Katharine Weinmann

An Adoration for Annie

AN ADORATION FOR ANNIE

Our morning routine:

I put the kettle on to boil for my americano.
I put fresh water into one of your bowls, a scoop of canned pumpkin into the other.
Making my way to fetch you, and welcome your joy into my heart,
I first glance out the front window for a moment’s glimpse into a new day.
I walk downstairs, say good morning, and pour a cup of kibble on top of the mound of pumpkin. Lean over to fetch you from your kennel. Maybe I get lucky with a quick sniff and kiss.
You shoot up the stairs, skewed carpet in your wake, and wait impatiently at the back door, howling for me to hurry. Maybe you make a side stop to take your own quick glance through the window to see if any rabbits are worth your first bark of the day.

Finally at your demanded destination, I laugh out loud because no sooner outside, after catching a sniff of the still dark morning air, you pivot, bound back, jump to be let in, the urgency to void suddenly displaced by the urge to eat.
Your exuberance for the new day continues, as racing down the hardwood hall,
you skid into the kitchen, and launch into breakfast. That scarfed down,
you tap dance across the floor, and head cocked alert in anticipation of the next course, a couple of chopped carrots chunks.

My turn. Maybe.
I scoop coffee into the stove-top espresso pot, section a grapefruit, get cream
into my mug before you signal the need to go out again. That done, another sequence of your morning routine, followed by another couple of carrot chunks, finally my coffee steaming and poured, and I sit down at the table to glance at my phone and the morning paper. You take your place in the hallway,
looking into the kitchen intently at me. Then it comes…

…your barely audible “grrrr.”

Satisfied that I’ve raised my head in acknowledgement, you take your leave
and settle onto “your” sofa to begin one of your many morning naps,
expecting my company. Later you’ll move upstairs to get comfy on a bed,
whichever is the best for basking between pillows in sun. Yes, we’ve created a Goldilocks, allowing you to jump up at your whim onto sofa or bed.
You, the first since our first so many decades ago.
We, with the weakened resolve of aging. I wax nostalgic…

But back to today…

The morning sun is shining exceptionally bright. Yesterday I remarked
at its growing warmth, its being higher in the sky, its promise of seasons to come, though mindful we have many more weeks of winter cold.
You return to the kitchen and nudge me to follow you, to sit with you on the sofa. With my full mug, I wait for you to choose your side, and then settle in beside you.
We look into each other’s eyes, I lean over to kiss your head, and then stroking your haunch stretched out beside me, I tell you the story of your coming to us, prefaced by saying,
“You’re one of the best things to have ever come into my life.”

Though not initially…

Too soon that weekend in August when we claimed you as ours.
Too soon after your predecessor, Lady, passed, she holding on until my return from three months’ travelling solo. Once home, my heart broken by grief. For her. For a career I loved “abolished” in a corporate reorg. For myself, shaken to the core by culture shock.

Then the call from our friend: if we wanted you, we had to come that weekend as he needed to quickly unload his kennel of dogs to tend to his dying wife.

We’d make a vacation out of it.
Tour the southern foothills. Visit a national park. View the mountains.
Dine at that local café off the beaten track, known for bringing in first class musicians in between their main touring gigs.

When I first saw you, then a year-old clumsy pup, the largest of your breed we’d ever had, I was struck by your gentle nature, your soft mouth. I was dismayed though that at a year old, living in the kennel, you weren’t yet house broken. Once home, after several inevitable messes, I wondered if you’d ever learn. Now I laugh and regularly swallow slices of humble pie with healthy sides of crow.

That was twelve years ago, making you now nearly thirteen.

These days, as I take in my own aging reflection, I see age advance in your white face, clouds in your dark eyes. I see you gingerly lick and occasionally chew on your front legs.
Watch you size up the height of the bed before jumping. Take the morning stairs slowly, sometimes tripping. Arthritis most likely the culprit, given you’re a sporting dog with an instinct honed to run for miles across the prairie an hour or so at a stretch, on the wind of bird scent. Walking now, we seldom manage ten thousand steps, and nothing too aerobic.

