Fiat Lux et Tenebra

1. The encroaching darkness

I am not sure when I first noticed it.  Rings appearing around lights.  The figures on the Union Station departure boards doubling. Not so much blurriness, but darkness.  

One’s eyesight declines with age. It happens. It was happening to me.  I would have to live with this existential angst as I approached my fiftieth year. “You are aging. But your health is excellent. You should rejoice in that. Others have it much worse.”  

My biannual eye exams detected nothing other than a growing need for reading glasses. Nothing more.

One evening, standing in the shower, I got soap in my left eye and shut it. I realized that my right eye was worse. Drastically worse. 

Making eye contact had never been easy for me.  Now, when I looked up, I felt my wounded right eye staring into blurry space, and I avoided it even more. My confidence plummeted. My work suffered.

2. The shadows of my mind

When I was younger, I had rituals to keep away the darkness. At night, I would recite a mental prayer to keep me safe from all manner of diseases.  There was a rhythm, a ritual to these recitations, a liturgy to give me comfort from the horrible things I read about every day.  When I was a little older, I added nuclear war to the things I prayed would not happen to me.  My vision of the future was limited to what was safe, what was nearby.  The love of others had always been hard for me to obtain; best to go with the sure thing.

3. Let there be light

As I crossed into my 20s, I began to question the fundamental premise of fear I had built my life around.  The world itself was opening, the Berlin Wall falling, the Cold War receding.  I made new friends, ended relationships, began others. I survived—no, I thrived.  I turned my focus from the minute and precise to the large and expansive. The mysteries of life no longer frightened me; to the contrary, I embraced them, drinking deeply of newfound springs of knowledge. The liturgy of fears was forgotten, and with them, my old faith.   The world could be an awful place, but a beautiful one as well.  I chose the light, a light bright enough to banish the shadows. I resolved to never let fear grip me again.

4. The world is getting better and better

Bathed in light, warding off the shadows, I took the better illuminated path, the easier way, the one presenting the least difficulties. I could not fail. I would not fail.  Instead, I would find another place to prevail, to be resilient, to pivot, to adapt. I would pick my battles. I would always see the best in any situation.  When the towers fell in 2001, I rejoiced in the coming together in its aftermath, the heroism of ordinary individuals, the unlikelihood of a repeat. I could lend my strength to the weak.  

5. Fears

Until I became the weak. Until I began to doubt myself, seeing myself in another’s eyes as less than. The last time, I had pivoted away from that challenge, chosen not to fight, to take another path.  This time, I could not. This time, I had to face myself. The shadows were again growing, threatening, looming around the corners. But I looked for the light, and I again found it, seized it. Beat back the shadows again, denied they existed at all. Confidence was regained in the speed at which the new doors opened, and I stepped through.

6. Hope

The world was bright and shiny again.  The election of Barack Obama underscored the possibility that the world truly was changing for the better. I was in a job I loved, learning, growing, flourishing, standing astride the path I had chosen, making it mine.   I could even turn back, pick up threads dropped long ago, such as my passion for the music of Rush, weaving them into a bright tapestry.  My father’s death, the financial crisis—nothing darkened my soul for too long.  

1. The encroaching darkness

Around 2014, I began to notice that the light seemed to be dimming. In the midst of some signs of progress in the United States—the passage of Obamacare, the legalization of same-sex marriage—increasingly an undercurrent of anger seemed to be rising to the surface.  But the light still seemed bright enough to sustain itself.  After all, the United States was a shining beacon of some of the finest ideals the world had ever seen; by no means perfect, these would carry the day, would they not? The high road would be taken, the truth would prevail…yes?

Driving around Hamilton on the evening of November 8, 2016, hearing the results come in from the election, I knew early that it was not going as expected. 

I had, like so many, taken the light for granted.

7. Numbness

Months later. My doctor was on leave. I put off making an appointment until when she returned. By then, I was fairly sure I knew the source of my problems, and she confirmed it: I had a cataract on my right eye. Six weeks later, I saw an optician, who noted that I actually had cataracts in both eyes.  The type I had were typically seen in people who had been on steroidal medications.  I never had been.  

The office said they would call me within a few weeks to set up the pre-surgical exam.

All I could see was shadow. I questioned my abilities, my intelligence, the fundamental perceptions of who I was as a person. I looked for the light. But for the first time, I was not encouraged by the world I saw around me. In the past, I had always been able to find joy.  I had no use for grief, for sorrow, for anger. These were things to be overcome. They were darkness. They were not to be indulged. I had no language for them.

Outside, I kept up the façade. Inside, all was grey. Numb.

In August, I contacted the optician wondering when I would be hearing from them. It was as if they had forgotten me, but within a few days, I had—at last! —an appointment for mid-September for the pre-surgical assessment. I even had a preliminary date for the surgery, September 23.

The light flickered encouragingly.

And then went out entirely.  I heard a few days after the appointment that my surgery was cancelled, and that I was to see my eye doctor at his office.  September 25, 2017 was one of the worst days of my entire life, as I sat in his chair hearing that my cataract was so bad that they were unable to operate.  I would have to be referred to a surgeon with experience in complex cataracts—a process that could take months.

I came home and had a panic attack.  What if I lost my drivers’ license before I could have surgery?  What if I lost my job?  What if what I had could not be fixed?  What if the darkness were permanent?  What if? 

8. A door opens

But in the midst of that darkness, that very afternoon, my doctor called.  He had found a doctor in Mississauga who dealt with complex cataracts.  And within hours, I had an appointment for one week later.

One year ago today, I had the cataract surgery in my right eye. The left eye followed at the beginning of December. 

The physical problem was corrected. But this—and the world—had broken me—old, long-healed fractures had opened up.  To someone looking in from the outside, there would have been little evidence of this.  Like a cat, I had learned to hide my pains very well out of fear of those who would prey on them.  I do not confide easily in others. The depth of my feelings is somewhat embarrassing, and I tend to minimize them.  After all, I came from an intact family with loving parents, am financially secure, have been married for 27 years, possess an outstanding education, and privilege in many ways. Materially, I have never wanted for anything. 

What had I to complain about? What had I to fear? 

I know the answer to that question now. I fear the future, a future where I might be deprived of these things, a world mourning what I once but no longer was, of potential squandered, of joy taken for granted now slipping through my fingers, a future where despite my best efforts, people turned on each other. A world diminished.  

Fear paralyzes me—unless I can find the language to name that fear, and then the courage to persist, to prevail despite it.  I have spent a full year searching for that language, and, like learning any new language, it has been at times overwhelming. But there is strength in understanding that others have passed this way, and have left signposts for me to see, to hear, to read…but most importantly, to feel. 

To name the fear, I must first accept that there is no light without shadow, no shadow without light. Those shadows cannot be willed away. They are part of the light, exist in balance with the light.  They are part of a whole. If I turn from the shadows, they do not disappear. They grow, unattended, no matter how much I want to believe they are not there at all.

But what I fear most is also true. Shadow has the power to fully obscure the light. This has happened before. I will see it, and the instinct will be to recoil, and insist it cannot happen again, and refuse to name it. But it can, and it will.

It is easy, so easy for me to slip into the shadows. To become numb. To succumb. To not have to feel the hurt and pain. To take the path of least resistance. To avoid failure. To shrug it off.  To wait for the great burst of light to dispel the gloom. 

What I fear most is this: that I will accept the shadow as light, accept that a life diminished is acceptable because it causes me less conflict, less pain.  Because it is more comfortable. 

Let there be light and shadow, and let me know the difference.

At this time, in this place

Even in darkness, there is light. And this is not so much darkness of the pitch black, starless variety, as greyness and gloom, where the light struggles, the rain falls, and it is easy to feel nothing because all of your senses are exhausted from the strain.

At this time, and in this place, I give thanks. For my parents who raised me, and the extended family who ensured an only child was not alone.

For true friends of many years and fewer years--for all that you are, for the love you have shown. For my husband, my partner, the closest I have ever come to understanding--truly understanding--another soul.

For the soft fur of a purring cat. For the sound of water falling. For words well chosen, beautiful or stark, legato or staccato, spoken or heard silently. For the symphony of a beautiful building, or the fugue of a monument to loss. And for the music itself, in all its forms, in joy and anger, sorrow and resignation, humour and biting wit, all of it, over many years and with many voices and instruments.

For the smell of warm cinnamon and spices, of wet leaves evoking red, orange, yellow and brown. For the play of light on clear water. For the most ancient of stones, and the story they tell. And for the stars, the timeless stars, each a tale of worlds existing only in my dreams.

These, I am thankful for, because in the days of deepening grey, they are my stars, and though there be clouds, I know they are there. Even when I cannot see them, even when they are just memories or images in my mind, they cannot be taken from me.

And for this, I give thanks, at this time, in this place.

Thanksgiving Day, 2018

9:35 am, 100th Street, Niagara Falls NY, October 6, 2018

Behind the chain link fence stretches a grassy field, benign, almost featureless.  It could be a park, but no friendly gate invites visitors.  Streets, or what once were streets, penetrate the perimeter, halting abruptly, the asphalt crumbling. Shrubs appear here and there—not the kind of shrubs that one might find in a country meadow, but the kind that are missing their houses. Because they are.

