You've heard about the water wheel,
has Chemainus in such a flap?
Well, now the truth has been revealed...
what turns its forward back.
The culprit's name is Flibber T,
that's Flibber T Gibbet for long.
He's the one you're gonna see
if you listen to this, my song.
Oh Flibber T, Oh Flibber T
You're such a curious fellow,
your cap's as red as red can be
and your shoes are bright, bright yellow
Flibber T is a naughty elf,
as naughty as naughty can be.
Never thinks of anyone else,
out on his troubling sprees.
Turning clockwise the other way
for unbelieving eyes
is just the sort of trick he'll play
to shock, and tease, and surprise.
But when it comes to elfish kind
you've gotta believe to see
you have to alter your state of mind
with the likes of Flibber T.
Oh Flibber T, Oh Flibber T
You're such a curious fellow,
your cap's as red as red can be
and your shoes are bright, bright yellow
Author: admin
Goodness Me!
There are four categories of ‘goodness’ I can identify: Absolute, Fundamental, Conditional and Contingent. I’ll describe each in a moment, but first a little context.
I have long been baffled by the word ‘good’. More to the point, whenever someone tries to define what ‘good’ is, as opposed to what it is not, or what is bad, I find myself unconvinced. Their definitions and my own come up short, seeming as incomplete and arbitrary as castles (aka fortresses) in the sky.
But over the last few days I have been studying ethics from a Stoic perspective, reading an article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. There I came across the apparently standard definition of ‘the good’, to which “all parties agree”, namely that: “…possession of what is genuinely good secures a person’s happiness.” What tweaked me in that definition is the notion that it’s not what goodness ‘is’ that’s important, it’s what it does, or it’s effect.
It ‘secures a person’s happiness’.
Which, of course, begs the question: What is true happiness? Until we have answered that, we can’t possibly determine what constitutes a ‘good’ thing or event, and will be unable to direct our lives in a way that makes us truly happy. Like a dog, chasing his tail, we’ll only succeed in making ourselves dizzy.
That second variable of the goodness-happiness equation has become more clear for me recently, in the form of a personal philosophy that begins with the fundamental statement: Value Life. I say ‘fundamental’ because for me that is an ethical stance that does not require ‘proof’. I don’t expect everyone to feel the same way, and if anyone asks ‘Why?’ the only answer I can offer is ‘because it’s a part of who I am’. In fact, my recent meditations have led me to the conclusion that valuing life is at the very heart of my ethical being.
order sildenafil online Such lab tests might include extensive system calculate (CBC), erythrocyte sedimentation (ESR), not to mention urinalysis. If you are relying on the equipments like pepper spray for self defense then you are making yourself dependent on technologies that viagra prescription respitecaresa.org might fail for no visible reason. sildenafil tablets australia It is only the medication that could potentially be very harmful to the patient. And that is followed by a lot of cialis 100mg canada visits to the doctors, hospitals, and taking all sorts of unnecessary medications.With what’s been said so far, I can hazard a definition of ‘good’ that is meaningful and useful. For me an event, action or thing is good if it allows me and my community to live up to my fundamental principle of valuing life, because valuing life makes me happy. That’s not to say there aren’t other things that will make me happy, or that valuing life isn’t an ethical commitment fraught with contradictions.
However, I know that unless I make choices that do value life, I will not be truly ‘happy’. Worse, when I make choices that devalue life – and despite myself I do – I undermine my own happiness, usually in the pursuit of immediate gratification
So I now have a criteria for determining at least some of what will be good choices for me. Not good because they are laudable from other people’s points of view, but because they bring me closer to my own – let me use the word I prefer – fulfilment.
Now I can attempt a definition of the four categories of goodness I mentioned at the outset of this essay:
Absolute Goodness – I actually don’t believe such a thing exists, an act, or event or thing that everyone would agree was good, if they fully comprehended its nature. If I believed in god, or Platonic ideals, I could speculate about the nature of absolute goodness, but I’m a spiritual-atheist, which precludes a belief in god or any sort of disembodied ideal.
