Love and the Written Word

Maurice once told me that his brother, Jimmy who spent years researching a group of (I’m relying on memory here) 19^th century Jesuit scholars in Paris, felt in some ways closer to them than to anyone in his present-day world. I truly can understand this phenomenon. There are people, often the late/great, with whom I have connected in a singularly profound manner simply by reading their works. Sometimes the work is fiction, though this is rare. Usually the work is biographical, especially auto-biographical. And, go figure, these people are quite universally of the male gender. It’s not that I fail to be impressed and moved by women authors. I can admire and seriously stand in awe before their articulation of the human experience. I think for example of Virginia Woolf’s capacity for moving into the intricacies of personal thought and emotion, and of the breadth of scholarship and understanding shown by Alexandra Richie in her remarkable History of Berlin. But the relationship that I enter into with these women is markedly different from what happens when I encounter a male author who in some fashion speaks to something deep within me.

I think that this phenomenon must have its source in the difficulty my father had in relating to me in any articulated fashion. Some years ago my mother told me that when I was young she would say to my father that he didn’t talk to me. This was not something that I realized myself; her saying the words placed this piece of the family puzzle into a previously empty slot and I felt instinctively that it was true. My dad had a twin sister of whom he was very fond. This affection was clearly directed toward my sister, Linda, just 19 months my senior. He had a pet name for her – Plum. When she was a moody teen he gave her a day book with his message, SMILE, written into each page. I knew without reflecting too much on it that they enjoyed a special relationship. I had adored him when I was his really little girl. I have had some thoughts about why that early love did not blossom into a deeper rapport between us as I grew into awkward adolescence, but shall not pursue those here.

Suffice it to say that I grew up with a man from whom I was estranged emotionally, not recognizing until much later how I longed for and needed the love and guidance of a father. Into this space have entered a number of male writers whose works have engendered in me not just respect and interest but truly a love that has been healing and self-affirming. It is as though I have internally fashioned a father, or a group of fathers, who have spoken to me in various voices, teaching me things of value, all the while giving me something of themselves that I could understand and with which I could empathize.

In the last couple of days I have read Basil Street Blues, a small book by one of these authors, Michael Holroyd. I came across his work in the early 1990s after seeing the movie Carrington. Doris Carrington was a student at the prestigious Slade School of Art when she met and fell in love with Lytton Strachey, an older, bi-sexual (mainly homosexual) writer (mostly biographies); as his friend she entered into the loose confederation called the Bloomsbury group in early 20^th century London. Holroyd’s extensive biography of Strachey, indeed of the entire Bloomsbury gang, was clearly a reference point for the makers of the film.  All that he had written of these people was of great interest to me. Reading his book felt like slipping down into a delicious and privileged place beside this amazing group of people, people who were not just talented but who were endeavouring to find their own ways of being – intellectually, artistically, emotionally, and sexually -- in a world just emerging from the Victorian era. Holroyd was able to convey his immersion in this world, the fruit of his extensive research, at once sympathetically, and, historically objective. Writing of Strachey and his circle, he conveyed much of his own intelligence and sensitivities. Like absorbing the music of a loved composer or the art of a talented painter, I took in not just the product but the producer himself, feeling myself connected to him by bonds of mutual sympathies and interests.

Since then I have read his biographies of Bernard Shaw and Augustus John. I came across a copy of the latter in a used book kiosk in Bangkok, days before leaving for a tour of northern Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam in the year 2000. I knew nothing of Augustus John at the time; the book was bulky and expensive for a used copy but Holroyd’s name on the cover convinced me to purchase it anyway. It saved my life on that strange and exotic trip. The small tour group, led by a rather taciturn Australian chap (unusual for an Australian!), percolated with hard-to-process emotions that rumbled among its disparate members dwelling for long stretches in quarters so close as to eliminate any sense of privacy. This was true particularly for the three days (staying over-night in guest houses along the route) that we motored south on the Mekong River from northern Laos to its ancient capital, Luong Prabang, all eleven of us encased in a seat-less, wooden boat about 6’x25’. My own discomfort, more psychological than physical, was intense.

