The Garden Snail

Moving softly in gliding silent strides, a garden snail caught my eye.
I gently moved the private creature to a quiet spot away from the tools
my husband and son were using to repair some damaged patio tiles.

The snail's pretty brown shell sported leopard like stripes,
that seemed bold compared to its shiny grey spongy body.
I sensed its concern as to my intent as I placed it on some tasty bright green grass.

The sun hit the animal's small body, casting a  perfect shadow of its shape,
with the pointed antennae looking perfectly lined out in charcoal black ,
its shadow self a perfect twin to its earthly coloured shell and vulnerable mass.

As the snail moved in slow motion across the grass, I was struck how its shadow
kept perfect time with its master's pace, I delighted in the observation as would an awestruck child.
Here there was revealed more than what was supposed to meet the eye.

If only in this life we would find a balance between our shadow and our light,
letting neither one get ahead of itself, not the good , not the bad, as we leave
our trail and mark along the path that we glide along, feeling our way as best as we can.

So often it is tempting to let only our light come forth, and we deny the need of the shadow following behind. So often the light is denied to favour the power of the shadow, leading to great harm.
To allow both to live side by side, in humility and awareness that few are all light or all night.

The garden snail had moved out of my sight by the time my musings came to their conclusion,
but the humble, quiet creature lingered in my mind. It had taught me something important I thought.
To be gracious, to be kind, and never to lose sight that we are all struggling with both the shadow and the light that life's mystery gives us no choice but to master and understand. 


Trudi Ralston.
September 26th, 2016.

Breakfast Bliss

It was late Sunday morning and the sun was streaming its silk opaque light into the bedroom. I looked over to my husband who was softly snoring sunk deep in our blankets. I stretched luxuriously in the warmth of our big bed, and looked over the edge to see our dog curled up on her pillow bed hugging her favorite pink flamingo stuffed animal. I got up to check on our old kitty Tigger who had somehow pulled a muscle in his rear right leg, and was walking around stiffly like a little old man with a bad case of sciatica. My son's bedroom was quiet, he was also still sound asleep. I smiled. Everyone was home, that meant my husband would cook his big Sunday breakfast. The best part about his breakfasts was that he enjoyed making them as much as he enjoyed eating them, and we loved his enthusiasm. The kitchen would fill with smells of hot waffles and pancakes, of bacon cooking crisply, of eggs with grated cheese, of orange juice, honey, butter and plum jam, of coffee. I love the fact that my husband likes to cook, it makes for many a cozy meal and hour on the weekends, and it gives me a break from the meals I cook during the week and on also on weekend nights. After the leisurely relaxed late breakfast, my husband and son got busy repairing some of the thousand tiles on our patio that got loosened over the course of the 22 years ago when they were installed. My father and husband did the project together when our son was just two. Over the years , the cold and rain and heat had done damage and split about 70 of the tiles, and there were quite a few stretches of grout that needed to be redone as well, even where the tiles were intact. I busied myself with the dishes and the rest of the weekend laundry which always included the bedding and blankets and pillowcases of our dog and cat. Then I was able to get back to the tapestry of a young cat I was currently working on. That allowed me to hear and watch the guys busy on the tiles , as I use the kitchen table by the sliding glass door which leads to the patio and deck. It was such a simple weekend, with such simple pleasures, such simple tasks, but they filled my heart with a rush of bliss and warmth. I also felt a deep sense of gratitude and an understanding that having a family that lives in peace and safety and happiness is not something to be taken for granted. My husband and I both grew up dealing with parents stuck in dismally dysfunctional marriages fueled by the rage and misery of alcohol abuse and all its ugly minions. The world is today very tense, here and in Europe, the Middle East, parts of Africa and Asia. Hostility seems to be everywhere. There is a tendency to think in terms of us versus them, of turning the clock back to a time of intolerance and hatred towards those who are different from  us, both in our own country, and abroad. The most vulnerable pay the price, especially in the endless war in Syria, that to me raises the spectre of the atrocities during World War II when it comes to the brutality of the extremists towards their own people, and the indifference from some communities towards the suffering of the millions of refugees fleeing the barbarism of fanatics.
In contrast, the simple joy of a relaxed weekend breakfast and weekend project with my husband and son I know are treasured gifts. My mother was not very fond of my small and modest house, of our old cars, our simple lifestyle and unpretentious friends. But I think in hindsight she may have reconsidered her askew ambitions and relationships and how she favored them over her marriage and her children. Compared to some of the luxuries of having been raised the daughter of a successful CEO, my life is indeed very quiet and unassuming, but it is also happy and peaceful and real, and devoid of illusions and lies. My family is very small, since it consists of just my husband and son, but we have everything we need. We have a cozy home, plenty of clean water, and good food, we have warm, clean beds, safety, security, the love and devotion for each other, some loyal neighbours and friends, a supportive church. We live in a quiet street with good neighbours. We do not have to worry about bombs overhead, about destruction and fear around every corner, about fleeing our homeland with nothing but the clothes on our back, of seeing family and friends killed in the hatred and terror of a brutal civil war, of living without hope and a very elusive future. Perhaps if more of us appreciated what blessings we have, our hearts might be a little more giving, a lot more tolerant, and feel more love instead of fear when it comes to loving our neighbours in our own country and abroad who can only dream of experiencing a peaceful, bountiful breakfast on a sunny, peaceful morning in their cozy, safe,quiet home with all family members, children and adults, alive and well.
In that light, we should try very hard to keep war out of our hearts and minds, because that is where it starts, and before we know it we are part of the madness that thinks we should dislike or hate someone because they look and think differently.  The all wise Jedi master, Yoda, from the blockbuster success movie series, " Star Wars " cautions at one point that  " ... Fear creates anger, and anger hatred, and hatred creates suffering." This admonition seems to echo the Zeitgeist we are struggling with. Let us hope that in view of the horrific mistakes of the all too recent past of World War II that cost the lives of millions and millions of people, we can overcome that terrible blind fear and hatred that is born out of selfishness gone mad.   

