Stan Burfield Blog - London Open Mic Poetry Archive

London Open Mic Poetry Archive

JEAN VANIER, WHAT IS THIS THING HE'S DISCOVERED?

1/30/2015

On the way home from the grocery store with Linda this afternoon, I was thinking about the puzzle of my attraction to Jean Vanier, which I wrote about here a few hours ago. I think I have it figured out.

The question is, what did I, then and still an agnostic (okay, an atheist), see in the ideas about reality espoused by a very devout Catholic?

Somehow, it had to do with the community he established, called L'Arche, of severely learning-disabled people and support workers who all lived together. As I said, "He was living with all the people whom the rest of the world wants to ignore in it's obsession with perfection, specialness, progress, and celebrity. I've always known those obsessions were

JEAN VANIER AND L'ARCHE

1/29/2015

The other day I bumped into some people who work at L'Arche. Along with a few of the guys they live with, who have severe learning disabilities. I didn't even know there was a L'Arche community here in London. It brought back memories and suddenly woke me up.

When I was in my 30's and 40's in Vancouver, I very oddly began looking forward to Canadian Jean Vanier's weekly TV program, which was a half-hour talk, usually with him sitting in a chair in his home in the L'Arche community he created in Paris (which is now worldwide, with a community here in London).

The weird thing for me then about watching Vanier was that I wasn't religious at all, and yet I was listening carefully to a man speaking from a very Christian, very Catholic, background. In fact his talks sounded quite a bit like a gentle preacher proselytizing. But this was definitely a different kind of preacher. He was a man who had practiced what he was preaching. Actually, he had not only created the L'Arche community, but he lived in it, along with people with serious mental problems, WHILE he was living the life of a preacher, so to speak. This to me was something very new.

A lot of what he said was what he had learned about life and living from that situation. And he didn't just combine it with his Christian ideas, and with the philosophy he was imbued with from his earlier days as a philosophy professor. He was telling us new things, views he had realized himself about what it is to be a real human. I was fascinated. This is a preacher who actually KNOWS life, hasn't just read it from the Bible and memorized what his church teaches.

The way I saw it was that he was living with all the people whom the rest of the world wants to ignore in it's obsession with perfection, specialness, progress, and celebrity. I've always known those obsessions were fantasies, unreal, and dangerous to their believers, and to the societies they lived in and promoted. (Yet strangely they provide most of the energy our free-enterprise system runs on, and what it would do without them I can't imagine.) Vanier, one of the brightest people I've ever been exposed to, seemed like he might have discovered an opposite path to those shallow obsessions. I felt he just may have discovered how we can cure ourselves and our communities and the world.

So I watched and rewatched his talks, many of which looked at God and Jesus in deeper ways than I had ever imagined possible, such that I could actually see the faint possibility of myself becoming a believer. But, alas, I would have had to have been much more of a blank slate than I was. I have my own very strong ideas of truth and reality, and to become a Christian I would have to throw all those out first. For people like me, it's not just a matter of deciding to believe.

Nevertheless, I'm still drawn to Vanier's vision. There is so much depth and solid reality in it, in its view of us human beings. It's exactly the opposite from what we are generally exposed to.

JE SUIS CHARLIE HEBDO, MAIS...

1/28/2015

When the Socrates Cafe closed at the Central Library last Monday evening, and many of us walked across to Coffee Culture to carry on the debate, I happened to be sitting opposite a young woman who had a copy of Charlie Hebdo!!

She had picked it up from the news outlet a couple stores away, the last copy they had, which they took out of the window for her.

I thumbed through it in fascination. It was bigger and thicker than I had thought it would be, with a great many cartoons (no photos) but also quite a few articles and regular columns. I was surprised at the number of cartoons. I had thought that those religious psychopaths who slaughtered the staff like cattle had managed to eliminate most of the artists. Well, not quite, thankfully. The magazine sure did a big job on this quickly-put-together issue. They must have had freelance cartoonists who filled in, and maybe some cartoons had been drawn earlier.

I had read that this new printing of three million was going to be in multiple languages, but this copy was French. Maybe it came via Quebec. At any rate, as I browsed through it, I wanted to get a French/English dictionary and pick up the language where I had left off back in grade 9. Because I could only read a word here and there.

One cartoon had a bland-looking middle-aged guy holding up a sign that said "Je suis Charlie Hebdo, mais..." I am Charlie Hebdo, but...

No buts here.

Life at a fire lookout tower

1/28/2015

Throughout my 20's, I spent three summers working in fire lookout towers in Alberta. I loved it. Five months totally alone, except for a couple hours a month when someone delivered groceries. It caused me very little stress. At the time I didn't think of my problem as shyness, just anxiety. And there was little of that at the tower. I did the job, and did it well.

