A New Year

and thus passed the first day of my thirtieth year. Not quite at an end, but its last movement playing across the evening. It was a day like so many others but one resonating with the promises of a youth that passed like a whispered memory and a life that seems to still stretch to eternity.

I spent a day in the city of my life, rode streetcars through a day of inconceivably blue skies, spring air and and the sunshine of impossible dreams. With the companion of my heart and my days, I strode into another year of this equally impossible dream with a strength and comfort of purpose I was sure would elude me. We talked of forever and loss and words. Of visions, ideas, change, home. We talked of bodies, of love, of freedom.

Steadied by the wishes of family and friends, my spirit rose to the day. A life at once thirty years done and at the beginning yet. The world I saw a was great world of open doors and open windows, sunlight and moonlight danced and from my hand I blew kisses to those scenes yet to come, those memories yet to be made into impossible dreams. In this place, with these people, with her, I walked into the possibilities.

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The Readings for the Thirtieth Year.

1. Walking Dead Vol. 1 - Robert Kirkman
2. Walking Dead Vol. 2 - Robert Kirkman
3. Walking Dead Vol. 3 - Robert Kirkman
4. Walking Dead Vol. 4 - Robert Kirkman
5. Battle Royale - Koushun Takami
6. The Joke - Milan Kundera
7. Why I Am Not a Muslim - Ibn Warraq
8. Joshua Then and Now - Mordecai Richler
9. The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood
10. The Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood
11. Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
12. 1Q84 - Haruki Murakami
13. A Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin
14. Born To Run - Christopher McDougall
15. Cosmopolis - Don Delillo
16. On God - Jiddu Krishnamurthi
17. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
18. The Reprieve - John Paul Sartre
19. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
20. The Divine Invasion - Philip K. Dick
21. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer - Philip K. Dick

22. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick

The Spirit of Disbelief

Spirituality seems to be such a dirty word for atheists. Seemingly if one is to even remotely consider themselves spiritual they have either a loose (and therefore) and apologist atheistic framework or are dumbing down their belief in order to extend politeness to others and in return have the same courtesy extended to them.  Today I cam across such a notion in the editorial of the most recent Free Inquiry magazine.  The editorial, written by Tom Flynn, argues (as he has before) that when using terms like spirituality is like shooting yourself in the foot as an atheist. He argues that it unnecessarily colours atheists and atheism as weak and insecure in their belief (or lack thereof). Flynn underscores this by using a quote from Carl Sagan (from his book Pale Blue Dot -which was inspired by this picture in):
"A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the new universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge." Viewing and contemplating the whole of life Flynn says "it's appropriate to view this spectacle as Sagan said with awe. I think it's an enormous mistake to view it as Sagan also said with reverence. Reverence to whom? For what? Nobody planned it, nobody designed it; it's not the cosmos bringing forth life so that it can contemplate its own wonders and sing a happy tune."

Well, malarkey I say back. I think that this is too rigid and narrow an interpretation of being a non-believer. It is far too reliant on what we are not and dare I say to fundamentalist an approach. This works for some but it does nothing for me. Perhaps I am a soft atheist then, not totally malleable but open to the idea of possibility but not governed by it. Perhaps it has to do with once having faith in something greater that a small part of it remains. Yet I feel it still, despite my non-belief in religion and God(s). I have felt it after an especially long run, when I have seen someone or something beautiful, on a gorgeous day, throughout a soft snowfall.  When I have been silent, meditating or when words are arranged on a page in just a certain way, when I have held my cat and pet it too sleep in my arms I have felt it deeply. Felt a connection to something more than myself, an energy, some grand binding agent that doesn't just connect human beings but that connects all of life. I have felt it in the woods on a splendid sunny day and on a miserably cold windy day.

I know that most of this is some chemical and wired reaction from my brain and body. Yet that connection between mind and body, can we not call it spiritual if it feels that way, can we not feel the high of that experience on a deep level without sacrificing the integrity of our disbelief? I think we can and I think it is a natural human thing to experience. That is not to say that it is something I believe should or does govern us. Rather it is something, a feeling and experience that enhances us and connects us more personally to the people and earth around us. If this means that my disbelief is questionable and suspect, then I am damned with or without god and so be it. I prefer the humanity of the experience to the cold machine sterility that says wonder is possible spirituality is not.

