Beer 101

There is an answer to the question of what makes humans tick. It is the same answer as to whether there is a philosophy which encompasses everything. Human motivation 101 or, you know, the philosophical question of the cognitive attitude of human consciousness toward the world... it's beer.

Well, beer's part of it anyway. Addictions actually. It gives us the incentive to make it through till Friday. It juices our noggin so we can envision the question of the objectively existing relationship between the mental and the physical. This relationship can only be consummated through an addiction, that human phenomenon somewhat shared by some higher life forms. Without an addiction we are naught, life has no meaning, we have no goal, we have no attitude toward the world.

Addiction comes in many forms. Some may not consider them all as addictions, but more like indoctrinations. But why pussy foot around it. An addiction is something which leaves us distraught if we're caught without it, be it beer, money, companionship, pants, ideology, man you name it, your social connectivity apparatus. Don't try and say these may be necessities, a nudist hermit can live without these, he's just addicted to his solitude, his ideology. Humans need this addictive ideological solace to grease their path through life. It takes much effort to rid ourselves of all conscious beliefs, yogis can do it, that's their addiction.

I have a friend, actually my wife's friend since she was thirteen, but with my wife's dementia which can't always remember to be nice to people or they may disparage of your wisdom, I've become the translator of good will in both directions. Anyhow, this friend she has this enormous problem with leaving her loft. Some anxiety complex. Pills don't really help her much. But... beer. I tease her lots. Beer is magic. Beer creates that magical faerieland where one can flitter flutter from out of the shutters and, yes, bring her a beer and she's good to go. Shucks, she's got less ideological hangups than a yogi, give her some beer. Often wish she kept a few, one crazy woman is enough in my life.

So, where were we. Oh yes, the anatomy of human consciousness. And beer. The consummation of the human phenomenon. Given our trite interest in the sojourns of ISIS and their ideological complexity which involves the raping of women, we can view their addictions from the outside. Power, lust, antagonism, Mohamed seems to have little to do with it. Personally, I'd rather just have a small plot of land with a chicken coop and a garden of veggies and a cold beer for supper, but then that's just my ideology, my addiction. Human motivation works in mysterious ways.

Western ideology is not too different. Power, those corporations. Lust, ever google nude babes? Antagonism, yes we're angels. Jesus has little to do with it other than a cheering section. Personally, I'd rather just have a small plot of land with a chicken coop and a garden of veggies and a cold beer for supper, but then that's just my ideology, my addiction. Human motivation works in mysterious ways.

Humans evolved this need for an addiction. With a brain having enough cells to survive the world in a romantically inclined body, we also needed a way to to keep our sanity in a world beyond our understanding. So we ate the fermented fruit from the tree of life, and lo and behold we developed more brain cells and a more romantically inclined body. We got even smarter and brewed beer so we could flitter flutter in a magical faerieland from out of the shutters of a world beyond our comprehension. We could question the objectively existing relationship between the mental and the physical. The answer was of course more beer. The human phenomenon had no consummation of this vagary. It was simply part of the flitter flutter which makes us tick. Just bogus cells in an incomprehensible world.

These addictions. The philosophy which encompasses everything. Must need a beer, haven't had one for some thirty odd years. I will though, out on the levy, the day I die.

Lead me down your garden path

Please lead me down your delectable quaint garden path

Would rather be wheedled by your twinkling Amaryllis

Than frig with a mind that is hell bound on obliqueness

Your burgeoning pompons they instill fanciful sweetness

Just yesterday morning my soul rotted in despondency

Gaffing some trite narration on the histology of zombie cruor

Why, why inject our angelic minds with incorporeal dread

Coaxes enjoining the hardscrabble reality of the Urban Dead

Romp to the left through that field of Lilies unfettered by yarn

And raspberries sweet as the succulence of 'double a batteries'

On a twisty path far astray from voodoo's reanimated cadaver

Holding hands to marvel at yon melons fringed with lavender

Mercy me, my heart's in my throat, it must be the Orchids

That fragrance so sweet seems mine eyes burst forth with fire

Oh all is forsaken mine i-pad has croaked, oh yen has it's wrath

Shucks be to lechery slithering down your ambrosial path

The ducky pond

We love to go and watch the geese. It's a retention pond in a mixed residential and industrial business area, between some busy traffic routes in our beloved Winnipeg. Rather underrated this wayward park, the odd dog drags it's owner around the prickly slopes for some daily exercise. Most everyone respects this summer home, the first awareness of earth's splendor for those young little guys, the goslings who paddle so hard to keep up with their protective parents. They share this little oasis with a few Mallard ducks and a whole bunch of Red Wing Blackbirds who nest in the reeds. The gulls come in for a treat from their staple McDonald's diet, and the odd scoop of Pelicans will drop down from their ever circling ride on the thermals to catch a bit of R&R and maybe a few tadpoles.