I have long wanted to come here, to see for myself. Driving down 100^th Street in Niagara Falls, I am struck by how desolate the area looks.  It could be an abandoned industrial area. In fact is is, but before and after that, it was a thriving neighbourhood. Houses were once here, with kids running up and down the street and across the big field to their elementary school. Sometimes they would run across something strange—a puddle with an oily slick, or an abandoned barrel, or an odd smell.  Everyone seemed to be sick, particularly the young ones.

The grassy field was the remains of a failed attempt to build a canal to bypass Niagara Falls. Forty years ago, the world learned that this site—the infamous Love Canal--was a toxic wasteland.  Residents were evacuated, their homes abandoned, condemned and eventually, torn down. The school that had been built right on top of the site was closed and eventually demolished. Millions of dollars were poured into sealing the site and in resolving the lawsuits the residents brought against the chemical company responsible for the dump.

Make no mistake, Love Canal is not gone. It’s right there, still toxic, though putatively contained now. There are no signs to identify it.  No museum or historical marker exists to tell its story. So the land itself must provide the words—the roads to nowhere, the driveways to invisible homes, the echoes in time of the children once running along 100^th Street as I drive south. On my right, that vast, empty, toxic field, its secrets buried for good now, so they say.  Nature is reclaiming this place. As in the lands surrounding Chernobyl, nature pays no mind to toxic chemicals. It breaks down those all those artifacts of humanity. 

The haunting of this place is that the knowledge that when all trace of humans are long gone, the enemy will still lurk within.  Love Canal is buried, but does not rest in peace.

*****

I first learned about Love Canal after picking up Lois Gibbs' account, Love Canal: The Story Continues many years ago.  Correction:  I first heard about Love Canal when the story broke in 1978. I was eleven, and old enough to understand.  The late 70s were a strange, toxic time dominated by a kind of malaise, a brokenness that seemed to infect the world after the last vestiges of the Vietnam War were cleared away.  Nixon's resignation in 1974 followed by the fall of Saigon in 1975 marked the closing of an era, but the new era was just tired and hurt and hopeless in so many ways.  Wounds were licked.  Nostalgia was invoked. Escapism reigned, and Star Wars was a New Hope before it knew it was. 

In many ways, the Love Canal story is a positive one, of how those committed to the truth can eventually overcome the odds and effect change, but there was a cost--in human lives, in relationships destroyed, dreams deferred, divisions sown. 

A few links:

Love Canal Today: 'We Know What's In Our Backyard'

A History of the Love Canal Disaster

Love Canal's Legacy Lingers

Love Canal Containment Zone (Atlas Obscura)

Why Do People Still Live at Love Canal?

Forty Years

Today, as I prep for tomorrow's Feast of the Bear, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Barony of Septentria, I came across a thing.  

****

The Tale of the Great Bear of the North

by Magistra Nicolaa de Bracton

Presented at Twelfth Night, AS 45

In the beginning of time, before civilization touched the lands of the North, the Great Bear roamed free, alone beneath the stars, ever wandering, ever searching. It is said that on the coldest of cold nights, his mate and his cub were taken from him, and the earth rang with his howls and roars of anguish.  Frigga, mate to the All-Father, heard these cries and came to him, and took pity on the white bear, bereft of mate and child, and offered this to him: “We cannot unwind the skein which the Norns have spun. But look to the sky, and know that in this Northern land, your kin will be with you always.”

And she pointed to the sky, where whirled the Great She-Bear and her cub, clad in stars, mother and child, always circling the Polestar.

“This is of great comfort to me,” said the Bear, “but what am I to do here, alone, below?”

“You must give your heart to the land, and your descendants will be multiplied upon this earth,” said Frigga.

The Bear wondered at this and how it might come to pass without his mate by his side, but kept silent.  For many years, the land was in his care, but he was alone. 

Far to the West, in the land of the setting sun, Apollo did look down from his chariot and espied a people thirsting for knowledge, searching in the darkness for truth.   One day he perchance came upon them, dressed in fine clothes, speaking the languages of civilized folk.  He heard the clash of sword upon sword, but found not warfare, but gentle courtesy and chivalry.  “I shall drive my sun-chariot close, and its light shall shine brightly upon these people, and they shall have my protection,” said he.  So bright was the sun that shone that it nourished a new Society.   And in those lands did King Richard and Queen Marynel rule, followed by King Henrik and Queen Wendryn, and King Richard the Second and his queens, Anne and Diana, and King Henrik the second and Queen Leanne; and King William and Queen Sheryl. 

And in the reign of King Siegfried and Queen Marynel, word reached Their Majesties that a fierce woman approached the Kingdom of the West, riding upon a tiger.  She demanded entry into their hall.  Apollo recognized Durga the Invincible from the Eastern lands, and knew she would not be denied her wish, for she is fearless and ever-patient, and so opened the minds of Their Majesties.

“My people are restless,” said she.  “They desire to know your ways, but not to be governed by you.  They wish to be self-sufficient.  They have read the sacred texts.  Will you grant them your blessing to rule their own Kingdom?  The lands of the East are far from you, and will not trouble you.”

Their Majesties nodded, and appointed Lady Elfrida to travel to the lands of the East.  And Durga was satisfied, and returned to her lands.  Lady Elfrida did appoint Maragorn and Adrienne to preside at the first tournament in Eastern lands as King and Queen, and in that grand tournament Bruce of Cloves won the Crown for his lady Florence, and reigned for a full year.  

The passing of Durga had roused a great dragon from his slumber, and the dragon saw from afar the people of the East and the birth of their Kingdom.  He looked beneath his wing and saw on the shores of the great lake others searching for the light of civilization.  Emissaries were sent, and Countess Adrienne did come to the city on the shore of the great lake, and a grand tournament was held, and the victor proclaimed Baron Under the Mountain.  This was Cariadoc of the Bow.   But the dragon was not satisfied, and he confronted the Lady of the Tiger.  “It is not right that I bow to you,” said the dragon. “You are not sacred to my people.”  He extended his right talon, so that it fell just west of the great city of steel. “All lands west of here I claim for my own.”   The Lady of the Tiger laughed.  “I have no desire to rule such uncivilized people.  Perhaps in the future these barbarians and my people might meet here to settle the matter.   The Dragon laughed and departed, and such did the Coronation of King Cariadoc and Queen Diana Alene transpire in the fourth year since the light came to the shores of the West.

But the Dragon did not inhabit these lands alone. The great wolf Fenrir was wont to prowl in the northern reaches, far from the dragon’s fiery breath.  In the great North Woods a band of people came together who venerated Fenrir and carried his image before them into battle. Three of their number had travelled to the Kingdom of the West in its third year and saw the wonders of civilization there. In the fourth year the people in the North Woods came together and began to form a barony, sending emissaries to the West Kingdom.  But messengers were slow and unreliable and were lost in the great distance, and so the people of Fenrir moved forward not knowing that around them, a new Kingdom was growing.  In the fall of the fifth year of the Society, King Franz of the Middle, hearing strange tales of this stronghold in the great woods, came in person to witness its wonders.  The victor of the tournament that day, Thorvald inn Grimmi, who had been one of the three to travel to the West, was invested as Baron and knighted on the field, and his lady Signy, who had also traveled to the West, became Baroness.  The Lost Barony had been found, and many of its line would sit the Dragon Thrones.

Amongst the people of the North Woods was one Finnvarr de Taahe, a knight whose wanderings took him through the lands to the East of the North Woods, and indeed, into the lands of the Tiger of the East.   It was there that he came to dwell in Mirkewode for a time and won for himself the Crown of the East.  In those days, there was no requirement that King and Queen dwell in their own Kingdom, and so his Queen was Caellyn, a lady of the North Woods.  Travelling between his home in the East and his keep in the North Woods, he travelled through lands yet unclaimed and unpopulated, though full of scholars and merchants, and he resolved to return.  His passing was not unnoticed.  The Great Bear of the North watched him from afar, and wondered what this might foretell.

Count Finnvarr built a hall within the city of scholars on the shore of the ancient lake, but yet he was still alone, and travelled often to the North Woods, where he told tales of the wondrous things in the city of scholars and the beauty of the wilds without.  One lady, Gillian d’Uriel, heard these stories and resolved to come to that land as well.  Others from the city of scholars soon joined them as well, and in the ninth year of the Society the outpost on the shore of the ancient lake known as Eoforwic arose. 

Soon other outposts arose as well, Noerlandia to the north, Ben Dunfirthshire to the west.   The Great Bear of the North discovered them in his wanderings.  He kept silent, but found that ever more he was drawn to these people, and the people began to catch glimpses of him during his wanderings, standing alone, his eyes sad yet hopeful.  The people of Noerlandia instituted a feast in his honour, but he did not yet come amongst them.   Yet he watched, and kept guard over them.

And so it came to pass in time that Count Finnvarr won the right to the throne of the Middle and he and Caellyn were crowned in Eoforwic in the twelfth year of the Society.   One day the King was out riding in the woods and found himself separated from his retinue. It was then that the Great Bear showed himself.  The King was not afraid.  “Great Bear, I have seen you from afar for many months, and so have all those who dwell in these lands.  Yet you do not fear us, nor hunt us for food.  What is the meaning of this?”

“Great King,” said the Bear, “I have felt the love of these people for this land.  I dwell alone in these lands, and have for many years done so.  The land has been my only companion, and it is my heart and soul.   Your people have honoured me, and yet I have kept apart, fearful of what might come to pass.”

“You are a mighty bear,” said the King.  “What have you to fear?

