T.L. Morrisey

Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

On impermanence

 



The thing is to accept (and even like) the very thing about life that upsets one the most because we are moving irreconcilably to death. And that is the impermanence of life. We can't freeze life to when we were most happy. We continue on and on and then we reflect on the past, on when we were happy but, perhaps, didn't know it. We weren't self-conscious in our happiness. It doesn't work that way; we think back, we're nostalgic creatures, and we fix on a time when we were most happy, or we think we were. We fight our emotions and ideas of self-reproachment, we beat them down! Why are we even having them? Because self-reproachment is an act of depression and we live with more or less mild depression all of the time. And we remember the past and wish we could live on an island of unself-consciousness and unreflected happiness. Is it a hallucination? Does it make any sense? We are sad, we grieve for what we had. We hate impermanence. And we are too old to suffer more impermanence, more change. What to do? What to do? 

                                                                                        16 April 2023

Thursday, August 12, 2021

My grandmother's summer cottage

I used to say I'd like my garden to be a place where my grandmother could visit and feel at home. In fact, I don't remember my grandmother walking in any garden or even being interested in gardens, so what I really meant is that I'd like my garden to be as old fashioned as possible, with old fashioned cottage garden plants, and a quality of timelessness throughout. Yes, my grandmother would feel this timeless quality, as would everyone else who walks through such a garden.

I remember my grandmother's summer cottage on 11th Avenue, not far from the water where we used to swim, in St. Eustache. It was a place of summer cottages back then, now it's a bedroom suburb and proof of the truth of Thomas Wolfe's book title, You Can't Go Home Again. My wife and I visited 11th Avenue in 2007 and I regret that I ever returned even for just an hour, it is in the process of gentrification and nothing is left of the way it used to be, nothing is left of what made it a special place. Because of this I am filled with sadness and nostalgia remembering those summers of my youth, they are gone forever, the old people I loved are gone and will never return. This is, of course, common sense--the one constant in life is change--but it is still upsetting. 

Facing my grandmother's cottage there were phlox growing between her house and the adjacent cottage on the right. Remembering those phlox, one of the first plants I wanted in my cottage garden were phlox just like hers; but the way it has turned out is that the phlox in my garden are never as nice as I expected them to be or as nice as everyone else's phlox in this area. Right now my phlox, with both white and purple flowers, are coming to the end of their growing season while my neighbours still have beautiful phlox. 

A cottage lends itself to timelessness. It should be a cosy place and that quality of cosiness is important; it contains a perennial desire, it is the desire to have a safe harbour, a place where one can relax and not worry about the outside world, and a place where one is safe from the vicissitudes of life. Everyone needs a roof over their head, everyone needs both a home and enough food to keep them from being hungry, and most people need family or friends with whom they can talk, laugh, and socialize. And we can all have some of this in a cottage with its cottage garden in the back yard.

I am reminded of Patrick Waddington's short story, "The Street that Got Mislaid", about some people who live on Green Bottle Street, a street that the bureaucrats who run the City of Montreal have somehow forgotten about; it "got mislaid" from the card index of city streets, and because of this the residents pay no taxes, they don't live in our world but they are of our world. These people are dedicated to their hobbies, playing the piano, gardening, talking about the past, and living with the other people on the street. It is just after World War Two and all of them are wounded in some way, life has not been kind to any of them. As well, the street is shaped like a bottle, implying it is isolated from the rest of the city, which it is, but it is also a kind of utopia, a kind of Shangri-La. It is their safe harbour. At the end of the story, the protagonist is invited to join them and live on Green Bottle Street and he happily does this and leaves the noisy and rough outside world behind him. A cottage is also a safe harbour, we say leave your cares at the door, put your feet up, have something to eat, and enjoy yourself. Or just sit and do nothing.


Here is my grandmother outside the cottage in 1946, the year she and my Uncle Alex
purchased the place; doesn't she look happy! 


My grandmother's summer cottage, photo taken in 1946 when she and my Uncle Alex
bought the place.





Here is the cottage around 2009, it had been winterized and renovated. By 2011 the cottage had been demolished, property near Lac des Deux Montagnes has increased in value, and a new large house has been built on the site. 




Monday, May 10, 2021

Crows Return to the Bird Bath

Not much gives me as much happiness as seeing these birds, whether crows, grackles, sparrows, robins, cardinals, or others. They are all a delight and source of happiness. The curious thing is that they seem to know this is for them, a bird bath, and they come and have a splashy bath or a drink of water; they even line up and wait their turn to use the bird bath. The crows are large majestic birds but never cross a crow, they'll remember what you've done and make your life difficult. Here is a crow visitor from last April.