A Very Civil War

I was out the other night with the dog walking our usual route past the golf course.  She stopped to look down and I looked up.

It was a cold late-winter night.  The cloudless sky made it possible to see the light from stars far away and the light from planes on their way to far away places.

The dog moved on and continued to collect the intelligence of odors as I took in the night sky.

I felt a bit like Tommy Lee Jones' character in "Men in Black" who tries to reconnect with the innocent wonder of stargazing that he lost when he learned that we aren't really alone.

I can recall spending time wondering about the stars.  I came of age at the right time.  Space was bigger then and a frontier worthy of literal and figurative exploration.  It seemed like each new year brought live coverage of the space thing or that.

In those days, the decision to interrupt regularly scheduled programming was taken more seriously.  We saw men walking on the moon, learned of assassinations and watched Watergate get investigated.  Never once did I see up-to-the-minute coverage of a slow-speed car chase.

As I was scanning the night sky and remembering Walter Cronkite's coverage of space missions, I saw the top of the tree my dog was currently marking and its leafless branches silhouetted against the speckled sky.

Black against dark blue:  stark, sculptural, isolated, insulated--like the stars themselves.  Sad, lonely, rooted and detached.  Of the land, but perhaps not entirely part of it.  Seen only in context.

Canadian.

It seems funny to write this after having lived in the States for thirty years, but in that instant, I was suddenly connected to all of those paintings by Canadian artists that I so quickly dismissed as a boy.

What was so frustrating about growing up in Canada was the relentless and exhausting dialogue about identity.

Much as if stuck in a mirror-lined funhouse, the conversation about what it means to be Canadian kept being bounced back and forth, reflected and refracted until it became completely abstracted.

You could almost understand why there are so many of my compatriots in the performing arts:  the chance to play a character with a defined identity must seem a welcome relief.

It seems like such a white person's problem to be consumed by questions of national identity.  In just about any other country in the world, the question has been long-settled.  In Canada, it's been a one hundred and forty-six year-long session of soul-searching and hand-wringing.

And what have we got to show for all this palaver?

We generally agree that we are not Americans..., although it would be rude to point out in precisely what ways we are different.

We bemoan the perceived lack of national unity while celebrating our diversity.

We value our history with England and the many traditions handed down, but we assert our independence even though the Queen continues on our currency.

We can identify with the bleak northern Canadian landscapes so long a favorite subject of our artists even though the greatest portion of our population lives in urban centers closer to our American cousins than to the Canadian Shield.

We are smugly self-satisfied in watching the States wrestle with multilingualism and multiculturalism.  We get along just fine with two official languages and our kids do better for having to learn them and yet....

Like a cat making endless loops around its bed, we are unable to settle, to claim the spot that is ours.

Perhaps there is a value to this questing, but is that enough of a nail upon which to hang the national quilt?

This has created a nice market for writers and so I suppose I shouldn't complain.  It's the plot against which all are judged:  the Canadian identity.

Can we coin a phrase as resonant as "two solitudes"?  Can work in references to wheat fields and hockey?  You know there has to be some acknowledgement of language--a French-speaking character, or a linguistic bigot.

The eternal question for Canadians is not one of acceptance, but of compromise.  In that respect, I think we qualify as the most mature of countries.  It's why we have staked out a reputation in the peacekeeping business.  It's not too flashy, but it's steady work, you know?

Lacking a national certainty, we work to manage our uncertainty.  We make down-payments on solutions, but always renegotiate the terms.  We are like non-conformists striving to unionize, terrorists in search of permission.  We talk about equality while defining unique-status relationships among our different regions.  We reject the celebrity-obsessed American culture, but instinctively identify every Canadian who shows up on Entertainment Tonight.

"They're Canadian, you know?"

To be Canadian is to be at war with yourself, to see both sides of every question, but in a respectful and accepting way.  It's war, but it's a civil war.  We see the lone pine tree on a barren landscape and know immediately it's a Canadian painting.  We think "That's good for a Canadian" and yet we also know exactly what the tree is thinking.

Christmas Windows

It has started to snow.

It isn't much and it still isn't the right time for it to stick around, but it's snow and a step in the right direction.

It's dark too. Not pitch black night time dark, but the fuzzy dark that happens as the sun makes its final exit and the day comes to an end.

And it's cold. Not really cold temperature-wise, but damp cold: the kind that gets into your joints that you don't really understand until you get older.

Ronin and I are out walking.

This is our time.

I try to mix up the routes we take just to keep it interesting. I think I am doing it for him, but the truth is he doesn't care. We could walk the same path every day and he would be fine with that. He makes new discoveries every day and everywhere. All that matters is that I honor the commitment and take him out.

