Ceiling Unlimited (2 of 2)

Look it up.

In a way, I envy people who don’t have personal philosophies. I don’t wish to and couldn’t imagine being like that, but I guess it’s probably one less thing to worry about in life. But then, what sort of life are you having not caring about things?

                I positively struggle with my personal philosophies. I find myself constantly shifting definitions, sifting through them, adjusting them to find what best suits me. I often find myself on the line between camps of ideas, and I suppose this sort of searching, compromising, and readjusting can look like indecision, as my friend said like I’m looking for something. I am, but she mistakes a questioning nature for a lack of conviction. The wondering wanderer (or the wandering wonderer) plagued with doubt is typically the sort of person the church gobbles up.

                That’s not me. Though I’m constantly redefining what I am, I know what I am not.

                I’m not a humanist in the strictest sense. I once thought so, because as a rational man I’m all for the celebration of humanity’s accomplishments. I find myself rooted in the thinking of Renaissance Florence, not First Century Judea. And yet, I’m not a strict atheist, and only looking at the accomplishments of humanity ignores the artistic and philosophical triumphs of the spirit, and their monuments that so enthrall and confuse me. As someone smarter than me once said, “Atheists ain’t got no songs.”

                I suppose I see myself as more of an individualist, but that’s a term we must be careful with because it’s one as misinterpreted and misaligned as agnostic. As an individualist, I am not a Randian objectivist or a libertarian. I’m suspicious of both of these philosophies for they are essentially dangerous or at the very least anti-social, and I am a very social (and often socialist) being.

                I’m an individualist in that I strive to make myself a better person, the best person I can be. An individualist celebrates the accomplishments of others as well, celebrates others who succeed, push themselves, make themselves better. Something evolved, something elevated. But not at the expense of anyone, and my moral code has me celebrating when this individual accomplishment can benefit others in some way, even just through inspiration. Can one be as oxymoronical as a socialist individualist? Not to sound hipster, but maybe there’s no term for my philosophy . . .

                Back to the beginning. If I enter the architectural triumph that is a cathedral and I find peace and I am able to elevate myself, I may also feel a desire to celebrate the people who created the place.

                Those that dreamed it, those that built it. Not those who hallowed it or the god and saints to whom it’s dedicated. Some view such places as wasteful, but they grant peace and elevation of the self, even on the heathen level.

                And very often I leave them with a better sense of who I am and what I think. 

Ceiling Unlimited (1 of 2)

Up. Way up.

When I travel, I take a lot of pictures of ceilings. Particularly church ceilings.

              I’m sure this is nothing special. There must be books dedicated to church and mosque and cathedral and synagogue ceilings, just as there are books of doors and windows and toilets around the world. I’m not thinking that it makes me especially unique that when I enter a church it’s instinctive for me to look up, nor is it especially unique that I take a next step of capturing what I see as some form of art. In fact, that I do it means I’m part of the masses—pun partially intended—for a functioning house of worship is figuratively and literally serving its purpose if it’s figuratively and literally making you look up.

              No, where the conflict resides in me is resolving this pious up-looking with my own secular heathenism.

              I was gently offended recently by a friend who happens to be a born-again Christian. (From the perspective of the comfortably faithless, there’s nothing worse than the born-again. It's like someone who's never eaten asparagus has it once at a restaurant, loves it, and insists on it at every meal. Then all they can talk about is asparagus. You've eaten it and it's not for you, but they just have to tell you about asparagus. Over and over. Like you're going to come around and like it just because they have.) She offended me by saying that she thinks my love of churches and my moral code are signs that I’m searching for something. That my attraction to churches in general and the fact that I'm a decent guy means I'm a Christian even and simply haven't realized it yet. Bothered me to be so simplified.  She could only define this search by her own standards. It downplayed my nature because she could only measure it by her own ruler. Or crucifix.

              But back to my love of churches. I adore them. I love the peace and the smell and the stained glass and where things are stored. I love the sounds and the way the light comes in them and the way it doesn't. Love everything about them. How each is its own story, a corner of a community, unique and stuffy and lovely. They’re usually the best part of any urban area, city or small town. When I travel somewhere new I always mentally note churches and pubs; it's subconscious. 

