time flies

time.

arrives.

passes.

is.

and there are measures of time.

the note of anxiety in my daughter's voice when she sees the very obvious effects that time is having on me -

i am not staying the same.

there are wrinkles appearing on my face.

there are more and more grey hairs on my head.

there are fewer hairs on my head than there used to be.

all observed and noted by her!

what's nice about time is that it allows me to place events.

with its passage,

life becomes a longer moment experienced -

a longer moment that gives meaning and context to experiences

that would have once been daunting

but which now are matter-of-fact.

"it'll pass", i can say with conviction.

i have also noticed that as i get older i'm more sensitized to the small moments.

i appreciate tiny details that are fleeting,

even negligible

and yet extraordinary in their richness

once my attention is turned to them.

for that reason i love time-lapse photographs and films.

they allow me to experience what occurs over a period of time

and in that experiencing is revealed a sort of loveliness

that is otherwise lost in its slow unfolding.

a really fine example of this was recently shared by the citizen watch company at the baselworld show.

i hope that you enjoy this as much as i did . . .

deliquescence

i love words.

i have for as long as i can remember.

when there isn't a word for something,

i create it and let the world figure it out,

catch on to it,

whatever it takes.

some words i like because they describe something specialized.

for example, the word

deliquesce.

its usual context is science.

but i like to apply it to ideas.

a melting,

a dissolution,

a disappearance from one context

and a reemergence in another.

i recall an article in a magazine in which musician brian eno

described his excitement at living in new york city for a while.

he described the cultural tone as being

similar to that of a medieval crossroads.

all sorts of cultural assumptions,

experiences

and expressions

were colliding and reforming

into new and unexpected combinations

that allowed for him to see familiar music

in a new light . . .

and unfamiliar music with an open ear.

i love circumstances that lend themselves to the notion of "planned accidents",

or circumstances that are generative of newness

through the incidental juxtaposition of disparate states or qualities.

this sometimes happens with people.

it sometimes happens with my photographs

(like the ones i've used to ilustrate this little piece!).

del·i·quesce (dl-kws)

intr.v. del·i·quesced, del·i·quesc·ing, del·i·quesc·es

1. a. to melt away.

b. to disappear as if by melting.

2. chemistry:

a. to dissolve and become liquid by absorbing moisture from the air.

what might have been

bee angel

this morning i sat in my big comfy chair reading.

a tapping at the window entered my awareness and hovered there.

it was insistent!

i closed my book and watched as a bee repeatedly flew into the window.

after several dozen calamitous bumps it decided to feel the glass

and worked its way across the transparent surface with its front legs scratching and scraping.

but to no effect.

for what it wanted was a bright red flower on the other side of the glass.

i am certain of this because it concentrated its efforts in the area of the glass closest to the flower.

it made me think of all the times i too have clawed and scratched at a seemingly invisible and impenetrable surface, wanting something beautiful or necessary-to-me-in-that-moment.

but to no effect.

the bee flew away.

with stories of what might have been.

leaving me to think about the idea of this story.

pages from the summer journal

yesterday reya opened another window onto the reyaverse.

this was in response to a meme that is floating in blogspace connected to handwriting.

~

handwriting.

here's a disclaimer up front.

my handwriting is in summer mode which means that it is scruffy and moving more from my fingers than my wrist. so what i have to share here has more to do with the place of vulnerability reya went to in sharing a page of her journal than in sharing exemplary sweetly formed handwriting.

~

the summer opens out big spaces and big time for me.

i need it.

the rest of my year is comprised of very tiny, very detailed spaces and time. in the big space of summer, i can breath and step back and see the little pieces as they form into what i am, what i am doing and most important of all - i get a sense of direction.

one part of this summer that i love is my journal. i try to place thirty minutes to one hour in the way of being available to it each day. some days there's not much . . . lots of dribbling. other days i'm really excited. on the 28th i was really aware of things going on around me, espcially those that had a quality of essence about them. on the 29th i was excited to get a book of poetry from harold budd the musician. in it there was a line that just spun me 'round and 'round.

so have a look.

here is the cover of my summer journal.

here is the little plate up close.

here are my journal tools all lined up and ready for another day's work.

here's my entry for july 28th just three days ago!!

(click on the image to reveal my revelations and singular experiences on that day!!)

and here's my entry for july 29th just a couple of days ago.