“I fear that I will love again, and lose my mate and child, as I did many years ago.  But yet Frigga foretold to me that my descendants would be multiplied were I to give the land my heart.  I did not know how this could be, and then your people came to dwell amongst trees, rivers, lakes and meadows alongside me, and I felt their love for what I love, and I knew that I must find my mate amongst them, for they are destined for greatness.  But I would not usurp your place, O King.”

The King inclined his head, and said, “Great Bear of the North, I and my line rule vast lands to the west and south.  It is in my power to raise these people to greater glory, and I had already resolved to do so.  But we have lacked a leader.   They shall be a barony called Septentria and you shall rule as Baron in my stead.”

“Alas, “said the Bear, “Great as the love I bear for this land, I cannot rule over humans.  But I have seen a lady amongst you, beloved by all her people, who came to these lands not long after you. Where I am rough and beastly, she is gentle and speaks with the voice of a poet, and is renowned far and wide.  She inspires all to create great beauty with their hands, voices, and hearts.  She is mother to these people, and thus my mate in deed if not in name.  If she were to accept the Coronet of a Baroness, I would ever be beside her to protect her, the land, and the people.”

“You speak of the Lady Gillian,” said the King.

“I do,” said the Great Bear of the North.

“Never before has a Baroness ruled alone,” said the King.

“She will not rule alone. She has the heart of a Bear,” said the Great Bear.

And so, in May of the thirteenth year of the Society, the Barony of Septentria was born, raised to high status by Queen Kirsten of the Middle, and the lady Gillian, to the joy of the people, took up the Coronet as its Baroness.   And the Great Bear of the North, Ursus Septentriae, alone no more, ever protects his people in peace and in war, and his descendants are multiplied upon the land.

The architecture of time

It is no secret that ceremony and ritual are deeply fascinating and meaningful to me, which is an odd thing to say for someone who is…well, not an atheist, but not not an atheist; agnostic doesn’t really quite describe me, either, because my not knowing is a kind of belief of its own, a revelling in the mysteries that are greater than me, the structures unseen that leave their cryptic marks.  It’s a something--an emotion, an intuition—based on what I can I observe through my five senses. (Five. That number. Again.)  I look for patterns, for cycles, for what repeats and resonates, for what forms the cellars and walls and windows and decoration of time itself.  To me, a ceremony or a ritual acknowledges this architecture, sometimes simply admiring what has been built before, sometimes building new rooms or knocking down walls or adding a storey. Sometimes there is a façade that seems familiar but the inside has been gutted and all has been made shiny or new. Sometimes we simply walk among the ruins and imagine the buildings that were once there and try to reconstruct them.

If time is a dimension, like the singularity, breadth, and depth, a fourth axis that we can depict only in its reflection, then the events of the past exist somewhen, and have a continuing reality. Just because we are in the attic does not mean the basement ceases to exist.  But we also perceive time as a repeating cycle, where we visit the buildings that those who went before built.  Sometimes we remember and build new structures in their image.  Sometimes we can only see the ruins, or the faintest outlines, because we lack the senses to fully perceive what is past (and, it should be said, the future, because if the past is a reality, so, then, is the future, even if we cannot touch it.) Sometimes words, or music, or items wrought in gold or clay or iron, or bedecked in pigments, come to us over the days, years, centuries, millennia. Sometimes all that remains is puzzled in the bands of rocks or tree-stumps, and sometimes all that comes to us is light itself, spattered about the sky.  

This time of year the cycles sing to me. For 27 years now, the rhythm of the summer has pulsed towards Pennsic, much as our medieval forebears in England moved towards the Feast of the Assumption and the times of the harvest fast approached. I have attended all but two of those years, and the ritual seems to have changed little, even though of course it has, slowly and imperceptibly.  Faces once young now become lined with care, and new faces appear. The dates have moved earlier; has Pennsic not always started in July?  The camps of my youth have vanished, replaced by camps that have always been there (until they will not). The streets rearrange themselves incrementally, but to back away is to see only permanence. That fort has always been there, has it not? (I once put pen to paper and wrote of its construction. This is just history now.) Once, just once, there were fireworks. 

Others look on this place and write truths. They are not my truths, but they are true.

Once, in the marketplace, I came across an apparition—a band of Janissaries, marching in double turns, with drums and horns and cymbals—and I saw it only once, almost believed it had been a dream. But it was not, and this year, I will march with the Janissaries, and history will be recreated, although I will not perceive it ever again in the same way.  Last year, I stood at the top of the field, paused, checking to left and right where two others, in tabards of their kingdoms, stood in wait, and then the three of us stepped forward, leading three kingdoms onto the field in long columns, and I spoke the words to herald in my King and Queen. I was the Voice of the Crown.  This year, my only oath is to my people, my voice only for them, the tabard laid aside until my labours are complete.

One last time, the nineteenth time, I will labour as the sun sinks to record words—my own, and others’-- that will be read and perhaps forgotten, but then, perhaps, not. I will send the words across the years.  The fort has always been there, has it not? We were fifteen thousand once, if only in theory.

Each year, I look around, know that this could always—always be the last year.  What will it be like, should I return, the next time?  The future is out there, unknown as of yet, but inevitable, unstoppable. We cannot freeze the moment a little bit longer, but the snippets of a tune on the wind, the smell of fresh woodsmoke, the snap of a banner—I have been here before. The architecture of time is all around me, and words and music, sight and sound, adorn its walls.  It is part of me, and I of it.  The cycle continues.

Queen and University, 11:45 am, July 3, 2018

I have stood at this intersection for 28 years now. The water, cool, shallow in its aqua pool, plays across from me, although I do not hear its gurgle over headphones and traffic, but it is there, as it has always been in summer, the years of construction notwithstanding. To my south, the Four Seasons Centre. No longer new, not yet old. The other three corners, as they have been for many years. The CN Tower looms behind the Shangri-La. Once that air was vacant, not so long ago.

Change boils you slowly, like the proverbial frog, until you look around and realize that the new has pushed up through the old like weeds through a crumbling sidewalk. The city is like the facade of an old Art Deco building slapped onto a new one. You recognize the landmarks, here, here, over there, but the fabric is subtly altering and morphing. Already, sleazy Yonge Street has vanished, replaced with glass and cleaned brick facades.  Artsy Queen West has moved further west and upscale. Where there is an old building, there is a developer with a plan for a condo.

I have stood at this intersection for 28 years now, headphones injecting music directly into my brain. WiFi earbuds and an iPhone now, earphones teathered to an Aiwa Walkman knockoff then. Shostakovich now. New Order then.. I arrived in Toronto in August of 1990 and stood here. Explored, over the next couple of months the vintage clothing stores just a block or two west, bought an old army tunic that smelled of stale Edwardian soldier sweat. (Vodka takes care of that, I have since learned). Combed through the shelves at Active Surplus, spent a minute or two with a book at Bakka, bought garnet jewellery at one of the patchouli-scented boutiques further towards Spadina.  I was 23 years old, a grad student, and had my artistic sensibilities and geeky style sense to feed.

And then I boarded the 501 streetcar, and went west to Parkdale, seedy Parkdale, to find the nirvana of fabric.  Joining the SCA, I had been told about this “Orange Bag Store.” Designer Fabric Outlet.  I had never seen such a place.  I knew almost nothing about fabric when I first passed through its double doors, other than what I liked, and what I liked on that day was black-shot green taffeta and some geometric trim, diamond patterned, in bright mosaic colours.  This, I thought, would make for good clothing for an Ostrogoth. I was wholly devoted to the Ostrogoths in those days, a Theoderic the Great fangirl, and joining the SCA was satisfying my desire to think of myself as one from time to time, to fill in the scant knowledge presented in chronicles and letters with ideas of what life must have been like for people living at that time.

Soon, though, I surmised that green synthetic taffeta wasn’t it. The clothing I made from that fabric was never worn, but instead entered legend (at least in my own mind) as the Ostrogothic prom dress. My second trip to the wondrous store resulted in purple rayon and marvelous wide trim, which I fashioned into what was meant to be 11th century Venetian clothing. If one disregarded the hooks and eyes up the back (after all, they didn’t have zippers—I was learning fast!) it would wasn’t half bad. It sits in my closet to this day.

There were many more trips over the years. Marvelous bullion trim formed the decorative piece for a Rus’ povonik. There were Bayeaux tapestry-style tapestry pieces, and gleaming silks and soft cashmere woolens of many colours. There were the bolts of $2.99 cotton that went into rapier loaner armour that was used for many years. There were Laurel wreath appliqués, and the inheritance fabric—$60 a yard red and gold brocaded silk, affordable to a grad student only because of a bequest from my husband’s aunt—another piece that still hangs in my closet and is worn from time to time. The store changed little, other than to expand slightly. Upholstery fabrics and trims on the main floor, fashion fabrics upstairs.

But the surrounding city changed. In my first decade in Toronto I barely noticed. It was still all newish to me. I don’t remember when the BCE Place was finished. I don’t remember when the Woolworth’s was torn down, although I do remember the parking lot that replaced it and the architectural hot mess that was built later. Then I moved away for a few years, and when I returned, fired by a burgeoning interest in architecture, I started to see the subtle alterations in the fabric of the city. The Bishop's Block, the oldest building in the city--once a hotel, now dirty, neglected, unloved--was subsumed into the facade of the Shangi-La, a five-star hotel. Queen West—at least the strip between Bay and Spadina—began to be populated not by quirky, funky, artsy stores, but by chains with pretensions of fashionable hipness. Sometime in the 2000s, someone built the first condo in the downtown core, and soon they began to spread like toadstools after a spring rain.  Neighbourhoods once populated by students living in decrepit, subdivided Victorians began to attract wealthier sorts, who would buy one of these old homes, shoo out the artisans and aging immigrants, and make them into showcases. The architecture maven in me rejoiced at the rebirth, but the human in me knew the cost to the neighbourhoods.

