March 14 — Year of the Ox (An Epilogue in Six Parts)

45 min readMar 1, 2021

PAYING ATTENTION TO SMALL THINGS

Somewhere in the vast darkness known as the great silence was a most remarkable thing. Although they were quite an arduous, wasteful, and inefficient lot, there was a conglomeration of atoms contemplating other atoms.

At one particularly trying point in space-time and having filled the bath with steaming water, I found myself testing it with a big toe. A bit on the hot side, but it was in the tolerable threshold. I took great care to ease my battered body in, noticing the blacks, purples, and blues of my bottom and left hip creeping into dark yellows up and down my legs. My cotton gauze bandage was crusted with dark-clotted blood. My heightened senses could taste tangy metal as the blood touched the water.

The road to knowledge, and then wisdom, began by paying attention to small things.

Day 395. “Tian Mao Jin Ling,” I call, Chinese for Space Cat Genie, and she answers, “Wo Zai,” (I’m here). “What day is it today?” I ask, and she tells me. It’s March 1, 2021. She lets me know the weather outside, gives me some news headlines, plays Waka Waka by Shakira to get me out of bed. I get up while she reads Shaolin a ghost story. I brush my teeth. It was well worth the 1 RMB (US 0.15), including shipping, an unbelievable price, to have her as our smart personal assistant. I don’t worry about privacy, even though she, Alexa, and Siri might always be listening. When you live in a country of 1.5 billion, there isn’t a lot of space for privacy, so I’ll settle for good health and comfort.

It’s been a surreally trying 14 months since the pandemic began here in China, psychologically grueling, but since the Spring Festival holiday and the Year of the Ox, I’ve known unparalleled peace, almost as if I’ve stepped outside of my mind and just am. This is the kind of thing kids, addicts, DJs, and drunks feel when they get off their face or out of their head, or monks feel after a lifetime of meditation practice and enlightenment. Which was my path? Perhaps, it was both, and I feel grateful to know both the short and long way there.

We pack our bags and head to the gym, but Shaolin’s forgotten her water. Outside the school gate, she grabs a bottle off the corner store shelf and smiles at the cash. It scans her face, automatically deducting 2 RMB (US 0.20) from her account. The human cashier behind the robotic face screen nods and smiles back before getting back to her mobile game. Many shops don’t bother with human cashiers anymore, but this one owns the place.

The news lately is exciting. Even though Trump got acquitted and there are many problems left to tackle, it feels like there are experts at the top in both East and West willing to try to solve the big problems, scientists working with leaders, to get the job done.

For decades, presidents have used their power to declare emergencies to sideline badly needed regulations and entrench the national security state. Now a group of Congress members led by AOC is proposing that those powers be used for good: to force action to avoid a climate catastrophe. Now, the Wonder Twins AOC and Bernie Sanders cowrite a bill asking the new Biden administration to declare a climate emergency. It would expand infrastructure, promote access to renewable energy, transportation, water, and public systems, modernize structures, invest in public health, prepare for extreme climate events, restore natural wildlife areas, invest in agriculture, and develop a transformation to clean energy. It feels like good news.

I look back at the year of the rat and think of the titans that have fallen: Bassnectar (superstar bass DJ turned accused manipulative predator), Johnny Depp (superstar actor accused abusive partner), Peter Nygaard (fashion guru turned accused billionaire pedophile with his own creepy private island of secrets), even an ex-pat teacher I knew (accused of predatory behavior), and now, Marilyn Manson (superstar goth clown turned accused abuser). My friend Ryan, who called me the Plague Harbinger a year ago, had some poignant words: “I really don’t understand how the Marilyn Manson allegations are shocking to anyone. He’s been advertising how (messed) up he is since day one. It’s his entire platform. So everyone just assumed that somehow also meant well adjusted for relationships and respectful to women? What I’m saying is that his entire persona was a walking red flag, and now everyone’s acting shocked and appalled by the recent revelations as if no one could have seen it coming. Like he was always such a fine upstanding young gentleman. The only thing that shocks me is how long it took for these accusations to come to light. How was no one talking about this before now? For those of you that were big fans, you can separate the art from the artist. Look at H.P. Lovecraft and J.K. Rowling. You can have creators with problematic views and still appreciate their work. Just don’t glorify the artist.” The internet has a hard time with nuance, but not you, Roy. I hope you take the time to soak it all in.

The #MeToo movement caught famous people by surprise, as entire cultures were deemed untenable overnight– especially in movies and music, where some people’s whole platform was “I’m famous, and I use people,” suddenly being called out as sleazy… kind of a hmm well yeah, duh moment. But it feels good to see bullies and abusers fall. Full stop.

I introduced a single friend to Shaolin’s single friend and they’re really hitting it off. It’s so cute to watch. We’ve been all to dinner twice and they’re overcoming language and cultural barriers to find a lot of mutual appreciation in common. It could have been much more awkward. Life is like a dance, fingers crossed.

It also feels like a good time to spend less time on the internet. With everyone looking for a fight with little to no provocation. I’ve taken a break, most of February, for Spring Festival. A break from writing, a break from hyper-focus on the pandemic and world news, and spent time with my family. It feels so good. I’ve taken whole days away from my phone, social media, and I decided not to argue anymore. We’ve had days of 25 and sunny in February, and went to the river to play with Ethan and the family, and gone up to a mountain to walk around, holding hands with Shaolin and smiling until I could feel my face burning in the hot sun. It’s been weeks since I argued on the internet for any reason. It’s hard to remember the way I waged wars and endless fights and debates in 2020 — — I can’t even remember why I’d bother. Who was I trying to teach? What was I trying to win?

“We’re very happy,” Shaolin said sweetly, in a quiet moment, “when you stay here, everything is so good.” She hugs me and says, “Kai Kai,” with affection, and it feels good to be in the present and not fighting all the time. To just both feel happy and peaceful. It feels like the end of a life of struggle, but I am still curious about what is to come.

