Rants

Bronze Ribbon

Bronze Ribbon

“And time has ticked a ribbon round the stars.” Dylan Thomas, sort of, but a perfect title for this painting that I completed this morning. The acrylic paint is still wet! I brought it downstairs, looked at it in the light from the kitchen window, and the colors had all changed. I angled the painting, then re-angled – it was a chameleon changing color in the shifting light. Then I turned the large ceiling lights on – and this is what I saw.

Exactly the same painting – or is it? When I was studying in Madrid, a long time ago, I visited the Prado every afternoon. Each day I would visit a different room and stay there for the duration of my visit. The tourists who flitted in and out amazed me with the brevity of their visits. A minute or two to see all the paintings by Hieronymous Bosch, for example. I sat in front of just one of them for half an hour – and I could have stayed longer.

When I visited Las Meninas, it stood in a room by itself. It had a full size mirror opposite it, on the far wall. I should add that this was long before it was cleaned and renovated. I looked at it from every possible angle. I drew close and squinted at the lace and wondered at the quality of the brush-strokes. I lay on the ground in front of it. Stood at the side. Watched it change as I changed my position. I discovered art as a living being, not a static moment in time. Imagine me, for a moment, kneeling on the ground, watching the young prince’s horse soar over the top of me, as it would have done, if it had occupied its original spot, angled above a doorway. Change the angle, change the perspective, change the painting, and watch it come alive.

I will never forget my days with Goya. His Disasters of War – wow – such an incredible sequence – took up several afternoons. And the Pinturas Negras – the Black Paintings – they still haunt me, as do the Disasters. Man’s inhumanity to man – not a dead set of etchings but living portraits of an evil that goes on and on. “This I have seen!” “And this!” Indescribable scenes. Words cannot do justice to the depth’s of the feelings generated by such works of art. When will we ever learn? I taught a great variety of students for most of my life and I know all too well that some lessons can never be learned. Like an endless loop on a news tape, people are doomed to repeat them, again and again, and again.

As the BBC Lion said as he finished his supper – “That is the end of the gnus.”
TWTWTW.

How much would you pay to go to the moon?

Daily writing prompt
How much would you pay to go to the moon?
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How much would you pay to go to the moon?

Exactly the same amount that I would pay to visit the Titanic in a Titan – zilch, nada, rien, nothing. Too risky. Not worth it. Too much carbon emission to damage the world around me. It’s only a thin envelope of air up there – pointless damaging it further. We have problems enough anyway.

And how much would it cost to fund a rescue mission if something went wrong? How much did it cost to search for the Titan for five days? I haven’t forgotten Apollo XIII, even if other people have.

No way, my friends, no way. No common or garden human being in his or her right mind would ever get into something like that. I notice you say ‘to go to the moon’. Is it a two way, return ticket, then? Does the lucky traveler also get to come back? Or is it a one way only trip and a journey of no return?

Don’t bother answering those questions. I am quite happy viewing the moon through my bedroom window. I wouldn’t go, even if you offered me a free ticket. Thanks, but no thanks. Not on my watch! I am not moonstruck!

What major historical events do you remember?

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What major historical events do you remember?
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What major historical events do you remember?

Interesting question, but very problematic. How do I define a “historical event”? What exactly do I mean when I say “I remember”? Max Boyce had a lovely song in which the chorus was “I wuz there.” If everybody who says they saw Llanelli defeat New Zealand in 1973 at Stradey Park had been there, there would have been 300,000 people pressed into a ground that held about 15,000. But, as Max Boyce sings, “I wuz there”. Well, in spirit, anyway, and I have seen the film several times. I also remember watching Jim Laker’s 19 wickets in the 1956 cricket Ashes. I watched that match on B&W TV. Does that count as an historical event that I remember?

