Driving this past week, I don’t know where, I noticed the nascent greening of trees in the river valley. After a few much-needed days of precipitation – sloppy snow that turned to thick rain, and in the mountains, heavy snow accumulations, though hardly making a dent in snowpack levels needed to offset the province’s extreme risk for fires and drought – buds are popping, tiny indigo scilla and daffodils are blooming, the raspberry canes are reviving. Absorbed in the beauty of one of my favorite seasons, I suddenly realized this was how it looked the day I took Annie to the vet after what we thought had been a case of THC poisoning. Checking with Sig and my 2023 calendar, yes, it had been April 27th when she suddenly took ill. For several days, she was listless, frightened, eating little, and very unsteady on her feet. Our vet, Deb, and I wept as she laid out options, and Annie lay under the chair.
And then Annie’s miraculous recovery…of biblical proportions, a spring resurrection, to our way of thinking.
our seven miraculous weeks
And then her sudden demise seven weeks later, just days before Solstice. In hindsight, it had been a stroke that felled her then, and now.
There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think of Annie…that I don’t continue to feel the tender ache in my heart for missing her.
Yet in a month’s time, we’ll welcome into our home Walker, our sixth English Setter. I’m ready. Watching people dog-walking and IG reels featuring the antics of dogs, I’m excited with what this young teenager will bring to our lives, assured of being enriched by his presence.
Driving home yesterday from my first solo Saturday Camino, nothing planned but feeling the stirrings to train for another long distance walk this fall, I heard on the radio Sinead O’Connor’s iconic rendering of Prince’s song, “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Tears stung as I whispered along, “yes, nothing compares to you, Annie.”
Walking along the river path, enamored seeing more signs of the wheel’s turning, I took a photo that perfectly captured not only the going and coming of seasons, but also the truth of this threshold moment in my life: the endings and beginnings, the grieving and the welcoming.
endings and beginnings
Come Wednesday, we’ll be off exploring more of our beloved Italy…always an easy sell for the man who “eats well and travels seldomly.” I’m acquainting him with regions I first visited in 2011 – Sicily, Sorrento, and the Amalfi Coast – a tour I designed when, lost in translation, the tour company I thought we’d booked with, didn’t. Allora…
A presto! Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.
If this is the best you can do, citizens of the world, I resolve to become summer shadow, turtle adrift in a pool. Today a frog waited in a patch of jasmine for drizzles of wet before dawn. The proud way he rose when water touched his skin – his simple joy at another morning – compare this to bombing, shooting, wrecking, in more countries than we can count and ask yourself – human or frog?
– Naomi Shihab Nye, Voices in the Air, 2018 –
Talk about prescience. This poem was published in 2018, though most likely written months, if not years earlier. Given the poet’s Palestinian father, Naomi Shihab Nye has always had her eye on, and heart attuned to the chronic strife in her father’s homeland.
I wrote at the bottom of the poem’s page, after yesterday’s reading and in response to growing tensions and extended involvements, “Are we poised for WW3? And too, Ukraine and Russia since February 2022…” My question as reasonable as the poet’s, but I pray, not prescient.
I’ve been away for a several days, hence the pause. Writing, but not in this space. It’s nice to be back until I set off again in a few weeks. Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.
“Aries and Viriditas” original artwork by Katharine Weinmann
…to a world-weary empath
you can’t leave Earth yet
~ because I just flipped ahead about a hundred pages in your story and I read that someday you will be the reason someone else doesn’t give up on their life
I’m sorry to spoil the end of your epic tale
~ but someday you will be the one who ignites the blaze in another person’s heart that won’t ever be put out again
don’t complicate the plot of your story
~ you are here to be lamplighter that hands out little bits of your flame to ensure the rest of the world doesn’t exist in darkness
I know you have been scorched so many times
~ to love the world is to sometimes be burned at the stake by others who mistake your gift of compassion as a personal weakness
I know it’s not easy to be a bringer of light to those who have become addicted to shadows
~ but we need you to be a gardener of effervescent seeds that you will perhaps never see grow into burning rosebushes that can be seen from space
Oh, my love, don’t give into the calling despair
~ set your life on fire with kindness and watch how many other people come out of their caves to sit by your campfire heart to share their own stories of survival
Oh my love, you are my favorite element
~ john roedel ~
It’s Easter Sunday. Cold, with a skiff remaining of the crusty snow that blew in on Thursday, and sunny. We were treated by our friends to a quintessential Easter brunch: locally sourced smoked ham and scalloped potatoes, sauteed asparagus, hot cross buns, and bread pudding with maple syrup. While flowers remain hidden here, a solitary bird, perched high within the branches of the still-bare alder tree, serenaded both our coming and going. A “slow” meal, interspersed with watching the antics of their cats, and our always edifying conversations, with the window open feeling the gentle breeze and hearing the birdsong, I felt the day’s hopeful promise.
