Lily Iona MacKenzie's Blog, page 59

Walking the Labyrinth at Grace Cathedral

Lily Iona MacKenzie on Myth, Ritual, and Psychic Process
Walking the Labyrinth at Grace Cathedral (Published in the most recent issue of Jung Journal.)

 

I’ve removed my shoes before entering Grace Cathedral’s labyrinth, considered in Medieval times the geographical and spiritual center of the world. The canvas surface feels rough against my bare feet, but pleasantly so, awakening them slightly from their usual sleep when encased in shoes.

I begin, keeping my eyes focused ahead of me, on the ground as I’ve done during previous walking meditations, raising them periodically to look at the stained glass windows.

Words fly out at me. Redemption. Savior. Mary. Disciple. Jesus. Love. Peace. Shards of intense colors—red, blue, green, and yellow made more vivid by the setting sun—flash by.

Before starting, I’d read of the three stages to walking the labyrinth: Purgation, Illumination, and Union. I’m in the Purgation stage, trying to shed the details of my everyday life, opening my mind. The idea is to surrender and let the labyrinth give whatever it will, to accept what comes forth.

I hear the sound of feet in nylons swishing on canvas. They sound like waves. I pass bandaged feet, toes with bunions, a woman with a metal crutch. I think of all the feet that have passed before me on this path and all those that will follow. I feel part of a pilgrimage.

Feet suddenly seem very vulnerable to me. They don’t get a day off. No vacations. I’m in awe of feet, my own seeming more precious. I promise to rest them more, give them footbaths, pamper them.

I keep watching for some sign that I’ve passed through Purgation and entered Illumination. Will death be like this? I wonder if I’ve left out the salmon I’m planning to have for dinner. Did I remember to tell my students the reading assignment for the next class?

Then I remember that Illumination is the time spent in the center of the labyrinth, quietly praying and receiving whatever wisdom is forthcoming. I’m anxious to get there now, wanting to see what will happen.

One of several musicians standing at the front of the cathedral lifts his oboe and plays. The music sounds like an animal’s voice probing the interior, an animal let loose in the city, rooting under the pews, sniffing at our feet. The sound is so intense it creates an ache in my chest.

I try to keep my mind on the walk and my breathing, but I think of how the sunshine filters through the stained glass and a shaft of light catches the edge of a pew as I pass. Is that Illumination?

I match the movement of my feet to my heartbeat, one foot, then the other. Why haven’t I ever noticed before that walking matches the heart’s rhythms?

The path is narrow. Someone wants to go by. No room to pass. I have to make myself skinny or step over into the next lane. We don’t look at one another’s faces. I focus on the person’s feet, legs, back. Most eyes are downcast, staring at the canvas. Purple boundaries that mark the path wind around and around.

For a moment I panic and think ‘What if I can’t get out. What if I get lost as I did once in the British Columbia wilderness.’ I almost bolt, but I calm myself. Focus on my breathing.

Remembering that a labyrinth is different from a maze quiets me. Mazes aren’t predictable. They can have many entrances and exits, trick corners, blind alleys, and dead ends. Riddles to be solved.

A labyrinth offers calm certainty—one well-defined path that leads us into the center and back out again. No tricks. No cul-de-sacs. No intersecting paths. The labyrinth directs you, guides you, leads. You follow. Knowing you’ll reach the center without having to think about it helps focus and quiet the mind, one purpose of using the structure.

Mazes sound more interesting. Less orderly and predictable. Like life.

I reach the center and sit on the floor with five strangers, trying not to let my voyeurism spoil the experience. But I can’t help glancing at one woman who is standing, balanced on one foot, a little like an egret. Maybe that’s the way to Illumination.

No big epiphany. I just feel pleased I’ve reached my goal, the kind of feeling I get when I’ve made a particularly steep climb and have finally reached the top.

Things I’ve read say that walking the labyrinth will help me return to some sort of center, assuming I have one or that I’ve lost it. Is this what enlightenment looks like? No lights? No great insight? The ordinary?

The center’s getting crowded now, and I rise slowly, controlling my impulse to rush out, eager to experience Union, the final stage, and reach home before the family does so I can start supper. I rework the path, preparing to reenter the world, taking the labyrinth with me.

