Academy of Enlightenment

Forged in the Academy of Enlightenment is a world of advanced learning where Chef d'Équipe, JP Michaels, feels right at home. From his thirst for knowledge as a student-monk in Philosophy and Religious Studies, to his pedagogical studies in Education and his desire to impart knowledge to his Middle School students, to his intensive musical training and international engagements on musical theatre and operatic stages these are the four pillars of learning for renaissance man JP Michaels and his Academy of Enlightenment

The Luxury of Grief by JP Michaels

There's no substitute for grief. Grief is just one of those rights of emotional passage. Grief shows up at your doorstep unannounced and stays for tea. Grief pokes at the bruises of your loss. Grief is not something that can be surrounded. There is no way to get over or under grief. You can't try and fill up grief because grief is in and of itself full. And the shortest distance between two points is a straight line through the center of grief. And whether you think you can or whether you think you can't you would be right on both accounts. Grief is the heart's way of nudging the memories of the brain to propel you on your healing journey. The luxury of grief is that it causes you to feel and as long as you can feel something you are still alive . I'm coming out the other side knowing I am going to be all right.
Lesson Learned: Change your perspective; change your attitude change your life.
Lest we forget 
JP Michaels

Reinvention Defined by JP Michaels

Glass Half Full

"We suffer not from the events in our lives, but from our judgment of them." (Epictetus; Greek Stoic Philosopher)
A dynamic life is made up of a series of  "teachable" moments of life-lessons successfully learned with each lesson building on the previous lesson. When I am not being a full-time teacher, I am a full-time student.
Over these past few years during my period of unwellness, I have realized two things about myself: I am a "glass half full" kinda person and I am a very slow drinker. Lesson learned: Take time to sip on life.

☆(JP Michaels: Memoirs of a Fashionista 'Died and Gone to Fashion:
Surviving a period of unwellness one outfit at a time', © 2019)

by JP Michaels

Mother Knows Best
Published in Where Love Is Illegal

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Mother Knows Best
Full Version Video

Gallery

JP Michaels Headshot 1985 
​Photo Credit: V. Tony Hauser

JP Michaels OFM Conv. Summer 1977
Photo credit: Bro. Berrard

Baby JP Michaels

JP Michaels Headshot 1985 
​Photo Credit: V. Tony Hauser

JP Michaels Age 7 as Prince Charming in his Theatrical Debut​

JP Michaels and Mother

Bonne Retraite
Au Revoir et Meilleurs Voeux
Monsieur Zuccala

​November 2020

A Penny For Your Thoughts

Whimsy

Be Careful What You Wish For

The Soul's Windows

There but for the Grace...

Today I felt the world. The few times over the past several weeks that I have stepped outside onto the street, it doesn't take me very long to realize that the street has changed, the world has been changed,  I have changed. I'm alone on the street, when I catch myself having a moment of feeling the world.
I don't quite know how to explain this feeling. It certainly is inclusive. There is an enormity packed into this one feeling. It is a feeling of thankfulness. My moments of feeling the world have a sense of warmth.
It's odd actually because it is usually when I have travelled the world that I am visited by these global thoughts of community, of connectedness, of this "we're-all-in-this-together" moment.  This moment of "feeling the world" is spawned by a deafening silence and stillness of the heart. This feeling never stays very long. It is best described as a nano-second roar of my soul in the moment when my heart feels what my brain knows. And to think I didn't even have to get dressed.

​By JP Michaels
April 2020

A Thank You Stone Moment

Le Chapeau de Mon Grandpère

treas·ure /ˈtreZHər/: noun a quantity of precious metals, gems, or other valuable objects.
No doubt you are familiar with the adage, 
"one person's trash is  another's treasure". 
What you are looking at is my paternal grandfather's gardening hat. Of all the beautiful and valuable 'objects d'art' I have acquired over many years of collecting, the most valued and meaningful item is my grandfather's gardening hat (le chapeau de mon grandpère). To this day etched indelibly in my memory, is the fond recollection of a preschooler in the late 1950's helping my grandfather in the mornings in his bountiful garden. As the heat of the noon day sun approached he would send me to the garage to fetch this hat which always hung precariously from the same rusty nail on the left hand side toward the back. When my grandfather passed in June of 1976, I wanted only one thing and I knew exactly where to look.

By JP Michaels
April 2020

The Naked Truth

Adult Content Below

​By JP Michaels

I have often wondered how a self-professed, unapologetic, clothes-horse like myself  can lay claim to such descriptors  in the face of one, bold and bare fact: I am Mr Nude Toronto 1998, and I have the sash to prove it!

