To thine own self be true

(a quiet moment with Peanut in her bone sweater; she came from a breeder of Bichon-Shitzus)

(Pepper on right, came from another breeder, and was a very intelligent dog; Scamp, left, my dog from grade1 to grade 8 kept this only child company; he was an adopted mongrel who had some Corgi in him; he sits on stairs by a window where he could see people come in the yard or pass by on the sidewalk; I often joined him there to take in the sights)

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Brings back a lot of memories of walking the family dog Pepper, a female miniature poodle for some 17 years of her 18 year-life. Dogs are great–they connect you with Nature and become family members for life–but they are a great responsibility, walking them every day, letting them out, taking them to the groomer and the vet monthly. (The saddest part is when they pass–their loss can be as moving as losing a human connection.)

Anyway, it all came back this morning, walking my son’s dog Peanut outside. Cold as it was, she loved it (as do all dogs)! There are so many smells and sights waiting to be taken in. Again, walks are something you have to do every day. My friends Ken and Melanie walk their latest dog Alfie about 3, sometimes 4 times a day. If they go on a trip, they have to board the dog (which is a forever dilemma for dog owners in this situation. It can be a traumatic experience for the dog to upset its routine and give a sense of abandonment.)

Nothing like owning a dog or having one in the house. Changes the atomosphere hugely and enhances it. They can be trained and their gratitude is obvious every time you let them out, walk them, feed them, play with them, or come home to them. Their unconditional love and loyalty often exceeds that between human beings. No, there’s nothing quite like a dog. Very rewarding and healthful, as doctors remind us by repeatedly reminding us how they bring down blood pressures. They have been proven to be very therapeutic when introduced into hospitals and old folks homes.

(the Play part; at Craigellachie, B.C.–scene of the driving of the Last Spike and climax of the building of the CPR; trains have long figured as part of my past and my Dad once worked for CPR and had a pass that took me on my first memorable trip–in the summer after grade 5, from Winnipeg through the mountains to the lotus land of Vancouver. Two years ago I had occasion to visit a memory from that trip when I, full circle played the Stanley Park pitch and putt course again  some 57 years later.)

Presence. Process, Play, Pleasure, Possibilities.

“That is all /Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”–John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

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In the 5 P’s, everything you might care to know about me, my past, or my approach to life.

(Harry Rasky’s book about the long withheld 1981 documentary on Cohen)

A most unusual process. In previous sleeps, I have met Dylan, Lightfoot, on and on…Last night Leonard Cohen and Sinclair Ross–separate meetings, visits.

Cohen was 45, looking much as he did in Harry Rasky’s never-released-on-DVD documentary “The Song of Leonard Cohen”. It is a very puzzling, disappointing, and somewhat unflattering portrait of both men as Rasky tries to schmooze with and get close to Cohen who becomes a role more than anything else, only becoming more open when his old friend Irving Layton barges into his apartment with his usual flamboyance like a circus wagon.

The Cohen I met admitted there were some problems with the documentary, but ultimately didn’t know why Rasky had withheld it from release today. He was fairly low key and cooperative. One interesting discovery was of a little-known album Cohen had recorded for an older label like Folkways in which he crooned a number of older songs along the lines of “The Tennessee Waltz” which he later put on a live album.

We talked of poetry and eventually I spoke a little about how I wrote. It was only then that his ‘crap detector’ emerged as he asked me questions about why this or that worked for me. I could see that nothing was ever easy or fixed about the way he himself approached his craft which probably accounted for the duality and irony of his poems and songs.

It was a brief meeting, but much more friendly and instructive than the cat-and-mouse, ‘put-on’ documentary that Rasky had once spent many months on.

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Sinclair Ross was a shorter encounter. He was soft-spoken and somewhat cautious about revealing details of his life. He was a more reserved man, most likely with a stranger in this case. “Why would anybody ever want to know about me?” was his most telling remark.

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Interesting to go back 4 years later, one after Cohen’s death to revisit this dream. He obviously influenced me more than any other Canadian poet. I once owned a portrait of him I had bought in the long-gone Rocco’s Studio on 118 Avenue (in much better days when I worked a casual mailman in the summer of 1971.).

Before that, I had sung some of his songs at a U of W  coffeehouse, and played “Suzanne” when it was a radio hit for Rex Harrison’s son Noel in the ’60s. When I played it in my Grand Centre band in 1973 at a gig, the drummer made a special point of telling me it was “a pretty song”.

It took till the ’80s to finally see Cohen in concert here in Edmonton. He was in good form after releasing The Future album; it was a comeback for him. But he had many more miles to go including his drying-out sojourn to Mt. Baldy with the monks, his being fleeced by his female manager, his return to publishing and the concert stages, which this time won him huge world-wide success. He went on to become an icon.

There is apparently one more book coming out this year and we may eventually see the weak Rasky documentary as well as a commermorative Canadian coin and stamp. I suspect Columbia will release a box set at some point with many extras. Should be interesting. I still am lucky to own two signed books and a number of unique Cohen items. But, looking back, I should never have given away the Cohen portrait to another teacher at McNally before I moved to Page. One of many mistakes and sincere regrets over the long haul. More on Cohen to come later….

