To thine own self be true

is believing that other people will be here forever whenever we want to see or talk with them at our convenience.

it is an honest wind
that blows the grass
across these tombs

the sun at noon
knows not leaf
nor lie

geese above
V their way
across a sky

and tell of time
for stars
and time for hope

there is truth
to every absence
beyond despair

is not the limits and limitations that others impose on us, but those we freely choose ourselves, limiting the innumerable possibilities, limiting ourselves and our potential, limiting the experience and joy of true freedom. The best there is and can be. As D.H. Lawrence and William Blake put it, the limitations of ego and reason straight-jacketing the joyous inner child or inner self.

(from 1994’s The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age–the most prophetic, significant book on the decline of reading and ‘old school’ literacy in our times: what got displaced, what has been lost  and replaced in a world of e-media)

-Language is the soul’s ozone layer and we thin it at our peril.

-Serious reading is above all an agency of self-making.

-Syntactic masonry is already a dying art.

-We can define imagination as the power to conceive and deploy representations, to combine elements–images, sounds, words–into coherent patterns.

-What you start with are pattern-making impulses of imagination.

-The technologies are spoilers.

-Turning our backs on the full sensory business of living, we have installed another-proxy-world between ourselves and that original place.

-The dollar is betting, as it always does, against the soul. Soul waxes in private, wanes in public.

…………………………………………

This is a very important, insightful book on reading and e-mediated experience. Birkerts contends that the saturating, virtual-based e-mediated experience erodes live in-person human presence, actual primary human experience, and the basic authority of the individual. Young contemporary e-based users have a fragmented sense of time rather than a big picture-greater context sense of history, tradition, and cumulative organic process. They have little sense of the possibility of a comprehensible unified whole and no informed sense of either a personal or collective future. With little sense of underlying patterns or structure, they see the world as basically relative.

They have a reduced attention span and, impatiently, are increasingly unable to experience natural empathy or to do sustained inquiry.  They engage in limited/limiting shallow, glib, cliched unrealistic entertainments and shun deeper analysis and critical thinking. Their language tends to be dumbed-down literal plainspeak; vertical engagements involving  the use of discourse, irony, ambiguity, paradox, wit, figurative language, metaphors, depth and meaning (via reading, books, the arts) are too difficult for many.. Overall, they choose the habitual collective e-hive over true autonomy and independence.

Re. the two different modes and paradigms, our society is turning its back on the primary world and the primary (individual) imagination as well as the fundamental durational and biological rhythms of natural process. We are losing the assumption of underlying coherence and wisdom (which is an understanding of the underlying laws and patterns of human experience).                                                                            

The e-mediated world is also an unnatural proxy world which short-circuits the pattern-making impulses of primary imagination, bestowing, instead, autonomy and authority to gadgets. Because human experience is increasingly fundamentally e-mediated, humans increasingly do not know each other via/as immediate presence. Old concepts such as truth, soul, and destiny are likewise becoming meaningless. The e-habit “distances the self from the primary things that give meaning and purpose to life. We are cut off from beauty, from love, from true passion, and from the spiritual.”

(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.

I never used to keep notes on my days through university, but when I became a teacher in 1972, I began to organize my days more, knowing that I, like so many adults, had lousy memories. I began to write down dates on the calendar and leave notes for myself.In 1982, Post-Its came to Canada and the process got easier, especially in conjunction with day calendars which I started using in the late ’70s.

Life was so busy with family, deadlines, teaching, writing books, and conferencing that it was absolutely necessary to know what was happening or due on any given day.
Though retired from teaching in 2002, I still use day calendars and Post-its (the latter for each day to help keep me organized as ever. I find that there are still many things to get done, many important dates and occasions to remember, and a need for lists.

Looking back on my life, I would have to say that, apart from imagination, dreams, sheer will, and hard work, that at least 50% of my various successes have had to do with organization and memory devices such as Post-its that keep me focused and aware of what is fully going on and happening in my life and work. (I would also add that keeping day calendars allows one to go back years later to look up events and verify dates which add another layer of structure and permanence to this whole process.)

