It’s been FOREVER since I’ve put anything on here!
. . . I wanted to note that my short essay on procrastination has just been posted on the excellent creative writing website Writing Companion. Please have look!
Archive for the ‘random’ Category
on procrastination
Saturday, June 12th, 2010the facebook experiment, part two
Saturday, April 10th, 2010I did it, I got a facebook account. That is, I stopped using it for only photographs and I actually accepted some “friend requests”. I don’t expect to use f.b. a great deal (I don’t use kellyshepherd.com very much these days either, for that matter) but it’s something I thought I’d try. So far it seems to be a good way to get back in touch with friends and relatives who I haven’t talked to for years.
People say facebook is highly addictive – but like anything else, we can choose if and when to use it. (Is that true?)
Facebook seems to be part of the same mass hypnosis as cell phones, texting, ipods, etc. - even though a piece of technology may be only a couple of years (even months?) old, we grab onto it for dear life and can’t seem to imagine living without it any more. We become dependant on these things, things that in the previous generation or decade hadn’t even been invented. Never mind that people have been able to live healthy, productive, imaginative lives for millenia without any such technology. No – now that they’re here, we absolutely need these things. I find this a little frightening.
(And yes, I’m aware of the hypocrisy: criticising technology via weblog.)
I’ve spoken with parents who say that they have no choice, they need to get this technology, and learn how to use it - because that’s how their kids do things. Sounds like: they can’t communicate with their kids unless they’re willing to do so on the kids’ terms? Like the music industry (primary target audience still being, I think, 14 year old girls spending their parents’ money) maybe this is more evidence of our society’s unspoken religion: youth-worship. It’s almost as if capitalism needs to butter up the future generations, so they won’t leave the fold when they come of age.
But what do I know? I only have twenty-five friends!
spring . . .
Friday, March 19th, 2010My poor, neglected blog. When was the last time I actually posted photos?
For now, I’ll add some links to things I’ve been reading lately, for my own quick reference if nothing else.
1. UK haiku website with words.
2. The Four Seasons of Haiku.
3. Haiku for Beginners, courtesy of Paul Brown, a prolific Canadian artist.
4. Poetry Chapbooks! I want to learn more. Here is a basic history and definition; here is BC poet Tim Lander’s inspiring and informative (and printable) Art of the Chapbook.
Just missed it: happy Saint Patrick’s Day! Next month: happy Poetry Month!
“non-human persons”
Friday, January 15th, 2010Dolphins: non-human persons? . . . Hasn’t this theme already been explored (semi-seriously) by science fiction writers?
What would it mean to have status on Earth as a non-human person? Any killing, hunting, or eating of dolphins would be illegal, certainly. Keeping them in aquariums and zoos for the viewing public would also be frowned upon. We couldn’t use them for military purposes – that is, unless we could do so with their consent. Doesn’t seem likely. Assuming the language barrier could ever be broken, I can’t imagine they’d be terribly patriotic toward many human causes. They probably wouldn’t – probably don’t - see things our way when it comes to our need to study them, experiment on them, etc. Even the act of granting dolphins status as something more than animals (as something a little closer to glorious us) might be seen as an example of human arrogance.
Wouldn’t their being recognized as ”non-human persons” mean that everyone would have to just leave dolphins alone?
server problems
Thursday, December 17th, 2009I’ve just lost a couple of posts in a server problem, apparently, but hopefully things will be back to normal soon . . .
artist statement
Thursday, November 19th, 2009I’ve recently come upon a couple of different blogs that really caught my eye. I know there are infinite websites out there, some of them featuring the work of truly great writers, and photographers, and thinkers and so on, but I’ve always found it a bit overwhelming. Where to start? For every interesting poetry blog, for example, there must be another five that I don’t even know about that are even better. And who’s got the time?
The first I found was Luchair: ”the gleam of light on water.” This is a blog from Scotland that features photography, literature, and more. The “sources and resources” is of the best required-reading lists I’ve ever seen: thoughtful, well-rounded, spiritual and ecological books, and more. A lot of things I’d like to read. (I’m becoming increasingly fascinated by the idea of reading lists, like those assigned by professors for their classes - but not necessarily involving any professor or class at all.) I tried to leave a comment here, but for some reason it wasn’t allowing me to – which prompted me to write this instead. Anyway, the posting in particular that caught my attention was from November 5, The True and the Sacred. This is a rambling, almost stream-of-consciousness monologue that ends with an excellent paragraph on the freedoms and responsibilities of the writer.
The second blog I read that I wanted to comment on is called Letters From the City. The post that really hit me is from September of last year: Something Like an Artist Statement, in which the Korean-American writer explores his own cultural background, and how that might relate to current events in America. Among other things. It is about interconnectedness: the idea that there is no such thing as an innocent bystander. It is also about the creative process. That journey (which is such a cliche, I know.) He describes his own personal struggles, and the steps he’s taking towards writing his own book. But it’s the actual process of exploring and developing some of these ideas that he is talking about here - all these many evolving, overlapping, dynamic elements of a person’s life: country of origin, family history, childhood, memories - this creative process is for all of us. If we choose. If we can.
. . . Without knowing them, or even knowing anything about them, really, I’d like to thank the writers of both of these blogs. Who knows where inspiration might be lurking?
tragic coyote attack in Nova Scotia park
Thursday, October 29th, 2009HALIFAX, N.S. – A young Canadian folk singer who had just set off on a solo tour to boost a promising musical career died Wednesday after being mauled by two coyotes in what is believed to be one of the country’s first fatal attacks by the animals.