How about the Battle of Hastings, 1066? In 1966, I ran in a road relay that led from Bristol to Stamford Bridge, where Harold defeated Harald Hadrada, down the main highway to The Trip to Jerusalem, where we stopped for a pint, down to Hastings, where we re-enacted the battle that saw William the Conqueror take the throne. Several of the runners wore Saxon uniforms, a couple even had long, blonde hair. We re-enacted two battles. Does that mean I remember that historical event?

Let us talk about Stonehenge. I first went there when there were no railings, no fences, and when sheep and cows could safely graze. I remember it well. And I remember creatively re-constructing, with my grandfather, the digging of the post-holes, the raising of the stones, the transportation of them, by ship and log rollers, from the Prescelli Mountains in Wales to their current resting place. As Max Boyce says, in my own mind, I was there. I was there too at the destruction of Maiden Castle. The first book I ever bought, age about six, was Sir Mortimer Wheeler’s autobiography, Still Digging. I can still feel that Roman ballista arrow going through the victim’s backbone. Does that count as a memory, as a presence, as a moment of reality?

The Conquest of Granada, the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, the later expulsion of the Moors, the Adventures of Don Quixote, the mixing of truth and reality, the questioning of authority, the inquiry into the meaning of meaning, my mother’s sister phoning me after 9-11. “What’s all the fuss about, Roger? There were only three planes. We had them every night, over here, during the London Blitz, for two long years.” What impresses itself upon the human consciousness. How do we remember things and why? The Spanish Armada -there were actually three of them -, the Peninsular wars in Spain, the battles of Trafalgar, Vimeiro, Salamanca… Then we can move on to Vimy Ridge, Ypres – Wipers, as my grandfather called it, his days in the trenches, recounted to me, in the kitchen, day after day, in vivid, lived language that still remains with me. And he would sing – “If you want the whole battalion, I know where they are, they’re hanging on the old barbed wire.” Yes, I was there with my grandfather. I remember it well. The Battle of the Atlantic, the Hunt for the Bismarck, the Battle of Britain – I sat in the cockpit of a Spitfire, a long time ago, during the Battle of Britain celebrations, and I climbed into and walked around the interior of a Lancaster.

Memory and the reconstruction of historic events, some we actually lived, and some we just dreamed of, and some we saw at the movies. What is memory – an actual happening or a creative reconstruct? What is the meaning of meaning? And read Bertrand Russell’s book on the subject before you answer that one. As for me, I was there, standing beside Max Boyce, witnessing the game, though, as he says, “a hundred thousand in the ground, and me and Roj outside.”

The Dying of the Light

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The world has become such a dark place over the last three weeks or so. At times, I have despaired, lost hope, lost my faith, lost my creativity. Words have not come knocking on at my door. The eyes in my head have seen nothing to paint. Darkness, bleakness everywhere. And yet, light breaks where no light shines, as Dylan Thomas once wrote, and last night I started a painting. This morning I finished it and gave it a title: Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Yesterday I managed to complete a couple of poems. I attribute this new found creativity to moving my muse out of my office and placing it in my bedroom where it can inspire me at night. It seems to have worked. My muse is a small carving placed between four pyramids. Pyramid power and the muse’s inspiration have brought light back into my world, the light of creativity.

We must band together, we creatives. We must inspire ourselves and then go on to inspire others. We must let the light of our creativity, our faith, our belief spill out into the darkness that surrounds us. Together we must stand united and our light will be a lantern that will enlighten the world, not with chants, slogans, and cults, but with the inner faith and the total belief that genuine creativity brings to the world.

Creatives of the world, unite. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. United together, we can, and will, restore that light.

When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?

Daily writing prompt
When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?
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When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?

What exactly does “successful” mean? I googled it and here are some of the answers – successful – well that’s a good answer. Successful means successful. It reminds me of my geography master in school – “The earth is geoidal, i.e., earth-shaped.” The earth is earth- shaped – I guess that leads to a successful education. Slightly better alternative meanings are – effective and productive. Taken literally, both have their problems, of course. The spud-bashers of WWI, sitting, peeling their potatoes at the cookhouse door, they were productive, but were they successful? Did they even survive the war? Do any names spring to mind? I am not so sure about that. But how about efficacious, another proffered meaning? Well, that certainly turns me on.

