Please see my photography site at: www.peterscottcameron.com
There is nothing surprising in the declaration that the world has changed during the Covid-19 pandemic. There is the enormous human toll of it: the illness, suffering and death of individuals, the grief of families, and the wear and tear on health care providers, the economic fear and devastation, and the psychic toll for many.
However, there has been another side to all this (Imagine, Part I). With exceptions for the misguided (to put it kindly) and more antisocial parts of the U.S., the world has become quieter, even where there is some reopening. There are fewer cars on the road, fewer airplanes in the sky, and fewer people on the streets. The gigantic cruise ships are sitting idle. The streets of tourist cities that were once crammed with people are suddenly liveable. Museums that were once filled with hurried and harried people snapping selfies are passable and calm; a visitor now can see and contemplate a painting or artifact. We are staying home, spending more time with those amiable companions – ourselves – and with our loved ones (not all of them, of course, as there are those whom we cannot visit under present circumstances). We have calmed down and this is a good thing.
And as a bonus, temporarily at least, we have also reduced our fossil fuel burning, with resulting lower carbon emission levels. The clear skies over cities have provided us with a glimpse of what is possible, what we can do to save our planet. As terrible as this pandemic has been, it also provides us with a chance to take stock, and to modify how we live in a way that will benefit both ourselves and the rest of earth’s creation.
(For any climate change deniers in my vast reading audience, for now I will just say: cut the bullshit.[i] I will deal with you another time.)
And so, I (and many others[ii]) propose that we seize this crisis as an opportunity to make permanent modifications in how we live, modelled on what we are doing now: not to change everything, but just to adjust and adapt. Slow down and make the recovery greener.
First is simply, once the pandemic ebbs, to stay home more and do less in the world. We, in the wealthy West and North, have been living like it is an ongoing party in our personal amusement park, complete with all the candy, rides and entertainment we could ever want. But this is not sustainable, and the planet is showing us that. And really, we must ask: is that how we want to live?
And so, my proposal is to do less in the world:
- Drive less: For many jobs, we simply do not have to drive every day to offices or other settings, including educational. The pandemic has shown this clearly. Of course, this is not true for all work – caps doffed to all those brave souls, from the grocery clerk to the nurse, who show up every day to serve and help the rest of us. But stating the obvious, technology enables many to work just as, or more, effectively from home. Perhaps one day a week in the office would satisfy social and schmoozing needs, as well as the usual managerial obsession with employee surveillance. Hybrid teaching and learning models could cut education-related travelling in half. Couple that with the sensible idea of reducing the work week to four days – which also has the advantage of spreading the work and money to more people – and bingo, we are the winners of a big door prize. Imagine less commuting, more comfortable working conditions, and more time for creative indolence.
- Travel less (we Baby Boomers especially): The crowded planes, the crowded ships, and the crowded cities are not doing anything for us anyhow. The streets in famous cities like Prague have become choked with throngs of jostling people; the museums of, say, Paris or London, are impassable thickets, and the cafés in Venice are sinking with the collective weight of thousands of wine-guzzlers. We could relieve all this simply by doing less travel. Baby Boomers for example: take a trip every second year, instead of one or two every year. Business travellers: cut it in half, use Zoom and the like instead. Imagine fewer flights: a bit more expensive, but without the cattle-calls in the airports, room to stretch and move in our seats, actual food to eat, and the end of nickel-and-diming us for our luggage and such.
- Dock the cruise ships: Park half the fleet of these floating colossi. The carbon impact of the ships is horrendous. The Oasis of the Seas, for example, uses a gallon of fuel every twelve feet, or to put it another way, gets 0.0023 mpg. Imagine ships moored and converted into mixed populace condos and rental apartments with built-in public-access community centres, party rooms, swimming pools, and playlands.
- Limit the cars and roadways in the cities: restrict access for cars and open the streets mainly for delivery, public transport, walking, cycling, including electric cycles and scooters, and sitting. Imagine our cities as accessible urban parks and living spaces, rather than mere travel grids for self-propelled metal containers.
