Shawn L. Bird

Original poetry, commentary, and fiction. All copyrights reserved.

decorating August 3, 2010

Filed under: Pondering,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 9:24 am
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This is a draft that I think will turn into something else later.  However, at the moment, it is this!  lol

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Once upon a time there was a little girl. She was the only child of doting parents. She was happy. She was admired. Her life was perfect.

The little girl grew up, and as she grew, she was happier. She liked herself. The curves of womanhood were celebrated. The eyes were admired. Everything she saw in the mirror was satisfying. She was thoroughly proud of every part of herself.

Except her nose.

She disliked the round nose with the ski jump and the tip that bounced when she talked.

“There’s nothing wrong with it!” assured her mother.

“It’s just like mine!” bragged her father.

The girl looked at her father’s large hook nose that tilted off to the side to show that he’d been a boxer in his youth and tears came to her eyes.

“If you really hate it,” remarked her best friend, “you can always go to a plastic surgeon and get it fixed.”

And so the girl pondered. She thought. She mulled. She studied. She considered.  What nose would she have if she had a perfect nose?  She knew exactly what she’d trim, and precisely where she’d tip.  She visualized her face with this perfect nose, and realised there was a problem.

She knew how proud she was of herself, and she realised that if her nose was to her liking, she would feel beyond beautiful. She knew her head would fill with herself (and being an only doted upon child, it was already quite full of satisfaction). She would become too pompous for other people to be around. She had obviously been created with this unattractive nose to protect her from vanity. It was the only tether to humility she had. She had to keep it.

Years went by. If anything, the nose began to resemble the father’s even more. The grown girl, now a woman, despaired of it, but determined to celebrate the source of her humility. She adorned the dreaded nose with a jewel, that caught the sun and twinkled merrily.  Whenever she caught sight of the glinting gem she smiled to herself, and thanked heaven for her distinctive nose.

 

possibility August 1, 2010

Filed under: Poetry,Pondering — Shawn L. Bird @ 5:31 am
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Possibility.

Within each glimmer of it
Dreams are born
Ventures are launched
Hope is the fuel for the journey.

Whether it brings victory or defeat
There is always
‘Next time…’

‘maybe…’

and
‘If…’

 

How to be a crappy exchange student July 31, 2010

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:15 am
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Over the years, I have met probably a thousand exchange students. 90% of them have been amazing young people, but some really should not have been sent abroad.  Some of them had a really horrible exchange year, and they were thrilled to leave their new country and go home.  Some chose to leave voluntarily before the year was over. Some were sent home.  Some of them managed to get through the challenges and salvage their year.

Here are some of the strategies these students employed to ensure they had a year they have been grumbling about ever since.  Of course, most of these students blamed everyone but themselves for their horrible experience. 

1. Go on exchange to escape troubles at home.  Leave to escape SATs. Leave boyfriend problems.  Leave to avoid college decisions or family problems. Believe it or not, your issues will just follow you. You can’t escape. Deal with your issues before you apply to go on exchange.

2. Go on exchange to become a celebrity. While it is true that you may be highly recognizable in your new town, you may not be admired. Your home and host countries might be in political dispute, as when Canada seized Spanish fishing boats they claimed were illegally fishing on The Grand Banks. Your religious background might be unpopular in your host country. Your ethnicity might make you a target, like it was for the Indo-Canadian student in Germany presumed to be a Turk and bullied in the streets and refused service in restaurants.

3. Be afraid of or be overwhelmed by your host culture. If you are not willing to face crowds, language, smells, religion, attitudes, and ideas that are different from your own, you’re not going to be able to handle the stress of being an exchange student.

4. Be shy. Avoid talking to people.  Don’t make friends at school.  Hide in your bedroom and don’t socialize with your host family.  Don’t attend Rotary meetings.  If you do, don’t talk to the Rotarians.  Stare at the floor a lot.

5. Insult people.  Take your nationalism to extreme.  Make sure that everyone knows where you are from and that your home country is MUCH better than your host country.  Explain how they are stupid, backward, or ignorant in your host country.

6. Borrow money.  Whenever you go out, whether with host families, school friends, or other exchange students, make it a point to leave your wallet at home, and ask others to pay for you.  Never pay them back.   This is particularly effective when people learn that you are receiving several hundred dollars of spending money every month from home.

