March 18, Pioneer

Here is the questionnaire you have to answer before you visit with your doctor: on a scale from 0 to 10, let us know about your pain, appetite, sleep, mood, drowsiness, fatigue, nausea, etc. It used to be a photocopied form we filled casually with a blunt pencil. The nurse would take it just as casually and put it in your chart. Then she would ask her questions again, and take some quick notes.

I who, in spite of the evidence, thought never to have come close yet to this pain of 10, "worst possible that you can imagine", settled often for a 5 or a 6 in the early days, and now will pick a 3. On the other hand, where mood is concerned, and satisfaction with life in general - or what is called in the medical jargon "quality of life" -, I would give myself a 2 in what I call the early days. 2 out of modesty, since, happy to be alive, I would have put down a perfect 0, were it not for my internal censorship.

Yesterday we arrived at the cancer centre in Kingston and had to wait in the loveliest waiting room of the new building, which feels more like a theatre hall than a hospital, and looks out on the lake. We had to fill the same form, this time directly on the computer. Obtained the printout and, to our surprise, found out that the data, for the last 4 visits, had been compiled on this one sheet. Therefore, you could tell, by the numbers, how I "progressed" within the year that passed, and from visit to visit, 4 in all. While most rubrics looked unremarkable - the pain somewhat the same, just marginally better, which is the case, same with sleep and appetite -, under the rubric of mood the difference was striking. Colin made the first comment since of course he knew what that was going to let loose. I protested and brought to bear my best philosophical argumentation. Of course a year ago I was happy to have prevailed over the tumor with radiation only, happy to be able to come home, happy to take up life again, even if in a new form. One year later, though, the isolation which so much contributed to my recovery has become difficult to bear, and the fatigue, which, in the beginning, was the promise that, through sleep, I was going to heal, now is the most difficult part of my convalescence. Now, that I am able to read at all, I protest not to be able to do that for more than half an hour without having to sleep immediately after. The same is true for writing. Or for any other activity that I may undertake. Those conditions of slowness, which I so welcomed fifteen months ago, have come to put my patience to a real test.

That this may make sense for Colin is one thing. But then, here comes the nurse, she who remembers what I was and looked like then. That end of november feels, for her, like three, rather than two years ago. She goes straight to the mood rubric which was, I confess, impossible to miss. These values are expressed in columns and this particular column, unlike others, went from barely a line to quite a square.

She took another look at me and wondered, for a moment it seemed like I had a stiff neck. Colin reassured her, that was not the case, but rather, our lovely new dog Bentley who is young, strong and playful, and not used to the leash. Which makes walks real tugs of war. The iPhone came out with the proof. Earlier, at the pain clinic, during our morning appointment, we had had to answer the question whether, since our last visit, there had been some, little or no improvement, with some, little or no thing to show for it. Even if initially we thought, "no improvement with nothing to show", I reconsidered and advocated for "some improvement with something to show", since, had there been no improvement, there would be no Bentley. Of course, these questionnaires do not have Bentley rubrics, only numbers.

When my favorite doctor - we share a similar temperament - came in, I tried to remind him that these are just numbers. That I had been a working woman all my life and that ceasing to be that kind of  person could not come easy. That I would have preferred never to have had to work, but since that had not been the case, I found myself now forced to mourn the loss of something I always wanted to loose.

Because, indeed, I always wandered, what would it feel like, to be an artist who did not have to work for a living? I may be, right now, quite close to this position, except for the pioneer quality of my present circumstances, which I did not expect to go together with the other. A convalescent pioneer who tries to do some writing and painting, and even a bit of music, and has to, once in a while, rate on a scale from 0 to 10 the quality of her pioneering experience.

As you may know, I have been a pioneer before, and so very proud of it too. But that is another long story. Nonetheless, I remember looking aghast at some of my schoolmates who, on the special days - like the first of May - when we were supposed to wear our red triangular scarfs, white shirts and black pleated skirts, came to school with a crumpled tie, stained and torn at the corners, hanging whichever way around their sorry thin necks. How did they not wake up early in the morning and iron that tie, that shirt, carefully washed, by necessity by hand, the night before? By their mother of course, or grandmother, whom they would have pestered at length, insisting on the importance of looking good in this outfit? Dirty tie had nothing to do with poverty, for sure, and I did not really have the concept in those days, not only because we were all poor, but because my own grandmother made her living out of laundering other poor people's belongings.

Well, you will say, what does that kind of pioneering have to do with the pioneer you are now, opening every day, through the snow in winter, through the clouds of mosquitoes and deer flies in summer, your trail, to the back of a property the Canadian government did not give you for free to clear and cultivate? Opening which does not even presuppose that you wear a red tie, although tying something around your neck to protect it is always a good idea?

