It gets harder each year to sort through the mixed messages we are bombarded with in this highly-commercialized season of greed. It’s not just the non-secular selling of goods and gifts destined to end up in the landfill, but the promise of perfection woven into each message; as if we are not complete without this or that. It is the message, the method, and the madness of advertising. Of course, it’s nothing new (it never has been), and soon you learn (as you always do) that the bigger the promise, the harder the fall. No matter your age, there is always something they are selling you. No matter your stage in life, there is always something they are telling you. Get past the bullshit. You have enough. We all have enough stuff. What we need is the resilience to say we have had enough, and the confidence to enjoy what we have.
There are now fewer pages left in my journal than there are days in this year. Perfect timing, really, for a new decade is approaching and I will begin the New Year with a brand new journal. I’ve been keeping a journal with solid regularity for well more than 25 years. I had tried before, at different points in my life, to maintain some sort of journal, diary, or account of my life, but those attempts always ended up incomplete. The books got lost, or I got lost (or lost interest), or couldn’t really find the time. Life is often like that, you find it hard to find the time to do things you really want to do. It takes more than commitment; it takes continued commitment. My journals are full of life, as it happens. Trips, trials and tribulations, events attended, tales about people I’ve met; people who have died, people who left, and those who are still with me. It becomes personal history. For me. It is important to me. I write every day, but not always in my journal. I’ve got a several manuscripts on the go, in varying stages of undress, and there is something on this site every day. Then there is poetry, and letters to friends and family scattered across this amazing planet. I write every damn day. The journaling is different, always by hand, always by pencil, I write both the consequential and inconsequential in my journal, as it happens and usually when it happens. Sometimes I will glue in an article from the newspaper, other times a postage stamp or concert ticket, or include a quote from somebody that has inspired me. It’s pretty random, at times it is messy (like life), at times my thoughts are not complete, but the journal has a purpose. This current journal is the second book I have filled this year. It began with a move back to Winnipeg and continues to describe weekends out and about as I continue to rediscover a city I thought I knew well. The pages are full of deep thoughts, random considerations, and memories of people, places, and music. You learn a lot about yourself as you write, and you continue learning as you write. That is the value of a journal. Journaling is sort of like the quote I jotted down in one of my journal’s from the past: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon.” -Charles Schultz
Winter will come without warning, but it is not unexpected. Winter will know when you are at your weakest. Winter will weaken you further. Willingly. Winter will wait and winter will know. Winter’s will arrives with spirit and snow.
Subjective or suggestive, visually, physically, experimentally accounting for a specific period of time. Inevitably art confronts the realities faced to the point where we are allowed a view beyond what is presented to why it is so.
More complicated than mathematics, as simple as politics, lines converging into our present from past misunderstandings. Can you not see or hear the tonal range, words dripping from a page? Open your mind.
A camera recording what is not always there but should be. Possibility or probability, classic or contemporary. This is art. Representational mystery, soothing reckless souls, enraptured and necessary to deal with the pain of life itself.
Even in this new day, as we only try to wake from the darkness that enveloped us, comforted or confused us, through the night; even as we give pause to immediate thoughts in the disquiet of the world, this city, this coffee shop (or wherever you find yourself). Even then (or now) as we struggle less and less with the inspiration and more and more with our intentions, we are never quite sure if we will find or have found the clarity we seek. It is naturally, even organically, a process we value, a practice we attempt, that is far less than pedantic and far more than studied. It occurs on its own, full of questions and comments, each random line on the page is purposeful if only because the pencil leaves a trail of thought and indications you are alive and wondering, at all times, as we should be… shouldn’t we? Let not the questions cast doubt on what you know, but instead observe where the answers take you. Surely you are alive enough to count yourself in? This is the pattern of life: to question, to observe, to make use of your time — in whatever manner — to express yourself beyond the boundaries of what you have been told. Is there a better reason to write every damn day?
