This time, I've been watching myself to see what happens. Usually, I start out positively, with great ideas on how to get through. But then they fall apart.

Well, now I'm seeing what happens pretty clearly. When we're together, the little negative things of my day are diluted by her presence. But alone they flood over me. I stumble around as if my mind had come loose inside my skull.

So how can I put it in its place when IT is me? And when there's no Linda to focus on.

My answer, this time, is to write this. To do that, I stand outside my mind, looking at it. Seeing it clearly. And here I am.


​

​From Facebook, Likes:  16......Larry Burfield, Scott Alderson and 14 others
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Scott Alderson Thus the expression, significant other. As Arnold would say "She'll be back"
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Stan Burfield Next time she calls, I'll have to try to get her to say in her deepest voice, "I'll be back". Ha ha. That'll cheer us both up!
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Linda and I went down to the backyard of the apartment building this afternoon, unfolded our two chairs under a massive, ancient maple and sat down to read, me Lawrence of Arabia's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and Linda the beginning of a diary written by one of my female ancestors in the 18th century. Linda did okay but I became distracted by a vine that was climbing from a hedge into the tree. Then a loud family came out, we both lost our concentration, and packed up to go back inside.

At the door, I had no keys.

I must have left them in the apartment. Luckily, someone let us in the building. We went up and our door was locked. Okay, before panic began to set in, I said, "Wait here, I'll go back and check around the table. They must have fallen out of my pocket into the grass, maybe when I pulled my camera out." The cord on the camera gets tangled up with everything all the time. So down I went, and hunted carefully all along the route between the door and where our chairs had been. Nothing. So I did it again, trying to remember my exact route back. Nothing. I stopped myself and thought carefully. Where could they have gone? Aha! They must have fallen out of my pocket into the chair, because the low chair pushes my legs upwards. So, optimistically, I went back up to Linda, searching all the way one more time. She was still petting the neighbour's cats in the hall. She didn't seem too concerned. We took both the chairs out of their bags and unfolded them. Nothing. Now I was really getting worried. It was 8 in the evening. The apartment manager would be gone for the day. Linda said, "We should be able to get someone at the company office." They own a bunch of these buildings and would have someone on all the time. But first we went out and looked again. I prowled along very slowly this time, and when I got to where we had been sitting I kneeled on the ground to feel through the grass with my hands. Linda had wandered off to the side, I couldn't imagine why. Irritated, I said, "What are you doing?" She said, "You were over here looking up into the tree. Remember the vine?" "Oh, yeah." I had completely forgotten. I walked toward her looking down, and there were the keys!

We are so different. I'm always thinking. She's always doing things. It's very easy for me to forget real things that I've really done in the real world, because my world, the one which is complete and is always with me, is a world of ideas. Whereas, Linda remembers every little thing that both of us have done in the real world, which is hers.
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We're similar and complement each other in the very important ways of human feelings, but we're opposite in virtually everything else. Which means that we hold together, and in doing so we have one all-encompassing brain. What one of us lacks the other excels in.

​Likes: 24--Karen Booth, Barbara Green and 22 others
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Comments
Linda Eva Williams Linda, you look like you're swooning! What's not to swoon over?

Stan Burfield Ha ha. You know how to say it, Linda.


Cambridge N Calvin Keenan A beautiful love story , thanks for Sharing Stan and Linda 🌹have a fabulous weekend

Cambridge N Calvin Keenan That's a great picture of you two 🌹


Meredith Moeckel Love reading about your love affair, and the picture of you two is perfect! ♡♡

We have a little farm below our apartment. It's the width of the block, with a barn and a barnyard and a little field. From our balcony, Linda and I, who both grew up in the country, enjoy watching every little thing that goes on down there. They have two horses they train for competitions and then sell. When Linda was young, she had a horse she broke in and trained, so she likes to watch the guy down below teaching his horse to back up, walk sideways, spin on a dime, etc. Well, yesterday a new horse came out of the barn, brown with black mane and tail, and then a tiny colt walked out from behind her! It had very gangly legs and a big head, and could hardly walk yet. It must have just been born. This morning it's walking more confidently. Linda and I laughed when, after nursing, it walked right under her to the other side.


