"Isn't the lake eerie tonight?"

The first gif I ever saw on the internet

Is there a God?

As one who can't chew gum and walk down the street at the same time, this impresses me. 

I took a crack at violin - more than a crack, I lasted nine years - and didn't get too good at it, but I persisted. We're supposed to persist at everything, aren't we? Try, try again - and again - and again, even if nothing is happening.

I guess reality is different. My violin experience was mostly attached to my teacher, who became a spiritual mentor for years. But the beliefs he espoused are so far from what I believe now that I wonder why I lasted so long.

It was just different then. I was not only a churchgoer, but a lay minister. It seems incredible now, as I have completely discarded organized religion and see it as something which did irreparable harm to me. The story of my former church was such a nightmare that I can barely stand to reflect on it. Leadership fell apart to the extent that no one would even admit how awful it was. TV  cameras came in the sanctuary during worship services to raise the profile and further the causes of our minister and his wife, who later appeared on CBC and talked about their  experiences in the bedroom.

If you didn't want your face on TV,  you had to speak up and say so. If you didn't mind it, you had to sign a waiver. Or maybe it was the other way around. A few years back, such an intrusion would have been unthinkable, jaw-dropping. There would have been tremendous protest. It at least would have been discussed and voted on in council. In this case, it was just "done" as a way of  promoting a certain agenda (theirs).

Things had been bad enough for long enough that it was time  for me to go anyway - long overdue, in fact. I made a stab at finding another church, and found a sort of death march of calcified old people who most certainly didn't want me there.

It sometimes occurs to me that I lost God somewhere along the way, and Jesus too. I just wonder when that happened. Those people in my former church shouldn't have bothered, because it wasn't ever about God to begin with. It was about human ego and insularity and bad decisions and conformity and fear of speaking up, in case we triggered another disastrous meltdown.

And so. All this, from a video of a woman playing a violin and dancing! My joy in that place was long gone, but I stayed and stayed, trying to make it work. It was like a bad marriage that I couldn't let go of. When I did finally leave, I was completely shut out. The hole closed over immediately, and it was as if (after fifteen years of intense involvement) I had never been there at all.

It's all very well to say, "Oh, none of that is God. It's human beings with a corrupt or too-limited idea of God." But God who? God what? I no longer believe in any sort of freestanding force that cares about us, that counts the hairs on our head, etc. etc. As a child, I learned the only theological statement worth paying attention to: "God is love."  If there is a God of love at all, we must carry it and harbour it and share it with each other. WE are love, or we are not.

Not exactly an original idea, but it's all I can do on a Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, we have this song - and it was monstrously difficult to find, by the way, and I nearly gave up on it - by a mediocre pop star called Andy Kim. 


Who Has the Answers          Andy Kim

Is there a God? I really don't know,
Does he have a son? I really don't know.
But when I'm down, and things are all wrong
I turn to him, to help me be strong.
And so I pray Lord..shine on, shine on, shine on, shine on your light.

God made the sun.
At least that's what they say.
The waters and trees.
He made night and day.
But who made the child who's hungry and blind?
And who has the answers that I cannot find?
And so I pray Lord..shine on, shine on, shine on, shine on your light.
And let me see.
Please let me see.

Oh people everywhere, living in despair, no one really cares if they're dying.
Politicians swear that they really care, everybody knows that they're lying.
People cannot find any piece of mind, even though they have the almighty dollar.
And so they live and search, never find a Church, everyone is fine 'til the final hour.

People everywhere, living in despair, no one really cares if they're dying.
Pray a little louder now children.
Polliticians swear that they really care, everybody knows that they're lying.
Pray a little louder now children.
People never find, any piece of mind, even though they have the almighty dollar.
Pray a little louder now children.
People everywhere, living in despair, no one really cares.
And so I pray Lord..shine on, shine on, shine on, shine on your light.
And let me see.
Please let me see.
Please let me see.
Is there a God?
Is there a God?
I really don't know.
Who has the answers?
Is there a God?
Does he have a son?
I really don't know.
Who has the answers?

