Mad Max
Existence is magic, an exhilarating
elixir of excitement for little Max. And
nature was exceedingly generous in
gifting the little fellow with form and
temperament, his disposition irresistibly
enthusiastic in a cuddly, curly-haired coat
his snout an arousal of exuberant joy
as he eyes his playmate-of-the-moment
and mounts a challenge to race madly
about the woods, in and around trees
escaping contact burrowing into a vast
generosity of autumn foliage fallen on
the forest floor, his apricot-toned curls
disappearing within the yellowed and
crisply-curled leaves, as he dares the
others to dive right in and swim with
him through the frothy ocean of fall.
His pleasure at being himself, a loved
companion and imp at one and the same
time, endearing at whimsical depth in
the conceit of the centre of the universe
for what else is there for a little dog
who has reached the milestone year
of life dedicated to the moment each
invitation he accepts, an ambassador
of leisure and unimaginable happiness.
Memory
Buried deep and seldom thought of
nestled far in the recesses of memory
to be evoked on rare occasions when
a fragrance arouses the sense of recall
and you become once more the one
that can never be recaptured in this
brief lifetime, a child for whom comfort
and security reflect the sensations of
familiar taste and smells recalling trust
and reliance on the guidance of your
parents' instinctual response to your
needs, and what could be more needful
to a child than to inhale a mother's
careful and fastidious preparations in
her kitchen to feed her family long
acquainted with the menu and relishing
its appearance, its taste, its companionship
and above all the distinct, unforgettable
odours of its constituents melding into
the promise of contentment and the
bond holding fast. From youth to old
age and a sudden flood of memory piqued
with that complex and familiar fragrance
your grandchildren now know and you
acknowledge timeless through the years.
The Here And Now
Awe and incredulity. For how can
the human mind despite its elasticity
and willingness to devour a vast multitude
of facts and data, eager to consume new
scientific findings possibly digest such
infinitely vast numbers, concepts and
visualizations of a time before time
in the vastness of the universe when
the massively heated planet we call our
home boiling in its liquid metallic and
gaseous state of becoming from its
collision creation beginning to host the
most primitive of life forms, existing
merely to exist, a cauldron of experiment
where evolution speaks in volumes of
billions of years to finally produce the
creatures that we are, populating a space
and a minuscule place in the vastness of
time and an endless universe, using our
creative intelligence to probe our very
existence while the purpose of it all
simply eludes understanding as we
impute what we perceive as mysterious
and unknowable to the giant hand of a
creator tenderly gathering gases and
chemicals to formulate the here and now.
Harvest
The wildflowers in their seasons
bloomed on the forest floor in bright
sparks of colour among the greens of the
mixed forest of deciduous and conifers
an exhalation of nature's very special
exhibition in parading her diverse
and clever landscaping the envy of
all those who fancy themselves capable
of emulation in tending gardens of their
own. The final season's arrival sees
the transformation of flowers into seed
heads meant to be carried hither and yon
by birds and animals in their innocence
transferring burrs and replanting their
seeds elsewhere, just as nature intended.
And autumn of course is also harvest
time when not only furred creatures of
the woods collect the edible fuel to carry
them over winter into spring but so do
domesticated companions awaiting a
share at berry-picking time and when
feral apples fall on woodland trails.
Where's The Pooch?
It's an innocent enough question. Coming
across the large shambling man instantly
jogged your memory of a young poodle mix
exuberantly energetic and full of fun, a lovely
apricot colour and half the size of a standard
since it was bred from a poodle with a Lab
a most felicitous pairing that resulted in an
animal with a lovely conformation and an
even more gracious temperament with all
the known intelligence of the former breed
and the friendliness of the latter. She was a
delight. 'Was' is the operative here as her
former companion shook his head and
simply said 'gone', to your great shock.
She couldn't have been more than . . .
