To thine own self be true

“The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.”
–Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Pretty much describes oil pipeline development at the expense of nature and AB PCs uncaring stands and bullying attacks on unions, education, post-secondary, health care, seniors’ facilities, dead adopted children, and assistance for the disabled. “Gut the institutions and public supports; we are not in the caring or people biz.”           

No doubt the PC contingent has been much too busy of late on the taxpayer’s’ dime touring South Africa, the lead bully gushing how much she personally learned about compassion, fighting for ordinary citizens, and government responsibility from Mandela.                                                                                                                                      Goes to show a little learning can, apparently, be an incredibly dangerous thing.

9 daze from solstice. Late afternoon, our crescent. A familiar December blueness. (Taken sans flash. Medium size recommended for viewing.)

Dreams are funny things, their origins and suddenness out of nowhere….

In a local large pavillion-style restaurant at lunch-hour in the summer, I bumped into Queen Elizabeth wandering a bit on her own with her cane (though her movements are always tightly limited and guarded in reality). She was looking at some nice stuff in a touristy section to one side of the great dark hall, and I offered to help her as she looked, me being a local denizen–handy and such.

She seemed attracted by a somewhat large artsy cushion which I held up for her to look at as she stood back to peruse. “That’s the one.” Something spoke to her that this was a nice memory of Edmo for herself or maybe as a gift for one of her family. I said I’d pay though she mentioned that wasn’t necessary, that there was some kind of available royal account.

The bill came to several hundreds of dollars! I used my Visa and quipped that, although I was middle class, buying this for her would give me pleasure because I knew she wanted it and the gift was clearly giving her pleasure. She asked me for my e-mail address (Is everyone on e-mail?) and said I would be contacted later by someone in her entourage.

Now why all this absurd fantasy? From what mysterious source/s? All I can think of is that one of my closest friends may be travelling in England and that is why I haven’t had answers to my e-mails in two-three weeks. Something else, too. As I went to pay for gas at a service station this week, I caught a glimpse of one of these magazine rags that has the loud headlines on its cover as I stood in line to pay. The typical, insensitive issue feature on the cover was about famous people, and which of them would die next! Queen Elizabeth was one of the people cited. (added later: yesterday a Christmas card arrived, which passed through my hands, with some kind of royal commemorative stamp somewhere on it. I have no conscious memory of seeing it.)

All of the above is about as close as I can get to identifying whence this out-of-character, presumptuous, unsolicited ‘wish-fulfillment’ originated. (I must add that I am neither a royalist, nor harbor any conscious desire to meet royalty, government figures, or celebrities of the day).
Ah, the gifts of self, when and where least expected, and how the subconscious mind fashions its own dream-stories.

(4:52 am, 12/12/13)

………………………….

The frozen north morning continues with Argentinian blueberries for my breakfast cereal. Argentinian blueberries bought in an Edmonton Safeway (!) in a continuing December cold snap as unsanded streets send morning commuters sliding into each other. The city has clearly given up on its citizens’ safety in time for Christmas. Roads abandoned to nature and windrows.

Many, of course, though more for individual poems.

Of late:
Dickinson
Keats
Shakespeare
Whitman
Frost
Tennyson
Blake
Auden
Lampman (the lone Canadian, for his excellent nature poems–best nature poet Canada ever produced)

Some larger poems of late;
Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”
Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations on Immortality”
Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
Eliot’s “Four Quartets”

The last contemporary poet who truly interested me was my friend, Edmonton’s Dean McKenzie, who passed away early in 2013. Two of his poem-videos remain online, his 2 CDs are unbelievable, and any of his published poems will change the quality of a reader’s day.

Inspired by “Trodden Weed” (1951) by Andrew Wyeth, one of my favorite painters.

To activate any photos not showing automatically, click on any picture frame. Then click “Continue to this website”–large pic, then smaller pic will emerge. When loaded, double-click upper left-pointing arrow twice to re-enter entire website with all blog photos now displayed. Pictures can then be enlarged or smallened as wished by clicking on photo. Three sizes in total.

makes countless millions mourn for him and other great people, real heroes, and large inspirational leaders of the past.
All today`s generation has to look forward to for ‘morally-inspiring, spiritually uplifting heroes’ are mediaworthy folks like:
Justin Trudeau
Rob Ford                                                                                                                        Dennis Rodman
Lance Armstrong
Lady Gaga
Miley Cyrus
Tiger Woods
Lindsay Lohan
Robert Downey, Jr.                                                                                                        Will Ferrell
Alison Redford
Charlie Sheen

‘Giants who tower above us with their achievements, accomplishments, and characters. Moral and spiritual leaders. True heroes.’

Yes, Mandela`s passing–yet another reminder of the great impoverishment and frivolousness of our truly weak, thoroughly screen-obsessed, e-distracted times.

Frozen North. Jack London. “Cremation of Sam McGee”.

Adds new meanings to the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter”.

Not a hospitable climate for cars or the homeless stuck outside, to say nothing of dogs.
Today I will throw out an extra block of suet for the squirrel and birds in the back yard. Hard to imagine how they cope. The flicker was around the other day. Magpies and blue jays stopping in more of late. I empathize with my frigid fine-feathered friends today before setting off to elucidate the ways of sound and image in creating poetry at the downtown library. The workshop participants will write to Erik Satie’s 1st Gymnopedie (composed in 1888) and get to use images from my own photo collection as stimuli for image-writing. Should be a unique, warm morning of mutual gifts of self. A very unique positive pre-Xmas morning.

