Creek. Time.

I am composing this in the way the ancient ones blogged. Archaically, pen to paper. Content-wise, nothing is different than writing here in WordPress, it’s just a jumble of words.

In what I conjure as an annual semi-tradition (i have convinced myself I have done this before, now that I think of it, last year’s effort is still inside a notebook) (and I have not even explained what I refer to) (sue me for bad literary practice).

The location is being settled into a place of delightful secret exception to whatever mental image you might summon for the Saskatchewan prairie (flat fields of wheat?). In a narrow cleft of a hill (yes, we have real topography), I am surrounded by dense forest of spruce, fir, aspen, think underbrush of wild rose, hazelnut, fleabane, native grass et al. Just beyond my feet is a gurgling creek maybe 4 feet wide.

Technically, fittingly, this is Swift Current Creek (stay tuned for why the name matters).

On one of our first outings together, Cori brought me to this special place, Pine Cree in the Cypress Hills of southern Saskatchewan. We have returned to camp here every summer. There is no cell signal, you have to walk up the hill out of the valley to “connect” which sounds even more disconnected than the connection one feels by the creek. The temperature is maybe 10 degrees cooler than the entrance maybe 300 feet above.

Yes, I wrote the draft for this post on paper.

I don’t like having drafts linger in my WordPress dashboard, but the paper one from last year sits unfinished (hmm, where did that notebook go?). Rules, being designed to be busted, right?

These theme of things being undone, amplified, distorted through some kind of Pandemic Effects pedal has been sitting heavy on me for… months.

Yes, the Not Done list includes my electric guitar, not touched since arriving in a shipping box to our new home, where of all things, I have a MUSIC ROOM. I won’t go on with making a list like this, but it whispers in my inner ear constantly. Tools are not organized, the garage is still Stuff Piled Up. Fence projects, the compost bins, not done. We’ve done only 2 bike rides. My daily photos are maybe 20? 30 days behind. SPLOT work I’ve shelved. I’ve dropped communications with friends and family.

And when blogging turns to blogging about not blogging you have arrived at the low levels of topics…

My family here lovingly reminds me of all the things that have gotten done- including a full house move in the middle of Canadian winter, managing more work projects over the winter than I have ever had before, and yes learning how to maneuver a large tractor. Oh, we planted 320 trees. Rooted and transplanted willow. Fenced a 150×60 foot garden, fought the weeds, planted fruit trees, berry bushes, squash, pumpkin, zucchini, green beans, potato, lettuce. We’ve just started shaping this small oasis into a natural habitat, and have adopted a family of foxes that have taken summer shelter in the old barn.

Stuff done and not done.

And is the pandemic a factor or an excuse?

Of course there is no definitive answer, but this riddle of time’s nature that might be of driving interest to physicists, but too simple I think to compare to this creek at my feet. Does time flow? The creek moves steadily, on it’s own decree from a source upstream I have not seen to some destination downstream unknown to me. This of course can be traced, but not from the comfort of this chair. I remain fixed, the water goes by. Does time really flow?

Is the metaphor fitting here? Are they ever? I reach for them all the time. And as if on cue I remember from the book I plucked to read on the trip (Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) (I am pretty sure I had bought and read this before but this copy is Cori’s, we fit like that). In the early part of the book, and the context I forget, Christopher shares this delightful explanation of “metaphor”:

The word metaphor means carrying something from one place to another, and it comes from the Greek word ???? (which means from one place to another) and ???? (which means to carry), and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn’t. This means the word metaphor is a metaphor.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time p 15

This delights me as much as Googling recursion.

But this creek, this time, does not care much about me, nor does it really stop (yes the metaphor falls with the human or Castor canadensis ability to build dams, but ignore that).

In listening too one might jump to think it’s speed is uniform, but toss in the effects of heavy precipitation, spring melt, drought, then really it is going at a variable pace. But then to know it, you have to be measuring it often.

