January 2, Lay Saints (1)

New year celebration used to be such an important event in my childhood. In part because of the communist disagreement with religious holidays, Christmas was, quite modestly, for children. How many pajamas did I not uncover from under the fire hazard which was our Christmas tree? Next to the unlikely doll my mother worked so hard at uncovering from under the black market.

New year's eve, though, or Saint Sylvester's, was most joyfully celebrated by all. Staying up past midnight, a must even for the feeble. The whole week after, ornate by delicious leftovers from that night's feast, which kept the illusion of carnivalesque joy alive. By sending her wishes for the new year, Cristina reminded me, yesterday, of happy children waking up early and descending, with gaudy wreaths, upon the sleepy, ill-humored adults. The first morning of the year was about making wishes in return of small change: the cheerful "sorcova" or wreath wished any and all to live and to grow old like apple and pear trees, like the rose on a stem in the middle of summer; be strong like stone and iron, be fast like arrow and steel. For the new year at hand and so many years to come.

Of course that was only possible in tight villages and apartment buildings like the ones we lived in. Uncles had to be close at hand, for it was they, the hanged over, who were most generous in rewards. I only reluctantly went to say my rimes. Something in them kept putting me ill at ease. I did not understand this wish for old age. Neither the wisdom of the comparison between people and fruit trees. Today, of course, I could not think of a better wish and therefore I wish it to you all: May the new year allow you to bear fruit just like the fruit trees, may you live strong and quick, and renew yourselves with every passing winter.

This past, last Sunday of the year, we went to see the Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera exhibition at the AGO in Toronto. Vividly colorful in both appearance and content, for these were out of the ordinary people. And yet, one could not not be saddened by Frieda's untimely death, probably due to illness, she who was twenty years younger than her spouse. In spite of which, the twenty some years spent together were most fruitful, regardless of the state of her health. Painterly life, if one could call it that, where every object was to potentially become the vessel of painted life, including the woman and the man at its centre. After the exhibition, an unusual, rich array of jewelry made after Frieda's own, is offered by the museum shop in order to allow any woman visitor to look just like the artist.

Except that, in order to do so, one should be in the possession of a sumptuous mane of black hair, carrying, in braids knotted above the rounded forehead, enormous tropical flowers. Red, orange, white. One should also know how to exhibit, with pride, her two eyebrows as one, while a thin mustache adorn her proud red lips.  One should move or rest gracefully in long, pleated skirts, colorful under lace, on top of which aprons are concerned as much with painting as with the various small and not so small animals hanging around those skirts like children. This woman, who so much desired the child she could never bring to term and life, has become, strangely, the image maker, or is it the lay saint, of so many otherwise fruitful women, north and south of the border.

Diego Rivera's paintings remind one of socialist realism, that style in art with which we were at home under the communist regime. In those days of course I detested it like everybody else in the know. Today I'm not so sure any longer. But the interesting part is the fact that Rivera had lived in France, where he worked with the painters of the day, like Picasso for instance. He was in possession of the new avant-garde styles which he had practiced, one by one, in his youth. Nevertheless, after the Mexican revolution, he had been entrusted with the monumental project of expressing this new Mexican identity, in frescoes which would appeal to the people. Therefore, avant-garde went out the window, and realism stepped in, with its possibility of capturing the imagination of many. Rivera was a man of larger than life stature, and his painting kept those same ambitions.

In the meantime, Frieda Kahlo learned to paint as she was recovering from the accident which disabled her for years. Her paintings, of very small proportions, force the spectator to come close and inspect every minuscule detail. Auto-portraits so intense because of the intensity of the sitter, of course. Yet imagine the kind of strength one must muster, in order to live and work side by side with the country's most venerated mural painter. How small, how detailed, how intimate and close to unreadable those paintings should be, to withstand the force of that which appeals, defines, instructs and directs all?

I think of the difference between those who live - and work - as an example and luminary for many, and those who live and work at their own survival, as evasive and un-exemplary as it may be. Rivera, who had known many women, is quoted to have said, upon his wife's death, that without her he would not have known "woman". A quotation out of context, which does not say much as such. Was she "woman" really? The essence of woman? A woman from what planet, one may almost ask, seeing that those qualities which she possessed hardly make for the perfect woman of our times? Survivor of an accident, of miscarriages, dead of unknown causes.

christmas tree and wreaths for good tidings

 

We wanted to see the exhibition before the year end and I was not sure what exactly I needed to see in there. At some point, in one of Rivera's murals, my childhood's repeatedly perused portraits of Marx, Lenin and Stalin were shown, and I had some difficulty recognizing them, as if it were possible to forget that which has been red ironed in one's memory. Let us hope, for now, that the small, fanciful self portraits of the recovering, for-ever painter to be, are as much of a consolation as their more grandiloquent counterparts. As for where exactly Frieda will lead us, stay (at)tuned; we'll wait together for those apple trees to first blossom.

