Seeking Answers for the 13th Game

I did a night shift last night, the first time after many months. I should have made a date with a whiskey bottle when I got home, or used some other means of hardcore sedation. Instead, I rode along with the momentum of residual anxious restlessness doing all sorts oddly random household chores: from fixing furniture, to troubleshooting tech components, to laundering non-clothing items, to making perogies and meatballs.*

The only good thing I can say about the night shift is that I endured it, but as always, there followed bad physiological effects, and a mind that gets warped into making strangely random observations and weird connections, especially when I start touring around town. My impulse control gets drastically lowered. For some strange reason, when I wandered by some place, and with my insomnia-addled brain, I somehow was triggered to remember that it was the same spot a while ago where I saw Yann Martel . . . If you recognize the name, yes, it's the same Yann Martel who is the author of Life of Pi. He resides here in Saskatoon, and I see him around from time to time; as much as I admire his work as an author I chose not to bother him, or impose upon his time.** After that day of seeing him at this one particular place, I was compelled to read another book he wrote: Beatrice and Virgil.*** Like  Life of Pi, animals are used to add an allegorical element about the human condition in the story, this one is centred around the Holocaust. I don't wish to spoil the story for anyone, but I will say that at the end of the book, there is a set of "games": really a series of questions related to deeper themes of morality centered on stuff people actually faced in the Holocaust. The last question, Game 13, is simply a blank page for you to fill in after you've deliberated all the dilemmas and ethical issues from the previous twelve, and you are left trying to figure out what your consequential place is in the scope of this most horrendous human tragedy. So now I'm sitting here blowing off the dust of some of the junk in the attic that is my insomniac mind by means of writing, re-examining the 13th game.

I only came up with a single word as a broad query for Game 13: a name of a place, Drohobych. Attached to it are a lot of "what if" questions. I found myself getting hung up on this particular word when I thought of the history of World War II, the Holocaust and the stuff dredged up in that book Yann wrote. Drohobych is the name of town in what is now western Ukraine. Historically, throughout the time since its founding sometime in the fourteenth century, it has been claimed and conquered numerous times by various Eastern European empires and nation states. According to my findings in Wikipedia, in 1939, the census showed that almost 40% that town's population was Jewish. During Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, this town was seized by the Nazi troops, and the Jewish ghetto there was liquidated. Thousands of these citizens were rounded up and shipped off to the Bełzec extermination camp in Poland. The census information of that place afterward in the 1950s then had only 2% of its population listed as being Jewish.

Why is this of significance to me? On a formal level, I studied some of the broader historical patterns of force from that country when I used to work in one of the Ukrainian cultural centres here. On a personal level, it was out of genealogical research. This is the community where my grandparents came from before they immigrated to Canada. Originally, they didn't leave there with the intent to escape anything they foresaw as a prelude to war or oppression, they simply left to try to prosper and garner a new life in Canada. Luckily and thankfully, they managed to get out of Drohobych before the Soviets/Nazis set foot in there. If they hadn't done so, of course, I wouldn't now exist. Had they remained there though, in what would become such a volatile and hostile place, they could have been damned to subjugation or slaughter by tyranny under either fascists or communists. They themselves weren't Jewish, and may not have been overtly targeted for extermination, but it is just as awful of a thought that if they had remained there, that they could have lost their humanity from being swept up in the insanity of that time and place, and could have been pressed into being servants who either actively or indirectly took part in some role the purging of the Jews in that region.

It was a doomed place, where higher ideals of justice and right and wrong were erased by the more immediate need for self-preservation. There seemed to be no right side to be on during those times as a Ukrainian, and it was worse if you were Jewish. Before the Nazis came, Ukraine already suffered a man-made famine under the Stalin regime, known there as the Holodomor (it roughly translates to murder by hunger), where the land, grain, and food was confiscated.  Millions died, and the living got starved into submitting to the Stalinist authority. When the Nazis came a few years later, many Ukrainians welcomed them as liberators from this regime. However, to avoid being slaughtered off by these new invading overlords, people were forced to comply with measures which meant that maybe only a few of the surrounding neighbours they knew got shipped off someplace on a train, never to return. Being put in that dilemma, it was comparatively better than watching you and all your family and neighbours being executed, or starved to death, for non-compliance. It was a shameful tragedy all around.

