The Long Road Leads to Joy

More than forty years ago I set off with two friends on a journey across a vast stretch of country. It wasn't the first time I'd taken a long trip paid for by thumb, nor was it quite the last. But something changed as a result of that particular voyage, as I suppose it did, in other ways, through all the others as well.

Before we left the small automotive city where we had met, three strangers from three different worlds who became good friends, I was caught in a directionless, rootless life. Shortly after we landed in Vancouver, the city I had longed to return to, I began to commit myself to life in a concrete way. I became an activist, volunteering for several years in feminist collectives, a rape crisis centre and a women's bookstore; I began doing Radical Therapy, where I learned about the social causes of personal troubles; I began digging deep into what the dynamics were among women and men, classes of people, and so on, that led to the great disparities in our lives and the monumental challenges in understanding and communicating that we faced. I grew more aware of my own limits and needs, and indeed my own limitations. I learned to receive and give support in new ways, to be more self-reflective, to believe in my goals.

Over time I got a little too serious. You won't often see me taking months out of my life to explore the world anymore. I have projects, I have illnesses, I have commitments. I don't remember the last time I just lay out in the sun and dreamed about the clouds. I am learning, though, more practical and better controlled ways to find rest and renewal. My Buddhist sangha is one part of that. I am embarking, right now, on a new leg of the journey, enrolling in a year long Complex Chronic Diseases Program at Women's Hospital. Whatever other projects I attempt to complete in the coming months, the centre is that program, the quest for greater health and energy through effort, rest, and increased understanding and support. This is a very cool thing.

There have been long, harsh periods on the road. Times of anguish, times of drought, times when I could not get a lift no matter how I tried. There have been times of rapt absorption, times of silliness, times of deep satisfaction, times of deep regret.

I am not old, but I feel old in many ways, because of my illnesses. I have no idea how long I will be treading the roads. Surely less time than I have already walked. My goal is only, as long it has been, to walk it well. To put one foot in front of the other with awareness and compassion--for myself, for those I meet along the way, from ants to elephants. Whatever I do, I do it, generally, invisibly. I am more comfortable that way. But just because I am not bouncing along beside you doesn't mean I don't know that you are there. You are my companions. We travel, and join, and separate, and change, and intersect again as life permits.

I have no idea if this is making sense. I have been in a fog of exhaustion for months. But I wanted to call out to you from my dwelling place on the path. To let you know I haven't forgotten you. To send you blessings as you wander your own long road.







Note: The Long Road Leads to Joy is the title of a book on walking meditation by Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.

Image: Casey and Rachel. Photo credit, Vera.

Done

Whoo. I try to post something roughly once a month here, but I have had my nose pressed so close to the grindstone that it's looking a lot blunter than before. For more than three months I worked away, day and night (well, day and evening) on a project I had to get done, tout de suite, and everything else took a back seat. Or a trunk. Or went spinning out the window on the breeze.

Now, it's done. There are a few small details left to sort out, and new projects have already begun (and old ones been resumed, and postponed Important Matters begun to be dealt with). But the weight has lifted off my shoulders in a tremendous way.

I love working. I love feeling a sense of purpose, pouring my heart and mind into something that seems important to me in some way, that will benefit someone, I hope, besides myself. (Though I'm happy if it benefits me, too.) But because my energy is so all-over-the-place, no matter how hard I try, it takes ages to get anything done, it wipes me out, it interferes with the things I need to do to keep healthy, and it worries me. That's the worst part—the worry.

But I almost don't care. I am grateful that I have some work of value in my life, even if it doesn't pay, even if it isn't what I hoped to do when I was young. I'm grateful that I have stayed with it long enough to have some skill. I'm grateful that it does have meaning for a few other people, too.

I've been sleeping ridiculously poorly lately. But I don't care. It screws my day up; I can only think a tiny bit and so get little work done. But I just feel so gall-darned pleased with everything. Even if I'm tired, even if I'm a little anxious, even if anything. I'm just glad to be alive.

