Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Forgiving me.
I woke up out of an angry dream last night to a couple hours of insomnia which gave me ample thinking time in the middle of the night that I probably didn’t need. I’ve been struggling lately with the concept of “sucking it up” and making things right with a friend of mine – particularly because I don’t feel it’s my responsibility to extend the effort at this point. The worst part is that it’s over something relatively insignificant – half misunderstanding and half misinterpretation. Not resolving it is more stressful than just making the phone call. I know.
This past year has been one in which I have meditated an awful lot on forgiveness, having experienced both sides of anger and hurt as a result of my continuing support for Darren, Chelsea and others in the Operation Backfire case. Through that process I have seen the difference between those who have found forgiveness and those who have not. And I worry all the more for those who haven’t, their anger projected outside of them seems untenable to live with on top of the facts of prison, betrayal, and state violence. As much as I wanted to believe otherwise two years ago, this situation was unchangeable from the very beginning and no amount of hating the self-righteous or the “snitches” makes any of it easier to bear. The opposite in fact. This outrage steals daydreams and turns them into revenge fantasies, gives an excuse to build fences between oneself and the world. Fuckers. Got to keep them out.
Early in 2007, I was sexually assaulted by someone who had been a friend to me for a long time – the fact that a friend had done it being more of an affront than the act itself. I never wrote about it here because it took me awhile to figure out and decide how to move with it – I didn’t even tell anyone at first because I didn’t want anyone making a big deal out of it before I had a chance to find that answer for myself. About three months after it happened, I started to write about it privately, and somewhere in there I realized that the only choice I had was to forgive the act and then walk away. To call the person to community accountability would mean that I would forever have my hurt and his bound up together in public space for others to look at, but to nurture my anger privately would result only in lessening myself and do nothing to counter the act.
In July I wrote him a letter outlining my perception of what he had done, how it had made me feel, and finished with my resolution to forgive him rather than holding onto it. I was clear my forgiveness did not restore our friendship, but that I had made a decision about clearing and was done thinking about it. And while some might question the sincerity of this, I can honestly say that when I sent the email I felt free of even my own self-doubt and am as sure now about that course of action as I was in the moment.
Does it make it all better? Well, no. Of course not. Simply forgiving doesn’t change the circumstance of violence, entrapment, loss or injury. These things are still present in both of the scenarios I describe above. Forgiveness is a symbolic and psychological act more than a physical one after all. But it does indicate a willingness to set one’s focus up and ahead rather than down and behind. That is – looking forward and for good instead of convinced that the past is the present and a dark one at that!
Like anything – generosity, gratitude, selflessness – learning to forgive requires regular practice – we don’t exactly live in a society that vaunts these values (being forgiving somehow being equated with being a pushover). But although it may be slightly easier each time, I still find it a struggle to let go in the moments when I am most acutely hurt. This seems to have nothing to do with the severity of the event itself but some other combined set of circumstances that I haven’t quite unravelled yet. Which oddly makes it easier to forgive a man who violated me physically than one who has simply wounded my self-perception. A chip at the ego, and I can’t bring myself to pick up the phone and clear the air between us.
Of course now that I’ve written it here, you know I have to.
Sound cycles.
The arrival of almost-winter has me reaching into my archive of classical music – simultaneously adding to it with new renditions of old standards, and new classical works altogether. This is a cycle I recognize, the November onset of reflective and beautiful music written back onto my playlist.
I was raised in a house where nothing except classical music was played until I was about eleven years old. My mother, a music teacher, played classical piano and had my brother and I trained in the pseudo-classical Suzuki method for violin – never mind the extensive record collection and the fact the only radio station we ever heard was CBC. Instead of rock stars we had the likes of Itzhak Perlman and Yehudi Menuhin to venerate, and a high point of our childhood was meeting old-man Suzuki himself at a conference in Bellingham.
