The Year Ahead

 

What are we to make of the year ahead? Whether it’s about the environment, the stock market or the pandemic, predictions seem to vary widely.

I recall the mythical story about Zhou Enlai, in response to a question about the impact of the French Revolution, saying “It’s too soon to tell.” And that reminded me of the old-fashioned Victorian cards that pictured a cherub wearing a sash that carried a New Year's greeting

It's early days yet, and the new year will appear in its infancy.

My friend Pat sent me a Christmas card that contained a quotation from a letter Rilke wrote to his fiancée Clara on January 1, 1907:

And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.

What wonderful letters people once wrote, before the days of email!!

I enjoy a British website which regularly sends out what they properly describe as “letters of note”:

https://lettersofnote.com/

Check out their website to order one of their beautiful editions of collected letters or just to sign up for email notifications which will send you random letters from time to time.

Today’s letter was from Sylvia Townsend Warner writing about having received an empty matchbox, one which was “neat and charming with a tray that slides in and out as though Chippendale has made it.” She writes that she had shut her imagination up in it instantly, and “it is still sitting there, listening to the wind in the firwood outside.”

At this time, I doubt many people are celebrating the gift of an empty matchbox so enthusiastically, but I do hope some of us are taking time to actually write real letters of thanks for our gifts.

Many have spoken about how thankful they are these days, especially for the various connections we can still have. Without close interactions, we’ve made greater attempts to greet our neighbours. We’ve made telephone calls. We’ve connected with old friends through email and social media. We’ve learned how to employ Zoom for family gatherings. We’ve used our wonderful postal services much more frequently to send and receive parcels, Christmas cards, and even real letters.

I’m hopeful that, if we keeping sticking together while following the rules, the sun will continue to rise, spring will come, and we’ll find new ways to meet the real challenges that we'll face in the year ahead.

I like the Victorian notion of relating the new year to the image of an infant. Neither has done anything wrong yet. They both need us to love and hope and care for them in order that they may flourish.

Let’s give 2021 the care and hope it needs. Let’s help it become the best year it possibly can be.

 

Christmas This Year

 

It’s that time of year again, but there seems to be a little less scurrying about and perhaps not so much getting and spending. It's a time which Bernadine Evaristo, in her novel Girl, Woman, Other, winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, refers to as “Greedymas.” 

For some time, the Christmas season in North America has been characterized by greed and gluttony, but this year people seem to be more thoughtful. Lots of people I know are giving donations to local social agencies. In one branch of my family, instead of doing the usual Secret Santa gifts, they are all contributing to a large family charitable donation to a non-profit organization that is helping with the current challenges.

Most people are doing much less travelling this holiday season, which is a good thing. Often people express concern about visiting older people who are “compromised.” It’s true that the compromised are more likely to get very sick and perhaps die if we contract the virus but, as far as I know, we are no more likely than anyone else to actually catch the virus.  The point is, you don’t want to pass the disease on to anyone, compromised or not.

The virus needs us to convey it from host to host. That’s why Dr. Henry and Minister Dix are telling us to stay home. Jane Godley says this more forcefully:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsiXbrH_vUA

Being in a global pandemic makes this a very different holiday season. It’s particularly hard for people who’ve experienced losses such as loss of income, loss of work, lack of contact with friends and family, and anxiety of the future. 

Even without a pandemic, Christmas and other holidays are often mixed for older people, who are remembering happy times and are missing loved ones who are no longer with us.. This year many will be missing children and grandchildren who are unable to visit. Lots of people will be spending Christmas alone. It will certainly feel lonely, but there will be a sense of satisfaction in doing the right thing. At a spiritual level, it might actually feel inspiring. There may be a new awareness of Peace and Goodwill towards others.

Which reminds me, on a nostalgic note, that I have always liked the Christmas carol which is set to the words from Longfellow’s I heard the Bells on Christmas Day:

https://poets.org/poem/christmas-bells

It’s encouraging to think that “The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, with Peace on Earth, Good-will to Men."

Perhaps that might be too much to hope for. But poets continue to give us encouraging words. Recently, my friend Marian sent me this quotation of Leonard Cohen’s parting words from his Old Ideas World Tour in 2012:

May you be surrounded by friends and family, and if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude."

