Ok… on to the good stuff. WOOO! My favorite show is back and back with style baby ya! So much to say…

The Big Reveal

The most significant plot point of the show of course was the end of the big secret. Walt finally told his wife what he has been up to (sans gory details of course). The keeping of this secret and all the lies born out of that was the central theme (I believe) of both seasons one & two. Walt never got a chance to explain the altruistic intention behind his actions to Skylar, because by the time he got around to telling the truth he had already destroyed her trust, and that is all that really matters in a marriage. It means nothing to Skylar when Walt says that he did it all for the family because as far as she is concerned he turned his back on the family the moment he started lying to her. She is of course perfectly justified to feel this way, although it is also true that she is lying to him about certain complications in her relationship with her boss. Skylar will not have anything to do with Walt unless (until?) she herself is in a desperate situation and he appears to be the only way out. I predict that this situation will present itself when Skylar is arrested for cooking the books at her new job.

I truly hope the writers do not let Skylar fade into the background now that we have wrapped on this theme (and quite possibly on their marriage). She is an excellently written and portrayed character. I don’t think they will, in fact I predict a major fall from grace with her this season as she finds a way to break bad the Skylar way. And I’m not just talking about smoking while pregnant here.

Walt & Jesse

The relationship between Walt & Jesse is obviously the bread & butter of this show and the writer’s have acknowledged that by shifting the secret-keeping theme from Skylar to Jesse. This time around though, the secret is much bigger and carries far more devastating consequences. I’m talking of course about the fact that Walt killed Jane. Walt cannot admit this under any circumstances (and conveniently, can rationalize it to himself that he did not actually kill her, but simply did not prevent her from dying… a highly flimsy rationalization but one that Walt will cling to tenaciously). The writers brought this theme in when Jesse tells Walt he feels responsible for the plane crash because Jane’s despondent dad caused it. Walt is desperate to absolve Jesse of any guilt over Jane’s death because he absolutely cannot tell Jesse the truth. He knows that if Jesse ever found out what really happened he would lose Jesse forever, and Jesse is his only true family at this point. Jesse is the only person in the world that knows both Walt and Heisenberg. Jesse is also Walt’s only chance at redemption here, he feels that if he can somehow save Jesse from himself then it will make up for all the horrible things he has done. So far, this is not going so well, as reflected by the devastating words spoken in response to Walt’s question “Who are you?”

Jesse: “I’m the bad guy.”

Ouch.

The Eye

Oh how I love this show and its crafty use of artifacts. We were first introduced to the teddy bear eye in the first few frames of season two as it floated in black & white across the surface of Walt’s pool. First, a few things about the teddy bear: obviously it represents innocence lost (or rather, burned and disfigured). It was the same color as the shirt Walt was wearing when it plunged into his pool (pink, which was an odd color to see on Walt)… and thus can be said to represent Walt’s innocence lost more specifically. And, of course, it came from one of the planes that Walt indirectly caused to collide midair above his house – a tragedy that claimed 167 lives (167 also being the most commonly known police code for murder due to the film of the same name… just in case we didn’t get the point that Walt essentially murdered all those people by his actions).

Finally, this innocent & disfigured child’s toy comes plummeting out of the sky and hits Walt’s pool with the force of a small meteor just moments after his family falls apart. The teddy bear (and by extension… its eye) is therefore just as significant an artifact to Walt himself as it is to us the viewers. If there is any part of Walt that even remotely wonders if there is a God, he has to be more than a little disturbed by it picking his pool to fall into at that specific moment in time.

Why then, is Walt keeping the eye? I think it is because it connects him to his victims. That eye once belonged to a stuffed animal that once belonged to a child that died because Walt did not save Jane. Walt feels responsible for the plane crash, and holding on to this memento is his way of both acknowledging that and punishing himself. He will not admit this in any other way, as doing so would entail admitting that he killed Jane and he will never do that. This theory of mine that the eye is an artifact of guilt for Walt is supported by the way he furtively hid it from Hank.

Aside from what it represents for Walt, the eye also has enormous symbolic significance for the show overall. The introduction of the eye was particularly ominous. We initially had no way of determining that this was a teddy bear’s eye and not the eye of a human being. It shows up in the first few frames of season two and is left unexplained until the final scene of that season. The season itself was all about consequences and I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that the eye symbolizes the all-seeing eye of consequences.

