dining room in these publications with the "accent" of a six-foot high "cat tree" backed up against the windows.

I do see kitchens large enough to host bowling tournaments and regimental reunions, large enough not to require top cupboards, with kitchen islands large enough to host overnight sleepovers. There's one with a wall of floor to ceiling windows covered with shutters ripped from a New England farmhouse built in 1760, still with original paint no less. I didn't see a single one with fake wood cabinets shoehorned into a 4' x 6' corner.

I've just been looking at pictures of a kitchen where all the crockery, dishes and glassware are stored on rough wood shelves on either side of a 14 foot tall mirror-finish range hood "chimney". How one is supposed to reach a water glass stored on a shelf 12 feet above the floor? Climbing up and down a 10-rung ladder to get a glass every time you need a drink of water seems a bit absurd, especially if you have a big pot of spaghetti boiling on the stove below. But hot damn it looks fabulous.

Fashion, in clothes, decor, houses, hairstyles and hipsters comes and goes like the tide. In 50 years time some chic young thing will be dreaming of finding my sofa but right now the only thing I have which would excite the AT crowd is this guy. They are suckers for cats at AT, which probably means they are an okay crowd, even if they like ugly 1950s furniture.

Attachment and letting go...

I did something I rarely do today. I had a raging migraine which I simply could not work through, sit up through, push through. I gave up about 2:00 and went to bed.

I don't think my head hit the pillow before I was asleep, brain flickering in that slow-seizing wave that *is* a migraine. When I am awake I am all senses, all raw reaction, every cell grating against the bouncing light, the frenzied collision of air against my skin, the smell of my own hair and the lavender body wash lingering around me.

When I am asleep the brain interprets stimulus in its own inexplicable ways. Curled with his back into the curve of my recumbent body is a small, muscular, compact dog. Slick-haired, breath slowing rising and falling, his head resting on my crooked arm. He smells like Fritos. His whiskers twitch.

I wake enough to realize that "he" is the weight of a bunched blanket, a pillow migrated to lie against my arm, the warmth of my own breath. "He" is not there. I hang onto the "him" that has not been there for 30 years. Tears well up into that emptiness where he was once.

Attachment, the Buddha called it. I hold on to my attachment, brought unexpectedly to the surface by a thunderless storm raging in my brain. I enjoy the memory of that joyful little body, and my attachment to it, touch it once more - lightly - and let it go.

I am suspicious of myself....

Are you an eccentric? I suspect I am. Maybe I ought to feel bad about it, but I don't.

“That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time”. ~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty.

Dr. David Weeks is the world's foremost expert on the subject of eccentrics. A highly regarded researcher and great storyteller (he's known as The Laughing Psychiatrist on the BBC), Weeks finds eccentrics to be happier, healthier and more creative than most conformists. Psychologist David Weeks mentions people with a mental illness "suffer" from their behavior while eccentrics are quite happy. He even states eccentrics are less prone to mental illness than everyone else.

“Time and again, the eccentrics in our study clearly evinced that shining sense of positivism and buoyant self-confidence that comes from being comfortable in one’s own skin.”

In a study of 1000 eccentrics a profile emerged with fifteen characteristics that applied to most eccentrics, ranging from the obvious to the trivial.

The first five characteristics listed are the most important and apply to virtually every eccentric. Nonconformity is, of course, the principal defining trait of the breed.

Characteristics of Eccentrics

• Nonconforming
• Creative
• Strongly motivated by curiosity
• Idealistic: wants to make the world a better place and the people in it happier
• Happily obsessed with one or more hobbyhorses (usually five or six)
• Aware from early childhood that he is different
• Intelligent
• Opinionated and outspoken, convinced that he is right and that the rest of the world is out of step
• Noncompetitive, not in need of reassurance or reinforcement from society
• Unusual in his eating habits and living arrangements
• Not particularly interested in the opinions or company of other people, except in order to persuade them to his – the correct – point of view
• Possessed of a mischievous sense of humor
• Often Single
• Usually the eldest or an only child
• Bad speller

