The Rich and the Dead

This post has been almost a year in the making. 

I have cooked it and cooked it and cooked it, not knowing how to start it or how to end it. 

A year or so ago began a very public series of suicides of Canadian veterans:

November 25, 2013:  Master Bombadier Travis Halmrast

November 26, 2013:  Master Cpl. William Elliot

November 27, 2013:  Warrant Officer Michael Robert McNeil

December 3, 2013:  Master Cpl. Sylvian Lelievre

December 25, 2013:  Retired Cpl. Leona MacEachern

January 3, 2014:  Cpl. Adam Eckhardt

January 8, 2014:  Cpl. Camilo Sanhueza-Martinez

January 16, 2014:  Lt.-Col. Stephane Beauchemin

(Related but not a suicide:)

March – Romeo Dallaire crashed into a traffic barrier on Parliament Hill after falling asleep at the wheel.

Day after day, it seemed, during the darkest days of 2013 and 2014, former soldier after former soldier took their own lives. Over and over and over.

Reports of the Veteran’s Affairs ministry came out about the cuts to services, clawing back of benefits, and the closing of VA offices.  Veterans were speaking out about how they were being forced to choose between their mental health and their pension:  if they stated to the Defence Department or VA that they were “unfit for duty” before their 10 years of service was up as a result of mental health needs (such as PTSD) and if the Defence Department ruled that the mental health issues pre-dated their service time, the vet would lose his/her pension.

What?!

I have to state this one more time so I am able to process it:  if a vet, before his or her 10 years service mark has been reached, comes forward to say that his/her PTSD has become too much for them to handle, has rendered them “unfit for duty,” the Defence Department may (and has more often than not) declare(d) that said individual is not eligible for his/her pension if the DD determines that the PTSD, or other related mental health issues, pre-date his/her time in the military.

Stack this knowledge on the closing of eight VA offices, the stripping of funding to mental health supports, the lack of supports for vets to help them transition to civilian life, and what do you get?:  A frustrated military person attempting to blow up a VA office in downtown Calgary last week.

If you spoke to anyone in DD or VA, they would assure us that policies are in process of being changed, that the necessary changes needed to implement the recommendations made by The House of Commons Standing Committee on Veteran’s Affairs are “phasing in,” and that millions of extra dollars are being poured into the mental health of soldiers. 

If you spoke to Julian Fantino (Minister of Veteran’s Affairs) or Rob Nicholson (Defence Minister), they would assure us all that our vets are being taken care of and that no one in the military is being forced out before they are ready.

Except that is not what our vets are telling us in either word or deed. 

Too many vets have taken their own lives because they have no idea how they are going to care for their family without their military family’s help – their country’s help.

Mental health services have been decimated across this country at every level from Child and Youth Mental Health services, to services for severely mentally ill people on the streets, to our vets.  Federal and provincial governments have failed to provide citizens with the care they desperately need.

The fact that Stephen Harper and his cronies can puff up their chest and declare the death sentences of hundreds of more soldiers, in yet another fight that is not ours, and then cut off the support they need when/if they come home is appalling and shameful.  This government is all about selling out and cashing in.

We have all heard of the treatment this government has given vets and yet nothing changes. 

Stephen Harper loves to make vets but hates to take care of them when they return from his phony wars.  SHAME!

Julian Fantino fattens himself off of a post which steals money from men and women (and their families) who so desperately need it.  He turned his back on vets, stood them up, and refused to apologize when he was called out on his abhorrent, disrespectful behaviour.  SHAME!

Rob Nicholson attaches himself to international conflicts and coalitions which have nothing  to do with Canada, sacrificing yet more Canadian citizens, only to deny their need upon their homecoming…making many of them homeless.  SHAME!

Government capitalises upon the jingoism of past wars, WWI and WWII, for example and uses Armistice Day as a photo op to support its current, hawkish designs. 

The same key words are employed now to stir the people to arms as were one hundred years ago:  militarism, freedom, justice, way of life, terrorism (Gavrilo Princip was called a terrorist by the Austrians and Germans in 1914). 

The same old sentiment is employed to drum up support for sending yet more troops into yet another battle with which we have no connection.

The same people blindly support those old sentiments, stating that “our way of life is in danger.”

Bullshit. 

I side firmly with Gwynne Dyer and his idea, as discussed in his newest book:   Canada in the Great Power Game: 1914-1918, that Canada has been hoodwinked into war after war by Empire after Empire, causing us to sacrifice our citizens needlessly.

I agree.  We all too quickly have a knee-jerk reaction to things (shootings in Ottawa, vehicular homicide in Quebec) and attach meanings to them which have been foisted upon us by the Empire du jour. 

We swing on the teat of those Empires and, because of our imaginary indebtedness, blindly, willingly cast off hundreds of thousands of lives.

We must stop this. 

Somehow we must stop this.

We must stop the grotesque use of the iconography and rituals of Remembrance as a form of jingoism – especially as used by those who would pile high the corpses of those they have sacrificed.  This is a time to honour the dead, not to feed the war machine.

We must provide help for all those who need it – military service people or otherwise – particularly for mental health issues.