Looking at you, I feel my heart seize with the inevitable, and wonder how I’ll bear your passing, my loss. It gets harder every time. The sinking truth, so wisely spoken by Mary Oliver, that our dogs die too soon, and we would do anything to keep them with us longer.

My storytelling over, I caress your silky ears, again kiss the top of your head, and lay my hand on your rib cage as you lay your head on my lap. All is quiet except for the tick tock of the cuckoo clock. Soon your soft and steady breathing syncs with mine. Looking outside, I notice the windsock hanging on the bare willow barely stirring.

A few moments later, all is in sync – the clock and our breathing, the swaying windsock and wind chimes.

As if each and all are moving to the soft and slow and steady rhythm of our inhale and exhale.

The sun glows orange on the claret-coloured blanket draped across the sofa.

The sky, a robin egg’s blue.

And in this moment, I feel we have stepped into a timelessness that is eternity.

Found for a moment, you and me, heaven here, on our sofa.

(An “adoration” is a poetic form of deep love and devotion originating in spiritual traditions. I wrote this for Annie in 2020, with minor revisions today.)

How life changes on a dime.

Just a week ago I ended my Monday morning post – the first in weeks – with an update on the remarkable recovery of our beloved Annie dog. Today, I write this post with equal measure heartbreak, and gratitude for her.

Yesterday at dawn, Sunday, June 18, after holding vigil for her on “her sofa” for the night, we knew it was time to make the final trip to the vet. After another day of being so totally present in all the ways she is uniquely “Annie” to and with us, Saturday evening it suddenly came to an end. Rousing from sleeping beside me while I watched a movie, I opened the door for her to go outside. She stood unsteadily, disoriented, with labored breathing – just like the end of April. As the evening progressed, it became apparent she had lost the function of her legs and sensed with us the inevitable. Carrying her in a towel sling to the truck, we drove the short distance to the emergency clinic to begin that last intervention, one administered with much tenderness, respect and reverence for her, and us.

I know many of you have met Annie, enjoyed my stories of her, and posting of her photos as we walk in our neighborhood. Too, many of you know well the path Sig and I now walk, this our 6th time. Overcome with the shock of this time’s sudden, irreversible turn, this is the best way to let you know of her passing and our loss. If you choose to comment here or on social media, please know we will read with gratitude but may not be able to reply.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

sitting together on our favourite bench, May 2023

The Perfect Place, The Right Time

“And the road is plenty wide and welcoming,
speaking out to all,
This is the perfect place,
this is the right time,
this is where wish becomes possible.”
Susan Frybort, “On the Road of Great Wonder,”
in Hope is a Traveler, 2015

This is the opening quote to a story I wrote about walking my Camino last year. Always intent to write more about that month long experience, one over twenty years in the making, but having felt stuck for months, I enrolled in an eight-week online course beautifully taught by local author and scholar Jenna Butler and hosted by Calgary’s Alexandra Writers’ Centre. I’d reached out to Jenna with hope that by using the sensory explorations and writing prompts in “Chronicling Our Personal Relationship with Place,” I’d be inspired to write. I took as kismet – “the perfect place… the right time… where wish becomes possible” – the course’s starting date as it coincided with the evening before I began walking my Camino a year ago. To deepen into the course’s invitation, I posted on social media a few select Camino photos and salient recollections from each day I had walked last year, May 10-30. Too, I’ve been drawn to learn about some literary forms that I thought would lend themselves to my vision of combining the reworked lyric essays from last year’s Portuguese Coastal Camino blog, my journal entries, and those from the guide book provided by Portugal Green Walks, and my newly emerging poetry.