I wasn't totally alone. The towermen (and women) and the forest rangers coordinated things on the radio. And in the evenings, when the fire hazard was low, we would occasionally chat socially with each other. I was one of the most voluble. I remember quite often openly joking, theorizing, generally having fun with one or other of several towermen next door, usually female, without a care in the world. While an audience of unknown size listened in. Making their judgements. What does that say about shyness? For some reason, it doesn't seem to be people's minds that cause the anxiety, but their bodies! (Maybe it's just their body language? Or maybe it was me being the mental person I'm so much more confident being, or maybe...)

Anyway, here I am in the tiny kitchen/dining room/living room of my cabin at the base of the tower, having set the camera for ten seconds. (There was also a bedroom and an office.)

It was just a few days ago that I discovered this photo. I have no memory of taking it, or of seeing it later. So it was a very strange experience seeing me there looking out at me here now. Like encountering myself after going back in a time machine. What does he think? How does he see the world? I mean how do I.

There sure is a lot of difference between now and then. The tower was 100 feet high. I got so I could run up the ladder right to the top. Well, now I live on the 11th floor of an apartment building, which is just about exactly the same height, by coincidence, and I can still make it up the stairs non-stop, but only by walking fairly slowly, and because I do it several times a day for my exercise. I was 29 when I was flying up that tower, which is maybe prime time for most people, more or less. When both the body and mind are in optimal shape, and maybe the emotional life as well.

But for me, I was a bit slow maturing emotionally. Uh, quite. So my optimum came later. When I was in my 60's.

Dominoes

1/27/2015

We received a very nice present from a friend last Christmas -- a set of wooden dominoes, in a beautiful wooden box. (Thanks, Debbie). One night I thought how can I get Linda to try it with me. I know she's never played dominoes before. (I asked her once a long time ago.) But it's not just dominoes: she won't play games of any kind with me; it's the winning and losing, the competition thing. We have a Monopoly set, checkers, cards, all that. But never.

Well, what happened was she asked me to help her with something -- I can't remember what -- so I grabbed at that and said, "Okay, but you've got to do something for me." She looked at me suspiciously. I never ask her to return a favour so it was obviously going to be something she'd hate.

I said, "Just one little game of dominoes. Don't worry, It's really easy. As easy as that." I pointed at the TV. There happened to be an ad for some silly children's thing on at that moment.

She hesitated, then smiled, "Oh, okay. But just one. And just for you," she said, pointing at me.

It took a while to get her mentally prepared and in the mood. We had to wait for her to relax from puttering, and then until whatever she was watching on TV was over. But finally we cleared off the dining room table and dumped the dominoes on it. I read over the instructions as quickly as possible. We picked out five each and started playing. Learning it together. I referred back to the instructions several times. After the first quick game we played another and began to get the idea together, so kept playing. Then Linda started figuring out what it took to win, and began applying it. But suddenly things would go wrong and one of us would have to pick up dominoes from the pile, one after the other, sadly, and we would laugh. After quite a few games we finally got played out and put them away. But Linda was smiling and said, "That was fun. And it was really distracting from everything!"

The next afternoon we put our coats on and left to go to Tillsonburg. There's a flea market/antique place there she wanted to see. In the elevator down I said, "Considering how little we have in common, just imagine if I was into sports."

She looked at me, thinking of other male relatives who spend most of their free time obsessed with one sport or another. Depending on the season, I guess. "We would be living separate lives completely!" she said.

Well, she drove to Tillsonburg. I drank coffee out of my Thermos and admired the farms. Remembering my childhood. I went into the flea market with her for a little while. Found one stall with "Fur, Fish and Game" magazines, which got me excited for a couple minutes, because I had had a subscription to it when I was a young teenager, and had wanted to be a professional trapper when I grew up. Now, reading a column about trapping muskrats I began feeling a little sick inside. The past is over.

I sat in McDonalds, reading and writing, then went back to the flea market to pick up Linda and on to London again. It was my turn to drive, and Linda's to sit back and drain out some of the stress that comes from looking, wanting and not getting.

Stan Burfield, poetic journeyman....by Susan McElroy for Your Old South Magazine

1/27/2015

This interview with Stan Burfield, organizer of London Open Mic Poetry Night, appeared in the premier issue of London's "Your Old South" magazine, Jan. 2015

Stan Burfield knows a great deal about journeys. He’s taken a number of them during his lifetime — arduous and spectacular journeys. Some of his travels have been on foot and others one would categorize as more personal or spiritual in nature. Both types have had a tremendous impact on his path through life. A path that several years ago brought him to London where, it seems, a desire to share his poetry allowed him to find what he had been desperately seeking in his wilderness trips. Here, in London, Ontario, he found his voice and he found himself.

Born and raised on a farm in Alberta, Stan’s view of life was pragmatic. Life on the farm, any farm, teaches lessons not found on city streets or even in the bundles of houses that make up rural towns. Farm life is hard. It’s good, but it’s hard and children raised in wide open spaces often have views of the world that others find hard to see. Farm life is just that – life — not a job. It’s 24/7 and those who choose it are strong in every sense of the word. They toil alongside nature and they understand what can and cannot be changed. They learn to adapt and accept and get on with the task at hand.

