The Tower of Babble

Wrestling with the Rottweiler: On Reading Mr. Dawkins

2012-02-26T22:52:00.012-08:00

So I finally read the controversial bestseller The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, two years after I read--and almost unquestioningly accepted--one of its formal rebuttals, Karen Armstrong’s The Case For God. Critics of Armstrong who also happen to be fans of Dawkins may be disappointed that my respect and admiration for Armstrong has not diminished, after reading Dawkins’s work. This is in part because I don’t believe that they’re direct, natural opponents. But I will disagree with Armstrong in her portrayal of Dawkins as overly aggressive or militant. What I have found in Dawkins is a mind as scrupulous as he is unflinching in his search for truth. The God Delusion is full of wit, robust logic, and great passion. There were moments where his contempt for religion nearly overrode the content of his arguments, but the content itself was virtually airtight, especially where it concerned religion’s track record. But again, his love for the natural world is greater than his hatred for the supernatural. I especially felt his love for the reality of the universe that science has unveiled, in the very last segment of the book, titled “The Mother of All Burkas”. But I’ll say no more about whether he takes it too far or not. You should go and read it and decide for yourself.

Theist? Atheist? Agnostic?

I decided to read this book because I felt it would be irresponsible of me not to. I read Armstrong’s response to New Atheism, so it’s only fair to examine New Atheism itself, right? Prompted by The Case for God I’ve spent the past two years reading books on religion, written by believers and nonbelievers alike. I’ve been reading book after book in an attempt to clarify not just what stance is best to take on religion, but exactly what it is I believe to be the truth about existence. I read this book most recently because I have been trying to sort out a very complicated relationship I have with religion and the idea of God.

To say I had lost my faith in God would be inaccurate, because I’m not quite sure I had any to begin with. My history with faith could be characterized by a series of attempts to get it, as though it were something I was lacking. This seems like a good enough indicator to stop trying,yet I’ve been compelled by and attracted to many aspects of religion all the same. Every time I thought I was done with it, something pulled me back. I felt very confused, and didn’t know where to stand. Whether it was faith (whatever that could possibly mean) or merely a sentimental loyalty, this feeling clearly demanded my attention. I felt condemned to agnosticism, and I didn’t particularly like being there, hoping that if I dug just a little deeper, I could discover what notion is enthroned in my psyche. So I wanted to see if ‘Darwin’s Rottweiler’ Richard Dawkins could tip me--poor, indecisive wretch--in the direction of atheism. I wanted to see if he could change my mind. I hoped to test my own views on religion and see if they stood up to the author’s rhetoric. Any God that could be argued away by just a book, I reasoned, was obviously a god I didn’t truly believe in, and not something worth believing in in the first place. Not just considering his arguments, but observing my reaction to his arguments would reveal myself to myself. So reading a book like The God Delusion was a method of honing, sharpening, and clarifying.

Biting Back

I was surprised by it, in a few ways. First, I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I’m not a huge fan of polemic, but I must admit it was great fun to read, thanks to the wit and clarity of Dawkins’ prose. The kind of atheism Dawkins espouses is a much more politicized one. He encourages atheists to stand up to the discrimination they face. Atheists and skeptics are not given the same respect afforded to believers in many parts of the world, the uber-religious United States being one of them. Yes, he does outright attack religion in many places (mainly the parts where it sucks), but he wasn’t nearly as aggressive as I thought he would be. He seemed less pugnacious as Sam Harris in The Moral Landscape (and even less so than Hitchens in God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything). But if his words do seem barbed, you can hardly blame him, seeing as his own profession and everything he’s worked for is itself under threat from religious lobbyists trying to force schools to teach creationism and Intelligent Design alongside evolution. And let’s not forget when he was writing this book, the Bush administration had been halting funding in the U.S. for stem-cell research, a potentially life-saving pursuit. He feels his world--which is also everybody’s, by the way--is under attack. They bite, and he bites back (with pen, sans sword). So, fair enough.

Zeitgeist

But above all, I was also surprised at how much I agreed with him. A lot of his arguments I had at least heard the gist of before (such as were phrased by Comte-Sponville in The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, and John Shelby Spong in The Sins of Scripture), while other conclusions he made were ones I had arrived at on my own, only to find them articulated better here. For example, I was always troubled by the way people tend to be selective of which parts of the Bible they obey, depending on their own cultural standards. This suggested that people don’t actually derive their morals from the Bible, but rather from standards outside and independent of it. Dawkins covers this in the chapter titled ‘The “Good Book” and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist’:

Remember, all I am trying to establish for the moment is that we do not, as a matter of fact, derive our morals from scripture. Or, if we do, we pick and choose among the scriptures for the nice bits and reject the nasty. But then we must have some independent criterion for deciding which are the moral bits: a criterion which, wherever it comes from, cannot come from scripture itself and is presumable available to all of us whether we are religious or not.

Of course, many religious people today don’t take the Bible literally, and don’t feel as though they have to, in light of the Bible scholarship that has emerged in the past two hundred years. But a non-literal view makes it much trickier to hold on to religion as we know it. Some can manage it, others can’t. I have been trying to find out which camp I belong to, and if God has any meaning left to me. If anything of my spiritual ties to Christianity remains, it has a closer resemblance to Spong’s non-theistic version. And for that reason, I actually found it easy to side with Dawkins on many points.

Religion = Child Abuse

Another point Dawkins raises that’s bothered me so often in the past is the contingency of religious belief. The biggest reason why I might prefer to be a Christian rather than a Muslim or a Rastafarian is because I was raised, more or less, as a Christian, and have lived in a predominantly Christian culture. How unfortunate for those living outside of Christendom! Are they to be damned forever because they weren’t lucky enough to be raised with a bias toward Lord Jesus Christ? More often than not faith is not a choice, so how could a loving God force an impossible choice on us? The habits we’re taught in childhood are incredibly powerful. And what Dawkins wants us to consider is calling a child a “Muslim girl” or a “Christian boy” is as ridiculous as calling one a “Marxist child”. He does not ask people to raise their children as atheists per se, but to raise them to think for themselves and decide what they believe after they’ve learned enough about the world and are mature enough to make that decision on their own. Makes sense to me. At first, I was a little shocked that he went so far as to call indoctrination a form of child abuse, but the more I consider it, the more I realize he’s definitely on to something.

“Gateway Drug” Religion

Religious moderates and religious liberals may resent the way Dawkins lumps them in the same camp as fundamentalists, but he does make a compelling case for doing so, however much it rankles people. One thing he mentions which I hadn’t considered before, and which I find very difficult to shake off, is that even though a religious practice and the doctrine behind it may be perfectly innocuous in most cases, it may lead to more sinister strains, as so many are based on something not based on conclusive evidence, and driven by faith, which doesn’t require evidence. The fact that so many of the 14th Dalai Lama’s followers regard him as a reincarnation of the semi-divine spirit Avalokitesvara makes them vulnerable to all sorts of abuses of power. Thankfully Tenzin Gyatso is an open-minded and compassionate person, and has given up his role as head of the Tibetan government-in-exile, and remains only a head of state and their spiritual leader. This is great, but this lineage is still a gamble, like all monarchies that claim power by divine right. Again, he has done much to bolster the hopes and morale of his people and promote peace throughout the world; I think this can’t be overstated. But while the Tibetans of Dharamsala are more democratically organized now, keep in mind that it took thirteen (Buddhist) predecessors to get to this point. And those ones didn’t seem to mind having all that power.

Credo: A Rough Sketch

If nothing else, I realised from reading this book that I have much more in common with atheists than I do theists: I believe in evolution. I believe the universe came into being 13.7 billion years ago. I believe that human beings are just another form of complex life, one more species among the billions on this planet, and we have an intelligence to which other animals are not entirely restricted, therefore we are not as special in the animal kingdom as we thought. I believe we are capable of uplifting acts of goodness, as well as chilling acts of evil, and neither are necessarily proof of a good or evil will pervading the entire, non-living universe. We are extraordinary, but we are not the be-all and end-all of evolution, because it’s an ongoing story and something better than us will emerge, (if we don’t destroy the planet, that is). I believe in all of these things which we have learned through the scientific method. And if new evidence came along to discredit it all, I would simply have to change my beliefs to suit the facts.

There are theists who believe all these things as well, but where I differ with them is that whatever transcendent experience we can acquire in this lifetime--satori, Grace, Brahman, creative flow--it is not likely to be the result of a Super-intelligence coming in from outside of our universe and deliberately injecting us with Himself. Whatever divinity is, it probably comes from within us, not from Elsewhere. Also, I don’t believe in the literal Virgin Birth, Resurrection, or any other such miracles, any more than I believe in the literal virgin birth of the Buddha or the literal resurrection of Osiris.

I can’t express how tempted I am to think in theistic terms, but if I were to be ruthlessly honest I would have to admit that there is no proof that our access to enlightenment is caused by Someone Else. I believe our focus on the hereafter is a threat to the good that comes from the here and now: this is the only good we’ve known, because now is all we have. There’s a reason our visions of heaven resemble Earth but shinier; it’s the only point of reference we have. C.S. Lewis’ assertion that because nothing on earth could satisfy his deepest longing implied there must be something beyond this world that does is unconvincing, though extremely attractive. It feels redundant to state these empirically verified beliefs, because I’ve held them for a long time now. But this book confronts me with them, and reminds me that to accept these things as truth and then adopt a worldview not based on them is irresponsible and lazy.

“To you be your religion; to me, mine.”

What I also appreciated about this book is that Dawkins cuts admirably through all the moral relativism that floats around in secular society. In a culture where it’s more P.C. to say ‘I don’t agree with you’ than to say ‘your argument is wrong’, I’m kind of impressed by his brass. If a Christian believes that only through accepting Jesus can we be saved, then this belief implies the corollary that souls of non-believers are in mortal danger.

He may not admit it in polite conversation, but it’s there. And yet I can’t even count how many conversations I’ve had that have shied away from it, out of politeness, or politics. Of course, a Christian can also believe in another person’s right to disagree. But that same person believes in a God who presides over believers and non-believers alike. It’s the same with an atheist. Even if an atheist says “You can believe what you like, I don’t agree with you,” he is implying that he thinks the other person’s worldview is false. We associate argument with discord and aggression, but it can have positive benefits as well. Being goaded into a kind of intellectual sparring match can helps us to clarify what it is we're defending. In arguing "your views are incorrect and here is why..." he forces readers to be really honest with themselves.

Let’s Talk

Attacking, demonizing and belittling the other side is obviously no solution. As the religion debate is enflamed more and more every day, I think we’ve got to be as compassionate and respectful as possible as we attempt to carry on a dialogue. Of course, it is difficult to hold a conversation when the other side is wholly devoted to your annihilation. But even in more peaceful company there is a danger in simply saying ‘you have your beliefs and I have mine’, agreeing to disagree and then going off and living in one's own hermetically sealed worlds. Living so subjectively makes it nearly impossible to speak meaningfully about anything, and we start to teeter over into nihilism. I think by taking a bolder stance on the matter Dawkins is trying to call our attention to that danger. Just because, as the truism goes, truth is subjective, it doesn't mean we aren't allowed to have our own convictions about the world. We’ve simply got to keep talking, and be open to our minds being changed. People accuse Dawkins of the same narrow thinking he diagnoses in his fundamentalist opponents, but he claims that if there was any sufficient evidence to discount evolution by natural selection or the Big Bang for that matter, he would be obliged to abandon these concepts, because that's what scientists must do. A fundamentalist, on the other hand, would dig their heels in deeper. Skeptics may have the upper-hand in this ongoing dialogue, because they are more ready to say “I was wrong” than their religious counterparts.

Homo Religiosus

Alright, so once finishing, the question remains: has Dawkins changed my mind about God? How about religion?

Dawkins covers almost every possible angle on religion, and you feel compelled to take a side. Let’s face it: religion’s track record is abysmal. And it is not just because it has been hijacked by human greed, hatred, fear and lust for power. People also do terrible things because they believe in them.

Perhaps religion should just die off, but in all honesty I think it won’t, not any time soon. However, I also think there’s still a great deal we can learn from religion, even if many of us can no longer return to its insane orthodoxies. I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll try to go into more detail about where I stand in a later post. For now I'll finish by saying I can’t agree with Dawkins, one hundred per cent, though I'm pretty close. Does this mean I am an atheist? Well, from everything I've just written it may sound like de facto atheism. This may be so, but even now the matter feels unresolved in my mind, and needs a post of its own, so I'll hold off here as well. I am far from finished with God. As far as religion is concerned, there may be ways of rethinking and reinventing it. It may take an imaginative leap not seen since the Axial Age to do it, but I still believe, however naïvely, that it is possible. If our name truly is Homo Religiosus and we are wired for religion as many anthropologists claim, this leap will have to be possible, or we may be seriously screwed as a species.

Belated Bog Post: New Years Resolutions

2012-01-31T21:15:00.000-08:00

New Years may be SO four and a half weeks ago, but the year is still new by my books, so I think it still counts if I put my New Years resolutions up here.

By the way, it's been a very busy and eventful month, so I apologize for the absence.

My resolutions revolve mainly around the idea of Ahimsa. This term literally means 'to do no harm' in Sanskrit. I don't consider myself an aggressive or destructive person, but I have it in me to be a negative force in my life, and it's something worth striving for, even if it only means subtly changing the way I think. I mean to carry this out this year in two specific ways: Refraining from ad hominem attacks and labelling as much as possible, and giving up meat and poultry.

Ad hominem is a term used in logic and rhetoric to describe an "attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it" (Wikipedia). I heard about this term while I was working at Parliament this past summer. In Parliamentary debate, ad hominem attacks are a big no-no. (Also, did you know that if you call someone a liar in Parliament you can be fined $300?!). They had this conduct built into the rules, so important was it to civil society. I think it applies everywhere though, not just Parliament. For the purposes of doing less harm in day-to-day life, this term could be applied to our relationships with people we don't agree with. It's bound to happen, and sometimes we can't help how we feel about some encounters with people. But it's one thing to condemn a person's actions, and another to condemn the person themselves. Let's say you're in retail (like I am), and a customer is being rude to you. When they leave, you want nothing more than to verbally maul them in the company of your colleagues. "What a bitch!" you'll want to say, or "what an asshole!" This is a way of labelling that person, as if 'asshole' is what they intrinsically are, deep down in their heart of hearts, so that is what they will always be. The alternative is to say that they're simply behaving very rudely, or snobby or grouchy. No, it's not nearly as fun saying it like that, but I think it's important to make the attempt. It is a subtle shift in language that can change the way we think about our fellow human being. Or, to magnify the situation, to say "Stephen Harper is a monster" is obviously more satisfying than saying "Stephen Harper is turning Canada into a police state", but people will tend to take you more seriously with the latter phrasing, though they may agree with both statements. Many people hate what he's doing, but he is still a human being. (Besides, I think calling him 'monster' is giving him too much credit.)

Anyway, you get the point. Don't judge, be nice, walk a mile in someone else's shoes, yada-yada. That's the essence of it. But it's more feasible--empathy becomes possible--when you build this policy right into your vocabulary. I don't mean to sound all self-righteous about this. Believe me, I have no right to pontificate. Refraining from ad hominem criticisms it's not a habit I have fully achieved. My shoulder devil just relishes calling someone an idiot, a bastard, a cow, etc. I have no qualms with it when it's meant jokingly, and not behind somebody's back. But when things get serious, it seems like a worthy aspiration, which is why I've made it a resolution.

The second resolution, as I mentioned is about diet. For this year, I have given up meat and poultry. I still eat eggs and dairy, and fish on occasion. I'm going without the rest, mainly for environmental and ethical reasons, but also for the thrill of the personal challenge. It's actually a rather unambitious change I realize, and not even 100% vegetarian, but it is important to me. It's been hard enough saying goodbye to bacon and hamburgers, breakfast sausages and black forest ham etc. etc.; I'm just trying to make the transition away from animals one step at a time. I think doing it for even just a year will be worth it. I'm not exactly sure what I'll do after 2012, but I've got some time to figure that out. I have given this a lot of thought over the past few months, and I've talked it through with my lady Kayla as well. I still have plenty more research to do, but I know I'll be able to handle the change, especially now that I've become more confident with cooking (not just toast with peanut butter anymore! I'm movin' up in the world!), and I've learned more recipes for healthy dishes that don't rely on meat for protein. And the truth is, meat isn't usually my go-to for comfort food; sugar and carbs are more my Achilles' heel. Between Kayla and I we don't even eat that much meat on a daily basis anyway, so I figured I'd take it a step further for myself and make it 'official'.

The major inspiration for this project was a video I watched last April of Jonathan Safran Foer talking about his book Eating Animals. Here's the video, and if you have a half hour to spare and are concerned about the impact our eating habits have on the environment and our relationship with it, I strongly encourage you to watch it.

Anyway, I mention this because it's something I've been really excited about for a while and wanted to share it with everybody, but also for the practical reason that if I end up as a dinner guest at your house one day, you'll know this ahead of time. (You won't be able to say I didn't warn you!)

These are my two main resolutions for 2012. I share them also so that anybody reading this can hold me accountable to them.

That's all for now! See you in February!

Liam

My 2011 Top 5 List of Non-Fiction

2011-12-31T17:58:00.000-08:00

Salutations!

I doubt anybody's actually on here to read this right now. If they have any sense they're out celebrating, but I shall keep my promise all the same, and put down the second half of my 2011 reading list. Enjoy!

My Top 5 Non-Fiction Books I Read in 2011

5. What the Buddha Never Taught by Tim Ward

I saw this book in the Travel Lit. section at Bolen Books in the Spring, and thought about it for months afterwards, till I finally read it. I have often wondered what the world of a monk is like, and Ward offers a small glimpse inside, in What the Buddha Never Taught. This book is an account of his stay at Wat Pah Nanachat in Thailand, a Theravada Buddhist monastery founded by the revered Ajahn Chah, and filled with a cast of flawed but endearing characters. He arrives seeking enlightenment and release from suffering, and finds there is suffering inside Pah Nanachat’s walls as well. Only here, there’s nothing to distract you from it: suffering must be faced head on. It is all too easy to romanticise the monastic life, but Ward shows that there is nothing romantic about it. The life of a bhikku, a Buddhist monk, is very hard. One gets bogged down in day-to-day suffering like anybody else, not to mention the possibility of falling asleep after hours of meditation, a cobra snake coiled behind the toilet door, the intense summer heat in a tin-roofed, and the constant threat of boredom. Ward also encounters what he sees as problems with the way the monastery is run, buttressed by centuries of deeply ingrained tradition. The appeal of the exotic wears off quickly, and what remains is a daily struggle to overcome ego and find peace. But while you can sense a clear tone of skepticism throughout, Ward tells the story of his adventure with humour, honesty, and humanity.

4. Harperland: The Politics of Control by Lawrence Martin

Remember, during Canada’s election campaign this year, the website Shit Harper Did? This book is basically that, written in long form. Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin chronicles the unlikely rise of this brilliant, pragmatic, and provincial-minded politician, from a fringe player, to Opposition Leader, to Canada’s “Dear Leader”. Martin sets out to offer readers a clear overview of the past half-decade, to make sense of the “episodic renderings of the daily press”. And that overview shows something very disturbing. But rather than a broad-sweep of the shit Harper’s done, Martin focuses mainly on the exercise of power; how under Harper’s rule more and more control has been sapped from the cabinet and rerouted to the Prime Minister’s Office. Because Harper’s team has been so secretive in operations, a great deal of the material in this book is provided by interviews with several former members of the PMO staff. What they reveal is a regime that has taken the government to new heights of authoritarian control, and new lows of mud-slinging politics. Think about that for a moment. These individuals being interviewed worked more closely with Prime Minister Harper than anybody else. They were Conservatives, and even they were troubled by the way Harper ran things.

I didn’t enjoy this book, at least not in the same sense as I did the others on this list. It was definitely well-written, and I can assure you I could not put it down. But it made me angry as I read about Harper’s “march of audacities”, one after the other. (I suppose it was a masochistic kind of enjoyment.) Now, I’m no fan of Harper, and from the looks of it neither is Martin. I admit that bias. But whatever your political leanings are, you have to admit that Harper has not done much to ennoble Canadian democracy. I don’t think it is fair to demonize Harper, nor is it constructive to just seethe in hatred for the government's actions, but the damning grist for Martin's mill is plain to see in the news from the past five years. All Martin did was piece it together so we can see the pattern, and act accordingly. Martin wrote this book in 2010, before the election. After the election, and a half year of majority government that has seen one demonstration of arrogance after another (e.g. the Gov’t response to Attawapiskat, Bill C-10, pulling out of Kyoto), it’s clear that “Harperland” is becoming a more and more real place every day. this book is worth reading just so we can become more aware of this pattern, and decide for ourselves what we should do about it in the next few years.

3. The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris

I first came across this argument put forward by Harris over a year and a half ago on TED Talks. Since then, I became increasingly intrigued by it. At the very beginning of the New Year I bought The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, his book which explains in greater detail the ideas he put forth at TED. Arguing from a neurological point of view, Harris states that science will eventually be able to not only comment on how humans behave, but how humans should behave, a role most often played by religion. The morality of an action can be measured not by the arbitrary, superimposed laws of a God-figure, but by the amount of well-being, or suffering, the action causes in the physical world. An action is placed on a gradient of peaks and valleys, or a ‘moral landscape’ if you will, where the deeds that gives the most people the highest amount of well-being are the peaks, and those that cause massive and intense suffering are the valleys in this landscape. The question is how do we measure well-being? Harris places it in the physical realm of the brain, the domain of neuroscience, and as happiness as a study is being taken more and more seriously in these circles, Harris is confident that we will be able to map out this landscape. It is merely a matter of time.

I found his ideas incredibly provocative, and very encouraging that we can find human answers to human suffering. However, as I mentioned on this blog before, I felt he devoted too much time to ripping into religion. I’ll admit it was warranted and well-argued, but it could have been reduced somewhat, or saved for another book (like his previous one, perhaps!). The bitter polemic just didn’t seem necessary to strengthen an already formidable argument. But however you may feel about religion, it’s still well worth the read, for a glimpse into the fascinating science of the brain, and the challenging but desperately needed route he suggests we take as a species.

2. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

In the Spring, my good friend Geneviève of NoFrillsFox approached me as well as various other colleagues of hers to perform a radio dramatization of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. I had never really read anything by Woolf before, so it seemed like a good opportunity to get some voice work to put on my ol’ acting resumé, while immersing myself in the words and world of one of the 20th century’s most venerated writers. I got much more than that.

Woolf was asked to deliver a series of lectures on “Women and Fiction”, and the result was a brilliant extended essay about female writers and the challenges they have faced in a male-dominated world. The entire book, written from the point of view of a fictional speaker, revolves around the argument that 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction'. The fact that good writing depends on physical needs like finances and space, both of which women have usually been denied in the past, accounts for the dearth of literature produced by women. These, and not some natural inferiority as a sex. The clarity of her prose and the sharpness of her wit, as well as the evidence she marshals to support this are testament enough. But Woolf does not simply rant at men and blame them for the problems women face. She tempers her critiques with compassion, believing that bitter resentment and anger, however well-meaning, can only be destructive forces, and that imagination and humour are much more powerful tools. But, she soberly reminds us, it all depends on having that room, and money. Without, we won’t make an inch of progress.

First of all, as a man, rather than make me feel guilty for my fortunate lot in life, this book made me extremely grateful. Woolf wrote it in 1929, but her words are still relevant today in 2011(2012, etc.). Secondly, as a writer, there is much I can learn from Woolf; like the best writers before her, her powers of reason and imagination transcend gender: creativity needs space and nourishment, whether you are a man, woman, both or neither. And finally, I just really enjoyed it as a good read. I found it entertaining, as well as insightful, and even if you’re not a writer I recommend it for no other reason than this.

1. Twelve Steps to A Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong

Following her TED Wish to have leaders of world religions to draw up a Charter for Compassion, an act of restoring compassion and the Golden Rule to the centre of the major religions and moral systems, Armstrong wrote this book. It's basically what its title says: a step by step guide in becoming a more compassionate person. Distilled from the methods of compassion of all the major faith traditions, including the three Abrahamic ones, Confucianism, Buddhism, and even the Western tradition of rationalist philosophy, Armstrong has cleverly modeled the process on the Twelve Step program for AA. Twelves Steps is a template for how we can draw inspiration from various religions and philosophies to specific action and make compassion a tangible part of our day to day lives. Beginning with Step One: Learn About Compassion, it goes on to looking at our own community and the role we play in it, to having compassion for yourself, and it culminates in the seemingly daunting twelfth step: Love Your Enemies. It is a simple, pragmatic, and hopeful little book, one which I’ve found myself reading near the beginning of the year, and rereading now at the end. I suspect this will happen again. And again.

That's it! Happy New Year, folks! See you in 2012!

Liam

My 2011 Top 5(ish) List of Fiction

2011-12-28T16:28:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all! Ready for 2012? Well hold your horses, because I'm not quite finished with 2011. For me, it was a really good year for reading. Having finished university, I’ve had the great privilege of time to read more books than I could during school.

The attempt to compile a definitive "Top 5 of 2011", choosing certain ones over others, could be a very tricky, and maybe pointless undertaking. I think it's kind of silly rating my reading experiences, since each book offered me something different. But it's also a lot of fun, and in the spirit of list-making I shall proceed, and instead of choosing among so many books, I’ve decided to separate it into two categories: Fiction, and Non-Fiction.

You may notice that my lists don’t contain new, contemporary books. These are the books that affected me in some way, this year. Some of them are quite old, and I recommend we cherish them, and ease up on our obsession with new and shiny things.

But before I begin the List, here are my Books of Honourable Mention, ones that I really enjoyed, but for one arbitrary reason or another--my mood, most likely--didn't make the list.

Honourable Mention:

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

I finally finished the HP saga this year, just in time for The Deathly Hallows, Part 2 movie that came out this summer. It was quite a marathon, burning through The Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows over a few short weeks, but it reminded me why I love the series so much. While I found aspects of the very last movie slightly disappointing, I found the last book an absolute thrill. It seemed by far the darkest, and saddest of the series (at least before Harry’s fortunes improve again), but I couldn’t have hoped for a better climax.

The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

Having re-read the second volume of Lord of the Rings this summer, I can safely say Tolkien is still my favourite writer of all time, and I am always in the mood to read him. Going back to his work is a little bit like going home, and yet going off on the greatest adventure ever, at the same time.

Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

I’ve put this on my honourable mention list because I haven’t actually finished reading it, and I know I won’t before the end of 2011. But I’m halfway through, and I can say that I’ve truly enjoyed it. It would probably count as epic fantasy, but is not in any way derivative of Lord of the Rings. The Seven Kingdoms, Winterfell, King’s Landing, The Wall, none of these places seem contrived to me. He gives it history, he gives it depth and beauty. The details he borrows from medieval life show an extremely well-researched writing process, which makes for a more tangible secondary world. Martin does not have the background of a linguist, and that is not a problem in the least. In fact, its encouraging for an amateur like myself.

Wow! Wouldja look at all those initials! Because of writers like these I became convinced at a young age that to be a proper writer I needed to sign my work with my initials (“L.M. Volke”, what do ya think?). Besides the fear of seeming pretentious, I’ve yet to find any other evidence to the contrary.

And now, without further adieu...

My 2011 Top 5(ish) List of Fiction

In no particular order:

5. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card / Deathless by Catherynne Valente

Okay, I cheated a little. It was hard to decide between the two of them, so I put them both down. In a way, it’s quite fitting, actually. The Nebula and Hugo Award-winning novel by Mr. Card is a look into our future where our world has been attacked by aliens, mobilizing our international community into an uneasy alliance against our extraterrestrial foe. Into this world comes young Ender Wiggin, a boy genius who is groomed at an early age for a brilliant military career, at the cost of his childhood, and even his very humanity. Card intentionally wrote the prose as clearly and plainly as he could, refusing to resort to any tricks or flourishes only the snobbish literary priesthood could enjoy. The storytelling is fast-paced and thrilling, while also dealing with fascinating and disturbing moral dilemmas.

In stark contrast to Card’s book, Catherynne Valente’s Deathless is a fantastical look into the past: the violent rise of the Societ Union as seen through the kaleidescopic Russian folk tales concerning Koschei the Deathless. Unlike Ender’s Game, the writing style Deathless opulent, playful, and dreamlike (or nightmarish, rather). In this world, everything is alive: the mountains, the air, even the buildings are literally alive. It took a greater effort to read and construct the world and the narrative in my mind, but it was rewarding because of this. At some passages I would think “not in a million years would I have thought of a metaphor as original as that!” The story didn’t grip me the way Ender’s Game did, but the beauty of the language is intoxicating and at time, astonishing.

My friend and fellow writer Jesse Cowell recommended me this book with all his might, and after having read it I can say that more people need to read it. So go read it.

4. Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen

I got a lovely edition of Andersen’s fairy tales as a birthday present from my wonderful dad this summer. This particular translation is by Tiina Nunally, with a terrific introduction by Jackie Wullschlager. The really cool thing about this is that before every story is an illustration by Andersen himself. His illustrations are scenes or characters corresponding to that story, and are cut out of paper. I haven’t actually finished the book, but I fell in love with his work the previous summer while doing the travelling puppet show, and I feel Andersen deserves some belated mention here. His stories are wildly imaginative, sometimes quite violent, often very beautiful, and even lacking in a tidy moral at the ending common to other fairy tales. Many of his stories were written to delight rather than instruct, and furthermore many of them he wrote himself, even though they have the feel of a fairy tale that has always been there. They will amuse you, enchant you, move you, and set your imagination aflame.

3. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

Remember seeing this cartoon as a kid, with the sad-eyed unicorn and the terrifying Red Bull that chased the unicorns to the ends of the earth?

Well it was actually a book, first. A very beautifully written one, at that. A unicorn overhears some hunters say that all unicorns are extinct. Wondering if she is the last of her kind, she sets out on a journey to find out what happened to her brothers and sisters, and on the way is joined by the hopelessly mediocre magician Schmendrick, and the brash bandit-woman Molly Grue.

Beagle has the ability to poke fun at the clichés of fantasy, and then in the same sentence deliver an image or an event that stands as a stunning, poetic testament of its power and beauty as a genre. This novel is a little gem that should not be forgotten among the growing piles of excrement that passes for fantasy lit.

2. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

This was my first encounter with the writing of both Gaiman and Pratchett, and I can safely say I haven’t laughed as much or as hard while reading a book as I did with this one. It had the same delicious irreverence for all things metaphysical as James Morrow’s Towing Jehovah. Two good friends, the Angel Aziraphale and Demon Crowley find out that the Antichrist has been born, signaling the fast-approaching Apocalypse. Because they both love the world so much, they disobey direct orders from both sides, decide to join together and try to prevent this whole mess from happening. Hilarity ensues.

The “bromance” between this unlikely pair has to be one of my favourite relationships I’ve ever come across. Their dynamic makes you wonder if it is a parallel to that of their creators. Now, which is Gaiman, and which is Pratchett? It may seem obvious sometimes, but I think the authors blur the lines pretty well. The difference in style between the two writers complements each other, and breeds a wonderful monster even a Marriage of Heaven and Hell would envy.

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

An extremely ambitious 11-year old me bought this book from a bargain table at Coles in New Brunswick. It is safe to say I never really picked it up with the intention of reading it until Christmas 2010, and when I was only about a hundred pages in I had to put it down again until the summer came round (school got in the way. And Good Omens, I’ll admit).

As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, it wasn’t exactly a page-turner. But I am so glad I kept with it. This tome is brimming with life, from the drawing room gossip of Russia’s wealthy and restless aristocrats; to the fields where serfs work in the sun all day long; to a dank tenement of a man dying of consumption, the sickly smell of death in the air. It is a drama full of vengeance, intrigue, and tragedy; but it also paints a picture of mundane drudgery, despair, as well as joy and great spiritual insight. It’s a very enriching read, and quietly exhilirating as well. After having spent some time with Anna Karenina, Vronsky, Levin, and dozens of other characters, I can see why people like Tolstoy so much. I know I’ll read this one again.

Now if I could just work up the nerve to read War and Peace...

So that's my List for Fiction. If you haven't already read any of these, I hope I've perhaps convinced you to give them a try.

Stay tuned for my Top 5(ish) List of Non-Fiction for 2011!

Thanks for reading,

L.M. Volke

Black Pine Creek, Christmas Eve

2011-12-25T18:52:00.000-08:00

WARNING: Scenes of gory, zombie-involved violence. Merry Christmas!

Black Pine Creek, Christmas Eve

By Liam Volke

The darkened forest slanted up at a sharp angle from the road, but he didn’t stop till they were all the way up to the ridge, and well out of sight of their predators.
‘Mr. Elf! You’re hurting me!’ The girl whined.

If Fin didn’t have her hand firmly in his own, he wouldn’t have known if she was still with him; he marched up through the trees and did not bother to look back, or even hold up a branch for the girl to pass under without getting swatted by it. He could not stop. If he did, if he listened to her sobbing, he would be confronted by the enormity of what he had done.

‘It’s getting late,’ said Fin, tapping his thumb on his crossbow.
‘Mmm,’ Matthias replied. The old elf was staring at his silver pocketwatch. It looked out of place with his heavy, green parka.
‘The Chief said it wouldn’t take longer than an hour,’ Fin said.
‘So he is late. That means we tarry, that is all.’ Matthias put away his watch somewhere deep within the layers of his coat. He crossed his arms and fixed his gaze on the forest. Fin could tell the older elf was trying to seem unconcerned by the Chief’s absence, but the stoic front didn’t convince Fin. Only a few moments after putting it away, he excavated the illustrious pocket-watch again, as if pulling it right out of his chest. He repeated this over the next few minutes. Matthias had to admit he was right, Fin reasoned: the sun, already low in the sky this far north in the dead of winter, was on its way down again. In another hour it would be behind the southwestern ridge of forest sprawled before them. The forest’s trees were not towering, but they grew close together, packed with spruce and pine and fir, each coated with white globs, like an army of stalagmites. On the other side of it lay a small town, each and every inhabitant dead. All but one.

‘I think we should go in and find him,’ said Fin.
‘He is used to doing things on his own,’ Matthias reasoned.
‘He’s never done this before.’
‘He ordered us to stay here, with the reindeer.’
‘What about going back to HQ for reinforcements?’
‘It is a quick search-and-rescue, in and out. It is not meant to be a full on assault. We need every man, woman and elf we can spare back at the base. And you very well know we cannot go very far without the Chief. Our fuel is already quite low. The only way out of here, I fear, is with the girl.’
‘So we just wait?
‘We just wait.’

