Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

Destinations

So, how about that letter from Captain James Cook that’s been found in the back of someone’s picture frame?

1777 is the year in which they believe it to be written, at the end of his three-year journey to chart Australia and its environs. Of course, there being no such thing as air mail or any kind of international postal service in existence at the time, the only way for a letter to get back from a seagoing vessel was for it to be handed to a fishing boat or a passing merchant ship headed in the other direction, and to pray that it eventually reache England’s shores. Which, when you think about it, is pretty much throwing your trust into the hands and words of a stranger.

It actually worked. The letter got to England.

Now, the thing that blows me away is the fact that we couldn’t do this today. Okay, if a stranger handed me a letter and said, “Please, could you post this?”, I’d probably say, “Sure,” and drop it in the nearest box and forget about it (I know, I know, anthrax scares and fingerprints to the contrary). But if a stranger in a foreign country came up to me and said, “Please, can you carry this back to England for me?”, chances are good I’d say, “Er, no, sorry.” Chances are good, in fact, that most people would say the same thing.

The other thing which amuses me about this is that the BBC quotes someones as comparing Cook’s return to James T Kirk’s return from his five-year mission with the Enterprise. Even Tom Allen, the host of CBC Radio Two’s Music & Company, compared the miracle of the letter reaching England to an Earth-bound letter from Kirk passed to some independent starship while on a far-flung planetary mission. Star Trek is all about idealism in the future. So our views of this letter from Cook are caught between nostalgia for the past on one side, and idealism about the future on the other.

Ain’t historical (and pop cultural) parallax grand?

I’m sure future generations will use similes like, “It’s about as amazing as someone three feet high carrying a Ring of Power through the entire lands of Middle-Earth and surviving the trilogy.” Ooh, look at that; I’m twitching.

Today

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I love hearing music I’ve played in concert on the radio. Particularly the fourth movement to Beethoven’s second symphony. I get all excited. Small things amuse, I know.

I also became strangely excited when I realised that it was so darned cold in the office this morning that I had to go put socks on. After a summer of bare feet, it Meant Something.

The computer finally defragged, on the fourth go-round. I can’t see that it’s any quicker, but it sure moved stuff around. This morning I installed a pop-up ad blocker, which works beautifully – so well, in fact, that I couldn’t get the YACCS comments boxes to come up on a blog this morning. Oh, right – they’re pop-up windows. Duh. Must hold Ctrl down while clicking on link. Small price to pay, though.

I was looking out the window this morning, waiting for my tea to steep, and I saw a man walk casually into the depanneur across from us. He had a ball cap on and a messenger-style bag over his shoulder, and wore a denim button-down shirt. It was around seven-fifteen, and all of a sudden I got hit by a wave of back-to-schoolness. For a moment, I, too, wished I had somewhere to be, to dress up and pack my bag and leave the house for, walking down the street early in the morning, when the light is still clear and cool, and on your way to the bus stop, you can swing by the dep for an orange juice and maybe a granola bar.

Only for a moment, though. Then I came back into the office with my tea, sat down, and looked at my list of work things I had drafted for today, with CBC Radio Two on behind me, with cats chasing one another around the apartment, and torn jeans and a summer sweater on.

Contradiction

Yesterday was another odd day.

I met with Ceri to exchange our creative efforts for the two previous weeks, and I was late; I had been involved in my writing, finally looked at the clock, and proceeded to dash about trying to print things out, change, and catch a bus. I hate being rushed. I also dislike waking up and being slightly out of sorts, which I was yesterday; not in a bad mood, just slightly out of step with everything else. Ceri offered me tea and made me a grilled cheese sandwich, like any good Maritimer would if you collapsed in their kitchen and said, “I feel wrong.” It helped. So did the Advil.