We must, by any means necessary, hold our governments to accompt when it comes to the care of those who have served.  We may not agree with the wars in which they served but we, as a society, owe support to those who chose to serve in them.  

The government put them there.  The government owes them some modicum of respect for placing them in harm's way.

Nearly one year ago, several vets illustrated that point.

As per request: My Annual Remembrance Day Speech

If I could put my ear to the rippling shadows and hear the whispers of the “…millions of mouthless dead…” who died “…pro patria…”  in that far away time.

In those far away places –

What would they tell me?

What would they tell me to tell you?

They would want you to know that the Earth is cold

And Death is lonely –

Even though there are so very many of them,

The “…mouthless dead…”

And it never seems to stop –

Even though their war.

The Great War,

Was supposed to be the war to end all wars.

They would tell me:

The Earth is cold

And Death is lonely.

They chased Honour

And Glory

Like Rainbows

And Wishes

And when they grabbed at any of them,

Came up empty handed.

They would tell me to tell you why we do this now:  this act of collective, ritual grieving.

Grieving for the old dead -

The Dead who lie in foreign fields.

We do this because those deaths matter.  They had wives, mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, sons, and daughters.

This point is brought home to me everyday when I see my 22 year old son, my husband, and my 19 year old daughter.  One hundred years ago, they all would have enlisted – my husband and son as soldiers and my daughter as a Nursing Sister.

This point is brought home to me when I look into the face of my 12 year old son who, 100 years ago, would have watched his family march off to war only to join them in a few years.  He, like many boys his age, would lie to join his family overseas.

I often think of all of those things these days and the point of all of this ritual is brought, quickly, home to me. 

In 1917 or 1918, a German couple travelled, by train, from the small town near their farm to the city nearby.  They were not rich people so they were not able to afford a cabin of their own.  Soon it was clear to all those who sat near them that the journey would have been more comfortable for all concerned if the farm couple could, indeed, afford a cabin of their own. 

You see, the woman kept counting: 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-4-5.  She would pause for a moment and start again:  1-2-3-4-5.  The counting continued hour after hour.  Finally someone nearby snapped at the husband:

“Can you not quiet your woman?  Her counting makes the rest of us uneasy.”

The husband turned to the angry passenger and quietly said:  “I beg your pardon, sir. My wife has quite lost her wits.  You see, hour counting 1-2-3-4-5, is the counting of our dead sons.  All five.  All dead.  The last one died in France last week. 

I am taking her to an asylum in the city, for all she does now is weep and count her dead sons.  There is nothing I can do to comfort her.  Nothing I can do to stop her weeping; her counting.”

So many dead mothers.

So many dead sons.

One such mother’s son was Charles Hamilton Sorley; a 19 year old British Officer.  Sorley had no interest in fighting the Germans in the Great War.  He had just returned to England from studying in Germany.

Charles got home.

He enlisted.

And he fought and died on the Western Front.

He died on the Western Front – 19 years old –

A poet who did not want to fight or kill someone who may have been his friend from the university in Germany in which he studied.

A poet sceptical of those who tried to sell the war under the guises of “glory” and “honour.”

A poet who wrote about the “…millions of mouthless dead…” as a way of dealing with his anguish, anger, and angst.

When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead'

BY CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY

When you see millions of the mouthless dead

Across your dreams in pale battalions go,

Say not soft things as other men have said,

That you'll remember. For you need not so.

Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know

It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?

Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.

Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.

Say only this, “They are dead.” Then add thereto,

“Yet many a better one has died before.”

Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you

Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,

It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.

Great death has made all his for evermore.

How freely we gave our sons.

How freely they died.

If, 100 years ago, my son or husband were among the “…millions of mouthless dead…” I would listen carefully –

So carefully –

To the rippling shadows –

Waiting to hear their voices

And to tell you to simply

Remember.

*********************************************************************************

The above was my speech at the annual Remembrance Day assembly.

Here is the video/slide presentation I put together:

Thank you for taking the time to read and view this post.  

It means a lot.

The Chill in My Blood Today

I have to share with you a deep, visceral fear I have today. 

I feel like maybe if I get it out there something will be done to stop my fear from coming true – you know, like when you were a kid and you told your parent(s) your bad dream in the middle of the night so the nightmare would stop.

I feel a little like Cassandra (the doomed prophetess of the Trojan War) – she whose prophecies were always true and no one believed her.  She could only stand by and watch the terrors of her predictions unfold before her very eyes.

Let me tell you my nightmare of how this strike is going to shake out unless we do something really radical to take back our schools:

The government is hiding something (more than usual), other wise why would they be so rigid in their approach to solving the issues driving this strike?  They are, as Tom Kertes suggested in his Tyee Article “Why Teachers Fear the Worst of the Clark Government,” using the strike as a wedge issue to pull funding and support from public schools.  This government has already made a move toward this through the $40/day scheme.  As Kertes points out, this is funnelling monies targeted for education into a project aimed to pacify “clients,” namely parents, hoping to keep them (1) on the side of the government and (2) financially compensated for their inconvenience.  That’s how schools in the voucher system “win” families – financial incentives for choosing their “brand.” 