Now home, and after a nap (I’ve been plagued with early waking for the past few weeks – The recent full moon? An upcoming solar eclipse? Excitement with Tuesday’s trip? Editing? Anxiety anticipating the long-time-in–coming meeting with afriend on Good Friday, one that allowed us both to lay down our metaphoric load of disappointment and grief?), I turned down the furnace and opened wide the windows to invite in Spring’s energy to displace Winter’s. A bit of packing, tending to correspondence, and this blog, one held in the draft folder for a day when time is short, concentration spent.
John Roedel is a self-described “Facebook poet,” sharing his bittersweet, aimed straight-for-the-heart compositions, often in the form of a photo of a first draft scratched in pen on the lined page of his notebook. On the heels of today’s brunch conversation, one that weaved back and forth through life’s joys and despairs, this felt like the right one to post. Too, that it speaks to his “favorite element” fire, which is Aries and the astrological sign currently ruling our planet. Aries is my sign, too. Fire my element and dosha. And as a self-described “empath,” at times world-weary – the trifecta of reasons for sharing it with you, many of whom I suspect are, too, world-weary empaths.
So, take heart, dear ones. Continue to set your life on fire with kindness and know we’re all in exceptionally good company.
One winter night in 2015, we attended a concert at our local theatre. Conceived and produced by local musician Cam Neufeld,“The Road to Django”celebrates the music of Django Reinhardt, founder of “gypsy jazz,” made famous with violinist Stephane Grappelli in Parisian hotclubs during the 1930s and 40s. Tracing its origins musically, following the migratory path of the Roma people from northern India to Spain, through Turkey and the Balkans to France, Cam and his ensemble educated and entertained us splendidly. But it was when their “journey” brought them to Andalusia with a “vignette” of Flamenco, its origins attributed to the impoverished Romani, a form initially despised but now a UNESCO recognized part of the World’s Intangible Cultural Heritage, that I became enthralled. Arriving at home, I immediately went in search of lessons and a teacher. Two days later, I was in class.
Fast forward to 2017 and my first visit to Andalusia en route to a weeklong writing retreat in a hill town northwest of Sevilla. While the “raison d’etre” left much to be desired, its location – a pink stucco villa built by long time British expats to raise their family and open a cooking school – was a culinary dream come true, the daily treks through the forests into different villages worth the price of admission. And the once in a lifetime opportunity to join the annual pilgrimage, la Romeria Reina de Los Angeles, where the Flamenco tradition was on show at every turn, became a most memorable feast for the eyes and ears. (I wrote about this experience in my earlier blog site.)
Returning to Sevilla after a week of writing, I witnessed a street performance of Flamenco dance and guitar the morning I visited the Plaza de España and later that evening, first in line for front row seats, I saw a live show at one of the local Flamenco cafes.
Returning home, and to classes, I realized this was a dance form I needed to have begun as a child, in another life, in another world if I were to ever realize the dream I had in my head, the feeling held in my heart. Yet, I persisted and finally felt I was making some progress when I switched to a teacher whose approach was organized, coherent, and aligned with my learning style. Jane was a devotee, studying every summer in Sevilla’s blistering heat, coming home to teach and produce annual Flamenco festivals featuring those same masters from Andalusia. I regretted not finding my way to her sooner and losing those precious years.
In 2020, I designed a winter sojourn in southern Spain to introduce my husband to another country of my heart (Italy and Morocco each taking chambers). Arriving in Sevilla, we quickly made our way to the pink stucco villa in the hill town to enjoy its remarkable hospitality and meals. Stops in Cordoba, Granada, Malaga (all described in past posts here) followed, with enough time in each to mosey around, take in the galleries and sights, taste the tapas and sip the icy vermuts. Returning to Sevilla, we took in a Flamenco show at the same cafe I’d visited in 2017. Again, first in line for front row seats, I recognized the male dancer and the singer. It was a performance not to be forgotten. The male dancer knew it. We knew it. He knew we knew it, as the energy in that cafe and on that stage soared and his footwork almost made sparks. Did he know what was to come? Winter 2020. Spain, then Italy, then Portugal, then the rest of the world falling to Covid-19. Was that performance, one where all was put on the stage, nothing held back, imbued with prescience?
