CanuckInBulgaria's Weblog

those who wait

canuckinbulgaria — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:20:25 +0000

“Good things come to those who wait.”

….

Heard that one? IT is also sometimes written with even wider scope as “ALL good things come to those who wait.”

….

It is commonly attributed to the Bible. I’ve just searched a few biblical sites carefully and it is NOT in there. Therefore no one can accuse me of heresy when, in the words of John Keating, I reply: “… excrement.”

Have you seen Walk The Line, the biography of Johnny Cash? Actually, I’m not particularly fond of Johnny Cash, my main awareness of him is as a character on Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman, which will make die-hard fans cringe. But anyways, this rant is not about Cash, it is about June Carter. In one scene, June is asking the tough questions about how a thing is to be accomplished, what steps will lead to it, what obstacles can they expect and Johnny is trying to placate her….

… he tells her: … “…June… That stuff will just work itself out….” .

She replies: “No, it does NOT work itself out. People work it out FOR you, and you THINK it works itself out.”

I DO like spunk.

So…. go ahead: wait for the good things to happen! Wait for the right moment to appear and strike you like an epiphany…. wait for the right person to save you from your life…. wait for the right moment to quit the job you hate, to sell the house that is killing you, to talk to your kid about sex and drugs. Wait for the perfect job to be offered to you, wait for the school to give your kid That Talk, wait for someone else to say: “you look unhappy, we should do something about that.” But I won’t.

I don’t believe the right moment exists…. YET. I think it can exist, I think it gets called into existence by what I do.

Maybe I am deluding myself: in a universe of infinite possibilities, that cannot be discounted. But I don’t think so. I have a good deal of evidence garnered.

A little waiting may be good, but alot of it will poison you. While we are waiting, other things are moving…. and if the moment chooses you, instead of you choosing it, you may not be very happy with the consequences. “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”… and a moment that you chose yourself, worked for, prepared for, is way better than the perhaps perfect moment that may be waiting in a nebulous and ever-changing future.

Actually, let me paraphrase myself here: “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”… and a circumstance that you chose yourself, worked for, prepared for, is way better than the perhaps perfect circumstance that may be waiting in a nebulous and ever-changing future.

Abe Lincoln said it best: “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”

Duuuuuuuuuuude!!!

The levels of disgruntlement

canuckinbulgaria — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:58:08 +0000

Something which is often quoted and deserving of a wider audience: DJ’s stirring essay on the Levels of Disgruntlement.

Sinking in the Pits of Despair

How far gone are you?

Level One

Symptoms: Employee was recently hired, thinks everything is great. Still believes everything they heard in their interview. Thinks that anyone complaining is just grumpy. Basically just blissed out on employment.

Also known as the “Blissful Ignorance Stage”

Level Two

Symptoms: Begins to realize that everything is NOT perfect, but figures it’s just a “busy time” and it will get better… Starts to listen to what the grumblers are saying.

Also known as the “Troubled Optomist Stage”

Level Three

Symptoms: Realizes that the “busy time” is not going away, but feels that maybe management doesn’t realize how much work there is, and thinks that as soon as they find out, they’ll hire more people… Wonders why obvious problems are not addressed. Begins to talk to the grumblers…

Also known as the “Flickering Candle of Hope Stage”

Level Four

Symptoms: Employee realizes that management doesn’t care as long as the “business goes on”. Realizes that there is no upside to his career choice, crappy benefits, poor conditions, and the money promised in the interview will never come. Begins to feel frustrated, takes out his frustration on others. All hopes of a bright career are buried, uncerimoniously.
This is the most irritating stage to the employee’s fellow workers. No one wants to work with a level four, and they are generally avoided… Becomes a grumbler.

Also known as the “Grumpy Bastard Stage”

Level Five

Symptoms: Employee feels confrontational, embarks on a quest to make things better. This us usually accomplished by joining safety committees and memorizing the phone number of the Ministry of Labour… Employees at this level provide much amusement for those at level six and above…

Also known as the “Don Quixote Stage”

Level Six

Symptoms: Employee feels trapped at the workplace by the economy, but begins to take pleasure in the suffering of others… The employee delights in company misfortune and computer and mechanical failures, even when they themselves are affected.