 

Filed under: Links Tagged: grace cathedral, labyrinth, myth, psyche, ritual

Letting Go

Who would think that a relationship with one’s medical doctor could be as important in certain ways as the ones we have with our family and friends. I didn’t. So I was surprised today to learn that my doctor of six years is moving on to another position and won’t be managing my medical care any longer. Actually, I was more than surprised. I was shocked. The news rocked my underpinnings.

In general, I only see him yearly for my physical. But these aren’t 15-minute visits. They always last at least an hour, and over those 60 minutes we exchange a lot of information. Some of it is medical. He loves to teach and is wonderful at putting certain problems within a context. For example, my cholesterol numbers had risen, but he broke down the different elements: HDL (the good cholesterol), LDL (the bad stuff), and the total (which combines good and bad) and how high HDL counters the problematic fat). He also explains that often death certificates read “died of a heart attack” because the examiner doesn’t have an accurate diagnosis. That then skewers the statistics and makes it sound as if more people die of heart problems than is actually the case.

The non-medical? We chat about the current political situation and exchange info on travels we’ve taken. I know that his Oakland Hills house was destroyed in a fire just as mine was in San Rafael in 1992. He also is a musician, and his weekend gigs thoroughly refresh him, the music giving him a foundation from which he can better practice medicine.

For someone like myself who tends to be high anxiety, these visits have helped reduce my stress about doctor’s appointments and have created an unexpected intimacy. So when I said my farewells today, it wasn’t a surprise that I teared up. As I mentioned in my last post, “Creating a Village,” communities and familiarity are important. My doctor has been part of my world for six years, and it’s difficult to see it change. Though I wish him well in his new venture, I just wish it included me as a patient!

 

 

Filed under: Links Tagged: cholesterol, doctors, doctors appointments

Creating a Village

I recently considered changing my gym to one that’s nearer to where I live. I would save money in tolls and gas. The new place is only five minutes from my home, which would be a big savings in terms of my time. To reach my current fitness center, on good days it takes an hour total to commute; on bad ones, when the bridge is backed up, it can be much longer.

So I visited the new place, a sterile feeling “Planet Fitness” with its jazzy purple and gold colors and slick unfamiliar equipment. It’s replaced what used to be a Safeway, but it has retained the vibes that make Safeway stores anathema to me: everything mass-produced and corporate. Planet Fitness manages to convey a similar feeling. I left, trying to convince myself it wouldn’t take long to adjust to the new place. I wasn’t successful.

My current gym has been nurturing my body for at least ten years. The owners are local and have a handful of other sites in the Bay area. The space itself feels like a big womb where I go to work out. I don’t spend much time talking to other members. Most of us focus on our routines, occasionally smiling or nodding at one another. So it isn’t the camaraderie that I would miss. It’s the familiarity. I like seeing the same faces day in and day out. I know how to make the space work for me, as well as the equipment. Yes, of course, I could adapt to a new gym. But I don’t want to.

This experience has made me think about how important comfort zones can be. In such an impersonal world, it’s uplifting to have places like this to visit, places where we have left our imprint and where we feel at home. It’s why I have shopped for over 30 years in the same locally owned market, and I’ve had the same hairdresser for almost as long. I love being reminded that, yes, even in an otherwise indifferent universe, we can still make connections and create a kind of village for ourselves.

Filed under: Links Tagged: comfort zones, fitness center, gym, planet fitness, village

Force Majeure Or Force Minor?

My husband and I had heard that Force Majeure was a movie not to be missed, so on Black Friday we headed to our favorite theatre. The place quickly filled, and we all settled into the darkness, waiting to be engaged by the action on the screen.

The film opens with a tourist photographer taking a staged photo of the family featured in the movie: Tomas (father), Ebba (mother), Harry (son and the youngest child), and Vera (daughter). Whoever was directing the scene wanted to make it clear that there were schisms in this otherwise handsome family. The photographer had to tell them to touch one another and appear engaged. But it seemed a heavy-handed way to announce at the beginning that there’s trouble ahead for this group on their five-day vacation in the French Alps.

It would have been more effective (and dramatic) to witness the family members interacting as they settle into their rental apartment in the upscale resort. Dialogue and gestures could begin to reveal their lives and relationships with one another. Instead we had to wade through this opening gambit.

The movie then unfolds as if we are reading chapters in a book with a heading for each part: Day 1, Day 2, and so on. Each day has a different focus, and I was fine with this way of presenting the material. The scenery is stunning, and the cinematographer captures the crisp cold landscape and astonishing peaks. It’s not friendly country in the sense that one could die easily from over exposure or avalanches. And the narration is punctuated by the sound of explosions, as crews set off “controlled” avalanches in the surrounding slopes.

