To thine own self be true

Given the Internet, a hard copy set of an encyclopedia is no longer needed, but there are still several other helpful print books I may reach for when writing. Online definitions from various sources aside, the hardcover Gage Canadian Dictionary and The Concise Oxford Dictionary provide whatever basic definitions and reminders of spellings and pronunciations.

Nothing is worse than referencing a specific you know by sight but can’t name. Two useful visual dictionaries are Merriam-Webster’s Compact Visual Dictionary and What’s What: A Visual Glossary. I also still own a 1962 copy of the classic red and black paperbound I used in high school–The New American Roget’s College Thesaurus, the handiest-ever, easy-to-use thesaurus for looking up synonyms or more exact word choice. It is very simple and quite concise to use, quickly opening up vistas of language possibilities, meanings, and nuances. Definitely a desert island classic.

Two helpful softcover ‘bathroom’ or ‘waiting room’ language reference books are Word Nerd and Phraseology by Barbara Ann Kipfer. In order to use language fluently, it helps to know, understand, and appreciate the origins and meanings of common or famous expressions. Other titles such as 1000 English Idioms Explained or The Oxford Dictionary of Allusions cover more well-known phrases and basic allusions.

Of late, I have received many prompts and ideas for writing from books of quotations. Some of the better wide-ranging and comprehensive ones I have used include: The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations, Pepper’s 20th Century Quotations, Bloomsbury’s Thematic Dictionary of Quotations, The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women, and Partnow’s The New Quotable Woman.

Handbooks of various kinds might be referred to basic grammar questions. Beyond that, for more enthusiastic word fans, I would highly recommend the fascinating labor of love by the Crystal brothers Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary & Language Companion. Shakespeare, of course, was the ultimate poet who changed our language more than any other person in history. If ever I was to be asked for an example of the widest range of possibilities of the English language (beyond a dictionary or thesaurus), that would be the ultimate book. Great birthday or Christmas gift, by the way!

(bust of The Bard on one of my bookshelves)

Lines from “Shakespeare” by Matthew Arnold:

We ask and ask–Thou smilest and art still./Out-topping knowledge.

All pains the immortal spirit must endure,/All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,/Find their sole voice in that victorious brow.

(My first and still favorite movie version; Laurence Olivier’s performance in classic black and white, directed by himself, is the one which all subsequent performances have been evaluated)

“Not a whit, we defy augury; there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be.”

“The rest is silence.”–both quotes from Hamlet

There are a number of other memorable quotes in that play of Shakespeare’s, but those two form some kind of bottom-line. We will all die, some today, some tomorrow; and down the road at some time the rest will be silence for each of us. In that–another topic already covered–about the information/the known and mystery/the unknown–another basic perspective of/on life.

Perhaps the casualness of Hamlet’s “Let be” may strike one as odd (whereas others may fret and be stressed out about the possibility of personal mortality), but at the bottom of things–all mortals must accept their own natural limits and limitations. Things will unfold as they will–death is very much a part of life and ‘flow’/process. It is deeply built into our lives.

In the fall, I looked outside my window and saw a dead tree (a stump–the tree hewn down years ago). I saw flowers amazingly alive in an Edmo October, but knew they would be dead that weekend with a predicted low of -7C. I look about the room and see photos of dead parents, a painting by my wife’s dead aunt. I open the paper and read about another train wreck in which hundreds are suddenly extinguished. Halloween passes again with its skulls and ghosts. The ‘D’ word is suddenly mentioned often in the course of the day, a year, and so forth.

Instead of seeing life and death as separate experiences and states, I see them as interfused and mingled together throughout all our days, weeks, months, years, and lives. This vision being ever-constant, with the implied sudden, seemingly random, possibility of death.

I recently survived a near-miss collision with a rather large UPS van; death is always that close, that potentially snuffed-outable–what Frost talks about in “‘Out, Out–‘”. Hamlet, elsewhere in that play, says that a man’s life is similarly extinguishable, as potentially extinguishable as saying the word “One”. There’s nothing serious in mortality” as Macbeth concludes: “Out, out, brief candle”.

