Punching Through Those Personal Barriers.

Photo by Robert A. Hoover.

Ian Cooper

When Chuck Yeager broke through the sound barrier, it was not so much a personal achievement as a scientific breakthrough, a leap forward for mankind. It was an epoch-making event.

Sometimes people need to break through their own personal barriers. 

And if you ever hit rock bottom, and decide not to stay there, there are all kinds of barriers to getting back up again.

People hit rock bottom for all kinds of reasons.

It can be drugs or alcohol, it can be divorce, or bankruptcy, a serious illness in the family, or an accident in the car, the workplace or in sport.

It’s never that simple, either.

It’s never any one thing that throws a person to the bottom of the heap. Issues feed on each other and contribute to the whole picture of that person. A person forced out of work due to an injury may become dependent on painkillers. They may get depressed, and suffer from financial problems. They may turn to drink, a bad mix with those painkillers…begin fighting with the spouse, et cetera. It all builds on itself until a situation spirals out of control. It can happen quickly.

There are the questions of character, and then there are the questions of circumstance. If your spouse is killed by a drunk driver, leaving you solely responsible for three small children under the age of seven, that is a circumstance. How a person deals with such tragedy indicates something about their character.

It reflects not just the choices that they made, but the choices that they had to begin with, for surely choices are limited at the best of times. Sometimes there are no good choices.

There is no such thing as choosing the lesser of two evils, sometimes. Based on the reader’s own personal experience, isn’t it really more a matter of choosing between a whole bunch of lesser and greater evils, some of which involve pain, suffering or sacrifice on our own parts and so we don’t want to do them? A good example would involve quitting smoking. Smokers know they need to quit, the problem is, they also know it’s going to hurt—and so they continually put it off. And of course it never happens.

So here’s my personal sound barrier: how do I take, what is at most a couple of hundred bucks in book and story sales per month, less than a grand a year essentially, and push it through that magical barrier, where I can get off the Ontario Disability Support Program and live on the proceeds of my work?

I read a lot of blogs, many by long-standing professional writers. Mention has been made of ‘editors with a million dollars to spend,’ or ‘hundred-thousand dollar advances.’

It’s true that would be enough to get me off disability. The problem is that the more likely scenario involves a five, or ten, or twenty thousand dollar advance. I would be an unknown, first-time author in a pretty big pond.

Some would say that I would be extremely fortunate to get that. Not everyone gets the professional book contract, after all.

And they would be correct to a certain extent.

In fact; they’re absolutely right.

Not everyone gets the chance.

The trouble is that at a certain level, I would be giving up the benefits, with small chance of qualifying ever again. That’s because I would have to prove to a tribunal that I could no longer write, not just no longer haul 12” concrete blocks around in wheelbarrows, or weld, or carry ladders around on job sites. It’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish at that point. The onus of proof is always on the client or applicant in this particular system.

The other scenario involves continuing to build up the independently-published book sales, simply by writing more, and following that curve as best one can these days. It really is early days and information goes out of date notoriously fast. The fact that I am selling any books at all proves that it can be done, I’m just not doing it well enough…or something.

Even then, in terms of my personal sound barrier, there’s a time where we’re at Mach .95 and there’s a lot of buffeting and you need to be structurally sound. You have to have the surplus power to punch through that barrier. Otherwise you’re going to break up and it’s game over at that point.

Living in a one-roomer, lining up at the soup kitchen and the food bank, and earning four or five hundred a month (when you’re lucky) is a distinct possibility if one should lose the pension for any reason.

It really wouldn’t be worth it on those terms. You can do exactly the same thing and not have to work at all. It’s called Welfare, right? Why bust your ass putting in sixty or eighty hours a week of thankless and minimally-paid work just for the privilege of calling yourself a writer. I know, we’re supposed to do it for the love, but you have to be practical as well.

At that rate, I might as well stay on ODSP, make my hundred or two a month—and maybe be a grand a month ahead some months on that deal. We know book sales fluctuate pretty markedly for reasons that are difficult to analyze and therefore predict.

If there was a quick way to go from a couple hundred a month in sales, to two thousand a month, I suppose someone would have to be a fool not to do it.

Punching through that barrier involves questions of circumstance, and questions of character. There are questions of knowledge and application, and then there is the factor of time.

For all we know, simply plugging away and doing exactly what I’m doing now may turn out to be the right path, over time. 

There is also a kind of psychological barrier to be overcome.

***

They say there’s a certain amount of luck involved and they are probably right.

Here’s what happens if I get a $20,000 advance one month. I immediately lose $1,100 roughly, that’s my pension cheque for that month. Then the ODSP says I owe them fifty cents on the dollar from the ‘earnings.’ 

