tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72687641161386788642024-03-16T12:29:38.951-06:00BLUE DUETSThoughts on creativity and daily lifeKathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.comBlogger358125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-71402896055149293542024-03-14T11:29:00.001-06:002024-03-16T11:16:57.013-06:00"Witness attends to being"<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6BB38iaV8Y_vDP1Z1Gmo4srazDQPUkk8O3C4GnjjrKmrPkU9Xty1Iv9ElmQeN0UQw3y4MkReRlF1u7aCQWVtjhY40lGPMfFZ5_F33ayYqwgK1JsF-GgGF3MaK8MsfJhr31ZhQE7FnCEC_yTFjZom1wkP123tasdsCQbR5VsptO8jrQBXsuxCBbjCSNNrD/s5184/IMG_2217.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6BB38iaV8Y_vDP1Z1Gmo4srazDQPUkk8O3C4GnjjrKmrPkU9Xty1Iv9ElmQeN0UQw3y4MkReRlF1u7aCQWVtjhY40lGPMfFZ5_F33ayYqwgK1JsF-GgGF3MaK8MsfJhr31ZhQE7FnCEC_yTFjZom1wkP123tasdsCQbR5VsptO8jrQBXsuxCBbjCSNNrD/w400-h300/IMG_2217.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">So Jan Zwicky writes in "The Syntax of Ethical Style," an essay her wise, learned, and mind-blowing new book, <i>Once Upon a Time in the West</i>. I promise to get back to this. This is where I want to end up.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But I want to start, perhaps not improbably, with the etymology of "narrate," which comes from the Latin "narrare," with its roots in "gnarus," or "knowing." Intuitively you know this. Good narrators know what they are talking about and they know how to tell an effective story or joke. Or you know it in another way when you distrust some narrators, the unreliable narrators like the butler Stephens in <i>The Remains of the Day</i>. I came upon an unreliable narrator last night when I finished Sarah Bernstein's provocative and yet puzzling <i>Study for Obedience</i>. I suspect that our unnamed narrator is not entirely honest with us. There were so many inconsistencies between the selfishness the narrator's family accuses her of and her inclination to give herself over to everyone else's will. There can be power in such renunciation. I also suspect that's not the whole story, that Bernstein is exploring a complex relationship between history's victims and its murderous bullies or even those who look the other way while bullies do the dirty work. Who can reliably tell such a story?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">You also know about would-be narrators, like your favourite four-year-old, who tells the story of her or his day saying "and then....and then....and then...." Narrative is not just sequence; it has to know something. I'm going to look like that narrator just now as I try to pull the threads of the last couple of weeks and find myself in the middle of the night reading Jan Zwicky. But I hope I'll come off "knowing" in the end.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">So I've decided to get off the medication for sleep I've been taking for upwards of ten years--well before I retired. In fact, part of the reason I retired was that I had been sleeping so badly that I envisioned coming into class some day and curling up under the table where professors put their books and notes, and napping while my students quietly left. Sleep is a huge issue these days--most North Americans don't get enough sleep--and by a series of accidents, I had read quite a few articles on sleep which told me that I was taking 2 1/2 times the usual dose of this medication <u>and it wasn't working</u>. (I also learned later that the med cause "fatigue" and wondered about the logic of prescribing a medication for exhaustion that in turn causes fatigue. Semantics?)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I also learned that the way to learn to sleep was through CBT-I, or Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Insomnia. You go to work on your sleep hygiene, which I'm already very good at. No coffee after four, very little tv that goes late, eschewing screens, etc. Then the first step, my wonderful therapist told me, is to answer my panic about not sleeping by telling myself that "I'll be okay." He tells me this in a wonderful deep voice that says with certainty, yes, I'll be okay. I'm not going to die of lack of sleep, not anytime soon, anyway. Here's the other rule, the one I find harder. If you are not sleeping, you get out of bed and do something else. For me, it's always a coin toss, getting out of bed. The cats are settled in. It's warm and comfortable. But it's also very frustrating and aggravating and I can't get comfortable so I'm spinning around like a dervish and pulling the covers every which way. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">All of this is kind of destabilizing. Who are you in the middle of the night when you are all alone and can't sleep, night after night? When even the streets are quiet? Your social self, charming as it is might be, is useless. Memories. Ah, memories. They can comfort or sandbag you, so that might not be the place to go. I've discovered solitaire isn't bad. I can't get myself organized to work on a quilt. Can you imagine the scene: Bill hears this mysterious whirring at 3 a.m. and gets up to find his wife, her white hair wafting as she moves, maniacally sewing? Reading mysteries, even tame ones, only urges you to keep reading. Some novels are okay: I've just finished re-re-reading Thomas Mann's <i>Dr. Faustus</i>, which is such a complex historical puzzle that your brain is working while your feelings are disengaged. Feelings. Feelings are not good at 3 a.m.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">So I've found that nonfiction is often the best reading for the middle of the night. I found Robert Hass's essays in <i>What Light Can Do</i> to be very helpful. He has a calm, evocative voice that represents his thinking about poetry and culture very clearly. I don't need to remember everything he tells me about a Japanese poet whose name I cannot pronounce, but the essay gives me another way to think about poetry. So, a slightly sleepy public intellectual is a fine identity for the middle of the night. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">That said, why did I move on to Jan Zwicky's <i>Once Upon a Time in the West</i>, essays by a brilliant and exacting intelligence? I simply knew there were essays that I would come back to; others, like "The Ethics of the Negative Review," which I would just vigorously agree with. Or "Integrity and Ornament," an essay on Adolf Loos and his belief that ornament was inherently decadent, touched on architectural issues Nikka had taught me about. So I could nod along with Zwicky--though looking back over it, I can see that I underlined many passages on the Loos essay that of course I need to revisit. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But on a particularly bad night, one when my sense of self had gone walkabout, I was reading "The Syntax of Ethical Style." A little heavier, that one. But I just persevered until I read a section entitled "Ontological Attention and Lyric Form," which is part of a complex description of what lyric thought is and does. (For complicated reasons, she distinguishes between lyric thought and lyric poetry.) Part of what lyric thought does is to bear witness. Describing the twenty-two days when Vedran Smailovic played Giazotto's Adagio in G Minor at a Sarajevo bomb site where twenty-two people died, Zwicky describes his project (and the italics are hers): "<i>This happened. See: a real life. See: a real death. See: reality</i>. That is: witness attends to being" (129). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">That raised the hair on my arms and confirmed some very odd plans I have for a series of brief poems, perhaps haikus, inspired by Robert Hass's humanistic view of poetry, where I just try to be witness to the everyday, while submerging the "I" as much as possible. I probably don't need to explain how this is a response to Ukraine, Gaza, Haiti, the 4,000 mile long east-to-west strip of African countries who have experienced coups in the last five years where life is still chaotic. Or maybe I do need to make that link, which rattles painfully around in my head these days, noisy and unnerving. What do I do with my horror and hopelessness in the face of my own privilege and good luck? Beyond sending money to Doctors without Borders, I live <u>here</u>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And then Zwicky writes "But witness...is concerned with our attunement to the whole. Positive witness understands that we have a duty to praise, and that it is this duty that underlies the witness of mourning. Cheerfulness is a virtue not just because it makes us pleasant company for other humans...but because it reflects a genuine grasp of the most fundamental fact of the matter: things exist. The witness of grief is the complement of our ability to stand before this fact in joyful astonishment" (129). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It was as if she had found that self that had gone walkabout, had given it back to me in the middle of the night, in the vulnerable hour. It was Troni Grande who gave me the word, saying one day over coffee that I'm always cheerful. I was shocked. The life that goes on in my head is often not cheerful, is often sickened and grappling with--let's just call it the rage and self-absorption loose in the world, on intimate and national scales, and be done with it. But I strive to be cheerful because otherwise I am useless. If I'm glum, I don't raise anyone else's spirits, I can't help anyone else. Besides, the privileged, lucky part of me knows that complete despair is dishonest. All I need to do is to look at the stones I've collected for the bowls in my office--stones!--to know the world is a miracle. In the middle of the night, Zwicky gave me the existential ballast to acknowledge the grief I often feel but to also to know that it's my job to be attuned to the remarkable whole. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">An ethical, reflective, aware life is undeniably hard right now. But maybe Zwicky has also given you permission to celebrate what is. </span></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-42184998791616546892024-02-12T15:07:00.002-06:002024-02-12T15:07:51.861-06:00Time--with a dose of irony<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA6TuDcmAtGPkMZF-bStiEyXwn4Fohi7cvvfXyFXCU_daDzcRgW0JjA1NBgXN_dO5Eryie1jjt7lzIMM1YUh-lyyxWPgB_ZOsmsG9JtnPg83ITTbWDIFrEn70u_QZEpZd7_oiTIzC45rSxfxTZOPPaLaFn1sEGF-D0olHZdDpvBff8klldok84WiPjxhll/s5184/IMG_2216.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA6TuDcmAtGPkMZF-bStiEyXwn4Fohi7cvvfXyFXCU_daDzcRgW0JjA1NBgXN_dO5Eryie1jjt7lzIMM1YUh-lyyxWPgB_ZOsmsG9JtnPg83ITTbWDIFrEn70u_QZEpZd7_oiTIzC45rSxfxTZOPPaLaFn1sEGF-D0olHZdDpvBff8klldok84WiPjxhll/w400-h300/IMG_2216.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Every once in a while, my head wants to challenge physics. If there's a long line of cars turning left and holding up traffic, why can't the ever-moving molecules in my car move between the ever-moving molecules in that tree on the boulevard so that I can get home sooner? I don't know why, the moving molecule thing never works. At least it doesn't when there's a cat lounging in the doorway I need to get through to grab my phone. It's over or around the cat, and if my hip slams into the doorway, no obliging molecules ever part their ways like the Red Sea.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But the physics of time! I know it's variable and yet it's not. The sleepless hours between midnight and 2:30 a.m. stretch almost to eternity. Yet a good hour's writing can seem so short, a good hour's thinking even shorter because so few words make it to the page. Mostly, though, the clock ticks inexorably on, and as I approach 74, there's less and less of it. Or less and less of the energy to use the time meaningfully. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I know all the rules about time. We can't evade its limits by multi-tasking. Regardless of how our phones summon us like Pied Pipers, we can't really watch TV and doom scroll. Something gets lost. We do both things badly. In <i>Four Thousand Weeks</i> by Oliver Burkeman--which I haven't had time to read but which has made the podcasts I listen to while I'm on my exercise bike--Burkeman tells us that we need to realize that, in the 4000 weeks given to us, we won't get everything on our to-do lists done. <u>We have to make choices</u>. (I've got maybe 500 weeks left, if I'm lucky.) Multi-taking will only make it worse, will actually steal that time from us because, at the end of it, the time will have fallen through our hands like sand. I hope this rule doesn't apply to petting the cat on my lap while I write.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I also know that task switching--changing from deliberate time spent doing research, for example, to spending time rearranging the books on my shelves--is counter productive. And at the end of a morning of evading writing by switching to reorganizing the novels and checking Facebook, I will be more exhausted than if I did those things sequentially. Yet in the weeks when it was cloudy and cloudy and cloudy, I found that spending an entire morning writing was going to be just depressing. So I planned to spend an hour writing and then an hour reading for the next chapter of <i>The Frosted Bough: Essays on Minimalism</i>, which is about the minimalist painter Agnes Martin. Then, to round my research on the chapter I'm just finishing, on "Making and Making Do," I'd learn about craftivism or read about Sheridan College's commitment to repair cafes. It was really helpful I'm guessing I didn't run out of a particular kind of concentration. And maybe planning blocks of time made me innocent of task-switching.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2aRWRUpdqeMsRq7CoLp6NVVyuFd-wmF1FGEe-OiNbX2KOEdeqnulEw-teqdzY4zxOHXdUwqpmn1AUCv-piODraIjeHt6rCxjONyR5a5GRTQQ_Sh0VU6w_-21GxUC9ggiPlEUSqu0Y_P2XgdwPAWId88HqmP1vMxHsmswlmXKcTT29mF5ro0SaLzycah7l/s5184/IMG_2212.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2aRWRUpdqeMsRq7CoLp6NVVyuFd-wmF1FGEe-OiNbX2KOEdeqnulEw-teqdzY4zxOHXdUwqpmn1AUCv-piODraIjeHt6rCxjONyR5a5GRTQQ_Sh0VU6w_-21GxUC9ggiPlEUSqu0Y_P2XgdwPAWId88HqmP1vMxHsmswlmXKcTT29mF5ro0SaLzycah7l/w400-h300/IMG_2212.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I know that there are two things I can do to maybe eke out a few weeks after the 500 I'm hoping for. One is to exercise--including cardio and strength training. But I haven't found the formula. If I lose 1 1/2 hours from my writing this week to exercise, how many more days does that give me at the end of my life? And will I still be writing at 85? Is there a best-before-date for poets? I'm pretty sure that longer forms like novels or collections of essays might be a stretch. I mostly exercise in the late afternoon when I'm too tired to read or write, and still don't manage to get in the recommended 140 minutes per week. This is partly because the other thing that contributes to longevity is good relationships. So is there a formula that helps me figure out whether losing a workout because I'm having coffee with a friend is a good use of my time? I could spend a lot of my life just trying to extend my life.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I also understand what I call the time of craftsmanship. Making a quilt or throwing a mug take as long as it takes to do it well. You're not worrying about how long it's taking because you are lost in the pleasure of doing it well. For me, this requires some discipline. (When am I going to finish this bloody book!) Yet lately I've taken on some quilting projects that need to be hand pieced, and I find that time so serene.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7z6BLFXhnEWlq75yBnctnMt2r0whbMXy0iRXROpFeUGGLDTKVJfY_iWRlQaSgTfFm2L2xL2dcPW2AsYn7qf1aYTopQmPo7xcwZRO0NC-z7_OV9WYkwL7r5aoTRSiKJQuuVJ2m6EzZ096tQpGSgIeKBYn-x0HKpEnVcABNVPZ_LVWnNyv3dCdlPIr07i9_/s5184/IMG_2211.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7z6BLFXhnEWlq75yBnctnMt2r0whbMXy0iRXROpFeUGGLDTKVJfY_iWRlQaSgTfFm2L2xL2dcPW2AsYn7qf1aYTopQmPo7xcwZRO0NC-z7_OV9WYkwL7r5aoTRSiKJQuuVJ2m6EzZ096tQpGSgIeKBYn-x0HKpEnVcABNVPZ_LVWnNyv3dCdlPIr07i9_/w400-h300/IMG_2211.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I have a handful of mantras that I find helpful. Just be curious. Kindness lives here. It's just a problem to be solved--this last one is especially helpful when "it" is something that is making people in my life emotional or panicked. The last is "Be here now." Or "Be. Here. Now." So often we're not where we are physically, and we miss so much of life's magic like a smile from a stranger or the woodpecker high in the tree. That's what Lyra tells me when he climbs on my lap while I write. He reminds me that I'm not typing away in some mythical future when I finish the book and edit it and approve a cover and get the box of books in the mail and do my first reading. That's all hypothetical anyway, as the Buddhists tell us. Uncertainty is everywhere. Given the last four years, we should know that. The only antidote to uncertainty is the certainty and pleasure of being here now.</span></span><p></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-47743121501636910592024-01-06T16:09:00.003-06:002024-01-06T16:11:00.136-06:00Hands<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8MY5_OM0-p9p2N9FL78dGo2SLZMmTT67Tv2r30PEqIh_zi9fKKK2wVnNEtC9uhlLopH_IzsC1ycWr159qgXi1jgLu5akVoIJFbu9OW7znig03nThtHIi4FciJkSIBIWnPAAmlB-KS0LIMNZlqeNJOZ8kBUPui6gQAIrfjYX2W87Pegez_2u4VcBtBqt6J/s5184/IMG_2209.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8MY5_OM0-p9p2N9FL78dGo2SLZMmTT67Tv2r30PEqIh_zi9fKKK2wVnNEtC9uhlLopH_IzsC1ycWr159qgXi1jgLu5akVoIJFbu9OW7znig03nThtHIi4FciJkSIBIWnPAAmlB-KS0LIMNZlqeNJOZ8kBUPui6gQAIrfjYX2W87Pegez_2u4VcBtBqt6J/w400-h300/IMG_2209.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">It's a new year and a new chapter of <i>The Frosted Bough: Essays on Minimalism</i>. I finished the chapter on the Voluntary Simplicity movement and am now almost ready to write "Making and Making Do." My idiosyncratic research has been to visit the quilters at Connecting Threads who gather together every Thursday morning just down the street from me at the Balkwill Centre to make quilts for women's shelters and premature babies. They are one of the happiest groups of people I have ever spent time with. I'm talking this afternoon to someone who has taken part in a repair cafe. I'm heading out next week to visit Zane Wilcox's studio to see what he has to say about minimalism and ceramics. I also have fifteen pages of notes that I hope to whittle down to 7,000 words or so, but even at a quick mental glance, I can see that there are a couple of things I really want to say about craftsmanship. One is about hands. Another is the fact that people who make things seems to me to be happier. The third is that craftspeople inhabit an entirely different kind of time, one we could all imitate.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">So, hands. What have you done with your hands today besides type and wiggle and click your mouse and swipe the screen on your phone? People who write knowledgeably about craft have noticed that, lamentably, many of us don't do much with our hands. Yet they've evolved through thousands of years to be flexible and knowledgeable. Competent crafters probably celebrate the moment, consciously or not, when their tools don't come between themselves and their work, when their tools are not something they are fighting to use effectively but become a mere means to an end. I saw that when I was learning to throw mugs and bowls as research for <i>Home in Stormy Weather. </i>I certainly didn't see it in myself but it was clear in how my teacher, Randall Fedge, centered his clay and then brought it smoothly up from the wheel to make a beautifully-shaped bowl. In fact, it may have been clearer to me precisely because I sucked. The distance between his craftsmanship and my lack of it was palpable. He did not <u>think</u> about the wheel, only about his hands shaping clay. I do experience my hands' knowledge occasionally when I'm practicing the piano and my hands merely shape a tricky passage without my actually thinking about what they are doing. In fact, they are more likely to do this when I'm focused on the music I want to make rather than on the fingerings necessary to get the notes to flow. There is complex neuroscience behind this, but yes, our hands know things. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Hands are expressive. Outside the grocery store while I waited for Bill to pick up orange juice for our OJ and prosecco on New Year's Eve, I saw a father stroke his eight-year-old daughter's long dark hair. So much was said by that gesture. In my reading on craft, I have learned about the early craft guilds and how they became the studio system for artists who had enough commissions that they could employ a cloud expert or a background painter or someone who could capture the folds in fabric. But the artist who ran the studio often saved faces and hands for himself. Here I think of my mother's hands, which embraced so many competencies, from painting a ceiling to kneading bread to sewing a dart to shaping itself just before she caressed my cheek. Rodin sculpted hands that pray, implore, struggle to grasp, understand, explain, express pain. The artist painted hands himself because they are shorthand for character, a kind of minimal expression of the sitter's historical and personal situation and frame of mind. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Or I think of Michelangelo's </span><i style="font-family: verdana;">Creation</i><span style="font-family: verdana;"> on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, the hand of God reaching out to the hand of Adam in a transcendent moment. What Michelangelo created there is the sense that hands bring forth of embodied creation--which is more or less what craft is. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Hands are also the conduit of other kinds of sensory experiences, I thought to myself Monday morning when I made a lemon meringue pie that I knew would delight both Bill and Nikka for New Year's Day dinner. My hands held the firm fruit as I grated the fragrant lemon peel, and they knew by the surface of the lemon when I'd gone all the way around. My hands got little giddy at the feel of lemon peel in their fingertips as I put it into the measuring spoon. How could something as insubstantial as dandelion fluff contain this powerful fragrance? They pushed down hard when I juiced the lemons. They were competent as I separated the eggs. They sensed what a magical thing an egg is with its crisp yet vulnerable shell. And of course they let me eat the pie. Our hands feel and grasp and throw, but they also mediate so much of our sensory experiences if only we'll let them off the leash of our devices. We actually call the feel of fabric, its drape and texture, from the sheerness of silk to the heft of tweed, its "hand."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Here's where hands and craftsmanship and minimalism come together. Craft isn't inherently minimal. Ask my sister, whose quilter's stash takes up a "bonus room" above a two-car garage. Ask a woodworker about his tools or a weaver about looms. But once a craftsperson has gained competency, the creative force is a a pair of hands and her or his material. There's a justifiable and complicated debate about how we know whether a glass vase or a quilt is handicraft or a work of art. I think it would be most useful to put craft on one end of a continuum, art on the other. Craft must be well made. There's no <u>point</u> to a piece of weaving that unravels every time its wearer moves. Nor is there any point to a glass vase that can't find its balance or a bowl that can't contain anything. On the other hand, art needs to be more than an object. It needs an idea; it needs to say something about our physical, intellectual, perceptual, psychological world and about its place and our place in that world. The off-kilter piece of glass might qualify as art, reflecting a world that often seems to be transparent but can't find a centre that will hold. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Or there's a distinction that's even simpler, and perhaps a bit dishonest: we don't use art. We wouldn't take one of Cezanne's paintings down from the wall and cover it with bowls of fruit and goblets of wine as if it a tablecloth. We use craft. We wear it, drink out of it, pile oranges in it. In turn, the clay bowl, the woven fabric, the finished wood invite our hands, bringing us back to our physical, sensing selves</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I'll write about craftsman's happiness and time in the coming weeks.</span></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-59054021396835468142023-11-08T09:28:00.002-06:002023-11-08T09:28:59.139-06:00Practice Watching How Light Changes--a slow and tardy blog post<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiABhsHaA69AGApjDkGzl5Zsvap13FhotQaigWf6meyB6lhiRmBkKt4S_7dAcVZAXWFdI9EgN6SHOXbRcd8MAPy4CSbYzVCmVlLd6E5AnxIr1E5OOQAW1RvOVlfIz582NJvPFrNBA2xzMxpANcc_BI0hcEEYM9nb6aJJEoeWq7MX_iQcBCwRUTKuuWo9CHe/s5184/IMG_2205.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiABhsHaA69AGApjDkGzl5Zsvap13FhotQaigWf6meyB6lhiRmBkKt4S_7dAcVZAXWFdI9EgN6SHOXbRcd8MAPy4CSbYzVCmVlLd6E5AnxIr1E5OOQAW1RvOVlfIz582NJvPFrNBA2xzMxpANcc_BI0hcEEYM9nb6aJJEoeWq7MX_iQcBCwRUTKuuWo9CHe/w300-h400/IMG_2205.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Right outside my kitchen window, which faces north, is crabapple tree. It was in bloom the weekend I brought my eleven-year-old daughter to Regina to buy a house and was certainly one of its attractions, along with the many, many windows. It's a gnarly old tree, a kind of grown-up bonsai, and it helps keep my kitchen cool in the summer when I hardly mind the calm greeny light it casts into the kitchen, especially when I'm cooking, however minimally, on a hot day. But there's a time of the year when it frustrates me. In late summer and early fall, when the sun has moved south enough to leave most of the back yard in shadow, my kitchen simply seems dark. And then, at first slowly, and then suddenly, its leaves turn yellow-gold and a golden light enters my kitchen. And there will be a third kind of light, soon, when all the leaves have dropped. If I haven't watched carefully, I miss this marking of the year. (The photo above is of that tree today. It's taken me a while to write this.