by Mary Ann Moore | Feb 27, 2022 | A Poet's Nanaimo
Sarah and I have never lived anywhere for seventeen years, in the same house that is, together or apart, before the house in which we’ve lived in Nanaimo.
Now we’re on the move to another home in Nanaimo, about fifteen minutes south of downtown, and I’m thinking of all I’m appreciating about our current home – for just one more day.
We arrived in Nanaimo, B.C. from Guelph, Ontario with our four cats in May of 2005. We had a few suitcases with us but that was it until our furniture and other belongings arrived about a week later. Life was very simple with so few belongings. Our landlord Peter loaned us laundry baskets full of linens, a mattress, a lamp, dishes and cutlery. I can’t imagine now being without my computer for a week! Sarah painted the bedrooms and we’d take little jaunts out to get to know our new city. Neck Point, just seven minutes from our home, was a favourite spot where we looked towards the Sunshine Coast of the mainland.
Our rental was to be temporary as we looked for a house to buy. I don’t remember ever looking for a house once we landed here. Or perhaps, we did occasionally. We got very comfortable and were treated very well in our rental home.
Our rent was affordable. Buying a house with its upkeep would mean “jobs” and why spend time elsewhere to buy a house that you can’t spend much time in? We stayed with our art making and graphic design, in Sarah’s case, and freelance writing, poetry and writing circles, in mine. Besides, Peter has been a landlord extraordinaire. He continued to work in his wonderful garden that is terraced with three ponds and a waterfall. The vista from our living room is of the Grandmother of All Surrounding Mountains, Te’tuxwtun to the Snuneymuxw people, and the mountains south of Nanaimo. We could watch the phases of the moon and the many aspects of the sky throughout the day and evening. In our front courtyard, we could sit under the mulberry tree and hazelnut, chatting with friends perhaps.
Peter liked to dry herbs from his garden, make tomato juice, salsa, and strawberry jam and share his prime rib roast with us. We were never without surprise treats of dinner or lunch. Oh, and there was Christmas with spiced nuts and bolts, shortbread cookies, butter tarts and a turkey dinner if he happened not to be in Mexico. (We had our last Christmas dinner in December 2021.)
If ever we ran out of anything, the stores were close but Peter’s pantry was closer!
The four cats we brought with us have all died: Miss Pooh, Kadi, Simon and Qwinn. We’re leaving their ashes here, in the Zen garden at the top of the driveway, and their spirits are always with us so they’ll be coming along to our new home in the country. And we’ll be taking Squeaker and Izzy with us, both very much alive. And so far, weathering the transition very well.
I wrote Writing Home: A Whole Life Practice here and Writing to Map Your Spiritual Journey was made into a digital format. I published poetry in various publications including chapbook anthologies edited by Patrick Lane, my own chapbooks, and a full length book of poems (Fishing for Mermaids, Leaf Press, 2014).
Other writing was in the form of advertorials for the Nanaimo Daily News, articles for More Living magazine and Synergy, book reviews for the Vancouver Sun and other publications.
I mention all these things as I’ve been going through files of clippings going back to the eighties. I do have some folios of articles I’ve written but those ancient files have been recycled. So many journals have been shredded as I ready myself to carry the memories although not in physical form. It’s time for a fresh new chapter for both Sarah and me.
It’s been wonderful to be part of a writing community on Vancouver Island. I started meeting writers right away when I attended the Victoria School of Writing and began going to poetry retreats with the late Patrick Lane. Connections made there with other poets have continued.
I appreciated WordStorm monthly poetry events in Nanaimo co-founded by David Fraser and Cindy Shantz. I joined a group with them and other writers, calling ourselves the Easy Writers. We had such fun going to Poetry Gabriola as a group meeting the likes of Robert Priest, Richard Van Camp, Ivan Coyote and Sheri-D Wilson.
At home, I started offering women’s writing circles called Writing Life (a continuation of the Flying Mermaids circles I had offered in Ontario) and I held salons for friends who had new books: Laura Apol from Michigan, Arleen Pare from Victoria, Alison Watt from Protection Island, Diana Hayes from Salt Spring Island, and Leanne McIntosh from Nanaimo. I think I had a salon way back when for Tina Biello and we did other readings together as our poetry books had come out at the same time.
I made flower essences in the garden here starting with Rhododendron, the definition of which is Self-Trust. Spirit of the Island is the name of the flower essence series, a name Sarah and I came up with together. Another of the Spirit of the Island flower essences is Camellia: Be Here Now. It is a photo of the camellia that attracted our new landlord to read Sarah’s post re looking for a place to live.
