beauty overshadowed

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Sometimes I feel that beauty has gone out of fashion.  All around us beauty sits waiting to be discovered, to be noticed, to be appreciated.  We are busy getting annoyed at some political wrangle, getting frightened over threats beyond our control, getting apathetic because we are overwhelmed.  Beauty sits waiting for a glance and in return she lifts us up, makes us draw a quick breath of joyful surprise. So, even if she is out of fashion, I present her today in two forms.  One is the just opening flower…plumeria or frangipani or as I sometimes call her ” Hawaiian girl’s ear flower” .  She smells like vanilla and as you see, she has kept me waiting all summer in hopes of this cluster of blooms.  The flowers are formed as twists and they slowly unfurl in hot humid weather.

The other picture is of a sunset over Georgian Bay.  I have never seen one quite like it.

Woody Woodpecker

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Ladies and gentlemen… here he is, fresh from Hollywood, just as raucous, cheeky and impudent as ever… your favorite and mine, Woody Woodpecker! It is very hot and sunny in Muskoka.  Confused birch trees are gently dropping their small brown leaves in the still air. Not a breath of wind disturbs the bees as they gather the last of clover nectar.   All is tranquil until Woody appears on the scene.  With a series of screeches he flaps around the property, examining the bark of various trees.  After a few half-hearted pecks he immerses himself in the leaves and branches of a choke cherry tree and makes a feast of the ripe fruit.  He hangs upside down, his red poll conspicuous in the leaves.  With a squawk he flies off to the next fruit tree, cackling as he goes,.  He flies very low from one tree to another so that I sometimes get the impression he is dive bombing me. The white underside of his wings make a show as he flaps around from one tree to another.

I always loved  cartoon Woody Woodpecker for his naughty ways and loud voice.  Well, here he is in the flesh and feathers! He hung out in our back lot all afternoon and probably went off to scare up a little feminine companionship with his cackling laugh and pesky ways.  Never a dull moment with Woody!

Thank you Mr. Van Horne

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steam-train-1442795In the train, the first train

to run over the brand new tracks

sat Sonya.

The clank, the hiss, the slamming of doors

as the huge weight of steel, wood, coal, luggage, passengers,

moved slowly out of Windsor Station.

The jolts, sudden lurches, settled into

a steady rocking flow out over the St. Lawrence plain,

into the barely lemon sky of late afternoon,

over new bridges, immobile under this first test,

proud and nonchalant.

Sonya sat upright, her new hat

pinned on

for fear the sweating effort of shoveling coal

the blaze,

the terrible power of steam,

would blow it off her head.

Blow her little jacket off, her dress, her petticoats,

Leaving only her black lace-up boots,

protected by the foot-board of the plush seat.

She would sit, young and naked, a figurehead

for the mighty train, delivering its power,

its majesty, its unraveling of the future.

If the young porter invited her to the dining car, she would murmur,

“Oh, no, look what has happened to me.”

A glance down at her white body

seated like the wife of Pharaoh.

And he, in his new uniform,

the collar a little stiff around his Adam’s apple,

fallen already in love with her at that instant,

would pull down the window sash, take her in his arms,

and together they would float out into the just-evening sky

decorated with a few pale stars.

Up over Lake Ontario while the new train

plunged fearlessly on over the Canadian Sheild.

 

 

End of a drought

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Nothing has escaped the pen, the keyboard, the soft yielding lead of the pencil for a long time. It has been about three months since I was able to write anything. No sitting at the table before a blank paper, no jotting things down, no type and backspace – just a horror of writing anything at all. In desperation I went to a poetry workshop led by a wonderful teacher. Larissa Andrusyshyn is a very talented teacher, prodder, encourager, with many a trick up her sleeve. Did you know, for instance, that the little paint color cards you pick up in hardware stores when you are agonizing over whether your living room wall should be black or morning cloud are blessed with the most wonderful names? ” Barely banana” ” shy meadow” ” storm cloud” ” trumpet voluntary” How could you not slip one of these wonderful phrases into a poem? I’m off to Canadian Tire to get my own pack this morning.