And as to Flynn's question reverence to what or whom, I answer reverence to life. Reverence to the process that got us here, the process by which we will die. Reverence for the sorrow and for the joy. Reverence that things happened just so that we happened, as human beings and as individual persons able to experience this wondrous thing we call life and reverence for our constant desire to find ways to express our experiences to each other. Reverence for those days gone and those days to come. Reverence above all to today. Does it really matter if nobody designed or planned it, isn't it enough that it happened and for the privilege of being a part of that continued cosmic poetry of happening, is it really such a tragic, repulsive idea to whisper a word of thanks with a slight bow of our heads and frames?

I cannot find it in my spirit to say that it is.

Winter, At Long Last

There has been little snow this winter, little in fact to call a winter this season. There have been moments of snow and pockets of chilling cold but nothing resembling anything I have come to know (and sometimes fear) as winter.  Gone it seems are those days when you froze just stepping outside, when one season would seem like a long series of dark nights and mornings which helped foster cravings for hot chocolates, soups, fires and the warmth of another human body to ease the cold and loneliness that attached itself to the season. Winter it seemed somedays was dead or dying, ironic in that this is a season most often associated with death and dying (my own maternal grandparents died in separate January's which lends the notion a personal gravitas).

The mild season this year has been in some ways a blessing. Running outside has been far more pleasant and manageable, I also no longer have the cursory fall back excuse of too cold, too icy or too snowy to run in my arsenal. Going out for a morning or late evening walk has also not been as seasonly arduous, minimal layering of clothing only required for the exercise. The heating bills have been lower which is economically nice and I haven't had to clean the car often or shovel the driveway in the morning or night more than a few times.

Still, I began to miss winter. Perhaps this has something to do with being someone who is born in the winter, being a February baby. Most of it though is nostalgia. As I've gotten older I've come to appreciate the season of winter on a deeper more personal and spiritual level. The cold give us character, it defines us and our ability to withstand the pressures of climate. Winter is a season of gathering and solitude at once. In the winter we gather with friends, we seek others for their warmth even if only to commiserate together on the lousy bitter weather. The darkness of the season, the bareness of our natural surroundings, the absence of light sparks all work together to spark in us a solitude and inward trained thoughtstream. Those moments of quiet, frozen reflection are crucial in our growth for without those meditations we may never find the courage or will to ask ourselves the toughest of questions that only a cold hard season can muster from our bones.

Most of all though, I missed the snow. The beautiful silence of snow, the blanketing of the Earth under my feet and in front of my eyes with the softness and whiteness of snow. I missed the feel of snow under my feet, the impressions my footprints left, testaments to my wanderings. I missed the muffled quiet that a heavy snow brings, and the sense that when everything is covered in the snow the world seems bigger, grander, prettier than you imagined. If the bitter cold of winter lends itself to sadder aspects of lonely solitude, then the snow I feel lends itself to a more peaceful zen inspired solitude where you individually feel part of a greater bigger confluence of times and spaces. Visually snow makes it seem like everything is gone and covered, nary a body on the sidewalk, but it is in the stillness it brings with it that you feel connected to a wholeness.

Tonight it snowed and for the first time in awhile, it snowed like a memory, like a painting, like an impression. It seemed like something I used to know and when I went for a walk it felt like something I still knew. For old time sake I stuck my tongue out and caught some snowflakes and made long lost love to a season I sometimes feel I am losing. I felt that there was no better way to begin the last week of my twenties then with a Trudeaesque walk in the snow and having gone out and returned, I know again the colour of gorgeous, I know again the feeling of beauty, it has always been for me a snowy night in Toronto.

Digitization

I recently (yesterday) made the decision to rejoin Facebook.  I remember why I quit in the first place: I was compelled to gossip about myself a little too much and there was a reason I didn't keep in touch with many people in the first place. So I quit.

And now I'm back.