Post-mortem thoughts. I remembered a few things about this obscure song. It wasn't  played on some radio stations (too atheistic, I suppose). Almost everyone who remembers it, which is not too many, thinks it was sung by Neil  Diamond. And it's true: in almost every respect, it sounds like a Neil Diamond  song, the plaintive tune and yearning lyrics. But it isn't.

I've even had arguments about it. It goes like this:

Oh yeah, I love Neil Diamond.
Um, it wasn't by Neil Diamond.
Oh yes it was! I remember what album it was on. Cherry Cherry.
Um, you can look it up if you l like.
I don't have to look it up. It was Neil Diamond. I remember.
Um, I'm pretty sure it was by Andy Kim.
Who?
Andy Kim.
I've never heard of an Andy Kim. What else did he record?
Umm. . . Shoot 'Em Up, Baby. How'd We Ever Get This Way. Rock Me Gently. Sugar Sugar.
SUGAR SUGAR? 
Yeah, I remember -
(Then, if someone else is sitting  at the table):
No, I remember, it WAS Andy Kim.
Oh? It WAS Andy Kim?
Yeah. It was him.
Oh! Thanks for telling me.

This happens to me all the time, making me wonder why I seem to lack all credibility.

Morphing Vincent's self portraits

I generally hate these "morphy" things, but I find this arresting. All those facets and angles, some of them radically different -  yet there's a still point at the centre, the core of being. I am back in a Vincent stage again, something I come around to eventually. I don't have to explain this, do I?

A cartoon miracle: The Blue Danube

This is something of a cartoon miracle. At least ten years ago, I made a few gifs from an old cartoon. It depicted little cherubs or elves or whatever-they-were, opening some sort of structure like a dam so that water spilled over rocks and tumbled down mountains in a splendid burst of traditional animation. (NOT Disney. Disney was the Edison, the Ford, the Bell of animation, better at stealing/cashing in than innovating.) 

 

 

Then, of course, I lost the whole thing. It got buried. I only came across those few small gifs again by accident, but I had NO IDEA where they had come from. I squeezed YouTube as hard as I could, looked at every nature cartoon, every cartoon set in a gnome village, ever cherub-frolicking scene I could find. I had no idea even of a title. Finally I emailed Jerry Beck, a sort of cartoon savant, and he came up with the title -  and a link to the YouTube video - instantly. I got to watch it exactly once, then "someone" took it down forever, claiming  violation of copyright. (On YOUTUBE? Where everyone violates every copyright, right, left and centre?) 

But never mind, I found (weirdly) another bootleg version of it with a Grateful Dead song on the sound track. It was pretty grainy and missing half its charm, but I at least got to see that compelling dam-bursting scene with all its Freudian eroticism.

But then this!

I don't even know if it will work, and I don't know why it's still up here if it's taken down on YouTube. And tomorrow it may be down everywhere, so you'd better watch it now.

Cats Ear Bite GIF from Cats GIFs

Needles in the desert

And you thought going to the dentist was bad.

Frog zoetrope

                       Excruciatingly beautiful. 

The walls are singing

        How a blank space can become joy.

Moose swimming underwater

An amazing sight. Why doesn't this ever happen to me?

Golden lotus: the binding of women's souls

Blogger's note. Foot binding was a practice which was almost universal in China for nearly a thousand years. It was only banned in the early 20th century, though it was carried on in secret for many decades. Little girls had their feet contorted and crushed into the “ideal” measurement of three or four inches. A powerful fetish sprang up around this hideous practice, with men becoming “connaisseurs” of foot deformity and the various ways in which the instep buckled and the toes were crushed into lifelessness. Feng Jicai’s novel The Three-Inch Golden Lotus is both brilliant and hair-raising in exposing a barbaric, horrifying practice which made little girls marriageable and desirable, providing their only chance to “marry up” and save their families from destitution. Many say Jicai's novel is satiric, not just uncovering a shame from the past but holding up present-day social atrocity for close, uncomfortable scrutiny.

