Mythos & Marginalia

life notes; flaws and all

j.g. lewis

original content and images ©j.g. lewis

a daily breath...

A thought du jour, my daily breath includes collected and conceived observations, questions of life, fortune cookie philosophies, reminders, messages of peace and simplicity, unsolicited advice, inspirations, quotes and words that got me thinking. They may get you thinking too . . .

look forward

The Tulips at St. James Park have run their course, the bulbs dug up and stored away until planting this fall.
    Right now it is just dirt, but I can feel potential.
    In the coming days, gardeners will fill the plant beds with a fresh crop of flowers to see us through the summer. I am anticipating beautiful things.
    Over the past couple of years, St. James Park has become a regular part of my landscape. It began during the COVID lockdown when I found myself passing through the park on my daily walks around downtown Toronto. It was more than a habit.
    The park became an oasis in my day; comfort within the concrete of the city. The shade of the magnificent trees always gave me a reason to stop.
    Sometimes I would sketch the flowers and trees, write a poem when the muse called out, or simply spend time with my journal or my camera.
    Some days I would just sit, as I did yesterday and the day before. Some days you only have to listen or look around.
    Yesterday, I noticed the water has been turned on in the bird bath after a two-year absence. It’s not quite a fountain but I know I’ll find myself, at some point, wasting time with my camera and capturing birds as they refresh themselves in the heat of the day.
    I look forward to it; time well-wasted is good for the soul. It’s always nice to have a place where there is the potential to do just that.

06/02/2023                                                                                                                   j.g.l.

?

We live in a world of what ifs.
What if we did something else,
or what if we weren’t there (as
sometimes we shouldn’t be
when it comes down to the
wrong place at the right time).
What if it never happened?
What if we had responded
differently or if we had taken
the advice we were told?
Would we have been so bold?

05/30/2023                                                                                        j.g.l.

Remembrance.

As it is, not
as we wish it to be.

You have days
to think back on,

and you do…

05/25/2023                                                                                           j.g.l.

listen

sit

just for a moment 

wherever you are

listen

look around

be present

 

take the time

a moment or two

don’t think

(or overthink)

simply be

 

you should do this more often

06/02/2021                                                                                  j.g.l.

Mondays are just young Fridays

It takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds for the light of the Sun to reach the Earth 93 million miles away.
   I know it takes about six days for a letter from Canada to arrive in the United Kingdom, but a few days more for correspondence to travel from Winnipeg to Toronto in the same country.
   Four minutes are required for a soft-boiled egg, but 14 minutes are needed for the water to reach a running boil.
   It takes roughly 14 minutes for me to walk to work or 17 minutes by streetcar (with, at least, a six-minute wait). I don’t drive because finding a parking spot downtown can, at times, take forever.
   It can take minutes or months for the answer to any question (depending on the circumstance), but even longer to muster the courage to ask.
   Politicians can make a promise in mere seconds, yet years to take action or hide from the obligation.
   Poems can generally be read in under a minute, but may take the entire day to be fully absorbed.
   A good novel may take a writer a decade to write, but it will be consumed over a weekend.
   Actual time is precise, but situations are variable. The importance of it all is subjective.
   Time equals duration or distance. Is it as relevant now as it was then?
   Time is time.
   How long does it take for my light to find its way to you?

05/29/2023                                                                                                     j.g.l.

 

