Dave Pollard's stories, memoirs, reflections and poetry.

	Monday, June 15, 2009

6:20 this is my first attempt at translation of a creative work. i hope the author will forgive my misunderstandings and my clumsiness. the poem is the first prize winner of the en route poetry prize for 2009. it was written in french. comments and corrections to my translation are welcome. 6:20 by judy quinn december 6, 1998 you are already into the second chapter of it, and not a word has been said. you are just an extension: the flower spike that opens and scatters its seeds. your happiness is joyless, your pain exposed. you no longer belong to yourself. sainte-justine, montreal, just like at saint-raphael, san jose -- 4:50, notes the nurse: you make your way earthward where even invisible things fragment apart, one year pressed against the other, your forehead pressed against the table: to replace, says the book, break apart, then replace. towards those who, before you, dressed up their web of illusions, a picture of hands, lost, bubbles trapped on the surface of a lake, bloop, blip: all these lives that once were yours. they have plugged in their probes, plunged into the restless waters. you see nothing, but everything's clear. on the screen, a raised arm hails a taxi, a lawnmower scrapes the sky, let me out of here before the storm. they have pumped the blood, drawn back the doors, and remade the bed. they played with your mother's hair, and said: it's nothing, relax, this is normal, everything's perfectly normal. 5:03, notes the nurse, and leaves: for millennia, our words depreciate each day, the same lamp, carried from room to room shines on each blinding day: it's been this way for millennia, she writes, and leaves. your mother admires the houseplants, the green unpleated drapes, your father, sitting, his schoolbag at his feet. an island that the merest word cracks. 5:53, december 6, 1998, what separates the sky from the window, your father's bedside chair, disappears, the centrifugal force that glues us, skin to skin, time has left the room. one day, you'll see, says your mother, no one will have to be buried anymore. and the nurse notes: elevated pulse bloodshot eyes slight delirium everything is perfectly normal. silent bell-towers toll our distress. dressed in green feathers, under the worried eyes of the stars, we will cease all procreation -- my child you will be born without me. 6:20, december 6, 1998 buried in billions of light-years of dust, silent and sterile a hand unblocks a plumbing pipe. from black to red, nail polish like the beginning of the cosmos. 6:20, local time peeps, diving flights, the yellow pink of a summer evening's heat -- the rain, the clouds of bees, complement each other. you are coming. we will empty the world. outside the room a tree sways in the languid morning, the final outcome of the growing dawn. a brown apple pressed against a face. when you get free from the vice, the one you weren't even aware of, when you have not cried, in today's book, you were already real enough. for a first note: nine out of ten, white, you failed the colour test. when you came, carrying on your skin that whiteness from the time before we each looked out for ourselves, and the tree, and the rose. this counterweight so sensitive to words that without them, it would have fallen over. you are this spot, as soft as infinite clay. your eyes are the seal of renewal. you expect heaven -- do not seek it. smell the soiled linen, the vomit and blood, these diapers down here, nothing higher. you would have to have been born in another time. here, they've placed a limit on our dreams. once you've frowned, looked at nothing, your black almond eyes, with no blue hue, unable to tell your mother from a blot of ink you already knew that to live, you must forget. omit what's essential, don't be concerned about it. it's a long trek. on the uneven road you'll get lost a million times, and a million times lay down your dusty burden looking for the break in the wire that holds your life back at the starting line. 6:20 am they tossed you on top of your mother, the frozen ghost, under the neon lights of the room furnished to please the administrators. i love you, and i want so much to love you says your mother, so much that i want you to live forever. without asking, they picked you up again. you will set up so many ideals, says your father and they will rise up against you he says, for his own benefit. there will be enough of them, they'll beat you back and stay alongside the living. don't pay any attention: everything is perfectly normal. just born, mechanically, you brought your lips to your mother's breast and sewed her back up with a web of drool. your mouth is partly played. you were baptized even before you were born, this twisted name swollen with a russian hero's pride. it carries the scent of the plains. in the moment when the earth steals it, a field of wheat at the other end of the world grows and moves with the sound of your name. they wish you to be noble, but you will be nothing but earth. they will prevent you from leaving. you'll be left alone. they will regain their former whiteness. don't think about it, it will be done for you. head turned towards childhood, your hand feels out eternity, and with the other you hold death by its collar, its body on the cross. don't think about it. they barely had to wash you, they wiped out your nostrils, cleared your lungs, they drew from your mouth your mother's voice which called out the world's promises, then they threw her away. they dug for the words that you threw out to her without finding them, threw them out with the water. only one remained. only one was never delivered. they tagged you, measured the rest of the night on your wrists. weighed your future with nothing but a sketch of your heart. then they put you in a bell jar: so wise. perhaps they dreamed about the sunken cheeks they gave you. that they raised, meager offerings from the bottom of a well. these cheeks where laughter will take shape in you will capsize boats which, within you well before this december 6, nineteen hundred and... at 6:20 am dead planets drifted. image: from salon.com 1:13:51 AM  trackback []  comment []