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">If I were entirely rational, fall would be just the beginning of the dread I will feel as the days get shorter. But since one of my mottos is "Be here now" and the other is "Just be curious," I really lean into autumn. Besides, I never know in advance how bad December and January are going to be, so why dread what isn't inevitable? Instead, I walk and admire. I've noticed that a row of elms that's lost about half their leaves has a kind of tenderness about it, like a beautiful older person whose skin is translucent. When I walk on the creek bank, I see colours, particularly the leaves of the wild roses, that I can't name. How can something be red and green at the same time? There isn't a green space and a red space: the leaf is red-green. As the leaves fall from trees, the heroic little cotoneasters turn gold and orange and red. Eventually enough leaves will fall that I have to actually seek out autumnal beauty on my walk. But that's a practice that late fall encourages in me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">When I was still teaching, I had a wonderful office with two floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the "podium," a second-storey outdoor space that unites the university's buildings. If you lived on the third floor of the AdHum Building and taught a class on the third floor of the Classroom Building, you could simply walk down a single flight, go outside, cross the podium, and then climb a single flight to your classroom. I stared out my windows a fair amount, since I also had a slice of Wascana Park and its lake within my view. One day I watched as a skate boarder sped across the podium toward a small flight of stairs leading down to the library doors. Sometimes he bailed, pulling up before the stairs. Sometimes he washed out. But once he made it. I tunked on my window; he looked up; I gave him a thumbs up. Someone had seen his many attempts and his single success, so it was real. All that practice made more sense with an unexpected audience.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">You know I love Future Crunch. At the end of an August newsletter they gave us a link to Hajime Miura's winning performance at the World Yo-Yo Contest, which was in Tokyo this year. Miura uses two yo-yos to do the most amazing things; I would give you a link, but the World Yo-Yo Contest discourages that. You can find them easily online. You will be grinning from ear to ear. The practice that went into those tricks and the seamless choreography that links one to another--and the young man's obvious humility--are mind-boggling and astounding. The year I lived in Boston, the first year of my first marriage, grey days sent me dialing up the local Audobon bird line to listen to the birds that had been sighted. About the time it told me that two yellow-bellied sapsuckers had been sighted in Woburn, I would begin to smile. You could use Haijime Miura's performance the same way. Or go to it now and then revisit when needed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I keep working on Bach's English and French Suites. It may take me an entire year to truly get one of these under my fingers and to find the dynamics and phrasing that make them musical, but it's a discipline in my week that gives me so much joy. I love them, love the order, the disorder, the surprise, the bending of music to Bach's ends. To be inside them, gaining glimmers of understanding of how they work and narrowing the enormous distance between what I can do and what Bach wrote, is a privilege. Recently, Ken Wilson posted a quotation from sculptor Henry Moore who averred that the secret of life is to devote yourself to a task--every hour of every day--that you cannot possibly accomplish. I disagree with this in part--but then I'm not an artist of the greatness of Henry Moore, so what do I know? Maybe greatness requires a single-mindedness I am unwilling to pay to my writing. But I know that I have to pay attention to other things in my life--to people, creatures, nature, culture, art, politics, war, human suffering and human flourishing. But I agree with Moore's sense that you need to aim for something beyond your reach--or that you believe you cannot do. That's what keeps us honest about our gifts and our shortcomings. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I started this post a couple of weeks ago, when the elms were nearly finished but the cotoneasters blazed. Then the attempt to finish up and polish another chapter of <i>The Frosted Bough: Essays on Minimalism</i> intervened. Last Tuesday we woke up to snow in Regina; I knew it was there even before I looked out the window because the dawn light had changed. Or was it two Tuesdays ago? In the furtive stillness, time seems to be hanging out and moving at an uneven pace. People around me averred that this was winter, come down like a curtain on fall's final act. I disagreed. We're far under normal lows and highs, and La Nina is afoot, creating warmer oceans and monstrous hurricanes. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Be here now. Since last Tuesday, if I'm right, we've had maybe one sunny day. In the past, I would have been part way down into the catacombs, which is where I seem to go when I don't have the energy to be myself, find myself, nurture myself. Though I admit it took two naps to get through snoozy Sunday. I don't honestly know how I've been able to accommodate my moods to the cloud, to be curious to subtle changes in the the way it envelopes the lacy, empty trees or traces them in blank ink with the rain. I'm guessing the answer is to be observant, to practice being observant even when it doesn't seem like there's much to observe. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGwQ4U2s6GQdHQtO0DWQSMKVPVn1Y6zPdSuQgEeWRtm0qKjth1vug7UkdRvsXj9zYh7T74wTB7no8JGbuoxtKJWN3lpHZ9ua95w9qKrOPOLU7BgrCOcOD3b4Kgdqp0tAuKp2IBtyxApSlTcSZea2RpjZLeQwBA9_24p8eMkLXcwzgDHWR1o-w1CdZseuwi/s5184/IMG_2206.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGwQ4U2s6GQdHQtO0DWQSMKVPVn1Y6zPdSuQgEeWRtm0qKjth1vug7UkdRvsXj9zYh7T74wTB7no8JGbuoxtKJWN3lpHZ9ua95w9qKrOPOLU7BgrCOcOD3b4Kgdqp0tAuKp2IBtyxApSlTcSZea2RpjZLeQwBA9_24p8eMkLXcwzgDHWR1o-w1CdZseuwi/w300-h400/IMG_2206.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Happiness Studies, aka Positive Psychology is continuously finding ways of nudging us in the direction of lives that are deeply satisfying. Dacher Keltner did this with <i>Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life</i>. It's essentially a book about paying attention to the moral beauty that happens around us, to the wonders of nature, to our struggling attempts to make sense of the world that result in awesome epiphanies, to that song or symphony that gives us goosebumps. Take an awe walk, Keltner advises. Go looking for awe in the natural world and you will inevitably find it, both in nature's vastness and in its attention to detail. Look for awe in the moral beauty of small acts of kindness or courage--an awe we deeply need to experience in a time when world events are tending toward anything but kindness. Practice looking for awe and you will get better at seeing it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">This fall I discovered another lovely concept: glimmers. Coined by psychotherapist Deb Dana in 2018, glimmers are tiny micro-moments of joy that allow us to feel calm and give us a sense of inner peace. The more you find, the more you see. I am thinking of the poetic collaborationo of Ariel Gorden and Brends Schmidt in <i>Siteseeing</i>. During a very difficult time--between the pandemic and the threats to the natural world--the collaboration prompted both of them to look carefully and create a glimmer out of whatever the world delivered that day. I think I'll be writing about them again.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I began this blog post in mid-fall. Today winter has brought us one of its most graceful beauties: a tall slice of white on every branch and twig and bird feeder. When I was coming home from breakfast with Katherine, I even saw a young man walking east with two or three inches atop his toque. Snowfalls like this make me want to step back and try to grasp the beauty of the whole. It's a landscape for taking the long view, working to get some perspective. It's also a time of year when I tend to pull inward; at least it's warm and dry in the catacombs. It's time to do inner work, time to reflect, time to contemplate and learn more about those close to me. Oddly enough, that sense of perspective and of pulling inward are connected because that inner work, that stretch for inner knowledge and discernment paradoxically lends itself to wider, clearer views of larger times and spaces.</span></p><p><br /></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-78625364194431082872023-10-17T10:14:00.001-06:002023-10-17T10:14:22.668-06:00Just Like Me<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgypLK-SaMJSI2c6UgO9qbSbZIhS4HmRDrqkVDu_dmj98mwijUm5qsrKuBCy7iRGkq5dmIbKxFCvd_rDNb5iI99WjlHjPRu5rJsG365A7Cf6mbeygO7YalZuW8RkkABX_zIaflpkxbyPnavkGLerexWUEC72ZmWNLeKyY8LDHQF8l9p36GKoJntBPukgSOu/s5184/IMG_2199.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgypLK-SaMJSI2c6UgO9qbSbZIhS4HmRDrqkVDu_dmj98mwijUm5qsrKuBCy7iRGkq5dmIbKxFCvd_rDNb5iI99WjlHjPRu5rJsG365A7Cf6mbeygO7YalZuW8RkkABX_zIaflpkxbyPnavkGLerexWUEC72ZmWNLeKyY8LDHQF8l9p36GKoJntBPukgSOu/w300-h400/IMG_2199.JPG" width="300" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span>Bill and I sometimes read to one another in bed. At this point, we're reading Pema Chodron's <i>Welcoming The Unwelcome</i>, which Bill has heard me talk about again and again. I</span><span> discovered </span><i>When Things Fall Apart</i><span> several years back and then learned of her more recent book. Sometimes, when I'm blue or feel ethically and emotionally lost among the vicissitudes of daily life, </span><span>I find myself reading the books over and over, sometimes just picking one of them up where I stopped reading it a week ago and beginning there. Her advice is very simple and very hard; her books are simple and yet complex. She is Buddhist to the core, but her works contain strong threads of psychology and philosophy. She is wise and kind. As I read and re-read, I think I get closer to the ideals she holds for feeling lovingkindness for others and for myself--one of her favourite wo</span><span>rds and principles. Certainly she has made me more patient and more mindful. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span>In </span><i>Welcoming The Unwelcome</i><span>, published in 2019, Chodron links, with uncanny insight, the unwelcome in ourselves with the people, events, and cultural values that are unwelcome in our cultures and in the larger world. Even before the threat of the pandemic widened the differences between us, she was attuned to the divisions that have riven our societies. </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">The night before Hamas attacked Israeli citizens we read about her practice called "Just like me." Chodron encourages us to observe the people around us, maybe in the line at the grocery store or as we're drinking our morning coffee in a coffee shop or in a traffic jam to </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">"zero in on one person and say to yourself things such as 'Just like me, this person doesn't want to feel uncomfortable. Just like me, this person loses it sometimes. Just like me, this person doesn't want to be disliked. Jut like me, this person wants to have friends and intimacy.' We can't presume to know exactly what someone else is feeling and thinking, but still we do know a lot about each other. We know that people want to be cared about and don't want to be hated. We know that most of us are hard on ourselves, that we often get emotionally triggered, but that we want to be of help in some way. We know that, at the most basic level, every living being desires happiness and doesn't want to suffer. If we view others from the standpoint of 'Just like me,' we have a strong basis to connect with them, even in situations where it seems most natural and reasonable to polarize."</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">She tells the story of the mother of James Foley, a journalist beheaded by ISIS, who said of her son's executioner "We need to forgive him for not having a clue what he was doing." Chodron acknowledges that this kind of forgiveness and acceptance is nearly inhuman. She goes on to observe that "Those who believe in violence are desperate to get some kind of ground under their feet, desperate to get away from their unpleasant feelings, desperate to be the one who's right. What would we do if we felt so desperate?" I doubt this understanding is within reach of the families of the Israelis who were executed, raped, and kidnapped by Hamas last week. And I doubt that Israelis and Palestinians are going to come to this detente anytime soon. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">If you are like me, you have been reading endlessly in an effort to understand and feel the same kind of dread for the suffering that is to come. Of course, we want this situation to be simple. We want to know who to blame when something so horrific happens. I liked an essay written by an Israeli soldier who said that he is fighting for Israel but that Palestinians are not his enemies. Rather, he thought, both Israelis and Palestinians know what has to be done but neither has started the hard work of doing it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I felt completely knocked off balance by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. When I described how I was feeling to my empathetic niece, she told me "That's exactly how I feel when I'm having an anxiety attack." Yes, the dread had invaded not just my mind but my body. I somehow thought we had gone beyond the age of Cold War duck and cover and the smell of pencils and erasers and glue that lingered beneath my desk when I was a child. The conflict between Hamas and Israel feels worse because it's much more complicated and "victory" will not be something to celebrate. We can celebrate if there's a conversation about how to rid Gaza of Hamas and how to govern it effectively. We can rejoice when there is space in both Israel and Gaza for human flourishing. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I'm frozen with dread and anger. But here, again, Pema Chodron gives me insight. When we cannot find empathy for the Hamas soldiers, we can do something else:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">"As a precursor to this level of empathy, sorrow--simple sorrow--is often more accessible. For instance, in this case of the violence committed by extreme militants [she's talking about ISIS here, but what she has to say is applicable to Hamas] we can tap into a deep sorrow for the <u>situation as a whole.</u> Along with our sorrow for the victims, we can also feel sorrow that young men find themselves hating so much, sorrow that they're stuck in such a pattern of hatred. <u>Since things have such complex and far-reaching causes, we can feel sorrow for the circumstances where ignorance or suffering in he past created the hatred that is manifesting in these young men now</u>."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">As we hear governments and individuals lining up beside one of the sides, often blindly, with only their own ideologies for evidence, we can appeal to sorrow and the open-heartedness that comes with it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">And maybe we can muster some anger that leaders, rather than seeking the well-being of their citizens, make the increase of their own power their defining principle.</span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">That's where we come in, guided by Pema Chodron. There are some practices we need to keep alive. Practicing "just like me," we can keep everyone's humanity in the forefront of our minds. When Bill and I were in Winnipeg this summer, we went to the Museum of Human Rights. It was an amazing experience, from the architecture to the exhibits. There's one floor where you can sit and reflect; there's a reflecting pool and upended "trunks" of basalt for you to sit on, basalt because it's a stone found everywhere in the world. Sitting on stone isn't that comfortable and isn't meant to be. But while we were there, I read a panel that said this: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." I don't think I've read a more powerful expression of that essential principle--powerful because it's so simple. And that word "dignity" says so much. Wanting dignity for others is an inherent part of Chodron's "just like me" practice.</span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">And here's a whimsical idea for offering comfort for you and those around you. Make something. Let's celebrate the human potential to create, not its penchant for angry destruction. Make someone an espresso. Make bread. Take someone's foot measurement and make socks. Write your aunt a cheerful email. Make a meal for someone who is sick. That's one place human flourishing can be found, in our creativity and our generosity. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-17401678541399694252023-08-22T09:40:00.000-06:002023-08-22T09:40:09.225-06:00In quest of a metaphor<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh4eFRwP-DSHS0VNURmye5ArxqHbbyXFZ8y9fxlNRekH-Es6yTrxVNoMrYN-eE2_12LrJOcPVbkFPoEmN130V-_jkMTtSCEPRWRP8rNxJ_7JUBqRmU0eu49gt5nLYgZutWokwHguIYMlVdseH-sgEb2ydTjgMdbo1gRx8GPxraz-Yd3xvFGU5axxwJNQSM/s5184/IMG_0079.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh4eFRwP-DSHS0VNURmye5ArxqHbbyXFZ8y9fxlNRekH-Es6yTrxVNoMrYN-eE2_12LrJOcPVbkFPoEmN130V-_jkMTtSCEPRWRP8rNxJ_7JUBqRmU0eu49gt5nLYgZutWokwHguIYMlVdseH-sgEb2ydTjgMdbo1gRx8GPxraz-Yd3xvFGU5axxwJNQSM/w400-h300/IMG_0079.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />I'm looking for a metaphor. For about the last week, whenever I've been doing something brainless like cutting rhubarb up for muffins or picking green beans or hand quilting, I've also bee rifling my brain for a metaphor. I think it's a metaphor for August. Or it may be a metaphor for this very moment on the planet.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I want the metaphor to express the coming together of two different things. I can get my hands to do it by spreading out the fingers of both hands and bringing them together in a kind of basket. At that moment, is it two things or one? Or I keep coming back to Brownian Motion, though I don't think I've got my head around Einstein's physics. He was looking at the distribution of pollen in water and observing the way the pollen and water interpenetrated in a very random way. The two substances plus their energy bounce around and move their respective particles in a way that is unpredictable. I remember someone in a novel or movie talking about the Brownian Motion of pouring cream into coffee. On hot days, when I would pour oat milk into a glass of homemade cold brew, I could see Browning motion in action, the creamy oat milk languidly sending tendrils down into the dark coffee. The point the character made was that you would hit a tipping point where more of the fluid was combined than not, but that in any case, you couldn't undo it. Browning Motion is a one-way process.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">It's an August kind of thing, I suspect. My Scarlet Runner Beans are still blooming ecstatically, my tomatoes are ripening, and my herbs have hit their stride, particularly the oregano which is calling out to the bumble bees to fertilize it. But at some point, those oregano blooms are going to tire and begin to go dry. And even while my beans and tomatoes are happy, the powdery mildew and my zucchini plants are in competition: who is going to grow or spread more and do it faster? When I sit on my garden bench in the back yard after giving my garden its evening watering, the Manitoba Maples that keep us cool all summer are dropping yellow leaves, slowly, absent-mindedly, one leaf every five minutes or so. The edges of some of my ferns, which thrived in the wet spring, are brown and crisp. When I look up at the crab apple tree above my bench, I can see that the apples are ripening; there are blushes of pink on the yellow-green apples that make me want to get my ladder out and harvest them for crabapple jelly. But the crabapple leaves have gone leathery. In the spring, the leaves are silky, so moist and new and clear that you can see the shadow a distant leaf casts on the one that's right above you. There's no such clarity now. They are leathery and they rustle in the wind in a different way. Susurration. The word was made for the sound I hear. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">There's a large aspen tree that I can see from my bedroom that has one single branch that's yellow. I don't know when it turned, but I watch it every day to see if any more has changed. Something's afoot.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Soon, I'll harvest the last of the tomatoes and pull up the pole beans and the cukes and the zucchinis and the carrots. That will be okay. I have always loved fall, mostly because, as an academic, I experienced autumn as a second new year. There will be new people and new ideas and new books. In the house there will be the smells of canning and the brilliant colour of jars full of apple tomato chutney and cranberry sauce. And then there will be a pause of a couple of months. In its own kind of Brownian Motion, the days will tend to get cooler, but we'll never know when we are going to wake up to a glorious day with golden trees and a hot clear blue sky, demanding that we take a long walk and listen to what Bill calls the "unching" of the leaves. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">For some reason what makes me sad and anxious is an August that's neither one thing nor another, that interpenetrating of ripeness and loss that I can't find a metaphor for.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">This sadness and anxiety and, yes, grief, is made worse by this year's fire season. I've listened, heartbroken, to people showing CBC journalists their burnt-down homes and communities. Yet I was most stunned at hearing a CBC employee talk about getting out of Yellowknife early and the drive not being too bad or too slow until they got to the area somewhere around Hay River. His eyes glistened and there was a catch in his throat: it was just <u>gone</u>. That word is absolute. Not a family photograph or a pitcher inherited from a grandmother or a favourite winter coat. How much is <u>just gone</u> for people, some of whom didn't even have time to choose what they took with them? We can talk about how much carbon was loosed this year when an area the size of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick burned. But how much grief was loosed? You don't "rebuild," really. You start over with nothing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">(And at this moment, grief and sadness be damned. I want everyone who has slowed our path off fossil fuels--CEOs and provincial premiers and slow-footed politicians and every climate change denier--to look everyone who has lost a home in the eye and say "I'm so sorry for your loss. But I'm going to wring every vote and dollar out of fossil fuels that I can. I'm going to make sure there's more and more loss until change is inevitable. And then I'll leave dealing with it up to someone else who wants to commit political suicide or get himself fired. Yes, we know what to do, but we're not doing it.")</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Tipping point. Is that where we are? That Brownian Motion thing that can't be undone? That "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" and forests reduced to stumps and homes looking like sad implosions. How do you balance those two visions in August? We should be getting ready for harvest.</span></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-27720137397100601262023-06-26T08:26:00.001-06:002023-06-26T09:09:42.985-06:00Bean Dreaming<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVuK17-eC8i9gLlbC2kb6dm5YRMSl_5QAr2eDlzazfj0Ga1IPRtm88QkeIxSNa95KMoc4xn5JlKniDfrVbHSk7NNC69Uq8xINBPw_2wnJmdrNqjNDGn_FlWAGD0UBPfPo_9g38pXOtITb1m3qD3GL7RsCR-SnFqOUW9AlARieEsyFacf2eJnYAsI1m006H/s5184/IMG_0511.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVuK17-eC8i9gLlbC2kb6dm5YRMSl_5QAr2eDlzazfj0Ga1IPRtm88QkeIxSNa95KMoc4xn5JlKniDfrVbHSk7NNC69Uq8xINBPw_2wnJmdrNqjNDGn_FlWAGD0UBPfPo_9g38pXOtITb1m3qD3GL7RsCR-SnFqOUW9AlARieEsyFacf2eJnYAsI1m006H/w400-h300/IMG_0511.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">We need a new word for the meandering peregrinations our minds set out on while we garden--a flower or vegetable version of wooll-gathering. Bean-dreaming?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I love weeding. I know: I'm on my knees, my seventy-three-year-old-knees, but I have a great kneeler. So each summer when everything is finally in and the weeds have gotten out of control, I remember the delights of weeding.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I think it partly teaches me perspective. If I look at the whole garden, which has several entire forests of tiny elm trees, I quickly become overwhelmed. But down on my knees, when I take the lilliputian perspective, I can concentrate only what's in front of me. Occasionally I'll find a clump of weeds that I can wipe out with my garden claw, but mostly it's just one thing at a time. And that's more or less the way life is, given that human beings are pretty lousy at multi-tasking.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt1Z_HPj3cVdYuCv_WAk_fiPjNu-e0APTc0z-mWaTDkNraItvx7__hLfGghm-KqLhM2fJ-3fsZuOi6OJY2Uv37MSboEo3p3NS2OwDUQ-SdKF2pYrmOoKvxrKbc_deoJixEsEmDwwhOqYoRNf9YmFFVG_rUwKk5BPeky_WxOCj5j4a0BglvGzaM_Oem4mh4/s5184/IMG_0515.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt1Z_HPj3cVdYuCv_WAk_fiPjNu-e0APTc0z-mWaTDkNraItvx7__hLfGghm-KqLhM2fJ-3fsZuOi6OJY2Uv37MSboEo3p3NS2OwDUQ-SdKF2pYrmOoKvxrKbc_deoJixEsEmDwwhOqYoRNf9YmFFVG_rUwKk5BPeky_WxOCj5j4a0BglvGzaM_Oem4mh4/w300-h400/IMG_0515.JPG" width="300" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's also a great chance to practice seeing the trees rather than the whole forest. Weeds love to germinate in damp places that don't get too much sun and dry out too quickly, so they collect in the places where I've been watering, under my pole beans and the bamboo tents that hold their winding stems. They collect under the shade of tomato plants or among rows of beans. The row of carrots doesn't have the same advantage--there's no shade there, just daily watering--but maybe some weeds are sun worshippers from the get go. If you want your vegetables to get <u>all</u> the advantages from your watering and fertilizing, you need to keep them weeded, but it's an exercise in looking carefully, discerning the trees from the forest around them, getting yourself right down there. Weeding gives you the chance to observe I was talking about earlier in June.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">(Did you see that rhubarb? It's a good four feet tall.) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And then we need to talk about soil. It includes microbacterium vaccae, a bacteria which triggers the release of seratonin, in turn lifting gardeners' moods and suppressing anxiety. But let's not stop talking about my mood there. I am outdoors with the sun and fresh air on my skin, with the scent of tomato plants--which for some reason is really nostalgic--and the scent of the pinks I included in my vegetable garden this year to feed the pollinaters, with the sound of birds at my feeder. My eyes breathe in all the shades of green in my back garden after a very long, very white winter. Weeding bathes all my senses--except for taste, that is. I can wait for taste until I pick the first tomatoes or handful of beans or until I put fresh basil on pasta.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But the bean-dreaming that gives me the most pleasure is the humility of what I'm doing, there on my knees looking for weeds among the tough stems of pole beans. Curious about an earlier time in my life, I'd returned to the reading I'd done then, which included May Sarton's journals and memoirs. She immerses us in the delights of a life that contained a lot of chosen solitude, a life fed by myriads of friends and her passion for her gardens. (She should also be given credit for writing frankly about lesbians, which she thought was her duty; because she made a living from her writing, she didn't risk losing her job by coming out. For this we should be grateful.) Many of the pages, as she attempts to understand the thunderstorms of her own character, are illuminating, human and humane. There are the inevitable writer's complaints about not having not enough time--but those are quickly followed by the reader's observation that she shouldn't go out for so many lunches or dinners with friends, shouldn't go off on so many weekend jaunts! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But what troubled me was that, by the end of her life, she had published 17 volumes of poems, 13 books of nonfiction, and 20 novels. Yet she worried constantly about her reputation--worried herself sick at times. Perhaps she didn't do enough weeding among the delphiniums and phlox. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-YX_jsAX1dv60ZmH8DUC4zVlSBr033Hg52cLb88E5WUk6yi3l_Ga_b8MuMe_gDHc_eb4OZ2eNCDW1XFxrfgWw-3giQTssSQp4dD2Ne2JiD_cH0CJSQQNmnBl8VoNaBmeRES3z_-VNlA5zvgjGc-gwJtof7hPxQX93mXaU8Yv9Mlb2baN8Wy7DptS1qj_3/s5184/IMG_0510.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-YX_jsAX1dv60ZmH8DUC4zVlSBr033Hg52cLb88E5WUk6yi3l_Ga_b8MuMe_gDHc_eb4OZ2eNCDW1XFxrfgWw-3giQTssSQp4dD2Ne2JiD_cH0CJSQQNmnBl8VoNaBmeRES3z_-VNlA5zvgjGc-gwJtof7hPxQX93mXaU8Yv9Mlb2baN8Wy7DptS1qj_3/s320/IMG_0510.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>When you weed, you are nature's hand maiden. A servant. And in return, you are given the all those experiences. The sound of a bee wallowing in a blooming Henry Hudson rose. The myriad scents of the garden. Air on skin that is more or less humid and sun that is more or less hot. At the end of your life, this is what you have collected--all those experiences you stopped to pay attention to that fed each day's delight in being alive. It is humbling. I've simply bumbled around trying </span>to create deep and caring relationships, doing my best to be kind, to think carefully and clearly, to write carefully and clearly, and life has given me all this? </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-77651118061244533172023-06-01T08:36:00.000-06:002023-06-01T08:36:07.516-06:00Observation, Moral Beauty, and an untrustworthy world<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimS1wOm2zKXTfGlROsIJ9RXA3SOkQS30unOlDuQ9xnVHimZVL5f0UkVDFes94kX5r4DQ9ylFm_-8wcnbAEZm2BSy-51A5a07tRLR-yLn5iuHF0V1fIus3Jjk4Ky4ifMX2hb3ZQWJIiSQrRzBH8Ic9KRKeK3UxG3blYJ1X9uTY4bk3WibveRKEjZWRehw/s5184/IMG_0498.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimS1wOm2zKXTfGlROsIJ9RXA3SOkQS30unOlDuQ9xnVHimZVL5f0UkVDFes94kX5r4DQ9ylFm_-8wcnbAEZm2BSy-51A5a07tRLR-yLn5iuHF0V1fIus3Jjk4Ky4ifMX2hb3ZQWJIiSQrRzBH8Ic9KRKeK3UxG3blYJ1X9uTY4bk3WibveRKEjZWRehw/w400-h300/IMG_0498.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Early in May, Medrie Purdham and I created a "First Draft" webinar for the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild. These presentations have their own distinct form. One writer gives a 15-minute presentation on a chosen topic, and then he or she is joined by a host--someone who knows something about the writer's topic--who will facilitate a conversation between them. Medrie had chosen me to be her interlocutor, and I was honoured and delighted for the chance to spend time thinking carefully about poetry with her. Medrie is an an extraordinary poet--there's no one quite like her, no one with her deep and quirky and insightful view of the world. She is also a person who thinks conscientiously about whatever she does. I expected that her exploration of the ethics and aesthetics of writing about one's family in "Should there be a 'son' in 'sonnet'?" would be full of insight, and it was. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">When we were chatting about our ideas over coffee the week before, and in the webinar itself, Medrie brought up the issue of observation. She told me that some of her friends found <i>Little Housewolf</i>, her astounding book of poetry published by Vehicule Press, to be a kind of primer for observing one's children. In the webinar itself, she considered the downsides of writing about one's family: does writing about your children strip them of their privacy? Do poets feed off the intimate lives of the people they are supposed to protect? But she also made the point that should they choose some day to read her poems about them, they would at the very least feel <u>seen</u>. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzxf3ln-zFuijh3FZv0-fQLMBQgfrNS18z_Q3SVnaaHhHbhCn2DR6Q559mdGam5pj4V8HmnWsww9OVQlG_zoebp1T1LRmb5haLNLqw9l2OBVOA3HVm_7bm1CcxRc0ugEXWhu3LepO5Iiy_3X2xTlGW3jyMcEA2W9GToOeqAxdpItu57cqU3XIPMsdPFg/s5184/IMG_0503.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzxf3ln-zFuijh3FZv0-fQLMBQgfrNS18z_Q3SVnaaHhHbhCn2DR6Q559mdGam5pj4V8HmnWsww9OVQlG_zoebp1T1LRmb5haLNLqw9l2OBVOA3HVm_7bm1CcxRc0ugEXWhu3LepO5Iiy_3X2xTlGW3jyMcEA2W9GToOeqAxdpItu57cqU3XIPMsdPFg/w320-h240/IMG_0503.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Careful observation is one of the foundations of poetry; often shaky or unsatisfying poems lack the kind of resonant detail that would have made the poem richer and more meaningful. But </span><u style="font-family: verdana;">being seen</u><span style="font-family: verdana;"> is of another order altogether. It's existential. It's a mark that you are complex enough and interesting enough and beautiful enough in that complicated human way that someone decides to pay attention. And perhaps if she is an artist--a poet, photographer, painter, novelist, composer--she will attempt to capture the you-ness of you. As I work on the Abecedarius about my mother and her generation, I realize that one cause of my mother's frequent bouts of despair or depression had to do with the fact that in some contexts she wasn't </span><u style="font-family: verdana;">seen</u><span style="font-family: verdana;">. She was a role and not a person. And having written that, I realize that what I'm doing and why I chose the abecedarius form is that it demanded that I have 26 views of her, that I would present 26 facets of her, as if she were a diamond. I knew the poems were a kind of witnessing, but this idea of being seen adds another layer to that.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Perhaps the popularity of social media like Facebook or Instagram has to do with our desire to be seen, though I suspect the medium works against that. We're more likely to work on our brand and less likely, for good reasons, to let ourselves be vulnerable. Being vulnerable on Facebook, particularly if you are a teenager, is not a good idea. This might explain why teenagers these days, and especially teenage girls, report shocking levels of depression. In those years between about 14 and about 28, we need the validation of being seen in a true and significant way, and if our friends and dates and mentors are too busy being on social media, they can't offer the real thing. Perhaps they don't even know what the real thing is.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">But lack of careful observation also distorts our experience of "the real world," particularly since mainstream media gives us a cynical sense of what the world is like and how people conduct themselves. Please, I beg you--and probably not for the last time--read Rutger Bregman's <i>Humankind</i>. But today I'm going to talk about cooperation. Led by Giovanni Rossi, a sociologist at UCLA, a group of researchers from Equador, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK carefully analyzed hours and hours of videotape recorded in social situations in widely different cultures. They found that about every two minutes, one person conveyed--explicitly, with words, or implicitly, with gestures--that they needed help. It's there in polite cliches: please pass the salt. It's what my physiotherapist does when he wants me to do something unusual and I simply hand him my glasses. It's with us when we stop as we drive down Fifteenth Avenue or Thirteenth Avenue because someone wants to cross or is in the midst of j-walking. There's almost a rule in the Cathedral Neighbourhood that you stop for pedestrians, particularly when it's cold and wet. I was shopping for tomatoes and dahlias yesterday, and a woman with a walker who had explained to me that she'd sprained her ankle and was having trouble moving, managed to unseat all the plants she'd put on her walker. Without a word, three people moved in to help her gather things up again.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">What Rossi's team noticed was that 79% of the time, people will be helpful, and when they can't be, they explain why 74% of the time. They never explain why they are helping, which suggests that being cooperative is the human default. Of course, what these sociologists were discovering with their videos was small examples of moral beauty, the thing that most frequently prompts us to feel awe--that wonderful, affirming experience that lifts our spirits.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I almost titled this blog post "Observation, Moral Beauty, and Your Cell Phone," but I knew if I did you would give it a miss. But first I need to confess that I caved and finally bought a cell phone. So I'm not in quite the position I was several months ago. I've learned a bit about how seductive it is to have a combination computer and phone in your pocket. But if you are consulting your cell phone while you are walking down the street, standing in line at the grocery store, pulling it out to answer email from work, you're missing things. You're not seeing the purple irises that are almost black in their evening glory. You're probably not smelling lilacs. You're missing the beauty that would feed your soul. And you're not seeing generous behaviour in the coffee shop. You go on living in the little pod of people who are your social media friends or in the shell you make for yourself while you check emails from work on a beautiful weekend when you should be throwing a frisbee for your dog. If you want to know that the world is basically a good place--especially in this historical moment when wars and autocrats are too too numerous--you have to observe the daily life around you. If you want an antidote to the kind of divisiveness that characterizes political discourse these days, you could do worse than stop to observe the ways people cooperate daily without asking for political credentials.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_4i8JSRykKrWRI9F0hpfNcn5OCZujJ5AYzU7r27v713iQAG-AEkFgqv1WeuqvUFJK1yxJymk4aiqTOCx3D-YVSeB3sWE8ecTfvYIDwNFXHGBAbPa7JGK0a1_iZgD5wM9L7gTvjMeqh9MEUKAyYkID5WnZAfTEYd_-7auDvWplJdwgJM1vkVaE9lw2Iw/s5184/IMG_0500.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_4i8JSRykKrWRI9F0hpfNcn5OCZujJ5AYzU7r27v713iQAG-AEkFgqv1WeuqvUFJK1yxJymk4aiqTOCx3D-YVSeB3sWE8ecTfvYIDwNFXHGBAbPa7JGK0a1_iZgD5wM9L7gTvjMeqh9MEUKAyYkID5WnZAfTEYd_-7auDvWplJdwgJM1vkVaE9lw2Iw/w400-h300/IMG_0500.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Simone Weil is right: "Attention is the rarest and the purest form of generosity." And Medrie's poems have a truth about them in that they make observation and being seen into the beautiful, generous gift that it is. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Being observant is what poetry does--or it dies on the page. Practice being observant more often. Because it is a practice.</span><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-89434324570961251492023-05-01T10:46:00.001-06:002023-05-31T08:56:27.167-06:00Awe and flash mobs<p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB6Bqzxj0LYeVwxLAvck8TF0ZRty9pk0tEvwWBhTp4fed-B-ng1Q24zrPLeql2-WSUyniqXgY2Vhixdu0Sv8eGXaVM2D0W9cjM_EKM3vgRJDzqGgUcPxBEF1MpqzEG1CfnicG5qDPJVQtzWYzUXXnvP7-LUDcDuEHc0VOv1zXIUKR6-BkDyTNzN_qCLA/s5184/IMG_0045.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB6Bqzxj0LYeVwxLAvck8TF0ZRty9pk0tEvwWBhTp4fed-B-ng1Q24zrPLeql2-WSUyniqXgY2Vhixdu0Sv8eGXaVM2D0W9cjM_EKM3vgRJDzqGgUcPxBEF1MpqzEG1CfnicG5qDPJVQtzWYzUXXnvP7-LUDcDuEHc0VOv1zXIUKR6-BkDyTNzN_qCLA/w300-h400/IMG_0045.JPG" width="300" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></span><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">This has been a hard spring in Regina. After a winter we couldn't really complain about, we had a March that put paid to any sense of promise. It was cold, though it thawed just enough to leave our footing uncertain. You had to look <u>hard</u> to find a sense of awe among the piles of dirty snow and the reticent tree branches, which refused to even think of putting out buds. They stood stoically, mere grey and brown. That about summed up the landscape: grey and brown and cold and dangerous. But the only way to take care of myself was to do that careful observing that Thoreau says, in <u>Walden</u>, is the point of any education: "</span><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how
well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life,
compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a
seer?" That little shift at the end ties, as does much of <i>Walden</i>, one's flourishing as a person to the carefulness and depth of one's observations and reflections. So I looked more carefully. The juncos are back and a small flock of them are eating something quite distant from my bird feeders, something on the surface of the snow. Their yellow beaks cheer me up--but that, you have to admit, is looking hard for one's cheer, and finding it in the very small. Occasionally the nuthatches would visit the feeders, and would let me come very close because, I'm sure, they have no predators. What is quicker than a nuthatch? They are these quick little bundles of joy that make squeaky-toy sounds. Awe-inspiring? Well, maybe, if you realize that much of the earth's beauty lies in what is tiny or even invisible.</span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH8Ntepvqg53fquQ1m2-OSvp_NK9DCnu_SLKLdB7Gzg_o7jsnZOAKf3p0z4ohs2c-92l8psAM2EN2wnxpiTPjtW3D9dsIivmsWFGqZMn9MnQXzzcc3WAdLD2Yd0auA40DfFY2VlhzRMKBcIvRTmZy4geRGmzQsrNLQ6RSNbPpKT1QxNCN8y4wX-r8pXw/s5184/IMG_0069.JPG" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH8Ntepvqg53fquQ1m2-OSvp_NK9DCnu_SLKLdB7Gzg_o7jsnZOAKf3p0z4ohs2c-92l8psAM2EN2wnxpiTPjtW3D9dsIivmsWFGqZMn9MnQXzzcc3WAdLD2Yd0auA40DfFY2VlhzRMKBcIvRTmZy4geRGmzQsrNLQ6RSNbPpKT1QxNCN8y4wX-r8pXw/w400-h300/IMG_0069.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">I depended on the sky, which seemed to have become even more blue, to have dialed up the colour, if that is possible. It's impossible to imagine infinity. The fact that I want to ask the question "What's beyond the universe?" illustrates the limits of my imagination. But if I study the prairie sky, just stand there and let my eyes sink into it, I feel as if I'm on the edge of understanding infinity. It's like a Mark Rothko or Agnes Martin canvas in that way, thin layers of colour that, where they are thinnest, gesture toward something beyond the canvas. I've also noticed that the light has changed, that late afternoon, early evening, the sun's rays are high in the trees, painting them golden. The light has changed with the solstice. I feel churlish when I say that's not enough.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Early in March, I wrote about my post-Covid mental health struggles (off the menu for today) and about Dacher Keltner's research on awe. Brief recap: he and his team elicited 2,600 brief narratives or descriptions of moments that prompted his subjecs to feel awe. They wrote to Keltner's team in 20 different languages, which, by necessity, means that he sought out at least twenty different perspectives. With this methodology, he sought to eliminate cultural biases. For example, if he'd studied 2,600 Finns, purportedly the happiest people in the world, his sample would have been seriously skewed. Once these descriptions were translated, he and his team sought to identify the kinds of things that elicited awe. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Now I know that when I put a link to a new post on Facebook, it languishes without a photograph. So last night I roamed through my camera looking for my photographs from our visit to Yellowstone, hoping to find a nice big waterfall. I found a modest waterfall from Waterton Park, though the uplift of angled rock hints at awe-inspiring force . Awe is often thought of as vast: Keltner writes "Vastness can be physical--for example, when you stand next to a 350-foot tree or hear a singer's voice or electric guitar fill the space of an arena. Vastness can be temporal, as when a laugh or a scent transports you back in time to the sounds or aromas of your childhood. Vastness can be semantic, or about ideas, most notably when an epiphany integrates scattered beliefs and unknowns into a coherent thesis about the world. Vastness can be challenging, unsettling, and destabilizing. In evoking awe, it reveals that our current knowledge is not up to the task of making sense of what we have encountered. And so, in awe, we go in search of new forms of understanding." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">These kinds of vastness seem in accord with my mantra: "Just be curious." You trip over a memory, or the hair on the back of your neck rises in response to music or your heart leaps in joy, and your response is to want to stop and investigate your reaction. Or you want to wrap it around you like a cloak. You don't fully understand it, but there it is, surprising and comforting at the same time.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">When Keltner and his team started to create their taxonomy of awe, there were some surprises. Most commonly, awe was inspired by "moral beauty," a phrase I love, a phrase implying an aesthetic different from the one that frequently catches our eye. Moral beauty is not the reason we post selfies to Facebook or Instagram. Experiencing moral beauty, we're moved by someone's kindness, by the "goodness of intention and action." We're moved when people encounter suffering and find surprising strength within themselves. We find moral beauty in the Dalai Lama's smile because the expression on his face manifests his philosophical cheerfulness, his empathy and compassion. We saw it in Nelson Mandela's face because he refused to seek revenge for his years of imprisonment. It is heartening--is that the word I want?--hopeful?--is that the word?--that most of the awe we encounter or feel is prompted by humans at their best. It suggests that some standard--even in an age of wars of aggression and political divisions that make communication all but impossible between people of different beliefs--something still holds. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">The next most common experience of awe is encountered in "collective effervescence." That's an expression of sociologist Emile Durkheim. Translated into less abstract words, collective effervescence refers to human bodies in the throes of celebrating their physical prowess--together--in a display of communal effort. You see it in a well-played baseball game and in a ballet. You see it in flash mobs. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I rediscovered flash mobs when my physiotherapist asked me to practice my balance exercises while watching something. Basically, he wants me to distract myself, making it harder to balance and thus teaching my brain some new skills. My ears (my vestibular systems, actually) will never give me reliable information about where horizontal and vertical are, so my brain has to mediate the conflicting information they do give me. I rarely cruise the internet for something to watch, but something about my physiotherapist's directive and my thoughts about "collective effervescence" and the fact videos of flash mobs are around 5 minutes long--about how long it takes me to stand on one foot or pretend I'm on a tight rope--made it a natural. People seeming to gather casually in Prestwick Airport performed ABBA tunes for a woman who is heading out for a birthday vacation. ABBA tunes are lively--in fact any music chosen for a flash mob is likely to have energy, so I kind of bopped along while standing on one foot. </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I'm afraid Covid-19 made flash mobs rare as hen's teeth, but they're one of my favourite forms of collective effervescence, because they're generous. I particularly like the ones that film the reaction of the audience because their faces light up with surprise and joy, which we see too rarely.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There's one in particular that moved me deeply. A tall string bass player in white tie and tails standing in the middle of a European square begins playing the early notes of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." He is joined by a cellist, and then two violins come out of nowhere as a crowd collects. Woodwinds come around the corner of one building, brass around another, assembling an orchestra out of nothing. Out of the gathering crowd come more violins and violas. An observer dressed in khakis and a plaid shirt turns out to be a conductor and the crowd to his right, which includes a father with his daughter sitting on his shoulder, begins to sing. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Why would an orchestra do this? What motivated them to rearrange and condense Beethoven's music for a smaller group of musicians playing in a town square? Then they would have had to think through the logistics, all to play the "Ode to Joy" to a crowd that really might not care. Except I'm sure they knew that Beethoven's music is irresistible, even to a little boy in a red shirt who climbed a light pole to direct his very own orchestra. There is moral beauty here, as well as collective effervescence, for they planned this performance simply to bring joy. What human being doesn't need a hit of joy occasionally? It may be part of the human condition, to have a shallow well of joy, especially when spring is in hiding. And music--another source of the awe Keltner found in his 2,600 stories--can bring this to us, especially when it's a cheerful surprise. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So this group of musicians hit three of Keltner's eight sources of awe: moral beauty, collective effervescence, and music. I wish our spring could learn something from flash mobs--nature is another of Keltner's sources of awe. Now I must admit that I began writing this in the middle of April--a dratted ugly April if ever there was one, full of cloudy skies and wind. I couldn't, to be frank, find the energy. It's not kind to dis mother nature, but there it is. She could have done a better job, though maybe she's pissed about how we treat her--and who can argue with that? Finally the windy days seemed to pass, the blue calm to reign in the sky. I've noticed that my Lemony Lace Elderberry, which will be a bright yellowy green, has reddish buds. Who understand the colours of leaves at the beginning of their lives and at the end? My rhubarb is tasting the air with red shoots. The evening darkness is staved off until after 8. Maybe spring is inevitable. Surely warmth and buds and green will eclipse our brown grey world, dropping crystalline petals into the swirling cones of the ferns. I won't have to look quite so hard for my daily awe. It will be right outside my door and I will be thankful.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-498051183849416022023-03-02T10:41:00.001-06:002023-03-02T10:41:48.825-06:00Awe<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTbcFJA819TbVuCs3FRRiB13PkUNKveMce6S0FpvDskx9RIVjKwnog-K2SZ5957qgA9oy8SPOqXn1Ql8CFNvMVsjpn3JhZZFIBzIlq-XDOPDsuh1lMuTwYLh5pqvVs9J1Z-8-uR_NXNg_GuwViq5BlsI8ycKM_Wn2M8DyuvI5VnMOemtxXPP5OMElm-A/s5184/IMG_0473.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTbcFJA819TbVuCs3FRRiB13PkUNKveMce6S0FpvDskx9RIVjKwnog-K2SZ5957qgA9oy8SPOqXn1Ql8CFNvMVsjpn3JhZZFIBzIlq-XDOPDsuh1lMuTwYLh5pqvVs9J1Z-8-uR_NXNg_GuwViq5BlsI8ycKM_Wn2M8DyuvI5VnMOemtxXPP5OMElm-A/w300-h400/IMG_0473.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Long Covid is so challenging because it seems to take many forms, some of them physical, some of them affecting the brain. One of the "trends" that medical professionals have seen is that people with mental illness before their Covid experience find those conditions coming back with a vengeance. I struggled with depression between the ages of 16 and 40--three or four six- or eight-week trips into darkness each year. Then when I moved to Regina, I joked that there was something helpful in the water. During the last ten years or so, they have returned, though with nothing like the virulence of those earlier 24 years. Either that, or at 73 (almost), I've gotten better at mitigating their effect on my life. But with Covid in August. they seem to have come back.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">A couple of weeks after Covid's onset, I'd get up in the morning, feeling enclosed in darkness, and my first thought would be "How am I going to get through today?" A day here and there is manageable. Indeed, James Parker, who writes the back page "Ode" for <i>The Atlantic</i>, says that mood swings are part of being normal in the twenty-first century as a pandemic seems to wind down while people are still dying and we're rescuing nature too slowly and a war in Ukraine hits its first anniversary and political factions have lost all sense of respect for anyone else's experience or opinion. But then the blackness came three days a week. Then for a whole week. These weren't mood swings anymore.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">My indispensable therapist encourages my use of metaphors. So I told him that the days and weeks were like living deep in the back of a catacomb with only a torn map marking my route out and a flashlight that was flickering--a sign the batteries were dying. It's a decent metaphor because the darkness is pretty extreme, as is the sense of something weighing on you, closing in. Then one really bad afternoon, I had written in my calendar that I was to listen to Arvo <span style="text-indent: 48px;">Pärt</span>'s <i>Berlin Mass</i>. Because I was just marching through my days desultorily, I did what my calendar told me to do. The mass was <span style="line-height: 107%; text-indent: 36pt;">written for the Catholic Days in Berlin in May of 1990, not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I could hear that the choir was singing in Latin, so I got out the liner notes and followed along. The