Since the house was sold in December (we’ve been renting the main level suite), we’ve been letting things go. We’ve made several trips to the Haven Society thrift store and to Well Read Books, Literacy Central’s bookstore. And I’ve given many books away to women in the circle circle. Still, there are many books to pack. We’re at a stage now that we want to take with us what will support our new phase. We’re not sure what that will look like but we’re grateful we have found a beautiful rental home in the country. Our new home will have lots of room including studio and office space, a garage and five acres on which to roam. The owners also have a house on the property. Annemarie is an avid gardener which is what attracted her to the camellia.
Thinking ahead to our new home has kept us going during these final days of packing as well as appreciating all we’ve enjoyed here.
A faded garden flag
empty flower pots
a tiny temple under the ferns
by Mary Ann Moore | Jan 14, 2022 | A Poet's Nanaimo
So many people passed on in 2021 including many poets and writers we’ve come to love through their work. I so appreciated Lee Maracle’s work in the world and had the honour and delight of working with her during the summer of 1993. Since hearing of Lee’s death on November 11, 2021, I’ve been thinking of the two weeks spent at West Word IX, a women’s writing retreat held at a college campus in North Vancouver, B.C.
All these years later, obviously, the two weeks at women’s writing retreat had a huge impact on me and I expect, others who attended Lee’s fiction workshop. I think the poets and the creative non-fiction groups may have been envious of all the fun we were having.
Lee had us walking on the desks in our portable classroom so as to have a fresh perspective, and some fun, and we took walks through the woods near the college, together. We all continued to learn from her as we hung out at meals or in the evenings. I first learned “muscle testing” from Lee and I still remember her advice about keeping hydrated so as not to pick up all the energies in a room full of people.
When people spoke of women getting the vote (in 1922 with some provinces earlier than that and Quebec not until 1940), Lee pointed out that was the vote for white women. It was not until 1960 that “suffrage” in federal elections was extended to First Nations women and men “without requiring them to give up their treaty status.” (The quote is from Wikipedia.)
Lee did not think much of writer Margaret Laurence nor artist Emily Carr. I have had different views of Laurence and Carr since then.
Margaret Laurence wrote of a First Nations male character in The Diviners who Lee felt was depicted in a degrading way. In her 2020 Writers Trust lecture, named for Margaret Laurence, Lee noted The Diviners and “the violence of the dirty halfbreed” as he was described and depicted, and the daughter in the book being prevented from seeing her father (who was the First Nations man.)
In the Writers Trust lecture (which you can find on line), Lee said she was grateful to be honoured. She said she cherished Dionne Brand who says “no language is neutral.” Lee, who was a member of the Sto-lo Nation on British Columbia’s coast, said every word originates in a body and is a salutation to the skies.
While people have “reclaimed” language such as “dyke” and “queer” for instance, Lee said reclaiming the terms “squaw” and “halfbreed,” would fail to become positive. She could feel such an act “dismantle” her being.
Lee wasn’t in favour of “deleting history” but she was against people reading about themselves as the subjects of degradation. She suggested we explore racism in literature. She included Mark Twain in that category.
As for Emily Carr, I remember Lee talking to Susan Crean, who was leading the Creative Non-Fiction group at the writing retreat in 1993. Susan was writing a book about Emily Carr, the artist Lee called a racist. I had a look again at Susan’s book, The Laughing One: A Journey to Emily Carr (HarperCollins, 2001) to remind me of that time as Susan wrote about her conversation with Lee.
At a public reading by the writing retreat instructors that was taped and broadcast on Co-op radio, Susan read from some of her notes “for an article on Emily Carr.” Susan was followed by Lee Maracle, reading from her book Ravensong. “Afterward she [Lee] delivered a stinging rebuke of my appropriation of her people’s stories, commingled with an elegiac prayer for her ancestors.”
Lee was always direct but it didn’t mean she dismissed people altogether. When Susan sought her out after breakfast the day following the reading, Lee “wasn’t angry or unfriendly,” Susan says in her book. “I even asked her why, given history, Native peoples tolerate the company of Whites.”
“She [Lee] shrugged and told me that my faux pas didn’t change the fact we were friends. As for Emily Carr, she guessed it was my choice if I wanted to rehabilitate a racist.”
Susan refers in The Laughing One to a “controversy” that had erupted in the spring of 1993 with the publication of an analysis by Haida/Tsimsian art historian Marcia Crosby regarding Emily Carr’s portrayal of Native peoples and “other White settler society.”
Crosby’s work said that “Carr’s knowledge of Native culture was fragmentary and minimal,” even though as Susan writes, “a special emotional attachment might be conceded.”
