A poem for 2022, "But that was twenty years ago, Auntie"

Eating, dreaming, 2021

Here is a new poem about pandemic for the first month of 2022, taken directly from a recent dream sequence. Set in the future, in another body, on another continent, I think we'll all have this moment one day in the years to come, PTSD on a global level.

This dream seemed real enough to want to write it down and share it. I'm still here writing, and I hope you are doing something you love, too. Poetry is always my way to get at the heart of something true, so I hope you can relate.

Please enjoy my dream poem: But that was twenty years ago, Auntie 

I.

This dream, the evening, will occur
twenty years from now.

We sit among the others,
place our body, this body,
(grey we are, old women,
creped and thin, still fine hands
and your beautiful eyes,
hair together down to our thighs).

You set our body in its seat
among the audience,
and we all agree to keep breathing in time,
to maintain decorum,
we aver to the general notion
of filling our lungs,
to allow light and form in at the eyes,
to interpret image and pattern
that concur: a play is performed
for our pleasure.

This is gathering,
this is an agreed-upon,
acceptable evening out,
this sitting and breathing in,
we generally recognize the story
and context while hearts beat
around us,
filling each warren of darkness.

And we know, suddenly,
that this should not be!
There is something terrible about this!

This being together.
This is what they have told us not to do!
Why are there humans everywhere?
The boy beside us is too close!
Another in front! Another behind!
We could touch them. Breathe into each.
This cannot be, this them, this me.

We are death to one another.

"Why aren’t we all wearing masks!”

I think this is our voice which has yelled.
There is silence;
the actors stop and look up.
The night turns around, all eyes
upon us,
flickering across our open mouth,
our startled cry.

The boy beside us gently says
that he is our nephew.
What is nephew? We see only eyes.
He lays a plump, blood-stormed
hand upon our arm, kind:

“But that was twenty years ago, Auntie.”

II.

This moment you have dreamed me,
will not be wasted
on the day that it happens.

Our terror in the audience,
our fear at such intimacy,
too much breath
to endure, or protect.

We will know each other
across the crowd:
the flare of memory
will flood us,
dream and breath connect.
But it will be you knocking,
insistent
and loud.

PD/January 2022

Here's pundit Chuck Wendig on "Writer's Resolutions 2022: The Necessary Act of Selfishly Seeking Joy"

Enjoy my December 2021 short piece, The Time Twin on CBC Books

More poetry on this Blog

Time out on Manitoulin Island

"Give me nights perfectly quiet, and I looking up at the stars." Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)

There is very little to cheer about this year. I still take time, however, to try to remember what I love about summer, and to do the things that make me happy.

Here, in no particular order, are some of those things:

1. Reading. I've been reading and re-reading Whitman, Melville, Shakespeare, Virgil, alternating each with modern authors. Reading is my greatest love and in this horrible time of pandemic, I've revisited old favourites and discovered new ones: I finally read Middlemarch! 

Here are Goodreads reviews and books I'm reading.

2. Playing guitar. My second great love is to create music. I've played guitar since I was eleven, and I've put out three albums with my editor, Allister Thompson, over the years. 

You can listen on YouTube here: Philippa's Guitar Music. Spotify and other links at right.

3. Manitoulin Island... this place is quiet, peaceful, and I try to visit every year or two. COVID kept us away last year, but this year we managed to visit. We've been visiting for 20 years now, the same cottage, the same fields, the same wildflowers. I sit on the porch and read, or write, or play guitar. Then, walk the lane to the farmhouse with Molly the farm dog. Or go for a swim. Or look at the night sky ...

4. Writing. I've been writing a lot during the pandemic. I can't promise that what I've written has been terribly good, but I have had a weird urgency to keep writing. Poetry, short stories, a novella, two middle grade novels (need polishing before I can submit them anywhere). AND, big news, I finished the sequel to OCULUM. 

It's OCULUM ECHO, and I've been working hard at it, although honestly it's been weird writing a book about a post-apocalyptic world with a ruined environment and a plague stalking everyone. I wrote the first book in 2016 and DCB published it in 2018 ... it's a little creepy to be so prescient and accurate, but writers are futurists, observers, smart liars. In fact, writing OCULUM ECHO has been cathartic too, since I get to imagine my characters healing and starting a new world, by being brave, and kind.

Here's more about OCULUM ECHO.

I've been so lucky to be able to write, and escape into my head. I hope that you have a creative outlet too, dance, music, art, soap bubbles, whatever it is, embrace it. Art will carry us through.

5. The Olympics, Tokyo 2020! I know, I know, it seems frivolous, to watch young athletes athleting their hearts out right now during a pandemic, but that's exactly why we SHOULD watch it. Human endeavour, challenge, striving, small acts of humanity, coming together as a global community to compete in play, joyous in winning or gracious in defeat. It's what makes us human, I think, and we can't forget to watch, to remember, to celebrate. 

I love that the IOC didn't change the name of the competition year, it's still Tokyo 2020 even though the events are happening in 2021. I think it's a small act of defiance in the face of COVID; the pandemic has taken so much from us all in the past year, but still we celebrate and compete as though it hasn't, and strive and live, read and write, play music and walk the country lanes, despite it. 

