Not Leaping With Joy
02 Mar 2012 4 Comments
Is there anyone in Canada that enjoys February? If so, I am not among them. The only thing I like about February is that it is followed by March–which to me, always signals the first hints of spring.
Not that we’ve had a terrible winter here in SW Ontario. There’s been little snow and frigid temperatures were rare over the past months. But much of it has been very dreary–the light thin, the woods muddy, and the skies bleak. I’m ready for some heat and some green.
Apparently, February used to be the last month in the Gregorian calendar, and this is why the necessary extra day which is added every four years was stuck onto it. To me, even though the shortest month of the year in theory, February drags sluggishly along, and I am affronted when that 29 is forced upon me.
To heck with the Gregorian calendar. Let’s put that extra day in July. July 32nd has a great ring to it. An extra day of summer has it all over an extra day of winter.
Here’s to the Next One…
02 Jan 2012 5 Comments
The sun has set on 2011, and it is time to move on to 2012, with all of its secrets, unknowns and uncertainties. My only resolution is to take the lessons of this past year on with me and use them to fine-tune my life, and move closer to becoming the person that I aspire to be.
2011 saw me hit the half-century mark. It also saw me hit the wall. I pushed too hard, and finally, my body pushed back–and sent me sprawling. I went from 100 kms an hour to 0 in very short order. There I was, off work, right in the thick of a busy fall with many committments and plans. I was suddenly at home, staring at a haggard face in the mirror, taking medications, and sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. Gradually, I got stronger. I wandered through woods on sunny mornings and read the afternoons away. I ate sparingly, but well. I committed to exercise and yoga. Then, I started writing seriously again. I played my piano and took on small projects around the house. (Ordering my surroundings has always equated with ordering my soul). I nurtured relationships. I sang the “Messiah.”
Here is the thing. It is not selfish or sinful to take care of yourself. In fact, it is paramount that you do that and make it your first priority. If you don’t, the day will come when everything unravels and you have to find the tattered ends of your life and start knitting it together again.
I have not knit my life back together quite the way it was before. There were patterns that needed to be eliminated, and I suspect that 2012 will show me a few more that I need to get rid of. Yes, I am a mom, a wife, a daughter, a friend, a teacher….the list goes on and on. But first and foremost, I am myself. I am not going to lose sight of that person again. And I am not going to be ashamed of giving myself the things that I need to be well and happy. My life is overflowing with blessing, and I was too busy and too tired and too overwhelmed to see any of it, let alone be grateful.
So here I am, rested, ten pounds lighter, feeling even ground beneath my feet, and some of the sag erased from my eyes. Back to work half-time next week. For now, that is what will be good for me. I don’t care one whit about what phase of the “Attendance Support Program” I am in. I’m stronger now, and have shifted more from “cower” to “power.” And I do not intend to lose any of the ground that I have gained. It’s mine.
2011 taught me more than any year of my adult life. I am thankful for those lessons. As difficult as they were, they have carried me to a new place–the brink of a new year, all those fresh pages–inspiring me instead of filling me with dread. How can I do this? What is wrong with me? Did I do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, forget something? I am not asking those questions any more. I can do this. Nothing is wrong with me. Yes, I make mistakes. Who doesn’t? But I do plenty of things right, too.
So, here’s to mistakes and lessons and moving on. Here’s to some serious self-nurturing, whatever it takes. WE’RE WORTH IT!
The November House
02 Nov 2011 1 Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: abandoned houses, hoarding
In a neighbourhood of tidy houses, perfect lawns and pruned bushes, the November House hunches, slouched on the corner. The bullying wind tosses leaves and plastic bags and sticks at her, and laughs. She does not respond. Her voice has faded to beyond a whisper these many long years.
A pink sign, hung on her doors. Not fit for habitation. By Authority. She hangs her head in shame. They came with boards and blinded her windows. It’s been dark inside her these many years, but now, no hope of a shaft of light. Day and night, all the same.