Fast forward to this month when I met my teacher for coffee. We’d met earlier in the summer as she was returning to Sevilla for the first time since Covid. I would be soon traveling to Italy to embark on my 250+ km Via di Francesco. I’d told her of my healing foot and wondered if I’d be able to return to her classes. During coffee this time, she confirmed my hunch that dancing again might seriously compromise my foot.
Last week, moved by spring’s enlivening energies and the age-old tradition of spring cleaning, I reached into the closet for the bag containing my nearly new hammered toe shoes, and to my surprise, the castanets I’d purchased while studying with my first teacher. In another closet, I gathered the long black trimmed red ruffled skirt. I took some photos and posted them on the local flamenco page and shared to mine. Within an hour an inquiry. By the next morning, all were sold to a local dance teacher.
We agreed to a day and time for her to pick them up and all day long, very atypical of me, it kept slipping my mind. Come the day of, I totally forgot our appointment. Apologetic, I offered to deliver the package to her. And that day, again atypical, I was running late. My husband, noticing all of this, together with my abrupt shunning of his attempts to help me get going, suggested I might be having a tough time parting with my skirt and shoes. Yes, I was, I conceded.
And then I cried…for the dream not to be…for the memory of that last time I danced…wearing my black shoes and my red skirt with a black ruffled sleeved shirt, looking very much the Flamenco dancer in my mind, on those stages…standing in a row with other dancers, each of us being watched by the teacher from Sevilla as he counted and clapped the beat…our feet tapping, hands held on hips, erect, looking straight ahead into the mirror…reflecting my focus, my precision… even when he stood directly in front of me.
It was a performance not to be forgotten. I knew it. He knew it. I knew he knew it, as the energy soared, and my footwork almost made sparks. Did I know what was to come? Winter 2020. Covid-19. Time passing. My final Flamenco class.
This is my homage to Flamenco, my dream of dancing it, the time I did.
A girl in Gaza speaks into a table microphone: Do you believe in infinity? If so, what does it look like to you?
Not like a wall Not like a soldier with a gun Not like a ruined house bombed out of being Not like concrete wreckage of a school’s good hope a clinic’s best dream
In fact not like anything imposed upon you and your family thus far in your precious thirteen years.
My infinity would be the never-ending light you deserve every road opening up in front of you.
Soberly she nods her head.
In our time voices cross the sea easily but sense is still difficult to come by.
Next girl’s question: Were you ever shy?
– Naomi Shihab Nye, Voices in the Air, 2018
I’m sitting at a worktable in my public library typing this post for tomorrow’s drop. We’ve been without WIFI in our home office for nearly a week (hence why no Monday post). WOW! How dependent are we on this technology? It’s tax time. My husband does all our investing online. Bills to be paid by the month end. Waiting to print time sensitive return labels. Looming project deadlines. I’ve managed with my phone but wonder how much I’m over the data limit and how much the costs will be. My neck aches from being hunched over…texting and tapping what I can to stay in touch, be responsive. So, in this moment, I’m reminded how much I enjoy and appreciate my library, surrounded by stacks, students plugged in working at other tables, surrounded by full-length windows.
It’s quintessential springtime in Alberta. After several days of sun, warm weather, and melted snow – after getting off really easy with winter – the temperature dropped below freezing and snow fell for most of the day. I took a leisurely start to my day with a coffee date being canceled. Sipping my Americano, in the flat white light of the living room, quiet with snow gently falling outside, I began reading this volume of poetry, waiting on my shelf for just this moment. Needing some shoring up given another week of rejections and trepidation about the manuscript I’m revising, I was not disappointed, as even its epigraph began to set me straight:
“Stay humble, blend, belong to all directions. Fly low, love a shadow. And sing, sing freely, never let anything get in the way of your singing, not darkness, not winter, not the cries of flashier birds, not the silence that finds you steadfast pen ready…”
Naomi Shihab Nye
Then this, the first sentence of her introduction:
“Poet Galway Kinnell said, ‘To me, poetry is someone standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.'”
