To thine own self be true

Memories tend to be sans words; more images than anything else.
Smells are hard-wired. Waking up to the smell of cigarettes, coffee, and toast.
Of those three, it is the smell of toast that takes me back to waking up, my parents in the room getting their breakfasts and getting ready to go to work. my dad trudging off into wintry morns–a blast of cold air briefly intruding on the deep warmth of mornings waking up inside. Me the one to stay home.

Of course, violent individual behavior manifests itself either through violence toward others (e.g., swearing, sadism, killing)or toward oneself (e.g., suicide).
One reason for violence toward others is to get money, possessions, or property (e.g., land, house).
Another, more general reason has to do with ego, power, and control–the desire to use, manipulate, and control others.
Which is why some people ‘snap’ as in the case of a husband whose wife is going to divorce him, thereby exposing or humiliating him/his image, going to get custody of the kids, going to get a material settlement of some kind. His ego can’t stand it and he wants to maintain control over his situation, his marriage, his wife and family, his property, and so he asserts his control by ‘showing her’ she can’t do this to him. He will have ‘the last word’; he will ‘win’ and so he resorts to primitive instinct, killing her.
In the case of a wife with three kids who no longer has a personal life or much personal freedom, she, too wants to dispose of her burdens and regain control of her life and so she selfishly drowns them.
Ego, power, control. These three drive a lot of personal violence on an individual level.

On a larger level, the deadly combo of ego, power and control can be seen in cults, or in nations (e.g., Hitler, Papa Doc). The big three can destroy countries (e.g., Russia, Cuba) and people in large numbers (think WW1). Often there is, as I’ve said above, an egotistical desire for land and conquest.

Most human beings desire control over their situations in daily life. Some also aspire to the power to push around or control as many people ‘under’ them as they can.

And children often experience this situation/context, too, once they become more conscious of their ego expressing/manifesting itself–desiring as much freedom as they can get– controlling parents, other kids, teachers. They often rebel at a certain preschool age, wanting to be free ‘to do their own thing’ without the interference and control of adults. It all starts there, so to speak–this triumvirate discussed above applied to family or home, even at a young age.

So, if you want to get pretty basic in discussing human behavior, situations, nature, psychology, and choices, there you have it on a small and large scale–ego, power, and control.

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On a personal level, I am as egotistical as anyone else trying to live their own lives freely from the power and control of others. Some of these I have long escaped (a 9 to 5 teaching job being controlled by principals, school boards, parents, and government–politics goes with the territory of work). Others I have not escaped (Revenue Canada quarterly GST payments and year-end tax, monthly bills), but the latter generally do not put any kind of serious crimp on my relative individual freedom.

Egotistically speaking otherwise, I am free, like many, to express myself through talk and writing. I am no longer restricted by educational publishers, though these tended to take their cues from me for 30 years which speaks to the amount of control and power I had with them in terms of textbook projects–all which I personally created and initiated.

As a teacher in the classroom, I benevolently used my power and control to maintain and facilitate civil classroom behavior and discussion. I taught students how to be autonomous, free, and powerful themselves through use of language in speaking, writing, listening, even viewing.

Though a servant of the system, I called most of my own shots and maintained a steady flow of creativity, sharing, and publication in directions I wanted to go. I can’t, on balance, complain about not having enough freedom. And I always exercised my own major life choices, retiring early at 52 from ‘the machine’, for example.

Now retired for 14 years, I choose not to have much to do with groups, crowds or organizations (except the Stroll of Poets which affords me enough opportunities to read, do workshops, and publish–again on my own terms). For it is in groups, crowds, and organizations that you often find the ego, power, and control games automatically. Someone always wants to control and use others, and to be the big cheese.

As for violence, it has never interested me as any kind of productive or humane choice In and of itself. One pities victims and helps if possible, naturally, but it takes certain kinds of unique helping, patient persons to make a difference in these cases. Alternately, I have always aspired to better, loftier things right from a young age: humoring or entertaining others, enjoying music and the pleasures of all arts, developing consciousness about myself, others, history, human nature, and Life.

I think of all the great geniuses who have influenced and civilized me: Michelangelo, Beethoven, Mother Teresa, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, on and on. All those kinds of role models and inspirations who have suggested that being true to oneself and developing consciousness are much more exciting possibilities of Life.

These daze, in the space I’m in, it is not hard to avoid crowds and people I choose to have nothing to do with. It’s a luxury, in fact, knowing exactly what you like and don’t like; what gives you pleasure as opposed to what bothers.