Somehow, upon first laying eyes on those questionnaires, at the doctor's, the thing that came to mind were the students' evaluations, the bane of each and all teachers, except for those precious few, who are always superbly admired by their students. Not having been among them, I can reckon that one of the freedoms I have acquired, in my life as a convalescent, is that of not having to be given a mark for my work performance. But wait! I still have to, I have in fact to give myself a mark, for how I do, in comparison to how I did. And when it comes to mood, or the well being of the spirit, if we should use such an obsolete term, it appears that the task is all mine. What seemed a 0 is now an 8 where 0 stands for perfection. We rely here on a system which definitely believes in progress. And I am afraid, if 0 came at a time when things were pretty bad from a medical point of view, what chance does one have, to improve on that? If being a pioneer was such a delight under the communist regime, how am I going to compare the pioneering I am practicing now, and expect it to win?

Am I trying to tell you that there is no improving upon the original experience, no matter how difficult the conditions might appear to have been then, to the objective eye? Possibly.

March 8, Women's Day

I had forgotten all about it. By 1996, more than 16 years after I had left my country, this kind of holiday had been replaced by others, meaningful in a very different way.

The approaching publication of my first book was an event of extraordinary proportions for the one who had been working on this, originally doctoral thesis, since 1984. I know it sounds unbearable and it is.

People outside the university often think that university jobs are easy. They count the number of hours one is expected to teach every week, they look at summers which appear to be work free, and wonder how such jobs are still possible nowadays, when business people work so hard, with so little security, etc. In fact, the reason I do not like to remember very often how I got that first position is precisely because, when I count the years it took, to put together a curriculum vitae likely be taken into consideration, I shiver. Of course, when one is young, life seems never-ending. It helped, that I liked to read and write. But spend twelve years on a book that nobody, including myself, remembers any longer? A book whose main virtue proved to be, to put me in a position wherefrom I could do the same a second time?

Of course not everybody takes this long. There are, fortunately, people who think fast, write fast, and get things through with ease and successfully. Of course.

That 8 March 1996 was the last of many days I had spent on the phone with the man who was doing the editing of my book. (We did not have email in those days.) This book had been read and proofread many times before, but he did not quite trust those. He was a better editor anyhow.  I too must have sounded somewhat untrustworthy. He had never seen me, I was neither in Montreal, nor from Montreal. He kept sending me back to my text, kept saying, as others were to do after him, that this is not "how you say it in French". The book contained an awful lot of quotations, that is, translations from German, from Spanish, God knows where else, and it certainly sounded very little French-like. It could not have. At some point, the editor himself, embarrassed by his lack of patience with a job he was paid to do, but of which he thought little, excused himself by saying that he regretted to have to do this to me on women's day. Obviously, being a québécois, he had a political conscience. That did not stop him from being rough with my work, with my general contention that I had written something worth publishing, but well, since I had been awarded the necessary grant, he had to do his job. It did not mean that he would do it nicely, of course not. Do it, and in the process spook me away from coming back another time.

From the depths of my embarrassment, I remembered those 8th of March days. I remembered the endless hours children spent making gifts for teachers and mothers. The festive, perfumed feel of it all, the fact that back home, March meant the arrival of spring already, with small delicious bouquets of snowdrops and violets to prove it.

Meanwhile here, when I had reason to rejoice in my accomplishment, it somehow felt riddled with difficulty and closer to rejection than joy.

A few weeks later I drove to Montreal from London, where I lived, to pick up the copies of the book to which I was entitled. I found my editor at the publishing house, in the midst of boxes piled up to the ceiling. All those books now published, which were probably never going to be bought, in spite of having been so thoroughly edited and proofread. I got my box from this very polite man, who in my presence had become almost pleasant. Nothing in him betrayed the grumpy phone demeanour. He had the appearance of the 70s intellectual, long if thinning unkempt hair, complexion fatigued by one too many nights spent drinking and maybe writing. Nothing so boring and thesis-infused like what I had produced. A master of his native tongue, without a doubt.

We had an uneasy lunch in an empty bar and I took off in a rush, impatient to take a closer look at my precious book, which I could not have done in his presence. Stopped on the side of the road, took one of them out, it smelled so good, so fresh, so perfect. I looked at the back cover, the one known to matter to the first time author, the only place where any mention of who she is may be made, if at all. Maybe there was also a small picture of me? I do not remember. But I don't think so. This was a serious, academic press, where they do not indulge in portrait narcissism. My attention on the spot arrested by the typo I could not not notice even before reading. Not a big deal at all, simply a word repeated twice, nothing horrible. The small preposition de. Yet to me, at that time, this was a disaster. After weeks of having had to listen to how poor my written language was, that typo, left to fester in such a noticeable place, loudly spoke about how this chap had not done his job properly. He was very good at telling one what they had done wrong, but not so good at doing things right himself.

