Mawkish Nature

It was clear that his disciplined mind
took its presence as a personal rebuke
as though nature itself regarded his 
carelessness as an assault upon her own
natural disorder where generations of
woodland detritus lay upon the forest
floor in a constant feverish state of
decomposition in preparation for
welcoming new generations, nursed
upon that rich humus within which lay
though biodegradable, the insult of a
human touch. Whether discarded in a
deliberate display of irreverence to the
natural surroundings or simply lost by
some poor soul battling asthma refusing
to surrender the pleasure of natural
environs to nurse an allergy, the paper
tissue lay there, partially desiccated 
thanks to wind and rain and time 
coalescing to reclaim this bit of 
processed cellulose. Yet to him signifying
the arrogance of human nature defiling
the nature that spawned humans. He
bends, deftly twists two twigs into a
pincer, lifts the offending white flag
not for him surrender to mocking nature.

The Gardener's Conceit

Infinitely less fastidious than the
gardeners who take such pains to
insert tender new plants into the moist
spring soil, the mature garden strikes
its own autonomous order of harmony
in the disorder of its eventual presentation
in the depths of summer, mature and
proudly preening. The sensible
gardener recognizes how futile it is
to impose her own aesthetic on an
ancient and well-practised design
where independence and the struggle
to survive equips every living thing 
with the impetus to impress upon its
environment its very own standards 
forging its own niche, not averse to
aggressively mounting a challenge to
lesser-endowed neighbours as a symbol 
of survival's signal tool in the territorial 
imperative that holds whichever species 
asserts survives and dominates. And so
it is that the humble gardenassiduously 
planned and worked by the resident 
gardener asserts its own design
celebrating the collective power of
vibrant life, the colour, architecture and
presence of its admirable resilience
resisting redundant human agency.

Set Adrift

My good friend, my dear old friend
and I say so despite the frailty of
our friendship, I know your pain
and the desperation of loneliness. And
I know also that your desolate condition
is the result of your very own lack
in failing to fully appreciate how so
fortunate you once were, as a good and
decent man, spurred on by irrational
desires to cause hurt and pain to those
most responsible for your comfort
and your happiness. Spurning the
integrity of your responsibility to them
to achieve a fleeting goal of passion
they became lost to you, and now you
flounder finding no one else to fill
the yawning vacuum in your life. In
the process discovering the reality that
possessions complement but do not
enrich one's life, and the absence of
love and companionship is destructive
of the value of life.  There are simply
those truisms and realities that cannot
be conveyed but must be lived to fully
comprehend ourselves as agents of our
own dislocation from life's promise.

Discerningly Discriminating

Truly, it stands alone, for there is no other
place quite like it, the land of opportunity
of self-confidence, of great-heartedness
opening its shores to those inhabiting a
world of dire misery to become as one
among the citizens of a land wide open
and free. Free enterprise. Wide latitude
offering riches to the bold and the far-seeing
entrepreneurs whose imaginations are held
by no boundaries. And where anyone can
aspire to hold the highest office in the
land. Having done so acknowledged as the
most influential, powerful single individual
on this hapless planet. To serve with proud
distinction as custodian of uncountable
wealth, international influence and respect
selecting from among senators and congressmen
of the Republic, even peanut farmers
and second-rate actors, governors, military
personnel, lawyers and community organizers
even flirted, twice, with the unthinkable concept
of a woman as president, but chose instead
in collective wisdom an envious, uncouth
and unlettered cretin of a circus barker.
And now, in the persona of a president of
the formerly great United States of America
one who has alienated far and wide, globally
and internally, in a wise display of equality
it does stand alone in its utter inane insanity.

History Lesson

From time immemorial it has been
the history of humankind to drift
as the first energetic pockets of those
bipedal creatures with emerging 
thinking prowess sought to migrate
great distances to establish themselves
other than where nature had deposited
them in her busy, harried schedule of
creation. Humankind is still on the move
searching out opportunity to advance
their interests, leaving behind a trail of
monumental disturbance both to the
landscapes they abandon and to the
relationships they flee or secure in
tribal, clan, and religious dysfunction as 
a reflection of nature's premise that she
could only do the best she could and
the rest was up to her creations. Discrete
geographic settlements homogeneously
reflecting adaptation and settlement
did not solve the endowment of survival's
impetus toward territorial aggression.
But nature meant her creatures to widen
their genetic pool allowing improved
specimens to survive. And now, in this
modern world built upon the genius of
the time-honoured succession of human
creative brilliance manipulating what
nature has produced, the living laboratory
that is the world we know exhibits areas
of human advancement and their direct
opposites. In those continents of strife
deprivation of the masses in a malevolent
social structure recreates restlessness
and search for haven. The new mass
migration of the disadvantaged has 
descended upon the continents of the
advantaged, bringing with them their
transformative cultures of distrust, envy
victimhood, violence, hatred and conflict.

