Monday, November 9, 2020

Relevant Relocations

 


We move at our peril. Or do we? Peril denotes danger. Yet not all movement is ‘bad’ for us. Still, to move from the known to the unknown takes a certain curiosity, a desire to go yet further, and a preparation to leave the already known. People may be left too. We more easily move with our things than we do people. We package and haul and unpack and again lay out our treasures. But people that we do not regularly see, especially, can seem so very forgotten in the paradigm shift from a there, to a here. (You, yes you, who knows me, do I seem to have forgotten you?)

Paradigm shifts denote a journey to the larger; they connote an awakening. Yes, one might move horizontally, and thereby grow larger in the knowing of the country, but do we necessarily change? Do we not unpack our belongings, make new friends, and tell our same old stories? Or might we realize new depths, soar to new heights, and examine more intuitively the awareness of the moment-by-moment? Are we not creatures given to making things yet more relevant?

Relevant relocations have us conscious of the amalgamation of our past, the accretion of our present, and the integration of our future. We may more and more realize that we move for ourselves, yes, but not so much with selfishness as, with insight, to be in service to the health of the whole. And though we might materially obtain more; get famous; be perceived as wealthy; is it not in the collective zeitgeist that each individual perhaps aims to give more toward others, to make contributions toward the health of the whole, and to put others at ease? No?

From childhood through youth through adulthood to second childishness, the stage upon which we walk and play is littered with our misspoken lines, our forgotten cues, our yearnings for the limelight, or even the desperation of stage fright. And accolades too! Thing is, those coloured memes of spiral dynamics prevail, endemic and integral to our being, like it or not. As such there are swaths of humanity predominantly persevering in the meme of survival, or familial, or competitive, or cultural-isms, or ambitious, or egalitarian proclivities. And to make the paradigm shift, sufficiently, from one meme to another takes more than curiosity. It takes the courage of one’s convictions. So too for becoming more and more integrative. So too for getting beyond the insecurities of self-doubt and allowing for the self to walk one’s talk. We integrate. We can make our relocations relevant, or we can merely move from one place, to another, and stay the same.

At which point does the fulcrum allow for the tipping point? When do we slide into the pool of the unknown and relax sufficient to float with the splash and waves of our own making, let alone ride the tides and weathers of the very nature of things around us? Integration will have us accepting our own (and others’) mistakes along with the outtakes and the retakes and the smooth delivery too. We are creatures connected to each other, and to everything. We are collections. We are individuals. We are common and special and unique. And the relevance we each give our lives, ultimately, must needs sustain us through the long years, the lean years, the growing years, and the forever learning years of our very being.

Indeed, some forget. Indeed, some slip into dotage. Indeed, some struggle to cling to the facts and the data and the truth and the history. Indeed, some no longer perform on the stage, but rather like Shakespeare’s slippered years, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans ears, and even sans taste, do but become the hollow men, the straw men, with but little relevance to intersections at the still point of their lives.* Can we avoid that much? Can we make sufficient choices to evade what to others appeared inevitable? Can we live fully and completely and as wholly as possible within the natural parameters of our aging? And can we make our relocations relevant, from paradigm shift to yet another paradigm shift, or must we but keep spinning our wheels?

I shall arise now, and go to Innisfree. And peace shall keep come winging on its way, slow, but sure. And no, throughout it all, I have not forgotten thee. I hold thine heart in mine, indelibly.

.............................................................................................................

*The Hollow Men (by T.S Elliot)

Mistah Kurtz-he dead
            A penny for the Old Guy



                       I

    We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    Or rats' feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar
   
    Shape without form, shade without colour,
    Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
   
    Those who have crossed
    With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
    Remember us-if at all-not as lost
    Violent souls, but only
    As the hollow men
    The stuffed men.
 
….[four more sections]
   
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

1. Mistah Kurtz: a character in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."
2. A...Old Guy: a cry of English children on the streets on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, when they carry straw effigies of Guy Fawkes and beg for money for fireworks to celebrate the day. Fawkes was a traitor who attempted with conspirators to blow up both houses of Parliament in 1605; the "gunpowder plot" failed.
3. Those...Kingdom: Those who have represented something positive and direct are blessed in Paradise. The reference is to Dante's "Paradiso".

 


Sunday, October 25, 2020

A Canon of Conflictual Contentions?



 "I don’t care how spiritual you are. How long you can melt in the sweat lodge. How many peyote or ayahuasca journeys that have blown your mind, how many master plant diets you’ve done or how well you can hold crow pose. I don’t care what planets fall in what houses on your birth chart, or how “silent” your meditation is. I don’t care how many crystals you have or how long you’ve gone without sugar, salt, spices or sex or how vegan your diet is.

