Reconciliation Day

A week ago yesterday, I was parking my car under a cedar tree in a parking lot near the site where the Reconciliation pole was about to be raised on the main mall at UBC.  It had rained all of the way into the city from the valley and we were preparing ourselves for a cold, wet, dreary day.  Instead, the rain stopped as we parked the car and by the time we were winding our way to the main mall, the sun had come out and it had become a beautiful spring day.

I was excited to be there with my daughter, who had invited me to come with her as part of a voluntary field trip for her Indigenous Peoples art history course at UFV.  I was so excited to be there, to be a part of this powerful occasion, to bear witness to the first step to healing – a prayer for healing in the glint of those copper nails – for those who survived the residential school system and for those who did not go home again.   

I was so excited and honoured to be there…I had no idea how I would be affected by the experience after the fact.  I had no idea that I would carry this lump in my throat when my mind would wander to that pole, those figures.  I had no idea I would be ripped open by that pole like a ghost-filled piñata; bleeding grief from parts of my soul with no name.  I especially had no idea that standing in the presence of that pole would serve as a reminder that I have no idea who I am – who my people are; that shame and denial has coloured my ancestry for generations; that my children will never know who their people are because my grand-parents were afraid to be Indians.  I had no idea I would walk away with any of this…or just how much I would be gutted by all of it.

The Reconciliation Pole at UBC

None of this story will make any sense without context:  context of the residential school system in Canadian history (its attempt to eradicate the Indian presence during the expansion of the railroad and the colonial claims on land historically lived on by many Indigenous peoples across the country) the context of the creation of the pole as a symbol of healing for our people in light of the reality of what was lived by those who survived the residential school experience and those who did not; and the context of all of my story – my family history and how all of this echoes through my family history like whispers in abandoned mine shafts.

The Subjugation of Truth
by Kent Monkman

The Treaty system and the Indian Act paves the way for Residential schools:

When the expansion of the West began in the early to mid-1800s, the Canadian government (and the American government as well) rounded up the nations of the Prairies (and any other nation that was present in areas coveted for settlement) and forced them onto randomly drawn sections of land called reservations.  The governments promised to care for his Indian brethren in this reservation system because the natives were like children, in the eyes of the colonial governments, and needed the Christianized, “civilised” officials and police to help them learn how to be better people.  Here is how the current government of Canada sees it:

“The impact of treaty making in Canada has been wide-ranging and long standing. The treaties the Crown has signed with Aboriginal peoples since the 18th century have permitted the evolution of Canada as we know it. In fact, much of Canada's land mass is covered by treaties. This treaty-making process, which has evolved over more than 300 years between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in Canada, has its origins in the early diplomatic relationship developed between European settlers and Aboriginal people. As the two parties made economic and military alliances, Canada began to take form. These diplomatic proceedings were the first steps in a long process that has led to today's comprehensive claims agreements between the Crown and Aboriginal groups.” 

From the Indigenous and Northern Affairs web page…like today… To read that makes it sound like the nations were happy to create this system and help out their burgeoning country.  The reality is that Indigenous peoples were rounded up and threatened with jail time if they didn’t comply with the authorities and their demands.  True acts of negotiation were few and far between…as in the example of the Indian Act of 1876.  The Indian Act granted more authority to the Department of Indian Affairs, allowing it to make sweeping policy decisions regarding the lives, livelihood, and identity of Indigenous peoples across the country, such as:  determining who was an Indian, managing Indian lands, resources and moneys, controlling access to intoxicants and promoting “civilisation.”  The Act was created to make the government the “guardians” of Aboriginal peoples until such time as they were sophisticated enough to fully integrate into Canadian society.

The Final Solution to the Indian Problem:  the Residential School System

 I always tell my students – grade 10 First Peoples unit or the grade 11 Second World War unit – that “the final solution” was not conjured by Himmler when he was designing and building concentration camps.  The phrase was created by Duncan Campbell Scott, an Indian Affairs minister in the early 1900s:

“It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the final solution of our Indian Problem.” (April 12, 1910)
(Department of Indian Affairs Superintendent D.C. Scott to B.C. Indian Agent General Major D. McKay, DIA Archives, RG 10 series).

Yep.  Our government created a phrase, and policy, mirrored 30-odd years later by a regime noted most for its holocaust.  The Canadian government created this policy and yet has never called it a holocaust…that is a conversation for a whole other blog post.

The Canadian government wanted to civilise and integrate Indigenous peoples into the “main-stream” Canadian society and looked to the Jesuits tradition of early childhood education as a frame work for this policy.  Many Catholic orders see that the earlier one educates the child in the ways s/he should go, the better success one will have in the passing on of knowledge and the chance that the child will follow the teachings.  Thus the impetus for the “Indian Problem” was fired in the hearts and minds of those who would eliminate us and thus began the assault on Indigenous communities and the legalized kidnapping of Indigenous children across Canada. 

They came for our children.

They stole our children.

Look at your children right now, if they are close.  If they are not, close your eyes and see your children as 3 year olds or even as shaky-legged 18 month olds…smell their soapy, baby smell.  Now imagine that the RCMP and nuns and priests drove up your driveway, kicked open your front door, and ripped your children from your arms…they scream your name as they are driving away from you.  If you try to stop them, they will kill you.

THEY CAME FOR OUR CHILDREN!

Children are the heart and soul of First Nation’s, Metis, and Inuit communities.  The laughter of children is the breath of these communities. 

They took our children.

 

The Scream
by Kent Monkman

I remember reading the account of a mother whose children were kidnapped and shipped away, thousands of miles away, to residential school…she talked about the silence after the children were gone – the hollow silences where laughter had once been.  She talked about how the adults didn’t know what to do, how many people became very sick because their hearts were so broken.

They took our children and they tortured them.  They raped them.  They starved them. They conducted experiments on them.  They impregnated them and murdered the faceless, nameless babies by asking other children to throw the strangled infants into the furnace fires.  They cut their hair and beat them for speaking their mother tongue.  They jailed children who tried to escape this hell and beat them to death.

