Insta-gram #8: Wonder Women

We assembled at the fountain before the race. Each of us sporting our own version of patriotism.

We donned our Wonder Women bracelets and posed for photos. Today, we dedicated our race to a friend dying from cancer.

Hardly seems fair.

There would have been tears, but we didn't want them there. We were strong, we were mighty. We can cry later. Now, now we have a race to run.

This afternoon. Sitting on my bed, I look out the window just in time to see the fawns my neighbor mentioned the other night.

Part of me is fighting this. Fear.

Who is afraid of wonder?

Insta-gram#7: Time Machine

Time has been on my mind a lot lately. Mostly, the past.

There are days where I feel like I'm in a Time Machine. This past weekend I found myself transported back to the summer of 1990.

Needless to say, it was a bumpy ride, and I'm still experiencing jet lag.

Speaking of time, I haven't posted anything here in almost three years.

Since that last post in 2014, I moved to Virginia and now work at Georgetown University. Georgetown is a Jesuit University, whose mission is steeped in Jesuit Values.

I have been thinking about Ignation Examens, a daily reflection that looks at the events of the day in order to detect God's presence in one's life (read more about Examens on the Ignation Spirituality website), and whether or not one is following that presence or their own will.

I read a post, Finding God on the Metro by William Blazek, SJ. It reminded me of this blog, specifically my Insta-gram posts, as well as a series of "things" I wrote, which eventually became known as my Subway Sketches.

I call them "things" because they aren't poetry, although some are poetic, and when I wrote them I knew nothing about Examens and would never have considered calling them reflections. But, as I think about them now, I realize they were moments where I noticed God's presence. Although, I prefer to think of it as the universe talking to me.

For me, those moments of noticing are about re-vitalizing my sense of wonder at the world. Without this exercise, I become closed to what is wonder-ful about my life, and then cynicism creeps back and gratitude disappears. It becomes a never-ending cycle of negativity and depression and this, this is when I find myself in my Time Machine.

So, I've decided to start my Insta-grams again, and bring wonder back into my life. I am going to follow the five-step Daily Examen that St. Ignatius practiced:

1. Become aware of God’s presence.
2. Review the day with gratitude. 
3. Pay attention to your emotions.
4. Choose one feature of the day and pray from it.
5. Look toward tomorrow.

Insta-gram #6: walk on by

Walking back from the market with a bag of vegetables, my mind lost.
A woman, dressed in a straw hat and blue sundress is walking toward me.
She is looking at me.
I ask myself if I recognize her. No, no I don't.
As she approaches she wears a wry smile.
We pass each other by. I feel her pause.
"Ma'am!" I hear from behind.
"Ma'am!" I realize she is calling me.
I turn.
She waves me closer.
Wearing the same smile, she whispers
"Your button is undone."

Insta-gram #5: hello, spring here

A young couple sitting on a stoop,
a small child in a stroller parked in front of them.

Music warbling from an iPhone.
Sipping a Labatt Blue tall boy.

A woman walks by eating apple slices from a plastic bag.
Followed by a hoodied stranger.

Cigarette dangling from his lips
and a ferret squirming in his grip.

Insta-gram #4: morning wake-up

Walked out of my apartment building into the Arctic sunshine;

greeted by a waft of marijuana.

Someone is coping with this frigid morning.

A woman, alone, shouting, walks down the street.

She's talking on her cellphone.

Insta-gram #3: Philosopher's Walk

A bright, frigid Toronto morning. 

Blue sky

Passersby walking dogs,

enveloped in breathe clouds with every exhale.

The grass dusted with snow

a young man wheels his cello to rehearsal.

Walking in Virginia: the sound of leaves

"Shhhh," say the leaves as the wind hurries them across the street.

"Someone is coming."

Walking. Walking.

The howling wind is banging on the rain spattered bedroom window.
The ghosts of yesterday, reaching out through the morning darkness.

Walking. Walking.

A woman in a bright green trench,
hot pink purse
slung across her body, walks by.

Unaware of the swirling leaves at her feet; tiny, rustling cats, scraping along the sidewalk, drawing figure eights around her ankles.

Walking. Walking.