Something about this did not sit right.
Fin hopped down from the sleigh. He needed to move or else he would become stir-crazy. He couldn’t keep watching Matthias and count how many times he checked his damn pocket-watch.
‘Fin,’ said Matthias. ‘Fin. What is that? Irish?’
‘It’s actually short for Finwë.’
‘Oh. Swedish?’
‘Elvish.’
Matthias tilted his large head to one side and gave him a curious look. ‘I did not know there were Elves that have Elvish names,’ he laughed.
‘They do if their parents had them in the 60’s,’ said Fin.
When they were students at North Pole Univeristy, Fin’s parents became avid fans of a certain English professor who wrote about elves and dwarves and rings and wizards, and who also had the audacity to invent a new language for elves. They named their son after one elf-hero from the Englishman’s stories. Fin did not share this affinity. He couldn’t stand it, in fact, so he tried to circulate the name ‘Fin’ among his friends and colleagues.
‘Well, Fin,’ said Matthias, as he leaned over the side of the red polished sleigh, ‘you are, what, a hundred?’
‘Ninety-eight.’
‘Well there you are. You are young yet. Shy of your first century. You have the impetuosity of youth in you, my boy. As you should; but as the saying goes, “for everything under the sun, there is a season.” When you get to be my age, you start to see things differently. And when you work with the Chief long enough you learn that he has always had his own way of carrying out his affairs. Our present circumstances are no exception.’
Fin didn’t like the way Matthias used his age as leverage; he did not like it when anybody did that. He was only a year out of school himself, and being a part of the Workshop meant most of the others were older than him. Matthias, for one, was old, and this was impressive, Fin had to admit. The senior elf had thick silvery mutton chops framing his round face, a small red cap with a little golden tassel, and a pince-nez at the end of his nose Fin never saw any elf under two-hundred wear. He heard Matthias once boast how he made the finest hobby-horses, and Louis XV’s children even sent the Chief a letter, giving him their regards for the elf’s craftsmanship.
‘And you know what else,’ Matthias said, gaining assurance from his own ramblings. ‘The Chief is an exceptionally efficient man. Every year we find ourselves working down to the eleventh hour, ninety nine point nine percent certain that we will not make our deadline. And yet every year we pull it off, thanks to him. When all seems lost,’ he paused, and sighed. ‘He is there, a brilliant beacon in the dark.’

Fin wanted to say that this year was different. They had never had to face a deadline like this before. They never had to face the End of Days. What if this was the one thing even the Chief could not prepare for? He wanted to say all this, but the old fool seemed so happy and hopeful, cocooned up in a warm cabin inside of himself. His face seemed lit like a candle sat inside his skull. The light did not seem to infect Fin, however. The younger elf paced back and forth before the forest, only a hundred yards away. Wisps of cloud wove themselves across a darkening sky like long ghostly dragon tails. The reindeer snorted and shuffled their feet; they seemed anxious as well.

The sun drooped a little behind the sharp treetops. Their shadows stretched out and clawed at the frozen, bare earth. A deep groan came from the heart of the forest. Fin looked over to Matthias, wide-eyed.
‘That could have been anything,’ Matthias said, regaining composure. ‘Could have been a wold. Or a caribou. The forest is full of wild things.’

There were less wild things these days. Fin would have preferred the company of wild things to this. He could still recall the first time he saw Them. It was the smell. The rising stench when they encountered a group of them feasting on a dead polar bear a hundred miles north of here. The Chief wanted to stop and get those awful creatures off the bear, and give its remains some dignity. But Matthias thankfully tempered the Chief’s compassion with the good sense that they were running out of time, and that little girl was still out there. They flew the sleigh low enough so Fin could try to pick them off with his crossbow--he was reputed to be the best shot in the North Pole, an impressive skill for someone so young. As the sleigh dropped in altitude till they were hovering a few dozen feet above the feast, the smell of their decayed flesh rose up. Fin nearly gagged. He had to hold his breath as he took aim. There were six of them. Their skin was blue and black from frost bite. Yet they moved their limbs as if they were full of blood and life.

How did these Deadfolk get this far north? They were widespread farther South, closer to the Equator. Perhaps they had run out of food. Fin shuddered to think of the thousands of cities, quiet and empty. Somehow they had found out about the Chief’s rescue operations and started following the refugees as they came north. They may have been soulless, mindless monsters, but their instincts made the Dead Ones good hunters. Fin heard whisperings around the Workshop that they had even learned to swim. The older elves scoffed at the idea, but as they began to be spotted wandering icy mazes off the coast of Greenland, the elders began to think differently. A month or two ago, before this pandemic was unleashed, they wouldn’t have believed these things could ever exist, that one by one, the governments of the world fell, and no amount of military might could stem the tide of chaos that washed over them. ‘Pah! Zombies!’ One crotchety gaffer said. ‘Next thing you’ll be telling me the Easter Bunny is real!’
These were strange days. Old Svetlana was saying it was the End of Days. But she had said that almost every year since 999 AD. now the points on her long ears drooped and curled like dog ears.

Fin heard another groan, this time louder. Matthias looked up from his watch-gazing and the reindeer’s heads shot up, each pair of onyx eyes fixed on the white woods. Another groan sounded from another corner. Fin shuddered. No caribou made a sound like that.
‘Something’s wrong,’ he said.
‘That’s enough, Finwë. You’re frightening the reindeer.’ Matthias put all his energy into sounding composed. ‘I have my blunderbuss, a bag full of ammunition, and if all else fails, the Chief has given us permission to use the fireworks.’ The “ammunition” was comprised of hundreds of unopened presents, ones which many would never receive. The war-effort was new to most denizens of the North Pole. They were inexperienced in the manufacture of arms, so they used whatever they could spare. Fin eyed the blunderbuss with doubt. It was a gift, Matthias told him, from the Baron of Saxony in the mid 1700’s. At first, Matthias thought it was the strangest trumpet he had ever seen, until it blew a hole in his roof, and couldn’t get rid of the smell of gunpowder form his hut for weeks. He locked it away in a heavy wooden chest beneath the floorboards, until this year, of course.

Out of the darkling forest Fin saw a single speck of red, like a tiny ember carried on a draught of air. He looked long and hard at it, flitting in and out of the trees, before he realized what it was. The soft, warm glow shone on the end of a brown snout, dark eyes and ahead crowned with great black antlers.

‘Rudy!’ Fin shouted. When the reindeer cleared the trees he bounded toward his brethren with great distress, and a limp in his back leg. Matthias’ ruddy face turned deathly pale at the sight. The reindeer then collapsed. His belly swelled and fell; he was breathing, but in sharp, shallow intervals. Claw marks scored his side, and a gash in his neck dribbled blood into his fur. Matthias climbed down and inspected the wound.
‘Do you think it was...’ Fin left the question in the air. ‘Can you help him, Matthias?’
‘I can dress his wound, and I have iodine. You are going to be alright, Rudolph, old boy.’ He said this with exaggerated, desperate liveliness.
Fin climbed up onto the sled and rummaged through a small sack. Out of it he drew an axe for wood-chopping, and a small metal cap with a flashlight attached to it, which he strapped on underneath his hood. The axe he tucked in his quiver of arrows on his back, and then he leapt down to the ground and marched off to the forest.
‘Where do you think you’re going, Finwë!’ Matthias shouted.
‘If anything happens, fire a flare.’
‘If you leave now then I will make sure you are fired from the Workshop.’
‘So fire me,’ Fin called back, though inside he winced.
‘Don’t pull that Rambo-tambo braggart soldier nonsense on me, young one. You are staying here and we are going back together.’
‘Not without Father Christmas.’ Fin then turned and marched straight toward the thick line of trees, paying no more heed to the older elf’s angry shouting. The sun was behind the trees now.

Fin followed Rudy’s hoof prints, which was mercifully easy in the pristine snow. The hard part was moving. Once inside the woods, the snow was several feet deep in some parts. As long as he kept to Rudy’s path he managed, but sometimes he found himself up to his eyes in snow, which he would have to climb on top, only to have it collapse under him. The groaning in the forest became a low hum, a white noise Fin almost forgot about.

When the trees grew closer together, the snow was not so deep, but Rudy’s path became harder to follow. He nudged a tree’s branch and it triggered an entire avalanche upon him. He thrashed his way up and out, spitting out mouthfuls of snow and pine needles. The angry thrum of Dead Ones grew more quiet and placid. This made it harder for Fin to place where it was coming from. The town couldn’t be much farther, he thought. Could it? The trail dipped as the forest sloped downward into a small valley. The sun had not completely set, but the world down here was a chilled blue, and Fin had to rely on his flashlight completely. Behind the black parapets of trees on the ridge before him, the sun blazed red. None of that dying light touched the bottom of the great bowl Fin trudged through, eyes to the ground, crossbow drawn. The prints, which were more like the trail of two slugs slithering parallel through the snow, seemed to wind up the hill.

When he reached the ridge he saw a little ways below him an open road running parallel to the ridge. When he climbed down closer to it he saw the road was littered by vehicles. One pick-up truck lay in a ditch on the other side, a couple lay where they had careened into each other on the ice road. Several lay in the ditch on both sides of the road, in both directions. A thick later of frost lay on all of them, and some of their windows were broken and frosted over. Most were headed to the right, Fin noticed, which he gathered was the way out. All seemed quiet, so he climbed down the ridge and out onto the road. One of the cars was t-boned by the other, its front crunched like a soda can into the first one’s side, and the torso of a woman was splayed across it from out of the smashed windshield. Her mid-section appeared skewered by a jagged ridge of smashed glass. The driver’s door of the other car was open, and in the dim light Fin could make out the shape of a person, head leaned to the side, almost falling out of the door.
‘Are...are you alright?’ he asked, and immediately felt ridiculous for doing so. That they had been there a while was plain to see, and he asked more out of habit.

He resumed his task, and scanned the ground for Rudy’s prints. He could make them out in the beaten down and packed ice on the road, and the prints wove their way through and between the wreckage, off to the left down the road. He followed them between the cars, and keeping his head turned to the ground. He was lucky to look up when only a few yards away from someone standing in the road. The man was quite tall, dressed in a brown polyester jacket, and a grey fur ushanka on his head. Fin didn’t realize his light was shining right on him until the man turned around.

‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘How rude of...’ his elfish goodwill evaporated at the sight of the man’s face: a gorged and blackened hole lay where his nose and upper lip should have been, under round, lidless eyes, that were fixed right on Fin. The elf stood paralysed as a gravelly rumbling came up from deep inside the man’s barrel chest. He limped forward, raised up a hand and and reached out to Fin. Fin shrieked and fired an arrow, slipped and fell hard on his back. His hands trembled violently as he tried to load up the crossbow again. He looked up and there the man stood, right above him. Not knowing what else to do, Fin scrambled under the man’s long legs, just before the man could bend down and scoop him up. It turned its head and was met with an arrow right in the eye. The impact knocked its hat off, and the tall deadman crumpled to the ground.

Fin let out a compulsive laugh. You’ve slain your first zombie, he thought. He felt giddy as he rose to his feet, only to meet gazes with two more: the one from inside the t-boned car, a short man with poppy-red earmuffs, mittens to match, totally blackened eyes and a trail of blood dripping from down the sides of his mouth; the other was the torso of the woman, dragging herself up on top of the car to see who was making all the commotion, and if he was edible. The wild, celebratory mood vanished. They looked very hungry.

Crossbow raised, Fin backed away, and then turned to run. Others had shown up, perhaps hiding in the other cars, a closing a ring around him.
‘Bless me,’ Fin said, and bolted between the two in his way before they could close tight enough around him, and right down the road. He prayed his little legs would serve him; elves were always light on their feet, especially Christmas elves. He was amazed these sloth-like creatures managed to overrun their living, sentient counterparts. But the ones behind him gave chase better than he expected. There was no time to follow Rudy’s prints. The little, ear-muffed man seemed especially fit, and led the chase with great zest. At first he went along like some hellish ape, using as knuckles as well as his feet, trying to gain purchase on the icy road. But as he picked up speed, the little man ran loped along on two feet with alarming speed. The road was slick, and Fin’s boots didn’t bite into it very well; he slipped and stumbled several times. As he ran he turned back and tried to fire a shot at their leader, only to shoot wide of the mark. He heard the snarls and groans from hoarse and infected throats. The dark road bounced in and out of view as he stumbled and his headlight swung up and down. At once, the hungry snarls from their hoarse and infected throats were near at hand, and then they grew distant, and all Fin could hear was his own huffing and puffing. The road bent down to the left, and he cut into the forest just around the bend to shake them off. But just as he cleared the turn, the road opened to an open view of the town, just a little ways down the hill in the valley, across an iron bridge over a frozen creek. Fin tried to slow down, but the road dropped so steeply he slipped and went sliding down the path into a snowbank on the left.

Less than a hundred yards away on this side of the bridge, dozens of Deadfolk meandered around in silence, near the creek, in and out of the trees, and in front of a sign that said ‘Welcome to Black Pine Creek, the Friendliest Town in the North. Population: 5034.’ He realized for the second time that his headlight flitted around wherever he turned. The ones near the bridge noticed, and stopped whatever errands they were running, and moved towards him. He could hear the bloodthirsty little man leading the charge from the top of the hill. Then, a large, gloved hand came over his mouth, and a great arm seized him from behind, and dragged him into the cover of the trees.

III

Fin’s cap was yanked right off his head and hidden, while the other hand remained over his mouth. It was very strong and firm, but it didn’t hurt him. He felt his head pressed into something soft, almost furry. He looked up, and saw a tall dark figure putting a finger up to its mouth, as if to say ‘don’t make a sound.’
Just outside the edge of pines the band of Deadfolk trundled past and headed for the town. By the time they reached the others, Fin noticed, they seemed to run out of purpose, and joined the ranks of aimless wanderers.
‘Not very bright, are they,’ came a deep voice in the shadows. The hand on Fin’s face loosened. Fin turned to see its owner, a tall man with a long, full beard hanging over a stout chest and belly. Without thinking, Fin wrapped his arms around the belly, sinking his face into the warm, soft, and ancient beard.
‘Sir,’ said the elf, fighting back tears. He felt like a child again. ‘You’re alive!’ Even in the dark he could make out the Chief’s face, and thought it did not smile, his eyes always smiled, and glinted.
‘My child, I told you to stay with the sleigh,’ he said.
‘Yes sir. I’m sorry, sir, but Rudy came out without you. We feared something had happened. I couldn’t wait any longer. Matthias kept checking his blasted watch every twenty seconds.
‘There is much you have yet to learn from Mr. Matthias. He is a good teacher and you would do well to pay him more respect.’
Fin felt wronged. This was not the response he was hoping for. ‘He swore he would fire me if I came in after you.’
‘Well I have the final say, don’t I? All the same, I am somewhat grateful that you went against my direct orders this time. Good thing you aren’t as well-trained as Mr. Matthias.’ He winked. ‘I am also relieved to hear that my beloved Rudolph made it out alive. They spooked him at the bridge and he threw me off. Poor thing had never been so scared in his life. I should have known better than to bring him in with me.’ They had landed the sleigh beyond the woods and not in the town because the reindeer so unnerved by the presence of the Undead they could not go near the town at all. ‘I suppose he is to be forgiven and excused for running.’
‘Well I am here, and I will not run, sir,’ said Fin, trying to appear as brave and loyal as possible, and meaning it. ‘I vow that I will--’
‘No, do not swear. There’s no need, I believe you and I am glad to have you. But we cannot tarry. There is not much time, and we still have yet to find this girl. My spirits are flagging already, and we won’t make much of an escape if I am all out of Cheer.’
‘So what is the plan, sir?’
‘No lights from here on in. We must rely on our senses, and our guts, and our hope. The bridge is well guarded by these devils. But I believe a ways down the creek the ice is not as thin and loose. But I need a better look. The footing does not look as firm for the non-living. I think we can reach it by the cover of the trees.’

Without confirming with Fin that he understood and approved of the plan, he turned and made for their destination. Fin had to catch up, as they squeezed their way between the needly branches. The Chief made sure to hold the low-hanging boughs, to keep them from whipping Fin in the face. They negotiated their way through a dense, snowy undergrowth, till curved down toward the cree, a ribbon that made for a clear border between the wilderness and the town. This must be the eponymous creek, Fin thought. Here, they climbed down a steep but low ridge, till they were right on the banks. There was a patch of tall, colourless reeds here, more open to the sky but still able to conceal them from dead, curious eyes. Fin got a better view of the Chief, who was dressed in a great white coat that went down to his knees with red thread finely woven into it, and a silver belt girdling the widest part of him. Instead of a long red cap he covered his head with the hood of his coat. In one hand he held a long twisted crosier with interwoven lines of red, green and white spiralling up the length of it, like the most beautiful candy-cane you had ever seen. Some said it was made from the core of a great holly tree sacred to the Druids. Svetlana had once told Fin that it was made from timbers of the Jesus’ cross. (She also told him the centre of the earth was filled with molten chocolate, which he later learned at University to be untrue.) All the same, the crosier inspired wonder in the young elf, and he felt safer knowing the Chief had it with him now.

Here, the creek was widest. But they were at a safe distance from the congestion of Dead Ones by the bridge. Only a pair of them patrolled the ridge across from Fin and the Chief, and they walked as slowly as a decrepit elderly couple going for a stroll in the dusk. Fin wondered if that wasn’t exactly what they were once upon a time. Perhaps they dreamed they would walk together in young, uncreaking bodies again once they died. Now they were condemned to walk in these frigid corpses till the frost broke them. He hoped their spirits had successfully unmoored themselves form all this, left their bodies behind, wherever they were now. He saw the Chief looking at them as well.
‘Do you believe in God, Fin?’
He was shocked by the question. But what was the point in lying?
‘Sometimes,’ Fin admitted.
‘Yes,’ The Chief smiled wryly. ‘Me too. Sometimes.’
The Chief tapped the ice with his staff.
‘Seems solid enough,’ he said, shrugging. He was uncertain, but clearly not worried. So Fin would not worry. The old saint took a tentative step, and then placed he other boot down. If it held the Chief, Fin reasoned, it would certainly hold me. Half a foot of snow was layered over the ice. It crunched under their feet, a sound Fin always took a small pleasure in.

Midway across the creek Fin tripped, and his whole little body fell flat onto the ice. The nearly cried out, expecting the whole creek to crack and splinter. Fin lay prostrate, winded and a little warm blood trickling from his nose, but he didn’t dare move to cry or curse. Several heartbeats later and the ice had not broken. Then the pain came. Fin was eager to see all the welts on his body just from falling down so much on this mission--if that the worst fate he was subject to here.
‘Are you alright,’ the Chief whispered.
‘My nose is bleeding,’ Fin whispered back. When he got to his feet, the Chief pointed out what Fin must have tripped on. There was a small lump in the ice. Fin had to get on his hands and knees to get a good look at it. And then he gasped, as he made out the features of a head, half submerged in the ice, up to its nose. It was glazed over with frost, and its eyes were half open an almost neanderthal-like furrow on its brow. With his sight down nearly flush with the surface of the creek, Fin could make out other similar lumps in the snow interspersed throughout the ice.
‘It would seem,’ said the Chief, hunched over beside him, ‘that Hell has frozen over.’

They continued on to the other side of the creek. The Chief whispered something into a small snowball he made and gave it to Fin to put on his nose till the bleeding stopped. They climbed up the bank on the other side, the Chief helping Fin up on the higher parts. When they reached the top, the town lay before them: hollow, window-smashed houses and alleyways with trash cans, some telephone poles toppled over across streets and yards. Beyond the small bungalows before them Fin saw a few spires of Church belfries. There was also one enormous building with a great tower and an old fashioned clock. This must have been the town hall. The evening had come and there was nothing but a cool, violet glow from the rim of the southwestern sky. The town was quiet, which frightened Fin knowing its streets were bustling with Undead feet. How long would it take before they realized there was nothing left to eat here, Fin wondered. He prayed the Dead Ones weren’t looking for the same thing they were after.
‘How are we going to find this girl?’ Fin asked. ‘How do we even know she’s still alive?’
The Chief was quiet for a moment. He was taking in the husk of Black Pine Creek. ‘My heart tells me she is.’ As he stood there, a faint light pulsed through the green strands of the crosier, like a blip on a heart monitor. This was a gauge of the Chief’s level of spirit and hope. He was operating on a hunch only, but even Fin knew from experience that the Chief’s hunches were usually right.

They climbed the fence of the nearest house, and scaled the walls to the roof. The Chief stood on the rooftop, crosier in one hand, the other planted on his hip as he surveyed the town. ‘It is quite strange doing this without the reindeer,’ he mused. ‘I hope I can still manage.’ Fin had always longed to go with the Chief on his annual expeditions. He never in his wildest dreams imagined he would ever do it like this.
‘It would be faster if you rode on my back,’ said the Chief. He lowered himself down and Fin hopped up on his back. Fin felt like an elfling again, riding piggy-back on his father, or his older brother Elrond. Now, he was the size of a human boy, and riding on the back of his boss, who also happened to be a living saint. Strange times, indeed.

The Chief raised his crosier, and holding it with both hands, charged to the other end of the roof as nimbly as a cat, and drove the crosier into it just as they reached the edge, and vaulted over the twelve foot gap between this house and the next. He didn’t make a clean landing, as he bent over when he hit the other side and spun his arms, trying to push his body forward, Fin all the while wrapping his arms around his neck in a vice grip. The Chief swung the crosier forward and hooked it to the chimney top and pulled them forward. Fin heard the tinkle of icicles underneath the eaves breaking off, and instead of hitting the ground, they fell on something else, and Fin heard a growl coming up from below.

‘It’s been some time since I’ve done it this way,’ the Chief huffed. ‘I’m a little out of shape. No matter. Before I recruited the reindeer this was always how I used to do it.’ Fin was a little shaken, and did not like that they may have disturbed one of those creatures, but his carrier became more surefooted after the next few roofs. It was difficult when two-storied houses cropped up, or if two houses had their driveways side by side, making the gap even wider, but sure enough the Chief managed every time, though they rattled more than a fair share of icicles. Fin figured the Chief must have done this with an enormous sack in tow, so he could not be as great of a burden by comparison. However, he could spot a person here and there in the street beside them, rummaging through the bushes, crawling across a lawn, dying on a doorstep. And Fin could sense a strain in the Chief with every bound. He did his best to keep cheerful, hale and hearty, but the evening was thick with darkness, and no place for roof-hopping. It seemed to sap the Chief of his energy.

They would climb down to scramble across streets, and then repeat the process. Before they left HQ, the girl’s parents told the Chief she was not in their house, but a friend’s house a couple of blocks away. When they reached their address, the Chief scanned the neighbourhood. It was dim all around of course, but right in front of them was a massive black hole in the shape of a rectangle. It was a park, with a soccer field and a playground, and there was enough light to see it was not completely deserted. The Chief sighed.
‘It’s there,’ he said, pointing forward. ‘Just across that.’ The park could not have been larger than sixty yards to the other side, but for them it might as well have been the Sahara Desert. A number of shadows murmured throughout.
‘Blast it all!’ The Chief rasped. ‘I was hoping it wouldn’t be in that direction.’ Down along the streets before them the park dwellers also spilled out, so even to go around the park would mean descending to walk among the damned.
‘Why are there so many here?’ asked Fin. ‘Did they spot us? Are they looking for us?’
‘I certainly hope it’s us they’re looking for, and nobody else,’ the Chief said. ‘Come. Let us get to the end of this block before we climb down.
Just as the Chief was about to jump, Fin yelped. An arm swung over the rooftop, a few inches from their left, and it startled the Chief as well as Fin, making him slip, and the two went crashing down into the yard between the houses. When they rose from the snow craters they made and brushed it off and out of their faces, Fin could not see their faces, but he knew that every one of them were looking right at him and the Chief.

‘I should have retired years ago,’ the Chief sighed. ‘To the corner on the park’s right!’ He raised the crosier in the air, and like a mace he swung it into the head of the nearest deadman and with a loud and deep crack he flew into the side of the house and crumpled to the ground. ‘Run!’ the Chief shouted, and before Fin had time to be shocked, he ran. To the right, the block of houses kitty-corner to this one was fifty feet away, and slightly uphill. He quickly found himself running through a maze of moaning, faceless shadows, hungry for blood. He looked behind and all he could see of the Chief was his crosier shining red like a firebrand over the undead heads. Fin pressed on, and they thickened. He was like a germ in the bloodstream of an enormous cancerous body, attacking him with all its might. Dozens of feet crunched in the snow toward him, the darkness writhed and groaned all around him, while he spun around with axe in one hand and crossbow in the other. To his left he saw a small gap, and a car on the park side of the road. He slipped through and climbed up the trunk and onto the top. There he saw them swarming around him; his car was pressed in by many leprous hands. Where was the Chief?
‘Behind you!’ the voice boomed. Fin wheeled around, and there was the Chief a little ways downhill into the park. ‘Jump!’ he cried. It was the only way to get off this island. He sprang over the monsters’ heads, his feet skirting their fingers as he landed and rolled down toward the Chief, still keeping the Deadfolk at bay with his mighty Christmas club. Fin reached the Chief just as he split the skull of a vicious looking young man.

They cut through the playground and down toward the field. Fin hewed one tall woman at the shin with his axe as he ran, but then he nearly got it stuck in the neck of a boy his own size. Fin had to kick him away to get the axe out, as the boy squealed in pain and snarled at him. With deadly aim the Chief struck several in the head and sent them headlong to the snowy earth. The other side was very near, and the crosier was glowing brighter in all its green, white and red strands as they closed in on the row of houses facing the park. The number of Undead thinned out here, as most of them were behind. They pursued them through the park, falling over each other as they entered.
‘Which house is it?’ Fin asked, when they emerged from the park. The Chief darted from one to the next, jogging his memory.
‘Six-Ninety Five, Six-Ninety Three....Six-Hundred-one! That was the address! Ah, yes, I remember this one now!’ It was the second last house on the left, another squat bungalow surrounded by tall and skeletal hedges. They charged forward, and the light in the crosier surged brighter and faster, and even started to ring. The Chief’s spirits were lifting.
When they entered the yard they found two Undead snooping about, trying to find a way into the house. Perhaps they smelled fresh, living meat. The Chief raised the crosier in the air, and it whirred.

‘Here now! There is plenty more meat on my bones!’ he shouted. They sniffed, and cautiously advanced on him. The Chief slapped his belly like a drum. ‘Yes, yes, come to feast on this, you hobgoblins!’ The first one, a lanky thing with one arm, the Chief hit so hard its head twisted on its axis almost all the way round, and it flopped aside. The second one, a tall, fat one, bigger even than the Chief, charged into him; the Chief tried to step out of the way, but when the man dove forward he grabbed onto the Chief’s arm, bring him down as well. Fin watched in horror as the fat creature rolled overtop the Chief, and the Chief held him up with only the crosier to keep the man from going for his jugular. Fin dashed toward them with axe held overhead, and he jumped and brought it down right where his neck met his right shoulder. Blood squirted out, but the axe was wedged in so deep he couldn’t get it out. The man climbed off the Chief and wheeled round, enraged at this little pest. For a moment Fin believed he would surely be disemboweled right then and there, but the Chief came in behind, and with a sickening crack the big man’s head split clean off, sending the head right over the high prickly hedge into the next yard. From the neck the enormous body showered the yard with blood, and it went crashing into a snowman nearby.

‘Some trees take more than one man to fell,’ the Chief said. ‘Thank you, Fin.’
‘I struck down a boy,’ Fin blurted out, just remembering. ‘One of them. In the park. He couldn’t have been more than eleven.’ Tears welled up, and suddenly he was unable to control his sobbing. ‘They took children too, sir.’
‘They did,’ the Chief admitted. ‘But not all of them.’ He lifted Fin up, still sniffling, up over the eaves, and then jumped up after him.

It was a small metal pipe, but it would do. The Chief said he had gone down worse chimneys. Fin, never having done this before, could not recall a more uncomfortable experience, being compressed till he was thrice thinner than he was before. He felt like a tube of sausage as he slithered down the chimney, and didn’t know how the Chief managed it. He pulled out a small hourglass from his breast pocket, and flipped it over. As the tiny grains of sand funneled down, so the Chief and Fin shrunk and slid down. The house inside was dark and very cold, but for the sickly moonlight that spilled in through the back windows. Fin heard the collective groan coming from just out front, but he could breathe again and felt a little more secure inside.

They found the girl in the basement. Sofia was huddled behind the washing machine in the undeveloped basement, a skinny thing wrapped up in an adult’s winter jacket. She couldn’t have been more than eight, with dark brown curly hair, and big olive eyes. At first, she hesitated to come out, but after she got a good look at the Chief, she got up and jumped into his arms, recognizing him instinctively. ‘Santa! Santa!’ She squealed. Her voice was hoarse, as if it hadn’t been used in some time, except for crying, perhaps. Her scrawny legs were covered only with tights. She told them that her babysitter was upstairs; Sofia had managed to lock her in the bathroom, before hiding down in the basement, eating cat food for a day and a half.
They heard the tinkle of glass breaking upstairs. When they went upstairs they saw a Deadwoman had broken a window in the kitchen and was trying to climb through. They had the house surrounded.

‘Well, it looks like more house-hopping,’ the Chief said, tired. It would be much more difficult without the crosier to vault across with. Just then Fin remembered that while they were searching for Sofia he had peaked into the garage adjacent to the front foyer, and he saw a car.
‘Sofia,’ he said, ‘ do you know if there are any keys to that car out there?’
‘I’m afraid it’s no use,’ the Chief said. ‘I cannot drive those blasted horseless sleighs.’ For him, horseless sleigh was a dirty pair of words.
‘I can,’ Fin said, thrilled to finally be useful to this mission. ‘If we could procure a key. Sofia?’
She shook her head. It was the house of a family friend; how could she know that when she likely wouldn’t have even known in her own house? Fin knew this, but had to try.
He held up the Chief’s match to the walls and found a small box hanging by the garage door. There were four keys inside, so he grabbed each of them and they slid into the garage as the Deadwoman began to climb through the kitchen window.

Fin flipped a switch and a small lightbulb came on above the car, lighting up the cluttered garage. The car itself was very small, and the windows frosted over. Fin pressed a button and it made a loud chirping sound, and Fin exchanged glances with the Chief.
‘I think that means it’s unlocked,’ he said sheepishly. The windshield was frozen over, so the Chief lit the same match, sucked in air and blew it out over the glass, sending out a bright green flame, thawing it within seconds.They filed in, with the Chief in the passenger seat and Sofia on his lap, while Fin took the helm, even though he could barely see over the dashboard. He pressed a button near the rearview mirror, and the garage door slowly opened with a screech as frozen metal ground against metal. The Chief cringed at the sound, and looked skeptical, but Fin gave him an entreating glance, hopeful this would work. It would have to work. Even if it did advertise them to the entire neighbourhood.
After a few jerky stops and starts, he navigated them out of the garage before their assailants understood what was going on.
‘Do you know where you are going?’ The Chief asked, a note of dismay in his voice.
‘Away from them!’ Fin replied, as he turned right and away from the mob that clogged the street.
‘Take Governor Street up ahead,’ said the Chief, peering out his passenger window. ‘Go left and it should take us to Main.’
They sped forward, swerving around the few stragglers in the road before reaching Main Street. The bridge lay at the end of it.
‘From what I recall,’ said the Chief, ‘there are few straight lines in the town of Black Pine Creek, but Main is one of them.’
This would have been an advantage, but the Dead Ones stood in scattered numbers all along the ice-laden street, without any regard to oncoming traffic. Most inconsiderate. Fin slammed his foot down and the car picked up speed. did his best to swerve around any jaywalkers, but on occasion he would nick one or two.
Thump-thump. Some were pulled under and rocked the car with most uneven driving; the passengers bounced violently in their seats.
Thump-slam. One rolled up the hood and onto the windshield, sending a web of cracks across the glass, concentrated where the man’s shoulder struck.
‘We’ll not last longer with this dreadful sport,’ the Chief shouted over the engine and the angry, wordless songs of the dead.
Snap. Off went Fin’s side view mirror.
‘How much farther, do you think?’ He asked, struggling to keep his view over the dashboard and his foot on the pedal at the same time.
‘Less than a furlong, by my life,’ the Chief said. Fin looked up through his side window and the building he thought must be the city hall whizzed past. The dead didn’t form a wall by any conscious effort till now; they walked as if drunk through the streets, and it wasn’t more than one or two at a time Fin drove into. He winced every time needing to remind himself they were no longer the people their bodies once carried. This street seemed to stretch on forever.
‘Slow down! Whoa, now.’ the Chief said, out of habit. ‘Extinguish the lights.’ Sofia was in tears, and the windshield was about to burst. When they reached the bridge they could not risk crashing into another body. And because that was just the way this day was going, there stood a mob between them and the entrance to the big iron bridge. Fin slowed down as he approached, and shut off the headlights. They didn’t seem to see the car. Would it be possible to breach the line in the shape they were in? Fin looked over to his superior, his hero, and saw the old saint’s wheels were turning.
‘This machine runs on petrol,’ he said. ‘Not Christmas Cheer. It does not live like the reindeer. And yet,’ he paused, and put a hand to the fractured glass. ‘This was machine rendered by man and came from the earth’s ore. There may still be some spirit in its metal.’
‘Sir?’ Fin looked on him utterly mystified, and alarmed knowing the chase was creeping up somewhere behind.
‘Drive, Fin. Drive straight and true,’ he said, his voice distant but resolute. ‘Drive!’
Once again, half weary and half terror-struck, Fin pressed his child-sized foot to the pedal, and the engine raised its voice. The Chief placed both hands on the dashboard and pushed his weight into it, like he was trying to move the car from inside, and before Fin knew what was happening the mob sunk out of view in the windshield. The Chief cried out like he was lifting an impossible weight, as the car lifted into the air, and nearly vaulted over the heads of the Undead. It rose to shoulder height, and Fin felt the whole car bounce as it skipped from one head to another. And then with a lurch and a crash they were back on the ground again. They cleared the bridge.

