It's been a very cold winter and it looks like it will continue being very cold until the end of March. Here are photographs from a walk on February 17, on the hidden trail; this winter, beginning in early November, has not been a time for any really pleasant walks. But we're Canadians, we endure. And we wait for spring.
Friday, February 27, 2026
Monday, February 23, 2026
Against Change
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A stained glass window at the United Church of Canada, Huntingdon, Quebec, dedicated to Robert Sellar, author and founder and editor of the now defunct Huntingdon Gleaner newspaper. |
How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse).
— John Cage
It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Economy", Walden (1854)
Whatever we change, we change at the loss of something else, and not every change is for the better. We believe in change and celebrate what is new, but at great expense to ourselves. Some things that we changed for something new we may have considered reforms, but they ended up making life worse, or more complicated, or they destroyed institutions that have supported society for centuries. Not much thought is given to how change will affect us, what we are giving up, what we are replacing, or what we have lost. We are a society that believes in change for its own sake, that what is new is better than what is old, and people cheer for change as though all change is wonderful. What people are cheering for now may be what people will regret in the future.
The reason we adopted the metric system is that it was presumed it would make us more economically competitive with other nations, for instance, with the European Union. Of course, the young accept the metric system, it's all they have ever known for measuring and weighing things, and it is taught in schools. Others among us have never wholeheartedly accepted metrification; fruit and vegetables in grocery stores are weighed in both metric and the imperial system, in ounces and pounds, and measurement for building construction material is still in the imperial system, we buy a sheet of plywood that is eight feet by four feet, a two by four is measured in inches, and so on. Measure twice, cut once, is the carpenter's rule; and it is still done in inches and feet.
Metrification meant giving up an aspect of both our collective inheritance and the use of words that pertain to measurement. But we didn't care, we accepted something that displaced centuries of our history, our way of life, and our language. Metrification moved us further from what is specific and historical, the Avoirdupois system, and into what was conceived in conferences and has very little connection to the everyday life of everyday people. My concern here is not which is the better system of weights and measurement, it the loss of language, history, and our way of life; of course, we assume that we can't go back, that going back will never happen.The Imperial system is derived from the Avoirdupois system which originated eight hundred years ago, certain words are from Old English, the Romans, and earlier civilizations. An "inch" is 1/36th of a yard, from the Old English "ince" or "ynce"', and it is 1/12th of a foot. A "foot" is from the Old English, it is a linear measurement of a man's foot measured as twelve inches. A "yard" is the length of a man's belt but also calculated by King Henry I as the distance from his nose to the thumb of his outstretched hand, it is 36 inches in length. While a "furlong", a word still used in horse racing, is the length of the average plowed furor, it is 660 feet long. A "mile" is from the Romans and calculated as 5,280 feet; a "country mile" refers to travelling over difficult terrain over a long distance since it is not a straight line.
Meanwhile, the metric system dates back to around the time of the French Revolution, from 1795 to 1799, replacing other systems of measurement. The metre was determined by dimensions of the Earth; the kilogram or unit of mass was based on the volume of the litre. It was not long before France and then the rest of Europe had adopted the metric system. This system of measurement is a child of conferences, both the Treaty of the Metre (1875) and the Conférence générale des poids et mesures continued to invent and increase divisions of the material world according to the metric system.
If our previous system of measurement is ancestral and originated in a pre-industrial rural society, then the metric system is fairly recent, originating in cities, by intellectuals and academics, and based in measurement for science, business, and urban dwellers; it is not a system of measurement with a relationship with the natural world, with the earth, or with anything to do with forests, rivers, wild life, oceans, fish, no coast lines, farming, small towns, hunting, and so on. Perhaps most urban dwellers don't care about forests, rivers, wild life, oceans, fish, coast lines, farming, small towns, hunting, and so on. The metric system does not spring from the earth that we walk on or from our ancestors or a belief in the importance of place or where we live; its origin is an abstract invented system of measurement, it is an inbred system based on itself.
How do we define what it means to be a human being and does this definition include a soul? The soul does not resonate to the metric system, the soul demands specificity, place, tradition, and history; the soul includes forests, rivers, wild life, oceans, fish, coast lines, farming, small towns, hunting, and so on. The metric system was imposed on us as so much else has been imposed on us; what is being imposed on us moves us away from tradition, our ancestors, and the ground on which we walk. The metric system does not spring from place, or from our ancestral and historical place.
