To thine own self be true

(the realization you’ve been ‘rabbit-holing’ all your life…)

Not every day that I sleep in past 7 a.m. this time finishing with an elaborate dream about going to Washington to speak to the House about the Impeachment proceedings.

Then, hearing from my wife about certain sleep issues like waking up and the surface mind is racing with problems and anxieties while the rational part is sleepy-tired, not yet roused. How scientists have found that imagining a huge whiteboard of problems and issues can be semi-consciously wiped clean, making it possible to go back to sleep.

As CNN broke the news about a possible terrorist incident on London Bridge ‘later today’ across the pond. Which got me thinking about all of this peculiar run of larger consciousness this morning rolling through my life in the above short period of time in one specific place.

Our own personal consciousness, which is very much self-containing and seemingly self-generated, fills our mind every day in whatever specific, limited form. Most of us view ourselves as “self-encapsulated egos” or individual selves whose limited views are generally most of our inner daily reality. Seen a certain way–no one else exists– sometimes/often even significant others, family members, friends, co-workers, acquaintances, strangers, et al. That includes all those people we experience on tv, online, or in books. The basic illusion of ‘separation’/”I am an island”.

Periodically, inevitably, we meet, see, or hear from all these ‘others’. It is then that we become most aware of others’ consciousnesses, how they, in turn, process all the physical reality of their lives. We expand our consciousness through these contacts with others, which, in turn, expands our own awareness and consciousness to varying degrees. “The Information” as I called it in earlier blog entries, but when you come down to it, that which we seek, desire, need, and want every day. People and places where you can get this nutritional consciousness each day.

“Feed your head” pronounced the Jefferson Airplane in their sixties anthem “White Rabbit” as it mused about one of the great works of awakening consciousness of all time: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

It is important, though, to recognize, though, as happened this morning for me, that you do not have to deliberately and actively ‘go after’/search for consciousness each day as I regularly do. Sometimes, as in the three things I reported above first, it just simply happens to you and, more to the point, consciousness and its possibilities and implications for your own awareness, are simply ‘happening’ every day as long as you have eyes, ears, and the rest of your senses. They are there potentially to be processed, felt, empathized with, and reflected on. They are the readily available ‘fodder’ for any consciousness mind, not just your own, but the myriad others in infinite spaces and times (past, present, future) here on Earth.

ps/ And I am very much Buddhisticly aware of consciousness in what Frost called “considerable speck[s]” or larger entities be they animal, vegetable, mineral (who knows?), or alien. But potentially in most of the denizens and ‘things’ of Earth: a large infinite field of potential connection, awareness and consciousness.

the lingering questions/ In the words of the Caterpillar “Who are you?” and What limits to consciousness have you set in your own life?

Gingerbread men and house kits.

once I got my Eaton’s CCM bicycle as a birthday present going into grade 5 in 1960. No longer did I have to depend on my mother’s old bike with the hitch in every revolution. I had paid my dues until then!

That was the year (in the fall described earlier in the blog) when, amazingly, my mother and I cycled across town, then rode on the gravel beside the highway out to (West) Selkirk, then on a dust-cloud gravel road to East Selkirk–a total of about 40-45 mi. each way on a weekend.

One noon-hour on a school day, I pedalled a total of 4-5 miles in an hour to the old Winnipeg Arena (from Wallasey St. to Polo Park) in order to buy a ticket for myself to see for an exhibition game between the Montreal Maroons and the Russians. I got back just in time for afternoon classes. That is the sort of thing I did when I was young, pushing my imaginings and conceptions into reality.

(a paper cup for holding water)

(CP menu from 1956 similar to what I had to choose from with our meals package)

(this 1935 ed. of my gr. 5 Canadian history reader hadn’t changed that much by the time I studied it in 1960-61)

how to make a paper cup, something you can see demo’d on YouTube. That memorable summer my mother and I travelled on CP’s Dominion train to Vancouver from Winnipeg which showed me a number of places I had read about in my Canadian history school book that year.

The mountains were particularly memorable, especially the Spiral tunnels and the Connaught tunnel (which lasted 5 miles in darkness). In those days, passengers could get off during the trip (something you can’t do these days), sometimes for several minutes, sometimes for half an hour to an hour. I remember the Moose Jaw stop was about an hour and I walked over to the main street. The trick was to check my watch and see how much time I had left before it went without me.

One highlight was the meals and we always tried to get into the enclosed portion of the dining car which was snugly special. I always looked forward to eating ice cream out of a silver dish! And because there was a water dispenser in each car, I could make a paper cup–as I had learned) and bring water back to my mother in something I had made myself. The seats were movable and we put two facing each other so we could sleep over the gap between the two seats, something else you’re also not allowed to do anymore.