Fin wanted to cry out he was so elated. The car climbed up the road that wound into the forest, up the slope where the Chief first found him. They sped along, Fin’s body stretched out so he could operate the wheel and pedal. He glanced back at Sofia, face full of wonder as she tried to look over her seat through the back window, back at the hurdle they just cleared.
‘Christmas lives!’ Fin declared. He looked over to his Chief, who still had his hands braced on the dashboard, his head bowed. He was breathing heavily, and sweating.
‘Sir?’
When he turned back to the road another figure slammed into view. Sofia screamed. Just before the window shattered and Fin lost control and they swerved and sailed into a deep bank of snow, he could make out the shape of the bloody little man with the red earmuffs.
Fin came to with a cold wind and something tugging at his arm. A hand, smaller than his. Sofia. He turned and saw her curly haired silhouette.
‘Mr. Elf?’ She squeaked.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m here.’ He could make out a body that lay on the hood, its arm slung over the dash, its lower body sandwiched between the hood and heavy snow. The little man did not move.
‘Is Santa okay?’ Fin leaned over, and saw the great bulk of the Chief leaned up against the passenger window. A trickle of blood ran down his head. He shook the Chief the way Sofia shook him. He shook harder. He grabbed his face, and shards of glass fell from his beard. The ever kind face was cold, and slightly damp. He lifted up his beard and felt for a pulse, but failed to find one. He grabbed the Chief’s lapels and shook them violently, barely moving the old saint.
‘Sir!’ he shouted. He listened for something, any little sign, but moments passed, and the Chief would not stir. The girl started to sniff and whimper, but he could not reach out and comfort her, imprisoned in his own shock and disbelief.

A distant snarl broke the silence outside. He shook the Chief again and he went limp like a marionette cut down from its strings when Fin let go. The snarling grew louder, and was answered with a groan, and then another. They were close.

Fin loathed the choice at hand, but found himself taking it any way. He reached in and found the Chief’s small, ornate red matchbox. He then tried to open his door, but found it sealed up. The snow seemed to come up on all sides, so there was no option but to go through the broken windshield. Fin tried to pull out Sofia, but she cried in protest and pulled back. He shouted at her, and reached in, unbuckled and grabbed her from her seat. She didn’t resist, but she kept crying. He climbed out first, shoving the little man’s arm aside, and brushing the glass out of the way. He stood up and then took her hands and drew her out of the car.
‘I think he’s breathing!’ she said.
‘He’s not. We have to go!’ She cried even louder as Fin hauled her out, over the Deadman’s corpse and over the mound of snow. He then grabbed the crosier. No light flowed through it. The woods were to their left, up a small slope. Only thirty feet away Fin could make out the wreckage he had first encountered down the road. From the opposite end, a fresh party limped its way toward them.

‘Upsy-daisy, now,’ he said, hurrying her along up the hill. ‘Keep down.’ Fin dragged her along a trail, insistent on moving. He stepped over a root, and Sofia snagged her foot on it and fell. It was only then he realized that the child did not have the advantage of sharp, elfish sight that could pierce the blackened woods, if only a little better than humans could.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered, his knee-flex manners kicking in, but without feeling it. ‘We’ll stop here for a moment.’ They stood in a small clearing, ringed in by magisterial old pines, with a long felled tree right across it. He sat her down on it, and sat himself a couple of feet away. He leaned his head into his hand, and gazed into the trail before them through the pines. It was only then the pain flooded in: whiplash, and possibly a cracked rib. It felt like somebody was twisting a crude, jagged knife in his side every time he breathed in too deeply. He also heard the girl whimpering again. Fin knew it was selfish of him to be so distant from her, but he felt exhausted and helpless against the resentment that came over him. If not for her he would be back at the workshop, safe and sound, where he would be much more useful than here in the middle of nowhere; and more importantly, there Chief would be alive. Why did they risk their lives for this one little urchin? Millions more were not spared the carnage. What about that boy he ran into in the park? Who was he? Was he less deserving than Sofia?

He imagined bringing her back with Matthias, to tell the last remainder of the human race, and the elves, that their benefactor--no, their saviour--was dead. He did not want to be the one to bring this message. The sobbing sounds of the girl became more and more loathsome however hard he tried to summon up any kindness. Earlier today he would have had more will to care for Sofia. He would be first to admit that, unlike most elves, he was not great with children; he still was a child compared to most other elves and so was treated as such. But he was still naturally caring, and this coldness alarmed him.

A new thought occurred: with the Chief gone, would they even be able to get the sleigh off the ground? It ran on Christmas Cheer, of which the Chief was the main conduit. But nobody else knew what happened yet; perhaps their ignorance would sustain them. Perhaps their belief that the Chief was alive would give them fuel. He couldn’t be sure. Fin was expert in what he could see with his own eyes and render with his own hands. He failed Christmas Spirit Studies, although to be fair it was the hardest, most elusive subject on which only a gifted few could grasp. But he heard the Spirit as described as a kind of electricity, static and ever-present, but charged when someone in particular came into the area. The Chief was that conductor. Perhaps Fin could harness whatever floated along in the air down from HQ.

But was it even worth it? Whether they escaped or not, the outcome looked grim. To him, the world had already ended. Any further destruction and loss would be a formality. He gazed down the winding path that ran down and then up through the wide bowl.

There was a scream. Fin whipped around and saw a larger figure emerging from the trees, only a few feet away from Sofia. He took out his axe, bolted up onto the log and leapt from it at the figure. He overshot it though, and went crashing right into the Deadman. The axe went flying into the trees, and when he got to his feet, the Deadman rose as well, and stood in the way. The crosier leaned against the felled log nearby. Just as the Deadman charged forward screaming like a banshee, Fin reached for the crosier, and as he saw the Chief do, he swung it with all his might, and with a bright flash of light he smashed the man’s head like a piñata; Fin ran for cover as rotted brains and a fountain of blood showered down on the clearing, as well as shards of the crosier. All of it he had in his hands were a few splinters, amounting to nothing more than a stick. The Deadman lay in a heap on the ground, blood still pooling out from the shoulders.

When he turned back to the girl, she was hiding beneath the log, and when he went closer, she shrunk away more. He looked at the shards of the crosier in his hands. These and the matches were all he had left of the Chief. He put them in his breastpocket. This girl had caused so much grief, but for some reason he saved her all the same.

‘I’m sorry,’ Fin said. ‘I’ve been a scrooge.’ He only felt profound sadness and shame. He was bound to her, whether he liked it or not. How oculd this be made better, he thought. Then he remembered the matches.

‘Let’s have a little light,’ he said, trying to sound encouraging. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of this gloom.’ He struck it, and a little pearly light leapt out between his fingers. It was certainly hot, but it did not burn down the wick, and it did not resemble any flame he had yet seen in the Chief’s repertoire.
‘Yulefire,’ he explained, though he wondered at it almost as much as Sofia did. It was the most beautiful point of light he had ever seen, closer and warmer than any star. He had heard tales of it, how it helped others who were lost find their way home. It resembled, ever so slightly, the twinkly in the Chief’s eye.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Shall we?’ He took one step toward the path, and then he stopped. He could feel his heart breaking open.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, meaning it. ‘I’m so sorry, Sofia.’ He felt the unshed tears pent up in his chest falling out now, and he was seized with sobs and hiccoughs. Sofia climbed over the log and hugged the elf.

As they walked, Fin began to wonder if they were not headed straight out of the woods, but were rather moving parallel to its edge. The trees seemed to stretch on farther than he remembered. There was now no hope of retracing his steps. Distant cries were always on the edge hearing; the Dead obviously had no trouble bushwhacking. The Yulefire fell on the trees close in front of them, which he preferred to the open clearings where they couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of them. They ran up against an old lady in a green overcoat, eyes milked over, fingers frozen blue and saliva dripping down her mouth. She also had a knife lodged in her gut. Sofia and FIn yelped and evaded her, only to find a pair of teenage boys in hoodies, one of them missing his lower jaw, the other with lips completely missing showing a wide, abscessed grin. They just dodged this pair, and hurried along. Sofia kept her hand over her mouth, and both stayed low. Fin got a sick feeling that if he were to cast a light over the surrounding fifty yards he would find several pockets of them, moving through the brush. But were they all after him and Sofia? They couldn’t be that fast. Some were well ahead of them. What were they doing here? The match attracted them, no doubt, but Sofia could move with greater speed with it lit. We must be close, he thought. They dashed from one tree to the next. Any minute now, they would be clear of the trees altogether. They did start to thin out more eventually so it could not be much longer. But every open shadow could also be hiding something.

There was a flash, just off to the right out view, over the trees. Then there was a crackle that split the air. Then, another flash, a whistle, and then a great bang.
Fireworks. Matthias. He was finally under attack.

VII

He could not be more grateful for the older elf’s plight. Matthias could have taken off any time without them, but he chose to stay and wait. Or perhaps Fin’s theory of Christmas Spirit was wrong, and he was forced to stay put on the ground. Either way, what a wonderfully stubborn old ass!

He brought Sofia to the last outcropping of trees and hid behind to get a good view. They came pouring out, dozens of them, off to Fin’s right. A hundred yards away Fin saw the sleigh turned over on its side, and a little head popping up over it. More fireworks fired up from behind the sleigh. It swam through the air like a tadpole and burst, knocking some off their feet, and sending a bright green fire raining down on the Dead Ones’ heads. There was another bang from the sleigh. Matthias was finally using his blunderbuss. Scraps of old presents went flying from it, spraying the numbers of undead with the flaming debris of cellphones, action figures, and coffee makers.

The Dead were pushed back to the trees temporarily, and now was their chance to move. Fin motioned for Sofia to run. A man crashed through the trees behind them, so Fin dashed out of their hiding place, following Sofia out into the open field.

‘Don’t shoot!’ Fin hollered.
‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’ Sofia echoed. Fin ran with the match still lit in his hand, and through the Yulefire flickered, the wind did not put it out. Small fires burned all around on the ground, some fuelled by corpses. One had half a dollhouse stuck in its face. Fin hoped, prayed Matthias would see them amid this waste and not fire sharp-edged presents at them in a moment of panic.
‘Finwë? Is that you, my boy?’ The old elf said from behind the upturned sleigh. His large head popped up over the top side.
‘I have Sofia with me,’ said Fin.
‘I see that. Now get behind before they see you! Come here, my sweeting.’ He ushered them both in behind the sleigh. Fin saw farther out in the field the reindeer had formed a ring around Rudy, his nose still aglow, but dimly so. There were only eight of them that he could see.
‘Prancer,’ Matthias explained, before he broke into a sob. ‘One of those devils came up without my seeing it and attacked the reindeer.’ He sunk down to the ground, leaned against the sleight. ‘It spooked the others and sent them running, pulling this thing along till it toppled over. I unhitched them all. It was then that we realised old Prancer had been bitten. It wasn’t fatal. I knew he would...turn...but I couldn’t do anything. I simply couldn’t. And then...’ he stopped, buried his face in his hands and cried. It was strange to see this old veteran cry. A few hours earlier and he wouldn’t have believed it. Now, anything seemed possible. Next to the Chief, nobody loved the Reindeer more than Matthias.

Sofia wrapped her arms around the curled up Matthias, only a little taller than him when she stood. I’m glad it was you we came for, thought Fin. She seemed to be handling it quite well for an 8-year old. Though he wouldn’t have admitted it, there were plenty of brats out there he wouldn’t miss, though some surely remained alive and well back at HQ.
Matthias looked up at Fin for a moment, wiping the dribble of snot from his nose. ‘Where is the Chief?’ he asked.
‘He is...’ what could he tell this broken-hearted man? ‘He is on his way.’ He seemed content enough with this answer, though the lie made something small and tight twisted in Fin’s stomach. Sofia looked at him, and back at Matthias, but said nothing.

Fin needed them to try and push the sleigh over again, and somehow rein in the team, even though Rudy was injured. He had to try and save them; he could explain about the Chief once they were safe. But the advancing undead were not helping things. The senior elf being presently indisposed, Fin took the great blunderbuss and loaded it some more, and cocked it. It was heavier than he imagined, impressed that Matthias wielded it so easily. He climbed up the sled and looked over. The small fires had almost run out, but he could see passing shadows, and was certain a couple were less than twenty feet away from the sleigh. He aimed at one in the middle, keeping it steady on the sleigh’s rim. With a slight tug at the brass trigger, there was a loud blast and a kickback that knocked Fin off the sleigh and onto his back. Just before he fell though, in the brief flash of the gun blast, he saw a great wave, in the hundreds, emerging from the trees.

‘My blunderbuss!’ Matthias cried. The gun lay on the ground, smoking, the barrel split open like a banana peel, and the metal charred. ‘What did you do to it?’ He shrieked. Fin rose form his back slowly. His head was throbbing, and the pain in his side was spreading.
‘I fired it,’ Fin said.
‘You fired too much, I daresay!’ Matthias said, brandishing the busted gun.
‘Not enough, I’d say. Look.’ Fin pointed and Matthias looked around the side. He could barely see the elf’s face with nothing but the kerosene lamp on the ground to light their hiding place, but he knew Matthias’ face was pale.
‘Everything,’ Fin said, each breath scoring his lungs. ‘We must throw everything at them.’
‘There is not much left in the bag,’ he said. ‘Mostly just the fireworks.’ He took a swig from a glass bottle of Scotch he must have pilfered from the sock. Fin jumped up and seized it from Matthias’ hand, and before had time to complain, he tore off a piece his shirt and stuck one end of it in the bottle. The other he dipped in the flame of the lamp.
‘What in blazing heaven...’ Matthias said, as Fin ran out from their cover. He stopped when he was thirty yards away or so from them, halfway between them and the sleigh. What are you doing, he thought. Before he could consider an answer, he shouted “For Prancer!” and sent the bottle soaring toward the mob.

Before the Undead could reply the flaming bottle landed among the ones in front. A few were instantly lit up; there was an awful scream that throttled the air, and the flailing bodies tumbled into others and lit up dozens more before the rest got wise and kept their distance. Most of them fell and burned up on the spot, but a few kept running around, and one came charging at Fin like a flaming comet. The elf sensed it was time to get back. He returned, and made snowballs to throw at the fiery Deadman. He pelted it, but failed to slow it down, till it reached the sleigh and crashed right into it. It staggered back, and collapsed. The sleigh did not catch on fire, and Fin sighed in relief. But the Dead pressed on.
‘Fireworks,’ Fin said.

At once, him, Matthias, and even Sofia pulled out long, multicoloured rocket firecrackers on the end of sticks. There were less than a dozen left, but they were large, and there was one nearly as tall as Matthias, with red, white and green spiraling up it like a candy cane. Taking as many as they could carry, they planted them in the snow a few feet away from the sleigh. A smell of roasted flesh rose up from the charred heap just in front of it.

They lit three. When the fuses ran down, one spun out off to the side, one went up above and past the mob and hit the trees, and only one headed right for its target. They all burst at once, and for a moment the world seemed almost festive again. The one that hit the undead fired off like a machine gun and knocked down a whole line of them. The trees behind them caught fire, while the one that missed exploded a red dome of light, huge, but only burning the zombies on that end.

‘Aim the ones like that better!’ Matthias barked. They fired off the enxt round, and the blast hollowed out the centre, even sending a few Dead Ones flying. The smell of sulfur hung heavy in the air. Still they came; the forest and town seemed now to be sending every last Dead One at them. They were down to their last: the huge candy cane rocket.
‘One last chance,’ Matthias said.
They took the great rocket and planted it in the snow. He took a match, lit it, and held it up to the snaking fuse. The Dead oozed ever closer.
‘For Saint Nicholas,’ said Fin.
Matthias beamed. ‘For Saint Nick.’
The candy cane blasted off, and it went hissing like a dragon into the masses. Fin saw the bodies flying before he heard the blast. And then light. A dome of white grew from underneath the Dead, and it faded, and one of blue surged up in its place, then red, then gold, purple, silver. The blast knocked Matthias, Fin and Sofia off their feet. A cloud of smoke hung over their target. The forest burned behind, lighting up the heart of the smoke like a huge, glowing coal.
They rose, and coughed. They watched it all, and for a few seconds it remained silent, except for the burning pines. Then minutes passed. Nothing. Sofia came out from behind and watched with them.

‘Did it work?’ Fin finally said.
‘It may have kept them at bay for a while. At least until the Chief returns. Where is he?’
Fin knew he would have to tell him eventually, but before he had to steel himself to answer, Sofia cried out, and pointed to the haze. Shadows passed over the warm glow. Something stirred in the furnace. And out they came again.
‘Heaven help us,’ said Fin, falling to his knees.
‘Oh shit,’ said Matthias.

VIII

Some, whom Fin thought they had killed, picked themselves up and carried on, though perhaps short an arm or a foot. A chorus of languished creatures rose up in groans, howls, and inarticulate murmurs. Hell seemed to have emptied all its bowels on the three of them. Coming in under the roars was one lower and fiercer. It shook the earth to its depths. There was something different about this though, Fin thought. The more he listened, the more mechanical this roar sounded.

Then, out from the burning treetops and red clouds of smoke, a huge, shining thing emerged. ‘Like a bat out of hell’ would have been inaccurate. In the near-blinding light it was more like a great creature with many limbs and heads, armoured in steel, half angel half demon knotted together, hurtling out bright and blazing from some unknown, ageless depths. It soared right over the the heads of the undead army, and landed before the three survivors. The light dimmed.

A truck. A red pick-up truck, at least its metal frame was red hot, with at least a dozen undead hanging onto it like lions with their teeth and claws sunk into a large prey. In its open back stood a great, tall figure, dressed in a tattered white coat, blood all down his head, and dripping from his long beard. Where his hands clutched the truck cabin, the metal crumpled like tin. He had a fierce, pure fire in his ancient eyes.

‘Sir.’ Fin whispered. The Chief turned and looked upon Fin, who trembled in his gaze.
‘I did not like being cramped in that infernal automobile,’ the old saint said. He took something out of his coat, and blew it at the zombies clinging to the truck, and all around. A white flame unfurled, blinding and paralysing the creatures.

‘The Yulefire will not last, we must ride,’ he shouted.
‘But sir, the sleigh,’ Matthias said. ‘A runner has broken off, and Rudolph is not fit to ride.
‘We have a new sleigh now,’ the Chief said. ‘I just needed some time to learn how to ride it. Now let us hitch the able-bodied to this, and we shall ride in all haste from here.’
While the Dead Ones writhed in pain and groped in blindness, the Chief and the others gathered the reindeer and attached them to the front. They were bounding in energy now that their old friend was back; they were without fear, though not without injury. Even Rudy seemed better, but the Chief kept him in the back. Fin, Matthias and Sofia shuffle into the cabin, while the Chief navigated the team over to Prancer’s body. He lifted the dead reindeer into his infinitely voluminous sack, and laid it down beside him and Rudy.

‘On, Dasher! On, Dancer! On...’ he paused, and the team faltered. ‘On, Prancer.’ He named his fallen comrade with great love and woe, and continued naming each one, as it lifted up, up, up into the dark. The fire still burned in the forest, and the monsters, recovered, wandered out into the dark waste, clueless where their prey had gone. Soon they would forget why they had even come out here, doomed to walk until their legs broke off from the freeze.
Fin’s passenger door didn’t close properly, so he had to hold it, as a few inches of cold air blew in at the door’s bottom. They rose up through icy clouds.

Fin felt something cold on his foot. He looked down and saw a hand clutching him through the door’s opening. He yelped and let go of the door, and tumbled out. Matthias lunged for him and caught him by the hand. Fin dangled in the freezing air, wind whipping at him, nothing below him except for that short little man with the red earmuffs, full of spite, gnawing on his other hand. He howled in pain as his bones were being gnashed, and nearly slipped from Matthias’ grip. A small ball of Yulefire floated down from the Chief and landed on the man’s face, exploding on impact. He screamed, and let go, plummeting into darkness. Little by little Matthias heaved him up into the cabin. He rocked his mangled left hand, a bad gash in his palm and a red, fleshy stump where his pinky used to be. Fin was close to fainting, as he watched the infection spread from the wound, draining life out of him, and replacing it with something else. The colour left, and a greenish grey seeped in. He looked at Matthias, who looked on him with doubt, sorrow, and a pang of fear.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, half delirious. He opened up the door, and was about to lean out and let the open sky take him, hopefully to smash his body against a hard mountain and die instantly.
‘No!’ said the Chief, his voice resonating throughout the truck’s frame. ‘There is another way,’ he said.

They returned an hour before dawn, welcomed back with cheers, hot cider, and medical attention. Fin felt very weak, but he made it through the night and did not turn. They managed to cauterize the wound with Yulefire, stopping the bleeding and isolating the infection. The Chief had seen it happen on his travels only a few days ago; whatever it was, it spread slow enough that it could be stopped if the infected flesh was removed, and it had not reached the the brain or the other vital organs.

Sofia was brought to her parents, both anxious and remorseful for having been parted with her. Her father, Mikhail, was a tall man, balding, though still quite handsome, and her mother Maria nearly as tall, with the same full, curly black hair and olive eyes as her daughter. Sofia introduced them to Fin, the brave young elf who agreed to go on this search-and-rescue mission before even meeting them.

That Christmas Day evening was also marked by a funeral. Prancer was cremated, and one and all mourned him out in the open ice fields beyond the Workshop’s walls. They let arctic winds carry his ashes off, and send his spirit home. Fin watched from the Infirmary. The nurses would not let him attend, however dogged his attempts to escape. He was wrapped in bandages and stitches. From the window by his bed he could see the blazing pyre out on the field, ringed in by men, women, children, elves, and reindeer. Dancer, Prancer’s elder brother sang out a long, mournful elegy; a sadder sound was never heard in the North Pole.

Later on, the Chief came to visit him.
‘Sir,’ Fin said.
‘Fin,’ the Chief said. ‘I am glad you are awake. You’re already looking better.’
There was a pause, and both seemed at a loss for what to say.
‘I am very sorry about your hand,’ the Chief finally said.
‘It’s alright, sir.’ It wasn’t. His livelihood was in his hands, and he felt nearly hopeless, but he tried to be brave for the Chief. ‘How’s the saying go? “Better to live with one hand than die with two?” I can’t remember.’
The Chief smiled. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve asked Thaddeus to make you a prosthetic. It won’t work with quite the same efficiency, but he said it can be used for working.’
‘Thank you, sir!’ He was not expecting this. He feared he would never hold a hammer again. The Chief knew his heart. Of course he did.
‘Sir?’ He said.
‘Yes, my son?’
‘I...I am sorry for leaving you. I wish there was...I wish...’
‘Do not apologize. I’m sorry you had to make that choice. When I awoke, and you were both gone, I knew you had done the right thing. Your choice gave me strength.’ The Chief kneeled down, and took Fin’s remaining hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said. The twinkle in his eyes faded for a moment. He looked like an old man in that moment. He was thinking about all they had lost, and what was to come; Fin knew the Chief always looked old when he thought on these things.
‘It’s not over sir, is it?’ Fin said.
‘No.’

Another reconnaissance mission earlier that day brought back reports of massive undead migrations crossing the borders of the Arctic Circle.
‘But,’ he said, ‘We will be ready for them when they come.’
‘What do we do in the meantime?’

The Chief paused, and looked out the window. In the main courtyard, surrounded by tents and makeshift huts erected by the world’s refugees, the great Christmas Tree towered, decked with Yule-candles. At its feet lay thousands of photographs, and candles for all the loved ones lost. Men and women stood around it, and held each other close.

‘For now,’ said the Chief, ‘Merry Christmas.’

It's December 1st. You Know What That Means?

2011-12-01T21:28:00.000-08:00

I’m breakin’ out the egg nog.

For the most part I've resisted the siren call of Christmas coming from the consumer world throughout November. Kayla and I did go to the Santa Claus parade last weekend following Black Friday, but I'd say it was worth it. I hadn't seen a parade in ages, and despite the fact that it was 45 minutes late, it was impressive.

Otherwise, I wouldn't have been quite ready for it all. Start too soon and you'll burn out well before the big day, is my policy.

But now that it's December, I've decided it's safe to officially get in the mood for the holidays. That means I'm listening to holiday tunes, Christmas lights and decorations, drinking egg nog, and starting on that ol' Advent calendar.

I know there are a lot of people who don't care for the Christmas holidays. They definitely have good reason; it can be incredibly depressing: every time I go Christmas shopping a little part of me dies inside, so I don’t blame them.

And yet, for some silly reason, I love this time of year.

For one thing, I draw a lot of inspiration just from this season. The encroaching darkness and cold makes us more introspective (and if you're anything like me, more sleepy), and in this dark world we can find a vast reserve of creative energy. I've noticed that on several occasions I'll set a story I'm writing deep in a dark forest in the dead of winter. I think this place, more than anything else, sums up the magic of the season. For me, it's a place of transformation and austere beauty, mystery and terror, danger and wonder.

As cliché as it sounds, for me, Christmas is all about that small light in the darkest hour that signals hope and rebirth. In this time there's something very powerful at work, on a deep, archetypal level. Every attempt I've made each year to try and recognize that power in an institutional sense, i.e. going to Church Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, always falls short and way off the mark. But if any time of year turned my thoughts to something we may call God, it would be this one. The darkness itself draws me in, and the call to create keeps me going. It sounds more pagan the way I describe it, but the layers of Christian influence play their part as well.

Christmas I will call it, as that is how it came to me.

This is also a very special year, because it will be my first Christmas away from home. This has been a very hard thing for me to accept, but now that it's on its way I want to make the most of it. I'll be damned if I don't do my best to make this a fun, memorable Christmas. Furthermore, since it's also my first Christmas spent with Kayla, it is an opportunity to start new traditions.

Today I partook in the BC Legislative Assembly's annual tree lighting ceremony down at the Parliament Buildings, handing out programs and candy canes to attendees as none other than the Honourable Amor De Cosmos. It was a short, fun gig, and a good way to start the month.

I will be cooking up a brand new Christmas short story this year, which I'll release a bit closer to December 25th. I may also do something with my first Christmas story from a couple of years ago, "The King of the North". So keep your eyes peeled, for these, and other updates throughout the month on my 2011 holiday shenanigans.

Adios, for now!

P.S. Did you know that on this day in 1822 Peter I was crowned Emperor of Brazil?

Yeah, neither did I.

A Comedy of Terror: "Four Lions" Review

2011-11-20T21:36:00.000-08:00

Terrorism is no laughing matter. At least that’s how we all seem to feel in the post-9/11 West. But director Christopher Morris obviously begged to differ when he and his crack team of actors made the film Four Lions, a black comedy about possibly the most incompetent Islamic terrorists ever to strap explosives to their bodies in search of Paradise. And he may be on to something, because as you follow their story, you may not want to, but you will laugh. But what’s even more fascinating is you find yourself almost rooting for them in some way--hopefully not because you think their acts are justified, but because you find yourself liking them so much.

Four Lions follows a group of young Muslim men living in the UK, seeking salvation by waging war against the Western non-believers, and going out with a bang (they hope). They have the drive. All they need is a plan, and explosives. Lots of explosives.

Their leader Omar, played by Riz Ahmed, struggles to keep his fellow hopeless mujahideen from messing up their plans of eternal glory with squabbling, recklessness, and general numbskullery. But when him and his halfwit brother Waj, played by Kayvan Novak, go to a training camp in the mountains of Pakistan (it's implied that the camp is run by Al-Qaeda), Omar himself causes a destructive accident that causes more trouble for the terrorist organization than he’s worth. Escaping with their lives, Omar and Waj return to the UK, and without official endorsements from the higher ranks, Omar and the others are forced to make piecemeal efforts at jihad. Meanwhile the loose cannon of the group Barry (Nigel Lindsay) tries to take over the group, recruits a Tupak-quoting jihad-prankster named Hassan, and the oddball Faisal tests explosives by blowing up crows in the English countryside. As their plans finally come together(ish), tensions run high among the group, and slowly one thing after another goes wrong up until the shocking and incredibly poignant climax.

I’ll admit there were times when I couldn’t actually understand what they were saying because they spoke too fast, and with thick English accents. And you definitely want to hear every line, because the script is fast-paced, crass, witty, and solid satiric gold. The characters are extreme, but entirely believable and very likeable. Barry is tough, mean, and his own wild plans for the group take an already bold story into even more morally ambiguous territory. Waj is a complete moron (when they try to figure out what to blow up, he suggests with a straight face, “Internet”); he is easily the most lovable of the characters, always trying to please his brother.

But what I found the most fascinating was Omar’s character, and the contrast between his ambitions for holy war and scenes of him living comfortably in an upper-middle class home with a loving wife and a son. His wife Sofia appears to enjoy a fairly independent and relatively liberal life as a Muslim woman, and her and their son are well aware of Omar’s plans, and seem to fully support him (they find him in several scenes editing his group’s video recordings on his laptop at the breakfast table, like it's a normal thing to do). It challenges the audience to rethink who these people who choose to kill and blow themselves up in the name of God really are. The men who crashed into the Twin Towers were not unlike Omar: highly educated, middle class individuals. But unlike those individuals, what you love most about these characters is how they just can’t get their shit together, and you kind of hope they don’t pull it off, not chiefly because a terrorist act is generally seen as an abominable thing to do--although that does factor into it--but because the actors manage to make them so sympathetic that you kinda want them to, you know, not kill themselves.

You certainly hope they at least don't get caught.

I love it when movies dare to blur those moral boundaries, especially when they do it with humour. Mel Brooks said that one of the greatest weapons we have against tyrants is ridicule. He was referring to his send-ups of Hitler and Nazism in his films of course, but I think it applies here too. When one of the goals of terrorism is to create terror, what better way to undermine it than to laugh? But it goes further than ridiculing the terrorists. It also lets you get to know them, and see their flawed humanity in greater depth. Maybe this movie wouldn’t be able to have been made a decade ago, maybe not even 6 years ago when London faced a major terrorist attack. But it’s still a reality, one people face in the Middle East with much more frequency than they do in the West, so a movie like this is no less relevant.

I found out about this movie a few months ago, just by happening upon its trailer on the Apple website. I knew I had to see it, and eventually Kayla and I stumbled upon it again at a small neighbourhood movie store down the road from us on the new release shelf. It was released in 2010, so this isn’t exactly a timely review of the movie, I realise. But if anybody reading this is as new to it as I was, I strongly recommend it. It is shocking, provocative, very moving and wickedly funny.

To further coax you to see it, here’s the trailer:

Now go watch the whole thing!

-Liam

RSA Animate - The Divided Brain

2011-11-08T13:54:00.000-08:00

Some may have already seen this video on Youtube or Facebook, but I liked it so much I thought I would post it again on here--also to atone for my lack of posting last week. And if you haven't already seen it, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Grameen, Micro-Credit, and a Sobering Encounter

2011-11-06T15:14:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus. It had been sitting on my shelf for about three years, bookmark wedged in a few pages shy of 100. The damn thing wasn't getting read. I figured I'd sell it to Russells for store credit or something, but I decided, out of a mix of guilt and curiosity, to actually finish reading it first.

Doubtless most people reading this will be familiar with Yunus and his Nobel Peace Prize winning Grameen Bank, if not for its work and theories, then at least for the controversy it received in the media last year over allegations of tax-evasion and charging extremely high interest rates*. But for those of you who aren't familiar, Dr. Yunus started the Grameen Bank in the late 70's in Bangladesh. The idea was born after he lent a total of $27 US, at no interest, to a number of impoverished families in a village, to help them purchase the materials needed to make and sell their wares, and lift themselves out of poverty without turning to greedy moneylenders for help. At the heart of the Grameen Bank (Grameen meaning "rural" or "village" in Bangla) is the belief that poor people are incredibly creative and resourceful, not lazy and worthless, and the Bank's job is to offer them the chance in the form of "micro-loans" to help unleash the creative potential of these people as contributors to the economy and valuable members of society. The Bank lends the money to borrowers, the majority of them women, so they can use that seed money to start their own businesses, like selling hand-made baskets or fabrics, and the borrowers pay back the interest-free loan on the terms of their setting. It may take a while, but as Yunus illustrates, almost every single borrower pays back what they owe.

I am not entirely against capitalism, but my belief is that it must be curbed by government policy. So it's quite a challenge when Yunus says we should reduce the role of the government and let the private sector take the lead. But he is no typical neo-liberal. He argues that bureaucracy has completely undermined the idea of a state-funded social safety net, and because money isn't getting to the poor, it's not doing its job. But he recognizes that at the other end lies the cut-throat business entrepreneur consumed by greed, whose image of the world is equally horrible. The poor get screwed on both accounts. So what Yunus advocates is small government, and that instead of international aid and charities combatting poverty, the standard should be taken up by a kind of "social entrepreneur", a new breed of entrepreneur whose goal of making profit is second to her goal of helping the world through socially and environmentally conscious action, Grameen being one example.

This strange brew of socially-minded, compassionate capitalism may be hard to imagine, but as I read of Yunus and the Bank's struggles from inception to the present day I was struck by the overwhelming number of success stories, ones where the value of human life was enshrined. Of course, micro-loans aren't a cure-all to poverty. The borrowers didn't suddenly become part of the middle class, and there were endless setbacks, including disease, famine, natural disasters, and even cultural resistance (rumours went around in the conservative, rural areas of Bangladesh that the Bank actually turned women away from Islam). But many have started up their businesses nonetheless, broken the debilitating cycle of poverty, and since then have become an economic force to be reckoned with, in Bangladesh, and in various other countries around the world where Grameen or similar micro-credit programs have started up. Overall, micro-loans have had a positive influence in the world. Of course the founder will portray his program in the best light, but the proof speaks for itself. Plainly written so that a layperson like myself can read, enjoy, and maybe even be inspired by it, I don't regret finishing it, and may instead decide to lend it to someone else instead of sell it off.

A couple of days ago I was headed downtown, waiting at the corner of Yates and Quadra for the light to change, when I was approached by a man. He seemed friendly enough, but he shoved a paper into my hands and went on to explain that he was living on the street and selling this paper by donation. I told him I didn't have any money to offer him, and when he asked if I could go to a bank to get out some cash, I told him again that I didn't have any money to offer him. Clearly disappointed, he told me to keep the paper, and walked away. The whole experience lasted maybe two minutes, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. It certainly poked a hole in my bubble of a self-satisfied life. I did have a few nickels in my wallet. I think I said no as a knee-jerk reaction; it's not just to people living on the street, but canvassers of worthy causes like Amnesty, Red Cross, and SPCA as well. I don't react well to peddlers of any kind. But even though I didn't like how pushy he was, I could understand what he was trying to do. In fact, it seemed not unlike what many borrowers in Bangladesh villages are trying to do. Instead of just asking for spare change, he was trying to engage me in a business transaction, working to generate seed money to help himself along while keeping his dignity intact, perhaps even empower him. It's not exactly a parallel situation, but similar in essence. And in light of the hope I felt after reading about the Grameen Bank, you'd think I would've been more enthusiastic about what this guy was trying to do. But for one reason or another, out of fear, caution, impatience, or whatever, I refused.

