What Are the Preoccupations of Our Time?

In August, 1986, I read an article in Harper's called "Reflections in a Glass Eye:  A Videocassette Best-Seller List."  From the themes of the ten, top-selling videos, the author, David Black, drew conclusions about the preoccupations of the late 1980s:  the zeitgeist.  Black showed how all 10 videos, which included Jane Fonda's workout video and Rambo, shared themes which pointed to the struggles and values of the day.

One can attempt this exercise with any selection of current cultural artefacts, from top ten iTune songs to current best-selling novels.  Because of its international flavour, the just-concluded Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) might be an excellent lens through which to view our times.

TIFF screened 289 feature films from 72 countries.  I attended 13 of these.  My films were chosen somewhat randomly by friends curious about international trends and familiar with the track records of various directors.  Spoiler Alert:  The spoilers are minimal - but with the exception of Argo and Midnight's Children, it is unlikely very many of these films will come your way.

What was the weather of your film selections?
My films overall were quite stormy and dark - not a single comedy.  The funniest was Argo which involved rescuing Americans who were hiding out in the home of the Canadian ambassador during the 1979 hostage taking.  It had sharp, humorous banter, but overall very dark.

What was the "season" of your film selections?
Arab spring (After the Battle) quickly becomes Arab winter; A Few Hours of Spring:  winter; A Late Quartet:  winter.

Does anyone win?
People mostly lose or gain a bitter victory.  For example, in A Few Hours of Spring, a woman takes advantage of a company in Switzerland that offers death with dignity to terminally ill patients.  While she fights with her son throughout the entire movie, they are only able to express their love for one another after she takes the life-ending concoction.

In Out in the Dark, a gay Palestinian student and an Israeli lawyer develop a beautiful love relationship, but the student's family want him dead and the Israeli military want him to betray the militants in his family.  Lose-lose-lose

In After the Battle, angry, frustrated Egyptians want freedom from dictatorship.  In the end, it seems one set of generals are replaced by another set.

The Attack begins with an Israeli-Palestinian surgeon being acclaimed by the Israelis for his contributions.  We gradually discover that he's not really trusted by the Israelis nor by his Palestinian relatives.  Meanwhile, his wife becomes a suicide bomber.  Dark dark dark.

What is the dominant imagery of the films?
Walls and borders - all kinds of walls:  walls around the pyramids, separating villagers from a source of livelihood; walls around the Palestinian territories; walls of small rooms where people are crowded; walls preventing communication between mother and son, between men and women; and borders thrown up between India and Pakistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh; borders thrown up all over post-war Germany.

Walls suggest separation, and walls also imply prisons.  People in these films are trapped and, if they transcend their own prejudices, they are trapped by the prejudices of their society.  Sarah Polley's mother in Stories We Tell feels trapped in her marriage; the characters in Midnight's Children are all trapped by the circumstances of their birth. Shira in Fill the Void feels trapped into a marriage she doesn't want.  To a certain extent, all the characters of all the movies are trapped by their socio-economic status, race, and religion.  Escape is attempted, but only occasionally successful.  Hannah Arendt escapes from Nazis and goes to Eichmann's trial to try and understand the evil she faced.  Wandering through the landscape of post-war Germany, Lore, a child of Nazis, gradually escapes from the tyranny of the beliefs she inherited.  In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Changez  escapes from the greed and materialism of the corporate world.

Does redemption seem possible?
Midnight's Children is on some level a search for home and family.  Saleem creates a surrogate family, a baby lives, and magic is alive.  (In Inch'Allah the baby dies.  InThe Attack a lot of babies die.  Note:  No matter what the genre, babies represent hope; dead babies represent hopelessness.)  Fill the Void is redeemed by the compassion of the rabbi.  He will not perform a marriage if Shira's heart is not in it.  In A Late Quartet, the power of beautiful music redeems all the characters.

Can you draw any conclusions about our times?

• These are dark times.
• Dictators fall, but there are always more dictators.
• The country you love will not necessarily protect you.
• Your birth family will not necessarily protect you, but any family based on love and compassion is your true family.
• Humans seek peace and freedom through politics, but also through love and art.

