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An understanding

As I rode home on the bus yesterday from the college where I teach, an unexpected realization opened within me. My bus ride is not particularly conducive to thoughtful reflection. There are a lot of loud students, the roads are bumpy, and the bus is often crowded; so you can see that the ride does not attract emergent understanding. From what I can tell, three things allowed this novel way of seeing to appear for me.

First, I have been making my way through the Dune hexalogy again. My initial encounter with the books occurred at 14 or 15. At that point in time, I was fascinated by the messianic arc of the narrative. Rereading them now, I am discovering many insights that were hidden from my ability to understand in the past. While on the bus yesterday, I was reading a section that dealt with the educational practices of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, a millenial old "quasi-religious" order of nuns. In describing their understanding of the universe, Lady Jessica says the following,

"To learn patience in the Bene Gesserit Way, you must begin by recognizing the essential, raw instability of our universe. We call nature - meaning this totality in all of its manifestations - the Ultimate Non-Absolute."

The raw December light of the afternoon filtered through a hazy sky and danced in patterns on the faces of the students I saw.

Second, when I ride the bus I wear headphones (see note above about noisy students). Yesterday, I was listening to a new discovery, Grant Green's impeccable album, Green Street. With an unmistakable style, Green weaves his way through the music. While I listened to "No. 1 Green Street," I recognized the flow that emerged from Green's guitar. The jazz and blues inflected style that he develops seems infinitely variable. The rhythm, tone, and style were perfect because they were unforced. Grant was not trying, he was simply doing what he was doing.

The raw December light of the afternoon filtered through a hazy sky and danced in patterns on the faces of the students I saw.

Third, because I have been working on my body, I am becoming more aware of what is happening within me. This embodiment allows me to recognize patterns in the world. The flow of my attention was focused and centred and pure and light. I have been developing a way to recognize moments of optimal attention through identifying particular internal emotional landscapes.

The raw December light of the afternoon filtered through a hazy sky and danced in interesting patterns upon the faces of the students I saw.

What I saw and understood yesterday was change, but it was not simply change in relation to stability. I know the infinite variation that change is. Instead of attempting to calculate and classify the changes, I saw through the changes to the changing of change.

Dead creatures

Two moments from my life.

1. Walking home from teaching on Monday afternoon, the late November sun was shining brightly and the arm was remarkably warm, as I was listening to Van Morrison's Blowin' Your Mind on my headphones. I had skipped "Brown Eyed Girl", made way through the aching "He Ain't Give You None", and was unfolding my thoughts to the epic and under-rated "TB Sheets" when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Turning to focus, I could make out a small grey foot protruding from the leaves. Then I saw the squirrel lying dead, head covered by leaves, in what seemed a peaceful position. I looked for a long, hard moment, then walked on. While I walked down my street, Van Morrison sang about his friend and the smell of the sheets and the knowledge she would die.

2. Picking Miriam up from daycare around the corner from our house is a joy. The walk to see her is filled with anticipation, the moment of meeting her again is joyful because she smiles and says, "Daddy," and then the walk home is perfect because of her unique ability to linger and look and explore and enjoy the late afternoon. So I picked Miriam up from daycare and as we walked home, we passed a hedge that had, up until recent memory, been covered in leaves. The hedge I noticed had many thorns in it. As I was making a mental note of this for future reference, a kind of "do not let Miriam grab this hedge" note, I looked into the tangled branches. There was a small, dead, male sparrow hanging from a thorn in the hedge. He had been dead from some time, but was suspended. It was a shocking vision. I did not want to see it and yet I could not not see it; his death was unavoidably preserved into my present. So there was a flash of death and then I had to tend to Miriam, to make sure she was safe and sound and smiling, and I was sucked back into my life.

I don't know why I saw either of these creatures. Nor do I know why they died. Perhaps it is only that reminder which occurs in the autumn, that hint of death, of the coming cold, and of the slow loss of energy. Being reminded of death is good for me because seeing it as the frame of life, the outside and negative of living, allows me to savour the moments I am experiencing.

Palin Supporters Interviewed

This video embodies many things that I value.

We are what we say.

Writing and editing

Well, I disappeared. I've been doing some important work both mentally and physically. My new website for my writing and editing work is online.

www.jonebenfield.com

Let me know what you think.

Be well.

The feasting

The morning sky is grey with clouds and a faint mist of rain falls, while in the backyard, at the feeder and on the ground, the birds and squirrels feast. The tiger lilies are bursting orange against the green below them, while yellow and white honeysuckle flowers array across the fence. I imagine their smell drifting through the yard. The quickly slipping beauty of summer is upon us. A friend last night said that he wished summer went by at half the speed of the rest of the year. There is a beauty in that thought. Then he said that he wished that his experience of his daughter's life had gone by at even a third or a quarter of its speed. Love does that. It makes us want to savour those moments.

I am in favour of slowness. As Miriam learns to walk and talk, as her first birthday approaches, I am reminded of how quickly life goes. On a daily basis, I practice looking at her. Every moment I spend with her, I remember her special and extraordinary existence.

Ah, love.

Flowing, flowing, flowing

I read this line by the Austrian writer Richard Beer Hofmann in a sermon by Joshua Haberman:

“We are but  riverbeds. Through you and me  runs  the blood of the past to those who shall be.”

I'm feeling very connected to things today.

Lack of Sleep

As a parent, you become accustomed to a certain lack of sleep and general tiredness. Whether by fortune, biology, or fate, during the initial parts of Miriam's life I have had the benefit of good sleep. In the last week, though, I have become acquainted with the sleeplessness that Shauna has been experiencing periodically throughout Mimi's first year of life. Wow! I have gained an enormous insight into what it is like to become sleep-deprived. In public, I have been fumbling for words, my thoughts seem muddied, my emotions run closer to the surface, and I find myself collapsing tired in a chair simply to feel my body held up. And I've had a doozy of a headache today.

