Jim Ross – Finding Stillness in Movement

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Jim Ross
Finding Stillness in Movement

After slowing to a trickle, the pilgrimage toward Santiago—along The Way of Saint James—began booming back fifty years ago as part of a global uptick in pilgrimage across faith traditions. Trails from all over Europe, four across France alone, merge to send travellers toward Santiago. For many, walking on The Way is an act of surrendering to The Way itself and letting It work Its wonders. In doing so, walkers (and smaller groups travelling by bike, wheelchair, or horseback) join the legions who, for over a millennium, walked to commune with nature and to experience revitalization and a restored perspective. Many communities, through which the pilgrims pass, came into existence a thousand years ago specifically to support pilgrims.

Jim Ross, Burdens Left Behind by Directional Sign, photograph, 2010. Many pilgrims symbolically leave their burdens behind as they trek. This pile is above one of the many red-and-white directional signs along The Way.

      Most people find it difficult to carve out of their frantic, fractured lives the six to ten weeks needed to walk the entire route. Many instead plan to walk for, say, two weeks now, picking up the next time where they left off. Daily, pilgrims walk for hours, often over challenging terrain. Most pilgrims carry their immediate possessions on their backs. In arriving at new places daily, some hardly pause except in sleep. Most interrupt their walking whenever the spirit says it’s time to hear the enveloping stillness. In moving, they discover a stillness that the disquietude they experienced prior to the pilgrimage blocked. And that stillness opens the door to moving in directions they couldn’t previously fathom. As I talked with other pilgrims, it became clear that nearly all sought healing, realignment, and/or direction; some, forgiveness.
     When I first arrived in France, I spent time with friends who questioned whether my embarking on the pilgrimage was wise on the grounds that I hadn’t trained adequately, didn’t speak French, and had no hotel reservations. I said I’d been training all my life, two people who had the will to communicate could do so despite language barriers, and pilgrims historically travelled without making reservations, trusting that The Way would provide. But after setting out, I wondered, were they right? When day was done, would I be able to find an inn? Would there be room for me? Would the trail be marked clearly enough that I’d be able to follow it? Would potable water be readily findable? Were warnings about vicious dogs over-stated? What about claims that each day walking on The Way would be more difficult than any day in our pre-pilgrimage lives? Would I hold up walking 15 miles per day when I’m accustomed to a third of that and have no backpacking experience?

Jim Ross, Pont d’Estaing, Estaing, France, photograph, 2010.

      I’d be walking through the French midi-Pyrenees on a rolling path that periodically dips down to villages built along rivers. Those dips require steep descents on arrival and ascents at departure. My intent was to restore balance, not by ruminating, not by over-planning, but by letting the act of movement over a place with deep history work its wonders. I had to trust that every night I would find dinner, shower, and a place to rest my head.

Jim Ross, Grazing Sheep, photograph, 2010. Grazing animals provides reassurance, company, entertainment, and role models.

Getting Lost
      Ordinarily when I travel, I let myself get lost deliberately because it leads to surprises. On The Way, I couldn’t get lost and stay on the prescribed path. Still, I got lost.
      Perhaps in reading guidebooks I skipped over sections on signage. I knew that a white-over-red stripe painted on a tree, rock, fence, barrel, or rusted-out tractor meant, ‘Go this way.’ It took me too long to discern that a red-and-white X means “Not this way” and a hooked white-over-red symbol means turn right or left depending on a hook’s direction. For a while, I walked on instinct, almost oblivious to signage. As a result, I sometimes found myself miles off course. In my defence, sometimes the ‘Go this way’ symbols weren’t readily visible or suggested ambiguous courses of action. And, because it was October, I often went hours without seeing another soul.

Jim Ross, Pilgrim Directional Signs, photograph, 2010. The red-and-white bars, barely visible in the middle of the tree trunk, often suggested ambiguous courses of action.

      There were advantages too of accidentally walking the road less travelled. I also learned there were ‘variants’, meaning segments of trail that weren’t considered the main path, but were recognized as alternate routes. Veering off course opened the doors of possibility. I saw my first porcupine in the wild. I chanced upon a village where every home was half in ruins, where a woman wearing a red sweater greeted me in French with, ‘Has God ever given us a more beautiful day?’ Another time, I came upon the 11th century chapel of St. Hiliarian. A cemetery adjoining the chapel had potable water. I came to realize that cemeteries are reliable sources of drinking water.

Jim Ross, St. Hilarian’s Chapel and Cemetery, photograph, 2010. The 11th century chapel of St. Hilarian taught me cemeteries usually have potable water.

Lodging
      I resisted creating an itinerary of where I would stay each night because it violated the notion I was surrendering to The Way. Since it was October, I figured I’d have little competition in finding places to rest my head.
      One of my first days, as the sun sounded its final trumpet, I began doubting I’d reach the convent where I hoped to stay. I came upon a doorless, dirt-floored,17th century shepherd’s shelter. It had a concrete bench with a rustic wood-slat top, which looked like a tolerable bed. I had a space blanket for warmth. Then I remembered another warning: ‘Vipers come out to play at night.’ I resumed walking. Then, after sunset, my right foot caught on a root and I began falling. I flipped 180 degrees, touched down hard, rolled from left to right, and nearly slammed my head on an ancient stone wall. When I finally reached the convent, a 500-year-old nun let me in and led me to dinner. The simple pilgrim’s dinner was over so I was brought to a more elaborate dinner of all the pilgrimage coordinators from the region, all thirty of them.