7. Lie.   Pretend you are going to school when you aren’t.  Claim you’re making lots of friends when you’re in your room on the computer all day.  Tell your family you’re with friends, but go to a bush party, get drunk, and then get in a car accident.  While in the hospital, keep telling people you weren’t drinking at a party…  (These students were sent home , one with a broken neck and severe brain damage).  

8. Moon over your boy/girlfriend back home.  Spend all your time on the phone or  sending email messages to your love back home.  Neglect making friends and participating in events so you don’t miss chat/call opportunities.  If you don’t believe either of you are mature enough to handle separation without daily contact, you are probably not mature enough to be on exchange.

9. Be a snob.  Whether because of insecurity, inferiority or actual narcisism, some students behave as if they are much better than those in their new community.   Show this by refusing to do chores your host family assigns, refusing to help in Rotary service projects, or refusing to attend functions.  You can also show this with a bored or uninterested attitude when you do deign to attend an event or by talking about yourself and never showing any interest in others’ interests or opinions.

10. Never spend a night away from home before the exchange.  The trauma of homesickness from kids from tightly emeshed homes almost always ensures the kids are home within a month of their arrival in the new country.  Your mother will probably be thrilled to have you back, tied to her apron where you belong.

11. Be disrespectful to your host mom.  The most important person for you to impress is your host mom.  She is the power behind the home.  If she likes you, you will be eating your favourite foods, going to special places, and receiving gifts for years.  If she dislikes you, well, let’s just say that you will probably be very uncomfortable. 

12. Whine a lot  and complain about your treatment by school mates, family and other exchange students.   If it seems to be a universal opinion, consider that perhaps you aren’t very likeable.  Study points 1-10 above and determine what you need to change about yourself. 

Be aware: If you aren’t usually so obnoxious in your home country, the manifestation of a few of the above points may indicate that you are suffering from culture shock.   Please speak to your club exchange counselor.  If s/he can’t help, speak to the district exchange officer.  If you address the issues early enough, you can turn your horrendous time into a wonderful, enriching exchange.  It’s not the host family, your club, or your circumstances that create a great year.  Your attitude is the most important thing, so if you find yourself having problems, decide what YOU can change to improve the situation.

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PS.  In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that more than a few of the points above applied to my own exchange year.   I think I had a great year abroad, but like everyone, I had some things I could have done better in order to have had an even better experience.

 

Memory rippling over fire July 29, 2010

Filed under: Grace Awakening,Literature — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:28 am

Memory distorts with time, like air rippling over a fire—what is gone becomes only more precious, becomes only more precious, becomes a yearning, a perfect dream.  Every word of those letters, every moment I shared with him, has been memorized in the language of a dream continuously visited, revisited.  The letters are gone but only haunt me more; I close my eyes and remember the words by heart.  I have nothing of the girl I used to be, aside from those old dreams.  I have become a ghost of myself.” (p. 88.  The King’s Rose  Alisa M. Libby)

Well Alisa, I couldn’t have said that better myself.  I bet Auntie Bright could completely relate to this sentiment!

 

The true you July 28, 2010

Filed under: Pondering — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:05 am

So who is real? Is it that person you show to the outside world: positive, inspiring, encouraging, or is it that person at your house, who is easily irritated, critical of others, and unforgiving? Is it the self-controlled person people see in the community, or is it the ranting lunatic at home?

Someone today was commenting about a mutual acquaintance and observing to me that we are all probably two people- the public person and the private person.  She theorized that how genuine we are is revealed by how similar those manifestations of ourselves are.

The more disparate the identities, the more difficult it is for the others who have to live with us.  They can feel like there is no consistency when they’ll be loved or attacked. Isn’t it odd that someone can have no respect for clients, but be able to be very courteous with them, and yet come home and be cruel to those that s/he apparently loves?  I have had people point out how loved and admired they are in the community, but I have also seen their unadmirable cruelties at home.  Is the public self our idealized vision of who we want to be, and the private or family self is the imperfect, obnoxious reality?  We are angel and demon in one.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we treated the people we live with, with the same respect, courtesy and consideration we afford to strangers?   I think we should wear out our criticism of those we love with long walks, work outs at the gym or journals set to burn.  We should be building up our spouses and kids, not ripping apart their self-worth. 