I can think of no more appropriate words for us at this time.

May those blessings be with us all.

 

 

O Christmas Tree

 

Like most children, I was always greatly excited when, at last, the time came to get the Christmas tree. In those early years, my father would pack my brothers and I into the family car to head out to Lulu Island to find the most beautiful tree. Many years later, my husband and I and our friends would go to a property in Yellow Point where we could find, not a perfect tree, but one that was crowding out another and should be removed to allow the better tree room to grow. Those trees, my young daughter claimed, were like something from the Grinch Who Stole Christmas: scrawny, crooked, misshapen. Eventually she bullied us into buying a Christmas tree from a lot.

No matter where they were found, all these trees provided a good base for lights and decorations and offered that wonderful smell of the outdoors which so interested our various cats and dog, but some of my favourite trees were the ones my husband and I had in Montreal when we were first married. We had no decorations and very little money but we managed to get a tree. I had remembered a Christmas story I loved as a child about a lonely tree who was left behind when others were taken away to homes where they shone with light and tinsel. Happily, some children went out to hang cookies on that little tree and then the birds came to sit on the branches making it the most beautiful tree of all. Inspired by that memory, I made birds of various sizes from coloured construction paper and baked cookies with faces made of raisins, nuts and bits of maraschino cherries.

The practice of bringing evergreens in the home goes back hundreds of years. Egyptians, Romans, Celts and Vikings liked to bring various green plants and evergreens into their homes at the time of the winter solstice, in some cases to keep away evil spirits and illness and in others to celebrate new seasons, new growth and life over death. 

The origin of the modern Christmas tree is often attributed to Germany, and I grew up singing O Tannenbaum in honour of that. One legend about the German celebrations proposes that Martin Luther was responsible for the origin of the Christmas tree in 1500. As the story goes, Luther was walking through the snowy woods and was moved by the beautify of the snow glistening on the branches of trees. In response to this he brought a small tree into his house and decorated it with small candles to illustrate the Christmas sky.

It was the Victorian period that brought trees into popular use in Britain and North America. Queen Victoria, her German husband prince Albert and her children were pictured around the Christmas tree: https://www.whychristmas.com/customs/trees.shtml

Indigenous people have celebrated the winter solstice for millennia. While the tree is not the focus of solstice festivities, Tsatassaya White tells me that the cedar tree is of central importance to indigenous people, a tree of life that is a central source for ceremony and for many applications including cooking, clothing and ritual. To learn more about indigenous solstice festivals, you might sign up for the livestream event that Tsatassaya and Crimson Coast’s Dance Society are hosting on December 20^th:

https://www.bclocalnews.com/entertainment/indigenous-artists-mark-winter-solstice-with-new-music-and-dance-festival/

We continue to learn new things about the importance of trees in our lives. A friend sent me this recent article in the New York Times which describes the research of UBC Professor of Forest Ecology, Dr. Suzanne Simard.  The article describes her work into mycorrhizal networks, the underground communication systems through which the dynamic exchange of resources and alarm signals through which resources and wisdom flow from the biggest and largest to the youngest and smallest trees:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/02/magazine/tree-communication-mycorrhiza.html?referringSource=articleShare

Reading about the awareness and sensitivity of trees makes me wonder about the practice of cutting them down for our Christmas festivities, but many articles suggest that the Christmas tree industry provides positive benefits:

https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/yardandgardenreport/2020-12-03/a-greener-christmas-tree

There’s something heartening about bringing a little of the outdoors into our homes. Not just the scent, but the spirit of the tree. As it is an ancient symbols of growth, transformation and connection, it’s not surprising that, at this time of isolation and separation, our Christmas trees are inviting us to communicate with them.  We feel affection our Christmas trees, as ee cummings described so poignantly in his poem Little Tree, which my friend Mark sent to me yesterday:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47304/little-tree

Trees are sending out good messages to us: Stay in place. Connect. Grow. Pay attention. Feel grateful.

