Promising and Creating Tomorrows

The main reason I’m writing this post is to keep a promise I made to myself a year ago. At that time, having fallen into a very unproductive writing rhythm, I resolved to post three times each month. If I maintained that pace, it would generate the highest level of blog productivity in several years.

This post marks number thirty-six of the year, fulfilling my commitment to myself. That’s a good accomplishment for a New Year’s Eve, on the verge of what most of us look to as, at the very least, an opportunity for a fresh start.

One of my best personal gains from the year 2020 was the relearning of a very simple lesson: that a habit, a commitment to keeping promises generates great power, that can be sustaining, generous and even transformational. This is the case because, when promises – or goals – are taken seriously, they bring the future present and turn possibilities into actualities.

If I tell myself that I will write a page a day, there is potential to complete a novel within a year. But if I elevate this intention to a promise, one which I bind myself to, then I am changing ‘might’ into ‘will’. I am transforming those imaginary and wishful 365 pages into certainties. When I bring myself to a state in which I trust and value myself enough to believe in my word to myself, my word then becomes very powerful, and speaking becomes an act of creation.

I have to give at least partial credit for this ‘lesson’ to Landmark Education, which grew out of the work of Werner Erhart, and whose programs have benefited me. Erhart’s expressions about promises and personal integrity are perhaps the most succinct that I have ever come across. And I’ve been using them to re-empower myself.

This re-empowering became necessary when I had to acknowledge that, over a long period of time, my words of commitment to myself had lost force. It began with making commitments that I wasn’t entirely committed to, so that it became easy to back out of them. And this progressed to the point where I hardly believed promises I made – to myself or others – even as I spoke them.

Taking up the lesson again meant, first of all, not to make any promise or commitment lightly, but only after consideration, and a clear-sighted acknowledgement to myself that the act of promising is either total or it is nothing. Because if a promise can’t be relied on, trusted in, completely, then it has no more power than a passing whim. And life had shown me how little whims are worth, when it comes to building a life.

One of the first fruits of beginning to take promises and commitments as expressions of my integrity, was becoming reacquainted with the power of will. I began to see how, once I’d promised something, and when abandoning that promise became an impossibility, the ‘will’ to fulfill always generated a way. It’s true. It works. However magical it may seem – and it sometimes does – it is also that simple.

And so, completing and posting this post, on this day, in this ‘last minute’, is important and meaningful to me. It reinforces the power and possibility of promises, as every fulfilled commitment does. And it deepens my believe in the magic that 2021 will bring!

Reflections on a Year

I think it’s always a good thing to look around and remind oneself of all that there is to be grateful for. That may be even more important at a time like this, when it’s so easy to dismiss the entire year as lost, painful and wasted. We are all looking forward so eagerly to 2021, to things being different, to hardships being in the past. It’s tempting to erase 2020 from memory, to let if fade like a bad dream.

But there are always flip-sides to a situation, aren’t there? Silver linings and serendipitous nuggets of goodness. Some of these have emerged because of the painful aspects of the fading year, and will disappear once things are more normal. For example, a lot of us have been blessed with a sense of more space and more time, both for privacy, self-discovery and solo pursuits, and for intimacy, ‘other’-discovery and activities shared with those we have bubbled with. So while I’ve shared accounts with many friends of our struggles with isolation, stagnation and boredom, we’ve also had experiences of re-connection, enlivening and reinvestment that would have eluded us if not for the strange pressures of this year.

Dilok Klaisataporn /iStockphoto

So, much has been lost, and much has been gained. We can each tally up the sides of our personal ledgers, if we want to. But I’m not so sure that it’s important to generate a ‘net’ result. I’d rather just hold on to as much of the good as I can. I want to keep the fresh eyes the year has given me, maintain the renewed connections, be more deeply appreciative of things I took too much for granted or allowed myself to be bored or impatient with.

Personally, I’m not one of those people who is very eager to see things return to the so-called ‘normal’. I’d rather welcome the many new normals that are coming about, though many of them are sure to be ugly. Collectively, we have opportunities to shape and tweak these ‘developments’ as they take place. And it looks like there are massive shifts taking place in work places, in political space and in communities everywhere, as well as inside of each home, each life. Which means there will be displacement, anxiety and fear. 2021 may or may not bring the level of upheaval that 2020 did. But it can’t help but bring a lot that’s unexpected, new and disruptive, because every year brings that.

My list of things to be grateful to 2020 for will be a long one. For all the insanity, it’s been a beautiful year. I won’t be sad to see it end, but I’ll try to hold onto much of what it has given me. It’s good to be alive!

Step by Step

It’s going on a year and a half since I retired, and I can hardly recapture the frame of mind that I lived with for so many years, rising five days a week to go to work and organizing the rest of my life around those committed hours. Fortunately, I managed through most of my life to work at jobs that excited and motivated me, so that whatever resistance there was to the constraints on my time was balanced by an eagerness and commitment to the work itself.

Quite a few of my jobs were project or contract related, or were new or cyclical in some sense, providing me with a sense of creating, developing or building on something that either had a finite end, or that would reach a natural, periodic conclusion. Working through a school year was like that, or counselling a group of youth transitioning from incarceration back into their communities, or putting together a life skills program for a new group home. This enabled me to work at specific jobs for one to three years, and then to move on at a natural end or completion point. Which in turn enabled me to feel just fine about my frequent changes of employment.

My very last job, however, was quite different. I remained in it for over ten years, which proved to be much too long. And while it was work that brought me onboard with a new and growing enterprise, and so had those elements of newness and development, this aspect was essentially done after the first three or four years, after which I found myself in increasingly stagnant and repetitive environments and routines. I should have moved on from there but failed to make that happen, and had become a burnout case by the time I coasted numbly into retirement.

Looking back, I’m struck by the levels of depression I experienced in that last job, and by the depressed energy and suppressed frustration and resentment in those around me. It wasn’t an atmosphere I had much prior experience with. In the past, I’d always felt well able to flee such environments long before the souring had set in. But this time around – having failed to succeed with a number of applications for other jobs, I felt stuck, resigned and hopeless. So I accepted what I’d always considered a ridiculous and unthinkable proposition: remaining in a role where I largely went through the motions, unhappy with the quality of my own work, and finding little or no fulfillment in it.