The notebook I am writing in (a loving gift from Cori) has its own measure of the past year. I have a few of these, with intent to have them organized with ones for work notes and others for home to do lists, but I am not even close to being that organized. So I can flip back, and see bits of the creek’s upstream (or is it downstream, oh the metaphor is unraveling so quickly). As I flip pages in time there are numbers or reminders to call a plumber or locksmith, lists of web pages to fix, lists of lumber to pickup, sketches of conference web sites, php functions to look up, notes from meetings, all jumbled together, flowing back to July 13, 2020.

This is some faint feint of an attempt to be organized, but I’d know less of the last year without it. But this is no full record, it’s more like dried puddles, old ripple marks in mud, debris stuck in branches.

Like everyone, or most, or… hell I cannot make such sweeping judgements about how others think about this (or any) time. At points I had some inkling that there could be something to bring a world together to focus on an issue affecting all of its corners, but the present of dealing with covid, like William Gibson once wrote wittingly and now almost quaintly about future – is also unevenly distributed.

The creek does not flow around a corner labeled “Same ‘Normal’ As 20 Clicks Upstream.”

What is the long term impact of what is normalized and that being uncertainty? I can’t even get my mouth, much less brain, formulate the phrase “back to normal.” Normal is clump of leaves that have floated over the rocks and around the corner. It smacks of being out of date as much as bell bottom jeans or Polaroid photos of the 1970s. We see the pre-time through some odd colored lenses.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Seb Chan (@sebsnarl)

I am not going to even come close to finding the words to describe what this time is like, or means. Leave it to future historians (definitely not some random blogger). Does “funk” (not that kind) get close? And what am I warbling about? I have a house surrounded by natural space, love, solid work. Comfort. Safety. Love. Love. And Love. Food.

Yeah food. Shall I marvel at the logistics of food supply chain that enable me to make fresh guacamole here at a campsite with fresh avocado and jalapeño pepper that find their way to the Safeway in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Anarchy is here when I cannot make guac.

The creek just keeps going, over rocks, under logs, not mattering at the scribblings of this author on its banks. It has no awareness or needs none of me. It. Just. Goes. One might jump to say it flows with purpose, but really it’s just laws of physics.

The narrator steps back to notice he has flipped over 5 pages of notebook paper without any sign of a purpose. Creek 1, Alan 0.

Still here at it like it was 2013 with pointless, incessant barking…

Blogging as Pointless, Incessant, Barking

How much water has flowed by since I started here? 100 gallons? 1000? We measure time so precisely yet the feel of it going by has the opposite sensation.

My feelings of “Not Doneness” with stuff rings a few bells back to the BP (Before Pandemic) concept of messiness, uncertainty, untidiness in educational technology of Not-Yetness co-created by Amy Collier and Jen Ross. Where does Not-yetness play out now with the day to day shifts in what form learning will happen, who will/will not require masks/vaccines?

Not-yetness is not satisfying every condition, not fully understanding something, not check-listing everything, not tidying everything, not trying to solve every problem…but creating space for emergence to take us to new and unpredictable places, to help us better understand the problems we are trying to solve.

http://redpincushion.us/blog/teaching-and-learning/not-yetness/

How does not-yetness play out now in this period of ongoing Not-Knowingness? I feel like it’s almost… quaint. Or maybe something to look back at with some forward sight on.

Alas the creek and time have both slid past me in this chair, I have scribbled pen to paper, crossed out much, (and later transcribed to WordPress) and doubting maybe the Publish button gets clicked — well I’d bet that it does, because why spend 1000 gallons of flow time doing this and just chucking it all?

But if anything, over the last (pulling out the calculator do do the subtraction) 18 years, writing in this space has reliably done something, often unexpected for me. Even if a post starts without a destination nor achieves one, something happens in the act.

And so, little creek, keep on flowing, and maybe, just maybe, something serendipitous will be carried around the bend to me. And so it flows. Past, around, me.

And this creek, in its humble way, generates peacefulness. Can I carry that with me when we have to leave?

---

Featured Image: