A Poorly Written Essay on The Meaning of Life.

I think I know the meaning of life. First of all, let me cover how it is that we got here. Either there is a grand plan such that elegant biology was enjoined to place us on earth, or a massive set of accidental chemical reactions culminating in me typing this post. I believe the latter is what happened. Note of course what I believe doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but just within the small scheme of things.

Now - it might be that we are meant to aggregate objects and wealth. Or that we are meant to aggregate power and strength - stability. Or perhaps we are meant to learn how to give up worldly things so that we can concentrate on the fine arts. Perhaps we are here to reflect beauty or engage in loving caring. I just don't figure. But what ever reason I come up with as to what the meaning of life is, I may be wrong, 'cause I just don't have the facts, or aren't in the club or receive the heavenly newsletter from the big guy.

So maybe I'll move into the more manageable. What would make me happiest, or most content to believe is the meaning of life? Yes, that's more - graspable, tangible, expressible. Easy, but ungraspable - 'to love others'. Cynical, but Nietzschean: to attain power, mastery over challenges and perhaps others. Camus-ish: to roll a large stone up a hill and then to roll it back up the other side once it plunges over. That we must assume Sisyphus is happy. Perhaps we must choose to believe that Sisyphus is happy - this might be blindingly obvious to a 1st year philosophy major, but I never took philosophy so apologies if I’m sounding basic.

Maybe... maybe the meaning of life is what we choose to believe it is, and that the choosing or faith or active construction of the idea is enough to imbue us with a sense which then I guess keeps us going. Like a child mastering his environment. I think maybe the meaning of life therefore is to find contentment somehow in the busy winds of life and to spread that contentment around because it seems kinda of nice to share. Which really isn't testable I think. But it feels kinda good.

Okay. I know. The meaning of life is that we live so that we can muddy through it all and take care of people and yourself and then watch it all go by without attachment. I like that Siddhartha river analogy – okay so I think I don’t know the meaning of life, but I’d like to think it is to watch stuff go by without being too affected either happily or sadly, excitedly or distressingly – and just kind of be part of the world without worrying.

Well. I’m not good at articulating this, and thinking too much about it all kind of worries me, so maybe I'll just stop writing and solicit your thoughts via the comments below but first include a snippet from Siddhartha:

An Excerpt from Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

… Let's listen, you'll hear more.

They listened. Softly sounded the river, singing in many voices. Siddhartha looked into the water, and images appeared to him in the moving water: his father appeared, lonely, mourning for his son; he himself appeared, lonely, he also being tied with the bondage of yearning to his distant son; his son appeared, lonely as well, the boy, greedily rushing along the burning course of his young wishes, each one heading for his goal, each one obsessed by the goal, each one suffering. The river sang with a voice of suffering, longingly it sang, longingly, it flowed towards its goal, lamentingly its voice sang.

“Do you hear?” Vasudeva's mute gaze asked. Siddhartha nodded.

“Listen better!” Vasudeva whispered.

Siddhartha made an effort to listen better. The image of his father, his own image, the image of his son merged, Kamala's image also appeared and was dispersed, and the image of Govinda, and other images, and they merged with each other, turned all into the river, headed all, being the river, for the goal, longing, desiring, suffering, and the river's voice sounded full of yearning, full of burning woe, full of unsatisfiable desire. For the goal, the river was heading, Siddhartha saw it hurrying, the river, which consisted of him and his loved ones and of all people, he had ever seen, all of these waves and waters were hurrying, suffering, towards goals, many goals, the waterfall, the lake, the rapids, the sea, and all goals were reached, and every goal was followed by a new one, and the water turned into vapour and rose to the sky, turned into rain and poured down from the sky, turned into a source, a stream, a river, headed forward once again, flowed on once again. But the longing voice had changed. It still resounded, full of suffering, searching, but other voices joined it, voices of joy and of suffering, good and bad voices, laughing and sad ones, a hundred voices, a thousand voices.

Raspberry D. Overexposure

Having been so busy at work etc... of late, I haven't really looked at my home e-mail. I had 834 junk e-mails in my folder. I checked through them to see if my filters inadvertently captured valid e-mail. I am amused at the names that spammers come up with. The image below shows the list of names, and I've circled the ones that make me giggle.

Another (Eventual) Campfire in the Woods

I learned a lesson on Saturday about firestarting.

The sunny, humid day followed a rainy foggy day and I was in a wooded valley north of Oakville. I brought my knife and firesteel - and after we hiked in a while we settled down at an old site where it looks like a party had taken place - beer cans, bags etc... laying all around. I grabbed some leaf litter and tried to spark a fire. There was not a birch tree in sight - this would have done it straigh-away. It took about 20 frustrating minutes to get a successful flame - it kept starting and quickly dying in the leaf tinder. Finally after much crouching, scraping, sparking and searching for tinder, the fire started and our campfire burned hot for about an hour before we left. Monty chased chipmunks and curiously splashed through and up the creek.


We burned the paper and tidied up the garbage for the trek out.

Lesson - bring tinder supply in a box - lint, cotton wool, compressed wood fibre and wax etc... as you never know when the weather will turn. Getting kindling is always easy, it is the tinder that is the tricky part.

Lush Gardens of Green Grass

Were I to make an entry for my blog today I'd want to make something that people will find useful, and not something that only I for unfathomed reasons could possible find interesting, so I should try to find some sort of universal theme, and inject a little bit of dry humour or even self-deprecating humour into it to give it a little umph.