I have to give proper respect to my wife for her ability to do without sleep. I honestly believe that I would be dead if I had to undergo the sleep deprivation she has been through this year.

So, yes, I am tired. There is a strange quality to the hours between 3:00am and 5:00am. The quietness is nice, refreshing, and occasionally eerie, but the real gem has been learning that I can do this. I wouldn't want to do it regularly because of my mental health, but knowing that I can, in a pinch, be up regularly for a stretch in the night is oddly satsisfying.

Any suggestions on how to get a one-yea-old to sleep through the night? We think it is walking and teething and the fact that we just took away her morning nap. Tricks, thoughts, helpful hints are welcome.

Talking about craziness (annals of psychiatry)

For the past ten years, consistently and diligently, in both good and bad therapeutic relationships, I have persisted in talking about my experience of mental illness. I have delineated my illness trajectory, analysed my cycle and patterns, talked about relationships, considered medications, listened to clinical advice, described my insight into my aberrant thought patterns and behaviours, and through it all, I have managed to have, for the most part, decent relationships with my psychiatrists. There are notable bad experiences: the doctor who, at the end of our session, dictated his notes into a handheld tape recorder as I sat listening to him analyse my awareness, understanding, and insight; the doctor who booked in twenty minute time slots, listened to me for eight minutes, wrote a prescription for two minutes, and then walked me to the door; and all of the doctors who have, at one time or another, not believed, trusted, or listened to my understanding of my moods.

So, yes, there have been bad doctors. But to a far greater degree, I have received careful, caring, and considerate treatment from individuals who understood the complexity of mental illness, were interested in the philosophical, literary, and linguistic components of insanity, and generally chose to see the world in the variegated colours that it embodies. And, although they will never know the depth of my appreciation, I thank each and every one of them for their compassion and ability to remain open, point out useful therapies, and understand deeply.

I came to see myself in the open, often extremely non-judgemental, space of their offices. This is not to denigrate, nor to deny the experiences of individuals who have fallen prey to the aggressive, violent, and reductionistic mode of operation which can exist in psychiatric institutions. Perhaps I am writing that I am one of those who has fallen on the compassionate side of this medicine.

So I am still talking about craziness, I am still writing about craziness, but the depth of awareness and subtlety that I bring to this task has been enormously aided through those psychiatrists who are, for the most part, largely anonymous figures to the rest of the people in my life. Their anonymity will never diminish the degree to which they have influenced, though.

Friendship (a prolegomenon)

For years, I have struggled, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to understand how male friendship operates. Or perhaps, it is not the understanding that I have striven for, but the embodiment of male friendship that satisfied the particular demands that I had for the designation of "friend." Recently, when I was speaking with Shauna about another unreturned phone call, I said, "Perhaps I don't have any real friends." Shauna looked at me and replied, "It's not that you don't have friends, but that you don't understand friendship. You expect things that, at your stage of life, men cannot provide." At first, I railed against this. I suppose it felt unjust to me. The suggestion that I did not understand the parameters of male friendship, that, somehow, I was asking my friends to provide a value in friendship which was considered surplus, really bothered me.

After a few days, I began to systematically reflect upon the quality of the friendships I have had over the span of my life and evaluate how satisfied I was in relation to each. At first, I was sure that Shauna was wrong, but as I went down the list of names that I counted as genuine friends, I began to see a pattern emerge. In most of my friendships, I was the initiator, whether that was in hanging out, playing music, or communicating. It was rare that a friend was able to keep up with the demands I required. Secondly, I noticed that the emotional depth that I sought in male friendships was very substantial. I came to see that I required an emotional commitment that was generally very high and many men, as I've come to learn, are unable or unwilling to exist in this state for long periods of time.

These two characteristics: a) my initiator status and the way that this kept my friendships going, and b) the emotional requirements which I expected, prevented me from seeing that an inordinate amount of my energy was being spent searching for happiness and satisfaction in the presence of friends. This is not to denigrate the friendships I have with a small group of intelligent, understanding, and compassionate men. It is perhaps better used to indicate a particular deficiency in my own comfortability in the world. I have, for better or worse, sought happiness, joy, comfort, and understanding in the existence of others who, at some level, have been indifferent to these particular needs, not because of a deficiency on their behalf, but because of an inability to understand the need, a priori, due to its non-existence for them.

So, I am in search of my solitary comfort and, strangely, I find it here. Even in declaring this much, I already understand that the words I use to describe and delineate myself are exactly what I need.

Eduardo Galeano

In the Saturday Globe and Mail, Eduardo Galeano explained in an interview part of his understanding of our submission to technology. He said:

We're being programmed by our computers and we're being bought by the supermarket and we're being seen by television and we're being driven by cars.

There are many ways in which technology can dominate our lives and distract us from the most vital signs in our environment. We are alive most when we understand our being as ecosystem.

Forgetting that our hyper-technological engagement in the world is radically recent history can obscure the dirt in our nails, the strangeness of our hands, and the beauty of our lives.

An experiment

I do not consider myself particularly radical in politics. In one of those serendipitous moments of aimless web wandering that occurs on occasion, I followed a link about Alain de Botton to his latest project called The School of Life. Besides offering some fascinating services, I found that I could receive an aphorism a day for a month in my email. I have a penchant for these types of things. So for a little over a week, I have been receiving these aphorisms in my inbox every morning. Some are hilarious, others profound, but thus far, all of them have been filled with a spirit of joy which has been exciting. I noticed in the first email that I could print out the aphorism, which I promptly did. I sat for a moment wondering what I would do with it. Then, it came to me, in a flash, as it were, I was going to post these aphorisms in my neighbourhood. We often take a walk after dinner, so I thought this would be an ideal time to poster my neighbourhood. So every day, we set out with the aphorism and cellophane tape and I do my small bit to experiment in the world. I check on the posters periodically to see if they are still up. Some disappear immediately. Apparently, people in my neighbourhood either: a) don't like posters or b) don't agree with the values on the posters or c) both a) & b). The first time one of the aphorisms was taken down, I took it personally. Now, I don't mind if they disappear. Even if only the person who takes them down reads it, the aphorism has done its job. Other aphorisms are still hanging around and, on occasion, I imagine strangers having a laugh or moment with the words. There is something to being the anonymous vehicle.

