I’ve been painting in the studio…decided to photograph some works in progress. I was happy about how the ‘rock’ spilled out of me for eight hours yesterday. I was listening to Damien Rice and Joni Mitchell and Wilco.
I receive many e-mails regarding the up and coming elections these days. Do you? Forwards of every shape and size and variety. Like any good and decent argument; each message includes the facts that support a particular platform. In the midst of it all…I sat and read an excellent article that followed a quote by Marshall McLuhan. It might interest you.
If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and the human family, a single consciousness?
– Marshall McLuhan, 1964
In the end, I think that our lives are built on our ability to wonder, question and translate. God has truly blessed us with imaginations and with minds. I celebrate my individual will and the opportunity to live my life consciously…whether that is in my studio, in relationship with my family and friends, or in spiritual and political forums. The blessing in the political arena is that we have the opportunity to express our personal views. Again, I thank my parents for causing me to explore both my individual politic and my individual expression of faith.
The strongest message that can be sent at this time from any perspective, is for all Canadians to exercise their privilege to vote.
Now…some poetry by a man who used writing (1900) as a way of expressing his views and to some degree, those of the collective unconscious.
Today the paper reads…
"Canadian killed in Afghanistan."
Walt Whitman
(1819–1892). Leaves of Grass.
1900.
66. I Dream’d in a Dream
| I DREAM’D in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth; |
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| I dream’d that was the new City of Friends; |
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| Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love—it led the rest; |
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| It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, |
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And in all their looks and words.
83. I Sit and Look Out
| I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame; |
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| I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done; |
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| I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate; |
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| I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer of young women; |
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| I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid—I see these sights on the earth; |
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| I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and prisoners; |
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| I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill’d, to preserve the lives of the rest; |
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| I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; |
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| All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon, |
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| See, hear, and am silent. |
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