	Thursday, May 21, 2009

first farewell to albion i've taken you so much for granted, lovely forest on my doorstep, strange hybrid of native and 'introduced' species, most at early stages of succession from land once farmed and then abandoned, with a few plantation sections, row on row, original purpose unknown. what did this land look like, i wonder before the first human eyes encountered it and the first human hands began its sad 'improvement'? how long now before the damage of our species is undone? such messy wetlands are not meant for man's endeavour: swamp and mud and rotted trees pocked with holes for creatures fit to glide with ease from land, to pond, to sky. and in the winter, drowned in snow and cold so still time stops. man the surveyor looks at this chaotic scene, and dreams of draining out the marsh for grain and chopping up the fallen trees for fuel: we like our beauty ordered, tamed. i've walked these deer-worn trails a hundred times, but still i do not know the names that humans call these trees; my guidebooks sit unopened, useless as the facts within them. i wish at least i knew which ones belong and which are new, invasive, hogging all the sun and rain and soil like managers hog time in meetings. such a mystery you are to me, a tiny piece of grace in touch with all the life on Earth in ways i can't imagine, now i'm deaf to nature's primal tongue. i do my best these days to still my mind and listen, sense and give attention, not to think of what it means or represents, or feel the grief of gaia's loss that haunts me everywhere: but just to sit and be here, now. though i cannot. this is my first farewell, for soon i'm gone: this land's too harsh for my arthritic bones and weary heart. you'll always be a part of me, and i of you, my land, my love, my teacher too. we're so alike: untidy, neither natural nor civilized, a little sad, a little wild, a little worn, untamed and proud and every year a bit more silent. thank you for your voice, your gentleness with me, the other creatures that are part of you and all you've showed me of adapting and of wisdom. i understand at last the message you've proclaimed for all who dare to hear, since life began a billion years ago: a whisper in the wind, a rustle in the rain, a baby's peep, a robin's song, the turtle's ancient swim to spawn, the senses' spell, the cry of love and joy and being one with all, and welcome always, everywhere. photos by the author, on a blustery day this past weekend, in albion hills conservation forest, beside and part of where he lives, for now Category: Memoirs and Dispatches 2:52:59 AM  trackback []  comment []

