To thine own self be true

(Blake’s “Glad Day”)

“Narcotics cannot still the Tooth/That nibbles at the soul–”–Emily Dickinson

And often one just works hard and long, endlessly giving, doing for others, sacrificing one’s own inner self, giving many performances (many of them hollow, ephemeral) giving, turning oneself inside out for others, hopefully, to see.

And do you ever feel that the long mysterious restlessness inside will never lift and that you will never fully connect with or be very close with anyone else in your ticking life– that you will never truly be fully known and loved for who/what you are, or fully known and loved by someone else?

The palpable ache remains–a restlessness, hunger, thirst, and deep desire so total it makes itself felt on all levels–mind, body, heart, soul, spirit.

And only occasionally the mind may dare to ask: What’s in it for me? What’s it all for? What is my true meaning and purpose that will leave me with no sense of anything vitally missing? Will I ever get back anything half-resembling what I give out and have selflessly offered others, society, and the world?

And one day, if we are lucky, the clouds may part and we shall meet someone remarkable and truly special. And they will begin to know us as we begin to know them- the essential informations shared and turning darkness into light. Like Molly Bloom, we will simply say “Yes” to someone else, their presence, and unlimited love for us and our presence.

And so we’ll respond in kind, finally trusting, letting go, believing in something and someone other than just ourselves, as we heed The Call that will not likely come again.
And all and everything shall open up, and the two shall be both truly free–deeply, significantly, and mutually changed forever.

To be that lucky, to take the chance, to find out what it means to live totally in and for someone else and to feel them doing likewise within us.

To feel the sad, old, depleted, exhausted self magically washed away forever.

To live life, floating in love on the highest, maximally free-est, most glorious heights.

To feel rapturously alive again, and strangely, wonderfully reborn like the child in Wordsworth’s famous “Ode: Intimations on Immortality”.
(previously published Jan. 3/13)

(male flicker)

………………………………………………………….

True, it gets soiled
now & then
& after fall
with snow.

Eventually ice,
then waiting for
beak-pecked memory.

Spring’s first robin–
full, the mirror bath
catches eyes alike,
revives new stock.

So someone
refills it–it is,
after all, expected.

I take the jug
& pour libations
to my aery brethren.

Honoured by their
short feathery stays,
voyeur to their dips.

Yes, I could do
nothing,
but it’s not mine
to choose.

And they cannot
do this simple thing,
the water of
necessity.

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Some roles we just acquire or find ourselves playing one day out of the blue seemingly. Context and process can set up these unique situations in which one finds a role one did not predict or ever expect to play. Call it the working out of context and process. Although these wild birds would likely find some way to survive, I am in part responsible for attracting them to the birdbath and responsible for cleaning it and refilling it ultimately. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it has worked out. And…I don’t mind.

(previously published Sept 18/12)

grey november sky
park benches etched in snow

wind strokes the last robin’s wing
breath warm & then gone

like a memory
lovers lost in each other’s eyes

we walk beside the river
& dream of hibernation

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It goes without saying that there are ‘nice’ and warm aspects to much of presence, perhaps most observably in love. Presence and our sense of it comes through imagery and images. In such moments of being there is connection and perhaps identification as in when two become one. (Is there a higher individual freedom than the freedom of two- –the two freeing themselves and one other –along with the individual freedom experienced by each of the two?)

Presence, of course, is mainly or maximally experienced in-person in the moment. The experience of presence likewise has a timelessness about it, blending past (“memory”), present, and future (“hibernation”). When we talk of presence, we speak of the sublime and most connective moments.

(first published here Sept. 1/12)

Feeding Mr. Dowdy on E-5
the limp oatmeal
dribbling
from his
uninterested mouth.
Grey eyes dead
he lives in another time
another war.

I shave his face
its stubbled contours
maps of memory and fear.
The razor cuts unevenly–
knicks his chin.
Hurt
he swats at me
with posey mitts:
a tired old fighter.

Done
I wipe away
the shaving cream
and leave him ready
for action
strapped to a red
vinyl chair
where he can watch
the shaven faces
of other old men
reflected in the window.

…………………………………………………….

(from Remembrance Day 2012)

A poem from the early ’80s about a memory from 1968 A.D. I worked as a nursing orderly at a hospital for two years while I was putting myself through university. Working there was a unique, fast growing-up featuring encounters with serious accidents, illness, and death. A number of the patients I looked after when I was shifted to the oldest part of the hospital (E-5: geriatrics) were older men, some of whom had fought in WW1 (there are no vets from that war left now). I think the poem speaks for itself.

Notes: posey mitts–white mitts then which were tied over hands to keep patients from hurting themselves and others.; strapped–again to keep some disoriented seniors from getting up and hurting themselves.

Most people’s experiences of war are limited to seeing Remembrance Day ceremonies on tv. There are, of course, many other experiences such as the one I had. A political moment: I find it disgraceful that the government is grinchily not funding the funerals of poor veterans. They, of course, as in the case of the vets in the poem, deserve a better finale. Though the fate of many elderly in our society, too, is not terribly different from what I bare-bonely described.