West on Bloor St.
Wind pushing back, refusing passage.
Unravelling scarves.
Desperate wearers scrambling to grasp purple, pink, green streams flapping wildly up, back, twisting away from their necks.

Walking. Walking.

Insta-gram #2: a hot pink ...

underwear day.

On a rainy Hallowe'en morning.
I think I'll walk to Virginia next year.

Insta-gram #1: Thursday

The dog, prancing, proud of the fuzzy yellow tennis ball in its mouth.

The dog's walker with her candy-coloured bag of dog shit.

The homeless man in the bus shelter; folding his belongings.

The women's running group, walking briskly, Venti coffees held aloft.

Trophies for this morning's effort.

Thursday.

Addendum to Thinking about history

I just read the following quote and thought about how it still rings true today and how fitting it would have been for my post, Thinking about history.

"The crisis we are experiencing today is not just a European crisis, nor a crisis of morals, economics, ideologies, politics or religion." -- Jean Gebser, 1949

From, Gebser, Jean. The Ever-Present Origin, translation by Noel Barstad and Algis Mickunas. (p xxvii)

Thinking about history

History's so strong
History's so strong
History's so strong
History's so strong* 
 
The song pumping out of a black Honda sitting at the traffic light as I jogged by.

Funny how an idea follows you wherever you go.

I've been thinking a lot about history lately. Mostly because a friend, Hank from book club, posted a link about Bruce Springsteen's new album and the foreword he wrote (Springsteen, not Hank. Although I have no doubt Hank could have written an equally moving, if not better, foreword) for the book, Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression, by Washington Post photographer Michael Williamson and writer Dale Maharidge.

Hank noted that the photographs in Someplace reminded him of Walker Evans' work. In my smart ass reply I said the work reminded me of Dorothea Lange's. Either way, the photos are reminiscent of the work by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers hired to document America during the Great Depression, a group that included Evans and Lange.

In "Theses on the Philosophy of History," Walter Benjamin lays the foundation for his historical materialism as an action against historicity and its assumptions of historical progress. In "Thesis XII," Benjamin writes, “Not man or men but the struggling, oppressed class itself is the depository of historical knowledge.” For Benjamin the lessons of history are to be taken and learned from the everyday activities of ordinary, working class people – "…the very detritus of history." An idea we see in the work of the FSA photographers, Springsteen, Willamson and Maharidge.

That these works align with Benjamin is not the astounding part, or perhaps it is? Each of the above mentioned artists and writers have documented the struggle of the working-class. But what has been learned? Some might argue that progress takes time, after all a century hasn't passed since the FSA's photography program and the publication of Someplace. Yet, the idea that we are going around in circles, just repeating ourselves cannot be overlooked.

Writer and philosopher, George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."**

It seems that remembering history is not the problem. But gleaning something new from it is. We are repeating history precisely because we have not learned what it is trying to teach us. The FSA photographs and the Williamson and Maharidge book are just one example of this cycle and they are not a new cycle in themselves. We must ask what moment in history are they repeating and so on?

Recently, Kyle and I went to see the Hunger Games. Hank recommended the movie because, as he wrote in another Facebook post, "... it is the best presentation of the Republican anti-Washington myth." He also noted that it followed the theme from his post about Springsteen (discussed above).

The movie was okay, too long in my opinion and, although I agree with Hank's interpretation, the storyline did seem tired. Kyle thought the movie was cliché. At the end, when Coriolanus Snow, played by Donald Sutherland who looked remarkably like a cross between Santa Claus and The Wizard of Oz (I doubt this is a coincidence), ascended a set of stairs (I won't say more than that in case you haven't seen the movie). Kyle said, "Why don't they just paint 'Zeus' across his back?"

To his thinking the entire movie was another retelling of Greek mythology. Same story with a contemporary, sci-fi look. The gods above pulling the strings of the mortals below. The ultimate puppet masters. This also can be said about Hank's interpretation of the movie, the gods (Wall St, government, etc.) pulling the strings and manipulating the lives of the working-class.

How do we break the cycle?

Something very strong is at play here and it will no doubt require a strength of character that I doubt I possess in order to change the course of history. Does it start with the individual? Is it collective, or both? I think about Marx and his proletarian revolution. To me, he overlooked one thing about the proletariat, they actually wanted to be the bourgeoisie. They wanted what they did not have.

