The Party’s Over

It’s time to call it a day.

One of those days was last Tuesday at 10:30 in the morning when I lined up with forty other new Canadians from twenty-one different countries to have our documents checked prior to the Citizenship Ceremony where we would all be sworn in as Canadian citizens.

I shook hands with Her Honour Linda Carvery, the Citizenship Court Judge, who presided over the ceremony and granted us our citizenship.  When she asked me how long I had been in Canada, I told her 64 years, a slight exaggeration because I landed in Canada on March 15, 1947 and did spend five of those years living in Türkiye.  Then I reminded her that it was her decision that allowed me to become a Canadian and thanked her for it.

I also shook hands with the CIC Director, two Members of Parliament, a Municipal Councillor, a city policeman, a Mountie who had what looked like a knife scar in his right cheek, and a young boy who gave me my own flag.

Finally I joined two other new Canadians who went up to the front at Her Honour’s invitation to help her lead the singing of O Canada.  I was happy to be there, though the young man from Burundi and Ms. Carvery, herself an accomplished jazz/blues singer, didn’t really need my voice to make it an enthusiastic rendition of our anthem.

The other day, or actually night, was Saturday when the real party started, our celebration of my new Canadian citizenship.  An eclectic crew of family and friends, that included a variety of citizenships and statuses, showed up with food and drink to welcome me and wish me well.  When I was called on to make a speech I wasn’t sure how to begin so I started to sing O Canada.  The whole crowd joined in with melodic gusto, though our numbers were fewer when we sang it en francais.

I don’t have images of the party itself (most were too busy talking to take pictures), but it was a good time, I think, and I did record some floral arrangements, a few gifts, the Canada windsock by the door, and our Christmas wreath which just happened to have the right colours for this occasion.

So, Canada, here I come, I’m one of you now.  The party may be over but it ain’t time to call it a day.  Not yet, eh.

bpNichol

These days when someone says bp, most people think oil spill, but it wasn’t always so. 

There was a time when people I ran into who knew or knew of bp would invariably smile at the mention of his name because they would recognize or remember the sense of wonder and whimsy and pathos and humour as well as the seriousness with which he seemed to approach the world and his work, the things he did with words or letters that we all wished we had thought of doing, or the generosity of spirit that informed everything he did.

And then there was a time that these same people’s faces would reflect their own sadness at the sudden loss of bp from our world in 1988 just before his 44^th birthday.

It is hard to know where to begin when talking about bp’s work.  I just pulled out a small stack of books from one of my poetry shelves, leaving a fairly large gap between Neruda and Nowlan, and looked through them.  There was the small paperbound copy of THE TRUE EVENTUAL STORY OF BILLY THE KID, which won the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry in 1970 along with Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (the same William Bonney who was almost pardoned last week), and which Lol and I bought for $1.50 on our first ever visit to Coach House Press in the spring of 1972.  A couple of years later we picked up the wonderful box of treasures labeled bp the cosmic chef: an evening of concrete, winner of the same award in 1971, and there are the lovely Martyrology volumes and assorted other books of delights from over the years. 

I remember the poetry session Warren T. organized at Cecil Green House at UBC (maybe it was the fall of 1970) where bp sang “I dreamed I saw Hugo Ball” and all I could think of was that was the kind of thing you should be able to play on juke boxes everywhere, and Warren called him Canada’s greatest poet (sharing the honours with George Bowering who was also there), and nobody present seemed to think of arguing the point, even though Irving Layton was back in Montreal proclaiming the same thing about himself.

About ten days ago I walked with an old friend and his new friend from Kensington Market to bpNichol Lane to buy a couple of books from Coach House and to see bp’s poem from EXTREME POSITIONS that was inscribed in the Lane.  The only other time I had seen it was in the summer of 1997, and someone had filled the words with water that time so that they reflected both the sky and the meaning of the poem itself.  This time there were dead leaves inside each letter, so I borrowed a broom from inside and swept them all clean.  It was a small tribute to a poet who mattered then and matters now.

