Elasticity of the Notions of Time and Space

Beyond Einstein yet through him as well, we know that space and time are relative, that it can be verified mathematically and "scientifically". Yet, as is the case for many things in this world, we knew that well before science could tell. Such is the case for everything that is left to prove. But this is not the object of this entry.

One day as I was hitchking* between Montréal and Québec City, a prof. from UQAR (Université du Québec à Rimouski) stopped to give me a ride. After a while and among the enthusiastic talks we were having, came the notion of distance and time. The prof. gave me the example of his travel. He left Montreal and was heading towards Rimouski. He made me realised that the notion of distance and space were relative to one's point of view, one's perception.
Thus having Quebec City as a destination, I was finding the trip rather long and was looking at things along the road that helped me calculate how close we were from Quebec City.
For him, going all the way to Rimouski, the view of Quebec City would always trigger this comment: "Oh, Quebec already!". However, he would remember having the same feeling as mine when as a student he was doing the Montreal-Quebec City route, but that all that changed as he was riding much longer. Quebec City was now mid-way.

Such is the case for a winter that seems never to end. Yesterday I dropped by a blog made by a Norvegian woman. The sun had just appeared on the horizon for the first time since November! Summers must be real short, I thought. But one has to remember that it is either sunny or the sun shows light 24 hours a day for many months up there. I imagine this Norvegian woman coming here and finding our winter rather short, looking at the greeneries that will eventually show up here.
We enter March, by far the most difficult month with its tons of snow that never seem to stop falling off the sky.
But rejoice! Since the sun is much higher in the sky, the snow melts fast, except that it has to be sunny. Which might not be the case this year: for the first time in memory the Great Lakes have not frozen this year, meaning we have much more humidity than usual.**
When I was young, sunny days were almost outnumbering cloudy days, with pure blue skies all day and all night long...

* For the younger generation reading this: it involved putting one's thumb up on the side of a road or an expressway and having someone stopped, taking you aboard, bringing you up to the point where both of you were not taking the same path, chitchatting in the meantime and not having to pay for it, as a gesture of solidarity from one human being to the other. Crazy, isn't it?

** One other reason for this endless cloudiness and it has been known for a good 25 years. For each ton of fuel burnt by airplanes, 1½ tons of water vapor is being created. They are called contrails. Considering the number of flights has immensely increased in the last quarter of a century, so is the amount of man-made water in the sky.

63 ¢ for rent... per month. I'll take it! √

^{Frosted skylight in my shack}

It has to be the price paid by the first French settlers in New France and it happens to be the price of my property taxes... for the time being.
It's a thoushand times cheaper than to rent in Montreal – let alone buy – and double that taking into consideration what I am about to built. The difference is staggering.
Of course it won't always be that way, but I'd rather start at such a low cost, making the rest feasible.
In today's world, one has to either earn above 100 grand or less than 10. Since the 6 digits income mostly comes with a pricetag (lifestyle, standing, mundanities, etc.) and that I am unable to cope with that anymore, I chose the other extreme.
According to the pyramid needs of Abraham Maslow, one has to fulfill one's primary needs before reaching a higher level of self. I do not need to sit on a golden toilet seat. I can satisfy myself with a backhouse, for I do not spend much time in there. And it's boring to sit all day :-)

^{Abraham Maslow's pyramid of needs}
In technical terms, the water closet system is rather polluting as much as the spreading of liquid manure of pigs which has a severe effect on ground water, on deforestation, as it is the case in Montérégie. Incendentally, the green zoning has this rather strange rules whereas you can't shit in that zoning but you can spread liquid manure of pigs on square kilometers and even cut down forests to do so. Other sanitary and non-chemical systems exist such as septic tanks. I always wonder though where is the stuff going after the tanks are being emptied by "specialized" firms.
I would by far prefer compost though I might not have much of a choice, depending on the municipality's policies. The most important is to leave this world as clean as I entered it for the next tenants to come on this planet.
I might be seen as cheap but I don't think I am. I call for the redistribution of wealth and sharing. I do not know how much more this society can go on the current trend. At least I am not waiting for things to happen in political terms. I'll be dead before the light shows up.
Of course an apartment in Paris or New York, etc. would be so much better! For some maybe. I am not ready to pay for this privilege and prefer to have none of it which is a reverse of my wishes before. Over and out.
My only wish: stop worrying about feeling fragile and worrysome day after day because of money... and being in the lowland of life makes you think acutely about what's essential. Not the image of who you are but the genuine you at the helm.
After all I am here to be able to do something that comes from my brain, not doing other people's stuff except for volunteer work.

^{It's only a picture, the show must go on!}

The Mauve House

^{Busy Denman Street in the fog, somewhere in 1997.}

For one reason or the other, I found myself searching for a house where I lived my last period in Vancouver. It was an old house of the beginning of Vancouver in the 1880's.
Back a few years ago, searching for it I found an aerial view of the street corner where it is located but I could not see it in the fog and darkness (in the photograph that is).
Looking more closely at that photograph of 1997 I could finally see it. It was to me a very astonishing discovery, for when one knows how the West End of Vancouver had been ripped apart by real estate for the last 50 years, it was amazing to see this very building still standing.

