Yes it IS my fault, thank you very much

"It's not your fault." That's what people say when they're trying to be nice, trying to be comforting. But that's not what they're being. If "it" isn't my fault, then whose is it? Who's in control? The Universe, or me?

I don't like the way The Universe keeps muscle-ing in on my business, trying to dominate (and forever changing its plans at the last minute). My faults are me. Take them away and you take my identity. Then what am I left with -- my virtues? Not much substance in that. Anyway, "virtue" is all the same, but faults are individual. So don't take mine, Universe. You think everything's about you. You've already got enough faults of your own -- whole earthquakes-worth of them, spread across billions of planets. So you don't need to take credit for mine.

I'm happy to take the blame for them. To let someone else take it is to cede control -- and if that was lost, it would be my fault. What's the use of being independent if you can't be independent from Everything? So when things go wrong it wasn't "it", it was me. I'm in charge. So dear friends, life coaches, therapists and whatever … please don't tell me whether something's my fault or not. Next thing I know you'll be telling me something wasn't my accomplishment. 😉

The Native Person's Ties to the Land: Green Childhood in a Green Birthplace

     

        He grew up in an era when kids roamed freely in residential neighbourhoods and parents were less watchful. He and his friends played in their large gardens and the woods close to their homes. They went out in all weather, sun-bathing or puddle-jumping as conditions dictated. In summer they picked blackberries, and the taste of the sweet juice bursting on the tongue was a memory they never lost, it spread deep into their unconscious like the stain of blackberry juice on clothing.

       They combed the local beaches and were accustomed from toddler-hood to cold salt water and sand between the toes. They dug clams and out on the reef collected oysters. They made friends with crows. They rode bikes to the tops of hills where they ate picnics while surveying the beloved landscape of their childhood spread out below, the roof-tops of houses hiding within the remnant oak forest and the air alive with birdsong.

       This outdoor life, these sensations, smells and sights bound them to land and climate and fed their spirits through the later challenges of adulthood, the highs and lows and whatever life brought them.
       Who were these children of this landscape where nature still survived in residential areas, and kids played on the land and not at computer terminals? They were grandchildren of immigrants to British Columbia from Great Britain and Europe, twentieth century kids who lived a green childhood, on intimate terms with the landscape. They were native to this land (meaning, born here) and native to nowhere else: this was their homeland. It had seeped into their spirits and personalities and by absorbing it they owned it, which is another way of saying that it owned them.

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More for the Satirocene Age -- Black & White

Black and White

Only Taoism uses black and white imagery properly, because it knows they're intermingled. One leads to the other, opposites giving birth to each other.

This is not the same as everything being a muddle. “Culture wars”, identitarianism and ideological politics are muddle. What is the place for instance of gender politics vis-a-vis trans rights? Why is it okay for men to “appropriate” femaleness by dressing in drag, but not okay for white people to use black-face for stage makeup in theatre? Is it playing the roles that's bad, or adopting the visible signifiers? Can only trans-men use drag, or can anyone? Back in the 19^th century when women like Georges Sand dressed in men's attire, some people said it proved they were evil, possessed by the devil -- sort of like when someone uses black-face in theatre today. Does the same apply to Japanese theatre which employs white face-paint? Or is that allowed because it's “ethnic”?

Definitions of “ethnic” seem muddled too. Usually, in coffee-shop disputes, “ethnic” means non-white, which tacitly places white people in the role of the gold standard against which other groups are measured. To anyone easily muddled this seems like reinforcing privilege. Reverse-prioritizing. If anyone gets things wrong it's whites who must apologize, because they speak from dominance --which gives them dominance. Theirs is the noblesse oblige of lavish apology-bestowal. Is this equity then? 

Of course some white people have higher (meaning lower) status than others in the ethnic hierarchy: in Canada recent white immigrants from unpleasant, war-torn or poverty-stricken nations need not apologize as much as “colonial” immigrants who came from places with democracy and rule of law – the very things with which these settlers made modern Canada what it is today. And what is it today? Some international grading systems call it the Number One best place to live – albeit perhaps a bit muddled about the difference between black and white.

The Satirocene Age

Recent Tales by Flora Jardine:
"Support Payments", 
http://www.short-humour.org.uk/10writersshowcase/supportpayments.htm 

"A Long Marriage", pifMagazine, No. 268, September 2019   https://www.pifmagazine.com/2019/09/a-long-marriage/

"Suicide Post", Island Writer, 17(1) 2019

"Tunnelling Down", Wandering Words: Anthology of West Coast Writing, 2018

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The Satirocene Age (a.k.a. Today)

      Our era may have invented the term “fake news” but we didn't invent fakery. Rather, the Romans started it all when the Latin tongue produced the verb “facere”(to do or make), from which we get “manufactured”, “made”, and things made-up: fakes. We got this then, from classical forebears. It used to be called propaganda, which properly speaking is about propagation (more Latin) of a doctrine by a committee (originally a committee of Church cardinals).

     “Satire” means medley and comes from “sature” (more Latin ...), and as a literary form it mixes fact and folly for the exposure of the latter (usually in a humorous way). The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English points out that satire is most popular in eras of rampant thought control – meaning eras with language police who enforce ideological correctness as expressed in popular socio-political slogans. That sounds a lot like our own times, and for that reason we could call ours the “Satirocene Age”. Satire is becoming the dominant literary species. It lets us demonstrate our resistance to the thought police by tossing as many individualistic fire-cracker ideas into the mix as we can – ensuring that nobody gets burnt, of course (although if their bluster gets heated that can be entertaining).