Learning Sideways

Often it's not enough for me to learn a lesson once.  I learn it and slip into old habits. At some point the universe whacks me upside the head and I have another chance to 'get it.'  I had one of those experiences this morning.  I'm in Vancouver attending a writing workshop that has become an annual ritual in my life. When I first began to attend these I felt almost panicky when I sat down to write.  What if I couldn't think of anything?  What if all of it was drivel? "Keep writing,"  I told myself, "just keep pressing those keys.  Keep going even if you're tired of it.  Change direction and keep going."

Over the last few years I have been writing differently and, as I have noticed before in my life, what I have learned has come sideways. When I was teaching, something in science, music or art would often bring insights about how to teach. Today I approach writing differently because I'm a woodworker. When I'm doing a project in wood I often take time to just sit back and look at it.  I'm not even conscious of thinking about it sometimes. I just sit and take it in. Sometimes I talk to myself about it and sometimes I call it rather uncomplimentary names. Other times I get busy with a pencil and paper and draw out possibilities while I talk to myself.

In all of these activities there is a stepping back without stepping away. I'm still engrossed in the project but I can now allow time and space to just sit with it. I'm finding the same thing with my writing. I won't say that it makes the writing better but I think it makes the process better for me. When I come to a place where I want to stop and sit with it I do. I get up, make a cup of tea, look out the window and then go back to it. It is a less pressured, less rushed way of writing than I have practiced in the past and it feels more sure-footed. Knowing me,I will have to learn this lesson again, but for now, I feel more confident with the stops and starts and with the silences.

The adventure continues.

Tea with the Senegal

I haven't looked back to see the precise date of the entry but early on I wrote a blog post called "Breakfast with the Budgies." Much has changed since that post. Among other things, we are down to 1 bird from a maximum of 4 and I no longer eat breakfast.  Odie has been moulting lately and has been both cranky and weird.  He's been nippy which is understandable as the new sheathed-feathers poke through his skin and hurt if we catch them the wrong way. He bit Richard's arm a while ago. He has been quieter than usual and, if I were to anthropomorphize even further, I'd say he was sulking.

I'm not much good at selfies but you get the idea.

I was out at a friend's working on a wood project for two days over the long weekend.  Odie didn't have much to do with Richard but when I came home Odie called me  5 times asking for head scratches.  Now that's weird. In case you're wondering I've taught him a particular whistle when he wants my attention.  Some people think I'm nuts but I find it more pleasant than having him squawk.  When he whistles I go over to the cage and he puts his head against the bars so I can scratch.  Sometimes our scratching sessions last for several minutes while he cheeps quietly.

I've been saying for some time that if Odie and I could get to a place where I could move him around the house he could hang out with me in my study and he'd get a lot more attention.  I'm a bit of a slow learner.  Richard often sits in the dining room with his computer where Odie can see him.  Today I decided to take my computer into the dining room and sit beside Odie's cage while I watched one of my woodworking videos and had my tea. When Odie naps in the afternoon he sits in the middle of his cage on the large square perch and he was there when I sat down with my computer and my tea.  I pulled a chair up close to the cage and he came up to the front and fixed one eye on the screen.  We watched for half an hour like that.  Every once in a while I'd look over at him and he would blink.  He didn't ask for head scratches.

As I'm writing this I'm back in my study where I can concentrate better and all is quiet in the bird cage. I don't know if having tea with Odie regularly will make any difference to the way we get along but it's not a hard thing for me to do and it certainly can't hurt.  I'll keep you posted.

Thoughts on the Fort McMurray fire

As I write this the city of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta is in flames.  I've always been afraid of fire and to know the forest, that seems to be a place of solace and peace, is burning taking a city with it brings nightmare images. I look around my study at all the stuff and, while it is only stuff, it comforts me. Photos of my mother, my husband, my cousins and my friends hang on the walls. There is a painting of a polar bear labelled "Iceland 1945," that belonged to my father.  A friend of a friend escaped Fort Mac with only her purse and her vehicle.

This disaster is not about me.  I am safe hundreds of kilometres to the south and the pavement outside the house is still wet from a morning rain. Yet one of the things we humans share is our ability to imagine and as I look around me and hear Odie whistle his morning greeting from the other room, I do not stop my imagination from going to the heat, smoke, and terror of the fire.  What would I take? What would I most miss?  I hope I never have to find out.  I'm sure the people of Fort Mac hoped they would never have to answer those questions either. Now their homes are gone.

I wonder if the United Church my father helped raise money to build in the 1970's has been engulfed in flames. I see again the mirror my dad had beside his desk with a Fort McMurray sticker on it. These are small connections but they are connections none-the-less. What will we do now, the people of Alberta, the people of Canada to help those who have lost so much?  In Canada, a first-world country we don't expect that disaster can strike. We have so much, so much freedom, so much wealth, so much technology and yet, one spark can take all those things away. It leaves me humbled, horrified and hopeful.

When I first heard about the fire, lines from a poem by Christopher Wiseman came back to me. I've been thinking about giving away my poetry collection, haven't looked at it for years, and yet I was very glad to be able to walk into the basement, open up a box of books and find it.

This poem was written in the late 1980's, still its lines came back to me and speak to how humans in need and those who can help, treat each other. I hope Chris will forgive me for quoting the poem here. In addition to helping with practicalities in times of disaster, we can fiercely insist on making art for art nourishes what is best in us. My thoughts are with the people of Fort McMurray and all those who feel the impact of the fire.

The Fall and After

The longest day of 1987. A Sunday.

The beach warm and crowded. The tide out.
And there's a man, I'd guess over eighty,
In a suit, a tie, and polished shoes,
Walking, with a stick, slowly towards the sea.
He comes to eight stone steps leading down,
Begins, trips, pitches right onto the road

Below, landing face first, lying still.
No glasses, thank God, my first thought,
Right above him, seeing it all happen
From a third floor window, no phone there.
People come quickly, touch, then turn him,
Blood pouring from his head, his face
Scuffed and filthy, his suit knee torn out.

His eyes don't focus, seem sightless,
But he moves a little, as if in quiet protest
At being there in the road like that.
Someone runs for a phone, another finds Kleenex
And holds it to his head. They gather round
And for a moment it looks like a big family,
He an elder, hurt and needing help,

Trying to sit up, to not be a nuisance.
Now a woman, about thirty, is sitting holding him,
Bare arms cradling his head to her white blouse,
Lips moving as she talks quietly to him,
And I am suddenly crying, surprised
By the thick heavy sobs shaking me.
At last they come and take him away.

A few stitches and a new suit. But is that all?
I think perhaps he'll never try again
To walk towards the sea on a Sunday afternoon.
And the next day his blood is still there,
Though you couldn't tell it from the oilstains,
And people go down the steps and tread on it,
Walking across the road to the beach.

What will I take from this? Just how he
Plunged forward, as if diving into water,
Just knowing how old we get, how bodies fail us,
How people will run to help, and do their best,
That we are, deep down, still gentle,
And, in the end, all we can do is watch,
Say what words we can, and wait until they come.


Christopher Wiseman
Saint Andrews, Scotland
published in Missing Persons
copyright 1989
Sono Nis Press
Victoria, British Columbia