Sound On InstaReadings Series Volume 6 with Betsy Warland & Alison Acheson
Welcome to Sound On InstaReadings. This is our final event of the season and features Betsy Warland and Alison Acheson and is hosted by David Ly, Cynara Geissler and Dina Del Bucchia. Thank you for joining us for our spring events. See you (virtually) in the fall! Bio:
Betsy Warland has published 13 books of poetry, creative nonfiction, and lyric prose. Warland’s 2010 book of essays on new approaches to writing, Breathing the Page— Reading the Act of Writing became a bestseller. Author, mentor, teacher, manuscript consultant, editor, Warland received the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Award for Literary Excellence in 2016.ALISON ACHESONAlison's IG handle is @alisonacheson. Her email is [email protected]. BIO: ALISON ACHESON is the author of ten books, including the memoir Dance Me to the End: Ten Months and Ten Days with ALS Brindle & Glass), and the short story collection Learning to Live Indoors (Porcupine’s Quill), which was praised by the Globe & Mail for its “arresting and crystalline clarity”. She teaches creative writing at the University of British Columbia, and lives in Vancouver, BC.
Reading Text:
#1
The Human is at a loss for words
The Human is at a loss for words. Considers. And, considers. Wonders, is this loss of words perhaps why The Human is a writer? The desire to describe something that The Human cherishes makes words scatter like a flock of startled bushtits. The very word “cherishes” is suspect. Passé.
Okay, The Human thinks (again), let’s begin with its name: Lost Lagoon. Its very name is a conundrum. How can one misplace a lagoon? Standing on the shore any passerby can observe it’s not a lagoon but a small lake or, perhaps, a pond.
Over the decades, The Human has walked around the lagoon chatting with various companions, but now dwelling close to it, lives with it. The difference between “around” and “with.” Difference between pointing with camera, voice or index finger, and standing still—watching, listening, sniffing, occasionally speaking softly or returning a bird’s call.
Just across the street from the high- and low-rise buildings’ cheek and jowlness, Lost Lagoon life is___________. Once again, The Human is at a loss for words.
The lagoon resists being depicted. Summed up. The Human admires this.
#2
That said, under the cover of darkness and human absence,
That said, under the cover of darkness and human absence, the lagoon spills into surrounding life. Many are the nights that The Human is jolted awake by alarmed quacking of geese and ducks. Coyote, owl, or otter on the prowl have startled them: their panic echoes inside The Human’s head.
#8
For years, decades in fact, whenever visiting
For years, decades in fact, whenever visiting Stanley Park, The Human puzzled over its name: Lost Lagoon. How did it get this nonsensical name? It seemed an oxymoron or a Zen koan. Then water drove The Human to water. The apartment flooded, and The Human moved here.
Just like the magnetism of the river four kilometres away from the family farm, Lost Lagoon magnetized The Human. Now, this close proximity has provoked an investigation into its curious name.
One might guess that it was named by a poet. Indeed it was. E. Pauline Johnson, part Mohawk part English, was fond of paddling her canoe there when it was a quiet cove. Here a “however” hovers. With summer tides, during Johnson’s favoured paddling time, her refuge was temporarily lost. Then, was lost permanently in 1916 when construction of the Stanley Park causeway cut the cove off from the sea. Lost, too, for the Skwxwú7mesh / Squamish, Musxwməθkwəy’əm / Musqueam and Səl’ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh / Burrard nations’ peoples who harvested clams and other sea life from the mudflats for generations, probably centuries.
“Lost, leu, to loosen, divide, cut apart.” The causeway separating the sea and the tidal flat.
“Lost, leu-, forleasan, to forfeit,” these unceded territories of the Indigenous Peoples.
Lost, another word for taken.
#31
Picture it as a slightly aberrant-shaped lima bean
Picture it as a slightly aberrant-shaped lima bean—six blocks wide by four blocks across—with a 1.75 kilometre gravel and earthen path hugging its shoreline, these in turn held by conifers and deciduous trees’ protective embrace. Notice its well-camouflaged beaver lodges: one on the south end; one on the north end. Picture its ceaseless reflective conversation with the trees and ever-changing sky and movement of air. Keep in mind how close it came to obliteration numerous times, the final attempt by the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council to get the city to drain it, fill it in and make a sports field. Whisper a thank you to those who worked to have it officially declared as a bird sanctuary in 1938. In the early fall notice how the Canada geese congregate at the narrowing arm leading to the stream in twilight. Puzzle about how strangely quiet they are, and why two or three adults take turns paddling to where the lagoon opens, then retreat. Paddle out. Retreat. The Human is mystified: “What are they waiting for?” Then imagine them suddenly, soundlessly unraveling in an unbroken line that swims as one being across the lagoon to where they spend the night. It takes a few times before The Human understands. The adults are waiting until the eagle has turned in and it’s safe. This choreography as eloquent as any The Human has ever seen.
Bio:
Alison Acheson is the author of ten books, including the memoir Dance Me to the End: Ten Months and Ten Days with ALS Brindle & Glass), and the short story collection Learning to Live Indoors (Porcupine’s Quill), which was praised by the Globe & Mail for its “arresting and crystalline clarity”. She teaches creative writing at the University of British Columbia, and lives in Vancouver, BC.
Dance Me to the End by Alison Acheson (TouchWood Editions) “Mary & Martha” – excerpt for SoundOn reading series
The sense I had at the outset, that we were still us, was beginning to feel over-populated. There were perhaps too many of me.
