Carpe Diem

What does freedom mean to you?

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What does freedom mean to you?
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What does freedom mean to you?

When I look at that one word, alone on the page, I think, above all, of the multiple meanings attached to such a word, then I think of how it can be twisted in so many ways to make it mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean. So, let me begin by asking, what does freedom mean, in general, not in my own specific case.

Freedom – “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.” Interesting – no mention here of right or wrong, of truth or lies, of harassment or of perjury. Freedom – speech with no hindrance or restraint.

Freedom – the “absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government.” Wow! The first is very interesting but the second is extremely problematic. We need a definition of despotic and of government. We also need further clarification as to who decides what governmental despotism means. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder and if there is no arguing about taste, is the definition of despotism purely subjective? Who shall guard the guards? Does a despot consider himself or herself to be despotic? Do his or her followers? Or is it only the people who suffer and become victims of the despot’s hands, feet, orders, laws, commands, bullies, or general conduct?

Freedom – “the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.” This is certainly much clearer. Thank you.

But consider where this very brief analysis has led us. And we haven’t even started on the Biblical meanings of freedom – “freedom from sin” – “and the truth shall set you free” – and here we are only scratching the surface of the possible religious and philosophical meanings of what the Spaniards call libre albedri’o, or free will.

What does freedom mean to you?

And now we move into the personal and the personal circumstances will change for each one of us. In my own case, freedom is my new Nexus 3 Rollator. It allows me to put aside my canes and walk around the block, something I have been unable to do for several years now. Wow – freedom to walk on my own, just leaning on my wheeled walker. Freedom to talk to my old friends, many of whom I have not seen or spoken to for a long time. Freedom to meet and talk to new neighbors, many with their lovely children and wonderful dogs. Freedom to breathe in the fresh air of early spring and to visit the flowers as they start to grow. Freedom, for me, is also the ability to see with my own eyes. Last month, I had my lenses laser-polished and now I can see again with 20/20 vision. Wow – that is really freedom, to to be able to read all but the tiniest print, without needing to use glasses. Freedom, for me, is also the ability to be able to cook, shop, move, live, without excessive pain. My new powers of walking have helped me with that. Long may it continue. It is also the good fortune to have enough money and strength to live in my own house and not to need a care home or regular home help.

Freedom – Such a magic word – such a powerful word – such a personal word. The freedom to choose to be myself, dependent on nobody else – and long may that freedom continue.

What was the last live performance you saw?

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What was the last live performance you saw?
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What was the last live performance you saw?

Depends on how you define performance, doesn’t it? Here’s one from a couple of days ago. I left the lid of my pot of wildflower honey slightly open and, guess what? This is what I saw inside. Actually, there were fourteen of them. Some ran for it. Some were so absorbed that they just lay there, inebriated. I grabbed my cell phone and took this shot.

It could have been a video. The seven that fled, it might have been eight, looked like a broken line of can-can girls fleeing from the Moulin Rouge. But look at the color of that honey. Such a rich, warming gold. It was, quite simply, one of the best honeys I have ever tasted. And I have to say, that I cannot blame the ants for invading such a honey-trap paradise.

The live performance was the running, fleeing, burying into the honey, and wild whimpering of the ants. Then, when I squished them, it was their feeble twitching, followed by their gradual submission to a force majeur.

The Nature of Art and the Art of Nature – a live performance, followed by a still life. A nature morte, as they say in French, or a naturaleza muerta, as the Spanish say. On the bright side, I like to think that they found their land of milk and honey, their earthly paradise, before they met their tragic end.

It’s A Small World

It’s A Small World

Light returns to Island View after Monday’s eclipse. Here it is post the total eclipse and daylight is being restored. It was a wonderful experience, totally unlike the last total eclipse we saw, at Skinner’s Pond, In PEI, on 10 July 1972.

That one was unexpected. Nobody talked about it. Nobody said a thing. We travelled to Skinner’s Pond, the birth place of Stompin’ Tom Connors, just to see where he was born. We parked the car, put the dog on a leash, and walked on the beach. Normal sea-side sounds – waves, sea birds, wind among the dune grass – swallows rose and fell, twittering joyfully. A world at peace. Then it happened.