grief and regret

News this week of the passing of Tina Turner was an unexpected shock to many of us, particularly those who had performed with her through the decades.
Social media was flooded with quotes, heartfelt remembrances and tributes from those she inspired.
    Many of us were.
    The words that particularly grabbed me were those of The Who’s Pete Townshend, who openly expressed grief and regret. Tina was the voice of the Acid Queen when his classic rock opera Tommy was transformed onto the silver screen in 1975.
    I, as a big fan of The Who, was infatuated by the original Tommy album and, admittedly, any of the music issued by the English rockers. Of course, I couldn’t wait to see the movie.
   The Ken Russell project was, in many ways, precursor to the music videos that flooded our screens at the end of that decade and well into the ‘80s. The movie was true to the storyline and, with a whose-who cast from the music industry, adequately told the tale of the deaf, dumb and blind boy.
    But one performance in the film affected me like no other and it was Tina’s seductive portrayal of the character. Sure, I had seen pictures of her in early issues of Rolling Stone magazine but the Ike and Tina Turner Review, like many of the stalwarts of early rock and roll, predated my intense interest in popular music.
    Tina came alive for me on the screen with her pure sex appeal: those lips, those legs, her entire presence was more than arousing for a young teenaged boy.
    And that voice; there was nothing like it. Ever.
    I didn’t hear anything new from Tina for years, but gained respect for the classic songs that would find there way onto the radio. Apparently there were a series of solo albums, but nothing charted.
    In 1982, while working at my first stint at a daily newspaper, I received a review copy of the soundtrack to the film Summer Lovers. This was at the beginning of the era where there was almost as much attention focused on the soundtrack as there was on the film itself.
    The Summer Lovers LP was, essentially, hit and miss (much like the movie) but among the artists of the day were two tracks by Tina, including a stunning cover of Robert Palmer’s Johnny and Mary.
    Aside those two tracks, I heard nothing else from Tina in those years, until I was driving to work in 1984 and What’s Love Got To Do With It? came on the radio. Her voice was unmistakable and I, like millions of others, rushed out to buy the vinyl.
    The rest of the story, as they say, is history.
    Tina became a major, empowering force in the industry and took her talents to stratospheric heights.
    Thankfully, her music will long live on.
    We all have Tina Turner moments now. As I read the tributes, the words of Townsend struck a chord. “I truly thought she would live forever,” he wrote on Facebook.
    His words about “meaning to track her down” hit me hard and should serve as a reminder.
    We all have people in our lives that were meaningful at one time or another, but we have lost track over the years. We think of them, sometimes at the strangest moments, and wonder where they are, what they are now doing, or if they even remember our presence.
    Perhaps now is a good time to find them and find out? Wouldn’t we be better off if we took the time, now, to make contact or at least try before we no longer have that chance?

R.I.P. Tina Turner

I'm like a pencil;
sometimes sharp,
most days
well-rounded,
other times
dull or
occasionally
broken.
Still I write.

j.g. lewis
is a writer/photographer in Toronto.

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logical and chronological

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The all-important Hyphen

Posted on January 21, 2015 // 2 Comments

 

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The all-important Hyphen

The hyphen: there is really not a lot to it.

At first glance, a small stroke using up less ink than a capital I (or lower
case for that matter), the hyphen holds many roles but is mainly used as a
joiner.

The hyphen brings words together.

Conveniently located adjacent to the numerals on your keyboard, the hyphen is
one of those reliable punctuation marks in a writer’s tool kit. It’s fairly
popular, rather practical, occasionally suffers from overuse, but has never
really been one of my go-to keys; I’m more of a semicolon guy.

The hyphen’s use and usefulness cannot be ignored. It’s helps modify and can
brighten up even the most euphorically-sunny day, further define a well-dressed
man in a made-to-measure three-piece suit, and can attach lovers joined by their
wedding vows. The hyphen, many times, can also be used to delineate parts within
a written date, or represent a span in time.

I suppose the weight of the hyphen really just occurred to me as I, again,
thought of my father and of his recent passing. I glance at his obituary and the
88 years summed up with a simple keystroke. Beneath his name sits a date of
birth and a date of passing; important dates indeed, but what of all the years
in between?

My father was just that, a true father. A Dad. But he was also son, and a
brother as well. He was a husband, uncle, brother-in-law, and a friend,
colleague, partner and co-worker. With each of those roles came responsibilities
he never seemed to shirk in a life filled with events and occasions, holidays,
graduations, weddings and anniversaries, career advancement, new cars and homes,
and fatherhood.

All those hours spent guiding his children, the lessons learned and wisdom
passed on, all represented by an insignificant hyphen.

It got me thinking about all the time between the start and stop of his life,
and mine. He made so much of his time on this planet, and I am just here.

I’m living in the hyphen right now and I have no idea when my full stop might
come. I would like to think the present is just another comma in the pages of a
life that still has many sentences and chapters to go, but maybe it’s time to be
more.

