Look at how much fun this girl is having!  It’s taken me 60-odd years to discover the glow that’s in her eyes as pen meets paper (or finger meets phone).  Good for her.

And good for me.  Jetpack tells me that I’ve posted there and on Facebook for 123 days in a row.  Today will be 124.  I love what I’m doing.  My heart soars when an idea comes … and my finger leads the way in the meandering.

I’m a fan boy of Philip Pullman, the author of His Dark Materials novels.  They are Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. 

I just had a thought: You’re blogging too much about Philip.  The man himself would be “tut tutting” at me for such words.  “If you’re drawn to it, say it.”

Here are some Pullman thoughts aimed at kids, and my responses …

***

I learned to become a conduit for what came to my imagination.

I love that word!  Something is flowing through me and demanding the fresh air of the outside world.

***

In one direction, the writer has complete control over his work, and in another, he’s fully accepting of the fickleness of his muse.

Who knows what thought will show up next in the story of my day?  I often have no idea.  My brain might be saying “Walk left” but my feet may have another idea.

***

Write what you want to write, be the next big thing and not another iteration of a phase that will pass.

Well I don’t want to be “the next big thing”.  My thing may be large or small.  As long as someone is listening, I’m happy.

***

Kid: “Why do you think it’s so important that young people read?”

For the same reason that I think it’s important that they breathe, eat, drink, sleep, run about, fool around, and have people who love and look after them.  It’s part of what makes us fully human.  Some people manage to get through life without reading.  But I know that if I’d had to do that, an enormous part of my mind, or my soul if you like, would be missing.  No one should be without the chance to let their soul grow.

Some of us stay in this world.  Some of us also explore other ones.  I meet new people on the street and on the page.

I love flesh-and-blood people in my life and characters who slip out from between the covers.

***

Kid: “How do you choose your themes and storylines?”

I don’t exactly choose them so much as surrender to them.  I couldn’t write at all if I had to choose, in a sort of cold-blooded way, between this idea and that one.  If they both excite me, I’ll write about them both.

The expression I love is “Does it make my heart sing?”  Whether it’s a person or a song or a place, do I want to be close?  Writing demands contact with what is loved.

***

Kid: “What advice would you give to anyone who wants to be a writer?”

Some people would say “Always write about what you know”.  I don’t think that’s good advice at all.  Nor is the advice to write what you think people will like.  I think that’s just silly.  We shouldn’t bother about other people at all when we write.  It’s none of their business what we write.

A wee bit of me wants folks to like what I write.  A huge part of me wants them to be touched, jolted … their eyes opened wide.

First of all, my eyes need to open wide.

***

Kid: “I cried when I read ‘The Amber Spyglass’.  Have you ever cried while reading or writing a book?”

Oh yes.  If I write something sad, I cry.  If I write something funny, I laugh.  If I write something boring I . . . What do I do then?  I cross it out and try again.

Once in awhile I cry as I write.  Perhaps I’m being touched gently on the forehead or torn apart by a savage beast.  A person or a story can do that to me.

***

Kid: “When you wrote ‘Northern Lights’ did you already know the plot of the other two books in the trilogy?”

No – at least, not in any detail.  I had a rough idea of where it was all going, and I knew a few things about some places I wanted to stop at on the way.  I knew it had to end in a garden.  I wanted to bring in the hornbeam trees along Sunderland Avenue in Oxford, where I live.  I thought I might have to go to the world of the dead.  That’s all.  I discovered most of it as I went along.

Sounds like life … “I discovered most of it as I went along.”

***

I read “The Lord of the Rings” when I was 18.  I read it greedily, lapping it up, eager for more.  But I haven’t read it since then, though I’ve tried.  It doesn’t satisfy me any more, and I think that’s because Tolkien, who created this marvellous vehicle, doesn’t go anywhere in it.  He just sits where he is.  What I mean by that is that he always seems to be looking backwards, to a greater and more golden past.  And what’s more, he doesn’t allow girls or women any important part in the story at all.  Life is bigger and more interesting than “The Lord of the Rings” thinks it is.

Please, Lord, help me write about the “big”.  And often I don’t know what that means.  I just know I need to go there.

And yes … women and girls need to be centre stage.

***

Work every day.  Get into the habit of it.  Work when you don’t feel like it, when you’ve just broken up with your girlfriend or boyfriend, when you’re feeling ill, when you’ve got homework to do.  Put your work first.  Habit is your greatest ally.  Get into the habit of writing when you’re young and it’ll stay with you.  Sixteen is a very good age to start.

123 and counting, Philip.  Also 75 and counting.

***

Don’t listen to anyone who tells you you should study what the public wants, and give it to them.  They don’t know what they want, or they’d be writing it themselves.  It’s not their job to tell you what to write.  It’s your job to write something they could never have thought of, and then offer it to them.

I write for you, trusting that what I say has goodness in it.  But really the whole thing is a mystery.

***

‘Nuff said

The world says that it’s good to get better, day by day, until we die.  Take any quality, such as playing the guitar.  We’ll gradually play the chords more accurately and sweetly, plus we’ll learn new chords.  And our right hand will grow into skilled finger-picking.

That’s one vision … but there’s another.  Take the current state of your skill and let yourself stay there.  Fall deeply into what is here and now.  Let the music take you into realms unknown. 

I love turquoise.  Here are many shades:

Pick one of the vertical strips.  Let’s say that’s where you are now, and you like it.  Then look at the one immediately to the right.  That’s the turquoise I want! 

And so begins the rest of your life, yearning for that better shade.  Plus forgetting the beauty that’s before you now.

***

One way to live is stretching to the left or right.  Sometimes that’s me

At other times, I rest into going down, letting the deeper embrace me

I like that better

They flew throughout the night.  The stars wheeled around them, and faded and vanished as the dawn seeped up from the east.  The world burst into brilliance as the sun’s rim appeared, and they were flying through blue sky and clear air, fresh and sweet and moist.

(The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman)

The white canvas sits on the easel … untouched.  And the paint brush rests in our hand.

Tomorrow is anew

It’s never been before

Just like us

I’ve said this for a year or more, without really “getting” it.  It was in the realm of a wise thing to say.  There’s been an undercurrent of ego, a touch of “look at me”.

Today feels different.

Before I dive in, I know there are times when the statement isn’t true.  If I’m sick in the hospital, it’s crucial what the doctor brings back to me.  His or her knowledge will assist me back to wellness.

Also, the bar three floors down from my apartment has entered into an agreement with me: Their terrace, which is below my bedroom, will be quiet at midnight.  For me to sleep, it’s important that they keep their word.

Now back to the main idea …

I experience myself as love.  I throw it out into the world.  May it fall on all shoulders.  What if I’m totally unaffected by what returns, or if anything returns?  I mean it – totally.  My eyes grow wide at the thought.  I would be free.

***

Here’s one of my favourite stories:

John and Harry were imprisoned together for many years.  They were both abused by Nick, their jailor.

Finally they’re released.  Months later they go for a coffee.

Harry: “Have you forgiven Nick?”

John: “Never!  After he what he did to me!?”

Harry: “Then I guess you’re still in prison.”

***

I often radiate

That’s enough

You don’t have to radiate back

Yesterday I watched one of my favourite Christmas movies: It’s A Wonderful Life.  It’s the story of a good man who’s falling apart … George Bailey.  Financial disaster.  Yelling at his wife and kids, who hardly recognize him anymore.  All is lost.

Clarence Odbody is an angel who has been sent down to Earth to help George weather the storm.

Clarence is also a good man.  He has something for George to experience … disappearing from the planet.

“You’ve been given a great gift, George … a chance to see what the world would be like without you.”

No George.  No one to rescue his kid brother from a fall through the ice.  And so the 9-year-old boy dies.  No one to carry on the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan after his father dies.  And so no one to give poor families a break on their loans. 

No one to be kind to everyone he meets

And what about you and me?  Who has been touched by our kindness?  Whose lives would have been diminished if we’d never come along?

I ask you to look back through the years and see the faces who are smiling when they think of you.  Faces that will remember you even as death approaches.  Really get that you matter.