Programmed

The design is inherently flawed. But
then perhaps deliberately so engineered
and inherited through countless generations
of human existence, flaws that no one is
immune to representing as they do within 
the overall grand design merely another
element in an elegant network of mechanics
translated through a skeletal armature
of precise method incorporating muscle
tissue, blood, sinew and bone atop which 
sits a brain, the control panel for the 
appendages and all that comprise the human 
and its mind, echoing the being of a soul 
entrapped in a living shroud whose entirety 
is clearly hugely unsatisfactory, for do not 
we all criticize and find fault with our fleshly 
trappings? We are to a one and in the aggregate
self-absorbed yet assailed with doubt, curious 
and envious of all that we are not and do not 
possess. The mirror we are most apt to gaze 
upon reflects back to us our imagined fount 
of perfection as actors we worship as celebrities 
appear as we do not, live as we cannot, love
as we would like to, yet our yearnings are
never satisfied nor satiated. That those we 
elevate in high esteem on the pedestal of 
celebrity fail in every index of human potential 
to grasp the apex of existence humours us 
not at all, for they too are inexorably infected 
with the very same flaws that disturb our lives
while their performances fail to persuade them
otherwise leading them to envy their audience.

 

Fragile Endurance

Long before dawn, when the world
was dark with lingering night
the heavens themselves screened
by layers of cloud heavy with their
burden and long after dusk when
the world, wearied by unending
rain that lashed the earth and all
its creatures when the dimmest
light revealed the world awash in
oceans of rain spilling nonstop
from the brimming clouds, thoughts
turned to Biblical-era fables of 
surviving the punishment of floods
and our very own experiences with
monsoon drenching, drowning
whatever cannot find shelter
from pummeling winds sweeping
the rain before it to penetrate every
conceivable vulnerability, dissolving
and destroying, humbling the shelters
that humanity in its conceit regards
as impermeable, a human-conceived
match contesting the destructive
power of nature's rumbling moods
in a disorder of the elements, brooding
and dangerous to existence. Yet in a
world of impermanence, no storm
system has yet proven its capacity
to linger interminably, and so it departed
and in the morning after, surviving
elements of the natural world made
their resistance known in a triumph
of fragility's capacity to endure.



 

The Chosen

Did you know this? There's an entirely
new paradigm in provocation and its
acceptable response. If and when
violently attacked, preferably do nothing.
If and when attacked the invariable
response is of course, defence, by
whatever means. And throughout the
history of humankind defence was not
only considered to represent the only
response justifiable by the visceral
nature of sudden attacks, but that most
urgently recommended. Through the
peculiar alchemy of twisted logic a new
perception has surfaced, however, and
those who act swiftly and with the precision
required to save their lives while disarming
their attackers are viewed and named as
aggressors. Has the normalcy of human
survival requiring instant action to
defend oneself been relegated to a trash
bin usually overflowing with the
edible corpses of a slaughterhouse?
Sadly, yes, if the attacker is an Arab
'youth' out to kill, and his victim is an
Israeli citizen, child, adult, elderly,
police or military, makes little difference.
All others may continue to function as
nature had intended for one's self-defence.

The Futility of Naivete

Migration has made the world a more
tangled place of tribal, ethnic, religious
and ideological dimensions altering
the homogeneity treasured by long 
established societies calling themselves 
nations distinct from their neighbours 
rife with their own celebrated heritage
and cultural compacts, dismayed with
the inexorable diminishing of all their
traditions held dear, yet struggling to
warm to the customs, cuisines and the
melding of languages and religions.
On the international stage accepting her
crown of world beauty the young woman
distinguished by "Australia" emblazoned
across her chest, gives thanks to the
country that has hosted generations of
her family and her many and varied
supporters. In her speech extolling the
beauty and serenity of her religion, Islam.
Oblivious by choice that in those nations 
where Islam rules supreme the ulema: 
Imams, Mullahs, Ayatollahs and their
elite, outraged at her lack of Muslim 
modesty issue fatwas so that she is 
well advised to give wide berth to the 
birthplace of her esteemed and so
hugely valued religion to avoid the
penalty awaiting her for attempting to
fuse Islam with freedom and equality.