There have been some truly wonderful aphorisms, but without a doubt, my favourite is Mae West's:

"Too much of a good thing can be truly wonderful."

So I will continue my peregrinations through my neighbourhood offering  these glimpses from different worlds and words. The wisdom is something that my community needs. So I will continue to experiment.

Fire so close to home

All yesterday evening, I felt a sickness inside as I learned that an undetermined number of houses within a kilometre of my parents' home in Nova Scotia had been burned down. Although I did not think that my parents' house had burned down, Google Earth and news reports helped me believe that their home was fine, there was still this deep uneasiness in me. I realized that although I love the physical structure of my parents' house and the many memories associated with it, my true fears surrounded the inescapably irreplaceable elements of our lives that were the home of the house. My mother's many extraordinary photographs and the countless negatives stored at the house could never, ever be replaced. My father's writing, the years of journals and poems and stories, would be impossible to reconstruct. Then, there are our old family photo albums, the vessels of our collective memories, the markers of our pasts together. Too many artifacts of our lives would have been lost. Then there are the pieces of artwork that my parents have accumulated over their long and wonderful lives. Then there are all the things that I have forgotten about, all those things that although I can't, at this moment, bring to mind, would be missed with a bodily awareness. I would never consciously remember those things, but I know that a longing for that past would still continue in me.

I did not grow up in this house and I only lived there briefly for two summers, but my memories of the times spent at the house are incredily powerful and important to me. And it is not as though the memories would be taken or stolen or disappear immediately. But, at the same time, there is an undeniable feeling I have that is associated with the place of that house, the angle of the walls and the windows, the sights visible from the upper and lower decks, the smell of the soil in the gardens, the rambling English garden in front with ferns that in spring burst forth with a brilliant green that is practically indescribable. And my fear was that if the house disappeared, if it was subsumed in flames, never to return like a phoenix, then I would slowly lose the memories I had of the place in the same way that memories of physical pain and emotional loss are dulled and, somehow, made fuzzy. In that process, I feared losing an important period of my past.

And then there was the future, or the futures, however you think about it, in which there were no vacations at the house in Ferguson's cove, in which I did not go to sleep knowing my parents were there, in which the ocean slowly moved in and through Halifax Harbour before the place where the house had been. The fog which often comes to shore from the deep ocean would cover these futures and it would never lift. And it was hard to think of this as a possibility, let alone a reality.

Although many dear places like Purcell's Pond and Flat Lake will, doubtless, never be the same, because my parents are safe, because my memories are safe, because the house, as far as we can tell, is still standing, I am relieved.

My heart goes out to those poor families who have to reconcile themselves with the tragedy of losing their homes. There are no salves for that.

The Birthday Visit

So, on the morning of my birthday, I dug up a tree stump in the backyard. And, if that plus turning 34 was not enough excitement for one day, I had a very interesting visit in the afternoon. I had taken a shower and felt remarkably cleansed from the morning adventure in the dirt. I was standing in my home office facing away from the window and talking to Shauna. All of the sudden, I hear behind me the large clunking, banging noise that I know from experience is  the sound of a bird hitting a window. I knew the bird had hit it hard from the depth and breadth of the sound. I turned quickly and in a flurry of feathers, I picked out a Mourning Dove flying disorientatedly away. And here is the moment of fell swoop. In my peripheral vision, and remember this is all happening very fast, I notice a Peregrine Falcon streaking directly towards where I am standing behind the window. When the Peregrine is about 5 feet from the window, it changes direction on a dime and pursues the Mourning Dove off to the right. The beauty, elegance, and power of this bird of prey struck me in that moment profoundly. The dove, reacting very quickly for a bird that is a bit of a clumsy flier, streaks the other way and, much to my chagrin, hits the window again. And I can tell you I am really feeling for the dove at that moment, but, at the same time, I am utterly transfixed and fascinated by the falcon who has shifted its direction now and, as the Dove flies off to the left of my window, streaks past the window in hot pursuit through my yard and over the fence. I never learned if the falcon got the the dove, but it was an amazing and revelatory moment of window bird-watching.

Later, I noticed that the spot where the dove first hit the window has a feathered fan tracing the point of impact. In  the very centre are two tiny feathers to remind me of that moment. Life and death. Pursuit and escape, predator and prey, two birds locked in a cycle as old as blood and time.

Yogourt

Wednesdays are my day to look after Miriam. She has taken to having monster two hour naps in the morning, so I've been developing projects for that time period. Yesterday, I decided to make yogourt. I had tried once before with, how shall I say, very poor results. On that occasion, everything had to be tossed because it was neither milk nor yogourt nor, for that matter, particularly edible. So this time around, I did a lot more investigation on the web to see how others have made yogourt and, although many recommend yogourt makers, I found many useful tips on how to do it from scratch. The guide I used is here.  It is informative, simple to follow, and, most importantly, it works. I decided to only do two litres of milk yesterday to save myself from major disappointment if it didn't work. Once I had everything organized, the actual process was very simple. It takes time and patience, but luckily with Miriam sleeping like she does the time factor took care of itself and my patience is generally pretty good. I prepared everything and was waiting for the milk to cool to the correct temperature. Of  course, Miriam woke up about ten minutes before I needed her to, but that is how things happen. She slept until almost noon and I fed her lunch while getting my yogourt through its last few steps. Once it was in the cooler with the heat sources, the long wait began.