Metric displaced pounds, ounces, inches, and feet, it displaced what our ancestors knew and lived with, and it displaced words that were used every day by average people going about their lives. We can't go back to the old system but we should remember that change is not always for the best, that what changes displaces what we already have, and in retrospect what we already have may not be all that bad. Today's society is beginning to look very different from what we had, and were happy with, even just five years ago. I am not saying that change is not needed in society, but change and the direction in which our society is now headed is not a place some of us want to go, it looks to be dominated by the State, by globalism, by the deterioration of the family unit, by a laissez-faire morality, by the end of our way of life, by everybody talking at odds with everybody else, and by replacing our vocabulary with new words that, in effect, replace and destroy the past. Anyone opposed to metrification was depicted as a crackpot, reactionary, terrible people, and trying to hold back "progress" (all of the usual reactions by the vocal liberal minority). One day you won't even be able to recognize society because of the changes imposed on us by progressives.
Saturday, February 21, 2026
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
Home of the rabbit
I assumed the rabbit lived in one of the backyards adjacent to ours. If you look at our street, or most other streets around here, you'll see people's homes and in front of the homes there is a sidewalk on both sides of the street and an asphalt road running between the sidewalks (I am being simplistic but I want to make a point). It seems to be relentless city but there are backyards behind each of the houses, there are two backyards adjacent to each other; on some blocks this land is taken up with a lane (the lanes of NDG are a great place to take a walk) and some backyards have flower or vegetable gardens, some are just grass, some have a swimming pool, and most aren't used much. So, the rabbit and other urban wildlife have a lot of land to enjoy and a lot of places to live and places where food can be found. And then, looking at our backyard, my Canadian Cottage Garden, I saw the rabbits' footprints, his trail, and it led from where I leave carrots for him to a pile of branches and weeds, I left these in a pile at the rear of the garden not wanting to bag and discard this stuff, but also wanting to add to the diversity of what grows and what is present in the garden. There are flowers and bushes and there is a growing wild space, planned by me last summer, and part of this is a pile of green vegetation. Now I see the rabbit probably lives in this pile of vegetation, people say rabbits live underground, perhaps under the vegetation. Anyhow, I'm happy with his presence and I don't plan on growing vegetables, just flowers and hostas, hydrangeas, and so on, nothing he'll want to eat.
Here are photographs, taken from the second floor bedroom window of our home, of the backyard in winter with the rabbit's path from where I leave carrots for him to where he possibly lives.
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| Where the rabbit lives. |
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| Where carrots are left for the rabbit. |
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| The rabbits' home? |
The rabbit's ears are burning, he knows someone is talking about him...
Monday, February 16, 2026
"World's Gone Wrong" by Lucinda Williams
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| Lucinda Williams |
He sells cars and she's a nurse
Workin' long hours is the devil's curse
Things are gettin' tight, but it could be worse
She tries hard to ignore the news
Nothing makes sense and she gets confused
Between what is false and what is true
And she worries they won't get through
Come on, baby, we gotta be strong
Dark days are getting long
Looking for comfort in a song
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
They can see what's going down
Empty houses all over town
So many lost are never found
And bad, bad signs are all around
A lot of people being put on the street
It's gettin' harder to make ends meet
He comes home every night feelin' beat
And wonders how long he can take the heat
Come on, baby, we gotta be strong
Dark days are getting long
Looking for comfort in a song
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
She stares out the window and shakes her head
She can't believe the things she's read
She can't believe what's being said
Some days she can't get outta bed
She hopes this won't last forever
She needs to believe it's gonna get better
It's getting hard to keep it together
They need each other now more than ever
Come on, baby, we gotta be strong
Dark days are getting long
Looking for comfort in a song
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
She holds him tight and softly smiles
Says, "Baby, let's put on some Miles"
And dance barefoot across the tiles
And forget our troubles for a little while
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
Baby, the world's gone wrong
Baby, the world's gone wrong
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
Note: Above is Lucinda Williams performing her song.