​Likes: 13:  Dusty Ferguson, Silvia Palacios and 11 others
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Cambridge N Calvin Keenan Awwww that's a cheerful blessing ! It's lovely to hear your stories , we enjoy them very much 🌹 a rose for you and beautiful Linda :)

Stan Burfield Thank you, Cambridge!


Meredith Moeckel This is truly a good story! And how lucky you and Linda are to have such a beautiful view of nature right below you! :)

Linda Eva Williams How lucky there is a place right in the city for a mini-stable without people complaining. Peoples' feathers get ruffled if one mentions backyard chicken coops in Calgary.

Stan Burfield Yeah, it's very surprising. And right below us. Well, he's the last farmer-holdout in the city, and he's sold most of his land to developers. Just keeps enough for what he likes the most.

Linda Eva Williams Good! Now he can certainly afford to.



Yvonne Maggs What a lovely view you two have...

Stan Burfield Here's the full view. That's the farmer's forest right below us, and part of his field to the left of his barnyard.

Linda Eva Williams Have you met him? If so, pass on our compliments.

Stan Burfield I will. No I haven't had the opportunity.

Linda Eva Williams You might have met a new poet! What the heck - ask him to write one. At the very least he'll feel flattered. Especially if he's lonely, as so many of our elders are.

Stan Burfield Actually, he's always busy doing things, has about eight vehicles on his property, has several businesses going with them, a wife and a young employee who trains the horses. Every evening he has a big barbeque going behind the house, making supper for them.

Linda Eva Williams OK, loneliness not a factor lol.

Linda Eva Williams Still, why not extend yourself to him? When I feel emboldened, I never fail to enjoy people I'd never have thought to meet. Who knows? You might attend a BBQ.

Stan Burfield Maybe. I won't discount the possibility. I'm a lot less shy than I used to be.

Linda Eva Williams If you invite me over, I'll get you together in a trice - winky face (FB has removed the option for me to post something like a simple smile or heart (grouchy face).

Stan Burfield Okay, you're invited whether you invite me to meet him or not. But I know you, you'd hop on that horse and not come off.

​

There are things I can see clearly now that I was blind to when I was young. For instance, even though I was always sceptical of the idea that you shouldn't hold your feelings in, that you should let them out before they cause you harm, I could never put my scepticism in words. I just knew from experience it didn't work that way. Whenever I did get things off my chest I felt even worse than before.

Now I understand what's really wrong with it. Usually, the feeling that wants to be expressed is irritation, or frustration, or self-righteous anger. Well, it may not seem like it at the time, but expressing that anger is an attempt to hurt the other person. I've practically had to study it to see that, but it's true. When you're young you justify it by thinking the other person is hurting you in some way, even if just by irritating you. So they deserve your anger. And anyway, if you don't let them know your feelings good and hard they will probably keep on irritating you endlessly. As well, especially if you're young, mouthing off makes you feel strong, like an adult.

Here's the thing: people who are irritating or frustrating are not trying to hurt other people in the process. That's just who they are. They operate that way. They can't help themselves. But those who express their anger at them because of it are deliberately trying to hurt them, which is to say, to cause them harm.

There is a world of difference between the two.
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And something else: those who express anger usually feel pretty good about it. As they are insulting the other person, they are looking down from a higher position, feeling and showing their superiority. But the person who is being hurt is hurt very deeply, far deeper than the other has intended. And that hurt can last for decades. The winner, on the other hand, gets to forget about it within minutes and move on to the important things in life.

