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enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Yearning, part II

I'm going to write a second, pleasant entry, because I'm feeling oddly, pleasantly meditative rather than morose.

I wonder if it's because I'm sitting at my desk with some fresh bread and olive oil, and I have freshly poured myself a half glass of Chianti? :)

I probably shouldn't have written the earlier entry about yearning. But that's what it is. I have a yearning to be in an environment in which I would be learning and growing in ways that feel in synch with my heart. Here, I have some goals that I have set out for myself. I have some work goals that I hope to accomplish - specific subject-area stuff - but when I step back and ask if those things arise out of discipline or out of heart, the answer is obvious. I am very, very good at discipline. And as we know, discipline, by its very definition, is a turning away from the self.

Anyhow. I can't make a change right away, so I'm going to tell you a little bit more about the movie that I saw last night. It was a French Canadian movie and I am thrilled to tell you that I obviously understood it as there was a dude sitting in front of me who had a super-large head and so I could not read any of the subtitles!

This is some accomplishment for me, as the film took place in a northern mining region.

Also, I understood the conversation with the director after the film, with the exception of one or two of the questions from the audience that were in very slangy French.

So that was good. I progress. I rarely have trouble understanding Parisian French, but those pesky Quebecois!

I have a profound respect for this filmmaking though. Bernard Emond is a quiet, philosophical sort of a man. His films require patience (I was thinking this as I was watching the film, and also that it must take incredible patience to MAKE such a film). All respect due goes to him.

In the trilogy he is eulogizing a way of life that is on the way out, really, that is not just a Quebecois story, but also a Canadian story. In fact, it's the story of any place in which the economy changes and the culture of youth gradually separates it from the traditions that came before - the church, etc. - and what is left behind.

The film moves very slowly through a series of encounters of a doctor with primarily elderly patients in a mining town in which the primary industry has been long gone. The doctor has come to replace the elderly town doctor who is about to take a vacation and who ultimately requires a replacement.

There is no humour in this film, but it is filmed beautifully and realistically, with characters very true to life. The doctor even falls in love, although no "action" takes place in the film - compassion, rather than kissing. :)

The man she falls in love with, frankly, is my new "Mr. D@rcy." YOu'll laugh when you hear how much he is my ideal type. Even C. whispered to me during the movie, "That's your boyfriend!"

Said guy was studying to be a historian in the big city, moving from archive to archive, hoping to finish his big thesis, when his father in the northern town died. The son moved to the north to run the father's bakery, so that the "region would have bread." Also, "I realized that what I really wanted to do was read. There's plenty of time here for that."

A baker AND a reader! With a cabin on a quiet lake in the middle of nowhere! And handsome! (OK, so he speaks with a Quebecois accent and there is a hint of Mr. Be@n about him, but still. ;))

I'm just joking. It's a beautifully-acted, delicate, and moving true-to-life picture of people in a region with little economic hope, just getting through their day-to-day life. It touches on what a life really is worth, what a life of service can mean, and it's a sensitive, delicate portrait of a woman in the throes of learning how to become intimate with other people and their lives. The landscape is even filmed in all of its dull austerity, rather than dressed up to be something it is not.

Well done, M. Emond.

When I was watching the film last night, I remembered the part of me that actually *does* feel Canadian. There are rare glimpses of the Canadian in me. I think that maybe those come through when I think of fairness and patience, but otherwise I find it difficult to relate to many of my compatriots.

But then I see a film like this and I remember the countless hours of my childhood on open country roads, staring at the endless forests and fields, the big sky, the giant crops of rocks blasted by lonely road crews through the Canadian shield in the middle of absolutely nowhere, having caught "the summer flying low; over the waving meadowlands; and held it there between our hands." I remember the endless grey skies and the pitch black in the north; the frigid water that even in August was...err..bracing, if swimmable by the brave (overlooking at great distance the exact spot of the wreckage of the Edmund F!tzgerald); and the buzzing of mosquitos on the porch of an old cabin dozens of miles from anywhere, in the lonely space illuminated only by stars, where settlers had once come and broken the land but that nature was taking back ever so quickly.

C. told me recently (I often wonder to him out loud, "How the hell can you live here, when you could live in Europe?") that he loves the openness here, plain and simple. He said that he finds the available space here translates into the people being more open. I don't really find that to be the case, but perhaps he means "casual." Certainly, we wear much more fleece.