Jim Ross, Doorless Shepherd’s Shelter (inside), photograph, 2010. I decided this doorless shepherd’s shelter wasn’t where I would pass the night.

      That became my signature: Approaching the next destination after dark, with no clear plan of where I might find dinner and lodging. Strangers plucked me out of the darkness. Still walking, stiffly, even feverishly, not thinking clearly. In one instance, I was walking unsafely after dark on a heavily-trafficked road. A Dutch woman pulled over in her Beetle and drove me to the village’s official pilgrim shelter. While I extricated myself, she ran inside, shouting, ‘I have a pilgrim,’ as if she just found one of Peter Pan’s lost boys. Another time, well after 10 p.m., I was rescued and brought to the priest’s house, where I was given a sheet of bubble wrap in which to cocoon myself on the visitor’s kitchen floor. This was the price I paid for taking in the path at my own pace and paying little attention to where I might spend the night. To make matters worse, many shelters close for the winter in October, reopening in April.

Jim Ross, Abandoned Shepherd’s Shelter, photograph, 2010. Shelters that once housed shepherds punctuated the landscape.

Dormitories
      I hadn’t slept in a dormitory-style room since I was 17. I didn’t exactly mind sharing but I tend to be restless during night, emit a cacophony of sound effects, and am up and down to the bathroom. My sharing a dormitory wouldn’t work for anyone. I began inquiring about availability of single or double rooms. An incidental advantage of getting a private or double room was not having to compete with my roommates to recharge camera batteries, cell phones, and other devices. Most dorm rooms weren’t designed to allow multiple people to charge their devices simultaneously.

Jim Ross, My Monastery Cell, photograph, 2010. My cell at the monastery necessitated effective use of space.

 

Jim Ross, The View from my Monastery Cell, photograph, 2010.

Sustenance and Hydration
      Every place I stayed fed me well. Nearly all served multi-course dinners with freely-flowing wine, either as part of the lodging cost, which was nominal, or for a small extra fee. Breakfasts consisted of breads, coffee, and fruit and sometimes fruit juice, cheeses, and/or meats. Discovery: soft cheese is a dead-ringer for yogurt. Some places served coffee in bowls, following local custom. While walking, I nibbled on dried blueberries and hard cheese.

Jim Ross, My Monastery Breakfast, photograph, 2010. A typical breakfast consisted of breads, juice, coffee, and fruit (here cherries).

      When I came upon pear or apple trees heavy with fruit, I usually picked up freshly-fallen fruit from the ground. If a tree grew wildly in a forest, I took my pick. I found plenty of fig trees, but most figs had dried up and/or turned mouldy.
      Many people left out drinks (water or tea) or fruit (apples, pears, plums). Some villages served drinks and snacks under a roof. Some even incorporated bathrooms, community bread ovens, and/or resting areas.
      When I saw that one family left out baskets of large, shapely pears, I assumed they were meant for pilgrims. They must have laughed at the sight of me trying to bite through their thick, furry skin and chew their sour, hard flesh until swallowable. Anyone in France, whom I told about this experience, laughed uncontrollably while repeating, ‘You fool! That was quince. You have to cook it.’ Widely used in jams, quince or marmelo is the root of the word ‘marmalade.’ If I can teach anyone anything in the time I have left on earth, it’s that you can’t eat quince raw.

Jim Ross, A Basket of Quinces, photograph, 2010. Quince resembles hefty pears but are nearly impossible to eat raw.

      Staying hydrated presented greater challenges. To travel light, I carried relatively little water. I ran out daily except for sips kept in reserve. I stayed vigilant for “eau potable” signs. In the absence of a sign, I refused to assume water was safe unless the setting clearly implied it (e.g., public water fountains). Being dehydrated toward day’s end increased anxiety about reaching the next destination and probably made me a tad delirious. I kept my eyes peeled for cemeteries. In my next incarnation, I plan to invent concentrated water.

The Most Difficult Day
      One guidebook I read before leaving home claimed that every day on the pilgrimage would be more difficult than every day in one’s prior life. Once I began walking, I quickly rejected that claim. There were hard days when I had to concentrate intensely on every moment, hoping as I hopped from rock to rock that my instincts in using my walking sticks would fire timely to restore balance. But, there were also days when it felt like I was walking in paradise.
      I met two women from Provence who, at their final stop, shipped home all their clothes so they could fill their backpacks with precious cargo: chestnuts. While I love chestnuts, I didn’t love them on the pilgrimage because they often blanketed the trails, with this year’s joining remnants from prior years, making footing unpredictable.

Jim Ross, My Name in Chestnuts; photograph, 2010. After hearing me complain, another pilgrim wrote my name in chestnuts to welcome me.

Attack Cows?
      The small herds of deer that roam my suburban neighbourhood at home sometimes accidentally bowl people over. More often, they surge suicidally into traffic and cause fender benders. Once, I was bitten by a neighbour’s dog. Should I fear dogs along The Way? I was more worried about feral cats. Friends warned my real nemesis could be cows, and if they charge at you and mean business, barbed wire won’t hold them back.

