The World I Live In by Mary Oliver

A beautiful poem by Mary Oliver......

I have refused to live

locked in the orderly house of

     reasons and proofs.

The world I live in and believe in

is wider than that. And anyway,

     what’s wrong with Maybe?

You wouldn’t believe what once or

twice I have seen. I’ll just

     tell you this:

only if there are angels in your head will you

     ever, possibly, see one.

Blooming in the absence of competition

“A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.”

– Zen Shin

I like this thought. If we all could just bloom and shine according to our individual talents and God-given potential rather than compete in a destructive way, the world would be a better place. However, having said that, I have witnessed competition in the plant world. Two geranium plants in one pot will eventually lead to one of them thriving and the other dying; one outcompetes the other for survival given limited resources. So the natural world is not free from competition for survival. However, plants seem to have adapted to a system of peaceful coexistence much better than we humans, for the most part. 

If you can't say something nice

My mother used to tell us children 'if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all'. It wasn't her expression, it's apparently an Aesop quote that found its way into the general vernacular many years ago. But it's as relevant now as it was all those years ago in ancient Greece. I was reminded of this quote when I heard about Chris Rock's diss of Jada Pinkett Smith's appearance at the recent Oscar's celebration. Neither she nor her husband Will Smith (who reacted badly) need my defense and this post is not about them or what happened. It is about what one has the right to say and not to say publicly. My take on it is this. You do not have the right as a comedian to joke about anyone else's appearance, be they women or men. You do not comment on their height, weight, attractiveness, baldness, facial characteristics, way of speaking, etc. You just do not do this. We learned this as children and we learned it early on. We did not do this at home, in school, or when out in public. If some few children did this, they were punished. As we got older (pre-teenagers) it suddenly became alright in different peer groups to comment on people's looks or intelligence and to sometimes mob them for it. It's hard to stop that in schools as we all know, even though it causes a lot of pain for the victims of such abuse. It comes down to how you were raised; if you were raised by parents who had empathy for others, you learned empathy at home. You understood that this person was poor or elderly, in difficult life circumstances, another sick, another a widow or widower, another the victim of spousal abuse, and so forth. As a child, you learned to have compassion for others. This was how we were raised, and how my closest and dearest friends were raised. Sarcasm was not often employed in the way we communicated with each other. We could criticize the behavior of others, yes, but we did not resort to calling others ugly, stupid, fat ass, or any other derogatory comments that are often bandied about in today's world. 

If you as a comedian want to comment or be self-deprecating about your own height, weight, attractiveness, baldness, facial characteristics, way of speaking, etc, feel free. We can choose to listen to you and laugh (or not). The point is that we can choose. Many male and female comedians made the rounds on the television circuit doing just that--Rodney Dangerfield, Don Rickles, and Phyllis Diller come to mind. Were they funny? Sometimes. But one could get tired of it. They joked about their wives and husbands too, but it was clear that they had the permission to do so. It wasn't just sprung on an unsuspecting audience. 

It is the same in our personal lives. Many people find it very uncomfortable to sit in the presence of couples whose only form of communication is to belittle their significant other via so-called humor. It's not humor, it's passive-aggressive behavior and it's unkind. It's hurtful. In some cases it's abusive. It's also extremely dishonest. If you cannot be honest with your partner about something that is bothering you, then that is your problem. And rest assured it is a problem. Having dealt with a passive-aggressive workplace for many years, I can attest to how destructive such behavior actually is; bosses who 'joked' at the expense of their employees, who were unkind via their so-called humor. None of it was funny. In group situations it was mortifying, since some bosses had their particular favorites whom they enjoyed hacking at. Those of us who defended the recipients of such behavior against the bosses also came in for our share of harassment. I have few good memories of most of the leaders I encountered in my former workplace. Most were men, some few were women; women could often be as unkind as the men were, just so that's clear. 

There are kind ways to criticize others, there are kind ways to instruct others. None of them involve publicly disparaging people or publicly making fun of them. The few times I had to criticize one or two employees who worked for me, I called them into my office for a private chat. No one else knew about what I wanted to say. The discussion was between me and the other person. I could say that I didn't like their behavior or attitude toward others in the research group; I could encourage them to alter the way they behaved. If they didn't do that, the consequence was that we ended our professional association. I was not unkind, just firm. They understood that and also understood that I was not out to get them. And in both cases they altered their behavior for the better. 