On an uncharacteristically warm late May Friday evening 1998, 250 naked men crowded into one of Toronto's bastion of gay watering holes known as 'The Toolbox' (Eastern Avenue) to witness the first Mr. Nude Toronto contest. I was chosen from a roster of 14 contestants. I shall leave the details of the criteria for the selection process to your own imaginations (read: dirty minds).
​
To my way of thinking, my current sartorial efforts and my past naked escapades place me in a very unique position to make some kind of statement so here it is:

I always felt fiercely empowered and self-possessed when I presented myself unclothed in public. Surprisingly, I feel the identical fierce empowerment and self-possession when I present myself with sartorial elegance. I am proud to have presented myself unclothed and I am proud to present myself clothed.  I guess you could say I'm versatile.

The Iceman Returneth

by JP Michaels
​May 2020

Have you ever had the experience of having a very young childhood memory verified decades later? And because your memory is verified in a very matter-of-fact way, it makes your memory all the more less imagined, all the more tangibly real, because now you have proof your memory once had actual life.

This past weekend , I was quite serendipitously confronted with a childhood memory. The memory was resurrected in the form of a @1959 b/w photograph. Pictured in the photograph is a young @18 years old, tall,Nordic in appearance Iceman whose chiseled physical presence always captivated me as a child particularly as he would carry a heavy ice-picked block of ice away from the back bed of a truck. Immediately upon gazing at the picture, I said I know that man, I know that truck! That man and that truck have been part of a very fond childhood memory. It is a memory which involves stealing, yes... stealing, at least that's the way I relish the thought as a naughty four year old. 

I, along with my playmates, would always greet this young man driving his truck while on delivery. We always hung around long enough to steal ice chips strewn onto the  wood-slatted floor of the open flatbed. This skulduggery always happened while the chiseled Iceman was completing his delivery to the "cold closet" inside old lady So-and-So's house on Ferguson Street, next to our house. To this day, a shard of cold, delicious ice on my tongue always brings me back to this moment pictured here when a childhood memory came back to life this past weekend, however fleeting, when The Iceman Returneth.

An Historical Excerpt

"The delivery of ice to the Ward and other parts of Guelph dates to the late 1900s when John Halliburton began the Halliburton and Sons Ice Merchant Company. His sons Kelly, Jack and Pat were all involved in the ice company. In the late 40s and early 50s, Jack and Pat delivered ice to many homes and stores in the Ward.

Most people could not afford a fridge so perishable food was stored in an insulated “ice box” (also called the cold closet) that was usually made of wood and lined with tin or zinc.  Although the ice was certified by the Medical Board of Health, sometimes the odd minnow or two was found when a block of ice melted. In the winter months, the Halliburton’s cut blocks of ice from the Speed River at the end of Clarence Street and later from a pond at Ignatius College on Highway 6."

By Joe Tersigni (The Tersigni family lived on Morris and Elizabeth Streets in St. Patrick’s Ward)

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THE JIG IS UP!

by JP Michaels
June 2020

• COVID-19 The perfect dress rehearsal to a REVOLUTION 

​• COVID - 19 has empirically demonstrated to the global psyche that humankind has the grit to respond and adapt on a massive scale of global proportions at a moment's notice. 

My Point: Nothing, and I mean nothing, should take hundreds of years to address. 

The jig is up! 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, human-kind can no longer claim voluntary ignorance: to know right is to do right. I remember watching a cartoon as a child:

"The Dudley Do-Right Show (1969–1970). The adventures of Canada's dumbest member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police"☆

Enough said. 

Oh well his heart was in the right place

• We Humans have been brought to our knees by a virus that is not able to be seen by the naked eye. 

• In solidarity, we remain on our knees with arms outstretched and fists held high, against a virus, as big as life itself, that has been staring us in the face for hundreds and hundreds of years. 

• What's wrong with this picture?

Isolating Voices

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by JP Michaels
June 2020

Preamble

Call me old school, but I look up to Respect!

Lesson Notes:
For the purposes of this  lesson, the word "respect" is Capitalized and the word "mercenary" is to be understood as follows:
● Mercenary Defined
/ˈməːsɪn(ə)ri/
noun
1 a professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army:
adjective
2  primarily concerned with making money at the expense of ethics:"
■ Synonyms
• money-oriented, 
• grasping, 
• greedy
•  acquisitive, 
•  avaricious, 
•  covetous, 
and my personal favourite,
•  rapacious, 
(Powered by Oxford Dictionaries)
• I do so like to say the word "rapacious"... Especially when you roll the "Rrrrrrrr"s !!!!

how to EARN RESPECT by PAYING it forward

● The recent COVID- weary-world events which have heralded the cry of #blacklivesmatter have placed Respect squarely at the forefront of the Revolution.
 
