To thine own self be true

After an interesting lunch at Asian Village, sat out back on the patio, enjoying the unbreezish springish warmth, watching a new squirrel, listening to the different bird sounds against the quietude, sipping tea from the Empress in Victoria. Worked well. A palpable still-point at the centre of the turning world. Nice to sl-o-w down after a busy week. A chance to sync with Nature, a pleasant engaging world far from the madding crowds and Friday traffic.

“Runnin’ everywhere at such a speed/Till they find there’s no need”–John Lennon, The Beatles’ “I’m Only Sleeping”

than reaching the top of the ladder and discovering you’re on the wrong wall.”–Joseph Campbell

(Also when you’re not getting back anything resembling the great amount you’re giving, sharing, and putting out for others.)

(previously posted on November 18, 2012)

1. What is my bliss? What do I like? What am I into? What am I passionate about? What can I lose myself in/distract myself with? What is positively engaging, immersive, and distracting in my life?

2. What am I good at? What are my strengths? What do I have to offer others and the world?

3. Who can I rely on and trust? What for? To what extent can I do as completely as possible for myself? What are my current (known) limits and limitations?

4. What missing pieces do I still have in my life? Do I need to address any isolation, alienation, or loneliness? How might I do this?

5. What specifically is ‘to do’, remains undone, unfinished, and unfulfilled?

6. What do I have to look forward to today, soon, or in the near future?

(Previously posted on November 27, 2012)

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

(previously posted on October 23, 2012)

“Infinite possibility is good, not bad.”–James Gleick, The Information

What do you know? What do you want to know or need to know in a given moment or situation? ‘The Information’.

You could be an executor dealing with a parent’s estate and phoning various people and companies to get information. You could be a parent telling a child how something works or why something is the way it is. You could be the same child learning what happens when you topple building blocks. You could be a student taking an evening class on intuition, trying to learn more about how it may work.

But always the quest to know, to get, to use, or understand some kind of information.
I think even the quest for relationships or a special someone who might be your ultimate partner in life falls along the same lines as another kind of information we seek. Getting to know someone, find out about someone, getting close/r to them. In our relationship choices, we want to know what makes that person ‘tick’. We want to see if they sync with us in attitudes, behavior, values, and tastes. ‘The Information’, the lowdown on them.

So much then, simply comes down to the information about something, someone, some process, some area. Our perpetual and restless curiosity that keeps us searching daily and over long periods of time.

Some of these information quests are themed as in the case of say an image or adopted totem, such as owls, that seems to ‘take over” our interests and sometimes become passions, even obsessions. And, in turn, the information we seek tells us much about ourselves–who we are, what makes us ‘tick’, what motivates us, and what makes us unique as individuals. The information that defines us.

A day in the life. I need to begin it by writing this blog entry about information, a topic which has emerged early in my morning coffee consciousness and ruminations. Information that bubbled up. Information to be recorded. Information to be shared. Like all the other info of this blog so far…

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Many thanks to my writing partner and friend for his timely Christmas 2011 gift of a book, The Information by James Gleick, which has continued to resonate and produce more awareness of how much of our lives and life quests center around information. The author’s bent is historical, scientific and mathematical, but the potential spinoffs from the thesis are potentially astounding and downright epiphanic. It is no wonder that information technology and e-information have become so central to our age. I believe there is a power and application well beyond the book’s initial intentions which I have tried to articulate in this entry above.

Our minds, bodies, sense, feelings, spirits, and souls are constantly processing information from a world of sources. Life and whatever understandings we arrive at are not just one thing but a multiplicity of layers and levels of experiential information. I believe that once we understand and appreciate that we are receiving and sending information from many sources that we will better understand ourselves and how we might become more attuned to that wealth of information which many times threatens to swamp us and literally boggle our minds. (“I am large…I contain multitudes.”–Whitman)

Ironically, the topic of this entry connects with a previous entry about poetry in that there is potentially a poetic quality to the information and its balancing by our inherent editing selves. In that sense, information can become poeticized or expressed poetically by those with capacity for language and a certain kind of communication. (What Dickinson called telling the truth, but telling it “Slant”.)

To adapt an old quotation (“The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your thoughts.”). The quality of your life is determined by the information of/in your life and an understanding, appreciation, and expression of that information. In that, potentially–Maslow’s “self-actualization”, personal fulfillment, happiness, and the potential for true, significant connections.

ps/ Of course, whatever incoming information has to be filtered, sometimes critically questioned, examined for truth and personal usefulness and positive applicability. In much the same way, whatever information is expressed requires that it be beautiful, true, honest, heartfelt, or necessary in some way.

The matter of what information becomes personally meaningful, knowledge or wisdom is finally left to each individual. In the end, personal choice and the limits and limitations built into each person come into play. And so many other factors including such qualities as imagination, empathy, sympathy, and love.