According to Dr. Week's Study, eccentrics are:

• Less likely to be addicted to consumer culture than the general population.
• Very unlikely to be substance abusers or alcoholics. Dr. David Weeks “fewer than 30 of the more than 1,000 eccentrics he sampled had been substance abusers or alcoholics.”
• Nonconformity, extreme curiosity and irreverence for the strictures of culture continually resurface as the most distinguishable eccentric traits, and these are indeed qualities that most of us consider admirable.
• They’re permanently non-conforming from a very early age, and there’s a great overlap between eccentric children and gifted children. They develop differently, though.
• The eccentrics become very, very creative but they’re motivated primarily by curiosity. They have extreme degrees of curiosity, and they’re very independent-minded.
• Their other motivation is fairly idealistic. They want to make the world a better place, and they want to make other people happy.
• They have these happy obsessive preoccupations, and a wonderful, unusual sense of humor, and this gives them a significant meaning in life. And they are far healthier than most people because of that.
• They have very low stress. They’re not worried about conforming to the rest of society, low stress, high happiness equates with psychological health.
• They use their solitude very constructively.

Source; "Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness"; David Weeks; Jamie James, ISBN 13: 9780394565651, Publisher: Villard Books, Publication Date: 1995

Promises, empty, empty promises

There is a clearing near a river in the jungle which gets smaller each passing year. In the middle of this clearing is a marvelous tree which has the most beautiful flowers. Every day the flowers are more beautiful than the flowers were the day before.

Once there was a village where this clearing is now. It is far away from other villages. The people who lived there were slower, less fleet of foot, than other people. Most had made their way to this remote place and stayed because when you are slow-footed in a village of the swift the neighbours avert their eyes when you pass, and even your family suffers shame.

The villagers had gathered in that particular place because of a plain and very unremarkable tree that grew on the riverbank. It wasn't particularly tall, it didn't have lovely flowers or beautiful foliage, but it bore fruit year-round, day in and day out. It wasn't exciting fruit. It wasn't sweet, or spicy. It was bland, it was hard to peel, stringy and sometimes tough to digest, but it was nourishing and gave you strength to keep the jungle at bay. They didn't know what kind of tree it was, so they called it the gwehdee tree - the meal tree.

The villagers foraged for food in the surrounding jungle. Sometimes it was plentiful, usually it was scarce and you had to fight the monkeys and jungle pigs for it. But whatever the season they could depend on the gwehdee tree. Year in and year out it stood at the edge of the river bearing fruit. When the jungle provided not- quite-enough or when the jungle provided nothing; when every belly was empty as a drum, the villagers could always go to the gwehdee tree, lift a leaf and the food they needed would be at their fingertips. The tree was so dependable that it simply became part of the background.

Generations came and went... all as slow-footed as their forefathers had been. One day, after many years, another tree grew up, right in the centre of the village. It was a beautiful tree, with a graceful trunk and delicately beautiful leaves. Its flowers were simply magnificent. The entire village gathered around to admire it and speculate about what wonderful fruit was sure to come from such bewitching blossoms.

Through the weeks and months the flowers came, each one more beautiful and delightfully fragrant than the one before, but not a single flower ever produced a fruit. Once in a while a small green fruit would follow a flower, but within a few days it would shrivel, blacken and fall to the ground. But still the villagers were mesmerized by the beauty of the tree, and every day they sat around it and waited - certain that wonderful, delicious fruit would soon appear.

"I imagine it will taste like honey," one said to the other. "Oh," replied the next, "like honey with mango and peaches and jasmine, all together. We will certainly swoon with delight from the flavour." "The texture will be like the freshest date, as soft as green coconut," said another. "And we will be able to eat the peel!" cackled a toothless old woman, who was tired of a lifetime of peeling gwehdee fruit.

