An Angel with just one wing

Tuesday November 6 we’ll be at Second Cup in Kensington / Sunnyside, and Wednesday November 7 at Vendome. The dialogues start at 6 PM.

Last Tuesday, Zoe read us her short story about a spooky wristwatch; Don Harris and I took turns reading Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and Don told us about an exhibit of his wife’s nature photos combined with his poetry. The book shared was As a Man Thinketh by James Allen, a classic that has inspired countless readers since its publication in 1903.

On Wednesday Aishwarya told us about some visionary work she’s doing as she applies to M.I.T. Zoe’s book share was The Challenge of Pain by Ronald Melzack and Patrick D. Wall. Cyril told us about a project involving very practical farm-related work for which he would need the use of at least two acres of farmland near Calgary.

The magic that Halloween evening at Vendome was not a five minute presentation, but a remarkable moment in which two of the participants became upset with each other. It was an opportunity to learn about life skills, and as good luck would have it, Marshall Rosenberg’s classic on non-violent communication was right there, and was pulled (like a rabbit out of a hat) out of a knapsack, and will be a book share this week. Another book shared that night had been The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein, about the genesis of Frankenstein and Dracula two hundred years ago, but also about how vulnerable and explosive those gifted human beings were who gathered that dark and stormy night (June 16, 1816, in a villa on Lake Geneva) when the projects to write those stories originated. If we observe ourselves carefully, we should be able to find a bit of monster in our patterns of thought and behaviour. A gentler way of expressing it is that each of us is an angel with just one wing and in order to fly, we’re going to have to do it together.

Until next,

Arthur