Fundamental Goodness – That is, goods which directly relate to my personal philosophy and set of values. They are ‘fundamental’ because they are essential events, actions or things that express and make real my set of values. Unless I participate in, demonstrate or possess these goods I am not engaged in meaningful and positive ways with my world.
Conditional Goodness – We are conflicted beings, and almost all the ‘good’ we do or experience has side effects or consequences we don’t desire. Conditional goods are directly related to my values, but they are conflicted because, viewed from a different perspective, they are also contrary to them. For example, I value life, but must kill in order to live. That tension cannot be resolved, it can only be mitigated by best possible choices.
Contingent Goodness – These are goods, not directly related to my philosophy or values, but which add to my well-being and enjoyment of life. Most of the good things I experience, enact or possess fall into this category, and if I examined them I might discover that they do support my values indirectly, or at least don’t contradict them. Wealth, for instance, doesn’t necessarily contradict my desire to value life, and it might give me the means to support causes that value life more effectively… or my unrestrained pursuit of wealth might damage life on this planet in irreparable ways.
Walk For the Children
On August 2, 2021 a March for the Children, organized by the Penelakut Tribe, made its way from the BC Ferry terminal in Chemainus, through the town up to Water Wheel Park. An estimated 1,500 people joined in the commemoration.
Penelakut Island is the historical site of the Kuper Island Industrial School, a site of the Canadian genocide of Indigenous people. The march was for the children, healing, and reconciliation.
What do I celebrate on Canada Day?
Canada Day?
It’s become an emotional, moral conundrum for me. On the one hand, I am a grateful citizen of one of the most prosperous, industrious, democratic nations on earth; on the other I am confronted with a legacy of deadly oppression and ongoing discrimination, perpetrated against the indigenous peoples of this land.
So what is it I am supposed to celebrate this July 1, as the tally of children who died in Canada’s infamous residential schools comes to 1,000 and counting – with estimates of at least 6,000 more than likely?
I certainly can’t celebrate a deliberate strategy of containment and re-education designed to enforce European occupation of the land. Nor can I celebrate the present deep rooted biases that are built into my country’s fibre. My only hope is to look toward a future where truth has been disclosed and reconciliation achieved, and make that commitment part of my Canadian citizenship in a meaningful way.
Our only hope as a nation is to accept the fact that a genocide was carried out, and take responsible action to compensate the individuals and communities that have been ravaged by a deliberate, sustained effort to eradicate their culture. I can sum that attitude up in a simple phrase: Take responsibility, or accept blame.
To know more about the popular kinds of generic drugs include discount viagra , levitra, levitra prescription, generic propecia and many others. It is bargain prices generic viagra overnight certainly a worthwhile area to pursue if you want to help people. If they thought they were cured and on line levitra stopped the treatment, the hidden pathogen which was suppressed within the prostate would survive from being completely wiped out. There are some people who prefer the older ways of doing things. viagra 25 mgThat mantra has to be put into its modern context. First Nations in Canada have proven themselves resilient. Despite a long history of brutal oppression, they are in the midst of a ‘renaissance’. They don’t need paternalistic meddling in that enterprise; they are entitled to recognition and an equitable share of this land’s bounty, which will allow them to thrive.
They are also entitled to understanding as they express their sorrow and anger. And to respect. Everyone lost when Canada embarked on its genocidal policy. What we could have learned from indigenous peoples about the importance of family and community, and coexistence with nature, is incalculable.
My celebration of Canada Day 2021 will be mixed. What I will be celebrating are the tremendous accomplishments of our history; what I will be condemning is the fact that a cornerstone of those achievements was a genocide.
The full measure of personal and national stature is a willingness to re-evaluate our stories and base our actions upon the truth. Will Canada live up to that standard? Will we become a nation that admits when wrongs have been committed, compensates the victims of those wrongs, and writes a history that ensures they are never committed again?