'four years old', he supplied, nodding. And
you stated your very sincere sympathy
felt like kicking yourself for even asking
of her presence, but in fact the elderly man
whom you hadn't seen all that often, was
gratified that you'd remembered and
wanted to talk, and talk, and talk. About
his loss and coping, and the unexpectedness
of it all. And so, you listened, carefully
as is your wont while commiserating
because you have your very own experience
of the delight inherent in that special
companionship and the emotional starkness
that strikes when it is forever vanished.
The Wisdom of Age
Then it hits you, the stunning realization
that your mind is a work in progress; in
itself a reality you are no stranger to
having accompanied your mind through
a lifetime of exposure to world events
both great and monstrous and as an avid
reader of news and literature of every
stripe you've stuffed your mind with
massive amounts of intelligence, some
challenging that nomenclature, but for
the most part the recipient of reams of
information and proxy experiences all
of which have formed your impressions
of those sharing the globe with your
singular self. No, it is not those reliable
sources, companions throughout your
life that you suddenly understand have
had a magnitude of knowledge-sourcing
enabling you to dredge up from deep
within recalled learning episodes, but
through your children from the time they
exercised the prerogatives of sentience to
the present and even then the picture is
not complete, for in step their children to
guide you anew through the intricacies of
another knowledge base whose particulars
they casually impart, re-framing the wisdom
attributed by custom to the wrinkled elderly.
Enduring Love
Manifestly there is enduring durability
in the symbiosis of mutual need within
which lies gratification in the realization
that security and enjoyment, stability
and trust seated deep within mutual love
mark out the covenant the fortunate take
comfort in. Although love itself may be
mysterious there is no mystery in love
and its rewards. Extending to another the
divine spark of one soul reaching out to
another to find its binary destiny and the
purpose of life, those who are fortunate
make that discovery and cherish their
fortune, while others struggle, oblivious
that caring for another is paramount in
placing oneself as a complement to the
other. A natural response to some but
difficult to attain for those who see
their needs superior unwilling to forego
or diminish that drive to conquer all
for in so doing they stifle opportunity.
Nature's formula is straightforward
and simple enough: loving oneself too
fervently then leaves too little to share.
In Breathless Admiration
You remember, don't you, back when
we were so tenderly young and in our
youth so inexpressibly vulnerable, with
a beauty and vivaciousness known only
to the young? I remember, vividly, and so
must you. When we failed to recognize
just how beautiful we were, and agonized
over blemishes we were certain detracted
from our slight attributes and we wished
we were different, and dreamed what it
might feel like to be perfect, even while
we were indeed perfect. That was then.
Now, through dimmed yet penetrating
vision we see ourselves unrecognizing
ourselves yet knowing there we are, aged
imperfect and utterly lacking the perfection
we once believed would be ours on maturity
ever so anxious to attain that state. Never
at any stage did we view ourselves for the
wonders of nature that we represented.
Yet, wonder of wonders, through the prism
of ourselves as we are, we view the young
with an appreciation we denied ourselves,
for their exuberance and ethereal beauty
their rounded limbs and perfect skin, their
expectant eyes, their flashing teeth and
smile-curving mouths, their flyaway hair
and their grace of movement. Wonderful.
It's enough to take your breath away.
Gone, Forgotten
Where are the poetic and literary giants
of the past? Past, gone, forgotten -- from Byron
and Shelley to Hemingway. Legends in their
times, galvanizing the literate public with
their creative brilliance, they wrote
transcending works that echoed nature
and the nature of man, presaging their very
own fate as renowned arbiters of taste and
memory. 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
The king of kings, remote in time and legend
great in his time and commemorated through
timeless archaeological worship of a singular
time and a vibrant dynasty, who does his name
now recall; his time and his greatness? Even
award of a Nobel Prize for literature could
not now recognize a name once thought to be
immortalized in his great novels testifying to
the state of humankind, yet a search for his
published works in today's library is fruitless
for even librarians whose academic scholarship
acquainted them with the meaning and stature
of literature failed to apprise them adequately
of the literary figures predating their own.