The Last Word

Surprise! Out of the ether of time and
space named social media comes a
sneering, malevolent challenge from
someone whose stinging words
swiftly identify him and certainly his
choice of politics as a firmly devoted
member of a loathed and loathsome
ideology whose champions actively
seek out martyrdom in their deadly
cause. Your visceral gasp of revulsion
incites an immediate albeit restrained
response-in-kind as a reminder that
in a civilized world his barbaric
Medievalism has no place. Nor does
his pious declaration of respecting
'human rights' shield his purpose as
a terrorist-supporting stalwart, your
acknowledgement toward which
simply elicits continued verbal jabs
and you realize that to joust with anyone
afflicted with such an impoverished
world view aids his cause and serves
to elevate him personally in the esteem
of those of his cohorts following him
and repeating the exchange on that
same stream of social media that you 
equate with the sinister Dark Web. 

The Quality of Mercy

He's a handsome, dapper man
courteous and unfailingly good humoured
quick with a quip, equipped with a
mordant sense of humour; good company
when someone of his ilk shares with
others both their sense of ironic comedy
and the equanimity of a well-balanced
personality. But not this time, though
his initial greeting and smile gave no
prior indication that he was on the spur
of relieving himself of a sense of having
had quite enough. Fed up: with unearned
entitlement, lack of discipline, of respect
of a sense of responsibility. He would know. 
And he blames parents raising children
patterned on their own lack of civil
behaviour. He would know, he grimly
asserts, since he is exposed to them daily
whining, demanding, impudent quasi-
adults attending university and querulously
challenging their professor on every level
draining his patience, impelling him to
consider reducing their grades. There is
no cost to empathy on our part for our
own last languished in a university class
decades earlier. And, as he hastened to add
his own are well imbued with the verities
of indisputable virtues by inheritance. 

Fated Destiny

If the good husband and wife had not
gone out together from their Swiss Alps
village 75 years ago to milk their cows
searching them out along a glacier
they would never have disappeared
leaving seven children behind to be
cared for by grieving family members.
So long ago, that their five grown sons
have since died never to learn of their
parents' mummified bodies frozen into
the ice having finally been discovered.
Vanished, without a trace, in a crevasse
in the glacier of a mountain in the
western Alps. How romantic, even
the name of the glacier seems mysterious
hardly tripping off the tongue:Tsanfleuron.
Surely if those people having lived there
all their lives, knowing that others
had also suddenly never been seen again
might have thought twice about
venturing out to meet a like fate? The
'if' is the most unknown of all ventures.
If unsuspecting that fate and ill fortune
awaited them, would they have gone out?
You muse introspectively, certain that
musing of such 'ifs' is irrelevant to 
outcomes, good or bad, and feel grateful
that you have no idea whether any 'ifs'
bide their time in your own fated destiny.

Their Legacy

Amina, thought to be about three, was pulled from the rubble in Mosul after being 

trapped for days. The little girl is believed to be the daughter of ISIL fighters from Chechnya 

who died in battle.© Carol Guzy via ZUMA Wire

Their Legacy

The child, only moments before 
buried deep in the debris of a bombed
building has been schooled beyond her
three years of life. Asked where her 
parents are, she responds "shaheeds"
her eyes blank of fully understanding
the tiny orphan layered in the dust of
an explosion, wistful and lost but
saved from death, her confused mind
steeped in a memory that will visit
and revisit her consciousness as years
pass. And what of her future, hers and
that of the countless other abandoned-
to-martyrdom castoffs of warriors of
Islam jubilant in their release from life
in the process of slaughtering infidels
who cannot and will not join them in
paradise since they are forbidden entry
as kuffars. This child may remember
her parents' lessons as will others
older than her, but the weeks-old
infants not yet ripe for paradisaical
ambition will know little of their ardent
antecedents who joyfully subscribed to
the sacred injunction to go forth and
perform jihad, the fruit of their labours
seen in the atrocities they commit and
the forlorn offspring left to carry on.