The films were

1. After the Battle (Egypt, Yousry Nasrallah)  Poor people living outside the wall around the pyramids are befriended by one of the rich activists who is protesting against Mubarak in Tahrir Square.  
2. Out in the Dark (Israeli/USA, Michael Mayer) A gay Palestinian falls in love with an Israeli.  
3. Stories We Tell (Canada, Sarah Polley)  Sarah Polley goes in search of her bio-daddy and finds her mother.
4. Inch'Allah (Canada, Anais Barbeau-Lavalette)  A French-Canadian works in the West Bank, but lives on the Israeli side.
5. The Attack (Lebanon/France/Qatar/Egypt/Belgium, Ziad Doueiri)  A successful Palestinian surgeon working in an Israeli hospital finds out that the latest suicide bomber was his wife.
6. A Few Hours of Spring (French, Stéphane Brizé)  A trucker screws up his life and ends up in jail.  The film begins with his release from jail when he moves in with his terminally ill mother who is seeking an assisted suicide.  They have some communication issues.
7. Midnight's Children (Canada/UK, Deepa Mehta)  The political events in 20th century India as experienced by the children born at midnight the day India gained independence from Britain.  Events include the separation of India and Pakistan and the war in Bangladesh.
8. Lore (Australia/UK/Germany, Cate Shortland)  After their Nazi parents are arrested, five children, led by the oldest, a 14-year-old daughter, cross the destroyed German landscape to their grandparents home.
9. Fill the Void (Israel, Rama Burshtein)  An orthodox Jewish girl is looking forward to her wedding when her older sister dies in childbirth.  Her family wants her to marry the widower.
10. A Late Quartet (USA, Yaron Zilberman)  When the cellist and leader of a famous string quartet becomes ill, each member of the quartet has to adapt.
11. Hannah Arendt (Germany, Margarethe von Trotta)  An examination of the trial of Eichmann through the eyes of Hannah Arendt.  Her conclusions challenge the philosophical community.
12. Argo (USA, Ben Affleck)  The US government chooses the least worst solution to rescuing six Americans who are hiding in the Canadian embassy after all the others in the US embassy are taken hostage.
13. The Reluctant Fundamentalist (India/Pakistan/USA, Mira Nair)  A brilliant South-Asian American rises to the top of the financial world, but the all-profit mentality of it (merging companies, slashing jobs) combined with the post-911 harassment of American Muslims, causes him to return to Pakistan.

Can You Make a Difference?

"Success isn't about how much money you make.  It's about the difference you make in people's lives."      -- Michelle Obama

This quote from Michelle Obama's speech (September 4, 2012) reminded me of an essay I wrote in 2000 when I taught in a jail school.  Here's my thoughts on making a difference in that one context:

**********

In September, school begins again for most kids.  I've been teaching in a detention centre for young offenders, and our school runs all summer.  This is a good thing because by the time these kids end up in custody, they have usually missed a lot of school.

When I tell people where I work, their first response is to express concerns about my safety.  After all, children are in custody for assault, manslaughter, robbery -- the same crimes adults commit.  I reassure them that a detention centre school is safer than many high schools.  Their next question is, "Do you think you can make a difference?"  I dance around the question, perhaps replying, "Of course I  make a difference.  While they're in my class, they're not out stealing your car."  But I suspect that's not the answer my questioners were seeking.

Can I make a difference?  Those of us who work with young offenders wonder this a lot, especially when a child returns three months after his release.  If children do stay out of trouble, it's due to their own efforts and the hard work of child care workers, social workers, parole officers, parents, as well as teachers.

Will I have some kind of intangible effect on these students?  One day, 20 years from now, the students may remember that I encouraged them or trusted them -- and  that helped them get their lives on track?  My friend, Rachel, worked in an education program with disadvantaged youth.   Many had been young offenders and some were in the program as a condition of parole or bail.  Rachel expressed despair over what she called "the unremitting and heartbreaking disappointment intrinsic to the work."

"There's so little immediate positive reaction to the classroom experiences," she says, "that teachers dream up this 20-year theory to comfort themselves.  When activities are constantly rejected by clients in the present, how can they be viewed as positive 20 years later?"

The math teacher at my facility, Hilary, has a different point of view.  She uses the stock market to help children practice math skills.  Everyone in the class invests 100,000 imaginary dollars.  As they follow the changes in the market and become aware of economic forces, they practice adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.  Hilary says she ran into one of her former students downtown.  The first thing this 14-year-old said was, "Hey, Miss, did CIBC and TD merge?"

Amazed, Hilary realized that she can make students more aware one step at a time.  She sees that when the children return to jail, they slide back into the program and pick up their math lessons where they left off.  These students perform well in a small, structured, consistent environment.  Hilary says you can't look at the big picture.  We have to look at small individual differences.  All of these together can add up to a significant difference.

We never know just what will make a difference to another person.  My friend, Bernie, played high school basketball.  Once, in a playoff game, he missed every shot in the first half.  His coach was still willing to play him in the second half.  He says the willingness of that coach to play him made a huge difference in his life.  He was ready to give up -- but the coach could see something in him that he couldn't yet see himself.  He sank every shot in the second half.  Now Bernie's a jailteacher too.

Most of us in this job believe that the best place for these kids to be is around us. One of my students is reading Romeo and Juliet while listening to an audio cassette of the play.  He then watches two versions of Romeo and Juliet on video.  He can experience Shakespeare's story of tender love amidst senseless hate for an hour a day in a quiet, supportive environment --  an experience he never had on the outside.