We, by we I mean I, have already begun to see this “branding” of schools and the need to “win families” under the guises of “declining enrolment.” Each school has been forced to compete with each other, trying to “sell” their school based on their extra curricular activities or academic standings in fake rating scales from fake academic experts like the Fraser Institute.  Every January/February the competition begins with Grade 7 Open Houses nights in my district.  We try everything to put on the best show.  Never mind that we have some of the most caring, compassionate adults in the province working in our district – that is not something the Fraser Institute measures…only provincial exam scores…another fake measurement.

The terror running through me is this: 

If we don’t take back our schools before the 23^rd of September (the date being tossed around by a number of people who are not related in any way but have heard the Ministry of Education use this date), when the Liberals are allegedly planning to introduce a  three tiered, sweeping change to the School Act, we will lose our public education system as we know it for good.

Oh and don’t think for one minute that I believe Fassbender, the old liar, when he said that these rumours were “…absolutely, categorically untrue.” This is the same government who denies any wrong doing in the last strike or stripping class size and composition language unconstitutionally from our contract and brazenly snubbed it’s nose at a Supreme Court ruling telling them to stop with the activities they are continuing to engage in. 

Let me be very clear here:  I BELIEVE NOTHING THIS GOVERNMENT SAYS AND THAT IS WHY I AM SO TERRIFIED BY THE RUMOUR.

The government has already used the Supreme Court case to attempt to bankrupt the BCTF and Bill E-80 would guarantee that this government never has to address class size and composition issues ever again.

In addition, unless I am giving Clark and Fassbender too much credit for having this many “smarts,” they knew that no teacher in her/his right mind would bargain away their rights visa vis E-80, thus building an unbreakable barrier to true bargaining. 

Layer on that the huge pain in the Ministry’s ass, a.k.a Class Size and Composition (CS&C), having to pay out for kids in classes with Ministry Designations (codings) and having to pay out for teachers to keep class sizes down, and you have some seriously raw bargaining issues – for both sides: on the side of the BCTF (the people who actually know what is going on “on the ground”) and the government (the people who are only concerned with the “bottom line” and do not care if they stomp the BCTF into the ground).

Now I hear that the minister is tossing around the threat of legislating us back to work.  This was also discussed by Kertes.  His idea was that only some of us would be declared an essential service and forced back, thus dividing the membership by forcing us to cross each other's picket lines.  Despicable.

The funnelling of surplus provincial revenue, essentially created off of the backs of striking teachers, back into the general coffers, rather than back into the education system, effectively starves the system even more.  This leaves the doors wide open for corporate sponsorship to come in and rescue the schools with private funds – blackmailing schools with ideologies which may not be in society’s best interest.  Just imagine: Science 10, Biology 11/12, or Earth Science 11 brought to you by SunCorp or Imperial Metals. 

Let the great social brainwashing experiment begin. 

Without the teaches union, and CUPE for that matter…our “right hands” in the school…in place to speak for every student’s right to an education which allows, nay, encourages them to think critically about what they are learning and the world around them, vouchers will be brought in.  All of those “top kids” will be funnelled into one school, the “middle kids” into another, and the rest will be left to their own devices in over crowded, under funded, neglected schools.  The tired and burnt out will be forced to work as admin and teach there because everyone else will be competing for the “top” positions in the “top” schools.

If your kid is a “top” kid and you don’t care about anyone else – you are probably in a private school already.  If not, your “top” kid is going to win a place in “good” schools. 

But what if your kid is brilliant, poor, and has a learning disability or can’t travel great distances to go to the “good” school outside of your catchment area? 

What if your kid has anxiety and can’t always go to school?  “Good” schools won’t take your kid because they don’t need to handle his/her issues.  Your kid can go to a different school and your kid's place will be filled with someone who can handle the rigours of competitive academics.

What if your kid has behaviour issues?  Health issues?  Is physically or cognitively compromised and needs specialized curriculum delivery?

I’ll tell you because I’ll watch it happen:  your kid will have his/her own school.  They will be isolated more than they already are and our society, the society of British Columbia, will be divided.  The “top” kids will grow up thinking they are privileged and will treat people as the “top” schools teach them to treat those who are not like them:  with disdain.  Why should they be forced to face the differences in others when the school system raises them to be elitist?

This is no joke.  And, believe me, I wish I were exaggerating.

Under the guises of “accountability,” the government will make all kinds of strict rules around teaching and academic delivery which will flush all of the personality and care out of the profession.  Tests scores will be king (more than they are now) and teachers will get bonuses for high achievement numbers.

Hey, guess what?  You can put any number you want in a marks book.  You just have to make the criteria fit the mark. 

So my kids in my school – after the 23^rd – will not get any extra money for more supplies or equipment because my kids don’t score as well as the kids at the school with the “top” kids.  All of the “top” kids have been seduced away from my school and only the most needy, challenging kids are left.  They are just as academically talented as their “top” peers but they use the “Fuck” word too much and that separates them from the other kids.

I’ll still be there, though.  I will never get a raise, rock star or not, because I let love, not personal advancement, guide me.

Bottom line here is that we have to take control back from these bureaucratic liars, cheats, and thieves. 

Vancouver can rouse itself to riot over something as vacant as hockey; surely to God, it can find the passion to rally around the rights of all kids in this province to a good education regardless of their socio-economic background.

