Mythos & Marginalia

2015 – 2025: a decade of days

  • looking beyond the obvious

    If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always had.

    We are all overly-familiar with this all-too-familiar adage. As humans, more than anything else, we are creatures of habit, so it seems that doing things the same old way is how we survive the day.

    As we sort through personal problems, perennial predicaments, unexpected uncertainties, or unwritten questions with indecipherable answers, we keep looking for the correct result, the right solution, or a different outcome.

    What has worked well in the past may not work as it once did. Disappointingly so, we know we need more. It could be addressing a strategy for the office, mastering a specialized skill, polishing a manuscript, or realigning our fitness routine to meet expectations or soothe our aspirations.

    To get a different result, we need to look for what is not there by stepping away from the current thought process. At one time it was cleverly called ‘thinking outside the box’, but now it is simply an overused cliché. Everybody is now avoiding the ‘box’, so we need to go to a different place.

    We need to begin thinking outside the thought.

    In this digital age of instant, all too often, we end up clicking through any of the available search engines for answers. That, itself, has limits. Too many times, too many answers are all the same. Our reliance on contemporary technologies tends to confuse, dumb down our spirit (or curiosity), and lead us to programed or predestined results.

    The answers are not always on Google.

    Maybe, without even thinking about it, we are trying too hard. Stop that. Think a little less. perhaps the answer is right there; or there; or under there.

    An original answer is not easy, that you know. It never has been. In fact, you know you can’t take the easy route. You’ve done that, time and again, and rarely does it provide effective results. Think, indeed, but think differently.

    Look closer. At times the obvious solution is the most difficult to see.

    Of course, solutions to what seems to be impossible and improbable cannot be guaranteed. Most times the only sure way of knowing is trial and error. You don’t know until you try, and you need to try and think from obscure angles, or with a different perspective.

    What you end up with might not yield the correct result; it may not even be a reasonable facsimile. Hell, it might be the most miserable attempt at something you’ve ever had. But that’s good, because you’ve done it like you’ve never done before.

    An original solution, how unique. Aren’t there already too many boxes?

    © 2017 j.g. lewis

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  • how I see it

    I wrote seven years ago.
    In that time, my condition has changed but attitudes have not.

    You do not see what I see. We all see everything differently.

    We count on our eyes, daily, to navigate our way through this life. We count on our eyes to witness everyday events with friends and family, capture beauty, and see the dangers ahead.

    Each of us interprets what we see.

    This is highly personal.

    You do not see as I do because I have a visual disability. You cannot even imagine how long it has taken me to say that out loud, even as I began to realize, or understand, what I am dealing with.

    It is far more than pride.

    By admitting I have a disability, I am confessing to a flaw. This is a hard thing to admit to anybody, let alone yourself.

    It is highly personal.

    When faced with diminished eyesight, at any level, you begin to think about how, and why, you use your eyes. My vision has always been important to me. My first career and educational training was in photography. I worked for many years as a photographer, then a writer, with a mid-size Canadian newspaper. What I saw became what readers of the paper read and looked at daily.

    Even now, as a writer, my eyes are what allows me to place ideas, poems, and thoughts on a page. This is important to me.

    My eyesight is now limited, in some way. I’m not sure if I can call it mild. At this point I still function well with most daily duties. I do not require a white cane (perhaps the greatest stereotype surrounding a visual disability), I can drive (save night vision, and my choice not to drive at night), and, for the most part, I get along well.

    I have been receiving treatment, in the form of monthly injections, and have adjusted the prescription to eyeglasses I’ve worn since age five. Seeing things at a distance, or just the everyday stuff you associate with getting around, has not been substantially altered.

    The difficulty I have been having is with my field of vision at close range – particularly when doing certain tasks, or multi-tasking at the computer. This, of course, begins to create problems with employment.

    We all know most jobs now require an element of computer literacy and time in front of a monitor. Our lives are now, pretty much, reliant on a screen of one size or the other. We all text, we tap, to keep up, to communicate, to get our news and views, or do our shopping or banking.

    I can do all of that, and with some consistency. I, however, have problems when running multiple programs on multiple platforms. This is a daily occurrence at work, and this goes past the eyestrain we all experience when you spend too much time in front of a screen (we probably all do).

    My eyes do not react quickly, not as they once did, and this is not about age. This is more than a period of adjustment for me.

    The greatest difficulty I encounter is that my disability is invisible.

    Nobody sees how I see. Nobody sees that I have, or could have, potential problems.

    Instead, I become the problem when I tell them I have a disability. I shouldn’t need to explain my impairment to the degree they are asking, and still they ask; or they ignore; or they doubt.

    There is a stigma attached to the word disability. Many people believe disability means difficulty. I know this personally.

    I continue to have difficulties with daily work required of me, even after months of adjustments and consultations, and appointments with medical professionals. Some of the measures have worked to a degree, yet some of the difficulties have not been about me, but rather the faulty equipment I have been working with. I question if the acuity of my vision will be further damaged by prolonged exposure.

    This remains a contentious issue, obviously, because it has not been corrected. I, still, routinely experience eye strain, blurred vision and headaches like I have never encountered.

    It hurts, yes.

    What hurts even more is the lack of understanding, even ignorance, and attitude towards the disability I am facing.

    We don’t see things the same. Some people don’t even have the foresight, or sensitivity, to look beyond stigma and stereotypes.

    I’m choosing to look further ahead.