“Searching for the Moon” by Casey June Wolf

on the first night of darkness

I searched the sky for her

my thoughts

noisy as the river in spring

on the second night

the finch betrayed her presence

busy in the moon’s thin glimmer

with unexpected song

on the third

with my own eyes I saw her

knelt to earth in welcome

and delight

as she grew   so I grew

at the moment of

her greatest girth

a herd of sharp-tined stars

traversed the sky

the waters in the river’s bed

spurred on by the moon

swelled to overflowing

I danced in glad elation

in her white woodlet

thanks to you

moon of strength and stillness

thanks to the reeling waters

whose blessings churn and rise

Image: “My first shot with my new Canon 350D, a solitary leaf hanging in the cold winder sky. Shot in Melbourne, Australia,” by Lachlan Donald from Melbourne, Australia (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

What is the kindest thing you ever did for an animal?

A few months ago my nephew Isidore finally wore me down by sending links to interesting things on Quora, a site I have mentioned here before (methinks), where questions are asked, answered, and bandied about. I could no longer resist at a certain point, and signed up so I could answer a question. I have myself only asked a few, and I discovered today that one that I did ask several months ago has about a dozen answers, some of which are very moving, and all of which are touching in the way they reveal each author.

In reading through the answers which for some reason I just discovered I had not been notified of, I was inspired to write another, edgier question. (Which just got it's first answer, I notice.):

What is a time when you did not act to help an animal and have always regretted it, and what were the circumstances that made you hold back? Would you act differently now?

Used correctly, this site can be a great way to affirm my sense of the goodness of humans, and my part in it all. (Used incorrectly, well...you know.)

Here are the answers so far; the link, in case you want to add a reply or see if there are any more comments, is above with the original question. I would love to hear what you have to say.

12 Answers

Gillian Schifreen

Answered Jun 27

Originally Answered: What's the kindest thing you've done for an animal?

Well probably the craziest. I was on my first day as a sales manager for a blue chip company. Cream designer suit, high heels the lot. The day went well and it just happened to be the GM's 50th birthday and we were all invited out to a nice restaurant that evening. So I'm heading home on the A1M motorway outside Newcastle upon Tyne, during rush hour so luckily not going too fast, when I see a dog stuck in the central reservation. So I'm in the outside lane and I stop dead - about 100yds past him at this point. Leap out of the car in my tottery heals and race back up the fast lane as fast as I can. Lean over the barrier, picked up the dog who wasn't much smaller that a lab and stagger back to the car trying to ignore the carnage I was creating behind. A lorry driver wound his window down and asked if he was mine, barely able to breathe carrying this heavy lump I yell, "Of course he isn't bloody mine, mine wouldn't be in the middle of the bloody motorway!!!" I was in my brand new company car and he was bleeding. Nothing major thankfully, he just had a few cuts, scrapes and bruises. No way could I put him on the seat. So off came the already bloody and stained brand new cream jacket and I laid that out for him to lie on. Got him straight to the local RSPCA clinic where they took over.
A couple of hours later, cleaned up, suitably groomed I waltz into the restaurant. Everyone looks up. It appears the traffic cameras had caught the whole episode and it was on the local evening news. To be honest until the day I left the job that was never forgotten and I was always considered to be the mad one. Good news is, he was never claimed but found a lovely new family.

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Casey Wolf

How wonderful! Good for you in every way! (And not in the least crazy, by my lights.)

 

Eon McLeary, Filmmaker (2008-present)

Answered Jul 2

Originally Answered: What's the kindest thing you've done for an animal?

I used to live in Topanga Canyon, which some people have referred to as the bohemian district of Malibu, CA. It’s straight wilderness — lizards, horses, owls, coyotes, mountain lions, hippies, etc… At any rate, I was walking up to my car and my girlfriend noticed a hummingbird laying in the driveway.

Glum Facts and the Power of Song

As you may know I have been contending with a few glum facts lately, in amongst the riches of life. The struggle to find new and welcome housing, a few private matters that are weighing me down, and now the love of my life, our community garden, is being torn up to make modular housing for homeless folk. The city says they will relocate us, to which I muse, why not put the modular housing in this new location and leave us be? You can't really "move" a garden. You can destroy one and start another, but the soil carefully tended takes a big step backward, and the soil they supplied last time was riddled with horsetail spores. But all that could be handled--who am I to begrudge the homeless?--except for one abiding concern. If they move it away from the Skytrain station, I may not have easy enough access to carry on there. So again we wait, this time for the eventual announcement of our garden's fate. In the meantime, I am mourning another loss.

However.