There was this irritating me—the one who organized and understood the need to think about tomorrow and plan for next week, and even take a peek at what might be required of me a month from now. The one who even knew to turn off my brain (or tried to) if thoughts went beyond next week or month. She was necessary. But she made me squirm. Because I wanted to be someone else—a loving spouse, or artist daydreamer. Or at least someone who could dream at night, asleep. This other person I was revealing myself to be seemed incapable of anything beyond list-making and research and careful cooking.
To my mind came the Biblical story of two sisters, Mary and Martha, and their brother, Lazarus.
I grew up with those stories. Every Sunday my father opened that big book with its magic of old English, and read. The stories embedded at cellular level. It’s the figure of Mary, at Jesus’s feet, listening to his words, that was imprinted on my mind, as it is in many minds of those growing up in Christian faith. I don’t know how that image resonates with boys and men, but as a girl it spoke to a hierarchy of tasks.
It is surprising to return to the actual text and discover the words from which church leaders have extracted these guiding thoughts, and images. The sisters are evoked in such brief verses, a handful of words, that have been expounded upon, dissected, painted by artists, interpreted, and re-envisioned. There are several vignettes in the books of Luke and John that show us the sisters, Martha intent on making and serving food, and Mary sitting at Jesus’s feet, listening, rapt.
The verses in the book of Luke say that Martha was “cumbered about much serving,” and approached Jesus, and said, “Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.” And Jesus answered: “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
In another story, Mary “took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.” She even took some grief from a disciple who thought she shouldn’t have spent the money on the ointment.
I wanted my house to be filled with that fragrance. After all, given the choice between a foot massage and kitchen work, I’d take the massage. And Jesus said that Mary’s listening was “that good part” of the sisters’ actions. In churches, even in the family Sundays of my growing up, that message of taking time to listen to Jesus, to make him the centre, was held up as the model. Martha was the woman in the kitchen, away from the saving words, and mired in chores and daily grind.
I have long held images and notions in my mind about these two and, as others have, I’ve tried to grapple with their significance and meaning. Was it possible there was some sustenance left in these ancient stories? I’d long ago put aside the bindle-stick of paradigms that seemed to belong to my childhood.
As a caregiver, these two women began to visit my mind, heart, and soul regularly, sometimes separately, sometimes together. In my heavier months of caregiving, they just showed up without being asked, and stepped through the doorway—Martha with a look of superiority in her unflagging energy, and Mary with such accusation: What was wrong with me that I didn’t understand that love—simple love—had all one needed to get through? All you need is love.
You don’t understand, I wanted to say. To both.
What about a third sister, one with shared qualities and more? But no. The stories, at first, seem to have a reductive nature; humans tend to like either/or. For our children, we call it choice therapy. It’s supposed to ease life.
I have looked at areas of my life in my past, and wondered whether I am one or the other. As a wife, I’ve ached to be Mary. But more often, as a mother of three, working in and out of home, I’ve had to be Martha. You know Martha wives and mothers. We’re the ones who opt to be designated driver with one glass o’ red, no more, over taking a cab and figuring out a way to retrieve the vehicle the following day.
We make meals that result in real leftovers for next-nights when there are multiple sports or music lessons. And we know how to make leftovers tasty, and how to keep straight in our minds and on our calendars all those classes and practices and games, alongside our own work schedule.
Martha is capable and convenient. But even as a writer, Mary has been my go-to desirable—the bohemian, the artist, the one who eschews the everyday concerns, and can spend hours looking out the window. Mary indulges. And I am pulled towards her. Then, too, that commendation of Jesus. No small thing. I’ve heard about it often, sitting in a pew. Mary hath chosen that good part.
Though, left entirely to Mary, would the words get on the page?
I let that thought drift away.
In the third story, Martha goes out into the town to find Jesus because their brother, Lazarus, has died, and she wants to ask Jesus why he did not come earlier when he might have saved him. Mary stays home to grieve. In this story, Martha affirms her faith. Jesus reassures her. And he resurrects Lazarus from the dead. This story is less often told from the pulpit.
In the days following Marty’s diagnosis, I found that point of acknowledging that this was an opportunity to show him what he meant to me. It was, to my mind, the highest calling of love: to care until the end. In Leonard Cohen’s words, Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in / Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove / Dance me to the end of love.
In my journal, through the months, are notes of almost prayer: Let me feel our connection through this. Let me be there when he goes. Give me the good to remember, and to sustain through the inevitable pain. Yes, the panic.
No one said to me, “You are a romantic idiot!” If they had, I would not have listened. Who would be brave enough to say that to someone trying to face a recent terminal diagnosis? Would I? Even now? People do say, all the time,
“This will draw you closer together than you’ve ever been,” which is, to my mind, a spectacularly stupid thing to say—to assume. But at the outset it seemed possible, desirable.
These people generally added words about this idea being based on observation of their grandparents’ marriage, for- getting that they were nine and a half at the time, and there is so much that children miss—willfully so, perhaps—about adult connections and misconnections.
So caregiving might begin with Mary, but what about Martha, with her wide hands and square-tipped fingers, broad in hip and shoulder? Her lips are full; she prefers to smile than not, and her smile is open and free of guile. She’s lost the art of flirting and seduction. Long ago she depended on being young for that, but now she counts on someone liking her hand-tossed pizza. I wouldn’t be taken in by her pizza.
Mary, Mary, Mary, with your slim hips. Let me follow you. Show yourself.
Even as both called to me, I knew in my gut that it was Mary I wanted to follow, if I had to choose. If I could choose.