Lee's Literary Odyssey

a quick note from Mexico

2011-01-20T15:13:00.001-08:00

There won´t be any new posts here until May, as my wife and I galivant around Central America!

Adios amigos!

bioflash: "The Search"

2010-12-12T11:52:00.001-08:00

Under the microscope, Sofi examines the Paramecium: life inside a matter of microns. The single cell zigzags across the slide, breaths, ingests, metabolizes and eventually births a twin. A tiny, motile miracle.

Through the telescope, Sofi studies galaxies that spiral, and nebulae named after spiders. The stars are grains of sand on a cosmic beach: too many to imagine, too immense to fathom.

Curiosity carries her forward, an exploration of existence both grand and small. Like a child’s first foray into the forest, Sofi’s experiment is without boundary, her wonder without limit.

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Come and get it!

bioflash: "Late for Work"

2010-10-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

Bill’s clock beeped. 6:45. Whap! Snooze.

6:55. Whap! “I don’t wanna work, I just want to bang on my drum...” Oops, wrong button. Whap!

7:05. Yawn. Snooze.

7:15. Ughhh.

7:25. Uh-oh. Thirty-five minutes to get dressed and beat two bridges.

Bill rushed out the door half-dressed. He weaved through traffic like taxis in Rome. Speed limit signs went by in a blurry dream.

A green light? Go faster.

Yellow? Faster still.

Red? Proceed with caution.

Then sirens.

“Damn!”

$196.

And so, like every other day, Bill was late for work.

That night he took a hammer to his snooze alarm.

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Don't hit that snooze alarm! Read more bioflash!

bioflash: "Rainchild"

2010-09-29T23:08:00.000-07:00

She is both mothercloud and rainchild. Each rainchild is part of a god, a god whose body is a part of creation. The vast ocean holds her heart, the sky her spirit. Her cycle of reincarnation shifts one form to the next, moving her shape from snow-white infancy into springtime childhood, to finally rest in the eternal ocean. Always, she longs for the freedom of those forgotten waves. Yet the sungod banishes her, upward, to perch on her mountain prison. There she waits, locked in ice, for the summer fairies to dance her frozen crystal legs back into the stream.

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Come and get it! (more bioflash, that is...)

Berries!

2010-09-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

I have been very busy taking photos for an upcoming book published by Lone Pine, featuring berries like this:

Now I can get back to bioflash and--more importantly!--revising my novel.

bioflash: "Meditation"

2010-08-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

Jakob sat still for an hour. He didn't feel any different.

He tried two hours, then three. Life became a calm, clear river, yet
he wasn't satisfied. To be a perfect being--that's what Jakob wanted.

So he sat, in stubborn rigidness, for ten straight hours. Exhausted,
his eyes opened to a table of Englishmen drinking tea.

“Welcome to our perfect place.”

“What,” Jakob ventured, “do you all do?”

“We sit. We drink. We speak kindly about our Queen.”

“Why?”

With that word he fell back into his basement suite, feeling less
than perfect, and happily so.

-----

Come and get your bioflash fix!

bioflash: "Cookie Monster"

2010-08-17T19:52:00.000-07:00

When the cookie with a chocolate chip happy face spoke to Trevor, he wasn't fazed.

“Don't eat me!”

Chomp.

“Ouch! I bring a message.”

“I'm listening.” Chomp.

“Om-eht-mey-moth.”

“Oh--sorry.”

Trevor rearranged the chocolate chips, using the nose to rebuild its half-eaten mouth. “Better?”

“Hardly. If you eat me, the Cosmic Cookie People will destroy Earth. The choice is yours!”

The words gripped Trevor's soul. Great power carried great responsibility. And yet, never had he tasted anything so delicious. In surreal slow-motion, he helplessly ate the rest.

The first colossal chocolate chip to fall from the sky flattened his house.

-----

Visit the bioflash breeding grounds right here!

bioflash: "Rain"

2010-08-10T23:06:00.000-07:00

Colours of rainbow beckon the sun.

Pearls on grass: soft food for green blades.

Foil to famine, fear to fire.

Sun shield, mountain mane, river rapture.

Quenching the parched, broth of every cell.

The lost child of a nebulous womb whose mourning breaks the sky.

The flood in the plains that overflows leaf and bough.

Lucid fluid on the freeway that twists tires into tragedy.

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Bioflash galore!

bioflash: "Closed"

2010-08-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

“Spineless jellyfish!” Sheryl snapped. “That’s what you are, Ben.”

That night, she acted like nothing had happened.

Ben relished the fresh wound. He held it close, the way a child both resents and covets a hidden hurt. In the dark, nourished by sullen spite, his black seed sprouted.

And so, with time, he learned to revile everything about Sheryl.

She hugged him. What a dreadful choke hold.

She cleared behind the couch. Always judging him for being messy.

She said “I love you.” He heard “You should be grateful.”

In studious silence, Ben seethed, waiting a lifetime for a forgotten apology.

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Bioflash by the handfuls found here!

bioflash: "Last Stop"

2010-07-27T20:15:00.001-07:00

The bus driver looked back at Tim.

“Bad dreams?”

Crushed robin’s eggs and smeared embryonic yolk. That’s all Tim saw. He frowned.

“It’s rush-hour. Where is everyone?”

The driver grinned a baleful grin. “Got off at the good stops. But we’re going to the end. Didn’t you know? You’re dead. Had a heart attack six stops back.”

“Heart attack?”

“Quite painless. Not fair, really. You should have left that bird’s nest alone.”

“Bird’s nest?” At a friend’s dare, Tim had flattened the tiny blue eggs beneath his shoe. “I was ten!”

“Old enough.”

Flame licked at the windows.

---

More bioflash than you can shake a stick at found here!

Bioflash: "Family Reunion"

2010-07-20T18:45:00.000-07:00

Dave didn’t recognize the young woman walking up his sister’s driveway. By the hook of her nose and square jaw, definitely a Ryerson.

He shook her hand. “I’m Dave.”

She acted aloof, eying him warily. “Jasmine.”

“How are you connected?”

“Gloria is my aunt. I found out about the reunion from her, just a few days ago.”

“My sis? Strange. Oh—here’s my better half. Vanessa, this is Jasmine.”

Jasmine smiled sweetly. “A pleasure, I’m sure. But we’re not related.”

Dave scratched his hooked nose. “I’m confused. What does that make me?”

“My father. Nice to meet you.”

---

Lots more bioflash here!

Bioflash finally returns! -- "Shooting Star"

2010-07-13T09:07:00.001-07:00

After a long hiatus, the bioflash have returned! I hope to put up one 100-word story every week.

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“Shooting Star”

Juno burst into Earth’s atmosphere, a stone bullet igniting the night sky. She travelled halfway across the universe to burn up in a brief white flash.

A shooting star, they called her. A nice way to speak of the dying.

But she was no star. A shell of iron, and heart of nickel. Still, 187 wishes were called her way. Juno granted none.

Perhaps, if someone called her by her true name, she would reconsider. But they were too late. Her flaming body, reduced to a bitter kernel, fell forgotten onto Earth, that most disciplined child of the sun.

---

Many more bioflash can be found here!

Death, the Final Emotion

2010-04-13T09:48:00.001-07:00

I read this last night at the Kwantlen Writers' Guild annual reading.

You can also read the full version here.

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Dying. Death. Deceased.

These words hold a dark, indefinable weight. What will that last heartbeat feel like? My final gasp of air? These thoughts lurk like a wolf spider in my subconscious, a furry shadow I can’t quite see. Organ failure terrifies me, but not as much as the subsequent loss of conscious thought. One day, knowledge and memory will disappear like city lights winking out one by one. Some might remain on file or paper. Others to be recalled by family or friend. But all of my emotional vitality and fastidious reflections will be buried with me.

And I don’t want to lose that. I have spent far too long in rumination, ponderance and soul spelunking. Like a cow with its cud, I have chewed over every aspect of life—ethics, spirit, philosophy, creativity, relationship and happiness to list some of the highlights—until there is nothing left to digest. Then I take a bite of something new. I want to keep the essence of me alive. Sure, we’re all connected and one day everything will pass. Yet as much as I appreciate community, ecology and the universal thread that holds it all together, I still very much like the notion of I.

I am Lee Michael Beavington. I was born into Arkell, Ontario on May 18th in the year 1977. I like to eat chocolate and watch National Geographic specials on cheetahs. And I will someday die.

There, I said it. I will one day cease to exist. There will be no thought process, no brain activity, no ability to analyse situations to determine the pros and cons. After I die, I won’t be able to look back and think: Hey, this isn’t so bad. I can jump from Earth to Mars to Jupiter! My body only got in the way before...

I wonder, is it my brain that I fret over? My soul is reasonably safe. I’m vegetarian. I never kill spiders in the bathtub. I’m an all-around nice guy. When I die my soul—in whatever shape it so decides—will live on. But my mind, the 100 billion neurons that have wired themselves based on the specific choices I have made these past 32 years, will not make that final transition. Think of all the books I have read! What about my biology degree, all those facts and figures? Cheetahs can run 110 kilometers per hour! One blood cell carries a billion oxygen atoms! Sclerenchyma cell walls possess lignin! If I could only be a head in a jar. I wouldn’t take up much space. Just give me a shelf somewhere in a university library. I could read a new book or journal every day, and help direct students to the New Scientist.

