To thine own self be true

This morning perky Suzanne was saying that “a low in the U.S. is pushing instability into Canada”. Must be thinking of the trade talks with Trump.

(a favorite preferred/projected (self-)image)

The possibilities we dream of come truest in our imaginations. Occasionally we are lucky and some of these dreams transition to physical reality. Then they assume an even greater transformative power. It is also in our dreams and imagination that we are, each of us, freest, too.

For anyone who is frustrated and profoundly unhappy in their lives, I would suggest the person enjoy and take pleasure within personal fantasy and imagination. There, there will be no or fewer disappointments. There, people will find the perfection and happiness they seek.

Always there are limits in physical reality. That and many different points of view, backgrounds, contexts, experiences, and agendas. One’s dreams are always up against that much potential conflict, naysaying, contrariness, and defeat.

In my own life, it has been my dreams and imagination that have long sustained me. I am like the speaker in Paul Simon’s “I Am a Rock” who has long lived mostly innerly and steadily built my own resources and integrity. An only child, I have long stood alone and actualized whatever (limited) possibilities I have had.

But some dreams have remained and survived the big bad world and I credit personal consciousness, imagination, and memory as being the main driving forces and foundations in my life. There have been myriad nice possibilities that haven’t been actualized, but the mere remembrance and contemplation of these have sufficed. In that, a being true to one self all over again and an appreciation of dream and imagination which have largely given me the lucky, contented life I’ve had so far.

(my autographed copy)

(The ending of Timebends, Arthur Miller’s autobiography. He concludes with an image of wolves on his Connecticut rural property.)

“In the darkness out there they see my light and pause, muzzles lifted, wondering who I am and what I am doing here in this cabin under my light. I am a mystery to them until they tire of it and move on, but the truth, the first truth, probably, is that we are all connected, watching one another. Even the trees.”

Indeed, if you have ever been to a party, a concert, a meeting, or some other social gathering, then you know the truth of Miller’s words. We are for a brief time, in the same space and potentially, ephemerally connected. And everyone observes and watches everyone else. And imagines and draws their various impressions and conclusions.

……………………………..

Interesting book. He felt his tragic wife, Marilyn Monroe, was truly talented, but not understood or appreciated by the masses and the media. His conclusion about her/metaphor for her:

“…she was poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes.”

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.”

“Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”

“There is a coherence in things, a stability; something…is immune from change, and shines out…in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby…Of such moments…the thing is made that remains for ever after.–Virginia Woolf

(a fine adaptation of a great novel, the kind most people no longer read or could care less about)

Unconventional individual personal choices abound in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Dorothea refuses to limited by her dead husband’s will and gives up her estate to marry Ladislaw. Ladislaw refuses Bulstrode’s (atonement) money because of the corrupt source, much as Mr. Garth refuses to work for Bulstrode, once he knows his employer’s background. Against his father’s wishes, Fred gives up a shot at the ministry to seek his own fortune close to home. Mary Garth refuses to take the dying Featherstone’s bribe money and does not marry Fred till he can support them. Lydgate, though broke, refuses to ask others for money and ultimately returns Bulstrode’s bribe in connection with Raffles’ death. In spite of his financial and marital setbacks, he continues to pursue his curative dreams.

The many temptations and many limits and limitations of money and materialism in Victorian society and in the Middlemarch town notwithstanding, the best personal choices in the book are not made on the basis of those two factors. Characters make difficult unconventional choices and act on the basis of their own inner needs and values. The book is ultimately about personal integrity.

“Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another.”–Eliot, Middlemarch

is a matter of survival these days in Edmonton. The bugs are bad where there’s shade, gardens, and bushes. They’re also bad when clouds obscure the sun. And they are bad in the early morning and evenings.

What’s the point? Water and mud shooting onto your back and pants on wet days or wet terrain.

A very curious newbie.

Those oh-so-cool guys who slide their cars in front of you into your lane and at intersections.