That costs $10,000, add that to the eleven hundred. Then the ODSP tells me that I got too much money in the bank, and that I must spend it down—as long as I don’t spend it on food, shelter or clothing. I can only have six or seven grand in the bank. So I would have to go out and piss away three grand by the end of the month. Then I would be back to getting my pension chequel and yes, I would have six grand in the bank, or whatever I'm allowed.

I would still also be on ODSP. It's either that or taking my full advance, going off ODSP and living in that one-roomer I told you about earlier.

That's where the psychological barrier really comes in. That's because I now have an actual, one-bedroom apartment and that monthly pension coming in.

I don’t know about that personal (possibly even psychological) barrier any more than Chuck Yeager did—I mean, I think it is possible, it’s just a question of going for it when we’ve got everything right.

It's a question of having all of our shit together.

It could be a while yet.

END

Moonshine.

Ian Cooper

Len Morrow hadn’t had a drink in a week, or he wouldn’t have gone in there at all.

Old man Quinn made the best shine in the county, and since the town seemed awful dry, he must be about ready to bring down a new load.

Above, the moon shone down with a harsh light, almost good enough to read by.

Len lifted the latch and eased on in through the door, listening carefully.

Quinn must be away, or his dogs would have been going crazy by now.

All you got to do is walk away.

Sorry, Mister—my mistake.

Len’s heart sank on the realization.

Quinn wouldn’t go away and leave a whole mess of shine unguarded. He wouldn’t leave and take all the dogs with him. Not all of them. That’s for sure…

Len’s feet scuffed the straw and dry boards underfoot, edges turned up from warping lengthwise, they’d been there so long.

Originally a dairy, there hadn’t been cows there in some time, judging by the smell, just hay and dry rot and the unmistakable taint of alcohol.

Len’s heart skipped a beat, but he wasn’t mistaken.

In the center of the room there were barrels, and one of them was up on sawhorses, with the gleam of a spigot sticking out on the end.

Len was just looking around for a cup or a jar or a dipper or anything, wondering if he could just cup his hands under there. He would have to move the lever with his teeth and he didn’t think he could quite do it. 

He only had eleven or twelve teeth left and he might as well keep them as long as he could.

Poor old Len needed a drink so bad, he could almost taste it, and it was about then when he heard them coming.

Whoever it was, they were just outside the door and Len didn’t have anywhere to go.

The only saving grace was that they were making more noise than he was, as the door creaked open and the light of a single match flooded the room.

The match was shaken out and Lenny’s senses were screaming to high heaven as the sulfur bit into his nostrils.

***

She stood in the centre of the open area as the young fellow unbolted the shutters.

The room was flooded by a fine, pure, colorless light. Creeping tendrils of smoke still rose, eddying about as the pair moved through it.

Len was struck by the dogs.

Where were they?

Why were they being so quiet?

It didn’t seem natural. They should have been making the odd little bark, snuffling in amongst themselves, laying around on the ends of their chains. He should have been able to hear the chains rattling.

Dogs muttered amongst themselves quite a bit in his experience.

There was nothing except the sounds of the night, even as a donkey brayed way over on the other side of the hollow. There was the gentle, uneven sigh of the wind in the leaves.

His thoughts were bleak when he spotted the clear glass form between him and the couple.

There was an empty bottle sitting on a three-legged stool. He had been damned lucky not to knock it off and give himself away. That would have set any animals off, including the horse and the cow and the chickens.

His heart sank. There was a whole wooden crate of them open. He saw more boxes stacked up in the darkest corner on his left side. It was away from the door to his right and the set of windows on the south and west corner.

Len wouldn’t have been able to get away with it anyway. They would have surprised him right in the act. 

Damn. All he had to do was to be patient and try not to piss his pants.

A sneeze or a cough right about then would have been disaster. The scene held a sick fascination for Len, whose knees weren’t too good these days and always got this slightly-painful itch inside of his chest when things got too stressful.

They clung together, her in a thin, white cotton night-dress and he all dressed in black. He wore tight black jeans, calf-length black boots, and a short rawhide jacket, stitched in pale patterns all over, the sounds of the three-inch fringe hitting on it a mournful reminder of things long dead. The young man didn’t seem to be wearing spurs, but they wouldn’t have been out of place on that rig.

The young man’s hair was long and flowing, with curly locks, and his cheekbones were wide. The man’s eyes were dark pools, and he wore a rakish beard and mustache.

It was clear he wasn’t from these parts. He looked too good, and a little bit foreign.