Many people have said of the art by white artists portraying First Nations villages, artifacts, and sacred ceremonies that they are preserving a culture that needs to be “saved.” As Crosby wrote: “[Those] doing the saving choose what fragments of a culture they will salvage. Having done this, they become both the owners and interpreters of the artefacts or goods that have survived.”
[Photo of Lee Maracle by Mary Ann Moore, 1993]
One day in our fiction group at the retreat in 1993, a woman of colour suggested the other Black, Indigenous and women of colour meet together. One of the white women thought we should all stick together not realizing the strength and solidarity the BIPOC women would gain by meeting on their own. I had the good fortune of having some anti-racism training through the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre where I had been a volunteer so suggested the white women meet in a group as well to discuss our part in adding to the unease and lack of safety for the BIPOC women.
We white women met on our own and heard the story of the woman who had been opposed to the BIPOC gathering. It was from that experience I learned that people don’t listen until they have had their own stories heard. I’ll call the woman Irene, the one we listened to about her family’s involvement with Nazis. It was shocking and although we had listened to Irene’s story, she chose not to stay for the second week of the retreat.
I learned lots at that retreat in 1993 including how writing is about all of life. I described some of my learning in my book Writing Home: A Whole Life Practice.
I recalled getting the letter of acceptance from West Word IX, the women’s writing retreat organized by volunteers, and taking it to the law firm where I worked as I was so excited about the good news. I would be spending two weeks of my vacation writing with other women. I was up for the challenge.
At the retreat, we had morning workshops with afternoons free to write, take a walk, have a massage. There were often spontaneous gatherings to share our work and there was also lots of play. We’d leave notes on one another’s room doors describing imaginary, playful gatherings.
I made changes when I got home to Toronto so that I could spend more time writing. I told my employer that I could do my job of scheduling in three-and-a-half days a week and they went for it. I think I had already moved to a cheaper apartment closer to work so I didn’t have transportation costs.
As I recall the community we created at West Word IX, I remember:
We met daily in a circle.
We each had a voice.
We told our stories.
We received wise guidance from an elder/leader.
We spoke through tears.
We “played” which gave us a different view of the situation and the world.
We “slowed the picture down” which was one of Lee’s pieces of advice about our writing.
We took a walk together seeing life’s lessons in Nature.
We acknowledged spirits, ghosts, and the energy of the land.
We ate meals together and shared our experiences of the day.
We had a room of our own to connect to ourselves and to write.
We had impromptu readings of our work.
We got silly.
We dealt with issues such as racism when they arose.
We honoured ourselves in readings of our work to which we invited others.
I was glad to be able to see Lee again a few times after we went home to Toronto, from the retreat. She joined me and other new friends from the writing retreat at a lesbian bar one evening. She did the same in Vancouver when we went to Lulu’s. It’s funny that I remember one of the songs we danced to in a circle: “Rhythm is a Dancer.”
We were excited, in emails, about my book launch in April, 2014 when Lee was actually going to be on Vancouver Island. We weren’t able to make the connection in person but was grateful for our mutual enthusiasm for our connection, however we could make it.
Thank you Lee for your witnessing, your speaking up, your passion, your writing, your teaching, your support, your speaking up. And for telling me I was the bravest white woman you had ever met and you estimated you had met about 10,000 white people at that time. Your encouragement was, I expect, the impetus for me to return to Vancouver in 1994, rent a car, and drive to Lytton where my great uncle had been principal of St. George’s Residential School in the late 1920s and early 1930s. My research, writing and acknowledgement continues.
. . .
We have lived for 11,000 years on this coastline
This is not the first massive death we have endured
We girded up our loins,
Recovered and re-built
We are builders,
We are singers,
We are dancers,
We are speakers
And we are still singing
We are dancing again
. . .
From “Blind Justice” by Lee Maracle (2013)
by Mary Ann Moore | Dec 30, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
We poets had a beautiful tradition at Glenairley in Sooke, B.C. on Friday evenings at our retreats when the Jewish women said prayers and sang songs, lighting candles as sunset approached for the beginning of Shabbos. One of the women was Isa Milman from Victoria, B.C.
Glenairley, an old farmhouse in Sooke, was an early location for poetry retreats with Patrick Lane. They had been running for several years before I began going in 2006. I was glad to meet Isa there and many other poets to whom I’m still connected.
Isa Milman is the author of three collections of poetry: Something Small to Carry Home (2012); Prairie Kaddish (2008), and Between the Doorposts (2004). She’s a three-time winner of the Helen & Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards whose jury in 2012 called Isa “a foremost Canadian writer of Jewish themes.” Besides writing and university teaching, Isa’s professional life has encompassed occupational therapy practice, entrepreneurship and art-making such as quilt making and collage.
In 2013, Isa began writing her memoir that came out in the Fall of 2021: Afterlight: In Search of Poetry, History, and Home (Heritage House). Her memoir is a family story as well as the lesser known story of “a holocaust of bullets” in Eastern Europe. Jews were shot and thrown into pits dug by local people “to get rid of Jews” or pressed into abominable service by the Soviets when Hitler and Stalin took over Poland. (Quotes are from Isa’s interview with Kathryn Marlow on North by Northwest, CBC, October 16, 2021).
As Isa says in Afterlight, “In all thirteen thousand Jews were murdered in the district of Kostopol – local Jews, and Jews brought from neighbouring towns.”
Afterlight is composed of chapters about what Isa knew of her family history told as if in an unfolding present interspersed with chapters where readers learn as Isa learns and does research including travelling to Poland and immersing herself in Polish Jewish history and poetics. I so appreciate the sharing of her journey as a poet and writer digging into the lost history of her family.
Sabina, Isa’s mother, had withheld some horrible details but had told her children about the murders of her twin sister Basia, Basia’s two-year-old son Mordechai Fishman, ripped from her arms, and other extended family members. More stories came out in the last year of her life, while living in New London, Connecticut.
“But in her newly awakened state, just steps away from the threshold to the next world, my mother returned with a story of her childhood with Basia. She told of her twin’s brilliance, her love of poetry and history, and her desire to write a book when she was only fifteen.”
As more stories were revealed, Sabina Milman said: “Isa, write this down, this should be your next book!”
Isa did jot down her mother’s words to which she would refer several years later. (Sabina Milman died in April 2007.) The photograph on the cover of Afterlight is of Sabina and Basia Kramer in Warsaw (Praga), Poland circa 1937.
Isa’s research and travel opened her up “to the complexities of how we understand history,” she said in her interview. Her memoir is “deeply rooted in the facts of the history that I tell,” Isa says in her introduction, and “it’s an exploration of imagination” as she creates scenes and dialogue as she envisions them. The book really is a marvel.
There’s also a mystery to be solved: Isa wants to learn more about her mother’s twin sister Basia who published poetry when she was fourteen, and was murdered in 1942 when she was twenty-five.
I found it heartwarming to read that Isa’s husband Robbie accompanied her to Poland where she was to present at a conference about Jewish-Canadian-Polish cultural connections in April 2014.Originally, he hadn’t want to go as nothing attracted him to Poland “not even the food.”
Robbie said: “I’ve been watching and listening as you prepare for this trip, and I think that doing it alone is a bit more than you should take on by yourself.”
Robbie, whose full name was Robert Brooke Naylor McConnell (1942 – 2019), was a fourth generation British Columbian. Afterlight is dedicated to him, Isa’s children “and theirs.”
It was also heartwarming to read of the various connections Isa made to Poles, Ukrainians and Jews in her research and travels.
Isa’s parents, Sabina and Olek Milman considered themselves lucky, she said in her interview. They were deported to Siberia, spending twenty-six days in a cattle car enroute to Itatka, “the second-to-last stop of this railway line, the farthest prison camp of the Soviet gulag,” she says in the book. [Photo of Isa Milman by Shea Lowry]
The Milmans did have some luck and synchronicity along their arduous journey, before and during their deportation. In early 1943 when they were sent to Uzbekistan, Sabina met a young Russian soldier on the journey. They conversed in Russian when their paths crossed, heading in different directions. When the soldier heard the Milmans were headed for Fergana he said his parents lived there “. . . and they would be overjoyed to receive word from me that I’m alive and well.” More than fifty years later, Sabina remembered the address on Vtoraia Ulitsa (Second Street).
Isa writes that “Once again, my mothers’ treasure chest of languages, and her natural friendliness and warmth, opened the door to the next chapter of my parents’ survival.”
Afterlight is a healing journey with its references to crimes against humans by fellow humans, Isa’s shedding of tears on the site of atrocities in Kostopil, and the blessed connections that can be made with survivors and allies. There is much to appreciate and honour in Isa’s story of uncovering the sorrows and the joys of her family. She, along with other Jews, is a member of “an ancient global family” as Rabbi Rami Shapiro has said in one of his magazine columns.
When Polish poet, Tomasz Rozycki, was visiting Victoria, Isa asked him if he had heard of “Tikkun – this beautiful Jewish concept of repair.” He shook his head and Isa told him: “This is our task on earth, to heal what’s broken, to make it a little better. It’s the most we can hope for.”
