Looting the House Next Door

A lot of outrage has been expressed about those who rioted in Vancouver recently. While not condoning destructive behaviour, I’m less judgmental than many, having particated in something similar myself. I understand how easy it can be to be carried away by a bad idea. The following poem is an excerpt from my book 1970: A Novel Poem

Since ‘private property’
had become a pejorative phrase—except for
one’s own belongings, of course—
perhaps it’s not surprising we looted
the house next door, thinking it abandoned,
we abandoned ourselves, and ran
from room to room and floor to floor,
snatching up small objects, anything
that lay to hand—Oh, the glee! the glee!

greed singing through us,
avarice humming in every cell,
we grab anything we can carry
—pillows, pictures, food, figurines
clothes we don’t need,
records we’ll never play,
books we’ll never read—but oh!

it was fun to take,
and take, and take,
and take, laughing

—in a fever to acquire
in a delirium of greed
we lugged home armfuls of stuff,
left it on the kitchen floor, and
going outdoors, lay about
the back yard, panting,

catching our breath, coming down,
coming back to ourselves,
a little awed, a little proud,
a little guilty, a little scared.

That night our visitors went home early.
They trailed away and the house was
unusually quiet for several days.

Next morning, shame-faced, we returned all
their things to the indignant owners, who returned
late the same night from wherever they’d been.
They moved away shortly thereafter.

Blue Mud Dauber Wasp

This is the beautiful but tiny wasp I never would have noticed if I hadn't been out hunting with my camera

Seeing

At various times, lately, when prowling the back yard, camera in hand, I practice really looking at things, really seeing them. Otherwise, my vision is often suspended somewhere between the object I’m ostensibly looking at and a more panoramic view, with the result that I’m actually seeing very little, I’m in sight-limbo. So whenever I remember to, I practice focusing on what I’m looking at, noting the details of what’s close around me--how individual blades of grass bend this way and that, a bit of gnarled twig, a grey, white-veined stone, that scurrying ant (too tiny, and moving too quickly to catch with even this lens--looking for the tell-tale twitch or flight or glint of wing that indicates a potential photographic target.

But after a while, I’ll deliberately switch to a more panoramic view, which is different than the suspension of vision in sight-limbo. In panoramic view, I catch the movement of insects and birds I would probably miss when concentrating on details close at hand. ‘Panoramic’ in relative terms, of course—twenty feet around me, instead of two, or sometimes hundreds of feet, a voluminous view as I scan the sky for an eagle.

Of coursed, in sight-limbo I’m usually thinking about something, usually something other than seeing, although thinking about ‘looking’ and ‘seeing’ (shades of Carlos Castaneda) can suspend true looking and seeing, as readily as thinking about any other subject. The ideal is to be Buddha-minded—aware of detail and panorama simultaneously—which seems to require stillness. And most depictions of the Buddha show him seated, though I have two little carved wooden Buddha’s with their hands in the air who appear to be dancing. And of course, it wouldn’t be complete enlightenment if one could only experience it while sitting.

Anyhow, in the garden I switch back and forth between detail and panorama, and still mostly get stuck in the middle, thinking about something and not really seeing. However, the camera does help to keep me focused on what’s going on around me. Because I’m looking for living, moving creatures to photograph, I’m far more observant than I used to be in pre-camera days, when much of my daily walk would take place in sight-limbo, the landscape going past as a backdrop to whatever drama was currently playing out in my head. Now, I’m much more attuned to picking up the darting movements that reveal where some bird or insect is, and am slowly building up a collection of all the various bug, bird, and (once) reptile life in the garden. There’s much more of it than there seems at first—like the beautiful turquoise-blue mud dauber wasp, so tiny—half an inch, at most—that, without the ceaseless hunt for food for the camera, I never would have noticed.

The Elimination of the per-vote subsidy for political parties--Harper's first step towards a one-party state

Isn’t it typical of the Harper Conservatives to eliminate the most democratic form of funding political parties—the per-vote subsidy—while maintaining the least democratic, the tax credit for political donations?

The Harper Conservatives claim that the per-vote subsidy forces tax-payers to finance parties they don’t support—which, typically for the Harper Conservatives, is simply not true. My vote directs where my tax dollars will go: to the NDP. The per-vote subsidy is far more democratic than the generous tax deduction for donation to political parties, which obviously favours those who a) have a taxable income (I do not); and b) can afford to donate any money at all, let alone $1,100 (the current limit per person).

As the party of big business, the Harper Conservatives raised 4 times the money ($17.7 million; with 3,400 people contributing at least $500) than the NDP, the party of working people and those on lower incomes ($4 million; 600 people contributing at least $500). Under the Harper Conservatives’ proposal, the wealthy will have even more influence over government than they do now.

One commentator made the argument that, without the subsidy, political parties will have to ‘work harder’ to present a platform that citizens will support, totally ignoring the fact that the per-vote subsidy already encourages political parties to do their best in each election to win votes, even if they can’t win a seat.

When political pundits bother to comment on the elimination of the per-vote subsidy, it’s generally couched in terms of Harper’s desire to eliminate the Liberal Party once and for all—as if that somehow makes it all right. However, while Harper’s first target may be the Liberals, the real target is all political parties, all of which will have difficulty raising the kind of money the Conservatives raise from their comparatively wealthier backers.

A one-party state is in keeping with Harper’s well-demonstrated desire to avoid dissent, and the elimination of the per-vote subsidy is a long step towards bringing it about.

Gulls Chasing Gulls Collage