“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
(there have been times I’ve been in the playing music dream; here with Fudge, my teacher-band at Strathcona High in teaching daze)
(awake in the author’s dream mapping out another textbook with the late Glen Kirkland)
(visiting Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West in Scottsdale, AZ was a dream come true)
(the annual spring trips to the West Coast are always a slice of pleasurable dream in Lotus Lands of Vancouver and Victoria)
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
This has been one of my successful ongoing efforts in my life. I am very much an individualist and have encouraged many people I’ve met along the way to embrace their own uniqueness and individuality. Pictured is my chapbook from last December which is an example of the sorts of independent ventures I have long created. I did the entire work myself including doing a cover photo, selecting and editing poems, arranging printing, and distributing of copies to select poets in town whom I enjoy and who would appreciate such a personal gift of poetry.
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and plces to pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”
“A king of shreds and patches”
(description of usurper king Claudius in Hamlet)
A must-have at this time of year if you savour quality biscuits.
That and Walker’s shortbread offerings.
It’s in her 1818 book Frankenstein and his 1886 book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The First Timeless Warnings: Do not play games with science, technology, and the unknown too much or there’ll be truly serious, self-destructive and destructive consequences.
Today, in 2017, the same old warning from about 1500 scientists about unconscionable killer robots. Putin is making his plans already: he says that whoever controls A.I. will control the world.
And by came an angel who had a bright key,
And he open’d the coffins and set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.
–from “The Chimney Sweeper”, Songs of Innocence
“When you don’t read, you don’t write.”–Helen Barolini, The Dream Book
The simple relationship of input to output, or ‘You don’t get something out, if you don’t put something in.’ It’s certainly easier to write if one has been ‘feeding oneself’ with ideas, images, subject matter background, and the views and approaches of other writers.
The fact is we learn from others and what they have done, said, and written before us. I’m sure you can recall, for instance–with little effort–your favorite poems and poets of childhood, school, university, or leisure reading . Reading others–especially the good and great writers–allows us to have contact with and become familiar with the sounds, images, ideas, styles, and sensibilities of those who have written before us. In other words, we read to learn and we read to learn to write.
What we, in turn, manifest in our own creative writing are often echoes, refinements, and nuances based on our choice of authors and readings. Most often, this is reflected in subject matter, diction, technique, and style choices.
If you look back at the great poets, they themselves frequently cite writers and works who influenced them. John Keats read Chapman’s Homer, then wrote a famous sonnet about his reading experience. T. S. Eliot poured much of his reading into his masterpiece The Waste Land as shown in its numerous allusions and satirical references to previous writers and their works.
So, who or what do you read that influences your writing? Emily Dickinson? e.e. cummings? Margaret Atwood? Quirky newspaper stories? Magazine articles about issues? Song lyrics? Online writing blogs? The possibilities are endless. What we read uniquely leaves its various influential, tell-tale marks and echoes in our writing inevitably.
“No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to [other] poets and artists.”–T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood
Many years ago, three score and four, to be exact. End of summer. My grandmother’s house on Sherbrook St. Being sent outside to play in the backyard so the adults could set up a surprise birthday party for me. I wandered out the gate, as I had been wont to do, and discovered a small boy, my age, playing down the lane. He had a large, well-used metal toy dump truck of old. We ended up playing together immediately, having a great free time, putting dirt in and out of the truck, managing to dirty our clothes in the process, of course.
Something signalled it was time to go, likely my grandmother’s voice calling my name. I began to walk back, but he wanted to follow me with his truck. Every time I looked back, he was still behind me, carrying the truck, and we eventually entered the back door of the house.
Inside was noisy with unfamiliar kids (I had never seen before) in party clothes, a cake on the table, the usual birthday decorations–balloons and the like. There was visible, palpable awkwardness as my grandmother questioned who this other boy was, my new friend. She commented on his grubbiness–same as mine, I thought. It didn’t bother me. I was happy he was there, too, for the party. But it was pointed out that he needed a gift to attend the party, and so he handed me his truck. I suddenly had its hugeness on my lap, amazed and overwhelmed by what seemed like the best possible gift in the world.
Then my grandmother curtly told him that the truck was old, dirty, and not suitable or good enough for admission to the event. The ragamuffin child was abruptly, and ignominiously escorted out, taking his truck with him. I truly did not want to see him go or be treated in that inexplicably harsh way. I believe I cried as the party tried to resume and all the other presents–much less impressive than his–were offered as new and better gifts of compensation.
My first remembered birthday. The boy I met down the lane. The one who wasn’t good enough to come to my party.
The first remembered gift of self. Torn away from me. The truck which made my three-year-old heart momentarily leap up with joy. My “Rosebud”. And my first lesson about social class. Katherine Mansfield’s “The Doll’s House”, Winnipeg ’50s. A little boy who wasn’t good enough to play with me, to be my friend, and who freely gave me his favorite toy of all. His most precious gift of self.
…………….
Today I wonder if he is still alive and if he, too, remembers this moment. How the rest of his day and life went. Whether he remembers the fun we had, and the boy he once befriended and gifted. And what gifts of self he himself may have later gone on to receive.
