Faceless

I want to meet Juan Valdez and ask him why my coffee was crap this morning.

We used to know who made our stuff.

I was reading a book called “Glass, Paper, Beans” by Leah Hagar Cohen. I've never read her stuff before, yet the book compelled me to pick it up one day while browsing at a used book store. Sometimes shit just calls your name, ya know? The subject matter caught my attention. The premise of the book was the stories of the people behind what we use every day. In this case, the author is sitting in a coffee shop reading the daily paper. Thus the title and ultimate history lesson about glass mugs, the newsprint industry and coffee production.

We really have no idea regarding the stories behind our stuff.

For the record, Juan Valdez does not exist. He and his trusty mule bandying about some Columbian mountainside are figments of an advertising wizard's fertile imagination.

There is a push on to buy local stuff. I see it every day in store windows and internet posts and advertisements. But what does this mean? If I buy a banana from a local shopkeeper, do I know the story behind the production and processing of that banana? The last time I checked, we don't grow bananas in Canada which means it came from elsewhere. Presumably, I might know the shopkeeper. Beyond that it's pretty much a crap shoot.

Someone once suggested to me I buy a suit from a local producer. Thus, I would know who made the article. In truth, I don't know who made the article. I know who cut the fabric and sewed it together but I don't know the person who produced the cloth and thread and buttons and zipper nor do I know the person who assembled the machine which stitched it all up. The only person I really knew was the person stitching the cloth together.

Even then, would I know they were the one to stitch it together?

Much of what we buy originates elsewhere, constructed by faceless people (or equally faceless machines). In our global economy, the food container could be from China, the metal to make the container from Europe, the edible contents from Brazil and the labels from Canada. How do I really know where anything truly comes from?

All Canadian Beef!

Um... really? Is the farmer here to verify that?

The world economy has become faceless and thus, emotionless. There was a time when we knew the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. They all lived down on Drury Lane with the Gingerbread Man. I knew whose farm my steak came from. I knew the growers of corn and beans and carrots. I knew the weavers of cloth and the builders of chairs. Even now I can go to a farmer's market and meet the grower. Yet, I would bet beyond a reasonable doubt they didn't manufacture the bag or the labels or the cute little berry basket.

It isn't possible to know exactly where things come from any longer. I do get the premise behind buying local and one must also keep in mind the faceless box store corporations employ several people on my block. What do we do with them when the store closes?

This in no way means I shun local stores. In fact, I use them as much as possible. At the same time, I try to be realistic about the origins of certain items.

There are many stories out there. I think it's far too easy to not notice the young man behind the counter paying his way through university or the single mom at the big box store who is worried about what to feed her kids that night. Those are the real stories behind our stuff. Those are the real people.

I think it's important to recognize the mug which contains my morning coffee came from a small company in a town in New Jersey which employs an elderly man who has been pushing the same buttons for 35 years, is close to retirement, who frets over how he will pay his bills come next July when they push him out the door, who only wants to be home with his adored wife of 42 years and to tend to his gardens in the back yard with his grandchildren.

That's the guy I want to know.

Real people behind my stuff.

Common Sense with Bears

During my recent trip to the hinterlands of Northern Ontario, I met a bear.

Before I go further regarding the bruin, the “Hinterlands” of Northern Ontario are much more civilized than our southern cousins give credit and there are quite a few people in that stick-ridden, backward boondocks who know they are far better off than those occupying the smoggy, concrete jungles of the south. Yet, folks in the south of the province are convinced those of us from the north are flea-bitten, bearskin wearing, slow learning, axe wielding, red-plaid Neanderthals without the sense to move to the warmer climes. In fairness, there are fleas in the north, just not as many because the natural predators who eat them aren't smothered in tarmac, concrete, and lawn fertilizer.

But, that's another story.

As it often seems, I come back from Away to Not Away with a slightly different orientation than before I was Away. Yeah... that sounds weird to me too.

Back to the bear.

While camping in Pancake Bay Provincial Park, my partner and I decided going for a morning hike was a delightful idea. Why not, right? We're both hikers (outdoors people in general, really) and we were in prime country for just such an activity. As we're heading into the trail (not more than three minutes), we see a bear on the opposite side of a stream. As sentient homo-sapiens are wont, we automatically apply human principals to non-human, non-biped, fur, scale or feather bearing life forms and surmise the previously mentioned bear will remain on the other side of the stream.

