This is the Sea

I'm guessing everyone has at some point in their life looked around themselves and wondered, "How did I get here?" We know David Byrne has, or at least we can assume so based on the 1980 Talking Heads song, Once in a Lifetime.

Sidebar: That song is from 1980? Like, 45-years-ago-1980? Having spent 25 years saying, "The date is twenty-something", now, "1980" sounds more like saying, "1880". Yet, the 1980s are also ever present in my mind, especially with the current wave of conservative governments in the States and Europe. Later in the 80s, as a teen, it was very common to think Mulroney, Reagan and Thatcher were the stuff creepy European folktales were made of. They would seem sweetly naive by today’s conservative standards. Well, maybe not Thatcher (shiver). It is funny to think nostalgically of a time when we wondered if we were running out of tomorrows. These days it’s very common to believe democracy is in its death throes. Some are protesting it, some are trying to ignore it, some are fighting it, but unfortunately, quite a few are profiting from it. Is that how the mind works? Yesterdays are for nostalgia and tomorrows are for hope and fears?

This brings me back to my point (I just knew I’d get there eventually): sometimes you have to look around and wonder “How did I get here?” Sometimes in your life, a change happens and you don’t realize it. Other times a change happens and your world shakes and you know it’s important and even if it took you by surprise it feels inevitable. When Robert Frost wrote The Road Not Taken, was he thinking that his choices made his life, or that we fool ourselves by thinking that our choices make our lives as they turn out to be? Do we even have free will? Does it even matter?

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A Most Useless Rain

When it is boiling hot, you don't really expect steam, until you do. The temperatures in Toronto have been at a steady roast for the last week. My thermometer outside my home office window is in the shade and has been stuck around 33ºC, with humidity at gross percent, the "feels like" numbers are more like 40-42º (around 105ºF). There hadn't been rain in a dog's age, but even a faint possibility was full of promise.

I stepped out onto Bay Street into a haze that had me sweating only seconds after leaving the confines of the atmospherically controlled office tower. I was desperate for a chocolate soft serve (custard cone to Newfoundlanders), which a van parked across the street sold. Side note: how has the cost of a small soft serve cone doubled in four years? Has ice cream pricing started to parallel real estate prices? It had been quietly raining, but the drops seemed to steam off upon touching the radiant asphalt. The streets were wet for perhaps a minute before they simply went dry. It was a bit strange to see wet pavement dry before your eyes, as though the wet was being sucked through the street. In reality, it was floating off, not soaking through. The rain hadn't made a dent in the temperature. If anything, the air felt thicker. In Newfoundland, a warm, but damp day, when it's humid yet foggy, is referred to as "mauzy". I can't say it was something you'd get every year in St. John's. Because everyone seemed to refer to August as the dog days of summer, as a kid, I assumed it had something to do with its closeness, its humidity, like the smell of a warm, wet dog. Humidity always seemed surprising to me in St. John's, as though a place so near the North Atlantic was caught off guard by it. In Toronto, humidity is effectively a default setting. Most of the city feels like a dank basement for weeks at a time. In this current heat wall (a heat wave sounds too pleasant. A heat wall slams you the second you step into it), the rain has no impact on temperature. There is no relief. It's like stepping from a sauna into a hot shower. This combination of heat, humidity and drizzle is the closest I've had to that mauzy feeling half-remembered from summers in my youth.

By the time I had ascended back up the 28 floors to my desk, what was a drizzle had become a squall, with rain streaking sideways and splattering against the windows of the office. Briefly, colours popped back to life. Greens were dark and fresh as produce, while reds shone out and yellows practically glowed. Then the rain stopped. The temperature was unchanged. The humidity had no doubt risen, and the city returned to its sallow grey.

A Lost Landscape

A landscape to explore.

One day I had a terrible headache and back pain. I spent most of the day sleeping with a heating pad across my forehead and ibuprofen in my gut. Finally, by late evening, my headache had subsided and, after another pill, my back was manageable. Now the only problem was that after a day of sleep, I hardly felt the need for it. It’s not uncommon for our cat Nero to bother us at night, either to feed him or just to get our attention. This particular night he was particularly bothersome, as he lurked around the bedroom trying to wake us. I wasn’t asleep, and I felt a kinship then with our nocturnal friend. At some point, Nero sat at the foot of the bed and stared at me. I looked up from my book and thought, “Hey bud, it’s you and me against the night.”