One of them almost engulfs the restaurant where the family has just been served lunch on the terrace. At first, in the white cloud that takes over the screen, viewers believe that there is a real threat. So does Tomas, the father, who takes off, leaving his wife and two kids to fend for themselves. This sets off a minor avalanche in this unit as Ebba returns repeatedly, in conversations with friends and strangers, to her husband’s abandonment. However, he has strikingly different perceptions of what happened. He claims he couldn’t have run away while wearing heavy ski boots. But we viewers are witnesses. He did bolt.

Okay. I can see where this behavior could undermine Ebba’s confidence in her spouse, especially if it is the culmination of other trust-damaging actions, such as infidelity. And there certainly is much to explore in this family’s dynamics when it appears that the vacation is an attempt to restore the household’s togetherness. Instead, at the beginning at least, these five days in a gorgeous location seem to be undermining it.

The movie would have been much more satisfying if the director had focused on the psychological subtleties that make most families fascinating fodder for stories rather than special effects. These are fine actors (the kids are especially convincing), and the setting splendid. Unfortunately, there is a sub-theme here that overwhelms what’s happening on the screen. After the shock of the “controlled” avalanche that almost smothered the restaurant, I was on edge thinking that a real avalanche—or something equally devastating—was eminent. The director encourages such a response and plays with the viewers’ fears by suggesting in multiple ways (I can’t detail them here or they’ll give away too much of the narrative) that something bad is about to occur.

It doesn’t, but I felt jerked around and wished that something climactic would happen. As it is, the story never does have the true climactic moment that it needs, and we felt a tremendous letdown after all the sparkling reviews and hype of this flawed film. Ruben Östlund, the Swedish writer/director, didn’t trust his material or his actors and leaned too heavily on special effects.

 

Filed under: Links Tagged: avalanche, force majeure, french alps, Swedish writer/director Ruben Östlund

Thanksgiving Shadows

This is a day of giving thanks, and there’s much to be thankful for, as I’m reminded every time I pick up a newspaper or make the mistake of tuning into CNN or MSNBC. But a call from my son this afternoon reminded me of my mother’s favorite saying: “There’s always something to take the joy out of life.” She had it right, and it’s important to remember that we’re never immune from what’s lurking on the dark side of the moon.

I’m using the moon as a metaphor. We all cast a shadow and have a shadow: those negative qualities in ourselves we don’t like to recognize as ours and usually project onto others. For democrats, it’s the republicans who don’t get it and vice versa. Day’s shadow is night, and it’s in the night, in dreams, that the parts of ourselves we cast off can appear, reminding us that we’re multiple.

But getting back to Mum’s favorite saying, life is always reminding us that we’re mortal and that bad things can happen at any time. So when my son called from Canada where he now lives (he was born there but grew up in California and still thinks of the American Thanksgiving as the “real” one: Canada’s happens mid-October and doesn’t have so much hoopla around it. The event really did focus on celebrating the harvest more than the American version’s origins), he mentioned his recent physical. He cautioned, “It may not be anything, but the doctor had some blood on his glove after he examined my rectum.”

It’s true: the blood may not be anything serious. There are more causes for internal bleeding than cancer. Yet it’s the word that first comes to mind and lingers, always hovering in the shadows. It seems appropriate to be reminded of our vulnerability on this day when we pause to give thanks before plowing into the Christmas season. Joy is such an elusive state. We need to be thankful when it is present because the other is never far away. Nothing is constant.

Filed under: Links Tagged: bleeding, canada, canadian thanksgiving, cancer, shadow, thanksgiving

Review of Blackboard: A Personal History of the Classroom

Most of us who have been teaching for some time need periodic reminders of the important work we’re doing in the classroom. It’s easy to become insensitive in our relations with our students and let automatic pilot take over. Also, since our salaries usually don’t reflect the value of what we do, the central role we have in students’ lives, it’s easy to stagnate. Being one of those teachers, it was uplifting to read Blackboard: A personal history of the classroom by Lewis Buzbee. A moving and thoughtful meditation on learning, the book underscores our value as teachers and the lasting impact we have on our students.

