STAYING CONNECTED THROUGH TIME AND SPACE

Here we are at the last weekend in March, with the equinox behind us, and yet it’s still chilly. At least I am now bicycling again. I took it out this morning to ride to Wychwood Market in a cold wind. It’s been four months since my old red Diamond Back bicycle, the one I rode from Kashgar over the Khujerab pass and down the Hunza Valley to Gilgit in 1986, has been out on the road. It could do with a cleaning and a tune-up (scheduled for next week), and this morning the back tire needed air, but everything else is fine. Not bad for a bicycle that’s getting on for thirty years old.

I’m very attached to my bicycle. It’s got scraped-off paint here and there, from being hauled on trucks and busses etc while it traveled with me in Tibet and Xinjiang and Pakistan and Nepal, and also from being locked to bits of railing around town in the years since. So it’s not a thing of beauty. And it’s also very old-style of course: no suspension (no-one was doing that in the early mountain bike era), and the gears are not synchro-mesh. I think braking systems have also improved in the intervening years, so the brakes too are very retro, and probably less effective than they could be.

When I dropped by last week on foot to Urbane Cyclist, not far from where I live, to make an appointment for a post-winter tune-up, the person in the repair shop, hearing that my bike was old, suggested that rather than getting a major tune-up, which can run to $200 plus, I might want to consider buying a new bike. I didn’t have my bike with me; she said I should come by with it and get a sense from them about whether it was worth maintaining.

Of course I was a little shocked. Abandon my bicycle? Just because it’s old and a little out-moded?

It’s true that in Chiang Mai I have a more modern bike, white and black, a Giant brand (made in China) which I bought in the fall of 2012. It’s got suspension and synchro-mesh gearing, it’s comfortable, and a pleasure to ride. When I first ride it after arriving in Chiang Mai, each time I am struck by how sleek and easy it is, how user-friendly compared to my old red Diamond Back. I feel guilty, sort of disloyal, for even thinking this way.

The suggestion that I move to a newer model here in Toronto is a reasonable one, on its face. But I don’t intend to do it. Why leave behind all that history when the bicycle is perfectly functional? I don’t care that it could be more comfortable or easy or whatever. I’m not interesting in optimising my “stuff”. I live in a house that is draughty and imperfect, a house that I keep repaired more or less, but that I don’t abandon for newer more “practical” lodging. It’s the same with clothing: I hang onto certain coats and jackets and other garments that I’ve had for ages. They get worn now and then, but even when they just hang in the closet the sight of them reminds me of places and people and stories, and enriches me.

It’s the same way with friends. I don’t like to lose people, to let them slide away, though it does happen. I like to keep the fabric of things knitted together if possible. The bicycle is part of that effort, a conscious preserving and keeping alive of a now long-past time in my life. And by using the bike and keeping it integrated into my current patterns of travel and connection, I keep a long thread going, a thread that began ages ago.

The interesting thing for me is to see how threads of place and people and idea come and go in importance. For example, when I get on my bike, or just see it sitting in the front hall waiting to be taken for an airing, I flash on central Asia, stacks of flatbreads, dry air, the scent of smoke, and more. It’s a long time since I was last in Xinjiang, but these days, as I immerse in my Persian World project, central Asia is again on my mind a lot. The bicycle gives me a little Proustian kick back to central Asia, so that my time there doesn't feel as remote. That perhaps explains why, when I was in the rolling grasslands near Mashad last October, the landscape was immediately familiar, and so was the feeling of exhilaration at being back in a central Asian environment. 

The memories and ties from the past, be they an old piece of clothing, a longstanding friendship, a scarred bicycle, are precious connections, cross-ties to the warp and weft of our lives. It seems to me that as we race around, in physical ways, or just mentally and imaginatively through the miracle of internet access, we are in extra need of grounding. I want to not lose track of who I am, and that means staying in touch with a sense of who and where I have been as I traveled to this point.

And so when I take my bike in to Urbane Cycle, I don't imagine I'll be looking longingly at shiny new bicycles. The new and perfect is highly over-rated, don’t you think? I'm sure that I don’t want a newborn bike, with no history, no associations, no resonance. I want to go on riding the  memory-laden red bicycle I’ve lived with for so long, with all its imperfections.

