The Crown of Light

I apparently think it's enough to have a favourite tree

            in High Park

to stop and admire it whenever I pass,

            recognizing its seasonal changes.

That'll suffice, I seem to think,

            as my (urban) connection to the natural world.

 

And thus I miss almost every time

the crown of light that blesses

            the most ordinary tree top,

the neighbourhood hawk making its rounds,

the gradual leaf change from green

            to very bright red.

 

I need to rethink.

One favourite tree, no matter how graceful,

is just the tip of the iceberg.

I could be watching the light,

could be lifting my eyes to the mystery of clouds.

 

I will myself to be a lover of all light's gifts.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2024 Ann Tudor
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The Superhuman Achievement of Keeping On

People have written about the middle-of-the-night black thoughts—those times when your mind reviews the past but with an emphasis on every embarrassing, or wrong, or morally dubious, or inexcusably naïve thing you ever did. That idea resonates with me because it's exactly what my own mind does. I am grateful that I follow this course only in the middle of the night, those nights when I wake at 2 and never go back to sleep. If I relived those shameful events in daylight hours, I'd go mad.

 

Like everyone, I am surrounded by people and families in trouble. I carry with me right now four dear friends who are struggling with health. That doesn't include the dozens of additional friends and family who have different sorts of difficulties. And it doesn't include troubled nations.

 

Why, if I allowed myself to think this way, I might have to conclude that suffering is the human condition. Surely not. Just see us cobble together moments that feel pleasant or that bring us comfort. See us snatch pings of joy from the cacophony of the daily bombardment. See us reach for happiness. We are human. We are wresting a liveable life from often unfriendly, inauspicious raw materials.

 

We carry on, following the carrot held in front of us even while we are thumped with the stick. So now comes the hard part. The real test is this: when we seize those moments/years of pleasure or comfort, we must be sure that we don't achieve our happiness at the expense of others. If our happiness is gained by grinding others into the dust, then we don't deserve it and it should not last.

 

I'm reminded here of the recent interest in connecting Jane Austen's fictional families with the slave-based sugar plantations in the West Indies. This revelation has changed everything.

 

And see how I have swerved dramatically from the personal (the you and I of this story) into the political (the "they", who are, of course, us).

 

I'm sorry. You are sorry. He, she, or it is sorry. Are THEY sorry? It's safe to say that this essay is unravelling, tugged by the wayward and undisciplined opinions of my id. And when I get into my metaphoric id, you know I'm in trouble. Go back to the concrete.

 

Concrete? Bad choice. That whole industry is Mafia-run.

 

Something material. Oh yes. Domestic bliss. That'll be a safe direction. I'm looking at the narrow shelf above the sewing table. On it are two bottles of ink (one of them India ink), a jar of lavender buds should I ever want to make a couple of sachets, and a plastic container of eighteen tubes of glitter to be used in crafts. Do any of these items contribute to domestic bliss? Well, of course they do, or I wouldn't keep them, right?

 

 

 

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Being Convinced

Be wary! Be very careful.

The streets and the hills 

teem with people trying to convince you.

Pick me, they say.

Pick my product. Follow my creed.

Follow me!

 

Well, don't do it, honey.

Hucksters proliferate

and their prosperity depends on

their ability to convince you.

Stay firm.

Your own path will appear in time.

Wait for the teachers who have nothing

to prove, nothing to sell.

Wait for the real deal.

Watch for signs.

Watch for light.

And in the meantime,

do your work.

Connect by the everlasting light

that appears (never twice the same) every day

in the portals of your safe house.

Do not respond to snake-oil salesmen.

They do not have your best interests at heart.

 

 

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Equilibrium

Equilibrium

 

If you work on balancing your physical body,

holding it in space without tipping to one side

or the other,

or standing on a single strong foot, ankle steady—

if you achieve this goal

(which may be unattainable)

will you then also have gained

the equilibrium sought through decades?

Will you than automatically know wise from foolish,

good from bad,

right from wrong—

in short, will you have found the state of grace

held out as a reward?

On the off chance that the one will lead to the other,

keep working at those exercises:

Stand on one foot.

