World View

Too much seriousness again. So time for anothe fun quiz. What is your world view. It might make you think or throw up. Either way, it has produced something.

As for myself - Cultural Creative. But then, I rigged the game...

Power Words

Loss.
Intent.
Magic.
Expectation.
Understanding.
Present Moment.
Suffering.
Truth.
Consequences.
Pain.
Memory.
Lust.
Love.
Let Go.

These are just mine. Please add more of your own in the comments section.

The concern to fix a moment in time undermines the moment. A moment of process is that process. When fixed, the process ends. We move "downwards" through the worlds. This means the possibilities open to us close. We are left with a photograph, or a recording, but not the event. For some people, the representation has a greater reality than reality.

Robert Fripp – June 10, 2000

This is one of the reasons why I rarely consent to video-taping or photographing certain events where I would rather be a full participant. Most of my relatives are angry because I wouldn't take pictures during their wedding ceremonies, this even though they had a professional photographer and many other family members were also taking pictures or videos.

Corporate Droning Tentacles

I have a really difficult time reconciling what seems to be two seemingly opposing experiences in one body : listening to Ozric Tentacles in the car, blasting it really loudly, and being a good corporate working drone.

One seems to be a letting go of ego and the other seems to be of keeping ego in check, which is simply another way of not letting ego go.

Who's Side Are You On?

I don't think the U.S. is really on anyone's side except its own anymore (if they ever did at all).

Bash! Bam! Kapow! Splurt!

You'll never look at comics the same way again.

Dream 7

Fear of a black planet.

Then I wake.

The Ultimate Police State

"In a sense, we’re policing ourselves and that’s the ultimate police state, where people are terrified of challenge."

J.G. Ballard from an interview in the summer of 1997.

Communication Breakdown

Although I love Led Zepelin, at one time the soundtrack to lust, actually finding out about this stuff kind of puts a little damper on things. Not much really, but enough. Ah, I'm just naive.

A list of some of the songs Zep stole from other artists:

"Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" - A folk song by Anne Bredon, this was originally credited as "traditional, arranged by Jimmy Page," then "words and music by Jimmy Page," and then, following legal action, "Bredon/Page/Plant."

"Black Mountain Side" - uncredited version of a traditional folk tune previously recorded by Bert Jansch.

"Bring It On Home" - the first section is an uncredited cover of the Willie Dixon
tune (as performed by the imposter Sonny Boy Williamson).

"Communication Breakdown" - apparently derived from Eddie Cochran's "Nervous
Breakdown."

"Custard Pie" - uncredited cover of Bukka White's "Shake 'Em On Down," with lyrics
from Sleepy John Estes's "Drop Down Daddy."

"Dazed And Confused" - uncredited cover of the Jake Holmes song (see The Above
Ground Sound Of Jake Holmes).

"Hats Off To (Roy) Harper" - uncredited version of Bukka White's "Shake 'Em On
Down."

"How Many More Times" - Part one is an uncredited cover of the Howlin' Wolf song available on numerous compilations). Part two is an uncredited cover of Albert King's "The Hunter."

"In My Time Of Dying" - uncredited cover of the traditional song (as heard on Bob Dylan's debut).

"The Lemon Song" - uncredited cover of Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor" - Wolf's publisher sued Zeppelin in the early 70s and settled out of court.

"Moby Dick" - written and first recorded by Sleepy John Estes under the title "The Girl I Love," and later covered by Bobby Parker.

"Nobody's Fault But Mine" - uncredited cover of the Blind Willie Johnson blues.

"Since I've Been Lovin' You" - lyrics are the same as Moby Grape's "Never," though the music isn't similar.

"Stairway To Heaven" - the main guitar line is apparently from "Taurus" by Spirit.

"White Summer" - uncredited cover of Davey Graham's "She Moved Through The Fair."

"Whole Lotta Love" - lyrics are from the Willie Dixon blues "You Need Love."

I'm not listing covers that the band credited to the actual authors ("You Shook Me") or the less blatant ripoffs (the "Superstition" riff in "Trampled Underfoot").

Delta Of Venus

The other strange thing I've found in my travels through the blogosphere is the amount of sex blogs. You know the ones. Where bored housewives write about secret dirty encounters and bored husbands post nude photos of themselves. They're almost as scary as the hot christian chicks. But not quite.

Food Of The Gods

Just one word today: Chocolate. It's been that kind of day.

Dream 6

I'm in a Vietnamese restaurant. I'm the only non-Asian in there and I'm ordering food for take-out. Everyone is eyeing me threateningly, with avarice. The staff and patrons are looking at me with open hostility. I try to avoid eyes and concentrate on the artwork on the walls but look around very often. The food seems to be taking too long. I am feeling very paranoid and afraid. As I look around, one very beautiful girl seems to be less angry with me. But as I stare at her a little longer, I feel as if she is attempting to lull me and then put a spike through my heart. I wake.

Hot Chicks

Following up on an earlier blog, during my travels through the blogosphere I can't help but notice how many of these new-born/new-found Christian chicks are really hot...I mean, it is a far greater percentage than that of the goth chicks or sensitive poetry chicks or new soccer mom chicks. Anyway, I just found it curious is all.

Notice: If you found the above message offensive, please note that the message says more about it's utterer than it's subject. And it also says more about the offended person than the subject represented. In fact, it says almost nothing at all about it's subject. This is a reality that most of us are unable to comprehend. And if we could, there'd be lots less self-righteous anger and violence around.

Fault

Three ways to discover our faults: ask a friend; ask an enemy; recognise a fault in others.

Robert Fripp

Music Of The Spheres

Music, music, music. If only I had the talent I would be playing some weird combination of Crimson, GYBE, David Sylvian, Shakti, The Hip and Zeppelin with a hint of interstellar space or maybe early Tangerine Dream and a dash of Miles. I think I need to get me a keyboard and just start creating sounds.

An Uncommon Affliction

“…they were very cheerful and friendly and I avoided them strenuously.”

An Unexpected Light - Travels In Afghanistan by Jason Elliot, Picador, London, 1999 - page 394.

An uncommon affliction. I seem to do the same, preferring even more so to be by myself most of the time. Or at least to be in silence even while next to someone. “I’m not afraid of your silences,” she said to me and I fell in love and married her.

The Story So Far

“…a journey was a kind of story in itself, providing one had the will to read it, just as a story too could be a journey, providing one had the experience to bring to it, and both found their mark differently in different people.”

An Unexpected Light - Travels In Afghanistan by Jason Elliot, Picador, London, 1999 - page 290.

The Self Made Man

“He is not concerned with acquiring powers but of uncovering something already within.”

Jason Elliot on a Sufi. An Unexpected Light - Travels In Afghanistan by Jason Elliot, Picador, London, 1999 - page 270.

Guitarzan

Robert Fripp was born today (in 1946 I think).

I thank his parents (both natural and spiritual) for his music and his writings.

Happy Brithday!

Enriched

I had a conversation recently with a colleague on bringing value to our lives that doesn’t involve enriching our employer to our own psychic detriment.

Couldn't be done, we concluded.

And there, we just did it.

Just Let Go

“Always there is this kind of suspense on a journey where you are both isolated and robbed of your own language. Under such conditions the means by which you make sense of things begins to be transformed; you can no longer rely on familiar signals but a cryptic sequence of tiny events, the pattern of which you sense more keenly as your isolation grows. It leads to a kind of parting of the ways; you either let go of your worries and put your faith in the natural unfolding of events or are plagued with anxieties which multiply as darkness falls.”

An Unexpected Light - Travels In Afghanistan by Jason Elliot, Picador, London, 1999 - page 191.

Just let go.