As you can see, many years have gone by, yet I still cannot forget that de. It took the shine off the publication of my first book. It should not have done so. In time I learned to rationally submit to the difference between what is important and what is not, and a typo certainly is not. It remains a fact that for years after, that typo came back. Every time I had to subject myself to comments concerning my writing, coming from people who invariably thought they could do better than I did. In a way, that typo on the back cover bio, brought a certain perspective to the act of writing and publishing. Writing was a form of giving, followed by a silence. That silence is sometimes marked by a typo, let us call it an X, the acte manqué by which my poor editor had manifested his disapproval and revolt.

I am tempted to say, let us imagine, on this Women's Day, that the best way to fill that silence would be, instead of the X, the wordless fragrance of a small bouquet of snowdrops, for the dark-haired, of violets, for the blond, and the grey. Let us all go back to our cheerful, communist spring.

   

February 11, Neurasthenia

A few weeks ago I came close to not getting out of the house any longer at all. The condition, not uncommon, particularly in women, and all those who share their virtues, used to be called neurasthenia. Besides not getting out of the house, one does things in what appears like strict order, today repeating yesterday foreshadowing tomorrow. A certain appeasement of anxiety results from such planned repetitivity. A little like planned parenthood, yet well beyond it, there comes planned life, where life is the only thing one has got left to wrestle.

Surprisingly, my narrow to the point, forward looking spellchecker still recognizes the word. While I observe things changing at such a speed, as to make that which is only a few years old appear beyond the very possibility of useful existence. If they were, and some wikipedia entry attested to it, they're now useless, be they concrete objects or concepts. The important thing is not to regret them, but to believe that they are, without a doubt, obsolete. Was that really possible? Were people really called neurasthenics, when they refused to leave their house? Would that be ethical? That name, that label? we ask with suspicion. Was that a form of hysteria? and if so, were the doctors responsible at fault for naming it?

Were these patients, these clients, not highly offended when somebody (a doctor they addressed to as Herr Professor mind you) told  them that they did not suffer of an organic, but rather, of a psycho-neurological, or rather (at the time) nervous condition? Needless to say, the very judgement passed on such revolute circumstances must, today, be the result of the speed at which all beings technological egg us on, as if people and their machines were never more pressed to mark the finish line.

Proust suffered at the hands of this affliction himself. He who makes it easy to understand why, as we grow old, we turn ever more in the direction of our forebears. The meaning of our actions becomes clearer when we see some version of them in another. The advantage with making ourselves the improved rendering of our kin resides in the appropriation of certain historical circumstances. In this process of identification chronology is levelled, and we are free to adopt those lost conditions which are now precious and available to the nostalgic. In other words, since our own life history seems to be wanting, we are free to adopt our great aunts’ oddities as our own.

It is not quite correct to say that I did not leave the house. I do, every day, but only for the daily waltz with Rocky, along the forest and pond-lined Canada trail. Somehow, this forest has become part of our dwelling, and therefore, like for our dog, the divide between the outside, public domain, and our territory, does not begin at the door of the house, but at the margin of the forest, along the fields inhabited, during the warmer months, by our skittish cow-friends. During these walks, and maybe because of their solitary, Rousseauist nature, I am tempted to try and figure the illness of which I suffer in the terms of what it would have appeared like before diagnostic imaging techniques.

There's a good research topic: first, a survey of those who, affected by a tumor, carried on in spite - if not because of - it.  I do not mean the elephant man, even if he is certainly the logically extreme case. I mean people who lived with the symptoms and  knowledge - if such it can be called - and did what they had to do. Secondly, what was it, this thing they had to accomplish, or, better yet, what did it become? In light of the illness underlying their actions?

All of a sudden you will notice that you know of at least a few of such personnages. Strangely enough, the "growth" inside is almost acceptable, almost friendly, seeing how we often describe it, from reference to the proverbial grain of rice, to the pea, to the orange; and even, as I am reluctant to show, but show I must, for it is the truth, to a wurst, that is, yes yes, a sausage. This metaphor (I call it so because within such anxiety riddled circumstances any comparison acquires larger meaning) was offered by that poetically challenged lung specialist I see once in a while. He who happens to be German. My friends know how much I revere that language. Moreover, in this context, the love affair German(ic) folk entertain with the sausage is relevant. This man, who I suspect must be perfectly healthy – which bodes ill for the patient, but we can talk about that at another time - was looking for a simple, accessible metaphor. He wanted us to get it. He paid attention to our needs. Anyhow, this oncologist, trying to explain the shape of the formation which appeared in my lung months after the radiation treatment, is bothered by the lack of certitude regarding its nature. You may remember that blog episode. During this last appointment, which took about 6 minutes, and could easily have been conducted over the phone, possibly with less damage to my asthenia, we had been turning that unknown fact inside out for some long seconds. This allowed not only for the lovely wurst metaphor, but also for a much more puzzling, off putting question. Wherefrom I conclude, sometimes even 6 minutes is too long. The question came, unexpected and hard, in my general direction: now that we knew we know little, if anything for sure, about that appearance in my lung, pray tell, "you do know about the thing in your back", do you not?

