Category Archives: troubling deaf heaven

Day Eight – Neither Fair nor Fowl

Posted on by
Reply

 

 

F1D09496-95E9-4572-9689-6C0201A95738

Is my town like yours?

My town, London, Ontario, has a population of about 400,000 people who politically either lean right or left depending on the mood. We have a river that runs through our town. We have a hockey arena downtown and a sort of chic market. Our main branch of the library is pretty cool but resides in a failed mall. We do not have a particularly inspired set of political leaders. They go from the petty and corrupt to the genuinely caring and engaged. Our wealthier neighbourhoods are hotbeds of NIMBYISM where they will drop a few bucks in the Sally Anne kettle at Christmas, but you try building something in, or at the edges, of one of their neighbourhoods to help the neediest in our city and you can expect an avalanche of opposition. Charity and helping people is all well and fine but keep it out of our sight seems to be the message.

Our city has 20% of our children living in poverty and a Food Bank that grows and grows and grows in response to the demand from our citizens. We do not have a very strong local arts scene. We have some amazing visual artists in London, for which we a have a world-class history, but generally, we import our talent, and almost all of our young artists go elsewhere to train and live.

Our transit system was the focus of a 3-year battle that really was a proxy war for two different political tribes in our community—the Progressive and Conservative. The result was one of the most brutal arguments, filled with lies and deception, that resulted in a kind of kludged solution that will ultimately serve no one, especially those that need transit the most. It was likely the most divisive political event to happen in our community in more than a decade that was full of sound and fury ultimately creating nothing.

Our town has a history of serial killing.

No, really it does. London, Ontario was at one time the serial killer capital of Canada. Weird eh?

We have, at times, an incredibly generous response from Londoners to emergencies. Like the time the whole town came together when a drunk driver rammed into a house that caused a fire and almost destroyed an entire neighbourhood. Hundreds of people came together to offer food and comfort and their own homes as a place to stay. We also volunteer almost more than anywhere else in Canada. We are the longtime champs of volunteerism as a matter of fact.

Parts of our town are so pretty they take your breath away. We have some of the most gorgeous neighbourhoods in the whole of our country, and the Thames Valley Pathway System is and treasure that needs to be protected and enhanced. We have these collections of natural parks and sites that are unique, and the neighbourhoods that surround them are stalwart wardens for them. They have driven off many a developer. And our downtown recently went through a transformation that was both inspired and will lead to a more robust downtown.

My town is ultimately directionless when it comes to longterm thinking. Its political seasons are filled with arguments for or against taxes. Candidates and incumbents jostling for position and advantage but rarely talk about big ideas and bold visions that chart a course to economic and community growth. When those people come along and propose a bold vision or clear path, there is inevitable a feeding frenzy on local radio, or from former reporters, that shoot it down. Not a good place to have an idea and stick up your hand, London Ontario, lest it is chopped off and shot down.

In the end, my town is neither fair nor fowl but a directionless beige that doesn’t dare to be something more but can still show flashes of brilliance now and then. It is a place of the middle. A place that is and is not.

Is my town like yours?

Day 6 – Saturday Virus Coffee Special

Posted on by
Reply
close up photo of coffee on table

Photo by Vova Krasilnikov on Pexels.com

Gotta say I am thrilled my daughter is not in school anymore. The thought of her going into those school hallways and classrooms would have had me feeling very anxious. But I don’t have to make that choice though sadly many of you do. Our governments have made this a lot easier, have they? Across Canada, there is a variety of approaches, none of which particularly install confidence.

Here in my adopted Ontario, Doug Ford has come out with a plan that has been roundly criticized by the Toronto School Board and by Sick Kids Hospital. Not a great signs of a winning strategy. Also, the need to open up the rest of the economy seems to be precipitous. I’m not convinced we’re through the first danger far enough yet to start opening everything back up, and yes I know that our economy has been brutalized. Still, I’d rather see a closed business than a life lost.

Add to all this the misinformation that comes out every day from that trusted news source Facebook friends. It’s no wonder people are confused and feeling uncertain. Yesterday someone who was in high school with me, who you would think would know better, sent me a private message with a news story insisting that the WHO had changed its mind about Carona Virus and it wasn’t contagious at all ! And now the WHO was being muzzled from telling the truth.