Study for Blackrobe
by Kent Monkman

Those children grew to be parents who knew nothing of love or culture or connection to who they were supposed to be.  They had children and became grandparents and those children and grandchildren were either “educated” in the same way their ancestors were or they were never parented because few people coming out of that system knew how to parent because no one was parented.  Many people drank, many peopled used drugs, many people entered the sex trade, many people killed themselves because the burden of the memories of those days were just too much.

 

Many people also survived and their resilience embraced those next to them and their strength gave hope to the generations that followed.  They held each other together.

The “Reconciliation Pole”

Haida master carver and hereditary chief 7idansuu (Edenshaw), James Hart, and a contingent of other carvers (including his son), began two years ago with an 800 year old ts'uu, or red cedar.  They created the story of Indigenous people before during and after the impact of residential school on Indigenous communities. 

I’ll let the pole tell the story.  The description is mostly taken from:  http://news.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Pole-diagram-full-size.jpg  I added some other reflections/details.

Haida poles are read from the bottom to the top:

Before Residential School/Colonisation:

1.         Surrounding the base of the pole are salmon representing life and its cycles

2.      Mother Bear is next.  There is a sGaaga (shaman), standing on Salmon house, performing a ritual for the return of the salmon

3.      Bear Mother holds her two cubs while Raven looks out from between Mother Bear’s ears

During Residential School:

4.       A residential school house, designed to assimilate and destroy all Indigenous cultures across Canada.  It was modelled after the Coqualeetza Residential School, where many of James’ relatives were imprisoned (his grandfather, great aunts, great uncles, and friends).

Chief 7idansuu comments in the Georgia Strait that it looks like the school has been “plunked on our heads.”  When you see the pole, you certainly are struck by the incongruity of this square “thing” in the middle of the flowing lines of the other figures – it just doesn’t fit.  It is covered in copper nails which, I was told by my daughter’s instructor, represents the children who died in those schools.  There were nearly 60, 000 nails.  There is one nail for each child lost.  Survivors and other members of indigenous communities were invited to hammer copper nails for the lost.  

5.      The next section is what I have carried all week – the piece that haunts me: the children holding and supporting one another are wearing their school uniforms with their numbers on their chests…the numbers by which they were identified when the schools took their names upon arrival.  Their feet are not depicted as they are not grounded during those times.

THE CHILDREN HAD NO FEET!  

And from where I stood, at the north side of the pole, there was a faceless child among the varied faces and colors of the children carved together.  It caught my breath.  Between the nails and the children, I could not feel my body in the midst of the crowd anymore.  I could only hear the drums. 

6.      Next are four spirit figures for the four directions:  water – killer whale; land – bear; air – eagle; Thunderbird – the supernatural.  They symbolise the ancestries, worldly realms, environments, and cultures in which they are rooted, that each child came from.

The Future:

7.      The mother, father, and the children represent the family unit and are dressed in traditional, high-ranking attire, symbolising revitalisation and strength of today.

8.      Above the family is a longboat and a canoe travelling forward side by side.  The canoe represents the First nations and governances across Canada.  The longboat represents the Canadian governance and the Canadian people.  This represents the respectful honouring of differences but shows us travelling forward, together, side by side.

9.       Four coppers, in red, black, yellow, and white, represent the different peoples of the world.  They symbolise and celebrate cultural diversity.

10.  Eagle at the top of the pole represents power, togetherness, and determination and speaks to a sustainable direction forward. 

I belong to a group of residential school survivors on fb.  I am not sure how I found them or they found me but I asked to join and they accepted me.  The videos and pictures posted from those who were able to make it to the ceremony – their tobacco offerings (tobacco smoke sends prayers to the creator) with kisses on the faces of the children, as they prayed for themselves and those who didn’t come home – were crushing.  I knew, mostly, how they felt near that pole.  It had been carved with such love and honour, it makes the lump grow in my throat to think of it.

The spirit of love and longing to be whole washed over all of us.  The drums and the singing and the glint of the copper nails, the wooden little faces with their wooden numbers, washed over all of us.  I could only hold my daughter and weep while I prayed for the souls of the survivors, the souls of the dead, and the souls of all of my people who long to be whole and honoured and loved. 

It took four days before the entirety of the experience hit me, while I was sharing with my dear friend and Aboriginal Support worker.  I didn’t know the meanings of the figures and as I read them to my friend I was once more awash in the emotions of Saturday.

But it was the children with no feet that really got to me – that still gets to me.  The faceless one and the children with no feet. 

No feet, no name, no face.

My story – the girl with no feet, no face, no name.

This seems a natural segue to the context of this experience in my story.

I was born on the Saskatchewan Prairies, in Yorkton, to a woman of 21 who had just gotten married in October.  I was born in mid-May in 1967…right in the heart of the ‘60s Scoop (Aboriginal women had their children taken from them right after birth and put into foster care).  The Scoop was not part of my mother’s reality, although, one of my Aunties had several children adopted out.  The Scoop was not part of my mother’s reality. 

I was born with piles of jet black hair and the pigment of my brand new skin was darker so that my mother’s father called me his little papoose.  My maternal grandfather played the fiddle and could jig up a storm, apparently – a key part of Metis culture (one piece of many).  My maternal grandmother’s people were long time Orangemen from Scotland and Ireland…basically the UK and Canada’s version of the KKK. Tolerance of difference was not their strong suit.  My maternal grandmother’s people homesteaded near Winnipeg, in the heart of Metis territory.  My maternal great-grandmother would tell me about the Indians coming to her house – how they were always around.  I remember that from when I was very small, probably around 2 or 3…definitely before my sister was born – we are 3½ years apart. 