Of course, there are so many other things we could add to calm ourselves and save the planet: buy less junk (and thereby owe less money), build smaller houses, drive smaller vehicles, and so on. We know what the list is. And, of course, these are only a part of what we need to do to address climate change. We know very well the items on that more extensive list are too. More on that another time.
Naturally, there are serious economic implications to consider. We have been living addicted to expanding consumerism and growth. If we make these changes, the economy will slow, and we will have to figure out how to live sustainably and support people more broadly than we have been, and probably with less money streaking in and out of our individual chequing accounts.
To its credit, modern capitalism has generated more wealth, health and human well being than humanity has ever seen. It must be complimented for that. Thank you, industrial capitalism. However, the current economic model of perpetual growth is simply not sustainable. It is simple, really, when you look at biology and nature: “Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse.”[iii] The planet is telling us clearly where we are headed, but we are living in a state of denial about it.[iv] In order to continue this growth, it is necessary to consume and dispose at ever higher levels, in order to keep the money machine going, so that, as Haruki Murakami, puts it, “waste [has become] the highest virtue one can achieve in advanced capitalist society.”[v] It is killing the planet, and seems to be driving us crazy as well.
The market fiction of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” will not save us from this. He was a smart fellow, to be sure, but the uncritical adoption of the metaphor constitutes magical thinking. It is a self-serving idea, that if we pursue our individual profit, that will result in the greatest good for all.[vi] It lets us off the hook of taking responsibility. It is not, in fact, the pursuit of our individual greed that will solve our problems, but rather it will be our capacity for a creative reimagining of the way we live. We are not without solid economic models of how to do this[vii], as I mentioned in Part I. But we have to change our vision of what constitutes a good life – keeping most of what we do but incorporating our experience during this pandemic.
And so, we can say that there has been a positive side to the changes we have made to cope with Covid-19. The reduction in climate-change gases is notable. But so are other modifications: buying and spending less, less rushing around, more time developing interests and talents, more time reading and thinking, more cultivating of home life overall – even literally, more gardening.
Imagine incorporating these things into our post-pandemic lives and enjoying ourselves in a quieter, less frenetic and less anxiety-riddled way. Imagine, at the same time, doing our planet, its creatures, and Gaia, a great favour.
Imagine greater freedom. Imagine less worry about the state of our planet – for ourselves, for our children and grandchildren, or as the North American Aboriginals put it, the Seven Generations to follow. Imagine more serenity in our lives. Imagine more time to be our still human selves.
“You can say I’m a dreamer…”
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[i] Frankfurt, Harry G. On Bullshit. Princeton University Press. 2005. Pages 16-17.
[ii] Proctor, Kate. Just 6% of UK Public Want a Return to Pre-pandemic Economy. The Guardian. June 28, 2020.
[iii] Powers, Richard. The Overstory. W.W. Norton & Company. 2018. Page 321.
[iv] Kolbert, Elizabeth. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2006. And Friedman, Thomas L. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. 2008.
[v] Nurakami, Harruki. Dance Dance Dance. Vintage Books. 1994. Page 19.
[vi] This is partly a distortion of Smith’s ideas in any case. He thought that governments should intervene sensibly as needed in order to optimize free markets.
[vii] “By simulating a variety of scenarios, we have seen that ‘no growth’ can be disastrous if implemented carelessly…we have also seen that slower growth, leading to stability around 2030, can be consistent with attractive economic, social and environmental outcomes: full employment, virtual elimination of poverty, more leisure, considerable reduction in GHG emissions and fiscal balance.” Victor, Peter A. Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster. 1st ed., Edward Elgar Publishers, 2009. Page 183.
Here I am sitting on a concrete barrier near the waterfront in Red Hook, Brooklyn, smoking a cigar, after having walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and back. I have my camera and am on my way to photograph Lady Liberty from the pier. It is a nice, sunny autumn day, a little breezy, not too hot. My favourite time of the year.
If I were back in Toronto, I’d smoke the heater in a park, but in here in New York, Bloomberg managed to ban smoking in parks, and naturally the tyrannically inclined majority went along with it. This follows the principle, noted famously by Mark Twain: “Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.” And so, rather than a luxurious park bench under the shade of a big maple, with an expanse of green in front of me, I am perched on top of a construction barrier beside a gritty street near a bus stop. But it is okay. It has its charms.