I don’t know what else to say.

Really bad things are going to happen, people, if the government is not taught the hard lesson that they are elected to do what we want, not that we are powerless to do anything but what they demand.

It’s time to take the Clark government to school – push for a General Strike so we can hit this government in the only place it feels it…in the pocket.

All of our kids deserve the best – not only the elite few.

The Book Challenge that Became a Blog Post

My darlings, I am sorry for the density of this post but I had to get these titles out there.  There will be another post with more titles later...the ones that were important and linked to these but would have made this epic post more epic-er.

Poverty and a kid keeps me off the line so I have lots of time to write.  :|

Trust me to turn something as simple as coming up with a Top 10 Influential Books in Your Life challenge into a blog post. 

I had to.

When I started listing books, my brain linked me with more and more and those morphed into play titles which morphed into graphic novel titles and the task became a labyrinthine octopus diagram with no end in sight.  I had to simplify things some how.  After diagramming the links and connections of one book to another, I decided to go with the titles I deemed to be “Gateway Books” in my life.

“Gateway Books” are those titles which opened a whole other world for me – either inspired me to find more info on topics in the “Gateway” title or spun me off from the original in another direction…y’know…the stuff good books are supposed to do in the first place. 

So here it is.  My top 10 (in no particular chronology in my life) and the other titles the Gateway Book inspired:

1.    Mythology by Edith Hamilton

Every kid who every fell in love with Greek mythology probably did it through Hamilton’s book.  I remember very clearly, as a 10 year old, reading this book for the first time and thinking: “…this is my world.  These Gods and Goddesses and heroes make complete sense to me.”  This is the point I knew I was different from other kids.  They were talking about toys and Church and all I wanted to talk about was how cool Zeus was, or Ares, or Aphrodite.  Here are the stirrings of my pagan soul. 

TITLES I CAME TO THROUGH THIS BOOK:

A.  The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay

Fantasy novel about 5 or 6 university kids from Toronto.  They get pulled into another world, Fionavar, to save it from unravelling.  There was a reference here to King Arthur and the love triangle between his wife Guinevere, Lancelot, and himself.  This whole King Arthur thing intrigued me and led me to:

B.  The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

This book probably should have been in Hamilton’s spot but I had a theme and had to stick to it or bibliochaos would have ensued.  This is the book that put me on the proper path to Wicca.  After reading Zimmer Bradley’s riveting historical fiction account of Arthur’s rise to power, I walked into the first pagan book store I found in Victoria, and asked for information about Arthur’s sister, Morgaine’s “old religion.”  From here there was no looking back.  This book placed my feet on the spiritual path which has served as a strength and comfort for me through the years.  I found my spiritual “home” thanks to this book.

C.  The Spiral Dance by Starhawk. 

Basically the Wicca 101 text book.  Gives the curious all the intro info on Wicca, its theology, and references to other books on Wicca and other Earth-based, polytheistic belief systems.

D.  Pagan Grace  by Ginette Paris

Studies on Dionysus, Apollo, and Hermes.  Great insights into the power and strengths of these Gods and how they influence our lives…if we let them.  When this book came into my life, I really needed it.  I learned to understand the impact of these Gods, particularly Dionysus, in my life.  Paris helped me to feel more connected and less of a freak for having had so many experiences with Dionysus and Apollo.

2.  Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

DISCLAIMER:  for the record, I really dislike this play.  The reason it is on this list as the second most influential piece of writing in my life is that it opened up Greek drama lit to me. 

Ok, maybe I don’t dislike it, I just was overexposed to it so I am sick of it.  Every drama lit course I have ever taken has either had us study it or has referred to it in some way – which, of course speaks to it’s importance in the Western Lit canon.

To me, what this play brings are these jewels:

            A.  The Oreseia by Aeschylus

Y’know when you were in school or in university and you read something that felt like a revelation to you?  This trilogy was that for me – especially Agamemnon.  I fell in love with Clytemnestra and the whole intertwined idea of murder and sacrifice woven into this mess of a family.  I could clearly see Agamemnon walking on the tapestry to his death…the axing in the bathtub by Clytemnestra.  *sigh* What a woman. 

I found a soft spot for Cassandra and followed her through a number of other works as well.  In fact, Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote her version of Cassandra’s life in The Firebrand.  Really cool version of the fall of Troy.

What I loved the most about Aeschylus is, unlike Sophocles, he seemed to have a place in his work for the psychology of his characters.  There is only a hint but it works and opens up the playing field for:

B.     Medea and The Bacchae by Euripides

If Aeschylus was a revelation, Euripides was a lightening bolt.  After reading the many works of Euripides, I realised the full power of late Greek drama lit.  Finally psychology becomes important in understanding the characters – and the Gods, too, become more interesting…more like Hamilton’s Gods and Goddesses.

Who could not weep with Agave when she learned she had torn her son to pieces with her own hands while in a blood thirsty trance placed on her by Dionysus?  Who did not share her shame – the lesson learned when you thumb your nose at the Gods and challenge them?

It’s all just so much ambrosia.

