2012.11.18 19:00 - The Little Story that Could

The Guardian for this meeting was Calvino Rabeni. The comments are by Calvino Rabeni.

Calvino Rabeni: Good evening Paradise :)
Paradise Tennant: hiya Cal :) quiet night :)
Calvino Rabeni: Yes, in the pavilion
Calvino Rabeni: In RL, there's more action ... a rain storm, one forecast for 6cm rain tonight but we'll see
Paradise Tennant: wow
Calvino Rabeni: It seems greater when you have a flat roof with thin insulation
Paradise Tennant: yes
Calvino Rabeni: Yesterday just after dark it was raining hard, and I expected a quiet night, but
Calvino Rabeni: some neighbor REALLY likes to cut wood, and he was out there in the rain/dark sawing away :)

--BELL--

Paradise Tennant: smiles
Calvino Rabeni: Most people save their chain sawing for a sunny afternoon ... I wasn't quite sure what to make of it !
Paradise Tennant: well maybe he wanted to get it cut and somewhere dry :)
Paradise Tennant: we had two glorious fall days crisp .. and sunny
Calvino Rabeni: Yup, a hardy old mountain man, probably saw the forecast and thought .. "Storm coming!"
Paradise Tennant: hiya san :)
Calvino Rabeni: Now he's cozy, dry, and warm :)
Santoshima Resident: hiya Paradise and Cal
Calvino Rabeni: Good evening Santo :)
Santoshima Resident: good evening :)

Paradise Tennant: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/masseys/
Calvino Rabeni: So I suppose, one doesn't really know why someone else does something, but a good story helps :)

Paradise Tennant: this is a link to a site that has free podcasts of a series of letures on CBC called the Massey lectures .. all kinds of topics .. wade davis is one ..
Paradise Tennant: smiles we all need stories they help us make our kind our own kind of sense of things
Calvino Rabeni: That's a good collection, thanks!
Calvino Rabeni: What stands out in that list for you ?
Calvino Rabeni scans ... "The Truth about Stories" ... hmm
Calvino Rabeni: "Necessary Illusions"
Calvino Rabeni: "The Ethical Imagination"
Paradise Tennant: 1999 Fulford, Robert The Triumph of Narrative - Storytelling in an Age of Mass Culture
Paradise Tennant: one you would like .. mostly they are all good
Paradise Tennant: listened to wade davis' talk this weekend
Calvino Rabeni: Here's one "Therefore, Choose Life" ... I wonder if that's anchored around the Andre Breton poem

Paradise Tennant: by André Breton translated by Bill Zavatsky and Zack Rogow

CHOOSE LIFE

Choose life instead of those prisms with no depth even if their colors are purer
Instead of this hour always hidden instead of those terrible vehicles of cold flame
Instead of these overripe stones
Choose this heart with its safety catch
Instead of that murmuring pool
And that white fabric singing in the air and the earth at the same time
Instead of that marriage blessing joining my forehead to total vanity's
Choose life

Choose life with its conspiratorial sheets
Its scars from escapes
Choose life choose that rose window on my tomb
The life of being here nothing but being here
Where one voice says Are you there where another answers Are you there
I'm hardly here at all alas
And even when we might be making fun of what we kill
Choose life

Choose life choose life venerable Childhood
The ribbon coming out of a fakir
Resembles the playground slide of the world
Though the sun is only a shipwreck
Insofar as a woman's body resembles it
You dream contemplating the whole length of its trajectory
Or only while closing your eyes on the adorable storm named your hand
Choose life

Choose life with its waiting rooms
When you know you'll never be shown in
Choose life instead of those health spas
Where you're served by drudges
Choose life unfavorable and long
When the books close again here on less gentle shelves
And when over there the weather would be better than better it would be free yes
Choose life

Choose life as the pit of scorn
With that head beautiful enough
Like the antidote to that perfection it summons and it fears
Life the makeup on God's face
Life like a virgin passport
A little town like Pont-a-Mousson
And since everything's already been said
Choose life instead

