Al Dennis, Age 44, Retired: Recent Episodes
Al Dennis
Join Al Dennis in his attempt to retire and stay retired with a little bit of net worth and a few more weeks of unEmployment Insurance coming to him from the government. He thinks it's pretty easy. He would like to suggest that you change your notions of what 'retirement' is, then do it too.
That's what you do with the DS.
Sometimes an image can work better than a spiritual reading. This is what occurred today after I opened an email to see this image this morning.
There is just so much to be unsaid that I won't bother. In this episode we learn what apposite means. It might not mean what you think.
This podcast, like its title, contains all sorts of Saskatchewan literary amalgamation.
Lorna Crozier's touching, perfect little memoir has gotten me rambling about the passage of time. Ruminating, yearning to brumate.
Good talks this morning. Therapeutic. Getting to the heart of what makes me feel anything, think anything. TREEPLANTERLAND and the trials that came from it. I could have missed the pain, but I would've had to miss the dance.
Resuming after The Break
DIY is the theme. The Spirit of Christ is the consideration.
(Pictured is the dismantled cement mixer that I must now learn how to 'mantle')
A nice little phone call with my Ma about the great book by Lornia Crozier, Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats).
Lorna signed this book to me and I started reading on the night of my birthday. Her handwritten, pre-epigraph, to me.
"one breath, one foot at a time
on the path wherever
it goes --"
Pictured is Canada's elusive prophet of folk, Raghu Lokanathan. His magnificent song, and the beautiful community of Wells, BC, should be enjoyed here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq72SUln1QQ
Here, now, is an excerpt from BEEFHAMTON:
He could hear the men praying, chanting from another room. Andy’s heart swirled like a swallow trapped in a barn. Should he enter? He entered silently. He slipped out of his sandals. He cleaned his feet in a little basin. And his face and hands in another. He stepped into the masjid barefoot. The chanting was beautiful. It took him directly to God, Allah. He began towards the prayer room, but somehow was unable to enter, he slid into a side classroom instead, and got to his knees and put his forehead against the floor.
Allah, he said. Allah ak bar.
The second his forehead touched the floor a voice came at him firm, insistent, but also patriarchal … like some sort of numinous finger of Abraham Lincoln. The voice said:
GET UP AND GO TO WORK RIGHT NOW. YOU HAVE ONE MORE DAY ON THIS PAY PERIOD, THAT’S WORTH AT LEAST $200.
COLLECT YOUR PAY ON FRIDAY AND LEAVE BEEFHAMTON FOREVER.
NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU GET, JUST LEAVE.
GO TO WORK NOW AND NEVER GO BACK!
Andy lay for a moment with his head pressed against the cool pine floor. He exhaled and deflated himself with gratitude for a moment, then was up on his knees. He inhaled and exhaled, one last time before opening his eyes. He knew that when he did so he would be totally refreshed. He opened his eyes.
On the desk in front of him was an English-Language copy of Quran.
Andy’s mouth fell open. He winced. He grabbed the book and stood and went for the door immediately. He stuffed the Quran in his backpack, which was Will’s backpack, actually. He’d started using it when the Crybaby captured his. He wondered if he should go back to the Crybaby to reclaim his old backpack, his manifesto, before he left. He could not face this thought just yet. He hopped on his pushie, and pushed off towards the abattoir before anything could distract him from his willingness to obey what he believed was a direct order from God, Allah.
As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill
So my body leaves no scar
On you and never will
Through windows in the dark
The children come, the children go
Like arrows with no targets
Like shackles made of snow
True love leaves no traces
If you and I are one
It's lost in our embraces
Like stars against the sun
As a falling leaf may rest
A moment on the air
So your head upon my breast
So my hand upon your hair
And many nights endure
Without a moon or star
So we will endure
When one is gone and far
True love leaves no traces
If you and I are one
It's lost in our embraces
Like stars against the sun
Today, in honour of locating a 1989 loonie, I cast a hex on myself. Turning to the I Ching, I ask:
What are the underlying causes leading me to drink alcohol and will clearly identifying them lead me from anger to sobriety and peace?
Okay, so I tried to cram a few questions into one consultation here.