I've quietly and loudly railed against Facebook often. It is with hesitation and wariness that I rejoined but the main reason is simple enough. People. Facebook is good at what it does which is primarily link people and connections. Communicating with people, getting their news and sharing news, ideas, thoughts, stories with each other is an essential part of the human experience.  Somehow e-mail has become far too formal a tool to use for this purpose and cumbersome. If I want to say a few things to a lot of people or share an article with many, mass e-mailing seems clunky and silly for that purpose. E-mail is far more suited to family or business connection and little with loose, frivolous bursts of communication.  Same with phone conversations and I'm hardly good at speaking on the phone and easily distracted. Texting is too short to share moderate things and reserved far more for one on one conversations.

So Facebook it is. I came to realize that I miss getting news. Not necessarily gossip but news. Like pictures of friends' babies, seeing how people's days went. Things that if we were still in high school together I would know or care to know or bother to find out. I've realized I care more about my friends then I've let on or made noticeable. I've come to realize that sometimes I want to talk/type/communicate with others, share my thoughts and exchange information.

Also without any shame at all I've come to realize that I kind of like having an audience that I can share my thoughts and ideas with, who I can interact with and a place where I can sustain and grow friendships that otherwise are relegated to personal thoughts and the odd party where I get to catch up with people I haven't seen in far too long and don't get to speak with as often as I'd wish. At the very least, for this who care or show interest, Facebook provides me with a place where I can be reached, I am visible and accessible. Where I can be reached.

Most importantly whether or not Facebook continues or is replaced, a digital presence is warranted in order to keep in touch. Love it, Like it, grudgingly bear it or flat out hate it, this is the world today. We are digitally motivated and moved. Our digital lives are extensions of our personas, personalities and persons. We an fight against it, we can live off the grid (and it is more than possible and even laudable in instances) but in order to maintain that connection with others in order to share and be shared being digital is just a procedural aspect of being a human being in this age.

So yes, with a bit of gritted teeth, a wry smile and full heart I'm back on Facebook. To see you all again acquaint myself with your lives again, to give you a glimpse of my own life, well it is well worth it to be back "online." More than these simple words have said. So I leave you with this:

Hello again.

Four Legs Good Two Legs Better

I have talked and written about my love of, passion for and obsession with running many times. For me running falls into that category of things we just can't stop gushing about and want everyone to experience. The evolution of the primate to current form of Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a combination of many many factors through millennia of evolution.  One of those evolutionary aspects is the primary use of our hind, our legs/glutes/trunk as stabilizers and primary method of motion. We may not be as fast as some animals or as powerful but overall the ability to use our legs the way we do has been key to our survival.

Human Beings are creatures that are born to run. The act of running has been key to our survival.  Once as babies we learn to walk we waste no time in trying to run, waddling forth faster and faster until we are bounding across stairs, hallways, houses and shopping malls. Being bipedal is a beautiful function of our species, one we often take for granted and one with the ubiquitousness of office, television and couch culture has seemingly eroded our passion and ability to use our own motion to propel ourselves.

But start running, go for daily walks of 20 minutes or more and things come back to you. It is hard at first, there is no escaping the fact. But once you begin to catch a rhythm and begin practicing and running, it is so very pretty as to how you body begins to respond. You start hearing your thoughts better, you learn more about breathing by virtue of having no choice but to learn how to breathe properly. You start relying on yourself more and more, each small or grand achievement in the course of your running life boosts your confidence. You learn how to deal with bad days better by shedding stress by running or by learning that even a bad run, one that was horrible, slow, plodding and just sucked was still better than not having the run at all. Running teaches you that through difficulty our selves have the ability to overcome and exceed. Your body starts to release endorphins and dopamine naturally through the simple chemical processes of sweat and exertion. Running makes us better, it asks us to persevere when conditions are tough, it challenges us daily to better. Running is sport where you are always competing against your greatest enemy, yourself. We are own own worst critics and doomsayers, running forces us to confront this. We know not every run will be perfect but we run anyways and we quiet that nagging voice down another notch. You are always running against yourself, physically and spiritually. Physically it is about time, pace, distance, speed. Tangible and measurable benchmarks that when we achieve them feel just insanely good. Spiritually it is a race against everything that little voice tells you that you are. It is against the desire to stop and give up, to quit entirely. It is against those first flows of thoughts that come in which tell you all that is wrong in the world with all around you. But by running you start a new conversation, you push those ideas aside with each stride, each breath, each bead of hard earned sweat.