REALLY?

REALLY?

What I don’t understand is why so many people buy this kind of deliberate misinformation. With just 5 minutes using the goole, you will find the story debunked, verifiable sources for true information, and a host of stories about how this kind of pernicious mistelling of the truth damages our democracy. Yet there’s an old high school classmate blithely serving up a great big serving of self-delusion and misinformation.

Look the thing is I can be both cynical, in terms of school and business opening, and be for factual and accurate information. I don’t have to go over to crackpot theories to feel vindicated in my thinking. You don’t have to either. We should be able to hold two simultaneous points of view from slightly different perspectives.

In the end, what I say, and really what you say, matters not a wit. The government will do what they feel is best and everyone else will, or will not, obey safe distancing and mask-wearing. There will be decent people believing conspiracies and misinformation. Me? I’m going to enjoy the tomatoes growing in my back yard, wear a mask when in public, and cynically look at the information that comes my way. The only other choice is to listen to the conspiracists, and that does not serve my time or focus.

So onward and outward (inward?) friends. Saturday awaits, and so does my morning coffee. But you know did hear that the coffee plantations are using aliens to……….

Day Five – Hearth and Home

Posted on by
Reply
bed bedroom blanket clean

Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

I woke this morning anxious. Many of you may how woken up the same way. Anxious about our children, anxious about our finances, anxious about friends and family, and anxious about the state of the world. I awoke this morning anxious. What I was not anxious about this morning was that tonight I would not have a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in.

But for many in Ontario this week that was not the case. Ontario’s Ford government decided that they no longer needed to use their power to protect people who were economically devastated by the Covid pandemic. Decided that landlord could now evict those people who had no way to pay their rents. Decided that despite the worst economic hit to our country since the great depression, the people in Ontario who couldn’t pay their rent could be kicked out onto the street.

Last night I wondered how do you respond rationally to a leader who allows this to happen? How do you give a party which marches in lockstep with that leader a fair hearing? How do you not see them as indifferent and callous? How do you not see the Ontario Conservative Party, Or the Republican Party in the United States, as a moral threat to Human Decency? I don’t know.

We here in the little berg of London, Ontario, see homelessness every day. We also have our share of indifference to homeless people as evidenced by the crackdowns our city governments have had on homeless camps. We don’t have a solution to housing in our town either. But as much as I disagree with our Major and a number of our Councillors, they did not actively create a law to make it easier to evict people onto the streets. Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, did just that. And in our town, and your town as well, we will be left to inadequately pick up the pieces of Mr.Ford and The Conservative Party in the desperate form of more homeless people.

In a month or two, you’ll likely forget about this issue, but those people who were evicted will still be without a home. And so we go on. And so this cycle continues; A cycle of politicians, emboldened by the people who elected them, cutting services and protections for the most vulnerable in our community while the rest of shake our heads and wag our fingers for the prescribed amount of virtue signalling before moving on.

I woke up Anxious this morning, but I did not wake up homeless. This week thousands of Ontarian’s will and you and I allowed it to happen.

To say shame on us somehow feels pathetically inadequate, but it is all I have.

Shame on us.

Day Three – Left To Our Own Devices

Posted on by
Reply

 

black metal framed glass window

In the town where I live, I am often very lonely. I don’t have a lot of friends here and don’t see the ones I do have very often. There are some very concrete reasons for my absenting myself from friends and why I am often lonely. This town encourages loneliness, and many, many, many people have told me how difficult they find it making friends here. But this loneliness is not only about my town but also about your town ans the fact that loneliness not only happens here but happens everywhere in such massive numbers that I think it will effect our near and long term future.

I am sure you’ve read about the plague of loneliness that has gripped the western world. I am sure you’re aware of how exasperated that is with the arrival of this virus. It further strips people of any connections they have to other people, and the result is more isolation without any hope of connections to other people. I had read somewhere recently that there has been a huge increase over the last 5 years to help lines and that the volunteers who work those lines have regulars who call every day because that is the only connection to the world they have. Did you know that loneliness can lead to an increase of 30% in early death? I didn’t, but it makes sense to me. So those people who are calling helplines as their only source of social connection are more likely to die because of how alone in the world they are. Doesn’t that break your heart?