In Blackboard, Buzbee, a native Californian who currently teaches in the University of San Francisco MFA Program, revisits in memory and in actuality his history as a student. He starts with a trip to Bagby Elementary, prompted by his daughter Maddy who wanted to see her dad’s old school. For the rest of the book, Buzbee moves back and forth between past and present, filtering his earlier educational experiences through Maddy’s current ones. This approach allows him to contrast the public schools of California’s golden years, when the state still “had a commitment to public education or all California students” (193), with the contemporary situation.

When Buzbee was in school, he didn’t live with “metal detectors, barred windows, locked gates, and sometimes armed guards” as his daughter’s generation does. Instead of students entering a safe space where they can experiment and explore, today’s youth study in “a locked down school [that] announce[s]…it is a dangerous place” (88). It isn’t just nostalgia operating here. Buzbee highlights our fear of violence that is reflected in the schools themselves because of the contemporary world’s complexities.

Despite the new moral and political complications students today face, schools still offer them the opportunity to experience valuable things they might not encounter in their daily lives. He describes how the best schools have fully equipped labs, woodshops, “easels and paints and pottery wheels” (110). He says, “School pushes you—lures you?—into the world” (136), offering students many different paths to follow, from math to science to history and so much more, including typing, a skill Buzbee has put to good use as a writer. The best schools also have teachers who care deeply about their students. Buzbee remembers every teacher he had from kindergarten through high school, “a steady corps of teachers…who helped [him] focus on the blackboard and urged [him] to cast off into the world that waited beyond it” (189).

At the center of much classroom learning and this book, “The blackboard is not an object that is merely stared at; the student sees beyond what’s written there, to the larger world.” So too does Blackboard take the reader beyond the classroom and its dynamics to how these things contribute to the larger world. Blackboard gives us a better appreciation of the integration of learning with social and political life that is essential at all ages. He says, “The blackboard is not merely a convenient teaching tool; it becomes a focus for the student’s mind, both individually and for the larger class” (48). It is a lens through which we discover ourselves.

What happens in the classroom motivates us to explore beyond it, the teacher offering the impetus for those ventures. Students are like instruments in an orchestra, making music in response to the teacher, who “commands her audience, conducts them” (60). For Buzbee it meant asking his parents for a “telescope and a microscope and a chemistry set” (60). These items not only opened him to mysteries he hadn’t considered before, but also inspired his parents to join him in investigating the heavens with his new telescope.

Buzbee’s time in the classroom wasn’t always joyous. Like all students, he often didn’t want to be there. Also, acquiring knowledge includes pain as we are encouraged to push beyond our current limits: “School drags us, sometimes kicking and screaming, out of our shells” (66) by forcing us to discover that learning is also about making mistakes and then correcting them. He offers his own terrifying moment in fourth grade of working out an equation on the blackboard in front of the whole class. As he says, “Not only did Miss Babb show me where I went wrong, but everyone else in the class could see my error and learn from it….On a blackboard, redemption is possible” (66).

After reading Buzbee’s book, none of us will see a blackboard in the same way again. That blank space that replicates a night sky but without any constellations becomes transformed into something illuminating, an opportunity to move beyond our limitations. Vital work goes on behind the walls of our educational institutions. As Buzbee stresses, “School, though imperfect, is still essential” (192), but we need to focus more on “what happens inside the classroom, rather than what happens in legislatures and on school boards” (192). If we can do that, he believes we might be able to improve not only our schools, “but the lives of the children there, and the future we all must share.”

Filed under: Links Tagged: blackboard: a personal history of the classroom, lewis buzbee, public education, schools, teaching

Wondering about Wonder Woman

For several days, I’ve been absorbed by Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman. I once idealized (and still do) this superheroine. As a girl, I read every comic I could find about her because she embodied something lacking in many female’s lives: power. And freedom. Though she had a public persona as the secretary Diana Prince, she could shed that mask and become her true self—an Amazon who was Superman’s equal.

Unfortunately, discovering her origins has been disillusioning. In a way, I’m sorry that I found Lepore’s book. I would prefer to think of Wonder Woman as a mythic figure who actually is part of an Amazon world, still fighting for freedom and justice.

Alas, all good illusions are destined to become disillusions. It turns out that she was William Moulton Marston’s creation. A psychologist who produced the polygraph and who failed to make his mark in academia, he also was a major, perhaps a pathological, liar. Much that his creation represented—peace, high ideals, and integrity—he lacked.