Jim Ross, Attack Cow, photograph, 2010. Barbed wire won’t hold them back!

      Most of the cows I met wore impressive horns that cause naïve cow-gazers to believe they’re bulls. Idyllic-looking creatures, they often play melodic bells and in May are crowned with wildflower garlands. Evidently, they’re not always mild-tempered. I learned that when I snapped a photo of a mottled cow that wasn’t going to let a little barbed wire keep us apart.

Jim Ross, Zita, Pilgrim’s Companion, photograph, 2010.

      Fortunately, hours earlier, I was picked up by a kind-looking German shepherd named Zita, who led me to the chapel of St. Roch, the patron saint of dogs and dog lovers, and led me inside. Over the next eleven hours, she shielded me from oncoming traffic, counter-charged that fussy cow and chased her away, and used her night vision to guide us through a forest after nightfall. I also rescued her from cars speeding on a busy road. I hated parting with my Zita, but that was a condition of the priest’s taking me in for the night.

Jim Ross, Aubrac Cows, photograph, 2010. Aubrac cows have long horns that result in being mistaken for bulls.

Experiencing the Sacred
      Notions of what pilgrims considered ‘sacred’ varied widely. Some embraced traditional Christian beliefs. For many, communing with nature or experiencing villages we passed through was ‘sacred’. I think nearly all considered the ground we walked on ‘sacred’ because millions came and walked before us in search of healing and balance.
      I learned a little about the profane side of sacredness. A thousand years ago, villages sought to get on pilgrimage routes because it meant big business for the Church. In addition, visiting pilgrims would need shelter, food, and hospitals and could be persuaded to buy indulgences and fake relics. To earn a spot on a pilgrimage route, a village had to have holy bones (i.e., the relics of saints).
      How did villages lacking holy bones procure them? Absent other options, they stole them. For example, a 9th century monk from Conques went under cover for a decade at a monastery in Agen to get close enough to the relics of 4th century Saint-Foy to steal them. Spiriting away Saint-Foy’s relics made Conques a competitive pilgrimage site. As the pilgrimage routes to Santiago formed, Conques already had status and investors. The profane history of pilgrimage positioning suggests we re-think, ‘What makes something sacred?’

Jim Ross, Gate at Abbey of Saint-Foy, photograph, 2010. A gate at the Abbey of Saint-Foy incorporates an extreme form of barbed wire.

Human Contact and Getting Home
      I went on the pilgrimage to get lost in a dark forest and breathe solitude into my lungs. After ritually exchanging ‘Bonjour’ with others I often remind myself, ‘I’m merely a pilgrim, by definition I’m only passing through.’ The break from solitude came at dinnertime, when most dinner conversations took place in French. Still, I came to feel part of a fabric. And every morning, I left solo as did nearly every other pilgrim.
      By the end, on the eve of a National Strike, I began reaching out to villagers. One village had been in the throes of a pre-emptive National Strike for five days. I found myself reverting to my professional behaviour by interviewing activist students, noncommittal students, teachers, residents, and striking railroad workers. On my first attempt to catch a bus (to begin my journey home), a high school student sat beside me and offered to split her ham baguette in exchange for conversation. After this distraction caused me to miss my bus, I went back into town and spent three more hours with the students and railroad workers, who shared cheese, bread, and wine with me. In turn, I helped tend to their little children. The high school students offered me a coke. An older protest junkie offered cannabis. (I declined).
      At the airport, I heard the National Strike might delay my flight home. I began rooting for the National Strike to keep me there. I decided I would go back to find Zita. Then my flight managed to get out after all. Nine months later, I went back and found Zita.    AQ

Simon Alderwick – jeepney

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Simon Alderwick
jeepney

Crossing the McArthur Highway. 7 o’clock Tuesday morning.
Oversized red cube of a Sogo hotel on one side, long haired man
wearing a chequered shirt & ripped jeans on the other. ‘Hey Joe!’
he greets me, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Downtown,’ I answer.

He points me inside with his lips. There’s no room, I protest
but his lips move a fraction & I see a space open up deep down
on the left-hand side. I contort myself inside that steel shell
held together by welding & the Catholic faith, squeeze my butt

between a college kid & a BPO worker. Coins pass back
& forwards, the driver never short changed, never forgets.
I crane my neck trying to look out of glassless windows.
The Jeepney passes Jollibees, 7-11s, churches, schools, SM malls.

I sense my stop before I see it, tap a coin against the roof. It clangs
its message to the driver who slamswerves his jeepney sidewards.
I escape into the blinding dust of day, sticky of shirt & sore of neck.
A tricycle driver accosts me, says: ‘Hey Joe! Where to, my friend?’

Pamela Alexander – Nomadic

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Pamela Alexander
Nomadic

My house is a box
with a wheel at each corner.
I think of the earth underneath it
and conserve:

not too many miles a day,
no other house left behind
to heat or cool, or furnish.
All the lights LEDs;
the furnace sips
propane. Conserve: don’t

spend energy on what
might have been–

pots tucked into lockers, knives
in drawers, everything lashed
or bungeed, secure–

or worse, on what was.

Couch and table become
beds. Storage under,
over, clever, crafty.

Land-liner, piloted
toward better weather,
outer and inner,
wherever that may be.