I have trouble, in particular, with the notion that death is forever. The fact that life is finite would not be so hard to swallow if everything that came after wasn’t so long. That isn’t fair. In fact, it violates the code of my moral handbook. If life is short, death should be too. The universe is 12 billion years old. If I’m lucky, I’ll be a centenarian. So that means every second I breathe, comparatively speaking, is nearly four years for the universe. What kind of Divine Being determined that to be okay?

The answer to that question I will likely never know. At least not until I die. And I’m a curious person. I’m a scientist. I like to know how things work. Perhaps God will oblige me in testing some hypotheses. Yet my logical, rational intellect will literally die with me. What if I forget to include a control in my divine experiments? I imagine God is a busy person, and won’t be my personal guinea pig for long, if She agrees to that in the first place. (I use the word She here because, let’s face it, birth is a woman’s domain, and creating the universe would have been one helluva labour, and credit is due where credit is due.)

Of course, death can be devastating. Sudden, violent, and unforgiving in its cold and rigid grip. Lives end—permanently—while others are forever changed. You often can’t predict death. (Though sometimes you can, the great curse of self-awareness.)

But I’m stuck in my head again. Is that the problem? When you get down to it, death is an emotion. That’s right. A feeling. Humans are emotional beings. We feel, we laugh, we hate, we grieve. As much as scientists—men in particular—want to believe otherwise, it is our emotions that define us. Our bursting passions, our darkest fears, our greatest joys. The events, jobs, people, creations and adventures in our lives—the experiences we recall most vividly—are built on feeling. In Star Trek, Spock’s most pivotal moments are when he loses control, when emotion enters the picture.

So death is our final emotion. And that is a scary thought.

My own experience with death is limited to a trip to Disneyland when I was six years old. At the hotel pool, playing tag with my cousins in the deep end—they could swim, I could not—I lost my grip on the concrete lip and fell under. I fought to find air. But no matter how hard I screamed on the inside and flailed on the outside, I could not escape. My cousin Sam pulled me out. I still remember the dark spectre trying to drag me down. Is that what death feels like? Submersed in fluid, caged in the amnion, powerless to escape from the reaper’s womb? Dylan Thomas would have us pledge: “Do not go gentle into that good night.” Yet when my time comes, is it not an exercise in futility to rage against the dying of the light?

Then again, maybe it’s best not to dwell on one’s own mortality. Which means I have stewed long enough over this murky pot. At the very least, when I’m dead I won’t have to think about being dead. And if I can, what a pleasant surprise that will be.

A Letter of Gratitude

2010-03-26T09:48:00.000-07:00

Published in the KCC Neighbour newspaper. Go community!

First draft of The Tainted River is complete!

2010-03-04T13:18:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, by Lynn Creek in North Vancouver, I finished the first draft of my novel, The Tainted River.

I actually wrote chapter one while on the backwaters of Kerala, India. Once again, at the end, I find myself by the river.

More to come...

Why I love Desmond Tutu...

2010-02-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

Interveiwer: "Do you think God has a sense of humour?"

Desmond Tutu: "Absolutely! Look at all the strange creatures he has made. He gave me this big nose and short stature, yet he still has to love me!"

Who knew poetry could be lucrative?

2009-11-03T23:00:00.000-08:00

My ode to the bigleaf maple, entitled "Family Tree", placed second in the Earth Vision nature writing contest.

Follow the link to read!

This poem has now earned me a whopping $200.

Transcribing Truth

2009-08-21T09:02:00.001-07:00

Please note: the full version, with photos, can be found here.

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In my hands I hold a treasure chest of words: my great-grandfather’s notebook. “Pow-wow,” reads the cover. Stoic Indians sit around a campfire next to a teepee, above the words subject and name. On the back, a multiplication table. This child’s notebook, fished from my mom’s filing cabinet last month, once felt my great-grandfather’s adult pencil. What golden prize waits within? I will transcribe every word.

I suppose it comes down to DNA. In the nucleus of each cell, coded in those entangled strands, lie threads of my ancestors—living and dead. My Norwegian great-great grandmother, who never accepted her son, Thomas, leaving the priesthood. After he married, she hounded Thomas and his wife, forcing them to immigrate to Canada. My kind and gentle grandma Bessie, who faced tragedy with great courage. And finally my mom, Dorothy: writer, social worker, feminist.

This thread of DNA has led to me.

Words shaped my mind earlier than most. The first book read to me—Richard Adam’s Watership Down—flowed from Dad’s tongue while Mom’s every heartbeat still gently jostled me within the amniotic fluid. Later, Mom cooed stories about animals and fairy tales with feminist maidens, while my dad told tales through flute and guitar. In kindergarten, too shy to fight for the train set, I abandoned toys for books.

What compels me to write? To lose myself in legend and share personal wisdom? Though I work in science—teaching students about microscopic cells and the vast biosphere—writing inspires me beyond any discipline. Yet my obsessive drive to create characters, narratives, even entire worlds is not enough. To archive and preserve ancestral stories is a commitment that springs from a well of curious habit. I have transcribed writings from three relatives—mother, aunt and great-grandfather.

As the third born of four sons, I feel the closest feminine ties with my mom, Dorothy, and her sisters—Betty and Chrissie. Only through transcribing their writings have I come to understand the three bookish goddesses nicknamed “sisti-uglers” by one of Chrissie’s boyfriends.

Mom raised me to love art. She put books—everything from The Iliad to Harriet the Spy to Aesop’s fables—on my shelves. She introduced me to foreign film—Fellini’s La Strada and Bergman’s Wild Strawberries. She nurtured every creative project I undertook: wall-to-wall mazes drawn across pin-feed computer paper, a filmed fantasy adventure in the backyard, and entering my first writing contest at age thirteen. While Dad held the role of ruthless editor (invaluable to me, if hard to bear), Mom was always the encourager. The one who says, “This is great! Send it out!”

I transcribed her manuscript first. Touching: A Family Love Story is filled with sex, cancer, death, tainted love, women-scorned—the six hundred yellowed pages contain everything my parents censored. In 2002 I found the manuscript languishing in the garage. Packing tape peeled from the flaccid box marked “Mom’s book.” As I picked up the hefty stack of papers, the clack of the typewriter instantly sounded from memory.

As a kid, that noise meant one thing: Do not disturb! My mom took refuge in the study—a room built by Dad, and later my bedroom—where she pounded at the keys. I remember the rhythm of the type bars hitting the paper, the grinding carriage return. Another finished line. She spat out dozens of pages each session, yet the silences meant even more. My budding eight-year-old intellect knew something about the artist’s mind. That sacred creative space. When I drew four-meter mazes, I tolerated no interruption. I can still hear Mom’s tone of voice, still see her piercing stare when I dared trespass. I possess the same fiery conviction. The only time I ever snapped at my girlfriend is when she peered over my shoulder while I wrote. To come between artist and art is to step between mother bear and cub.

Children do not witness their parents’ adolescence; they see them as mentors, life teachers that seem to shrink with time. Little did I know, as I set Touching on the desk next to my computer, the visceral journey that awaited. I discovered parts of my mother I had never met, parts almost too painful to bear.

On page one, Mom quotes Virginia Woolf: “The beauty of the world…has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish cutting the heart asunder.”

Next page Mom holds her sister Betty in her arms as she dies, and then sings to her mother in a Pincher Creek hospital. “For almost seven hours I sang her favourite songs and hymns and slowly willed her to die. It was a labour of love. I gave my mother death as she had given me birth.”

I soon realized that in digitizing her book, I would be swimming in the depths of my mother’s anguish and grief.

As I transcribed aged typeface to bits and bytes, I moved vicariously through 1983, a year where I played with Star Wars action figures. A woman I thought I knew—mother, protector, housewife—became daughter, sister, writer, pissed off feminist, frustrated wife. I was six when her world collapsed, her older sister and mother having died a week apart. One morning, ready for school, I remember Mom breaking into tears, clutching the walls for support. My maternal pillar crumbled before my eyes. Dad said we could stay home. But my brothers and I ran for the bus, eager to escape. Our home could no longer shelter us from the storms of reality.

One hundred-and-fifty-thousand words later, I gained a fuller understanding of Dorothy Anne Lee, all the layers of onion peeled back to reveal the hidden, fragile flower. Behind Mom was a woman with admissible faults and extraordinary resilience. A woman who kept breastfeeding even when her doctor said: ‘Beyond three months it’s pathological.’ A woman who faced her own breast cancer scare—then watched two of the closest women in her life succumb to cancer. Despite her heart being cut asunder, she found strength to carry on, to write her story and live her life.

At Aunt Betty’s 50th birthday party, my mom wrote a series of clues for the family treasure hunt. As she says in Touching:

Betty started this ritual over forty years ago. The rules had always been simple. The clues must be clever, brilliant and challenging. They must be difficult to decipher but not impossible. Betty had always been the most clever clue maker. Hers were rhyming couplets often with literary references.