And now this eye has found its way to Walt’s new home and sits under the bed… watching. I predict it will remain there until the end of this season when it will be involved in something simultaneously sublime and horrible… perhaps involving the Silent Twins.

The Silent Twins

Oooooh, reminiscences of the deliciously creepy bad guy in No Country for Old Men… doubled! This is going to be good (and oh so very bad).

What do we know about these two? They don’t talk. They are twins. They are Mexican and members of a gang that the mere mention of scares the talk out of some cocky kid (something to do with the skulls on their boots). They are not poor. They are cold killers. They are followers of Santa Muerte (Saint Death). They appear to be on a one-way mission (evidenced by them leaving their clothes and car behind… beautiful scene with the keys on the goat by the way). They like blowing stuff up… even when it means a long walk out of the desert for no good reason. They are now in America and their target is Heisenberg.

Scary.

Speculation? Could be Tuco’s cousins… but then wouldn’t they be after Hank? He was, after all, the one who killed Tuco. More likely, the quality of the Meth Walt has been cooking has drawn some unwanted attention. This is more likely the writers picking up the threads they laid down in season two with the narcocorrido music video at the start of episode seven. This is really really bad news for Walt & Jesse if anyone’s been following any of what’s happening in Mexico lately.

So much to look forward to… it was definitely a welcome and satisfying return of a near perfect show.

I, for one, am not the slightest bit surprised that the Obama Democrats managed to get this done.  I kept the faith.  What I am surprised about is that, apparently, we have Nancy Pelosi to thank for this victory.  It is being reported that after the Scott Brown win in Mass. the Democrats all the way up to Obama himself were considering abandoning comprehensive Health Care reform and instead just trying to pass a few piecemeal bits of it.  It was Nancy who stood up and insisted that this was a gamble worth taking.  It was Nancy who cajoled and convinced every single one of those 219 votes.  It was Nancy who ultimately showed that amongst the boys club of Washington, sometimes the only one with any balls is a woman.  I was very excited when she became the first woman speaker of the house, not because of her gender, but because I could see that here was an individual that was not afraid to fight and fight hard for what she believed was right.  And God knows, the Democrats need more fighters.

Now I have to admit, from time to time I have hurled some angry words in the direction of Nancy.  Especially when the whole “deem and pass” thing came up.  In retrospect, this really came down to the old “watching the sausage being made” issue.  The “deem and pass” thing was a bluff, and one that obviously served it’s purpose.  I am guilty of the all-too commonplace hypocrisy of decrying the democrats for not playing hardball and then being disgusted with them when they do.  So this post is in part a mea culpa.

HUGE Kudos to you Nancy Pelosi.  You will go down in history as a titan with the strength, intelligence, determination, and courage to actually get some real progress done.  Cheers!

It occurred to me that, contrary to much of what we think, read, sing, and say about love, the best kind of love is actually a very selfish thing: it is all about you (or, from my perspective, me).   When we talk about a relationship or a marriage we often talk about it as if it is a third entity, as if it were a child born from love, but requiring each of the two people involved to somehow sacrifice themselves for the betterment of this other, imagined entity of the relationship itself.  If we experience frustration or disappointment with aspects of the relationship our focus usually turns from the entity of two to the one, and that one is hardly ever ourselves, it is our partner: the other.  This occurs even when we are consumed by happiness.  Whether it be an overwhelming obsession of positive thoughts, or an equally obsessive string of the negative, they usually center on the other.  Either we are cataloging the reasons why we love this person (as if rationality had anything to do with it), or we are making lists of changes our partner needs to make in order for this relationship to “work.”  While this is all very natural, and probably unavoidable to some extent, it really does not have anything to do with love.

You see, love isn’t about two, and it isn’t about your partner.  Love is about you.  When you truly love someone you do things for them, sacrifice for them, not because you are trying to prove your love through some ridiculous display of martyrdom, nor because you want to earn brownie points to cash in later for something you want, but because doing things for them makes you feel good.  When you love someone you share the deepest darkest parts of yourself with them, not to set an example of the honest authenticity you expect them to provide for you in return, not because it gives you the upper hand (higher ground) in some twisted zero-sum marriage game, but because you want to be known, fully and completely, and by this person whom you love.