I decided to leave mine for seven hours because last time I had taken it out too early. My kitchen timer counted down the hours through the afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised every time I went in and saw that the hours were diminishing. Around dinner time, things seemed to really slow down because I was in the kitchen all the time and I kept looking at the timer. After dinner, I did some work on a project and waited for Shauna to come downstairs from putting Miriam to sleep. I was listening to music and browsing the web when she finally descended. I went into the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea. Then I casually, almost in a half-forgotten mode because I had almost literally forgotten that the yogourt was there, looked at the timer. There were only eight minutes left. I was both excited and daunted. The thought of having waited that whole time for disappointment overwhelmed me for a moment and I did not want to know if it had worked. Shauna and I talked about possibility for a bit.  The timer went off. The shrill beeping crept through me.

I decided to wait a few more minutes just in case. Shauna told me to stop procrastinating. So I did. I opened my cooler. I felt the warmth from the hot water. And then there they were, five beautiful jars of yogourt. Even before I picked one up to test its solidity, I knew it had worked. I capped four of the jars. I dipped a spoon into the fifth jar, pulled out a spoonful of warm yogourt, and slipped it in my mouth. It was beyond delicious, sweet and comforting. Store-bought yogourt always tastes slightly sour, but this was yogourt the way it was supposed to be. Shauna and I split the fifth jar over strawberries while drinking tea. It was a wonderful end to a seven hour wait.

Rooted-ness

I turned 34 on Monday. My father and I have an interest in prime numbers, so when I spoke with him, he was pleased to indicate that my age was twice 17. In my opinion, 17 is a very beautiful prime. They each have their own elegance, but 17 has a particularity that seems very suited to my life at this point in time.

On Sunday, I began something that I had been meaning and wishing to do for some time. If you remember, when Shauna and I moved into our new home, there was a tree in the backyard from which I hung my birdfeeder. I was disappointed in the spring when I learned that the tree was thoroughly dead and I cut it down. Well, what is left after a tree is cut down? A stump connected to roots spread deeply in the ground. I left the stump last summer because the baby was coming and I did not feel up to the task of excavating it.

On Sunday, I decided I had procrastinated long enough. I assembled a shovel, a hatchet, pruning shears, and a hand-held spade and hoe. I began in the mid-afternoon while the sun was shining and, although the air was crisp, I had soon worked up a considerable sweat and was working in my t-shirt. The stump is located in the corner of our yard, so I began digging out underneath the stump on the most accessible side. The soil in the Niagara region is rich and fecund. As I dug down, I encountered roots, the smaller of which I cut with the shears and the larger of which I hacked through with my hatchet. At first, the work went quickly and I felt I had made considerable progress. The pile of dirt to my right was rapidly expanding and I became assured that I would be finished within an hour or two. That was perhaps my Faustian moment. Hubris, of course, revealed itself soon afterwards. As I progressed deeper into my subterranean cave, the work became harder as I spent more and more of my time lying on my side pulling out roots, dislodging soil with my hoe, and working with my hatchet in increasingly confined quarters. I was still making progress, but the task seemed to have expanded incalculably and I became frustrated.

I continued to shovel, occasionally hitting roots, sometimes stabbing frustratedly through them, sometimes cutting, sometimes hacking. At a certain point, my shovel became caught as I was leveraging out dirt. I pushed down on the handle hoping the root would break. It resisted. My tiredness and frustration seemed centred on this one moment. I pushed a little harder, the root did not give. I knew I was close to the breaking point of the shovel handle, but decided to push a little harder. Then, snap, the shovel was broken. It happened so fast, I couldn't quite believe it. And then I knew I was done for the day. I put the tools in the shed and left my hole in the ground with a pile of roots beside it.

The next morning I took some of the money that my grandmother sent me for my birthday and bought, among other things, a sturdy shovel. By 11am, I was back at it. Where the first day had a slightly frustrated undercurrent to it, on my birthday everything seemed to flow. It was not that the work was easy. Quite the contrary, but I settled into it as though into a new skin. And it felt right. Really right. As I dug deeper, the ground grew colder and when I went on my subterranean dives, I could see my breath. The soil was everywhere on me and it smelled incredible. I got down to the lighter coloured clay that makes the Niagara region so fertile. It was truly amazing. So I worked and I worked. The pile of roots grew. The pile of soil grew. I started to work my way around the sides of the stump. I grew excited as I knew there was less and less root holding this stump in place. When I finally got it to wiggle, I ran and got Shauna and Miriam so they could see how far I had come. I had told myself that I needed to be done by 2pm. I was way ahead of schedule. Chopping through the last two large roots was cathartic. When the stump fell into the hole, and I began severing its last roots with the pruning shears, I became exuberant. It was truly exhilirating to be so close. Then it was done and there I was panting next the stump in the hole. I knew though that I would not be truly finished until I had extracted the whole thing from the depths. I tried once to lift it and could not. I thought to myself, "Damn it, I am going to have to ask someone to help." Then I looked at it and summed up a deep strength. I reached down and grabbed it by two roots, set my legs with bent knees, closed my eyes and pushed. One. Two. Three. It was out of the hole. Then I rolled it once, then twice. It was done. I looked at it. I was amazed. This was my first tree stump. I had uprooted it. It was difficult, but I had prevailed with patience in the end. All in all, it took me about 5 hours of solid work.

Here are some pictures I took afterward. First, the tools:

 

Second,the stump from three angles:

 

 

 

The roots:

 

The pile of dirt:

 

And last, but certainly not least, the hole:

 

My sister-in-law, Jennifer, who happens to share April 13th as a birthday, pointed out the resonant symbolism of digging into the dirt and uprooting a stump on my birthday. A story of digging in the dirt. I learned a lot about myself in extracting this stump from the ground.

Oh, we are planning to plant a magnolia tree in the hole. Ah, spring.

