turned my head away from the noise, bruise and drip decay of childish toys

Byte Thoughts 4.0: Mount Royal is an inactive volcano

4.1. Heart Burn is inaccurately named. It should be called Stomach Volcano From Hell.

4.2. The site where my wisdom tooth was removed in April decided it wasn't done torturing me yet. Not only did I lose, according to the surgeon who performed the extraction, half of my lower mandibular in the area where my wisdom tooth used to be, I was also lucky enough to develop dry socket a couple of weeks later, which subsequently cleared up, only to flare up again a few days ago (on the day of the full moon, yet another clear correlation between lunar gravity and systemic inflammation, but I digress), leaving me with a cheek swollen out to HERE <------------->, forcing me to drag my sorry ass to the emergency room where I was seen by a seemingly competent doctor of the teefs, who prescribed a 7-day run of clindamycin, under mild duress.

4.3. The primary side-effect of Clindamycin, it should be noted, is the aforementioned Stomach Volcano From Hell. That said, it is, so far, on my third day into the 7-day script, an apparently robust antibiotic that appears to be working quite well against Staphylococcus or whatever the hell bacteria likes to get up my ass every few months or so. Literally. Up my ass. Staph causes gastroenteritis (the runs!), and penicillin usually gives me the runs on top of the runs. Clindamycin may make me feel like it's eating my stomach and throat and tender organs ALIVE!! But I'm happy to report that my poops are firmer than they've been in a dog's age. Yay firm poops!

4.4. I'm exhausted. I need to take a dose of Clindamysic every 6 hours. And I need to stay in an upright position for about an hour after taking it or I get gastric reflux. Which means I have to get up half way through the night, pop a pill, and then keep myself awake long enough for the reflux to chill the fuck out, which usually involves making and eating a midnight snack and sitting on my bed meditating for half an hour and reading a lil bit too. Sooo tired. But at least I'm getting some good meditatin' time in there, there.

4.5. It took me awhile to figure out why my doctor asked me if I had been smoking or making sucking motions with my mouth after I had the wisdom tooth removed. Doh. Because I'm way too honest for my own good and wrote on my chart that I sometimes smoke marijuana. Sometimes. These days not at all, and definitely not after surgery. Doctor guy thought I had marijuanaed myself into developing dry socket. Good grief, if only that were true. I could have used a truckload of the stuff after I had the fucker extracted in April, the pain was pretty horrible for a few days there. But no, alas, I'm not a big fan of being zonked to the gills on wacky weed anymore. So yeah, I'll have to clarify when I go in for a follow-up visit next week that I don't smoke the drugs, man. My rule is: if you can't eat it, you probably shouldn't be taking it. Also, my growing fascination with mathematics and physics far outweighs any desire for inebriation.

4.6. Sucking motions indeed.

4.7. So I'm sitting in the ER waiting for a doctor to take a look at my jaw and give me a prescription for antibiotics and without thinking much about it I grab a seat next to a pudgy post-menopausal Haitian lady with milky eyes and a son/grandson/nephew/young Haitian man who proceeded to spend a good half an hour gesticulating angrily, pointing finger at his imagined nemesis and all, jabbing at the air and gabbing at the mouth in Creole about the gods-only-know-what. Not a bad vibe so much as an angry one, and he may well of been justified. So I try my best to block his venting out of my mind and start some deep breathing meditational type stuff, and he's looking at my tits every once in awhile as I take deep breaths in and I'm, like, dude, they're just tits, get over it, I'm trying to breathe. I don't say it of course, that would be rude. I just hunch my shoulders a bit and keep my eyes to the wall in front of me and ignore it.

After awhile the doctor calls the son/nephew/young Haitian man away for his check up and pudgy post-menopausal lady turns her head slightly, seeing me deep breathing while reading a book, and she appears to be somewhat disturbed. So she pulls a well-loved Bible from her purse, opens it up, and starts to mutter religious dogma under her breath, like she's tryin' to exercise spirits or some shit, and that's it, I've had enough, I'm officially creeped out. She seems harmless enough but.. I can't do Biblical under-the-breath mutterings from a milky eyed ol' lady sitting no more than a foot and a half from me. I get up to switch chairs, go to the receptionist under the pretense of asking how much longer the wait will be, though I don't much care, and they tell me any time between now and 4:30pm, and I say thank you and walk back down the hall and when I get back to the waiting area voodoo lady and her Bible are gone and I tell you, I breathed one hell of a sigh of relief.

Pardon the pun.

They're usually not deliberate.

But that one was.

4.8. People really don't like using those automatic hot-air hand-dryers public washrooms sometimes have. I wonder if the waste of energy is really that much better than the waste of brown paper towels. I've noticed that in the absence of paper towels many people either dry their hands on the seat of their pants, or don't bother drying them at all.

That said, when you're on a Greyhound bus for 4 days straight, crossing the country without stopping in hostels or motels for a night, there is nothing like washing your hair in the sink and luxuriously drying it under one of them fancy hot air hand dryers.

4.9. According to an article in Wired Magazine, and Washington University's microbiologist Jeffrey Gordon, internal bacteria and viruses outnumber each human body's cells by a factor of 10, many of which are friendly bacteria/viruses. Systemic bacteria and viruses, and other microorganisms co-habiting the human body, together are called the microbiome.

4.10. Personal theory: cellular regeneration can be aided by introducing symbiotic microorganisms (ie. bacteria and viruses) to the human body. They are also inheritable as they can be passed on to infants in utero or during birth process.

4.11. In Euclidean space (or geometry), pi, which is expressed in mathematics as 3.141593, is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diametre. It is the same value of a circle's area to the square of its radius. A circles area is calculated using the following formula: A=πr²  or Area = circumference ÷ diametre x radius squared.

Tiny entanglements

4.17. Quantum entanglement: particles may be interconnected over great distances.

4.18. Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC): particles may be unified into one state of wave function.

