A superagit STRICTLY PERSONAL IT’S THE little things that get you. Get me, anyway. When I was in my late teens, I tried taking up yoga. I would lie - there on a straw mat, sometimes stark naked, and struggle to relax every muscle i in my body, starting at the tip of my toes. By the time you got up to your frontal.Jobes, you were supposed to be halfway to Nirvana. Do this often’ enough an¢ you can prac- tically float you are so serene. . There is a lot more to yoga than _ this, of course. But that was the ’ ‘asic starting exercise, as I recall. : >» had always been a skittish, highly strung, stressed-out kid. Yoga would have been perfect for “me. But it was such an over- a whelming effort, trying to relax, CERN RET ted that | soon exhausted myself and gave up, Well, not totally. 1 read everything | could find about Zen and other kinds of Oriental wisdom. Buddhism at first seemed merely exotic. Zen was where the mind-warping stuff was, But after a while Zen gets kind of unhelpful. Sure, the world simultaneously was and was not, and [ could dismiss suffering as a thing ultimately of no consequence because everything just was and was nol. By thinking about the sound of one hand clapping, you could avoid thinking about being smacked around by fate. The trouble with Zen was that while it was great mind-food, it didn’t seem to have much ap- plication, except to encourage doing nothing. Acting by not act- ing, right? The greatest action is no action at all. Except that it doesn’t bring in the paycheque, or win the big game, or help get the girl, unless she’s a very mellow Zen adept herself, I guess, and you just hap- pen to fail/not fall into each other’s arms. I can't help feeling 1 might have had more fun if I’d just passed on the whole Zen phase. In any event, I don’t think I was really looking for truth: 1 was looking for some way to cali down. 7 1 would notice people who seemed to be calm. 1 had at least one uncle and a couple of aunts who seemed calm. That was about it. search for so Everybody else in the world seemed agitated. It was a very ag- itated world. I did my best to escape from it as much as possible. In addition to yoga and Zen, | gobbled up science fiction. f went straight from there into the mad German philosopher Nietzsche, who raved about hav- ing to surpass ourselves and move on to a superman phase of evolu- tion. Great stuff! A superman wouldn't be agitated, would he? Or would he? Judging from Nietzsche (and me, for that mat- ter, after I'd read a few of his books); there was a distinct possi- bility of acquiring a bad case of super-agitation. In these various pursuits, 1 was, of course, looking for the big mental tranquilizer, the idea that would explain life and thus allow my agitated little mind to settle down. I knew there had to be a Big Picture, and once you had it, everything would fall into place. I had flings with theosophy, Taoism and various types of meditation, and they were all interesting. But after five decades of ex- istence, the only truth I know for sure is that I am still skittish, highly strung and stressed-out. My search for mystical serenity has been a total bust. On a given day, I blow up at somebody probably a couple of dozen times. Most of it occurs in the car, as some idiot ahead of me is drifting into my lane without bothering to la ) joquot rainforest needs Dear Editor: - This -is an open letter to all grandmothers of Canada from: the three who were arrested July 6 on. ‘Kennedy bridge, leading into Cilayoquot “Sound on Vancouver sland. - We were arrested for blockading a Macmillan Bloedel (MB) logging “. .truck and are’ now residing in the ‘Nanaimo Correctional Centre.’ | ~The three of us, along. with . others, ‘were . bridge for. an extremely important ... reason: to’ preserve the -ancient - temperate | rainforests -of Clayo- quot Sound from the clearcutting chainsaws of MB and Interfor. None of us have ever been ar-/ rested before. : But our desires for the comfort of our own homes and loved ones ‘are overridden by our deep anxiety » over the. recent government deci- sicn to allow logging i in. two-thirds of the Sound. Indeed, this : proposal fills us _with unspeakable horror. Clayoquot: Sound does not - belong to logging companies. Decades ago when our B.C. ° government: gave ‘away these priceless trees and streams, it did a cruel thing to the people of this standing on the | nation. The handing over. of the peo- ple’s ‘living treasures to a multipa- tional like MB was pure theft. Clayoquot Sound belongs to the people of B.C., to the nation, to the native people, and to the . animals and birds: and fish that - make their homes there. We ask Premier Harcourt to get out of bed with MB and remember who elected the NDP. We ask him to order a halt to the police intimidation tactics be- ing used against peaceful people in this province who try to. protect , the rainforests. . : Grandmothers, we implore you: think about these things. B.C. holds half of the world’s temperate rainforests, and-Ciayo- quot Sound is one of the largest on Earth. Because its composition is so unique and complex, it needs total proteciion. If you want your grandchildren to grow up in a land where there are sweet, wild places to tarry awhile deep. within the heart of nature, join us. If you want your grandchildren to breathe clean air, join us.. For the rainforest manufacturers the 'Re-evaluate Sunshine Girl “Dear Editor: Cops — your nonprogressive . ‘mentality i is showing. _: Focussing. on an individual’s ‘physical qualities is’ a very - limited and lopsided focus. “Isn’t it time ‘to: re-evaluate the appropriateness of | the Sunshine Girl pictorial and your advertisement calling for “attractive girls, 19 or over,..°? _ Leigh-Anne Maxwell North Vancouver rotection to survive very oxygen that gives us breath. When we become too alienated from nature, we lose our way. Let’s save what’s left of our’ land, our trees, our streams, our very sky, for our grandchildren. Grandmothers, we need your help! Don’t let multinationals control our world heritage. For information on! how to help, please phone Judith Robinson Betty Keawezyk Inessa Ormond Nanaimo Correctional Institute Formerly of Hair Today would like to take this opportunity to welcome all her friends & clients to her new location at. Bryan Stratten, Hair’ Design. 725-4218. signal, or some dazed pedestrian is ambling across the road, plugging up traffic for blocks, or, worst of all, a brain-dead driver is hogging the fast lane while going slow, forcing the rest of us to risk our lives getting around him. That's the car part of the day. Then | get to work, My day job involves doing daily television, which means that | have to deal with producers, pro- grain directors, cameramen, poli- ticians, activists, Macks, goons, liars, rip-off artists, nut cases, weirdos and energy drains, Among this Jot, there aren’t too many blissed-out saints, let me tell you. Maybe all that media world agitation rubs off. Although it could as easily be rubbing off me on to them as much as it rubs off them on to me. By the end of the day, the bot- tom line is that we're all squirrely, And just a little bit crazier than the day before. it sure would have been nice if, way back, | had somehow mastered Zen or yoga or astra! travel. ie Seren J T have a sense of the Big Pic- ture, cosmically speaking. Namely that it’s a picture so big you can't see itall, OK. That doesn't bother me. At feast, | don't think it does. What bothers me is the neighbors heading off to the country for the weekend and hir- ing two inconsiderate jerks to reshingle their roof while they're gone, starting at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning. What bothers me is another neighbor's degenerate little rat of a dog somchow getting outside and barking at roughly the same time of day on a Sunday. Or other neighbors going out of town and leaving their teenagers to haul the speakers outside and start playing unspeakably monotonous post-punkoid grunt noises full blast... 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