I have also been trying to inject a little singing into my days, the last few months. When I am away or horribly forgetful or horribly busy, that ends up just being me tweedly-dumming through the day. When I am home and see my "SING!" notecard on the counter while busying myself with other things, I run through a bunch of vocal exercises and when I really get it together, like today and yesterday, I pull out my big black binder of Irish songs and run through a few.

Today was "M" and "O". I admit there are still a lot of songs in the binder that I haven't learned (but with the internet I have more hope of finding their tunes), and too many more whose melodies I have forgotten, in the long interregnum between the days of yore when I learned and sang songs galore, enjoying them at Irish music sessions with the likes of Ken Howard and Michael Dooley, and the days of now, when I almost lost my ability to sing. I have missed that music-making very much.

So what good does it do to limber your vocal chords up and sing a few tunes on your own in your room? Isn't that a little pathetic? Isn't music made to be shared? Look at all those eager folk on Britain's Got Talent. To them, singing at home is only the beginning. For me, it may be an end in itself.

When I take an hour, or half an hour even, out of my day and offer it up to song, I feel as though I have repatriated myself in the country of my heart. My body, inside and out, is completely involved, with the workout of breath, posture, and so much more. My emotions are engaged. I strive to do the best I can vocally but also to feel the song in its fullness. The result of all of this is a wakening from at least some of the weight and dullness that come with constant worry and self-criticism, coming back from fear and regret to a complete moment in which the song and myself are the only things in the world--and that is joy.

So delight with me in the full throated strains of another dedicant of the gods of music. And then, taking his inspiration for your own, open your heart and sing.

Image: 'Rufous-naped Lark, Mirafra africana at Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa' by Derek Keats from Johannesburg, South Africa [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Video: English: "Singing seriema (Cariama cristata) at Areia city, from Brazil's northeast state Paraiba (PB).

Português: Seriema (Cariama cristata) cantando em Areia, cidade da Paraíba, Brasil" by Rhalah. Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Is There a (Happy and Rested) Doctor in the House?

Do you ever worry about your doctor's health? If indeed you have a doctor? I have to confess that I only occasionally remember to wonder if my doctor is doing okay. I am much more likely to be thinking in terms of whether she is available to me, competent, perceptive, on top of things concerning my health, friendly and considerate and compassionate when I need her to be. As someone who spends a lot of her time thinking about how my friends are doing, and offering support when I am able, it is disappointing to realize how one-sided my thoughts are concerning someone who I have known and liked for quite a few years. We do express affection for each other, and when she was brutally assaulted a number of years ago I was sensitive to her distress for months afterward. But then I fell back into being the baby in the relationship.

Now that it is stirred up in my mind, though, I can't help stringing together all the moments I have stopped and wondered how a doctor friend of mine manages his or her enormous and taxing workload, or been horrified to hear the hours that ER doctors work, heard about increasing restrictions on the amount of time allowed per consultation, and so on. It adds up to a lot of moments over a bunch of years. Doctors in this country are suffering, and I have been mostly oblivious to it.

What stirred these thoughts up was an episode that aired this week on White Coat, Black Art, on CBC: Doctor Burnout. It begins with a recording of a doctor freaking out at a patient who has made a demand on him that he is in no shape to respond to. It was a wakeup call for me.

At one time in Canada we felt pretty smug about our health care system, especially when (imagine us fluffing our feathers here) we compared ours to the system available in the United States. We meanwhile streamed in and out of our doctors' offices and hospitals concerned only with how well we were treated and how good the food was, and, of course, whether we got better. I speak only of those I knew. Doubtless there were holes in the system even in the good old days, but those holes got bigger and bigger over the decades, and in time there was a constant flow of talk about the myriad problems we now face, from increasing costs (both to society and to the individual), loooong waitlists, a rising two-tiered health care system, and suddenly (or perhaps not so suddenly), the near-impossibility of getting a GP (family doctor). Our cries of "Unfair!" resounded, and I was not alone in looking with fear at the disintegration of that once envied system, hoping it would not crash at last into a mimic of the US system, sure that this was the direction certain forces were trying to make it go.

