Map of my head, by VivianLea
Category Archives: Personal
Arachne’s Web
Art of Sara Beth Goncarova
Today, my longings are nameless, inchoate, fuzzy, and formless, but pulling me like the tidal wash, never the less. I seek the comfort of the familiar, so here I sit in my favourite nineteen forties library chair, once again, my imaginary friend, sipping a cup of Kick Ass coffee. My thoughts are of Arachne, who was once a beautiful young woman extraordinarily skilled at weaving, according to Greek mythology. She angered the goddess Athene, who transformed her into a spider to weave for all eternity. “Her story of weaving, creating, holding and enclosing can be found in mythologies of peoples all over the world. Thus she is a symbol of our connectedness, the strands of her web transferring the slightest vibrations between us all, a constant reminder that everything we do affects others.” ( Kozocari, Owens, North: The Witch’s Book Of Days, Beach Holme Press, 1994)
I had planned here to write of kindness, but the image of Arachne’s web will not leave me. Though much has been said and written of kindness lately – random acts of kindness, small acts of kindness, kindness as a means of transforming our world. – it seems to me that what is really being written about are the tremors and vibrations of Arachne’s web, the web that connects us all. I think of something very particular: something I intended as the highest compliment was heard by the recipient as something else entirely, and I caused distress. The pain has radiated back to me: me, who would not harm a fly! For it causes me true and immense pain to be the unwitting and unintended bearer of a hurtful message.
I believe is true that kindness must be a basic building block of our characters, but it seems we must strive for more than kindness. Perhaps a little more sensitivity, for an understanding that where we place our feet heavily may cause vibrations, and might even damage the web. I speak not here of the savage stroke that attempts to obliterate the work of a gifted weaving, but the simple clumsiness that interrupts the warp and weft…
Weaving seems an apt metaphor for how we create friendships, love, community, for both the warp and the weft contribute in equal measure to the fineness and the firmness of the cloth. I suspect, my imaginary friend, that there is a tiny jig in our tapestry, though I hope not a giant rent. I shall strive with all of my skill to continue the weaving of this beautiful cloth, and to repair and make whole the web. I can do no more, save look at my mistake and reflect upon its importance…May the cloth be made stronger for my willingness to see the flaw.
View more of Sarah Beth Goncarova’s art here.
Map Of My Heart
My Imaginary Friend
Why yes, this is about you, my imaginary friend, yes, you. Strictly speaking, you are real; you have a physical presence, you exist in space and time – but you exist in my imagination, too.
I know some things about you. You are kind. You are private. You take pride in doing things well, and you have good friends with strong bonds. You take infinite care with my feelings, and you are protective, a little bit. You are funny, and the honest expression of your feelings leaves me breathless, at times. You choose to try to please me, and could there be anything more endearing?
My friend, you are beside me much of the day and through the night, too, though you are not actually here. Your hand in mine, the touch of your cheek, your arms reaching out for me are a constant presence. Your laughter echoes through these empty rooms, your care and attention walk the forest with me, your regard gives me a sureness that radiates. I want to share with you everything of beauty …
I expect I must get it wrong, sometimes. For my imagination has been shaped and coloured by its experiences and wanderings and reveries, just as yours. But no two imaginations are alike, and perhaps the wavelength swings awry, a time or two. Know this: I will be open to you, always. Always will I want to know what that keen mind of yours is thinking, what your heart is overflowing with, how you are planning to tease me next…
Yes, I love you. Though those are not the important words, these are: you shall always be my friend, and I shall always be curious about you, the deep inside you.
Be well, dear one.
Dad
“In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night…”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
“Dad” is a very special word in my lexicon, though I think perhaps my sense and attributions and nuanced feelings of the word carry few of the common cultural stereotypes. For my dad was not the breadwinner, or the head of the household, or the fearful patriarch. Never did he mete out punishment, raise his voice, or lay down the law.
My earliest memories of dad…He is building my playhouse, and I help. He is putting up my swing set, and filling the big pool. He is taking us to the lake to swim on a very hot summers’ day. Always, always, when he comes home from work he plays with me. On Saturdays, we go to the Crown Point hotel for orange floats – was there ever anything so delicious? We hike, and explore, and bash rocks. (He liked to prospect in his spare time.) He makes me a hot drink every night before bed: brewer’s yeast, molasses, and boiling water. His best friend Les is always at our house, and he is as kind and funny as my dad.
