Good Song: Ici-bas

New Year's is upon us again, and as usual I'm in a reflective mood. This time I've got the Cowboys Fringants' Ici-bas running through my head. Les Cowboys have an unusual gift for couching poetry in vernacular speech, and it only gains in power what it loses in polish. Since the group lost its lead singer to prostate cancer just last month, this song has been much in my thoughts.

The video itself is a significant, Cowboys-worthy bonus; like another, unwritten verse, pumping context into words that might otherwise read more grimly than intended. Note all the visual metaphors for growing up and growing old, and also the classic backstreet scenes from some Québécois town, all of which have an uncanny knack for being distinct and the same at the same time. This one – whoever it is – makes me homesick for my own.

And finally, of course, that heart-pulling winter: much more than a simple season, it's a kind of family member in Québec; a relationship hard to grasp beyond the Ottawa. None of which is hurt by an additional call-out to my enduring love of taking long walks through it, both in town and nearer home.

« Ici-bas » literally means the here-below, an expression that exists in English as well, but is much more current in French. It implies the fishbowl nature of the human lot -- its claustrophobic smallness, the impossibility of escaping it with our lives. And also the unity of our experience, whether we choose to accept that or not.

All of which made translating even the title tough. At last I went with Down Here, with its implied awareness of the great not-Earth, and the modesty of our little neighbourhood and our existence in it.

Follows the usual heartbreak of reclothing sublime images in clunky foreign syntax. Does « trafic » refer to backroom intrigue, or is it just traffic? Because it's both in French, and the writer almost certainly meant both. And what of « faucher » (to scythe), mostly used in these industrial times to describe what Death does. Strike down, we might say, but that would leave a richer metaphor by the roadside. Nothing English gets us there as completely and concisely; you just have to take your best shot and move on.

Any road, I suggest you first listen to the song while reading the lyrics and ignoring the video, to savour the full impact of the message. Then run through the video again, watching it this time.

Either way, it's a touching meditation on The Great Matter.

Best of luck in 2024, and may we remember and honour each other, here-below.

(Note: an English translation follows the French lyrics.)


Ici-bas
paroles et musique: Jean-François Pauzé

Malgré nos vies qui s’emballent dans une époque folle
Où un rien nous détourne du simple instant présent
Alors que tout s’envole
Avec le temps
Malgré la mort, celle qui frappe et qui nous fait pleurer
Ou bien celle qui un jour, tôt ou tard, nous fauchera
Je m’accroche les pieds
Ici-bas

Malgré l’amour celui qui nous fait vivre d’espoir
Qui parfois fait si mal quand on reste sur le seuil
D’une trop courte histoire
Sans qu’on le veuille
Malgré la haine qui souvent nous retombe sur le nez
Et les caves qui s’abreuvent de ce triste crachat
Je m’accroche les pieds
Ici-bas
Ici-bas

Tant que mes yeux s’ouvriront
Je cherch’rai dans l’horizon
La brèche qui s’ouvre sur mes décombres
La lueur dans les jours plus sombres
Tant que mes pieds marcheront
J’avancerai comme un con
Avec l’espoir dans chaque pas
Et ce jusqu’à mon dernier souffle
Ici-bas

Malgré les merdes, les revers, les choses qui nous échappent
Les p’tits, les grands tourments, les erreurs de parcours
Et tout c’qui nous rattrape
Dans le détour
Malgré l’ennui, le trafic, les rêves inachevés
La routine, le cynisme, l’hiver qui finit pas
Je m’accroche les pieds
Ici-bas
Ici-bas

Tant que mes yeux s’ouvriront
Je cherch’rai dans l’horizon
La brèche qui s’ouvre sur mes décombres
La lueur dans les jours plus sombres
Tant que mes pieds marcheront
J’avancerai comme un con
Avec l’espoir dans chaque pas
Et ce jusqu’à mon dernier souffle
Ici-bas


Down Here
words and music by Jean-François Pauzé

In spite of the way our lives spin out of control in this daft epoch
Where an anything can pull us out of the moment we're in
While it all flies away
Over time
In spite of the deaths that strike and leave us crying
Or the one that one day, sooner or later, will cut us down
I will plant my feet
Down here

In spite of the love that allows us to live in hope
But sometimes hurts so bad we remain stuck on the edge
Of a story cut too short
Like it or not
In spite of the hate so often blown back in our face
And the caverns storing up all that wretched spit
I will plant my feet
Down here
Down here

So long as my eyes still open
I will search the horizon
For the chink that will shine on my ruins
A light in my darkest days
So long as my feet will still walk
I'll forge ahead like an idiot
Hope in every step
Right to my last breath
Down here

In spite of the hassles, the setbacks, the ones that got away
The small wounds and the great, the wrong turns
And all that trips us up
In the detour
In spite of the boredom, the traffic, the unfulfilled dreams
The routine, the cynicism, the endless winters
I will plant my feet
Down here
Down here

So long as my eyes still open
I will search the horizon
For the chink that will shine on my ruins
A light in my darkest days
So long as my feet will still walk
I'll forge ahead like an idiot
Hope in every step
Right to my last breath
Down here

WW: Camouflaged nap

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Merry Christmas 2023

On this Christmas of 2023, all of us here at Rusty Ring wish our readers the best and kindest of seasons.

