Politely Rejected by Harpers

Bagpipes, Sunsets, Bermuda and John Lennon

Going through an old collection of assorted papers and cards, I came across a postcard I’d bought in Bermuda. I like to collect art postcards, sometimes I send them, sometimes I don’t. This one apparently, I kept. It was a reproduction of a watercolour by Andrew Wyeth entitled “The Bermudian”. It depicted a black woman from another time, a time we may want to forget, but never should. She was dressed in white, sitting, bare arms crossed, looking exhausted, in a chair beside a pale blue gray louvered door. The wall behind her white, scratched and stained by the years, the weather, by life. Art was and continues to be, I hope, in the very air you breathe in Bermuda. Painters, poets, and writers have all gone there to relax, to go on vacation, to take a step out of their everyday lives and have discovered that Art was waiting for them even there. Names you’ll undoubtably recognize, some who you’ll never meet. Winslow Homer, Georgia O’Keefe, Frank L. Baum, Alfred Hitchcock, Marsden Hartley, John Lennon. Most, if not all were renewed, revitalized, inspired and perhaps even reborn. John came away from his experience of Bermuda with that beautiful, last album, Double Fantasy, named for a flamboyant Hibiscus growing in the Botanical Gardens.

A very dedicated and energetic Bermudian began to realize that the history of his island home was being beautifully depicted by these extraordinary people, and so began a long voyage for him and like-minded Bermudians, to collect as much of the work as they could. A valuable legacy for all Bermudians now, and those still to come. In March of 2013, I journeyed back for the first time in 22 years, and I was excited to see how far this project had come. A museum had been built on the grounds of Camden House and the Botanical Gardens. I paid a visit to this museum filled with works by Bermudian and International Artists and there in the gift shop I discovered a gorgeous little book entitled Lennon Bermuda. With the book came 2 CD’s of some of the music of John’s, recorded by various Bermudian musicians. It surprised me to learn that he had visited, no one had made mention of it. But then, Bermudians are like that. Unless you’re a high ranking member of the Royal Family, they honour your privacy. I bought the book and read it on the flight home. The book told of John’s sail to Bermuda, and his many experiences during the few months he was there, the summer of 1980, meeting new people, spending time with Sean, writing music. One story, out of all the stories, emerged and got my attention.

Let me tell my story so you’ll understand the significance for me.

I was very fortunate to have lived in Bermuda for almost 10 years. I was even more fortunate to have found a small white cottage by the side of the sea. Actually, a small part of the sea, for Harrington Sound was a large lake-like expanse of water fed by the sea through underground caves and a narrow inlet. The cottage had been built in a niche carved by man out of the limestone hillside. It was about 40 feet above the water, set back about 6 feet, so that sitting on the verandah we could look below and watch the fish in the glass-like water. When we went snorkeling, we discovered  a small underwater cave directly below the house, where we often saw lobsters tucked into the very back, they would come out to touch their antennas to our wiggling fingers.

The cottage was the guest cottage to the big house, a beautiful 2 story house with a great lawn, the center formed by a collapsed cave. Lots of trees, Casaurinas, Frangipani, Hibiscus, Oleanders, and the border of the property left wild, Asparagus fern, Fennel and a little poison ivy. Our cottage had a tiny lawn on one side but the front was steep, dropping sharply 20 feet above the water, left wild. The back of the house was narrow with a high wall behind. A planter had been built that was as high as the walls of the cottage. Nothing much grew there except some scraggily geraniums as there was very little sun. The wall continued up several more feet and above was the beginnings of Mrs. Wilkinson’s estate. Her house was on the point of the small peninsula that defined one side of the cove. But her carriage house was above us. 

Over the years it was converted to a proper cottage. Mrs. Wilkinson actually lived in it for a time while her house underwent repairs from a fire. I remember the day.  The smoke was horrendous, pouring out from under the roof, rolling like a massive storm front.

Eventually she moved back home and the cottage, having by now been completely renovated, was let to young newlyweds. He was the son of a Bermudian of Scottish heritage. I believe his wife was American, a lovely girl, unfortunately afflicted with Lupus.

One beautiful evening as the sun was setting across the Sound, bagpipes began to play the most sublimely romantic yet sorrowful music I had ever heard.  I gave myself over to all the emotions I’d held in check for so long, laughing and crying quietly so not to miss a single note. Forgetting to breathe, as if that would keep me in the moment.