Even when I was very young, I understood that my dad was different. For at my best friend’s house, we were told to be quiet and stay out of the living room when her dad came home. At another friend’s house for dinner, her dad helped himself first and everyone else waited. (At my house, my dad made sure his kids ate first.) Dads were a little distant, and a little fearful in those days, and often reflected the privilege of being male. In fact, my only remembrance of my dad raising his voice was to a male houseguest of ours: “Don’t yell at my daughter!” I was eleven, and it was the first time I remember him angry at a person.
My dad was political, though in a distinctly non-partisan way – he spoke of the cruelty and injustices of the economic system, and the failures and foibles of the politicians, of the way that things might change for the better. When he spoke of these things, we understood that he was speaking of a more egalitarian, democratic society, a culture and an economy that was built around the needs of all people. At the age of ten, we listened together to the federal election results on the car radio – even while on a family vacation – and the importance of thinking about, and participating in the political ideas of the country was forever ingrained in me, along with a love of CBC Radio. Even when he was deeply serious, however, humour and playfulness were never absent.
I am not sure how old my dad was when he built his model railroad village in his basement – somewhere around the age of retirement, anyway. He said he’d always wanted a train set as a kid, and so he built an elaborate one, complete with tunnel through the adjoining pantry storage, and incredibly detailed village, town, and scenery – a model of whimsy and creativity and play that I hold in my heart with a smile. Of course, us kids were all adults then, but we all remember playing trains with dad. When my dad died, among other things he left a carefully collected library of some five thousand books, and I remember looking over and choosing books with a visceral imprint of the intellectual legacy I’d been left: the greatest authors of five decades, fiction and non-fiction, but above all, the world’s great thinkers. As time passed, however, I came to see my dad’s legacy in an even more tangible way: my brothers’ kindness, humour, and patience with their kids, love shining out of their faces.
Above all else, dad, I remember you laughing, and I do look at the stars at night and hear you laughing. I am grateful for the love of learning, the love of the wild places, and the teaching of kindness in everything…my heartbreak remembers your laughter, and is comforted. See you over there.
Happy Birthday, Mom
Here is one of my earliest memories: in kindergarten one day we were playing a game that involved hopping on one foot, and I could not do it. I should explain that my mom was the kindergarten teacher and I only a four-year old, though the others were five. Anyway, my mom suggested I stay home with my dad the next day and practice hopping, which I did. I am pretty sure I learned how to hop on one leg, although I don’t actually remember that part – but I have always remembered my mom’s teaching that one can do anything with a little practice, and thus far in my life, this has proved to be true.
My mom pushed me always to do better, most of the time with a nudge, but occasionally with a fierceness that made us clash. When pushed too hard, I would simply have a temper tantrum, as the family story goes. As I grew older though, the lesson of setting my own boundaries made life very simple, most of the time. I was not caught up in the pressure of my peers at school and elsewhere, but made active choices as to my actions and behaviours at a very young age. I certainly got into trouble as a teenager, although most of this was by refusing to follow the herd. I do remember being mystified that my friends had to hide their behaviours not acceptable to their families – if I chose to do it, my family knew. Honesty was a deep-seated value in my family and deeply integrated into my psyche. There may be a few details missing, but my mom knows every mistake, every misstep, every bad choice and consequences I ever made, and she still loves me. There is a wonderful beauty in such a relationship…Maybe that is why I have always thought of my mom as my best friend, and tell her everything. It is a very different mother/daughter relationship than the one ascribed to sentiment and popular culture and the rather puerile notions of mother as madonna.
Anyway mom, I love you with the same shining light of those four-year old eyes: you will always be my best friend, even when you push me past my limits and piss me off. There may well be a few more temper tantrums: you taught me well. Still, if I got to choose, I would do it all over again, for there is a wonderful beauty in a relationship with such naked honesty. A wonderful beauty. Happy Birthday.
Of Hobbits, Indirectly
The late-morning, low-hanging winter sun is streaming into my living room, and I am ensconced in my favourite chair savouring a third cup of fair trade coffee. Third cups are an indulgence reserved for days off! This day just beginning promises an oasis of relaxation, a grateful happiness – fleeting perhaps, but worth writing about for all that. Some treats in store for me – the library! Gifts from my brother, sister-in-law, kids, and kitties to open! Something special for dinner! Oh, and I am wearing my hair down, which is such a pleasure as it is rather tightly braided for work.