Len thought of General Santa Ana’s army then, and how all proud as peacocks them boys had been. That’s how they impressed him at the time. But what the hell someone like that would be doing all the way up here was a good question.

Her head tilted, his hand was on the small of her back, and he kissed her just the way Len would have liked to have kissed her, before things went bad and Len gave up on all that sort of thing.

She was a sight, though.

The way she walked coming into that room, stepping fine, pretty and so light on her bare feet. She kind of walked on her toes, yet with long strides, and then there was her hair, appearing auburn and glossy in the dim yellowing light. Her leg came up and that kiss went on for a long time. Even in the dim silhouette of the windows, her form came through loud and clear.

The smell of her was everywhere.

If he was unlucky, they might even smell him, and remark upon it.

All they had to do was light another match, or even just look around, and he’d be a dead goner.

His heart pounded.

He was all right where he was, in behind an old stepladder leaning up against the back wall, right next to a line of slickers and long winter coats, some smelly old overalls hanging on hooks on the wall.

They had eyes only for each other.

***

“Hiram.”

“Leslie. Sweet, dear Leslie…”

Leslie! Old man Quinn’s daughter.

Len stifled a laugh. The guy had a faint accent, not so much the pronunciation as the rhythm.

Old Len almost impressed himself with that one.

Stood to reason, though.

No one else would dare—‘cept desperate old reprobates like Lenny himself.

She would know what Quinn was doing and where he was—and when and where he wasn’t.

It was stirring enough to watch. Len’s involuntary response was not just unwelcome but kind of surprising.

That hadn’t happened in a while.

The man lifted the dress straight up.

She stood there in her glory, and Len’s breath caught in his throat.

She lovingly lifted the jacket up and back and off his shoulders, and the man let it fall to the floor with a thud that jolted Len in his guilt and doubts.

The fellow pulled out his shirt-tails and began unbuttoning his creamy yellow shirt with the wide V-slash at the throat and the French cuffs as far as Len could see.

The girl put something down on the floor and went to her knees.

It was all Len could do not to speak, not to grab himself by the head, or stamp his feet, or just do anything at all.

“Oh, sweet dear Leslie…”

There was a moment when Len considered just bolting for the door, and taking his chances with dogs, angry young men, and angry old men, whose 12-gauges were said to be loaded with half-inch chunks of rock salt these days, and any other thing he might trip over or run headlong into, in the course of his screaming flight.

Somehow he managed to sit there.

And take it. Like a man.

For surely; he had come in here for some reason—some important reason, like swiping a drop or two of the white lightning—moonshine, and somehow making it through another night. All he wanted was another man’s whiskey.

Another night, another day.

Another morning.

Another good puke, and a headache that wouldn’t go away.

***

Initially, the man had been between the girl and the moonlight, leaving much to the imagination and much to be desired in terms of the pure visuals. That all changed. Whispering, giggling and gasping all the while, the man lifted her up and then took her to a long bench right in front of the big mullioned windows.

By the light of the silvery moon, poor old Len had to watch, as glued together like snakes wrestling in hot oil, the pair swooned and spooned, swinked and sowed their wild oats together.

The thought of babies crossed Len’s mind right about then, and he almost cried.

The truth was that he deserved this.

Every damned minute of this was too much, and yet he had to take it. His hands shook so badly he clamped them together, wringing them and wishing it was over.

His own erection was long gone, a measure of his impotence—his ineffectuality as a man and as a human being. The drink, that was what had done it.

Oh, how he loved her so.

And he still needed her, his demon mistress of the long nights and even longer days.

All he had to do was watch them until it was over, and wait for them to leave, for surely they must leave—and then Len would have his own lover.

Then, maybe, everything would be all right.

Maybe then he would be able to get some sleep.

After all these years of heartbreak and misery, surely poor old Lenny had earned a rest.

As for all of this, as Hiram drove Leslie into a long series of moaning, groaning spasms of pure ecstasy, it was just one big pain in the ass.

END

No Atheists in a Foxhole.

Ian Cooper

They say there are no atheists in a foxhole.

That may be true, but no one ever said there were no hypocrites in a foxhole.

Any port in a storm as they say, and when all bets are off, where’s the harm in it anyways?

***

One of the things about atheism, in my own personal life, is that I don’t want it to become an attack platform against someone else’s personal beliefs. It is more a matter of living comfortably within my own skin, with some semblance of dignity, if not outright gravitas. That can hardly happen without some moral constraints. 

Without divine revelation, where could these good things possibly come from?

Could they not come from our own hearts and minds...?