Ah, but my travel mate was Holroyd! In the end I did not find Augustus John an especially likeable character. Nonetheless, his artistic world opened and examined for me by Michael Holroyd gave me an interior, entirely private quarter of escape from the awkwardness and discomfort in which I travelled on the Mekong. {I have just reviewed my journal entries for those three days. In the event I mentioned only reading, not the subject or the author, and I diagnosed my troubles to be caused by a state of mild depression. Talking in the evenings with Mark who experienced none of my hyper-sensitivity to the group’s collective atmosphere, and finding comfort in reading, I made it through. Most of the entries made during those days relate to the sites visited along our route. How many different experiences we are able to have simultaneously, none of which rule out the others.}

          

One set of feelings that I have held over the years about people like Michael Holroyd relates to an incipient sense of envy of those who benefitted so clearly from a really good education and were able to translate these benefits into solid, excellent, and interesting work. I saw myself in contrast as someone who had in some ways grown up in an emotional and intellectual jungle, with little direction or purpose, who stumbled from one phase of life, one involvement after another, finding some semblance of a path for myself only in middle age. What a waste! What might I have done with my life had I had the advantages of some? Reading Holroyd’s Basil Street Blues showed me, not at all for the first time, how foolish such an attitude is. This book is family biography, a tale of Holroyd’s own family and his path through their various financial and relational calamities, even as he was educated in Britain’s finest “public,” i.e., private schools, complete with masters who caned boys for minor offenses and senior boys who took seriously their assignment to “toughen up” those younger than themselves through humiliation and beatings. Like most of us Holroyd took what was good from his early circumstances and gradually found his way through that which was painful and thwarting, finding a path for himself. His tale spares no one but is singularly lacking in bitterness. His love for all of his fractious family and his understanding of their individual attempts to find lives for themselves shines through his text. My response to his story is one of compassion and love, sensing in the work not just his considerable ability to convey moods and eras, but his own humanity and lack of pretentiousness. It is men like him that I have adopted for my own.

The Spring of My Discontent

How can it be that a mood of discontent is able to find its way into one’s very fine existence? What are its sources and its desires? “Damned if I know,” my brother-in-law Terry would likely say. Yet there it is, a sense that something is awry, a feeling of frustration that seeks its cause, a mood that easily turns into a bout of self-condemnation or even worse, of annoyance turned towards one’s sometimes long suffering partner. I can understand why people can be attracted at certain moments of their lives to all-encompassing ideologies or faiths that allow them a reference point with which to deal with all that assails them. A Catholic poet, maybe Gerrard Manley Hopkins, wrote “our hearts are restless ‘til they rest in Thee.” Having God or a cause as the deepest touchstone of one’s existence can bring a degree of certainty about the meaning or relevance of all of life’s events and challenges.

My own sources of discontent come I believe from some ideas that I have ingested along the line that to be a worthwhile person my days and weeks ought to contain particular elements. The details are not easily articulated though they seem to consist of activities that prove to myself or to some internalized observer that I am alright: i.e., solidly responsible and productive in my world. A bit of the Protestant ethic, I assume. I suspect that people positioned somewhat like myself, that is, people no longer living a life of predictable activities like caring for others and/or pursuing a profession, are more subject to this kind of inner discomfort. “What use am I?” one wonders as one looks over the array of little details that make up one’s day. This conundrum probably appears foolish to people whose difficulties lie more with finding any time at all to call their own. “Get a grip,” they might holler, following up with a list of worthwhile activities that one might pursue to fill one’s time. But finding things to do is not the issue. It is more a matter of finding oneself, finding the rhythm and the activities that are consistent who one is.

Transitions generally are stressful times. I sometimes forget that I am engaged in a long-term transition, from being fully employed to a state of barely employed at all. As that process has been gradual, I have been spared the intense dislocation experienced by many people who have worked outside their homes for decades and then suddenly face retirement. The person who faced the working day in more or less predictable fashions must now find a new way of being in the world. For some the transition is traumatic.

It’s a great feeling when you can simply voice your discontents or frustrations to someone with a sympathetic ear. My daughter, Elizabeth was here the other day seeing one of her clients. (She is using my office a few hours each week.) She had some time before catching the GO train back to Barrie so we went for a walk along Bloor. I had had a morning of being at sixes and sevens with myself, making plans to do some things and then because of one circumstance or another cancelling them. I asked her, “Do you ever feel like you are a hodge-podge of several people all at the same time, wanting and not wanting particular things, and then full of frustrated energy?” “Absolutely,” was her response, and we launched in to a great talk about the strangeness of the inner life.