In the midst of all of that, I for one felt disappointed and at times angry with my continually disappearing GPs, leaving me in sometimes a very difficult position, with a grouchiness that arose not only in some physicians but in the nurses, receptionists, and other practitioners that people the health care sytem, with overlooked health conditions (even when I pleaded with them to take care of them--I am thinking particularly but not only about the cancer that went undiagnosed for nearly a year despite my repeated requests to have the lump removed)... But only occasionally did the fog of my (reasonable) self-interest clear enough for me to see how the people in that system were suffering.

I particularly remember being helpless in a hospital bed when a certain nurse was cutting and abrupt with both myself and another patient. It was only later that she said to me--I suppose I must have called her on it in a gentle way--that she cared a lot and was in a fractious state because she couldn't do what needed to be done for patients and was exhausted. So her distress that arose from compassion resulted in her acting uncompassionately. A lightbulb went on, then fizzled out again when I got back to normal life.

There are a million reasons why we need to shore up our ailing health care system. The suffering of the people whose job it is to deliver it is one huge reason. Even if that suffering didn't result in mistakes and bad bedside manner, it would be reason enough to put things right. We wouldn't want to live stretched past the limit ourselves. Why would we expect it of them?

Below are links to the radio program I listened to and to an excellent article on the topic I was pointed to by a doctor friend of mine. The article, from a US newspaper, points out that 300-400 doctors (presumably in the States) kill themselves every year, and that doctors are at double the risk of other professionals to take that terrible step. Women physicians are especially vulnerable.

So, I am glad that I start every appointment with my doctor with the question, "How have you been?" and that I get to actually hear from her how she is. Now I hope I will be more forgiving when she is impatient with me (as she has been perhaps twice in the decade or so I've known her), and that I will remember that she is doing the best she can in an imperfect system. And, by and large, doing it very well.

Doctor Burnout, CBC Radio One, White Coat, Black Art, with Doctor Brian Goldman. 11 November 2017.
Taking Care of the Physician, by Perri Klass MD. The New York Times, 13 November 2017.





Image: "Daydreams of a Doctor" by Columbus Barlow (1898) (14778458162). By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons

Putting the Garden to Bed; Waking up to Community

What a blissful yield from today's community garden workday, the last of the year.

I weeded, wheelbarrowed, and wandered around (sorry--needed a third W). I signed up for several jobs, most of which I have already been doing (minding the lupines and blueberries, for two, but also helping paint some doohickey). Of course, there was also the occasional chat with friendly folk, some of whom after (four?) years are familiar, one of whom (Clélie!) is a dear friend.

A couple of hours later, I got to work on my own garden. Harvested all the beans and tomatoes and leeks, (inherited some carrots and tomatoes from other beds), pulled up old veg of various sorts, and then added back a lot of material to the beds so they can snooze all snug and happy.

After a few errands I got home and contented myself with shelling a LOT of scarlet runner beans and white pole beans—I even found a few young enough to munch down while I was working. It looks like I can supply much of the garden with bean seeds next year. (Hint, though you wouldn't want to do it with some seeds, beans can be frozen and used in the spring.)

As always, even when I am in pain and tired and reluctant to go, it was very rewarding being in the garden. Particularly with the uncertainty around my housing, having this one piece of "home" that I don't expect to part with soon is very comforting, and as I lose my neighbours one by one (or two or three at a time, in some cases), these garden neighbours grow in importance. I have a keen need to have stability in my community. Sharing the work and pleasure of growing food is an amazing way to nurture that.

I left my writers group this year, one I have enjoyed being a part of for many years. The leader, Eileen, my dear friend and the reason I joined it in the first place, was retiring, but also it was getting to be too much to get out to Port Moody once a week, plus do all the prep for it with the diligence I demand.

Apparently, though, I have found a new activity to replace that. A call for new board members at the garden came out and I found myself thinking I might actually like to do that. (Normally I run like the wind.) It would be a concrete service to the garden, and an opportunity to become more invested in it and to know some of the other gardeners better. After a few preliminary questions, I decided to join up, if they will accept me with my various limitations. I am feeling quite happy about that, about stepping out into the world a little in a realm that gives me great joy. Also feeling happy about my beans.

One weird thing: my potatoes have disappeared. Only found one little one, and all the the leaves and stems were gone. Odd and disappointing. But hey. I have bundles of garlic, trays of beans, and all manner of lovely things. Maybe next year I will get to keep my potatoes, too.


Image snitched from Still Creek Community Garden Facebook Page.