Among the amazing family photos included in Afterlight is one of Sabina, Olek and their daughters Estera and Isa Milman leaving Germany in May of 1950, where both girls had been born in DP camps.
The word “afterlight” is one Isa discovered and found to be the perfect title for her memoir. “Afterlight is an uncommon word that refers to the light visible in the sky after sunset, or to a look back in time, a retrospect,” she writes in her introduction.
The book is timely as Isa said in her interview. Hatred and genocide still exist. People are still displaced from their homelands. “What can we do as human beings to make it a little bit better in this world?” she asks.
by Mary Ann Moore | Nov 27, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
I’ve never received a book for review that comes with a box full of edible goodies – not until a recent delivery that is. Alon Ozery’s new book, Even the Sidewalk Could Tell: How I Came Out to My Wife, My Three Children, and the World (Regent Park Publishing, 2021) was accompanied by delicious treats from Alon’s two businesses of which he is the co-founder: Ozery Bakery in Vaughan, Ontario and Parallel Brothers in Toronto.
First the book: Everyone should tell their coming out story. No story is the same and the approaches can be as unique as the tellers. (I’m thinking of My Autobiography of Carson McCullers which was Jenn Shapland’s innovative coming-out story as it related to her research into the life of American writer Carson McCullers.)
Alon Ozery’s memoir is written chronologically and in a way that can be shared with his ex-wife, children and family members. He describes his life from being raised in Israel to more recent times living with his male life partner in Toronto.
Alon moved with his parents and two brothers, Guy and Aharon, to Toronto when he was sixteen and got early work experience working for Coleman’s, a Jewish deli. Following his graduation from high school, he worked at Coleman’s and then went back to Israel to fulfill the obligation of army service for three years.
When Alon returned to Canada at twenty-one, he earned an undergraduate degree in hospitality management from Ryerson University. He and his father opened a restaurant that evolved into a wholesale bakery. Alon’s wife Michelle also worked there and his brother Guy joined them four years after they opened. Alon and Michelle’s first son was born two years after opening the store. Two more children followed: another son and a daughter.
Alon doesn’t name his children which I can understand. They’re teenagers now and will have their own stories to tell. (I think of Alison Wearing telling the story of her gay father in a stage production as well as in her book: Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter: Growing Up with a Gay Dad.)
Although he had come out to his wife Michelle as well as family members and close friends, Alon and Michelle set aside a time to sit down with the children one evening to tell them. Some people know they’re gay from childhood while others, such as Alon, grow up suppressing any desire towards the same sex.
When he had his first sexual encounter Alon said “it felt as if my body had been waiting for this my entire life.” He later realized: “I had finally aligned with my true self.” Some lesbians and gay men have felt pressured to do what was expected of them (to get married to someone of the opposite sex for instance). From his own experience, Alon says: “I had trained and brainwashed myself about who I ‘needed’ to be for so long that was able to ignore the signs about my sexuality that were there from the very beginning.”
There are some charming drawings in the book which may have been done by Alon. One drawing shows the three kids sitting on the couch in the living room as he and Michelle tell them the news that would change their lives as a family. One son wanted to know if they would still have family dinners on Fridays. That tradition has continued along with Alon and Michelle’s new partners.
Alon Ozery’s memoir about coming out as a gay man describes a very positive experience as he didn’t suffer estrangement from family, a custody battle for children, physical harm or other effects of homophobia. It’s s true testament to love to come out to a beloved spouse and have that love returned in supporting the path you need to take.
I’m thinking of a less positive experience by Irish poet and theologian, Padraig O’Tuama, raised Roman Catholic, who suffered “exorcisms” for being gay. He says: “Since beginning to tell the truth of my sexual orientation more widely a number of things have happened. First, I have begun to realise the taste of relief. It is always a good thing to tell the truth. I have also found myself on the outside of the halls of holiness.” At the beginning of In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World (Hodder & Stoughton, 2015), from which the quote is taken, Padraig says: “Hello to the need for shelter. Hello to the stories that shelter us.”
Fifty percent of the profits from the sales of Even the Sidewalk Could Tell are being donated to Friends of Ruby in Toronto, an organization dedicated to the progressive well-being of LGBTQI2S youth through mental health services, social services and housing.
As for the food, I tried the halva first as I am a big fan of the sesame treat. Alon Ozery is co-owner of Parallel Brothers, a restaurant and sesame butter brand in Toronto. The halva I received is infused with chocolate and black sea salt with sesame seeds sourced from Humera, Ethiopia. It’s so light and delicious. I was having a little portion after lunch and after dinner. The take-out menu at Parallel Brothers looks delicious. For you Toronto folks, the restaurant is at 217 Geary Avenue. You can also order products online at parallelbrothers.com.