Quotation marks indicate the level of the communication we struggled to sustain. The question itself was put in a sort of indifferent, vague, by-the-way-here's-a-detail sort of way. Nothing in the gaze to betray the thought, possibly the thinking process, behind. He looked overall drawn and unshaven, in spite of wearing a beard. I kept going back and forth, up and down, from his face to the photograph of his face on his name tag, which showed a younger, sturdier, more ambitious, even if just as much of a philistine kind of fellow. That photograph must come from the time when he still believed in cancer research.

Had Colin not been with me, I would have answered differently. I promise it makes a difference, because, with him there, I have to behave, to adhere to and possibly match that coolness, the cool of cool he embodies, even when he occupies the fated chair of the patient's companion. That superbly generous, unfazed demeanor, undisturbed in the face of human failure, no matter how often it repeats, remorselessly, its errors.

I would have asked the lung specialist if he was indeed trying to see whether the medication I have been taking, whatever it is - for he would have no idea - had already turned me into a senile old woman, who does not quite know any longer why she spends her time "on disability", either in the woods, or at home.

Or, I could have said something about his own level of brain activity.

Instead, we assured him, like good wards of the health care system, that yes, we knew the lesson, we knew what was happening to my spine.

Now, you might understand how, when one has spent some time under that label, however imprecise, of "disabled", under which I present, even unknowingly, in most social settings which I still have to attend, one develops a bit of a hesitation, a bit of a phobia, regarding the encounters with even the better informed members of the so called community to which we now belong. On the other hand, the lung specialist could have compared the shape which eludes him to worse things. He could have more precisely, closer to its actual size, compared it to a worm, which would have put a different spin on the therapeutic contract we somehow still entertain. One can always do worse.

As for my bouts of neurasthenia, all I can hope for is that the tumor, real as it is, if diminished, will keep pushing me out of the house and into the forest. We have our alpenstock, Rocky and I. We keep measuring the distance and thinking of all the blog entries still to be written. All the pictures still to be taken in order to replace the undigestible imaging flooding my chart.

February 2, Lay Saints (2)

saint george and his faithful dog rocky

one end of the summer day, while  walking along the trail, angela lost her handkerchief. it was a grave incident since, for her walks, two objects are of the utmost significance and never to be left behind: handkerchief and iphone. colin said not to worry, he will go back into the woods with his faithful dog rocky and find the precious object. they were not gone more than a few minutes when they reappeared from under the line of the horizon. angela thought they were returning empty-handed when all of a sudden colin pulled from behind his back in a victorious gesture the lost and found charm. fortunately, angela had her phone pointing in that very direction, and the instant was recorded in a blink. from there to the finished painting, nevertheless, the road proved to be arduous and much less rapid. 

January 19, Decisions

For Oana

Decisions (1): What kind of work and why

The year was 1981 and I had lived in Canada for about eighteen months. Lucky to find a job a week after I arrived in the country. Calgary was a boom town living up to its name. I had been hired as a drafting apprentice in a geophysical consulting company where, for $500 a month, I was taught the rudiments of the trade.

Two seasons later, Mobil Oil hired me for $1200. The working conditions were not as tolerant in the face of daily error, but the money was much better. I came close to consider myself well off. On which comforting thought my most pressing fear, that of being uncovered as a fraud, was throwing its long shadow. My basic skills were limited and my work, so slow as to hardly justify, in my own estimation, the wages I  brought home. I tried to take courses in geophysics, improve, get on on the company ladder, since opportunity was knocking at every door. At the Southern Alberta Institute for Technology, they were churning technologists off the conveyer belt, the land was swelling with capped wells, the company happy to pay for training. But the number of indistinguishable rock samples was so daunting, I had to admit neither geophysics, nor its more artistic counterpart, geology, were my calling.

The afternoons at the office gradually more difficult to get through. After lunch, and everybody ate hefty in those days, I could hardly keep my eyes open. Not unlike how I feel today, as a result of sharply different reasons. I would gladly have put my head on the drawing board and fall asleep, were it not that my desk was in the middle of a large room I shared with fifteen people.