opening <i>Kyrie</i>, asking for mercy, is
haunting, full of dissonances made beautiful by the clear voices. Yes, well
might I want some mercy right about now. Two alleluia verses, not a traditional
part of the mass, spoke of renewal, followed by <i>Veni sancta spiritus</i>. Its cheerful triple meter asked for light,
consolation, solace. After a <i>Credo</i>
and <i>Sanctus</i>, the mass ended with a
plangent plea to the Lamb of God for peace. All these longings, for mercy, light, consolation and peace reach back to the Middle Ages.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">By the end, I was —the only word I’ve found was “lifted,” as
if I’d come in touch with something transcendent. The cloud that let me see only half the world was gone. Puzzled, I tried to think
where the transcendence came from. I’m not religious, certainly not Catholic, but I’ve been to
enough Latin masses and have sung enough of them to recognize the words. Maybe being put in touch with
those historical roots had given me perspective? </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Or maybe it was an
aesthetic transcendence. Had Pärt channeled the masses that go back and back to Flemish Renaissance composer Johannes
Ockeghem, through Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky? <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">Music became the first
panel in what I came to call my “transcendent cloak,” another helpful metaphor. There are elements of my life that,
like a cloak, give me at least transitory comfort during days that are, mood-wise, cold and
dark.</span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;"> Urged by my therapist to describe my cloak, I realized it was made of heavy silk, brocade, and velvet. It had two sides; I could wear the side with whites and creams and tans and greys when I needed gentle, serene comfort. When I needed energy, I would wear the side made of teal and navy and rose and purple. More importantly, though, I discovered that my cloak was made of </span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">my family, my
rich friendships, these two cats who seem to believe that the most important
task in their lives is to love and to be present.</span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">Nature is a crucial part of my cloak, whether it’s
just the sparrows at the feeder or a day radiant with hoarfrost. Beauty of any
kind can assuage my sense that I am completely out of tune with the world.</span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;"> Music was another strand. </span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">Stopping to be grateful can jar me into
remembering what I have, not what I lack. These were the resources I had. They didn't "cure" the depression; indeed, we don't know enough about the brain to cure depression. But they were a counterbalance, a distraction, a visceral and profound reminder that the world didn't consists simply of darkness.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-khEosTBZo2P9j3LDEdrlPB2wZEYEUzhpgIJ1IRGFI1QNfrmgUbicHShsjyelFOV2jrMXfVmRrXHE5Mp66cF9-sPoIGZ5tzuMMRJ9xqEZI9dRS0_6g2tyl4r5VsiXnHr-t0zSmOpiSsSisuhG2TImXy8CKCjgvvf5FNtvGACMBjAcoXLSu5iGuclWgA/s5184/IMG_0474.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-khEosTBZo2P9j3LDEdrlPB2wZEYEUzhpgIJ1IRGFI1QNfrmgUbicHShsjyelFOV2jrMXfVmRrXHE5Mp66cF9-sPoIGZ5tzuMMRJ9xqEZI9dRS0_6g2tyl4r5VsiXnHr-t0zSmOpiSsSisuhG2TImXy8CKCjgvvf5FNtvGACMBjAcoXLSu5iGuclWgA/w400-h300/IMG_0474.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana; text-indent: 36pt;">On one of my particularly dark days, I had lunch with Nikka in her apartment---always a respite, partly because we talk of anything except my mood. As I went down her stairs, which are outside (she lives in the second storey apartment of an old house), I slipped down the last five of her snowy steps, losing both my shoes and badly bruising the leg that was behind me when I slipped. "Shit!" I yelled at the universe, at the clouds, at whoever would listen. "I can't do this! I've had enough!" In my stocking feet, I stumbled through six inches of snow under her stairs where I found both my shoes. I got into the car to cry. You have to realize that falling (again) sets off my whole sense that my body is becoming incompetent, the worst symptom being vertigo that leads people, I am quite sure, to believe I am perpetually drunk. But my little camera was in the cup holder because my task for that afternoon was to take photographs of the startling hoarfrost. So I drove into Wascana Park and was stopped--pulled up--by beauty. What is this earth and her nature that gives us such beauty?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJRMcbLP16JRgdfSvLaF_ugavbCUACidbdvVcmVc_mRG1At585X4hdxrqgqyhaSp_P5i4bQYbgeJo_Dyb45W93fw8hpWhot8DrGvhFKzK5NcenU-eyJcXexY5YoVwuN4SWfrOwQdyWT1wVWjhJlhc_HFsDGqn-sC7EOnT4UbZ_EFOXiF9YV4BQlTD8Gw/s5184/IMG_0477.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJRMcbLP16JRgdfSvLaF_ugavbCUACidbdvVcmVc_mRG1At585X4hdxrqgqyhaSp_P5i4bQYbgeJo_Dyb45W93fw8hpWhot8DrGvhFKzK5NcenU-eyJcXexY5YoVwuN4SWfrOwQdyWT1wVWjhJlhc_HFsDGqn-sC7EOnT4UbZ_EFOXiF9YV4BQlTD8Gw/w300-h400/IMG_0477.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">A few days later, "awe" turned out to be my word of the week. </span><i style="text-indent: 36pt;">The Atlantic</i><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">, which publishes an evening newsletter, included a link to a brief essay by Dacher Keltner called "The Quiet Profundity of Everyday Awe." Keltner begins "What gives you a sense of awe? That word, </span><i style="text-indent: 36pt;">awe</i><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">--the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world--is often associated with the extraordinary. You might imagine standing next to a 350-foot tree or on a wide-open plain with a storm approaching, or hearing an electric guitar fill the space of an arena, or holding the tiny finger of a newborn baby. Awe blows us away. It reminds us that there are forces bigger than ourselves, and it reveals that our current knowledge is not up to the task of making sense of what we have encountered." Later that day </span>I got on the exercise bike and settled down to listen to Krista Tippett, whose "On Being" podcast has returned--for which I am so grateful. She was interviewing Keltner. Was "awe" the word for the week, or was Keltner on a book tour?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I bought the ebook, and it turns out there is a science of awe, a reason Pärt's music and the hoarfrost jolted me out of the darkness<span style="text-indent: 36pt;">. Keltner and his colleagues asked 2,600 people, who used 20 languages and came from around the world, to write about experiences that led them to feel awe. Once these small essays were translated, he and his team of researchers could see that things that prompted awe fell into eight categories, which I'll write about in the coming weeks. Following up on this research, Keltner and his team discovered that the experience of awe had all kinds of positive effects on our bodies and moods. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">But here is the main takeaway: Awe takes us out of ourselves. It opens us up to new experiences and feelings and questions. In one of his experiments, he had people go on "awe walks," where they would actively look for things that inspired awe. He also had a control group that was simply asked to take a walk. Both groups were encouraged to record their walks with photographs. Those in the control group invariably took classic selfies. In the "awe" group they stopped doing that quite soon and simply took photographs of the world around them. The longer they looked for awe, the more they found. We can deliberately make awe a practice in our days, days that for good reason are often difficult and dark, bringing a modicum of light to our moods. In the face of this difficult historical moment, there is actually something we can do for ourselves.</span></span></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-1392634490163648892023-01-06T16:46:00.001-06:002023-01-13T10:46:18.356-06:00Choices<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPiwO7LUaeaGUjCN_AWSpoNEKRltVesoW8BGalBKCj1Up3L2yke9uJuDOcuvamGQm3n6k25S312ruE6RUSG66Go-obGMT9JbHZ_io_DrT68hdH2ta_T2gKD2vGmJQOA8nSnfgZUUGLIqcolssee-U5SScig7Wzom9l5ifD7A2eu9RDsu51wKXXEKVfFg/s5184/IMG_0473.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPiwO7LUaeaGUjCN_AWSpoNEKRltVesoW8BGalBKCj1Up3L2yke9uJuDOcuvamGQm3n6k25S312ruE6RUSG66Go-obGMT9JbHZ_io_DrT68hdH2ta_T2gKD2vGmJQOA8nSnfgZUUGLIqcolssee-U5SScig7Wzom9l5ifD7A2eu9RDsu51wKXXEKVfFg/w300-h400/IMG_0473.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><p>I had a meltdown on the way back from coffee on the morning of Christmas Eve. </p><p>We have coffee and breakfast at French Press every Saturday morning, and I had just given them a Christmas card describing how welcome we--and nine other Saturday morning regulars, with whom we now chat--feel there. For Christmas, they changed their little vases with live flowers for candles, and George often uses quiet moments to put a new tea light on a table and light it. They greet us by name; George fills my coffee cup with hot water when he sees me come in the door to heat my mug. So I'd tried to describe their gifts tor cheer and friendliness--backed up by wonderful baking--that they give us Saturday after Saturday. We all need someone to hold up a mirror to our best selves occasionally, and Christmas seemed a good time to do this for George and Nicole. Still, I was a bit surprised by their heartfelt response.</p><p>But the meltdown. We were on our way home and Bill had turned on his radio to find Handel's <i>Messiah</i> in the middle of Part Two where Handel gets political. The bass has a lovely solo describing what the "kings of the earth" get up to: "Why do the nations so furiously rage together / And why do the people imagine a vain thing?" What vain thing do we imagine? Conquest? Power? More and bigger and better? The tenor chimes in to suggesting that God or Christ "break them with a rod of iron; / thou shalt dash them in pieces / like a potter's vessel." Almost without a break, the choir sings the "Hallelujah Chorus." Were I in a concert hall, I would have stood, as King George II did in 1741. We don't know why: was he moved by the music, was he stiff from sitting so long, or was his gout troubling him? Perhaps the point is this: we don't accord any other piece of classical music this honour, and we've intuitively kept up the practice for 281 years. It just feels right.</p><p>But I simply cried and sobbed. I couldn't stop. Words take time to choose and say or write, but my initial reaction was almost wordless. It took no time at all. We had choices. Breaking or making was the first choice that I felt at all my nerve ends. We could rage furiously or we could make something beautiful, as Handel did. I felt this with startling force. And then the words came, because, really, I needed to explain this reaction to Bill. I was reacting to most of 2022, to the rage we saw behind Putin's war, his raging need to punish Ukrainians for not submitting to his will and his army. We saw it in some members of the truckers' convoy. We certainly have seen it in American politics, where rage and factionalism are bringing Congress to a halt. We've seen it in the Iranian government's response to women's demand for more freedom. What is this world-wide rage all about? I couldn't answer that, and this made me cry harder. (There's another kind of rage: the "Me too" rage, the "Black Lives Matter" rage, the Iranian protestors' rage, but that's for another day.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3I4pmqmrFDRt8iMNLLxJq090tghfV3ypdkAEStnwc2aCPicZkl4iXTB1Wps7J0y3enmbpAxkVXfXC3B6JdCHhzfInVz-1Ob1Q4TwDyAEw-joedEXMjUf8ldNpGPRUlhNGmKKjJwG2_DdMza9EIO8Cc_Ct40M_WKhi03luSekCgMftGvGzKFnX-gj9DA/s5184/IMG_0474.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3I4pmqmrFDRt8iMNLLxJq090tghfV3ypdkAEStnwc2aCPicZkl4iXTB1Wps7J0y3enmbpAxkVXfXC3B6JdCHhzfInVz-1Ob1Q4TwDyAEw-joedEXMjUf8ldNpGPRUlhNGmKKjJwG2_DdMza9EIO8Cc_Ct40M_WKhi03luSekCgMftGvGzKFnX-gj9DA/w400-h300/IMG_0474.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><p>We could make war or we could make beauty or knit socks or sand down an old table or write a note to an aunt who isn't well. We could take a photograph of hoarfrost or a sunrise and put it on Facebook. Have you noticed how many people react to posts that are beautiful? We can choose to create or destroy. When we get up in the morning, we can choose rage or choose kindness and patience. We can be curious rather than judgmental. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinSnOm888-SOymJblKKeMBcgqkfjv9IzWu70wP4lksNFCTYC6Iq8Fur-gvOVEJ13Auzot9vnTrJugfEhRtyuDIao5f2tHMf4-gntTtQe4VxHLnHIDy6Dna0mLj8wDaz7pnQwiqVQbloMNKdW5lQi4Q4LKs6JzqY3X0EaxScd6Wv-uXuI5BJUftxmoJEg/s5184/IMG_0475.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinSnOm888-SOymJblKKeMBcgqkfjv9IzWu70wP4lksNFCTYC6Iq8Fur-gvOVEJ13Auzot9vnTrJugfEhRtyuDIao5f2tHMf4-gntTtQe4VxHLnHIDy6Dna0mLj8wDaz7pnQwiqVQbloMNKdW5lQi4Q4LKs6JzqY3X0EaxScd6Wv-uXuI5BJUftxmoJEg/w400-h300/IMG_0475.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><p>It's hard being human. It's been very hard the last three years. Not surprisingly, the new year has brought out all the researchers and columnists writing about our our mental and physical wellness, and it turns out it's pretty simple. Foster relationships. Tend them and value them. Having good relationships is the easiest way to be happy; it's also the most direct route to a long life. Exercise is the second most direct route to a long and happy life. So work your muscles and your heart--both your hearts--the one in your chest and the one between your ears. </p><p>I know that the mornings are still dark here. My weather ap tells me that we're gaining a minute of sunlight every afternoon but that sunrise has barely budged. But once you're had your first coffee, you can choose to celebrate the human with your own "hallelujah" a la Handel or Cohen. Practice guerilla kindness. Open a door. Buy someone a coffee. Listen to someone's struggles. Kindness is not only good for us, though our neurotransmitters certainly give us a lovely glow afterwards. It's also a chance to change the world of the recipient, who regards a kind act more highly than we'd guess. It changes their sense of the world for a moment. They take away a sense of warmth--of your warmth. And they trust the world a little bit more. Trust is in very short supply these days, and is probably one of the reasons there is so much rage. When we don't trust the world, we're more likely to sort people into "us" and "them." That at least lets us know who we are and what we believe. </p><p>Instead, you could embrace human uncertainty and knit another row, make another quilt block, sow some seeds (or just read the seed catalogue for now), send a grateful email. And hear the soft "hallelujah!" behind you. </p><p><br /></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-29189840180704002892022-11-28T11:47:00.002-06:002023-02-15T15:51:24.319-06:00Hope?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidr6akn_GIvAy7muarcRUqzE26vK4ZsBJthgYzhmuA4tLJbk19WoMIW2SdEb6ucgTzQVIOlKBCXuhJAqdD-NpcJ_foEzSi9gFrEzPg0TutqH3lVDMsaeZ-M5ux3iyRjjJGSKjUwz9s-O_EumB6FybKyr1Va0tMLgXpWoXWaHY9aRna2ypO9xs6UNtTBg/s5184/IMG_0461.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidr6akn_GIvAy7muarcRUqzE26vK4ZsBJthgYzhmuA4tLJbk19WoMIW2SdEb6ucgTzQVIOlKBCXuhJAqdD-NpcJ_foEzSi9gFrEzPg0TutqH3lVDMsaeZ-M5ux3iyRjjJGSKjUwz9s-O_EumB6FybKyr1Va0tMLgXpWoXWaHY9aRna2ypO9xs6UNtTBg/w300-h400/IMG_0461.JPG" width="300" /></span></a></div><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Yesterday morning, I opened my diary to see how I was going to shape this week. My head is in too many places, so I needed to have a plan for focusing. I seriously need to rewrite the cover letter and pitch for <i>Soul Weather</i>. Plus it needs a new name. I'm worried that publishers and readers are going to expect something religious and it's not that at all. The best I've done so far is <i>Weather for Recreating Home. </i>Can you help me and come up with a briefer, more mellifluous word for "recreating?" I'm stumped. At<i> </i>the same time, I'm working on the sixth chapter of <i>The Frosted Bough: Essays on Minimalism</i>, and I'd hoped to have it done and fairly polished by the end of the year. This chapter is a biggie: it's on Thoreau, whose "Simplify! Simplify!" from <i>Walden</i> is probably a rallying cry for most minimalists. Also, I've got a volume of poems, <i>Appointments with Memory,</i> nearly ready to go, and thought I'd work on those when I hit a wall writing about Thoreau, who is charming and an old fart in turn. He built his house on Walden Pond in 1845, when he was 28, and finished revising <i>Walden</i> when he was 37, so perhaps it's not surprising that I hear so many voices in its pages. I knew I would be coming to grief quite regularly, and so thought that working on <i>Appointments with Memory</i> would be a reasonable, welcome, and productive distraction. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">So I opened my diary, intent on planning a sane week, and read "Blog post on hope." Who wrote that? And when? Well, I obviously did--it's my distinctive handwriting--but which me? And what on earth did I mean? Was it the who me was a bit hopeful earlier in November after the midterm elections in the States, wherein we discovered that the average voter <u>does</u> care about democracy and abortion rights, not only inflation? Voters can think about more than one thing at a time--which is not what pollsters conclude. Is it the one that cheered along with Ukrainians when their army entered Kherson? Is it the one who got excited when I read that the COP mechanism was actually working? Even though countries are not punished for not making their targets, most countries are working hard to get there. There seems to be such good will in that collection of people.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Perhaps "hope" was written by the woman who read Krista Tippett's newsletter and learned of biologist Lynn Margulis who argues that life didn't happen on earth because combat was central to creatures' ways of being in the world, but because life cooperated. We have bacteria happily living in our guts that help break down food and keep our immune system strong. Trees cooperate with one another via the interconnections of mycorrhizal fungi, who also benefit. (I know I've told you to read Suzanne Simard's <i>Finding the Mother</i> <i>Tree</i>. Seriously, do it over the winter solstice if you really want hope.) Margulis coined the word <i>endosymbiosis, </i>which describes the deep, "radical collaborative creativity" that is at the heart of evolution. Our nature is to cooperate, to work together, not to wage wars. It's just that wars get more air time. You opened the door for someone today or loaned a cookbook to a friend or just shared cups of coffee to listen to what's challenging her at the moment. That's cooperation.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNl4THZad-RLmVc7vCtZ4KS_XovPlLSPcIaauuYTbXhJ1QtCbkboPNBAKD-WBoarN-wG8rwtHRkTXmpijymS86l2kaMTBoCzH4-BMvNy-BwHf-f5jYna6gTH4phvyaYFK-t24Cug0fIJAR-O_oBELIJvmayp7O4dQY4XHMAFgwufrmaHCb6OufscoT8Q/s5184/IMG_0459.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNl4THZad-RLmVc7vCtZ4KS_XovPlLSPcIaauuYTbXhJ1QtCbkboPNBAKD-WBoarN-wG8rwtHRkTXmpijymS86l2kaMTBoCzH4-BMvNy-BwHf-f5jYna6gTH4phvyaYFK-t24Cug0fIJAR-O_oBELIJvmayp7O4dQY4XHMAFgwufrmaHCb6OufscoT8Q/w300-h400/IMG_0459.JPG" width="300" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Or is it the me that's listening to Beethoven string quartets while I write, and who has written only one paragraph today? (I chose Beethoven because his life was so difficult and his music is so joyful: clearly he had something to teach me.) It couldn't have been the me who was in such despair about what the Russians did in Kherson before they left--the trauma and rape and torture. Or who remains in despair over the bombing of maternity hospitals and of water and power infrastructure. By any definition, this situation has changed from one of war to terrorism--or so Russian specialist Anne Applebaum, who writes for <i>Atlantic,</i> argues. In war you kill soldiers who, one hopes, have signed up and believe in what they are fighting for. (Now even that is questionable.) Terrorists kill the innocent. What emptiness lives in the deep empty crevasse at the centre of Putin's heart?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">My stats tell me that I've written 381 posts here since I began writing in the fall of 2010. So I'm beginning to repeat myself but hope you won't mind. If I'm supposed to be writing about hope today, there are two things I can tell you. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">First, beauty. By most measures, we have icky weather in Regina today--a fine, sandy blowing snow that makes roads fairly treacherous. But if I just look at what this snow does to the landscape, rendering it with the softness of fog, so that the world has been made tenuous, it's beautiful. It's as if the elms have been swathed in something out of one of Mrs Radcliffe's Gothic novels, some fog or muslin or frame of mind. Clouds seem to hover just above the street. The world has been--if you will let me use the fancy but precise word--defamiliarized. So it says "Look!" That in itself is a gift. But you also realize that nature regularly gives us gifts, even on the prairies in winter. What kind of a world do we inhabit if its very fabric is not only cooperation but beauty?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Second, kindness. It nearly makes me weep to say that the only way I believe I can change the world is to be kind, because (see wars and elections and terrorism, above) it feels so infinitesmal. But when people react to your unexpected kindness, you have a chance to see that it matters in a way that cannot, like numbers of soldiers, sizes of graves, or tons of bombs, be quantified. Numbers aren't everything. (See cooperation, above.) You're keeping a practice alive every day, asserting that cooperation is infinitely more important than individual wealth or power. That's saying something.</span></p><p><br /></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-64999688609656924222022-10-28T13:42:00.001-06:002022-10-28T13:42:58.221-06:00Easing into change<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikIdZ_bhWOjyiLfnfLXRZHlIxbugPZinN-dKnsNKMKl242fHuvKYcYYVc7pzQVF8veqTwReYv620WanFn1Ymz3y88NlXVTv6-Dw5xwOqSC9XI3BKfVNuEZubu-TGjTvp_6YJ3MfwgmEHSmJK5dnLKOedjyYWrb9CwW65CUhXrcB_28CntOqdovEFiKeQ/s5184/IMG_0457.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikIdZ_bhWOjyiLfnfLXRZHlIxbugPZinN-dKnsNKMKl242fHuvKYcYYVc7pzQVF8veqTwReYv620WanFn1Ymz3y88NlXVTv6-Dw5xwOqSC9XI3BKfVNuEZubu-TGjTvp_6YJ3MfwgmEHSmJK5dnLKOedjyYWrb9CwW65CUhXrcB_28CntOqdovEFiKeQ/w400-h300/IMG_0457.