To thine own self be true

is above all else, the gift of oneself.”–Jean Anouilh

are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”–Rudyard Kipling

is to be dissolved in something completely great.”–Willa Cather, My Antonia

is what moves us forward.”–Joseph Campbell

a glass of Jackson Triggs Chardonnay today with a nice lunch complete with sticky buns on another first day of un-skool. Eminently civilized.

(above photo: On this day in his-story–another first day of un-skool, 30ish degrees C, 2012, sipping Aus shiraz on the sunny-ambient Banff Springs Hotel outdoor patio)

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It was my good friend Ken who once remarked to me; “Gosh, Richard, you sure know how to live.”

Seconded, indeed. September–my favourite month. First day of school for a zillion others. Freedom 52 has worked for me since 2002.

we are always in the midst of death, whether we are conscious of it or not.

“He not busy being born is busy dying.”–Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding”

(my Tom Stoppard-signed copy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)

Guildenstern: “Give us this day our daily mask.”–Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“There will be time, there will be time/To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.”–T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Especially today–the first day of school–as teachers meet the students, parents, and staff. Roles–we are constantly performing them in the work world, adopting external personas “to meet the faces you meet” in various contexts. A certain inauthenticness kicks in despite the edges and whatever thrills of intense engagement on the restart-runaway-school-year-treadmill or a new job. And so begins another round of what Eliot dubbed “the buried life”…

Omens–Sure, I believe. A robin showed up this morning in the garden on my 65th. As favorable omens go, I’ll take it.

Totems–L’il Red, the backyard squirrel, dropped by for his morning shelled peanuts and a swing on the tray, while we were having coffee on the patio. His main biz, as usual, storing tray contents in his hi-rise abandoned bird hotel in the neighbor’s yard. If ever there was a totem for “Seize the day”, “Waste not, want not”, or “The readiness is all”, the squirrel would be the perfect choice.

Shared music live–today my guitarist-son comes and we ‘raid the catalogue’. He will definitely be impressed by the latest added sound of my Turbo Distortion pedal which ‘punches’ and adds depth to the simplest and most ordinary guitar-playing. First song? Maybe “Almost Saturday Night” by John Fogerty. Wonder what my grandson will make of all this noise and excitement?

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postscript/ We ran several songs with 12-string acoustic beginning with “A Horse with No Name”. Then we played several with 6-string acoustic, and finished with many rock tunes including the Barenaked Ladies’ “Too Little, Too Late” which I had been riffing for about a week.

Grandson came later, missed the guitar music, but I introduced him to my hand drum, which he took to like a natural, playing to Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now” and America’s “You Can Do Magic”. He enjoyed my bday and helped blow out the candles and open presents. Later we did “Round and Round”–one of his favorite activities of late, walking in room-to-room circles to CD music. He carried a small owl and the CD case for The Mavericks’ Greatest Hits, looking at it as we passed the Mavericks playing on the CD player.

(evocative 1962 Coward-McCann dust jacket by George Salter)

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Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
–William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”

That falcon is pretty free and wild in the world today, flapping amok abroad in Syria, Iraq, the Ukraine, and elsewhere. That “blood-dimmed tide” of beheadings, home-grown terrorists, and “Convert or be killed” has become the news-fixture of the day. “The ceremony of innocence is drowned” is, of course, not just the dead kids in these nightmarish places, but also the 10-year-old soldiers trained to wage jihad on all infidels. In more civilized places, Obama, Harper, and others “lack all conviction” and say or do as little as possible as the violent crazies with their sick, narrow, evil agendas “Are full of passionate intensity”.

What goes around, comes around inevitably–Yeats is proven right again–and we are forced to face the human darkness all over again. The Beast Within, as it was correctly identified in Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Our world today has become, basically, a time of limited, limiting political agendas on all levels of human societies and interpersonal engagements. We are witnessing what happens abroad when organized, unchecked evil takes over, denying all other possibilities and agendas except their violent, fanatical own. Now who will stop them and when before millions of other innocents get ‘converted’?

In W.H. Auden’s own classic prophecy, “There Will Be No Peace”, the poet speaks of how the “gale” of evil others will prophesy “your downfall” for the simple reason that “they do not like you” despite your, ironically, having done nothing to them:

Their cause, if they had one, is nothing to them now;                                                  They hate for hate’s sake.

In another poem, “O What Is That Sound”, Auden presents the consequences of innocent others’ passivity, indifference, and fear in the face of the threatening “scarlet soldiers”; when the chickens come home to roost, so to speak:

O it’s broken the lock and splintered the door,                                                                 O it’s the gate where they’re turning, turning;                                                              Their boots are heavy on the floor                                                                                And their eyes are burning.

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Auden, Yeats, and others.Yes, the truly great poets have known, understood, and warned about the dark side of human nature human nature long before the rest of us.

“So why should young people study poetry in high schools or university anymore?” “It’s not relevant unlike learning how to operate the latest iPhone. How does it prepare them for life?” Doh.

is what Robert Frost called a “momentary stay against the confusion of the world”; a small, personal, creative act of order in a world increasingly chaotic; the making and expression–out of nothing–of something that has a potentially meaningful, satisfying form.