The bear, with only bear-conceived ideals, had other thoughts.

He crossed the stream at a pace that far exceeded our previous erroneous conceptualization of bear speed... toward the path we were negotiating. Needless to say (or perhaps I should say), common sense prevailed and we backed out of the woods fairly quickly. My last glance back at the bear was a glimpse of him peeking curiously over a knoll at two abruptly less intrepid bipeds retreating to the road.

The human constructed road seemed safer, as if a bear, which lives in a park crisscrossed with roads, had never conceived of the notion to walk on the frigging road.

Man, we are a dumb species.

Later in the morning, I needed to make a morning visit to the latrine.

Yours truly discovered that bears, indeed, are mobile. After finishing my morning duties, I heard a sound outside the public convenience. Caution hasn't always been a strong suit of mine so I opened the door. There, not ten feet away, was my quadruped bush buddy. I had a sudden urge to repeat perform my morning duties. The bear wasn't looking at me nor did he seem to pay much attention. Still, I decided under the circumstances a vewy, vewy quiet retreat back behind the door might be the better part of valour.

We are an odd lot, are we not?

Our species, under its current condition, seems to have a fantastical misconception about almost everything. Firstly, determining what is a true threat and what isn't seems to be a matter of individual judgement. There are those reading this who will believe they could have walked up to the bear. There are others who might think my retreat was not linked to valour at all. There are still others who would have ignored the bear and continued blithely on with their day. Who's to say what the outcome may have been under different circumstances. The bear was young; probably less than two yet already away from its mother.

The whole incident sort of made me consider a lot of recent events and happenings.

Was Prime Minister Trudeau really photo-bombing a wedding with his shirt off at a beach or perhaps a wedding party at a beach was a complete surprise?

Is Donald Trump really presidential material?

Is Hillary Clinton really presidential material?

Are there really radio waves being heard from space?

Was the temperature really hotter this summer or was El Nino just being a bit of a prat?

Is it really necessary for a pipeline to pass through native land?

Does Nestle really have more right to water than the rest of us?

We can debate opposite sides of issues until we are blue in the face. Oftener than not, most events have so many sides to them we haven't the foggiest what the truth is. To some, Donald Trump is the perfect antidote to a troubled America. To others, Hillary is the perfect continuation of President Obama's legacy.

Some think aliens are trying to contact us and have purchased copious amounts of tinfoil hat materials.

Perhaps one should use common sense when deciding whether something is real or fiction. Not the common sense manufactured by industry, politics and Hollywood star-gazers. No. The common sense I am referring to is the kind that is; a) based on common knowledge and, b) represents the common good.

If the actions taken by a group are not for the common good of all, then it isn't common sense. Insert any decision choosing corporations, government or large institution over the needs of people. If actions taken do not serve the good of all people, then they are not common sense, regardless of how it's spun.

Common sense told me to leave the bear alone. Wild things do not require human contact and tend to survive much better without us interfering. Common sense also tells me to stop watching the news because of its over-hyped manipulation of the truth. Common sense tells me some starlet seen knotting laces at Bergdorf Goodman's isn't news. Common sense tells me we are living in a fantasy world of someone's creation and expecting to hear the truth from their lips when it's in their best interest to keep the fantasy going.

Common sense tells me the interests of large institutions and their profit margin are less important than the humans they impact.

Common sense tells me people are crazy.

Life is Fair

I did it to myself. Oh, I won't ever say the reaction by the other person was ever my doing, because it wasn't. Their reaction is always their choice. However, my choice of putting myself in a particular situation is always my doing and I have to own up to it. Otherwise, I become blamey and give my energy away to someone who likely doesn't deserve it in that moment.

And that is what taking responsibility (being accountable) for my own life looks like.

I started writing this piece about two months ago and, for the life of me, I can't recall what the situation was I had placed myself in to generate the thought. That probably says something about the life-altering importance of what it was. Whatever the choice then, it's odd how circumstance seems to rotate around some ethereal Maypole until it feels as if your past life (situation) is flashing in front of your eyes... again.

Haven't I been here before?