Paradise Tennant: the whole site is like a brain candy store :)
Calvino Rabeni: Thanks Paradise
Calvino Rabeni: That's a great poem, a classic

Paradise Tennant:

Born in 1896 to a working-class parents from Tinchenbray (Orne), Normandy, André Breton wrote poetry and studied medicine and psychology at a young age. During World War I, Breton worked in psychiatric units with traumatized soldiers, employing the work of Freud, whom he had met, in his practice. It was during this time that Breton met Jacque Vaché, a rebellious soldier who would become a friend and important influence. Until Vaché's death 1919, Breton corresponded with him for many years; those letters were published as Letters of War (Lettres de guerre) in 1919. Although originally a Dadaist, Breton eventually broke away from this group, owing to aesthetic differences. In 1924, he published the Surrealist Manifesto, which outlines surrealist preoccupations and is considered to be the beginning of the Surrealist Movement. It also established Breton as the spearhead of Surrealism, a role he would maintain for the entire duration of the movement. In the manifesto, Breton defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism, by which an attempt is made to express—either verbally, in writing or in any other manner— the true functioning of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation." During his lifetime, Breton produced a tremendous body of work that contained poetry, novels, criticism, and theory. Of his oeuvre, the collection of poems Mad Love (1937), the novel Nadja (1928) and the critical text Communicating Vessels (1932) are considered to be his most valuable contributions to the literary world. Breton died in Paris on September 28, 1966.

Paradise Tennant: so many great minds come and go ..
Calvino Rabeni: nods
Paradise Tennant: would it not be lovely to have tea with some of these people we get to read
Paradise Tennant: such tantalizing glimpses of their world
Calvino Rabeni: Yes
Calvino Rabeni: there's a strong ethical thread through the Massey lecture series
Paradise Tennant: :)
Santoshima Resident: thank you for the poem, para

--BELL--

Paradise Tennant: yes the CBC is a force :)
Paradise Tennant: or with the force :)
Calvino Rabeni: :)
Paradise Tennant: http://www.eutorontofilmfest.ca/
Paradise Tennant: my brother loves films and we have great european film festival going on ..
Paradise Tennant: 29 films all free :) all captivating ..
Paradise Tennant: happened on it by pure accident :)
Santoshima Resident: looks promising
Calvino Rabeni: It's quite a cornucopia of media value we live in
Paradise Tennant: nods yes .. nothing like a good portugese film followed by this town's best Pasteis de nata
Paradise Tennant: yes !
Paradise Tennant: I think we are evolving our techonology .. to evolve ourselves
Calvino Rabeni: Yes
Paradise Tennant: in a way the world's knowledge is constantly simmering growing at our fingertips
Paradise Tennant: we just have to touch it to know things
Paradise Tennant: to understand
Calvino Rabeni: (thinks "shimmering" too) It's hard to assess the effect of that simmering and growing
Calvino Rabeni: true
Calvino Rabeni: a lot more crossing of minds through conversation
Calvino Rabeni: people who will be renowned in the future are in the present, engaging people
Calvino Rabeni: with all the hits and misses of a non-storied life
Paradise Tennant: smiles
Calvino Rabeni: and there's the second-hand stuff too, people talking about their experiences of the recently deceased too
Paradise Tennant: is there such a thing as a non storied life ?
Calvino Rabeni: not in a micro way, no, but, there seem to be collective myths that take shape when seeing lives from a distance
Calvino Rabeni: biographers have always been important to making sense of who people are, presenting to the public