Retirement has become a kind of drawn out adventure. I feel that I’m engaged in an ongoing process of reinvention and rediscovery, but it progresses slowly. The pressures I’m under are set principally by myself. Goals and projects are my own, self-defined and willingly embraced, but not promptly executed. When I don’t accomplish what I’d planned to in the course of a day, there is no external consequence, and that’s an aspect with two faces.

On one hand, I’m thrilled at how completely free I feel. What didn’t get done today, I can easily put off to tomorrow; there’s no one to care or even to know. The absence of the mounting pressure I’ve associated with procrastination all my life is really beautiful. Whenever I do get to whatever it might be, I feel motivated by my own concerns and wants, instead of by a desire to avoid criticism or disappointment from someone else.

But the other side of the coin is that I let many things slide for longer than my own standards can tolerate. And the feeling of disappointing my own expectations cuts deeper than those complaints I occasionally got from others. And they are a lot harder to dismiss.

Maybe the best side of this process of developing a self-generated work process and rhythm is the fact that it’s so personal, and has involved me getting a deeper understanding of how I tick. For example, I’ve confirmed that the most productive work times for me are late morning – shortly after getting up from bed, and late at night – early morning, really – when the day is over and the next hasn’t yet started. That latter time is like a space in between, and it feels that way, almost as though it floats between those two days, untethered from regular clock time. My late morning and my early morning sessions have totally different feels, and I’ve also found that the second is always best if I’ve already made an investment in the first.

There are a few other things I’m learning about myself and how I work best that are carrying me toward the goal of writing and publishing regularly. I’m sometimes amazed that I’m seeing a piece of the puzzle of myself so late in life. And I’m also seeing that some lessons are so particular to my current stage of life that I couldn’t have learned them any earlier than I have, just as I’ll never do the writing I failed to do at earlier stages, because I’m no longer the person who held those seeds of stories inside himself.

All of this together seems to be opening up a present tense in my living that, while it’s always available, can only be entered into by conscious choice. And I only seem capable of making that choice when I’ve freed myself of distractions and fears, while at the same time accepting whatever structures and demands the moment brings for what they are. And often, as weird as it may seem, that means being willing to act without explanation or understanding. It’s like giving voice to another dimension of my own awareness and intelligence, and trusting that it won’t let me down, because it can’t.

A Win and a Beginning

There’s a magic to this NaNo business that I need to get a handle on in the next few days. It’s a clear and obvious sort of magic, but I haven’t yet learned to make it work for me.

This is my second year participating in National Novel Writing Month, and I’ve gotten so much from it. The month and the challenge – to produce a 50,000 word draft of a novel – will be over tomorrow, and I already have my technical Win. Like last year, it was a tremendous success for me. I started the month with an idea, and over the last four weeks I’ve worked and built on that idea and have sketched out a novel that’s full of ideas and substance. And I’m very happy with this beginning. I hope that the parallel to last year ends here. Because then, I barely advanced with the work over the course of the following eleven months. The mindset that worked so well in November evaporated, and I never figured out how to get it back.

What’s obvious is that it has to do with a deadline and a commitment. Both this year and last, starting with those two elements and a good idea, I was able to force myself to the keyboard multiple times each day, and to press to add an average of 1,667 words to the manuscript each day. After November ended, I wasn’t able to do so. And now, after having re-visited that very productive mindset, I’m at least a little clearer about what shifted that I can’t allow to shift this time around.

During Nano, I’ve granted myself permission to fail. I keep writing even when I don’t believe in what I’m writing, out of the commitment to get the words out and to hit the 2,000 daily that I aim for. I sometimes feel flat, uninspired, a little bored or even miserable as I’m producing those words. Because I don’t feel I’m writing well. The inner critic is very present and very loud in my head, telling me with every key stroke that I’m producing crap.

But rarely does it turn out to be crap. There’s always something there that I can use. Some few sentences, or a description, a character or an insight give me material that actually carries the work forward, that successfully fills in a gap in the narrative, the plot, or in the guts of the piece that I was trying to fill. Which then fuels me to push on, so I go through the entire thing again.

In normal time, there are several ways in which my process would differ. First of all, I typically don’t force myself to keep writing when I feel that I’m writing crap. I might go at it for a short while, but rarely beyond two or three hundred words. And if I do press on, it’s generally going to be with a fresh start, after abandoning what I’ve done that I don’t feel good about. I don’t write far enough through that pain of ‘writing crap’ to have anything to look back on the next day, something I might realize isn’t as useless as I thought it was.

Another difference is that during these Novembers I’ve been able to really put off any editing. I start the month knowing that I won’t be doing any through the entire month. It is really ‘out of mind’. So I continue writing free, able to think of it all as play, experiment, exploration, knowing that in the editing process I may change any or everything.

What it comes down to is that Nano incentivizes me to write much looser than I normally permit myself. And in the looseness lies the magic. I allow ideas to intrude sentence by sentence, make up characters on the fly, bring in or ignore key elements, or zig where I intended to zag just moments before.

Already, I’m feeling the signals of approaching anxiety that’s of a totally different flavor than anything I’ve felt all month. I did feel anxiety during the month, but forced myself to write through it. As I’ll have to force myself through the tightness that’s threatening now. I feel optimistic because I have a better understanding of it than I did last year. And the greatest gift of NaNo is the self-confidence it inspires. It’s amazing to have a rough draft of a novel where a month ago there was barely a scenario. It inspires great faith in the creative process and in my ability to enter into it. Every Day. And day by day.

An Odd Birthday

Today is a kind of birthday. I’m two thirds of a century old. Somehow, shortly after rising this morning, much earlier than usual but fully awake, the significance of the day popped into mind.

Odd, yes. Exactly 66 years and eight months, two thirds of a century pie. I LOVE it.

Maybe the reason I caught the date is because I have a very clear memory of the same happening when I hit the one third century mark. It must have been 25 July 1987 and I was in Seattle. I was – at the time I made the calculation – in a vehicle heading north, with my love of the time and one or two others that I can’t remember. Thirty-three years and 4 months old, I was.

And what did I think of that then? I guess that it seemed a good age to be. I was realizing that I wasn’t young anymore, in the way I had been. And a prediction by an old friend occurred to me: he’d said I’d ‘settle down’ by the time I was thirty-five. I guess he meant ‘get serious’.

He should’ve given me this other third of a century; it’s what I’ve taken, anyway. I think I’ve finally done it though. And if I haven’t gotten serious, I’ve at least gotten a lot more focused.