The notion that atheism is completely amoral is mistaken. Atheism is the examination of profound moral questions using the tools of reason. The funny thing is that all religions ultimately appeal to human reason. 

That’s why they have been so successful.

Without religion, where would we be?

We would live in a completely amoral world and evil and anarchy would triumph. Or at least that seems to be the reasoning, however unspoken it may be—and sometimes it is spoken.

Bearing in mind my own upbringing, and no doubt that of most readers, it is safe to say that my own personal morality, stems from some point on the Judaeo-Christian family tree. As far as I’m concerned, it is not an attempt to justify some departure, along superior lines of reasoning.

It’s merely the background that I came from, and ultimately rejected on some philosophical level..

I cannot say that my morality, which is near enough that of most other Canadians as makes no difference, was independently arrived-at. It all had to come from some starting point, and that particular starting point included the Roman Catholic Church, and separate schools. It includes bed-time stories and Christmas decorations, the child’s yearning for gifts and miracles, and even the typical children’s books in the doctor’s office waiting-room. You might still be able to find some of those religious texts in your own pediatrician’s office next time you take little Suzie in there for a tummy-ache. No sane person sees any real harm in that. There’s no doubt that culturally, religion has played a role in the building of our society, and religion has also played a role in the sort of job description of atheism.

It is difficult to imagine a world not built on some form of generally-agreed set of rules.

***

It is a bit of a contradiction that the more liberal must tolerate the intolerant. This is not always easy to do, as it is not always reciprocated. Non-reciprocity leads to feelings of injury and alienation. It also leads to real injuries.

If I have the right to be an atheist, certainly someone else has the right to believe whatever they like. If atheism expects toleration, then surely it must offer its own tolerance up front. It’s a fair exchange.

There are times when I need a loaf of bread or a quart of milk on a religious holiday and I prefer not to have to go to a gas station—notice the societal sense of priorities here, where a quart of milk will cost me a buck more.

It's a minor inconvenience in a generally-decent society.

I really don’t want to go out and picket in front of your church over the matter. Let’s leave it at that.

People don’t have to adopt our beliefs, they don’t have to like us or accept us—merely tolerate us. That’s not always easy to do either! That is one good reason to keep discussions as polite as possible, and another reason to avoid the whole attack-platform ethos.

If atheism somehow justifies anti-Semitism, or anti-Hinduism, then the practitioner has missed the point.

And yet atheism is surely an attack platform against religion—any religion, and all religion. Simply put, an atheist believes all religion, at foundation-level, to be a problem of one sort or another.

Otherwise, why bother to speak up at all?

Maybe atheism sees itself as a solution waiting for a chance to happen. For a problem, is nothing more than a solution waiting to happen, or so the motivational speakers would have us believe.

It is an attack on irrational beliefs in the sense that those beliefs have come to rule society, which has many inequities and the presently-constituted moral authorities seem unable to address these issues. It is an attack platform for any number of things, including bourgeois value systems…if a person cared to see it that way.

But simply put, and as most people see it, atheism is the antithesis of religion, and nothing more in the eyes of some.

Atheism is the great contradiction, for in order to defeat and supersede religiousity as the dominant set of belief systems on the planet, as it might very well do some day, it adopts similar methodology. It adopts similar lines of reasoning, and it parallels religion in significant ways.

This is of necessity, for both belief systems are responses to and ways of dealing with questions of morality.

If Jesus Christ were alive today, he might very well be an atheist. He might very well still preach exactly the same things, for example brotherly love, respect, tolerance and forgiveness. He might simply phrase the ideas in more modern terms.

On the purely personal level, this is what I would seek to do with my atheism.

Leaving the whole question of God out of the equation, the message would remain the same, and also remaining the same would be the goal, the intention, of the teacher. For surely that was what Jesus was, and what he set out to be.

One of the things he tried to do was to contradict prejudice.

One teaching must supplant another with superior knowledge, or superior application, or it dies.

One of the lessons taught by atheism is that all bigotry, all prejudice is the result of teaching.

It is a learned response. The lessons we learn in life begin at birth and are instilled by the people around us, and the circumstances we find ourselves in. We are very carefully taught those prejudices, in many instances.

For the record, our prejudice against eating poisonous mushrooms would appear to be a rational one.

Even in the 21^st century, it would be difficult to be born a native American and not feel some resentment towards other Americans or Canadians, or not to have some questions about the past, and the society that still surrounds you rather than fully accepting you.

It must be difficult to be born a Palestinian, and have anything other than anger towards Israel. It must be difficult to be born an Israeli, or a Jew in some other part of the world and not have some ingrained prejudices towards a people who, in some cases, live fifty yards away. It is the same whether we care to discuss black versus white—how ‘natural’ that phrase sounds—or any other racial or cultural question.