Half way through the course and my hesitation to begin has persisted. I’ve felt afraid to take the first step, not knowing what I’m getting myself into, or where this is going to take me, despite having reached Santiago a year ago. I’ve wondered if Camino doesn’t want, or isn’t yet ready for me to walk on or with him again. Yes, I am animating Camino, doing so out of reverence and regard for its centuries of history, people and their traditions, cultures and stories, and the more than human elements continuously making for its beauty and its challenges. And yes, I admit, maybe it’s simply me who hasn’t been ready, with it simply being a matter of not yet the right time. Then, after a few hours over the past month preparing – compiling my blog posts into a single document and adding my recent Instagram posts; propping up on my writing table my photo journal with its cover photo of me standing in front of the cathedral the day I arrived; stacking beside me my travel journal, course notes, and Portugal Green Walks’ self guided program notes – this week I finally lifted open my laptop and began. While I’d thought I’d use for incentive the June 30th chapbook submission deadline with a literary journal who recently published one of my poems, given the experimental nature of this undertaking, braiding together from several sources, and wanting to embody in my writing now how I walked then – sauntering to enjoy the vistas – I’ve decided wisely let that go.

Albeit reluctantly and with regret, I’m using the gift of time received by finally having conceded a week ago that I must step away from playing pickleball. A game I enjoy for its physicality and camaraderie with women, who like me, love being fully engaged in life. A game my chiropractor has suggested I may need to sit out as for the past three months I’ve been nursing an injured metatarsal. Despite regular appointments, taking a few days off from the game here and there, icing, and copious applications of extra strength Volartin, it’s been one healing step forward and several back. Compounding this is the pressure, with worry enough to wake me, of needing to seriously train for another long walk in September. This one not a saunter. This one strenuous with nearly double the daily kilometers over sixteen days, and steady ascents and descents. All a natural consequence of aging, this has brought its own grief as I face such realities. My foot and body as whole are feeling better, and I’m hoping this, too, will become “the perfect place… the right time… where wish becomes possible.”

***

As I’ve written here before, the writerly life is a lonely one, rife with rejection. Just this morning I received two. On the up side, I finally received a print copy of the local poetry anthology featuring both my photo as cover and poem inside, and in the past month, several other photos have been accepted by literary journals making me wonder if I should shift my genre!

As it’s been several weeks since I posted a Monday morning blog, by way of update, our dear Annie dog has had a remarkable recovery from the stroke she suffered the end of April. So much so, I call her our “Lazarus,” as it truly feels she rose from a near death listlessness during those early days. Today, she has returned to all the ways in which she is uniquely Annie to and with us, including interrupting my work at noon by persistently placing her big right front paw on my lap or keyboard. Now I kiss it and her in ever welcome gratitude.

walking with Annie “Bright Eyes”, June 5, 2023

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. May this post find you on roads plenty wide and welcoming.

Of The Empire

Of The Empire

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

Mary Oliver
Red Bird (2008)

I collect poems that appear in my inbox or on social media. This is one posted by wise elder Parker Palmer in mid March of this year. Is it prescience? Or simply another rendering of Mary Oliver’s astute skills in observation already so evident in her poetry situated in the natural world. I imagine is was cited often in the months following the 2016 American presidential election. It continues to have remarkable resonance there as states swing to vote in politicians and legislation undermining and undoing so much of what we have considered the hard won, inviolable rights of the historically vulnerable, marginalized and disenfranchised.

Today, I think it apropos for my province, mere days after the election that gave to the woman who took over her party’s leadership on a no confidence vote, the mandate to proceed with her view of things. A woman who, just days before, was found guilty of violating the province’s conflict of interest act. A woman who, in the first months of assuming leadership, was publicly apologizing for every verbal gaffe she’d made speaking, apparently without thinking. Or was she revealing a heart that was “small, and hard, and full of meanness.” A heart that regrettably becomes so shaped by empire. A heart that beats in my own chest unless I chose to cultivate otherwise.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

To The Sea

TO THE SEA
Sometimes when you start to ramble
or rather when you feel you are starting to ramble
you will say Well, now I’m rambling
though I don’t think you ever are.
And if you ever are I don’t really care.
And not just because I and everyone really
at times falls into our own unspooling
—which really I think is a beautiful softness
of being human, trying to show someone else
the color of all our threads, wanting another to know
everything in us we are trying to to show them—
but in the specific,
in the specific of you
here in this car that you are driving
and in which I am sitting beside you
with regards to you
and your specific mouth
parting to give way
to the specific sweetness that is
the water of your voice
tumbling forth—like I said
I don’t ever really mind
how much more
you might keep speaking
as it simply means
I get to hear you
speak for longer.
What was a stream
now a river.

