Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
a reminder
when you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. it probably doesn’t matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life’s many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children we all are. it probably doesn’t matter if a passerby sees us dipping a finger into the moist pouches of dozens of lady’s slippers to find out what bugs tend to fall into them, and thinks us a bit eecentric. or a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other, its color hitting our senses like a flow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move.
– from – A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
less than charming
i am finding myself less than charming today and i just had a meeting with a manager and a human resources advisor about a case i am working on as a shop steward, and am wishing i could have been a little bit more *on* – though i’m not sure if i feel uneasy because of the manager’s awkwardness or mine.
some days i really don’t like myself for no good reason – i just don’t understand it because other days i think i am great. i strongly suspect brain chemistry has something to do with it. i wish i could schedule all my meetings for days when i don’t feel like a loser.
in any case, i am going to drink beers with jess tonight as that seems to be the only real option at this point.
blog-spam
i hate to have to do this – but due to bad blog-comment spam (yes, spammers now try to flood blog-comment areas with their nonsense) i have had to make all comments moderated. if you comment on one of my posts (which i really encourage – then i know that people are reading!) it won’t show up until i approve it. i promise to approve everything that isn’t spam – this is not something i want to do – but have to in order to save my blog from being hijacked by the spam pirates.
marry an amercian?
whaddya think – time to marry an american?
idolizing the rich
this morning there was a bus break-down or some such thing and so instead of taking the express bus from the ferry to work which travels mainly along the highway, i ended up on the 250 Horseshoe Bay bus which winds through the streets of West Vancouver. this route wends through the wealthiest municipalities in bc, block after block of waterfront mansions – testaments to consumption well beyond the limits of any perceived need rising out of the side of rock and perching on tiny islands in sheltered bays. i can’t help but stare at them, fascinated by the monstrousness of them, both in size and implication (for wealth this grossly displayed implies an assumed privilege over the needs of the majority of the world’s population). these are the people who honestly believe it is their birthright to own while others starve and thus destroy resources at a rate that should be considered criminal.
the rapt attention with which i watched these houses move by the bus windows reminded me of times during my upbringing when my parents would bundle us into the car to go for a drive which too often ended up on the streets of the uplands outside of victoria ogling the homes of the rich. the uplands, like west vancouver is full of old money mansions in all their colonial pomposity – and i was taught from a very young age, this was what all people aspired to – bombastic wealth without regard for others.
Red Cedar 