(letter from jazz great Dave Brubeck to an aspiring young musician)

(the wonderful deep world, syntax, stream-of-consciousness of Virginia Woolf)

(the pleasures of reading solitude; Rick in gr. 12 class)

(the power of pop song lyrics and language to capture a young audience’s interest; Fudge plays Scona in the ’90s)

(as good as it gets or ever got for the English language: the top example of the richness, complexity, poetry, and depth of language)

language is a basic tool. To which I would add that your life depends a lot on your language and, in many ways, your vocabulary,(reflecting your ideas, thought, emotions, range of knowledge, attitude, and knowledge), your syntax (reflecting your limits, limitations, freedom, personality, perspective ), your style (your uniqueness), and your consciousness/awareness.

The more words, phrases, quotations, etc. you know, the larger your world and experience are, potentially too. People with little or minimal language are frankly limited–they can only say so little or not much, often turning to expletives or clichés (e.g., “Anyway”). They aren’t usually that interesting unless their personalities and values are communicated regardless.

It is very important to teach children today as many words as possible when they begin to vocalize. It is important that they are able to understand the external world as much as they can and are able to express themselves as much as possible (as in the case of a toddler answering a doctor’s question) and have some control over their worlds.

Language is simply empowerment; one’s own language is the greatest tool in creating autonomy and ensuring communication in daily practical situations, (e.g., of the latter–getting the order right via a fast food intercom).

As far as overall autonomy is concerned, this is pretty much along the lines Orwell was concerned about relative to language control and manipulation by external societal forces such as in advertising and politics. People aren’t just dummies to be used or manipulated to buy products and candidates; they are entitled to know how to critically examine others’ language for their own health and sanity ultimately.

But to be able to critically think, you have to be able to have words and sentences to understand and express yourself, and to ‘read’ what others say. In short, you need to be steeped in language and its many uses and abuses. Thus, language is consciousness and expression thereof.

I’ll just conclude here this morning by saying that the language exchanged or expressed in relationships and Literature (doh, who needs the latter in our glorious e-mediated world?) are some of the best language of all. There is a need for eloquence and poetry that enrich our lives and relationships. Words are, after all, from the infancy get-go, potentially pleasurable and fun to be shared, enjoyed, and savoured). In that simple fact alone, can be seen and known the most important fact and application of language within our common experiences with others.

“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 synch 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 about 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 large 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 thent 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)

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.

(1st posted on October 31, 2012)

(for James)

The kingdom…is spread over the earth and men do not see it.–The Gospel of Thomas
(as quoted by Joseph Campbell)

We all start life in various relative contexts of safety, security, advantage, disadvantage, family, and love. All these things affect our initial possibilities in life. Context–as played out through school, work, relationships, places lived in–continues to play a major role in what our life possibilities might be.

But to a large extent, life is what we make of it, via our choices and the process of living. When we are young, we are usually blessed with more time, freedom, and uninhibited imagination, that we can distract ourselves, and ‘create our own fun.’ Just about anything is possible, in that sense, when we are, say, three or five years-old. Although we may be confined to playing in the backyard, there is a richness to be found in whatever nature or man-made-objects we are left to play with, with or without playmates–the possibilities of one or more than one, socially speaking.

School introduces us to the possibilities of increased knowledge and interaction with many different other people and texts. We learn the possibilities of languages, mathematics, sciences, history, the fine arts, and physical education. Again, our possibilities may increase through socializing and learning more about ourselves, others, various subject areas, society, and the world.

We are presented with a variety of possibilities via our introduction to the working world as we try out different jobs and, possibly, careers in the exploration of employment possibilities. If we are lucky, we may end up doing work we enjoy and make an adequate living. Through a similar trial and error process, we also arrive at our home bases and mature relationships, usually involving parents, friends, neighbors, staff at work, and, possibly, significant others.

Along the way, we are the unique people we are with various attitudes, values, beliefs, dreams, strengths and skills. Whatever life possibilities we actualize are dependent on those key personal elements or aspects. And so we arrive at certain points in our lives where we stop and take stock of ourselves and remaining life possibilities. What might and can we still do? What dreams do we still want to realize and achieve?

But life possibilities are more microcosmic than the dreams of the so-called ‘big picture’. There are the possibilities of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years. At any given moment, everywhere around us, are life’s possibilities in the precious process of an individual lifetime. What these possibilities are or may be is largely a matter of perception and attitude, how one feels at any given time about his or her own life.

At any given moment on a weekend or evening, for instance, one can likely go to the nearest book-store coffee shop and not only relax with a favorite beverage, but wander the aisles in search of what subjects may interest one all over again as they once did in school. If one really wants to see a concert involving a favorite performer, one can easily book tickets online when they first become available. If one wants to be surrounded by natural beauty for three seasons of a North American year, one can go to greenhouses to buy whatever flowers and plants one wants to nurture and be able to derive viewing pleasure from. If one wants to see the classmates of one’s youth, one might attend an anniversary reunion. If one wants to ‘get out of town’, one can travel to any place that appeals to deeper needs of soul and preferred imagery.