In Japan, the lonely and self-isolating are called Hikikomori. Japan has an official number of 1.15 million Hikikomori but experts tell us that this number is more likely 10 million. These people purposely withdraw from society. They are so hurt or bewildered by the world around them that they withdraw from all contact. Shutting themselves up in their apartments, never leaving. Many times they only come out when neighbours complain of smells and authorities investigate finding these poor individuals have died. I think I understand some of the reasons people become Hikikomori. The depths of their pain and hurt must be so extreme that they would rather not see anyone. Ever.

Why I am sharing all this with you? Well because I don’t think about this issue very often and am sure many of you never give it much thought either. More importantly, I want you to consider how we got to the point where people have to call helplines in order not to feel lonely. How did it come to pass that there is such an epidemic of loneliness that it is reported in the planets major newspapers as a substantial public health issue..

I believe that this global loneliness is also linked with the rise in bullying, loss of civility, our inability to see past our own point of view, and growing seeming indifference to one another. We humans are changing friends. We seem to be more lonely, less able to see opportunities for understanding and collaboration, and hardened and indifferent to the suffering that is growing around us.

I am not sure we can change the course we are on, and I would like to leave you with a typically hopeful ending to this kind of blog, but I am not sure I can. I know I am lonely, and I know you are likely alone as well. Both of us knowing this, we don’t seem to be able to connect and change the course of that isolation. So will we become a world of Hikikomori? This may be how many people end up. Unable to cope with the shattered world around them. I hope not, but I am unsure if we collectively have a heart big enough to overcome this and the rest of our problems.

I will look out my window, watch, and see what happens.

Day One

Posted on by
Reply

Loser

I fail all the time. I fail professionally, I fail personally, I fail mortally. I fail and fail and fail. Now if you think this is some sort of self-flagellation that leads to some redemption blog, then I will have to disappoint you, friend. I fail because I fail. Not for some deeper purpose like “fail faster “. I fail because I fail.

The reason I am sharing with you that I fail all the time is to put right on the table that I am not some paragon of virtue looking down on everyone. I am not an exemplar of virtue or wisdom. But even though I fail all the time on all kinds of levels at least I can admit it and put a pin in my own hubris as I offer a more severe criticism.

You’re all failing.

In Britain, in the United States, In Canada, in Poland, In France, In Italy, and across the western world you are all failing. All of you are failing miserably. You’re failing because you choose to not care about your neighbour who doesn’t have enough food. You’re failing because you’re willing to let racists and flim flamers take the reins of power in your country. You’re failing because you don’t demand that obscenely wealthy corporations and individuals actually pay their fair share. You are failing because you would rather believe bullshit conspiracy theories propagated by Vladimir Putin on Facebook than the people in your own town. You are failing because you can’t bring yourself to say Black Lives Matter. You’re failing because Me Too makes you feel uncomfortable rather than outraged.

You are failing because you refuse to vote or when you do vote you can’t be bothered to invest the time needed to make sure you’ve made an informed decision. You are failing and failing and failing because you would instead do that, fail, then admit you’re wrong, and it’s that hubris that lets people like Donald Trump get into power. It’s because of that hubris that Boris Johnstone can lie to you again and again and again yet you elect him Prime Minister of Britain. It is because of hubris that you chose the racist Andrzej Duda in Poland. And it is that hubris that allows Justin Trudeau to think he is The Dauphin rather than the servant he is supposed to be.

Now you could blame the right-wingers and the white power element or the patriarchy or the economy, but in the end maybe you should look in the mirror. Perhaps you should consider that you would rather see the world burn, people starve, demagogues be elected, and our children’s future dimmer than admit that you’ve gotten it wrong.

Or maybe you won’t, and you’ll start to hold yourself to account so we can hold those in power to account.

The future of the world os riding on your shoulders friend, so I really have to ask you.

Is failure an option?

Pacem ad Populum Terræ

Posted on by
Reply

There is no reason whatsoever for anyone on our planet to not have enough food, enough clean water, enough housing, enough medicine, enough education  and enough love to live lives without created suffering. We have enough resources on our planet to end the global environmental, refugee, food, and war crises we have today. There is no logical reason for human injustice and suffering to happen anywhere on our planet. None whatsoever.

