A few snaps from the utterly humbling scale of nature in British Columbia –
Thanks to Sofia for the Lens-Artist prompt on scale.
A sense of scale
Nothing gold can stay
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.~ Robert Frost
My dad spoke this entire poem aloud as we sat at the exit of the rehab hospital, looking out the window at the emergence of spring, waiting for the ride to get him home.
When I made a crack about “nothing gold can stay” being perhaps not the most uplifting of lines, he came back with “assumptions about Frost being a sunny, feel-good poet” being off base and the like – the sharp engagement with language and writing and expression was clearly intact. So good to know after some 6 weeks of hospital turmoil.
The rehab hospital offered some particularly fine moments – taking dad out for walks through the verdant Willowdale grounds as spring sprung. I downloaded an app of bird song, just to know who exactly was singing so brightly as we wandered from one corner of the gardens to another. There were robins of course, the occasional jay, a waxwing, and several variations on sparrows – the prettiest being the Song Sparrow as opposed to the House Sparrow or the Common Sparrow. But one day there was a fleeting moment of Goldfinch… oh, what a magical name. Must be the gold reference.
In the mornings before heading up to the hospital, I started a practice of sitting on the benches facing the lake and doing 10 minutes or so of meditation.
I have an app for that too, don’t ya know. So I sit there with my headphones on and do my best to clear the mind.
The guided meditations in my app do your basic bringing attention to the breath, but they have a few other tricks to help with the incessant Thinking Thinking Thinking of the brain. My favourite so far is to “become aware of the sounds” that are all around you. Recognize that you cannot stop the hearing of the sounds, that there is a part of you hearing the sounds – your consciousness – and your consciousness is hearing sounds whether you will it to or not. And then be in touch with that part of yourself that is simply hearing sounds and simply carries on breathing all day long. Something that is always there no matter what thought is going on in your mind.
For some reason I see this “consciousness” thing, this place that is somewhere behind and beyond the Thinking Mind, as a kind of vagus nerve shape…
…something that includes and yet is deeper and more extensive than the brain.
I dunno – maybe this image will change over time as I do more meditation, we’ll see.
But there is something about the realizing that sound is happening all around all the time whether or not you are paying attention to it, and using that as a way past the thinking that works better for me than trying a similar thing with the visual world. I guess I’m so visually oriented that analysis jumps in very quickly. As soon as I open my eyes my mind starts in with the ideas: “Would this scene before me make a compelling image?” ” “Is this interesting to look at or not so much?”
Anyways, dad went home that day from the rehab hospital and was home for a few weeks before he ended up in yet another emergency department, and was then admitted to hospital again, and is now in “transitional care”. A bit of a holding zone while he builds his strength again and we work on a more sustainable plan.
Meanwhile, on a weekend getaway to a friend’s cottage, I pulled out the birdsong app, and was brought back into the joy of birds… Hello!!!
So many different birds outside of the city!!!
Yes, plenty of robins and jays, but then there was an Eastern Phoebe! A Northern Flicker! And when I thought I was hearing the Northern Flicker again, no, no, turns out that was a Yellow-Bottomed Warbler!!! Such a world of variety.
And so many elaborate swirling marks when their calls are expressed as waveforms –
Well, I soon realized that the birdsong app, as fun and charming as it is, is also a way of being in that very analytical part of the brain, of not relaxing back into a more experiential way of being in the moment.
And I have to say, I do find water – and the glittering play of light on water – a kind of short cut to clearing the mind and simply being. Being in the present moment.
Nothing gold can stay.
A shuffle in your shoes
Gotta love what you do, babe
William Prince
For that jingle jangle
Cause we only get a few days
Nobody makes it outta here anyway
What puts a shuffle in your shoes, babe?
That’s the thing worth chasing
Gotta love what you do, babe
So not a day goes wasted…
A few weeks ago I went with friends to the William Prince concert at Massey Hall.
It was beautiful – dynamic and heartfelt and vulnerable. He told us much about himself – was it 26 days sober that he announced? Such a tender tentative declaration… but in and amidst all of it was a pronounced preoccupation with mortality.