Friday, February 13, 2026
Rabbit time, u can't touch this
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| Today’s carrot purchase. |
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| Our resident rabbit with carrots. |
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
"The Great Year"
| Walking to Meadowbrook Golf Course, 27 March 2020 |
I wrote "The Great Year" in the mid- to late- 1990s. Here is the complete, edited, version available on the internet archive.
The Great Year is a collection of poems that celebrate a period of time that lasts 25,868 years during which Earth passes through the twelve zodiacal signs, and the Great Months, each lasting approximately 2,500 solar years. Poetry is the voice of the human soul, and like astrology and mythology, it is also the language of the unconscious mind, of dreams, symbolism, irrationality, and intuition.
Saturday, February 7, 2026
Commentary on Continuation III, Introduction (Edited)
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| Downtown Montreal, 1960s |
This third book, the parts were written but never collected to make a book out of them, let's call it "a proposed book", by Louis Dudek, and continuing his Continuation project, was meant to be his final Continuation statement; the incomplete and unassembled nature of this text coincides with the incomplete nature of the whole project. There isn’t a completed book titled Continuation III; there are bits and pieces, an assemblage of fragments that are significant. Continuation III is the deconstruction of Continuation I and II. It is the intervention of life over art, the separation of artifice and authenticity. The triumph of truth over poetry’s facsimile of authenticity. It is where poetry ends and the last words and absolution begin.
Final lines in Continuation III:
Stand there and remember
the paltriness of worldly claims
and the immensity
that is always now.
--The Surface of Time (2000), p. 84
-o-
The content of Continuation III was published in two installments by Sonja Skarstedt’s Empyreal Press. “Continuation III [Fragment]” and “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]” both appear in The Caged Tiger (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1997). “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]” is the only section of all three "Continuation" that deviates from the style, use of epigrams, and line breaks found in the previous two books. The final poems are in Dudek’s last book, The Surface of Time (2000).
There is no single volume or completed series of poems called Continuation III but there are fragments, and completed sections, of what might have been the text of this non-existent third book. In Dudek's The Caged Tiger (1997) there is "Continuation III (Fragment)"; it has four sections and the fourth section emphasizes the importance of poetry; this is followed by "Notes for Ken" (Norris), these are page numbers and notes explaining some of the references and meaning of this section. Then, Dudek published Surface of Time (2000) and the final Continuation III poems are included here, "Sequence from "Continuation III". This is the conclusion to the Continuation project; it emphasizes the importance, value, and journey of Dudek’s poetry, both writing poetry and reading poetry; in addition to poetry the other topic in the Continuation texts is God, the divine presence, and there are references to both God and poetry throughout all three Continuation books. Suddenly, the poem ends, not in mid-sentence but it ends (as life ends), the various fragments have ended but it still has the feeling of continuation; it might serve as Dudek's literary “last will and testament": it's the gift of the importance of poetry. But it is also a failed completion of the Continuation project and proves my belief that most long, multi-volume poems end in failure, not in completion, and, as Pound said of his Cantos, it does not cohere.
-o-
Continuation III is preoccupied with and describes what it’s like to be old. It has a quality of increasing fragmentation, the body is collapsing, it's closing down,, it is beginning to reach its end.
It is possible some parts of Continuation III were written much earlier and then recycled into the final book. I have tried to indicate both the movement of time and the various insights in these three books; dates for composition remain approximate, for instance, the embryo of Continuation III was in 1990.
-o-
"Continuation III" (this section is found at the end of The Caged Tiger) is divided into four sections with an additional section, “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]” at the very end of the book. Between these two sections is “Notes for Ken [Norris]”, that briefly elaborate Dudek’s vision in personal terms, not abstract ideas but poetry. This writing is Dudek in his old age, in which the theme of youth vs. (old) age is further developed. This is a poem of summation of the important points in Continuation I and II. The fragmentary nature, writing in fragments, is important here. It seems that in old age all there is are fragments; indeed, one doesn’t have the strength to write a long poem without relying on the fragmentary nature of the poem. In old age this is all that’s left of the individual; it’s fragments, not much else but fragments and inevitable death. And death, meditations on death, run throughout this poem. While this is the weakest of the three books—because it is incomplete and published in two separate volumes— it might also be the most moving, written directly from Dudek’s profound experience when he wrote this section.