              They are the highest combination of irony. I don’t buy what they’re selling—not directly, anyway—and yet they are made of and containers for art.

              Art is humanity’s greatest expression, the sign of a high-achieving society. When a society starts to falter, when the mob begins to reign, that’s when art fails. Religion on the other hand is the most basic of creations. The most basic society invents a god to thank, blame, and appease as soon as it gets its collective head together. Religion is humanity at its simplest.

              Art is greatness, religion is baseness, and church is where the two meet.

              On a particularly hectic day in Aix-en-Provence, France, just before I entered the cathedral, a friend of mine commented on the building’s combination of Gothic and Romanesque architecture.

              “Gothic,” she said, “like many other styles implores us to look up to God, to the heavens.”

              I was surprised to hear this coming without pessimism from my atheist friend. I thought about how I was always drawn up to the ceilings, to the bottom of the top of these buildings.

              “When you go in think about that,” she continued. “think about elevating yourself. To some this means in the Christian sense, or at least in the faithful sense. To others it’s in the secular sense, in the raising of self. If nothing else, it’s a place to gather yourself in peace. Take a moment, breathe. Think about the how you can rise, ascend as a person. Raise yourself by whatever means you define it.”

              See, despite it being art dedicated to humanity’s most basic creation—religion—it’s still some of our greatest art. And the greater the church, the greater its architectural art.

              I’m glad they exist, even if I don’t use them as they were intended. Yes, the resources could’ve been better spent feeding, clothing, educating people. The same could be said for the money spent on sports stadiums, shopping malls, and office towers. Sometimes it’s just good to be awed by a thing. I suppose that sounds like a rationalization, but we need to be impressed at times, and maybe you’re not always on the ocean or beside a mountain.

              And unlike stadiums, malls, or towers, a person can enter most churches at most times and just be. Experience and elevate.

              Faith aside, I’m glad churches exist. Faith aside, I love everything about them. Faith aside, it’s still possible to be elevated in them without strict faith inside.  

R-Rated Superhero Movies (Or: What Happened to the Fun?)

Christopher Reeves just stopped combines . . . 

I went to see Deadpool the other day. I probably shouldn’t have.

              I tried to go in with an open mind. I like Ryan Reynolds, but I forgot how much I hate the character. I was still reading comics when he first came out. I hated him then and I hate him now—I hate that this movie’s success means that somewhere, somehow, Rob Liefeld is making a buck.

              I hated the movie. I hated that this cheap Wolverine/Spider-Man rip-off, a relic of a fad-driven 1990s comic book industry was getting any representation. I hate that he’s the symbol of where comic book heroes are going. It’s either “Grimdark” (re: Man of Steel) or potty humour.

              I don’t want to make it too big a deal, but the success of Deadpool can be equated to the success of Donald Trump. Maybe people truly are getting stupider.

              The movie sucked. It had all of the depth and creativity of a Family Guy episode, and it’s an insult to twelve-year-old boys to say it’s full of their humour. It’s idiotic, but idiocy sells.

              I haven’t collected comics in almost twenty years. I know there are many people who still think of me when they think of a comic nerd. And although there’s something about their mythos that still appeals to my lizard brain, they’re mostly just a topic like Star Wars that I associate with my bond with my kids more than with myself. I guess I simply outgrew them, along with video games, three chord punk, and party as a verb instead of a noun. Nowadays the odd comic-inspired flick neatly serves the purpose, especially since most of the stories are based on what I read as a kid.

              I got into comics when I was very young, and so I understand that my kids are getting into them. Unfortunately, the only ones I can give them are mine from thirty years ago, because comics are no longer for them. And Deadpool and its whole R-rated superhero debate might be a sign that the movies are going to follow their source right into the toilet.

              The problem is that we’re lying to ourselves as to what comics are about, who they’re for.