A shadow moved across the sun and the world started to darken. The dog went wild, strained at the leash, started to whimper. The bank swallows began to gather, then, as the darkness deepened, they dived for their burrows and vanished from sight. We shivered and wondered. We had no glasses of any kind. We avoided looking at the sun, and just experienced the world as it darkened and became colder and more silent, save for the sound of the wind in the grass. As the light returned, the dog settled down, the swallows emerged from their tunnels and took to the skies, twittering again. Life, light, and warmth returned to normal.

Monday’s eclipse was so very different. We weren’t intending to watch it, other than on the television. While I was out shopping, early that morning, I joked with the people I met that, during the eclipse, I was going to tuck myself into bed and hide my head under the blankets, in case it was dangerous. [Yes, I have read Day of the Triffids and seen the movie. Now that does date me.] On the way home, I met one of my neighbors. Was I going to watch the eclipse? Once in a life experience. Did I have the right glasses? He told me to avoid normal sunglasses. Told me I wouldn’t get the right glasses now. All sold out. He gave me a strange look when I told him of my decision to bury my head in the blankets – just in case – so no harm would come to me.

Several news items turned up on my computer. In one of them I read that approved special glasses – true specifics and details given – had vanished from the stores in Fredericton. Only one place still stocked them – Canadian Tire, South Side. Ha! I drove back into town and there, on the door of CT-South, I saw a sign – Eclipse Glasses available at Check Outs. I joined the line up of late buyers, bought two pairs, and headed joyfully home.

When the eclipse started, I drove around the block, looking for the best place from which to view it. I parked here, there, and everywhere, tried my glasses out – a small, black line, curved, was slowly and silently invading the sun’s disc. I drove back home and discovered, after an experiment or two, that our back porch was the perfect spot for viewing. We put chairs on the deck, sat down, and watched as the blackness on the sun’s face grew larger. No beach view this. The Island in Island View is in the St. John River / Wolastoq, on the other side of the hill. No sea gulls, no swallows, in our garden. In fact very few birds at all.

As it grew darker, we could hear the soulful hooting of some mourning doves. They soon grew silent. The crows, on the other hand, rose up to defend their territory, just like they do when a hawk passes over and puts its shadow between them and the sun. What a racket of sheer defiance.

Through our glasses we could see wavy lines of light flickering around the visible parts of the sun’s circumference. Occasional red streamers, flared up and out. Then the eclipse became total. We took off our glasses and for two minutes and seven seconds (or so) we basked in celestial glory. Breathtaking. Spell binding. A mystical moment of myth and magic. We sat in silence. Then, the spell broke. The sun emerged from its moon shadow and light returned. The earth warmed. Life was as it was. Nothing had changed, except for us. Light broke where no sun shone, and suddenly we realized so many truths.

How tiny is our world. How enormous is the space around us. How mighty is the universe. How fragile are we humans. How small and insignificant is our world. How glorious is our existence, the joy of life, of witnessing, of seeing such power and such glory. The joys of knowing that we are sentient, and alive.

Two images of partial eclipse – with clouds – Kingsbrae International Residencies for Artists (KIRA, June 2021).

Solar Eclipse

Solar Eclipse

(Devil’s Kitchen, PP. 118-120)