I remember the faces of my first cousins and thinking to myself – always in the most silent parts of myself – that their straight black hair and hooked noses; their faces and skin and something else I couldn’t quite understand made them like the people my father and mother derided when they saw “Indians” stumble around downtown Regina or Calgary or Edmonton or any other city we have lived. My cousins always dated people who were Aboriginal, married into Aboriginal families, birthed children into Aboriginal communities.

When I was three, or so, and we were living in Winnipeg, my mother and father took me to Fort Garry for the afternoon for a picnic and to run around.  We lived in an apartment and had no back yard for me to run around in so they made sure we went outside to parks as often as we could.  I remember this trip because I have this very clear memory of the giant canoe on display and how I could hear drumming and singing of the people who had once used it.  As I got older and thought about that day, I envisioned a button that someone had pushed to make the canoe sing.  When I became a teacher, a student of mine was raised here on the coast but was born on a reserve north of Winnipeg.  He knew Fort Garry very well and knew that canoe.  When I told him about the singing and the button and how it wasn’t there anymore; when I asked him what happened to the speakers that made the canoe sing, he looked at me like I was crazy…there was no singing canoe.  Ok.  So, as a three year old I heard drumming and singing in a canoe that had no one drumming or singing near it in reality.  Cool.

Given that experience, I really should not have been overly surprised when, in my mid-twenties, just after the birth of my first child, I started having dreams about living in a village with people whose skin was as red as clay.  Granted, I had been watching lots of North of 60, which happened to be one of my favorite TV shows of all time, but it fit for me.  The dreams fit for me.  I was with the elder women of the village and we were fighting intruders.  I stood beside them as they were shot in the head – I woke feeling bone fragments and blood on my face.  I hid them and ate with them.  We talked and walked and swam – Else told me I was a turtle person. 

Elsie 

I would dream I was a bear or a cougar.  I dreamed one night I was an eagle, soaring above a mountain made of bones…later I found out Thunderbirds live on mountains made of bones. 

I dreamed I was sitting in a long house across a fire pit from three elder men.  They told me it was time for me to learn about my ancestors…this was the morning before I was supposed to go to a Pro-D on the Katze reserve in Pitt Meadows but I was sick when I woke up – sick with fever and I didn’t go.

I dreamed, around two years ago, that I stood facing the mountains behind my school – Golden Ears.  I was in line with thousands of women and they were singing the women’s warrior song.  They were drumming and they told me to sing.  When I awakened from the dream, I knew I had been gifted with the song.  I played it on my phone to be sure that it was actually that song…it was.  I wept.  Such an honour.  I wept again as I shared that information with my Ab Ed worker friend.

About a year ago, I dreamed I was in a teepee with an elder man in traditional robes and eagle feathers.  The teepee was black and twinkled with stars – it was as though the teepee walls were the night sky.  He stood giant over me and said “They have named you Starchild.  You are a star child,” and I woke up.  I told my friend about it and asked her if she knew what it meant.  I looked it up and was shocked (not too much, mind you) to learn that many of the qualities of a star child are qualities I have or have experienced.

So what, right?  What does this have to do with the pole raising?

About five years ago I proposed to my mother that we were probably Aboriginal.   She laughed and said there could be no way.  I told her all of the stuff I just told you and she said that maybe I was Aboriginal in a past life.  Given that my mother’s family were Orangemen, I am sure that outing the family as “Indians” in a northern Saskatchewan town would not have been awesome; especially because my mom’s brothers were constantly in and out of jail, her father was thought of as one of the town drunks, and one of her older brothers was put in jail for manslaughter for shooting his wife in a drunken rage and trying to shoot himself.

We never talked about the shootings.  Even after my Uncle moved in with us when he got out of jail, the scar on his cheek still pink and fresh.  Even when I heard his name on the radio when we were driving to pick him up from the pen.  Even when he would get blackout drunk and cry to my mother.  We never talked about the shootings and we never talked about how her sister’s 17 year old son was the first to sexually assault me when I was 3.  We never talked about how he started the abuse train on me that went on intermittently with many other family members until I was 10 or 11 years old.  We never talked about that.

Somehow being “Indian” was much worse than all of that.  I don’t know how but it was.

I saw my Granny’s face in the faces of the elder women at awards ceremonies or meetings for Aboriginal Education.  I have been asked several times in my life what “tribe” I belong to.  I have been pulled and connected to the soul of indigenous spiritual practice for as long as I can remember.  And yet, there is a code of silence, a pressure of denial in my family that has kept me footless and faceless my whole life. 

The ultimate effect of that is that I have no idea who my people really are.  Where do I come from?  Am I Metis?  Am I Cree? Ojibway?  Blackfoot? Dene?  Who are my people?  What is my clan?  I don’t know.  I don’t know who I am or where I come from and this makes me as lost as those wooden children on that pole…the children with no feet because they were not permitted to be grounded in their culture.

I want to have feet.  I want to teach my children the ways of our people but I don’t know the way.  It was buried with my great-grandmother and all of those who knew the secrets but didn’t whisper them to enough people to allow them to get to my ears.

The Reconciliation pole is for our survivors and also for our country so that families need never feel the necessity to cover up their true identities again in order to save their children.  The pole was for the dead and the never born, the survivors, and the generations living with them.  The pole was for the children who were ripped from the arms of their mothers and fathers and torn to pieces by a country that needed to get rid of them but hasn’t had the courage to call it genocide.

Those wooden, nameless, footless children will haunt me for a long, long time.  They will tug at my heart and force me to stare into their faces. They will remind me that I live in a place where I will never know who I am because it was better to be a murder and a child molester than it was to be known as an “Indian.”

I lift my hands and voice in prayer to those beautiful children murdered by the church and government; the children torn from family and community; for the souls of the dead and the living who carry the burden of those days in their heart.  I tell the souls of the nameless that they will not be forgotten – that they will live in our hearts forever.  I pray for peace and love and healing.  I pray for strength and pride for our people and the generations to come so we can free ourselves from the yolk of colonialism for good.  May the Creator hold us all and fill us with love and strength.  All My Relations.