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Seen in June

K2SO reporting for duty.
It looks like I watched a lot more than I did this June but much of this list are shows that were, "already in progress", as they say. It was a busy month, (aren't they all?), but time was found to watch some good stuff.

Andor S02 (+Rogue One)
Disney+
This show has received a lot of well-deserved and positive press, so it doesn't need more from me. I will say that if Star Wars doesn't interest you, don't worry. There's not a lot of laser swords, space religion or whatnot here. This is more like John le Carré wrote a novel set in the Star Wars universe. At times, it's a heist movie, a jail break movie, a WWII French Resistance story, and it often speaks to our own time. I've kvetched a lot about the rise and influence of very right-wing or autocratic governments and politics, but nothing has helped me understand those on the other side as much as this show. Throughout, we see the baddies, who, of course, never see themselves as baddies, worrying that a rebellion would lead to chaos and that only the strong hand of the Empire can bring order. Meanwhile, we see oppressed populations so beaten down by the Empire that they think their only option is to rise up and resist. That is the essential story of Star Wars more broadly. We witness the clumsy indecisiveness of diplomacy versus the strong-willed focus of the Empire's regime. We see mid-level managers in the Empire trying to rise the corporate ladder and the rebels who've given too much and want to be done with the fighting. The through line of it all is the film Rogue One and the original Star Wars film, A New Hope. Knowing those stories helps you see the threads that are loosened or tugged at, but this show is entirely entertaining on its own.

Comics come alive in Daredevil.

Daredevil: Born Again
Disney+
Daredevil is back, but as lawyer Matt Murdoch (Charlie Cox), who hopes to resist his most violent urges to fight against the rise of The Kingpin, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), who has become mayor of New York. Is Fisk a reformed right-wing politico or a crime boss hoping to enrich himself in a new position of power? Why not both? Like Andor, this show also highlights those in power as seeing themselves bringing order to a chaotic world and the heroes who rise against them as conflicted about the ends justifying the means. This is a great and grown-up version of the comic book, but perhaps a little too violent for a wider audience.

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Life in the slow lane

Old To Slow GIF from Old GIFs

I stood from my chair and felt a little pop. Like the sort of small creak you might hear when you stretch your neck or step on a loose floorboard. That was it. My back had gone out yet again. I say "gone out" as though my spine had left my body for dinner, a movie, or maybe a night at the theatre. No, my back was not enjoying light entertainment. My back had stiffened and contracted to the point where I was now shorter. I bore a comical resemblance to Tim Conway's shuffling old man. It may have been funny if it didn't hurt so much. Lightning strikes of pain in my lower back lose their punchline, but never their punch.

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The centre will not hold

William Butler Yeats, in 1932

This might be a long walk but please, walk with me.

Lately, everything’s been a bit much, hasn't it? Just everything. The growing environmental crisis leading to devastating wildfires, floods, landslides and droughts which the oil and gas sector and their minions in government who depend on their economic clout, choose to ignore. The ongoing attacks on Ukraine by Russia. The devastating, disproportionate and disgusting onslaught of Gaza by a west-backed non-democratic Israeli government which we accept because doing something might lead to something worse (though how that could be is beyond me). Continual economic strife caused by an American administration too daft to know what it is doing. That same administration’s quick step into trying to rid the US of all migrants and refugees through autocratic means using questionable arrests and deportations. The same administration is trying to rewrite several decades of advancement of women’s rights and LCBTQ+ acceptance. The same administration’s attempt to ban books and artistic expression which they deem anti-American. Lastly, I suppose, because to give any more examples would be overkill, is the bald-faced corruption of that same administration using their government platform to enrich themselves and their friends (either through cryptocurrency schemes or accepting large gifts from foreign governments). We don’t actually have to look that far. The Ford government in Ontario has made it their policy to dole out money to their friends and patrons who might benefit from any of their unnecessary schemes under the guise of infrastructure. I will also note that none of these governments causing such havoc are lefties. They are hard-right conservatives (from the MAGAites, to Putin, to Netanyahu). They are only growing in number from being elected in Italy, Hungary, and Poland to rising in the polls in Germany and France. Against their namesake, they aren’t conserving anything, especially not norms, which they are dismantling with glee.

It’s hard to put into words or even to know how to react. Then I heard this from Ezra Klein’s podcast:

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