Like:  5Grant Dempsey, Josh Livingstone and 3 others
Comments

Linda Eva Williams There must be some reason anger exists or it wouldn't be in everyone's DNA. Your view of anger seems to be focussed on those who are basically bullies perhaps. But if we don't express anger at injustices, or the Hitlers and Trumps (talk about an angry guy!) of this world, we are silent cowards and enablers.
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Stan Burfield Good point.
Like · Reply · 52 mins

Stan Burfield I guess you could say that pretty much all of humanity's worst characteristics were important creations of evolution, and no doubt if they didn't exist, neither would we--including all the causes of wars, hatred, patriotism, even jealousy, apparently, to name only a few. What's interesting to me about people is that for the first time in all those millions of years one of evolution's creatures can see what's going on and fret about it and try to control it. Not that it matters to evolution.

There is just no way this can be what it seems to be. Yet when it happens over and over, and now back-to-back, you have to wonder what's going on.

This happened a couple days ago: It was a down day for me. I hadn't had a good sleep, and then some negative incidents happened. For a while, I tried to dig myself out of it. Finally, Linda noticed, asked me about it, and plied me with positive things. That helped, but not enough, so I finally phoned my sister in Calgary.

Well, to get across the extent of weirdness here, you need to know that she and I had not been communicating for a few years until one day some months ago I finally got myself to sit down and write her a letter. Just as I got the blank page up on my computer, the phone rang. It was her. She had had exactly the same feeling and idea at exactly the same time, after that years-long interval.

Well, two days ago it happened again. With the addition that this time she expected it. She had just written me an email, and, as she paused before putting in the salutation, for some reason she felt I would call her right then, during that pause. And I did! She couldn't have known I had the phone in my hand. And I couldn't have known she was about to punch send.

Okay, that's coincidence #1. I was calling about my emotional pain. After we got calmed down from our excitement about that coincidence (which also seemed like telepathy), and I told her why I was calling, she sent me the email.

Here it is:
"Hi Stan, Here is a little coincidence. You wrote a blog about giving thanks for help unknown, (I had met Roy MacDonald at a bus stop where he recited to me his now-favourite "poem") a few days ago, and today I read the same thing! A friend brought me a book called “Healing Trauma”, by Peter Levine. Today, I read in the book, “I’d like to share with you an affirmation from the Native American tradition: ‘I give thanks for help unknown, already on its way.’ Whenever you begin to feel lost or frightened, this affirmation can have a beneficial effect.”
             " Levine went to Berkley, and taught at the Hopi Guidance Center and at trauma centres."

That isn't the whole of my sister's story. Amazed by it all, she tried to put it together in words in an email to me: "And look at this. That quote was given to you by Roy MacDonald, out of the blue, on the sidewalk, I think you said. Then days later, when things were bad, the same quote was given to you in a book lent, just at that time, to your sister. (By a friend who drove all the way out here to bring me the book, because she “felt” I should have it, though we haven’t seen each other in person for years.)"

Okay, so far we have me phoning her exactly when she thought I would. Then the content of her email had to do with the healing of trauma, which was what I was hoping to get from her when I called, and her quote was exactly the same quote that Roy had just told me on the street, but which I had not applied myself to at the time. (I posted it here on my Facebook page anyway--just scroll down and you'll see it.) But now that it had been given to me a second time, I really got into it and all its implications. So the second time was necessary. And for my sister to read the quote right when she did, so that she would write the email right then, her friend had to "feel" she should give the book to my sister exactly the right number of days beforehand. And drive a long way to get it to her, something she hadn't done for years.

And here's another thing about it, not quite as shocking a coincidence, but which maybe falls in the same general area of weirdness. My sister's email told me that the saying was Native American. And the previous month I had featured indigenous poetry and history at London Open Mic. I had been looking forward to that event all season, and because of it, and since then, I've been getting more into indigenous culture and wisdom. And right now I'm in the process of planning to do a lengthy interview about it with Charmaine E. Elijah, one of the indigenous poets.

And one more thing. Earlier in my life, I had gone on some very long, very risky adventures, during which the most astonishing seemingly-impossible coincidences saved my life so often that I began to lose my fear when I found myself in extremely dangerous situations. I began to assume that something would happen at the last minute to rescue me. And it always did.