It was the young man. John was his name. He was playing the Piobrochs (Piobaireachd), ancient Scottish music developed along with the evolution of the pipes. The music was written to commemorate the many occasions of man; gatherings, a call-to-arms, weddings, funerals and to honour fallen heroes.They are powerful, they are transcendent, they are cathartic. They invade your heart, causing it to expand and overflow with emotions, turning your sadness to anguish, your joy to elation, your yearnings to lust. Having grown up in Canada, my listening experiences with bagpipes varied but never ever included this music, the truth of the pipes. Yes, I found them rousing when the Black Watch or the RCMP, went on parade with drums and kilts, and fantastic headdresses, but mostly the music was always the same, Amazing Grace, and other songs of that ilk and if the piper was mediocre, well you understand.

I went to visit my neighbour the next day and he told me how he had come to learn to play the bagpipes and those legendary Scottish airs. He’d been trained by a master piper, a friend of his father’s living in New York. He, himself, was a goodly way towards being a master piper and may be one as I write these words many years later.

 As always, I like to see what folks are reading, what art they have on their walls and as I gazed around the tiny cottage, my eyes discerned a framed letter. I went for a closer look and discovered it was signed by John Lennon, with the pencil drawing of his face that I’m sure we all recognize. I don’t remember reading the letter, I probably didn’t. As I grew up, my psyche was formed by hard and fast rules, the most important being, “one must never pry”. A bad thing to have if you want to be a writer. I was left to assume that this young man had bought it from some auction house, some estate sale. I was in the process of leaving my husband which meant leaving Bermuda, so I missed the adventure of getting to know this young couple.

John Lennon was for me a hero of my generation. I suppose he was a disappointment to his first wife and son, to some of his friends and colleagues, pulled as he was in many directions by his art and his humanity. Caught in a tug of war by people, friends, fans, strangers, who needed him to be only one of the many potential lives he had in him to be. But he found a way in the end to be almost all, if not all, of the men who made up the whole of John Lennon. Or so I believe. His death was unlooked for, uncalled for, knocking the breath from your lungs, propelling you to your knees in grief, but somehow inevitable. We can’t seem to rest easy with greatness in our midst. Some of us ‘dirty rascals’ need to defeat the ‘kings and queens’ of the castles.

In the stories of John Lennon in Bermuda, I read of his sail across the Atlantic, his time with his son, and the first hand accounts of his new found friends. The places he visited, the adventures he had. He and Sean rented a lovely cottage near the city of Hamilton where they spent a time most revitalizing and inspirational. It came to him one evening, a glorious sound over the waters and through the oleanders. The Piobrochs came to him I think as it came to me. He wrote a letter to the Piper. The very same I saw framed in that tiny cottage on Harrington Sound. My eyes can never more behold a sunset without my ears straining to hear the Piobrochs. And learning that John shared the same experience as I did, my thoughts often turn to him as well.

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” ― May Sarton

The title of a book I once read back in my thirties has embedded itself in my brain and comes to me at odd times. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, written by Milan Kundera, a Czechoslovakian author. The title intrigued me. A phrase with three seemingly unconnected words, each one familiar and understandable in an everyday kind of way, but taken together I feel, becomes a journey of contemplation and a quest for exploring the great mysteries. It may be why some people join convents or monasteries or are endlessly moving, searching for answers. I remember W.Somerset Maugham’s story “The Razor’s Edge” - a life spent examining a life, what it can mean to love, to be aware, to be an active participant in this one moment of this one life. 

These internal quests into the mysteries require courage and I often fail or become exhausted with all the thinking. It’s as though the answer is right there on the tip of my tongue. Each discovery reveals more questions. Sometimes I just curl up and read a book, or play World of Warcraft, just to get some respite. That new-age adage “It’s not the destination but the journey that matters”, leaves me cold.  Can you make a journey without a destination?

I’ve just now sat down from cooking in the kitchen - one of my favourite things to do if it isn’t chore-like. A glass of wine (essential), a good knife, a good chopping board and fresh veggies to chop. Music completes my heaven for the next 20 minutes. Other things make this heaven that much sweeter; Jackson, my husband who fires up the Bar-B-Que, the friends coming soon. Is this not an Unbearable Lightness of Being? Friends both here and gone are with me, in me, part of me. I’m not aware of them until I make a tunafish sandwich and there’s Lilian. Holding my French Knife for chopping, Pierre is conjured. Gail, my friend of 40 years (and I am gone from her for so many of them), is with me everyday. She is so much a part of me it’s like a prayer. Is this not an Unbearable Lightness of Being?

“I spoon you into my coffee cup, spin you through a delicate wash, I wear

you all day, I wear you all day.”