My favourite aspects of running though are these.  Outdoor running. Nothing like it, in the pouring rain (yes very strange), July humidity, -20 windchill with ice on the ground and 4:30pm dark skies. The chance to be outside, to brave any element and run alongside mother nature is poetry itself. When you run outside you see your neighbourhood and community differently, you learn new streets and shortcuts, you smell the food of evenings, the days ends or beginnings on the faces of people you pass. You feel the city in your skin and take it with you each step you hit the ground with.

Related to that is the inherent madness in being outside. Running is as I've mentioned an obsession, an addiction. Ask my wife. If I don't get in a run, the energy I don't burn off comes out in an unproductive form of craziness or laziness, not good for anyone! Even running in the dead of a winter evening, the chill stinging the tips of my fingers through two layers of gloves is seen as crazy, tellement fou. But it is a special type of crazy, a grinning joyful foolishness I wouldn't trade. Running keeps me in touch with my madness, my crazy side, it outlets that energy positively. Let's be honest, we are all crazy. The pressures of life and the pressures of our selves upon our own selves can be nasty at times. We all have craziness in us. We all feel the pull of insanity at times. Being able to harness, use and go dancing with your madness however is something we are never really told to do but is something we should all aspire to. There is nothing wrong with being a little off, life itself is often a little off. Absurdity is the main ingredient of life and being able to come to terms with, to run towards it and embrace it is wondrous.

And that is why I love running most of all. Not just because it makes me better in almost all aspects of my life, but because it allows me to be more of myself than anything else. It allows me to be crazy and being crazy is just so much fun.

In defence of the Toronto Public Libraries

Some of my favourite and earliest memories are of being a young kid and going to the library (such a nerd I know).  Most prominent in those memories are going the the TPL branch at Main and Gerrard, bounding my little kid feet up the stairs and plunking down in front of the shelf that had the garfield books and reading them then saving a couple to borrow and take home and read those.

I loved the library and especially that library to pieces. The trees that surrounded the the entrance and the red lines that outlined the doors and windows, the brick structure of the building, how it looked like a giant cottage house full of magic and once I feel in love with books and reading how it really was a giant cottage house of full of magic.

As I grew up there were other libraries that became important to me, the Dawes Road branch near my old apartment at Victoria Park in Crescent Town, it was the closest big library to us and much of my middle childhood borrowing was done there. The Walter Stewart branch near the East York Civic Centre which was near my middle school, Leaside Library near my high school and my girlfriend and Albert Campbell in Scarborough, the branch near the house my family and I lived in during my teens to mid twenties. All these branches were part of the same idea, the TPL system but all were distinct in themselves, in the items they carried, the patrons, staff and programs offered. I often felt (and still feel) the TPL system was a microcosm for Toronto itself; a dynamic co-dependent and accessible system that celebrated individual cultural differences as strengths of the overall mutual community we shared.

When the first of our 99 branches closed last year I was shocked and angry. I understand the desire in some parts for (what seems like) massive fiscal restraint but I just couldn't understand this. I still don't. Having 99 branches I though was a symbol of how progressive this city was. It was a sign of how important we as Torontonians both old and new valued literacy, the power of words, community spaces and meeting grounds, how we valued and defined our neighbourhoods.  Now as we approach a time where we as citizens are being forced to content with service cuts to our libraries I am just confused. Utterly confused. We somehow can find extra money for policing. We somehow can find extra money for wards with councillors willing to horse trade with the Mayor but somehow can't find a way to save and even expand our robust library system?

I then ask myself, is this the kind of city we ever imagined living in? Is this what we think of when we think of places to live and raise families - a focus on policing and cuts to public services, places where libraries are deemed elitist and culturally unimportant? Do we imagine ourselves living in a place where the fabric of our communities and neighbourhoods is defined by what we lose rather than protecting what we have?