Only time will tell. For now, I think a token of my determination to that end will be to wear orange and red on Canada Day. It’s a small gesture, but one that tends toward a redefinition of what it means for a nation to be ‘great’.
Harnessing the Heart – Short Story
[This is a Direct to Web story]
I try to avoid the thought, ‘This isn’t so bad.’ Because that might lead me to the admission that ‘it’s kind of nice’, which I’m sure would be misinterpreted. The procedure is meant to be purely clinical. An elderly man, in a sterile room, having patches of his body shaved so the receptors of a heart monitor can be glued to his sagging torso. My sentiments are strictly in the ‘like-being-around-young-people’ category, but the specifics of our situation, the semblance of intimacy, make me nervous.
The nurse’s hands move with a precision that suggests there’s no room for error here. Scrape, scrape, the plastic razor removes the short and curlies from five points of contact: two on my chest, three on my upper abdomen. Then she rubs the ointment on, peels the parchment from each of the receptor’s pads, and sticks them onto me, so they hang there like leeches.
It’s hard, under the circumstances, to keep the conspiracy theories from manifesting. ‘What exactly might they be listening to, through this harness that’s fastened to my skin?’ Those suspicions intensify when I realize the metaphor of ‘leeches’ doesn’t quite describe the species that will be clinging to me for the next 24 hours. They’re more like tentacles of a five legged octopus, whose neurones connect to a little black box the size of a mobile phone I’m to carry around with me as the creature sucks data out of my body.
‘What can you learn about a person by listening so intently and unremittingly to the beating of his heart,’ I wonder.
When she’s done with the techie stuff, the nurse shows me a ‘Patient Diary’, which she will later insert into a plastic zip-lock envelop that has the warning ‘BIOHAZARD’ emblazoned on it in both official languages. I’m to insert the scribble of my diurnal, minute-by-minute notes into a pouch on the outside of the envelop, the heart monitor and harness into the zip-locked compartment behind, then hand my pulsed record in to the ‘ambassador’ at the hospital entrance, who will make sure it finds its way to where it needs to go.
My record keeping must be curt. There are three columns to the diary: one to log the time, another to name my activities, and a third to list any symptoms I might experience. Activities might include ‘walking the dog’, symptoms things like ‘shortness of breath’.
The example are appropriate, I will discover. You really don’t know how boring your life is until you are asked to record the minutia of your days. If they’d cited an example like, say, ‘Wing Suit Flying!” or ‘Formula 1 Racing!’, I would have felt even more inadequate than I did before this bloody stroke added a knife-edge to my existence. ‘Shortness of breath’ wouldn’t even come close to describing the heart pounding rush of zooming through the alps at 200 kph, skimming over jagged granite teeth within centimetres of my life.
“Every decision entails risk.” I can hear Herbert pontificating over a pint of Dark Matter on the Sawmill’s patio. “You might get run over, deciding to cross the road,” he would say. Then add, in that nuanced, pain-in-the-ass mode of his, “Even in a crosswalk.” With Herbert repetition is sort of like the rivets and welds that hold a ship together. His logic has structure, you get exhausted just thinking about how you might dismantle the unassailable integrity of it.
“But happenstance doesn’t add zest to my risk-taking!” I want to shout at him. He’d have some kind of answer for that. I can see him smiling smugly, casually taking another sip of his beer, while I try to calculate the significance of a ‘mini-stroke’ on the future tense of my life’s story. “I didn’t decide to have a stroke!” I would complain.”So how can you call that ‘risk-taking?”
I know Herbert would have an irrefutable answer. One that would make perfect sense, even though it might be… would almost certainly be… perfectly wrong. That’s the thing I like most about Herbert, his ability to reason to wrong conclusions from almost any point of view. He’s like Socrates on steroids, his brain a network of unassailable algorithms that yield their own truth because they are based on false, hidden premises and mysterious assumptions. He makes me feel sane.
