Category: academia

Pandemic Journal 12/2/22: The Bridge – what yoga means to me

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Yoga means “to yoke”, to join, to bridge. “Only connect”, wrote novelist E M Forester when I read his famous novel Howard’s End in my first undergraduate English class in 1969. My professor said: Only connect. For me, now 
more than fifty years later, 
yoga’s connections expand into a rejuvenation 
of the body and the mind. Yoga means holding out for more. Not giving up or giving in. It means giving up. Giving in. Yoga means sensual pleasure 
and the erotic spring. It means contemplative disembodied reflection. Yoga means somewhere between these spaces
of opposition -
an ease in whatever emerges.

Pandemic Journal 11/1/21: a retiree remembers classrooms students hallways colleagues gardens mentors

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Sheena and I (May Day, 2019) Two years after retirement she finds this five-year-old journal entry —Sept 5, 2015: the serendipity of today Such a beautiful first class day. Two courses began - and I returned home to pass out in a deeply pleasurable nap of sheer exhaustion at how intense these initial encounters can… Continue reading Pandemic Journal 11/1/21: a retiree remembers classrooms students hallways colleagues gardens mentors

Pandemic Journal 19/7/20 — Summer in the city bricolage: masks and masculinity, two gardens, a nearby beach, a Chinese grocery, a market, and David Suzuki

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Summer in the city bricolage: masks and masculinity, two gardens, a nearby beach, a Chinese grocery, a market, and David Suzuki

Pandemic Journal 27/3/2020 – only connect

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This pandemic, like a dark bird of history pierced the thin membrane of our personal world. Ripped open we feel the call of friends lost and and found. Their voices sound in our dreams. We bear witness to our loss. Our bounty. And reach across to others. ...In this new era, COVID-19 time, this impulse to connect, an essential element in our well-being, is enabled by our digital technology. Isolated in our homes or wherever we find ourselves, connections stretch out the minutes of our day into a zone of contemporaneous aliveness. We humans peer at each other through machines. Our bodies relax or contort into awkward postures scrunched down on a chair - or standing, our weight on one foot, at the sink.

On “good enough” balance: parenting, work, & adoption

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In recounting the process that led to his life as a single father, a man with the financial means to give up paid labour describes how he quit his lawyer job and migrated from his homeland to enhance his life as a parent. His young son was born via a surrogate. And his access to… Continue reading On “good enough” balance: parenting, work, & adoption

Retirement 101 – Winter Solstice 2019

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Winter solstice is in the rear view mirror. This year, spring is once again on its way as I write. Six hours and nineteen minutes into a next year. Every day creeps closer to a high rising summer. Yesterday afternoon was a solstice celebration of connection. Acres of food, hours with friends, a happy visit. Though I did miss all the beloveds too far away or stricken with illness or long gone.r