He has the view that the cramped quarters in Europe make people crabby. I can see him evolving into a Canadian, really, before my eyes. His primary leisure activities involve outdoor sports. His girlfriend cross-country skis quite a bit and so they did that together this winter. He loves to run outdoors, cycle, paddle. In short, he loves it here. He even wears fleece. (Eek!)

I wish I loved it in the same way, or at least with the same regularity. I love nature for the solitude and the way that it scales me down to almost nothing. Sometimes I really miss the woods, almost as though I have been eviscerated.

At the same time, I don't really consider myself a sporting person, in spite of my past. I don't want to spend every evening riding my bicycle or running or canoeing. If I lived on a cabin on a lake I am sure that I would lie at the end of the dock every night, staring at the water bugs darting about. Most of all, as we know, I don't like the people. I find them petty and provincial, obsessed with pointless things (a giant tv on which to watch hockey), and worst of all there's VERY LITTLE ART TO LOOK at.

I don't know. I know I oughtn't to be so negative. I will try for love for my fellow countrymen. I will try hard.

So I'm going to leave you with my favourite letter EVER from an anthology of Canadian letters. I hope you enjoy it. It is fabulous, not only for the spelling of "country" used, which is for Anna, but because it catches the spirit of what I loved once, back when I had the dream of being a historian of this country myself.

1972
Dear Peter Zoskii? I hope I speled that right I know how you feel you should see the fun they hav with my name I am also a lousy speler. I listen to your program when ever I can mostly becaus CBC is about all we get hear. HE! HE! But seriously I do like your program some times you get a little beyond me but its different and I like it.
I herd your program today and you ried a powem about a (fellow?) leaving his citifid ant hill typ job and taking off for a cotage in the woods I wonder how meny men have don that. I have don it I lived in Welland Ont for 15 years and worked in just about all the factoryes there I married a girl there had 4 children but after pining for my prairie hom for 15 yr I finnaly took off for 2 years found this place in High Level it is the most northerly farming cuntry in Canada I believe and I have found my sele here (finally) but It cost me dearly my wife took one look at this cold God forsacken Cuntry and took off as fast as that old bus would taek her I somtimes whis I had forst her to stay but I love my freedom to mutch to fors my will on eny one elles freedom I miss them verry mutch so I worck like hell clearing the bush off the land burnying roots bracking new land with a 24 in bracking plow, and work it is. only 4 out of 10 peopl stay in this cuntry. But I have promised my silf I would stay I have quit so meny good jobs that I would be emberest to tell how many. I figer a fellas got to make a stand sooner or latter you cant run for ever. but I shure wish my family was hear with me. but if I went back there I would only be thincking about this place.
All the time I was in them smocky factories I used to think of the open prairies, the free blowing wind with not a house in sight. When I came back I drove out in an old 51 ford and 1/2 ton and I drove night and day. The second morning I was in Saskatchewan it was in the spring the wind was flowing the ducks were mateing, and the antelop were troting across the prairie I stoped the truck and I took a deep breeth of freedom I never fellt so close to God in all my life and that was when I said to my self there aint enuf money in Ontario to mack me stay there.
I have a new famely her. I have a famely of bares living on the south west quarter. She dug her den right under my corner post and it's a real good one too. I get a wild stalion that comes to visit every now and then and a wesel lives under my shack. the littl devil stole my duck the other morning. there is also a pure white timber wolf comes throw here every week or so to chick up on me. Walks right threw the yard but I hardly ever see him but I shure see his tracks they are larger than the palm of my hand. I don't have T.V. here but I would'nt have tim to watch it with all these wild criters around here to watch. Like how many people would have seen the mating dance of the sand hill crain or watched a wild stalion macking love to a spirited little filly or seen the wheet fields in spring with so many ducks and geese you could'nt count them all or wathch all the beautfull colers off the sunsett at mide nite
I have read the paper at 11.0cok at nite hear meny times. I have driven the tractor all night with out turning on the lights. this is a very exiteing cuntry for those how are yong at hart. It is the last fronter. I don't know why I am telling you all this exept to say that a man only lives once and if he is brave enofe he lives it the way he likes and he likes it all the time he lives.
Yours Truly, VI Dardick
P.S. shure hope you can read this mess
(Taken from the THe Book of L3tters, P@ul and Audrey Gresco3)

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6:33 p.m. - 2010-04-18

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