	Friday, April 17, 2009

The Will to Live, and Life's Trajectories Pollard birches, by Vincent Van Gogh I spent four days last week with my father, who's 85, and who's struggling a lot these days with memory, especially words and names. In the past year, he's moved from the house he lived in for 57 years. The house my brother and I grew up in, the house my mother -- the only child of a brutal but engaging Welsh railroad engineer to run away from him, after the terrible war that defined her teenage years, to the strange colony of Canada -- lived her adult life in. The house she died in, of a cancer that consumed her in six short months at the age of 60, the age I'm approaching now, and which she managed as stoicly as the loneliness and depression that haunted her life. My father was with her every moment of those terrible months, as he had been for his own mother when she had died a decade earlier. After visiting my mother in the early stages of her cancer, I respected her request to fly home and not to visit her again, to remember her as she was when she was able to keep her demons at bay. My father remarried a few years later. My stepmother was a WREN, a woman active with the navy during the final years of the war to defeat the enemy that was then raining terror down upon my mother and her family. Living a thousand miles away, I hardly met her in the years before she was diagnosed, more than a decade ago, with cortico-basal degeneration, an incurable disease that ravages the mind and body at the same time. From what I can piece together she had a terrible life, fleeing an abusive husband and raising her four terrified children alone. Her disease was the ultimate injustice. My father was pressed into nursing duty again, and tried for several years to care for her in his house, but finally had to admit her to a convalescent home when she kept falling and injuring herself. For the next seven years he spent twelve hours or more a day visiting her there, talking to her even after she could no longer speak, even after she could no longer move enough to even indicate if she knew who he was, feeding her and looking after her every need. He called it his "job". About a year ago, his memory started to fail, and he was also diagnosed with prostate cancer, and somewhat reluctantly agreed to move into an assisted-care facility, and give up his empty house, which he could no longer maintain properly, and his car. His new home is institutional but, as far as these places go, excellent. They make sure he takes the right pills and gets help with the treatments for his various ailments, and they offer a dining room with very good food, and drive him to visit my stepmother for three hours each day. At his insistance, we have hired a caregiver for her, to take up some of the slack of his reduced visit schedule (he's convinced she is not well cared for at her convalesecent home in his absence). My brother and sister-in-law devote a great deal of time visiting and helping him. I'm the slacker brother, living a thousand miles away and only talking with him on the phone an hour or so a week. To give my brother and sister-in-law a break, I'm spending a total of nine days with him this month and next, with twelve days exploring SW Australia sandwiched in between, while they're in the UK on a much-needed vacation. Because his memory of words comes and goes, telephone conversations have become a bit hit-and-miss anyway, so I wanted to see whether our communication would be better with facial expression and body language to substitute for the missing words. I've discovered that it helps, but not a lot. The truth is that, philosophers and writers and voracious readers both, our worlds and lives require language to give them most of their meaning. I kind of wished we were carpenters or painters, so that we could do stuff together that didn't require words, stuff he could still do without a struggle. I'm going to see if I can talk him into taking up some art or craft during my second visit. His coordination is failing somewhat, but it's still a lot better than his memory and language skills. I found two things that helped a lot. Thanks to my brilliant daughter, who gave me a scrapbook full of photos for him, I discovered that when there are visual clues, like photographs, he can find the words he's looking for more easily. Because we have lived so far apart for three decades, however, there is no shared context for recent photos, and you can only look at old photos for so long before you start feeling like you're living in the past. So I'm going to collect recent photos of his life, and of mine, and we'll take turns telling stories. When I was young, my father's idea of the perfect weekend was to go fishing in some lake in Manitoba he had never tried before. I didn't like fishing but I loved exploring these remote areas, some of them four hours or more away from Winnipeg, so he drove and I navigated, and when we got to our destination, he fished and I hiked. It occurred to me that he might enjoy a ride now, and he did -- scenery, like photos, seems to help him find the words he seeks. We explored the roads all along the flooding Red and Assiniboine Rivers, including some roads that were completely flooded out, and my Dad regaled me with stories of picnics and outings from his youth, and from mine, that I'd forgotten. Afterwards, we visited my uncle and aunt's house for dinner, and I learned that my aunt is either a better listener or more intuitive than I am, since she was able to fill in the blanks when my Dad was at a loss for words much better than either I or my uncle could. We also went to visit my stepmother one day -- the first time I had seen her, other than in sad photographs, since she became ill. Now, as for nearly a decade, she's confined to a wheelchair, and shakes a lot, and her mouth is constantly open, but she has a lot of facial expression, and looks remarkably healthy for someone who's been bedridden and locked inside a body that is no more than a terrible prison for her, for so long. I believe that, if I were in her situation, I would choose to simply stop swallowing food. That's the choice I've been told another uncle of mine made when he died last year, and since we (my family) all have stated clear preferences for no resuscitation and no tube-feeding if/when we get to that stage in our lives, it is my guess that she is not in a lot of pain, and she is eating because she still has the will to live. My theory is that, at this point in her life, she is staying alive only out of love for my father, in the belief that is what he wants of her. I find that thought overwhelming. Another thought that occurred to me often over the last four days is how much I'm like my father, and how much the vector of my life, and of his, have been the same. We were both the nomads in our family, the writers, the readers, the philosophers, the hopeless idealists, the radical leftists. My father is an honorary lifetime member of an organization called Junior Achievement, that helps young people learn entrepreneurial skills. I spent most of my career helping entrepreneurs, and now have published a book on that subject. My father wrote a book but never found a publisher, and my success as a writer is one of the greatest joys of his life. He also received great vicarious pleasure that I followed his advice not to go into the 'family business' (he spent his life working there, unhappy and unfulfilled) -- that I succeeded on my own merits, and that my children are doing the same. He taught me to be self-confident, to question and challenge everything, and that if you have that self-confidence you can do anything you want to. I have tried to pass along that simple wisdom to my children. Now, when I hear myself talking to other people, it is my father's voice I hear -- his tone, his expressions, his vocabulary, his hesitations at forgotten words and names (I've always been terrible with names, and I'm relying more and more on my blog as my 'extended memory'). I am constantly becoming him, and that infuriates and terrifies me. Ironically, or perhaps perceptively, he absolutely loved the ee cummings poem I read to him, and I am going to print it out and frame it for him: A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words. This may sound easy, but it isn't. A lot of people think or believe or know they feel -- but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling -- not knowing or believing or     thinking. Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself. To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody-else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight;     and never stop fighting. My Dad is aware that my marriage has ended, and when I told him about it he predicted that I'd remarry, but I get a sense that he appreciates that, in some important senses, ones he greatly appreciates and admires, the trajectory of my life and of his have diverged. More than anything else, that is probably due to his counsel and my observations of some of the things that he's done that have not made him happy. He has no regrets (he told me yesterday), and if he had his life to live over he'd do nothing different. In these visits, he will take the opportunity to do one more thing for me, and for his family -- to show us, through a life lived well, and generously, and fully, in accordance with principles from which he never wavered, how to be different, not only from everybody-else, but from him as well. Category: Memoirs & Dispatches 8:05:20 PM  trackback []  comment []