I had dinner with MLG which was as enjoyable as always, and yet uncomfortable on other levels. We’d made the date previous to my implosion on Sunday, so rather than having an evening getting away from it all, we ended up troubleshooting and problem-solving, which isn’t a bad thing, just not what I had originally intended. Although I am an excellent listener, I am admittedly reluctant to ask people for help, and these days I’m incredibly blessed to have people who see that I need it and give it to me whether I’ve asked or not. I think that reluctance partially stems from the belief that my feelings and problems are private, and partially from the desire to not burden others (who have their own problems) with mine as well. To a certain extent, it’s also learned behaviour: throughout high school and CEGEP, my friends would pour their problems out to me, but when I tried to share my own, they were uninterested. The idea that people are determined to get me to talk and open up is rather new. I am, however, looking forward to a day when I can have a conversation with other adults that doesn’t revolve around my problems. I get twitchy when a conversation rests on me for too long and start looking for a place to hide, and when you’re in a corner at a pub with a single rather sharp individual, hiding is rather difficult. I suppose this is good for me – doesn’t it build character or something?

Apart from dinner being terribly delicious (nothing like colcannon when you need comfort food!) and being introduced to Boddingtons, I acquired a battery for my laptop, hurrah! I got home and spent an embarrassing amount of time looking for the slot to install it before realising that the only logical place for it to go was the CD-ROM drive slot, so I took out the disc drive and lo and behold, the battery slid right in. The unit didn’t self-destruct when I turned it on this morning, so I must have done something right – it has even produced a battery indicator on the display. I feel more freedom already. The Loyola campus library is three minutes away from me, and I have many fond memories of hours spent there before and after class during my BA years; there’s also a perfectly lovely park across the way which I will have to test out soon as a writing location as well.

I have an odd contradiction of feeling about my home these days. I want to cocoon, to stay home, read, and write; on the other hand, I’m feeling a little house-bound by the recent weather and want to be Out Doing Things. The latter is a very new experience for me, so I’m indulging it at the right times. In fact, Ceri and I are headed for more fabric stores today, questing for the perfect trim for sewing projects. Little expeditions like this are just perfect; they get me out, I can read on the metro, I share a couple of hours with another intelligent life form other than a cat, and then I’m home again. I have discovered by not working for an employer during the week, I no longer feel like I Have To Have Fun on my days off; as a result, when the sun goes down I no longer feel as if I’ve wasted a day somehow. This is a definite improvement.

They say it will rain this weekend. They said that last weekend too. I’ll believe it when I see it.

The Little Things Count

So I spent yesterday with Ceri, and all day something was lurking in the back of my mind, and it had something to do with Ceri herself (indirectly), and Saturday night when I went to a ritual.

It nibbled, and nibbled, and every time I tried to look at it it would vanish into the shadowy depths of my subconscious again. All Sunday it lurked and gnawed. Something like this is like having a mosquito in the room with you: you can hear it, and you know it’s there, but you’ll never see it, and it just gets more and more irritating.

When I go to ritual I usually wear a hand-made anklet of amber and onyx. I rarely wear it for any other reason, and if I do, I have to be feeling really special. As I did up the clasp on Saturday night I thought about wearing it more often, but I’m always afraid it will break. This casual observation must have been what started that lurky thought that hung around for a day or so. Ceri and I looked at a lot of fabric and trims yesterday, and Ceri mentioned making her wedding dress. The niggling feeling that I was forgetting something floated closer to the surface, but still didn’t make it all the way to conscious thought. It wasn’t until I was in a bath last night that I finally, triumphantly, dragged that thought out into the light, kicking and screaming.

I bought another anklet in Halifax last September the day of Ceri’s wedding, so I could wear an anklet all the time.

There.

When I emerged from the bath I hunted through my jewelry box until I found it, underneath some stone necklaces. Out of sight, out of mind. Figures.

I shouldn’t feel this smug and content about remembering a delicate silver anklet. Really.

Thoughts On Successful Children

So, Wil Wheaton is thirty.

So is Midori.

When people you knew as child prodigies hit their third decade, you get an odd sort of ripply time warp feeling. As if they have been children forever, and suddenly, bang, they’re adults.

Midori’s been performing for twenty years. Twenty. Made her debut at eleven. At fifteen, she calmly went through three violins while playing with Leonard Bernstein and the Boston Symphony. A string broke; she was handed another instrument and kept playing. A string broke on the replacement violin; she was handed a third instrument and finished the piece. Didn’t lose her cool. Didn’t make a mistake.

