To thine own self be true

‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

No team that alternates goofy games with good games one after the other is a serious contender for the Stanley Cup. No way Oilers will win another 15 games before their off-game losses and no-show losses catch up with them.

It is also easy to see that inept defensive dopes like Bouchard and Draisaitl and a non-clutch goalie like Skinner are three main reasons why Oilers will exit in round 1.

As I have often remarked, we do it to ourselves whether by divorces, abuses, lawsuits, wars or wanton destruction of the environment.

Much of the current AB and BC wildfire situation is owing to human-caused wildfires; in other words, it’s caused by dopes and crazies.

(overall contents)

(front and back covers of slipcase box)

(front and back covers of Blu-ray disc book)

(sample facing pages inside: 30 discs, 41 films from 1946 to 2003; new 4K and 2K and other digital restorations; 11 intros by Bergman; 6 audio commentaries; 5 hrs. of Bergman interviews; interviews with Bergman collaborators;  6 making of documentaries; several documentaries on his life and work; behind-the-scenes footage, video essays, trailers, stills, galleries)

(front and back covers of 248-page illustrated book; 24 essays and articles)

(inside front endpapers; penultimate scene of The Seventh Seal as Death approaches)

Close up the casement, draw the blind,
Shut out that stealing moon,
She wears too much the guise she wore
Before our lutes were strewn
With years-deep dust, and names we read
On a white stone were hewn.

Step not out on the dew-dashed lawn
To view the Lady’s Chair,
Immense Orion’s glittering form,
The Less and Greater Bear:
Stay in; to such sights we were drawn
When faded ones were fair.

Brush not the bough for midnight scents
That come forth lingeringly,
And wake the same sweet sentiments
They breathed to you and me
When living seemed a laugh, and love
All it was said to be.

Within the common lamp-lit room
Prison my eyes and thought;
Let dingy details crudely loom,
Mechanic speech be wrought:
Too fragrant was Life’s early bloom,
Too tart the fruit it brought!

-Thomas Hardy

Where, like a pillow on a bed,
A pregnant bank swell’d up to rest
The violet’s reclining head,
Sat we two, one another’s best.

Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm, which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;

So t’ intergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.

As ‘twixt two equal armies Fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls (which to advance their state
Were gone out) hung ‘twixt her and me.

And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.

If any, so by love refin’d
That the soul’s language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,

He (though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same)
Might thence a new concoction take
And part far purer than he came.

This ecstasy doth unperplex,
We said, and tell us what we love;
We see by this it was not sex,
We see, we saw not what did move;

But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love these mix’d souls doth mix again
And makes both one, each this and that.

A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size,
(All which before was poor and scant)
Redoubles still, and multiplies.

When love with one another so
Interinanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.

We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are compos’d and made,
For th’ atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.

But o alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They are ours, though they are not we, we are
The intelligences, they the spheres.

We owe them thanks, because they thus
Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses’ force to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.

On man heaven’s influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air,
So soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.

As our blood labours to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot which makes us man,

So must pure lovers’ souls descend
T’ affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.

To our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love reveal’d may look;
Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.

And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change, when we’re to bodies gone.

…………………………..

The ultimate English metaphysical love poem fusing sexuality with spirituality and vice versa.

to people who destroy themselves like the irrational dope who set himself on fire today at the courthouse where Trump is on trial. Trump is a dangerous demonic being, of course, and he attracts the craziest loonies out there.

wantonly and deliberately destroying the environment more significantly than what they’re purportedly protesting, and endangering human lives: firefighters and the lives of nearby community citizens.

No glory in that malevolent, irrational choice of action, much like the deluded European art gallery vandals.

(A play adaptation by Arthur Miller I used to teach grade 12s back in 1972-78. Ibsen’s play contained many teachable conflicts and themes. I used to cast members of the class to read aloud the play and make it come to life for them.)

Yesterday I revisited this classic–one of Ibsen’s best–when I watched the 1966 Broadway black-and-white tv version on DVD. It was very much like watching a stage play (directed by Paul Bogart) seamlessly filmed live–not clunky as are some of these old tv drama productions.

Plot-wise, Dr. Stockman is a respected member of a seaside Norwegian town which prides itself on its supposedly therapeutic medical springs that bring in summer tourist trade. However, Stockman is exploring recent cases of visitor sickness and has sent water samples to be analyzed, which reveal the springs are poisoned. He presents this fact to the community, assuming the town council will close the facility to make the necessary repairs. He and the town newspaper writers assume that the truth needs to be told and that Stockman will ultimately be lionized for saving the town.

But reality turns out differently. Instead, he becomes a pariah–“an enemy of the people”–after a community town hall meeting is turned against him by his brother the mayor, the newspaper people he initially entrusted with his information, and muck-raising locals who try to run him and his family out of town.

The many powerful play conflicts include the individual vs. society, authority vs. rebellion, conformity vs. non-conformity, truth vs. lies/illusion/propaganda, medical science vs. chamber of commerce, and free press vs. censorship. The conflicts are all political, intense, and exacerbated by assumptions, agendas, bias, and discrimination. (Much like those conflicts currently raging in and polarizing Canada and the U.S. Politics and politicizing are, similarly, the archetypal snakes in the grass here.)

A range of realistic human behaviors are on display, most of them very ignoble and flawed. Only Dr. Stockman sticks to his guns and holds fast to facts, the truth, and empirical evidence in the face of the howling mob that wants to silence and destroy him. And typical of Ibsen’s style, there are innumerable non-stop, true-to-life ironies that make all this messiness and chaos believable and relevant for the viewer.

Much like our current times, honest, decent, principled people are under fire while the ignorant and corrupt go crazy. Trolling and social ostracism are weapons wielded by the irrational mob and corrupt leaders. Trump has even ignorantly pirated the play’s title to use against the news media today–an echo of Ibsen’s criticism of the media in its failure to tell the truth within the play.

There are uniformly strong performances by all the actors of this production, notably by James Daly as the doctor, Philip Bosco as his corrupt sibling, and Canadian veteran Kate Reid as Catherine, Stockman’s wife.

Overall, An Enemy of the People captures the irrational nature of the masses and the corrupt political systems that encourage them. It remains a rich, relevant play for people looking for significant insights and literary wisdom about our truly troubled times.

…………………………………………….

One other interesting version of this play include Steve McQueen’s 1977 labor-of-love color production filmed as his health was declining.  McQueen plays Stockman, Charles Durning plays his brother, and Bibi Andersson plays Mrs. Stockman. Veteran tv director George Schaeffer directs. This production also follows the Arthur Miller adaptation/translation.

Yet another color version uses actual, realistic town and house interiors and exteriors in the 1980 U.K. tv production directed by Gareth Davies. This version has a more modern feel, and will satisfy modern tv viewer expectations. Unlike the other two versions, this one plays and looks more like a film than a filmed stage play. (Part of the BBC Henrik Ibsen Collection DVD set.)

(Henrik Ibsen, ‘the Norwegian Shakespeare’, 1828-1906, author of other popular classics including A Doll’s House, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, The Master Builder, Hedda Gabler, The Lady from the Sea, Peer Gynt, Brand, Pillars of Society, Rosmersholm, Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman, and When We Dead Awaken.

She doesn’t care that neonatal intensive care units are at capacity in Edmonton, does nothing to address this crisis, talks of expanding Calgary’s units (!), and is quite prepared to fly Edmonton infants without local facilities to Calgary or out of province.

“Deaths of infants may soon follow”, says Dr. Mona Gill, president of the Edmonton Zone Medical Staff Association.

A useless, evil UCP hag, much like the Premier.