Close your eyes.

Balance. Balance.

Don't fall.

 

 

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Not What You Were

You are not what you were.

That inchoate yearning embryonic entity

who presented herself as full and finished?

Not that at all or ever again.

But this emergent hesitant pillar striving for the authentic in all ways.

 

You are not what you were—

younger than springtime and greener than grass—

but what you are now:

more compassionate,

more aware of others' misery,

more capable of holding life

            in your own two hands,

more aware,

more aware,

more here, more present.

 

Release who you were into the past where she belongs

and revel in the current you,

who is present

and is a present to reward your efforts.

 

 

 

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Choosing

It's a choice, she says.

It's a deliberate opting for this

and not that.

 

Let me be specific and name the choices:

joy, life, curiosity.

On the other side is the easier,

more familiar, option:

the complaining dullard oppressed

by anything new.

 

Choices, choices.

Which will serve best?

Someone wrote:

Life is an adventure, not a catastrophe

(actually, I think they said "predicament",

not catastrophe).

Can you try to remember that, please?

Tattoo it on your forehead, perhaps.

And remember also that change is the only constant.

Who you once were is not who you are.

You were formed by past experiences

(oh woe is me alas, alack)

but

you are not still that person.

Choose well.

Greet the day with the explosion of happiness

that it deserves.

 

 

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Paradise

First find your Paradise

and then (phase 2) absorb it.

Incorporate it until it infuses your tissues and organs. This way you will have it with you for good and all.

 

Empty the blessings and graces of your Paradise

from time to time,

at odd moments of your long life.

Take stock of its beauty and gifts.

If possible, consider sharing

some little bits of your Paradise

with those who are lacking.

Don't hesitate or be a critic.

Act on your first impulse

and trust that all will be well.

Like the storytale's pot of porridge,

your shared Paradise

will be miraculously replenished.

And this will happen again and again.

 

 

 

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How Doth the Busy Little Bee

If it's not about this, then it's about that. Or, as someone once said, what if the hokey-pokey IS what it's all about? That gives us pause, doesn't it? And if we have paws does that make us cats? Or dogs? Or any of the other four-footed animals with whom we share the earth (though "share" isn't exactly the word, is it? Not a lot of sharing goes on once Man gets into the picture).

 

Another creature to consider: how doth the busy little bee improve each shining hour! Yet another aphoristic nineteenth century writer telling us how to live. And boy! Have we taken that one to heart. I was reminded of it this morning as I sat on my big red ball (for repeated bouncing and tiny movement and good posture) and as I waited for my creaky old computer to respond to my clicks I did spinal twists—to the left, to the right—to loosen up my own creaky bones. Never waste a minute. Shoulder shrugs, slow head turns to one side then the other drawing on the instructions from teachers past and present: yoga, Continuum, the osteopath, the massage therapist. For someone who hates being told what to do or how to do it, I certainly have put myself in the path of a lot of teachers.

 

So here I am, improving each shining hour to the best of my ability. The reason? Because I can? Because I should? (Whoa! There's the forbidden word.)

 

Let's move on. Many thanks. Thanks for righting me at each stumble and before I land on the concrete. Thanks for letting me live this long because in terms of learning we all know I got off to a very slow start. I needed those extra years just to get me up to the level of the playing field. Thanks for DinoVino in my life. His miraculous appearance at exactly the right time brought me to Canada, to a world of healers, sounding, teachers. And to the Moving Pen phenomenon, without which I would have continued to refuse to write, my innate laziness (or my incorrigible nay-saying stubbornness) overcoming any ability I might have had. Even now, it's true that I would rather read than write. But Moving Pen kept my toes to the fire, pushed and prodded me (in the very nicest way) and brought out my inner Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Wish I could say my inner Pemo Chodron, but I'd have to be someone else entirely for that one.

 

I was in the midst of thank-yous, wasn't I? My three children and five grandchildren. Watching them go through life's vicissitudes (that's the ups as well as the downs) has taught me a lot about when to let go and how to support. They fill me sometimes with pride for who they have become, regardless of whether I can take any credit for that. I revel in their accomplishments but also in their failures and their own learning.