That was the trip that introduced me to the mountains for the first time, which was my first long distance train trip, and which included Stanley Park (playing at the pitch and putt and riding the miniature train), Victoria, the ferry ride between, and Butchart Gardens. It would be some 50 years later that I would return to actually go into the Empress Hotel for afternoon tea and stay in Victoria. And several years ago, I actually went back to play the impressive pitch and putt at Stanley Park, reuniting with my Inner Child from gr. 5 days.

-Emperor mandarin oranges (sold at Safeway)
-Holiday Tea from Second Cup Coffee
-Large red poinsettia plants from Costco that will last into January.

About time and it must have been a lot of fun on the no man’s corner of Portage and Main till the wee small hours last eve.
Worthy victors, too, who dominated the Cats just like the olde Bud Grant Bombers days. The city truly needed a win as the last Jets’ run showed and as the beautiful vintage Bay store is now, incredibly worth $0! I am still happy this morning for my old hometown.

A definite charming classic. Recommended if you want to see what New York (complete with moody Central Park scenes) was like in 1964 before The Beatles arrived. Also for its old-fashioned take on two early sixties girls coming of age with their romantic fantasies and overactive imaginations. The two leads played by one-shot wonders Tippy Walker (as rich, flighty grade 8 girl in analysis) and Merrie Spaeth (as Gil, a plain, level-headed, loyal buddy of Val) are both bona-fide hoots.

Other reasons to check this film out: fine performances, too, by Peter Sellers as Orient, a lustful aging concert pianist, Paula Prentiss at her dizziest best as an unfaithful wife foiling Sellers’ seduction plans, Angela Lansbury as an unfaithful wife and ‘evil’ stepmother, Tom Bosley as the ideal father who comes to prioritize his daughter, Phyllis Thaxter as the ideal mother of Gil (Merrie Spaeth).

There are many funny scenes involving Sellers, Prentiss, Lansbury, and the girls. The music by Elmer Bernstein is very catchy (the main theme of the girls) and underscores most of the film’s episodes; the concert performance featuring atonal classical music at its height in ’64 is wonderfully accurate. And all the characters get their just deserts in the wish-fulfilment ending of this romantic comedy; Sellers being booed by disenchanted fans as he leaves the concert hall is exactly what he deserves, and the truth behind his so-called musical talent.

Director George Roy Hill (of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting fame) has a remarkably memorable handle on all the shenanigans, masks, and deceits of World. He takes what is an adolescent novel and more than satisfyingly realizes it with liveliness and humor from beginning to end.

I was particularly impressed by how the innocent adolescent comedy aimed at teenage girls morphs more broadly and transitions seamlessly into the conflictful adult world with its lies and adult problems including analysis, divorce, affairs, broken homes, lies, disloyalty, betrayal, manipulation, and personal agendas with realism and positiveness. What a refreshingly different take on these topics!

In short, The World of Henry Orient is a wonderful, thoroughly entertaining film classic and a must-see which accurately portrays North American teen, family, and societal life in 1964.

if Trump is not stopped and removed from the presidency. No question. And, certainly, if he is re-elected, the United States, its democracy, and constitution will all come to an end along with facts, truth, empirical evidence, world peace, the North American economy, law and order also. All that would be left would be signs proclaiming TRUMP, the Trump Party, his dictatorship, rampant corruption, widespread chaos, racism, and violence, and Russia inheriting the Earth. Everyone in Alberta, Canada, the United States, the West, and the world ought to have a serious vested interest in the impeachment and removal process. There will simply be no way back from this version of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four if Trump is not stopped. Everything is now on the line.

Where does the time go?

The 1960s truly came to an end on Dec. 6, 1969 at Altamont Speedway with 300,000 stoned concert-goers, no facilities (including bathrooms), no police, and only drunk Hell’s Angels to provide security as the event became increasingly chaotic, unruly, and dangerously violent. Four people died (including one audience member viciously killed in front of a minimal makeshift stage where the Rolling Stones nervously played to close out the most negative musical event of the 1960s. (You kinda knew something was amiss when Mick Jagger stepped from a helicopter and got punched out by one of many deranged ‘fans.’)

The Criterion Collection’s enhanced 2002 DVD of Gimme Shelter has it all. Directors David and Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin were on site to record the ‘happening’ and Albert and Charlotte have recorded an audio commentary to enhance what viewers today can see in the remastered and restored uncensored version which originally came out 20 years ago.There are ample other extras including extra Stones New York footage from the same tour which followed Brian Jones’s sudden death and introduced the brilliant young Mick Taylor on second lead guitar. There are trailers and a photo gallery as well.

If you ever wanted to see “Satan laughing with delight” as Don McLean put it in “American Pie’s history of rock and roll, then this is the essential ‘bummer’ episode when the Love Generation awoke to reality and truth with a resounding crash. An important, defining, resonant visual and musical social event. One of the top sixties documentaries and one of the most memorable musical documentaries of all-time for sure.

Pity the poor kids, as young as 4, working in African mica mines to produce American products. Not much of a life. No long-term future. A major tragedy as the kids are exploited as they try to survive day-to-day. Enough to tear your heart out.