One guiding principal that I return to most helps me as I navigate this peculiar phase of my life: if I allow the day to unfold rather than trying to assume control over it, I enjoy the things that come my way. “Follow your bliss,” was Joseph Campbell’s primary advice to people seeking a way of being in the world. Finding and following the things that make you happy is not necessarily as simple as it sounds, however. But I’m working on it.

Homeland Security and the KGB

We were up very early on Saturday to pick up Billie at Highway 88 on the 400. Elizabeth her mom, and Al were off for a late winter/early spring weekend at his cottage somewhere in the wilds of the north and west. Sunday morning, once again at a ridiculously early hour, with Billie and Emily in tow, we left for Kalamazoo to dine with the Hall clan. Billie, 10, and Emily, 13, are the big draw for Nathan and Lauren, our niece Jennifer’s kids, now about 6 and 8. These four have been playing together twice a year for some time, so quickly fall into familiar spaces with one another. It’s always a lot of fun. We travelled in our considerably reduced “ride,” having recently gone from a Chevy Malibu Max to a Mini. No one was allowed any more baggage than they could sit on or carry at their feet! It made for an interesting trip.

For the past few days I’ve been shuffling my way through the first 150 pages of an approximately 1000 page tome about the Soviet security and foreign intelligence agency, latterly called the KGB. (Almost 250 of these pages are notes and references.) A British historian, Christopher Andrew, was given full access by Mi6, the British intelligence service, to an archive of notes secretly documented for two decades by Vasili Mitrokhin, a highly placed KGB bureaucrat. By the late 1960s Mitrokhin’s political views had been gradually affected by the developing dissident mood throughout the territories dominated by the Soviet Union. In 1972 a move of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate from the Lubyanka to new quarters, necessitated a thorough organization of files kept since the 1917 revolution of the various incarnations of the secret services. Mitrokhin’s role was to review all of these files before they were sealed and stored. For the next decade as he made his way through this storehouse of Soviet history, he kept notes about its contents. Aware of the dangers of discovery, Mitrokhin dug out an area below the floorboards of his dacha outside Moscow. Over the years he managed to bury an enormous repository of secret information.

After his retirement in 1984 Mitrokhin pulled together some of his material, focussing especially on the Afghan war. More and more, however, he began to consider ways that he could bring his information to the West. During that decade, Mitrokhin typed up and organized some of the voluminous materials that he had gathered. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 Russian border controls were considerably weakened. Mitrokhin travelled to Latvia and approached the British embassy with his story and with some samples of his work. A later visit allowed a lengthy debriefing session with the Mi6 and in 1992 Mitrokhin left Russia with his family, settling in London. His vast store of archival notes was unearthed and transported west by Mi6 operatives. For several years Mitrokhin in collaboration with the secret services of five countries, continued to mine the data contained in these six large packing cases of notes. In 1995 Christopher Andrew was contacted by Mi6 and invited to work with Mitrokhin to publish those parts of the archive that related particularly to the KGB’s activities in Europe and the West. Their book was published in 1999.

The material is absolutely the stuff of John Le Carre! Aside from the details of the early years of the Soviet Union, there is a fair amount about the recruitment, care, and feeding of the agents known as the Magnificent Five: Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross – young men brought into espionage for the Soviets right from their days as students at Cambridge. The hundreds of agents in place in Britain and other European countries well before the outbreak of WWII testify to the seriously developed paranoia of Stalin. An example: he was entirely convinced that the many reports that Hitler was planning to invade Russia in the summer of 1941 was merely a plot hatched by the British to incite trouble with his new-found ally. Reports of the massing of German troops on his borders were dismissed by Stalin as lies and distortions. More than one officer lost not just his job but his life for pushing this idea too determinably. Once war did begin with Germany he believed that the British were trying to negotiate a separate peace with Hitler which would leave the Soviets alone against the Nazis. Considerable espionage resources were centred on his allies rather than the German’s themselves, both during and after the war.