I have no contact with those who are blood relatives who still live in Ukraine; who may possibly still inhabit Drohobych. The decades of political and social isolationism through the communist years effectively severed such ties with our families. I have been ignorant of their histories and accounts of who they were as people living through such an ordeal and how it made them what they are today. If I could speak with any of them who witnessed such stuff during that phase of history, for the sake of gleaning answers to Game 13, I would be asking them things like:

• What happened with the family during the years of the Holodomor?
• Was anybody in the family in the military during WWII? If so, which side were they on? (Red Army, Nazi collaborators, independent partisans?) 
• What did you do when they came to round up the Jewish citizens in the village?
• How did you reconcile with all these things afterward?

I'm sure a lot of the answers would be disquieting and unnerving. I'd probably be better off not knowing some of them.

I don't know why these reflections of such morbid things strike me now. Perhaps it's a consequence of the stress of the series of negotiations I'm involved in, which seems to be wearing at me as we'll. Perhaps it's because I'm going through something like what they did in Drohobych during the war years, minus the matter of life and death urgency: having the back against the wall and the only options given seem to be just different entrances into hell; dealing with powers of authority who are indifferent about anyone's welfare. Maybe the thoughts of my grandparents' courageous choice to get out of the old country is a prompt for me to think more seriously of making some sort of exodus of my own: before seeing things taking a turn for the worse.

*- Two foods commonly found in the community Fall suppers that happen in October and November in the rural towns of Saskatchewan. Perhaps I was getting nostalgic.
** - I'm not divulging when, where, and what circumstances it happened, I see no need to violate any aspect of his privacy. Sure, it was tempting to gush, and accost him with praise, platitudes, comments and questions about his work, but acting like a star-struck groupie isn't respectful, nor does it make for a good first impression to someone whom you regard, even indirectly, as a mentor. I'll leave my appreciation for his brilliance as a writer to be reflected here while still respecting his peace. It was enough that we just exchanged good mornings with each other as civilized men, as we each went about our separate ways to attend to our own affairs.
***- Stretching leather while fixing my furniture today made me think of taxidermy, which was probably another prompt to remember the book. You'll have to read it to get it.

Praise and Thanks to Alan

November continues to be a month of solemn salutes, tributes, and commemorations. For this year, along with things like Remembrance day and Movember, the month holds the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy down in the states. That event happened before I was born*, in a nation apart from me, and thus I'm more ignorant of it than one who actually lived through that piece of history; but I look upon that day as when the best possible seed for a continuous destiny of positive growth and change for the Americans had died as well, and nothing ever really appeared as a decent replacement in any other equivalent form since then.

Today marks another sad anniversary of sorts. November 16th of this year is the 40th anniversary of the passing of a person who has been a lot more impressionable to me than someone like Kennedy was. I rarely bring attention to the people whom I regard as heroes, icons, and mentors. However for today, it would feel wrong for me not to write something about him.

Alan Wilson Watts
January 6th, 1915 - November 16th, 1973

Alan Watts was a philosopher, and a keen intellect who dared to bring eastern religions to light, comparing them with those ideas of a largely conservative western contemporary establishment at the time, examining it all with strong objectivity, and yet somehow avoiding to "preach" about such things. He often introduced himself as a self-acclaimed "spiritual entertainer"; and he was very effective at this role. It was through his lectures that I was introduced to Zen Buddhism, one thing I began to find more solace in thereafter. What I most liked about Alan was not only his choice of many lecture topics, but his manner of delivering them. I admired him most as a speaker. Whenever I want to really focus on communicating something with a great degree of fortitude and depth, yet with an eloquent, calm, humorous and kindly manner, it's his voice that enters my head that I use as a model for doing it**. He probably did a lot to show me how to freely engage, and courageously make, an esoteric subject much less intellectually abstract, at least as a writer, and proved to me that even liberal and nonsensical use of sound effects in the course of a serious discussion is a good thing and can do a lot to make your point, and that people can take what you say seriously without you taking yourself too seriously. Watts started off being a religious interpreter, but he progressed to examining things more in the spheres of more science and anthropology. What I most appreciate him for is for ultimately being an interpreter of consciousness and how it fits in reality. He made thinking on deeper issues of existence look like fun! Listen to him long and often enough, and you will never allow yourself to ever have another boring thought ever again when you wonder about the metaphysical things in nature.

How exactly I discovered the works and wisdom of Alan Watts escapes my memory: it's still a mystery to me. I just remember that it happened about a decade ago, at a time when I felt most downtrodden, the most burnt-out, and when I was at my worst in failing to feel like a human being of some worth. I was very disgruntled, depressed, and disillusioned. I totally snapped after dealing with a lot of stress, and at the same time being treated like a tool/peon by fools who claimed to be religious, or acting like they were morally superior to me; but at the same time, would press me to do their dirty work, slander, backstab, and would throw me under the bus as easily as flipping a coin. I became distrustful of everyone and completely bereft of a spiritual centre, or an inner happy place to retreat to; and there was no way I was going to return back to those from whom I felt the most betrayal. To this day, I regard religious zealousness and sanctimony, and those who try to be authoritarian through such means, as being far more perverse than any of the vices spelled out by the seven deadly sins. Listening to Alan's lectures helped me emerge from the hatred I was feeling for much of humanity, to finding a curiosity and appreciation about things and wonders of everyday life, and finding more of a place for myself in it. His words and teachings did a lot to rescue me.

I only wish that something more happened that could have rescued him. I wish he lived longer, and I wish I discovered this guy and used him as a teacher and mentor much earlier on in my life. I think I would have made so many better decisions about: who to befriend, how to be rebellious in a manner that's benevolent***, where to find peace, and how to question other people's motives without putting them on the defensive. Alan was not without his own foibles and troubles. Despite being such a personable lecturer, his own interpersonal relationships weren't so easy for him. He had been married three times; each marriage dissolving into separation and divorce. His own death was caused by a heart condition, suspected to be complicated and worsened by chronic overuse of alcohol; dying on this day at a relatively young age of 58 years old. I'm thankful for the treasure trove of his writings and lectures that he had recorded during the time that he was with us on this Earth.

I can't explain the thinking of Alan Watts better than he could himself. So, to close, I'm including the following links of a couple of his more enjoyable/notable talks. Feel free to explore and click on more of his lectures in You Tube, or check out his podcasts, if you wish.

You're It -by Alan Watts

 

Animation by Matt Stone and Trey Parker: the creators of South Park. 

*- In a nation that never had any political assassinations of any of its leaders I must add . . . 
**- I have to sometimes watch myself while I'm doing it though as I speak: because strangely, the British accent he had tends to sneak into the choice of words I use if I'm not careful.
***- Like how both Buddha and Jesus did.
 

In Remembrance (추억의)

For this time of the year, I felt a need to share this memory from an experience I had last August. I was riding home one weekend afternoon. I spotted a young Asian woman trying to wave down motor traffic from the side of the street. When she saw me approaching, she dashed out onto the road in the path of my bike; forcing me to stop. She was a bit flustered and anxious, trying to explain to me in broken English that she was lost and trying to find a local address. Once she calmed down, and was more readily able to understand me, I managed to draw her a crude map on the back of an envelope to show her where to go. I asked her where she was from. In her reply, it wasn't what she said, but how she said it that struck me to the bone. She told me that she was from South Korea, drawing out extra emphasis on the word "south". She said it very deliberately and adamantly, like she had to make it clearly known to me that she wasn't one of them, as if to completely disassociate herself from something very vile and evil. I came to realizing on that late summer day that this year would be the 60th anniversary of the end of hostilities of the Korean War*.

It's a bloody shame that there is still this despicable geopolitical abomination on this planet called North Korea, with its six decade long dynasty of wicked totalitarianism. The notable tone in that young lady's response was a mixture of both pride and gratitude of who she was, and of a sorrow laden shame that there are these people who are ethnically identical to her, but have been perverted and corrupted culturally and politically; rendered into some sort of sub-species without rights or freedoms. These same people could be directly related to her, but at the same time conditioned such that on a simple order, they may be turned against her to kill her and her loved ones without any second thought. As bad as that all sounds, it could be so much worse. That entire peninsula could have been overrun by the Communist forces, and there would be about another 50 million more Koreans today being starved, oppressed and subjected to the depraved indoctrination by the Kim legacy. That would be 50 million more Koreans under this type of dictatorship: a number 10 million greater than the current population of Canada; and we have our veterans to thank for not allowing that to happen. Had the political entities on the side of South Korea, with any real interest in democracy and human rights, during that time had foresight into what North Korea would eventually be devolving into, there probably would still have been fighting going on until that peninsula was entirely liberated.

We have failed for a long time to take a better reckoning of this fact. We have been more dismissive of this time, and undervaluing our veterans' role during that point of history, somehow putting it behind our nation's victories and sacrifices in the European theatres of battle in scale, scope and significance. The media and political forces have stooped to calling our military presence on the Korean peninsula a "police action", or simply terming it the "Korean Conflict"** That has made us ignorant of the not only the real historical impact it had, but also in terms of the suffering and horror soldiers and civilians alike endured. Sadly, our perception of that period only gets viewed most commonly through dark comedy reruns of M*A*S*H. I would never insult or disrespect our veterans who were involved there by diminishing it with lesser labels; by calling it something other than what it was. It was indeed a war.