            … with my angels … face to face … the ones I have carried within me since the day I was born … the grey-one … winged like a whisky jack who arrives in dreams… the white-one that hovers dove-like as I lie asleep … the multi-colored-one who wraps me in his feathered wings when I am alone and chilled by the world around me … the black-one who flaps with me on his back when I can walk no further and who creates the single set of footprints that plod their path through the badlands when I can walk no more …
            … ‘the truth’ my black angel says to me … I say ‘he’ but he is a powerful spirit, not sexed in anyway I know it … and yet I think of him as ‘he’ …awesome in the tiny reflection he sometimes allows me to glimpse of his power and glory … for, like Rilke, I could not bear meeting his whole angelic being face to face … as I cannot bear the sun, not by day, and not in eclipse … not even with smoked glass … this is the moment of truth when human values turn upside down and earth takes on a new reality … wild birds and bank swallows roosting at three in the afternoon … and that fierce heat draining from the summer sky … I remember it well … and the dog whimpering as a portion of the angel’s wing erased the sun until an umber midnight ruled … a simple phenomenon, the papers said … the moon coming between the earth and the sun …but magic … pure magic … to we who stood on the shore at Skinner’s Pond and sensed the majesty of the universe … more powerful than anything we could imagine … and the dog … taking no comfort from its human gods … whimpering at our feet …
            … during the eclipse I saw a single feather floating down and knew my angel had placed himself between me and all that glory … to protect me … to save me from myself … and I saw that snowflake of an angel feather bleached from black to white by some small trick of the sunlight … and knowledge filled me … and for a moment I felt the glory … the magnificence … and there are no words for that slow filling up with want and desire as light filters from the sky and the body fills with darkness … and I was so afraid … afraid of myself … of where I had been … of where I stood … of what I might return to … of my lost shadow … snipped from my heels …
            … I don’t know how I heard my angel’s words … ‘the time of truth is upon you’ … ‘all you have ever been is behind you now’ … ‘naked you stand here on this shore’ … ‘like the grains of sand on this beach’ … ‘your days are numbered by the only one who counts’ … I heard the sound of roosting wings … but I heard and saw nothing more … I felt only midnight’s cold when the chill enters the body and the soul is sore afraid …
            … ‘it is the law’ my angel said … I saw a second feather fall … ‘and the law says man must fail’ … ‘his spirit must leave its mortal shell and fly back to the light’ … ‘blood will cease to flow’ … ‘the heart will no longer beat’ … the spirit must accept the call and go’ … ‘do not assume’… ‘nobody knows what lies in wait’ … ‘blind acceptance’ … ‘the only way’ … ‘now’ …  ‘in this twilight hour’ …  ‘now when you are blind’ … ‘only the blind shall receive the gift of sight’ … ‘all you have’ … ‘your wife’ … ‘your house’ … ‘your car’ … ‘your child’ … ‘everything you think of as yours’ … ‘I own’ … ‘and on that day’ …’ I will claim it from you and take it for my own’ … ‘now I can say no more’ …
            … the sea-wind rose with a sigh and one by one night’s shadows fled … the moon’s brief circle fell away from the sun … light returned, a drop at a time, sunshine flowing from a heavenly clepsydra filled with light …
            after the eclipse … birds ceased to circle … a stray dog saw a sea-gull and chased it back to sea … and the sun … source of all goodness … was once again a golden coin floating in the sky …

… on my shoulder a feather perched … a whisper of warmth wrapped its protective cloak around my shoulders … for a moment, just a moment, I knew I was the apple of my angel’s eye … and I knew that one day I would meet him again … and understand …

Devil’s Kitchen
Short Stories and Flash Fiction
Click here to purchase this book.

Hope Springs Eternal

Hope Springs Eternal

Easter Sunday and the world is reborn. Early, this year, yes. March 31. But all too often in April we see the snow disappear and look out on watch for the geese. Some have flown through, just a few. We search for the flowers, and one or two are pushing upwards in the garden beneath our window. I see a green fuzz on the crab apple trees on our front lawn and the same sign of green around the tops of the tallest birch trees. The crows are flying in pairs, sharing the same branch, and huddling shoulder to shoulder. And yes, the world feels good. Our world. The little world of Island View.

There’s something special about the Equinox. We can feel it in our bones and in the bones of Old Mother Earth. The standing stones of Stonehenge have measured the Equinox for thousands of years, as have the stone circles that can be found all over the British Isles. Even in our garden, in Island View, we know when and where the sun will rise above the ridge as, each morning, we predict the kind of day.

But, when I look to the world beyond my world, the signs of spring are few and far between. I remember swimming in the sea at Pwll Ddu every Easter, on Easter Sunday. When I look at the news, the beaches of my Gower childhood are now polluted. Signs – Caution – Do not enter the water – abound. The boat race took place a day or two ago (depending on when you are reading this). For the first time in 190 years, the winning team was told NOT to throw their coxswain into the water, nor to enter the water themselves in that glorious after-splash of famous victory. The waters of the Thames are so polluted that serious illness might occur. “Oh Thames, flow gently while I sing my song.”

“Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.” I don’t know who said that, but I echo those words. Where are we going? Why are we going there? What can we do about it?

I look at the Easter Message – Northern Hemisphere – the spring rebirth. The world reborn in flowers. I look at the news – or do I? I no longer want to look at the news. I no longer want to read about the shipping disasters, the environmental catastrophes, the mass shootings, the road rage, long term Covid, misinformation and disinformation, fake news, wars and rumor of wars.