But back to the more or less present: our trip to Michigan was accomplished in about 33 hours: Sunday AM off at 7; arrival 2PM at Kalamazoo, or, I ought to say, Portage, the Zoo’s sister city where Mark’s brother, Terry lives. Monday AM at 8, off to Toronto; arrival 4PM. The new(ish) car performed beautifully and the two girlies in the back were an unending source of interesting comment, interspersed with lots of laughing, general fooling around, and the odd nap. At the border a somewhat grouchy Homeland Security person grilled us: HS: How many in the car? Me: Four. HS: All Canadians? Me: Yes. HS: Where are you going? Me: To Kalamazoo. HS: What for? Me: To have dinner with my husband’s family. HS: That’s a long way to drive to have dinner. Me: We are used to it. HS: How often do you do that? Me: Two or three times a year; besides we are staying overnight. HS: It’s a long way to drive for such a short visit. Why wouldn’t you come earlier to have a longer visit with the family? Me: It works for us. HS: What are you bringing with you? Me: Some pies. HS: No alcohol or tobacco? Me: No. HS: How about fruit or vegetables? Me: No. HS: That girl in the back seat is eating an apple. Why did you say you were not bringing any fruit? Me: Oh, that’s part of her lunch. I didn’t think of that. HS: It’s a $1500 fine to not declare something. That’s a very expensive apple. Me: Yes. HS: (handing me back the four passports) Next time you’ll get the fine!

On the way home we had lunch at Wendy’s in Port Huron, the last stop before crossing the bridge to Sarnia. Emily asked for the word that meant marrying more than one person. Polygamy, I said. Right, she said, that’s the word I was looking for. Is that legal? No, I explained, except in some cultures and countries, for example, in Saudi Arabia and in some other Islamic countries men are allowed to have up to four wives. Only men can do that? She asked. Yes. Well then, if I wanted to marry all four of the guys in my band (meaning a band she follows on the internet and is mad for), I would have to have a sex change and they would all have to have sex changes as well. Yes, I said, of course, sometimes people have more than one partner but they just don’t marry them both because you could go to jail for that. It was then that I noticed that the lady who was sitting in a booth directly ahead of ours had been following our conversation. She turned her head to see what kind of people were talking about such things. We were amused but I’m not certain that she was.

In between these adventures we had visits with the Halls: Terry, his girls Dana and Natalie now in their early 20s but just babies when I first met them; Karen, their mother; Judi, his current partner; Bob, his boys Ben and David, with David’s wife, Kaela and their 7 month old baby; and Jennifer, Mike’s daughter with her husband Todd and their kids, Nathan and Lauren. We sat outside in the lovely spring sun and ate hamburgers and sausages hot off the barbie with salads and the pies that made it through customs without any ill will. We talked about a houseboat that Terry and Judi have engaged for a four night cruise on Lake Cumberland, Kentucky in late June. It has six bedrooms! Mark and I will be on board as will, most likely, Billie. We also had some time to talk about Mike, the second of the Hall brothers who died in February, just a week after visiting with us in Puerto Vallarta. We didn’t come early to spend a lot of time visiting with the family. But what we had was, as always, very fine.

On The Sons of Perdition

It’s April 15 and it’s snowing! But no matter, it won’t last. Yesterday we had balmy spring and in another two days it will find its way back to us. Spring in Toronto often seems like this: a little winter, a little pleasant weather, a bit more winter, and then suddenly: it’s full blown hot and summery! So much to complain about.

Last night Mark and I made our way over to our neighbouring Bloor Cinema to watch a documentary screened as a money-raiser for PEN, an organization that works world-wide to draw attention to and agitate for the release of writers imprisoned for positions unpopular to their political masters. Each film in the series has been chosen and is presented by a Canadian writer; the film is followed by an interview of the writer by a PEN rep and an audience Q & A. Linwood Barclay chose Sons of Perdition. My interest in the film stems from the reading of and reporting on Sally Denton’s book about the Mountain Meadow Massacres by Mormons that I posted in my earlier blog A Winter in Puerto Vallarta. The link: www.awinterinpuertovallarta.blogspot.com This film focuses on a present-day off-shoot of the Mormons that left the main branch in 1913. Late in the 19^th century in order to accommodate themselves to the strictures of the federal government, the main Mormon Church had officially banned polygamy.