If I was to make one suggestion to people who are mired and unfocused, it would be to buy and use Post-its and day calendars. You will never forget anything again and have an invaluable record of your life process. And you will get more done and have a stronger sense of present, past, and future in your working and personal life.

I rejoice in my fortunate portions, appreciating a multitude of dumb luck thusfar.

is that they will let you down 9 times out of 10 when you want to get something done, when you need help, when you’re trying to give them some business, when you have an agreement with them, when they’re supposed to call you, show up, etc. They simply can’t be counted on except in rare, exceptional cases.
That is one reason I try to have as little to do with others for the most part. Myself I can count on! And I have long learned to do for myself as much as possible to avoid disappointment, letdowns, hassles, and the limits and limitations of others. I just don’t need the weaknesses and failings of others.
And that is why I also tip for any good service when people try to do a good job and put themselves out for me. I really appreciate people who are good, nice, and who work hard. Because it just ain’t the norm anymore these daze.

(an aside: Never forget humble or poor working-class roots, and the people closest to you who worked hard to give you the opportunity, luxury, and privilege (they never had) to go to university and pursue a career you wouldn’t otherwise have had. One’s success is often built on the love and foundation provided by decent, underprivileged parents.)

We all have choices, options, opportunities, and possibilities. When I got to U of W, my life changed in so many ways for the better. Suddenly I had time to focus on reading literature and raising my sightlines in terms of values, the beginning of beliefs, etc.
My focus then was incoming ideas and views of human nature and life; this propelled me into teaching literature for the next 30 years in high schools. This thinking led to larger understandings and greater confidence which, in turn, led to the writing and editing of school textbooks and presentations at teacher conferences beginning in 1978.

I was a born teacher with much content and subject matter in my background, unlike English teachers today who are more tech-based with, typically, a much narrower subject-area base. Today, through my poetry, blogs, and workshops, I continue to stretch adults; also, in my role as a grandfather, I stretch two keen and curious grandsons.

Over the years, thusly, I became a collector of many books, much literature, movies, and music (a heady mix of pop, jazz, and classical). I’ve always been interested in the arts (including painting and sculpture), and my lifelong journey has always been squarely centered on the fine arts.

I would say, though, that this plane of higher regard has focused more on inner, spiritual nourishment after 1990 and retirement from teaching in 2002. Lately, that emphasis has grown stronger into a very comfortable zone with no discernible missing pieces of any consequence.

I still stretch and support those I have contact with (recently through manuscript editing) and find it easy to talk directly to other writers on an easy, intimate level with no obstructions. After all, we poets are most concerned with inner matters and have a mutual interest in Beauty and Truth.

“I love a broad margin to my life.’–Thoreau

I have pretty much limited my contacts with no-growth, limited, limiting others who are far less deep and significant than they imagine themselves to be. I have lots of time, more than ever, to reflect, meditate, and connect with nature. Can one ever have too much free time? Ha! Dumb question, if you know how to focus, follow your bliss, and actually do the many things you desire and choose to do.

So, as the world dumbs down, I have maintained my natural curiosity and desire to learn new things every day. I am constantly ‘putting things in’ via my studies, preferred sensibility, beliefs, and values.
“Education doesn’t change life much. It just lifts trouble to a plane of higher regard.”–Robert Frost

I think he’s right and that educating oneself does raise one, too, to a higher plane of regard. That responsibility is on the individual for growth and development, especially of the inner, spiritual kind. It’s all a matter of how and if one wants to really and fully live. A higher plane of regard? Who wouldn’t want to live there over the years and every day?

(story on pages 172-177)

(one night a boy meets Dark Pony asks to be taken to Sleepy Town)

(They pick up a girl and then a dog they meet)

(They pick up a gray squirrel next and then approach Sleepy Town; there is one more picture–which is too precious-of all five of them asleep when they arrive at Sleepy Town)

……………………………………………………….

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”–Robert Frost

The first school story which moved, influenced, inspired me, and gave me great pleasure. “Dark Pony”.
From The New Basic Reader: The New Our New Friends, W.J. Gage, 1950s.
“Dark Pony”–a folk tale, previously published in Little Folks Magazine.
Likely illustrated by Evelyn Copelman.
You can still find this old reader for sale on ABEbooks.