Category: mourning

The Three Lives of Simone de Bébé

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My 14-year-old Simone de Bébé was in her last stage of life. She hadn’t been eating much at all the past few weeks. I made the first appointment I could with the vet to have her euthanized in a few days, on Monday. But in the end, she declined precipitously and I couldn't wait. 
Over the recent days when my Simone de Bébé was gravely ill, I experienced an ever present underlying nausea, an existential exhaustion. Not so much grief as despair. As though all the terrible deaths occurring everywhere in the world were happening right at my feet. 

Remembering Bill Lane

janice williamson1 Comment

Bill Lane was born in 1951 and died December 30, 1951. He was a director and producer of theatre and radio drama, a dramaturg, a playwright, and a teacher. After his CBC career, he earned an MA in Social & Political Thought and a PhD in Theatre Studies from York University. Bill Lane was a life-long friend who was loved and admired by many.

Pandemic Journal 26/6/22 — when “death leaves us homesick” 

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On mourning and melancholia. On the loss of friends and lovers. And the loss of women’s rights to abortion in the U.S. so courageously gained 50 years ago. Melancholia must give way to action. Change via feminist transformation cannot be counted on to remain. Stay engaged! The struggle continues!

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

janice williamson3 Comments

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

Split

janice williamson4 Comments

Two things are happening simultaneously. A propellor whirls. My being is moving in two directions. My body is twinned in two places at once. The present tense and my long ago past collide every morning. I am in 2020 Oaxaca City, Mexico City. And in my great grandmother’s nineteenth-century English home.