It is this truth of love that, I believe, makes it divine.  It is not about self-sacrifice, but rather purely selfish sacrifice.  It is similar to charity I believe.  If you give of yourself to others in order to receive some kind of payback, whether it be to impress others, to mitigate guilt, or to get an express ticket to heaven… whatever… then what you are doing is not really charity, and more than likely will not earn you any of these things that you may be seeking by doing it.  If, however, you do it because it makes you feel good then you’ve got it, and rewards you are not seeking will follow.  Love works like this.  Love requires you to give yourself over to it, but it only works if you are giving yourself for yourself.

Love is all about you.  “Can you love?” is the most crucial question life will ask of you.  It will ask every day if you are listening.  So if your answer is “No” don’t worry, you will get another chance, if you listen.  And if you are lucky and wise and your answer is “Yes” then don’t forget to keep listening… because you will be asked again tomorrow.

Now don’t get me wrong… I’m not saying “Love the one you’re with no matter what” or that anyone can just love anyone else if they do enough listening… heck the best some of us can hope with certain others of us is willful tolerance and perhaps moderate compassion.  Obviously, the quality of your relationship still has a lot to do with whom your partner is and how well you are suited for one another.  We are talking about love here though and love is not “the quality of your relationship”.  It is the most important determining factor in that equation, and yet also so much more…

Love is raw healing power and a natural energy source.  Love can make your life whole, and give you meaning.  Love can put you in touch with your authentic self.  Love is eternal hope and can banish all fear from your life.  Love is the ultimate leap of faith.

And all of that is about you.  All love needs is you.

A little over a month ago I embarked on a journey to the southwest of America.  On this journey I experienced a plethora of spectacle (Vegas) and Mother Nature at her most majestic (Arizona).  Among these many experiences three stood out that I feel deserve sharing.

The first was the Love show in Las Vegas.  Now, I am no aficionado of the theatre, having been to far more concerts than shows, and certainly not an expert in circus by any means… but I simply cannot imagine any show that could capture the transformative magic of art any better than this one.  It is billed as a tribute to the Beatles performed by the Cirque Du Soleil, but it is far more than that.  This is truly a Beatles production, and I couldn’t help but think that this was exactly what they were aiming for with Sgt. Pepper and the magical mystery tour… if only the Cirque had existed then.  If you can possibly find a way to make it to Vegas to see this, I guarantee you will not regret whatever it cost to get you there.  I spent nearly the entire show in a state of utter glee and wonder, magically transformed into a child once again… my crusty old heart was cracked wide open… and that, my friends, is priceless.

The second experience I want to share was actually a series of majestic and spiritual places I passed through in southern Utah and northern Arizona.  This is truly some very special geography and I think I understand now why so many founders of religion did their finding in the desert.  While all the deserts and canyons were tremendous each in their own way, one place in particular did stand out: Monument Valley.  This is a place, deep into Navajo Country, where you can literally hear the spirits of our ancients whispering.  Words fail me… so here is a photo:

Finally, the last experience was a week spent hanging out with an old and dear friend in Texas.  The trouble with being a philosopher sometimes is you forget what its like to just be, and to do that being in the company of a kindred spirit.  The reminding of that did me more good than even I know.

So!  I am back, changed, and filled with good spirit…  more to come.

Then there was the school / independence movement life.  Another weird twilight zone of a life, marked by an unrelenting forward motion driven by the panic of being on my own too early with absolutely no clues about the world beyond the closeted existence of my alternative childhood.  That life, too, ended in a murky mess that my memory has graciously clouded.

There was the corporate / entrepreneur life…  wherein I dazzled people, started businesses,  and ultimately learned that people suck and I should stay as far away from business as I can (which unfortunately turns out to be not very far at all).  That life resulted in a series of deaths in what has to have been one of the most bizarre years a human being has experienced.

And finally, this last life- the attempt to build a family of my own -now pronounced dead with an exchange of vows between a stranger I have never met, and another stranger I’ve known for 11 years and loved deeply despite the hazards to my health of doing so.

So here I am.  I have been told by student advisors (people who should never ever be taken at their word) that I have accumulated enough credits to graduate university at long last.  The catch: I have to wait for 11 weeks or more for the people in the admissions office to do something that cannot take longer than an hour.  There is no point in taking anymore courses until they have finished their evaluation, and little point in moving on to the next stage until I find out whether this one is really completed or not.  Is the universe conspiring to ensure that I take a breather between lives this time around?  It certainly seems that way…

So that is what I am doing right now.  Taking a breather.  I refuse to make plans.  I refuse to even think too deeply about practically anything at this point.  I will wait at least until I have my degree in hand to start the thinking and planning cycle again… in the meantime, I am re-acquainting myself with childhood dreams.  I am reading fiction again, and thinking about writing some.  And with a little sweat and a lotta luck, maybe I can turn this breather into another life… and maybe, just maybe, this new life will stick.

