Africa Calling (CD), Solitude (book), and Validation (streaming video)

SOLITUDE: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes —A Year Alone in the Patagonia Wilderness (book)
by Robert Kull
(New World Library, $23.95)

Solitude is Vancouver resident Robert Kull’s diary of the year he spent living alone (OK, he had a cat) on a remote, inhospitable island off Chile. A lifelong spiritual seeker, Kull describes with brute frankness his innermost fears, frustrations, and ongoing struggle to find enlightenment—all against the wild, sublime backdrop of the Patagonian wilderness. Though the vast majority of us would never dare to venture alone into the wild as Kull did, Solitude is a powerful reminder that sometimes we all need to tune out the world around us and turn our attention inward.
—Tamara Letkeman

 

Validation(streaming video)
by Kurt Kuenne(SpiritualCinemaCircle.com, free)

Parking attendant Hugh Newman doesn’t just give compliments—he makes it his life’s work. In fact, he’s so good at what he does, every day he has a long line of customers waiting to have their parking tickets—and themselves—validated. But the upbeat Hugh soon meets his match in the surly Victoria; try as he may, he just can’t get her to smile, and ends up losing his moxie. But it’s hard to keep a good man down; Hugh is joyfully reminded of the power of a sincere compliment—and the viewer is left wondering how so much fun, magic, and sweetness can be packed into a 16-minute film.
—Tamara Letkeman

 

Africa Calling (CD)
by Lorraine Klaasen
(Justin Time Records, $18.99)

Rain got you down? Have no fear: Montreal-based songstress Lorraine Klaasen is here to add a little sunshine to these dark and drizzly days. Daughter of legendary South African jazz singer Thandi Klaasen, Lorraine managed to get a group of hot-blooded South Africans into a Montreal recording studio during the freezing Canadian winter to produce a heartwarming album. Embracing the rich musical cultures of Quebec and French-speaking Africa, this highly charged collection blends eclectic background singing tracks in Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa, Lingala, English, and French with the classic sound of township music.
—Erica Gehrke

 

Organizer, Camp Moomba Yogathon & Blissfest

campmoombayogathon.com

What book is on your bedside table? Chasing Clayoquot: A Wilderness Almanac (Raincoast), by the naturalist David Pitt-Brooke, who lives in Tofino.

Page-turner or doorstop? You wouldn’t believe it, but the author makes the history of one singular rock seem as interesting as Angelina Jolie’s and Brad Pitt’s newest domestic drama. So I would say it’s a page-turner.

Would you put it on your desert-island list of must-haves? Well, considering that it would definitely take you far, far away from a desert-island landscape since it does focus on the moisture-filled, temperate rainforest right here in our backyard, probably yes.

Describe the book in one sentence. A wondrous journey through one of Canada’s as-yet wild frontiers in a voice that brings focus, history, and humour to humanize and contextualize the most abstract principles of ecology and geology.

If you designed a poster for the book, what would it look like? A human being entwined with a glorious, old-growth tree—one melding into the other.

List three new words you learned from reading it. Definitely expanded my beyond-the-urban vocabulary. Here’s to using one of these soon: argillite, a fine-grained sedimentary rock composed predominantly of clay and silt-sized particles; semaphore, a visual signalling apparatus with flags, lights, or mechanically moving arms, as is used on a railroad; Evinrude, a brand of outboard motor.

To whom would you recommend this book? Anyone who wants to experience the magnitude and natural rhythms of nature—even from the confines of our urban landscape.

How often did you find yourself re-reading a paragraph because it was so delicious? I’ve actually been re-reading bits of it during the yoga classes I teach. Here is a passage that resonated with me: “A breaking wave in deep water moves with dignity, slow and ponderous. In sunlight, it’s a beautiful thing to behold, a mountain of green water, its shoulders cloaked in a mantle of snowy white foam, massive, sedate, majestic. In the dark of a storm, the same wave becomes ominous and menacing. These are Kipling’s ‘great, grey-green, hissing widow makers.’”

—Erica Gehrke