There is lots you can find if you want more of or about bp.  There’s an excellent anthology (it’s important to remember that anthos is Greek for flower) called An H in the Heart, there’s plenty to be explored in the online archive here, and there are video clips of performances (this one from Poetry in Motion has bp leading the Four Horsemen) to be found here.

Go.  Explore.  Enjoy.

Or just look at this one:

 counting the ways

     love
     love
     love
     love
     love
     love
     love

     love

     love

     love

________

   1 love

Post #121: On Becoming Canadian

Last week I got a letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

It was a NOTICE TO APPEAR - TO TAKE THE OATH OF CITIZENSHIP.

It included this PERMISSION RELEASE - MEDIA CONSENT FORM.  (You can click on the image if you want to read it.  Use the back button to return to the post.)

I will show up on January 11, 2011 at 10:30 a.m. for the ceremony.

I will solemnly repeat that OATH OR AFFIRMATION OF CITIZENSHIP.

And I will sign the Citizenship Ceremony - Permission Release to allow the media to photograph, video, and/or record me at the ceremony.

It is an important occasion.

I have been a Landed Immigrant/Permanent Resident for 63 years.

It's been a long time coming, but a week from tomorrow I am going to become a Canadian.

And I am happy for that.

Just wondering if I'm supposed to start watching hockey -- have to do some research on this being Canadian thing.

Endings and Beginnings

It is 07:20 on January 2, 2011, the second full day of this new year.  It is still night outside, but the sky has lightened to a dark bluish grey.  The black silhouettes of two crows just flew past the window cawing.  Day is breaking.

This morning I boiled the kettle and savoured the faint aroma of bergamot as I poured water into the teapot.

I nursed the coals in the woodstove into the morning’s fire using the stub end of a Christmas candle to help it go.

I noticed one red bud on the potted azalea and wondered what we had done or not done to help that happen.

I checked Gmail and my mobile for messages and understood that there was likely no change in my mother's condition on the 8^th floor of the Halifax Infirmary.

I thought about the day ahead, a Sunday, and decided I would stop in for a visit even though my next scheduled bedside vigil was not until after midnight.

I wondered which of my six brothers I would see when I went in and whether or not she would be awake and present.

As I drank my tea I thought about my beloved who is still with our children in Ontario and how utterly beautiful she was when we chatted yesterday on google talk.

And about our youngest granddaughter sitting on her lap showing me the bandage from her new doctor’s kit, her dad in the background wearing the plastic stethoscope and saying, You know you can really hear a heartbeat with this.

And I thought about our lovely serious daughter who texts me for updates on her grandmother and wonders whether she should be flying down to see her as she works on finishing an application due on Friday for a doctoral program.

And my mother saying, in a clear moment last night, Oh no, she mustn’t come, she must do the application.

And I thought of our firstborn son sleeping on the couch yesterday, his back in spasm as my back used to be in spasm, being cared for by his beloved and by their beautiful girls, waiting for him to wake up to show him the pictures they made with ballpoint pens at the dining room table.

The sky has turned a uniform grey, the harbour the same, the spruces are almost black, but the trunks of the birches are bright white.  It is day now.

My mother may be reaching the end of her life, but it has been a full life.  Her seven sons, aged 52 to 67, are all alive, all well.  She has eleven grandsons, five granddaughters, and sixteen great-grandchildren, all alive, all well.  She has much to remember, much to be happy for and proud of, and many promising beginnings to dream about in her last days.

And we all begin our new years. 

I think of two longtime friends I have seen in the past few days with their newfound partners and the happiness that shone in their faces. 

I think of other good friends, some close by and some very far from here, and the enduring substance of their friendship and love.

I think of the kindness we show each other at this time of endings and beginnings. 

I make a connection between heart and hearth, the warmth of each, even though the Oxford doesn’t.

I consider this new year with its endings and beginnings and the hard times we all may face in it, but I also think of the promise and the possibility and am heartened by it.

I notice a bit of blue sky and sunlight reflected in the screen, turn off my desk lamp, and think of what I might make for my breakfast.

