To thine own self be true

By popular request those 5 P’s which have driven my life thusfar and which continue to keep me purposed.

Presence (always the heart and soul of the experience of any person, place, or thing)
Process (built in to the many aspects and activities of our day; important to remember the process of consciousness)
Play (can never have enough of–the fun Inner Child stuff)
Pleasure (the inner and expressed enjoyment of that which or those who we love, choose, or prefer)
Possibilities (the motivation for all that we do or choose to do; the best of these have to do with freedom, love, and art)

(a happy poet-blogger takes year-end stock)

There is so much more to life than driving a great big honkin’ truck, buying a new car every year, playing the lotteries (c.f. Orwell’s 1984) or casinos, advertising and Super Bowl commercials, going on cruises, being a snowbird, having season’s tix to the Oilers or Esks games, going to Boxing Day sales, etc.

One thing that I wanted to accomplish with this blog was to go on record and leave ‘permanent’ online evidence that I was or had been here. This motive is behind the early literature of Homer, for instance, in The Iliad and The Odyssey in which the author leaves a record of his time and times before his. “Vain was the chief’s, the sage’s pride. They had no poet and they died.” Literature, poetry, and the arts are a significant record of personal and cultural histories.

I, too, like Shakespeare, attempt to deal with various basic or large themes, issues, and conflicts, especially in the first year of this blog. These many topics can be viewed in my July 5, 2015 entry reviewing/overviewing basic themes and meditations on life.

I think if there was another thing I have tried to do in my blog, poetry, and life it is to transcend my time and daily context–an instinct that first emerged from my studies of the English Romantics–notably Keats, Wordsworth, and Shelley. Daily life, as Keats, I and many others, including artists have tried to transcend, includes the actual physical world, earth, mortality, time, materiality, the known, the finite, and the real/istic. What I and many others have preferred and often chosen is dream, imagination, the ideal, permanence, eternity, spirituality, the infinite, and romance. The latter states usually turn out to be much larger, deeper, richer, and more interesting than daily life.

Given a preference for the latter series of conditions and possibilities, like Oscar Wilde, I have consciously whenever possible tried to make an art of my life, reflected through many unconventional and bohemian personal choices.

It is this artful living or life which has created and motivated my many modest excursions into art. If ever there was an ironic objective correlative for this ongoing process, it can be found in the final line of Yeats’ “Among School Children” poem: “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” Especially when the dancer transcends skin-encapsulated-ego-isolation and becomes the dance, indeed, with lived life and experienced consciousness informing and motivating creative expressiveness.

It is thus my blog has become my final art, through its expression of consciousness and creative takes on thoughts and experiences emerging from my own remaining daily life experience. A realization of what Wilde initially set out for himself as a worthy purpose. And, as in many other cases in the art world, the realized possibility that art finally emerges or is expressed out of the life an individual artist has led.

And going back to Keats, in this, is the possibility of and actual transcendence that he, I and so many others have believed in and sought to achieve.

So we are all finally down to our daily possibilities (even if these be dwindling via the limits and limitations of aging or circumstance)) and the consciousness and awareness we are able to cobble together from even the most chaotic or ‘unsmooth’ life experiences and from our interactions with others, life, Nature, the Arts, etc.

These daze I do not have to go out of my way to find or generate subject matter. Like Montaigne’s essais, the topics emerge naturally of their own accord bubbling up like Maharishi’s thought-bubbles. Frost’s “momentary stays against confusion”. (And I make no apologies for living and creating out of my own life. It is what I know and have known best of all)

A la Homer and early writers, I have also been able to recall and record early experiences which would otherwise have been lost to nothingness. This blog has been an important empirical evidence (beyond whatever survivor memories) that I was here going back to childhood.

For I am, after all, a “maker” (maker) who has a long record of making things happen, creating possibilities for myself, my family, and others. I have also been a maker (like Wilde) of my own life, art, and destiny. In that, there has been great fun, play, and pleasure. There too, my most significant presence.

Control–having it in your life, over your life, and the ways in which you live.

Babies control by crying–it’s all they’ve got. Toddlers, too. But as kids age and interact socially, ‘leaders’ and ‘followers’ quickly show up. And, of course, there are controlling parents right into early adult life (I’ve seen it happen to children in their 70s!), sometimes micromanaging kids’ freedom and entire days.