So you're thinking of participating in the 2017 Poetry Marathon?

So you’re thinking of participating in the 2017 Poetry Marathon in August? 

Ok.  If your answer was yes, you need to take a few things into consideration before deciding if it’s a hard or soft yes.  Lots of people think they are ready or misjudge the rigor of the exercise and drop out.  How do I know?  Last year was my first full marathon and it took a week to recover BUT I am still reaping the rewards from that one 24 hour exercise in artistic torture AND I wouldn’t stop myself from doing it again no matter how much it hurt at the time…like giving birth…we forget the pain and do it again because the outcomes are so awesome.

So you’re thinking of participating in the 2017 Poetry Marathon in August?  There are a few questions you need to ask yourself first to see if you are up for the challenge:  Full or half?  Is this your first go or are you a vet?  Did you give it a try in the past and not complete?  Are you going to write alone or with others around you?  Do you have access to the internet at all times or most of the time?  Will you have a prep regime the month before, the week before, a day before? Are you planning to finish or are you thinking about starting with an “out?” – I’ll just quit if it gets too hard or if life gets in the way. Or I have stuff to do that weekend but I’ll just post poems in between that other stuff.  Yeah. No.  I don’t know how that would be manageable.  Some people last year thought they could do the marathon at a music festival or a family reunion or a wedding?????  Yeah. No.

The marathon is a marathon.  It’s not just poetry so it is easier than a real marathon…I don’t run because this body is built for comfort… but I know people who do and when they prep for a marathon they adhere to a strict training regime.  We have to do that, too.  I didn’t really understand what that would entail.  I thought I would be totally ok because I write a poem a day. How hard could one per hour be, right?  Especially when there are prompts!  It can’t be that hard, can it?  OH, YES IT CAN!

Caitlin gave some really good advice to the Poetry Marathon Universe, in the weeks and days leading up to the marathon, around warming up for the marathon and I took many of them to heart.  I knew that I would have little time to cook and so on so I made three cold salads and made sure to have sandwich foods, snacks and teas on the ready so I just needed to walk to the kitchen and grab what I needed while I let the prompt settle for a bit. 

Sun rise on the marathon morning.

On the morning of the marathon, my time zone started me at 6 am, I woke up an hour early and did some yoga, got my coffee ready, and sat at my table waiting for the first prompt to drop.  I hand write everything first so by the time I wrote, typed, and edited (I do that whilst I type) the hour flew by and a bit of a panic set in that I wouldn’t be able to handle the pace.  Soon I got the rhythm of the morning and all settled in nicely…until the heat came.  At that point, I went for a walk in the local park for some air and a change of scenery.  The prompt was giving me issues, too, so I walked for an hour and went home.  Good idea but it back logged me for a couple of hours and freaked me out that I would never catch up.  I did…after two prompts.

I thought I had hit my stride after that and, I guess I did, but the prompts seem to drag me out more and more and when 6pm rolled around and all of the half marathoners were saying good bye on our fb page, or on our blog page, I fell apart.  I hit the wall. Hard.  All I saw ahead of me was 12 more hours and 12 more prompts and the late hours of night or early hours of morning, in the approaching darkness, fighting exhaustion and I wanted to quit.  Everything in me screamed to just quit…do the half marathon…no shame in that for your first time.  No one will know but you and Caitlin.

Now, if you have ever had the pleasure of meeting Caitlin, you will know that quitting on her is out of the question.  I had only met her on-line last year but I have since met both her and Jacob and, yeah…quitting on her is not an option.

I couldn’t quit on Caitlin and I couldn’t quit on me.  I signed up for the full marathon, I committed to the full marathon, and I would finish the full marathon. Period.  I got my sorry ass off of the couch and asked my husband and my youngest son to go for a walk with me in the forest. 

So back I went to the park to walk off the despair in the cooling twilight of the forest.  By the time I showered after coming back home, I was a new person.  I ate some salad, drank some really nice cold tea, and I found my groove again.

Two important elements saved me from crashing and burning at the wall around hours 12 and 13:  my family’s support and popsicles.  When my husband and son went walking with me, they made me laugh and got me moving so I could leave the doubt behind.  My husband and son went to the local store for slushies and a box of popsicles while I was in the shower so I had some sugar for energy and the cool, half frozen pop kept my body temperature down in the heat.  It was all I needed to keep me going for the rest of the night and into the wee hours. 

I am so glad it did.  My best work was written in hours 17 through 22.  In fact, the first piece I've ever had published was written in hour 17.

As the night progressed and my husband and son slept on the couch bed in the room opposite my writing room, a tone would go off every hour on the hour:  2 am, 3am, 4am, 5am.  My husband would wake up every hour to make sure I was awake for the next prompt and at 5am he congratulated me on completing the marathon…that was the 24^th prompt.

I know I am really lucky to have support from my family.  Many poets don’t.  The key here is don’t write alone.  The Poetry Marathon family is beautiful and compassionate and if you need a booster, they are so happy to do that.  This year when I hit the wall, I will reach out to them, too, because, while my husband and son are awesome cheerleaders and were so amazing to bring me icy treats and walk with me, they aren’t writing. 

In those early, early (or late, late – depending on your perspective) hours when I was the only one awake in the house and I was alone with my music, I needed those people the most and they came through for me.  We became so much more entertaining the more “punch drunk” we became.  I still laugh about some of the stuff we wrote to keep ourselves moving forward to the next prompt.  I still laugh about those early hours but, most of all, I remember how it felt to crawl into bed at 6 am, after sending in my last poem: exhausted and warm and so proud of myself.  I dreamed in poetry that morning.  All of my dreams were in verse.  I even remember dreaming a poem that my Granny gave me.  I was so exhausted, I was open to visitations of loved ones long dead.  It was totally worth it. 

For a week after the marathon, I was wobbly. From the re-jigging of my internal clock? Maybe.  From the ferocious output of creative energy?  Probably.  From the realisation that this one 24 hour period had re-routed my life as a poet and there was no going back?  Definitely. 