My father, Delmar (Del) Vernon Davies (1926-1998), in Royal Canadian Navy (Sept. 9, 1943 to Apr. 23, 1946 and–in its Reserve–Sept. 13, 1960 to Sept. 12, 1965). He also served in the Royal Canadian Air Force from Mar. 29, 1951 to Jan. 20,1957 and the Royal Canadian Navy–Reserve–Sept. 13, 1960 to Sept. 12, 1965.

We/they were all young once. Like many other vets, he would have been appalled by ongoing government withdrawal of support for veterans’ health and services. He was a very witty man who loved old movie classics, music, dancing, travel, animals, and Nature. Significantly, he instilled in me a great appreciation of irony, humor, and perspective.

Peanut. Female, part Bichon, part Shizu.
A love sponge if ever there was one.

”Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.’–Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

First posed in 1865, this question has been the central preoccupation of twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers and poets–the central question of personal identity.

When we write, it goes without saying that we create something out of nothing. As artists or makers, we make something new and original each time we write. Although our poem may contain feelings, ideas, a story, a social comment or criticism, humor or satire, it is first and foremost our expressive writing on a topic. When readers encounter our poem, they not only form some response to the work as well as the voice, mask, or persona ‘speaking’, but also to the individual person responsible for its composition.

I believe we ‘write ourselves into existence’, into the awareness or consciousness of others, into our social context or times whenever we write. Each poem says something about who we are as people in process–our views, attitudes, values, character, and sensibilities. “I write, therefore I become.” (That is, when we write, we move from being to becoming, thereby expressing our unique personal identity.)

Quite apart from our desire to entertain and share thoughts, feelings, and perspectives with others, we also write to clarify ourselves–that is, our deepest most innermost selves to ourselves and to others–readers or an audience. In that sense, the creative writing of poetry can be seen as a means for answering the Caterpillar’s question, ‘the Big One’–as to who we really are. And in that process, we actualize our creative and expressive potential, simultaneously identifying and realizing ourselves each time, with each new poem.

“The goal of the [life or writing] journey is to discover yourself as consciousness.”
-Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion

The best of human beings in daily life remains live in-person presence coupled with the sharing and mutual exchange of the gifts of self. When these are, maximally, the best gifts of self, then there is nothing greater, finer, or more selfless or more truly loving.

As I wrote earlier in this blog:

Give all, give all for love
Our maximal gifts of self.
Hold nothing back
And never question why.

“And this gray spirit yearning in desire/To follow knowledge like a sinking star,/Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.”–Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”

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Very much the possibilities in context, process, and choices at all times. Very much who considers, contemplates, and responds to these, personally or individually. And so you are back to the person gazing, pondering, reacting to whatever. And I think the imagination of that person, finally, the capacity to imagine and empathize. (I will just add that you can’t empathize without imagination or exercises/’exorcises’ of imagination.) What makes life so interesting is the individual’s processing of the information of possibilities (e.g., life, love, language, nature), what can or might be done, what patterns, understandings, and insights that emerge, and finally whether that individual can articulate or express those (sometimes creatively, sometimes practically).

So, possibilities–an infinite number thereof with the interesting, fascinating aspect of a human imagination and sensibility responding to those, and then what happens as a result–a play, a dance, a love affair, a new career, an enhanced relationship, a developing talent, a facility to do and accomplish certain unique things. Quite wide open really. And again, back to possibilities. Possibilities hidden, inherent, untapped, never previously explored, or articulated, possibly even shared.

And the imagination, as Walt Whitman put it–“I am large, I contain multitudes”–an idea echoed by Northrop Frye in The Educated Imagination about the human imagination ‘swallowing’, subsuming everything, or at least as many possibilities as it desires or wishes, and being able to share–through teaching, through creativity, through example with others. An internalization followed by an outward expression and sharing thereof. Much like the gifts of others assimilated, then reciprocated or broadcast, expressed and shared with others. The egoic-based trip initially, the individual process, the personal journey then turned outward toward the world and others.

I was thinking earlier this morning about being a human silo, a depository of life’s information and knowledge, understandings and insights–how this potential is ultimately ‘tappable’ like, metaphorically, any other kind of natural (we are of nature) resource.
People talk of great minds, genius, dreamers or visions, but it is very much true. Imagination-centered, rather platonically incidentally, a kind of pureness and primariness of response and agency. It is that that creates or facilitates–a readiness, a capacity and confidence, to assume and express the universe, Prufrockily,

And so it is that the educated (as Frye put it) or the enhanced and developed imagination–an ultimate form or organ of consciousness facilitates ‘the way’ to all possibilities, to deal with all and any changes, challenges, limits, limitations, or difficulties. It is the transcendent and most ascendant aspect of the human being, coupled with conscious or unconscious will to survive and strive for (very Tennyson’s “Ulysses”)–Imagination, Will (including choices) and Spirit as One. In that possibility alone , the most integrated possible form of individual, person, and human life.

it is the dream or illusion that is most beautiful and true, particularly in its conscious/ly realized forms. In literature, in music, in art, in architecture, in film, in Nature, and Love.

As Thomas Wolfe said, “For if a man should dream of heaven and waking, find within his hand a flower as token that he had really been there–what then, what then?”

could care less about the de-icer being poured onto sidewalks. They lacked the imagination to see the problems that will arise when pets’ paws walk thru it, or when kids fall on it, or when people get the damn corrosive stuff on their clothes and boots. Bad enough vehicles will rust away faster thanks to this incredibly stupid move. My Xmas wish for council members is that they get this crap poured on their sidewalks, driveways, and roads around their houses several times.