When I got home from the hospital, I made my first Patient Diary entry, aware of the octopus clinging to my flesh, monitoring my heartbeats as I struggled to enter the time. Everything I do with my right hand is a struggle now, especially writing. That’s how I knew something was wrong in the first place. Leanne asked me to write down an email address she was reciting during a phone call, and my hand couldn’t form the letters. They came out all shaky and crooked, sloping down the page like a five year old’s script.
What the fuck! No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my hand and fingers to manipulate the pencil in a way that looked anything like normal. I pretended not to have heard her, left the room, threw the incriminating envelope into the garbage.
‘Drove home’ I scrawled under ‘Activity’; ‘3:20 PM’, under ‘Time’; I had nothing to report under ‘Symptoms’. I could have said ‘Depressed’, but that’s not the kind of information they were looking for. I could have added that it felt like my right arm was dying, that the weight of it tired me out if I insisted on actually using it. That, even if I let it hang limp from my shoulder like meat on a hook, just the sensation of its dead weight fatigued me. But there wasn’t room for that kind of descriptiveness in the symptoms column, so I left it blank.
Leanne got mad at me when I finally told her what had happened. After the chicken-scratch episode, I phoned my doctor’s office and was instructed to get my ass to a hospital and not to drive. I wanted to have some idea what was happening to me before I told Leanne, because she can’t stand uncertainty, has to fill in all the blanks and gaps with plausible explanations, followed up by the likely actions we need to take to deal with her scenarios. I’d have to stop my compulsive snacking, improve my posture, spend less time at the computer and watching TV, walk the dog vigorously twice a day, get rid of my belly fat and body flab… plus do what the doctors told me to.
She lectured me all the way from Chemainus to Duncan on our first trip to the hospital. Scolded about my slovenly habits and secretive attitudes. When she asked if I needed a drive to get the heart harness fitted, I said I’d be okay. “No need for you to sit around the hospital waiting for me,” I advised.
No matter how you slice it, the brain looks like a stalk of broccoli. I’d never seen my brain before, and if you showed me my CT and MRI scans, without any accompanying information, I wouldn’t recognize the folded cortex as my own. But it’s me all right. More me than the photos fading in our family albums, or imprinted in the circuitry of my friends’ mobile phones. Everything I know, or am capable of ever knowing or believing, is right there, in those pictures.
Everything!
Seeing images of my brain, collected by clunking, squawking, beeping, flashing machines, operated by technicians, who didn’t know me from Adam before I stepped into their clinical chambers, and would forget me almost before my moment of departure, confused me. It was like stepping into a house of mirrors…
No that’s not it. More like becoming an insect skittering about in my own neural network, able to see the inside of my own eyeball, then scurry up axions and hop synaptic gaps, until I burrowed my way into buzzing, vaulted chamber of my own brain and could sense the chaotic wonder of its electricity.
No! That’s not it either! It was as though I’d become an electron, aware of every other electron in the universe, and of the fact that I wasn’t an electron at all, but a something indefinable, an essence, a substance at the very core of living energy and matter, that could not be classified as either, or seen through the eyepiece of a microscope, or captured by the whirling cameras of a CT scanner.
If I wasn’t an atheist, I would have classified the experience of truly seeing my own brain as ‘religious’. And perhaps I’m not an atheist, after all, but a spiritual being who wonders, not at a god out there in a place called heaven, but at the ineffable miracle of every living moment.
Miracle Beach – rites of passage
We didn’t realize it until we were returning from our Miracle Beach foray that dogs are not allowed down to the water’s edge. Some signs are meant to be obeyed, some you just gotta wonder about, and do what you think is right.
My impressions coalesced into a poem…
Miracle Beach - rites of passage
We broke a few rules, trudging the arced shore
beyond the subtle sign, deleting dogs of any sort.
Sophie’s nose came with us, snuffling things out,
we might otherwise have missed, being merely human.
Death, of course, is ever present,
a sickly sweet scent on salted air,
a peeling back, layer by fibrous layer, of muscle and bone,
the tendons and ribs that hold us in,
bind us to joys, hopes and sorrows
like the taught stings of a harp.