There are people who think that for a fifteen-year-old to display such sang-froide is proof of something unnatural. From what I can tell, however, Midori has always been polite and level-headed. I have nothing against child prodigies; I do, however, have something against the people who force children into being child prodigies if the child doesn’t want to be there. I also have something against people who convince a child prodigy that they’re something special and encourage them to be arrogant, or who don’t have the sense to keep the child rooted in the real world. This behaviour is hardly limited to child prodigies, of course; there are plenty of adult performers who are nowhere near prodigal who develop arrogance and run wild.

I’ve been trying to figure out why people get so hostile about successful young people. Is it guilt? Is it a sense of failure on their own part? Is it sour grapes? And on the other hand, why do people flock to see an eleven-year-old play the violin? Is an example of the human desire to gawk at something freakish? Or is it a genuine appreciation of the talent that shines?

There are generally two camps that end up emerging: those who disparage child prodigies as being unnatural, saying that while they may display technical brilliance they do not have the life experience necessary to interpret most pieces of music emotionally. My respnse to this particular belief is that there are plenty of adults who have the technical brilliance and the life experience who still can’t play a piece of music that sounds like it has any emotion whatsoever, and so what’s their excuse? The other camp views child prodigies as gifts, inspired by whatever deity you care to assign it to.

Unfortunately for any talented child, if a marketing department gets hold of them, woe betide their reputation. No matter what, people will get sick and tired of “child prodigy this” and “child prodigy that”. Inevitably, we strike out against anything we are overexposed to, and a touchy thing like a talented child, who is not only more skilled than we are but famous and making money at it as well, is all too easy a target.

Yo-Yo Ma began memorising two bars of the Bach Solo Suites for Cello daily when he was four years old. He knew them all by heart in a few years. I take that as an inspiration, not a criticism.

So long as a talented child pursues what s/he is skilled at becauses/he enjoys it, I think they’re on the right track. If someone else is forcing them to do it simply because they’re good at it, that’s where things start to break down.

Speaking of breaking down, I’m dizzy and my stomach appears to be upset, so I think I’m going to go lie down. I slept horribly last night and woke up much too early.

Did you remember to say “white rabbits, white rabbits, white rabbits”?

Bringing The Past To Life

My father took me to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton this afternoon. He volunteers there now that he’s not flying, and he makes a terrific tour guide: he paced everything well and gave me a wonderful range of information on each craft. There are over forty planes in the collection, housed in a wonderful new delta-shaped hangar, and every single one of them flies (except for the two wired up, and the fiberglass reconstructed craft that was destroyed in the fire that burned down the original hangar).

There are several bright yellow trainers (my favourites!) spanning several years: Finches, Moths, Harvards; there are bombers, recon craft and others. Every once in a while Dad would connect the craft to something I would recognise from his own history: “This is the one I flew in Portage-La-Prairie; this is the one I would fly up from Summerside to see your mother in Montreal.” I had no idea he had trained on so many warplanes.

The trip was fascinating, but unfortunately what I’ll remember the most is the Lancaster. The Lancaster is one of the Heritage Museum’s pride and joys; fully restored, it flies for display several times each year, and for a modest fee of $1000 (gulp!) will take passengers for a half-hour ride. It’s a beautiful aircraft. It was on the tarmac today along with four or five trainers doing passenger tours, as well as an F-5, a DC-3 and a couple of others odds and ends. We paused by the open hangar door to watch it taxi in, guided by the ground crew, and everything seemed just fine right up until a surreal moment where everyone watched without comprehending what was truly happening. Rather than completing the slow and graceful arc into the open area to taxi to a stop, the Lancaster came too close to the parked DC-3, and inexorably, like a bad dream, the right-most prop hacked into the left wing of the DC-3.

We stood in the hangar door and stared. Planes don’t do that. The surreal moment hung there as two gigantic aircraft attempted to occupy the same place. Then the props cut out on the Lancaster and it stopped dead, ground crews were running out, and the noise that I hadn’t truly heard over the sound of the engines ceased. There was debris on the runway, and a sense of numb horror in the air.