Nelson [author’s note: Nelson is my dad] had the distinction after he joined the family of producing absolutely brilliant clues that defied all the previous rules as to rhyme and reason…once he just gave Betty a blank piece of paper. It took her an hour to figure out that it meant “empty space”, which referred to the empty space in the crawl space above her ceiling.

Twenty years later, for Mother’s Day, I wrote clues for Mom. I organized a treasure hunt, just as she had done for Betty on her last birthday. Mine were not as clever or erudite. “Frozen chest” led her to the freezer, “hot cube” to the dryer, and eventually “music-maker’s seat” to the piano bench. Inside lay the crisp white pages of Touching.

The journey through Mom’s book led fittingly to my indomitable aunt, Betty Lambert, English professor and author of seventy plays. “Brilliant, wise, larger-than life,” my dad, her ex-student, succinctly wrote of her. While on holiday in San Francisco, she fell in love with an African American law student. Within the month she realized she was pregnant, but he did not want to be a father. Betty decided to keep the baby and raise the child on her own.

When I was young and shy, her flamboyance intimidated me. During family visits to Aunt Betty’s house, I ran in the backyard and played with Golda, her golden lab. Only scattered images remain. Russian matryoshka nesting dolls. Black-and-white family photos on the mantelpiece. A huge painting of a potted cactus. How does one build a relationship from a six-year-old memory?

Years later, my mom introduced me to Betty’s plays. Jennie’s Story, inspired by true events, examines the ramifications of Alberta’s Sexual Sterilization Act enacted in 1928. This permitted sterilization without consent on those deemed unfit or mentally challenged. The young Jennie worked as a housekeeper for a Catholic priest. He seduced her. To ensure she would not become pregnant, he convinced authorities she was mentally challenged and took her to Ponoka to be sterilized. He told Jennie she was having an appendectomy.

I saw Under the Skin next. Based on a real kidnapping in Port Moody, the focus is Renee’s marriage to the cruel, ruthless John, and his terrible secret. John has confined the neighbour’s twelve-year-old to the bomb shelter beneath his workshop, where he sexually molests her. Renee’s subtle reaction to what her heart gradually knows to be true underlies the play’s stark theme.

These productions were my first exposure to Betty’s vision. Her humour, honesty, and moral fury surfaced from the intensely drawn characters. As a teenager I read her sole novel, Crossings, moulding my nascent life philosophy further. Largely autobiographical, it depicts her physical and sexually abusive relationship with Mik. I began to understand woman as victims of patriarchal society, but persevering nonetheless. I witnessed violence and oppression endured with tender strength and determination.

On my personal journey to discover Betty, this treasure hunt led me to the veritable dragon’s den: Simon Fraser University’s special collections library. In that temperature and humidity-controlled room lay forty boxes filled with Elizabeth Minnie Lambert. SFU had bought her literary estate. Scripts, drafts, journals, letters, lectures…I tore into the manuscripts voraciously, feeding off her words like a coyote in a chicken coop.

For months I returned, every week devouring another few boxes. I read her notes on making love, script drafts covered in red edits, stories of teenage heartbreak, letters to an on-again off-again ex-lover, and personal diaries that shied away from nothing. Betty was always a seeker of truth. And she shared her truth, no matter how shocking. In one entry, I found a reference to me as a baby—my colicky scream filled her with an overwhelming desire to strangle me with her bare hands.

The dialogue in Betty’s plays made evident her wit. The mountain of manuscripts and drafts revealed her unwavering drive. Her entertaining letters, lovelorn confusion, and desperation for truth all danced behind the words. The aunt who died while I learned to print and spell now became a fellow writer and teacher.

In tribute to her words, I designed an elaborate website referencing every single work she wrote, published or not. But my goal was accomplished. My Aunt Betty was no longer a stranger.

Betty was a writer to the bitter end. Even when blinded by brain tumours, struck mute by pneumonia, she printed letter by painstaking letter on her yellow pad: I want to write. Her last words were on that same yellow pad.

What is the final demand in life? she wrote to my mom.

“I don’t know, Betty. But I’m sure you do.”

She nodded and wrote, every letter a tremendous effort, More and more and more nostalgia. So my mom talked about their father and mother, their childhood struggles, their bonding as sisters, how much they had always loved each other. She talked until Betty took her last breath in my mother’s arms.

Only two of the sisti-uglers remain, and my path now leads me to the youngest. Like her mother and older sister, cancer would later claim Chrissie’s body. Letters offer her only literary legacy, but she was full of story. In early 2007, given months to live, she clung to photos and family stories. During my final visits, we dug through boxes of familial treasures. As she moved excitedly from one subject to the next, I scrawled names and dates on unlabelled pictures, often including a question mark. Like a sponge, I sucked in her wit-filled anecdotes told with her wicked sense of humour.

Chrissie knew life’s importance. Hardship, injustice, ailment, and grief all tried to sour her spirit. Yet at her core, Chrissie lived for and shared story. Like Betty, she craved nostalgia.

And now, in my hands, the notebook of my great-grandfather, Thomas Craven, filled with fictional stories. This past week I transcribed the first, untitled tale about a bully named Piggoh.

Why am I driven this way, to set in stone words of the dead? Respect for ghosts of generations past? Morbid curiosity? Or perhaps, by following those who came before, I hope to find my own path.

In the lumberjack camps, Piggoh preys on Jules, a French immigrant. Thomas himself fled England for Canada in 1896 aboard the SS Mongolian, to escape his domineering mother. She demanded he stay in the priesthood. Instead, he married Bridget McGrane, a sweet Irish colleen—poor, illiterate, half his age, and soon pregnant. Thomas’s mother got him fired from a university job and threatened to disinherit him. He would have come into Westwood, a stately mansion complete with tea house, vineyard, horse stables and dog kennels. But he cut the phantom umbilical by crossing the Atlantic and taking the surname Cooper.

Thomas bought land near Cowley, a remote town 150 miles south of Calgary. He thought the scrubland would be valuable when the railway went through. But the tracks were diverted. With a third child on the way, and their barren land worthless, he became desperate for work. This man, fluent in five languages and with degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, accepted the job of logging camp cook. Thomas delighted in working outdoors, concocting new recipes, soups, and—as it turns out—fiction.

The story of Piggoh and Jules is obviously inspired by his days in the logging camps. Thomas’s penciled, cursive writing makes every third or fourth word difficult to decipher. With patient diligence, I transcribed the thirteen-page story; Jules stands up to the bully with one resounding punch.

[Piggoh] lay silent and peaceful amid the wild flowers and fern like a fallen angel. Jules, uncertain as to what would now happen, stood ready. Would Piggoh rise and beat him up? If so, he would take it willingly for the pleasure of seeing his tormenter ‘hors de combat’. The fallen bully lay without movement, looking up into the face of the French youth with surprise and with fear plainly written on his face.

Then Jules returned to his work and his axe, feeling and looking like a conqueror! Piggoh’s companions left him to recover as he was able, for it is against the etiquette of the woods to interfere in a fight.

“What happened?” was a question put by the bully.

“You were knocked out in one blow,” he was informed. “Served you damn well right!”

The last story in the notebook is called “The Timekeeper.” Thomas played that role at the ill-fated Frank Mine, a job he took some years later. At 4:10 in the morning, April 29th, 1903, 90 million tons of rock fell from the summit of Turtle Mountain. The town of Frank was swept away in a thunderous wave. By chance, Thomas was absent from work that morning.

Christened Turtle Mountain by rancher Louis Garnett, the oral traditions of the Blackfoot and Kutenai aptly referred to the peak as “the mountain that moves.” Thomas wrote about the day stone fell like rain in his article “The Terror that Came in the Night.”

The mass of falling rocks poured down on the town below with unceasing and irresistible force from the summit of the mountain literally burying the dwellings beneath and their unfortunate inmates, who waking in terror were buried in their rocky tombs beneath the crushing weight of countless tons…we know nothing of the [cause]—all is conjecture. Only one thing we know for certain is that we were and are alive and thankful to be so.

My three ancestral writers possess such diverse telling of tales. I search for the common thread, the fitting motif. My great grandfather dealt with mines and lumberjack camps. Mom and Aunt Betty wrote feminist-driven memoirs. I write about rivers, Iceland, and life on other planets. Is there a link?

We all seek truth. The truth of the Frank Slide, the truth of my Aunt Betty’s abusive relationship, the truth of cancer’s devastating effects. My own personal seeds of truth germinate into reflections on Mother Nature’s spirituality, world travelogues, and insights from exploring an entirely alien perspective.

On a cellular level, my ancestors and I share the same threads of life. Yet Watson, Crick and Franklin determined DNA to be a double helix—I have only elucidated stories from my maternal strand. On Dad’s side, stories are hard to come by. One week ago, wishing to explore my other helical half, I visited my dad’s mother. My hidden agenda? Hearing tales from her eighty years of life. Her first response came as a joyful sound, “For Christmas of next year, I’m going to write out my life story.” I felt a warm shiver of anticipation. I coaxed her for a preview; she was eager to oblige. Pieces of my past fell into place.

