A glimmering dawn; here Nature first begins
—John Milton Paradise Lost: Book 2
It was a hard week. Everything seemed to set me off. Just looking at the cupboard that does not quite close completely with the N91 masks covering the scanner with old artwork from that job for the fashion label that got postponed till next season or maybe for never, its delicate art made from crystallizing ink and it should really go back into its box, but where is that box? Probably with the other boxes hulking under the porch waiting for me to make a space in the studio that I still don’t have.
Let’s call them triggers. I want to both use that term lightly and heavily. I know that sometimes the smallest thing can signal to the brain and body past trauma that is debilitating and ongoing and bigger than anything I have ever gone through. I know some people feel the idea of trigger warnings get overused and should only be for the biggest problems. I know that people with triggers get called over-sensitive and that my fear of the inbox on my computer might be connected to deeper feeling of heart and soul or it might just be an anxiety about having too many unanswered emails. Scale is never stable and always personal. Personally I would like to make room for all the people who sweat the small stuff and get called overly sensitive. And not just because the sensitive could use a little help but also because our world needs them.
For me, the anxious feelings started to shift around the end of the week. Under the bridge in the ravine with Eric Davies, the tree expert, and Tamara Smith, the biology teacher who runs Environmental Initiatives at Toronto French School, I was combing the forest for wild grapes (lots of vines, very few actual grapes) which I needed for a workshop to be part of a kids forest school television show that I’ll be a guest on later this fall. Eric and Tamara were looking up at the white pines through binoculars to see if any of the pine cones were ready to drop because the ones on the forest floor had been attacked by a specialized beetle and it takes two years for the cones to mature way up there. Tamara and Eric need plenty of seeds to get even a few successful seedlings going in their living room right now, but are hoping to build a greenhouse at the school. The white pine, Eric was telling me, makes such good lumber that it was mostly wiped out of the Toronto area, but the Toronto French School has a few beautiful examples of hundred-year-old white pines that grew up after the old growth forest was cut down. And way up in the sky you can see their 5-spoked branching needles brushy and soft and sometimes hiding a sticky green cone or two full of future baby trees. Eric has taught me all kinds of things about the native trees of Toronto, but also we get along because I collect just the caps of acorns for ink and he collects just the part under the cap for seedlings.
Tamara showed me where the stand of horsetails are mixed in with other ferns and submerged in the Jurassic green. She told me about how a couple years ago her students who were beginning to disturb her. They weren’t violent or angry and or even depressed about the environment— they were becoming flat. Feeling that there’s no hope and that the grownups were looking to their generation to somehow do things differently for the dying planet and save the day, she decided that instead of focusing on teaching kids about global warming and how bad everything is, teachers should be actually tackling environmental issues head on and right at their feet, to show rather than tell kids what hope looks like. She now leads the Environment and Sustainability Initiatives program at TFS and the initiatives are happening right in dirt and leaves and trees of the forest in the ravine behind the school. Eric is helping. So is a guy who can haul out the invasive Norway maples to make way for the sugar maples, the old way, with a team of horses. It was a golden green afternoon. I noticed that I was mostly looking down, drawing into the micro worlds of nuts, and mushrooms and fallen berries while Tamara and Eric were more often looking up at rare warblers, seed pods, and the competition between Sugar and Norway Maple trees.
The ravine felt luxuriantly out of time and below the city, but there’s always something to find if you are looking down. Another moment that cheered me up this week was looking for lamb’s quarters. The leaves of lamb’s quarters sometimes get infested with a purple blight that can be made into bright pink ink. I found a beautiful example growing in the little pile of dirt dug out by some little mole or mouse that lived in a hole in the sidewalk. A perfect little play put on by the city.
I learned a new therapy term this week too. Glimmer. Coined by Deb Dana, a licensed clinical social worker specializing in complex trauma, it’s like a trigger but the opposite. The micro-noticings or events that can reset your body and mind with joy rather than anxiety. Like triggers, glimmers are personal, something that comes up suddenly and unexpectedly with a little jolt of almost subliminal recognition. And as with triggers, it’s good to be awake to your glimmers. They could be anything from a sidewalk weed to the afternoon light freckling the river with gold, the feeling of a cup in your hand to the sound of ripping open the paper off a mini bar of hotel soap on a road trip across the desert. You might not even know what yours are. But, I assure you, they are out there, waiting for you.
Let me know what you found this week,
Jason
Last night I watched "The Colour of Ink" on CBC Gem. It is such a beautiful documentary & I am very glad you went to the trouble for its creation. Your work and the work of the artists you inspire and collaborate with is all so wonderful. Thank-you.
I grew up in a difficult family and a kind relative who looked out for me gave me some very wise words ,which was to appreciate the little things. This has held me in good stead. Hadn't come across the use of the word glimmer in this context and I think it's wonderfully descriptive . I am a sensitive human and I think one of the benefits of that is that we tend to be very good at noticing things. You are clearly very good at noticing things and making them a part of your work/passion.