We come back to the idea of being nice. It does not mean being weak. It does not mean that others have the right to walk all over nice people. Nice is not the same as 'woke', although if we've come to the point in society where wokeness is the only thing that forces people to examine their unkind and unjust behavior, then it serves a purpose. I believe that one should 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. That's the Golden Rule and I think society should remember it. And those who think they're cool by being mean, try keeping your mouths shut. 'Silence is golden'. 

 

Having to listen to windbags

More and more I understand what I wanted to escape by retiring when I did. I wanted to escape endless useless meetings that were dominated by the same people who talked and talked and in the end did nothing except check off one more meeting on their daily schedule. While the rest of us put aside an hour or two for these meetings, when we had plenty of real work to do, the meeting addicts held us captive while they proceeded to talk endlessly about nothing at all. At least that's my take on it. Percentage-wise I'd say that about twenty-five percent of all meetings actually led to a desired result. The rest were just excuses to waste time in my estimation. I know I am being judgmental, and I wish I could think and feel otherwise. But in my former workplace there was a lot of hot air floating around and eventually my body just couldn't take it anymore. I got restless physically and mentally and just wanted to escape whatever room in which we were trapped. 

I was reminded of this last night when I attended the annual garden meeting held by our allotment garden. The board leader held order and had a list of things to be discussed. It was all going well until the room was open for discussion of some particular issues. That's when the windbags opened their mouths to overstate the obvious. I wish I could say that what they uttered had a point, but there was no point other than to harangue the rest of us for thinking incorrectly. One man in particular was the worst; he chided the rest of us every time he opened his mouth, saying the same exact thing at least five times. A domineering man who likes to hear himself talk, who pounded the table first when announcing that he had something to say. Which of course was important, at least to him. It was torture to listen to him. The rest of us could have rolled our eyes but didn't. We were not rude; he was. That's when the board leader should have stepped in and stopped him but didn't. Or if she tried, it wasn't firmly enough. I caught the eye of the woman sitting across from me at the table, and we tacitly agreed that it was painful to listen to this man drone on and on. It made me wonder if some people feel they have so little stature in life that they need to assert themselves in settings where it absolutely has no place. This was a garden meeting after all, not a high-level diplomatic government meeting. 

I shouldn't have let the meeting ruin my evening, but it did. I was reminded of Sartre's comment 'hell is other people' when I thought afterward about the meeting and some of the very strange people who frequent such meetings. It's hell to be stuck in the same room with domineering windbags. What is fun about sitting for two hours in the same room with these types of people you barely know and will probably not get to know (or want to get to know) in any meaningful way? I made myself a promise that I will not attend these meetings in the future. It goes against my grain to disengage from such things, because I know it is important to be involved, but I cannot stomach being harangued anymore by windbags. I've had enough of it to last me a lifetime. 

Honeybees enjoying the snowdrops

It's still quite early in the season, but the snowdrops have bloomed first as they always do, providing food for the honeybees that are no longer dormant in their hives. We've had exceptionally nice weather in Oslo for the past two weeks, with daytime temperatures around 50 degrees F. So the bees are out in force during the early afternoon when the sun is at its warmest. I took this video the other day and wanted to share it with you. Turn up the volume for full effect!

Movements through the landscape

My newest collection of poems, Movements through the Landscape, is now available on Amazon in paperback form and as an e-book: Movements through the Landscape: De Angelis, Paula Mary: 9798437622254: Amazon.com: Books

This book is a collection of poems originally written in Norwegian and translated into English. I am planning to publish the Norwegian version as an e-book here in Norway. 

2018 - Max Richter - My Brilliant Friend (OST)

Wonderful musical score to the brilliant HBO series--My Brilliant Friend. I'm now watching season 3 which corresponds to book 3 (Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay) of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan quadrilogy. Season 3 will end shortly; at least I can look forward to season 4. Quality television all the way--a pearl in a sea of mostly garbage. 

 

A quieter way of life

 This is how I've viewed life for many years now. 

The television series White Wall

White Wall is an eight-episode Finnish/Swedish tv series from 2020 that showed up on Norwegian tv (NRK1) recently (perhaps it's been there a while and I just didn't know about it) and we finished watching it last week. It is apparently available for viewing on Netflix as well. White Wall is a sci-fi series that I can recommend, although the ending will probably frustrate some people (not me). But I happen to like the sci-fi genre and will cut sci-fi writers/filmmakers some slack if their creations are mostly well-done. I think this series was well-done, even though it moved slowly. It took its time getting to the revelation of what the white wall actually was and what was behind it. Additionally it had an appropriate 'atmosphere' and subtle feeling of impending doom in each episode.  

