This is the this

It is, as some of you know, my birthday today, and I am now 66.  It is important to me not just because I am beginning my 67^th year today, but also because of this.  What this, you might well ask.  Well, this is the this, this page I am just now composing and will some time through the day today post on my blog so that you, whoever you are and wherever you might be, can read it if you choose.

Two years ago today I decide to write and post my first ever blog entry (you can check it out here if you want to).  It was titled “They say it’s your birthday”, and it was built around the fact that Lou Reed (67 today), a boy named Levi (4 today), and I (66 today) share this day, the understanding that Lou was (and likely still is) in a relationship with Laurie Anderson, memories of the albums I had just taken to a used record store, and the connections to a couple of old Beatles songs that were in my head that day (and still are today, though I am no longer 64).

This is Post #130 of that blog, which I called Field Days: A Miscellany.  I have just learned how to pronounce “miscellany” through one of the wonders of the internet where someone at a pronunciation site just said it for me, and miscellaneous really characterizes the contents of Field Days.  It is subtitled “A Day Book of Sorts”, and one of the things I have truly loved is the ability to write here about things that happen in a day (miscellaneous things) and take my attention sufficiently to get me writing or photographing or googling them and posting the results here.

I think that my blog posts are a bit like essays, in the original sense of the word, that is; they are essais, or attempts, to get at something through language.  One of the blessings in this endeavour is the ability to write of these things that have engaged me in the informal voice I am most comfortable with, a kind of conversation with the known or unknown you.  A further blessing of a blog is the ability to broaden the range of what can be written through the use of links, so that my side trips in exploring that thing or things that may end up ranging over the vast number of possible trails through the ether of the net can be shared.  And, finally, because I am such a happily visual being, I have the opportunity to include images, what the roving eye may see and try to hold onto with a small camera.

I know some of the people who read what I write here, either because they post comments in response or because I recognize their IP addresses or locations, but the majority who show up on my sitemeter are unknown to me.  I like that, the fact that my writing voice, my listening ear, and my scanning eye can be read, heard, and seen by others out in our wide networked world whenever they care to explore what is available here, and sometimes wonder why that person in Agawam, Massachusetts or Arlon, Luxembourg, or Broadmeadows, Australia dropped in for a visit and what s/he might have thought or felt.

So the subject of my 130^th post is not so much my birthday today, shared with Lou and Levi and family and friends, but the variousness of the world we live in and the things that take our (or, in this case, my) attention in it sufficiently to note them as they pass.  Composing a post for this blog has always been a great pleasure for me, and I always hope it may bring pleasure to you too. 

Happy (birth) day to you too, hope you have a great one!

February 28, 2011

It is eight in the morning on the last day of February.

The sky is clear and the harbour is calm.

It is minus twelve outside but there’s wood in the stove.

The sun is getting higher and warming the house.

The girls have got over their flu and Kelly’s tulips are opening.

There’s still snow for skiing.

But the flower garden kilim gives a nice hint of seasons that could be just around the corner.  Tomorrow a new month marches in.

February 11, 2011

I came back from the Pockwock Lake trails in Mount Uniacke and planned to write a post on the joys of cross country skiing, even when you’re out there skiing alone.  The words and images were in my head as I skied and also as I drove home listening to K.D.Lang, lulled perhaps by my own endorphens.  When I got here, I brought my gear in, cleared the skiff of new snow off the walkway and entrance, made a small sandwich, poured a shot of Jameson’s over a single ice cube, put on a dry t-shirt, fired up the computer, and turned on the TV.

When I left this morning for Uniacke, the Friday midday prayers were finished in Egypt, and protestors were reported to be heading for the Presidential Palace and the State TV building, as well as filling any space that was left in Tahrir Square.  I knew that the Palace was surrounded by the Presidential Guard and that the military had asked the demonstrators to go home.  And I had seen the coverage of the speeches of the two corrupt old henchmen, Mubarak and Suleiman (this one a shameful bearer of the great Sultan Suleyman’s name), as they made their speeches in a desperate attempt to hang onto power, and I saw the anger and disgust of the protesters when they heard what was being said.

