Author Archives: I.A.M.

About I.A.M.

Who am I? Do I exist? Is the fact that I claim to exist sufficient proof of life, or do you require empirical evidence? If you do, what in blazes are you doing staring at your computer?!?! Go outside for a walk; go to the theatre; drink a pint at the pub; shag someone silly; whatever you want, just stop doing it in 'virtual reality'!

Put on Something Sexy (medium)

OPINION: What's the Big Deal? When Should They Learn?

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It’s not often that I’ll step out of my usual box of “someone ranting about arts” to discuss sexual things. Yet, that’s where this post is going. so I’ll warn you now that if topics such as “family planning” or “condoms” or “practising safe sex” or “sex education” or “animated porn cartoons” make you uncomfortable or even offend you, you should go away now.

Seriously: right now.

Okay… you’ve been warned…!

See, there’s this problem over in Nanaimo, where a Grade 8 kid (around 13 or so) was given a copy of a book. A flip-​book; you know, the kind where you let the pages flip quickly past your thumb and the series of images on the page seem to move, like a movie. Yeah, that sort of thing.

The flip book was given to him as a part of an in-​school programme with excellent goals.

As part of a new district policy to make better use of time during exam week, the school offered students personal health classes in personal health and planning this year.

AIDS Vancouver Island has provided some course materials for a number of years for the programme

Splendid! This is good, and something that needs to be taught to the kids somehow, sometime, by someone. Typically parents who say ” this sort of thing needs to be taught in the home” are also frequently the parents least likely to actually do the educating about sex at all. However, that’s beside the point here.

In addition to other materials from other similar organizations, AIDS Vancouver Island has been involved with providing course materials for a number of years as part of the programme, so the credentials of the content is both sound and respectable.

For more of the ins-​and-​outs of the matter itself, you can read THIS STORY on the CBC News site, as well as THIS STORY as well as A LATER ONE on the site for The Vancouver Sun.

What got me thinking about this at all was this tweet:

Learning about the delightful and intelligent Nadine Thornhill of Ottawa (but soon to be San Francisco-​based), I then gave some thought to the question of this particular educational material and its possible inappropriate use with 13-​year olds.

Here’s an animated *.GIF of the book, showing what you would would see if a copy of it was in your hand.

WARNING

This following graphic will show you images of two-​dimensional characters engaging in
the consensual act of coitus – apparently in a pleasurable fashion – and there is no
specification that they are actually married or even in a committed relationship.
You will also see a man’s willy, which has a condom placed upon it.

Proceed with caution if you feel this might cause you discomfort.

I’ve put this together from the original PDF (you can find that PDF here: CLICKY!) which was published by the Chee Mamuk Aboriginal Program, BC Centre for Disease Control in 2010 as part of their client resources. They describe it as “Flipping fun – a pocket-​sized flip book that models condom use.” The point of it is to promote “Safer sex and sexual health > Safer sex” and within the specific population it targets being “youth.” Presumably the very specific sub-​set of that is First Nations youth, as there have been concerns expressed about STI and HIV become more wide-​spread in recent years, and the promotion of safer sex and contraction of diseases in that community.

Put on Something Sexy (medium)

Put on Something Sexy (medium)

CLICK HERE to see the above animated version of Put on Something Sexy in a larger image size

Sticking with Twitter as a sort-​of litmus test of the acceptability of the material, here’s some reaction to the issue.

There’s the confirmation that the intention of the material has been met: education on how to use a prophylactic device. All good there. Huzzah! Knowledge is power, the use of a condom isn’t as difficult as you might have though, easy to do by anyone, and there’s at least one less mystery which might provide resistance to the use of them therefore.

How could someone object to this, one wonders. It’s possible that a thirteen-​year-​old male might feel uncomfortable discussing the matter with their parent, but it doesn’t seem to me possible that this same male could be un-​aware of the existence of condoms, nor that he might not be considering his options regarding sexual activity in the near future. Perhaps I’m presuming too much, but one might suggest that the innocence of the average 13-​year-​old male is hardly un-​touched long before he sees this fairly benign and un-​erotic booklet? There is the omnipresence of the interweb and its propensity to serve up anything you can state in a few words and which are shoved into Google.

There are a few things one can object to in the book, however.

Both of these quite good points.