The first good episode in a while. Oh, well ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clw_E53vFGk
He is a wellspring of determination ..
https://www.amazon.com/Farmer/dp/B001BNJ0NS
Meanwhile, I must get back to advising millionaires how to make more money.
Surprised by waking up to minus six degrees centigrade, the host resumes his path. Eats, forgetting everything but the mixed bowl of KD and cream of leek soup.
St Paddy's sobriety. New beginnings.
The icicles from the leaky upstairs bathtub (pictured).
Desiderata, why don't you come to your senses?
You've been out riding fences for so long ...
In the image is a picture of the Duke Blueberry bush. I'm going to see if I can't order some Duke Blueberry seedlings to be shipped here.
The ducks I am trying to identify through a pair of the worlds worst binoculars in this episode are closest in appearance to a cross between a merganser and a an oldsquaw.
Bill Aide would know.
I believe that now, at last,
the quality of the literature might improve.
The tragedy in the loss of handwriting
is not the loss of handwriting.
Only those with the handwriting know.
Handwriting is meditation.
Handwriting contains blood,
Nature
is man made.
Cities will pour into countrysides,
electricity will pour
into old bans,
and old barns will fall into oceans,
be raised,
razed
or remain
jubilant wobbly...
Water will touch underskirts,
spritz plants. Slide down your hand
hold the ---- with me here
water
sifts,
spritzes under skirts as the page turns not only your fingers
to yourself,
your thoughts, divinity
(handwriting like fingers to yourelf)
upholds you
how you want to be held,
your back to the bed,
hard and hearty against the bed,
and otherwise.
cities will pour electricity into your countrysides
the incomes, the outcomes,
the sunlight,
the ducks on the tide.
I felt like a character in a Chekov for a while tonight. That's a good feeling.
The sign in the picture was found in the basement. It dates back to the Gertrude Thurber days, when this place was called Tiverton Tidalview B & B.
The B &B is gone, but the Tidalview remains.
March 9. The funny thing is, none of us should be at the banquet. Yet we are allowed to be at the banquet. And there is a banquet, and there is laughter, and there are many years to make milestones. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Dreams.
And none of us should be at the banquet. Keep this in mind and you will understand humility:
There is a banquet, we should not be at it, yet we are allowed to be at it and are at it.
This feels as good as a belly laugh.
(The picture does not really depict the rare colour of sunlight that hit the pond this morning, March 9, 2021)
The picture is of the seaglass I collected yesterday in my humility walk to Israel Cove. Humility. I will still seek it today. Still weep a little inside.
Sometimes we experience so much joy that we forget we are still in great pain. When the intensity of the joy departs, the pain is still there. It surprises us. It bites us again.
When we are off the path of the superior person, even a tiny bit, we are more vulnerable to this pain, and we react to it poorly. The first thing to do is return to the path of the superior person. Be humble, shrink the ego, stretch, breathe, disengage from our pain.
One way to do so is through Simran. That is, the Sikh practice of reciting the Name of G-d to one's self over and over. This is one way, to humble ourselves enough to ensure that we are capable of shrinking our ego.
Love.
Walter Gretzky died on March 4, 2021. The image is the autography Walter Gretzky signed for my Mom when I met Walter in the Vancouver Park Hyatt lobby during the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.
I filmed this video in Vancouver 2010 seconds after Crosby scored. I believe this moment stemmed from the power of a Walter Gretzky hug:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB-r55vp6yc
waltergretzky
Apparently, there was no March 3. Is that a glitch in the matrix? This podcast has nothing to do the fact that there was no March, 3, 2021. That has nothing to do with me. New ideas. New time frame? New life.
I found the image while looking for an image of the elusive Blue Notebook. It embarrasses me to admit that I did write this. I'm sharing it because it feels like something I would share on Instagram and it might be general enough to like it.
Lunar eclipse, a liminal moment. Feel the light shining inside you. Continue the path, resolute like one crossing a wintry stream. Joyous of heart.
For posterity's sake, here are the lyrics to my song to Castro:
O to run all night!
O to run all baby!
Castro baby, fifteen miles,
O you do not know...
(ch.. ch.. ch..)
O you do not know!
(ch..ch..ch..)
O you do not know!
Where's that baby?
I don't know.
O you do not know!
(ch..ch..ch..)
O to run all night!
O to run all baby!
How many babies do you know?
