Fishy

Fishie

There are funny things that happen. Funny stuff. I don’t know that the rest of the world outside my bubble will find them funny but? Today, I put on my pants and, inadvertently, included one arm of my robe. It was stuffed down my backside. As I walked away, I jumped… noticing that something, someone was following me! aieeeeee! See? Funny stuff.

There are less funny things that happen. Fireball air-crashes, lunatic politics, dead bodies all around. Such things are not funny and I learned, as a child, to make light of them. At least, I learned to make light-er of the rough things. Humour helps a soul over the threshold and out into the sunshine again. A little bit of a joke gives you distance from tragedy. A chuckle turns the ghost into a sheet, waving in the wind. There is enough tragedy and some of it is better done to push away from. Our dead pet fish, for example. It was sad, the method by which the poor thing did expire. So tragic, that careless alcohol over-use created conditions that allowed for the death of our fish. It wasn’t wanton, drunken, abusive violence, it was a drunken accident, performed by a loving and quite charming man who couldn’t do better than he did. It wouldn’t be good and isn’t necessary to see it otherwise. Laugh, a little. Shit happens.

My fellows-in-childhood and I woke to a grisly scene one Saturday morning, many years ago. Broken glass, broken records, an upended piece of furniture, a dead body. During the sordid previous evening, a floating, numbed person had scuffled with a perfectly still tall phonograph. It was my dad and one of the old hand-crank acoustical 78 players. The player being one of those surprising machines that required no electricity and were much louder than you might expect, their bowels being a labyrinth of ever-expanding acoustic horn. With the doors on the front opened, the music was absolutely audible. As a part of the machine, there was record storage. When everything was closed up, the top surface became a perch for one glass bowl containing a goldfish. Our pet. Our ‘Fishie’.

At morning, that fateful Saturday, I ambled out to the living room and there he was, ‘fishie’… wedged under the door-threshold, dry as a bone, dead as a door-nail. He looked astonished, as though having been suddenly, inexplicably awakened by some confusion that ended with him skidding across the rough floorboards and coming to his final rest. He had been jammed in the tiny space, unable to flap about or gasp. It must have been a quick end. I hope it was quick. When the fish died, so did a few 78 rpm records. I think one of the records lost must have been Marian Anderson’s ‘I Can’t Stay Away’, a personal favourite that I dearly adored, a valuable possession. In the one night’s accident must be how we lost Marian, Marian and Fishie… I have no other idea how that record disappeared and no memory of any other possibility.

When I first purveyed the carnage, spread across the living room floor, I reacted with shock. When did this happen? Why did I not wake to the screams of the fish, the crashing of the phonograph? Well, of course, the fish could not cry out, being wedged as he was. Maybe, the phonograph did one of those slow tips forward, emptying its beloved contents in a slow motion manner. Maybe it didn’t make all that much noise? Maybe the household was too fast asleep to have been interrupted with such a small event. It was a small event. A small but significant event. It was important. It was a warning that life is going to be a series of ‘small, yet significant’ events.

As my brothers and my sister gathered with me around the disaster site, not a sound was made. Each innocent, speechless pair of eyes was revealing the inner thought, a unison thought – “What the hell?” Finally, to relieve the horror, I noted the similarity of this scene to that when daylight revealed a missing Ichabod Crane… a missing horse, a smashed pumpkin and not another bit of evidence. Yes, it was The Headless Horseman all over the place. I cradled Fishie with an insincere hand. “Oh! Fishie!” I said. My little brother laughed. The pressure was gone. We cleaned up the mess and forgot about it all. No biggie. On we go. There is one caveat, I still think It is better not to think about Marian.

Waste and Art And AI

Hum-de-dum. I was working, then I stopped. The poem reached out to me and withdrew its hand before I could get the thing written down. Sigh. I am trying to compare/contrast the migration of fauna to the endless cycle of human beings destroying each other… the build up to a great war seems always with us. Is it part of a cycle? Natural selection? I thought Covid would level us a bit, but science was too quick and too smart… we survived. Ha. Will we survive Donald Trump and Co.? It’s a good question that people who are smarter than me can’t seem to figure out yet. Sure looks bad, though, don’t it?