I’m lately re-discovering the power of promises I can make to myself. I’ve been reacquainting myself with that tool recently, not to hold away the distractions and temptations, exactly, but to press on and do what I committed to anyway. And I’m committed to living leaner these future days than I have my past ones. It’s a big advantage, a gift I can give myself.

Another promise was to do NaNoWriMo again this year, as it helped me so much last year. And it’s been amazing again, and has refreshed my vision and optimism about writing throughout the year.

Thanksgiving is here in the States, and I wouldn’t mind some time there. But the Hammer, here in Canada is home and I’m glad I don’t have that particular set of heightened stresses to deal with. My brother and family are in Atlanta, Georgia, in the state that was such a key flip in the recent election, and that is about to hold the final two nationally significant elections of the cycle. And right in the middle of the Covid explosion.

Thanksgiving was always my favorite holiday. All about actively enjoying the blessings. It’s probably always been a bit too much about indulging, and not enough about being thankful. But enjoyment is a full and direct expression of appreciation, anyway. So long as we’re aware of how blessed we are in having whatever it is we have to enjoy. Even when a lot of pain and lack comes with it. It’s a great strength to be able to thank. It’s a rich and an enriching experience.

Thanks forward, too, for whatever may be coming next. 

Trumpocalypse 3.0

    Version 1.0 was the takeover of the Republican Party with hardly a whimper of resistance.

    Version 2.0 saw Trump winning control of the executive branch of the US, and beginning to impose his will across the nation and the world. That period - thankfully - appears to be coming to an end. But the nightmare won't be over for some time yet.

    The new version of Trump that is emerging - version 3.0 - promises to be as chaotic and disrupting as the others - maybe more so. This latest version, which was unveiled at about 3 am on 4 November, the day after his defeat and removal from office was officially set into motion, is the manifestation of the terrified loser that Donald Trump has apparently dreaded being for his entire life.

    One of the characteristics of Trump that emerged during 2.0 is his need to respond to failure, rejection and criticism with destructive vengeance. And as soon as he found himself on the verge of becoming the biggest loser of all time - victim of the largest voter turnout in US history - he turned his full attention to attacking those entities responsible for his public humiliation with everything he has.

    His first targets: the democratic party and the electoral system that are bringing him down. Starting with the early morning press conference, in which Trump claimed victory long before all votes were counted and accused the Democratic party of fraud, Trump made clear his willingness to intentionally poison his followers' faith in the institutions that sustain them.

    Over the course of the last three days, Trump has done what no other losing presidential candidate in memory has ever done: he's appealed to the most gullible and loyal of his supporters, with lies that his opponents are trying to do what he in fact is trying to do - steal an election. He calls them out to put everything on the line to support what he is willing to destroy, in an attempt to retain the power slipping through his fingers.

    And my fear is that, after the final votes have been confirmed, and his loss of the presidency is clear, he will do what is in his power to sabotage the Biden administration, regardless of the harm it will do his supporters.

    Am I paranoid? Over-reacting? Falling into the bottomless pit of conspiracy thinking? I may be. Trump's insults, threats, accusations and dog whistles, and the unthinking acceptance by Trump nation of his every lie, have me dreading the worst of which Americans are capable.

    There's a silver lining of fresh hope. Actually, it's an enormous opening of possibility stretching into the future. Maybe, just maybe, Biden will restore some sanity to the political realm in the US. I'm actually very happy just now. I was near despair when Trump made his pronouncements the other morning, but by the time I woke, Wisconsin and my home state of Michigan were beginning to trend in the right direction. Since then, through endless hours spent following the developments, one state after another has shifted into Biden's column.

    But Trump isn't going to dissolve like a bad dream. Version 3.0 is newly activated, its ego has been badly damaged, and it's out for vengeance. And it has over two months remaining in power to stir up the chaos it so loves. May we all survive its infectious madness.

Another Go at NaNo!

Last year, my most productive writing by far occurred during National Novel Writing Month. It was quite a surprise, especially since I only decided on it a couple of weeks before it started and began with only a very vague idea for a novel.

I wrote every day but one last November, reached my goal of over 50,000 words, and best of all, wound up with perhaps three quarters of a novel that I was very pleased with. I'd been stuck so long in editing and re-writing projects that have dragged on for way too long, that going at a fresh idea with little expectation, but with the commitment to churn out the words, no matter what, was extremely liberating.

Trouble is, when November ended, I let my efforts slow, and before long, it all came to a halt. Clearly, it was all psychological - both the creative burst and the flat-lining. And, unfortunately, I don't yet understand myself enough to keep myself as active and productive as I'd like to be.

But November is here again, and I'm feeling some of the same sense of excitement and optimism that I felt this time last year. I'm going to go at it, unconcerned about ultimate quality, but alert to the trickle of ideas and motivations that materialized daily during NaNo 2019.

However it goes, I'm extremely grateful to the organization and the volunteers and other participants who make Nano happen. However much I don't understand about how and why it worked for me, it's very clear that Community and Structure were key. I don't expect it to be the same experience as last year (when there was neither Covid nor an Election with the fate of the World riding on it to distract) but I already know that it'll be good!

Actually, I'm realizing that another big factor in last year's success was Trust. Trust in the creative process and the very act of writing. Barbara, a member of my first writing group, used to say about all problems that come up in creative writing, "Work it out on the page!" And she was right. Part of last year's wonder - which I let myself forget come December - was how the subconscious always came through when I simply sat down to write without having already worked out what I was going to write.

So here's to Trusting enough for the writing to be an act of Creative Freedom!

Just Voted!

I just got confirmation that my ballot for the 2020 US Election has been received, my signature has been verified, and my votes have been tabulated. 

I am both a Canadian and a US citizen. I vote in both countries and my US voting home is Seattle, Washington. (for a 2016 post, about the character and substance of an election in the US, go to https://obsidianblooms.blogspot.com/2016/11/)

Like much of the World, I'm caught up in the Trump-Biden contest and think it will mark a sharp fork in the forward course of history, however it turns out. I've been pretty pessimistic about the wisdom of Americans, and fearful of a wave of violence that I think is very possible. But my mood has shifted beyond hope toward optimism during these last weeks. I haven't written the letters or made the calls I intended - any of the actual grunt work of shifting the mildly interested and the borderline unaware into action, into voting. But I've been involved via my thinking and speaking and writing. And whether or not it makes any kind of difference, I'm seeing and feeling so much how the life of an individual is wrapped up in the life of the communities to which they belong. We are such social creatures, and that biological fact, that matter of our wiring, will always have its way with us, with our feelings, our needs, our decisions about what's important. Who we are collectively can't help but mirror who we are individually, in all our unique and multiple glories.

