Chagal4's Blog

Some time ago we developed this stupid habit of believing that if we could name a thing we could manage it. But if that “thing” is bull-riding…there is a fair chance that repeating those words over and over will not get you out of the field in one piece. Being able to spell “psychotic” won’t make the word a better place and all of the conversations you’ve had about tsunamis won’t turn one into sushi. So, repeat after me. “Naming shit will not manage it.” I’m thinking of having tee shirts made. I would like to have had that thought before the Paris conference on the environment.

The recent news about intense air pollution in China conveniently appeared in the media while the debate fogged the conference rooms in Paris…And it didn’t take long to note that along with China, India, Pakistan, Iran and other countries had air pollution indicators that were far off the scale for human consumption. I don’t want to be crude but sometimes when the sky is sick…it vomits. Using a cute name like “smog” doesn’t stop it…doesn’t explain or fix it…doesn’t analyze its parts or enable you to breathe.

And the western world has no business being smug about smog…back at the turn of another century the great fogs of London killed hundreds of people…men were hired to carry torches in front of vehicles moving at a slow walking pace because one couldn’t see ten feet. There’s a story about people wearing fog hats…with a light on top so they wouldn’t get hit by cars. The industrial revolution ran on coal…and houses ran on coal and oil…and vehicles…and the air was filled with vapours of every kind. I’m surprised that noses didn’t drop off the evolutionary table.

When I was a kid (default phrase for tedious old people)…I grew up down river from Detroit, Michigan. And just so we all understand how rivers work…if Detroit is up river and my town is down river…throw a stick in the water in Detroit, chances are it’ll float past my town. And if the only things that got thrown into the water were sticks …things would be joyful. The city of Windsor, Ontario is right across the river from Detroit. It’s up river too. Detroit has steel mills and stamping plants and heavy industry and Windsor does too. There are distilleries for whiskey and chemical plants and one of the biggest salt mines in North America all up river. They all dumped their waste into the water. And of course, hundreds of thousands of people. One day when I was about twelve I went down to the river and it was orange from shore to shore. Apparently they were flushing slag and rust out of the Bessemer converters…up river. Fish died. Chemical plants turned the water milky…and some days in the summer there was a smell…like turpentine or benzine…burned  your throat and eyes. Fish died. Soon fish developed weird shapes…I didn’t actually see any two headed fish…but I heard that there were some caught with little legs like they were thinking about learning to walk ashore…and get the hell outta there. People died too…I’ve never seen the statistics on cancers and heart disease and lung diseases and kidney diseases…but you know…there were an awful lot of those around there. O.K. so I know and hate pollution and hate it still after sixty years. So I feel for those people in China…and India and elsewhere. They have a name for what’s happening to them but that doesn’t stop it…doesn’t make it go away.

I hope those folks in Paris think of something…but I suspect that with so many countries and politicians involved…and the great political elephant chained in the corner of the room…It has a name too…”The Economy”. I suspect that when all of the words are sorted and stacked and filed and pressed and analyzed…this is what they’ll say:

“We’re working on it…meanwhile…Don’t Breathe.”

Like millions of others last night, I spent three hours, off and on, watching a train wreck. The fact that it was news…that it was happening in front of our eyes…that it had become familiar enough that we knew what the “experts” were going to say before they said it…was obscene. News networks have managed to elevate the adrenaline levels on these things while filling airtime with non-information and sticking microphones into shocked and worried faces to demand…”what did you see?” with the ghoulism of “did you see any bodies?”. And all the time we know what they’re doing…They’re being us…They want to see the blood because we want to see the blood…they want to hear the shooting…because we want to hear the shooting. We do. We do because we want to follow it through to the climax…we want to see the bad guys caught or get killed and know that this train wreck is over. Later on we’ll want to know how and why it happened.

We have a horrific reality…not unlike the one in Paris that rips beyond entertainment. The loss of all these lives should not be entertainment. And yet because it is framed within a context in which movies and video games and T.V. portray hyper violence constantly…the format is no longer chilling…it’s familiar and the meaning is rendered “common”. All morning I kept hearing the media in Europe saying “Yet another American shooting” as if “American” is an adjective describing a particular kind of shooting rather than a place where it happened. Yes, there are a lot of them…many more than in any other country but these incidents certainly do happen in other countries.

