Ah Fuck.

An old band mate of mine is in palliative care. He has four tumors eating his throat and face. From the sounds of it he hasn't much time left and I'm on the other side of the world.

I can't say I was a good friend for I wasn't. He had problems, bad problems with drugs that lead to a life that I could not, and would not, be a part of. I cut him loose and never really looked back. But now I am looking back and I've realized that many of the things that annoyed me the most about him were in fact his way of trying to help me.

Sure, his idea of helping was, for example, to suggest that heroin would be of some benefit to me. I said no for obvious reasons, but the strange thing is that he was right, or at least partly right. I was an insecure, uptight little tosser when we first met. And if there's one thing about heroin, it does mellow a person out.

I'm not being naive here, I know that part of his motivation was to have someone else share his addiction in order make some money to pay for said addiction. I know too that he wanted the people around him to act as he did in order to feel normal about his behavior. But when I put this incident together with all the other times he annoyed me enough to remember it these 20 years later, I realize that at the bottom of every incident there was always an intent, however small, to help.

I regret not noticing that sooner.

For all his faults, for all the damage he did to himself and others, he isn't an evil man. And now he's laying in a fogged stupor not of his own choosing, unlike all the ones that went before. He's laying there waiting for the cancer to cut his carotid artery again, or close off his esophagus, or to cause pain so unbearable that never fully awakening again is the only option.

He does not deserve this, and fuck any self-righteous pricks who dare to suggest that he does. I've heard that there have been a few of those around, even on his medical team. He's human, flawed to be sure, but no less deserving of love and compassion for all of that.

The Big Empty

So, are you scared? Is the world too big for you, does it overwhelm you with its complexity.Yes? Well then, I suggest you stay far, far away from telescopes and microscopes.

The scale of the universe in which we live, from the outer reaches of observable interstellar space 46.5 billion lights years away to the Plank length infinitesimal minuteness of the subatomic realm is vast almost beyond comprehension. We as a species are not equipped to observe these extremes without resorting to instruments that enhance our senses to superhuman levels. And at the very outer edges of the largest and the smallest we have to rely on math to map and explain what is there. Those edges at present are beyond our ability to detect directly.

How do we cope with this near infinity that surrounds us? One option is to make stuff up, to invent a wise and benevolent entity that not only understands it all but is somehow responsible for it all. Then all one has to do is wrap one's self up in the warm security blanket of revealed wisdom to feel safe. Of course one has to ignore the fact that the blanket no longer stretches to cover lightning, earthquakes, floods and plagues. Or that the parts that used to cover the motions of the stars and planets, the seasons and eclipses are now just frayed holes. "Fine, fine." one could say "Static electricity, plate tectonics, the water cycle and germs are just the ways that our entity does things." But here's the rub, none of these things requires an entity to sustain them. They work just fine all by themselves. As our body of knowledge grows larger and larger the security blanket gets smaller and smaller until one is left twisting and turning, pulling the blanket here and there in a futile attempt to hide from the reality in which we live.

It's a vast, hostile universe in which we live, one that cares nothing for you or me. Less than nothing really, because that phrase "it cares nothing" is misleading. There is nothing there that is capable of caring one way or the other. And therein lies the joy.

You see, we're not alone and we're not helpless. We have each other and that's enough, more than enough. Don't believe me? Take someone you love by the hand, look in their eyes and say "I'm here." How big is the universe at that moment? How scary? Do you need your ragged and fading security blanket to warm you as arms, alive and real, hold you?

We're all together in the big empty and it's going to be alright.

More Adventures in the 3 Year Old's Brain

Me: Em, just how did your toes get so big, hmmmm?

Em: I'm getting bigger.

Me: Yup, you are. How big are you going to get?

Em: Bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and Bigger, And Bigger, AND Bigger, AND BIGGER, VERY BIG!

Me: [uncovers ears, starts to say "Not so loud" but is interrupted]

Em: I'm going to be as big as you Daddy!

Me: You might be.

Em: But with hair.

Squeeee!

I'm so happy. I just got my first ranting anti-atheist comment, despite not having written much if anything about the subject here. Someone tracked me back from another website where I'd commented and left this incoherent screed. Hilarious.

Adventures in Oz

This morning I had to get up and go deal with our pump yet again. For some reason the power to the shed where it's plugged in died. Might have had something to do with the rain and wind. What a great way to start the day and it only got better.

We had winds gusting to 100km/hr, driving rain and lightning in the afternoon. This in the equivalent of the northern hemisphere's December. It took down trees everywhere, the native vegetation park looked like the trees had been mown. We shut the shop at 2pm because there was no way the power was coming back any time soon. Fortunately, the worker responsible for clearing downed trees off our section of road used his head. He drove the dozer back to town along the rail trail. I'd brought a saw along just in case but I'm pretty sure it would have taken an hour or more to ride home if the trail hadn't been cleared. This on a ride that's normally 15 minutes.

The pub next door lost the roof from a bungalow out back and part of their front veranda. Tin from the bungalow roof ended up across the highway wrapped around a tree 10 meters off the ground. A house a couple of k away lost it's entire roof. We were lucky. All it did to our place is blow the back door open which fortunately is so far under a veranda that no water got in.

I went over to pub to see if they needed any help. Here's what I love about country life: as I talked to the owners maybe half a dozen people pulled up to see if they could help. Everyone was touching base and making sure everyone else was okay. Sure, a lot of these folk are rough as guts but they care about and look after each other.

We dug out some candles and our torches for light. I trudged across the highway to the creek and filled some buckets so we could flush the toilet. Claire made dinner on the barbeque and we ate by candle light. Our pre-bed play with Em consisted entirely of games where she got to sit in my lap.

Me: Emlyn, it's 10 degrees in here, you need warmer clothes.
Em: No, I'm warm.
Me: Yes, put on this jumper...
Em. No, no, No, NO!
Me: Look, if you're not cold why does every game involve you sitting in my lap?
Em: Cuddle me

She did tell me a fabulous story though. She gave me a piece of paper that she'd carefully folded up.

Me: What's this?
Em: It's your ticket.
Me: My ticket for what?
Em: Vesher.
Me: What?
Em: Vesher!
Me: Take that dummy out...
Em: Adventure.
Me: An adventure like with pirates?
Em: Yes we sailed on ship to island and there was a hole and the wormmies got the hole from the wormmy store and they went wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle and got it out for us. *
Me: Breath my love, breath. Got what out for us.
Em: Treasure.
Me: I love this adventure.

The power came back on after 7 and and a half hours. I've got to say that that was pretty quick work and that I'm a little disappointed. As unpleasant as it was to sit around in a cold house it was also kinda fun. A nice, safe adventure to break up the routine. For us at any rate; tomorrow will show just how bad it was for everyone else.

Gender

Okay, I can talk about other things really. No seriously I can, honest...er, well that said, I've got to get this off my chest:

Meccano has re-issued it's classic metal construction set. When I saw them for sale I bought two for Emlyn despite her being less than a year old. She's just under three now and we're going to wait a bit longer to break it out. I don't really care if she takes to it or not, but she's going to have the opportunity for that kind of constructive play.

Em is an intelligent, curious and energetic human being. You can almost see the potential radiating out from her, like some kind of Van der Graaf generated nimbus. I don't understand how anyone, male or female, could see that potential and want to limit it in any way. It makes me grit my teeth to think of it. Saying to your daughter "I love you." while shoehorning her into a narrowly defined gender role is the very height of destructive ignorance.

I can and will denounce, demean and fucking destroy if necessary, anyone who tries to limit my daughter because she's female.

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/panta/