On the 501 streetcar, now the entire length of Queen, all the way out to Dufferin, became to be populated with the quirky shops that once lived east of Spadina. The marginal—the street kids, the punks, the junkies—suddenly gone. Probably not suddenly, but when I had returned, I lived not in the core of Toronto, but in the suburbs, and I no longer rode the 501 streetcar with any regularity. Life continued without my gaze. Increasingly, I bought my fabric elsewhere—online, at other stores closer to the core—easier to reach from my downtown office—or at the local Fabricland. I was changing, too, no longer the grad student with dreams of life as a professor at some small college, surrounded by eager students, immersed in history. History, my vocation, my calling, was no longer my profession, but I kept it in my life, my passion. Even that began to change, as my love of architecture first, then all things Art Deco led me into the 20th century, where I met up with my first historical love from over 40 years past—the Second World War. 

But still, when it was needed, the Orange Bag Store still retained its magic. Nowhere else could you get silk in any colour you liked--dozens just in shades of gold. Bolts of silk twill, with its liquid drape in deep shades of red and blue and black; and more recently, fine white linen at $9.99 and $10.99 a yard beckoned, attracting me repeatedly. Around the store, the boundary of hipness began to spread into Parkdale, yet the margins still held. You could still see the downtrodden, the strange-eyed men yelling at traffic, the litter of syringes in back alleys, but increasingly, the renovators in their BMWs gave them the nervous side-eye, not acknowledging that they themselves were, in actuality, the ones who were out of place. 

I have stood at this intersection for 28 years now, waiting for the 501 streetcar, and today I ride it to pay my final respects.  After 65 years, Designer Fabric Outlet will soon close, and the entire store is on sale. Soon, the stories of the pilgrimages to the legendary Orange Bag Store will pass into memory, and then fade. Something else will rise in its place in Parkdale, and the not-so-young will pass it and remember, and the young will not understand. Today, I will seek out the bolts of fabric by the door, in search of bargain linen.  I will once again climb the stairs to the second floor, run my hand over the silks in rainbow colours, rub wools between finger and thumb, marvel at the textile treasures in the locked cases.  I will wander through the trim department, remembering the geometric, mosaic-like trim found there almost 28 years ago and the other finds over the years since—have I truly been coming here well more than half my life?  I will buy wool crepe for a 1920s cocoon coat, the yardage and the cost pinned to the fabric as it always has been, and talk with the store’s owner on whether there might be more of the linen in the back. But what I am here for is not fabric, or trim, or buttons, or thread. It is to remember, to pay tribute to what, for a handful of remaining days, is still the shrine of pilgrimage I remember, the enabler of dreams realized, a sparkling ornament in the fabric of the Toronto I came to nearly three decades ago.

I stand at this intersection again, at 5:15 pm, a heavy orange bag in my right hand, a familiar feeling. The second movement of the Shostakovich 2nd piano concerto is in my ears—simple, expressive, notes cascading, glittering like so many jewels upon silk. Across from me, the water, cool in its shallow pool, catches the light, a shimmering aquamarine sheet, and I remember. And then I cross the street, turn north, and the moment passes.

Full Fathom Five

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell

Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.

— William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Sc. II

We have been planning a trip to Tobermory since...well, probably for at least 20 years.  In the 90s, when both of my husband's parents were still alive and relatively fit to travel, we talked about the four of us visiting. Dave had been once, around 1980, remembered the glass-bottomed boat tour to view some of the shipwrecks that dot the area. His parents had been avid rockhounds when he was a child, and the limestone and dolostone rocks of the Niagara Escarpment with their abundant fossils were a natural draw. 

But we had never made it, until this past weekend. 

Like many of our friends, we have been recently much more interested in our own country's abundant attractions, and in spending our vacation dollars in Canada. This year we decided against a long vacation, instead looking to do a few weekend trips. Tobermory was at the top of the list. 

We live not far from the cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment and the Bruce Trail, which we walk regularly during the warmer seasons (and even sometimes in the winter).  The Escarpment itself is over 400 million years old and reaches all the way from New York, up through Ontario, across Manitoulin Island, into Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and down into Wisconsin. When the sediment for these rocks was formed, the area was a shallow tropical sea, not unlike the Great Barrier Reef. As the sea dried, the sediments became concentrated, and limestone absorbed magnesium, turning into dolomitic limestone, or dolostone, which is harder than limestone.  Once the rocks were exposed many millions of years later, erosion began, eating away the limestone and leaving the dolostone, creating cliffs and waterfalls and caves. Along the Bruce Peninsula, these rocks form spectacular cliffs along the edge of Georgian Bay.  The entire Escarpment in Ontario is a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve.

The weather forecast leading up to the weekend was gloomy, but other than a little bit of spit on Saturday, the showers kept well south of us during the hours we were out exploring, both Saturday and Sunday.  Our motel was a small, but fairly new and very nice Mom and Pop place (no chains in Tobermory) called the Escarpment Inn, which put us in walking distance of just about everything, from the boat launch to the small downtown area to the National Park visitors' centre. This was a good thing, as I realized late on Friday night after arriving that I had not brought a brush or comb, so after combing my hair with a fork that night, I was able to walk over to the supermarket and acquire means to un-muss my hair.

Tobermory does a decent job of not being overwhelmed by tacky touristy shops.  There are probably about a dozen shops clustered around Little Tub Harbour, including two very nice gallery-type places (one selling Brenda Roy's jewellery--I recognized the style immediately).  My one complaint is that there is a sameness to the restaurants--fish and chips and pub food, for the most part.  One of the two glass bottom boat companies runs out of this harbour, which is immediately adjacent to the ferry station.  We got to see the huge Chi-Cheemaun ferry boat arrive at one point;  it's absolutely massive.

The quote from Shakespeare above is the inspiration for the name of Fathom Five National Marine Park, which was the focus of our first day's excursion.  As I mentioned earlier, the Niagara escarpment goes all the way from New York State to Wisconsin.  At the tip of the Bruce Peninsula it disappears...underwater!   If you look at this map, you can clearly see the tightly bunched contour lines indicating a steep dropoff along the eastern side of the Bruce Peninsula and how they continue out along past Middle Island and Flowerpot Island. 

So the escarpment continues along underneath Georgian Bay and Lake Huron, islands jutting up here and there until cliffs once again rise up on the southwest side of Manitoulin. And that dropoff means that this area of Georgian Bay is deep - as deep as 540 feet, much more than five fathoms (which is 30 feet)!  Once, when the sea levels were lower, these rocks were exposed. Scientists have even uncovered evidence that there was a waterfall bigger than Niagara Falls that is now completely submerged.

There are quite a few shipwrecks in the area.  Two are at the very end of Big Tub Harbour, which means that they can be easily seen in the shallow water.  This was the first order of business when we boarded the Evolution on Saturday morning.  The glass bottomed boats pass right over the more intact of the two shipwrecks, the Sweepstakes, which is in about 20 feet of water.  This was a schooner built in Burlington, ON in 1867 which initially was wrecked near Big Cove Island in August 1885 and then was towed into Big Tub Harbour, where it sank in September of the same year.  The other ship, the City of Grand Rapids, is in water that ranges from three to nine fee deep; parts even occasionally project above the water.  This was a steamship that caught fire while docked;  it was towed out into the harbour and sank in 1907.   I had noticed before boarding how clear the water was.  This was especially apparent when the tour boat passed over the Sweepstakes.  Even the motion of the boat did not stir up silt in the water. 

Once we had viewed the wrecks, the tour boat left Big Tub Harbour and picked up speed to reach Flowerpot Island, before slowing to pass all the way around, allowing beautiful views of the lightstation and the two "flowerpots." Flowerpots are formed at the side of cliffs where softer limestone has eroded away, leaving pipes or sea stacks of the harder dolostone. 

We were dropped off at Beachy Cove so that we could hike out to see the flowerpots up close.  The forest along the shore is redolent of cedar and dotted with caves also formed from the same erosion process that forms the flowerpots. Where rocks were exposed, it was easy to see the shapes of their ancient origins as coral reefs. After viewing the flowerpots, we then hiked out to the lightstation and the lighthouse museum before returning to the dock for our trip back.  

One thing that stood out for me during this part of the trip was how well Parks Canada was managing a very sensitive, easily-overwhelmed ecosystem.  Visitors are very much limited in number and ability to access the park--and they seem to mostly respect what they have been given access to. I saw very little evidence of graffiti or other destructive practices (although I did notice one person smoking--and receiving dirty looks from multiple others--she didn't dare leave a butt behind!)