Right in darkness there is light.



(Painting by Ohara Koson. Image file courtesy of Rawpixel.com.)

WW: Jelly mushrooms

(This is Dacrymyces chrysospermus, the orange jelly mushroom. It grows on deadwood in moist forests – two things we have aplenty here on the North Pacific. It's also a winter harvest, making this fungus doubly useful, since it's eminently edible when sautéed in butter. )

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Poem: The Sound Of The Colour

Winter solitude—
In a world of one colour
The sound of wind.

Bashō

Happy Chanukah 2023

"Within darkness there is light, do not be against the light."

Shítóu Xīqiān (Sekitō Kisen)

Best of thoughts to my Jewish brothers and sisters worldwide on this first night of the Festival of Light.

Chanukah 2023 - 7 to 15 December.
(5784 - 25 Kislev to 2 Tevet.)



(Photo courtesy of Benigno Hoyuela and Unsplash.com.)

WW: Migrating swans

(Trumpeters [Cygnus buccinator]. Brief stopover over two foggy days. Watching this large flock of very big birds light on this small lake in successive wings was a memorable experience.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

New Buddhist Superhero

OK, hear me out:

Equani-Mouse.

(Interested parties can buy the wall decal from this Etsy store; illustration from linked page.) 

WW: Sitting shadow

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Good Podcast: We Regret To Inform You

Since many readers of this blog are engaged in creative endeavours, on this day of American Thanksgiving, I'd like to share a Canadian thing for which I'm grateful.

I've listened to Terry O'Reilly, a Canadian adman who's made several excellent CBC Radio One series on the art and history of marketing, for just short of 20 years. When his current project debuted simultaneously as a podcast, it proved so successful that he and his family (in a classic Canadian turn, Terry's production team contains more O'Reillys than the Dublin phone book) launched their own podcast production company to produce other worthy projects as well.

One of which Terry flacked (admen are born, not made) on his own podcast. So I gave it a spin.

It was great.

It was fresh.

It was life-changing.

We Regret To Inform You: The Rejection Podcast is required listening for anyone involved in a creative venture. In each episode, Sidney O'Reilly (daughter) unspools the tale of an iconic creator – writer, painter, filmmaker, athlete, actor, musician, anyone shopping his or her heart – and reveals how conventional wisdom treated them before they were famous.

Like Jesus Christ Superstar's 40 years in the desert, searching for a producer, any producer, to take on this massive cultural epiphany of the 70s.

Or the Temple of Doom that the guys who finally gave us Bat Out of Hell – Meatloaf's epic genre-busting rock-opera of an album – had to negotiate, and renegotiate, and abandon, and reconfront, and assault again, to get one of pop music's most thunderous masterworks into listeners' hands.

Or the 15-year odyssey, complete with Cyclops and sea monsters, that the gods sent Mad Men on before they'd (grudgingly) allow it to become a landmark of modern television.

All beloved household names, all gold standards in their domains now. Every last one sneered down, dismissed as sophomoric, laughable, unsaleable, boring, tragically lame.

Over and over and over.

Till the day they redefined art.

As a writer, Regret populates my solitude and refuels my soul. The main movement of each episode, in which Sidney recounts in full numbing splendour all the obstacles these people had to overcome to reach the summit, is skeletal support for those of us in the foothills. When we've relived this ordeal, and are basking vicariously in the subject's earned glory, Terry steps in to deliver a pithy, potent epilogue, summing up what we've learned, and ending on the show's simple – but in that moment, roaring – catch phrase:

"Never – ever – give up."

I've teared up more than once.

Finally, as the theme music rises, we get an envoi: a synthesised voice lists the winding litany of triumphs, awards, firsts, and fortunes amassed by this pathetic geek whom no-one is ever going to take seriously.

The whole experience leaves me restored, replenished, and ready to horse up again. If you too are an artist – or just a fan – I suspect it'll do the same for you.

You can hear We Regret To Inform You: The Rejection Podcast on its own website, or download it to your favourite device from iTunes/Apple Podcast or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.

Best of luck to everyone who's building today, in this dictatorship of yesterday.

