From doing what was needed for others
now a time to walk with my own sense of life
but a moment before moving on
to be still…
thanks for what has brought me here
thanks for what is here
may it be honoured
in doing
and in being
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of saying goodbye to people, to places seldom by choice, these goodbyes but that’s part of what life is made of so… …being able to say goodbye well.
for life is Hey, friend, how’s your day? I hope you’re well and enjoying some of the spring we’re still having. Because it was delivered so early this year there was talk of it being taken back after a few days, but apparently it fits well enough we’ll keep it and wear it in a little bit. I know it’s really spring now because I finally noticed buds on the tree out front. Couldn’t miss them actually. I guess I’d been walking around with my head down, hadn’t looked up. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, eh? Had another lesson yesterday, I’m just not sure quite what it is yet. As you know, friend, I’m not a pack rat, I don’t care for collecting odd piles of things I just might use someday. I’ve walked with people who live like that and it makes me uncomfortable. It speaks of a sadness to me. Maybe that’s just me. No, I’m not a collector, but I am a bit of an archivist. Sometimes I surprise myself at what I’ve managed to hang on to. So I shouldn’t be too surprised that I ran across a pile of papers last night that looked odd at first, but turned out to be stacks of old tunes that I’d collected or people had asked me to learn over the decades, as well as instrumental arrangements from late in the last century, and even a few pieces I’d written something over thirty years ago. I was surprised I still had any of it. Even more that some of it actually wasn’t bad. There were also several songs from a few years ago, things I’d forgotten about completely, one or two of which I might actually re-learn just for amusement’s sake. Mind you I don’t know what to do with the arrangements for violin, oboe, flute and cello. I think I got the chance to hear them on real instruments exactly twice. Oh, and lyrics for the first two songs I ever wrote. How very strange yet typical that I could immediately hear the melody and the guitar part clearly and completely. Interesting to notice, too, that while the classic putdown of all young writing that it’s all about ‘me’, the first one was about Amos, a guy in South Africa who had climbed six floors up on a construction site to end his life while crowd gathered below chanting ‘jump, jump, jump’, and the second was about the end of the world from nuclear destruction. Of course, typical me, they’re barely recognizable in those terms. The first owes more to ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge‘ than any normal narrative structure, and the second is a whole ton of weird imagery flinging itself in all directions then returning to one person asking another what they saw when the world ended this morning. Y’know, I guess when you start there pretty much anything is possible. Maybe even inevitable. You see I tripped across the reminder that when it was first invented existentialism became a huge fad in the popular press which led philosophers to accuse the papers of getting it all wrong sacrificing meaning for the sake of business and here’s me thinking I’ll bet the reply was if the scholarly crowd wanted existential accuracy maybe they should go peddle their own Camus. D’ya think?
So, just for the record, it did snow on the first day of spring. Not much, and not long. And it certainly didn’t stick around. But there was snow. Hey friend, how’s your day? I hope you’ve had a taste of some of the wonderful weather we’ve been having lately. They tell me it’s the official start of spring this weekend, but it’s felt almost like summer the last couple of days. Even though I wasn’t able to get out as much as I would’ve liked, it’s been nice to have it fresh enough to open all the windows and feel the warm air. Nicer still to be able to hear kids playing around the neighbourhood, spring break and good weather made it all sound just enough like summer to make it feel even a couple of degrees warmer. What a pleasure. So although some of us are still taking bets as to whether we get another late snow storm, I think we can say that it’s looking like we made it through winter. We haven’t got the green haze on the trees yet, that first sign that there really will be leaves again at some point. But the cardinal and I are quite certain that spring is on its way. And both of us can hardly wait. Apparently more than one of us feels like singing. I don’t know if you’re the same, but spring always makes me think of changes. Not changes to dread, changes to look forward to. I have no idea what changes are in store this season, and frankly there are some real challenges ahead. But I think I’m looking ahead to positive change. And when it comes I hope I can be ready with open arms. After all life is change, no? Yeah, I’m ready. Wish me luck.
90 percent of what I say people should cheerfully disregard. The other ten per cent they will happily ignore.
Hey friend, how’s your day? We’ve had snow around here again today. And the temperature’s been warm enough that the storm came and the roads turned into ice. So it was a good day to stay inside. Of course that wasn’t an option, so I got to wander around while everyone remembered how to drive in these sorts of conditions. Some figured it out quicker than others. At least most of the traffic was going in slow motion, so I didn’t see a lot of real ugliness in my travels. And wonder of wonders people seemed to be behaving courteously to other drivers. You’ve heard me say it before, I can’t count the number of times visitors have told me that they think we have some of the rudest drivers in these parts. So it looks to me like it takes nasty weather to actually bring out the kindness that we think we exhibit all the time. That would explain the doofus honking impatiently at me the other day because I had the nerve to pause for a moment and let that poor soul make that left turn. Apparently the weather was too nice. We Canadians can be such a funny people, eh? Save our kindness for bad weather. And think of ourselves as polite. Save our helpfulness for charity. And think of ourselves as compassionate. Save our careful language for when we think people are listening. And think of ourselves as enlightened. Save our good moves for people we like. And think of ourselves as loving. You wouldn’t know it from all of the official cheerleading going on, but we’ve slipped badly, friend. We used to be a country that ranked highly in every official measure of decency you could imagine. And one by one those measures have dropped. But as those positive realities disappear we lean harder and harder into the lies we tell ourselves. And now I am embarrassed when I hear someone suggest we live in a truly caring society. Ah friend, how did we come to believe such a pack of lies about ourselves? How did we ever come to think that a few good moves decades ago meant the task of creating a truly civil society was completed? And who on earth decided that it was more important to think highly of ourselves than to sit down and really figure out how to help one another. No, in many important ways we no longer measure up to our image of ourselves. And that is truly sad. But no one’s interested in hearing me say we have work to do. That would be un-Canadian. So I don’t bother. Guess I’ll go finish clearing the snow. At least there I can be doing something useful. And celebrate that I can do it at all, even if it is in shifts. So there too is something positive. Meanwhile thanks for the excuse to sit for a while. Always nice to spend a few minutes with you. Write when you can. And know that I’m thinking of you. Be well. |
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for poetry is not the words
Just a small postscript to thoughts of spring the other day. The day dawned a little cooler than the last few. A fair bit cooler actually. I was standing by the window taking in the complete lack of wind. Everything was so still. Then a single, tiny white feather fluttered down. How odd, I thought, I wonder how that came to be. And so small. A moment later another. Then another. Ah, I see.
As a rule of thumb