This group, the FLDS (Fundamental Latter Day Saints) has received considerable notoriety in the past decade with the arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of its leader, Warren Jeffs, on charges of statutory rape. Inheriting his status of “prophet” and absolute leader from his father, Jeffs exploited the considerable freedoms of his location, concentrating wealth and power ever more in his own person. Girls and women, the precious commodity doled out as wives to men who obeyed his dictums, were maintained in extreme physical and intellectual isolation. The local school which previously took students to a grade nine level began to teach only religion and household or technical skills. Boys would work as early as age eight often in the businesses pursued by their fathers, developing capabilities for example, in several aspects of home construction. These boys were allowed greater latitude than their sisters, freedoms that for some allowed a recognition that there could be alternatives to their lives of constant obedience to fathers and the community hierarchy. The documentary’s title Sons of Perdition refers to a handful of these boys who chose to escape from the community near Colorado City, Utah, locally titled “The Crick.” Since early childhood all were taught that they had been especially chosen by God to partake in a holy church, to be part of the few elect who would be allowed into heaven. All others were in Jeff’s words, sinners and adulterers, doomed to an eternity in hell. The same fate lay in waiting for any who turned away from the teachings of the prophet – himself – and sought a life of independence.

Between 2001 and 2006 Jeffs expelled over 400 men and boys from the community because of disobedience to his orders. Boys and girls were forbidden to think of one another as possible mates. Rather they were to await God’s decision, mediated through the person of Jeffs, about their designated spouses. In practice girls, sometimes as young as 13 or 14 were awarded to men as old as their fathers or even grandfathers. Young boys and men were viewed by the hierarchy and the lucky winners of this marriage roulette as potential rivals for women and girls. Flirting with and especially attempting to date girls was sufficient cause for expulsion for the community.  Married men who incurred the leader’s displeasure were not only expelled: their wives, children, and homes were awarded to others more in Jeffs’ favour. Most of the expelled members moved to the close-by town of Colorado City, often floundering because of their extreme lack of preparation for the modern world.

This documentary does not focus on those who have been expelled, however. Rather it follows three boys who themselves decide to leave the community at about the ages of 15 or 16 because of their growing frustration with the constraints of FLDS life. Over a three or four year period the boys attempt to find new lives in a broadened universe, hampered by their lack of experience and education, struggling with views of themselves as doomed to hell fire, with the painful loss of connections with mothers and siblings, and, with insufficient structures available to them in the local community. Housing is a major problem as is education. Without a permanent address they are disallowed from registering in Colorado City schools. Perhaps assisted by the interest taken in them by the documentary crew over these years, the boys do eventually find their ways, one even assisting the emancipation of his mother and siblings from the abusive thrall of his father.

According to internet sources, some things have changed in the area since the initial screening of this documentary in 2010. The federal government initiated civil rights proceedings that eventuated in a change of jurisdiction from the local police, who clearly had taken orders from the FLDS hierarchy (still controlled by Jeffs from prison), giving county officers control of “The Crick” area. A charter school has been started (though it is not clear if there is legislation in place which enforces schooling of all children), and, some fathers banished by Jeffs have sued and won custody of their estranged children. However, many still live boundaried by fear of temporal or eternal reprisal, not just in the cocoon of this particular cult but of others around the world.

In the discussion that followed the film, I was reminded of the way that every culture presents to its people certain “facts of life” viewed through its own lens. These FLDS children growing as do we all like weeds within our cultures took entirely for cash the “fact” that unless faithful to the “prophet” they were doomed to an eternity of hell fire. Extricating themselves from this idea was one of the major difficulties for the boys who left their origins behind. As a child attending a Catholic school and learning my catechism with the others, I took in as “fact” the ideas presented. Consider my amazement when at the age of 12 I heard a tent-mate at Girl Guide camp say casually that she didn’t believe in hell! Astonishing! What had been entirely perceived as every bit as factual as the presence of the sun or the moon, suddenly became, like Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, a question of “belief.”I doubt that this experience threw into me into immediate apostasy but it was something that I never forgot. Even the name of the girl remained with me, so revelatory was her comment.

Well, that's all for today. Cheers and happy spring!

Intimations of Advancing Age

Yesterday, on a perfectly beautiful spring day here in the Annex, I felt unwell. Not so unwell that I couldn’t carry on my usual activities. In the morning I had a session with a couple exploring how to reconnect with one another after a years-long pattern of emotional separation. At lunch time Catherine, Theoren, and Emily arrived to enjoy Mark’s Mexican extravaganza meal on the deck outside our kitchen. Catherine and I managed a brief walk with Bacon (yes, Bacon!), their now four year old, funny-face dog, and caught up with each other’s recent activities and thoughts. After lunch we looked through three of the photo books that I have been putting together – great hilarity over many of the pics, particularly the series of shots that illustrate Emily’s introduction to the joys of chocolate at her first birthday party. The first tentative taste of her cake (by hand, I might mention) is followed by more and more enthusiastic applications of the treat to her now plastered mouth. The final shot shows a satisfied visage covered from jaw to hair line with her newly discovered favourite.