I am heartened by that too.

January 3, 2011: Update on my mother's condition = much improved today after several days of very serious concern.

Christmas Bird Count, 2010

This morning at first light I went outside for firewood and heard the bell buoy in the harbour clang.  The swells must have been moving into the harbour ahead of tonight’s storm, which has rainfall and storm surge warnings posted, but the air was still, just as it was yesterday, the day of this year’s Nova Scotia bird count.

Yesterday was my first official participation in the count, something my older brother had suggested I might do when I talked to him on Friday night.  He is my one older brother (the other five are younger) and he has influenced my life in a number of ways besides getting me involved in the bird count. 

He is a statistician, still active in it even though he is retired from active teaching, which of course is a useful skill in the Bird Society, but he started out in university as a Math and Science student.  My highest marks in Provincials (my high official high school leaving grades) were in Geometry and Physics, and I think I won school prizes in both; my lowest by quite a long shot was English.  However, I had watched my brother’s study habits during his first couple of years as a university student and knew I would (or could) never work as hard as that, so I passed on Math and studied English instead.

I have been watching birds since I was about ten, when our dad pointed out to me an osprey hovering over the lagoon at North-side East Bay in Cape Breton.  I watched it dive straight into the water, struggle upwards with a fish in its talons, get enough height to shake the water out of its feathers, swoop up a little higher to shake again, and then fly away to its nest or a high perch to either eat the prey or feed its young.  After that I began to notice the eagles that circled over the big lake when my next younger brother and I would venture out there in the rowboat, and I’ve loved watching birds of all sizes and colours ever since. 

I think my older brother became a bird watcher later than I did because when we were talking about an eagle I had seen floating up the Shubenacadie River on a small ice floe, he didn’t remember the Bras d’Or Lakes eagles and ospreys I used to watch.  However, as a mathematics and statistics person, he became a much more careful and scientific watcher than I ever was, and it was he who often educated me about specific birds and their habits and songs.

On Saturday, the day before the count, Lorraine and I watched chickadees and juncos and jays on and under the feeder in the magnolia bush pecking at seeds and sometimes squabbling over them.  From where she sat she was able to see a male cardinal carefully approaching the feeding area under the bush (the jays are good at knocking seeds out of the feeder every time I fill it).  It was a great moment for me because I hadn’t seen a cardinal in the neighbourhood for almost a year, and I wished that I could do the count that day, as I could have included the cardinal, a couple of blue jays, and a pale goldfinch in its winter plumage.

We weren’t home much yesterday, but in the morning I refilled the feeders and in the afternoon I had a chance to watch for a while.  I saw my little crew of juncos working the territory accompanied by a couple of white-throated sparrows who are also regulars.  My happy handful of chickadees made a busy visit, but no goldfinch or blue jay to be seen, at least by me.  I was feeling tempted to bend the rules and report Saturday’s cardinal, but decided I couldn’t do it – something of that need for statistical accuracy kept me honest.

So I was delighted when the wary cardinal showed up and hopped across the snowy lawn for a quick feed and I added him to my brief list.  When I reported my stats to my brother last night, he told me that his group had observed thirty-eight species out at Cole Harbour, so I was happy for him, but I was also glad to have my numbers included in the total.   

The numbers may not have told anything of my delight at watching the birds, the poetry of their quick presences, but they did put our house and local birds into the record books for the 2010 bird count:

Dark-eyed junco                    10
White-throated sparrow       4
Black-capped chickadee        4
Northern cardinal (male)      1

Driving

This post is about driving, specifically about driving our Subaru, something I have been doing quite a bit of lately. Most of the trips are in and out of the city, winding up and down the hills on Purcell’s Cove Road and figuring out the best route to take once I get into town, or deciding how to get out of town and then navigating Purcell’s Cove Road on the way home.  What I love the most about it is the opportunity for a kind of seamless smoothness in the journey.