And a lot of the control that children and teens seek is that which simply maximizes their freedom and independence–two elements signifying desired autonomy and maturity. So, ultimately, control and whatever freedom it brings is basic to the individual in his or her various phases of development.

There are many other ways of looking at control. Health is one of these. One is controlled by one’s health context at various stages of life. To a large extent, control in the area of health brings freedom in such things as physical and mental capacity, and mobility, for instance.

Beyond the physical, there is the matter of having control over one’s life in the areas of smoking, alcohol and drugs, eating, appearance, and sex. Of the latter, one often wants to have control over potential play, pleasure, closeness, and intimacy beyond whatever friends one has. Call it a control over how physically close others might get to one, or choosing how close one might want to be with another.

Just about any situation or context you wish to identify including how one will finish one’s days, funeral arrangements, and final will and money arrangements involve control and how much of it you have right up to the end of or beyond your life.

Oh, and there is the not-so-small issue of how people generally and daily interact with one another; in many cases treating others as a means to an end (controlling, manipulating) or respecting and interacting with people as autonomous ends in themselves. (I have seen more than enough of the former in literature, in homes, in workplaces, out in public to know that control in and of itself re. others is mostly negative and potentially harmful. It potentially warps how one relates to others or restricts the limits and limitations of one’s own self)

These days I mostly just accept people, things, and situations, occasionally giving my opinion without any agenda or expectation. Call it a control-less phase except for a self-control borne of perspective, aging, and personal freedom. Being and appreciating being are more the preferred operational modes, taking delight in Truth, Beauty, Nature, truly good Real People, the Arts, and the possibilities of late refinements in one’s personal sensibility.

Control is mostly a pathetic, distracting, self-gulling process which can damage self, others, various social situations and lives. Like all other self-inflicted suffering, it is typically human, but, of course, often unnecessary, absurd, or pointless.

“Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work.
And o’er the sickle bending;–
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.”

–William Wordsworth, the last stanza of “The Solitary Reaper”

Well, there are life-defining poems that go way beyond ephemeral romantic interludes, with a music heard, stirring deeply within. Who can say what will change our lives forever whether it be Music, Beauty, Nature, Poetry, Love or the Arts?

For me, this remains a signature Wordsworth poem that does much to explain him, me, and many other Romantic artists. Memorable chosen words transcending the passage of time and ever-changing contexts. And yes, I still keep the song alive and intact deep within me.

365 days a year, early mornings. My first contact with Nature daily.

“Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-coloured snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.”
–Dylan Thomas, conclusion of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”

“It is not half so important to know as to feel.”–Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

All the crazies with money-making schemes and agendas come out of the woodwork as you approach Christmas.
Phone call yesterday from a ‘police detective’ claiming I owed taxes and that I should call him back to pay them or I would be ‘arrested’.
He finished by saying `God bless you`which is a strange thing to say to someone you`re trying to shake down and going to ‘arrest’.
Anyway, a phone call close to Christmas is often from an intimidating stranger trying to increase your paranoia level and separate you from as much moola as he can extract from old, dumb, or naïve people. Pity the poor, nervous, desperate, beaten-down, susceptible souls who return these nervy, aggressive, nuisance calls.

Across the River and Into the Trees

(meditation/photo by RD)

(Christmas Day, 2013)

The car stopped in front of Ganma and Ganpa’s house. It was dark. Dada lifted me out of the car chair and set me on the snow. I walked to the house which had many lights on.

Ganpa opened the door to let us in. Inside there was noise and people. He and Mama took off my boots, coat and hat. From the door, I could see a big tree with many lights on it. There were strings of candy canes and a star up, up on top. There were presents under the tree and many colors. Ganpa held my hand and walked me around the tree. He showed me another little tree that kept changing colors and a snowman who did the same. It was dark in the room, but then we walked into the light where I saw Ganma and other people standing.

We went to a big table which had food and bottles on it and there was a choo-choo going. It kept going round and round on the table. Ganpa put me on his lap and I could see a small town of houses and people smiling who did not move. He let me turn a dial which made the choo-choo stop, slow down, go faster or go backwards! It was a cool train! He and me put cases and small people on and off on one car, then made the choo-choo go again. When it stopped, I said “Again”.