C.     Lysistrata by Aristophanes

Best sex comedy ever.  The women of Athens go on a sex strike to make the men get out of the Peloponnesian War.   When the theatre department at U of Regina put it on in the early 80s, just a couple of years before I got there, the director had the actor wear a 10 foot phallus.  The thing preceded the actor on stage by several minutes.  People talked about it for years after. Now *that* is a great theatrical moment. I wish I had seen it.

3.    All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque

I have already dedicated an entire post to this novel. This was my gateway to the Great War and the tragic stories therein.  I won’t add anything to that discussion; I’ll just get on to the books I came to from this one.

A.    Regeneration by Pat Barker

This book has its own spot on the list – discussion to follow.

B.     The Rites of Spring  by Modris Eksteins

Ekstiens discusses the importance of the Great War in the formation of all aspects of society which came after it. 

Brought together all of my favourite things: art, music, history, theatre.  This book will be on a separate list on another post. 

Seriously.  Just read this book.

4.    Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare

Once again this is a case of HATE THIS PLAY but it is on the list because it was my intro to William.  Whose initials were my first tattoo, by the way. 

R & J was my first script.  I had never read anything in that format before this.  I loved it and the language was intoxicating.  I could never understand how kids in my class could not understand the language.  It was beautiful – the most beautiful I had ever heard.  I approached it the same way I approached learning German and any other second language.

Shakespeare blew my mind.  Brought me to:

Shakespeare: Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom. 

Because Shakespeare did invent the human.  Talk about psychology in drama lit.  The King of Western Lit addresses the King of Western Lit. Life changing.  Made me want to read the whole of Shakespeare’s works.  Haven’t quite gotten there but I’m getting close.

The script format brought me to:

A.    Hedda Gabler by Heinrik Ibsen- another strong female character.  Cautionary tale for middle class people trapped in their lives.

B.     A Dream Play by August Strindberg – my intro into post-modernist, surrealist work.  Love at first read  - lead me to Munch and other 19^th century painters in this school of thought.

C.     Glengarry Glenross by David Mamet – master of 20^th century theatre.  Wordsmith of never-ending talent.  The film is great, too b/c Mamet supervises it.

D.    Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller – classic.  Dark side of the “American Dream.”

E.     The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill – another script that made me feel better about my family. 

F.      Aunt Dan and Lemon by Wallace Shawn

G.    Glass Menagerie, Night of the Iguana, and A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams – Loved everything about this man’s work.  He pulled my heartstrings with his deep pain stemming from his inability to come out as a gay man in the south in the 40s and 50s.

H.    Hosanna by Michelle Tremblay – Hosanna was a transvestite.  When I came to this piece I was in my early 20s…and a prairie kid.  I certainly had no insight into this world.  I fell in love with Hosanna.  I wanted to make her world love her as much as I did.

I.       Billy Bishop Goes to War by John Gray – Great musical. 

J.       The Ecstasy of Rita Joe by George Ryga – Opened up my eyes to the realities of aboriginal women who were forced on the streets after coming to the cities from the rez.  One of the most touching pieces I have ever read.  I would love to perform it one day.

5.    I and Thou by Martin Buber

I was given this book as an assignment in my philosophy of education class.  It opened up my world to philosophy – a passion I have pursued in one form or another from then on. 

Buber, like Viktor Frankl (on my list later), was a concentration camp survivor.  Buber developed the idea that if humans interacted with each other’s spirit – the “thou” – we would be much more compassionate, loving, and understanding to each other.  We would create institutions that address the “thou” and, create a peaceful, loving society.

This work was/is the foundation of my approach to education/teaching/life.

This work led me to:

A.    Love, Poverty, and War… by Christopher Hitchens

From the first time I heard him on CBC, I loved him.  I love how he even called out Mother Theresa.  He inspired me to speak truth to power. 

I realise he is opposite in feel to Buber but I like the contrast.  Sometimes you just have to be a douche and call it like it is.

B.     1984 by Orwell

I have loved Orwell since I was in grade 10 when I first read Animal Farm.  I didn’t come to 1984 until I was in my late 30s, early 40s – during the second Gulf War.  Talk about a lightening bolt!  Worked through it with my first Comm 12 class.  I really felt it was important to wake them up.  Complete with some Rage Against the Machine and Public Enemy. 

Incidentally, Hitchens wrote a book called Why Orwell Matters.  I have it but haven’t read it yet.  Maybe it will be on my next list.

C.     The Metamorphosis by Kafka

Fucking weird.  The perfect metaphor.  That is all I am going to say about that.  It’s just one of those pieces I couldn’t get out of my head.

D.    Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl – will have his own entry.

6.    The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Callasso

One of my all time favourite books.  Callasso writes prose like a poet.  He approaches Greek mythology from a perspective I had never seen before…told the myths from other angles.  He is a classicist so he was able to read the myths in Ancient Greek – allowing him to get the nuances of the work.  He was able to ask questions of some of the stories and follow threads from one myth to another – from Theseus to Heracles; Ariadne’s suicidal heritage – the hanging woman from 7 generations before her.  What if Medea was just doing her duty…the duty of all women in Greek myths…initiating the hero?  What if the God’s interference in our lives is a good thing – it brings us to life?  Do we invite the Gods into our lives or are we merely playthings or both?  How did the Trojan war kill the Gods?  How did it usher in a time when the separation of man and the Gods – thus cutting the thread between Olympus and Earth? 