BUT we have a collective flaw. We want what we don’t have and will not give up what we do. So much so that we will kill, persecute, disenfranchise, and ignore others who have less. We are inhuman in our collective ability to solve these very solvable problems.

Yet everyday I see messages of understanding, of pleas for justice, outrage at inequality, and lonely shouts out into the world of people searching for meaning and balance in their day-to-day lives. How can it be the case when there are so many efforts and pleas for a better world yet at the same time the world is filled with so much human created grief? It is a dichotomy that is at the heart of who we are as a species, and a dichotomy that beggars us to a whiplash existence from grace to hell and back again over and over.

Ask yourself this one question about the state of our world. Is there a single leader or government that continually works for the collective well-being of us all? A leader or government that holds human care and wellbeing above any other consideration? In Canada we have Justin Trudeau, a man who was elected with great hope, but is now creating a system where corporations will build out our much-needed infrastructure improvements for a profit, and is ignoring his own promises for democratic reform to our electoral system. Barak Obama maybe? He spearheaded some amazing strides forward for the United States with gay marriage, health care, and brought his country back from a near economic collapse. But he and Congress allowed the people who created that crisis, and the suffering that went with it, to continue without any penalty.

We saw what happened in Sierra, what happened in South Sudan,  what happened in Iraq, what happened in Turkey, what happened across Asia, what continues to happen across our planet. Nothing was done, no effort was undertaken, no action completed, to stop these mountains of human suffering. It happened and we shook our heads and made sad noises. We donated some money and posted to Facebook our outrage. We soothed ourselves with our own thoughts of “ that is horrible“ and moved on. I do this. You do this. We do this.

And we, in the west especially, lull ourselves through our days with pictures of our wonderful lives posted as displays of a faux identity. We alleviate our loneliness in likes and retweets and struggle for meaning in something that does not have meaning. We have bought into the lie of our identity as nothing more than consumers, and because we always want what we don’t have, we allow corporations and the governments that serve them to continue on unhindered and undeterred. We are complicit.

We don’t do anything about this. I don’t do anything about this. I rant and rave in these words in the foolish hope that someone else will recognize and understand some small part of what I am inadequately expressing. In the hope someone will reach back and ask to help me to make a change, or better yet , ask me to help them. 

And there are moments of human beauty and generosity. There are moments, millions of times a day, that we do or say something that is transformative. Millions of moments everyday where we exceed our own expectations and become something better than we are. Millions of moments of kindness, of laughter, of art, of caring, of LOVE. So much so that in any second, on any day, in any country on the earth, you can witness this and be left breathless with the how extraordinary we are.

But we have yet to overcome our basic flaw collectively and for more than a second. If I have a prayer for this new year it is that. That we find our way toward the sustained effort of being, not extraordinary individuals, but an extraordinary species. A species that sees itself for what we can offer one another and our planet and not a species that wants more of what we don’t have.

Peace to the people of earth and peace to our collective hearts as we stumble forward seeking who we can be rather than what we are.

 

Buzzsaw Cowardice

Posted on by
1

Your buzzsaw quick cowardice dresses itself in the theft
of Judy, Doris, Rosemary, Anne, and Heather’s work.

Who? you ask ….Yeah .

And now you stand on the shores of the pacific, reeking of privilege and anglo pride,
bringing salvation to the poor people of a nation whose history and struggle you only notice in the airport gift shop.

What? you ask …..Yeah.

I would gladly stand in a court made of Y and 46XX to be judged.
And when sentence is passed would say thank while you slink out the backdoor
with your eyes down.

Uh? you say….. Yeah

So go a head spit spite and shout your words yelled from safe distances.
I am unafraid of any judgement you may generate and offer the evidence of your incompetence dressed in other peoples struggles.

But! you say……Yeah

Shibboleth

Posted on by
Reply

“Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right.” Book of Judges, Chapter 12

 

I have been considering first principles for sometime now. More specifically my own first principles and what they mean to me and what I do with them. In my beginning there was art and it informed what I did and how I went about my life. It began with music and moved on to theatre. Art and its creation was a first principle.  And then came to a stop.