I want to know how human you are. Can you sit at the feet of the dying despite the discomfort? Can you be with your grief, or mine, without trying to advise, fix or maintain it? I want to know that you can show up at the table no matter how shiny, chakra- aligned or complete you are- or not. Can you hold loving space for your beloveds in the depths of your own healing without trying to be big?
It doesn’t flatter me how many online healing trainings you have, that you live in the desert, forest or in a log cabin, or that you’ve mastered the art of tantra.
What turns me on is busy hands. Planting roots. That despite how tired you are, you make that phone call, you board that plane, you love your children, you feed your family.
I have no interest in how well you can ascend to 5D, astral travel or have out of body sex. I want to see how beautifully you integrate into ordinary reality with your unique magic, how you find beauty and gratitude in what’s surrounding you, and how present you can be in your relationships. How do you hold the ones you love in the midst of conflict? How do you take responsibility for your part? How do you make amends?
I want to know that you can show up and do the hard and holy things on this gorgeously messy Earth. I want to see that you can be sincere, grounded and compassionate as equally as you are empowered, fiery and magnetic. I want to know that even during your achievements, you can step back and be humble enough to still be a student.
What’s beautiful and sexy and authentic is how well you can continue to celebrate others no matter how advanced you’ve become. What’s truly flattering is how much you can give despite how full you’ve made yourself. What’s honestly valuable is how f***ing better of a human you can be, in a world that is high off of spiritual materialism and jumping the next escape goat for “freedom.”
At the end of the day I don’t care how brave you are. How productive, how popular, how enlightened you are. At the end of the day, I want to know that you were kind. That you were real. I want to know that you can step down from the pedestal from time to time to kiss the earth and let your hair get dirty and your feet get muddy, and join the dance with us all."
~ Dolores Cannon

http://www.dolorescannon.com/?fbclid=IwAR1dCfMzY0zawIhvgizJAu6B_01VZ9s94m0auGtOjgeLEGX84bCiwAc1d8w




Thursday, October 8, 2020

Garnering The Grail

 


We search. Some know not what for. Some have a clear idea. A thing can preoccupy our energy. Be it a horse, or a buggy, or a book, or an 'other'. Something outside of oneself can represent The Grail, and our pursuit of such may become an obsession. We can discard communication, huddle into ourselves, and search seemingly without distraction for the object in mind. We want what we want. And as the saying goes, “Be careful what you want; you just might get it.”

Others may pay the price for our perseverance. Others can be left on the sidelines, kept in the dark, and be not privy to our peregrinations. The Grail takes on so many meanings. It becomes a symbol, a stand-in for the actuality of the ancient vessel (purported to be used by Jesus at the Last Supper.) Medieval knights made it an enduring relic, ephemeral, insubstantial, and ultimately unobtainable. No one person could own it; it became the stuff not only of 13th century legend, but of the present journey toward enlightenment. And as such, throughout history, it became an object in itself, without which we are bereft of fortune, destitute in our dissatisfactions, and incomplete in our journey. We forget that the present is the time warp of temporal disintegrations, in which an infinite present coalesces with the future, as well as the past, always. And whilst en route in our search for such a Grail we may too easily forget our friends, our companions, our family, and even our other interests  

Give me leave for digression. When directing for theatre I was at liberty to insert ‘the mystical object’ onto the stage. In Little Women, to give a reason for entering the room, I had Marmee come in with one slipper, tapping her free hand with it as she searched while dispensing advice: “I'm not patient by nature, but with nearly forty years of effort I'm learning to not let it get the better of me.” In Pirates of Penzance, I had 20-year-old Frederick come off the ship with his teddy bear, the which he protected, until he met Mable. In Camelot, I had Pellinore, the rusty knight in search of The Grail, emerge from the forest with his pet dog, a makeshift of rope and sticks; (not with a real dog, who stole the show in the professional production I once saw with the famous Richard Harris.) And in the Savoy Opera, Iolanthe, I again had a teddy bear, searched for and then lovingly found by Private Willis, the lone Sentry, as he sings: “When all night long a chap remains on sentry-go, to chase monotony he exercises of his brains, that is, assuming that he’s got any. Though never nurtured in the lap of luxury, yet I admonish you, I am an intellectual chap, and think of things that would astonish you.”

The point is, The Grail, for each of us, has a different value. And given the now for now of our lives, we obtain, grow used to, take for granted, and even discard the many grails of our passage as we grow in years, yet not necessarily in wisdom.

Symbolical, intuitively unobtainable, The Grail is understood not so much as an object, but as that quality of being ‘happy’ with what one has found; or even better yet, at peace with where one is at. It is as the poet, Robert Browning, puts it: “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?”

Still, the contention is, one would be better off not entirely to be fixated.  The solo journey of a Pellinore of Camelot renders him a little ‘mad’ and comical; and harmless though he is, he becomes unsure of Arthur's new ideas for a new order of chivalry, being against "... any new ideas" on principle. No, one is best to keep moving, rather than resting on one’s laurels, indeed.



Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Eye for an 'I'

 

Signs of the self are everywhere. Each time we use an ‘I’ statement, I aver, we subtly surrender objectivity for subjectivity. Difficult not to, since every observation, sensation, feeling, touch, taste, and smell arises directly from our apprehension of particularities. (Even when most empathetic, we are hardly able entirely to see another’s point of view.) Yet, as I know, an ego preserves boundaries; we have a lifetime of experience, at whatever age. We live in terms of a relationship to persons, to things, and even to our geography. Our entelechy, or degrees of inquisitive energy, propels us. We assimilate, at once selfless and selfish, subordinating our selfhood to desires, proclivities, preferences, and wants. Yes, I know, “But, I am me.”

Yet if I begin and end here, and you are there, how can we really be ‘One’? What’s with the ‘third eye’? What’s with the Collective Consciousness, an Ubermensch? How can we be an admixture of individual souls as interdependent as the molecules of the sea, each subject to the vicissitudes of tide and time? How can my energy, like all energy, not actually die, but simply become transmuted into the collective whole? Surely, I shall retain my own identity! Still be me? Yes, belief, assurances, and inexactitudes are yoked in streams of traditionalisms that define groups, sub-groups, and the individual: I believe. (Closely aligned with ‘me,’ can also be a ‘we.’)