Lose The Habit

"In ordinary life you know yourself from your surroundings, which become the measure and the mirror of your thoughts and actions. Remove the familiar and you are left with a stranger, the disembodied voice of one's own self which, robbed of its usual habits, seems barely recognizable."

An Unexpected Light - Travels In Afghanistan by Jason Elliot, Picador, London, 1999 - page 144.

We gain and gather these habits over a lifetime and from our ancestors, and do not even realize it. Lose the habits and find yourself.

...trust in the spirit of the journey...

"...trust in the spirit of the journey..."

An Unexpected Light - Travels In Afghanistan by Jason Elliot, Picador, London, 1999 - page 80.

Sometimes you just have to let go and start walking.

Won't You Help Me Sing

Bob Marley died this day in 1981.

The impressive influence of his music reached even my extremely northern and very cold high-school, about as far removed from the beaches of Jamaica (in a sense, as was Marley as well) as you could possibly get. That power, careening around and through the atmosphere or at least our hearts, must do something...

Limits

"Ah", he replied solemnly, as if I had hit on a notion of importance. Then he lit a cigarette, and a coil of smoke spiralled upwards before his face. "If a man does not reach his limit," he pronounced, a flicker of enquiry surfacing into his eyes as if released from a great depth, "how can he discover the way to go beyond it?"

An Unexpected Light - Travels In Afghanistan by Jason Elliot, Picador, London, 1999 - page 72.

Sometimes I read passages such as this and it makes me want to give up writing forever. Luckily I only stop for a short while.

Staring

"...the faint sense of trespass implicit in the act of staring..."

An Unexpected Light - Travels In Afghanistan by Jason Elliot, Picador, London, 1999 - page 4.

This was my own reaction to the veiled women of Syria and the strangers on the subway in Canada. No matter the goodwill intent behind the staring, it is still intentionally rude.

Journeys Part 2

" I had in mind a quietly epic sort of journey..."

An Unexpected Light - Travels In Afghanistan by Jason Elliot, Picador, London, 1999 - page 17.

Mine are all like that too. At least...in my mind...

Journeys

"...journeys are sparked from small and unlikely things rather than grand conviction."

An Unexpected Light - Travels In Afghanistan by Jason Elliot, Picador, London, 1999 - page 4.

Could be true. A tale of lost love, a story about a street or river, a wall or mountain. A brief passage in a book such as...'When James left Ulan Bator, the winds had turned the skies pink'. The reader then wonders, why is the sky pink in Ulan Bator? I'd like to see this for myself. And off they go...

Moving Day

I was thinking today that government policy has made it far easier to move capital and goods (including drugs and money from drugs) than to move people between countries. What does that tell us about what is important to governments.

I Feel Good

James Brown was born today May 3rd. Get the funk out!

Cheating

Thoughts on cheating:














Yeah, as if!!!

Time Dilation

It was 100 years ago this year that Einstein published his theory of special relativity. One of the consequences of this theory is that as you get closer to moving at the speed of light, time slows down. This is also known as time dilation.

I once had a conversation with my spouse about time seeming to be going much faster for us since the children were born. It really does seem to go faster because, ironically, we're not taking the time to enjoy the time.

I;ve said it before and I'll probably go on saying it. In fact many, many others far cleverer than I have said it as well and in far superior ways. Live in the present moment. Make each second pass as though it were your last second and I guarantee you that time will slow down until it seems like forever. No need for a special spaceship.

Mellotron

A mellotron, played by the right musician, sounds like the soundtrack to the end of the world when the demons run amok in the streets and children cry for their lost parents.

Some albums recorded with a mellotron (some evil sounding, some not so much) that I have listened to:
The Beatles - Revolver, Magical Mystery Tour & The White Album
Black Sabbath - Volume 4
David Bowie - Space Oddity, Hunky Dory & Diamond Dogs
Genesis - Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot & Selling England By The Pound
Joy Division - Closer
King Crimson - Just about every album but best sounding on the first album, In The Court Of The Crismon King and on Larks' Tounges In Aspic
Led Zeppelin - Houses Of The Holy & Physical Graffiti
The Mars Volta - De-Loused In The Comatorium & Frances The Mute
Monster Magnet - Dopes To Infinity
Moody Blues - Days Of Future Past
Oasis - "What's The Story" Morning Glory
Opeth - Damnation & Ghost Reveries
Pink Floyd - A Sucerful Of Secrets, Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother
Porcupine Tree - In Absentia & Deadwing
Radiohead - OK Computer
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication & Blood Sugar Sex Magic
Rolling Stones - Beggar's Banquet
Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure & Stranded
Smashing Pumpkins - Most of their albums
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Strange Advance - World's Away
Talk Talk - The Colour Of Spring
Tangerine Dream - Most albums from the 70's but I especialy like Stratosfear
The Tea Party - All their albums
Traffic - Mr. Fantasy

Any parts of these albums that make you sad or fearful were most likely made by the mellotron.

Work In Progress 2

Work in progress: Poem from "A Quiet Weariness".

it's always quiet of course,
just the low sound of
classical music
playing in the background
and a muffled machine-like sound
coming from everywhere,
summer and winter,
morning and night,
forever,
apparatus that we need
to keep places like this
running
smoothly.

the names are always there,
Paul Eugene Lortie,
Georgette Gervais,
good old
Geraldine Di Tomma Stallato,
friendly, habitual denizens
of this quiet
place.

the new neighbours.

we can't always choose our neighbours,
even less in death
than in life.

it's quiet here,
the quiet of respect,
regret and tears,

death
of course,

but mostly
a quiet weariness.

hello Gino,
hi Alberto,
how's it going
Maria...

resting...
resting neighbours

old friends really,
in death only
of course

in death only.

Bethune: A Review

The Sword, The Scalpel – The Story of Dr. Norman Bethune by Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon. A review.

Norman Bethune is still a hero to many Canadians and non-Canadians, especially in China where he spent the last years of his life in Mao’s fight against the Japanese, Chinese imperialists and capitalists. Socialists, medical professionals and many Montréalers (where he spent a good part of his life as chief of thoracic surgery at Ste. Justine Hospital) revere Bethune as a noble doctor who helped the underprivileged. His many exploits of genius, from designing better surgical tools to inventing the modern mobile medical unit used in wars since 1939, have made him a Canadian to be proud of. His almost single-handed and constant fight against tuberculosis alone (which he himself suffered from), would make him a great humanitarian.

Which makes it all the more unfortunate that Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon’s biography has two things (among many) that hinder our understanding and appreciation of this man: The book is more propaganda than art which serves to make a truly great man somehow less and the information gathered and given to the reader is subsumed by the authors’ agenda in pushing a particular point of view, that of the glorious communist future awaiting us. The book is more hagiography than biography.

Now, I don’t have an issue with a socialist or communist ideologist attempting to convince us of the greatness of that way of life, but the effect of items such as getting to age 34 of his life by page 20 of a 319 page book, but writing with great heavy-handed detail on his death, to the extent that we know the exact time of his passing and the exact words spoken by those around him full of camaraderie and brotherhood, is to feel like we are being beaten over the head. Yes, we know that all the communists fighting in Mao’s army were really, really hard-working and never complained about their lot because they believed in the brotherhood of man. Enough already.

Those looking for an in depth analyses of Bethune’s early childhood and formative experiences should look elsewhere. For example, where did Bethune get such a single-minded ability to focus and his zeal for causes? We are given scant information on his parents; his father was a minister and his mother a missionary is basically all we’re told. A proper biography would have explored his upbringing and relationship to his parents to bring into focus his later stubbornness and attachment to causes. The authors write of Bethune’s “idealism of adolescence” but try as I might, I can not find any reference to his adolescence as Bethune’s teen-age years don’t even rate a sentence.