Anyway, another interesting thing about all this is that now that so many formerly-separate events in my life and memories and ideas seem to be coalescing around that major coincidence of me phoning just when my sister thought I would, then others are also entering the circle, attached to them, and so on. The whole swirling mass contains so much now that there is no point in trying to mention it all.

And why bother? Coincidences are only coincidences. To be more than that, everyone's unconscious mind would have to be connected with everyone else's. Which just isn't possible in the real world (although it's fun to fantasise about). And those unconscious minds would have to be able to see into the future, another impossibility since the future hasn't happened. And based on their view into the future they would all have to decide to force innumerable things to happen just so some extremely insignificant coming together would amaze two tiny little critters amongst billions.
I don't think so. But tossed all together like this, it does seem pretty weird. At least to the people it happened to.

Like: 5 Jenny Getsinger, Yvonne Maggs and 3 others
Comments

Paulette C Turcotte Jung would say that are highly significant and should be held as sacred messages. What is taking place is highly relevant and should be taken very seriously in one's journey. If that had been happening to me, I would have called my favourite Jungian analyst for a session... just to make sure I wasn't missing any cues..... my opinion for what it's worth... xx
Like · Reply · 1 · 7 June at 20:18

Stan Burfield Thanks, Paulette. My sister and I are working on it. Since it makes no sense starting at the point of view where none of this can mean anything, my normal point of view, I'm working back towards my point of view from the other end, just assuming things, like telepathy, like everyone's unconscious mind is in constant contact with everyone else's, like the unconscious mind can hold an infinite amount of data, and so on. And see where I end up.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 20:23
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Stan Burfield One assumption I pretty much have to make for any of these other assumptions to work in terms of coincidences is a very difficult one to make, even compared to those three. It is that those unconscious minds can see into the future. No matter what physicists say, the future does not exist.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 20:26
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Margary Robinson Coincidenses do make us wonder if someone or something does have controls that we are not aware of and how they are arranged in the atoms that fly around us. It's true it's weird!l
Unlike · Reply · 1 · 8 June at 23:37

Like:  7Kathryn Alexander, Cambridge N Calvin Keenan and 5 others
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Stan Burfield If a person's hope is destroyed, so is their motivation to live.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 15:45
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Barbara Green There's gotta be more to this story.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 17:03

Stan Burfield Well, my sister and I were talking on the phone. Her life is very difficult, and we were talking about mine and others' as well. Suddenly I burst out with, "This world is definitely not Heaven," and from there, of course, we went to denying that it was Hell either. We settled for it being a place where if you had the normal amount of luck and a little ability to control your environment (the normal amount) then you should be able, in Canada, to have a few enjoyable, maybe even happy, times now and then. Then I went for a walk to the grocery store and on the way saw a sign for 6/49 tickets, and Hope jumped out at me. Of course, it's the motivator that drives everyone to carve out those little bits of enjoyment in this grungy space between Heaven and Hell.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 19:12

Stan Burfield Hope keeps you moving away from hell towards heaven.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 19:16

Barbara Green Stan Burfield So hell would be loss of hope ... probably true if you consider that people do desperate things -- murder, rape, war -- only when hope of something better has utterly gone. And some engage in war because they hope to either preserve or create a better outcome for themselves or their families. So in that case maybe hope can also lead to hell. You know what they say about good intentions ...
Like · Reply · 7 June at 19:21

Barbara Green However ... that's just sophistry. Here's the thing. The thing that Is, is Hope. The feared thing, Hell, is the result not of some existent evil, but only of the lack of the positive thing. I ws talking to the kids recently about how most (not all) evil seems not to be anything in itself, but rather the lack of the good created, existent thing. The way shadow/dark is nothing in itself, only blocked light.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 19:22

Barbara Green I don't fully believe that your intention/imagination creates reality. However, where you direct your attention certainly does influence your direction, and whether you have the motive power to go anywhere at all, that's clear. Lack of hope = depression, which robs you of the motive and the power to act at all.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 19:25