In this excerpt, Fragrant Lotus, a five-year-old girl who already has beautiful tiny feet, is initiated into womanhood by her beloved grandmother. To start the process, she forcibly breaks the little girl’s toes and folds them under the sole.

“Granny’s hands moved fast. She was afraid Fragrant Lotus would start to kick and scream, so she quickly completed the binding. She wrapped the bandage around the four toes, down to the arch, up over the instep, behind the heel, and then quickly forward, over the four toes once again. . . Fragrant Lotus’ mind was filled with waves of pain and pinching, folding and contortion. . . The four toes, now next to the arch, were locked firmly in place, as if by metal bands. They were unable to move, even a minute fraction of an inch.

“. . . She set about collecting shards of broken bowls, spread them on the ground, and smashed them into small, sharp bits. The next time she rebound Fragrant Lotus’ feet, she put the bits of porcelain inside the bandages, along the soles of her feet. When Fragrant Lotus walked, the pottery bits cut into her skin. . . The cut feet suffocated by the bandages became swollen, inflamed, and pus formed in the wounds. Whenever the bindings were changed, the old bandage had to be ripped off, tearing off pus and chunks of rotten flesh. This was an old method in the north China foot-binding tradition. Only when the bones were shattered and the flesh was putrid could the feet be properly molded into the most desirable shape.”

ENOUGH! We won’t get into the way Granny pulls out Fragrant Lotus’ toenails and pounds her feet with a rolling pin to make them more malleable. Though I am sure Jicai did his research with the utmost care (it matches everything I’ve ever found on the subject), at a certain point it becomes too headspinningly horrendous to even take in. How many millions of little girls had their childhood stolen from them in this way, forced to live the rest of their lives with a literally crippling deformity?

But even this isn’t the worst. Jicai also delves into the creepy fetishes men developed around bound feet, which were sometimes unwrapped and “played with” in the marriage bed. Foot competitions, in which feet were judged on size and shape (the smaller and pointier the better) were a common diversion, with women hiding behind screens so that only their deformed feet showed in their three-or-four inch, gorgeously-embroidered, teeteringly high-heeled shoes.

Because of her exquisitely-bound feet, Fragrant Lotus has “married up” into a wealthy family with a typical foot obsession. An impromptu foot contest springs up when a number of perverted old men show up to indulge their fetish. Mr. Lu, a self-appointed expert on the subject, begins to expound: 

“Small feet are beautiful or ugly based on their overall appearance, which can be further divided into two elements: shape and form. Let us discuss shape first. There are six terms to describe shape: short, narrow, thin, smooth, upright, and pointed. Short refers to the foot’s length from back to front, and it should be short, not long. Narrow refers to the breadth of the foot from side to side, and it should be narrow, not wide. . . "

"Pointed refers to the toes, which should not be blunt but should come to a sharp point. If they have a slight upward turn, they are even more seductive. However, the degree of upturn should be just right. Too much will cause the point to stand upright, like a scorpion’s tail;  too little and it will droop downward, like a rat’s tail. Neither of these will do. And that, gentlemen, completes the discussion of the shape of the lotus.”

It goes on and on from there, for pages and pages, as various points of confirmation are discussed in detail as if the men are talking about flower varieties or dog breeds. The longer you think about this, the worse it gets: these crushed feet are being celebrated, the women’s lifelong crippling lifted up as rare beauty. The most unbelievable aspect of all this is the true meaning of the term “fragrant”: what it comes down to, as far as I can tell, is the horrid whiff of dead flesh coming from the rotting toes.

From a foot binding site come these startling revelations:

“Men who were turned on by bound feet were referred to as “lotus lovers”. They were aroused by the mysterious feet and were thrilled when the cotton covers were taken off. They inhaled the fragrant aroma and took delight in smelling the bared flesh. The husbands would fondle the foot in the palms of his hand before gradually caressing it with his mouth. He would place watermelon seeds or almonds between the toes before eating them from the woman’s foot. Beside these strange fetishes some men would drink the water that had previously been used to bathe the feet. The bound feet would be treasured like gold.”