And so into the night they'd invent ever more fantastic flavours, textures, fragrances and attributes the fabulous fruit would surely have, when it ripened. And then they would go home with their growling, empty bellies and curse while eating roasted lizards and the stringy, bland and hard to digest but nourishing fruit of the gwehdee tree.

Meanwhile, at the edge of the village, the river had changed course. The gwehdee tree loved water more than almost anything, but the water the tree depended on had moved away. The tree grew thirsty, and longed for a pail or two of water from the river it could see glistening a hundred feet beyond its reach. But it was the fat season and fruit in the jungle was plentiful, so no one came to the gwehdee tree except some men who passed and remarked how ugly it was, compared to the beautiful tree in the centre of the village.

The heat shimmered above the river. Insects buzzed up and down on errands and little fish leaped from the water as they played tag with their hundreds of brothers and sisters. The river wandered even farther away. The gwehdee tree ached for water. The dryness burned in its leaves and rootlets. The pain crept down the stems and up the roots. Ever so slowly its inconspicuous flowers shriveled and fewer and fewer fruit formed under the shelter of the leaves. Still, no one noticed until one morning when a villager felt too ill to forage in the jungle and went to the gwehdee tree to gather some fruit and - there was none to gather.

Alarmed, the villagers ran to the gwehdee tree, but it was too late. The tree was dead. As the season turned from fat to lean and food in the jungle became scarce the villagers had little nourishment. Without the strength the gwehdee tree provided they were soon at the mercy of the jungle itself, which cares as little for the slow-footed as it does for the baby monkey who becomes the python's meal.

One by one the villagers disappeared. The little huts quickly fell into the mouths of the ants and termites and the waddling mother rat who carries away your best cloth as a nest for her young. It hardly mattered. There was no one left to care.

But even now in the centre of a rapidly closing clearing grows a lovely tree, with magnificent flowers, which will hold you spellbound with their promise...

And the seasons slowly…

In May the apple trees blossomed,

In August the crabapples glow.

The hail ate most of our flowers,

Put divots in the Zen garden's moss,

But here and there, spared a small rose.

I hope there is a cure for that

A long-time friend moved recently. She wrote yesterday, relating that she'd found an excellent paediatrician for her daughter, who has a genetic illness, and that her son's second year of college has begun well.

She wrote, "Overall, things have worked out well, though I keep waiting for something bad to happen. I have turned into a pessimist. I hope there is a cure for that." 



When you think about it, pessimism is used as kind of like a talisman in our culture, "Don't get too happy, or too comfortable or too confident, or too anything joyful whatsover, because it can end in a second!" 



Relentless gurus churn out dozens of number one best selling books every year, all promising the secret to everlasting happiness and peace. But even they come at you with the not-so-veiled message that the reason you have to grab that inner peace, seize the day, or live the moment is because the sky could fall on you at any moment! Like if you don't seize each moment and wrestle it to the ground like it was a Texas longhorn steer something bad might happen!!!   We pretend, no let's call it what it is; we have this superstition that pessimism and anxiety are a shield that will protect us from the falling sky.

When my father died unexpectedly I was unable to make the very long trip to his funeral. Although I knew rationally that it didn't make any difference to Dad it meant I never said a proper goodbye to him and that's a grief that has never completely resolved. But that grief manifested in a strange way.

Dad died in late November. For Mother's Day the next April the boys asked, "What do you want?" and I said, "I want a kitten." And so a grey and white five-week old kitten whose short legs and fat little body made him look like a furry caterpillar came into my life. He was a clown in a cat suit and he lived almost 18 years, but from the day he arrived until the day we had to ease his old body off to sleep, every time I held him and looked at him I felt anxious about losing him. That anxiety kept me from enjoying him as much as I should have. Every time he squeaked I panicked. It's as if I felt my anxiety could protect him, and me from the pain of parting. It did not.

There's a Zen story which says that anxiety makes no sense, regardless of circumstances. I haven't mastered this anxiety-free life so at the moment it's purely conceptual but it interests me. 



“There is a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.” ~ Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World