Glenn Kubish

  Happy end of the week, friends. To keep the noticing equipment from disintegrating, here are three things I noticed I noticed that made me feel happy or grateful. (Just a little longer today. It takes Arendt awhile to get to the point.) Episode 75:                                1. Taking readings   Monday morning’s first stop, even before the bathroom, even before coffee, was the mailbox. The New York Times Sunday edition is delivered overnight. One pound of news. I scanned the headlines. In Ukraine, an ‘Endless Caravan of Death’ ... How Gun Makers Harness Fear to Supercharge Sales ... A Key Hurdle for Prosecutors: Proving What Trump Believed . I am slightly consoled by the mere organization of the newspaper—all this havoc made to fit in boxes, all the power and greed’s copy neatly standing in perfect towers of print, left and right justified. If the message were the medium, a newspaper would b...

  This is where, despite it all, or because of it all, I try to notice three things from my ordinary life that made me happy or grateful, and unpack them, so I keep an idea of the kind of stuff I am carrying around with me. Here is Three Things, episode 52 . 1. Cemeteries On New Year’s Day, I go for a walk in a cemetery. I’ve done it for years now. This year it was the St. Anthony/Mount Pleasant graveyards on 106th Street. I like the feeling of being in a graveyard, the feeling of knowing that I am in a graveyard and, especially, the feeling of walking out of a graveyard. I go to graveyards so I can still leave. My number isn’t up yet. In a graveyard, I’m nobody’s number. I mean, there are no neon or flashing signs or eye-catching vide there. I’m not being sold anything. No logos or brands. Just granite and upper case fonts, a lot of Times New Roman, if I’m not mistaken. It’s dramatic to be in the Mount Pleasant cemetery, standing on the hill, to the left a slope of snow-covered to...

It's the end of October, it's 3 degrees Celsius, it's raining, it's dark, the wind hits my wet face at about 15 km/h. A great night for riding a bicycle in Edmonton.  Let me explain myself.  Which is the point, actually. What I'm searching for is myself. For me, a bicycle has just been the most reliable interrogation device I have ever found. I keep running my questions through it.  I am just back from a 50-minute pedal from the north side. My tan Levi's went from pencil points of rain to splotches to tiny islands of dry fabric. The new asphalt shone oily. The green and red traffic lights projected lightsabers. Car tires sloshed. My nose leaked. I wasn't exactly warm. I felt alive.  Hannah Arendt wasn't talking about riding a bicycle, I get it. But, still:  Vitality and liveliness can be conserved only to the extent that men are willing to take the burden, the toil and trouble of life, upon themselves, Arendt wrote in The Human Condition.  The unexpecte...

Here's Hannah Arendt finding words for my experience of riding a bicycle. Arendt is talking about air travel, but the insight transfers nicely enough:  "[A]ny decrease of terrestrial distance can be won only at the price of putting a decisive distance between man and earth, of alienating man from his immediate earthly surroundings." I tried an Arendtian experiment this afternoon, recording my trip, first on bike, then in car, along our front street and down 91 Avenue toward Andy's IGA. It's a windy day today. The wind brings back Heidegger's insight that wind is always wind-in-the-trees, which, as far as it has been given to me to understand, means that existence is mediated for human beings. We don't get it pure. It's a quick jump from Heidegger to John Prine who knows about the wind, too. For Prine, it's not just the wind, either. Many years later I found myself talking to this girl Who was standing there with her back turned to Lake Marie The w...