Impressions criss-crossed our wondering ways,
sometimes the past tenses of others, or our own,
at all times intriguing, the comings and goings, heres and theres
of life in the making, out on the substrate sand.
Where it dawns on us, that all’s touch after all,
the tingle of light in our eyes, the rush of the sea,
its thrashing echoed in inner ears,
the tongue’s excitement at what once was…
it's all touch, vibrant on the boundaries of who and what we’ve become.
A convergence, really…
at the point of being…
if there is one?
I look to where my sky touches the ocean,
land curves beyond my horizon,
sound reveals its silence…
and discover it’s all part of me, particles of who I am
in this exact, eternal instant.
As for meaning? We’re ever on the lookout,
gathering what we can from the clatter and clutter
of worlds that engulf our common senses,
defy purpose… and leave me asking:
What remains of all this, once I am gone?
To which I must answer: Everything but me.
CraigSpenceWriter.ca
Expanding our definition of a ‘book’
My favourite place to read is an armchair, in the northeast corner of our living room, which has one window facing out on our suburban street, another with a peekaboo view of Stuart Channel and the Salish Sea.
Most often I have a hardcover or paperback opened in front of me, either held up in my hands or propped on my lap. It’s a comfortable portrait, most would recognize instantly, and most readers would sanction.
It fits our notion of what a book and, by extension, literature should be.
The flaw in that picture, however, is the word ‘most’. If most of the people show up most of the time for an activity that happens most every day, it won’t be long before most people aren’t showing up at all.
Literature is too important to allow incremental slippage. Books Unbound is not about denigrating what remains the most popular literary medium, a position printed books will occupy for a long time to come.
It’s about imagining new ways of writing and sharing, ways that broadcast storyteller’s voices and, by extension, the reach of literature.
Our stories have to unfold in places where readers go. To me that means books that are dynamic, interactive and versatile, presented to ‘audiences’ on social media, websites, in video readings and book trailers, episodically in eMagazines, and…
In ways that promote literature in its vital role as the art form that challenges readers to experience their worlds from new, diverse perspectives.
Today’s Write – Feb. 11, 2021
Stages of Anguish
This narrative emerged, writing about Harry Sanderson’s recollected state of mind as a ten-year-old, who had just suffered a deeply traumatic event, an assault on himself and the killing of his dog Gypsy. He blames himself for Gypsy’s agonizing fate, the dog protecting him from the predations of a violent itinerant, who had forced the two of them into the forest above the E&N Railroad line in Chemainus.
However, because this product costs much, only a part of the population around the world can afford to purchase levitra online midwayfire.com purchase this for its use. If your friends or family advise you of some will and estate lawyers you can always switch over to safe generic drugs, as recommended by spetadalafil cialis india ts. While the absence of VIPPS accreditation is one way to spot a potential counterfeiter, there are even more obvious signs–like websites that don’t require prescriptions, or that sell drugs at one-tenth the going rate at your local purchase viagra in australia pharmacy. If a site says that you don’t need any sort of foreign body, even a fabric should be prohibited and when all the essential home care is over with- it is time to rush levitra 40 mg midwayfire.com to a doctor immediately.Harry was so traumatized and ashamed by what he judged his own cowardice, that he never told anyone what had really happened. He simply said Gypsy vanished into the woods, then howled in terror and agony, and could not be found anywhere afterward.
The first person he told this truncated version of his story to was his mother, who consoled him as best she could, and tried to assure Harry that Gypsy might find his way home. After that, Harry would sublimate the tale of Gypsy’s disappearance into someone else’s story: His imaginary friend Art had been accosted in the woods above Chemainus, and heard his dog being killed. Then the imaginary Art moved away.
At this point The Mural Gazer will zero in on Harry’s need to confront the truth of what happened in that forest, now known as The Hermit’s Trail. In the time remaining he must expiate his guilt and sorrow by, at long-last, remembering and making his terrible confession, one he’d partially made to Charlie Abbott, the legendary hermit whose trail is part of Chemainus’s mind-scape.
