Three Things from Edmonton podcast -- Episode 133: Oppenheimer, magpies, close calls

Here is where this time every week, I play back three things that made marks of happiness and gratitude on my timeline. 

Three Things, episode 133: 

 

                           

1. Oppenheimer 

Tatlock: I don’t want anything from you.
Oppenheimer: You say that and then you call.
Tatlock: Well, don’t answer.
<brief silence>
Oppenheimer: I’ll always answer.

That little back-and-forth between the Jean Tatlock and J. Robert Oppenheimer characters near the start of the biopic works on many levels. I’ll always answer is his pledge to a lover. I’ll always answer is his approach to his Star Chamber interrogators. I’ll always answer is his action before the riddles of nature. I’ll always answer is a prophecy: he will forever be required to provide a defence of his actions and their reactions. As a man, as a citizen, as a scientist and as an American god—private, public, professional, Prometheus—he says he will always answer.

Prometheus himself answered big time after stealing  fire from the gods for humankind’s preservation. (As an aside, according to Plato, it was not only fire that was stolen but the art of Hephaestus, too, which means that Edmonton metal artist Slavo Cech is an indirect beneficiary of the gift of Prometheus, which is kinda cool, but not the main point of either the dialogue or the movie, admittedly.)  For his troubles—for opening up to mortals the need to choose for themselves what is best for their lives—Prometheus was riveted to a rock on a mountaintop, an eagle arriving each day to feed on his regenerated liver.

In Christopher Nolan’s updated telling of the story, the Caucusus Mountains of Greek myth are the mesas of 1940s Los Alamos. Fire is the  first nuclear explosion at the Trinity test site. The voracious bird is the attack of Oppenheimer’s conscience. 

Was Oppenheimer surprised by the arrival of his ordeal? Did he, Prometheus-like, see it coming? Did he knowingly endure the pain as punishment for his pride? Did he willingly submit to that pain out of a recognition of the jurisdictions of the world?  Out of love for the world? At the end of the film, to his wife’s indictment that he is naively willing to be tarred and feathered (see eagle above) in the hope of someday being forgiven, Oppenheimer says: we’ll see. What did he see? 

A movie I still think about a week after seeing was worth going to—twice.

2.  Magpies 

On a morning bicycle ride last week I counted 43 magpies. Many were patrolling front lawns, walking like I imagine old field marshals walked, hands behind their backs, contemplating the battlefield. I count magpies because I have managed to stop counting car tires and telephone poles and trees. At some level, I count magpies for the pure joy of counting, even if it is mindless numeracy. At some level, I count magpies because of the one I unintentionally killed in a uniquely Canadian way. I hit it with a hockey puck.  Its only crime was non-stop squawking from the tree outside the bedrooms where our little boys and their tired mother were sleeping. I had meant only to scare it away. I hit the target. I never hit the target. I always missed the cutoff man. How could I take out a bird hidden in the mountain ash? 

Magpies are maligned, with some cause. They sound harsh. They wake up babies. They can’t carry a tune. They can’t dodge a puck. They look like masked villains. They hang out in dumpsters. On this last point, the Russian poet Akhmatova once got me thinking more magnanimously about magpies.  “If only you knew what trash gives rise/ To verse…,” she wrote. Huh. My bird friends at Coffee Outside encouraged me further down the road to relationship rehab. Nicola taught me about corvids, how clever they are. I’ve been wondering if they’re also conversant with grief. I can still hear how troubled three of them sounded as they stood around the body of a fourth, presumably hit and killed by a car, on 136 Street in North Glenora recently. What do they see?

3. Close calls 

This how it almost happened. I was pedalling east on 92A Avenue in Crestwood and had just gotten to the intersection at 146 Street. To my left, heading south, coming towards me, was a car. It was just far enough away and moving at a speed just slow enough that I calculated I could stop quickly at the stop sign and then hammer on the cranks and get across the intersection without causing the car to slow down. A quick look to confirm no traffic coming from my right. Look back to my left. Clear! Go! It was only as I reached the far curb that I noticed a bicycle rider moving across my path. I swerved, apologized, he was gracious, no harm done. Slightly alarming was the fact that I had not seen the cyclist at all while taking my precise speed and distance readings of the traffic. What my eyes told was accurate, as far as they could see. They didn’t see the bigger picture. I didn’t give them enough time to do their work. My friend Sonia would say that I didn’t trust the process. I ad libbed. I rushed. And got the gift of a close-ish call that showed me clearly how I don’t see things, which is vital to observe. 

Thanks for being out there, friends.