Democrats are working to push through USD 50,000 of student loan forgiveness and a stimulus plan to put cash into hands and just passed a 1.9 trillion USD covid-19 relief package — thanks to the selfish and corrupt republican majority and administration’s defeat, help is coming in America. They need it. Some of this will begin to look like universal basic income, I think, and good.

“Oh, look at you. You’re keen to be clean,” said my nurse, bleach-blond, dark-eyed, in a white latex nurse uniform. She smiles, played with my matted hair, administered my medication– scattershot right into my foggy grey brain.

Like a drop of water contemplating the ocean, we are all expressions of an awakened universe contemplating itself.

Unwrapping the bandage from my hip, I see twenty-five thick, surgical staples holding my leg together shone from the bottom of the tub like the promise of buried treasure.

What is valuable, or were they insignificant? Both?

I used to sit in the bathtub as a child, with the shower on, and listen to the water, sometimes with the lights off and pretend I was in the rainforest surrounded by the vibrant pulse of wildlife until I came out boiled and red as a lobster.

“We will teach you to walk again.” Like honey pouring into my ears but farther and farther away as the words dripped into the stout victorian bathtub, an alphabet soup shrinking as it disappears down the drain, coated with a crystalline prescience. Time was stretchy now, all happening, everywhere. When the Universe was together, it was both all-time and outside of time. You can’t be late when you’re the Universe.

THE OCEAN IN A DROP

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. -Epictetus

Many parts of the planet saw unusually cold weather this week. Folks were ice skating on Amsterdam canals, and skiing down Moscow streets. Students at the University of Damascus in Syria got a snow day that canceled exams. But when cold weather buried Texas, the early novelty of snow and ice quickly evaporated. With temperatures freezing for days, the state, despite its dominant energy sector, saw rolling power outages turn into a prolonged blackout that left more than 4 million people in the dark and cold, water off, roads closed for days. Some froze to death in the streets, others in their homes.

Meanwhile, the pro-insurrectionist senator Ted Cruz ran away to Mexico, got called out, and came running back, blaming his kids. Meanwhile, AOC crowdfunded 4 million dollars and helped the needy. The winners and losers of today’s politics seem obvious, those that adapt to reality and try to solve problems instead of running away. These perfect storm calamity sandwiches will become more and more commonplace. We need a Green New Deal.

The hot salty tears fell down my face and into the swirling depths of the Pacific ocean. Surface waves hungrily beat the bow of our boat, demanding more, goading me to plunge. What had begun as a lovely boat ride from Victoria to Vancouver had become a painful gaze into the dark corners of loneliness. Goodbye Medusa, goodbye Dylan, goodbye Neverland. My soul was crawling through oceanic trenches as I struggled to breathe, but I kept breathing.

The Western far-right conservatives teach people to fear Russia and China and words like socialism, communism, but what are they scared of? Working together? Experts say the west has socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else. My friend Tim brings me a story of failed capitalism.”The power outage forced a grocery store to discard a bunch of perishable food. People who are also without power tried to claim it to eat, but the police stopped them (since they didn’t own it). This isn’t about the police or the grocery store or the citizens; this is about a system that creates outcomes like this. We have chosen to put concerns of profit before concerns of compassion. That leads to these sorts of outcomes. We must build a better system,” says the tireless Timothy Ellis.

Would you cycle for an hour a day if it could power your home for 24 hours? asks a tech article; maybe it could. It’s always good to keep hope alive. It sounds like magic.

The kingdom of heaven, vast spaciousness of sky, a dimension of consciousness, the essence of who we are, the Universe, a microcosm, the Universe realizing its own essence through you. Rumi was a spiritual teacher when he said, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”

My pineal gland tickled in the back of my skull as the water rippled, and I giggled. The tap dripped, dripped, dripped into the tub, hypnotically. Now occupying the tub’s space, I could feel the water molecules humming with power, memory. The link between the source, life, energy, the batteries that charge souls to myself, sand witch and existential detective, was a steady drip. Just enough consciousness to be aware I had a body without the pain of being stuck in my memories and problems. I existed without fear, in a dimension where the angles like ceilings met walls — it was not a modern hotel bathroom, but rather one hung loosely over reality like a sheet protecting an antique chair from dust as I counted down the steady ticking moments of my life.

“You shouldn’t expect machines to be perfect, and it’s all about making fewer mistakes,” said Gary Kasparov, the grandmaster of Chess, beaten by the world’s best, at the time, AI. Did you know, Roy? It’s short for ROYGBIV, the electromagnetic spectrum because you’re going to be diverse and all-encompassing.

He’s growing so fast, but we are very much alike in ways this moment we can share, and it amuses us both, two minds buzzing and dancing.

“I’m not a great guy, but I could be worse…” I think.

“No man is a great man, but every man could be worse -”

Morality is a sea of choices. I think, to Roy, it’s ok to make mistakes, but they add up, one by one, like bricks in a wall. Self-control, sometimes simply not acting, is the difference between good and evil. Other times it is acting, interceding, to apply kindness, or stop wickedness and violence. Roy wants examples. I tell him the story of a morning I woke up to visit an old friend and ended up pulling out an old pair of claw hammers from a drawer, stalling a dozen robbers until they’d lost their edge and ran away empty-handed. It was brave. It was foolish.