Bethune joined the Canadian armed forces the day World War 1 begun. He spent time at the front and was wounded at Ypres where many Canadian historians note that Canada was truly born as a nation. Surely such a horrendous experience would make some sort of impression and help us to understand his later hatred of unworthy causes. After all, many post-war writers, the Lost Generation as Gertrude Stein called them, felt such deep scars that they wrote and drank and talked in some fashion about their experiences for the rest of their lives. These authors see fit to give us exactly one page on Bethune and the First World War.

The propensity to propaganda comes early in the book. We are told that Bethune’s decision to start his first medical practice in Detroit is partly because “America was rich, and a great torrent of its riches washed through Detroit…There, he told himself, he would have to kiss no one’s hand, bend the knee to no British upper-class dowager…” There is nothing inherently wrong with this statement except that we haven’t been given a proper explanation or set-up before hand to tell us why he felt he had to “bend his knee”. In the paragraphs preceding this statement we are told he is living the good life and quite enjoying it. We are told of his jaunts in London, Paris and Italy, carousing and carrying-on like any young man at the time. He seems to be happy. Where did he get the feeling he was “bending the knee” while drinking in London pubs or picking up girls in Parisian cafes? Approximately 2 pages later we are told that money no longer satisfies him, he needs to be able to be the “old” Bethune, healing the poor with no thought to monetary reward. Unfortunately the authors have already made him out to be a bit of a spoiled rich kid…how many of us get to go to medical school in England and Italy and squander the money sent by his parents on drinks and food. At least make the propaganda a little more subtle guys!

Now I know this book was written in 1952 during a time of Communist witch-hunts and paranoia so maybe the message had to be heavy-handed but it doesn’t excuse sloppy writing. The move from self-serving to self-sacrificing young doctor is unclear and one of the problems I think is that both authors knew Bethune and the only detailed biographical information we get comes in the years that Allan and Gordon had dealings with their subject.

I had seen the Donald Sutherland movie (Bethune – The Making of a Hero) many years ago and the only part that made an impression on me was when Sutherland, playing Bethune, collapses his own lung in order to stave off or cure the effects of tuberculosis. My thoughts at the time were, my god, what absolute balls does it take to be able to operate on yourself and is this what Bethune really did or did the film makers take the hero title a little too seriously.

I bought Bethune’s biography soon after to confirm for myself. Although Bethune never actually collapsed his own lung, this biography would have us believe that this medical genius, inventor and communist was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The sainthood attributed to Bethune sometimes so far outweighs the often truly astonishing things he has done, that this biography makes the man Bethune much less real and the story of his life, ironically, much less interesting.

Consequences

Life gets musch easier when you make a decision, then simply accept the consequences which follow from it. Robert Fripp.

Someone threw a cookie at me today. While walking along a downtown street, a cookie hit me on the left shoulder. I brushed it off, looked around but decided to forget it and just kept walking. My day was instantly changed. A somewhat depressive weight lifted off my mind. I couldn't get angry at something as stupid as a cookie hitting me in the shoulder and I realized that most of my issues were exactly the same; as inconsequential as that cookie. Perhaps more importantly, a young lady looked at me right as the cookie hit me, saw that I did not react in a vile manner and I swear I saw a shadow or something more weighty rise from her shoulders into thin the air.

Playing In Time

Posted elsewhere but I have wanted to write about this for awhile so I've put it here as well. Why? Because I can.

For years I have read Robert Fripp's writings on music. Often his descriptions of what happens during group improvisations and specific gigs (Central Park 1974, Marquee 1969, recording Moonchild) often seem quite other-worldly to me. Especially during the group improvisations, he seems (to me anyway) to describe the experience as almost a form of communal and telepathic thinking where something else takes over.

Although I have felt a power in the music or experience as a member of the audience and it was exhilarating, I hadn't felt anything special as a musician playing in a group context. And I frankly doubted what he was saying. Until one evening...

I was playing in a studio, just jamming with some players. Nothing much was happening, just noodling around. At one point I started playing a simple progression on the bass and the drummer followed, then the 2 guitarists and finally the vocalist gave us some stream of consciousness lyrics. While playing this tune, I had the experience of being "locked-in" with the other players. It seemed to me that whatever we did, whether changing chords or tempos, we did it together, instantly and with no audible errors. It also seemed to me that there was no "leader" for that tune, if the drummer suddenly shifted into a different groove we followed, if the vocalist suddenly got quieter we followed. There seemed to be a group-mind in play that dare I say it - directed us. I was playing bass but had no conscious feeling about playing bass. It just melded with the other instruments and players to form something new. If I was a Crafty I might say I was playing bass and not playing bass at the same time. We seemed to be in sync for exactly 6 minutes and 32 seconds at least. The experience was so powerful that I still get goose-bumps thinking about it and yet have a difficult time describing it.

This experience allowed to me to get a glimpse what Mr. Fripp might have been describing. I don't know if it was exactly the same but it was in my opinion just as powerful a feeling for me as it was for him and countless other musicians who have no doubt gone through a similar experience.

I have tried mightily to get that feeling back with other musicians and studios and gigs. Sadly it hasn't.

Whatever

The reconciliation of work and love. Another eternal question in an endless series of them.

For Absent Friends

Mother in law passed on 12 years ago today. I haven't made many toasts in my life, but when I do, I always toast to absent friends. It seems the smallest thing I can do but it is needed.

Wide Asleep

Twice now I've tried to read the passage in Jason Elliot's book An Unexpected Light on Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam, and both times my eyes tear up, or almost close involuntarily as I fall asleep, and prevents me from reading the whole passage or even remember the few words I have been able to read. I have noticed this happening when I read certain profound passages in other books as well. What is this phenomenon? It must have a name. Perhaps I am unready to be made aware of this knowledge. Most likely though I'm just tired. But it's interesting how the mind invents deep mysteries where there may be none.

Work In Progress 1

Work in progress: From Hotel Poems (plain tentative title).

you were framed
in the window,
crying,
and when i asked you why
you said
because,
and i said
i know,
but pulled you back to bed
anyway

anyway,
i can no longer sleep in hotel
rooms
and the night desk people
are annoyed at me
because i keep pressing
the wake-up call button
but it doesn't seem to work

Dead Stop

Still having a difficult time writing daily. The discipline required is tremendous for such a seemingly easy task. Just starting the first word is hard sometimes. The ideas are there it's just bloody difficult getting the engine going. The hardest thing to do is to start moving from a dead stop. I needn't worry about turning and inertia just yet.

Spent

Spent, or The Poem That Couldn't Last.

i'm spent,
leaving these traces
on a clean page
as i once left traces
on your glistening breasts,
profaning the sacred
for a second
time

Clean And Cheerful Friends

Had lunch at J.'s restaurant today. He looks tired. Opening and running a business is not easy but he does it with a kind of cheerful fatalism. Having such decent friends is a blessing. He's one of the good guys and I wish him well.

The Consensus

"If we know that someone is consumed with greed, avarice & venality (like myself) we feel safe with them: they can be bought. This person presents no challenges or threats to the consensus."

Robert Fripp, May 4, 2000

The question in my mind then is how does an individualist safely live in this world?

Happy

Anyone else tired of being unhappy because you're happy being unhappy?

The Damage Done

Lies can create both physical and psychic damage.

It's easy at first, then the worry and stress comes. Then the skipping heart appears. Then the nervous arm shaking. Then the restlessness. Then pacing. Then...

The Final Frontier

In the spirit of wonderful spring days and sticking to the easy-going and space related them from yesterday, do yourself a favour and check out the Astronomy Picture of the Day site. It is inspiring and awesome in the truest sense of the word (not the de-clawed way use it today).