(previously posted on October 31, 2012)

(re. choosing one’s surrounding symbolic imagery–old Dylan Thomas LP cover now in wall frame in my bedroom)

I wake up where I want to be–in a room with plants and a bookcase of great English literature with a large bust of Shakespeare on top looking down at me. On one side of the bed, there is a CD-cassette player with headphones if I want to listen to an audiobook before I go to bed or in the night if I am awake enough. In one corner there are four large plants breathing happily away.

After waking and reading an actual newspaper, when I am in the semi-darkness of the family room, sipping coffee and eating three oatmeal cookies, the tv is usually turned on to the Frame channel. I never know what world in or prospect I will abruptly transported to: the barreness or majesty of some northern Canadian park, a rainy day in Paris (complete with young woman streetwalker) to a pan of some Mediterranean vista. Armchair travel at its best.

The mind, especially when waking up/coming to needs its visual imagery. We all live in contexts of our choice. the mind and imagination require stimulation, play, pleasure, and engagement. As said My Dinner with Andre, we do not need to travel to Athens or Egypt to mentally/emotionally/spiritually/innerly imagine, apprehend, and know these places. (The realities of such go without saying, though, of course–a separate topic–live in-person presence.)

We live in many contexts during our daze and lives. We experience them on many different levels, some of them imaginatively and intuitively. To some extent, we don’t need to leave home or city to experience these other realities and presences.There can be contentment and satisfaction in watching a really good documentary or thumbing through a visual presentation of a place or process. Like everything else, it depends on the individual and his or her capabilities and the realization of certain of skills and sensibilities.

One can experience an entire world or imaginatively live in another time and place while reading Pride and Prejudice or while viewing Lawrence of Arabia. These are many very real, fulfilling forms of experience with which we can contextualize our lives and draw fulfillment from. In a real sense, it is quite possible to not need anyone else, any society, or to have a bucket list of places to travel to.
Fully realizing one’s own powers and possibilities. Becoming conscious of how what’s ‘out there’ can be ‘swallowed’ and ‘satisfactorily digested’ by our own persons. “I am large, I contain multitudes.”–Walt Whitman

Indeed.

The apparently restrictive/restricting surrounding parameters, people, and contexts of our lives. How easily are they swept away by consciousness, autonomy, and acts of sheer will!

I’ve often talked of the importance of freedom to everyone and everything, but ultimately, freedom is very much an individual and perceptual matter. Freedom is ultimately what we choose for ourselves, to enhance our lives, and to make them more pleasurable and meaningful.

So context, though important and sometimes/often limiting as conventionally understood, is something we can redefine and recreate in our own basic daily lives. Personally, I have not viewed context as limiting for a long time–maybe back to teaching, which I left 14 years ago. Beyond that, the pleasure and satisfaction of making my own choices for my life, family, and a few close friends. Great freedom that.

Is process necessarily/automatically limiting? “Though I sang in my chains like the sea”–Dylan Thomas, “Fern Hill” conclusion. I think not. There are only trillions of possibilities and processes. And we can choose our own attitudes, involvements, and attitudes toward all that neverending change and process. Not simply be ‘swept along’ or ‘pig-pile’ (Frank Lloyd Wright term)/i.e., ‘follow the herd’ and do what they stereotypically do.

As I say above, we choose our processes and contexts. We have to be happy with ourselves, with who we are, with how we live. We make our own worlds and lives. No one else. A great responsibility, as the Existentialists underlined. We are responsible for our own integrity, meanings, and purpose. No one else. We have to live with ourselves and accept our selves–the last trick of maturation. When we can do that, we will be truly free inside and have an inner peace that belies every weekend rush to the mall or every “I don’t know what to do.”

The latter two concepts which are learned very early.
Pattern–I can recall my oneish-year-old grandson playing in the living room near the window with a view to the opposite side of the back window. In both, he saw trees moving in the wind. He stopped his play, alternately looking toward one, then turning his head, glancing toward the other. He momentarily realized and connected there were two windows and similar trees blowing in each one.
Structure–a tot playing with 10 colored cups, putting them together one way, then another, taking them apart, putting them together in different combinations.
Again, like the first example, delight and pleasure in play, making connections, discovering/becoming aware of structure–how things are and can be organized. Possibilities.
A third example–same grandson, a little older. Discovering wall light switches in everywhere. Magically turning each on and off. possibilities, connection, discovery, pattern, structure, and the possibilities of choice for action, play, pleasure, engagement, and some vague inkling of the meaning in all of this at some subconscious/unconscious level perhaps.