For the next few days, I committed myself to reading as many poems from other poets as I could, to give as much feedback as I could, and to contact as many other writers as was possible in the regular ebb and flow of my day.  I made so many connections which have lasted to this day, which have bolstered me and given me courage to move forward as an artist.  I was invited into a community of poets where I was mentored around self-publishing so that I have had my first chap book of poems out on amazon.com for a couple of months and ready to build the next one.One of my poems was chosen by Caitlin for the Poetry Marathon anthology which led to my first poetry reading. 

In one year I was published for the first time, reading for the first time, and selling my work for the first time…all born out of that 24 hour period of anguish.

So you’re thinking of participating in the 2017 Poetry Marathon in August?  You need to know that the organisers, who are saints, have set a goal of completion for this year’s participants.  You need to know that if you commit to the exercise, we are all going to expect that you are going to cross the finish line at hour 12 or 24.  You need to know that we will all be here to cheer you on, throw water on you, get you Gatorade…ewww … no …whatever you need to hydrate.  We will electronically hold your hand or grab you by the elbow and drag you with us. We will make you laugh when you want to quit.  We will make you weep with joy when you don’t.  We will become the family you never knew you wanted but never knew you needed so much.  We got you.

So you’re thinking of doing the 2017 Poetry Marathon?  If you are, you need to ask yourself if you are in it to finish.  You will never know just how committed you are to your art until you do. 

Come on in.  We got you!

Sunday morning thoughts on teaching and mothering

Sunday morning.  Too early for chores.  Too early to start nagging about and facilitating homework.  Too early to start the laundry.  So, what to do?

It has been a while since a blog post went out so how about that?  I write so much now that the blog posts are extra writing “things” now rather than an outlet.  I think that is good, right?

This week, the theme seems to have been mothers and motherhood and mothering and parenting and …all of that shit.  Anyone who has had a chance to get a hold of my first chap book, or has read past posts, knows what all of that would do to me: it tinkers with my workings and fucks up the wheels and the cogs.  It has slowed me down somewhat this week, which is not what needed to happen during a short week requiring catch up at work. 

Oh, well, the Universe seems to have a better grasp on our needs than we do any way.  So I offer my reflections on this very full week in the hopes that it may be useful to someone and to give thanks to those who help me keep my shit straight.

I have to lead off with a full excerpt from my therapist and friend Neil Douglas-Tubb.  The excerpt is from his blog: There is a Door: thereisadoor@blogspot.ca

Mother

A Simple Truth of the Way of Things[1]

It is a given that every child has a legitimate need to be noticed, understood, taken seriously, and respected by their mother. 

This is beautifully illustrated in one of Donald Winnicott’s images: the mother gazes at the baby in her arms and the baby gazes at his mother’s face and in the process finds himself therein. 

This is only possible provided his mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being in her arms and not projecting her own expectations, fears and plans for the child onto the child.  If she, is then the child will not find himself in his mother’s face, but rather his mother’s projections.

This child is left without a mirror of self. 

He or she needs their mother to reflect them back to themselves. 

If this does not happen, if the child is left without a mirror, then for the rest of their lives they will be seeking this mirror in vain. Thus we search in vain through our partnering to find the lost and missing reflection that was missed in childhood.

Extracted from Into The Light ... available on Amazon.com

Pretty heavy, right?

I would argue that this is also how we choose our life’s work, as well as our partners.  I chose to be an adult who works with highly at risk youth because I needed the approval and love from the most challenging people…they were easier to get love and loyalty from than it was from my mother.  It served a purpose and at the time, early in my career, I had absolutely no idea that what I was doing was so unhealthy for me or for those kids.  I didn’t start to take notice until my grief work after the death of those kids in 2012.  I didn’t see any correlation between my life and their lives until then.  My caseload mostly consists of boys whose mothers were either physically absent through death or distance or were unable to mother due to addiction, mental illness, or any other number of issues. 

I wanted to be their mother.  That was my conscious goal.  I was going to be their mother, at least while they were at school, and I would make everything as good as I was capable of, while they were with me. 

They were “my” kids.  They were “mine.”  I took on all of their sorrows and woes and needs and made a mohair tunic out of their suffering.  We had so many cross-over issues that it was easy to become the champion of these cast outs, these rebels, these misfits.  I was/am, identify as a cast out, rebel, misfit.  I felt their pain and I was going to make it all better – make it go away - and if I couldn’t, it would be on me. 

Everything about them was about me:  their behaviour, their inability to stay substance free, their choices, their grades, their successes.  I was deified through my ability to suffer with them and carry on.  I was deified by my tolerance for their misbehaving and their abusive actions to themselves and others.  I was deified by the choice to stand for the voiceless (so I called them when, actually their voices are/were very strong…not many listened…even me).  I framed my identity on how great I was to work with them, to hear their painful stories and sit with them in the heart of their anguish.  I hung my whole perception of my self-worth on how many kids would pass or graduate or stay alive.  I created a whole person around my great martyr mask and how amazing I was to work with “these kids,”  and I was constantly reinforced in that identity by my colleagues and my admin teams and by district people who would say they had heard about my great work…people I didn’t even know.  I had/have young teachers who say they tried to get into my school to work with me because they want to do what I do and be as awesome as I am.

At first all of that was really great.  I would get the warm fuzzies from stuff I didn’t really do:  the kids’ successes are theirs.  Yes, an environment was created – as a group – to foster that success but that did not belong to me any more than their lack of success belonged to me.

I used to feel that I had done something wrong, missed something, was disrespected if a kid came to class high or partied so hard on the weekend they nearly died, or tried to kill themselves.  Somehow I didn’t love them enough or make them believe in their own worth.  Ironic, really, that I needed their love to give me worth.

