beyond magazine

Dwelling In Possibility

We called Issue 14 Possible Worlds and it became a collection on what hope could create. The voices were varied - from incredible photographers, illustrators, musicians and writers to the birds in our alley -everyone had something to say about seeing what was possible.

Contributing Editor Deegy continues the conversation. He lives in Vancouver, working at a crisis shelter for youth.  He is a lover of community, music and art and can't kick the habit of cooking all things Jamie Oliver.

Dwelling In Possibility

I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -

Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of Eye -
And for an Everlasting Roof -
The Gambrels of the Sky -

Of Visitors - the fairest -
For Occupation - This -
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise -

Emily Dickinson, American poet (1830-1886)

I escaped to a greasy spoon diner after work yesterday, had some eggs, sausage and toast, and finally cracked open the book, The Impossible Will Take A Little While, this time to forge past the introduction.  Diane Ackerman's essay A Slender Thread, around a call she fielded at a suicide hotline, really encouraged me.  She writes:

As Emikle Sola once said, some mornings you first have to swallow your toad of disgust before you can get on with the day. We choose to live. But suicidal people have tunnel vision - no other choice seems possible. A counselor's job is to put windows and doors in that tunnel.

Her thoughts struck home, as our shelter encounters many suicidal young people every month. A few of my co-workers have even chased some clients from the door to the nearest bridge and pulled them to safety. Thankfully, like Ackerman, we do have the opportunity to punch some holes of light into these tunnels of despair, and on the odd occasion have a chance to hear that some of these youth, at some point, do move beyond their suicidal ideations with some help and counselling. Last night, one youth I had worked with months earlier, who still drops by for food and to talk from time to time, stopped by in a drunken stupor to thank me for helping him find a counsellor who he really connects with. It was a strange encounter, knowing he was still dealing with much pain but was a little farther along since he first came to us, when he was so eager to jump off the nearest bridge.

I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -

Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of Eye -
And for an Everlasting Roof -
The Gambrels of the Sky -

Of Visitors - the fairest -
For Occupation - This -
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise -

Emily Dickinson, American poet (1830-1886)

I escaped to a greasy spoon diner after work yesterday, had some eggs, sausage and toast, and finally cracked open the book, The Impossible Will Take A Little While, this time to forge past the introduction.  Diane Ackerman's essay A Slender Thread, around a call she fielded at a suicide hotline, really encouraged me.  She writes:

As Emikle Sola once said, some mornings you first have to swallow your toad of disgust before you can get on with the day. We choose to live. But suicidal people have tunnel vision - no other choice seems possible. A counselor's job is to put windows and doors in that tunnel.

Her thoughts struck home, as our shelter encounters many suicidal young people every month. A few of my co-workers have even chased some clients from the door to the nearest bridge and pulled them to safety. Thankfully, like Ackerman, we do have the opportunity to punch some holes of light into these tunnels of despair, and on the odd occasion have a chance to hear that some of these youth, at some point, do move beyond their suicidal ideations with some help and counselling. Last night, one youth I had worked with months earlier, who still drops by for food and to talk from time to time, stopped by in a drunken stupor to thank me for helping him find a counsellor who he really connects with. It was a strange encounter, knowing he was still dealing with much pain but was a little farther along since he first came to us, when he was so eager to jump off the nearest bridge.

Spend it all.

Write Till You Drop
by Annie Dillard

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

Color and Form.

Last night, I was talking with another artist about art websites on the web. We both confessed our addiction to the varied and eclectic programming available through CBC Radio. He recommended CBC Radio Three, a website devoted to Canadian arts and music and I said that I enjoy ZED whenever I get the chance to watch it on TV or drop by the Web.

He asked me how the next issue of the magazine was going and I responded, "Does it ever seem to you that there is so much art being made, why would you ever add to the mix? Why would you ever do more or produce more?"

He reminded me that each project is as unique as the group of people producing it. Their place in time as well as their geographic location also makes it unique. It's like saying there are too many fingerprints I guess.

And to personalize the incessant "why?" even more, I was reminded of this Natalie Goldberg quote about writing:

"I write because I kept my mouth shut all my life. I write because I am alone and move through the world alone. No one will know what has passed through me, and even more amazing, I don't know. I write because I am crazy in some ways and I know it and accept it and I have to do something with it other than go to the loony bin. I write because there are stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am a woman trying to stand up in my life. I write because to form a word with your lips and tongue or think a thing and then dare to write it down so you can never take it back is the most powerful thing I know. I am trying to come alive, to find the distances in my own recesses and bring them forward and give them color and form. I write out of total incomprehension that even love isn't enough and that finally writing might be all I have and that isn't enough. I can never get it all down, and besides, there are times when I have to step away from the table, notebook, and turn to face my own life. Then there are times when it's only coming to the notebook that I truly do face my own life. And I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only real home I'll ever have."

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down The Bones

Carol Shields.

I have been transferring some old content over to Typepad and was astonished to learn that it has been over a year since Carol Shields died from breast cancer. I have only become more familiar with her work over the last two years and have found that the things that bothered some of her critics - her attraction to the ordinary, her attention to detail, and her faith in human beings - are the very things that draw me to her writing.

Here are some bits from one of her last interviews:

Growing up to be blonde, pretty and clever, Shields would often act dumb to appeal to boys. She chuckles at the memory. 'When I was young, if you weren't soft, feminine and sweet enough you wouldn't get the man, the big house and the holidays. That was what we grew up with and we bought it.' So, what terrible things happened to brash, clever, noisy girls? 'I don't think anything terrible happened to them,' says Shields. 'They probably went on and had terrific lives.' Does she now regret not being noisier herself? 'I do.'

***

Shields isn't deaf to her critics. In 1997, she observed: 'When you write happy endings you are not taken seriously as a writer.' She has also noted literature's 'genuine prejudice': 'When men write about "ordinary people", they are thought to be subtle and sensitive. When women do, their novels are classified as domestic.'

***

There's an early quote from Shields about how she only started writing because she couldn't find any novels about the women she knew. 'Women in fiction were either bimbos or bitches.' She recalls a talk she once attended by George Steiner. 'I stood up and asked about women writers and he said there weren't any from the 20th century. He could think of a couple from the 19th but that was that. It's all so dispiriting. I went to another talk by Martin Amis and pretty much the same thing occurred. I didn't bother asking any questions that time.' There's a spiky passage in Unless about how men simply aren't that interested in women's lives - are these Shields's own sentiments? 'Pretty much. I think men want to be around women. They enjoy their womanliness and get relief from it. But I also think they may not care much about how the synapses of a woman's brain operate.'

Shields's personal definition of feminism is: 'Simply an acknowledgement that women are human'.