And this, to open the first section, “Messages,”:
Broken pencil Broken pen Maybe today I’ll write my best poem
Well maybe not a poem but a post. And maybe not my best, but enough. Enough to be thankful for Palestinian-American poet and educator, Naomi Shihab Nye who first came to my attention when I read her well known “Gate a4” and signature, “Kindness.” Enough to let her cultural perspective and experiences teach me, as she was taught when teaching a poetry workshop in an international high school in Japan, the word Yutori – “life space” – the place and space “in which to stand back to contemplate what we are living and experiencing. More spaciousness in being, more room in which to listen.” (Voices in the Air, xiii) And enough to remember a girl in Gaza, or Ukraine, or Israel, Afghanistan, Haiti, Ethopia, Yemen,Russia…asking profound questions, being deeply heard, and wishing her the infinity of the never-ending light she so deserves.
I Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do.
You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. – Rainer Maria Rilke
II the places in our heart where the world took bites out of us
may never fully heal and will likely become wide open spaces
~ be careful to not fill them with just anything or anyone
your wounds aren’t supposed to become attics for you to hoard unnecessary junk
these holes in our hearts are holy sites
and we should treat them as such
so when visiting your old wounds make sure to take your shoes off and turn off your cellphone
sit by candlelight and watch how the shadows tell the story how brave you are
~ to survive – John Roedel
III “When a lot of things start going wrong, all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born – and that this something needs for your to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.” – Anne Lamott
IV “Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the Earth gives me daily and I must return the gift. “ – Robin Wall Kimmerer
I collect poems and quotes for my weekly Friday photo and poem feature. As I scrolled for today’s post, these four came together for me with a curious resonance, echoing from writ small to large, scaling from an individual’s questioning and suffering to Earth’s magnificent mystery.
I offer these selections as a reminder that there are forces seen and unseeen, angels, ancients and ancestors working on our behalf in ways we have little, if any way, of registering. I offer these up to salute the turning of the season, life’s cycles being just one of those vast and wondrous mysteries.
Much love and kindest regards, dear friends, and blessings for the arrival of the Equinox, spring and autumn.
There are those who want the world to remain on its current path. This is not only unacceptable, but it is painfully unimaginative. For the beauty of our generation is we are uniquely situated to achieve what so many in this world currently consider impossible. How exquisitely beautiful it will be to watch the current narrative go down in flames, then witness poetics & phoenix rise from the ashes.
Embers, ancestors, and angels await us, loved ones. Forward.
– Mark Gonzales – In Times of Terror, Wage Beauty, 2014
I’d forgotten I had on my poetry shelf this eloquent “collage of visions.” In response to last week’s attempt to find enough words to notice and name one of the current global narratives literally imploding and exploding, a friend, in her comment, referenced the book, one I had gifted her years back. Immediately retrieving it, thumbing through its simple and beautifully designed pages, I knew I wanted to uplift and amplify Mark’s message and intention here today. Quoting from the back cover:
In Times of Terror, Wage Beauty is a meticulously crafted series of ideas in tweet sized digestible prose. It serves as a personal guide to social change makers in the 21st century navigating complex social systems by highlighting advanced approaches to healing and global wellness.
A quick early morning scroll todayon social media and I’m reminded it’s International Women’sDay. Aware of feeling cynical and crusty, perhaps the result of many very early mornings arriving at my desk to write, I’m less inclined to jump on the bandwagon and share any of its memes or create my own. As with so many of these socially-politically designated days, often created, if not co-opted, by the power brokers to highlight and assuage their own interests, or by corporations to make money, I’m tired and disillusioned with the narrative that has become a “painfully unimaginative” rhetoric. I need a narrative like Mark’s. One that insists we not live in a world where any of us needs to shout to be heard, seen, and valued (26).
Instead, a narrative that encourages the simple yet essential acts of creativity – dreams, laughter, love, and imagination (51). One that heals the hearts of those forced from their homelands by centering on their beauty (29). One that remembers stories as ceremony, vessels for ancestors, memories, futures, and the vehicle by which the divine is engaged (41). One that reminds me “now is not the time to be timid” (21).
the ridged terraces below Trevi, Umbria – a classic Italian hilltop town la Via di Francesco, September 27, 2023
SILENT BRAVERIES Sometimes it takes looking at your struggles to recognize the depth of your courage. To be in awe of what it takes to face real fears, break old patterns, and climb the steep ridges of your own private mountain. Even the silent braveries carried out over time cover the ground all around you.