(same deal! click on the image to see what mattered to me on the 29th!)

here's the little drawing a little closer "your head swathed in stars" . . . here's one!

the rest of harold's book was very lovely.

yann arthus-bertrand

i see little pieces of this earth visually. the challenge is that the little loops and ecologies that i am a piece of are experientially and visually distinct from the larger pieces.

i can cerebralize my connection to the whole. even feel my connection to larger wholes but it is almost impossible to truly see the whole.

fortunately, shortcuts abound because there are people like yann arthus-bertrand who have gone to the literal ends of the earth to bring back images and sequences that i would otherwise have no idea about let alone access to.

visiting his website you will quickly become aware of the fact that he takes his presence and impact on this planet seriously. he also takes his photography seriously. there are images here that will leave you awestruck. not only that the content of the images exists, but that someone could capture something so extraordinary.

yann spoke at the ted talks back in february. he is an articulate, passionate, talented man. it is beautiful and mind-opening work. watch this - i hope that you will be as blown away as i was.

le whif - common scents

i recently wrote about my chocolate experiences past and present, revealing to all the hitherto hinted at but fairly discrete relationship with my dark master - the cocoa bean. as a result of that, coming out of sorts, i thought i'd head out across the net to come up with something new and innovative in the world of chocolate.

i think you'll be astonished at what i've come up with.

the paris location of laboshop (which you have to see to believe) has just released an extraordinary product called le whif.

okay no pun intended but let's take a breather here - what's with the word whiff? in addition to being one of those words that i sometimes think about and wonder at its origin, the word "whiff" has many connotations. now, a sniffer is a sniffer no matter how beautiful . . . or handsome . . . you might be.

but if you have the money or merely the inclination, then in this instance "whiff" would describe the momentary experiencing of the smell of chocolate.

the smell of chocolate. that's it.

here's what i found at the site by way of explanation: "le whif is a revolutionary new way of eating chocolate - by breathing it! imagine, chocolate without the calories. be the first to try inhaled chocolate when le whif goes on sale later this month in four luscious flavors: mint chocolate, raspberry chocolate, mango chocolate, and plain chocolate.

harvard professor david edwards, lead inventor of le whif, says: "over the centuries we've been eating smaller and smaller quantities at shorter and shorter intervals. it seemed to us that eating was tending toward breathing, so, with a mix of culinary art and aerosol science, we've helped move eating habits to their logical conclusion. we call it whiffing."

le whif is a terrific way to curb your appetite or to accompany a coffee, and edwards says inhaled chocolate is just the beginning. new culinary innovations that involve eating by breathing are being developed by the foodlab at le laboratoire, edwards' art and science innovation center in central paris."

hmmmmm. i dunno. very cool thinking and a cool product, but at ten euros (almost sixteen dollars canadian) i think i'll risk the weight gain and the sugar/caffeine spike for something i can feel in my mouth!!

from this tangled convolution

and from this tangled convolution shall emerge a thing of singular beauty. and with it a friend in kind. and they shall talk about the improbability of it all: the sun, the rain, the wind, and most especially they will talk about their mother - who holds them in her green hands like flags. tiny semaphores to all other living things that she will freely share the most deep-rooted images of herself for all to see and love.

and in their petals they hold her face, her heart, her soul . . . and so it is that flowers are little microcosms of the whole of nature - unconditional acts of love.

the road

i just read cormac mccarthy's novel "the road" cover to cover. i'm gutted. filled with emptiness. filled with the colour of the book. the colour is spread like pain across the grey-scale. filled with the immense joy and suffering that is love. i don't really know what to say.

the last time i read a book like this was many years ago when as a young adult filled with naivete and a fascination with obscurity, i happened on samuel delaney's dhalgren. dhalgren had more of the spectrum to it - a redefining of life that while unnerving and off-centre was still recognizable and tolerable. but it too described a world that had relocated its centre and was comprised of a quality of life far removed from that which we assume today.

but then, it's amazing what we'll tolerate. i look at my life as a child and my life as a fifty-two year old and wonder.

how?

how did i come to be this person? how did the world come to be this world?

after reading "the road" i knew that much of what i had valued as a twelve year old (passionately immersed in the whole earth catalogue of stewart brand, knee deep in the don river hauling garbage out to help the environment, and later, as i listened to my grade twelve urban studies teacher detailing the exponential growth of the world's population, not to mention the concommitant pollution and even global warming) had come in a long mobius strip to land in the lap of me as a fifty two year-old dad/teacher immersed in sharing and supporting the work of people like green-up, biking every day instead of driving, choosing wherever possible to provide my family with food and materials that support the work of others and to the degree i am capable, trying to maintain our planet as a healthy home.

"the road" follows and details the journey taken by a father and his young son over an indeterminate period , across a landscape completely and irrevocably destroyed by an event that seems to have brought to a crashing halt, all civilization and, apparently, most life on earth. needless to say, it isn't pretty but the writing has a constancy of presence about it that doesn't allow for the usual sort of breaks provided in literature - chapters are non-existent, apostrophes are almost non-existent. mccarthy's writing is clipped but vivid in the way that haiku and tanka are vivid. there is so little on the page, but the mind's eye is filled to overflowing with images, the emotional centre quickly overflows.

in the story there is so little. so little is left. everything is dead or empty or taken or destroyed. what is there is glorious, amplified, magnified. a tin of pears becomes the centre of the universe. the love that flows from the father to the boy is like a garden in winter. the trust, the questioning trust that erupts from the boy to the father is so clear in its fullness.

here's an excerpt: "with the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. barren, silent, godless. he thought the month was october but he wasnt sure. he hadn't kept a calendar for years. they were moving south. there'd be no surviving another winter here.

