Understandings

"Fie, fie how franticly I square my talk!"

I actually saw the animated film some time before reading the book. I always thought that Eliot Noyes made it, but can no longer find his name in references to the short, made in the 1960s. It was simply called Flatland, the title of the book published some eighty years earlier. It’s simple yet powerful illustration of the difficulty we have in entering into other people’s ways of seeing and understanding made quite a contribution to my education.

Edwin Abbott, author of the original text, long dead when I emerged from the womb, was my master teacher. Noyes, if indeed it was him, was a superb translator.

This first person account from an inhabitant of a two-dimensional country struggling with dreams and encounters which suggest another dimension of reality, is an encouragement to the heretic in us. Yet piercing the veil of established wisdom causes him great discomfort and alienation from family and society.

Edwin Abbott was not only a schoolmaster, but a theologian of note. His book can be read online.

Personally I prefer to explain my present state of grace in terms of “understandings” rather than “beliefs”. The latter often seems so final, absolute, and inflexible.

Just do it!

It was always pleasant to chat with Lyle. He was not only business-like, but was very perceptive. Very human too. His work in film distribution put him in touch with people in far away places. Passing his office one morning in early May, I popped in for a momentary “hello”. He had something on his mind. And as a freelancer I was always conscious of people’s needs and interests. They could put bread, and sometimes butter on our table.

Peter had just called Lyle from London. He had an urgent need. His monthly magazine, TV World was featuring Canada in its June issue. Three pages of adverts had been sold to Canadian companies on this promise. The deadline loomed and the Toronto correspondent had dropped out. Where to find a replacement?

Despite the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach I piped up “That’s me!”. Then my customary self kicked in and I explained to Lyle that I knew nothing about the business of television, and rarely even watched the tube. A quick call to London and my own doubts were reflected in Peter’s uneasy response. “Tell him I’ll do it on spec,” I said. Peter, over the proverbial barrel, had no choice.

Paul succeeded Peter as editor and we got along well. One day when I was at their basement quarters on Wilfred Street, Paul took me in his Rolls to a prestigious Oxford Street club. That was a first for me, but not the last.

Those initial three articles with the seductive titles Challenge of the New Technology, Quiet Revolution that Brings the $’s In, and Keeping Canada for Canadians made me a sort of journalist. After that I churned out copy by the lorryload and met some interesting people in the process. And I learned that mystiques are meant to be shattered. There will always be more.

Reading Between the Lines

In the fifties my father made them for his own use. Plastic shopping bags were not known at the time, although a very few people here followed European custom and fait le tour with string carrier bags. But dad found the common brown paper bags to be wasteful so he bought some sturdy canvas and had permanent bags made for carrying home the groceries. These bags are still in use.

I was reminded of them when reading an article by George Monbiot in a recent issue of The Guardian. It brought to mind the commercial fad for promoting non-plastic tote bags. They have become status symbols, even for the elite. Apparently the upper-crust leave their tony shoppes with one of Anya Hindmarsh’s limited edition I’m Not a Plastic Bag carefully wrapped in the store’s own elegant paper bags. What irony!

Having bought reusable bags we are supposed to bask in a halo of Green. Fully redeemed. All the while of course, filling them full of non-essentials! Years ago I cottoned on to the wiles of the product pushers. I sat in the library perusing thirty or forty issues of that respectable American magazine, Consumer Reports. CR gives lots of useful attention to which car or van is better this way or that way. But never did I come across a caveat that any car is addictive. That perhaps one ought to consider other options. Of course if CR were able to persuade many people that life would be better without a car, it would be committing corporate suicide!

Monbiot goes well beyond shopping bags. He puts the lie to “green consumerism” in Eco-junk. Well worth a read! My father would have agreed. And so do I.

Border crossings

The trio left in high spirits an hour or so before midnight. At this moment, barring unforseen problems, they should be in the final stretch. Barreling down 87 somewhere south of Albany. With early dawn revealing the Catskills, and the windows on the driver’s side of the Greyhound giving fragmentary views out onto the broad sweep of the Hudson River.

I’ve done that overnighter many times in the past. And it was always accompanied by an exhilarating sense of adventure. Even on business trips, the treasures of Manhattan were there for the taking. Now it’s the grandchildren’s turn. Kyle is an old hand at dealing with this powerful magnet. Seven years ago when she was just 15 she went with Pat and I for her first visit. On arrival we sat in one of those dark oak-trimmed bars in a quiet corner, she sipping on a pina colada. Only grandparents can get away with things like that.

Her mother was like that too. When she was barely 16 she headed West alone, through the winter landscape of the Great Canadian Shield. Then on the Prairies her train was snowed-in for 48 hours. Finally she made it through the Rockies and the other ranges to do a stint in the Pacific on an inshore fishing boat.

Then Kyle’s cousin Megan got the bug. Meg is 16 now so she can cross borders without written parental permission. She’s a bold adventurer too, excited by the scent of new discoveries and pleased to revisit old haunts. I don’t think anything will hold her back.