The series has Norwegian actor (Aksel Hennie) in one of the main roles. I thought he did a very good job as the character Lars Ruud, project leader at a former Swedish mining site that is being prepared as a large repository for nuclear waste. There are the extremist environmental activists who are against the opening of the site as well as corporate leadership that doesn't want anything to stand in the way of the formal opening. The underground team working on the site discovers the existence of a white wall at the end of one of the many tunnels after an unexplained explosion. Several members of the team are killed and this prompts an investigation by security; Lars and his team keep the discovery of the white wall secret from corporate leadership while letting the security leader in on the secret. They come to realize that they cannot dig around the wall or excavate it; it has an oblong shape and is quite high. Without giving away the rest of the story, the white wall is eventually shown to be a huge capsule of some sort, composed of carbon and unidentifiable materials not before seen on earth. What this capsule is doing there, who put it there, and what it contains are the subjects of the last three episodes. Subplots include Lars' affair with his colleague Helen Wikberg (played by Vera Vitali), her autistic son Axel's behavioral changes after touching the capsule wall, the activist Astrid and her father Besse (retired but who once worked in the mine and knew about the existence of the white wall), and the relationship of Oskar the security guard with Astrid. The atmosphere is appropriately eerie and claustrophobic, as one might expect when working in deserted mine tunnels. The series was filmed in an actual mine located in Pyhäjärvi, Finland. Kudos to the actors who worked in these mine tunnels for months at a time. You couldn't have paid me enough money to descend so far underground; my claustrophobia would have gotten the better of me. 

It's unclear whether there will be a season 2 based on the ending of season 1. Without giving it away, I'll say that it's fairly catastrophic, so what there would be to continue in terms of storyline would be truly challenging to write. But time will tell. 

The Kashmir Files

There are some films that will haunt you for the rest of your life. The Kashmir Files is one of them. I saw it last night with a friend who happens to be from India. She did not know the story of the 1990 exodus of the Kashmir Pandits, which is what the film is about, but she had heard that the film was very good. She invited me to join her and her family and friends to go and see the movie. We have previously talked about going to see an Indian Bollywood film together with some of our other friends, a group of women who happen to be former colleagues, and we will do that at some point. But last night's film was not a happy Bollywood film. 

The Kashmir Files is a Hindi-language drama film (with English subtitles) based on real-life stories of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits during the Kashmir Insurgency. It was written and directed by Vivek Agnihotri and was released in March of this year. It has done very well at the Indian box office and it will be interesting to see how well it does globally. The film has been criticized for promoting anti-Muslim sentiment due to the brutality of the extremist Muslim insurgents against the Kashmiri Pandits. If you want to read about the film you can do so here: The Kashmir Files - Wikipedia. What I have understood is that the insurgents butchered not only the Kashmiri Pandits but also moderate Muslims and other religious groups. Their aim was to free Kashmir from India and to make it a Muslim state; their motto was 'convert, leave, or die'. In the film, the young male university student named Krishna Pandit (played by Darshan Kumaar) learns what happened to his parents and brother at the hands of the insurgents; he has not been told the truth by his grandfather who raised him. His speech at the end of the film to his fellow university students was electrifying. He tells the story of what he has learned about what happened in Kashmir after going there to spread his grandfather's ashes together with his grandfather's old friends, which leads to estrangement from his professor Radhika Menon (played by Pallavi Joshi) who has pushed him to front the new separatist movement. All the actors and actresses in this film delivered excellent performances.  

I leave the political discussions for the experts. I cannot comment on the history or the events of 1990 in Kashmir; I know very little about Indian history. But it struck me once again how much evil is committed in the name of religious sentiment. Religion has been the reason for many of the wars up through history and for the ensuing brutality. After seeing this film, I asked, why? Why can't we live in peace, coexist peacefully with each other? I firmly believe that most people want to do just that. Why can't we worship as we please without preaching and subduing others who believe differently? If you believe in several gods and I believe in one, so be it. We are different. I have no right to tell you that my beliefs are better than yours, nor do you have any right to tell me that yours are better than mine. I am not the sole possessor of truth in this life and neither are you. It is more important to me that we should live peacefully together. But I see that many political leaders do not want to do that. That is very clear to me when I look at what is happening in Ukraine. Man's inhumanity to man; I wonder if it will ever stop. 