There are goals still not realized, and a purpose not fully defined. I have a
great deal to offer my family and friends, and to those I have yet to meet.
There is more life to live, and more air to breathe. I’d like to think there are
many hyphens still within my grasp.

I guess its about deciding to make the hyphen important and squeezing as many
memories and moments into this one small dash. I need now to be more open to
changes that will inevitably happen, to be prepared to accept compromise and
compassion.

It’s also time now to start paying attention to the smaller hyphens, the ones
that fall between self and awareness, or realization. Or preservation. Call it
self-examination. I don’t think I’m much different than any of us presented with
our middle-aged life (talk about a shocking hyphen). We all look at where we
were, and consider where we are going. How we will get there, and where exactly
is “there”?

I know I need to worry less about situations beyond my control, to be less
suspicious of others, and make myself more susceptible to options and emotions
presented to me. I need to be a more-reliable brother, and father. I need to be
a better friend, and I need to be able to become a stronger person. I need to
forgive more and criticize less (myself and others). I need to show a greater
aptitude for gratitude.

I need to live my life more by the example set by my father, and less like the
reckless self-absorbed teenager who once doubted his advice.

As stubborn as I am, I’ll still live by my words (or I will try), but in doing
so I will pay more attention to the hyphenation, beginning with less self-doubt and
more self-respect.

Decision Time

Posted on January 14, 2015 Leave a comment

Decisions

Decision Time

What will I do today? This week?
Each day I ask this, of myself. I ask this of others;
daily, hourly . . . each second of every minute I ask questions,
and
with each question comes a decision.
We all make decisions
all the time.
Continually.
Where to go, what to do, what to buy, whether to stay,
what to say,
how to say it, how to ask a question. ?????
All decisions.

Each and every act, goal, accomplishment or
failure, begins with a decision.

How can I be sure the decisions I make are right, or proper, or ethical . . . even moral?
I can’t.
I can try.
I can leverage all my knowledge and experience, and hope, and plan,
but even then I can’t be sure the decisions I make, at that time, are correct.

I am like everybody else.
We all struggle with decisions.
Many, or even most, of the decisions we make involve someone else. In fact, many of the decisions we make must function, or cooperate, or align, with decisions made by others.
And that is hard.
Even the simple decisions we must make are hard.
Every decision is one of hundreds of inter-connected, though seemingly unrelated, decisions made each day.

Life is a cumulative series of decisions.

Your decisions impact the lives of those around you; those you love
or those who, just by their nature of being where they are or what they are,
are just there.
Every day.
Every day we make decisions.
You decide how you will be viewed, how you will be remembered,
how you will be accepted, or how you will accept others.
All decisions.

We wake and walk upon each decision we make.

Some, in fact most, decisions are irreversible; resolution is not even in your hands.
And the decisions made by others may possibly be the most difficult decisions to deal with.
You are forced, without having to decide, to deal with the consequences
you had never intended.
One decision leads to another, and there is always the danger of collateral damage.
And if we don’t question the decisions made by others, we wonder: why they did that; why they said that; why they left, or let you go?
All are questions fuelled by decisions, and decisions made without your input. Mainly
decisions made with little care or without concern for you.
Then again it’s not the actual decision that hurts, as much as it’s how you react to the decision.
If you don’t react properly, there is certain to be conflict.
Decisions can lead to arguments, as much as agreement, or conclusion, or worry . . .

Without decisions we do little, or nothing, to contribute to
this grand parade we call life.
Think about it.
There, right there, that’s a decision; you have to decide how you will think about it
and what you will think about.
What will you think?
What choice will you make?

If you don’t make a choice, you are leaving it up to a chance, or fate. Kismet.
And taking a chance is nowhere near effective as making a decision.
It might be easier, at the time,
but really it’s not.
Not at all.
When we make the decision to leave it up in the air — to leave it to chance — that in itself
is a decision; not one to be taken lightly,
and one that can only lead to indecision.

Indecision can kill you, if not physically then morally, or spiritually.
Just as the wrong decision, or even the right decision at the wrong time, can
take its toll on how life should, or could, be lived.