While Wonder Woman used the lasso of truth to force anyone she captured to tell and understand the absolute truth, Marston was living a massive lie. He shared a house with three women (simultaneously), one of whom he married, Elizabeth “Sadie” Holloway Marston. She was a kind of wonder woman herself in the early 1900s, supporting the whole household since Marston was unable to hold jobs for long and wasn’t a reliable provider. The ménage à trois that at times was a ménage à quatre produced at least four children, all of whom Marston fathered.

But Marston redeemed himself somewhat in my eyes by inventing a character that still has clout and embodies his feminist ideals. He believed women were superior, and they certainly did rule in his household, all of them strong suffragettes in spite of being somewhat under his thumb. And images of Wonder Woman herself in a skimpy pin-up girl outfit would inflame most contemporary feminist.

Still, in the early 1940s, the women’s movement was being revived, and Wonder Woman helped to feed that development. So while I would prefer that Wonder Woman were Athena and had sprang full grown from Zeus’s head rather than Marston’s, I’m grateful that she exists no matter what her origins were.

Filed under: Links Tagged: Elizabeth “Sadie” Holloway Marston, feminism, jill lepore, suffragette, the secret history of wonder woman, William Moulton Marston, women's movement, wonder woman

Blogging into Visibility

One of the first things my publisher told me to do before my novel Fling is published in 2015 is create a fan base. I don’t think he was referring to the kind of fan I’m used to, a mechanical object with rotating blades that whirl around and stir the air. In a way, though, I suppose the kind of fan my publisher was referring to can stir things up and call attention to our work.

Yet for someone of my disposition (I don’t love big parties or crowds; I prefer quiet intimate dinners with close friends and enjoy spending time alone), making the kind of outreach that marketing a book requires is hard. Not only is it all consuming, taking time away from the precious little I do have for writing itself, but I also must enter a world totally different from the one I’m accustomed to.

I’ve had to learn the language of twitter (I still haven’t a clue how to make that networking approach work); tumblr (not sure exactly what this does); and Facebook (I’m a neophyte, but I’m learning how to add “friends,” many of whom I don’t know, and I’m very good at liking things that stand out); triberr (can’t figure this one out); and Pinterest (not sure how to employ this tool). I’ve signed up for blog rolls and blog hops. I’m investigating virtual book tours since real ones don’t do much for unknown authors. At the moment, I have a 15-page marketing plan, and I’ve only scratched the surface! It will be a book itself by the time I’m finished.

This sounds like sour grapes when I should be grateful that my novel will be published (and I am!), but how will all of these activities make people like my writing or become a “fan”? This marketing madness is an aspect of writing I hadn’t anticipated. While I was familiar with the demands of researching publishers and publications for long and short work, both poetry and prose, the business side of what we writers do, this other aspect of publishing has totally changed my life.

It’s also one of the reasons I am writing this blog (as so many other writers are doing), trying to make my presence as a writer known beyond my immediate friends (who must hate receiving all these posts!). At times I wonder if I’m just preaching to the choir since most writers have the same goals: We’re enrolled in Goodreads and Librarything. If we’re women, we try to keep connected with Shewrites. We’re all trying to sell books, but are we actually reaching those readers who aren’t writers themselves, the ones we want to attract?

I would like to hear from other writers who are also going through this process and have advice on how to survive it. Meanwhile, here I am, stirring up a little air on the Internet in my search for fans.

 

 

 

Filed under: Links Tagged: blogging, blogs, book publicity, fan base, fans, marketing writing, publishing, writers

Dear Fellow Writers/Readers

It amazes me that after all of these years spent writing in a variety of genres, I’m still learning about process and other writing-related things. Recently, I’ve been working on what I expect will become another novel that draws on some of my childhood experiences growing up in the Calgary area. Of course, it’s no surprise to anyone that writers use such events in their fiction (and non-fiction), but I find that I get bogged down if I stay too close to the actual material.

When I’m recreating something I’ve already lived through, especially in fiction, it loses its appeal and I don’t feel any excitement writing it. For the material to take on life for me, I must only use it as a seed that I plant and embellish through invention. If my imagination doesn’t get stimulated and involved, it’s a trudge each day to try and press forward.

Once I realized what was happening in my current work, I was able to let go and fly! Now I can’t wait to return each day to the manuscript and discover where it wants to go. The characters and setting are taking on their own life, very different from what I originally envisioned.