 

 

 

Knitting Up the Raveled Sleeve of Care

Despite a few haphazard attempts, I’ve never been any good at knitting, but I was pleased when my granddaughter proposed that it was something we could do together. I told her I could teach her how to knit and pearl so that we could make some of those little six-by-six dishcloths, and then she could find a real knitter to teach her. My friend and knitting guide Trudy dropped off a couple of balls of cotton wool and some knitting needles, and so we began.

At this time of separation and isolation, it feels good to be knitting. Through the years, many people have found solace in this activity during stressful periods. My granddaughter points out that knitting is a lot like life in that sometimes you have to go back and redo a couple of rows before you can move forward.  My own tendency is just to blunder on, ignoring the mistakes, which is why my granddaughter will be a better knitter than I. And a better human being.

Knitting has long been recommended as a cure for boredom. Theatre critic, writer and satirist Dorothy Parker took her knitting with her everywhere. In reviewing a forgettable production, she advised her readers, “If you don’t knit, bring a book.”

Although it helps with stress reduction, there's a dark side to knitting. Virginia Woolf thought of knitting as therapy. Early in 1912 she reported to Leonard Woolf, before they were married and shortly after she had been in a rest home, that "Knitting is the saving of life." That worked until 1941, when Virginia took her own life, drowning herself in the river Ouse.

Years ago, I used to watch one of my colleagues knit quickly and furiously through tedious administrative meetings. Observing her grim expression, I was reminded of Madam Defarge in Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. With her stitches, Madame Defarge secretly knits a register of the names of the revolution’s intended victims, those who were to be executed. When she is asked about it, she claims it is just a pastime, but later smiles and says she may find a use for it and, if so, “I’ll use it.” And she did.

During the seventeen days that my husband was in hospital before he died, I sat beside him, knitting a long scarf. Nothing fancy and somewhat uneven, it contained rows of stitching on patterned wool and served as the kind of mindless activity I needed through those long days and nights. After his death, I gave the scarf to my daughter, telling her that I had stitched all of life and death into it. I don't remember ever seeing her wear it, although she says she has done.

Yarn representing the thread of life is a very old concept. The mythology of Ancient Greece tells the story of the Morae, or the Fates, who spin, measure, and cut the length of each person’s life. https://mythagora.com/bios/fates.html

These days many lives are being cut short, and it seems that many things are falling apart. Unraveling. I think of Macbeth’s longing for the Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care. The sleep, it suggests, will knit up and make new again all that has been unravelled.

Knitting is a useful image for what we will need to do to heal our damaged world. We will need to bring things back together so that the thread of life can continue. We will have to integrate a lot of pain and loss and knit it all together. The broken world, just like broken bones, will tale time to be knit together.

And how will we do it? Sitting out on my patio this afternoon, I watched the trees swaying gently in the light wind and thought of how much we have been learning recently of the ways in which trees and fungi are communicating and knitting their connections underground. Dr. Richard Atleo has proposed that the Nuu-Chah-Nulth people's core belief of Tsawalk, “everything is one,” offers a foundation for building more equitable and sustainable communities: https://www.ubcpress.ca/principles-of-tsawalk

Maybe that’s a place to start. Acknowledging that everything is one, and honouring the connections we have and will need to forge in the future. And all those ravell’d things that we will have to knit up.

It looks like we’ll all have to stick to our knitting for the next many months and years to come.

 

 

 

Hibernation

This time of year, when the darkness increases until we reach Solstice and can see the return of longer days, I find myself thinking of hibernation. The increasingly tightened Covid regulations intensify that desire. I want to crawl under my big green Hudson’s Bay blanket and sleep for a long time.

Apparently, bears don’t technically hibernate, but rather they enter a state of “torpor” which seems to describe something of what I feel these days. In torpor, according to Science World, bears can sleep more than 100 days without eating, drinking, or passing waste. The remarkable thing about bears is that in this state they are able to turn their pee into protein. For some of us who need to get up two or three times a night to pee, this sounds like a very clever ability:

https://www.scienceworld.ca/stories/do-bears-actually-hibernate/

Bears figure prominently in children's books. From Winnie the Pooh, to Rupert the Bear, Aloysius, Paddington Bear, and so on, children have been entertained for generations by bear protagonists. 

