Ego is a cruel master
Category: Insights
Courage (for Gordon Downie)
We lost a good one this week in Canada, Gordon Downie, frontman, lyricist, songwriter for The Tragically Hip, a Canadian rock powerhouse. In the 80s and 90s, they were probably my favourite band.
This song, Courage (for Hugh MacLennan), has always resonated deeply with me. In 1998, while spending six months bicycling across China, it inspired this blog post from the road. As it turns out, with all that’s going on in the world right now, it proves a timely reminder to get back on the path of love and light and insight. It was a path Gordon Downie forged and followed vigorously, right up to the very end.
Here’s to you, Gordon. And thanks, again, for all the insight.
Mortality ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #100
Grey.
Smoky.
The smell of a campfire.
But the nearest fire set a hundred thousand trees alight, a hundred or more kilometers away. I wonder, was that one lightning? A cigarette? A carelessly managed fire?
Patterns of Existence
Lao Tzu’s words can be pretty difficult to wrap a Western, science-educated mind around (my own struggle is continuous), beginning with understanding the term “the Tao” itself.
Reawakenings
Every now and again
I reawaken to the extraordinary adventure life is
An adventure as epic and unique
As bicycling 6,000 kilometers across China
Or as small and day-to-day as a sunset on English Bay
Enjoying a cold beer over conversation with a good friend
I reawaken to the extraordinary adventure life is
An adventure as epic and unique
As bicycling 6,000 kilometers across China
Or as small and day-to-day as a sunset on English Bay
Enjoying a cold beer over conversation with a good friend
I take a breath, breathing in the magical divinity of existence
Finger Painting
The canyon walls were a run of colours, as if, in a fit of whimsy, Mother Nature had just kept going with the finger paint, like the kindergarten child whose teacher didn’t know when to take the paper away.
Unfathomable Wealth
What kind of person, with the power and resources to do so much for so many others, chooses instead to exploit them?
Little green moth
When we talk about our lives, it’s not the stories about the safe paths we have taken which are our favourite stories to tell. It’s the risky choices which make for the best tales, no matter the difficulties, no matter the outcomes. These are the choices from which we grow the most, both at the time and years later when we recount those moments. We are always learning from our experiences, even years after having them.
The Dragon is China
“The Dragon is China,” she told me.
I nodded an assent, then shook my head… paused. “What does that mean?”
She told me. I must still not have understood, because I’ve forgotten. Only the phrase is left. I couldn’t focus, and the image in my mind drifted away.
Like this photo of a dragon-handled brazier at Kong Miao, the Confucius Temple in Beijing. Ever so slightly, focussed too deep. And like a photograph, there is no way, hard as I’ve tried, to bring China fully into focus.
The Road of Flight
66 is the mother road, the road of flight.
~ John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 12
~ John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 12
Steinbeck dedicated chapter twelve of Grapes to Route 66, the road of flight for dust bowl refugees seeking the promise of something better in California. The chapter traces Route 66, its terrain, its places, its challenges, the experiences of its desperate travellers, from the Joad family home in Oklahoma all the way to Los Angeles.
Pix to Words 