Stockholm Syndrome

The 29-Day Blogging Challenge: X is for Xylopolist

In my initial post announcing this 29-Day Blogging Challenge, I solicited topic suggestions from readers as I didn’t happen to know a xylopolist. Truth is, that isn’t wholly correct, so I’m here to clarify my earlier comments…

While not a traditional xylopolist, per se, out local grocery and hardware store do sell firewood in the winter months. When Jill first took this apartment she mentioned that it has a fireplace, and that there are services one can sign up to that deliver wood to your door on a regular schedule. Never having had a wood-burning fireplace, I was excited at the possibility of lighting one up on those cold, dark winter nights for which Stockholm is known.

We haven’t signed up for a wood delivery service, however; late last year a number of apartment buildings in our neighbourhood were going through renovations, and thus nightly had bags of old timber, cut to 1-foot to 2-foot sections, neatly stacked outside their front doors. So there I was, almost on a nightly basis, trolling through the back streets of Östermalm picking up ‘burnables’, discarded building material that would serve as fuel for the fire. Better that than have it end up taking space in some landfill…

Of course, there were several times when there was no flammable detritus was to be found, and with no wood delivery service at our beck and call, it seemed like we were out of luck. However, we soon discovered that Ica, Sabey’s, and the local hardware store all sold bags of birchwood timber. So whenever we wanted a fire, and had no pilfered means of creating one, I would trudge off to the local shop to pick up a bag of wood; pre-dried, organized by size (kindling on top, the larger, longer-burning logs at the bottom), perfectly prepped and ready for the match.

There’s nothing really astounding about this discovery, considering most apartments in Stockholm have some sort of fireplace for self-heating, but having come from Canada, where this is a rarity, and being an unabashed pyromaniac, this was pure heaven. Many nights we fell asleep to the cracking fire in the next room, the warm glow wafting in like a cherubic ghost, blissfully aware of what we had been missing back home.

Previous posts: Introducing the 29-Day Blogging Challenge; A is for Anonymity; B is for Busses; C is for Canada; D is for Dogs;E is for Expatriate; F is for Failure;G is for Google; H is for Hedgehog; I is for Indian food; J is for Jill, obviously; K is for Kurt Cobain; L is for Listerine; M is for Mac&Cheez; N is for Night; O if for Olfactory Dysfunction; P is for Photography; Q if for Quest For Fire; R is for Religion; S is for Stockholm; T is for The Local; U is for Urban Living; V is for Verisimilitude; W is for Wikipedia

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The 29-Day Blogging Challenge: W is for Wikipedia

Back in the day, whilst preparing school reports, I had to haul myself down to the public library, check out huge, unwieldy volumes of various encyclopedias, and comb through them for the necessary, pertinent info. These days, however, students and the randomly-curious have one of the greatest tools to be spawned by the interwebs: Wikipedia.

I’m on the site almost daily, looking up work-related information (PCR and Stromma, etc.) or just random things that pop into my head (e.g. Phi Delta Theta or eggs or Kurt Cobain). It’s an invaluable resource, but has come under fire by many critics as it is editable by anyone, prone to ‘hacks’ and misinformation, and represents ‘information by consensus’ rather than true fact. Even Wikipedia itself cautions that its information is not generally accepted as a citable source in academic works without additional corroboration. But for those of us looking to find out the history of Catherine The Great, or phallic saints, or the bio (and awesome pics) of Kari Byron from Myth Busters, Wikipedia is the go-to source of any and all miscellaneous information.

Interestingly, but perhaps logically, Wikipedia has an entry about itself on Wikipedia. I’ll let the site itself explain further:

Wikipedia ( /ˌwɪkɪˈpiːdi.ə/ or /ˌwɪkiˈpiːdi.ə/ WIK-i-PEE-dee-ə) is a free,^[4] web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is a portmanteau from wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning “quick”) and encyclopedia (from ancient Greek meaning “the circle of arts and sciences”). Wikipedia’s 15 million articles (3.2 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site.^[5] It was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger^[6] and is currently the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet.^[2][7][8][9]

Critics of Wikipedia accuse it of systemic bias and inconsistencies (including undue weight given to popular culture),^[10] and allege that it favors consensus over credentials in its editorial process.^[11] Its reliability and accuracy are also targeted.^[12] Other criticisms center on its susceptibility to vandalism and the addition of spurious or unverified information,^[13] though scholarly work suggests that vandalism is generally short-lived,^[14][15] and an investigation in Nature found that the material they compared came close to the level of accuracy of Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of “serious errors”.^[16]