A LIFE OF DEPARTURES & CHANGE

I’m sitting in my Toronto-bound plane in HongKong airport, waiting for everyone else to get seated, as the sun comes out from the mist and cloud and the afternoon shadows sharpen and lengthen.

In the last few days of packing and anticipating departure from Chiang Mai, I’ve found myself in a familiar state: a little edgy, sharp-tongued, unsettled. You’d think that after all these years I would take departures for granted, but somehow that has not happened. I’ve written here before about how I hope I never lose my sense of wonder about travel, whether in a plane or otherwise. Part of that wonder is also what gives me edge and edginess: a departure is a loss, a severing from place and people. It’s something I can never get used to. On the other hand departure is also marks the start of new possibilities and the opening of new horizons. That’s why travel has such appeal to many people, including me.

But there’s a disconnect between the romantic notion of “travel to faraway lands” and the focus and attention to detail that are necessary to actually get where you’re going. When it comes right down to the actual days leading up to departure, the practical details of packing enough underwear and warm or cool or whatever clothing, and basic checklist questions such as do I have my passport and other essentials? have I locked the house? watered the plants? etc, then there’s not much romance. 

I think it’s in part that need to focus on practical details that makes me edgy.

But I think that it’s mostly because I have an old-fashioned feeling about travel. No matter that flights halfway around the world can happen with speed and ease. For me they are still huge and momentous departures. Perhaps I’m channeling the feelings of fear and anticipation that humans have felt for centuries as they embarked on perilous sailing-ship voyages, often never to return home, or made the fraught transition from hard-scrabble village and farm life in rural China or India or Africa to the terrors and possibilities of the cities….

Thus the idea of departure becomes one more moment in life where we can be either “glass half full” or “glass half empty” people. I am mostly a glass half full person, with a (sometimes irritating-to-others) inclination to see the positive. When the time for departure actually comes, though I may have been edgy ahead of time about the loss involved in saying farewell or the anxiety about what might come, I lose that little feeling of dread and can usually feel unequivocally pleased about the new horizons that lie in the journey and the destination. I’m not bragging about this. I think it’s just a matter of luck that I love the unknown and the unexpected, rather than fearing them.

LATER:

Now safely landed in the wintry chill of Toronto in late February, I look back on the thoughts I had in the plane and on my edginess before leaving, and they feel like the clothing I wore in the flight: familiar, now needing a wash and an airing, but destined to be worn again when the time comes to make another departure.

These habits of thought, which we may well be able to modify when we’re young, eventually become part of us, at least so it seems. I don’t expect ever to get matter-of-fact about departures or long flights or parting from loved ones.

And if travel is, as the truism goes, a metaphor for life, then it is one way of accustoming ourselves to the truth that all life is change. We can count on nothing remaining constant except the fact that everything changes and that we are all mortal and headed sooner or later to the biggest change of all. Every departure is a small death, just as falling asleep can be, a letting go, a loosening of the ties to the known and an embarking on unknown seas...

LIVING ON THE ROLLER-COASTER OF LOSS AND LUCK

Freshly landed in the new year, I want to talk about losing and finding. I'm thinking about this because of something that happened today.

It's an important subject to explore, always relevant I think, because of the difficulty I usually have letting go when I lose something that I treasure (a scarf, an earring); the difficulty I have accepting the death of a friend or the loss of a friendship; the difficulty - and this will perhaps seem extremely trivial to you - of changing plans or ideas in midstream when things go awry or other people change their minds.

All these situations, some trivially small and others huge and very painful, demand a suppleness and some equilibrium. It takes work to navigate them or digest them. And it's an ongoing life-pursuit for many of us, I think. For it often feels as if just as I get reconciled to one loss, another comes and crashes in.

But I've come to realise that there are equally surprising and unexpected "finds" or positive gifts or bonuses that turn up in our lives. Don't you think so? It's just that we don't often look at them in the same way. We're happy to have the good luck to meet someone special who becomes a close friend. Or we catch a break somehow, an unexpected break and then say briefly, oh that was lucky, or thank heavens ..x..  happened when we didn't deserve that good luck. Then we move on.