I offer this anecdote as self-reflection, and as a tonic to whatever sense of ego-inflation we may feel when we align ourselves with a noble cause. This sort of scenario happens thousands of times a day, but for some reason it certainly gave me enough pause to need to stop and reflect on it. Regardless of a person's attitude toward homeless people asking for money, hopefully others can learn from my behaviour and find a better way of dealing with these brief, but impactful meetings with people living on the fringe making an honest effort to better their lives. I hope that perhaps if I am approached by another person selling this paper or any like it (it's called the Lionheart Tribune, by the way. Anybody else been approached by someone with this publication?), if I can't offer anything by way of money, I can at least offer a word, or an ear to listen. We needn't go to the other side of the world to find poverty. It isn't quarantined off in developing countries, but here in Canada as well, and the best part of Yunus' idea is that it is applicable to any country, regardless of its GDP. I'm not about to go off and become a social entrepreneur now, but it seems to me even the little efforts count for something. Here's hoping, anyway.

*These allegations were proved to be nothing more than that. The source was a Norwegian documentary called Caught in Micro-Debt. Micro-credit is not without its critics of course, and I'm sure there are cases where they are right, but I don't have reason to believe that it is fundamentally unsound as an approach to fighting poverty. It's certainly worth a try, isn't it?

It's James Ussher Day! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, THE UNIVERSE!

2011-10-23T17:56:00.000-07:00

That's right, folks. Today's the day it all began. One sleepy day in late October, while strolling through the endless stretch of Nothingness and Chaos, God decided to make the Universe. And if it weren't for the dogged efforts of a 17th century Irish Archbishop named James Ussher, we never would have known it was today, 6015 years ago. If it wasn't for him paying close attention to the Bible and calculating back to the days of Adam and Eve, we would still be living the erroneous belief that it was 13.7 Billion years ago, not in 4004 BC. Whew! That was a close one! Thanks for putting that to rest, Jim. Good sleuthing!

Never mind that God started Time on a date as arbitrary as the 23rd of October (why not January 1st? Or Christmas? Or International Talk Like a Pirate Day?). And never mind that he started the clock counting down. Or that the earliest homo sapiens, the dinosaurs, most rocks, and Mickey Rooney all predate Ussher's reckoning of Genesis. Ussher was a smart guy! He was an Archbishop. You don't get promoted to Archbishop if you're the village idiot; he must've been doing something right. And hey, why not 4004 BC? Stranger things have happened. Besides, those creationists seem so darn sure about it. They must be right!

So for that, we thank you Mr. Ussher. And to you, the Universe, I say Bonne Fête à Toi! (And please don't stop existing just yet, k? I enjoy pizza too much!)

Returning to Faery: Creation Through Narration

2011-10-14T19:36:00.000-07:00

I dare you to try to build an imaginary world for a character to walk through, fight for, destroy, love, die, etc. and not become instantly overwhelmed by the immensity of the task. Go on, try it.

Tolkien said that he created the mythology of Middle-earth because he wanted to imagine people who spoke the languages he had invented. For him, the languages came first, and then the stories. I'm working in the reverse, which has a host of problems, not the least of which being that I’m taking a path many have trodden before, and few have actually succeeded. I want to write a story in a fantastical world and in order to do that I must imagine the languages, the customs, and cultures they speak there. It must be rich in detail, or else it won’t bear the stamp of my own unique perspective. I won’t enjoy it because I’ll be telling someone else’s story. The thing is, I've realized that for me the Story comes first and foremost. Don't get me wrong, I've got a taste for languages myself. I’ve come to relish the rhythm and cadence of language, and the beauty and strangeness of words. But I am not a linguist by trade, and I've come to realize that if I'm ever going to get this bloody book finished, I have to accept that I’m not going to become a linguist any time soon. For all intents and purposes, I am a storyteller. And a storyteller’s trade is the Story.

So, after Story, everything else is secondary. The world does not exist outside of the story. But that seems like a problem to me, in fantasy. Story reigns like a tyrant here, but it is not the only important thing. I want to create a four-dimensional place, a sense that people in it keep moving through time and space, keep going about their business elsewhere during the main events of the story, long after the last page has been turned, and the book has been placed back on the shelf. So how does one go about doing that? Correction: how does one go about doing that without losing his mind? I know it must be done, but after countless false starts over the years it seemed like I would never find a way in.

Last summer, in a moment of recklessness I decided “to hell with it I’ll write the damn thing anyway” and proceeded with a ‘Write first, ask questions later’ mentality. What I found was this: if I just wrote a passage of the story I knew I wanted to happen, without editing or judging what came out, I could actually find some really cool stuff. It was liberation: I could carry out this story without knowing all the details of the world. In fact--and this was the best surprise of all--I would find just the details I needed through the telling of the story. Example: my protagonist is put in a prison. She falls asleep there in that dank hole and when she wakes up, she sees a vine has grown up the wall from where she lay her head, one that was not there when she got tossed in. This is a detail that I didn’t plan for, but it came up while I was writing the scene out. It may not lead anywhere, but then again, it just might.

Of course, there are some things that are harder to get around. In the next scene, my protagonist is escaping a city through an underground tunnel; she is escorted by a guard. What is the guard’s name? What are the men and women who live in this city named? I’ve always been hung up on names. It’s hard enough when finding the right name for a character set in our world. "Should I call this woman Lisa? Or is she a Deb? Or a Françoise?" The snag is tenfold in a world you made up. Eventually the responsibility of creating these people proves too much, and if you let it, it becomes death to creative flow. But every now and then, I’ll brainstorm some words and some names, and if they’re suitable for this culture, I’ll use them. Which leads me to the best part, which I only recently gave myself license to do: if I realize later on a name doesn’t work? No biggie! I can always go back and change it! What a thought! It sounds pretty obvious, but for a long time I had felt I couldn’t find the character until I had the name, and once it was down on paper the process was almost irreversible, because the name is a powerful thing and can take root quickly. But it doesn’t have to. So the guard’s name? Let’s call him “Kalfira.” Why? What does that name mean? “Don’t ask me! I don’t f#$%ing know! Because I like the way it sounds! Leave me alone! I’ll figure it out later!” is my response. In the meantime, I stop myself from getting hung up, and just keep writing. The result? I’ve actually started writing certain scenes I’ve had in my head for years. It’s finally happening!

That’s the other thing: I don’t have to write out this story in chronological order. The very start of it is still a bit fuzzy, but I can see very clearly where my characters are three or five steps ahead. So why wait for the first step? Figure out just where you are, take note of your surroundings, look for clues, and then you’ll have an easier time of retracing your steps back. C.S. Lewis described the genesis of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe as a series of different images he had in his head, which for one reason or another kept floating toward each other, so he wrote them out and went backwards and forwards connecting them. The original seed didn’t start with the children fleeing London to escape the Blitz. It started with the image of a satyr standing beneath a lamp in a wintry wood. He didn’t intend for it to be a Christian allegory, but that’s the direction the story took him, and he followed it. But before that it was a story, plain and simple. And before that, it was images. And it was through the telling of the story that the images came together to become Narnia.

I find this approach seems to work for me as well. World building is a pleasure in and of itself, but I don’t have as much success with it if I just do it systematically, listing out names of places and people, mapping it out and conjuring up static information like I’m preparing a Encyclopedia entry for it. To an extent these can be useful things to help organize your thoughts, but I find they don’t generate the ideas themselves. They don’t galvanize the imagination, they don’t lead to action. And being an actor, I like me some action. A new world is an awfully big place. I’d much rather go there as a travel writer, documenting what I find. That way, the world comes in flashes, in sounds, images, in songs, poems, war stories, love stories. Stories. Approach it with child-like wonder and the active voice of narration, rather than the authority of a God-like architect listing trivia, and the world will more willingly unfold itself.

Another major obstacle has been my lack of experience. I’ve questioned whether I should be writing this story at this time in my life, simply because I haven’t lived enough. It’s stewed for so long (half of my brief life, so far), and it’s come to mean so much to me, that I feel like it has to be my magnum opus, or it doesn’t see the light of day. For a while I put it off, deciding I should wait until I’m older, wiser, have more life experience and am in theory a better writer, so it will be a better story when I’m at the top of my game. I realise now just how silly this way of thinking is. This isn’t prudence, or good writing habits. It's vanity! I’m coddling the piece to death. The ego gets in the way and the story gets punished for it. This must stop! The story burns in me now! Not 10, 20, 30 years from now. I should be writing from that place that yearns to make itself heard in the present moment. If I try to write from somewhere else, it will not be genuine, and it will shrivel up. Of course I’ve got other story ideas, and I work on them as well (if this was all I had to work on I would go mad!). But if this fairy tale habitually crops up unbidden, I should take that as a sign. Opus shmopus. It may not be the best story I’ve ever written, it may even be a very bad one. It may simply be something I have to get down before I can move on to a new adventure. Then again, it may be wonderful. But for now that’s not my place to decide, is it?

For now, my job is to keep writing.

Montaigne, Renaissance Blogger

2011-10-08T13:42:00.001-07:00

'I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.' -Michel de Montaigne

It's a little ironic, being a blogger, and one of the few people I know who actually enjoys writing essays, and has spent the past 4 years whipping up several of them (though not at many as maybe an English or History Major), that I should not have once come across the work of Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne was a French nobleman of the 16th century, and was best known as the father of what we now call the personal essay. His most memorable work is a collection of prose writings called Essais (French for "trial" or "attempt"), covering diverse topics ranging from sleep, to books, to the limits of human knowledge and our own mortality. Granted, I was not officially a student of literature or philosophy, so there was really no pressing need that could have led me to him, besides errant curiosity or procrastination. But my studies of Renaissance theatre brought me tantalizingly close to him; it's very likely that Shakespeare himself read Montaigne. You'd think the name would have come up at least a couple of times, and sooner. Nope. Rather, I am finally exposed to his writing long after school has ended. But I should be grateful that I've come across him at all.

I got a little three-dollar Dover Thrift edition of a selection of Montaigne's Essays from Russel Books a while back, and read it this past month. I found it invigorating. He (and his translator English poet Charles Cotton) have a knack for making you want to study and meditate on your own life, to flesh out your thoughts and to attain perspective through the act of writing. He made it his goal to paint an honest portrait of human life, using himself as a reference point. His style is skeptical, anecdotal, often going into tangets and never making any claim of possessing some absolute truth. In fact, one of his Essays is titled "That It Is Folly to Measure Truth and Error by Our Own Capacity", discussing just that; we can never get the entire picture.

Reading these essays I found the syntax to be long and meandering. The sentences were in appearance so tangled, so clogged with dependent clauses and sub-clauses--of course not uncommon to writers of his age--it could hardly be decoded by a 21st century reader like myself without breaking into a bit of a sweat, and maybe a slight headache. But I kinda liked it for that. It was a robust workout. I remember what our Prof. Jen Wise said in Theories of Acting, that when you diligently read something beyond your skill level, your mind strengthens and widens to accomodate the new territory. You become a better reader. I think that's something I've found rewarding from generally all archaic writings, including Shakespeare: for a cretin like myself, half the fun is in figuring out just what the hell they're saying. And once you've breached that wall, you can freely roam the country they've laid out for you. You can understand and relate to Montaigne's observations. You can relate to almost everything he's saying, and you feel a kinship with him, and those that have gone before him (he borrows heavily from older, classical writers like Seneca, Plutarch, Horace, Cicero, Aristotle, etc.) This is in no small part because of his very personal style of writing. You then become aware of a long unbroken chain of human experience from the days of ancient Rome, to the French Renaissance, to today. It is a reminder of all the richness that Western philosophy has to offer, something I've neglected of late. Time and distance are no barriers; Montaigne's words are still valuable to me, a young Canadian man in the 21st century. There is still wisdom to be found with him, because like myself, he was a very human being.

So I feel that in a way the blogging world owes a great debt to this French nobleman. My part of it certainly does. I and many others try to understand our lives through writing. And any one who attempts this owes Montaigne for making room for such an attempt. He was an innovator, bringing his own personal experience into his work, because the great subject of his work was himself. So that's why I'm dedicating this post to Michel de Montaigne, the Renaissance Blogger.

Update

2011-09-30T23:12:00.000-07:00

Got back from a fantastic Kings of Leon concert in Caprica City--I mean, Vancouver. I was considerably less familiar with KOL going into it than most people there, but I recognized quite a few of their songs, and really liked almost every single one. This has launched me into an infatuation with their music, naturally. I partly wish I'd done more research before going to the concert, so I'd be able to appreciate it even more, but on the other hand it's not a bad way of getting into a band, no?

I don't have much else to report, right now. Life is busy enough, though. I'm bouncing between work, yoga and karate classes, and among all that I've got a couple of projects on the side to keep me involved with theatre and performance, and am working on a short, 1500 word piece for a CBC short story contest. Lots of variety. I wish I could've done more blog posts for this month. I feel bad having only done these two. Sorry about that, September. I'll do more for next month. I promise.

Inception: The Dark Knight Rises at Bag End, or What You Will

2011-09-18T19:48:00.000-07:00

What do The Hobbit, Shakespeare, and Batman all have in common? Everything, apparently.

A few days ago I had a dream. At the time it was terrifying, but also exhilarating. Here's how it went:

I am with a bunch of other people; I don't know who. Somehow we end up running from something, and we're running along a huge, but unstable wall we made out of snow bricks. It collapses as I run on top. As it turns out, we're being chased by a giant monster made of snow, which I later learn is actually a Balrog covered in snow. We take refuge in a dark cavernous place, and I think it's beneath Bag End, in Hobbiton. I go as far down this cave as I possibly can, down to the very bottom where there's water, and platforms floating around on it. I, and I'm assuming all the other people who got in, look up and watch with anticipation the cave's entrance way above us, hoping we aren't spotted. I then hide inside a crevice in the wall, and whoever I was before, I am now viewing the action from the perspective of a small cave-dwelling creature.

And then, instead of everything happening above me, it's happening down below. I'm up in the higher walls, looking down from this crevice. There is a metal railing on the edge of it, and there are other metal railings, platforms, stairs and walkways built into the walls of the cave: it is none other than the Bat Cave. Of course. What else would be underneath Bag End? And suddenly I see below me, Batman flying away in his Batwing, through a huge opening in the cave, going out to do battle with the Snow-Balrog. He's gone for a few moments, but then I see a red light, and then an enormous ball of flame bursts through into the cave.

Something opens from behind me. I am a human again, and someone comes into my hiding place, as a cold light of an overcast day spills in, as if from the main level of a city street. The crevice is sealed off from the rest of the Bat Cave, and in from this door come a bunch of thugs. I am surrounded by Bane's cronies. And then someone begins to explain that Bane is an ex-UFC fighter, and Italian, and he's out to prove that William Shakespeare is his direct ancestor, which for some reason means that he has to kill Batman before he can prove it's true. Someone also mentions that Commissioner Gordon is in cahoots with Batman, so they decide to go after him too. This pisses me off and frightens me, because now Gordon's life is in danger as well.

I don't know whether Batman won or lost against the Snow-Balrog, but I know he can't be dead, because it's Batman! However, things look grim. The forces of evil have the upper hand, now that they've discovered the Bat Cave.

So what does this all mean? Well, I'm no psychoanalyst, but I'm pretty sure my subconscious is saying that Christoper Nolan and Peter Jackson need to scrap the movies they're working on, join forces, and make a movie based off of this story. If they don't come willing, then I may have to sneak inside their dreams and plant the seed. They'll both think it was their own idea, of course, but I'm okay with that. I'll do what it takes.

I think it'll work.

Principle

2011-08-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

I recently applied for a job at the Good Planet Company, a store in Victoria that sells all eco-friendly home products. I admit I get excited at the prospect of working in a retail job where I can sell things with a clear conscience. I don't know what my chances of getting the job are, but it would be pretty cool to be a part of something I know is trying to make a difference in the world by transforming our consumer culture into a sustainable one. It would be nice to live by one's principles, wouldn't it?

As the summer is drawing to a close it seems like a good time to reflect on this, and how it is part of a larger pattern I have noticed in the past few months; a pattern characterized by principle.

I have learned of the efforts of others who have tried to live by their principles, and I have made the effort myself. Of course this is ongoing and hasn't come up just this summer, but now that I am out of school and more free than I've ever been, the matter stares me squarely in the face. I must decide how I live my life. What choices will I make?

Near the beginning of the summer I finished reading Anna Karenina. The journey of one of its main characters, Levin, is a struggle to live a life of purity (Levin, was based on Tolstoy himself, another man who tried the same). Around April I watched a video of Jonathan Safran Foer giving a talk at the RSA about his new book Eating Animals, and his take on the meat industry, the environment, and vegetarianism. I sent this video to my sister, which inspired her to become a vegetarian herself. I have not made that leap. Not yet, anyway.

About two weeks ago Kayla and I watched a documentary called No Impact Man, about a man, his wife and child, who try to live with as little environmental impact as possible for a year; that means no electricity, no car, no diapers, no fridge, no paper, only locally grown food, etc.--and in New York City to boot. A week or so later we watched a The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, the newest documentary by Morgan Spurlock. It follows the process a filmmaker must go through to get brands, corporate endorsements, and product placement in one's movie. It's obviously on the opposite end of the principle spectrum, albeit done tongue-in-cheek. But the irony of course is that the further he goes along this process, the harder it is to maintain the integrity of his film and not compromise the vision he has for it. Several of the companies that agree to be a part of the movie have jillions of little stipulations that must be met for their product to be displayed onscreen (e.g. one company that sells a drink product says it is the only drink that can appear in the movie; or a gas station/restaurant chain that demands that it be the only one in the movie, and so on.)

These are all examples of people and stories that kept cropping up in my summer, all marked by the theme of principle.

I have tried in small ways to live a life guided by principle. For example, I made it a goal for myself to write on a regular basis, and to meditate on a daily basis. The former works for a couple of weeks at a time, averaging about four to five hours a week, and then something comes up. The meditation worked for only two to three weeks. The question is: why did I not succeed in implementing these things? They reflect what is important to me, what I value. I know they would invariably bring me joy and grounding. So what got in the way?

In short, life. On the one hand, I became busy by heaping one commitment on top of another in an all-you-can-manage buffet; not to mention friends, relationship, family, etc. On the other, there were times I would come home and I would be simply too tired to make any serious effort at these things, or so I told myself. "But, Liam, you are being too hard on yourself," some people will undoubtedly say. "And friends and family are extremely important, you insensitive ass!" They may also say. Well on the second matter, of course they are. On the first? I am skeptical. Allow me to put forward the notion that there are people, ordinary people like you and I, who have managed to ingrain in themselves a habit of practicing their art on a regular basis. A singer or a musician do scales, a runner runs, a karate-ka practices kata. Daily. My dad is a painter, and as a rule does a minimum of one brush stroke a day (the genius of this of course is its disarming simplicity: one brush stroke will usually lead to many more once you sit down in front of the thing.) There is a great deal I can do with only one hour, out of twenty-four. There are ordinary people who have a solid routine, and still seem to lead balanced lives. I glut myself on hundreds of little reasons not to do these things that will bring me joy and peace of mind.

And what of the moral sphere? For example, I continue to eat meat knowing fully how destructive the meat industry is the environment. It's not a necessary evil, is it? We don't need to eat meat. My reasoning? I'm used to it, and I like the taste of meat. Jonathan Foer's response: so what? There are plenty of nutritional substitutes to meat that ought to consider (and we may have to at some point.) The planet is going to pot because I like the taste of hamburgers. I don't say this to condemn--I admit I am a part of the problem--but to draw attention to a hard fact. So when do our values, the things we believe to be right, step in?

Is it possible to live by our principles? Some people manage it, don't they? If possible, than to what degree? Moreover, what do you do when your principles clash with one another and compete for your attention? After the May 2 election I decided to write a letter to Stephen Harper. I penned it, and then put it away in my desk and never sent it. I decided it wasn't the right time for it, or it wasn't written clearly enough, or it probably wouldn't even reach him, it wasn't this, it wasn't that, till it wasn't anything at all. I decided it wasn't necessary to raise my voice and that I had to get on with other things.

What is more important here? Civic duty or artistic obligations? Art, or one's duty to the life of the spirit? Spiritual well-being, or physical well-being? It's hard to measure. Of course all of these are important, and all intrinsically linked. But that in itself presents problems. If they're all important, how does one prioritize? How do they all fit into your life, and the hierarchy of things that need tending to? Any thing worth doing takes hard work, but as soon as you focus in on something, other worthy causes get neglected. How does one serve these gods and not lose oneself?

The logistics are dizzying. Jury's out on this one, as far as I can tell.

To be fair, I have done a good amount of writing this summer, including a creative non-fiction piece, a short story, the scribblings of a poem, a new draft of an old story, the beginnings of another short story, and a few pages of my fairy tale. Not to mention the co-writing of an adaptation for the stage. I can safely say I haven't just sat around twiddling my thumbs, this summer. And I am only 21. My brain isn't even fully-formed yet, I am told. But it is the nature of the arts that nobody's going to wait for me. In this line of work, personal initiative is highly conducive to "making it". So what on Earth am I waiting for?

I think as far as getting a solid routine of any discipline is concerned, patience is key. Also, to not fear routine. Some people think of sheer drudgery when they think of routine. Some must imagine Sisyphus rolling a rock up a hill, only to have it fall down again for all eternity. Routine = tedium. Yet I don't think it needs to be seen that way. Routine is good. It's how you build muscles. It's how you play piano or project properly onstage. It's revelling in the process, the journey. So when we lose that ever-so-helpful regularness? Well, I think part of it though is acknowledging one's failings, and instead of wallowing in self-pity, you must renew your vows to the things you cherish, and carry on.

"Why do we fall?" asks Bruce Wayne's father. So we can learn to pick ourselves up.

My Day

2011-08-01T22:33:00.001-07:00

Today was a hectic day. On top of it being BC's Heritage Day, which means my work hours are longer and all the pissy families and tourists come out, it was also the last day my parents were in town before they flew back to Calgary. I got to have lunch with them, and then I had to say goodbye. Thankfully my afternoon was busy enough that it didn't give me a chance to get too down in the dumps about them leaving. But I really am sad to see them gone. My family always rejuvenates me emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Naturally, it's hard to see them go. This is also on top of the fact that quite a few of my good friends have all moved away from Victoria. Growing pains, you know?

Anyway, after I came home from work, I had to get groceries and clean, and then work on transcribing dialogue for the Fringe show I'm working on. I was worried I would just be toiling away until bedtime, a thought which never wins my vote. It was very easy for me to get frazzled and stressed. I was coming home from a troublesome grocery trip, feeling especially put upon: all this little quotidian tasks were eating away at my time to relax, and enjoy myself. I was even madder because only an hour and a half earlier I had had a brief period of meditation, and was feeling all pleased with myself for having done so and grounded myself etc. etc. And then suddenly I'm back to reality and lo and behold! my knickers are in a knot!

But there was a moment, as I was parking my bike, when this notion came to mind: It's not all about me. And for some reason, that truism is all it took. It wasn't a "suck-it-up buttercup" kind of notion. Well it was, partially, but not entirely. You are not at the centre of the universe; okay sure, that's a drag. But it's also the greatest news you could ever get. This is an enormous relief. There is something greater than you, and the burden is not on you to have all your ego's demands met.

I will forget this truth soon enough, and will need some reminding periodically. But it was nourishing all the same, a good pick-me-up when my spirits are flagging. Hopefully it'll come up again, down the road.

Just thought I'd share that with y'all. I have an idea for an essay I'd like to write, and I'll post it on here when it comes into existence. Until then, have a wonderful night everyone.

Fruit, Part IV (Conclusion)

2011-07-19T12:58:00.000-07:00

“Ashley?” the woman says again.

She doesn’t answer, but keeps looking at the woman’s hands. The woman tries to pull Ash to her feet, and she doesn’t resist, but the woman can’t do it. She kneels down and holds Ash’s face and leans in to kiss it, but Ash turns away like there’s a fly in her face. And the man just keeps standing there, weighing the photograph against the real thing. After a little more struggling the woman lets go, and she waves her fists about and grits her teeth, as everybody watches her silent tantrum, knowing the monstrous wail she is choking. The woman stops, looks back at everyone, the line, the tents, the thermoses, the snow. And then she looks at me.
“Are you a mother?” She says with a surgeon’s poise.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” Each word is a cold, sterilized blade. I have to bite my tongue. Stay professional.
She straightens her back, turns and walks away. The man, remaining, looks confused. Then he puts the photograph in his pocket and follows his wife down the path.
“That them?” I say, breathing on Ash’s chilled hands.
“I think so.” Ash doesn’t seem to remember. “I’m thirsty.”

Ash’s breaths are short, and to the point. Every movement she makes is minimal and calculated. I’ve given her three bottles of water in the past hour. Ash’s hair is thinner than it was this morning. I stopped the recorder, but she insists I continue. Her eyes glaze over every few minutes; her face is like a light switch being turned on and off, now in almost regular intervals. People keep lining up and she keeps knocking them down, possibly not even aware she’s doing it anymore. The rest keep their vigil in silence. Water, Ash urges, is the best thing right now.

“Oh fuck me.” She says loud enough for everyone to hear. “It’s official. I’m blind.” Her jaw hangs open and her lower lip is shaking. Her brow is wrinkled, which is the most expression I’ve seen on her face all day. A dim fear fills her eyes like cataracts. I take her sallow hands.
“Mum?”
“Holly.”
“Sorry…Fuck, it’s cold. I can feel that now.” The Thing is not holding up its end of the bargain. Is this still what’s supposed to happen? Before I can ask she slips out again.

Myself and two paramedics squat beside the limp girl, trying to wrest her from the fallow ground. She hasn’t moved that spot in almost two months and they’re expecting it’ll be easy. She is a small, hundred and ten pound teenager with the weight of the earth itself. Perhaps that Thing is pure lead. Poison. Ash is unconscious in our arms while we wiggle her out of place. Four stockier men from the camp come over and help lift her onto the stretcher, straining every muscle in their backs and legs to do it. The bangles slip off her slack arms as we carry her. There’s a shallow groove in the ground where she sat.
I stand over Ash in the ambulance, across from the younger blonde paramedic. A whimper comes up from her through the oxygen mask. The monitor shows a temperature of a hundred and five. The heat is rising up from her, like a skin she’s sloughing off.

Ash’s eyes are sunken and her skin worn so thin the muscles are visible beneath it. I wish I could run my fingers through the girl’s hair, but it looks like it would fall out if I did.

Her eyelids slide open like a doll’s: it’s not Ash I’m looking at. I lean in and stare It straight in the eye.

Thing. You’re not a miracle. You’re a growth of cells that don’t know they’re dead. Those people might be fooled, but I had you once too and only the dead can know the dead so I thought you might listen to me, if not her. Let her go, and I’ll confess. It nods Ash’s head in agreement.
Since I met Ash, I dreamt I had hair again. All the way down past my feet, even. Every time I’m near Ash, my body doesn’t feel so swollen and empty, like a balloon, the way it usually does. I feel like Bo will want to touch me again. I remember his big hands and his strong shoulders and his weight. I want Bo to run his fat stupid fingers through my hair. When I’m near Ash I feel like if I were to do a pregnancy test right there, pee on that stick right there then life would be sure to follow. There, I confessed. Now get out.

Ash’s body straightens out like a plank and her eyes burst open. The paramedic is dumb-struck by the thin green line of her heart rate that moves not like a flat dash interrupted by blips of pulse, but like notes on a score of music, all over the place in no discernible order. A deafening crack rings out through the small compartment of the vehicle. The oxygen mask has snapped off and Ash grins so wide you can see her back molars.
“Treeee—” she proclaims, and vomits out a massive grey root as thick as a pole. It fires out and widens as it goes, unhinging her jaw. On the end little shoots break off from the main stock, and yellow flowers explode on them. It creaks toward the ceiling and spreads its branches along it and down the walls, while the blonde paramedic screams and backs up. The girl’s hair has fallen out completely. From her eyes and nostrils grow damp leaves and smaller branches whipping about and the main limb has sprouted full boughs and they bear fruit, small nut-like fruit growing rapidly. From the body’s joints grow more roots that wrap themselves around the stretcher and dangle to the floor.

The ambulance has slowed to a stop, unable to bear the weight of the tree. The thing has burst through the walls and flattened the tires. It’s fighting to reach the earth again, and in its attempt it cuts the entire vehicle in half, opening it like a steel nutshell. The branches flay about rudely and throw us to the street. It digs its hoary fingers into the asphalt and pierces through until it reaches soil, while it twists and writhes upwards and outwards. There are three main branches, thick, slender and splendid silver; one straight out at an eighty degree angle, and the two other ones winding off in their own directions. The branches bear green, oval-shaped fruit, heavy and ripe.

The crowd from the park has followed us all the way up Centre Street. No cars hit the hulking thing, but several have mashed together on both sides of the road around it. Ash is absolutely gone, and in her place the tree stands five metres at the base and thirty feet high. Its canopy hangs over like a massive dome as wide as it is tall, with thick leaves the size of an adult’s hand.
I see three news networks trying to slither in, but two fire trucks, three ambulances and five police cars barricade the site, offering the shivering multitudes blankets and stretchers. There is a hollow at the base that some of the children play in, hiding themselves. The adults stand back. One sprightly young believer from the park climbs the tree with the grace of a monkey. With a firm footing in the knotted side he reaches the lowest branch, only ten feet off the ground, the end made lower by the weight of the fruit. He shakes the branch, unable to reach the luscious green object that’s as big as his head. One snaps off and rolls down the slope of the trunk’s enormous roots and along the asphalt nearby me.

I pick up the thing; it’s heavy and its husk is pocked and wrinkled. But it is warm as well. There is a shuffle of feet, and I look up and see the boy in front of me, eyes on the fruit. As gently as possible, I thumb open a slit in it to see moist white flesh underneath, sleeping, embryonic. It almost shivers in the late winter air. I fold the slit back over again, and hand the large fruit to the boy, who takes it over and shows it to his parents.
My pocket vibrates, and I pull out my phone: nine missed calls, all from Bo of course.

I open it, and dial.

Fruit, Part III

2011-07-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

It is now late afternoon, and at least twenty people have received salvation. The cold sun dips behind the skyscrapers, the downtown core flushes out its workers in a mass exodus, but the faithful mob remains. I offer a blanket from my car to Ash, but she refuses. She says she doesn’t get cold at night; says the ‘Thing’ has been protecting her, keeping her warm. No frost-bite yet, but I see her shiver, all the same. She makes a junky look like Miss Universe: her muscles have atrophied, and recently her bowel movements have completely stopped. She hasn’t left this spott for nearly two months because it hasn’t let her. It’s asserted control, and yet, her personality is somehow still intact.

I’ve brought us both some boxed rice vermicelli and shredded pork. But all Ash wants is water. “You’re anemic,” I say. “Eat.”

Ash’s hands are practically limp right now, so I have to feed it to her. I ask her about people who haven’t been as enthusiastic about the idea of her being there. Between swallowing and chewing she tells me about Reverend Karl Novak, from Church of the Redeemer. He paid her a visit last week with a posse of board members who were upset at what she was doing, and that it was taking parishioners away from their church not three blocks away.

“‘You are stealing God’s flock from Him’” she says in a nasal, flat Novak impersonation. “I told them it was a free country so they can shove it.” Her face beams with pride. “It was rich.”
“Why didn’t you try to ‘convert’ Novak?”
“I can’t really decide who gets healed and who doesn’t. Plus, I think you have to want it. He’s happier going around bullying homeless teenagers with his Jesus Club thugs, anyway. And I don’t think he deserves to know the truth about himself.”
“Why should he feel threatened by you, Ash?”
“He knows I’m right. I’m the real McCoy,” she says, eyeing my notepad, perhaps hoping I quote her verbatim.
“You believe you’re helping these people?”
She pauses. “Sure. What do you think?”
I think the placebo effect is a powerful thing. “I think you need a doctor.”
“I think you need help. You want me to heal you yet?”
“That won’t be necessary, thanks.”
“You miss your hair, don’t you?”
I hold vermicelli up to her mouth. “Eat.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have--”
“Eat.” Suddenly I feel very conspicuous with my toque on.

The food helps ease the headaches a little, she tells me, but it’s always there. Like drugs and painkillers, food is no better of an anesthetic. She says the Thing is trying to make her hate her body, so she’ll be glad to be rid of it when the time comes, which she insists is soon.

My phone rings. I step away from her and the congregation. It rings three times before I pick it up. A tinny voice from somewhere far away comes on the other end.
“Holly?”
“What is it?”
“Dr. Baum called. Your test was at noon. Where the hell are you?”
“I’m downtown right now, with my story. I’ll worry about the test, okay?”
“You mean you didn’t go?”
“Whatever, Bo. It’s my problem, right?”
“It’s our problem, Hol.” The line goes quiet for a moment. “Anyway, how are you feeling?”
“See you, Bo.” I snap the cell shut. We are a family of three: Bo, myself, and my pelvic exams.
“Who’s Bo?” says Ash.
My cancer. “Husband.”
“He’s leaving you.” She seems surprised at her own words.
I put more vermicelli in her mouth. “Did your tumor predict that?”
“It’s not a tumor!” she says in her best Schwarzenegger parody, sputtering out noodle. “And it didn’t have to.”
“Can we talk about something else?”
“‘Can we talk about something else?’ They teach you that at reporter school?”
“Tell me about your parents.”
She shakes her head, and closes her eyes. “Again, won’t have to.”

The world is blue in the overcast evening. The crowd has surged. People are back from work and they’ve brought others, bundled but faithful, numbered at almost a hundred. If they’re not in line they stand about, talking to each other in low voices, not wanting to miss what happens next, assuming there is something next. A lot of them have brought sleeping bags and thermoses; there are two tents in the park, so far. I’ve been sitting just a few feet away to the Ash’s side, as the queue grows all the way down the path, to the street corner.

At the altar now is another couple. The man is tall and gangly, but his coat is puffed up so he looks like an egg on stilts. His face is thin with a salt and pepper beard and his jaw is tight. The woman is shorter, with broad shoulders under a long red overcoat. She has too much makeup on, but I can still see her hazel eyes, and blonde hair cut to her shoulders. They aren’t kneeling. The man is holding a photograph, glancing at it--at Ash--and back at it. The girl doesn’t look at them, but stares forward cloud-headed, like she does with everybody. She doesn’t look until the woman approaches her and takes her hands. And when she looks it’s not at the woman, just at the hands holding hers. Ash examines them with mild, clinical interest.

“Ashley?” Says the woman, the word quivering out.

Fruit, Continued...