To my left is a construction project that I think involves drainage from the Gowanus Canal. The canal itself is a survivor from the great industrial age, and what looks like water in the canal is, in fact, toxic swill. Back in the good old days, you probably could light it on fire.
To my right is the harbour, and across that, if you walk around the corner from where I am, there is the skyline of Southern Manhattan, including the comical and beautiful Gehry Tower and the new incomplete World Trade building, that monument to resilience and resistance.
Drive past me in the more-or-less southerly direction, and you will hit the entrance to the Battery Tunnel. I think officials tried to rename it the Carey Tunnel, but it didn’t take.
Not a bad perch overall, despite the occasional blue and white city buses roaring in with a cloud of dust trailing. Interesting people to watch. And the cigar is good, too…Nicaraguan. Quite tasty if you are bent that way. I have no worries on my mind. A great afternoon, all in all.
I look down, and right at my feet I notice something I had not seen when I hopped onto the barrier: a pair of lovely satin panties, with delicate lace trim. A nice wine colour. Quite pretty, I would say. They are in good shape, though quite obviously they have been worn.
Now, how did they get here?
So sorry
about the Camembert cheese
and all that raspberry jam
so red and seedy on the brown bread
and the last yellow banana
and the left-over spaghetti
with clam sauce
you were planning
for dinner
so tangy and delicious
I am convinced that it will not be so much the big things that we will recall as we die – not the grand pleasures, the colossal mistakes, the wringing regrets; not the births, the deaths, the marriages, the divorces; neither the accolades nor the stinging rebukes; not the triumph of dreams realized nor the desolation of brutal failure. It will not be the drama of beginnings and endings of grand love affairs, the jobs won and lost, nor the fortunes gained and squandered, that we will remember.
Rather, it will be the small things and moments, the nearly imperceptible things that get inside us and become part of us. It will be a father’s whistling, as he stands in shirtsleeves in the kitchen, turning over bacon in the pan. The tune is Twilight Time and the smell of bacon is sweet and clinging. It will be the tinkling of ice in the glass, the sound of the liquid pouring over it and the cubes cracking as the alcohol hits them: a mother’s first sip of the night and the sigh of satisfaction.
We will remember the cold rain on the face and running down a ten-year-old neck, inside the collar, as we trudge home under gray skies, with fishing pole in one hand, and a string of perch and pickerel in the other, working our way in the fall rain toward the doorway that will open into yellow light and warmth of inside.
It will be the call of the loon on a fall afternoon on Lake Temagami, when the lake is still, and there is no one else for miles, just the pines standing tall on the islands at the moment when the paddle breaks from the water and a solitary flake of snow, the first of the impending winter, falls and lands on a wrist.
It will be the moment of the brush of a lover’s lips, and her breath, on a cheek, and the small delicate spaces of delusion and desire between one touch and the next, and the one after that, the moment before she leaves.
It will be the look – between question and delight – of a red-haired daughter in her green flannel nightgown, as she peeks up from the floor, caught in the middle of a private joke shared between her and the ragged little doll that she clutches as though it were a new-born.
It will be that moment years later in Upstate, mid-August, when the sun is still hot, beating down on the corn which stands high in the field sprawling beneath the eternal blue sky, the moment when the crickets sing, the solitary raven calls, and the sun is burning that spot on your face that will later turn into something, and we realize with a shiver that – just now – the season has shifted beyond ripeness, and is now moving to decay, and so are we, and all the earth is trembling in its precariousness.
We will remember the frozen seconds, those moments when the cosmic crack opens just so, when a microscopic fracture appears in this beautiful and catastrophic illusion, when the earth and we shift ever so slightly off-kilter and everything is absolutely still and we realize that it is all a perfect disaster, just as it is.
– From We Never Say Goodbye (unpublished), copyright © Peter Scott Cameron, 2016.
Prospect Hill Cemetery, Valatie, N.Y.
Please see my photo site at peterscottcameron.com.