Basil, the Teddy Bear in the photo above, is embracing a can of Molson’s Lager. I didn’t know Teddy Bears liked lager until I saw him doing this. Caught in the act, all sticky-pawed. I asked him what he was doing and he replied that he was taking his medicinal compounds. When I asked him why, he started singing “most efficacious in every case.” “Who do you associate that with?” I asked. He started whistling the tune of Lily the Pink. “And was she successful?” I asked. “Of course she was,” Basil replied. “She’s the Savior of the the Human Race.” Wow!

So, I hereby nominate Lily the Pink, the Savior of the Human Race as both successful and nameable. And remember – “when Lily died, she went up to heaven. You could hear the church bells ring. She took with her, her medicinal compounds, hark the herald angels sing.” Now that’s a true life success story. And what an ending!

What makes a good neighbor?

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What makes a good neighbor?
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What makes a good neighbor?

I am not sure what makes a good neighbor, but I am learning what makes a bad one. This cheeky little fellow has taken a liking to my garage. When he finds the garage doors closed, he gnaws and nibbles at the outside woodwork and tries to chew his way in. Not a nice neighbor.

Earlier this summer, I had problems with my windshield wiper liquid. The right side squirted well, and cleaned the passenger side nicely. The left side slowed down to a dribble, and then stopped. The rear window wiper, on the other hand worked well. No problems at all. One day, both the windshield wipers stopped squirting. Press the button – no liquid at all. I checked the reservoir – half full – and topped it up. Then I tried a pin in the tiny nozzles beneath the windshield. Sometimes they clog up with dust and block the flow. Nothing.

I decided to take my problem to a professional. He raised the hood, looked inside, took one sniff and said “Mice. I can smell the piss.” He told me to leave the car with him, at his garage, and that he’d call me later. He called and drove to the house to pick me up. On the way, I asked him “Well?” “Wait and see,” he told me. “You won’t believe this.”

When we got to his garage he showed me the evidence – a huge red squirrel nest, complete with a winter supply of food, nestled beneath the hood of my car, between the hood lining and the actual engine. The squirrel had chewed his way through the plastic tubing that linked the washer fluid to the wipers. He was shaking with laughter. I was devastated. Cost to me to repair my naughty neighbor’s activities? Well, I won’t tell you – because I don’t want to shock you – but it was quite a bit of money, not enough to be covered by my insurance.

When I got back home, the naughty neighbor was sitting on the roof rafters, inside the garage, chittering at me, chattering away, and scolding me. “I’ll get you, you little varmint,” I said. But he only chattered more loudly. I saw him coming in early one morning and he fled into the woodpile along the wall. “I’ll get you,” I said, beating at the spots behind the logs where I could hear him.

I went online and sought some solutions. One suggestion was to use cinnamon. So, I dug out a packet of cinnamon powder, spread it on the garage floor, across the doorway, and waited. Within minutes, a chattering began in the trees, outside the garage. An angry, nervous chittering and chattering. Then the garden went silent.

I keep renewing the cinnamon. The garage smells lovely. I haven’t seen or heard a squirrel for days. Has this actually worked, I wonder? Watch this page if you want to know the answer to that question.

Grand Manan

Grand Manan

Cruel, the baited fish-hook, the bait
swallowed by an eager gull,
then reeled in by the young boy,
hauling him down, hooked from the sky.

Such things bewilder me. Words
control me, I don’t control the words
that appear in my mind. I cannot bait them,
nor hook them, nor reel them in.

Seagulls come and go, floating on the wind,
hovering, soaring, descending, poised
to snatch any morsel held before them.

The blue sky, so beautiful. The azure sea
a mirror image of the universe above.
White caps, floating, drifting, poised
for a moment, then crashing down.