For adults as well, bears figure in our literature. In The Winter’s Tale, one of Shakespeare’s most famous stage directions is “Exit, pursued by a bear.” Rafi Zabor won the Pen/Faulkner award, for his novel The Bear Comes Home, a brilliant work of jazz fiction which features a saxophone-playing bear as the protagonist.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-393-04037-1

Marian Engel’s novel Bear, about a woman who is empowered as a result of her sexual relationship with a bear, won the Governor-General’s Literary Award. Rudyard Kipling wrote about Baloo, the bear who is an important teacher in The Jungle Book. Bears provide great inspiration for fiction writers.

And bears are also subjects of interest for non-fiction writers. UBC Professor Emeritus Dr. Margery Fee recently wrote an important book about the majestic and iconic polar bear:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/polar-bear-margery-fee/1130783744

My friend Liz has said that we need happy songs to cheer us these days, and writing about bears reminds me of Teddy Bears’ Picnic, one of my favourite songs as a child:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAKcqXA-EQs&list=RDIrvkHAxnjzI&index=5

I used to sing this to my granddaughter when she was two and three years old. She loved the song and ask for it to be sung. again and again, but at some point, just before the line about Mummies and Daddies taking the little bears home to bed, I would see large tears rolling down her face. There's something about happy songs, I realize, that can also make us feel sad, perhaps because of the recognition that happiness is often followed by sadness or disappointment.

There were many bears around the North Vancouver home of my daughter and son-in-law, and my granddaughter recalls seeing a bear and her two cubs on her school grounds. The children backed away cautiously! There was a bear outside our bedroom window one night when my husband and I stayed at their North Vancouver house, and one day a bear broke into their shed to get at some garbage. My son-in-law figured out how to deal with that problem and created a short video to teach others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAilTfoUfC4&t=2s

Many homeowners and the bear protection people were pleased with his video. It has now had 19,000 views!

There’s lots to learn from and about bears. 

I’m trying to emulate them through torpor. It’s said to help animals survive difficult periods, and I think it a little suspended animation can also help humans at this time.

What’s important, though, is for us to emerge from brief states of torpor with more energy and greater determination to do whatever it takes to see us -- and to help others -- through the darkest days of the year.

Note: Is you want to write to me with comments about any of my posts – or with suggestions for happy songs – please write directly to me at wayword@telus.com. Sadly, replies to Carol Matthews These Days don’t reach me.

 

Bubbles

 

When I was young and all too free, and living in Montreal, my roommate and I often would jump into a cab to go to Whitey’s Hideaway where we’d drink gin and listen to an excellent jazz jukebox. A couple of young men we would meet there were impressed with the largesse we demonstrated with taxis and with heavy tipping. They said we were like characters from Guys and Dolls and dubbed me “Peaches” and her “Bubbles.”

I thought of this the other day when a friend phoned and sang me that old tune, I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles. It’s a song with a century-old history.. Written by Nat Vincent, John Kellette, James Kendis and James Brockman, it was first sung in 1918 and was a major Tin Pan Alley hit. Since then it has been sung by Dame Vera Lynn, Doris Day, Dean Martin, and many, many others. I find it a sweet song, a kind of cheerful ditty, although the verses are poignant:

http://mountainstatescollector.com/im-forever-blowing-bubbles-will-never-fade-and-die/

The song quickly became the club anthem of the English Premier League team West Ham United and it has been sung at their games every year up to the 2019 game in Olympic Stadium.

https://spartacus-educational.com/Bubbles.htm.

Through the years, the word “bubble” has come to mean many things: A sparkling drink, something rising to the surface or, more negatively, a place inhabited by someone who is overly sheltered. Living in a bubble has been a criticism of daydreamers or people not open to new ideas.

Bubble was a charmingly ditsy character in the TV serious Absolutely Fabulous and a rather unsavory chap in Trailer Park Boys. Bubbles was also a fish in Finding Nemo.

However, since the virus began the word “bubble” is mostly used in reference to the restricted number of people one is limited to seeing. That’s a total of six. Fewer, if possible.

Although most people are trying to live in tiny bubbles, we notice that there are still a fair number of big bubbles around. I think of them as Bubbles of Privilege or Bubbles of Entitlement. They’re inhabited by people who think the rules don’t apply to them. People who think that their wants and needs are more important than those of the rest of us.