Under it all you can feel the frustration of all of us…that more of these horror shows are inevitable…That there will be more surveillance, more cameras, more security checks, more police, more people buying and carrying weapons, more words from politicians, more promises, more questions with no real answers, and more drive to find an enemy off-shore to go after. And we’re not stupid people…we know that while there are enemies off shore…there are also people who may live down the street and around the corner. People you may have known for years, grew up with, went to school with, who flip out and start blasting. We certainly know it but we don’t want to think about that.

Because there’s even less that we can do about that than we can do to an off shore enemy. And when it happens we can’t just change the channel and there ain’t no wait a minute.

“Well” she said, “I hope we don’t have to get used to it.”

It was just one little comment by a young woman on the streets of Brussels in response to a reporter asking what she thought about the overwhelming police and army presence this past week. There were many other comments…and it would have been easy to lose sight of this one. For me it was the most important.

The events in Paris were ghastly and horrific…intentionally so…and they provoked a response that highlighted the holes in our whole system of policing. In Ottawa a year ago the attack on Parliament Hill took only two lives and police were on the scene and shooting in less than five minutes…but that wasn’t because they knew it was coming. It was because the Hill is surrounded by police from at least three departments. Even so…we discovered that they barely talk to each other…and communication on the day was hopelessly garbled. In France I have no idea how many police forces and intelligence organizations they have…not to mention the army and it’s many arms. Belgium, I assume, is similar. With all of this force available it is certain that many attacks have been averted. Yet it only takes one like the Paris situation to expose the in-security of the security forces. They are not intended for this. Their reaction last week was to flood the streets with masked, helmeted, armoured, heavily armed, camouflaged, vigilant, intimidating men and women in the thousands.

The juxtaposition of these military and paramilitary soldiers in full battle mode alongside ordinary people going about their business was stark. And that was what the young woman was talking about. She didn’t want to get used to seeing hundreds of outrageously over-equipped over armed troops all day, everyday as she tried to live her life.

And to be reasonable, they won’t be there all of the time. The numbers will decrease…the presence will become more discreet. blacked out trucks will hide in alleys and side streets…the conspicuous military hardware will go into the trunks of police vehicles. The level of alert will remain high for a long time but the daunting display of warriors will calm down.

But that doesn’t solve the problem. There are two issues here aside from the obvious need to keep people safe from terrorists. First there is the elevation of trauma of being surrounded by intimidating gunmen…regardless of whether they’re supposed to be protecting you. The very fact that they’re there…armed and ready means that if the bad guys come…there’ll be two parties shooting holes in the scenery with you in the middle. That’s a scary thought. Secondly there’s the psychological impact of being one of those guys  in the camouflage uniforms with masks up to their eyes and every conceivable walking weapon strapped or clipped or tied to their body. They have to stay alert of course, and it’s the sort of alert that says you need to be suspicious of ordinary looking citizens walking in ordinary looking streets.

I have carried a gun…it does something to your head. I can’t imagine what’s going on the heads of these people. The adrenaline goes up when you put that gear on…stays high and spikes when something suspicious happens…and it doesn’t go away immediately when you take all of that stuff off. Adrenaline is addictive…and toxic.

So I’m with her…I hope we don’t have to get used to this.

Many media sites especially news outlets have a comments section where readers can add their opinion about a particular story. In Canada the CBC news site does it. They moderate the comments to keep the totally outrageous at a minimum but leaving that aside…the “comments” section is often far more interesting and revealing than the story being addressed. There is no doubt that there are a lot of people with too much time on their hands and not a lot of reason on their minds. There are haters and trolls and people whose frustration is so tangible that I’m almost glad they have this outlet for their rage. After a while you begin to recognize the pseudonyms of certain commentators…or if they change names, the tone and content are so consistent that you know this troll has been here before. Not that we need any evidence of the political polarization that has occurred over the past dozen…but cruising through the comments tells you all you need to know. The rabid right hates the rabid left. There are never any winners because the battle just goes on and on. The middle ground gets lost because no reasonable argument gains traction.