The initiate on this trip is Kyle’s thirteen year old brother, Dylan. My guess is that he’ll find the East Village and the Guggenheim even more fascinating than video games. After five nights in a youth hostel he’ll be prepared to take on the world too.

There’s a slight personal nostalgia in all this. A flashback to 56 years ago when I first crossed the country. Under steam. The dream lives on. Borders are there to be crossed.

Silent vocabulary

It was long after I evaporated from the habit of going to meeting. Or church as some more forthright religions call their Christian places of worship. But it was worth the wait to learn to sort out mouthings from really useful expressions. There were lots of the former, but my real interest is in the latter. They became a part of my self. So much so that I can only identify two or three at this moment.

One was "conscience". My mother actually used it a lot. She said, "Let your conscience be your guide." At meeting it was rarely spoken. There wasn't much place for the individual even in those kinder days. They were kinder though. Another expression, if in fact it is a single word, used often by the lay preachers, was "lovingkindness". I still use it when I'm thinking, but would never utter it. I'm conscious of being pleasantly old, but still wish to avoid being thought of as archaic. Nonetheless, it's a warm thought which I'm pondering when lovingkindness comes to mind.

Another really important word which rests in the fore of my mind is "stewardship". I understood it to mean that since I'm a temporary resident of this planet I don't really own anything. But I do have a responsibility to behave properly with all those things which aren't really mine. And since I have a conscience, which in my opinion is quite active, I remind myself of this fairly often. Sometimes I find the word "stewardship" in print. And then I am delighted.

In this age of sometimes superficial ecological concern, I wish lots of people thought about stewardship, were pricked often by their consciences, and practised plenty of lovingkindness. Even if they never spoke these silent words.

Along the Trail

I was thinking about Ulmer Bird and the strange way we met. It was just 23 years ago to the month. He met me in his church. A white clapboard building with a small peaked tower, standing in solitary desolation on the plain. Near the banks of the Yellow Wolf River, and some distance from the Sunday House in Sweetwater. But just a short drive in the spirit of West Texans.

We sat alone and austere amongst the wooden folding chairs. Eyeing each other nervously. Each with a mission. And the sense that maybe our missions were incongruent. I knew enough of country life to not blurt out my intent. That I learned years earlier in the Edgeley post office and general store. Now swallowed whole in the Toronto megalopolis.

Nonetheless, my purpose was simple and direct. And so was Ulmer’s, I was to discover. But only later. We talked about the country and how Sanco had become a ghost town. Years before there had been boll weevils. And now drought, in its seventh year. There was something Biblical in the conversation. Then a cautious bit of talk about our families. I think Ulmer was pleased that I had six children. He probably thought that the whole film crew were licentious gadabouts. Then I told him that we wanted to use his old Sanco filling station as a location. And that overgrown and dilapidated, with rusting gasoline pumps, it was perfect for a scene in Red Desert Penitentiary.

My request, because it really was a request, was answered with some comments about his dear wife Josephine and her skills as a cook. At respectful intervals thereafter, I raised the subject again. We needed that location badly, and right away. And again. Dusk was approaching and I knew the moment of truth had arrived. I lied to the preacher. A cock and bull tale that we had another site available at Maryneal, and I must rush off to make final arrangements there.

Ulmer looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Is it a dirty film?” Knowing full well that the nude bathing scene with Cathryn Bissell playing Myrna would qualify it as X-rated to his Methodist understandings, I emphasized only the international reputation of Director George Sluizer. And Ulmer said “yes”.

Over the following years we kept up a sporadic correspondence. The last letter from Sanco reported on Ulmer’s physical decline. It closed with “Your coming our way was a high point in our lives, and we are richer for it. Love from both of us, Josephine”. The feeling was mutual.

The Hasidim

One winter day Kyle and I were walking to 4 Frères to buy a few things for dinner. It was a Saturday and it was quite cold. Suddenly a man dressed in the garb of a Hasidic Jew rushed out of his house and asked me to “fix his furnace”. Taken aback, I mumbled something about my incompetence in such matters. But he ushered both of us in and told us that his furnace was malfunctioning and he needed to turn on the auxiliary electrical heating.

Kyle was just visiting then from Vancouver. So she was totally mystified. But I suddenly understood. On their Sabbath the Hasidim must not touch anything mechanical. Not light switches, or stoves, or cars. The latter is the main reason they live within walking distance of their places of worship.

So round the house we went flicking switches as directed. You can imagine Kyle’s confusion about what was going on, until we left and I explained things to her!

These people remind me of the Christian group in which I was raised. They are quite separate from non-Hasidim. They have large families. And they work for each other. Also, it seems, that they are people of the Book. Quite literal in their interpretations of the sacred text. They also know how to stretch their own rules for convenience. Such as when they construct “erouvs”. This irritates some other citizens, particularly, I suspect, those with slight anti-semitic sentiments. We all try at times to justify our actions, so I simply find it amusing.

When Lotte Reiniger lived with us in the 1970s she would stand on the balcony and watch the Hasidim go to worship. It made her recall her home in Berlin in the 1930s. There were tears in her eyes.