Car Crash Blues

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Bought myself a car as soon as I could,

Bought myself a car as soon as I could,

I drove that car and man it felt good.

Got myself a girl and she liked my car,

Got myself a girl and she liked my car,

Told that girl together how we would drive far.

Me and my girl in the passenger seat,

Me and my girl in the passenger seat,

I never thought she was the kind to cheat.

So I drove my car as fast as I could,

Yeah I drove my car as fast as I could,

I drove my car and man it felt good.

I miss that car and I miss that girl,

I miss that car and I miss that girl,

Cause I drove too fast and misjudged the curve.

October

 On this day (and every day) I remember my mother Arleen Solomon Rotchin z'l with a poem. 

On the Sixth Day

AND GOD CREATED HUMANKIND in his own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.

And God gave them, the male and female, brains to think and hearts to feel. And he knew that this might be a problem, because the feeling heart and the thinking brain would not always agree, and sometimes they would disagree vehemently, and He knew (because He knows everything) that it would give them trouble. God didn't see a way around it. And anyway, the 'heart' was really the brain, it was just another aspect of it. 

And God knew humankind needed to possess agency - the ability to make decisions about how to live life and to act. Plus, humankind needed to possess awareness of having agency, otherwise what was the point of giving agency?  He didn't want to create a humankind that only followed instructions, not even if the instructions came from God. He didn't want to create automatons or robots. And the awareness of agency God called consciousness.

And God made the source of humankind's agency the heart, for it was emotion that would distinguish humankind from being just a thinking machine. For God realized that it was the experience of sadness and joy that gave life meaning to humankind. And this is what is meant by in 'His own image'. Humankind was not a creature of instinct, and not a slave to a master, but humankind had to be free to inquire about the meaning of life, the way the image of a face in the mirror inspects its own face. And this was the essence of the relationship between humankind and its Creator, and this pleased Him.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Riverbank Blues

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We went down to the riverbank my little gal and I,

We went down to the riverbank my little gal and I,

We went down to the riverbank,

Where I made my gal cry.

You know the river's so deep, how did she make it across,

You know the river's so deep, how did she make it across,

You know I love that little girl so much,

Won't get over my loss.

Sometimes I ask myself, how could I stoop so low.

Said I ask myself, how could I stoop so low.

You know it's so hard,

When you're livin alone.

Told her I loved her before she went away,

I say I told that girl I loved her before she went away,

You know that little girl,

Took my secret to her grave.

I go back to the riverbank, and I fall down on my knees,

I go back to the riverbank, and I fall down on my knees,

I go back to the riverbank,

Where I hope she hears my pleas.

Bertha Lee

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Charley was a man, small and mean,

Worked the cotton field, when times were lean,

Drank moonshine, tried to stay clean, 

Sang us a song 'bout how to be free.

 

Said I love Bertha Lee but she don't love me,

We'll settle down together in Dockery, 

Don't the moon look pretty behind those trees,

By the Sunflower River, Mississippi. 

He fought with the man and was thrown in jail, 

Said the devil called up from the fires of hell,

Asked to repent when they rang the church bell,

Dropped a coin in the wishing well.

Said I love Bertha Lee but she don't love me,

We'll settle down together in Dockery, 

Don't the moon look pretty behind those trees,

By the Sunflower River, Mississippi. 

There's a good woman waiting for me,

Wondering all night long about where I'll be,

Ain't much sense to all that worry,

Livin ain't easy, on this we agree.

Said I love Bertha Lee but she don't love me,

We'll settle down together in Dockery, 

Don't the moon look pretty behind those trees,

By the Sunflower River, Mississippi. 

One In Two

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Another one bites the dust,

And by another I mean marriage.

There's an inevitability about it, like rust,

On the creaky wheels of an old carriage.

So why be surprised about this news?

When statistically we know the score.

It happens to one in every two,

A partner decides they want more.

I thought this couple had the right attitude, 

Vow-bound for twenty-five years.

Thought they'd reached cruising altitude,

With their engines humming in low gear.

A notary and a stay-at-home mom,

Who delivered Meals-on-Wheels.