The only way in which one could chase sleep was to chat with one's colleagues. I had a few who were glad to see me come visit under the pretext of looking for advice on my mapping. Gaby, my Hungarian friend, was close to retirement, and neither sleepy nor troubled by anxiety concerning his duties. My other conversation partner was my boss, Laszlo, another Hungarian. These men, who had come to Canada with the 1956 revolution, did not know much about communism, but a lot about what to do to avoid it.

As with all immigrants at the beginning of what is called their new life, I had already incurred some debt and begun to experience the impossibility to bringing a credit card balance to 0. My parents made quite a bit less money than I, so I helped. Gaby kept talking about university. He had a very smart approach, which consisted mainly of praising my intellectual talents. I had left Romania in the midst of my third year university studies and never thought I would go back. All advice from that corner insisted that I renounce any ambition of intellectual pursuit. The West was all about making money and such endeavors as the intellectual ones were not rewarded. Which proved quickly not to be false. I also had this misconception, many people of my whereabouts entertained, that, at 25, I was already too old for school. How was I going to pay for my studies, my livelihood? The best advice Gaby gave me came in the form of a simple calculation. He said, yes, you are 25 now, in four years you will be 29. The time would have passed anyway, and you will ask yourself, how did I spend it? You can stay here, or, you can go look for something else. Time will pass, would have passed, regardless.

The only impediment seemed to be financing my studies, therefore I applied for a student loan. Rarely have I been happier than the day when I received approval for my first year.

At the university there was also encouragement, under the figure of a vice dean admissions who gave me some credit for the years I had spent in the university back home. I was happy to start it all anew, since all was new and unusual.

I left the oil company in the fall of 1982. My colleagues made me a gift, a writing pen of course. The year after, the second important recession in the oil business kicked in, more than half of the employees were laid off, and all received nice severance packages. There where I had left simply for the joy of having been awarded a student loan.

We could say this was an important decision I took in collaboration with a whole group of people around me who all cheered me on. We could also say that it was only the semblance of a decision, that I had to go back, that no other option would have been sustainable, to use another fashionable word, in the long run for me. School, that is, the eighth floor of the University of Calgary's library, with a view of the Rockies, was the most miraculous place I had yet laid eyes on since my arrival. Shortly put, I had never experienced a library where books were accessible on the shelves, no matter how expensive, no matter how rare, to anybody and all who cared to reach out and read them. I entered this place of retreat and wonder in 1982 and only emerged, from libraries in Montreal and then back to Calgary, where I finished the writing of my dissertation, passing through Atlanta for a short stint, in 1990. To that we can add another five years of teaching and postdoctoral studies in Halifax and Kingston, and we can say that it was only in 1995, when I got my first permanent job in London Ontario, that I could consider myself done reading in university libraries, and could finally move into my own office at home.

When we refer to decisions concerning professional life, if one were to think "decision" as a choice between this and that: between a less desirable, difficult because boring, generally unfulfilling, and a more desirable, pleasant, or satisfying because more provocative, creatively speaking, way of life; then of course, my decision to practically move to the library and live almost exclusively in the presence of books, between the ages of 26 and 40, can hardly be considered a decision which made my life easier. During those years - usually considered the best years of one's life, speaking from that point of view which values youth - the financial concerns were overwhelming, and there were times when I cannot say I dealt with those worries very well. Once the kind of work consequent with life in the library materialized, difficulties became of a different nature, but never disappeared, as they seem to do in those tall tales people spin, about life changed without a blink, where decision is spurred by some revelation. Whether it is one's having been laid off a job and deciding work in front of a computer, insignificant cog contributing to the wealth of the corporation, was not their thing anyway; or one's having had an out of the body experience, or its equivalent, at the dentist or on the operating table, which brought about the discovery of that spiritual, immaterial side of the world, they had never before cared for; and the list can go on; this kind of so called decision means, rather, changing one way of life with another and not with a better one necessarily. Truly good decisions are calls built on some precedent which makes them, to more attentive analysis, a consequence of something meaningful that came before, to which the call answers, rather than a radical change of course.

In the case I described, by necessity mine since it is what I know best, "going back to school" was exactly that. It was not a change of course. Work in the oil company had been, it was one of the many things I did in order to adapt to my new country, but it could hardly last, considering that I had not seriously dreamt of being a geologist in my youth. Instead, when I came to Canada, and in spite of the two only suitcases I keep talking about in order to recall to what extent I was without material means, one could hardly call me naked like a new born when I entered this new world at 24. There was something else I carried, of which I like to speak less, simply because it was and is unusual and apparently of little use. I was in possession, in one form or another, of no less than eight languages, whose learning had taken much of my childhood and youth. It mattered little that I would, at some point, make use of those, as a matter of fact the prevailing mentality, upon my arrival and even later, was such, that I better kept to myself that kind of possession. Whether I made use of it or not, the fact remained that in some manner, it was going to determine my professional decisions and by that I mean my way of life for ever. Learning a language is not simply a matter of learning words unknown. And at some point, when done properly, this kind of knowledge can open up forms of creativity which are a secret even to that learning itself.

