Are we living in a black hole? A delightful watch from Neil deGrasse Tyson, exploring the evidence that we might be living inside a black hole. Can we even know that? At some level, it perhaps doesn’t matter, although it makes my head spin and creates that little feeling of amazement that we are here at all. I like that.
Of much more practical concern are the cognitive black holes that we are drifting into. Three readings from this morning that have me reflecting on those. First, from the June issue of Harper’s Karl Ove Knuagsgaard writes about our relationship to technology. Us Generation X folks have our lives split into thirds. The first third, including our formative years, was pretty much digital technology free and the probably our last third will be spent being talked to by inanimate matter: “if I were forced to mention the most distinctive feature of our time, it would be precisely that: everything addresses us.”
These cognitive blackholes created by the digital world that manages us are even countered by the digital world that manages us. Having my heap of papers, notes, links, stories and ideas SEARCHABLE is a major feature of the technology in my life. I have never been able to hold a thought for long, and I’m always chasing that little stimulation brought about by novelty. Adrian Sager writes today about why people of our age and generation appreciate this feature of technology, even as some are finding liberation in deleting their digital memory.
The issue of course is whether it deadens us to the world by stealing our ability to navigate and create. Brian Klaas has written a lovely piece about this and shared the term “an illiterate in the Library of Alexandria” lamenting that “we’re engaged in a rather large, depressingly inept social experiment of downloading endless knowledge while offloading intelligence to machines.”
I don’t want to go down that black hole. But like the one that deGrasse Tyson describes in his video, though, I may already be deep in it and not able to know how deep. There are event horizons like the ones that Knaugsgaard writes about. Remember the first video game you ever played? (yup. Pong, on a Sinclair ZX-80 in 1979 in John Harris’ living room on Muskalls Close, in Chestnut, Herts.) I was 11.
Our back door, created by my friend and fellow islander Burns Jennings who died in February. We asked him to design a door that signifies a crossing into our family home. He was proud of this one.
"Every day is perfect if,
when you wake, you hear birds
in the garden..."
- Ann Margaret Lim, "Birdsong of Shaker Way"
That’s what we call it traditionally on Bowen Island, Juneuary. It is a traditional period of rain and cooler weather that drenches the coast for a while in June, around the summer solstice. Every year, there are a few hot days in May that fool us into believing that the summer has fully arrived and then most years, there is this period.
There is birdsong, but the spring dawn chorus of warblers and grosbeaks and rattling flickers has dulled a little. Instead there are the little questions that the towhees ask, and the resonant guttural calls of ravens going about their business in the tree tops. In the aftermath of rain, there is calm and settled grey that hangs over and before the mountains, sometimes sending wispy tendrils of mist across the ridge lines.
The ground smells amazing. Every flower releases its perfume to the damp air. The mock orange and the chamomile in our garden fills the space with scent. Raspberries demand to be picked, the final blush of spring’s peas swell with the rain. The lettuce is in its glory and the beans seem to grow while you watch.
On our little island a quiet grey weekend day like this one tends to dampen the number of visitors, except for those who are insistent on heading into the woods or up the mountain for a hike. That’s all good. It’s nice to have a bit of quiet in the Cove, and sometimes a cloudy grey day quiets the groups on the trails too. The rain brings reverence.
Yesterday we marked the passing of a well-loved Bowen Islander, Burns Jennings. Burns was a talented athlete, artist, craftsman and coach. He touched everyone around him all the time because he was one of the very few people I know who realized that his soul had been deposited in a time and place that allowed him to live life fully and completely. He feasted on opportunity to generate gratitude so that he could live with generosity. He never waited for a chance to act if it meant that he could create a thing of beauty, be it a piece of furniture, or a community based football club, or a perfect strike on a chinook salmon, or carving powder on bluebird day at Whistler.
His legacy was best captured by the fact that about 400 people showed up in the school gym to watch a slide show of his life and hear stories from close friends and families. And that was followed by a soccer tournament with 80 folks from 12 to 60+, including myself, which was a huge testament to the love of football he instilled in all of us.