Perfection.

OPENED THESE WORLDS FOR ME:

A.    The House of Spirits by Isabelle Allende

Rich, sensual world of Central American magic realism.  My first exposure to her work.  I am a huge fan. 

B.     Neil Gaiman– anything. 

His Sandman graphic novel series was my intro.  After that came American Gods, the battle between the old gods and the new (internet, media, money, credit cards) and in the middle is Shadow, an ex-con who just wants to get home and put his soul in order. 

This novel drove my first year teaching.  I taught Art, English, and Drama – the holy pagan trinity.  So much mythology.  It was fun.

7.    The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordechai Richler

Until this list, I actually haven’t thought about this book since grade 11!  I loved this book.  I got to read it twice – once in grade 11 and once in grade 12.  We moved provinces.  Lucky me! 

I remember loving Richler’s writing – gritty and real.  I really wanted to love Duddy and I think I eventually did.  He was such a douche, though. 

What I remember the most about this novel, was how it separated me from the rest of my class. I always felt less intelligent than my classmates, and being smart was not a high priority in my household, so when I demonstrated a deep understanding of the novel and rose to the top of my class, I felt like I had held my own with the smart kids.  That and I loved my English teacher, Mrs. Babic, and I wanted to impress her with how smart I thought I was.  J

I think I’ll find a copy and re-read it to see if it still “plays well” in my head.

8.    The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

All of the credit for the effects of this book goes to my therapist.  He recommended I do the program as a way of saving my sanity as a full time mom. It is a 12 week program which assigns you 3 essential components:  1.  Morning Pages 2. Artist Dates 3.  Walks (that came later but is now part of the program).   Four or five plays were created out of this program, all of which were produced and performed. 

I have maintained the routine “morning pages” (3 pages of stream of consciousness writing) off and on for over 20 years.  Much of my creative life has been kept alive by this program.  I probably owe my life to it…I was pretty depressed when Neil told me to do this program.

I learned how important my creative life is to me and to my healing and recovery.

9.    Regeneration by Pat Barker

I stumbled upon this novel looking for WW1 info.  I was looking for military history regarding the individual battles and googled this title.  When I read in the synopsis that part of the story was about Sassoon’s recovery at Craiglockheart Hospital, I had to get it. 

From there I dove into the lives of Sassoon, Owen, Graves, Sorley, W.H.R. Rivers (Sassoon’s psychologist), and the poetry of shell shock.  It has kept me in reading material for over 2 years.

In fact, there was a point when I hadn’t read anything outside of the Great War in over a year.  Coincidentally, this was the same time as the fatal car crashes in the winter/spring of 2012.  These readings helped me to process the painful losses.

10.                       Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

This book was recommended to me by my reading hook up before his book store closed down.  I was trying to keep my head above the grief of losing my student in the accident when I wandered into his bookstore one Saturday afternoon.  After our talk, he gave me the title. 

Frankl, like Buber, survived several concentration camps.  He was interested in that intangible “something” that helped people survive situations which seem to be impossible to survive…not just survive but come out from the experience able to be a more compassionate person.  Frankl was curious about how some people came out of the camps angry and hateful (and justifiably so) and how others took the experience as an opportunity to help others.

Frankl gave me this quote from Nietzsche:  “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”    

And this from Frankl:  “In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning…”

I needed this sentiment at the time when nothing seemed to make any sense and there didn’t seem to be an end to the pain of losing those kids.

So that’s it.  Finally.  The list.  And not all of the books I originally put down made the list.  I will need to do another post to deal with them because they are equally as important to me as these are.

I'm not sure why that stuff is highlighted but what ever.  I hope you enjoyed it.

Reflections on Anniversaries of the Dead

An anniversary of events feels like an electromagnetic shadow - a chalk outline around the souls of those haunting it.

There is a faint, white noise type hum in the background of everything we do during these dates and our lives hum with the life force of those who have gone “beyond the veil,” without us…like a whisper we thought we heard or the fleeting vision of someone dashing past us just out of the corner of our eye.

It is almost as if the dead live again and bring to us the lessons they wished they had learned when they had “their turn.” 

I really feel that.  It is like walking too close to a highly charged power line or an electric fence or static electricity…the almost imperceptible energy that raises the hairs on your arms.  I hear or read the stories of dead Great War soldiers and I feel them all around me.  It is impossible not to.  And, really, there is an obligation to tune into those voices, feelings, words.  No one yet lives who walked those battle fields or floors of homes.  No one yet lives who signed the papers and sent to the killing fields of Flanders the blossoms of youth and a generation of artists, poets, painters, and politicians; farmers, bankers, and teachers;  fathers, sons, and brothers; mothers, daughters, and sisters – the likes of whom we have not seen since.

The sacrifice was much too dear, the price far too high, and if you look at Gaza, the Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Africa – any where – you will see that we did not learn anything from that sacrifice.  In fact, a mere twenty years after the cessation of the hostilities in France and Belgium, the world was at it again with many of the same key players.