2011-07-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

“Look in my bag,” says Ash. “There are two x-rays.” I fish through her knapsack and take out two glossy sheets, both of which show the teenager’s skull in cross-section. “The first one” Ash says, “was from two and a half months ago.” Holding it up to the sunlight, I see in Ash’s parietal lobe a lesion the size of a nickel, with a sperm-like tail.

“It’s like a baby-crocodile,” she says. “Cute when you get it, but soon enough it grows up”. The second one is from two weeks later. “Kinda cool, hey?” she says. It’s the size and shape of a gourd, compressing everything else, with tendrils spread out lovingly throughout her grey matter, roots in rich soil.“Were you expecting the face of the Virgin Mary?” she says. “It got way bigger, and stronger, and the doctors have no idea what to do. It’ll be able to work on its own, without me.”

It will start by shutting down her motor functions, she tells me. She’ll go blind, and then she’ll go into a coma, during which it will shut her organs off. That is what the doctors told her, and while they could predict this, they were unable to do a thing. No amount of radiotherapy or chemotherapy could reverse this, nor does she want it to. Her body is an offering. This thing is taking a great risk, because the stronger it gets, the more it needs Ash to survive, she says.

“And what happens when it takes over completely?”

For a moment Ash’s eyes shine with a benevolent madness and her skin seems gnarled and sinewy. She shrugs, but she is smiling. Ash claims it’s the reason she’s able to do what she does. People come to her with their problems--the maritally challenged, the depressed, compulsive overeaters, alcoholics, even junkies--and she solves them. No, saves them. There was even one case where someone came and demanded something as audacious as resurrection: a kid with his dead rabbit. He dug it out of the backyard and gave her a shoebox with the animal half-decomposed inside. Ash took the rabbit, put it to her lips, and kissed it. The corpse started to twitch. But only twitch. That was enough to make the boy scream and run away crying, leaving the mother to put the remains back in the shoebox and slink away. Ash insists that if the boy came today, when the growth was bigger, the animal would have been “hopping around like the Easter Bunny.” Pet carcasses notwithstanding, her success rate seems high. A touch, a nod, a whisper in their ear, and that’s it. The patients walk away feeling like Jesus just rubbed mud and spittle in their eyes. Who knows how long the effect lasts, but it provides some sort of comfort. Otherwise the fifty odd people in the park wouldn’t still be here. And it’s all thanks to the gourd-shaped growth in her brain.

There was something that Ash told me last week:“I call it ‘Tree’ on a good day, when I can breathe easy and my head doesn’t feel like it’s gonna explode.” She added: “On a bad day, I call it Thing.” Besides that one time, I haven’t heard her call it “Tree” yet.

Happy 144th Birthday, Canada!

2011-07-01T17:17:00.000-07:00

(And, as usual, a happy and prosperous Dominion Day for Andrew Cohen.)

Here is the first part of a short story of mine, which I will be publishing in segments over the next little while.

Fruit
By Liam Volke

I pull my toque down further over my bare scalp, and check my cell: two text messages, one from Bo reminding me that my pelvic exam is today at noon, and one from my section editor, asking “Holly why the fuck haven’t u submitted anything 4 a week?” I was supposed to have something by now, to show for these business trips I’ve been taking to the urban core for a feature article. The only people who seem to call me are my editor and Bo, and the only things Bo talks to me about these days are the exams I haven’t been showing up to. Never mind that while sleeping last night, he draped his stocky branch of an arm over me at one point. It then retracted over my shoulder and back where it came from. As if even his subconscious thought better of it.

I put away my cell, and enter the park. There are more people than usual, this morning. Numbering at fifty, they bring candles, flowers, chocolate, photographs, letters, stick-figure drawings. One woman brought an urn carrying her father. They are all here for the girl named Ash.

Every morning, Ash appears rooted to the ground—literally, held down by thick, sooty white roots that coil around her knees, sprouting leaves. Then I blink, and they’re gone: she looks like a sickly and unkempt sixteen-year-old, sitting at the foot of a poplar in the city park. A crowd huddles around her like they would a fire in a garbage can, in this snowless winter. Ash’s body is tense but still, as she sits like a slouching guru. At her feet a man and a woman grovel, turning to the sky and then to each other in tears, ecstatic. They sob out strings of words, unintelligible. I flutter my knees for warmth a few metres away, and fire out notes.

The two people in front of Ash are a couple, caught in the throes of religious rapture as they hold each other and kiss and shout. The woman tries to say “I love you” but it comes out as “guy lah rue.” They’re not speaking in Tongues--not yet, anyway. Ash just watches, like a wooden idol in bangles and a winter jacket. Eventually a few people come and help them up. Others weep and applaud. Ash is a healer, self-proclaimed.

“You’re late,” Ash says with a thin rasp, as I approach.
I smile and take out my notebook and recorder. “I always seem to just miss the miracles, don’t I.”
“Not really," she says. "Marital issues be gone! Nothing special.”
The crowd in the park mills about. Some leave for work, but most are squatters. Followers, they call themselves. They’ve been here since before I met Ash three weeks ago.
“Shall we get to work?” I ask.
“Holly so serious. Holly a serious journalist. Holly needs to ligh--” her eyes glaze over. She remains motionless for almost a minute. Then, she returns. “Fuck that’s annoying.”

Ash said she started having seizures a little over a month ago; I first saw it happen to her last week. She didn’t move, and it was difficult to tell if she was even breathing. It was like looking at the effigy of a girl, not a real one. It would start, once every few days, and by now it’s once every few hours. She told me it’s the way the ‘Thing’ works.

I'll post the next part soon. For now, have a great day!

So...Graduated.

2011-06-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

Like, officially.

God help us all, now that Liam Volke is about to be unleashed upon the world!

I've got a whole album from my Day of Convocation on Facebook, so if you'd like to see more, that's where they'll be.

This amazing four years that have given me something that has little, if anything, to do with a piece of paper. My education was immeasurably nourishing, and this day was just the gravy. That being said, "Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction" does have a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Dear Anybody,

2011-06-21T22:53:00.000-07:00

I promise that I will post soon. I pinky swear it.

In other news, I recently graduated, and I want to put some photos of that up here, but it's too late to do that tonight.

I've also been doing a lot of fiction writing, which makes me very happy and excited, and I hope to post some of that on here soon, as well. Rest assured, I have been proactive, and have not forgotten my beloved Babble. Just you wait.

Sincerely,

Liam

Huzzah!

2011-06-10T23:10:00.001-07:00

I've FINALLY finished Anna Karenina! It was well worth it, at least--but what a labour!

Again, I did enjoy it. The density and the thoroughness of the storytelling is an astounding feat of writing. Tolstoy really understood human behaviour, I think, and really gloried in delving into people's motivations. Don't get me wrong: if you're expecting a book like this to fly by like a Stieg Larsson novel, you know nothing about 19th century Russian literature. It most certainly isn't the kind of tome you can devour over a lazy long weekend. It's density is something you experience rather than burn through. You taste it, savour it, and let it gather itself in your mind's eye. That's where its genius lies. That is why it is worth reading.

Unfortunately, my copy was a cheap Wordsworth edition I got when I was 11 years old on sale for peanuts at a Coles Book store. This shouldn't be a problem really (I'm quite partial to cheap books, in fact!) but I get the feeling there are better translations out there. Not only that, but the editing was terrible. It was so fraught with errors that it was actually kind of amusing. Typos everywhere. In several cases punctuation was simply overlooked. Things were misspelt. One man, whose name for most of the book is Koznyshev, was mentioned in two places on the same page late in the book as "Kozushev". My favourite though was when the word "help" was spelled "he]p".

And since spring hit I've been in the mood for something more fanciful. Fantastical, you might even say. My co-worker lent me a book of essays contributed by different fantasy writers, about the work of Tolkien and its influence on them. This has been whetting my appetite for some damn good summer escapism. It's also reminding me where my roots are.

It's funny because that word, "escapism", is tacked onto The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and most fantasy for that matter, as if it were a bad thing; and yet if I could pinpoint when and where I became opened up to the world in a completely new way it would be upon the reading of these books. It introduced me to a vast number of subjects of interest, bodies of knowledge and experiences like no other work has singlehandedly done before. It's no exaggeration to say that through reading Lord of the Rings I gained a deeper appreciation for nature; Tolkien's love of what is green and good was ignited in myself. As well as the beginnings of an increased ecological consciousness, It opened me up to Norse, Celtic, and Classic myth, and from there, religion, philosophy, astronomy, and western literature and literary theory.

And then there are the languages! Tolkien's linguistic background seeps into every corner of his world, and it spilled into mine. I tried to create my own Elvish language, and got considerably far, for a twelve year-old. I had a lexicon, a grammar, an alphabet. I even tried to teach myself Latin for a couple of years. I have no doubt that this love for language inspired by Tolkien helped me greatly as I went into French immersion in junior high. I never picked up a rock album until I learned that some of Led Zeppelin's songs were directly inspired by Lord of the Rings. I never knew rock was that versatile, and about something other than sex, and drugs or whatever those kids were listening to.

Perhaps I would have gotten interested in these things on my own without Tolkien's influence, but the point is I didn't. His work was the doorway I stepped through. Above all else it sharpened my sense of wonder, and I like to think that it is always strengthened upon returning to it. Escapism? Hah! If anything, I was escaping into the world! But I digress...

Next up on my roster is The Half-Blood Prince. It's been a few years since it came out, my sister has always nagged me about reading it, so now that the second part of the Deathly Hallows is imminent, it seems like the right time to start on it. I'll try to get through it and the Deathly Hallows in the next 30 days or so. Wish me luck!

On Reading

2011-05-13T19:23:00.000-07:00

After finishing How to Read and Why* by Harold Bloom, I remembered a conversation I was having with a friend of mine. I can't remember the topic of conversation, but I remember my friend saying that reading is something you do when you're waiting to do other things. I found this a little perplexing, and very telling. It challenged my own biases toward reading, and it made me wonder what the majority of society feels about reading.

So now, like Harold Bloom--but with way less credentials--I'm going to chime in on the discussion.

Excluding oppressive dictators, I get the feeling nobody will say "reading is bad"; certainly nobody will say it is bad for you. Even if some people don't like doing it, if they are rational creatures they will see the value. If not imaginative literature (and I include graphic novels and comic books), then reading the news can come in handy. If not that, being able to read instruction manuals and road signs can be a real boost to getting through life. Nobody who is literate will regret being literate. But I think a lot of people will read for more than just information on how to put together their jalsklär desk from IKEA. Book publishing is a multi-billion dollar industry, so I can only assume that it is a pretty popular activity. It certainly isn't the only thing, and being a text-oriented society has problems (and there is much good in oral cultures which we are in danger of losing to the monolith of the written word), but it has a lot of advantages too. Reading enjoys an almost universal, and perhaps curiously unquestioned status as a good thing.

But we seem to have a peculiar attitude about this good thing, at least when it comes to leisurely reading. Like other forms of entertainment, we find ourselves having to justify why we do it more than other things. Reading for leisure smacks of uselessness, or worse, elitism. That we call it leisurely reading shows the ambivalence we have about it; we love to do it, but it is only acceptable when it's raining out and there's nothing left to do. It's almost shameful to think of sitting at home and reading on a sunny saturday afternoon, isn't it? Or even worse, on a Friday night! The horror! Behaviour like that would just seem weird, even antisocial. The only time that would be acceptable is if it's compulsory reading, for a class. It's just not the kind of thing you do when you can do something else!

One time a friend of mine asked me why I didn't want to go to a party (or something along those lines), and I said because I felt like I needed to catch up on reading. I realise in hindsight how pretentious, rude and antisocial that must have sounded. But why is it all those things?

Some people might think it is isolating, living in an ivory tower, avoiding "life". I have to ask what they mean by "life". Why is a social gathering closer to "life" than reading? Reading is a part of life, isn't it? It engages several areas of the brain at once--the brain being a living, physical organ, an essential tool for life. In fact, it enhances that organ, and by extension, the rest of ourselves. How can that be a bad thing? The imagination is as essential to human life as our social interactions, and yet when we say "live a little", almost nobody imagines sitting in a chair and reading. So is it something we love to do but feel bad for it? It certainly seems hard to justify when you look at it: from the outside, it looks like a person is doing absolutely nothing, but staring at an object with small ink-scratchings on it. This is not profitable behaviour, so it doesn't sit well with utilitarian, economy-minded creatures.

I believe it is not only important, but deeply rewarding and enjoyable. It brings pleasure, which may put off people who think that you shouldn't get pleasure from important things. Important things are about helping other people, right? They're about productivity, thrift, hard work, and other Puritan virtues. Well, I believe the Puritans were just a little bit silly, that not all selfishness is intrinsically bad, and that we nourish ourselves with reading. We read to become more human.

This might be stretching it a bit, but it even has a meditative quality to it, as it demands a sustained amount of concentration and visualization, all in the effort to help us understand the story. Some people might dismiss this as escapism. This is inaccurate. It is an exercise in empathy as we follow somebody else's life, and understand them a little better. A story offers a blueprint to better understanding each other; so if empathy is escapism, then escapism must be the noblest thing you can do! It takes us outside of ourselves and puts us in the Other. Central to the practice of Rabbinic Judaism is the act of reading. Rabbis will read--live and breathe the literature of their faith, absorb it as fully as they can, and form an exegesis, an understanding of their text-- and will encounter wisdom. That is why they read. Sure, reading won't change the world, but it may lead to self-understanding, which will help you become a better you.

And yet, reading is still seen as something we should only do when we're waiting to do something else.

I use "we" a lot in this entry, because I believe I'm not alone in what I'm thinking. I love reading, yet I often feel guilty, or at least uneasy, for doing it. Surely this feeling is instilled in me from standards of the outside, which means it's happening to other people as well. This must mean it is a widespread problem. This is comforting in a way, but it also means that it's something we should all be addressing.

I want to challenge this problem, and encourage others to make time in their day to read. I'm not saying it's the only thing worth doing, or even the most important (and I'm certainly not entering into the argument of Books vs. Video Games, or Books vs. Movies). There's a danger to fetishizing it, of course. But there's a danger to putting too much emphasis on a social life, too. Balance, as usual, is key. But do take some time.

I have no set reading list or canon, personally. I was raised on comic books, so I try to resist bias towards one genre or another. I include comics, graphic novels, blogs and magazines, childrens books, etc. It doesn't have to be Cervantes or Tolstoy, as long as it means something to you. But I also encourage you to read what challenges you, what inspires you, what haunts you. If nothing else, read because it's fun, and fun is bloody important.

Thanks for reading!

Liam

*It's not as pretentious as it sounds, and although it doesn't completely deliver, it's still a good, challenging read.

Omar Ahmad Redux

2011-05-07T14:40:00.000-07:00

Hey folks! Sorry for the sparseness of bloggery here. I'm in Calgary right now with my family, having a great time, and I'll probably post something when I get back to Victoria. Until then, have a look at this video. I posted it on here over a year ago, but in light of the election, I feel that it's something worth looking at if you feel like you want to try and change something but you don't know how. Omar Ahmad offers one way:

Talk to you soon, ladies and gentlemen!

-Liam

Election Day Eve

2011-05-01T14:14:00.001-07:00

WARNING: This post is a little redundant in some parts. But I hope you enjoy it anyway.

On the day before the election, it feels somehow inappropriate to write about anything else. And yet I feel as though I have nothing to contribute to the conversation; no matter how closely I follow this campaign and how much research I do, I still don't know enough to offer an educated opinion about any of this. I know more or less where I stand on the political spectrum. But there's nothing I can say that hasn't already been said better by someone better informed. So don't expect anything new here. And as far as saying anything about my own politics goes, I'd most likely be preaching to the choir in this medium. I'll leave the in-depth speculation and soapboxing to the critics, pundits and pollsters.

What I will reiterate is one of the most urgent messages of all: we cannot take for granted what other people under autocratic regimes all over the world are dying to do. I keep reading articles about the surge in the NDP's popularity and how this is may herald a more galvanized votership and lead to higher turnout tomorrow. But then, it may not. Apathy is a powerful foe, even at this point, and we just don't know what it will look like until the day. So this message needs to be repeated. Social and political inertia is the result of an unnecessary self-fulfilling prophecy of cynicism. Just because something has been a certain way for as long as you can remember, doesn't mean it will be that way forever. Look at Egypt. Southern Sudan. Tunisia. Hell, look at Calgary's recent mayoral election! Just look at these, dag nabbit!

Please vote, everybody. Please. It's likely that I'm preaching to the choir and 90% of the people who read this are going to show up to the polls on Monday, but it's important to remember, even in the 11th hour.

For those who plan on voting strategically, here's a very useful tool that might help. It's called Project Democracy, and it shows how each party is faring on a riding by riding basis. You can see who has the best chance of beating a Conservative candidate in your riding, be it NDP or Liberal, and put your vote towards that candidate. As a lot of NDP-voters for the first time have the luxury of following their heart and their head, some Liberal supporters are for once in the opposite position. Hopefully this site will help both to make the best decision possible.

I also want to say that however things turn out tomorrow, whoever you vote for, and in spite of all the childish nonsense that reigns supreme in Ottawa, how blest are we to live in a country where we can speak openly against the status quo? We don't need to live in fear of heavy censorship and secret police. It might sounds fanciful to talk of these things, but lest we forget there are many places where this is still a reality. We can be critical, even to the point of real change (however rare that may be). There is the possibility for dialogue. There is public space for public anger. Stephen Harper can call it the "Harper Government", and there's nothing he can do to stop any one of us from speaking out against that absurd title, and for that I'm proud to be Canadian. There are a lot of major problems with our system, but even if our cries falls on deaf ears, we still won't have thugs busting into our houses in the middle of the night and putting away our dissidents into dark places never to be seen or heard from again.

Don't get me wrong. Prejudice, inequality, and injustice are rampant in Canada, but, as far as I know, we don't live in a country of pogroms, killing fields, and Kristallnacht. And, in the words of Martha Stewart, that's a good thing.

Four Years Later, a Degree

2011-04-13T16:22:00.000-07:00

Well obviously, right? Geez, who wrote that title?

So, in my last entry, I said that these have been the richest four consecutive years of my life. I really meant it. They've been very hard, sometimes nearly impossible to handle, but they have given me so much.

When I entered the acting program, I was fighting an inferiority complex due to the fact that UVic wasn't NTS, or NYU, or Juilliard, or [insert any other prestigious acting school here]. I expected the program to mould me into a disciplined, and highly sophisticated acting machine, and if it didn't, then it would only confirm my fears. But I was determined. Now I believe I have a very strong work ethic. I would drive myself to the point that I wasn't even enjoying myself any more. And any point where I felt like the program had fallen short of my impossible expectations made me doubt it, as if I wasn't getting something that every other acting program in the world was getting. I will also admit that there were times I felt that none of us took it seriously enough, which contributed to a less than exemplary training environment. This is not true, of course. We all take it seriously, and I apologise to my peers for thinking that. If anything, I was the one with a rod up his arse. Also, I see now how exemplary this training environment really was.

Now, looking back on five terms of Voice and Movement and six of Acting, I realise that there's no way any school can yield more out of 3 years of training than what we went through. There's simply not enough time. It was more about breadth than depth, I'd say. But still, what breadth! We were given the opportunity to explore so many different avenues of performance--Stanislavski techniques, Meisner, ballet, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, Mask, Laban, stage combat, Viewpoints, acting for Film and TV, contemporary dance, self-generated work, meditation, collective creation--and you could spend four years (and beyond!) studying any single one of these on its own. How cool is that? "That's what you went to SCHOOL for?" "Shit yeah!" And this list doesn't include all the great guests we had visit us and offer their wisdom--alumni, actors and directors, casting directors, playwrights, all of whom were working professionals with illustrious careers.

So what if the Phoenix isn't in Toronto, swarming with talent scouts? Alright, the business of theatre is very much about who you know, but what we should be largely concerned about while we're training is our craft, and I have no reason to believe we got less of it than any other school in the country, or the world. Some renowned schools might have great teachers, but those very same schools have their share of crappy teachers, too. Perhaps this is the wrong detail to be looking at, but it makes me feel like I haven't missed out, knowing there's good and bad teachers just about everywhere you go. The reputation of a school alone does not a good actor make. Perhaps a well-connected one, but the quality of the training is hit and miss everywhere. And even so, for all my teachers' foibles, I feel it was mostly a hit. Some I gained from more than others, but I learned from each and every one of them. And let's not forget my peers: fellow actors, directors, designers, stage managers, writers, technicians, and scholars; a whole community of people extremely passionate about the same thing as me. Even without the profs' help, it's proved to be a fertile ground for creativity.

My understanding of a BFA in Acting is that it is a time to be opened up to many different options. Don't mistake me; I'm not saying it was just one long introductory course. Some of it was gloriously in depth, and I feel like a much stronger, competent and confident actor than I was four years ago. Of course there is a sharpening of skills, but that's something that takes an entire lifetime to do. If Acting only took three to four years to master, it would hardly be worth doing, wouldn't it? Sure, maybe a conservatory style school would have a higher concentration of what we were learning, but even then it can only go so far.

If nothing else, you know why I believe this education was a success? Despite the progress I've made, I leave with many habits I had upon entrance, and that's OK. I am at peace with my incompleteness as an actor. I am spurred on by it. And above all I am ready. Not only do I leave ready to leave, ready to move on to the next big adventure, but I leave even more curious, open, and hungry than when I began. This, I think, is what this BFA should be all about. And for that, I'm so very grateful.

The Next Step

2011-04-12T00:37:00.000-07:00

Oh hi there!

Now that I'm standing firmly on the other side of a Bachelors Degree, and am at a safe distance from a flurry of euphoric end-of-year farewells, it seems like a good time to blog and get all reflect-ey up in here.

But first, I want to post part of an entry I wrote in first year, describing the crossroads I was once at:

"So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to work as hard as I can in all my classes and keep my grades up, and audition for second year acting at the end of the year. But I don't think double-majoring is gonna work, unless I do the Theatre/Writing program, which is an option.

"Ok, so here's the plan:

If I get into Acting next year, I'll Major in Acting and Minor in English

If I don't get into Acting, I'll do the Theatre/Writing Major, and Minor in English (second choice)

or

Directing, minoring in English or Writing (2nd second choice)

or

Theatre Generalist Option, minoring in English (3rd second choice)"

So, I went into Acting. No, I didn't minor in English (although I did try to take a Medieval English Lit. course in second year). I also tried to double-major in Acting and Writing, which became one of the most stressful school years of my life. So I decided I wanted to enjoy my University experience: Writing was cut, and I never looked back. Except for when I did.

Don't get me wrong. The following 3rd and 4th years were the second half of the richest 4 years of my life. But while not majoring in Writing need never stop me from doing it on my own, the desire kept cropping up throughout. When 4th year was under way and we were focusing on generating original work in two thirds of our performance classes, it became almost overwhelming. The talks we had of "the biz", from how to get an agent, to head shots, to how to do income taxes as an actor scared me, and made me wonder whether I wanted to do this beyond the haven of school. If I was this scared and hesitant, did that mean I wasn't in the right place?

In the second term I seriously questioned my need to act, quite frankly. It's not that I didn't enjoy it; of course I did. But did I feel compelled to do it? Was it worth going through all the hoops of auditioning and agent shopping and taxes? Did my desire really trump all those things? I've often heard that if you doubt whether you should be in theatre, get the hell out. Well, I could feel a big ol' rat called doubt rattling about in my skull.

Granted, this was also because we were all so close to graduating that the temptation to mentally 'check out' was stronger than ever. And if it helped at all, I knew this feeling was similar to what I felt in second year. To be honest, I haven't entirely shaken it off, but I'm certain that some time for rest will help me to gain some perspective. Already I'm thinking about it in a more imperative light. I know I don't have to choose between writing and acting, but right now the former dominates. And the question remains: what next?

Well, as I did in first year, I'll list my up to date options as they stand:

-Take a cross-country trip to all the major theatre scenes, auditioning and giving out headshots
-National Voice Intensive next year
-Playwriting Workshop with Daniel MacIvor at the Banff Centre next year
-Move to Toronto
-Audition for plays
-Try and create new work with fellow theatre-folk
-Mask work (full, half, neutral)
-Small film projects
-Build up writing portfolio, submit to every contest and magazine I can get my hands on, and in a couple of years time, apply for the Creative Writing MFA at University of Guelph
-Audition for Stratford Festival
-Audition for Stratford's Birmingham Conservatory
-Audition for Shaw Festival

The two big goals I'm looking at right now (and may be in competition for each other) are auditioning for Birmingham, and applying for the MFA at Guelph. Thankfully I don't have to make the decision right away, and I can still cast for both of them (likely multiple times, until one of them bites). Either way, it looks like I'm eastbound. It's just a question of when, and how I'll get there.

Salman Khan: Let's use video to reinvent education

2011-03-12T21:15:00.000-08:00

Another stake in the heart of conventional, cookie cutter education!

Two Selves

2011-03-11T22:31:00.000-08:00

I am very glad to be on this side of the ocean right now, even though the west coast was under warning. I didn't hear about the catastrophe in Japan until later this evening, long after the wave was merely a ripple in our harbour. All the same, I'm grateful to be alive.

* * * * *

When I was reading The Moral Landscape, one concept I came across was the concept that we are split up into two "selves", the "experiencing self" and the "remembering self". The psychologist David Kahneman came up with these terms to describe the differences and contradictions in our own emotional lives. The remembering self is the one that does just that; it remembers, and it allows you to base your state of mind and predisposition on past experiences. The experiencing self is the one that exists in the present on a moment to moment basis, influenced by immediate circumstances. Kahneman makes this distinction because, Harris says, "these two 'selves' often disagree. Indeed, they can be experimentally shown to disagree, even across a relatively brief span of time.' To Harris and Kahneman's understanding, both selves have an equal share in the measurement of one's overall happiness.

This got me thinking about my own life, and how this concept applies to it. During the rehearsal process of Twelfth Night, if I were to be totally honest with myself, I probably had more periods of either frustration, boredom, depression, anxiety, or indifference, than I did moments of sheer delight, excitement, contentment, or creative flow. More often than not I went in to rehearsal to get it over with, and my mind was elsewhere. Even in performance those golden moments were few. And yet I can look back with an overriding feeling of fondness, and even pride at what we did.

Now this isn't unusual in any way. It's characteristic of anybody's emotional ride when creating theatre, and any sort of creative act for that matter. I imagine it's like an extremely milder form of childbirth, where the end somehow makes you forget the hell you went through. We're built this way, I get it. But we often forget the experiencing self when those good, nostalgic vibes come flooding in, and this seems counterproductive to becoming more self-aware and honest. We certainly don't think that way when we're in the thick of it. At the worst moments of rehearsal I found myself asking why I bothered doing it, and whether it was even worth it to continue. Furthermore, every trough seemed deeper and darker by the fact that I was already doubting myself and uncertain of where my path in life lies-- that's enough without all the added stress of a potentially rocky rehearsal.

And yet, reflecting on it, things seem rosy. Is this my mind blurring the details, protecting itself from melancholy? The main problem is when Harris says that both "selves" are equally valid. What are we to do about this, then? Which "self" is more accurate and truthful of how we really feel about these experiences? It's only a model, a way of describing something incredibly more complex and intricate than we can really conceive (like the model of an atom being a cloud of electrons; it's inaccurate, but it's the best we can do with words and symbols). Harris points out that the remembering self is just one mode of the experiencing self, since even when a person's mental state is affected by memories, it is being affected in the present moment. I look at photos on Facebook of Twelfth Night backstage, and I think "ah, good times", but even this is happening in the present. I am presently experiencing nostalgia, and it may be a blanket statement, but who's to say it's wrong? Moreover, how do we tell if a time in our life is bright, punctuated by dark moments, or dark, punctuated by bright moments? How many bad experiences do we have to have and how intense do they have to be before this period becomes a dark age? And vice versa?

Until we do better understand the brain, the mind, and the science of well-being (and I'm hoping Harris and his ilk are working hard at it!) we can delegate our experiences to the scrutiny of history. I still have trouble looking back on my journal entries from this past summer without getting emotional; it's still too soon, I guess. But the objective side of me knows that that time was extremely beneficial for me and yielded much. For the sake of the question I'm curious to see how I'll feel about Twelfth Night down the road, in the next few months. The next year. Five years down. Maybe just the same. Maybe not. But I loved the people, and I love the play, what more matters? We'll see. And when in doubt, we can remember what Shakespeare himself wrote:

"O Time, thou must untangle this, not I. It is too hard a knot for me t'untie!"

In Twenty Minutes...

2011-03-08T23:32:00.000-08:00

...I will be refined sugar-free for the next forty days. That means, among other things, no candy, no junk food, no pastries, no bread. You read me correctly. No bread. Those who know me well know I am a breadoholic. It's my yeasty, wheaty cryptonite. And I'm implicitly giving it up. Not to mention most kinds of cereal. You'd be surprised what things have refined sugar in them, if you actually read the ingredients. You'd also be surprised what things I could technically get away with eating. Margarine has no sugar in it, and neither does Kraft Dinner. What's wrong with this picture? Well, what they lack in sugar, they make up in sodium. But I'm not on a sodium diet. Mind you, I feel I should cut down on those things anyway; this seems generally conducive to what I'm trying to accomplish.

On that note, I'm doing this to live healthier by forcing me to be more mindful of what I eat. One might say it's a routine effort to practice self-compassion, if one were to categorize it in Karen Armstrong's terms. It's also forcing me to learn to cook new dishes. So if anybody has any recipe suggestions for sugar-free dishes (especially desserts, I'll probably grapple with this one the most), please let me know!

Wish me luck!

P.S.

2011-03-01T00:32:00.001-08:00

In my previous post I was describing Karen Armstrong's new book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, and I may have misrepresented some information about it:

"As you read it, Armstrong advises us to work one step at a time, and not to move on to the next one until you have a firm grasp on the one you're on."

I should've been clearer on the "firm grasp" part. I realised afterward that if anybody was on the first step, learning about the history of compassion, or on the third step of having compassion for yourself, they could potentially stay there all their lives if they told themselves they did not have a "firm grasp" on the step. Then they would be absolved of any responsibility to move on to the next step and actually make progress. Just to be more specific, here's what Armstrong writes:

"Each step will build on the disciplines practiced and the habits acquired in those that have gone before. The effect will be cumulative. Do not skip any of the steps, because each one is an indispensable part of the process. And do not leave a step until the recommended practices have become part of your daily routine."

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say. Thanks, Karen! Once a step is firmly a part of your routine--which is something a little more concrete and measurable than the vague feeling of a "firm grasp"--then and only then do you move on. I know anybody who sincerely wants to practice loving kindness, equanimity and love on a daily basis wouldn't get confused, but we do have a great capacity for self-deception, and I especially didn't want to distort somebody else's work. A small quibble over wording, but it makes a big difference. Just read the book and see for yourself, okay?

Two Month Catch-Up, Harris, and Armstrong

2011-02-27T21:26:00.000-08:00

Wowza! It's been almost two months since I've posted on here. Two whole months! Well, enough of that silliness.

Let's see, what's happened since then? We've rehearsed Twelfth Night and recently opened it this past week and it's been generally quite well received. That's always nice, being a part of a show you're proud of AND the audience liking it too! Also, when not performing in the evenings, I spent my Reading Week with my family, which was just great. My sister, Gabrielle Volke, is going to be a published author very soon, with a short story in her university literary journal. Let's all cheer her on! Hurrah! Mazeltov! Olé! I'm quite proud of her.

In class we've been talking a lot about the logistics of going into the "real world" and how to survive there: we had a whole class on how to do taxes as an actor, another on resumés, and another still on writing cover letters and thank you letters to theatre companies. Another prof. of ours came in to talk to us about how to get an agent. We're being constantly reminded that we're not long for this undergrad world. As helpful as it has been, it scared the shit out of me, thinking about it so much. My doubts and uncertainty about my future course were only further fed when we were asked to write out a plan of where we want to be in the next year, in five years, ten years, fifteen. Some people had some ambitious and fantastic goals, and I wish them all the best. Others had a little more uncertainty and vagueness to their plans. I fell into the second camp. I noticed that I couldn't really see where I would be in five years like others, let alone the next one. I was considering attending the National Voice Intensive this summer, but I kept flip-flopping about it. So I decided I would wait on that one, and if I was still considering it around this time next year, then it would be the right decision. Only time will tell.

The through-line of my wishy-washy plan was that I be creating new work at every stage. I think this has revealed a very important strain of my artistic leanings, and perhaps what will keep me in theatre. I am not content to just be performing works that other people have made. I have to make my own. Whether it's in the form of a one-person show, collective creation, or as a playwright who lets others perform it, I need to generate new stories. I always believed in the actor as creator, so why not go the whole nine yards on that principle? That's not to say I've fully abandoned the path of auditioning for repertory theatres and whatnot, but there is a lot about that life that will not fully satisfy me. The writer in me will not be denied. On that note, I'm even considering going back to finish my Writing degree. But that's just one option. I'm pretty sure I want to continue with some kind of post-graduate schooling, whether it's for acting or writing. In fact, here is the complete list of options I've even briefly considered:

-Finishing Writing degree at UVic
-Writing MFA at UVic (after I've amassed a sizeable portfolio of written work)
-Acting MFA at York University
-Birmingham Conservatory at the Stratford Festival
-3-year certificate at National Theatre School
-Acting MFA at Yale School of Drama (thanks to Gen and Sarah for pointing it out)

Right now the first two options burn the brightest. But in the interim I need to not be going to school for a while. Again, time will lend some perspective on the matter, and I have no doubt that things will be a little bit clearer if I wait.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, on the book front, I've had the pleasure of reading two books, the authors of which disagree with each other, and so naturally I'd love to hear a conversation between them. The first book was The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. This guy has been lumped into the "New Atheism" camp, along with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. The premise of this book is basically this: moral relativists can sit down and shut up, because there is a way of determining "right" and "wrong", and science is going to figure it out. That's right, not only is science able to show how people behave, but in time it may also show us how we should behave.

He says that the values we hold as human beings (morality) can be related to facts about the world (science). The rightness or wrongness of an act is measured by its effect in the physical world, and in a person's brain specifically, translating into well-being or suffering. These are what we should use to measure a system or morality. He is quick to add that he is not claiming that science has the answers already, especially to some morally ambiguous actions. Nor does he claim that there is just one way. Rather, morality is like a landscape with many peaks and valleys. Some moral systems might be at an equal height on this landscape. Some might not. He points out that they are not all created equal: a moral system that multiplies misery and suffering in this world is not equal to one that mitigates suffering and creates well-being. Hence the peaks and valleys. This is why, he believes, we need not stand back and let something like the Taliban repress women in the name of religion. Those who feel they cannot do anything because who are we to say what's right and wrong? can simply view morality not as a mere cultural norm without any absolute value, nor even a set of arbitrary laws sent down from Heaven, but as a set of actions that translate into measurable facts about human suffering or well-being.