My father had spent the last hour or so detailing the expense and effort that goes into restoring these aircraft, and I had taken it all to heart. I admire any sort of dedicated restoration, and to keep an outdated piece of machinery in flying trim is a particularly impressive work. Many of the craft in the museum hangar have been salvaged from barns or fields, rusted and broken; some have been pieced together from three, five, six other craft. Apart from three paid mechanics and a cleaning staff, everyone involved in the Museum work is a volunteer, which means the pilots, the interpreters, and the restoration crews do it out of love for the aircraft and the history.

The horror I felt watching the Lancaster’s prop destroy the wing of the DC-3 was partially based on the knowledge of the expense incurred and the historic memorabilia damaged, partially on the despair of the men and women who had invested so many hours of maintenance and pride into the two craft, and partially on my empathy for the pilots, fighting a huge craft weighing several tons as it just didn’t make the turn, taking the responsibility for the result on their shoulders. The latter was heightened later on when while my father and I were having lunch, the co-pilot of the Lancaster came in with an accident report to fill out, and that disconnected air that someone dealing with shock displays. He was an old piloting friend of my father’s who sat with us as he filled in his report (although he said that it was impossible to reconstruct what had gone wrong), and we watched as the Lancaster was finally pushed back away from the DC-3 and examined. The damage to the Lancaster appears to be minimal; the DC-3, on the other hand, might lose the wing panel, which is removable thanks to a couple of hundred bolts. Depending on the extent of the damage, it will be either restored, or replaced if a panel can be found elsewhere.

The Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum is one of those places I truly admire, making an attempt to preserve history for future generations. The memorabilia they house (crafts and gear, medals, uniforms, communications) is evidence of another time that wasn’t so long ago. In the past century, our rate of development has shot through the roof; more progress has been made in the last hundred years than in two to three centuries previous. We go so fast that we lose track of how we got here. When I tour places like this, I am simultaneously amazed at how much I know, and always dejected at how much I still have to learn. Which is why I admire people like my father, donating time to teach people about where they came from, sharing their knowledge.

The entire staff of the Museum deserve a tip of the hat for their work, past, present and future. I’ll be back again; and I know that after many long, expensive hours of reconstruction, maintenance, and finishing, I’ll see the DC-3 and the Lancaster fly again. Because that’s what they do; they bring the past back to life. And every one of them should be honoured for it.

Troll-Provoked Thoughts

Someone left a holier-than-thou comment on the last post and it got me thinking.

With all the crap going on in the world, if we stopped to think about every morally outrageous act � the war crimes, the abuse, the murder, the rape � and to get worked up about every single one of them, it would be as useless as ignoring it all.

How do you prioritize between evil? How do you say, �This man shooting this man is more evil than this woman abusing this boy?� There is no way to put a value on heinous acts. Each act is freshly evil.

Yet in our society, the evil acts conglomerate into a numbing mass. We hear of murder done daily, of fresh horrors in overseas wars. Have we not become desensitized?

And if so, if a single act � a particular, not-necessarily-earthshattering act � gets past the numbness, and speaks to you; if it pricks a heart jaded by everyday acts of evil� how can this be valued at less than if a heart is pricked by a bomb dropped on a city?

By reacting to one, we react to them all. We choose to stand up and say, �This violence committed is wrong�; we are horrified, outraged, saddened, turned to despair, angered, spurred to action on some level.

Who among us has the right to judge if the death of a woman, man, child or animal is more or less important than another? Who are we to say that deforestation, poisoning of crops, or salting of earth deserves less righteous fury than a capsized ferry, a leaking oil tanker?

God cares for all equally. Man, on the other hand, has spent years hacking out a hierarchy where the Earth and Her creatures rank far below us. To me, an animal is as a child. If I am horrified at an animal abused, I am extending that horror to the abuse of all creatures on this Earth. Which includes little girls raped and murdered, elderly men stabbed to death in their apartments, little boys sexually abused by their baseball coaches, and women shot and killed while jogging.

It�s just a pity that compassion doesn�t seem to flow the other way very often.