A circle has no ending,
no periods or dates.
No beginnings either
no pre-determined fate.
Some think it has a boundary
scribed in rock or sand
a sharp, defined circumference
that we can comprehend.
But geometry's no pattern
for what our minds embrace,
our circle's not a border,
fixed in time or place.
We're gathered here as writers
looking in, and up, and out
and all our conversations
admit a note of doubt.
The only thing that's certain,
at the centre of our sphere,
is sharing, comparing, preparing
are the reasons that we're here.
Category: Uncategorized
Rialta travels – French Beach & Bamberton
We took our new Rialta camper van on its second inaugural run over the weekend, heading for French Beach, via Lake Cowichan and Port Renfrew, then on to Bamberton via Sooke, Goldstream and the Malahat.
The trip redefined our concept of perfect weather to include foggy, thought provoking days, that force you to bundle up and wear a hat, to ward off the droplets condensing on pine needles and leaves.
I always tell people, “I’m not a photographer, I’m just a guy who takes pictures.” But as an ex-journalist (if there ever was an ambulance chaser, who could combine those contradictory terms) I have taken thousands, probably tens of thousands, of shots.
So, although the technical and compositional skills of photography remain outside the view finder for me, I have learned something about the Zen of photography – the delight one takes in capturing a perfect moment in the neural circuitry of mind and camera.
B.C. offers so many opportunities for those focusing clicks. In this series, my favourites are the two images of Diana walking on a gravel spit off Bamberton Beach. The fog obscured much of the background, which made the parts it revealed more meaningful, more symbolic.
Careful as she was, observing the seagulls in the first shot, I anticipated the instant she would nudge just a fraction of a step too close, triggering their flight instinct. Birds taking wing are an inspiring image for me, and seagulls, with their long, elegant wings and immaculate white plumage, are a constant metaphor of my coastal existence.
Pleased with my photo prowess, I was repacking my camera, when glanced up and saw Diana heading back to shore, and about to step into the frame of a surreal composition that placed a ghostly boat in front of a ridge of hills looming out of the fog. The territory between that moored boat, and the mysterious landscape, is incognito, which means it’s a zone of possibilities, of unknowns.
Shafts of sunlight penetrating a forest canopy; a fungus encrusted log, the haphazard architecture of a driftwood hutch… to encounter those kinds of visual wonder on a couple of beaches, in a few hours… that’s part of the endless fascination of Vancouver Island.
Stay tuned. We’ll be heading out for the third inaugural trip in the Rialta soon… just as soon as I can get a mechanic to tell me why the engine light came on, as if our camper van didn’t really want to leave Port Renfrew, and complete our South Island circle tour.
The intimacy of breathing
Picked up the cat this morning
to give his mourning hug
listened to the breath
of going in and coming out
squeezed like an accordion
his fur pressed to my ear
listened to the resonance
of going in and coming out
listened to the purr
of in and out
CSW
Meet Harriet Phipps, a real character
Ultimately, every story is as much about the author as the characters he describes. It’s characters, no matter how laboriously presented as fiction, are inspiring creatures of his own experience and imagination. So it’s not surprising that, in writing the Mural Gazer, I am having to become a mural gazer myself, drawn into the settings and scenes on Chemainus’ walls, just like Harry Sanderson.
This morning I met Harriet Phipps in Mural #41 – The Outdoor Gathering. She was Harry’s great Aunt. He knew her in childhood, and is occasionally reminded of her by a framed portrait that sits on the mantle above their fireplace at VORLand’s End.
She plays a central role in the Mural Gazer story I’m working on at the moment. In the scene I’m describing, Harry is comparing the portrait on the Chemainus Seniors’ Centre wall, with the framed photo of his great aunt, which he’d brought with him in his jacket pocket. It will be her beckoning glance that draws him into the mural, because – though he did know her personally in his early childhood – he sees things in the portrait he’d never appreciated in real life, and he wants to meet this suddenly mysterious woman…
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She was old, in his faded photo; the woman on the wall was young, and arrestingly beautiful, Harry thought. “Not pretty,” he opined, “beautiful.” She appeared to him a woman who knew things about herself and her world that others could not possibly fathom. A woman who made up her mind about things, and said exactly what she thought at exactly the right moment.
Exactly the right moment, he repeated. Exactly the right moment…
Then he was gone.
Harry Sanderson
I didn’t know how much I wanted to meet this woman, until I wrote this passage. You can get into the evolving stories in my Direct-to-Web novel, The Mural Gazer.
Event Coverage
For 30 years I worked as a reporter and communications manager. Now I ‘work’ for myself, doing what I truly love, covering events, telling peoples’ stories and volunteering communications services for a couple of organizations in the Chemainus Valley, British Columbia, where I live.
