Friday, October 28, 2016

Whetstone

Lorna Crozier. Whetstone. M&S, 2005.



I have always loved this woman's poetry. Her imagination. Her sense of play. Her love of words. In this collection, I'm transported back to a prairie childhood, of being outside in wide spaces, darkness, blizzards, the light in snow. 

Thursday, October 27, 2016

The Truth About Stories

Thomas King. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. CBC Massey Lectures. Anansi, 2003.



This guy can tell stories. Always loved his Dead Dog Cafe. 
"The truth about stories is that that's all we are," he says. Stories determine how we relate to each other, to the other, and to the environment. 
And the stories we don't tell . . . 

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Auguste Rodin: Sculptures & Drawings

October 18, 2016 Auguste Rodin: Sculptures & Drawings. Benedikt Taschen, 1994.



This tidy little book includes a timeline of the French sculptor's life, photographs of statues, models, the artist, his muses, with a very economical yet revealing account of Rodin's career & creative process. Who knew that he is buried with his wife beneath The Thinker?





The Tao of Psychology

October 17, 2016

Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D. The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self. Harper Row, 1979/1982.


Jean Bolen has been a favourite writer since I first encountered her Goddesses In Everywoman a quarter century ago. This little book, The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self, links the ideas of Logos, Tao, and Jung's Collective Unconscious/Self. She defines "synchronicity" as "meaningful coincidence, a subjective experience in which the person gives meaning to the coincidence." [p.15] Which is why, I suspect, she and Jung seem to appeal to writers. Because what they are describing seems to me to be connected to how metaphor functions. How we tend to try to define the unknown in terms of the known & familiar. How do we explain "mystery"?


We are part of a larger whole -- Jung's collective unconscious. "When we feel synchronicity, we feel ourselves as part of a cosmic matrix, as participants in the Tao. It gives us a glimpse into the reality that there is indeed a link between us all, between us and all living things, between us and the universe." This is why synchronicity, she says, breaks through our modern isolation and loneliness and we feel we have had a numinous, religious, spiritual experience. [p.103]

Saturday, October 8, 2016

In the Land of Pain

October 7, 2016
Alphonse Daudet. In the Land of Pain. Edited and Translated by Julian Barnes. 




HOW DEEP IS THE LAKE

Shelley O'Callaghan. HOW DEEP IS THE LAKE: A Century at Chilliwack Lake. Caitlin, 2017. I have owned this copy for some time and decide...