MAGA-lomania isn’t great, eh? It’s dangerous!
Saw a picture the other day of an Albertan wearing a baseball cap with Let’s Make Canada Great Again emblazoned on its peak.
I suppose it’s not surprising that a Trumpian brand of nationalism is spreading north of the 49th. There will always be a segment of the population drawn to what is essentially a fascist ethic. It’s sad to see, though. Our saving grace – for the time being – is we don’t have an egoistic personality of Trumpian MAGAtude to incite Canadian worshipers to the kind of nonsense exhibited in Washington DC recently.
Before the madness takes root here, we should consider what the historic ‘greatness’ this Albertan proclaims consists of, then compare it to a version of greatness that isn’t a lie.
When, in the mid-16th Century, Jacques Cartier ‘claimed’ the territories he had explored for King Francis I of France, he was ignoring the fact that the land was already occupied. ‘Ignored’ doesn’t quite describe the Eurocentric hubris and nascent French nationalism of that historic moment. The fact that the land was already inhabited simply didn’t occur to him, which is tantamount to saying the original ‘owners’ were not really considered people.
That to me is not a mark of greatness; it’s a mindset that resulted in despicable acts of genocide by colonizing nations the world over. ‘Greatness’ today – true greatness – will be the successful reconciliation, and genuine recognition that we have much to learn from and share with resurgent First Nations across this land.
The name ‘Canada’ is a Europeanization of the Iroquoian word kanata, meaning village. It’s a crowning irony that the very hunting-gathering cultures our Canadian ancestors almost destroyed, and which still face pervasive discrimination to this day, gave our country its name.
Having confiscated huge swaths of ‘free land’, including approximately 25 million square kilometres in North America, the world’s colonizing nations prospered during the transformation of the global economy in the 18th and 19th Centuries. And the economic ‘greatness’ of this continent and the European homelands of its settlers, was in large part due to the vast resources that could be extracted, grown and eventually manufactured here.
Most colleges already have numbers along with literacy applications, but teachers remain for you to their very viagra online own gadgets for you to occur on top of interesting training pertaining to other subject locations. Therefore, ED, or male impotence is buy cialis mastercard an intimate relationship dysfunction or a mal-behavior of libido of human being, and development or maintenance of an erection incapability of male organ is relating to satisfactory performance of physical intimacy. Above mentioned herbs like punarnava, try address cheapest generic cialis varuna, shrigu, apamarg etc. are described from ancient times in our ayurvedic medicine system. A study conducted by Columbia University monitored 152 men suffering from impotence Men working in a factory or pilots should not take Kamagra Oral Jelly before going to their workplace Kamagra Oral Jelly is a brand name for generic levitra online Sildenafil Citrate Oral Jelly.But plundering, not living in harmony with or even sustainably managing the land, was the order of the day. As the industrial and consumerist revolutions took off, fuelled by an insatiable greed for more and more ‘raw materials’ clawed and hacked form the motherlodes appropriated in North America and all over the colonized world, the toll on the environment became increasingly ominous.
So the ‘greatness’ of North America has been based in part on the economic equivalent of an environmental reverse mortgage taken out on our continent… oh, I forgot, it wan’t really our continent to begin with, so in truth it’s a reverse mortgage taken out of other peoples’ land. Any way you look at it, the ‘greatness’ we’re so proud of in that equation is unsustainable, and to think of making ourselves ‘great again’ through that kind of rapacious appropriation doesn’t take us to paradise. It’s a fool’s dream.
So what could that misguided Albertan possibly aspire to as a form of ‘greatness’ not morally corrupt and environmentally disastrous? What would give us true pride?
Never in the long record of evolution has there been species that could consider its actions and circumstances, look into the future, and consciously proclaim: ‘What we have done and are doing is neither morally acceptable nor sustainable.’ Humanity is the first life-form that can deliberately adopt an ethic that goes beyond the cruelty and ultimately self-destructive impulses summed up in the phrase, ‘survival of the fittest’, or more aptly in the 21st Century, ‘bloating of the richest’.
Our only chance is to adopt lifestyles and technologies that allow us to live in harmony with each other and the environment, and which prove what intelligent, morally upright creatures we really are. That’s something no species or civilization has ever attempted, and – as with every historic challenge – it requires courage, vision and generosity of its champions, the true hallmarks of greatness.
CraigSpenceWriter.ca
The Underwood Blues
Let’s jettison last century’s anchors
Well into retirement age, it’s time for me to ask what I want to achieve in this final phase of my literary career? What it means to be a 21st Century writer? It’s never been an easy vocation; and that truism has never been more applicable than it is on the cusp of this New Year.
I began my working career as a reporter, hammering out stories on an Underwood typewriter; I’m writing this introspective on my laptop, standing up in my dining room, occasionally interrupted by the ‘Ding!’ of another email landing in my in-box; I could just as easily be thumb-writing in ‘Notes’ on my iPhone, in the middle of a busy intersection or at a socially distanced café.
Conclusion: The world has changed. If we writers don’t adapt to the blizzard of social and technological innovation that’s whipping round us, we will lose our vital role as voices in the storm. In a future post I want to go into more detail about just how vital the role of literature is, and how sorry a loss it will be, if we fail to rise to the challenges of the times, but for now I’m going to map out how I want to go about adapting to our new reality, not the why of it.
I’ll begin with my oft-repeated, favourite saying: Writing isn’t about writing. It’s about delving into meaningful experiences and sharing those adventures with appreciative audiences. And it’s not about ‘books’ in any clearly defined sense of the word, it’s about insinuating our ways into the minds of audiences.
Please note the use of the world ‘audience’ instead of ‘readers’ in that last paragraph. Ultimately literature comes down to books in some form or another, of course. But my minimalist definition of a book is: A code of squiggles and dots on a series of pages or screens; or a vocalization of those squiggles and dots into words and sentences, which any creature other than a human would interpret as the grunting and growling of an animal suffering terminal indigestion.
The allure of literature, its special place in the arts pantheon, is its symbolic delivery. Every reader or listener has to make up the presented story in his or her own imagination. Until then, books are inert lumps of masticated wood and ink on library and bookstore shelves, or confusing assemblages of wires and circuits in peoples briefcases and pockets. Reading and its derivatives are creative acts as much as the art of writing.
Alas, getting people to choose reading over the plethora of other media available to them has become an increasingly hard sell, especially if you define literature as a subset of entertainment. Think about it! A hundred and fifty years ago there were no radios, no televisions, computers, video games, the Internet, virtual realities, movie theatres – and so on. Candle light story-telling, live theatre, and parlour music or pub songs were the free-time activities people turned to, and books the only transportable repositories of thought and entertainment.
That unique portability has long-since been overwhelmed by powerful broadcast media, and I believe authors and publishers are increasingly going to have to seek out niche audiences, and find affordable, widely dispersed channels for sharing literature in this crazed new world. Books are going to have to connect seamlessly to digital media and keep up with the fast paced bursts of attention modern audiences give new ideas.
Learning how to effectively use new media has become part of my creative process, and I hope to share my successes and pratfalls as I go. I don’t see digital technology as a replacement for ‘books’, but as an essential adjunct. My upcoming edition of The Boy From Under is my third run at what I have dubbed Direct-to-Web publishing, the first edition (now offline) was my inaugural run. My second effort is a novel in progress, The Mural Gazer.
I’ll celebrate if, late in life, I can become a crotchety advocate of new media as the neural network for modern fiction and creative writing… Heck! I’ll celebrate even if my only achievement is to get literary types to stop using Underwood typewriters and quill pens as their trademark symbols in this frenetic here-and-now!
CraigSpenceWriter.ca
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