That would be some geeky childhood, let me tell you 😉 – and like all individuating beings, I started listening to pop/rock and then punk rock music exclusively when I was about twelve years old – having discovered the University of Victoria radio station (CFUV) and the power of my own spending money for records. At the age of 15 I ditched my violin as one more thing I would never be good enough at and spent the rest of my teenage years in some form of trouble or another. To say I had some issues at that time would be an understatement – but I never went as far as pawning my instrument no matter how bad it got. Lucky me, I still have the same instrument I received at twelve – my “adult” violin after years of playing cheap chinese-factory children’s sizes. (A little trivia – I do not play a fullsize violin, but a 7/8ths size which was common at one time among smaller adults in Europe and suits my short fingers perfectly even now.)
My violin lay untouched for a few years, when I picked it up again to make money for college in my early twenties. Having quit a job mid-summer at a fishing lodge (under terrible conditions), I came back to Victoria with a pretty severe disdain for working and decided instead that I would try my hand at playing on the street for money. Thinking about it now, it seems like an entirely preposterous decision since I had barely picked it up since the age of fifteen, but I suppose that has something to do with being twenty-one and a bit reckless. For about two months I was there every day with my fiddle playing improvised classical music on the summertime streets and making surprisingly good money. Typically I would play about 3-4 hours, taking about $200 into my case which not only provided for living expenses but also allowed me to save a year’s worth of college tuition. It was a joy, this improvisation without form or rule, and probably the first time I realized a connection between my inner being and that strange wood box – how I could make a single thing out of it, appreciated by others.
Although I continued to play a little bit through the time I went to school, it wasn’t until 1997 when the Flying Folk Army had its first jam in a studio on Granville Island that I really discovered an excitement in collaboration and later the comfortable creative trust that could develop between people. Not classical, but based in folk traditions timeless in their own right…. But I’m not going to go on about that now as this post has already gotten a bit long.
To bring this back around, the point with which I started – classical music was something I ditched out of rebellion some years ago, and never pursued as a violin player afterwards…. and yet I have been increasingly drawn back to it in the last few years. And as much as I have fallen in love with the more esoteric “new” classical, I can’t help but find an incredible comfort in the pieces I was raised listening to – Bach, Vivaldi, Boccherini, Elgar. A fascination to play the newer artists (Kennedy, St. John) to see what they do with what could become stale. It’s still remarkable to me how distinct the interpretations can be and how ways of playing a piece seem to come in and out of fashion. (Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins and Strings in D minor is as close as it comes to “perfect” music, the piece by which I consider any professional violinist.)
Equally stunning to me is how I habitually to turn to these same pieces year after year as winter sets in, and how this music continues to shape the person I am as it has since my childhood. A certain melancholy I suppose, a particularly tempered joy – this music fits back inside me like it always belonged there.
(This post was inspired by this one – Thanks to Diana for the mother’s lament)
A whole bunch of things in no particular order….
…is what my life feels like right now
Issues in my work unit, fending off airplane-induced illnesses, windstorm anxiety, the approaching anniversary of the arrests, the birth of anna’s son, social niceties, impending holidays, union negotiations, speaking engagements, an interesting new person in my life, the constant noise of downstairs renovations, and a whole lot of driving….. No wonder I’m having a laundry crisis and there is no food in my fridge.
And up until yesterday I could say – well at least I’m going to be mostly around home for the next several weeks, but… oh, whatever. All this handwringing and the reality is I’ll get through it just fine. Despite the hectic pace I’m feeling pretty good at the moment – organized, competent, clearly moving on a bunch of things that give me a sense of self-worth (work, activism, social relationships). What I’m missing most right now is creative space, though I think my upcoming schedule is relaxed enough to allow for a little of whatever it is about that I need.
There will be better words here soon, I promise.
From the journal.
(Wednesday morning, Ottawa)
Morning newspapers are grim with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq – deadly all these days with bombings, with martial law. I refuse to read it most days – the news being little more than packaged indifference to atrocity. I am not sure what is worse, the events themselves or the fact no one really cares that they are occurring “over there”. Yes, yes. The world is not fair. But why, indeed does it have to be so unfair? So damaged, so angry, so far from love?
A friend of Joe’s is dying of something terrible and freakish – something that has been on my mind for the last few days – a twisted joke played in the midst of an already-terrible situation. I try not to envision either man – the one struggling to live against the cancer which is taking him piece by piece – the one who disappeared almost two years ago trying to find his lonely way in a desert nation* and wishing he could come home. Brothers who will not see the other now because of all the cruelties circumstance could muster. There is nothing in that but teeth gritted against the tears that threaten.
