The Best of Times

Remember the good old days? Your first car, your first love, your first real job? The days when you were part of a posse? When every weekend was spent at the movies and you couldn’t wait for the new (insert artist here) album? When you got by on three hours of sleep because life was so fresh and vibrant that sleep was an inconvenience?

I came of age in the 1980s. That’s when I hooked up with Ter, we got our own place, and I got my first loan to buy Blue Thunder. I spent one summer in Europe. I discovered Sting and Duran Duran. I had a good government job and a kinda sorta boyfriend (and that’s the last you’ll hear of that, ever). I dabbled with vampires and wrote a fictional band biography because there was no reason not to. I not only ran with the cool crowd, I was one of the executive. So many good memories were born in those years. Some painful ones, too, but whatever. For me, the 80s were all about growing up and growing out, leaving kidhood behind and becoming an adult. I spent them figuring out who I was, and I had so much fun doing it that I still perceive the 80s through rosy lenses, as expertly polished as the slickest Bryan Ferry tune.

So imagine the surprise when I saw a recent documentary about the state of the world during my glory days. The Falkland War. The cold war. The drought in Ethiopia. Reaganomics. The threatened rainforest. AIDS. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. The Challenger explosion. Ted Bundy.

I was living la vida loca and the world was in chaos.

“Surprise” isn’t the right word. I knew about these things on a peripheral level, but they didn’t affect me at the time. Despite the world going crazy around me, those years remain among the happiest of my entire life. Oblivious years? Self-absorbed years? Or just years spent in pursuit of myself, the shaping of the woman I was destined to become?

My point? Those times were not the best because of what was happening around me. They were the best because of what was happening within me. Consider the best years of your life. Think about what happened to make them so, then look outward to what the world was going through at the same time. I bet it was as nutty, as tumultuous and uncertain and just plain scary, as it is now. If so, then I suggest that the “good old days” we old folks long for had little to do with the state of the world and everything to do with where we were as individuals. The 1980s were not as golden as I’ve always believed. Neither were the 50s, 60s, or 70s, though I’m sure lots of people remember them as fondly.

My second favourite Styx song is called TheBest of Times. I heard it on the oldies (!!) station a few days ago, and I smiled because the sentiment is as relevant today as it was thirtysome years ago:

The headlines read these are the worst of times

I do believe it’s true

I feel so helpless, like a boat against the tide

I wish the summer winds could bring back paradise

But I know, when the world turns upside down

Baby I know, you’ll always be around

The best of times

Are when I’m alone with you

Some rain, some shine

We’ll make this a world for two

Those memories of yesterday will last a lifetime

We’ll take the best, forget the rest, and someday we’ll find

These are the best of times

With love,

Painting and Revolution

Ter and I recently watched a 4-part documentary about the Impressionist movement of the late 19^th century. The presenter—a quirky character with a droll sense of humour—did more than discourse about the painters themselves. He expanded the subject to include the changing times that inspired their work. It was awesome!

I love Paris and I love Impressionist art—the light and colour and motion are dazzling and, as is the case with most artistic endeavours, they reflect the world in which the artists lived. Sometimes the painter’s inner world is revealed—Goya, Van Gogh and early Degas come to mind—but it’s the external world that lends life and colour to our history. Without the painters, poets and playwrights, we’d only have the media spin on what went before. In the days of kings and cardinals, artists were funded by the powers that be, hence the abundant regal and religious works … and you can’t tell me that Holbein and Van Dyck weren’t the masters of Photoshop in their time. When royalty is your bread and butter, you’d better make those recessive traits look good.

Patronage aside, art is critical in capturing the essence of a time and place. Artists are both historians and scientists, experimenting with light and colour in ways that “real” science might ignore. Even now, in the 21^st century, our society is revealed through its art , and not to its best advantage when one considers that terrorists and serial killers are the heroes on TV and the world can only be saved in the movies by people with superpowers.

Isn’t that why arts programs are the first to suffer funding cuts in times of fiscal restraint? Creativity is considered a luxury by those who fear it. To everyone else, it’s a link to something greater than ourselves, and a perspective on life that reveals too much for intellectual comfort.

I digress.

Like the Dutch masters before them, the Impressionists were free to paint what they saw: ordinary people living everyday life. Better yet, they spawned a revolution in tools as well as technique. The invention of tubed pigments and portable easels made painting outdoors as convenient as working in one’s studio. And, man, did they have a myriad of subjects from which to choose. I have yet to see myself in any of the café tableaux, but I’m sure I was there in a past life; I’m too in love with music and the lifestyle, naughty girl that I must have been.