The male’s tattoo, and the female’s feather accessory do both smack more than a little of tokenism to make the characters more readily identifiable as First Nations community members. Taken to a ridiculous extreme, this would also manifest itself as two people wearing wooden shoes to make them ‘more Dutch,’ or perhaps both of them smoking and frying some horse meat to make them ‘more French,’ or both of them firing off handguns to make them ‘more American.’ Still, the need to have two people who weren’t clearly white does require something more than a slight tinting to their flesh.

Additionally, the reality of sex – it’s a bit messy, and it’s certainly ain’t elegant as viewing material – is hardly on display here. The idealized images above don’t really grab the eye of the kids, and basically continue that style of textbook illustration that reduce to the barest essentials something far more complex and thus make it… well… a bit boring, really.

To return to the title of this post, however, and the real question this whole thing raises in my mind:

If the kid doesn’t get the information at school, and in the grade where they enter the level of education they start really concerning themselves with careers and other ‘adult-​oriented’ questions of how to live their lives, then where do they do it? Seriously: when?

Okay, sure, the chances are good that only a minority of the students in Grade 8 now will have experienced a sexual act that would necessitate the use of a condom (based on my experience in high school, anyway… not that I’m bitter or anything… no no), some of them actually will have done so by the time they get into the senior grades. Do we wait until they’re about to have sex, then rush up to the parked cars and set-​up the flip-​charts with diagrammes of reproduction systems, shove a handful of condoms through the window, and then hope for the best? Clearly that’s not going to work as they’re not going to be paying attention to anything other than how annoying the adults are being, and it’s already too damned late for them to remember anything.

No, telling them about stuff they need to know before they actually need to know it is the best, to my mind.

After all, we teach our youth about all of the traffic signs and potential behaviour that causes automobile accidents before they get behind the wheel of a car; why not teach them about STI /​HIV /​AIDS and how to use condoms and dental dams before they start navigating a bed?

NOTE ADDED LATER: It is only now that I’ve read Nadine Thornhill’s article about “Sex: A Tell-​All Exhibition” (although I may have read it months ago when she posted it originally). It’s only now that I realize the above final paragraph mirrors her closing argument about the teaching of material prior to its actual use. What can I say; great minds think a link… and fools seldom differ, yes, I know.

HotPink Crowd

RE-VIEW: Hot Pink

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Okay, more of an “I was there” kinda thing-​a-​ring-​ding. Because I was there, and I enjoyed it. So there!

Last evening I went to “Hot Pink: an art event with works by Alex Stewart and Bret Taylor” which had the following as its ‘enticement text’:

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This cake was made by Candice Roach of bakedinvancouver.com. HOORAY!

As your eyes wander up, a stiletto becomes a stocking becomes a hemline. It’s the tease that tempts you.

Artists Alex Stewart and Bret Taylor present Hot Pink: a night of temptation featuring the very definition of tease: the Pin-​Up Girl.

The two artists’ works were quite different, yet both strongly sensual /​evocative in their own way.

Alex Stewart’s pieces tended to a more mysterious feeling of sexuality, taking the approach that that which is not seen is more enticing to the imagination. Several people mentioned a feeling of art nouveau to the works, with their use of repeated, intricate designs overlapped on each other with contrasting – and sometimes clashing – colours creating an almost Turkish or East Indian effect, blocking out full view of the female figures which peeked through the gap in the screen-​like barrier between them and the viewer. There’s even a feeling of affinity with some of Klimt’s approach showing the face in a realistic fashion but the rest of the scene being merely coloured patterns (such as “Mäda Eugenia Primavesi”, “Water Snakes”, or most famously “The Kiss”). On the whole they’re enticing and draw the viewer in to explore rather than creating an impenetrable wall.

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HotPink Artist [right] with HotPink Agent [left]

The works by Bret Taylor [image, left], are nothing if not bold, honest, and open to the viewer. Evoking the raw sensuality of the 1950s and early-‘60s pin-​up girls, simple lines with technical precision create more for the imagination to fill-​in than expected. His technical skill is exemplary, in the same way that it takes an artist like Davis or Ellington to play a 12-​bar solo consiting of a single note to know the precise note that needs to be used. I liked these a great deal due to their accessibility, even if the word “subtlety” might not ever be used about them.