Stephen Anderson – Bloom

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Stephen Anderson
Bloom

An older woman walks her dog
down a bombed-out street in
Kharkiv. It’s spring and she side-steps
cratered sidewalks with emerging purple
crocuses that magically seem to smile
their brightness. She stops, gathers her
breath, and listens to their quiet hallelujah
song, and bends to touch them as they
sing to her of hope and a smattering
of beauty—despite it all.

Zoë Blaylock – The Chariot

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Zoë Blaylock
The Chariot

The relic rusting in the driveway doesn’t get much mileage now that the last dog has died.
      It sits uncomplaining, like each of my pups did whenever they sat resigned behind the picture window and watched as I, all dolled up, took my place in the forbidden, people-only sedan and left them home alone while I went to chase some fun.
      I suppose I should take the old heap for a spin. A mechanic told me that gasoline gets stale if it sits in the tank too long. She said all vehicles should be driven at least once every few weeks; nineteen-year-old minivans, perhaps a tad more frequently.
      But not enough time has passed since The Chariot carried geriatric Shiloh home from his final visit to the vet. It’s too soon for me to get behind the wheel dry-eyed again.
      I’m sure The Chariot understands. It’s not the only time I’ve had to take it out of commission. The first was in 2004, after Cooper, another geriatric dog, died.
      I’d bought it brand new a few months earlier. It was the nicest transportation I’d ever owned. Silver paint gleamed. Motor hummed. Even Cooper’s flatulence was no match for its rich, new-car smell.
      Given Cooper’s fulminant kidney failure, he barely had a chance to shed in it, or to leave muddy pawprints so large they could frighten the pluckiest car thief away. As brawny as that 115 lb. German Shepherd was, he was also a pacifist who loathed using his teeth when simple, well-placed evidence of his prowess could keep danger at bay.
      When I first brought The Chariot home from the dealer’s and invited him to jump in, like any jumbo-sized dog would have, Cooper wagged himself silly with joy. Years of crouching in the rear of a small station wagon must have left him feeling like he was suddenly in the heaven that all too soon would become his eternally.
      For his remaining eight weeks of life, once each morning and once each late afternoon Cooper reclined on the third-row bench as regally as a Roman emperor while we headed to and from the park. When he finally reclined forever, I could no more drive his wheels than I could drive away the memory of his emissions. I longed for them as I did for the fragrance of a jasmine bloom in spring.
      There’s no accounting for taste when you’re in mourning.
      And believe you me. We mourned, The Chariot and I. It was the laws of nature that decreed only I should do the crying, not those of the heart.

#

Young-adult Waldo was the one who charmed The Chariot and me toward the road again. But not without insisting that I pimp his ride first.
      A taller, lither German Shepherd, more refined than Cooper thanks to a drop or two of Irish Wolfhound in his pedigree, Waldo preferred lolling on the floor to lazing on the bench. This meant that the second-row bucket seats had to be banished to the garage, and in their stead, The Chariot was fitted with a cut-to-order black and tan carpet.
      Waldo was almost pleased. But not quite. He required further refinements. Blankets, pillows, and bottled water first, followed in his sunset years by a no-slip ramp that permitted him to board and disembark without straining his prone-to-dislocation shoulders and his arthritic hips.
      Nothing but nothing cheered Waldo more than the words, ‘Get in The Chariot.’ Not even summons to the barbecue for cheeseburgers, or an invitation to a bone china plate of Thanksgiving turkey and a side of giblets.
      I couldn’t bear to vacuum or wash The Chariot after Waldo died, much less to turn on the ignition. And if this seems unsanitary to any person addicted to fastidious hygienic pretensions, please understand that vehicles like The Chariot who live to do, rather than merely to be, don’t give a damn about looking pretty.

#

When, months after Waldo’s departure, a homeless Archie inherited the conveyance, the odours left by his predecessor soothed him.
      Waldo had been a gourmand with an experienced stomach. He never passed up a meal. Consequently, the flatus he had taken to expelling and that now lingered in The Chariot surely portended something good for Archie.
      However fetid the evidence, knowing that past meals had been enjoyed by other dogs in the new environ, heartened the street scrapper whose worn teeth suggested a chronic hunger so desperate that he had eaten more than his share of gravelly dirt.
      That Archie feasted on several of The Chariot’s many parts did not surprise the veterinarian. Nor did the gnawing seem to bother The Chariot itself.
      Like all beings who are lucky enough to reach middle age, The Chariot and I both knew the blush of youth would never be ours again. We were liberated by the certainty that what is beneath the hood is more valuable than the face we present to the world.
      ‘So what?’ The Chariot seemed to say. ‘If Archie noshes on my seatbelts and my armrests as regularly as he wolfs down slices of bacon stolen from your kitchen counter?’
      So what indeed.
      Archie loved his wise Chariot, although to him the minivan was simply, ‘Cha—.’ Just the one syllable set him beelining for its sliding door. The full moniker was too hoity-toity for my tough, delinquent, unrepentant dog.
      He died as The Chariot and I transported him to the emergency room at unsafe speeds, but not by accident. In fragile health since his arrival, he suddenly collapsed within a year of moving in.
      His death would have been bearable if before he went, he could have eaten enough bacon, slept in comfort and safety through enough nights, nibbled on enough Chariot.
      A year’s respite in a loving home is several eons from enough. Just ask anyone who has ever loved a German Shepherd. They’ll tell you. They know.