As I drove out to Uniacke to see my old colleagues at the school and check out the last of the students who might still remember me, I worried what the military might do today.  Would they, if ordered to, attempt to dispel the demonstrators by force?  And if they didn’t, what might happen then?  I couldn’t imagine Mubarak and Suleiman, who had seemed so out of touch with the demonstrators and why they were there, actually coming to their senses.  And I feared for the people of Egypt who had risked so much to be there and to stay there.

On the TV I saw Robert Gibbs saying good-bye to the White House press corps as he prepared (I guess) to go and do something else.  And when the computer came up, Al Jazeera was very slow loading, so it was the CBC site that told me Mubarak had stepped down.  He had stepped down!  I was elated!  He was hiding out in Sharm El Sheikh.  The thirty years of Mubarak were over! 

Since there was no one here for me to hug and kiss and share my joy, I danced around a little by myself and then sipped my whiskey, ate my sandwich, and thought, Hooray!  Hooray for the brave people of Egypt who stood up, sat down, slept in the treads of the US-made tanks, sang their songs, waved their flags, and refused to leave until the change they needed started to happen.  And it did happen!

I haven’t figured out exactly why I care so much or why this seems to mean so much.  I didn’t like Egypt when we visited five years ago because it felt as if every bit of its heritage was up for sale or sold and because it seemed so corrupt and so beat, and I’m not sure that I’d like those aspects of it a whole lot more now.  But I am happy for the people of Egypt, unaccountably happy really, for what they have accomplished in the last eighteen days. 

There is something about this revolution that is profoundly emotional as well as profoundly political.  And I think that something happened there today that we may be talking about for a long time.  Here is one interesting take on it, and there are any number of other careful and thoughtful analyses to be found at the Al Jazeera site.  Check it out!

I remember walking into the staff room at Uniacke District School on September 11, 2001 and telling the teachers there that I thought the world had changed that day.  It is interesting that I was in that same staff room today, almost ten years later, another day that the world has changed.  Only this change is different and this time I have a small hope that it changed for the better.  My fingers remain crossed for Egypt, and for all of us.

The Brilliance of Winter

Yesterday, the 7^th of February, was a beautiful winter day here in Ferguson’s Cove and in Halifax.  The sun shone, the official temperature rose to at least +2, and (and this is the important part for us here on the eastern coast) there was no wind, none at all.  It was the brilliance of winter.

Various of our friends are heading south to places where the sun may not be brighter, but the air and the ocean will be warmer and they can wear shorts and sandals and sunscreen and forget about winter weather, like today’s snowstorm, which has been slow and wet, but persistent.  I don’t blame them for wanting a break, but there is something wonderful about the winter brilliance of a day like yesterday, and it is something you run the risk of missing if you decide you need to escape winter.

Part of what makes a brilliant winter day so special is the clear and even blue of the winter sky without a wisp of cloud or even a vapour trail, and the matching deeper blue of the harbour below it, set off by the bright whiteness of the snow.

Then there’s the way the sun delineates the branches of the bare trees and creates traces of bluish shadows in the snow.

And the sun has started to climb noticeably higher in the sky where it can melt snow and ice off some of the surfaces like our walkway.

It even provokes early thoughts of possible spring, getting this young busker out balancing and juggling in front of his sidewalk drawing next to the library.

And the same sun has enticed this person, who is sensible enough (or, like me, old enough) to keep her coat on, to at least take off her gloves and read on a park bench in the snow.

On a day like yesterday there was no need for SAD light therapy; all you needed was to walk outside and look around.  The official temperature may have been only 1.7 degrees Celsius, but the fact that the sun rose at 07:26 and didn’t set until 17:32, and that there was no wind all day, gave it the kind of warmth and brilliance that made you realize that winter, no matter how beautiful, would not stay forever and that something special, like they say, could not be far behind.

Spring will spring up soon enough, but right now I just want to get out into more of that bright white winter.