I love the Spanish word – ensimismado meaning to go into oneself. So, I go into my little world, into myself. I retreat into poetry and painting. I try to recreate my childhood world as I knew it, as I still want it to be – full of love, trust, goodness, kindness, softness, beauty, and, above all, faith, charity, and hope.

Marx once said “Workers of the world, unite.” But fewer and fewer people are working. A song of the sixties said “You alone know what is right, lovers of the world, unite.” Now I put out my own cry – “Creatives of the world, unite.” Let us join together to creatively build a better world and to fill it with joy, light, faith, hope, and charity. And the greatest of these, my dear friends, is charity.

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

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When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
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When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I attended an international research conference on Quevedo, a long time ago, when I was teaching full time. A senior researcher, at the reception, heard me speaking and spoke to me – “Excuse me, and forgive me for asking, but I love your accent. Where did you grow up?” The question took me by surprise and, slightly off-balance, I replied – “I don’t think I have yet.” I assume the laughter was provoked by whatever my fellow academics were quaffing at the time.

Yet the answer lies very close to the truth. When I was four or five years old, one of the local priests asked me a similar question – “What do you want to be when you grow up?” At that stage of my life, I lived in a very strange world. All around me, my family seemed to fight like cats and dogs. I watched my dog chasing cats, and thought that women were cats and men were dogs. And all they ever did was chase one another and fight. I didn’t want to live a life like that. “I never want to grow up,” I told that priest. “You have to grow up,” the priest replied. “Everybody has to grow up.” “Peter Pan didn’t,” I said. “And I won’t either.”

I have tried, like Picasso, to see worldly things through they eyes of that child who has always lived in me. Sometimes, it is not easy to do so. The bitterness of the adult world creeps in and my world is flooded by those same old conflicts that have been there ever since I can remember. Fray Luis de Leon wrote about them when, after five years, he was finally released from imprisonment by the Spanish Inquisition.

“Aqui la envidia y mentira / me tuvieron encerrado,” he penned. “Here, envy and lies / kept me imprisoned.” Rather than the rat race of the adult world, he chose to follow the “hidden path trodden by the few wise sages who have lived in this world.” He also chose to be surrounded by simplicity and the child-like pleasures of a solitary life in which he found himself “ni envidiado, ni invidioso” / “neither envied nor envious.”

And there you have it, drawn from the mind of a five year old child and framed in the words, more or less, of a an excellent Spanish poet, whose work, dating from the 16th. Century, borders on the mystical nature of pantheistic theological thought.

The painting, incidentally, is by my artist friend, Moo, and he calls it Pi in the Sky. You can think what you like about that and interpret it in any way you want. I hope Moo never grows up either.

Spirits

Spirits

Neon Orange, the tube said. I tried it out last night and this is what emerged. I call it Spirits, but that is really short for “We are spirits in the material world.” I have always loved that idea. So, how many spirits can you count in this painting? “Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head” – whatever that means. This is certainly a very different palette for me and the start of another set of experiments.

I have often wondered what that spirit world would look like. Perhaps they are all present in our material world? No wonder this planet of ours is so over-crowded! Or maybe they are spread across the universe and that is why the universe is expanding, to make room for them all, and even more of them in the making and on their way.

Is speculation as much fun as peculation? I can certainly do the former, but I’ve never done the latter. So, I guess I’ll never know. Never mind – life long learning – if somebody gifts me with enough of their money, one day I may speculate and peculate, and then I’ll find out, if I’m not found out first.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll stick to being a free spirit in a world that gets more materialistic every day. And this is my slogan – “Free spirits of the world, unite!” If there were enough of us, we could take it over, the world. Freeing it is one thing. Managing it afterwards might not be so much fun. I guess I’ll stick to speculation!

If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?

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If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?
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If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?

My instant response was – I would be a billionaire, names don’t matter, then transfer a couple of million to myself, then back out of the alternate persona for another day, and there I would be – rich and happy, my old self once more. Then I started thinking – ‘billionaires don’t do things like that’ – then I really started thinking. How much of my alternate persona would I take over? Would I be myself in another body? Or would I be that person, privileged, hard, caring only for myself and my fortune, sparing nobody as I strove for my ultimate desire, the Noah’s Ark of a bunker that would protect me from the oncoming disaster that I was myself encouraging to happen? Enough, I said to myself. That’s not for me.