One of the older characters in the film says that inhuman leaders rely on the hopelessness of the people they subjugate in order to retain their power. He says that one must always have hope, because if there is hope there is the possibility of change. I can imagine that for those who lived through this era in Indian history, that having hope was difficult, much like it must have been for the Jewish people during WWII. But it is hope that keeps you going. My friend said that one of her friends did not want to attend the film with them because she is from Kashmir and experienced what happened first-hand. I can understand that too. The film was tough to watch, and probably on my own, had I read about it first, I would not have chosen to see it. But I don't regret having seen it. Sometimes it is necessary for the bubble that we live in to be popped from time to time. Because we really have no idea what it is like to have to leave your country behind because an invader wants to kill you. We have no idea. 

Another way of looking at it

Another way of looking at life's detours.......

What to say to a writer

Nothing else to do but laugh when I read this. I can imagine it's like this in some literary arenas where the air is rarefied, if they're anything like the good ole boys' clubs found in academic circles. Mutual admiration societies, and if you're not part of one, oh well. Too bad for you.  

Vaccination competition

Did I ever mention how much I love Pearls Before Swine (probably a hundred times if I was counting). Stephan Pastis' sense of humor appeals to me. Today's strip was funny in that bizarre nutso way he has of reflecting on what goes on in society. Enjoy. 

In my later years

I am now living like this after years of not living like this. It's not that I was unhappy before (research science used to be a creative profession until it was taken over by bureaucrats), just that I'm happier now that I am working only for myself. I consider myself lucky that I loved what I did for many years (over thirty years working as an academic research scientist), until I didn't anymore due to the bureaucratic infiltration that hit us full on about ten years ago. No regrets about retiring. Moving on has been a happy change!

A necessary reminder

Just a reminder, for those Americans (and any others) who are complaining about the high gas prices.....

No one else is quite like you

Worth remembering especially when you get discouraged.....

Harbingers of spring

How the snowdrops look now as of March 5 this year

How the snowdrops looked on March 16 of last year

Each year in March, the snowdrops make their appearance. They are the harbingers of spring, and my heart is overjoyed each time I see them. They are hardy flowers, poking up through the remaining snow and dead leaves covering the garden. They precede crocuses and hyacinths which make their appearance in April, closer to Easter. 

I love hardy flowers. I love anything that survives a tough environment. In that regard, I'm a fan of berry bushes too, as well as rhododendrons. Raspberry, gooseberry, blackberry, black currant and red currant bushes survive the cold winter and freezing temperatures and bloom like clockwork each year. There is something so heartening about a garden. It gives one something to believe in, especially when it seems that all hope is lost in the world. A garden provides hope. It is a place of renewal. It tells us that we can start again, start over, leave our winter souls behind and embrace the warm sunshine on our faces. I've often wondered what the world would be like without the sun. Life as we know it would end, of course, but I'm sure many people would commit suicide before that eventuality. Who would want to live in perpetual darkness? I suppose there is a good reason that Christ is seen as the light of the world; our souls do not have to live in darkness if we seek him. It seems that more than ever, we need to seek him, since our world is moving toward darkness. I will find him in my garden, that I know.  

The turn of events in the world

I haven't posted this past week, and it's not because I've run out of things to say. It's because I'm shocked by the turn of events in the world. Russia invaded Ukraine and most of the world united against the aggressor Russia. I'm astounded by how fast that happened, both the invasion and the reaction to it. We knew the invasion was coming, but the unity of the reaction impresses me. I'm so heartened to see all of the businesses that are pulling out of Russia, the freezing of Russian assets, etc. While I know that many Russians don't support Putin's decision or his world view, the fact remains that they are the only ones who can end his reign of terror and paranoia. They are the only ones who can rise up against him. It has to come from within their country. I'm all for supporting Ukraine with weapons and military equipment, and if need be, personnel, but only if absolutely necessary. But if we do, the USA and NATO will be part of a new world war, and what will that mean for humanity's future, especially if it becomes a nuclear war?