Pastinaca Sativa
Max Ehrmann (of Desiderata fame) had it wrong. Deep-down, we all know we are not good enough, and so self-improvement is required, and despite what the poet claimed, we should not be gentle about it. The good news is that Covid-19 provides the perfect opportunity to focus our self-improvement efforts. The pandemic has forced people, sensible and otherwise, to stay home if they can do so: no visits to unpopular relatives, no frying in a traffic jam on the Jersey Turnpike, no bagpipe concerts, no heaping plates of fries followed by hot fudge sundaes in diners, no heavy drinking at the curling rink – no nothing. It can be very trying, certainly.
Mental health experts have come on television to advise that it is important that people fill their time positively, in order to avoid a bad case of ennui during this pandemic. They get money for this advice. One of the best ways to both fend off ennui and to improve our inadequate selves is to develop interests and hobbies that heretofore have lain dormant. Seize the day and move up the Maslovian pyramid! Take steps toward blissful self-actualization, as personified by these mental health experts on the evening news.
And so, what is this period of Covid-19, but a time finally to learn the Cantonese that you have put off for so long? Perhaps you can renew your high school Latin, and finally translate those racy bits about Caligula. It could be cooking: time to actualize your inner gourmet and turn those family frowns upside down! Imagine the family’s excitement when you serve up Canard à la Rouennaise – Duck in Blood Sauce? Or if more intellectually inclined, you could discover a third form of indefinitesimal calculus to rival the two invented by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz in the late seventeenth century. If otherwise deficient, but kinaesthetically intelligent, you could take up limbo dancing, and thereby not only become fitter, but also amuse your mate during endless hours in the living room. Is it to be music? You could pick up the contrabassoon, or if you live alone, the bongo drums. There is no end to possibilities.
I am doing no less, and in my case, my new hobby benefits both me and the larger world.
Wild parsnip (Pastinaca Sativa), an invasive species of plant originally from Eurasia, now grows in Upstate New York and other parts of the U.S. and southern Canada. The original plants appear to have escaped captivity, like that celebrity fugitive capybara did a couple of years back in High Park in Toronto. It grows along roadsides or other areas where the soil has been disturbed. Normally it will not invade established meadows and fields; however, it can do so from areas that have been troubled, usually by men riding machines that they recently acquired at the John Deere store on the payment plan, and which they use to inflict insults on Mother Nature.
Mature wild parsnips have a yellowish-green stalk with vertical grooves. Leaves are in pairs and reach a length of about six inches. Each plant produces hundreds of small yellow flowers arranged in compound umbels (an upside-down umbrella shape). The plants are big, often standing five feet in height. The evil parsnips tower menacingly over the beautiful daylilies. For my new self-improvement hobby, I have taken to hand-cutting these alongside our gravel road, which stretches about a mile between two paved county roads.
I must be careful while doing my hobby. Contact with the sap from the wild parsnip will produce an intense burning rash, with severe blistering and skin discoloration. It is called phytophotodermatitis; you look like you have leprosy, only unlike that disease, it is painful. As a result of this experience, you will come to remember your days of childhood poison ivy contamination as “the good times.” It is a burn, there is no cure, and it can last two years.
And so, twice a week, I suit up: long-sleeved shirt, long pants, leather gloves, and work boots with tall white socks up over my pants. Eye and head coverings are important too, for sun and the mobs of horseflies. At first, I used sunglasses and a baseball cap, but these were inadequate and so now I’ve settled on tinted aviator goggles complemented by a rather stylish Panama hat.
Perhaps you wonder: why white socks? Answer: to be able to see the tiny deer ticks of course! The ticks pounce on you as you lumber along in the roadside weeds, while the horse flies are attempting to eat your face. The ticks burrow into your skin to suck your blood, and while at it, they give you Lyme disease and anaplasmosis. City people especially, say nature is wonderful, but it is not quite true. That is why I do not watch those dreadful nature shows on PBS. Too much poisoning and exuberant gnawing on the limbs of fellow creatures, as far as I am concerned. Show me that stuff, PBS, and you can forget about asking for money!