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>On October 1, I started spending half an hour in the morning in front of my SAD light with a cup of coffee, a book of poems, and a bird feeder just outside the window. My days <i>could</i> be filled with dread for the effect the short days <i>could</i> have on my energy and my mental health. But I can't go there. I can take care of today and begin it with a lovely ritual. Some winters have been fine, some have nearly broken my spirit. But today, I'm fine, and that's all I can be sure of. That's all that's certain. </p><p>I've been trying to renegotiate my relationship with certainty. Part of that has to do with my obsession with news: I could see that I was spending fruitless time collecting as much intel as I could so I might have some sense of what was coming. Covid-19 made that impossible. No one could have predicted that, on the two-year anniversary of the Chinese Government's admission that there was a new virus that was killing many people, we would have more cases than ever thanks to Omicron. How do you 'predict' a virus's mutations? The war in Ukraine also made that impossible. We know some things: that the Russian army and their weaponry are not particularly effective. But I'm not sure even Putin knows what he's going to do when he has to admit he is well and truly cornered. Meanwhile, he continues to lob bombs into Ukraine, often destroying apartments, schools, hospitals and energy infrastructure. Young women living in Afghanistan under the Taliban are not only forbidden to go to school but are often raped and abused. Is this what religious fundamentalism and all its obsession about purity comes to? Covid numbers are heading up, as they are wont to do in the fall. My daughter's 16-year-old cat had all but stopped eating, in spite of appetite stimulants. Then certainty fell in on us: We needed to put Whimsy to sleep.</p><p>(No. Searching for certainty isn't the only reason I watch the news. Every day when I eat my morning oatmeal, I ask "How is it with humankind this morning?" See above. Yet we don't live in a world where cruelty and disaster are the way of the world. Future Crunch reports that poverty around the world is falling significantly. India's Supreme Court has deemed that women have a right to choose whether or not to see a pregnancy to term. We're discovering that Basic Income works as we thought it might--having positive impacts on children's health and adults' search for good jobs. In the last twenty years, 2 billion more people gained access to safe drinking water. (Canadians had better get busy.) And today, David Wallace-Wells, the climate emergency prophet who wrote <i>The Uninhabitable Earth</i>, admits he's hopeful that we are on our way to avoiding the worst of what he predicted.) </p><p>Buddhist nun Pema Chodron often convinces me that the very state of being alive is chock full of uncertainty. If I'm having trouble getting metaphysical with her, I simply think about moving parts. How many moving parts are there in my body and my mind? How many moving parts there are in my relationships, moving parts within each of the people who are a glorious part of my sense of well-being? And in the world outside my personal bubble? All those moving parts add up to profound uncertainty.</p><p>Paradoxically, this may explain why I love fall, even when it comes with snow and cloud.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu_GPze4yY_Mwy2g_GcXa4tixPNpB0TZ0nzsOBsGi7ZD56CrOZJikBdSNv0IuItbvEtl7qhf3BkmZXkMf1P8utzpCPHmNavb51KugamgSnlxkcqtrFgF0bbUoc7YZQ6y-eSetLyk9m3T1fwVvxzyXrY4PTTGruIjyMd5aQ8iJOyItpVmKlkaK0-gRfoQ/s5184/IMG_0456.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu_GPze4yY_Mwy2g_GcXa4tixPNpB0TZ0nzsOBsGi7ZD56CrOZJikBdSNv0IuItbvEtl7qhf3BkmZXkMf1P8utzpCPHmNavb51KugamgSnlxkcqtrFgF0bbUoc7YZQ6y-eSetLyk9m3T1fwVvxzyXrY4PTTGruIjyMd5aQ8iJOyItpVmKlkaK0-gRfoQ/w300-h400/IMG_0456.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><p>I watch autumn carefully. There's a lovely mid-sized tree that the city has planted on boulevards, an ash of some kind. It is one of the first trees to turn and it is the creamiest gold in fall: the colour actually seems to have a softly silky texture. Then the plants on the creek bank begin to turn shades I cannot name. There's the ruddy-green the wild roses turn, the ruddy brown of some weeds. There's the sound of the grasses with their tall dry stalks. The humble cotoneaster begins to turn next, but it takes it a while to go from gold to red--and in fact made that final turn into red just as the snow came down. The elm trees are outliers. Some years they simply give up their green leaves like frightened comic book cats shedding fur. Other years the colour drains out of them subtly. This year they have hung onto their leaves for quite a long time, becoming a golden green, like some unearthly metal that suffered a sea change, becoming something rich and strange. Yesterday I went for a walk and had plenty to study in spite of the snow. There were lilacs that looked like decorative sprays of antique bronze unearthed from somewhere unknown. Bright jack-o-lantern plants glowed in the snow.</p><p>All this slow-busy change, I remind myself, is in the service of gathering energy: plants draw down the energy captured in their leaves to store it underground. Some of it will be syphoned off to feed the helpful fungi which tangle in their roots. (If you haven't read Merlin Sheldrake's <i>Entangled Life</i> or Suzanne Simard's <i>Finding the Mother Tree</i>, you must. They are the perfect books to read in the winter dark.)<i> </i>When spring comes, the trees drive that energy back up to the tips of each stem, where it turns back to leaves.</p><p>So here I am, seemingly poised in the middle of uncertainty, engrossed in watching change happen. It's a matter of how I watch, deliberately and carefully, immersed in the present moment. </p><p>I've been writing about minimalist composers Philip Glass (who wrote the soundtracks for <i>Kundun</i> and <i>The Hours</i>) and Arvo P<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">ä</span>rt, whose <i>Fratres</i> or <i>Fur Alina</i> you might know. Some people call minimalist music "going nowhere music" for its tendency to repeat and repeat and repeat--changing your whole sense of time--to suddenly but subtly change. Because most minimalist music is beautiful, I'm willing to listen closely, waiting for the change to come and appreciating it when it does.</p><p>Minimalist music and the acceptance of uncertainty encouraged by Buddhists come together here to explain why I love fall. I'm encouraged by beauty or philosophy to be patient, to watch or listen carefully. That is to say that I'm deeply planted in the present moment. The paradox is accomplished: I'm here right now. But I'm inside a moment created by nature's changes or uncertainty in the world. Since I'm more than just fine right here in this moment, I will find a way to be fine in other circumstances.</p><p><br /></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-73904822327517616622022-09-15T10:38:00.002-06:002022-09-15T10:38:51.573-06:00Kindness and goodness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBShTCj4W66zPIJotpQ86ArxITZEFDLqcwDZSRagZ1SzdYdYwvuj6Zi5id5aWk8c1QCXGmzHxy0UdYQzmFchZcmGnAqzZ8dFyVxuJVXLzxIQoBnxpb9PI-OJpyNdyLgiZwShK6RQO2HDYwJ7pKhM2PTdJMG14LpexYLtwG9LvzEZCuqwRVzxd1LFUKtQ/s5184/IMG_0449.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBShTCj4W66zPIJotpQ86ArxITZEFDLqcwDZSRagZ1SzdYdYwvuj6Zi5id5aWk8c1QCXGmzHxy0UdYQzmFchZcmGnAqzZ8dFyVxuJVXLzxIQoBnxpb9PI-OJpyNdyLgiZwShK6RQO2HDYwJ7pKhM2PTdJMG14LpexYLtwG9LvzEZCuqwRVzxd1LFUKtQ/w400-h300/IMG_0449.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>Henry James has said that "Three things in life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind." I don't know many authors more finely attuned to the quality of our relations with one another, to the ethics of how we treat one another, or to what happens when we cease to treat one another with generosity. If he says that the almost obsessive attention his characters give to their relationships is useless if they aren't kind, I believe him. </p><p>Bill's 27 months working from home during the pandemic only reinforced James's belief. There were practical things we did to make the claustrophobic days as pleasant as could be. I would put out a plate of fresh vegetables at lunch on a lovely glass dish given to me by Jeanne Shami. I would scour "Reasons to Be Cheerful" and "Future Crunch" for good news. I spent time cooking things I'd never tried before because time was mostly what I had. At dinner there were candles. But what I began to notice was how careful we both were, how patient we were and how patiently we listened to one another. I noticed how deliberate our generosity and our gratitude were. One day I summed it up by saying "Kindness lives here." We stopped and looked carefully at one another. Yes, that about summed it up. </p><p>I didn't know that was going to tip me into a philosophical quandary. What's the difference between kindness and goodness? Why do we have two words that live in different houses but are so friendly? Kindness can come into those everyday "micro-connections" that researchers are telling us are so important to our baseline well-being. I've witnessed some dispiriting moments when customers treated a barista or a grocery store clerk as if they were badly-programmed robots: the customer had completely forgotten the human connection. So I'm really deliberate about telling someone who is harried by three customers before she or he gets to me "That's okay. I'm not the only one who needs your attention." Or I ask about what they're studying in university this fall. I hold the door for a woman pushing her husband in a large wheelchair. Or I leave a crazy tip because I don't know how the barista's pandemic has been, and we're not out of the woods yet. That's not goodness. And it borders on goody-two-shoes virtue signaling. But it's the only way I can think of to change the world. If just one of those people I've connected with or helped stands up a little straighter or settles the tension out of of their shoulders or smiles at someone else, I've done my job.</p><p>But kindness isn't <u>hard</u>. It doesn't require me to make judgments or weigh options the way goodness does. Rutger Bregman, whose <i>Humankind</i> I cannot recommend highly enough, finds that most people are pretty decent. Given my experience, I believe him. So I'm not making any judgments about whether the seventy-five-year-old woman is really patient with her husband, in spite of the fact that he requires a lot of care and she has less and less energy every day and her feet hurt. I'm not wondering whether the traffic jam in the coffee bar is the result of the barista's incompetence. The manager will sort that out. I'm just assuming everyone deserves kindness, and although the Buddhists tell me that is true, that feels a little lazy to someone coming from a western philosophical tradition.</p><p>But here's the thing. The only cases where I can see that kindness and goodness aren't sharing a lot of space on their Venn diagram is when the good thing to do is to call someone else out, insist that they be accountable or take responsibility for their actions. At its most dramatic, I can say that principle of goodness requires us to resist evil or injustice. Yet those who attacked the U.S. Capitol or the Truckers who settled down in Ottawa thought they were resisting injustice. Maybe kindness has something to teach our assumptions that we're being good.</p><p>The kindness/goodness quandary is particularly hard for me when I see someone struggling to grow and not behaving very well in the process. I overthink whether or not I should call them out, and I'll admit I often decide not to. Which of us isn't striving to grow into a better person? On whose schedule? At the same time, I'm such a wimp! Often I think the behaviour needs to be named but not necessarily judged. If they're stuck or lazy, though, kindness be damned: a little reality check is called for. But the last question I ask myself before I deliver my edict is whether my focus on goodness is at least informed by kindness. After all, helping someone to grow or see themselves more clearly is kind as well as good. </p><p>Or do I just want to be right! Do I just need to blow my top because the last four days have been cloudy and my writing is not going well and the construction taking place on the street outside my window is driving me crazy with the constant "beep beep beep"? Am I depressed? Did I get up on the wrong side of my bed? If I answer "yes" to any of those questions, my temper tantrum is called off. It has taken me a long time to get to this practice, to see that my judgments often have as much to do with my mood as with someone else's behaviour. But, bit by bit, I'm getting better at it. The ethics of depression, if we can speak of such a thing, force you to find the real source of your unhappiness and anger.</p><p>There was nothing kind about the Truckers or the Proud Boys. They just wanted to have things their way. Witness the violence. Witness the way the Truckers wanted to make everyone else's life miserable.</p><p>So maybe asking that seemingly innocent questions, "Is this kind?" has more relevance to goodness than I'd thought when I started to write.</p><p>(I was also thinking about kindness and love--whether they're really different--but that's for another day.) </p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-70665655676001533652022-08-25T15:40:00.001-06:002022-08-25T15:40:49.318-06:00Life's broad river<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl1qX18qjK3v-OJnqkhO0hVIrlF6EMgm-zprgOTWx_RArofQGe1m9cy9WL8fov0VvS1VMHEuMvVtYkAWhD3PuC4h_yKcEYaraH7N26_4v66eWfJbm8UMPDLNi8lDtcvoo4Du65mLUfbyBRMwhHP5eMWSwyJYhHr6vF_dSIxOtp6fFoA8VaKNo5Lu5vGA/s5184/IMG_0447.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl1qX18qjK3v-OJnqkhO0hVIrlF6EMgm-zprgOTWx_RArofQGe1m9cy9WL8fov0VvS1VMHEuMvVtYkAWhD3PuC4h_yKcEYaraH7N26_4v66eWfJbm8UMPDLNi8lDtcvoo4Du65mLUfbyBRMwhHP5eMWSwyJYhHr6vF_dSIxOtp6fFoA8VaKNo5Lu5vGA/w300-h400/IMG_0447.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">Bill came home from work on a Tuesday in mid-August to declare that he felt like crap.</span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">He hurt everywhere and he was sure he had a fever.</span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">Without a kiss or a hug, he carried everything upstairs to take a Covid test, letting me know fifteen minutes later that it was positive.</span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">I was not panicked—we both had
two vaccines and two boosters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So my
first reaction<span style="text-indent: 36pt;"> was to go into problem-solving mode.</span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">My father repaired TVs before schematics were
common, and my mother sought to be middle-class on a very tight budget, so I
come from a family of problem solvers. </span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">A
tray table at our bedroom door would house hand sanitizer and paper towels and
would give me a place to put his meals before I backed away (masked, of course)
and he opened the door.</span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">(I had to stand
there until he claimed his meal so the cats wouldn’t eat it first.) His dishes
went straight from their tray into the dishwasher and then the tray got washed
before it even touched my counter.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">Until I got bleach wipes, he
could use the sanitizer—the annoying spray kind, which was why I found it under
the kitchen sink—and paper towels to erase his presence in the bathroom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile, knowing I couldn’t ask him not to
cough or sneeze in the bathroom, I took everything I use out of the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Towels, toothbrush, pills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have a single bathroom in the house; I
would only use it for basics and he would relentlessly sanitize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I made lists of groceries to get the
next day, lists that didn’t look that different from those I made at the
beginning of the pandemic lockdowns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Bleach wipes, vitamin C, oranges, orange juice, a bag of lovely rolls
and some good cold cuts. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He craved
chicken noodle soup. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had green beans,
cherry tomatoes and beefsteak tomatoes coming ripe in the garden, along with
just about every herb we’d want. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">My second reaction was entirely
different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had seen life during these
two and a half years as a wide river, shallow at the edges, swiftly moving and
deep in the middle, flowing through every landscape and language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All over the world, people had been pulled
into that river, some only adrift in its swift current for ten days or two
weeks, their heads just above the water while they flailed, until they were
strong enough to make their way to the shore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Some people’s lives had been entirely changed by their immersion, at
least for the foreseeable future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some
were pulled into the middle and drowned, families watching from a distant
shore, traumatized and grief-stricken, health care workers helpless and burned
out from seeing so much suffering and death, from dedicating themselves to
healing others which, in the early days, they had to do with so little
knowledge or equipment, with so few drugs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>With the appearance of a pale red line, we were promptly swept to that
river’s shore, joining a stream of diverse humanity. The water smelled like
hospitals and sanitizer and old people’s residences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could feel its slippery humidity on my skin,
like something left by a fever. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">Bill, I suspected, especially by
his second day, when his symptoms were a slight fever, muscles that ached
everywhere, exhaustion, lung congestion that he coughed out several times a
day, would be plashing at the edge, and I would be walking alongside him, with
the odd bowl of chicken soup or a plate of his favourite pork chop dish with
mushrooms and oregano-infused tomato sauce.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And noodles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was <u>hungry</u>—a
good sign.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">Perhaps this metaphor verges on drama
and cliché, but I can’t find a better one to capture how all of us have oriented
our lives, our hopes, our daily habits and decisions and occasional delights by
a single…what? What metaphor is large enough to capture how a mass of humanity has
been swept up by a single force, like metal filings to an immense magnet?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I was not alive during World War II
and didn’t experience my mother’s panic about being a lonely single parent,
panic that changed her body irremediably, because I didn’t read the newspaper
headlines on the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, I can’t find a
better one. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That little red line made it impossible not to
see—no, it made it imperative that I <u>see</u> how our experience connected us
to a world-wide community, how it rendered us all helpless and human and
frightened—how so many of us felt the same things (until the exhaustion and the
blame started).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">But there was also a third
reaction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Parts of life were suddenly irradiated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next morning when I watered the vegetable
garden, a spider’s web in the corner of my herb planter pulsed with light in
the morning breeze.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I drove home
from the grocery store armed with cans of chicken noodle soup and oranges and
bleach wipes, the local pump track was thronged with kids, their mothers
collected in the small shade of a small tree, talking to one another, petting
their calm dogs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Oh, that’s life,’ I
thought. While I was watering the roses, our elderly neighbour walked toward
his house with a book under his arm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
had been to the little library down the street and had found himself a book—lucky
man! These small human gestures were beautifully flooded with light.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">Yes, I caught it, but all our
precautions meant that I didn’t get it until Bill began to feel better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mostly I tried to ignore it and keep on
reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I’m on the mend.<o:p></o:p></p><br /><p></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-4436853199644433062022-07-28T14:23:00.000-06:002022-07-28T14:23:45.480-06:00Wonder<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh64jjw_D6SevP61tDBRj8vAVeJh2oxWL2JWObNimhPJIdRSlnBgOGSocHECpUWkl5wbe53oK4LJU-kxRKAcGSL-V2Hk8_qQUZ-IO66ruov_2CWsl0nqF6kKrbIdUPNJCvWJ87X3ThZHiEemWL1NOHmgsF9Vez9YTqPq4BKTzClkFTH95UHHEbpEo9eAQ/s5184/IMG_0440.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh64jjw_D6SevP61tDBRj8vAVeJh2oxWL2JWObNimhPJIdRSlnBgOGSocHECpUWkl5wbe53oK4LJU-kxRKAcGSL-V2Hk8_qQUZ-IO66ruov_2CWsl0nqF6kKrbIdUPNJCvWJ87X3ThZHiEemWL1NOHmgsF9Vez9YTqPq4BKTzClkFTH95UHHEbpEo9eAQ/w400-h300/IMG_0440.JPG" width="400" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>Something happened last Saturday morning. It was as if I was breathing in wonder--though I couldn't explain why. True, we had altered our usual Saturday ritual by having breakfast at Brewed Awakenings downtown rather than French Press on south Albert, so I had an entirely different group of people to observe and wonder about. And I had different things to notice, like all the fish made out of bits and pieces of machinery and gears. There was one robot figure near the cashier that held up a sign reading "Peace." I couldn't agree with it more. And the young, energetic barista was a delight all by herself.</p><p>Then Bill and I put away our books and got a bag out of the trunk for the short walk to the Farmer's Market for our first visit this year. I bought fresh peas! They took me half an hour to get them out of their pods, but every one that went bouncing around on the floor was fair game for my cats, who love peas and scurry for them crazily. Go figure. And I found tiny carrots. Farmers' markets, I learned this week from one of my favourite e-newsletters, "Reasons to Be Cheerful," almost disappeared with the rise of supermarkets. But it seems we can't resist buying produce--or mead, or doggie treats--from the person who grew or made it. And I had to think of Farmers' Markets in the context of the time we're living through. They are really important to our future. We can't keep on with the high-carbon industrial farming that turns whole hillsides gold or blue--though I can't help admiring the sheer verve of fields of canola or flax. And canola and flax together in the same landscape! Still, we can't continue to ship wine from France in those heavy bottles or buy all our carrots from California. Local not only tastes better, it's always more carbon-efficient. What you are paying for is labour, not an airplane ticket. I couldn't help but look around and see the people at the Farmers' Market as the ones who will get us through once we really begin questioning what truly needs to be shipped thousands of miles.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCPCqsr7gZLjGA_J91yhPKiiUUgBEei-89HcT1w8Zpq8RFjfIjF-c8EFUKQGk8VHTfw_iraE6iywc36MZviNl-kHpHcGMJsjiQEgoIGrpw0uUHRvJA0ZbJPWXUwUUWtdD-v7d2LQ-CN0Ouu9uBk1gCX_pE4EKJiheGRRRAfacOlDMsx2QilxqcD0SxvA/s5184/IMG_0441.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCPCqsr7gZLjGA_J91yhPKiiUUgBEei-89HcT1w8Zpq8RFjfIjF-c8EFUKQGk8VHTfw_iraE6iywc36MZviNl-kHpHcGMJsjiQEgoIGrpw0uUHRvJA0ZbJPWXUwUUWtdD-v7d2LQ-CN0Ouu9uBk1gCX_pE4EKJiheGRRRAfacOlDMsx2QilxqcD0SxvA/s320/IMG_0441.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>Our Farmers' Market has a nice plaza downtown, but the Farmers' Market I grew up with as a child gathered on a huge parking lot we used during the school year for our early drivers' ed classes. There were holes in the concrete where the farmers put in the legs for the old slanting wooden shelves that held their produce. I have such memories of going there with my mother. I remember a farmer who happily cut a cantaloupe in half for us to smell, thinking I'd never smelled anything quite so rich. He taught me to press the end of the cantaloupe that connected to the stem to gauge how ripe it is. I remember the year--Michigan is known for its fruit trees on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan--red delicious apples arrived in farmers' markets. Our favourite apple seller showed us the characteristic little bumps on the bottom of a red delicious and cut one to give us a taste. So different from the softer, more mealy Spartans or MacIntosh that were the apples we usually ate. Its crispness was a delight, a kind of clarity that echoed the late August sunlight. Every year, Mother bought a peck of peaches and a peck of pears--so beautiful in their brocade skins--to can. We would sit in the back yard under our elm tree, in our clamshell chairs, a roasting pan on our laps for the peels, and peel fruit for days and days, it seemed. </p><p>Maybe memory was the source of my wonder? The memories were rich and the crowds were heartwarming and varied. There was sitar music, and the all the things people had made and grown created a colourful kaleidoscope. It was a delight to do out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye people-watching. The Farmer's Market was a feast for the senses. But I didn't quite think the Farmers' Market was the source of my wonder.