Take That, Doom-and-Gloom!

I have spent most of my adult life trying to answer a deceptively simple question: Why does the world look the way it does?
I don't mean the biosphere in general. I mean the human world, the built environment, the structures and cultures and systems that collectively encompass the whole of human experience. It has been clear to me for a very long time that our way of life has a rather limited future, akin to the kind of self-restricting situation that a group of shipwrecked sailors, adrift on a raft, would find themselves in as they tore up the raft to provide fuel for their fire.
Our career here on Earth seems to be tumbling head-long toward the same sort of finality, for a thousand different reasons motivated by a million innocent decisions that were taken in good faith and in isolation. There is little evidence that our predicament was promulgated by conspiracy, although absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. We face the inevitable results of exuberant growth within a finite environment with limited resources, limited carrying capacity, and limited ability to absorb our waste products.
This does not make us bad people, or a failed species, or an evolutionary dead end. It does mean that we are no different than innumerable other species that came before us, acted as we have, and eventually so polluted their environment that it was no longer able to support life of their type and specific requirements. This left the field open for other species adapted to live on the wastes left over, which flourished in their turn, and so on.
This process is called succession, and is one of the inviolable laws that governs biological activity on this planet.
We are having a real problem accepting these facts. We believe we are different, we believe we are immune from the laws that all other species are subject to, and we thus resist an active recognition of the ways in which the biosphere is warning us that time is short, and in fact it is likely that it is already too late for us to do anything about our behaviours and lifestyles.
I have come to the conclusion that all our problems begin with population size. There are simply too many of us, living resource-intensive lives, for the earth to effectively compensate for. This is a fact. Arguments to the contrary inevitably either ignore certain salient portions of the population equation, or include rather juvenile factors such as the ability of the market to develop alternatives that will alleviate the difficulty-du-jour that are at best wishful thinking.
Absent our enourmous population, we might have a chance to really come to grips with our growth-based perspective on our relationship to this planet. We might have the opportunity to develop a different ethic, based on balance and ecological humility, that would allow us to live harmoniously and respectfully within the limits set by the natural systems that we depend on.
Unfortunately, this will not be the case. We have had our chances, and spurned them on religious, emotional, economic, political, or moral grounds, and so the stage is set for the endgame imposed by any ecosystem whose existence is threatened by the species supported by it: Negative feedback loops activate, and a process called 'die-off' begins...
I felt that population was the key to all other problems. I felt that having a child at this point in history was irresponsible, immoral, and flew in the face of any kind of respect for the environment. I felt it so strongly that I had a vasectomy a few years ago, prepared to put my money where my ethics were.
I have since had that procedure reversed at great expense, and my wife and I are busy with the task of conceiving a child.
What has happened here? Am I a hypocrite? Have I lost my sense of ethics, values, and principle? Is the massive amount of information I have collected concerning the technical where-fores and whence-come-we's of how we got here been somehow rendered irrelevant?
No.
It has been made known to me that life, any kind of life, is the most precious thing in the universe. That the earth is a variable, changeable place that operates on a timeframe previously unguessed and never witnessed by anyone now living. That we are just another in a very long line of species that did as we are doing, albeit not on the scale or to the extent that we are doing it.
That there must be someone to carry on the great adventure that is humanity.
I am by nature a cautious optimist, but I am not stupid. The times to come will be fraught with extreme difficulty and unimaginable hazards. If anyone is to survive, they must be taught to do so. More than this, however, they must also be taught the difference between mere survival and worthwhile living. That there will be a time for a certain toughness in their decision-making, followed by a time for whole-hearted compassion and unquestioning love. That honour, integrity, truth, and faith are still worthy of devotion...
My wife and I have decided to have a child, not because we believe in that old cop-out that 'our kid might be the one to save the world', and not because we are hoping for the best. We aren't brainless animals that can't control our biological imperatives to breed, and we are certainly not particularly stupid. We are having a child because any future chance our species has at a kind of long-term survival will depend on changing the way we relate to the earth, first and foremost, and we will begin that process by educating our child with the things we have discovered in our researches, the things that will make a difference, the components of a new paradigm that will enable a sense of balance between humanity and the earth.
The paradigm of growth-at-any-cost-cause-the-bible-says-it's-okay that has driven our species for the last thousand years must be undone and unlearned if we are to continue. We need to enlist the help of the next generation to do this, since we cannot complete the task by ourselves. There is simply too much to do and insufficient time in which to do it.
What haunts me is how to explain why their lives will have the character I fear they will. Hardship, privation, danger, shortened lives, and a seemingly endless time of misery will be their lot, and the answer to the question 'Why?' will be very, very difficult to produce.
That said, in the face of so much potential for despair, and so many factors contributing to a certain bleakness in one's outlook, what greater expression of optimism can there be?