Since we are not to be given peace, we will need to take it. NO, not by violence – violence is only peace in Newspeak. We will need to drift our eyes back down toward our own testpaper and forget what the fools are doing. Today? Musk called Mamdani— ‘Mamdami or whatever’—- as if ‘Musk’ were an ordinary, white, American name? Well, folks…it certainly isn’t ‘Joe Smith’ now, is it?

How in heaven or hell did we get here? I have to think that too many people have no respect for education, for art, for spirituality, for creativity. The tik-tok-ers are running out the clock on creativity, on love, on real things. They are wiggling perfect asses and little of substance gets through. The boys and girls are handsome as heck, though.

A few real artists take to the ‘reels’ with honest humour or genuine art but it seems few and far between. Myself as a wanna-be artist? I have trouble getting past the hurdles, am now struggling with my computer and its imposed AI component. Perversely, something that I am writing is what AI suggests be summarized for me? This is the message I get when I am editing something. ‘LOOKS LIKE THIS IS A LONG DOCUMENT, SHALL I SAVE YOU TIME AND SUMMARIZE IT FOR YOU?’

Yikes. If that is what folks are doing, then no wonder there is no depth, no thought, no reflection, nothing but a hollow sound from deep in the well. Now, Windows and many browsers will not let you get away from the automation. We are being pushed toward what can only be described as a bitter end. What is human about the machine? Its design, its build and only that. The rest is approximation and just like Edison’s co-option of the cylinder for ‘storing’ sound…AI is co-opting (or trying to) creativity. See? This is the thing: AI cannot imagine, it can only repeat, deduce from what it has seen. That is plagiarism, nothing more.

How very boring life will become, under AI, if Trump does not succeed in destroying civilization himself. Oh, by the way…Imagine? One man on the lips of 7 billion others and not kindly. Ahh, screw it….

even under these conditions, there comes a beautiful day like today. My feet never seem to warm up anymore but that is ok, I can wear socks, drink a nice coffee, look out the window and glory in being unproductive. this may not last but, in the meantime, I shall enjoy wasting the day.

Just OK

Aloha. It is always sunny at Starbucks… if you aren’t involved in union negotiations or trying to make a living. Ha. I am here, doing neither. I am enjoying the fat of the land, after many years of fattening the land. I suppose that makes me a foe of the conservatives, and of the liberals. Ah. Blessed politics. Today, I am not wearing a red hat, nor am I sporting some sort of mis-gendered clothing. I am not wearing a frog outfit. I am not chanting against any government. I am not recycling. I am over-paying for a less than delicious sweetened tea. I am attempting to summon the spirit.

I wait for the muse, the special one, with my electric device and its long cable. The cable is made in Vietnam, so is not susceptible of any extreme tariff. It is just made in a place where labour is cheap and environmental protections are slim. Yeah, mea culpa. I could be banging away at the old Olivetti from yesteryear. I could. I am not. I am thinking with my fingers, those digits pressing plastic keys that don’t click. The clicking is in my head, I am ‘audiating’ the click. I am storing my words in the immaculate world of the pixel, the one and the zero. I send my thought-symbols into the cyberworld, where they can be edited easily and erased quickly. What is interesting is that erasing my words completely is not easily done in our electronic, world of wide webs. Such a contradiction: everything is kept and nothing is permanent.

Hm.

We have rogue government to fear, wild weather to endure and? Today is a day off from care. Nope, I don’t care. I don’t even care what others think. Check out my outfit. Ancient jeans, a frowdy old jacket and a golf visor. Hm.