Let us say, that was my foundation. Many years spent in solitude, with books, because of course in my time learning was done with books, there was nothing technological, nothing communicative, nothing purposeful, beyond the beauty of the language itself, about it. Either modern languages or the so called dead ones were taught in the same way. One read the ancients, one read the moderns, it was pretty much all it took, besides time.

Of course, what people do with what I call here, their fundamental knowledge, the one that becomes almost organic, as if already part of their genetic makeup, depends very much on their character and their desire. They can transform it into something practical, live off it, accomplish it in the open. Or, they can transform it into some form of private entertainment, commonly known as a hobby. Or, they can simply forget about it completely. The last is the sad case, and it was, once again, my case, when, for so many years, I stopped painting. Until the illness which brought us together, woke me up to it again. And, since I took up the piano, I discover so many people around me who, in their childhood, played it, and have abandoned it long ago. It is a mystery why we leave behind so definitely our childhood. I understand that to be appropriate when such learning was accompanied by some form of grief, which is not uncommon. But when it was a happy kind of learning, why we abandon it, I cannot understand.

It seems to have to do with becoming a grown up and reckoning with the real life of the adult. That life is not supposed to contain such pleasures as painting and piano playing for the sake of play. If one will not become a professional at it, then better forgotten. There is no time to play. When one is an adult, one has to provide.

Against this, sometimes, the child awakens and asks to be reinstated in his or her rights.

These seem to be moments the adult translates as taking a radical decision. One looks inwards and hears a recognizable, seductive voice. There are dreams there, which have been forgotten. Often there is renewed energy to learn. But most surely, there is a desire to do better than one has done.

That is why, I do not trust those who pretend the better way of life to be the one of lesser work, lesser effort. Work and effort are not to be avoided in themselves. What matters is, what we ask of these work and effort to do. Do we ask them to make us better, more wise, more helpful, therefore more lovable? Or do we ask them to give us more of the selfsame "I" to carry around?

It looks like I will have to take much more time than I have allotted myself, right now, to answer that question. We can therefore expect, this to be continued...

Decisions (2): What the dog said: I'd rather you stay home

People who love the company of animals know this conundrum.  Even when they have found the best place where to leave their companions while they go away, the pleasures of travel and holidays are always overshadowed by worries of what may, in their absence, happen with those left behind, more often than not, not at home.

A few days ago, while following Rocky on the trail,  I remembered one of our longer, more memorable trips to Europe. Yet what came to mind were not so much the many pleasant aspects of that sojourn, but that which, at the heart of it, became the source of untold anxiety. And this, in spite of the fact that, in those days - this was the summer of 2004 -, because I was in psychotherapy, I used to pay close attention to all manner of hints people with whom I came into contact routinely sent out. Right when I should have put that kind of knowledge to work, I preferred to disregard the warning at hand and stay the course.

Before the trip, as usual, I had to take care of the animals. Alice, timid, private and content to spend days on end in the house, has never been a problem. She was going to be cared for by Greg, and could not dream of a better master. Looking for a temporary asylum for Felix was a different matter. This time around I seemed to be out of luck, all well recommended homes were full. Finally, one agreed to take the dog in for such a long time. The owner of the kennel, a big farmhouse nicely appointed from what I could see on the outside, never invited me to visit as the custom requires. Time was getting short and I, fearful precisely of what came to pass, did not ask to inspect. The recommendation I had been given concerning him was truly half-hearted, and yet I chose to rely on it entirely.

Félix (foreground) and his all-time best friend Valérie 

Strangely enough, this man, as if aware of my worry, brought the conversation himself to the topic of people who are in the habit of leaving their pets with friends or acquaintances. He advised firmly against, of course, by saying that such ill placed trust can easily lead to the death of one's pet. An outcome of such gravity had never occurred to me before, and his words on the one hand shocked me, on the other appeared gratuitously far fetched. Come to think of it, I might have told him that up to that point I had often, if not always, left my dog with friends. I considered it my privilege and chance to be able to do so. It was almost the reason why I could have any, aware of the difficulty they represent, when one wants to travel, as I did. I was, indeed, fortunate enough to count such generous people around me, who would accept to take care of my dog while I was away, no matter for how long. This, in spite of Felix's difficult to adapt, punctilious, intense character.