And so it is, the large atrocities of war, the small atrocities of living – and injustice seems knitted through it all. Love unreachable, connection impossible.
But I am not quite grim as all that really – though I probably would be without those who have been propping me up lately. Interdependence. Community. Connection. Friendship. For these facts I feel lucky, as though I am cradled against the worst of it for the fact I can make a phone call or ask for a hand to help me step out of the muck that threatens to drown me at times. At odds with my own life, I am struck by what I have to be grateful for while at the same time pierced acutely by what I have lost. Or is that the message? Do those states just go together like that?
These days I am not afraid of myself or my emotions – even as I traverse these dips and valleys. The other night, while grappling with something difficult and in tears, I thought to myself a prayer – “Please help me to feel this as it should be felt, and let me get through it just the same.” I do not desire to eliminate this heart – the one which has given me the gift of sight as much as anything.
I wrote not long ago about the sensation of containing everything – every emotion – and honestly, this has not ceased since I said it to myself. I feel giant. I feel like every breath takes in everyone around me – for happiness and sorrow both.
I am watching the first few flakes of snow here and in wonder at the fact I will fly home tonight to such a different caress of rain and salty air. (Perhaps this notebook is my only true home anyways). It is cold here this morning and I am aware of what lies between now and the local airport. At least I know that I will be met there by myself. As always.
* I don’t actually know where Joe is, but FBI reports put him in Syria about a year ago, so it’s where I’ve placed him in my mind for good.
Packing to come home.
This trip has definitely been one day too long. Or two even. I’m tired and I feel like I haven’t stopped talking for the whole time I’ve been here. Someone is getting their money’s worth anyways.
As usual, there’s lots going on in my head but I seem to be tired to the point of inarticulate tonight. I found out yesterday that Darren has been moved (it’s on the BOP website, he’s at the Oklahoma Federal Transfer Center) and he’ll be moved again at some point in the next month. I’ll be sending out an update to his list on that shortly – but for those of you who read this blog, please hold off on sending books until he’s at his next stopping point. Letters though. Send letters! I’m just too damned drained at the moment to do much more than send him short ones and we’ve been having trouble with phone calls since I returned from Salem a month ago. I can hardly wait for late next summer when at least I’ll have one person less to deal with prison-side. The official release date is now August 14th – which gives me a bit of space to get things ready in the house for his return. I’ll be looking for a double bed of some sort and a clothing bureau over the next little while as well as bedding and other little things to make his small room comfy – so anything free and in good shape would be more than welcome.
As I mentioned when I got here, I’ve been unusually homesick this trip – missing people, wishing I could go to Victoria to see Anna’s new little one, sad about some news I heard a couple of nights ago regarding a friend of mine who is quite ill. On the plus side, I went for a visit at Patty and Gabe’s on Saturday night and met their son Santiago who is now 2 and a half (which means it’s been over three years since I’ve seen them). They moved up to Ottawa about a year ago and I’ve been wanting to connect with them so as to re-establish my friendship with them and make a social connection here so I have some sanity to visit with. They are very lovely women from back in my old TAO days… and it turns out we’ve still got lots to talk about.
Although I probably say it here enough – I’ll say it again – the more I spend time around people who I don’t relate to in any significant way, the more my gratitude expands for the significant connections I do have in my life. Besides seeing my friends here, just the fact that I have people around who I can phone to cry to or vent at or just talk with really makes me a lot less alienated than I would otherwise be.
My plans upon my return involve more union meetings on Thursday and then (finally!) a retreat to a cabin in the woods for the weekend with a friend. Although it necessitates a bit more travel, I am encouraged homeward by the idea of being close to big trees for a few days, having the opportunity to curl up beside a warm body, and some respite from cities. Oh. And the ocean. Too bad it’s too cold for a swim. But the rain at least will give the excuse to do little except loll about and be cozy. That’s what winter on the coast is all about right?
I’m packing tonight and thinking about coming home to the big cedar tree and a cup of good coffee. Luxurious this life, as I am often reminded.
Red Cedar 