Last Year’s Snow Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan? Villon.
Meditations on Messiaen Inner Migrants
4
Last Year’s Snow
Last year’s snow: where did it go? The snow-blower blew it around while my daughter made snow angels, but that snow melted, so long ago. We made a snowman.
I remember rolling snowballs around the yard. They grew so big we could hardly lift them, one large lump onto another, and then we planted stick-arms, a hat, a nose.
Our dog visited him. Sniffed. Drilled yellow holes into his feet. Crows sat on his arms, cawed and cawed, totally unafraid, no scarecrow this, this fake man made entirely of snow.
The crows saw worse in the roadside snowbanks. Dead deer, snow plowed into the banks and abandoned at roadside, their bodies waiting for spring sun to resurrect them.
Our annual question: where did the snowman go? And its sequels: last year’s snow, the birds that nested in last year’s nests, what happened? Where did they go?
I have searched near and far, but I haven’t found them, not a trace, not a song, not a feather floating down. Where did they go?
No hay pajaros en los nidos de antano. Miguel de Cervantes.
55-54 BCE. Julius Caesar visits Britain, but he doesn’t come as a sight-seeing tourist. When asked later about his trip across the channel, he replied with three little words that have echoed through the halls of history: veni, vidi, vici / I came, I saw, I conquered.
Filled with a desire to paint, I prepared a floral background. Overnight, those words came to mind: veni, vidi,vici. To them I added Alpha (the first letter of the Greek alphabet) and Omega (that alphabet’s last letter), these being the Greek letters currently being attached to the various variants of Covid-19. It being Sunday and me, having years ago sung in the choir of the ancient, 12th Century Anglican Church at King’s Stanley, I thought of the words of the old hymn “Omega and Alpha He”. Then, with a stroke or two of the pen, I added them to the painting.
Last, but not least, I added co- to -vidi to get co-vid-i. The painting was almost done. OMG-3 (OMG cubed in the painting) was the final touch and there you have it. The ultimate Covid-19 painting, or is it a poem? Whatever it is, it is a warning, or rather a series of warnings. (1) It is here. (2) It is real. (3) It is killing people. (4) We are currently at Omicron. (5) There’s still a long way to go to Omega. (6) It’s not over yet, not by a long way.
So my friends: keep well, keep safe, keep out of trouble, keep believing, and keep visiting this site! There’s something new here every so often. And once in a while it’s pretty and / orunique.
North Wind descended from the pole sending its wolf pack through snow- bound trees. Listless, they stood there, then wind and wolves came, cutting and shuffling, playing snap-the-branch, chase-the snow-flake, and strip-jack- naked. Wolves danced on their hind- legs, round and round, shaking trees, biting at branches, testing winter games until trees stood naked, stripped of snow, tresses and garlands gobbled and gone.
Oh the wickedness of winter, its cold- cut cruelty, the lash of the wind, ice- pellets hurled, picketing fences, pecking a wild winter-song, forlorn in its fury, its pace, its power, its reckless race to hurl everything away, out of its way, snow twisted, tormented, twitching its snake-way down barren highways devoid of secret places in which to hide tender faces from the North Wind.
Late fall with falling leaves, trees stripped wind-blown bare, and winter drawing close.
The huntsman, the archer, the Cerne Abbas Giant, Hercules and his club walking high in the sky, a dog forever at their heels, ever faithful, ever true. Star-jewels line his belt, where the star-sword swings, the bow, and all his magnificence displayed before us. Bow down before him and rejoice.
The year is turning, or has turned and we are turning with it. Back to our pasts, on to our futures, or else we stand here, gazing skywards, our feet mired in the present, minds locked, nowhere to go.
Those that have been chosen to survive have walked indoors, Now they are safe behind glass, in the warm, low sunshine that floods the rooms. We watch the sun’s fingers starting to reach into the deepest corners and know that winter is on its way.
Thanksgiving has come and gone yet we still give thanks: indoor flowers to brighten the dark days, flu shots tomorrow, blood tests on Friday. I guess it’s a case of ‘last man standing’!
Orion confirms this. He has risen in the night sky and now accompanies me on my journey through the dark hours, sword at belt, faithful dog at heel. Yes. Winter is on its way. Warmer clothing. Thicker jerseys. Non-slip shoes. Oh the joys of Canada.
Remember: there is no such thing as bad weather, only inadequate clothing. Locked out of the university, walking the picket lines at -35C, we learned the facts of outdoor winter life only too well. So, dress warmly. Keep safe. Keep your distance. Wear those masks. Did out your snow tires. Tune up the snow blower.
And may you always wake with the flowers in the house.
Wisdom in the wrinkled skin, the grin that glows with humor, the sun sign of old age, or merely that of ageing, the knowledge that, yes, many have walked this wobbly way before, and many will follow.