Then he was carrying me down some steps toward some lights in another room. He showed me a big window and two deer with lights moving in the snow outside. I said “Brrr, cold” because I know it’s not warm outside. We looked at a fire on tv, and I said “Hot, no touch” like my Mama told me. There were boats on pictures, snowmen, a big star, and Santas too. On the floor were some puzzles which I started to play with, pushing out the pieces through holes. Then, I started to put them back where they belonged.

Later Gandpa showed me the fridge and there was a big picture there which looked like crayons. He said I did it. I saw a picture of Ganma and went to the chair where Ganma sat to say “Ganma” and point to her in the picture. When I wanted to play with her and pulled on her leg when she was standing in the kitchen, she said she was busy and didn’t come with me.

There were lots of snacks on the table and I helped myself to some, taking them back to Mama in the big tree room. I didn’t have too much supper, but drank from a bottle of water. (No cup.) It was fun. After, Ganpa showed me white dogs and yellow birds that moved and played music. I liked the dog who played piano and Ganpa and I danced on the floor to the song. He also showed me how to pick up icicles from the rug to put back on the tree.

I had a lot of fun and opened up a few presents. There was a truck I put balls into which flew out another hole in the truck as it went. It was a good day. I said “Bye” to everybody and waved when Dada and Mama put my clothes on to go out into the Brr, cold again and the car.

(Boxing Day)

It was light outside this time when we got to Ganma and Ganpa’s. Ganpa had a camera as I walked with giraffe in my arms to him. Mama carried the dog in her Santa dress. Inside the big tree was still there with lights on, but there were no other people, just Ganma and Ganpa.

We went to the other room again and I saw puzzles on the floor and started to play with them. The deer were still moving outside but didn’t look as cold. The dog lay on the floor by herself and was eating a rope. We started to taking things out of some big stockings. I got a remote like the tv one at home except it looked like a train and made sounds like a phone. I was pretty busy some of the time throwing the rubber puzzle pieces into the hall like I do at home.

Then we moved into the room with the big tree and opened some more presents. There were some books about hugs and cars–which made noise. I got a colored phone which had a stick to play the ‘phone. I liked putting bows and tags on my head. I had more fun with a blue box which I put over my head and sat there in the middle of the room as the dog came to see me under the box to kiss me. She got tired though and lay down in her funny dress. I lay on the floor too sometimes, face down on my giraffe.

There was lots to do. I picked up paper and tore it into small bits and then put it in a row on a big box to keep me in the room. Some I dropped over the box. Later Granpa and me went to pick up the paper to put in a garbage which had a moving top. When we moved the top, we could put the garbage in. It was like a swing.

The food was good again. There was ham and sauce I could dip the ham in. I used my fingers for that. I said “Cheers” when Ganpa clinked my cup. He had my dog on his lap. The big people popped something they called crackers, but they didn’t look like crackers to me. I played with the dog and bird piano again. It still worked as did the dog with floppy ears who sang a wild song.

It was a good day again at Ganma and Ganpa’s. When we left, someone put the dog in a big box for a joke. I stood in a boxlid. It felt nice. As Mama and Dada got ready to go, I pushed a big box round and round different rooms with my giraffe on top. Ganpa helped me go over the bumps. I sure liked that.

I waved Bye again by the cold door waiting to go outside to the car. I sure had fun my first Christmas.
…………………………………………….
Note: “first Christmas” because he would have little or no memory of the first one (aged 1).

A piece about consciousness and its early beginnings relative to a special time of year. My grandson also kept walking into the ‘Tree Room’ and looking up at the tree as different-colored lights blinked on and off or ornaments moved. His favorite effect were ye olde bubble lights with the yellow fluid. “Bubbles” he said pretty clearly. There was definitely awe and wonder in many of his responses to what was going on. He also had his share of quiet moments in which I could sit him on my knee or hold him to point out different things. He is quite mimetic with words at this point, and occasionally launches into his own babble syntax to narrate his take on some things like the snowy candle town on an end table, punctuating his description with familiar words like “house’ and “tree” or “quack-quack” for the sound that penguins make!

This Christmas was unique, vicariously sharing in my grandson’s first real, conscious Christmas.