February 8

Friday February 8, 2008 5:05 am Edmonton, Alberta

It is -20 C with a high forecast of -21 C. Sunrise 8:08 Sunset 17:28 Hours of daylight: 9:20

bbq

tree

A. Morning Musings

With a strong wind, the wind chill is -32. Today looks like a good day to be off the roads. The blowing snow will seriously reduce visability, particularly on the highways. There is 20 minutes less daylight here than in Lethbridge. But in another couple of weeks Edmonton will begin having longer days than us.

It is great having Internet access while in Edmonton. I have a fresh cup and the day in front of me.

In principle, this is a great time for musing, but at the moment I feel more like reading "The Golden Notebook". I was in a bookstore yesterday and noticed that all of the Doris Lessing books now had new covers indicating that she was a Nobel prize author. Crass commercialism. Rumi would not approve. I doubt Lessing would either.

Learning Category	Planned Activities for Today	Time
Literature	Begin morning with a Rumi reading
Literature	Continue reading "The Golden Notebook" by Doris Lessing	3 hr

B. Actual Learning Activities

6:00 am

I am beginning to see why I like Lessing. Here are three quotes from the "Black" notebook:

"This war was presented to us as a crusade against the evil doctrines of Hitler, against racialism, etc, yet the whole of that enornous land mass, about half the total area of Africa, was conducted on precisely Hitler's assumption - that some human beings are better than others because of their race. ... It was self-punishing, a locking of feeling, an inability or a refusal to fit conflicting things together to make a whole; so that one can live inside it, no matter how terrible. The refusal means one can neither change nor destroy; the refusal means ultimately either death or impoverishment of the individual." [p. 63]

and

"... a dedicated faith in humanity spreads ripples in all directions." [p. 64]

and

"It is now obvious that inherent in the structure of a communist party or group is a self-dividing principle. Any communist party anywhere exists and perhaps even flourishes by this process of discarding individuals or groups; not because of personal merits or demerits, but according to how they accord with the inner dynamism of the party at any given moment." [p. 65]

Insightful, powerful, truthful. An outside view from within. Rare.

9:20 am

One more, then I will stick to reading ...

"I see I am falling into the self-punishing, cynical tone again. Yet how comforting this tone is, like a sort of poultice on a wound. ... Yet that pain is like the dangerous pain of nostalgia, its first cousin and just as deadly. I'll go on with this when I can write it straight, not in that tone." [p. 86]