in Canada

It is September of my 73rd year. I am in Canada and along with me is my nemesis, Caleb. He has been with me since reading Ann Rice. Living forever, trading your soul in for extended consciousness, was a delightful fantasy–it sold books, and it sold me.

Always the ‘wanna-be’, that was Caleb’s life. With the arc in plain view, Caleb noticed that he was the same DNA that was once a little boy. As he sat by an open window in one of the townships of Quebec he heard neighbors in the adjoining yard–they spoke Canadian. It all came back to him like a dream. Except now it was Caleb that had COPD and his mother had been dead a quarter of a century. It was not so much the words as the rhythm, the cadence of the language that Caleb admired, as it was the heartfelt language, because it represents a people who had to settle-in to survive; and many did not survive. Those that did respect their antiquity. The culture of French Canada shows that determination. They are a nation that respects the status quo.

Today we would say it was a mindfulness that did not want to be intruded upon. Caleb would be meditating. He would be stopping. He would be absconded by an alien consciousness. This is too esoteric for these Canadians. They know how to be and the land and the history and the culture supports that.

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The Private Practice: in writing

The Private Practice: In Writing 

I infrequently see angels. Although, I have at times felt startled thinking I was about to step on my little Yorkie. A more deliberate glance showed nothing there but the remains of a shadow that lives in my mind. Lyla continues to live: in my mind.
When I access my French Canadian roots, I feel enveloped by the arms and culture of my grandmother. Memere, was her name. I still see her in my minds eye much like I see little Lyla who was always underfoot. 

My morality lives a different narrative in French than does my English narrative. I have know this for many years. As many year as I have know that a souls last death is when no one else on earth is alive to remember it. I keep Memere alive.
I guess I might call myself an emotional pragmatist–someone who follows nature, like another might follow football. I like knowing the nuances. And those same nuances that I see in the tall pines and the swinging birches, I see in the magnified imaginations of both my conscious and my unconscious mind.
…………………………………..
Autumn is nearby. This year she has not given much warning about the impending transitions about to happen–in my case from a bathing suit and bare-feet to long pants and a sweater. But, that is only the start. Transitions at this time of the year demand that we pay a conscious attention to not only today, but to the inevitable death of summer tomorrow. In this case the fleeting last hours and the fleeting last flowers of summer 2018.
We can’t ignore it–at least, we can’t ignore it for long. High winds crawling across the Atlantic Ocean from South Africa will actually rip some trees out of their roots. Imagine what it might do to you, if you were unfortunate enough to be where the tree was when the winds hit the coast. And, of course, when the rain falls it will be cold, and the bones will feel the chill; just a month ago the wind was welcomed as a soft, gossamer breeze fluttering like a yellow finch or the humming birds sucking up nectar from the brightest flowers in the gardens. 

Here, in my little Canada, I am fortunate enough to anticipate fall, and eventually winter. The Canadian geese are on a flight pattern that has them stopping for a lunch break on Watchaug Pond. It probably looks not much different from Les Canton d’es Est to these migrators. Except for one nuisance: in Canada they are generally satisfied, there is no perpetual motion for the next exciting bit of success and the latest gadget that complicates life while convincing Americans that this very expensive thing will make life easier. The light bulb, internal plumbing and gardens in the Townships seem to have been joyfully arrested in the clutches of 1950 sentimentality with a touch of 2018 wisdom. 

No Two Moments Are Alike

 

Honesty seems to live just below the surface of consciousness.  It is not deeply fastened to the lower brain functions, it is not unconscious.  However, in the semi-conscious state where it exists, it needs to be seduced out deliberately if it is to be of any use.

I am curious about the statement that makes up the title of this mini-essay: ” No two moments are alike.”  I remember being mystified for quite some time when I first learned that no two snow-flakes were a like.  I am mystified in the same way about this recent thought that I have been having.

At this point in our collective development as humans, most of us can accept the “here & now” of current life.  We are surrounded with mindful reminders of “live for today,” “only one day matters. today, because yesterday is gone and tomorrow is not here.”  The here and now has been relegated to a  cute little phrase that is comfortable and not offensive to anyone.

Add the concept of believing in a deep and loyal commitment to oneself, and most of us run as fast as we can, taking our un-resolved self with us.  We do this from one moment to the next. And, some of us do it for a life time.  Honesty as a form of communicating between aspects of yourself is a skill that must be learned.  It is not a given that on our own we will find the route to nirvana or honesty.

Honesty is eclipsed by the ego through a myriad of defenses and coping skills that are neuronal connections.  To work with the authentic self, we must risk the emotional discomfort of shame, ignorance, guilt, arrogance, grandiosity, imperfection, and most of all a gigantic ego that demands respect while advocating complete control of the human mind.

In exchange for protecting us, the ego demands 100% entitlement to righteousness.  The ego has no use for intuition, the subjectivity, the dream-like images of what ever we can conjure up.  Matters of the heart are like Ladies in the court of Henry VIII.

The concept of deliberate intent is again being called on.  If we want to be honest with ourselves, we have to commit to a practice that is consistent and supportive.   As well, we have to be prepared to chase away the demon nay-sayers.  The one we hear outside of us and the eternal ones that come from ancestry.

Moving to honesty is a paradigm switch.  Nothing that we thought we knew applies to our discovering our own neuro-pathways.  Thinking is not particularly useful in getting there.  There may be a constitutional resistance to even wanting to know the truth as you may feel a need to punish yourself according to pre-renaissance torture treatments.  Perhaps the source of our modern day hell is the souls of men who have created human atrocities.

Hell is too frighteningly close to honesty.  It heats up the fears to such an intensity that deliberate search for the still-point is unconsciously abandoned.

Happy New Year 2015

A Fire,

A Dream,

A Storm,

The Cello, The piano

A Prayer

A Dog, A Friend

And Tea

Quebec–enhanced and edited–Topazed

roo

Each of these photo-paintings–iphotoimpressions, are of French Canada.  You can see how different styles of digital brush strokes and different tonal variations change the intentional entirely.  One image above is an outdoor wall mural.  A painting that feels as if you could walk into that space for how perfect the perspective is.

Roof-top  have been inspired by Matthew Cutter’s work.  He painted a piece called “roof-tops” that is deep and tonal and uses only two colors to render a universal impression.  When I see roof-tops, I see Cutter’s work in my minds eye.

Notre Dame des Victoires—at the Place Royal is a church build in the mid 17th century (1667).  Walking through Quebec’s ancient city along the St Lawrence River is walk in timelessness.  I chose low saturation and no saturation to convey the faded stone work of the period.

Each of these represent a subjective interpretation of where I am in time and space.  I feel transported, only for the moment, but long enough to feel the air that breathes now was the air that breathed then.  The river is perpetually the same while always changing and flowing with new waters….

Ouebec is a wonderland of peace and “adequate” prosperity.  She is fun to capture and more fun to edit.

august heat: the joy gardening @ the fountain of youth

it must be the infectious weather.  i am outside 12, 15 hours a day.  I love the heat, the breeze and most of all being nearly naked on a wide expanse of beach and seemingly not seeing anyone, unless you consider the sky someone.  The sky with its orange and blue clouds and and pink and purple highlights throughout, it makes you wonder, am i on another planet…is this too good to be true?

a little man with a very scruffy hat sit at the beach whittling palm branches into curious shapes.  we he has a piece just right he uses a magnifying glass and the sun to etch and burn images and text onto these palm discards.  I love that so much is actually used.

in addition to just being overjoyed with the activities and the pace of this world, i am engaged in becoming younger next year.  why not?  As my useful, productive exercises produce a nice, art-felt creative looking garden, my body is shedding pounds from the heat and the labor…i become hot and restless so I just into my car, park at the beach and within five minutes, I am a fish swimming against a wave, or a wanna-be surfer that comes riding in on a wave scraping bottom–in this case bottom being my protruding stomach.  Another reason to stay in the ocean and swim off some more weight.

It is easy to be in love in this town, not because the men are beautiful and the woman are plentiful, but because everything is so romantic…small out of the way ethnic restaurants, a cove that appears private, so private you are tempted to swim bare.  a bar filled with cowboy hats and men and women two-steppin.  music from the plaza de la constitution, music from a rock club, music from a spanish guitar playing solo to no one in particular in the mournful key of A minor.  fudge and popcorn in more flavors then I knew existed.  good, good european coffee anywhere. and the churches still ring the angelus, and the choir is gregorian and the mass is high, and musical, and intellectually lectured sermons are interesting.

It is camelot, shangria-la, Don Quixote’s adventure, the Spanish inquisition, the year is 1567, the roads are cobble-stone, a house was recently stained with cranberries.  house drawn carriages, small intimate theater, live Opera, a Picasso exhibit…….

then, i begin to crave co-creating and I start to see how I might have a different life here than I have up north.  work in a landscape company? teach software art? write my book.

gardening is so good to me.  i look at a square or a circle or a corner or a triangle and it begs to me to landscape it into something indigenous and beautiful.  then the exercise of gathering the stone, the brick, the motor, digging up roots, raking level a section–dig some deep holes and line them with a quality grade composted top soil.

then there is the nursery. there the young people know plants like I know diagnostic categories.  so i pick some long limb flowering bougainvillea that will fill a pot 4 feet high by maybe 3 feel wide.  i picked up a trellis to help the youngster to grow right into the old giant oak that stands very tall just behind the fence.  There will be an arch of bogies, and in front of the bogies, i planted a variety of flowering plants in the 4 to 8 feet range; and just in front of that is a row of rosemary that we hope to see grow into tall eatable herbs.  and the out-door whirlpool sits in the middle of this jungle-like garden.

 

Getting ready to leave, st. augustine, but would sure like to have stayed on at least one more month, Perhaps soon.

I am manifesting many wishes and most are granted with no strings attached, except to be a good man; that is, to be accountable to an examined analytic  matrix.  The contents of a each man is different, because “each” means that it is onto itself that the values mush be evaluated and attached.

Here in St. Augustine where there are many imports, from other cities in America, we experience a conservative acceptance of each other–beneath the core, I can not tell yet if there is real soul.  From the looks of it, it has to have soul; but I am too new here to thrown out any opinions.  For now, the feeling is that of being in Love…this too shall pass, I presume; but until then I am going to photograph, paint, draw, write and pray full-out for my continued manifesting and my mission to help the world to see how much beauty there lies in the least excepted places.

 

Once again Deliberate Intent is here to suggest that we can let a great deal of beauty pass us by when our heads are buried in the sand.  Beauty must be aggressively sought after.  It is a component of drive and as such it has great powers that can lie dormant for a life time, if they are not awakened..

Like the nursery rhyme where sleeping beauty is woken by a kiss from a Prince…ok, so who would not wake up for that, beauty was the passion that sent the kiss.  And what of Helen Of Troy, navies and armies were sent to fetch her home…we can go to no limits if the drive is strong enough….

To be in a place of beauty, a state of Grace, it is wise first to have examined who you are and why you like what you like and what you don’t like and why?  We need that infusion of our own reality, our subjective world has to be touched by the instincts as well as by the over-bearing ego.

Deliberately Aim for Beauty.