After the car accident, about four long years after the accident, I had an epiphany:  my ego was too wrapped up in the actions of the kids I teach and I was using them for love and acceptance and to work out my life issues – my issues with my mother.  I was trying to mother my issues out on those kids.  When I really let that sink in and owned that, I was sickened.  That is abuse, people.  When we work our shit out on those around us, that is abuse…AND WE ALL DO IT.

Now I see that my ego has no place in my work with these kids, or with my kids, or my colleagues or my husband…they all get to be who they are because they are who they are.  If they succeed, that’s all them, if they don’t that’s all them, too.  I am just here to mirror their true selves to them – yes, as I see it – but as I see it free of my shit…free from my reflection over theirs.

I had/have no right to use other people to reflect to me what I needed from my mother.  I have/had no right to use other people to make me feel worthy to be here because I don’t usually feel like that…that I am gate crashing this great party and not many people would have invited me, if they had the choice. 

I need to come to the place that I am a miracle just by my being here.  I don’t need to do “good works” or be a martyr… “look at how amazing she is for working with ‘those kids’”…I am amazing because I survived some fucked up shit and I am amazing because I am filled with star dust and pieces of the Universe so ancient that we would have to go back billions of years before our time begins to find the start. 

This is true for all of us.  We are worthy of love because we are here.  That is all.  No good works or money or martyrdom will make us more loveable.  Our kids’ successes don’t make us a success; their failures don’t make us failures.  We want them to but they don’t. 

So, for those colleagues, those new teachers who want to be me – don’t.  Keep your boundaries clear and strong and remember that your ego has no place in your work.  Do not wear the failure or success of the kids – do not refer to them as “your kids”…they aren’t and that just makes the emotional fallout and mess waaaay too difficult to clean up. 

They do not reflect who you are or what you do.  

You are not better than the rest of us because you work with the kids you work with.  You have higher levels of tolerance for bullshit but why?  Are you a door mat?  Was that your role in your family?  You absorb all of the toxic shit so that no one else has to feel from it or learn from it?  DON’T!  STOP IT!  You are killing yourself.

But maybe you need to learn that for yourself like I did.  Not maybe…you do.

So now, the job is different because I am not so deep in the shit…I have tried to learn to love the kids for who they are not for what they reflect to me about me.  I keep my boundaries now…try really hard to…and not let my reflections cloud theirs.  I try to reflect to them their potential, not mine.  It is really hard because I miss feeling that chaos/trauma bond for the intensity and the immediacy but I know it will kill me if I continue and I am not helping them at all. 

Thank you, Neil, for the inspiration to look into these things more deeply.  I see now why I have been living the way I have been living.

My mother is a great caretaker.  That is not a good thing.  Caretakers take care…they don’t give it, they don’t help, they take.  They help when you don’t ask.  Like my mother:  she insinuates herself into the chaos of others in order to make herself indispensable.  She martyrs herself on the pain of others and is incensed when they don’t thank her for support she gave that was never asked for.  That is me…was me…I am unbecoming that, hopefully.  I was a great caretaker, too.  I am loosening the grip on that, I hope.

It really is no surprise, then, that I became who I did, when that mirror was held up to me and made me see that I am not worthy of love without caring for the pain of others to make me look good.

Take care of yourself.  If your mothers did not mirror your worthiness of love because you are here, know that you are made of stars and have the breath of the Universe within you.  That is why you are worthy of love.

Blessed be you.

A Call to Art

Yesterday, whilst shoveling snow…for nearly three hours…I had lots of time to reflect on the year that was and the year that was becoming.  After I got over the bitterness of having to shovel snow…for nearly three hours…I found myself reflecting on the deaths from last year and a very clear message came to me from those remembrances. 

The message was loud and clear:  CREATE!  No matter what – CREATE!  Do what makes your soul sigh and feel like it is speaking from the centre of you and your deepest connection to the divinity within you.  You owe your talent to the places from whence it has come and there are people in the world, RIGHT NOW, who need to hear what you have to say, to see what you have to make, to weep at your words, to revel in your humour, to taste your wares. 

BRING US WHAT YOU GOT TO GIVE!

There are millions of reasons not to but none of them are really good enough.  None of them.

Take a second right now and remember that feeling in the pit of your stomach, the ringing in your head, the bottom dropping out of your world when you heard the news of any of those shattering losses last year.  Remember the feeling in your body…how did you feel when you heard the news about Bowie?  Where were you when you heard Rickman died?  Or Haggard? What happened to you when you heard that Prince was dead? What about that Hip concert? Ali?  Eli Weisel?

Feel it.  Really feel it.

Feel that heart ache? 

Now take another second and remember all of the joy they brought into your lives.  Think about the first time you heard Cohen’s voice or read his words.  Remember seeing Rickman for the first time.  For me, it was Truly, Madly, Deeply…yeah, I saw Die Hard, but I  *truly* saw him in Truly, Madly, Deeply.  Who brought you to Bowie or Motorhead or the Eagles?  Think about the great memories of watching Fish or M.A.S.H or The Gary Shandling Show.  How about the first time you read Night or watched Ali fight or light a fire in your heart with his passion for Black lives in America?  Or Leah’s beauty in the Star Wars movies?

Where does this live for you?  What did it do for you?

Really feel that, too.

Now imagine that all of those feelings were never made available to you because those artists –all of them are artists – had chosen to not produce their art.  Imagine that they had allowed the voices in their head, or in their world, to deter them from creating what they created that changed the world. Imagine if they had lost their war with their art.

Shitty, right? 

Early in the morning of December 13, after all of my writing and mourning the death of Leonard Cohen I had a dream.  I dreamed that I sat in a greenhouse/conservatory (a la the Crystal Palace) across from Cohen.  He was waiting to do a concert in this space and the mic wasn’t working.  I had some kind of amp-thing sitting behind me and, of course, I had no idea how to work it.  I was supposed to get things ready for him and felt really badly that it wasn’t working out.  It did, however allow me to sit with him for a while.  He was practicing Song of Bernadette.  The piano played and I sang it, not thinking for a second that he was listening to me.  When the last notes faded, this exchange took place:

                        “You do it,” Cohen said to me.