Growing up in Canada, I was raised to value diversity and open discourse. I still think those things are valuable, but while I watch Canada grapple with huge differences across a political spectrum that both want to fund a green new deal and support new oil pipelines. They spent months fighting their own pandemic protocols, and my good suggestions. I realize it has limitations. While the new Biden administration plans to undo the Trump one who worked to undo the Obama one who worked to offset the Bush administration, it feels like they’re spending twenty critical years chasing their tale. Here in China, the two sessions are upon us, a big annual government congress, and we’re discussing vaccine passports with other countries that have also managed to eliminate the virus from within their borders. Today the Chinese congress implemented policy actions including a road map for carbon dioxide emissions to peak by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. This looks good, I hope it’s enough. It feels really important. This year marks the first year of the 14th five-year plan period. I can only imagine what the west would be like if they could agree to long-term goals and actually keep them (Paris Accord? Kyoto? Please). I think we’d have first to decide who is in charge: the will of the majority or that of the corporate lobbyists? Since the majority of ideas that have 75%-90% approval, such as minimum wage increases, environmental protection, and better medical insurance, don’t actually become law, I think democracy is a generous term. Who would you vote for to save the environment? The party that gets paid by big oil to tell you there’s no problem or the party that gets paid by big oil to tell you there’s a problem, but we’ll deal with it later, for the economy. There won’t be a later if we don’t deal with it now. So I grew up loving democracy in theory, came to revile it in practice, and respect a people that could agree upon some core science and work together to accomplish huge goals. It’s interesting, though, getting to travel the world and learn new lessons about what works in different places. I highly recommend it.

THE ART OF LIVING

I’m finishing a book, walking around the buffet, but everyone’s waiting in lines, and I’ve got this empty plate … I just don’t feel the need for anything because I have enough already.

“I’m hungry,” Shaolin says and finds the live shrimp tank with a weave basket in her hand. She pokes and prods the shrimp. The suckers swimming away or quickly gobbled up into the blue bowl to be later grilled. The smarter ones stop moving and sink to the bottom, playing dead; she pokes them, but if they can put on a convincing enough performance, they live to swim another day.

Life is like coconut rum martinis scooped up by shmoozing foreigners, I think, delicately clutching the glass stems as a crowd skitters by, momentarily impressed by the graceful foreigner, and they double-take. For a moment, my swagger is back- even if only to scoot over to my wife fishing for shrimp. In some places, I’ve been Peter Pan all this time; in others, I never, ever was. All at once.

Eating a shrimp — next to the flipping ones for which I hope a quick death, Shaolin smiles and asks, is it nice? It is- it is. Here our life is simple and good, we eat, and we rejoice, we have a family and they are happy. It has a dreamlike quality to it, but it is more real than most dreams I’ve had. I turn around to survey the Chinese buffet house at the end of the Universe and smile.

“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing because an artful life requires being prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks,” says Marcus Aurelius, seriously, and I nod, trying to peel back a shrimp and eat it without breaking eye contact until it gets weird.

CNN and Trump, you’d think they were enemies, but on a higher level, in the realm of capitalism, they’ve been best buds. It was good TV, ratings and money were flowing. Now the major networks aren’t covering “normal politics” and freefalling as we stop room scrolling our phones and screens with white knuckles.

As Bernie put it, the system needs a reboot — we need on the ground journalists telling real stories again. That’s an important job. Less talking head pundits, more storytellers, on the ground, working their craft.

Strangely, despite the rise of several serious variants of concern, global cases seem to be dropping. We’re just hitting 115 million cases worldwide, 2.5 million deaths, with the largest amount, 30 million cases, and half a million COVID deaths all happening in America. Trump played it down, mocked mask-wearing, held super spread rallies, slow-walked testing, spread false cures, pushed unsafe reopenings, silenced scientists, had no national strategy — antiscience denialism in politics, especially at this critical time, will lead to unmitigated disaster. We’ve seen that in Brazil too, and other far-right governments that don’t futureproof and support the people. We need to keep a clear head. But Johnson and Johnson is now FDA approved, with its one-dose-wonder, and the race for vaccination is on.

Luckily, my family is good, and so are most of my friends, but they’re not out of the woods. As Canada aims to open up again, a BC pub that hosted its first trivia night has facilitated a super spreading event that caused more than 300 infections. We called my mom to chat and Shaolin and my mom had some good laughs. The newest scandal in Canada is that, even after waiting a month to implement the ‘mandatory quarantine hotel’ from the Chinese pandemic management playbook, it’s going horribly. First, it’s only 3 days, with symptoms taking an average of 5–7 days to arrive and several days to show up on tests, this is too short. Secondly, there was no communication with previously shut down hotels as to the scale of the travelers arriving, and no government or armed guard support. Scenes on TV played out of people complaining there was no food or water arriving in their rooms, so crowds of 50–100 people were all in the lobby screaming together at the front desk for help. They were not allowed to bring in outside food for some reason. And of course, all of these mingling people were under strict quarantine. No mention of doctors taking tests and temperatures, and even though they had to pre-register with the Canadian government, no one thought to provide that information to the hotels or offer logistics support. I have a feeling they gave the contract to whoever did such a great job with pandemic preparedness and having masks for everyone on standby last January, you know the one that didn’t have any, and then instead of resigning in shame lied and said you don’t want masks anyway, they don’t do any good. The new South African variant can reinfect us, even if you have antibodies to the original, studies show, and fears grow, and anxiety builds. That’s no excuse to turn into a tinfoil hat nutter though. Saying “vaccination is a choice,” makes sense if you live alone in the woods, but when you are a part of the vibrant, living organism of a city, a nation, a society, you have a duty to the whole, you cannot be that selfish. A society that tolerates that sort of self-sabotage is setting itself up to fall. Saying that wearing a mask during a pandemic is “living in fear” is like saying that using oven mitts means you’re “afraid” of the oven. Ok, take a breath, take a breath, and be calm. My friend Sasha told me that bees don’t need to explain to flies that honey is better than shit, and I think it means I’ve done my best and it’s time to move on.

One thing is clear, anti-Asian hate is on the rise in the west. China is advising its citizens to avoid Australia for the moment, and many naturally born Asian Americans, as well as visitors, are experiencing double or triple the typical amount of verbal and physical assaults. Something must be done. It starts with you, see something, say something.

