The Grand Old Lollipop of Life

How long has it been since I announced my new home? Six days? Well--surprise! I'm moving somewhere else.

You will remember that I had some regrets about the new place, mixed in with the relief and happiness I felt at finally putting my search to rest. I was happy about the mountains, and the sky, and the light. I loved the people at Anavets, Beth especially, who runs the office, and Ruby, her boss, but even the residents seemed sweet to me. I was thrilled that I could have an animal, if I chose to. But the size of the place was yet smaller than my own, with no balcony or patio, no garden, and reduced privacy. I was ready to make that compromise, and knew I could be happy there, but I was sad to say goodbye to my plants and the ability to fling open my door and just be outside. (There is only a small window to open there, though there is a larger non-opening window.

Well, I was very unexpectedly offered an apartment at the place I have been going back to every two or three months, pestering the manager and over time discovering what a lovely woman she is. The new place is a small one bedroom, with lots of cupboard and closet space, more privacy, spacious kitchen and bathroom (compared to most you'll find in tiny apartments, that is), a patio, and my own private garden. It is run by an Italian organization and is reminiscent of the Roman villas, with a courtyard in the centre--but not a paved, desolate coutryard, a grassy, treed yard with a small gazebo for barbecues and vegetable plots for the residents. And it is joined to an extended care home so once we get too rickety to take care of ourselves, we can move next door and not be separated entirely from our homes once more.

Before I left Erminia, I gathered my courage and asked if there might be a place there where I could plant my magnolia, because I didn't want to leave it behind to be mowed over when the building comes down. She was very understanding that I might want to keep this friend nearby, and said we would try to fit it in outside my place, and if not, in the central yard!!!

I am astonished. Shocked and gobsmacked and shaken and thrilled. There is only one sad note: no pets. I hadn't decided that I would get an animal, but I had a very good cry as I contemplated never ever having one again. I am lucky that I get to walk Susan's dog, Juniper. And that I get a cuddle now and then from Joani's kitty, my nephew, Albert.

Life continues to amaze me. I cannot believe I have obtained such a beautiful home. There is artwork in the hallways! And I'm halfway to making my first friend there--Dee, the woman whose place I will be taking. She is moving down the hall to a larger, more mobility-impaired-friendly apartment.

It has been an exhausting, horribly frightening two years (minus a month) since I first learned our building had sold. I have hit the depths on more than one occasion as I considered the housing situation in Vancouver and how unlikely it would be that I would end up somewhere I really liked. But I held out, and now I have three apartments in my possession, two of which I am in the process of giving up. (THAT was one of the hardest phone calls I've ever made--to tell Beth at Anavets, the wonderful, welcoming woman who rented me that lovely tiny home, that although I haven't even entirely moved in yet, I'm moving out.)

They say you should count your blessings. I have been doing that a lot today. An unbelievable number of wonderful things are stuffed into my own little, shivery life. For that I give enormous thanks.

Dark/Light, Low/High, Change, Change, Change

One foot is in one world, the other is in the next. Maintaining balance in such a stance is a challenge and an awakening.

This week my friends and I moved a number of boxes from here, my home of three decades, to the new place in a seniors apartment block a few minutes away. Half of my room seems torn away, a gaping hole with a few bits of detritus left in it, and a whole lot of antique dust. The other half of the room, ignoring a few boxes and an unusual untidiness on surfaces, remains as normal. The quiet continues. The trees stand in lush leaf as before. It remains my home.

Not far away, another room is coalescing, shaping itself out of bare walls and empty cabinets. An oak sideboard, scouted out in New Westminster long ago with a friend beside me, and an upright dresser that belonged to my neighbours Grace and Bill in the last home I lost to developers, now conspire to create the first margin of my coming home, both comforting and disconcerting me. Boxes of dishes and doodads have been lifted from here--towers I squeezed past for days--and lie open there, awaiting my attentions. Most of my books are already there on shelves. I feel the urge to bring more home here. What is a room without its weight in books?

Here, I have been nurtured by darkness, living on the ground floor in the corner of an L-shaped structure, with only slivers of sunlight piercing the window at daybreak at certain times of year, not entering more than a few inches into the room. In summer, it is cooler here than anywhere else. In winter, the trees shed their leaves and the grey light moves close for several hours a day, mountains peeking out from between their ravelled branches.

I am close to earth here. I have planted the land outside my windows, and the smell of rain-wet soil brings pleasure on a dark winter day. I have spent many hours with cats in every corner of this yard, and met my neighbour skunks and raccoons and insects, and the flitting populations of birds that pass through this close embrace of dwelling and land. Sky has little to do with my home here. A tinge of gold on distant trees on special evenings, a glimpse of cloud if I crane my neck.