#

I could have bought new parts to replace the ones Archie had munched on, but The Chariot bristled at the mention of plastic surgery. My vehicle’s priorities have always been sound.
      So, instead I spent the money on the shell-shocked doggie named G. Shepherd Von Something Stupid who became our Shiloh. I would like to tell you that I did it because The Chariot was in need of a dog. But that would be a lie. The truth is that after an inconsolable bereavement, the greater need was mine.
      And while I’m being honest, let me also say that it wasn’t I who picked Shiloh, nor Shiloh who picked me. The fact is that the three-year-old picked The Chariot by jumping in and refusing to get out even before the unemotional breeder had transferred ownership.
      Once the money changed hands and Shiloh’s escape from the trafficker was secured, he fell asleep on the third-row bench, snoozed soundly as I manoeuvred hours of treacherous rural roads to get us home, and did not stir until we pulled up to his new residence.
      One neutering and a few seductive meals later, the only way you could get him to leave the safety of house and garden was to whisper ‘Chariot’.
      He trusted his getaway vehicle as if it were his guardian angel. Just as he should have. Dog beach. Dog supermarket. Dog playgroup. For nine years they were all a mere motorized-hop away. And after Shiloh was adequately enriched by each outing, The Chariot was at the ready to haul him home sweet home again.
      Maybe it was the medicine that helped him fight the hemangiosarcoma as the Covid years unwound. Maybe it was the menu. Or maybe he fought because he loved me as much as I loved him, and he knew what his exit would do to me.
      But then again, maybe I’m thinking too much of myself. The odds are it was The Chariot he didn’t want to leave. Or the adventures it promised when the stay-at-home restrictions were lifted. I don’t know.
      But I do know this: Lately, in the middle of the night, when I find myself missing my dogs fiercely—more, in fact, than I care tell anyone who doesn’t yet love me enough to be entrusted with such an intimate disclosure—I sneak out in my pyjamas to spend time in The Chariot. And I spill my guts.   AQ

Jessica Bundschuh – Moving Postcards

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Jessica Bundschuh
Moving Postcards

Dear Pebble,
On an afternoon walk to no particular place, a small stack of pebbles will lie at my feet; I will make up their histories for any lover: looking into his blue or brown eyes, explaining how they will bounce along the riverbed like letters in a sloppy sentence, pebbles worn round and smooth by abrasions, no place to go but downward, to the ocean; I will tell the story as if it were my own, my mouth opening each letter; and as my lips will open, pulling out the last rrrrr sound, he will certainly see my pleasure in making this sound—raunchy, rough, like a motor revving, and my tongue will suspend itself in the middle of my mouth, like a guilty lover’s; what I will say with aplomb is how I love how grey they are, all of one colour; I will bend to pick up a pebble, a smooth one, and taste it—running my tongue across its surface (to hear its salty, marrow-ribboned history, how it will come from a distant sea; how it will have no mother, no father, and no vowels to spare for its dry, hot future: OOO).

Dear Gondola,
Unser schönes Südtirol will write my dead German mother-in-law on a creased and scalloped photo. She will it hold against her umbrella, posting letters outside the hotel. Without gravity, she will slide in a gondola towards ceramic blue, higher certainly than any god, and she will let the clouds greet her, snaking her waist, while she takes picture after picture of the highest place she will ever stand—the film will stay undeveloped. She will then pass back and forth across the village wall, the five tower gates, and the church steeple—still awfully brave and awfully Gothic—to secure for me the precise dot-dot-dot […] when the up-gondola and the down-gondola will kiss and will embrace their swing or Schwung, while her streaked gondola window will reflect her passage outside: the clouds will lift between the tulip poplars and her warm breath will still on glass—and later a batting taffeta lid—caught in tomorrow’s quiet emergency, tomorrow’s unsent postcards.

Nimruz De Castro – salt for good luck

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Nimruz De Castro
salt for good luck

here, your great dreams have abandoned you.
or on days that you feel taller,
you say it was you
who sent them away.
you packed their bags,
lined their pockets
with salt for good luck,
with money enough
for tickets back
to that mountainous place
you left behind
so many years ago,
where the Internet was so bad, you hoped they
would give up on sending emails.
it was your choice to leave,
to live quietly, to live unbound,
unfettered, unseen.
it was you that chose
to live in a house without a door
for Opportunity to knock on.
Opportunity who speaks a different language,
whose hair is golden as flowers
your mother tongue did not have names for.
there are days he still comes to visit.
he stands beneath the doorframe,
he shakes his head, realizing he is still unable
to pronounce your name.
you smile at him, with teeth showing.
as you tuck yourself in,
outside, by the window, you watch your dreams
stand under the rain like ghosts,
as the water washes their faces away.

Anne Gruner – Migration

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Anne Gruner
Migration

The geese used to fly south
for the winter, a honking traffic jam
slipstreaming overhead in V-formation,
a peloton team, guided by an inner compass.
Craning my neck skyward, I listened
to the seasonal siren of change.

The gaggle now settles here for the winter.
Seems I’m no longer a flyover,
but a destination, a port.
Snow on the lawn that once shimmered
in the sunlight has become a flotilla
of grey feathers adrift on a sea of grass,
an avian navy commandeering the yard.
Black and white heads bob, gobbling greenery,
except for one—tall and alert: the captain of the watch.