                        “What?”

                        “The song.  You do it, kid.  It’s yours. You sound better than I do-make it sound better than I do anyway.”

Even in my dream I thought:  holy fuck!  Leonard Cohen just visited me and gave me Song of Bernadette!  That thought woke me up and rolled around in my head all day.  COHEN VISITED ME AND GIFTED ME WITH THE FIRST SONG I EVER LOVED FROM HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!  In indigenous cultures, ancestors gift songs and stories to their protégés in dreams, so this was a huge deal/is a huge deal for me.    

I am not saying that I am, in any way, the next Cohen, what I am saying is that I have been charged with the responsibility to share my work with the world – in spite of and in the face of my terror of rejection and failure.  I must take the same risk that he did because to not do so would be spiritual suicide.  I have wandered the desert of self-imposed artistic barrenness and, after a year of forcing myself to rise early and write, I would never go back.  I can’t go back.

Think about this:  you are someone’s Cohen.  You have work in you that someone, somewhere needs to hear.  Maybe that is a song or a poem; a story or a tattoo; a soup or loaf of bread; a sculpture or pirouette – whatever you create that makes you feel the most connected to the divine…that is what needs to be shared.  Whatever it may be…and I mean whatever…in the face of covert and overt social mores created to shame you into not creating or expressing your art – even fucking. 

 I have shared my thoughts about how Prince gave me permission to be a sexually voracious female and how much I needed permission to be me without the shame inherent in the Judeo-Christian moral constructs around female sexuality.  He worked, and shared his work, in a world scandalised by sex – gay, straight, non-binary or any kinds.  We needed that.  Badly.

And, we need what you got, too.  More than ever before, we need what you have to offer.  The world is going to get interesting – really interesting – and there are gaps in the front lines needing to be filled.  I know you have the means and the tools to do it, so pick up the instruments of your art of choice and get in line!

My tattoo artist, Alex Rousey, and my husband, Dallas, both brought into my life a book which has transformed my courage around creating and sharing and art.  Steven Pressfield’s,  The War of Art, has forced me into commitment and discipline for my art that I had been too afraid to step to in the past.  Pressfield also left in my heart pieces of this quote which informed my reflections yesterday and informs me now as I trepidatiously step into the world of self-publishing.  Our work does not belong to us, and as such, we have no right to keep it to ourselves. 

                        THE ARTIST’S LIFE  

Are you a born writer?  Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace?  In the end the question can only be answered by action.

            Do it or don’t do it.

            It may help to think of it this way.  If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself.  You hurt your children.  You hurt me.  You hurt the planet.

            You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.

            Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor.  It’s a gift to the world and every being in it.  Don’t cheat us of your contributions.  Give us what you’ve got.

                                                                                    The War of Art page 165

I am not a religious person, so the God stuff didn’t do much for me but I do acknowledge that creation comes from a divine source, so that is what I substitute in my head for “God.” I know you are all clever people and get what I’m saying.

You have the means to be someone’s Bowie or Ali or Cohen or Rickman or Fisher or …..

Get busy!  We need you.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to a Chap book

I have been bouncing around a number of ideas lately in regards to my poetry.  I promised myself that over the break from school, I would choose pieces for a chap book – a collection of roughly 24 poems.  I have rolled a number of them around in my head and, over the last couple of days, have been gifted with a couple of pieces which will make great capstones for the book. 

The publishing bug has bitten me, and like all artists, the little taste of exposure has enticed me to chase more of it.  So I do. 

The funny thing that has happened on the way to this chap book is the exorcism of much of the poisonous blood I have carried about my relationship to my mother.  I knew that journaling is a great way to release and heal but I had forgotten the healing power of poetry…sounds so stupid when it comes onto my page…but that is what is happening.  My voices in my head have been dictating poems about her for months and, out of my Morning Pages have come many pieces with her as the star.  I don’t know if it is really helping but I know it shows the bruised places in me about our fucked up relationship and my fantasy life of how much I wish it weren’t so.

Such is the way of the world:  we are sold a bill of goods promising us that our homes will be safe, our parents will be the tv sitcom perfection we dreamed of as children, and as we age that relationship will never change but will become richer and more beautiful.  Perhaps, for some people that is, indeed, the reality – lucky them – but more likely, the reality is closer to mine than the fantasy. Let me share with you the pieces that have cracked me open.

Today I offer you a couple of pieces which will, inevitably make their way into the book.  They are new.  Brand new: one from yesterday and one from today.  I am quite pleased with them.  I hope you enjoy them, too.

to the locked up parts of me i promised to protect

Somewhere.

Somewhere in the back of her mind –

so far back it was in a place she could barely reach without the aid of a step-stool –

somewhere, deep in the back of her, lives a shadow in the figure of a girl;

a woman-child.

A shadow,

an outline –

like the carbon-burned shadow forms blasted,

melted into concrete in Hiroshima or Nagasaki –

an outline of something once female hovers

with memories of dolls and tea sets and Easy Bake ovens

but somewhere closer –

so much closer that the step-stool was useless –

somewhere close in her, lives a memory of all of that hair,

all of those eyelashes,

and ankle socks,

forming some kind of wordless allurement to touch,

sans invitation,

sans desire,

sans understanding of the weight of the hand on her thigh,

her head,

her breasts.

The laughter burned in her ears and scorched her brain

like the Hiroshima hand prints left on her body

and she shut her eyes tight in quiet solitude,

promising never to be female again.

R. L. Elke

Dec 29/16

newtonian laws as they apply to my mother

Law #1: an object (me) will remain at rest or in uniform motion (my peaceful life) unless acted upon by an external force (you).  Objects (me) will remain in their state of motion (my life) unless a force (you) act to change the motion (fucks me up).

My life remains at rest in an orbit of its own making,

with an energy allowing me constant motion forward, somehow,

in spite of the many attempts,

by other bodies,

to make it otherwise.