Wikipedia’s departure from the expert-driven style of the encyclopedia building mode and the large presence of unacademic content have been noted several times. When Time magazine recognized You as its Person of the Year for 2006, acknowledging the accelerating success of online collaboration and interaction by millions of users around the world, it cited Wikipedia as one of several examples of Web 2.0 services, along with YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook.^[17] Some noted the importance of Wikipedia not only as an encyclopedic reference but also as a frequently updated news resource because of how quickly articles about recent events appear.^[18][19]

Previous posts: Introducing the 29-Day Blogging Challenge; A is for Anonymity; B is for Busses; C is for Canada; D is for Dogs;E is for Expatriate; F is for Failure;G is for Google; H is for Hedgehog; I is for Indian food; J is for Jill, obviously; K is for Kurt Cobain; L is for Listerine; M is for Mac&Cheez; N is for Night; O if for Olfactory Dysfunction; P is for Photography; Q if for Quest For Fire; R is for Religion; S is for Stockholm; T is for The Local; U is for Urban Living; V is for Verisimilitude

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The 29-Day Blogging Challenge: V is for Verisimilitude

Of all the words in the English language, this one – verisimilitude – is perhaps my favourite. It just rolls off the tongue, musically and poetically, and contains all sorts of meaning. Classically defined as referring to truth, or the likelihood of truth, verisimilitude can be used to refer to a person and his or her preponderance to probability.

Interestingly, there is no concise consensus of how many words comprise the English language, perhaps because it is such an adaptable, evolving vocabulary. Some dictionaries list around a half-million; others list more than double that, accounting for slang and technical terminology that seeps into every day usage (e.g. using ‘Google’ as a verb). Some estimates say that around 25,000 new words are added to that list each year.

It’s no wonder that English is considered one of the hardest languages to learn, having numerous rules but multiple exceptions to each one. In many ways I consider myself lucky to have been brought up and educated in English, with no need to learn it as a second language. But despite being a native speaker, English continues to confuse and confound me, especially with some of the finer points of grammatical conduct and proper usage of ‘who’ and ‘whom’.

But truthfully, or perhaps verisimilitudinally (and yes I just made that one up), the language has some beautifully crafted words, most of which rarely get used in daily conversation. One of my friends loves the fact that both Jill and I use the term ‘copious’ (meaning ‘a lot,’ as in “Perhaps my wife had copious amounts of wine with dinner last night”) regularly, and considers this an indication of our Canadianism. I’m not sure that diverse vocabulary usage is evidence of one’s nationality, but perhaps it is. Regardless, or irregardless despite the term’s reluctant acceptance in official English lexicon, verisimilitude remains one of my favourite words in the lingua franca that is my mother tongue.

Previous posts: Introducing the 29-Day Blogging Challenge; A is for Anonymity; B is for Busses; C is for Canada; D is for Dogs;E is for Expatriate; F is for Failure;G is for Google; H is for Hedgehog; I is for Indian food; J is for Jill, obviously; K is for Kurt Cobain; L is for Listerine; M is for Mac&Cheez; N is for Night; O if for Olfactory Dysfunction; P is for Photography; Q if for Quest For Fire; R is for Religion; S is for Stockholm; T is for The Local; U is for Urban Living

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The 29-Day Blogging Challenge: U if for Urban Living

A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again. – Margaret Mead

As people get older, get married, have kids, and ‘settle down’ into life’s routine they tend to shun the city centres, the urban jungle, and move out to the suburbs in search of rolling lawns and picket fences  child-friendly parks and graffiti-free storefronts. They leave behind the constant din of the city’s voice, the cacophony of horns and people and dogs and bus bells and wailing sirens and car alarms and the myriad of other ‘noise’ that naturally rises up from an area so densely packed with people. They seek the quiet, the isolated, the artificially constructed landscapes decorated with pre-fab homes and soccer fields and good schools for their kids. They escape the chaos of the urban jungle and take shelter in the order and parceled structure of suburbia.

