Tag Archives: Beauty

Phlox

They’re little flowers, some of them purple and some of them white, that grow in ditches and woodlots in Southwestern Ontario.  They’re very pretty.  I first encountered these beauties in June, 1990 when I took the bus across the country to find an apartment for Jody and me in London.  I was walking in the woods near Western University, rounded a corner on the trail and came face-to-face with a bevy of floral sublimity.

Did I just say “bevy of floral sublimity”?  Hmm.  Perhaps it’s a mental problem.

Phlox only blossom during the first two weeks of June.  So like human lives, we need to cherish them while they’re with us.   I read an article recently (Or did I listen to a talk?  Or did a friend just say it to me?) about beautiful things being beautiful because they’re impermanent.  I believe that’s true.  Jody’s great spirit was a blessing to me.  I revere the moments we had together, knowing that, in this physical life, they are now gone.  But Jodiette, may we rediscover each other in different bodies next time.

I drove to the small town of Bothwell today to visit a friend.  Bunches of phlox said hi along the way.  I wanted to possess them, make them mine forever.  Sorry, guy.  Life doesn’t work that way.  For part of the trip, I scanned the horizon, left and right, trying so very hard to find phlox.  Eventually I woke up and let that intense focus fade away.  From then on, my eyes softened, and phlox sometimes just came into view.  I took in the broad canvas of the natural world as I reflected on Jody’s words:  “I am all trees, Bruce.  I welcome you everywhere.”  Soft welcoming feels so much better than concentrated searching.

Thank you for today, dear phlox.  See you next year, I hope.

Clothes

I started one day a month ago but I couldn’t handle it.  I stopped.  And this morning I began again.

I know that I need to get Jody’s clothes out of the house, but it’s hard.  So many memories of my darling wife enjoying her bright ensemble.  One of the first items I looked at was Jody’s wedding dress.  What a fine day that was … June 25, 1988.  My sister-in-law Nona said that I could put the dress in storage, but that didn’t feel right, and it still doesn’t.  I’m going to give all of Jody’s clothes to Goodwill.  Right now, I’m looking at a 24×36″ poster of my lovely wife that’s hanging on our family room wall.  She’s beautifully wrapped in the dress and veil.  But all that whiteness is not the woman I love.  “Let go of my clothes, Bruce.  They’re not me.”  Okay, Jodiette.

My favourite photo of Jody is of her sitting in a Quebec City restaurant, looking at me.  She’s wearing a short-sleeved top, with horizontal stripes of light and dark blue.  When I found it hanging in our closet a month ago, I held it to my chest and cried.  “Let it go, Bruce.”  So I did, folding it gently and adding it to the pile in a huge clear plastic bag.  Sigh.

This morning, I made an agreement with myself to work on Jody’s clothes for an hour.  I kept my word.  But now I’m exhausted.  An hour in a closet … remembering, crying and packing.  Also marvelling at the beauty of Jodiette’s tops and pants and dresses.  The colours of the rainbow, reflecting my girl’s embracing of life.  How I miss you, dear one.

I held a scalloped green-turquoise-black dress, adorned with glitter.

“You’re so pretty in these pretty clothes, life wife.”

“Thank you, husband.”

 

Only Birds and Deer Need Apply

I’m visiting my friends Cam and Ann in Richmond Hill, north of Toronto.  Although most of the town seems to be dominated by huge, tall homes that fill nearly all of the lot, I’m sitting in an oasis of peace.  Cam and Ann live in a small house that’s 150 years old.  It’s part of a huge property that her uncle used to own.  He’s donated a small lake, with its surrounding wooded slopes, to the Province of Ontario, with one stipulation: no people will be allowed in this newly created conservation area.  Uncle holds the vision of a sanctuary for wildlife, untroubled by the purposeful activities of mankind.  Ann and other family members will be allowed to walk on the land until they move away from the property.  When they’re gone, no human beings will touch this earth … forever.

Yesterday afternoon, we went walking into another world.  On the shoreline, we watched an owl fly silently across the lake, and a few minutes later heard its mournful hooting.  Otherwise … silence.  The lake was frozen and was decorated with tiny animal tracks going across.  The trees were the tallest of guardians.  Some of them were the most exquisite pines – tall trunks of vibrant red topped by small clumps of needles.  Jody was there with me.

We walked to an old boathouse – a berth on the water topped by a large room with windows viewing the lake, topped by a rooftop patio.  Ann told us about the parties she had enjoyed there as a young person.  Looking down from the roof, I saw a dock extending into the lake, with two railings jutting out of the ice, and I was torn.  I imagined happy swimmers hauling themselves out of the water, lots of laughing, and peaceful moments of companionship as twilight settled over the land.

All the history of humans will end soon.  The birds will fly joyfully.  The deer will bound up and down the slopes unhindered.  A sanctuary for them, and not for us.  I was happy.  I was sad.  Life showing me all its colours once more.  Let both sides embrace you, Bruce.

Toronto – Part 2: Fish Up and Fish Down

After depositing our belongings in the hotel room on Thursday, Neal and I braved the icy blasts and walked four blocks to Ripley’s Aquarium.  I was fully decked out in sweater, toque, parka and mitts, plus Jody’s white scarf wrapped tightly over my nose and mouth.  Oh my God!  I was just so cold.  My mind started heading to “I’m bad” but I nipped that in the bud.  Not bad, just sick.

Inside the building, I revelled for a minute in my senior reality.  I saved $10.00 off the adult price.  But the glee faded quickly when I saw the first tank just down the hall, populated with wild splotches of colour.  What came through was the warmth of peace.  I was somewhere special.

