Dreamspeak: Under the Override

There’s a great scene in Osmosis Jones, a semi-animated flick about the insides of zookeeper Frank Detomello’s (Bill Murray) body, when a serious virus hits “City of Frank.” Instead of going to see a doctor, he pops a flu pill saying, “Sick? I’m not getting sick! I have far too much planned.” Meanwhile, down in [...]

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from ‘Last Fragment’ by Raymond Carver

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
- Raymond Carver

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Dreamspeak: Dome Sweet Dome

Dear Readers; I write this week’s column on the first anniversary of my landing in the Kootenays, which also happens to be Rumi’s birthday. In honour of the community, love and astonishing beauty it has bestowed upon me, I’d like to share a chapter of my own dream journey which led me to Nelson, [...]

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Galway Kinnell on self-blessing

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing.
– Galway Kinnell

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Rain, by Herman Hesse

Soft rain, summer rain
Whispers from bushes, whispers from trees.
Oh, how lovely and full of blessing
To dream and be satisfied.
I was so long in the outer brightness,
I am not used to this upheaval:
Being at home in my own soul,
Never to be led elsewhere.
I want nothing, I long for nothing,
I hum gently the sounds of childhood,
And [...]

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Dreamspeak: Healing on the Astral

“Hello Toko-pa: A few years ago, I was dating a woman who deceived me about having another lover on the side. When I found out, I was very angry. She brushed it off and made excuses for her deception. I held a grudge until recently, after having my only dream about her.
The only thing [...]

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Heartbeat
Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart
which safely exists in the center of all things?
His giant heartbeat is diverted in us
into little pulses. And his giant grief
is, like his giant jubilation, far too
great for us. And so we tear ourselves away
from him time after time, remaining only
mouths. But unexepectedly and secretly
the giant heartbeat [...]

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Bleed Joyfully – A Fresh View of Depression

“My mother slept with an axe under her pillow,” one woman recounts in a plaintive voice, “We lived in terror that my father would return to murder us in the night. For some reason, I don’t know why, but I was always expected to be happy.”
Inside a recent video installation at the Power Plant Gallery [...]

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The Well of Grief
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold [...]

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