On the living room TV set the Jays were tromping Baltimore 11-3. I slipped in periodically to witness their explosion of bat wizardry. Yay, Blue Jays!! After the kids left I had a nap, quite a regular part of my afternoon, I confess, and then Mark and I walked along Bloor into what is now called Koreatown, the stretch of Bloor between Bathurst and Christie. So many and varied people were out and about lapping up the warm, sunny air, feasting in the general happiness of former prisoners of winter. We picked up fruit and vegetables, as well as some Korean specialties for Mark’s supper.

Still, throughout all of this I felt unwell. Main symptoms: a slight nausea and a feeling of general lassitude. The main downside: it put me off my food!! I am a person who seriously enjoys her meals and daily treats – the latter mainly of a chocolaty nature. 

You may find what I am saying to be silly and of little consequence, but to me the thought that this could someday be a feature of advancing age, a lingering dis-ease, i.e., the loss of a capacity to enjoy the simple, primitive pleasure in eating foods that one has enjoyed, was a real downer. There are so many basic facilities that we take entirely for granted until they are challenged. Being able to move about the world comfortably, to read (a capacity my mother lost years before her death because of advancing blindness), and to hear without strain the conversations of others and the sounds of music: all of the functions of our miraculous bodies that we take so for granted until they begin to fail gradually or in some rapid, calamitous fashion. Truly, we don’t know what we’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

Full disclosure: the feeling of being unwell past into history last night. It did, however, bring me up short and on to reflections of the importance of appreciating all that I regularly enjoy in this the middle passage of my advancing years. Further up-dates may follow as time passes. Be well!

P.S. To follow up with an earlier post in which I wrote about the torturous nature of a fitness class at the JCC: after mature (ahem) deliberation I decided to scale down those strenuous expectations of my body and have opted instead to begin with regular Pilates and yoga classes, one each day Monday to Friday. I have just returned from my second class in Pilates, a thorough work-out which has impressed upon me the existence of muscle groups of which I have been only theoretically aware. It is torture at a manageable level. But oh how happy one finds oneself when the hour is completed and one emerges into the spring air at Bloor and Spadina, filled with a sense of virtue and with no little pride that one's aging body can still learn new tricks.

Reading and War

After three weeks in Puerto Vallarta last December, I knew that I had settled in when I began to write. Now, four weeks after our move to Major St the marker of a deeper comfort with my surroundings is that I have resumed reading. Since our move I have been unable to settle deeply into any of the books that present themselves to me on our wonderful living room shelves. Rather, I have read only the newspapers, flyers that appear at our doorstep, and, the slim volume by William Trevor, Felicia’s Journey, de rigueur for our book club meeting last weekend. A very fine story, by the way. Suddenly yesterday I found myself entirely engrossed by a book by William Craig, entitled The Fall of Japan, a volume entirely focussed on the few months before and after the surrender of the Japanese government to the Allied forces. Publishing in 1967 Craig had access to documents and personnel in Japan as well as in the United States where the development of the atomic bomb and the decision to deploy its power to end the war was happening. In Japan the clear knowledge that their war was lost conflicted with the impossible to accept notion of their country being not just defeated, but occupied by a foreign force for the first time in its close to three millennial existence. The samurai code, deeply imbedded in the consciousness especially of the military officer class, demanded a fight to the death, even for some, the death of the entire country. This determination differed from a similar attitude among some Nazi leaders. Hitler’s personal bitterness and knowledge of his own impending death made him immune to concern about the fate of his fellow citizens.

In Japan a major sticking point for the diplomats and generals who after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were forced to consider the Allies demand for unconditional surrender, was their fear that the Emperor, revered by the nation as a god, would be removed from his central position in the Japanese hierarchy and culture. Their deepest loyalties were to this iconic figure, who in reality had had no executive powers for centuries. For about a week after the debacle of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an intense debate raged not only within the highest echelons of the army and the government, but also with the junior, young officer ranks of the military. Factions emerged that argued for and against the acceptance of the Allies demands. By a subtle wording of their official response to the US government, diplomats signalled their concern that a radical elimination of the Emperor as Japan’s central figure, would lead to revolutionary reactions. Recognizing the truth in this concern, the US, the actual leader in all “Allied” communiqués with Japan, similarly tailored their own acceptance of the Japanese response to allow for a nuanced approach to the role of the Emperor.