The Encounter

The soft, sweet scent of one of the last Sweet Pea flowers in the backyard garden tickled my nose as I inhaled its perfume deeply. The sky above me stretched turquoise in  a tight, smooth canvas. I luxuriated in the caress of the sun's warmth relaxing my face. A few white clouds floated overhead, reminding me of misplaced cotton balls. The silence all around me bounced a familiar echo through the quiet house. I put the house keys down on the kitchen counter and they briefly sounded with the resonance of a chime. It was cool enough now to wear a light sweater on my daily walks with our dog, and the slight early evening chill felt comforting. Plenty of yellow, dry leaves were crunching under my feet as I crossed the lawn to refill the dog's water dish. The solitude I had initially been hesitant about, started to feel more like a chance to get to know a part of myself I had not been around, so to speak, since I was about 14. I think that was about the last time I felt truly comfortable spending time by myself, with myself. After that, the solitude turned into a melancholy loneliness being pretty miserable in a strict Catholic all girl high school. The challenges of being in college abroad as an intellectually well prepared but socially inexperienced and shy teenager only reinforced the sense of alienation and often intense loneliness. My last year in graduate school was very satisfying as I met several of the friends who would become important and remain in my life, some of them through intense correspondence. It was also the year I met my husband of now 30 years. It took me a very long time to find my identity in my marriage, to find my voice. I am so glad to be writing, to have a memoir out on Amazon and a book of poems written in French that are inspired by my friend Driss Ouaouicha, apart from also a publication of poems in English. I keep my blog I started 4 years ago current, and am working on a second publication of poems in French and English. Writing is a solitary occupation, and in my case it has allowed a journey of self discovery, of coming to terms with the past, the now and hope for the future. After going on seven years of confronting my trolls, I am beginning to feel more comfortable with myself, and I am no longer so reluctant to embrace my solitude. It feels in some ways like I am meeting myself for the first time, or at least reintroducing myself to me. And it feels both exciting and a bit unnerving. It feels I have a second chance at defining myself, something that was cut short because my adolescence was simply removed by a very strict father and a mother who was all too glad not to have to acknowledge that she had three daughters threatening to crowd her mirror and her narcissistic obsessions to be the prima ballerina at all times. Feeling comfortable with myself, how I dress, my makeup, my perfume, my choice of purse or shoes, jewelry, on a perhaps silly level, and my thoughts, my dreams and hopes, my will, my strength, are all feeling to be finally mine, not indoctrinated through either one of my parents, although I often remember the lessons of wisdom I learned from my father. To be free of my mother's ghost and negative influences is a great relief. It has been such a long journey back to myself. I may be 59, but I feel new and fresh the way I did when I was a young teenager. I feel a sense of identity and energy , of peace and hope all in one, it feels so good. The challenge of solitude due to all the family loss remains, but I feel confident I can work through it. I certainly no longer feel the need to walk away from it. The inheritance of solitude is a now a part of me.  It  has allowed me to undertake this journey of self discovery, of becoming friends with myself. A long overdue trek into uncharted territory.     