● Respect is by nature mercenary, or at least one would think so, by the words with which we very often choose to describe it, and be engaged by it in a not so very come-by-chance way, the act of giving respect is very often couched in financial terms, namely, that 
•Respect is "to be paid" to someone, or 
•Respect is "to be earned" by someone.

● Respect's financial imagery plants the seed and, over time,  infuses the message that there is some inherent value in being respected by another...

● And like any financial transaction, this Respect is to be "held in trust" as a bankable commodity in the world of human behaviour.

● The act of "being entrusted" with the  Respect of another, denotes a degree of trustworthiness between two individuals. 

● However, Respect is not achieved through its earning power alone. 

● Rather, the altruistic nature of Respect demands that it also be paid forward.   

● This 2-step process is the dynamic by which Respect is both Realized and Actualized.

● The cycle of earning  and paying Respect, is an integral part in the cycle of the Natural Law Order of "being and becoming" whereupon, the once entrusted becomes the entrustee. 

●  Respect begets Trustworthiness which in turn begets Respect.

●  And in the spirit of this mercenary imagery, it would be fair to say that the high dividend paid by Respect for soldiering the Revolution of Respect on a global level is World Pride... and Peace.

Funny that!

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O COLONEL
​MY COLONEL

O COLONEL MY COLONEL*

O Colonel  My  Colonel  is inspired by a very famous poem 'O Captain My Captain'. The poem was penned by American  writer Walt Whitman upon  The death of the 16th president of United States Abraham Lincoln, who by the way, is purported to have been gay.

by JP Michaels
​July 2020

● For 2 and a 1/2 months I was a USA Army Bitch. 
• Which is quite something when you consider I don't have a submissive bone in my body, sexual or otherwise. 
Preamble
● For the purposes of this lesson, the term "bitch" is to be understood as follows: 
• To the detriment of all stakeholders, "BITCH" is a derogatory reference 
• to a person who feels emotionally beholden to the entitlement of another.
●"Do I have proof of this?" you ask, 
• with a hint of incredulity in the tone of your voice. 
● Damn right I have proof! 
• Behold a gift from 'O Colonel, My Colonel"
• bona-fide USA ARMY Dog Tags issued, 
• in duplicate of course,
• in my family name. 
● After all, a bitch without its tags.
    is like a mut without its bark 
    both legitimizes existence in
     some way.
● I've been led to believe that it's all part of "marking your territory" or some kind of "Dogmatic Canine Compulsion." 
● I suppose it's just one of the perks as the dog-tagged bitch of a Lieutenant Colonel in the US army. 
● "How the fuck  did we meet?" you ask, 
• once again with palpable incredulity in the tone of your voice? 
● I could not help but notice this handsome and virile figure of a man 
• the moment he walked into the room... I had just rented at a local bathhouse. 
• My usual, ROOM 100 to be exact. 
● More Specific, without being identifiably-specific,
• because the US intelligence strongly believes in 
• discretion being the better part of valor.
• Let's just say, without really saying anything ,
• "Oh Colonel, My Colonel" was part of the security/intelligence entourage
• for the sitting US President while here for The G20 Summit in Toronto Canada
• commencing on June 26, 2010. 
● And the rest as they say is history.
Well at least a 2 and a 1/2 month history
• until I had to bid him adieu in public. 
Always in public!! repeat after me, always leave in public !!!
● I came to care for a very damaged man 
• as a result of being captured and tortured in Iraq....Enough said.
• And I would not change a moment of this life-affirming experience
• of having met this very brave, remarkable and sadly very tragically broken man for the world
• because this experience opened someone else's world up to me.
• 'Oh Colonel, My Colonel' was of old school courting;
• particularly courting from a distance. 
• I dare say Iraq gave him plenty of practice. 
• So to make the experience of our long-distance relationship more real, more quickly, 
• ' O Colonel My Colonel, identified "OUR" song very quickly
• "Writing Love Letters In the Sand" 
• It is a song about daring to dream even though 
• those dreams are only written in the sand.
• The love letter is short- lived because of the ebb and flow of the ocean.
• As is love-in-life is shortlived because of the ebb and flow of life. 
• 'Love letters In the Sand' harbours a delightful sentiment with an infectious tune. 
• I guarantee that you will not be able to look at a sandy beach the same ever again!
● Happy 10th Anniversary Darling
• wherever you are 
• and do continue writing those love letters in the sand!
• I do so enjoy reading them.

