"Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That's why it's good to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower. 'Lead us not into temptation.'" Joseph Campbell
Oh look! The books I brought with me to Nanaimo back in 2012.
Read
Mother Night - read before I left - enjoyed
The English Patient - loved it
My Lucky Star - Wodehouse with gays - right for the depression I was in!
Indiscretion - very Heyer-Austenian writer, so enjoyed
Starfish - too dark for my mood, but very good hard sci fi about ocean floor sh*t
Rumpole a la carte - always enjoy Rumpole
The Name of the Wind - not quite for me, but most fantasy readers enjoy it
Tried to Read but Rejected
- Time Traveler's Wife
- The Halifax Connection
- Wild Swans - don't think I even tried to read it. Just decided it was too depressing for my state of mind, and left it behind.
- Millionaire
- Objets perdues
- Un gout de bonheur
- Saga
- Orlando
Sped-red
- Light Fantastic by Pratchett -- not good
- The New Yorkers by Schine -- once I realized a dog would die...
Left in Nanaimo Unread (I think... )
-Rules of Prey
-maybe the Rendells
- Serial Killers Club
Read Since
- the Sharon Shinn book
--> So out of 40 books I managed to read or eliminate half. Pretty lame. The rest I brought home!
Pretty sure I read or read-rejected a few of these before leaving
Last night I finally caught up with my friend Vidal. We went to our favorite convo spot (Chenoy's Deli, open all night) and had a 5 hour session. He told me such a good story about mindfulness.
Earlier this year he went a silent retreat in Thailand (?I think)--no talking for the week. Just meditating, and listening to teachers.
At the end of the first full day he was walking the dusty trail back to his room, with just a head lamp to light the way. He was thinking about how great the day had gone--how good he was at this! Self-congratulatory pats on the back about how easily he'd taken to meditating, how great he was at this mindfulness stuff.
At which point he slammed his toe into a root. Gushing blood. Splinters he was still picking out of his toe for the remainder of the week. His trip would have ended then and there had it not been for a fellow retreat-er who gave him antiseptic powder. (This is a *thing* -- a thing you need in humid climates. Liquid antiseptic doesn't work well.)
Vidal and I both struggle with remembering our meditative practice. What I love about this story (besides the inherent Pride Goeth Before the Fall humor) is what a great reminder-analogy it is. How many roots am I mentally/spiritually slamming my toes into, and injuring myself, every day? Because I forget to grab just a few minutes of meditation, or practice a few minutes of mindfulness? By too much worry about the future, too much focus on the past, what kind of injury am I doing to myself?
P.S. Nice post-script to the story. The Swiss Guy who gave Vidal the powder was this free-spirited uber traveler, who found the silent retreat very inhibiting of his Le Free Spirit. He felt so much better when (at the end of the retreat) Vidal thanked him for saving his whole experience.
___
SONG OF THE DAY
Nettles covering Bob Seger. Best song about being young.
Bingewatched this show in two days. Mohawk Girls takes place on the Kahnawake reserve, a bridge outside of Montreal--and the home town of its creator, Tracey Deer.
Deer did a great documentary call Club Native, that I saw years ago. In Kahnawake you have to be 50% native in order to live there, to have status. And if you're above 50% but marry outside, then you have to leave, and you lose your status. It's very controversial, and the reserve is right now in the process of enforcing it (starting evictions.)
Mohawk Girls is a fun, sex-filled 30 min show--compared a lot with Sex in the City. But it's really sex in the town, cause it is very similar to small-town life. ...Okay I didn't grow up in a small town, but the women remind me of those I've met who did. Tough. Very tough.
I know a lot about aboriginal peoples, and the Kanien’kehá:ka (People of the Flint), and even Kahnawake--but I know about history, and laws, and big issues. I've always wanted to know what it's like to live there. So I loved this show. Can't wait for season 2.
You can watch all the episodes on APTN, but it's also on youtube.
It's been a long, cold winter. Coldest February in over 100 years here in Montreal. But I still learned something new about myself...
I have SAD! Never noticed before. Maybe Nanaimo triggered it. A couple weeks ago I had a vair grumpy day at work and I stepped outside and realized it was light outside. For the first time! (I leave work at 6.) And my mood just lifted. Freakishly so. And I thought: Well okay then... winter. I know SAD is supposed to be caused by lack of light, but there must be a corresponding COLDIES-SAD because cold depress the fuck out of me.
Since then it's been fairly warm, and I've been feeling better. Not all the time. Not when I'm procrastinating. But I'm getting back some of the energy needed to get past the procrastiones. I had 6 days off work this past week, and spent the first part facebooking and reading all the myriad of articles that fb triggers, and watching shows and such. Only in the last few days did I start to get things done. (And took an official Facebook Break. Coincidence?)
Miraculously, on the second to last day, I started to feel centered again. I made an appointment with a therapist, which I'd been procrastinating about. And though for years I've thought "one day I'll try yoga" suddenly I thought: This May. For my birthday.
One cold February day in 1989 (I assume it was cold--Edmonton in February) my grandfather dug out this copy of The Divine Comedy. He was a retired lit professor, always digging out bits of his collection for me.
Must be why this line popped into my head yesterday: Midway upon the journey of life.... Dante was describing being morally lost, looking to reach God; but he might as well have been describing a mid-life crisis.
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
Classic hero journey, with a goal, a guide, and a demon at the climax.
"Behold Dis, and behold the place
Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself."
How frozen I became and powerless then,
Ask it not, Reader, for I write it not,
Because all language would be insufficient.
And treasure at the end...
And without care of having any rest
We mounted up, he first and I the second,
Till I beheld through a round aperture
Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear;
Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.
Well, I tried blogging at weebly. But there are still some things I don't like about it that make blogging too long. So I'll go back to what I had before, which is a feed from here to there. :-)
Today I did Fernando and my taxes. Also from last year, cause that's how kooky my year was. I used to enjoy doing it, but what with moving to BC and moving back, the last few years of taxes have been highly annoying. At one point I yanked my hair, then had to take a pill to ward off the headache that gave me.
BUT. I don't like to whine about taxes, because I am glad to pay them. I'm glad to live in a country that is organized enough to collect taxes--means I live somewhere safe. And I'm glad we pay more taxes than people do in the US, cause I can see the difference in things I read about on facebook. Like leaving it to individual owners to clear the snow from the sidewalks! Cause of course not everyone does. And of course the city doesn't have the resources to pursue them.
Animal protection
Benefits eg disability
Cleared sidewalks
Daycare (in Quebec)
Education
Food safety
Garbage collection
Hospital visits
Immigration
Justice system
K-9s and lesser cops
Librairies
Medical visits
Nails for infrastructure
Oboes... and other members of the art family
Peacekeeping missions
Quick snow removal (it's pretty quick... unless you were in some boroughs this year)
Regulators
Street cleaning (you don't miss it til it's gone)
Training
Universal health care
Veterans
Welfare
X-rays
Yellow traffic lights (and red and green)
Zippy bike trails & other park maintenance ... lol
