RAINY SPRING, ARAB SPRING, AND MORE

More pouring and dripping rain this evening...May 2011 has now posted a record amount of rain, and there's nearly a week more of May to go (with three days of rain in the forecast).

The flowering plums and apples have come and gone, lovely for a moment, but soon faded by water and wind, leaving a confetti of pale and dark pink all over... The lilies of the valley are drunkenly aromatic in the front of the house. I half expect visitors and the mailman too to lurch as they approach the house, from the headiness of their perfume. And in the last couple of days that effect has been doubled by the blooming Japanese lilac by the front window, all soft purple and fragrance. The final piece of this talk of blooming in the rain is the wisteria, always a touchy subject for me. The vine, a Chinese (white) wisteria, has bloomed precisely twice in eighteen years, and not very generously. But last year I kept trimming it intermittently all summer and early fall. And lo and behold this spring there's a whole section of the plant that is trailing long white strands of dripping blossom. Now if I could just be sure which part of my trimming technique caused this to happen. Maybe none of it. Perhaps it's chance, or mother nature taking pity...

I'm still on deadline, and feel like I must have a raw patch on my nose where I've had it pressed to the grindstone. No, really, the Burma book is emerging from the fog of its creation and feels solid now. It just needs more editing time. Most books do!

In the last weeks, apart from the lovely blossoming of spring, there have been some wonderfully good intervals. One was the visit overnight of a young woman whom I haven't seen since she was not quite seven. At the time she was travelling in Thailand with her parents. We spent a lot of time together and had memorable days over the Lisu New Year at a Lisu village a day's walk from Pai... I've seen her mother a few times in the past five years, coming into town briefly from BC, but this is a first with the daughter. And she was a wonderful and present person as an adult, a grown version of how she had been when a child. What a privilege to be back in touch with someone I've always thought of as family. Yes, that was a special trip, twenty-four years ago, and now there's a chance to reconnect with it in a new way.

This coming weekend there's a Market Day up in Grey County, when the members of the Saugeen Trading Community come together to buy and sell; outsiders are also welcome of course. I'm going to head north for the day. It should be a good break from the manuscript and also a chance to pick up some heritage tomato plants and to reconnect with friends from Grey County whom I haven't seen enough of this spring.

The tomatoes will need to be planted once I get back to the city. I have three bags of soil, but need three more I figure, so that I can plant them in the bags (make slits in the plastic, stir the soil to loosen it, and insert the plant. Make a slit right beside the plant and put a small plastic cup in there with holes at the bottom. Water the plant regularly by pouring water in the cup, so it goes directly to the plant). Those are the almost verbatim instructions set out online for growing tomatoes or other plants in a plastic bag of soil. (I'm doing it because there is blight in the soil in my garden, argh!).

I'm sleepy this evening, not able to work on Burma. That'show I've managed to post this small blogpost. I took the evening off to go to listen to Monia Mazigh, Maher Arar's spouse, speak about current events in Tunisia (her home country), Egypt, Libya, Syria, etc. I am so glad to have heard her and seen her. She's a strong intelligent woman, deliberately provocative in her hijab, speaking fluently in English, her third language. Very dazzling.

meantime my only contact with all those shattering and amazing and awful events is to follow them on Twitter and read the links that are posted. And to hope that they have a positive and productive and peaceful outcome, sooner rather than later.

LOOKING FORWARD TO NEW POSSIBILITIES

Got a call around noon today from a friend in southern Thailand. She was in a bar and it was already past midnight and the year 2011 where she was, whereas I was wandering around a spare and nearly empty post-dance-party house, looking out at a mild last day of 2010.

It was another reminder, that call, that we can talk to each other across time and space, but each of us can be in only one place at a time. Sometimes as I read a description in a book. or as I daydream, I am transported to another place or situation or long to be elsewhere. But fact is, I am where I am (sort of a Popeye-ish expression!!) and not elsewhere.