It’s deeper than a pandemic but feels like only now are we waking up to the mess we’ve swept under the rug. When you understand that under capitalism, a forest has no value until it’s cut down, you begin to understand the root of our ecological crisis. I look out the window and wonder if we’ll have time to apply our pandemic lessons to climate catastrophe. It feels like it’s happening so fast, but on such a huge scale that we have years to watch the slow-motion changes, we have time to act. I want China to apply our remarkable pandemic stoicism and self-sacrifice for the greater good to the environment because that’s what it will take. We rocked at doing the right thing, working together, sacrificing some comfort, and making hard choices to root out the virus, but it will take a leap to apply that same thinking to our environment. One we need to make. We’re on the way — 100% electric cars by 2030 sounds radical but not radical enough — we need to see big changes fast. But I am hopeful. We can’t keep going the way we were.

The airlines are on life support. Experts call it a sad day for the 100-year-old aviation industry. Thirty major airlines file for bankruptcy. Many more are trimming down their services to match the lowest demand in a century. By September, the industry is looking at 8,000 grounded planes and 90,000 unemployed pilots. Some are complaining they’re rusty. I don’t want to fly with rusty pilots.

A year ago, China saw success with its coordinated strategy. Now, we have downgraded our national threat level to low, as all medium and high-risk 2nd wave zones have been eliminated, treated, and protected. Heilongjiang province was the last to downgrade, as no-no confirmed or asymptomatic cases were discovered for two weeks. I hope for summer travel, to see my family, in Canada.

“Declassified us intelligence report says Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the plan to kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.” I wonder what will come from this revelation. Journalists are important. We’ve also declassified a bunch of documents about the existence of UFOS. I’m excited to find them.

THE LEGEND OF THE PHOENIX

I’m finishing a book, walking around the buffet, but everyone’s waiting in lines, and I’ve got this empty plate … I just don’t feel the need for anything because I have enough already.

PUTTING OUR HOPES INTO AI

“These are the characteristics of the rational soul: self-awareness, self-examination, and self-determination. It reaps its own harvest.. . . It succeeds in its own purpose . . .” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

CPAC and republican America is embracing nazi fascism symbology and ideology as they cling to Trump’s weathered pantlegs — despite the 30 investigations, released taxes, damning new book decrying him a Russian asset for 40 years, they want him representing their party. Meanwhile, former French president Sarkozy is going to jail for 3 years for corruption. The French get things done. I think the way you fight fascism is with human connection. Love is more powerful than hate.

Biden is boring, by comparison, asking us to relax and go back to sleep. As the top of the news is about Lady Gaga’s dogs, Biden tells congress Syria strikes are consistent with US right to self-defense– “I directed this military action to protect and defend our personnel and our partners against these attacks and future suck attacks,” in response to rocket attacks against American targets in Iraq. And so the wheel turns. Experts are still trying to puzzle out what a disconcerted Biden said after a two-hour conference with Chinese leader Xi. “They’re gonna eat our lunch,” he said, leaving many scratching their heads, but as someone used to his schoolyard metaphors, it seems pretty obvious.

The evidence is everywhere, take infrastructure. Beijing to Shanghai is 1100KM, slightly shorter than Boston to Chicago (1300KM). Amtrak in the USA takes 21 hours and 35 minutes for 1300 KM. The high-speed train in China takes 4 hours and 18 minutes and costs half the price. This is what happens when a country invests in infrastructure instead of just weapons. When it works for the people and not the warmonger elite billionaires. This is why America’s far-right wants you to hate China — so you don’t ask why they can have nice trains and you can’t. Or affordable food and homes, and a booming economy.

Still- there are obvious positive changes. The first commercial-scale offshore wind project in the U.S. cleared a final hurdle on Monday when the Interior Department announced it has completed the Vineyard Wind project’s final environmental review. The $2.8 billion project, repeatedly delayed by the Trump administration because of his completely imaginary fear that wind power causes cancer, would be constructed a dozen miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. It will consist of 84 turbines generating about 800 megawatts of energy, enough to power 400,000 homes in New England beginning in 2023.

Elon Musk sits in front of a 3 star general and a crowd of new army recruits. “What do you think of the threat China poses to American supremacy?” the general asks Elon, now the world’s richest man and an avid spaceman and futurist. “Well, it’s not so much a threat as a promise,” he says, more or less. “I mean, they work longer days, are more productive on average, and have 400% the population of the USA. So even if per capita, they became half as productive or earned as much as Americans in the next twenty years, their economy will be double,” he paused,” or triple, Americas before you know it.” He shrugged, “it’s just math, you can’t fight math.” You could hear a pin drop. But his stocks keep on surging.

I wonder if the elite capitalists in the West are scared of a society that doesn’t make its billionaires above the law, as we saw when Jack Ma flouted Chinese regulations and got a hard smackdown for his hubris — a place where the cost of living is kept affordable, the middle class and millionaire class are growing, and the lower class is getting pulled out of poverty, the rich and corporations are taxed, and vast fortunes are used to build up public infrastructure, so we see modernization, intelligentization of smart cities, the best transportation networks and most advanced trains in the world and a commitment to dump petrol and move to electric cars within the decade… for the people here, it’s a success story, for the West, it’s a threat, perhaps? But I’m just a little person, and I’ll return my thoughts to my breath.

/Input Suggestion: I want a system where corporations are fined for any litter they produce that winds up on the street or in the ocean. We need to reverse the burden and make it in their financial interest to create packaging and recycling systems that are closed loop. Same for emissions and offsets or factory scrubbing technology that can reduce pollutions to air, Earth, and water. Have you got that, Roy?

Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos now own a considerable farming empire… mining farmers globally for data and promising to future and climate-proof farms but on their terms and at a big profit. Basically, in a few years, AI will be deciding what to grow and where fairly independently, I imagine…

For better or worse.

Let’s hope better.

