And So It Comes to an End . . . . .

“Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day; here I was happy, in that place I left my coat behind after a party, that is where I met my love; I cried there once, I was heartsore; but felt better round the corner once I saw the hills of Fife across the Forth, things of that sort, our personal memories, that make the private tapestry of our lives.” 

-          Alexander McCall Smith, Love Over Scotland

 “A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.” 

-          Joan Didion

And so this comes to an end. This all started with a little house across the street. A house that, in the course of one decision, became empty-eyed and lonely, became derelict and of the past. This bantam house that I had thought would always be there, because it always had. It was a part of the tapestry, the fabric, of my place. 

When it became evident that the house was to be torn down, that the weave of the tapestry was to be utterly altered, it made me stop to ponder what ‘place’ is. How place can be ephemeral or enduring. How place can be eternal or impermanent, perpetual or flitting. So, I opened my eyes, became present in my ‘place’. I found things I loved, things I didn’t. 

I spoke of trains, and rain, and trails, and rivers, cobwebs, clotheslines, and dogs. I spoke of bad decisions, bad vibes, and ghosts of the past. Of leaves, and storms, local heroes, and fog.  I mulled the sadness of lost streams, and the high meditative quality of cups of clouds. These are all of my ‘place’, of my ‘sense of place’. 

I have come to an end of writing about this place, of this moment, at this time, which of course had to happen at some point. I will, I suppose, write of other things, other places, other sorts of places, in other places. Place actually never really ends – the stories of place never really end. Because, as the writer Amy Tan has said:  “That is the nature of endings, it seems. They never end. When all the missing pieces of your life are found, put together with glue of memory and reason, there are more pieces to be found.” 

More pieces, and more places, more bits of my life and shards of my experiences. Someday, someplace. 

Of Ghosts and Burdens

“In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.”

- Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls

“Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what.”

                                                - Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

 “Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.”

- Ray Bradbury

My place is a place of burdens. It has its proverbial skeletons in the closets and ghosts in the ground. Most small towns do. The histories and pasts of small towns are built, after all, on human foibles.

A former mental asylum sits atop a wooded hill overlooking the town. Most of it is disused now, abandoned, its stone exterior crumbling to sand and its lime-washed interior falling to heaps of rotting timber and insect-infested detritus. Where the walls still stand, the institutional colours of green or pale  yellow glow in patches of the decaying elements mixed with the lime for strength  – water glass, glue, egg white, milk, soil, pig’s blood.

Below the asylum is 1,000 acres of wooded land, now the domain of turtles, herons, and community gardens. But at one time this was a farm worked by the inmates of that mental asylum on the hill. The farm produced enormous quantities of hay, vegetables, honey, meat, and milk from one of the largest herds of diary cows in the area.  It was considered a great agricultural and mental health treatment success. But I wonder, was this indentured labour, the inmates used much like prison gangs used to be? Or was it some enlightened medical procedure consisting of bright sunshine, fresh air, and hard exercise?

I recall the story of John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of that famous corn flake. His sanatorium was run on the basis of his philosophies of nutrition, enemas, and exercise.  He had ideas about holistic health, vegetarianism, intestinal health, and how patients benefited from these, at that time, unusual practices. But he had strange ideas about sexuality and was also a devout believer in eugenics.

Perhaps institutionalized people are always at the whim and mercy of those that feel they understand them and what it is that they need – whether that is true or not.

At one time, another farm adjoined this wonderfully productive one. But it became a place of many ghosts and appalling abominations. A serial killer is another skeleton in the closet of this small town. Now that farm is gone and there is instead a housing complex made up of homes, and schools, and playgrounds. Here the ghosts in the ground don’t have voices anymore – the intensity and magnitude of life in its everyday ordinary-ness suffocates them. 

Perhaps ghosts are always at the whim and mercy of life lived large, and loud, and vital – whether that is true or not.

Meditation on Leaves

“To hear never-heard sounds,

To see never-seen colors and shapes,

To try to understand the imperceptible

Power pervading the world;

To fly and find pure ethereal substances

That are not of matter

But of that invisible soul pervading reality.

To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul;

To be a lantern in the darkness

Or an umbrella in a stormy day;

To feel much more than know.

To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain;

To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon;

To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves;

To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets

Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching.

To be a smile on the face of a woman

And shine in her memory

As a moment saved without planning.”

                                                                                                  - Dejan Stojanovic

“Anyone who thinks fallen leaves are dead has never watched them dancing on a windy day.”