I had some powerful lessons on the impact of individual character on communal character during my years in social work.  For a number of years I worked in public schools, working with some of those students whose didn't manage to thrive in their school environments, and it was a revelation to learn how much these environments reflected the personalities of the principals.

In both Seattle and Toronto I was able to make direct comparisons between pairs of schools with different types of leaders.

One of the Seattle schools had a principal who was always at the front doors in the morning and when the day ended, interacting with students, most of whom she knew by name. She was in and out of classrooms and in the halls. She created an atmosphere of connection and empathy throughout the school community. Even the 'behavioral problems' I worked with liked, respected and felt supported by her. And the teachers all felt that she was aware of the challenges they faced and knew that they could extend themselves and try new things without fear of being unfairly penalized anytime something went wrong.

The principal of the other Seattle school, on the other hand, was almost always in his office or downtown currying favor with the central administration. He was lauded for having 'pull' and for getting resources that other schools didn't, but the price was huge. The entire school atmosphere was weighed down by stress and worry. Teachers felt isolated and on-guard and few were willing to try anything beyond making sure that they met all mandated requirements, whether they had anything to do with actually teaching and supporting their students or not. The student body was chaotic, with a much higher rate of disciplinary problems than the other school, and with problems that reached a higher level of seriousness.

The differences in the Toronto schools was equally stark. One considered itself a 'community school'. The principal was often in the halls and classrooms, as a smiling, supportive presence. But he was also often out of the building, but within the community, working with government and community agencies on issues that directly affected the school community. And these other agencies, including my own, were situated throughout the building, on a daily or weekly basis, providing almost a supplementary staff. Parents were always in the building as well, either supporting teachers in classrooms, or getting services themselves, like ESL lessons or food supplements.

The other Toronto school was like a fortress. Gaining admission to work with students involved an elaborate process. I was one of very few outside professionals who was ever in the building; few of the other community agencies had any presence what-so-ever. One notable exception was that the principal sometimes called in the police. On one occassion, they entered a classroom to handcuff and remove an eighth-grader on the spot. This principal, while often in the halls, was there purely as a disciplinarian, to intimidate the children into obedience. Neither they nor the school staff felt supported.

These 'side' effects of leadership in schools parallel those we see on the national and international levels. Leadership by Trump has stimulated the energies of fear, conflict and mistrust throughout America. Even if one accepts what his supporters acclaim as accomplishments, they have come at an enormous price, which they could not deny if they allowed themselves to see. And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that another four years of the Trump administration could erode what's good about the US beyond the point of repair. He's a principal who has allowed the heart and soul of the nation to become diseased. Or rather, he's allowed the disease - that is present in any community to some degree - to take hold, spread and begin to damage the vital organs. It's so fitting that he may be ushered out by a viral disease that so perfectly mirrors the spiritual disease he has weaponized and brought with him to the most powerful and important role on the planet.

I'm very excited by the numbers I'm hearing from the daily newscasts, reflecting record-shattering early and absentee voting, and hinting at a potentially historic turnout. My own voting, by the way, was done entirely by email. I submitted my signed package with a click, and then tracked it through receipt, examination, signature verification and tabulation, all within about 16 hours. Amazing.

We may be about to emerge from a national horror. May we do so, and Learn from it.

The Courage Required

          People are always being celebrated for their courage and heroism for doing the accepted and expected thing. Soldiers, police and 1^st responders, most of all, are cited for heroically carrying out their jobs. But these are, in fact their jobs, and jobs they have volunteered for and been trained to do. It’s laudable when they do these jobs well and with commitment, but I don’t think that this, in and of itself, earns them the designation ‘hero’.

          What I think is far more courageous is to do the unexpected and even the un-accepted, for a good that transcends your own, personal interest. So the people I want to call attention to in these troubled times, are the life-long republicans who are speaking out against Donald Trump.

          Personally, I don’t really think it should be a difficult thing to be anti-Trump. To me, the man is so obviously narcissistic, grossly immature, morally vacuous and deeply ignorant that I continue to find it hard to believe that he developed a following in the first place. But what I do understand is that many people, while recognizing all of these deficits, were so committed to particular policy positions, such as a conservative Supreme Court, the repeal of Roe v. Wade, and gun rights, that they calculated that a vote for Trump was an acceptable price to pay. I don’t agree with these conservative positions, so it’s very easy for me to reject Trump for these reasons on top of his character flaws. But I can see how difficult a calculation I’d have to make if Trump and Biden’s policy positions reversed.

          So I want to applaud and thank republicans such as those behind the Lincoln Project, who recognize that the current election is a matter of choosing between Trump and America. They see what a caustic effect Trump’s presidency is having on the most fundamental characteristics of American democracy, things like ease of voting, independence and trust in the courts and the media.

          But I also recognize that many republicans who turn from Trump will pay a heavy cost. Some are being rejected by their communities and their friends. Some will suffer in their professional lives. And some will live with a deep sense of doubt, having turned against the candidate most likely to further their most valued policy beliefs. This is real courage and heroism. And I’m appreciative.

Magic Cities

Awhile ago, I was sitting in Allen Gardens when a friend appeared. We hadn't seen one another for some time, so she stopped to visit with me, and we had a good, meandering talk in the cool of a Fall afternoon. My friend is one of those people whom I felt a pleasant connection to almost immediately upon meeting. There's a sure sense not only of enjoying her company, but knowing too that she enjoys mine. So meeting is always a pleasure. I feel that she carries a spark of magic.

Our connection has never gone beyond our casual meetings, but I feel that it easily could. So much so that, if she and I weren't both married, I would absolutely want to explore our possibilities. And perhaps that explains why we've allowed our meetings to remain random and unpredictable.

So here we were, on a perfect day, in a beautiful setting, relaxed and with no sense of expectation. And we chose to speak of cities. Which was the perfect complement to all the other elements. Because, just like special days, special places and special people, there are cities that possess qualities that are in no way exceptional, that may not stand out on their own, but that when combined is a particular way - including the ingredient of he or she who gets to behold it - becomes something magical.