O you do not know
Here is the great song Sleep the Clock around by Belle & Sebastian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mB8V9Lz7u0
How much is that fish house in the picture? This is the fishouse I would love to buy, photograph taken on my morning walk. It would be the best summer hangout, up there over the sandy beach, the clear water rolling in.
I love this episode. It felt like the best one yet. The picture is the picture of by far my favourite book on earth.
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/07/887649010/regardless-of-what-you-think-irregardless-is-a-word
Interesting that the spontaneous Dictionary Hukamnama in this episode opened to a spread beginning with words that began with the letters "pl". PL are the initials for Patrick Lane. Yesterday's episode was devoted, in great part, to Patrick Lane. One never knows what the energy of a Hukamnama fully means.
This was the discarded writing I referenced in the couchcast:
"The Old Sage began to answer and then could not and then closed his eyes. Sittting on the giant, 400-year-old log that had been there so long it had grass growing out of its back, the Old Sage experienced something like an electric current throbbing into him from the bark of Meredith the Mermaid. It coursed through his buttocks and palms. Several sharp breaths came out his nose, then he went silent.
He breathed out sharply again.
“I come here to extinguish the bad things in myself,” he said.
END
Solitary Confinement in the Digital Age.
A nice podcast featuring a secretly recorded conversation with my mom in which we discuss our mission to have a lane in North Saanich, BC (pictured) named after the late, great Canadian poet, Patrick Lane.
A conflicted travelling drunkard. In over his head, betraying those closest to him, lying, philandering, full of awe, and aspects of love.
This is a fairly uninspired episode. Were it not for my neighbour Alger, this couchcast would have expressed very little of value.
Which Viny Supernova I Youtube Ad
https://youtu.be/LBkZxxSTWaM
Vinyl Supernova 2 Youtube Ad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kbgPyIiOBE
You may buy your votes at the website below and you are encouraged to vote as many times as possible. $2 per vote.
https://sidneytoday.ca/2021/02/19/votes-now-available-for-purchase-at-sidneytoday-ca/
A poem within a podcast.
https://anchor.fm/al-dennis/episodes/Morse-Code-----------------a-poem-written-and-read-by-Alex-Ternowetsky-eqg16g
Listening to Django Reinhardt cookin' some burgers. What a day of contradiction, especially regarding the bovines.
Another couchcast idea that came to me whilst urinating. The idea that Leonard Cohen's The Old Revolution is basically his imitation of a folk song he made his own 'The Partisan.'
Then his other folk song: Un Canadien Errant
Leonard Cohen himself translates Un Canadien Errant in his incredible piece of footage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V-Rth-NKk4
FLANEUR
Fear nothing,
walk the night streeets eternal
dream the Gardens transcendental,
walk among them, think
GESTHEMANE.
(mind the gap)
All sorrows not included, counter-currents,
culture, walk the path,
the treetops sifting light like
MIRACLE, the song
of myself in my head like a line
from a song of thyself, like a sunbeam
waft thru brain current be:
the crazy person to the godless girl,
the snarl in the lip of the death-eyed dog,
the secret inside the man,
the man with the throat full of
secret, the secret condecension.
(mind the gap)
the CN Tower,
be the CN Tower?
Be the CN tower, perfect, omnipresent, be
the broken man if broken man
you need to be.
be the change you want to see in the girl,
barren as the beer glass, empty, now
of a sudden, soft.
The Flaneur,
buying weed from a girl named Charity
on Grace Street. Charity on Grace
Street, madman uttering Dante in the city
This notebook felt like a significant find. And was a rewarding read for the reader, who is there.
At least two poems were discovered here that he will go back and transcribe.
Songs listened to are Baby Julie Come Home, by American Analog Set. Incredible animated video here too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ifdpAE9Ggk
And Corrin Raymond Give it May. This link is a different version than the one played on the couchcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZedC4oRu14U
This didn't start out to be a Joe couchcast, but after it coined the word couchcast, and since February 11 is Joes birthday, it decided that the first "couchcast" in the history of the world should be about Joe. Little Guy Joe.
The photo is of the Alexandra Bridge and Toonooba. We wander lost into a Central Queensland sunset for a while.