The problem is that the comments section has awakened me to knowledge I wished never to have. It’s not that I was so blissfully ignorant before but…I enjoyed the delusion that the depth and heat of rage and frustration was not so great that one should be alarmed. But now I am alarmed. The shit that people are carrying in their heads is frightening. Not only because of things they might do…but because of things they won’t do…things that they will allow to happen. Not only can they be the mob but they can stand by and do nothing when the mob gets out of control. Or they can cheer the mob on. Tough choices.

We’re currently facing a crisis…along with many other countries. Absolutely horrible foreign policy mistakes by the worlds great powers have split open the schism among muslims in Syria and Iraq. The outrageous question of whether the monster in Damascus should be supported in virtually unanswerable. Millions of people are running in any direction to get away from Assad’s military…and more millions are running in any other direction to get away from ISIS and their cronies. And our crisis is whether to take some of these dispossessed thousands into our country…to give them homes and help them find jobs…help them and their families to survive. The question of “whether” has been resolved. We will. The questions of “how” and “how many” remain to be answered. And this is where our polarized society finds its dilemma. There can be no doubt that quickly screening thousands of people in, from Syria or Iraq, will provide an opportunity for terrorists and ISIS supporters to slip into the mix…they can wait months or years and blow themselves and us up in the grocery store down the street. Of course the rising tide of home grown terrorists born around the corner is problematic but for some stupid reason the thought that the poison could be lurking among the refugees is more alarming. What to do? Well, some say a suitable period of quarantine while checking out backgrounds and histories is done…Sounds good. There may be a problem getting reliable information from Syria or Iraq…but it’s better than nothing. Then there are those who say NO WAY…we can’t take the risk…Don’t take any of them. Or take a few dozen at a time so we can spend more time checking them out…weed out the bad guys. Sounds good. Of course winter is coming and with millions of refugees starving and freezing along the borders of Europe a lot of people will die…a lot of children and women and old people  (if you care about those groups) will die…and then there’s the possibility that all of those people in dire straits can become a perfect breeding ground for disease…for epidemics. And the longer we wait the greater the possibility that we’ll be bringing diseases along with the refugees. Never-mind…we have doctors for that.

According to the people who write the comments…opinion is in favour of bringing the refugees in. Good news for the kinder and gentler humans. But the opinions also show that the minority of ravers is a fairly large group and if the news from Europe is anything to go by…this group is getting bigger.

All of this is unfolding at a time when the polarization of politics has hardened the dogma of our society.   These are the things I didn’t want to learn about in the comments section of the news.

It was a little thing. In fact it was a little girl…about as big as a minute, as my mother would have said. She was four or five, walking on the street with her father (I presumed) who was busy thumb dancing on his phone. It was windy but mild today, promising rain. A couple of people passed the man and girl in the opposite direction…and a scarf blew off one of them…I saw it get caught by the wind and tossed onto a lawn behind them. Neither noticed. But the little girl did. I saw her stop as her father kept walking and she ran onto the lawn and picked up the scarf. Then she spun around and ran after the couple…shouting “Hey!…Hey!” until they stopped and she gave back the scarf. Her father had turned and started back to get her but stopped when she returned…The couple laughed and waved at the little girl and everybody went on their way. I was standing on my balcony waterproofing a pair of boots…(damn, that spray stinks!) and as I saw the story unfold, a warm glow caught me.

A kindness is what it was and they come in all sizes. Children often do small ones that turn out to be larger than life and lots of adults do huge ones that turn out to be less than that. Never mind…small, medium or large…kindnesses are needed more than ever these days. I’m very much in favour of small kindnesses. I believe they add up and if you do enough of them you’ll wake up one morning and find a merit badge pinned to your pillow.

We are blessed and cursed to live in incredibly interesting times. The past fifty years have been filled with astonishments…terrible things…ghastly things…disasters and great crimes…and also amazing things…good works…great art and music…medical miracles…mind blowing science and technology. We have seen, as well, the stresses and pressures that this phenomenal rate of change places on people and as a society, as a culture, our reactions have shown some ominous trends. Recent political campaigns around the world have revealed a mean negativity and a drive to polarize and divide people.The mass media are too quick to seize opportunities to fan fires…to pry open the rifts…to add to the divisiveness. It appears that racism, sexism, agism, elitism…and many other “isms” are increasing. It’s hard to know if they are or not but it certainly looks that way. In all kinds of situations people are choosing sides instead of trying to understand. Too often people come to the table with opinions firmly fixed and unchangeable…doesn’t make the meal taste better.

