Janit Bianic
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Part 1

She wants something so simple, so seldom heard, so basic, so warm and loving and primal, and tender and longs for the answer. Knows her self. Not. Longs for the sensible but shows her self. Not. Her work has become a large collage overlooked by its parts over and over and over again. Her parts, her colors, her "tendernesses" seem lost in the beauty of this January day.

Instead, she thinks she needs to tell and show her heart in other ways, through others - weave the story so even the boneless brainless source God will have no judgment. The God who was inaccessible to her household without a prayer - invisible to the unspoken, poor, plain, and filthy. No simple way of judging her thoughts are evil or righteous, or spelled wrong, or damned by the ever present mothers and grandmothers watching the neighbors for clues as to their own truths. "At least her clothes were clean.  Her mother always wears clean clothes when she goes to town. There's no reason to wear dirty clothes no matter how poor you are. You can always wash them."

Her voice is so still and fragile. Can it be worn out by the unnecessary days of quietude? Shocked by the judge-all-around-her speedily forming her sense of reality, her level of being okay, energy for forwardness and very little left for prosperity. Her judge is so refined by its righteousness. Wanting to protect and file her ego - that internal auditor, tax evader. Dates a lawyer who boxes topics and presents opinions, forms justice policy for the world. Frames the uniqueness of her voice put in its proper place by Me Lord's tongues. Lawyers no longer have to address the judge as "me Lord." It's the law.

A visitor sits eating sunflower seeds, covers herself in a moving company blanket, her flannelette sheep pajamas buttoned tight over a black turtleneck. Rests under a ball cap that reads Everlast Woman. Her shades stare blankly away from a poetry book. One would believe it to be chilly. Her coffee cup waits on a West Coast table by the creek dried up over time - imaginable. This farmhouse is over 100 years old. A man named Uncle Louis owned it and worked as an engineer, raised 5 kids on a dairy farm. The whole village knew him.

Pipe chimes sing in the wind, in nature, beautiful rhythms one upon the other, upon the other, needing each other to survive a day of nothing else to do. Be yourself, she whispers. Feels like she's gazing at her navel - finding dust bombs and spider's heads hanging upside down - caught by their own entrapment. Golden leaves make their way to her leg - on the porch, on the back of the farm house where there's blackberries to pick and freeze.

A voice reminds her to pick berries now. When she picked blueberries and raspberries she never ate and gorged like her younger brother. Knew how many berries it took to take the family through the cold wind blows. As a youth she loved walking past the new piglets playing and rooting with their pink noses. She wanted to pick one up in her arms. Instead she headed to her own spot inside the raspberry patch quietly amusing the flies while her mother and sister created berry picking songs like they were in the deep south. She loved the still of the air. Always knew what time her neighbor headed down the dusty road with a wave. The hum of honeybees helped her fill her Crisco lard pail.

At an open market this August, she promised to trade one day a week at Eat More Sprouts. Now it seemed too far up the road. She now wanted to stay closer to home in her own garden at the farmhouse - so overrun by nature trapped inside a fence. Felt she had let herself down by not following up. Left a whole bunch of life out as she walked her talk in the opposite direction. Was this becoming a pattern? To want to do something but not actually take it? The real reason was she hated to drive 30 miles to volunteer her time. Besides she was drawn to the East not up Island toward Campbell River.

She walked to the coffeepot finding a way into this story, these words. Fidgets beside the back door. Nothing to test her patience except herself and her quiet tyranny. She felt safe inside Uncle Louis's house rented for a few months or a lifetime by the sea. Alone with a writer from Vancouver and loved from oh so many directions. Away from pizza slices and cappuccinos spelled differently on every corner.