The two artists’ works shared more than one might expect from the above, as they both presented the “Female as Icon”, along with a feeling that the viewer may want to interact with or reach-​out to them, but they are un-​obtainable in some way. Taylor’s figures tease, entice, and arouse but are too iconic to be real enough for us to encounter in reality. Stewart’s images are photographic in character, but we are not only separated from them by the screen/​pattern, but we also are limited to only seeing their face and sometimes not even more than an eye and a cheekbone, so we do not know if they exist beyond that.

Had I money to spend on the purchasing of art, there was at least one piece from each of the walls I would have purchased.

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HotPink Hair at HotPink

The evening itself was enjoyable, even if there was a difficulty conducting a conversation some of the time due to the volume level. No doubt earlier in the day would have been better for that, but I was there from about 7:45 onward for the “Adults Only” part of the evening, thus the music was a bit more in the “PAR-​TAY TIME!!” levels. Nothing wrong with that, either.

Above all else, it was great to see @stepc, @CathyBrowne, @gusgreeper, @abc4, @DanielOong, @danudey, @BretInVancouver, @Kimli, and @cwcheeks at the event. It’s always great to see them, and combining that with art is better.

Art: HOORAY!

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HotPink Shoes at HotPink

Mood: complacent
Music: “Light Arms” from After the Heat, by Eno, Moebius, Roedelius (1978, Sky Records)
Book: Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkhov, (translated by George Bird); Melville International Crime [ISBN 978 – 1 – 612190 – 7 – 61]

A WARNING: You Can Never Go Back, Only Forward

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Despite the silence, life continues un-​abated here. Oh so very much life, oh yes. Some of it might even be something I will write about… someday.

Maybe…

For the moment, here’s some food for thought.

Ever since the spring of 2001, I’ve been on varying amounts of Effexor, to help me manage my chronic, clinical-​level of depression. The very first version of it were called that, then shortly they had to re-​jig the way it was made so it was more ‘time-​released’, as well as fixing a few things in the way they marketed it. Initially they claimed that the dosages could go up, go down, start, and stop all at a moment’s notice without any problems.

Oh my, no that wasn’t the case.

Once they got word of an on-​going number of suicides (completed and not), the common denominator being the reduction or complete stopping of intake of the anti-​depressant, they realized the claim above wasn’t as reliable as the testing documentation was purported to be.

Well, dang, it’s a good thing that they got all that squared away and it’s all fine now, I hear you say on behalf of me and anyone else who are prescribed the Venlafaxine.

Sadly, no, it’s not.

Corinna is someone I’ve met and got to know a bit, as we’re both artsy, cat-​mad, and living with mental health issues. Recently she and her doctor decided to shift her – very slowly – from Effexor over to another medication. They were just about at the last stage of things when…

But then, my doctor and I both mistook symptoms of Effexor withdrawal – heightened agitation, irritability, larger than life mood swings, plus the onset of some random crying, to name just a few, for a depressive episode that made sense based on the fact that there have been a lot of changes in my life recently and I was also processing an upcoming 10 year anniversary of a friend lost to suicide.

You can read the rest of this RIGHT HERE, and it’s recommended that you do.

I had harboured the hope that, someday, I could stop taking this stuff. Having watched Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive (I’m not manic, but about half of the show was spot-​on to my experience) and being met with the news that medication once begun can never be eliminated, I got a bit scared. Then, upon thinking more about the fact that things have changed since that Emmy Award winning “Best Documentary” was released in 2006 or so, hoped that medication had changed enough that this was no longer the case. Besides, mine is less complicated by ‘manic states’ and so on.

Then I read about this experience of Corinna’s, and started wondering. This section particularly grabbed my attention:

I actually don’t feel that bad if I keep my head still but haven’t been able to keep other symptoms such as bursting into tears or feeling so dysphoric that suicidal thoughts have become overwhelming and I’ve simply slouched over on the couch like a rag doll or meandered back to my bed.

How I remember what that’s like. So clearly, for that matter, that I wish not to return to that ever.

There’s a few quite substantial changes coming in the next 12 months for me (which are for a future post), but part of the fact that I’ve been able to survive this long is that I’ve qualified for the Provincial Government covering my shed-​load dimension of daily dose, and this might get pretty expensive for me in short order if I get a decent job to help me support myself in the way I’ll have to… which then means I’ll be back to having no money once I pay for the expensive and massive daily medication.

The end result of all this for me is an on-​going serious concern for my continuing mental health.