Alon is also the co-founder of the Ozery Bakery that produces products that can be purchased online. I tried all three of the Keto Snacks that are baked clusters of seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, sesame and flax) with very little sugar. My favourite was the sweet and salty. Who doesn’t want a snack while they’re reading? You can order them from ozerybakery.com.
by Mary Ann Moore | Nov 20, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
I look forward to Rachel Lang’s astrology newsletters with her readings for the month ahead so was delighted to hear of her new book: Modern Day Magic: (Hardie Grant Books, 2021).
The book is beautifully designed with illustrations throughout and contains “ 8 Simple Rules” to “realize your power and shape your life.” Modern Day Magic isn’t about witchcraft as Rachel points out through she does include ideas, rituals and spells from her past experience as a practising witch. It’s a comprehensive book with all sorts of inspiration and possibilities for exploring our own magical power.
“Magic is not about getting something you want,” Rachel points out. “It’s about embodying your prime creative potential.” She describes how the word “magic” dating back to the 5th century BCE, was used as a derogatory term.
“The Goddess” is included in one of the sections of the book which Rachel describes as the Divine Feminine. We have come to know her by various names. Rachel doesn’t want readers to “limit Her to any one of these images or icons” (such as Diana, Demeter, Quan Yin, Aphrodite, Athena or Hera). “The Divine Feminine, the Goddess, is the presence of the Divine that’s alive and palpable in our world – in nature, humans, and even the stars. She’s the connecting force between energy and matter.”
Each of the chapters has journal prompts and in Chapter 1, readers are prompted to write a letter to the Goddess “stating your intention.” And, readers are invited to write a letter back to themselves as if she’s writing to you.
As I first read the book, I did write down my intention and didn’t write the letter back which I’m feeling the need of now. In fact, my intention may have shifted in the midst of this season of Samhain about rest and letting go.
There is also a Daily Practice as part of each chapter so that in Chapter 1 it is to gather images of goddesses or “individuals who embody Goddess energy.”
Magic Rule #1 is “Trust Yourself All of Yourself.” In that chapter, is a list of archetypes and I like the idea of choosing from the list that we embody within ourselves. For instance: mother, mystic, priestess, artist, teacher, muse.
A “magical exercise” is to imagine a scene in which “several of the different archetypes you’ve identified with meet to discuss your primary intention.” In a later chapter, there are some questions related to the four archetypes readers most identify with.
Magic Rule #3 is “Attention is Power.” Rachel says: “If you want to feel better about your finances, give attention to your successes and celebrate the abundance you experience in your life.”
I remember when I was working at a law firm in Toronto in the 1990s and although I had cut back my hours to three and a half days a week, I still wanted to leave the job altogether. I wasn’t sure how all that was going to come about but I kept visualizing doing just that, even imagining a farewell party after nine years of having worked there. As it turns out, my position was going to be phased out and although I could still work at the firm, I wouldn’t be in the position of scheduler that I had helped to create. I asked to be laid off which isn’t always a positive move but in this case receiving Employment Insurance benefits and creating my own business of offering women’s writing circles turned out very well.
Rachel includes astrological information under Magic Rule #8: “Use Magical Astrology.” I was interested to see that Wednesday or Thursday is associated with wisdom/spiritual growth with the moon sign of Sagittarius or Pisces. Wednesday is the day the Writing Life women’s writing circle meets. And Wednesday is associated with communication or writing projects with the moon sign of Gemini, Virgo or Aquarius. So that’s perfect as well.
In Chapter 12, “Working with Magic,” Rachel says she and her wife Tisha “love discovering new ways to receive guiding messages using everyday objects.” I’ve thought that way too and also, objects as metaphors in poems can be a form of divination. Just think of all that Pablo Neruda wrote in his odes to socks, a chair, a bed and a box of tea.
The Daily Practice for the chapter is “Everyday Divination.” You need to know your intention for this. I think of an intention as something to live with each day rather than a goal to be reached in the future. With that in mind, “look around you. Find three objects that grab your attention. For the first one, answer the question, ‘What does this object symbolize about my intention.’ Write down the first impressions that come to you. For the second object, answer the question, ‘What does this object say about an obstacle to my intention? Write down your impressions. Thinking of the third object, ask ‘What do I need to know about the outcome of my intention? Now, write: “Am I aligned to manifest my intention? Look for just one object or person to glean insight from. Write: ‘What does this tell me about how aligned I am to manifest my intention? Write down three things.”