Over the last 10 or so years i have tried a number of times to restart the process of creating but it was always abortive in the doing. Always came to a point of confusion and non-completion. The largest part of the blame for this resides within myself by holding on to past wrongs and failures. Some part of this is because of where I live. It has not been as fertile a place to create as other places I have lived. But again and again, for sometime now, I keep thinking about these first principles of where I started. The first principle of creating art.

Let me say that Art is a completely illogical thing. Where the impulse for its creation comes from for me is almost undefinable. In trying to II sputter and flail about. But still it is there; a very deep and strong impulse despite my abuse of it. So I chose to go back to first principles. The drive to create art.

This will mean i will need to set aside some other plans and processes I have currently started or am doing. To those of you who will see me leave that work I am sorry for not finishing it with you. I hope you will understand. I must do this other thing.

I will begin by understanding and writing and talking about the parts of this first principle of creating art. About sharing my thoughts on what it means here in my community and most importantly creating it. For those that create art there is a kind of shibboleth that we recognize amongst one another; a way of identifying those who understand these impulses and need to create. I will be seeking you out and will know you, and you me, by how we frame our thoughts. How we say Shibboleth to one another.

This will not be easy but i sense already it will be a worth while. I am filled with a mad excitement and a real terror at the thought of starting .or is it restarting and of abandoning the safer path I am currently on. So let this be a declaration of a beginning.

Wish me Gods speed and turbulent waters. Everything else is merde .

Quigley

When Jimmy Kimmel Cried

Posted on by
Reply

There has been much outrage and outrageousness over the brutal killing of Cecil the Lion, including the very authentic moment when late night host Jimmy Kimmel was visibly moved over how the animal was killed. My social media feeds for the last four days have been overwhelmed by a deluge of posts on the lion including calls for the perpetrator of the killing, a Minnesota Dentist, to be hunted himself. Yesterday morning, between the time when I was eating breakfast and listening to the radio while driving to work, I noticed something that left me a little troubled.

First was this story posted on my Facebook feed, “International report confirms: 2014 was Earth’s warmest year on record“ and then came, “Canada offers up to $8.3M in fight against ISIS” with this line in particular leaving me shaken, “Naked women are sold at market like cattle, with manuals on how to sell slaves and deal with them.”  Then this came up, “France deploys riot police at Calais as migrants try to rush Channel Tunnel” where Prime Minister Cameron of Great Britain has offered to send dogs and chain link fence to deal with the issue of the economically displaced. And then there was “Verdict in Mohamed Fahmy retrial postponed until August” about a Canadian journalist who is still being held in Egypt. Or “Attacker stabs six people during Israel gay pride parade” about an ultra-orthodox man recently released from prison who had stabbed people at a parade five years previously and did the same thing again.  All of this I read in the space of the hour when I eat my breakfast and when I get to work.

While the issue of Cecil the Lion and the way this animal was butchered is tragic, I was struck by the lack of comparative attention to these other stories involving the lives of people around the world. I mean women and children being sold at sex slave markets with instruction manuals should create some outrage one would think, or the fact that thousands of economically displaced people from Libya to Afghanistan are trying to jump on to moving trains and trucks, where five have died, in order to get to Great Britain because they want a better life, should cause some attention on Facebook or Twitter, no? Or the fact that our planet seems to be on a collision course for radically higher sea levels and rapid weather change that would affect millions should at least create some stir? But no. The story of Cecil the Lion not only consumed social media but was in heavy circulation on our radios and tv sets and North America was focused on that.

How did this happen? How did we end up so focused on the case of this lion and not on at least some of the stories, or thousands like them, above? Have we become so disconnected from the plight of our brothers and sisters on our planet that what happens to them doesn’t even register anymore? Have we been reduced to veering wildly from Cecil to cat videos to the billions of inspirational videos that we cannot even see through the noise to what is happening around us? Or have we become so overwhelmed with the complexity of our economies and environments, combined with the distraction of the small screen, that we can’t even begin to grasp how to look at and deal with these very human issues?