It is such a relief to feel the first little trickle of life come back to an activity I love, one I love to share with readers. I’m not going to church today. I’m going to work on two pieces Larissa evoked, coaxed, simply expected me to write yesterday. The long sheets of white embraced my lists, my sentences, my rhymes, my crossing out, my arrows. Something emerged, something a little rough, a little flowing, opening up just at the end.

They say when you fall off a horse you should get right back on. I had to chase my poney over hill and dale for many sad weeks but, oh, how good that warm steady movement feels now.I’ll post the poem when  I think it’s ready.

Dem Bones, dem bones…Osteopathy

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imports from ipad

I’ve been wanting to write about my visits to the College of Osteopathy Studies here in Montreal for some time. Some family members urged me to go and have someone look at my knee about two years ago. To my surprise, some gentle manipulations made me feel a lot better. Since then I have sporadically gone back for help from the friendly students of this college.

I had a hip replacement about eight years ago which was a great success, thanks to my wonderful surgeon, Dr. Paul Stephenson. He did a brilliant job and I’ve been dancing a jig ever since. So, you can see I literally have one foot in the camp of strictly conventional medicine.

Well, not quite, obviously, or I wouldn’t be visiting the osteopaths. When I first went, I was a bit skeptical and researched what exactly osteopathy is. The whole field of “alternative medicine” is rather mysterious for someone who worked in a conventional hospital for years. I came to some understanding of the term “Naturopathy” through an explanation that defined it as a branch of medicine that added nothing – like drugs and took nothing away – as does surgery.

What intrigued me very much was the history of the founder of osteopathy. He was an American doctor, son of a Protestant minister, who practiced during the Civil War. Dr. Andrew Taylor Still lost his wife and all his children to an epidemic and, grief-stricken, he decided to develop a different kind of medicine that would improve on the methods he had seen employed during the war. Of course, amputations, use of heavy sedatives, radical surgery and his own family experience with illness were powerful motivators.

Drawing on his medical skills and his personal religious convictions, he put forward a method of treatment that saw the patient as a whole being made up of body, mind, and spirit. There is a strong tradition of “laying on of hands” to heal, clearly set out in the New Testament and in the Book of Acts which certainly was part of Dr. Still’s philosophy. I was fascinated by this aspect. I had a vivid memory of being taken as a child to the gentleman who treated the rugby players in our gritty Welsh town. Jack Lyshun was a natural healer and manipulator, skilled at “fixing up” formidable players of the toughest brand of football. Following a mysterious infection, I was unable to walk properly. After a few sessions with “Jack”, I was as right as the implacable rain of my hometown and the whole episode was forgotten.

These thoughts and memories ran through my head last week as two students of the College, under the watchful eye of their instructor, observed how I stood, walked, shifted from foot to foot. They did more than observe and diagnose. They “laid hands” on me, gently, firmly, surprisingly at some moments. One of them manipulated the elegant scar of my hip replacement surgery. He explained that the scar was rather like the seam in a piece of cloth. It tended to draw the tissue, to bunch it up. Of course, hip replacement is a profound business. I am always shocked to see how far down the pin that holds the replacement in place reaches – almost to my knee. In X-Rays it leaps out, solid and white among the shadowy images. Skin, muscles, tendons, the socket, all this and others, of which I am mercifully unaware, are sundered, manipulated, replaced, repaired by the surgeon. Such a surgery is a controlled assault. Osteopathy’s approach of touch, pressure, manipulation is quite different.

My whole body was under scrutiny – and was treated. The other leg, the “good” leg has had years of compensating, adapting, relating. And why? So that I can go up and down stairs, run for the bus, swim, drive the car, make love, dance, climb a ladder – all this and more. Poor good leg that never complained and yet spoiled her gait because of the “bad” leg.

The two young people pulled my toes (a terrible point of shyness as I think my feet are not beautiful) rotated my ankles, took hold of my leg and applied pressure. They made me turn on my stomach and pressed my back. From time to time, one of them would exclaim about “feeling” something. He could notice some sort of current of energy.  They seemed to know what they were doing. Good thing, since I did not. There was something satisfying about simply surrendering to their attention, their manipulations, their instructions.

And now, at home, what is the result of all this? My toes do not hurt anymore. I always ascribe the pain in my feet to arthritis, but one student said, no, it was all part of the alignment of the right leg. My knee is better but I still have some pain higher up. I will go to see them again next week.

