(John Keats–death mask)
(Shakespeare bust)
(van Gogh and his irises)
(Emily Dickinson and her inner life)
(Glenn Gould)
(the MacDonald Hotel)
(Virginia Woolf and her writing)
(movies; mini-theatre B.C. museum, Victoria)
(evening, English Bay, Vancouver from a hotel hi-rise)
(Frank Lloyd Wright mural lit-up, Arizona Biltmore, Phoenix)
(Nature; chickadee in fall, Laurier Park)
…have always been fun, engaging, and meaningful, but the ones that become real connections are still the best.
(first edition dust jacket and back cover, TKAM)
TKAM remains a classic despite the publication of Go Set a Watchman. Simply put, it is the greatest children’s book ever written and a must-read for anyone wanting to find out information about how bad and unjust life was for many American blacks in the Southern states, in particular.
Beyond that, it is a strong coming-of-age novel about two children who move from innocence to experience very convincingly, with truthful observations about irrational fear, prejudice, discrimination, outsiders, and the importance of empathy and justice in dealing with others. If an adult or teacher was trying to encourage or ‘teach’ the value of empathy, this is a very appropriate book for that purpose.
Is it the Great American Novel? Here the arguments begin with many other contenders. Two books more squarely about the old American dream and the corrupt modern American dream are The Grapes of Wrath and The Great Gatsby. Like TKAM, they, too, feature obvious instances of maturation and injustice.
Grapes has more to say about Nature and the tragedies that occur when Nature ‘fails’ and politics and commercial interests override humanity. It ends with a stunning instance of generosity and sharing in the name of common brother-sisterhood. Like TKAM, it is a powerful book about humanity triumphing over limiting social contexts.
My money has long been on Gatsby. It is about the corruption of 20th century America which began after WWI with the rise of organized crime and the obsessive pursuit of materialism–both still flourishing today throughout North America. All of us dream as do all the characters in Gatsby, but all must balance dreams with whatever realities and truths that emerge, as Hamlet put it–”a little soil’d in the working”. Like Scout, Nick, too, comes to learn greater truths about Gatsby, Gatsby’s failed dream, his own life, himself, passion, purpose, and the American dream. For a modest-looking novella, this novel packs quite a rich, nuanced punch and is definitely a book for young adults grade 12 and on; it clarifies the conflict between dreams and reality, truth and illusion, and the prevailing values of our time which remain virtually unchanged from when Fitzgerald wrote it.
Each of the three books mentioned are poetic in their own ways and make masterful use of language, emotions, and ideas. All three spoke to me largely the first time I read them. If I was recommending a read about empathy and equality, I would recommend TKAM. If I was recommending the importance of human struggle, love, and the family, I would back Steinbeck’s great novel. But if I was recommending perspectives on recurring basic values of society today, I would, unhesitatingly, recommend Gatsby. (For a relevant example of the latter, look no further than the movies of Wall Street and The Wolf of Wall Street.)
April 8, 2013, Queen Elizabeth Park, Vancouver
Another nature lesson.
“I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.”
“Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.”
“Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up.”
in her poem “Otherwise”, no matter how good or great life is today, tomorrow it could be or will be otherwise. You can bet on that one.
I would have to agree. The most important day always is today and what you do with it, how you fill it in, what you get done that really needs doing, especially being as close to significant others and enjoying their company to the max. Life is change/process (e.g., nothing today stays the same with all the continuous deconstruction and downsizing that’s going on) so there’s never any guarantees how tomorrow will go, if you and yours will still be healthy, if an opportunity will still be there, if you will accomplish something you planned or dreamed of, etc.
Standing up over and over
for one hymn after another.
The wonderful love,
another prayer.
Scripture and affirmation,
blessing, sermon, offertory.
Something for believers.
The Pouring of the Water.
Coffee, cake, and mingling
downstairs, fellowship.
Pretty much foreign
and alien to
a long unbeliever.
After that, I felt much better,
more at home
in the plein air outside
out front by myself
waiting for the others,
the wind on my face
and through the boughs
beside me of
40-foot-tall pines,
as much as I ever need
of God, Nature and peace
after all this time.
I attend the greatest of all churches. I put a capital N on Nature and call it my church.
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
Nature is my manifestation of God.
Nature is all the body of God we mortals will ever see.
I go to nature every day for inspiration in a day’s work.
Freedom is from within.
Individuality is sacred.
Love of an idea is the love of God.
Reason and will have been exalted by Philosophy and Science. Let us now do homage to imagination.
An idea is salvation by imagination.
The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind.
The truth is more important than facts.
An expert is a man who has stopped thinking–he knows!
The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.
The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built.
The best friend of earth of man is the tree.
Wood is universally beautiful to man. It is the most humanly intimate of all materials.
Each material has its own message.
Light is the beautifier of the building.
If you wisely invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.
it is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.
Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.
Space is the breath of art.
Respect the masterpiece. It is true reverence to man. There is no quality so great, none so much needed now.
Youth is not an age thing. It’s a quality. Once you’ve had it, you never lose it.
You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.
A belief in a thing makes it happen.
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
Mechanization best serves mediocrity.
If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.
He was more like a mood or a force of nature, who grew up wild, free, and somewhat amoral or ‘bad’ behind his likeable appearance. A curious sort, he always sought out pleasure, play, and fun. He was, above all else, imaginative and expressive–innerly unlimited, always his own person, not others’: a man of integrity. His honesty was occasionally an open, hard one based on his ideals and expectations for those closest to him. Raised as an only child, he did not care to be hurt, crossed, ignored, misunderstood, and most of all, unappreciated.
What he hadn’t bargained on, though, was an unexpected inner tranquillity and the sudden end of a restless life-long feeling of aloneness inside. That and the awareness of the satisfying, engaging, meaningful multitudinousness of his life both past and present. Somehow in his Ulysses-like process, he had flukily yet successfully authored his own life-story.