I don’t believe that most people “just don’t care” or that Gen Y is “self involved and lazy” or that Baby Boomers are ”all about their own money and power” or that the poor should “be able to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps” or any of the thousands of easy one-line responses to issues and problems that are deeply complex and are woven through our communities and planet. No, I believe that people are essentially good and that our fellow humans will go out of their way to help those who need it.

But maybe we have become more myopic in what we react to and maybe that myopia leads us to not be able to understand our place in the larger context of humanity and our planet. And maybe the world comes at us so fast and in such a customized way that much of the world is filtered from our view even as it is happening right in our own backyard. And maybe, in writing this to myself and in recognizing my own small world view, we can lift our eyes a little higher to see over the horizon to see a wider view of our world and our place in it. Cecil is a part of that story but so are the millions of people from our own downtowns to the middle east and across the World. I hope you’ll remind me to lift my eyes as you remember to lift your own and consider the bigger picture and hope that Jimmy and the rest of us are as moved by these issues as we are by Cecil.

Solid Ground

Posted on by
Reply

We have gone through what seems to be an unending series of calamities and misfortunes that at times for me seems to shake the fabric of the world and I am left standing like a witness to a mugging. What was stolen was us, the collective we, and the ground we were standing on. The place where the crime happened is our forested city and perhaps like many bystanders we let this crime happen.

Our Annus horribilis began with racism on ice that fled to discrimination in a market which catapulted into park occupation in hopes of equality that was then dismantled which hurtled into the eroding of the middle class jobs, locked gates, and picket lines, that then staggered into the facts of increased poverty, lower employment, lack of opportunity for newcomers and new generations, that slid into the daily horror of bullying which finally sighed into the wavering of our belief in public office.

We also had moments and movements of hope this last year. Gatherings of the concerned and optimistic, heartfelt conversations over beer and coffee, presentations of excellence and inspiration, and revelries of who we are in dance, music, theatre, and words. These shared experience in twos and threes, hundreds and thousands, made the last year bearable when things seemed to have no chance of being better.

In the face of all this some come to the front to offer a way forward and drop out of site when they cannot find consensus, some are tenacious and keep iterating and creating, hoping that the next time the combination of idea, people, and place will coalesce into a magic moment and it will all come together. The majority will stand on the sidelines and remain mute hoping for a brighter day.

It is to all of you that I am writing this. I am writing because i believe that in order to know where you are going you have to recognize where you are and where you have been. I have been in places of bright optimism and bleak pessimism. In places where I have been comforted and have offered comfort. In places of screaming in rage and in places of counseling clam and tolerance. And it is in that we find the rub dear reader.

We are in a time and place of wild swings of intention and action, of inattention and inaction, of tolerance and rage, of expectation, hope, cynicism , decay and rebirth. We have no solid ground to stand upon and survey where we are and what we are doing, and know not where or who we want be today or tomorrow.  We are ricocheted around these times like rubber balls on concrete walls and we are left unstable.

We have lost the old solid footing of community institutions like churches, clubs, political parties, and often the comforting familiarity of community, neighbor and family. If this is the case then we must build new institutions on the old or rebuild that which has crumbled. Organization that do the work now that was once the purview of government and who work for the common good should come together and buttress each other, standing forward as places for community to grow from. Our institutions of higher learning can no longer look inside their own walls or so far beyond them thy the cannot see the people living around them. We live just outside the doors. Collective recognition of old institutions like churches should begin because they are the ones feeding and caring for the most untouchable and unloved amongst us and do this despite our growing disbelief and distrust in them.

Those with voices clear and strong need to step forward now and take up the reins of leadership in our community with the pledge that they will restore our faith in the offices of political power but with the understanding in their marrow that all of that power is derived from the people who live around them. They must pledge to never shun the input for those that gave them this great gift of trust and pledge that they will work tirelessly, not for themselves, but for us and our collective hope for a better place to be and live.

If we do this then we shore up the ground we are standing on and have a stable place to build upon and to look out at the world. If we decide to do this then we must not only point out what is wrong but point out how to make it right.

This is not about policy or party but rather it is about belief. The belief that we can achieve anything if we have the collective will to do so and that if we chose to, we can stand together again on solid ground.