Also known as the “Sadistic Bastard Stage”

Level Seven

Symptoms: Employee begins to take so much pleasure in the suffering of others, he begins to instigate it. The most dangerous stage. This stage encompasses everything from starting rumors to industrial espionage…

Also known as the “Agent Provocateur Stage”

Level Eight

Symptoms: This expert has not seen this level as yet, but surmises that it would include a high powered rifle, a list, and lots of sirens…

Also known as the “Going Postal Stage”

“Art For Peasants” 101

canuckinbulgaria — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 12:13:26 +0000

“For I look on de corner over dere,
an’ see it ma birch canoe,
I look on de wall w’ere ma rifle hang
along wit’ de good snowshoe,
An ‘ev’ ry t’ing else on de worl’ I got,
safe on dis place near me.
An’ here you are too, ma brave old dog,
wit’ your nose up agen ma knee.
An’ here we be stay t’roo de summer day,
w’en ev’ry ting’s warm an’ bright
On winter too w’en de stormy win’
blow lak she blow to-night
Let dem stay on de city, on great beeg house,
dem feller dat’s be riche man
For we’re happy an’ satisfy here, mon chien,
on our own leetle small cabane.”

William Henry Drummond was an Irish-born Canadian who developed his own, unique style of poetry. It was dubbed “habitant poetry”. A “habitant” is basically a peasant French-Canadian, most often from Québec. Drummond’s poems bring to life the accent of a French-Canadian communicating in “broken English”; the themes of his poems are representative of the “habitant” lifestyle.

His poetry, like Kriegoff‘s paintings, is often dismissed by “artistic experts”. I am not including their work here to please the so-called “artistic experts”, but to please other peasants, like me.

fruit flies like a banana

canuckinbulgaria — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:10:05 +0000

I was watching the third episode of ER today, and one of the patients was singing a song called Time Flies. I checked out the lyrics… I don’t really get them… but this line stuck with me.

“… While we are dreaming, time flies…”

I’m sitting in my apartment in Bulgaria, wearing the sweater that a lovely lady knitted for me, FOR ME, from yarn that she spun herself, by hand, from her own goats (.. I’ve MILKED a goat… but not THE goat who was “involved” in making my sweater…. ), and I’m thinking that I absolutely agree with that phrase.

Time IS flying while we sit and dream of doing something.

The “dreaming” is important: without it, we would not know the destination, the target.

The “sitting” is important: without it, we would not devise an itinerary, a plan.

But both those are just parts of the whole. also important is the part that comes after the dreaming and the sitting, the part that is doing it, living it. It is by far the scariest part of the whole affair, the hardest, the costliest, but I would say also the most rewarding. And often, rewarding in ways we did not anticipate.

We are grown-ups and no one will tell us that to do. We are free to wile away our time, focusing on the dreaming…. it is safe, and it costs nothing but time, although it might lead to a feeling of dissatisfaction with our lives and our selves, knowing we dream of being more than we are, but we are not doing anything about it. We are also free to focus on the sitting, which has its own danger in that it allows us to feel like we are doing something useful, we are making lists, devising plans, we are pondering options.

The question I am asking myself is whether we have a responsibility to act. Are these dreams, in fact, the hand of Fate pointing out something more that we could be, something more we are intended to be – but since we have free will, the path is only shown to us, we are not led down it.

….

I’m sitting in my apartment in Bulgaria, wearing the sweater that a lovely lady knitted for me, FOR ME.

Appreciation

canuckinbulgaria — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:48:04 +0000

- What’s this?

- It is a project I did a long time ago in school.

- What is it?

- All right, I will tell you but… First you must take some wine. Can you describe it, the taste?

- It’s a nice red wine.

- I think you can do better.

- A bold wine with a hint of sophistication and lacking in pretension.

- …

- Actually, I was just talking about myself. I..I don’t know….

- No, you are not wrong. Wine is like people. The vine takes all the influences in life all around it. It absorbs them and it gets its personality. Here. Smell.

- Rosemary.

- …?

- Some kind of mushroom?

- Very good. Currant, cassis, mint, lavender… They’re all in the ground here, and in the air. Now… taste the wine again. Close your eyes….

