Simple Ways

 Greenfields, near Stow on the Wold, UK

Gillian Cornwall, September, 2015.

It's as simple as the way a line of trees, or a stone wall, separates two fields along a rolling, verdant landscape where, midway up a rise, the line is accentuated by a perfectly shaped English oak caught in one's sites for a perfect moment as one rolls past on the train, delighting in a field dotted with a hundred head of sheep, white clouds of wool upon verdant pasture. 

The scene is redolent of our centuries old, British wool industry, steeped in tradition (and urine - read on); back to medieval times, when it was big business. The wool business was in place long before the industrial revolution and machinery that toiled with people controlling the machinery, instead of people toiling directly - like the poor Fuller whose job it was to place the wool in a barrel of stale urine and to spend all day trampling on the wool to produce softer cloth. Not fresh pee, mind you, it had to be stale.... who figured that out?... A reminder of harder, but more simple times when need equaled make, find, do or do without. When I say simpler, it is not that I think the life of someone who trampled urine-soaked wool all day was easy, rather that the line between need and resource was less convoluted.

Perhaps this is what it is all about for me: a reminder of a time when our struggles were focused on the basic needs of living.

After a month back in my ancestral home of England last year, I came back to this place, this Canada, this land which was stolen by my European ancestors, this land on which I have lived my life. I have worked here and made it my home. Six months ago I was laid off from what I thought was a secure job of twenty years. 

For a long time I have been focusing on the way I live my life and how I can make it easier and better but that breed of ease has changed these past six months. It has been replaced with thoughts of bridging the gap between need and attainment with fewer conductors and referees in the way and more certain footing while working to keep my ship afloat. I must focus again on the toil and the desired result: keeping a door between me and the bedlam of society.

Above all, I wish for time and simplicity: the right to stop and enjoy the beauty of the earth - to nurture it so it is not destroyed through greed and a perceived shorter path to simplicity for those who wield the most money and the most perceived power - razing all that stands in their way as they stuff the fruits of the world down their insatiable, selfish gobs.

I have been without a safe home in my distant past. It was embarrassing and hard and I kept it hidden from my friends for quite some time. I am too past my prime to deal with that nonsense again.

I cope with the fear of being homeless through memories of my homeland: the simple line between two fields, two fields that have remained the same since anyone can remember - something preserved, that I hope won't change with a gust of the wind or the swipe of a power-hungry, selfish, fear-filled, political ogre ... Because that bad experience would "Trump" most of the others... Couldn't help myself there - sorry. 

I miss those fields and the villages, where people still know one another and maybe even care for one another. I know I am creating an unrealistic picture in my mind, but it is what I need to do right now. I need to believe that somewhere on this earth, we are doing better at stopping to care for one another and light the way for one another when darkness prevails. 

Mostly, I miss my cousin and I am eternally grateful to her for the loving care she gave me while with her. She restored my health and my faith in the loving care we can share with one another. I have never in my life been so safe or well taken care of as I was with her for that month. It healed me and restored me. I hope she gives me opportunity to give that gift to her one day! 

The thing is, if we all care for one another - it could be okay. If I, if all of us, could just let go of our fear in the guise of safety, if we rediscover and trust our instincts, we may learn to do as well as the wild creatures of the Earth who have retained their instinct, their connection to the universe, without question or thought. They simply know - because they allow themselves to do so. They are directly involved in the equation of their needs as it relates to their fulfillment - individually and as groups. The only thing that has tampered with their well-being is humanity.

We humans have lost the plot and unless we start to pay attention from our hearts, from our very cellular network that connects us to all, well, quite frankly, we are hopping into the toilet and reaching for the flush. Does a flush trump a Trump?

Have a great week. I send you love and peaceful wishes for simplicity. Thanks for taking the time and patience to read this through the flu haze in which it was written....

Gillian Cornwall, c. October 2, 2016

Dedicated to my cousin, in gratitude and admiration.

I love you, Kaz!