-o-
The most difficult time in a person’s life is when they are at their weakest, it is when we are old. If one is a sensitive or intelligent person old age is a time of physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual decline to inevitable death. As one grows old the body wears out, just as the body of an old car rusts, parts wear out and have to be replaced, and nothing works as well as it used to. After a lifetime of stress one’s ability to handle emotional conflict is at its lowest; we’ve survived death, divorce, betrayal, but there isn’t much left to us, our nerves are shot... The brain is also wearing out, thought processes are not as fast as they used to be, there is the possibility of dementia and senility. As well, one wonders if the spirituality that was once a support is now viable, facing the end one might wonder if religion was never more than a fairy tale; or, one’s spirituality is strengthened by the circumstances of one’s life. Around you, all of your old friends and family members are dying, you are more and more alone, and you must face your own inevitable death. There is the chance that one’s family, one’s own children, have turned on you and invented a rift, the very people you loved the most have become the biggest disappointment of your life. Do they care? Perhaps not at all. This is a dismal picture of old age. This is what Dudek is writing about when he says that old people are either always smiling or always scowling; that the older one gets the more one looks like a corpse. Some old people are strong and resilient, they have the support of loving families and have a positive outlook on life; however, many others become bitter as they grow old, and some become insane, gags, with their inability to handle the terrible final demands of their existence.
-o-
Note the fragmentary nature of Continuation III, note that it is a fragment in a fragment. Life has dissolved into its separate parts, there isn’t the energy to work on a larger manuscript.
-o-
There is still poetry and “shining”, what is brilliant, mysterious, against the world of appearance, is a counterpoint to the world of appearance and possible illusion. The infinite, one of Dudek’s favourite words, seems to be a part of life, for those able to perceive it, as well as the experience of poetry. Some excerpts:
We are tied to a chariot called time
and dragged along the road
(58)
Well, you’re old only once
Something to be said for that
And thanks to the collection of manuscripts
we now know, before we die
what our friends really thought of us
(59)
Against this, he writes:
There are days when
whatever is is bright
(63)
An Appearance Erscheinung
not “mere appearance”
but a shining
EPIPHANEIA
(64)
Why should I bow to authority?
The poem is my authority
if I want truth.
(65)
-o-
Tragi-comedy, comic-tragedy
Let’s see how you will laugh
when your time comes.
(69)
And accept everything that is given—
pain, darkness, death.
So I am living it
for the last time
like the young
who are living it
for the first time
Ah!
The lilacs falling over themselves
on the garage roof,
and the trellis of trees, making their leaves
for a new summer.
(70-71)
-o-
the one you lie to is the one you love.
“Santuzza, criedi mi!”
cries out Turridu
and died with the lie on his lips.
“Santuizza, credi me! Santuzza, credi me!”
If it’s the truth it fits like a glove,
but the one you lie to is the one you love.
. . . .
Where are the kind friends that used to pass,
and the lovers, with laughing loves—
where are they gone from this world of glass?
(71)
-o-
I am a hole in space,
empty as matter, hungry as death—
can eat up the universe in my maw.
I push into unknown infinite world...
(Came to the sun, came to the earth
and wedged into matter)
I am an interloper,
even now as I push my pencil in the dark
and write this poem.
(76-77)
-o-
His advice:
Keep pushing ahead
with all the language arts,
developing new brain cells
And the reader rubbing his bald pate
in irritation—
Canadian (or American)
“entreprenoors”
sipping their “kreem the menthe”
to their “déjà voo”—
Some of this is beautiful, simply exquisite writing.
-o-
Ah, the tears, the tears of forgetfulness
for all our sorrows
For all the good we leave behind
(Even you, my dear,
whom I love more than myself
—the self that I despise)
(82)
-o-
Back, for a minute, to epigrams:
The New Yorker has set a very high standard
for perfume advertising
So has “the Booker Prize”
for best-sellers.
(86)
-o-
-o-
The second section in Continution III is “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]”. This section is made up of “Bits & Pieces”, but it’s an interesting poem. It posits two voices of the same person speaking with some directions or instructions as to how it should be read (for instance, “cut here”, “pause”, “break”, “long pause”, and so on). The voice that is italicized could be Dudek’s thinking while the voice in plain type could be Dudek addressing an audience; there are other variations of this. Italics could indicate answers or responses the one speaking, the unconscious mind, the fragmentation of the speaker’s voice, and so on.
