A Gift, The Dream And You

"...The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it."

This truly inspirational address by author, journalist and environmentalist, Paul Hawken at the University of Portland Commencement 2009, speaks many truths about why we are here and what we could be creating and giving back - both individually and collectively - during the precious time we have been given on this wonderous planet.

From: Paul Hawken, Commencement Address 2009, University Of Portland
"Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums..."
Full inspirational speech here

Further Info:
Portland University Commencement / Paul Hawken

The Beekeeper, Tori Amos

The Beekeeper by Tori Amos is a song too beautiful for words so I'll only attempt a few. Somehow I only discovered this track very recently (perhaps the time was right) and I cannot stop listening to it. The section that immediately and most intensely struck me is the main chorus:
""Do you know who I am" she said "I'm the one, who taps you on your shoulder, when it's your time. Don't be afraid, I promise that she will awake tomorrow""

On a spiritual adventure of my own the idea of being awakened at a certain time - the right time - by someone or something tapping me on the shoulder rang true. The music accompanying the lyrics is utterly poignant and stirs my heart and soul.

Having sought out (thanks to Lyrics Mania) and read the whole lyrics, I have a sense - which could easily be entirely wrong - that Tori may have been writing about the loss of a child who only just or didn't quite make it into this world from the other. The painful anguish of loss and desperation are intense. The desire to make sense of something so sad makes for enchanting listening.

"Flaxen hair blowing in the breeze
It is time for the geese to head south
I have come with my mustard seed
I cannot accept that she will be taken from me

"Do you know who I am" she said
"I'm the one who taps you on the shoulder when it's your time
Don't be afraid I promise that she will awake
Tomorrow somewhere, tomorrow somewhere"

Wrap yourself around the tree of life
And the dance of the infinity
Of the hive
(Take this message to Michael)

I will comb myself into chains
In between the tap dance clan
And your ballerina gang

I have come for the beekeeper
I know you want my
You want my queen
Anything but this
Can you use me instead?

In your gown with your breathing mask on
Plugged into a heart machine
As if you ever needed one

I must see the beekeeper
I must see if she'll keep her alive
(Call Engine 49)
I have come with my mustard seed

Maybe I'm passing you by
Just passing you by girl
I'm passing you by
On my way, on my way

I'm just passing you by
But don't be confused
One day I'll be coming for you...
I must see the beekeeper
I must see the beekeeper"

Corinne Bailey Rae: Life Drifted By...

Corinne Bailey Rae: 'It happened to me. It could happen to anyone at any time'
From out of the darkest place, following the sudden death of her husband, Corinne Bailey Rae is re-emerging with an extraordinarily intimate and impassioned album. Here she talks about grief and the redemptive power of music

Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 4Oct09

"...Then came the strange inertia that grief instils in those left behind, the long, terrible numbness that is, in itself, a kind of death. "I didn't do anything for a year. I mean, nothing," she says, still sounding as if she can barely believe it. "Everyone was asking, 'What have you done?' But I had nothing to show them. I didn't go anywhere. I didn't write anything. I didn't work. I sat at my kitchen table for a whole year, people came and people went, life drifted by. It was just bleak. Bleak."

Did she think that she might give up music altogether? "I did think that I could never do this sort of thing again because if anyone asked me about Jason, I would just explode. For a long time, I didn't even try and write. It was just too big a thing, too raw. It was just too destructive to make anything creative out of. All I wanted to do was destroy things. And I'm really not that type so it was all these emotions that were totally alien to me. It was just a bleak, empty, hollow nothing.""

Full article here

Hawksmoor: Short Review

Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd is:

Awesome, in the truest sense of the word. A veritable labyrinth of clever and intriguing word play caught between the glass frame of a paper weight in which all time is no time and no time is now! Shake it up and watch the effects. Wonderful!

The Preciousness of Books

I have so many favourite books my top 10 is often changing but will probably always include T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland which I can read over and over and over... Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor and J.D Salinger's Franny & Zooey all of which had a profound effect on me when first reading, plus I studied the former two in school at a particularly tempestuous time in my life! I lost myself totally in the magic of the stories and words and was quite swept up in the drama of other worlds and lives.

Whilst movies can, and indeed have, had a similar effect on me, I find that the effects don't last as long or go as deep. There is something about reading from a real book, held in our hands, carried around with us for days/weeks/months even years, the fold of the corners when a book mark has been misplaced, the smell of new paper or even better, the smell of musty bookshelves acquired from a second-hand book store, the scribbles made by previous readers, their name printed neatly or scrawled carelessly on the inside cover, a certain timeless quality, all these things, along with engaging contents of course, make a book far more potent than even the best film ever could be (and I do love a good movie). Perhaps it's the ability to touch and hold and thus feel more engaged with a book than one can with a dvd which relies on a machine to be played or a film viewed at the cinema with many other people.