Hemingway? the librarian responded to the
puzzled reader fruitlessly searching for The Sun
(which should) Also Rise/s. Never heard of him.
So, where now are the shapers of language
the chroniclers of the human spirit, Verne,
Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Dumas, Plato and
Camus and Balzac and Aleichem; long gone
as dead as their oeuvre, absent from the
shelves of the public library serving you.
Mortifying Penance
The nuances in courtesy exchanges and
social consideration are many; as civilized
people and in accord with a social contract
of polite dialogue, we acknowledge the
presence of others and with frequent
exposure regard them as acquaintances.
That category is somewhat more than
requiring of attention than mere strangers
yet they are in essence, strangers, not
friends, as those whose well-being deeply
concern us. Yet as fellow travellers in life
and the propinquity of neighbourhoods
fairly frequent yet slight encounters occur
and with them the kind of social gestures
that affirm one as a social creature, so
invariably conversations of blessed brevity
are launched, but on occasion release
fails to materialize and one is left scouring
imagination to offer small conversational
tidbits, awaiting the observable inclination
for the other to move on, freeing you from
this servitude to civility. Today you
exhausted so many topics in a relatively
brief period, filling in dead space while
the other simply nodded as though rooted
in fascination with the stream that extruded
from your brain via your mouth. You
glance at your husband, deep in conversation
with her husband, willing a conclusion which
eventually arrives. Later you querulously
ask what on earth could he have to discuss
with the other, and he responds in surprise
not much; he was awaiting the opportunity
to break off, but you seemed to go on...
and on, and he wondered what you had to
discuss with the man's wife that kept you
so deep in a protracted conversation....
Condoned ... Condemned
Thank heavens for the existence of that
distinguished and noble world body where
the rights of humankind to exist unmolested
and secure, safe from degrading misery and
violent attacks are enshrined in that covenant
all its members heed and respect, the code
setting out humankind's obligations to
one another on human rights. In that august
body is vested the authority to intervene
and to protect the world's most vulnerable.
Yet through some strange warped inversion
there are those members whose transgressions
though stark and barbaric in exercising their
penchant for tyranny and bloody conflict
inciting to mass murder in the name of an
ideological religious and tribal bigotry
can be conveniently overlooked for they
are many and the power of their influence
so robust. Even so among all the nations of
the world is one and one alone surrounded
by enmity and vicious hostility, an island
of inner calm and equality where shelter is
given to all within but whose presence on
the planet and within its small geography
enrages the tyrants and leaders reliant on
persecution and intimidation to remain secure
in control of their nations. Those with whom
they consort, others like themselves of whom
there are no lack lead the vaunted halls of
the United Nations in defaming attacks on
the singular nation whose values reflect the
very moral foundation on which the world
body's assurances of equality are based
while base calumnies distinguish its alumnae.
Grooming Terror
The situation is quite beyond serious
may even become a matter for possible
disputes resolution, perhaps even arbitration
yet a dark shadow of matters descending
completely out of the arena of settling
out of court and spiralling into a dreaded
criminal investigation also looms on the
horizon. You stand accused. The evidence
is there, and not merely one individual
but two may be prepared to launch such
proceedings. Unspoken, but obvious their
intention is to alert authorities that you
undertook an act that had the potential of
imperilling their very existence. You might,
it is darkly hinted, even have been inspired
by terrorists who espouse the utility of
using whatever menacing means are at
hand to inspire terror in the hearts of their
victims, let alone conspiring to act in the
agency of a lone wolf. Headlines could read:
the attacker wielded a large, sharp pair of
scissors. Violence may not have been your
intention, and you may now incline to speak
gently to your accusers but they were subjected
to an event that inspired fear and panic and
you were responsible. Mind, it is true that
they look almost respectable now that their
haircoats have been trimmed because the
sibling poodles looked downright like
unkempt ragamuffins and by now they've
laid aside their panic, nuzzling you in trust.
