Fogsail an dorus

I have a very clear memory from almost 4 years ago.

It was just after Easter, toward the end of April, and I was on the Greek island of Kefalonia. I'd spent a magical few days experiencing the tiny seaside community of Assos, and the traditional Greek Easter celebrations. My account of that time is here. But there was one thing I didn't share with anybody at the time, but which was so vivid I have never forgotten it. I had an odd presentiment of the future. Not that I saw visions or heard voices or anything like that; my few experiences of the world beyond the veil are never so concrete or easily explained. But they are not easily explained away, either. And, in fact, Assos seemed to me like something out of a vision, in and of itself. I felt as though everything I saw and heard was trying to tell me something, in a barely audible whispers: the friendly water lapping at the rocky beach, the small, murmuring caves across the bay that I swam into, the handmade, whitewashed houses and stone walls, the atonal shepherd's bells, the giant, forbidding cliffs that seemed to protect and threaten the village at the same time. Assos was the sort of place where time no longer seems to move in a straight line but whirls in an eddy.

I wrote in the journal I kept at the time:

I have had many peculiar emotions here: everything from a sense of excitement to a sense of foreboding, feeling both close to the future and close to the past. I have a strange feeling, a conviction even, almost frightening in its certainty, that one chapter, one act of my life is about to close. I can feel myself in the future, looking back on myself now, although I can't see back the other way to know where I will be. If I could, it would be interesting!

Several times as the years have gone by, I've looked back at how things unfolded after that Easter and wondered about what exactly that presentiment referred to, if indeed anything. Did something happen afterwards that dropped the curtain one one act and lifted it on another? At the time, I'd thought the great change in my life would happen when I went on a planned trip to Scotland. And actually, I think I was right about that.

One thing I discovered when I was traveling was that while buses and planes could carry me great distances, to amazing places and new experiences, thoughts could carry me even greater distances. The real traveling did not only happen on the physical level, but inside of me. I think I became aware of my own mind on a higher level. For several months I was tormented by homesickness, barely able to control my thoughts. It felt sometimes like the present was being subducted into a vision of the past that came to me in all my waking hours. At the same time I realized that these perceptions were not based on reality, and while I couldn't fight them, I could set them aside, carry on in spite of them.

I felt very cut off from civilization when I was living abroad. This was odd, and not at all what I expected. I spent quite a bit of time looking at museums, and artifacts, and ruins; but rarely did I feel any personal connection with them. They were made by people who had decided to stay somewhere and build something; I had not decided to stay anywhere and I did not know what I wanted to build. I was cut off, alien, lost both accidentally and deliberately. But the movement of things: water, wind, flowing clothes, dancing feet, leaves, flowers; time: I drank up that sense of movement. Movement was where I lived.

It was when I went to Scotland that I completely gave myself over to the joy of movement, when I let myself dance and threw away the lingering fears I had about being in the present, being in the middle of the journey. I picked up a book of Scottish quotations at the airport, and this one summed up my week in Scotland: "One crowded hour of glorious life, is worth an age without a name." I packed a lot of life into that one week, and have always felt it was a great gift. I loved South Uist and was at home there in a magical way. But South Uist gave me a greater gift: the ability to be at home inside myself.

I didn't really know that at the time, of course. I felt a surge of something within me; I felt as though a stone had rolled away, or something big and heavy and dark had rolled away. I knew I was going to sing and play music and dance. Fogsail an dorus! Open the door! And I did.

Once the door was open walking through it seemed to just be the right thing to do. I returned to Canada some months later, not because of homesickness but because I felt it was the right thing to do. I joined a concert band, learned to play an instrument. Suddenly I was part of something. It was bizarre, unbelievable, and totally normal and believable. I didn't have to run anywhere to find myself. How liberating that felt! I wriggled back into teaching, and quite the adventure that has been. I was cautious, I am cautious, I'll always be cautious, but I recognize and celebrate the power of forces in my life that are greater than fear.

I wanted to tell this story, now, because while we like to divide people's lives into easily digestible chunks, and happy stories and Hollywood movies tend to end with a marriage, I don't think the beginning or end of a new act is quite that straightforward. I heard once that where you are now is where you planned to be five years ago, whether you were aware of it or not. Well, it's not quite five years ago that I wrote those thoughts on Assos, or danced in South Uist, but it's close.

There was a moment on Assos, and again on South Uist, when I opened a door, and stepped out into a new world. The new world was around me, but it was also inside me. The beginning of now was then; I know it. This year, I will begin another dance. I'm getting married. I won't say much more about that now, because it's a whole other story that hasn't been written yet. There will be time. But I think the occasion does call for some superbly happy tunes. And here they are.

Fogsail an dorus (Open the door): the puirt-a-beul song that came to mind when I was writing this entry. Here is Capercaillie singing in the streets:




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj_gnLBsPEk

The 2009 Heroes series

Toward the end of 2009 I decided to write about 4 people whose creative output and/or personal stories have had a big impact on my life. Writing about my "heroes" was part of the meditation I have been been doing on my life as I turn 3-0. Whee, 30! An age is really just a number as far as I'm concerned (especially if one is happy with one's life), but it is an opportunity to reflect on the choices I made in the first part of my adulthood and how my values have developed. I'm at the point in life where I know I don't have endless time, though I still have a lot of time, and I've made some important decisions, deliberately or by default, that can't be changed. So I feel the need to take some time to reflect on that, not in an evaluative way, to label things bad or good, but just to understand myself and what has influenced me. The people I wrote about in these entries have been huge influences.