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Agur_uLyjN_7yd6DNrqj3IslfY13zZCE77PvNeaEbOddhpmHJx2zQusBCIuT2sIsNgMLgmhh4owAUaUb99g8dReXezYKtGHX7ZJ8Bls21YdZ-FLbpMqBU-B98dZ7WUk8tlQQfVOXS8qJkAURZYvZCfPW45YLfSlTcVRoJJd5VtLW7EQSNcpEyKCYHw/s5184/IMG_0434.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Agur_uLyjN_7yd6DNrqj3IslfY13zZCE77PvNeaEbOddhpmHJx2zQusBCIuT2sIsNgMLgmhh4owAUaUb99g8dReXezYKtGHX7ZJ8Bls21YdZ-FLbpMqBU-B98dZ7WUk8tlQQfVOXS8qJkAURZYvZCfPW45YLfSlTcVRoJJd5VtLW7EQSNcpEyKCYHw/w400-h300/IMG_0434.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>When we got home, the groceries put away, it was time to fertilize the garden. I do the roses and Bill does everything else that blooms. I do the shrubs that don't bloom and Bill gives the ferns a good watering. Then I do the vegetable garden. Regina is greengreengreen this summer, thanks to the rain. The roses were past their peak--I would deadhead them and the itinerant daisies the next day--but the liiles and the hydrangea were on their way and the clematis hadn't stopped blooming. Maybe that was the cause of the wonder I felt? Frankly, after hauling a dozen watering cans with their proper dose of fertilizer in them, I was simply tired.</p><p>So I went in the house and opened all the windows. Saturday began cool and it would stay relatively cool. We could have all the fresh air we wanted. No closing drapes against the sun or closing down the windows in the afternoon. And that was when it hit me. It was the coolness that I'd been walking through all day that stirred something. Maybe a hint of fall--my favourite time of year? I think it was actually that I didn't have to work <u>against</u><i> </i>Mother Nature. We were on the same side all day, and the weather forecast, which turned out to be mostly right, though it missed a few periods of rain, projected cool days all week.</p><p>Solastalgia is the word we've chosen for the grief we feel as we notice all the changes in our environment, on our planet. But a summer day that was just a summer day, not an argument about how hot I liked it or about how dark rooms needed to be to keep us cool or about how I would sleep tonight--that summer day rekindled wonder.</p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-27014847777783113902022-06-30T17:06:00.001-06:002022-06-30T17:06:19.287-06:00Hope: Learn It from the Bees<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTkxsivQn0vs5beIpnIfPcYi9d4B7gSj_wpgmthxUgYHluTK1hRKICRbI74tJDxE-3QpnSrb_9bKQZJ9OqMwGmSq89gJPPAVM2h_7GnNOV_W1vuv_KnfGJ88xkDLEDRVepte9mJS7lUhMHMLv87Z6DLJVt80CJoXKkBG08m538gvKxzuYhuD3TTGTT9A/s5184/IMG_0429.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTkxsivQn0vs5beIpnIfPcYi9d4B7gSj_wpgmthxUgYHluTK1hRKICRbI74tJDxE-3QpnSrb_9bKQZJ9OqMwGmSq89gJPPAVM2h_7GnNOV_W1vuv_KnfGJ88xkDLEDRVepte9mJS7lUhMHMLv87Z6DLJVt80CJoXKkBG08m538gvKxzuYhuD3TTGTT9A/w400-h300/IMG_0429.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><p>This morning I was down on my knees, weeding the vegetable garden so my tomatoes, beans, potatoes, cukes, lettuces, and herbs could get the best of the water and food in the soil. And, to be frank, I love weeding. I love the look of a garden after a good bout of weeding. I love this acknowledgement that I am merely nature's handmaiden. After I've put in seeds and plants, I can add water and some fertilizer to my garden, but that's about the extent of my powers. I can't take away too much water. I can't do anything about unseasonably hot or cold days, except to see things are watered on the hot ones. But I can weed.</p><p>While I was weeding among the tomatoes, I was buzzed by a couple of bees, reminding me of my last year of teaching. I'd decided it was important to teach an English 110 class on literature and the environment. (English 110 is the second English class most of the students on campus are required to take.) I remembered telling them that if people disappeared, the earth would thrive. But if the bugs disappeared, particularly the pollinators like bees, the human race would be toast. So we're here courtesy of bees and their kindred. Interestingly, when I read the final exams for that class I noticed that almost every student had found somewhere to include that fact and I remember being rather pleased that I may have shifted their sense that people are the centre of the universe.</p><p>It's humbling, isn't it? Bugs. This humility runs through Jenna Butler's <i>Revery: A Year of Bees</i>. Jenna and her husband, Thomas Lock, live off the grid, just at the edge of the boreal forest in Alberta, where they farm and keep bees. The book begins with Jenna up in the wee morning hours on a cold January day to stoke their stove, light a wax taper, and daydream through seed catalogues. Choosing what to grow in their vegetable and cutting gardens--choosing what will feed them literally and what beauty will feed their souls--has an impact on everything around them, particularly their bees' sister pollinators. In this scene, two of her book's themes meet. How we must bring humility into our relationship with the natural world, and how we are profoundly interconnected with it. Everything we do resonates outward. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZnDpUc9IxU1MHVdTa2EW6eGQEHnlCy9ppRPCgU_gVSjtz8NMmTlbSG6WVy_UrRj_aIP9jn81IfZRrpCTJOAZ4cbP40tLejE8swBPVKAbFEb0j-n3PJlyzcU9gXi1CBer0Ss-vkJExlgpCUV9f6bg4ecwNpEMPBD2j166_-9J6vEgATsaDE_ky2W4gJg/s5184/IMG_0422.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZnDpUc9IxU1MHVdTa2EW6eGQEHnlCy9ppRPCgU_gVSjtz8NMmTlbSG6WVy_UrRj_aIP9jn81IfZRrpCTJOAZ4cbP40tLejE8swBPVKAbFEb0j-n3PJlyzcU9gXi1CBer0Ss-vkJExlgpCUV9f6bg4ecwNpEMPBD2j166_-9J6vEgATsaDE_ky2W4gJg/w300-h400/IMG_0422.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><p>A garden, I tell myself when things aren't going as well among the flowers and shrubs and vegetables as I'd like, is always a work in progress. Some things stay the same. For years now I've had Asiatic lilies in my west perennial border. But the weather has changed. Last year was appallingly hot, and the lilies didn't flower. This year it's been cool and rainy, so I think I'll get some blooms, but I'm not entirely sure yet. When I visit the border, I look down into the Fibonacci swirl of leaves and ask if they're setting a bud. Some of them are; others, I'm not sure about. As well, the enormous evergreen in my next door neighbour's yard has grown, so my lilies probably don't get enough sun. There are too many variables! Similarly, Jenna writes that "As students of the land, we can choose to learn through humility or hardship. Humility can be a tough path at times. It often means setting aside the things we dream of doing with the land until such time that we learn a way to make them possible without destroying ecosystems or compromising the many untouched acres of forest."</p><p>As Jenna thinks about seeds for the next summer, recognizing that she's just part of the landscape, she arrives at an ethics of husbandry that recognizes that we are interdependent, and that human beings are really only a small part of any ecosystem, a small part with outsized impacts: "One of the most powerful results of working <u>with</u> the land in a conscious way has been coming to see it as a series of interlinked ecosystems, and realizing that what we do to one ecosystem we effectively do to all" (22; emphasis mine). Yes, she seeks to be careful what land she clears, what seeds she plants, but this involves some granular thinking. If they grow their garden into verges, for example, that will have an impact on the pollinators that have laboriously evolved to thrive on the plants that grow there. <i>Revery</i> is full of facts about bees and bee-keeping. Alberta is the fifth-largest producer of honey in the world, thanks in all likelihood to professional beekeepers who cart their bees around the province to fertilize canola. But bumblebees are joined by 320 different species of bees, and not all of them are doing well. So Jenna plants for her honeybees and for the others who are also busy fertilizing Alberta's varied ecosystems.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW3zRCeJu7hQQZY4Dh0cLxQcpV0pnYcvM4NJdct6fJZfgP3r_nIfe4Hfdomi_WwemdKlk-FwegsLNdf8iHfLjSybn0boBW_gW30ajn7Ok55jzwAWyxR1B1g6VFrn2xSQryEWbLe9bPNwpeaof_MVcrwdjI-6NOBX7e8_2-2U6nhJsuDJmu-QJTPzilQg/s5184/IMG_0428.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW3zRCeJu7hQQZY4Dh0cLxQcpV0pnYcvM4NJdct6fJZfgP3r_nIfe4Hfdomi_WwemdKlk-FwegsLNdf8iHfLjSybn0boBW_gW30ajn7Ok55jzwAWyxR1B1g6VFrn2xSQryEWbLe9bPNwpeaof_MVcrwdjI-6NOBX7e8_2-2U6nhJsuDJmu-QJTPzilQg/w300-h400/IMG_0428.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><p>As well, she and Thomas are aware that their bee hives are complex; each kind of bee has its own task; the hive itself has its natural shape of a superorganism: "A superorganism is, at its core, a social unit that's carefully diversified when it comes to divisions of labour and works together as a whole" (24). I try not to take my honey for granted, and I'm very careful to always buy Canadian honey. In this sense, <i>Revery </i>is a gift to all of us, an insider's glimpse of how simple and yet complex hives are, particularly given how far north as their farm is, and how contemporary farming practices endanger them. We learn about the coats the hives wear for about half the year and about how Jenna must order new queens from New Zealand when something hasn't gone quite right. She and Thomas have two different ways of attending to their bees. Jenna listens. And Thomas watches from what is apparently the best seat on the farm, one that calms and fascinates just about anyone who sits there.</p><p>These superorganisms to which they pay so much attention are natural synecdoches for the human relationship with the natural world, one that informs every decision Jenna and Thomas make on their farm. If nature is fine, we'll be fine. If nature is in trouble, we're in trouble--or will be soon. The ethics of husbandry that Jenna and Thomas practice acknowledges that when human beings work with the natural world, we are the beneficiaries. As I've tried to show in my "Nature's Culture" poems, the complexity and generosity of nature can profoundly benefit us. First, there's the sensual beauty they bring to our lives. Jenna writes of harvesting the honey in late August: "The scent of the kitchen on processing day is a smell as old as memory....The scent of it, and the taste of a stolen teaspoonful on the tongue, releases May's willow catkins and June's wild roses, July's white clover and August's goldenrod It releases all the weather of a boreal summer in the faint tinge of forest fire smoke or the watery flavour of flooded blossoms" (89). </p><p>European monks are credited not only for their tasty honey mead, but for their recognition that honey is a reliable unguent. The Egyptians buried their dead with pots of honey. Manuka honey from Australia and New Zealand can heal skin trauma. An Austrian, Heinrich Huttner, recognized how much he benefitted from inhaling the warm air as he worked his hives, coming to believe it could cure the common cold. He has opened a bee spa where patients can take afternoon naps among the breath of bees and the scent of honey, which helps with a number of breathing-related ailments. Jenna herself has turned to the bees as a way of understanding and mending her life-long relationship to pain. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRJFnh79AGRjyCvonR21V6bNT2b44_hLq5av3v6dfMRQ0LIiX6nCVEJ9SWT6tEDfnYAh8Cxw0BASh7acWU2P8Q2jsEoEJQwQ2QTDtsm0uCXtIkjLs5dZgth_plidSuvDpxWAFRW_C3r0HJiDaKCbJeXZieoGanZ7iWnN21bFjEbjLKWIdBYumtnL-VyA/s5184/IMG_0427.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRJFnh79AGRjyCvonR21V6bNT2b44_hLq5av3v6dfMRQ0LIiX6nCVEJ9SWT6tEDfnYAh8Cxw0BASh7acWU2P8Q2jsEoEJQwQ2QTDtsm0uCXtIkjLs5dZgth_plidSuvDpxWAFRW_C3r0HJiDaKCbJeXZieoGanZ7iWnN21bFjEbjLKWIdBYumtnL-VyA/w400-h300/IMG_0427.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><p>I've been working on this post for a while. The vegetable garden is going to need weeding again soon, but right now I am encountering bees in my roses, where they seem to dance in the middle of the flowers. Whenever I hem and haw about whether we should water the flowers and vegetables again today, I think of Bill saying something so wise and so grounded in his own experience. He loves watering, especially after a tough day at work. "Watering our garden," he reminds me "is an investment in our mental health." It gives us beauty and food, two essentials for our well-being. And because tomorrow morning I'll be heading out to the roses again or watering the pole beans, it gives us hope.</p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-7006052242911775132022-06-01T13:15:00.000-06:002022-06-01T13:15:18.764-06:00Hope is the thing with petals<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXN_RbsTCHuPHt0ZlI0Rk89Vmn4A2GPOr-F3wLgVGshyirMgmUEwCHhep5C6utmZUq9TzRVrpglmokKznQ1mhPgtIvbW-aanOlFM0YnAdXe6J4BKXB4PJzenzFOF1ovmGfsA3HWxVjnH7xAVO3c2fIqBA2X_ltTojRWWkykPLRHSZ3XuGzuw_IXV6UzQ/s5184/IMG_0415.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXN_RbsTCHuPHt0ZlI0Rk89Vmn4A2GPOr-F3wLgVGshyirMgmUEwCHhep5C6utmZUq9TzRVrpglmokKznQ1mhPgtIvbW-aanOlFM0YnAdXe6J4BKXB4PJzenzFOF1ovmGfsA3HWxVjnH7xAVO3c2fIqBA2X_ltTojRWWkykPLRHSZ3XuGzuw_IXV6UzQ/w300-h400/IMG_0415.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><p>In 1976, I completely missed spring. I was in Ann Arbor, living for two months with a friend and her husband, trying to finish up my master's degree from the University of Michigan so I could start a Ph.D. in the fall at the University of Manitoba. If I were simply there to finish a couple of English classes, this would have been a fairly easy spring. But there were complications. First, I was taking a very interesting course on the psychology of perception. Although I had the principles down cold, it became clear from my mark on the midterm that simply knowing what we knew about perception was inadequate. I had to tell the professor <u>how</u> we knew what we knew, which meant memorizing the dates of experiments, the names of experimenters, and the methodology of the experiments. I clearly did very well on the final exam, but sadly, I'm afraid that all those dates and names obscured my memory of the principles. </p><p>Second, in order to graduate I had to buff up my second language, which was Russian. Luckily, an old professor was more than willing to give me tutorials and practice translations, but this came on top of memorizing names and dates. Before bed every night, I settled down to do another practice translation. </p><p>Then there was the husband of the friend I was staying with. Ginny was gone for a couple of weekends to conferences of librarians, and the husband and I discovered we both had frustrations with our relationships. This resulted in a lot of long drives in the countryside around Ann Arbor, which is very beautiful in a winding hilly-foresty sort of way. No, it came to nothing more. The drives in the beautiful landscape were as far as the romance went. But it did confirm that I really didn't want to return to Winnipeg but had no idea what else to do. As I spent hours in the final days looking at job postings in various papers, I couldn't help ask what I was doing with two useless degrees besides seeking what I had been told would be a third useless degree. In the seventies, there was almost no hiring done in universities. </p><p>Each day I walked the three miles from Ginny's house into campus and then walked back. Ann Arbor is a lovely town, yet with stresses practical and existential roiling in my head, my eyes were turned inward. I simply missed spring. Just before I left to return to Winnipeg, I noticed that the maple trees had full-sized leaves on them. When did that happen?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCLWfC_UT0hWo8AD6Xn06TxGNu_OmuE7q-JOi-TRcyYuOpmqYSw7vmYAZVfUOx-urQdktgBol6S4BmqkYXpWVVGFEUAXClhffAGQO4Bb9DBV4NTGX1Mi2l411UJSfxLl0KVraow6KBOOMS8xgTPxyowkqMpGa-rw1QonpU_FlRRZptGgRLugN9_OfbdQ/s5184/IMG_0413.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCLWfC_UT0hWo8AD6Xn06TxGNu_OmuE7q-JOi-TRcyYuOpmqYSw7vmYAZVfUOx-urQdktgBol6S4BmqkYXpWVVGFEUAXClhffAGQO4Bb9DBV4NTGX1Mi2l411UJSfxLl0KVraow6KBOOMS8xgTPxyowkqMpGa-rw1QonpU_FlRRZptGgRLugN9_OfbdQ/w300-h400/IMG_0413.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><p>I've already complained here about this spring--the spring that wasn't. The crabapple tree in my back yard has, for the thirty-two years I've lived here, bloomed on May long weekend. Except for this year. I worked very hard last Saturday to get my garden planted and my lawn fertilized before the rain showed up on Sunday, and the result came with a kind of euphoria. At seventy-two, I can still work vigorously in the garden for hours on end. But the soil simply isn't warm enough for seeds to sprout. We're going to have another windy day today and overnight temperatures this week will be in the low single digits. I've planted nasturtiums to add their bright colour and flavour to our salads this summer, but I'm not sure when they'll want to poke their heads above the soil. Ever hopeful, I keep them watered.</p><p>But here's the wonderful things about spring this year: I have paid careful attention to every shift. I've noticed when the trees got fuzzier and when that fuzz actually became a brilliant lime green. You can only see this from a distance, as if perspective is one of the things you need to practice. I've been out to talk to my irises every day to see if they are going to give me flowers. At first I thought they weren't, and that I needed to dig them up and thin them, but last night I saw the thinnest, most transparent stems and flowers growing out of the spiky fans of leaves. They seem paper thin and I can't imagine them turning into three-dimensional flowers, but I'm hoping they will. </p><p>Last week, I sat on my little gardening stool and patiently sorted out the clematis. Sometimes growth comes off old wood and sometimes the old wood simply needs to be carefully extricated from the tangle. So I was out looking for little hopeful sprouts on old wood and pulling out the detritus. Last night I went to see how they were doing and found that new growth has somehow emerged from the soil and overtaken the old growth. How did it do that? I tucked it poetically into the trellis so it wouldn't mass up on top and then fall to the back so the flowers are invisible. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9bfkQBs1Bld9ke4swjtlNbMCSdR67kaXivfIU18Dv82FqP7GmgVMNKnDIyoErjH0_ZICZcOLRyo2MOmvnLbFkZOEYM-CsM8XRXwPhZSdShYmIQqbeXBPlhSXmUrmiRZF--mLrqeGUxuQWpCNmYQyx2N1wSfl6nr5h0Yn8LYmr88BNXhrQhx9jCwod8w/s5184/IMG_0412.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9bfkQBs1Bld9ke4swjtlNbMCSdR67kaXivfIU18Dv82FqP7GmgVMNKnDIyoErjH0_ZICZcOLRyo2MOmvnLbFkZOEYM-CsM8XRXwPhZSdShYmIQqbeXBPlhSXmUrmiRZF--mLrqeGUxuQWpCNmYQyx2N1wSfl6nr5h0Yn8LYmr88BNXhrQhx9jCwod8w/w300-h400/IMG_0412.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><p>The crabapple tree in my back yard was old when I moved in thirty-two years ago, and I could see no signs of blossoms among the tiny vestigial leaves. I thought maybe it had outlived its fertility. Yet it not only bloomed last weekend, almost exactly a week late, but its blooms have held on during the rain and the wind. Those petals are so vulnerable and transparent, yet they hang on until they've done their work and the tree can set fruit.</p><p>Yesterday, Nikka and I checked the peat pots she'd planted our cucumbers in. There are no leaves, but there's this tiny arc of stem pushing its way through the soil that we know means leaves are on their way.</p><p>All this is like hope. Not like optimism. I'm out of optimism. I don't think we'll go back to something that looks normal after the pandemic; I'm not sure there will be an 'after.' I'm not optimistic about the war in Ukraine, and I don't think either the Russians or the Ukrainians are ready to quit once the Donbas is taken by the Russians or re-taken by the Ukrainians once the U.S. weapons arrive. </p><p>Is optimism tied to age? I was not optimistic in my teens and twenties. We go to dark movies at art house cinemas and read Russian novels. At that age our shit-detectors are too good to be optimistic. There was a stupid war in Vietnam and there were too few black students on the Ann Arbor campus--though enough to gather a good number for a demonstration. And then, ohmygod, there was Watergate. If anything could make me cynical, it was Watergate. I lived in Boston that year, working at Brandeis University, about an hour's bus ride away. I began my day by picking up the <i>New York Times</i> at the corner pharmacy and reading it on the way to work. When I got home, we turned on our tiny tv and watched the highlights of the day's testimony. I brushed my teeth, rinsed, and repeated next morning. If this wasn't going to make me cynical, I don't know what was. </p><p>Optimism might have arrived with a wonderful baby and by feeling at home in the Ph.D. program at the University of Manitoba. It took a big dip during a divorce, only to spike when I moved to Regina where I found a lovely city and a welcoming English Department. It took a downward turn, more or less, with 9/11, with more stupid American wars in the Middle East. Obama made me optimistic, but then it took another sudden dip when Trump was elected--his election only highlighting some of the significant problems alive in the world. Optimism is a way of thinking--or a way of not thinking. Of assuming things will be fine, no watering of irises or hilling of potatoes needed. Veronica didn't sleep through the night for two years; I may have been too tired to resist the pull of optimism. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPJCOgDBFP2BjWV_m-h_XrEvUGR7zX6O63C2IT3SKGDKM0SaLeNPXIObJpiQu5oT0MvatRQiC0-ZLmZsLB-tSeuJH1cEjRcfC-ck5fK0Nci5kZyUGZXJ_8QXhjq42NG7IG0OzX2QuGqHczSQM99UaE4aInrXeq3xEe7GNGLeFGpv-EFhgVAnRiqsgHkA/s5184/IMG_0414.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPJCOgDBFP2BjWV_m-h_XrEvUGR7zX6O63C2IT3SKGDKM0SaLeNPXIObJpiQu5oT0MvatRQiC0-ZLmZsLB-tSeuJH1cEjRcfC-ck5fK0Nci5kZyUGZXJ_8QXhjq42NG7IG0OzX2QuGqHczSQM99UaE4aInrXeq3xEe7GNGLeFGpv-EFhgVAnRiqsgHkA/w300-h400/IMG_0414.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><p>But I believe in hope. I think of those tiny little stems that are pushing their way through the soil and realize that I know exactly what those mean: I've checked seeds hundreds of times in my life, so I recognize an unfurling seedling when I see one. But I've also kept them watered so they could bloom. That's hope. Hope at its best is active, as my brilliant friend Katherine Arbuthnott argued in an essay she wrote for a group trying to cope with the trauma of climate change. When researchers studied the hope of people concerned about climate change, they uncovered something surprising, Katherine tells us: </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">"Only active
hope was associated with pro-environmental actions, including support for
environmental policies. Most importantly, participants reported that active
hope was most strongly evoked by seeing others working to solve problems, both
directly and indirectly....This suggests that the actions and communications of
local individuals and groups are particularly important for encouraging and
maintaining active hope. In a social species such as ours, it seems that the actions
of every person matter because they can counter the ever-present news of