I think I’ll go for a walk now…

The other goodbye tomorrow (for me) is personal. Tomorrow the woman I thought for many years was the love of my life will marry another. I don’t have anything to say about this… or maybe I have too much to say… either way… it will happen without me saying anything. It does bring up a question that has been tumbling around my head since I heard this news last week though: if you put ten years of hard effort into earning yourself a kick in the nuts, are you obligated to savour the pain?

Republicans think that government should NOT help you live your life but should tell you how you can or cannot live it.

Democrats think that government should help you live your life but should NOT tell you how you can or cannot live it.

Ask yourself: do you think government should be telling you how to live your life? If the answer is yes, you are a Republican. If you think the government should tell you what you can believe then you are a Republican.

Yes, it can be said that Democrats have some agendas in regards to life choices, but these are all expressed economically. For example: when the Democrats decide that people should be living their lives in a way that does not kill the planet they do not make it illegal for you to pollute, they make it the more expensive choice through taxation.

Republicans, on the other hand, actually want to take away your liberties, not just tax behaviour that they don’t like, but actually put people in jail for it.

What I am getting at here is that Republicans, essentially, are anti-American. They do not believe in liberty, they believe in the tyranny of one group over another (so long as the group in charge is theirs). They don’t want you to be free, they want you to take marching orders from them. Fall in line. Do as I say (not as I do). Sound familiar?

Let’s take two of their main issues: the sanctity of marriage and abortion. Two issues which, by the way, I generally agree are important social issues.

When Republicans work to “protect” traditional marriage where do they put all their energy? They put it all into the courts, trying to make laws that say that gay people cannot be married. They don’t try to do anything about reducing the number of divorces. They don’t do anything about reducing the number of teen pregnancies. They don’t fight for raising the minimum wage, or better yet, for a family wage. The main thing destroying the traditional family right now is economic, both parents have to work and nobody is staying home raising the kids. But none of these things involve actually taking away rights, so they focus all their energy on same-sex marriage.

Abortion is a similar issue. While they claim to abhor abortion, they do absolutely nothing to reduce the number of abortions. In fact, I would argue that they are responsible for many of them through their irresponsible and ineffective abstinence-only sex education policies. They are against condoms, against teaching kids about sex and pregnancy. But making laws that allow the government to have more say over what a woman does with her body than the woman does? They love that idea.

Both of these issues raised above are socio-cultural issues and they should be fought in that arena. Instead, these people have ceded that ground completely and instead focus all their energy into an assault on fundamental civil liberties… turning what should be issues that we can all generally agree on into the most serious threat to America that exists today.

The problem with this approach is that history has proven to us over and over again that it is a slippery slope that goes straight to hell. America is the proof that civil liberties that are above and beyond the reach of any individual leader or majority group are the strongest and most enduring foundation that any nation can be built upon. These people put all their energy into eroding that foundation and then turn around and call themselves patriots. Stunning.

There is a reason why the Republicans put all the focus into legislation: it allows them to take highly charged social issues and turn them into political power. They don’t want people to spend their dollars funding real social programs to reduce divorce and abortion, they want them to spend that money getting Republican politicians elected on the false promise that Republican politicians will do something about these issues (and the false assertion that the thing to be done about them involves legislation). The truth is they don’t want either of these issues to be “solved” or even mitigated to any degree because that would take away their primary levers to power. Republicans have been in power for 20 of the past 30 years, and in that time all the measures have risen: divorce rates, teen pregnancy rates, abortion rates. Ask yourself: why?

You see, if you don’t, if you take the cowards way out and think only of your own convenience, you really have no idea of the potential damage you will more than likely cause. I’ve been dumped twice and neither was handled well at all. The first time it took six years before I really began to heal and could trust again. The second, much more recent, time was far worse. She exhibited behaviour beyond normal human cowardice and frankly never actually broke it off at all, she just vanished and sent word through proxies that she was with another. The result for me is that I wake up every single morning replaying an event in my head that never happened. Because it never actually happened, my mind gets free reign to re-imagine the event each time. There is no beginning or end, there is only constant shouting in my head. If I was replaying a real event, the event would be roughly the same on each play through, and eventually my mind would get bored of it, having picked over the bones and examined every angle I would eventually emerge with a single account of what happened and be able to integrate that into the story of my life. Instead I am stuck in an endless loop of “what ifs” and “maybe whys.” Rather than doing the work of accepting this radical change, I am cast adrift in a constant twilight of vertigo and rage.