– Susan Frybort – Look to the Clearing
From my filed and saved poems, this is one in keeping with my current writing, both here andin recent poetry. The threshold crossed into a new terrain, one I’ve coined “an eldering landscape,” where facing real, albeit old and ancient fears; identifying, breaking and grieving old patterns; challenging roles and rules; initiating courageous conversations; climbing my private steep mountains and traversing barren landscapes – all various way markers to a destination unknown.
Truly my camino, caminho, cammino – the Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian ways. Truly ones that each of us walk, in this and the various stages of our lives. Walks wherein we call upon, become, and cover the ground with our respective silent braveries, revealing the way for each other.
Maybe a short post. More from a promise kept to me. To write. Though of late, I feel wrung out of words and too full of others’.
I need to empty. To make space. To listen to what might want to be, needs to be heard.
Maybe it’s the belated onset of “Blue Monday,” but I’ve had little energy for much beyond the thrice weekly pool visits for deep water aquafitness and an occasional walk. Despite a ridiculous run of beyond glorious weather, confusing birds and buds and deeply concerning to all of us regarding forest fires and cumulative droughts, I’ve been in a slump, the likes of which I haven’t felt for almost two decades. Then, upon the advice of my GP, I made a card to myself called “Trust,” addressed to me, “to be opened in the dark days to remember”…that the light will and does always return.
I notice that now, again, every day, especially at dinner time, how dark is giving way to sunset. I notice beautiful sunrises as I dress for the pool.
As I read the words I wrote in spring of 2005, there in black and white is the recurrent theme of generational loss and its genetic vestiges that have weighed me down. This time amplified by my mother’s recent health crisis, harrowing for all of us.
Maybe “slump” is too hard a word. “Fallow” comes to mind, as in how I felt and named myself during those first months of covid when I had suddenly lost my career, never to be found in the same way again. Underground and uncertain. Bereft and lost. Yes, there’s that. Again. Still. As it must be. Walking this week, I met a neighbor I hadn’t seen for months. When she asked about Annie, and I said she’d died in June, it became a very tearful walk. A stop on the quiet fairway, held by a tree until my sadness subsided.
I especially love the phrase gifted to me by a dear friend in the card she made and sent to me last week: “The rocking pendulum of January…” a bit lullaby, a bit raucous…
Given that here is where I’ve named my fresh territory of living – an eldering landscape – I’ll defer to the words of John O’Donohue who speaks with a wise and knowing eloquence about the interior state of threshold:
“At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold, a great complexity of emotion comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds: to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.”
To Bless the Space Between Us
So, with little energy to spare, I’m taking my time…feeling as I can, the bigness, muchness, fullness of it all, attempting to listen inward with as much attention as I can summon.
HALLUCINATIONS OF THE SOUL The longing for things that you could not have, the yearning for places you were not destined to arrive. Wistful memories of what was not ever meant to be. Regret for not being who you thought you would become. These hallucinations of the soul are agonizing prisoners that must be pardoned and released.
Clear the room. Open the door and let them leave. And in this space, you’ll paint a glorious existence of being here with presence and contentment for what truly is a relevant and meaningful life.
– Susan Frybort, Open Passages –
Still in the first month, Frybort’s poem speaks to me of a tender way of approaching the new year. Not bound by resolution making, or even fixed on a word for the year (though comfort, grace and gratitude continue to accompany my focused breaths), the imagery of pardon and release, of allowing discontent an open door from which to leave, invite a softening and deepening into possibility. Evoked too for me, is a favourite from Rumi, The Guest House, as rendered by Coleman Barks.
It’s been a challenging month. I’m happy to be home to days that are ever so slightly growing longer, especially in the late afternoon, and to temperatures rising to comfortable from last week’s frigid depths. My family and I are relieved that my mother is home, regaining her strength.
Discerning “guides from beyond” from “agonizing prisoners,” balancing hospitable welcome with unabashed leave taking, giving gratitude its due, we all make our way.
A Wabi Sabi Life 