To thine own self be true

I guess every form of refuge has its price.”
–“Lyin’ Eyes”

As Trump found out last Thursday and Sunday evenings.

It is necessary for us to be open to and conscious of information from all systems, sources, and worlds.

It is necessary to balance emotions, flesh, and blood with mind and spirit. The organism needs to open up to the life force. We need to get rid of tensions and repressions in order to let the life force flow. This process requires unblocking the (self-)conscious ego.

It is necessary to balance reason with immediate experience.

Zen occurs when inner and outer are balanced with each other simultaneously.

The material world of mass, energy, space, and time needs to be accepted, embraced, and played with.

Our consciousness can be liberated by breaking the back of ego. Our most memorable experiences are ones with felt/experienced upsurges of consciousness.

Contemplation and consciousness go together.

The irrational requires satisfaction and expression within whatever system. It is necessary to put up with the irrational in harmless, but unrepressed ways.

General philosophical ideas are perhaps best expressed in terms of individual case histories or stories. (Induction as a means to understanding and consciousness)

1

Sparrows chirp
and pluck at scraps
of empty gutters.

2

An old man leans
on a rake
and contemplates
his dead spring lawn.

3

Two lovers pass by
their care-less laughter
rising from the lane
as they disappear
from view.

4

Oblivious are they all
to the cunning cat
that stalks its prey,
the shadow lurking
by an old man’s garage,
and the slow, steady ticking
of two lovers’ watches.

Winter continues all this week into the next. Longest run of cold and snowy misery we’ve had in memory. The only good thing is that it has given people time to catch up on projects at home.
Did get out for my first ‘spring’ walks in the local neighborhood last week; ice had receded and melted enough finally. It’s a bit cold, but I did think about taking out my bike for 2018’s first spin. Might still do that, but weekly groceries beckon to start the week…

So there’s nothing to put in the expensive galleria. I say, Open it up to the druggies, bums and street people 8 months a year in winter and have city council clean it up afterward.
Then when the gondolas across the river valley are operational, let the bums, druggies, and street people have free rides all summer till winter sets in again. When they get across to the downtown side of the valley, they can ride the funicular up and down and buzz the mayor’s office every time it breaks down when they jump and up and down in it.
The beach can be open just to city council. They can deal with the fecal contaminants. Or, alternatively, they can splash around in the city hall fountain with ankle-high water while they hold more planning meetings.
In the winter, though, city council will get to ride the gondolas across the river and can call the 24 hr. emergency line to rescue them when the gondolas break down high above the river.

Imagine the audacity of Richard Brooks to write a screenplay and to direct a 1958 Hollywood version of Dostoevsky’s 1880 classic novel The Brothers Karamazov. But in 2 hrs. and 25 mins., he manages the impossible and, despite some stereotyping, manages to keep the plot on a realistic, entertaining path with the unexpected episodic turns of the original book.

Plot is a main strength of this movie and Brooks does his best to recreate the atmosphere of a nineteenth-century Russia town by use of set design, costumes, and music by a Russian composer.

The acting is uniformly strong. Yul Brynner makes a good mysterious protagonist Dmitri. His middle brother Ivan is nicely, ambiguously played by Richard Basehart who communicates the angst, confusion, and mental breakdown of this intellectual character. Albert Salmi is a sufficiently malevolent Dickensian character who effectively plays the bastard brother who is the alter ego of Ivan and causes chaos and ruin for the Karamazov family.

William Shatner’s casting is a pleasant surprise from his pre-Capt. Kirk Days; he plays the young Karamazov brother, a priest, who is the purest member of the family. Lee J. Cobb is wonderfully over-the-top (he was nominated for an AA) at his slimiest as the corrupt buffoon father who has no love for his sons, which, in turn, contributes to the tragedy and his fate.

The women actresses steal the show with fine, unpredictable, morally ambiguous performances by Claire Bloom as Dmitri’s frustrated intended (she thinks) and by Maria Schell whose wild, convincing performance as a loose, uncentered bawdy-house madam who is Dmitri’s true love. Both actresses give portrayals of changeable, believable women who don’t know themselves, have no stability, and are unable to control their emotions, which causes havoc in Dmitri’s life. As I’ve said, the women characters do much to steal the show and keep the plot constantly and nicely askew.

Dostoevsky’s views of God, man, human suffering, and truth transfer reasonably well to this adaptation. I didn’t feel Brooks–a bright man himself–ever shortchanged the main elements and philosophy of the original and the author.

The Brothers Karamazov is a surprise and a throwback to older Hollywood larger canvases and the practice of adapting great books. Warner Brothers have done right by Brooks in releasing this DVD, of one of his best films–a labor of love high in dramatic, entertainment value.

starting Saturday morning with music by Handel and the two T.O newspapers?

has just been massively hacked. Again. Cambridge Analytica. Facebook.
Add those to banks, Equifax, and myriad other company and corporation sites. This had all been predicted.

started here in Canada with the election of T2, followed by Brexit in the UK. The Western world seemed to be intent in undoing years of relative permanence and institutions that had previously worked and kept this major part of the world stable.

The election of Trump–the most sleazy, egomaniacal, corrupt U.S. president ever–led to many more unnecessary changes to suit an ignoramus dictator’s whims. He has managed to intimidate and frighten all other countries in the world including his own. He is a jackass running amok deconstructing and destroying all vestiges of normalcy and permanence that have kept the American dream live. Now he has really, singlehandedly killed it, and there will be no road back to sanity, courtesy, non-identity politics, and anything resembling sanity and hope for the future. And that goes well beyond the States to other countries in the world.

Now he has hired a warmonger and the Doomsday Clock is well-nigh at midnight again. It was a long road to the development and reign of what used to be called Civilization, but Trump has crushed that great spiritual movement as surely as Big Brother stamping on the faces of U.S. citizens and anybody else Trump does not like and wants to fire the ass of.

What we are left with at this time is complete chaos and all people living in uncertainty, fear, and anxiety. His name is in the heads and on the lips of everyone as surely as Orwell’s Big Brother. He has had a year of daily destructions and killings to assert his ego and to bludgeon everyone and everything with his visionless, banal, stupid crap. What he did to Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, he has likewise boorishly and piggishly done to America and the rest of the world.

And the Republican party will have to assume much responsibility and blame for this mass destruction and chaos. America’s only hope in the future is to return a Democrat majority to staunch the hemorrhaging while anything and anyone is still left standing.

But of civilization, you can forget it in the Age of Distraction (Politics) of both Trudeau and Trump. There is no more moral compass on either side of the border (T2’s cynical, irresponsible selling of Canadian youth to feed government coffers with the legalization of pot) and it has proven very hard so far to hit forever-changing, forever-moving targets who have perfected the olde shell-game like no other political leaders before them. In any case, neither leader gives a flying fig about civilization, common sense, caring, and any form of higher instincts or values.

Banff

(at Roy and Kris’s)

Down the long steps
to an unscheduled wood,
down to the feathered green
of mast-like trees
swaying high and significant.

An inland sea sweeps
deck and continent alike,
black and white peaks
a geography of snow:
one man, one solitude.

He was meant for this ground–
his presence a direction,
his message a track.
He was, moreover, destined
for this much meaning:

the boardwalk over pungent moss,
the unseen elk and wolf,
no tourists,
and a safe passage home.