My Mother and I discuss the fact that today was my late brother's birthday. We discuss the labour she was in 42 years ago today. (WARNING: THIS CALL BEGINS ABRUPTLY AT 17:22)
Then we contribute to a breaking news story on SidneyToday.ca. What a family!
https://sidneytoday.ca/2021/02/10/jack-lohman-to-resign-as-ceo-at-royal-bc-museum/
.
This mystical and transcendent episode swirls from the power of the Thing the Jews are tapped into. It all begins, this one, the moment the mysterious Chouchani is thought of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsieur_Chouchani
The music is from the Jew Geoff Berner. Keep it light enough to travel. If ever a film was made about BEEFHAMTON, Berner's Keep it Light Enough To Travel might qualify as the music for the HBZ section.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCi7QTt0B1k
A "clouchard" means a beggar or a tramp. Especially, for some reason, one in France.
Chouchani decreed that this episode would be a double-lenghter.
https://jeremystewartmusic.bandcamp.com/track/mountain-alone
Next Year in Jerusalem.
The jpeg of this indicates that the title is 'no matter of principle'. At the last minute the poet decided the title should be 'its simpler now'. None of that really matters, of course.
I let the iTunes shuffle, let the truth roll in, keep on along in the Easy Work as this work of 4th Cinema continues bereft of cinema screen.
I was in Victoria and Sidney as I filled this notebook. Had just bought Seagress the Sailboat and crashed into H Dock in the Port Sidney Marina.
SAY VALLEY MAKER, a song by Bill Callaghan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gRheCFcllA
Bury me in wood, and I will splinter.
Bury me in stone, and I will quake.
Bury me in water, and I will geyser.
Bury me in fire, and I'm gonna phoenix.
I'm gonna phoenix.
FULL LYRICS:
With the grace of a corpse
In a riptide
I let go
And I slide, slide, slide
Downriver
With an empty case by my side
An empty case
That's my crime
And I sing
Say Valley Maker
To keep from cursing
Yes I sing
Say Valley Maker
To keep from cursing
River oh, river end
River oh, river end
River go, river bend
Take me through the sweet valley
Where your heart blooms, blooms, blooms
Take me through the sweet valley
Where your heart is covered in dew
And when the river dries
Will you bury me in wood
Where the river dries
Will you bury me in stone
Oh, I never really realized
Death is what it meant
To make it on my own
Because there is no love
Where there is no obstacle
And there is no love
Where there is no bramble
There is no love
On the hacked away plateau
And there is no love
In the unerring
And there is no love
On the one true path
Oh I cantered out here
Now I'm galloping back
So bury me in wood
And I will splinter
Bury me in stone
And I will quake
Bury me in water
And I will geyser
Bury me in fire
And I'm gonna phoenix
I'm gonna phoenix
Another book names this Hexagram : The Harmonious Family, The Well-Ordered Household.
I think maybe three days ago maybe now we encountered it. It was the first Hexagram we cast in our entire history and in our first steps towards harmoniousness.
The notebook read from in this episode was inscribed in the years spanning my brother's death. I wrote it in Rockhampton, Australia.
Raghu @ Cameron House. Full Concert Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42OrmKzPNfo
Raghu's phenomenal concert at Cameron House, Toronto. October 2, 2010.
And some great stories connected to the great, unsung singer, songwriter, celebrity to the underground.
Love, ultimately.
(Poet's note: I think in the last line "finally" should be replaced by "someday".)
Jeremy Stewart
Raghu Lokanathan
the benediction of art
red hearts trump
rain in the desert
the endless movieZZZZ of Sion
breathe
love
bridge
The picture is what you get when you Google "the giggling emoji".
The link to the full Leonard Cohen song is here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7QFsV65D-I
This second episode of the re-awakening returns in gratitude to Jeremy Stewart, the man and his art.
The song Don't Look Away from the LIght is no doubt a form of 4th Cinema.
This podcast is such.
There are some beautiful surprises in this episode, including an appearance from Bagwan Osho Rajneesh. Sorry to spoil the surprise.
Swap the stance,
Put your best foot forward,
Swap the stance,
Put your bet foot forward,
Swap the stance and say:
Turn
Oh
Wet
Sky
Don’t go searching for the things that hurt you
Don’t go searching for the things that hurt you
Don’t fish the swamp and don’t go lying
Don’t fish the swamp and don’t go lying
Don’t go lying
Don’t go lying
Down
In
Roads!