It seems to me that the little girl knows how to save the world. Do a kindness today…no…do two or three kindnesses today. And check your pillow for that merit badge.

The air is filled with words that shriek and dive around our heads like startled birds.

The night is ripped and ripped by sirens with flashing lights and the roar of anger.

Fear rides the darkness, whipping the flanks of a black horse dripping the silvery foam

Of death…of blood and fire and the fetid stink of madness blown on the wind of hatred.

I can see through the back of my head…I can hear through the soles of my feet.

I can feel the shiver of trees…and the cold, cold, hearts of assassins…calmly walking,

Calmly killing, calmly driving away. This is insanity…deep and screaming…and speaking

Not a word.

And now the morning comes with silence…quiet…trembling sorrow.

A city raped…a city blasted…a city mourning.

Men in rubber suits…eyes blank and yet knowing…hoist the hoses,

Wash the blood from cobble stones…stones that have always known

The scent of blood…the colour of blood…these streets…this blood. There

Needs to come a rain…to cleanse…to bring a balm to the face of the day.

Alone before sleep…my tired mind wanders…along the narrow streets,

Up the boulevards…stops to rest in the corner of a pretty square. In my mind

I see the rushing bustle…People moving, shopping, eating, working, walking,

Talking, riding scooters, standing in the shadows, kissing, arguing, living, living,

Living in a city I have come to love.

Paris.

Uh huh…it’s Friday the 13th…of November (although the month doesn’t seem to matter). I don’t suffer from triskaidekaphobia. That’s a great word…if you’re not afraid of the date you could just get nervous about a word like that. I mean…if a doctor told you that you had contracted triskaidekaphobia you’d be wondering where they would stick the needle…and who did you catch it from…all that.  I have lots of other superstitions, some I inherited from my granny, others were drug induced. Encounters with police will give you superstitions…make it possible for you to see around corners. I knew a man in the army who buried a bottle of whiskey outside the door of any house he moved into. Told me that sometimes he could only afford a mickey and he figured it was only half as good as a full quart. Seemed like a waste of whiskey to me…but he did it anyway. He was a brick- layer by trade and a scammer by preference. He would pick a street in a residential area…go out at night and climb up to the roof…chip the mortar out of some bricks on the chimney and displace a few of the bricks. He’d hit four or five house that way, then later in the week he’d knock on the door of the houses…point out the dangerously damaged chimney and the fact that as a brick-layer it was lucky he happened to notice…and well, he was free this week…etc. etc. …Oh! and he noticed the neighbour’s chimney looked a little shaky…do you happen to know if they’re home? Six or seven chimneys would keep him in spending money for a month…but he had to keep moving from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.

I’ve known people to stay at home on Friday the thirteenth…on the premise that one can’t be too careful. And even if you don’t believe it, you need to be aware that some fool who does could have an unlucky lapse and knock you off your bike. Like I said …it’s not one of mine but…I’ll keep an eye out for black cats and leaning ladders today.

You’d think that people would have enough bad luck in any given year that it wouldn’t be necessary to have a special day for it. Maybe the idea is that if you have a really bad fucking day…then you’re cool for the rest of the month or two or three before the next one. Who knows…humans didn’t get ahead of the chimps without some clever mystical bullshit.  It could be that these superstitious gestures have a deeper and much more rational purpose. Perhaps they’re reminders handed down for generations that we all need to remain alert, not just of the things we see and hear around us but also things unseen and unheard…things that could take us by surprise. Seems sensible when you look at it that way…you don’t have to be asleep to wake up.

Friday the 13th…wake up!…stay alert. Have a good day.

The moon according to Bob:

Fathers and sons, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, aunts, mothers, children, neighbours, strangers, grand parents, teachers, holy men and holy women, unholy people, christians, jews, muslims, hindus, atheists, jains, lovers, haters, truckers, fuckers, the guy down the street, the woman in the window, the kid on the skateboard, liars and cowards and criminals, helpers and holders and huggers and the people who work every day. Hookers and harlots and thieves. Criminals, cops , crooked cops, and politicians. Soldiers and sailors and pilots. Killers and savers. More soldiers and more sailors and more pilots. Victims and survivors. Actors and singers and players and dancers and artists of all kinds.