Clarissa Estes

Seamus Heaney

Hild of Whitby

Moya Brennan

Heroes: Moya Brennan

Music has always been central to my life in a mysterious way that I can talk about a lot, but can never fully explain. It's like the wind in Christina Rossetti's poem:

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

You know the wind is there because you see what it does, but you can never see the wind itself.

Writing about Moya Brennan is going to be a lot like writing about the wind. Moya makes music, and music is all about experience. You can talk and write about music in a highly analytical and intellectual way, but the real power of music is that it's so immediate. It moves you to a different level of awareness often before you even fully comprehend what is happening, and certainly before you can step back and analyze it.

What is listening to Moya Brennan like?

It's a bit like listening to a mother sing to her child. Her sound is tender, personal, always warm. She seems to have such good intentions toward her listeners. If she sings about painful experiences, it is never to hurt, or to revel in hurt, but to acknowledge the difficulty of life and to heal. Perhaps not coincidentally, Moya started her solo career around the time she became a mother. Several of her songs were written for her children, and her children's voices appear on some of her albums.

It's a bit like listening to someone pray. Not publicly, in a church or cathedral, or as part of a ceremony. No, as if you were walking by someone's open door, and heard them almost by accident, speaking with complete honesty to God or to whoever they think hears them. I think part of why I respond so strongly to Moya's songs is because I feel she is trying to be fully honest, to tell it like she really feels it. That her music ends up being so beautiful and uplifting is, I think, due in equal parts to her talent and her character.



When I visited the Hebrides of Scotland back in 2006, I was lucky to go to a house party where people were playing instruments, dancing and singing the local Gaelic songs. However, I felt very awkward at first. I know a bit about Scottish music and culture, and I've been to big and small concerts and even a dance, so I thought I would feel quite at home. But it was very different to be in such a personal, intimate setting: in somebody's house. I felt at sea in a different culture and language, and unsure how to relate to the people around me, although I wanted very badly to relate to them. At one point in the party, people began taking turns singing, unaccompanied. I found a place to sit on the floor, and got ready to listen. When I recognized one song, I sang along with the chorus, and several people around me did too. I don't quite know how, but by the end of that song all my fear of being misunderstood, or of misunderstanding, was gone. The song had healed me inside. I felt whole, able to dance, sing, laugh, make music, talk, ask, relate. No silly hang ups would get in the way again.

Listening to Moya Brennan is a bit like that, too.



I first heard her in a little theatre in Calgary. It was a sold out crowd but not a big one. I hadn't heard Moya's music or voice much, except for a Clannad CD I'd picked up some years ago. I liked it, but not enough to explore more of their music.

I think the first thing I noticed about Moya and her band when they came on stage were their big, delighted smiles. And they weren't even smiling at the audience, exactly. They smiled at each other, with the goofy, happy smiles of people that share a joke or are doing something together that they absolutely love. I liked the music and the band, but similarly to the time when I sat at the feet of the singers in Scotland, I didn't really understand how it was reaching me. What I saw were people completely absorbed in what they were doing. As they sang, played their harps, drums, and fiddles, I suddenly realized that I was seeing something beautiful. Moya and her band do not look like models. They are well past their 30s. Moya is in her 50s. They are not what you might think of in the conventional sense when I say "beautiful people." But they were beautiful. They were some of the most beautiful people I had ever seen.

Afterwards I bought the live CD Moya was selling ("Heartstrings"), got her autograph, said hello to her briefly, and went home. Then I put the CD in the player and listened. And listened again. And again. I don't know how many times I listened in the first few weeks.



Moya's gentle songs of courage, endurance, faith, and finally joy were perhaps just what I needed at the time. She comes across not as a person who knows it all, nor as a person sells her pain or anger (it is clear she has experienced a lot of both), but as someone who tries to write honestly about the journey.

When I read a bit about Moya's life story, I gained more respect for her. She first became well-known as the lead singer of the band Clannad. In the 70s and 80s Clannad created a contemporary Celtic sound that is now recognized around the world. Sometimes they are referred to as New Age, a label that Moya finds rather limiting and that I think is too flaky for her. Her younger sister Enya also performed with Clannad for a while, but then went solo and acquired a huge audience and great wealth with her own unique fusion of Celtic/techno/classical.

Somewhere along the way to becoming popular and somewhat famous in the way that roots artists are, Moya got into the rock and roll lifestyle and made some poor choices. She wrote about these in her book The Other Side of the Rainbow and sometimes mentions the experiences in interviews. She used drugs, alcohol, was promiscuous. She had a brief marriage that failed. She had an abortion. She finally hit a very low point in life, which was when she rediscovered her faith. Some of that journey is explored in her songs.



I can perhaps appreciate Moya's music more from knowing her life story, but it isn't really necessary to know all about it. You can intuit from listening to her songs that this is a woman who has refined hard experience into character. She is one of those people who can experience a lot but still remain open to the world and all it offers. Her story does have a happy ending, so far: in her late 30s, after giving up on finding love, she met and married photographer Tim Jarvis, and they had two children.



Last year I found this documentary that was done when Moya released her album "An Irish Christmas." It's appropriate to the season and definitely has the best interview footage of her that's available online. Plus, Moya sings the beautiful songs on her Christmas album. Click on the photo to go to the page with the video. Once you get to the website, click the "video" button. It's in English with Dutch subtitles.