Sheep - Wigginton, Herts, UK

Gillian Cornwall, c. October 2015

The Homeland

Me - Probably 12 or 13 yrs old 

Camp Richildaca, ON.

The older I get, the more I seem to be "pining for the old country". I was made in England ;-) and born in Canada. My parents came over to Canada on the boat for the second time when Chris, the eldest, was 12, Bruce was 9 and Philip was one. I traveled as a stowaway inside my mother and I am determined that this is why I love the ocean, waves and surfing. 

One night on the crossing aboard the RMS Empress of Canada, the Atlantic was so rocky that my mother and Chris were the only two guests in the dining room along with a few service staff that were not ill with sea-sickness. My mother was very proud of that. I remember her all puffed up with it when she regaled us with the tale. 

We went back to England frequently as children. My parents traveled back on business with the parent company for whom they provided a Canadian branch in our hometown of Richmond Hill, Ontario and they usually made a family vacation of it. We went back to visit relatives and friends of my parents and to explore their favourite vacation spots. There were places that, even as a child, blew my mind. Among them were the grandeur, history and tradition of both the University of Oxford and Cambridge University, the size and wonder of Stonehenge - standing below one of the great upright monoliths in wonder, St Paul's Cathedral and the Whispering Gallery, the  thatched roofs of the Cotswolds and meeting the parents of my mum's wartime love on their farm there and feeling the love and intensity of loss between them and my mum. Lyme Regis and the Alexandra Hotel, where we met another family with kids and my brother and I fell for the same girl - tragically and, of course, she fell for him... I remember excavating fossils along the Jurassic Coast and getting quite embarrassingly stuck up on the cliffs. How sweet my eldest brother was to take Philip and I out on a mackerel fishing boat with our lines and wooden spools. Poor Chris loathed the look and feel of live fish!

I remember the sites and smells. They are ingrained in the fibre of my being. Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire - being able to finally be old enough to venture out on my own and browse through the shops on the high street. My cousin, Karen, is my closest relation. We are daughters of sisters, women warriors and survivors. I have not seen her for 32 years. I have not been back and, now, every fibre in my being is being pulled back with a magnetic force I have never previously experienced. I need to go. I need to see my people. I need to walk the places of my childhood. I need to take a trip across the pond to the Guidel Communal Cemetery in Brittany near the Gulf of Morbihan where there lies a marker for my mother's wartime love, Richard, shot down in the second world war. 

I remember,vividly,standing on the grounds of Biggin Hill Fighter Station, listening to my mum tell us the story of a German plane being shot down and crashing into the base, the air raid siren going off and because of her exhaustion, she stayed in her barracks bed until the windows imploded with the explosion. She showed us the scar above her eyebrow where the glass from the window had just missed her eye. I will never forget these things. I tell them here and hope my brother has told his children - lest we forget.

I remember the Tower of London, Westminster Cathedral, Buckingham Palace - waving to the queen as she returned from the race track. I remember how mum nearly had me convinced that Kensington Gardens belonged to her family but I just couldn't wrap my head around why they would leave if that were true! I remember cruising down the Thames, thinking of all that has passed over and through that historic river. I remember my mum losing her watch by Big Ben - irony...

I am attached to this country and my body has begun to call me home. I will need to scrimp and save but I know I will return to her soon.I will see the green patchwork of farmer's fields and walk the paths of some of the greatest writers ever known. I will cry for family gone, to whom I never was able to say my goodbyes. I will walk and walk through the streets of London and breathe deeply in the arms of remaining family. I will know that I am from this land. I am of these people and I am one with England through my bloodline and the soil and ocean that surrounds this faraway island. I will see the new friends I have met through the wonder of Twitter and we will sit and talk story over tea. 

I will see you soon, England. I carry you with me always. 

-Gillian Cornwall, c. May 18, 2014.

 My brother, Philip, and me 

A couple of very British-looking kids in Richmond Hill in the early 1960s