“My father—your great grandfather—had golden locks.” Hence my bright blonde curls up to age five.

“In cross-country, my brother and I finished third in all the Saskatchewan schools.” Hence my love of long-distance running.

“I wanted so badly to be a teacher, but my parents could only send one of us to university. My brother got to go. I thought to myself, I’ll get married and start a family.” My grandmother married and a year later Dad was born. The other half of the puzzle began to fill in.

I was curious. “Grandma, are you going to use your old script typewriter?”

She shook her head. “I’ll do it longhand.”

I offered to transcribe her words. Said it would be my honour—and it grants me first reading rights.

With this future project of preservation on my mind, I left feeling more familiar with my paternal strand. DNA fulfills its vital functions—protein production, replication, growth—only after being copied and transcribed. Then its purpose is translated into physical meaning. At some point, I will stop transcribing to focus on my tale. Yet the remaining pockets of truth compel me to further unravel those familial strands. This cause is ultimately selfish. When my time comes, I will be well prepared. In those last few hours and days, when death’s shadow robs my senses one by one, I will have no shortage of precious family nostalgia to bring me comfort.

Lee Beavington
August 20, 2009

References

Beavington, Dorothy. Touching: A Family Love Story. (Unpublished manuscript).

Cooper, Thomas. “The Terror That Came in the Night.” Pincher Creek Echo, April 26, 1962 (reprinted).

Lambert, Betty. Jennie’s Story.

Lambert, Betty. Under the Skin.

www.bettylambert.com

www.leebeavington.com

Trekking in Evia

2009-06-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

Dimosaris Gorge
Karystos, Greece

Tanya and I hiked the Dimosaris Gorge today near the souther tip of Evia, Greek's second largest island. The day started with a long, winding drive up a gravel road, which is sandwiched between Mount Ohi and the start of the gorge. This hike is hailed as the most beautiful on the island, with a trail bordered by luscious forest that winds, next to a dazzling stream, for a ten kilometer stretch to the ocean.

Bells guided us down the correct path. The cacophony of sound belonged to countless sheep, each with a large bell so owners can keep track of their movement on the camouflaging hillsides. As we moved through the herd the sheep scattered, wide-eyed, their fear of us greater than that of being apart.

Tanya and I moved on quickly, having little desire to disturb the fauna of the animated forest. But disturb we did. Basking lizards leapt off the path before us, by day's end I spotted hundreds. Two eagles feasting on a large, eviscerated toad took flight as we traversed a bend in the trail, shrieking their dismay at having to abandon their kill.

Dragonflies flittered off rocks next to the cascading river, looking for new perches. A snake--at least three or four feet long--writhed off the path and under a stump, trying to burrow its head into a darker and safer alcove. And finally, goats gave us a pitiful cry (while we rested next to the stream) stuck on a high mountain ledge with a light rain making their footing even more treacherous. Alas, two exhausted humans had little help to offer such lofty hooves.

This week I have been re-uniting with nature. After London, Paris, Rome and Athens, the untouristy and largely undeveloped island of Evia is a most welcome respite. I find being surrounded by living ecological systems is when I truly feel connected to both the earth and myself. I heard someone say the forest is their church; that I can admire. Thorny scratches, irritating bug bites, grimy sweat and aching leg muscles--they all are part of a most rewarding trek. In fact, without the trial and tribulation, experiencing the forest would not be the same. Getting scratched by prickly flora and bitten by tiny winged fauna is only natural. I admire my battle scars, as I call them, and deem the day more than well spent. Weary and worn with euphoric exhaustion, I look forward to the next trail.

Roaming in Rome...

2009-06-21T04:24:00.000-07:00

A sampling of photos from Rome. Giant pizzas, fantastic fountains, Saint Peter's Basilica, and cafes next to colossal creations. As an aside, the entrance to the Vatican closed when we arrived, so we had to border-hop into the Pope's private country!

Enjoying Eclectic Europe!

2009-06-21T04:23:00.000-07:00

Phew!

London, France, Italy and now Greece. I've often barely had time enough to breathe let alone write. Here are a few snippets from the adventures of the Mad Hatter and his three tea tarts:

London, England
Wandering along the River Thames. Jenn snaps photos of everything. I smile at her excitement and joy, despite the long flight that stirred more than butterflies in the belly. Mom and Tanya join us for part of the walk, then retreat for R&R at the hotel. Jenn and I trek onward, past Parliament, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square and Picadilly Circus. We get lost amidst the dazzle of lights, double deckers and winding ways of London streets. Buckingham Palace lingers royally somewhere to our left as we c0-navigate back to our hotel. It's nearly midnight, but, for the time being, jetlag has been deferred by the wonder and flavours of this foreign setting.

Corsica, France
Accomodation proves difficult, due to an--unbeknowest to us--Italian long weekend. We arrive on Friday night, can't find our car rental place (which we later find out closed earlier than usual, an hour before our ferry from Nice arrived). An expensive taxi ride takes us to Maloni Hotel, although we only have a single night reserved. At my request to stay five nights the owner, Alex, scolds me. "I'm booked until September!" He phones his friends in the morning and finds us a place just a few kilometers from the small town of Saint Florent. Picked up by our new host (who speaks next to no English) we go up a windy, pot-holed road with some trepidation. The place looks very green, while the stone building we are guided to looks small and weathered. Inside, complete with stove, fridge and washing machine, we realize we have stumbled across the best kind of sanctuary--the hidden and unexpected. This is why I don't like to book in advance, as such a discovery can't be found in Lonely Planet or Eurocheapo. Jenn, our talented translater, converses with the owners in French. They take us to a "sa-preeze" on the property: a swimming pool! Not bad for 80 euros a night.

Venice, Italy
After sixteen and a half hours of travel--bus, ferry, bus, train, train, train--Jenn and I stagger onto the Grande Canal. The waterway is a sight from another world, a mythical place where streets flow with water and gondoliers sing under the stars. Reflected orange in the current is the almost blazing full moon, hanging in the sky like a plump lamp, a beacon guiding us through the maze that is Venice to our hotel. We get lost. In fact, that is one of our goals on our four-day sojourn. Often, Jenn and I simply choose a direction and walk. Sometimes we end up where we started. Other times the map is our saviour. Yet always we stumble upon little treasures: a cat lounging on a bridge, a gelato shop for my daily fix, a choir singing in San Marco square, delectable vegetarian Indian food, and voluptuous Venetian masks. Our last night involves a gondola ride at night, along quiet canals, during which I spot a shooting star. La Dolce Vita!

...and now for something completely different

2009-06-19T06:17:00.000-07:00

Europe musings...

2009-05-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

Ran up the Eiffel Tower yesterday, then took a boat ride down La Seine. London was a quiet start compared to the hustle and bustle of Paris. Everyone seems to have a cigarette or cell phone in hand (sometimes both). No matter where you look, it seems you need to have a camera at the ready. I was in Paris eight years before, hence the deja vu while walking down streets at once exotic and familiar. Jetlag still lingers, leaving me in a surreal state while exploring one city of Europe after another. I have my three favourite women with me: my Mom, Tanya, and the lovely Jenn (aka Sola). We all took a sleeper train last night, and are sitting here in Nice amidst the sunshine, palm trees and baguettes. A ferry will soon scurry us over to Corsica, and the much needed quiet respite it will offer. Then onward to Italy!

Photos from Europe!

2009-05-27T15:06:00.000-07:00

Here's a few photos to get things started...

bioflash: "Sacred"

2009-05-13T08:42:00.000-07:00

Buddha beneath the bodhi tree.

Bare feet brushing against monastery stone.

The first piercing cry of a newborn babe.

A snow leopard atop the Himalayas.

Sunrays streaming through cloud.

Perfectly parallel vapour trails behind a jet.

A raccoon prying open the garbage can.

The last, raspy breath of a centenarian.

A cell phone ringing at a funeral.

Jesus bleeding on the cross.

-----

More bioflash can be found here.

bioflash: "Dreams (Reality)"

2009-05-05T09:05:00.000-07:00

Harold always wanted to be a vet (greenhouse worker).

He dreamed of a log house with an evergreen forest as his backyard (suburban condo, supermall parking lot).

Start a family with a slim, talented woman, and have one son and one daughter (obese K-Mart cashier, five girls).

Someday, he would write that fantasy novel where gnomes rode winged camels (cathartic journaling regarding divorce).

Finally, well past his prime, Harold decided to think less and do more about what he thought (and, after a few years, his imagination converged with his waking path).

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More bioflash here!

bioflash: "Aroma Acupuncture"

2009-04-28T20:48:00.000-07:00

The night Gerald the groundskeeper got fired from the zoo—“you’re overstressed,” his boss claimed—he decided to have some fun. Laughing with glee, he put hedgehogs with hippos, pit vipers with snow leopards, and naked mall rats in the leech pond. Peacocks got plucked by squirrel monkeys. Cheetahs and sloths changed their perception of time. The black panther knocked Emperor penguins around like bowling pins.

Gerald’s comeuppance finally arrived—never was there a more reluctant convert to Chinese medicine—when he got caught in the porcupine and hog-nosed skunk crossfire.

