Desolation

 

What are the chances that fate with its 

twisted equilibrium of finality would write 

such an implausible plot guiding a life-saving

professional toward a scene of disaster and 

in the process screen the victim beyond

recognition impelling medical aid to

desperately bring all its considerable skills

and experience to mitigate the condition of

a dying girl to enable surgeons to restore

her to life, only to reveal no life left to save

for the soul had left the body the paramedic

so assiduously strove to preserve. Only to 

discover her frantic efforts that ultimately

failed to save a life was that of a young woman

so gravely and horrendously injured nothing

could persuade fate to preserve her future. The

agony of the medic reverberated through the empty 

chasm of space as she raised her head and loosed 

her incredulous grief in the revelation she had

lost her only child whose familiar features were so

mutilated she was unrecognizable to her mother.

 

The Distempered Mind

 

The human mind is truly a remarkable

instrument toying with fantasy in a game 

to shape-shift reality to whatever the creative 

possibilities can offer in service to a brain 

convinced that its enemies lurk everywhere

threatening and awaiting the opportunity

to leap upon the unwary with deadly precision. 

The mind is only too adeptly prepared to 

usher that brain to endless scenarios to identify 

the enemy, heap malicious intent over vicious 

assaults the wary must elude by preempting 

that lethal force by one of their own. Hostility 

is put to work devising deadly bombs meant to 

mutilate and kill. The enemy is transcribed as 

any man, woman or child the targeted bomb

is able to reach and destroy, bringing joy and 

celebration to terrorist groups triumphant

in purpose and practise -- heroes to some.

 

 

The Candidates

 

 

Smug, intemperate, crass and arrogant

to mention but a few of the indispensable

attributes qualifying personages of great

self-importance for high public office these

days. It helps to be born with that fabled

silver spoon with a background of entitlement

and the self-assurance of one whose every

whim and whimper has never been denied

grown to adulthood yet lacking emotional 

maturity and a reasonable degree of intelligence

aside from the craft of modelling self as the

answer to the universal search for a candidate

of sound mind, experience and honour-bound

to think first and foremost of the welfare of

the nation whose fortunes have been dropped

in the lap of the aristocratic scion of the past.

Dictator or democrat they share much in common

and the public weal does not dominate either

their thoughts or their actions, united in praise

of their own illiberally corrupt investment in self.

 

An Alternate Universe

 

It is more than a hypothesis. There are alternate

worlds in existence and it is unknown whether 

one is born into one world or instead drifts into 

one world or the other. One, a world where 

reason prevails and truth and reality honoured

the other where its inhabitants trust that the world 

reflects their preferences. Where reality becomes 

a movable feast where the succulent tidbits are 

chosen and the unpalatable set aside and spurned. 

As an accompaniment to selecting personal realities

the aggressor invariably becomes the victim

rallying support to the cause he insists is just

while brandishing a sabre against a presumed

adversary possessing resources he craves. When

the attacked defend themselves they are accused

of fomenting violence by the fantasyworld

dwellers who view themselves as allies of any

whom their worldview entitles to shape the

kind of reality they see utility in for themselves.

 

 

The Function of Language

 

As infants humanity searches for language

in the babbling babies invoke as they

emulate what they hear to make sense

of communication until finally they

achieve language skills mimicking what

they hear in the knowledge of being well

understood, an induction into personhood

impressing with their uncanny facility to

form and understand messages. As for the

convention of language exchange as the

fulcrum for fully understanding how others

think, feel and behave in a world that

inherited the chaos of the genesis of language

great minds of communication come to

appreciate that a common universal speech

does not lead to a cessation of human

hostilities for even in speaking the same

language, comprehension evades for the

fact is humanity even in uttering similar

words speaks a language evasive, intentions

hidden from scrutiny and Babel persists.

 

Reductio ad Absurdum

 

What is the meaning of life? Must it

have a meaning? Cannot we exist simply

because we do? Did Nature have a purpose

when she devised a creature that celebrates

itself as an expression of the highest order

of animal life? What other animals of her

creative imagination are themselves creative

capable of deep, dense thought in the sublime

exercise of reason? We are, therefore we think.

Think of this: the three common elements of

the animal kingdom from infancy to agedness 

in the foundational fundamentals of nature's 

injunction to her offspring in pursuit of the 

elements of survival: Our needfully functional 

existential fixation motivating all of nature's 

creatures: food, play, sleep. Unique are we?

 

A Global Pestilence ... Pathogen/Protest

 

 

Oh ye of little faith in world leadership ...

Pause and consider how heartwarming it is

when presidents and prime ministers consult

discovering how much in common they share.

Take the instance of the unabashed admiration

Canada's prime minister has for China's premier 

a democracy looking on in awe at the ease 

in which a dictatorship is able to exert dominion 

over a vast multitude whose numbers dwarf 

those of Canada. Yet generous to a fault Canada's 

own premier advises China's that in the face

of public disaffection and mounting protests it is 

best to allow the public to ventilate its frustrations 

honouring the human right to exercise free speech. 

Canada's own response to group protests of hundreds 

as opposed to China's vast protests of hundreds of 

thousands swiftly settled inconvenient issues by the

timely invocation of what was once identified as the 

War Measures Act. China's admirable restraint in only 

ordering its national police to secure public safety 

honouring the rule of the Chinese Communist Party 

in its diligent concern for public health and social 

cohesion strikingly similar in text and tenor to Canada's 

own. Brought to agreement by a global pestilence.