We both came to Toronto about twenty-five years or so ago, she from a small community in Quebec, close to Montreal, and me from Seattle. Neither of us was very impressed with Toronto upon arrival, but we each discovered - after two or three years - that it is special in a number of ways. But we also agreed that, though Toronto has become, and we suspect will remain, Home, it is not a city that we would ever designate as magical. And we agreed that Montreal, on the other hand, is a magical city. This didn't mean for either of us that we'd rather be in Montreal than here in Toronto. Nor did it mean that we were sentenced to carry a regret for the rest of time, that we'd accepted living out our existence in a place as un-magical as Toronto. It was simply the recognition of a special and rare quality that sets some places apart from others.

Cities that I've felt this magical quality about, and that I've been blessed to live in, include New York and San Francisco. Others that I'm sure have this quality, and that I'd love to spend more time in, to confirm, are Paris, New Orleans, Prague, Krakow and Old San Juan.

And just as is the case with Toronto, there are cities I have personal history and strong connections with, that I've come to love, but to which I wouldn't attribute this same sort of magic. These include Boston, Seattle, Chicago and Berlin.

I wonder what other people think and feel about this: about the presence or absence of something very special in certain people and places; something not easily defined or quantified, but that is somewhat above and beyond the ordinary, the natural; something that speaks to spirit.

I'd love to learn what other people consider to be magical cities. I haven't travelled nearly as much of the World as I'd like, and it would be great to add some other special places to my list. I hope you'll be willing to share!

Ten ECM Albums that will Take You Places

Manfred Eicher's ECM label out of Germany has forever been a source of a fresh listening experiences for me. I did most of my exploration of new music during the seventies and eighties, and I still go to those decades for music that's new to me, however known or obscure its standing in the World. The label has a long list of regulars who return again and again at different stages of their careers, often collaborating with one another and incorporating new influences.

I have about sixty ECM albums, mostly from among their first two hundred issues. Collectively, they make up a good chunk of the progressive, non-commercial, freer part of my vinyl collection. These ten albums are my favorites from among them.

It's fitting that the first album I'll rave about it one I just came across about three weeks ago, in Dr. Disc, a great shop here in downtown Hamilton, where I picked up about twenty used albums. Six of them are ECM and the chance to take up that many discs by mostly unknown artists was easy to take up, because the product from that label is always good, and almost always something unique.

Barre Phillips: Journal Violone II

Incredibly beautiful tapestries of string bass, sax and voice. I have another of Phillips' efforts with the label and I like it, but this one is in a different league. 

One of the most wonderful things about all of the arts is how they remind us of the infinity of possibilities, and that creativity is inexhaustible, despite the too ubiquitous human habit of clinging to what we think we already know. Improvisational and experiential music can always brings us to something beyond what we know. And there's a quality it can have - but doesn't always - of feeling new even when recorded and listened to hundreds of times. That's because it carries us to places we aren't accustomed to being, into spaces and angles that we aren't used to inhabiting.

This album evokes all those qualities. It is an instant favorite and I'm looking forward to growing into it.

ECM, as a label, is supreme in inviting its guest artists to explore new combinations of sounds. Very often, the work an artist records for ECM is totally different than what they've recorded elsewhere, or even their other work on the label. I've assumed - though I haven't done the research to confirm - that Manfred Eicher was a producer who invited artists to do what they hadn't previously had the opportunity or the space to do. It usually feels like the musicians have plunged into some dimension just beyond where they've become settled, so that what they produce surprises even them.

Maybe that's only a reflection of how this music feels to me.

Keith Jarrett: Facing You

This may be the first ECM album that ever came into my possession. That would've been in '75, when I was twenty-one and living in Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There was a used record store called Deja Vu - the first in my experience, and a place I explored whenever I had a few bucks extra from whatever I was gigging. In those days I spent money on rent, books, food, ounces of herb and records. And life was pretty simple. I listened to Eric Jackson's late night radio show, and he was always hipping me to artists that opened my ears in different ways, that brought something alive inside of me that felt like possibility, like newness, like the untried. And I also picked up new tastes from friends, swapping visits and thumbing through each other's small but always growing collections of lps.

One place this album takes me is to church, and into the ecstatic joy that church sometimes inspires. And it doesn't just take you in the front door, bound up in suit and tie and good manners. This is like stepping into the side door of a Baptist church, where the brothers shout and the sisters catch the spirit and roll in the aisles. And in the kitchen, some of the church ladies are preparing suppers for sale: greens and fried chicken and cornbread. Jarrett takes his solo piano on journeys to wherever his mood and spirit and thundering or tickling fingers take him.

The Koln Concert is of course Jarrett's and ECM's most revered classic and all-time best seller. But this studio album was Jarrett's first solo album, and it's may favorite because of "In Front", the tune I've been referencing.

Keith Jarrett: The Survivor's Suite

I intend to mostly stay away from multiple works by one artist. But Jarrett need this representative of his other most loved performance idiom, that being the small combo. And - respect to the Peacock/DeJohnette tandem, and to the Garbarek/Danielsson/ Christensen quartet - my favorite is his "American" quartet, with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. This is characteristic of their terraforming magic.

Julian Priester: Polarization

I wish there was more of this out there in the World. Julian Priester was onto something with this and his earlier atmospheric beauty. Ephemeral, pulsing, moody. It's long been a late night favorite of mine.

Bennie Maupin: The Jewel in the Lotus

This is undoubtedly one of my three bests on this list. It too is moody, but also sweet, caressing, evocative. This is a prime example of an artist's work diverging from the rest of his discography, which features Head Hunters funk. If I was a smoother guy, this would've been my 'make out' album.

Dave Holland: Conference of the Birds

Here, we're more into the hard bop side of ECM, with Holland mixing it up with Braxton, Rivers and Altschul. This is a great batch of quirky melodies that actually do evoke a social clustering of twittering, squawking, keening birds. Bright and bouncing.

John Abercrombie, Dave Holland & Jack DeJohnette: Gateway

A driving, grooving Set featuring the virtuosity of three masters. If you like it, they reassembled every couple of years until they'd recorded four.

Jack DeJohnette: New Directions

Another of my top three! This impressionistic stew finds DeJohnette with Abercrombie again, and joined by Lester Bowie and Eddie Gomez. They all play their instruments loose and rolling, slippery and smoky, with the leader dancing around and beneath them. Bayou Fever for REAL!