Can I make a difference?  I honestly don't know.  But a girl in custody in British Columbia sent me an e-mail with her answer to the question.  She says, "I can tell you from my personal experience of being in a jail, that yes, you teachers do make a difference.  It may not seem like it at first.  Most of us aren't used to someone trying to help us, so when a hand is offered, we get wary.  My teacher has done a lot for me.  He has not only taught me how to keep from swearing at a piece of wood, but he taught me that if I have patience, wood can turn into a thing of beauty.  In addition, I can talk to him about everything.  It's great to know that there are people out there that even want to try to make a difference."

**********

"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."      -- Jane Goodall 

What do you think?  Can you, can we, make a difference?

What's the Best Advice Ever?

Advice has a tendency to be site specific.  For example, the best advice I ever received was from a high school principal who told me this:

-- The more you teach, the less they learn.

I think of that every class I teach.

My brother, Len, tells a story about the best advice he ever heard.  He played double bass in the high school band.  A string broke during band class and there were no extra strings in the school.  The teacher, Mr. Roberts, said, "Len, go downtown to Ann Foster's Music Store and get a box of new strings and fix that bass before you go to your next class."

Len:  "Mr. Roberts, it'll take me an hour to go downtown and back.  I have a double French class coming up."

Mr. Roberts: "Always keep your instrument in good repair and ready to play.  Get those strings now."

This message stayed with my brother for years after.  He played guitar in rock and roll bands, always keeping his instrument ready to play.  He witnessed the downfall of many musicians who had not received that advice.

Ten years later, the high school had their 50th anniversary.  My brother saw Mr. Roberts, quite aged now and walking with a cane.  Len said, "Mr. Roberts, in high school you gave me the best advice ever about keeping my instrument ready to play.  Do you have any advice for me now?"

Mr. Roberts said, "Len, from where you're standing on your side of the street, you don't know which way the wind is blowing on the other side of the street."

My brother became a screenwriter and for the next ten years had to deal with Hollywood directors and producers and actors, each one making script changes.  He remembered that from where he was standing, from his position, he didn't know the constraints and issues of the others in the business.  That perspective helped him cope with the pressure.

Ten years later, the high school had a 20-year reunion for Len's class.  Mr. Roberts arrived, held up by his two grand-daughters and two canes.  My brother approached him again and reminded him of the advice he'd given Len in high school and at the earlier reunion.  Len asked Mr. Roberts if he had any further advice.

"Len," said Mr. Roberts, "you still don't know which way the wind is blowing on the other side of the street."

-------------------

I keep that bit of advice in mind as well.

What's the best advice you've ever received (or given for that matter)?

How Do You Know When You've Hit Bottom?

The phrase goes, "When you hit bottom, there's nowhere to go but up."

Maybe - but I sure wouldn't count on it.  Meanwhile, bottom might be a moving target.

I was once in a relationship with a man who had violent outbursts.  I had been planning and planning to move out, but I couldn't just then.  I had left several times before,  but, as lame as it sounds, that day, month, year, I was too busy.  I had just been hired full time, I had a pre-schooler to look after, and a lot of other excuses.

After a major glass-smashing binge, I fled with my baby and stayed the night with friends.  

All my projects, teaching materials, and life files were organized on shelves in my office.  The shelves were built by a friend of mine and covered an entire wall.  I would have been teaching at least five courses that term.  Each course had its own shelf for course books, marking, notes, and more.

I left that night, but the thing is this:  after taking my daughter to day care the next morning, I would have gone back.  This was not going to be my great escape.  However, when I got back to the house, the entire bookshelf had been dismantled and all my papers were thrown around the room.  There was nothing to go back to.  I finally and absolutely left.

My conclusion is this:  You never hit bottom, but if you're lucky, the bottom will come up and kick your ass out the door.

What about you?  Where was your bottom?

What's That Smell?

I often hear the question, "What's that smell?"  Unfortunately, I have no answer. I lost my sense of smell in 1972 as a result of a bicycle accident.  Several weeks after the accident, I was putting on some perfume.  I couldn't smell it, so I put on more and more.  Then I thought, "Maybe it isn't the perfume that has no smell - maybe it's me."  I ran around the apartment sticking my nose into everything:  bleach, vinegar, shampoo - nothing, nothing, nothing.

Doctors told me this:  The inside of my head was travelling faster than the outside.  When I landed hard on the back of my head, the olfactory nerve was either stretched or severed.  The nerve was still in my brain, but had been disconnected. 
For my first few anosmic years, I had mysterious-smelling olfactory hallucinations. After sampling some boiled eggplant for the first time some months later, I recognized it as the taste of my hallucination.  Does that mean the inside of my brain tastes like eggplant?  Perhaps.  The hallucinations faded and my world has been odour-free ever since.

I went home to stay with my mother after getting out of the hospital, and accidentally put a dent in her car.  She said, "Oh sweetheart.  It's all right about the dent in the car.  It's the dents in your head I'm worried about."

People continue to stick things in my face and say, "You've got to smell this."  I say, "I have no sense of smell."  They say, "Oh, you'll smell this."  But I don't.