Close to Tears

It has been a rough week, one that has kept me close to tears at times, even though I have little or nothing to complain about in my own life.

On Tuesday morning I was doing my regular shift in the laptop lab at the Halifax Refugee Clinic when a young woman came upstairs to use a computer.  She was Ethiopian, a human rights activist there who had completed a semester of study here in Nova Scotia and then been told that she must report to the Security Services when she returned home.  Needless to say she has not returned, even though she has a husband and two young sons there, and is looking at making a claim for refugee status here.  The impossibility of her situation, and her sad quiet courage in the face of it, left me moved and close to tears, just as I had been for days thinking of the desperation of life in Egypt and the courage of the demonstrators there.

On Wednesday I watched coverage of the pro-Mubarak thugs riding into Tahrir Square armed with swords and sticks and attacking the peaceful protestors.  This was after I had marveled at the admirable restraint shown by those protestors, their quiet determination and persistence in the face of a stubborn and implacable foe.  As Lorraine said every time some television commentator spoke about an end to the protests, “They can’t go home.”  And they haven’t, in spite of the violence of Wednesday’s actions and the danger they were in.  Whenever I think of the lives we observed in that poor beaten down country and of the courage these protesters show, I am moved again and find myself with that familiar thickening of the throat as I am close to tears.

Today I had a wonderful ski with my brother and his wife through a long and beautiful trail under blue sky and bright sun on perfect snow.  After that we went to a fundraiser called Coldest Night of the Year at the Fo’c’sle Tavern in Chester where lots of local performers were playing and singing.  I was taken by a rocking rendition of Bob’s My God They Killed Him, a young girl soulfully singing Summertime and Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone, some nice blues riffs, and good beer and pub snacks. 

The place was packed, and I watched a couple come in, she slight and covered with a head scarf, he tall and solid, both possibly Egyptian.  They were different from everyone else in the crowd as they stood watching and listening, and I wondered what meaning they made of our rock and blues and folk nostalgia.  Then the choral group that had been singing old sentimental favourites closed their segment with Hymn to Freedom (you can hear Oscar Peterson play it here, and Dione Taylor sing it here – listen to these and you too will be close to tears). 

The conductor pointed out that it was in honour of African Heritage Month, and I thought about Africa.  I thought of its northern edges with their quiet and determined revolutions, its Ethiopia where the ruling party gained 99.6% in a recent “election” and secret police can detain or disappear people they don’t care for, and the Diaspora that uprooted so many of its people but ended up enriching the lives of us non-Africans so hugely, and once again I found myself close to tears. 

I have no answers to any of this, and I know that tears are not enough, but I can pay attention and help where I can, and I can hope for a better week and a better world.

Snow days and winter picnics

Today was a snow day for Halifax schools so Lorraine and I were not able to go to A.’s Primary class reading event where family members were invited to come and read with our kids or grandkids or nieces or nephews.  We were told we could wear pajamas, and A. was excited at the prospect and was definite that she was going to – we hadn’t decided ourselves, though I had been thinking of a dressing gown I could put on; however, it didn’t happen because of that pesky northeaster that was blowing through this morning, so Lorraine suggested we take the girls to the library instead this afternoon.

We had a lot of fun doing that and signed out sixteen books and nine videos.  Then they came to our house to look at the books, check out a couple of the videos, and eat cheezies and sliced apple while they snuggled on our big bed.

I stayed upstairs with the girls while Nan (Lorraine) made some supper and then decided to set it up in front of the woodstove for a winter picnic.

Then she decided that the carpet was an island and everyone spent time sunbathing on a big towel and stretching their legs up on the edge of the couch.

My suggestion was to toast marshmallows in the stove, so I melted the ice off our hot dog sticks that were still in the treehouse, and then Nan decided we could make s’mores with chocolate digestive cookies.

What can I say, except that it was some good (some jeezly good!) and the girls had a right fine (and fun) time.  So, hooray, I say, for a snow day – it’s important to make the best you can of it, and I think we did!