(Photo of Australian painter Tom Roberts' Rejected, in which the artist contemplates a rejected work, courtesy of the ABC and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: November lake

(Click on the photo to see it bigger.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Alan Watts On Hermits

There’s always a very inconsiderable minority of these non-joiners. [...] But you will find that insecure societies are the most intolerant of those who are non-joiners. They are so unsure of the validity of their game rules that they say everyone must play. Now that’s a double-bind. You can’t say to a person you must play because what you’re saying is – you are required to do something which will be acceptable only if you do it voluntarily.

Alan Watts

Long ago I happened upon this teaching from Alan Watts – an Anglican priest, founding figure of Western Zen, and arguable Zen hermit – for whom I have attested admiration. He was specifically addressing the predicament of Buddhist hermits, but as was his habit, more basically referring to the universal status of free-range monks of all paths. Virtually all religions have them, though some meet us with greater grace than others. (I've been told that Zoroastrians, alone among major religions, have no hermits, but I might not believe it. It's possible they "have no hermits" in the same sense as Western Zen.)

Over the years I've returned to Watts' meditation on hermits and the Institution, and found it validating and insightful. Since fellow hermits and the hermit-curious rest here occasionally, I thought to spread the wealth.


(Photo courtesy of Ben Blennerhassett and Unsplash.com.)

WW: Major monk meal

(Fried eggs from real chickens, barbecued cheese curds, and salsa over steamed vegetables and brown rice. Why envy the immortal gods?)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Second Thought

Everything happens for a reason, but the reason doesn't happen until everything happens.

(Earlier meditation here.)


Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com and a generous photographer.

WW: LBMs

(I don't know what species this is, as I tend to ignore LBMs [little brown mushrooms], because they're hard to identify and not edible. But whatever they are, they were blanketing the ground under some pines.

Very nearly a lawn of mushrooms.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Guarding the Walls

Palladius said, "One day when I was suffering from boredom I went to Abba Macarius and said, 'What shall I do? My thoughts afflict me, saying, "You are not making any progress, go away from here".' He said to me, 'Tell them, "For Christ's sake, I am guarding the walls"'."

The Paradise of the Desert Fathers


(Pictured: the Bodhi Tree, the huge old bigleaf [Acer grandiflora] I guarded will sitting my 100 Days on the Mountain.)

WW: Epic Saturday dinner

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

National Hermit Day

This Sunday, 29 October, is National Hermit Day. (I have no idea which nation declared this. The day commemorates an Irish saint, so I'd guess Ireland must at least be in. And since most of the websites about it are American, I'd guess they're in, too. Really, it seems more like International Hermit Day, unless, like Labour Day, various countries are feuding over what date it's observed.)

Anyway.

Judging by Internet sources, lots of people are writing about this, but not many are researching it.

This page, for example, manages to get just about everything wrong.

• The 29th is not St. Colman's Feast. (That would be the 27th.)

• A group of hermits is not called an "observance"; it's a skete. But at least the person who made that up knew what we are; he or she might have gone with a "grumpy" or a "Kaczynski" or some other synonym for antisocial.

• No mention of spiritual practice – the fundamental definition of a hermit.

This one does a better job, at least mentioning the religious nature of non-metaphorical hermits, but only after it says:

Hermits, by definition, are people who prefer seclusion to socialization.

Uh, no. Our actual motivation can be contemplated here.

Honourable mention to this site, which not only gets St. Colman's feast day right, but leans heavily on the religious origins of the word, going so far as to list two actual hermits (50% of the total) on their list of famous hermits.

Anyway.

I'm not sure what we should do on (Inter)National Hermit Day. A hermit parade on the high road would be pretty paltry, unless you happen to live near the Zhongnan Mountains. Pinching people not wearing sandals would involve a lot of people, and spread the most irritating of all the asinine North American St. Patrick's Day customs.

So bump that.

We might take a page from Bodhisattva Day and don some meaningful garment… if the whole thing about hermits weren't that we serve in civilian clothes, without exclusive robes or regalia.

So how about this: prepare a nice sesshin meal. While enjoying it, contemplate the worthiness of devoting your life to pursuing fundamental, extra-human truth. Recall that it's your right, neither alienable nor certifiable.

Rice and beans or a hearty ramen soup, maybe. A good cup of tea and a nice flavour plate on the side.

Eat in gratitude and appreciation for how delicious and filling it is, whether the dish earns others' praise or not.

It feeds and rehinges.

And that's a blessing worth celebrating.


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: A bounty of boletes

(Typical on the North Coast this time of year, where you can often fill a 5 gallon bucket with large boletes in a matter of minutes. Suspect these are Suillus clintonianus, the larch suillus.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

The Most Hated Ideology

In 2015 I uploaded a post entitled Forgiveness. It's about forgiveness.