 

Eileen, my sainted Irish mother, had a vision (or seemed to have a vision, as I look back on it) that our family was uniquely blessed. Exceptionalism, we might call it today. She seemed to feel that nothing bad would ever happen to any of us. It was a limited view, and luckily she was wrong. We are all of us simply human, subject to life's blows and rewards. That's as it should be.

 

 

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Making Mistakes

The way to make all possible mistakes

is to live at full force,

running before the wind, at full sail,

screaming with excitement and delight.

And just a bit of fright.

 

This is one approach to the business of life.

Many people swear by this wild way.

Many others favour it but don't follow it

(from fear, perhaps).

 

Me?

My path is different--

committed to repose and reflection

rather than that full force business.

A path with greater emphasis on breath and silence

than on poking the old adrenal glands.

Let others live for excess.

I delight in the minimum.

 

 

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In the Meantime

In the meantime,

try to stay alive,

even if that seems

1) too painful

2) pointless

3) insert your own excuse here.

 

How do you do it?

Set aside the "why" for a while.

A poets recommend

that you feel yourself and thus

hold a conversation with yourself

and indeed!

there (here) you are, as alive as ever,

still independent yet still

dependent on the kindness

that infuses it all,

a reminder of the oneness you keep seeking.

 

I have a friend who knows oneness

from long-ago trips

that burned the truth into her soul

and that truth

is what keeps her going

even as light fades.

 

In the meantime

let's remember who we are by touching.

And touching.

 

 

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Clinging to Routine

As one dedicated to routine (we won't go into the reasons here), I feel I am singularly qualified to write about "clinging to a habit", for I cling to all of mine. I've convinced myself that without my habits I wouldn't be able to make it through a day. I admire the Dalai Lama for many obvious reasons but especially because I read once that you can take him anywhere, set him down in any rough or smooth place, and he will still be his true self.

 

Me? Take me anywhere away from my accustomed lair and I am disoriented. There are so many elements to my morning and evening routines, applying unguents and rubs and creams and foams and drops, that I can't manage them in any setting other than my own, familiar space.

 

And then after the applications the routine continues: In the morning version of it, I dress. I go to the computer room and turn on The Beast, whose age and loss of speed send the grandchildren into hysterical laughter. While it warms up I bounce on the Rebounder: 100 bounces is just the right length of time for the computer to come alive. Then I step off the Rebounder (carefully) and push the button to open my email, which arrives in another 100 bounces. At that point I read whatever email has come in overnight.

 

I allow thirty minutes or so for meditation, breathing, Swimming Dragon, and other methods of calming the self and opening to What Is.

 

And then to breakfast: put water on for DinoVino's coffee. Oh, even taking the time to write down the routine is boring. Can you imagine how boring it is to live through it? Every single morning?

 

Several months ago I was telling DinoVino how very much I love three-day weekends. Even though I don't have a "job", there's something about that extra day "off work", the Monday when nothing happens, that fills me with a sense of possibility. He, in his wisdom, said, "There's no reason you couldn't make every weekend a three-day weekend." Out of the mouths of husbands . . . !

 

So I have rearranged my schedule to leave all my Mondays totally free and I think of each one as a holiday. Already I feel liberated.

 

This is exciting. A routine, yes, but a changed routine. A NEW routine, though that sounds like an oxymoron. What will its long-term effect be? Will it give me renewed interest in life? Will it stem the passage of days that inevitably lead to more and greater age?

 

Now we're coming to the point. What does it mean, as I move through this year on my way to yet another December birthday? Talk about change. Gone are the lightness and humour and perspective I had at 70, when I wrote Hesitating at the Gate. We're no longer in Kansas, Toto. But where are we? Where are we going? What's the best way to get there? Well, Toto, I think it's all about attitude. Keep that in mind as you encounter the adventures of the Yellow Brick Road on your way to pull back the curtain and unmask the Wizard.

