To thine own self be true

You were the rarest book of all,
for me, the ultimate edition.
Much of you had been unread
though you remained in great shape,
unfaded and unmarked.
Crisp and fine,
inscribed to me only,
a true collectible.

Bibiliophile that I am,
I had never come across
such definitive copy.
Nothing chipped or shelf-cocked
about you.
A trim folio, unpaginated,
with no slipcase.
Your spine sunned
but binding intact.

I had no blurb to go by
but dedicated myself
to your sole acquisition.
Your front matter
and end-pages skim-read
as I turned you
over in my hands, savouring
each distinguishing point.
Your non-gilt edges
and errata were all forgiven.
I loved most your imprint
your laid-ins
and variant proofs.

For me, as issued,
you were First Thus.
No bookplate ever
for you, o precious tome.

(previously printed here in August 2012)

(Safe Read-Only site–ignore any security warnings when opening pix. Open any one picture and they all open when you click backward 2x.)

they are continuing presences.”

–Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Perhaps the androgynous mind is less apt to make these distinctions than the single-sexed mind….the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is unnaturally creative, incandescent and undivided.”

–Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Generally circumstances are against it. Dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down. Further, accentuating all these difficulties and making them harder to bear is the world’s notorious indifference. It does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories; it does not need them.”

–Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“But what still remains with me as a worse infliction than either was the poison of fear and bitterness which those days bred in me.”

“To begin with, always to be doing work that one did not wish to do, and to do it like a slave, flattering and fawning, not always necessarily perhaps, but it seemed necessary and the stakes were too great to run risks; and then the thought of that one gift which it was death to hide–a small one but dear to the possessor–perishing and with it my self, my soul–all this became like a rust eating away the bloom of the spring, destroying the tree at its heart.”

“Literature is open to anybody….Lock up your libraries if you like;  but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

–Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

Radium butterfly, miniature golf course

I will just say this. K-12 education used to be wisely broad-based, relatively unagenda-ed . Kids learned and knew a lot about the world and human nature by the end of grade 12. They were not shallow, dumb, simply ‘nice’, limited characters out of Huxley’s Brave New World.

When one went to university then, one was exposed to further learning in various specializations. But then, there was a strong emphasis on universities as places of higher learning where one learned, as my old prof-friend David Wangler used to say, about becoming seekers of truth and wisdom. Nowadays, of course, universities are more obviously job factories and have no special status apart from the NAITs and SAITs which have always functioned as more limited job training centres (with the according of university status to those two previously-mentioned institutions).

And as the PCs have dictated in their highly personal/political agenda-ed 2013 curriculum framework, entrepreneurship and technology (which kids are conditioned slaves to) are simply/mostly what K-12 is now about. Incredibly narrow, self-serving stuff–Big Damage to Education in the wake of the big bad PCs finally being ousted. Major, major irony. There is much, much more to real education than the bill of goods the PCs sold, have foisted on, and will continue to foist on innocent, unsuspecting kids–a grave long, ruinous, mindless shadow.

There is so much more to education than manipulating elementary kids to become entrepreneurs and letting kids go their own ways online, playing and fumbling toward a deluded/delusory brave new e-world which is truly nothing more than a lazy, bogus bill of goods and a terribly limited shell of learning.

is not Bruce Jenner’s transgendering, Kim Kardashian’s dress catching fire, Edmonton’s wanna-be mermaid, Mike Duffy’s trial, or anyone’s limited political or personal agenda to capture public attention, headlines, and news coverage. Many people and most of the media can no longer discriminate between what’s important/truly newsworthy or not. And neither have the common sense to focus on what’s truly more important in the world today or significant in their own lives. Distraction, sensationalism, and highly personal or political agendas are the limited/limiting order of the day. And the media is awash in the agenda-ed complaints, froth, and trivia of our oh-so limited-times.

Any restaurant that offers doggy water is OK with me.

The Alex Colville-inspired selfie.

“Granite” (abstract)

Radium gender humor

Radium hustler in motion

Street banner art

If the shoe fits…

“Primeval”

“The Owl and the Apples”

abstract: “Convergence” (ceilings meeting)

Kitchen selfie

Tablecloth, On Higher Grounds coffee bar

Radium found poem

“And all those should know who gaze the skies/ It’s for those who are wise, only those who are wise.” –John Stewart, Kingston Trio, “Those Who Are Wise”