With losses, on the other hand, we linger, the pain goes on, we carry the resentment or unquiet spirit of loss with us for hours and days and sometimes years.

In the superficial loss situation, where I struggle to accept that I truly did leave that precious shawl behind in the car lot and that it's gone forever, there's a nausea. It takes a real effort to push it back down and to really just let go. I've found though that if I remember to mark, or remark on, the occasions where a "find" or a good luck thing happens, then I am forced to acknowledge that things often do balance out, that sometimes the unexpected works in my favour. And this acknowledgement helps me accept the harshness of loss.

This is all a rather clunky introduction to a simple story: Today I hustled up to Yorkville to meet a friend for coffee (I had left the house a little late and so had to walk-run for much of the way). The paths across Queen's Park and across the university playing fields were snowy, hard packed, and uneven, which made the rushing along a little precarious. It was a beautiful cold clear day, with sharp shadows of bare tree skeletons cast on the white white snowy expanses I was hurrying across.  

Some time later as we sat chatting and drinking our coffee, my friend and I, I realised that somewhere in my rushing I had lost an earring. Ah...the perils of winter, and of long hair that catches earrings, and of chilly air that seems to encourage them to slide out.  Too bad. And so I managed to shrug off the loss, more or less, with a slight lingering nagging feeling of nausea.

On my way back home nearly two hours later, walking at a more thoughtful pace along a well-shovelled university pathway I saw a small gleam. It was my lost earring. A miracle? Not really. But a lucky find...the fates smiling and giving me a chance to remember to feel grateful for finds and good fortune, instead of clinging only to the remembrance of losses.

I guess in life we end up with more loss than gain, if we're being literal, for death awaits us all. But just as it does no good to dwell on that fact, it is useless and often harmful to focus on what's broken and can't be fixed or what's lost and can't be retrieved. (I know, easy to say and hard to do...for sure.)

But that's life: an ongoing changing and evolving tapestry, with gains and losses, unexpected treats and shocking and disturbing catastrophes. It's up to us to navigate all this, like a skiier on a steep mogul-filled hill, with grace and, with practice and luck, some elan too.

Happy new year to all...

GAINS AND LOSSES, SMALL-SCALE!

It's Monday morning, with a high humidex already (we're at 30 degrees Centigrade and it's only 7.30 as I write) so I'm writing this, a short morning post, rather than heading out for a jog. Yesterday's run was long, for me, and I'm trying, as I've said before here, to pace myself and not wear out my joints too soon. Instead I'll use this early morning space to write here and then to tidy up the garden, suddenly looking ragged and unkempt.

But apart from that superficial messiness, the garden news continues great in this astonishingly wonderful summer. The cherry tomatoes have been producing ripe fruit for awhile, and so have the chile plants. But now I'm also eating larger tomatoes, an heirloom variety whose name I cannot remember. The tomatoes are dull red, slightly oval, with dull green shoulders. Perhaps I can find a tag out in the garden when I head there for my tidying session. The other good news is more amazing: the wisteria has bloomed. I don't understand it blooming this late, but I have seen other wisteria vines with blooms on recently, so perhaps there's a second season? Anyway, my wisteria is white-blooming, an Asian variety, and I've seen blooms on it only twice before in the fifteen or eighteen years I've had it. The flowers on this variety are sweetly aromatic, and very beautiful.

This year's small flowering may be because I have been regularly cutting it back all season. I was once given advice, on a gardening show in Sonoma, that to get wisteria to bloom it's a good idea to trim it back, and this year I finally was regular about the trimming. Though now I wonder, in that trimming, how many other bloom-bearing fronds I cut off!. Whatever the story, I am thrilled about this unexpected treat.