In short, just about anything is possible even in adult life, be it changing a mate, a home, a job, a stale lifestyle, and so forth. Life’s possibilities, for the most part, remain nothing more than what we can and might choose if we wish through simple acts of will. Minister-author Norman Vincent Peale had an interesting suggestion regarding this topic: “Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities–always see them, for they’re always there.”

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Life possibilities are ever-present in any situation, as Viktor Frankl persuasively argues in his must-read book Man’s Search for Meaning, in which he speaks of willing seemingly impossible dreams, attitudes, and behaviors into being. Possibilities are to be found even in the most stressful or depressing situations and contexts, and we have the free will and inner capacity to rise above any crisis or extremely limiting situation. “Life is what we make (of) it” goes the old cliche.

In “As I Walked Out One Evening”, W.H. Auden wrote “Life remains a blessing/Although you cannot bless.” Hamlet said “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” In those two statements, the ideas that there is a “kingdom” of opportunities (cf. the meditation’s epigraph), and that attitude and perspective play large roles in actualizing whatever possibilities of said kingdom. Indeed, if we cannot “bless”, the fault may be an internal one, one resting largely on personal will and individual choice.

A song lyric of mine from the late 1960s goes:

And if you want, you can slide/And if you want you can ride/The day is like a daisy/Pick it off if you’re lazy or crazy

And with your dreams you can fly/Spread your wings touch the sky/All that remains is for you to do it/Close your eyes there’s nothing to it/Come on and try

Takin’ a chance on a star/Findin’ out who you really are/Strummin’ on a magic guitar

……………….

“I am large….I contain multitudes.”–Walt Whitman

(1st posted on September 6, 2012)

“Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow”
–from “Mr. Tambourine Man” by Bob Dylan

(originally posted on November 4, 2012 )

My parents would never have reconciled, enjoyed a happy retirement, and died on the same date, one hour apart, nine years to the day.

I would never have finished grade 8, moved from the childhood home, or left my hometown.

I would never have gone to high school or university.

I would never have heard the Beatles, learned to play guitar, and played in several groups.

I would never have become a writer or written poems, songs, or books.

I would never have fallen in love and married.

I would never have had a family or grandchildren.

I would never have become a teacher, a musician, a nursing orderly, a letter carrier, or a film classifier.

I would never have had the many good friends I have known.

I would never have taught and retired, living long enough to collect a pension.

I would never have become a serious reader, a fan of classical and jazz, a playgoer, and met many musicians I admire and look up to.

I would never have seen great art or enjoyed the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.

I would never have learned to drive a car or been up in an airplane or on a ferry.

I would never have lived in apartments, a condo, or owned a house.

I would never have owned my favorite movies, books, and music.

I would never have flown a kite.

I would never have owned a black female miniature poodle.

I would never have become a gardener and lover of natural beauty.

I would never have become a bird or squirrel watcher.

I would never have seen the Arizonan desert in winter or New England brilliant in the fall.

I would never have collected one issue of each of the Classics Illustrated main title series.

I never would have attended my elementary (100th) and high school (50th) reunions.

I would never have written about any on this on a blog in a cloud somewhere.

If Jack hadn’t proposed and Nikky accepted.

No, I and millions of others would never would have got this far.

………………………………………………………………..

re. title: the time and date the Cuban Missile Crisis ended and the world was not blown up many times over. “Jack”–J.F.K. “Nikky”–Nikita Kruschev.

We are a product of our context and are here today by the skin of our teeth. This crisis was the closest we came to doomsday as a species and planet. I am under no illusions I/everybody/everything else is here because of a fluke, luck, and the personalities, fears, and choices of two individuals. I am grateful to both men for their cooler heads and compromise that has allowed me as much as I have experienced and enjoyed in life thusfar.

As mind-boggling as reviewing my own luck and process has been today, I invite you to ponder how much history and things we take for granted now would not have occurred if Nikky had been too ornery that fateful episode 53 years ago.

*For me, this crisis was the major turning point in my life and the lives of millions. It is the doomsday edge that the world has thusfar avoided and flukily dodged since 1962. It is why Lumet made Fail Safe and Kubrick Dr. Strangelove. How many people out there really think about this extremely critical moment in history and how far war can go? For me, this is always a memory on Remembrance Day.

The other best piece which came out of this crisis was Dr. Helen Caldicott’s significant documentary “If You Love This Planet”.

(on left) my father, Delmar (Del) Vernon Davies (1926-1998), in Royal Canadian Navy (Sept. 9, 1943 to Apr. 23, 1946 and–in its Reserve–Sept. 13, 1960 to Sept. 12, 1965). He also served in the Royal Canadian Air Force from Mar. 29, 1951 to Jan. 20,1957 and the Royal Canadian Navy–Reserve–Sept. 13, 1960 to Sept. 12, 1965.

We/they were all young once. Like many other vets, he would have been appalled by ongoing government withdrawal of support for veterans’ health and services. He was a very witty man who loved old movie classics, music, dancing, travel, animals, and Nature. Significantly, he instilled in me a great appreciation of irony, humor, and perspective.

Over 18 years of military service for his/our country. Fondly remembered by Rick, especially around November 11.

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reprise of Remembrance Day message, 2013