The lonely sea and the sky. And me
a tourist, marveling at a wonderland
so far from my inland Island View home,
by a river, over which no seagulls fly.

If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?

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If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?
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If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?

The key word here is “who”. Who suggests an individual – children (just choose one and make the rest jealous), grandchildren (copy the above), a friend (wow, that would make the family happy). So, let us choose another set of words – If you had a million dollars to give away – what would you do with it? Now that’s a better question.

Look at the painting above. Bas Bleu was the name given to French women intellectuals who often wore dark blue stockings to show their difference. But check out Moo’s bas bleu – she has blue stockings, but not shoes. No shoes is a sign of poverty (or extreme holiness). I’ll go for the former. I would give that bas bleu and all her colleagues and lookalikes a chance at some security and a more secure intellectual future.

How? I would set up a needs-based scholarship fund for female students with special needs – indigenous women from the first nations, single mothers who need help, support, and encouragement, older women returning to the university, some of them with little or no financial support. This, I believe, is one of the most important things we need to do to improve our university system. A million dollars at invested at 5% would return $50,000 a year. That would provide five scholarships at $10,000 for five financially deserving women.

Can it be done? Of course it can. I know. I have already set the wheels in motion for such a fund to be established when my beloved and I have had our last twitch and fallen off the perch. Alas, the sum invested is a lot less than $1,000,000. I wish I had more to give. But every good thought counts and every dollar, to a person in need, is a step along the way.

What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?

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What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?
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What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?

Oscar Wilde once wrote – “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.” The Ancient Greeks had a similar phrase – “Know thyself.” Well, to know myself, and then to be myself, are two of the hardest personal goals I have ever undertaken.

Why? Because I was educated in a system that wanted young people, boys and girls, to look alike, and think alike, and dress alike. That’s why school uniforms were designed. That’s why we marched into chapel at the same time every day, and sang the same hymns every day, and said the same prayers every day. Rote learning was a key element in this. I remember, age four, chorusing my two times table: “1 x 2 is 2. 2 x 2 is 4. 3 x 2 is 6. 4 x 2 is 8.” Very little room for thinking. Nobody would ever answer the question “Why is 2 x 2 4?” “What makes this so important?” “Why do we have to learn it?” The stock answer: “Little boys should be seen and not heard.” Or “Shut up and just do it.” Or “Why can’t you be like other children?”

This type of early school life, with anyone who stepped out of line, getting punished, often physically, was not conducive to lateral thinking or freedom of thought. Anyone who moved aside from the prescribed patterns was moved back into them, very quickly. The WWII convoy theory – the class moves at the speed of the slowest ship. No stragglers permitted. This later morphed into the slogan “No child left behind.”

But they were. And they were left outside, looking in. And if they didn’t buckle down, they suffered the shame of expulsion from the herd or the flock or the convoy. And once expelled, and branded as stupid or a trouble-maker, it was very difficult to get back in.

At what stage did I become myself? I am not really sure. First there was the phase of knowing I didn’t belong. Then there was the phase of realizing that my mind didn’t react like the minds of other people. Why not? Well, for one reason, on IQ tests, even the simple ones, I often saw multiple answers. But there was only ever one correct answer. Say what the Inquisitor wanted to hear and it was “Good dog, have a biscuit”. Give an answer other than the one he (or she) was looking for, and it was “Bad dog.” Then your nose was rubbed in the dirt.

Here’s a simple example from this year’s Farmer’s Almanac. Which is the odd one out? Tennis, pickle ball, badminton, squash… ” Oh dear, I think there were five, but I have forgotten the fifth. The correct answer – pickle ball, – it’s the only one played with a paddle not a racquet. GOOD DOG. How about badminton – it’s the only one played with a shuttlecock. BAD DOG. Or squash – its the only one played without a net between the players. BAD DOG. The Farmer’s Almanac was fun, but being judged sub-standard at age 11, and again at age 15, for coming up with creative, and perfectly logical alternative answers, was not much fun.

So – the most difficult personal goals – 1. to know yourself. 2. to grow into yourself. 3. to appreciate the wonderful, unique nature of who and what you truly are. 4. to then rejoice in the creativity of your own individuality.

What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

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What would you do if you lost all your possessions?
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What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

When I look at the growing number of refugees across the world, I wonder what would happen if such a disaster fell upon me. Then I look at the forest fires, out in Western Canada, in BC and Alberta, and wonder what we would do, what we would we pack, how would we manage, if the order to evacuate our home came suddenly upon us. When the Bocabec fires burned in New Brunswick, I felt the stress and distress of several of our close friends who were forced to evacuate. Then I thought that, really, it’s not a question of if, but of when. And this was my dream.

            … with my angel … face to face … the one I have carried within me since the day I was born … the black-one … winged like a crow … the one that hovers over me as I lie asleep … the one who wraps me in his feathered wings when I am alone and chilled by the world around me … the one who flaps with me on his back when I can walk no further and who creates the single set of footprints that plod their path through the badlands when I can walk no more …
            … ‘the truth’ my black angel says to me … I say ‘he’ but he is a powerful spirit, not sexed in any way I know it … and yet I think of him as ‘he’ …awesome in the tiny reflection he sometimes allows me to glimpse of his power and glory … for, like Rilke, I could not bear meeting his whole angelic being face to face … as I cannot bear the sun, not by day, and not in eclipse … not even with smoked glass … when earthly values turn upside down and earth takes on a new reality … wild birds and bank swallows roosting at three in the afternoon … and that fierce heat draining from the summer sky … I remember it well … and the dog whimpering as a portion of the angel’s wing erased the sun until an umber midnight ruled … a simple phenomenon, the papers said … the moon coming between the earth and the sun …but magic … pure magic … to we who stood on the shore at Skinner’s Pond and sensed the majesty of the universe … more powerful than anything we could imagine … and the dog … taking no comfort from its human gods … whimpering at our feet …
            … I saw a single feather floating down and knew my angel had placed himself between me and all that glory … to protect me … to save me from myself … and I saw that snowflake of an angel feather bleached from black to white by some small trick of the sunlight … and knowledge filled me … and for a moment I felt the glory … the magnificence … and there are no words for that slow filling up with want and desire as light filters from the sky and the body fills with darkness … and I was so afraid … afraid of myself … of where I had been … of where I was … of what I might return to … of my lost shadow … snipped from my heels …
            … I don’t know how I heard my angel’s words … ‘the time of truth is upon you’ … ‘all you have ever been is behind you now’ … ‘naked you stand here on this shore … like the grains of sand on this beach … your days are numbered by the only one who counts’ … I heard the sound of roosting wings … but I heard and saw nothing more … I felt only midnight’s cold when the chill enters the body and the soul is sore afraid …
            … ‘it is the law’ my angel said … I saw a second feather fall … ‘and the law says man must fail … his spirit must leave its mortal shell and fly back to the light’ … ‘blood will cease to flow … the heart will no longer beat … the spirit must accept and go’ … ‘do not assume… nobody knows what lies in wait’ … ‘blind acceptance … the only way … now …  in this twilight hour …  now when you are blind … only the blind shall receive the gift of sight’ … ‘all you have … your wife … your house … your car … your child … everything you think of as yours I own … and on that day … I will claim it from you and take it for my own … now I can say no more’ …
            … the sea-wind rose with a sigh and one by one night’s shadows fled … the moon’s brief circle sped from the sun … light returned, a drop at a time, sunshine flowing from a heavenly clepsydra filled with light …
            … birds ceased to circle … a stray dog saw a sea-gull and chased it back to sea … and the sun … source of all goodness … was once again a golden coin floating in the sky …
            … on my shoulder a feather perched … a whisper of warmth wrapped its protective cloak around my shoulders … for a moment, just a moment, I knew I was the apple of my angel’s eye … and I hoped and still hope that one day I might meet him again and understand …