July 2014 sees my 61st year on this planet and I’m not certain what I want to say about that, perhaps I shouldn’t say anything. Growing up a thinker in a family of do-ers has made me feel out on the periphery; of course, so did my spending so much time away. While I have a feast of an internal life, it hasn’t translated very well to my outer life.  I’ve made some attempts to be involved with art and explore new environments, spurred on by the creativity within, the “Rio Abajo Rio”, the river beneath the river, that Clarissa Pinkola Estes speaks about in her book, “Women Who Run With the Wolves”. Looking back, I see how life directed me to a path of contemplation. Sometimes I appear to be doing nothing while in fact I am doing so very much. 

Part of me would like to just stay home. Many quiet, gentle women stayed home and were able to make plastic their genius, but the visions in my sleeping dreams encouraged me to experience a different sort of life. I am not a person of theological faith, but my spiritual life and my faith in love remain intact despite the little earthquakes along the way.I feel the need to have dialogues and relationships that have the potential for exploration and discovery. I have felt it was dangerous for me to accept someone else’s truth, so I’ve explored many different paths but all of them failed to resonate in my internal life. It seemed if I accepted one path, I had to give up the others. 

It has cost me much, this way I’ve chosen. Alienation from my family, my friends, gone on to make their own lives. I can’t be a part of it, no one I love seeks me out. Someone said the secret to happiness is not getting everything you want but it’s definitely the road to unhappiness, in my opinion. Maybe it will all sort itself out in the end.

Pelican

                                

We sit at a bend in the river where it widens to a fair size and while we can’t see the town upriver, down river we can see the mouth of the river opening into the Gulf of Mexico. There are boats of many sizes, most are motor boats with just a dash of sailboats to make it interesting for us. But I didn’t come here to talk about boats. Pelicans are my topic. We see many birds both land and water birds, but the brown pelican holds my interest more often than not. They are magnificent as flyers especially when several of them fly together inches above the water like the finest squadron of Blue Angels. You can tell they know their business well when you watch them go from a tranquil floating position to launch themselves with a few short hops into full flight. After circling high above the water they easily configure their body into a straight-on, death defying dive, beak first, into the water after fish.

We do have tides in this southern most state called Florida. Those of you in New Brunswick, Canada, and most especially along the Fundy coast, can feel free to snicker at the 3 foot tide here in Tarpon Springs, I do myself, :). But even though the tide is small the current is strong both coming and going. We watch kayakers struggling against the current or sitting back enjoying the ride as they catch a more favourable current. There are tiny spoil islands covered in dense mangroves, good havens in the Spring for roosting birds or as resting spots as they travel up and down the river. Gulls, cormorants, pelicans and all the wading birds make full use of these. The crows and Ospreys, however,  they like to sit in the taller trees or on any handy sailboat mast. 

Aboard our boat, Jack and I find our second favorite time of the day to be early evening, sitting in the cockpit, enjoying a libation and watching the boats coming home and the birds going to roost. This time of the year, most of them go out to the barrier islands or the larger spoil islands at the mouth of the river. Some like to fly high, some like to fly alone, some like to call out as they fly, others are silent with their passing. One lone pelican has caught our attention. If the tide is going out about 6 or 7 of the o’clock, this solitary bird rides the current down the river to one of the spoil islands across the river from our boat. He gives himself a rinse off then flies up into the mangroves. We think he spends the night there. We may see him once or twice a week. We wonder why he does this. Only he knows.

There is an ancient legend about pelicans. In time of famine, the mother pelican wounded herself, striking her breast with her beak to feed her young with her blood to prevent starvation. Another version of the legend was that the mother fed her dying young with her blood to revive them from death, but in turn lost her own life. The Christians adopted the pelican as a symbol of charity and self sacrifice. References to the pelican and its Christian meaning are found in Renaissance literature: Dante (1321) in the "Paridiso" of his Divine Comedy refers to Christ as "our Pelican." John Lyly in his Euphues (1606) wrote, "Pelicane who striketh blood out of its owne bodye to do others good." Shakespeare (1616) in Hamlet wrote, "To his good friend thus wide, I’ll ope my arms / And, like the kind, life-rendering pelican / Repast them with my blood." John Skelton (1529) in his Armorie of Birds, wrote, "Then sayd the Pellycan: When my Byrdts be slayne / With my bloude I them revyve. Scripture doth record / The same dyd our Lord / And rose from deth to lyve." 

But this is not why I like pelicans. Like all creatures on this earth, we all generally go about our business of living according to our form. Once in awhile something extraordinary (well at least to this casual observer) happens which draws our attention and causes us to marvel. We look a little harder and assume a more personal connection. This is where I find my rapture.

Caring Deeply

 I've written letters from time to time, but never mailed them on the advice of those who know me well and believe that sending the letters would be opening the door for more angst. What drives me to write are things I care deeply about, in this I am not a rare bird. Not long ago I had an exchange on Facebook with a young man about the meaning of 'Truth.' Thinking about my answers kept me up at night and in the end I felt drained and un-valued. In order to stand one's ground we sometimes bandy around words, use shock and awe tactics or just change the subject altogether which then brings the talk to a halt. I admit to being guilty of that myself. It's hard not to take things personally; it is one of the Four Agreements.