 She was connected like a bridge. Was a damn good coach. Linked to resources, time and space and everyday, everywhere. Felt depressed and smoked half a joint. Decided that everybody needs at least one another" to find a way of telling a winter tale. Appeal to that silent sensible judge, critic inside. But oh how she longed for at least one witness to grow with and charm. Will she ever feel her energy rise? Dance the romance? Play with the clay? Create her own statute of liberty? Of limitations? Was she too cheap to explore foreign shores and divine entrance into herself over a course of this lifetime? Did she really want to be seen and heard unlike her Father's idea of control?  Be like other dependent women who cling to shoulders in the mind's eye, never actually receiving her due?

Her father Jean Louis left France in 1914 at nine years old. In the '60's learned they must wait until the first frost to harvest the potato because nothing grows after the green is brown. Nothing grows after the tall stalks of the Red River Valley are flooded, miles and miles of over flow destroying the naturally organic farming, pesticides poured onto the potatoes. One potato, peeled and placed delicately beside another, one word after another, after another, after another. Reminders to say please and thank you for the food we eat. Thank you for the meat, the animal that sacrificed its life, long and enduring and modernized by amazing cinematography.

She is lying beside the dry creek bed along the creek's edge. A part of her tastes the flavor of the week, maple walnut, enroute to visit her mother in the hospital. Her words like geldings, always, compared to the source ... Has been finding ways of living a life unknown prior to bursting into mass consciousness. Her outer layers have protected her marvelous center core. Not allowing music again today. Tapping into life away from the prairie farm chores. On the West Coast trees beckon and burn her shade across her pages. Historic moments along the creek. Eons of time spits the truth. People acting on their own stages, staying in character roles regardless of their surroundings, regardless of petty annoyances of lifelong emotions of mothers and grandmothers before us. Nodding and reconciling. Sometimes barely keeping the peace. Peace keepers. Peace not always required by the children who want to stay angrily present for their own growth. For their own good. Little seedlings developing to make their own way. To be old enough to use the family bicycle. No borrowing of the car, or the neighbor's lawnmower. Only the tractor for harvest.

At Uncle Louis's a plane breaks the natural setting - finds its journey across the morning sky, heading directly to a particular location where someone else, one other person at the very least, knows it's heading toward them, their day, their way inward to connect with a living human being. Soon the Comox Valley will be serviced by West Jet. A boon to economic growth and tourism.

She knows the harvest dance. Her mother knew it, as did her grandmother before her. She knows the harvest of the Jew, the harvest of the Hutterites, the farming communities of Alberta, and Saskatchewan and Winnipeg, the harvest of the voices turned to summer fallow for yet another year of relentless. Harvest snow placed upon the truth, baking the lies onto the crumbs of the pies in the silence - so amazing. Everybody else must know - even though she wants to hide her story of mamma and daddy's un-love. Forever and ever curious moments in the core of her humanness.

Often she feels she wants too much. Can she be appreciated, enjoyed and enraptured by the soft winds of fall. The time the year lends itself a moment without scrutiny. Embraces her threshing machine experience – so simple and evolving and pouring out at the onset of a long table, the same story is told over the winter in Russia or Berlin or Montana. Over a plate of steamed white fluffy potatoes that Grandpa knew and Gramma cooked. Brought to the kitchen before coconut oil and bananas, and sugar cane from those far away voices and ships docked in Halifax or Montreal. She knows there is life. Needs to be seen. Deep, deep inside her she knows life must have been pleasant and joyous over there by the sewing machine or beside the spinning wheel. Wouldn't these stories be of interest? Repeated at the docks where supplies are delayed from distant ports. Supplies tainted by everyone who touches them and adds a price for handling and storage. Rotting the true essence of the silk or the wool.

Peacemakers, they are called. Mothers and grandmothers sent to remind us of our usefulness while we incubate with Wrigley's chewing gum and the corn seeds, blue and golden in Taco chip bags. Noisy as dock workers crackling on ships Ahoy. Her days are numbered by speed, and sound all around, grandparents watch CNN as if God has spoken to them individually in the night.


Janit Bianic, Action Coaching & Communication Arts
email: janitb@mars.ark.com

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