morning sunlight peeks
around the curtain. Drifting
scent of toasted grain…
Monthly Archives: January 2006
What makes a citizen?
OK – time to get a bit serious here. For those of you that don’t know (and I’m sure there are some Canadians among you), today is Election Day in Canada. If it seems like it’s come around again rather quickly (for those of you that were paying attention!), that’s because it has – the last government was a minority government and a non-confidence vote was called, hence the early election.
And I have to say that despite being Canadian, that is all I know about it. I had even forgotten that there was an election in Canada until Richard looked up my friend Carla’s blog and found a posting on it. Mom did tell me the last time I spoke to her, but it slipped my mind. Which is a shame, since if the Conservatives win, it’ll be the first time in history that Canada has a Prime Mininster from western Canada – Stephen Harper, the leader of the Conservative Party, is from Calgary.
I do feel guilty that I don’t stay in touch with Canadian politics – mind you, I didn’t really stay in touch with Canadian politics when I lived there, except for the bits that concerned me. I do feel that I’m more politically aware since I’ve been living in the UK, but that may also be because Richard is rather aware of political trends, and, hey – I live with the guy. I’ve got to pick up on some things…
But that did get me thinking – who do I owe my allegiance to?
Sure, I have a Canadian passport, and those who know me know that I am quite proud to be Canadian (cue beer advert here…). But – I live in the UK. I pay taxes here. I contribute to the education of UK young people. I drive on the left side of the road. I still haven’t got used to warm beer (or beer of any sort, really…) but I think that’s probably a minor point. I can sing ‘God Save the Queen’ and I attend a Church of England church. I’m even contemplating becoming a clergy-person in said church. Any of my Canadian friends can tell you that my vocabulary is slowly changing, even if my accent isn’t. I think I officially got rid of the last t-shirt I bought in Canada last week. So why do I need to vote in the Canadian election?
I can see the argument – I have a duty to do so because that’s where I was born, and I should take responsibility for the running of ‘my’ country. But who am I to stick my nose in? I hear a very bitty version of the political situation when I talk to my parents (the recent BSE situation and the political reaction to it hit them rather hard, being cattle farmers) but as to the wider views, I really haven’t a clue. So what right do I have to put my two cents in and vote? I will say that I vote regulary here in the UK – being a member of the Commonwealth I don’t have to wait for a passport to do this – and I do think that those people who don’t vote have no right to complain about the government. But I do it because it’s relevant to my life right now, not my parent’s lives or a life I had five years ago.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not knocking the people like Carla who keep abreast of the political situation in their home country and vote regularly there. But I can’t see the relevance it has to my life here and now. To me it’s holding onto the past, and I’ve got a pretty good present and future to look forward to, thank-you-very-much.
Just one thing I’m annoyed with – it’s going to cost me £312 to become a British citizen. That includes the test to demonstrate knowledge of life in the UK (£34) and the book you need to pass it (£9.99). And yes, they make you go through the citizenship ceremony, and then make you pay for it…
Update:
Canadian Election Results:
Conservatives – 124 seats
Liberals – 103 seats
Bloc Quebecois – 51 seats
New Democratic Party – 29 seats
Independant – 1 seat
This means the Conservatives form the new government, but it, too is a minority government. It also means that an MP from Alberta is PM for the first time ever…
Sibling Rivalry
We’ve just had a phone call from Beth’s brother in Toronto – the Charles Krause you may have spotted posting comments recently.
Amongst a vast array of conversation topics, he mentioned that he had set up his own blog – in fact a set of four different blogs allowing him to split his subjects. (Perhaps we could do the same, and put everything in the topic Toast somewhere else…)
We’ve added a link to his blog on our links bar, and you can also follow the link to Memetic Selection from here. Worth taking a look at a bit of sibling rivalry caused by Beth’s reading log, and also how Wikipedia allows him to vent his anti-social tendency to explain things complete with a link to his contribution list.
If you’re an Internet Explorer user you may find one or two hiccups at the moment, as he says in this post he’s still at the tinkering phase. However Firefox users should have no problems, as it seems to work fine with that.
Poetry – but No Toast!
Taking into account the comments from a friend, here is a toast-free posting…
The toast haiku did get me thinking, however, and I unearthed a notebook that I used in university to copy down poems that struck me at the time. What’s incredible is that they all seem to be less than 10 lines (with the exception of a William Carlos Williams poem – which is 12). But what fascinates me, I think, is how much feeling and emotion you can get from just a few lines of poetry. Here’s one of my all-time faves:
In a Station at the Metro
The apparition of these faces in a crowd –
Petals on a wet, black bough.– Ezra Pound
Pound was an American poet, and this poem ‘struck me between the eyes’, as it were, when I first read it at uni. It felt true, as if I’d just discovered something important – that you don’t have to use a thousand words to explain an experience, but that just a small, but important, image will do. Pound explained it himself, comparing his work to Asian forms of poetry such as haiku.
And I continued to find short poems with a powerful image interesting. My favourite of the afore-mentioned William Carlos Williams is this:
This is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the iceboxand which
you were probably
saving
for breakfastForgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
For me, it evokes the sweetness (and sometime frustration) of married life – you come home to discover that Your Beloved has eaten the chocolate bar you’ve been saving, etc (except he never has – he has this very annoying habit of not snacking between meals…) , but also the sharp sweetness of the plums against your teeth, and the coldness hitting the roof of your mouth on a hot day. I also love that the title is so integral to the meaning of the poem – it gives the rest of it context, and without it the resonances of the relationship would be non-existant, or at least changed.
But haiku also can evoke the same kind of reaction. One of my favourites is from a Croatian poet, Darko Plazanin. (I did a search earlier, and there seem to be a lot of Croatian poets who write haiku – similarities in the language, perhaps?? ) My understanding is that haiku is supposed to recall an image, but also embody an emotion or link to humanity’s condition. (Please correct me if I’m wrong!) This seemed to evoke a wonder, as well as a feeling of – futility perphaps? –
After the storm
a boy wipes the sky
from the tables.– Darko Plazanin
Here’s another that I found today:
Waterfall roaring –
though the sparrow sings unheard –
still he keeps singing.– James Kirkup
How many different ways has that sentiment been expressed? And yet, it still seems to give new insight.
So, since this whole post has been about expressing emotion in poetry, I suppose I should leave you with one of my own. Please don’t laugh – but also, feel free to comment if you wish.
Cold night lurks outside
freezing all in its piercing grip.
Heart still in my chest– Beth Peat
Noticed By Flickr
I came across a neat little Flickr tool called Scout, which given a username, e-mail or id, will return details of any pictures that user has taken that have appeared on the Flickr Explore page – of which there are 500 per day.
Now I wasn’t actually expecting it to come back with anything, because as far as I knew, one of my pictures had never appeared – certainly I’d never heard anything about it. However I was wrong…
Take a look at this page from August 20th 2005…
About halfway down is one of the pictures from our holiday in Canada, the shot of Wild Goose Island in Glacier National Park.