When I used to commute from here to Uniacke District School, which I did for seven years, I wasn’t particularly aware of that aesthetic in my travels.  For one thing I was either heading to school, getting ready in my mind for what the day might bring, or I was heading home, processing the events of the day and preparing to be clear of them in order to focus on supper instead.  For another, I always had CBC Radio going so it was Information Morning one way and Mainstreet the other, and the heavy traffic was always going in the opposite direction so I didn’t have much to contend with.  As a result, I didn’t really think about smoothness in the drive, I just drove.

When we first moved to Istanbul and travelled during our orientation period on school service buses, I was happy to just watch out the window, but I was also getting itchy to drive.  Part of it was the way others talked about the difficulties of driving there, and part of it was just watching the way the traffic moved, or sometimes didn’t.  Soon enough we got a car, and soon enough we were both driving, heading out from campus onto the TEM or down to the D100 or the sahil yolu (seaside road).  It was a challenge, and you quickly learned to check your mirrors and every angle through your windows because the drivers on the TEM were often fairly fast (like coming up behind you at about 160 and flashing their lights at you as you are passing a long truck and can’t easily get out of the way), fairly aggressive (like riding your bumper so close at 120 that you can’t even see their lights in your rear view), and fairly daring (like using every lane and the paved shoulder to weave their way through traffic at 140).  It was a challenge, but if you liked driving (as we do), it was worth engaging in.

Lorraine noted early on that the key was fluidity, keeping the flow going; as she put it, If you can go, you must.  There was little room for hesitation, and too much politeness (You go.  No, you go.) just interfered with that necessary flow.  So we got into the flow, with some trepidation at first, and started to develop a feel for driving in Istanbul (driving in the rest of Turkiye is a piece of cake by comparison) and the kind of confidence you need to keep going with the flow and keep the flow going.

Now we are back in Nova Scotia where there are few challenges when we set out for the city or its environs, and in the absence of a challenge you need to develop an aesthetic, which is the seamless smoothness I have mentioned.  It’s important to me to be driving a standard, to make my shifts at the right moment so that they are almost imperceptible, to use my brakes as little as possible, to change lanes strategically and elegantly, to get from A to B as smoothly and efficiently as possible, and to pay attention to the sometimes reckless behavior of Halifax pedestrians (in Istanbul they knew how to cross roads without interfering substantially with the flow).

There is, with the exception of pedestrian unpredictability and the inconsiderate actions of some drivers, the relaxation of driving, something that comes with the smoothness of flow and is connected with those right brain activities it requires: scanning the road, anticipating the moves ahead of you, watching the seconds count down on the Walk/Don’t Walk signs, and moving the car through it all like a larger body you inhabit to the place you are heading for.   

If you are, like me, a language person, these periods you spend in the other side of your brain when you are driving can be both peaceful and productive, as thoughts and ideas find space to emerge and blossom, except of course when you come up behind a Pontiac Vibe that is going too slowly or a Mercedes that keeps braking for no conceivable reason.  My road rage in these cases is limited to mild expletives addressed to the car itself, and most of the time I enjoy the meditative calm of a good drive.

I know something of the environmental costs of driving and try to minimize them, but because of where we live and where we sometimes need to go, those costs are sometimes unavoidable.  Given that, I believe it is important, and in fact something I do take pleasure in, to drive well.  You can’t tell, I’m sure, if you see me driving that I am cultivating an aesthetic, but if you notice me coming down the steep hill into the Cove and rounding the corner by Kiley’s at the bottom without needing to brake, you should know that I am feeling a small sense of satisfaction. 

 It’s the satisfaction that comes from being one with the Subaru and moving through it all smoothly and well.

December 10

It’s been a cold clear winter day today, the 10^th day of December, with its own kind of beauty.  There’s a dryness to the air, and the sun never gets very high in the sky, or very warm, as we approach the solstice and the official beginning of the next season, namely winter.  It was nice to be out in today’s air, to feel the lawn frozen hard and to understand that the bright green of the grass, which a couple of days ago was like what you see in Vancouver when you make a snowman from the good thick wet snow they sometimes get and see the brilliant lawn underneath, will fade to straw and dun and stay locked in that winter hardness for a few months.