The Mission
Only an uncompromisingly vengeful god
could possibly convey his omni-voracious
appetite, potency and covetous need to dominate
through a covenant that convinces the
faithful of his doctrine of peace that all
those in the world who fail to surrender
their autonomy of free agency to his all
encompassing demands live in a place of
war and that it is incumbent upon believers
to wage peace on those war-mongers by
attacking them as infidels, kuffars, despicable
unbelievers whose salvation can only be
achieved through conversion to Islam. In
this way will the world be saved and become
a paradise of peace between all, for what will
there be to separate them when all worship
monogamously, intensely, foregoing all
pretense to ambiguous 'human rights' of the
individual to become as one in the worship
of the all-powerful? Dread and fear are
powerfully emotive incentives and jihad
promises to deliver all that and more in its
terror-crusade to pacify the world and bring
it to a place of divine peace where human
nature's penchant to view other clans and
tribes with suspicion and fear their strange
religious beliefs will be forever shed. Jihad:
proselytizing with exuberant missionary zeal
inextricably linked to engulfing the world
of conflict in excruciating lethal atrocities.
School's In
Two very small boys, mute but
smiling. Snakes, frogs and dogs catch
their interest, so the two frantic little
dogs greeting them with hysterical
barks translate to welcome, not threat
and they react accordingly each to its
own. Theirs is a mission, instructed in
their classrooms to 'get thee out and sell!'
and so, a mother hovering in the distance
they ring doorbells and shyly, from the
worldly experience of their years proffer
boxes of treasures for they know the sweet
value of what they purvey. But, sputtered
one, what kind did you choose? when
the householder handed them $5 for two
bars and said they're for their own
delectable pleasure; she would pay
they would enjoy. The quicker one
eagerly accepted the premise that selling
translates to profitability and they had
been awarded for their enforced enterprise
the freedom to select and to benefit.
Terrifying You
And then, when your heart finally starts
beating again, you take a deep breath
and tell him, calmly and with deliberation
'over my dead body', and there is no reaction
other than his own calm response that this
is something he will do. You've been
together, you and him, for far longer than
most people on this earth have lived in
years well and truly spent and he is the
same man as the boy he once was loving
you as you love him. But his spirit is his
own and it cannot be tamed to fear any
consequences of his decisions, for he
thinks deeply of his responsibilities as
he assumes them to be. Not for him to
hire out dangerous work that he feels he
is eminently capable of performing, even
though that work represents a profession
whose practitioners are available and
more than capable of performing well.
But not, in his opionated mind, while he
remains wholly capable of seeing to it
all on his own diminished steam, you see.
Give Me A Break
Have I no shame? None, evidently on the word
of the newly-designated foremost authorities
on what may and may not be declared,
recognized and respected. My views
formed over a lifetime of experience are
quaint but to be held incommunicado as
they and I don't actually exist. Dating me of
course to prehistory. I am not alone, there
is a growing horde of my vintage, many of
whom have become adept at eye-rolling
and getting on with what's left of their
lives while others simply give no notice of
life's extraneous and utterly incomprehensible
alterations that have taken place where
apparently reasonable human beings have
taken to extolling the virtues of the sadly
canted social stream of anything-goes.
Courtesy and public decorum, spiced up
with a lazy attitude toward human decency
have been shoved up high, high on a
shelf, tagged 'in the olden days of yore'
so weighted with dust they'll never be
discovered by paleoarchaeologists looking
for proof that humanity was ever even
moderately sane. Women want to transition
to males but still go through childbirth and
males prefer being female threatening to
beat the living daylights out of anyone who
doubts their sanity. Children are encouraged
to be 'themselves' but not their designated
sex at birth. Observing that terrorists happen
to be Muslim rates you as an Islamophobe.