 

 

 

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Pitch

Let's all just pitch in and come up with various definitions of "pitch."  Tar (black as pitch), of course. The baseball season consists of one pitch after another; good pitching trumps good hitting. And at our house, we throw out unwanted things, pitching them toward new homes. Finally, but not definitively, pitch is what you do with an idea that you are trying to sell to an editor or a producer. You pitch your outline in order to snag the contract.

 

And then there's musical pitch, some of it even perfect. I once heard a musician refer to a slightly out-of-tune performance as "a bit pitchy". Our family, collectively, has prided itself on having a good sense of pitch; that is, we can sing on key and can tell when someone else's pitch is off. Well, pride goeth, as we know, before a fall. Some years ago, when there were still three of us, my sisters and I were joking around in a recording studio (don't ask) and sang our version of "Daddy's Little Girl", the only trio we have left in our repertoire. By the end, we were congratulating ourselves on the mellowness of our three similar voices—and then the recording engineer began the playback. We were painfully out of tune. We doubled over with laughter (and humiliation) and never again tried to record a sisters' trio.

 

Recently the Globe & Mail used "pitch" ambiguously in a headline. Did the group in question promote the idea or throw the idea away? Unfortunately, I didn't bother to read the story, having been put off by the confusing head, so I still can't answer. But the moral is: don't use "pitch" in  a headline unless you're talking about baseball.

 

 

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Words in the World

Beware the word, more powerful than we think—

than a locomotive, even,

though who but Superman, these days,

is compared to locomotives?

 

Can words sway the world

as once they could?

Written words held strength,

moved mountains,

destroyed empires.

 

Now? Now, not so much.

 

How do we reclaim the soul and body

of our world?

Return to words, poets implore.

Bring back the word,

the listeners, the readers,

the lovers of life.

Will that suffice?

 

Pluto invites us to visit him

in the Underworld.

Now there's a world that still knows

the value of words,

spoken or unspoken,

symbolic to a fare-thee-well.

Let us hie ourselves Nether-ward

and attend to the disquieting words

of his darkness.

 

 

 

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The Roar of the Press

A lucky person might be born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Or a wooden spoon to stir up trouble (I made that one up). Some are said to have printer's ink in their blood. Some have blue blood.

 

Myself, I was born to a sound. I didn't hear it immediately upon being born. Christmas Day in 1936 was on a Friday (oh, Google, you never fail me). So from Friday until the following Tuesday, I lived my tiny life in peace and quiet. We lived at the time in the apartment above the Delphi Citizen office. The apartment was long and narrow, running from its front on Franklin Street all the way back to the alley that divided the block. We lived there, my brother who was exactly two and a half on the day I was born, and my two parents, until I was just under a year, when we moved to the first of our two houses on the hill.

 

The defining feature of living "above the office" was the printing press. I don't know whether you've ever seen (or heard) a real newspaper printing press. It has the footprint of, say, a small room and is about ten feet tall. The operator (for ours, at least, needed an operator at every moment) sat at the very top in order to separate and flick the giant sheets of newsprint so they didn't jam as they slipped between the rollers.

 

But what I'm getting to is the sound of my life. The press roars. It roars endlessly as it prints its papers. In my case it roared all Tuesday afternoon every week, for the first run of the paper, and then all day Wednesday (the second run)—an unmistakable, inescapable rhythm that deafened everyone in the backroom. Or, in my case, anyone lying in a crib directly above the press.

 

I have to wonder what that new baby—after five days of quiet—felt when the press started up on that first Tuesday. Did my mind conjure up lions from a previous existence? Did I imagine terrifying beasts? Earthquakes? Or was I simply overwhelmed? Did I learn to sleep through it?

 

A family story: I was a "difficult" baby who cried when she was put to bed at night. So Eileen and Myron would take little toddler Dinty and go for a long family walk, leaving me to cry myself to sleep.

 

Did the noise of the press in my earliest days so disturb my sleep that I then became a "difficult" baby?

 

 

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Aging Eyes

Once you reach a certain stage in your life you will find that age overtakes you at a surprising pace. For me, that stage was reaching 80. At first I imagined that the inevitable "aging" bit would proceed at its usual moderate speed. You might be different from me, but I wouldn't, if I were you, count on the same leisurely pace between this decade and the next (unforeseeable) one.

