Shadow the Sun

Everyone was talking about it. The news constantly updated us on where to go, what time to be there, and what degree of eye protection was required to view last week’s solar eclipse. It was such a significant event that I almost took the day off to watch it from the beach across the street. I would have done it, too, had Monday been Ter’s scheduled day off. As she’s been an integral part of the HQ wildfire response all summer, taking an errant vacation day wasn’t likely to be approved, so off we went to our respective workplaces, me trying to convince myself that it wasn’t such a big deal, it was only an eclipse, for Pete’s sake, the world was not going to stop just to watch a shadow fall over the sun.

Only it kinda sorta did.

Happily, the timing for totality in Victoria coincided with mid-morning coffee. If I couldn’t experience the event with Ter, I decided, the next best person was my wee sister. The library courtyard where she takes her breaks (and where we have coffee on Thursdays) faces east. The sun would be in full view when it all went dark.

Only it didn’t all go dark. At around nine-thirty, the sky went a little weird, like the planetarium light before the show starts. Half an hour later, I headed to the library, where wee sis was indeed parked in place on the wall. The light hadn’t changed much. In fact, the sun seemed as bright and furious as ever—to the naked eye, anyway. People had gathered in groups for the momentous occasion, equipped with NASA-approved dark glasses, projectors made of cereal boxes, or the infamous paper with a hole poked in the middle (I’ve never understood how that works). Wee sis and I were unarmed. I had my phone to track the timing, but she only had her coffee. She seemed less excited about the event than I was, though she smiled when I said I wanted to share it with someone I love. I wasn’t so driven to see the eclipse itself; I wanted to feel it. You know, to feel the wonder of dwindling daylight on a mid-summer morning, and to experience a rare and extraordinary event in the company of my fellow humans.

Canada was outside the so-called “band of totality”; in Victoria, the sun was only ninety percent obscured by the moon. As peak time neared, wee sis shaded her eyes and risked a peripheral glance in the general direction of the sun. “It doesn’t look any darker to me,” she said.

I concurred. Despite knowing we wouldn’t get a total eclipse, I’d hoped for something more dramatic in the light department, like a ninety percent drop from what’s normal for the time. I, too, chanced a glance at the sun, but all I glimpsed was the usual glare. “It’s gotten cold, though,” said the friend who had joined us.

She was right. A definite chill had descended though the light remained the same. In fact, the temperature plunged in those few minutes. It seems obvious now, but I hadn’t anticipated a chill. That was—literally and figuratively—cool!

Back at the office, folks were a little disappointed that complete darkness hadn’t dropped on the day. A couple of my co-workers were discussing it when I stopped in the kitchen to make tea. After listening to a minute of them puzzling over why it didn’t go darker outside, I suddenly said, “It’s a good metaphor, though, don’t you think?”

They looked even more puzzled. “How do you mean?” one of them asked.

“Well, the moon blocked out ninety percent of the sun, yet the light was as bright as if it had only blocked ten percent. So, metaphorically, one bright spirit will shed more light than nine cast in shadow. ‘How far that little candle throws its beam’, you know?”

Admittedly, I got a couple of odd looks, but after they thought about it, they also got my point. It was later said that, for a couple of minutes on August 21, the violence and hatred stopped as everyone looked up at the sky in a shared moment of purest awe. We are all connected. We are all rays of light. Ninety percent of us can falter in the shadows, but so long as the other ten stay strong, the world will not go totally dark.

With love,

Give Peace a Chance

“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding” – Albert Einstein

“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace” – Gandhi

“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others—and if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them” – the Dalai Lama

Something horrifying happened as a result of Charlottesville, last weekend. I agreed—to a point—with Donald Trump. Violence only escalates with participants on both sides.

Now that you’ve regained consciousness, my thought is actually more expansive than the single incident of protesters getting into it with white supremacists at that rally. People who bring weapons to a gathering for any reason may try to plead self defence, but that’s an extremely loose interpretation of America’s Second Amendment, “arms” being anything that will do more damage in a confrontation than bare hands. Neither is a street brawl inevitable, since violence—like peace—is a choice. The math is simple enough: weapons = intent to harm.