My wife, she'll wake me up at the wee hour of 9:30 am all dressed and ready to go for a ride to that ducky pond which I had unawares promised, I don't know when, in that vague past of a foggy dementia. “Would you mind some breakfast first?” as I slide a cup of cold coffee into the microwave, trying to unglue my eyes and get my arthritic legs functioning, not to mention my head. My first thought is always “Maybe she'll forget and I can leisurely read the news and let the world slowly awaken in my noggin,” but no, dementia has a long memory when you're sweet on some adventure. So it's a quick breaky, with the purse not forsaking that shoulder, and off we go and of course we have to pick up a cup of tea. That's part and parcel of the ducky pond.

So... there she seats herself, on a little bridge. And she talks to them. “Helloo. We're back.” The adults look on while the youngsters approach in their innocence. Families of slightly different ages and sizes, always eating, picking away whether on water or on shore. They must grow for that long flight south, and grow they do. And they drill for strength and stamina, swimming in long lines against the wind, following their mommy, always one little one straggling to keep up. The line slows, and the little one catches up. It's bread crumbs they really would like. Some people feed them, but not us. “Sorry.” The green grass is almost as good though and they pick, pick away. She's in her little heaven, my wife, “Oh how pretty you are, helloo.”

They dug this little pond out of the flat prairie lake bed of Agassiz around 1967 to mimic the marshes which once soaked up those 5 inch downpour and hail and wind and lightening displays which thrill us every summer. They dredged out a whole scad of them all over Winnipeg because it was the cheapest way to alleviate the overland flooding which occurred on a regular basis on our flat 400 square miles of residential and industrial achievements. So the gooses came back, and they love it. We even mow their lawns for them, but they insist on the fertilizing themselves, send all the potash to South America you know.

The tea is finished. The goslings have wandered off and are headed back to their pond. The sun is high and burning our arms, us Winnipegers who have twenty days a year when air conditioning feels needed. She says “Are you ready to go?” So hand in hand we shuffle back up the long path to the parking lot. “Goody bye, good bye, we'll be back, oh you look so pretty.”

Boo boos

Boo boos teach us. A young cat who singes his little paw on a hot stove top will think before venturing ever again near that inviting surface with all the yummy smells.

She swept me away. That little red headed girl. Got me hormones pumping when she fell asleep on my shoulder just past high school. One time out to hockey game and then she said “No.” Took three months to dissipate those imperishable wonders of disconsonant avidity, mind numbly unaware in fields of sweet grasses and butterflies, the feel of that soft hair. I wish you the best, little red headed girl.

Little paws heal, adolescent hearts endure. Boo boos create the charm in mahogany. Then there are calamities.

That warmhearted pouch who just wished to greet a solitary bicycle pedlar on a sunny stretch of highway past family farms and holdings where all the good things in life are encompassed. Got nailed by a car from the other way in his enthusiasm, never to move again.

We ask, do boo boos have a degree to their catastrophe? Some boo boos end up in wheel chairs and some end in coffins. Is death our last boo boo? Life does go on for the rest of us, for now anyhow. Meanwhile we suffer on, life would be so so bland. The charm in the mahogany. We dream.

Best to keep a gentle spirit, just in case. This holographic universe, the greatest boo boo ever. He was full of love, that warmhearted pouch. Time may be but the convenience of our consciousness in our multilayered universe. His warmheartedness may remain forever in the realms beyond time. We just don't know, this boo boo in our cognizance.

Sweep me away forever more, my little red headed girl. My holographic fantasy. My boo boo. I dream of you in the dentist chair. Ouch

Mirror, mirror

There was this old fool and he looked much like me. He hid in my mirror and he'd peek back at me. So one fine day I asked him out of sheer vanity, his views and perceptions on humanity. “Well,” says he without batting an eye, “Man's god and man's money, they do make me sigh.”

“The concepts of god and money have many similarities. Both have values which are hard to define, and they are dependant on what we make of them. God is said to be the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship. In reality, money is much the same, if not more so. They both made themselves known unto mankind about the same time, within the last two million years, and have morphed into what we have today.