Stan was a shy child, an uncomfortably shy child, who grew to be a shy adult. Anxious in social situations for most of his life, Stan says his journeys were attempts to find a remedy for his introverted state.

After finishing university in Calgary, where he studied both biology (in another life he would have been a scientist) and journalism, Stan began a career as a reporter. Stan says it was then that his father offered the only vocation advice he ever gave his son. Having read a book authored by a man who had walked across the United States and then wrote of his travels, Stan’s father suggested Stan take a similar journey.

He suggested to his son that he walk across Canada and then write of his exploits. Being an avid wilderness hiker and confident in his outdoor skills Stan considered the challenge doable. It had all the elements of a good story and he felt the degree of difficulty and required endurance might just push him past his anxiety and shyness. A journey this hard, both physically and mentally, would surely allow him to conquer his fears.

Stan set out from the Pacific coast and seven months later, in Thunder Bay, Ontario, he stopped. Having walked

It seems you just have to be still

1/26/2015

Behind our motel in Quebec City, Linda so loved this bed of stocks, she couldn't resist getting down in it.

IT SEEMS YOU JUST HAVE TO BE STILL

Today I threw myself around, lunging
from one little job
into another;
finally staggered out, rubbing wooden eyes, past
Linda lying softly on the couch
saying soothingly as I passed
why don’t you take a cloth and put it in
hot water and lay it on your eyes.
It will relax them.

I was too stressed to listen
until I came around
through the kitchen two more times; and she said
just go lie down in the dark a few minutes.
Really, the hot cloth will relax them.

Around and back again from the kitchen,
I said OK but it’ll just get cold right away.
She said take in a big bowl of hot water, then.

OK, alright.

Lying in the bedroom, eyes shut,
unable to do anything, with this heat burning
into them, I told myself just stay here in this one place. Don’t
move. Until the cloth gets cold and then just reheat it. And
stay here some more.

Well, where am I going anyway.
It’s not like I’m young and have an unknown life
ahead of me. We’re retired now. Sort of.
I’m not going anywhere anymore. This is it.
I thought of the future leading us out from here.
But it won’t. I’ll be here. In this apartment.
We’re not moving again. This place is where
all the stress of my life has led me to. This
has to be my heaven.

I lay there.

Getting excited now. Restless.

This was my dad in 1965.

1/3/2015

I was 15 at the time. He had been out at the barn milking cows and was now washing the supper dishes in the kitchen. As I burst in excited with my new camera in my hands I noticed the light on his face from the late evening sun.

He was blind and couldn’t see me point the camera, so I said, “Hey Dad, I’m going to take a picture of you.” He smiled.

I’m glad I did. It’s my favourite photo.

At his funeral service two decades later I set this photo at the front of the room, surrounded by sheaves of wheat.

And finally, now, thirty years after that, I’m realizing how much of me is an extension of him: his odd interest in both science and poetry, his love of nature and the country, and his stubbornness.

What would make me happier and more content than anything else in the world right now would be to drive an old tractor in circles around a fragrant field, pulling a disc or a mower or an old-fashioned rake, the air awaft with freshly cut hay, sea gulls hovering.

But then again...

1/3/2015

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”― Albert Einstein

I just saw this quote on someone's Facebook page. It's strange. I want to like it just because Einstein said it. He was such a bright guy that anything he said must be true. And good. But the really weird thing to me about it is that it expresses such an extremely subjective, emotion-laden opinion. Yet Einstein was a scientist. The whole point of science is to try to see reality objectively. And here the No.1 scientist of his age is straight out calling everyone stupid!

I suppose from the point of view of such a genius, lesser minds would seem stupid. And Einstein's mind was praised by everyone. He was looking down on all comers from the top rung of his ladder. Well, if Einstein saw things that way, it must be overwhelmingly hard not to. In other words, the more successful that people become, the more difficult it is for them to see their fellow humans as they really are. (Winners are superior. Losers are inferior. If not, what is the point of winning.)

Yet the objective reality of the situation, which Einstein the scientist presumably was interested in, is quite different. The victorious individuals were motivated not just by their desire to understand how the universe works, or their ability to run the hundred meters quickly, which no doubt played a role, but mostly by the group of "animal" instincts which all mammals have built into them and which pushes them to butt their way to the front of the herd. Once installed there, suddenly there is one "superior" leader and a group of "inferior" followers.

But if you take the instincts that motivate the creation of this mental scale out of the equation, the real objective reality shows itself clearly: We are just a lot of individuals. Objects in space. But we're also objects that happen to be bonded to each other by a complex set of instincts and by the resulting two-dimensional diagrams of life we all love to draw, which reduce the images of surrounding individuals to cartoons.

But somehow it works. We have civilization.

As for me, I would especially like to admire the few successful people who manage to overcome all these immense hurdles and end up not only successful but also equal to their fellow humans.

But then again ... um ... admire?

Oops.

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