• Animal Medicine

    • February 28, 2023 2:36 pm
    Dearest Readers,

    Since publishing my memoir, I’ve been taking time to discern my next creative project. Write something new? What about all the stories that didn’t make it into the book? I have a mountain of them.

    I thought maybe I could publish the occasional piece here. The story below, about an encounter with a beaver, got cut out of the memoir because one of the editors said, “Too many animals!”

    There were a lot of animal stories. Encounters with woodpeckers and bears and deer and armadillos and beavers have always made me feel as though the Cosmos is conscious of me. When I am at my lowest, animals show up, and it always feels like I’m being reassured by a Loving Force.

    Here is the story of The Beaver:

    Have you seen the TV movie adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge? The Mayor, played by Ciarán Hinds, has made some terrible decisions, most of them while drinking. His protégé, Donald Farfrae, on the other hand, is a more saintly man, with very few troubles or fears.

    One evening, the Mayor confides in Farfrae and shares honestly with the young man about his despair. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

    “… I sank into one of those gloomy fits I sometimes suffer from … when the world seems to have the blackness of hell, and, like Job, I could curse the day that gave me birth.”

    “Ah, now, I never feel like it,” said Farfrae.

    “Then pray to God that you never may, young man.”

    When I was watching this scene in the film, I fully expected the young man to say, “Ah, yes, I understand.” But he says the opposite. This dropped my jaw.

    You mean there are actually people out there who have no idea what that kind of hopelessness feels like?

    Those of us who do understand these black, gloomy fits know well how hard it is to cope with them. Sometimes there is no remedy but to ride them out.

    On a day when I was in the kind of despair that the Mayor described, I walked to the Yukon River for relief. Nature is often one of the surest ways to lift the blackness of hell and I knew being outside would help.

    I found a bench by a bend in the river and began to pray. I remember saying the words, “Take me, God, I am willing to die.”

    SLAP!

    I opened my eyes. A beaver was in the water right in front of me.

    SPLASH!

    It dove underwater and I watched it resurface a few feet further upriver.

    Suddenly, my self-pity evaporated. The Beaver had woken me up.

    In that moment, it was as though I’d swallowed a fast-acting miracle. I became willing to live.

    —

    That’s a super-abridged version of the story but you get the idea. Reflecting on it now, I am again struck by what I call Impeccable Timing. The slap of the beaver’s tail at the instant when I “cursed the day that gave me birth.” I wasn’t alone, I was known.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    Catch a Buzz

    • July 23, 2010 8:10 am

    Dearest Readers,

    It’s a gorgeous morning here in Montreal. I can see blue sky above the red brick houses across the way and the sun is pouring into the sunroom adjacent to the kitchen where I sit.  Outside, the sound of buzzing cicadas makes me think I’m in the countryside on a hot summer day but the airplanes overhead and the traffic on the street assure me I’m in the city.

    The Big City. When you live in Whitehorse any city beyond the borders of the Yukon is the Big City. I know a lot of Yukoners who can’t stand larger populations but I love ’em and I’ve blogged often about my fondness for connecting to that Big City buzz.

    The small town connection is certainly more personal and that’s what I like about living in Whitehorse. Everybody knows everybody and if they don’t someone will introduce them. The Big City connection is less tangible. It’s not about knowing others. It’s about being an other with a million other others. It’s about a common experience.

    Back in April someone sent me a link to a story about a composer named Eric Whitacre who organized a Virtual Choir. Many of you have probably heard of this idea or have already seen it (the YouTube video has well over a million hits) but I finally got around to checking it out yesterday. It got me thinking about this common experience and connecting.

    Whitacre managed to get 185 people to sing in his Virtual Choir and despite the fact that each singer was by him/herself, alone in his/her home, the project was a fountain of togetherness. The composer had this to say about the depth of connectivity created by the Choir:

    “People want to be together… [The project created] this sense of shared humanity… there is this innate and overwhelming need for people to connect and they’ll do it with whatever means are necessary or available to them… you can have all these people isolated all over the world sitting alone and they go to great lengths to connect.”

    No doubt I’ve blogged before about my favourite quote by the great writer E.M. Forster who said, “Connect. Only connect.” It truly is the greatest human need.

    And do you know how cicadas make that buzzing sound I’m hearing now? The sound that embodies the hot summer day like nothing else I can think of? By contracting and relaxing their abdominal muscles! Umm… kind of like singing? Indeed, “cicadas like heat and do their most spirited singing during the hotter hours of a summer day.”

    Virtually, a choir.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: There is Interconnection everywhere and I am a part of it: Technology/Nature, City/Country. I am a piece of the Great Puzzle of Life!