No, “Let be” indeed. A philosophic perspective and acceptance that in the midst of life, we are always, realistically/factually, also in the midst of death, or as Milton put it, living life “under the ribs of death.” Need we be bothered about this underlying reality or perspective? I think not. We may or will come to know more than we do, get whatever missing information or perspectives on both life and death. Some of the mysteries of life and death will continue to unfold the longer we live, along with more of whatever missing information. And, from this further information and understanding of these mysteries, a fuller and greater appreciation and savouring, perhaps, of the relative briefness, fragility, limits, ephemeralness, evanescent momentariness and transitoriness, and potential values and meanings of life, love, beauty, fuller consciousness, flow, process and unique person/life/presence.

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Very much–life and death are not simply separate experiences or entities. They are constantly intermingled and interfused throughout a human day and life. This awareness does, ironically, illustrate the kind of depth to our human experience and journey–a basic overarching perspective or ‘backdrop’, if you will.

But, I think, finally, the response, at least mine, to such a view or awareness–everything in a person’s life does come down to their fundamental consciousness, values and beliefs–as revealed in what might simply be called attitude.

Life is, also a simultaneously “wonderful world” as Louis Armstrong crooned. Or as W. H. Auden in “As I Walked Out One Evening” wrote: “Life remains a blessing/Although you cannot bless.” That is to say there are positive attitudes and experiences despite whatever negativity one may also be aware/conscious of. There is, unquestionably, the positive potential and experiences of health, good conversation, family, friends, pets, love, good luck, the arts, Nature, beauty in many forms, kindness, decency, civilized behaviors and practices, peace, etc. On most days of our lives, the glass is half-full, whether we are surviving, succeeding, or experiencing the extraordinary.

(A truly great 1981 movie(and play) classic about the right-to-die controversy: very funny, serious, beautiful and moving)

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,”
Rough-hew them how we will.”
-Shakespeare, Hamlet

We may be or feel limited by forces outside us–be they known or unknown–as in mystery, but we generally/most of the time have choices or options, as Shakespeare’s various characters often illustrate (“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves” (Julius Caesar). To a large extent–even within many/most circumstances, situations, and contexts–we have choices.

Although there was only a split second before the UPS van veered out of nowhere in front of me as I was travelling 50 km/hr. one recent summer, I did have about a second or less to react and slam on my car brakes and miraculously survive someone else’s irresponsibility/stupid/completely selfish move to ‘take me out’. There was a choice, albeit a brief, limited, limiting one.

Likewise, if you are told you may have cancer, you will likely have a series of choices–albeit difficult ones–to make in the process of your treatment. You can still “rough-hew” your limited, limiting choices in that apparently external “shaping” context. You might even say “No” or refuse treatment and choose to die on your own terms. True, as in the exceptional case of Whose Life is It Anyway? , you may find yourself in a medical or state system that has last call, or in the case of a no living will situation, be subject to others’ (often family’s) choices, but in most situations, you typically still have a choice and can call your own shots.

I use these extreme situations to point out my theme here. Otherwise, you are generally, through your life, left to make choices and decide on this or that, regardless of red tape and rules, for most of your life. As in: You chose your school, your relationships, your studies, your work, your home, your lifestyle to a large extent. No one else. You make or made your life, regardless of limiting factors (health, school or work restrictions, the limits and limitations of the people you threw your lot in with, etc.). Your life, your story is unique, your own. It was not authored and largely directed by outside forces, agencies, or mysteries.

In that, I think, a major, fundamental acceptance along the lines of what Shakespeare and Novalis wrote–character is destiny–regardless of the stars and whatever other external “divinity”.

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The Existentialists did make sense when I first encountered them in the ’60s, especially with their emphasis on human choice within absurdist modern life. The lessons of Shakespeare’s characters and many other character processes from works I taught in high school English confirmed the position above. To say nothing of what I have seen and experienced in my own life and those other lives around me.

“Some people like to make a little garden out of life and walk down a path.”

(arguably the greatest man in Canadian history who helped create, unite, and build this nation–we/the whole country would not be here today without his efforts and accomplishments; should great people be completely trashed when criticized by narrow single-themed political causes 150 years later and totally out of context?) visual excerpted and adapted from Mel Hurtig’s original labor-of-love Canadian Encyclopedia,still the best source of pre-21st century info on Canadian culture, history and the arts)

The sanctimonious loser-dopes who vandalized Sir John A. MacDonald’s statue in Montreal this weekend have zero credibility. They have no sense of Canadian history and who made it possible for this country to exist in the first place so that they could abuse free speech and break the law willy-nilly for selfish political cauaes they want to arbitrarily impose on everyone else.