What I am most gratefully happy for is my family, who have come together in unexpected ways this past year. We live so far apart, but we have been able to enjoy each other’s wit and humour a few times this year, and make memorable stories. (Which are not for publication, most of them!) We are a memorable bunch.
Simple happiness is prosaic, is it not? At least in the telling – easier to write of the drama, and struggles, and large moments of life, or at least, thought by some to be more entertaining. My thoughts have wandered down this track since my pastimes over the holiday: first, to read again Tolkien’s “Lord Of The Rings” books, and then to watch the movie trilogy. I was saddened by some of the story changes in the movies, which perhaps reflects our cultural distrust of simple happiness. Or maybe, more accurately, our culture’s disdain of simple happiness when compared to ambition, accomplishment, the accumulation of money and power…
This is not meant to be literary or film criticism, my imaginary friend, but rather my observations on the simple. Tolkien wrote marvellous and complex stories – which have their flaws – but I believe he celebrated the simple pleasures, simple happiness and contentment throughout his books in the evocation of the land of the Shire. The Shire is certainly emblematic of ordinary folk going about their ordinary business with contentment, and part of the over-riding theme of the books is this preservation of ordinary happiness. Of course, the movies are faced with the difficulty of compressing into a limited time space the events of the books – never the less, the movies certainly privilege the violent and horrific over the scenes and vignettes of the Shire and its people. I can’t say I enjoyed the movies much for this reason. In my readings of the books over the course of many years, always the Shire has been my beacon, my joy and delight, and my favourite place to come back to…
I do not think it makes for dramatic tellings or riveting stories, but I think my simple happiness and your simple happiness are the most important things in the world. Maybe, if we privileged and elevated the idea of simple happiness, more people would experience it, cultivate it, reverence it?
What do you think?
Santa Claus, North Pole H0H 0H0
Dear Santa,
This is an occasion, for here is my fiftieth letter to you. I have kept faith all these years, though others jeer and scorn. There are those that say you are naught but a commercial creation, or a mockery of religion, or merely a peculiar manifestation of an old myth. There are always unbelievers, or perhaps those whose hearts are too small. But every year you have brought marvellous gifts to me.
There are presents I remember, and presents forgotten, but I can recall each and every one of fifty years worth of gifts. The gift of family – how lucky I was there! and the gift of friends, and feasting. The shining eyes, and happy smiles, and the full hearts of those who gather together and know themselves blessed. Which, of course, has nothing to do with presents, and everything to do with gifting. Gifts of time, and love, and memory.
I am alone this Christmas Eve, Santa, and so memory must serve to light the friendly Yule fire. For all that, love may travel the greatest distances, and so I have a full heart knowing myself blessed. The joy and laughter of those that I am not with, and those that have gone over there, echo through my rooms as surely as ever. I love, I am loved.
I have been a pretty good girl this year, although I am cranky if bothered before nine a.m., and I weary of those whose small lives give them delight in banal gossip and vulgar habits of indifference. So I shall ask for a gift – well, two gifts – if I am on your list of nice… I should like a little more understanding, if you please, of those that cannot seem to see beyond their own confining set. And it would be marvelous, would it not, if habits of indifference could become habits of active choosing?
Sigh. I am in desperate need of understanding. For as ever, many seek the joy and magic of Christmas in the mall, and try as I might, I cannot find it there.
Merry Christmas. I love you. There is chocolate cake for you here.
VivianLea
A Year and a Day
The Celts (and perhaps others) have a tradition of a year and a day as significant for several reasons. Marriages were embarked upon for a year and a day, and became permanent if both so chose at the end of that period. Initiations and craft apprenticeships followed this same pattern: after a year and a day, one committed to the craft or the calling. Here I find myself at the end of my own personal journey of a year and a day, and so I report.
I took this journey very seriously: to discover what fills me with wonder, and to write about it. Each morning for a year and a day my web calendar has asked me: “What shall you do differently today?”. The marvelous musical beep as this message arrived on my very smart phone has been quite satisfying, and some days more than challenging. Never the less, each day I did something different, small or large, and I have no doubt this set the stage for the very large leap I took some months back, moving several hundred miles and starting a new business. In one sense the project has been a failure: I have had little time to write of the wondrous things I have experienced. On the other hand, I have experienced some wondrous things…
We become immersed in habits and routines, we humans. Some because they are pleasurable, or important, but many, I think, because they are duty. Duty to earn one’s living, and all the other necessities of life. It has become very clear to me how deadening these routines can be – even if necessary. And partly because I am in a new place, I see that others, too, follow routines without really thinking about them. I suppose I would say, at the end of my year and a day, that I think very deeply about my daily personal choices, and how they shape me and my world. I think of it as a great gift, although perhaps I cultivated the conditions to receive the gift.
