Category: Blog

I have several stalled blog entries and yet more scrapes of notebook paper littering my desk.

My room is a mess, and it feels like my head is too. I quit smoking and staying up late, but I miss doing both.

I rally my words and they falter. I crave the future, but I keep looking back expecting it to be there.

It’s a challenge to be, yet I am still here.

I just have to wait.

These lulls happen and pass, but I notice them all the same.

Go to work. Clean up your room. And the dragon always spits the sun back out…

Solo: Uh, everything’s under control. Situation normal.

Voice: What happened?

Solo: Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh… everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?

An ugly creature is undergoing an ugly death—and I feel it trying to avoid the inevitable, trying to drag the rest of the world down with it. It’s loud out there. Deafening.

“Survival of the fittest” is what we’re told Charles Darwin said about evolution. But he didn’t say it. The phrase was coined by a guy named Herbert Spencer who read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species five years after it was published. Once again school teaches the words instead of the lesson. They taught me wrong, so I’m betting they taught you wrong as well. How do I know? It’s built right into our culture. I see it over and over again: people fighting to live. Watch any nature documentary: the narrator will at some point speak of only the strong surviving.

What Darwin was actually talking about was a creature who was best adapted for its immediate, local environment. Strength—in the knuckle‐dragging, meathead sense of the word—has nothing to do with it. There is no fight. But it makes for a useful excuse—in conjunction with human nature—when we’re rattling sabres and standing proud in the face of wars won and to be fought. With all due respect to those who have fought a war—war is nothing to be proud of. To me it’s the ultimate admission of failure, like smashing something broken instead of taking the time and effort to learn why it isn’t working.

Thus by survival of the fittest, the militant type of society becomes characterized by profound confidence in the governing power, joined with a loyalty causing submission to it in all matters whatever.

That’s Herbert Spencer again. Sound familiar?

The United States, and possibly England—although they are currently and drastically attempting to pull up after seeing just how fast the ground was rushing up to them—are going down. It won’t be any one specific event—the rest of us will just have better things to do than be intimidated and, somehow—paradoxically impressed by the self‐declared coolest kid in school trying to make everyone like them.

What I see is an environmental and emotional global climate where the classical ideologies of might is right embraced by the few are endangering the lives of everyone else. It’s unacceptable. It’s unfit for survival in the context of a planet inhabited by multiple cultures—human and animal. Our environment is telling us we need to be utilizing our resources more effectively and efficiently. Our environment is telling us we need to be kinder and more understanding to our fellow inhabitants.

And if you listen hard enough, over the wretched racket of an unfit beast in its death throws, our environment is telling us there is so much more to discover about what it means to be here. There is a grand adventure out there waiting for those who are fit.

I used to tell friends to stay strong. I was wrong. Stay fit. Always stay fit.

Years ago I had a cat—a black and white named Siegfried, Siggy for short. He was a rescue cat from the veterinary clinic back when I lived in British Columbia, and whether it was true or not, the day I met him was to be his last, but I did meet him, so it wasn’t. He came back to live with me and my family until his death in 2005, but I never knew how old he actually was.

Throughout his life his gentle character and welcoming personality earned him the title of Ambassador of Cats. There was a soft snapping sound I would make with one finger against my palm that if he heard he would come over to and stand up on his back legs, his front claws dug into my leg, head stretched up so I could pet him. He’d purr and all would be well. I’d whistle for him at the end of the day if he was outside and within a few minutes he’d be chirping in a way I’ve never heard a cat do before or since as he emerged from the shadows.

The topic of pets came up the other day at work—specifically how we often outlive them, and how difficult it is that we do. I told them about Siggy, the best cat in the world, and how hard it was to say goodbye to him, to feel him leave in my arms. They looked at my with pained expressions. They couldn’t believe I’d stayed there while it happened. A lump formed in my throat—I’d known this cat for fifteen years he wouldn’t have had otherwise. I saw him everyday. He was my friend, and I loved him. I knew I owed him that final respect—I saved his life, and for years he enriched not only mine but also the lives of those—human and feline—around him. And when the time came, when I knew I couldn’t save his life any longer, I also know I couldn’t leave him alone to die again. I know I wouldn’t have been able to face myself if I hadn’t in the same way I understood how my coworkers wouldn’t have been able to face themselves if they had.

I’ve been disappointed in the world lately—wasted potential angers me. I’m offended at the issues of the day—I honestly believed we were further along then it appears we are, but here we are, still trying to figure out how we all feel about access to equality and equity, still trying to figure out how we’re supposed to treat one another. Well—Siggy figured it out, despite occasionally licking his own balls in public, so there’s at least that common ground with conservatives. Gotta start somewhere, right?