Nonetheless, the council of men charged with a final decision were unable to come to an agreement. The Premier took an entirely unprecedented step, asking Emperor Hirohito to meet with the council and to give his advice. Hirohito unequivocally entreated the council to accept the terms of surrender. He had never favoured the war which had essentially been entered into unilaterally by the military with their invasion of Manchuria in the 1930s. His personal suffering over the daily devastation of his people which continued with fire-bombing raids even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was evident in his address to the council. Even after this meeting, however, some in the council continued to agitate for a continuation of the war, regardless of the cost. They were abetted by some junior officers whose sense of personal and national honour forbade an acceptance of surrender.

On the night before the address to the nation by the Emperor, a radio recording already made, an attempt at a coup was mounted. The Imperial Palace was invaded by dissident soldiers. Their leaders sought particularly to find the recording and to destroy it. The plan was to hold the Emperor in “safe keeping,” from the “traitors” who had forced his acceptance of surrender, and to effect a prolongation of the war. In a secret room below the palace those charged with the recording were hidden from the invaders. They knew well that if they were discovered their own lives would be forfeited and that the official statement of surrender would not go out to the nation. They were not discovered. As the long night progressed, the rebellion lost its energy. Superior officers alerted to the revolt moved to quell its spread to other areas. By the next day it was completely finished. The main rebel leaders committed suicide, an outcome respected even by those whom they had attempted to coerce. There was happiness for no one in this ending of the war. The country had been ravaged; supplies of every kind were virtually non-existent; and, the people who had been told for decades of the cruel fates that awaited them should the Allies be victorious, feared for their future.

Craig’s book continues into the months during which McArthur arrives in Japan. I’m finding much in his narrative that is new to me. Like reading about or seeing a documentary about the inner workings of the North Vietnamese government and army during that later conflict, it helps to see “the enemy” as presented during a war, from its own perspective, from its own needs and logic, distinct from that given by war propaganda. War is perhaps the greatest possible tragedy to which we humans submit ourselves. It opens the Pandora’s Box of all possible horrors to be inflicted on our planet and one another. As I regard the long history of our species, I beg your forgiveness for saying that in all truth, I hold out little hope that we will be able to find other means of dealing with conflicts that inevitably arise over the quest for resources.

Everything Changes

We have been in our new digs for 3 ½ weeks and are reasonably quite settled. However, being grounded materially (i.e., our things have found their places and we no longer start to drive north to Croydon Rd when we are heading home) is not quite the same as being grounded internally. When we arrived at our rented condo in Puerto Vallarta last December it took about three weeks for both of us to feel fully settled within ourselves and within the building and the neighbourhood, even though we are very familiar with PV. We hadn’t quite reached that space of knowing where we were and where everything else was without having to reflect upon it. Our environment had to become internalized in a way that allowed for a deeper settling within it and within ourselves.

Finding that space will, I believe, take longer in this setting. We know the Annex area from extensive periods of living here but it feels like we are experiencing it from an entirely different angle. It was seven years ago that we moved up to the Cedervale community to accommodate living together with (though in separate apartments) Catherine and her two young children: Theoren, age 8, and Emily, age 6. Previous to that move we had been involved in their lives in an almost daily manner, right from the time Theoren was born in 1998. A year or so before the move to Croydon, Elizabeth came from Vancouver with Billie (age 1 ½) in tow, and they had become a regular part of our weekly lives as well. During that seven year period there have been major changes for all of us, the impact of which I am now experiencing as we settle into our home on Major.

When we moved to Croydon, Mark and I were what I would call “young seniors,” fully active in our professions and with our young families. We are now at quite a different stage of our lives. I have gradually morphed into a condition of semi-retirement, consistent with long periods away from Toronto. Mark, who always spoke of his desire to work, like his hero Frank Lloyd Wright, into his nineties, has also begun to mellow, acknowledging to me the other day that he was beginning to feel lazy. I saw this as a positive development. We now have more time but our grandchildren, once a big component of our focus both in Toronto and at our year-round cottage in Orillia, have also move on to different locations and stages.