Words from the past

I was doing a little research into Paul Valery's work today. I ended up reading a two-part essay called "Crisis of the Mind" from 1919. At times brilliant, at times baffling, this essay is a fascinating combination of modernism's culturally myopic tendencies and the prevalent relativism that was appearing in Europe after the end of the War. I thought the beginning of the essay, though, was far too good to ignore. Since we seem to be in a kind of war-filled, economic bad times, crisis of our own, these words are a balm, even if a bit astringent.

We later civilizations . . . we too know that we are mortal.

We had long heard tell of whole worlds that had vanished, of empires sunk without a trace, gone down with all their men and all their machines into the unexplorable depths of the centuries, with their gods and their laws, their academies and their sciences pure and applied, their grammars and their dictionaries, their Classics, their Romantics, and their Symbolists, their critics and the critics of their critics. . . . We were aware that the visible earth is made of ashes, and that ashes signify something. Through the obscure depths of history we could make out the phantoms of great ships laden with riches and intellect; we could not count them. But the disasters that had sent them down were, after all, none of our affair.

Look! In the tree!

I took Miriam outside two days ago to watch the sunset. It was a beautiful day, still cooler than I would like, but in that coolness there was a refreshing element and we stood and watched as the sun sank over the house across the street. I explain things to Miriam as they are happening, so we talked about the van that drove by, the children who were walking down the street, the buds on plants, the snowdrop flowers popping up, the green shoots rising from bulbs, and all the other signs of spring that I could notice and explain. While we were doing this looking, I noticed something in the tree above us. There was an animal sleeping perched in the nook of the large maple tree in front of our house. It was about 35 or 40 feet above the sidewalk. I came back in and got the camera and took these pictures:

You can make it out in the middle of the tree. Then I zoomed in a little bit more.

Figured out what it is yet? I zoomed in even further. And it becomes pretty clear.

This was Miriam's first raccoon. I'm not sure she could focus on it or that she understood what she was looking at. Just before we trooped inside, a group of kids came bounding down the street. "What are you taking pictures of?" I told them about the raccoon and pointed it out. One of them said, "I didn't know that raccoons slept in trees." I suppose I hadn't thought about it too much before, but there it was sleeping in the tree.

Yesterday's visions

Have you ever seen two somehow deeply incongruous and, at the same time, connected, I was about to write tableaux, but now have decided on the more appropriate, things. Things because these situations were, at once, surreal and deeply grounded in the real.

• Thing 1.

As I was writing in my office yesterday, I noticed a man staggering across the parking lot. He seemed lost and disoriented. After watching him twist and swagger, looking furtively around, though, I decided he was drunk. At the point at which he was rapidly becoming uninteresting to me, he scuttled quickly into an area that was fenced on three sides. While he looked furtively over his shoulders and swayed back and forth, he urinated. It was an odd moment to find myself in. I don't usually watch other people pee, but this man was peeing in the public of my window. Because he had thought he had hidden his public urination I became the unwitting observer. And, believe me, I thought to myself I do not have to watch this, but there was something oddly compelling about this observation of a person who was acting as though they were not being observed.

• Thing 2.

Walking home from the office, I turned as I heard a bike approaching on the street. As the cyclist passed, I had a moment of gestalt as what I saw went from unknown to known (but still at some level, unknown). The man who was huffing and puffing on his bicycle had a rather large red wheelbarrow on the front handlebars. The obvious exertion of bicycling, balancing, and concentrating on the road was almost too much for the haggard man. The wheelbarrow bicycle man. I wondered where he got the wheelbarrow and where he was taking it, but then I decided that it didn't matter, that somehow his precarious pedaling was enough.

So, make of them what you will. Two moments somehow discordant with the course of my ordinary daily experience, yet resounding in, if you will, a complex and dissonant harmony.

Blue skies, sun, and the possibility of spring

I was looking after Miriam on Monday. A Monday where the sky was blue, the sun shone its sunshiningness, and spring felt more like a possibility than a utopian season perpetually out of reach. We are sorting out childcare for Miriam as Shauna transitions back to work. Turns out, there is a lot more to think about than I thought. After Miriam had her morning nap and lunch, we decided to go for a walk. The world has opened itself up to Miriam in new ways as she now sits upright in her stroller. On Monday as we walked down the street, Miriam was looking left and right absorbing the world and giggling and talking to everyone and everything that passed. We headed down to a local playground. I placed her in a baby swing (and yes I know she is still a tiny bit young for this). At first, I thought this would be a revolutionary experience, a kind of insight into the relative swingy weightlessness that I remember feeling whenever I went on a swing. But there were a tonne of other kids running and screaming on the playground, so Miriam's attention was elsewhere. Then, I pulled her towards me. She looked at me quizzically, as if to say, "Hmm, this is interesting." And then, of course, I let her go. A shock went through her body. And then she laughed and laughed and laughed. Every time she swung forward, she laughed or giggled or cooed. Somehow, I realized that swinging is electrifying and even though Miriam had never swung before, at some level, she understood what was happening.

A window

I've been working as a freelance writer and academic editor since October. The transition to this mode of life has been both fascinating and complex. At first, the flexibility of working from home and being available to help Shauna with Mimi's care was a wonderful boon, but I've realized lately that there were negatives to this way of performing work. First, and perhaps the only truly significant factor, was that I was not getting as much work done as I could have. The separation between my work life and my home life was so porous and permeable that often I had difficulty prioritizing my tasks. But, for all of this, the time I spent at home was truly great because of my experience as a caregiver and the manner in which this set of relationships enabled us to create a strong parenting style based on teamwork. And, even beyond this, witnessing the minute transformations that Miriam has gone through in becoming who she is today has been phenomenal.