May our public and private selves be one.

 

Rotary Youth Exchange: open mind, broken heart July 27, 2010

Filed under: Commentary,Rotary — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:41 am
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In the blog about The Exchange Student Cycle, I mentioned that at the end of an exchange, the worst part of being an exchange student becomes clear. No one warns you about how difficult it is to come home.

When you choose to be an exchange student, you know in your head that you are going to become attached to your new country. You know that you will have host families and that you will make friends abroad. You hope they will be close friends. You hope you will love your families. Friends and families provide the strength and value of an exchange, but they also cause the greatest pain. When you leave home, you expect to see all your friends and families in a year, but when it comes time to leave your new country, you realize that you may never see these people again. They have become a precious part of your life, and you are leaving them behind to return to your old life. If you have had the wonderful year you wanted to have, you are about to be disemboweled. Unless you’ve experienced the death of a loved one, it is unlikely you will ever have experienced the suffering you will endure when you leave your exchange friends and families behind to return to your old life. You can never return to your exchange life. Even if you return to the country, it will never be the same again.

If you’ve had a successful exchange year, you will have embraced a new life. You will feel part of a new culture. You’ll be dreaming in a new language. You will feel like you belong in that world, and the life you left at home will seem very, very far away. You will wonder that you ever found it strange and difficult to fit in. You will find it difficult to remember what life was really like back home, and that’s the moment when they send you home.

Now the crushing truth becomes clear. You are leaving people you love behind, and you may never see them again. The pain is engulfing. Your heart is about to be torn in half, and left behind in your exchange country. When your heart is left behind, the exchange was everything it was supposed to be.

Rotary Youth Exchange: opening minds and breaking hearts since 1929.

 

iced tea at home July 26, 2010

Filed under: Recipes — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:03 am

In Canada, iced tea is a syrupy sweet concoction that has very little to do with tea and much more to do with sugar.  My friend Heather, who worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken in tourist ridden Banff, said the Americans would come into the restaurant and freak out when they tasted it, so they had to add “American Ice  Tea” to their menu.  Guess what it was made from?  Tea.  Wow.

Since I’ve been trying to cut down on refined sugars in my diet, I have begun making my own iced tea.  I boil a kettle, pour it into my biggest tea pot along with a tea bag or two and let it steep.  When it’s ready, I add 2 packets of stevia powder to my 2.2 litre Tupperware™ pitcher and pour in the tea.  I put it in the fridge to cool.  To serve, I pour over ice into a glass.  Couldn’t get much simpler, could it?

But wait!  There’s more! 😉  There is a gourmet aspect to this simple beverage.   If your tea shelf looks anything like mine, you have a huge variety of flavour options!  At the moment I am sipping “Lipton Green tea with orange.”  I just finished a pitcher of vanilla Rooibus.   For my birthday last year, my daughter bought me “Ice tea blend” from Tea Delights in Vernon, a black tea with a subtle peach flavour.  My favourite is probably peppermint herbal tea.  It’s very cooling on a hot day.  I rarely have boring Orange Pekoe, but it works, too.  

This is a bargain beverage, as well.  A stevia packet is 10c, and a tea bag is about the same, so for 30c you can enjoy 2.2 litres of summer sunshine.  My friend Cyndy has an iced tea maker that works like a drip coffee maker, dripping tea onto ice cubes.  I think they usually use about 4 tea bags in it. Feel free to make your tea stronger if you’re so inclined.  You’re adding 30c more to the budget, but you’re worth the splurge.  Oh- and if you don’t have an issue with refined sugar, you could substitute 1/4 c of sugar for the stevia, but now you’re adding calories.

Cheers!

 

time travelling July 25, 2010

Filed under: Commentary,Grace Awakening,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:02 am
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Writing is a way of communicating across time and space. As a teen, I remember a friend ruminating about how his letter was going to time travel to me, and that when I read it, a week or so hence, I’d be in his past. When I read my teen diaries, I’m conscious that I am time travelling back to visit with another self, and I wish I had a little more of value to say about the times and experiences I was having! I was, sadly, a very boring diarist, as I explored my particular obsession ad nauseum. Nonetheless, the power of that time travel is still with me. My diaries are messages to the future that are still there, waiting for an even further flung future. My thoughts, my worries, my dreams are all congealing on those pages, just waiting for a future someone to read the message. Unfortunately, the communication is one way. How I wish I could send a message back to that young diarist and tell her that it would all work out: every last bit of it, as perfectly as could be wished, and assure her that she would find the meaning of the life story she was struggling to understand.