When I'm with people and a stinky thing enters the atmosphere, they say, "You're lucky you have no sense of smell."  I say, "Really?  You really think so?"

I say things like, "Does this food smell okay?"  I say that a lot.  "Has this milk gone off?" and "Crap, I burned the ...."  I've burned a lot of things over the years.

Bottom Line:  Wear a helmet.

How Cold Have You Been?

I spoke about the depths of winter in my August 15 quotation blog.  Summer is still here, but I'm thinking about winter and reading Paul Auster's inspiring memoir Winter Journal.

In Canada, conversations eventually roll around to coldest cold stories.  My friend David K spent this past winter in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.  On the winter solstice, 2011, it was minus 31 C, minus 44 with the windchill.  Dave reported days as low as minus 50.  The cold Arctic landscape is beautifully photographed and described in Dave's blog:
http://arcticwatch.wordpress.com/.

David went to the Arctic prepared for the cold.  People aren't always able to prepare.   Russia and Ukraine suffered a brutal cold spell in 2012 which killed 175 people.

77-year old Elisabeta Dumitrache, left, watches as firefighters dig her house out of the snow in the village of Carligul Mic, Romania, on Feb. 11, 2012, as heavy snow and freezing temperatures continued to blanket much of Europe.

I rarely mention my coldest cold story.  I don't like to compete ("You call that cold?  Let me tell you about cold.)  But I will tell it here.  A medical emergency brought me to a Vancouver Hospital in fall 1974.  I had lost a lot of blood and had to be given blood immediately so a procedure could be performed in the morning.  I'm the universal donor, not the universal recipient, but they had some O negative blood stored in the freezer.  They briefly defrosted the first bag and began transfusing it while the other bag thawed.

As it flowed into me, I felt colder and colder and colder.  They kept throwing more blankets on me, but I was cold from the inside out.  I was cold, but my life was saved!

That was 38 years ago.  I imagine emergency medicine has changed.

What's your coldest cold story? 

Why Do We Love Quotations?

I love quotations, not all quotations, but the good useful ones.  I add them to the bottom of my emails as part of the signature file.  Here's one:

"Speak now, kiss now / Before the river freezes altogether."  - Troy Jollimore

If I read that all winter, it reminds me to speak and kiss.  Climate change might stop the river from freezing altogether, but there are still rivers of passion coursing within me.  I wouldn't want them to freeze, so I keep speaking and kissing.  Or this one:

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."  - Albert Camus

That one reminds me to be resilient.  You can tell from those quotes that I live in the north.

A lot of people also add quotations to their email.  We copy one another's.  My friend Sergio in Salvador, Brazil, translates quotations into Portuguese and copies them to the bottom of his email.  They look like this:

"A coragem é resistência ao medo, domínio do medo - não ausência do medo."
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."  - Mark Twain

Quotations are both reminders for me and little messages to others.  They nod to the great writers and thinkers of past and present.  Lines from speeches, songs, and conversations are pulled out of context.  Lyrics are extracted from songs to sing to the immediate moment:

"You live your life as if it's real, a thousand kisses deep."  - Leonard Cohen

William Renauld wrote me that he loved my sig file quotations because "the quotes stretch a particular experience into a common, shared space."  Yes, they do that - move all readers towards a moment of communal thoughtfulness.  Here's one of my favourite quotations:

"We are all here for a single purpose:  to grow in wisdom and to learn to love better.  We can do this through losing as well as through winning, by having and by not having, by succeeding or by failing.  All we need to do is to show up openhearted for class" - Rachel Naomi Remen

It's my birthday Thursday.  Please send me a question or a quotation.  I will use them in my speech.
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Update:  Please take a look at http://quoteinvestigator.com/.   This website is written by Garson O'Toole who applies his enormous investigative skills to verifying the source of quotations.

Should My Boyfriend Move in with Me?

I love men.  I even live with one.  My answer below is in no way indicative of an anti-male bias.

I was recently asked this question by a female friend.  She's in her 30s and employed.    Rather than give her a direct answer, I asked value-clarifying questions so she could come to her own conclusions.   I will, however, give a direct answer here:

Should I let my boyfriend move into my apartment?

PROBABLY NOT - If it was a good idea, you wouldn't be asking Google this question.

You are asking the question because you fear that

• he might not contribute to rent and utilities
• he'll get more stoned or drink more often than you'd prefer
• he'll make more work for you, not less
• he won't do what he says he will do and then find a way to make it your fault

Meanwhile

• you have not introduced him to many of your friends
• he doesn't like the friends he's met
• he wakes up grouchy
• he complains and whines
• and you feel alone when you're together.

Moving in together tends to make any bad thing worse, not better.

If you go ahead and let him move in with you anyway, remember that you were 100% aware of all your doubts and fears going in.