I assume that some day I will emerge from this state and be able to get along with my life, but I also know deep down that that is really just a crapshoot. The reality is that I may never emerge, and that even if I do, I will do so as someone else, perhaps even as someone that I don’t like very much. So far I have managed to keep the shouting enclosed neatly within my skull, but I know I can’t keep that up forever and with time it will begin to spill out into the world, thereby changing who I am and further spreading this damage around. By giving in to her cowardice my ex planted a seed of negativity with boundless potential for growth.

Which returns me to my original point: Every breakup causes some wounds, but if you take care when inflicting those wounds you can contribute a great deal to ensuring that they can eventually heal. This is not a complicated exercise really; it just takes exhibiting a little backbone and actually being there for the breakup. It may be one of the most important things you ever do. Yes you will have to endure some tears and even some shouting, but let me tell you it is nothing compared to all this shouting in my head.

If you won’t do it for them (or for me), do it for yourself… cuz Karma’s a bitch man and she will get you in the end.

First, I should make clear that while I abhor war in general, I am a realist and I do not think all wars are the same. I do not agree that countries should be engaging in regime change adventures of any kind. The only time this sort of a war is justified in my view is when the offensive regime actually becomes offensive (invades/attacks another sovereign nation). As such, I am and have been highly critical of the Iraq war. That said, I view the conflict in Afghanistan from a wholly different angle. The problem with Afghanistan is not an offensive regime, but the lack of any substantive regime whatsoever. Afghanistan is a failed state (if it can even be called a state). I strongly believe that this world we inhabit today cannot tolerate any failed states. If there is to be any hope for global cooperation moving forward there simply cannot be any regions on the planet that are not involved in the conversation. I won’t go into the full argument here for that, as that would make this post too long for anyone to bother reading it. Suffice it to say: Iraq war = stupid mistake, Afghanistan war = sadly necessary.

It may be a difficult sell up here in Canada to say that the war in Afghanistan starts now. We have, after all, been there for nearly eight years now. To say that the war begins now may be taken as an affront to all that our soldiers have already sacrificed and accomplished there – it is not intended as such. I believe that for the most part, what we have been doing in Afghanistan up until now has been to maintain a holding pattern, to keep our foot wedged in the door, but we simply have not had the resources to make any significant lasting gains in the territory overall. We need more boots on the ground, more intelligence, more alliances, and a much more serious approach overall.

As Harper tries to gin up some voter support by posing as a reasonable man who wants to bring Canadian troops home, let us not forget that if this man had been in power at the time we would be in Iraq. Let me say that again: Harper would have gotten us entangled in the Iraq fiasco. Don’t forget it. If Harper had had his way we would not even have a foot in the door in Afghanistan, we would be wondering what happened to our severed foot while the Taliban wondered what to do with their newly won Pakistani nukes. Harper does not have a leg to stand on here.

I hope that as the Afghanistan war moves forward the powers that be will make three very critical changes to the strategy.

For one: Afghanistan requires justice, not freedom. I will write another post on this distinction later.

Two: Afghans need jobs. We need to stop shipping our own people in to do the construction work. We don’t understand construction in that area of the world anyways. We ship in our own people, then we have to build hugely expensive security complexes to house these people, and then they go about building things out of concrete (also shipped in) that simply does not do well in that environment. Let the Afghans do the building, they have developed region-specific techniques that have served them well for thousands of years, and we simply do not know better. Besides, it will make our aid dollars go way further.

Three: Buy the poppies! I don’t care what we do with them, but we need to become the customer the farmers are beholden to if we are to have any hope of winning over the population. So long as the Taliban is the entity providing the paycheque, we have no hope of making any permanent gains.

Obama should also be reminding our NATO allies (and I suspect that is exactly what Joe Biden was doing in Europe last week) that they have a responsibility in Afghanistan as well. This is a NATO conflict, and all of NATO’s partners should be involved.

After 7+ long years of fighting in Afghanistan it is time for us to take it seriously. We either get the hell out (bad idea) or we seriously ramp up our efforts there to get the job done. 17,000 more troops is nowhere near enough. While it may make my skin crawl to assume the role of hawk here, I am prepared to do it on this one. Are you?