And so, I suit up and spray my boots, socks, and pant-legs with cancer-causing deet, with a lighter bug repellent for my face as a first coating, and sunscreen as a second. Then off I go with my clippers and a sickle, making my way up and down the sides of the road while singing inspirational songs, such as La Marseillaise. I sever the plants as low as I can, but no matter how low or high, there is great joy in watching the umbels tumble.
There are moments of embarrassment, naturally, when neighbours drive by. Fortunately, this is rare, as there are only three other neighbours on the road and one of them, Lloyd, doesn’t come out since his goat died. You have to go see him and take soup and beer with you. The worst is when Charley, who is a dairy farmer, goes by in his yellow tractor. He is a nice guy, but for some reason he is always laughing and shaking his head. I try to be casual about it, drenched in sweat while lopping the heads off the devils. I give a jaunty wave and continue working in a casual fashion. People naturally view casualness as a sign of normalcy.
Speaking of: one must be careful not to let this develop into an obsession. Like many hobbies, such as eBay-bidding, Facebook-checking, coupon-clipping, socializing in adult-only chat rooms, or marijuana-smoking, one must keep things under control. I limit myself to twice a week. That works – it means that only half the time do I have to restrain myself and wait the full four days before cutting again. Ah, yes, it is true: this is not a one-time thing – the parsnips grow right back.
I know what you are thinking: Sisyphus! However, this is not so different from other things that moral people do in life. There will always be good and evil, but what we do is to stand for the good, knowing we will never totally defeat Beelzebub, whether the demon himself or his minion, Pastinaca Sativa. We keep the lights on in the tool-shed of the virtuous. In the face of Covid-19, we shrink not away. We do not allow it to push us into ennui. We declare: “no, never!” We stand tall and at the same time, improve our hapless selves with a beneficial hobby.
And so, if you drive along a gravel road in Upstate New York, near the Vermont border, and see an old, very hot man alongside the road with clippers in one leather-gloved hand and a sickle in the other, wearing long sleeves, with white socks over his pants, sporting aviator goggles and a dashing Panama hat, do not be baffled or perturbed.
It is just me.
I am practicing a useful hobby. I am defeating that old Coronavirus ennui. I am improving myself and saving the world.
Amanda, Hamilton, Ontario, 2004. Please see my photo site at www.peterscottcameron.com.
From The Albany Project.
Please visit my photography site at: www.peterscottcameron.com.
I have lived a long time. As a result, I have learned some things: not a lot, I admit, but a few useful things.
Out of this learning I have identified a handful of important laws that operate in life. Over time in this blog, I will share these with you, starting with Cameron’s Second Law today. Be sure to return here to get the other laws. You will not get these anywhere else, such as in a book or by divine revelation.
The reason that I am starting with the Second Law is because I don’t have the First Law formulated yet, although I am working on it. But when I get it, it will be terrific. It will be all-encompassing and will explain, basically, everything. Stay tuned. In any case, Cameron’s Second Law recognizes both a great spiritual Buddhist principle, along with a common experience that we have all had. You will recognize this great truth immediately.
Cameron’s Second Law states: Good things go on too long.
I will tell you how I discovered – no, that is the wrong word for this law – the correct word is realized. I realized this law during a performance of Gluck’s Paride ed Elena, which is a five-act opera that can run on for three hours and fifteen minutes.
Despite the robust presentation of Anna Netrebko and others, I do not ordinarily like recorded opera much, but I love live performances. These have everything: love, sex, jealousy, murder, intrigue, betrayal, skullduggery, lust and bloodlust, dastardliness, and nobility. It is like a British television murder-mystery on steroids, but with costumes and unbelievable singing.
At one time a favourite activity was to travel to the baseball town of Cooperstown, NY, to attend an opera at Glimmerglass. How wonderful: beautiful summer evenings, an ersatz-rustic theatre with moveable sides that open to the country air, top calibre singing and orchestration (in preparation for the fall New York season), English translations above the stage, alcoholic beverages, and lots of old people dressed in semi-casual nattiness including bow ties.