– Anis Mojgani –

Once a month I have a Zoom call with a dear friend who lives near the sea. She and I have known each other for several years, a decade at least, maybe two. We’ll check in with each other and then see where our conversation takes us. Always into depth and meaning, relationship and emergence. Always held within a container of love and deep regard for each other. Always remarkable the interior landscapes we can traverse in an hour.

This poem arrived the morning after our most recent conversation. I love it for so beautifully capturing, despite being written by a man, the way my friend and I ramble together, often saying, just as the character in the poem, “Well, now I’m rambling,” and just like the poet’s response, “I don’t think you ever are.” Inevitably, because of the container we’ve created, one where vulnerability is welcome, curiosity cherished, and questions allowed to rest without answers, I come away with clarity, the results of which often show up in these posts.

Once in another Zoom conversation, this time with other dear women friends who live by the sea, I came to know that perhaps this way of talking with each other is simply, particularly, the feminine way of being with each other and in the world. A couple of years ago during early pandemic days, the day after that call, I emailed them:

“Many times it seems my thinking is foggy and lazy, that it isn’t “cogent” or coherent, that I can’t put together a compelling argument of defense. And then it came to me, this is the feminine way – to feel my way through a depth of complexity that is dark and foggy, that isn’t necessarily, yet, cogent nor coherent...You wrote to me, gifted me, once with the invocation that I recognize with increasing vividness that I know what I know, that find myself less and less inclined to self-doubt, meekness and hesitation.“

This rambling, vulnerably feeling one’s way through the depths of complexity and uncertainty is the “unspooling” described by Anis Mojgani, that “beautiful softness/of being human, trying to show someone else/the color of all our threads, wanting another to know/everything in us we are trying to to show them.”

I love that I can be this way with another, because it helps me be this way more with myself – soft, vulnerable, vivid and alive in the unknowing, the curiosity, the questions.

May we each have in our lives such persons with whom to ramble.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

How to Walk an Old Dog

HOW TO WALK AN OLD DOG

Give up on your agenda – this
is exploration, not exercise.
She can’t hear you calling her on,
but then, you can’t smell whatever
is so intriguing about that clump of grass,
so maybe just relax. Stop counting steps.
Don’t even count birds, or minutes
or the things you have left to do
on your pressing and eternal list.
Move gently into the immeasurable.
Stop to greet children. Consider
that the most fascinating thing in the world
could be your neighbor’s garbage can.
Observe without judgement
what is near to hand – even if what you see
is the halt in her step, the way
her spine has begun to show. Walk
just long enough to remember
that love is not an antidote to death,
but loss is not the opposite of life.

– Lynn Ungar, May 2, 2023 –

Over the past year at least, I’ve been saying that walking Annie is no longer exercise. It’s fresh air, the gift of being outside noticing life around us. That I may walk 10,000 steps, but certainly not aerobically. And I’ve long known for a dog, walking is “scent shopping,” so I best be prepared for meandering. But in the last two weeks, the gift of this oh-so-perfectly-timed poem, could not be truer.