Maybe I could talk about our new lawn. Yes, I think that is what I will talk about. Now I won't be able to inject much if any humour or include a universal theme (except for hope and striving towards a lawn), but hey.

Well, our balcony overlooks the Spadina Quay Music Garden, and the Island Airport, and finally of course the lake, but don't forget if you turn to your right you can see the Gardiner Expressway, well, I'm sure you wouldn't but I really was just reminding myself to mention it.

We have window boxes that last year lay in fallow due only to my lassitude and failure to be a farmer (of flowers etc...). But this year, not only have I planted copious flowing gardens in the three window boxes, I have also planted a lush, luxurious, deep, cradling and soft lawn. About 15 inches by 15 inches square. It took about 4 days for tufts to appear, and 2 weeks later the grass is not quite as high as an elephant's eye, but heck it is getting there.

I don't know what I'll do when it gets so high that it needs a good mowing. Monty can't reach up to have a pee on it either. I'd like to walk through it in bare feet, feeling the grass rustle through my toes. But I'd likely topple over the balcony walls and fall 7 stories to arrive mangled and bruised at an emergency ward.

So, without further ado, I present to you our new lawn:

Camping mistakes I have made. You shouldn't make them.

1. I used the blade of a non-lock-blade folding laguille knife to lift a cooking pot off of a fire. We'd just arrived after an arduous 19-kilometre-long (phew) portage and canoe-journey, and the light had fallen quickly, and I'd just had an 'arrival-beer'. Luckily it didn't cut my finger completely off.
   You should have used a stick to lift the pot.


2. November camping once, I set up my tent on a promontory, on a thin spit of land between lakes. I turned to get the fire going, and a gust of wind threw my tent into a solitary bush by the beach - if it hadn't have been there, my tent would have been in the lake.
   You should have tied down the tent with pegs and against a tree.
   
3. To keep a pesky racoon away from my food one evening, I placed my food containers in my tent. Then I went to bed. Then I woke up to the sound of some vicious snuffling outside of my tent. I froze in horror, stepped out of the tent, and watched a bear's dark shape race off into the woods.
   You should have used a bear-bag and tossed it up into a tree - away from the camp.
   
   
4. I didn't bring a lantern, and arrived on site an hour after dark.
   You should have brought a lantern.
   
5. I got into a who-can-toss-the-largest-rock contest with 2 very large guys. I had my very first rotator-cuff injury ever, and didn't bring pain-killers.
   You should have not thrown large rocks, and you should have brought pain-killers - injuries hurt so much more at 3 in the morning.
   
   
6. To start a stubborn fire, I tossed naptha gas in the firepit and lit it. I narrowly avoided burning my face off.
   You should have learned how to make a fire properly.
   
7. I drank a drinking-box of wine instead of packing glass - it was the environmentally right thing to do. My hangover the next morning was evil.
   You should never drink wine from a box again.

P.S. Read more camping lore from Mungo...

Hunky Dory

A week ago tonight I heard a snippet of a song on the radio and it threw me back in time, hurled me back to when things were different and I still love this album. This is one of my top twenty seven albums of all time.



Eight Line Poem Lyrics
The tactful cactus by your window
Surveys the prairie of your room
The mobile spins to its collision
Clara puts her head between her paws
They've opened shops down West side
Will all the cacti find a home
But the key to the city
Is in the sun that pins
the branches to the sky

Porter Goss steps aside.

Porter Goss's retreat.
Statement by CIA Director Porter Goss

This morning, I notified the President that I will be stepping aside as Director of CIA. It has been my distinct honor to serve the President, the people of the United States, and the very able men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency. I am grateful to President Bush for the trust and responsibility he placed in me, and for allowing me the privilege of serving him, and the people of the United States.

When the President asked me to become the last DCI, I fully recognized and embraced the challenge of leading this Agency through historic change, not just for the CIA, but the entire Intelligence Community. It was my desire to lead the CIA – this is where I started my career, and where I always wanted to return.

I am proud of CIA's leadership team. They share a deep dedication to improving the Agency's capabilities, and are driven by a complete dedication to mission. Given the new IC architecture, it was imperative to have a team that worked not as individual directorates, but as one. They have helped me, and CIA as a whole, in our ongoing inter-agency discussions related to this new architecture.

When I came to CIA in September of 2004, I wanted to accomplish some very specific things, and we have made great strides on all fronts, from our field-forward approach, to welcoming record numbers of new employees who are today receiving better training than ever before. We have reintegrated support, and improved tradecraft across the board – part of which is keeping our secrets. We also are reinvigorating and enhancing our analytic capabilities with an even stronger role for alternative analysis. And, there is no question, that CIA remains the leader of cutting edge research and technology, which enables our security mission.

CIA remains the gold standard. That has been recognized within the new IC structure – CIA is the National HUMINT Manager, the place for all source analysis, the bulwark of our nation's analytic capability, and remains central, from support to our technological advantage.

Over the next few weeks, I will be here to ensure a smooth and professional transition, which is the tradition of our Agency, as we welcome the next Director of CIA. During the time of transition, I am fully confident that the men and women of CIA will be solely focused on their critical mission.

The past 18 months have been among the proudest of my five decades in public service. Every day, I have had the unique privilege of knowing first hand the extraordinary work the men and women of CIA do in the name of our nation's security. It has been an honor.