At this moment, however, none of those friends were able to help. In fact, we were all going to meet at a conference in Spain. As it turned out, of course, unbeknownst to us all, this was to be the last conference our group, dare I say our small community, to keep in tune with common ideals, attended as a group. It was to be, as they say, the end of an era. And I often wonder if I am alone to wax nostalgic about that loss.

Nevertheless, upon parting, I tried to tell myself, as one always does, that all was going to be all right. This chap seemed responsible enough, his front lawn manicured, his manner almost polite. I was sentimentally attached to this area around Kingston, it was here where I had started my career, at Queen's, and it was from these townships that Felix had emerged, as a stray in need of a home which turned out to be my rented apartment of 1992. I trusted my dog's summer would be a holiday in his home county. He could be described as an anxious creature at the best of times, reason why I tried to ignore and resist the desperate appeals he kept sending in my direction.

I went away, that summer, for six weeks. Colin came to join me in France, at the end of my teaching engagement. After some traveling we ended in Pamplona, for the conference which, incidentally, had to do with togetherness and the bond between animal and human beings. During these six weeks, not one evening went by without my paining for my dog. When I called the kennel, I received vaguely reassuring, ready-made reports. Yet my dreams were disquieting and, try as I may, I simply could not believe he was well.

I had bought a brand new dog cushion when I took him to his summer camp. I remember it well, it was the brightest red. When we went to take him back, the cushion made us choke with its stench. We put it in the trunk, it did not look particularly dirty or stained, yet it was obvious that odor would never leave it. At the first opportunity we threw it out. To this day I wonder about that odor. Was it pain? The novelist Marguerite Yourcenar, who was a vegetarian, thought that eating meat was indulging in the taste of suffering. Maybe suffering has a smell too? I am quite sure of that.

My dog had been with me by now for about twelve years. He was getting old, much more sensitive and particular in the attentions he required. As soon as he appeared from behind the closed gates, he did not stop to greet us but, like an amnesiac who only remembers gestures, jumped in the car, evil burning on its tail. His bones swam untangled in the dirty, oversized fur-bag his skin had become, like a homeless's tattered suit. Movements disjointed, sideways gaze, chewed off tip of the left ear. Despondent, foggy gazed and overall hurt. My dog looked like he had frayed that very death the kennel-man wished upon all those pets left in friendly homes.

Such words as he had uttered upon our acquaintance came back to me and I could not forgive myself for not having properly attended to them first.

An ominous summer it was to be. Felix grew, after the order of things, older and weaker, and required the attentions we owe to the old. A summer whose horrors I will never really know, except for the signs which my dog displayed and which I did my best to erase, in the shortest possible time. Then, a decision was born, which had only been a vague, rather ambitious thought before. It certainly took years for me to make it happen, but it was at that point that I understood I could not again, simply leave behind my animal companions for long periods of time, in order to travel.  

January 13, Vampire

Today is the 11th anniversary of my father’s death. While it was my intention to write a fragment dedicated to him, I was apprehensive before the magnitude of the task. But even if I did not know what exactly I was going to say, I did know that my father, always preoccupied with his image, we could even say, with the dissemination of his figure, was going to give me a hint. He was a man generous beyond his means, who loved making gifts. His gifts to me were often of such an incongruous nature, as to make me laugh in disbelief. Which today, of course, I miss badly. This Sunday’s gift might have been the following unexpected visit, preemptive in the face of my initial apprehension.

rocky and not-rat

Rocky jumped off the bed like he does when something is the matter. Usually an animal wondering outside, on the deck or in the meadow. It was still dark and since it is Sunday we would have liked to sleep in. He rolled downstairs in a rush and started barking. It did not take long to figure that the bark was not of wildlife on the other side of the window, but of wildlife in the house. An indescribable, mechanical screech responded once in a while to his angry taunting.

Colin took a bit to reach the scene. He is never one to rush down the stairs lest the house is under threat of flood or fire. I did not have my shoes nearby and hesitated to go down barefooted. Experience has taught me these visitors risk to be small and their potential aggression directed at one's toes or ankles. The thought flushed through my mind of a larger animal but I rejected it immediately. I could not see how a larger animal could just happen. Especially since, two nights ago, we had watched the most recent Hound of Baskerville, which makes possible all kind of wild intrusions into quiet country homes.

I shook myself up and found my slippers at the foot of the stairs. In the meantime Colin, some wobbly, plastic wand in hand, had assessed the situation. An animal was hiding under the armchair with Rocky dancing furiously the dance of the warrior, barking and foaming at the mouth, around it. How big the animal? Colin did not seem to know for sure. I got to my knees and realized we were dealing with the size of a rat. A white rat that is.