To the window, then. Once, while I was working at my previous job, I began explaining deconstruction to a student who worked for me. I don't remember if she asked me to talk about this methodology or not, but there I was talking about it. Part of what I ended up saying pointed out the obvious ways in which our interactions are structured by the literal structures that govern and surround and give context to our attempts to understand the world. I used the physical space of my office as an example to demonstrate how certain types of communication and interaction were condoned or forbidden based on the regulatory systems that governed the structured space of the office. Further to this, I talked about how in deconstruction there is the possibility of breaking down these structures and providing alternative and transgressive readings. To provide a different and alternative understanding of this space of interaction and communication. At some point, I became aware that I was wandering rather far from where I had started. In the office in which that conversation happened, I did not have a window. The fluorescent lights were bright and the walls were a strange greyish blue.

I've recently moved into an office very close to my home. And now, I have a window in my office. The window faces south and looks over a parking lot and faces the backs of several brick buildings. I love watching people come and go to the cars. There are faint wisps of smoke that rise from the buildings' chimneys. The window allows me to see things differently. I am doing something new. I am working in ways that are familiar to me, but new and exciting. I am inhabiting a new space, a new structure, and I am interpreting it differently. What happens here is work. This work is a vital and necessary part of my life. This window lets me see a new way of understanding my life and how things are changing to accommodate this mode of being in my office. And, somehow, it makes it more official.

March 11th, it is raining.

Well, today is a big day for me. March 11th, 2009 is the ten-year anniversary of my first hospitalization for bipolar II disorder in Halifax. At the time, I had no idea what had hit me. I was 23 years old, had been working too much, sleeping too little, and living somewhere far past the edge of sanity. My collapse was rather rapid. Things really fell apart over the course of a couple of days. In retrospect, and believe me there has been more than enough time to think about hindsight, I can see the signs and hints of what was to come. I was hospitalized and there were needles and pills and doctors and nurses and seemingly endless hours on a locked ward. I was lost somewhere. I didn't understand many simple, yet fundamental things about myself. My family was amazing. They showed up, day after day, week after week, and they were present. They listened. They didn't always agree with all of my ideas of who I was, but they listened nonetheless. I will never be able to repay them for the countless gifts that they bestowed on me in this time and in the years that have followed. Their wisdom, their insight, their sense of compassion, and their ability to laugh made it possible for me to get better. These qualities taught me things about myself that were essential, things I needed to know and remember. Long afterwards, I remember asking my parents how they did what they did for me. They replied, "We knew you couldn't hold all the pieces of yourself together. So we held them for you and reflected them back until you could hold onto them on your own again."

You may be surprised to discover that I've been living with bipolar and you did not know. I don't hide this fact but, at the same time, I do not advertise it. Well, until now, I guess. If you are just finding out, and you have a question, feel completely free to ask me about it. Mental illness is stigmatized through a lack of knowledge and education.

Over the years, many of my friends have helped me through difficult periods. For those of you who have listened to me talk about my hospital experiences or talked me through a high or low period, "Thank you." I've appreciated every moment of your precious listening time.

If my immediate family has been integral to my growth into the person I am today, then my new family has strengthened and given confidence to who I am. When I first met Shauna, I was two years out of the hospital. I was lonely and my head was filled with stories rarely told. Shauna opened herself to me. She was scared at times, but she asked questions and gradually came to understand that having bipolar was simply part of who I am and that, in many ways, I would not be who I am without it. And so she grew to love me in my highs and lows. Over the years, Shauna has helped me find confidence, and self-esteem, while showing me how to get over myself. Believe it or not, I used to take myself more seriously than I do now. Our relationship has been built on my ability to trust her when I am manic or depressed. She is remarkable, this woman. She has helped me to learn to live fully and happily and joyfully. My life would not make sense without her. And we have Miriam, a bundle of smiles and laughter, who is the greatest thing I have ever played a part in creating. I may be crazy, but I know a good thing when I see one.

So, Shauna and I are going out to dinner tomorrow night to celebrate ten years. I have survived. And, if you will allow, I have thrived. The world is truly amazing from where I sit today. Ten years is a long time and yet, I still feel like I am just beginning to plumb the depths of my experiences with this fascinatingly complex and occasionally difficult illness.

To life.

Writing about chopping wood

My father has started a blog (Field Days:  A miscellany). He began posting on March 2nd, which was his birthday, and has been writing a fair amount almost every day. I am happy that my dad has found this venue and space for his thoughts and writing. I have memories of my dad jotting and scribbling things down in his assorted journals from all periods of my life. His blog, I think, will provide him with an opportunity to put that writing into a more public place.

On March 5th, he wrote a piece about chopping wood. After reading this, I remembered a significant experience I had when I was much younger. I was 21 and had just finished my first year treeplanting in northern Ontario. In itself, that experience changed me in more ways than I imagined possible. I had left Nova Scotia on a train heading to Toronto. I left behind my family and a wounded dove girlfriend that I was dying to get away from. I realized somewhere around Fredericton that other than the camp supervisor, no one knew anything about me. There is a brilliance in that revelatory realization at 21. I knew that I was starting anew. I was being given the opportunity to try out a new identity and set of narratives. I did not feel bound to the past in the same suffocating ways I had felt before I left. I began, you could say, the process of making and discovering and reinventing myself. The poiesis of the self. So, imagine if you will that I had spent two months in the bush living with a bunch of free spirited individuals performing and enacting this self-poiesis. Well, it changes a kid. I went west. Spent some time at my grandparents house in Calgary waiting for two friends to arrive from Montreal. They arrived. We whisked ourselves to Vancouver, then quickly to Vancouver Island. My mom gave me the number of her old boyfriend, Merrick, who had settled on a large tract of land on Lasqueti island and built a home for his family. They let us stay in a barn at the back of their property. Melanie, my girlfriend, Jess, and I had to work for our keep. We got to eat great food, but we were up early and set to tasks quickly.