When Fragrant Lotus loses the foot competition, not by inferior feet but a cheap pair of shoes, she decides to commit suicide: “In the Tong family if your feet were bad, you were finished. This family was like a chessboard, and bound feet were the individual chessmen. One false move and the game changed completely.”

Her only solution is to consult with a foot binding expert who says her feet are not "bowed" enough to be truly beautiful and must be rebound. ("Bowed" refers to the buckling upward of the crushed instep, forcing the front of the ankle to bulge outward.) Thus she experiences the torture of her girlhood all over again in order to gain favor in her own family.

The Three-Inch Golden Lotus isn’t history so much as social satire. Jicai seems to be whispering to us beneath the fascinatingly awful story: “Have things really changed so much?”  Instruments of torture, all the various means of squeezing, deforming, removing, wrenching out of shape and cutting away: they are all part of woman’s presence on earth. 

Corsets, high heels, female circumcision, clitoridectomy, where does it stop? Now women are having surgery on their feet to “correct” problems that might keep them from wearing the five-inch skyscraper heels that are currently in fashion. In fact, the newest invention is the "ballet" heel in which the wearer literally walks on the ends of her toes with seven-inch stilts under her heels.

All in the name of fashion, but why? Do women do this for each other? Why are men so afraid of women? Why won’t they let us walk, breathe, have an orgasm? Why was being deformed and crippled such a sexual turn-on in an advanced civilization for a thousand years? Do we really think all this pain is part of the past, has come to an end? Why do women collude with men in taking on so much pain in order to be “beautiful”? What’s beautiful? And why?

Please note. This is a summer repeat, but from 2011 (!), so I didn't think too many people would remember it. The line spacing may be a bit "off". This is one of my few posts  that actually got some views, though I'm not sure it will play the second time.

Over-smoked: the miracle of Marlboro

                                                                                   

The "miracle", of course, is that these ads were allowed to run at all. They have a bizarre beauty to them, a sort of otherworldliness which I HOPE reflects how much attitudes have changed.

Or not?

CAN attitudes change on a sort of mass level? If they don't, where are we headed? Will this be a slow process, or will we all too quickly plunge headlong into the abyss ?

I grew up in the '60s, when anything seemed possible. Civil rights, women's lib, enlightenment towards the disabled and mentally ill, hope for the poor and marginalized.

What has happened to all that passion and progress?

I feel a great sucking force dragging us backwards. It's not a simple matter of  being "over-smoked". The news is becoming more intolerable by the day. When I was a kid, shows like The Twilight Zone were already trying to tell us how intolerable it would be to live in a world run by technology.

There was also this recurring theme of political oppression, a leftover from the Second World War when Fascism came terrifyingly close to achieving world domination. 

Is political oppression winning now? Don't ask me, I'm not political, but I do care. I suppose it's too late for me, but I care about the sort of world my grandchildren will inherit.

So the point of all this rambling is: should I have hope? In a few short decades, these cute ads showing babies selling cigarettes became distasteful, then shocking, then completely unacceptable. Having been normalized and even considered a social necessity, cigarettes became heavily stigmatized and thrust outside the bounds of acceptability. Compared to the usual rate of social change, all this happened at light speed.

Can this happen with other things? I mean, right now? WILL it happen, and what will be our fate if it doesn't? The ruthless unravelling of all the passionate progress I've ever seen is  breaking my heart. Our chains are being buckled back on, and it looks like there's nothing we can do about it. It's over, that great experiment in social enlightenment which (supposedly) changed everything. 

Isn't it? Tell me it isn't - I will take any good news I can get.

Little dancer makes a big impact

      Click bottom right to watch in full-screen/sound.

Take the I-train: luxury ride in India