These days, I am spending a lot of time with Francesco Petrarca, a man who loved to write as much as he loved to read. Letters, poetry, essays were left behind him in a tidal wave of very well edited paper. He left us so many messages to the future that are still quoted by philosophers, theologians, historians, and poets. He was a fascinating guy, and it is amusing to read some of the commentators who evaluate Petrarca’s own perception of himself. He was apparently a blatantly proud self-promoter, using his celebrity with aplomb and thoroughly satisfied with his own worth. Although he wrote of his frailties of faith, his words suggest that he was humbly proud. He would be blissful that we are still pouring over his words today, and yet not particularly surprised about it. He believed his words were worth something significant; after all, his master work was his “Letter to Posterity” which he fully intended for people to be reading long after his death.

I am absolutely adoring the ‘Franco’ who is being revealed to me as I read his writings, and those of the philosophers, historians and such who have analyzed his life. I think I’m falling head over heels in love with him, actually. Funny how his intellectual charisma reaches across time through his words, and draws us to him. I can see him at a cocktail party, gathering an audience as he asks tricky questions, delights in argument and good conversation, and has everyone enchanted. Thanks for your words, Franco. I wish I could travel back to 1370 and tell you myself.

 

Sonnet for Grace 2 July 24, 2010

Filed under: Grace Awakening,Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 9:01 pm
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Your eyes awaken tender dreams in me

That call across mere lifetimes to the past

Revealed as twinkling stars in skies so vast:

A universe that’s less than we can see.

Beyond the Earth the roof of Heaven glows;

Beneath the ground the molten rivers glide,

Yet in your love securely I abide.

Without you Hell is close, but Heaven knows

That love like ours parades across all time,

Encircling all who come within its arms.

No sorrow can hold long against a joy

entreating me to fill the world with rhyme.

We rise on love above all Earthly harm

For death has lost its power to destroy.

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Persona of Ben writing about Grace again.  Poor guy. He’s got it bad.

(I really do need to work on proper sonnet structure that incorporates a volta.  You don’t  see one in this, do you?  No?  I didn’t, either.  Sigh.)

 

celebrating Petrarca July 23, 2010

Filed under: Commentary,Grace Awakening,Reading,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:22 am
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On July 20 & 19, 2010 it was the 306th anniversary of the birth of Francesco Petrarch in Arezzo, Italy and the 236th anniversary of his death in Arqua near Padua Italy 70 years later.

Petrarca will feature prominently in my life over the next few years, and I am finding him a fascinating man to get to know. Aside from his romantic tale of woe, as re-told briefly in Grace Awakening, he was a significant intellect of his time. It was his interest in Classical studies that ushered in the Renaissance. He was the one that coined the term, “The Dark Ages” for the Medieval period when men of intellect stopped studying the classics and lost themselves in church pronouncements and reinterpretations of history.  His writings were used to establish the  language rules for modern Italian.  He was declared the Poet Laureate of Rome in 1341 when he was only 35 years old.  His name is attached to the sonnet form he developed: the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet.

As Petrarca travelled around Italy and France, he collected the finest library in Christendom, one fought over after his death.  Here is a man who loved learning, celebrated travelling for new experiences, delved into history to better understand himself, climbed mountains for the aestetic of seeing the view at the top, struggled with faith, and loved purely with a devotion that was stronger than death.

One of the most wonderful (and challenging) things about Petrarca is that he was a prolific writer.  He wrote volumes and volumes about his life, his thoughts, and his beliefs. He wrote poetry about his love. He wrote biographies of those he admired. He wrote letters to his friends. Most of his writings survive, because his genius was well-recognised at the time. There is a lot of material to go through!

As I unfold the layers of his life, I hope that I can do justice to the story and that the embellishments I bring will be worthy of him.  He is surprising and amazing me at every turn.    It’s not going to be a quick book to write.  I have 70 years of writings to work through and tons of things to learn about the time and place.  I just hope this amazing man will captivate you when I am finally able to introduce you to him in a few years.