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More bioflash here!

One more pat on the back...

2009-04-22T18:21:00.001-07:00

bioflash: "Bartleby's Return"

2009-04-21T09:34:00.000-07:00

“You could flip burgers at McDonalds.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“My stag, this weekend, in Vegas!”

“I would prefer not to.”

“We can smoke in this strip club.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“Bottled water—half price at Walmart!”

“Britney’s singing on Broadway!”

“Our special today: no fat, ginger, grande chai latte with whipped soy milk.”

“Having an iphone makes everything easier.”

“The season finale of Survivor: Timbuktu is starting!”

“I would prefer not to.”

“Want to lead a simple life where your actions inspire community and growth?”

“That, I would prefer.”

-----

Bioflash found here!

Farewell, Paddy

2009-04-15T19:07:00.000-07:00

Paddy (aka Paddykins or Padwon),

You were an old girl when I met you. Yet unforgettably cute and feisty with an indomitable spirit--and appetite. Your teeth were few but your experiences were many. I remember the time when our daily ritual involved me writing 2,000 words and taking you for an afternoon walk in Mokpo, South Korea. We managed 76,000 words worth of walks. I still recall the Koreans who were curious about you. You diverted attention from my long hair and beard to your white curls and adorable snout. The locals who tried to pet you didn't realize you weren't one to mess with. I can hardly blame you for snapping at them--I'd probably do the same if a stranger thrust their fingers in my face. You knew how to keep your boundaries, a lesson I'm still learning. Despite your size, you were the alpha-dog, keeping Xuxa (and Luna) in line.

Our adventures were many. That time we snuck you onto a bus, and didn't get caught until we arrived at the airport. Hiking around Alexander Falls on my birthday, carrying you in a bag over my shoulder. The low tide walk just outside White Rock. You made it all the way out to the marker (although you refused to go on another walk for days afterward).

Even though you could be a curmudgeon, you made your way into my heart. I miss you, Paddy.

Bioflash: "Water"

2009-04-07T22:40:00.001-07:00

One oxygen atom and a pair of hydrogen.

Sparkling dew on a garden leaf.

Gentle rain casting circles on a lily pond.

The floating prism twisting colours into a rainbow.

Lenticular clouds capping a mountain range.

A billion individual crystal snowflakes.

Glaciers glowing blue as the ocean deep.

A river carving boulder into pebble.

A waterfall shedding mist as clouds of heaven.

A lake swimming with fins and fish.

An icicle dripping its liquid body into a driveway puddle.

White breath on a cold morning.

The well from which life sprang.

One oxygen atom and a pair of hydrogen.

-----

Bioflash found here!

Penticton: a poem

2009-04-07T00:31:00.000-07:00

You can read, comment and vote for my poem, "Penticton", at the following location:

http://www.everydaypoets.com/penticton-by-lee-beavington

Cheers,
Lee

Wow!

2009-04-03T08:21:00.001-07:00

Wednesday night, the Kwantlen Writers' Guild held their annual reading event, and also announced the winners of the creative writing contest. I entered two poems, and one piece for nonfiction and fiction, in hopes of placing in one of the three categories.

Beforehand, I was a little nervous about getting up to read in front of the 40 or 50 people present. So when my friend Tanya arrived, she promptly suggested that we dance in the corner where the music was coming from. Not a bad way to shake the nerves (despite being stared at by everyone in the room!)

My parents were also there. Reading three of my bioflash went fine, and after several other readings Sheila Hancock, the outgoing chair of the Creative Writing department, announced the winners of the contest.

"The judging was blind," she assured everyone. "For poetry, first place goes to Lee Beavington."

Needless to say, I was quite surprised. Poetry isn't my strongest suit, and I had just heard some very strong poets, such as Karen Ezra, give stellar readings of their work. Up I went to shake Sheila's hand and get a copy of the Kwantlen Writers' Guild journal, in which my poem appears.

Second and third place for poetry were announced, and then on to nonfiction. "In second place we have...Lee Beavington!"

Up I went again. Then fiction came, in which I held little hope, as I had submitted a fantasy-flavoured piece, and I assumed the journal catered to what some consider to be "literary". Sheila called out the winners.

"First place goes to Lee Beavington!"

Flabbergasted by this point, I went up and proceeded to apologize to the crowd. My current creative writing instructor (Aislinn Hunter--big thanks to her for organizing the event) called out: "Lee slept with all the judges!"

The annual creative writing scholarship went to my talented classmate Angela Kenyon (who also placed second in the poetry category). Congrats to her! Before they announced the winner of the scholarship, a short piece was read about each applicant, including me. My teacher, Zoe Landale, wrote the following, which was read by the incoming chair (and inspirational teacher galore) Ross Laird:

Lee Beavington is a writer with courage. Getting to the places which resonate with readers requires going deep into the places where we ourselves are uncertain, and shadows leap high on the cave walls. Lee is a person who cares about stories. He also has a great work ethic and goes back over and over his writing until it fairly gleams.

I've been beaming since last night.

Bioflash: "Meeting in the Aisle"

2009-03-30T21:53:00.000-07:00

Twenty-three years—that’s the last time he had seen Vera, her face flushed and skin glowing. Now, she pushed a cart with fruit loops and spaghettiOs. A girl of ten or eleven, platinum blonde just like her mom, trailed after Vera.

He noticed her face, hardened somehow, the skin tighter. Softness is what he remembered; smooth cheek, supple breast. This gaunt mother gave him—her past life—a brief glance, an old building long-since torn down and built anew.

He watched her move away, rubbed clammy hands on a pant leg, and emptied his basket at the self-service checkout.

-----

Bioflash archives

Bioflash: "The Life of Blood"

2009-03-23T23:15:00.000-07:00

Arteries and veins—our fluid freeways—provide a direct line from the lungs to every living cell. One red blood cell shuttles a billion oxygen in its donut-shaped disc, stacking capillaries with the breath of life. No DNA guides this cell. Born in the bone marrow, he is slave to a merciless heart. One hundred days later, broken and beaten, the red blood cell disassembles. A new car is made from his old parts, this vital transport racing along dilated vessels. And so blood flows with every beat, carrying life from lung to tissue, artery to vein, heart to cell.

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Bioflash archives

Bioflash: "Broken"

2009-03-12T20:32:00.000-07:00

The bus from Williams Lake was late.

Stu sat in the idling car, waiting for his son. They hadn’t spoken in over ten years. What could he say? What possible comfort could this old curmudgeon offer?

The bus finally pulled in. Tim was one of the last to get off. Stu saw it in his eyes, and held back tears last shed twenty-nine years ago. Tears for his son’s birth. But this time, birth had taken two lives.

Stu said nothing and hugged his son hard. He held him for a long time, but he did not cry.

Bioflash: "Microscope"

2009-03-05T22:23:00.000-08:00

This crystal ball waits in the biology lab, ever-patient in her mounting curiosity. Through her glasses the world is clear: a beaming, unblemished full moon. Lenses and light make the invisible visible, the tiny titanic. One dot resolves into two, one cell a bustling city of constant construction, movement and repair. To an observer, looking through a window at the building blocks of life, the small appears infinite, like God staring down at his divine elements, mesmerized by the miracle of his makeup. Thus, this optical opus blesses the naked eye with the power to gaze into creation itself.

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Looking for more bioflash? Click here!

Bioflash: "Destiny's Fate"

2009-02-26T18:52:00.000-08:00

“Don’t worry, be happy,” said Fate. “What will be will be.”

Destiny shook his head. “How can you say that? Luck is something you make.”

“Excuse me,” said Luck. “I was made by the divine.”

“I guess that makes me a heathen,” said Chance.

“Fortune favours the bold,” said Fortune boldly.

“You would say that,” Freewill said to Fortune. “It is the choices in life that are important.”

“Only the ones I make,” said Fate.

Destiny smiled. “And you make those choices because of me.”

-----

Click here for more bioflash!

Bioflash: "Gravitational Waltz"

2009-02-20T01:12:00.000-08:00

In her fullness the moon shines, touching water without touching, the gentle caress of a distant lover. Sunlight ripples on the ocean, solar rays reflecting off Luna—a mirror for a star.

Eternal waves slide over a shifting shoreline, tides drawn to the glowing sphere above. One circles the other in a coy dance, always reaching for what is out of reach.

The sea waits for Luna’s nightly visits. Sometimes she wears a crescent smile, or shows her wide, beaming teeth, and once a month she disappears completely. But the sea always waits. Luna gives her life.

----

Click here for more bioflash!

My writing companion this morning...

2009-02-10T00:40:00.001-08:00

Bioflash: "Centrifuge"

2009-02-10T00:37:00.000-08:00

The Great Beings lived above space and time. They saw universes the way a whale considers a grain of sand. One of these Beings became curious, much like a human scientist.

“Let’s spin a universe in a centrifuge!”

So he ground down a universe with a giant mortar and pestle and spun it at a trillion G’s. Stars settled near the top, comets further down. A dark pellet of iron and nickel—planetary cores—clumped at the bottom of the centrifuge tube.

Picking up his mortar, he cleaned out the crushed remains of the Milky Way and started again.