December 20, Siesta

This morning I woke up with with more purpose than usual. I felt I had the energy to drive myself to the clinic.  On the way to town, we marveled at a rainbow which formed a circle, interrupted by white layers of cloud, around the raising sun.

I met my new family doctor who is a happy talker and whose name contains the word hope. In Spanish. For a reason that I cannot know yet, I felt good about this change. He is a Filipino born and raised in Winnipeg, and looks just like a Japanese sumo wrestler. 

For the last few days I have been more tired than usual. Years ago a friend gave me, as a present, a book called De la fatigue. A philosophical approach, on which I am forced to reflect every day lately. There is something uncanny about how this state has become my most pressing symptom and concern. Somewhat akin to idleness, if I understand correctly how the latter works. One formulates all kinds of projects in one's mind, and they may be of the most exciting nature: write a blog, why not start writing a book for that matter? Order some Christmas presents on line, why not go to the mall and buy them yourself, after careful consideration? Finish that painting which has been waiting for a few months now, why not actually arrange the new atelier that you have decided to set on the second floor? Practice the piano, why not print the fifty page Schubert partition waiting to be measured? Set the Christmas decorations, and so on. The list is unending. And yet, nothing can be done, or should I say, so little as to be almost nothing. As soon as I have practiced the piano for twenty minutes, or laid out the colors, my eyes are asking to close. I need to rest, and that means, sleep. A day without sleep will only add more need of sleep to the next.

In order to offer some amusement to our friend who visited last week, we went to see Aida at the Met, which, thanks to modern technology, is accessible at a theater near you. I thought I would give a try to an activity I used to enjoy before my illness. The theater seats are extremely comfortable, much more so than those of an opera house, and the public, in keeping with a dying form of culture, white haired and never more than fifty heads at all. These days grey hair allows me to fit in quite well. Colin is the odd one out, even if a bit of a bold spot is quite welcome in such company. I am sorry to report that I slept through most of the performance, and while it was our game, for me to wake Colin up when, at the end of the work day, we used to go to the opera in Toronto, things have changed and it is for him to keep me awake, early Saturday afternoon.

It is a difficult feeling to describe. Nothing really hurts. One is to simply go to rest. Nothing dramatic. And yet, this fatigue gives one the impression that life itself is shrinking. I have always been a great defender of siestas, and we used to practice it gladly in our small family, between myself and my parents. On Sunday afternoons, the only day when we were all at home at the same time, we used to close the door of the apartment with determination, and we would almost have hanged a sign on it, like the surrealists used to, which would have said, "poets at work". The siesta so much more enjoyable when some relative or acquaintance would commit the error of calling during those secret hours. The more they rang, or knocked, rang and knocked and shouted, thinking it impossible for us not to hear, being that we lived in such a small apartment, the more we enjoyed pretending we did not hear, we were not there. We never answered, but rejoiced in that exquisite possibility of claiming sleeping time, of steeling sleeping time from those who busied themselves with uncalled-for visits.

Those days are long gone, as my master Proust would say. Never again will I and my parents hide in our respective bedrooms, pretending we're not at home, in order to steal a siesta against the better judgement of people in need of things to say and do, places to go to. Nowadays nobody calls unannounced, visits are planned months in advance, one simply cannot play Oblomov for the sake of sweet sleep. Maybe this is why I find this manifestation of my illness so difficult to bear. This sleep is not stolen for its gifts, for the afternoon dreams which tell more, and more vividly, than the nighttime ones. This is rather becoming the main condition, and while part of it still retains, to my joy, some of those qualities of the in-between vigil and sleep, the accumulation of too many hours of sleep leads one into more ominous unrest.

Whatever the hour of rest will be for you, now that the holidays are coming down the chimney, we wish you good company and sweet afternoons. May the old year end in good cheer, and the new bring you the joys of sunnier dreams.  



















