My Thoughts
“There are times when I am half out of bed and fumbling for socks and mumbling for words before I realize that I am foolishly alone, that no one waits at the base of the stairs and no boat rides restlessly the waters of the pier. At such times only the grey corpses on the overflowing ashtray beside my bed bear witness to the extinction of the latest spark and silently await the crushing out of the most recent of their fellows.“
~ MacLeod, Alistair. “The Boat.” The Massachusetts Review, vol. 9, no. 4, 1968, pp. 721–734.
I read this short story when I was in high school and reread this paragraph over and over. Like a door opening slowly in my imagination the brilliance of Alistair Macleod’s writing filled my heart. The paragraph foreshadows the arc of the story of a man who is married to Cape Breton culture with every aspect of their lives revolving around the weather, the sea and the boat. As the narrator tells the story of his father, the reader smells the fish and the salty winds, and understands the metaphor of the small boat floating in a seemlingly endless ocean of responsibility. The father must continue to work on the boat even though he was not meant for the sea.
“Clearly the mind is always altering its focus, and bringing the world into different perspectives.“
~ Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. 1929. Harcourt, 1989.
I have read this book a number of times in my life and every time I feel a deeper meaning to Woolf’s narrative. The weight of bearing… “witness to the latest spark” not only in her day but of ours. How easy it is to sidestep a creative destiny until you are tripping over it.
~ Atwood, Margaret. “Siren Song.” You Are Happy, Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 62.
This poem by Margaret Atwood attends to the many variations resultant of Homer’s Odyssey which describes these rather singular, lyrical voices that would lure men to their deaths. The myth became more alluring in its tenure going on to be described as half bird and half women, then expanding further to the trope as a mermaid like creatures. The siren song in Atwood’s poem alludes to the oft observed role of men as saviour, fixers , rescuers of the damsel in distress but, that lures men to their deaths. Perhaps an hallucination / a word of warning to men (or women) who are diminished by their own ego. However here, the archetype is herself, dying of boredom. Atwood writes “I don’t enjoy it here squatting on this island looking picturesque and mythical “. The costume still hangs stubbornly in the closets of women of the 21st Century and requires unpacking. Especially now.
~ Brown, Brené. Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. Random House, 2018.
Brené Brown attends to courage and the correlation of courage to vulnerability. People behave so differently when they feel safe. Yet the mask wears us down, and strength looks like something else.~ Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library, Simon & Schuster, 2003.
“This was on an old ceramic mug that belonged to my grandmother and now sits on a shelf in my kitchen. The tricky thing here is that it took me a lifetime to come to terms with who I was, or rather, who I wasn’t. The process of elimination was excruciating but provided contrast when I was lucky enough to recognise myself again. I was so tired of trying to be something I wasn’t. Here I left the boat on shore and decided to dive in and swim. I wasn’t sure if I would survive the water but I knew for sure I wasn’t going to survive the boat.”