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More bioflash right here!

Bioflash: "When Trees Fight Back"

2009-02-02T00:57:00.000-08:00

When the trees decided to reclaim the planet, the great firs dropped cones onto human heads. Moss released spores full of bacteria. Sword ferns claimed their namesake.

But humans proved surprisingly resilient. Even falling coconuts didn’t deter them.

Flowers released hyperallergenic pollen, but could not defeat Benadryl. Angiosperms stopped producing fruit, but apples and oranges were replicated in laboratories. Finally, plants slowed photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide started suffocating the air.

Humans had only one choice. Give up their cars, factories and air conditioners.

Thus began, amidst a long and quiet verdancy, the Great Age of Green.

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More bioflash here!

More of Gaia's creations...

2009-02-02T00:34:00.000-08:00

Bioflash: "Probability"

2009-01-25T22:54:00.000-08:00

Thao’s teacher rolled the dice.

“Six!” Mr. Abaddon announced. “What’s the probability I’ll roll two more?”

Thao raised his hand. “One hundred percent!”

No one got the joke. Thao had always suspected his math teacher was the devil, hiding his horns behind that tweed hat.

Mr. Abaddon rolled twice more. Both sixes. “You’re right, Thao. I’ll see you after class.”

When everyone else had left, Thao walked up to the teacher’s desk. Mr. Abaddon looked at him curiously.

“How did you know?”

Thao shrugged

“Just a lucky guess? I want to show you something.”

Mr. Abaddon took off his hat.

A few photos from Saturday

2009-01-25T14:21:00.000-08:00

What a Saturday!

First, I got to see my "Fading Firs" photo on display in the Surrey Art gallery "Earth Matters" exhibit. Then it was off to the Every Day Fiction anthology book launch, which features my story, "A Fungal Friend". Unfortunately, an hour-plus wait for the Port Mann bridge meant I missed the reading. But I did get to meet the other authors, and chat with Jordan Lapp for a good while. Besides being a founding editor of Every Day fiction, he is also a fellow Writers of the Future winner, and is an in-law of one of my co-workers! Small world. This might be the start of a beautiful friendship...

You can find out more about the Every Day Fiction anthology right here.

Two events this weekend!

2009-01-20T23:13:00.000-08:00

This Saturday, January 24, I have two back-to-back artistic events. The first is "Earth Matters", an exhibition of photography at the Surrey Art Gallery. My photo, "fading firs", is one of those featured in the exhibit. The opening reception is from 2-4 pm.

Secondly, a story of mine appears in the Best of Every Day Fiction 2008 anthology. They are having a book launch at Spartacus books in Vancouver from 4-7 pm. There will be readings and book signings. (I won't get there until about 5 or so, due to the aforementioned above commitment!)

Here are the details:

Earth Matters exhibit
Opening Reception
Saturday, January 24
2-4 pm
Surrey Art Gallery
13750 - 88 Avenue

Best of Every Day Fiction book launch
Saturday, January 24
4-7 pm
Spartacus Books
684 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC

Both events are free. I hope to see some family and friends there!

Bioflash: "Sea Urchin"

2009-01-18T14:03:00.000-08:00

Like a lotus the purple urchin perceives every direction as one. Spiny petals oscillate, omniscient antenna waving through salt water. His world moves over and through him, this keeper of the kelp forests. Seaweeds sing of Aristotle’s lantern, circular fangs that chew their lifeline. From prey to predator, otters portend doom, crunching echinoderm shells like eggs.

These shallow water Buddhists remain content. From stillness comes enlightenment. Their existence is a deep meditation—radial perception offers perfect symmetry. The urchin sits on the sea floor in prayer to Luna, pale God of the night sky, ruler of Mother Ocean’s tide.

Mother Nature: the ultimate artist

2009-01-11T10:26:00.001-08:00

Last weekend I went up to the Sunshine Coast with my friend Tanya. Even in the dead of winter, Gaia's creativity isn't subdued. If anything, her artistry shines even brighter. Here are a selection of photos from her infinite and ever-changing portfolio:

You'll see two faces below, one by human hand, the other carved by time and rain.

Softshell on Every Day Poets

2009-01-10T00:42:00.000-08:00

My poem, "Softshell," appears in today's edition of Every Day Poets. The interested can visit the above link, where you can read, comment and vote on my poem. Cheers!

Bioflash: "Presidential Moult"

2009-01-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

The giant, eight-legged snakes descended on Earth in turtle-shaped ships.

“Take us to your leader.”

The humans did as they were told. They had no choice. Would these reptilian overlords eat the President?

The meeting took place at the White House. Naked alien scales brushed against the ceiling of the Oval Office.

“We have but one demand,” rasped the chief reptile. “Shed your skin so we can feast on the protein-rich moults!”

They noticed President Obama’s hesitation.

“Shed or your species dies!”

“All right,” Obama said, taking off his jacket and shoes. “I hope you like leather and wool.”

-----

Find more bioflashes here.

Dish soap art

2008-12-30T12:47:00.000-08:00

Who knew the tedious task of washing dishes by hand could be a source for art? These soap bubbles were inadvertently trapped by the lid of the pot. I looked closer. I got annoyed by the reflections and glare. Then I saw more patterns, light and shapes: the four bulbs above the sink were reflected in their own reflection. Out came the camera, and I snapped these photos.

Art is everywhere. You just have to know where--or perhaps more importantly, how--to look.

A Christmas Bioflash

2008-12-25T22:54:00.000-08:00

"Night Snow"

A break in the fence is my gateway to frozen fields. The wind sings beneath a roiling sky dark over the white waves of earth. A fir creaks under the weight of winter. Branches hang low, evergreens in mourning. Yet magic floats in the moonlit air, greens turned to heavenly clouds. A million crystals cushion each footstep, lunar sparkles setting the path aglow. The cold bites deep, but my heart is warmed by stillness and wonder. I spot the flag of the 18th hole and pull it free, intrepid Arctic explorer of the winter Golf Course.

The creativity of snow

2008-12-24T15:27:00.000-08:00

Snow is art.

Look outside after snowfall. Trees become stoic statues and lawns a blank white canvas. Nature's jagged edges disappear, except for finely carved ice daggers that flow from drain pipes.

Moist, firm snow can be sculpted easier than clay. Snowballs are simplest. I made a snow angel up at Jim's cabin a couple weekends ago. Today, a carrot-nosed snowman stared into the kitchen door, until one of my nephews literally tackled my eight-foot man of snow to the ground. A snow fort followed, complete with secret tunnel and the requisite snowball fight.

Freshly fallen snow is an artist's playfield. So go ahead and create some fleeting art. The fact it's temporary doesn't matter--art should always be, first and foremost, for the artist.

PS - Over the holidays, I was supposed to get back to writing my novel...but I wouldn't trade playtime with my nephews for the world.

Keeper of the Swords

2008-12-23T20:24:00.000-08:00

[full version with photos can be read here]

I mounted the Chinese swords on the kitchen wall. They rest, high up, above the threshold of the hall. Two brackets—jutting from the plaster like black hands—support each bone-sheathed sword. In their stillness, they wait and observe, antique blades stained by century-old blood. To reach my home, these swords have survived a battle involving nine nations, four generations of my family, and narrowly escaped a voyage on the Titanic.

Why did I choose this spot? Perhaps they would not fit anywhere else in my modest abode, an 800-square-foot coach house above my parents’ garage. I call it The Loft. The swords reside amongst Tibetan prayer flags, Asian elephants, and Kenyan batiks showing gazelle and giraffes living in harmony with long-legged Masai. Peculiar housemates for these instruments of war. Yet perhaps my placement is not mere chance. Swords are symbols of protection, in my case guardians of the place I work and rest. I am comforted by their presence, the way a child is reassured at night by a familiar stuffed animal.

As a boy, my eyes always felt drawn to the swords’ hand-carved sheaths. Chinese figures painstakingly etched along the entire length of slightly-curved bone added an air of mystique to the already exotic blades. Taking them off the wall was forbidden, so I felt a need for stealth and gentleness when handling these sacred heirlooms. The smoothed, yellowed bone—elephant? Horse? Deer? Human?—felt at once fragile and firm. I always paused before pulling a sword free: I relished the moment I allowed the blade a brief glimpse of the light. At one time, this edge tasted flesh, perhaps separated more than one body from its soul. With that knowledge, I saw myself on the battlefield, both hands wielding a sword, a noble warrior fighting for the cause of good.

But they do not belong to me. Neither do they belong to my mom, who inherited them from her mother and father, who in turn inherited the swords from my great grandmother, Harriet Isabelle Lee. Harriet herself, nicknamed Pips (short for “pipsqueak”, for she was a tiny woman, called a “wee bit of a thing” by her husband) could not claim to be the original discoverer either. Her brother, Thomas Tuggey, came upon them during his service with the British navy. In 1900 he went to China as part of the eight treaty powers to quell the uprising called the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxers wanted to rid China of the foreigners they felt were draining their country’s power and wealth. It was near Beijing that Thomas found the swords in the theatre of war. How or why I can not say. Did he kill the original owner in honourable combat? Did he know anything about this man, this silent stranger whose only ancestral clue lay within the men carved into the sheaths? Or did my great-great uncle simply stumble across a corpse and claim his prize?