Where the subtleties of ‘self’ arises (and here I do not speak of narcissism,) there is the propensity to project onto others the subjective sensations of the self in our given moments, in thought, feelings, attitudes, or even beliefs. Because you do not appear to feel the same, we are not kismet. Because you do not think the same, we are not compatible. Because you have so much passion about this, or that, and I don’t, we are not commensurate. And because you believe in this, or that, politically, religiously, or even traditionally, we cannot easily share, or even communicate. I am different from you. You are different from me. Let’s leave it that. The one who is rightest gets to feel like the winner. The other, being less right, more wrong, or decidedly put out to left field, simply is not to be included into my oeuvre of connections. I do not wish to abide with him, or her. I cannot share. I cannot easily communicate. And my time is precious; I do not choose to waste it. “I feel that...” and so on. Indeed, our disinclinations, we honour.

Peace comes dripping slow. Enlightenment would have one become more and more accepting of every moment, of every person, of every thought, of every contention, of every philosophy, of every... well, of everything. (And which part of Everything is not?) But ‘I’ can get in the way. I am irritated. I am disgruntled. I am discombobulated. I am inaccurate. I am guilty, shallow, avaricious, greedy, and impatient. As the song goes: “Let’s talk about me!” Yet narcissism aside, the subtlety of our self-involvement perpetuates as we bring reference to everything around ourselves from our own point of view. It naturally is so. But at issue here is that the degree of compassion we most can exhibit, resonate with, feel at core, is dependent on our instinctive and intuitive connection to others. We are relational. We are ‘the family of man.’ Still, self-preservation, self-sufficiency, selfishness, self-interest, selfhood, and self-indulgence pervades.

“Do not take anything personally,” (according to The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz.) Paradoxically, an integrity of self-hood allows for not needing, seeking, wanting, or caring about the approbation, approval, applause, reciprocity, or flattery of others.  It is a sufficiency unto one-self. My spirituality. My progress. My health. My worth. My interests. My self. Still, as Morrie (on a given Tuesday) asks, I do wonder if I can settle for being ‘fully human.’ Ha! All are but components in a universal whole, I think. Now then, as for you? What do you say, eh?


Wednesday, July 29, 2020

The Rock in the River




                                                                                  *


Some rocks are called just that, rocks. The one I slept the night on, alone in the middle of a gurgling river, was really a boulder. While all boulders are rocks, but not all rocks are boulders, I certainly begged to sleep atop the giant rock. And Rev Moore, back in circa 1968, or was it 9 (?), was hesitant from the outset about giving me permission. He oversaw about 20 of us, boys of varying ages, all from Pretoria Boys High. We had bicycled to the Hartebeest Dam, and some tributary river near to it, to camp for the night. Rev Moore had followed us in a rented white van. Perhaps it was the Outdoors Club outing. Perhaps it was the Cycle Club outing. Whichever, we were there, all of us in the woods, beside a stream, around a campfire, and I, being obstinate, adventuresome, or plain selfish, wanted not to sleep in a tent with others, but by myself, alone, atop a rock, surrounded by water. It would feel like an island of solitude. It would feel as though I was protected by a moat. And it would feel special.

“I have to see it,” Rev Moore demurred. And he accompanied me there. I remember him not electing to follow me as I goat-leaped the rocks across the rushing stream, scrambled up the big boulder (in my memory about as big as a modern-day SUV,) and demonstrated the flat-top. “Alright,” he shouted across at me. “But if you get too cold you know where we are!”

Thing is, it grew very cold, lying there, all alone. I recall the brilliance of the stars. And mostly, I recall the perseverative gurgle and trickle and cacophony of the forever rushing current. While no real threat was expected, I knew at least that I was alone, on my own island, and as hard and cold as the rock itself was, I would be safe.

The next morning, having spent a very restless night, I came to the camp fireplace a mite downcast, huddled into myself. I remember him looking across at me, this gentle Reverend Moore, and he said something like: “No man is an island. A poet wrote that. But you had to experience it for yourself, even if for just one night. Right?”

“Right.”

“Well then,” he went on, “since we really are surrounded by others, the very water of life, we are better off to share ourselves with them, than just to be an isolate. Do you think?”

I smiled. (I think.)

Somehow, in the manufacturing of the images and words from memory, we may be guilty of inaccuracy. We are creative beings, after all. But the essence of the man, our revered master, Reverend Michael Moore, remains. More than fifty years later, we still see him as a fulcrum in our lives, a man who served us by example. A man who was compassionate, caring, understanding, insightful, and gentle.

He may not have been an island ‘just for me’, but certainly he was the rock of safety and integrity and kindness for so very many of us. And sometimes, in the stream of consciousness that is one’s memory, he rises to anchor me in the security of knowing I was seen, cared for, appreciated, respected, and honoured, just for 'being'. Rev Moore. Some souls among us are boulders of integrity, indeed.