My small harbour is warm and peaceful—but for
two golden retrievers staring from the window.
The furry sentinels gently whine,
seized by ancestral urges.
The local golf course, inundated
with the cackling interlopers,
compensates canines to play
an endless game of tag they cannot win.

I let slip my golden dogs of war, who cry havoc.
The armada takes flight, sailing into the blue.

It’s oddly comforting that the pattern
will repeat tomorrow and again,
but I know at some point the fleet
will opt to dock further north,
abandoning my port to loneliness.

Jane Hertenstein – Life in the Midden

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Jane Hertenstein
Life in the Midden

Shaken after an unexpected break in my marriage in 2016, I decided to traverse the United Kingdom, north to south, on my bicycle. I was inspired after reading about Frances Willard, an early reformer who learned to ride a bike at age 53. It was Frances who popularized the motto: ‘Do everything.’ I took these words to heart by setting off solo from John O’Groats to Land’s End. Along the way I encountered headwinds, roundabouts, and the loneliness of long-distance cycling.
 
      It is near sunset and it has been raining all day. The word ‘rain’ is too broad. I’ve heard the Scottish have as many names for liquid precipitation as the Inuit have for snow. The day has been all over the dial of wetness, ranging from drizzle to misty fog, to scattered showers to sudden downpour. As a reader of English literature, the phrase “dying from the damp” comes to mind, likely some poor Dickens’s character, a wayfaring orphan, Oliver Twist’s mother.
      The damp has seeped into my soul, through the goosebumps on my forearms, through my colourless wrinkled toes. But, for now, I’ve shed my soaked tights and spongy wool socks. I’m dry sitting in the door of my tent watching the sun go down, a blaze of poppy-orange and mauve watercolouring the sky above a hillside where sheep graze.
      I feel as if I’ve climbed inside a serene Turner landscape painting as I rest in the Scottish countryside—except the day has been fraught with self-doubt, short, steep climbs—more walking than riding the bike. This is not what I imagined before setting out on a solo ride from the top to the bottom of the United Kingdom or what the locals call an End to End.
      More like an End to End Her. Me, a middle-aged frumpy housewife trying to find herself at the end of her marriage.
      But, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m at the beginning of a bike trip that will ultimately take me 20 days and 1,099 miles from John O’Groats to Land’s End, north to south, down the spine of the isle, from Scotland, through Wales and England to Cornwall. My tent is pitched behind a pub off the side of a road that borders Loch Ness.
      The tea in my thermos is still warm, little wisps of steam waft up. For now, the wind has stopped whipping my coffin-size tent. I’m a city-girl from Chicago—not Chicago-ish, but the true inner-city complete with gun shots, muggings, and police helicopters whirling overhead. As I watch sheep—I guess they’re sheep—dip their heads to chew and eat, bleat and baaa, and shuffle their feet, hooves, I wonder: How did I get here?
      Of course, I know how I got here. By bike. By pedalling using my own two legs. With great effort. But how—what brought me to this place, this moment, this fulcrum, or what T.S. Eliot in the Four Quartets calls ‘a still point’? The universal dance.
      Watching the sun douse itself in deep reds and purples before subsiding into the west, I remember a recent news article that explained the science behind Turner’s vivid skies: disaster. A cataclysmic volcanic eruption of poisonous gases that killed tens of thousands produced otherworldly sunsets.
      That’s me I think, on the brink of change, hoping to wring beauty from pain.
      My tea has grown cold and I toss the dregs before screwing the cup back on the thermos. It has begun to rain, again.

*

At the hostel in Oban, I heard a weather report that sounded ominous. Gale-force winds. Word was that the ferries that would take Alex, a fellow cyclist whom I met the day before on the road, to the Outer Hebrides were not running. The next morning, I quietly gathered my things while Alex slept.
      After yanking my bike out of a tangle of other bikes in a store room, I climbed aboard my rig and headed south, hoping to catch a ferry to the island of Arran and then over to Ayr—if the weather held. A big if.
      Sometime in the afternoon the winds picked up and I found myself pedalling hard, standing on the downstroke—stock still. The wind whipped a piece off my helmet. I quickly checked my phone and maps to redirect.
      There was a campground at Lochgilphead—if I could get there. Another big if.
      Luckily, I found it and was able to call the proprietor who came out of his house to show me a flat piece of ground in a boggy field, where my tent would be fully exposed to the winds. Then, as if reading my mind, he walked me over to a stable, where I might set up. I was about to release my bungees on the back of the bike. But, wait! He then unlocked a caravan parked next to the shower house and said I could stay there. I burst into tears of relief.
      The little RV wasn’t connected to water or electricity, yet it was more than a hollow shell. There was a couch and a little table where I could spread out my stuff. For the next couple of days, it would be my refuge from the storm.