We can yearn to "have it all", but in fact that's not possibile. We must accept that at any time we are who we are, where we are. If we want something different, then we have to make hard choices and exert ourselves to change things. There's no point whining and yearning! We just need to get out there and commit, take risks, do what's necessary to try to change those things we want changed.

This sounds preachy, and I guess it is. Sorry if I'm bugging you! But I've got more to say on this..

Whether it's political action and social justice, or personal transformation that we want, none of it happens without effort and commitment, and for most of it also we also need the help and support of friends and family and colleagues.

So let's make 2011 a year of building networks of mutual respect, affection, and effectiveness, so we can move forward with strength to work for whatever changes and transformations we feel are important.

And let's remember to have compassion for each other and to help each other as we are able to. In the end we're all in the same boat: Each of us is finding our way, making mistakes sometimes, of course, and needing help and mentoring and understanding as we muddle along.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!

CHANGE AND ATTACHMENT: THOUGHTS FROM TUCSON

I am in Tucson, sitting outside in clear dry air and brilliant sunshine, hearing birds singing in the trees.  In a few hours there's a plane to catch back to Toronto (via a stop in Denver's surprisingly dreary airport, alas!) but for now I'm loving the feeling of warmth (even in the early morning it's soft and warm here) and the unfamiliar southwestern scents in the air.

Last night we gave a talk and slide-show at the Center for Creative Photography.  It was fun and very engaging, because the audience and the venue were terrific.  We love being invited to university events; the people who come are generally very curious and interested in wide-ranging discussion.  And so it was last night.  (We also had the deep pleasure of seeing old friends again: John and Tilly Warnock, whom we know from Laramie, now live here and came to the talk.  Fabulous to reconnect with them.)  

Thank-you Tucson, and Arizona U, and in particular, thank-you to Cass Fey, who has taken great care of us throughout the planning and our time here,  and to Britt, whose idea it was to invite us in the first place.  

We had the usual messing around with projectors, of course.  Cass kept her cool, and finally the third projector, not without some last-minute hiccups, did a wonderful job (though needing the occasional manual adjustment to the auto-focus, thanks to a patient student intern!). 

Now that projectors are not being made any more, we know that our days of showing slides are numbered.  And we know, too, that for people in charge of these events, the end of slide- shows will be a relief.  Digital projection is now the standard and feels less tricky to everyone but us! 

BUT:  I love the way light passes through film and arrives on the screen.  I love the idea that the film, that actual piece of film, was exposed to the light in, say, a village in India, and has travelled all the way to, say, an auditorium in Tucson, so that light can pass through it onto a screen and project an image of that woman's face, or hand, or...  It's magical.  And somehow I can't get as entranced by the idea of an electronic image being brought back, tidied up, and re-projected.  It's perhaps a childish attachment, my love of the concrete thing-itself?? Nonetheless real for all that!

I am sitting outside here in Tucson, using my laptop, thanks to a cafe with wi-fi.  Lovely and lucky to have technology, that makes communication portable, and the whole world accessible. I am grateful, truly.  But I can't help mourning the passage of older technologies, like slide projectors...  Life being made easier, in other words, isn't always life being made better, right?  

Perhaps the important thing to remember is that we do have choices.  For example, I can choose to write with pen on paper; I don't have to be typing and looking at a screen.  I don't have to feel enslaved by the computer.  If I do, it's up to me to shift the way I relate to it.  

Similarly, if I am prepared to travel with my own slide projector, I can go on giving slide shows. And on the other hand, if projecting slides places too huge a burden on others, I can scan the slides and show them digitally.  The trade-offs are there, each time, to be weighed.  

The main thing I try to remember about this tech change, (and other changes and challenges too, of course) is the old rule: no complaining!  no self-pity!  Figure it out for yourself, I say to myself (frequently, these days).  Change the way you do things, if you can; roll with it when you can't; and try to do it all with grace...