P.S. Snow came down last night and branches bend heavy, blocking the path. On the highway, we met men hunting for coyotes from their parked truck. The dogs are doing the work and satellite tracking devices show their progression, while Rocky goes mad over this intrusion and unusual fuss.
The air is still with snowflakes. From here where winter has finally arrived we wish you again happy, joyful holidays. May all good coyotes be safe, or land safely onto coyote paradise.

yesterday

today

what's with all that barking?

December 5, Barren trees

“I’ve seen that tree many years earlier and it was a most beautiful oak tree, with its large crown. At that time I did not think to paint it. What is in filling out the space with a splodge of green like others do? What is in Nature separated by large spaces, is compressed into a cramped space and overfills and oversatiates the eye, creating an unfavorable and disquieting effect on the viewer. Yet it was the lightning that came from the ether which achieved this feat of creating the space for me to paint the tree, but ... I finished by only painting the distance.”

These are the painter Caspar David Friederich's words and they refer to the portrait of a tree which, after having been hit by lightening, had lost all its leaves and remained the barren, majestic ruin of its former glory. I used to study this German painter's work many years ago, he occupies an important place in my book on melancholia. Cristi sent me this quotation a few days ago, and I had an experience of shock at the sudden reminder of what I used to enjoy so much and am not able to any longer.

The figure of the barren tree is most appropriate to my present condition, and I take that as a good omen. While on my daily walk this morning, I decided to open a new theme in my photo documents, that of barren trees. Those belonging to fall into winter, most often waiting for the next spring to be revived, but also, sometimes, dead. Upon returning home with a few new takes of such trees, and opening this new file, I went through my last year's photographs and discovered, to my wonder, that I have tens and tens of such subjects. It seems I have been interested in lonely barren trees all along.

     

Just like Friedrich remarks, the barren tree allows for space to become evident. Whether the painter achieves his purpose, of painting this space, between branches for instance, and their volume in space, is of lesser importance. He did succeed in seizing the distance between the tree and himself. Otherwise put, maybe, the loneliness of the painter himself, face to face with the tree which we always perceive as lonely when it is barren.

When I had just moved in this house and had just begun our walks along the trail, I used to pass every day by a wonderful old tree, so old and long dead that it had lost all its bark and appeared naked beyond remedy. I had also recently learned that dead trees are most useful for many such critters like the woodpecker, and should not all be taken down. Our own land is filled with dead trees, and they will certainly remain there until returned in decay to the ground. Yet this old, naked tree, I learned to greet every day as I passed by like you greet a neighbor you know from afar but do not talk to. In the absolute solitude of my walks, He reassured me. Until, one day, new owners moved in, and shortly after the old trunk disappeared. I was inexplicably saddened. But what should I have expected for Him?

Not long ago we decided to replace the carpet in so many rooms of the house with hardwood floors. The choice of wood was a most interesting matter. Colin likes pine, and I, for some reason, like the ash, if only for its beautiful name. There was another pretty name in the draw, hickory. We finally decided for both pine and ash, and the work will start next week. It is an opportunity to turn yet again the house upside down, get rid of many things which should have been discarded, yet have found a hiding place and go unnoticed here. For a few nights, between sleep and wakefulness, I wondered what this enterprise was about. It is a wonderful thing, to be sure, to lay wooden floors in the rooms, and let that smell of the Forest take hold of the house. It is also a good thing to imagine that those many ash trees, killed by the ash beetle, will find a new, if artificial life, under Rocky and Alice's clicky and wishy paws. The good neighbor who will do the work assured me that the wood comes from the woods around here, and I took it as the sign of another, lesser known, attachment to the immediately surrounding landscape.

I have said, at the beginning of this note, that the barren tree was a figure of what the painter needs, to understand, or seize, true distance. That which is Barren, in Friedrich's sense, lets the space breathe in between the branches, lets the wind fashion, little by little, nakedness, to the point where it becomes sculpture. That which lets the sky, the earth show their magnitude. All which without the barren trees remains overwhelming, impossible to grasp.

November 21, Another kind of love

ancient sun

When we got the FaceTime connection my piano teacher appeared like a magician's illusion and took me by surprise. Her black hair quickly wrapped in a chignon, a gray vest of asymmetric collar kept in place by an oversized button, red. Thin silver rimmed glasses next to which the earphone cables looked like old fashioned eye-ware chains. Behind her, on the piano, piles of books. Yellow walls covered in prints, a lovely small room where everything seemed within reach.

