AND HERE'S TO YOU FROM JANNE ROBINSON: WE'D LIKE TO HELP YOU LEARN TO HELP YOURSELF

JANNE IN HER HIPPY VAN

JANNE ROBINSON is a feminist non-fiction writer and beat poet who resides on Vancouver Island.

Janne’s theme is authenticity, and so my entry today will be in that same spirit which is ever present in Janne Robinson’s published and publicized life.  To begin, here are a couple of poems that I wrote twenty-some years ago.  The poems are short, but the nuances are long.

This first poem, A Church is …

A Church is

Where beautiful faces marry beautiful faces 

And where the wrinkled ones bury their dead.

You only have to look through the personals and obituaries of the daily newspapers to see my point.  In their pictures, people getting married do look beautiful; whereas, those pictured in their obituaries, though posed at their lively best, present visages that are wrinkled.

My second poem, The Moon in the Afternoon, was written when my oldest boy was about three years of age.  During the summers which I always had holidays because I was a teacher, I’d ride around our city with Baron sitting in the back on his bicycle seat.  Oftentimes we actually saw the moon in the afternoon sky.

The Moon in the Afternoon

The moon in the afternoon belongs to my son,

He looks at it and laughs.

It used to belong to me,

But at night I never laughed.

The suggested theme here is that the poet, in evening sullenness, is abandoned by the moon; the personified moon chooses instead to shine in the afternoon for those who would appreciate it.

I’ll present now some quips from JANNE ROBINSON’s poetry and her keynote speeches, and I’ll offer some personal anecdotes with regard to such.  (Note that these quips from Janne are not quotations, they are just paraphrased snippet I’ve gleaned from her written and oral expressions.)

• I am supported by what I love …

I love guitar busking.  My nidus for this really began when I spent 30 summertime days strumming on the mean streets in Victoria, British Columbia many, many years ago.  Then came didge busking, then portrait busking.  Street hypnosis (though right now I lack the courage) very much seems to be my next busking adventure.

• If it’s heavy let it go …

I love having friends but sometimes you just have to let them go.  I’m referring only to those who anchor me to mundane experiences.  This mundanity has manifested in various ways, boring and monotonous coffee chats only about their work and expressing always their physical aches and pains are just two examples.  I do have a pattern concerning letting friends go.  Once they’re dropped they’re dropped.

• Don’t be known for your suffering …

To live is to suffer is the skinny of Zen but those pains mentioned in the previous paragraph is not really what is being referenced to in the spirit of Zen.  I do not want my perceived theme to be ache-and-pain.  According to B.F. Skinner, if I want to be ache-and-pain old, I just need to behave in that manner.  That would mean being a chronic complainer and having people open doors for me (literally) and accommodate me in other ways, simply because I am acting like an old guy.  Nope.  Acting old is not for me.  I want my theme to be buskology.  

• We are constantly expanding …

Just as our universe is expanding (in a physical sense according to most astronomy camps), so could be we (at least metaphorically).  The longer we live the longer we have opportunity to grow in philosophically, especially existentially.  The longer we linger the more opportunity we have to reflect and introspect upon the contrariness of restriction with regard to unlimited individual choice and individual freedom.  (My Nietzsche is pietzsche but Sartre is smartre blog entry is not soon coming down the Milky Way.)

• Wouldja like more cream in your coffee kind of moment …

I love projecting my alterity as a laid-back busker who sips American coffees all day long, an Americano mein so to speak.  (Note that Americanos to Janne Robinson connote her past as a Canadian representing Corporate America.  Her dislike for this thought makes her physically and psychologically sick.)

• Experiences, not pensions, make you rich …

And speaking about Corporate America, welcome to the middle-class misadventure of company pensions and other banal benefits, escaping from this I’ve discovered my niche to be busking and hypnotherapy -- no pensions allowed.  Sketching street people for free has unwittingly become my unofficial calling.  Surprisingly, my epiphanic moment for this meed originated in Morocco, where just a few months ago I hit the streets of Marrakech with my sketchpad and pencil drew dozens of random strangers who literally stood in line for their pencil-never-lies portraits. 

• Part of being successful is just f@#$kin’ wingin’ it …

True confession:  I am a stager.  I first realized this when I contracted clients through another counseling agency in my home city, Regina, Canada.  Until those initial outside contracts, I had only counseled adolescents.  Counseling under contract, I became the agency go-to couple counselor.  I was successful doing this following my twenty year Choice Theory skills, and adapting them to suit the Solution-Focus Therapy mandated by the agency.  Because I’d been on the counseling stage for a thousand previous client acts, my new role dealing with adults and not adolescents, and presenting a Solution-Focus therapy rather than my usual Choice Theory, my stager status was bona-fide solidified. 

• Fix yourself – Fix the world …

I’m in a constant state of self-fix and flux, but most certainly not in a selfless and universal sense.  Specifically relating to exercise and diet and philosophical and vocational nourishment, in selfish fashion I’m doing pretty good; however, in selfless fashion my actions have been disproportionately stingy.  I love sketching the perceived social street dregs (dregs being a stark social descriptor, my choice of social attitude not my personal belief).  My true worth, unfortunately, comes to weigh-in with you get what you pay for as being one of my favorite phrases.

• Knowing the shit that we hate is as important as knowing the shit that we love …

Yes and yikes!  I do know I have always hated being a career counselor and that concurrently in my career I have always loved being a crisis counselor.  As a worker bee contract counselor, I hate the paper work; the writing up and the filing of the treatment plans because of the subpoenas kicking down the imaginary litigation road in the future.

I hate the packing but I love my buskspots.  Getting to and fro, slinging only my guitar and harp, though traveling light of foot is still a self-imagined heavy burden.  However, as soon as I arrive I thrum and I think and I think and I thrum.  Buskspots are my perfect places for introspection and contemplation.

• We can be the art that we love …

I love being a singer-songwriter and my local gigs are my mercenary proof.  Every year I’m offered four scheduled stage performances, one for each season, at the BUSHWAKKER BREWPUB in Regina.  This, I regard, as a commercial privilege, a social recognition of my busker alterity.  From a narcissistic viewpoint –  
AT LONG LAST I HAVE ARRIVED!

Those marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week:  (continuing from Janne’s, “We can be the art that we love … “)

MY NEW SKETCHING STATION AT CENTENNIAL MARKET IN REGINA CANADA

Chrysta, the Centennial Market manager, put this together for me ... and ... she wants to bring my twelve-string and harp to play between sketches!

LILY

LISA

GARY (AGAIN)
Gary is my colleague.  What are the odds that he is an ex-NHL'er and pro European player!
(This is phenomenology at its finest!)

PATSY (AGAIN)
Patsy, too, is my colleague and one of the finest social worker ever!

ANOTHER GARY ... this Gary has been one of my very best friends for over 30 years!

CORBYN AT THE MARKET
Corbyn will very soon be my competition in the portrait sketching department!