Just This Once, Let's Not Reminisce

At long, long last, 2009 is officially over with. Dead. Finito. Kaput. And what a relief it is to say this.

What a year. We knew that it would be a year of great, sweeping change, but we had no idea what that simple statement would translate into practically. It's a good thing that knowledge was reserved for the rear-view mirror, too, else I am not sure we would have been so stunningly successful in negotiating the slings and arrows of these, our outrageous fortunes.

New Year's is usually a time for reminiscence and a taking of the stock of the year just past, but I have decided, and my wife has thoughtfully agreed, that we will give this activity a miss this year. We know what fucking happened, and we know what didn't, and we do not need to revisit those events in the interests of clarity or indulgent review. Actually, the less said the better, as it caused us both a great deal of pain and anguish and irritation and frustration and... but I am reminiscing, aren't I? Ooops.

Better to look forward to the year just begun. We have so much to do. And, best of all, we will get the chance to do it all, despite how things looked just five months ago.

That's the great thing about nightmares. No matter how terrifying, how desperate and evil and scary, eventually you will wake from them, and feel the relief at your safety, and realise that even though you are covered in sweat and your joints ache from tension, all is well, and will continue to be so.

We are just getting to the dream that the nightmare was prelude for. And we are ready to go forward and live that dream.

I hope your 2010 turns out to be as fantastic as ours is going to prove.

Is It Over Yet?

Wow, what a year it has been.

We knew that 2009 was going to be a year of great changes, personally and generally, but I had no idea what that would become. Tentatively, I have begun to look back over the past twelve months, being gentle and painstaking in my traverse. There is a lot of hurt here, as well as joy and triumph, and I am still a little fragile even now. I can't deal with a lot of in-depth soul-searching, and I don't want to relive the madness I endured over the summer, but I can at least acknowledge the process and rebuild that sense of wonder I felt at the way things work out. I need to remember that things always work out.

I mentioned the other day to my wife that I had noticed how things seemed to be consistently going our way; nothing major or huge, just a series of little things that have resolved in our favour, a progression that has made me begin to wonder when I should start expecting the other shoe. She replied that this is not something to be amazed at; now that we aren't fighting it, and allowing the flow to work, this is how things should have been all along. I felt a little ashamed. I felt cheated of the years, all the time spent resisting the good stuff. I felt that I had let my wife down.

She would say, though, that everything happens in its' time. She would say that there is no blame. She would say that the moment is all that matters. And she would be correct.

I have learned so much this year, and I am a happier, stronger, more contented person because of it. I am pleased at the way things have turned out, but still I feel a small sense of disappointment, as if something is holding me back. Something is blocked. It is a subtle one, this feeling, and I had not really noticed it until I wrote it down just now. Stephen King says that people don't really know what they think until they write it down, and I have been surprised by this phenomenon ever since I read that. Still, I will give this some thought over the weekend and discuss it with my wife at some point.

I don't want the ride to end. Things are going great just now, and I think my fear is that this is only temporary bliss before the next round of horror. I am resolved, however, to ensure that clarity, peace, and balance remain my watchwords, now and forever more.

Despite the clouds on the global horizon, which we are well aware of, there remains joy to be found in the simplest of things. And we notice these.

We will continue, and improve, and be blessed in all things.