I’m doing that now

And the smile comes

I matter too

Don’t we all

She is Mary Oliver.  Many words have been written about her, but not today by me.  The most precious words are those that flowed from her hand and heart.

Here is one of Mary’s gems:

What Is the Greatest Gift?

What is the greatest gift?
Could it be the world itself – the oceans, the meadowlark
The patience of the trees in the wind?
Could it be love, with its sweet clamor of passion?

Something else – something else entirely
holds me in thrall
That you have a life that I wonder about
more than I wonder about my own
That you have a life – courteous, intelligent – that I wonder about more than I wonder about my own
That you have a soul – your own, no one else’s
That I wonder about more than I wonder about my own
So that I find my soul clapping its hands for yours
More than my own

***

May our eyes do what they’re designed to do

Gaze outwards, into the big wide world

And find the beauties there

Yesterday’s cyclocross race in Gavere was won by Fem van Empel from The Netherlands.  Here she is:

She’s a pretty young woman.  But beauty is far beyond youth and high cheek bones.  What do the eyes say?  Because I think true beauty resides there.  There is determination in her gaze.  “I will not give up.”

And what about perfect skin?  Specks of mud do not diminish her.  Nor the red spots where her cycling glasses were rubbing.

And now even more dirt:

The smile cannot be extinguished by exhaustion and cold and mud.

For the truest beauty, it takes two.  Loving each other, celebrating each other.  “We did it!”

And a cycling image from the road.  Beauty in an 81-year-old:

***

It’s the eyes

It’s the upturned mouth

It’s the spirit that won’t be denied

It’s a little town near Gent which today was the centre of the cycling universe.  I went.

Cyclocross is all about mud – uphill and downhill.  I wasn’t going to miss it. 

***

As I sat waiting for my second bus this morning, I decided to do a variation of loving the people I see.  I simply looked straight ahead and wished well everyone who came into my field of vision.

I could drink in pedestrians on the far side of the street.  People in cars over there were just momentary shapes, while close to me were blurred vehicles, each no doubt containing human beings.  I loved them all … because it’s a nice thing to do.

***

A strange house blew by me on the bus.  I saw the front wall and a side one.  The only windows were long horizontal slits, no more than 30 centimetres high.  What kind of world view does that give you?  Not much, I’d say.  I hoped that the other two sides of the building were open to the world … so the residents could have some mental health.

***

As I approached Gavere, I realized that my cell phone would soon be on life support.  Google Maps kindly showed me that there weren’t any restaurants or pubs (cafés in Belgium) near the bus stop by the cyclocross course.  So I got off earlier, in the town centre.  Now to find an outlet for charging.

The café was already jam packed with cycling fans at 11:30 – two hours before the first race.  I checked the walls, and there in the far corner I spied a lonely power bar.  We were about to become friends.

I sat at a table with my beloved cappuccino and watched the display of humanity … all cyclocross fans, I guessed – 90% men, all ages, even a sprinkling of kids:

Almost everyone had a Jupiler in hand, sometimes one in each hand.  It’s an “ordinary” Belgian beer, 5.2% alcohol, with a weaker taste than spectacular brews such as Westmalle Tripel.  But Jupiler accounts for 40% of beer sales in this country.

I simply watched the friendships, the joy of about to be watching cyclocross, and the number of empty bottles that sat on tables.  I was happy sipping my cappuccino.

***

Did I mention mud?  At the admission gate, I checked out people’s footwear.  Maybe a third of the folks wore high rubber boots.  They’d been down this road before.

Lying on the grass to form a less oozy path were 3-metre long slabs of metal.  Often I was slip-slidin’-away on them, and on the soaked grass.

No matter.  I was there to see riders’ kits almost unrecognizable with the brown splatters.  And any exposed skin was dotted with wet dirt.  Plus the faces were studies in filth and exhaustion.  The human determination to finish the race, to push a little harder, to pass the rider just ahead … was on display.

Here’s a pic of the men’s race beginning.  At this point I’d moved from the world of ooze to the civility of reasonable sand:

***

Gosh it was fun!

Even though my legs tightened up with all the standing

There are bigger things in life

In Belgium Christmas is celebrated on December 24.  I went to Maarkedal yesterday to join eleven other human beings for the celebration.  People such as my friend Lydia, her children Lore and Baziel, and her mother Marie-paule.

