Edith Södergran, circa 1914I stumbled upon the poetry of Edith Södergran in a second-hand bookstore many years ago. She lived a short life full of hardship, yet her poetry is full and ripe with a joyful celebration of life. It is not a shallow brightness, but a strong, clear beacon shining through great storms.

Edith was a Swedish-speaking Finn, born in St. Petersburg in 1892. Her early life was relatively priviledged, wintering in the city and summering in the family's village, Raivola. In 1907, she lost a grandmother, her adopted sister, and then her beloved father to tuberculosis. Two years later, she discovered she had the same disease. She was only 16 years old.

Struggling until her death with this illness, she and her family also were caught in the political strife of the day: the First World War, the Russian Revolution, a Finnish civil war, and then the Finnish declaration of independence in 1917. These events forced Edith and her family to leave St. Petersburg permanently, and brought fighting and starvation to the countryside they sought solace in.

In the face of all this, Edith wrote, bringing her fearless new form of modernism to Swedish literature. She published several volumes of poetry which were met with almost universal scorn. This surprised her and wounded her, yet she persisted. She had a few champions in her lifetime, and today she is recognized as one of the great poets of Scandinavian literature. She died aged 31 in 1923, of tuberculosis and starvation, long before that recognition would come to fruition.

I rediscovered this poem recently, and it stays with me.

Triumph of Existing

What do I fear? I am a part of infinity.
I am a portion of a cosmic force,
a separate world within a million worlds,
a star  of the first magnitude, the last to die.
The triumph of the living, the triumph of the breathing,
                                        the triumph of the existing!
The triumph of feeling time flow, glacial, through my veins,
and hear the silent stream of night
and stand atop a mountain in the sun.
I walk on sun, I stand on sun,
I know nothing but the sun.
Time — transformer, time — destroyer,
                                        time — enchanter,
do you come with new intrigues, a thousand
                                        schemes, to offer me a life
as a little seed, as a coiled serpent, as a rock
                                        out in the sea?
Time — you murderer — begone from me!
The sun fills up my breast with lovely honey to
                                        the brim
and she says: some day, all stars are bound to die,
                                        yet they always shine without dread.

September 1918

From Love & Solitude, translated by Stina Katchadourian

Like the proverbial lamb, March has come in soft and light.
It is easy to believe in Spring, waiting around the corner.

Just around the corner.

Wishing you love, light, & grace this Holiday Season!

{with homage to Picasso}

When I was ten or eleven, I had a favourite teacher who had been a small child in London during World War II. Each year, Remembrance Day was a time when she would share her stories of the Blitz, of air raids, of losing her father. She told her stories vividly and with the hope that we would understand “Never Again” and “Lest We Forget.” I am glad I know her stories now, but they frightened me into a white silent panic, the panic that tainted my Cold War childhood, a childhood in the time of Mutually Assured Destruction.

German Bomber over London, The Blitz

My mother blames herself for my childhood anxiety, because the uncontrollable in her life would push her into rage, and her anger was traumatic. For my father, I believe the uncontrollable brought melancholy and a chronic sense of worry. They also blame their children's pain on their own divorce. I know the story and these emotions so well, and when out of balance, cycles of sadness, disappointed idealism (disillusion), frustration, worry, rage, can take awkward expression, or can turn inward, toward depression.

I believe that these are aspects of a normal response to a terrifyingly complex world. My mother and father could not keep me safe because none of us are safe. The struggle for me as a precocious, sensitive, and well-read child was to somehow integrate the truth that the grownups, the keepers of order, were not in control and could not be in control, no matter how good their intentions. And I did have the vivid, personal example of cataclysm, my family's “life as we know it” suddenly, abruptly ending in their divorce.

A turning point came when I embraced activism as a teenager. At that time, my activism focused around a movement for World Peace. Taking action, even small actions, moved me out of the paralyzing white panic and into a dance, a pulse of energy to move forward, pause, reflect, move again. Today, my focus is centered on the urgency of creating sustainable alternatives to our destructive patterns of production and consumption, recognizing also the beauty and deep humanity implicit in MAKING and DESIGNING and INNOVATING. There are irresolvable contradictions, no perfect solutions, but the dance is for love and for life.

[with(in)constraints] 8, 2007 by Rami Schandall

This child and the teenager is now an adult, entering my fifth decade. I know there are no grownups here. But in adulthood I can see more clearly how powerful fear is. I can feel how hard it is to integrate uncertainty and contradictions, be brave, and have peace (on the smallest and largest scales). I have learned to manage anxiety. As an entrepreneur I am quite comfortable with risk, and almost never experience panic. I try to put anger and worry to work, keeping it healthy, motivating for change.

On Remembrance Day, I remember the war dead, their tragic loss, our tragic loss of them. I imagine their heroic efforts for something they believed in, hopefully. But I also see the propaganda and manipulation that happens in wars and continues to this day. I see the horror of militarism and its bloody trail of destruction. I see an imperative to DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY. On a global scale, to create peace and work together on global issues, we have to embrace uncertainty and contradictions: political, cultural, economic. Can we do that?

On Remembrance Day, I would love to give a gift of integrity, personal agency, clarity of thought and purpose...to whom? The war dead can’t use it, and I cannot give away what I can only claim for myself. So my gift is a promise and a vow, to keep thinking, learning, and acting for peace and fairness, with all the integrity and stamina and creative force I can muster. Will you join me? None of us are “grown-ups,” in control of the incontrollable. But we are adults, and together, we are in charge.

Offerings, 2005 by Rami Schandall

Heritage Tomatoes from Chick-a-biddy AcresI often find Autumn a melancholy time. It is hard to let go of summer, and I feel some dread for the long winter months ahead. But the beauty and the bounty of Autumn are spectacular, particularly in this part of the world. The wealth of color on the trees and the richness of our harvest gentle me along this transition from a season of growth to one of fallow.

For the last decade, each February I have purchased a share in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). My share is an investment in a farm for the season ahead. My share buys the seed, and from June to October, my family reaps the benefits: a weekly delivery of fresh herbs, leafy greens, legumes, melons, squash, potatoes...even free-range eggs, honey, maple syrup...We share the bounty of the harvest until the weather turns cold.

It is a wonderful way to enjoy farm fresh foods while living in a big city, and to connect with the farmers who grow that food. I know intimately what the impact of a dry year is, or of a cool wet summer like we have had this year. The gorgeous, colorful tomatoes pictured above are the late yield after a cold summer and hot September: more sizes and varieties and quantity than we have ever had before! They are so sweet, even the green ones, that I have been eating them all week as snacks from the fruit bowl.

I will miss these bright bursts of flavor, as I will miss my weekly dose of fresh, fragrant herbs (I put them in everything!). And I know that the earth must rest, the farmer must rest, and that spring, and summer, and autumn, will come again.