(Ferguson Point restaurant, Stanley Park)

(One of Fudge’s many noonhour shows in the ’90s, Strathcona High, Edmonton)

(April tree, Stanley Park)

“God is in the detail.”–Gustave Flaubert

Moments of being are those more elusive transitory times when one is especially aware of the sublime pleasure and excitement of a given moment, and how it is unique and distinctly different from the many more ordinary, mundane moments in the passing flow of daily life. Moments of being tend to ‘announce’ or ‘proclaim’ themselves with an extreme obvious positiveness. At the time that they are experienced, the person (and sometimes persons) involved know and sometimes even share the specialness, uniqueness, and importance of the moment. Often there is a definite pleasurable sense of discovery, revelation, or epiphany about the moment in question.

The “being” part of whatever moment usually manifests itself in/as a heightened sense of being or becoming. A moment of being might very well also be the consciousness of significant change–possibly of imminent or possible change–an awareness of great hitherto inexperienced individual or situation potential. In any case, moments of being are primarily inner individual experiences in response to context and external events.

It is not surprising that moments of being comprise our most treasured memories of important things that have happened to us in the past. Think back to when you had special recognition that no one else you’ve known has had such as being chosen by your principal to receive the gift of a painting for the school’s official opening, or of being allowed the privilege of playing disc jockey in charge of your high school’s noon-hour intercom music. Often it is these sorts of special defining moments which determine one’s direction in life, too, career-wise.

Often moments of being have to do with relationships such as the first time one spoke to or spent time closely with a particular person. Experiences with members of the same or opposite sex in a first-time intimate way can introduce us to aspects of ourselves and others that ‘mark us’ for life.

Moments of being sometimes occur in moments of learning through the arts such as when we read a very emotionally moving book such as To Kill a Mockingbird, experience a powerful piece of music such as Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations” or visit a gallery containing Monet’s enormous panels of water-lillies. In such experiences, we are moved through our senses to experience something deep and true about the human condition that connects us with other people and other times. Moments of being can have that kind of broadening, enriching impact and influence.

We know, too, that nature can also create moments of being, an effect we attain anytime we go to the mountains, the seaside, or desert. Under favorable active or contemplative circumstances, interaction with nature can produce deep inner effects that go way beyond words to transportive spiritual satisfactions, akin to those we might call religious. In that sense, ‘God’ can be found in the “details” that make up whatever moving moments of being.

As we look back on our lives, we find that our lives can, to a large extent, be defined and understood by the many personal moments of being that we have been lucky to experience and sometimes fortunate to share and communicate to others. To them, we should pay special attention, as we should, indeed, to all passing, precious transitory moments, regardless of their relative ‘shine’ in the great scheme of things.

“We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand…and melting like a snowflake.”–Marie Beynon Ray

……………………………………………………………………..

The title of this ’probe’ (a McLuhan term) comes from a phrase by Virginia Woolf. I have tried to keep some of the meanings she intended, but it seems to me the term is broader, more connotative, and self-defining. The “details” are in many ways the most important aspects of moments of being, as well, incidentally, as this blog. Viewed another way, they are how we know what we know. From pondering these for possible meanings, the general patterns and larger insights emerge.

Moments of being tend to be personal, though when other people figure in them, they become larger and often more connective. (In a previous meditation, I write that the freedom of two, for instance, can exceed and be more profound than the freedom of one.) Consciousness and reflection are necessary to recognize, understand, and appreciate moments of being. I believe we seek moments of being, although these can happen quite wonderfully on their own spontaneously. And sometimes, if we are fortunate and paying attention, we can be conscious of moments of being as they happen, savouring them as they do. In that instance, moments of being can be glorious, inspiring, and loving.

“Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.” –Chinese proverb

(previously posted on September 10, 2012)

“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil [Austen obviously read Hamlet–“some vicious mole of nature”]–a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”
“And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.”
“And yours,” he replied, with a smile, “is wilfully to misunderstand them.”

(highly recommended Alliance Atlantis DVD with extras)

and one of the best of Robert Altman’s career. Gosford Park, a comedy-romance-whodunit. A wonderful playful, engaging film featuring some of Britain’s great actresses and actors: Alan Bates, Stephen Fry, Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, Helen Mirren, Clive Owen, Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emily Watson.

Script by Academy Award winner Julian Fellowes. Great interplay between upstairs and downstairs. Each actor and actress given sufficient room to breathe and come alive in their parts, which are evenly distributed. Quite often it is the asides and accidents in production which make this film and any Bob Altman film entertaining and memorable.
Although there are clichés and stock characters, the performances tend to be unique and unconventional, as free as Altman himself.

Sets are realistic for 1932 England. Altman used several actual servants from the thirties who advised actors contributing to the authenticity of their roles. Music is special and functional echoing several themes. Appearances, of course, are deceptive and there are many masks, roles, lies and agendas going on that keep everything realistic. In many ways, this is ‘women’s picture’ and the men are satirized and, in one case, get their just deserts. Most enjoyable are the dog motif and the detective’s repeated introduction of himself. This is also very much a play, simultaneously, with secrets that will out and characters, above and all, who get their various shining moments in the sun and limelight of this timeless picture.