A complete slap in the face of those young men who believed what they were told:  that they were fighting the war to end all wars.

I cannot imagine, in anyway, what it must have been like for the fathers, veterans of the Great War, to send their sons onto the battle fields of the next war knowing what they knew about what war was really like; a knowledge they, themselves, did not have when they were 20 year men signing up and heading out to Flanders. 

I cannot imagine how they dealt with the memory of their war while hearing in the news the details of the war their sons fought.  Those six years must have been a continual flash back for them – with no way of easing the horrors that probably revisited them in fits and starts…so much worse than they did in the years immediately following their war during which time they forced all of the images and pain deeper and deeper down.

I believe that those of us who survive significant trauma have a line to, are “plugged into,” others who have suffered, like there is an “energy signature” sent out by our brains.  It’s like our brains register that frequency because we are “tuned into” that frequency based on the fact that our individual trauma has “tuned” our brains into the “trauma frequency.” And because energy is never-ending, the energies of trauma remain always – sort of “floating” around for anyone to “tune into.”

As I have said, anniversary dates amplify that “frequency,” I think, making it easier to tune into those who lived the events which scarred them.  The larger the numbers of people affected, the more powerful the frequency.  So then, is it any wonder those souls walk again, with more clarity than before, a century after their horrific deaths?  In addition, those who engage in acts of remembrance are focusing their attention to those who have passed, lending even more energy to their “frequency.”

Maybe that is why on anniversaries of death, we feel a more profound connection to those we have lost than during any other time.  There seems to be a lead up and then on the day, there is a strong surge and we dream about them or hear “their song” or smell a smell that reminds us of them.  We are “plugged into” them.  I have had this experience several times in my life.  Sometimes I was comforted by the connection, sometimes I was puzzled, sometimes I was scared, and sometimes I was made even sadder – missing them all the more.

As I said yesterday in my intro to yesterdays post, the ghosts have started to whisper.  This doesn't mean I need a trip to the psychiatrist’s office.  I have been sensitive to this since childhood.  What it does mean is that I need to listen and record the whispers to give voice to the murmurs of the dead.

I am both excited and terrified for the day, in the not too distant future, when I walk those still scarred fields of Flanders – so full of shadows those fields will be.  I will be a divining rod for screaming souls.

The First Gas Attack  by William Roberts

These next four years are going to be beautiful and sad for me and others like me…those whose frequencies are “tuned” to the suffering we have shared with others.  For those who have family members who died in the Great War, I am sure the familial blood will sing to you to tell the stories of your warriors - be they soldier or healer. 

For those who are sensitive to these things this is an honour and a burden, both.  And, yet, for me, I would not trade it for a life lived in silence – muted to those whispers. 

We hear you beloved “mouthless dead.”

I hear you.

Through Their Souls to Mine: The Anniversaries Begin

One of the many paintings/sketches I have made over the years of this subject.

These days I have been feeling out of touch and impotent when it comes to the strike.  I have been feeling like I have nothing interesting to say that hasn’t already been said a thousand times so I have changed the focus of my writing.  

I am sure that I have little new to say about the topic I have been steeped in for decades…almost on the verge of obsession…but I need to write about it all the same.  I stumbled upon this obsession 20 summers ago whilst I read Eric Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. 

The Great War, World War One, has been a passion of mine for a long, long time.  Twenty summers ago I was reading All Quiet... and getting to know the struggles of Paul Baumer and his friends, German soldiers, in the Great War.  Paul is a poet, a playwright, and a gentle, beautiful soul.  He, in my mind, best represents many of the young, artistic, sensitive men sent to the battlefields of that “war to end all wars.”

I have a very vivid memory of reading this book that summer:  my oldest son was then nine months old.  He was my first baby.  He was plump and soft and beautiful and I loved him (still do) with my whole soul – the kind of love you have when you see that first baby and hold them and smell them.  They are your everything.  He would reach up and touch my cheek when he nursed.  His little brown eyes filled with love and something else – something I still don’t know what it was…comfort, peace, trust…I don’t know.

One particularly hot summer afternoon I was reading the book while I was nursing him and trying to get him to go to sleep for a nap.  I had reached a very sad section of the novel – there are many - this one was the saddest.  I kept thinking about how I would feel if this baby in my arms, my son, had been one of those young men in this novel – ones who would never come home to their mothers - and I began to silently weep. One of my tears landed on his face.  He opened his eyes and looked up at me…and I will never forget this…he took his chubby little hand and touched one of the tears on my cheek, unlatched himself from my breast, and said “mama?” as if to ask me why I was crying.  This, of course, opened the flood gates and I just held him close and cried tears for other women’s sons.

That baby boy is 21 years old now and I can’t quite shake the fact that if I sat here a century ago, in one weeks time my oldest would be off to Valcartier to train with the other young men for the CEF (Canadian Expeditionary Forces) to fight, and probably die, in the mud of Flanders.   That 21 year old now has a 19 year old sister and an 11 year old brother who, 100 years ago, would most certainly have lied about his age, in the last years of the war, to join his brother.  He has asthma but he wouldn’t care.  An ocean could not keep him from his beloved older brother. 

That story had been lived out a thousand, thousand times during those four bloody years.