I was out doing my thing the other day. You know... getting a thing-a-ma-hooey for the whats-it-for so I can do the hokey pokey and shake it all about. While I'm wandering the aisles of some warehouse-ish, florescent box like an Irish Setter scurrying to and fro with my nose nosing and my ears earing and looking for whatever it is I'm looking for, I overhear a couple having a rather heated, though pointedly hushed, discussion in the next aisle. It wasn't anything I haven't heard before. ~sniff~ Or smelled, for that matter. It's pretty easy to smell bullshit these days. I grew up hearing and smelling it.

She was trying to reason with him and it was getting nowhere. He was blaming her for forcing him to go shopping and putting him in a bad mood.

He said... she said... they said... then no-one said.

At some level, if he had taken responsibility for his actions (that is... he chose to be there in the first place and he chose to be in a bad mood), the foray into the big box store with huge packages of stuff you can't use in a lifetime may have gone much simpler and much, much more joyously.

Far too often we look at life as unfair when it isn't life which has put us in a particular situation in the first place.

Our choices put us there.

If I look at every situation I'm in as a choice I have made, then it follows I can make another choice to correct course or to backtrack. At no point am I compelled to stick with a decision to the bitter end simply because I, someone else or societal pressure believes I should “suck it up and stick it out”. I always retain the choice to opt out. I'm always allowed to say "Oops".

Life happens because we choose to be where we are.

Life isn't “doing it to us”. Life is supporting our decisions based on the choices we make.

Life is fair.

If you choose to live in misery when it was your choice to be there in the first place, awesome! More power to you! I'm just not sticking around to see the show.

Amen... or something along those lines.

Resolve not to Resolve

New Year's is not one of those things I go out of my way to celebrate. Certainly not in any currently traditional manner.

When I was young, I was told Christmas was for kids and New Year's Eve was for adults. Naturally, as I grew older and became what is legally an adult, I had a yen to join in those festivities and pretty much make a blithering idiot of myself. As it turned, most of those around me didn't notice the Idiot of Ed since they were, a) passed out, b) incapable of actually focusing on what I was doing to become an idiot, c) in the midst of becoming idiots themselves or, d) partaking in “b” and “c” until “a” occurred in an incoherent, steaming heap on a shag rug or tiled bathroom floor.

At the time, I felt I was behaving adulty... until the next day when I couldn't see well enough through my self imposed mental haze to find a coffee cup.

Naturally, as New Years Day came and went in some form of catatonic haze of headache, barely edible food, hair of the dog spiked orange juice and college bowl football digested through blurred vision, most resolutions I had made mere hours before were set aside for “tomorrow”. Tomorrow never comes, as the idiom so aptly applies to incomprehensible, drunken promises slurred through blurred synapses. 

Later in life, the throngs of semi-coherent gyrating New Year's Eve revellers became less and less enticing and, as I glance in the rear-view, far less important to brag about. Resolutions soon became less important as well. Those things I would promise myself on New Year's Eve while partaking in some form of alcohol imbued mental promiscuity seldom came to any lasting fruition.

I, like many others, would resolve to change those things I deemed less than adequate about my behaviour, my character or my lifestyle. It wasn't until my late thirties when I realised there was nothing wrong with any of those things so long as my actions weren't harming anyone else. If they were harming me, it was a choice... hopefully made consciously.

That in no way implies I didn't wish to become better or more than I was. It simply means that “better” is a bit of an ambiguous target from the outset.

So, my resolutions became more and more about a state of mind. That is, how did I wish to feel rather than what I wanted or wanted to change. The truth is, if there were something which I wished to change that was important enough to me, (drinking, smoking, eating healthy food, driving slower, using less, recycling more, exercise, etc), I would have done it already. A fictitious line in the sand has little meaning or motivation.

If I say I want to change something or set a goal for something else, I will only achieve it when it becomes important enough to me to motivate change.

It has become far more important to me to focus on achieving a feeling rather than focusing on a thing or change in behaviour.

Of course, there are times when I miss knowing how many pieces of gum were stuck to the under side of the tables at my favourite watering hole. That, though, is a story for another day.

Shields Up

With influences from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...

I meet new humans all of the time. It's an occupational hazard, if you will, considering my tendency for invasion of their territory while trundling along doing my J.O.B. My job, while posing as a city employee, is to update the page in the Galactic Visitors Guide on the third planet from a nondescript sun at the far reaches of the Milky Way.