 

The Purpose of Conviction

"We are dependent on our brains for
whatever form of faith we experience in 
our lives reflecting our spiritual being:
Does God exist? Does life have meaning?"
Ah, the academics, the experts, those
of scientific mind and the papers to
prove it, those professionals in whom the
public places their trust knowing as they do
what we do not, now inform us that a
sense of purpose is essential to living a
life well, to appreciating the opportunity to
exist despite any or all happenstance
intrusions mitigating against meeting our
humble aspirations to be satisfied with
what fate has apportioned us. We could
hardly, of our own initiative ponder the
sublime issue of existence and its purpose
without their guiding words. Our minds
incapable of grasping that existence gives
us purpose. Trouble sleeping? Tch! Fewer
than the minimally-stated hours will 
shorten your life, so what to do? Have purpose
of course, and by that measure, the metric
identified so pithily by those whose
immaculate credentials lend them the
authority that you lack, will do very well
for you. As for existence, does a fly in
some ancient collective-species memory 
realize its purpose? Perhaps terrorists assured 
of their ascent to paradise in honour of their
purpose achieved have discovered the 
formula through zealous application of
their spirituality's injunction to arouse
themselves to the purpose decreed by Islam.

Who Are We To Judge?

Have you ever noticed, my friend
how parsimonious perfectly decent
people are in recognizing good in
others to the extent that it becomes
clear an inherent meanness of spirit
overcomes the potential to compliment
others as a nasty little imp within
urges restraint lest one's admission
of admiration take away from their
own sense of accomplishment in any
arena where the slightest hint of
competition raises the social hackles
of those perfectly decent people. In
acknowledging that very human
failing are we directed from within
to judge, to hold that individual in
less esteem than we would like? One
wonders if one's own forbearance
and the preference to express admiration
where due would then become somewhat
compromised, making of one in essence
little more than complicit with the
narrow-minded whose inability
to give credit where due represents
the measure of their compatibility
with the golden mean and the injunction
to do unto others, of such value to us.

Wildfires

In the endless time that the fabulous
Old Testament's legendary interpretation
informs that the omnipotent power
that is the Almighty took to create
existence, a mere seven days
completed the transaction from endless
nothing to vastly unimaginable existence
roughly the same number of days
it takes to canoe and trek through the
Bowron Lakes in the Cariboo mountains
interior of British Columbia, one of
nature's most favoured landscapes
where endless rain cascading through
overcast skies drenches hardy
canoeists day after day after day.
There, at Cache Creek,100-Mile House
and Williams Lake where Gold Rush
fever led a hopeful influx of
prospectors to a rough and ready
ingathering amongst the stately
splendour of old-growth forests, 
endless mountains, rivers and lakes
nature met the onrush with total
equanimity knowing in her wisdom
of longevity that they would leave and
only she and her creatures would remain.
Yet now she has staged another drama
consuming her landscape in spontaneous
combustion, countless wildfires scattering
her creatures, all accomplished in the
very same time-frame heralding existence.

Allahu Akbar!

Slain police officers Kamil Shnan (left) and Hael Sathawi against the backdrop of a forensic team surrounding the body of an assailant on the Temple Mount, July 14, 2017. THOMAS COEX/AFP and Israel Police

Allahu Akbar!

They are deliriously fervent in their
passion to do service to the divine
in which they invest their entire lives
their past, their present and their
delusional prospects of a future that
in recognition of their willing sacrifice
will lift them as the Prophet Mohammad
was lifted, into the realm of their revered
god who demands of them the ultimate
for which no alternatives suffice. Their
lives are sacred in their submission to
Islam but those the scripts inherited
from Allah identified as the despised
infidel are as dross, worthless and
utterly meaningless, their very existence
an catalyst reproach to the faithful
for tolerating their presence when all
it takes to perform the service their
faith demands of them is to engage
selflessly in slaughter of those
undeserving of life. And so, whatever
executive means at hand will suffice
as the faithful go forth, their minds ablaze
with intent, their conscience is clear in
the knowledge that they do god's work
aids in the commission, even at the
very doorstep of the almighty's abode.
All that is and will be is at the pleasure
of his blessedly gracious spirit, Inshallah.