Moya Brennan Interview

Heroes: Hild of Whitby

Hild of Whitby is going to be, in a way, the most difficult of my heroes to talk about. That's because she lived in the 7th century AD, and only one story about her, plus a handful of references, survive. The rest is conjecture, a superstructure built out of literary archeology and some actual archeology. To get to know her is to dive into a world where the boundaries between myth and history are porous and rarely clearly defined.

Hild came to me, or I came to Hild, however you want to look at it, via Bede's story of Caedmon. This is the one story where Hild is a main character, though her role in other stories and historical moments can be imagined. So, we might as well get it out there right now. Bede's story of Caedmon exists in several medieval manuscripts (somewhat unusual) and there is both a Latin and an Anglo-Saxon version, which are similar but not the same. Here are both versions (and a Modern English translation for your reading convenience!)

Bede's Story of Caedmon
http://www.heorot.dk/bede-caedmon-i.html
on Ben Slade's Beowulf on Steorarume website

If your read one or both the versions of that story, then you'll know 90% of what anybody knows about Hild or Caedmon. Scholars of various things - Anglo-Saxon, folklore, Irish history, women's history, archeology etc. - have tried to understand this story better by looking at it with reference to various other things: words and tropes that exist in the story and in other texts, myths about dream/creation, similarities between Caedmon's experience and that of Irish or Welsh poets; other women in medieval history, the physical culture of Whitby as revealed by the artefacts unearthed there (the last approach was taken up by yours truly in my joyous student days).

Bede's story of Caedmon has become one of my myths, meaning one of the stories I carry with me as talisman, power story, creation hymn. And this is how I will talk about it. I have studied it and absorbed a fair amount of the knowledge and bibliography surrounding it, but it is not primarily information that I will share now. The information and bibliography is out there for anyone who is curious about the story: Anglo-Saxon scholars today are as dedicated as the medieval scribes of old to preserving and sharing their texts of study and their scholarship. (And they are a very witty and intelligent community of people.) But I will talk about what Caedmon and Hild have become to me.

I first encountered Caedmon as a child. I read any book that got in my way when I was young. (Not much has changed.) I particularly liked history books, when they were written in an engaging way with lots of pictures, and one favourite was a nice fat book with stories from the history of Britain. It was picked up at the big annual library discard sale (a yearly ritual where my family would line up for an hour or so for a chance to go into a warehouse and pick up books by the box load, for a few dollars). It has detailed engravings and a few awesome colour plates which I can still recall as if I saw them ten minutes ago, even though I haven't looked inside that book for years. Like all of my favourite books, I read it over and over and over and over. I encountered the story again, much later, as a university student in my Old English course. This time I got to read it in the original Anglo-Saxon. Putting together the story word by word, phrase by phrase, seeing it again through adult eyes, was as much or more of a discovery than reading it for the first time as a child.

Both as a child and an adult, I found I could easily identify with the hero, Caedmon. He wanted to participate in the song circle but ended up on the side lines, listening to others, too shy or awkward to do his turn when the harp came around to him. He must have been considered quite boring by his fellow cowherds and pub-bench wits. I was another person who was labeled "shy" or "quiet" because I didn't speak up a lot in groups. However, quiet people are often not quiet at all: inside they may carry companies of voices, troupes of dancers, whole orchestras and choirs of music. To sit and listen is no passive act for quiet people of this sort: not much gets by them. It is never "in one ear and out the other." To be alone is not to be isolated or sad, but to be fully with oneself, imagining out an opus, a community of spirit; it is to feel more "together" than it is possible to be with the clacking crowd. Now that I've become literate in my own way of being, I would laugh at anyone who called me "quiet" (it rarely happens anymore). I would say "You aren't listening on the right frequency." Listening on the right frequency is a skill that is well worth practicing: I have known many "quiet people" who shock your socks off by suddenly revealing the garden within them, whether it's with photography, writing, artwork, conversation, music, or something else.

But people who are quiet in this way also long deeply for something else: for a real-life community of people who will bring out what they really are, who will encourage and allow that inner symphony to emerge. They are not lonely when they are by themselves, exactly, but they are lonely for that community of people. And for many it is very very hard to figure out where to find it. It is common to search for years not knowing exactly what one is looking for, or to look for the wrong thing, or look in the wrong place. Or perhaps, to give up and not bother to look at all, thinking that it is one's doom to always be alone, to even start to believe one's gifts or deep desires doom one to be alone. This is completely untrue, because those gifts are the very thing that should lead one to one's community, but the world is full of detours and charlatans and distractions and wastes-of-time and liars and it is not surprising that many people feel exactly that way.

I've been through all of those phases, more or less. I never gave in to the more destructive of the distractions: i.e. drugs, alcohol, or some other sort of detour from reality. Part of the reason why I was never particularly tempted to do so, however, has to be because I "knew" people like Caedmon from an early age. Caedmon hasn't found his real community at the beginning of the story. Scholars have speculated, because of his name and the manner in which his poem came to him, that he was a sort of cultural minority: a Brythonic man whose culture was in the process of being overwhelmed by Anglo-Saxon settlers and invaders. His shyness and inability to recite a poem or tell a story when the harp came to him may have been in part because he was unfamiliar with the Anglo-Saxon language, or lacked confidence. He may have had cultural reasons for not feeling like he "belonged." Or maybe it was just the way he was. There are always people like that. But there is more to the story.