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Racism must never be regarded as the punchline to a 400+ year old joke!  The arrogance of the pseudo "Police State" mentality is the presumption of power, personal interpretation and misguided enforcement of the clearly formatted and sanctioned laws of the land. Such arrogance is not to be tolerated nor embraced by a just and right society. 
It has been demonstratively evident through the focus of the social media lens that the retaliatory actions of late by the global societies of policing and some corrupt governments have but a cursory understanding of the application of law and the very nature of the "rule of law" itself.  
There is a clear distinction  between a "Police Force" and "Officers of the Law". 
Ideally all "Officers of the Law" should in fact be armed with law degrees. After all, "police forces" the world over are armed with riot gear designed not to mete out justice, but to deliver physical harm. They are not called SWAT for nothing.
I am not suggesting police  practice law in the traditional sense. However, I am suggesting that Officers of the Law deliver justice based on a quick and near instinctive recall of the spirit of the law. Change the narrative, change the results. To this end, it is vital to a just society that those who engage in the practice of "justice management"  must be supported in their training and education. It is not acceptable that those who are sanctioned to be lethally armed and responsible for carrying out the law  would have less preparation and training to do so than the barber who trims your sideburns or puts highlights in your hair.
It is a sobering image if one truly stops to imagine the moment by moment of inhumanity experienced by millions over 400 years at the brute-force hands of arrogance and presumption of misguided power. 
COVID and it's non negotiable isolation was a " STOP THE WORLD I WANNA GET OFF" moment held in suspended animation for months of global proportions.  I've said it before and I will say it again, COVID is the perfect dress rehearsal for a global SOCIAL REVOLUTIONary with the mandate in the narrative of equal justice for all.

More Brain
​Less Brawn
​More Heart

by JP Michaels
August 2020

Monkey Business
​No. 2

Fashionably Serving No. 2

Selfie 360

Corona
​Conundrum

Monkey Business
No. 1

Fashionably Serving No. 1

Picture this: 
 An Easter Sunday Antiphonal Choir made up of 60 black-robed Friars 30 on one side and 30 on the other flanking the sanctuary, facing each other on raked pews.
The choir director thought it would be a good idea to have a voice crying in the wilderness by asking Friar Tony a.k.a. Friar Bull
(as in bull-in-a-China-shop-bull", to sing the first line of the recessional hymn "Jesus Christ is Risen Today," a capella no less. It was not-for-not that Tony was affectionately called "Friar Bull". I happen to be seated directly in front of Tony.  All through the service he was clearing his throat multiple times giving indication of the level of his anxiety on being given the most auspicious of a choirmember's tasks...a solo. 
When the time came for the lone voice to cry in the wilderness, a capella no less, cry it did! True to his name Friar Tony sang the words "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" brilliantly to the tune of the ever-popular minstrel folk song "Camptown Races" 
There was complete silence throughout the entire chapel. It was as if time were suspended  because no one knew what to do next; except for one other lone voice.
If you know anything about the song "Camptown Races" and antiphonal choirs then you will know that it behooves a lone voice response from the other side of the sanctuary. A quick-witted friar was knee-jerk compelled to sing the most holy of antiphonal responses to ,"Jesus Christ is Risen Today,"with the response "doo-da doo-da." At which point the choir convulsed into spasming laughter. A quick-thinking organist pumped the pedal-to-the-metal and pipe-blasted us all out as we recessed up the centre aisle of the Chapel. Adding insult to injury, we were obliged to run the proverbial gauntlet past a most unimpressed gathering of pious and disapproving confrères. The only saving grace were the punctuated gaffes of  the brilliant and wheelchair-bound Father Cosmos,  made all the more punctuated because "Incontinent  Cosmos" was legitimately convulsing  from laughter due to a medical condition. Are you getting this picture class? I know, sounds like something outta of Fellini movie doesn't  it?
To this day I cannot sing that hymn with a straight face! And for those who are so inclined, I daresay from here on end, you won't be able to keep a straight face either.