The first object that drew my intention as I looked around my office was a card with a swinging writing angel that says “I love writing. I love the swirl & swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.” What does this object symbolize about my intention? It’s absolutely right on. My intention was to continue to write and publish my work. It’s the writing that is most important, the process and the discoveries I make. I appreciate writing for self-expression, the choosing of words and images, the honouring of everyday ordinariness as well as what a poem or piece of writing can teach. Something new has been added to the atmosphere, emanating through the currents.
What does the second object say about an obstacle to my intention? The second object that drew my attention is a little ostrich called Olivia that I first saw in a magazine. The company is Jelly Cat Bonbon. Such a great name! This ostrich isn’t real so maybe the obstacle is attempting to be “real” in my writing. I see that as more of a challenge. Ostrichs are flightless birds and the obstacle may have something to do with my writing not taking flight.
A framed photo of Sarah’s Mr. Big, a big cat, is the third object with the question: “What do I need to know about the outcome of my intention?” Mr. Big was a beloved companion to Sarah and to her other cats which have also passed on to the spirit realm. Perhaps my writing will continue to be a loving companion and will live on after I’m gone.
“Am I aligned to manifest my intention?” I looked for one object to glean insight and it was a framed mandala Sarah drew for me that has images of things I am drawn to: the hamsa (hand), rose, mermaid, Venus of Willendorf and Frida Kahlo. What does this mandala tell me about how aligned I am to manifest my intention? It confirms that I am aligned through all my interests and passions as well as ongoing learning.
Rachel says: “Now, more than ever, we need a return to magic. It is the force that breaks walls, open hearts, and allows us to be in harmonious relationship with one another and the natural world. Think of what our collective magic can do! Imagine a world dedicated to wonder, curiosity, and connection.”
by Mary Ann Moore | Oct 7, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
Sharon Butala’s husband died when she was two weeks short of her sixty-seventh birthday she says in the first essay, “Against Ageism,” in her new book of essays on aging and the writing life: This Strange Visible Air (Freehand Books, 2021).
As she was born in 1940, Sharon is 81 years old this year. She has been on her own for over a decade and writes of loneliness in “Open Your Eyes” saying: “I was lonely because I had no significant other reading the newspaper in the other room.”
Sharon recalls being eight years old, living in a village in central Saskatchewan, as a little girl. One “hot Friday afternoon in June,” she wandered off from a softball game being organized on the baseball diamond. She knew, as a small child and not athletic, she’d be the last chosen for any team.
On the front steps to the empty school, Sharon sat alone. Although an older girl had seen her there, either she didn’t let anyone know or if she told a teacher, the teacher chose to leave Sharon alone.
From research Sharon has done about loneliness, she shares a quote by Judith Shulevitz from The New Republic in 2013: “And yet loneliness is made as well as given, and at a very early age. Deprive us of the attention of a loving, reliable parent, and, if nothing happens to make up for that lack, we’ll tend toward loneliness for the rest of our lives. Not only that, but our loneliness will probably make us moody, self-doubting, angry, pessimistic, shy, and hypersensitive to criticism.” It’s a passage that Sharon says, caused her to freeze, “so accurate a description it was of how I gradually, over my adulthood, have come to see myself.”
At the end of her essay, Sharon asks, “But if my teacher had rescued me from my desire for solitude, and my self-willed loneliness, would I be a writer today?”
Burning the Journals
As many of us grow older, we wonder what will happen to our handwritten journals. Sharon has a gas fireplace so went to a friend’s house who had a wood-burning fireplace where she could burn her journals. She says in “Cold Ankles”: “The journals so embarrassed me that I decided to burn them all while I still could, the elderly person on her own being all too well aware that at any moment the Great Catastrophe can strike.”
Stopping to read some of the dreams she had recorded on the journal pages before she threw them into the fire, Sharon saw that some of them “turned out to be prescient.”
The title of the essay is from this passage: “Last night I caught myself thinking I should buy some new socks, as winter is approaching, and my ankles are already cold.”
As for the journals, she says: “And I can’t tell you, even now, if burning my journals was a good or a bad think to have done. If burning my journals changed anything, about the life they recorded or my life to come.”
An Unsolved Murder
I’ve read other books by Sharon Butala and particularly appreciated The Perfection of the Morning: An Apprenticeship in Nature, one of her early nonfiction books. I haven’t read The Girl in Saskatoon: A Meditation on Friendship and now I’m especially curious. Sharon writes of the subject of that particular book in her essay: “The Murder Remains Unsolved.”
“2021lmarks fifty-nine years since beauty queen Alexandra Wiwcharuk was beaten, raped, and murdered, and her body buried in a shallow grave in a copse of trees near the weir on the northeast bank of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.”