Burns’ memorial was just one of a bunch of things happening on the island this weekend. Today, as I walked down to the village to get some supplies for making tortellini, there was an open house at the firehall, and our choir Carmina Bowena gave an impromptu flashmob performance of some of our repertoire. Yesterday a marimba ensemble was playing somewhere, there was a performance of Decho: River Journey by Theatre of Fire, there was a wedding.
Lots of little touches of community this weekend. Just the kind of thing for which Burns would have expressed deep gratitude.
A fantastic comment on what it means to lose access to care for and what life is like right now in the USA for one trans person.
A new album from Australian band ZÖJ, Give Water to Birds. TO my ear they are to Persian classical music what The Gloaming is to Irish traditional music. From this interview, I can relate to this quote.
“For me, the music of nature is not only sound; it is also movement, light, colour, smell, texture, and temperature. The most powerful and inspiring sound in nature for me is its deep silence and stillness.
To this day, the most powerful sound in nature for me is the stillness of snow fall. This silence has been my most favourite sound since I was a child. I’d lay on mountains of snow in northern Tehran, gaze into the sky and let the snow lay on my skin. Everything covered in snow, quiet but alive, like a big orchestra playing the most beautiful song, in pianississimo.”
The aftermath of a goal celebration in the TSS Rovers men’s 2-1 win over the Whitecaps Academy on Wednesday at Swangard Stadium in Burnaby.
I’ve started – for now anyway, read the June 20 note for why this might only be a passing fad! – to post a daily or nearly daily set of notes drawn from my readings and surfing of the day. Call it a “web log” if you will. This is partly a strategy to return to the origins of blogging and it’s also a way to keep my dopamine seeking brain from hanging out on my phone and its library of scrolls, where it’s easy to read things and just post them on social media. I’m really, really trying hard to kick social media.
And so every day this week I’ve posted these notes, but they don’t get pushed out to email subscribers becasue I don’t want to overwhelm you with a daily email from me. Those who read blogs in traditional ways, through feedreader for example, will see these, as will those that just hang out here and check the recent postings. (Are there any of you that do that?)
At any rate, the enteries in these posts are loosely themed every day, with a theme that emerges from my reading. Every week or so, on a Friday, I thought I might send you a little digest of these notes because they contain some really interesting readings and links that you might want to check out for your weekend.
- June 16: Notes
- June 17: Accomdating yearning
- June 18: Starting over
- June 19: Service
- June 20: Desire lines
Enjoy.
It’s probably no surprise to my friends, but last year I was diagnosed with adult ADHD and I have been living and working with that SUPER helpful diagnosis ever since. A couple of weeks ago, CBC Ideas ran a two part series on ADHD and the Myth of Normal. Well worth a listen, especially for the part where neurodivergence is discussed as an evolutionary advantage. I especially appreciate that Edward Hallowell features in this series, as his book (with John Ratey) ADHD 2.0 has been massively helpful to me. I keep it close by as a user manual for my brain.
Speaking of books, I’m currently reading The Beekeeper’s Question by my friend and mentor Christina Baldwin. It is a beautifully written novel, and contains typically Christina turns of phrase and observations. The beekeeper’s actual question is so very Christina that if you know her it will break your face into a wide grin of recognition. The book attacks deeply important questions about our current society with a story set in the 1940s, long enough ago that the patterns are repeating again, and the lines connect then to now.
Chris Bolton’s lovely meditation on desire paths introduces a new term to me: Sneckdown. “Sneckdown” is a relatively new word used to describe the patterns of affordances that cars leave when driving in snow. This has to be one of the most Canadian words you can imagine but all those who live through urban northern winters know what this means.
We do indeed desire better futures, better societies, better ways to work together, right? I keep holding out hope, but this important piece tells us what the constraints are if we want to rebuild and reimagine democracy, let alone build a world where care and support are there to build wellness and prosperity. Is it over? It’s kind of over. What could be next?
To wrap up this week, my first as a 57 year old, I feel seen.