*

The next day I awoke to fierce winds whipping up the narrow loch slip to a frothy brew. When I opened the little aluminium door, it flew out of my hands and slapped the side of the trailer. I ran across the grounds to the bath/toilet house. Even within the cement block walls I could hear the wind whooshing.
      At the shower house I met a woman who had recently retired. She was staying at the campgrounds while volunteering at a Bronze Age dig at the Kilmartin Dig. I’d passed signs for it on the way to a café stop at the museum.
      It occurred to me that I hadn’t been spending much time just hanging out with locals, hearing their stories. Of course not, I was always on my bike or else collapsed in my tent.
      Anyway, I asked the woman to tell me about Kilmartin, to tell me what I had missed.
      Growing up in Ohio, I’d ridden my bike to Fort Ancient, the name given to grave mounds that had been robbed of the bodies and artefacts of Native peoples. At Kilmartin there was something similar called cairns that were being excavated. Maggie went on to tell me there were also standing stones.
      I’d seen stone circles in Sweden and Ireland, where ancient tribes oriented themselves within the bigger cosmos. I’m sure they had a much better grasp of where they were from and where they were going than I.
      I asked her about buried treasure. It was slow going, she told me. Much like writing, much like cycling, I reckoned. There are bright spots, nuggets in the midst of detritus. Always the biggest bonanza involves garbage: midden piles, the refuse, it is there that archaeologists discover how a society was organized, how it worked, what was important, what they threw out. It is in digging through the ordinary that one often finds a gem.
      Good words for living, I thought.

*

Battling the winds back to the lonely caravan, I recalled I had little food. I would need to face the elements once again.
      I donned rain pants and a rain jacket and struggled forward. Flags and pennants stood out straight from poles. Awnings over doorways ballooned. I passed a library and went in. I needed a book since I’d finished reading the one I’d brought and left at the hostel. The library had a second-hand prose section, books for sale by the Friends of the Library.
      There I bought a copy of Wuthering Heights—a more convoluted love story has never been written. Yet, it harkened back to my early twenties when I deemed it the most romantic book I’d ever read. Everlasting love, love that spoke over the centuries, that defied the dead, the separation of this earth from the next. The idea of two hearts beating as one, a soul mate.
      I was never one to fall for that kind of purple language when describing love, but, at the same time, I secretly wished it were true. I wanted a love that would last forever, that wouldn’t be corrupted by death or time. I bought the book because I hoped there was some way to go back, to find amidst the garbage and trash, something to hang on to.
      Leaving the library, I held the door for a woman right out of Scottish casting. She wore a waterproof Mackintosh with a matching brim hat tied under her chin and she was pushing one of those little personal shopping carts.
      ‘Whew!’ She paused, to shake off in the doorway. ‘I needed the trolley today so’s not to blow away!’
      I smiled in agreement before going on my way.

*

I next stopped at a thrift store to buy another ‘wee’ sack for food. Even here in Lochgilphead, I wasn’t far from pop culture. In the midden piles of linen dresser covers, lace tablecloths, plated tea spoons, little china creamers, souvenir Jubilee plates, I found a Backstreet Boys insulated lunch bag.
      Now all I needed was food. I found a Co-op where I restocked my store of cheese and bread, cookies, and crackers. On the way back to the caravan park was an Indian Takeaway. Curried fried rice sounded good on such a raw day. I told the kid taking my order that I’d cycled here. ‘Why?’, he’d wanted to know.
      In the big picture, I wasn’t doing anything too out of the normal. Visiting the library, thrift storing, shopping for groceries, getting takeout. I could have done all this without leaving home. But here I was in wind-swept Lochgilphead, walking through a prism. Each facet of the experience slightly different, taking on new colours, a new slant. I realized this is what it means to travel, to take time and not just pedal the miles, but to live in the midden. The mess.

*

Back at the caravan park I ran into Philip, the proprietor. He asked me how things were going and I waved my bag of takeaway at him and smiled.
      He told me the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had fainted after a 9/11 commemoration. I’d been so far away from the news that hearing this made me want to fall down. Suddenly there is no such thing as gravity, a way to be held up. I feel as if I am in the middle of an ever-widening, ever-maddening gyre. According to the poet Yeats, ‘the centre cannot hold’. The world seems to be bending toward some kind of fiery sunset. After weeks away from the political mayhem in America, I am thrust back into the current political reality. More and more the run up to the election felt like an episode of the Jerry Springer Show, combative daytime TV.
      How did we end up here? I wondered.

*

As a kid I saw the hand of God in nature, in the fluttered, fluid murmuration of starlings over a field, in the night song of crickets caught in the cracks of the patio, in the winking black-eyed Susans, butterflies dancing above the heads of wildflowers beside the road. The Divine was everywhere, in holding a door for the next person, a baby’s smile, poetry, forgiveness.
      I was having a hard time reconciling the church of Lock Her Up and Build the Wall, messages of hatred and othering, with the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospel, the Golden Rule, ‘the greatest of these is love.’
      What happened to compassion?
      It all seemed upside-down. Had I been hoodwinked? Or, like, my father thought: Had I wasted my life?
      I wasn’t quite ready to give up, but I had to find a way to navigate what lay ahead.   AQ