Another pleasure that's come to us recently is a mouser, a beautiful tabby named Silky. We are taking care of her while friends are out of town for a year. We knew we needed her as much as (more than!) she needed us, because we had mice and couldn't get rid of them. But we hadn't anticipated how much we'd enjoy her company. The mice have fled, and she patrols (that's how it feels) the back and front yards too, so we don't have the same losses to squirrels we usually do (they take bites out of tomatoes etc, and we really detest them). The only difficulty is that we have one close friend who, because of a long-time allergy to them, detests, abhors, whatever word you want to use will do, all cats. Hmmm... For now it's wonderful to be mouse-free and also to have Silky reminding us that there are worlds out there that we don't understand, mysterious life in the jungle that is our neighbourhood from her point of view! She also makes herself comfortable on Tashi's lap in the evenings as he's on his computer. They make a cosy pair.

In the losses column: A week ago, when I was up north, I finally lost my gold keeper, a little earring. I had only one, the other having strayed long ago, and the pair being from my long-dead mother. I don't know if you've had this experience of having something (usually it's jewellry of some kind, but other items can also be candidates) that you keep checking to make sure it isn't lost. That's been my pattern with the gold keeper. I would reach up to touch my right earlobe, just to make sure the fine gold loop of keeper was still there and closed securely.

Now I need no longer fear the loss. It's happened. And so, perversely, though there's regret, there's also a kind of relief. That small worry is over. I am freed from a concern, however small. All I need to do is shed the last vestiges of regret, and also let go of the small hope that it will turn up somewhere. This time it's gone for good, out in a field somewhere or by a road. Maybe someone will find it and enjoy it. I hope so. Nice to think that my small loss could be someone else's unexpected pleasure.

DEEP-FRYING, AND THOUGHTS OF EUROPE AND LIFE

My hands are chilly as I write this, as if it were a wintry day. Along with many people, I've found it difficult and uncomfortable to adjust to the cold temperatures and wind and sleet and generally unfriendly weather of the last few days. Can this be May??It feels like an aggressive attack.

Context is everything, or at least matters so much, doesn't it? This weather in February would feel mild, if gusty. But now that we've been lulled into a relaxed basking in spring sunshine and warmth, we're undefended. The cold and wind have their way with us and we shiver and are tired and, if you're like me, we are hungry all the time!

Speaking of which, I have been deep-frying the last couple of days. It is a response to the cold, for sure, and also an important technique in some of the food from Burma that I am trying to figure out. Street snacks in Burma are often deep-fried, as in many other places, but it's more than that. The classic noodle dish, mohinga (rice noodles in fish or other broth with many options as toppings) often comes, at a streetstall, with the possibility of shrimp fritters or a kind of chickpea cracker-fritter, among other choices. It's about texture for sure, as well as taste and succulence. The contrast between the welcome tenderness of the rice noodles and the aromatic broth on the one hand, and crispy savory fritter-crackers crumbled on top on the other, is one of the major pleasures of mohinga in all its forms.

Today I tried shrimp fritters, two versions. In Rangoon they are flat and crispy, but I still haven't got them fine-tuned. Mine were lumpy and too thick, and not crispy enough. Back to the drawing board!

Another kind of deep-frying happened yesterday morning, and was a huge success. I have to go back another step: There's a kind of tofu-like food (that we wrote about in Hot Sour Salty Sweet) found in southern Yunnan and northern Burma and Laos. In Chiang Mai it's sold at the Friday Haw market (see my posts about the market from January I think, and late Feb too). Sometimes it's made of rice flour, but the Shan version, also found widely in Burma, is made from chickpea flour (known also as besan, or else as channa flour). (Besan is the flour used in the batter that coats pakoras, those deep-fried north Indian fritters. And besan is widely used in batters in Burma too.)

The "tofu" that is made from besan is a simple cooked batter. I'll put a recipe here when I have it completely tested and clearly written. It's made of besan and water and salt, and resembles a plain (unflavoured) version of that great Ethiopian vegetarian food called infirfir shiro (there's a recipe for it in Flatbreads & Flavors). In both, the proportions are one part besan to three parts water, by volume. The "tofu" sets after the slow-cooked smooth batter is poured into a pan and chilled for an hour. Then it firms up to solid and can be thinly sliced.

