photo credit: Marcelo Moreira on pexels.co
Back in 1982 a strange little film came out called Koyaanisqatsi. That is a Hopi word for life out of balance. If you have seen the film, you will know. If you have not, there are copies to be found online. I can not do it justice here but I can say it stayed with me. With some effort I learned the word, Koyaanisqatsi, and repeat it to myself from time to time. It sums things up, now.
I have felt off balance since October 7, 2023. Along with everything else, there is genocide unfolding in front of us. If the word genocide offends you, perhaps this is not the column for you today.
It is not the only thing that leaves me off balance. There is much disturbance these days, but Gaza has so tipped the scales I can not seem to find my way back. At least I am alive, secure and in my own community. I just can not seem to organize myself well or long enough to write too much.
Here is the point of the strange title and today’s topic. I have not been writing regular columns recently on substack because of the heightened mental effort needed to find some balance each day. To do so, I rely on some things. This morning I wrote down a few of them.
I look for facts to clarify the things that worry me. Luckily, I have a good education and still have some remnants of wits about me. For example, I search out some facts on not just on covid, but on viruses, airborne transmission and infection control. Certainly I will make some errors but I have had some training that helps me to focus on well researched information. I use what scientific and academic training I have and I rely on the rigour it brings. Living a well informed life helps on the days that threaten to give me a case of the staggers.
Each day there are openings to add some small act to keep myself upright. At hospice last week I sat in a reading chair in the hall while my extended family visited their brother. His room is not large, there is no space for the extra voice in the air or body in the room. As they needed, one or more would leave, stand by me for a while, take a breather or a sandwich from my pack and then return. My sisters told me of their troubles. On the way home I bought some bear oil liniment from the Indigenous man who makes and sells it in a small market near where I live. Wonderfully soothing for sore muscles, I will give each of them a bottle for their back pain when I see them next. I need to do these little things as much as they need relief from their aches. None of us needs a lecture on how the body expresses grief. That fixes nothing. This oil, well, it fixes a little thing, for a little while.
My grandmother was a homesteader on the Saskatchewan prairies in the 1920s. The family literally started out in a sod shack. They farmed, they were poor. Every rare once in a while, she would buy some real butter, calling it ‘food for the soul’. Just a little bit of something wonderful. I seem to be doing the same these days, when I make food for others. Familiarity, comfort, taste, all are priorities now. I have found a good butcher with local product. We are almost at the end of the garden produce I froze or jammed last summer, but I can still use these things to make some food for the soul. To have only two or at most four at the table, with a meal and some wine, brings a gentle comfort to us all. That rights the balance for a while. Since we do not go out to entertainment venues anymore, the costs balance too.
So many good things are being destroyed, deliberately, by other humans. Many think I am a sweet tempered person. Do not be fooled. Of course I feel rage. Often. Restraining my fingers on the keyboard, the words in my mouth, is another small balancing act. Harming someone with words is rarely useful. I do not need to go off on a rant, and that other person rarely needs to hear it. Sometimes, yes, necessary to force an offender back, but rarely. Even then, words can be tempered. I know what I feel, I do not have to say it out loud. Restraint buys some balance for me as well as them.
Spring has come to southern Ontario in the middle of February. It is very wrong, this much warmth so early in the year. The only balance to be had is bundling up, for it is still below 10C, and go for a bike ride with my husband. Fresh air, exercise, freedom, waving at the neighbours. Something right in the world there too. For a little while.
I am struggling to write the next book. I started writing notes for it, tentatively titled The Language of the Unconscious, almost two years ago. It is a lot of work to pull together. Although the ideas come most days, the organization is a huge job. I want to do this, I want to bring some shape to the chaos, but it goes slowly. I get older and may not actually pull this off. At least trying gives me hope that I can say something of merit. The discipline of the work brings some sense of balance as well.
Such small acts, little efforts, to try and find a footing in a scary and unstable world. That might be the best metaphor for this time: one foot in front of another. Balance now demands making some thoughtful choices about where I show restraint and where I act. This is what I’ve got right now. You have the options as well. Each of us can find ways to stay upright as much as possible, as long as we can.