Internal Debate

Tonight, I was supposed to cook dinner for a girl. But then she called me up this morning saying that she didn't really feel comfortable coming over and that we should go elsewhere for a coffee (or something like that I don't really know it was in French). And what a shame this is! I had practiced the dish (chicken marsala) just the other night and it tasted great! I had all the necessary ingredients, plus wine and cappuccino (had she wanted either).

So I'm going to see her later, and I can't help asking myself whether or not to let her know about all the effort I put in to getting the dinner ready. I mean, what will I do with the ingredients at this point? Throw them out? Make the dinner for myself? I'm certain they will spoil soon.

You see how besetting it is to me, but that's not my point. I'm wondering if telling her about my effort is a way to make her feel guilty, maybe even to put her under me (figuratively), or in my debt. Anyone would have a drive to do this. It's the idea that I can but don't that bugs me. I mean, she doesn't know that I'm "sparing" her, and I could never tell her, because that categorically destroys "sparing" her.

After so many years of experience and reflection on situations exactly like this one, I've concluded that I actually can handle not telling her, and not getting the juicy satisfaction that comes with it. Of course, I'm telling you who are reading the blog, so it's not left completely unsaid. I think the true foundation of nobility (however skewed the definition may be in this case) lies in refusing to tell at least one other person about a good deed. You have to find the satisfaction within yourself.

It's like I've said: To discuss the philosophy would be a blatant and utter violation thereof.

Steady Hands

If you ever buy a school bag at the McGill bookstore, they will advertise free repairs on it for its lifetime. As my school bag had had its arm ripped from its shoulder last semester, I decided to take them up on their offer. I then discovered that this free repair was in fact a couple of weeks without the bag, while I myself mail it to the company. There was, however, a note on the bottom of the statement that read, "For our montreal customers, come to us directly and we'll do it on the spot. Take the 165 north to..." well it was a distance, but anything to save a trip to the post office. Armed with my broken bag, a copy of Ulysses, and a monthly bus pass well-haggled from the cutest of physics students, I set off to Ecogold's factory.

The 165 goes the distance, all the way past the bakeries and Maisons de la Presse of Cote-des-Neiges, past a Canadian Tire in the core of a shopping center you don't know exists, and through some light residential to the Mont-Royal train station. I got off at rue Goyer, on one of the most pleasant of spring days. It was a thursday afternoon, maybe 2 PM. The regulars were all at work; the workers were outside working. There were still the very old, efficaciously reserving their spots on the line at the bus stop, and there were the very young who were all but carefully monitored by their mothers who never ever notice me.

Stately, I leave the cote-des-neiges bustle and head into some back streets littered with low-rise houses. Chain-linked fences arbitrarily dotted the scenery, belonging to the more weary residents. It was a lower-middle class neighborhood, but overall I could sense the effort that the locals put into their houses. Just to my north I found the street where Ecogold supposedly resides. This street immediately reminded me of Railroad avenue on Long Island (that's where you find the sock factory). At night it's desolate. During the day you can sense activity, based on the occasional passing van or hearing accentless chatter through a dusty window tilted open. I could not escape the feeling that nine out of ten of these factories were abandoned, and those who remained felt their absense.

I chose one building out of ten based on the address. No signs anywhere, no buzzer to get in, no people nor birds watching me choose. I climbed up three sets of stairs and pushed through a door with no latch. Make one last corner and finally I spied past two sets of fire doors Ecogold's black and white logo, poster size at the end of the hall. I made my way there and found a little buzzer beside a door. I pressed it and a minute later a door behind me was opened by a little man. He greeted me and invited me into the sewing room. His French was gentle but his English was gentler. There were enough machines to handle a working force of fifty, but I found only two others in the room, who were quite content not to stir at my presence. I showed him my bag's dislocated shoulder and he brought me over to his machine.

I knew I could relax on that metal stool and watch him. His thick, calloused fingertips carefully removed the bobin of red thread from inside the machine. He searched his drawer and withdrew a bobin already prepared with black thread and loaded it. He then found the same black thread on a spool and loaded it on the top of the machine, steadily drawing the end around a wheel and finally through the needle. I watched him position himself to use the petal. After so much preparation, he finished fixing my bag within a few moments, his blue eyes monitoring his steady hands from up high.

While I probably could have stayed there in a my own style of meditation, I knew it was time to leave. I thanked him and made my way back to the bus stop. I remembered that I used to do physical work and while I didn't enjoy it at the time, I missed it the instant I stopped. I think maybe people are designed to enjoy a repetitious frame of mind. A meditation of the hands.

Sartre

There are three legs to my philosophy as a whole: Nietzsche's false idols, Sartre's definition by the Other, and Kierkegaard's leveling process. Now that's both an inaccurate exaggeration and an exaggerated inaccuracy. But you simply must hear about Sartre.