When he moves in with you, it will deepen the intensity of your life (since you'll be angry all the time).  Don't mistake intensity for intimacy.

On the positive side, his presence will fill the emptiness within you and you can prolong having to face your life a while longer.

Why Do We Have No Sympathy for Coyote?

While people often cheer on the perceived underdog, why is it no one ever roots for Wile E. Coyote?

The coyote makes us uncomfortable.  Like many of us, the coyote is the dupe of consumer culture.  His solutions are always technological.  He doesn't train for months so that he can catch the roadrunner.  He doesn't study or consult.  He goes to the the giant ACME OUTLET MALL and buys some piece-of-shit consumer item that promises more than it delivers.  A rope, a crane, a catapult, a trap -- whatever it is -- never works.  The bomb always blows up in Coyote's face.

Meanwhile, the roadrunner seems to be the ultimate carefree hippy zipping through the desert.  Beep Beep.  We discover, however, at the end (6'24") of Episode #23 ("To Beep or Not to Beep") that the technology bought by Wile E. Coyote to catch the roadrunner is built by the roadrunner's own manufacturing company.  Way to go roadrunner!

If only the guns sold to the coyotes of society would blow up those same coyotes before they do harm to others.   

Are You Nursing a Grudge?

My friend, Dabuoy, has a blog called "What the F**K Is He Talking About?" (http://dabuoy.blogspot.ca).  He recently posted this poem which I find just a little scary.

I held a grudge today...

I held it gentle

as a baby

cooing

all the while

I held a grudge today...

I traced my love

upon its furrowed 

brow

and giggled

I held a grudge today...

I nursed it

I burped it

I changed it

I learnt from it

I held a grudge today...

I taught it to hunt

I taught it to protect

I taught it respect

I taught it to love

I held a grudge today...

It called me 'MOM'

What Hand Have I Been Dealt?

My dear friend C, who likes to make lists, added this to his list of beliefs:

"I’m not very fond of the saying, “You have to play the hand you’re dealt.” I believe that many of the most interesting people are those who have not played the hands they were dealt.  Personally, in my own life, I try not to be limited by the cards I was dealt at birth."

But, C, what are the cards you were dealt?  You may have been dealt controlling, hostile parents or no parents at all.  You may have begun with deprivations of all sorts, four fingers instead of five; but obviously your hand included the ability, imagination, and courage to see beyond the initial unfolding of your life.  That too is part of your hand.

Let's take the card game, bridge, for example.  In bridge you are dealt 13 cards.  Every round, another 13.  Sometimes it's all aces and faces.  Sometimes none.  You have to play the hand you are dealt.  (And, by the way, in duplicate bridge, you can even play a bleak pointless hand extraordinarily well and win the game!)

Unlike bridge, a life might offer more choices and the immediately available options change with every decision you make and every fork in every road.  The hand we are dealt makes it possible to choose Fork A or Fork U and to even go back if we don't like the view.  We might feel we're all out of cards, when out of the blue, we see another card hiding under a bush.

Of course not everyone has a bush available.  I agree with C of course, but I'm just not sure the metaphor holds up.  What do you think?  Should I delete this blog?

Are You a Good Son (Mother, Father, Partner, etc. etc.)?

A friend of mine (male, early 30s) is living a mountain range away from his mother.  His father died a couple of years ago and his mom (late 50s) has been trying to get on with her life.  He said he wants to be a good son.  I asked him, "What do you think being a 'good son' means?"

He didn't know.  He hadn't thought of it in terms of a set of criteria.

We want to be "good" partners, friends, and family members even when there are difficulties with the other person.  If we are in a relationship, we generally want to do our part to make it good.  It might be useful to have specific behavioural goals instead of assuming goodness.  People who need to protect themselves from difficult parents might still want to be a "good" son or daughter.  Guilt and a sense of duty might push them towards family, but fear, ambivalence, or resentment pulls them away.

If there's closeness, respect, and acceptance, we want to be around family and do all we can together.  Some people, however, need to put up boundaries of protection and be free to create themselves.  In these cases it might be helpful to define for yourself what it might mean to be a good whatever.  Set minimum actions (e.g. phone once a week).  As the relationship changes, eventually your actions will be fearless and spontaneous and flow from open-hearted love.

When my daughter was young, I decided that being a good mother included giving her swimming lessons.  A lot of "what is a good mother" had to be figured out.  It's not instinctive.  It might be the same with all our roles.

Self-Definition Goals

Some goals are long-term goals that we set out to achieve step-by-step:  complete a degree, find a job, run in a marathon, and so on.

Other goals involve ways of being:  being a good employee, partner, or parent.  If my goal is to be a "good" daughter to an elderly parent, or a "good" partner in a relationship, what does that mean specifically?  We could ask the other person and consider their answer, but their definition of "good" might be different from our own.