How to serve it? It's perfectly plain, flavoured only with salt, so it can be thinly sliced and dressed as a salad (shallot oil, fried shallots, chopped coriander leaves or mint or lime leaves, vinegar, a little soy or fish sauce and/or salt); or instead it can be deep-fried. Aha! It is spectacular as a deep-fried snack. I tried frying thin slices, and they were crispy and tender all at once; and I tried making slightly thicker pieces, in rectangles or triangles, and then the texture was a crsip surface and melting interior. All good, all terrific in fact.

I was so pleased with the results that I hurried over to 4-Life, in Kensington Market, to show Potz. I had told him about the besan tofu the day before and he'd said he wanted to see it and taste it. Various customers who happened to be there at the time had tastes of the salad and the deep-fried versions. The verdict was like mine: delish! And also, and this was interesting to me, people said things like, I feel there's so much soy product around, I am happy to be eating a tofu-like food that is NOT soy.

HMMM Do we go into business? No I don't think so. Let's just start making this at home.

I promise I'll post a recipe in the next week. Please send me a note of complaint if I am late!

And meantime, as spring has slowed to a halt, let's enjoy the freeze-frame (literally!) chance to have flowers that last more than a day and leaf-unfurlings that are now happening at a snail's pace.

On another subject entirely, last weekend marked the sixty-fifth anniversary of VE Day, the official end of the war in Europe. It was the start of new plans and ambitions for many, and the end of the road for others. Germany now dominates Europe economically, a different kind of victory, that comes with complicated responsibilities too. And this weekend, at last and belatedly, Germany and other EU countries finally came together to try to bail Europe out of financial catastrophe.

My father, who landed on the Canadian beach on the first day of the D-Day landings and made it all the way to Holland, where he spent nearly a year, would have been fascinated by the evolution of the world, especially as it is now playing out in Europe. I can't entirely imagine how he would have reacted to specifics, but he sure would have had opnions!

One of the huge losses, when we lose family and friends, is the loss of the chance to talk about the unfolding of events in our lives, both personal and large-scale political. Engaging in discussion with friends and peers and family is a huge treat for me. And I guess one of the positive things that comes out of the pain and loss we feel at the loss of a beloved of any kind is that we are driven to find new friends, new family, to share and engage with. Life goes on!

LOST AND FOUND, COLOUR AND LIFE RETURNING

The ides of March and the long shadow of Julius Caesar welcome us to spring... Here in Toronto, after some lovely sun, we’ve had three days of rain and drizzle and wind and more rain. The ground is sodden and the first dark-red-edged green tulip leaves are an inch or two above the ground, as are the pale pointed leaves of the clumps of iris in the back garden.

My friend Cassandra is here from Vancouver, staying over tonight. I made her a quick diabetic-friendly late supper (meaning low-carb): chopped fennel and radicchio stir-fried in olive oil flavoured with mustard seed and dried chile and ginger, topped with a fried egg. The egg is from Potz at the market, pale green-blue and fresh, almost too beautiful to crack open. There was some Bleubry, a Quebec cheese new to me, to follow. Cassandra manages her pre-diabetic state with diligence and care and real discipline. I so feel lucky to be able to be casual and unplanned about my eating.

Cassandra is heading to the Maldives tomorrow with her daughter to go diving, a big treat for them both. (She and I long ago took a diving course together, then went diving in Cozumel and in the Red Sea. I've let it drop, but she's kept her certification..) Her fins are packed! So as I sit here writing this, she is busy doing advanced check-in: Toronto-DC-Doha-Male on Qatar Airways. It all feels very exotic to me, a lovely escape from chores such as taxes, the next entry on my “to-do” list.

I’ve been slowly gathering myself together this last week, unpacking not just my bags but also my head, from my long weeks in Chiang Mai and Burma. There was the first brilliant red tender Ontario rhubarb at the market the other day, so I used it to top a skillet cake. The colour was just glorious and the cake vanished. I’ve also done some banking, amended the immersethrough website to show the dates for next year, done my laundry, and seen a few friends, but I have still not managed to find my Canadian SIM card. And that pattern, of some things achieved and others very much NOT done, is somehow a familiar one from other times of travel and change.