When Thomas brought these blades into our family the legend of their creation was lost. In the changing of hands, only the physical was transferred; any spirit and story imbued in the swords became a mystery best explained by myth.

Who is the rightful owner of these blades?

A solitary, thorny question often manages to multiply into many elusive forms. Did these matched swords belong to the same soldier? They are certainly light enough to be held in one hand, yet the hilt has room for two sets of fingers. What was he fighting for? In the time of the Boxer Rebellion, the Chinese Society of Right and Harmonious Fists fought against foreign influence in their country. Are these swords ceremonial rather than battle-ready? Perhaps the darks stains are actually rust, yet the nicks in the blade suggest they were used in combat. Was it he (or his ancestor) who forged them so lovingly, meticulous in whittled storytelling? I want to think this is true. His family history is carved right into the bone.

I take the swords down from the kitchen wall to study their extraordinary craftsmanship. The hilt and scabbard are both decorated bone; when sheathed, they become one complete unit. Along one edge are two small holes where the swords may have attached to a belt. By ink and groove sixteen men can be discerned. Women are absent—not surprising, given China’s patriarchal Confucian society at the time. The illustrations are the same on both swords, with only minute discrepancies; a few men are facing the opposite direction, and a couple have alternate headgear. But their faces are undeniably the same. Each stoic figure is robed, wearing a near-smile. Three near the handle are bald, resembling Buddhist monks, except their clothing is far too elaborate. The sculptor differentiated among the sixteen long, flowing, hanging-sleeved Hanfu robes in several ways: drawing cross-hatching, X’s, stars, or two concentric ovals that look like open eyes. The ornate patterns suggest noble heritage.

Hanfu is traditional Chinese clothing, dating back thousands of years to Huángtì, the Yellow Emperor. Wearing these silk robes has been carried to present from 2400 BCE. Huángtì is said to be the ancestor of all Han Chinese, the largest individual ethnic group in the world. Both the Japanese kimono and Korean hanbok were derived from Hanfu. On the sword sheaths, the Hanfu is by far the most prominent feature. All the figures have their hands folded over one another beneath the sleeves. This gives them an air of contentment, a quiet and humble satisfaction only the enlightened achieve.

The swords actually consist of seven bone segments, individually carved and glued together. The division separating each segment is carefully hidden within the design. Between each set of figures—dividing one generation from the next—is a layer of water, earth and sky. Directly below the knee level of most figures is a wavy line; within the space underneath is a series of dashes, clearly representing a current in water. Under these few centimetres on the sword is an equal-sized band of rocky earth, portrayed with jagged hexagonal lines; an observer can see one layer of stone stacked upon a second. Next, a clear band represents the sky, and finally another wavy line—filled with longer diagonal stripes in contrast to the short horizontal ones in the first water layer—shows clouds inundated with rain. This completes the hydrological cycle. The rain will fall back into the sea at the feet of the figure below.

This pattern of water, earth and air is broken only near the end of the sheath, where four men have been carved overlapping one another—three men on the reverse side. Perhaps the sculptor ran out of space? Or did these four and three belong to the same family, being brothers of the sword-bearer himself?

Still more detail exists. Besides the intermittent thin sliver of sun seen beneath the horizon of cloud, fire is also symbolized at the sheath’s top and bottom in the form of a hibiscus flower. The China rose. Thus all four elements are embodied in the bone. One full petal and two half petals are elegantly inscribed, showing half the overall flower, their edges joined to resemble a rising sun. Creeping inconspicuously from behind are two leaves with netted veins. Not only are the paired hibiscus found at either end of the 60-centimeter scabbard—removing the blade reveals flowers at the top and bottom of the 25-centimeter hilt. So even when unsheathed, both scabbard and hilt retain their radiant symmetry. The repeating images of robed men and the four elements are sandwiched between these open flowers.

In the plant world, the China rose is a curiosity. Hibiscus is polyploid, meaning it possesses multiple pairs of chromosomes, so that its offspring could resemble an ancient ancestor just as likely as a parent, or grandparent. In a way, I am the heir of these swords, a pseudo-descendant of the men drawn on the sheaths. But my DNA is only distantly related. Like the hibiscus, my sword ancestors look little like me.

Do I deserve the right to have these blades on my wall? For all I know, they could be ill-gotten. If my great-great uncle was a corpse robber, that pilfering gene has been passed on to me through these swords. Furthermore, I will never know the people carved on the sheaths—strangers that belong to a culture and country toward which I have never shown interest.

Should I not be seeking the rightful owner? The practical side of such a journey is near impossible. Over and above the geographical gap is an extraordinary distance between the customs and language of China and Canada. But at the very least, I can attempt understanding.

Why did the swords fall into my hands? For the first part of that answer, I look to my siblings. I have three brothers. Why was I granted this early inheritance? The swords are, after all, valued at over $700—or so a man at an antique show told my mom in 2004. When I moved from home, my mom offered me the swords. My two elder brothers never expressed an interest. Dan, the youngest son, has yet to leave.

Next I look to my mother. She is the one who christened me Lee. Lee is a sheltered or protected place. As Keeper of the Swords, she has entrusted me to shelter and protect them. In grade five, I remember finding a “meaning of names” book in the school library. My entry read, in full:

Lee; Chinese, plump.

Being skinny and Caucasian, this left me perplexed. In my case, Lee’s origin is English. The surname Lee supplanted Tuggey in 1898, when my great grandmother Pips married John Robert Lee on New Year’s Day, in Portsmouth, England.

My mom lost the Lee family name the day of her first wedding. It was her second marriage to my dad, Nelson, where Lee returned. Admittedly, I arrived a few months before the vows. Within my name—Lee Michael Beavington—is carried the ancestry of my father and mother. By granting me her maiden name, my mom ensured its survival at least one more generation. The middle Michael is after my godfather, Michael Wineberg. My mom has often said Michael tried to convince Nelson not to marry her, the night before the wedding, no less. (My dad tells a different story.) So Michael literally came between Beavington and Lee; to this day, that is where he resides, caught between two families merged by my conception.

Of course, I am the only son with any interest in Lee family history. This surely did not escape mom’s attention.

Then again, maybe the swords chose me. They have undergone a long, arduous journey to reach my hands. In fact, they almost ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic in the bowels of the Titanic.

Pips was responsible for bringing the swords from England to Canada. Plagued by illness as a child, she was short, slim, and courageous, with luminous eyes and flowing brown curls. John Robert Lee, a burly, bushy-browed and moustached Englishman, fell in love with her. Walking down the aisle, Pips overheard John’s aunt mutter to another aunt, “Look at that poor sickly thing. She won’t last a year!” Pips recounted this many times to her children and grandchildren (including my mom), unable to hide her delight in outliving the very prophesier of her doom. It’s a good thing too, for she needed time to birth my grandfather; by 1907, they had four children, the youngest being Kit.

John, a building contractor, immigrated to Canada in 1911. He found work in Calgary. The pay was terrible, and the hostile winter chilled his spirits. To save money, John lived in a tent with other men. He wrote to Pips, “Come in April when the weather is more agreeable.” She booked herself and the children one-way on the historic April 10th, 1912 sailing. The Titanic tickets said “third class”. They could afford only steerage.

John faced more misfortune. He lost his job. He wrote to Pips, despondent over signs stating “Englishmen need not apply.” With the arrival of Christmas, his heart grew fragile. He could not bear to be parted any longer from his Pips. His telegram read:

Miss you. Sail sooner. Love, John.

So my grandmother cancelled her passage on the Titanic. In doing so, she saved the swords—and me. When the Titanic sank, the men, women and children in steerage were locked below deck. My five-year-old grandfather, Kit, surely would have drowned. Tragically, such a terrible event struck thirty-three years later, when Kit and his nephew Johnnie drowned in a sailing accident at Chestermere Lake, just outside Calgary. My mom was six; her family life was thrown into turmoil. Thirty-eight years later, when I myself was six, I nearly drowned while swimming in a hotel pool.

In August of 1983, my family was vacationing in California. My dad’s sister—Aunt Jenny—brought two of her boys along. I frequented the hotel pool as often as I could. I have always loved water, drawn to Mother Ocean’s power and the spirit of the river. My two cousins and I were playing pool tag; they could swim, I could not. In the deep end, I pulled myself through the water by grabbing the ledge, hand over hand. I did not like getting tagged. Yet my finless feet could not help me. In order to elude my aquatic cousins, I started skipping corners. I bridged the right angle of a pool’s corner like a transient hypotenuse, leaping from one edge to another in order to save time. Each time I left more space, more distance for the hypotenuse to cover. One time, it was too far.

I leapt, pushing off with my hands, and fell into water three times my height. My world collapsed. I still remember the terror, the complete panic and helplessness, arms flailing for something solid as my lungs burned. I had lost control of my life, and it filled me with the fear of a thousand deaths. My cousin Sam, a year my senior, managed to pull me to the side of the pool.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

But I was in no condition to answer, my mind frozen by that image of eternal darkness. My Aunt, the first adult on the scene, made me promise never to tell my mom. That would strike too close to heart, what with her father’s drowning. Also, at the time, my mom was facing the cancer spreading inside her mother and older sister—they would soon die a week apart. I kept my mouth shut.