OMG - I'm Deanna Troi !?*&$%!!!

Lighten up and enjoy the day.

This is a fun quiz.

Which Star Trek character are you?

Lies My Father Told Me

Maturity means:

Take it like a man.
Don't complain.
Don't cry.
Be a man.
Be tough.

That's All Right

Parts of me are well and parts are not well. Sometimes those parts that were well become not well and vice versa. If I could make all the parts be well at the same time you might find me under a plum tree. But generally, today, the majority of parts are well. Perhaps that's all right too.

Boxscore

It's official. I no longer care anything whatsoever about baseball. I found myself reading the morning paper and skipping all the baseball related stories. It's done. Move on. Nothing to see here folks.

Addicted To Blogger

These technical difficulties are driving me crazy.

Blog Life

Life is getting in the way of writing this blog so I'll be out for a bit...of the blog that is, not life.

Another Day, Another Dollar.

I've always hated this saying.

Because it's not enough.

And I don't mean monetarily.

The Love Of Many Things

"It must be a good thing to die conscious of having performed some real good, and to know that by this work one will live, at least in the memory of some, and will have left a good example to those that come after. A work that is good - it may not be eternal, but the thought expressed in it is, and the work itself will certainly remain in existence for a long, long time; and if afterwards others arise, they can do no better than follow in the footsteps of such predecessors and do their work in the same way."

Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo. From the book: Dear Theo, The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh edited by Irving Stone. A good biography of Van Gogh is by David Sweetman.

The need to express oneself, one's feelings and hopes and loves, to impart to others one's viewpoint nakedly, unadulterated, unaltered, true...The mathematician comes close but the artist comes closer.

In Another Key

There is a storyof a first century rabbi who was asked by a pagan to explain the whole of the Torah while standing on one leg and if he could achieve this, the pagan would convert to judaism. The rabbi stood on one leg and replied, "Do not do unto others as you would not have done to you. That is the whole of the Law; go and learn it".

Compassion yet again.

So simple yet so difficult to achieve.

Today's listening pleasure: Damageby Sylvian & Fripp.

Faith

Fun times mixed with a little bit of seriousness.

This site has an interesting quiz called what's your spiritual type.

Little did I know that I have more in common with Neo-Pagans and Liberal Quakers than my own born faith (Eastern Orthodox)!

Today's listening pleasure: Supertramp's Even In the Quietest Moments.

The Key

Communication is a key to compassion.

The more we talk to each other, get to know each other, taste each other's food, listen to each other's music and stories, stare into each other's eyes, experience each other's cultures, the harder it is to de-humanize each other and we can end the waste.

Video Killed the Radio Star

I enjoy music and so read a few online forums dedicated to different kinds of sounds.

One thing that always puzzles me and frightens me at the same time is the absolute worship and attachment we have to artists.

It seems to me that by exalting a fellow human being who happens to play an instrument better you or me only diminishes both the artist and the fan.

Maybe, by exploring our common humanity, the music or any other art would actually be more meaningful to us and speak to us on a deeper level.

Today's listening pleasure: Yes.

Dream - 5

Change - pain - scream - metamorphosis - fear - experience - instructerless - loss

Expectation Is A Prison

Pre-conception, pre-judgeing, predeliction, expectation, assuming:

Went to a fund-rasing hockey game for my son's school the other day. Walking into the arena I noticed the sweet* smell of marijuana; automatically assumed the kids were smoking...but what if it's the parents?

* By sweet, I meant the actual smell seemed sweet. I'm not attempting to use lingo from a younger generation.

What did I say above...Pre-conception, pre-judgeing, predeliction, expectation, assuming.

What Am I Doing Here?

Thesiger: A review.

There are passages in Wilfred Thesiger's book, My Life & Travels, An Anthology, where I often wondered what I would do in his position. Whether facing wild animals with a single bullet left, or travelling with companions in unsafe regions, who were revealed to be outlaws; what would I do?

The answer is simple. I wouldn't have been there in the first place.

And that is also the one simple reason to read this anthology of Thesiger's travel writings. He has travelled like the great explorers of the 19th century, mostly on his own two feet, in inhospitable yet breathtaking lands and written about both the discomfort and beauty in the same upper-class, British, dry, understated way that by implication gets your heart racing.

His meticulous and dreary counting of bedbugs (there were sixty) while in Iraq show a perverse, and dare I say it, mad dogs and englishmen sort of stiff upper lip that both attracts and repulses at the same time. The reader thinks, why didn't he just go sleep somewhere else? Well, because then he might not have an amusing and strange event to write about.

His non-chalant recounting of a beating he received in Africa makes one wonder if he isn't going too far in recounting obviously painful memories. He writes about the violence that "it is not something to be repeated". Unless you're at the club old chap.

Although the dry writing can be off-putting, the decription of lands now forever changed by the inhabitants and other invaders and the toils made to get there are enough of an invitation to get the reader going.

The Enemy Is Us

OK, so I used the word "they" a number of times in yesterday's post.

Yes, it occurs to me that an understanding of oneself is needed before understanding anyone else, but I don't want to the navel-gazing to get in the way of knowing your enemy.

Shit, I did it again.

Back to the awareness board.

Us and Them - Part 2

Wandering around the blogoshpere you can't help but notice how many people identify themselves as christian, republican and conservative, not neccesarily in that order, but taking each of those words and using them as if they meant the same thing.

They've really taken a shine to the ease of this self-publishing world, my guess is because they don't have to deal with the questions and criticism that participating in a forum might produce.

They proudly proclaim their ignorance of history and the worthiness of their faith based system of reason (if that is even possible) while complaining that the enemy dopes the same.

They fall back to literal, fundamentalist preachings because they can't make sense of the reality around them and then accuse the other side of being narrow-minded and doing the same.

They cast the enemy as insane lunatics, bent on the destruction of a certain way of life because of their mis-interpretation of a holy book yet believe literaly in their own holy book which presumably means they also believe in the last judgement and the end of this world.

They forget that words can have different meanings to different people based on education, up-bringing, regionality and a host of other reasons. I might be a christian but if I'm not their kind of christian, well, there goes the neighbourhood.

There is a division in america. And because america is the greatest, strongest power in the world today, you're with us or against us is a dangerous statement.

I'm more and more convinced that communication is the key not sloganeering and monologues, not demonstrations in the streets but demonstrations on the netwaves.

The one uncertainty I have is: what if even communication is not enough?

Social Lubricant

St Patrick's day and me feeling out of place at a local watering hole. Fish out of water feeling. From childhood to now, it doesn't go away.

But after a few beers, we're all nameless friends.

Today's listening pleasure (of course): Van the Man

A Prayer

Death aproaches. Four young police officers perish.

It affects those who are left alive and mourning, even those with only tenuous ties.

The reaction here is more than the usual horror because of aquaintance, friendship even, with people involved in police activities.

Why don't we feel/react this way every time, regardless of personal knowledge of the victims?

The Boys of Summer

Spring training.

Once, I would have relished those words like no other. It meant longer days, cool nights, the smell of cut grass...blahhhh!

Look, major league baseball is sick with an incurable wasting disease. The smell of decay is now leaking out for all to whiff. Steroids, insider trading, a used car salesman running a rudder-less ship, blaming the fans and moving once vibrant, viable and valuable franchises for a pittance...problems ad nauseum.

Baseball used to be a modern type of rite of passage for North American boys. Perhaps not as usefull as those of the Bantu or Iroquois, but just as neccessary.

Now it's become a mockery.

I really did love the grand old game, once upon a time. Now it's enough to make me hurl.

How Soon Is Now

Some of the people who watched the Spielberg film Minority Report may have seen that the movie was based on a short-story by Philip K. Dick written in the mid 50's.