For me, that’s the main pleasure of writing in any genre: if I don’t learn something new, then it’s tedious and not worth my time or my reader’s. Writing needs to be about these voyages into the unknown where we make visible what has been hidden. It’s like fishing, lowering our line into the waters of the unconscious and snagging who knows what.

 

 

Filed under: Links Tagged: calgary, fiction, memoir, non-fiction, reader, writer, writing, writing process

The Isle of Skye

Learning yesterday about my Scottish cousin Douglas’ recent heart attack has made me think about the Isle of Skye where both he and my mother were born. Our family has lived on Skye for six generations. A first-generation Canadian, I grew up listening to my mother and uncles’ stories about their early days in and around Portree, the capital, currently with a population of just over a thousand.

They talked of their grandparents’ croft on the outskirts of town; of their uncles’ tailor shop; of Braeside cottage, where Mum hung out her bedroom window and watched the fishermen going to sea—the Atlantic a constant presence, its smells and gray-green surface encircling them. I knew the woods where Mum hid her shoes every morning and ran barefoot to school. And I’d heard about The Lump (a natural amphitheatre near the center of town where the Highland Games are held each August) so often that it seemed I was the one who had played there as a girl and not my mother.

Mist and myth shroud Skye, the largest of the Hebrides, the Cuillin peaks jagged contours visited by clouds, constantly changing according to the time of day and the light. In July, it’s twilight for most of the night, creating a mysterious atmosphere. The Cuillins add to the mystery, dark hulking shapes. Even at night they seem ephemeral, not quite tangible, as if stepping out of a fairy tale and not sure of the role they’re to play, older than I have the ability to imagine, older than our family, older than the Greek gods. Yet when the sun breaks through, even the Cuillens snap to attention. The clouds no longer give them a vague indefiniteness, and the land gleams—green, lush, inviting.

During one of my visits to Portree, my husband and I attended the Scottish games, inaugurated in 1877. On the morning of the contests, I was showering in Douglas’ house when I heard his resonant voice booming over a microphone from the other end of town, announcing the first competition. Over the years, he often was master of ceremonies, and his father Alistair, now dead, had been the chieftain several times, an honorary position usually filled by a lord.

A true Scot in his love for language, words come easily to Douglas, yeasty dough that he kneads and pummels. Rolling “r’s” and lilting cadences transform familiar words, vowels and consonants. I haven’t met a Scot yet who didn’t have something to say—and Douglas is no exception. He speaks with wit, humor, and a lovely irreverence.

My husband and I quickly dressed and walked the few blocks to The Lump. We found a patch of grass where we could park ourselves for the day. The area above the womb-like amphitheatre gives an expansive view of the activities below. In one corner, girls dressed in traditional kilts, white blouses, and weskits, and a few boys who were competing also, flew over the crossed swords at their feet.

I remember Mum doing these dances at the slightest provocation, leaping and landing softly, a couple of old broomsticks standing in as swords. And I also remember reading that the Highlanders, brave warriors, would do the sword dance in front of fires in the fields before a battle. How tame it has become, but still how profound, the sword a phallic image, a risky thing for these girls to be playing with. In these complicated steps, the youth are showing us how uncertain life is: we’re constantly avoiding contact with the sword of truth and the pain it provokes.

In another section, the heavies were throwing the hammer, putting the stone, and doing the caber toss, while the locals raced around the track, competing in broad and high jumping contests. Douglas—wearing his MacKenzie tartan kilt, a blue shirt, and a jacket—strode back and forth among these activities, trying to keep tabs on all the announcements and establishing a rapport with the crowd.

The games captured the original spirit of the event, an opportunity for young and old in the community to work together throughout the year preparing for the various track, field, and dancing venues. Of course, most of the heavies were imported from other areas in Scotland—and from abroad—but there were also locals who started out at the Skye games, an opportunity to try their stuff with the big guys. And big they were, arms and legs solid muscle, the kind of power needed for flinging 56 pounds of steel over a bar above their heads.

These events remind me of the many generations that have gone before, the primal quality of the games, men pitting themselves against the elements, the unknown. I can imagine how these contests originated, arising out of some need to test and dominate the environment—to show mastery. This isn’t the Olympics, but the same spirit informs the contestants: a desire to challenge themselves, to find their limits, and to allow others to live vicariously through their accomplishments. The games are a tradition that binds us to our past and the future.