Where we live now

The snow is beginning to accumulate as I write this from the safety of our warm house. We live on a landform called an alvar, which is a not-terribly-well-understood formation characterised by primarily flat topography, very thin overburden, and a high water table.
This area is officially known as the Carden Plain, and is a provincially recognised Important Bird Area. It is host to the last 300 or so breeding pairs of Northern Shrike, as well as being beset by multitudes of other winged warriors year-round. My wife and I have even, on three occasions, positively ID'd a three-toed woodpecker in our wood room, which is extremely rare and an occasion for kudos. We will get a picture someday, and then the sighting will be official.
Our road is a dead end, and traffic on it is restricted to locals, the odd snowplow, the postal carrier, and, in the spring and summer, hordes of city people come to ignore property lines in their desire to see the birds. Dressed in identical Tilley hats, imitation Banana Republic cargo vests, and sporting very large and obviously expensive optical equipment, they rather rudely block the narrow back roads and yell imprecations when a local attempts to negotiate the resulting obstacle course.
For now, though, the snow is falling rather thickly, the fire is settled, and the cats are lazy. We have nowhere we need to be today, though if we did have a destination we could get there thanks to our trusty Subaru. Even if the power were to fail, we would not really notice, since we have a stove for heat, lots of wood to burn, and several options for cooking purposes.
We love living here. It is not, despite appearances, the middle of nowhere; there is lots of somewhere all around us. Ours is thus a little oasis of nowhere in the midst of the chaos that surrounds this area, and even though it seems isolated and lonely, this is manifestly not the case.
My wife is particularly firm on this point. Her family was appalled when they saw what we had moved to, soon after we took up residence here. They thought I had purposefully isolated her from them. They thought that I was so neurotic, so hateful, that I had engineered a means by which my wife would be completely under my control at all times. They thought I had even refused to allow her a driver's licence for the same reasons.
What they did not know, and have since been appraised of, is that all this was her idea too. We moved here in mutual agreement, citing the privacy, the awesome silence, the space, the calm, as being of primacy. She had no licence because she had not wanted one. Her choice.
And we continue to love it, even though getting anywhere requires a car. That's the way it is out in the country. There are some other things that go with this beautiful territory....
The only gunfire you hear out in these parts is the sound of somebody filling their larder, not settling a score or completing an initiation or proving a point or scoring some smokes.
There is no street racing, other than the odd encounter with a road-filling combine.
The police have an average response time of forty minutes upon getting a 911 call. This is not because they are lazy or indifferent; this is because they have a huge territory to somehow cover. And so on.
This life we have is wonder-filled, and we find that our education really allows us to appreciate the land around us, the antics of the wildlife, the reasons why things look the way they do. It is nice to not have to lock our doors at night, either on the house or the car. Crossing the road does not involve taking one's life in one's hands. We don't even have salespeople, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, or survey-takers show up out here. And that's the way we like it.
Anyone who has an objection to that should really stay in the city, where it is apparently much safer. If you must come up here, try working on your manners first. We don't take kindly to rudeness, and we certainly won't welcome you back.

2012 and the Suspension of Reason

"...That which we do not understand only appears irrelevant..."