As it gets darker outside, we become more aware of the lights on in each of the houses we pass. We are not voyeurs, but, on these dimly-lit streets, the lights from the houses just naturally draw your attention.

It's hard not to notice as the occupants move from room to room and turn on lights. It's hard not to notice who's having dinner and who's watching TV. And, at this time of year, it's hard not to notice who have already put up their holiday lights.

As the blue-gray of dusk becomes the charcoal gray of twilight becomes the black of night, we cross streets and round corners. At every pole, sign or hydrant, Ronin stops to read and/or sign the guest book while I search my pockets for anything I can find with which to wipe my running nose.

We pass more houses and more of them have a tree, or a wreath, or one of those inflatable lawn sculptures. Each reminds me that I need to find our decorations and get started on our house. Each is like the open door on an Advent calendar reminding us that Christmas is coming ever closer.

Each window is also a reminder of every Christmas past: the trips to the Atwater Market to pick out the tree, untangling the gordian knot of lights and promising myself that I would take more care putting this year's lights away so as not to have the same problem next year, sitting in the living room late at night bathed in the warmth of the decorated tree and Mahalia Jackson's version of “Silent Night” on the hi-fi. Each is a reminder of gifts given and received and the growing list of family and friends who have “gone on ahead.”

As Ronin and I walk on through the darkening evening, I become aware that I am looking at these decorated houses through the soft-focused lens of memory. It doesn't snow much around here, but at each house I see with a yard tree, I am imagining it poking up through a snowbank, its limbs staggering under a thick frosting of snow. As our six feet move silently along the pavement, I am hearing the sound of them crunch in snow—the same sound you hear when you chew a mouthful of cereal.

There is a real danger of being kidnapped by memories of Christmas Past: it robs you of your Christmas present and the ability to appreciate the here and the now. Just as Hollywood stars of a certain age look better in soft focus, too much time spent looking in the rear view mirror can give you a false sense of how things really were. I know that and yet the nostalgic warmth that emanates from these houses seems really tangible to me tonight.

We walk past a house with a screened in porch and right at the corner there are a pair of figures from a large molded Nativity scene, but instead of being arranged in the traditional semi-circle around the manger, the figures of Mary and Joseph are right up against the screen looking out toward the street. In this context, without the figures of the Wise Men and the Baby Jesus, the figures look like the expectant children who used to crowd around the Morgan's Department Store window watching the animated holiday window display. They literally have their noses pressed up against the screen in anticipation.

I am struck by this image because it seems to capture my own arrested perspective on Christmas.

Without a doubt, this was my most favorite time of the year and now....

I guess I tend to approach each Christmas with the same ambivalence that I have for my own birthday. There is a hope that is mixed with disappointment; there is fear and anger, there is depression. (I'm not sure that I am not confusing Christmas with New Year's.)

Christmas is a benchmark, a milestone and a goal. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth,” “I'll Be Home for Christmas”: the notion of comparison and contrast is built right in. “Look what Santa brung me!” “You have to put up the lights, everyone else has theirs up already.”

I suffer by comparison.

I had goals and expectations and each year they seem to be further away, like Santa's sleigh at the end of his hard day's night.

I walk past these windows and see glimpses of the Christmas of my past and I can still feel the scratchiness of the new clothes, smell the aromas of the holiday baking and hear the frantic competition of oneupsmanship in the telling of the horribly corny riddles from the Christmas crackers. It calls to me like the memory of the ocean's roar trapped in a sea shell.

Ronin and I pass more windows with different degrees of lights and decoration. Many of the major movements in art history are represented in the houses we pass: realism, impressionism, expressionism each are expressed in light and texture, line and color. There are even some nihilists who don't bother decorating.

I write about Christmas because it has the same sort of all and nothing meaning represented by our neighborhood's decorators. It informs where I am by reminding me where I came from and also that another lap around life's racecourse is coming to an end. It's a time to be warmed by the familiarity of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” mourn losses, and be reminded of victories.

That is Christmas's present to us all.

It's getting darker and I have forgotten to bring my gloves.

We turn the last corner and enter the final stretch of our walk.

Ronin stops, stiffens and, from somewhere deep in his massive chest, a growl begins to form.

He's staring at something but, try as I might, I can't make it out. There's only one street light on this part of the walk and everything beyond its beams is out of focus to my stigmatic eyes.

I hear them before I see them, a trio of deer wander lazily into the light from between a pair of houses.

Ronin barks.

They stop, turn in our direction and then, in a twinkling, they are gone in a flash. They clear the split rail fence that encloses the golf course on our left as it it didn't even occur to them.

The dog stares after them as they disappear into the darkness.

I tighten the lead and pick up the pace. Time to go home and get warm.