This is an excerpt from a discussion started by Maddy called Has Reading Become A Lost Art on Ooffoo.com. Read the full article here.

Underworld by Don DeLillo is long but worth a read

Don DeLillos's Underworld is as relevant and valid today as it was at time of publication some ten years ago. In that time so much has happened and yet precious little has changed.

I acquired Underworld by Don DeLillo over 10 years ago as a result of having studied and enjoyed the author's book White Noise at university. I desperately wanted to read more work of this person who seemed to have his fingers on the pulse of our era as well as a good grasp of the past events, both small and sizeable, that helped to form the present. He also seemed to dislay an almost uncanny insight into the future.

DeLillo has the magical ability to present the varying strands of our current ethos, culture, lifestyles and ideologies in succinct form without foregoing any of the vital minutiae of daily life that make up these things. One minute his characters are discussing, quite seriously, the merits of wearing sunscreen in the desert, for example, and in the very same sentence or paragraph we realise that they are also commenting on the atomisation of society at large. The author manages to do this without any of the usual jarring gaps in flow and avoids any sense of disconnect. The books - all those I've had the good fortune to read - flow like understated but crucially zeitgeist movies - think American Dream and perhaps sometimes Donny Darko.

Reading DeLillo's work (I can't bring myself to use the words 'novel' or 'story' as they seem too trite descriptions for works so intrinsically linked to real life) is like watching a perfect mix of documentary and fictionalized drama that blends so well it is almost impossible to tell what is 'real' and what isn't. In this way his work is simply a mirror on our lives. If you cannot find yourself, or at least a part of yourself in his work, perhaps your existence is questionably.

Back to Underworld, which I wanted to read and attempted to at least hit the 100 page mark before giving up (as advised by one of my English tutors at school) several times over the last ten years. The size of the book overwhelmed me however and in conjunction with the highly americanised subject of the first chapters - baseball - which I felt no desire to even try to relate to, meant that I quit after only a few pages several times over. Size (and sport) are not everything however and honestly, I think I was just not ready for Underworld. Not yet ready to understand its simple complexities and appreciate the subject matter from a well balanced distance matched with the closeness of experience.

Until late last year. Now I am finally ready to devour this book in a way I could not have done ten years ago. I have just passed the half way mark (in page terms) and am as excited about it as I was at the start. The characters are familiarly intriguing, their personalities forming, dissolving, adapting before my eyes as DeLillo takes his readers backwards and forwards in time. The events of over 50 years played and replayed from different angles with clues and signs dished out here and there. I feel as though I've been given special privilege to wallow through restricted archives on vast micro-fiche, piles of newspapers, audio and film reels and diaries.

The specifics of Underworld's era, from Cold War fever, J Edgar Hoover's paranoia through 70's alternative counter-culture, consumerist ignorance and the shameful wastefulness of post war periods right through to the present, are as relevant today, if not more so, than they were in the late 90s. I would highly recommend this book as both fascinating fiction and documentary research of why we are where we are today.

First Female Poet Laureate

From: Alison Flood, Guardian, 1May09

"Four hundred years of male domination came to an end today with the election of Carol Ann Duffy as poet laureate. Duffy, the widely-tipped favourite for the post, only agreed to accept the post ahead of poets Simon Armitage and Roger McGough because "they hadn't had a woman".

Speaking on Woman's Hour this morning on Radio 4, she revealed that she had thought "long and hard" about accepting the offer.
"The decision was purely because they hadn't had a woman," she said. "I look on it as recognition of the great women poets we now have writing, like Alice Oswald.""

Full article here

Who Is Running The Show?

No individual species is 'in control' of the planet. We are all part of the same ecosystem. Each species plays its part and is as vital as the next.

The sooner we, as human beings, realise that we are simply part of the planet and all the species, resources and elements contained therein rather than 'lords' over all else, the better. Better for the planet and for all the life it sustains, including us.

The only hierarchy is a false one. It is sustained by those who hope that controlling others will lead to personal evolution or enlightenment. The truth is quite opposite. It is the meek, not the powerful, who will inherit the earth.

Here's Where The Story Ends

The Sundays: Here's Where The Story Ends

People I know, places I go, make me feel tongue-tied.
I can see how people look down, they're on the inside.
Here's where the story ends.

People I see, weary of me, showing my good side.
I can see how people look down, I'm on the outside.
Here's where the story ends.
Here's where the story ends.

It's that little souvenir of a terrible year
Which makes my eyes feel sore.
Oh I never should have said, the books that you read
Were all I loved you for.

It's that little souvenir of a terrible year
Which makes me wonder why;
And it's the memories of your shed, that make me turn red
Surprise, surprise, surprise!