Can you define your roles, at least partly, in terms of specific realistic behaviours?  What is one of your most important self-definition roles (student, sister, brother, daughter, son, lover, team member, parent, etc.).  Pick one and think of some specific behaviours:

I would consider myself a good ________________________, if I

1. ___________________________________________________________

2. ___________________________________________________________

3. ___________________________________________________________

You can then measure your level of achievement against your own criteria -- not someone else's.  You don't have to feel inadequate or guilty all the time, and you can fortify yourself against other people's accusations of inadequacy.

"Why?"

The media say that the FBI are searching for a motive for the Aurora, Colorado massacre.  "Why?" is a frequently asked question, number five on the five w's list:  who, what, when, where, why.  Answers to the whys of human behaviour, though, tend to be speculative.  DNA or other evidence will often help nail down who, what, when, where, and even how, but give no hints to why.

If we knew why random, senseless atrocities occurred, we could predict them and stop them before they happened.  But I suspect there is no why.  Perhaps the shooter will offer a reason besides "I'm the joker," but even an explanation given by the perpetrator will not create a satisfying why.  Nonetheless, we would very much like one.  This article suggests that needing an explanation seems wired into the brain:

BEHAVIOR; Mind Fills The Need To Explain

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/17/health/behavior-mind-fills-the-need-to-explain.html

"While mapping the brain, they [neurophysiologists] were amazed to find that when the area responsible for an emotion was electronically stimulated, subjects experienced the mechanically induced feeling, then instantly came up with reasons for their responses."

Many people will come up with a why.  We need to, but I suspect events like the Montreal Massacre, the Columbine massacre, and the tragedy in Aurora ultimately arise from the unique experiences and chemistry of the shooters.  Perhaps it would be more helpful to examine, question, and circumscribe the how.
 

"Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?"

D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous.  These three questions comprise the title of Gauguin's famous painting currently hanging in the Arcadia exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  When I was there a couple of days ago, I took the exhibit's "audio tour."  This involved wearing headphones and carrying a device as I wandered the exhibit featuring Impressionists obsessed with visions of Arcadia.  Certain pictures are labelled with a headset icon and number.  When I punched the number into my  portable device, I could listen to the voices of art historians.

The historian first described the groups of figures in Gauguin's masterpiece:  the women and baby and dog on the right,  youthful figures in the middle, a blue idol in the background, and an old woman in the left corner with a white bird.  The expert then declared that the picture does not answer the questions in the title. Huh?

Was the picture supposed to answer the questions?  Can art answer questions?  Art of all sorts tends to stimulate and inspire questions in the viewer.  As artists paint, the working out of the picture might answer their questions, just as writing blogs answers my questions (or creates more questions).  When art seems to answer questions for viewers, it is likely to be a very subjective answer.

Brief note on the audio-tour experience:

The museum was very crowded with people wearing their headsets, isolated, listening to pre-recorded comments on the works of art.  Guided tours were few and far between.  This is typical of art galleries these days, and it might seem like a good idea as a great deal of information can be communicated, and people can choose which work of art they want to hear about.

I felt isolated and cut off from other viewers, each of us in a private audio environment discouraged from interacting with one another and unable to ask questions -- the way it is on sidewalks, buses, and subways of urban environments - everyone listening to their own private playlist.

Are You Self-Scrutinizing? Not Enough? Too Much?

I have a friend (C.) who engages in what he calls "self-absorbed list-making."  He just sent me his list of "Things I'm Good At" followed by "Things I'm Not Good At."

This is the same friend who wrote a list of "Things I Believe" which I discussed in the blog, What Should I Believe In?.  He says he considers his lists an exercise in self-understanding.  Also, he clearly has chosen self-absorbed list-making over other possibly more dangerous or addictive activities.  So I applaud his pastime.

His list, so far, is short although wide-ranging.  It includes work habits:

• I am good at finishing what I start
• I am good at procrastinating

specific skills:

• I am pretty good at learning languages
• I am good at writing music (sometimes)

and mental processes:

• I'm good at questioning fundamental ideas that others might accept as self-evident truths.

His list of things he's not good at is presented without apology:

•  I am not very punctual
•  I am not very good at making money. I just don’t think that way.

Although there is occasionally a slight wistfulness:

• I wish I were better at renewing old friendships than I am ...
• Sadly, I am not much of a ladies’ man.

What am I to make of this?  Most of us do not feel the need to make such a list unless we're preparing for that horrible (but important) job-interview question, "What are your weaknesses?"  (Interviewers want to see if you are capable of self-scrutiny.)

Most of us also prefer to hear how wonderful we are from others. ("You're a fabulous lover.")  If your self-esteem is shaky, the list might lead you to the nearest bridge. 

On the other hand, it might not be a bad idea to make such a list, and having done so to look for ways to share or teach the things we're good at, or to seek to improve the things we wish to improve - or maybe just to understand and accept ourselves more.

I just sent C. the following questions:

1. Do you feel you know yourself better after completing your list?
2. Has it made you want to become better at things you are not good at, or more accepting of yourself?
3. Has it provided a framework for what seems to be your life?
4. Do you recommend this for others?