                                                                                                  - Shira Tamir

I live in a place of leaves.  My place still retains some old growth forest, has quite a lot of second growth, and several species of trees not native to the region. Almost all of them are deciduous.  The old growth forest that still stands in my neighborhood consists of predominantly Sitka Spruce.  Closer to the streams are some Shore Pines, a sub-species of the Lodgepole Pine, but they like their feet wet and boggy. My place is on a high water table so one or two of the Shore Pines traipse up our street, finding the squelchy areas easily where they like to wiggle their toes.

There is quite a lot of Vine Maple, small but very prolific insofar as number of leaves are concerned. There are still one or two Elms, though most are gone, and a couple of Horse Chestnuts, their burred and barbed seeds littering the ground in the fall, followed by their leaves. Red Alder, Black Cottonwood, some Rowan trees, and Black Locust, all add to the cascades of leaf fall in the autumn. And Maple trees, from small-leafed Japanese maples to the leaves of Oregon Maple – which can be as big as dinner plates. Lots and lots of Maples.

They say the grandeur of trees is gone when raking leaves. That when faced with a lawn of leaves up to your knees that you quickly forget the charm of the trees from whence all this foliage came. What was once beauty and shade becomes a chore.

I love raking leaves – I love that it happens when the air is nipping-cold, when the lawnmowers have become quieted; when there is a peacefulness that accompanies the scritch, scritch of the rake in the leaves and the sniggering of birds at the feeders. I love that at times I will rake and uncover wondrous fungi and mushrooms – in every colour from white to purple, and from every size from thumb nail, to bucket-sized. They don’t appear until the leaves are there to hide their murky and covert journey to the surface of the soil. I love how I uncover the secret stashes of squirrels, little piles of nuts they had hoped to remember to find again. If a squirrel is watching while I rake he will come down from a tree when he thinks my back is turned and steal them back, indignant and a little chagrined about his dodgy wee memory.

We are not allowed to burn leaves in my place. Apparently it is environmentally toxic. Which I understand, and comply with, but it is also a sensual regret. When I was a child, the final ceremonial step in raking leaves was to set fire to them. My brother and I tended the bonfire. Long into the evening we would poke and putter about the fire, inhaling the heady smell of burning leaves.  Our faces would become smudged, our hands dirty, our clothes as thick with the smell of dry vegetation as a wool coat in a peat barn. The synthesis of low evening light, perhaps the streaking of pink and gold as the sun set, the gloom approaching on cat’s paws, and the nose-pinching smell of the bonfire, coalesced into a memory that is still so strong today in my old age that I can physically inhale it.

Leaves are not meant to be bagged up in over-priced ‘bio-degradable’ bags that line up in a row next to the garbage cans, or even worse in plastic ‘compost’ bags. Leaves are certainly not meant to be vacuumed – the full-mouthed sound of the machinery shattering the deadened air of autumn. We compost, but something is lost in the ritual

I love raking leaves. I love even, but only in a meditative mind, when I am finished and turn around and see that the breeze and the trees have conspired to re-carpet the lawn. Begin again. Begin again. Meditation on a breezy, leafy autumn day.

Of Dogs and Heaven

“Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.”

                                                             Orhan Pamum, My Name is Red

“The conclusion I have reached is that, above all, dogs are witnesses. They are allowed access to our most private moments. They are there when we think we are alone. Think of what they could tell us. They sit on the laps of presidents. They see acts of love and violence, quarrels and feuds, and the secret play of children. If they could tell us everything they have seen, all of the gaps of our lives would stitch themselves together.”

                                                              Carolyn Parkhurst, The Dogs of Babel

My place is a place of dogs. With its many meandering trails, its circuitous rivers, and duck-populated lakes, it is the sanctum of canine blessedness. I have never gone from one point to any other, regardless of the mode of conveyance, without encountering at least one dog. Most usually, many more.

There is fat Frank, an old black labrador whose girth is substantial and whose gait is wobbly and dawdling. His tail continually wags back and forth in a drowsy, sweeping constancy as though it is the key that has wound him up - and he will go and go until it stops. His owner plods along with him, letting him set the pace - slow enough to read her book as they go. 

There is yappy, impertinent little Buddy, a self-important Pug. He has something to say about everyone and everything. His perch is the upper floor deck of a house that faces onto the street, his window on the world. He has political opinions, views about his consternation about what is happening in the neighborhood, and a general curmudgeon attitude. On the occasions that he is taken for a walk, he pulls vigorously at the end of his leash, rushing from here to there to push his flattened nose into all businesses.

There is three-legged Cody- a mutt of indiscernible heritage. He has been a dog of three (legs) for most of his life. He moves faster and is more agile than most four-legged dogs I know.  His enthusiasm for life is palpable - he is like a sparking, electrical charge at the end of his lead.