How long since she’s heard the sound of laughter, the yelling of children in the yard? How long since she’s seen a family gathered around a table, a Christmas tree in the corner, lit with coloured lights? How long since someone cleaned her walls, swept her floors, carried a baby to its crib in one of her rooms? Even in summer, while children laugh in other yards, and the sun lights the grass, it’s always November in this corner.
For many years, only one lived here. A poor soul, who cardboarded the windows and kept all her bags and boxes and garbage, piled it against the walls and in the car that never left the driveway. The hedges grew tall, a Sleeping Beauty fortress of vines and tangled branches.
A rusty clothesline with tattered wires, battered by the winds of years. No sun or wind has tousled freshly laundered sheets or rifled through a row of a child’s clean shirts. Her memory stirs, stumbles, falls silent.
Trees and bushes and perennials, planted in hope, by someone, long ago. Their branches tangle and break, the flowers are choked by weeds. Birds light, and don’t linger long. Leaves fall on layers of other years’ leaves. Wandering into the yard fills the soul with cemetery gloom. The November House is like a forgotten grave, untended, its identity fading away.
Quietly, she dies. Someone will buy her double lot, and the bulldozers will come. She will crumple to the ground. What to salvage? Some twisted metal and a pile of bricks. Something new built over her sad remains. If the trees are left standing, someone may hear something of her memory in the November winds.
The Exquisite Burn
18 Oct 2011 3 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: A Hot Flash of Wisdom
I’ve read that menopause is the time in a woman’s life where all the hurts and injustices of her past rear their ugly heads, demanding to be dealt with once and for all.
Maybe, through social conditioning, it’s generally women who are guilty of deliberate silence when they are upset–the stifling of anger, the control of the bitter tongue, the swallowing of the vitriol–in order to maintain the common peace. We grit our teeth, set our jaws and move on. We learn it from the time we are little girls. Control yourself, calm down, what are you getting so upset about? Lose the drama!
What’s the point in getting upset, we ask ourselves? It only serves to upset everyone else around us, the ones who are depending on us to hold everything together. As though we are the very gravitational force that prevents everyone from being sucked into chaos. And so, we choke it all down, and it burns, but we keep it deep in the recesses of our beings, and tell ourselves it’s best.
And then come the hot flashes. Waves of heat and perspiration–the wet hair, the throwing off of blankets in the middle of the night, the damp pillows and sheets, and the saturated nightgown….
Human beings sweat. It’s the body’s way of keeping things at a “normal” temperature and to dispel impurities.
I have this theory about hot flashes. Maybe, there is one flash assigned to every time I have choked back an emotion. For every time I have suppressed an opinion that may have caused upset. For every time I acquiesced for the sake of ending an argument. For every time I had to quiet down. Maybe those hot flashes are nature’s way of getting my inner self back to a normal temperature and to dispel all the junk from my past.
So, every time I’m hit with a flash, that’s one piece of nasty baggage I am rid of. By the time the hot flashes are over, I will be a new person, rewired and cleansed.
But not necessarily quiet.
“True Grit” Done Over
16 Oct 2011 1 Comment
The second version of “True Grit” was released in 2010. I saw it in the theatres when it came out.
Of course, I had seen the 1969 John Wayne/Kim Darby/Glen Campbell version many times over several years of rainy Sunday afternoons. However, there was a whole new dimension and overlay of texture in this later version with Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Hailee Steinfeld that I had never sensed in the first movie, as wonderful as it was. ”True Grit” 2010 was one of those movies that pulls you in–you find yourself there, peeking out from behind a tree, or listening from the next room. Everything is so artfully done, all the details so reverently attended to–that for an hour and fifty minutes, it’s real.
I think the magic in this case comes from the careful attention to capturing the essence of Charles’ Portis’s novel. The first movie version didn’t do that–the old familiar flavour of Western adventure was there–and that was the problem. It was a common taste. Unlike the later version, the first “True Grit” did not completely capture the barbaric times, the irreverence for the value of human life, the hardship and deprivation of people struggling to eke out a miserable existence on the American frontier. The later version did that, and did it perfectly.