(originally posted on December 8, 2012)

“He who loses his life shall find it.” -quoted by Joseph Campbell

Two of the most inspiring Christmas movies ever are the Alistair Sim version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and Frank Capra’s movie It’s a Wonderful Life. They have inspired many generations of viewers with their simple, yet profound core messages about life.

Both show us the great difference between (transitory, ephemeral, living) presence and (deathly, ghostly, forever) absence–or the extreme loss of presence. In the Dickens’ former, Scrooge comes to learn the hard way that absence can be a terrible point-of-no-return and that he has meanly absented himself from his family, his sister, her son, his fiance, his employee Bob Cratchit, and his business partner Marley. In his heartless obsession with accumulating meaningless wealth, he has also alienated himself from whatever good qualities he once possessed or valued in the past.

It is only through realizing unchangeable, irrevocable absences like those of his dead sister, fiance, and Marley and by being given a glimpse of a future without Tiny Tim and himself, that he is able to reconnect with finer values of kindness, love, and generosity. These values, in turn, help him to reconnect positively with both society and his once-better self. In the world of A Christmas Carol, the only other alternative is grim, stark hopelessness, suffering, and death, as amply revealed by the three ghosts who visit Scrooge.

Scrooge’s final appreciation of presence and being alive become epiphany and reason enough for him to celebrate and re/connect with the social world. Though this change comes late in his life, Scrooge ‘magically’ finds that he can will any possibility into being with humor and a better attitude–key positive manifestations of both presence and consciousness.

Likewise, George Bailey, the main character in It’s a Wonderful Life, suddenly finds himself ‘lost’ and ‘gone missing’ in a way reminiscent of Scrooge, but, in contrast, he is truly a desperate man driven by crisis to the brink of suicide. The beginning of his salvation occurs at the bridge when he saves his drowning guardian angel Clarence. That event alone reveals George’s essential nature of putting others before himself, something he had previously done all his life.

Like Scrooge, he is shown life without his presence and an alternate nightmarish version of his own community–a negative view caused by his absence and his granted wish to never been born. After a final repentance, George is given back his less-than-perfect life, grateful for the chance to recover both presence and life. Like Scrooge, his limited/limiting, blinkered attitude changes and he embraces life, with all its problems and shortcomings. That said, both protagonists find a richness through their experience and a renewed appreciation of presence and others. And as both characters discover, nearly anything becomes possible when one fully accepts and embraces life and presence.

Today we still hear that Christmas can be a stressful, isolating time of year for some individuals in our society. For those who may find themselves similarly ‘lost’ or ‘gone missing’ like George and Scrooge, these two classics offer helpful perspectives on some of the ‘basics’ for finding one’s better/best self, or recovering meaning within one’s own life.

on the best time of year.

No politics, no entitlements, no phone-baloney, no kow-towing, no shut-up-and-don’t-cause-trouble-for-poor-poor-pitiful-me-makin’-the-big-bucks.

Just honest good feeling and will within that the above can’t touch or Grinch into submission and nothingness.

The society and its authority figures (Redford, Ford, Harper, AB’s PC government) are just a self-serving powerful elite trying to ground down and confute the citizenry. In such an atmosphere of corruption, entitlements, unconscionable lack of responsibility (farmed out and eliminated public services), smothered democracy (right to strike crushed, absurd Big Brother laws and lack of privacy), insurance companies dodging responsibilities, no service in stores, etc.one has to finally wake up and realize that society has changed bigtime in the last decade, and that one is basically on his or her own, period.

And there are things that companies, bosses, authorities and governments cannot control and ground down such as charity and Christmas.

Again, Christmas is a spirit–a feeling within individuals which is a better, finer instinct and motivation at this incredibly cold time of year. It is and represents the best that one can be and do in an incredibly diminished/fast diminishing world.

So why personally angst about politics crap and all the red tape that one cannot control and that basically does not love its citizenry, its ordinary people? Far better to put one’s energies into positive, productive events and processes like Christmas in which one can be and express one’s better, more humanitarian (Yes, we are our brother’s keeper, too, anyway) self.

So leave the fallible stock market behind, mentally dismiss the idiots and insanity of one’s workplace, don’t get sucked into media-obsessed Ford and senate scandal meltdowns, and, above all, don’t lose any sleep over this distracting crap.

Far far better to be one’s self, one’s best, and enjoy and practise the best of the season. Far far better to help and support others less fortunate. Far better to show and express one’s honest love for family and friends. Far far better to make the donations and volunteer–all the things that truly do elevate us and move us and others forward, reminding us of what is most important and essential that we ought never lose.

Christmas–a beautiful word.

Can’t hear it enough in all the radio music. Makes me want to walk the streets shouting  “Merry Christmas, one and all!”

Songs like Bachman’s “Takin’ Care of Christmas“–its last verse yet another reminder of Christmas‘s best–helping the poor, needy, and less fortunate; putting others’ needs and plights before our own. So civil and civilized.

No, Christmas does change many people’s attitudes and behaviors for the better. People are more obviously and openly ‘up’– happier, by and large.

Christmas also helps people enjoy and appreciate family.                                              It brings out the spirit of giving and the best gifts of self.                                                     (Is there another more positive, more inclusive celebration?)

Christmas–that politically incorrect Western time that grinches and other selfish, agenda-ed individuals loudly protest, want to shut down, and don’t want others to enjoy. (“What an awful, politically incorrect imposition! It should be banned.”)

But listen now. Hear those herald angels rebut, “It’s Christmas, Christmas, Christmas….”