There is a white Malti-Poo sort of dog that walks with his elderly lady friend daily past our yard. I watch them sometimes as they take their interminable time to walk past. The dog likes to stop at our yard to do his business. Sometimes the elderly lady notices I am watching. She makes a great show of pulling out a plastic bag, pulling it over her hands like a surgeon with his latex gloves. She holds her hand up in the air in preparation and then bends to the task. She makes a further show of scooping, and twirling, and tying - and with a great flourish, places the bag in her pocket. What !?!  When I go out later, the poop is still there, not picked up at all. 

Then there is Rocky, a powerful and belligerant Boxer. He is usually confined to the yard but on the occasions that he is left to run in the park, he has beaten up every dog he has met. He is like a big kid desperate for friends but prone to every social faux pas imaginable.  His idea of play is everyone else’s idea of assault. He just needs an understanding friend. Kind of like Winnie the Pooh has his Piglet. 

Out on the dykes, the dogs encountered are predominantly of the sporting type. There are balls and sticks and ducks to be fetched out of ponds and sloughs. In November there are fetid, stinking Salmon carcasses to roll in, the height of exultation and jubilance. It is a special place for dogs. Young puppies scuttle after butterflies and slugs, mid-aged dogs carry large sticks with great purpose and ambition, trotting along the trail leading their owners to the ‘sweet spots’.  And old dogs shamble along - aching and wheezing, lifting their grizzled faces to the sun-warmed azure skies; inhaling deeply the essential odours of hay, and rabbits, and manure, and fish, and ducks, dandelions, and turtles - and thinking that life is pretty good. 

And that when they do finally have to go, heaven is right here - in this place. 

Of Development and Exhausted Passions

“A sip of wine, a cigarette,

And then it’s time to go.

I tidied up the kitchenette;

I tuned the old banjo.

I’m wanted at the traffic-jam.

They’re saving me a seat.”                                                  - Leonard Cohen

“Ahhh, God's balls! The Horrible Halt!" Adoulla pronounced the Dhamsawaati term for the complete standstill of traffic with a familiar disgust.”                                                                - Saladin Ahmen, Throne of the Crescent Moon

My place is a place of disappointment sometimes. There is a road, an inland road named for a seaside place - the reason having to do with engineering, plots, and plats. When we first came to this place is was a main road in the same vein as many Main Roads in small towns. It was the longest and the widest, but it had traffic lights only at each end and the volume of traffic on it was no more than on a back-town residential street in a larger city. 

In our first summer here, a man appeared at my door. He was short and swarthy, his hair heavily oiled. On this hot and humid day he wore a suit that was far too warm for the weather and fit him poorly. His tie was askew and he carried a clip-board. 

“They are going to build an over-pass”, he blurted when I opened the door to him, “We must stop them”. 

He went on, as sweat trickled down his face and his feet swelled in his shoes, about how it would change things, change everything. About how the traffic would increase, how people would lose their homes, how it would be an evil thing. You didn’t need to know the facts to know the passion. I signed his petition.

And the next year, the same oily-haired man again appeared in what looked to be the same over-warm suit,  his sweat-moistened petition in hand; and again exhort and plead. He needn’t have tried so hard. I signed the petition - I would have signed it anyway.

My neighbours chuckled and shook their wise heads and told me how the threat of the over-pass had been there for over thirty years. That realtors never even mentioned it anymore to potential buyers - it was never going to happen. That the man was a yearly community joke.

But the little man was fervent and vehement. He was a man of foreign origins and at times his intensity was so extreme that the words of his own language would tangle with the words of his learned language and would create a paroxysm of sounds. You didn’t need to know the words to know the passion. I signed his petition.

Year after year, I signed his petition - for many years.

And then one year, houses were torn down on either side of the seaside place-named street. A concrete armature reached over the expanse of the railway yard that had formally been the division of north from south. It was an overpass, and its architecture rose high into the air and changed the skyline. It’s footings reached deep into residential streets and changed the flow and curve and the meandering dispositions of streets. The soft asphalt that had kept the imprints of dog’s feet or fallen leaves in its soft, impressionable tar was changed to concrete - grey, unending concrete. There are many traffic lights along the road now. There is traffic of brobdingnagian proportions. 

And I remembered he had said, “It will change things, change everything”.

The little oil-haired man doesn’t come anymore. His breathless and avid speeches have been replaced with the constant shushing of constant traffic. His passion is spent and his cause was for naught. I fear he may have died of a broken heart, or at the very least lives lonely with the company of being right. 

In any case, I miss him.