Back when I was a little kid, oh perhaps 15 years of age, I shared with my audience down at the coffee house my brand new theory: I am no one. I am precisely no one. In fact, I'm solely made up of all the other people I've ever met. Well, they thought it was cute but they didn't think all too much about it. I basically buried the idea until just recently when I realized it was exactly what Sartre had in mind.

To run this philosophy down as quickly as possible to get to the juicy applications, let's start with the assumptions: Existence precedes essence. That is to say, we can define everything's essence by our own experience. And I think therefore I am. That is to say, my consciousness exists (the part that thinks!). But what about this body that keeps following me around. Is that me? Is that an extension of me? How can I know?

Well, when I recognize another consciousness, another subject that I know is just like my own, I become aware of my own body. I have an emotional response to what my body is doing: if I'm naked, I feel embarrassed; if I'm caught stealing, I'm ashamed; if I'm caught looking damn good, I'm proud. And guess what, if there's no one there, I feel none of these! These emotions prove that I am my body (my ego as Sartre liked to put it).

There are some direct applications: first, we can use this to observe what we think about others. The level of embarrassment we feel is different before different people. Way back in the day I dare suggest that, having no flirting technique whatsoever, I would frequently resort to being downright weird in front of girls. I can't remember flat out what it was that I did (I'd have loved to share it with you), but suffice it to say that I would not behave this way in front of my guy friends. Nor would I ever tell them about it. Eventually I realized that telling myself only to act in the way I would in front of everyone would produce better results. This isn't that hard and fast a rule, but it certainly counts for flirting in high school. So what does this say: it says that I felt that my guy friends could understand me more than these random girls. Naturally--they were my friends. Having grown up together we obviously thought pretty similarly. They would know exactly what I was thinking, and know exactly how shitty my thoughts really were. But only they could, and my embarrassment proves it.

One time I was in a grocery store among countless 40 and 50 somethings clad in sweatpants and sunglasses on chains. One in ten brought their offspring, who generally tooled abortively around the store. Remember how kids act? Drunk, screaming, bumping in to you. So imagine this: I see two girls of 8 years at opposite ends of the aisle. They approach each other bitching out their mothers. Then they see each other, and they both become calm and composed and try to look as cool as possible (for a grocery store, a feat worth mentioning). The girls did not feel embarrassment in front of their mothers, only in front of each other. Their change in behavior shows this, and this embarrassment proves that they recognized each other as the most observant of subjects.

And the applications have just begun! Stay tuned for more, but right now I have to go back to work.

Gay Marriage

So Owen, are you for Gay marriage?

Well, yes I'm "for" it, but that's a pretty easy way out, isn't it? It isn't all that pragmatic. I think it's really important to investigate some of the factors involved.

First of all, gays can already get married. Indeed, two people can sign a social contract that will be validated (and enforced) on the state level. And as more people do this, the more standard it becomes (common law) and the easier it becomes for the next couple (precedents).

So then it became a federal issue. I don't know whose doing this was, but they are at fault. Remember our first assumption: attitude follows behavior. Behavior is this: marriage as a term is not attributed to gays, gay couples aren't prevalent outside of cities, and homosexuality is not supported by the church. In fact, many people find sodomy disgusting (I couldn't imagine why...) So what's the resulting attitude: marriage should be protected from bastardization.

Bringing an issue like this to the federal level is not how to enact change in this country! Of course people will react negatively! Because it's different! One changes the law first, and attitudes follow. Martin Luther King knew it, and that was why he was our greatest civil rights leader. So I, of course, think that whoever or whichever group brought this to the forefront was trying to make a stand. Trying to confront people who have been denying them their natural rights.

I mean face it, if you're gay in high school you're going to get made fun of big time. I got made fun of for something--I can't quite recall what--and really took it to heart. But that's just it: some people would want retribution for all that torment. They might want to say, "After all these years, I win."

I imagine it was people like this who brought this issue up. The only real way to show their oppressors that they won requires that it be a national issue (because people tend to mind their own business out in the suburbs). And what makes this ploy especially viable is that it was guaranteed to have a negative response.

So the question is this: do gays want marriage or do gays want everyone to know that they have marriage?

Now you're angry.

What amazes me is that Bush's orignal stance what the right one: when elected, he said that is was a state issue and that it should stay a state issue. But due to the inherent reaction of our populus he then was advised to change his stance to get votes.

Hem, it's hard to be libertarian. You can only choose the lesser of two evils.

Someone offers a hand shake
I give him a 5-5

Flashbulbs speaking diggity wiggity
while these hicks are thinking
they're bigger and better than all I muster
Jobim
Ten rolled snowballs
yelling --wrap it up, O

Head-holed chunks in a woodchuck's graveyard
How much hand can a rotten man hold?
A man alikened to a christian death
A silver cat scratches on my welcome mat.