For the life of me, I cannot remember what Mel and Jess had to do, but I was set up with a chopping block, a large amount of wood, and a maul. Merrick showed me how to chop with an effortless grace that indicated the zen of his woodcutting. He gave me a few practice swings, commented on my form, then left me to my chopping. I was doing really well for about twenty minutes. Then I decided I knew what I was doing. I started swinging more freely. Before I knew it, I had cracked the handle of the maul by mishitting a piece of gnarled wood. When I saw what I had done, I wanted to run away. Realizing that this was not feasible, I searched out Merrick and told him what had happened. After consulting with his wife, during which time I became aware that it was not good to be helping out with work if you were destroying the tools that make further work possible, Merrick gave me another chance. He jerry-rigged the handle and practiced with it for some time making sure it was safe. He handed me the maul, stood off to the side, and told me to continue. I was nervous. I heaved the maul, then I paused, then I swung. I started a nice crack in the wood. There was the fresh smell of cedar permeating. Such a beautiful scent. Merrick continued to watch, commented now and again, and helped me to drive my focus into the wood. Before long, I was chopping away, barely aware of what was happening and Merrick was gone. I let myself go into the chopping.

Self-poiesis becomes recognizable only in relation to the continuity of ourselves. I have made myself because I understand and swim in the narratives of my lives.

Sometimes, it is important to break a maul to figure out how to use one.

Watching the birds

Since I was young, I've been fascinated by birds. Even more than being interested in their ability to fly, there is an avian element in me that allows me to connect with birds on a deep level. In my office, there is a large picture window that opens on our rather small backyard. Shortly after we moved in, I set up a bird feeder in a small tree. Unfortunately, I had to cut down the tree last spring because it was dead. I ended up getting a shepherd's hook to host the feeder. All of this is to say that I love feeding and watching the birds in my backyard. I get a lot of sparrows and mourning doves, well, I almost exclusively get sparrows. In fact, I have at least 15 or 20 sparrows that live almost entirely in one area or another of my backyard. But I also get the pair of bluejays that live in our neighbourhood coming to the feeder occasionally and, even less occasionally,  the resident cardinal will drop in to redden things up for a while. His partner, a very shy female, rarely appears, but I always filled with joy when I see her subtle greenish-pink hues.

So, I have the feeder and I watch out of the corner of my eye while I am working. My new discovery,though, is that Miriam loves to sit in my lap and watch the birds as well. We will sometimes sit for 15 or 20 minutes, which is a long time for her, and simply watch the birds at the feeder and on the ground below. For a long time, I was plagued by squirrels ransacking and pillaging the feeder. But I recently installed a pop bottle squirrel deterrent (it is affixed about three feet up the pole) which prevents them from scrambling up. I love watching them try to figure out how to get up to the feeder and failing time and again. I hope that Miriam loves watching the frustrated squirrels, but it is still difficult to tell. I imagine she does, though.

The birds and the feeder allow Miriam and me to sit together. We look together. We are warm together. And we are fascinated together. It is a good way to start a Sunday morning.

Thoreau and parenting

Shauna and I had a dispute about time recently. She indicated that she was often "killing time" when she was with Miriam. I thought this wasn't fair to either Miriam or time, the first because she is wonderful to be with, and the second because, well, it deserves a life, of sorts. Shauna eventually had the upper hand because of the late night vigils she keeps where she is literally killing time before she can go back to sleep. That said, I came across the following in Thoreau and just knew he didn't have children.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

A Wise Roman

I've been reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations lately. Besides being remarkably lucid and profound and engaging, his personal writings are uniquely human and engaging. There is a quality that is undeniable in the words. It is as though I am confronted with aspects of my own understanding, except that the expressions in their essential, pared-down communicativeness strike through all pretense and artifice. Perhaps there is no other way to express it, but the stark appearance of an individual remarkably free of vanity.

I read the following last night from Book 5 and thought it worth sharing:

I am made up of the causal and the material. Neither of these will disappear into nothing, just as neither came to be out of nothing. So every part of me will be assigned its changed place in some part of the universe, and that will change again into another part of the universe, and so on to infinity. A similar sequence of change brought me into existence, and my parents before me, and so back in another infinity of regression. Nothing forbids this assertion, even if the universe is subject to the completion of cycles.

This is from the same man who wrote close to 1900 years ago, "Live each day as if it were your last."

1461 Days

Work it out. That's right, Shauna and I got married on February 18th, 2005. Ergo, as of Wednesday evening, we had spent one thousand four hundred and sixty one days married. Amazing to think about. Traditionally, we don't do anything for anniversaries other than go out for dinner. We usually pick a place that we haven't tried, that we want to try, and ordinarily wouldn't try because of the cost. But hey, that is what anniversaries are for, the celebration of love and passion and fidelity and togetherness. So, we had booked a babysitter for Wednesday night, made our reservation at a local establishment of fine dining, and, well, we were ready.

But the fickle fates had a different idea of what our anniversary was going to be. That's right, no table service, too rich plates of food and dessert, nor a couple of hours to talk with Shauna without interruption. On Wednesday morning, we woke up to a sick baby. Miriam had been up more than usual in the night. We took her temperature and she was definitely sick. Her cute little nose become a volcano of snot. Her lips were covered with drool and mucous and her left eye was weeping more than we cared for. Well, I have to admit that selfishly I hoped that she would be okay so we could still go to dinner. But I realized very quickly with a nudge from Shauna's better judgment that all bets were off. I called the babysitter and cancelled. Shauna called the restaurant. We began what I'm sure all new parents do in the information age. We started searching for answers. What exactly is the range of "normal" temperatures for babies? When should you take a baby with a fever to the hospital? What does conjunctivitus look like?

At the end of the day, Miriam seemed worse than when she started in the morning. We called our doctor. Luckily the clinic was at her office this week. We showed up to a crowded waiting room. And, well, we waited. Miriam, even though she was sick and tired and disgruntled, made many in the waiting room laugh and smile and forget their troubles for a few moments. Once we were in with the doctor, she quickly assessed the situation, answered our questions, and then told us Miriam had her first ear infection. Antibiotics. Drops (for the possible pink eye). And then home.