Pat Metheny: 80/81

At the time this came out, I had Metheny pegged as a proponent of music that wouldn't offend the ears of the tourists who want to listen to jazz as a backdrop to their cocktails. This album showed me how transcendentally beautiful his music could be, and that Metheny subordinated his chops to the service of his land and spirit-scapes. "Everyday I Thank You" is truly prayerful.

Chick Corea: Return to Forever

For me, this is the top of the mountain, a musical voyage that delivered the World to my ears. It's earthy, impassioned, playful and soulful all at once. And it jams! The musicianship of Joe Farrell, Stanley Clarke, Flora Purim and Airto Moreira is epic!

Feed your Hungry Ears!

Trickster Trip

We’re in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and it’s been a helluva time getting here.

We left Hamilton on the 15^th on our sailboat Trickster, expecting to arrive that night.

But we’ve endured high winds, a loose shroud and torn sails, and sputtering and stalling engine. We’ve run aground and got our jib line tangled in our propeller. We’ve been rescued by the Coast Guard and chased out of Smuggler’s Cove. And we spent a night bouncing around off an anchored buoy in the mouth of the Niagara river, and spent a night dodging visions of coming loose and wakening as we hurtled over the Falls. (It was pointed out to me that this fate was impossible, as Niagara-on-the-Lake is down river of the Falls. Embarrassing.)

And now we have to turn around and try to make it home without drowning!

And it’s been a WONDERFUL trip!

My Bardzo often teases me about being boring, and with good reason. These days I’m generally happy with my books and lps, Netflix and NPR, and the odd bike ride and takeout from Popeye’s.

She, on the other hand, can be accused of being the antidote to boredom! Meaning, interesting things always happen when I hang out with My Bardzo. And it’s been just that kind of trip. So full of the unexpected. One of those reminders of the incredible richness of the world and of simply being alive and in it.

We’ve spent the nights in beautiful spots, have had wonderful meals on the boat, laugh about Mawa, our cat, waking us every night with her squawking and squalling, have met a handful of really nice, helpful boaters, have enjoyed having electricity, thanks to our newly added solar panel, and even the motor, as tempermental as it’s been, has always come through strong when needed. And the job of diving under the boat, to cut and clear the tangled line was both easy and provided a huge boost of confidence, and plenty of story material for years to come.

It's actually been an intention of mine these last weeks, to consciously feel all of my feelings, especially the fears. Reaching my late sixties has me wanting to prepare for a healthy death. And it's been said - and I believe it - that one of the best ways to gift oneself peace during one's last years is to meditate on death. And this trip has given me more than one premonition of dying, and with them a very clear-eyed appreciation of whatever the circumstances were at the moment. Even with the motor unresponsive and our sails down, and a strong offshore wind of 20 knots pushing us out onto Lake Ontario as dusk approached, the sky and clouds and light were God's gift beautiful. And then, when death doesn't happen...!?

 

Addressing Law & Order

If the Left is going to survive Trump's Law and Order assault, and elect Joe Biden to the presidency, I believe we will have to make an adjustment in how we address that visceral and sensitive issue.

The right - and Trump in particular - has ramped up tension by supporting police crack-downs and encouraging armed militias. They contrast violence on the left as 'mob violence' and as 'destructive', while upholding the violence of the right as 'patriotic' and 'defensive'.

The right is focusing on this issue because it’s one on which they feel they can win. And they may well be right. By stoking the fears of ‘middle America’ as they did so persistently during their convention, they’ve managed to divert attention away from the issues of police violence, institutional racism and the needs for reform.

The right is equating Biden and democrats with lawlessness, just as in the past it has succeeded in equating liberals with weakness, blackness with welfare and crime, and republicans with patriotism and the constitution.

Too often, the Left has been afraid of fighting back, of actively engaging in the war over definitions, over what things mean. This is a case in point.

It's become a white, republican conservative thing to say that you want your streets to be safe. That you want dangerous people to be watched, contained. But liberal democrats of color want these things too. We too want an end to violence in the streets, and want active criminals to be dealt with, at least constrained.

One of the problems is, the social systems of control that make safe streets happen are largely under the control of the right, and they are highly suspect in many communities of the left. Which is why the left has always protested against the agents of the law, as far back as there has been Black protest in America, since the days when slave-catchers had legal authority to kidnap free human beings and re-claim them as some man's property. 

The right keeps wanting to say that the problems of police have disappeared, except for the odd, bad apple. The right wants to deny any responsibility for the state of distrust and for the demands for social justice, reform and defunding the police.

They pretend that legitimate protests have not been happening, because there's nothing to protest in Trump's America. The only legitimate action by citizens is the armed defense of the nation against vandals, looters and those who hate America. It's right out of Rynd's "Atlas Shrugged", a brilliant fantasy novel about godlike heros who overcome the hoards of the weak and servile socialists who want to sap the wealth and vitality of real humans.

The Left can't afford to make the mistake of leaving the definitions to the other side. And we can't win the war - which is already underway; no use arguing about whether anyone wants a war or not - if we won't even engage. We can't afford to focus so insistently on the social injustice issues that we hold ourselves indifferent to the vandalism, looting and attacks on police. That's even if we want the repudiation and defunding of the police. We - and not just the right - have to be willing to recognize personal responsibility. Not just that of a police officer who stands by while a fellow squeezes the life out of a citizen with his knee, but also that of a demonstrator who torches a store, or who doesn't, but who afterwards decides to help himself to the goodies that were made available.

These are issues that cannot be ignored without alienating a large segment of the American voting public. And without eroding the integrity of what the protests and demonstrations are about.

It’s hard for the Left to call attention to the 'disruptors', anarchists and looters whom so many are doing their best to make the symbols of what the Left stands for. I understand the reluctance, because the size and importance of this segment of the left is already exaggerated. And because attention to them has consistently been used to ignore the underlying causes of unrest and protest. And also because we understand the anger about a capitalist system that has consistently 'looted' the poor in favor of the rich, and then uses the law to both maintain inequalities and to punish those who oppose them. And, because much of the violence taking place is caused by policing forces, and by the vigilantes that come out to support them, with the backing of the president and republicans.