Stan Burfield Yes. I agree everywhere except for what Hell is. Certainly it can be created by evil people, and is in a lot of situation, but mostly I think it's just circumstance. Being born in a very poor, crowded slum means that even a lot of hope will be unlikely to bring much happiness or enjoyment to most of the residents there. Similarly, there are many circumstances in Canada that amount to Hell.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 19:32

Barbara Green Yes, Some of it is as you say, an Is, a condition. And yet there are people -- think of Mendela, wrongly imprisoned, beaten, his own movement including his wife evolving into something bitter, and he chooses to remain free. I don't mean to minimize anyone's pain or difficulties (though I can hardly help doing that, having had a very easy existence). But there is something to the aphorism that pain is inevitable, but suffering is not.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 19:42

Stan Burfield Just reread what you said about evil above, and it's pretty much what I said, sorry.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 19:50

Barbara Green Nothing to apologize for! (Except that we can't help it -- just having a concurrent fb conversation with an American friend about Canadians' over-politeness.)
Like · Reply · 7 June at 19:51

Stan Burfield Ha ha. It's hard to overlay the world of politeness on the world of hope.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 19:56

In England, there are those who do, and, amongst many other groups, those who speak Cockney. The difference is so dramatic, and the class and regional origins of the different dialects so obvious, that the upper crust doesn't bother trying to get the Cockneys to speak proper English. At least, I expect, they haven't since My Fair Lady.

But in this country, language police abound. Those who speak "properly" see those who don't as inferior in some fundamental and very annoying way: they are either sloppy people, or they don't care about quality, they're simply boors, or, at very least, they're lazy.

I grew up on an Alberta farm, amongst farmers. We had no need for BBC grammar, metaphorical flowers (we specialised in real ones), poetry, abstruse allegories, whatever. And we communicated very well, as well as we needed to. We used large chunks of mental power to understand and deal with aspects of reality city people know little about, chunks of brain others use for such things as practising BBC grammar, useless from our point of view.

And anyway, people aren't inferior to each other. It's not possible. They are simply not as good at doing certain things. Somewhere inside us, we all know that. But we don't all practice it.

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7Meredith Moeckel, Terry Willard and 5 others
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Click "Read More" for the many comments...........................................

​Yesterday, as I transferred at a bus stop on the way home from the open mic, I bumped into Roy MacDonald. Roy was our Oct. 2014 featured poet, when he packed Mykonos. (His interview) Now he's looking forward to his next decade, this being the week of his 80th birthday. For the occasion he recited this, his now favourite poem:

I give thanks
for help unknown
already on the way.

(Author unknown.)

​Likes:
22Magnus Grendel Samson Coleman, Patricia Black and 20 others
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Patricia Black I thought Roy was a year younger than I am? But, of course, happy birthday Roy!

Like · Reply · 6 June at 00:49

Patricia Black Ah, I just clued in - it will be Roy's 80th year, which means he's coming up to his 79th birthday, just as I thought. He and I are Geminis.

Like · Reply · 6 June at 01:01

Stan Burfield Well, he told me he'll be 80 years old, whatever that means.

Like · Reply · 6 June at 17:43

Jean McKay Wiki says he was born June 4, 1937.

Like · Reply · 6 June at 17:47

Stan Burfield So he must be 79 then.

Like · Reply · 6 June at 17:55

Jean McKay Yeah, as of last Saturday. Of course Wiki could be wrong. It's been known to happen.

Like · Reply · 6 June at 17:57
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Stan Burfield Here he was on Saturday celebrating his birthday by reciting poetry at the London Poetry Slam reading on Dundas and Richmond as part of Nuit Blanche. Thanks, Holly Painter

​Like · Reply · 1 · 6 June at 18:06 · Edited

Holly Painter Was a delight to hear him share something at Nuit Blanche with London Poetry Slam again this year, and the crowd sung him a wonderful happy birthday! He was all smiles, as were we :)
Like · Reply · 6 June at 18:07

Stan Burfield :)