- The currant. I can taste that right away and… from the brown bottle… lavender? … Incredible…

soothsayer

canuckinbulgaria — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:10:45 +0000

Did you like fairy tales when you were a kid? I did…. I read them over and over, and then I discovered Greek mythology. The very endlessness of Greek mythology let me indulge two passions at once: the passion for interesting stories about how people live, and the passion for research.. the latter lead me to write an exhaustive lexicon of Greek mythical heroes, cross-referenced to equivalent Roman myths, not bad for a ten-year-old, I found the manuscript last year.

As a kid, fairy tales and myths were just stories accepted at face value. They were entertaining. As a grown-up, I discovered with great interest that there can be more to them. I had an acquaintance who had made a career of examining such things as the female stereotypes in Disney’s The Little Mermaid; and I had a colleague who was interested in the origin of children tales and songs. For example, he told me that Ring Around the Rosie is a song about the plague.

Cassandra was a Greek mythological figure whose name and story has survived. She was given the gift of prophecy… well, not just any kind of prophecy, I mean ACCURATE prophecy, the kind that actually comes true. And later, she was cursed by one of the gods; gifted to always foretell the future accurately, she was doomed to never be believed or heeded.

And I find myself wondering…. how she handled it. How did she handle the frustration of knowing she was right alongside her inability to convince anyone that she was right.

I was wondering whether she experienced the classic stages of grief.

Maybe she started out telling herself that this cannot be happening to her, it is not possible that people won’t believe her when she keeps accurately predicting things! Maybe she is not telling the right people, maybe she needs to enhance her communication skills, maybe she should take a course on how to Win Friends And Influence People!

And then, maybe she got angry, asking herself what the hell is the matter with everyone? Why can’t they see the evidence before them?!?!? Maybe she backed some people to the wall, and told them they HAD to listen to her, because SHE KNOWS.

“It’s not working … look, I’m sorry I yelled, but it’s so important that you listen! Please, listen to me, just TRUST me this one time and if it turns out I am wrong, I will never ask you to trust me again. Deal?

No use…. no use…. there’s nothing I can do to fix this. There must be something wrong with me. When people look at me, they must see someone whose judgement cannot be trusted. Or maybe I just cannot come across as competent, trustworthy, whatever…. doesn’t matter. It’s no use.

Whatever happens, happens. I tried. “

I wonder. I wonder whether she found the energy and the will to keep croaking out her unwelcome prophecies until her dying breath; either stuck in the anger phase, or stuck in the bargaining phase. I wonder whether she made it into the acceptance phase with bitterness, watching her prophecies come true and then regaling everyone with “I told you so’s”.

I wonder whether she developed the kind of acceptance that lets you let go of the need to control the process; that lets you find peace in whatever end may come.

I am no poet

canuckinbulgaria — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:51:34 +0000

Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.

“To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech. Then ask two questions: One, how artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered, and two, how important is that objective. Question one rates the poem’s perfection, question two rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining a poem’s greatest becomes a relatively simple matter.

If the poem’s score for perfection is plotted along the horizontal of a graph, and its importance is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness.

A sonnet by Byron may score high on the vertical, but only average on the horizontal. A Shakespearean sonnet, on the other hand, would score high both horizontally and vertically, yielding a massive total area, thereby revealing the poem to be truly great. As you proceed through the poetry in this book, practice this rating method. As your ability to evaluate poems in this matter grows, so will – so will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry.”

I agree with Mr Keating that this is “excrement”. But at the same time, I have no better explanation to offer. Most of us try to express an emotion and it sounds trite, or whiny, or exaggerated… simply, it does not have the ring of truth, the symmetry of truth meeting beauty. And, sorry, but to me, accuracy is also a part of it. (scientist….)

I’ve quoted poems here before, poems classically considered “good”. Here’s one that is in a greyer area, but it still appeals to me. But I am not sure whether I like it because it is “good poetry” by any meter, or whether it rings true to me, in its very absurdity.

I first read it in High School. We had been asked to present ten poems in a unique and original format…. so I made up a story about the telegraph operator on the Titanic choosing to steady his nerves, in his final hours, by telegraphing poetry from memory. And I handed in the ten poems, all painstakingly translated into Morse code. Even in my teenage years, a time for high-flown pseudo-artistry!, my concept of “unique and original” was more technical than artistic.