Three years ago Catherine moved from Croydon to a house that she purchased in the junction area. Last September she rented out her place to three young women and moved her brood to Jackson’s Point on the southern side of Lake Simcoe. The kids go to school there during the week and on the weekends come to Toronto to be with Eli, their father, and especially with their vast clan of cousins on his side. Now 13 and 15, their interests and needs are no longer ones easily satisfied by grandparents. Besides, their parents no longer need us to care for the kids while they work or socialize. It’s a completely new landscape. Elizabeth and Billie have also moved north, to Barrie, now sharing a house there with Elizabeth’s fellow, Al. Elizabeth will be coming to Toronto one or two days a week to see a few clients in her role as an addictions counsellor. She is using my office here so I will get to see her fairly regularly. But, the family dinners and the sleep overs seem now to be a thing of the past – at least until we are able to find new patterns within these changed realities. Clearly I am experiencing the quandary of the empty-nester grandparent. I’m still here but where have you gone???

So it’s not just a new home but new ways of being that we are coming to terms with. The apartment is terrific; the location could hardly be better; but now the challenge, perhaps particularly for me is to find new and satisfying places in which to expend my time and energy. I’ve made a couple of new friends and I’ve joined the JCC. Other connections will follow I know, even, I hope different levels of connection with our rapidly changing adolescent grandchildren.

On Time, Exercise, and Baseball

This past week has been busy because of several developments: the baseball season has started; suddenly I have had a jump in the number of clients asking for sessions, some of them people I had not heard from for awhile; and lastly, on Monday I joined the JCC, the Jewish Community Centre, a mere two short blocks from our new home. Since, I have gone over each morning for a class or for a spell on a treadmill and a bicycle. Two of the classes were a relatively meditative form of yoga, very pleasant. 

The third, entitled Fitness Fundamentals, had nothing meditative about it whatsoever. It was an hour of flat-out rapid fire cardio exercise, the most vigorous workout I have had in decades. I kept looking at the clock, thinking that I would hang in until a half hour had past, then, that I would give it another few minutes to see what else the instructor would ask of us, then, that since we were promised a period down on the mat, I’d wait to see if perhaps it would be a restful interlude – it wasn’t. I stopped a couple of times as I started to feel dizzy. Betty, the instructor cautioned me to keep moving even if only slowly to prevent “blood pooling.” I stayed to the (bitter?) end, perhaps only out of some instinct of pride or of embarrassment to be seen leaving prematurely. What was fun at the beginning gradually felt something like a self-imposed torture, however. At the end several women came to me to encourage me: one said that it takes three to six months to internalize all of the moves of the class in order to feel in sync; another told me she had been doing that class for 15 years and that if this was my first time I had done spectacularly well; one other advised me to let the instructor know that I had stopped because I was dizzy. Betty also made a point of talking with me, congratulating me and encouraging me. So I will return. I know that it will be good for me on lots of levels, so regular self-torture, here I come. It is quite possible though that without the kindness of those women, I might have opted for slinking away with my tail firmly tucked between my legs, seeking only the gentle and peaceful forms of exercise available. Who knows, I may be ready for Zumba in a few months!

The baseball season presents a challenge for me: I get drawn into watching the almost daily games because I love the game and feel for my poor benighted Blue Jays who struggle from one season to another. At the same time it is an enormous expenditure of time and focus. I sit here in my beautiful living room/library (because for once the expanse of shelving allows our books a common site) looking at the titles and thinking how I long to be perusing them, all the while distracted by my concern for the game. I find more and more that I do not have a great capacity for multi-tasking. I can’t read in anything like a thoughtful fashion, nor for that matter do any writing, while there are other things going on. It’s a funny thing about the leisure of retirement or semi-retirement: though objectively there is more time available to one, there never really seems to be enough to satisfy the demands of all that needs to be done or that one would ideally like to do. I keep having this fantasy of being a more sociable person, but the work and time to convert this into anything like reality seems beyond me. Maybe my sociability has to find its outlet in these letters that I like to send to you from my new perch in the (south) Annex.

P.S. I should add that I did begin one piece of writing this week that because of a lack of concentrated time I have been unable to complete. It relates to thoughts I have been having about the importance to a child's sense of agency to allow some latitude for mischief and for dissident expression. This topic has more to do with a blog that I started a few years ago called Thoughts on Psychotherapy -- the link is www.thoughtsonpsychotherapy.blogspot.com for anyone interested. I haven't looked at it for quite some time but if I finish the above piece I will post it there.