My opera watching usually follows a pattern. First it begins with acute attention and excitement, which can last right through to the intermission. After that intermission, I flag a tad, and so usually slip into a dream-like altered state – the hypnogogic state that we experience before sleep. It is restful and I can still hear the music. Sometimes, of course, I transition to a full-blown nap, but as far as I know, I have never lapsed into deep sleep with snoring. After that I awake, refreshed, and if the timing is good, we are near the finale and my attention is once again rapt, though I admit that my excitement mounts as I prepare to go home.
It was while attending the previously mentioned Paride ed Elena when I came to the realization of the Second Law. I went through the usual cycle, snapping to attention after the hypnogogic state and preparing to be excited, when it dawned on me that we were only somewhere, I believe, in the fourth act. I am unsure – there may have been a second intermission that I missed, due to extended hypnogogia or the fact that I have a case of partial psychogenic amnesia from the stress of the situation. Erasto (Cupid) had not yet even convinced Elena that she should accompany Paride to Troy. It went on and on, probably for another hour – an hour during which I could have been driving home, listening to The Zombies on my car CD player. By the time Erasto did succeed in sinking his arrow, I was ready let loose a torrent of my own arrows down on both Paride and Elena, as well as anyone else on stage.
And so there you have it: what started out as a lovely evening, with all that excitement and a beautiful setting with fantastic music along with a first-hand experience of the reform movement in Italian opera, became, after it went on too long, an ordeal.
A related example: this is why, second perhaps only to King’s I Have a Dream, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, at 271 words, is the greatest speech ever.
But back to opera – this happens with other operas, of course – not to pick on Gluck, but again, in Orpheo ed Eurydice, by the time Orpheo turns and looks at Eurydice and she dies, we have long been ready to throttle her ourselves.
But of course, it is not just opera; that is only the illustrative case. It is life. It happens all the time. Just think of salt-and-vinegar-flavoured-potato-chip-eating. Eat a handful and you will feel great; but eat the whole family-sized bag and see what happens. It is the same with beer-drinking and such: the first two drinks are excellent, and it never gets any better after that. In fact, to illustrate this for yourself, briefly visit any happy hour at a bar as it starts. Everybody is cheery and chipper. Then return a half-dozen hours later at closing time and see how the leftovers look.
Another example: perhaps you fall in love, and you start having incredible sex with your new beloved. For the sake of argument here, let’s just assume we are talking about a plain old cisgendered man and woman. So, you (the man, in this example) have this beautiful new mate, you can’t get enough of her and all you want to do is talk and have sex with her. And so, the two of you take two weeks off to stay at home to do nothing but talk and have sex, including all those things you have been imagining doing to someone, or having done back to you, for years. And it is a miracle. For a while. As amazing as it is, I guarantee you that after six – nay, four days or even less – you will be thinking: “I wonder if the Blue Jays are on television?” or “Maybe Walt is holding his poker game this evening.” This is nobody’s failing; no one has done anything wrong here. It is just the way it is.
If you are a baby-boomer, think about Woodstock: Jimi’s unbelievable performance aside, would not Two Days of Peace, Love and Music have been enough, provided we could work Joe Cocker in on the second day? By then you would have had your fill of seeing naked hairy people in mud, and there would have been less garbage in Yasgur’s field, too.
Good things go on too long. Much like this essay.
Of course, no less than Freud himself understood the Second Law. Aside from the obvious things like compulsions and fixations, which illustrate the point perfectly, there is his concept of Thanatos, and what he saw happening as we moved along in old age. He said we turned toward death – not merely accepting it – but embracing and welcoming it. “Enough,” we say! “Time to move along.” Though the old psychoanalyst was never wrong, in this instance I confess that the Second Law has not kicked in just yet for me, although I look forward to when it does.
Fortunately, nature and the human condition provide some limit to our excesses, even when we ourselves are inclined to blow off the Law. As the Buddhists are fond of saying, “everything changes.” To be sure, this is a comfort when we are experiencing pain or grief; at some point it changes and becomes something else and we are relieved. But the same is true of pleasures and joy; at some time, they end and if we recognize the point, we do not attach to these things. We can let them go and there is relief in that also.
This is exactly what the Second Law invites. It invites us to enjoy, but to realize it will not get any better. And so, do not attach; let it go before things go on too long.
A helpful practical recommendation for life from all this?
Leave at the intermission.