The story (and movie) posits that sometime in the future, the US will discover that certain people have pre-cognitive abilities; that they will be able to view the various possible futures ahead of us. The US then creates the Pre-Crime Department and uses these "pre-cogs" to discover and prevent serious crimes. This department then arrests and imprisons people based on what they "will" do in the future.

The short story, unlike the movie, throws somewhat of a paradox at the reader and allows that if a person knows that they will commit a crime, they may be able to change that particular future thread and open up a new future.

But of course, that then means that some innocent people have been accused of and imprisoned for crimes they have not committed or will not commit.

The US today has created the Department of Homeland Security. It's mission is to prevent, pre-empt and deter against aggression targeting the US territory, sovereignty, domestic population, and infrastructure.

Some of the methods used to prevent aggression seem to infringe upon basic constitutional rights entrenched in the minds of US citizens if not the laws of the country. Fingerprinting arriving travellers from certain countries, secret search warrants that do not have to be disclosed for some time after the search has been executed, the mining of seemingly innocuous data such as library records, and seizing and holding people for an indeterminate amount of time based on something they have not done yet but may...

I love Phil Dick's work but I really don't think I'd like to live in one of his schizophrenic, time-slipping, unreal worlds.

I don't seem to have a choice.

Today's listening: The Smiths

Can't Find My Way Home

I've been reading over several of Hunter Thompson's work since he committed suicide several weeks ago.

What has struck me, especially about the later work, is that he seemed to have lost his sense of humour about everything. The last few years worth of columns for the San Francisco Examiner still have all the bile and outsider on a rampage feel but they are no longer tempered with irony or fun.

Did the drink and drugs finally take its toll? Did the strange and violent actions in the last years point the way to a depression that couldn't be overcome? Did the accolades and celebrity wear thin as he found himself less relevant in a world where bad craziness was the norm rather than the exception?

In the forward to his second selection of letters, Fear and Loathing in America: The Gonzo Letters Vol. 2, Thompson writes, "...no matter where I was, or how weird & crazy & dangerous it got, everything would be okay if I could just make it home."

Somewhere along the journey, maybe between the Woody Creek Tavern friends and the family constantly waiting for him at home, he lost the way.

Today's listening pleasure: Blind Faith

Spring Forward

The days are getting longer and bringing a smile to my face.

There's the sickly yet sweet smell of decay rising up from the ground. Smile.

Over-sized clothes are being left at home. Smile.

I can finally walk around in running shoes. Smile.

Horrible Workers

In 1871 Arthur Rimbaud, still a teen-ager, wrote a letter to his friend Paul Demeny. In it he describes what he is attempting to do with his life and art in order to create a new poetry and a new language. Indeed, Rimbaud almost seems to be saying that he wants to create a new type of human being through artistic freedom.

Although most of the letter is characteristic of a schoolboy from a small town trying to impress an older and more experienced friend (name dropping and half-understood philosophies), there are some passages that attain a certain power and anticipate or point directly to several future developments in art and poetry.

Surrealism; dada; free verse; the marrying of beauty and ugliness to birth a new, sometimes quite humorous graffiti; using slang words to jar against the elegant ones, forcing the reader to read between the lines; re-inventing language that was inadequate for the goal of a new poetry; these are the gifts Rimbaud left behind in this letter and other writings.

Rimbaud writes (this condensed paraphrase and translation are mine– the whole letter in French can be found here): A poet becomes a visionary by a long, gigantic, rational dis-organization of all the senses. All forms of love, suffering and madness. He searches himself. He cultivates his soul and reaches the unknown. Then, bewildered with panic, he ends up by losing the intelligence of his vision; at least he has seen them! Let him be destroyed as he leaps through things unheard of, unnamable; other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has collapsed.

Rimbaud’s letters and work have been used by some to advance agendas on drug-taking or debauchery. Some of the translations in English have also not helped by using words such as crazed and derangement, adding to the myth that artists must suffer and debase themselves for their art.

My own feeling is that Rimbaud had asked himself, how can freedom be attained by a mind that has been conditioned by its oppressor and proceeded to answer with the letter, then by living out and writing down his attempts until he turned his back on poetry and concerned himself with more earthly matters.*

Keeping in mind the time Rimbaud was living in, he seemed to be attempting to escape some of the teachings of the catholic church and the constraints of his culture; he was trying to figure out a way to live outside oneself…trying to escape the building blocks of personality, of being, to get to the essence, the primitive or innocence inside oneself…the first, true man…

In a sense, his attempt at freedom is similar to the search for enlightenment in many spiritual teachings. The difference is that Rimbaud is using poetry as a means to attain this enlightenment.

Rimbaud died at 41 after having lived and worked for many years in north eastern Africa. The legend has him writing his famous A Season in Hell, then turning his back on poetry and art, but he actually continued sporadically writing until the demands of earning a living in a rough country wore him down.

Other horrible workers did come after him, continuing to use words to look for something else. James Joyce and his stream of consciousness writing, Breton’s surrealist manifesto and automatic writing, Philip K. Dick’s mix of psychology, conditioning and future technology, Kerouac’s bop prosody and Burroughs’ cut-up method were partly interested in getting underneath reality (or what we think is reality) to find the real story.

Here’s to all the horrible workers. I think you know who you are.

* For valuable insight into Rimbaud’s life and art I am indebted to Graham Robb’s Rimbaud: A Biography.

Other excellent works on Rimbaud are: Wallace Fowlie's Complete Works of Rimbaud especially as it has both the French and English translations of his work and selected letters.

Alain Borer's Rimbaud in Abyssina gives an excellent look at Rimbaud's days in Africa.

Henry Miller's The Time of the Assassinstells you more about Miller than anything else, but does have some insight into Rimbaud's works.

Payment

I came across one of Robert Fripp's aphorisms today.

"When a record company makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
When a manager makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
When the artist makes a mistake, the artist pays for it."

I think he's forgetting that in the end, the audient, fan, punter, interested buyer of music, whatever you want to call him/her always "pays" for it as well. Perhaps to a different degree than the artist but payment nonetheless.

Bird Lives!

Charlie Parker died 50 years ago today.

Sheer speed coupled with mastery of melody; throw in inventiveness with harmony and this meant that Bird and bebop caused a revolution in jazz still heard today.

My own personal feelings on hearing Parker's music was amazement that he could say so much in such a short amount of time and improvise so fluidly on standard tunes.

Powerful, lyrical and just simply great toe-tapping, swaying and swinging music.

Ooh...look at me, I'm gushing!

Office Politics

Sigh...enough said.

Emptied to Fill Up

Overdosing on Keith Jarrett music lately (yet again). I've been listening to much of his live solo work. The fact that this is totally improvised music and he is able to create such beauty for seemingly hours on end is just... magnificent. I'm jealous and quite envious of his ability. Oh I know that his natural ability has been honed by years of practice and discipline, practice that most of us never achieve but it’s just easier to say I’m jealous of some inborn mastery rather than admitting I should be working much harder at my own disciplines.

My understanding of his way of working is that he prepares for the concert by totally emptying himself of thoughts, ideas and pre-conceived notions. Once he feels emptied, he is able to sit at the piano, take in the atmosphere of the concert hall and audience, his own emotional state (and how successful he has emptied himself), and allow these elements to bring forth the music that, Jarrett says, is constantly around us.

Whatever he does resonates with me and during certain passages I literally get goose bumps.

Sublime stuff.

Surfing with the Buddha*

How can we know what people are really like? Is trying to look at things from their point of view enough? Can we really "get into" someone else's head? How does one turn the ideal of compassion into true empathetic feelings for someone else? Enough so that you "feel" what they feel and can then so identify with them that any violence against them becomes violence against yourself.