Sir John A. was the chief founder of this nation and his actions led to the building of the CPR which built and bound this country from sea to sea and kept it from falling into the hands of the violent gun-crazy States. Canada would not be here without him and his contributions. Fact.

His constitutional efforts helped create Canada in the first place and his enforcement of the law in the West with the help of the RCMP brought law and order to that area so that decent settlers and developers could come and turn this wilderness into Canada as we know it today with all its civilized aspects and freedoms–the very ones vandals and political kooks want to burn to the ground.

It takes no brains to use divisive politics of a narrow stripe to take shots at people who were agents of their context, who also made Canada a great place to live–a privilege the lawless vandal dummies have no perspective on and can only do dirt on.

I have watched my grandson playing for about a year and come to the conclusion that our lives begin and continue as a series of projects. One of his earliest projects was stacking colored cups which he did for months in various ways. Later, he would over and over do puzzles of different kinds. Now when he finishes a project, he takes each one to his mother or father. He does not like to be interrupted and, like all toddlers, does not like to be thwarted or told “no”. (Like all of us, he enjoys his limited freedom, and does not suffer external or imposed limits and limitations easily.) Most of all, he, like all of us, enjoys being engaged, or ‘being/getting lost’ in a project.

In much the same way, a family dog does not like having the project of enjoying a meal being interrupted, as in when the meal is pulled away, signified usually by a growl. The squirrel outside in my yard does not understand, likewise, why I would use the garden hose on him as he tries to rip fabric strips off the swing set canopy. No one likes having their projects interrupted, especially when they are busy and engaged on some intent, goal, or ongoing pleasurable activity.

It is and has been, indeed personally, a life of projects. I think back to my collection of Classics Illustrated comics, or collecting 45s when I was 10 to 15. Other projects included getting through and out of high school and playing hockey as long as I could as a child (the rinks in our yard, the pickup games at the community club and a brief stint as a peewee goalie). Projects, projects. The girlfriends, friends, the school musical career, the folk music career, the nursing orderly and letter carrier stints, the band leader project (from 1968-2002), the textbook writing career (from 1978-2010), the teaching career (1972-2002), my ongoing epoch as a husband, the enhanced family project, movie collecting, stamp-collecting, poster-collecting, my ongoing project as a grandparent (player, performer, teacher), and so forth.

Yes, a life of projects. And, to think that it all began with some cups, some stacking rings, some puzzles, some toys, and a pet–the world of my grandson, and that of my mirrored childhood past, too. I don’t think it’s accidental that one of the most famous movie motifs, symbols, and moments is crystallized in the dropping of a snow globe and the utterance of “Rosebud” in Citizen Kane, one of the most famous films of all time. If you`ve seen the movie, you`ll recall that it was young Kane`s being interrupted and being wrested from his playing in the winter snow project that was the defining moment in his life and past. And what was Kane`s life after that? Nothing but a series of projects–Xanadu, the newspaper, his campaign to make Susan an opera singer, his failed political career.

Yes, a life of projects. Like all our own every day and over periods of our transitory lives. Why else do people have bucket lists of projects?

(consciousness, eventually anyway, combined with a positive good attitude;:Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travers in  the classic O Lucky Man!)

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
–Shakespeare, Hamlet

Much of our lives simply comes down to our consciousness, awareness, perceptions, and attitudes. We see ourselves, others, and the world outside us in terms of this “thinking”, however limited, limiting, or free and expansive (as in imaginative, intuitive, insightful, empathic).

To a large extent, then, what we are aware of, what we perceive, what we know, what we imagine is who or what we basically are, finally. That is our personal experience and, not necessarily anyone else’s (which is why accord, agreement, and common ground of whatever kinds are so de-isolating and desirable.)

So there is what we know (our consciousness) and how we view and respond to our daily experiences (our attitudes). A basic orientation, beyond this, is the proverbial glass half-full or half-empty. Attitude, then, may be considered to be a response to consciousness or a by-product of it. (This leads to some interesting positions or points, though, ironically, as in a following entry on response to death. For instance, it is possible one might still be basically positive–in attitude– despite an awareness of death,) Values and beliefs may also play roles in determining attitude.