Deploring the BDS movement where ill
informed stupidity punishes the very nation
that Islamic terrorists plan to destroy, ditto.
Noting the incontrovertible fact that social
deviants and criminals are over-represented
in specific communities prove you're a racist.
Oh, perhaps not you of course, certainly me.
Trolls
They are, for obvious reasons, most
comfortable in the gloom-shaded regions
of a shadowy world where identification
can be conveniently hidden, or at the very
least the distance of the ether confers on
them a kind of anonymity where one never
really knows if the persona they claim to
is legitimately authentic. What cannot be
disputed however, is that they are genuinely
and morbidly sinister, their ghoulish minds
taking inordinate delight in tracking down
the vulnerable, hovering about the defenceless
preying on the confused and the innocent
to enable them to achieve a multifaceted
goal; the thrill of the chase, the satisfaction
in assessing the discomfort and fear they
can sense in those they target, uncertain
how to respond but seemingly captured
helpless in a web of malign intent they are
unable to identify though they feel compelled
to participate by some strange psychosis of
insecurity edged by the lack of will to
assert their own agency instead succumbing
to the assumed authority resting with their
psychological tormentor. Whose victims
rear back reeling from the assaults they found
themselves unable to resist in this dark game
of gotcha! The game goes on, the deviant
content on conquest until finally an intended
victim's cool response identifies the blighted
mind delinquent in humanity and delivers the
interpretation that silences this lover of
wretched excess as a victim of otherwise
commendable and well earned self-loathing.
Functional, Thank You
No, I am not possessed of a disordered
mind. Possibly it could be said that
my mind is one of disorderly chaos
on the other hand. Logic is in there
somewhere to be sure, among the
provoking thoughts and the occasional
panic when it seems absurd that words
so ordinary cannot be summoned. I am
however assured that this forgetfulness
state results from the crowded atmosphere
in my overworked mind, sensitive to all
manner of suggestive occurrences some
of which make little sense whatever. I
can thus sympathize with my computer
which anticipates an orderly mind with
which to interact, failing my own feeble
efforts to bring forth an anticipated outcome
when I fail to advise it accurately what is
expected of its performance. No doubt
my hard-worked computer is just as
frustrated with me as I with it, though it
has never made an effort to shock me
as I have it on some absurd occasions.
 |
| Auguste Rodin |
The Creative Mind
If the human mind is the seat of the
soul, and thought to be endowed with
a divine spark reflecting the original
creation what could surpass it in its
creative genius? Granted, few wear the
undisputed crown of genius, but those
that do earn it by the very unique and
rare spirit within that moves them to
imagine, theorize and propose. Those we
admire for their obvious and great talents
whose greatness is inspired by the fine
capacity of their intelligence outdistancing
all others have laid the groundwork for
any and all momentum humankind has
realized in its relentless march to the
present where we look back and cannot
but venerate the body of work that has
brought us to the state of appreciating
aesthetic beauty mirroring nature's own
creative genius, and the technological
advances that have brought us from the
taming of fire to careful handling of atomic
power, yet we are now so in thrall of the
inspired width and breadth of memory
instilled by us in machinery that we are
eager to surrender human agency to the
anticipated power, thrust and unalloyed
process-perfection of artificial intelligence.
Shared Recipes
Enduring and durable and yet imbued
with mystery, a source of life but not
indestructible, so my dear, take care
when you crack those eggs to separate
yolk from white, the yolks for the white
sauce, the whites for the froth to rise
that souffle to great heights and temptation.
Like love itself the eggs must be treated
with gentle care, their friable exterior
shielding the soft interior from harm.
The cadence of the rhythm resembling
a recipe for lifelong companionship
my dear, can you not recognize the
verisimilitude in that straightforward
compact between egg and the success
of this meal we will share just as we have
over our lifetimes shared our lives, you
and I? Yes, we will include sweet melon
in the salad alongside green and red-ripe
vegetables resting on a bed of lettuce.