--BELL--

Calvino Rabeni: It's a continual puzzle, what to make of social media, I mean about emergent effects that change things
Calvino Rabeni: How does one find the places where that seems to be happening?
Paradise Tennant: smiles I guess it is within without process so for some of it you don't have to go far
Calvino Rabeni: I read this ironic comment in a social site - I guess Ginsberg was looking over his shoulder
Calvino Rabeni: "The best minds of my generation
Calvino Rabeni: ... are figuring out how to get people to click on ads"
Santoshima Resident: ad minds take the place of biographer minds
Calvino Rabeni: Nods...  given the right situation, what would be a small, ironic quip or complaint can become part of a mosaic of ethical thinking
Calvino Rabeni: If a group thinks together in that way, it generates some power for change .. something that in the past has been the job of biographers and other commentators to collect the public's attention
Calvino Rabeni: If the minds are already open to the issue, a smallest thing could be a seed crystal that might or might not continue to grow
Paradise Tennant: smiles
Calvino Rabeni: One thing that interests me about social media is, it taps into and connects a big latent pool of ethical thinking among knowledge workers
Calvino Rabeni: who thread it in somehow along with the corporate work of ad-clicking
Calvino Rabeni: economically it looks unproductive

--BELL--

Calvino Rabeni: ...but it's culturally healthy
Paradise Tennant: smiles yes
Paradise Tennant: and vibrant
Calvino Rabeni: Yes
Paradise Tennant: all the many levels of connection
stevenaia Michinaga: Hi Cal, Para, San
Paradise Tennant: was reading some of olvier sacks this weekend
Calvino Rabeni: Hi Stevenaia :)

Paradise Tennant: Bleu had suggested him to me :)
Paradise Tennant: http://www.oliversacks.com/about-the-author/list-of-publications/
Calvino Rabeni: What stands out for you in what you've read so far?
Paradise Tennant: and coincidently there was a big interview .. with him in the globe and mail over his new book
Paradise Tennant: smiles
Paradise Tennant: how in your senior years truth matters :)
Paradise Tennant: he is 80 and now prepared to be frank about his life and experiments

Santoshima Resident: hi Stevenaia
Paradise Tennant: hiya stev
stevenaia Michinaga: http://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sacks_what_hallucination_reveals_about_our_minds.html
Calvino Rabeni: http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2012/11/05/book-review-hallucinations-oliver-sacks/gZA5Qfb2qDnVQvj69k2F5J/story.html
Calvino Rabeni: thanks
Calvino Rabeni: An example of using ones own "life as a lab"
stevenaia Michinaga: Hallucinations as Reality
Calvino Rabeni: As in, can't tell a story that
Calvino Rabeni: is not true
Calvino Rabeni: at least partly
Paradise Tennant: smiles he believes our brains require stimulation if we don't get it we make it for ourselves .. just our wiring
Calvino Rabeni: life requires stimulation within a certain range - not too little - not too much
Calvino Rabeni: there's been an increase in health syndromes that are auto-immune related
Calvino Rabeni: and it's not necessarily due to environmental toxicity
Calvino Rabeni: but includes the lack of challenge and stimulation of the modern sanitary environment
Calvino Rabeni: the immune system requires constant challenge and will generate its own if it doesn't come from outside

--BELL--

Paradise Tennant: smiles my immune system is sending me to bed :)) thank you cal san stev for the company the conversation :)) namaste my friends :)
stevenaia Michinaga: night Para
Paradise Tennant: happy thanksgiving :))
stevenaia Michinaga: Bye Para
Santoshima Resident: bye Paradise
stevenaia Michinaga: you make me think of looking for my winter clothes, san
Santoshima Resident: :)
stevenaia Michinaga: no idea where to begin looking in my inventory
Calvino Rabeni waves to the recently vanished Paradise :)
stevenaia Michinaga: bedtime for me as well
stevenaia Michinaga: night Cal, San
Santoshima Resident: night steve
Calvino Rabeni: Dream well stevenaia :)
Santoshima Resident: best evening, Cal ~ thank you for this conversation
Calvino Rabeni: YW Santoshima
Calvino Rabeni: Good to see you, bye