I look around and see no shortage of people ‘pig-piling’ as Frank Lloyd Wright called it. But, occasionally, on the tube, I see some old geezer living in a solitary cabin with his dog, looking blissfully happy, far from the social world of ego, power, and control. Both lifestyles are choices after all. Yet my only-child heart, spirit, and soul will always side with the geezer who seems most content and satisfied with no falseness, no limiting roles, no power and control by others in his life. Human violence having become a complete non-entity and non-existent destructive force in his world by his choice alone.

quickly creates irony and ironic humor in one.”–RD

(Playing matching memory game with grandson 1 on a sunny Sat. afternoon. If you ever want to get close to grandkids or preschoolers, you must always play on the floor–their level/world. The only exception is reading to them with them on your lap or beside you )

ps/ He doubled my score–good (visual) memory already.He later beat me twice at checkers. He’s enthusiastically entering the game-phase now. Grandson 2 up and walking and starting to say words. He’ll enjoy and remember Xmas this year. Where does the time go?

The wonderfully funny Harris on Barney Miller. There was never a show in which he wasn’t funny for all seasons of the show. One of my favorite black actors along with the great Sidney Poitier.

In deep November there is disbelief
A loss of faith that winter, not yet here,
Will go about its business and be brief.
Instead the season generates a fear
That winter, once in place will stay that way
Forever–cold and bleak, cheerless and stark–
As icy blasts relentlessly hold sway,
Consigning us forever to the dark.
But then December comes along, and lo!
What lights are these that sparkle, clear and bright?
Instead of darkness, there’s a happy glow
Of red and green that glistens through the night,
And where we feared that coldness might prevail
The warmth of love tells quite a different tale!

–R. Glenn Martin

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Glenn was my ED Curriculum and Instruction ( i.e., how to teach English) prof at U of A in 1971-2 A.D. He published my first articles in Alberta English, notably one on Canadian literature. Glenn was a generally genial gentleman and a long-time friend. He was a Harvard grad and took a class with Robert Frost who encouraged the students to write poetry. (Frost sent him a Christmas card.) Glenn and I shared a great love of poetry and we often talked of Emily Dickinson. In his last good year, I escorted him to the Edmonton Symphony and we dined out each time. The last time I saw him in hospital, he was happily in his own world, but sort of recognized me and whistled (quite accurately) the melody of a Beethoven piece. (His favorite composer on whom he lectured via a U of Ex Extension class.) It was my honour to read the eulogy at his funeral. He was a brilliant, witty, kind man who talked me into staying in my first/junior high student teaching round when I wanted to quit. After that, I was the only one who ever sent him a Xmas card every year, something he noted and appreciated. One of my literary heroes and major influences, remembered this Saturday winter morn.

From a mere 63 years ago.
How to make a decoration at home.
Supplies needed : 1 empty toilet paper roll, one piece of Xmas wrapping paper, a piece of ribbon, scissors (to cut the paper to size), glue, and awl (to punch the ribbon holes)

Trudeau who is finally doing something positive for the economy, okaying two pipelines to help create jobs and put food on the table for families, finds himself being called a traitor by eco-green radicals and natives. There will be protests and police and RCMP will have to maintain law and order when this construction begins.  Eco-thugs, vandals, and criminals will become martyrs and ‘heroes’. Agenda vs. agenda = political conflict and unnecessary violence. Politicizing = chaos, lawlessness, and crazies running amok

“Nothing is what is not.” “Fair is foul and foul is fair”–Macbeth.

On another, more simpler level, a cop saves a cat in distress from its meth-owner. The boyfriend comes home and complains the cat’s gone, the one he and the meth owner were prepared to let the cat die. Voila, another political conflict with the cop being reprimanded for saving the life of a defenceless, dying animal. Cat owners rightly side with the cop, not the dopes who were allowing the cat to die.

Again politicization on a simple, common-sense case. The owners should be glad the cop saved the cat and had started to nurse it back to health. No perspective. No real responsibility. Only selfishness and stupidity. And voila politics and politicization again.

Absurd and all-too-common these daze. No common sense, Only agendas, complaining, and blaming. Mass stupidity and ignorance is the order of the day.
Animals and children continue to die right and left because every situation is  being prioritized.

You’re doomed regardless of what you do today. Not the first or last time individuals have been and will continue to be pilloried for doing the right thing and helping others. People’s inhumanity to other people and animals makes countless millions mourn.

Rejecting the d-hive paradigm
and prevailing winds of
“All’s right with the world”–
the ear candy,
grasshopper minds,
vested interests,
lowest common denominator.
My very free will transcends
a cognitive dissonance
and depressive realism,
moves instead
toward sweetness and light,
Buddha nature,
first magnitude,
binary stars,
the je ne sais quoi and
ad libitum of
blue-sky thinking,
the entre nous of
high kindred spirits,
savor vivre,
and magic hour.

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(“I am large….I contain multitudes”
-Walt Whitman)

Christmas spirit. Wonder and joy: a no-brainer.

(These kinds of traditional seasonal store services have long provided many special family memories of the best of kids’ early years. A great picture’s worth a thousand words and feelings.)