Crazy I know, places I go, make me feel so tired.
I can see how, people look down, I'm on the outside.
Here's where the story ends.
Here's where the story ends.

It's that little souvenir of a terrible year
Which makes my eyes feel sore.
And who ever would've thought the books that you brought
Were all I loved you for.

Oh the devil in me said, go down to the shed,
I know where I belong;
But the only thing I ever really wanted to say
Was wrong, was wrong, was wrong!

It's that little souvenir of a colourful year
Which makes me smile inside;
So I cynically, cynically say, well it's that way
Surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise!
Here's where the story ends.
Here's where the story ends.

My favorite room...

My favourite room is the cosy, self contained room that lies within the realms of my over active imagination. It is like a tardis inside, or more accurately, I suppose, like Wonderland.

One minute there is just enough room for me contently curled up warm and snug on the world's comfiest bean bag, reading endless books and munching my way through delicious food that handily keeps appearing from nowhere.

The next, I suddenly feel alone, surrounded by deepest green water. A brood of baby sharks are playfully piercing holes in my barely floating beanbag. Oh, bugger! I'm falling into the ocean and I can't swim - agh!

My favourite room is also my most feared...

If you paid me enough, I might sing this song at a karaoke bar

That Day by Natalie Imbruglia

I would embarrass (is that really how it's spelt?) myself with this song because, like much of Ms Imbruglia's work it is beautiful but also a challenge to sing and breathe at the same time - plus my partner (DFH) loves to hear me sing it trying to remember the lyrics and who am I to disappoint... hmmmm...

And so it goes: "Well, that day, that day, what a mess, what a marvel. I walked into that cloud again and I lost myself. And I'm sad, sad, sad, small, alone and scared, craving purity and a fragile mind and a gentle spirit. That day, that day, what a marvelous mess. Well this is all that I can do. I'm done to be me - sad, scared, small, alone and beautiful. It's supposed to like this. I accept everything. It's supposed to be like this..."

Natalie's lyrics are dynamite. In this potent epic poem of a song, she describes perfectly that sense of desperately trying to fight the often overwhelming negative thoughts and feelings of despair that life will sometimes insist on throwing our way. Do you recognise the feeling? You find yourself suddenly swallowed up by an ocean of emptiness, pulled deep down under the dark pounding waves of loneliness and futility, utterly alone and more miserable than a weekful of Mondays.

As you begin to sink under the weight of all the world's sadness however, a minor life-saving miracle takes place and you suddenly remember how to swim. With each stroke you repeat your mantras - I AM beautiful. EVERYTHING happens for a reason. It's SUPPOSED to be like this - breathing in the sweet air of instant comfort that they bring.

Cliched phrases these mantras may be, but those powerful words not only offer a life line, they force it into your hands. You cling for dear life as another wave blows over your head knowing that if you can just hold on, sooner or later you WILL find yourself on the beach once more. Exhausted and bewhildered perhaps, but on solid ground none-the-less.

Complete lyrics (how I hear them):
"Well that day, that day, what a mess, what a marvel.
I walked into that cloud again and I lost myself.
And I'm sad, sad, sad, small, alone and scared,
Craving purity and a fragile mind and a gentle spirit.

That day, that day, what a marvelous mess.
Well this is all that I can do. I'm done to be me.
Sad, scared, small, alone and beautiful. It's supposed to like this.
I accept everything. It's supposed to be like this.

That day, that day I lay down beside myself
In this feeling of pain and sad and scared and small
And find me crawling towards the light and it's all that I see
And I'm tired and I'm right and I'm wrong and it's beautiful.

That day, that day, what a mess, what a marvel,
We're all the same but no-one thinks so.
And it's okay and I'm small and I'm divine
And it's beautiful and it's coming and it's already here and it's absolutely perfect.

Well that day, that day when everything was a mess
When everything was in place and it's too much hurt
Sad and small and scared, alone
And everyone's a cynic and it's hard and it's sweet but it's supposed to be like this.

Well that day, that day when I sat in the sun
And I thought and I cried cos I'm sad, scared, small, alone, strong
And I'm nothing and I'm true.
Only a great man can break through. And it's all okay. Yeah, it's okay.

That day, that day when I lay down beside myself
In this feeling of pain and sad and scared and small
And find me crawling towards the light and it's all that I see
And I'm tired and I'm right and I'm wrong and it's beautiful

That day, that day, what a mess, what a marvelous mess.
We're all the same but no-one thinks so.
And it's okay and I'm small and I'm divine
And it's beautiful and it's coming and it's already here and it's absolutely perfect.

So sweet, can you feel it?
Are you here? Are you with me?
I can feel it? And it's beautiful."

by Natalie Imbruglia
on White Lilies Island
Watch That Day on YouTube