Misplacing the SIM card reminds me that loss and finding seem to have been themes of my days this last while. I wrote earlier here about dropping my money-purse at Muang Mai market and having it returned to me before I had even realised it was gone. Well the next loss was more worrisome: I got to Canadian immigration in Toronto, after my flight from Bangkok via Tokyo, and when I reached into my zip pocket for my passport it wasn’t there. Nor was it anywhere else in my handcarry.

The Immigration guy was fabulous, as I started to get flustered: “Don’t worry, he said, we have to let you in if we’re satisfied you’re a citizen, even if you don’t have a passport.” That felt good. “Just go straight dowstairs and talk to the Air Canada people. They can check if you left it on the plane.” I did, and they did, again very kindly and without condescension (for which I was grateful; I felt so stupid!!). And by the time my checked bag had arrived, they’d run back to the plane, retrieved my passport, and had it waiting for me.

The kindness of strangers is a wonderful thing. Time to pass it on!

Meantime the pot of daffodils a friend brought by a week ago is still in bloom, yellow and optimistic, and the almost garishly intense pink-red cyclamen brought by another friend is still a hot spot in the kitchen. All we need now is more spring warmth and sunshine outside too.

CHAOS vs THE HARMONY OF COMMUNITY

I had thought, last Thursday, that I would write about the intense day and a half of Indian food cooking that I did last week with Anne MacKenzie, making food to be shot for publicity photos for Cooking with Stella, a film that is being shown at the Toronto International Film Festival.  The film opens in Canada in March 2010; not sure about the US plans.  And yes, it involves lots of food, is set in Delhi, and is a social and cross-cultural comedy.

Well here's a little about that food:  We made Masala Dosa, Sambhar, a Kerala Shrimp Curry, a Mango Salad, some fresh chutneys, and that weird western favorite, Butter Chicken.  Friends stopped by to eat the props, of course, and still there was plenty to feed Dom and Tashi that evening.  I'd made a double batch of dosa batter, so there was some left over.  I put it in the frig and miraculously the fermentation was slowed enough that it made good dosas the following evening.

It was all a reminder that once you embark on it, Indian home-cooking is not difficult, and is in fact very forgiving, as well as delicious.  I expect homestyle dosas will now re-enter our weekly routine.  The kids have already made another batch of the potato masala (boil potatoes, peel off skins, chop; heat oil and drop in mustard seeds, some curry leaves, onions, whatever, then add the potatoes and cook to heat and flavour them; top with coriander leaves).

But food-thoughts were pushed aside a day later.  On Thursday a huge storm came through here, dumping gallons and lakes'-worth of rain (over two inches in an hour) and leaving the sky an emerald green.  Farther north, in Grey County, the storm action was catastrophic, for there a huge tornado came ripping through the town of Durham and up Glenelg Concession Two, tearing roofs off houses and barns, destroying barns and other buildings completely, and killing one eleven year old boy.  We have dear friends whose places are a mess of broken glass, uprooted trees, and wrecked buildings.

This is Kaos, in the Greek sense, out-of-control nature or life, or whatever you want to call it.  There are photos on Facebook, and outpourings of love and concern, and offers of fundraisers, etc.  That's one form of social reknitting, a kind of action at a distance that is warming and important.  The other help and support is the tangible one that has been happening since the tornado:  friends and strangers have come to clear away trees that lie like broken spillikins all over lanes and barnyards, to help pick up debris (pieces of torn metal and splintered beams that lie everywhere) from fields and yards and laneways, to provide food for those who are working at the clean-up....

The help doesn't make the damage disappear, but it does bring some sense of order, and an assertion of order.  It's practical help, in a physical sense, but it's also social and emotional help, for it's community working to try to knit together the social confidence and the fabric of everyday life that the chaos and violence of the tornado tore open.

I am reminded of when I was in Phnom Penh right after the coup that chased Ranariddh out of the country (leaving Hun Sen in control) in the summer of 1997.   There was broken glass in the streets, and most of the foreigner community had fled, but locals were asserting everyday normalcy:  going to the market, carrying on, resisting the impulse to panic or to admit that the fragile society of the country was once more close to unravelling.   

So I guess what I'm saying is that when the tornado hits, or the earthquake, or the political revolution, we are taken to a place where chaos/Kaos rules.  But we are social beings, so we use our best weapon, our sociability, to fight chaos and the panic it makes us feel.  We restore order.