Some of you might know that two weeks ago yesterday – after our morning walk, treats in the kitchen, sleeping…errrr…supervising our work in the office, and then going outside to her kennel when the house cleaners arrived – Annie suddenly was not ok. Disoriented, barely able to walk let alone stand upright, shallow breathing, drooling, incontinent – the ER vet clinic gave us a diagnosis of THC poisoning, an increasingly common incident given our carelessness with roaches and edibles. We were given a prognosis, took her in to see our vet the following morning, who confirmed the diagnosis, but by Sunday her condition was not improving. No appetite nor eating, so we bought electrolytes for her water (on the suggestion from a Facebook friend who saw my posting). Her walk had not improved, in fact we were seeing more weakening. But of most concern was seeing her paw at her right eye, and when I did the reflex test I’d seen the vets do, she didn’t blink, leading us to believe she’d suffered vision loss. A return visit to the vet on Monday morning confirmed my first, and our worst suspicions: she’d most likely had a stroke. “She’ll not live to 17,” the vet said, referring to Annie’s predecessor, Peggy, who died late into her 17th year. And with further examination, and seeing Annie’s lethargy, I wondered if she’d last the week.

After deliberation, we decided to pass on the neuro consult, not wanting to add further distress to Annie with the battery of tests required pre-exam. We know she is happiest with us, and so we’d keep her home, tend to her best we could, hope for the best, and pray for a miracle.

This is my “Lazarus” story, because with every passing day, Annie has returned to herself, engaging in all the patterns and endearing ways she is who she is, with us. Looking eagerly for me to get her leash to walk, barking at the neighbors (fulfilling her job as guard dog), finally eating regularly with creative concoctions of smelly canned fish to pique her interest, remembering to remind us to fetch her favourite dessert of dentistix, and following me down into the office where she takes her place on her supervisor’s cushion. The big right front paw she would persistently, heavily place on my keyboard at noon to signal lunch and a walk…the one I would curse for interrupting my work…that has been slow to return being the side that became weakened. But tonight, she placed it on me as I napped, reminding me of dinner time. It comes. I pray it comes in the office, on my keyboard, and I will kiss and welcome it back.

Annie is a bird dog, smelling her particular stock in trade. We think her loss of vision and diminished sense of smell have been the most disorienting for her, with her hearing less for the past couple of years. Sleeping more than usual with the trauma of it all, and the neurological stress has been exhausting. At yesterday’s chiropractic session, we learned that dogs have the ability to reroute blood to injured areas of the brain. We’re hopeful that as we see her eating and sniffing with more precision and focus outside and during our walks, coming into the kitchen while we cook and eat dinner, her scenting is returning. We pray, too, that her eyesight might improve as pressure comes off the optic nerve, because the eye itself is in good health.

In the last week, I’ve read of several friends having to say goodbye to their beloved fur companions. Each time I feel my heart squeeze. With Annie being our sixth dog, this is a heartbreak I know too well, yet wouldn’t trade for the joy each brings, the love I feel, that grows with each one, in return. Lynn Ungar writes it one way. Mary Oliver in her volume Dog Songs, writes it another: “We would do anything to keep them with us and to keep them young”[1].

At thirteen years, walking slower, needing my help to be lifted onto the bed, and now ensuring she makes it up and down the stairs safely, with this health crisis, I know Annie isn’t young, and that I can’t keep her forever. I am simply so thankful to have her with us now, for as long as now is.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. And deep gratitude to you who replied to my posting on Facebook. Your love, thoughts and prayers have helped immeasurably.

[1] “Dog Talk” in Dog Songs, 2013, 115.

Beyond Any Silence You Have Heard

the old pine on the Niagara River bank at sunrise

BEHIND ANY SILENCE YOU HAVE HEARD

Different trees grow various heights and then
perish and evolve into another species.

They reach their limbs – their souls – a little
deeper into incandescence’s well

and then tell the world by their marvelous
appearance what life is like.

Yes, try to do that before you depart this
wondrous place we are visiting;

bring us some good tidings of silence beyond
and silence you have already heard.

Hafiz, as rendered by Daniel Ladinsky
A Year with Hafiz: April 29

This selection felt like a lovely follow-up from last week’s poem, Aunt Leaf, by Mary Oliver. Coming across it on April 29, my margin note reads: “This is exquisite. This is my knowing of trees, especially our beloved Laurel Leaf Willow, gone now two years.” Both poems spoke to me of that “before, beneath, beyond words” knowing we have with trees, and the other “more than human” beings.