Last year, after almost a decade of being roundly ignored by the Internet, the article was flagged as "sensitive content", fenced behind a warning to visitors, and then a second fence that requires a Google sign-in to pass.

Evidently to shield children from my dangerous advocacy of compassion.

There are times when the irony on this rock gets so thick that one is literally at a loss for words.

Which is why I've haven’t said anything about this until now.

In the article, I point out that I've consistently attracted more mob-borne hatred when advocating for forgiveness than any other topic. By way of example, I cite reactions to a comment I made about Frank Meeink, one-time neo-Nazi who atoned for his hateful conduct and actively defected to the side of kindness and reason. And I wound the thing up with a reference to Angulimala, a figure from the sutras who renounced his career as a serial killer and became a disciple of the Buddha.

I've now re-read Forgiveness half a dozen times, with long periods of reflection between, and still can't find a single line any rational person would call offensive. (It's true I can get, shall we say, "passionate", about certain subjects, nay judgemental in some cases. But unless I'm blind to something, Forgiveness contains no such cases.)

Instead, it appears that someone – or several someones – reported this little-read post from my back-catalogue simply because I advocated mindful compassion toward a repentant Nazi.

More perplexing still, Google also agrees that this is too shocking a contemplation for unsuspecting surfers to stumble across unawares. And much too shocking for kids, under any circumstances.

So, hey. I've been wrong before. If any readers game enough to breech the safety fences could read the text behind them and explain to me where you find offence, I would be sincerely grateful.

Please post your thoughts in the comment section below, if you don't mind. My word that I'll be equanimous toward all, pro- or anti-Ring, that are on-topic and not personally abusive to anyone.

Because I think the Great Sangha needs to start talking about this forgiveness thing.


(Photo courtesy of Damian Gadal and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Football monk

(From the monks' graveyard. Evidently, Brother Lawrence also worshipped at the altar of the Seahawks.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Starfish Report 2023

Healthy adult P. ochreceus.

I conducted my informal annual survey of a local beach a few weeks ago and found the wasting-syndrome situation holding, relative to past years. The species recorded in the past are present in similar number, with a possible bump in the number of Pisaster ochraceus, the purple starfish. In that case I noted a heartening continued presence of adults with no noticeable infection or mutilation, supported by what I believe is a modest rise in the number of youngsters.

As this iconic North Coast star all but vanished at the height of the pandemic, I was touched to note this.

White E. troschelii.

With any good luck, this old friend is back to stay.

Evasterias troschelii, the mottled star, held the lead as the largest population on the tidelands since reclaiming first place from Dermasterias a few years back, though they still run small compared to pre-SSWS norms. Together with what may be signs of plague in two of the largest specimens, this may be a bit of a blue note. (See photographs; one individual appears unusually white about the disc, and a ray of another seems whiter and weaker than normal where it's been thrown over a cobble. Compare with the photos on this page. Again, I'm relying solely on 60 years of familiarity with the starfish of my homeland; this wasn't a scientific survey, and I may have misread the cues.)

So Evasterias may still be dying

Possible infected ray.

before it reaches full size. If so, the breeding population is keeping apace, so there are grounds to hope for an evolved solution.

For the rest, leather stars (Dermasterias imbricata) seem about as present as before, and sadly, Pycnopodia helianthoides, the sunflower star, and Pisaster brevispinus, the giant pink star, just as extinct. I wasn't able to observe the blood stars (Henricia leviuscula), which barely reach the intertidal zone, because the tide was a few feet higher than those I've caught in the past.

Final analysis: though the beach apparently still isn't clean, all in all, an encouraging show by the new normal.

Adolescent P. ochreceus.

WW: Elk Ridge trail

(This is the trail up Elk Ridge, just across the ravine from the jungle camp where I sat ango.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Ango

True nature;
It is on this mountain.
Because of the heavy mist, the exact location is unknown.

– An Ancestor's commentary on the Mumonkan.


(Photo of a North Coast mountain that looks remarkably similar to the one were I sat ango, courtesy of John Fowler and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Sea anemone eating a crab

(The anenome [suspect Urticina columbiana] is about the size of a teacup; the crab is Hemigrapsus oregonensis, the green shore crab.

Beach crabs are seldom swallowed by anemones; on the contrary, when below the waterline, these crabs often rest in the middle of an open anemone's tentacles for long periods. I suspect this bravado is down to the fact that they're hard as porcelain and quite intractable when challenged, which is why they have very few predators. So I have no idea what the story is here. This one was still perfectly healthy despite being half-gobbed, yet not trying in the least to escape. Perhaps he burrowed into the cnidarian deliberately, though to what end I've no better idea.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.