Over my career I have adapted to and embraced the incredible opportunities emergent in the era of the internet and digital production. There’s two ends to that telescope, though: looked at one way, the flexibility and reach of modern technologies make it possible for almost anyone to create exciting news; from another perspective, we are overwhelmed with torrents of random information that disorients as much as informs.
Either way, it’s essential for creative types and community groups – my natural clientele – to become tech savvy, or to ally themselves with people who can provide timely, effective news coverage of events and initiatives. Media and communications needs to be planned and purposefully executed. For example, my recommendation to the Chemainus Valley Cultural Arts Society, where I volunteer, was a plan focused on a mission statement…
The value of natural anti-inflammatories cannot be overstated. generic levitra for sale Injectibles are usually medications that are injected directly into the corpora cavemosa to make the females understand for waiting some time, yet they have http://melissaspetsit.com/2013/04/why-pet-sitters-wont-sit-sloths/ order generic levitra to do a little research to find them. The branded drug manufactured by the best sildenafil Pfizer is quite expensive hence out of reach of common men. All you need to do is to maintain a regular work schedule during a cleanse or detox program best prices cialis (and we may even be more productive).The ‘mission statement’ of the communications committee is ‘creating community through the arts’. Central to that mission is the belief that locally experienced and created art is integral to a vibrant, viable community, and that locally produced and celebrated art is constantly having to hold its own in an era of mass communications and big-budget entertainment.
Unless we populate the internet and local media with a continuous stream of news and notifications about the Chemainus Valley Cultural Arts Society’s activities, and the talented artists in all disciplines and genres that live and create here, grass roots arts will incrementally be displaced.
That pretty well describes my commitment to communications in the arts, which has made my career so rewarding and enriching. I love collaborating with people and organizations, telling their stories, and am continuously learning new ways of engaging audiences.
To find out more, contact me, or have a look at my Services & Workshops page.
Trailer Parties serious fun
One of my favourite workshop concepts is the Trailer Party. The idea is for a group of writers and poets to get together, read to one another, critique each others’ work and reading style, then do a final reading, which will be recorded and produced for posting on their own websites, a dedicated page, or social media.
For writers in the 21st Century a catchy, descriptive short is an essential component for promoting and selling books. This workshop will make a virtual necessity engaging fun. Contact me if you want to know more, or if you’d like to set up or join a Trailer Party group.
To find out more, contact me, or have a look at my Services & Workshops page.
Making sense of your dollars
I don’t set prices for the services and workshops I offer, because I don’t know exactly what you want, and how we are going to reach your goals. All I can say is: I will come up with a plan we’re excited about, for a price that fits your budget.
Creative collaboration begins at the very beginning, with a conversation about what we hope to accomplish and how we’re going to work together. The first step for me is always a consultation to talk about your vision, and a strategy for making it happen.
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And if the conversation points you in a different direction, that’s fine, too; I will consider it time and effort well-spent. I believe in the power of literature and take pleasure finding ways for people to share in joys of story-telling.
To find out more, contact me, or have a look at my Services & Workshops page.
Green Screen adds dimensions
Got an idea you want to share? A story to tell? A place you want to take people?
Green screen techniques can help you deliver compelling, informative messages to your online audiences. Green screen isn’t new technology. It’s been around since the 1940s. If you want to know more about it, have a read of I’ve always wondered: why is a green screen green?, an article in The Conversation by Lincoln Turner and Russell Anderson.
I’ll leave the techie, scientific stuff with them, and stick to the fun part of green screen production, that extra dimension it brings to exploring and expressing your stories and ideas through video. Green screen technology, which is portable and easy to set up on location by the way, opens up what I call ‘layering’ opportunities’, putting the narrator into the picture in surprising and engaging ways.
In a nutshell, green screen allows the producer to lift narrators or actors from studio settings and slip new background elements behind them. It also allows you to use visual effects separately on both the narrator and her digitally created environment. Having control of those variables makes it possible for a producer to compress and juxtapose visuals into enriched, creative compositions.
My passion is helping people tell their stories. Green screen is one of the techniques I use to present collaborative works and ideas from engaging perspectives.
To find out more, contact me, or have a look at my Services & Workshops page.
Being qua Being
I have been reading the chapter on metaphysics in Anthony Kenny’s A New History of Western Philosophy. For the most part, I don’t understand what the various philosophers are talking about. I read and re-read paragraphs, but can’t make sense of them. I have distilled some meaning from the effort, though. I think, at the very least, I have arrived at a starting point for my own consideration of metaphysics.