Libraries are escapes and shelters. You can browse for books and read and write yes. You can also access the internet, do school projects or other research. You can look of jobs, take advantage of classes offered. You can take your kids to reading programs, meet your neighbours. They are places where new Canadians and Torontonians can access vital services that can help them find their footing in a new society and even flourish.  Libraries are quite simply are the hubs of neighbourhoods and communities, they are a central focus and tether, a universal point where privilege and class don't matter, everyone is a patron. Libraries are places where we are equals, where we are all searching bound together by words and language English and beyond. To take that from us speaks of the kind of society we seem to be being pushed towards, where these common grounds are not viable and not honoured. It is a sad and often distressing commentary on how this city is being made to change. As Torontonians and citizens of a city, we should be outraged far more than we have shown. As human beings all striving for a mutually beneficial society where we can rely on each other, grow from each other and seek each other for joy and comfort we should be ashamed we have let it get this far.

I will leave with this last note. My wife and I just recently bought a house. There are often main criteria people look for when searching for a house, neighbourhood, schools etc. One of the criteria for us was it must be within walking distance to a library for if we were to be blessed with children one day we wanted to give them the joy and gift of a library, to share the same magic we felt when we first got our red and white TPL cards, when we first borrowed books.

When we bought our home this past autumn, it was a ten minute walk from the Walter Stewart Branch.

A good library is a place, a palace where the lofty spirits of all nations and generations meet. 
— Samuel NIGER 

The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries. 
— Cosmos 
Carl SAGAN

Bibliophilia 2012!

January
1. The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
2. Spadework - Timothy Findley
3. The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe
4. CBC Massey Lectures 2011: Winter - Adam Gopnick
5. The Crucible - Arthur Miller

February
1. When You Hear Hoofbeats Think of a Zebra - Shems Friedlander
2. The Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone By - Robert Kirkman (GN)
3. The Walking Dead Volume 2: Miles Behind Us - Robert Kirkman (GN)
4. Battle Royale - Koushun Takami
5. The Joke - Milan Kundera
6. A Song of Fire and Ice Book 1: Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin

March
1. Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
2. The Tao Te Ching - Lau Tzu (version transcribed by Gia Fu Feng, photographs by Jane English)
3. Cosmopolis - Don Delillo
4. Walking Dead Volume 3: Safety Behind Bars - Robert Kirkman (GN)
5. Walking Dead Volume 4: The Heart's Desire - Robert Kirkman (GN)
6. On God - Jiddu Krishnamurthi
7. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
8. Why I Am Not a Muslim - Ibn Warraq
9. A Song of Fire and Ice Vol.2: A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin

April
1. Born to Run - A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen - Christopher McDougall
2. We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
3. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
4. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
5. The Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood
6. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner


May
1. Joshua Then and Now - Mordecai Richler
2. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
3. The Divine Invasion - Philip K. Dick
4. Thado Bardo Thol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) - Robert Thurman (English Translation)
5. The Reprieve- John Paul Sartre


June
1. A Song of Fire and Ice Book 3: A Storm of Swords - George R.R. Martin
2. The Midwifery Option - Miranda Hawkins  and Sarah Knox
3. IQ84 - Haruki Murakami

July
1. The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood
2. What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell
3. When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro
4. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
5. Green Grass, Running Water - Thomas King

August
1. The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
2. Les Aurores Montréales -  Monique Proulx
3. The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett

September
1. Rainbow Six - Tom Clancy
2. Chopin's Funeral - Benita Eisler
3. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
4. The Essential Yoga Sutra: Ancient Wisdom For Your Yoga - Geshe Michael Roche and Lama Christie McNally
5. Making History - Stephen Fry

October
1. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
2. The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise - Julia Stuart
3.  The 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene

November
1. Timequake - Kurt Vonnegut
2. The Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) - Alexander Dumas  (English Translation)
3. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - Steven Pinker

December

1. The Brothers Kamarazov* - Fyodor Dostoevsky