I watched the second version again today when I noticed it on Netflix. Even though it was playing on my tiny iPhone screen, I was able to fall completely and utterly into the story all over again.
I’m no movie or book critic, but I know a good story. “True Grit” is it. The Coens’ “re-make” beautifully honours the essence of the novel. Add to that a carefully chosen cast, rugged, sweeping backdrops, and a sensitive soundtrack, and you’re perfectly caught– the silent observer–all the nuances and angles and unworded emotions of “story” right there in front of you to touch.
“True Grit” encompasses all those elements of a great story. It doesn’t have to “explain” anything. The characters are set down on its pages, they interact with one another, and they simply unfold. We don’t need page upon page of background information. The few sentences the characters offer about themselves say all that is necessary. Some of the characters never even surface in the lines–they don’t need to. For example, fourteen-year-old Mattie’s ineffectual mother never appears nor murmurs a word, and yet we know that it is because of her background helplessness that Mattie’s story unravels at all. The events that take place are all exacerbated by the murder of Mattie’s father, and we never even see him, nor do we see any of the father-daughter closeness between them that would undoubtedly be at the root of Mattie’s imperturbable quest for justice after his death. The loquacious LaBouef, the precocious Mattie Ross and the old sinner that is Rooster Cogburn are an unlikely trio, but their story is unforgettable, and it impacts. People don’t have to gush to demonstrate compassion, or loyalty, or even love. It can exist without word or explanation. And humanity, in all its faces, is ultimately capable of all of these things. Even the villains in the story have moments where they show their human faces, and they are never made completely despicable. Truthfully, a good story is never painted in black and white, and “True Grit” is not lacking in colour. It is a story that shows without an attempt to teach. It does not condescend to its audience.
Definitely and surprisingly, it’s in the Top Ten Movies of my Lifetime list.
September Again…
30 Sep 2011 1 Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Fall Begins in the Woods
I thought my quest to blog my woods for one year was finished, until I stole an hour this week and snuck off to enjoy the trails alone. I wasn’t walking with an eye to write, but attempting to capture the woods in words has become more habit than quest, it would seem. The trees and the birds and the sky glimmering through branches scribble thoughts and phrases into my head as I amble along the trails. I cannot shush their voices. They have so much to say, in their strangely unworded ways.
The woods are loud in September. The harsh grating of insect wings, the rough hollering of the raucous jays, the surprisingly loud clattering and thuds of nuts and wild apples as they crash through the branches and hit the ground….the embittered squirrel sitting boldly on its branch, chattering and cussing at me for daring to pass beneath its tree, and already, the dry crushing of trodden leaves, already thick on the trails. A red-headed woodpecker taps at a tree like an elven shoe-maker with a tiny hammer. He ascends the tree in spirals, hopping along the bark as though little stairs had been carved into it. Finally reaching the top, he tosses himself into the air and lights off.
There is a little more sky visible through the branches. The leaves are thinning, although still so green in many of the trees. When the wind heaves a little sigh, it sends delicate showers of golden leaves spinning down through the light, some of them lightly brushing against my arms and trying to cling to my hair. Some land in the creek, launching off in the dark ripples, borne over wet stones and away.
The steady sun stirs up fall odours from the earth–leaf musk and fallen apples, fungi and something onion-y. In the pine-scented church, a choir of ghostly mushrooms bend their heads in a silent prayer. I tiptoe past them.
The underbrush is a tangle of weeds and choking grapevines and clusters of berries, threading the bushes with dark blue and scarlet. The thorny vines encroach the trails, trying to clutch at skin and clothing. Everything is thickening, and yet thinning, at the same time…the woods is a little confused in September. It doesn’t know whether to let go or bring forth, so it does a little of both. October will be here soon enough to bring everything to its colourful conclusion and ease the woods into its long rest.
