To thine own self be true

One reason why it’s good to travel to Vancouver or Victoria in April for real spring.

And thinking deeply is way too much to expect these daze. The short attention spans of kids have gotten shorter and they have no ability to sit still or be patient. If they have an e-device in their hands, they can amuse themselves to obsession, sedentary lotus-eaters’  lifestyle, and early death.

Yes, no question plugged-ins can’t stop checking and engage otherwise in the here-and-now as life passes them by. The disconnect from Nature is way beyond Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much with Us”. In other words, material/istic obsession doesn’t help either–we become shallow like Brave New World types and terminally, infantilely ego-centered. “It’s all about Me.”

Happiness and pleasure means having an naval-gazing iWatch, an iPhone, etc.
And Westerners will continue to dis-empathize and rank so alienation will become the prevalent mode of engaging with others and the world.

I think Hawking is right. The ‘toy’-technology has spiralled out of control and people have become easy, brainwashed slaves to it. And they no longer want to think, especially about their doublethinking ‘personal-individual freedom/mass slavery to e-devices. We are witnessing a great mass consensual implosion of human autonomy and consciousness.

Hawking foresees the end of human civilization and human mastery over machines. The triumph of e-gizmos over diminishing human will and freedom. And lest we forget, it was Sven Birkerts who first said “Refuse it” lest the brainwashed lose their capacity to say “No”.

Hit the road, several days of bliss and healing at Radium Hot Springs and Bighorn Meadows Resort. (Last pic a selfie as reflected in big picture window on a balcony overlooking the golf course adjacent to resort.)

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

No two days are the same in retirement. In the afternoon I was tidying up my basement office while listening to a country radio station when Jim Reeves came on singing “Stand at Your Window Some Night”, which I hadn’t heard in 50 years. Realized how it had perhaps subconsciously, along with early Paul Simon romantic lyrics, influenced the writing of my own song “Until Next Year”.

Later, attending the Edmonton Symphony concert “Handel & Haydn”, got to see an oboe d’amore Bach piece played expertly by local Lidia Khaner. What an exercise in breath control and tricky fingering! Jeremy Spurgeon’s deep organ filled the hall for Handel’s “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale”. The bird theme was also well-represented by Respighi’s “The Birds” (no relation to Hitchcock) which featured dove, hen, nightingale, and cuckoo. For someone who loves birds, this was quite the delightful aural treat and made me aware (again) of how music and Nature have been natural confluences within classical music.

The day’s flow was typical–unexpected and pleasurable. Music often surfaces as key parts or backgrounds of the day. Again–flow, changing moods, spirit expressions and voices often from the multitudinous dead pantheon of great composers, musicians, and vocalists, via broadcast, disc, or played live. I would have to say that much of the richness and depth of my life is and has been music-related or music-punctuated. The stirring of emotions, memories, images, mind, heart, spirit, and soul.

……………………

Often it is that I can immediately recognize a piece of piped-in music in whatever elevator, store, or restaurant. Often, too, I can remember a person, place, or time by a piece of music, and often the year, time of year, and what I was doing at the time. Overall, music can enhance experiences and create a pleasurable mood, conducive to a setting or event.

4 self-driving cars have had accidents since Sept., 2014 in California. I would not want to be anywhere near the massive deadly accidents that the self-driving rigs will spawn when they are finally unleashed on the highways.
No different from drone technology and its limits and limitations. Collateral damage, baby! All in the name of Mammon and improving the bottom-line by eliminating human beings.

After dinner and croquet
we sat happy, content
with ourselves
family and world
in the grey backyard
calm of twilight.

The whoosh and cries
came too sudden
for knowing–
the stillness broken
by necessity and
nature’s fact.

The cedar shattered
with absurd terror
as the hawk tore
a path to just one
unready sparrow.

He cleared the bush
in nano-seconds,
his unreal shriek
of triumph lifting
supper, arcing now
an indifferent sky,
the random babe
ripped out of
the only life it had
ever dumbly known.

‘What was that?’ we asked
‘hawk or merlin?’
But exactitude no
longer mattered
in that eerie birdless-hush,
as we turned once more
in private doubt, lost
for words, and resumed
our game of Scrabble.

(reprised from May 16, 2013 entry; saw a merlin dramatically bolt thru the yard yesterday, the day before Mother’s Day–no catch this time; must be their time of year)

The tulips were first, of course–various colours against the whites, greys, and browns.
Next came the first hardy dandies (dandelions–reminding me of the vacant lot across the street of my childhood home. The first time I saw that host of yellow, I picked a bunch to take home to my gardening mother who wasn’t as pleased as I had expected. I never did such again.)

This week, though, there are fields of dandies, adding colour to the drive or commute.
But beyond this, that first fresh light green of buds on bushes and trees signalling the true foothold of spring in Edmo. I always love the freshness of those buds and the surrounding air, as well as the beautiful contrast in greens right now–the new growth green against the dark green background of evergreens.

All that and the first butterfly in addition to the fragrant smell of May trees which began this past week. And best of all, of course–no mosquitoes!

Kim Kardashian? ! ?
Does this seem like the best role model for girls and women around the world these days? That’s as good as it gets for half the people on the planet?

with Pure Music, playing my Toca hand percussion drum, accompanying sitarist Ravi Shakar in the living room as the sun streams warmly in from the East. The music comes from without and within connecting something necessary and spiritual that only fingers, hands, ears, and soul can possibly understand and appreciate. Pure Music with no distractions, nothing to draw away the attention, becoming in the end just the music spontaneously composed and played in an instant. Ever-changing, ever-gliding from one mood, one nuance, one depth to another.

I have always needed and known different types of music: Eastern, jazz, rock, pop, folk, country, etc. But it is too classical and Eastern that I return again and again these past ten years. And repeatedly of late to Eastern and its quiet calm and sureness. Natural, free, and very much expressive of the Inner Life, Inner Being.

I first discovered Ravi Shankar in 1967 when he was being lauded by George Harrison of The Beatles, who used Eastern music significantly within his songs. Something completely fresh, yet basic is to be found in the eastern sounds of sitar, table, and tamboura. Something truly basic, vaguely primitive and wild, and extremely free/ing. Eastern music is about Being, the Soul, and its mysteries. It is about heart and head merged with soul in their expressions together, simultaneously. Always with Eastern music, a sweet and/or sad sublimnity and quiet power. When I finish playing, passing time long-forgotten, I awake in another fresh world–clearer and more peaceful. More myself and freer than I was when the music began and I became a key part of it and enhanced it by playing from within.

Nicely done. More realistic than Sidney Lumet’s entertaining, intriguing movie. The rocky cinematography approximating train movement. The nuanced decision of the denouement unlike the movie’s light, frothier ending. Poirot’s Catholicism and references to God (introduced in previous episodes, coming in the final years of the series) which reflect the uncaricaturizing of the detective and signalling his mature depth and realistic conflictedness. The ending of this version does much more than the movie does in terms of dealing with justice relative to premeditated murder. In the age that we live in, with all vestiges of authority crashing down around us in the West, this ending rings more true, especially for conservatives and traditionalists who feel laws serve a purpose and that standards are standards. The wobbliness of the story’s atmosphere reflects the current chaos and uncertainty within our greatly-changing society and culture. A timely viewing for our “out-of-joint” Hamletian times.