A few weeks before the discovery of her murder, Alexandra had turned twenty-three; she had graduated from nursing school and was employed at Saskatoon City Hospital. Sharon was fourteen when she met Alex and although they weren’t friends, they knew one another from high school activities.
The murder was never solved and while no harm came to Sharon as she was researching her book over a period of ten years, there was some harassment by phone and other close encounters with cars. Men she wanted to talk to avoided her. And someone anonymously “said that I would be killed if I kept on asking questions . . . “
Sharon says she learned about corruption, class, misogyny and evil. “Also, slowly, over the years, I have begun to see better what I specifically need to fear, and to separate most of that from what doesn’t need to be feared. Now, at eighty, my fears come mostly (but not all) from being an old woman in an old-woman-hostile world.”
The Writing Life
In “Vanished Without a Trace,” Sharon describes her writing life. She published her first book, a novel, in 1984 when she was forty-four. She had begun to write at thirty-eight, leaving her plan to be a painter, behind.
Sharon was a cattle rancher’s wife and rose at 5 a.m. as her husband did, going to her desk to write for two to six hours every day, “weekends and holidays included.” As she “lived in the middle of it,” Sharon wrote about rural western Canada.
“I gave up everything for writing, “she told a television interviewer. And while she thought one night, that she would give up her writing for her husband, child, mother, sisters or friends who needed her, she later acknowledged she was a “liar.” What came to Sharon was the knowledge, “that I would always put my writing ahead of any other significant demand on me; that there was nothing and nobody for whom I would s stop.”
It’s startling to realize that although she says her “sales record was still good enough to get me a publisher,” the ten percent she received “wouldn’t pay the rent, and the big-money prizes continued to elude me.” No wonder writers need to have speaking gigs, work in bakeries and bookshops, or teach.
In 2018, the Writers’ Union of Canada reported that writers’ “incomes had dropped twenty-seven percent since 1998; eighty-one percent of writers now had incomes below the poverty line; worse, female writers now earned fifty-five percent of what male writers earned.”
In August 2007, when her husband Peter died, Sharon “became the sole owner of a bank account that, if it did not make me rich, left me able to live as I always had . . “
At the end of her seventies and in good health, Sharon says in her essay that she is having “a burst of late life creativity.” She tells friends: “I haven’t much time left; I have to get everything down before I depart.” What keeps her writing is the same motive she began with which is: “I continue to have ideas that I need to explore through writing. I can see no reason to quit, for what else would I do with myself? After years of the hardest struggle, the misery of it, the pain and the doubts each day as I tried to find the right words for the idea whose shape I was struggling to reveal, writing is coming easily now, and flows.”
Perhaps Sharon has given up the award and contest-winning aspect of writing and is finding courage and solace in her writing. I know that writing will remain for me the way I make my way through life and I appreciate being in circles where we write together and share aspects of our queries and our discoveries.
Sharon’s final essay, “On the Pandemic” dated May 28, 2020, was written during the early months of the pandemic. At that time, she knew no one who was ill and no one who had died. As an introvert, life during “lockdown” wasn’t all that much different for her. She did wonder though “which would happen first: the gradual lessening of the lockdown, or our complete descent into insanity.”
Hopefully it was the gradual lessening of the lockdown so that Sharon could see her friends again. Sharon has calculated how many years she has left and I find myself thinking of that as well. Most important, is how we spend our days: writing, not for any awards, but because we need to. And while we’re at it, we can celebrate the desire and imagination that continues to nourish us.
Lorna Crozier, another Saskatchewan writer based for many years in North Saanich on Vancouver Island, says: “Oh, help me find the mettle to resist the call to go quietly into that good night. No matter how many years under my belt, may I have the audacity to open my mouth and wail. In the same essay, “Running/Writing For Your Life” (The New Quarterly, Summer 2021), Lorna says: “How will I touch with words those places aging makes tender. I don’t know, though I started to do that about three books ago. What I do know is that the days are shrinking, and that as I set out into the lengthening dark, it is a journey I must embark on alone.”
Still, Lorna will continue because as she says: “I can’t imagine a life without poetry, without writing poetry, I have to believe that the sheer wild joy of it will lead me to places I haven’t gone before, places where I can discover some shard of beauty, whether painful or joyous. These are the risks I take, the nerve I ride on.”
It’s true that beauty discovered may be painful or joyous. We remain curious. As John Gould says of This Strange Visible Air by Sharon Butala: “The insight embodied in this book doesn’t come free with age, but as the payoff for decades of fine attention, of impassioned curiosity.”