I should like to tell you about the most mundane of activities: eating a pomegranate last evening. A beautiful, lush, deep red, and perfectly ripe pomegranate which I quartered and proceeded to eat seed by delicious seed. I spent about an hour doing so, with every burst of sweet seed in my mouth feeling like the freshest of pleasures. I did nothing in that time but sit at the table and carefully pick apart the fruit and savour it. Mind, this was not preconceived – just my eagerness to eat the pomegranate, and my allowing, I suppose, the experience of wonder to be just that.
I can see you, my imaginary friend, cocking your head and willing to listen, though wondering if I shall go on about pomegranates much longer.
No, I shan’t. But I shall give thanks to the goddess for the gifts of the love of rain, of curiosity, and the wonder of pomegranates. But most of all, for finding that the end is only the beginning.
My Inner Green
Just shy of a year ago, I embarked on a project to change my world. To say I am amazed at the results thus far is a tad understated …I shall write more of my inner journey at a later date, but for today, I want to make a quick sketch for you of the place I find myself in.
I have moved from the lush and beautiful rain forest of Vancouver Island to the south Okanagan area of British Columbia, a place that is unique in its geographical aspects and climate, for it is considered semi-desert. The town is situated between two large lakes and surrounded by low mountains – although it is very different, it also is stunningly beautiful. Once surrounded by fruit orchards, many have now been transformed into vineyards and wineries. Hiking and biking opportunities abound, and one is never far from the water.
Gaaaaaack – this is beginning to sound like a tourist brochure…
In a way, that is apropos for there are many, many tourists that visit here: one and a half million per year is the last figure I saw quoted. I am sure you can appreciate that impact on a small city of just over thirty thousand people. Penticton draws its name from the Syilx First Nation (that name itself has a wonderful symbolic meaning, do look it up) who called it Sin-peen-tick-tin. The tourist brochures translate this as ‘a place to stay forever’, which seems to somewhat miss the point. Other, more subtle translations say ‘permanent place’ and variations – a place to linger, perhaps and to enjoy the world with fresh eyes and fresh spirit. It is undeniable that there is something here that calls deeply to the spirit.
I am certainly not a world traveler, although I have explored my own vast country in a way few others have – there are two other places that have called to my spirit so deeply and compellingly. What is this call? It could be ascribed to the beauties of nature, or various psychological constructs, or simply delights of exploring a new place, although I suspect it goes much deeper than that. I know my words are not adequate to the idea, but I believe the call is to some deep and primordial place in the human soul…
Eileen Delehanty Pearkes wrote this of my birthplace, a few hundred miles to the east of here, in a book called “The Inner Green”:
I knew I was standing not only at a drainage divide in a narrow valley along an abandoned rail line at the origin of a minor river called the Salmo, but also as a witness to one of the Earth’s central landscape functions: the movement of melted snow or rainwater into a welcoming, but distant ocean. Like a point on a gothic arch, this branch of the vast Columbia River watershed begins at a precise point, representing the apex of twin drainage systems that drop with great elegance and complexity from the mountains to the plateaus and then to the ocean. Unlike a gothic arch, this river locus had no pretences, no heavenly aspirations. It was on the ground, placed as such to remind me that authenticity has its source in the Earth, the personal terrain, the place of truth.
These words never fail to thrill me, to move me to that place of authenticity, the earth and the environs we are located in. One small town in western Canada is much like another, as we humans impose our cultural trends on the landscape. For those who look and seek, there will always be some deeper undercurrent of truth – the very formation and movement and regeneration of the land that births us.
I have moved from the mundane descriptive to the banal metaphysical – I rarely apologize for my words, though I must here – for as I said, my words are not equal to the task. Never the less, I find myself in a place where I wake each morning to the sure and certain rootedness of spirit that tells me I am just where I ought to be at this particular time. Where every aspect of the landscape calls to me to learn and explore. Where I feel, in the most physical embodiment of feeling with my whole body, connected and alive and cradled by a generous spirit. I shall endeavour to live up to this gift, my imaginary friend. Thanks for being here with me.
Me, and my imaginary friend 