Caedmon didn't give up. He kept going to the mead-hall to listen and learn, even though he knew that he would be laughed at when he couldn't participate like the others, that he would go away and hide by himself in the end, with who-knows-what desire and chorus of voices rising up in him, wanting out, wanting to say...what? When one is trying in this way, it can feel like time is slowing down, like things are getting interminably harder, like the whole world outside is pressing down, while the whole world inside is pressing up, and you only stay standing because you don't know which way to collapse. Somewhere, something is going to give. Trying is all very well, but this kind of trying makes you feel more than a little insane. And yet, you have to reach this point, the point where your own strength is simply not enough anymore. It's only then that you can feel and appreciate the strength of the something else.

And this is where the central mystery of the story is, and where Hild is too. As to the mystery, I can only tell it just the way it happens and just the way it is, because one could speculate and analyze it forever, but in the end it would still be a mystery, and that is entirely appropriate. After leaving the meadhall one...more...time, Caemon goes to the stable where his animals are and falls asleep. There he dreams a dream, and a "man" comes to him.

"Caedmon, sing me something," the man says.

Then he answered and said: "I do not know how to sing and for that reason I went out from this feast and went hither, because I did not know how to sing at all."

Again he said, he who was speaking with him: 'Nevertheless, you must sing.' ( 'Hwæðre þu meaht singan.')

Then he said: 'What must I sing?'

Said he: 'Sing to me of the first Creation.' When he received this answer, then he began immediately to sing in praise of God the Creator verses and words which he had never heard, whose order is this....

At that point the Anglo-Saxon version of the text includes the poem that Caedmon sang in his dream, and that he also remembered when he woke up (!).

I find these lines of dialogue delightful and hilarious, in the sense that they make me want to laugh with joy. I recognize Caedmon the shy cowherd, and I also recognize this man in the dream. This "man" has come to me in many shapes, sometimes as a human teacher or friend, sometimes through a song or book that arrived in my life at just the right miraculous moment, sometimes through a dream (yes) or as a beam of light through a crack in the wall that I never knew was there, at all. And it goes just like that: "I can't." "Nevertheless you must." "But what and how?" "This way."

For a person who creates, the most important thing he or she must learn is to listen, without question, to that voice that says "Now" and "Nevertheless you must" and "This way." And it always struck me as so intuitively right that the first song Caedmon sings is about the creation of the world, because he himself has been touched with the gift of creation.

After his miraculous dream, Caedmon goes on to speak his poem to others. He knows he has been given something real or true, and now there is no hesitation or shyness in his manner. He is not afraid of those with power. He goes straight to the town alderman, who sends him to Hild, the abbess. Hild assembles the most learned men, and Caedmon recites his poetry to them, too. No cringing, no running away now. They listen (another kind of miracle, but we'll get to that one) and Hild and her scholars declare that his gift is from God, and that from now on he will make poems in service to the abby. Caedmon has found his true community, the people who will nurture his gift, bring it out, give it the respect it deserves. He has arrived.

But then there's the other half of the story, and the other half is this: How there was a community for Caedmon to go to in the first place. And here now is Hild.

It took me a while to find my real community(ies) and the search is never over. But I believe that when you really try to do something worthwhile or find where you belong, that there are hints or markers showing the right way to go. Those hints are markers are put there by the people who are trying to find you, whether you know it or not. Even if you are trying in a confused way or seem to be just going in circles, the markers are there just the same. For example, I discovered quite soon that where I find one thing or person who is good, there are other good things and people as well. Good things do not exist in isolation; they are connected to each other in a kind of complex network, and the task is to find the threads that connect them to each other.

I have been lucky to find those kind of networks many times in my life. When was in my late teens/early 20s, I started talking to people in the online Celtic music network. There I found individuals who not only knew interesting things about Celtic music, but who had understanding and sympathy toward my way of seeing the world, who even helped me develop some of the job skills that led to me getting my first breaks in the adult world. I would never have guessed I would find them that way. It was astonishing what strangers were willing to do to help me out, and how quickly they became friends and allies. Some years later, when I started playing music in a community band, I was deeply touched by the music teachers who led the group. At that point in life I'd had some good teaching experiences, but some awful ones too, and although my self-confidence had started to recover, it was still pretty shaky. I didn't apply to any teaching jobs when I came back from Europe, nor would I even consider subsitute teaching. I was wary of schools in general and cringed a little when learned our music class was going to be in a public school. Again, what I found in our beginner music group was something I would never have guessed at. Our directors showed such love of music and people in all their interactions with us. They slowly helped convince me that teaching could be a tolerable and honourable undertaking. It was a huge part of what gave me the courage to get in front of a class again. Even with my self-imposed silence (it took months before I would admit to anyone in that group I was a teacher, and that was no coincidence, trust me) somehow, I was discovered, to myself and others. Again.

I see Hild in the story of Caedmon as one of the people who sets out the markers showing the way, who welcomes people 'home.' The evidence in Bede suggests that she was a very gifted teacher and administrator. She might have been married in early life; nobody knows. But fairly late in life by the standards of the time - she was 33 - she began founding houses of nuns and later, the double monastery at Whitby. She must also have been a very warm and approachable person; Bede says that everyone called her "Mother." Hild's astuteness is shown when she immediately recognizes Caedmon's gift. She herself was the daughter of a king, and well educated; she would not have had much in common with an illiterate cow-herd who may even have been of a different culture than her. But she immediately could see that something very special had happened to Caedmon, and that their futures would be intertwined. Without Hild, there would be no miracle of Caedmon; he would never have been heard of.