                                         *Rev. Michael Moore, circa 1968, and again in 2011. 
                                                                      
                                                                         [Photos provided by Justin Neway]

Thursday, July 23, 2020

Such Sweet Sorrow



A wailing escapes me. Raw, unchecked, I am surprised by the sound. It is a wallowing cord of connection to an alien universe, in which my moaning grief is transported to my conjecture of an ethereal other, a ghostly you, there, just simply no longer present in my small world. It comes wuthering out of me, uninhibited. Still, I am conscious that I am alone whenever this freedom from the self, this almost startling catharsis, occurs. I choose not to contain my grief when in privacy; at last, alone, the release of it can gush from me. Yet still, it does not empty my pain. Years and years may pass, decades even, and still the tears at some sudden memory of you will, unbidden, leak from me. I am watered by my grief. The garden of my consciousness is made richer for having known you, and though you do become but a memory, I am sustained by the sweet sorrow of having shared your essence. Such is love. It does not die, not as long as I feel it.

Such sweet sweet sorrow. Perhaps that is why we cling to the memories? Perhaps the sense of keeping our loved ones with us is carried in the groundswell of grief irrigating our containment of them. Photos. Stories. Recollections. Places. Experiences. Smells. Tastes. And sounds. Have I left something out? Yes, even texture will have one recall an ‘Other’. And a sad tear, a tug on the heartstring, a catching of breath will give pause to the immediacy of activity engaging me, and I then feel, however differentiated, my connection to you, You, who is no longer available to me. You who cannot write. Who cannot speak. Who cannot touch. Who is beyond any reach other than that which I so very subjectively choose to conjure. Such sweet sorrow, indeed.

Does it really matter that I tell someone else, particularly those that never knew you, that I have lost you? That you are dead.

We each can relate: Pet; Granny; Grandpa; Mother; Dad; Child; Sibling; Aunt; Uncle; Cousin. Whom have I left out? Oh, yes, Lover. Withal, what actual names shall I recount? Will someone else identify? Will they send condolences? Will their words really succor me? Will they assuage my pain? Will they give me support when what I really want right now is the privacy of my grief to cry for my loss to the real-life connection to you. All else of you now becomes conjecture. You become ethereal. You become a memory. Yet you sustain me in my sense of appreciation for your contribution to the very value of my experience. In my gratitude lies the sweet sensation of thankfulness, and the sorrow that you are no longer there to reciprocate. Shall you be named?

An alphabet of names here can follow. Certainly, for you, reading this, hearing this, too; we each have lost and loved and lost and loved and keep on loving. We each have variously experienced others in differing degrees of intimacy, accord, and relevance. As such, our grief, sweet grief, can even attend our projection of love toward those we actually never knew, or could know; at least, not know personally. Funerals for kings, for queens, for presidents and politicians, for movie stars, rock stars, and troubadours; they are the stuff of the collective. Let us share our sorrow that we lost Leonard Cohen. A single star in the firmament brightens up the dark. Yet who can possibly name every star surrounding us? And surely my sorrow for Doris Day’s demise is felt too, unless you knew her not, and her actual name no longer provokes your consciousness as she flits from scene to scene. There are too many to cry over. Yet loss is continuous. Shaka Zulu decreed a year of mourning Nandi. But who now still cries over that?

I miss you. Revered master. Teacher. Mentor. Friend.
I love you. And in that much, I feel so very deeply for your passing. Always.



Monday, July 6, 2020

Raising Reciprocity



After the initial excitement, what? We make contact in the instant, and check in with whatever story attenuates our daily struggle, and then, naturally, drift apart. Yet though our pathways are expected to diverge, the feeling of having reconnected leaves one pleased. It is good to know that friendly accord persists, despite the years that do separate us. We can honour the past. We can recollect the memories. We can communicate with some, especially nowadays, thanks to the many mediums at our disposal. Yet in the bullseye metaphor of a dart board there are comparatively few persons in one’s inner circle who are obliged, or feel compelled, to reciprocate frequently. Some maintain contact, intimately by degrees. A special friend. But very many persons we know, naturally, prick into one’s consciousness, but stay on the periphery. (Surely there are none that "doesn't matter," or, "never did," surely?)

Outer circle relationships can know little of the facts of our life. The pleasantries with the familiar receptionist, the clerk, the secretary, the milk man may all slip away. We forget their names. We enjoyed their presence, their energy, their helpfulness, and even our chatter. But eventually, we, or they, move on; (that is, even those with whom we share intellectual intimacy.)

Closer circle relationships evoke more touchstones. People with whom we’ve worked. People on whom we’ve depended. People with whom we’ve shared stories. Old school classmates. Old office colleagues. Old neighbourhood camaraderies. Then there are present day persons circling the immediate apex of shared interests. Ongoing reciprocity is in the instant. We give, they give back. And all the care and empathy and sympathy and assistance and generosity can be heartfelt, sincere, and treasured. We learn personal things about them, and they know our stories too. But then way leads on to way, and we move away, or they do so too. Yet always, we recall that we had a relationship of some sort, however peripheral that may have been. Coming back into consciousness, an itch begins. We need to make contact. To reconnect.

But let’s face it. Some relationships, like watching a drifting leaf in the streams of life, bob and glide and pass on, away. Each person we meet, have met, are yet to meet, appears interesting to us, depending on the degree to which we give them focus. And yes, then too, it can depend on the degree to which they give focus back to us too. How often do we stay communicating?

Thing is, within the dissection of memes of continuing behaviours, preferences, proclivities, habits, and interests, three arteries appear: Conversations dwell on a predominant interest in things; or delve much into an interest in others; and some explore amongst ideas. All three, generally, engage us. The first is easy. Things can preoccupy. The second is more subtle. We talk about people with care and love and compassion, or some talk can be mean-spirited and poisonous. And if overtly preoccupied by ideas, that too can be too political, contentious, self-righteous, or too abstract easily to integrate. So, yes, we are an admixture of all three, and by degrees are swirling in the very chemistry that makes for the recipes of our individuality. It is the kismet soul that invigorates us most. Especially in the moment. (Hello there, fellow traveler!)

