To thine own self be true

Shaving in the bathroom with the window slightly open. A cool fresh breeze coming in, putting me back to the ’70s, shaving in my parents’ old walk-up apartment in Winnipeg. An even chillier summer breeze coming in off the river. Feeling a rightness about it all. Home again with parents, my mother getting breakfast ready, the radio on. Another humid day ahead.

Nature, still. That which Man is doing his best to kill.

One of the best dark chocolate treats with peanuts ever to be created in Canada was a Winnipeg invention which has been revived by a Camrose woman. To me, it tastes even better than ever after the new owner modified the recipe a tad. It can be bought at Sobey’s. A treat that sneaks up on you, addictively! Best cut up and savoured in smaller pieces.

To see a World in a grain of sand, /And a Heaven in a wild flower, /Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, /And Eternity in an hour.

He who bends to himself a Joy/Doth the winged life destroy; /But he who kisses the Joy as it flies /Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.

I must Create a System, or be enslaved by another Man’s; /I will not Reason and Compare; my business is to Create.

Love seeketh not itself to please, /Nor for itself have any care, /But for another gives its ease, /And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.

Without contraries is no progression.

Energy is eternal delight!

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

Man’s Desires are limited by his Perceptions; none can desire what he has not perceived.

Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the Night.

I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.

Do what you will, this world’s a fiction and is made up of contradictions.

Exuberance is energy.

Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.

Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.

The imagination is not a state; it is the human existence itself.

Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life.

How can a bird that is born for joy/Sit in a cage and sing?

The eye altering, alters all.

We become what we behold.

A robin redbreast in a cage/Puts all of heaven in a rage.

The nakedness of woman is a work of God.

Each man is haunted until his humanity awakens.

I know that this world is a world of Imagination and Vision.

“Peace on Earth and Good Will to All Men and Women on Earth”.

(a delightful comedy classic, Anchor Bay)

Again, I thank my late Dad for introducing me to so many film classics, this one originally released in 1949–my birthday year–(Compton Mackenzie’s book appeared in 1947), which we watched late night together on b & w tv in the 1950s.

“The sinking of the SS Politician in February 1941 has gone down as one of the funniest nights in Hebridean history–thanks to Compton Mackenzie’s novel Whiskey Galore!
When the Politician floundered on a hidden shoal just off the tiny islands of Eriskay and Barra in the Outer Hebrides, she was bound for America with 264,000 bottles of best Scotch whisky.
It was a cash-rich cargo designed to help Britain’s war effort. But by the time the islanders had helped to salvage it, 100,000 bottles had been ‘liberated’. The Politician bar on Eriskay has proof.
Mackenzie turned the episode into Whisky Galore! in 1947, writing from his home on Barra, overlooking the windswept beach.”
(by Sally Varlow, A Reader’s Guide to Writer’s Britain)

(1996, Prion, illustrated in color; covers all English, Welsh, and Scottish writers of note–highly recommended)

Men in Kilts.

If you phone them, one of your line options allows you to listen to bagpipe music.

Strathcona Composite men’s stags at the end of the school year. I miss that open, light-hearted spirit of camaraderie based on gender and shared school experience. Also the steaks, beans, drinks, and live oldies music (which I usually provided). Fudge (me captain’s hat) played there many times with guest teachers joining us.

The stupidity, ignorance, and stupid choices of the hoi-polloi. Like letting a toddler die in a grease pit behind a McDonald’s Or dumb people moving beyond barriers to perish on mountains, in oceans. Careless, unimaginative choices lacking common sense that end in the death of the person or those connected to him/her.

I am prouder of my character and proudest of my family and grandkids.