To thine own self be true

Nurses have to give up their vacation time, but not youknowwho while provincial Covid spirals out of control, throwing Deena…

Province of The Clowns.

The whole lot of them. Pepper-spray dope. Dumb-ass LaGrange. Useless Shandro.

Don Everly passes, 84.

The many hits, of which I still play
-All I’ve Got to Do Is Dream
-Cathy’s Clown
-Walk Right Back
-Let It Be Me
-Cryin’ in the Rain
-Devoted to You
-Wake Up Little Suzie.

Don was the anchor/the base, the melody to Phil’s beautiful unique soaring harmonies. We are fortunate that their London reunion live show is available on DVD.

Any of their greatest hits is a necessary part to any audiophile’s collection. They also influenced The Beatles, says Paul–John was Don, Paul was Phil. There will be many Everly Brothers tributes to follow.

“To fulfil the dreams of one’s youth; that is the best that can happen to a man. No worldly success can take the place of that.”

often in a large, significant way. Like world poverty, the Taliban, the wildfires, or the idiots who support Trump.

One has to focus on being true to oneself, one’s own interests (and those closest to one), daily necessities, family matters, immediate and urgent problems.

Although I spent a large chunk of my life, as a musician, textbook author, and teacher, bringing pleasure and ideas to the lives of others, those contributions to others and to society are largely over. I have more than ‘done my bit’.

I have also enlarged my consciousness through every stage and decade of my life. I pretty much knew my own mind by 40, sometime ago, and morphed into a more self-activization period of creativity through poetry writing, blog-writing, working as a film classifier, and exploring e-media.

I continue to follow my own bliss, going where my heart, mind, and spirit gravitate towards. Often, I end up going full circle back to key moments and turning points from my youthful past.

For instance, in the last two weeks, I’ve returned to discover more about Donovan who, in my teen years, influenced my musical and psychological sensibility. I realize that consciousness was, likewise, a big, important part of my life, too, and that he influenced me and others (Suzanne Vega, Bruce Cockburn–other musical favorites) who, likewise, focused on consciousness in their own developments as performers and songwriters.

I still never know what will ‘bubble up’ as a compelling idea or subject of interest in the course of each unique changing day.

Anyway, it is in that state I continue to live my life far from the hard, brutal, brutish, stupid ways that continue for many on Earth: the non-stop War that drags on. Donovan was right after all, some 7 decades later: gentleness, consciousness, love, and peace are the four things that matter most.

(a sign of the times: decontaminating delivered packages)

Since March, 2020, a lot has changed for me personally. A significant diminishment.
No more Stroll of Poets live cafe readings. (Online readings not the same.)
Very limited contact with my son’s family and the two grandsons. We have been in the same outdoor area about 3 times, but no physical contact. No visits to our place.
We no longer go grocery shopping in person. Our daughter has groceries sent to her place and we pick up there. (She works out of home.)
We no longer see extended family except my wife’s sister visiting at a distance rarely.
No more shopping trips or mortar and bricks shopping. All bought online via Amazon usually.
Basically, we are confined to home, looking after house and yard. Our exposure to nature, otherwise, comes from neighborhood walks.
We no longer attend the August symphony concerts or any live concerts or plays.
We have not been to the dentist, not needing any repairs.
I have only taken the car in for servicing once.
We have not ordered restaurant deliveries except with our daughter a few times.
My meds are delivered by the druggist.
I have discontinued regular monthly massages and periodic haircuts.
We pay at the pump when gassing up seldomly. Certainly no long distance travel to Jasper, Banff, Radium, Vancouver, or Victoria.
We wear masks and socially distance if we have to make a rare trip out (to the post office, doctor’s, lab).
In the winter, I walk in the basement (no walks outside on snow or ice). And ride a stationary bike till spring.
We do more e-mailing than phoning except to arrange appointments.
We limit how much national and international news we get via tv given the ongoing ‘downer’ bad news and tragedies.

Yes, in many ways, this is the new diminished existence–a far cry from the olde normal life before March of last year. The focus daily is on personal survival, getting various things done, and attending to what needs doing. We often take evenings off to watch movies or old tv shows or read. Personal existential choices and priorities guide the day’s choices and activities. Ultimately, one’s own world is most important and relevant by necessity to avoid conflict and problems. You have to look after your own well-being, mind, heart, and spirit in ways that work for oneself and any significant others you live with.

The world ‘out there’ remains very divisive and self-imploding what with the climate crisis, the dangerous nonvaxxers, the stupid politicians and their dumb-ass choices (Trudeau’s greed for a majority, Kenney’s bungling on Delta, and Biden’s Afghanistan exit, and innumerable, other unreconcilable agendas. There is little courtes, much more irrational nastiness, hate, and casual, random violence. Basically, you do not know the vaccination status of others; so you cannot trust strangers. A far cry from freedom, peace, trust, and love movements of the late 1960s-early ’70s.

but, as he showed yesterday by not being at Deena’s press conference apology/falling on her/his sword, he’s just
The Coward of the County.
Has been all the way; will be the rest of his reign.

( a very prophetic poem about today’s world light years ahead of its time, methinks)

Though mild clear weather
Smile again on the shore of your esteem
And its colours come back, the storm has changed you:
You will not forget, ever,
The darkness blotting out hope, the gale
Prophesying your downfall.

You must live with your knowledge.
Way back, beyond, outside of you are others,
In moonless absences you never heard of,
Who have certainly heard of you,
Beings of unknown number and gender:
And they do not like you.

What have you done to them?
Nothing? Nothing is not an answer:
You will come to believe – how can you help it? –
That you did, you did do something;
You will find yourself wishing you could make them laugh,
You will long for their friendship.

There will be no peace.
Fight back, then, with such courage as you have
And every unchivalrous dodge you know of,
Clear on your conscience on this:
Their cause, if they had one, is nothing to them now;
They hate for hate’s sake.

(RD @ mending wall referred to in poem, 1991, Robert Frost Farm, Derry, N.H.)

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

–Robert Frost

by Jorge Luis Borges

My cane, my pocket change, this ring of keys,
The obedient lock, the belated notes
The few days left to me will not find time
To read, the deck of cards, the tabletop,
A book, and crushed in its pages the withered
Violet, monument to an afternoon
Undoubtedly unforgettable, now forgotten,
The mirror in the west where a red sunrise
Blazes its illusion. How many things,
Files, doorsills, atlases, wine glasses, nails,
Serve us like slaves who never say a word,
Blind and so mysteriously reserved.
They will endure beyond our vanishing;
And they will never know that we have gone.

Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same

He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds’ song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.

–Robert Frost