The Decision

Books are known for their capability to leave lasting impacts on our psyche, mind and soul.
And when they are done right,  well done movies do the same. They leave an indelible imprint on the viewer who feels changed by the experience. I am not sure why, but I had not seen the 2002 movie  by Roman Polanski, " The Pianist " until this weekend. The movie, based on the book by the pianist Wladsilav Szpilman, is sublime, in its cinematography, in the setting of the miserable conditions in the forced resettling of the Warsaw Jewish families in the walled in ghetto,
in the brilliant acting by Adrien Brody. The haunting depiction of Nazi inhumanity during the Holocaust is a subject that will forever remain raw and sickening in the history of human kind. It continues to stun me that the worst acts of genocide were perpetuated by inhabitants of the center of European civilization. I remember how in the aftermath of World War II my father struggled with the idea of establishing friendships with Germans necessitated by his business connections. My younger sisters both dated young German students while in college in the US, and I know how my parents both had a hard time accepting the possibility that heir daughters might marry these young men. When that did not happen, they were visibly relieved. The wounds the Nazi monster machine left in the people of Western Europe who were traumatized by the war are very slow to heal. One of my maternal grandmother's cousins perished in Buchenwald, and the stories of the horrors of the Nazi death camps were everywhere when I was growing up.
" The Pianist " is brilliant at showing very deeply and intimately the shattering effects of persecution and brutality the Polish Jews endured during the Nazi occupation of their homeland. Adrien Brody's portrayal of Wladyslav Szpilman pulls us into his mind, his heart and soul and we feel his suffering and losses to the bone. There is a surreal quality of both horror and beauty in the depiction of the devastation. The almost unbearable tension between human frailty and tenacity is done in apocalyptic magnitude. Before I watched the movie I was aware of its importance and quality, but not of the details of the story it portrayed. By the time the movie introduces Wladyslaw Szpilman to Wehrmacht officer Wilm Hosenfeld, played so soberly by Thomas Kretschmann, I was resigned to the idea that the pianist would be shot or arrested and taken to an extermination camp like the rest of his family. But the German officer is war weary and decides to help Szpilman. He regularly brings him food, and even gives him his heavy winter coat and thus helps him to live out the rest of the war. The movie does an exquisite job letting us know that Hosenfeld was tired of the atrocities committed by the Nazi empire. In a bizarre twist of fate, Hosenfeld perished in a Soviet concentration camp in 1952, on false accusations of spying, despite efforts by Szpilman to have the German officer released. Apparently, Hosenfeld learned the name of the pianist in the course of their last meeting, while the pianist did not learn of Hosenfeld's name until after he was taken as a prisoner of war by the Russians. It was a bitter end for a man who had tried his best to help as many Jewish people as he could. And it must have been heartbreaking for Wladyslaw Szpilman to have been unable to save the life of the man who saved his. It is an unnerving story of the enigma of destiny and redemption. It is an astonishing story that is haunting and spellbinding. The presence of Chopin's piano music becomes the voice of the mystery of the presence of evil in the presence of beauty and human dignity, warmth and love. Chopin's exquisite Ballade No.1 in G minor added a personal touch for me, because my maternal grandmother was fond of playing the Polish composer's music on her piano, and she had lost a close relative in a Nazi death camp. The beauty of Chopin's music is in agonizing contrast to the brutality that the movie gives witness to. The silence of  Wilm Hosenfeld who seems absorbed in a dream like state while listening to Szpilman play Chopin in the bombed out building where the emaciated  pianist took refuge is more powerful than any words the two could have exchanged. The silence seems an affirmation of the decision the Wehrmacht officer made a while back to stop participating in the genocide perpetuated by the emblems of the uniform he was wearing.
The decision to say no to endless brutality and fathomless inhumanity. The decision to stop the madness, at least for the people he could, while he could.
Adrien Brody is superb, considering he was only 29 at the time of the movie. I thought he was in his late thirties. I was interested to learn that the real Wilm Hosenfeld was posthumously recognized in Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous among the Nations. He died in a Soviet concentration camp on August 13 1952, from a rupture of the thoracic aorta, possibly sustained during torture. Szpilman lived and worked on as a successful pianist and composer in Warsaw until 2000, where he died at the age of 88 on July 6th. The movie is an affirmation that people can rise above the definitions they are told to uphold, even in the most brutal circumstances, and it does not get any more harrowingly brutal than the Holocaust.   