It’s been a tough week. I’ll leave it at that for now. Yet as the miracle of spring explodes with Alberta’s record breaking heat – not a good thing given how dry, with province-wide fire bans and daily evacuations due to grass fires – I once again find myself in awe with and comforted by the silent beauty, graciousness and grandeur of trees. This quote from patron saint Catherine of Siena a fitting sign off for today:

All has been consecrated
The creatures in the forest know this,

the earth does, the seas do, the clouds know
as does the heart full of
love.

Strange a priest would rob us of this
knowledge

and empower himself
with the ability

to make holy what
already, always was.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Aunt Leaf

AUNT LEAF
Needing one, I invented her —
the great-great-aunt dark as hickory
called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud
or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.

Dear aunt, I’d call into the leaves,
and she’d rise up, like an old log in a pool,
and whisper in a language only the two of us knew
the word that meant 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸,

and we’d travel
cheerful as birds
out of the dusty town and into the trees
where she would change us both into something quicker —

two foxes with black feet,
two snakes green as ribbons,
two shimmering fish —
and all day we’d travel.

At day’s end she’d leave me back at my own door
with the rest of my family,
who were kind, but solid as wood
and rarely wandered. While she,
old twist of feathers and birch bark,
would walk in circles wide as rain and then
float back

scattering the rags of twilight
on fluttering moth wings;

or she’d slouch from the barn like a gray opossum;
or she’d hang in the milky moonlight
burning like a medallion,

this bone dream,
this friend I had to have,
this old woman made out of leaves.

– Mary Oliver –
Twelve Moons

While never naming nor summoning a great-great aunt from among the trees, my earliest memory is of gazing up into the spring green canopies of maple and chestnut, where placed in my buggy to nap, I’d be lulled to sleep by their fluttering leaves, the play of dappled light, and the hum of cars passing by. Those maples surrounded my great gran’s home on the street hemming the mighty Niagara River, while the chestnuts, with their lacy pyramids of pink and white blossoms and glossy brown nuts hidden behind green prickly shells, held court over the fence and in the backyard of our main floor apartment, it, too, on that same river street.

A small Canadian town, across the river from the bustle of a big American city, both trees and river became my touchstones, providing a grounding for the inner and outer bustle. It’s only as I’ve grown older that I realized the necessity of that gift to my well being, that I would have known them to be, claimed them to be my friends.

While reading this poem, wishing I’d had the imagination then to have conjured a friend made out of leaves, maybe it was simply a matter of being inarticulate and diffuse. Maybe imagination was always at play, given my natural affinity for always noticing trees as I walk with Annie, or ride shotgun, and knowing that sitting in my yard surrounded by trees has been healing post surgery and illness. Maybe too, I’ve had my own Aunt Leaf all this time, inviting me to wander the world, and walk in circles wide.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

A Burst of Light

*a fluke becomes magic on Erg Chebbi, Morocco’s sub Sahara*

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out my ears, my eyes, my noseholes – everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor.”

– Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light and other essays

When I read this quote earlier in the month, I thought, “That’s a powerful manifesto… just what I need to claim for myself for my birthday and beyond.”

I’d been home a week from my three weeks in Morocco, basking in the full sensory experience that IS Morocco. I had enjoyed myself immensely – a feeling that’s lingered now a month, delighted with my decision to have returned. I felt deeply content with how I’d shown up – not by bringing the best of me, but by bringing all of me. I used my skills to navigate some tricky dynamics, to ask for what I needed, and to offer what I could, including having “an answered prayer” in a room mate, simpatico were we in many ways. (Not everyday do you have a room mate who suggests we meditate daily.)

*morning meditation, Errachidia, Morocco – photo credit Kimberly Wise Tyrrell*

Travelling solo meant I needed to stretch beyond several comfort points, and while I had some inevitable moments of anxiety, scared even the final morning in Marrakech when my driver never showed, I tended to myself with care, regularly checking in, quietly reassuring myself. My boundaries were intact, yet flexible.