Or look at the wildflowers on Manitoulin Island, right after it rains ... 

All posts on this blog about the Pandemic

A writer's life during the pandemic crisis...

Dear Friends,

Do we all have a picture of ourselves in a mask by now?

We make one and then check out what we look like in this new reality. Mine is made from pieces of my son's old flannel pyjamas and hair bands, it's totally serviceable and reasonably comfortable.

Here's the link to how to make this simple no-sew mask: No Sew Pleated Face Mask

So here we are, facing months of isolation and mask-wearing and how, really HOW, are we all doing with this? I'm not a therapist, and I can't tell anyone how to cope, only that I hope you ARE coping, however that looks for you.

Here's what I've been doing most days:

1. Sleep. I've watched the moon cross the Toronto skyline from my porch at 2 a.m. I've also slept in until past 11:00 a.m. and napped on and off. I'm not really a night owl, a napper or a particulary late sleeper. But right now, sleep comes and goes and I just accept it.

Author and her husband on the street,
photo by daughter at 6 feet away ...

2. Stretch. When I do get up (!), I start most days with a gentle tai chi or yoga stretch in a sunny part of the house, for me that's the kitchen. I usually have a coffee and music going too. I face the window, look at trees, breathe, stretch, but mostly breathe.

3. Watch. The back of my house faces an alley, and there's a lot going on back there. Families out riding bikes, older folks going for brisk walks, people washing their cars, kids playing road hockey, cats slinking around. Lots to see actually, if I just slow down and watch.

4. Create. I've finished writing a sequel to OCULUM, and now I'm editing a book coming out next fall (more about Firefly here). The safest place for me has always been in my head, frankly. I hope you have a safe creative space too, whatever that might be.

Making puzzles, reading, making music, writing, working with food or paint or dance or whatever it is you do or would like to try.  For me, creating really is a way to beat back the fear, the aloneness, the anxiety of not knowing what's going to happen. When I create something, I'm completely in control of it and the world, at least for a little while. I hope you find a creative outlet that helps you feel in control of something.

5. Music. I play guitar and piano. I've had people gift me classical guitar music books for most of my life, so I'm slowly reading through new music. It's completely absorbing to try to learn something new. Here's more about my musical life on this blog if you'd like to listen free: Philippa's Music

The last time I was out in public at a conference,
(Feb 2020) and met a friend who wanted a picture

6. Visit with creators. I've looked at paintings online, listened to music, and spent my fair share of time watching Netflix, of course. I've decided not to worry about the quantity or quality either. There's lots of letting go right now. I've also found podcasts and stories I've liked, as you have too no doubt.

Here's something I really enjoyed, listening to Stephen King: Stephen King is Sorry you Feel like you're stuck in a Stephen King Novel

I like writer and pundit Chuck Wendig, who's been writing about being a writer during COVID. All of his posts are interesting but start here if you like: Being Broken In Half (but wanting to be whole)

7. Read. This is of course, a given! Again, I haven't worried too much about the quality or quantity, but for the record, my quarantine reading so far: Battle Royale (Koushun Takami), The Tartar Steppe (Dino Buzzatti), Love in the Time of Cholera (GG Marquez), Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming (Paul Hawken). 

I've also read several of the Silver Birch books nominated with OCULUM this year. I've got one more to go, then I've read all ten books, they've been fun to read. Sadly, we won't be doing the Forest of Trees this year, I was looking forward to meeting all the writers and the kids. Tough one to miss out on, but we gotta go forward.
There will be some online celebration though, so stay tuned for more on that.

8. Do nothing. Sometimes, you just have to do nothing. It's not actively doing nothing, it's just a moment where you catch yourself actually doing nothing. I think that's something we used to do a lot as kids, and frankly it was okay to do nothing. It's when we daydream, or at least I do. It's when we accept we can't change the big things, but just have to sit with ... nothing in particular. And it's really okay to do nothing.

9. Friends. Ya, I've connected with friends in all the ways we do right now. Zoom, sure, and facebook and instagram and messaging and groups of us meeting on whatsapp and so on. But we all know it's a pale imitation of real life. I've written poems lately about how much I want to hug someone, anyone, and run my filthy, unwashed hands across their beautiful cheek. I wonder if that will ever happen again with the same freedom we once had? I realize that I've never actually run an unwashed hand across anyone's face ... but suddenly it seems sad that I haven't.

Zoom guitar party, fun but hard to be apart

10. Family. My kids are both on their own right now, in apartments in different cities, trying to finish their university year however they can. Online exams are the new normal. I can't even express how much I miss them, but it occured to me yesterday it could be a LONG time before I can hold them again; September, December, next spring?

The last photo I have
of me hugging my kid!

If you're with your loved ones, please hug them for me.



Until we're all running our unwashed hands over each others cheeks once again ... be well. Please. Read, write, sleep, do puzzles, dance, sing, cry, hug each other, watch too much terrible television ... whatever it is you need to do to get through, I'm doing it too.

PD

More Pandemic Posts on this Blog
Oddly this isn't the first time I've been quarantined in my life. Read here for a post about my Brush with Mortality ... and Measles