The Years–U.S. 1st ed.
Paper Darts–illustrated collection of her correspondence
Orlando–audio read by Tilda Swinton (who portrayed Orlando in movie version)
A Room of One’s Own–audio read by Claire Bloom
TIME magazine cover and article 1930s at time The Years published
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7 dust jackets by her sister Vanessa Bell
1st ed. of Flush
All these items are out-of-print, mostly scarce, some rare.
These two are essential for Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West fans and how these two writer-lovers planned and developed their own unique gardens.
My school textbooks (minus the accompanying teacher guides) in chronological order left to right, top to bottom:
1981: Crossroads 1: Imagining, Crossroads 2: Relating, Crossroads 3: Discovering
1984: Inside Poetry
1986: Dimensions: A Book of Essays
1987: Inside Stories I, Inside Stories II
1990: Connections 1: Imagining (2nd ed.), Connections 2: Relating (2nd ed.), Connections 3: Discovering (2nd ed.)
1993: Inside Stories for Senior Students
1995: Choices
1996: Dimensions II
1999: Inside Stories 1 (2nd ed.), Inside Stories 2: (2nd ed.)
2000: Gage Canadian Writer’s Handbook, Crossroads 10
2002: Inside Poetry (2nd ed.), Inside Stories III, Between the Lines 11, Between the Lines 12
2008: Nelson Canadian Writer’s Handbook, Persuade Me
2010: Inside Media (completed, but not published)
In total, 24 textbooks, 21 teacher’s guides= 44. Many more articles, monographs. Something like 70 school-related publications in all.
These textbooks have been authorized and used in every Canadian province at some time from 1981 till now (2014) for grades 9-12 ELA. Over 1 million units sold in the past 43 years. With multiple classroom usage, used by an estimated 3-5 million Canadian students. Many of the post-1999 books remain in print.
For the record, publishers have included Gage (extinct), Harcourt (extinct), Pearson, and Nelson. My excellent co-authors, without whom none of these projects would have been possible, have included Jerry Wowk and the late Glen Kirkland, both of Edmonton Catholic schools.
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My 2004 literacy tipsheet series, available from Edmonton Public:
Film as Text, Matters of Choice (in Writing), Metacognition: An Introduction, Sharing a Personal Response, Listening and Notetaking Skills, Understanding Character, Revise Your Writing, How to Do a Critical Response, Responding to a Photograph, Writing a Film Review.
I was also a consultant for a junior high 6 book ELA series for Pearson in 2008.
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“What a man essentially is is revealed by the record of what he has done, and by what he is trying to make of himself at any given moment.”–Northrop Frye, “Myth I”
E. M. Forster’s “Only connect” is probably the truest two-word statement ever uttered. And one can connect on many levels: between oneself and others, between one and nature, and between one and any work of art, be it film, book, painting, or piece of music.
Connection is a state that starts as early as a baby returning a parent’s gaze. We also feel connection to family, others, and our various environments before we begin attending school. Connection usually means that one consciousness recognizes the existence, presence, and consciousness of others. In that sense, there is an inner connection, not just the exterior connection or superficial glancing off ‘the other’ like a couple of billiard balls on the table of life. One of the challenges of living is the extent to which we can connect with the consciousness of ‘the other’, whether in the form of person, situation, object or surroundings.
Our minds and egos typically predispose us to living mostly in terms of self; as expressed by songwriter Paul Simon–“I am a rock. I am an island.” Most of us live inside ourselves and see and relate to the ‘outer world’ in terms of our selves. The challenge often is to recognize the common humanity of other people or our similarity to other species such as animals struggling to survive possible ecological disaster or planetary crisis. There is, then, a large central bedrock of consciousness that connects everything on Earth, and it is that basic field of consciousness recognition that holds the possibility of significant individual growth and positive personal learning.
For instance, when you read a book and are moved by the experiences and ideas of real people or fictional characters, you and your awareness or consciousness are changed by that process. You may end up feeling as if the characters or people are you and feel an indefinable or inexplicable close connection to them. Likewise, if you are on a team that wins a championship, there is a bond between the team members that connects them in a lasting, significant way. Much the same thing happens when people go to a school reunion and remember and relive those old days, roles, and events. There is a sharing of consciousness that accompanies the reconnection.
Hence, consciousness is potentially the important aspect of connection. Just consider the perceptions, awarenesses, recognitions, knowledge, understandings, insights, impressions, and appreciations that occur in such key, moving, and memorable moments.
“Making mental connections is our most crucial learning tool, the essence of human intelligence to forge links; to go beyond the given; to see patterns, relationship, context.”–Marilyn Ferguson
And, too–returning to Forster’s quote about relationships–the best of what happens between any two people is often simply the agreements and connected consciousness—the shared experiences and mutual learning that occur in those very close ties. It is the connected consciousness that is the greatest value of whatever significant connections.
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It is difficult to talk about connection without mentioning consciousness. When we seek to connect, we seek to know more about who or what we are connecting with. We seek an awareness that is a vital part of connection. And to a large extent, our connections won’t happen or be significant unless they presuppose imaginative empathy or sympathy, other forms of knowing, other forms of consciousness.