Shauna and I had agreed that we would order in Indian food to celebrate. I picked up the food just before Shauna finally got Miriam to go to sleep. We were unpacking the food, enjoying our onion bhaji, our Kashmir rice palao, our curries, our paneer, our naan, and I decided to put some music on while we ate. I decided on a Bill Evans album that I've always enjoyed. It is called, "Alone." The music started playing. Before I even reached my seat, we heard her. I stopped. I waited. I said, "I think she's still asleep." As if by saying this I caused her to come fully awake, her piercing scream echoed through both of the baby monitors. Shauna marched dutifully upstairs. The trials and tribulations of motherhood.

And I ate my anniversary dinner alone.

Swimming

I am preparing to take Miriam to her second swimming lesson this afternoon. We're going out for brunch with some friends prior, hence the early preparations. Last time I took Miriam, she was cautious, wary, and, even, a little unsure. I did my best to comfort her and make her feel safe by holding her close and stopping when it looked like she needed a break. Yet, unlike many of the other kids, Miriam seemed to take a lot longer to adjust to her surroundings. Without question, being immersed in water with the cavernous, echoing sounds of a swimming pool buffeting her all the time would, I think, be a disorienting experience. I am looking forward to going back, if only to see if she is more relaxed the second time.

I think Miriam may be quite sensitive to and aware of her surroundings. Swimming with Miriam during pregnancy was Shauna's domain. I often wondered what it would be like to float, belly up, in the water while talking to our unborn child, as Shauna so often used to do. Swimming became a major metaphor not only our lives, but in our understanding of who we are. I think we have a primordial response to immersion in water. Not simply because we spend the first 40 weeks of our lives literally underwater, but also because, deep down, far back in cellular memory, we know that this is where we emerged. I remember I used to scoff at such ideas as simply romantic longing for a connection to a past that was forever lost. Not so any longer. Largely through watching my daughter grow and become, have I been able to grasp those tendrils that weave backwards in the tapestry of time and history and being.

We are with ourselves and all that has come before us. When I hold Miriam in my arms in the water and watch her scan her surroundings trying to take it all in, to somehow make sense of the denseness of her sensations, I feel a kinship with her so deep and profound that we are no longer different people, but particular iterations on a theme in the vast web of life we inhabit.

So, today, we return to the water. Miriam and I will swim. And hopefully, we will laugh and play as we remember the stretches of experience that bind us to our liquid past.

After a while

Four months, huh? Time mysteriously disappears into the past. Unmarked, but never forgotten. For the first time in a long while, I feel more expressive. The snow is falling lightly today in St. Catharines, Miriam is 7 months old as of Monday, I recently finished David Foster Wallace's Girl with Curious Hair, and for some reason, starlings keep coming to my birdfeeder. I know, a strange set of events. There does not need to be a connection, but somehow there is. I am the web that weaves these things together.

I don't struggle to understand everything any longer. The search for meaning in the world is more contained now. Whereas previously I attempted to synthesize the disparate strands that came into my life, there is a looser weave to the fabric of my life. There are threads that I am interested in following, in playing out, but I don't cling to them with the same determination that I used to. By allowing things to be and without demanding a complete narrative to emerge, I somehow gain a sense of the spectrum of my life that is never completely in focus. In some senses, the areas that I focus on do become clear, but I don't need the overall texture, pattern, and structure of my life to be apparent to me at all times.

A looseness allows a friction to become a generative understanding. And, strangely enough, things are filled with more of a clarity of purpose than vision. I simply intuit where I need to push and what I need to do. In the same way that we all know at some inchoate level how to grow, I am moving outwards from my interior existence.

I've been reading The Way of Chuang Tzu (translated by Thomas Merton) and encountered a calm and settled brilliance in the words. There is an unthinkingness that is remarkable for its sagacity. It is as it is. Settled and calm.

I sent one small section to Ellen the other day and decided to share it with you. Here it is.

Easy is right. Begin right
And you are easy.
Continue easy and you are right.
The right way to go easy
Is to forget the right way
And forget that the going is easy.

Be easy. And yes, I plan to write here and in my life much more frequently.

Morning

Mimi is chirping and squealing beside me, part of her routine nowadays, as Shauna sleeps upstairs. The sun is casting a beautiful ambient glow on the tree with its fall coloured leaves in our neighbour's yard. There is a black squirrel foraging in the backyard. Then it scrambles away down the fence. A pot of green tea is brewing in the kitchen. Our cat, Satchel, seems to have "discovered" Mimi insofar as he now looks at her as if he thought she was worth acknowledging. It is an interesting development in their relationship.

Life is good here.

And I am a quiet man.

On the eve of 3 months old

Miriam will be 3 months old tomorrow. There is no possible way to describe all of the changes that have occurred in our lives as a result of her arrival. Perhaps summing it up is not the task, then. There is only a very strong sense that we have agreed to live and learn together.

Being with Miriam requires only attention. In order to pay attention, I must care. To care, I need love. Luckily, this is a feedback loop that works particularly well in my day-to-day life with my daughter. Miriam gives love and receives love. There is a freedom in her personality that allows the present to exist in an amazingly full manner around her. She is in this moment because this moment is presently occurring. To be frank, it is quite astonishing to see her effect on others. There is an uninhibited joy in their eyes as they talk, coo, and pay attention to her. She draws them into the present moment with an incredible force. For a moment, they forget their worries and problems and they simply are. It is a striking sight. This is one of the joys of fatherhood that I truly relish.

So, obviously, I am thinking about the time I've spent with her, even though I do not particularly want to generalize about those experiences. Let me simply say, she is a wonderful traveling companion.

She is sleeping upstairs, as is Shauna.

I will be sleeping soon. Have you ever wondered why we sleep? I remember reading that we only ask questions for which  we have an inkling of the answer. I have an inkling. Let me sleep on it.