This wanting is fodder for exploitation. The everyman is the donkey with the carrot tied to the string. Constantly moving toward the carrot, but never arriving. When disaster strikes he vows never to be fooled again, but soon enough everyman is back chasing a carrot again. Is it the fault of the 'gods' for exploiting this, or the fault of the everyman for falling for the carrot? Both. In order to change history, we need to change our patterns. We can't, as Einstein is credited for saying, keep doing the same things and expecting different results. 

Unfortunately, it's a bit like being in a gunfight, nobody wants to blink and both sides want to 'draw' at the right moment, before the other guy get's the drop. 

The hunger games, indeed.



* Save the Population, Red Hot Chili Peppers
** Reason in Common Sense: Volume One of "The Life of Reason" Ch 12

My computer is a vacuum

Kyle and "Geefle" at work.

To hear my spouse, Kyle, you would think my computer is a vacuum. He often equates the retrieval of information from online resources as “sucking it in.”

It seems he thinks that when I enter a search term in a browser - sometimes he asks me to look something up for him, while he stands over my shoulder - it activates a vacuum cleaner in cyberspace.

When the sought after information is found,  this cyber-hoover sucks it up like a dust bunny from under the couch and instantly appears on the monitor.

Perhaps I should explain. I think the last time Kyle used a computer punch cards were all the rage.

He is currently working on a major book project; an undertaking that has been going on for over a decade and has involved a great deal of research, reading and note-taking.

How has he accomplished his research without a computer or using the internet?

Kyle goes to the library and checks out books, makes notes on reams of the graph paper he likes and records major concepts on index cards with his favourite writing instruments: a Pilot Hi-tecpoint V7 Grip pen in various colours (excluding candy-colours of course), pencils, Sharpies, highlighters, and the old stand-by we once could not live without, Liquid Paper.

On the floor around his desk, and slowly creeping their way into the living room of our smallish apartment, is his filing system; stacks of folders containing his work and notes, written in English, German, Latvian, as well as some Sanskrit, Greek and Latin.

To call Kyle a Luddite would be wrong. He’s just not that interested in computers; he isn’t mesmerized by gadgets.

Sure, when he’s ready to compile all of his work into a coherent and readable format, in other words a manuscript, he’ll get a computer – he’s mentioned it twice in the last 12 months. But until he actually needs one, it’s old-school devices for him.

As for me, it's rare when I'm not in front of a computer.

Perhaps Kyle is on to something; maybe my computer is a vacuum?

What?! No doodle?!

Today would have been Marshall McLuhan's 100th birthday, so why didn't Google create a doodle? Seems like a no brainer doesn't it?

Sitting is Killing Me!

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

AutoShare Buzz: EVs coming to Toronto car sharing company

Yesterday I was out wandering in my neighbourhood, shirking mundane domestic duties and enjoying a rare sunny day; when I came across a small car parked in a back alley.

The car was sitting outside a two-car garage, and although you can't see it in the photo below, it was plugged in!

I saw a gentleman in the garage and stopped to talk to him about the car.

The headlight peaking over the front of the MiEV belongs to a 1929 Buick. 

It turns out the gentleman was Bill McLaughlin. He, along with his son Kevin McLaughlin, are owners of the Toronto-based company AutoShare, and the car - their first fully electric vehicle (EV) - a Mitsubishi I-MiEV.

As distant relatives to Sam McLaughlin, co-founder of the McLaughlin Motor Car Company in 1907, the owners of AutoShare are no strangers to automobiles. Parked inside the garage were two antique automobiles, a 1929 Buick and a 1937 Cord.

I asked McLaughlin what it was like to drive the MiEV and he said it wasn't much different from driving a regular car except when idling. "When you come to a stop-light it's very quiet," said McLaughlin.

He also explained the car should be available to AutoShare members soon;  the company is currently making partnership arrangements for parking and charging.

"I just realized the juxtaposition," said McLaughlin, looking at the EV and then the gems inside the garage.

Indeed, the automobile industry has come a long way.

AMEX is Phishing

Just the other day I received a letter (the one you see below) from American Express (AMEX).

