GROWTH

We come into this world, complex yet unformed. As we experience life through the years, it shapes us and changes us. Throughout this process, there is a desire to control how we are affected by life’s forces. We are all engaged in the same process of trying to make sense of our existence and our surrounding environment. Our biological, emotional, and intellectual needs drive us into the company of others, where we share our experiences, insights, wonderment, and the bewilderment of our lives.
We are story tellers.
We share our stories in so many ways: through art, songs, poems, prose, stories, and speeches. We strive to condense powerful emotional experiences into a kernel of beauty and intensity that we hope will act as a catalyst to change people close to us, and then ripple outwards into our communities, and ultimately the world.
We should tell our stories…we must tell our stories.
Our fragile world depends on us to protect it from the ravages of damaged beings that have acquired sufficient power to threaten our very existence, and unknowingly, theirs as well. We must create and build our culture from ourselves, moulding it through music, sculpture, paintings, Poetry, Novels, and video lest we succumb to the dominant consumptive culture imposed from above.
We must create.
Creative work does not burst forth fully formed but, like ourselves, starts newborn and develops slowly, gaining power and influence until it can speak to the powerful, the corrupt, the angry, and the hurt. Creations can speak loudly and softly. They can sooth a troubled elder and delight a wide eyed child. If we are not creative beings, who are we?
We are nothing without creativity.
The more we leave our core humanity and extend ourselves into a world of rich creation, the more we separate from those who are also extending themselves from the same human beginnings to follow their creative needs. In an expanding universe, galaxies of creative endeavour are moving further and further apart.
We must connect.
We need a unified field of ideas and expression to reconnect us in some other dimension. We need to be in our own space and in the space of other’s as well. We need a quantum connection with each other.
This is a collection of poems arranged in approximate chronological order to illustrate the moulding of one’s personality, attitudes and motivations from internal and external events, as one grows through the various phases of life.

Paperback: 132 pages
Publishing date: April 1, 2019
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1-950437-41-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-950437-41-2
Product Dimensions: 6 x0.6 x 9 inches

Peter Freeman lives on Salt Spring Island on the west coast of Canada. He writes non-fiction and fictional Novels, children’s books, screen and stage plays, short stories, magazine articles, and Poetry.

He grew up in what was once the sleepy, fishing village of Noosa Heads on the Sunshine Coast, just south of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. He started his working career first as a cadet surveyor, then a journeyman fitter and turner, and finally focused on computer science at the University of Tasmania.

While in Hobart, Peter joined the local rock-climbing club where he later met Max Dorfligger, a carpenter, shipwright and famous Swiss mountaineer.  Peter sailed across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand with Max in the thirty-two foot sloop, Sunshine, that Max had built. Peter then spent the next few years in Dunedin as a train driver and building his own sailboat, Laivi?a.

Peter sailed from New Zealand to Australia and then onto Canada where he incorporated an Information Technology company (Southern Cross Systems Ltd.), producing and selling scientific and business software to universities, government and the private sector.

In 1984, Peter departed Victoria, British Columbia, to sail his thirty-two foot sloop, Laivi?a, on a solo non-stop circumnavigation of the globe, breaking the existing world record in a time of 236 days. His book, Cape Horn Birthday, is an account of this journey.

Representing Canada in world championships, Peter competed as a masters athlete in Italy, South Africa, Australia, the USA, and Canada, and has won gold, silver and bronze medals from these competitions in the 100, 200, 400, and 800 metre events.  In 2003, Peter was ranked 11th in the world and 1st in Canada for his 55.10 second time in the 400 metres.

As a keen cyclist, Peter has twice ridden his bicycle across Canada. Without any support, he took 79 bicycling days to cover the 15,400 kilometre perimeter of Australia, averaging 200 kilometres a day.