You get a hint of it there in the lyrics: “cause we only get a few days…”
Pretty much since then my dad has been in hospital.
It started in the hallway of the emergency room after a few falls. My brother the fireman had brought him in, and at the time I think we all thought it would get sorted quickly and he’d be back home soon enough, and there’s that trip they have booked in April…
But it has not been an easy ride. And he will not be going anywhere in April.
This morning we were officially 2 weeks into my dad’s stay in hospital.
The Physio gals came by as they do every weekday morning. At one point we had been considering walks around the hallways, but after downgrading expectations, now they are focused on sitting and standing and the corresponding blood pressure readings. So they talk as they go, they ask questions.
“So, have you always lived in Toronto?” they ask, keeping the conversation happening while they verify sitting position blood pressure.
Dad scoffs, a moment where he is distinctly in character, which he hasn’t always been over these two weeks. “I was raised in Philadelphia” he scolds them, as if they should know. “I didn’t come here {to Canada} until I was an adult”.
“Oh, okay”, they respond, indifferent and unoffended, moving him to a standing position to verify how the blood pressure holds up once they have him standing. They just started the new blood pressure meds yesterday, so standing may not last long, we all know.
“What brought you up here?’ is the next question – keeping him going, keeping him engaged. Standing, dad is starting to get a bit fuzzy, blood pressure dropping. He tries to answer. “Education…” he mutters vaguely. They pick it up with enthusiasm, “Oh, did you come up here to go to the University of Toronto?”
Distinctly dizzy now, pressing his weight into the walker, he gives them what they want: “Yes?”, he floats the quasi-question. But I shake my head.
“He was a Prof at U of T”, I clarify. “He came up from the States to teach at U of T”.
Now for a flashback moment in the narrative – there’s, my dad, graduating with a PhD from Brown University, Rhode Island, with my mom and me. How young we all were.
One interesting thing that emerged – after both mom and dad had been offered jobs at Canadian universities as fancy-pants Brown graduates, and I grew up and went off to university in Montreal – I had a delightful roommate, Sabrina Mathews. And one Christmas when I went home to Toronto, I asked my dad if he knew Sabrina’s dad, Robin Mathews? From what I understood he was a bit of a nationalist and had something of an opinion about American graduates getting jobs that maybe could have been given to Canadians….?
“Robin Mathews?!?!!???!”, my dad exclaimed. “I almost lost my JOB because of Robin Mathews!!!” Apparently Robin was quite vocal and activist in his opinions.
Well whaddyaknow. And yet, in spite of all that paternal animosity, Sabrina and I became lifelong friends – friends who always and still share all the things.
Sadly, Sabrina lost her remarkable dad not long ago.
His passing was acknowledged across Canada.
Last time Sabrina was here for a visit, and knowing she was more experienced in the difficult things of aging parents than I, I told her about where we were at with all things regarding my dad.
“It’s a process”, she advised me.
Fair enough. A process without clear indicators.
After the Physio gals left today, the head nurse came in and went through a series of localized and cognitive tests. Dad, bored, answered the questions about dates and symptoms with a pronounced sigh of tedium. At a certain point, regarding heart condition, readings, medications, etc, the nurse said, “given your age, sir, with all respect…”
There was a bit of a pause, a blank. Dad looked at me.
Looking for levity, I said, “getting old ain’t for sissies”.
It’s a line we have toyed with before. Bette Davis and all. But today there was no mischief in dad’s eyes as he held my gaze, level and serious. “NO”, he answered.
Coming home from the hospital, I figured I’d crash in front of the television.
I decided to watch La La Land, which I hadn’t caught when it came out years ago. And gosh, it is one charming movie!
But there is a scene in it where the two leads do a bit of a Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers moment. Of course I thought of my dad. I thought of my dad who had introduced me to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly… the dad with whom I’d watched so many old movies on the tiny little television out on the sunporch… For hours we’d hunched in the creaky wicker chairs and stared at that little television…
And there I had been taught the Sacred Love of Movies.
follow your nose 