The precise meaning of the term seems to be lost on many people. I’ve heard people say things like, “They are sort of in our bubble,” or “She is in one of my bubbles.”

A bubble is intended to mean a fixed number of people and an exclusive membership, i.e. just one bubble, and you can’t move from one bubble to another.

Sometimes people say the regulations are confusing, or that that they don’t know what a “bubble” or a “household” is, but I think in our hearts we all know what a tiny bubble is meant to be, and the rules seem pretty clear to me.

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/emergency-preparedness-response-recovery/covid-19-provincial-support/restrictions

I’m hopeful that by next summer a vaccine will become available and everything will begin to look brighter. In the meantime, if we follow the regulations and keep our bubbles tiny, we may be able to flatten the curve again.

I believe we can. 

We must!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remembering

Remembrance Day was different this year. With no public gatherings permitted, only a few people congregated at the citadel. But, from a safe distance, on front porches or in our homes, people still observed the two minutes of silence and thought about the wars in which so many young people risked their lives. So many were killed or crippled for life. Six members of my family as well as my husband’s father served in the military in two world wars. They showed remarkable courage. In different ways, they also all felt lifelong effects from that service.

A friend sent me the link to   Joh McDermott’s song “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvmOWBanX-s

I find it one of the most moving and poignant of the many songs that decry war. Buffy Ste. Marie’s The Universal Soldier, for which she was apparently blacklisted when it was first performed, also never fails to bring tears to my eyes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6imjvgJFvM

Although we don’t want to glorify war, we rightly celebrate the courage and sacrifice of the young soldiers who gave their lives to the war effort. And we also recognize the contributions of the people who stayed at home, waiting for their loved ones to return. We heard countless stories of hardship during the blackouts. People endured the absence of parents, spouses and children, the fearful times in bomb shelters, the rationing, and all the many losses, small and large.

They endured. They put up with a lot of limitations to their freedom. I never heard of anyone saying, “I have a right to refuse to pull down my blinds.” They knew they were all in it together and they followed the rules.

Sometimes when I think of the word “remembrance,” I think of re-membering – putting things back together. Putting things back together.

We will put things back together when the Covid crisis lessens and we move on to what people are calling “the new normal.”  In the meantime, we must all do as our parents and grandparents did in those hard times before us.

Remember the people on the front lines, our health care and other essential workers.

Endure. Be patient. Think of others. Follow the rules.

And then, if we’re lucky, we’ll have things to remember.

And re-member.

Fantastic Fungi

 

One year, when I was five years old, my family lived across the road from a farmhouse in which a woman grew mushrooms in her basement. I loved going over there, descending the stairs to the dark room within which tiny white mushrooms sprouted. There was something eerily magical about these round white beings emerging from the darkness.

My mother disliked the fact that the mushrooms grew in manure, and she insisted that I wash my hands carefully after I’d been there. Mrs. P., the mushroom grower, also insisted that I wash my hands when I returned upstairs before she gave me one of the little marzipan mushrooms she produced in her spotless white kitchen. The contrast between the light and the dark, the pristine and the murky -- what was above and what below -- was remarkable.

Similar contrasts have come to mind these last few days while awaiting the results of the election in the country beneath us. On election night I did not watch the news but instead rented the video entitled Fabulous Fungi: https://fantasticfungi.com/watch/ and learned about the extraordinary world of mycelium, the variety of mushrooms that grow above the ground and the intelligent network of communication that takes place below.

It made me feel hopeful.

It looks like the United States will have a new President, for which I am grateful, but it’s clear that difficult times are ahead. Not only is there the spiralling Covid crisis with more than a thousand people dying there each day, there’s also unemployment, increased violence, long term inequities of race and income and a host of other pressing issues. Half the people will be glad of the election result and half will be furiously angry. And, of course, all of those problems, inequities and divisions exist in our own country.

Around the world, the Covid numbers rise and lockdowns increase. The months ahead look dark and I as myself: how can we best carry on?

Well, then I think about the modest mushrooms. About trees. About connections. About that invisible self-learning underground network which is all about communication, cooperation, collaboration, connectedness, community. Once again it is all about the C-words! I think that they are the reason that  the next US President had the momentum to win the election. Those are the things that he’s known for.