In it, AMEX points out that I have not used my credit card in the past 12 months. That is correct.

They go on to say, if I wish to keep my account open I should use my credit card within 35 days of the letter's mail date (April 8, 2011), and "benefit from the experience of being an American Express Cardmember."

In the past, when I've used my AMEX credit card, I've found the experience to be remarkably similar to that of other credit cards; anxiety over whether or not I should really be buying an item I can't pay cash for; indifference when I get my monthly statement. But I digress.

AMEX goes on to say that if I do not use my card with 35 days, they will "for [my] own security," close my account.

Sounds like one of 'those' email scams doesn't it?!

The kind that looks like it's from a reputable organization, such as a bank or credit card company, and whose message is designed to make recipients think their accounts are in danger if they don't act quickly and submit their password or other personal information.

How can my credit card account be in danger if I'm not using it?

I get it, I'm a lousy customer. AMEX hasn't made dime one from me in the past year and they're trying to scare me into using my card by going shopping. "I better go buy something or else they're going to cut me off!" is the reaction they're hoping for.

It's a shameful tactic, if they don't want to keep my account they should have said so.

In the meantime, I'll be looking for my scissors, adios AMEX. 

The cost of doing yoga

The mainstreaming of yoga would have you think - with the right accessories - it is the way to calmness and serenity. Yet, what it fails to admit is this state of being comes at a price.

Forget the cost of classes, mats and fashionable outfits. Yoga is hard and messy work. In fact, I would say it is even violent.

For the past decade I’ve been practicing yoga in Toronto. I don’t need to prove “I am into yoga.” I see the lululemon manifesto as the marketing device it is and I don’t have an OM symbol tattoo.

It was during a Sunday morning yoga class when I discovered the yoga experience doesn’t add up to the propaganda.

The instructor was leading the class through a sun salutation series. The first round was over and I found myself back at the front of my mat in mountain pose – Tadasana – when I heard a quiet voice whisper, “I hate yoga.”

It took a moment before I realized the voice was my own.
At first, I kept the experience to myself. However, a few weeks later I decided to mention it to Catherine another instructor at the studio.

Catherine explained, as she made chattering motions with her hand, the voice I heard was a wise voice that emerged from the gut, not the usual interior voice of discursive thinking. I shouldn’t try to analyze it, just let it go.

Yoga challenges the mind’s hypnotic version of reality and has the power to lead us through some serious self-reflection. Sometimes a practitioner becomes pissed off by yoga because it introduces her to aspects of herself she would prefer to deny. Yet, although negativity arises as part of a yoga practice it is seldom mentioned.

There is the illusion that there might be an extraordinary guru or expert out there who lives in a constant state of bliss and that this should be our goal too. But this isn’t a real person with everyday demands to contend with.

This is also why I hate yoga.

Most people who seek out a practice like yoga are trying to find a way to better cope with life. To make it seem that balance and harmony are possible without the hard and messy part is deceiving.  

“ABANDON  ALL  HOPE  YE  WHO  ENTER  HERE,” reads the ominous warning above the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno. I think yoga studios should consider posting a similar warning over their doors.

What is employment?

Recent events in my life have caused me to ponder the question, "what is employment?"

On a basic level, it's a contract for labour between the 'employee' and the 'employer.' In exchange for labour, the employee receives payment, which usually goes toward personal sustainability - food, shelter, etc.

In other words, in exchange for my labour, I receive payment, which I then use to pay rent, buy food, pay bills, purchase goods and entertainment. I'm told I should also be saving some of this payment, but that's a whole other conversation.

In my case, payment not only includes my wages, it also includes healthcare benefits, pension contributions and a variety of other perks.

However, should it be something else? Should this exchange provide more?

Should my employment, i.e., my job, offer any sort of satisfaction beyond sustainability? Is it merely an exchange of labour for money?

What does job satisfaction entail? I imagine this question can only be measured on a personal basis. So, what is job satisfaction for me?

Now, I'd like to think I'm not naive enough to think there is a perfect job out there somewhere. However, I think a great job entails a creative, dynamic environment, where ideas are shared, discussed - sometimes argued - and decided upon.

