The Merry Recluse considers Moral Philosophy and decides to put on Trousers

It’s rather odd to go through a depressive phase coupled with total loss of focus in writing, and have it be semi-public by virtue of its absence. It’s like having double-vision: I see the repeated false starts; the scattering off into different venues, meetings, committees; the pile of books I’ve been reading in lieu of blogs; the scramble to arrange this or that issue relating to the life of the mind and the state of the hearth; and the sorted and unsorted piles of paper that speak of a harbourmaster’s task of domestic barge, freighter, and cruiseship management. You, the blog-reader, have seen nothing. And — this is the curious part — when I look, I see the nothing, too. It’s been excruciating to look at, so I decided to get back at it.

Kate‘s comment today, on my last entry in May, did it. Can’t let anyone think I’ve been eaten up by vegetation, for heaven’s sake. Lions and tigers and bears, ok. But vegetables? Old ruins are overtaken by vegetation; it especially likes the cracks. I am at present very far from being an old ruin, so screw that. And while I’m cracked in all the right places, nothing but animal kingdom veins its way through my domain, with permission.

Today is Canada Day, our national holiday. On Monday I went to vote: alas, strategically, which action I regretted as soon as I heard David Anderson, our re-elected Liberal incumbent, speak on the radio the next day. Victoria is one of the few ridings in British Columbia that didn’t send a Conservative Party member to Ottawa in the last elections, and I wanted to help keep it that way. But does Anderson make any noises about working cooperatively with the NDP (the quasi-sorta-kinda socialists)? No, he tells his constituents that the Liberals will govern as though they have a majority, with no regard for any other party. Dude?? Your party has a minority. Your party should figure out how to work with the NDP. With that kind of attitude, Canadians will be looking at another election in a year or two, when Paul Martin’s Liberal government falls due to terminal arrogance. Next time I’m voting my conscience (Green Party), and to hell with the strategy. I could kick myself for voting for a man who is the Liberal Party’s Environment Minister, who was born in Victoria, who represents Victoria in Parliament, and who has done nothing, as far as I know, to stop the flooding of raw sewage by Victoria into the Juan de Fuca Strait. Nor did he ever respond to my letter two years ago, where I raised this issue along with the related environmental issue that Victoria has no regulation in place — none — regarding car exhaust emissions. You wouldn’t believe the vaporised shit that comes out of some people’s tailpipes here, in this city in which Canada’s Environment Minister resides. It’s the aerosol equivalent of what we dump into the ocean. But then again, I had coffee this afternoon with a man who smokes too much, and when I came home I felt as though I had been smoking. The day we stop breathing is the day we’ll stop sucking.

And then the vegetation will creep through all the cracks, the many many cracks. In the end, photosynthesis will perhaps show itself to be the more efficient process.

I forgot all those false starts, by the way. Some of them were really good, too. Unfortunately, that’s the nature of letting things slide: the good and the bad go down the tubes, equally, ending up in the Deep Blue Sea, …or the Juan de Fuca Strait.

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A few snippets from the magpie’s pile of what I’m reading:

…and I’ll probably reread Knapp’s Appetites.

On a related note, via Arts & Letters Daily, this article by Christine Rosen, The Democratization of Beauty, about cosmetic surgery.