This is my special thanks to those men and women, to the Canadians and other UN force veterans, who served for that critical time in history. I'm sure the same appreciation comes from that young lady I helped in August, and the remaining 50 million free Koreans, who are prosperous today in comparison to their subjugated northern neighbours. Peace be with you all.

I see the greeting of "Have a Happy Remembrance Day" being shared on signs and posts on Facebook. I know people mean it as a good intention, or are at least grateful for a statutory holiday, but I think the more correct and appropriate greeting we should share is: "Have an Appreciative Remembrance Day". War, or memory of it, shouldn't exactly incite the feeling of "happiness", except for its ending. We have to be wary of the fact that the rights and freedoms we have today didn't come to us cheaply. Let us rightly honour those who gave some sacrifice, either in deed or in blood, in order that our generations in peace time have rights and freedom.

*Technically, the war between those nations hasn't ended: no official peace treaty has been signed between the two nations; it has been just been a prolonged cease-fire.
**- When you have a nation as large as Communist China, backed with a million man Red Army, involved as an oppositional force, there is no way in hell you can trivialize that situation as a "police action" or a simple "conflict".

Hunkering Down between Covers

For me, the most unwelcome sign that marks the first day of when Old Man Winter comes to stay is not the actual sight of the snow, nor any characteristic of the chill in the air. It's from something like being awoken in the morning, like I was this morning, to the wretched sound coming from outside of ice being chipped, and scraped off from encrusted windshields in the parking lot or from the sidewalks, especially when the snow follows a soaking rain, like it did last night. I can detect other's frustration, loathing, and negativity surrounding the ordeal by the force and rhythm used with their scraping tools along these slick and pebbly surfaces as they are smacked with the disappointing reality of having to chisel and rasp away at their ice-encased vehicles just to get into them. It is a sound representing things grinding down to a bleak despair for most, in knowing just how much extra effort and energy it takes to just move around and do even simple tasks for the next few months.

From that noise alone, even while my eyes are closed in the dark of my room, with my curtains drawn, I can readily form a perfectly vivid and exact picture in my mind as to what the actual scene outside looks like as to: how much snow fell, where it blew in and accumulated, what its exact texture and moisture composition is, and just how bad the conditions of the roads and streets are, all before I even try to move out of bed . . . which by then, I don't want to do. I wish I could impress you with some intricate and elegant Sherlock Holmes-ian style and manner of deduction for determining how all this happens precognitively, but it really doesn't involve anything that intellectually sophisticated. It's an instinct that one eventually gets after living here in this particular region, as a Canadian; enduring too many years of long harsh miserable winters. One innately develops an instinct for sensing accurately how inclement the weather gets out there without even making direct contact with it; with even the most minimal of sensory input. It becomes a feature of the mind that one doesn't want to admit or appreciate having: since once this instinct is triggered, a long depression tends to follow.


A small sample of some of the other covers that I like slip
 between other than the ones on my bed. If the books in my
entire collection of digital editions were physical hardcopies,
they would make every shelf in this place buckle and break. 

After getting up and glancing outside out the window to discover how accurate and correct my suspicions were, I sadly stowed my bike away, and started rummaging around my storage spaces for my woollies, skiing equipment, and block heater cords. I also uncovered and sorted out all the remaining physical bits of reading material I own. It reminds me that I've been going into a slump with that too: acquiring and reading the "right" books for my personal hardcopy library. There are books that can be read over and left hidden away as digital copies, and others that somehow merit some distinction of what I'd like to incorporate as concrete physical features in my dominion: ones that are true representations and summations of my personal character and identity. E-reader apps and tablets are wonderful things, which I will always use, but they lack the ability to project an air of your true passions and interests in an organic fashion and fusion into your living space that books with actual physical covers do. It's kind of the same way for people who collect album covers/sleeves to reflect their musical/artistic tastes, even though current digital audio technology has left analog LP records in the dust in terms of sound fidelity ages ago. It's sentimentality: something in people who need, or long for, a physical object or icon to make abstract things of thought and memory coalesce together.

Here is a small list of some of the hardcopies of fiction and non-fiction I'd proudly have in my home library that I have yet to collect:

• The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Complete Works of H.G. Wells
• Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer
• A Clockwork Orange - Antony Burgess
• Gulliver's Travels - Johnathan Swift
• Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
• Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
• The Alchemist - Paulo Coello
• Life of Pi - Yann Martel (I had one, but Ella chewed it to pieces as a puppy. . . BAD GIRL!)*
• Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
• Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson
• Seeing Farther - Bill Bryson
• Physics of the Future - Michio Kaku
• Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond
• The Origin of the Species - Charles Darwin

*- Perhaps another advantage to having an e-reader. . . unless your dog starts to chew on that too.