Reflective Essays and Poetic Musings by Condemiang + Stories About the World

This year, “Autumn” left a little later than usual. Following behind, “Winter” arrived with a feisty temperament, sprinkling snow throughout last week. It wasn’t heavy, more like a teasing flurry—until Saturday the 24th, when it poured down all at once, as if Winter were making a grand entrance. The leaves on the fence trees were unusually persistent this year. Perhaps due to Autumn’s late departure, they seemed caught off guard by Winter’s sudden greeting. It wasn’t just the fence trees—other trees clustered around the neighborhood were the same. "The leaves hadn’t fully fallen yet."   Last Christmas, I had strung LED lights around the eaves of our house. Something about that season always lifts my heart. My wife and I had hung them together, hoping to bring a bit of comfort to close the bleak, oil-crash-stricken year of 2019. The lights stayed up well into February 2020. Joseph, our neighbor across the street, passed away in March 2018. This past March marked his second...

Washing My Hair and Showering with Just Water It’s been nearly five weeks since I tossed out the shampoo and started washing my hair with only water. My eldest son began doing this around March—washing his hair with water only—and by early September, after about six months, I decided to follow suit. I sniffed his hair out of curiosity, but it didn’t smell unpleasant. I wanted to test it for myself. According to him, the beginning feels sticky and uncomfortable, but the effects become noticeable over time. Those effects, he said, include the natural protective oil layer of the scalp being maintained, significantly reducing dryness-related dandruff, itchiness, and even hair loss. For the first three to four weeks, I didn’t feel clean at all after washing. My hair felt sticky and clumped together due to oiliness, and I wasn’t sure if the odor was truly gone. But once it dried, it sort of felt like I had washed it. That gave me enough reason to push through. My towel, after drying my h...

A Boy with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever / The Link Between Microbes and the Brain /  Gut Microbes and Memory /  Cognitive and Physiological Impact of Microbes /  Gut Microbes and Behavior /  Neurotransmitters Produced by Bacteria /  Microbiota, Antibiotics, and Autism /  Microbiota and Human Health A few days ago, my eldest child shared a highly interesting YouTube video titled “How the Gut Microbe Affects the Brain and Mind,” published by the channel What I've Learned. (It was posted on February 19, 2018, and runs for 13 minutes and 22 seconds.) It felt too valuable to watch alone, so I made time to summarize it. I’ve long suspected that certain microorganisms might influence not only the human body but also our mental and emotional states. I do not mean in the general sense of psychological damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but rather in the more direct form of microbes affecting the brain and mind. After watching this video, that idea feel...

  Solen Feyissa-N-GpAMItcPc@unsplash Now that summer has fully receded, from rough and lazy memories, I spot a love shaped like a stubby yellow pencil. Sometimes, while preparing for autumn, I go about picking up the memories I scattered in summer, one by one, but that blunted love—I just can’t bring myself to take it with me. One day, just as that summer was beginning, I first saw that love— with a deep and tightly packed core, a bright yellow exterior, solid and unblemished, dazzling to behold. I grasped that love without hesitation. I felt I could draw any picture, no matter the shape, write even the hardest of stories endlessly and beautifully. So it was, at the height of that summer, the love I held had grown quite short. Its core cracked and worn, its body tired and marked with my fingernail dents, my bite marks. Yet still, I resented that love— for not being the same as before. Then one day, as the summer’s heat began to ease, I happened to gaze upon a white wall filled with...

  Written, composed, and sung by Lilaype I been talking to you for a while been loving you sure ain’t really easy On text sending all them fake hearts I been, trying to give, my real lonely heart Texting you all day, sleepless nights, it was fun all this excitement like a trophy that I won Feeling real isolated, even for a little without your text, wondering what you doing You took longer, now losing your interest getting dangerous You took longer now losing your interest dangerous Fading away ay ay ay ay Fading away ay ay ay ay Still holding on what for I know you were hand made just right for me I wasn’t made for you but it just might be Never say out loud its just in my head Wait another day, watch Netflix instead Worries, piling, feel like were moving away bit by bit Never, asked...

Father’s Day in Canada falls on the third Sunday of June every year. In 2020, it was observed on Sunday, June 21. They are soft and fragile people, yet in front of their families, they become strong and resolute. Unable to say “I love you” easily, they substitute it with words like “You’re cool.” They are beings of cognitive dissonance—those whose thoughts and actions don’t always align when it comes to loving their families. At home, they’re gruff and curt, but among friends, they become charming, funny, and approachable. They know too much, so they nag often. Yet, out of the blue, they might show grace, saying they trust you to handle things on your own. The truth is, fathers themselves often don’t know the right way to go. They tell you to live righteously and ethically but also want you to be cunning and shrewd—because that might make life a little easier for the family. Drawing from their own experiences, they cling to outdated ways and preach them. No one really listens. Just bec...

Eye-Catching Advanced Technologies The tragic death of George Floyd has ignited intense controversy over racial discrimination. Yet, I suddenly had a strange thought—that in the near future, many people might come to miss the world we live in now. A chilly fear passed through me. The point at which a superintelligence, more advanced than the combined intellectual capacity of all humans with normal brains, appears is called the “Technological Singularity.” It is casually presumed—under the guise of expert deliberation—that this will happen around the year 2040. Stephen Hawking, Nick Bostrom, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates (who in 2015 raised alarms that it would be a major threat, but from 2019 began speaking more of its positive aspects, calling it a double-edged sword and saying they would invest—why the change?) have all actively warned of the potential dangers of artificial intelligence. While Elon Musk is pouring all his efforts into developing Tesla cars, he is also working on the Neur...

 

COVID-19 has flipped the world upside down. Scholars everywhere are passionately—some might say rabidly—announcing the arrival of an entirely new era. And those famous investment experts (yes, the same ones who didn’t see 2008 coming) are now warning of an incoming depression so massive it might make the Great Depression look like a clearance sale. It’s an RNA virus, which means it mutates like a drama queen changes moods. It’s zoonotic, too—capable of infecting humans and animals alike. That means everyone’s a potential host, whether you walk on two legs, four, or have wings and echolocation. Vaccines and treatments? Hard-won, yes. Guaranteed? Not so much. We still haven’t figured out which creature served as the intermediate host between bats and humans. Pangolins? Raccoon dogs? Some are even whispering that this whole thing wasn’t entirely… natural. That maybe, just maybe, some mysterious group had a hand in creating and spreading it. Sounds like a bad movie plot—but here we are. ...

Stories of Little Happiness - 02 The world was reeling from the shock of COVID-19. Everything, except essential services like grocery stores, came to a halt. Parks, playgrounds, public facilities, shopping malls, restaurants, beauty salons—places we once took for granted—were suddenly off-limits. Yet here in Canada, people remained calm, composed, and considerate, weathering it all with quiet resilience.  Looks a lot like me—same face, same frame. There’s a guy I know—well, a few of them, actually—who hadn’t had a haircut in over two months. Their hair had grown wild and unruly. But cutting it themselves? Too risky. One wrong move and disaster strikes. Asking a family member? Just as risky. If the cut goes wrong, the blame game begins. Better to just live with it. But me? I had nothing to worry about. For the past 12 years, my wife has been our family barber. Mine and our kids’. She took a crash course in men’s haircutting—a whirlwind three-day program—and never looked back. Of c...