Were the protesters in Virginia there to perpetrate violence? Only the individuals know for sure. Did they expect to encounter resistance from the other side? Considering the collective nature of that side, you’d have to be a moron to expect otherwise.

The white supremacists, on the other hand ... I can’t begin to guess their group intention, but protesting the removal of a statue seems like an excuse to act out their fear-based self-loathing on anybody and everybody else. “We’re taking back our country,” one of them declared. Um, excuse me, sir, but the country was never yours to begin with. White men took it from the original inhabitants by trickery and force, so even the excuse that you’re reclaiming what you’ve lost is a piss-poor one.

I read a quote the other day: “We are all human. Why can’t we live together?”

Because we’re human, that’s why. We are biologically linked to the earth and all the elements; we are ruled by intellect and bullied by ego, subject to fear and driven by the emotion resulting from all of the above. Our spirit selves are a little lost amid the tumult. Rising above it takes more internal fortitude than many of us believe we have, so we resort to violence when we feel threatened. Those white supremacists in Charlottesville arrived feeling brave in their numbers, but every one of them is a fragile, fearful, wounded soul more pathetic than powerful.

And on the flipside, those standing against them  were similarly equipped, though they surely felt their cause more noble. It’s easy to hate those who behave hatefully. It’s equally easy to ape (and justify) that behaviour when we believe we’re in the right. Remember: the villain is the hero in his own story.

The events of the past week have left me somewhat discouraged and a little bit afraid of a future that seems to be unravelling like a roll of toilet paper in the mouth of a speeding squirrel. Terrorists continue to drive vehicles into crowds at festivals and public markets. Nazis, like overconfident cockroaches, are creeping out of the shadows in our own back yard. Mother Earth continues to rend her garments through weather events of Biblical proportion. We can’t live peacefully with our families, our neighbours, our co-workers, our environment, other drivers—or with ourselves.

Maybe this is the real problem. We are all victims of conditioning, of broken parents and bad relationships and the myth of a god who plays favourites. We justify our misery by blaming others and rely on outside agencies to solve our problems when in truth, we can only be responsible for ourselves. We choose our thoughts, therefore we choose our actions, and ultimately, we choose who we become.

Most of us are good people. Most of us do not appear in video clips of violence and mass hysteria. Most of us are simply doing the best we can, but the time may be coming when each of us must make a choice and stand by it. I’m not saying we each have to go it alone. Of course we don’t. There is strength in numbers, but the strength required to gain peace must not manifest in violence. It must come with kindness, with caring and generosity and understanding. It must also come from within. So start with yourself. Look inward, angel, and see where peace begins. Find it there, or find a way to bring it there. Nurture it. Practice it, and when you’re comfortable with it, let it spread outward, beyond yourself to the realm of others, and once the world alights, watch those cockroaches run for cover.

With love,

A Creative Life

I am eternally curious about the lives of entertainers. Rock stars, film stars, artists, writers and architects, if there’s a biography on film, I am likely to watch it. Documentaries are fine, but the best ones are those compiled from the artist’s own words, from interviews and articles and performance clips. Naturally, someone whose work I admire is a draw, but I am equally intrigued by the life of someone whose career played in my periphery—David Bowie, for example. “The Last Five Years” of his life was utterly absorbing. I came away with a strong sense of his individuality and his determination to preserve that individuality by reinventing himself with every project. He was brilliant. Not at all tragic, just brilliant.

Mind you, he lived to a fairly ripe old age before cancer took him out. The ones who die young seem to be more tragic, probably because we tend to lament the work they might have done even as we celebrate the work they did. Often, those young ones lived hard, deeply troubled lives and checked out early (either deliberately or accidentally) because celebrity only amplifies what already exists. People like Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain were doomed before they started. Fame made it worse for them. Then there were Prince and Michael Jackson, twin geniuses in crippling physical pain, who succumbed in one form or another to the drugs prescribed to alleviate it. Even Chris Cornell’s lifelong struggle with depression must have hastened his end.