No Man's Land

When I was about ten, I read a Flemish translation of an 1878 French novel by Hector Malot. It tells the heartbreaking story of a child who loses his family and wanders around for years trying to figure out where they are and it left a lasting impact on me. The Flemish title to the original " Sans Famille " became " Alleen op de wereld ", literally meaning " Alone in the World ". The title in English became " No Man's Boy ". In the story that involves a lot of loneliness amidst the wandering and traveling, animals become important companions. I have since early adolescence had a real affection for animals, and since my husband and I got together 36 years ago, we have had 9 dogs and 4 cats, so far. I have enormous respect for the love and empathy animal companions are capable of. Each day I walk our current dog, a female Flemish Bouvier - Black Labrador we adopted from a local no kill shelter 4 years ago when she was 3. I walk her in the early evenings, as she is high strung and is easily upset by other dogs. So our walks together are very solitary as most people are busy eating dinner when I take her. I often think of the  " No Man's Boy " story. Even as a child I had to deal with solitude. I was a serious child who liked to read from an early age on, and reading was a way to escape the solitude from two parents who had very busy social lives, and younger siblings who were not interested in my serious nature. As a child I felt drawn to this serious story that seemed to speak of my own struggles, even into the future, when it came to hanging on to what would become a shattered family, that ultimately would be nothing but a dusty ruin. Today again, the book that hypnotized me as a child came back to mind, as I walked down a very quiet street where the only companions for my dog and I were the houses and the trees. Destiny is a strange thing, if it is at all. But I cannot shake the feeling that some patterns in our lives seem already outlined, if not concretely, then in our subconscious intuitions and inclinations. Like a tune we hear once when we are very young and that we can hear at different times in our life's journey and that leads us like a siren to the path that we cannot seem to avoid. A song that is both unnerving and reassuring in a nauseous sort of way. As I am walking my dog each day, it is intriguing to me that the image of the young boy in " No Man's Boy " walking alone with his dogs and his monkey would remind me of me walking alone in a land that in many ways is not mine, looking for the ghosts of my family lost in the journey of this big, vast land. Just like the young boy Remi was looking for his family, like a character in a novel, I keep looking for the family I lost. I imagine I will take a walk and see my father coming towards me, or my youngest sister. I know this will not happen, but the identification with Remi as a person gives me the emotional sensation that I could reverse time and find my family to be still alive. On the days I walk our dog alone it is a very strong feeling, and it is so strange to me that the story of the wandering boy that so impacted me as a child would now be a script that I carry not only in my memory but in my walking steps and that I feel beat in my heart and breath. Remi 's story had a good ending, he ultimately is reunited with his family. My story has a good ending too, in that I found a good husband and have a very kind son. So the days I get to go walking with them, the ghosts are still there, but they are friendly. Yet on the days I get to walk our dog by myself, I look forward to the ache of hope that this could have been the day I find my family again.    

First Generation

As goofy as the last dream might seem on first appearance, the dream I had the night before that was very realistic and serious. In the dream, my husband , son and I were living in a future community that concerned itself with healing the earth and its food sources. We were growing crops for the purpose of extracting the toxins out of the soil, harvest and burn those crops and then grow fresh crops that were toxin free. We were working hard, non- stop, with very positive results. I remember it was very hot and dry in the dream, there was a lot of dust. We had access to a good, plenty full well, and we were working on a rice field. I remember the sensation of planting the rice seedlings in the cool water. The sound of it was very pleasing and encouraging.
When I woke, I told my husband about the dream, and he told me that the technique I envisioned in the dream was an actual technique used. That made me feel proud. Not bad for a dreamy eyed writer and poet, considering my husband was the experienced gardner, not me.
Later that day, my mind kept going back to the dream. Somehow the content and aspirations of the dream made me think of being a first generation immigrant. How hard it has been to hang on to my identity, especially in view of the traumatic loss of my family that immigrated with me. I had read somewhere that the first generation is always the one that sacrifices itself for the betterment of the next generation. I am very devoted to my husband and son, and it is true that I make a conscious and well measured effort to put them first, always. Perhaps outdated as an idea, but in my case it has encouraged me to confront my trolls head on, as one Texas artist friend noted, and as a result start writing, both prose and poetry, and start my metallic threads tapestries and my photography of flowers. A solitary journey to be sure and perhaps that is why I kept going back to the dream where my husband, son and I were healing the soil, to make it better for the next harvests. Perhaps the dream was as much an allegory of my own journey, and the journey of my husband and son, as it was an intuitive way to deal with a concern for the pollution of the earth's food supply. As a first generation immigrant with no original family left, feeling invisible is a daily reality, one I have come to terms with and understand well. I get immeasurable strength from my black Baptist church and its wise bishop. Courage under fire runs as thick as blood in the black American soul and experience. So I consider myself lucky to have had a neighbour 22 years ago who introduced me to the most fascinating spiritual journey of my life. Planting a crop of seeds just to see them grow and then having to eradicate them is unnerving for someone who views all life as sacred, but I understand the symbolism when it comes to my own life. I know a  lot of my 40 years here continues to be planting a crop that will need to be pulled up, cast aside and burnt, so that in time the crop that will be planted after it, will be fruitful and free of past toxins and limitations. When you pay attention to your dreams they can teach you a lot. But you can't be in a hurry. You have to be willing to plant the seeds of understanding one at a time, with care and respect for each one as you put it in the forgiving ground. And you have to pull the sacrificial crop with mercy and love, knowing it is willing to die so the next crop can thrive. Two ends with one middle, one no less important than the other in the process of healing and redemption. 