A rat? asked Colin. That's not good. Well, it's not that bad either, it seemed to me, since it is within our power, that is Alice's, Rocky's, mine and even Colin's, to deal with a rat, at least theoretically. Yet this rat was white, and as far as I know, and had again, just witnessed in the Baskerville movie, white rats, mice, rabbits, white anything, is the preferred kind in lab animals. So we were dealing here potentially with an escaped lab rat.

For a moment that seemed possible, except there was an obvious strong smell, we could call it almost stench, if it did not come from such a small creature, coming from under the armchair and, so far as I know, rats do not smell. Which introduced again doubt as to the nature of the animal. It was probably something else. Rocky's fury did not allow for a calm assessment of the situation so I had to take him back to the bedroom in spite of Colin's protest. He felt the dog was, indeed, in his opinion, defending us somehow against the threatening intruder.

I went again on my knees to peak under and saw, to my pleasant surprise, a lovely white and grey-ended furry tail, totally unlike that of a rat. Better yet, when the beast turned around, I could see v-shaped white teeth on a lovely face with pointy ears and a clear determination which looked less like fear than like calculation. Having put a heavy work mitten (it seems to be my preferred instrument of intervention) on, I extended my hand under the armchair and the animal came quite quickly and resolutely near, like one who would respond to a food offering. Except that he or she was quite resolute to take a bite off this  glove, with the relative conviction that it would be a productive move, which indeed it was, since I retracted my glove and set on a different path of action.

Having first opened the door to the deck, we entertained the hope that, like it is the case with bats, the white not-rat would do the reasonable thing and leave the premises into the rainy night. Because, I forgot to say, it was pouring outside. This would mean, waiting for him or her to figure out that the way was clear in that direction. That's how people think. The animal seemed to be interested in all other directions except of the door.

In the meantime, Alice came cautiously down the stairs. The racket should have brought her down earlier, but she did not seem to rush. Cautiously but curious, she approached the armchair and peaked under. Her tail started filling up gradually, but not too much. She lowered her head further, looked closer, backed up a bit and, slowly but surely, left that close proximity and all the while walking backwards chose an observation point some two meters away, from behind a basket on the floor.

I deduced the animal was in some way more intimidating than a rat, larger version of the mice Alice has no difficulty terminating. Her dexterity such that one would be hard pressed to perceive the point of entry through which her claw operates its lethal task. Her victims could truly be said to be sleeping the last, peaceful sleep. Or than a squirrel, or a chipmunk, who do not stir her in the least, except for some half hearted semblance of a chase leading nowhere. No, this not-rat inspired in Alice if not fear, certainly respect, which I took note of and adhered to myself.

Finally, once the whole family had expressed their opinion in the matter, I took things in my own bare hands. The solution was simple: I pushed the armchair, not-rat underneath, towards the door, as far as I could. This is a massive armchair, yet easy to move. In my mind I thanked the non-rat for having chosen that piece of furniture to hide underneath, and asked her to now please leave the site. Once the armchair hit the threshold, I lifted it sideways and ascertained the absence of animal underneath. By which evidence concluded optimistically that she had chosen the way to freedom rather than the warmth and wealth of nooks and crannies, as well as the affluence of prey offered by the house.

Which prey, I learned fortunately after, must have been mice, since this not-rat was definitely a weasel or rather ermine. The picture on google corresponded perfectly to my own consideration of the enemy's features. This fearless, devoid of principle carnivore, will eat half his, and two thirds her weight, lest they perish by means of mercilessly high metabolism. They will, therefore, eat all that which crosses their path, up to the size of a rabbit, that is, the very size of Alice, who is a tiny cat. Apparently their pleasure is largely that of clean killing, by way of the neck, and this does not always correlate with hunger. A vampire, one could say, who makes her bed in the burrow of the victim, bed linens out of the fur of that same unfortunate creature.

The house got back to its usual calm, all concerned resuming their violently interrupted sleep. We promised once again to seek those access points whereby all manner of unwanted visitors periodically enter the house. In spite of knowing very well that vampires do not need a door or a window to penetrate your sleep, but simply the recollection of fabulous stories, like those of Sir Conan Doyle. 

SNOW WRITES

once upon a time 
there were
TWO LOVERS

a MAN and a WOMAN
who had grown together like a
SPIDERWEB

OOOH they had

at least 
one CLOSE WITNESS

and many LINKS: A Z N V

ASCENDING the CROSS

his YOUTH put to test
by the duty of 

of symbols
in a forest which
would have spooked
Baudelaire
>a<

while she wore
BIG MITTS
in her work as a 
huntress