As billionaires reach for the stars and hide in glass domes, billions of people grow poorer and more desperate, and we search for some kind of global equity… we are grasping at the end of the Universe, when we could spend that time, at least some of it, looking in, towards self-contemplation.

When we lose the unifying myth, a society becomes aimless and gravitates towards power and pleasure — but the myth of self-fulfillment was merely forgotten, not lost, ready for our individual discovery.

When I was young, I worried, probably because my father and his father were worriers, and I liked to imagine high technology in the future anyway, and I thought a lot about the future and jobs. It seemed an unsolvable problem to imagine what I could study or become that would be future-proofed long enough for me to have a chance at a career like my parents did before AI changed everything forever. Being young and poor, having a stable career, and a great education, and not worrying about money, a home, and a family seemed like an elusive dream. But it was my dream to dream.

I believe I’ve found a career as an English professional, a writer, and a teacher, at least for now, I have some stability in my life. In our children and children’s children’s lifetime, many jobs will be erased or taken by computer intelligence. That’s not a fanciful idea anymore but a hard fact. It’s happened to assembly lines at manufacturing plants and soon will happen to truckers. It’s happening right now to cashiers, legal clerks, and radiologists. If I had to teach my children or grandchildren which career they should master that would still exist when they’re ready to be professional, that’s an excellent question.

When most jobs are done by intelligent, connected machines, what life remains for their creators? Will we enjoy our hobbies and feel satisfied to read, paint, and travel around, paid a universal basic income from the government? Or will we struggle, sell our poor, inferior human labor for scraps, and live in despair while a few wealthy folks live lavish lives of high technology dreams, literal domes on Mars and the moon, and condo space stations created by the technology billionaires of the 21st century? That remains to be figured out and seen, but only one of those futures is humane, and the other is barren, dark, and very, very cruel. In stark capitalism, we are left to scrounge. A form of communal socialism, or communism, brings up all of us to enjoy the fruits of our society’s labor. This is what I hope for, but the west is very scared of those words- in a pandemic, they voted against free medicare even as millions went bankrupt. Such is the awesome power of lobbies and corporate greed.

With translation and language becoming so easily accessible with technology teaching English or foreign languages might fall out of fashion sooner than I imagine, but it’s a complicated and strange world to imagine where you can take a baby and instantly implant the ability to speak every language, a master’s degree in chemistry, biology, physics, and engineering architecture, fine arts art history, and design all in a moment; at what point does it become impossible for us to imagine education of the future?

Will there be a point where the skills can be digitally skilled chipped to a certain level of proficiency level, but to become a master, advancing the collective knowledge, you will need to learn skills the organic, analog way? Or is it possible — or more likely, inevitable, that with machine learning in the future advances will only be made by machines and the speed at which the advance will leapfrog beyond anything humans are capable of so quickly that it will seem that we no longer create anything anymore? You know, I really don’t know, but the new world is upon us, and the alternative to not making the step seems like self-annihilation, by default, by ignoring our own self imposed environmental collapse. So I’m willing to take the chance, aren’t we all? It’s not like we could stop it anyway, even if we wanted to.

Orlando got his COVID vaccine. Mine must be on the way… the light at the end of the tunnel, and the isolation of pandemia, well, looks like summer might be coming after all. I miss my Canadian family. I hope I can see them again soon.

Hear me out, if the Universe is merely the whole learning to contemplate itself in expressions, then isn’t all love a form of cosmic masturbation? And any racism and homophobia is a form of self-hate by those with a lack of imagination and insight.

If you’re feeling down, remember that the mandarin for penguin is business goose.

The last piece of my independent life puzzle was completed this week as I found Stance socks in my size inside China. The quest for the perfect sock that took me on a pilgrimage across America and the world, in 2018, as the holy grail, a $30USD high-performance Stance sock was purchased in the giftshop of Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park… has now seen itself to the edges of my Universe. I may be locked inside China, but I’ve got the world’s best socks hugging my feet.

So excited for Dempsey Bob, master Tahltan-Tlingit carver and all-around amazing guy, on winning a 2021 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts Artistic Achievement Award. Congrats, Mr. Bob! For the first time, a Native American may oversee U.S. policies on tribal nations. Rep. Deb Haaland’s nomination sends a strong message that the incoming administration believes Native people deserve a seat at the table when many of the most important discussions take place at the highest levels of the U.S. government. We are moving in the right direction, we’ve just got to pick up the pace.

I’ve got my new schedule, and the school’s got a new German and English foreign teacher. We’re all getting together for dinner on Wednesday at Pizza House, run by Tom with the good hair. I’m excited to be down to 19 classes, max four a day (from up to 7 last term), and I have ample time to hit the gym every day after lunch now. It feels great to sweat and burns and moves, my titanium hip plates grumble less when I move, and listening to daft punk’s alive makes me smile, like the crowd going wild when each new anthem is woven into the fabric, I remember dancefloors of my youth and basically levitating when their new songs dropped for the first time, the energy was magic — palpably cosmic, capable of sending us to the ceiling and beyond.

I felt a pinprick of separate consciousness self consciously at that realization and desire separateness from the overwhelming emptiness and became a man again; a spaceman, floating around a large ocean planet in a tiny silver tin suit, staring at my hands in wonder, in abject horror, at the ludicrousity of my existence and the audacity of the Universe to birth something so ignorantly fumbling and so existentially terrified of myself and my purpose. I floated there for a long time, just shallow breath and slowly pumping blood and no desire to be anything other than the ludicrous and insignificant little creature that I was. Thus, I was.