The end result of all this for you is that you ought to read Corinna’s post, in order to better understand how come [INSERT NAME HERE] went all crazy the other day on Facebook /​their blog /​on Twitter /​at the party in reply to me? Because there’s a good number of people who quietly deal with things their own way, without wearing their heart on their sleeve like I do. There’s loads of people dealing with the same shit that I do about which I am ignorant. Everyone deals with it in their own way; mine is to ‘let it all hang out there’ and hope that people take the bits from my output that they find entertaining and /​or useful.

Meanwhile, if things do have to be changed dramatically, I know that I’m not alone for others have gone before me and will be able to point the way.

So… there’s that, at least…

Mood: pessimistic
Music: “Ruby My Dear”, Thelonious Monk, recorded in Paris, 1963; Monk ’Round the World, Columbia Records
Book: Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov (translated by George Bird); Melville International Crime [ISBN 978 – 1-​612190 – 7-​61]

RE:VIEW ~ "Leave of Absence" by Lucia Frangione

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Sometimes something has such an effect that to not write a review would prevent the proper appreciation of the art being completed. Such is the case with Leave of Absence, which had its official World Début last evening at Pacific Theatre.

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Cover of published script. [Design: Emily Cooper]

For some time, the writing of Lucia Frangione has had a profound effect on me. Her ability to intelligently discuss the spiritual without the too-​common ‘preachiness’ of some religious-​themed plays is all to rare. Surely the consideration of philosophical and moral codes of living one’s life in a thoughtful and considerate fashion is something that we all do, at least to some extent. “You can’t say that!” “How could anyone decide that was acceptable?” “Who raised her as a child so that she would think that as an adult?” “If a son of mine was like that, I’d dis-​own them!” These are things commonly said by anyone, no matter the religious upbringing or lack thereof.

Over the last several decades of current events, the two recurring themes are war, and those in authority of Organized Religions’ ability to critique behavior of others with a willful disregard of their own. This has led to a dismissal of religion in any form by the common man, as they eschew it in favor of humanitarianism. All people have the right to do so, and I am not decrying their decisions (in fact, I consider myself among their group). The discussion of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ within a religious setting (a Catholic-​run high school) makes the series of events of this play sing with moral judgements. The Church is at war with the church in the heart of a 15-​year-​old girl (played by Karyn Guenther; who is incredible): she sees the Holy Spirit, and the reality of what she’s been is dismissed by the same teacher who gave her the information of its very possibility (Marie Russell in a very earnest and caring performance). The priest (Tom McBeath; who is consistently able to make acting disappear into pure reality) and her mother (Lucia Frangione in one of her best performances ever) both believe her, at least to the extent that the incredible can be fully accepted by anyone. The local Russian emigré Leap (Craig Erickson; in a wildly successful balance of “butch tough-​guy” and “caring”) thinks that the girl just needs a Father, or at the very least an older brother of sort to stable her daily influence.

Over the course of a what seems to be week or slightly more, the entire question of spiritual awakening, bulling, sexuality, imposed religious dogma at the cost of actual Christ-​like care and consideration, the focus of self-​interest over actual attention to others, and life’s ability to cause things to occur while one is making other plans entirely, all come to a head for this little group of five and the community in which they revolve. As it is with any great theatre, they will never be the same after, and neither will the audience.

Much of the plot revolves around people’s need to pigeon-​hole people into labelled categories: gay, straight, weird, normal, sinner, popular, husband, widow, priest, lay-​person. Yet, no one is any one of these with the exclusivity which would make life easy. The priest certainly has a sexuality (he’s quite happy, thanks, just not gay) but he subsumes it owing to his calling. The tough-​guy ex-​Soviet hates his dead wife for never letting him understand the intelligent and intimate side of her soul. The single mother and teacher both love their charges for the potential they have yet do not wish for time to actually progress, and are thus disappointed to some extent when it does.

Cast of “Leave of Absence” [l to r]: Karyn Guenther, Craig Erickson, Tom McBeath, Lucia Frangione [photo credit: Emily Cooper]

Cast of “Leave of Absence” [l to r]: Karyn Guenther, Craig Erickson, Tom McBeath, Lucia Frangione [photo credit: Emily Cooper]

Somehow the girl “Blake” (named for the poet) has to come to terms with her own sensualist religious beliefs as manifested within a Catholic upbringing. She’s surrounded by people who are both complex and internally contradicted, yet she is the one labelled an “out-​lier” in the way that a set of probability data includes instances of high improbability; extremes influence the ‘average’, but are still extremes. Being entirely un-​equipped to deal with this duality of teaching and reality surrounding her, she’s in over her head, and so are the other students in the school, to the tragedy of all.