The muse is not here yet. I will have to leave soon if he doesn’t show up. One thing to note is that the fellow who drives the ‘GreenGills’ truck is still working at Starbucks. While I was here a few years back, finishing the first book, he was quite friendly. He gave my old love engine a pull or two.. the thing never started. For all of my imagining, there was nought to do about it so I just sat down. He has a nice voice, distinct. I can hear him speaking in the background. He can be heard as well as the important-things-to-do guy who is on his cell phone.

I no longer have important things to do. Nothing is important. I see friends, I watch tv and I don’t bother about it any more. Entertain yourselves as you are best able…none of the great works will save us, so we might as well relax. Eat when there is food. Drink when there is drink. Start up the love engine before the fuel runs out or the cable snaps and needs replacing. S’okay once in a while, ain’t it?

By Design, Intelligent or Otherwise

I could not sleep longer than 3am. The best I could think to do was to grab hold of Facebook and scroll away. I did so. I am weak. This is not good. The man, Mr. Zuckerberg and his company, his cheating and lying and good ‘ol college boy antics / attitude have taken us off track in a serious fashion. We, I say we but mean me… I am lost in his created wilderness. I’ve never been strong. I am tough, I endure but I am not strong. If there is a place to be beaten, a place to fall, a place to fail… I will find it. Meta and the algorithm have created just such a place. It is like drinking or taking drugs or believing wrong things. It is a place to fall, to fail, to be beaten. Mathematics, statistics, algorithms are hammers that can be used against the soul…can shrink or pound a person to mere numbers, dots on a graph, points in a matrix. Math is funny that way. It is both the underpinning of everything and the ultimate destruction of everything.

So. They think they have me and they do have me for the moment. There does remain always, the last shoe to drop, the final moment, the conclusion, the release, the proof that all of creation can be created and un-created just as easily. Seed becomes a star, a star burns out, dies, implodes. I am a vibration, a number, a point on a chart but so are the stars, the galaxies, the planets (known and unknown). Using the knowledge of, the calculation of what I can be expected to do, made more money for Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos than can be counted. Theirs is a never repeating never completing decimal. What does a billion even mean? and..That billion dollars the tech-folk have stolen? It is as worthless as bit-coin. They can buy boats and cars and houses and people and governments but cannot, ever, own any of it. They, too are points on a graph and all of the material gathered around them is equally susceptible of life. There can be no protection from time/movement/change/life and there is no meaning. Meaning, we think is elusive? No. There is no meaning. Meaning is a cipher, a nothing. All that is visible, palpable is rented, is of very little consequence – not even to the algorithm. Life and rent are almost from the same root word. The lease will be up one day, Czar Nicholas found this out, Marie Antoinette found this out, the great and ancient peoples of the new world found this out. Jesus found this out.

I know there is nothing of meaning. Meaning is a word of two syllables, in English…of seven letters, generally accented on the first syllable. There are lines on paper, pixels on a screen that describe and evoke and symbolize something but there is nothing. No meaning to search for. Still, I believe in the search. It is part of the game that God or whatever set us to. In the case of M. Zuckerberg and his particular game? I use myself against myself, just as Meta and others knew I would. They hold up a mirror, a glass of many facets, a fascination. What do we see? A pretty thing? sometimes, but often, only an increasingly, very ugly thing. Here we stand. I am, you are, they are as Narcissus, staring into the glass this time and not the water. Perhaps, we have misunderstood the message of Narcissus? We are curious, we are captivated but are we truly in love with the mirror image? I dunno. Love? I believe wrong things. I thought I believed there could be love. I believe less in love every day as I fall down. I fail. I will continue so to do, until I do not. Maybe, one day I will pick up a good book and read away when I can’t sleep.

Ah.

A good book. A good movie. A great song. They do exist. Margaret Atwood writes good books. Bob Dylan makes great songs. ‘The History of Sound’ is a good movie. These are all kind works… not selling sex or violence or the destruction of the soul. Not commodifying the soul. These works nourish. There are works that nourish. Face-book is aberrant, it is abominable, it will turn to a pillar of salt one day, taking huge numbers of innocent folks along with it. It does not nourish, it destroys. It will cease to exist. Donald Trump will cease to exist. Jeff Bezos will go bankrupt. It is predictable, there is an algorithm. Perhaps the algorithm started deep in the center of the universe, long before there was time or intelligent design?

(JohnPaulGeorgeandRingo)

I am enjoying refuge at Starbucks, in their clean well-lighted place, but I am not Hemingway, he was more closeted than I ever have been. I sorta feel bad for him. An honest adventurer who couldn’t consider the whole picture, a real man who didn’t understand.. but I digress.

There stood a time, once, for me to linger in the wardrobe. I still am there, a bit… you laugh? Ha. It makes me laugh to think on it, too. I remember an evening where I had been acting ‘normal’ (I thought) but casually and accidentally speaking of my ex-husband. The couple I was chatting with were young and a bit right-wing. I thought they were adequately in the dark about the maze of my sex/love life until the woman awoke to my conversation and said, “OH! You are gay?”. Her husband then, in a matter of fact manner? said…”Well…he was talking about his husband, after all.” They didn’t seem too disturbed at the revelation and we only did a bit of ‘investigative conversation’ afterward. They were sweet people. She was tipsy and he was self-assured, secure. I wish more young men were. The self-assured, the secure can smile. There should be more smiling.

Last night, I was reminded that when I was in Italy, my Facebook posts were positive, cheerful. I had been smiling. When I got home, the newsfeed changed back into growling bear observations on modern life. Grrr. No smiling. It is true, I stopped smiling when I got to Canadian Customs. Ha. I really don’t like the government comparing my passport picture to the visage I presented at their darned machine. “Don’t smile. Don’t fidget. Stare into the camera.” Nuts! we are back in the real world.

Sigh.

So, then. It has been some time that Gladys has been on retirement from neighbourhood observation duties – I need to get back at that. Lots has happened. The city exercised their ‘lord over all’ option and tore up my whole block, all the little streets and our laneway as well. The whole world was turned into a muddy mess, garbage collection and mail delivery have stopped and I have to park a minimum of one block away from my home. The consolation for this window-view observer? Men. Men in construction outfits. Big men. Strong men. Mmmmmm. The one crew-leader fellow came to the door to warn that I won’t be able to park at home ‘for a while, probably’. He was extra nice and very shy, has a sexy beard and a tiny little beer-belly…well, a beer-belly that enhances the manliness, anyway. I guess I am a funny homo, I like it like that. Do you suppose my sexy growl in response made him a little nervous? Ha. Maybe that wasn’t a very closeted thing to do? I was in my housecoat, after all.

My dear aunts and remaining cousins are getting nervous, themselves, at this moment. ‘What is he going to say now?’

It is raining today and big men are taking out a rogue tree. The power is off, said tree had been hoping for the protection of having its arms wrapped around the high voltage. ‘Nobody will get me now!’ he might have said. Sorry, magnificent tree, Mr. Beard has the on/off switch and you will have to go. The big men and big machines are very elegant, a little snip, a roar of an engine and the huge tree eases to a supine position on the church front lawn. ‘Rest, brother tree.’ It is a Statue of St. Michael that breathes the last words. In a couple of hours, the power will be back on and I can return to Facebooking at home.

We have had a hard year/s. Trump has pooped on elegance, grace, humane ways. His rich white man poop is everywhere. It is quite a thing to have infected the entire world with ugliness. Really something, eh? We can only turn the other cheek, remembering that ‘what goes up, must come down’ as it ever does. Our task is to smile again, knowing that the Beatles will bring colour back to Pepperland some day. I hope like hell that the Blue Jays win the world series because that would show ‘em!

“little darlin’, the smile’s returning to the faces/ little darlin’, it seems like years since its been clear/ here comes the sun, here comes the sun and I say – its alright”

(JohnPaulGeorgeandRingo).