^{A revealing close-up}
I was not sure about the address anymore. I lived there from november 1981 to May 1982 and then in the spring of 1983. I finally found a great site put up by a West End photographer Maurice Jussak, worth checking out. He took pictures of all old buildings in the West End before they all disappear. A great idea. That is how I found the Mauve House, at 1762 Pendrell Avenue, where I used to live. I was thrilled. More than any other places I ever lived this place is foreever treasured in my heart and mind.

^{Obviously the last one to have painted the house was my roomate in 1982... The two houses are side by side. The concrete entrance is the same on both pics. Only the angle is different.}
It is somehow the basis for all my believes in a sense of conviviality that is to be reclaimed from this beheaded society. As much as Jim Morisson tombstones is a shrine for musical fans, this place is my own shrine for the joy of living. When I came back in March 1983, it became a very surprising place where around 100 different people came by to talk to exchange thoughts mostly around a coffee pot, sometimes beer or wine. It was a very intense moment that acts as a beacon to any disire to reclaim the pleasure to be with people in a simple manner. That is where I had great fun with my daughter's mom who is still a genuine friend of mine and long in the same way as I do for that great moment in our lives.
Alas, as I just found out, it's been finally sold as well as the house next to it for a mere 2M $. There were three houses altogether. My neighbours were good people of all walks of life with whom I had great conversation.

^{From the house (red dot) to the park view, 100 feet}
Located in the lane of Denman and Davie, the backyard was 100 feet from the English Bay park with that fantastic view. The location was incredible and the price very low compared to the hefty fines that were the rents all over.
My intention is to replicate my appartement in that house into my home project. I sincerely believe the configuration of the apartment played a major role in the connection I had with people. Not only its location next to the sea. It is out of reach now for me to even remotely think I could go back out there and carrying on, for it won't be possible, would it be for only one reason: it is in the past. Times have changed.
Yet it is through that channel that I glowed most, hence my intention in reclaiming my own space in this ever crunching world. It is not nostalgia. I am struggling to maintain a lifestyle that is closer to my heart and that place triggered in me a vibration strong enough to say: "This is IT".
That being said (written in fact) I do not think everyone feels the same way about it, furthermore, that it will be again possible to renew this in my future place. I simply do not see how at this point. I was in a city which is not the case anymore.

^{A bit of the view when crossing the street. Click on the pic for more of the view.
Credit: Photograph by Trail Canada www.trailcanada.com}

Science & spirituality : two different perspectives.

Spiritualities as much as sciences are constructions of the human spirit, as far as we know. No one has come forward from the outer world to tell us which is right and which is wrong and we much depend on ourselves up to now to make this determination.

There is about only one thing undeniable: the universe has been there well before we came to be and it does not need us to stay there! The rest is speculative but should put us at our place. Am I being reasonable here or disappointing...

Our interpretation of it all since the beginning of the species has been a good try to say the least. Furthermore there should always be a clean separation between science and spirituality, for their respective angle of research and questioning is quite apart most of the time. On the one hand simply put, science asks "how" and on the other hand spirituality wonders "why". But that does not mean there is no possible dialogue between the two. They complete each other. In a natural manner a child is asking "why". In adulthood we come to ask "how". The link between the spiritual world or the invisible world and the scientific or material world is there. During childhood, in normal condition, we have the leisure to ask "why", for we do not have to take care much of the material world for our survival. It is done for us. But in adulthood we have to face "reality". Our dreamworld is vanishing. Yet always in normal child-rearing conditions it will always stay there as a beacon of hope.

The universe does not need us to be... Science has come very late in the universe. It has not build it and has still to explain much of it. It can explain the Big Bang, how it happened, but not why it happened. What or who triggered it. Sciences are only tools, great tools that is. But they probably will never explain the "whys", only the "hows".

It is very important to know the "hows" for it helps us tremendously in avoiding the pain of not knowing. "What you don't know can't hurt you", the saying goes. This is obviously a very dangerous and lazy way to be.

Since the universe does not need us to be and science will probably never tell us "why" it's there, lets assume that we still need to know "why"... That line of questioning is as old as the "how". We have intuitively known that we can't explain the two lines of questioning with the same parameters. Science has always excluded any explanation that cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It is its privilege.

Spirituality as we know it involves a certain degree of intuitive belief that we can't prove scientifically. Yet we need such an anchor or a basis on which to build our encounter with the universe and "go from there". It can be something transmitted from generation to generation or it can be learned from others later on if we find ourselves unable to accept what has been transmitted to us through family, parents, etc. In any case, we build our set of beliefs from our own capacities, would they be social, intellectual or otherwise.

We all have a set of believes from atheism to fanatism of all sorts. We are more and more "civilized" and living in big cities where we hardly know that milk comes from cows or goats, that water comes from either the ocean or lakes and rivers far away, that stars are not lamposts at every street corners. The quest for meaning in this small universe within the big one is more difficult than it would have been when the Great Prophets were having their own quest in the middle of nature.