*If this isn't a song title it should be.

The Meaning of Sacrifice

For a selfish and slighty self-centered man, there is no greater lesson in true sacrifice that cleaning up after sick children, letting them fall asleep on you breathing their germs into your face and facing it all again the next day.

Frustration

The children are sick and sometimes all you can do is sit by the bed and hold their hands.

Not to Touch the Earth

Earthquake during the night.

I was awake and the rattling shook me. OK, not a great pun there but the trembling and shaking of the house and bed reminded me of the power of mother nature. Normally I feel very comfortable whether in the city or out in the country but once in awhile I remember that I'm not in charge of everything around me. Heck, I’m not even in charge of what’s inside me most of the time.

Expectations

The expectations on the first born, especially sons, can be a harsh reality to bear. All the failed plans are passed down and placed on the young shoulders of others. The burden of these unwanted ideas slowly warps the personal dreams of the bearer and as both parties gradually succumb to the weight, stunted growth appears in the relationship. It withers and then bears sour fruit in the next generation.

Notes after watching a neighborhood football game.

Vacation

Reading over some of the dreams I've recorded (and some I haven't), I realize that I really, really need a vacation!

Dream - 4

Fragment:

A group of people bunched together and discussing work-related items. I am among them. I can recognize some colleauges, while others are not known to me. It's not clear if we are at the office as the surrounding outside our circle is grey and indistinct. The conversation turns to over-work and someone mentions another co-worker (who is not there) and says he looks close to exhaustion. The discussion continues with descriptions of his face and posture, indication his fatigue. Then a few people point at me and say, "Look, just like him." I start to protest and the dream fades away.

The Bottom Line

This person is still annoying me. Even though they actually haven't done anything to bug me in awhile, I am still annoyed. What exactly am I annoyed about? That this person once did something wrong to me; that this person might do something wrong to me in the future; that this person is the opposite of what I am trying to become; that this person is very similar to what I am today?

How do you let go when you don't really want to?

Clueless and Slightly Slack

Part of the problem is that most of us are smart enough to know just how not-smart we are. And yet we still act cluelessly most of the time.

Sarcasm Is Not Lost On Me...Mostly

All right...so, after the many arguments, disagreements, questions and emotional disturbances, I realized that it is sometimes better to be kind than to be right.

And, lo, the heavens opened, trumpets blew and there was peace in the land.

Mock Me

Too much mock meta-physical/philosophical gobbledeygook running around here.

Can't wait until the weather turns warmer so that I can sit outside on my patio, fire up the barbeque and listen to steaks sizzle while I sip a nice cold beer.

Stretching the Happiness

Cycles. The moon rises and falls, new moon to whole moon and back again. The sun rises and sets. The seasons spin, hot to cool to cold and back again.

Even in our personal lives we seem to behave cyclically. One moment ecstatic, one moment livid, one moment depressed, one moment shamed, one moment fearful, one moment contrite and back again to happiness.

I'm wondering if leveling the emotions so that they don't mirror the much larger and longer moments in space/time would do us all some good.

Progress

"Suffering is our experience of the distance between what we are and who we wish to become."

Robert Fripp

Work Related

Busy at work and flying for work and thinking about work and suffering for work...

The Dreaming

The dreams lately have been mostly of an...um...erotic nature so I won't write about them here simply because I don't feel they reflect any deeper value. As letters to the editor of various adult magazines though there may be some value of a, shall we say, more superficial nature.

The Reason Not to Listen to U2 Late at Night

It's about the search for meaning of course. Not the scientific and rational how do things work, why is the sky blue, how can fish survive hundreds of feet under the sea, but the true search for why is my sky blue and if it weren't what would that mean to me and you and what does that have to do with fish under the sea, why nothing of course only it's all inter-related and what affects one affects the other.

It is about finding a way to live a spiritual/religious/ritualistic (whatever you want to call it) life in a wholly rational yet insular world with wholly irrational (to the beholder) occurences.

Interiors

Still thinking about Hunter S. Thompson's death...Killed himself with a shotgun it seems. Got me thinking how some of the toughest exteriors hide the most brittle interiors.

A problem with many boys growing up is that they're never taught how to express emotion and therefore never learn how to deal with feelings in a constructive matter. They are left to cope the best way they know how and often it is not sufficient to get them through adulthood.

Thompson also seemed to be a product of his times. Talk and walk tough. Show the world the man and then end it all in a blaze of...something.

I will be re-reading many of his books over the next few weeks.

Hunter S. Thompson R.I.P.

Damn.

Hunter Thompson died today. By a self-inflicted shotgun no less. Another victim of his own created identity perhaps, a la Hemingway.

I started reading Thompson fairly late in life when I was less impressionable and so the glamour of the drug trips didn't affect me so much. What I did like about Hunter was and is just the sheer humour in his writing. Even when he was deadly serious about a subject, Nixon say, or guns or drugs, he was damn funny. Read any of his books and they are like nothing you've read anywhere else. Part journalism, part auto-biography, part creative fiction, part social commentary, part travelogue and all guts.

The Curse of Lono, ostensibly about the Honolulu marathon, has just about nothing to do with running races but it doesn't seem to matter because whatever Thompson did write about is far more interesting. And did I mention funny?

I mean here he is in Las Vegas to write about a stock car racing event, blasted on every drug known to man and lizard-kind and he stumbles into a national DA’s convention on narcotics…bad craziness indeed.

He could also turn a phrase with the best of them. "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro", "Generation of Swine", "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". I think if I had ever met him I would have been scared shirtless or in such awe that I would have babbled incoherently and I would have ended up just another drunkard or failure to maybe write about or not.

He changed what a journalist could write about or which stories to cover. He put himself (or at least what he wanted us to think was himself) right in the forefront of the story and yet still kept a part of his intellect back to observe and report on the craziness. He often created the craziness even if only in his head and then put pen to paper. He demonstrated that you could literally write anything you wanted and if it was good (or very funny) people would read it.

He had a distinctive voice, both in his writing and speech. He was himself and that was the most important thing I liked about him. Still do.

Plus his road trips sounded better than mine.

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive….” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”

Hunter S. Thompson; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; page 3; Vintage Books 1989

Happy Again

And just as suddenly as it appeared, the sickness is gone and all is renewed and happy again.

Don't Mean a Thing

Violence begets violence.

And all the sorries in the world don't mean a thing when you're sobbing because the one you loved and protected you opened you to the world.

Dream - 3

Fragment (as most of them are):

I am in a building waiting for a large elevator, looks like a freight elevator, along with two other people, male and female. The elevator opens and we get in. I press the RC button and thrown off-balanace when the elevator starts to move sideways. From then on the elevator moves up and down and sideways but always unpredictably and never for long in one direction. The couple seems not have any trouble, but I can not get retain my balance for long with all the changes in driection. I wake when the phone rings.

The interesting thing is that this building and elevator are familiar to me from other dreams. It seems to represent the work life, or business, or capitalism or perhaps my life. I'm not sure. Need to visit some Jungians.

The Mouths of Babes

"Is he a good guy or a bad guy," she asked.

He's both. He's good and bad because he's honest," he replied.

To Begin Again

Thinking about yesterday's post.

I hope to some day have the courage to inquire further into where I came from.

It would at the very least make for a good story.

At the very most, it would allow for a beginning to end and a new beginning to begin again.