This was also very much apparent in our visit to Bruce Peninsula National Park. We had decided Saturday evening might be a nice time to hike out to see the Grotto, a sea cave along the rocky eastern cliffs.  Apparently, the Grotto is so popular that on weekends, you need to reserve a parking spot to see it, and Saturday evening they were sold out. However, it was a simple process to request a spot for Sunday morning, which we did. The hike out through the forest of cedars flanking lakes was relatively peaceful, on a wide, well-maintained path, and we even saw some of the park's famous orchids. Upon reaching the shores, the wide path disappeared and was replaced by rocks that required serious clambering skills.  And there were a lot of people there clambering. Or, in some cases, hogging the photo spots. A melange of different languages was in the air, and ages ranged from the barely mobile to the...well, barely mobile.   

But the stretch of coastline was spectacular, featuring towering cliffs and tumbled rocks everywhere, and the same crystalline, sparkling water we had seen earlier.  This is actually part of the Bruce Trail, and you could see the trademark white flashes marked on trees and rocks. The Grotto itself was as amazing as promised, although we didn't descend into it (a crowd of very loud teen girls was lingering there, and Dave had the wrong shoes, anyway).  Just a little north up the trail, however, the crowds thinned out and one could climb to the top of one of the taller cliff faces and see a beautiful view largely free of giggling teenagers or pushy middle-aged ladies in bucket caps.  There is a good stretch of the Bruce Trail that passes over this difficult rocky shoreline--so very different than the gentle trails close to my house.  I was glad it was not raining.

After we returned on Saturday, we paid a visit to the Fathom Five National Park Visitors' Centre, and ascended the viewing tower that rises 65 feet from the ground, past the tops of the trees.  Here you could truly see the outlines of the escarpment, as it ran up to Tobermory and then disappeared under water, the islands its only evidence.  You can also see the first white flash along the Bruce Trail, and view a very interesting museum including part of a recovered shipwreck and other artifacts from the area.  After seeing the two national parts on this particular trip, along with those we saw last year in Nova Scotia, I have a heightened respect for Parks Canada. We had been impressed by the US National Park system (and still are), but Canada can easily stand on its own for the strength of its national park system.

A few photos can be found on my Facebook page. 

Coda: On the way home, we were musing about the history of the Bruce Trail.  The group that built the trail was formed in 1960, construction started in 1962, and the trail officially opened in 1967. In five years, 850 km of main trail and about 400 km of side trails were constructed--all by volunteers working in local communities. About half of the trail is on public land.  The Bruce Trail Conservancy has been slowly working at acquiring those portions that are still in private hands.  The creation of the Bruce Trail - and its effect on conserving the Niagara Escarpment--led directly to the UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve designation in 1990.  Never doubt what can be accomplished by dedicated volunteers when inspired by a worthy goal.

Longhair

“I really don’t like most of that longhair music.  But I like that one.”

I was in the 8th grade or so when I got my first proper stereo.  Finally, I could move off of the tiny, tinny record player where I had first begun to nurture my love of music, checking out albums from the library before I decided whether to buy them.  And in those junior high days, what I checked out was almost exclusively classical music, growing out of the violin lessons I had been taking since the 4^th grade.

Mom didn’t quite get that kind of music.  The kind of records we owned were, apart from the Glenn Miller (which I always enjoyed), about as bland as Wonder Bread and as cheezy as Velveeta. Mom really liked Boots Randolph, of “Yakety Sax” fame (yes, that music from Benny Hill). The radio was usually tuned to one of Columbus’ “Beautiful Music” stations, a format that played what was essentially Muzak—“quiet, unobtrusive instrumental music.” 

I had no family background in classical music at all, something that in retrospect I really wish we had had. My parents tried their best, but they really did not have ties into the community that could have gotten me started early on private music lessons.  We didn’t go to concerts (of any kind).  My appreciation for classical music, like my appreciation for most of my other obsessions, was sparked first at school where I started my violin studies and through ballet lessons, and then became the focus of intense independent study. The first violin I owned (rather than rented) was a scratched-up ¾ size instrument that was found in a garage sale. When it came time to upgrade to a full-sized violin, we didn’t even go to the violin shop that all of the other kids went to—we went to a little, dusty hole in the wall owned by an elderly gentleman who had once, perhaps, been considered an expert.  But my parents did encourage me. We joined WOSU, the local classical music public radio station, mainly so I could get the schedule of what was going to be played when, and I would often wrench control of the downstairs radio away from the “Beautiful Music” station.  My mom put up with it, although if it was opera or anything from after about 1850, we’d find ourselves back listening to Mantovani.

When I got my stereo—actually, my parents’ old console stereo, tuner and record player (and 8 track tape player) all in one unit—I quickly developed a tendency to play my music loudly (a tendency I retain to this day, although I usually use headphones now).  I’d shut the door to my room, crank up the Beethoven or Mozart (or if I were feeling really radical, the Berlioz), and sometimes even dance around the room to it.   

My parents rarely commented.  Even later in my teens, when I began to intersperse the classical music with Rush or just listening to Q-FM (the local album-oriented rock station), they rarely took notice, despite the volume at which I played things.  Except for one particular piece.

One afternoon, I was up in my bedroom reading.  I’d put on the Beethoven 5^th piano concerto—the “Emperor.”  Part of the way through the second movement, I opened my bedroom door for some reason long forgotten—and realized my mom, in her room across the hall, was listening, intently.

She asked me what it was, and I told her.  I went back in my room but kept the door open so she could hear the rest.   At the end, she said the words at the top of this page.

It was that vespertine, serene second movement that had reeled her in.  The second movement of the “Emperor”, for those of you who have not been initiated into its mysteries, is a shimmering, evocative thing, one that has cast a long shadow of quiet perfection over just about every subsequent piano concerto’s slow movement.  It follows a first movement that is classic Beethoven “heroic period” in its maturity (the concerto falls between the Sixth and Seventh symphonies on the Beethoven timeline) and leads into one of the most joyful finales within any of Beethoven’s works.  It is in a completely different (and distant) key (B major—five sharps) than the first movement (which is in E flat major—three flats)   I call it “vespertine” not only because I love that word and have always wanted to use it, but also because the second movement to me evokes images of moonlight sparkling on water as the sky darkens through shades of pink and purple, of the calm and solitude of a pine forest at twilight.  It starts out with the muted orchestra suggesting the landscape, and then the piano enters with descending notes that lead into a simple melodic line in the middle-high registers of the keyboard, suggesting perhaps a lone figure in this beautiful setting, quiet, contemplative but filled with joy. At a certain point, it is as if that figure has decided to stand up, to walk towards some goal that only he or she can see in the distance, with wind instruments accompanying like trees being passed in the forest.  And at a certain point, a clearing is reached, and tentatively, the lone figure reaches out, as if to say….”I think this is how it should go?  Maybe like this?”  And then it IS how things should go, and we are into the jubilant third movement, in dancelike 6/8 time.

Beethoven likely originally intended to perform the work himself, but the deafness he had been struggling with for years prevented this.  As the liner notes for my CD of the work say, “the power of the work is formidable and the range of emotions encompassed the widest of any Beethoven concerto. This was the work that inspired the romantic virtuoso concerto of the nineteenth century because of the way the soloist is set up in opposition to the orchestra, rather than being a partner in a complementary relationship.”  Importance aside, it is by far my favourite piano concerto, not least because it was one of the few classical pieces I felt like my mom really loved as well.

In the last decade of my mom’s life, when I was living far from her in Canada, she asked me about "that music" (she never did really learn what it was called), and I gave her a CD so she could enjoy it herself.  That was one of only a handful of times I bought her music.  By that time, I think she already sensed her memory was not what it should be, and she was grasping to retain a connection to things which brought her pleasure.  I know she associated the piece with me, and I hope that when she played it, it awakened good memories of her geeky young classical music-loving daughter and how she liked to blast Beethoven in the same way most teens blasted heavy metal or Madonna.   

I put so much of my classical music past aside over the past couple of decades, occasionally returning to a Beethoven symphony, Handel’s Messiah (and attending the singalong), or the Berlioz Requiem. Last month, seeing a performance of the Shostakovich 5^th symphony, I remembered, and when I saw a chance to see the Emperor performed by soloist Yefim Bronfman and the TSO, I jumped.  Tonight, I look forward to finding myself in that forest by the side of the water at twilight, the stars twinkling in the sky reminding me of my mom and what we shared.

Chastising the Third Reich: The Dambusters Raid

Today is the 75^th anniversary of the Dambusters raid, where a squadron of 19 Lancasters flew a dangerous and daring mission to destroy hydroelectric dams in the Ruhr Valley.  They successfully breached one of the main targets, the Möhne dam, as well as a secondary target, the Eder dam. They also damaged (but did not breach) the Sorpe dam.  Operation Chastise, as it was known, was deemed a success—although the damage only disrupted German industry in the Ruhr for a few months until the dams were repaired, the morale boost to England from what the raid was able to accomplish was significant.

The raid happened in the pivotal year of 1943.  Going into that year, Allied victory was by no means assured, although there were certainly promising signs in Europe. Germany ended 1942 encircled and starving at Stalingrad; within a little over a month they would be defeated in a battle that in the final accounting resulted in nearly 2 million casualties, 1.1 million of them on the Soviet side.  Henceforth, the Axis in Europe would slowly be pushed back.   In May of that year, just a few days before the Dambusters raid, the Allies achieved victory in North Africa. Italy was pushed out of the war by the end of the year.

Some of the most horrific events of the war took place in 1943.  This was the year of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  Today is also the 75^th anniversary of its tragic end, in which the ghetto was utterly destroyed and all its inhabitants either killed or sent to the camps.

