NEW ENERGY AND SOME IDEAS TO CHEW ON

I headed out this evening on my bicycle to go hear Lewis Lapham speak. I've been a huge fan forever - what would life have been like these last thirty years without Harpers magazine and Lapham's clear-eyed editorial writing about politics and life?  He was as interesting and clear and fruitful in person as he is on the page.

But I have to say that the guy interviewing him on stage did a terrible job. It was so frustrating! .The guy's an editor at Walrus magazine. He may be OK at his job, but he sure should stay away from doing interviews.  His deafness to Lapham's answers and thinkings-out-loud was shocking. And enraging too, he wasted all kinds of opportunities to take the conversation to interesting places.

Why am I going on and on about this?  Well perhaps because it was a reminder of how often people screw up for similar reasons: because they are so busy wanting to seem clever or hard-working or otherwise impressive that they are blind and deaf to the situation or to the person they are talking to or whatever.  And so it was here.  The interviewer had his little prep sheet with facts and figures and preset questions and he worked his way through it, oblivious of all the lovely pathways that Lapham's answers opened up.

You get the same obtuseness in very different circumstances - I'm thinking about how people act around the subject of death or when someone is dying. When death is around, often people say to themselves or others,"I don't know what to say" or even "I'm so embarrassed, I don't know how to behave". Talk about self-centred and hopeless.

If we stop worrying about how we look to others, if we stop being so ridiculously self-conscious about our own status and appearance, then we can start to tune in. And otherwise, we can't and don't tune in. We get in the way. We parade our "knowledge" (as the guy Kyle did tonight) rather than being attentive to the situation or to the other people involved. We stay hung up on our own appearance, on how we might appear to others.  What a waste.

Lewis Lapham said many things this evening. I wish I'd taken notes. But one area I do remember: he talked about the fearfulness that is in the US; he said that the war on terror has been lost, for everyone in the US is fearful. They're afraid of death, he said. And that's because they go through life as if the government was a luxury resort. "We lack the sense of the tragic in everyday life" he said.

And if daily life is about accumulating treasures and wealth, and about pretending that death can be prevented, that it's something that happens to other people, then life is one big playground and people have no context, no sense of the tragic, and no sense of history.

Afterward the friend I went with this evening said, but surely every culture worth the name has a sense of the tragic in everyday life. Art, music, literature: all of them create worlds where the tragic is waiting every day.

The evening ended with some very good questions from the audience. Lapham's final comment was about capitalism: I feel happy he said, and relieved, by my study of history. Everything is born, peaks, and then tails off and dies.  This includes capitalism, which arose in Holland in the fifteenth century, peaked in the Industrial revolution in the UK and US, and will come to an end sometimes this century.   hmmm

Lapham's an optimist after all. He's clear that right now the world is going to hell in a handbasket made of lies. (He says for example that the US is not a democracy but an oligarchy:"Government by the rich, of the rich, for the rich").  But he can also take the long term view: eventually things will change, and he sees renewal not as a loss of the old but a needed growth of the new.

Here as we head into the solstice week, it's a good time to think about renewal. I've been bitten by some renewing bug, I must confess. I've done a purge of cookbooks, organised those that remain, cleaned and painted and rearranged much of the ground floor...oh and started a new invigorating and demanding regimen of exercises from the great Rafi.  Perhaps the exercises have led me to this energised take on chores? Who can tell? But whatever the explanation I am loving the results. The walls are clean and bright and smooth downstairs; everything looks refreshed.

Another marker of change and renewal happened earlier this week with Ian's graduation. He lived in this house for three of his five years of undergrad at U of T. Now it's hard, seeing his confidence, to remember the shy first year student he was so long ago. His family came down from Grey County for the graduation and they came bearing gifts: paper bags of freshly picked shiitake mushrooms, grown on maple logs in their forest.

I've had two big feasts of them, each time sliced, sauteed in the cast-iron pan with some garlic, a dash of wine, then with whisked eggs added to make a mushroom-loaded omelet. Tonight before going out to hear Lapham, I included some chopped tender broccoli raab and garlic scapes in the frying. Nothing better. And there were tender mixed leafy greens to have alongside, also grown in Grey County, dressed with the lightest dash of olive oil, local cider vinegar, and salt.