“Money” has a profound influence on the diffusion of food and shelter in a world where there are enough resources to make everyone comfortable. “God” has a profound influence over the diffusion of cultures in a world where we all live with the same actualities. The values we attribute to them pretty much rule us.

Now we have this new finagled concept called responsibility. It builds on the concepts of god and money, commingling the two into one awesome truth to be adhered to by the strictest of moral sanction, admonishing all to labour vivaciously and not screw up the system. God and money both invoke this responsibility, god as the essence of purpose which mankind must fulfill, and money as the essence of hard labour which mankind must endure. Purpose and hard labour, coalescing into that sufferable yardstick of deference known as the gross domestic product. A little austerity hear and there, and the derivatives can eschew much vivaciousness.

The problem with all this is that evolution works in mysterious ways. Survival has more often than not depended on the diversification of species, not on their desire to breed with the best looking rooster. Life evolves, and species are expendable, so it seems. It is hard to fathom, but the GDP along with god and money may be a dead end.”

Well, well now my fine mirror hanging awry on the wall, hiding this fool who seems blessed to know it all, can I beseech of you to bring him forth with, his views on the outcome of such abominable pith.

“Luckily for mankind we have not thrown all our eggs in one basket. Besides god and money and the ensuing responsibility, we have anarchism, also making itself known unto mankind within the last two million years. Encompassing a lack of faith this concept is quite definable and is also quite independent of what we may make of it. Utter chaos, adherent to no one, anarchy brings a springy clarifying alternative to the intricacies of the GDP. In an insolvent and atheistic world we are not godless, we have anarchy.

Finally, a definable god, this utter chaos. A deficient, impotent, feckless destroyer and vassal of nothing, a concept so breathtakingly simple no soul could help but throw a brick on it's behalf into the schism of plunder. Mankind's future this chaos, an evolving concept in the throws of our extinction.

Chaos theory. In that infinitely small moment when it all started, the big bang, there was absolute chaos. That moment is so infinitely small that it can not exist yet it determined the whole future of our universe, even the tear in thine eye. Ya, quantum mechanics, that evolving bit of speculation powered by determined chaos, predetermined but totally unpredictable. We can't know where we are going and we can't change inevitability. Yes, we are screwed, we must mossy on into the schism.”

Now my mirror, my mirror on the wall, how can you allow this damn fool to utter this drawl? I've good mind to wing you with this here old brick, seven years of bad luck is worth smacking that old frick.

“The throws of anarchism shall flower before us. We shall rent vexation upon ourselves and our offspring. Chaos shall dwell among us. We will evolve thick skulls to ward off the bricks, and our brains will shrink so they no longer fathom the ambiguities of omnipotence and tokenage. Our skin will grow scales to...”

Crash

I believe in Vanity

Today we go on a hunch, a rolly polly hunch, all out to lunch. It's nineteen hundred and sixty one, the year that you can turn upside down and it's still 1961. Twenty fifteen is still a long way off. By then there won't be cars, we'll just snap our fingers and we'll be there, where we want to be.  Neat eh? They'll call it virtual reality, an effervescent mentality, a psychedelic duality.   Da.

Komm, Herr Jesu; sei du unser Gast; und segne, was du uns bescheret hast. Amen    Sitting in a hot little one room school, our youngish teacher fresh from teacher's college inspiring us twelve kiddies to eat our wilted sandwiches before we enliven the schoolyard with playful abandon in the dandelions.

When you are young you don't question. Beliefs you are told is just the way the world is. And after some sixty and some odd years I still catch myself, when I remember an embarrassing situation from the past, thinking “Our Father who art in heaven,” and then I catch myself. Tried for a while to change it to “Hey diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle,” but my mind wasn't always quick enough so I just gave up and live with “Our Father, Oh what the ...”

As little kids, we'd get all decked out in our Sunday duds and off we'd drive to church. Walk on the sidewalk with all the other folks and up the big steps and through those big doors, and that's all I remember. Whatever went on inside must have numbed my head. No recollection whatsoever. Likely just a lack of frogs. I do have this feeling from my early recollections, that the earth is about five thousand years old and the flood was a sort of turning point in human history.

And then we snap, snap our fingers and the earth is four point five billion years old in a thirteen point seven billion year old universe. But hey, that's young in the scheme of this infinity, a virtual reality, an effervescent mentality, a psychedelic duality.