So the morale victory of the raid came at a key point in the war.  However, the casualties from the raid were high—8 of the 19 Lancasters were lost, with 53 of 130 crew killed and 3 taken prisoner—which may account for why a followup raid was not attempted.

To me, what stands out about the raid is how quickly the technology was developed and tested. The initial paper proposing a “bouncing bomb” was published by civilian Wallis Barnes in April, 1942.  The idea was to skip the bomb over the water, much as one skips a stone, to avoid torpedo nets and other barriers.  When the bomb hit the dam structure, it would sink and then explode, much like a depth charge.  By July of that year, it was successfully proven that a dam could be breached with a depth charge, when a disused dam in Wales was successfully destroyed as a test. This left significant details to be worked out, such as the shape of the bomb, its size, its shape, and how it would be delivered.  

By November 1942, it was decided to develop a larger and smaller version of the bomb for various purposes. A cylindrical shape was selected rather than the initial round shape.  Another addition made was backspin, which helped the bomb to bounce and stabilized its flight.  Finally, the weight and physical size of the bomb was dictated by the size of the Lancaster bomber itself, the largest bomber then available. 

The planners realized that there was a tight timeline to adhere to.  The raid could take place no later than about mid-May, as the dam reservoirs were at their peak after winter meltoff at that point and the destruction of the dam would result in the biggest impact. Testing of unfilled versions of the Upkeep bomb began in December and lasted through April; engineers continued to tweak the design and to work to determine how it would be dropped. They finally determined that the Lancaster had to be precisely 60 feet above the water and at a speed of 232 mph.  To do this, a pair of spotlights were mounted on the Lancaster, and the point at which the two beams converged marked 60 feet. 

Both the backspin and the size and shape of the bomb would also dictate changes on the Lancasters.  The bomb bay doors had to be removed and a bracket installed to hold the massive bomb sideways underneath the plane. The upper gun turret was removed so that the hydraulic system could be used to drive a belt to start the bomb spinning about ten minutes before it was due to be dropped. 

The main other issue was aiming.  A handmade y-shaped device that allowed the bomb aimer to line up the prongs with the towers of the dam was the “official” solution, but other solutions involving marks on windows and string would also be used.

The Lancasters themselves were supplied in March, and the squadron assembled under Guy Gibson in the same month to begin practicing. Gibson, who would win the Victoria Cross for his actions after his bombing run to distract flak away from the planes following him, was at 24 was a veteran of over 170 bombing runs, a stat that nearly boggles the mind today—we often forget how young soldiers were during WWII.  They had about six weeks to train, without a clear indication of what their precise mission would be, using untried technology. To reach Germany, the squadron had to fly as low as possible (so low that more than one plane was lost to electrical wires and towers) before their bombing runs.

It’s pretty astounding what was accomplished.

Of course, it’s me, so there have to be ruins.  Here is a link to a photo of the Möhne dam after the bombing:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise#/media/File:Mohne_Dam_Breached.jpg Here is a similar photo of the Eder dam:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edersee_Dam#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-C0212-0043-012,_Edertalsperre,_Zerst%C3%B6rung.jpg

I was of course curious as to whether there were any lasting traces to be seen at the dams, where emergency repairs were completed by September of 1943.   For the most part, if the photos are to be trusted, the answer is no.   I did find a really interesting article from the Guardian about 15 years ago describing a visit to the dams as they are today. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2003/may/06/artsfeatures

Finally, as some may know, the 1955 film Dambusters was a huge influence on the original Star Wars movie’s climactic Death Star destruction sequence, from the special effects photography and cinematography (Gilbert Taylor performed the former for Dambusters and the latter for A New Hope).   Here’s an article and a video to check out:   https://www.starwars.com/news/the-cinema-behind-star-wars-the-dam-busters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNdb03Hw18M

****

--As I am finishing up and posting this article, I’m following the Telegraph’s real-time account of the raid.  The last update was at 11 pm local time, when the first planes were lost.  

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/16/dambusters-raid-famous-world-war-two-attack-unfolded/

The First Saturday in May

In the early days of May, a young girl's thoughts turn to thoughts of horses.  In my own case, these were no dreams of prancing pretty ponies, but thoroughbreds, thundering down the homestretch at Churchill Downs. 

Only two of my grandparents lived into my own lifetime, and one of them died when I was only four or five, so to me, Granny--my mother's mother--was special.  I only had her in my life until I was 11 years old.  I remember her for two things:  The first was passing on to me her love for crafts, as she taught me how to embroider and crochet. The second was an annual ritual. We'd gather at her trailer the first Saturday in May and watch the Kentucky Derby with her. It was in 1977 that I particularly started to pay attention--the year Seattle Slew won.  I began to learn about the Triple Crown races as Seattle Slew went on to win the Preakness and the Belmont, becoming the second Triple Crown winner of the decade.  The first had, of course, been the great Secretariat, who I had the vaguest of memories of from when he had won the Derby.

The next year, 1978, was special.  That year, two horses, Affirmed and Alydar, battled in all three Triple Crown races.  Alydar had been the favourite going into each series, but Affirmed had won the Derby.  I was definitely Team Affirmed.  He was a beautiful chestnut horse, less obviously powerful than Alydar, and was ridden by the young superstar jockey Steve Cauthen.  It was perhaps the single time I routed for anything involving the colour pink, the colour of the racing silks of Harbor View Farm.

But I did not watch the Derby at Granny's trailer. We had lost her on April 5, just about a month before, after a visit to the hospital for gallbladder surgery had turned into something more.  I don't really remember quite what it was--some sort of fistula.  I only vaguely remember the funeral. It didn't quite seem real. I'm not sure whether that played into an obsession that would last two years in its most intense phase, but looking back, I am sure it did.

Affirmed and Alydar continued their legendary battle in the Preakness and the Belmont. In the Preakness, Affirmed beat Alydar by a neck.  In the Belmont, the grueling mile and a half race that had broken all but the best Triple Crown contenders, Affirmed and Alydar raced neck and neck for half the race, with their final mile the fastest in Belmont history.  I could barely stand to watch, but I was glued to the TV as they battled down the home stretch.  Alydar at one point nosed ahead, but Cauthen switched his whip hand and Affirmed surged back, winning the race by a nose. 

There would not be another Triple Crown winner until 2015.

I carried a good luck charm of a photo of Affirmed from Sports Illustrated mounted on a square of wood for years afterward.  It's here in front of me on the desk as I type this.  I had a stuffed horse that looked like him.  He was my celebrity crush, and I eagerly followed the rest of his racing career. I plastered the walls and doors of my bedroom with covers and stories from Sports Illustrated about his races.  But he was joined by the great Secretariat, after reading William Nack's book Big Red of Meadow Stable: Secretariat, the Making of a Champion.  Many girls go through a horsey phase, but mine was, I think, odd--because I identified so strongly with the horses, to the point of thinking of myself as one.  It was probably no great coincidence that the year of my greatest obsession was in the seventh grade, where I had extensive problems with relating to actual people.  I was certainly a weird kid;  this was not the age of My Little Pony, where cartoon horses are clearly meant to stand in for girls. 

The following year summer, my family vacationed in Kentucky.  We visited Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Horse Park. And somehow--I am still not sure how he did this--my Dad arranged a visit to Calumet Farms, where Secretariat was standing at stud. He was--and still is--the biggest celebrity I ever met, and I got to see him have a shoe changed and to feed him a carrot.  Other greats of racing--particularly the storied Northern Dancer--were also at the farm.  My dad could schmooze anyone, but I am still astounded that he just managed to phone them up and arrange a visit.

Even as my obsession gradually subsided, I still watched the Derby every year, and each time a horse also won the Preakness, I followed eagerly to see if we would see another Triple Crown winner.  (This happened thirteen times until American Pharoah finally won in 2015.)  Yesterday, far away from a TV, I watched my iPhone and refreshed it for updates until I saw that Justified--the horse I had picked--had won the race.  (I only found out later that he wore a red saddle cloth and a star on his jockey's racing silks).  It's a hard habit to break, and I have no intention of doing so.

But horse racing itself is a vastly different landscape than it was during the '70s.  Pimlico the track where the Preakness is held, has been barely able to stay open.  Horses and jockeys are no longer celebrities in the United States to the extent they once were--so much of the serious money has gone abroad to the Arab world, where horse racing is still the sport of kings.  In recent years, movies about Seabiscuit and Secretariat have captured a little of the flavour of that earlier era, where racetracks were one of the few places where ordinary people could legally gamble. These days, casinos are everywhere, and tracks often have to add slots or gaming tables to remain afloat.  And the issues with horse racing that have always been present in its lower ranks, of horses being mistreated, or sold to slaughterhouses when they fail to perform, have not gotten any better.

But I still cannot resist the lure of Derby Day, of seeing such delicate power, such strong beauty, in motion, coming around that final turn.  There is nothing quite like it, and the memories it arouses are strong for me, as I picture myself sprawled in front of that black-and-white TV at my grandmother's place.  And each year, on this day, the day after the Derby, I revel in the possibilities ahead--another Triple Crown, perhaps?  

We shall see.   

The Paradox of May 4

May the 4th be with you!

It is, but in a different way than I suspect it is for most people my age.  I was ten years old when Star Wars was released, and it was, without a doubt, the iconic movie of my childhood. I had the action figures, played "Death Star" behind the couch, wore a Star Wars t-shirt in my fifth grade class photo.  But the whole "May the 4th" thing is fairly recent, and the date still means something very different to me.