When the sun dropped and the daylight dropped (as it does), I came inside because I wanted to vacuum around the entry and in front of the woodstove.  It was getting darker in the house, not ideal for vacuuming, but I persevered, completing the entry room, kitchen, and living room, not just the area by the woodstove, but the whole of our living room carpet.

And that’s what this post is really about, not working outside or early December sun or the change in the colour and texture of the grass or vacuuming under low light conditions, but the carpet.

In the summer the carpet is rolled up, put away, and replaced with jute mats so that the high bright sun doesn’t have a chance to fade it.  So every fall when we bring the carpet down and unroll it again we are consistently taken by its beauty.

We were first taken by the beauty of this carpet the first time we saw it.  We had looked at lots of carpets and kilims after we first moved to Istanbul and resolved at the time that we wouldn’t buy anything for at least a year because there were so many to see and so much learn about them.  Finally we did buy a lovely Armenian carpet that Lorraine found at Adnan & Hasan in Kapalı Çarşı (aka Grand Bazaar) and that we agreed would work well in our living room once we returned to Nova Scotia and our house.  But it wasn’t the one we ended up bringing home.

We first saw this carpet in the showroom at the Bella Hotel in Selçuk.  Nazmi told us that it had come from his village near Kayseri from a young couple who had inherited it from their aunt and wanted something more contemporary.  We were immediately taken by the unusual soft and subtle green of its background colour, the touches of rust and blue, the wonderful intricacy of the centre medallion and flowers in the border, the faint smell of wood smoke it carried, and all the touches of the hands that had made it and given it such a happy character. 

Words can’t capture the nature of this carpet – you just need to be with it, look at it for a while, and keep discovering all the subtle and wonderful new aspects and details in it.  Unfortunately I can’t supply a daylight image of it until tomorrow, so the image you have at the head of this post shows it being washed on our deck the way we watched the young guy in the courtyard of the Umayyid Mosque in Damascus do it, with squeegee, soap, and a hose. 

It’s wet and soapy in the image but it’s still beautiful and continues to give us pleasure every time we see it or walk on it or even just vacuum it. 

The Descent of Winter (2)

We had a cold snap for a few days earlier this week, down to minus six or so each night and below freezing each day.  It provided an introduction to winter we didn’t really need because we know it’s coming soon enough, with the same inevitability, someone who is (I think) in Manitoba pointed out to me, as death and taxes.  But we now have a reprieve, and the skim of ice has gone from the frogpond, as well as our own little pond, though the parsley is not likely to stand up again this season.

One of the wonders of that touch of winter was the way splashing water glazed the surfaces it landed on.  Our small dragon kept on spouting, but the water lettuce and water hyacinths we left in the pond are not going to survive this coating of ice.

The morning after a light snowfall there were still remnants on the head of the garden column that Lorraine made.

And, as things warmed up a little, snow slumped off the hood of the car.

While the same snow coated the ice in the pond.

Since this mass of Arctic air moved on, I’ve been able to do a little more yard cleanup, picking up last scraps of firewood, putting pots under cover, and moving the raked leaves to the compost pile.  And the milder air has brought a new crop of moths to the outside light at night and let the crystalline garden soil soften up enough for me to get the last of the tulip bulbs in before everything solidifies again.

Now we can watch with wonder as three pertly perfect chickadees take turns at the suet cage, or the red squirrel makes a fool of itself trying vainly to keep two blue jays away from the seeds, running up slender branches after them and then having to rush down again as they fly back to the feeder for a quick peck.   

And we can wait for the lacy patterns of ice that will soon creep across ponds and puddles again, the iron grip that settles into the ground as it freezes, and the next snowfall that will slide down the air to cover everything as winter descends upon us one more time.

The Descent of Winter

In 1927 William Carlos Williams wrote a series of poems titled The Descent of Winter.  Each of the twenty included in Collected Early Poems was dated rather than titled, running from 10/29 to 12/15 of that year.  It’s an odd collection with only three of these pieces selected by Williams and Randal Jarrell for his Selected Poems, but there are quite a few in it that I like. 