What is pain, but the knowledge that we are alive, and relatively well, and still on the green side of the grass. Long may it last. When the pain is gone, we shall soon follow. For this is age, and age is this pain, and the painful knowledge that we are no longer young, can no longer bend the way we bent, or touch our toes, or even see our toes, some of us. The golden arrow pierces the heart. Fierce is the pain. But when that arrow is withdrawn and the heart no longer lives in love, why, how we miss that pain, how we weep to find it gone, perhaps never to come back again.
Pain, like rain, an essential part of the cycle of the seasons, of the days and the weeks, and all the months and years that walk us around time’s circle, in time with the earth and its desire to open its arms, and welcome us, and greet us, and bring us rest, from our pain.
Rant, I say, rant and rage away, rage, rage against the death of friendship and loathing built on false love. This is a blood sport where even the spectators are spattered with the refined frenzy of friends turned into fiends and foes, and this is a protest, a rant against love that doesn’t last, that doesn’t stand the test of time, against families that break up, against a society that breaks them up, driving wedges and knives between people once bound by the puppet strings of love, against relationships that can no longer continue, against the rattling of dead white bones in empty cupboards where skeletons dance their way into legal daylight and the spectators call for more: more blood, more money, more blood money, and the engagement diamond is a blood diamond now, a tarnished garnet, and where is the Little Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, that spire inspired needle that will stitch their world back together, and stitch you back together when you’ve been shocked out of your own ruby-sweet rose-tinted world and torn into little bits in their oh-so-bitter one, the biters bitten and those bitten biting back in return, a new world this world of snapping turtles, turtles standing on the back of turtles, and turtle after turtle all the way down until this carnival world puts down its dead clown mask and turns turtle in its turn.
Comment:
National Reconciliation Day today, the first in Canada. Now that is a valid reason to rant. Let us hope for reconciliation, for a healing and a mending. I love Canada. I love all Canadians. I came here by choice, stayed here by choice, and I am very grateful to have been accepted by the Canadian communities in which I have lived. I hope I have graced Canada, with my presence, as Canada has aided me and helped me along in all my endeavors, academic, sporting, teaching, creating, and editing. As Norman Levine once wrote: Canada Made Me. In my case, it is true. On this first National Reconciliation Day, my thoughts and thanks go out to my brothers and sisters, all of us Canadians.
I don’t know what happened this morning: I put the same post up as yesterday. Different photo, same post. I really don’t know what to think about what I was thinking. Old age? Confusion? A troubled mind? All of the above!!! Never mind: here we go again, and maybe my next rant will be about getting out of touch and loss of memory! You never know what’s coming next, and that’s the beauty of Messiaen.
Sometimes you wake up in the morning and you realize that you can do no more. What is it about family split-ups, the ugliness of a disputed divorce, the glue coming unstuck in an already unstable marriage, a financial settlement that satisfies nobody and impoverishes both sides of a divide?
And how do you bridge that divide when you are friends with father, mother, children and the wounds are so deep that everyone wants out, whatever the costs and whatever it takes? And what is it about the deliberate wounding of each by the others, leaving permanent scars that will never heal over, no matter how hard one tries?
And what is it about lawyers, when too many guests gather around the Thanksgiving turkey and knives are out for everyone to take the choicest cuts leaving nothing but a skeletal carcass, no flesh on the bones, and the guests all hungry and their empty bellies rumbling for more, more, more.
Think natural disasters. Think famine, wars, violence, plague. How our world changes when refugees arrive, blend, contribute, offer so much, their languages, cultures.
Yet we still exploit them, stealing subtle things, their identities, their energy, their ability to adapt, to give so much and really to take so little.
Who would want to build a wall, to reject them, to deny entry? Maybe a million Indigenous people can actually claim the right
to belong here. Most of us are immigrants, late-comers in one way or another. To accept, to grow together in peace, to establish a nation where people
need not fear imminent expulsion for the color of their skin, their language, their religion, their political thoughts, the fact they may not even vote for us.
When push comes to shove, who stands at one end of the gangplank, who at the other, the shipboard one with a gun or a cutlass, the other poised above circling sharks, their grey triangular mini-sails threatening.
Can you hear the siren song emerging from Davey Jones, waiting below, his locker door open, as it has been so often before? Is this fate or a fait accompli? Don’t ask me.
Let’s leave him there, the condemned man, walking his plank, tied blindfold to his stake, seated before the firing squad, standing on the crossing, not quite ready to dance on a rope’s end, or riding the tumbril to La Place de la Bastille, carrying the time-bomb candle that will light him to bed.
Waiting, waiting, like them, we are all of us waiting, in media res, waiting for push to come to shove.