4.19. Wave/particle duality: particles may behave as waves spacially and temporally.

4.20. Mount Royal is an inactive volcano: if you climb to the top of Mount Royal taking the stairs at the lookout point on Camillien Houde, and then take the trail to your left once you reach the top of the stairs, after a 5 minute walk or so from the stairs you'll come to a small footbridge. Once you cross the footbridge you'll come to a few outcroppings of seemingly normal rock. This rock is actually cooled and solidified magma and if you look closely enough you'll see the curvy, fluid way it was formed from lava that was once so hot it would burn trees and living beasts and human beings alive if they were so unlucky as to be caught in its flow.

4.21. 1000km/hr = MACH 1

4.22. What is the possibility of prolonging life by prolonging fertility?

4.23. Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.

4.24. 1 acre = 43,560 square feet = 4,046.85642 square metres

4.25. Every essential invention (ie. basic electricity, water filtration, basic home appliances) needs a step-by-step guide detailing precisely - and as simply as possible, in layman's terms - how to build each invention from harvesting raw materials right up to the final product, in case of worldwide disaster, loss of technology, or for homesteading, especially when we start to colonize other planets or space stations.

4.26. How long would it take one person to build an automobile with a combustible diesel engine from scratch, and by hand, including the creation of the tools necessary to build said automobile?

4.27. Human beings help to enable a horse's inherent desire and ability to dance to rhythm/music, as well as creative desires and abilities of other animals (and microorganisms, no doubt). The opposite is obviously true as well (ie. music made from whale songs, bird song, and other sounds from nature).

4.28. Jeanne-Mance park should have - or at least Beaver Lake should be turned into - a natural wading lake/pond like Trout Lake in Vancouver.

4.29. The body as sentient organism separate from the mind...?

4.30. Baby envy > penis envy

(I would estimate that more men have baby envy than women have penis envy)

4.31. "Nature is a dictatorship".. not sure that I would agree.

What is nature anyway?

4.32. Resource-based economy vs. Capitalist economy: how to move swiftly from a money-based economy to a resource-based economy without causing war or panic?

4.33. Concept: mandelbrot city design..... mandelbrot eco-village design

4.34. Psychic driving: "driving" someone else's body, like driving a car.

4.35. 64 codes within DNA but only 20 are supposedly active

4.36. Vladimir Poponin's "Phantom DNA Effect"

4.37. Wave of fear: long, slow wave that touches on only a few DNA sites = less "antennas"

4.38. Wave of love: short, fast wave that touches on a larger number of DNA sites = more "antennas"

4.39. There is a link between emotions and DNA. Obviously. There is a link between anything and everything.


4.40. Fibinacci theory: mathematical sequences (number sequences) appear in nature. For example, sea shells, pine cones, cacti, and sunflowers.

Per Wikipedia:

Fibonacci is best known to the modern world for ^[3] the spreading of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system in Europe, primarily through the publication in the early 13th century of his Book of Calculation, the Liber Abaci; and for a number sequence named after him known as the Fibonacci numbers, which he did not discover but used as an example in the Liber Abaci.^[4]

4.41. Collective consciousness

4.42. Civil vs. Maritime law

4.43. Natural person vs. Artificial person

4.44. John Doe: only the first lettres of the name are capitalized = Capittus Diminutio Minima: occurs when a human's family relations alone are changed, with a minimal loss of rights.

4.45. john DOE: only the last name is capitalized = Capitus Diminutio Media: occurs when a human loses their rights of citizenship but not their rights of liberty. You can be fined but not enslaved or imprisoned.

4.46. JOHN DOE: entire name is capitalized = Capitus Diminutio Maxima: occurs when a human's condition changes from freedom to bondage. All rights of citizenship and family rights are surrendered or revoked without consent.

4.47. 100th monkey effect

4.48. Paradox: a statement that contradicts itself, or a situation that defies intuition.

4.49. Indirect economic terrorism: profiteers who force employees to knowingly or unknowingly implicate themselves in economic moral offences.

4.50. Trufficulture: the cultivation of truffles

4.51. Thursday June 16th 2011 6:30pm at the old clock tower on the steps overlooking LaRonde and the Jacques Cartier bridge. It's hot and sunny and only the thinnest wisps of clouds in the sky. The St-Lawrence river moves and churns, flows in spirals, a clear and still murky blue-brown. Speedboats zip by leaving wakes of white waves in v's, the river flows against aquamarine buoys sending out more white waves.. the St-Lawrence is only gentle from a distance but up close it's teeming, the current strong enough to drown even the most able-bodied swimmer. I take off my beat up black and white Adidas, barefoot, I eat a quick dinner of lentils and rice, then I get up and walk along bricks of sparkling crushed granite and quartz and think, my feet are not really touching the ground, there is an electromagnetic field between us. I sit back down to write and read, a few strands of grass bend in the wind, tapping my shoulder. I wish I was on one of those roller coasters across the river, there on Ile Ste-Helene, in a car at the top of the ferris wheel.. on a boat rowing out to the ocean.. I wish I could dive into the water and swim to the opposite shore. A tiny brown and orange beetle crawls across the page and reminds me it's time to get up and go.

4.52. A dream: a deadly virus wipes out almost all mammals and birds on earth, including humans. Only a few dozen humans survive on the North American west coast. There are rocky mountains in the distance but the city is old, reminds me of Brooklyn or Montreal, old red brick buildings. I am a survivor and I reach out to pet a duck, and it immediately contracts the virus and dies on the spot, and more ducks follow but I leave them alone, they've survived this far, I don't want to kill them too. (in real life, I came across a deceased baby duckling the day before the dream on the shore of the St-Lawrence, to give some context, and also woke up the next day with an infected jaw... the subconscious at work...). In the dream there are sentient cyborgs we are constantly avoiding capture from, who want to trap us and use us as test subjects, as breeders for a new race of human beings. The cyborgs were programmed before the virus broke out, to capture human test subjects, but one cyborg somehow reprograms herself, she looks like Susan Sarandon, beautiful eyes and curly hair, wise and kind, and she becomes a lifelong friend of the survivors. She helps us evade capture from the other cyborgs. We have to swim underwater via secret underwater entrances to our hideouts in the abandoned Brooklyn/Montreal west coast city. The water is filled with corpses but we're used to swimming amongst the dead..