climate inaction from our business and political leaders."</p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">When it comes to hope, small actions matter. I think I've written before--but it bears repeating--that the reason <i>homo sapiens</i> thrived when other hominids did not is that we're social learners. We're good at doing things we've seen others do. That means hope is catching and, like those tiny cucumber seeds, blooms in the small actions you take, the small actions you inspire in other people. Who knows? You might even inspire yourself.</p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-23927017501470051122022-05-13T13:04:00.000-06:002022-05-13T13:04:40.121-06:00A Hard-Won Spring<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfF2lxaFJ_x0SMSdyT-K269gw7yM_KbDQyKp4aKj7OTwkaWb6BW604JxhjKX371LC8nmqx72bkHZrco3qa_LIN192PTZHLnhWybqr3WnU-2S8riu00YMkXSbjPBE3Pu4c4UW6zBXre7YS8oy1eT1q0tdxk_86zaKiUT4NykawXymig0yLHxA8vA8WHqQ/s5184/IMG_0411.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfF2lxaFJ_x0SMSdyT-K269gw7yM_KbDQyKp4aKj7OTwkaWb6BW604JxhjKX371LC8nmqx72bkHZrco3qa_LIN192PTZHLnhWybqr3WnU-2S8riu00YMkXSbjPBE3Pu4c4UW6zBXre7YS8oy1eT1q0tdxk_86zaKiUT4NykawXymig0yLHxA8vA8WHqQ/w300-h400/IMG_0411.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p>We have no flooding or forest fires in Saskatchewan, so perhaps I shouldn't be whining so much. But this has been one of the most unpleasant springs ever. Our days have been very grey and cold: tulips are behind their normal budding about a week after Easter. My crabapple tree, which always blooms on May long weekend, has no more than tiny little leaves on it. And even the sunny days, which I drank up eagerly, getting out into the garden to start the spring cleanup, have often been windy. Windy days make my vertigo act up, probably because they come with changes to barometric pressure. But they also make me edgy. It's as if the wind threatens to sweep away parts of who I am. I can't look out a window without seeing chaos moving through the landscape or walk without feeling chaos on my skin. A single cloudy or windy day doesn't bother me, especially if it comes with rain. But a whole streak of rainy or windy days in a row--which we've often had this spring (calling it "spring" gives it too much credit) leaves me feeling like a deflated balloon. </p><p>On Wednesday about ten days ago, I woke up to such a morning after several similar mornings, and said "I can't do this." I seem to have an inner voice that only has two options when faced with a challenge: either "I can do this. No problem." Or a whining "I can't do this." It doesn't even deliver an explanation, though there are obvious candidates, with a few extras during Covid. Loneliness. Dismay at how greedy our "leaders" have been to lift mask and passport mandates in order to get the economy moving again and to please impatient voters. (That certainly hadn't worked here in Saskatchewan; we have the lowest GDP in the country and one of the higher death rates.) The after-effects of insomnia. Feeling that my writing is pure shit. Feeling that my writing makes no different in a world where a bully just decides to invade a neighbouring country. I'm supposed to be standing up for humanity, for beauty, but what good do humanity and beauty do in a world where a single person can say "I want...." and mobilize thousands of others to meet his desire and in the process kill and be killed? All those blasted apartment buildings we're shown on TV are people's homes and lives, and I can't stop thinking about that and about the needless deaths and trauma. These are glass half empty days in the life of someone who has fought hard to see her glass as half full.</p><p>How can the weather do this, tipping me over into helplessness? It's just weather. Unless it's thirty below and my furnace has to run full time just to keep the house warm, or unless it's thirty-five above (and we don't have air conditioning), weather has little effect on my comfort. What is weather all about if it isn't about comfort or the lack of it--unless you're a farmer and need rain or unless you're a farmer and need the rain to stop? </p><p>I have this sense that my moods are a heavy cloak. I don't mind holding it up for a while as I try to adjust my relationship with a magical and maddening universe so I can find enough hope to be a productive person. But at some point the arm holding my cloak off the floor gets stiff and then very tired. You wouldn't want to sully such an essential cloak; where would we be--<u>what</u> would we be without our moods? I count on the beauty of the natural world to hold my cloak for a while on those days when politicians don't care about human lives or tyrants have a good day with their bombs. Or those days when I have slept badly or can't find the words for my thoughts. Or the days when the people I love are struggling.</p><p>We had an unexpected nice day last weekend, so I got out into the garden to begin the spring cleaning. I rake my lawn fairly carefully in the fall so it can go on photosynthesizing even in the cool weather. But I rake most of those leaves onto perennial beds where they can decompose over winter and in the spring serve as cover for insects that the robins come looking for. So my first spring job is to lift the leaves off the things that bloom early: my two bleeding heart and the iris in the front yard. This is such a pedestrian thing to do. Nothing is particularly beautiful besides the air on your skin or the sounds of birds. But lifting decaying leaves off the bleeding heart and finding little white sprouts below--the layer of leaves prevented photosynthesis--was inexplicably joyful. I had uncovered a miracle. The week after that Sunday was nicer than expected--continuous rain had been forecast--so I tried to get out most days and work at turning over my vegetable garden. As I told the young man who shovels our snow and who offered to borrow a rototiller so he could rototill my garden, the one thing standing in the way of seeing myself as an old woman is the fact that I can still turn over my vegetable garden. At the end of an hour of digging, I'd roam the yard to see what was putting out buds--what, in effects, had made it through the winter. The hydrangeas, much to my delight had. The mahogany nine bark had, but I suspect the silver dogwood I'd planted as a companion hasn't.</p><p>All this spoke to the voice that said "I can't do this" with reassurance that in fact I could. That reassurance came in two ways. First, I know when I rake leaves over my perennial beds in the fall or lift them off in the spring, that I'm nature's handmaiden; nature's midwife. That's a small role that gives me joy. I'm also reminded of the fact that when the universe goes pear-shaped, but best thing is to look close to home--to look closely--to appreciate what it's just as easy to miss otherwise. My lemony lace elderberry turns bright and vivid green when spring really gets under way, but its buds are a wine red. My cats--another part of nature--are remarkably intuitive. My friends and family are the best.</p><p>Here's the thing that makes me curious, though. When we're in blue moods, we're inclined to pay attention to detail; happy people tend to see the big picture, something that makes them even happier. But during a rainy spring maybe paying attention to detail is all you have. Best to be mindful about it, to see its small miracle and to understand the place of the small in a universe that is constantly expanding.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /> <p></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-13611275064352739262022-04-06T09:58:00.004-06:002022-04-07T07:43:45.494-06:00Beauty and kindness; war and despair<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyw1SezoHzS6wv-p7zbNMHJZNbYaTLW2l9Be0bjlAh_Su9t-_s3xfxdS-b8u56j1m0pBF-aEs2XlFAOBWPZqutZw0roknzYY7GNYzuQC8tiFIOvco-1nVYQLEZ1at0nOMnEtBNgQ_hAd0csIYSsyeu9sW3bY6gGaIDeMCpbRu6mz7UnVieg2Ntv0b35Q/s5184/IMG_0410.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="3888" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyw1SezoHzS6wv-p7zbNMHJZNbYaTLW2l9Be0bjlAh_Su9t-_s3xfxdS-b8u56j1m0pBF-aEs2XlFAOBWPZqutZw0roknzYY7GNYzuQC8tiFIOvco-1nVYQLEZ1at0nOMnEtBNgQ_hAd0csIYSsyeu9sW3bY6gGaIDeMCpbRu6mz7UnVieg2Ntv0b35Q/w480-h640/IMG_0410.JPG" width="480" /></a></div><p>Last night I stood looking out the window at the dusky skyline; Lyra had joined me. The view was quite simple: the cloudy sky put the naked trees and the row of full evergreens into sharp relief. Lyra examined my face carefully, his expression changing, as if he were trying to read my mood. 'What's up with Mom?" he seemed to be asking as he turned his head and widened his eyes. It was simply this. That the world was so beautiful, even on a cloudy evening in raw spring; that Russian soldiers had committed atrocities in Bucha. Lyra purred and leaned into me the second I began to pet him.</p><p>I'm never sure what we mean this time a year when we say that a day is beautiful. A careful look reveals that it really isn't. While we can see the tree buds stretching and plumping every day, the overall effect is that the stark lace of tree branches just looks a little fuller at the top. There are dirty snowbanks everywhere. Where our lawns have been revealed, they're a sad green. But all this is visual. Our sense of touch is glorying in the warmer days, the softness of air on skin--on our faces, on our hands if we've decided to tough it out without our gloves. The sound of birds has changed as robins come north and add their liquid song to the staccato of sparrows. If I'm patient, I can smell earth and leaf mold, which I leave on the garden to provide cover to the insects the robins will seek as they return. I can't quite explain it, but the blue sky on a spring day says "Hang in there. You can do this." A blue that seems infinite promises that the future is there, waiting for us to join it--though it doesn't give us permission to ignore the fact that this moment is the only one we have right now. </p><p>As Russia built up its forces just outside of Ukraine, I still didn't think that Putin would invade--that he would risk starting World War III. I thought it was male posturing. Unhappy male posturing. One thing we need to remember is that Putin is a profoundly unhappy man, an unspeakably rich man who is not satisfied with what he has--riches from a large country that he's not really governing. He's just taking their riches for himself and other oligarchs. There is no satisfaction for such an unhappy person. No satisfaction in wealth and land and power because there's always more out there for the taking. But we also need to admit that such men are unpredictable.</p><p>The invasion sent me off for a philosophical talk with my therapist. Distraught, I simply didn't know how to see the world. I knew it was an important ethical task for me to witness what was going on. But what did I do with that knowledge? If I didn't <u>do</u> anything with it, did I still have to sit quietly with my horror and take in more every day? The answer was yes, but I didn't know why, though I knew that it had something to do with being honest to history. But that honesty threatened to erase the beauties of the present moment: my relationships with Bill and Veronica, wonderful friends, two cats who are the most affectionate and intuitive that I've ever had, and spring on the way. An earth, despite all we've done to her, who just doesn't stop being beautiful. </p><p>I imagined the present moment as the scales of justice. Putin was putting war, destruction, death, the loneliness and disorientation of refugees--and now unnecessary atrocities--in the left-hand pan. Going to war, I suppose, means that you will kill people. But it doesn't mean you have to rape, torture, and execute. What could I possibly put on the other side of the scales that would not be dishonest? The beauty of a spring day, a remarkable marriage, a daughter that's just an astonishing, loving person--how did I teach her that? Think of that miracle: that people can teach one another to be loving. Two cats who, from the beginning of the war, know that Mom is troubled and who stay close by? I was stopped briefly by that: my cats have figured out what Putin needs to know: that the meaning in our lives comes from the relationships we build, the care with which we build them, and from our mindful presence here and now.</p><p>All that on the other sides of the scales seemed, for all its wonder, inadequate.</p><p>And then, I realized I had the wrong metaphor, the wrong paradigm. In my blogs, I've often included links to the Future Crunch newsletter that comes out of Australia. The people who create Future Crunch are swimming upstream in the current media environment.* They write about the improvements human beings are making to health around the world, the latest tech wizardry, the creative and disciplined ways we are actually making progress on reducing our emissions and protecting ecosystems like forests and oceans and grasslands. Each newsletter ends with the story of an everyday person who has made a significant difference in the world. Last fall, Angus Hervey, its director, wrote about "the rope of history" after he gave us two starkly different views of the present moment. It isn't just horror that makes up the rope of history. It's also good things we do together and good things we do as individuals. From time to time the rope of history is dominated by wars and cruelty and hunger. But the creativity of individuals and cultures working toward progress is always there too.</p><p>Right now, it's kind of like looking at spring struggling to unfold. If we choose, we can see the beauty alongside the grittiness. Spring sunshine lights up the bark of trees and the feathers of sparrows, falls gently on our faces, but it also creates tangles of shadow. Except that spring goes on without us. It's not the same with humankind.</p><p>Rather than understanding my astonishment as dishonest, I have come to see it as necessary. What happens to that rope when we give in to despair and all the lack of care for others and the planet that follows close on the heels of despair? To keep the rope of history strong during this time, we need to celebrate the beauty and the goodness that threads through each of our lives. We need to realize that our lives matter. The attention we give to our lives matters. Every act of kindness and creativity adds another thread to the rope of history. </p><p><br /></p><p>The quilt above is a hybrid. The block is distinctly American, and is called a log cabin. The subtle fabrics are Japanese.</p><p>*Whether you agree with how mainstream media covers what's happening in the world--if it bleeds, it leads--thank them, please. Putin can only get away with this war because he controls Russian media with an iron hand and the threat of jail.</p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-15410229039032714202022-04-01T12:06:00.002-06:002022-04-01T12:06:27.493-06:00Writing about cooking is not always just about food: Bread and Water<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheVqAxw4yXL6AMATQDwdLPFAhPb8JW-CUBhY_tIkW4c3YZchJr74trDijVWkwH5lbW9od0htd7ehKBqloySaAbhrFTootNVkYo6ezriI2n2hORTV2YhRdoeJNxEF36kRt7TZpyMJMpUOyMZFuHqPWntSSd5M52kLgOiJ89oLzpTj1XxpLFXSkXo8bfMA/s5184/IMG_0409.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheVqAxw4yXL6AMATQDwdLPFAhPb8JW-CUBhY_tIkW4c3YZchJr74trDijVWkwH5lbW9od0htd7ehKBqloySaAbhrFTootNVkYo6ezriI2n2hORTV2YhRdoeJNxEF36kRt7TZpyMJMpUOyMZFuHqPWntSSd5M52kLgOiJ89oLzpTj1XxpLFXSkXo8bfMA/w400-h300/IMG_0409.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p> I have just finished re-reading dee Hobsbawn-Smith's luminous <i>Bread and Water</i>, and the second reading was worth it. Our lives are infused with food and drink, so the spine of dee's book immediately captures us and underscores what is important: our relationships with others, with pleasure, with the planet. And, oh, the writing about food! The metaphors! "Summer flows from spring like a butterscotch sundae." The fragrances and colours! When dee writes about food, it's a sensuous experience; she brings her poet's eye and ear to everything within her purview.</p><p>In some ways, this book of essays is a memoir. Were she not happy with the incisive <i>Bread and Water</i>, her title could have added that this was a book about family or a book about finding oneself. A book about taking risks--whether it's jumping with a horse or leaping into a job she wasn't ready for. But the essays, not arranged in any chronological order--not, indeed, subject to chronology--balance self and subject carefully. Memoir, as I understand it, differs from autobiography in that it doesn't even attempt a full accounting of one's life, instead using one's experiences as a lens on another topic altogether, albeit a topic that is central to the writer's life, curiosity, or passions. The architect Philip Johnson built himself a completely glass house--a simple but hardly livable structure--it had no library or sewing room. There's a story about the first night he spent there and actually inhabited the structure with the lights on. He phoned a friend to say "You've got to come over. I've turned on the lights and all I can see is me me me me me!" Autobiographies can be a bit like that. Memoirs are as curious about the world as about the self.</p><p>Dee links cooking and caring for others through the way family and food intertwine in her essays. We learn about her grandmother, who was generous with her time in the kitchen, teaching dee to make transparent strudel dough and showing her a central paradox that's almost existential: "Time has no meaning in the kitchen. Time means everything in the kitchen." Like all craftspeople, dee's grandmother knew that when we're cooking we commit ourselves to taking the time to do it right. But when we're feeding a large family, getting the timing right so every dish meets perfection at the same moment marks the cook's devotion to her or his craft.</p><p>We learn about dee's peripatetic life as an air force brat, at one point fetching up on the Vancouver Island coast and often gathering oysters for dinner. We learn about her father's cooking career, begun after dee's Mom could no longer cook, and about how his spread sheets showed the way he experimented with a recipe. We learn about her teaching her sons to cook and their choice to become chefs. We are invisible guests to the times when she cooks with these now adult children and how that brings back whole wafts of memories along with pleasure in the present. Some nights after I've had a rough day, Bill might ask me whether I really want to cook. I know he's being attentive and helpful, but he doesn't love cooking, so he doesn't quite grasp the fact that those are the very times to cook. The physical and sensuous experience of making pleasure for someone else perfectly balances with an intensive day writing. I've always thought that cooking combines basic yet pleasurable self-care with our drive to be generous to those we love and to give them pleasure; dee profoundly shares that belief. </p><p>Dee also links cooking with care and gratitude for the planet by writing about her commitment to slow food, a commitment to knowing your local farmers, cheesemakers, and vintners. Dee comes to the prairie version of the 100-mile diet via learning to cook with Madeleine Kamman in France. Madam began her days with her students by taking them to the market to see what was fresh, a practice dee translated to her Calgary restaurant, Foodsmith. There are points when the 100 mile diet severely limits what one can eat or drink--the thought of a morning without coffee terrifies me, and dee was saddened by the loss of the spices that can make a lovely Moroccan or Indian stew out of a bit of meat, some beans or pulses, and a few vegetables. Without olive oil, she learned to cook with rendered duck fat. She uses local vinegars and home-grown herbs to give her dishes panache. "What grows together goes together," she tells us. But she also teaches us that the fresh, intense flavours of local food make simple cooking into something remarkable. Here is dee's "bellweather moment. My reconnection to a local diet came with unexpected benefits. A deeper sense of immediacy and place meant I ate what the moment and the weather rendered possible....Casting this net created a symbiotic network. I knew the people who grew my food and they knew me." She pleads with us to make time for good food and the relationships it builds with growers and family and friends, and to realize that "locally grown will feed us better than what has travelled thousands of miles." </p><p>The pandemic has made many of us leery about eating out. Dee gives us insight into what goes on in the backrooms of restaurants: the sexism, the physical demands of coping with the heat of a kitchen and staying on your feet for hours on end. And high-end restaurants are hardly the worst: dee's first job in Fernie B.C. involved buses "parked like ghostly mastodons," unloading hungry tourists at ten and four everyday, where dee was expected to organize the many moving parts of a kitchen. It was a lonely, exhausting, isolating job from which she fled. Essays like "Cooking for James" and "Love Affair with a Wolf" (a riff, I suspect on M.F.K. Fisher's <i>How to Cook a Wolf), </i>she gives us the insider's view of restaurants. You know what? Maybe we should occasionally tip more generously. And maybe, when we've really enjoyed a dish, we should send a comment back to the chef. They are unsung heroes and only get complaints, I'll bet. </p><p>Dee has certainly had experience with water. Her Calgary house was flooded in June 2013 by the Bow River. Her prairie farmhouse was graced by an ad hoc lake in 2011, the result of record-breaking snow fall which came swift on the heals of a summer of unprecedented rain. She made lemonade of lemons when she and her husband Dave held mid-winter bonspiels, feeding them, of course. But the essay called "Floodplain" is the occasion of some of dee's most poetic and insightful writing. I think I'll just end my casual review with her words. They will show you what a treat you have in store:</p><p>"Water is light, mirror-glass physics, angle of incidence equals angle of refraction. Is mercury droplets. A sheet. Ice/steam/fluid. Invisible. A rock-chipped diamond. A skater's agony. A skier's liftoff above the T-bar. Raft supporter, life raft. Float. Inhale, and death to all but fish. Life and death. Water is blue green aqua emerald azure cobalt sapphire cerulean indigo. Sea of Tranquility. Sea of despond. Sea of heartache. Water is in. Out. Fashionable bottles, stored, iced, jugged, poured, hoarded, squandered. Water is hip. The arctic, tamed and bottled, icerbergs with olives and a twist. Tankers, plastic bottles forming floating islands of post-industrial despair in the oceans. Glasses. A mattress. Water is eternal. Evanescent. A desert. An ocean." </p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-44489892799133317182022-03-07T16:29:00.002-06:002022-03-07T16:29:42.248-06:00Being Grateful<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiVPDuMpa_uKk7n8uNKIN_-PAkvvUmcpzvRQ7wij2FP7pAUVA81gC46qx_Yu-DtVuza7fANamH3Or--dsXpzZ50h4md3YvX01k9xn2h-jbR4Dh1uqp74lb6yYVQNLeuau2CP2En-3ymPeznSKC-S3egocHy6Rv7yDITVEtnlDPDVDIoYKjT0rxzh0y-pQ=s5184" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiVPDuMpa_uKk7n8uNKIN_-PAkvvUmcpzvRQ7wij2FP7pAUVA81gC46qx_Yu-DtVuza7fANamH3Or--dsXpzZ50h4md3YvX01k9xn2h-jbR4Dh1uqp74lb6yYVQNLeuau2CP2En-3ymPeznSKC-S3egocHy6Rv7yDITVEtnlDPDVDIoYKjT0rxzh0y-pQ=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></div><p>At the end of February, my brain uttered a couple of sentences that were initially surprising. Once, it observed that I was grateful to be doing the dishes. The second time, I was grateful to be able to play Bach, albeit on a very old and out-of-tune piano. </p><p>That first sentence told me how startling and violent and shocking the first images of women and children fleeing Ukraine were. Doing the dishes, even before locking up the house they hoped to return to, was utterly beside the point. When they were on the road, it was the least of their worries. What could they actually take? What could they carry, along with the two-year-old who would sometimes need to be held? What on earth were the logistics of spending days in your car waiting to cross the Polish border? How could you have enough food and water? I remembered a moving photograph by Dorothea Lange, who documented the dirty thirties in the U.S.: an unending road reaching the vanishing point, open fields with nothing in them but dust, and a young couple pulling two children in a wagon. It has always stood for me for those moments in history when people must turn their backs on the known world and turn their faces to the unknown, and the unspeakable number of times people have had to do this. </p><p>Feeling grateful to be doing the dishes acknowledged how even the most ordinary labours of my life marked me among the fortunate and reminded me of Viktor Frankl's <i>Man's Search for Meaning</i>, which I'd begun to read a week before. In the concentration camps, he tells of being grateful for the smallest things, like getting a bowl of soup from the bottom of the pot, where there are actually a few vegetables. Any act of kindness was worthy of gratitude, no matter how small. And he found he could get positively excited when he was being transferred to another camp, a smaller camp, one that didn't even have a chimney. </p><p>If being grateful for doing dishes was "ridiculous," being grateful for playing Bach was the "sublime." I hoped that their days would have some beauty in them; a smile on an unfamiliar face, the bright purple of a child's hat, the calm grey before dawn arrived. Frankl tells of being dead tired at the end of a day and having one of his fellow prisoners rush in to call them to beauty: "Standing outside we saw sinister clouds glowing in the west and the whole sky alive with clouds of ever-changing shapes and colors from steel blue to blood red. The desolate grey mud huts provided a sharp contrast, while the puddles on the muddy ground reflected the glowing sky. Then, after minutes of moving silence, one prisoner said to another, 'How beautiful the world <i>could</i> be!'" That the universe simply drops such revelations of beauty into people's hands in a concentration camp is an affirmation that there is some meaning for which we can hold out a little longer.</p><p>Beauty remained life-saving. He tells of working at dawn in a trench and of having an inner conversation with his wife about whether he would give in to hopelessness. And just at that moment when he might have decided hopelessness was more powerful than the will to survive, "a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria." There was often music in the camps which highlighted the difference between sublime beauty and the greys of brutality.</p><p>Well might Frankl have wondered whether there was freedom in a concentration camp. Even when he was in a slightly better situation as a doctor in a typhus hospital, the utterly arbitrary rules of the concentration camp--even forgetting the barbed wire for a moment, if one could--shaped his days. When his field hospital was being "inspected," the inspectors cared more about how the patients' feet were tucked in among the blankets and whether there were any wisps of straw on the floor than whether the patients had the medications they needed. Being both rule-bound and arbitrary gave the Nazis the psychological edge. Yet Frankl tells us that there were men who often did something kind, comforted others, gave away a precious piece of bread. "They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."</p><p>This is what we are so admiring of the Ukrainians now as they are led by a defiant Volodymyr Zelensky. In their heroic defiance, they are maintaining their freedom--and ours. While the Russians, like the Nazis, have a tactical advantage, one they exploit by announcing cease-fires around humanitarian routes--and then shelling them--the Ukrainians refuse to be dehumanized or cowed. They have already inspired North Americans and Europeans by their vivid example of maintaining one's freedom in the face of might. </p><p><br /></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-72335324824559345522022-02-28T11:01:00.002-06:002022-02-28T11:02:27.735-06:00Finding ways to act in times of uncertainty<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In this startling and dismaying year, three things have happened that I could not have predicted. The first was that Omicron, arriving nearly two years after the Chinese admitted that there was a pandemic loose in Wuhan, would cause higher levels of illness than we had yet seen. Watching the numbers skyrocket was surreal, especially since so many Canadians were vaccinated. When Dr. Bonnie Henry said "There's always a second wave," I believed her. But I thought that in a year's time--by spring of 2021--we'd be done. COVID-19 has changed our world in ways we can barely begin to see. I worry especially about what it has done to the performing arts and universities. And I am grateful to libraries for dispensing quick COVID tests and showing their patrons how to access their health records for proof of vaccination. I don't know about you, but libraries and bookstores kept me sane--or as sane as I've managed to be.