The central question is not one of “what did someone do for this child?” but a more important one of “what did we, as intelligent and caring human beings not do which contributed to the situation in which we now find ourselves?” The act of murder, bigotry, the rejection of personal ability to make a difference (positive or negative) are, sadly eternal matters in the history of human events. For all we dress up each day’s “hot topic” with words about “the right wing”, or someone’s “agenda”, the evils of “organized religion”, or “kids today”, it comes down to what did each of us do to prevent this and it always has.

I’ve not been to the theatre in quite some time, for a number of personal reasons. The end of the piece left me in tears, and restored my faith in the ability of playwrights to tackle complicated subjects in ways that mean something to an audience without either imposing their final message or preaching, respecting the audience sufficiently to come to their own conclusions about the matters.

This will be produced everywhere, and for the excellent reason of its crafting. The performances of this initial production respect that, as well as setting the bar at a height in keeping with the quality of its words.

If you’re not able to see a production — or even if you are — the script is already published by Talon Books.

Leave of Absence, written by Lucia Frangione, produced by Pacific Theatre, 1440 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, Box Office: 604.731.5518

Director: Morris Ertman*; Cast: Tom McBeath*, Lucia Frangione*, Craig Erickson* Marie Russell*, Karyn Guenther; Dramaturg: DD Kugler; Composer: Jim Hodgkinson; Set: Drew Facey; Costume; Sydney Cavanagh; Lighting: Laughlin Johnston; Sound: Jeff Tymoschuk; Stage Manager: Jethlo E. Cabilete*; Ass’t Stage Mgr: Michelle Harrison; Ass’t Costume: Catrina Jackson; Properties: Linsy Rotar; Technical Dir: Jess Howell; Head Elec.: Kougar Basi; Venue Tech: Denis Pimm

[*appears with permission of the Canadian Actors Equity Association]

Wednesday-​Saturday at 8pm, Saturday matinees 2pm; Post-​Show Artist Talkback: Friday, February 1; Panel Discussion: Saturday, February 9 (approx. 4:30pm), featuring QMUNITY, Dignity Canada, and Ms Frangione

Mood: thankful
Music: “Whisper Not”, by Lee Morgan Vol. 2 [1956, Blue Note (CD: CJ28-​5145)]
Book: The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day II), by Patrick Rothfuss [2011, DAW; ISBN: 9781101486405]

A Glance Over the Shoulder Before Merging

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So, what was 2012 for me, then? I’ve seen a few questions on Facebook that were of the same nature as that question with various limitations for the answer such as “use only three words” or “use a movie title to best capture this past year”. This is not easy to answer in my case. Much of this year involved massive problem solving, tests of various sorts, failure, and generally bad decisions all ’round. Perhaps The Empire Strikes Back would be an appropriate film title?

Late last year I threw up my hands and started looking for a “day job” in order to support my publishing foolishness. Gosh, that went so well, too! After a year of looking and applying for billions of jobs all the way down to barista – including at least four positions whose descriptions read like they were seeking me specifically, and not just someone very much like me – and not even being interviewed for a single one of them, all I have to show for the effort is one part-​time position which didn’t live past the probationary period (originally scheduled for six months but I requested three). The thought of having a regular pay-​cheque was welcome indeed! The necessity of getting-​up and being downtown Monday-​through-​Friday by 8:30 was awesome, and the commuting was helping me to lose some weight! Hooray!

And then it was “this isn’t working out” and I was back to looking for more jobs; but really, I’m unemployable after being an entrepreneur out of necessity for nearly two uninterrupted decades. I know too much, and am entirely too much my own man, for anyone to be able to either boss me around or instill me with a feeling of terror for their Authority. That certainly shows up with the résumé’s items being headed with “owner” and “proprietor” instead of “Doo-​Hickey Manager (Level II)” or the like. So that, and the on-​going depression, results in me basically being unemployable.