The human survivors are somehow genetically enhanced by the virus instead of killed by it, and are capable of living thousands of years. By the time we are several thousand years old we are capable of flying using thought alone, but our cyborg friend must use a sort of jet-chariot she stands on to fly while the rest of us fly using the power of thought and we all fly off a cliff together, between mountain valleys. The cyborgs gradually die off, become defunct, and by the time the human survivors are 10,000 years old our cyborg friend is having difficulty surviving with full functionality too. She looks 60-70 years old at this point. She decides to disable herself and put herself in storage, and we are all very sad.

Don't remember much else.

Granary in the Vieux Port of Montréal

4.53. Wednesday June 15th 2011 8:00pm. I am on the edge of the river, sitting with my feet hanging over the edge of the pier next to the old granary in the Vieux Port. Sunset reflects off Habitat, lights up windows vibrant peach-pink. Two large white snow geese with black tipped wings swim past. one isn't paddling his feet and I'm perplexed, how is he gliding through the water like that? he has one wing extended over his back, using it like a sail, catching the wind so he doesn't have to paddle his feet that float lazily behind him, i can see his tangerine-orange toes. It's ingenious and I'm charmed, and I watch the snow geese until they round the pier and I can't see them anymore.

The sun is setting over the rooftops of buildings along rue de la Commune, to my left, a faraway airplane is moving across a rosy pink and blue sky, above the sunset, leaving a trail of hydrogen exhaust over the Palais de Justice, it is sharp and clean and whiter than the clouds that hang dark blue and grey and fire-peach along the horizon.

It is a beautiful, warm and calm evening. A trio of friends are a few feet away enjoying the evening too, a beer and a smoke and the view. I see Terre d'Homme, the roller coaster of LaRonde, and Habitat to my right, across the St-Lawrence. i breathe in. scent of fresh cut grass and musky spice, earthy nutmeg, spicy leaves fermenting in the heat of the woods surrounding the north side of the granary. a tiny beetle, smaller than an ant crawls along my left knee as I'm snacking on chick pea and bean salad, crunching diced onions and celery mixed between, then chocolate coconut macaroons homemade a couple of nights before, with a canteen of cool rooibos tea. the call of sandpipers erupts behind me and i look back to see two fly up from the grass into the air and away to the west. there are robins and starlings and seagulls and crows, and a single blue heron with long drooping legs flies north over the granary as i get up to leave. will return tomorrow to take photos since i forgot my camera. the sun is gone now. i'm getting cold. it's time to pack up and head home.

4.54. Checked my blood pressure at the clinic when I went to drop off some forms.

Systolic: 90

Diastolic: 63

Pulse: 72

4.55. It's saturday night, tonight in fact, just a few hours ago, and I'm hanging out at Jeanne-Mance park, and some relatively handsome dude yells out to me from 100ft away as I'm sitting on the grass watching the soccer game and reading a book at the same time (Carl Sagan "Cosmos"), eating a quick dinner, more chick pea and bean salad, and the guy yells out to me again, and with my mouth half full of beans I point to myself and yell back, "who, me?!" and he yells, "yeah! you!" and I'm mildly confused until he yells out again, still 100ft away, to come over and have a beer and a smoke and i can't very well explain, from 100ft away, that i'm in the middle of eating, and i've had a couple of shitty days, and i can't handle talking to a group of strangers right at that moment, no matter how inviting the idea of sitting around with nice folks and having a beer sounds, because it was really nice of him to ask, so instead i yell back, "no thank you!" and he yells a semi-sarcastic "ooookay!" and i feel like shit for half an hour afterwards and it makes me want to cry, tears well up and i blink them back cuz it's so silly crying over something like that. i wanted to get up and apologize to him for being so uptight. but i just didn't have it in me. so i went back to reading and watching the game. and now here i am, typing this shit out.

About sums it up

That's BAD!

Byte Thoughts 3.0: It's too damn hot to think straight but holy shit, thank the gods it's summertime!

3.1. The number of chain-smoking fools hanging out at LaFontaine Park always makes me flee the second the sun finishes setting and the boozers come out to play. I've come to realize it's not really cigarette smoke that bothers me per se but the quality of the tobacco being smoked. When I walk by someone smoking a high quality cigar or cigarette, I actually enjoy the smell of its second hand smoke.

So long as folks continue to smoke their nasty cancer sticks around the lovely pond at Parc LaFontaine, I'll continue to lounge around in other parks instead. It's a shame, the sun sets are sooo beautiful around the pond.

Now that I think of it.. the number of cigarette smokers at this particular park may have something to do with the low number of children playing around Parc LaFontaine. I guess parents these days don't like exposing their youngsters to toxic smoke if they can help it.

Which is a good sign.. with all luck the new generation of Quebecois children will grow up to be strong and smart enough to avoid the very products that are made by anglophone multi-national corporations which only lines the pockets of said anglophones while they sit around rubbing their hands in glee as our Quebecois youth and welfare classes kick the bucket decades earlier than they would otherwise.

Dudes, if you truly support the Quebecois movement, maybe you should stop smoking Anglo products that cause genetic malformations and chronic illness in the very population you're so damn proud of and trying so hard to protect: Quebec!

3.2. If you desperately need to smoke a cigarette, do yourself and everyone around you a favour and smoke pure tobacco. All these commercial cigarette brands are hardly tobacco at all, they're mostly chaff and sawdust and tar and benzene and cyanide, they are quite literally cancer in a stick. I am of the personal opinion that cigarette manufacturers should be banned from selling anything but 100% pure tobacco. I'm a bit perplexed as to why food, alcohol, and drug companies are not allowed to sell overtly toxic products for human consumption, but cigarette companies are allowed to sell products containing additives that are scientifically proven to be toxic. If food companies put benzene and tar and cyanide in their food products, they would be shut down in an instant. Why are cigarette companies not held to the same standards? I can understand the United States government not giving a flying fuck but c'mon Canada, you're better than that.

All Natural Native brand cigarettes are the Canadian equivalent of Free Spirit cigarettes and better quality in my opinion. I believe they are 100% additive free, but don't take my word for it.

3.3. Harp-Peur aka Stephen Harper

3.4. It would be nice if the city of Montreal put out garbage bins that hold bottles and cans that others can return for deposit along the edge of the can, like they have in Vancouver.

3.5. It would also be nice if the provincial government instituted a broad container deposit system like they have in British Columbia so that virtually all plastic, glass, paper, and metal containers could be brought back to bottle depots for a return deposit. This would take the burden off local depanneurs and grocery stores and would also open up a new industry in Quebec where entrepreneurs could open container depots and make a modest profit. This would also give low-income individuals incentive to pick rubbish off the street as they would also make a modest profit collecting recyclable materials.

At the moment there is no incentive for folks to clean up after themselves or pick rubbish off the streets, so instead Montreal's alleys and sidewalks and public spaces are constantly cluttered with waste, most of which is recyclable. This one small act, creating a container depot system, would simultaneously clean the streets of garbage and create small business incentives.

3.6. Stop cutting and start supporting and healing old trees in Montreal, dammit.

3.7. The city of Montreal stopped removing old tree stumps and trunks on Mount Royal about 5 years ago and it has created a noticeable difference the past couple of years, especially this summer. There are thousands of new mushrooms and colonies of moss and lichen! There is also a lot of new growth around the stumps since they provide moisture and shade for new sprouts. These stumps and trunks also create natural seating areas for park visitors, which are frequently used. Heck of a lot cheaper than installing a bunch of new benches everywhere, not to mention saving time and money leaving trunks in the park rather than cutting them up and dragging them out (to some contractor's backyard, no doubt).

3.8.We need to start looking at wheat flour and other grain flours as powdered sugar rather than a wholesome nutritious meal. Wheat = gluten = glucose = sugar.

3.9. There should be an active wildlife station on Mount Royal. There used to be one when I was a child..

Interior atrium of the ruelle des fortifications of the Centre de Commerce Mondial de Montréal in the Quartier International de Montréal. The grey stone building in the centre is just one of many fine examples of granite stone structures in Montreal. Most of the Appalachian Shield is comprised of granite and marble, so we have an abundance of both at our disposal as a building material.

3.10. I love granite as a building material. I also love the way the city has edged many of our new sidewalks in granite, it is more robust than regular sidewalk concrete and doesn't erode and chip the way concrete does. It's also aesthetically pleasing.

Sometimes I'll walk by a building with a granite exterior and I'll stop for a second and admire the way it glitters in the sun, or run my hands over it.. beautiful!

3.11. I read in a home renovation book recently that the larger the gravel is in a cement mix, the stronger that cement will be once it's dry. I wonder if this is indeed true...

3.12. Television came to Canada in the fall of 1952. Before television, the National Film Board of Canada was one of the only sources of visual entertainment in Canada. Folks came out to watch NFB films at local and impromptu theatres in droves, it was a regional event for many people, which is why NFB propaganda was so popular before the advent of television.Whole crowds of people would come from farms and factories to gather round a single projector in a school house or barn or outdoor screen and have a party of it.

NFB films are still popular today, however there is a noticeable difference between the documentary and propaganda films of the 1940-1950 era and the films being published today. In the 1940's NFB films were very optimistic, whereas today's films are quite pessimistic. It would be preferable if newer NFB films - and documentary films in general - could balance themselves between naive optimism and grudging pessimism.

I often avoid watching documentary films these days because while I appreciate and encourage free speech and uncensored public information, it doesn't help anyone if viewers are left with a feeling of impending doom at the end of the film. This only serves to terrorize the public and gives us a sense of powerlessness, impotence. If you must create a film - or music or any medium thereof - to educate the public on despotism and genocide, consider providing the public with constructive methods for combating said despotism.

There is a fine line between public education and public terrorism.

3.13. Lorne Greene's New Wilderness: one of my all time favourite television series when I was a child. Lorne Greene is also the reason why I still love Bonanza to this day. Him and Michael Landon. I should go on a Bonanza watching spree one of these days...

3.14. Late April, Easter Sunday 2011. Sitting in that secluded spot on the mountain, just above Rachel, I can see the Big O and hear the tam tams loud as day from all the way up here. The lawn of Jeanne-Mance park and the football field look so green, along with small groups of coniferous trees, red and white birch branches against the grey and brown buildings and tawn of spring. One mysterious tree is already budding, bright gold-green. There are only one or two bright gold-green trees lighting up among the thousands that haven't woken up yet. Bright maroon red, pink red, sunset red branches and white white birch..

3.15. This is not something I recommend or advocate or do very often, myself, but every once in awhile, when the snow isn't quite melted and there's less chance of forest fire..

***

It's dark, well past midnight, there is rain on the wind but I'm on Mount Royal tending a small campfire left behind by someone else. I've added dry leaves and small bits of wood and now that I've blown life back into the ashes, I sit down, calm and at peace and think of primitive magic. One of man's first tricks: the wonder and gift of creating fire. I feed small twigs and branches and oak leaves, thick pieces of bark fallen from trees over the winter. I hear traffic and airplanes glimmer across the night sky, roaring like quiet thunder... and I think.... tanzer... means dancer in German.

3.16. Old George, who lived at the corner of 6th Avenue and Roy in Dorval, the street I grew up on, had a sable coated german shepherd named Tanzer. I ask George what "Tanzer" means and he tells me.

Tanzer is a stoic, grouchy but handsome dog who scared the bejesus out of the neighbourhood kids who'd veer far away from the tall wooden fence around George's back yard any time Tanzer came near. I was scared of him too but loved dogs so much I'd simper up to the fence, let him sniff my hand, and sadly watch him turn away in complete disinterest.

When I was about 10 years old George adopted another shepherd, a small but friendly russet bitch he named Trouble. She was a wild lil pup who grew up to be an equally wild companion for grumpy ol' Tanzer. I couldn't resist. As soon as I saw Trouble in George's yard I ran up and introduce myself to her. She was a wonderful dog. Still scary, the way German Shepherds tend to be. Imposing. Stubborn. But smart.

I started taking Trouble for walks. Every few weeks I'd come by and ask George if I could take Trouble out and he'd sit and chat for a few minutes before he went and got her leash. Then we were off, usually to the abandoned field next to the apartment buildings behind my house, where my brothers and I would build forts.

After awhile Tanzer warmed up to me too and when I was big enough to take both dogs out at once, that's what I did. They were better company than most of the neighbourhood kids. It became a habit. When I was lonely or bored and wanted some company I'd take the neighbourhood dogs for a walk, for free. Kelley, the beautiful border collie across the street, my own dog Dutchess, a black Labrador, and Tanzer and Trouble too.

One day George showed me his big toe, which was half rotted through with cancer. A few months after that he told me his toe'd been clean taken off. A couple years passed and I noticed the dogs were becoming unkempt. George stopped cooking homemade meals for the dogs, beef stew, stopped brushing their fur, and he stopped coming out to mow the lawn and chat on his front porch. The house was boarded up and the dogs were taken away by his daughter, who told me Old George had passed away.

I went to the lake shore and thought for a long time.

Tanzer. Means "dancer" in German.


***


3.17. Weird the way hospitals and aerospace factories have the same odour.

3.18. Why are there no snakes or frogs on Mount Royal?

3.19. Normandy. My father once told us we were descendents of the Normands of France. He tells us he is the seventh son of the seventh son and my mother rolls her eyes, gimme a break, illusions of grandeur. But it's true, if you count all the daughters in between. My brother Keith takes it seriously. He loves our father dearly. I do too, but I can barely remember him. My father's name is Norman, which just compounds the issue. I'm only two, but I remember things..

First my father, then my mother leaves.. and a lot of stuff happens in between.

***

We're 14 and 16. My brother thinks the seventh son of the seventh son means my father was a Satanist. I roll my eyes at him. My brother and his illusions of grandeur. He paints his bedroom first blood red, doesn't like it, so a few weeks later he paints his room pitch black. He collects skulls and bones and cuts words into his skin. He pierces his own ears, sticks needles through the webs between his fingers, so I pierce my own ears too. It doesn't actually hurt. So I pierce my right ear again, three piercings in a row, sew fishing line and beads through two of them, a regular ear ring in the last and oldest, the one I begged my foster mother to let me have when I was eight.

I go to church every Sunday morning and Bible study on Thursday nights. My brother goes to the woods and drinks and smokes and parties with his girlfriend and neighbourhood punks. I go sometimes too. I'm stuck between two worlds and I'm alright with that. I interlope. I leave church every Sunday and come home to Ste-Rose with my Satanist brother and his skin-cutting body-piercing friends and life is interesting and it's all good.

I paint murals on my bedroom wall. A horse's head, poetry, landscapes and abstract doodles and my mother complains. My brother and his satanic blood red and pitch black darkness is a-okay but God help me if I paint beautiful things on my own bedroom wall.

My mother owes me two hundred dollars and won't give it to me so I steal her guitar. My brother shows me first C, then D, then G. My fingers hurt but I keep going, strum each painful chord one at a time, a single strum down. My brother is better than I am, he has the gift, but me, it takes time. The guitar is too big, the strings are too far off the fret. My brother has bigger fingers and I'm jealous he can hold the strings down so easily. But I keep going, keep going, keep at it, until I can strum my first few songs.

Every Rose Has It's Thorn.

Patience.

Blaze of Glory.

The Rose.

I go to church and I can play guitar now.

I sing gospel songs and do my best to play along.

***

3.20. With cloning and genetic manipulation, scientists are bringing the ancient gods, the gods of old, back to life again, though most do not know it.

3.21. Those hardest to love are the ones who need it the most.

3.22. Remaining cultures with powerful positive magic.. the Irish.. the Hasids.. the Africans.. the Indians.. our First Nations..

3.23. It is possible to be both critical and optimistic.

3.24. Hasids depend on their cars and minivans too much. I rarely see an adult Hasid riding a bicycle. Dudes, you guys need to get in touch with the Earth again, with your own bodies. I only criticize you because I love you so much. You have powerful magic, you need to set an example for others.

3.25. LaRouche is all about semantics but doesn't seem to be all that concerned with root causes. So much noise and so little action. Bad vibes from dude trying to sell me LaRouche propaganda on avenue du Parc near the corner of rue Bernard.

3.26. Prescribed affection: hug therapy > prescribed medication: drug therapy.

3.27. Aleutian Islands

3.28. The very word "government" implies despotism.

3.29. Mandatory prison education. Basic Math, English, Biology, and Health science.

3.30. Alvar Aalto: 1898-1976. Finnish architect.

3.31. Helena Syrkus: 1900-1982. Polish architect.

3.32. Kunio Maekawa: 1905-1986. Japanese architect. Worked with le Corbusier.

3.33. Norman Bel Geddes: 1893-1958. American theatrical and industrial designer.

3.34. Odd how the higher the value and income of a neighbourhood is, the less people use their yards and homes. I walk through these wealthy hoods and rarely see anyone out enjoying their yards, no families having a nice BBQ dinner together, no children playing ball on the street, no adults sitting around laughing and playing music and having a drink or two. Almost as if the more wealth a person accumulates the less soul they possess.

3.35. Why are red brick buildings so charming?

3.36. I keep mentioning this, but it's ridiculous how much noise pollution automobile traffic creates! It is extremely irritating/disturbing.

3.37. Beeping signals for the blind at crosswalks.. are they supposed to beep when the lights are red? Or are they simply indicators that there is in fact a button for sight-impaired folks to push? Because there are several signals beeping constantly at busy intersections regardless of whether the light is green or red and it is quite disconcerting. Mildly ironic that sight-impaired individuals seem to be a wee bit more cognitively aware than our own city workers are since I keep coming across malfunctioning signals for the blind and yet have yet to witness a blind pedestrian in a street accident.

notice the braille to the right of the moss

If any of you city workers are reading this, please check the beeping signal-for-the-blind at the main cross-walk on avenue du Parc in front of the George-Etienne Cartier memorial, as well as the ever-beeping signals along chemin Cote-Ste-Catherine. Merci!

3.38. The punks and vagrants seem to be doing a better job - without pay! - of taking care of Mount Royal than the Amis de la Montagne and city workers seem to be doing, for pay. Local punks have been carefully placing fallen logs and dead trees across unofficial pathways to deter cyclists and other visitors from crashing through the woods, which stops cyclists/visitors from killing small trees and bushes and countless plants along the way.

These same anonymous landscapers have rebuilt the small brook north-east of the of the George-Etienne Cartier memorial. They've obviously put a lot of time and effort into their work, moving all the stones and large rocks by hand. Whoever you guys are... I love you! Keep up the good work. I wish I knew who you were! The city should be paying you guys for your work, damn it.

3.39. I need to find out the name of what locals call, "scrub maple".. it's such a fast growing tree.

3.40. I wish city workers and private landscapers would create manmade paths on top of organic pathways rather than creating new - and completely unused - pathways based on in-organic design. Just because it looks pretty on paper doesn't mean it's functional in practice.

3.41. Per Wikipedia:

Richard Phillips Feynman ( /ˈfaɪnmən/; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, jointly with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. He developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world. 

3.42. Young, pretty mulatto chick walking by me yesterday, as I was cycling along Decarie zooming past the old Blue Bonnets site to trade some kribs for some rasboras at the new Aquatropicale store at Decarie Square (also the site of the Dollar Cinema, incidentally), grins at me, chuckling, calls out, "tan dammit! tan dammit!". I look down at my pale-ass arms and laugh.

Tan, damn it!

3.43. Thucydides: c. 460 BC - 395 BC. "War is a stern teacher".

Gotta love CBC.

3.44. I understand the appeal of planting annuals because they require more turnover, so growers can make a steady profit every year by selling new plants to gardeners and garden centers, and to their clients. But perennials are more appropriate, they're better for the environment, and they don't create as much waste and loss of manpower.

Landscape designers, growers, gardeners, and our municipal department should stop planting annuals, or at least only plant them in small containers, and plant perennials in our city gardens, as well as private gardens. Our horticultural and landscape design industry should stop focusing on short-term profit and reeducate themselves, focus on organic gardening, building roof top gardens, vertical farms, next tier horticultural projects. These types of projects create more profit in any case as they require more labour and materials, and tend to cater to clients with more disposable income.

3.45. Please, for the love of your own damn city and planet, stop creating Make Work Projects. There are so many necessary public works and private projects that need to be built and maintained. There is no need to build half-shod public works and low-quality private projects just to ensure future work and profit. Stop draining city coffers with low-quality work, and stop pointing the finger at the mayor, point it at your own damn selves: shady-ass construction crews and landscape companies.

3.46. Plastic signs too easily destroyed, barely last a full season. Aluminum/stainless steel ones last for years.

3.47. Don't mow at least 3 to 5 feet around base of trees, growth protects the roots from being exposed, trees healthier.

3.48. Few old growth trees in Montreal, sadly.

3.49. Something healing and powerful about pine woods. Wonder what it is... the sap, maybe? Stays fluid in both hot and cold?

3.50. There should be a pedestrian cross-walk at Esplanade and rue Mont-Royal.

3.51. Sense of community is very important. This is the most notable difference between Vancouver and Montreal and why people tend to leave Vancouver to come back east. There is a greater sense of community on the east coast. Perhaps because the east coast has had more time to grow organically, to set down psychological roots. Toronto is somewhere in between Vancouver and Montreal. Toronto has a sense of community, but also a sense of social alienation. Vancouver has virtually no sense of community, but the city is slowly taking root. In a few decades Vancouver should be more settled, but only if the gap between rich and poor is addressed. See: human population not using yards and homes in high income communities. Deserted yards and homes = lack of sense of community = social alienation.

3.52. Neptune's Banquet

Peace, bastards.

3.53. The more I learn about pure and applied science the more I realize no one really knows what's going on and all "laws" of science are arbitrary hubris.

3.54. Paraphrased: you can enter a room filled with evil and darkness and light a candle and the darkness will flee, the room will be illuminated with light. But the opposite does not happen, if darkness enters a room filled with light the darkness will immediately fade to nothing. Darkness cannot exist in light. But light can exist in darkness.

3.55. I (current) = V (voltage) ÷ R (resistance)

or V = I x R

3.56. Cardinal tetras are a much better choice for the home aquarium than neon tetras, which tend to die off very quickly. Cardinal tetras are more robust, and more colourful.

3.57. The air quality around lower Peel at rue Williams STINKS. I had to cover my mouth with cloth it was so bad. Some building in that area has a subpar ventilation and air filtration system and needs to be replaced. It has the same air quality as the incinerator in the meat packing plant at the corner of Parc & Bernard, thick choking exhaust. That said, it appears said meat packing plant has recently revamped it's exhaust system (or stopped incinerating carcasses on site), I have not smelled ye olde animal carcass holocaust coming from that building for several months now. Lets hope it stays that way.

3.58. I really need to gather my stones and check out the new Nouveau Palais, it's right across the freakin' street. The possibility of bumping into Pop Boss skeers me... I can take on a big ol' mean German Shepherd for Christ's sake but Pop-dude makes me run away faster than you can say goddamn.

3.59. I seem to have a weird and mild allergic reaction to bananas. More than a couple bananas per day results in a histamine reaction. Also, is it just me or do organic bananas taste spicier than regular bananas? Like cinnamon.. or nutmeg. Or something.

3.60. Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless:

"Anything that happens, happens.

Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.

Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.

It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though."

Montreal in the distance..

love-based righteousness vs. greed-based selfishness

I have this constant running debate in my mind: do I do what I know to be morally right and true, or do I do what is in my own best interest?

Sometimes I block my blog from public view because I'm afraid that the topics I'm discussing and opening up about are going to damage my career, which really comes down to this: I'm afraid I won't be able to make a crapload of money because I'll be punished by the corporate world for speaking the truth.

So I have a choice to make: do I continue to speak the truth, or do I protect myself so I can make more money than I actually need to survive?

It disturbs me that someone so morally centered sometimes has a difficult time deciding between love-based righteousness and greed-based selfishness. (Morally centered, not morally perfect.. there's a big difference! I am far from being morally perfect, thank the gods).

If I have such a hard time choosing between right and wrong, if my moral compass wavers from time to time, it must be even more difficult for those who are not yet self-actualized. And this worries me a bit.

Still..

I choose truth and righteousness.

I choose the power of love.

In the beginning there was light

When I think of my childhood I remember the earliest days first, when I was about 3 years old, living with my mother and brother in an apartment complex in Lasalle. While it may not necessarily have been intentional, my mother liked to sleep in a lot, she would often leave my brother and I to our own devices, so we'd sneak out of the house and wander around the neighbourhood together before she woke up. We were what parents today call, "Free Range Kids".

Like I said, it wasn't intentional, but it happened anyway.

This is my favourite memory from my childhood: three years old and wandering around the 'hood with my five year old brother, Keith, or sometimes wandering around by myself. The only time we ever had an issue is when my brother and I scaled the wire link fence around the communal pool in early spring and a couple of nearby adults came running to keep us from jumping in or doing something equally silly. We were fully conscious that jumping into a pool filled with junk and mud and winter thaw was probably a bad idea. We didn't need to be told that it was dangerous, we already knew. Children are nowhere near as idiotic and irresponsible or incapable of rational judgement as adults would like to believe.

We also used to wander around Belmont Park, up in Montreal North, before it was shut down. Belmont Park wasn't like La Ronde, where you have to pay admission in order to get through the gates. At Belmont Park you could walk right on in and wander around taking in the sights and sounds without having to pay admission, so it didn't matter if you were rich or poor, either way you could walk in and experience the energy and joy of Belmont's carnival.

These were good times in Montreal.. late 70's, early 80's.. the hype and excitement of the '76 Olympics had revived Montreal's '67 Man and His World exhibit. The city was full of tourists and money and booze and joie de vivre flowed freely throughout the entire city. The Old Port was bustling, the night life was electric, people were happy in Montreal.

I haven't felt the same positive energy in Montreal since the early 80's, almost 20 years, not until Gerald Tremblay became mayor and began his pro-festival and Quartier des Spectacles programs. I've heard a lot of slack from some people regarding Mayor Tremblay, but if you were in Montreal in the 70's and 80's you'd remember what the city was like back then and understand that the mayor is bringing the city back to life rather than stifling creativity and public works the way Pierre Bourque did. Bourque destroyed this city! I have seen nothing but good things since Tremblay became mayor. If Montrealers need to point the finger at anyone, point them at the Italian and Jewish and Irish mafia, they're the ones defrauding Montreal and building sub-par public works while demanding the highest pay possible. Tremblay can only do so much, he's one single man trying to lead and care for almost 4 million people.

But I digress.

These were good times in Montreal, and the happiest moments of my childhood.

***

It gets darker from there on in.

In 1980, just after my 3rd birthday, after my last summer of being a Free Range Kid, the government stepped in and removed my brother and I from my mother's custody and placed my brother and I in foster care. Our first foster home was in Notre-Dame-de-Grace, a place called Hawkins Home. All of the terrible stories you hear about foster care, kids being locked up and put into solitary confinement, kids being strangled and sat on and abused in ways that never leave noticeable bruises, kids being refused food as punishment, kids being taunted and teased and insulted and belittled, ahh it all happened at Hawkins Home.

Hawkins Home was a short-term placement foster home, meaning kids weren't supposed to stay there for more than a month or two. But my brother and I got lost in the shuffle somehow and we ended up staying there for almost 6 months. All because my mother liked to sleep in and we liked to wander around the neighbourhood without adult supervision, which is what it all comes down to, pretty much.

My mother was neglectful but not outright abusive, with the exception of the time she tried to drown us when we were babies because she wasn't able to cope with being a single parent. She had absolutely no support system and, like many parents at their wits end, considered killing herself and her children to save us from suffering. I get that. But the fact remains, she didn't actually go through with it, and this one incident is the only abusive thing my mother ever did to us in our early childhood. There was really no good reason to take us away from our mother. Some nosy neighbours complained about us wandering around the neighbourhood alone and that was that, the government took us away from a relatively benign Free Range lifestyle and locked us up with the violent child abusers that ran Hawkins Home.

You have to understand, also, that there is serious conflict between English child protection services and Quebecois child protection services. They are even run by different agencies, or at least were when we were kids. The Quebecois system refuses to help anglophone children regardless of the amount of abuse or suffering anglophone children experience. If you're an anglophone child in Montreal you're shit out of luck if you need protection. The government will simply "forget" about you, send you home, or place you in high security juvenile detention centres until you finally give up and decide to go back home to your abusive parents all on your own. It's one of the most horrible consequences of the Quebecois sovereignty conflict: anglophone children are mangled and abused by the very system that is mandated to protect them.

In any case. After Hawkins Home my brother and I were placed in a foster home run by a strict and cruel Catholic nun named Carmelita Currie. She wasn't a monster by any stretch of the imagination, she simply did not believe in "babying" children, she believed in the "tough love" approach. Which really translates as abuse by withholding the affection and love and nurturing a traumatized child requires in order to heal and become a productive member of society. I respect Carmelita, she did the best she could with the resources available to her at the time, but she was still a hard cruel woman who straightened out quite a few kids, but also abused quite a few children as well.

Thanks to the affluent and wealthy Catholic community, Carm's foster home was well funded. We had the best of everything; nice clothes, a top notch education, health care, and healthy meals every day. It was run like a boot camp, which is probably why some children who stayed at Carm's eventually joined the army and police force. It was a natural graduation from child boot camp to adult boot camp. We were institutionalized.

I won't go into great detail, but will only say my most traumatic experiences at Carm's were when Father Dave would come to visit, which would traumatize the boys, who then in turn took their anger out on me, the only girl in the house. What stands out the most are the seances and ritual abuse where Father Dave would take the children and perform religious ceremonies.. I have one particular memory where he tried to evoke demonic entities by chanting latin phrases, using me to channel whatever gods or spirits he was trying to communicate with. In simpler words, the dude tried to possess me with demons. He did the same with the boys, but usually behind closed doors, so I can't speak for their experiences.

Sister Carm refused to listen to us when we complained, and for all her intelligence didn't see a correlation between the kids' night terrors and Father Dave's visits. When we complained to her of abuse she told us we were lying and making things up to tarnish Father Dave's reputation. Father Dave told Carm, and I can almost quote verbatim as I heard him say it several times, that the boys were "misconstruing his affection for them because they were starved for male attention and as such didn't know the difference between abuse and innocent affection". But of course we knew the difference. Affection doesn't terrorize children.

I had nightmares for quite a while after moving into Carm's, as did my brother, for very good reason. My biological family is atheist and we were never exposed to religion until we moved into Carm's, so being inundated with violent imagery and ideology, being exposed to paintings of people being beaten and bleeding and hung on crosses, and threatened with that same punishment if we were "bad", yeah, that's some terrifying stuff for full grown adults never mind children. Catholicism in and of itself was a traumatic environment to be raised in, the added ritual abuse only exacerbated the trauma.

It's not that I believed in demons or spirits that was so disturbing but rather that a grown adult was using children for their own means. I felt like a rag doll being thrown around, passed around from person to person, situation to situation, and I had no say in the matter, I was powerless. It was also surreal to understand, at 5 years old, 8 years old, 10 years old, that I was more aware and emotionally mature than the very adults who were supposed to be caring for and protecting us.

***

Children say, "that's not fair!" and they're right, it isn't fair.

Adults say, "that's the way life is" and they're wrong. Living in terror isn't the natural order of being. Oppression is a manmade construct, not universal law.

***

My brother acted out more as the years went by at Carm's and no one stepped in to help us, gradually escalating until he finally broke down and started attacking anyone who picked on him. He was a quiet, gentle kid and he was teased and picked on a lot by his peers in school. He was a geek and a loner, and he was a strong, intelligent, attractive child too, he was the perfect target for school bullies. But he wasn't a pushover. He would take the bullying for weeks, sometimes months on end, every single day at school, until he finally blew up at them. And when my brother blew up... he EXPLODED!

My brother and I are similar in that way. We're quiet, gentle people, until people attack us, and even then we can take a beating without lashing out. But if that line is crossed, when it goes from bullying to outright violent assault, we fight back, and we fight back hard. If you punch us once we'll punch you ten times in return, and we'll make sure it hurts, to make the point that we may be meek and gentle, but if you hurt us, we'll put you in your place so you never think about hurting us again. Extreme self-defense.

So it shocked teachers and social workers when my brother would be bullied for months on end, months! And then he'd go from being this sweet, gentle kid to this angry child full of rage. He wouldn't just punch his attackers, he'd tear them apart until someone finally pulled him off his attackers' backs. And I was the same. And it scared our teachers and social workers. But it was their own damn fault for allowing us to be bullied and refusing to protect us in the first place. If adults wouldn't protect us then we would damn well protect ourselves.

But being a little girl who lashed out at bullies, and being a little boy who lashed out at bullies are two completely different situations. I was consoled and understood, while my brother was punished and abused even more. By the time my brother was 12 years old his teachers had had enough, and Carm had given up on trying to help him, and the government decided to remove him from foster care and placed him at Shawbridge Boys' Farm, a high security juvenile detention centre in the Laurentians. He was only 12 years old and at that time one of the youngest children to ever be placed in Shawbridge. He was a child placed with 16 to 18 year old violent offenders in one of the most horrendous and abusive juvenile detention centres in Canadian history.

I, for my part, stayed at Carm's until I was 14, the longest any child has ever stayed at Carm's.

I was there for 9 years.

***

Somehow (I blame genetics) my brother and I escaped our pasts and grew up to be responsible, kindhearted, productive adults.

When my brother was 17, a hardcore punk begging for money on the streets of downtown Montreal, he met a kindhearted man and they started discussing computers and sound production. Keith had been taking sound production courses at Dawson College, and was one of those types of kids who could take apart a toaster and build a radio out of spare parts. He's brilliant. He is, in my opinion, a genius. He impressed this guy so much that this man hired him to work on some IT projects at the company he managed, Aon Canada. My brother did good work and was hired as a permanent employee. Keith stopped living on the street, found an apartment, met a girl, and settled down. He worked with Aon for more than a decade before branching off and starting his own IT company.

When I was 17 I moved into my first apartment and found a job cleaning tables in the food court of Cavendish Mall, in Cote St-Luc. A year later I moved out to British Columbia and landed a job as a credit manager for Custom Paper Ltd., a small family-run paper company located in Richmond, BC, where I worked for a year. I still have fond memories of Custom Paper and the Batcheller family, they're pretty nice people and it was a pleasure working for them. I then moved on to The Personnel Department, where I worked as an administrative assistant and accounting clerk for several years, building up experience until I qualified for a compliance job at Scotia McLeod, a subsidiary of Scotiabank. A few years later I also branched out and started an ethical accounting firm, which I still run, part time, to this day. Unfortunately a lot of the work I do is pro-bono and I ain't rich, but it's a conscious choice. My work is honourable, which more than pays for itself, karmically.

***

But when I think of my childhood, I skip over all the bits in between. I remember my brother and I wandering around Montreal together, three and five years old, free and curious and happy, and unsullied.

The Bible got it wrong. In the beginning wasn't darkness.

In the beginning, there was light.