Atheism isn’t going to solve too many land questions, and not in a situation of long-standing dispute, where cultural, economic and political dominance are at stake. A place where there is too much blood and too much history. Only time and stability can heal those wounds. Only a long period of sustained peace can heal those wounds. It is fair comment to say that it is religious interests, allied to political interests, that fight so strongly to keep those wounds open. For surely the state, as theoretical entity, would like to see those wounds firmly closed.

What atheism might do is to weaken the props—for state and church are still inseparable in too many ways.

In Canada, as I write this, it’s Good Friday. It’s a statutory holiday. That means a majority government, freely-elected, passed a law. It is a state-religious holiday. And yet rule by the majority surely means tyranny for somebody—the few.

Hell, maybe even the atheists.

The Queen of England, the titular head of our constitutional monarchy, is also the titular head of the Anglican Church. In order to become a country, Canada had to ‘repatriate’ the British North America Act. It’s a piece of paper. Rather than burn it or shred it, they enshrined it. It is the symbolic source of all their legitimacy, and it stems from the divine right of kings. Even in the 21^st century, we cannot seem to dispense with all of that. They still seem to think merit is instilled by blood and heredity. The reason is simple. 

To initiate a new discussion about what it means to be a nation, what it means to be a Canadian, or even just a person, and how equal under the law any given person might be, would invoke too much noise. We would all be talking at once. We’d all have our wants and wishes, some of which ennoble or enrich ourselves, and some of which diminish or impoverish our neighbours. It’s a strange thing, but Canada, as it is presently constituted, would be, ah…’un-re-formable-again.’

Too many people would seek to prevent too many things, and too many people would seek to enable too many things. The talk would never end, would it?

Too many terms and conditions would apply for it to ever properly work again. Nation-building best happens in the undeveloped or pioneering state.

As things now stand, our government is assumed to be valid—and for all intents and purposes, it is. The thing works after all. Once you have achieved that, it is a question of balancing a lot of interests, not all of which will coincide, and some of which will contradict one another.

Atheism undermines the legitimacy of all this, all of these mechanisms, in some purely academic and philosophical challenge.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be this way—it merely is, mostly because it has been.”

It reveals legitimacy to be nothing more than a legal fiction—a necessary fiction, maybe.

The idea of monarchy, is one that could probably be dispensed with, given fertile ground and some nurturing.

But it is a fiction nevertheless. For surely they govern by the sword as much as by reason. Where men cannot be persuaded to obey, they must be compelled, after all.

Atheism contradicts the assumptions on which our culture was built, and therefore it is The Great Contradiction for more than one reason.

***

Atheism has a lot of lessons to teach us about ourselves as well as others.

To be objective, one must get outside of the system under observation, and ultimately, to go beyond one's self.

It is to become an outcast in every sense of the meaning. It means to become an outcast from existence itself, for without existence we can have no perceptions at all. That’s all atheism really is. It’s just a new way of looking at the same old problems.

It is a contradiction of past perceptions.

In its present stage of development, it is still more art than science.

This ‘getting beyond all prejudice’ is of course extremely difficult.

How would we get outside of our bodies and their subsequent needs, (and therefore interests), let alone the known universe without some new kind of technology? The universe is where we live and where all things happen, for they can happen no place else. This is where our interests lie.

That’s only rational.

The very fact that we went outside of it might make it an impossibility to observe.

In that case, I guess you could say we’re pooched, ladies and gentlemen.

The sky is falling.

We’ll leave it at that for the time being.

***

Evolution. I don’t have a problem still calling evolution a theory. The reason is that our life-spans are too short to ever make the long–term observations required for scientific proof to be established.

That’s not to say that I have any doubts about the outcome of such studies.

Here are some more interesting links.

Christian Radio fuels witch-burning mentality. (Patheos.com)

Lawsuit to remove the term ‘under God’ from U.S. Constitution. (American Humanist.)

Atheists should ‘come out of the closet.’ (The Freethinker.)

Calling for an end to Saudi Arabia’s anti-atheism statute law. (Atheism U.K.)

Atheists are Believers. (non-Religion and Secularity.)

Use Rational Thinking to Build a Civil Society. BenBaz Aziz. (Atheist Ireland.)

Religious People Invited to Turkey’s First Atheism Organization. (Daily News.)

Angry Atheist Sues Over Vanity Plates. (The Daily News.)

Atheism to be Taught to Irish Schoolchildren. (The Guardian.)

Where Will Atheists’ Souls Go? (True Believer.)

END