The documentary also prompted me to revisit the story of François and Odette, not to amend it in any way, but to look at them a few months after he rescued her from the life of a disenchanted muse. As with any revolution, some will benefit, some will suffer, and the artist will record it for posterity.

All You Need

Following “I Am” is “Happy”, a documentary about the science of happiness punctuated with stories of people following their bliss. Turns out that wealth and status account for a whole 10% of our happiness quota. 50% might be DNA-related, which leaves a full 40% of how to get happy up to the individual.

The most powerfully memorable scene in the film featured a comic addressing a junior high assembly. He asked for volunteers who’d been teased or bullied to come forward and tell the other kids how they felt to be on the receiving end. The braver kids actually stood up and shared; by the end of the session, everyone was in tears and the bullied kids were heroes. The voiceover stated that the best thing we can do is teach our children to love.

I thought, Kids are born loving. We have to stop teaching them not to love.

Because that’s what we do. Intentionally or not, love is taught out of our kids and replaced with judgment, jealousy, anger, and fear. It takes time, but eventually, love becomes a commodity or a condition rather than a freely given right of birth.

Ter related an experience she had at the grocery store on the weekend – she met a toddler in the produce department who was happily offering high-fives to everyone he saw. Most people ignored him. Ter didn’t. She leaned in, smiled at him, and gently smacked her palm to his. He loved it. They shared a moment, then went their separate ways.

At the checkout, she spied the little guy in the lineup two tills over. His dad was paying for the groceries and he was sitting in the cart, looking around. When he saw her at a distance, he broke into a grin and thrust his open hand high in salute. High five, lady! He remembered her. They had connected.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. I usually thumb my nose at it, but that was before I realized that the day is a celebration not only of lovers, but of love itself, in all its many forms. Love, love, love. It’s what we are, what connects us, what surpasses barriers of language and culture and social status. Children don’t care what you’re driving or how many vacation homes you own. They only know the person behind your eyes. Ter connected with the little guy at the grocery store. He won’t remember her in years to come, but he recognized her in that moment.

 

High five!

Mother Nature is a Libra

Ter and I recently caught a cool documentary called “Orbit” – about the Earth’s annual journey around the sun and how three things affect our planet: the orbit itself, the rotation of the Earth on its axis, and the tilt of the Earth on its axis. I paid more attention in Grade 10 science than I thought, because I actually understood what the presenters were saying about how the weather works, how (and why) the seasons occur, and all manner of other nifty-neater tidbits that I’ve filed away to wow people at social occasions down the road.

The episode about the tilt was the most fascinating because it focused on extreme weather phenomena like tornadoes and monsoons, explaining how and why they happen. There is so much going on to keep the world balanced while we merrily blaze along unbalancing everything. I’m not so hip on the Book of Genesis these days, but I do appreciate the intricate design and mechanics of our world within its galaxy within the greater universe. It’s miraculous no matter who/what you think is in charge of it all, and we are indeed arrogant little gnats to think so much of our combined intellect and expertise. Yeah. Right. The planet is smarter than we are. It’s trying, always trying, to compensate for our intelligence. It’s all about balancing the positive and negative energies that sustain us and we haven’t got a frigging clue. We don’t.

My vocabulary is too small to express my awe at how precarious is our position in space. Down to the tiniest molecule, nature seeks to keep the physical scales aligned and thus keep the world habitable. Actually, the same thing is happening within our own bodies, but we’ve been deafened to the innate wisdom that can tell us what we require to be healthy. There is a movement toward healing through balancing internal energies—or is it a return to those methods? because holistic therapies have been around for millennia compared to the relatively recent forms of “conventional” medicine. It makes you wonder which is actually the alternative in the field.

Admittedly, I’m no expert and I’m not dependent on my intelligence, but I am learning to ride the rhythm of the world both outside and within myself. I’ve known for a while that the planet is ill because we’re robbing it of the resources it needs to stay healthy, therefore its attempts to regain that critical balance are becoming more violent. I’m trying to apply the same principle to my own carbon-based unit, else I’d still be eating sandwiches and sticky buns. Some days are better than others, but I am practicing awareness of myself and my environment. Earth is a marvelous, magical place. Doesn’t it make sense to keep it that way?

Beautiful!