The author is a Canadian poet named Irving Layton. He was born in Romania.

FOR AVIVA, BECAUSE I LOVE HER

I saw a spider eating a huge bee.

First he ate my limbs;
and then he removed my head, feasting
on the quivering jellies of my eyes
and on what passes among bees for ears.

And though dead
I could feel, with each morsel he had
that he enjoyed his repast
and I was glad.

Afterwards he sliced me down the middle
exposing my insides
to the burning mid-day heat;
and slowly the voluptuous spider
feasted on my jeweled organs
abolishing them one by one
till I was all gone, all swallowed up
except my love of you:

My radiant wings – these, ah, these
he did not touch
but left glinting in the sun.

What we think, we become

canuckinbulgaria — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:07:06 +0000

I’ve seen this quote (or its moral equivalent) attributed to many people, from Buddha to Earl Nightingale:

“You become what you think about”

One of my earlier posts contained a quote from Malibu Stacy, the talking doll featured in one episode of The Simpsons. You know, the kind of doll that has a string in her back, and when you pull the string, she speaks. Well, such things probably don’t exist anymore – but they were the height of cool when I was a kid. In fact, objectively, it is still pretty darned cool! This was a toy that TALKED WITHOUT BATTERIES. But that is a tangent.

I’ve read that the Malibu Stacy doll was a parody of a real Barbie doll, Teen Talk Barbie, which was first released by Mattel in July 1992. (yes: 1992!!!!!! Not 1962!!!) The doll became (in)famous because one of her pre-programmed phrases was :” Math class is tough!”. Malibu Stacy’s phrases, collected here for your edification, are in a similar vein:

“I wish they taught shopping in school!”
“Let’s bake some cookies for the boys!”
“Let’s buy makeup so the boys will like us.”
“Now let’s forget our troubles with a big bowl of strawberry ice cream!”
“Don’t ask me, I’m just a girl.”
“My name is Stacy, but you can call me (wolf whistle).”
“Math is hard, let’s go shopping!”
“Thinking too much gives you wrinkles.”

The Teen Talk Barbie dolls which said the phrase “Math class is tough” were recalled by Mattel as a result of a public outcry – I assume that some people felt that girls would “become” what they were hearing this doll say, day after day. I “get it”, but … I would respectfully suggest that getting rid of the doll only protects the child from the doll. And I can imagine a much greater role for the doll, a role with wider scope and durability, in helping a kid learn to think critically about anything she is told, be it: “You cannot do that: you’re a GIRL!!!”, or be it: “… the Pill is the right choice …. you deserve a KitKat …. we must invade Iraq…”. So I would respectfully argue that Malibu Stacy is.. not a good “role-model”, but a good “Influence” for little girls, precisely because of the phrases she is saying, which can be used to spark the critical thinking that tears down walls.

There are more subtle examples than Malibu Stacy, examples more immediately relevant. Hip-hop music is notoriously misogynistic … the emo lifestyle promotes the kind of despairing moodiness commonly associated with suicide… and kids who don’t drink, smoke or do drugs are still dubbed “nerdy”. So…. what do we do about it? Forbid the music and the lifestyle, and tell the kid: “if they laugh at you, then they are not nice friends?” Lame. Or is this an opportunity to call attention to the concept of choice, of thinking critically and choosing the aspects that you are willing “to become”, and seeing the rest for what they are: things you do not choose to make part of yourself.

Pausch

canuckinbulgaria — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:51:51 +0000

***********************************************************

“Brick walls are there to test how badly you want something.

Brick walls are there to separate those who really want it from the others.

Brick walls are there … to stop the OTHER people.”

************************

“I’m going to keep having fun, every day I have left – because there’s just no other way to play it.”

Randy Pausch, one month after being told he had 3-6 months of healthy life left.

***********************************************************

“… while we breathe, we hope.”

canuckinbulgaria — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:06:14 +0000

“…tell them how this time, we listened to our hopes, instead of our fears.

How this time, how this time, we decided to stop doubting and to start dreaming.

How this time, in this great country,

… where a girl from the South Side of Chicago can go to college and law school,

and the son of a single mother from Hawaii can go all the way to the White House —

… that we committed ourselves, we committed ourselves to building the world as it should be….”

delivered by Michelle Obama, August 25 2008