While not officially a diagnosable fear, unlike coulrophobia and aichmophobia, I am profoundly terrified of ‘the suburbs’. Back in Canada the spread of these neatly designed, allotted, manufactured ‘communities’ can be seen around every major city centre, steadily replacing the natural landscape with “Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky, Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same.” They become a rolling sea of sameness, uniformity, conformity, lacking distinction and character and anything architecturally intriguing. I find these neighbourhoods vapid, uninteresting, soul-leeching, and wholly without any redeeming qualities.

I do of course understand the attraction to living in such an area, especially with young kids and a family in tow. There’s a sense of safety and security, even familiarity, in having these single family dwellings neatly lined up on well manicured streets and cul-de-sacs, a garden and landscaping to tend on warm Saturday afternoons, a friendly wave from a neighbor whilst on your morning walk with the family pooch. I get it; I just don’t want it.

I’m a city boy at heart; always have been, despite having grown up in one of these suburban clone farms. On days off from school I would bus into Toronto and wander the streets, the alleys, the distinct little neighbourhoods, amazed at the symphony of noise around me, the varied and fantastic architecture, the variety of shops and cafes and bodegas and record stores and pubs and one-off restaurants and corner markets and newspaper stands and the swarm of eclectic, unique, fascinating people in every direction. I loved the organized chaos – nothing looked the same, but it all fit together in a magnificently crafted canvas of urban art. Even the graffiti – some crude, basic, and rough, some expertly executed murals that could be proudly displayed in any one of a hundred local galleries – was the city’s effort at accessorizing, like a diamond necklace on a pretty girl.

Admittedly I haven’t spent much time in Stockholm’s ‘suburbs’ so I really don’t know how they compare to the Canadian version of hell (in my humble and perhaps overly harsh opinion). Jill and I live in Östermalm, with just about everything we need easily accessed within a five-minute walk of our front door. With Karlaplan subway station just down the road, and bus stops across the street, every corner of Stockholm is but a short wander, a quick ride, a brief foray into the steady pulse of the city. It is a jungle – albeit an older, more established, less gritty one than I’m used to – but it brims with the same signs of life, with its constant stream of people and cell phone chatter and dog walking and amazing old buildings and bus traffic and honking taxis and sidewalk cafes street vendors and music wafting down from apartments overhead… I think Ezra Pound had it mostly right when he said, “And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there… Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.” Stockholm, of course, was already well on its way to creating such a stunning labyrinthine urban environment when New York was just a patch of grass and a then-unpolluted river. New York is awesome, but Stockholm is my new favourite playground… for now.

Previous posts: Introducing the 29-Day Blogging Challenge; A is for Anonymity; B is for Busses; C is for Canada; D is for Dogs;E is for Expatriate; F is for Failure;G is for Google; H is for Hedgehog; I is for Indian food; J is for Jill, obviously; K is for Kurt Cobain; L is for Listerine; M is for Mac&Cheez; N is for Night; O if for Olfactory Dysfunction; P is for Photography; Q if for Quest For Fire; R is for Religion; S is for Stockholm; T is for The Local

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The 29-Day Blogging Challenge: T is for The Local

This may seem like pandering flattery to the wise and benevolent folks at The Local who made this blog possible, but I assure you it’s not. This site was my first real exposure to Sweden, and has made my time here that much easier.

When Jill first accepted a job here I was still living in Dubai, but planned to move here once she was settled in. Not really knowing much about Sweden, or Stockholm specifically, I browsed around a few sites and landed on The Local. I was able to read the latest news, event listings, debates, weather reports, just about everything going on in the country at the time. It gave me a sense of the culture, the social environment, the attitudes of the people. In a way, it made moving here easier because I knew what to expect.

When I moved to Dubai, on the other hand, I had no such prior knowledge. I packed my bags and jetted off to the Middle East without knowing really anything about where I would end up. I intentionally didn’t do much research because I wanted to arrive with no expectations, no preconceived notions; I wanted to step off the plane and experience Dubai first-hand, day to day, and just take it as it comes. For months there were daily learning experiences, which served to prolong the novelty and continuously provide little moments of discovery.

Moving to Sweden, however, was a different story. For one thing, Jill was already living here and so was a great source of information, like where to buy phone credits and which bus routes to take and kitschy little neighbourhoods and currency conversion and how to order a coffee in Swedish. It made the transition and integration into Stockholm life much easier, like having my own personal tour guide. But outside of the procedural details, I had already been reading The Local for a few months and had developed a distinct sense of the Swedish mindset. In many ways I find the Swedish and Canadian cultures very similar, so it wasn’t a difficult adaptation to my new home.

Once I was living here I continued to read The Local on a daily basis. I started browsing through the user forums, and got to know some of the other readers on a personal level. Being mostly expats themselves, there were a great source of information and advice on getting by in Stockholm, as they had been in the same boat themselves. I even got to meet many of them at one of The Local’s reader events, finally putting faces to names and sharing stories about moving and living here.

Last year The Local set up a blogging function, just around the time I was leaving Canada and moving back here. When I was in Dubai I ran my own blog, mostly as a way of keeping people up to date on life over there, and wanted to do something similar with my time in Stockholm. Conveniently, The Local provided a perfect outlet for my ramblings, and fitting that it’s hosted on the very site that was my first foray into understanding Swedish life. So thanks to them for that.

(As a complete aside, I must say this 29-Day Blogging Challenge was a better idea than the reality. I’m getting what I call ‘blogger’s fatigue’ – a lack of enthusiasm for these daily posts. But I press on, determined not to be outdone, and will complete the task I set out for myself what seems like eons ago. But once this textual marathon is done, I’m taking a much deserved break.)

Previous posts: Introducing the 29-Day Blogging Challenge; A is for Anonymity; B is for Busses; C is for Canada; D is for Dogs;E is for Expatriate; F is for Failure;G is for Google; H is for Hedgehog; I is for Indian food; J is for Jill, obviously; K is for Kurt Cobain; L is for Listerine; M is for Mac&Cheez; N is for Night; O if for Olfactory Dysfunction; P is for Photography; Q if for Quest For Fire; R is for Religion; S is for Stockholm

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The 29-Day Blogging Challenge: S is for Stockholm

One of the more exciting aspects of the expat life is moving into a new city, new country, new language, new culture, new everything. It’s an energizing challenge to re-learn everything in an effort to live effortlessly – mastering the language and cultural peculiarities, figuring out the streets and neighbourhoods and transportation routes, understanding societal expectations and codes of conduct, wrangling with governmental bureaucracy and guidelines… For some, it can be a daunting task, and thus they shy away from it. A friend of mine did a 4-month educational exchange in Norway some years back, and hated it. He hated not knowing which streets to take, where a particular store was located, how much the bus cost, how to order a coffee or a pack of smokes, or even the general etiquette rules for queuing at a grocery store. He felt more comfortable in the familiar and shunned anything that pulled him outside his comfort zone.

While these and the thousand other aspects to expat living can be intimidating, that’s what I like most about living in a new city. Perhaps it’s the adrenaline rush to my ADHD-addled brain that finds excitement and thrill in stepping out of the known into the unknown, to wander foreign streets for the first time and get horribly lost, but not at all concerned about finding my way back home. My first night in Amsterdam years back was like that – I went out on my own, no map, no previous experience with navigating the serpentine streets and alleyways, and wandered aimlessly through the damp night without a care in the world. Of course I made my way back to the hotel eventually, after miles of wrong turns and dead ends and “oooh! Let’s see what’s down this heretofore unseen passage!”… Similarly, the first several months of living in Stockholm have provided many opportunities for the same sort of aimless meandering, discovery-by-happenstance, the thrill of rounding a corner and having no idea where I’ve ended up, but eager to press on and see more.

I’ve written before about the beauty of Stockholm; I still have moments of stunned realization that I do, in fact, live here. Having only been exposed to the city through tales and movies and random pictures, I find myself often staring at the city, its architecture, its urban art, its juxtaposition of buildings and parkland and asphalt and cobblestone and forests and waterways and Beemers and bikes and people and dogs and malls and boutiques and think, “Holy shit… I live here.” This place is not a temporary stop on my vacation itinerary, it is fast becoming home.

Of course expat living often comes with an expiration date; at some point you accept a new job in a new city, a new country, you pack your bags, say final good-byes, and jet off for a new set of experiences. We have no idea what that date is for us – maybe a year or two down the road, maybe more. Our jobs are secure, and we’re both feeling ‘at home’ in this city quite rapidly. (And Sweden obviously wants me to stay – in what must be a record turn-around, I applied for and received my personnummer – basically a Swedish social security number – in 2 days. I have friends that have been struggling with the immigration board’s bureaucracy for over a year, with little success.) Whatever the remainder of our time here, Jill and I continue to discover little treasures of this city – be it a quaint neighbourhood or a jazz bar or a waterfront café or a stunning bit of architecture – and will be genuinely sad when the time comes to say goodbye. But with every goodbye comes a new challenge, a new city to explore, new rules and expectations and a myriad of unknowns that will undoubtedly surprise, delight, and frustrate us all over again. Such is the live we live, and we love it.

Previous posts: Introducing the 29-Day Blogging Challenge; A is for Anonymity; B is for Busses; C is for Canada; D is for Dogs;E is for Expatriate; F is for Failure;G is for Google; H is for Hedgehog; I is for Indian food; J is for Jill, obviously; K is for Kurt Cobain; L is for Listerine; M is for Mac&Cheez; N is for Night; O if for Olfactory Dysfunction; P is for Photography; Q if for Quest For Fire; R is for Religion

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The 29-day Blogging Challenge: S is for SWEEEET!

For the 19th installment of this 29-Day Blogging Challenge I planned on writing extensively about my new stomping ground, our new home, the city that continues to amaze and surprise me: Stockholm. However, today was a frakkin’ great day – awesome review at work, more responsibilities, extended employment guarantees, and we’re 8-days away from a loooong weekend in Amsterdam. There’s just too much going on in my mind right now to pen something moderately coherent and interesting (as if that’s ever stopped me before) but for now, I’m signing off, kicking my feet up, and basking in the glow of a SWEEEET day. An entry on Stockholm will be coming tomorrow…

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The 29-Day Blogging Challenge: R is for Religion

I am not religious. I grew up in a church, but from a very young age started questioning what I was being told; and, more specifically, that I was being told just to believe what I was being told. There was little or no importance placed on scholarly investigation or dissection, no encouragement of analysis and truth seeking; it was written, and therefore it was truth. The stories had some no-brainer morals behind the narrative – be a good person, treat others well, take care of your neighbours, etc. – but I regarded these fanciful tales as little more than padding around otherwise logical recommendations for human conduct. I didn’t need a particular book or some old guy in a suit telling me these things – they made sense, as though pre-programmed in the hardwiring of my brain. It was the rest of the fables, the mythology, the concept of divine creation and control, that I just couldn’t buy.

I had friends in grade school that were Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran, and a handful of other religious affiliations. And they were being taught the same basic morals, albeit with different illustrative stories wrapped around these lessons. My first question, the one that stated me on a path to questioning everything, was simple: If I was being taught one thing out of a particular book, and they were being taught other things out of other books, and we were all told our version was right because it was written in our respective books, which was correct? No one could give me a definitive answer – they just told me to ‘have faith’, as though blind obedience and a closed mind to alternative explanations and accounts was all it took to enter heaven. Not surprisingly, I called ‘bullshit’ early on, and while still a regular attendee at weekly services, would sit and critique everything I heard, everything I was told, searching for some element of ‘truth’ – not as I was told, but as I felt. Some things stuck – like lessons in basic human morality and conduct towards my fellow man – but the mythology and fanciful fabrications held no sway in my thinking.

I’ve studied religion all my life, with an element of fascination and historical critique at the development and growth of various belief systems. I realized fairly quickly that stripping out the stories, the places, the people, the mythology, left most religions saying basically the same things. They were guidelines for right conduct, affirmations of what was considered good in the world. In christian terms, most religions can be broken down to the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. That’s the basic plot to each one, and everything else is just context and character development. And in many cases, the stories and main characters aren’t all that different – for example, Jesus is a notable, revered figure in Christianity (obviously), but also in Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism. There are many theories, in fact, that he traveled throughout India (perhaps during his 18-year hiatus in the bible?) and learned morality and ethics from Buddhist, Hindu, and other local belief systems. He is one of the highest prophets in Islam, and accounts of his life and dealings are nearly identical in both the bible and the Qur’an. It is somewhat surprising, and saddening, that with so many similarities between religions, both literal and figurative, that there is such deep division and animosity among their respective followers. Johnathan Swift wrote, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” Unfortunately, this is all too true.

History is riddled with the destructive power of religion. More people have died due to religious conflict that for any other reason. Entire empires have been overthrown, decimated, eradicated, and tortured in the name of some particular god. No religion is faultless, although some have been far more active in their crusade for world domination than others. Even today, conflicts rage around the world in the name of religion. Georgia Harkness, one of the first female theologians, famously wrote that “The tendency to turn human judgments into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world.” It has been said that religion is the worst thing to happen to humanity, and in many ways, I fully agree.

I don’t have a problem with religion per se. I can understand its attraction, and I fully respect the sense of purpose and fulfillment it gives the devout followers. I admire people who devote their lives to a particular belief system, who feel its life-affirming power every day, who live by a prescribed set of principles and traditions and tenets – not because they were told to, but because it is who they are, it is what they feel, it is truth to them. What I do have a problem with, however, is when those same people discount the possibility that another person can live a just-as-moral life while believing a different collection of stories and mythology; when there can be no other truth than their own, and anyone who says otherwise is a blasphemous lout who must be converted or destroyed; when these people take their religion which (in my opinion) is a personal affirmation of purpose, and make it a public banner under which to march forward, swords blazing, in the name of their supposedly benevolent god. Examples of religious colonialism are rife throughout history, and still go on to this day. People die every minute because they have the audacity to believe in – or even just be born into – a different house of worship. Religion can be the most dangerous force in the world, despite its main intentions otherwise. As Jon Stewart says, religion gives people hope in a world torn apart by religion.

George Carlin, a brilliant comic and one of my favourite humourist thinkers, is no stranger to controversial opinion. He was very politically minded, and had a critical eye towards society, humanity, government, and of course, religion. Brought up in Catholic school, he had an acerbic view of organized religion and its potential for ill on the world. One of his lesser-known but best routines looks at the Ten Commandments, and he in no uncertain terms calls ‘bullshit’ on the lot. Methodically, logically, and humourously he breaks them down to just a couple of universally acceptable guidelines, easier to follow and without all the ’spooky’ language from the original version. At the end of the clip he sums up his arguments beautifully: “Two is all you need; Moses could have carried them down the hill in his fucking pocket. And if they had a list like that I wouldn’t mind those folks in Alabama putting it up on the courthouse wall – as long as they included one additional commandment: Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.” If that last line were included in every religious text throughout history, the world would be a much better – and perhaps less religiously fanatical – place.

Previous posts: Introducing the 29-Day Blogging Challenge; A is for Anonymity; B is for Busses; C is for Canada; D is for Dogs;E is for Expatriate; F is for Failure;G is for Google; H is for Hedgehog; I is for Indian food; J is for Jill, obviously; K is for Kurt Cobain; L is for Listerine; M is for Mac&Cheez; N is for Night; O if for Olfactory Dysfunction; P is for Photography; Q if for Quest For Fire

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The 29-Day Blogging Challenge: Q is for Quest For Fire

If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Most people have considered this question at least once. Common answers are the ability to read minds, to fly, to be invisible (at will, I’d assume), teleportation, and a raft of other comic book and Heroes-inspired skills. I always wanted to be universally fluent – that is, have the ability to speak any language, any time, anywhere. Or similarly, I’d like to be able to master any skill when needed – e.g. be able to pick up a guitar and wail like Angus Young, or sing like Pavarotti, or skate like Tony Hawk, or do some wicked Kung Fu Fighting like Bruce Lee; maybe cook like Jamie Oliver, dance like Gene Kelly (the baddest dancer ever, bar none), dunk like Michael Jordan, unicycle like <insert name of famous unicyclist here> or twirl my pen in my fingers like that guy that sat in front of my in economics class. Anyway, the ability to speak any language or summon any skill at will would be fun, and would open up a whole world of possibilities in terms of travel, employment, reality shows… But the one ability I would trade or all others is time travel.

Having the ability to slip effortlessly through time, back to another era, is something I’ve always dreamed of. Imagine having the opportunity to witness first-hand the building of the Great Wall or the pyramids at Giza or Aztec temples; watching epic battles by the likes of Alexander and Wallace and Napoleon; sitting in a village pub, hundreds of years ago, before the steam engine and electricity and refrigeration and iPods, and experiencing the human condition in raw form, devoid of technological advancements and encroachments, when transportation was powered by either beast or wind, fire the main source of light and life, and a person’s whole world extended but a few miles in every direction. It would be quite a contrast to today, when within hours one can be on the other side of the world and still have real-time communication with people back home, where dinner is microwavable and hermetically sealed and perfectly portioned, where the internet and satellite TV and radio and newspapers lay the world at your fingertips, neatly, orderly, in searchable, indexable, referenceable.