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Diskpocalypse 2012 begins

Most of the money earned went to fund the replacement of three hard-​drives which chose to fail at nearly the same time, including sending one of them to Ontario to go through an expensive recovery process. The first warning sign was the need to run CHKDSK, something I probably hadn’t done since Windows 98. Once that bit of joy was done [image, right] and it seemed to be a mild hiccup, things started to go very wrong very quickly. The biggest and most horrifying thing discovered was that all of the data files were on a different virtual disc than Windows 7 was, but not on a different physical drive, thus as the OS disc began having mechanical failures the data disc was as well.

Of course, you have everything backed-​up… right…? Well, I certainly do now, yes, thanks to the Backblaze back-​up service and iOmega’s “QuikProtect” [sic] running, I’ve got the original copies of each file, then everything’s copied over to an external iOmega hard-​drive, then everything gets duplicated up to the Backblaze cloud server. At any given time, if the computer fails, the external drive will provide a copy of nearly everything, and if the house burns down, taking the entire computer and external drive in the process, then there’s a third copy on-​line that has nearly everything on that. Done!

So, after over three weeks’ pay going to the job of recovering the first failed drive, I got back my old one plus a new little drive in a case with all my files from the old Drive C:\\ and Drive D:\\ on it, and the proper setting-​up of fail-​safe systems was on. Part of that was replacing the other two drives in the tower as they were starting to show funny error codes as well, just as the Mother Disc had… ARGH!!

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Jennifer’s New Computer

So, about a month ago now, when Jennifer’s hard drive began doing the same odd thing when booting – straight to CHKDSK before entering Windows – the answer was either “replace the drive” or “replace the whole computer”. Given the age of the unit (lack of modern connections for several things, several others being long-​dead or over-​worked such as graphic and main processor – we opted for an entire new computer [image, left]. Changing her to a Mac also ensured that, going forward, she’d be happier and have less of Redmond’s idiotic approach to future operating systems: Windows 8 is so awful in its philosophy and approach to things that I’ve sworn to change the entire house over to Apple as fast as money permits.

She’s not too keen on learning how to use the new computer, but is willing to believe me when told it’ll be easier for her to use in the long run than any Windows system was. There’s a large amount of basic tasks and functions she’s never quite grasped properly, and much of that is probably the odd ways that Windows approached them, and the number of changes they made to some of the more simple things. Anyhow, she’s got a new keyboard and computer, with her old mouse and monitor, and is learning to love OS X “Mountain Lion”. Possibly.

What with it having been a Presidential Election year in the USA, sales of books published by Atomic Fez were down (any US Election year is a bad one for business, as people are both distracted by the campaigning as well as as being uncertain about the future), which added to the already disastrous state of the economy putting a massive dent in things financial. All together a not very good year there, save for the publishing of two wonderful books: John Llewellyn Probert’s The House that Death Built, and John Travis’s second “Benji Spriteman Mystery” titled The Designated Coconut. Both are already in the hands of reviewers now, so hopefully the new year and some reviews will change the sales figures for the better of both publisher and the authors.

The state of Canadian politics in both federal and provincial areas makes me increasingly cynical and embittered to much of the system, bringing on such a case of ennui that the notion of “why bother voting when the same horse-​shit gets trotted out all the time anyway?” actually makes sense to this life-​long political junkie and enthusiastic vote casting participant. Someone suggested I should run for office, but there’s no way I could toe anyone’s party line, and there’s no way an independent could get elected when these days require oodles of money for even a bare-​bones campaign. Besides, what sort of fool would vote for a guy who’s got “ex-​” ahead of the names of several disparate careers he’s attempted?

And here’s the crux of where I’m at right now, with the world’s society hell-​bent on making the rich richer, the children more in danger from gun crime, and those in power increasingly contemptuous of the public: having arrived at 46 years of age this year, financially destitute, without employment, without means to solve many of the basics which are broken, and I’ve no one to blame but myself for thinking I could make success based on old-​fashioned gumption and hard work, like back in the ‘50s. But as it’s too late to fix that now, I guess the end-​result is to keep beavering away towards no definite goal, until whenever the grave happens to arrive.

Yup: it’s come to that.

[click image to visit original source]

With thanks to a post on Facebook [click image to visit]

Mood: reflective
Music: “Dear Friend”, by Wings, from “Wild Life” [Apple Records, 1971]
Book: “The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day II)” by Patrick Rothfuss [2011, DAW; ISBN: 9781101486405]