And the fantastic fungi have even more mysterious things to teach us. I’d like to know more about psylocibin and I hope it’s available to me if I succumb to dementia or the virus.

There’s a peaceful feeling of oneness when one thinks of the threading branches that decompose, stabilize and recycle everything around them. It may be, as Fantastic Fungi suggests, that the answers to our most pressing problems are very close to us.

Perhaps they are right under our feet, in the deep ecology of nature.

Givers and Takers

 

I’ve been thinking about what makes us happy in these dark days. I used to be happy on Halloween when I gave out candy to the little creatures who came to our door, dressed in their colourful costumes and carrying their large candy bags. This year, there were no kids coming to my door -- which was good because, anticipating that would be the case, I’d bought no candy to give out. No givers, no takers. It felt a bit sad.

Giving and receiving can create a mutually beneficial transaction that results in a continuum of positive energy. Maya Angelou has said, “When we give cheerfully and receive gratefully, everyone is blessed.” Some people refer to this as the “cycle of giving and receiving.” The sacred wheel.

It’s a cliché to say that it’s better to give than to receive. Often receiving is more difficult, especially when we don’t want whatever we’ve been given. Yet receiving is equally important as giving, and it’s timely to think about what we’re receiving these days.

I agree with our Prime Minister declaring that “Covid sucks.” Yet I’ve heard people speak about “silver linings” and “unanticipated positive outcomes” because of Covid. Many people are experiencing great gratitude. They say things like:

·       * My family is enjoying discovering beautiful places close to home

·        *We’re appreciating the outdoors and we’ve taken up birdwatching

·        *My husband and I are much closer now that we’ve had so much uninterrupted time together

·        *The time away from the office has helped me to rethink my priorities.

 

Some cite such practical achievements as

·        *I’ve had time to paint the living room

·        *I finally cleared out that storage room.

As Covid-hibernating continues, we may find that such “gifts” offer more meaningful satisfaction than those which come from our more usual pursuits of happiness. I’ve been thinking about Dr. Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning and about the distinction he made between finding meaning in life as opposed to seeking happiness. There was a discussion of this in an article in the Atlantic Monthly:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/

Maybe if we looked for possible benefits in unwanted occurrences, we’d find meaning in them -- meaning that would lead us to a sense of purpose.

Frankl, while experiencing brutally inhumane conditions as a prisoner in a Nazi death camp, was able to find an internal strength that allowed him to survive.

“The last of the human freedoms,” he said “is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

I’m going to focus on what I can receive from these Covid times, and then try to choose my own way to respond in the best way I can.

As Frankl said “When we are no longer able to change our situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

That message is a challenge to me, and also a gift. One that I’m going to accept gratefully. And I’ll try to give back. 

Try to keep that sacred wheel turning.

 

A Smaller Life

 

Lately I’ve been thinking about what it means to have “a big life.” I’ve heard other people saying that they either wanted or were proud to have a big life. Why, I wondered, isn’t it challenge enough just to have a life? Must it be big?

I’m a physically large person and my size sometimes troubles me.  I feel I’m taking up too much room. I remember seeing a T-shirt message that read, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.” That’s me, I thought.

Big lives often take up too much space, especially if they involve very frequent long flights for very brief vacations. If they involve excessive consumption of unnecessary possessions. If enough is never enough.

I was inspired by reading Steven Heighton’s recent article in The Toronto Star: On Hope and Embracing the Smallest Life You Can Love, in which he writes about the relief he felt after the Covid-imposed shutdown in his city resulted in a reduction of traffic, of construction, of the noise created by constant expansion. Like so many, he appreciates the slowing down which has him planting a garden.

https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2020/09/19/steven-heighton-on-hope-and-embracing-the-smallest-life-you-can-love.html?fbclid=IwAR0t0kvnVhV7cEFR9ubw67R3YFspMdP3mj1WaPNkAsNfc-1wCeb2KhQUFmk

Many people are celebrating the slow-down -- the Pause that is allowing them to reflect on what is really important to them. As I wrote in an earlier blog, the caesura, in music and in literature is the space that helps us to catch our breath, appreciate the present moment, and perhaps move forward into positive changes. The Covid Caesura.