Here’s one:

10/28

In this strong light

the leafless beechtree

shines like a cloud

it seems to glow

of itself

with a soft stript light

of love

over the brittle

grass

But there are

on second look

a few yellow leaves

still shaking

far apart

just one here one there

trembling vividly

And then there’s this one:

11/7

We must listen.  Before

she died she told them—

I always liked to be well dressed

I wanted to look nice—

So she asked them to dress

her well.  They curled her hair . . .

Now she fought

She didn’t want to go

She didn’t want to!

Or this:

11/20

Even idiots grow old

   in a cap with a peak

over his right ear

   cross-eyed

shamble-footed

   minding the three goats

behind the firehouse

   his face is deeper lined

than last year

   and the rain comes down

in gusts suddenly

I had actually been planning a post about the approach of winter, its onset, how it looks and feels, the leaves on the wet ground, brightness of grass, the ponds overflowing (as someone said recently, “The ponds are always full when they freeze”), and the yellow needles showing up on the tamaracks. 

However, I kept thinking of Williams’ title, the notion that we were on the descent into another season, and when I got to the poems themselves decided that they should stand on their own.  After all, we don’t need reminders of the seasonal change that is coming.  Winter does always find us.

Sun after Rain

It is November and this is the sixth day in a row that it has been raining.  A few bright leaves at T & S’s house, small scarlet pointed ones on the Japanese split leaf maple and large yellow heart shapes on the mulberry tree, are hanging on, but many of them are now plastered on the ground, and most of the other trees are bare.  The grass is brilliant green, made even more intense by an unremitting grey sky.  The Sackville River down by the Superstore turnoff is a raging torrent almost up to the bridge, and everything is soggy and sodden.

Sunday afternoon we had a small taste of the light that comes when the weather breaks.  It wasn’t actual sunlight, but you could see a patch of blue and where the sun was if it could just break through the edge of cloud.  It didn’t, and the cloud closed in for at least a couple more days, but it provided at least a promise of what might come (on Thursday, I think, if the forecast doesn’t change).

There is always something to love about sun after rain, so different from the white brightness of desert suns.  It always seems more golden and the blue of the sky always feels washed and fresh.  

I remember my first winter in Vancouver and my introduction to the day after day after day of rain, with no prospect of change.  It was oppressive, that low season, that November dark, but what sticks with me still were those instances toward sunset when the cloud would lift in the west to reveal just enough clear sky for the beneficent rays of sun to shine sideways across the city illuminating everything.  It was always an uplift, both emotionally and meteorologically, and always a wonder. 

After rain the wet surfaces reflect the brightness of the sky, and the remnants of grey cloud provide the kind of dense backdrop for the lit colours that photographers’ eyes (and ours) love.    

In this illuminated world objects seem to be emitting light and colour from within.

The other wonderful thing about the ending of the rain is the possibility of a rainbow, something that still astonishes me.  We have seen some wonderful ones from here arching over the harbour, but one (or two) of the most amazing happened last month as we were driving home from Bayers Lake.  It was late afternoon and the sun had started to drop when the sky opened up to the west.  We were just on the edge of the rain, and the most brilliant double rainbow shone beside and above us, with the near end following the bumper of the car in front of ours rather than pointing to a pot of gold.   

What I find consistently astonishing is the perfection of those curves in the sky and the brilliant delineation of colours, especially in the primary rainbow; I know I could look up the explanation of how the sunlight through the raindrops breaks up into the full spectrum of colour and forms a perfect arc, but I’d rather just see it happen and marvel at its magic.

The rain hasn’t stopped yet, but, according to that forecast, when it does the sun will shine quite a bit longer than it did in Ray Bradbury’s famous story, which we might honestly feel we are part of right now (check it out here if you’re not familiar with its poignancy).   On Thursday, if the forecast holds, I’ll be outside working in the sun and thinking of Bradbury’s  Margot and the tragedy of what she missed