Nothing New

450 million year old fossils - the remains of a mass mortality event,
Royal Ontario Museum, Dawn of Life Gallery, 24 August, 2022

I've not seen a single episode of Game of Thrones, not the old run, not the new.

I have seen the Lord of the Rings movies, and read the books, but I haven't carved out a single second of my finite and fleeting lifetime to watch Rings of Power. 

Why not? Because even if I haven't watched a recent mega-hit, I'm willing to bet I've seen it before.

The logic driving media megaliths these days appears to be that you don't need original content to make boat loads of cash. In fact, the opposite is true. If something was a hit before, you can make the same thing a different way (see live-action remakes), or just make it again (see Spiderman), and boom, the money rolls in. Media-consuming millions love a good story, which is to say, a story they recognize and are comfortably delighted with. If they like a show, they want more of same.

Which leads me, as do so many other things, to the conclusion that the West is in its decadence. We're rummaging in the past for our stories. There is nothing new under the sun.

Except, perhaps, for what you might find in the comments section.

In my desperate attempts to drown out the neighbourhood and get a decent night's sleep, I discovered on YouTube sound-engineer-made videos of "colour noises" as described here:

"White noise is comprised of an equal amount of every frequency, all played at once. Any other colour is a variation on white noise, based on a rough analogy between the frequency spectrum and the colour spectrum. For example, "black noise" is silence.

Deep Red Noise is my go-to for nights untroubled by sirens and shrieking neighbours. The videos come in different run times, 12 hour, 10 hour, 6 hour and so on.

Here are some comments from the 10 hour video. They are real, but I have edited for length and spelling and have played with the order: 

Reminds me of the flight back home from deployment. 

Almost sounds alive. 

This is what beaches sound like without the moon. 

It feels like you’re on a spaceship and you can hear Saturn.

Okay but I’m starting to think that noises don’t have colours.

This is literally the same as your super deep brown noise.

Why are we listening to colours? We’ve all gone insane haven’t we? 

I’m a third grader. Why am I here? 

Is it meant to make my face hot?

Why can I hear people talking in the background?  

THE TINGLING IS DRIVING ME CRAZY! 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

 

 

Prince Edward County

Pirr, sculpture in glass and steel by Julia Reimer, 2022. Oeno Gallery.
Pirr is a Scottish (Shetland) word for a light breath of wind.

This year for Kim's birthday, I took the train to Belleville, and we spent the day in Prince Edward County, or PEC as it has come to be known by the people who don't live there.

PEC's the place for nice scenery, bucolic surrounds, a winery every kilometre (one source says there are more than 40), or a cidery (around five), or a brewery (maybe ten), or a distillery (one).

And galleries. The local tourism site effortlessly lists twenty-five.

And restaurants. There are at least thirty to try before you die.

You get the picture. To do PEC, you get in a car, drive all day, and stop every five to fifteen minutes or so to eat or drink or look or shop. A designated driver is highly recommended. 

For Kim's birthday, we tried one restaurant, three galleries, a cidery and the distillery, Kinsip, where you come for the weak-flavoured spirits but stay for the funny-looking rooster. 

That's a Padovana chicken, which may be a relation of the Polish chicken, and whose images started appearing in local artwork around the 15th century in the Padova region in Italy.

Obviously, we barely scratched the surface of everything there is to do in PEC on a birthday. 

Which is why, in about a month or so, we will be back, in numbers, to celebrate three birthdays over three days. 

I'll let you know how the old folks do.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Found nestled under some bushes
away from the sun: a Plymouth
Rock chicken. 

Weeding

Recently sighted: Four very retired people: Me, Ed, Kay, Kim

When I was a kid, the greenery that grew through cracks in the sidewalk was just part of the world. Not good not bad, maybe even beautiful in its sturdy, determined proliferation.

Later on, I was told that these plants are weeds.They are unsightly and bring with them connotations of neglect and poverty - a slander, really, of hardy pioneer species that are just trying to make the place more habitable for coming generations.

With the slanderous version planted in my head, it was hard not to see the weeds proliferating on the sidewalk outside our door on Sherbourne Street as an eyesore. Hardy pioneer species notwithstanding, there are no plans for the neighbourhood to succeed to Carolinian forest (at least not for the foreseeable future), so, for a few hours this past week, Bruce and I tugged and dug and tore at the weeds growing on the sidewalk in front of our condo complex.

As I yanked prostrate knotweed, plantain and wild portulaca out by the roots, these thoughts occurred to me:

You spend the first twenty years of your life learning how to fit into the economy, the next forty-five gyrating within the economy trying to be all the things you were told to be and do all the things and buy all the things and then, when you leave the economy, you get to shed all that - all that working at a job you don't love, associating with people you don't like and doing things that bore or appall or irritate you. Your reward when you retire is living life unencumbered by the discipline of capitalism and the expectations of others. 

For some people this is a fine turn of events. They reclaim the creativity that would never have earned them a living. They return to old hobbies or learn new skills and reap all the delights of purposive play.

For some other people, they turn the other way. They say mean and hurtful things - what they may have always thought but never felt they could say. They reap all the delights of crotchety nastiness.

It would appear that I'm building toward a metaphor about weeds here, but I'm not.

My point is that even when you have perfect freedom to do what you want, you may still find yourself resting on the expectations of others - and crouching on the sidewalk yanking at weeds - and see it's not always such a bad thing after all. 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

The Two Sides of the Debate

One of the handful of Canadian poets with their own portrait sculpture: Al Purdy in Queens Park.

After paying an average amount of attention to serial discussions of the pandemic, climate change and myriad other threats to the world as we know it, I think I can summarize all the arguments, as follows: 

Scientist and/or Politician: “I think it’s important that everyone modifies their behaviour so we don’t die.”

Citizen: “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Scientist and/or Politician: “But you are in danger.”

Citizen: “I can keep myself out of danger.”

Scientist and/or Politician: “But your actions hurt other people.”

Citizen: “My actions hurt no one.” 

Scientist and/or Politician: “But we have to work together.” 

Citizen: “I already told you not to tell me what to do. Besides, I question your version of what’s dangerous. I think you’re the one that’s dangerous.”

Scientist and/or Politician: “You’re an idiot. You’re the one who's dangerous.”

And so on. 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen