Category: Δ

Margaret Atwood on TVO 2008-11-01

I had been looking for this poem for literally years when I came across a TVO recording where she recites it. Atwood’s an intoxicating speaker, but you’ll have to use your imagination unless you can also track the audio down somewhere:

“That grandfather clock that was too large for the shelf, so it stood 90 years on the floor
Was brought from the shop on the day that the grandfather was born and went
Tick tock; tick tock
90 years without slumbering
Tick tock; tick tock
His life’s seconds numbering, just like a heartbeat
But it stopped
Short
Never to go again
When the
Old
Man
died
— I learned some memorable songs in grade three.”

Related:

out there

I have a friend for who, every night as I struggle to sleep, I make a point of issuing a hope or aspiration to the universe about: that they are safe and well, and that they will find what they need in life. I don’t believe that such wishes can have any effect on the world, but deliberately having those thoughts adds some hopefulness to the fear and sadness.

There will be good things ahead

Now that the darkest part of the year has passed, I’m hopeful we’ll see something like what my Uncle Robert described in an email to me last year:

It seems sometimes like things plod along, yielding neither joy nor sorrow; and then suddenly an unexpected series of events, meetings, or conversations; a surge of energy and clarity; or just a darn good night’s sleep, something shifts and the heart fills, the mind opens, and one gets the feeling of something like epiphany. I hope you are experiencing this as often as possible!

There’s much to fear and much that needs to be changed about the world, but the future will also hold wonderful surprises which we’re completely unable to foresee now. I’ve often thought about some of the saddest times in my life and the feelings I might have had then of simply not wanting to experience the future. With hindsight, I can see now that so many of the things which I would now regard as the most rewarding and significant of my life came after those darkest days, and they would have had their potential expunged in the hopelessness of those moments.

The future will bring joy and sorrow, and eventually death, and we should cultivate a feeling of gratitude for being able to experience any of it: each of our brains an impossibly complex and unlikely combination of atoms and higher-order structures — from monomers, precursors, and bare inorganic ions to proteins, DNA, cellular organelles, and organs — as with the sensory organs and neurons through which our experiences occur.

saganangst — fear of nuclear war, and particularly nuclear winter

We live under constant threat of sudden destruction via nuclear war. It wouldn’t take that many warheads falling on major cities to darken the atmosphere — making the consequences of even a regional exchange (or the payload of a single ‘boomer’ sub) global, and potentially a threat to the integrity of human civilization. The control systems carry a frightening risk of malfunction, particularly in a crisis when nuclear-armed forces may be out of communication with higher level command and at immediate risk of nuclear attack.

The only safe option is to disarm as a global community — spare everyone the costs of the nuclear arms complex, while greatly diminishing the total severity of potential wars.

there are non-overlapping gaps in all our memories which leave us confused in our social relations with one another

Helplessly watching someone you love suffer can teach and change you more than years of academic study, expert help, and suffering of your own.

if the conditions are right, the brain can create new circuits at any stage of development