The Covid shrinking of our lives is allowing us to see more clearly what is very close to home, which is what Blake encourages us to do at the start of Auguries of Innocence:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

In this poem, Blake goes on to encourage us to look at contrasts and extremes within a framework which suggests that beauty can be found in common places and that what is at hand, and in the moment, can contain vastness. The whole poem invites us to re-read and reflect upon it. And it proposes that a smaller life can be a good life.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43650/auguries-of-innocence

I’m glad Heighton notes that it’s possible for a life to be too small. Some people are enduring lives in which their basic needs are not met and those lives are not loveable. It’s incumbent on the rest of us to chip in, to help out, and to vote for better allocations in government spending in order to reduce poverty and homelessness. Basic Income would be a good start.

If more of us learn to love the small life, perhaps more people’s lives can become loveable. It will require some of us to shrink our appetites and use smaller plates so we can provide more space and make room for others.

  

To See or Not to See

 

Because of the virus, many of us are spending an unusual amount of time on Zoom and have found ourselves gazing at our own reflections. It’s not pleasant. Where did those wrinkles and wattles, extra chins, age spots and skin tags come from? When did they appear? Who knew?

Everyone but oneself, apparently.

I think of Robert Burns’ lines: O, wad some Power the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as others see us! The gods listened, and Zoom gave us that gift.

It’s never been a good idea to look at ourselves in the mirror for too long or too often. Remember what happened to Snow White’s evil stepmother?

Fortunately, the gods not only giveth but they can also taketh away.  When my granddaughter showed me how to “Hide Self View,” it took care of one of my problems. I no longer see myself, which is a good thing.

But there remains the problem of seeing others and making eye contact. I’ve been told that I should always look directly at the camera so as to create the impression that I’m looking at the viewer. If I actually look at the person who is talking, I appear to be looking away from them. It’s a conundrum.

There’s no way to really connect on Zoom, no way to have actual eye contact, the thing that Meleau-Ponty once described as “mutually enfolding glances”: https://www.mic.com/p/the-bizarre-intimacy-of-zoom-meetings-22684781

That said, I feel a lot of gratitude for the ways in which technology allows us to see our loved ones, to take courses, enjoy discussions and learn new things in different ways while still maintaining safe distances and following Covid procedures.

Years ago, when I worked as a social worker in a psychiatric setting, some therapists encouraged us to work in pairs in order to experience long sessions of silent eye contact. I remember being partnered with a very perceptive young schizophrenic man who quickly observed, “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

He was right. Back then I wasn’t a fan of extensive eye contact with strangers, but now I miss it.

However, as happens so frequently in these Covid times, “there’s a silver lining” – an expression we hear more and more often. A friend of mine was recently in a waiting room at the hospital for several hours, and for most of that time was sitting across from a young woman to whom she never spoke. Nonetheless, they formed a strong connection. Both masked, they glanced at each other – “mutually enfolding glances,” it seems – as they responded to the long wait as people came and went around them. The two of them were able, non-verbally, to communicate humour, frustration, boredom and, eventually, relief. My friend later said, “I will never forget that young woman’s eyes.”

In the early days of the virus, masks seemed alien. Now we’re able to lift up our eyes and we’re beginning to see each other in new ways.

 

Cornucopia

I like Thanksgiving and I’ve always had many reasons to feel thankful, but never more than this year. In the midst of widespread misery, misfortune, pain and suffering, how could I not feel grateful for my comfortable circumstances? 

It’s true that the coronavirus has caused most of us to experience some small hardships, but what do these minor inconveniences matter at a time when over 10,000 people in our province have contacted the virus, almost 180,000 in Canada. and over 37 million around the world, and with over a million deaths from this disease so far this year? Living on Vancouver Island at this time is fortunate. 

Celebrations of thankfulness have a long history. Medieval communities in Europe held festivals to express thanks for the fruits and vegetables that were harvested each autumn. In many places, Lammas Day celebrated the first fruits of the earth with a loaf made from the new crop being blessed in church. Pagan communities offered up fruits of the harvest to the gods in thankfulness and held ceremonies that involved games, feasting, dancing and pilgrimages. The cornucopia or “horn of plenty” was an important symbol for these celebrations. 

