An Ode to Spare time

Motherhood has more benefits, blessings, than can be counted. This is a true statement. I know that becoming a mother has been a great boon to me as a human being. But, as I move into seventeen years as a mother, I am beginning to identify one particular deficiency in my life.

This issue is with the ownership of my brain.

Now one would think that with the many demands on your mind that having three children would require, your mind would hone, sharpen and become the perfect tool for solving all of life's problems. Because that's my job, right? I resolve all conflicts, remove all clothing stains, fix all baking disasters and remain beatific throughout. Always.

I'm glad you don't agree. There's too much pressure in that.

However, between working full-time and being a mother and wife, I do find that having time for my own thinking, my own creativity, my own aspirations, is compromised. It's no one's fault. It's just that "my brain is full" before I start. (Yes, I'm picturing Gary Larson's Far Side, too, but found out I can't post it)

Clearly, I need a bigger brain. I'll work on that in my spare time.

It awaits

I find myself thinking of it as a malevolent force that constantly waits to ambush me. Like a hulking darkness that hides in the forest just outside my wee house, I can feel its presence.

It can approach so quietly, almost gently, over the course of a few hours, that I am not aware that it has infiltrated. But it has, through cracks and familiar places, until all of a sudden I realize that its taint has smudged everything inside my tiny house. There is nowhere that I can go that it will not have smeared. Nowhere but sleep.

Doesn't the vampire have to ask if it can come in? Not this beast.

Living with chronic pain means that the days that it does not hold dominion are precious. Some of those days I push myself to accomplish more than I should. I think that perhaps I can banish the beast deeper into the wilds of the forest with my control over my small house, stretching my power even to the grounds outside.

I know it will return. Sometimes it comes as a fierce storm and I have to surrender my house to it utterly. Other times it arrives in the cruel guise of an old friend.

Keeping my enemies even closer, I guess.

Beautiful Storyteller

There are stories of beauty everywhere, tales of affection and of powerful love.

These are tiny stories that cannot be captured by art or words. A sudden cool breeze on a too-hot day. Dappled sunlight through green wide leaves. A glance of love--wondering and reassurance--between a young son and his father. The sing-song vowels of a baby.

And you feel a rush; a sense of being loved. Because you are Loved.

He tells His stories differently than we do.

Death of the Interloper

What can one say about a Canadian July so hot and dry that the weeds are starting die off? When they won out over the frail plants I'd expected to be there, I wasn't surprised, but when even they can't thrive?  Well, that's saying something and it just ain't good.

Yeesh.

February Robin

I was surprised to see a robin this morning. This is not him, but a beautiful photo @ Gavatron I found on Flickr that very much looks like how I found him. He was alone, not in a small flock like you usually see robins after they've made the trip back north. High in a crab apple tree, fluffed up to fend off the cold, surrounded by frozen treats still hanging on the branches. He did not look happy to be here--I wonder if he got the memo from the wrong ground hog. I hope he likes frozen fruit! That may be all there is to eat for a while...

Inspiration rises earlier than the worm

I am not a morning person. 

I am the opposite of such a brain-addled creature, preferring the dark recesses of my bed far past what could be deemed socially responsible. 

However.

If I do rise before the dawn--which is an easy venture in the dark days of February--and sit at my computer to write, I find I have a clarity of mind and a sharpness of purpose unattainable at any other time of day.  Email does not tempt me, neither does the laundry in the dryer, nor the clutter in the kitchen. I don't want to read or eat; even my coffee, usually thick with sugar and milk, must be black if I am to drink while writing in the early morning darkness.   

It's all about the story. It fills my head, my room, and all the waiting, pressing world; it blocks out the rising sun and takes the foremost place in all my attention.

It is magical. It is rare. Why?

Because I am NOT a morning person. 

Curses!

The Age of Selfishness: Ayn Rand, Morality and the Financial Crisis

I didn’t really know much about Ayn Rand. I definitely didn’t know the causes of the economic downturn of 2008. I thought I had a good understanding of American politics. If you read Darryl Cunningham’s graphic nonfiction book The Age of Selfishness: Ayn Rand, Morality, and the Financial Crisis, you will learn how much more you didn’t know.

It is said that the proof of your intelligence is in your ability to communicate effectively the big ideas that you have.  Using this sentence as a metre stick, I’d have to say (a) my intelligence appears to need work and (b) Darryl Cunningham is an awfully smart man. Using a graphic format to discuss these intricate and multi-layered themes is pure genius. The book is divided into 3 major sections: the first is on the life of Ayn Rand and the people that she influenced, the second is on the how and why of the economic crash of 2008 and the third is on American politics as viewed through the alternating filters of altruism and selfishness.

A way to sum up much of the book is in this graphic format:

Ayn Rand + rabid followers (including Alan Greenspan) = “collective”

Randian philosophy = objectivism [(selfishness = virtue) + (altruism = moral failure)]

Alan Greenspan (@ Ronald Reagan) = Chairman of Federal Reserve for 4 Presidents (spanning 3 decades)

U.S. Government adoption of Randian philosophy (“taxation = theft”) = U.S. Government reduces regulation of banking

Banks go power-crazy = messy recession; felt worldwide.

Cunningham does have a solution. He thinks that conservativism has won the day but that liberals need to reassert themselves in American politics (despite the current liberals in power) to bring back true altruism. Cunningham doesn't like conservatives. They "prize hard work, orderliness, and structure...are goal oriented." Liberals, however, "are risk takers...are experimental in their lifestyle choices and self-expression. They are tolerant of different perspectives and values." Cunningham is very sorry but you fit into only one political affiliation or the other. There are no other options. He actually goes so far as to insinuate that these are psychologically defined distinctions that divide all of us into two camps.

Too bad the rest of the world doesn't work out of a two-party system. Canadians don't get mentioned at all. The British don't get much press either, perhaps because they have a four-party system, with voices from seven other parties mixed in. 

Here's another take on this dilemma:

Author Hypothesis:

Selfishness + American political system (Tea Partyists) = need more liberals to fix it.

Reader Doubt:

Psychological profiling of liberals and conservatives = reduction of all people into 2-party system thinking

Reductive thinking = all theses in the book may be skewed

The bottom line is that this book has excellent polemics, but the proposed ideas are still open for debate.  

This article was first published on the Mississauga Library System's Nonfiction Book Club Blog