Then there was Heath Ledger. Young, strong, successful, talented—and dead at twenty-eight. Surely a tragedy lurked somewhere in his life, right?

Wrong.

I sat down to watch the documentary “I Am Heath Ledger” with the expectation of a common thread that would link him to other famous figures whose lives were cut too short. A dysfunctional family, substance abuse, or maybe some childhood trauma that he never got over; surely something pushed him beyond the brink. But, no. He was a happy kid, a good brother, a loyal friend, a determined actor, a gifted director (he shot music videos for friends in the biz), and was making plans far into the future when his light went out.

And what a light it was. His buddies reminisced about his energy, one even wondered aloud how he could sustain so bright a burn. Another mentioned how strangely aware of mortality he was, how he kept saying he had so much to do and limited time in which to do it. He had known from the start that he would be an actor, and he worked steadily toward it, but he remembered his friends and family along the way. He was warm and generous and loving, and asked nothing in return. It seemed to me that this intense and inherently good soul was operating on a level the majority of us never reach.

The one thing that pinged was his trouble sleeping. When I heard that, I thought of Michael Jackson—there was the common thread. A bright, intense white light, snuffed before the rest of us were ready by prescription drugs and a flu bug that got in the way. A truly tragic accidental death.

Celebrity death is traumatic because our icons are supposed to be immortal. Truth is, they are immortal. Look at the legacy of everyone mentioned in this post. None of them is truly gone when the spirit in their work lives on. I was not so big a fan of Heath Ledger that I followed every move or saw every film he made—but “A Knight’s Tale” is one of my favourites and without him, it wouldn’t be.

Friday Night Videos

“I’m old, I’m tired, and I want my MTV!”

Gone are the days of glossy, artistically smutty, airbrushed and often incomprehensible music videos. Ter and I used to stay up on Fridays, watching the limited rotation of mostly British bands on late night TV. MTV can claim responsibility for the success of those artists, only a few of which remain relevant in the twenty-first century. The rest have either faded into obscurity or are on never-ending greatest hits tours. The soundtrack of our youth, unlike those of the generations before us, came with moving pictures. Usually pretty ones.

Then things got darker. Music got angrier, the product of broken children raging in a disconnected world. The lip gloss came off, Ter and I grew up, and the video channels gave up playing music videos. Much More became Much Less, and its slot on the cable guide eventually gave over to yet another cooking/lifestyle channel. I can never give up my video cassette player; without it, my collection of rock vids taped directly from Much in the 80s and 90s is just another collection of outdated relics from a happier time. Not that they get any air play these days—the box they’re stashed in sits high on a closet shelf, last touched in 2012, when we moved into our current residence.

I admit, when my priorities changed, I stopped listening to new music except for what plays on top 40 radio, then, unimpressed, I stopped listening to top 40 radio. I have bought less than a dozen new albums in the past year, and none of them are by anyone born in this century. Ter and I began reminiscing fondly about the good old days of Much Music and MTV—then lo and behold, she stumbled onto a TV channel aptly titled “Please Rewind”. All they play are music videos—hats and horns!—but, alas, sometimes they don’t rewind far enough. Mixed heavily among the rainbow-sprinkled clips from my heyday are grungier, hip-hoppier, gloomier and grimmer samples from more recent bands. Honestly, I get a cheerier perspective from the evening news. And Ter, gods bless her, lost it after enduring a set of angst-ridden wailing on the heels of a workday from hell:

“I’m old, I’m tired, and I want my MTV!”

After my laughter subsided, I wholly agreed. A channel limited to the 80s and 90s would certainly have an audience, and even clips from the 70s would be welcome.

Enter “Vintage TV”, discovered a few weeks ago and a definite answer to her lament. It’s probably the last stop before PBS for the bands we knew and still love, and it’s not commercial-free, but it’s as close to Friday Night Videos as we’ve seen in decades.

Rock on!