Susan E. Lloy – She

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Susan E. Lloy
She

She’s uncertain when she left her country as the entire process has been a blur. There had been too much unquenchable sorrow, stress, and unknowns, still they were fortunate compared to others. Others who had never set foot on dry land again wishing for something better. It was in the summer when the winds were strong and currents manic, but the precise date has now escaped her. They straddled the high seas against the wind and wild currents, which tossed their craft around like a cork in a swimming pool. Her child was one of a clutch of frightened children. A girl of six with wide open eyes and long, dark hair. A sweet and prepared face for such a young thing with all the dangers that greeted them with hungry open arms.
      Now she is in a camp, and the shelters that house her and her neighbours touch each other like a parade of soldiers, arm to arm. Her child went missing within a month of their arrival. No one saw a thing. Snatched up and taken by a gang or traffickers like so many others here. Three went missing that day while kicking a ball or playing some child’s game. The UN are interviewing with the help of the police, probing the disappearance of these three children as well as countless others in scattered camps across the country. And each time they visit they provide the same answer. No updates at this time.
      The opportunists, that plague these camps, prey on the unsuspecting. Rana waits and cries and, on occasion, has to be apprehended by others when she attempts to drown herself in the sea that is blue and inviting and constantly calling her name. And, if she just swam until she no longer could, then it would be done. But Rana can’t give in. She must be here if her daughter returns, so this exit is something she can’t consider, at least for now.
      She looks at every one with suspicion, save for her neighbours on either side. A tattered doll lies on the cot of her missing child. It stares back at her, forlorn and distant. Its round, blue eyes seem to be frozen in a shock-like state. Very much like herself. Every breath is already an accomplishment considering the misfortune and misery that has a strangle hold on her, which is unrelenting and merciless. Every day she, and the other parents whose children are also missing, get together and discuss their heartache and what can be done. They must rely on the police as they’re not permitted to walk around outside the camp. Feet and souls are confined to this place. This that has become home, yet has nothing of familiarity or comfort.
      She tries to imagine her child eating nutritious food and playing in the open air, the sun smiling down while she eats an ice cream under the shade of a tree. She wears a pretty, patterned dress with cute animals, or watches a cartoon series on television. But Rana knows this isn’t true. She’s heard the stories and whispers from people who have known such tragedies and realizes the darkness that awaits outside this enclosure. Yet couldn’t this end differently?
 
 
      She’s here now. After decades of living in another space. Territory that inhabited her every pore and memory. Her home of what seemed a thousand years. Her children said she can call this home now. Mavis looks around the single, solitary room with a bathroom off to one side and recognizes some familiar items. Her favourite recliner, framed photographs of loved ones. Some confined within squares she doesn’t quite know anymore, but they look at her with smiles and reassurances. There isn’t a stove to cook on. Just a bare counter with dying flowers in a vase and some snacks. Someone she doesn’t know asked her if she would like her to throw them away, but she replied–no leave them.
      She does remember when she was a young girl moving from one base to another. Never staying in one place long enough to plant roots, make good friends or have any degree of nostalgia to hitch a ride with the next. Yet, the flowers, she does remember. From one country to another all the lovely flowers that grew on the outskirts of the bases. How she loved to bring them home to her mother who always acted surprised and arranged them in a prominent place in different windows for everyone to see.
      There aren’t fields of flowers outside her windows. Just concrete and a parking lot. It wasn’t her children’s choice when they placed her here, but it was the only available spot. They try to make light of it when she asks why she is here. Oh, Mom, it’s nice here. Don’t you think? You don’t have to do anything. Everything is done for you here. Don’t you deserve this after all your years of doing for us?
      She stares off to unknown horizons imagining herself as a young girl again. How time has sped. Now she is here in a space she doesn’t like or understand why exactly. Everything aches and is increasingly more difficult. They won’t even let her out the front door on her own. This prison. This cage that is now hers. How life has become so small. She can’t even make a cup of tea. If she could only move around a bit. Pick flowers, go for a coffee, enjoy a glass of good wine after the cinema. Meet a man.
 
 
      It will take time to adjust to this space, but Lizzy expected this. How else could it be after so many years of cohabitation? She let him keep the house as she was the one who wanted a fresh start. Every crevice in that dwelling reminded her of him. Her new homestead is compact, but what more does she need? Lizzy won’t be inviting another in. Storing his socks and hobbies in her closets. Her friends say she can’t possibly know this at this juncture, yet she does. That part of her life is over and a singular one has begun.
      She looks out at the expanse of the sea where it all began for her, her childhood turf. It’s limitless horizon and soothing rhythm. This is something she will never leave again. Her migration days are over. She must stay anchored to this place on this shore for the remainder of her days. Even though the fog layers this stretch of land with force and a relentless grip. Footsteps must be taken with care. But Lizzy feels safe here with the cold Atlantic winds and hard, blue water. All familiar markers of her youth. Especially when she reads about the misfortunes of others. The migrants who take such peril-filled escape routes on waters such as this and the hard realities of the ones who make it. Homes where no hats are hung and lives that become absorbed into the unknown.
 
 
      Rana looks out from the refugee camp and sees a flock of gulls flying overhead and wants to leave with them. To where, she doesn’t care. Still, she is imprisoned here indefinitely with no freedom but a hope. Perhaps she will have news of her daughter soon and this keeps her feet solid on this foreign soil. A land where one is not easily welcomed. She looks out across the stretch of land that borders the east side of the camp. A grove of olive trees stands quietly in the field. She imagines picking olives and preparing simple fresh cooked meals. It’s so close she can imagine plucking one from a tree. Yet her feet are bound here. To this place that’s home now, but grasps none of its liberty. At this moment she knows it’s a good thing, for one step in any direction and her child is farther from her too.   AQ