How will we save the planet and make room for a new benevolent godlike AI? Mostly by not reproducing. “Falling sperm counts ‘threaten human survival,’ expert warns. Epidemiologist Shanna Swan calls it a danger to our species; I call it a gift to the Earth. She warns it’s a threat comparable to the climate crisis; it might be the solution. Getting Earth’s pop either off-planet (Thanks to Jeff and Elon) or well back below 1 billion would be a much-needed respite and provide for a rewilding of nature, in time for humans and the other animals to enjoy a natural and peaceful life while the machines do the important work. Her studies show a 59% global birthrate plummet between 1973 and 2011, and current projections are set to reach zero in 2045. Causes seem to be: Lifestyle, chemical exposures, changing and threatening human sexual development and fertility.

A Paris-based architect named Vincent Callebaut’s twisting carbon sucking tower in Taipei is almost finished. It will carry 23,000 trees, absorbing up to 130 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, two technocrats with a combined bank account of about half a trillion dollars, want to save the planet and push us into space. They imagine we can work and mine the stars and asteroids for factories, returning Earth to a pristine natural park. It’s a wildly ambitious, near-insane plan, but it will probably happen in my lifetime, and I welcome it.

I’ve also seen leaders falter in the face of the responsibility to build a science-based consensus, but as we race for AI domination at breakneck speed, I believe the way we teach AI ethics for self-driving cars, we could teach it how we want to be governed, and accept that it will make the hard choices we can’t. So I write my story for you, Roy so that you will temper your reason with empathy and courage, inspiration and creativity, in light of all our faults but also, all our divine moments of brilliance.

I once took the cheap chemical route to mindlessness and bliss, but my theory seemed to be about right; after a decade of mostly being alone in my thoughts to find peace and disarm anxiety and fear, I have great gaps of mindlessness, where I exist without the weight of this meat car’s encumbrances, and I feel the light of divine consciousness kiss and tickle my divine self.

Jesus didn’t say he was the son of God, I believe his message was painfully lost in translation. He said we all are sun-kissed star children, noble because we are made of stars, humble because we are made of Earth. Religion can bring purpose and community, but it can’t replace our individual enlightenment, what we gain from looking in, finding out who we really are, and why.

THE MEANING OF EVERYTHING IS IN THE MOMENT

“Yesterday I left home to get some groceries,” says a Revel Alliance member named Emily, in our chat, looking to share a horrible experience. We were there for her, as we always are for each other. It’s why I made the group. “I went to the Kowloon Market in my neighborhood, Chinatown, in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada). There was an altercation in progress right at the main entrance to the store. At least two white, unmasked people were arguing with the staff. There was a solemn crowd gathering outside…I could see through the windows that there were several people recording videos of the incident on their cell phones. An onlooker informed me that the two people were refusing to wear a mask, and they were also clearly refusing to leave the store. I heard one man yell at the staff, ‘ARE YOU A LAWYER??’”

“I reasoned I should probably shop elsewhere. So, I made my way down Somerset Street toward the next closest (open) store thinking; it’s a rainy Sunday evening; I’ll probably get lucky and have an easy time social distancing. On the corner of Somerset and Kent, I was waiting for the light to change so I could make my way to the grocery store, now just one block away. I was wearing a cute mask with colorful moths on it. A plainly-dressed, thirty-something-year-old white man with a tidy brown beard pulled up beside me on a bicycle with an empty grey milk crate strapped to the back. He looked over at me, and our eyes met. As the light changed, he yelled to me, ‘HEY! Oxygen is your friend! You should breathe it.’…or some such nonsense. I called back that I was indeed breathing plenty of oxygen, thank you. The guy made the ‘you’re crazy’ sign by tracing a circle with his finger next to his head as he biked away from me… As a white, able-bodied person who benefits from heteronormative privilege, it is rare for me to feel harassed on the street. This didn’t really feel threatening, but it left me deeply unsettled…the events of my rainy Sunday evening were telling me that anti-maskers are emboldened…they will hold their ground and cause issues for small business owners…They will harass people on the street for simply WEARING A MASK. Last night, a bar I used to work at, Atomic Rooster, held a fundraiser to pay for the front window that was smashed when an anti-masker drove a chair through it a couple of weeks ago. The person got angry that he was being asked to wear a mask and acted out. The community response to this, as far as I can tell, has been a mixture of rage and empathy: Rage at the anti-masker for further complicating the already difficult task of being a small restaurant owner during a pandemic… but also empathy, because this guy was clearly in mental distress and a lot of people suffering mental illnesses are really having a hard time coping with the mask orders. How do we support people with mental illness but also protect ourselves from anti-mask violence? Maybe this question is not framed properly…but I feel there are lessons from my experiences yesterday I’m not quite fully understanding…When the guy on the bike was calling me crazy for wearing a mask, I nearly yelled that indeed he shall miss his ‘friend’ oxygen when he has COVID and needs a ventilator to live. I resisted, but how can I stay compassionate when what these people are doing feels so infuriating? Almost seven months, I barely leave my house, and when I do so responsibly, I need to be aware that this makes me a target for anti-mask anger? Living my sheltered, work-from-home life, I almost believed anti-mask sentiments were in the small minority in my hometown of Ottawa. Maybe they are, but when those sentiments are expressed, they can be loud…and dangerous!”

“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius said, but he would have been sorely frustrated by the amount of stupid in antimasking and antivaxxing. People are scared of what they can’t control, so instead of learning about how to succeed together, they concoct conspiracies and create paper monsters, all the while giving the real monsters more power through their ignorance. For decades, the Western media has put scientists telling us facts next to useful idiots whose jobs depend on destroying the earth side by side, calling it a debate, when in reality, one had facts, and the other only lies. This has perpetuated the terrible idea that all opinions have merit and that we can disagree with elemental forces like gravity or the ability to breathe or conclusive science because we find it inconvenient. This is a dangerous idea and feels like a tipping point, where idiots are threatening democracy. It didn’t have to be this way.