Turn, O, Wet Sky ….
The nipple will dribble the harder you try
The nipple will dribble the harder you try
The nipple will dribble the harder you try
And the teat of creation will never run dry!
The great big voloptuous teat,
The mighty teat,
The ever-so-sweet teat
The sweetest teat
That sweet sweet teat
(Perhaps there’s two,
One for me. One for you)
The nipple will dribble the harder you try.
And the teat of creation will never run dry.
How long had it been? How long? Not too long. Two haircuts, maybe three, and here he was back on track, still with his bicycle that Neil had fortunately rescued, and with a new fresh bald head on his shoulders and a wee bit of agitation inside it on account for the fact that he was late for work.
Andy Zalupan, the meatworker, was late for work.
Time to swap the stance,
put your best foot forward.
Remember it might feel hard,
but it's easy work.
get objective
with the subjectives
and you will clearly see,
she is not for thee.
break your heart,
don’t expect to set it free.
she gets cozy with those
who jail you
and while you’re twisting in that cell
she cozys up to the one who has jailed you
and with him condemns you to hell.
when finally you are kicked
into that light of day,
and swap your confession for her comforts
it takes her several days of smokescreens
concealments and outright lies
to confess the ways she stabbed you,
to show you all the knives.
and you long to forgive her
and yes you forgive her
and you long to be with her
but NO...
get objective with the subjectives
and unfortunately you’ll know
that your heart has become a bruise
for all the world to see,
and against your will
and to your great horror
your heart has been set free.
Al Dennis has only one dream in life. To do nothing. That is, to support himself trading shares online. This podcast follows a man who knows absolutely nothing about the stock market attempt to turn $2000 into a day trading share portfolio that brings him "enough money to get by".
So this poem reminded me of Waltzing Matilda.
It's the work of a great writer. No.
Both are works of very good writers.
Waltzing Matilda is eternal.
This poem is eternal, kind of.
It is not the work of a poet,
it is the work of a guy who rhymes.
It is the work of a guy who has a good sense
for the sounds of the words.
It is not the work of a poet.
But it is a very good work.
Read it all here.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43187/the-highwayman
IN VOLUNTARY SEGREGATION
All my overreactions
are reactions
against the age of overreaction.
I trickster,
I ballast,
I manifest.
I seek to say the unsayable,
like ‘palimpsest.’
Why even allow a word like that?
All my overreactions are reactions
against the age of overreaction.
I trickster,
I manifest.
In lieu of saying the unsayable,
I ‘F’ the ineffable, am left,
to contemplate the curse of ‘Jeff’.
Jeff!
Jeff as a first name.
Jeff? Say it until the curse is yours
to understand. Jeff.
All my overreactions are reactions against the age of overreaction.
I seek this solitude to nourish
the insanity. I master
the act of self-neglect, I perfect
the art of placing forward nothing
but the worst of all possible feet, overreacting,
ad infinituum,
in hope of counteracting
the age of overreaction.
In ballast,
in painful and all-too finite
jest, i know
i go profane in the wee hours,
the wine bottle
on the floor beside my foot,
my worst possible foot.
the images of the consequences
revolt me.
Let’s talk revolution.
Unfortunately I do not have great confidence in your ability to bear one thing in mind as you listen to this podcast. It is a call for awareness but I don't think you will recognize this.
A pandemic has just been used to both dethrone Trump and sell drugs. Someone I just spoke to pointed out to me that" the vaccine is the biggest piece of commerce in the history of the planet."
The narrative in the media today is that of triumph. A fresh start for America. This is anything but. The establishment - and in my opinion it is an evil one, one that habitually drops bombs far away villages wherever it thinks it can make a buck- has won back control.
I don't think you will be able to remain neutral. I suspect that you are one of the almost everyone I know who has bought into the brilliant narrative the mainstream media, bought out by the drug companies, has crafted around outgoing President Donald Trump.
Here I speak of how that, to me, seems to have happened. If you were someone like Jake Tapper of CNN you would condemn what I say before hearing it and childishly try to make me seem pro-Trump.
This is not a pro Trump piece. It is again a call to ask you to pay attention to the workings of media, the power of advertisers, and the way narratives are constructed.
