Colm Toibin interview and short story

Photo from The Guardian

Colm Toibin's "Summer of '38" appeared in the March issue of The New Yorker. This short and simple tale of ordinary events and one woman's memories portrays some long-term consequences of the Spanish Civil War. After making a decision to leave the past undisturbed, the protagonist declines a unique lunch invitation and arranges a lunch of her own.

Last month, Toibin was interviewed by CBC's Eleanor Wachtel of Writers and Company at Blue Metropolis in Montreal, where he was awarded the International Literary Grand Prix.

His latest work, The Testament of Mary, featured Toibin's view of what it was like for Mary to be the mother of Jesus. The first theatrical run starred Fiona Shaw and closed on May 5. Toibin is close to the Irish theatre, and it was at a theatrical event that the idea was suggested. Would he do a play? He would, and did. In the interview, he talked about how much of Mary's appeal as someone to pray to lay in her silence, her acquiescence.

Hearing Toibin talk about his play with Eleanor Wachtel made me think about another book I read recently. In 2011 Michelle Roberts published a novel called The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene. It seems to me an interesting thread connects the two.

Toibin's discussion of how he envisioned Mary reminded me of a passage from Roberts's book. In listing her identification with more ancient goddesses and their epithets, Mary describes herself as "she who is ignored...exiled."

Interesting parallel. I love Toibin's writing and look forward to reading this latest opus. If the opportunity arises, I'll see the play on stage. 

Seasonal waterfall and grazing bears

This waterfall in the Callaghan Valley has a great variation in seasonal flow. In summer, our guide Jason told us, it is a mere trickle. At this season it is still fed by plenty of melting snow. This was a bonus view shown us by our bear guides.

James and Jason, of  Whistler Discovery Tours, drove us up into bear country to watch from the safety of a land rover while those hungry animals, fresh out of hibernation, grazed on young clover by the roadside. As the snow melts and the spring progresses, the bears will follow the new growth up to the alpine elevations.

Whistler Creek and the big old softie in summer

Whistler Creek and 99, the Sea to Sky Hgwy from Creekside Village

Creekside Gondola with Whistler Mountain in the background

The big ole softie still has some snow up top

Cable car cosy at Creekside Gondola

I've seen them on teapots and golf clubs. But cable car cosies?

Also, why is one car clothed and the other naked?

 Picture from Joanne at Seasonal Hearth and Home

Photo from craftstylish

Bears wake and graze near Whistler

From the safety of the Whistler Discovery Tours jeep, I was fortunate to be witness to the early feeding of black bears along a remote mountain road.

My fellow bear-watchers were two couples: one from California and the other from Australia.

Jason, our photographer guide, told us how fortunate we were to get such a good look at these impressive animals. In spring, the grass is still short, so they are plainly visible.

Each individual animal we saw stayed close to our vehicle for at least 15 minutes. All three were black bears, though two were brown in colour. They seemed unconcerned by the presence of the jeep or the sounds of clicking cameras from its windows.

It was wonderful to watch them at close range. Their movements were interesting and unexpected; more than once we saw someone standing on three legs, the fourth paw in the air with its teddy-bear pads plainly visible.

Just recently out of their dens, they were grazing on young clover. Jason told us another favourite spring food is skunk cabbage -- a plant with a rank smell I recall well from my northern BC childhood.

Black Tusk memories

Photo taken from the Callaghan Valley at dusk

As a young woman, I hiked up to camp in Black Tusk Meadows. At the time there was a lot I didn't know about the mountain. For one thing, it was the original choice as a ski hill for what later became Whistler Blackcomb.

Also, I lacked a clear understanding of how the tusk itself was formed from the hardened magma of an extinct volcano. This magma never escaped the chamber. The surrounding rock, far softer, eroded away over a long period of time.

However, on that trip, I learned other things of importance when we left too late and had to traverse the last part of the trail to Taylor Campsite in the dark.

That nocturnal journey up the forested switchbacks was a wonderful experience. When visual perception is limited by darkness, other senses compensate. That night it was sound and the quality of the air that kept me on the right path. 

That unique trip to the alpine meadows in darkness afforded me a mysterious glimpse of things lit, but not by light. The memory has stayed with me for forty years.

Life as a series of emergencies

Dominant features of the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston are this huge defibrillator sign and the constant dunning of announcements warning travelers not to trust others with their bag. Anything to raise the traveler's adrenalin levels.

While I waited for my connecting flight, I saw two emergency vehicles drive up to the plane, lights flashing. The reason? A passenger felt slightly ill. I wonder if all the noise made her feel better, or worse.

This atmosphere is not just in international airports, and the paranoid propaganda isn't prevalent only in our neighbouring nation. Here in formerly laid-back Vancouver, for instance, there is a sign advertising CPR on the floor of Cambie Station.

Marshall McLuhan was right about the nature and power of the media, though few understood his prophetic words, "The medium is the message." Though most of us would deny the idea, we are the products of the media.

Media mavens, themselves products of the information age, use the media to shape our behaviour, and our very thoughts. The influence is pervasive and insidious, and largely unconscious.

The worldwide belief system, as biologist Rupert Sheldrake points out in a recent book, is now scientific materialism (or promissory materialism, as Karl Popper ironically christened this unproven view.) This set of beliefs has far- ranging consequences.

Ironically, while the media beat the drum of the social danger comes from the old religions, Islam in particular, they appear unconscious of the real danger comes from our widespread and unquestioned belief in science -- that is, the quasi-religious version of science that the media and society currently inculcate.

The major tenet of the new quasi-religious belief in science is this:
       The purpose and meaning of life is to get more money and acquire more stuff. This entails a whole host of corollaries. For one thing, the old idea of the spiritual quest has been replaced by the quest for money. For another, social life, including marriage, is seen as a shopping trip. If the selected spouse proves over time not to have been a bargain, go shopping for another. Fulfillment and happiness, the rights of all, are to be found through getting more stuff. Expensive weddings and temporary spouses, as well as "friends" on facebook illustrate the trend.

As a corollary to this, we are taught that socially, politically and environmentally, our world is fraught with dangers we must fight against; ergo, we need to be very vigilant, very suspicious, very afraid. Thus TV and the newspapers provide only two main messages: the current thing to fear is x; first, be very afraid of x, and second, buy this solution to overcome your current fear. Fear is a powerful sales pitch.

The misguided but engineered idea that life is a series of emergencies, and that the appropriate response to all of them is to pursue security through material goods and goals is quite simply wrong. It only replicates the fear that keeps it going, and thus, the whole daft system.

Invisible, pervasive, and astonishingly influential, these programs that run silently behind  our conscious awareness are the viruses that have infected our minds. Many of our contemporary problems follow from allowing the media and society to tell us what to think -- and what to be afraid of.