It was around the same time, maybe a little earlier, that I learned that the words "Kent State" were a bad thing.  Always attuned to current events, I remember reading about a controversy, reported in the Columbus Dispatch, about building a new gym at the college on land scarred by gunfire less than a decade before. Photos were produced of trees and sculptures still pockmarked from being hit, and a story told of students cut down in a riot.  And in my household, it was definitely a riot, with thousands of students said to be involved, and Gov. Rhodes definitely in the right for calling out the National Guard to stop it.  The Democrat John Gilligan, who was elected in the fall of 1970 (after Rhodes did not run after a failed bid to win the Republican nomination for US Senate) was reviled in no uncertain words, and it was only right that Rhodes had returned to his erstwhile throne, where he would serve two more terms.

Those hippies and longhairs had deserved it. They had rioted, and the Guardsmen had defended themselves, from bricks and bags of sh*t and maybe even a sniper.  Certainly, it was an incident marked with deep shame for Kent State, which clearly wanted to erase all memory of the event.

In Ohio, when you said "Kent State", you were met with a knowing look that said "that's something we don't talk about here."

By the time I was in my teens, the tumultuous times of the 60s were history.  Looking around, I saw preppies and then, later, the Dynasty look, with its huge shoulder pads and big hair.  I didn't seen hippies or Communists or Black Panthers--I saw what were beginning to be called yuppies.  Reagan was President, and students didn't demonstrate anymore, at least not in white suburbs like mine. We might join hands and sing "We are the world," and the more progressive among us might write letters for Amnesty International about political prisoners in faraway countries.  We worried about the Soviets nuking us. Really worried about that--I remember viewing a TV movie, "The Day After", which was about the aftermath of a nuclear attack.  I even took a course at Ohio State on nuclear ethics--discussing the principles of Mutual Assured Destruction.  Vietnam was over, but just beginning to be scrutinized in movies such as "Platoon."  Rambo--the angry or scarred Vietnam veteran who was now spoiling for revenge--was now iconic, and the Vietnam war memorial in Washington was new--a deep gash in the earth filled with black granite. The scars had not really healed, as much as we tried to think they had.  It had really only been a decade or less since the fall of Saigon, but it felt to me like ancient history--like WWII, or Korea, or the other wars I couldn't really remember.

I read James Michener's book, Kent State: What Happened and Why, during this period.  I had picked it up in a church garage sale, wanting to know more about this event I knew about mostly from the secretive murmurs and the CSN&Y song.  Like that song, the book was written in the immediate aftermath of the shootings and released in early 1971.  It was later criticized for its willingness to buy into theories of conspiracies by radical activists to provoke the violence, but in retrospect, for its day, it was remarkably even-handed and detailed.  It's also an interesting snapshot of the world as it was in 1970, in the waning days of the massive upheavals that had marked the 60s, before, as Howard Means, author of a more recent work on the shootings, 67 Shots, America lost her innocence and learned that guns might contain live rounds. (White America, Means is clear to state.  Black Americans already knew their government might shoot them, and apparently avoided the demonstrations at Kent State "like the plague.")

Forty-eight years on, what I was struck most by, in re-reading these books and some of the other articles available on the shootings, was two things.  First, the polarization:  The United States was a deeply divided nation in 1970--over Vietnam, civil rights, and its role in the world.  For someone who came of age after this period, our more recent polarization can feel like a new thing.  It is not.  Other problems distracted US society for awhile--fuel shortages, hostages, Russians--but those wounds never healed, and the fundamental questions were never answered. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached, and too quickly the Watergate years were swept under the rug as an ugly aberration, with Nixon the boogeyman for what was clearly a deep culture of corruption.

The second observation is that the spread of disinformation in the wake of these kinds of events is often cast as a new thing, with every conspiracy theory getting its own blog on the Internet, victims being blamed, and trolls and bots looking to sow dissension.  It is not.  The rumours that spread in the wake of Kent State were lacking only the rapid means of distribution we have now.   With a state of emergency declared,  Kent had been more or less occupied during the crisis by over 1500 Guardsmen, most of whom were not on campus, but in the surrounding town. Gov. Rhodes never declared martial law, but there seems to have been a widespread assumption that he had.  The town already had a contentious relationship with the university, and suddenly having such a large force occupying such a small town convinced many that the situation on campus was far worse than it was.

   As a result, the students were vilified with a large brush.  "They should have shot more," was a common reaction.  Kent was actually a fairly conservative  rural commuter school, and it's thought that fewer than 100 students were part of the core group involved in the demonstration that led to the shooting. There were probably 2000-3000 students in the area, but many were bystanders and others seem to have gotten swept up in the demonstration as "something fun to do."  None have ever been shown to have been armed. No one was expecting to be shot-- tear gas and maybe blanks, yes, but there was a widespread belief that the guns the National Guardsmen carried were not loaded.

Of the dead, two of the students killed had been involved in the demonstration, one had been an observer, and one was killed from 130 yards away as she walked to class.  All four were equally vilified.  Stories circulated that the victims were unwashed and riddled with venereal diseases, and the grief-stricken families received hate mail accusing their children of being Communists and stating that it was a good thing that they had been killed.  At the same time, in an accusation that will sound very familiar,  "outside agitators" who were said to have been "bused in" were claimed to have provoked the confrontation.

This reaction was by no means confined to the rumour mill.  One of the earliest stories on the shooting claimed that two Guardsmen had been killed in "a violent campus battle" involving 3000 students. Local radio had inflamed the situation during the crisis and was no better in the days following.  There was little compassion to be seen in the aftermath of the tragedy as students tried to evacuate their shattered college--townspeople refused to serve them or sell them gasoline (in the belief it might be used to make a bomb).  Initial reports, as we know, are key to defining beliefs about news narratives, and can override more nuanced accounts that appear later.  My own parents believed that Kent State had been a massive, violent armed riot.

And the lack of action to hold anyone accountable in the wake of the shootings will also sound familiar. The Scranton Commission, called to investigate the shootings, did not assign guilt or innocence, but condemned both protesters and the Guard. Twenty-four students and one faculty member were rounded up after the shootings and charged with a variety of offenses, but charges were dropped against most with four being convicted of minor offenses, primarily on technicalities. Eight Guardsmen were indicted on civil rights charges for their role, but claimed self-defense and the case was dropped  A civil suit brought by the families of the victims was eventually settled out of court.  but As Means states, "When it comes to official culpability for the shootings themselves, not a single person involved has ever been convicted of so much as a misdemeanor or even tried solely on the merits of the case as opposed to its technicalities. The dead, their survivors, the wounded, the shooters, their commanding officers, a host of peripheral players--they all hover still in a kind of legal limbo.  That's what makes Kent State so hard to let go."

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

 -----Neil Young, 1970

An Essay in 5 Movements: 3, 4, and 5 (played without interruption)

3. Allegro non troppo.

When I was a young girl, I began swimming lessons. I was not good, as much as I tried to convince myself that I was.  I did not pass my first test to transition out of “polliwog” status to “guppy”, but for weeks afterwards, I was convinced they would send me my patch in the mail. I loved the water. I just didn’t quite understand it.  I learned to respect it the following summer, when I nearly drowned. 

Suddenly, not long after, I figured it out.  I went from being frightened to put my face in the water to looking forward every week to the feeling of being beneath the water, pulling myself down with deep strokes. I progressed.  Within a couple of years I was spending all my time exploring the bottom of the 7’ section at the local pool, swimming down to sweep along the black lane markers.  I bought goggles to see better underwater. I learned to dive, and moved over to the dive pool, where the depth was 12’, and soon, I was challenging myself to go all the way down, submerging deep, deep, to touch the bottom, and to look up at the light far above my head. I wanted to be part of the water, one with it.  My friends wanted to lay out on the deck and work on their suntans while they flirted with boys.  I wanted to be in the water the entire time, every day. It was my passion, my obsession, and it consumed me.

This is the way I am. When I light upon a topic that intrigues me, I will first cautiously approach, to understand, to look for the spark.  If that spark is there, and ignites, the flames burn hot and fast and then steady but fierce as I feed the fire. New books to read, leading to more. Images, or music, and then more and more, branching out to specifics, or deeper and deeper, because I can literally not stop until satiated, and so long as there is another book, or song, or image, I am not satiated.  It is on my mind somewhere in every waking moment.   It is ever the same.

My one saving grace is that while in the grip of a research obsession, I can put it aside to concentrate on other pressing matters.  This was a lesson learned in the depths of my doctoral thesis research.  I had come into graduate school filled with research passion, but passion does not always equate with discipline, and it did not for me. Faced with a difficult thesis advisor and discovering that my obsession with the Ostrogoths did not necessarily lead to good scholarship, I moved to another historical field, one where I rightly saw more opportunities.  I did much better scholarship in my new field.  At the same time, I indulged my flights of passion in topics that were related to my thesis field, but only distantly—and experienced what I now know was my first minor bout of depression.  My main research field was not leading to that total immersion and obsession that had powered me into graduate school in the first place.  I was enjoying the teaching I was doing, but it was if a fire had gone out on my research work.

Was this where I came to know my future?  I did not at the time. At a certain point, I looked at the work I had done and resolved to finish my thesis. And I did. 