So even though I identify with the Caedmon of this story, over the years I've identified more and more with Hild, too, because they are linked in essential ways. In her I see all the people who have welcomed me, and shown me the way, and in her I see something of what I hope to be for others, too.

Heroes: Seamus Heaney

I first came across Seamus Heaney in my second year university literature text book. I think the first thing that caught my eye was his name. The Irish-ness of it was exotic to me, a student who at that time had only traveled via books and imagination. Then the poem, "Punishment", had slightly lurid content. Nothing like a little luridness for getting a student's attention. (Seamus Heaney is actually significantly less lurid by comparsion than many contemporary poets.) But what caught me for good was Seamus Heaney's voice. He is keenly observant, almost scientific in his precise description of things. But at the same time, he maintains a very present, personal tone.

Punishment
I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
of her neck, the wind
on her naked front.

It blows her nipples
to amber beads,
it shakes the frail rigging
of her ribs.

I can see her drowned
body in the bog,
the weighing stone,
the floating rods and boughs.

Under which at first
she was a barked sapling
that is dug up
oak-bone, brain-firkin:

her shaved head
like a stubble of black corn
her blindfold a soiled bandage,
her noose a ring

to store
the memories of love
Little adulteress,
before they punished you

you were flaxen-haired,
undernourished, and your
tar-black face was beautiful.
My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you
but would have cast, I know
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur

of your brain's exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles' webbing
and all your numbered bones:

I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,

who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.
******
In the poem the "betraying sisters" are Catholic girls who were publicly humiliated by the IRA for dating British soldiers. There were basically tarred and feathered and handcuffed to street railings. Heaney begins by observing the body of the Bronze age "adulteress," and feels pity for the brutal tribal revenge enacted on her for her crime. But then he also notices and comments on his own hypocrisy: he shouldn't act all superior and horrified about the customs of the ancient tribes, because he has witnessed a similar act in his own time, and was complicit in it.

Some people have read this poem as if it is normalizing brutality toward women, but I think that reading is missing the tone of the poem. I hear the poem as self-accusation, in a way: a recongnition that living in an advanced technological civilization hasn't made people's tribal and violent natures disappear. While the poem doesn't outright condemn that events that it describes, the speaker's recognition of what is inside him is somehow more powerful than an outright condemnation would be.

"Punishment" has a lot of the typical qualities of Heaney's poetry: using the past as a lens through which to understand the present; the use of excavation or "digging down" as a metaphor for the search for knowledge or insight; the careful observation and interpretation, or re-interpretation, of artefacts. Sometimes these artifacts are ancient artefacts like the bog bodies, or pieces of Viking carving, or bits of Old English or Latin poetry, but sometimes they are everyday objects:

A Kite for Michael and Christopher

All through that Sunday afternoon
A kite flew above Sunday,
a tightened drumhead, an armful of blow chaff.

I'd seen it grey and slippy in the making,
I'd tapped it when it dried out white and stiff,
I'd tied the bows of the newspaper
along its six-foot tail.

But now it was far up like a small black lark
and now it dragged as if the bellied string
were a wet rope hauled upon
to life a shoal.

My friend says that the human soul
is about the weight of a snipe
yet the soul at anchor there,
the string that sags and ascends,
weigh like a furrow assumed into the heavens.

Before the kite plunges down into the wood
and this line goes useless
take in your two hands, boys, and feel
the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.
You were born fit for it.
Stand here in front of me
and take the strain.

************************
People often tell me that poetry is difficult and complicated and contains meanings that are always hidden for some reason, perhaps because of the malice or madness of the writer. I say: a poem is not like a messy closet where a few useful objects are hidden beneath piles and piles of junk that must be sorted through before anything of worth is discovered. Lots of things in life are exactly like that, but not poetry. A poem is like one of those reusable shopping bags that folds into a space as small as your fist, but can be unfolded to become a tote-bag that carries twenty times its mass. A poem does not take long. A poem weighs very little. You can tuck it into your handbag or pocket, and go about your business without even knowing it's there. No heavy book to haul around. No big expectations to harrow your mind. No nattering person at your ear trying to convince your of this or that or the other thing. When you need the poem, or your little shopping bag, you pull it out and poof! it expands into another form, makes itself ready for what you need at the moment. The real beauty of poetry is it's simplicity, compactness and praticality.

"A Kite for Michael and Christopher," one of my favourite poems ever, is a poem just like that. It is a simple poem: it's about Heaney making a kite with his two sons, Michael and Christopher. He describes the kite in detail, and how they go out on a Sunday afternoon and fly it. Then in stanza four the poem unfurls into a big bag, the kind that carries all sorts of meaning.

The kite becomes a metaphor of the soul. The soul tries to ascend, but is held onto by the person on the other end of the string. Heaney describes this in a variety of ways: flying the kite is plowing a field, it's like trying to pull up an anchor that is caught in a shoal. The feeling is labourous: keeping the soul up in the air, while not letting it fly completely away, is intense work.

In the last stanza Heaney, having apparently got the kite into the air, hands the line to his two boys.

Before the kite plunges down into the wood
and this line goes useless
take in your two hands, boys, and feel
the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.
You were born fit for it.
Stand here in front of me
and take the strain.