Holocaust Deniers

They have few peers and on this
they pride themselves, asserting their
preening confidence in demonstrated
rectitude of a shade societal convention
fails to recognize. These are the rare
few who defend the words and actions
of the indefensible, who cite their right
to the freedom of sneering at history
the historical revisionists whose lens
interprets reality as a farce they obey
an imperative to counter. As racist 
bigots and hateful defenders of dread
fascism's crowning glory who see
victory in their lost global conflict
when those who fought for universal
freedom overcame the Axis heralding
tyranny, they did succeed in destroying
an entire continent's reserve of Jews.
Their denials of that wholesale and
fastidious instrument of death leaving
no doubt that a mass convulsion of
deranged malice motivated the putrid
annihilation of innocents satisfied the
blood-lust of sadistic hatred, proffered
as a gallant struggle for freedom, to
speak as one believes, without censure.
As though to minimize six million dead
with a broad diminishment of numbers 
makes the unspeakable crime more
civil, palatable, excusable as an excess
of devotion to the duty of cleansing society
of identified enemies of civilization.

 

Grim/m Doubt

Is there a higher pastoral authority
in human existence, a fount of
wisdom and theological-social
aspirations toward the ultimate
spirituality on the path to sainthood
than the pope? There was a children's
book with a moral message of a poor
fisherman whose catch of a giant
elderly fish offered the man a wish
if he but returned the fish, an obvious
angel in disguise to its watery home.
The fisherman thought long and hard
and finally ventured his wish; to be
the pope. Sternly rebuked by the
fish who warned that he could be
an emperor, a king, a monarch of
great estates and wealth, but the pope
never, ever in his wildest dreams,
that position sacred inheritance to
scant few whose destiny it was. Now
the pope has issued a decree that a
new pathway to sainthood is extended
to the faithful of his flock. As example
an expectant mother waving off
life-saving treatment for her fatal
disease, in exchange for delivering
her child intact; that child known
to be deformed never to attain full
maturity as a functioning adult, her 
sacrifice ushering her to sainthood.

In The Woods

They are the very picture of contented
consanguinity, the devoted pair
strolling comfortably together
mother and daughter, a delightful
sight to those they meet and greet.
Fair-skinned, round-faced, facial
features prettily perched upon
swanlike necks, their smiles warm
the privileged upon whom they are
proffered. Their Irish heritage a
match for grass-green eyes and fire
flamed hair, cropped and curly for
the mother, long and flowing for
her daughter. Their relationship is
clearly one of need and fulfillment
each offering the emotional nurturing
the other craves, their symbiosis a
lesson in motherly and filial love.
The sylphlike form of the younger
is captivating and somehow eerily
fey. Look, have you noticed? They're
wearing long, graceful gowns.
Passingly odd garb for a casual
walk along a woodland trail under
overcast skies, gloom settling
into the forest as dusk arrives, a
light breeze ruffling their hair and
flowing dresses, ephemeral yet
real; not so peculiar perhaps if
they truly are woodland nymphs.

 

Nature, Interrupted

Certainly it is most unusual that
a yearling doe would find her way
into this place resembling though
it does her accustomed preserve in
nature, while it is not but an urban
forested reserve. The woodland
corridors that once existed to bring
her and her generational cohorts to
this place have long since vanished
replaced by the steadily relentless
recroachment of houses. In those
houses live people and with those
people their companion dogs. The
doe is far from where that exquisite
creature should be for her safety and
survival. The dog that accosted her
approaching swiftly on a trail much
used by residents is a Husky, and she
too but for the intervention of human
desire should be in her own natural
preserve, in the North. A whim of fate
has brought them together, the dog
and the doe, one a hunter one its prey.

Creator, Destroyer

Tinder dry weather, wind and dry lightning have caused fires to spread aggressively in the province. (B.C. Wildfire Service)

Creator, Destroyer

In a lifetime of nudging nature
to show us her vast range of 
grandly impressive geological
sites of monumental landscapes
few have been more varied and
stunning than those we have seen
in that westernmost of Canadian
provinces where we alpine camped
canoed and strolled among the 
world's old forest marvels. Ascending
mountains, placing a tent on a narrow
shelf on their slopes, watching the
force of nature that is a thunderstorm
and waiting out the drenching in that
tent to finally see across the vast
expanse to the Stein Valley a bonfire
in defiance of possibility. Paddling
our geared canoe through the
Bowron Lakes in the Cariboo
Mountain range, from lake to river
to lake. The mountain sheep, the
fear of grizzlies, the shrieks of 
screech owls, moose and salmon
the tracks of wolves. Awed in the 
presence of venerable trees the 
ephemeral hush as of nature's 
cathedral. The vast stretches of desert
the irrigated fields of ginseng, and 
the roaming cattle ranches, the depth
and awe of the Fraser River Canyon
this there was and this we saw. And
now wildfires roar about Cache Creek.