I promised myself that summer 20 years ago, that I would learn all I could learn about this war and I would make it my life’s mission to never forget those who had fallen in a war that no one seemed to want to remember. 

So I did.  

I started to read and collect books, memoirs, artifacts, and pictures from the Great War.  I have pictures of men I have never met from families I do not know; “adopting” them from the dusty military antiques shop I frequent in Victoria.  I could not let them go to people who did not understand what their sacrifice really meant.  I must admit that it is a little creepy to have the images of people hanging around the house from someone else’s family but I figured that I “adopt” other people’s kids all of the time, “adopting” their brothers, dads, husbands, or sons would be ok.  At least they were coming to a home where they are constantly in the open – where people can see them and honour their memory.  I just wish I knew their story.  Maybe someday I will.

I decided that if I was going to write anything any more, it would be thoughts, honourings, and remembrances of those who slogged through the mud of Belgium and France, climbed the cliffs of the Dardanelles, sweated in the sun of North Africa, or “kept the home fires burning.”  These people, of whom no one survives, shall be remembered in my house beyond the 100^th anniversary of the conflicts.  I had a place for them before that and I shall have a place for them until I am dead and gone – and then I will see to it that my children and their children pass on the knowledge and the faces. 

Too high a price has been paid for them to disappear into sepia nothingness.  

Those faces could have very easily been faces of my beloveds.  They could have been my worry, my longing, my grief to bear.  Only time protected us…time and chance.

And so it begins.

You will see into my soul through theirs.

One Hundred Years Ago: The Power of The Great War Lives On

What were you doing during the June of your 19^th year?  Excited to be finished your first year of University/college?  Looking forward to the beach and the bar – finally able to get a drink without lying about your age?  Pining over your first love?  Falling into your first love?

One hundred years ago yesterday, in the June of his 19^th year, Gavril Princip succeeded where others had failed - he gunned down the dour Franz Ferdinand and his beloved Sophie Chotek as they drove past his post at the Soho café, situated in a narrow side street in Sarajevo. 

This frustrated, disgruntled teenager decided that he would, along with three of his associates from the Black Hand nationalist organization, take the future of his people into his own hands.  He wanted to free his people at any cost.

The arrogant, aristocrat had to die.  Ferdinand had to act as a symbol to all other nations  - other would be oppressors of Serbia – that Princip’s tiny country would no longer be pushed around. Princip made a statement, and in so doing, dragged the entire planet across the threshold into the modern age…the age of terror and destruction and death.  The age of shell shock and machine guns and gas.  The age of poetry and paintings and photographs.

We are, as a species, forever changed by this war.  It made us bitter and cynical in a way that did not exist prior to the Great War.  Of course humans have been critical and questioning of leadership prior to this time, but it was not institutionalized until now.  Questioning authority based on the observation of its wholesale failure was not fashionable or necessary until now. Raging against the machine did not come at so high a price until now.

Millions of beautiful, talented, brilliant young men were sacrificed, on both sides, to feed the militaristic/imperialistic machinations of countries, of kings, of gamblers whose arrogance and ignorance blinded them to the realities of the battlefield and politics, geography and psychology, public opinion and private disgust.

The Great War created, as T.S. Eliot observed, a wasteland of corpses, souls, and societies.  It created a junk yard on the poppy-filled fields of France.  It created a hole in our collective psyches, our collective unconscious, our genetic memories.  We have felt the pain through our ancestors’ photos, letters, and diaries.  We make pilgrimage to those poppy-filled, corpse-filled fields of France to find our beloved ancestors buried, nameless, with millions of others.

We stare at the Great War from the wrong end of a spy glass – it seems so very far away and yet, when we put the glass down, we realize it has been within our arm’s reach all along.  We have been afraid to reach out and touch it once more, afraid to re-ignite the memories, afraid to be shell-shocked all over again.

Charles Hamilton Sorley

John  McCrea

Isaac Rosenberg

Ivor Gurney

When we stand among the ghosts of Sorley’s “…millions of the mouthless dead…” few of us even remember them anymore, outside of the day on which the Armistice was celebrated.  Few of us remember that they were once someone’s son, father, husband, brother, lover.  Few of us hold McCrea’s torch, remembering to not “…break faith with us who die…” so that the dead may finally sleep.  Few of us, outside of academia, remember the pain of Rosenberg’s isolation, Gurney’s madness, Graves’s aloofness, Owen’s sensitivity, Sorley’s irreverence, Brooke’s beauty, or Sassoon’s rebellion.  Their words, visions, and resignation barely reach us now outside of Oxford Poetry collections or literature classes.  They are given to us like prescriptions rather than gifts or balms.

Robert Graves

Wilfred Owen

Siegfried Sassoon

Rupert Brooke

Over the next four years, and after, let us take the time to research and acquaint ourselves with at least one warrior…one soldier…one poet we did not know before.

When we read their work, tell their stories, say their names, we breathe life into them once more.  We let them live through us.  Given the weight of their sacrifice, do we not owe them at least that?

So begins my continued homage to the Fallen of the Great War.

Blessed Be all of their names.

“…they shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”  (from For the Fallen  by Laurence Binyon)

Laurence Binyon