	Monday, April 13, 2009

Glass Half Full The business executive was considering the strategic direction of his company, and consulted with an expert in strategy, uncertainty and complexity. "I need to know," the executive said, "whether we're going to have a quick recovery from this recession, or if it's going to get even worse". The consultant, who had been keeping up with the latest trends, suggested that rather on relying on economists, who were almost invariably wrong, the executive should assemble a diverse group of people and draw upon the Wisdom of Crowds. So an invitation was issued to some of the brightest people in the nation from all walks of life, and soon dozens of people congregated in the executive's conference room. The conference facilitator, who was a whiz with metaphors, welcomed everyone and then said to the amassed group: "There is an old  proverb that says that, when looking at a glass like this one" (he held up the glass in the picture), "the optimist will see it as half full, while the pessimist will see it as half empty. We would like to know how you see it." First to speak was an Appreciative Inquiry Specialist who said, "I wonder how it got half full? Because if we could figure that out, we could get it all the way full!" Then a scientist replied "The glass is simply twice as large as it needs to be." Next an environmentalist piped up: "If it's tap water, the glass is half full; if it's bottled water, the glass is half empty." A doctor intoned "Pessimism correlates with stress-related diseases that can shorten your life by up to twenty years, so if you know what's good for you, you had better see this glass as at least half full." An accountant in the group asked "How full or empty would you like it to be?" A statistician shook his head, and, holding up a chart, explained "At no point is the glass precisely half full or half empty, because the water is constantly evaporating." Next up was a lawyer who said "We have no comment at this time regarding the fullness or emptiness of the alleged glass." And then a banker chimed in "If you consider the leverage opportunity we've created by allowing more air space into the glass, it's clear that the glass is full to overflowing, but there remains considerable opportunity for it to become even fuller, without limit, indefinitely. And if not, we are more than willing to loan you a second glass on what we think are very reasonable terms, given your credit history." A new immigrant said "Where I come from we have no glasses, and nothing to put in them, so by comparison this glass looks very full to me." A former billionaire who had lost three fourths of his wealth retorted "Hey, I think that's my glass, where did you get it? And when I last saw it it was full. And it was a bigger glass!" A politician from the party in power drew himself up and proclaimed "Despite the fact that the previous administration neglected this glass disgracefully, we have made it a priority to ensure that the fullness of all glasses everywhere is and will be maximized." But a politician from the opposition party replied "Despite the hard work of the citizens of our country, the current administration continues to shamefully allow this glass, and all glasses across this great country of ours, to be drained to the point of exhaustion." A conspiracy theorist with a frightened look went even further, saying "The government has cynically changed the way volume statistics are collected, to the point that any measure of fullness or emptyness is now meaningless." A psychiatrist replied patronizingly "The glass, of course, represents the womb, and so one's perception of its emptiness or fullness will be affected by one's desire to return to that womb, by the experiences one had while in the womb. And, I need not add, by the degree of one's fear of drowning." A philosopher stroked his beard and inquired of the group: "At certain times, this glass has probably been full, and at other times empty, and at other times still all gradients of fullness and emptiness. And since time is ephemeral and flowing, who is to say what its state is, or even if the glass itself is merely an illusion, a construct of our imaginations?" But a sports commentator interrupted and blurted out "Well, we've certainly never seen a glass do this before, at least not in these circumstances, and folks, you may be seeing one for the ages." Finally a Taoist said quietly: "The glass simply is what it is, and so is what is contained in it." Others in turn expressed their views, and finally the expert consultant thanked them all and declared the conference concluded. When the guests had all left, the executive said to the expert: "Well, now we've heard the Wisdom of Crowds; is the glass half full or half empty?" "Yes," said the expert. "Please let us know if we can be of further assistance in future." Category: Satire and Fables 12:43:10 AM  trackback []  comment []