Generally speaking, conversations with humans aren't all that bad... unless they're carrying a nine iron, a sodden dishrag or a scowl. My ability with human humour tends to get me out of most binds. Afterwards, I simply move on whistling the theme to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest all the while glancing over my shoulder alert for a goalie mask wearing, machete wielding, cover-all clad, shadowy figures named Jason (a rather bizarre series of self destructive videos designed to awaken something long hidden in the human psyche).

How many of those movies have been made, anyway?

I do understand people coming out of their domestic hidy-holes to see what I'm up to. Despite wearing blinding orange with a yellow “shoot here” X across my chest, I am, after all, skulking around the nether regions of their abodes. That most persons of ill repute would unlikely be wearing brain-numbing fluorescent while casing a stranger's home seems of little consequence. That the city installers have a habit of placing water remotes in areas where, despite intent, it appears as if I'm peeking in windows or checking out goodies in backyards. Part of my job, therefore, is being bold.

Another part of the job is being aware of hazards. Things like snow covered holes, snarling dogs, slippery concrete, malcontent cats, threatening goldfish, menageries of child playthings, garden skewering implements and overly aggressive neighbourhood watches. Keeping my guard up while traipsing around someone's property looking for a water-thingy on the outside of a house specifically placed in the most inconvenient position possible by overwhelmingly vapid city installers is a full time occupation in itself. Under the stairs behind the rose bush where the pet wolf has it's daily unload? Really!?

I'm far too far from home for this crap.

It occurs to me, though, there are certain hazards which occur in human's daily lives which carry as much risk of damage to their malleable neurons as there might be to their physical being. There is a strikingly odd behaviour among ape descendants to behave somewhat... ape-ish, though the leaving of the trees occurred, in the local vernacular, many moons ago. Humans have an innate ability to “raise shields” whenever they encounter a situation in which they are unfamiliar. In instances where humans are familiar with the degree of ape-ish-ness, shields are usually raised before the encounter... often several days before, thus shutting down their ability to function on a high level for days at a time. And thus the need for emotional awakening at films.

Generally speaking, “shields up” occurs just about any time a human is in a state of wakened consciousness, though that generally accepted “conscious” state is subject to debate in and of itself.

Interestingly, the shields don't offer physical protection. More often than not, this state can be described as a mental state... an involuntary, systematic shutdown of high level functioning areas of the brain most prone to emotional attack while creating a semi-comatose state which the bipedal, carbon based unit labels as “normal”. “Normal” itself, as with consciousness, is a subjective state from human to human and therefore has no real intrinsic value to the whole. Nor is “normal” a continuous state among individuals. Rather, it seems to be a moving target based on some irrational emotional state combined with internal chemical reaction liberally mixed with external chemical reactions and whether or not bananas or peaches are available at the local grocery.

All this to say humans have no true state of normal except the obvious that individual normal is not normal at all.

The whole of society, as it were, tends to be afflicted with a general malaise as individual carbon based units migrate from place to place doing whatever it is they deem important. In most instances, this important activity includes some form of low level communication, shuffling papers from one side of a desk to another, drinking caffeinated beverages and staring fascinated at a cat cleaning itself. The “shields up” state is a constant, particularly when watching a cat clean itself, lest the human be caught staring by said cat and the human receiving a blank stare from the feline telepathically communicating the thought, “Don't you wish you could do the same”.

Humans are in a constant state of self protection, all the while yearning for connection. So ingrained is this yen for connection that they will often find ways of attracting attention to themselves without regard to personal safety, physically or emotionally, through activities which require them to wear protective clothing and shut off their conscious brain. Since the subconscious seems to run the show in the human mind, it is this subconscious which determines whether now is a good time for attention getting or not, often through means unbecoming of their ancestral apes.

This, then, is the great human dichotomy which permeates through their inept, directionless, self-defeating social structure; the unconscious need to be connected while having emotional shields up thus preventing said connection in the first place and searching out activities which give them those emotional boosts much to the detriment of their physical being.

Yeah... I don't get it either.

In summary, humans are most likely not a threat to anything accept themselves, their environment and any hapless traveller wandering into their midst trying to communicate on virtually any level of rational thought. Beyond that, Earth is a decent place to watch the goings on from a distance. While somewhat affable, becoming engaged in the activities of humans comes with its own perils, inclusive of any attempts to define pretty much anything about them, and should be considered mentally hazardous.

Any attempt to understand the reasoning behind human activity will most likely result in paralysis and a yearning to dine on dirt.

I wonder if I should remove the yellow X. You know... just as a protective measure.