Osteopaths have a difficult time being accepted in this province. The College des Medicins traditionally fights against any other profession encroaching on what they think is remotely related to conventional medicine. Midwives, for instance, had a terrible time getting recognized and encouraged to practice. There still remains something mysterious about osteopathy. But then, one could hardly say conventional medicine is free of mystery, even that it is transparent. The bottom line is ….does it work? Mercifully, it does for me.

 

Hope on the table

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 Do you know what this? It’s hope in the form of a shell.

Yeah, I’ve missed you too. It’s been a long time since I wrote anything here, since I wrote anything at all, in fact. Some stuff happened that I’m not ready to write about but out of a deep well I dragged up the bucket and, surprise, there was something silvery and magical at the bottom of the bucket. It was the idea of a trip.

I’m going on a journey in May of 2020. There, I’ve said it, I’ve written it and it’s not just a vague “wish” a half-baked “plan”. It’s a real project that I have publicly put out there in the real and the cyber world.

I have decided to walk the Camino de Santiago de Compostella in Spain. Some of you know what that is and I won’t bore you to tears by explaining it all over again. Some of you don’t know what it is and for you – there is always Wikipedia.

It’s a hell of a long way to walk and I have already started to train at the YMCA. I detest gyms but this goal seems to have motivated me. On many many days, I break the 10K step mark. One of my daughters referred me to Spotify and now Linda Ronstadt sings me away on the treadmill. I can’t run on a treadmill but I can walk pretty fast and seem to manage quite a slope. I walk around the streets for miles and miles too.

In all the YouTube features, in all the books and films about the Camino, people talk about why they do it. A reasonable question, especially for an oldie, like me. My right knee is a little fragile and it is the only real worry I have about this project.

So, yes, why? Why? To walk is a sacred thing, after all. As I get older, I don’t want to be whisked around in cars and buses and metros. I don’t like the noise of it. I want to have time to observe the sky. What a wonder it is that every day, every hour, the sky is totally different from any other moment in the history of the world.

Walk away from fear

Walk away from age, breathing cold on the back of my neck.

Walk away from disappointment.

Walk away from the material world that steals my time, my attention, my life

Walk to wonder, to marveling at the beautiful, astonishing world.

Walk to patience, with myself and with others

Walk to solitude for I must get used to that.

Walk to goodwill to others met along the way and to those waiting for my return.

Walk as a last effort before the dear body betrays me.

Walk as a forgiveness, as a love song to all the hurts that taught me so much.

Walk as a work of art, as a sacrament, as a gift.

Walk as a key to understanding all the rest.

            —————————————————–

Well, that is the plan. Let’s see how things develop. Certainly, I will do my part with my whole heart but…..for example, it’s very icy outside today. One never knows the outcome of plans.

 

Mummies come to Montreal

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Mummies come to Montreal

What is the fascination with mummies? Ancient Egypt is right up there with dinosaurs in kids’ obsessions. The difference is that almost all adults retain that awe-struck wonder about this beautiful and mysterious civilization. Our imaginations have been captured by countless books and movies on the lives and death rituals of these people.

The British Museum exhibition of six mummies and over 240 objects related to the lives of each of them opened last week at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Besides the superb staging and curatorship of the exhibit, what makes it unique is the inclusion of modern medical scanning technology.

I had seen a sarcophagus before. There is a beautiful one in the permanent collection of our museum. A sarcophagus is simply the coffin that contained a mummy. I had often included ours in tours I gave as a volunteer guide. The gods painted on the wooden case, the still brilliant colours and the story of the woman who had been entombed in our sarcophagus were a high point of a tour.

So why did it feel so different to stand before what would have been the contents of a sarcophagus? A sober form, wrapped simply in linen, the shape of the body clearly outlined lay before me. What was touching to me was the irresistible tug of the imagination to connect with the person lying just a foot away. A deep feeling of compassion flooded over me.

Archaeology has been described as controlled destruction. To remove the bindings of these mummies would inflict irreparable damage. The code of ethics of the British Museum does not permit the removal of the wrappings. Fortunately we now have the technical tools to virtually strip away the bindings and “see” the person within. The CT scans our doctors order to diagnose our health problems have been used here to penetrate the mysterious lives of these six individuals. CT scanners use a combination of x-rays and a computer to create the images that are projected onto the walls behind the mummies.