It felt like we were sharing a room, closely. The sentiment perdured even as we had to fiddle with equipment so that she may see my hands and, thankfully, correct my physical approach of the instrument.

I believe the most fortunate of students are those who had the chance to be taught by people they adored. Forget the 10000 hours of practice as the road to fame and riches. I choose my words knowingly, for this has been one of the most enviable chances I was granted. To be taught, especially when young, by people I adored. Foreign languages, painting, Latin. At the university, a few professors whose knowledge I admired, if from far. Now, miraculously, my piano teacher. I say miraculously because one does not expect to experience again such emotions as are the privilege of childhood and young age.

Why is it important that one be in the throws of love in the presence of one's teacher? I am sure the answer presents itself readily. There are teachers who hand out, just like handouts, some form of knowledge, that which we call today information. And there are those rare encounters where the teacher entrusts her or his pupils with secrets more precious than knowledge. The secret is, again, out in the open. And yet, not for everybody to grasp. Knowledge without affect, without some measure of tenderness, admiration, love, which teacher and pupil alike may share, has no value.

Curiously, what I remember most vividly about the first three teachers I have named is their hands. I must have spent a lot of time watching them. Seventy year old, sixty- and thirty-something old hands. The age did not seem to matter. All such beautifully expressive hands; the first two, I imagined then, because of spending so much time writing; the third, because of drawing. The manner in which they held the pencil - they used mechanical, metal pencils to write in those days - witnessed, in my mind, to the wealth of their knowledge. As for drawing, nothing could equal the elegance of her holding le charbon, while doing esquisses.

I of course also adored my mother's hands. For wholly different reasons: do hair,  caress, make gifts, embrace. Her marvelous lips seemed to kiss even when smiling.

It is a common misconception that teaching has something to do with transference. Students would transfer some of the feelings they hold for they parents upon their teachers. I hope this is a misconception only, for my experience would then indicate that students either love their parents very little, or hate them a great deal. If this were true, then I would have had to put up with a lot of misdirected affect. For my own salvation, I prefer to think that the admiration, or rather adoration, as I like to call it, of the teacher, has to do with love of a different kind. Love for what the teachers know lovingly; or, we love them, because they tell us about the love they hold for the object of their teaching. We come together in the hope that we, too, will get to experience that feeling. Otherwise, what good would have been my love affair with Latin, a language which I never used otherwise than to hold in my heart?

My piano teacher has, of course, beautifully expressive hands. Their beauty only revealed to those fortunate enough to take lessons with her, and see her play. For such is the secret of this kind of beauty. Not apparent to whomever, whenever, but immediately obvious to she who would like to join in that kind of knowledge. Again, the word is not appropriate. These hands know, indeed, marvelous things, which came to them down the river of time. They repeat gestures which may have been deployed by somebody hundreds of years ago. The words we use today, hardly generous in describing the miracle of communication with those who came before us: transmission we say, as if speaking about a radio cast. I like to think of that communication, rather, as something akin to our relationship to the sun.

Be that as it may, and even if we were to use the word transmission, I am unendingly thankful to receive such gifts as those devised by Bartok, with whom we consort through the graceful teachings of my long distance medium and teacher; or by Schubert, and the wonder of these other, all knowing, superb old hands:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Ak7Tk9B3s

October 31, Mine and Yours

Angela writes:

It is raining and I contemplate with surprise how little of the Sandy storm made itself present for us here. Strange acting of calamity: for those in the middle of it, the world comes to a stop; for others, maybe not very far away, the same span of time is marked by some inconvenience.


Yesterday we walked along the trail and I got some breathtaking pictures of the sky above the county, without knowing clearly what those same clouds had brought with them somewhere else. Amazing what a little machine like the iPhone can grasp of the grandeur of such phenomena. Or is it that, to such grandeur, our means of intervention are secondary?

All that can be said at the sight of these pictures is, that I was there to witness it. Very little know-how went into the seizing of these cloud formations, except for my being prepared. If such renderings were ever to be properly printed, and presented in a public space, they could, I suppose, be called art. And yet the only artistry at work was that of natural elements at play.