Presumably when the kite plunges into the wood, then life will be over. In the meantime, hanging onto it, living life with your soul in the air, is one's life work. "Feel / the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief." Whose grief that is is not totally clear. Perhaps it is the soul's grief: the soul wants to fly higher and higher into the sky, but can only go so far because it is attached to a mortal. Or perhaps it is through grief, the inevitable grief that comes from living, that one begins to feel the presence of the soul. Probably there's something of both meanings in it. The lesson that Heaney passes onto his children is: Don't be afraid of grief. Grief will come, but in the end its presence means you are alive. It means that as a human you strive to reach into the heavens. And you are strong enough to take the pain with the beauty. Indeed, grief is almost a beautiful thing in the poem: "strumming, rooted, long-tailed." It is like the music of a harp, like a firmly rooted tree, like a long-tailed kite flying in the wind. And we can "take the strain:" by holding on to the soul, accepting the grief, we can live fully.

I see this poem as a twin to a "Old Smoothing Iron," a section from "Shelf Life," which again looks at every day artefacts and tells a story about each one. This one, I believe, is about Heaney's mother.

2 Old Smoothing Iron

Often I watched her lift it
from where its compact wedge
rode the back of the stove
like a tug at achor.

To test its heat by ear
she spat in its iron face
or held it up next her cheek
to divine the stored danger.

Soft thumps on the ironing board.
Her dimpled angled elbow
and intent stoop
as she aimed the smoothing iron

like a plane into linen
like the resentment of women
To work, her dumb lunge says,
is to move a certain mass

through a certain distance,
is to pull your weight and feel
exact and equal to it.
Feel dragged upon. And buoyant.

*******

Labour is another theme that comes up in Heaney's poetry, especially physical labour. This poem plays upon the scientific definition of work: to move an object of a certain mass through a certain distance. The work described is not work involving a lot of education or intellectualism, and yet the poem suggests that satisfaction comes from "pulling your weight" and feeling exact and equal to the thing being moved. Whatever the particular task, there's pleasure in feeling equal to it and seeing your actions move something in the world. Even if one's job is not always utterly fascinating, even if there are some dull, repetitive moments, there's a reward in seeing something moved or transformed by one's efforts, however big or small.

Poetry like this is the reason that I often turn to Seamus Heaney as a restorative, or when I need a clear voice to drown out the babble around me. They are the sort of poems that you want to memorize and carry around like a gift, like a piece of life-saving luggage that is as big as a sunset but doesn't weigh even a gram.

As a student, Seamus Heaney also spoke to me because we shared, in a way, a journey into the English language. When he wrote about reading and translating Anglo-Saxon (Old English), the words rang true for me:

Bone-house:
a skeleton
in the tongue's
old dungeons.

I push back
through dictions
Elizabethan canopies.
Norman devices,

the erotic Mayflowers
of Provence
and the ivied Latins
of churchmen

to the scop's
twang, the iron
flash of consonants
cleaving the line.

What Heaney describes here is a journey back through the English language, passing through the stages of Elizabethan (Shakespearean) English, past the influence of the Normans (Middle English) and Latin, back to the Anglo-Saxon roots, to a language that is almost more recognizable to German speakers than modern English speakers. A scop was an Anglo-Saxon poet; the "iron flash of consonants cleaving the line" was the way that scops used alliterative sounds (which is unfortunately rather hard to render in Modern English; but I'll keep my eye out if I find a good example.)

In the coffered
riches of grammar
and declensions
I found ban hus,

its fire, benches,
wattel and rafters,
where the soul
fluttered for a while

in the roofspace.
There was a small crock
for the brain,
and a cauldron

of generation
swung at the centre:
love-den, blood-holt,
dream-bower.

IV

Come back past
philology and kennings,
re-enter memory
where the bone's lair

is a love-next
in the grass.
I hold my lady's head
like a crystal

and ossify myself
by gazing: I am screes
on her escarpments,
a chalk giant

carved upon her downs.
Soon my hands, on the sunken
fosse of her spine
move toward the passes.

********

This is incantatory writing; it takes you to a world-between-worlds, as Clarissa Estes would call it. "In the coffered riches of grammar / and declensions / I found ban hus": It might seem odd to think of the study of grammar being liberating; one might think of soaring eagles, floating clouds, or Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto Number 1 as liberating, but not grammar, for goodness' sake. But in Heaney's poetry, it's digging down into the darkness, feeling the the weight of the bone, doing the hard labour that liberates.

And indeed, I experienced this too. Struggling to understand and form Old English grammar freed me and excited my poetic voice, in a way that nothing had previously. There is something about Old English that feels like handling clay, that feels like touching the very bricks and mortar of language itself. I felt the same way when I began learning music: the endless exercises and scales were the opposite of boring, even if I wasn't making music quite yet. It was engendering, astonishing, cosmic, unbelievable except for being more real than anything I could imagine: I was touching the essence of a thing, and its power was coming to me.

Seamus Heaney is interested in the past, but he doesn't write about the past per se, nor is his writing anachronistic. Instead it seems to exist in a place where past and present are equally in the moment.

Child on the way, it won't be long until
You land among us. Your mother's showing signs,
Out for her sunset walk among the big bales.
Planet earth like a teething ring suspended
Hangs by its world-chain. Your pram waits in the corner.
Cows are let out. They're sluicing the milk-house door.

This segment from "Bann Valley Eclogues" has one of my favourite lines ever: "Planet Earth like a teething ring hangs by its world-chain." "World-Chain" is a kenning: an Anglo-Saxon construction that is part metaphor, part riddle. If the Anglo-Saxons knew anything about gravity they might have described it so. But the image of planet earth dangling in space, fragile, beautiful, new, is not an image that any Anglo-Saxon scop would have ever come up with. Only someone of the 20th century, who has seen pictures of Earth as viewed from space, would think of that one. In that one line, the ancient past and present come together in a moment.