              I have a graphic novel of 1970s Neal Adams Batman stories. Read it with my kids. Couldn’t believe it. Batman was telling jokes, playing a prank, even smiling. I mean, it wasn’t the camp of the TV show ten years prior, but nor was it the brooding, husky, grim character of the 80s and beyond. He was an actual human being. This is all the more poignant because the modern comics and their films with adult themes for adult readers are often praised for their realism. Which is asinine, but we’ll come to that.

              Those 1970s comics were a fine balance: Superman and Batman still wore their undies on the outside, Robin still had no pants, and the costumes of the Avengers and X-Men lineups looked like they’d been designed by Crayola. But it was also the time of the brutal death of Gwen Stacy, Green Arrow and Green Lantern teaming up to take on social issues and combat drug abuse, and the lamentable creation of the Punisher: a dude with a gun. The worst superhero creation ever and the door-opener for a long line of grim, pointless G.I. Joe-wannabes up to and including Mr. Pool.

              See, 1970s comics—and I’m too young to be saying this out of nostalgia—could be relevant and entertaining at once, and they understood they were still for kids. Smart kids, yes, but kids. Now they’re just for dumb adults.

              Generally, it’s a mistake to see comics as an art form. And before you get all worked up I say that having high regard for comics, at least for what they once were.

They are advertising-based entertainment. The 1980s saw the advent of comic books (Super Powers, G.I.Joe, Secret Wars, Micronauts, etc.) that existed just to sell toys. That is, to children. Only in the later part of that decade and in the 1990s did toy collection become a serious and seriously creepy business. As with comics themselves, weirdos were finding justification for remaining children into adulthood and buying their youth back at ten times the original cost. Toys became much less playable, more for posing on bookshelves next to books about talking to girls and losing weight on a dollar cheeseburger diet.

              No, strictly speaking, comics are not an art form. There have been moments where works of art have come from comics—The Watchmen, Ronin, The Dark Knight Returns, Arkham Asylum—but these were blips, mostly in the 80s, a time where the medium stretched its muscles before embarking into the territory of constant merchandising. The problem is these dark forays away from what comics truly are have become the rule. The audience aged and felt that it should still be the target. It’s like expecting Bugs Bunny to have a mortgage and taxes.

              Like video games, professional wrestling, horror films, and porn, comic books have their passionate followers who try to defend the artistic merits of capitalistic entertainment of little substance. Interestingly, the majority of the fans crossover between these media. Maybe that’s why the lines between them have become so blurred.

              See, the problem is guys around my age. I’ll admit it. We messed up. Those who defend comics as art thinking those few stellar exceptions should be the norm grew up and became creators themselves, feeling that their creations should reflect their own “maturity.” Funnybooks about dudes in tights with sketchy science and multiple religions and myths overlapping (Zeus and Odin  and the Archangel Michaelare drinking buddies) got dark, gritty, dirty. Adult. Real.

              Real. Comic book superheroes. People who get exposed to radiation and develop wild powers rather than cancer. Aliens who can do pretty much anything because of solar energy. More real you say? Consider the medium for a second. Its merits are its complete lack of reality, for it is grounded in the ludicrous, it has grown from the corner of a child’s mind where the question “How can this be?” is never uttered.

              Comics are for kids. Making them exclusive by adding grit, gore, or soft core porn and thus making them exclusive to adults (that is, adults stuck in teen mentality) is a disservice to that audience and an underestimation of what adults need for entertainment. Comics are created by manboys for manboys and Deadpool is a sign that the films are set to follow this unhappy trend.

              Let’s take the first and greatest of them all: Superman. Attempting to make him “real” and “dark” calls for us to ignore what is ridiculous about the character: everything. He’s a perfectly humanoid alien who has the powers of the entire X-men team, has the silliest of silly names, the silliest of silly disguises, and for the majority of his career wore bright red underpants and a yellow belt. In 2013’s Man of Steel Zack Snyder asked the audience what it would be like if Superman was grimdark (it’s a thing on the Internet), lacking any humour and with the colours so washed out that even the Academy of Motion Pictures couldn’t tell who was which race.

              Grimdark, utterly humourless, a hopeless movie that claims to be about hope. In no way was this a film for kids. Or even adults not suffering from clinical depression.