I'll report on his answers when they arrive.

I tried momentarily to write myself a list of things I'm good and bad at, but I didn't get very far.  I'm not that self-scrutinizing.  I know one thing though.  If I did make that list, I don't think I'd send it to anyone.  Unless they asked.

Meanwhile, how do you self-scrutinize?

What's Your (Secret) Identity?

Growing up with Superman, Batman, and the other heroes, I thought I had a clear idea of what a secret identity was.  This was the disguise the heroes wore to hide their powers and function in the world as regular citizens.  Most superheroes wore masks, yet, their "secret" identity was unmasked.  Their masked (yet real) identity had amazing powers.  Their unmasked selves hid their powers.

This seems like a confusing message for a kid.  How do we learn who we are and what we stand for?  If we have special powers, should they stay hidden?  What is identity?  Do we all have double lives?

Masked or unmasked, identity is our definition of ourselves.  To be effective and consistent, we need an idea of ourselves.

We build our identity piece by piece as experiences sharpen our understanding of what we will or will not do.  Our identity develops

• when we don't fit in
• when we explore areas beyond our comfort zone
• when we heed a call to go forward into an unknown future
• when we find out we could do more than we thought we could
• when we discover what we will or will not tolerate
• when we take a stand

and in many other ways.  As we differentiate ourselves from others, we also must learn to merge empathically with others without losing ourselves or barraging others with our strong sense of self.

We define our identities bit by bit, experience by experience.  I suspect, as we enter the last periods of our lives, and our sons and daughters tell us to "rage, rage against the dying of the light," we reverse the process, losing ourselves piece by piece to merge easily back into the cosmos.

How did you discover who you were?  Do you have a secret identity?

Have You Had a Lucid Dream?

A lucid dream occurs when you become aware that you are dreaming.  That is, you become lucid.  Lucid dreaming is rare because the brain tends to accept the experience it is having.  To the brain, the experience is real, whether it is a dream reality or a conscious reality.  Here's my dream from Tuesday morning:

I am about to give a training seminar.  All my booklets have been printed.  The seminar organizers are helping me put the desks into a circle.  The participants will be applicants to medical school, but they have not arrived yet.  It is getting time to start and I'm aware that I should review my handouts, but I decide to change first.  I'm wearing a long warm dress, but I seem to have a lighter dress that I want to put on.  There is a washroom behind the seminar area and I go there.  I put on the other dress, and look in the mirror.  I notice I have waist-length hair.  The dress seems shabby though.  I decide to put the long warm dress back on, but when I take off the shabby dress, I find that I am wearing a yellow raincoat underneath it.


In my dream, I see that the raincoat is a clue that I am dreaming.  I recall two previous dreams where I am removing clothes, but keep finding more items of clothing underneath.  


In my dream, I start yelling, "THIS IS A DREAM!! WAKE UP!!"  The dream reality is very strong and wants to pull me back into the dream, but I resist it and I manage to wake myself up with the yelling.


Any other lucid dreamers out there?
----------
As for those dreams of undressing:  no matter how much I undress, I just can't get naked.   In this dream, I find I am wearing a raincoat underneath my clothes.  If I ask the raincoat what it wants, it replies, "I want to protect you."


Am I am covered by layers and layers of defences keeping me from being truly open and vulnerable?  The message from the dream unsettled me, and yelling myself awake left me feeling Matrix-y the rest of the day.

Am I an Ass?

A high school girl told me this story:

A boy in her class said to her: "You should wear lower-cut tops, so we can see more of your puppies."

The girl, staring calmly into his eyes, replied:  "Do you know you're an ass?  I'm thinking maybe no one ever told you, and you should know."

I imagine the question, "Am I an ass?" rarely comes up in people's personal meditations, especially since what is an unwelcome, hurtful comment to one person might be, to the speaker, an innocent and sincere remark.

If the comment is labelled racist, sexist, anti-semitic, or offensive, the complainer is labelled oversensitive or unable to take a joke.  But sometimes people do see themselves in a new light.

In the late 1980s, I was teaching English to an all-male college engineering class.  One day, just before class ended, I read them a story I wrote called "Ma Bell's Revenge."  The story is about my former partner who would violently smash things when he was angry, particularly telephones. The story begins with me returning a smashed phone we had rented from Bell Canada.  (Back then, phones could be rented.)  They replaced it with a new "husband-proof" phone called The Harmony.  The customer service rep said, "It's so light that it won't hurt if he throws it at you."

The story ends with my partner returning from the hospital with stitches in his lip.  He had thrown the phone down so hard, it bounced up and hit him in the face.  The class laughed at the end of the story, at the man who couldn't control his temper.

As the students were leaving, one of the boys approached me slowly.  "My girlfriend says that I break phones," he said.

"Do you?" I asked.

"Yeah, I guess," he said.