In Heaney's poetry one is often aware of the here and the there, and the tension between them. But the tension is not, or not always, the kind that pulls things apart, that is anxious or uncomfortable. Rather, it is like the tension of a violin string: without it, the string would not be in tune, no music would be possible. Perhaps this is another reason I identify with Heaney: I am a naturally "high strung" person, easily brought to a state of tension, who lives about equally in both the "outer" world and the "inner" one. Such a way of being can lead to a lot of anxiety, of wondering where one is, who one is, how it all fits together, how things can ever be unified. But if I switch my thinking, think of tension as something that can be finely tuned, managed, engineered, it becomes something quite different.

Steady under strain and strong through tension
Its feet on both sides but in neither camp
It stands its ground, a span of pure attention
A holding action, the arches and ramp
Steady under strain and strong through tension.

Reading through Seamus Heaney's poetry again, I enjoyed some old favourites, and noticed other poems that I hadn't before. Like all good books, they are a slightly different journey each time. Some poems seemed more personal to me, others seemed more resonant with meanings that I hadn't found the first time. The other part of Seamus Heaney's writing that I enjoy deeply is his writing on other writers. But that's a whole other topic. Finders Keepers, Heaney's collection of essays on other poems who have been significant or inspiring, is one of my most treasured books.

There's not a lot of his prose online, but his Nobel Acceptance speech can be read here, if you would like more of Heaney in his own words.

Heroes: Dr. Estes

The other day I was talking to a good friend about dreams, and Clarissa Pinkola Estes came up. When I was 17 I was wandering through a bookstore for no particular reason, as I did quite often back then. On impulse, I pulled off the shelf a book called Women Who Run with the Wolves. * A glance at the cover, a look at the chapter titles, a perusal of the first chapter - I no longer remember what the exact reason was - but something made me decide with no hesitation to buy it, right then and there.

* Each link in this entry points to a different website with information on the book.

By the time I walked out of the store, I was so captivated by this book that I walked home with it open in front of me, reading. I don't think I've ever done that with a book before or since, not even later in university when delving into books was my full-time occupation.

Dr. Estes is a story-teller ("cantadora" in Mexican), Jungian psychoanalyst, poet, therapist, and more than anything a woman with an unnervingly accurate reading of my own spiritual reality. Women Who Run with the Wolves has sold more than a million copies so clearly there are others who get a similarly good shake-out from her.

For a good four or five years after I bought the book, I read and re-read Women Who Run with the Wolves regularly, in whole or in part. It was my go-to book if I ever felt too tired, discouraged, stressed, frustrated, creatively dry, or whatever, which were things I felt quite often in my late teens/early twenties. (It was great to be that age, in many ways, but I wouldn't choose to live it over again, or be twenty-one forever, that's for sure. The belief that I will age gracefully and calm the hell down has always been the hope of my life.) I would never have lent Women Who Run with the Wolves to anyone or put it anywhere where it could not be picked up at a moment's notice.

It was only after graduating with my first degree (at age 22) that I began to feel like I was outgrowing Estes, a little. It was a natural process. I encountered Seamus Heaney, St. Augustine, and Thomas Carlyle, among others, and I also felt a deep recognition of their voices. I became one of the many people who reads Old English (Anglo-Saxon) literature and feels like an explorer discovering an ancient, lost continent, but one that is at the same time marvelously new. But every reading of a great book can be like that. In my case, learning the grammar of a dead language was one of the most liberating things I had ever done. (Life is not necessarily what you expect.)

So, I stopped reading WWRWTW so often, though I know it remains in my mind. Once I became a bit more knowledgeable of who I am, I could accept that other writers than Estes could also reach me on a similar deep level. Still, she was probably the first writer I encountered as semi-mature person who helped me to see that there is a community of like minds "out there," who gave me the courage to look for them and keep looking. Many of Estes' quotes are never far from mind. "An artist is an artist from the moment she picks up the brush. A runner is a runner from the moment she laces her shoes." My friend Knate gave me the same idea in six succinct words: "You are what you are becoming." The perfectionist in me needs to hear that, so I don't tear my work to pieces before it is begun.

Anyway, after the brief conversation with my friend, I decided to read Women Who Run With the Wolves again, just for the heck of it. And it's still a great read. It's still a book I would recommend.

This being the age of the internet, I decided to see what I could learn about Dr. Estes now. Google wasn't around when I first read WWRWTW. I discovered she's still doing lots of good work around the U.S.A as a trauma therapist, among other things, and encountered a few intelligent blog entries about current events. Of course everybody is blogging these days, but Dr. Estes is the kind who takes the time to discuss the background, share some knowledge, and really explain her point of view, instead of just spouting off. Always appreciated.

I also discovered this link, which is a closing address to the 2004 Call to Action conference (CTA is a movement within the Catholic church that works for "equality and justice in the Church and society. ") I make no endorsement of Dr. Estes political or religious views as such; I don't know enough about the CTA to say much about it either way. I did enjoy this account because I learned about the life of a woman whose writing has connected very deeply with me. Her story is one of those you can sense before you read the details of her life, because she has distilled experience into her craft. But it's also interesting to learn some of the details, and I gain more respect for her as a person after reading her personal story. And I love the energy of belief and spirit that comes through in her account of herself. She is a fighter, a woman who has been through some dark times but is not afraid to hold up a light, however small, to show a way to others.