Well, who amongst our friends maintains a steady and loving contact? Who among our family? Some of us have old colleagues, old neighbours, old school chums, and old relationships that continue to dip into our lives (and we in theirs) as the years turn to decades. Such is the nature of an unconditional reciprocity. Yet still, how deep do either of us really, truly, delve?

To provoke a sustained contact, now there’s the rub. Personally, I find Penelope and Percy to have reached out, to have shared their story of the journey from a then to a now, and then to disappear again into ‘the new now’, full of the circumstances and involvements and interests and preoccupations that naturally absorb each of us, individually. “Anon,” and, “Toodle-do!”

Recounting catch-ups goes only so far. The ball is in your court. Or is it in mine? And friendly as our interaction may be, when do we again meet? Or must all relationships, except the ones in an ongoing comfort of reciprocity, circle and cycle around the circumstances of living one’s life as it evolves? When will you write, or respond, or reciprocate, or reach out, yet again? Hm?



Thursday, June 4, 2020

Subtle Sensibilities



Dissolution is everywhere. We easily tear down, minimize, shame, or dismiss others. It takes too much energy to absorb, include, integrate, and assimilate. Rather, we expunge, cauterize, and ignore. Knee jerk reactions can even incite us to violence. We can swear at, mock, and vilify those who are different from ourselves. Our impatience, perceptions, and cultural appropriations set us up for non-acceptance of that which does not suit our status quo. And such negative judgmentalism is endemic to every culture, to every group, subgroup, and clique. Worse even, it is harbored in the individual. We walk around with the censorship deep in our psyche, anchored in our adopted values, and yet too often can unleash it on the tip of our tongues: “Disgusting. Idiot. Shame on you! Buttocks’ hole! Fool. Lowlife. You’re a bastard.” And worse: “Retard!”

Thing is, too often, the very subtlety of it all can disguise it. Our own self-righteousness can feel laudable. “It’s beneath me. She wears dreadful colours. I hate people who do this, or do that!”

All our lives we get taught by others what to think. And we even take on other’s feelings too. A child learns fear responses, learns racism, easily adopts a sense of hate. Taking on the sense of self, a child begins a journey fraught with the acculturation of ages, tradition, expectation, and of maturation toward a plateau of regular and steady personality and character; it is a stance from which one may ineluctably choose not much further to grow; yet for some it is a conscious choice. Such are the pathways for most of us. We evolve rather slowly along the continuum of enlightenment as we adopt the main behaviors and sensibilities of our ‘being’, as opposed to our ‘becoming’. And being ‘just fine for who I am’ becomes our happy place, or our main place, (or our being accustomed to accepting a Thoreauvian sensibility of unrequited desperations.)

We eschew the imposition of being called out, pigeonholed, labelled. Or perhaps not. Some of us are at ease with wearing white capes and hoods, like living ghosts. Some of us are at ease with brandishing swastikas, or badges and emblems and identifying slogans. We care not that we are purposefully and utterly committed to what amounts to a petri-dish of convention within the whole spectrum of mankind. We cling to the sense of our culture, unable easily to ascend beyond it. At most we may side-step the Venn Diagram of our birthright, or even of our particular pathway, but we do tend readily to settle into another. We replace the Bible on the shelf for the book of Tao, (but we do not necessarily read either, let alone immerse ourselves in their preferential practices.) We are content to be as we feel, rather than to understand, deeply, profoundly, entirely, what it is that we are really, truly, being. And so, our prejudices mount. It is natural to flock together with our own species. Different sports for different sorts. Different cars for different drivers. Different houses. Different clothes. Collective, acculturated thoughts. Yes, it can become natural to be divisive, exclusive, demeaning, and self-serving. Differences become reference points to judgmentalism and prestige. 

Thought drives us. Emotions can anchor us. It is thinking about our thinking, (the perpetual practice of meta-cognition,) that can invigorate our evolution through the multi-dimensional dynamics of aspirations toward more and more enlightenment. Like compassion, it is a journey, not just a product. We are too much of everything to be ‘perfect,’ entirely with consistency. As Bob Dylan puts it: “I contain multitudes”. At issue is the choices we make, moment for moment, however caught up we are in survival modes; familial anchors; competitive striving; the fundamentalism of political stance or religious segregations; the inviolate dispensation of being self-righteous; the inarguable need to level the playing field; or then the dreadful insecurity of feeling fraught by one’s individual ineffectiveness; until the paradigm shift of a generalized integration becomes ‘the new norm’, such that one’s actions can begin to contribute more and more effectively toward the health of the whole. Acceptance is all. Integration is everything. And compassion continues in its dendrite-like veins of more and more understanding. If ‘Everything’ is important, and ‘Nothing’ really matters, how then to suspend negative judgements? How to accept, assimilate, absorb, integrate, and nurture the edges of insight? Whatcha thinking? Hm?



Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Keys to The Kingdom




We seldom can see everything at once. We take things in briefly, training on specifics. The horizon, with Denman Island, was my focus. For another, I knew, it would be the foreground of Qualicum Beach. For someone else, it would be the dancing flowers in my camera lens. Without your seeing my picture, how could you possibly find the keys to my meaning? We each make metaphors of our lives, turning the past into symbolism, significance, and perspective. But seldom do we see everything. In retrospect, or when viewing an image again, one may notice something altogether missed, (as did I, recently, when taking the photo (above), more than a week or so ago.)

The key to an effective composition lies in the rule of three. The key to another’s heart lies in treasuring not only the lock, but how to open it. The keys to the kingdom lie in the phrases passed down through history. The key to mankind lies in his ability to marry with her kind too. We are inundated with keys. We carry them like jingle bells, each opening a portal to the new present. And sometimes, oft times, frequently, we come across a key and no longer know what it is for. Our rules of conservation, of co-operation, of collaboration can so easily dissolve trust and security with the loss of keys. We are both collectively and independently dependent on keys. So too for the attainment of them. We get keys to lock something in, or to lock something out. And putting one’s address on the name tag of a key is hardly the way to ensure against future loss. We are conscious of where we keep our keys, most of the time. And sometimes, we give friends a spare key. But the keys to our bank accounts, or to our computers, or to our castles are kept private, secret, secured, we hope. The rule of three applies both to our artistic and practicable sensibilities: head, heart, and kept somewhere filed away for reference.

In that singular adverb, ‘somewhere’, lies the problem. The key to a life is somewhere. Thing is, should we die (when we die,) there is the need of another (preferably one’s trusted loved ones) to unlock one’s ordinarily private files in order to access the bank accounts, the computer files, the life insurance papers, the mortgage and tax papers, as well as the photos and letters of a lifetime. And the key to it all, in the necessity to disburse, or to preserve, or to discard, lies in the value given to everything in one’s will, or given by the subjective decisions of the one who retains the key. Undiscovered wills leave great confusion. Un-updated wills can leave a great sense of inequity. And too decisive wills (“I’ve left all my millions to Fluffy,”) can drive some to despair. Somewhere, somehow, sometime or another, we each must become responsible for knowing where we, or those we care for, keep our keys.

To get to the point. Unlocking one’s thoughts is seldom a direct process, especially if one is right brained, an abstract thinker, or of a metaphorical mind readily given to a predilection for the propensity to prevaricate. Words are not always clear-cut keys. Stop. No. Go. Shut up. Rather, like the very many brush strokes attending the making of a painting, words are as layered and as multifaceted as a moving stream that gurgles and burbles its way to the ocean. And somewhere in all of the tumble of activity and surge of energy that allows for the song to be created, the essay to be written, the bruited meaning(s) to become clear, are the key phrases that invigorate another’s understanding, that unlock the symbolism and the metaphor and the meaning. Or do we not get the drift? Do left-brained apprehenders prefer precise impeccability of phrasing?

We keep our keys close by. We find another’s keys and we hope to help the owner rediscover them. We decide to be more secure, more conscious, more responsible, more prescient, and, yes, even more-better with our lives. We look at others more closely. We look at our landscapes with yet more appreciation. And we look at ourselves with more circumspection, with yet greater metacognition, and with more clarity. Clarity. How very obscured all else can be when we no longer have the keys to our kingdom. Or is my meaning lost too? Look yet more closely at the picture provided to you, (above); like the overview of one’s life, the keys we might have lost are there. We need but see them.

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Insidious Insights



The cages are of my own making. Is it not so for most of us? Except that, at this age and stage, I can walk quite easily through the first-floor bars, their being neither too tight for my older frame, nor yet all clad up so that only an open door might provide egress. It is now as though the ribs contain but light-filled spaces, allowing one freely to breathe. We each know such cages. And we each know the other cages too, the ones that we keep dark. We each can have these conscious curtailments that define our existence, mostly of our own making. We can draw our curtains. We can close our doors. We can lock away our treasures. And from our own windows we can survey that which is without, from within. But not all cages are of our own making; many get imposed on us by our acculturation, our circumstances, and by the power of others. How to stay clear?

Such has been the insidious effect of this 2020, with its social distancing, its laws and regulations forbidding this and that. We find ourselves in the cages of our dwellings; or in the confines of our automobiles; or visiting each other from a distance; like prisoners of our collective dilemma.   

As a friend writes, “[I’m] Going into my mind because going out of my mind is not an option.”*

Yes, the cages that define our comfortable rooms, that contain our hopes for the future, that outline the very superstructure supporting our individual existence, needs be thought about. Or else we shall but go our habitual way from room to room, or mayhap venture outside, yet stay leashed to the expectations, and the conditioning, and the perpetuation of unquestioned traditions imposed by our history. Since babies, have we not been stopped from unfettered freedom by the bars of our cribs; by the locked doors and cabinets of our childhood; by the fences of our yards; by the rules of the classroom; by the expectations on us of being a responsible adult? It all has been structured to keep one safe. The societal cages make of us a species apparently free to move around the globe, (particularly before the advent of Covid-19,) yet still, we were enabled to do so precisely because we were expected to follow conventional rules, regulations, and expectations; it made no matter how different the society was into which we were able so freely to move about. After all, barring places like North Korea, we did travel fairly easily. After all, except that one needed a visa, and a passport, and proof of financial wherewithal for the journey, one could just about go anywhere.

Given the new framing (as seen in the picture above,) that sense of freedom is what I got when actually walking through the walls of the superstructure of the building in situ. There was the delight of being entirely within my rights. There was no guard to harry me off the property. There was no time-constraint other than that which I chose. There was nothing other than the differentiation in the sizes of rooms that could curtail my process. Except that all the cages were on one level. And the stairway, although nailed down the first five steps to the landing, was entirely loose up to the second floor. To hazard going the next four, to the loose board at the top, merely to get a glimpse of the vaster expanse before me, was risky at best. But at the very least, provided I thought about where to place my balance, I was safe enough, temporarily. The superstructure was not yet ready to ascend to a second floor.

We progress through the Memes of evolution in simultaneous apprehensions of horizontal and vertical accretion. We comprehend but barely, at times, the significance of the cages into which we become conditioned. We at times do “go out of my mind.” And that fear of not being able to understand, to be conscious, to be alert, can indeed be scary. So, yes, it is best advised to keep ‘going into one’s mind,’ for in our better perception of ourselves, within our world, we shall indeed be broaching the universe of what it means to be free, to be compassionate, integrative, and healing.

(*By permission: Mike Jablonski) 

                            “Going into my mind because going out of my mind is not an option.

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Family, Friends, and Faith



That’s what came out of the funeral service for Sharon, that sad morning of last March: the three cups of Family, Friends, and Faith. We can be fixated on precise dates, yes, but grief knows no boundaries; so too is happiness best not to be truncated, forgotten, or packed away. Our lives are a stream of consciousness in which the memories come and go, and we easily can re-engage with the old feelings, if we allow their conjure, if we give in to their quick and sudden provocation, or purposefully draw out the memory, or determinedly pull images up from our interior spaces, like yanking up a bucket from our own well. And sometimes the cup overflows. And sometimes, one might aver, it is empty. Yet, since we are always a reservoir of that which was, if the bucket does come up empty, it is because we did not nurture each tug on our emotion, nor did we dip it deep enough. Friends, Family, and Faith are not so much metaphors as living entities by which we perpetually are sustained. We feel all the more deeply for our knowing, and loving, our dear Sharon.

To you though, she may be just a name.

Friends and Family, and Faith too affects the isolate, the lone homeless person, with no connections, no sub-culture, no network of social support systems. Such a person rises into our consciousness like a boil on the pavement, unwanted, even despised by some. But for most of us, care for such an one is not within our usual purvey. We can afford not to have to dwell on their predicament. We can trust that someone else will take care of them. We can hope that they will take care of themselves. We can have faith that somehow, somewhere, in this vast world of inequalities, there will be succour enough unto the needs of such-like others. We cannot identify with real starvation. We cannot identify with absolute drought. We cannot identify with their apparent rejection of societal norms, expectations, values. We cannot identify with their evident mental aberration, the practice of their physical addictions, or even their horrid hygienic habituations. We have faith that God will take care of them. Somehow, down deep, we feel that they made a choice, and that their way has led way to way. (At least, that allows very many of us freely to skirt past the hobo on the pavements.) And thank God for those who are prepared to minister to them, to stand and serve at the soup-kitchens, to distribute blankets and socks and clothing. They are the angels, indeed. But it becomes necessarily sufficient that we make the Salvation Army coinage-donation, the unwanted-clothes drop. Somehow, God is taking care of it all. Besides, there are too many of ‘them.’ City by city. Country by country. After all, how does one retain one’s need for self-sufficiency, first? If one gives too much, then how quickly will all one’s resources not be depleted? No, better to be in the position to be able to continue to give, but from the well-spring of having one’s ‘own’. Such, generally, is our faith.

In this 2020 time of social isolation and physical distancing we still are able to write, to phone, to skype and zoom and tweet and make communication with friends and family. Yet still, we do not necessarily reach out to all our friends, or even to all our family. We trust we shall hear the news should someone be in trouble, should someone need help. And we keep the faith. After all, at the precise moment of typing these words, at noon, 09/04/2020, there are 94,888 deaths from Covid-19, world-wide. And for me, not a single person of those is someone I know, personally. No, with a little faith, with prayer, with God’s grace, no one that I know will be affected. Such is faith. Such are my friends and family. We are sufficiently connected.

But the statics keep creeping upwards. And it seems the roll of the die may eventually touch a person I personally love, (God forbid!) And therein lies the rub. Until we are personally aggrieved, reached, touched, affected, we do but continue to progress along the way. And the wellspring of our empathy can become cauterized by the sheer volume of statistics. Still, our cups are not entirely empty. Yet behind every one of those nameless 95,047 (a mere two hours later, on checking the burgeoning statistics,) there is family, friends, and faith. And so, weep not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee too. It tolls, awfully.




Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Mending Walls



We are astounded at unprovoked aggression. We startle! It’s like the surprising attack of an angry and noisy dog, (especially when one is not trespassing.) We are astounded at territorial imperatives. Like that of a neighbour who measures the one-inch overhang of your eavestrough onto his property, and then sets up a letter that arrives in the mail, full of legal complaint. Yes, we do need distance from each other. Yes, we are wont to protect our property, our view, our safety, our security, our sense of ownership of a particular space. But how to mend the rift that can occur in relationships, to repair the neighbourly wall that breaks between us? How to reach beyond impatience, and to speak to each other with dignity and grace and care? How not to threaten?

The current of Covid-19 knows no boundaries. Insidious, it has resulted in our putting walls up, everywhere. In the supermarkets there are taped-distances for us each to stand. On the pathways we veer away from each other. We do not share elevators. We do not share transport. We do not touch. And when that month comes in which we all, tentatively, try to resume the normality of our old lives, shall we easily handshake and hug and speak close across the fences of our social conventions yet once more? How long shall we cling to the ghosts of those so drastically fallen?
  