Dead in bed, in ditches, in corn fields, in the driver’s seat, underwater, underground, in classrooms and hospital beds. Dead in the living room, the bathroom, walking down the street. Alone dead, dead with friends and family, dead on the kitchen floor. Dead in the trenches…in foxholes, in tanks, in broken buildings, in rubble, in stubble, on beaches, on mountains. Dead in mid air, in the office, in the morning, in the winter, frozen. Dead on vacation, in battle, waiting for a bus. Dead on the side of the road. Dead on the doorstep, ringing the bell.

Shattered and scattered and blown to ribbons and red mist on the wind. Caught and shot and quietly asleep. Coughing and crying and wheezing and praying, falling and failing and hit by a car. Suddenly not breathing, surprised by wonder, lost at sea, vanished in thin air. Calling for help, whispering, saying nothing, not a word.

Gone…just gone…just gone…just gone

but not

forgotten.

Please

As told by Tommy Middleditch:

Yep…there was two little burn marks behind his left ear… About the size of a small shirt button I’d guess…Well, old Larry down at the garage says he probably did that his own self, with maybe a hot nail head, you know. No…I couldn’t say, but then again old Freddy has always been a bit odd. Well, nothing too serious like. O.K. well there was that time he took off all his clothes and ran through the bowling alley on Saturday night…Gave all the ladies quite a show that night. Terry…he’s the town cop…threw Fred in jail for the night…claiming he was drunk, but…Fred didn’t drink you know. I figured it was more like that Terry didn’t want the local boys to give Freddy a beating. It all blew over. Then there was the time we found him sleeping in Ida Quinn’s chicken coop…sound asleep on the floor, covered in feathers and chicken shit, with them birds making a hell of a racket. No use speculating about that one. Larry says that he reckoned that Freddy was in love with one of those hens…but you can’t take that stuff seriously…specially since Larry is known to do the odd strange thing himself. Keeps a pistol in his lunch pail…He says “just in case” but it ain’t loaded and we don’t even know if the damn thing works…”Just in case, of what?” . Half the time he forgets his lunch at home anyways…What if “just in case” came along on one of those days?

Never-mind…Anyway, Freddy came in here …must have been back in April of last year…Hair all tangled and twisted up, clothes all knotted up and muddy…dead leaves and twigs sticking to him like he’d been sleeping under ground in some old badger den. His eyes was wild and his teeth was chattering like those clickers them Spanish dancers use, you know. Marty…She’s the girl behind the counter over there. Earl Jones’ girl. Yep…she’s a good kid. Keeps the place going and folks like her. Dropped out of high school last year…but she’s going back next year I hear. Well anyway, Marty was always good with Freddy…got him calmed down and made him some coffee and a slice of apple pie. Well…he practically inhaled that didn’t he? And she got him talking…and he got real spooky then, see. That’s when Charlie and Larry, we were all in here for our morning coffee, see?…that’s when I wanted to send for old doc Crowder. The upshot was that Freddy says he was snatched by these guys from outer space…two days before, and he woke up buried over in the field over by Ida Quinn’s back garden. Says he doesn’t remember anything since Tuesday and he hurts all over but specially behind his ear and he shows us those burn marks.

Of course nobody believes that stuff…no, but it makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck, you know…He was talking so serious and scared like. Larry asked him what these guys looked like…I guess he was thinking a couple of high-school kids was playing some kind of bad joke on Freddy…and that would have been some bad shit right there, because no matter if he was a little crazy…Freddy …we all like him and we don’t stand for nobody messing with him. If it was a couple of those kids they was in for a serious ass kicking…once Larry found out. But no…Freddy said that they was little guys about four foot or so and they was very strong. They had some sort of mask or helmet so he couldn’t make out their faces and anyway they must have knocked him out pretty quick because that was all she wrote until he woke up, covered in dirt over at Ida’s place.

So I called doc Crowder then because we thought Freddy ought to be looked at. I mean, he looked dirty and had a few scratches and those two burn spots but otherwise he was just about the way he always was. Just the same, it was a pretty spooky story…even for Freddy…so it was possible that the boy had gone and slipped right off the rails this time.