My wife and I went to see Mr Emmerich's latest offering on opening night.
Given his movie credits thus far, we were unsurprised to discover that he had taken on the idea of 2012 and the myths surrounding it. We have a copy of the book we suspect this film to be inspired by, and it is a fabulous read.
That said, the film left us a little disappointed, from the science end of things. For example, if the sun were to be emitting CME's of the size described in the early part of the film, we would be seeing auroras of a biblical scale. This little detail was not shown, although I could certainly see that some things had to be left on the cutting-room floor. The visuals are breathtaking, however, and the oblique reference to the uranium deposit under the Yellowstone Caldera, in the form of the nature of the explosion once the park begins to unzip, was a direct reference to the above-mentioned book (Apocalypse 2012 by Lawrence Joseph). We also noted the extremely fast reference to Ontario as being a source of confirmation for the neutrino activity being observed in India; this is, of course, a nod to the neutrino counter in Sudbury.
Little details that make a film worth seeing, and make me happy to notice them. A great film, and definitely worth the seven bucks to see in theatre...
The rather rare effort by NASA to debunk the 2012 mythos and calm any panic that was released on Wednesday last week disappointed me somewhat. NASA essentially went through some questions, dealing with our passage through the plane of the ecliptic and the possible existence of Nibiru, and in each case defended it's assertion that nothing will happen three years from now by asking 'Where's the science? Where is the evidence? Where is the proof?'
Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence, and only a complete fool would presume otherwise. NASA said that no credible scientist in any way supported the idea that something of a deleterious nature will occur around the magical end-date of the current Mayan calendar. My wife and I have assertions from credible scientists saying exactly the opposite, but recall the revised version of Newton's Third Law: For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert.
What I find arrogant about this is that NASA is displaying the hallmarks of institutionalised science world-wide: we will conveniently ignore and ridicule anything that does not conveniently fit with current models. There is tenure at stake, people. Careers and reputations to defend. Government and private sector funding to secure. Money to be made using the old paradigm.
I am to understand that, in the august opinion of NASA, remarks and writings made thousands of years ago by peoples belonging to civilisations that a) lasted a lot longer than ours and b) achieved things that we cannot equal with all our technology and expertise, are to be simply regarded as irrelevant and without merit or value because we cannot comfortably understand them? Information that has been, against all odds, placed into our hands at the end of a three-thousand-year cultural relay race is to be discounted out-of-hand because to acknowledge it would threaten the very underpinnings of our society? The ancients knew nothing? They were simply playing games? Ignorant savages that just happened to know a thing or two about architecture that lasts?
Every ancient culture we have a name for tells essentially the same story: at around this time, the planet undergoes another iteration of a cyclical process, a renewal of sorts, that marks the end of one age and the beginning of another. Even a casual study of evolution shows this same process: long periods of evolutionary fun and games during which fish turn to amphibia turn to mammals, and then a comparatively brief but intense period of global change that wipes the slate clean for the next stage of development. Real estate developers do this all the time, razing existing buildings to powder to make way for spanky new buildings that promise even more.
In our estimation, 2012 and the years surrounding it do not mean the end of the world. This planet is busy with its own agenda, and change is as much a part of that as the water cycle. It does, however mean the end of our world, since things are at the point now where even small changes have enourmous effects on our incredibly complex and thus fragile human society. The human world cannot hope to withstand even a percentage of what was depicted in the film, and the Maya foretold far worse, as did the Hopi, the Maori, the Aztecs, the Egyptians, the ancient Japanese...
Let me underscore something. Complexity in any system is directly proportional to the fragility of that system. Humans have placed themselves at enourmous risk by inducing incalculable complexity into our way of life in spite of the obstacles posed by the earth and its vagaries. By assuming as an article of faith that the world is our dominion and we are here to use it for our exclusive needs and bollocks to everything else, we have also assumed that we understand this planet in its entirety and it holds no surprises. Anything we do not understand is thus irrelevant. NASA's vaunted science is beginning, and only beginning, to suspect that there is much more to this world than we thought. Our ability to see certain things, like earth processes and cycles, was obscured by the fact that such processes generally thumb their noses at puny human lifetimes, instead unfolding over much longer periods of time. The only way we can see them is through the medium of our unique ability to transfer information from generation to generation; we call this 'cultural inheritance' and it is an awesome power.
If institutional science is left in charge, we appear to be guilty of squandering that inheritance.
The Socratic Paradox is a double-edged sword. It's conclusions can paralyse or liberate, depending on the humility of the observer. Unfortunately, the epitaph of our species will likely not include the word 'humble', as we are anything but.
We are paralysed, and the time for study has run out.
I realise that this little blog will change nothing, and that the human world will run its course unhindered by reason or common sense or even a little humility. I just wanted to throw this out there into the void, so that at least I can say I said it.

The Second Day Of Our New Life...

Things just keep getting clearer.
I had the most amazing visit with my wife yesterday. I went to the college where she works when I was finished for the day, and we had about ninety minutes together. She told me many things, including a detailed description of how she feels to be back at the college and how great it is for her, and how she is discovering what an amazing person she truly is. I felt it inappropriate to remind her that I have been unswervingly devoted to her for eleven years, and for much of that time I have told her the same things (in fact, I found a letter I wrote to her five years ago that was an attempt to answer her question 'What do you see in me?' I went on for five pages about why I loved her so much, her finer qualities, the things that drew me to her so powerfully.... The funny thing is, I could have writ this letter yesterday. Nothing has changed; I still feel the same way today as I did then).
I am not offended; I realise that for me to tell her how wonderful she is is one thing ( I am apparently biased =)), but for her to actually internalise it is something else entirely. I am just glad that she can finally, after all this time, really see who she is and how much she has going for her. I am also so very, very proud of her for her achievements, accomplishments, and the way she has at last chosen her time to be happy.
The best part for me, perhaps selfishly, is that through all this she still wants to be my wife; I get to be part of this process, as our Paths once again become one. That's very humbling, as it was the first time she chose me, but it is also enervating and makes me incredibly, quietly, happy. I am really looking forward to further adventures with her, and I can't wait to see what we do next. Full speed ahead, and to hell with the fear.....