	Thursday, March 12, 2009

Blog Post for May 6, 2012 Well, it took me two years longer than I had expected to find the place I was meant to live, but it was worth it. I have a twenty-year lease on a piece of rainforest that is so staggeringly beautiful it almost hurts my eyes. I have constructed a roundhouse into the side of a hill with large walls of polarized glass so that animals and birds see it as opaque and don't crash into it, but to me, when I awake each morning, I see floor-to-ceiling panoramas of forest and waterfalls, and I am a mile trail hike from the ocean beach, and a mile trail hike in the opposite direction to the road and the small village where I can get groceries and other supplies I need. My typical day is the kind most people only dream of. In the morning I harvest fruit and nuts from the trees growing wild around me, and grains from my small garden, for breakfast. I go online and do a bit of research and video chat with friends all over the world online, using a new Virtual World software that allows my avatars (one that looks just like the real me, only a bit better; the other is my fantasy avatar, an eco-hero BirdMan) to collaborate with others, watch videos, look at documents etc. together as if we were together in real time and real space. I have a steady stream of visitors from all over the world, so the rest of the morning is often consumed by a walk in the forest or along the beach or to the village with them. Our trips and chats are automatically video-recorded using our miniature headband cameras, and automatically electronically transcribed and posted on this blog with a link to the video. On days when I am alone I still sometimes record my morning walk, accompanied by a personal travelogue or perhaps a story I have written and memorized. Or, like today, I might do more 'traditional' blogging like this post. Afternoons are my volunteering time. I do some teaching about natural enterprise, innovation and sustainability, both in the nearby village and online, where my 'courses' are available for free download and self-paced learning, and where my 'office hours' for real-time questions and mentoring are posted. The evenings are my time for writing, most of it creative writing these days (stories, plays, films, music, and poetry), but also sometimes essays, research and new 'courseware' and blog posts like this one. I've nearly achieved zero footprint. I consume nearly nothing other than my vegan foods, most of which grow wild and local. No need for heat or air conditioning in this perfect human climate. My small electricity and lighting needs are produced by solar energy, and I've nearly forgotten what it's like to wear clothes. Water is collected from the abundant rains and waste is composted. Most of my pension goes to projects to help others reduce their footprint, since I have almost nothing to spend it on. Everything I do is allotted more than enough time, because I've learned that by doing things much more slowly I get much more accomplished, more effectively, more creatively, more attentively, and I have slowed my life down to the point that I am beginning to sense how animals in the wild live in Now Time. The only things I do are the ten things I blogged about three years ago as being what I was meant to do: exploring and discovering (mostly within a short walk of my front door), reflecting and imagining possibilities, writing, loving (people, here and virtually, and the wild creatures I live among and belong with here), learning, conversing, sensing and listening and paying attention and just being present, playing, coaching and showing others what I know and what I imagine, and self-managing (just trying to be an example for others of how to live responsibly, sustainably, and joyfully). Virtually everything I produce I give away, and I remain astonished and humbled that I am given in return far more than I could ever use, so I just keep passing it forward. My vision of living in a natural, intentional community has come true, I think, but not in the way I had imagined. My community is everyone, and every creature, who happens to be here, each day. I am simply a part of it. This community has no 'permanent residents', not even me. I'm just here, for now, in this physical community, and in the virtual communities of which I am a part. The world remains in crisis, and I am sad about that, but I do what I can, and what I must. Category: Fables 11:38:51 PM  trackback []  comment []

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