He makes some very fascinating arguments, drawing from his own experience as a neuroscientist, from psychology, and philosophy, but he always keeps it accessible and engaging to a broader audience. I'll admit he devotes a great deal of bile for religion, which disappoints me slightly, because I wanted to read more about a science of morality and save the critique of religion for a different book. But he does focus on the way some people have tried to combine science and religion, or rather used pseudoscience to justify articles of religious faith, with disastrous and embarrassing results, and I suppose this has something to do with his argument. Either way, this has been an extremely provocative read. Here's his TED Talk discussing the idea of this Moral Landscape:

The second book was Karen Armstrong's book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, which my lovely girlfriend got for me on Valentine's Day. It's a short little book, but it is very clever and has a lot to offer. Following her TED Wish to have leaders of world religions to draw up a Charter for Compassion, an act of restoring compassion, and the Golden Rule to the centre of the major religions and moral systems, Armstrong wrote this book. It's basically what its title says: a step by step guide in becoming a more compassionate person. Cleverly modelled on the Twelve Step program for AA, it is a template for how we can take specific action and make compassion a tangible part of our day to day lives.

As you read it, Armstrong advises us to work one step at a time, and not to move on to the next one until you have a firm grasp on the one you're on. She also reminds us that this will not come easily or quickly. It will take all of our lives and requires diligence, patience, humility and will. It is no less than a summary of what all the major religions are at their best: guides for compassion. On that note, she draws freely from these major religions and moral philosophies as points of reference, from Islam to Confucianism to Buddhism to ancient Greek philosophy (Socrates and Plato). She doesn't say anything new; she just repeats what these systems prescribe as far as compassion goes. But I think it's very smart to organize these actions into steps, from easiest to most difficult. This should make the process a little less daunting, in theory. The first step is basically about educating oneself about compassion, and its history. The next is learning about how it can translate into our own contemporary world. The third is learning to be compassionate toward yourself. It goes from there, in an ever-expanding circle, from "love thyself", to "love thy neighbour", all the way to the final step, which is "love thy enemy". The tools at our disposal, she tells us, are our capacity for empathy, practice of mindfulness, and even restoring the ancient practice of Socratic dialogue, a means of arriving at wisdom and understanding, as opposed to the other ancient rhetorical tradition of proving yourself right at whatever cost and shouting down your opponents, something our political leaders indulge way too much in. This book is a great follow-up to The Case for God, where she explains how religion was originally meant to be a spiritual technique that could only make sense in the doing, in action. Here's her TED Talk about the Charter for Compassion:

Alright, that's all for now. So in case I can't blog again until after school's done, this should make up for lost time.

Top 5 Books of 2010

2011-01-01T19:08:00.000-08:00

Hello and Happy 2011 to everybody!

I don't really want to do a reflection of 2010. I haven't the energy nor the will for that sort of thing. But I will do what I did last year, and list the five books that had the biggest influence on me. So here they are, in the order I read them:

5. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
Alright so I have read this once before, in high-school. I liked it then, but I thought it was even better now. I ended up reading quite a bit of C.S. Lewis this year, including The Great Divorce, Surprised by Joy, and for good measure, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Even today he seems to me to be one of the most brilliant Christian thinkers of the 20th century. I found him far more convincing because he came to his faith through atheism, and he fought in one of the bloodiest wars in history, so he kinda has "street cred" in my mind. Religion and matters of the spirit weren't all just ivory tower musings to him. He saw suffering and he experienced spiritual joy--in short, he really lived. He has perhaps been the most influential writer for me this year, just for his style of writing. But his sheer imaginative power when it comes to Christianity amazes me and is what makes him great. Someone wrote that he wouldn't have been the writer he became if he didn't become a Christian. I believe this is true. This one book can't be taken in isolation from the rest of his works on religion. What it does do is sum up his ideas in a concise way, while further elaborations on his theme can be found in his other books. So Mere Christianity stands as an symbol for his body of work, and for me the introduction to it.

4. The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by André Comte-Sponville
This book was the first book about atheism that I read, and a first serious consideration of it. I found it easy to read because he is open to dialogue with religious and spiritual thinking people, and he makes a great case for a spiritual life sans Dieu. On that note, he provides robust challenges to the idea of God, and my own views. It is such a unique book, a great counterpoint to C.S. Lewis (as you can read about in my summer posts), and a refreshing alternative to the "New Atheism" of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris.*

3. The Sins of Scipture by John Shelby Spong
Like Mere Christianity, this book acted as a doorway to Spong's work. But I found this book to have the biggest impact on my thinking. In this book he, an Episcopal bishop, puts the Bible on trial, and puts it in its place: not God's mouth, but in history. From there, he proposes that the biblical passages that we today view as prejudiced, arbitrary, destructive, and evil, should be jettisoned from the Bible altogether. He brings to light the Bible scholarship that has been going on since the 19th century that has largely been inaccessible to the public. But the most remarkable part of this book is that while he is attacking many aspects of Christianity, he is able to keep his faith intact. He is using his criticism not to demolish his religion as militant atheists would want to do, but to make it better and help it express its original purpose. I won't say any more on it, because I summarised it a while ago on my blog. It's very well researched and written, and I encourage all to read it.

2. True and False by David Mamet
I think I read this book in 2 or 3 days. He believes that acting schools and techniques and systems are all bullshit. Perhaps he's right, but I don't agree with him. I think what did stick in my mind was when he said that all of these illustrious theatre schools have people come to them, and once the actors are out on the other side and have made a big splash in the world, the schools take the credit for the actor's accomplishments. Thus the schools' reputations are further garnished, when in all likelihood the actor was a genius before she went into the school, and if she was worth her salt, would make it big without the school's help. I don't agree with this. I believe in school, and I wouldn't be here otherwise. However, what Mamet says has helped to weaken the inferiority complex I have had about my own school, because it is not National Theatre School, or Julliard, or Yale. The chances of me being noticed by a big time talent scout might be greater in some other place, but there is no guarantee that I would be a better quality actor just by going to one of these other places. I think the point Mamet makes, or at least what I drew from it, is that so much depends on the individual's talent and drive. We can blame our learning issues on the school, or the teachers, or the classmates, and to some degree these things do have an effect. But of course, the fault, dear Actors, "lies not in our stars, but in ourselves if we are underlings.” The root cause of it is in ourselves. There is more in our control than we think. This book helped to remind me of that.

1. A Fair Country by John Ralston Saul
I just wrote a long and boring post about this book, so I won't go into much detail here. If you really want to know more, just suck it up and read the post, k? I will say that I think Saul is onto something about the correlation between Canada's identity and Aboriginal way of life, and has pointed me in a very good direction to better understand my country and participate in its life.

So that's that for now. Just a recap, really. Perhaps I'll say something about 2011 later. But for that's it for not.

À bientôt!

Liam

*That being said, I would still like to read what Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris are saying. I want to see how my views stand up against the champions of New Atheism. It would be hypocritical of me not to read them, and who knows? they might even shed some light on the subject!

John Ralston Saul, Aboriginals, Citizenship, and Our F#$%ing Inferiority Complex

2010-12-13T23:07:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading John Ralston Saul's book A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada. Quite a hefty read for the holidays, but worth it in the long run, I'd say.

A Fair Country revolves around Saul's argument that Canada is a 'Métis Civilization'*. The reason we have such an identity crisis as a nation is because we aren't asking the right questions. He believes that the mythology that our country is based on a European, Enlightenment-era model of a monolithic nation-state is an inaccurate portrayal of ourselves. Rather, our society is based on the values and principles Aboriginal culture: egalitarianism, social welfare, complexity, and balance with the environment. This current runs through our collective unconscious and has for the past four hundred years, Saul believes. The problem is that it remains in the unconscious, not our consciousness.

The reason we stumble as a nation is because we fail to acknowledge this, and when we succeed and excel as a nation it is not merely by accident. Medicare, Peacekeeping, Multiculturalism--ideas spearheaded by ambitious and forward-thinking Canadians--are not things that came about in spite of our national character, but because of it. He argues that Canada was based on three cultural pillars: the French, the English, and the Aboriginals. It is by acknowledging and restoring this third and senior pillar that we can find a balance and unleash our power as a nation. For the first settlers and traders to survive in the harsh conditions of Canada they had to develop strong and trusting relationships with the indigenous peoples, who already lived there. Every model of industry we inherited from Europe, from government to agriculture, only worked when we compromised them and found a balance with the Aboriginal way of life.

The same is true now for our survival as a healthy society. We suffer from an inferiority complex because, as a former colony, we judge ourselves by an imperial yardstick. The idea of linear progress, of a monolithic, racially defined nation-state devoted to Enlightenment ideals, and a Judeo-Christian, Manichean worldview--these elements together do not work for Canada. When we resort to this worldview, we are imagining someone else, not ourselves. And when we see the reality come short of our self-image, we think there is something wrong with us. These European-U.S. models of thinking are not inherently wrong (except maybe for the racially defined part). At least, they certainly aren't inherently ineffective. They worked well for other countries at other times. But what worked for the U.S. will not work for us.

Our greatest blunders are often a result of this colonial thinking, where we defer power and authority to someone else--we didn't do anything unless it had London's approval, and now we don't unless it has Washington's approval. This, Saul argues, has affected every level of Canadian society, but especially its elite. He credits individual initiatives to make the country a better place, but he argues that unless there are sweeping changes in elite thinking and institutional initiative, real change won't be possible. The part of the book where he levels an attack on Canada's elite--business managers, politicians, administrators, leaders in both private and public sectors--he titles 'The Castrati', implying that our elite has been emasculated and weakened as a group by this kind of colonial thinking. The reason we remain in this colonial mind-frame is because we believe that we are the direct inheritors of European thinking. Saul suggests that if we realize that we owe more to the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit for our identity than we do Europe and the Enlightenment, we might be able to break free from our dependancy on Empire for self-worth.

At the very foundation of his whole argument is that Canada's healthy sense of self is linked to the well-being of the Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The former is dependant on the latter. It sounds like a stretch, but even when his arguments are on the verge of collapsing under their own weight, he somehow ties them together. It all kind of makes sense. At least, I'm willing to give the idea a shot.

He's not suggesting that we abandon our European roots that actually do exist--some of these things work!--and start mimicking Aboriginal culture. This would be a superficial act, disrespectful to all parties involved, and beside the point. Nor does it mean that those who are non-Aboriginal need to romanticize, worship and elevate indigenous people to superior status in order to find who we are. What we need to do is own those fundamental principles we have inherited from our indigenous roots as a nation, and recognize that to lose Aboriginal culture is to lose a vital part of ourselves, as much as it would be to lose our Anglophone or Francophone roots.

I'm not really doing the book justice. He talks of Canada being a 'Métis Civilization', that our motto 'Peace, Order, and Good Government' should be 'Peace, Fairness, and Good Government, and that while these are minor details, being careful and precise about the language we use to describe ourselves will have enormous impact on our social imagination. He mounts argument after eye-crossing, head-splitting argument to show the validity of this point. I also might be oversimplifying or misrepresenting some aspects of his ideas, so I suggest reading it for yourself to decide whether or not there's actually something to what he's saying. I'm drawn in by his theories, because it looks to me like he is giving historical evidence for the reasons we fail, and why we are great, which is something I haven't seen anybody else do before. Not so thoroughly, anyway. I'm very green in Canadian politics and history, but I can tell that this is the kind of book that can make waves. Big ones. Andrew Cohen points out the major problems with Canada and proposes solutions, but Saul takes us to the root of the problem, which might strengthen our efforts to improve this country in the long run.

I think a great thing I've taken from reading this book is that, if what he is putting forward is true, then I don't have to be so cynical about our leaders, and politicians in general. I haven't seen much in our leaders today to have hope, but Saul cites examples of gutsy and effective leaders who really did listen to their people and changed the country for the better. Canadian politics may seem childish and ineffective now, but it hasn't always been, nor will it always be that way for all time. Andrew Cohen said that while we haven't produced a Stalin or Hitler, we haven't produced a Churchill or Roosevelt either. The more I learn about our history, the more I have to question that. What made Churchill and Roosevelt great leaders? They spoke to their people in a way that they needed. The words and actions of these men resonated deeply and directly with a certain time and a certain place, and for that they are immortalized. I think that we had leaders just like this, who connected with the people and place of their time. If one must parade our individuals like shiny trophies before the world, then I could list Lester Pearson (Peacekeeping), Pierre Trudeau (Multiculturalism, Charter of Rights and Freedoms), Tommy Douglas (Universal Healthcare), the Fathers of Confederation, who negotiated our independence--making ours the first colony to do so entirely without bloodshed. This is quite extraordinary in that context, and anybody who doesn't recognize that is simply ignorant. I realize that all of these examples are white males. Yes, we obviously have a long way to go. But that's also me not knowing enough of our country's history, its movers and shakers, so I have to throw in that disclaimer. (That's not even counting the legions of brilliant minds that have emerged from our country: Margaret Atwood, Emily Carr, Mordecai Richler, David Suzuki, Leonard Cohen, K'Naan, Alexander Fleming, Marshall McLuhan, Douglas Coupland, Louis Riel, Robertson Davies, Neil Young, Rohinton Mistry, Michel Tremblay, Robert LePage, Tomson Highway). My point is, that although treating these achievements like scores in a competition is silly, we would have no problem dropping names. We have a culture of highly influential people. If this proves nothing, and people still feel that we are immature as a society, then just wait. If this is true, Saul is wrong and we are simply a baby nation, I think Robertson Davies has the best rebuttle to that. "Cabbages can be grown quite quickly; an oak takes longer, and I do not think my country should be contented with a cabbage culture." Either way, I don't think Saul is wrong. It is also our responsibility to embrace our history and actively participate in our communal affairs so we don't repeat the atrocities committed by our forebears. This is an age-old, tired argument to use, but it must be repeated until we get the point. So not only is it crucial that we rise above apathy and cynicism, but it is entirely possible too.

I find that the more I read these kinds of things, the more I understand the full meaning of Citizenship. For a long time I resisted the concept of citizenship as being more than a legal title (I am a Canadian Citizen because the bureaucrats need a way to categorize me). It couldn't possibly have any deeper connection to my identity. Why couldn't I be a member of the human race who happened to be from Canada? Why, like, narrow your definition of self when you're like, so much more universal than that, man? Citizenship implied patriotism, which implied a worship of the Nation-State as an unshakeable entity that will always exist in its present form. Patriotism is so easily confused with Nationalism. But even so, it just didn't seem to be a big part of my life. But the more I have learned about Canada, the world, and myself, the more I realize that I am who I am because of where I am, when I am, and whom I engage with. I think this is what it means to be a citizen. To be an individual and take part in one's community is to be a citizen. I live in a land called Canada and engage with other Canadians as a Canadian myself. I owe nothing to some abstract idea called Nation über alles. That, I think, would no longer be patriotism, or even citizenship. That would be secular idolatry. Rather, I have a responsibility to the land I live in and the people I live in it with. Canada has proven to have far more to do with me than I would have preferred. But that's the nature of the beast. So, I am learning to embrace the term citizen in a deeper, broader, and simpler meaning.

Now Saul goes into great detail about how this colonial mindset has affected the elite, but I think it has seeped into every corner of Canadian society. Our favourite word is 'sorry'. I find myself saying it, not even meaning it, but as a verbal tick as common as 'like' or 'um'. So often at my university I hear people say, with a dash of contempt, 'how Canadian of you' to someone who decides to take the middle road on an argument, seeking a happy medium--as if there were something really wrong with that. It's one thing to be laughed at and scorned by other countries, but when we ourselves don't have much self-respect, that is when I have to draw the line. I'm tired of 'being Canadian' being spoken of in a pejorative sense, as if it was the worst thing you could be.

As actors in training one of our biggest hindrances, we are told, is our Canadian dialect. It is higher-pitched, nasal, and tight-jawed. I'm tired of this being the outward trappings of Canadian. Of course, it is good for an actor to be able to have mastery over many dialects--as many as possible--but we forget that our own can be of great value as well. We need to start associating 'Canadian' with our strengths as well as our weaknesses.

As much as I'd like to think that my identity has nothing to do with my country's identity, everything is interconnected from macro to micro, so any issues with self-confidence I may possess might be related to something that runs deeper in us as a people. This is somewhat a relief, but also rather troubling. We need to learn to own what we have. Really own it. I'm tired of being led to believe that my school is sub-par because it is not American, and my training is not British. I have to face the facts that the quality of training might be elsewhere, but it is tied in with this vicious cycle of self-confidence. So I simply can't think that way anymore. I've seen too much diligence, skill, talent, and extraordinary intellectual and creative energy abounding right where I am to believe that it is of lesser value because it didn't come from somewhere else. I've seen too much weakened self-confidence in others around me and myself to accept that this is okay. We have something great, where we are in this country, and it needs to be identified and embraced.

*He uses Métis in a very loose sense, speaking of Canada being a marriage of European and Aboriginal, but not necessarily the specific group of people that emerged over time.

The Spiritual Actor, or, Where Religion and Theatre Bump into Each Other

2010-12-10T15:27:00.001-08:00

AH! The holidays have arrived for yours truly, which means I can spend more time on here! To kick off my holiday blogging, I'm going to bore you all to death with the essay I wrote in Theories of Acting. In it I look at where the art of acting intersects with the central ideas of certain world religions. What I've focused on are Buddhism, Shamanism, and a sprinkling of Christianity for good measure. Feel free to question, comment, critique or condemn at your leisure. I love feedback!

I have often heard actors being identified as “high priests” of theatre—usually meant as no more than a metaphor. But I wonder if there is perhaps some validity in that remark after all. Otherwise, why would the comparison be made so often as it is? Surely there are some spiritual dimensions to the actor’s art. Notable theatre practitioners of the 20th century, including Stanislavski and Grotowski have used these dimensions to inform their work in theatre. One might assume that these spiritual aspects were superimposed on acting from the outside, and that is when they became spiritually endowed. But this seems like an oversimplification of the art, and I believe the conclusions these individuals drew would not have been possible had there not been some spiritual qualities latent within this ancient tradition. But if so, what are those qualities? How does acting resemble a spiritual journey? In observing certain religions and faith traditions of the world, one can draw parallels between the actor’s process and performance, and certain ideas and roles in religion. An actor has all the potential to be a kind of monk on the road to enlightenment, a model for ethical behaviour, a shaman healing the community through story, and a heretic who goes against establishment to keep it from stagnating.

One of the actor’s primary intentions is to pretend to be someone else. In acting training we are taught that to accomplish a truthful portrayal of a character it can only come with the acceptance that we are capable of any kind of behaviour. In studying the art of Half-Mask, we improvise with the mask to find a character, depending on what kind of impressions the mask makes on our bodies. It would be incorrect to say that what develops, what character arises, is not the person from whom it arose. The character is an aspect of the actor, and the mask is a channel that gives that person license to act and behave in ways they would not under everyday circumstances. Even the language used about the creation, finding a character, implies that they were waiting to be discovered rather than consciously contrived by the actor. If we are to agree with Erving Goffman’s theory that all human interaction is acting, then this notion does not seem so farfetched (252). When we embrace a wider view of our Selves, we see that the things we assume to make us us are not as fundamental as we thought. My “Self” is a combination of genetic inheritance and experiences. Free will comes into play of course, but we act largely as a result of these factors. This is a central idea in Buddhist thought about the Self. The Sanskrit word Atman means “Self”, but Buddhism subverts this, and rather acknowledges Anatman, “No-Self”, the idea that there is no fundamental I upon which a person builds their identity (Prebish, 48). Acting as an art form recognizes this plasticity of human nature more than most. The “Magic If” tool used by actors challenges the belief that our identities are solid and unchanging.

A term I always hear when applied to acting is being in the moment. An actor’s hope is to be able to perform with all of their attention focused in the present moment onstage. They are not to be thinking about what they are supposed to be doing next or what their next line is, and must be focused on their character’s objective. Actors must make themselves innocent in a sense, becoming open and childlike to what may happen onstage. This sounds strangely like the Biblical passage about how Jesus’ disciples would never enter the Kingdom of God unless they entered it with the open-eyed consciousness of a child (New International Version, Mark. 10:15). The focus of achieving a character’s objective in a play is a highly complex task, and paradoxically simple. It is as difficult for people every day to live in the present as it is for actors to live in the present of their performance. Often actors use tools to help them attune their bodies and imaginations to the specific needs of the role, a warm-up which can often manifest as a kind of meditation. To be rooted in the present, an actor is like a monk in the Buddhist tradition practicing Mindfulness meditation (Eckel, 63). This often involves physical tasks a monk carries out, to be fully in that task, with their mind not wandering, daydreaming, or thinking to the future while they are carrying it out. The hope is that when a person is doing something, they must do it one hundred per cent with all of their energy. This is exactly what an actor is doing.

As actors we are taught to not “anticipate”. We must not try to play for an effect or a quality, but play the action of the character only, and trust that the desired effect will arise naturally. This is also directly related to the concept of dethroning the ego, which is perhaps the most central element of all of the major religions. “On action alone be thy interest”, says the author of the Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita. “Never on its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive, nor be thy attachment to inaction” (14, 2:47). It is this doing something for its own sake, and not for results, money, or approval of critics or the audience, that is prized most in an actor. This says more about human nature than it does about acting, and it might be questionable that acting can even make a person more selfless and trusting, rather than these qualities making a good actor. But it might work on a person in that way. Stanislavski said that “unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it” (276). He believed it could make people more enlightened, more in tune with the world; and I do not think he was alone. The goal of letting go of self-consciousness in order to become a better actor might be a way of indirectly helping somebody on that path, helping them because they are relieved of the pressure of being aware that they are on it.

This is an extreme claim to make, connecting the path to spiritual enlightenment to the art of the actor—after all, a good actor is not necessarily an enlightened, or even a good person. But many prominent theatre practitioners have argued that this compartmentalizing of art and life is actually counterproductive. Grotowski argued that for an actor to even take part in the act of creation, “his health, physical condition and all his private affairs cease to be just his own concern. A creative act of such quality flourishes only if nourished by the living organism” (260). This comment is echoed in other artists who worked in a more traditional theatre setting. “If you should feel schizophrenic about attempting to stay an honest artist and worker in our present-day theater,” said Uta Hagen, “for the health of your soul and mind, remember that what makes you an artist is your private domain…only when you are functioning can you try to influence or make a better theater” (212). Stanislavski said that the actor’s “part is not played out when the curtain goes down. He is still bound in his everyday life to be the standard bearer of what is fine. Remember this from the very beginning of your term of service to art and prepare yourselves for this mission” (280). The ethical side has been addressed more than once. Theatre is such a highly social art form and demands working as an ensemble to create quality art, so its very nature forces artists to cooperate, which also demands an adherence to moral principles. As a positive result, it creates a strong sense of community under ideal conditions.

A shaman is a figure in non-industrialized cultures that acts as a spiritual leader, a mediator between the world of everyday humans and the realm of the spirits. The job of a shaman is to use ritual and technique to enter this spirit world, in order to bring healing and protection to the community. In a secular, post-Enlightenment society, belief in spirits is a minority. But that does not mean the shaman disappears; rather, he reappears in a form that is compatible with that society. Anthropologist Piers Vitebsky says that a shaman covers the roles which in “industrial societies are played separately by the doctor, psychotherapist, soldier, fortune-teller, priest and politician.” Vitebsky ought to add ‘Actor’ to that list. Although a shaman may be all of those things, he fulfills these needs through theatre, something which only actors actually recognizes as part of their occupation. Vitebsky says the shaman must be able to “sweep the audience along with the power of his or her performance” (52). I think Vitebsky uses terms like “performance” and “audience” to describe what the shaman does, because it is unavoidably theatrical. However, this is not to reduce what the shaman does to mere charlatanry. Rather, if we recognize the spiritual dimension of the actor’s craft, this comparison somewhat elevates expectations of the actor to that of community healer, and spiritual voyager. An actor plumbs the depths of their imagination and subconscious in the way the shaman plumbs the depths of the spirit world (An Actor Prepares, 305). Both must not get lost there, but externalize the experience in the form of a narrative for the audience. Both use a conscious technique or ritual to achieve this balance (Vitebsky, 65). He is careful to note that shamanism is more than ‘only acting’, as if to imply something false. The shaman’s performance transforms the consciousness of everyone involved, which “makes the question of trickery irrelevant” (120). This might separate the shaman apart from the actor, but that might not give the actor full credit for their potential as an artist. I believe an actor is more than a charlatan; but someone who takes part in a public narrative ritual like the shaman, says and does things that need to be said and done for that community, when nobody else can do it. Whether or not one believes in the spirit world, the shaman’s efficacy in healing is in part because of the reality the community believes in. “Shamanic cultures have particular assumptions about what exists (ontology) and how things happen (causality),” says Vitebsky. “If one shares these assumptions, then the possibility of effective shamanic action follows” (143). Likewise, the power the actor has to heal the community relies on a community that is literate in the actor’s art, and the actor’s sensitivity to the things that carry meaning for that community.

But what does the work of the shaman for the community have to do with the actor in the 21st century performing repertory at a regional theatre in North America? Maybe nothing. Does the content have to be a particular type to benefit society? If so, perhaps only the theatre of a highly moral or overtly religious tone would be permissible. This would leave no room for non-canonical, non-religious drama, subversive or slapstick comedy, spectacle, or art for art’s sake. In that case, the actor’s performance cannot always benefit the community as a whole on a spiritual level. But I think this implies a very narrow view of spirituality, and even morality. The stories we tell ourselves survive because they have something to do with the human spirit. We operate in the theatre with the belief that the spirit can be enriched by joy, silliness, and pure imagination, as much as morality. Humour, even that of an irreverent, scathing flavour has a place in a moral universe. When Augustine of Hippo called theatre an anti-temple, with anti-rituals, and actors its anti-priests, he probably would not have imagined that eventually he would be doing us a huge favour (Barish, 64). If we are to agree with his statement, we must take this as a great complement and a great responsibility. This might be where an actor least resembles a priest. A priest upholds a tradition that a community generally puts their faith in. The actor, as an artist, doesn’t necessarily buy into it as well. That is why the actor must play the role of Heretic. He must be the Outsider who challenges the rites and rituals of the Establishment, not to replace it, but to keep it in check and offer a broader view of the human condition. The actor does this by daring to create new rites, by daring to laugh at the Establishment, and by daring to laugh at himself.

The answer to the question of how acting intersects with religion is complex. At the end of the day an actor is not quite a monk, a priest, or a shaman. An actor is an actor. To overlook the differences of each would do a great injustice to all of them. I am not trying to elevate the status of actor to someone better than anybody else, within the theatre or without. There's nothing worse than that kind of moral superiority complex that runs amok in art and religion. And there is also a danger of mystifying acting in making these kinds of claims. But I believe there is also practical value and technique in what a monk or a shaman do, so the comparison isn't as outlandish as one might think. I also think that there is room for mystery in art, so let's not look on it as a bad thing. And while acting isn’t a spiritual vocation by necessity--sometimes it can't be--it has all the potential to become one. Even in my own experience I have been unable to avoid the parallels. Those parallels imply that there is something in acting as an art that goes beyond itself. It is not simply what story the actor is telling that causes some sort of vague religious experience. It is the act itself—the event of summoning one’s courage, discipline, cooperation and imagination to share something with a community, to share the community with itself—where those spiritual dimensions can be most tangibly found.

Works Cited:

-Barish, Jonas. The Antitheatrical Prejudice. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1981.

-The Bhagavad Gita. Trans. Franklin Edgerton. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.

-Eckel, Malcom David. Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

-Goffman, Erving. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday Publishing, 1959.

-Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. New York: Routledge, 2002.

-Hagen, Uta and Haskel Frankel. Respect for Acting. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons,
2008.

-The Holy Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.

-Prebish, Charles S. and Damien Keown. Introducing Buddhism: Second Edition. New
York: Routledge, 2010.

-Stanislavski, Constantin, Elizabeth Hapgood trans. Building a Character. trans. Elizabeth
Hapgood. New York: Routledge, 1989.

---, An Actor Prepares. trans. Elizabeth Hapgood New York:
Routledge, 1989.

-Vitebsky, Piers. Shamanism. University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

Whew! You made it! Well, thanks for reading. Hope you got something out of it!

I'm thinking about writing another Christmas-themed tale this year, but we'll see. Either way, I'll be back shortly!

-Liam

Rondeaux

2010-11-30T19:43:00.000-08:00

So recently, the writer Douglas Glover started a Rondeau writing contest on his website, Numero Cinq. The winner of the contest, as well as the finalists, as well as the rest of the website, can be found here. My sister, who is in contact with this author, suggested I enter it if I had the time. Somehow I did find the time to enter a rondeau. In fact, I wrote two! Never having written one before, I'd say that's not too shabby (a famous example of a rondeau is "In Flanders Fields"). Here are my entries for your amusement!

In Nicaea

In Nicaea, did they all choose
To gild the words of old Good News.
In god-like robes, for all to see
They dressed that soul from Galilee:
No longer man, this King of Jews.

Hundreds gathered, filled up the pews
With Bishops, all to air their views,
On that old question of Divinity
Once and for all, in Nicaea.

Arius said: "Do not misuse
The name of Christ. Be not confused!
Our Lord was Man!" That was his plea.
The rest believed that God was three,
And from a vote did his side lose,
A dead man became God in Nicaea.

Dreams

In my dream, I swung from the sky
Like Spider-Man. And who did I spy
Standing atop a 'scraper tall
But Barak Obama, all poised to fall:
Had I not caught him, he'd have surely died.

I also saw, in my mind's eye
A poor man chopped to bits. I tried to cry
Out but awoke, struck my head on the wall.
Jesus Christ! It was just a dream.

One night I saw dark heav'n up high
Burst open in a blaze of light. It dyed
The air with gold and violet falls,
Cascading down the starry walls.
A beatific sight, I dare not try
To reach. It was only a dream.

I'll be able to post more often on here as of next week, when I'm on HOLIDAY! Bye for now!

-Liam

Happy Birthday, Universe!

2010-10-23T13:55:00.000-07:00

Today is James Ussher day. Why is that? Because 6014 years ago, God created the universe, and this 17th century Irish Archbishop figured it all out. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, on the eve of October 23, 4004 BC, EVERYTHING came into being. And we all owe it to Ussher's intrepid scholarship for pinning that date down.

Darwin was obviously on crack. Clearly, the dinosaurs and other prehistoric flora and fauna were wiped out in the Great Flood. It's a fact. Get used to it, evolutionary theorists. So today is for you, Creationists, you wacky bunch, and your champion, Mr. Ussher. I salute you!

Zappity Thanksgiving!

2010-10-11T21:48:00.000-07:00

So sorry I'm late! Didn't have a moment to blog over the weekend, as it was filled with a whirlwind trip with Kayla to Vancouver, and turkey dinner. The dinner was delicious and enjoyed among good friends. But the highlight to my weekend was definitely Vancouver. It's amazing that it's taken me this long to hop across the water to go there. What I saw of it, which was very very little, was really cool. Unfortunately there was only so much I could take in in one day. I would love to go back (and I probably will). There was only one thing that seemed strange. The Vancouver Public Library, seen here...

...looks strikingly similar to a building located on Caprica, from Battlestar Galactica, seen here:

Coincidence? I think not! The Capricans must have studied Earth architecture and built a replica. It's the only explanation.

Hope you all had a wonderful Canadian Thanksgiving!

Humour, and Professional Goals

2010-10-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

Well so far I'm keepin' my promise to post on Sundays. So far my score is 1 out of 1 Sunday since I decided to do this. That's 100% on schedule!

I realised something recently about my sense of humour and my prejudices, that I want to test. I have this theory that there could be a person who is relatively quite uneducated, dumb and unsophisticated, tell a very vulgar joke and I'd probably think it was terrible, and I wouldn't laugh. Then, have another person who is well-educated, intelligent and sophisticated person tell the same trashy joke and I'd laugh my ass off. Why is that? Is that the result of my own prejudices? Do I judge the less educated person with harsher standards? Or is it just the hilarity of hearing a very intelligent and classy person totally subvert their image with a raunchy sex joke, while the joke in and of itself isn't all that good? Is it simply the irony? I don't think it's a class thing; but I'm not entirely sure. I have to wonder if there's a correlation, like the smarter the person is, the funnier the joke will be, or something like that, as if it's a matter of having the authority to say it. Or maybe I will find the same joke funny whoever is saying it, but I'll give the smarter person more kudos, because it shows that they might have a broader range of humour? It might be that, because I know no matter who says it, I still hate potty humour. Sex? Yes. Violence? Sure. Fart jokes? Hellz no. But again, I do think there's something to all this. For me, it does depend on who's saying the joke. What do y'all think?

--------

The past week has been a very inspiring one. I had about three evenings in a row where I was so motivated to work on my Half-Mask and Acting Masque pieces, and I've been prolific. I've virtually finished my first draft, four days before I have to present it in class. I really enjoy this year, because the emphasis put on self-created works. It's a delicious synthesis of writing and performance, two areas of interest that have always remained compartmentalised. Now it has me thinking about all of my post-post-secondary goals as an artist. There are so many projects I want to devote myself to, and I don't know which one is the best one to do first! FYI, here are my most immediate goals:

-write/perform a Fringe show
-get involved in the spoken word circuit, either here or wherever I end up living in the near future. This means writing poetry again! After so long!
-start up a theatre troupe that does Full and Half-Mask performances, and other non-realistic forms of theatre, like Clown and Puppetry. I want to take workshops in all of these things. This might even be a possible idea for Fringe. All, but especially Mask. The work I'm doing on it in Movement class is so gratifying, and it's surprisingly uncommon in the biz right now. There are pretty much no companies in Canada that do this kind of Mask. So yeah. That needs to change.
-finish my Writing degree. Wanna wait a bit before I go back to school, but this option is very plausible in my mind.
-while at some point I'd like to get involved in Film and TV, right now I'm more interested in doing smaller, self-produced projects. If I could get a camcorder and some other friends with cameras, we could make little indie movies and videos to put on Youtube.
-On that note, I'm strongly considering starting a video blog. The problem is it would need a point of focus, which I don't have yet that will lend itself well to video, rather than text.
-do more classical theatre. I fell in love with Shakespeare last year, and I think I still want to audition for Stratford in a couple of years. But, you know, that's in a couple of years, so it doesn't exactly count. I need other professional work under my belt before that. Maybe Bard on the Beach?