              And it was about a fella in a cape named Superman. Think on that.

              Man of Steel, Deadpool, Suicide Squad. Adult comic book fans are demanding superhero films that reflect their own eroding values. Rather than leave this medium to childhood, it’s been smeared with a reality while avoiding the simply ridiculous unreality of where it comes from. When did “It’s dark” become a compliment?

              What will happen in a decade, when we’ve depleted the fanbase completely by cutting it off at the roots, or worse, by corrupting that fanbase with joyless and graphic depictions of breakfast cereals?

              The superhero is supposed to be inspirational. Yes, he can be complex, conflicted, even troubled. But, man, since when did their films have to either resemble an emo band video or a romp through Larry Flynt’s basement?

              Time to grow up and stop taking things from the kids. 

Hostel Return

I used to stay in hostels all the time when I was a young backpacker. Time and responsibility have sort of made their necessity fade. However, recently I had the opportunity to stay at one in Edmonton, and one evening I appreciated the encapsulation of the hostel experience.

Booklist 2015

Booklist 2015

January 1-March 19

1.       Excalibur by Bernard Cornwell

2.       Neuromancer by William Gibson

3.       Watch You Bleed by Stephen Davis

4.       Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks

5.       Self by Yann Martel

6.       The Call of the Wild by Jack London

7.       My Best Stories by Alice Munro

8.       The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

9.       The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

10.   Writers Workshop in a Book by various.

11.   Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

March 20-June 21

12.   Stonehenge by Bernard Cornwell

13.   Enter Night by Mick Wall

14.   A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

15.   15 Canadian Poets X2 Ed. By Gary Geddes

16.   The Right to Be Cold by Sheila Watt-Cloutier

17.   The Adventures of Tom Bombadil by J.R.R. Tolkien

18.   Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) by Ann-Marie MacDonald

June 22-Sept 20

19.   The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

20.   Let the Elephants Run by David Usher

21.   The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

22.   The National Dream by Pierre Berton

23.   The Secret World of Og by Pierre Berton

24.   The Poets Corner by John Lithgow

25.   Supergods by Grant Morrison

26.   The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Sept 20-Dec 31

27.   Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

28.   The Martian by Andy Weir

29.   World Religions Thomas A. Robinson and Hillary P. Rodrigues

30.   No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

31.   The Last Spike by Pierre Berton

32.   Punishment by Linden MacIntyre

33.   Vimy by Pierre Berton

34.   Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

Unsoical Mediation

"John S. has responded to your comment . . ."

You all know the feeling. Flipping through your news feed you see some joke, some picture, some meme, some comment. You consider yourself cavalier when it comes to political correctness, but you see this right thing at the right time in light of the right events and it manages to irk you. To get under your digital skin.

              Pick your issue, but all of us no matter how tolerant have some group that is ne touch pas.

              Before you react you may have the wisdom or at least the experience to reproach yourself, to remind yourself that no good can come from taking a stand on a digital timeline. But, dammit, you’re peeved. Finally, for whichever of the thousand justifications you have that all basically sound the same and add up to the same, you react, you respond.

              You comment. You hit reply and say your piece. 

              A few minutes later, the offending party responds. Or one of their supporters does. Or one of yours. Or some innocent bystander, some patronizing pedant, some deliberately offensive troglodyte, some bleeding heart.

              Knowing what you’ve got yourself into but unable to resist, you respond to the response.

              And we’re off. Like a starburst of dominoes, the “debate” goes out, drawing from all, affecting all, swaying none none.

              If I may for a time continue with my second-person hypothetical, in the eventual fallout of this ultimately useless argument, perhaps you say or have said to you some nasty words. Maybe you come away resenting an actual human because of their online expression of self. Maybe the real person and created persona begin to blend in your head.

              So maybe you see the folly in this—once again—and you decide—once again—to swear off debating on this particular social medium. Maybe—once again—you start calling into question what good this medium is actually bringing to your life, to the world, to rhetoric. Maybe you quit cold turkey, feeling a sense of freedom. You indulge in your human relationships, finding yourself agreeing readily with points that don’t reflect you ideologically and spiritually to the letter.