The new home is high. Highest. It is the top floor of the building--will I hear rain on the roof for the first time in years?--and earth is far below, and far off in the form of ball fields and mountains. Buildings, bridges, motorways dominate the view, with a busyness unremembered in my old place. Balconies and windows spread out below me, people busy on or next to them, men in hard-hats toil there every day. Above them the mountains hang, changing colour and distinctness with the shifting haze, and above them an ocean of sky, rippling with cloud or mist or stark with sunshine and Brandeis blue. There is a vastness of sky there. I will have no garden, no balcony, no little place outside to call my own.

There, the cotton wool of my urban woodland is torn away. The soft, familiar view is thrown wide to a frantic people and wild sky. Light floods in--still from the northern exposure, but bright, bright enough to light the farthest wall. When I sit on the loo with the door open, instead of a chair with books of poetry I look out at world and sky.

What will this shifting viewpoint do to me? Will I crawl out from under my cozy rock and hurl myself into the world? Will I draw the drapes and hide from the overstimulation all around? Will my writing change? Will my energy change? Who will I be when my environment is so transformed?

I am lucky. Lucky that I have found a home that appears safe and stable, that I can afford because of a government subsidy, that despite a loss of space and all that that implies, appeals to me. Lucky to have a building manager who likes me, and says so. Lucky to have neighbours who smile. Lucky to have friends who will carry boxes and furniture when I am in too much pain to do it. Lucky, so lucky, to have a friend who offered to pay an extra month's rent in my old home so I could move at a pace that lessens every kind of shock that leaving a well-loved home, leaving against my will, and packing and moving and figuring out and then being somewhere new can entail.

This way, I get slowly used to that foreign space. I make its acquaintance, make, perhaps, friends with it. I have time to see what I need to ask, get, change, what I can bring, what I must store, what I pass on. And time to move things over at a pace that allows me to unpack and integrate and order a bit at a time instead of landing with a crash in a tiny apartment filled to the ceiling with stuff.

I am lucky I get to stay almost in my neighbourhood--a short walk away--where I have friends, shopkeepers I am fond of, roots, my friend, roots.

Dark, light, low, high; change, change, change. With enough warning, two agonizing years, to have assimilated the worst of the shock, to know what I want and what I am willing to sacrifice, to be as ready as I can be for this turning in my life.

Where the changes take me, I do not know. Sad though I am, mad though I am, I am also happy, curious, ready--almost--to go.

That last look out at the yard will be a painful one. It has been my greatest solace through some awfully difficult times. But there is another vista waiting, with promises unrevealed.

Low. High. Dark. Light.

Change.

Change.

Change.





Image: "Bleeding Heart and Swordfern," Casey June Wolf (2018).

Homeward Bound

Well, my friends, it has happened at last, after nearly two years of panic and searching.

I got a place.

I feel compelled to tell you not to get too excited because of the deficits--less space, less privacy, no garden, no balcony, not allowed to feed my friends, the birds. I feel equally compelled to say I am hugely relieved, and feel hopeful that this can be a comfortable and happy home. The people seem lovely, the building is secure, clean, and well maintained (as is the yard), and I trust the organization that runs it. It's even almost in my old neighbourhood, so the wrench won't be so huge.

Thanks to the Army, Navy, and Air Force Veterans of Canada for building subsidized housing for aging folk.

Above is Beth, my new building manager, who is herself a breath of fresh air. Below is my (gasp) view.

Walk With Me, Thich Nhat Hanh

My friend Kelly and I finally got to see Walk With Me, the film about the monastic tradition of Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh that has been in the works for years. As a member of the larger sangha of the Plum Village tradition, having met with a small group of friends, new and old, for more than fifteen years, I have waited in happy anticipation for its release.

I was going to call it a documentary, but it is more than that. It isn't fiction. It is a meditative experience that exposes the viewer to some of the most graceful elements (and some amusing ones) of the life of nuns and monks in the Plum Village tradition, and those who come on retreat with them. There is a lot of silence. There are a lot of gentle bells. There are smiles and tears and yes, tiny motes of instruction to have it all make sense to the Western mind.

There are moments here and there where the deep, dulcet voice of Benedict Cumberbatch reads from Thich Nhat Hanh's book, Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals, 1962–1966. These journals were written at a time when he was in exile from his beloved country because of his peace activism. They are extraordinarily beautiful and profound reflections, and move like a thread of silver through the happenings, and nonhappenings, of the film.

I want to see it again. And I am grateful still more that I have the support and inspiration of this wonderful community.

If Walk With Me is not scheduled to appear in your town, suggest a venue to the organizers (you can find them on Facebook), or ask your local film festival or theatre to schedule some showings. In Vancouver, the film festival added several showings because the first ones all sold out. These ones are selling out, too. It is probably a good bet for your theatre.

A lotus for you, Buddhas to be!

Casey

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