Elephant Revival- Go On

My Travel Blog...

sojournnotes.wordpress.com

Travel Blog to Come...

September 6, Calgary-Thunder Bay
September 14, Thunder Bay-Zurich
September 21, Zurich-New Delhi

Adbusters Canada

"Karl Marx was one of the first to observe that as societal wealth increases so too does the prevalence of individual madness. Marx estimated that in 1852 one out of every 850 residents of Great Britain was classified as a "lunatic" whereas merely five years later the rate had increased to one in 700. The trend has since continued and rates of mental disorders are rising annually in the richest nations. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the US suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression-the highest rate globally. In the Netherlands one out of seven are similarly afflicted. Most alarming is that in 2005 researchers predicted that one in two Americas will suffer from a mental illness in their lifetime. According to the WHO, mental disease will be bigger than heart disease by 2020. In many ways, mental breakdown is much scarier than ecological breakdown, because once we lose our ability to think clearly-once we descent into a society of anxious, depressed me-then we will never be able to deal with the political, economic and climate tipping points now bearing down upon us. In a strange twist of fate, the apocalypse that we fear is coming our way, may not be of devastated landscapes but of devastated mindscapes."

Kono Matsu

An Ode to my Journal

There's nothing more disconcerting than losing ones own journal. It must have happened at Fountain Tire. I had a flat yesterday on my drive back from the mountains-I stopped in Didsbury to get it fixed, while waiting I wrote in my journal at a coffee shop then went back to Fountain Tire. I recall pulling out my journal to write some more-but I never did-I was interrupted, the guy fixing my tire wanted to show me the patch on it...what did I do with my journal from there? I didn't slip it back into my bag, for it's not in there. Did I really set it on the magazine table? Laura, did you really!?

So I've searched high and low but no journal, somebody, somewhere may have read it, may have tossed it out, or maybe it's still sitting there on that magazine table, being perused at intervals by people waiting for their flat tires to be patched. Perhaps on my list of things to do today a drive into Didsbury would be most beneficial...poor little exposed journal.

poet friend

II. Sadness
But there is also the sadness of spring-time, which,
like falling snow, distracts us.
Both sorrow and joy throbbing and pulsing—a
countless crowd of feelings are stirred and
mingle together in this festival of perfume.
What if I have a friend far away on the shores of
the Hsiang! (Calgary/India) Clouds part us and hide us
from each other.
Upon a little wave I shed the tears of separation,
and—little wave going eastward (and Westward), take to
my friend my soul-felt love.
Oh! that I could grasp this golden light of
spring, keep it and horde it—a treasure-trove
of days for my fairest far-off friend.

Spring is Here and so am I

I've discovered some poetry by Theodore Roethke. I like skimming a poem first and noticing the lines that jump off the page:

"I dream of journeys repeatedly"
"I learned not to fear infinity"
"What I love is near at hand
always in earth and air"
"I learn by going where I have to go"

Tomorrow-I'm going with a couple friends to camp and rock climb and then there'll be a week in Thunder Bay visiting a dear old friend. It is difficult to believe that the school year is over, that the hum of activity last weekend is now covered in quiet restfulness. There will be one more month here for me and then I'll be shooting off into another chapter. I want the month of May to be a Monastic month. My roommate will be in England, the campus is empty, and aside from work I don't have too many obligations elsewhere. So I'm putting this out into the universe, "Monastic Month of May!"

It will be a sort of retreat, a reflective time-and how good it is to do this in Otterburne where I've spent the last five years. How good to use that time to say good-bye to it all. And to enjoy its fields and its trees while I can; to read the Lonely Planet guide to India, to plan my trip, to write, to "imagine! imagine!" and then to go out and do.

"One day you finally knew what to do, and began."
-Mary Oliver



In the meantime I will say how much I've loved Prov...This is what I've loved:

-the color of twilight when all the snow is blue
-the recital hall where sits a shiny black piano
-the walks down long gravel roads with friends
-walks on the frozen river
-playing guitar outside in a thunder storm
-tea and wine and wine and tea and coffee and a good chat and a good book and a good friend
-the fireflies, the stars, the nighttime owl that swoops down suddenly with big white wings
-finding inventive ways to climb onto the roof

Here's to closing one chapter, and beginning another! Cheers.

Jon Bryant - Think Back - OFFICIAL VIDEO

Alchemy - Unfinished

Nicole and I decided to record one of our songs. Still a lot we need to work on but here's a taste!

snowy woods and Rilke

I went snowshoeing yesterday in the woods. There is a stillness about winter which always catches my breath, suddenly everything is quieter, seems more solitary, more thoughtful. Black branches of trees were frosted over in white snow, draping over the frozen ground. The sky; grey too, and wings of black birds crossed over it at unexpected intervals, interrupting the stillness. All the colours are muted, the river is silenced by it's covering of ice and snow. Then I read later the thoughts of Rainer Maria Rilke, which so often impress me.

He writes to a young poet who is seeking a mentor, someone who will advise him. These letters were written over a span of 5 years. Written from Rome, Italy, Paris, Sweden... what comes out of Rilke's pen as he corresponds with this man is poignant, beautiful, wise...here is a taste from "Letters to a Young Poet":

"If you will cling to nature, to the simple in nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you. You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day to the answer."

"Your life, of which I think with so many wishes. Do you remember how that life yearned out of its childhood for the "great"? I see that it is now going on beyond the great to long for greater. For this reason it will not cease to be difficult, but for this reason too it will not cease to grow."

"So you must not be frightened, if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall."

Vivian Maier, street photographer and nanny

Bonhoeffer

"O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray
And to concentrate my thoughts on you:
I cannot do this alone.
In me there is darkness,
But with you there is light;
I am lonely; but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;
I do not understand your ways,
But you know the way for me...
Restore me to liberty,
and enable me to live now
That I may answer before you and before me.
Lord, whatever this day may bring,
Your name be praised."

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer