(Port) Coquitlam Odysseus

The last week was a very difficult one for me, and many thoughts, many of which were most unpleasant, have been going through my head.

I have also taken a break from Aristophanes. Fortunately, I have been enjoying the prose of Bill Reid. I’ve also been reading about Reid as a phenomenon, as an artist, as a man. When I have time, I hope to write about these readings on my other blog, where Reid more naturally belongs.

I have also been thinking about the relationships between the experience of brokenness and the strange but wonderful phenomenon we call “humour.” I have experienced the need for emotional solitude and detachment. I have written two poems that proved cathartic, but these will likely remain private.

The thought has come to me that who I am and am connected to is in large part a reflection of the facets of life in Vancouver. . . and this is a good thing. There is so much uncertainty, though, and deep and profound dissonances and ambiguities that resolve themselves only in suffering and pain.

Life is, indeed, as sharp as the edge of a knife.*

I’m still pondering Being There‘s conclusion, orally delivered by an actor in the movie’s final scene to the accompaniment of a Zen-like piano on a canvas of a beautiful garden in winter: Life is a state of mind.

For now, I’m still here, and I’m not there yet.
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*This is a Haida expression that was chosen as the title of a feschcrift, contributed to by Bill Reid and others, that was dedicated to the anthropologist William Duff, whose life ended at an untimely age. In a talk at the Surrey Art Gallery some months ago, Robert Davidson interpreted this expression to mean “that sometimes, when life is going well, we get overconfident, and we don’t see that right ahead–where we are walking–there is a sharp precipice” (paraphrase from memory).
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And yes, I know that this post may have been a little too self-absorbed. It was a capital “I” post, after all.