Visitors now know that these people were buried with amulets, with nail covers, with colored beads. We know the ages, the ailments and the causes of death as revealed to us by state of the art equipment. The priests and embalmers who carefully prepared these six people for the afterlife could never have imagined that the immortality they hoped for would be, in a strange way, played out in a museum thousands of miles from the Nile.

Of course, I looked on, intrigued as the three-D images were projected on the walls. My eyes kept coming back to the white forms, however, and something in me was glad that there was no image of the child mummy. He was safe inside his touchingly small sarcophagus. In glass cases lining the walls of his room the toys our children still play with lay still. A ball, a top, little clothes that a child might wear today.

In spite of our technological advances, there is still so much that is universal.  What is the meaning of our lives and our deaths? What is the meaning of the death of a child, of our grief? We share many mysteries with our ancient Egyptian brothers and sisters and not all of them can be revealed by state of the art equipment.

The exhibition – Six Mummies – Six Lives will continue until February 2, 2020.

 

Urban beekeeping

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I live in a pretty densely-populated area of Montreal. Three years ago I noticed many bees congregating in my garden around a dripping hose I had been meaning to fix. Groups of twenty or more were quite common. My small city garden is not very well manicured. I planted some wild rose bushes a long time ago and they certainly have thrived. Add to the mix, clematis, peoney bushes, black eyed Susan and some cone flowers and I concluded that the bees were not just coming to drink. There was pollen in this jardin anglais!. My back yard is bordered by a city lane that is part of the Montreal initiative, ” Les Rouelles Vertes”. That means our lane is not paved but rather left to grow green and wild.  Golden rod, milkweed and Queen Anne’s Lace flourish there. Add a little judicious planting by the city of Saskatoon berry bushes and elderberry along with orange day lilies, and you have an urban paradise for pollinators.

The high number of bees was puzzling though. A stroll down the lane revealed that one of my neighbors had bravely taken on a new project. She had set up two small hives. She was glad to hear her charges were getting plenty of water even though she had a supply set up for them in her own yard. Perhaps it was a case of, ” the water is wetter on the other side of the fence” ?

How interesting it was to meet my neighbour and learn about her enthusiasm for her project but also to wonder at her courage.  We always think about intrepid bee keepers brandishing their smokers, and kitted out in impenetrable gear. However, imagine the first time a novice beekeeper opens the hive! A scary moment, no?

As you can see, this year our neighborhood bees outdid themselves. Production was over one hundred kilos. I bought a few jars and even got a freebie in honor of my watering hole! After all, it never hurts to spread your wings and try new places….especially if you’re a city bee.

 

 

 

 

Modesty

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A friend and I were shaking our heads over the antics of “president” Trump the other day and he made an unusual request. He said, “write about modesty”. Right away I knew he didn’t mean anything to do with bikinis… or burkinis. The idea simmered in my mind for quite a while. After all, even writing for public consumption is hardly an act of modesty. Do I believe I have something interesting, enlightening, amusing to say? Surely that rules out the modest approach. Modesty is not much appreciated these days.  All the advice columns tell us how to “sell” ourselves, how to “boost” readership, how to “be best” – oops, can’t keep that family out of anything!

How long ago was I taught in what seems now like a medieval Catholic….and British…ethic, not to boast, not to draw attention to one’s own accomplishment, not to be “vain”, “proud”, “a show-off”. Those reproaches were among the worst that could be levelled against anyone.

Then I thought about nature. The way the seasons repeat, the way plants follow a natural progression of what looks like death, rebirth, blooming, seeding and retreat into a mysterious slumber is inexplicable. Animals, that look at us with a certain understanding, an understanding that we, who boast of being the highest form of life, cannot fathom. The sea, wind, stones, planets and stars, simply go about their business without drawing attention to themselves, in their modest way. Even in its most spectacular moments such as volcanic eruptions, tornados or blizzards, nature just is. There is no heralding that “This is the greatest eruption, folks, trust me!” There is, in these great demonstrations of nature’s power, an inherent modesty.

So I must be vigilant. A little less, “fantastic, amazing, incredible” in my writing, and in my thoughts. Let’s have a big round of applause for modesty, folks. After all, it’s the greatest quality!