But for all of the historically significant events, there is one period I would most love to visit; and more specifically, one person I would love to meet. As with most people I have a list of my favourite movies – The Godfather, Shawshank Redemption, Clockwork Orange, even The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. But at the top of the list is a film that went relatively unnoticed, unacknowledged, unsung in the award ceremonies; but for me, it’s the most brilliant movie of them all, in part because it allows me – sadly without the use of superpowers – to experience a period of time long since past but right at the top of my list of temporal vacation destinations.

Quest For Fire, released in 1981,c tells the story of a Neanderthal tribe some 80,000 years ago that, after an attack by rival homo erectus assholes, lose their source of fire. These days, that wouldn’t be much of a big deal – strike a match, flick a lighter, even strike some flint, and voila – heart-warming, life-giving, food-cooking fire. Those days, however, early man had to steal fire from nature, and tend it lovingly to keep it going. Without a source of fire, and no way of popping down to the local corner shop for a Bic lighter, three members of the tribe get sent out on a, well, quest for fire. Spoiler alert – all ends well, one of the lads finds love, everyone’s happy and fed, Paleolithic fun for the whole family.

Most fascinating about this movie is that no modern language is used. Anthony Burgess – ironically of Clockwork Orange fame – invented fictitious languages based on early-human physiology and social development. Most of the communication is situationally understandable, a logical ‘fill in the blanks’ as to the specifics of these prehistoric conversations. As such, you take this film to the backwaters of any country and people would understand it; perhaps it is the most universally accessible film out there. Some tribes use basic grunts, others utilize a more structured, evolved language; but each is easily understood, as though they were speaking some inherently-coded language that predates our own but is still hardwired in our collective psyche.

There is one scene that I could watch over and over again – and have, in the course of 25+ viewings of the film. If I were able to time travel, it represents one event that I would love to see. At one point in the movie a member of a more advanced homo sapien tribe shows the film’s ‘hero’ character how to make fire. This is mind-blowing, life-altering, game-changing information – he’s been trudging around the barren wastelands and dangerous swamps looking for a natural source of fire, and suddenly he is presented with a way of taking control, domesticating, mastering the greatest mystery and source of life known at the time. He watches in sheer amazement, disbelief, confusion, elation, the whole spectrum of emotion, as he is shown how to make fire. No longer is he a slave to its whims, forced to protect and nurture and tend his tribe’s source of warmth, light, life itself. The quest, it seems, was not merely for fire, but for the knowledge and ability to create and control it.

I’ve been asked who I would most love to meet, living or dead. Of course certain people top the list, but if I could only meet one historical figure, I would choose that first guy – or gal – to create fire. Say what you will about electricity or the internal combustion engine or the silicone chip or sliced bread – there is no greater leap in humanity’s intellectual evolution and mastery of his natural environment than the intentional creation of fire. As someone who has created fire himself, and danced maniacally at the overwhelming sense of atavistic accomplishment, I can only image sitting in some cave, about 100,000 years ago, before complex language and stone tools, when most were still trudging around grunting like our ape cousins and wrapped in stinky animal pets, and watching that first time that early man created smoke, then a spark, then a smoldering ember, and finally, with care and attention and I’m sure no small amount of praying to whatever god concept they had at the time, poof! Fire.

So keep your ability to fly, or read people’s minds, or spoon-bending mental tomfoolery; as fun as they would be to have, I’d definitely choose time travel as my superpower. There are so many historical events and periods of human achievement that I would love to see, to experience, to just spend a day blending in, observing, living that life and moving on. But the one event, the one experience, that I would most like to witness is that first time man created fire. Alas, Quest For Fire is the closest I’ll come to that damp cave floor, but it is a worthy substitute for the real thing.

And plus, just to be an asshole, I’d probably show up a day before the ‘1st fire’ guy made his epic discovery, and whip out the Zippo to the amazement and adulation of all around. I would be their god, they would fear me, and scamper away to do my nefarious bidding lest I light their pelts a-flame. Perhaps it’s better I don’t have superpowers…

Previous posts: Introducing the 29-Day Blogging Challenge; A is for Anonymity; B is for Busses; C is for Canada; D is for Dogs;E is for Expatriate; F is for Failure;G is for Google; H is for Hedgehog; I is for Indian food; J is for Jill, obviously; K is for Kurt Cobain; L is for Listerine; M is for Mac&Cheez; N is for Night; O if for Olfactory Dysfunction; P is for Photography

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The 29-Day Blogging Challenge: P is for Photography

I’ve heard it said that humans are the only creature that creates – or has the capacity to create – art. Regarded as a clear symbol of our advanced evolution, this capacity for abstraction and symbolism towards our greater environment, rather than a purely functional, literal interaction, is seen as that which “separates man from beast.” Personally I think the world would be better off if we acted more like our lesser-order cousins, but perhaps we would lose our ability to produce art – and that would be a great loss indeed.