The world is always full
of the young.
(99)
you try another.
In the end they all fail.
But you keep on trying.
Only youth
never fails.
(106)
-o-
“Sequence from Continuation III” appears in The Surface of Time (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 2000). This is the final “sequence” and conclusion of the poem. It is fragmentary, as thinking is fragmentary, moving from one thought to the next but always overshadowed with Dudek’s concerns: poetry, infinity, youth vs. age, and so on. Poetry seems to be one approach to an awareness of eternity:
Time and space are a construct,
we know it.
But before time and space, what was there?
Eternity is the surface of time.
(80)
What started things, what
was there before the creation
in unknowable to us.
But it shines
from a leaf, from a letter
on the perfect page.
Poetry is a wandering search
an escape from gravity—
a space-walk in the open.
(81)
-o-
And then we have a memory, an anecdote, regarding the “many funerals” Dudek attended as a child. It is the beginning of his sense of mortality, of the utter transience of life. It is the positioning of youth and age beside each other, of an awareness of temporality, an awareness of death. But with this awareness is also a more difficult awareness, it is of the magnificence of life, the multiplicity of existence, the “shining” features of life, the transcendence of temporality found on poetry and life.
Then, he gives us another memory from childhood, “How you fumbled in class,/ how you failed in arithmetic” (83), and then the final, compelling and deeply moving words of this monument of poetry. For, as I remember thinking as we left Dudek’s funeral (on the side of Mount Royal, within walking distance of St. Joseph’s Oratory) that cold March day in 2001, we had greatness among us, we had a Colossus (as Henry Miller referred to a writer friend of his) among us, and now we are alone to face the demands of “savage modernity”:
Go out in the sun
some Sunday morning
when the clouds are melting
over St. Joseph’s,
look down from Mount Royal
to that other world.
It is far off and glorious—
at the heart of creation—
no tin-can world
of savage modernity,
but the everlasting
world of a present
where you stand
in the pale light of allness.
Stand there and remember
the paltriness of worldly claims,
and the immensity
that is always now.
(83-84)
Note: Written in 2012; revised October - November 2024, 2025. Thought: the best final statement is to put in writing what one is thinking, don't leave it up to chance or the possibility that someone might understand what you are saying. Suggestion for poets: be your own critic because the critics may never write about your work and you need to explain what you are doing.
Wednesday, February 4, 2026
"Radio Ethiopia" by Patti Smith
Oh I'll send you a telegram
Oh I have some information for you
Oh I'll send you a telegram
Send it deep in the heart of you
Deep in the heart of your brain is a lever
Oh deep in the heart of your brain is a switch
Oh deep in the heart of your flesh you are clever
Oh honey you met your match in a b_tch
Deep in the heart of
Deep in the heart of
There will be no famine in my existence
I merge with the people of the hills
Oh people of Ethiopia
Your opiate is the air that you breathe
All those mint bushes around you
Are the perfect thing for your system
Aww clean clean it out
You must rid yourself from these, these animal fixations
You must release yourself
From the thickening blackmail of elephantiasis
You must divide the wheat from the rats
You must turn around [and look oh God]
When I see Brancusi
His eyes searching out the infinite abstract spaces
In the [radio] rude hands of sculptor
Now gripped around the neck of a [duosonic]
[I swear on your eyes no pretty words will sway me]
Oh look at me aah
cannot move ahh so much aahh everything I am
possible
Aah
Feel so f_cked up
much too
I know I know
tell him to get out of here
go down to the sea
if he would just tell me
he appreciates Brancusi's space
the sculptor's mallet has been taken in place
every time I see
Sunday, February 1, 2026
Rabbit grabs carrot and runs!
When I get home, late afternoon, the first thing I do is put out a carrot, cut into pieces, for the wild rabbit. The other day the rabbit was already there and as soon as he saw me off he ran. It's lots of fun looking out of the dining room window and seeing the rabbit there, eating a carrot and then sitting for a while before leaving. Here is a short video of the rabbit.


