Robert Frost, the old poet, in ‘Mending Wall,’ (below,) finished off the poem with these phrases:
  
 “He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father’s saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbours.’”

Indeed. We resonate by clinging to the past. Indeed, we move in the darkness of our established conventions. We inculcate tradition and fear and xenophobia and acculturation as easily as many children once had their private-parts altered in the name of religions. Many still do! We still set up borders, and vaingloriously can defend them against submitting to the differences between our expectations, and that of our neighbour’s. “Having thought of it so well,” we resume and perpetuate our forefather’s practices. Caveman like, we certainly will not allow for someone’s unwanted (or even unexpected) presence at our entrances. Self-protection, and the security of those we love, is quite naturally paramount. And much like Plato’s cave, in which we face the wall and see the moving shadows and mistake them for reality, we perpetuate quite easily the suspended-disbelief of our lives, and presume to squander time, checking the state of our own contrivances, such that we live in the need perpetually to find yet another object, point of focus, or belief that may sustain us. We do not easily turn to the light. We do not easily give up that which went before. We do not easily move beyond the horizontal accretion of our gathered experiences,

“Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: ‘Why do they [fences] make good neighbours?’” Robert Frost asks.

Well? Why? What is there about our fragmentation and dissolution and isolation and disconnect that we so readily can resort (in the face of attack, of fear, of uncertainty, and even of reasonable precaution) to the persuasion to keep at mending the wall between ourselves and the other? Indeed, as Frost intimates: “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out.”

Thing is, as the poet said: “Something there is that does not love a wall.” Then again, “Spring is the mischief in me.” Indeed.

Mending Wall by Robert Frost - 1874-1963
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'





Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Em's and En's



“Em? That’s not a word!” At eight years old, I felt cheated, incensed. My uncle often tried to beat me at scrabble. “It is a word,” he remonstrated. “Look in the dictionary.” And indeed, upon flipping through many familiar pages, I realized I was mistaken.

In the relatively short dash between then and now, so very much has transpired. That singular line between dates, like 448-338 b.c.; 356-326 b.c; 110-44 b.c.; 33-61 a.d.; 539-612; 1122-1204; 1343-1400; 1412-1431; 1564-1616; 1756-1791; 1809-1865; 1819-1901; 1879-1955; 1892-1951; and 1918-2013 certainly represents a chronological series. Yet these dates are specifically significant, indeed, and perhaps even recognizable; but it is that all too brief em dash betwixt the dates that really signifies. Therein lies the life. Therein lies the influence of a given person on others, from birth to death. And suspended as that short-stroke em-dash is between the book-ends of any given dates, it is there that the very chapters of all history get written.

Social distancing is creating a stressful acclimatization to a new world order. Indeed, we adjust to being alone, and we preoccupy ourselves with the house-chores of isolation and free time. Indeed, we phone and email and Skype and Facebook, etc., but the physical reality of hugs and handshakes are very much a current aversion. We are to stand six feet apart, if we do not want to be buried six feet under. And evidently, too many lives have been foreshortened by a bug, a disease, a contagion, that horridly knows no international boundaries. Our globe is under attack, or at least, we human beings are the ones being attacked at this dastardly time on our world.

“A debacle! It is my favourite word of the month,” writes 97-year-old M’Lady Nancy Sinclair. In her long lifetime she’s seen the world wars, and plenty more. She’s endured and persevered within the storms of inordinate odds. At now, just about to turn 98 on April 01, she is supposed to allow no one into her cottage on The Swan, near Perth, in Australia. Her adult daughters, her friends, her neighbours, how will they be able to celebrate M’Lady’s birthday? That em dash of her life is indeed experiencing an awful shrinkage in the debacle of this 2020 year. To be so very alone is difficult for anyone, let alone those who care to be generous with their love toward and care for others. It is in direct contact with others that most of us share our very vitality.

A debacle is defined as ‘a sudden and ignominious failure’. Therein lies the rub. Are we, by staying chiefly in a virtual reality for the next long while, able to control the contagion, to contain it, and even, like polio, or the bubonic plague, or malaria, or aids, to stem the spread and so to keep things in check that we no longer need to be so fearful of each other? Certainly, all personnel involved in essential services, from our health, food, and maintenance workers, deserve a hero’s accolades. Their bravery to keep us all as cared for as possible is deeply profound.

And as for that all too brief em dash in the lives of those who once lived, and all those not as yet book-ended by a final date, we can but love day to day, appreciating all that is good and beautiful and marvelous and wonderful within our lives. The em dash of Plato, and Alexander, and even Caesar, and Queen Boudecia, and Bertha of Kent, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Joan of Arc, and President Lincoln, and Einstein, and Sir Arthur Street, and Mandela too, contains their experience of love and appreciation of life. Then too, they also indeed needed to overcome the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. So too, one fears, for each and all of us.

And as for the present debacle, darn it, we need, indeed, keep apart, and keep clean. Let us not play scrabble with the rules. After all, life for any of us can be too short. And lest we do not take precaution, unlike the inevitable and unavoidable reality of our own personal em dash; for some of us, we fear, it might become the even shorter ‘en’ dash. (Yes, the same, but shorter still.) We need think of our own impact on others. So stay safe. Be well. Move about with care. Please.