I’ve learned over years of travelling that my creative practices – photography and journaling with the occasional small painted vignette – give me both wonderful personalized memories and in the moment help ground and grok the rich day to day experiences. As I’ve upped my photography skills in the last year, my journal entries lapsed. So this week I filled them in using ticket stubs, brochures, business cards and photos to prompt my recollections. A touch of water colour to brighten the text heavy pages already embellished with washi tape.

In short, I came home, to use a somewhat passé, admittedly overused description, feeling empowered. Ready to keep on living the rest of my life until “I go like a fucking meteor,” just as I’ve long imagined myself coming in.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

*“glamping” in Erg Chebbi, Morocco’s sub Sahara – photo credit: Rebecca Sugarman*

Wisdom Without Words

Birthday celebrations over, and I’ve got one foot in the other out of the season. April in Alberta is like that. So warm and dry this past week that the county opened all the outdoor pickleball courts last week, but snow is forecast early this week. Buds and blossoms are slowly making their appearance through skiffs of snow and mounds of dried and dead leaves. Yet with one or two sunny, warm days and like the Easter miracle, they are risen. I’ve laundered and stored my winter down and blanket coats, those super warm Hestra mitts, and winter Blundstones, but still have wool toques ready to wear during the morning chill and nippy northern winds. Too, I washed Annie’s coats and mitts as her natural coat is plenty warm, too much so during our nearly 10,000 step walk today. Despite an old pattern of switching over my clothes closet from fall-winter to spring-summer Easter weekend, my bones are saying wait at least another week.

“I’m coming, but be patient,” Spring scolded. “You know Winter
likes to take her sweet, snowy time leaving. A bit slow and sluggish.
Likes to dig in her heels when she feels my push to get
going and growing.”
excerpt from my poem, “Call Me Caprice”

I wish I’d heeded that visceral nudge last week, when finally overcoming what I thought was inertia, I went to replace the outdoor winter wreath – a faded resplendence of red amaryllis, holly berries and evergreen – with the similarly faded spring circle of forsythia and willow. Laying the winter version on the carpet in the hallway while I placed the spring wreath on the door, I noticed Annie sniffing intently and gently nosing into it. Putting it inside its storage bag, I noticed on the carpet an egg, exactly the size and colour of those Easter mini eggs. At first glance and baffled I thought it was one, but where would a mini egg have come from? Then, taking the wreath outside and exploring, I discovered hidden within a masterfully constructed sparrow’s nest, camouflaged with sprigs of cedar just like the wreath’s own. No sooner had I carefully pried it out, when I replaced it, and the egg, hoping against hope for an Easter miracle. In hindsight, I had noticed two birds in the nearby tree paying close attention to me, but hadn’t put together that my actions around the wreath were worrying them. And Sig said he’d seen on the security cam, sparrows flying by the door for several days prior. While not the wisest place to build a nest – on the door that is our main entrance – I felt sad for having interfered. And several days later, when the temperature dropped below freezing, and I’d not seen the parent birds since, I ventured a look and found the egg cold, beyond hope. It now rests on my alter, inside its nest, with other found nests, sea glass and stones, dragonflies…each reminders of nature and the elements and seaons, and this time, the price paid for over-riding that visceral nudge.

Last night, the reverse. Pulling into our driveway, I noticed in the dark a neighborhood cat skulking in the hedge in front of my car. I got out, shooo’d and out it came with something in its mouth, whimpering softly. Not a mouse, but perhaps a baby rabbit? This time I didn’t interfere, knowing even if the cat had dropped it, given another cold night, where would I put the tiny being to ensure its survival? I felt sad.

Interfering. Not interfering. Who’s to say? Just as there is a wisdom deep in my bones that says “Too soon your spring-summer clothes (granted a small thing),” I trust there is deep and old wisdom among those more than human that asks of me to pay attention, to witness, and yes, to feel sad.

