Glenn Kubish

Almost 2,100 years ago, the Lucretius wrote a book called On the Nature of Things. The scientist-poet muses on the soul, matter, physics, history, happiness, sailing, corn, existential dread, wine, the weather, the theatre, mud, the allure of tyrants in times of ordeal, love, the senses, death, compounds, dreams, fire, fallacy, flatulence, why evil happens to good people, images, the afterlife and other breezy topics of interest to Rome back in the day. And volcanoes. He writes about volcanoes, too. And fabric.  The tract is a song of praise to Epicurus, the Greek philosopher who "was the first that dared to raise mortal eyes" against superstitious religion. It's a slow, timely read.  The book ends unexpectedly during an account of the plague that devastated Greece at the time of the Peloponnesian War. Some scholars suggest Lucretius died before being able to weave together the cosmos into a complete account. I kinda like how it ends. I also like the way The Sopranos ends...

The pieces have been swirling around. On Facebook, my friend Steve had posted a winter-arrives-in-Edmonton pic with the advice to embrace the elements. For the first time, I heard elements. On Twitter. my friend Brett had retweeted the East Village news that Calgary's 9th Avenue cycle track between Macleod Trail and 4th Street was now open. "Your commute in and out of East Village has gotten a little bit sweeter." For the first time, I heard sweeter.  On the sidewalk along the 102 Ave bike lane in Edmonton, a parka'd child sat on the concrete, legs below the knees splayed out in the way we bend before growing inflexible, the bundled one's attention on a mitten full of snow, while, from above, the mother asked the question: "What do you think?" For the first time I heard the question directed at me. What do I, 56-year-old Glenn , think of winter weather? On the pedal home today, the pieces came together in a kind of equation from Grade 7.  CO 2   +  H 2 O...

  Since the current U.S. president called his city a rodent infested mess where human beings wouldn't want to live, Edgar Allan Poe has been having a bit of a moment.  In a song on his latest album, Bob Dylan confesses to having a "tell-tale heart like Mr. Poe and skeletons in the walls of people you know." Saturday Night Live's cold open gives viewers Jim Carrey's Joe Biden reading from Poe's The Raven, corrected and updated for Hillary Clinton's electoral college loss to and Lil Wayne's support for Trump.  Once upon a midnight dreary while Trump retweeted QAnon theories.... But it's Poe's The Masque Of The Red Death that is required reading in this historical moment. Masque as homonym for mask. Red as suggestive of Orange. Death being in and on the air in this pandemic. And that's just the suggestive work of the title. "The 'Red Death' had long devastated the country" is how the short story begins. You don't need a d...