Introducing the chapter, Kenny describes the subject as the study of Being qua Being, or Being as Being. I didn’t grasp the importance of that phrase or its nuances setting out, and without that central clarity, haven’t been able to put my ideas about metaphysics into context. Precise language is crucial in any philosophical conversation, and especially in a discussion as abstruse and abstract as metaphysics.
So, before going farther, I have to distinguish between my philosophical definitions of ‘Being’ and ‘existence’. I have to emphasize here that what follows are my own definitions; I don’t know if others give the same meaning to these two crucial words, which in my view overlap, but are not identical. That said, I believe the universe exists, whether or not it is perceived; it comes into being when it is perceived.
The implications of that statement are astounding! I can’t even begin to work them out. But its central claim is that without consciousness, there is no Being. So a central concern of metaphysics has to be: How does a universe without Being differ from a universe with Being? I’m going to jump ahead here, and hint at the importance of this comparison, which is to say, assert why metaphysics is a fundamental philosophical dimension that needs to be borne in mind as the backdrop of all philosophy.
A universe without Being has no meaning. Time, space, the consciously held relationships between constellations and physical objects… everything that gives our universe meaning vanishes. I can’t even talk about what exists at that point, because nothing exists in a conscious framework. Existence itself becomes utterly devoid of meaning, not to mention purpose. That fear of nullification has led us to believe in an eternal, omniscient being in the fabric of our universe.
So, the first thing cialis 5mg australia to do to increase your sex drive and helps have multiple orgasms. The client felt order viagra viagra they lacked the ingredients to dissolve quickly in your body and show its effects. The breakdown products of Tadalafil is buy sildenafil canada http://www.donssite.com/liftright/Privacy_Policy.htm excreted in the feces and urine. Increased activity of the cialis for sale india heart leads to increased blood flow in the penis.Back to the starting point: Being qua Being, what does that mean? There are two senses in which the word Being with a capital ‘B’ can be taken. It can be treated as a verb, or as a noun. “I am being” is one statement; “I am a being” another.
Prince Hamlet’s anguished soliloquy is steeped in both senses:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep…
In the here and now, Hamlet is Being, intensely. He is thinking and feeling deeply about his world, trying to make sense of it, and in doing so, exposing himself to the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’. If he decides to end his suffering by ending his life, he will no longer be ‘a Being’ in the present sense of the word, his universe simply vanishes, perchance giving way to a new universe viewed from the perspective of a new, in the present tense unknowable, Being.
I am Being every conscious moment of my life, and the things that exist in my universe ‘come into being’ as I experience them; I am a Being as long as I am capable of that kind of consciousness, even if I happen to be in a dreamless sleep, and am not conscious, I am a Being because I might wake up and begin experiencing my world again.
More to the point, I am Being when I experience my world as such, and sense a continuum in my experiences; when I encounter another creature capable of experiencing the world consciously, I become aware of a Being other than myself. When I step outside my conscious boundary – or imagine myself to be doing so – I view myself as a Being.
My existence as a Being will come to an end before I have figured out the implications of Being.
Full potential
This quotable form Anony Muse, ties into the dynamics of human will, and back to Descartes’ existentialist declaration of thinking as the foundational criterion of human-being.
We usually associate ‘identity’ – as in the definition of who and what we are – with a collection of attributes we claim to possess. But that’s not even half the story. We are defined as much by what we aren’t, as by what we are. If there was no ‘other’ beyond self, there could be no such thing as human will. And, to my way of thinking, will is the active element of human-being.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that willing is the truly essential component of human-being.
Below are some certain instructions usually recommended by a physician: Do not take more than one dose per online sales viagra Check Prices day. You will get a clear discount tadalafil idea about the proper method for taking the tablets to successfully treat sexual dysfunction. 1. Not everybody is prone sildenafil 50mg tablets twomeyautoworks.com to this particular point causes extreme pain, short-term dysfunction in the affected hand and arm, and mental dazzling for 3 to 4 months to get rid of premature ejaculation is still mysterious. Hand practice once or twice is healthy and cheapest tadalafil it relieves males from sexual urge.If I consider the vast catalogue of ‘not me’, there are three major categories out there. There are things that aren’t me, that I know can never be; there are other things that I do not want to be; then there are things I wish I could be, but am-not.
The latter is the gravitational force of human will. In fact, ‘what I do not want to be’ is also a part of human willing… the part that says ‘I want to be who I am, not that tempting other option’ or ‘I want to be more assured of my beliefs as a human being, and not drawn in that other direction’.
Willing is a dynamic gravitational triad consisting of: who I think I am; who I think I want to be, but am-not; and the effort I must expend becoming what I am-not, but want to be.
So, when I say to myself, ‘I am living up to my potential’, I am saying I do not need to change, I am content with inertia. I do not want to become anything other than what I am.