But we lose the effectiveness of protest, and ultimately will reinforce the crushing of dissent, if we lose the upcoming election because voters have been too frightened by the prospects of lawlessness and disorder to pay attention to anything else. And if Democrats become identified with an indifference to Law & Order, because our attention is so focused on Justice and constitutional law that we are seen as willing to overlook - or outright forgive - street-level crime and destruction of property, we may truly be inviting a new American fascism that goes beyond our worst nightmares.

I'm not sure how the message "You will not be safe under Biden" will be successfully corrected, but it has to be addressed directly. I think the democrats missed an opportunity during their convention, by not addressing these issues preemptively. I have to agree, as the republicans charged over and over during their convention, that the democrats hardly mentioned the disorder that has occurred - however minimally - alongside peaceful protests. And, by not naming it where it does occur, democrats can be more effectively charged with ignoring or tolerating it..

America isn't going to change overnight - as we should all know by now, especially after witnessing the strong, reactionary lurch backward that began immediately following Obama's election. I too felt a kind of jubilation at the overwhelming reactions, nationwide and worldwide, to George Floyd's murder, and the calls for justice. But I'm not deluded that the celebrity activism of the NBA is representative of the 'likely voters' who will mail in their ballots or stream to the polls on November 3.

Some of those likely voters are already tiring of all the attention on systemic racism - which a great many of them still do not grasp. They may be much more concerned about the rising numbers of assaults and the threat of street violence. And Biden and Harris damned sure better have a lot to say about that. At the very least, Democrats need to point out, again and again, that the violence occurring in America TODAY, is occurring in Trump's America, out of the discord HE has generated.

Can an Entire Nation go Insane? Can an Entire People lose its Soul?

Yet another shooting that defies understanding. But even without understanding, the story will be scripted in scars across a paralysed body, and in the minds of children.

I once saw a young man lose his mind.

One day, he was lucid and clear as water, sharp and smart, cynical and blaming, counting up all the pricks and pokes that daily life sent his way, sure that he was better than all the distained realities that oppressed him, and that he would transcend them.

And the next time I saw him, he was no longer tethered. He’d begun to be prodded by what he couldn’t see, but which he could hear, voices telling him things, scaring him, daring him. His cynicism was now free-floating, detached from the realities I knew, and from those of his girlfriend and community, the world he’d known.

Our communication, which had always been strained by tensions between what was and what ought to be, between the offered and the demanded, it now devolved into desperate lunges at meaning that eluded and shape-shifted us to exhaustion. Until we could only make exchanges of raw emotion, of wanting, or dismissing, of coming or going, yes and no, on and off.

This was a white young man, by the way. This isn’t that kind of oppression tale.

I hadn’t known that sanity could be lost so suddenly.

I watch the news, and the political conventions in the self-proclaimed ‘greatest nation in the history of the world’. And I wonder if an entire people can lose its collective mind, become insane. Does a nation, a community even have a mind? And if so, can it become severely disordered?

A young woman, slippers on her feet, as though she just left her living room. Maybe she plunged through her television screen to enter the drama unfolding blocks away. She is excited, as though she’s just been called up from the audience by a game show host, and now gets the chance to spin the Big Wheel. But she stands in a store, looters smashing display cases all around her, grabbing up plastic baubles and cardboard boxes. Exultant. Exuberant. Not wanting to miss this moment.

A young man, dressed like the citizen-soldier of a Marvel comics universe, transported by duty and super-hero fantasy, for God and Country, protecting property that isn’t his. Filled with fervor and carrying an automatic weapon which will soon leave two people dead.

Two of thousands or millions, talking back in their souls to the talking heads that don’t hear us or each other. Language that will not translate anymore, because there are no rules for translating passion and propaganda into lived, shared truth.

I didn’t know that sanity could be lost so suddenly. When a body cannot reconcile its visions of right and wrong with the world in which it finds itself. When it will not turn down the volume of its own fantasy, to accept why it can never be reality – these puffed-up, animated, choreographed and sound-tracked dreams.

Maybe a nation raised on Batman, Skywalker and Superfly cannot grasp the need to do its laundry. Vigilantes, revolutionaries and citizen tricksters, made into familiar storybook figures, devoid of responsibility or conscience, or the need to step backwards, and to sleep.

Journeying Through My Journals

              Awhile ago, I began generating a list of books I’ve read, and to help me along, I cycled through my journals. I started to journal when I dropped out of college for a year, just before turning twenty, and have kept at it in a very irregular way for almost fifty years now. I knew that here and there were lists of my reading. And even before I started the lists, I’d gotten into the habit of underlining titles of books, so they stood out from the texts. I wasn’t intending to actually read the journals, but I guess it was inevitable that as mentions of people and places and events caught my eye, I would be drawn in, which I was.

              My thirty or so journals were mostly still boxed, from our last move. I used art sketchbooks all those years, the ones with the black hardcovers, and thick, acid-free, unlined paper, so except for the difference in the two sizes I alternated between, they are almost identical. They can hardly be distinguished by wear and tear either, because in later years I began to carry my journals with me instead of writing all my entries at home, making them appear much like the older ones. In any case, in my search for book titles, I picked up the journals randomly, so that I bounced backward and forward through my life, which made for an odd effect. It reminded me of Billy Pilgrim, Kurt Vonnegut’s character from Slaughterhouse Five, “unstuck in time” and bounding randomly through his past and future.

My journals are a wonderful thing. For several reasons. They remind me of things I’ve forgotten, including how I felt at the time of an experience, rather than how I feel about it years later, looking back. And, they provide evidence of what a lousy memory I have. Actually, not lousy at all. Just that it does its thing with the aid of some super, creative editing.

I’ve begun to think about what to do with this shelf of books, how to dispose of them. I don’t have children to leave them to, and there’s so much explicit and personal material in them, I don’t know if I’d have the courage to leave them behind if I did. A dear friend once told me about stopping journaling and burning the evidence in a bonfire, and I couldn’t imagine doing likewise. But it increasingly seems possible that I could follow that example.

But here are just a few of the precious memories I came across in my journal scan. Some were all but forgotten, and feel almost like the experiences of an alternate me in an alternate life; others got a detailing from the re-reading that brought them back to vivid life, and carry me back to their time. They make me grateful for the long years, for the experiences that pile up and continue to shape me, for good or bad. They reaffirm for me that I’ve lived a life.