What has also surprised me is how many wealthy people there are in Russia, all of whom are worried about their wealth and their freedom now that sanctions are a reality. Russian oligarchs. I looked up the word oligarch just to be sure I understood its meaning. An oligarch is 'a person who is part of a small group holding power in a state'. Wikipedia defines Russian oligarchs as 'business oligarchs of the former Soviet republics who rapidly accumulated wealth during the era of Russian privatization in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s'. In other words, opportunists who got filthy rich at the expense of the country; they support Putin and their resources help to finance his invasion ( FACT SHEET: The United States Continues to Target Russian Oligarchs Enabling Putin’s War of Choice | The White House). Putin is very wealthy as are many in his cabinet and many of his cronies. Of course they want to preserve their wealth; in that respect they are no different than many American billionaires. The difference is that American billionaires are not considered to be oligarchs, although one can wonder at times about their intelligence and morality (or lack of it). I need only think of Jeff Bezos wanting the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands to take down a bridge so that he can sail his 458 million dollar yacht out of the city (Rotterdam to partly dismantle historic bridge for Jeff Bezos’s superyacht | Netherlands | The Guardian). Rotterdam surprisingly enough has agreed to do that. Or Kim Kardashian paying 150 million dollars for her new private jet. People are starving in the world and they use amounts of money that 99% of the world population will never see during their entire lives.  

I'm not shocked about how power corrupts or about how absolute power corrupts absolutely. One need only take a look at some toxic workplaces to understand this. Unchecked power wreaks havoc on a workplace, just as it wreaks havoc on a country. One must stand up to power-hungry bullies and aggressors, but it seldom happens if they have the power. Toxic workplaces are like toxic countries, just on a smaller scale. You do as you're told or else. The 'or else' can be everything from being fired to being harassed, frozen out of the majority, or mocked. Imagine working for Trump and getting on his wrong side; we've all witnessed how he treated those he considered to be 'disloyal'. Luckily for the USA, its founders built in a set of checks and balances so that the president would never have absolute power. They did not want a king as leader of America. Trump is fascinated by authoritarian leaders like Putin; you could wonder if he wants to be in the same position, the undisputed leader with absolute power. 

The uncomfortable truth is that many people view the extremely wealthy as successful and good people. I'm sure a number of them are, but many aren't. Many are just plain amoral, unconcerned with the right and wrong of a particular issue. And men like Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and OJ Simpson, who are just plain immoral, who behave evilly because they think (know) they can get away with their abhorrent behavior. What surprises me are the number of people living in borderline poverty who think people like Trump, Bezos, or Gates really care about them. What don't they understand? Trump, Bezos, Gates, and other wealthy people do not represent them. They actually have no idea about how the other 99% of people in the world live. How can they, when if they want to travel, they hop on their private jets and avoid what the rest of us have to deal with anytime we want to travel--traffic on the way to the airport, queues at the airport, the economy section of the plane that packs people together like sardines. During the recent pandemic, they were not crammed into their tiny apartments in Manhattan or the Bronx, they were ensconced in their beach houses or vacation houses far from overpopulated cities. 

I don't envy the wealthy, I never have. I grew up with people who did, who wondered why they weren't wealthier, why they couldn't have what their wealthy friends had. I never cared too much about money. Had I cared, I certainly wouldn't have chosen an academic career. Scientists made very little money when I was starting out. I chose my career based on my interest in it, but I did of course know that it would pay me enough so that I could live and take care of myself. Most people think this way. I am appreciative of the innovation and jobs that the wealthy create when they start companies based on their innovative ideas, but at some point their wealth gets the upper hand and things get out of hand. They forget where they came from and they surround themselves with people who preferably don't remind them of where they came from. 

Putin seems to have forgotten where he came from. He is interested in preserving his power and wealth like most right-wing ultraconservatives. He may have been a communist once but no longer. He will kill many innocent people to protect his power and wealth. He is not interested in what is good for Russia, only in what is good for himself. He is both amoral and immoral and the world will eventually be better off without him. How that happens is anyone's guess. I am very grateful for all of the unnamed diplomats in the world who work tirelessly to preserve peace and prevent war. I never understood before what an important role they play in preserving the fragile peace in the world. God bless them. 

Some quotes about evil

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke

Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil. --Elie Wiesel

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. --Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways. --Buddha

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil. --Plato

The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance. --Herodotus

Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table. --W. H. Auden

Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good... Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place. --Pope Francis

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil. --Aristotle

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself. --Soren Kierkegaard

Evil is whatever distracts. --Franz Kafka

I define a 'good person' as somebody who is fully conscious of their own limitations. They know their strengths, but they also know their 'shadow' - they know their weaknesses. In other words, they understand that there is no good without bad. Good and evil are really one, but we have broken them up in our consciousness. We polarize them. --John Bradshaw

All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy. --Scott Alexander

It is not enough for us to restrain from doing evil, unless we shall also do good. --St. Jerome

The bad man desires arbitrary power. What moves the evil man is the love of injustice. --John Rawls

The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world. --Max Born

I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power. --Patricia Cornwell

Another great Pearls Before Swine--The Game of Covid Life

 Pretty much sums it up!