Thanksgiving was originally declared a holiday in Canada on November 6th, 1879. Of course, Indigenous peoples in Canada have a history of having held feasts to celebrate the fall harvest for thousands of years before any European settlers arrived on their land. And, although settler society chooses just this one day as a time for offering thanks, I’ve been told that Indigenous peoples include the giving of thanks in all their ceremonies. We might learn from this example and include gratitude routinely in our daily lives. 

This Thanksgiving, I’m trying to express gratitude to everyone I encounter: people in grocery stores, coffee shops, banks, and so forth. All the people who turn up to work as usual, despite the virus. On Sunday, I’ll toast and appreciate friends and family, near and far. Some dear friends from Ottawa sent me seasonal greetings along with seven carefully-pressed, colourful Eastern maple leaves of various sizes. We’ll have these leaves decorating our Thanksgiving table, just as my friends always did when I was with them for Thanksgiving in past years. 

When I reflect on the cornucopia of abundance that is in my life, I think of the beauty of all the trees that surround us, the forests that we must work to preserve. I’m reminded of Wendell Berry’s wonderful poem, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front: Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. 

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/manifesto-the-mad-farmer-liberation-front/ 

The poem concludes: Practice resurrection. 

And so, to some friends and family who are close at hand this Thanksgiving, I’m practicing resurrection by giving them a few bulbs to plant as a way of marking 2020 and anticipating the flowers that will bloom in the spring of 2021. I’m also planting some myself. 

I think it’s a good occasion for us to feel the earth in our hands – as indeed it is. 

A time to hope and plant for the future. 

A time to dig deep.

Octopus Teachers

 

 

I’ve always loved octopi, and have spent long sessions at aquariums watching and talking to them.

Everything about the octopi fascinates me: the smooth, graceful approaches, the slow undulations of their many tentacles, and the swift shape-shifting retreats. I’ve heard that they can recognize and become friends with humans and, on a holiday to Tacoma many years ago, I became convinced that a large octopus in the aquarium at Point Defiance Park knew and liked me. “Look,” I said to my husband. “See how he rushes up to the glass when I come close. He changes colour and folds and unfolds his tentacles.”

My husband was unconvinced. “No,” he said, “It’s anger that changes his colour. He’s racing towards you because he wants to break through the glass and strangle you.”

Nonetheless, my infatuation continued and I had yearnings, like those of Ringo Starr, to be under the sea in an octopus’s garden. I frequently sang along with Ringo: We would shout, And swim about, The coral that lies beneath the waves.

My infatuation returned when I watched Netflix’s extraordinarily beautiful documentary, My Octopus Teacher. It’s a film we need right now, not just for its poignant love story but also for real lessons that might help us in coping with the pandemic.

In this film, I was fascinated when the diver and director Craig Foster hesitantly extends one arm and the octopus slowly unfolds her own, reaching out to touch his hand and stroke his arm. Tears came to my eyes and I felt a wave of shock at the encounter, one which was similar to that described by Annie Dillard in her brilliant essay Living Like Weasels: https://public.wsu.edu/~hughesc/dillard_weasel.htm

It seems we experience something positive and transformational when we’re confronted with what is foreign and frightening. And maybe such encounters can change how we perceive the world and how we live in it.

The underwater world is dangerous. Foster decides not to intervene when a predator shark follows the octopus. At first, the little octopus hides under a rock but the shark manages to get close enough to bite off a limb, leaving the creature bleeding and seriously weakened. Yet, after a while, she recovers and soon a tiny tentacle appears. Her regenerative powers have produced a new limb.

Later in the film, we watch the octopus cleverly dodge a predator shark. She faces the danger directly, jumping onto the shark’s back, hanging on, and holding fast until the situation changes and she’s able to escape.

We’ve all suffered painful amputations over the past six months. Humans can’t grow new limbs but, like the octopus, we can find ways to rebound and to experience renewal. Remembering that the octopus was an important symbol in Ancient Rome, I find myself thinking of the Latin words resilio and renovo. Rebound. Renew.

By being smart and hanging on.

And holding fast until things change.