 

We were talking about eyes recently, with things like dry eye, cataracts, glaucoma awaiting us. But those are relatively superficial and/or fixable issues. The problem that will really affect you is speed—or lack of it. The mechanism that controls light will slow down. The automatic adjustment from the bright sunlight of a summer day to the cavernous dark of, say, a subway station no longer happens immediately. Oh, it will happen. Your eyes will adjust. But you might want to remove yourself from the subway hordes for a few minutes until you are no longer blind. Just stand still off to the side, and let your eyes gradually change. There's no way to improve this condition.

 

Along the same lines is the slowing of focus-change. Look at the paper in front of you. Now look out the window. Look at your hands chopping an onion. Now look up to find the appropriate pan hanging from the rack. The change in focus, which used to be split-second fast, now takes a second or two, and you really can't re-find the original speed that has been with you your whole life. Like so much else, the muscles of your eyes simply move more slowly now.

 

An eye function that seems to have disappeared forever is depth perception. You probably won't have realized, in your younger years, how much of your movement depends on a reliable depth perception. Now, walking on uneven ground is treacherous. How high is that bit of flagstone?  How deep is that pothole? How far down is it from the curb to the street?

 

In anticipation of this being your own new reality, I'm urging you to develop some patience with "older folk" who hold up your progress with their doddering. Their annoying tortoise-speed might stem from a mobility issue, but it's even more likely to be an eye problem, as they gingerly tread the paths of the park—or of life. Patience, please.

 

These conditions aren't life-threatening exactly, except when they lead to a misstep or a fall. But they change you from the confidently striding youngster you are today to a more cautious, more tentative person you will find it hard to recognise as yourself. This will be your NEW self. Which is to say, your old, aging self.

 

 

 

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A Summer Dream

This year for sure we'll make use of summer.

Winter—those ten (well, at least nine) months

            of early darkness and endless cold—

conditions us to be indoors.

In the summer we sit outside on our rustic deck

to eat an evening meal

but, having eaten,

we allow ourselves to be driven—

by uncomfortable chairs, mosquitoes, humidity—

back into the familiarity of the house.

 

Those illumined hours of a summer evening

are wasted, night after night—

and finally I say enough!

This is the year to brave the fears and discomforts.

This is the year to stay on the deck yet another hour

after the disappearance of our local robin

who forages for worms at the same time every evening

in the green patch of lawn beyond our fence.

 

 

 

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Chasing the Unknown

Pema Chodron has written a series of essays called "Comfortable with Uncertainty". She may be. But for the rest of us, that title is aspirational at best. Uncertainty is our bugaboo, our bogeyman. No matter how many Buddhist pundits we read, no matter how we admire the concept in principle, we still go in search of that one final thing to cement our certainty once and for all, disregarding the fact that cementing anything leads only to rigidity—and we all know that the tree that bends with the wind survives while the tree that rigidly resists the wind will be toppled to extinction.

 

So there we are, looking for the security of the known, little suspecting that it's the unknown that will complete us and actually save us. And again we are holding two conflicting ideas in our capacious minds. They cancel each     other out and leave us, as always, hoping that one more refinement, one more purchase, will bring us finally to the security that will make us safe forever. Delusion.

 

 

 

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Just for the Fun of It

The animals that are not human know

(or seem to know, for what do I know?)

how to move and live for the fun of it.

When I think of the mountain goat

scaling the peaks with abandon,

I suppose he's hunting for food,

but between bites he gambols.

Just for the fun of it.

 

Billy Collins pictures whales

crisscrossing the ocean trails

because they can.

I imagine waving my broad

and majestic tail

to propel a giant body

across the vasty deep

and I can put myself there

in the same way I can become the trees.

 

In that spirit I glory

in the flittings and flyings

of the teenage jays that cavort in the evening

outside our upstairs window.

Just for the fun of it.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2024 Ann Tudor
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Declining

Introduction: I decline to decline these nouns because attempting to do so would make more obvious the decline of my cognitive functions.