Did we not take our rest on a shared bed
allowing the sweetness of communion to
bring forth new life? The sour and the
sweet, the fullness of life, the salt and the
bread, all symbols of sharing. You. Me.
Once....
Once upon a lifetime ago girls came
calling on one another and made their
way together down to the park, giggling
sometimes veering off to the closest
shopping mall, answering the siren call
of fashion and !on sale! clearouts promising
glamour and recognition of their uniqueness.
And in the summer basketball hoops in
driveways, hockey nets on the streets in
winter and soccer madness coloured our
neighbourhood where people walked
along sidewalks and carried bags straight
from the supermarket, a goodly walk but
almost part of the social contract where
you would always recognize a neighbour
even those living on the street behind your
own. The children have left with their
mature years to take up their own residence
elsewhere and on your street their parents
retired then moved on, replaced by those
who are now what they were long ago.
These are ghost families, neither seen nor
heard, not on the streets, not in their quiet
homes, living in an alter-universe we can
only guess at since their very presence
is a theory. We can only hope they're happy.
The street is not quite void of neighbours
some yet remain to share that memory.
Seasons
The ephemerality of the changing
seasons fails to impress us when we are
young. When we advance in years their
arrivals and departures become startlingly
abrupt and seasons whose longevity
were once seen as of equal duration
suddenly reveal themselves as those
that linger much too long and those we
grieve of as somehow becoming much
much too short, as though a shift in
reality has taken place in lock-step with
our migration from youth to adult to
maturity and beyond. Through our new
lenses we view the arrival of spring with
unalloyed joy and summer as a supreme
blessing while autumn has its moments
but winter though pleasant as a scenic
landscape has become a harsh and
excessively punishing environment
we seek to escape like songbirds turning
south from the boreal forests they inhabit
becoming inhospitable to the very life they
sustain. We mourn the shorter daylight
hours, the creeping cold, the shrinking
garden soon to transition from blazing
colours the sun magnifies to a fiery gloss
recumbent deep and dark under a white
comforter whose presence lacks comfort.
Nature Shrugs
Define parasite. Earth perhaps did
not request of nature to be populated
by a host of organisms, creatures so
dependent on the resources so amenable
to adaptation in living communities of
creatures spread everywhere on her
mantle but her destiny has been realized
as a great habitat accommodating their
presence. As a living presence itself,
the globe tends on occasion to express
itself through a variety of expressions
reflecting its sovereign agency in the
process of which its lodged creatures
find themselves alarmingly threatened
suddenly vulnerable to the excesses of
their home's natural elements at times
benign and occasionally maliciously
inclined. When earthquakes, tornadoes
wildfires, flooding, drought and
ferocious hurricanes, volcanic eruptions
and numbing cold temperatures arise
to abruptly raise alarm and arouse
acknowledgement of humankind's
tenuous links and clasps to a notoriously
indifferent and omnipotent presence
whose essence we attempt to grasp
through the credulous nature of science.
Flawed and Blighted
We enter life naked and fearful as
though in entering sentience we
inherit a primal memory of a world
that is hostile to our presence as humans.
A world populated by animals other
than ourselves, whose interest in us
appears to be as carnivores, so we
learned to eat or be eaten. A world
where safety could be found in one
of the most destructive elements that
nature devised: fire. A world where
other humans sought security in the
close presence of those like themselves
a clan, a tribe, an exclusive group that
viewed all others as enemy contestants
for the consuming occupation of
survival. Ah, but that was humanity
in its infancy, at the dawn of its creation.
We have since evolved, achieving much
to bring us toward enlightenment and
a philosophical awareness of our
centrality in the world we inhabit, as
secure as nature will allow. And now?
We identify one another as threats to
our existence and act accordingly.
The firepower that could be used for
ill and for good has achieved its very
own monumental destructive force
and humanity believes there is survival
in the wake of a cataclysm that paranoia
anger and contempt catalyze into force.