I have friends that can draw and paint amazing works, play numerous musical instruments, create stunning 3D computer images, sing like the best of their genre, dance in ways that defy physics, act out any number of theatre characters, or write so effortlessly and eloquently that guarantees them a spot on the future must-read lists. I’ve dabbled in most of these – I play percussion, a little piano, and a few chords on guitar; I can’t draw to save my life but play around with computer graphics and design; I make feeble attempts at writing, when the mood strikes, of course. Artisically, I think I’ve got a lot of expressive desire, but lack the fundamental skills to actually produce something.

Photography is my main artistic outlet. I’ve always been drawn to great photos, interesting compositions, the interplay of colour and shadow and perspective. I used to pour over film collections at the local library, relatively uninterested in the accompanying captions but entranced by the images themselves. What gave me pause was seeing photographs that showed the world the way I tend to see it. I’m drawn to unique angles, contrasts, candid scenes, juxtaposed subjects and environment. I studied these pictures, analyzed them, imagined myself the photographer looking at a particular scene and finding the ‘life’ that would inhabit my pictures.

What I love most about photography is the ability to capture a period of time in a static, two-dimensional medium. Even at the highest shutter speed, the resulting photograph spans a certain – perhaps miniscule – period of time. When taking someone’s portrait, for example, even if the shutter snaps shut in a hundredth of a second, the image still shows their progression through ten one-thousandths of that very second – in that time cells have regenerated, hair has grown, a myriad of thoughts have spun through their heads. Whole lives have begun and ended in less time. On the quantum level, a photograph is representative of an era, a length of time too small for us to notice but long enough for entire galaxies to shift position, the sun to move a several kilometers over. Although seemingly instantaneous, there is no such thing as ‘instantaneous’ in photography; and in a way, that brings the image to life.

I tend to focus (ha!) on inanimate objects, mainly buildings, architectural elements, cityscapes. I’ve begun to play around with animate subjects, group photos, portraits, etc., but still find the inanimate a much easier subject to capture. I’m rarely without my camera – especially when I travel – and spend a great amount of time analyzing the shots, the technical details – exposure, shutter speed, white balance, etc. – that produce the best results. Even if the composition – the combination of distinct elements to make up a cohesive scene – is less-than interesting, I try to learn the technical tweaks that result in the end product that I want. Once I have the specific settings and adjustments down, I can better capture the compositional image that I see through the viewfinder.

I’m still learning a lot, of course. I browse through photography-related websites and books often, picking up little tips and tricks along the way. That’s part of the allure of digital photography – experimentation is basically free. But I plod ahead, talk to friends with similar interests, practice as much as possible, and smile when I happen to get ‘the’ shot. It’s rare, but incredibly satisfying when it finally happens. Maybe that’s what drives my more classically artistic friends in their particular craft – that sense of accomplishment, even one-time mastery, the gratifying realization that you’ve physically produced something that until then only existed in your mind’s eye.

I certainly wouldn’t call myself an artist – I’m just some guy with a camera and a willingness to search for that one great shot. Sometimes is works out, sometimes it fails miserably, and sometimes there’s just a minute detail out of place that ultimately relegates the picture to the recycling bin on my desktop. I’m picky about the shots that I take, even more about the photos I keep, and as such struggle to learn more about my equipment, photography in general, advanced techniques and the more classically accepted principles of composition. Over the years I’ve seen an improvement, and am aiming to get even better over the next while. I’ve got a few project ideas, but they need a better photographer behind the lens in order to be worthwhile. With time, a lot of experience, and an overflowing recycling bin, maybe I’ll get there.

Previous posts: Introducing the 29-Day Blogging Challenge; A is for Anonymity; B is for Busses; C is for Canada; D is for Dogs;E is for Expatriate; F is for Failure;G is for Google; H is for Hedgehog; I is for Indian food; J is for Jill, obviously; K is for Kurt Cobain; L is for Listerine; M is for Mac&Cheez; N is for Night; O if for Olfactory Dysfunction

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