So those are some of them. The idea of self-created, self-produced work is shining brightly in my mind right now, knowing how hard it will be to get myself out there in the industry otherwise. I'll play it by ear, but I intend to do all of those things. Just you wait!

Here's to You, Eva.

2010-09-26T22:58:00.001-07:00

Today was Eva Markvoort's Celebration of Life, at the Phoenix Theatre. It was a beautiful event. It featured the screening of her documentary 65_RedRoses; various people speaking, including Jan, Linda, Eva's fellow classmate, and her parents; and even a recording of her vocal masque. For non-Victoria readers, she was a former student at the Phoenix Theatre who was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis as a baby and lived with it throughout her all too short life. The doc was about her harrowing journey waiting for an organ donor, a few years ago. She died on March 27, this year. I came to the Phoenix the year after she graduated, and I know a lot of people who knew her personally. It's a strange position to be in. Stranger still is that today was the closest thing to a funeral I've ever been to, and I didn't even know her. But that doesn't mean that her life and her message haven't touched me. The things she has accomplished in her all too short life is staggering and humbling. The amount of love that that event generated--because from what I've been told of Eva, she was full of love--has already inspired me to share my life with others as much as possible, and to work passionately on what I am passionate about in life. During the documentary, as I watched Eva struggle simply to breathe, I became so aware of the healthiness of my own lungs, my own ability to breathe deeply, my own capacity to live deeply. Who am I to take that for granted?

I should also confess that I haven't been a faithful follower of her blog. In fact, the first time I ever went on it was tonight. I expect that I'll be on there more, now. On top of everything else, she's inspired me to keep blogging, and to remember that I do have something to say, even if it's not as big of a something as her journey.

Thank you, Eva.

As I had suspected, school has already started to take over life. No more leisurely reading--nope! I have to read Oscar Wilde, and various acting theores--and no more leisurely writing--it's VOCAL MASQUE TIME!--but I will certainly try to keep up on here. With any luck I can get a book in if I read slowly and patiently on bus rides. Also, Christine has approached me about a very interesting and exciting newspaper project, and I await with puppy-dog eagerness to hear more about it from her.

That's all for now! I hope to blog again next Sunday. Have a beautiful week, everybody!

By the Way...

2010-09-19T21:12:00.000-07:00

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Sweet Jesus!

2010-09-13T22:50:00.000-07:00

When I was on campus today, there was a free ice cream booth by the bookstore. You heard me. FREE. ICE CREAM. What a brilliant idea. Anyway, one of the people giving out the ice cream was a Catholic priest, Father Dean Henderson, whom I recognised from Holy Cross Church where I went for Lent. After I left the booth, I got this picture in my head of a Catholic mass where the priest dishes out a decadent maple walnut flavoured ice cream cone to each devotee for the Eucharist. I guarantee the Church would be way more popular if the Body of Christ was ice cream, and not some silly wafer. God Inlactate, if you will.

I at least think it's a good idea.

2010-09-06T00:22:00.000-07:00

Now that the summer has drawn to a close, my year so far has been radically different from what I planned it to be. While the idea behind my Year of Extraordinary Thinking remains true and admirable, my own plans have had to change. I ended up not doing tree planting, I didn't enter the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest, I didn't finish writing my submission for SATCo, and I didn't ever get an artist's retreat. The reasons I didn't do these things were partially out of my control, but to the degree that it was in my own hands I chose not to do these things. There were a lot of personal demons that reared their ugly heads this summer and I wasn't brave enough to face them and soldier on. Because of that, I simply didn't have the energy to work on these things. I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed.

What this summer did bring with it was worthwhile in its own way, however. In producing and creating a puppet show for kids, I had a renaissance of sorts for children's literature. The fact that my mom is studying it right now only further whetted my appetite. Being around little kids (3-10) for the first time in a bajillion years was great. The immediacy of their imagination and life was invigorating. My mom made a remark a week or so ago about her granddaughter Lucy's visit to Calgary; she said that it's good to always have a young child in the house. I think she's absolutely right; she speaks as a grandmother, and I speak from a different place of course-- only as an actor, a person who depends on remembering how to reach the world of play. But I can see why that is true. Children were a good thing for me, during a very hard summer when I sometimes verged on taking myself way too seriously.

But: I'm biking more, I observed Lent and went through a lot of spiritual inquiry, I've learned a few new recipes from my cookbook (although I've fallen embarrassingly behind on that resolution), I've already hosted two storytelling parties, and despite the drawbacks, I did devote more time and energy to writing. These are not to be written off. It is progress. Yet the real measure of this Year of Extraordinary Thinking is whether or not I've been living truly and honestly. Have I been honouring my values? Have I been true to my self? That is perhaps the hardest thing anyone can do, but it is also the most important. It's important to check in with that question as often as possible. More often than I have been. So to start my fourth year on the right foot, now is a good time to ask it. In the short term, I can't say I am living as honestly as I know I can be, as I was meant to be. Two days from school starting and excited though I am, I don't feel ready. There is not enough time and my life is kind of crazy, what with moving in to a new place. Things haven't settled yet, and it's frustrating because I can't think straight right now. My desire to create is greater than my time or energy for it. Thankfully this can all be mended. Once school starts things will be settled, I'll be in a rhythm, and it'll be okay. But it's important to have the right start. Every little step counts.

2010-08-11T20:11:00.000-07:00

Hey folks! I'm back from my Puppet show tour! Whew! Finally finished.

I'm happy to report that while I was out on tour I wrote quite a few pages of my "Tolkien rip-off" story (see June 7 and June 18, 2009 entries for more information). This is a big deal to me. It's a story I've been working on for years, and it shows no sign of speeding up. So when I can actually get a measurable amount of work done on it, however small, I'm happy.

But I'm torn. I don't feel like I'm ready to write this particular story. I feel like there's so much I need to learn about the world and myself, so many other stories and attempted flights of fancy, ambitious trials and flaming errors, before I can even think of committing this one to paper. But the thing is it's the only one I really care about writing. I abandoned my SATCo project this summer because I just wasn't getting excited about it, and I am for this other one.

I see this Faerie Tale as one of two things: this story is either the one I was called to do, the one to which all other stories I write are stepping stones, the one I was born to write; OR this is the story I need to get out of my system, regardless of how good or bad it is, before I can actually go on to have a fruitful career as a writer. Who knows? Either way, it haunts me, no matter what I do.

2010-07-24T23:35:00.001-07:00

P.S. What do you think of the new layout?

K, Dis One's For Gabi!

2010-07-24T22:54:00.000-07:00

Oh hey there!

My sister Gabrielle has started her very first blog, which has inspired me to get back on here, after almost a month's unintentional hiatus. The truth is, she was the writer in the family first. She was doing it for as long as I can remember, perhaps as long as she can, too. Granted, I was making comic books and story boards for movies when I was a five-year old, but that always belonged more to the realm of drawing, in my mind. It was nothing like writing out a picture-less story, and being a true Author. I started doing it after she did, trying to be like her. Only I would start a story and never finish; I never had the stamina to finish one. But anyway, I've been inspired once again to keep it up, thanks to my sis.

It's been a fast-paced run through July. And frankly, that's okay by me. The puppet show has been going very well, and we've just finished out Salt Spring tour. We're back in Vic for a week, and then we hit the road once again!

I've developed a very interesting relationship with books, in the past year or so. You might even call it an intuitive one. I find that timing is important when it comes to reading. I won't touch a book, no matter how much of a gem it is, unless it or a subject it deals with has been on my mind for some time. Until then, I won't give it all the attention it deserves. Sometimes a book can put itself in my mind where it wasn't before, and then I'll see if it takes root. But it can't be forced. So if you recommend a book to me, please don't be offended if I turn it down or never bother to pick it up. No matter how good it is it probably just isn't the right time, so I won't be interested.

For instance, having read a couple of C.S. Lewis' books in the past few months, as well as some of his literary essays, I've been thinking more and more about his fiction. So in all likelihood I might end up reading his sci-fi series, and maybe the Chronicles of Narnia, one of these days. Reading his works has also led me in the direction of George MacDonald, a huge influence on Lewis, so I read the Princess and the Goblin. I might find my way back to him pretty soon as well, perhaps to read his adult fairy tale Phantastes. Ever since reading Peter Pan the play, I've been curious about the novel Barrie made out of it, so that is another one I want to get my hands on very soon. My point is, this is how my mind and appetite for reading works. I know what I want. And it might be more difficult, though not impossible, to come in from the outside and plant the desire for something entirely different. It all depends. Please don't stop recommending books, because there is no way that you can know whether I want to read it or not, but like I said, don't be offended if I turn it down. If it really is such a page-turner and just up my alley, then rest assured I will get to it in due time, and it's my loss alone for not reading it, right?

In the meantime, I'm on a mission to read more post-Tolkien fantasy, a whole world which I snubbed before I even gave it a chance. in grade 7 I read The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks, and assumed that most fantasy from the 60's onward was like that, so I didn't bother. I read The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, and thought it was alright. I can't remember what it's about at all. It simply didn't leave an impression. BUT, those are only two writers in the genre, and there are many. Most of them probably are, to my tastes, crap, but I shouldn't spite the jewels for being rare. Currently I'm reading the Ursula K. Le Guin's novel A Wizard of Earthsea. She is highly acclaimed, and not just a New York Times bestseller, so I'm hopeful. I'll let you know how it goes. What's everyone else reading, these days?

Happy Canada Day, Everyone!

2010-07-01T10:48:00.001-07:00

And happy Dominion Day, to you, Andrew Cohen.

143 years and we still haven't quite moved out of our parents' house.

Tarantino's got nothing on Homer

2010-07-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

I'd like to read to you a couple of passages from the Odyssey, Book 9:

'He leapt to his feet, lunged with his hands among my fellows, snatched up two of them like whelps and rapped their heads against the ground. The brains burst out from their skulls and were spattere over the cave's floor, while he broke them limb from limb, and supped off them to the last shred, eating ravenously like a mountain lion, everything--bowels and flesh and bones, even the marrow in the bones. We wept and raised out hands to Zeus in horror at this crime committed before our eyes: yet there was nothing we could do. Wherefore Cyclops, unhindered, filled his great gut with the human flesh, and washed it down with raw milk. Afterwards he stretched himself out across the cavern, among the flocks, and slept.'

And also, from Book 9:

'Some power from on high breathed into us all a mad courage, by whose strength they charged with the great spear and stabbed its sharp point right into [the Cyclops'] eye. I flung my weight upon it from above so that it bored home. As a shipbuilder's bit drills its timbers, steadily twirling by reason of the drag from the hide thong which his mates underneath pull to and fro alternately, so we held the burning pointed stake in his eye and spun it, till the boiling blood bubbled about its pillar of fire. Eyebrows, with eyelids shrivelled and stank in the blast of his consuming eyeball: yea, the very roots of the eye crackled into flame.'

Good old classical literature.

2010-06-12T23:20:00.000-07:00

While I was reading Letters to a Young Poet, which Kayla recommended to me, I came across this passage:

"In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn't matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life; learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!"

This summer has so far come to be a big lesson in patience. Patience in the knowledge that I will find a job, patience with my health, fitness and well-being, and patience with my artistic pursuits. I've become enthralled by the need to be efficient. If I'm not doing something with my time, I feel very anxious about it, and then depressed and greatly frustrated. Even if I am doing something, if it's not something my ego arbitrarily deems worthwhile, then it's as good as doing nothing. If it doesn't have a tangible result, then all is lost, it seems. I need to keep looking to this passage for a reminder that I don't have to do everything all at once. More importantly, the times where I feel inactive, something--an idea, a picture, a song, is in me and needs that time to bloom in my mind. The evenings I get home from work and I may accomplish nothing all evening, it's worth remembering that while my conscious self may not have done much, my unconscious might be working very hard, and is waiting for the right opportunity. It's worth remembering that any inspiration I get came to me not in spite of that seemingly endless wandering and floundering, but because of it. Nothing is a waste.

I've idolized the idea of maximizing my time, doing the most with it as possible; a distortion of the carpe diem mantra, I guess. Perhaps we're not meant to be that efficient. Stanislavski, who devoted his entire life to acting, likened himself to a prospector, who had to sift through tons of useless rocks just to gather a few pieces of gold. I think he found an abundance of it, but the important part is all of the time and energy he put into sifting through all the rocks. One can't get around that step.

A word I came across, also from reading Rilke, was fruitfulness. This word struck me instantly. I think this is what I've been working for, but I mistook it for its deceptively similar, utilitarian counterpart, productivity. Yes, they're synonymous, but I believe there is a difference, in our day and age at least. To me, fruitfulness implies fruit, which comes from an organic kind of growth that will only yield over time, with great patience and humility, after enduring great pain. Productivity is an Industrialist word, and it smacks of quotas in my mind. It implies efficiency, and economy. If a human being was a lightbulb, it would not be a very cost-efficient one. Yes, it can create light--and it is a marvelous light indeed!--but not without producing a lot of heat. The metaphor itself doesn't come close to it, because I don't think we're meant to be that way. We are from Nature, and Art is from Nature, so we really are more like a tree. That's why we live according to the seasons, and that's why there is a time for everything under the sun. (So for God's sake, we've got to stop believing that we are what we make! Our creations already have that covered.) Efficiency is something that I cannot satisfy right now. I think there's a reason why people say the "fruit of one's labours" more often than the "product of one's labours". It's got a far nicer ring to it, and it speaks of something that comes out of life and is life-giving. I believe this word is closer to Art, as well as Life. And that's what brings me back to the passage above. And that's why I've got to be patient. I will not yield anymore than my earth will allow.

Confessions of an Armchair Anarchist

2010-06-03T21:14:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

I haven't posted much of anything lately, and I don't really have too much on the boil at the moment. But that should change fairly soon. In the mean time, since I have no new material, I thought I'd share with you an ooold and silly entry from when I was 15, because it's just too amusing:

"I think laws are stupid. For as long as they exist people won't be able to continue in their evolution. Rid ourselves of laws and people will gradually become more self-reliant upon their potentiality for common sense. Things will seem chaotic at first I'm sure, but I believe the long-term effect will be better. Until then, we will be bound by laws; external agents that we look to rather than looking inward. Laws are like over-protective parents, doing more harm than good, since they are ultimately supressing the growth and development of the children (i.e. the subjects under which laws are implemented, a.k.a us). My two cents for today."
Liam Volke
October 13, 2004

Seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.

2010-05-28T22:14:00.000-07:00

I feel that I should explain a few things.

I often wonder why I even bother with Christianity anymore. I'm very aware of how much time I've put in writing about it on here, and frankly I would like to move on to other things again. But the fact of the matter is that it's been on my mind a lot lately, and it won't stop until I've followed this train of thought to its natural conclusion and it's done with me. All the same, I do wonder why I bother with it. For a long time I didn't, but it kept bobbing up every now and then throughout my teen life. Encountering figures like Desmond Tutu, C.S. Lewis, the mystics John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart, and especially people in my own life, showed me people for whom this faith had something real and true and beautiful, and it was a constant source of inspiration to them. Seeing them live this deeply within their faith made me admire them, and envy them their ability to access that through Christianity. It has long stopped doing that for me. For a while I wondered if their convictions, their love and compassion, was proof that Christianity did work. But then I realized that it was not the system, but the people themselves that inspired me. As I've mentioned here before, I have great faith in people who have faith. I also viewed these kind of people as an outsider. But I wanted to know what it was at the centre of their faith that inspired the joy and serenity they seem to possess. I wanted back into Christianity, but I felt it was too late, and I had moved on. I don't necessarily need it. Nonetheless, this religion has still been a subject of great fascination and frustration for me. So I should explain where I stand with it. Get comfortable, this is going to take a while.

As I grew older, I became more aware of different religions, a process that was accelerated in the post-9/11 era, where religion and diversity became a huge topic in schools and media. As I became more aware of different religions, I took an interest in them and studied them. The more I studied, the more I realised that there was something of God in each of them. Understanding their system of ethics, and the profound experiences that they were rooted in brought me to the conclusion that they too had a grasp on the sacred as much as my own faith tradition. This unhinging of my previous understanding of religion--the deep humanness of it--was liberating for me. I was someone who was raised in an environment of tolerance and open-mindedness. To discriminate against others for their religions never would have entered my mind, and yet I felt I needed some divine sanctioning for this ingrained attitude. My heart wanted to celebrate diversity, but my head wanted God's permission first. I believed in my newfound universalism, but I had no direct evidence for it. Yet seeing the way people of various traditions conducted their lives according to their faiths, reading the texts they regarded as holy, I was convinced of this idea. There were similar traits among each of them. How could a religion like Islam--that endorsed critical thought and social justice--be evil? How could a religion like Buddhism--that endorsed compassion for all beings, and offered the chance to transcend endless suffering--be godless? How could a man like the Dalai Lama not be holy, just because he didn't worship the God of Abraham and Isaac?

However, this liberation also brought with it a sense of inertia. I still felt I needed a way to express my own spirituality, but what were my options? To choose one road would be to exclude all the others in a way. I couldn't stand the idea of not making a choice, but the idea of defining myself also meant creating a border around me, which excludes more than it includes. You may ask, "why choose at all?" If the mind, as Comte-Sponville says, has no fatherland, then why the need to pretend it does? To choose did indeed feel futile, because I understood intellectually that the truth ultimately transcended any single path. God was greater than religion. Yet I still needed a way to that truth and I did not feel I could trust myself on my own to reach it.

For years I've been orbiting around Buddhism, but I can't make a decision about following it specifically for a few reasons, one of them being my fear that I would commit to it for all the wrong reasons. In some ways it felt more true to Buddhism not to officially convert to it, because otherwise it would simply be exchanging one parochial worldview for another. Again, perhaps I needn't make a choice. But a large part of me longs to actively express my spirituality, and to openly acknowledge the sacred in my every day life, something a secular lifestyle often overlooks.

Amid all this, Christianity hasn't completely lost its appeal. For all its baggage throughout history, even in spite of its narrow view seemingly built into the Bible, I've been drawn to it. I felt the ministry and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth has a great deal to offer to our contemporary world. This I cannot deny. I believe this is so because it is mirrored in other faiths. The problem with that was that I only really saw its value when I held it up to the alternatives. I could not put stock in Christianity until it was validated by other systems, so this meant I had other built-in standards by which I was measuring it. I think that because I've tried to view the Gospels through the lens of Eastern philosophy to make sense of it, I wondered if I belonged to that mindset, which is why I turn so often to Buddhism. The language of this faith tradition was always more accessible to my logic-saturated mind. It allowed me to think more. And yet, for whatever reason, my sights always wandered back to the images of cloistered cathedrals, humble monastic cells, bread and wine, lambs, blood --and crosses. Always the Cross loomed in my mind whether I wanted it there or not: a symbol of death turned inside out, into a symbol of selflessness and love. It is a dramatic and therefore unforgettable image, and therefore I could not forget it. This may be because I have been raised in a predominantly Christian context. To deny this cultural heritage would be apocryphal. But whatever the reason, I am drawn to it, like a big, horrific magnet.

This past Christmas, I read Karen Armstrong's book The Case For God, and my hope for religion--not just faith, but religion--was renewed. She showed me that it does have a place in human society, but only because she illustrated its original meaning. Religion, she argues, is not something you intellectually believe in, but something you do. It was a skill, a technique, similar to practicing scales on a piano, which could help someone improve and expand their spiritual life the more they did it. It was the way one carried out what one believed. The ritual in religion had potential to awaken the spirit of action and enlightenment. She also gave historical evidence of the same transcendent experience in all religions, eastern and western, so this put my mind to rest about that. That wasn't enough to make me consider returning to Christianity, however. It was a crucial moment, but not the end.

I tried going to church a few times over Lent, and while I wanted a spiritual community, I couldn't relate to the liturgical practices. I couldn't say the Apostle's Creed without feeling a knot in my stomach, knowing I didn't believe 95% of it. I believe in forgiveness, and I believe in God, (although in no form resembling the traditional bearded patriarch), and I believe that in all likelihood Jesus died under Pontius Pilate's governance, since this governor was a real historical person. Everything else I couldn't swallow. The biggest issue barring me from Christianity is its historicity. In our contemporary Darwinised world it is perfectly alright for Christians to believe that the story of Genesis is nothing but a creation myth. A lot of the supernatural aspects of the Old Testament are generally viewed as myth and metaphor to most Christians today, thankfully. Therein science and religion may coexist. The problem comes up with the stories surrounding the life of Christianity's protagonist. Can a person see the Virgin Birth, the various miracles Jesus performed, and the Resurrection, as metaphor rather than fact, and still be considered a Christian? To be a Christian, in the orthodox sense, meant that these things had to be accepted as things that actually occurred in history, even if the Fall, Noah's Ark, and the parting of the Red Sea did not. And even if the Virgin Birth and the miracles were debunked, the Resurrection surely had to be accepted as a real historical event in order to be a Christian. This was the event that everything Jesus' life lead up to, we are told. It was what the Christian argument hinged upon. This does not work for me as literal, so I decided I must not be a Christian.

Furthermore, I could not accept the doctrine of the Trinity, which sucked the humanity out of Jesus and injected him with divinity--all done centuries after his death. I believe he was a man, nothing more. Therefore, I must not be a Christian. I also knew that all of the documents in the New Testament were written decades after Jesus' life ended, and in all probability he never said most of the things he was quoted to have said. So I could never be certain what the original followers of Jesus actually said and did. Unable to reach the historical Jesus, I couldn't be sure either way if the Gospels had any validity. It troubled me that people called these books the Word of God, when they were selected out of a plethora of gospels that were floating around at the time. For example, why did the Gospel of Thomas get rejected from the canon? Why did the canon close at all? Why did Paul get so much stage time in the New Testament? This to me seemed like the texts were edited by individuals who had their own agenda to promote, and closing the canon for all time was a way for the Church to exert its power and authority. How could I call it the Word of God when I knew it was tampered with, not to mention penned by humans? I could make no final conclusions from looking at history, so the way was barred for me.

But that wasn't the end either. At the beginning of the summer I started reading a book called The Sins of Scripture by John Shelby Spong. Spong is a Bishop in the Episcopal Church of America. He is also a theologian and a Biblical scholar. In this book he basically says flat out that the Bible is not the Word of God, but a document of very human origins. He deconstructed the Bible, one argument at a time, showing how its books were the product of human insight at best, and aggressive nationalism at worst. He goes through the passages that promote anti-Semitism, child abuse, homophobia and misogyny, and says they must be jettisoned from the Bible. They are not Holy Writ so they have no reason to be there. He does the same with texts that promote a patriarchal order, including the image of God as Father, and even the texts that the Church uses today to defend its stance on birth control. To "be fruitful and multiply" Spong argues, may have had a place in a time when the Jewish tribe was small and relied on its progeny to survive, but now that the planet is groaning under the weight of overpopulation, birth control is now a moral necessity; the sacredness of life is being compromised by the unchecked quantity of it. The best way to view the Bible is as a Jewish Epic, like the Odyssey was for the Greeks, or the Mahabharata was for Hindus--not the final truth, but a way for a people to tell the story of their nation using the language they had, with all its power and limitations. Finally, Spong casts the light on Jesus not as a god, but a man. He is not God, Spong says. In all likelihood he was a person conceived out of wedlock (yes, a bastard child; hence using the story of the Virgin Birth to avoid the scandal). And in all likelihood he had a wife (there are many theories about Mary Magdalene being this person, and Spong thinks that there is text evidence for it). Not only that, but he may have even had female disciples, so his community was not a Boys Only club as it has become and been up until now. He probably did a lot to infuriate the orthodox Jewish authorities, and so he was crucified and died for it. That's it. The Bible is not the Word of God, it is a collection of books conceived by human minds and shaped by their limited knowledge. But knowing this, Spong argues it is still possible to be a Christian. He believes that even though none of the Gospels can be seen as historically accurate, they point toward a man with whom people had a profound experience and that the miracles and the Resurrection, are still viable symbols for today, even if they did not literally happen.

I read about this further in Spong's book This Hebrew Lord. Its argument was that Jesus must be viewed "through Hebrew eyes", and that most of the imagery we have inherited in Christianity has been removed from its original context, and therefore distorted. Obviously Jesus had an effect on the people around him which they could only express with the words they possessed. It is important to look at him in his original Jewish context to understand the things that were said about him. People called him 'Lord' and 'Son of God' because these were images and words pulled directly from Jewish scripture to describe the Jewish Messiah, a human. 'Lord' and 'Son of God were titles for a man, the descendant of King David, not a divine being who came down to visit us from Outside. Even if he wasn't literally the descendant of David, he acted in such a way that made people believe he was the Messiah. This was the only language they had to express the experience they had with him. Spong also argues that as long as the Bible is seen as a human document and not the Word of God, it is possible to be a Christian, because Jesus was a man who defied tribal barriers: instead of rising up to crush and scatter his enemies, he preached the idea of loving his enemies. He reached out to communities outside of his own, regardless of who they were. His message of love and compassion are what shine through the Gospels, though hidden beneath the political biases and limited language of their writers. His story, Spong says, was the turning point at which the Jewish epic was transformed into a universal epic, and that is why he is significant and worthy of following. That is why he was called Christ.

After reading his work, I've been able to look at these facts not with trepidation, but relief. Of course all of this information has existed before Spong came along, but the fact that it was admitted by a person of considerable authority in the Christian Church, a Bishop no less, gives me hope for this faith tradition. Indeed, Bible scholarship came into its own about two hundred years ago, and yet it so much of its discoveries do not reach laypeople. Not through the Church anyway. Church authorities view it as a threat to the status quo, a threat to certainty which they seem to think that regular people cannot grasp. So they repress it, while people curious enough find out anyway, from other sources less friendly to Christianity. People use this information to level attacks against Christianity, and what I find interesting here is that Spong uses it as a defense of Christianity, or at least what he believes it should be.

There is one more problem I haven't addressed though. Still unsure about how to enter any path without negating the others, I read something else Spong said:

"Is our only alternative then to seek to honor positive tradition in all religious systems, creating in the process a pantheon large enough to hold us all together, a religion of consensus where the edges are blurred and the divisions are papered over? Some traditions, like B'hai, seek to do that, and they do it with great integrity, but that pathway, while positive for many, does not seem to me to offer the best hope for either religious toleration or a religious future."

This was exactly how I was feeling.

"I propose, rather, a different route into what I think is our inevitable interfaith future. Each of us as participants in our own particular faith must journey into the very heart of the tradition that claims our loyalty. I, as a Christian, must plumb the depths and scale the heights of my own faith system. I must learn to separate the essence of Christianity from the compromises this religious system has made through history...We Christians must journey beyond these forced political divisions to the core of our faith and there allow ourselves to discover its essence, to enter its meaning and finally to transcend its limits. We do that, however, while still clinging to what we call our ultimate Truth and what we regard as our 'pearl of great price.' That must also be the pathway that every Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and any other participant in any other religion of the world must walk."

Spong makes the case that Christianity is a way that points to the truth, and not the truth itself, and that eventually one must go beyond it. This made perfect sense to me, now. I think I could understand this because of my experience as an artist, and a person. We as humans deal with the concrete, the tangible, and physical, in order to reach the abstract, the intangible, and the spiritual. Great art is created by focusing on the specifics. That is what specificity is to acting choices, that is what imagery is to literature. We deal with particulars to reach the universal. Jesus spoke in the concrete language of symbols because that is how the human mind works. Tibetan Buddhism employs the same method, by focusing one's energy on mandalas. We can't tend to the soul without the body, which is something I think Jewish wisdom understands quite well. We can't reach God but through the physical, because that is what our minds can wrap themselves around. It is like in the Bhagavad Gita: Arjuna asks Krishna to reveal himself in his full glory, but to do that would blind Arjuna, so Krishna takes on a physical form while on earth. That is what religion is. Trying to be specific in spirituality as one is specific in art. Trying to put clothing on the ineffable. Of course, it gets to a point where the clothing must be shed, but until then, it's a necessity.

So that's where I now stand with religion in general, and Christianity in particular. It's a very complicated relationship, but one I feel strongly about. Spong is just one individual, but his ideas resonate with me quite deeply, as does Armstrong, and even Lewis. That being said I haven't reached a final conclusion, but this doesn't bother me anymore. I know my journey is not over, and it excites me. But all in all, after reading these authors, I feel it is now possible to enter this faith tradition if I so desire, let alone any tradition, without giving up my intellect and my skepticism.

2010-05-18T22:00:00.001-07:00

It occurred to me yesterday that it's been over half a month since I've posted anything new on here. It's already almost the end of May! This won't do. At this rate I'll never be able to beat my record of 48 entries in 2009! I'll have to pick up the slack, one way or another. Right now, to be honest, I can't say I've been motivated to write on here recently. I prepared another spun out entry and I couldn't bring myself to finish it, so I'll leave it for a later date.

In the mean time, I've been doing a hell of a lot of reading in my oodles of free (unemployed) time, so nobody can say I haven't been keeping busy (not to mention applying for one job after another, but that's not very interesting to talk about. So I wont.) If nothing else, I'm rather pleased about this. But even during the school year I can say--with a hint of smugness, I'll admit--that I managed to get some leisurely reading done. In fact, I'm proud to say that I've gotten a lot of reading done over the year. When I'm asked what my hobbies are, the list comes up rather short. The list comes up headed by reading and writing. I feel like I should do more with my time. I'm not a part of any clubs or teams. I just read. I rarely watch movies, and I barely even watch TV. I never play my video games. Don't get me wrong, I love doing all of those things, and reading isn't necessarily superior to any one of them as a pastime. That's just what I seem to do.

It's funny to be saying this now; I think I can say I've always been a sort of academic type, but I don't think you could say I was a bookworm. I was never prolific enough to deserve that title. Granted, having all this free time has changed that, it seems. I do do other things with my day, to be fair: I exercise, try to learn to play piano, run errands and stuff like that. But at the moment, reading is something of a primary activity. For some reason I feel guilty about this fact, like I should be doing more. Instead I just sit there and absorb a story or an argument. It doesn't really benefit anybody but myself. At least with writing, I'm giving or creating something and putting it into the world; someone else has the chance to be engaged with me. But reading is more of a selfish act. At least it can be; I've spent more time with books than I have with my own friends, recently. It's a sorry sight: if left alone for too long, I will be a hermit. Old habits die hard, I guess.

On the other hand, why shouldn't I be happy to be reading? It's more than an act of slightly sophisticated spongery, isn't it? It's a noble and enriching thing, and although this may seem obvious, I think that fact bears repeating, (if nothing else to make me feel better about all of my involuntary free time). So I say to anybody who's realized they just spent the last few hours, days or even weeks doing nothing but: don't feel bad about it! It may seem passive to an outside observer, but that doesn't make it so. Whether you're reading Stephen King or Batman or James Joyce or Robert Munsch, your imagination is a flurry of activity and that should be honoured! So don't take that for granted.

C.S. Lewis' Theism vs. André Comte-Sponville's Atheism

2010-05-01T19:49:00.000-07:00

As I had mentioned three weeks ago, I would devote an entire entry to my readings of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and André Comte-Sponville's The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. I read these because I wanted to hear from the most credible and intelligent advocates the strongest arguments they could make for their respective beliefs about God. I thought I would line up each of the arguments that resonated the most with me, and tried to choose the ones that were arguing about the same point to make it as fair as possible.

A few notes before I begin: I have my own opinions separate from either of the one laid out here, but I felt a lot of what both of them had to say to be quite persuasive in some ways, although less so in others. Furthermore I don't believe that you can prove or disprove God's existence, certainly not just by logical debate. Thankfully, I think this is something which both authors would recognize as well. Ultimately I wouldn't leave the matter of such personal significance up to other people whose experiences I haven't had. This is just for fun.

I should also admit that to compare these gentlemen's arguments is an unfair business to begin with. They were not contemporaries and they had different audiences. Not to mention they were using different means to put their arguments across. C.S. Lewis delivered Mere Christianity as a series of radio broadcasts to the beleaguered people of the British Isles during the German blitz of World War II. He was acting as a voice of hope and he was speaking directly to the British people, trying to be as simple and clear as possible without dumbing down his message to for the people. His writing style is full of humour, wit, piercing intelligence and beauty. His argument as a whole is not without its warts however. He makes claims that show quite clearly where he is and when he is in history, and he cannot exactly be judged by our standards for having these beliefs, but they are prejudiced beliefs nonetheless and we can't follow his advice in those areas, knowing what we know and being who we are in a 21st century secular context. That being said he strikes me as quite a progressive man for his time, and was not someone to let Christianity fall into the hands of simpletons who believe the "common" person is unable to engage with his or her faith on a deeper, more contemplative level. Lewis never stood for blind faith. Indeed, a man of letters like himself, I should hope not. On that note, he uses a more literary style for his argument, employing scenarios and images that will resonate with a regular English person, whereas Comte-Sponville follows the tradition of Western philosophers and uses their words to fuel his arguments. Both write clearly enough and beautifully enough for the layman to appreciate, but sometimes their tactics are so different they seem to be speaking different languages, on different premises.

The reason why I find both of their voices compelling is that both of them have seen God from both sides, so to speak. The only difference is they went in opposite directions. For a long time, Lewis was an atheist, and then he found his way back to theism, and then ultimately Christianity. What he is very successful in doing in this book is making Christianity seem like the most sensible thing anybody can do, and I imagine the arc of his reasoning might reflect his own personal journey. Comte-Sponville came out of a Christian context; he was one in his youth, and when he entered adulthood he found his way into atheism. But he understands quite thoroughly what he is arguing against, and even acknowledges the value of belief without outright dismissing the whole thing. I feel I can engage in what he is saying because he maintains his respect for people who have different views than his own. He does not launch an attack on religion like individuals such as Richard Dawkins and his staunch 'militant atheism', but he calmly and firmly says why he is not a believer and makes a damn good case for it. Finally what I find appealing about his argument is that he believes it's possible to be spiritual without God, and His non-existence does not preclude living a life of the spirit.

I only wish they knew each other and that I knew them, because I would love to hear what I'm certain would be a lively debate between them. Anyway, enough of my yammering.

THE LAW OF MORALITY

Without touching Christianity, Lewis makes a claim for the existence of a God based on two things. The first is the Intelligent Design view that with a universe so beautiful and immense and elegant, it must have been made by Someone or Something. This would be extremely weak evidence if he had stopped there. But he doesn't, thankfully. In fact, it's not even the main thrust of his argument. "If" he says, "we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You find out God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built."