              A day of this new found freedom goes by. Another. Someone posts an article or a joke and tags you. In person they berate you for not responding, for not ratifying their existence with commentary in the public sphere. You start getting emails from medium itself telling you there’s stuff you’re missing, like you stepped out of a loud party for some fresh air but someone keeps calling for you.

              You start to get antsy, start to feel withdrawn. You tell yourself you’ll have one quick look. “Just one.”

              Next thing you know, you’re right back where you started.

              And yes, the diction’s intentional: this experience is supposed to sound like that experience. And no, I don’t think that’s over-stating it.

              Because I think addicts would attest that only at the deepest in their drug would they show how truly awful good people can be.

              Several times I’ve “quit” Facebook. I'm certainly not very active—outside of elections—compared to what I was a few years back. I’d like to avoid it, but the fact is I still find it the best way to interact with many of my distant friends, and yes, sometimes I find vines, videos, and George Takei entertaining. I deplore those who treat anything that’s posing as news on Facebook as news and I also tire of those who use it to feed their narcissism. That said, the only hard rule for Facebook behaviour is that how you behave on Facebook is how someone says you shouldn’t behave on Facebook.

              In the decade or so of the term and the medium’s existence, social media with Facebook and Twitter as the flagships have degraded. Like the Internet itself, they began as something that offered so much to so many but are now just barely doing anything, and much of the time doing more harm than good.

              It—yes, I’m using this singular pronoun for “social media” if you’ll forgive my catch-all c.2009 jingoism, because IT is the word for addiction and cancer—is the place we see humans being terrible. Sometimes hiding in anonymity, but at least hiding behind a digital ID that we have all agreed to consider as different than an actual human, people say and do things that are simply unacceptable and we accept them because of the venue.

              It’s no good. I’m calling us out. We’re a bunch of digital brutes.

              And I’m not saying I’m not guilty. I’ve often used it as a forum for my political views, but I’d say I’m very rare in that I’m clear that there’s a line between politics and personality, between ideology and prejudice. Facebook and Twitter abound in racism, sexism, and most of all the unrepentant, glaring perpetuation of ignorance. Dare I say it, our social media have become the playground of the wilfully stupid.

              Where my mind fair boggles is that still, after some twenty years of accessible public Internet, it's hunky dory to be racist, sexist, dumb and loud, etc. on-line, as if who we are and what we do in that most public of forums is still sort of not us, not real. We’re just pretending to promote hate, not really doing it.

              Fact: many people I know behave on-line in a manner they wouldn’t dare in real, human life. Twenty years ago, they never would’ve opened their doors and hollered “Don’t you hate Muslims?” They’d never knowingly put up a billboard that deliberately misinformed or, worse, believe any billboard they saw as truth. They’d never come up to a random stranger reading a newspaper and start an argument about an opinion piece that ended up in a contest of personal insults.

              Yet these same folks post racist rants, share and believe memes that my pet fish could sling together and call “facts,” or patrol the comments sections of news pieces looking to pick a fight.

              (Incidentally, the CBC’s disabling of comments on indigenous news pieces due to hate posts is an indication of a bigger issue. There has never been a justification for the comments sections of online news, and it does us nothing but bad as a species that they continue to exist.)

              I actually believed that we were outgrowing “I’m not a racist/sexist/homophobe/moron, but . . .” as an introduction to something decidedly racist/sexist/homophobic/moronic, but it’s wormed its way into our on-line lexicon. It’s become acceptable. Every avatar feels the pedantic right to “Well, actually” on any post by anyone about anything. And to be pretty darn petty whilst doing so too. 

              Facebook started out as something good and bad. So did Twitter. Ironically, this step forward in communication has meant a gigantic step backward in our social evolution.

              Facebook and Twitter, and their many bastard offspring, are where people feel safe being awful. Wanton bigotry and stupidty reign.

              Social media. It’s full of media, but it’s hardly social. Facebook is where we deface ourselves because of its facelessness. And Twitter is where we’re twits.

              Stop it. 

My Canada

Well, quite the year for us Albertan Canadians.

I’ve decided to swear off political blogging for at least a twelvemonth—after all Henry V is an uninteresting play because it’s essentially just a line of victories and no one cares about consecutive wins—but it’s the flush (in both meanings of the word) of politics that drives me to set these words down about about Canada, but specifically my Canada.

What is this Canada? Does it even exist any more?

Canada is an unwieldy state, a nation far too big for its population. Every definitive moment in its history is themed with working on a place that in very good sense has no business existing as it is.

There are divisions between East and West so deep it’s a wonder we’ve never got around to the world’s most polite civil war. There are those who stand rigidly on their side of this geographical divide and hold that we are a nation carved, East and West, regions, Alberta and Quebec. I am not one of those.

Perhaps my vision has always been to grand. For several years now I’ve wondered if I am not an Eastern Canadian at heart. I know I am not, but if one were to embrace stereotypes, then one could say that I am perhaps better suited to Montreal or Ottawa or Halifax. If Easterners value learning above all, culture and art and history, and are more attuned with their European roots, then perhaps that’s where I belong. If Westerners only value hard work, and by work I mean physical labour, and there’s no room for wasteful and frivolous pursuits like reading and painting, where the aim in life is to make money no matter the how, where traditional values and good Christian living are the norm, then truly I’m not a Westerner. But this is also a stereotype, and neither is true, so I cannot be either for I am not false in my identity.

I am a Canadian, truly.

My Canada stretches from ocean to ocean, from border to Arctic. My Canada has a capital in Ottawa, a breadbasket in the Prairies, a glory in the Rockies, and a conscience in Regina. My Canada is a cultural mosaic with two official languages, three levels of government, and one queen. My Canada has its faults, has made its mistakes, and has a history of people marginalized and wronged to make up to. But it is a great place. My Canada is not something to carve up, but something to work and live for and even, if I may say something decidedly un-Canadian: to brag about. It’s not to be broken by petty and short-sighted ideological and geographical squabbles. It is a grand impossibility because the best ideas should be just a little to big and a little too impossible for fear of being lost to complacency.

A year ago, a man killed a soldier, striking violence into the heart of our nation and shaking us as a people. In Vancouver a week later I shook the hand of a uniformed veteran who was standing vigilant for a day at a downtown war memorial, tears in his eyes contagious. Standing there at a spot closer to Phoenix than Ottawa, he was unified with his brethren in the East.

Yet there were some who remained unmoved by those events for they were Eastern events, as foreign to them as the war in Syria. In the Alberta floods of 2013 there was an outpouring of support and aid from our Eastern family, and yet among them voices that delighted at seeing a humbling of the loud, wealthy, redneck child in our Confederation family.

This is not—as I’ve said—a political or even an ideological post, but I must add that the recent federal election exposed an ugly side to us that is tied to how we define what a Canadian is. Forgetting that our nation is a mosaic grown strong because of its diversity, there are those who would tell us that a Canadian is not a Muslim, not a Punjabi or Arabic or Chinese speaker, not a woman in a niqab, not a refugee looking for sanctuary. True, but neither is a Canadian a Christian, a French or English speaker, a white man in a cowboy hat, or a fourth generation fisherman. It’s not that simple, you see, but then it also can be, for a Canadian is a person who lives in Canada, who adds their tile to the fuller picture.

A Canadian is a person who understands where this nation has come from in order to help steer it where it needs to go. A Canadian tries to preserve the whole but understands the strengths has always been in the adaptability of the parts. A Canadian is not one who would try to subvert this, try to divide a nation and its people. A Canadian is neither selective nor exclusive.

My Canada is like a marriage or a tree or a child. It grows, it changes, it adapts. It must be nurtured and can never remain as it was for a period forever. To stay unchanging means it must die. To stop a marriage, a tree, a child at a point is to kill it.

So it goes with a nation. My Canada is a flawed thing but also a glorious thing worth steering past the divisions that threaten it. It, and all of us within, will be better for getting past the chasms to the other side.