Like my grandfather, I avoided an early underwater fate. If Kit had sailed on the Titanic and subsequently drowned in steerage, I would be without experience—near-death or otherwise. I would also not feel such strong empathy for his later drowning. Over the last ten years, I have relayed my hotel pool story to my mom at least half a dozen times; not once has she remembered. Yet she can recall the time and place Pips left for Canada.

With the Titanic trip cancelled, my great grandmother booked for a ship sailing in February, 1912, from Southampton to the east coast of Canada. To the best of my knowledge, she brought the swords with her, perhaps a parting gift from her brother Tom.

After weeks on the ship, Pips and the kids took a transcontinental train. Accompanied by many immigrants following the promise of cheap land, they arrived in Calgary, utterly spent. The Canadian government wanted homesteads set up in the prairies, so the Minister of the Interior forbade copy writers from referring to “snow” and “cold” in official publications. Yet snow and cold are exactly what Pips found.

A blizzard raged through the city. John was still struggling to save money. After the happy reunion, the five of them shared a tent with other families for a few days until the tiny house my great grandfather had managed to rent was available. From that meagre foundation, he eventually started his own contracting business. Among the dozens of houses he built in Calgary were four along what is now called Fifth Avenue NW. These were homes for the Lee family; the Chinese swords were kept in the nicest house, where John and Pips lived.

Pips died in 1958, outliving her husband and nearly every relative of her generation. She bestowed the swords to Kit, my grandfather. Why he got them instead of his older brother, Bob, I do not know. Kit’s wife, Bessie, kept them safe after his tragic drowning at age 37. Thirty-eight years later, when cancer claimed Bessie on Remembrance Day, 1983, the swords moved to my mom’s house in Surrey, British Columbia. Like Pips, my mom has four children. Now the third of that line—Lee Michael Beavington—sits in The Loft, holding the centenarian swords in reverence. It feels like I’m holding the prehistory of my life. As I pull out a blade, I notice the nicks along the edge, the dents where steel met steel. My mom used to take the swords out from under her parents’ bed, despite strict orders not to touch them. She and her sisters would unfold the blanket they were wrapped in, remove the blades from their sheaths, and shiver in delight at the dark blood stains. They made up stories about who owned the swords, how he died bravely on the battlefield defending his country, how Uncle Thomas found the swords and brought them back with him to England.

These blades still hold the blood of ancient enemies. Those enemies could very well have been my ancestors. Yet the irony goes further.

When Thomas Tuggey arrived in China in the early 1900s as a British naval officer, he was part of the forces sent to stamp out the Boxer Movement. The treaty troops—from eight nations—were able to occupy Beijing and end the uprising. Plunder, looting and rape ensued.

Somewhere during this campaign, my great-great uncle discovered the two swords. I can almost feel that first touch, his hand grasping the bloodied weapons. From his hands they have passed to mine. Thus—a foreigner owns the heirlooms that would have stayed in China had not the Boxers rebelled.

For two weeks, the swords have sat with me at my desk. My thumb occasionally runs along the grooves in the bone, pondering character and meaning. They were forged over a hundred years ago, infused with story and ancestry that have since changed shape and form. Yet the legend of their journey endures. As the swords move in and out of lives, one set of stories overlays another.

I do not want to put them back on the wall. In doing so, I fear their history will be forgotten. I cannot claim ownership. In keeping the swords, am I defiling their heritage? Is my very touch sacrilegious? My ancestry brought them to me. But the ancestry of the swords belongs to a country, culture, and century to which I hold no claim. If any dignity remains, if I can offer any tribute, it is to keep telling the story of the swords. In remembrance, there is honour.

No Assembly Required

2008-12-22T23:17:00.000-08:00

Upon their first meeting, a sperm and egg fuse into life. The monogamous shell allows only one seed inside, rejecting every other tail-wagging suitor. From this single unit the spirit is born.

God’s hand, coiled into fingers of DNA, pulls the fertilized egg into two cells—then four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two—exponential growth that forms body, movement and consciousness. After the mother cell is cleaved into multicellularism daughter cells migrate outward like the arms of a sea star, following the instructions embedded in the phosphates, sugars and bases. The puzzle of life assembles itself.

My photo in the art gallery!

2008-12-11T22:23:00.001-08:00

My photo, "Fading Firs," is going to be featured in the Surrey Art Gallery Earth Matters exhibition. You can see the fully-framed version anytime between December 20 and March 1, 2009.

This week's bioflash: "Spring Dress"

2008-12-11T21:34:00.000-08:00

From a bud, the flower unfurls like a fist revealing a petaled palm. Colourful fingers catch transparent wings without moving. With sweet perfume she lures pollinators into her silky red folds. Hungry insects carry grains of life from one flower to another.

The fruit of her labour? A seed on the wind.

Once her petals have served their purpose—and colour and fragrance fade—they drop to the ground as wilted tears. She will pass this art of seduction to her daughters: blossom, attract, mate—and scarlet dresses are worn with pride in the spring.

Published poem!

2008-12-07T00:59:00.000-08:00

My poem, "Venus," was published today on Every Day Poets.

You can find it here. Comments welcome!

Leroy's Labyrinth

2008-12-05T19:10:00.000-08:00

In the first cave, Cocoa faced the frothing slime monsters. He pushed through, scurrying down the back of a mouthless snake. A collapsing tunnel led to a great, churning cavern. Acid pooled in that dark pit, burning off every extremity.

Yet Cocoa pressed on, fighting through a circular door that snapped shut behind. His greatest challenge awaited: a labyrinth of coiled corridors and folded passageways. Tentacles snared him, reaching from every wall, clinging like a snake to a rat.

Then a shiver went down his molecular spine—the terminal hole!—and Cocoa let himself be absorbed by Leroy’s small intestine.

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Also, my flash fiction story "What's the Meaning of Life" appeared in yesterday's edition of Flashshot.

Two images of inspired creativity

2008-12-04T20:36:00.001-08:00

First up is "Tributaries of Enlightenment," a painting I did in my mythological narratives class. I don't consider myself a painter, but I like the symmetry and the spontaneity with which this was created. I tried to illustrate the many paths to happiness and truth.

The second creation belongs to nature. Jen went out on the deck this morning and picked up a piece of ice frozen in a large bowl. The shapes in this circle utterly fascinating. To think that a series of random events and subzero temperatures were responsible for this work of art.

Bioflash: "One Cell, One World"

2008-11-26T21:47:00.000-08:00

The freshwater paramecium is a mobile, microscopic metropolis. In this cellular economy, the nucleus is the capitol, governing transport and protein construction.

Yet it doesn’t know. Its world is a slide on a microscope, its lifespan the attention span of a scientist.

Against water—its very home—the paramecium wages war. Water, made toxic by its abundance, leaks through every wall, constantly being bailed out.

On the transparent desert, the light always burns.

Thousands of oar-like cilia propel the protist forward, its oral groove vacuuming nutrients. Trapped between glass, the paramecium continues its search, eclipsed by an even greater curiosity.

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You can find my other weekly bioflashes here.

Recent & Upcoming publications

2008-11-25T23:29:00.000-08:00

"Genocide and Graffiti: Remembering Cambodia's War Torn Past," Travel Thru History, November 2008.

"Thirst," Spotlight on the Arts, November 2008.

"A Fungal Friend," The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008, December 2008.

“Billion Dollar Billboard,” “Devolver” & “What's the Meaning of Life?,” Flashshot, December 2008/January 2009.

"Communications Delay," Dark Worlds, Issue 3, TBA.

"Venus," "Penticton," & "Softshell," Every Day Poets, TBA.

Take ecology at Kwantlen!

2008-11-24T23:58:00.001-08:00

As most of my readers know, I work as a biology lab instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. One of my recent projects was to create a poster to entice enrollment in my favourite course: ecology.

I used to design such creations for fun's sake. Now, I'm fortunate enough to get paid to be creative. (In a science job, to boot...)

"Parting"

2008-11-20T00:19:00.000-08:00

When a heart breaks, and two divide, the body feels consumed. Despair feeds on your insides, as though the stomach’s acid has leaked. Parting is such needed sorrow, to help untie the threads of morphing love, severing some, rearranging others. Hurt seethes beneath the skin, molten suffering ready to rupture. Through that fog the damaged stumble, uncertain and afraid.

Yet a split heart finds another purchase. Each seed of the divided grows with new hope. A common root lies underground, a link that will never break. So while the two hearts may grow apart, their buried love forever remains.

First Post

2008-11-20T00:10:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my new blog!

This will be a place for random writings, exercises in creativity, artful musings, explorations of myth, literary failures, grand successes, and other feats of the written word.

The image at the top of the blog is from my novella, "Evolution's End," which was published in Writers of the Future XXII. The bottom photo was taken in Ta Prohm, a Cambodian temple.

And so, my odyssey begins...