To thine own self be true

When we choose between doing things for others’ imagined approvals or for our deepest personal desires and longings. “Dare I eat a peach?” “Dare I disturb the [social, public] universe?” indeed.

Well, back to Joseph Campbell’s “Follow your bliss”. The choice has always been clear for me. A life of many opportunities and moments I did not repress or defer to others so as not to taste peaches or disturb the universe. Momentarily, these windows. And knowing that not choosing to act meant a lifetime of regret and missed opportunity. Myriad what-ifs–the beautiful and wondrous possibilities.

One can be an agent or possibilitarian. One can be an agent/author of one’s own life or a mere victim/watcher. Or as Auden put it, a “fearer” not a “farer”. Frank Sinatra’s “Come Blow Your Horn” describes this process all too well– “In a one-word-speech: Reach.”

have our private store of sadnesses, pain, and pathetic moments from our childhood or adolescent past. Sometimes we haven’t even internalized or personally resolved these negative moments. It is always something of a wonder when we discover them in adult life and share them with someone close to us suddenly one day. Things they have no clue of–what we’ve been through or may have carried unseen or buried within all these years. Until we express these moments, we likely have not articulated them for our own understanding, let alone expressed them externally for someone else to hear. That much alienation, that much unknowing, and deep separation between people even friends and family.

simply go to the bathroom. 50% of the time, the phone will ring.

(ghostly presences never far from me nigh Xmas annually–the missing 2/3s of Spiritus: Glen and Dean, two of Edmonton’s finest English teachers and poets)

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connecting you with many you have known. And suddenly today you’ll wonder “Whatever happened to…?” or “I haven’t heard anything for a long time about…?” One of those passing bubbles of thought or just some vague sense that the person might be in peril or not be well.

And inevitably, you will hear via the grapevine or in see an obit in the newspaper confirming your inexplicable sudden intuition. And it makes you wonder about some kind of connectedness that takes place in the air, so to speak. An awareness of presence or absence beyond the more immediate conscious swirl or calm of your daily life.

(Frank Lloyd Wright Drive–turnoff into hills)

(the hill road to Taliesin West)

(upper level working spaces for architects even today)

(ground level of facility including greeting area/entrance–Wright and his wife’s adjoining large windowed bedrooms are in an open space in the middle.)

(fountains, large open areas everywhere; even Nature participates in the geometric bent of the complex’s design–note shadows)

(mid-January desert dog in front of desert down to Scottsdale; this is what most of the complex looks out onto from half the complex)

(and everywhere you go, you see rocks embedded in concrete–a common Wright choice in Taliesin design–make surroundings part of whatever human structure and vice-versa)

(the influence of Asian design on Wright can be seen in a number of outdoor artworks)

(the sculpture garden outside the theatre complex)

(Wright’s large theatre for performances including puppet theatre embedded in ‘fireplace’ on right wall)

(the smaller movie/lecture theatre–movie screen at one end)

(Wright was always interested in lighting affects; note stones in concrete wall even inside this complex)

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The dream Frank Lloyd Wright built outside of Scottsdale to house his winter lodgings and architecture students. An inspiring arts colony with drafting spaces, community room, theatres, cafeteria, sculpture garden, fountains, etc. A world unto itself. You can do several tours there including the surrounding hills. There is also an ultimate Wright gift shop.

(approaching the Arizona Biltmore, palm trees everywhere)

(Wright-styled sign and textile block style he used out in California)

(the lobby viewed from the open 2nd floor–all lighting and furniture styles influenced by Wright)

(a familiar Wright design in front hallway)

(the dining room with exquisite ceiling)

(view of surrounding grounds from patio during lunch)

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A beautiful 1928 luxury Phoenix resort influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright and designed by one of his students, Albert McArthur.

(poster excerpt, Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson’s classic O Lucky Man!)

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was the way of words, poetry, romance, dream, and imagination. He occasionally dropped down from the clouds to visit, commune, and observe. His ways were reflective and conscious, more to do with possibilities than simple fact. He was more nightingale, skylark, or muse finally. He sang and spoke of beauty mainly, and the long road from innocence to experience. He brought with him a music such that others opened themselves up to the possibilities and dreams he had always radiated and represented. Ultimately, though, he, not others, most knew himself, his nature, his meaning, and eccentricity. How can one describe a spirit or soul, certainly not one from far away and somewhere else, who transcended the particulars, people, and contexts that had tried to know, describe, or limit him? In freedom there is much that is pure essence and spirit, that can only be experienced, rarely communicated, and seldom understood or appreciated. His presence, his light then, ephemeral, but timeless beyond mere memory.

(opening of A Tale of Two Cities)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

A phone call solicitation at 8:40 a.m.

(the top movie ever on reading, books, and censorship, starring Julie Christie in 2 roles and Oskar Werner)

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Montag’s Speech Quoting Dickens’ David Copperfield in Francois Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451

“There can be no disparity

in marriage like unsuitability

of mind and purpose.

I had endeavoured to adapt Dora

to myself and found it impracticable.

It remained for me to adapt myself to Dora,

to share with her what I could and be happy.

It made my second year

much happier than my first,

and, what was better still,

made Dora’s life all sunshine.

But as that year wore on,

Dora was not strong.

I had hoped that lighter hands than mine

would help to mould her character

and that a baby’s smile upon her breast

might change my child-wife to a woman.

It was not to be.

My pretty Dora.

We thought she would be running

about as she used to do in a few days.

But they said wait a few days more

and then, wait a few days more,

and still she neither ran

nor walked.

I began to carry her downstairs

every morning and upstairs every night.

But sometimes when I took her up,

I felt that she was lighter in my arms.

A dead, blank feeling

came upon me,

as if I were approaching

some frozen region,

yet unseen,

that numbed my life.

I avoided direct recognition of this feeling

by any name, over any communing with myself

until one night when it was

very strong upon me

and my aunt had left her

with her parting cry,

‘Oh, good-bye,

little blossom.’

I sat down at my desk,

alone, and tried to think.

Oh, what a fatal name it was,

and how the blossom

withered in its bloom

up in the tree.”