One thing really got my attention. I reminded her that there were measures we took long ago that were absolutely necessary at the time, but that eventually contibuted to the events of this summer. One example is that we purposefully removed ourselves from the influence of people that had the power and inclination to meddle in our lives, both as individuals and as a married couple. This led to us isolating ourselves from just about everyone we cared about, because we got to a point where they, too, became threats to us...
She replied that this is one reason why there is no blame in this case, for either of us. We did what we had to do; we just didn't know where those actions would take us.
That gave me a lot to think about. I had for some time been having trouble reconciling decisions and policies that were right at the time of implementation, but that had been proven to have directly contributed to our troubles of the past year. This had me wondering how much of an asshole I had been, and how badly I had fucked this up, and to what degree I was responsible for just how unhappy my wife had become, the one person I would never, ever, willingly or knowingly hurt.
She was able to explain this part of the process in such a way that it became very clear to me, and I am still shaking my head at the way things turn out sometimes.
Strange how decisions made years ago in innocence introduce things that quietly, eventually, build into the very things needed years later to resolve other issues that are seemingly unrelated.
This is really weird.

Once again, I am awed by my wife's insight, and her ability to reduce very complex issues down to simple concepts, apparently effortlessly. I am indeed fortunate.

Of one thing I am sure: with all the effort that went into creating the conditions necessary to give us a second chance at the life we deserve together, something wants us to stay united.
I guess, as they say, we were meant to be, although that is not precisely true. We do not have the right to be anything, but we have been given the chance to do it right.
Either way, that's okay, because we have a lot to do.

I love my wife beyond my ability to articulate it, and I am grateful for this chance with her. That conversation she & I began so many lifetimes ago can now continue: We get to love again.
I think the Goddess is well pleased.

So What If The House Is Messy???

I am about to embark on the next great adventure of my life.
You see, my wife is coming home.
We are both still going through our respective processes, but we can see where those are leading, and they are leading us back home, together.
We get the chance to start again, taking into account all that has happened, all that has changed, and all that has remained constant. This is a remarkable opportunity, to start over, knowing all that we know now, and getting to do things differently.
She and I have been talking a lot recently, and we have realised that the chance we have taken has worked. Her intuition is at the heart of this; without that, we would still be where we were, and that was not a good place to be for long. Despite the fact that we spent a very long time in that place, we have somehow been able to find a way out of it, and move toward something better. Something healthy.
Dark had been my dreams of late, wondering how this was going to go, where this was going to go, how I would survive it. Knowing now how she feels and what she has discovered over the past weeks, I feel like the nightmare has finally ended. I no longer carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, feeling like it is my responsibility to give a fuck when everyone else is having a good time and being reasonably carefree. My own insights into my part in how we got to where we did have shown me the error of my priorities, the foolishness of my focii, the poor judgement I used to arrive at my conclusions. And I can now move forward, leaving that self behind, acknowledging the sacrifices I made for the things I thought were important, but understanding that there are many other things that are actually important that now must be satisfied...

She asked me once, 'When do I get to be happy?' I did not have an answer for her, nor do I now; that is not my place. At the time, I felt like an enourmous bag of shit that she had got to the point of asking such a question. Her sorrow and unhappiness were pervading everything she did, and it went unchecked, unaddressed, for too long.
Since we reestablished contact last week, I have never seen her happier. Well, that is not true; once, long ago, back in the morning of our relationship, she was this happy. Then, something happened. The curtain fell, our lifestyle and its principles asserted its grip on us, and we passed into darkness for ten years.

She feels clean, healthy, renewed, reawakened, and reconnected to herself and the people around her. Her energy is purer, somehow, unfettered and no longer tainted by doubt or duty. I am falling in love with her all over again, and I am really looking forward to experiencing the process of discovering her anew.
She is everything to me, and I feel that now we are in a position where we can realise the potential of our pairing. There is so much to do, and we have so many plans....
And, she loves her wedding band, which fits perfectly.

I am not sure when she will be home. She was home yesterday, to see the cats and be with me; I had to send one of the cats on his way yesterday morning. LeStat was very ill, and wasn't going to come out of it on his own, and I tried everything to make him comfortable. But it was, it turned out, his time.
We miss him.
My wife is still working through some things, as am I, but she tells me she is nearly ready to come home and move forward with me into our future, a future I dared not hope to see. I am hopeful that she will take the time she needs, as much as she needs, but I do not think she will rush herself. There is no point, and as I have mentioned, she is in her own way brilliant. She knows what she is doing, and that is good enough for me.
I trust.
I believe.
I commit.
I wait, because the process must be satisfied. We have not come this far to do anything foolish.

I seem to be surrounded by love and light, and in part I have my wife to thank for that. What is between us has emerged stronger and better than it was, and we can certainly build something worthwhile on it.
For now, though, I am content to work on the house and know that we did the right thing.
I could not be happier.