Nope, I don’t know any more than that. Well, doc Crowder took him over town to the clinic and kept him for almost a week and his story never changed. Doc did all kinds of tests and got a shrinker from the city to come and check him out. We was all supposed to keep our mouths shut, according to doc, because the newspapers would come and turn us all into a joke if it got out. Still, Charlie, Larry and the rest of us did go over to Ida’s place and we must have covered every square inch of that field. There was a little ditch, like…looked like it was covered with twigs and old leaves…could have been the place that Freddie woke up…but you couldn’t tell. And there was a round sort of scorch mark on the ground about four feet across, you know, not a real deep burn, but like a lot of things can do that…somebody drops a cigarette…it only takes a spark in the dry season. And Charlie’s brother Ed found an old pocket-knife that he lost a couple of years ago out pheasant hunting. It was all rusted but he kept her anyway…figured he could clean her up. That was it…aside from a few old bottles and rusty cans and a hand full of old shotgun shells…it was just the same old field.

After doc Crowder let Freddie out of the clinic he told his story all over town for about six months…until nearly everybody had heard it at least once. A guy from one of those weekly news-papers they put in the supermarket came and bought Freddy lunch…heard the whole story…took Freddie out to Ida’s place and shot off a bunch of pictures. That was about six months ago…I never saw the story though… I never pick up those papers in the store. Marty…Earl’s girl, said she read the article. She said they made Freddy out to be crazy and the rest of us as hicks who didn’t know a hoax when we saw one. I don’t know about that.

Freddy seemed to settle down after a while. Didn’t do none of his usual crazy stuff. People said it was like he found a new kind of crazy…talking about those little guys out back of Ida’s place. He swore he didn’t know anything about the two lost days and the marks behind his ear. Larry says that’s where the aliens looked inside his head and didn’t find nothing and so they let him go.

Yessir and so, like I said, we all just sort of put it all out of our minds, you know…like they say…life goes on. Well sure…I know people sat out on their porches some nights looking for lights in the sky…like flying saucers…them UFOs? Never heard if anybody saw them.

Well, I don’t know…that was the whole story until a couple of months ago. I expect that’s what all the fuss is about. Yep…two months ago. Yes…well one day he just wasn’t there…Freddy. Up and gone. Not like him at all. Nobody said nothing for a week or so…he doesn’t have kin around here…lives alone across the little river…People don’t like to intrude see. But after a week of not seeing him I think Marty went over there and he wasn’t home…At least he wasn’t in there, sick or…you know…dead. So she must have told Earl and he called the police. I guess they didn’t want to do too much. Freddy was a grown man…free to come and go, you know…But we all had a little meeting and called the police back…got a proper search to look around. And the thing of it is…all his stuff is still out at the house. It’s a mystery now.

It’s just a mystery now. Maybe he’ll turn up with more burns behind the ear…but I don’t know…it worries me…the whole thing does. I don’t think he’ll be back around here anymore…I think Freddy is gone in that flying saucer.

B.C.

06-11-15

Freddy’s Flying Saucer

Remembrance Day is still a week away but I find it easier to think about now than I will on that week-end. there’s a patriotic fervour that sweeps up the main streets and flutters the flags and brings a tear to the eye. Grand old guys in berets with medals and badges are wheeled up to the memorials to shiver in the cold and remember what only they can remember…And we bow and listen to the military band blowing ‘Taps” or “The Last Post” or “Amazing Grace” and some of us wonder why we’re still up to our asses in wars when the sacrifice of these men and women was supposed to mean that it should end. So there’s an edge of remembered promises broken…and while we honour the memory of those both dead and alive of our wars…we still seem to be marching off to create more memories. I was a soldier. I knew a few of the old ones. i think they enjoyed this once a year gathering, if only to see who was still alive…and to share stories of health care…and laugh at the youngsters. Because after it’s over on the eleventh…they almost all go back in their boxes…wherever that may be…and we can cling to a little emotional hangover for a week or two and get on with forgetting for another year. It pisses me off every year…and that’s why it’s easier to write about this week in stead of next week.

For me next week will be a time for remembering dead family…dead friends…some dead heroes…and some dead soldiers. I won’t weep or wail and I probably won’t go over to the parade or war memorial. I’ve seen enough of those. And I’ll tell myself once again to try to remember all of those who’ve gone…more often than once a year.