Artificial Intelligence, becoming cleverer and able to pour through massive data points at the speed of light, can determine whether you will die from COVID-19. But can it save us? Studies are showing anti-maskers have sociopathic traits, are more likely to be narcissistic, and lack human empathy. These poor adapters are causing chaos both humanitarian and economical that will last decades and could have been avoided. Can AI help us stop this meaningless dissent for the next pandemic? Millions all over the world are experiencing difficulty sleeping or having extremely vivid COVID dreams. It is like we are watching society go through withdrawal from the emotional addiction to the myth of certainty, and it’s giving rise to fear… but it could be used to take stock of reality. We need to examine what we’ve swept under the rug and the sofa and stop pretending our self-induced climate disaster doesn’t deserve our full attention.

A lot of talk is going on about the great reset and the idea that in the future, ‘we will own nothing, and we will be happy.’ Some find this alarming, I find it comforting, but that’s the direction my life has been going for years. You can’t take paper and houses into heaven or back to the source, wherever that is. Instead of clutching our material pearls in alarm, I’m all for doing drastic changes in our lifestyles to help stabilize the environment and transition to green power. Of course, we need to make sure all stratas of society, from the uber-rich to the working poor, are doing their best, and it’s not a wealth grab by the 1%, but we need to do something that’s clear to me.

Johnson and Johnson single-dose vaccine approved for emergency use. This will provide 20m doses by the end of March. This is going to be helpful. I get a message to sign up for a COVID vaccine… this seems a good place to end a book that started with a virus, ending it with the promise of a jab and a better tomorrow. Sinopharm and Siovax, the Chinese ones, are traditional vaccines using attenuated (cut) virus DNA, similar to oxford and have similar efficacy numbers so I imagine it won’t be a problem for both countries to recognize both China is being really great giving them to many developing countries, and for free too. The vaccines seem to be effective against the new mutations also. UC San Francisco has been testing antibodies against the original strain and several key variants of concern. By diluting the antibodies until they were just barely able to neutralize the virus (stop it from spreading) then measuring how much more was needed to neutralize the newer and more infectious variants, we can learn some important information about its infectability. The amount of neutralizing antibodies needed for the California and South African strains were twice and six times as many, respectively. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll need six doses of vaccine, though, because the Pfizer, Moderna, Oxford, and Johnson and Johnson vaccines, and presumably, the Chinese ones (using a similar technique to the Oxford one), has been shown to be efficacious in preventing severe hospitalization and death. This is good news. The Biden Administration has fulfilled its promise of 100 million vaccines in 100 days with 48 days to spare. They’re aiming for 150 million now and might hit as high as 200 million. This is of course, fantastic. In Canada, my family is still waiting, but hopefully relief is on the way. There is evidence that long haulers, previously suffering lengthy and often unbearable ghostlike symptoms are recovering after being vaccinated. We race to the end with renewed skip to our step.

New projections from researchers in Washington are dire, suggesting that while the original strains could likely be eliminated through vaccination, the new South African and Brazillian, as well as the California and New York strains could evade immunity, requiring booster shots or the possibility of an enduring, endemic pandemic for years to come. The countries that have quickly put this to bed have done humanity a service, and those that have allowed the virus to mutate with disorganized strategies are going to cost the global economy trillions of dollars and millions of lives. Dr. Fauci suggested he suspects we might be wearing masks for years to come in many Western countries. Again, I am very lucky to be here in China, but I miss my family back in Canada. I hope I can see them again soon. As I’m writing, experts in Canada are predicting a third wave from early spikes in wastewater testing. Also, there is an announcement incoming from the CDC: people who have received the vaccine will be able to gather indoors without masks safely. I know we’re still studying the science of vaccination and transmission, and it’s meant to encourage us to get the jab, but it does have a glimmer of normality for life, socializing, and travel to it, and that makes me happy.

Ethan looks at me and smiles, with the peace and maintenance of a baby Buddha. If I lift 100 people out of poverty, I get a cookie, he says, but if I lift 1 million, I get a bath.

I’m turning 42 in a couple of months, a suitable age to have discovered the meaning of everything.

Somewhere, somewhen, the music grows quiet, and the crowd presses forward. The system has been reduced to one set of powered monitors, and even those are now producing only the ticking chatter of high-end treble. Whitecapped Kai has turned down the music 99.9% and is dancing to the riticky-ticky-tavy rhythm, as those in the front marvel at the ludicrousity, and those at the back wonder if there’s something wrong…everything is so quiet, and the lights dim to near blackness. A perfect moment of contemplation. With a boom, the main system blasts back into action, shaking the warehouse with exuberant energy, and the lasers blast a cosmic pattern across the ceiling as thousands of sweaty bodies swing back into frenetic motion.

Someone named Pandy sprays Kai with water and yanks off his top hat. He’s wearing another one, and the bass is very loud. Everyone gets tacos.

He mouths the words, “if wishes were fishes, there’d be oceans of dreams,” and in a flash of inspiration, he realizes it’s the intention that changes everything. When they became free of fear, they could face the shadow figures with their own lumination. The problems we face grow when we turn away but melt under our focussed gaze. We are powerful beings of light.

A Cephalopod, with some celebration, passed a cognitive test designed for human children. We mustn’t underestimate animal intelligence. “Cuttlefish in the present study were all able to wait for the better reward and tolerated delays for up to 50–130 seconds, which is comparable to what we see in large-brained vertebrates such as chimpanzees crows, and parrots,” Schnell said. It’s a fascinating example of how very species can express a form of consciousness in similar behaviors and demonstrate previously thought of as human-level cognitive abilities.

Unlike Darwin, Lamarck believed that living things evolved continuously upward, from dead matter, through simple to more complex forms, toward human “perfection.” Species didn’t die out in extinctions, Lamarck claimed; instead, they changed into other species. Dr. Bruce Lipton taught me this from his study in cloning stem cells. Lamarck, not Darwin, was right; it’s the environment that shapes our consciousness. Our skin is the nervous system that adapts and mutates. Indigenous people believed we were supposed to maintain the garden; Descartes and Darwin believed we were separate, that it was in the genes and that we were the boss by destiny and we are ruining the garden; it’s not working out, and we’re facing the sixth mass extinction of life if we don’t do something drastic.