Two kids and a dog, fluffy as a pom-pom,

A suburban house with curb appeal.

They seemed to have it all,

By the standards we're taught to admire.

While behind closed doors and thick walls,

Whispering remorse of the buyer.

 

We talk, the wife and I, and look around,

At our neighbours and sometime-friends.

To gauge the happiness we think we've found, 

Before wondering when for us it must end.

We see in each other the well trod path -

Our climb uphill in sun and rain. 

Count our steps, do emotional math,

Feel, at times, like we're crate-trained.

Sure we each crave the freedom,

That comes from desires unleashed.  

To break the ordered calm,

To feel that sense of release.

  

But like an elastic that rebounds,

Or else it's bound to snap.

We eventually settle down,

To avoid a fatal mishap. 

Some contracts are written in glue,

Others on brittle autumn leaves. 

Your name is signed in me and mine in you,

At least that's what I believe.

Post Script and Palette Cleanser

A Post Script for October 7th.

A brief political rant. Did you watch the October 7th commemoration from Ottawa that was broadcast on the CBC? I was pleasantly surprised to see that they aired it. The Israeli ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed spoke movingly, connecting the Leonard Cohen song Who By Fire - which is borrowed thematically and inspired by the High Holiday liturgy 'Unetaneh Tokef' - to the tragedy of the murders on that horrific day. The refrain 'who shall I say is calling' was repeated to express the pain of our incomprehension and also the urgency of our responsibility to combat evil. He pulled no punches, taking the government to task for being too wishy-washy in their public pronouncements of support for Israel and against the perpetrators. Next came Justin Trudeau who was thoughtful and appropriately solemn, paying sober tribute to each slain Canadian by name and talking about them individually, giving us a sense of the kind of people they were and the magnitude of our loss. He denounced anti-Semitism and reiterated the support of all Canadians for Israel and the Jewish community. Then Pierre Poilievre spoke, using his time at the podium to shamelessly turn the event into a political rally. It didn’t help that he was cheered on. I was frankly embarrassed by the community, and appalled at his lack of discretion and aplomb. Poilievre ended by reciting a cheesy poem in 6th grade rhyming quatrains which purported to envision Israel living in peace in the year 6785 (1000 years in the future on the Jewish calendar, God help us if it takes that long.) He exited the stage with an air of triumph when he should have slinked off in humiliation. 

There is very little chance I will vote Conservative in the next election.

Okay, now for a palette cleanser.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was announced, and congratulations to us Canadians, it was co-won by a fellow named Geoffrey Hinton who we can apparently claim as one of our own. I think he’s British by birth, but lives here and works at the University of Toronto, so we can celebrate, together with the Brits. What makes this even more interesting is that Hinton won for his work on neural networks in Artificial Intelligence (AI), in other words computer technology, in other words not physics in the traditional sense. Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder riffs on this in her inimitably sarcastic fashion on her YouTube channel. She’s been railing for some time about how physics, for the last 50 years or so, has made zero actual progress in its field. (I say 50 years because that's when the Higgs Boson particle was proposed. To be fair, it was finally experimentally confirmed in 2012). Instead of experimental breakthroughs, the last number of decades has been spent making up untestable unfalsifiable theories using complicated math to show… well, that we’ve gotten good at complicated math. In other words physics seems to have given up on the physical. But for Sabine the most maddening part is that so many physicists don’t seem to understand that they are working on nonsense because they get paid handsomely for working on nonsense. Now, by giving the prize for physics for work that’s not physics, the Nobel Prize committee seems to be acknowledging what Sabine's been talking about. It reminds me of a few years back when they gave the Nobel in Literature to singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. The Walrus magazine even asked me my opinion. You can probably guess what I said. All this probably means something, about the relevance of the Nobel Prize (can anyone remember who won any of the Prizes last year?) or award culture and the proliferation of prizes for all kinds of things in general (grade inflation?) and maybe about Andy Warhol's famous dictum that in the future everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes. Or maybe this year's Prize in Physics tells us that living virtually has clearly become more important to us than living physically. Anyway, I fully expect that they will soon be giving the Nobel in Chemistry to a pastry chef in the not too distant future.