Candy Menagerie

My dreams continue to be a source of intrigue, delight and puzzlement. Last night confirmed that once more. Those who know me are aware of my love for animals, and my fierce desire to love and protect them. I also have a collection of stuffed animals, both for myself, and my cats and dogs over the course of now 31 years of taking in shelter animals. In the dream I was living in this spacious modern house, and apparently I had a room dedicated to just stuffed animals... the thought makes me both cringe and smile. I have always and continue to go through great lenghts to take good care of our animal friends and it is therefore a bit unnerving that in my dreams about them I often am dealing with anxiety because of noticing they are in need of more water and food. Now, this dream was doubly strange, because I had apparently forgotten to feed my stuffed animals... and apparently their diet was candy. The sticky, hard candy kind, that as a kid you were told is terrible for your teeth. And my stuffed animals loved that kind of candy. One blue stuffed little elephant jumped up in delight of anticipating lemon drops. I even remember the sound of squeeky delight he made... I had candy strewn all over the plush carpets, with stuffed animals laughing and munching loudly on their very dubious meals which I was putting out as fast as I could in small shiny metallic bowls. It all sounds like the dream would be uproariously, ridiculous fun. But there was an undercurrent of concern and dismay on my part at having forgotten to feed them. This from a person who gets up at the crack of dawn to cook fresh meat for our kitty Tigger, who had always had a very delicate digestive system and who is thriving now with a largely protein diet of lean meat, which he prefers hot. I know, but after losing him almost to a very bad cold a few winters back, seeing him now shine in a thick, furry healthy coat makes the effort  well worth it. So, you would think I would be allowed to relax with my animals when I dream about them. No such luck. Most of the time, the dreams with them are full of worry and concern and the perpetual struggle to make sure I feed and water them on time.I told my husband about the dream, and he thought it was very entertaining. That made me feel better. I thought of when I read Sigmund Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" a revolutionary work in psycho analysis. It was a revelation to me, and has guided me through more than one complex dream. But I do not think that the father of psycho analysis would have been very pleased to hear about my stuffed animals dream and their clamor for candy. It might have stretched his sophisticated sense of humour beyond tolerance. However, it might also have encouraged the master to scratch beyond the surface. The surface of the hard candy and the surface of the soft stuffed animals as well.  

Fade

Le gris de la pluie danse ses ombres autour des nuages dans mes yeux,
une musique de piano qui chante blanc et noir dans mes pas humides.
J'ai pense a toi, si loin, ne plus jeune comme moi aussi,
sur cette photo que j'ai trouve par hasard.
Ton sourire et la lumiere dans ton regard le meme de il y a 30 ans.

C'etait qu'une brise de mer passant, un moment d'avonture et chance
perdu maintenant dans le passage des annees et leur lignes strictes.
La couleur de la photo presque grise avec la poussiere des heures enfuies,
l'espoir que tu as donne persiste encore, une fleur tetue, seule et rouge, dans le jardin fade de mes illusions.
Le jour viendra quand ni toi ni moi n'existeront plus, et la photo se perdra, etrangere et inconnue.

Fade, une belle couleur pour un foulard doux et chaud.
Fade, notre amitie qu'un souvenir sous les etoiles indifferentes
au passage du temps, aux reves des hommes, petits et grands.
Toute ambition coulante vers le neant, ou je te chercherai encore
pour te raconter les reves de mes poemes qui t'attendront encore, les coeurs battants et chauds, en plein sommeil eternel.


Trudi ralston.
September 8th, 2016.
Pour Driss Ouaouicha.