That is what has happened here.
Full disclosure: my heart was with Bernie Sanders. I know he got railroaded, by the people who are paying CNN to say what they are saying and to cover news that way. Follow the money. Look at the people who are paying the salaries of the talking heads at CNN. It's not just CNN, but the same people who are paying CNN to say what they say, are paying other outlets too.
Joe Biden won the Democratic primaries because of some brilliant political manueuvriung. Bernie entered the race as the huge favourite, so what camp Biden did was position a bunch of decoy candidates (Klobuchar, Buttegig, Mini Mike, some other ones) as actual candidates in order to split the voters preferences. Some people naturally gravitated away from Bernie to these other candidates, enough so that when they all followed the plan, dropped out of the race all at the same time and threw their support behind Biden, it was enough to dilute Bernie's momentum.
If, as Trump correctly pointed out at the time, Elizabeth Warren would have dropped out and supported her ideological counterpart, Bernie Sanders, America might really have cause to celebrate today. So would I.
This is the prologue to the introduction to work of Jeremy Stewart, at least in some sense. In essence, or essentially.
Links to some of the referenced shite:
Jeremy's poem 'bugs groucho I: self-portrait with greasepaint eyebrows & moustache':
https://bnw-mag.blogspot.com/2020/03/jeremy-stewart-bugs-groucho-1-5.html
JW Dunne's curious Experiment with Time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Experiment_with_Time
Singing Jeremy Stewart to my dog in her last days, I
reel at the thought of reels, I
go dizzy with Vertov, I, Kino I,
realize or strive to realize
both Self (mine)
and selflessness.
I read from TREEPLANTERLAND's vital thesis,
reveal one small scene from Absentia.
I imagine a film called Colonizers,
Then imagine that film a porn.
No no no hyphens necessary
when you're here alone here all alone.
Alone, here
in Absentia.
So, I should state that I have taken to messaging Bonnie Allen, who, as far as I know, receives money from the CBC in Regina, Saskatchewan.
One of the nice things about cancel culture is that once you are cancelled, once you have been prohibited from contributing anything positive to society by people who claim to only want positive contributions to society.... once these people forbid you from doing any good in the world, like, say, writing a poem, once they forbid you from even accessing gainful employment, all you have left is yourself...
and then the miracle.... well it is all miracle, always miracle for all of us, always miracle, always miracle unfolding ...
once you no longer strive for gain, some kind of healing occurs. You can be yourself, because you have to be yourself, all you have is yourself (and 'your' dog, I guess)
so i do have access to some private correspondence of both Bonnie Allen and Stephanie Taylor, the latter of the two claims to write for the Canadian Press.
I can say that Bonnie Allen is a decent, thoughtful person. Stephanie Taylor, hmmm still don't know about that one.
I like the dialogue that can take place in the Global Village. At last, as McLuhan stated, the "centre is nowhere the margins are everywhere".
Technology has enabled me to have a voice. One, albeit, that no one listens to. But I will keep voicing.
Not to write any wrong, perhaps, or perhaps... no... i give this voice to the world in the hope that I can heal myself.
Thank you for listening. I'm sure you haven't.
In this episode, as you learn how to make a delicious pot of cha in the tradition of the Punjab, you will learn of some of the spectral forces that accompany my scholarship.
The ramblings herein meander from Prince George, BC to The Nordheim Ravine, which is connected to Toronto's Winston Churchill Boulevard.
All of the above are Supernatural Lanscapes. This episode specifically details how the ghosts of Ernest Hemingway and Marshall McLuhan can still be encountered in The Nordheim Ravine, how I found them and they found my beautiful Lady Castro and me.
The mansion in the photograph attached to this episode is where Ernest Hemingway lived for a couple years as a young man. I took the photograph, standing at the bottom of the barranca.
SPOILER ALERT: A link to the documentary Marshall McLuhan shot in this ravine - a documentary that ultimately may have been responsible for saving the ravine - can be found below.
I posted this link originally, by the way. It was the first time the film was made available in digital format. The academic geek in me considers this a minor, very minor but not insignificant contribution to the growing field of McLuhan scholarship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDzkjL7r5zg
I have inside experience with people involved with The Epoch Times, Shen. Yun and the practical, beautiful wisdom of Master Li.