    © 2018 j.g. lewis

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  • In Flanders Fields

    In Flanders fields the poppies blow
    Between the crosses, row on row,
    That mark our place; and in the sky
    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
    Scarce heard amid the guns below.

    We are the Dead. Short days ago
    We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
    In Flanders fields.

    Take up our quarrel with the foe:
    To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high.
    If ye break faith with us who die
    We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
    In Flanders fields.

    -John MCCrae

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  • the greatest respect

    I have no space in my heart for war. 
       I am fearful, and saddened, by continued conflict on foreign soils that I have grown up watching on television and reading in the news. I cannot get past the hatred expressed by bombs, and guns, and the death of innocents unable to defend themselves.
       I am distressed by the threat of war. I have no space in my mind to even try to comprehend such action.
       I have no room in my heart for war.
       I do, however, have the greatest respect for those who have served this country, or made the ultimate sacrifice, so that I, that we, may live as we do now.
       It is not hypocritical.
       It is honest.
       I grew up listening to the horrors of war. I grew up attending, annually, Remembrance Day ceremonies. Armistice Day, as observed by commonwealth nations, marks the end of the First World War. We learned of the war, and those that followed, from a very young age, in textbooks, through the media, or from our parents. 
       The stories were not lost on me, but truly didn’t sink in until the end of my teenage years.
       As, then, staff photographer at a mid-sized daily Canadian newspaper, I was assigned to cover the annual November 11 ceremony at a cemetery on the outskirts of the city. 
       As a photographer you learn to hover on the edges of an event. I, not wanting to disrupt the ceremony — and wanting to pay respect to those who were there for greater reasons than I — tucked myself behind a tree, attached my telephoto lens, then watched and waited for the right shot.
       The crowd was not small, rain threatened, and veterans still stood tall in their uniforms, blue blazers and berets, medals displayed proudly. Their postures straightened as a bugle played The Last Post.
       I watched as a man in a wheelchair began to shudder, his head bowing down. I then watched as the soldier next to him reached over and placed a hand his shoulder. I was watching through a 200 mm lens, the complete picture of the scene and the crowd was not important to me. 
       The sound of the bugle fill the air. I pressed the shutter button a few times, capturing the intimacy of this small act, then my eyes began to cloud with tears. I lowered my camera and broke down.
       I tried to remain silent behind the tree. My eyes were no longer fixed through the camera lens, but sweeping the crowd. I watched aging veterans, wives and widows, and sons and daughters honouring family.
       The impact of the wars, on me, was felt more deliberately than ever before.
       After any event, as a photographer, you search out the subjects of your photograph to get names (and correct spellings). This particular photograph would not require the soldiers to be identified as I shot mostly from behind and they were simply the two men, in a crowd of many, who were not identifiable, as such. I could have easily offered a cutline in the next day’s paper identifying the men as “veterans”.
       I did not think it as respectful, or I wanted to know who these men were. I had been profoundly affected.
       When asked, both men proudly provided their names, ranks, and details of where they served. I was also invited to the Legion Hall where a simple lunch was planned. 
       I went, and I sat and listened to men who were not regaling themselves of war stories, but sharing memories of friendship, of comradery, and of duty.
       I have no place in my heart for war.
       But I have room to remember those who defended this country and others; proud soldiers who defended the lives of others across the globe. The numbers have dwindled over the years. 
       They were fathers, and husbands, grandfathers. They meant something to their families, and to me.
       I still tear up on Remembrance Day. 
       Some years I will watch the beautiful ceremony broadcast from the National War Memorial Ottawa. I have visited the Cenotaph in Winnipeg, on Memorial Boulevard, and sat through the ceremony. There is nothing as dramatic as the cannons going off as a sign of respect, heightened by the silence between each shot. 
       I cannot help but stop for a moment each Remembrance Day, wherever I am, and offer a silent prayer.
       I have no room in my heart for war, yet, if I am to claim peace the most important goal, I am also to acknowledge, and dare I say, respect, war, and Canada’s peacekeeping role throughout the world.
       No, it is not hypocritical; it is the reality we are faced with.
       War is a reality we are all forced to live with, sadly.
       That should not stop us from hoping, for praying, for peace.

    Lest We Forget.

    © 2018 j.g. lewis

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  • at any speed

    Warning signs, dashboard indicators, red flags, 
    continual reminders of what is ahead, or
    what follows at breakneck speed. Too fast; 
    too busy, too confused, we yield not to the signals, 
    but push ahead, our direction, our intention, 
    our destination more important 
    than anyone else. Even suspended in traffic, 
    all four lanes, our refusal to allow others in 
    is more than stubbornness. Sharing neither 
    caution or common courtesy, we will not alter 
    or acknowledge our route. 
    To do so is to admit less power, or that we may
    have lost our way. Distance and time 
    the only measure of where we are going, or 
    how we will get there. We navigate the commute 
    between the reality we live with, and that 
    which is expected, our individual emissions 
    contributing to the noxious fumes we ingest. Daily. 
    Driving forward, but not ahead, running on empty, 
    through a cracked windshield we see, or believe, 
    nothing will harm us. Road rage, we curse 
    under our breath. or shout foul-mouthed insults 
    at those behaving as we are, refusing right-of-way. 
    To anybody. Self-motivated or selfish, 
    it makes little difference at any speed. We fail 
    to notice a world that passes us by. Look, 
    perhaps a shoulder check. It may take a glance 
    in the review mirror to remind us life is precious. 
    Slow down. Pay attention. Let others in.

    © 2016 j.g. lewis

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