1.  Christmas Dinner

Around the long table we grilled our meats, vegetables and eggs.  Voices filled the air … mostly Dutch, some French and occasionally English.  My Dutch and French are thoroughly basic, and virtually non-existent when folks talk fast.

So I listened to the music of unknown conversations.  I watched faces brighten in joy at the punchline of a joke.  I danced with the other dancers.  I was included, and I felt it.

I had a long talk with Marie-paule about the troubles in life and how love is bigger than them all.  We talked slowly (!) and mostly in French.  Often I couldn’t find the right word but we still met.

2.  Overnight

It’s a logical progression: too much food and too much champagne  >  nausea.  Those six letters stayed with me for most of the night.  Sitting on the side of the bed with my plastic barf bag (like Düsseldorf!) wondering if the explosions would begin.  Unlike Düsseldorf, they didn’t.  Thank God.

When, oh when, will I learn the error of my ways?  I can’t eat like I used to, and alcohol is approaching the status of poison.  This man needs his sleep and a calm tummy.  Perhaps when I’m older I’ll wise up.

3.  On the Train With Baziel

He’s a medical student and had to get back to Gent to study.  Exams are looming.

Baziel visited me in Canada in 2019 as a young teen … and now he’s a young man, one who can absorb astonishing amounts of medical information.

We talked about family.  We talked about cycling, including tomorrow’s cyclocross race in Gavere (I’m going!).  And then I asked him to tell me about something he’s learning right now.

Baziel chose cancer.  He spoke clearly, using basic terminology, to communicate with the old fellow sitting across from him.  I learned about the complex mutating of genes, and how a tumour seems to have a consciousness as it tries to trick the body.

This was not the kid begging to go to McDonald’s every second day.  This was the future Dr. Baziel.

4.  A WhatsApp Call From Canada

Cam Clark is my oldest friend.  We met when we were 15.  Tonight he and his partner Ann Higgins phoned me from across the ocean.  Their voices were sweet.

Cam and Ann live most of the year surrounded by the woods and lake of Lion’s Head, Canada.  They love sitting outside in the morning and watching their tomato plants grow.  They love going for a walk on their shady road, a trip that takes fifteen minutes back and forth “without talking” … and three hours when there’s life to share with neighbours.  Lion’s Head is home.

We rambled through the years on the phone, and then towards April, when I’ll visit Canada – and them.  It’ll be a blessed reunion.

***

Christmas 2024

I hope it was a blessing for you and your loved ones

Merry Christmas

It’s a 2004 animated film that Jody and I watched many times before she died in 2014.  It was, and still is, magic for me at Christmas time.

Kids are invited onto a train heading to the North Pole, shepherded by a conductor who looks suspiciously like Tom Hanks.

The kids are asked to believe … in Santa, in goodness.  After many adventures, we end up in a square full of elves, with a gigantic Christmas tree in the centre.

And here comes the big man … white beard and red suit.  He’s wondering who should receive the first gift of Christmas.  He chooses our hero, who is unnamed in the film:

Guess who Hero Boy is looking at.

And of course there is also Hero Girl – such a kind person:

The same someone has her attention.

Also pulling at our heartstrings is Lonely Boy.  Love comes to him from Hero Girl and Hero Boy, as well as from two large men – one in red and one in blue:

Hero Boy is given a jingle bell by Santa but forgets it in his sleigh.  After the train trip home, Hero Boy wakes up on Christmas morning to find his sister handing him a gift … “From Santa”.  It’s the jingle bell.  Both Hero Boy and his sister ring the bell, and both hear the clear tone.  But mom and dad can’t hear it.

As the film closes, Hero Boy has become Hero Man:

At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed it fell silent for all of them.  Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound.  Though I’ve grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.

Many years ago, I worked at St. Mary’s Choir School in London, Ontario, Canada.  One time, two classes of 12-year-olds watched The Polar Express with me. 

As the credits were rolling at the end, I stood before the kids and held up three jingle bells on an orange cord.

Silence

Stillness

Many mouths open

…

And I rang the bells