The biggest problem I have with writing down this stuff is I don't wish to cause a lot of waves. I understand the battle which ensues in one's being when one's childhood mindset is trashed. Breaking from a deeply religiously ingrained social network can lead to horrific inner turmoil, withdrawal, anger, a mind full of subterfuge and trickery using all means of substances and mental ploys to achieve some sort of adjustment. For many it is too much, and I do not wish to berate anyone for their cohesion. Gentle waves are easier to piddle through.

In passing we may note that our war on extremism is not going to respond well to bludgeoning. Western thought has taken millennia to reach the silliness we live with today. A hurricane smashes everything while gentle waves can create pleasing smooth beaches (even if we piddle).

Oh those war years, the years of delightful insurgency, no urgency, all the shortcomings of an industrious scoundrel. That high school boarding school teaching us the apotheosis of becoming tomorrows uplifting leaders. Right, becoming a disquieting legend for sawing holes through the floors to escape those insufferable study periods, pilfering the pantry for nightly midnight snacks, skipping the whole of June grade twelve to thumb irresponsibly all over Saskatchewan, passing out rather inebriated on the middle of the local highway, yes leadership induces quite the sublimity. Somehow Mennonitish conscientious objection didn't go hand in hand with the vagaries of subliminal upmanship. Yipes.

I believe in vanity, the insufferable arrogance of man, maker of divine providence.

And in virtual reality, an effervescent mentality, a psychedelic duality.

Which was conceived by the ingestion of mushrooms, born of Mother Earth;

Suffering succotash, those things were potent, damn near died;

But we rose again, the third day, from the dead;

Minds blown unto heaven, a virtual reality, a psychedelic duality;

From whence we can judge man's mentality, the quick and the dead;

I believe in Faeries.

I believe in fortunateness, the effervescence of ideologies, the ensuing wars;

But our luck has run out;

Mankind is consummated;

I believe in vanity. Amen

Wandering around our continent, spent years of abnegation, denying comforts, denying acumen, denying camaraderie. All hinging on those magical words of subordination, “Are you saved?” Ah yes my friend, I am saving myself from the vagaries of subliminal upmanship. I wander with passion, fulfilling in a fashion, a mission of wishin to be left quite alone with my thoughts, and my vanity, is it greater than yours? “Are you saved?” from what may I ask, is it hellfire or really from having to deal with... snap, snap, the earth is four point five billion years old in a thirteen point seven billion year old universe, a virtual reality?  Twould be simpler to ignore it for just some cohesion. But vanity rules, abnegation or not.

So we sit here in our one room school, in a field of dandelions and our youngish teacher fresh from teacher's college inspiring us to turn 1961 upside down, virtual reality is not yet born. But we have vanity. Snap, snap. Do we really have a hunch, this wilted lunch?

Thank you Plastic Man

Thou hast pilfered mother nature of her wretched virtue

When all was thought to be lost to the forces of good and righteousness

   you held your heads high and lambasted the earth with annihilation

We owe unto you the eternal debt of our procreation

Beholden to you we proliferate with rapturous abandon

Thou hadst trifled with that floundering nucleic acid

The Great Mother was so want for her little children to wax prolific

   in monotonous adaptions to her vagarious environs

Oh how you salvaged rapaciousness from the grips of her magnanimity

Beholden to no one we delight in your slanted obsessions

Thine haphazard generosity stimulating the ostentatious great warming

Hell bent on the aggrandizement of your vaporous plastic tokens

   fulfilling your innermost evolutionary hankering for that virtual reality

To rid the Sweet Madam of her superfluous animateness

Beholden we laugh ensanguined at our unconscionable good fortune

Thou created for thine dallying fixation us rubber duckies all in a row

Imperishable fictile a spurious ersatz with embedded crystalline circuitries

   endowed with oversized phalluses druthering our thermionic rituals of mating

We scorn much as you did the gross little vermin tepefaction fried with abandon

Beholden to Thine Providential insights, our heroic dead creators

Thanks be to Thine scintillating random fluctuating of the electromagnetic wave

We propagate licentiously with teeny filched azoic roboties labouring 24/7

   to fabricate all us rubber ducky clones powered by calefaction all in a row

We sail this dead starship with no feeling and no soul and no scruples

Beholden to chemical carnage zapping Mother Nature in mortiferous gestalt

Oh we're on a journey and round and round we go, we go

O'er a phlegmatic slightly liquidated baron earth we waddle on

   anaesthetized we just don't care, from minerals we draw our sprightly oomph

Us rubber duckies in a rows and rows and rows, millions of miles long we go

Beholden to you we're quite inane, and round and round the sun we go