On the Turning Away

My grandmother passed away a few weeks ago and I still feel nothing. It's not I like I didn't know her. Though she did live in another part of the world she had stayed with us for several months in the late 70's and I had visited her for a few weeks at a time since then. It's just that we never really grew close or indeed, knew each other at all. I always had the feeling that she saw too much of my father in me and instinctively turned away. I also felt that the sins of the grandparents were being visited upon the grandchildren. Her own relationship with her daughter (my mother) was strained though I have not had the courage to dig deeper. My feeling was that I was a secondary thought to her, much like I believe my mother felt growing up. I'm not sure what she felt for me exactly if anything at all so even though I am probably projecting, I don't wonder that I feel nothing. It's all very sad really.

Remedy

Still sick. I'll just turn over now. Goodnight.

Video Killed the Radio Star

Sick as the proverbial dog. I'm under the covers listening to the radio like I used to do when I was a wee lad.

Late nights listening to west coast baseball games, sports talk shows, and the occasional live concert. There was a station that played live shows once in awhile and I vividly remember listening to King Crimson's last date at the Spectrum in Montreal in 84 which just blew me away. Roger McGuinn on solo guitar was another that had me late for school in 79. Triumph's launch of an album I can't remember now, Men Without Hats, The Smiths...

Remember when we used to get excited about the next release from a musical group?

The Moderns

See, now I did it again. I read the newspaper this morning and can't get stuff out of my head. Just like the pharmacist tells you to take the anti-biotics for the full ten days it says on the bottle even if you are feeling better, I didn't take my own advice.

One of the perils of modern man/woman. Information overload creates paralyses. Discuss.

The Value of Sesame Street

It looks like the hitmaps link is broken because for the past month and a bit it continues to show the same number of visits. I haven't tried to repair it because the outfit that was providing the free service no longer provides a free service but is supposed to maintain the existing users.

Q: Why should I even care if anyone is reading this?
A: I shouldn't.
Q: How do I stop from caring?
A: Understand why I care.
Q: Why do I care?
A: Weird form of validation...narcissism...mistaken belief in the meaningfulness to someone other than me...pointed stick.
Q: Which of these things is not like the other?
A: OK, I get it now. I think.

The Try

So it's been about a week now and I haven't read a newspaper. Not even glanced at it except to read the comics.

And guess what? I feel great!

I have enough stress at work and home without having to take on the additional pressure of bad news elsewhere. Does this mean I don't care about seismic issues or corruption in the corporate world or terrorism masquerading as religious will? Of course not. I care deeply. After all, I am part of humanity and what happens "out there" affects me as well. But it was starting to influence my behavior; actually, I was letting it influence me much too deeply. Now that I have backed off, I can attempt to learn to ingest stressful news without letting it affect or influence me.

The attempt is what matters ultimately. The try.

Dream - 2

Another fragment of a dream last night. Might be work-related...I'm not sure.

I was a demon-hunter. That is, I was hired by some shadowy person or thing to hunt demons in this world. Before I could do that though, I had to go through what seemed like endless interviews, examinations, discussions, talks, guidance counselors and personality tests.

The place where all this took place was cloaked in greys and browns, dim and hazy. Very difficult to see who had hired me or was asking questions.

As I went through these interminable steps I started wondering if the demon I was hunting was me. Then, just before I woke up, I had the intense feeling that these demons were a lot smarter than I had given them credit for and might have been before my eyes the whole time.

Footsteps

I have been reading Karen Armstrong's The Spiral Staircase this month and last and have enjoyed it immensely.

It is an autobiography of Ms. Armstrong's life as a Nun and after she left the convent. Her writing is elegant yet clear and precise and she doesn't shirk from personal responsibility.

Even though I am not familiar with catholic religious orders, I have a deep interest in spiritual callings and Armstrong clearly describes her life with this in mind. She shows us that some searches are universal no matter what name we give them. Highly recommended.

Some quotes:

"I needed to escape into other people's books and minds, because when left entirely to own devices, I found that I had nothing to say." Page 31. An experience that I fight every day.

"...the ability to experience pain and sorrow is the sine qua non of enlightenment..." Page 263. Add forgiveness to the equation and you have a key.

"We are...most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away, and it is egotism that holds us back from the transcendent experience that has been called God, Nirvana, Brahma or the Tao." Page 279. A paradox. And a concept that most of us are afraid to try.

And my favourite sentence:

"You have to be prepared to extend your compassionate interest when there is no hope of return." Page 299. This is an important point where most of us fall down. If we humans, followers of various gods and deities, would be able to follow these simple words, we would then surely follow in the footsteps of the great prophets and redeemers of history and myth.

Fallen

Now you're probably saying shit, this blog's fallen to amateurish poetry in place of content. Well you're right. It's an attempt, much like the haiku earlier, to display another side of me in an attempt to get to the core. I make no apologies and you should ridicule me to your hearts content if you wish. This is also an attempt, for those who look closely, at self-effacement and misdirection. If they laugh and I laugh with them, maybe they'll forget I'm being heartfelt.

one of those days

we have the shutters
closed tightly,
it’s one of those days.
no amount of light
must be let through.
the cat will be yelled at,
the bed will be left
unmade,
it’s one of those days.
we won’t speak to
each other much,
only in grunts and sighs,
it’s one of those days.
every blemish will be an
excuse for anger
and the cat will go
to its secret hiding place
for a few hours
but we will be left
to face each other,
it’s another one of those days.

The Weight

Spirituality (mythos) is concerned with meaning.

Fact (logos) is concerned with functioning.

Both are needed in today's world where functioning has no meaning and thus atrocities, both little and large, are committed daily.

A Perfect Way

There simply must be a better way.

A Face From the Ancient Gallery

We are more than just one person. We contain multitudes and display the different faces depending on the situation.

The key is to get down to the essence, the core, the final one personality.

As scary as that might be.

The Work Life

The work life.

Discuss, count to ten, discuss, count to ten, discuss, decide, justify, discuss, count to ten, clarify, discuss, count to ten, discuss, discuss, count to ten, discuss, decide, justify, count to ten, start over.

Effort-less

Not much to say today. It was one of those days where you just can't get anything going. You then need to stop and think about why...but it's too much effort.

Good Times, Bad Times

What's the old saying; stop the world I want to get off?

Reading the newspaper every morning I realize now puts me in quite a horrid mood. Here I am trying to start the day and seeing only bad or worse headlines with my breakfast cereal. My son recently had to do a project for school where he had to look at the newspaper and find one good/inspiring story and one bad/disaster type story and contrast them (where they were placed in the paper, the tone of the news etc.) We were very hard pressed to find any "good" stories.

I am going to try to stop reading the paper in the mornings (except for the comics) to see if it makes my outlook any brighter. It may be seen as closing my eyes to the suffering in the world, but I find I am almost hungering after these types of stories. I am like those spectators at car accidents, unwilling to leave the scene. Once the bizarre need to see these stories lessens, as I don't think it totally disappears, then I'll start up again

Working Man

Working too hard sometimes has the unintentional effect of turning a person into two people. The work person who is steady, dependable, always smiling and "gets things done" and the other person who goes home and opens and closes the fridge door seventeen times looking for the same item.

The Finer Things

A bottle of wine, good food, superior friends with excellent conversation and the children occupying themselves. Paradise.

Sit and Write

One of the most difficult aspects of this blog has been to actually write anything that may be of interest to anyone. It sometimes takes a while to get the engine running and often it just splutters and fails.

In order to kick-start the writing I went back and re-visited the aims I had when initially starting this space and I realized that I don't have to actually write anything interesting at all...and I certainly don't have to write something that may interest someone out there (assuming there is anyone out there).

I just have to sit and write.

So here you go.

Political Movement - Part 2

Yesterday's title to the post I made not only came from within the posting but from travelling the blogoshpere and seeing how many political writings there are out there.

It seems to me that they're only preaching to the converted or talking to themselves, and so the mis-interpretation goes on.

Political Movement

The internal politics of a large company is an awesome sight to behold. Just don't get caught in the way.