Earlier today I read “Spring Renewal, Rebirth, and the Purifying Activity of Grief,” this week’s e letter from oft cited therapist-contemplative, Matt Licata. I had actually finished this post when I felt the nudge to re-read his words:

…”There is no lasting, embodied, visionary renewal without passing through the portal of grief, which requires us to slow down, come into the earth and the ground, and honor all that we’ve lost. It requires that we provide a home for shattered ones and for the integration of the dying pieces of an old dream.

…It’s a process where we collect the shattered pieces into a holy place and place them onto an altar in front of us, where we can enter into relationship with the shards of soul that must move on without us. And we can participate with a whole heart with the death of an old dream, and the way we were so sure that it was all going to turn out.

The nature of this altar and this vase will be different for each of us, with calligraphy, engravings, colors, and in a shape that is crafted for our unique soulprint. We don’t design the vase ourselves, at least not by way of ordinary ego-consciousness. The vase is outside our deepest hopes, fears, desires, and unfolds apart from our personal sense of will.

It is given to us by the transpersonal Self, by the Divine, however we come to conceive of that and is ours and ours alone – no one else can perceive or apprehend it, or design the vase on our behalf.

…The vase, the altar, and any aspect of the soul wanting to come into our conscious experience will present itself in unexpected ways, through our dreams, out in nature, in a moment of intuitive knowing, or even through a disturbance in our mood or emotional activation.”

Something about altar and vase… coming to us in unexpected ways… out in nature… through a disturbance in our mood… resonates deeply, and inexplicably for the time being. That old and deep wisdom within my human bones and the more than human. A wisdom without words.

altar and nest-vases, heart stones, dreams and peace

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

The Beloved Is the World

When we’re young there’s lots
We don’t know about
The beloved:
How he or she is only housed
Briefly in this or that body.

Mostly, the beloved is the world,
But we’re not ready to see
That yet, not able to bear
The idea that the beloved
Won’t necessarily gaze back at us
With eyes like ours, won’t
Wrap us in his or her arms.

We want risk, but comfort, too,
Comfort most of all.
We’re still clinging to our loneliness,
Not yet ready to be alone.

– Gregory Orr –
Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved

I think I’d heard of Gregory Orr. Read something of his when a poem arrives in my inbox, or crosses my Facebook feed. But this poem really grabbed me given its appearance this week during the still potent trifecta of faith traditions. From his publisher, Copper Canyon Press, Mary Oliver is quoted as having written about this volume: “What other poet do you know who would give his work such a title—ambitious and humble at the same time? He speaks now, in these many short poems, which in their entirety are really one long poem, of mysteries, of those things—emotions, situations, mind and heart states—which are beyond the definitive.”

In addition to poetry, and city happenings, my inbox welcomes me each morning with a variety of contemplative essays and musing . For one, this week’s theme has been resurrection: what it may have originally meant, how it’s been distorted over time and empire’s (mis)interpretation, and what it might mean in a renewed way today for us. Referencing contemporary theologian Matthew Fox, it offers that we “be resurrection” for ourselves and each other, by rising up and being counted through the commitment to hope and creativity…by being in love with Life.

Being in love with Life and recognizing that the beloved IS the world, are among travel’s most significant gifts to me. I carry home as “souvenir” the memory of my encounters with people, land and culture beyond my familiar, and I am renewed. I return empowered having traveled well with my self in “our” aloneness. And my curiosity, gratitude and imagination are enlivened.

tiny blossoms at Volubilis, Morocco, 2023

Very much taken by this poet, and the bit I’ve read about him and from him as I prepare this post, I’ll conclude with another of his poems from the same volume, perhaps as wise instruction and reminder for me as I begin my next round of poetry submissions…

“How lucky we are That you can’t sell A poem”
How lucky we are
That you can’t sell
A poem, that it has
No value. Might
As well
Give it away.

That poem you love,
That saved your life,
Wasn’t it given to you?

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

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