May 3, Open doors

Summer is here, and as often in the past, there was little transition between winter, and these hot days. The orchestra of critters of all sorts, birds during the day, toads at night, keeps us awake and mesmerised. The wind can now play with laundry hanging outside.

I am becoming organized again. Something to do with the train. Every second Monday I take the 8:17 to Toronto. There, I spend a couple of days in order to pursue my new treatment: enjoy the benefits of friendship, psycho- and naturotherapy and people watching. I use the expression in the sense of “bird watching”, since it is my unexpected, present position, to spend my days in the midst of birds and only rarely of people. When this Via adventure first started I did not think I'd be able to withstand two entire days out and away. I did not think I'd be able to stand or sit for so many hours, considering that the reason I sought therapy in the first place was extreme fatigue. Yet here I am, two months later, able to keep this commitment from one excursion to the next.

The city of Toronto is so much friendlier when one is a visitor, the transient beneficiary of its riches, rather than its permanent resident. Besides my renewed practice of mostly traditional psychoanalysis, to which I remain attached just as I do to Greek Orthodoxy, the yoga exercise has opened the way to the office of a naturopath.  Incidentally, that is thanks to the mediation of the generous friend who allows me to nest in her house. It has been a soothing discovery, this submission to hands that know and can help the workings of your body, inside and out. It is not easy to understand how such subtle, non intrusive intervention can have the powerful effect it has. Only seldom are we allowed to entrust our body to a person who takes control, in order to alleviate our pain. The feeling of gratitude which comes to the surface as the hour progresses keeps in check those wondering thoughts which so often command that we stay vigilant.

My yoga instructor’s French is excellent, while the osteopath is a Maghrébine. The piano lessons we conduct in French, and it was my wise piano teacher who noticed this tendency I have to find, without looking, people who have some attachment to that language. It might be equal parts of a lifelong therapeutic quest and its traumatic counterpart, I suppose.

It remains that, with the coming of spring, if not already summer, the isolation this long winter past has imposed on me, the difficulty I had to get out of the house, has been replaced by truly new forms of activity, and new friendships. In winter, the one person I met regularly, in the pursuit of a form of healing to which I owe much already, was Heidi. Next to her, and those long distance piano lessons, there are now quite a few other women waiting for me behind their open doors. Miraculously, at the same time, we found a young girl, strong and kind enough to want to take care of Ben, Rocky and Alice while I'm away.

rocky and ben, otherwise known as spooky and spook

I suppose this entry is about new friendships, new acquaintances, a new manner of being, and the endurance of some of the old, under new forms. Given the feelings which animate me at the moment, and in the name of all of us, who, by the meadow, cannot but enjoy the stillness contained in every sunny day, I wish you a wonderful summer.  May many a critter symphony accompany your starry nights.