MONKey Business
​No. 3:
Camptown Races

​by JP Michaels

by JP Michaels

How to Curate Your Confidence

Definitions:

1. A curate is a person who is invested with the care or cure of souls of a parish.

2. Confidence
• A noun made up of two Latin words 
• "con" meaning "with" and
• "Fidelis" meaning "faith"
3. Symbiosis
 /ˌsɪmbɪˈəʊsɪs/
 noun
Interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both.*
*Powered by Oxford Dictionaries

What does it mean to curate your confidence? The counsel of nother to "have faith in yourself" doesn't really help an individual who is struggling with self-knowledge. Confidence is a ying and yang dynamic exchange between the brain and the heart. Confidence is the symbiosis between feeling something and knowing something. Confidence is a component of Reinvention of self. Confidence will accompany you on your journey when the brain knows what the heart feels.
These two "dynamics of Reinvention" , feeling and knowing, are codependent on one another and neither can be left out of the equation. This is a reminder that the goal of Reinvention is to create a strong and mindful opinion of yourself so that you don't accidentally believe what others say about you. The curated process of creating a strong and mindful opinion of yourself involves you becoming the 'Curate of Your Soul', that is you are invested with the care of your authentic self wherein passion resides and gives substance to confidence. If "Repetition is the Mother of all Learning",☆
then Due-Reflection is the Father of all Understanding. ☆☆
Your quest as the Curate of Confidence and officeholder of your soul, is to carefully choose, mindfully organize and simultaneously present to your brain and heart those chosen 'Life Experiences' which serve to inform and empower in the investiture of your reinvention process. 
Knowing you have given due reflection and mindfully selected those aspects of your true character help galvanize your soul. It is indeed a remarkable moment of achievement of reinvention
when the brain knows what the heart feels. Passion is Reinvention of soul realized. Confidence
is the substance found in the indisputable exchange between the brain and heart. It is the world where the mundane is banished stepping aside and giving way to fuel the extraordinary and incite confidence.
☆Latin Proverb
(Repetitio mater studiorum est.)

 The Passionate Revolutionary

For the purposes of this writing the term "Revolution" will be Capitalized and be understood as follows:

A Revolution is a great turning point in history. A revolution is a tumultuous and trans-formative event that attempts to change a nation, a region or society – and, in some cases, even the world.
(Merriam-Webster)
• A revolution is not just a question of a change of heart.
• A revolution is not just a question of a change of mind.
• A revolution is a change of collective heart and collective mind at the very same time. 
• A Revolution is the collective mobilization of Reinvented souls. 
• The call to duty to Revolutionize, like the call to duty to Reinvent Self, is a duty to the soul fueled by passion to mobilize the collective will to sustain the Revolution. 
• COVID-19 is humankind's non-partisan equalizer. Weeks of Isolation have caused me to reflect that we are more alike than different. 
• I have sensed my isolated self strangely connected to human-oneness, while standing together/apart, on guard, outside on our terraces, balconies and sidewalks at 7:30 each evening. 
• For months now I do my part to honour the heroic efforts of the frontline workers, my baby sister included. 
• I blend my voice with those of others who cry out and I am not aware of their colour. 
• I am only aware of The Voice to which I lend mine. 
• I willingly heed the call to the ritualized duty of the COVID CAW CAW. 
• For those few minutes of connectedness, we are of one heart and one mind. 
• My brain knows what my heart feels and my newly reinvented self finds itself as part of a revolution in behaviour within the global mindset. 
COVID -19 may have captured the attention of the global psyche, but it is the mobilization of our collective psyche that will sustain the passion inherent in a Revolutionary cause amidst the cries of defunding for policing and within the milieu of all that is right and just in the battle cry for #blacklivesmatter
• This is revolutionary on every level, and it is for this reason it is the duty of humankind to come together to sustain the Revolution. As Repetition is the Mother of all learning, 
Due Reflection is the Father of all understanding. the historical Repetition of Racial Injustices,teaches human-kind that such history cannot repeat itself from this moment going forward.
• We can no longer claim voluntary ignorance; to know better is to do better. 
• It is only through the discipline of Due Reflection that we, as global citizens, will harness those serendipitous teachable moments and begin to address the systemic causes for and the perpetuation of the injustices. 
• Much like my thoughts about Reinvention of Self, of which I have written about and video-chronicled in the recent past, Revolution happens when the collective brain knows what the collective heart feels.
• We feel in our hearts racial Injustice is wrong, just as our brain knows that such injustices are wrong.
• It is on the back of our global commitment to engage the dynamic between what the brain knows and what the heart feels.
• That we as global citizens will hold our vigilant attention to keep this global revolution alive so that history does not ever repeat itself.

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Words by JP Michaels
Photography by Justin Anantawan
BLM Protest Toronto - June 2020​

THE WHITE BOX IS NOT A LIFESTYLE
by Barbara Jesson
January 2021

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All Things 4/20

​JP Michaels
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The Kushness