He recognized that the world is governed by laws, but when it comes to human beings, the Law of Morality is the law that we can choose not to follow. Lewis says that we act one way even though we know we should be acting another. It is something deeply ingrained in us as animals, and the cause for it being there is that there is a force in the universe telling us to listen to it, and the reason why this is what we feel we should be following is because it is in fact the law we were originally meant to follow. "Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong. I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know--because after all the only other thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions."

So for Lewis, the voice of conscience is a sign of God's existence. I won't go into it here, but he skillfully reasons from this point that this voice inside of us is directly linked to the origins of the universe. This is based on the assumption of course that right and wrong are truths that govern the entire universe, and not just the way we understand the universe. But he makes the case that even if they as concepts only concern human beings, that doesn't necessarily mean they don't exist.

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust," he says. "But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning." This last statement, although not verifiable as definite evidence in any way, is compelling in my eyes.

LEWIS' CONCLUSION: EXISTENCE OF GOD=LEGITIMACY OF CHRISTIANITY

From here he goes step by step to his final conclusion that Christianity is the most logical choice one could make. Make no mistake, Lewis is arguing for a very particular idea of God, and does not want it to be confused for something else. "To be complete" he says, "I ought to mention the In-between view called Life-Force philosophy, or Creative Evolution...people who hold this view say that the small variations by which life on this planet 'evolved' form the lowest forms to Man were not due to chance but to the 'striving' or 'purposiveness' of a Life-Force. When people say this we must ask them whether by Life-Force they mean something with a mind or not. If they do, then 'a mind bringing life into existence and leading it to perfection' is really a God, and their view is thus identical with the Religious. If they do not, then what is the sense in saying that something without a mind 'strives' or has 'purposes'? This seems to me fatal to their view". So if you believe in God, Lewis says, you might as well believe in a personal God, as in a God that actually has a personality and is not just some abstract law. If you're going to go that far you might as well admit that because there is so much evil and because we fail to climb out of it despite our best efforts, you might as well admit that we need help from the outside, and that's where God's Incarnation comes in.

REASON VS. THE ABYSS

I can also see just what Comte-Sponville might say in response to Lewis' argument for God. He might say that because we are able to find meaning in the universe, that does not mean the universe innately has it, or that it is even built to be meaningful. He looks at the question from the philosophical angle "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Gottfried Leibniz asks, and Comte-Sponville reiterates. He makes the case for a universe of contingency, that is, the absence of necessity. The universe is here without having to be here, and that drives us with our need for order, meaning and reason, up the wall. "Contingency is an abyss in which reason loses its bearings," he says. "Disorientation, however, does not constitute a proof. Why shouldn't reason--our reason--get lost in the universe, if the latter is too big, too deep, too complex, too dark or too bright for it? Indeed, how can we be certain our reason is perfectly rational? Only a God could guarantee us that, and this is just what prevents our reason from proving his existence...That our reason stumbles and feels dizzy when confronted with the abyss of contingency proves that we would like to get to the bottom of the abyss, not that the abyss has a bottom." I have to admit, the flaw in Lewis' thinking is that the universe is a teleological one, where everything has a designated purpose, a trajectory. This is not necessarily the case, as Comte-Sponville believes, and there really is no way of proving it.

WISHFUL THINKING

He also argues that the very belief in God is wishful thinking. "What is at stake in this argument? Nothing less than us--and our wish for God. Yes, I desperately wish that God existed, and I see this as a particularly convincing reason not to believe he does. This is only apparently contradictory. To be an atheist is not necessarily to be against God. Why would I be against what does not exist? Personally, I would go even further and admit that I would definitely prefer that there be a God. This is just why, in my eyes, all religions are suspicious...We are in favor of justice, too, but that hardly proves it exists. As Alain rightly put it, "Justice does not exist, which is why we need to create it."

COMTE-SPONVILLE'S SUMMARY

Comte-Sponville actually sums up the reasons behind his atheism in 6 clear points:

"A final word to sum up and conclude this chapter: We have discussed six major arguments, the first three of which lead me not to believe in God and the latter three of which lead me to believe that he does not exist. They are:

1. The weakness of the opposing arguments, the so-called proofs of God's existence.
2. Common experience: If God existed, he should be easier to see or sense.
3. My refusal to explain something I cannot understand by something I understand even less.
4. The enormity of evil.
5. The mediocrity of mankind.
6. Last but not least, the fact that God corresponds so perfectly to our wishes that there is every reason to think he was
invented to fulfill them, at least in fantasy; this makes religion an illusion in the Freudian sense of the term."

EVIL AND SUFFERING

The Problem of Evil has always been a powerful argument against God's existence. This is something which neither the Jewish nor Christian traditions can adequately answer. The Book of Job is a testament to this. They might say something like how evil exists because God gave us free will. He preferred that we choose to follow Him out of our own volition rather than by his. This almost works, but it still doesn't cut it for me. Even if human beings were less despicable, bad things will still happen to good people. The Judeo-Christian tradition uses the story of the rebellion of the angels in heaven as a mythological model to explain evil; so evil came from outside the natural order of things. But even this has its flaws. I like to ask the question, Who tempted the Tempter? Lucifer may have free will and that's what enabled him to turn away from God, but God did not have to organize free will around morality.* Evil did not necessarily have to be the alternative. We only can't imagine anything else because that's all we know and if that's what the omniscient ruler of the universe decided out of all of his infinite options for what this universe would be, then he must be a cruel despot indeed.

To answer believers' claims that we are not meant to know these things, that "God works in mysterious ways" makes the matter more complicated, according to Comte-Sponville. His third point is his reason. "From a theoretical point of view, believing in God always amounts to trying to explain something we do not understand (the universe, life, human consciousness) by something we understand even less (God). How can such an attitude satisfy us intellectually?...Much will always be unknown--this is what relegates us to mystery. But why would that mystery be God, especially given the fact that God can't be understood either, since ineffability is part of his definition?...Religion becomes the universal solution, something like a theoretical master key--except that it opens only imaginary doors. What use is that? God explains everything, since he is all-powerful; but in vain, since he could just as well explain the opposite. The sun revolves around the earth? God wanted it that way. The earth revolves around the sun? God wanted it that way. This does not get us very far. And in either case, what is the explanation worth, given that God himself remains inexplicable and incomprehensible?" I find this argument incredibly compelling.

FAITH AND HOPE

I must touch on Christianity in a little more detail, and while the debate about God's existence does not mean bringing this particular religion into the ring, both writers draw from it heavily (albeit for different purposes), and it greatly concerns me as well, because I live in Western society, which is predominantly a context of Judeo-Christian thinking. Furthermore, as someone who is currently grappling with Christianity and trying to give it a chance, I feel it important to talk about.

I think that Lewis understands that Christianity cannot ultimately answer these questions any better than Comte-Sponville can. Paradoxically enough, I think this is what gives me hope for Christianity's survival, provided its adherents can admit to it. It also makes me believe that there can be a real dialogue between theists and atheists. The real point of Christianity is not to answer the question. Any attempts to do so is a human attempt, including the story of Genesis. But Christian faith, at its bare essence, acknowledges that we are in a world gone wrong, and no, ultimately we won't find out why we are creatures who are conscious of suffering, but that there is an antidote to that suffering. It's the specifics of that antidote that cause disagreement.

The reason why I believe C.S. Lewis is a sobering voice for Christianity, and the reason why I think him and Comte-Sponville would have something to agree on is the topic of faith and hope. They use different words, but I get the sense that they are speaking about the same thing. In Christian doctrine, the three theological virtues are Faith, Hope, and Love (Charity), as outlined by St. Paul. Comte-Sponville believes that Christians spend too much time on the first two. "In the kingdom of heaven," he says, "faith and hope will have disappeared; only charity, or love, will remain! From my own standpoint as a faithful atheist, I would simply add that this is already true. Why dream about paradise? The kingdom is here and now." People who wait around, dreaming of a better world are missing out on the wonder and beauty of this one. This is because it was largely influenced by Greek philosophy, specifically Neoplatonism and Plato's Theory of Forms, which separated the body from the soul, the world of thought from the world of being. A lot of Christian thought over the years has been obsessed with the Hereafter, and paid little attention to the Here. From this conclusion Christians have justified abuse self-flagellation, poverty and any sort of abuse against the physical body to remind themselves and other people that it is sinful and the sooner we can be rid of it (without actually doing the deed ourselves) the better. I think that Lewis might agree with Sponville however. "God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it."

Sponville also thinks that Christians put to much emphasis on belief, and instead ought to follow Jesus' example, rather than lean entirely on him for the solution. "If Jesus himself, as even Saint Thomas acknowledged, was inhabited by neither faith nor hope, then being faithful to Jesus (and attempting, with the means at our disposal, to follow his example) would not entail imitating either his faith or his hope; it might entail imitating his vision and comprehension (as Christians do through faith and hope and as Spinoza does through philosophy); it would definitely entail imitating his love (such is the ethics of the Gospel--or, again, Spinoza's ethics)." There is a passage in Lewis' book that might also make an appropriate response to this statement, as well as Comte-Sponville's statement that the "kingdom is here and now", and it has to do with the Christian idea of faith. "Handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying. To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you." Jesus himself was quoted to have said that 'the kingdom of God is inside you', and all it takes is to recognize this ( to me it is actually not unlike the Buddhist view of Samsara and Nirvana being the same thing, merely two side of the same coin). I think one of my favourite quotes of Lewis' about the matter is this one: "Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary."

Again, even though I think Christianity still has a fighting chance as a faith tradition, that doesn't mean it's the best solution for all people at all times, or that its potential for good prove that God is necessarily behind it. I think it has a fighting chance because it has the wisdom enough to point to something greater than itself, indeed greater than any single creed or philosophy, and I feel fortunate to have learned from two individuals who I think have tapped into that idea. Lewis although deeply Christian in his way of thinking, I believe is open-minded and compassionate because of his faith. With his trademark cleverness as a writer, he gives this answer: "Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him." If you ask me, it's not a bad response at all. You certainly wouldn't find an intolerant bigot in him, that's for sure, and that's what makes me feel like I can read him without feeling uneasy, like I'm going to have my wrist slapped (or my soul thrown into eternal damnation) for disagreeing with him when I do. I only wish more Christians thought like him. Comte-Sponville speaks with this same open-mindedness as well, which shows his willingness to have dialogue with theistic thinkers. "It would be madness" he says, "to attach more significance to what we don't know and what separates us than to what we know from our own experience, in the depths of our hearts, and what brings us together, namely, the idea that people's real worth is measured neither by faith nor hope but by the amount of love, compassion and justice of which they are capable...when summits are involved, why should we need to choose? When sources are involved, why should we need to exclude? The mind knows no fatherland, nor does humanity."

Ultimately, they haven't answered my questions. Nor did I expect them to. But Lewis has reminded me what Christianity, as we know it, is at its essence. Comte-Sponville has offered a reminder to always search for the truth, no matter what, at the expense of comfort, at the expense of hope, at the expense of religion, and even at the expense of God. I feel that I can engage with both of these belief systems, because at heart they know they are dealing with something greater than either of their traditions can accurately describe.

Omar Ahmad: Political change with pen and paper

2010-04-29T17:41:00.000-07:00

And now for my usual cop out device, a TED Talk!

Will post very soon. I promise.

2010-04-29T00:40:00.000-07:00

As soon as things settle over here and I can find a job in the next week or so and get that out of the way I'll be on here more often. Until then, adieu!

Addendum

2010-04-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

This entry was inspired by and is a response to a comment Andrew left on my most recent entry. I originally wrote it as a reply to the comment, but I decided to turn it into its own entry, because it interests me deeply and I feel the matter deserves more discourse than a simple reply on a thread can give it and thought I'd might as well open it up to discussion to everybody else on here as well.

Previously I had mentioned that when I attended Sunday service I felt like an outsider looking in on the whole operation. This, I realise now, deserves some explaining. Maybe this would change if I was more of an active participant in this community and then I would not feel so removed from the action, as it were. But it's not as simple as all that.

My problem is I feel like an outsider because I am not going there for the same reason everybody else is. I feel like an outsider because I can't believe in a lot of what Christians in our day believe. I can't bring myself to say the Apostle's Creed, the very thing that defines Western Christian orthodoxy. It's a silly little thing to fuss over, and it's an awful thing for people to kill for, but personally, if the only reason for this Church is to provide a community, without any sort of spiritual guidance, then I can just as easily find it in other communities, such as theatre. I need a spiritual community. It's not that I want a community that thinks exactly the same thing as I do--I think diversity is a wonderful thing. But I want a community where my beliefs are welcome. And I know that here they're probably not. Thankfully they'll take me in all the same, no questions asked. But I'm not going to sit and listen and go along with something that in some ways don't match up to what I fundamentally believe. For example, I don't believe that Jesus was necessarily the only begotten Son of God, at least not in the sense that the Church teaches it. I'm not even sure what that whole business means. So what am I to do? That's a pretty central Christian belief, isn't it? Do I play along with the liturgy, and quietly pretend that traditional doctrine fits into my worldview quite comfortably, overlooking some obvious differences of opinion?

The way the majority of Christian denominations talk about God, the Bible, and Jesus of Nazareth is so different from my understanding that it's like I'm speaking a different language. Which is unfortunate. Because the language of the Bible is very powerful, moving, and insightful, not to mention a source of inspiration for half of Western culture (you can't go far through the history of music, theatre, art or literature without encountering a Biblical reference). I don't doubt that the words its many authors put down were divinely inspired. But even saying that presents a problem. When I say 'divinely inspired' I don't mean I think that there was some loud booming voice that came down from heaven to dictate God's word verbatim to some poor unsuspecting fellow handpicked to be God's stenographer. Besides, many of the canonical books were not actually written by their supposed authors, but rather transcribed from an oral tradition, which further complicates things (e.g. the Torah was written almost five hundred years after Moses' death). I'm sure the messages they had they felt compelled to write, perhaps because they were in tune with a strong inner voice which others may not have heard. But it's an inner voice we all may have nonetheless, but don't have immediate access to it. (There are geniuses in every field of knowledge we have, from music, to math, to politics, to sports. Why should there not be spiritual geniuses?) The Jews and early Christians had these stories not as facts about the world to be taken literally, but as a way of deeply engaging with the world around and within them, showing that there indeed were individuals among them who were very spiritually attuned. This is what I feel 'divinely inspired' might mean. But the meaning I have for the word 'divine' might be different from the meaning the Church might give it. So do I go to Mass and pretend that we're both talking about the same thing?

Another note: I don't mean to sound like everybody else at this Church, or any Church for that matter, is a simply a group of mindless automatons who all follow along blindly and I'm the only one who is a skeptic. I know that the pews are full of free thinkers, or at least people who have doubts of their own. There is an abundance of life and intelligence and diversity to be found in any congregation. They may not believe in one thing or another, but there is something that nourishes them on a fundamental level that keeps them coming back, and that is fine. I respect that. Why I feel different from them is that I am not being nourished on that level.

As you can see, to me the issue runs deeper than community. It's not that I didn't feel welcome--I did, which was great. But knowing what I know and believing what I believe based on what I know, I didn't feel like I was able to commit to this particular community.

2010-04-16T15:00:00.001-07:00

By the way, I apologise for any spelling or grammar errors in earlier blog entries. I'll do my best to catch them in the future.

3/4 Complete

2010-04-16T14:15:00.000-07:00

So I've finished an overall fabulous third year and am now scrambling for a job in Vic for the summer. At this very moment however, I'm in my kitchen in Calgary, trying to figure out what to do with my afternoon so I don't waste it. So I'm on here, blogging.

I've grown a lot this year. And I'm not burnt out like I was at the end of Second Year. While Second Year was a relatively gruelling and disheartening year punctuated by moments of joy, this year was a joyful year punctuated by moments of suffering. There is much to look back on with fondness. First, I fell in love with Shakespeare, then I fell in love with Chekhov and naturalism, and then I fell in love with a beautiful girl. Not too shabby.

I went through Lent as well. I gave up chocolate and Facebook, and I went to Church on Sundays. The third decision was an interesting experience, and although at times I felt it gave me the sense of a spiritual community I still felt like an outsider looking in on it no matter how hard I tried. I'm not giving up though. Far from it. But I need a way to define my spirituality, whatever it may be. I also underwent the usual theological debates I put myself through when I think about the matter way more than is good for me. I started by re-reading C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, and immediately after, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. Both had brilliant points, and I won't go into this matter right now but devote an entire blog entry to it instead.
What I did get from Lent is a reminder that the act of self-denial and restraint can make you appreciate things more. I realise chocolate and Facebook are relatively small things to be giving up, but even with small things, having those kinds of boundaries made me find creative alternatives: my diet was probably a little bit healthier and I had more time on my hands--in fact I didn't miss Facebook at all. The other thing I learned was after Lent was finished, things went back to the way they were. I immediately gorged myself on chocolate and it made me sick. I check Facebook quite regularly like I used to, wasting away time that could be spent doing other things. It's as if nothing ever changed, any progress made over Lent was lost, as far as self-restraint and willpower goes. What I got from this is that just because I couldn't have chocolate for forty days does not mean that I will now savour it as much as I did on Easter. The same is true of anything in life. What I got from Lent was the inspiration to live a simpler life; certainly one of moderation. This is a truism, but obviously one that needs repeating. Quite often humans are quick to forget their past experiences, and lack the foresight to improve themselves. I know I certainly do. So we have to constantly remind ourselves of it, and there should be no shame in forgetting so long as we do our utmost not to stay ignorant.

As for this Summer, it will be a Lenten Summer, financially speaking. This is where I need my friends' help. The rules for my Summer are:

1. I will not spend a dime on alcohol, except for two specific birthdays. I'll go out to bars, but not if there's a cover charge. And I'm not drinking unless someone buys me a drink.
2. I may not spend money on eating out unless ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY and not a moment before. So friends, please don't invite me out to dinner if you want to hang out with me unless you're willing to pay for dinner. I'm serious, I have to watch my money like a hawk, and spend it only on groceries and necessities.

As for how I'll be spending it, besides working, I'm still devoting it to writing and drawing, as I said before. Probably more to writing, though. I'm working on my fairy-tale novel and my SATCo piece, and I'll be playing around with Garage Band and iMovie as well.

It's going to be a busy Summer, but that's what I want. And I'm still resolved to make this an Extraordinary Year.

On that note, I'll be blogging more as well.

Karen Armstrong: 2008 TED Prize wish: Charter for Compassio

2010-03-20T12:33:00.001-07:00

Another cop out, yes, but this is still something I think everybody should see. This lecture here is directly related to the subject matter of Armstrong's book The Case for God, which I think everybody should read. Both contain very thought-provoking and ground-breaking insight on what it actually means to believe, and an inspiring call to action to live a life of compassion. So until I get my act together, please enjoy this TED talk!

2010-03-16T00:51:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,

It's been two and a half months since I've posted on here, I know. I promise though, I will post on here very soon, ideally this Sunday. So whatever you do, don't give up on me!

-Liam

And Now for Obligatory...

2010-01-03T23:03:00.000-08:00

...New Years resolutions. I guess it's the last thing I can do before embarking on the New Year. People think it's a silly waste of time, and most of the time, it seems like they're right. But like my friend Kierra mentioned, if you actually give it some serious thought, have a concrete plan with specific steps and a time for when you're going to do them, your chances of actually achieving them increases. Plus I'm a sentimental fellow, so I also enjoy the notion of New Years Resolutions on an aesthetic level. It seems right to make goals at the beginning of a new year. To most of us it's more than just a unit of measurement; it's a symbol for change. Otherwise people would call it Following Year, not New Year. That being said, here are my resolutions:

-I'm going to observe Lent. Usually I just give something up, something minor like drinking or movies or whatever. This year I'd like to make a sacrifice of my time and energy, something infinitely more valuable than some small possession. I'd like to
observe this time a little more traditionally, as in going to Church, prayer and contemplation etc. I would like to try fasting on specific dates, but we'll see how that goes. The life of a student, specifically a student actor whose time is almost completely devoured by a mainstage, can't always afford the luxury of voluntary poverty and self-denial (in some ways, the job's already been done for me!) I am doing this for a couple reasons. First of all, I'd like to see if I actually can do it, after being estranged from religion for so long, to see if practicing Christianity still has any relevance in my own life. In light of the ideas I've been going over from Karen Armstrong's book, I've been inspired to seek some spiritual guidance if I ever hope to cultivate this aspect in my life, because I think without it I would not have the ability or experience to do it on my own. When people are initiated into Buddhism, they are required to take refuge in the Buddha, the Teachings of the Buddha, and the Sangha, which is the spiritual Community. In the Gospels Jesus Christ said that when "two or more are gathered in my name, I am there". Community is emphasized in all religions from east to west, so it seems like it would be counterproductive to make this effort alone. We are social animals after all. Part of a religious effort requires one to reach out, seek out and find oneself in the Other. Although there is a place for solitude, if a religion can't help you function properly among other people, it's not a very good one. and if nothing else, this is to see if I can sustain a routine like this for at least forty days and forty nights. There's a time limit to it, so if it doesn't work out, it'll be over and I won't be obliged to continue with it. I'm doing this as an experiment, essentially. The last time I went to church several years ago, it did absolutely nothing for me. But that could be for a number of reasons. What's to say it'll be that way now, after everything I've learned in that time?

-In the summer time, I am going to devote more time to my visual art, and writing. The winter at school is for the theatre and I don't want to take any focus away from it, so I've reserved Summer for painting and drawing, something which I've neglected for way too long, much to my own detriment. I feel like drawing feeds my imagination and complements my storytelling in ways that I could not do without it. So there it is.

-I will learn at least one new recipe from my More-With-Less cookbook. I think this is doable.

-I will use my bike. Now that I have a light and gloves for the cold I'm better equipped. Now if only I could find my helmet...

-as I said a few posts ago, if I'm not doing anything in the Fringe Festival, I'm going to try my hand at the 3-Day Novel Writing contest. You heard me. Anybody want to join me?

I'm telling you this, readers, not to show off so people will be all "ooo look at everything Liam's going to accomplish this year", (especially if I don't accomplish these things, and then won't I be a supreme ass?) I'm telling you this because you have a part to play as well. If I didn't say anything to my friends, I would probably be less motivated to do it. I haven't hammered out all the details for these goals yet, but I need people around me to support me so I don't give up, and actually follow through. If anybody has any resolutions they need support with let me know and I'll gladly do the same. I guess they're not so much new Years resolutions as they are things I've wanted to do for myself and this seems like the right time in my life to do them, and they just happen to coincide with the oncoming year. They're more like New Years projects than resolutions. The term New Years Resolution does smack of triviality nowadays, doesn't it? Well, there's no reason why it can't be reclaimed. After all, 2010 is the Year of Extraordinary Thinking: so what better time to start than now?

Have a good night, everybody!

Reflections on The Case For God by Karen Armstrong

2010-01-03T14:13:00.000-08:00

I have been inclined to agree with the argument that all religions essentially preached a similar (if not the same) message of compassion, and more importantly that their founders were all inspired by the same experience. This is an idea that many liberal-minded intellectuals, artists, and spiritual authorities like the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu seem to advocate. But I was always troubled by it; without absolute certainty, it seemed like wishful thinking. There was always an irrational fear at the back of my head and the bottom of my heart that what if maybe, just maybe, one of these many many fundamentalist sectarian groups are right, and the rest of us are all right screwed? Again, it's an irrational fear, but it was there nonetheless. Even if they're not, how could anybody prove that the religious figures of the ancient world thought in these high-minded terms that we yearn for today? After all, Yahweh, the God of the tribe of Israel was just another tribal deity competing for mastery over the cosmos in the pantheon of Middle-eastern believers; a symbolic measure taken by these people to galvanize themselves as a nation. Pragmatically speaking, what did it matter whether it was true or not, as long as it got the job done? What this book illustrated for me was that in fact these religions were indeed inspired by a similar spiritual experience, and there is more historical evidence for it now.

The main points I learned in this book are as follows:
-our concept of God as we know it is a modern construct
-our understanding of the words 'belief' and 'faith' is also a modern construct
-literal interpretation and fundamentalism is a modern construct
-Armstrong employs the ancient Greek idea that all methods of understanding used by human beings fall under the categories of logos and mythos. Religion, like art, falls under the latter, and the reason why people misunderstand it is because they misplace it in the former.
-religion is something that you do, and that it takes practice and skill like anything else. Rather than a set of arbitrary laws and abstract concepts, it is a technique to unlocking a person's faith and spirituality, and if any method fails to do so, if it fails to yield practical results, then it is not doing its job. Armstrong explains that this is how the believers of the ancient world thought about religion, and seeing as they are chronologically closer to the wellspring of these spiritual ideas, their opinion does carry a lot of weight for me today. Any of the rituals that religious people partake in would seem absurd and abstract if observed from the outside with a logical mind. A religious experience for the people of the ancient world evoked a sense of Mystery, a "Cloud of Unknowing" as Armstrong puts it, a depth that cannot be explained rationally and has its place in our world, even though crusaders of Reason try to eradicate it.

Probably the most radical effect that Armstrong's arguments have is that they completely changed the way I think about the words 'belief', 'faith' and 'God'. Armstrong states that our understanding of these words are all the product of our modern age, which began some 500 odd years ago. Belief, she says,did not always mean assenting to something and accepting it as true. The word might have had a completely different connotation in the ancient world. Belief is related to the word "lief" which is related to the word "love". The Latin word for believe is "credere", which meant something else as well. To say credo, "I believe", it actually was closer to "I engage myself","I commit", "I trust". So from this we can deduce that at no point does the Bible ask us to believe in the modern sense, which is to accept as true. Rather, what it asks us is to commit ourselves and invest ourselves in the words of the text. Belief to the people of the ancient world, was not blind faith. If anything it was closer to wrestling with God the way Jacob did. It required study, testing, and if necessary, doubt. It needed thorough scrutiny, a delving into the subject to reach a higher plane of being. The pre-modern Christian thinkers tried to understand their God through apophatic methods, which is the knowledge of God gained through negation. Rather than come to a conclusion about what God was, they would set up a concept, and then knock it down, saying God is not this, God is not that. The exercise was to demonstrate that human language could not accurately explain who or what God is, and the exercise culminates in a loss of words and a religious silence. And this inability to put one's finger on it did not frustrate these practitioners. They were alright with the feeling of uncertainty which Modernism seems to abhor. In fact, they delighted in it. Reaching that awed silence was the whole point.

Religion for the pre-modern world was something that required exhaustive creative work for it actually pay off. It was based on practical solutions to problems that arose in those particular moments in time and space. The pre-Rabbinical Jews went to the Temple to re-enact the creation myth in order to become closer to their God. It was never meant to be a literal account for how the world begun.

the concept of 'God' as we most traditionally know it, is also a modern construct. It came out of peoples' desire for absolute certainty in an increasingly uncertain world. The Scientific Revolution was in full swing, and it seemed that as Reason became the great beacon of light in the world to yield hard, tangible facts, peoples' concepts of religion had to keep up. Religion as an institution had to keep up, because the Church was a player that had to remain in power. In time, religion melded with science, and people tried to argue with Reason to prove the existence of God. As a result, the word 'belief' turned into the acceptance of something being true, and logic was what everything hinged upon. God became an idol of the vanity of human beings, a larger more powerful version of ourselves, and just another creature in all of creation who could killed with enough effort.

Fundamentalism as we know it today came out of post-revolutionary America as a political and cultural fight for survival, while the God of the modern age became something that people could disprove as easily as prove. Armstrong chronicles how atheism in the modern sense, the wilfull denial of a God came into being. Today, atheism has taken on a guise not unlike fundamentalism. Individuals like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens launch an assault on religion and God and claim that these are responsible for so much bloodshed in the world. While they're not entirely wrong, Armstrong asserts that they are missing the larger picture, not just in the way that most religious people aren't as crazy as the Taliban and the hell-fire preaching Televangelists, but also that the whole notion of God that they are attacking is inaccurate. She also says that there are less staunch Atheistic thinkers out there from whom religious people would benefit in an open dialogue, and that they too play a part in our spiritual evolution.

Armstrong basically does a broad sweep of the history of Western religious thought, beginning in the Paleolithic era, steering eastward to the early Indian philosophy which the Upanishads were based on, back west to the roots of Jewish religion, to the Greek philosophers, to the early Christian Church, to Islam, to the Middle Ages, and up to the Modern Age that began in the 16th century to the Enlightenment, and culminated in the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, looking at post-modern philosophers as well. Among the people she cites are the likes of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus Christ, St. Paul, Augustine, Muhammad, Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis, Descartes, Copernicus, Galileo, Luther, Calvin, Hegel, Voltaire, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Einstein, Heidegger, and even Richard Dawkins! She points out all the places where religion was warped for political and tribalistic agendas, from the Crusades up to the September 11 terrorist attacks. It also illustrates the different religious experiences that people had all over the ancient world, and the striking resemblance they all had with each other, even though they were culturally and geographically worlds apart. The whole book is thoroughly researched and brimming with insight. It felt like a story as well, with a soaring narrative that brought me along with its key characters as I skipped across the history of Western civilization.

I knew that God was an idea that evolved throughout time and was subject to change based on the Zeitgeist of society at any given point. This troubled me, because I wanted a more concrete idea, somewhere along the road that I could pinpoint and say "there! That's what it's all about!" I knew that Jesus was a man, and it troubled me deeply because I so badly wanted a Son of God but knew better. But now I feel like my intellect and my non-rational need for faith are not irreconcilable. Peoples' ideas about God are the product of their time, and not from divine intervention, and I'm okay with it now because I don't have to relinquish my yearning for God because of it.

This understanding I've gained from reading this book hasn't made me a better or happier person, nor has it really changed the things I hold to be true in my life. It hasn't solved the question of whether there is a primordial, Unmoved Mover of the universe, and whether this universe is ruled by fate or chance, and I have not subscribed to a particular faith. But I think it has caused a slight shift in my way of thinking, which although is small now like a slight change in degree, may prove significant and radically alter things further down the road. Of course, it is too soon to say. Ultimately what this book did for me was release me from the need to be certain for the time being. It has also given me a LOT to think about for a long time to come, and I feel incredibly happy and relieved for it.

She obviously goes into waaay more detail and covers way more subjects then I mentioned here, so please go read it. It's very well written, and I highly recommend it, whether you're a theist, atheist, agnostic, or are simply curious about the subject.

So long, Swine '09!

2010-01-02T22:06:00.000-08:00

Well, I was going to write a reflection on 2009 on New Years' Eve, but time was a luxury I couldn't afford at that point. But now I'm back in Vic and more or less settled in, so I can now get on with it.Thankfully there isn't enough of 2010 yet so I still can still make some timely commentary. I'm just fashionably late, that's all. ;)

I feel like I should say something big and important, but I have no idea what. Much has happened this year, as it does every year, and no grand account of it could really suffice. Plus I'm too lazy.

So we'll have to settle for this brief summary. the first half of the year was kind of sucky. I hate to say it because it had some really good moments in it, but the less desirable parts seem clearer in my mind. Essentially I came to really question whether I wanted to stay on the path I was following. This is pretty huge, especially considering that pathway is several thousands of dollars a year and will guarantee none of that money back when I get to the next level. By the time summer came around, I was pretty beat and in need of a rest. The universe had other plans, however. I was to do Summerstock, and it was too late to back out. But I did it, and that was when things turned around for me. Even though I didn't get the mental rest I was hoping for, I became gradually more optimistic as the summer went on. By the fall things were going very well and by the end of it, I feel like the personal progress I made, though seemingly small, was significant. I wrote 3 short stories, and was in 5 shows this year, one after the other (and two of them actually concurrent) with no hope of rest until Christmas holidays. But Time, being what it was, went on, and Christmas finally came. It was a very good holiday though.

I could make some sweeping commentary on world events, but I haven't enough understanding of the world. So I'll try to recount some of its most momentous moments, stream of consciousness style: A recession hit the honey-moon period with Obama eventually ended an almost revolution went down in Iran following the country's incendiary election results a handful of celebrities died people got swine flu the crew of the Starship Enterprise boldly went where no one had gone before...again...for the first time...(and it was awesome by the way!) Afghanistan had its sophomoric election leaving a bitter and jaded taste in a lot of peoples' mouths Lady Gaga shot sparks out of her boobs Peter Mansbridge stood up on CBC the Olympic Torch started its journey across Canada Jon and Kate called it quits a bunch of powerful people met in Copenhagen and seemed to do very little while they were there Obama managed to get his health-care legislation passed in his final act of arrogance of the year Mr. Harper prorogued parliament and yes. Mickey Rooney is still alive.

I always wanted to have some 'Best of 2009' spiel, but I have no idea what I would do. I can't say anything about the movies, or the music. Not even theatre, for that matter. I'm no critic and I didn't really have my ear to the ground....in any area, really. I can tell you about the books I read though. Specifically the books that shall we say had the biggest effect on me this year.

So without further adieu, the Top Five Books of 2009 (in chronological order) are:

5. Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen
I explained why this book is so meaningful to me way back in a Summer entry. Basically it renewed my faith in acting as an
art form.

4. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
What a powerful story! As I said in an earlier post, I don't condone what Christopher McCandless did per se, but I can't help
but admire this young madman, and how damned hard he tried to live up to his ideals, at all costs. He has inspired me
do the same (maybe with less success, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try!) Krakauer's prose is brilliant and he's the
perfect man to tell McCandless' story, given his own background. I rarely cry when reading books, but this was
definitely one of them.

3. The Unfinished Canadian by Andrew Cohen
In my effort to better understand Canada, at least literarily, this book launched my enterprise. He presents some
provocative ideas on how we as a people can "find ourselves", some of those ideas controversial but definitely insightful.

2. Playing Shakespeare by John Barton
This book, coupled with the Playing Shakespeare TV mini-series (from which the book is transcribed almost word for word)
almost singlehandedly decoded the acting of Shakespeare for me. Well, the theory side of it, anyway. The practice I learned
in class and onstage. John Barton and his students (including Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart and Judi Dench) showed to me
how brilliant Shakespeare can be, provided it's executed with skill and talent.

1. The Case For God by Karen Armstrong
I read this at the end of the holiday, and although it might be too soon to say, but it has made the biggest impact on me
that a book has made in a while. When I finished it I knew that it had significantly altered the way I think about belief,
religion and God. I'd like to go further into what this book is all about and what it means to me, so I'll have to devote an
entire entry to it...

I read some other books worth noting, like Watchmen, Tales of the Perilous Realm by Tolkien, Paradise Lost, and Up Till Now by William Shatner. Boo yeah. Reading is fun!

Anyway, it was a good year, but now it's time to look forward and press onward, as per usual. So say we all.