Rejoice with me

I had planned to use the phrase “More joy in Heaven” as a title for this post.  The words have been bouncing around in my head for the past few days, but it wasn’t until today when I sat down to get started that I actually looked the phrase up in Luke 15 and found that it wasn’t quite the way I thought it was.  The story was there, and it was as relevant as I remembered, but the use of the phrase just wasn’t right.  However, a quick read of the chapter led me to the words “Rejoice with me”, which is what I am now inviting you to do.

Here’s why.

Tomorrow at this time I will have been a Canadian citizen for exactly two weeks.  However, the occasion for rejoicing with me over that accomplishment has passed.  As I mentioned in my last post, “The party’s over”, and it’s starting to feel like time to get down to the hard work of actually being Canadian.   

I’m not sure how well I’m doing: so far I haven’t managed to pay attention to a single hockey score, let alone watch a game, though I did notice the headlines about that unexpected third period debacle in the Juniors against Russia, but of course I was only a Permanent Resident back then.  I am still passing by every Tim Horton’s without a pang of desire or regret, though I still remember the first one I went to back when Tim's served fifteen cent hamburgers near the bottom of Yonge Street in 1964.  And what I haven’t been able to divine is whether the revulsion I feel at any mention or appearance of Harper and his Conservatives is truly Canadian or just a manifestation of my non-Canadian immigrant experience. 

One of the benefits of this new identity I have achieved, besides being able to vote legally (as soon as I have the chance), is to carry a Canadian passport.  Since there are no elections that I know of coming up, I decided that one truly Canadian thing I could do was to apply for a passport.  It’s not the only time I’ve done that; in fact, my unsuccessful passport application in the fall of 2002 was the first official notification I ever got that I wasn’t actually a Canadian, something that sent me scrambling to obtain my current British/Bermudian one but not to actually get the paperwork done to become Canadian right then (something I have often regretted since).

As you might expect, I have plenty of experience with the nooks and crannies of the CIC website, so it was no problem to find and download the right form.  The instructions and cautions are lengthy and detailed, but the form itself is pretty straightforward, and the crux of the issue is being able to show that you are in fact a Canadian citizen.  Should be easy now!

And everything was easy until Section 4 on page 2, Proof of Canadian Citizenship.  Actually Section 4 A, Did you acquire citizenship of another country before JANUARY 1, 1947?, was still easy.  4 B did not apply to me, since I was not born in Canada.  It was 4 C, where I was given four options for proving I was Canadian, that ended up stopping me, because I couldn’t find the wallet-sized laminated card that was the Certificate of Canadian Citizenship I had been presented by Her Honour Linda Carvery only a week previous. 

I could give a very long and painful account of my days of looking for it, trying to track down the last occasion I had shown the card to somebody and to understand the faint physical memory that I had put it in my wallet and finding it just wasn’t there, taking apart my thick citizenship file over and over again, searching all the adjacent hanging files and the bottom of the file drawer, looking in every possible place inside the car, worrying that somehow it had gone out with the recyclables, checking the pockets of everything I wore to the ceremony, waking up at 4 a.m. with another sudden idea of where it might possibly be and then not finding it when I looked after day broke, e-mailing my CIC officer to find out how long it takes to get a replacement card (10 months!) and whether they could issue a temporary replacement (no), and just feeling stupider and stupider about losing the thing after spending so much time and effort to get it.

So, you may be able to imagine my happiness when I went through my wallet one final desperate time, decided to pull out my Blue Cross group insurance card even though there was no suggestion that anything else could be in that slot, and discovered my slim but perfect Certificate of Canadian Citizenship stuck to the back of it.  I looked at both sides of the card, I kissed it, I jumped in the air and shouted, I hugged Lorraine (kissed her too, of course), and I thought of the parable of “More joy in Heaven”, all of which led me to Luke 15, part of which goes like this:

8  Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently until she find it?

9 And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost.

Forget the parts about the prodigal son or the sinner that repenteth, because the thing that was lost has been found, and my application can proceed.

So, after all that, and if you still care to do so, please

Rejoice with me!

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.