Not long ago we had the visit of my cousin and her two children, grown up inquirers of all things worthy of inquiry. The topics addressed during their stay were numerous, yet the one which kept us awake overnight, believe it or not, was the question of art, and of who can call themselves an artist. Tudor, our lovely nephew, among many other things a dandy if one is yet to have survived the turn of the past centuries, wants to know. Not least because his sister Oana is an artist, who, like all such respectable fellows, bypasses the potential riches promised by lucrative endeavors like her brother's. Her brother, generous in turn, is ready to accept that an artist is one who makes art, even if they take a loss. For the sake of the argument, I contradict, and maintain that an artist can only call themselves such if they bring their work out in the open, to the public. By public of course I do not mean the immediate family, neither one's well intentioned friends and acquaintances, but rather people one does not know.

It is difficult for Tudor to accept that one who plays their bongos (his example) in the solitude of their home is not an artist in my definition. I say, they are not artists, but rather they play bongos. Just as I am not a painter, but rather somebody who sometimes paints. And so long as I will not expose a meaningful body of works, I will simply be one who spends some of her time in such a fashion.

From there, not surprisingly, at least not for me, we went on to speak about love and loss. Yes, this is how far the question of one's coming out with the fruit of their artistic expression took us. A question of definition again. Can love call itself such, if it is not built on the fear of the loss of the beloved? I ask. One condition too difficult to accept without putting up a vigorous struggle. And just like in the case of art, an unjust prerequisite. Why should anybody need the accord, or recognition, of anybody else than oneself, in order to keep doing what they enjoy, and which they cheerfully and freely may call art? For themselves alone to take or leave, for themselves to appreciate.
Likewise in love, the lover should be free to say, I love because I feel like it right now, and I will stop loving when this object will stop giving me what I expect.

Meanwhile, according to my position, neither is for me to take or leave. In art it would make such an occupation deserving of the name hobby. In love the take it or leave it rule makes the relationship a partnership of sorts. There is, of course, nothing wrong with that. I am tempted to say, that is, mostly and maybe rightfully, the form relationships take nowadays. As for love, where the one who loves is concerned with the needs and wants of the beloved, well, for better or for worse, such relationships are on the wane. Who would want to live one's life hanging on the affections of another than oneself?

Is this not what happens, when we take our art, whatever that may be, to strangers, and ask them what they think of it? It is a difficult place to be in, and in a world where self- sufficiency is the name of the most sought after condition, to depend on another's judgement, or passion, or compassion for that matter, is strictly unacceptable.

No wonder that a young and sensitive person may, sometimes, over such matters, loose sleep.

October 19, Sugar Molecule

Angela writes:

Ottawa under heavy rain and fast winds is not much to look at. We could not even get out of the car to go and eat somewhere afterwards. I had had to fast before the test, which took almost three hours. That is because one needs to wait for that sugar molecule, as they call it, to come out of the metal syringe, itself encased in a metal box, all of which are handled with gloves, and travel deep into the body of the testee. This it will eventually light up from the inside.

The lung doctor called me yesterday to let me know that the pet scan shows an area of mild activity, not characteristic of cancer, probably an inflammation of sorts. The results are non-specific again, or inconclusive. I have two options: either wait for another three months and get another cat scan of the lung, and again every three months after, for two years; or have the surgeon go in and remove this formation, with the risk, of course, that upon biopsy the extirpation prove to have been unnecessary. In spite of all the expensive, so-called non-invasive imaging techniques, the scalpel remains the most trustworthy instrument.

Since I was given a choice, I chose to wait.

Some of my friends or colleagues, with whom I communicate from time to time, give me an idea of how they imagine convalescence. Since the university professor’s most important complaint is to have not enough time to read and write, to do research as it is referred to, because of teaching and other administrative duties, a character on sick leave, or, even better, on disability, such one like myself, would certainly take advantage of all the time freed up by the disease in order to, while taking pills, read and write. And, in case that person, on account of some debilitating condition, were unable to write, they would certainly at least read voraciously all those excellent books they were not able to get into while doing the work required by their salaried condition.

To this question I have to again answer in the negative. No, I do not read. The fact that I lay, apparently still, propped on a pillow, on my couch, does not mean that I am comfortable. Indeed, as the traveling sugar molecule would tell you, if it could speak, the condition of the opium eater that I have become is one of double discomfort: a fire burning within the body, especially along the spine, which takes not kindly the loss of one of its member vertebrae; and a film of ice coating the outer envelope of this burning body, the skin. If for Scheherazade it was not difficult to answer the riddle of the one who walks dressed and undressed at the same time, by wrapping herself in a fishing net, for me the answer appears less easy to grasp.

Between reading books, after fifty years of book reading, and reading music, as I now do, as a beginner, there lies a difference that in fact allows me to take pleasure in the second and reject the first. Reading music is at this point the recognition of a direction, and a rhythm for the hands. For the moment it is all about the hands, and the manner in which, without grasping anything whatsoever, they bring about some lovely and ephemeral formation of sound. No real meaning beyond that deciphering, if not the correspondence between sound and a small, well-defined gesture. The reading of books, now an old if not respectably competent endeavor, is much more about finding the sought-after meaning. Why this, why that, and how it came to be. All the awe at the deciphering of signs, which makes reading so enjoyable in the beginning, now lost. The attention we must bestow upon such an occupation, much more purposeful than the one we apply to hitting the right note.

I am not, of course, against reading, and if I were, it would take longer than this to justify. Yet for those who consider it to be the most desirable of the minor, low energy actions to fill the day of the proverbial patient, I suggest that the fictional nature of all reading can only offer false, self serving answers. The pleasures of fiction can easily hide the struggle at hand. While the clearly imperfect exercise of one’s hands, in painting and music for instance, gives the full measure of the body’s mood.

October 9, Giving Thanks for Bartok

Angela writes:


I would like to wish you a very happy thanksgiving week. This is a marvelous holiday to which I used to pay little attention when I was younger. It did not belong to my childhood and I did not fully understand it, mainly because when one is young, one thinks less of what one has, or has been given, than of what one is poised to expect and receive. This is not only true of the young, it is also true of the university setting of which, for so long, I have been a part.

It is wondrous to be, as I am right now, the object of the attentions of those who are around you and notice the manner in which they achieve such presence. I am certainly wary of judging those overwhelmed by their work, if not by life. I have been there, where there was no time for those far away. Not to speak about those left on the sidelines. I had a job to do, and no matter how hard I tried, I never got it quite right. Or so it seemed. That is how mother university (or is it a father?) trains her offspring.

On the other hand, people who have other occupations than the academic seem to have an easier time. With the understandable exception of the illness-fobic, and there are a few I came to uncover. Yet all are saved by the retired, and I take that in the wide sense of the word. Oh, the retired! Those who have given up ambition! Where would we be without them, who fortunately have time to take care of the ill, the busy and the stressed out?

You may remember that I was apprehensive about going to Montreal. Fortunately, the first day I had there, Heidi spent a whole afternoon with me. Not because she did not have more pressing things to do. She came to see me and alluded right away to the physiotherapist who wanted me to practice the computer keyboard, no matter what words or numbers would cross my mind and come under my fingers. What a narrow use of my precious energy, she mused. For her, who, among other talents, including writing, is an accomplished musician, a keyboard is a piano keyboard first. We went to the music store to look up pianos. And at the end of another couple of hours, we came up with a choice.

While waiting for my keyboard here in Springbrook, I started looking into some of the rudiments of this trade. My long distance teacher sent right away a whole cahier with music exercises put together by the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok for his son. Of course these exercises contain a lot of motifs which used to fill my childhood's everyday musical landscape.

Now the keyboard is here, looking out over the turning foliage and the everyday more barren trees. And I have to say, the effort it takes to work those keys is very different than what it takes to write on a keypad. I have the sensation of touching something original, I would venture to say from before writing, even if I never thought of the writing keyboard as the approximate replacement of a more authentic one, which would by now be lost. But there is this visceral pleasure contained in the pushing of a key and that resulting sound, hopefully the right one, which should come out and greet you with what feels like encouragement. Not to speak about the effects of a series of sounds, which, in the right order and with due exercise, may begin to make sense. When I am not practicing, I listen to a recording of this music, while doing my painting. There is ever less time left for me in one day. And since I only have a few hours of active energy to begin with, i do not quite know how to give myself to these tasks, one more pleasurable than the other. I am afraid the first casualty of the true keyboard, you might have noticed, was the computer.

That is how, for this thanksgiving, I had to give thanks for all the friendship which has accompanied us for the last year. Soon it will be a year since Colin wrote a long letter to my family doctor, asking not only for the appropriate pain medication, but for a serious investigation of the pain in my back. What else can I wish for, if not to grasp the one thing to be thankful for, even as life put us through her blind, cruel workings.