I thought about it during the night, in those elusive moments between waking and sleeping, that half-sleep contained in the Spanish duermivela. And then the light bulb flashed and I knew who I would be.

I have always wanted to visit Australia. The cost, the length of the flight, the rigors of the journey, the fear of DVT, have all prevented me from making that voyage – quite simply a flight too far. But what if I could be my cousin Frances, in Sydney, for a day? I have never met most of her family, and this would be a wonderful chance for me to do so. I would see her husband, George, in close-up. Also her four children, two of whom I have never seen except in photos. I could also meet their partners, and the grand-children, and all of that merely by waking up in another body on another continent. If I timed it right, I might even manage to visit the Sydney Opera House and see the harbour bridge, or catch a test match, or a rugby international – the red lights are flashing – overload – overload – overload -!!! Too much – too greedy – KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid – !!!

Seeing the family, experiencing her daily life, looking at her garden, so beautiful in the photos, maybe even sinking my fingers into that rich earth, that would be more than enough. Ayer’s Rock – Uruburu – Alice Springs, the Fremantle Doctor, my cousins in Perth and Bundaburg, they will have to wait. Sydney and my closest family, that will be more than enough.

But how much will I retain upon my return? How much will I remember? And what will happen to Frances? Will she become me and be forced to suffer our Canadian winter, for a day, while I rejoice in her Australian summer? So many questions.

Too many questions. Maybe I’ll just be myself, after all, as Oscar Wilde says “Be yourself. Everybody else is taken.” I’ll just be myself and to the above offer I will reply: “Thanks, but no thanks. I just want to be me.”

You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?

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You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?
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You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?

The End.

Why did I write that? Because I like reading T. S. Eliot – Four Quartets – “In my beginning is my end.” If that statement be true, then, ipso facto, The End must be my first sentence, because that’s my beginning. Eliot converted to Catholicism – and, according to the Jesuits, “The end justifies the means” – so, when we start with the end we are justifying the writing (the means) of all that led us there.

You don’t like my logic, you say? Why not? It is as straight as the corkscrew I hold in my hand when I am threatening to add the contents of a bottle of wine to my autobiography. Is a bottle’s end in it’s beginning? Of course it is. If you don’t open the bottle, you can’t finish it. If you don’t start it, you cannot end it, so in the beginning lies the end.

Oh the mysteries of mysticism, those truths that know no logic and follow no known paths from their beginning (via purgativa), through their middle (via iluminativa), to their end (via unitiva). Or is life and truth a circle that has no end? In which case wherever I begin the circle of my autobiography, there too is my end.

In my end is my beginning and in my beginning is my end.

Mors omnia solvit.
The End.

Who are your favorite people to be around?

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Who are your favorite people to be around?
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Who are your favorite people to be around?

Creatives – because creative people need support in their creativity and need to believe in themselves and in their creations. I wrote two days ago about Rejections and Silence – while both are needed by creatives – rejections to help perfect and polish – and silence in which to create – too many rejections and too much silence can result in alienation, depression, and the suppression of creative acts.

“We few, we happy few, we band of siblings!” Not quite what Harry said before the Battle of Agincourt, yet can we, the readers, be absolutely certain that what Shakespeare said he said was actually what he said? But we share the spirit of creativity with creators big and small, famous, infamous, and struggling. That is why we need to band together, to support each other, and to ensure that creativity isn’t killed by the straitjacket of a nine to five job, or longer, or the multi-employment that has become so necessary just to survive in our diminished and diminishing world.

“What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?” wrote W. H. Davies, one of the great Welsh poets. And he concluded this poem with a parallel couplet: “A sad life this, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”

I hope you like the painting that heads this prompt that is turning into a joyous rant. It is by one of my creative friends, the poet-painter Moo. He calls it Spotted Coppers and he painted it last night after watching the Midsomer Murders episode that dealt with the theft of valuable Spotted Copper Butterflies. Intertextuality – one text leads to another, and the butterfly becomes a TV episode becomes a painting by a friend becomes a rant prompted by my computer and written by me.

That is the circle of creativity and it blends into the circle of friendships, and creative artists are both competitors and friends, for “whether creativity survives or no, I’m sure is only touch and go.” Another line that another great Welsh poet, this time Dylan Thomas of Swansea, might almost have said.

So, who are my favorite people to be around? Creative people, of course, with all their passions, energy, warts, flaws, and their constant need of encouragement and support.