PS. That would make a great name for a rock n roll band wouldn’t it? This, too shall pass.

living The Dream

Back at what used to be my haunt. When Starbucks’ prices rose right after Covid, I stopped using their facilities as my office away from home. Too expensive. My recent birthday brought in a couple of gift cards and I am back for a time. Yum, an $8 latte! Thing is, I really enjoy sitting here with my typewriter and watching the folks, thinking about folks and doing no real harm. Hell, the thing is electronic! I am not even using paper! There are rare-earth minerals and inhumane/environmentally damaging mining techniques to consider, on the way to using my electronics, but by and all, no real harm? When the money is once again gone, maybe the powers that run things would let me bring a thermos. Then, I could always sit here, just breathing and living the dream. Gasp! ‘Living the dream’.

Oh, sons and daughters… the dream. I am coming to believe that there is no dream – this current life is always The Dream. It has to be. You, I, the little beasts are living our dream every day. I do, sometimes, imagine being elsewhere, inhabiting some other body, existing in ways that do not contain the present moment, but there is no other moment. Imagined possibility is dream, yes. We can aim ourselves there but we will never get to another place. The other is always ‘down the road’ (says our inner self, Mr. or Ms. Imagination). The other can exist in ways that are not and may never be. Experience tells me that the thing, the dream, turns out not to be as imagined when we get there. No pot o’ gold. The found pot will be just as brown and probably just as shit as the pot we are in, here, now. So, driving the road to ‘other’ might as well be called ‘living the dream’. I digress. I was daydreaming.

Sigh.

Dreaming of a somewhere else and desiring to be there is our biggest difference with the stars, the planets, the asteroids, the other creatures and living things. The little pussycats I used to babysit, accepted what was. They got up, got themselves something to eat or sat quietly, played rambunctiously, slept often and worried not a whit. If tragedy struck, if the mouse got away, the pussycat just kept on about his pussycat business. No big deal. What is, what happens, is and happens. A pussycat can dream, I am certain. It is within their being to do so. I have witnessed the twitching legs and the chattering teeth of a dreaming pussycat. Theirs is a different attitude. While dreaming, they are in the moment. Those little beasts don’t distract themselves from the moment they are in with a dream. There is no longing for somewhere else, no wishing they could fly, no dissatisfaction with the pot o’ brown, that gets found

Ha.

Today, I pronounce myself King of my day! I am not thin, I am not young, I am not rich. I am dreaming of those things. I am on the road toward (away from) those things. I am living the dream. I am in the moment and there is none better. I sure do hope that the $8 doesn’t run out?

Caution

Proceed with caution, dear audience. The possibilities follow imagination. Take good care to remain positive, to find humour where there is none, to enjoy that the dentist’s face is often upside down…. There is more to come, I have awakened once again.

I did not mean it

this time or that other time. I stand humbled by algorithm and the need to express myself. I am as weak as any other one of us. The designers of social media programs have done their homework and we are vulnerable. Being the human being that we are often challenged to be is not an easy thing. Fighting back against the time-wasting act of endlessly scrolling proves difficult. The scrolling is consuming our productivity, draining our energy, sapping human resources. That is not good. Yeah, there is very likely consensus on that one point. Do we enlist the aid of government in the fight? Hm. You and I can see where government intervention generally makes a problem a worse problem.

so….

How to (in my case, at least) get my words out to the broader public, while escaping the clutches of Facebook and Google and Amazon proves next to impossible. There is my little website and I should be promoting it.

maybe, I will…

I Mean It This Time

I just deactivated Facebook. I mean it this time, I mean it this time…I mean it. The powers that are, keep pushing AI upon us. Now, that unworkable technology is going to upend our world in rapid ways that we will not be able to defend against. Quit these people, everyone. Take the money away from them or they will take our lives away from us. Don’t stream video, don’t make Tik Tok or Instagram videos, don’t stream music. Be careful what you send in email. Use the post, where tech can’t easily go. Get a land line telephone. Buy records. Get a print newspaper from a trusted source. I mean it this time, I really do.