So I share. And it gives me an idea for this blog, too. I've not been inspired with any subjects lately. I'm going to do a series on my heroes, and try to find an article or a poem or essay or a piece of music by them that really illuminates who they are. I could also call the female heroes (of which there are many) "heroines," but "heroine" has a rather brittle sound to my ears. I think I would rather call them "girly heroes." :-)

Anyway, we'll call Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes the first of the series, which chronologically, she basically is. Here she is in her own words, talking about herself.

The Church Beneath the Church.

When we walked to church with my grandmother and were in view of the church, she would often say, “See that church?” “Yes, we see that church,” we would say. “That’s not our church,” she would say. “Yes it is, grandma, that’s our church.” “No, no. Our Church is beneath that church. We don’t belong to that brick church. We belong to the Church underneath that church.” (more)

New bright shiny thing

So, today I drove down to St. John's Music and forked over the cash for my very own, very shiny, very sweet euphonium.

It wasn't an impulse purchase; I've had in mind to buy one this spring for quite a while, and I seriously started the research process about a month ago. I read every opinion I could find on the internet, whether rational, passionate, prejudiced, professional or amateur; perused a few websites, and went on a couple of excusions with Christy to music stores where we played around with various instruments. Out of the confusion I came to some understanding of what I wanted. I ended up playing it safe; same brand and model that I've been renting (Yamaha YEP 321: 4-valve, non-compensating).

I bought it new, so that there would be no hidden issues, and from a local vendor, so that I have somewhere to take it for repairs if it's necessary. I may have been able to get a better deal money-wise if I went with a used instrument or an internet vendor, but I'm not enough of a risk taker for that. And I don't begrudge the money at all if I'm reasonably sure I'm getting something I'll enjoy for many years.

Most importantly....I have my own instrument, and I never, ever have to give it away again! I can play it for the rest of my life, barring some diasaster or a serious lapse of sanity that prevents me from playing. Both are possible, but rap wood that they don't happen.

And yes...."she" has a name: Laura Cecily. AKA Baby Laura. Her name has an etymology, of course:

Laura was the name of my first best friend as a child; or at least, she was the first best friend that I really needed. She also had a personality very much like that of the euphonium: mellow, gentle, dependable, solid. Quite different from the tempermental nature of something like a flute, which can go to all kinds of extremes. Laura is also a euphonic-sounding name, all soft vowels and consonants. Plus the name Laura has a lot of positive associations, from Little House on the Prairie to Laura Secord chocolates. I haven't yet met a jerk or a brat called Laura.

Cecily is the diminuitive of Cecilia, who is the patron saint of music. (She wasn't a musician, but sang a song before she died, and that did the trick.) The only other Cecilia I know was a professor of mine, who played a fairly important role in my life during a difficult time. Interestingly, she was also a music teacher, though that had no signicance for me then. Cecilia/Cecily are also names I like. I go with the diminutive form because euphoniums are small and cute. (Most people think they are big and heavy, but they don't understand. You have to hold one: they are about the size and weight of a one-year-old.)

So much for name origins. Just in case you think Laura Cecily is just another materialistic purchase, I assure you she is not. This particular purchase is significant for me for many reasons, some of which scare me a little, but all of which I'm willing to embrace.

First of all, Baby Laura the euphonium is a fairly big investment money-wise, which means I'm committed to making music part of my life for many years. No protest there. I've been waiting a long time to have a rich cultural life; I just didn't know how to make it happen. I believed for many years that I could never be truly happy outside of Nova Scotia, where music and dancing permeate the very air you breathe. Learning an instrument, being part of a band, and attached to a community of like-minded people has slowly changed my mind on that accord. It's not, by itself, enough reason to stay here, but it's removed what was a large part of the reason to leave.

Laura Cecily cost about as much as a nice vacation, including plane tickets to some distant locale. That's OK too. I love to travel, and I want to again in a few years, but music can take me to places that even a plane ticket can't. My journeys will happen through imagination and the absorption of culture. I know that when I do travel again, my mind and soul will be more open than before.

Secondly, despite being quite portable (she doesn't require a forklift or anything) Laura Cecily is a pretty heavy, solid instrument. She's not a fiddle or a banjo or a guitar or a whistle or any of the instruments a gypsy would carry from town to town to play on the street corner. Moreover, although I love playing it by myself, the euphonium and me came together in a social setting - a band - and that's where we fit in best. Bands are elaborate social projects that require much time, skill, committment, and community-building. In other words they are part of a settled, civilized life that has always somewhat eluded me. That's probably the scariest part of this: the real milestone. I've just committed myself to that kind of a life, being a part of the community, making sure I have the time, money, and leisure to pursue this endeavour. Again, it's a welcome change. But the lack of this settled life, the longing for it, the vague but irresistable desire to do something, anything that would lead me to it - all this has caused a current of existential anxiety and muffled pain that's run through most of my adult life. Suddenly facing up to these feelings makes me feel a little dizzy. Can I really? Is the time now?

*slams the book shut*

So yes, I have a new bright shiny thing. I already love its voice. Maybe it's because it's clean, maybe it's because it's new, but I'm sure my higher range in particular sounds way better. I can't wait to wander through more soundscapes. I look forward to a future of musical fun, and have no fear, you'll be bored with plenty of news about it on this blog.

(note: the original date of this post was lost when I republished it. If I have a chance I will look up the real date on the bill of sale sometime.)