...and forth...

Batshit finds you day 4, a gift for the son, an old Calgary Flames hat, a quick touch and frisk for a loan to buy the frame for the Mona Lisa which just happens to be hanging in the Salvation Army, then he's off.

The customers, many glad to see you back, some of the locals - members of the anti-tipping league - break form and even leave you a tip, but that won't happen again, it's a one off. 

In a weird way it's good to be back, although the manners are - in general - ruder than what you'd find in the city, and we have customers exploding in alcoholic rages, fighting with staff, with themselves, you just shake your head, carry on, out here it's just another day, a game of numbers.

The schedule, I'd asked, been promised, 4 doubles, 3 off, so that I could return to Calgary and visit daughter, they give me 12 in a row - doubles, 2 off, I shuffle the schedule and make it work. This could be a long summer - if I can survive it, we'll see...

Early morning, drive to Calgary, visit, a few shops, errands, then - again tomorrow, bright and early, back to work the evening shift...

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Category: Calgary

A cultivated agnostic, with opinions, true, everyone does though, but - 

I've seen this before - was an enthusiast in the 70's following Geller and his spoon-bending routines, read "Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain", which, as best I can recall, was about a sly old Babushka who could move iron filings and needles with magnets on her knees, then nodded agreeing with Randi, these people are frauds, but...

The truth is I don't know. I'm agnostic. I don't believe the truth is knowable. I don't believe the mind of God - however simple - is knowable - think about it - can an ant know what you're thinking? And - the difference between you and God - it's easily as great, infinitely more great even, for God - if you believe in him or her - is infinite...

What is remarkable is that so much of the universe is knowable, that we have discovered laws, that we can predict and understand as much as we can.

My problems, that science reduces us to biology, physics, maths, ... which is to some degree true. But we are more than that. The universe is more than that. There is no way that in a few thousand years we have become Gods. There is so much more - but we're not asking the right questions. And so - even to trivial questions, to things that I would ordinarily dismiss out of hand, I've begun to answer that I don't know. It might suggest that I'm an idiot but it doesn't confirm it the same way that certainty does..

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Category: Conversations

The daughter, conversations, the big bang, the extinction of the dinosaurs, ... our own, seemingly inevitable extinction, trying to find, distill some meaning from it all ...

What matters.

I don't know. 

Or I do, I think I do at least, have an intuitive grasp of beauty and those smaller - and larger moments, all too often alone, it would be nice to share them, but it's seldom worth the risk, to apprehend beauty in the company of fools - well, it makes it ugly, it in some ways devalues it, better to find it on your own. Which then maybe is a separate post, on the nature of beauty, not merely the sum of harmonious colors, symmetries and shapes, but ...? How to describe? Mathematicians describe beauty as well, and it has none of those qualities, and certain words, languages, have to the ear the same quality, and so there's a more worthwhile thought I can return to. 

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Category: Ideas & Questions

I didn't need this. I mean, a drinking buddy with an infinitely more entertaining sex life, which I put down to the fact that I haven't been drinking nearly as long and I'm a little bit more fussy...

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Category: Books
  1. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
  2. The Empty Locker
  3. Returning to ...
  4. Spring Break