But it’s not the world, actually. It’s the place that thinks it’s the world, the United States of America, the biggest frat house on the world street that shits its pants if it thinks it’s not invited to the block party, threatens to blow it up because it doesn’t like the DJ, drinks too much anyway, locks itself out of its own house, and then crashes on Canada’s porch after throwing up on it. And despite all this there is still the discussion here about being more like America.

You know that friend you used to have? You know the one you used to hang out with all the time as you helped each other with projects, you’d build stuff together, lend each other things, drink beer, laugh with, struggle with… Then one day as if overnight they became a bigoted, ignorant, misogynistic, hate‐filled, dishonest, greedy, petty, terrified little bastard. Then you realize it wasn’t overnight but something that happened so gradually you hadn’t noticed for years. And then you step even further back and realize they’d been a monster all this time but you’d only ever known this one person so you didn’t really know anything otherwise. That’s how I feel about the United States right now.

The title of this post is also the title of the song I currently have on repeat. Called Say Something Loving it’s from The xx’s third album I See You. The song, along with the rest of the album, is beautifully produced, and right now is my current pick for music perfection. Inspired by this track, I left myself a note: write something loving it said. With the dumpster fire of America raging so close by it seemed all I could write was more rage, but I know rage makes me sick. I cannot dwell on it. I cannot write rage and have it come out reading anything other than more rage, more fuel for the fire.

Siegfried—I write this for you, the Ambassador of Cats, you in simply being knew how to be kind to everyone you met. Whatever thoughts you may have had, your hopes or fears, they were yours, and they didn’t betray your actions. Here’s some news I thought you might like: Iceland recently passed legislation requiring employers to demonstrably prove they are paying men and women equal pay for equal work. Germany will be overturning the convictions of and compensating gay men prosecuted under archaic legislation prohibiting homosexuality. And a New Zealand school has introduced a range of gender neutral uniforms for students to choose from.

America will still be America, right up until it is or isn’t —but I think I’ve found some better friends anyway.

I like how blogs run time backwards—the latest stuff is what you read first. If you want true chronology you have to go all the way back to the beginning, or at least, to the first post.

My fortune cookie project is finished, and I’m pleased. Small as it seems, this is a project I came up with one night, executed, and—most importantly—completed. One project down, several more to go.

I decided to burn the remaining paper fortunes, so I lit what little remained of an old scented candle, the ones they sell in glass containers. The flames built up as I tossed in each fortune, watching it burn, watching the fire spread across each piece of paper, watching the wax soak into what paper wasn’t on fire yet. It felt all very transcendental—most pleasing.

As I watched the fire grow, a small thought floated through my mind: the glass is getting much hotter than it is usually accustomed to—there’s a lot of fire in there. And as if on cue, my moment of zen is shattered by the sound of the glass base popping and now I’m watching in slow motion as flaming wax no longer contained by glass starts to spread out and toward any number of combustible items on my desk before it’s all smothered by the collapsing glass around it. I can still see it all playing out so perfectly in my head, going from peaceful reflection to sudden panic to stunned silence of it all working out in a single motion without any intervention from me.

Object impermanence indeed.

The other night I was staring at the fridge and figured it was time for a change. Whatever fridge I’ve had in the various places I’ve called home in the last few years has been covered with an ever‐increasing number of fortune cookie fortunes.

But I’m also working to shed what it is I carry around with me—funny how a shed is also something you put in the back of your yard and fill with stuff—yet even in this mindset I thought perhaps there was a way to keep the fortunes and get rid of the fortunes at the same time.

There is a component of Buddhism referring to the impermanence of all things—temporal things, whether material or mental, are compounded objects in a continuous change of condition, subject to decline and destruction. Basically—things are, and then they aren’t, and that’s how it all goes, and it is our own interpretations of these events which “make” us feel badly or goodly about the whole process.

With that in mind I decided to incorporate the text from the fortunes into a widget on my blog. If everything is working correctly, and everything is, you’ll see a random fortune displayed in the top right corner above my Twitter and Instagram icons each time you load a page or refresh the current one. There are several fortunes to enter in, but as I do, I’m throwing away each one as its paper state expires and its new digital state continues on.

And it turns out it is also ridiculously easy to program this all. I was planning on making an evening of it, but it’s three lines of code and a link to a file containing all the text from the fortune cookies. I’ve spent more time writing this post than I did coding the functionality I’m describing in it.

Plus now there’s more room on the fridge for stuff.