Ideally, some of the best connections with other people will arise from talk and ‘comparing notes’. In those exchanges of feelings and ideas, we may potentially experience similarities of feelings, thinking, and experiences that create the bridges of connection and, in turn, connected consciousness.
Over the days and years, our consciousness alters and, hopefully, grows. We learn more about others, ourselves, human nature, nature, society, and the world. As Ferguson suggests, learning occurs through our ability to make connections whether studying a person, a mathematical theory, a period of history, and so forth. Those connections become a part of us as much as we may, as Paul of Tarsus said, become a part of someone, something else, a process–of who and what we know.
Above all, shared consciousness and the seeking of common ground remain basic to one’s fulfillment as a person and as an individual.
(1st published here August 29/2012)
There are animals here
who have rubbed themselves
raw on mornings like these
recalling robinsong
& lovesap before
the decibels of jets.
They peer thru gauze
at the cool desired blue.
Shaved & alarmed
into daylight
they weigh their lives
against the balance-sheet of sky
draw breath & drive deadlined
into forests of stone.
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Retired for over a decade now, I remember it too well–what a soulless work-day and rush-hour are like. At odds with necessity are nature’s beauty and the bright blue dream of love. Instead, a certain mechanical/automated response called “making a living” and a hardness (c.f. “Concrete Sea”, an old tune by The Poppy Family) and a numbing alienation within. Might have also called this The Ruts of Our Lives.
(1st published here August 25, 2012)
What passes through a young mind when it meets the strange or unfamiliar?
(pic: sofa throw–bench scene, behind the Banff Springs Hotel, September)
“Be natural, my children.”–last words of English novelist Charles Dickens
Living authentically, especially in social situations like families and workplaces, is one of the hardest, trickiest challenges in interpersonal relationships. It always works if you are honest, simply yourself, and not merely some kind of expected social role or role you choose to play in order to cater to the wishes and limited/limiting egos of others.
When we are with friends or people closest to us, it is always best to focus on mutual interests, shared past experiences, and what you want to know about them, who they are, and what you’re curious about. I always take the view that Virginia Woolf had–that I want to learn from and about others, that there is something positive that will expand my own perception, understanding, and appreciation of others. Other people are always potentially interesting and they naturally evoke questions and responses during the listening, relating process. I am ‘larger’ or ‘largest’ when I am fully engaged, listening, and responding to others. When the talk is honest and thoughtful, the process, incidentally and consequentially, reveals me at my most natural and best.
Typically, people play roles when they are with others. This begins at an early age when we are children (sons and daughters) in relation to parents (mothers and fathers)–something that usually continues through life, though in changed and modified forms as children grow up or age themselves. In the workplace, we are employees, doing what employers or bosses expect or tell us to do. In male-female relationships, there are usually assigned or assumed roles–a fair number of these challenging or begrudgingly done over time. Roles always delineate, limit, and restrict at some stage–sometimes they are even fixed or foisted–having an unnatural rigidity and smallness that make one aware that there is often much more to oneself–potentially and actually.
One ‘trap’ to being nice, for instance, is that there is no limit to the number of people who will use or not care about others, but rather see nice people as being a means to an end. Often, as I have remarked before, nice people will not necessarily get a deeply-needed or commensurate positiveness back. They put out way more than they ever put back in, frequently leading to dwindling energy and personal resources. As I have also remarked elsewhere in this blog, one has to be nice to oneself or take care of oneself if one is going to approach life this way. Charity begins at home, so to speak, and you certainly can’t be any good for others if you are not good to yourself. You owe this to yourself; after all, your life is mostly your life.
Two basic problems in relationships are: 1) We do not see ourselves the ways that others do (that is, we may not fully understand our affects on others or we do not see the gaps between our perceived images of ourselves vs. the preferred images that others have of us). 2) We receive meanings and purposes from relationships, but the roles and exposures that we have to others in relationships may limit what we really want or need, as well as who we are, and our potentially to live authentically–without social masks or personas, assigned or chosen roles.
As we often hear, it is important to be oneself or to be true to oneself. This may require an extra step of setting up conditions under which we are more likely to learn about ourselves, who we are, what we like, and so forth. This may mean ‘dropping out’, leaving the ‘herd’ or ‘machine’ as we used to call it in the ’60s, cutting out the social noise, and trying other possibilities and actualizing roles of self-growth that may work better in the long run for ourselves. “Finding oneself’ is a bit of a cliche, but sometimes that can get thwarted in the glut or mess of one’s main personal relationships, family living, work, or career. I think living authentically is always going to be easier if you know and like yourself, and if you respond naturally/’unrolely’ to others. Roles can be convenient or efficient (e.g., a job may get done), but they are, first and foremost, just that–roles. People and life are far more complicated and nuanced than roles.
So who are you? What do you like? What are your missing pieces, your unfulfilled or neglected dreams? This is, after all, your life. It’s been said that sometimes we’d rather die for our preferred egoic images of self and imagined, projected fantasies of what ‘society’ expects of us. Too many of us serve without reflecting and attending to our own much deeper inner–sometimes spiritual–needs. There are basic hungers and thirsts that beg a more authentic, less ‘rolely’ lifestyle. And sometimes, these will bubble up, whether in the proverbial mid-life crisis or under other changed contexts, and we will draw a very deep breath and begin again. This time, as our natural selves, living for and as our more authentic, basic selves.