The upper tank was a tall cylinder full of large fish of every hue.  Actually, some seemed to have no hue, but all of the residents moved with such grace.  A lower and wider tank was teeming with small fishies, just as glorious as the big guys.

I just stared at all this flowing life.  Soon, I saw us human beings inside that aquarium too.  We’re so different from each other in how we colour our lives.  Some of us show the world a bigness of spirit, and some of us keep that part well hidden.  But we all can swim.

I didn’t know the names of any of these fish, although I could have studied the nearby signs.  I didn’t want to.  No labels please.  I just wanted to drink in the beauty.

Further down the hallway, I came upon a giant cylindrical tank that stretched way above my head.  It was crammed with silver fish, each about six inches long.  They were in a “school”, and seemed to hover in place … all these parallel lines of beings.  And again I saw us, this time how we are identical in our hearts, in wanting to be happy, in wanting to love and be loved.  I stared some more.

Many more tanks of fish beckoned me along the way.  A long pedestrian tunnel showed sting rays and sharks above, accompanied by far smaller swimmers.  The world was full of movement.  The curved glass distorted the size of the fish.  And soon it was my head that was swimming.  Dizzy.  Nauseous.  All I could do was sit down on a bench and wait for Neal’s return.  He came and went and came back again.  I sat and reeled.  I closed my eyes.  Families passed by in bubbles of excited chatter.  I faded.  My stomach rolled.  Both the happy variety of fish/human beings and their exquisite school of sameness were long gone.  I was sad.

I decided to follow the path of overhead fish to its end, and emerged to sit in front of a blessedly flat tank full of sting rays.  The huge ones rested on the sand floor, occasionally rousing themselves to float over the rock outcroppings.  The small ones pressed their bellies near the glass and climbed.  Although I was looking at their breathing apparatus, it sure looked like a lot of smiling faces to me.  And I had to smile back, despite the pain.  Messengers had come to tell me it would be all right.

And life is definitely fine, thank you.  I’ll just keep swimming through all the waters of the world.  Sights abound.

Flower

Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature … Flowers would become for us an expression in form of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless within ourselves.  Flowers, more fleeting, more ethereal, and more delicate than the plants out of which they emerged, would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless.  They not only had a scent that was delicate and pleasing to humans, but also brought a fragrance from the realm of spirit.

So well said.

A lovely pink orchid sits on the computer desk facing Jody’s bed. Its stem arches in a question mark and the blossom bows to the earth.  It’s a blossom whose time is nearly done but it has given us joy for months.  Soon it will fall, in its own time.

In the mountains of long ago, three flowers beckoned me.  When I arrived in Waterton Lakes National Park each June, the meadows glistened with beargrass.  Tall stalks supported a glorious head of countless tiny white flowers.  They waved in the wind, greeting me as I emerged from the woods.

In Rowe Meadow, as the snows receded, glacier lilies popped through the drifts.  Like Jody’s lily, these precious yellow beings lowered their petals toward the ground.

Later in the summer, on the ridge of Mount Lineham, I found tiny clumps of alpine forget-me-nots.  Only a couple of inches high, these blue ones beckoned me to kneel down and gaze into the centre of it all … some hearts of yellow, some pink.

Now, as winter approaches, blooms are still with me.  I have a program called “Flower” on my PlayStation 3.  Closed buds open graciously as I swoop the controller low over the land.  And I am happy.

Artful

When I directly view, say, a great Van Gogh, I am reminded of what all superior art has in common: the capacity to simply take your breath away.  To literally, actually, make you inwardly gasp, at least for that second or two when the art first hits you, or more accurately, first enters your being: you swoon a little bit, you are slightly stunned, you are open to perceptions that you had not seen before … You are ushered into a quiet clearing, free of desire, free of grasping, free of ego, free of the self-contraction … For a moment you might even touch eternity.

So many years ago, I was taking a philosophy of education course at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta.  The professor, Gordon Campbell, gave us one assignment for the whole course: write a daily log, reflecting on our discussions, the readings and our field trips (such as to the school on a nearby Blackfoot reserve).  And of course, apply it to our lives.  Such freedom! Such responsibility.

I was looking through a book in the university library, and flipped the page to a remarkable photo, showing Michelangelo’s sculpture “Pieta”.  Jesus is lying in the lap of his mother Mary after he had been crucified.  I stared at the immense sadness in her face, at her right hand supporting Jesus’ back, and at her left hand, palm up.  After the silence diminished, I started writing, about the suffering in the world, in homes, in the classroom.  Over the course of the next day or two, it seems to me that I completed 8 or 10 pages.  It just flowed out of me.

I think the words are gone now, probably discarded inside a pile of stuff on one of our moves.  But she and he remain, tucked away within me.

Near us, in St. Thomas, there is a shrine also tucked away, in a leafy corner of a cemetery.  The centrepiece is an elevated statue of a kneeling girl, with arms upraised, looking in wonder at the golden ball she holds in her hands. Her smile is so sublime, beyond any words I could attach to it.  I go and visit her, just to be with the young lady.  Not often enough for my liking, though. People like me need to bask in her glow.

Sometime in the 1970s, my former wife Rita and I visited the Butchart Gardens near Victoria, B.C.  Paths dropped us into a host of wonderlands, such as the Sunken Garden, the Japanese Garden, and the Mediterranean Garden.  For part of the time, I explored on my own.  I was walking on a manicured lawn, bordered by a rainbow of flower beds.  My stretch of lawn was getting narrower and began curving to the right.  Finally I was “ushered into a quiet clearing”, where I came face-to-face with another girl.  She was naked, and her arms covered her breasts.  Her eyes touched the sky … no smile, no frown, just space.  So lovely to behold.

Three statues.  One Spirit.