when it was light enough to use the binoculars he glassed the valley below. everything paling away into the murk. the soft ash blowing in loose swirls over the blacktop. he studied what he could see. the segments of road down there among the dead trees. looking for anything of colour. any movement. any trace of standing smoke. he lowered the glasses and pulled down the cotton mask from his face and wiped his nose on the back of his wrist and then glassed the country again. then he just sat there holding the binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land. he knew only that the child was his warrant. he said: if he is not the word of God God never spoke.

when he got back the boy was still asleep. he pulled the blue plastic tarp off of him and folded it and carried it out to the grocery cart and packed it and came back with their plates and some cornmeal cakes in a plastic bag and a plastic bottle of syrup. he spread the small tarp they used for a table on the ground and laid everything out and he took the pistol from his belt and laid it on the cloth and then he just sat watching the boy sleep. he'd pulled away his mask in the night and it was buried somewhere in the blankets. he watched the boy and he looked out through the trees toward the road. this was not a safe place. they could be seen from the road now it was day. the boy turned in the blankets. then he opened his eyes. hi, papa, he said.

i'm right here.

i know.

an hour later they were on the road. he pushed the cart and both he and the boy carried knapsacks. in the knapsacks were essential things. in case they had to abandon the cart and make a run for it. clamped to the handle of the cart was a chrome motorcycle mirror that he used to watch the road behind them. he shifted the pack higher on his shoulders and looked out over the wasted country. the road was empty. below in the little valley the still gray serpentine of a river. motionless and precise. along the shore a burden of dead reeds. are you okay? he said. the boy nodded. then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire."

the book is stunning in its unwavering attention to the slightest detail. to setting an emotional tone. to establishing a moral heriarchy that extends beyond the terms of the world described in the book into the world we are welcoming / creating. if nothing else this book builds on similar thinking established in rachel carson's silent spring, schumacher's small is beautiful and thoreau's walden.

after the book's presence had calmed somewhat inside me i reflected on the fact that this world is so extraordinarily beautiful and so utterly fragile. we need it much more than it needs us. and so it behooves us to express a degree of care that supercedes our inclination towards our own needs.

the images are from the film version of the road which is scheduled for release in 2009 but who knows when?

the colours of the night

"it often seems to me that the night is much more alive and richly colored than the day," van gogh wrote to his brother theo in 1888.
finding light and colour in places that are either obscure, gently lit, darkened by weather, or simply a feature of the sun rising from behind the woods to the east or having gone down across the fields to the west is fast becoming one of my favourite pursuits. it represents a lovely metaphor in a time when it is all too easy to characterize our world as descending into a dark place.

not at all.

we are witnessing the ending of a world for sure, but we are also witnessing the simultaneous birthing of a world that intuitively makes much more sense and has the potential to be more clearly attuned to notions and precepts that became optional or overlooked in the old world leaving.

notions and precepts such as care. love. kindness. responsibility. quality over quantity. truth. love.

i said that twice. love.

how these will manifest in the terms of this world becoming are anybody's guess.

the sufi maxim "in this world but not of it" clearly describes the ideal of a state of goodness functioning and being well in a circumstance that might otherwise trivialize or marginalize that state.

so it is with the features i suggested earlier. we have enough experience to know that each of those - when placed in the marketplace - acquires less than savoury qualities. ask any musician, ask any artist, ask any environmentalist, ask any honest politician, ask anyone who knows what love really is.

so the idea of light in the darkness really appeals to me. like sunrises. beautiful lights at night.

a year or so ago, a lovely and powerful exhibition of paintings by vincent van gogh was shared by moma. titled "van gogh night" it features the work of this amazing man in several contexts: early landscapes, peasant life, sowers and wheatfields, poetry of the night, town, poetry of the night, country.

look for the light in the darkness.

light lane

getting back on the bicycle after a long winter of splitting my travel method between quick, dry, warm, comfy rides in my buddy dave's honda fit in the morning and the eight km walk home has been a bit of a challenge. even with the walk, personal fitness tends to slide after a few months and so the journey back to real fitness has been a sore and at times ugly road but it's gradually coming back.

getting used to sharing a roadway with cars and trucks and buses has also been a bit of a learning curve. it's funny to think that i've ridden this route hundreds and hundreds of times but it still takes a while to get used to thinking like a vehicle on a road filled with other larger vehicles that are sometimes driven by (shall we say) unhappy people. the route i take has no bicycle lane. instead i rely on the highway traffic act which suggests that a cyclist has an area one metre from the curb that they may inhabit.

cyclists always look for an edge in dealing with the weather, roadspace, equipment, appearance so you're likely to see the odd piece written by me that looks at some of those needs.

today i'd like to share a novel idea for protecting the space nominally referred to as a "bicycle lane". originally shared by the good people over at dustbowl, this cool idea is making the rounds of cyclists for whom stepping into a car just 'cause it's cold, wet, dark or whatever just isn't an option.

(click on the image to enlarge it so you can read it!!)

i think that this has some potential although it's terribly expensive and honestly, most bike lanes i frequent quickly become parking spots making cycling them something of a waste of time. still, it's nice to see people thinking a little bit beyond the single white line and stencilled cyclist model.