Solstice, new life in the garden, a transformed cleaned-up house, good friends and good health, clear skies and sharp breezes, and engaging thinking from a visiting public intellectual: it doesn't get better than this...

A FEW THOUGHTS AT FULL MOON

It's the night before full moon, clear and cool for mid-June. I was at a fairly hot discussion about Kensington Market, then bicycled down to King Street to hear an open air free concert, part of Luminato. I caught the second act, Yemen Blues, a mixed bag of people from israel and elsewhere singing in Arabic, with some modern flash and flare and some feeling more anchored. Ran into friends there and felt lucky: music. friends, choices.

Don't know why I'm telling you this except that I just came across the little question thing put out by the OECD, where you rank the level of importance you attach to health, education etc, and it tells you which countries you want to live in.

Basically it comes down to Australia, Canada, Sweden, etc. These are underpopulated places where the environment is not yet completely degraded and there's reasonable health care and public education. It made me realise how few places there are where people can be taken care of in their hour of need or just encouraged to realise their full potential. hmm

I had a chance to talk to an old friend this evening, one of the people I ran into at Yemen Blues. (By the way, there was a nice big crowd, and some dancing and general body-happiness. I found the lead guy a bit forced and over the top, but if I listened rather than looking at him I was fine. Great percussion, and a viola and cello player as well as trumpet and trombone and various lute/guitar relatives.) One of the things she said was that she's been reading a lot of non-fiction for a number of years and has just started back into fiction.

I am the same way (apart from thrillers on airplanes etc). I wonder whether our pattern has been shaped by the publishing industry or has shaped itself independently. In any case, I am interested to watch myself go after novels. I just finished the amazing 1000 autumns of Jacob de Zoet and have started on David Mitchell's Nine Dreams or whatever it's called. He is extraordinary. I am thrilled to have the rest of his writing lying ahead, like riches in the larder before Christmas holidays. I read Camilla Gibb's first book the other day at one swallow, so amazing. Now to read her latest, set in Vietnam. More riches!

What are you reading these days? Do you find yourself with less reading time, or less attentiveness for a book, in this era of online jumping around and consuming of bits and pieces, rather than long sustained works?

Perhaps it's just as well to have books lined up, for I seem to have some kind of injury in my left foot. I'm phrasing it vaguely because the problem shifts a little and feels ephemeral, except when it most definitely feels like a serious and unavoidable problem. I will stop running for a week and also try to see a sports-medicine doc and hope I can get a handle on what it is. But in fact what I really want is to figure out how to get running again with no problem. Argh!

Every sign of aging or unwellness has to start with something, I do know that. But I can't accept that this is some kind of sudden onset arthritis in my ankle...I will keep you posted.

Meanwhile I should report to you on the delish fresh lake trout I had from Akawenzie's (they sell at Wychwood market). It was a long wide fillet, so it went over a small charcoal fire. I had put on some nutritional yeast, as recommended by Potz, and a little olive oil and salt: that's all. In ten minutes the fish was firm-textured, and the shallots I put on at the same time were done through, softened and sweet.

Food has been pretty basic around here for awhile, I admit. I do make the odd skillet cake, and my breakfast is plain leftover rice with fried dandelion greens and garlic chives, all from the back garden, together with a fried egg.

All the above was written late at night on the 14th. Now it's bright sunshine on the 15th, with the fat full moon due to rise in a few hours. There's a full eclipse of the moon in Africa and the MEditerranean, but it won't reach us here in North America we're told. And the other thing we're looking forward to this evening is the arrival of old friends whom we haven't seen for ages, a father and daughter. She is almost fourteen, and we last saw her in Kovalam near the southern tip of India, when we all danced our way into the year 2000. YEs, she was two and a half, and dancing at midnight. ANd so were DOm and TAshi. Now all of them are tall and have taken full shape as people. I love this anticipation of their arrival!

News on the foot front: I got seen by my great doc today and it looks like my arch has sagged on my left foot. Very strange. But with extremely high arches I am at risk. It does hurt, but not always. I think I'm heading into orthotics or other kinds of under-foot support. I just want to be able to run and not feel like I'm doing myself further injury.

Compared to a friend who has agonising pain from her herniated disk, this is nothing. I am grateful, even as I whine and worry, to have just this to trouble me.

Happy mid-June everyone, and enjoy the light of the generous moon tonight.