Turtle Blogathon
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009From the Turtle Conservation Centre in Terengganu, Malaysia comes this urgent and interesting call for support. Please do check out the website, which is full of information, news articles, and video clips. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about turtles! And more importantly, opportunities to get involved! Adopt a terrapin! (100 ringgit is about 30 Canadian dollars.) Please send the link to anyone you know who might be interested.
For additional background information and some photographs, one of my earlier posts refers to a similar project that I was involved in, at the same place.
back in BC
Sunday, August 16th, 2009Korea already feels like a whole world away, even though I was there just last week! Arrived back in British Columbia, Canada, a few days ago. Uneventful flights, efficient airports, 16 hours of traveling in total. I miss my Korean friends (and my students, most of them), but I’m also definitely enjoying the fresh Okanagan air. Vernon is a little quieter than Seoul! Nice to see the stars again too.
Not much going on for now. Although I have had a chance to test out a theory about long-distance travel: that people who have insomnia don’t get jet lag. Soon to be leaving on some road trips, epic late-summer drives thoughout the western provinces of this fine dominion . . .
One last quote from this book:
A hunch tells me that the awareness shyly budding in us can slowly catch up with wilderness. In this joyride over the edge of my common sense world, I dive into my psyche beyond what has been domesticated and herded behind Sir Humanism’s garden fence, beyond my own reproductive zest, beyond my allegiance to man. To qualify for this fabulous ride I have to lose my old innocence. I think we all have to. That newly discovered wilderness will not be peopled by the innocent and the primitive of yesterday’s health nor by the simply virtuous, the good boys and those who kept their minds all spic and span, but by those who got sick with anger, have overfished, blundered, sinned, goofed, drifted, been bored in seminars and waded through mud, got kicked out, split in two, yet ultimately became lucky and got beached as pioneers on a new reality that is larger than man’s welfare. If there will be vagabonds there, they have wiggled free of many myths, slogans, refuges, and traps before. There, a woodsman will have excelled in creative thinking and in biology. A future pedestrian will have driven a million miles. If there will be innocence, it will be an earned serenity that surived a cataclysmic world in which our five year plans collided with nature’s million year plans. In this mutagenic happening, tougher thoughts may synthesize that can give me mental immunity against banal slogans like: “work for a better world for man,” that have echoed in my mind too long, and played havoc with all life that could not readily explain its use to me (214).
Grutter, Theo. Dancing with Mosquitoes: To Liberate the Mind from Humanism – A Way to Green the Mind. New York: Vantage Press, 2000.
Dancing with Mosquitoes
Sunday, August 9th, 2009Some paragraphs from a book I recently picked up…
It appears to me that it is my own disharmonies, the excesses, the holes in my soul, my missing corners or tumors in my loving, a brain lobe usefullized by some steroid or seratonin enhancer, even my cowardice, that are the raw material asked for to make a technological society prosper… The GNP miracle does not thrive on the serene but flourishes on unbalanced character traits, on neuroses, on wounds to tap the blood, on the manure of decomposed souls, on all of our thousand little short- and long-comings and sins. Such a society celebrates a man who grows one of his talents into a great tumor disharmonizing himself while making himself useful to them. It celebrates a man of whom it made just one pair of super-legs – a man with no arms, no head, no soul – in short, a pair of sprinter legs so dominant, smart and powerful it can outrace in the Olympic games any man or woman who carry also their head and soul through the race. Yet will such a man not limp terribly through life if ever again left to live by his own body and soul? (33)
Some among us do not dream of life as a job and an exercise machine and a package tour to Cancun. We dream of dangers as others dream of ice cream. We dream to take off on the adventure tours of our souls, competing to invent the slickest lifestyle of all. We are shy poets. We enjoy building floating bridges to other realities and worlds. We follow a hunch that there is a poverty which is exciting, ingenious, and elegant. We are such confident fools. (86)
Much of our progress comes from feasting on the “seed potatoes” of our kids – and they will pay for our nasty trick. Oh no, not so much with money. Their minds will become banal and square in a cash-crop land that we made banal and square and is not allowed the luxury anymore to also produce inspirations in them. As in the adversity of arid land plants tend to grow spines, so our kids will also grow more meanness to elbow through hordes of fellow men and endless traffic jams we cause with our soft ethic and our overloads of possessions in our homes and our minds… And so I watch the children pay a high price for our civilization that often loves its technology’s ego boosters more than them. (205)
Grutter, Theo. Dancing with Mosquitoes: To Liberate the Mind from Humanism – A Way to Green the Mind. New York: Vantage Press, 2000.
. . . I’m not finished it yet and will not venture to write a “book review” but here are some initial thoughts. This is a guy who seems to have always lived out on the fringes of mainstream society, traveling, and working as a commercial fisherman in Mexico and Alaska. His writing is a sort of prose/poetry that takes a little while to get into, and occasionally requires some rereading. It is written in separate journal-like entries, perhaps meant to be talks or meditations. At the low points Mr Grutter almost slips into the dreaded “self-help zone,” not so much in subject matter but in his writing: sometimes a little too preachy or melodramatic. At his best, his is sort of a Thoreau-like voice. He examines and questions popular assumptions and credos, the pillars and underlying philosophies of our civilization, often using metaphors and observations from nature.