Interestingly, one can also reverse the above and say that attitude leads to consciousness as in, say, an open-minded, curious, scholarly approach to life. So in the end, the two aspects inform and interfuse with each other. One may simply have more or less consciousness or knowledge (called information elsewhere in this blog) and relatively more or less optimism or pessimism in one’s attitude.

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For me, these two qualities are pretty basic in life experience. They also give a means by which to view and understand self and others, especially when it comes to limits and limitations vs. relative freedom/s.

(a Steinbeck classic about several individuals’ dreams of freedom and their various limits and limitations)

Each person has limits, limitations, and whatever freedom/s. In the context and process of each of our lives, we bump into these limits on a daily basis. Sometimes the limits are interior (self-caused/generated), other times external (caused by others or various outside situations and contexts).

I think what most of us want is pretty much what you see in the free play of a toddler (which is why many people revert to childish behaviors, incidentally). We desire to be free to pursue (what I call elsewhere in this blog) our projects and processes, without interference from others or external forces and agencies.

I think you can catch glimpses of this child-like freedom in the experience of love, for instance, when two people ‘play’ and free each other’s (what I would call) inner child. Something there is, very deep, which wants to be that free all over again (even to have, say, the freedom often experienced in university life).

And so, daily, we are happy for and look forward to our freedoms–whether it is the life we lead after work, the free coffee paid forward, or the anticipated holiday or trip.
Freedom, then, is largely the goal of many people in our society and world.

I will just add that freedom is also an inner experience, which may in fact be more important and potentially satisfying than any of the external ones exampled above. (We do, after all, live and experience largely ‘inside’.) The freedom to imagine and express is a very heady one, indeed.

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N.B./ We are all, at any given moment, either limited or free in many ways. How we feel about these is potentially a catalyst for change, improvement, and betterment. And certainly, each person’s notion or conception of freedom will vary from one individual to the next. (As seen in the different dreams of the characters in Of Mice and Men).

It is always a refreshing pleasure to encounter a strong, entertaining, well-made film at the movie theatres in a dark age when Bad Grandpa tops the weekend box office and coarseness, crudeness, violence, and phony over-the-top effects and explosions rule.

In contrast, All Is Lost has a simple, but engrossing storyline: one man`s yacht begins to take on water in the middle of the Indian Ocean and he tries to survive numerous setbacks against impossible odds. The film is remarkable for its conflicts, crises with realistic effects, a believable performance by a very vulnerable, older-looking Robert Redford, and no language except for one curse and a few sentences of opening voice-over monologue. Otherwise, the stereo sound figures prominently with boat creakings, squall roar, and continuous water noise. The action takes place in both full sunlight and night or storm darkness.

Let`s put it this way about the plot: anything that can go wrong does and–although the man`s common sense, intelligence, and available technology work sometimes–nature offers little forgiveness to a mariner who could not possibly foresee all the negative things that could potentially befall him. For that matter, the modern commercial world with its large, seemingly unmanned cargo ships and adrift cargo containers of useless runners project a similar, care-less indifference about the havoc and plight experienced at the level of individuals such as the man.

As always, truly good acting communicates through facial expression and movement. Along the way in this film, the viewer sees Redford`s man as alternately energetic, hopeful, determined, resourceful, unbeaten, depressed, amazed, embattled, exhausted, and defeated. It is hard to imagine this unique modern variation of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea being performed as well and as convincingly by anyone other than Redford–one of the few remaining true stars of the previous movie generation still working.

Without revealing the ending, I will remark that it is a wish fulfillment–the very thing that “our man”–as he is identified in the credits–and conventional audience most desire, and at the same time it is quite realistic and plausible. Very well-executed.

All Is Lost demonstrates finally, that good movies are still possible if the storylines are strong and believable, and if the conflicts are simple, strong, and timeless. They are still possible today without resorting to non-stop swearing, continuous one-second shots, loud music, nudity, horror, crude humor, animation, 3-D, or over-the-top violence. Instead, All Is Lost shows us how powerful, memorable, and effective films can still be, especially if you have an entertaining believable human story, the right actor (Redford), and right director–J.C. Chandor.