Our eyes met.  It was clear that after hearing my story, he was seeing himself as an ass for the first time -- and he didn't like what he saw.

What Do Teenagers Want to Know?

There I was in Halifax, reading The Power of Now in my hotel hot tub when two teenage boys joined me in the foam of pulsating jets and asked me what I was reading.  "It's philosophy," I said.
"What's it about?  We're totally into philosophy.  We read philosophy all the time."
That seemed a little unbelievable, but we started discussing the main ideas of the book when 15 more teenagers slipped into the hot tub with us.  They told me that they were from PEI and all in their high school senior band.  They were in Halifax with their music teacher and chaperones for a band festival.  In addition they were all performing in the upcoming school play, Annie.  Then they started singing "The sun will come out/Tomorrow" in four-part harmony.
I mentioned that I had a blog of questions people ask me, questions like "How do you know you're really in love?"  They said, "That's a great question.  We think about that all the time."  They wanted an answer.  They asked more and more questions.  In the hot tub.  In Halifax.  Here's some of that conversation:

"What is it like to be in love?"
I told them that being in love is mostly awful.  It's good for a while, and then it's over and it's really, really bad, and you hate how bad it is, so you fall in love again, and it's good and then bad again.  It goes on like that until you change or run away (sometimes with one or two kids in tow), and you learn to live with yourself.  Eventually you figure out what you want and need and what you don't want.  You've learned to live with yourself, so next time it's not as awful.  It might even be pretty good.
They hung on my words as if they were true.  I asked them who had been in a great love relationship that was good and then really bad.  Most of them put their hands up and nodded.

When should I say, "I love you" in a relationship?
I asked them for their ideas on this question.  One fellow said, "When 'I like you a lot' doesn't seem like enough anymore."  I speculated that saying "I love you" is our way of showing gratitude.  What you mean is that in the presence of the romantic partner you feel smarter and more beautiful than with anyone else.  You feel connected and alive and worthy.  You are so grateful to the other person for co-creating the situation where those feelings emerge that you are overwhelmed with a gratefulness that you call love.
One of the teen-age girls said, "That's so true."

"Should I stay friends with my ex?"
You can stay friends with your ex, but it might be a good idea to first ask yourself why you want to do that.  Some people want to stay friends because they feel guilty for breaking up and hope they would feel less guilty by staying friends.  Some people still have some control over the other person and they like having that power.  One person I know told me that he wanted to stay friends with his ex as a way of honouring the six good years they had together.  Are you "staying friends" because you actually are friends?  Does staying friends stop either of you from moving on?  Is it helpful or harmful to either of you?

My girlfriend of four months has a best friend who doesn't like me and wants to break us up because she doesn't have a boyfriend.  My girlfriend's kind of torn.  What should I do? 
Figure out what you want in terms of intimacy and time together and see if your girlfriend wants more or less what you want.  If you want to keep that relationship and give it more time, trust your girlfriend to do what is right for her.  Don't make her choose.  Say things like, "I trust that you'll figure out what's best.  If you can't see me tonight, I'm going to ... "  Then do that other thing.  Don't judge the best friend's behaviour and motivation.  There are probably things you don't know.

Doesn't everyone get jealous?
Look under your jealousy for a fear.  Face your fear.

I've been looking for a partner, but can't find anyone.  What should I do?
Tell yourself every day, "If the universe can make someone like me, with my qualities and characteristics, then the universe can make someone for me."

I don't want to be controlled by a relationship, but am I missing out?
Find a relationship that seems to offer endless possibilities.  Your relationship should make you feel that more is possible for you, not less.

Hot tub time was over, but two of them wanted to talk further and followed me down to my room asking more questions ("I'm 17 and I just met someone who is 25.  Is that too old?").

.... so that's what teenagers want to know.

Did You Just Tell me to Relax??

Last night, in a social situation, there was a minor difference of opinion.  The very tense woman who disagreed with me told me to relax.  Like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, I held her with my eyes and said "Don't ... ever ... tell me to relax."

Nothing makes me more tense than people telling me to relax.  What do those words really mean?

All communication is a projection of some kind.  When I communicate with you, I am projecting my identity through my thoughts, ideas, and feelings.  Even a statement that seems factual, like "The Romneys have five sons," is also a projection of my attention to the 2012 US election.

However, the worst projections are made when people project their own tension and impatience on others by telling them to "relax" or "be patient."  This is irritating for several reasons:

1. The speaker has become tense and thinks her tension will go away if she issues the relax instruction to everyone else.
2. As soon as the speaker gives that perhaps tenderly meant instruction, she is making a judgement, thus acting superior by implying that the speaker herself is relaxed and patient.
3. These statements draw attention away from the instigating incident and make it about the other person's supposed tension or impatience, thus creating new conflict.

I could go on... but the next time someone tells me to relax, I'll try and smile.  Then I'll scribble down the website to this blog and entreat them to read it.