And yet in all this is also the lesson that we are NOT in control.  There are larger forces out there, and we don't know when the chasm will open, so we must live well in the moment, eyes alert to help our neighbours, and hearts grateful for whatever we have of health and happiness.

I'm not trying to preach.  And apologies if it sounds as if I am.  I'm just trying to stay mindful, that everyday obligation!

Two days after the tornado there was a shape-note singing at the Dettweiler Meeting House, south of Kitchener-Waterloo.  People came from Illinois and Pennsylvania, from Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as from Toronto and Durham and London Ontario.  The meeting house is a gorgeous elegant Mennonite stone church built in 1855 and restored now, with lovely acoustics and a peaceful cemetary out back, set outside the hamlet of Roseville.  We sang and sang, and those of us who are not believers in God or Christ or any of the usual gang, sang with just as much feeling and pleasure as those that do call themselves Christians.  

For again it was community, in this case the community of music, the lovely close harmonies, and the feeling of shared harmony, that brought us there and gave us joy.  We paused before the lunch break (an incredible pot-luck spread of summer bounty) to sing for those who were suffering, from illness or tornado loss or other trauma, and also for those who were dead and gone.   It was healing, and uplifting, in all its imperfection and heartfelt intention.  Wonderful.

LIFE CHANGES THEN AND NOW

Here it is January 14, a big day on my calendar every year, for it's the date on which, forty years ago, my father died.  I was eighteen and in first year university; he was forty-eight, had been on the beaches in Normandy, in the Canadian forces in Holland at the end of the war, at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar after the war, studying physics, and then a fabulously present and intelligent, engaged father to me and my brother, and I think a loving reliable partner for my mother, though they couldn't have been more different in many ways.  

Nothing prepared me for his death, not could anything have done so.  That first big loss, and after all I was eighteen and not a small child, so I was lucky, took years to absorb, perhaps will never be quite absorbed.  But it also had a huge impact on how I look at the world.  I came to realise that life is short, can be cut off at any time, and that human relationships, our web of friends and family and acquaintances, are what keep us all afloat, remind us that we are part of a larger whole.

Some people look to religion for this connection.  For me religion has always been a version of words, sometimes loaded, yes, with meaning and metaphor and remembrance, but actually just a form of institutionalised control and restriction.  No there is no life after death, I believe.  And no, my father is not looking down on me from some heaven and pitying me or loving me or whatever.  Those can be nice images, consoling perhaps, but also they are creepy.

We have the now, and our relationships and our minds and imaginations and creative energies.  That is the heaven we have on earth.  Let's agree that we are not so separate from the animal kingdom.  The difference is in our awareness of and our ability to conceptualise and verbalise about both the future and the past, while also living in the present.  How rich is that?!  And another difference, I believe, is our capacity for kindness, our ability to will ourselves to behave better toward each other than pure animal instincts would dictate. 

So if life is fragile and to be savored, and thus individual people and relationships are also evanescent, potentially, and need to be appreciated, why am I planning to catch a plane tomorrow leaving friends and extended family and my nearest and dearest Dom and Tashi to go to the other side of the world?

Well life is also about stretching ourselves, keeping commitments while pushing ourselves to extend outward, to keep learning and appreciating what's out there.  And for now, that sends me to southeast Asia, first to Chiang Mai for our immersethrough course, which will be fun and challenging and a very new adventure, and then to Burma for I hope a good explore to the west and north of the country.    

Yes, I'm sure things can and will go wrong or off track.  But that's not always a bad thing.  And the serendipity that I rely on when travelling, which is really another way of saying that I enjoy the unexpected, is something to look forward to.

First there's the flight to HongKong, where I'll have a few hours to go into town and see Rocky, at Phoenix Travel, such a wonderful person and old friend, and hopefully Peter too.  Then it's back onto a plane for the legs to Bangkok and Chiang Mai.  I'm packed, with computer and camera, and books for the flight.  

And yes, part of me is weeping a little, for the loss and change of today long ago, and for the losses and changes to come, even as I look forward....