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The second was the freedom convoy to Ottawa, where some Canadians were unspeakably rude and violent and others woefully misinformed about how democracy, and Canadian democracy worked. Did they really think they could protest and honk their way into a government coup? I try to think about each protester imagining they had the power and authority to undo a democratic election, and my mind boggles. What role did hot tubs and bouncy castles play in their efforts to change Canada's constitution? What has happened to the limits on the words "I want"?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The third of course is the invasion of Ukraine. I knew, just as you and world leaders knew, that Putin was lying about the coming and the going of troops on Ukraine's borders. But one of the things I've learned about the powerful from Rutger Bregman is that shamelessness of the powerful is unlimited, as is their ability to lie shamelessly. Nevertheless, I was a victim of what Viktor Frankl calls "the delusion of reprieve," something that Jews in the death camps felt in order to keep the will to survive. "This is not really going to get as bad for me as I think it might," is an infinite loop in the mind of someone whose right to exist and whose humanity is under erasure.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Yes, the powerful are different from us. Bregman identifies their disability as "acquired sociopathy." It arises, he tells us, "after a blow to the head that damages key regions of the brain and can turn the nicest people into the worst kind of Machiavellian. It transpires that people in power display the same tendencies. They literally act like someone with brain damage. Not only are they more impulsive, self-centred, reckless, arrogant and ruder than average, they are more likely to cheat on their spouses, are less attentive to other people and less interested in others' perspectives. They're also more shameless, often failing to manifest that one facial phenomenon that makes human beings unique among primates. They don't blush." Blushing is the human tell, out there for everyone to see, that we know we're being evil and unreasonable. Pasty-faced Putin doesn't blush.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">If this seems like too much to take in a mere two months into 2022 (Omicron identified toward the end of November 2021), that's because it is. So I'd recommend that you visit Shawna Lemay's comforting blog, <i>Transactions with Beauty</i>: "It's Hard to Concentrate right now." The link is below. I'm in more of a "Don't let the bastards get you down" mood. In the face of such profound uncertainty, it helps if there are things we can do.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Putin has threatened every Russian journalist with fines up to $60,000 if they publish any thing about the war that they didn't find on official Russian sites. They've shut down Facebook as much as they can so people can't gather or share accurate information. Yuval Noah Hirari tells us that nations are built on stories. (A link to his essay in <i>The Guardian, </i>"Why Vladimir Putin has already lost this war," is below.) So you can support a thriving journalism culture in Canada. You can support free speech. Buy newspapers. Join PEN Canada. We know from what happened in Ottawa and what is happening next door, justified by the shout "fake news!" that the truth has become vulnerable in the cesspool of conspiracy theories and personal desires. Do what you can to keep it alive. Support libraries, another form of literacy, the only public space where everyone, whether they have money or a roof over their head or not--is welcome.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">What we see acted out by the Freedom Convoy and Putin's war is a belief that individual desires are sacrosanct, not to be questioned, debated, or thwarted--under threat of nuclear attack or attempted coup. We need to call rampant individualism into question by celebrating "The Commons." What do we share that we can't do without? Paved roads and traffic regulations. Public transit. Clean air. Clean water. (Though unfortunately this isn't available to all of us. It's a file we seriously need to work on.) Health care and hospitals. Libraries, Schools and all post-secondary institutions. Parks and other places of respite. What we need, especially in Saskatchewan, is to shift the conversation away from individual wishes and actions toward a recognition that the things we hold in common--like information about how many COVID cases there are in a province with no vaccine passports or mask requirements in place--are crucial to our health and well-being. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">We can keep alive beauty and hope in our daily lives. They lighten our hearts and nourish our souls and give us the energy to fight "the bastards." We can keep kindness and tolerance alive. Think of every act of kindness or smile of tolerance as counterweight to Putin and our homegrown protesters. Anne Applebaum wrote in December's <i>Atlantic</i> about the fact that democracy is under threat and that the autocrats are winning. It used to be that one in every two people lived in a democracy. Now it's one in five. Beauty and hope and kindness and tolerance won't directly allow Canadians to effect the war in Ukraine, though we're hearing stories about people in Poland who are driven by exactly those values to help those fleeing the war. We have to support their generosity and altruism by keeping those qualities alive here. And who knows how such ideals spread in the real world? But they sure as hell don't spread if we aren't practicing them. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">And there are donations. UNHCR is gearing up to give respite to Ukrainians fleeing the war. Donations to the Canadian Red Cross, which is already at work, will be met, dollar for dollar, by the Canadian government. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://www.unhcr.org/ukraine.html" target="_blank">UNHCR in Ukraine</a> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/canada-plans-to-match-individual-donations-to-red-cross-for-ukraine-dollar-for-dollar-1.5796076" target="_blank">Canadian Red Cross</a><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7268764116138678864/8919168478933812952" target="_blank">The Commons during a pandemic</a><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="http://transactionswithbeauty.com/home/itshardtoconcentrate?fbclid=IwAR3kSELovL3Ui9kNgBMB6aora7PHjVgsRtHDAcMCs8PUVMaRYd-kshIVREk" target="_blank">"It's hard to concentrate right now"</a><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/vladimir-putin-war-russia-ukraine" target="_blank">Why Vladimir Putin has already lost this war</a> </span></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-18176796253293203362022-02-10T10:48:00.001-06:002022-02-10T10:51:21.863-06:00Imperfect metaphors<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOrOKNjXcvKnWIBliGivHFiHj3TyiJxk27wTeDIMSzqfOvRKA261wJrbxt-7xIgvidkuIEiDtiZEJA3-ID0J434qv2-YjHBYPOLxx9MrRC7LV-TmSmrfLvKnWEohiTxOVf10bawOyHMvI_8xJAZ66gWNO3llvnw0yxykRPFEF45rcy6iu5cVnXCessoQ=s5184" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOrOKNjXcvKnWIBliGivHFiHj3TyiJxk27wTeDIMSzqfOvRKA261wJrbxt-7xIgvidkuIEiDtiZEJA3-ID0J434qv2-YjHBYPOLxx9MrRC7LV-TmSmrfLvKnWEohiTxOVf10bawOyHMvI_8xJAZ66gWNO3llvnw0yxykRPFEF45rcy6iu5cVnXCessoQ=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></div><p>My large work table takes up far too much space in my little workroom. I've been meaning to get it downstairs for a while, but wanted to get a few quilts basted up for hand quilting before I did so. So I've been going through my unfortunately large pile of pieced tops to see what I wanted to work on, and came across the one above that Lyra is admiring. In an incongruous way, it reminded me of attending the post-sabbatical show of a Winnipeg painter nearly forty years ago. His enormous canvases were mostly painted in dark greyed-out colours with floating abstract and jagged shapes articulated in charcoal. A naive graduate student at the time, I asked what I was supposed to see, and he explained his work to me patiently and carefully. What I was supposed to see was quite interesting, but I couldn't quite see it. For me, that incident has always stood for the gap between conception and finished work of art. Theodore Adorno talks about that magical moment when the work of art is the equivalent of itself. Since I read his <i>Aesthetics</i> in English, I feel I can't be exactly sure what he means, but I suspect most artists have felt it occasionally: your poem or painting or photograph actually comes close to what you wanted to achieve. Conversely, we all know art, sometimes our own, sometimes others', that fails that test. We know and can articulate what we want to do but can't quite pull it off. I should say that moments ago I found his paintings online and was quite moved. That adds another variable that frustrates many of us: some people can see a work that is the equivalent of itself. Some can't.</p><p>As a quilter, I try to evoke a mood. As well, I want to make something visually engaging, something that makes you want to look at it carefully and begin to see the juxtapositions of fabrics I've made. Perhaps it even prompts you to look at the way my tiny little points--sometimes eight at a time--meet up exactly. Craftsmanship is often as important as conception. But when I looked at that little quilt, well crafted though it was, my reaction was "Meh."</p><p>I haven't been sleeping well lately, so a couple of days after I looked at those nice block in their unexciting setting, I spent my insomniac hours taking it apart, rescuing the blocks. As I did so, I found myself considering the challenges I'm facing as a writer. It isn't enough that the work is well-crafted. At the ground floor of literature lies the challenge of word choice and sentence structure, rhythm and sound. I'm good at that. In my teens, I was a champion at sentence diagramming, and given a single sentence, I can still probably come up with three or four other syntaxes. Then out comes the old thesaurus--I handle it gingerly because it is falling apart--where I consider word choice and the kinds of sound and rhythm that might undergird the sense. In other words, my hands told me as I wielded my seam ripper, I can make good blocks. But do I have a vision? And here is the question I think many writers are asking themselves today: do I have a vision that other people will care about or consider significant?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgFNAzUiayAuJVv-NasBAfTXOTyW6ugLBJuo2tWWGZuq_udXlejnm8T0AFQYAfvP3ccfc8zySt6MQi9fii7hcvDR55-oOBMmBX4GNWhmgJQdui7hV8gsiQ4TJh6I3lSdZOC6UDmFmN9Hd0vHlQHFseACHkH6snkYL-ELcvmcA5uHHuVro1s6McBm4wQ7w=s4320" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3240" data-original-width="4320" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgFNAzUiayAuJVv-NasBAfTXOTyW6ugLBJuo2tWWGZuq_udXlejnm8T0AFQYAfvP3ccfc8zySt6MQi9fii7hcvDR55-oOBMmBX4GNWhmgJQdui7hV8gsiQ4TJh6I3lSdZOC6UDmFmN9Hd0vHlQHFseACHkH6snkYL-ELcvmcA5uHHuVro1s6McBm4wQ7w=s320" width="320" /></a></div><p>The quilt above is put together in one of the traditional ways quilters use: pieced blocks alternate with plain blocks. Sometimes, as in the quilt on the right that I made for Nikka some years back, the plain blocks contain lots of quilting. There are some advantages to this structure. First, you don't have to make so many pieced blocks, which takes quite a lot of time. In the finished version below, which is thirty inches square, there are 433 pieces. They all had to be sewn together. Plain blocks can also calm a quilt down. But I could see that no amount of quilting was going to make those 4 1/2 inch blocks interesting, while blocks pieced together can yield secondary patterns. In the original version, I'd added a playful touch: I used a toile for the plain blocks, in the order in which I cut them, so a viewer could actually put the toile back together mentally. Clever, eh? But cleverness is pointless if the quilt is boring or doesn't make a statement. Convention plus cleverness only gets you so far as an artist. </p><p>Taking the quilt apart also made me think about revision. When I taught students to write, I would urge them not to revise until they had a whole, partly because they could spend an hour revising a paragraph they might later cut. That advice is meant to save them time, which is at a premium when you are taking five classes and each of your professors wants a research paper at the end of term. I now don't follow my own advice, instead revising in two ways. I start each day revising what I wrote the day before; that gets me into the flow of what I'm creating. Then I go back to drafting but can make more intimate and subtle connections with what has gone before. And then, of course, there's the big structural revision where you cut what isn't working and reshape what remains. That's the point when I bring my big worktable up from the basement and spread chapters and pages and poems out to see how the whole thing can best be built. That's the point I'd gotten to with the original quilt. To make it the equivalent of itself, I had to be willing to take the whole thing apart.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhfGNfI_KpbynNva16yykSeTbVLtbdMzYWYP2xGTP_TSiNxgkG-npXqVwdl7wPU4Dlpkp0v9Gvq-TjzkinC-hr5BQaF9GGzbK1Pyop3le_2hUY1ghDdHa3boDcRnzOe69AGrGpAlHoNg4SYkU9RodAoumqMfb6iEQ9K8AhJHDVoGEF1CQXIuchSfhhVtw=s5184" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhfGNfI_KpbynNva16yykSeTbVLtbdMzYWYP2xGTP_TSiNxgkG-npXqVwdl7wPU4Dlpkp0v9Gvq-TjzkinC-hr5BQaF9GGzbK1Pyop3le_2hUY1ghDdHa3boDcRnzOe69AGrGpAlHoNg4SYkU9RodAoumqMfb6iEQ9K8AhJHDVoGEF1CQXIuchSfhhVtw=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></p><p>In the same way, I took four of the blocks from the original quilt and sewed them together to see if they worked or were too busy. Instead, I found they created some echoing patterns; you could see the architecture of the block. Then I sat down to choose fabrics for new blocks--twelve more--cut out more tiny pieces and began putting them together. I had hoped to keep the original borders, so added more blue. It also needed a dash of black here and there for sharpness. I bootlegged the toile I'd used for the plain blocks into one of these. It's turned out to be a cheerful quilt, a bit funky, even though all the blocks are made of reproductions--fabric designed to look like it was made in the nineteenth century. I might even say that the original version is polite; this one isn't.</p><p>Here's the part of revising that no quilting metaphor will help with. How do you reveal what's important without getting out your hammer and tacking up a sign? How do you hold your readers, making them what Virginia Woolf called her "co-creators"? How do you find those moments in a draft that are easy and clever but need you to stop and stare at them for half an hour, finding ways to dig more deeply, to push your understanding of the human condition and this magical planet we all inhabit? I think I get there after a while--after a long time. More insomniac nights than it took to take this little quilt apart.</p><p>It's clearly Lyra's quilt. When I put it on the floor to photograph, he ran right over and begin posturing.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWotUSHdke5DrVBRvVR4UrfdJbZM01UvkreZNzp84G7UKyk76hhPgD0WOgsiVWWp36zcti4x0dP7sLne33uOmO54BQNKgv19UsxuUEdMxAx23vYHcVbl9kzEo7kKjIP3IU8A1PJU_WGTwqG2jCzSkLNbYw_A0tAL_bmcElwXrid44TQBTrYFxUvNmEow=s5184" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWotUSHdke5DrVBRvVR4UrfdJbZM01UvkreZNzp84G7UKyk76hhPgD0WOgsiVWWp36zcti4x0dP7sLne33uOmO54BQNKgv19UsxuUEdMxAx23vYHcVbl9kzEo7kKjIP3IU8A1PJU_WGTwqG2jCzSkLNbYw_A0tAL_bmcElwXrid44TQBTrYFxUvNmEow=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7268764116138678864.post-26610389277260622072022-01-21T10:29:00.002-06:002022-01-21T10:29:27.345-06:00Snow Days and beauty<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi0Gn8hcT8xvcg1DkNgbb3Mxxhi4FbG8Nny9KDCisC2h6hID4oFQZXArOAMZHLJSsvhsSjELZq9Zp_8FBeAeNIH4d2aCVfKFf6AZqoJqnONPPdHt1MM7fhplS2GYGFdyfMBKLfn4oE-GcJ0LXu3cWCw4Em6a9rNSyt9rqRW3qU65oKNPrIIFnIFwCkbeQ=s5184" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi0Gn8hcT8xvcg1DkNgbb3Mxxhi4FbG8Nny9KDCisC2h6hID4oFQZXArOAMZHLJSsvhsSjELZq9Zp_8FBeAeNIH4d2aCVfKFf6AZqoJqnONPPdHt1MM7fhplS2GYGFdyfMBKLfn4oE-GcJ0LXu3cWCw4Em6a9rNSyt9rqRW3qU65oKNPrIIFnIFwCkbeQ=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></div><br /> There is nothing more boring than basting up a quilt. The fun stuff is done. You've pulled fabric out of your stash whose colours and styles embody the mood you want for your quilt--because for me, each quilt is a mood. I'm not an artist; I'm happy evoking a mood. Then each block was an adventure as you chose fabrics that go with one another and yet contrast, so that they sing. Then you decided how you will put those blocks together. Did they go together edge to edge, almost vibrating with busy-ness? Here's mood again, on another level. Or did you use lattices or plain blocks of fabric between them to calm them down? You've decided whether you'll have a border and what you'll do with that border. One of my weaknesses as a quilter is that I can never "see" the next stage until I'm ready for it. I make some blocks I love and hope it will work. This process is both exciting and fraught with anxiety. Right now I'm taking a quilt apart because the way I put them together was so 'meh.' But I've got new plans I'll write about in a couple of weeks. <div><br /></div><div>When you've got the quilt top together, you get to shift into another gear altogether. I find hand quilting meditative and soothing, and since I'm starting a new writing project I thought I should get some quilt tops ready to hand quilt. When I get into the rhythm of the tiny stitches, my mind wanders--sometimes quite purposefully, sometimes waywardly. I wanted to baste up a couple of small things I could just pick up. And I wanted to make some progress on the quilt tops that are collecting in my study, so I basted up two lap size and two small ones.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhv_TNKKXxiAMoq4TpCgWYXuCz6lVe_D-I9Y2U9eynwCNmk0mu3qXQ04-ltSp-UWqoaoKZ2XdHLOKqYZMQE0z_9Wl4sCr1pajEpS_KWm7aPFqFIV4DCc3oFXLGnDInrGTCP2CyGLHXctXQRLnK8PfNls2wS4Zvl6o0VcY9pP9dhGa51nKtKu_uaXWQq3A=s5184" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhv_TNKKXxiAMoq4TpCgWYXuCz6lVe_D-I9Y2U9eynwCNmk0mu3qXQ04-ltSp-UWqoaoKZ2XdHLOKqYZMQE0z_9Wl4sCr1pajEpS_KWm7aPFqFIV4DCc3oFXLGnDInrGTCP2CyGLHXctXQRLnK8PfNls2wS4Zvl6o0VcY9pP9dhGa51nKtKu_uaXWQq3A=s320" width="320" /></a></div><p>But between the exciting anxiety and the meditative work, there's frustration and boredom. First, you have to convince your top, your batting, and the backing you've chosen to line up straight without a wrinkle anywhere. Then you find a large, sturdy needle, a spool of white thread, the thimble with a little edge around its top that will catch and push a large needle, and you begin to baste. Every three or four inches top to bottom and side to side. </p><div>It should have been boring, except I think we've learned something about boredom during the pandemic. That there are worse things. That there's lots you can do to ameliorate it. I knew that once I got my basting rhythm my hands would know what to do and I would be able to let my thoughts wander. The cats came to see what I was up to.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj4657LkeBXenRpfzLoCIWb4i-iKeY_0crd3j11x7mrfLLbqmw5sW4PGhpzmr2A1j5S249EUGmasGyVeYGR__xzLi9hqw5hp4Ph7ebtCqEwlGjHLsItyB1h7U3XEaMLMSnZozCp3Z5-7-zAyo6Ysq0BouqYtZ3vpdAmmfRNTD-sI9k25A3jwAuSC7EnzQ=s5184" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj4657LkeBXenRpfzLoCIWb4i-iKeY_0crd3j11x7mrfLLbqmw5sW4PGhpzmr2A1j5S249EUGmasGyVeYGR__xzLi9hqw5hp4Ph7ebtCqEwlGjHLsItyB1h7U3XEaMLMSnZozCp3Z5-7-zAyo6Ysq0BouqYtZ3vpdAmmfRNTD-sI9k25A3jwAuSC7EnzQ=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div>I listen to two Radio Three weekend jazz programs, one of old standards that readers write in to request, and one of very cutting edge work that I'm not sure I understand and appreciate fully, but that's okay. You can still hear the creativity hitting the air, and that's why I listen. Besides, there are worse things than being bathed in the unfamiliar. In fact, I feel like two women at once. One is a conventional boring woman in Regina spending a sunny winter day inside basting up quilts. She's a fuddy-duddy, my mother would have said, doing something so last century--and the century before that. And the other is a woman who just loves the unpredictability, the uncertainty of jazz, who admires the way the musicians have these very complicated conversations with the the song they're playing and with their instruments and with one another. This woman was in a jazz club somewhere, hearing the invention of music unfold. So there's lots to get excited about when you are basting up a quilt and listening to jazz. And, paradoxically, there's some common ground between how I make a quilt and how a group of musicians brings all the threads of a jazz performance together--leaving some loose, perhaps, for another time. Under the influence of the jazz, I could even admire the blocks I'd made, some of them not conventional or even proper. At one point, I was short one small equilateral triangle for a block, so I just picked up another fabric. I'm wondering whether anyone will ever see my "mistake."</div><div><br /></div><div>It was, seemingly, a day for paradoxes, because listening to jazz and basting up a quilt, I completely forgot the pandemic, the surreal spread of the Omicron variant. I guess I'd chosen my quiet day, my isolation, rather than having it thrust on me. I had just finished reading a book by Jerome Segal called <i>Graceful Simplicity.</i> Segal finds it difficult to define gracefulness, though he argues that we know it by its absence. I came to think of it as a matter of time and space. Essentially, he means our surroundings are simple enough to give our thoughts space; it is apparently difficult, researchers tell me, to think Great Thoughts in a cluttered room. Think of the artist retreats you've been on. One of the reasons they are so productive is that someone else takes care of the shopping, cooking, and even cleaning. But the other, I'll warrant, is that you are detached from all your stuff. Packing, you realized how little you really need. And that cleared some space in your head. Or think of vacations you've gone on when your mind seemed so much clearer, ready to take in what you saw, ready to record your experiences. Part of that you might simply call "vacation mindfulness." But part of it is being in a time outside time.</div><div><br /></div><div>We need beauty in both our spaces and our schedules. The value behind my obsessive quilt making is beauty: I hope the quilts drop an element of beauty into a life and that they remind us of the importance of what Roger Scruton calls "everyday beauty." Aesthetics don't get into this area much, but what's the point of a beautiful piece of ceramics or a beautiful photograph is it's surrounded by space that shows its owner doesn't really value beauty? Or who thinks beauty is confined to art galleries and gallery shops?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivT8XYDVxNhi4bHpft2-sU_HMoYWAG9hUh3dxwkZiNulZVNcg1oHGtwm8mPo2aFsiJA-tqDLxojIz5tCeeAQIdu5mJB0W1LARI5veKKtyh7aiIqJoEf3lBHQXxA2HVmRnqz7Aqg-rGWEfIDJ3-zFoOUwBJakoMVfaVNg-yPvmlc9heRBqzdYQkDOPZhw=s5184" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivT8XYDVxNhi4bHpft2-sU_HMoYWAG9hUh3dxwkZiNulZVNcg1oHGtwm8mPo2aFsiJA-tqDLxojIz5tCeeAQIdu5mJB0W1LARI5veKKtyh7aiIqJoEf3lBHQXxA2HVmRnqz7Aqg-rGWEfIDJ3-zFoOUwBJakoMVfaVNg-yPvmlc9heRBqzdYQkDOPZhw=s320" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>But the other element of my quilts is time. I hand quilt most of my work unless it's going on a bed--and is simply too big for me to hand quilt. I don't rush. When I first sit down to quilt, I take a stitch at a time. Only once my stitches have settled into the the size and regularity that makes me happy--and I pull out a fair number--do I try to get two or three stitches on my needle. And here Segal helps explain what I'm doing: "To live well means giving things the time they deserve, be it time for children, one's spouse and lover, one's friends, or the garden....[Or basting up a quilt!] When we act in haste, whether it be at work or with friends, our activity and ultimately our very being becomes a mere means to some intended outcome. When this is our general way of being in the world, we have failed in what Thoreau identified as the great enterprise--to make living poetic."</div><div><br /></div><div>This is what snow days are for--or cold snowy weekends. We've been handed this time out of time so we can make something beautiful--a meaningful conversation, a photograph, a letter, or a quilt. Snow days and jazz make the boredom of basting up a quilt a pleasure. No one will ever see how carefully you basted up your quilt except indirectly through the quilting that is even and that doesn't shift around wrinkles in the batting or backing. But there is a gracefulness in giving this task the time it deserves.</div><div><br /> <br /><p><br /></p></div></div>Kathleen Wallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02600340942046394429noreply@blogger.com1