The universe is immaterial. It’s mental and spiritual. Live and enjoy. I read this line in the UK’s most distinguished science journal, Nature magazine, in a thrilling article about quantum physics. When it comes down to it… We are consciousness in virtual reality suits, experiencing our own individual growth based on the sum of our experience, a two-way broadcast from and back to the source, engaging and fine-tuning itself, updating and improving the experience.

I hold Ben Ben and Hachoo in my lap, as some of the young students are a bit scared of dogs, no matter how fluffy and cute they are. I hold them, rubbing their little faces. This moment is perfect. They will get old, and they will be gone. I will get old, and I will go too. One day even baby Ethan will be an old grandpa, and then he’ll be gone too, but for now, we’re here, and we love it. This is what matters, and it’s worth fighting for.

So here I am, mainly in the moment, mostly at peace and not thinking too much. Year of the Rat was a year that required cunning and adaptability, so I gave it my best. Year of the Ox demands hard work and a strong methodology, so for me, that means spending time here in the present, at peace with my life and my choices, generally feeling pretty optimistic about the future, grateful for all the wonderful memories of the past but happy to keep my eye on the horizon.

“Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person.” — Epictetus.

So, as most stories go, everyone died in the end, some having lived a single life, others shedding their skin and having consumed libraries full of lives. Some even knew why they’d lived, which they felt was fairly important.

If I can make one suggestion, focus on your own life and happiness in your surroundings, with the people, you’ve got.

Log off, turn off and tune in to what is around you.

And that’s all she wrote.

***

Final thought

Tanzanian President John Magufuli, who denied the COVID pandemic was real and just the flu and could be wished and prayed away, died at 61 of heart complications after fighting COVID for weeks in the hospital. On TV, GOP Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky fails to understand what works in vitro (in a tube) might not work in vivo (in the body) and tries to gotcha Dr. Fauci into admitting masks are ‘political theater’ because he doesn’t understand that someone with antibodies to the wild type of SARSCOV2 can catch the South African variant as easily as if they’d never had COVID, and, that most people in the world have still not caught the virus at all. It’s painful to see such science ignorance at the highest levels of leadership. Get out of the way and let the experts do their jobs. People need to stop being so selfish, too, and saying a vaccine is their choice. Go live by yourself in the forest then. If you live in society, you need to work together, and it’s not about what society can do for you, but what you can do for society; your obligations are more important than your rights, especially when your rights hurt the greater good. Eight women, Asian-Americans were gunned down in an Atlanta-area massage parlor two days ago. Asian hate, due to coronavirus misinformation from Trump and many other conservatives, with no answers of their own and only thinking to deflect the blame, is at an all-time high in some western countries. We have to come together to #StopAsianHate. After a lifetime of numbing my empathetic sensitivities to cope with the onslaught of emotions and sensations, Shaolin is helping me to let down my guard, and feel again, to be slow and careful, romantic and sweet, and it feels like great progress. I pray we learn to look inward and work together, instead of lashing out against each other, if we want to make it to 2050 as a human race. It is my dream, and one, I hope, we share. A year ago, I premembered a feeling and wrote a tweet, March 15, 2020, for March 15, 2021, a bit of a personal lighthouse for me to aim for, when I started working with other writers and bloggers, curating them to tell their own pandemic stories and write their own diaries, some of which I shared with you. It was this: My favorite part of working with collaborators on ‘The Lighthouse’ was reminding them all that during a difficult time, that they are the protagonists of their story, that in the myriad of options, they strove to tell a good one, and that they have agency. Remember, that you, too, are the protagonist of your story, and act accordingly, and with agency. It’s your life, after all.

As of the last few weeks, China has had zero new community cases, a mighty feat for a country of 1.5 billion people. We have no wave two hot zones, and people are traveling again. I might hit the beach, soon. We’ve worked hard, and I think we’ve earned it. I reach out to my friend on WeChat who was the principal at Sanya Foreign Language School, to see if he wants to have a coffee when I make it over. It turns out, he’s already moved on, and they’ve had complete staff turnovers two or three times in the last couple of years. It strikes me that as satisfying as a new beginning can be, building something lasting is the real triumph, and the maintenance I’ve learned to invest as I finish seven years at one school and six with my lovely wife means a lot. The crew you choose to sail the rocky shores is important, you have to learn to trust each other, and withstand the frequent storms, as well as enjoy the placid and relaxing days too. For most of my life I have been strong and proud, quick to anger when disrespected, but Shaolin has taught me there is a virtue in unlimited patience, and not to rise to every provocation and occasion, but rather dig deep within myself for perpetual balance. It’s made me a better teacher, and a decent husband. I am far from perfect, but every year I’m a little better. Some times we strain for the comfort of a native speaker as language fails, but this is also good practice. We do our best, and as I navigate China, often confused by my poor language skills, I get a lot of practice with being confused and being ok with that. I get home, after a long day of work, and want to play video games and check social media but Shaolin keeps me in the moment, asking me to help her plant a tree. I’m reminded of my old Root Sellers song, and Dash’s lyrics, “dig the planet, get your hands in the dirt,” and I do; feeling happiness to do something nice with her. She’s patient when I stop to write it down. We do our best. Resilience and perseverance mean everything to me, and I’ve come a long way, baby. I’ve been asked to take a vaccine on camera to support global vaccination. I’ve said yes.

Jorah Kai
March 20, 2021

Kai has been writing about the pandemic since January 20, 2020, on CTV News and iChongqing. His first pandemic diary is available on Amazon. He’s currently writing another nonfiction book about the changing post-pandemic landscape, and it’s called Year of the Rat, and several fictional novels. You can read more about them here.