Once I had completed it, we moved to Columbus, ostensibly to be closer to my bedridden mother, whose dementia meant she no longer recognized me. In all honesty, it was to take advantage of the safety net of living with my parents while I struggled with a sense of dissatisfaction about myself.  I had finished my doctorate, yes, but I did not feel worthy of the title.  The work I had done felt mechanical. If I were going to invest the rest of my life in a profession where I would be expected to produce and write, how could I even expect to get interviews when I lacked confidence in myself?

 I also felt a profound need for a “real job.”  I loathed being reliant on my parents, as I had been through my graduate studies.  I felt that switching away from the sciences to history had been disappointing to them, although they never said anything of that sort. 

And so, I abandoned academia.  Not immediately—but I didn’t even make it to the first AHA conference where I might have interviewed.  I was already in a “temp to hire” position at Bank One at that point, with managers vying to see who would “get” me.

And sometime around that point, I found a spark and followed it.  I read an article on the work of Camilo José Vergara, and bought his book American Ruins.  I found the Fabulous Ruins of Detroit website and spent hours upon hours wandering virtually through the abandoned mansions of Brush Park, the empty skyscraper hulks in what Vergara called the American Acropolis of ruins, touring crumbling hotels that now played host to birds, rats, and the occasional squatter.  And deeper and deeper I went. Photos of the Brush Park mansions began to adorn my cubicle at work.  I followed leads on the individual buildings, read everything I could, found other photos, and even, in the very early years of video content being available online, watched footage of the implosion of Hudson’s and the collapse of ‘Old Slumpy’.  I bought books on the buildings of Detroit.  And finally, I went to see for myself.

It's never stopped.  This is what I research now.   I keep diving down, and sometimes I come up with a new treasure from the depths, pointing me in another direction, something slightly different, but always, in some way, connected with ruins.  The Berlin Wall?  Now a ruin; I have my own piece of it. Mt. St. Helens?  What was “the most perfect cone in the Pacific Northwest” still stands, its side blown out by the 1980 eruption. The architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright?  The Darwin Martin House was abandoned in the 30s, left unlocked, the roof caving in from the snow, part of the house demolished once it was reclaimed.  The Westcott House?  Subdivided into apartments, a major retaining beam removed, it had started to slump dangerously before it was restored.  The Larkin Building?  Gone, a sad retaining wall all that’s left.   I’ve gone on to visit glorious buildings that were never ruins, being so affected by Fallingwater that I wear its mark on my body, but those that were ruined and revived are special to me. 

I can now count three times where I have been drowning, my self-confidence weakened, and each time, this obsession has revitalized me, changed me, taught me to invite the deluge, to find myself in the depths again.   But what I am discovering this time is deeper than that.

4. Largo

Been searching for all these years
From the highest heights to the deepest seas
But everything is out of reach
And it still hurts me to fail
I scream as loud as I can
So, can you give me a sign, if you hear me now?
I know it´s a foolish try, but it still hurts me to fail

Komm, komm, reiss mir doch einfach mein Herz heraus
Denn es schlägt so schwer
Tief, tief, tief unterm Eis suchst du auch wie ich
Doch du traust dich nicht
Komm, komm, reiss mir doch einfach mein Herz heraus
Denn es schlägt so schwer
Komm, komm, komm
Because it still hurts me to fail

(Kyau and Albert, Mein Herz)

But the hurt becomes the norm. the pain endures, the numbness sets in. My heart still beats, but it is buried deep.

Fear is irrational. Fear is utterly rational. It is both things at one time, a balance of heart and mind, just like all things. Confronted by the prospect of future harm or pain, do I back away or do I confront?

Fear of many things has shaped my life.  I would like to say I have triumphed over these fears. I have not. I have learned to live with them, become accustomed to their presence.

I may be numb, but it still hurts me to fail. And I fear it, more than I fear anything in this world. I fear failing to live up to my own ideals, my own dreams, what I believe I am capable of if I only had the courage to try.  I fear the confrontation.  I fear what others will think. I fear that others will find me wanting, and that that will shatter me. And sometimes, it paralyzes me. 

As a child, when confronted by bullies, and lacking the tools to deal with them, I learned to back away, to turn deep inside myself. I put up a wall.  There, I could be myself, the person I knew myself to be. I could imagine, create, dream without fear of scorn, or exclusion.  I learned that my real feelings, my passions, my obsessions were too weird for this world.  The walls were weak at first, and I was vulnerable to attack, but once they were stable, I carefully decorated them with those qualities, those skills from inside that I deemed suitable for the world. And I built walls within walls, so my heart and soul were protected even when I cautiously opened the gate, learned to trust a little.

 The outer walls fell into ruin, but the inner ones persist.

(Dammit, leave me to this.  I’ve been ready for this for a day now, and each time, each time….stop it.  I want to lock that door. I want to not be startled out of the music. I want to not let the flush of sudden discovery colour my face. I want to not feel ashamed for this. 

I am twitching again. Unbidden, my foot is bouncing. I don’t even notice it until I notice it. I let it go. Do people see this? )

I fear I will not be remembered.  No one will carry my name, for good or ill. The things I have surrounded myself with, the things that bring me a modicum of joy, or a memory, will be meaningless to others. And it hurts to know that I still care how others see me.

I have settled for good enough by telling myself I can never be good enough.

Sometimes when you dive, when you see the treasure waiting at the bottom of the deep, you know that it will take work, life, perhaps even blood, to bring it to the surface. You know it’s there. But if you try to pull it free, it may escape your grasp, slip through your hands, and you will know in that moment what you have lost.  But you’ve spotted another gem, less precious, at a shallower depth; you know you can attain, be acclaimed for doing so, so you reach, and it is yours.  And that brings you joy for awhile, but the sparkle dulls, and you can’t stop diving down to see the thing you left behind.

And this repeats itself again and again and again. 

And yet.

When I look up, and around, when I listen, when I see fear and grief and despair written clearly on the faces of friends, I look at my heart, and what I have learned by diving so deep.  I have protected my heart, but somehow, it still beats.  I still feel it. It is strong. Stronger, perhaps, than my fear. If I dare.

 And somehow, somewhere…
.

I feel a flutter, a glimmer of something.

Listen.

I am not nervous now. There is no shame.  The treasure I seek is in my hand already.

It is all there in the music of my voice, my words, what I do, what I put into my life…Others will attribute what they will. Let them.  

It resolves.

5. Allegretto.

This is what Brene Brown terms “the wilderness”—that place where you must dare to stand alone for what matters most for you.  She says “Belonging so fully to yourself that you’re willing to stand alone is a wilderness—an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching.  It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. The wilderness can often feel unholy because we can’t control it, or what people think about our choice of whether to venture into that vastness or not. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it’s the bravest and most sacred space you will ever stand.”

“True belonging is not passive. It’s not the belonging that comes with just joining a group…. It’s a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are. We want true belonging, but it takes tremendous courage to knowingly walk into hard moments.”

Being able to do this fully is a privilege.  It is possible but takes even more courage when your very safety is threatened, or when you lack the means or the freedom to even stand up in the first place.  My first lesson to myself is this: You fear failure most of all. But do you fear for where your next meal will come from?  Do you fear that you will be assaulted, even killed for who you are attracted to?  Do you fear that, because of the colour of your skin, the police will be called to stop a burglary when you are trying to move into your new apartment?

Do you spend your nights sleeping in the hallway, your bags packed, in case the secret police come to take you away in their black automobiles, and you do not want to wake your family?

History is full of people who could not be who they might have been because of fear made reality.  History is full of people who mistook hatred of a common enemy as community, who turned their pain and suffering into inhumanity.  And history is also full of those who relaxed in their privilege, safe and secure that the evil would never touch them—until it did.   

The time is now. That is what history has shown me. I believe this passionately, deeply.  I have my voice, and can raise it, but I can also listen, and believe, and enjoin others to do so as well.

So what do I fear?  I do not discount that I do. It is real. But I am not without tools to understand what it is I fear.   

Brown mentions braving skills as essential to being able to enter the wilderness, skills that are all about trust.  And—this was a revelation to me—that despite my fears that I am not enough, that I lack courage to act…that maybe, just maybe, I have a decent foundation.  The skills are:  Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault (the ability to keep confidences), Integrity, Nonjudgement, and Generosity.

There are seven there. Seven virtues, as it were. Every single one of them is something I consciously strive for.  I can say that without hesitation. Every. Single. One. Not that I do not struggle—but the struggle is not with wholeheartedly embracing and contemplating these virtues, it is in the active practice of them beyond the walls.   It is the battle of Fortitude against Sloth, going beyond contemplation into action.  It is the battle of Hope, which looks to a better future, against the vice of Wrath, which only focuses on the immediate pain.

It is easy within my walls, with those people who I trust.  It is harder to open up and be vulnerable outside them.  That is the wilderness. 

But what have I to fear in the wilderness?  The unknown?  But this is my wilderness, the open garden gate in the crumbling wall showing the way. I know this place, know what I believe. I have never compromised this part of myself, the most important part, but I have kept it quiet, secret, known only to a few friends, and then, even then, never completely.  What I didn’t realize is that the wilderness truly is found outside the walls.  I know there is much more to be realized in being who I am. 

Others will attribute what they will. Let them.

Brown states: “True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness.  True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are, it requires you to be who you are.”  

But here are my words. “I have not yet been forgotten. I may yet be again. There is a choice still.”

I need to be who I am. 

I will be who I am.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtI9003nzro