The people who publish The Epoch Times are the same people who produce Shen Yun. I don't know why they don't disclose that they are followers of Master Li, I don't know how it all works. I think they should, but they don't.
I do know this: Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) is not a cult. Not even close.
I also know that any society run by Falun Dafa would be infinitely better that whatever you call this we have now.
CNN, Fox News,climb downfromyour polarity.
The media in Canada. has written a lot about the cruelty of solitary confinement. There is a large movement among journalists to write stories about how to counteract solitary confinement.
I have spent years in solitary confinement. My crime has made me unpopular, indefensible, in the media. Yet I feel that if the same journalist who continually spoke about the horrors of racism or solitary confinement had any true interest in these matters...
It would seem natural to talk to me.
But I make myself multi-dimensional in the media.
A white man who channels the trixter can be a trixter.
lol
Jeremy Stewart is one of these artists who will be talked about long after he is dead, by a public that could not accept him in his lifetime.Maybe, he won't because electricity is enabling a public of morons.
He's a Kafka at heart. A bankrupt at wessel sphincter. I'm guessing he's uncircumcised. Only Jeremy would apprecieate the fact that Raghu Lokanathan once publicly declared that he got circumcised at the age of 8.
What a dramatic way to begin a discussion of Jeremy Stewart, a man who once had abrasive ways. Jeremy Stewart, a man who once had abrasive ... abraisiveness. From the basement suite poverty of a mother who would not quit., Jeremy Stewart learned not to quit, either. he just kept fucking shoving his art in your face. At some point in his shitbag, penurious, malfeasant existence, Jeremy Stewart, obviously, was given something by art.
Something fucking made this guy push and push and push, and in this 17, or more, part series of episode, we are going to try to tap Jeremy Stewart. Tranquillo, Amigot.
Watch the documentary and read this write up, then we'll make another show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE8XRTSGY_g
Mike Rivet is holy man, who in no way consents to anything that makes him look bad.
Like Marshall McLuhan, he is a gangly egret who once wrote out the contents of The Knowledge Book By Hand.
He always steals my girls.
He did, however, cause me to meet Bulent Corak, who is actually the spirit of Rumi, the living, re-incarnated, spirit of Rumi, who then presented me with my own personal copy of The Knowledge Book.
It is Presented for your Information.
A song of about drinking tea and praising God.
A song of gratitude to my Punjabi friends.
Waheguruji ka khalsa. Waheguruji qi Fateh!
In this beautiful, precedent-setting episode of Solitary Confinement in the Digital Age, I invite you into my house, and let what happens happen.
The evening's impetus comes from me discovering a Hunter S Thompson book in a thrift store, getting some beer, writing a song/poem with inflamatory words that should merely, by now, be cool. It goes through the great Leonard Cohen and the great Cat Power. The great Cat Power is the great Chan Marshall, who might be an alcoholic, like me.
I know about the great Chan Marshall because of the great, the greatest, Patti Schmidt. I don't know how to spell her name and I am not going to check. But Patti Schmitt(?) was once the host of the show that made Canadian indie music the best indie music in the world: the show was broadcast on CBC radio 2 during the 90s. It was called Brave New Waves.
Hey ... It's Brave New Waves
An unsung genius of Canadian broadcasting. How many great Canadian bands will read this and not realize the slight they have done Patti Smitt (lol) by not demanding that she receive, at the very least
I'm not checking how to spell her name. I love her. I met her once at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto and this was after listening to her show all five days a week after lockdown. The best fuckin' show.
Anyhoo, when I met her at the Horseshoe Tavern, I didn't quite believe it was her. It just seemed too good to be true.
She insisted she was she. To make her prove it - GET THIS! - I made her say the show's intro into my ear.
"Hey ... It's Brave New Waves"
If you have never heard the show Brave New Waves I won't bother explaining the matchless brilliance of this.
I didn't mention the above story in the podcast, by the way. If you've read this far consider yourself backstoried.
last night i assassinated
the song of myself
again. saw sorrow
in pooled raindrops.
i awoke to disbelief, relief.
in one of the two puddles was history
puddled ice was evident.
one puddle was history
one puddle was my own pooled
nightmare
from which i cannot awake.
Finnegan, Finnegan!