 

It began when I turned 80. Until then—until that very day—I had been about 60 in my mind. But those two little digits suddenly turned my attention from my present and past toward my future which, for the first time in my life, had limits. It's hard to believe, but until that moment I had given zero attention to the inevitability of personal extinction—aka death. Like, ME. Me. I was going to die some time in the foreseeable future. Ninety seemed like an ending date, and that was only ten years away. Ten years to get my affairs in order (a bit of a joke, that is). I'm not a bucket-list type of person, so I didn't start making notes about projects or trips. No, I just thought: someday soon this will end.

 

Now, I say this began at 80, which it did. But let me tell you, turning 85 is what revved up the process. 85! Only five years left until 90. Maybe I should revise that ultimate date. Move it to 92, 95—and look! The obits these days feature dozens of deaths at 102, 105, 107. So with that realization, surely I can begin to relax: there's no rush.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2024 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

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Hesitant Light

May the light shine boldly.

Let's have nothing hesitant about our light.

We slow our step, our sight, our very minds,

allowing the best and most of light

to enliven us with its glow.

The glow, the shine, the brilliant sparks

will open into our dark places

and by penetrating the penumbra

lead us to a new level of understanding

that goes beyond the mind and

instead

incorporates the slow body.

We need that light to show us slow.

 

 

Copyright © 2024 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

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A Winter Rant

First of all, let's discuss the weather and its ramifications. Without even acknowledging a recent snowfall of fluffy white flakes that could be whisked away with one sweep of the broom—without even taking this into consideration I am left with a sufficient number of weather instances to keep me going for a while.

 

Because of the specific timing of the various freezes, thaws, rains, ice storms, and snowfalls during January and February, the condition of the roads and sidewalks varies from block to block in the city. Did the homeowner fail to shovel snow the day before the ice storm crusted it over and then the freeze hardened it into slick stone? Did the carefully shoveled snow begin to melt from its pile and leak water onto the walkways so it could freeze into invisible glass (even less visible if it was then covered with a thin layer of the fluffy white)?

 

I was out and walking yesterday for the first time in five days. I have discovered in myself an ability to curse. Not your standard "blankety-blank" kind of curse but the kind uttered by real witches, as in "A pox upon your house through the third generation of sons"—that kind of curse. I walk along a block of beautifully cleared sidewalks, striding and breathing deeply of the crisp, cold air of the season. And then, with no warning, I come across a house with a corner lot, and there were 50 linear feet of ice. Solid, four-inch thick ice from curb up to the edge of the house itself. Can't go around it. Can't go under it. I have to go through it. My stride shortens to the baby steps of a two-year-old encountering his first ice rink. For me it isn't the first time, more's the pity. It's a familiar, terrifying situation of potential fractures and concussions (among my close friends during this time were a broken fibula and a broken hip). And once I'm past this uncaring household's frontage and back onto solid concrete, I turn to the offending house, raise my arms as if I were truly an avenging angel, and hurl my curse: A pox upon . . . etc.

 

I doubt that it will be effective, since I haven't really honed my black arts skills. But such is my anger.

 

Being fair-minded, I look for mitigating circumstances: the homeowners are in their 90s, too frail to wield a snow shovel. So hire someone! A new baby is in the house requiring all the time in their world. So hire someone! They shoveled but the clear sidewalk was attacked by the ice storm and then they were busy and couldn't shovel and then, you know: life got in the way. And so forth. So get out there with the ice breaker and chop away at your dangerous walk. Make an effort!

 

That's really all I ask: make an effort!

 

Now, on the plus side of the weather I can report how exciting it is to see all the lawns and gardens covered with many inches of solid ice and to know that somewhere under that heavy load are tulip bulbs, crocuses, snowdrops, and scylla—all biding their time. I'm biding mine as well, 'cause that's the kinda gal I'm.

 

Did I mention that in some places the ice that edges out over the sidewalk has now been undercut and is ripe for the thwock of breaking if you tap it with your toe? The most satisfying winter sound!

 

 

Copyright © 2024 Ann Tudor
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