With decision comes responsibility.
We own each decision we make, and every mistake made.
Spur-of-the-moment decisions often haunt us the longest.
So how do you make the right decision, without worry, without regret?
I suppose, above all else, it’s a matter of being flexible, and even more so,
being fair.
If you are making a decision it should be made in fairness, and with intention.
And it should be made for all the reasons that are good and whole,
and right.
Not just right for you, but those you care about.
Think about it.
Ask yourself: What do I want . . . what do I really want?
Or,
is what I have what I really want?

Is it?
Make that decision.

My January Breath

Posted on January 7, 2015 Leave a comment

 

January Breath

My January Breath

Snowflakes. Only movement.                                                                                                                           Twilight comes until twilight goes.                                                                                                              Daylight leaves too early. Swiftly.                                                                                                                 The deeper the night, the colder                                                                                                            the darkness.

My January breath suspended,                                                                                                                 my thoughts wishing to go                                                                                                        somewhere. Anywhere, other                                                                                                                than here. A deafening                                                                                                                         winter silence.

The air is slow.Still. Almost.                                                                                                                   Alone, even in the shadow                                                                                                                            of the streetlamps. Nobody to                                                                                                              shield your ears from the cold,                                                                                                                   or dampen the inevitable.

Pointless the task, reviewing patterns                                                                                                   and paths carved into the cartography of                                                                                              the ego. Realization. What once was,                                                                                                     may never be. This season                                                                                                                       stays the longest.

Even with full sunlight. The wind,                                                                                                     should it decide, rips through me.                                                                                                      Harsh. I am not here, not really.                                                                                                 Permanent as my                                                                                                                                 January breath.

Flurries obscure constellations and                                                                                                         the moon. Isolation. The circumference                                                                                                   of my being is reduced. Limited.                                                                                                      Blinded by temporal                                                                                                                             beauty, or tears.

Nothing has happened, or is                                                                                                        happening. The brazen wind chill                                                                                                    clashes with body heat, the atmosphere                                                                                                the victor. Obvious. The world                                                                                                                 still gets in your eyes.

Time agape with a grey known only                                                                                                           to the night. A solitary trek through the                                                                                      ordinary. Undisturbed. Each step resonates                                                                                         the soul-crunching scream of                                                                                                                      a thousand snowflakes.

Beneath winter’s fickle facade, the ice                                                                                             cracks. The fragility of the planet apparent.                                                                            Vulnerable. Each season has precious moments.                                                                             Gone. Time stands still. This is                                                                                                                   my January breath.

Only Wednesday

Posted on December 31, 2014 // 1 Comment

IMG_5467

 

Only Wednesday

Wednesday sits naked                                                                                                                               and ordinary                                                                                                                                          waiting

between the bookends of social Saturday
and restive Sunday. The day is                                                                                                                little more

than a cluster of hours or a stop on the                                                                                        treadmill. Indecisive and                                                                                                                       lonely

nobody chooses a Wednesday. Nothing                                                                                       happens                                                                                                                                                           on a Wednesday

and it’s the same each week.

 

Sept 11/01, a Tuesday. London Subway bombings: July 7/05, a Tuesday, also July 21/05, and also a Tuesday. Assassinations: John Lennon on a Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. a Thursday, and John F. Kennedy a Friday. Kurt Cobain’s body was discovered on a Wednesday, but he chose his way out three days earlier. Nothing happens on a Wednesday.

There are fewer concerts mid-week, and opening night is never a Wednesday. They never open the Olympics on a Wednesday. Nobody gets married on a Wednesday.

Yet I will choose Wednesday, or I will start with a Wednesday. I’ll begin with a page, a place where I can plant my thoughts. I have many thoughts, each week, every day (even on Wednesday), but I will commit to posting something once a week. There are seven days to choose from, and I chose Wednesday.

Now I may post something else on some other day, I’m like that (a true Gemini). If I am moved or if I have time, if the stars align or the moon gives me a nudge, or if something is really bothering me, I won’t wait for Wednesday. But I will post something each Wednesday.

Something will happen each Wednesday, every week. Right here. If you want to see, or wish to be reminded, sign up. There will also be a daily breath (usually 140 characters or less) and it will not be limited to Wednesday, but will, or should, arrive every day.

Until Wednesday . . .

-j-

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