The Four G's

I used to work in a job that involved dealing with the public in a very public place.

All sorts of people would approach me for assistance and many would tell me their stories.

An elderly black man once came up to me and asked me a question.

"Do you know the secret to success in life" he asked.

I should have said yes and hoped for him to move on but I replied in the negative.

He said "Four words. Guts, guile, gall and glamour."

Then he smiled and walked away.

Fault Lines

There is an axiom that says what we find most at fault in others is the fault we actually see (or don't yet see) in ourselves. I would add that sometimes we also find fault in others due to something we lack in ourselves.

How then to stop finding fault in others:

1 - acknowledgment - there is an issue
2 - allowance - this is my issue
3 - revealing - this is the issue
4 - understanding - this is why I have the issue
5 - letting go - this is what I can do about the issue

Take her for a spin, let me know how she handles.

The Supreme Humourist

Of course, ever since I complained about dreaming too much I can't recall any of the myriad number of dreams I've had.

Methinks there is a presence in the universe with a very unique sense of humour.

The Last Page

And sometimes when I've stared at the computer screen much too long, I click here.

Us and Them

The kids tested my/their limits today. Multiple times. In fact they blew right past the limits and headed into interstellar space.

It's quite amazing how we can allow someone so pint-sized to rule our emotional condition. I mean, here we are, experienced adults, with stressful working lives that don't cause us to lose control as much as when a tiny miniature us pushes the right button. Suddenly all the strategies go out the window and we become them.

I know, I know, it's just part of growing up.

Just The Way You Are

I've noticed that with some people the more immersed they become in a book the more their personality changes to reflect some aspect of the book.

For example I've noticed that if I read too much fantasy or science-fiction I am more apt to daydream or take on primitive chivalric actions.

I've noticed a friend becoming more austere and severe when she started to read Through the Narrow Gate, a book about Karen Armstrong's time as a nun.

But in some traditions they would say we become the things we are.

Do Unto Others

"It is always difficult to forgive people we have harmed."

Karen Armstrong - The Spiral Staircase p.146

To all those who fit the bill (you know who you are).

Inspiration

Going over the last few posts I realize I'm falling into the bloggers trap. Just about every blog out there has this samey "I'm so sad", "Why won't she go out with me", "Boo-hoo, look at me I'm so cool because I'm so jaded, depressed etc." tone to it.

I'll try to do better, I promise.

Feelings

Today's feeling - Grab the covers and pull them over my head while the world passes by.

Life

Life is like that.

One moment of pure beauty and peaceful movement.

Then, chaos and disaster.

Then peace and beauty once again.

This time with scars.

Questions?

An opportunity arises.

Now, how to go about figuring out what to do.

Questions:

What do you need, I mean really need, to maintain the life that makes you happy. Better yet, what do you need to be fulfilled. Why take this opportunity, what does it mean to you personally and professionally. How will it change you and if it does is this change what you really, and I mean really, need.

At the end of the day you need courage and faith in yourself to grasp opportunities but the questions above help you to understand the why.

Nothing Much

When all is said and done...good night!

Sport

Last night I witnessed a man yelling at two boys just after a football practice. The boys were around eight years old.

He wasn't yelling about their lack of enthusiasm for the practice or disregard for the coach's instructions. He was yelling at them because they kept calling over to where he was sitting and trying to draw his attention to what they were doing.

I'm not sure if the inner emotion that led to the outward display of anger was motivated by embarrassment but I'm sure it wasn't motivated by love of sport.

More like lust of sport.

The Middle

Middle of the week and already wish it were Friday.

Projects at a standstill. Office politics to play. Higher-ups to appease. Meeting after meeting after meeting, then ten minutes to actually get any work done.

Some of the perils of the modern work environment.

Oh, give me clear, transparent colleagues and guidelines and I'll give you productivity.

Reading 101

The post I made the other day about reading books at specified times of the year brought back to me two other books that I read every year around the same time.

The first is Albert Camus' L'Etranger. I always read this in the autumn, just as the children are heading back to school. It might seem odd because the book mostly takes place in the hot Algerian summer, but this novel reminds me of French class in grade 11 where the teacher introduced me to this classic of existentialist writings. Although I now understand that Camus himself would have given it another label, absurdist perhaps, reading the novel always takes me back to being young and impressionable to outsiders and writings about outsiders.

The second is Hemmingway's complete short stories. The stories would seemingly concern themselves with decay which most associate with the fall or winter but I always read these in the spring as it brings me closer to the Michigan forests and Spanish cafes of the book. This collection also helps me to understand the expression "hide in plain sight" as it seems to me that was what Hemmingway was doing in these stories. Scratch a little on the surface of the hunting expeditions and you may find the wounded boy underneath.

I thank the teachers, friends and strangers who introduced me to these and many other works.

Let Go. Move On.

This person just refuses to let go. Walks around with a permanent grumpy expression, almost a pained look. Doesn't adhere to the usual niceties, good mornings and such. Dominates meetings with roadblocks and objections. And never brings constructive recommendations to the table. It's always can't do this, can't do that. Beginning to once again bug me immensely. Read: piss me off.

Calm down. Count to ten. Put yourself in their shoes, see things from their viewpoint. Try to understand why they are the way they are. Let go of your expectations of this person. Think about why you need them to act/talk/behave in a certain way. Let go. Move on.

When my head explodes I'll come looking for you Siddhartha.

Time and a Word

Every winter, between Christmas and New Year's, I read the Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies. The opening chapter begins during the winter with snow falling and two boys tobogganing on a hill. Many other scenes in the novels take place in a winter that can only occur in small town Canada; cold and dreary but with a sense of fierce pride at being able to bear the discomfort and survive another day. It just feels right to read it around that time of year.

In the Ear of the Beholder

Whenever I find my son listening to rap or hip-hop, or my daughter listen to Britstina Idol, I sigh and remind myself of the time my dad came into my room while I was listening to The Wizard by Black Sabbath, stayed for a few seconds and walked right out without saying a word.

We Don't Need No Education

My son has been sick for a few days and hasn't been able to attend school. I went to the school to see about getting his homework so he wouldn't fall behind. I was told that teachers do not like to collect and give out homework for children who have missed class regardless of the reason...

That's right, let's punish the children...

It astounds me that a parent who has taken the time to show interest in the education of their child is rebuffed in this matter and yet we are constantly told that parents aren't controlling or have enough of an influence in their children's lives.

This saddens me.

I Say

It is better to be kind than to be right.

Same As It Ever Was

My sister-in-law can't understand why I read the same book more than once, or watch the same movie several times.

I tell her it's because what I bring to the book or movie or any art may be different each time because I have moved on from the person I was.

Even in the space of a week.

A book read today and the same book read tomorrow each offer something different perhaps even unique.

And even if I haven't moved on, I have.

Back to the Garden

Back to work again. Feel more tired than when I took my time off. The holidays were...difficult. And now it's back to full-speed, damn the torpedoes capitalism. How I long for simpler days. But of course they were never simple, just less cluttered with non-essentials...

Try, Try Again

All right, so the previous days' post wasn't a true Haiku. It didn't have any references to nature, didn't impart any hidden truth, and wasn't in Japanese. It did however stay true to the 5 - 7 - 5 syllable count which although an arbitrary confinement in the English language, does allow for a certain discipline of thought when writing. It is a type of poetry that has value in focusing the mind.

I should try to do more.

Oh, the horror!

Haiku - 1

night, whispers are heard
alone they seem to strengthen
don't listen they say

Miles Beyond

"How are you going to rehearse the future?"

Miles to Wayne Shorter, quoted in Miles Beyond by Paul Tingen, p.14.

Happy New Year everyone and you too!