And it’s tradition that binds me to that place. Before leaving Skye, Douglas took me to the old cemetery and showed me the family tree, a sycamore planted in the middle of the family plot. Its branches laden with leaves, it shaded not just the Kemp’s graves but others as well (we are related to the Kemps through my mother’s side of the family; my grandfather is MacKenzie). The names and the dates tell a story—of children who died young, of husbands and wives whose lives intertwined in death as they had (or perhaps did not) in life.

Visiting the family graves reminded me of how my life is intertwined with them, a tree’s roots being an apt metaphor describing how deep and enmeshed they can get. Today I’m reminded of how ephemeral our lives are and how important it is to nourish these family connections.

Pen-L Press will be publishing my novel Fling in 2015. A wildly comic romp on mothers, daughters, art, and death, the book should appeal to a broad range of readers. While the main characters are middle-aged and older, their zest for life would draw readers of all ages, male or female, attracting the youthful adventurer in most people. Though women may identify more readily with Feather and Bubbles’ daughter and mother struggles, the heart of the book is how they approach their aging selves and are open to new experiences. Since art and imagination are key to this narrative, artists of all ages would find something to enjoy. And because the book crosses many borders (Scotland, Canada, the U.S., and Mexico), it also can’t be limited to a specific age group, social class, gender, or region.

My first fan letter for Fling came from an 80 year-old woman who lives in the tiny village of Christina Lake, B.C. My son, who also lives there, had given her my manuscript to read. She said, “I just wanted to express to you how very much I enjoyed your writing.  I started it and didn’t stop till I had read it all.  I very much like your style and your subtle humor. Thank you for a most enjoyable read. I can’t understand why it hasn’t been scooped up by some publisher. But I know that it will be. In my estimation I know that it is excellent literary work. I am a voracious reader and have been since grade 4. I remember my first book was Tom Sawyer and I have never stopped since then. I go through 4 to 5 books a week.  We are so fortunate here at the Lake now.  The Library staff in Grand Forks come out here every Wednesday. I have become very fond of the young lady who comes out. She provides me with all the award winning books and orders others for me. Again I want to express to you how very much I enjoyed your manuscript.  Have patience my dear….it will be published to wide acclaim I am so sure.” —Joan Fornelli.

Here is a synopsis:

Feather, an aging hippie, returns to her Calgary home to help her mother, Bubbles, celebrate her 90th birthday. Bubbles has received mail from the dead letter office in Mexico City, asking her to pick up her mother’s ashes, left there seventy years earlier and only now surfacing. Bubbles’ mother, Scottish by birth, had died in Mexico in the late 1920s after taking off with a married man and abandoning her husband and kids.

A woman with a mission, and still vigorous, Bubbles convinces a reluctant Feather to take her to Mexico so she can recover the ashes and give her mother a proper burial. Both women have recently shed husbands and have a secondary agenda: they’d like a little action. And they get it.

Alternating narratives weave together Feather and Bubbles’ odyssey with their colorful Scottish ancestors, creating a family tapestry. The “now” thread presents the two women as they travel south from Canada to San Francisco and then Mexico, covering a span of about six months. “Now” and “then” merge in Mexico when Bubbles’ long-dead mother, grandmother, and grandfather turn up, enlivening the narrative with their antics.

In Mexico, the land where reality and magic co-exist, Feather gets a new sense of her mother. The Indian villagers mistake Bubbles for a well-known rain goddess, praying for her to bring rain so their land will thrive again. Feather, who’s been seeking “The Goddess” for years, eventually realizes what she’s overlooked.

Meanwhile, Bubbles’ quest for her mother’s ashes (and a new man) has increased her zest for life. A shrewd business woman (she’s raised chickens, sold her crafts, taken in bizarre boarders, and has a sure-fire system for winning at bingo and lotteries), she’s certain she’s found the fountain of youth at a mineral springs outside San Miguel de Allende; she’s determined to bottle the water and sell it.

But gambling is her first love, and unlike most women her age, fun-loving Bubbles takes risks, believing she’s immortal. Unlike her daughter, Bubbles doesn’t hold back in any way, eating heartily, lusting after strangers, her youthful spirit and innocence convincing readers that they’ve found the fountain of youth themselves in this character. At ninety, she comes into her own, coming to age, proving it’s never too late to fulfill one’s dreams.

Fling, a meditation on death, mothers and daughters, and art, suggests that the fountain of youth is the imagination, and this is what they all discover in Mexico. It’s what Bubbles wants to bottle, but she doesn’t need to. She embodies it. The whole family does.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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