Your external force of “cookie and a punch” parenting launches me off course –

careening into foreign bodies –

looking for uniform motion once again.

It’s inevitable and always happens like a perpetual motion machine knocking me toward you and away from you over and over and over and over and…

Law #2:    F (net force) = mass x acceleration

This law has certain limitations (as do we).  It does not apply to changing mass or if the object is moving close to the speed of light or on an atomic scale – relativity and quantum mechanics apply, respectively, in those cases, but is effective for the solution of standard problems including the effects of friction (any time we are around each other too long).

As so was my adolescents around you,

when your disdain for my round, pre-womanly body forced me to quickly change or –

see Law #1 –

be cast into isolation from the adoration of your gaze.

I am not sure if it was my size or my masculine edge –

my connection to my father –

that forced you to slap me with that famous, transformative phrase:

You have such a beautiful face, Ramona.  Boys would like you so much more if you lost weight.

What you didn’t know is that weight is not mass.

What I am made of could not be altered –

should not have been able to be altered by the gravity of your words –

even though it weighed me down,

weighed on me for years.

Law #3:  All forces in the universe occur in equal but oppositely directed pairs (us).  There are no isolated forces; for every external force of equal magnitude but opposite direction which acts back on the object – for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (our dance).

“There are no isolated forces” –

which dooms us, really, to this mess of back and forth,

to and fro,

embrace and push back;

in this waltz of abuse enrobed in good intention.

I push,

you reach out.

I step to you,

you move away.

So it has gone on since the beginning when I appeared,

unbidden –

bad timing and all –

forcing your life away from the one you had longed for:

a working girl in the city,

an escapee of the chattering hamlet which had cast you in a role you did not want

or deserve…

a theme in your life.

I forced you to take the role of wife and mother and you,

unconsciously/subconsciously,

reacted in an equal and opposite direction,

of rejection in order to survive the changing forces in your universe;

setting the stage for the rest of the movements of us:

to and fro,

embrace and push back,

stepping toward an running away –

the waltz of heartbreak we dance.

We are forces of nature,

doomed to be ruled by forces we cannot see,

to ways of being we may not want

because Newton has given us no other choices

because “there are no isolated forces” –

everything seems to force our motion onto predetermined paths.

I don’t know.

Perhaps our release lay with Einstein.

R. L. Elke

Dec 30/16

On This Solstice

On this dark night – the longest of the year – I listen to Joe Rogan’s pod cast whilst preparing food for supper and for the Christian feast in 4 days.  There are men who remind us to look to the sky and re-connect with the inhabitants therein – the heavenly bodies encircling us and our ancestors…the light reaching us is the same light reaching them hundreds of thousands of years ago.  Their light is our light.

They knew the power of the solstice and the equinox and the high drama of the fight of light and dark – the fight for the survival of all of us and all living creatures with which we share this orb of earth, air, fire, and water.  They knew what to do on these nights – to go to the top of the highest place and raise hands to the sun, praying for its return.

I had planned to do that.  It never happened.  I still may go to the park yet tonight and reach to the stars and thank them for their light, protecting us from the blackening night and all of the monsters hiding therein.  What I have done, however, is to marvel at what a difference six months make…how the Sun King anoints us with his warmth and leaves us too soon.  How I had written a poem about the summer solstice and how it felt like such a rip off for the first day of summer to come even before school was out for the year…for the days to shorten before my longest, blissful days had begun. 

There is no such sorrow on the winter solstice, strangely enough.  There is no such sorrow – even in this impenetrable darkness, there is no sorrow…there is only a drive to burrow deeply into the sacred spaces of myself and confer with the elders; to sit with the ancients and feel their wisdom whisper to my bones.  Only a pull to my tarot cards and to warm soup and black teas flavoured with orange and clove and rum.  Only a desire to dress in nothing but furs, to feel that silky touch on naked skin and sigh a prayer of thanks to the creature for its touch...and to melt the darkest of chocolate on the tongue slowly so as not to never forget the taste of it.

When my older children were small, they would be allowed one gift to open for Yule.  They were allowed one gift and promised a story at bed time of the Holly King and the Oak King who fought tonight for the sun – to make sure that the sun would rise in the morning.  What I omitted was the version of the story in which the Holly King and the Oak King were two handsome men who were fighting for the hand of the beautiful consort – the Sun Queen.  The Holly King was older and had fulfilled his duty to the Queen and now it was time for the young, virile Oak King to take over until June 21, when the Holly King would fight the Oak King and the whole cycle would start again.  Both were supple and keen to serve. Both worshiped her so she would rise every morning, pleased and satisfied; for when she is satisfied, we are all satisfied.

I think of those lovers now, the men fighting until midnight, when she arrives in the doorway to say goodbye to the Holly King, and gathers up her new lover.

Gawain wore the Holly and, before the Christianization of the Arthurian Legends, was considered to be a manifestation of the Green God but also a manifestation of the Holly King.  There are stories of his banishment of the Red Knight, I believe, from the Pentecost feast in the Great Hall, which caused the disintegration of the Knights of the Round table and sent them to the four corners of the world to find the Grail…

So many interesting stories for this time of year.  So many based in reflection and taking stock and counting blessings and aching to be near those we love most.

This piece was my gift today from the angels of poetry:

For the Sun 

Deep in this fitfulness digs discontent –

a tick infecting flesh with madness,

delirium,

or dread of days darker than these.

Not today –

on this day of darkest days,

when Night holds captive the Sun

for much longer than we dare imagine,

today we love light and entice it to stay for one more drink

because, baby it’s cold outside,

and I left my coat laying on his bed.

Today we coax Night out

and create new ways to pacify his longing for darkness.

We need light today –

darkness has reigned too often this year.

Return to dance with us, beloved.

We miss your starry eyes.

R. L. Elke

Dec. 21/16

Blessed Be you this Solstice and may Light love you always.