Work should be a forward motion - dealing with itself in the context of the world. The world is constantly evolving, so why shouldn't work? Unfortunately, people and organizations often get comfortable and settle into a pattern of complacency.

When you hear a phrase like, "This is the way we've always done it," you can be assured that the organization you're in is pretty much stagnant. However, this statement can also be used for good.

If taken as a warning signal, the statement can be used to draw our attention to our complacency - forcing us to ask, "What needs to be different?" Instead, it is used to block out new, and possibly regenerative, ideas that threaten the status quo.

The world of the job thus becomes entangled within itself because it is viewed from within a vacuum. It is lost and cut-off from its relevance to the world within which it lives.

It's not easy or always comfortable, but acting when the sign appears will keep an organization - and the people it employs - fresh and relevant.

This is the sort of place where I want to work.

Championing the good

As someone whose university years were spent pouring over Plato’s dialogues, I cannot overcome the urge to ask this question.

When is something good? Who decides? There are many things that people think of as being good, and many who would think the same thing is bad. For example, I think ice cream is good, some might claim - because of its sugar and high fat content - it is bad.

Are so-called binary pairs; good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, right and wrong, just and unjust, so easily differentiated?

I think capital punishment is bad, but others would disagree. Socrates would further the debate by asking something like, If someone is justly put to death, then who is harmed more, the executioner or the executed?

But, back to the original question, what is good?

When I think about ‘good,’ words like quiet, spontaneous and fleeting come to mind. Good often happens in small ways and is easily forgotten. It’s not uncommon for a person to recall every detail of some slight committed against them 20 years ago, but have difficulty in remembering something good that happened to them more recently.

We seldom acknowledge how good we have it, especially when we think we don’t. Imagine criticizing your government publicly - and who doesn’t - and then being arrested for doing so.

Unfortunately, for writers like Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan - currently serving a 19-and-a-half year prison sentence in Iran – freedom of expression is a luxury. However, for organizations like PEN Canada, exiled and imprisoned writers are not forgotten and their causes are pursued until justice is served. This is good.

So is the idealism of U of T students; Brigid Burke, a fourth-year undergrad studying anthropology and sociology, and third-year undergrad Nymisha Chilukuri, studying developmental biology and religious studies. I had the pleasure of interviewing them for a story about World AIDS Day events taking place on U of T’s St George campus.

Burke and Chilukuri, and the rest of the U of T’s Millennium Project committee, have organized a People’s Ribbon Campaign, and are asking the university community to wear something red and meet them at King’s College Circle on Dec. 1st at 3 p.m. to help create the largest human-made red ribbon.

The purpose of this event is to bring awareness to the Canadian government’s lack of progress in reaching United Nations Millennium development goal number 6; to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases.

They also want to inspire people to act and be less complacent when it comes to solving these problems.

For Burke and Chilukuri, giving money or buying something ‘Red’ at the Gap, are acts designed to make us feel like we’re contributing to the solution, without engaging us critically. Who among us knows how this money is spent? Me neither.

By shopping or giving money we get to feel good because we are doing something. And, of course we are, because let’s face it money is important to this fight. However, it also absolves us of any responsibility. Do you know the details of goal number 6 and why only Scandinavian countries are meeting their obligations?

What these students see are citizens, and their governments, all too willing to let corporations handle the problem. Do we know how corporations plan to halt HIV/AIDS or malaria by 2015? What are their policies, and how much will the bottom line determine their actions?  

In 1994, Bill Gates established what would become the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help improve people’s health in developing nations and to provide opportunities for education to citizens of the United States.

The foundation employs over 800 people, manages a $36.4 billion trust endowment and has given $23.91 billion in research grants for things like improving soil conditions in Africa, or developing malaria vaccines. How can this be anything but good?

It can’t, unless of course the world becomes Gates’ world. But that’ll never happen. Right?

I think this is Burke and Chilukuri’s point. What will the world look like when major corporations are allowed to take-up the world’s problems without input or questioning from its citizens?

Is it wrong to question the motives of companies who establish foundations or actively support charities all in the name of doing something good?

A history professor of mine once said, “Thinking critically does not necessarily entail a rejection.”

So, the next time you’re about to do something labeled ‘good,’ think about it.