Repeated mentions of a friend, Theo, who called me over and over again during a long period of struggle and sadness, just to see how I was doing, and that she was thinking of me.

A couple, in their fifties, who picked me up on a bitter cold night, as I hitch-hiked north through Cleveland one January. They couldn’t take me very far, but as they dropped me off, with best wishes, they gave me ten dollars, a bible and the remains of a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

On a long Greyhound bus trip, returning from a cross-country visit with my 91-year old grandmother. I wrote about a young child, Marcus, who crossed the aisle to sit with me and look out the window at I can’t remember what. He shyly accepted my invitation to sit on my lap so that he could see better, his smiling mother looking on. Could that even happen these days?

Getting the beauty of a desert for the first time, as I drove through the Yakima valley at daybreak. Then, decades later, experiencing the Negev and understanding how such a place could give rise to visions.

I bounded from the volume where I went for a 3-day holiday in San Francisco, backward, to the volume of fifteen years earlier, when I lived there for six months. Everything had changed in those intervening years. Especially me.

There was an invitation to a party I gave, with a hand-drawn map of how to get there, because I lived on a hillside, on a crooked, dead-end street. On the back is a list of all the people who came.

I awoke from a dream sobbing, my face and pillow damp from tears. I was awash in sadness from a dream I couldn’t remember. But the feeling that was predominate was relief. I hadn’t cried in years, had felt bottled up. The experience came as blessed release.

Getting off of an Amtrak train on an impulse, a couple of hours before my destination, Raleigh, North Carolina, because I recognized the name of a town as my grandfather’s birthplace. I called a distant relative whose number I happened to have. We visited, and as I left her home, she pointed to the cultivated field next to it. “Have you ever seen cotton?” she asked. I hadn’t. I picked a handful of it, and tried to connect to the spirits of un-named ancestors.

A sudden and surprising one night, sexual indulgence with a young woman I’d had fantasies about. But all the pages before and after are about another woman I was emotionally obsessed with and longing for.

Hitchhiking from Atlanta to San Francisco in four and a half days and eighteen rides. Why was I in such a hurry? My one visit along the way was disappointing. My first girlfriend. Never saw her again.

I was surprised to discover that one period of time, when I was in great personal distress over a relationship breaking down, and another period of time when I was soaring with energy and enthusiasm around my professional and volunteer work with youth, were in fact the same period of time. I never remember them that way.

Taking my Dad with me to my jazz deejay sets at the Dominion on Queen on Wednesday nights during his visit with us. Six weeks in a row. He was in his eighties at the time, and still a charmer and a flirt. For years after that, whenever I ran into regulars from those days, they asked about him and told me what a kick he was.

When I was just starting to write, and was frustrated at my inability to imagine strong plots, I was given a story in a dream. It was complete, beginning to end, and I immediately wrote it down, marveling at the ways of creativity.

Being laid over in Chicago's O'Hare airport for about three hours in the early, early morning. I hopped on the subway heading downtown and was soon on the elevated track going through a working-class neighborhood waking to the day. I got off and had breakfast at the counter of a greasy-spoon, thinking: “These people have no idea that I’m an alien, briefly touching down.”

 

 

Balancing the Books

              What to do with all these books?

              There are so many of them, filling tall shelves all over the house, and stacked on tables and deskstops here and there. And I keep buying more. I love books.

              Years and years ago, after moving almost a dozen times, and going through many variations of book turnover and re-cycling, I gave myself permission to be a glutton about my books, to never discard another that I didn’t want to part with.

              I love the over-indulgence. Love having rows and rows of books I’ve read and remember the joy of discovering, and ones that tantalize but that I haven't dipped into yet. By habit, I organize my books according to size, to be efficient with the use of space, at least. Otherwise, they are shelved randomly, so that I can have a paperback of classic sci-fi short fiction next to a textbook on economics, abutting a recent novel by an unknown that I picked up in a remainder’s bin, then a biography next to an all-time favorite epic.

              But books are dusty and heavy! And down-sizing is going to come, sooner or later. I dread having to move again before I've thinned these shelves! As loved as they are, I begin to think about living without all of these books within arm's reach. And as I prepare myself for that psychic shock, a desire grows to somehow catalog my books so that, once they’re gone, I have a way of maintaining touch with them.

              And Goodreads.com has appeared as a helpful solution. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been trying to list the books I’ve read in my life under the “My Books” tab on the site. I don’t expect to get all of them, but hopefully I’ll be able to sketch out the highlights of a long, soulful connection with worlds on pages.

              In my first two or three visits to the site, I just added books by memory as I could recall them, but I didn't even come up with two hundred titles. Going through some of the ‘Favorites’ lists on Goodreads got me another few hundred. Then, I spent time at my actual book shelves, adding a few hundred more. 

              But I knew that, despite my long ago allowance to myself, there were lots of books I’d read and loved that were neither of my growing list, nor on the shelves throughout the house. And that’s what brought me to my journals.

              Over the last week or so, I’ve been scanning my thirty-plus artist's sketch books, filled with my self-conscious document of my times: my wonderings and wanderings, my steps and stretches toward figuring myself out, with all the jobs, the dreams, the adventures, loves and travels of living my life. 

               Among the photos, drawings, notes to self and ticket stubs in my journals were lists of books I'd read, and I went looking for them.  And I've been finding them one at a time, and each time I'm taken down a side road I'd forgotten, picking up scraps of those different people I've been and have known and lived among. All from the titles of books and their authors' names, sometimes a sentence or two about how the work struck me.

               I was surprised at having failed to remember so many books that worked magic upon me at some time, that had wholly possessed me, had prodded me along my path. But the memories came rushing back. I was more surprised at the so many other books that I couldn't remember reading even after confronting the evidence of my lists and my notes! There is such an interesting contrast between those books remembered in vivid detail, decades after a single reading, and those that are completely forgotten. Of course, it's like that with people, too. And looking through my journals never fails to remind me of the peculiar workings of my own mind.

               It's been a fun way to spend some of my self-isolation time since my jaunt into New York State. I'm enjoying these wonderful, brief visitations with the books of my life, with the other minds that wrote them, and into the worlds they spin. It's a joy I'll never give up entirely.

p.s. One of the small side bonuses of the pandemic has been peeking into the private domiciles of media figures, and those of friends/acquaintances I've connected to virtually. I love catching glimpses of their bookshelves and trying to read a title or two!