 This blog will give me a place to make concrete all those abstract thoughts filling my head. I think better and this way perhaps I can communicate better and without all the drama. Maybe people will respond in kind and a dialogue can occur. I don't always have my facts straight, I never have statistics, all I have are my experiences, my observations, my researches and readings and dare I say it, my feelings and intuitions. Religion and politics are topics destined to create frustration and anger. As well as are all the subset issues: abortion, gun control, racism, corporate greed and on and on. Is it any wonder we are all so angry. We all believe we know how sweet it could be if ....... 

if only......

 

            Here is the letter I wrote my niece who has been home schooled in a fundamental Christian environment and now attending http://www.ihopkc.org/, a very charismatic, evangelical movement.

"Sometime ago I wrote to you about your decision to enter a school/college that I feel is so deeply Christian fundamentalist that it takes my breath away. I hoped to get a sense of your thoughts, your feelings on the matter. Your answer, {'I know that the very meaning of humanity is that God is love who made me and He was willing to be hung with nails to a tree so that He would have a chance to be with me because of His great love for me.  I know that He calls everyone, because He died for everyone, but it's just a matter of who will come.  I must say that my studies and time here have only increased the love inside my heart for every people group and opened my eyes to understand more intensely the emotional workings of a human heart.'}stopped me cold, because I’ve heard those words before. I’ve said them myself. I feel those are words said by people who think they have the truth, think they have all the answers; so much so that they often become self-righteous and un-empathetic to anyone not in their clique. It stops all dialogue and reasonable exchanges of ideas, of experiences and of other ways of finding one’s divinity. It is my experience that the religions I have studied are so deep into the rhetoric of men, so closed to the natural world, that their followers do more harm than good. The God rhetoric has closed many people to the actual sufferings and heartaches of other humans and creatures on this planet. The belief that the bible is the literal translation of God’s word and the true history of man, is appalling to me. The countless mixed messages found in this book only add to the prejudice and hatred now being disguised as love.

Can you sense that I am concerned? I am. I feel that this path you are on is dangerous, not just for you but for this planet. Do you know, or understand, the struggle people that have come before you have made to bring the horrors of war, slavery, prostitution, torture and wanton mistreatment of women, children and other humans to light? Do you understand that despite the prayers, the protests, the laws, and religious fervor, these horrors still exist? But because of the struggles by people, whose only agenda is to seek some justice and fair play for all, these things are out in the open, and some of the laws reflect this new understanding, that all is not black and white and the simplistic, bumper sticker beliefs that if you “JUST SAY NO”, and punish those who say yes, does not protect anyone or make the world any safer.

 I see you are against prostitution and would advocate stricter laws in hopes of abolishing it. Lets talk about prostitution. What do we really know about it? Why do you suppose it still exists? What is the driving force that keeps it going? Money? Sex? Power? Control? Does prostitution only involve paid sex? What about the things people do with their bodies to make a living? Or to find a mate? Women, in particular, in every area of life, sell themselves. Those are just a few of the things to be discussed.  How did this happen? Who’s to blame? How to stop it? Every where you look; Inequality, Poverty, Injustice, the three big evils that drive people to do despicable things. Have you talked to prostitutes? Do you know what is at stake for them, do you know their stories? Will making stricter laws do anything to stop the trafficking of humans, [and let’s not forget the animals of this world] which is a world wide horror? Isn’t that the bigger issue? I think one of the most important lessons is that when we begin a conversation, we should at least start from a common ground so that we know what we're talking about. Otherwise we're just talking past each other. You know people who work with prostitutes and disenfranchised women, talk to them. 

You mustn’t pray for more laws, my girl, pray for changes of the heart. You mustn’t pray for people to say no to the wrong things, but for people to say yes to the right things. Pray for the enlightenment of all human hearts and minds. We are all one, we are all star-stuff. It’s what the scientists have been trying to tell us for years. They don’t have an agenda, they want what we all crave, to walk in beauty, our eyes, ears, hearts and minds always open, receiving, sharing, caring.

This is our true humanity, not some man dying on a tree with nails in his hands. But a Human Being, of whatever gender, age, colour or sexual orientation, proud to be of this earth, safe to walk this earth, eager to live with love and dignity and a part of the whole.

I don’t expect this to touch you very much. You have the world before you, and experiences of your own to shape your future you. You are a brilliant, loving person and while you may believe you know where you are going, please open more doors than you close."