I can neither sleep nor forget thee!
Please neither forget nor remember me.
I am still recovering from the Public Service Announcement Andrew Packham bequeathed to the treeplanting tribe.
Life has gone on for everyone else. People got to feel good and moral and activist for condemning me. Then that all got forgotten.
I'm still recovering from it. It almost killed me. Maybe it is still killing me.
Here's a start of a poem about it.
I'm a classy motherfucker
on the phone
Leave me alone
Don't leave me alone
I'm a classy motherfucker
on the phone
Who do you need? Who do you love? When you come undone.
It is recommended to click on this link directly after listening to the poem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X5KweDhsaI
Leo Tolstoy's A Calendar of Wisdom contains spiritual sustenance for every day of the year. Tolstoy considered this book, more than War and Peace, more than Anna Karenina as the reason he was put on this earth as a writer.
The December 21 reading, centres around the topic of Prayer.
This poem would be difficult to read for a person with a heavy Asian accent. But the words would all still be exactly as they should be.
Words can be wrong when it comes to the things they denote.
Words are both kidnappings and ransom notes.
Something to consider.
Something to strive for.
The nipple will dribble the harder you try.
These were written in 2019 when Alex Ternowetsky was living on Long Island, Nova Scotia. At this point in his life he was working at a fish plant, enjoying his coworkers and his anonymity among them. When the hurricane came, his identity his history was revealed. It was like that skirt of Marilyn Monroe, only this Marilyn was an armless war-amp who could not afford panties, or medication for sexual disease.
These poems are significant in that they speak of Ternowetsky, great modern poet, and his admiration for Leonard Cohen. In this segment, Ternowetsky also records for the first time his coining of the term 'Museworthy'.
In this podcast, Al Dennis and Ryan H Wugalter, a Jew, discuss the musical greatness of Raghu Lokanathan. The phonecall took place sometime between 2009 and 2011, and is interesting, because at this point Jian Gomeshi has not been disgraced by vindictive women so caught up in their own angst that they thought the police could bring them some kind of happiness in life.
The conversation occurred at some point between the time when Jian Gomeshi interviewed Billy Bob Thornton on his national radio and television show Q and when he got kicked off the show because, well ... that is a different story. This podcast is about Raghu Lokanathan. And Gomeshi is mentioned here, because of a letter Al Dennis wrote to Jian Gomeshi during the height of the Gomeshi's (positive) attention. Gomeshi, did not respond to the email Al Dennis sent. Nor did Gomeshi make any attempt to follow up on the email begging him to pay attention to Raghu Lokanathan .
This tune is important because it is the lyrics as sung by the poet, envisioning the chorus.
As Al Dennis prepares for winter his 'pretirement' experiment/adventure, he discovers that the joy of a hot bath might also have immense practical value in his quest to get through the coldest months of the year.
In conjunction with his hyper-lunar and uber-unreliable mind, Al Dennis, aged 44, retired, contemplates resigning himself a podcast called The Daily Supernova, hosted himself and a former personality of his, Aldous Supernova.
After all, every day is a supernova, is it not? It's either an implosion or an explosion or an improvised potion of each. It is a prank call, it is a love letter, as Steinbeck might put it it is a poem, a stink a noise. Everyday, a boundless and abounding Supernova.
Al Dennis, age 44, retired, explains a bit of the story about how he ended up in an old house, alone with his dog Lady Castro. He also ponders the notion of 'pre-tirement' and its accuracy in relation to this jobless experiment he is contemplating.
Host Al Dennis, age 44, debates whether or not to change the name of his program, and this thing that he's trying to do, into pre-tirement.
Raghu Lokanathan is on the same level as Leonard Cohen in the Tower of Song. This podcast is about Raghu Lokanathan.
A mandadory quarantine in an old house by the sea convinces 44 year-old Al Dennis that he is now retired. He is not going back to work. He's not going to look for work.
Most people in Al Dennis' situation would consider themselves unable to retire. Al is beginning his retirement with an investment portfolio of about $2000. He has about $180 in the bank.
In this podcast, Al Dennis invites you into his retirement, and examines, often with exasperation, mainstream notions of retirement ... the big societal dream in the big societal stream... the more you 'buy in' the more of your soul you sell ... etc ...