From Word To Word

Most people no longer converse.  At least, they no longer converse well.

They chat well, certainly, about the weather, about their favourite sports teams, about the newest entertainment news, about anything that will not reveal or involve them personally.  Otherwise, they say very little, and when circumstances require them to go further than mere chatter, require them to say something meaningful about what they think, feel, and believe, they lack the practice, the experience, the tools, to say anything very coherent. Even those few who are willing to go beyond their chatter often fall short of real conversation as well, falling into mere argumentation, into alternating monologue, into self-absorbed verbiage.

Conversation, however, true conversation, is much more than mere chatter or argument.  It is an exchange of words that is like an exchange of gifts.  Those who converse approach each other ready to give and receive words as tokens of themselves, as tokens of their love for one another.  They approach and receive each other as an act of hospitality, as an act of friendship, and their words are the gestures, the icons, the sacraments of this exchange.  They give and receive themselves through their words, though this giving and receiving is nothing that they can determine or guarantee.

Conversation is never satisfied with idle chatter, even if it permits this kind of talk to take place and to perform its function.  It does not do away with chatter, but neither is it satisfied with it, because conversation always desires something more, always desires to know the other more deeply in hospitality, in friendship, in love.

Neither is conversation ever satisfied with argument, even if this argument takes up questions of the profoundest significance, because conversation desires that words be exchanged like gifts, not that assent be compelled by force.  Though conversation is open to disagreement, open to difference in thought and feeling and belief, it exchanges even this difference, especially this difference, within its economy of giving and hospitality and friendship.  Difference, through the exchange of conversation, is made to strengthen rather than weaken the relation that is formed through the exchange of words.

Conversation is only satisfied, then, with words that give ourselves and receive others, with words that perform a continual hospitality, with words that are nothing except as they come to form a relation between us.

This is why a conversation does not end when a particular subject becomes exhausted, because the subject is secondary to the relation in any case.  The conversation extends beyond any subject, beyond any occasion, even if the subject and the occasion inform it profoundly.  The conversation  extends also beyond any greeting and farewell, waiting always to be continued, extending itself across whole lives, passing from generation to generation.

This kind of conversation does not come without labour, however.  Like anything worth doing, it must be cultivated.  We must seek it out wherever it might be, give ourselves over to it when it is found, guard it against thoose things that would threaten it, because it is perhaps our  profoundest human treasure.

As my children have already posted, our family visited Loonsong Garden while we were on Manitoulin Island this past weekend.  Loonsong is a farm that grows organic cereal crops and grinds whole flours.  It also grows vegetables for a local Community Shared Agriculture program.  My mother first introduced us to Loonsong at Christmas, when she brought us four of their flours as a Christmas gift.  My wife, who has begun breadmaking much more seriously, has really enjoyed using them, particularly the Red Fife Wheat flour, which has a really beautiful flavour.

Red Fife, as the owners of Loonsong will tell you, has a story of its own that is well worth telling.  Myth has it that Red Fife began as a single hat full of grain sent on to Canada from Glasgow, and that the whole first crop was destroyed by rust except for a single plant that must have been an accidental hybrid of some sort, and that this single plant was the parent of all Red Fife grown today.  It was robust enough to thrive in the sometimes difficult Canadian climate, resistant to rust, and did not require nitrogen rich soil to grow, so it was used to breed many new variations.  These newer strains and other wheat varieties were often bred for higher yields, however, so the original Red Fife was gradually replaced, until there was little of its seed remaining.  Only in the last thirty years or so has it become used more widely again, especially by organic farmers for whom its resistance to rust and ability to grow without chemical fertilizers are highly desirable, despite its relatively low yields.

The flour that Loonsong makes from Red Fife is also distinct from commercial flours in that it is truly whole grain.  Most flours include only the endosperm, the carbohydrate heavy part of the wheat seed that provides nutrition for the growing wheat germ until it can grow leaves and photosynthesize for itself.  Commercial whole grain flours include the bran, the outer coating of the seed, which adds needed roughage but not much nutritive value to the flour.  Loonsong’s flours, however, include literally the whole wheat seed: the endosperm, the bran, and the germ.  The benfit of this is that the flour contains the many nutritious oils and proteins of the germ, but at the cost of a shorter shelf life, since these oils will make the flour go rancid more quickly, so whole flours do need to be refrigerated

Loonsong’s whole grain Red Fife flour is really beautiful.  It is far more nutritious than most flours, and it is delicious, with a flavour that is mildly suggestive of nuts.  It also makes great bread, though it is too heavy to be used in most bread machines.  It works best in old-fashioned recipes, since many of these recipes were made with hand ground whole flours in mind.  The following is one that we have been enjoying lately:

Jaya’s Bread

Mix 2 cups of stone ground whole wheat flour, 2 cups of rye flour, and 2 cups of unbleached white flour.

Warm 1 pint of buttermilk and 1 cup of water to about 30 degrees Celsius.  Stir in 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, 1 tablespoon of dark molasses, and a dash of salt.  Stir in 2 rounded tablespoons of dry yeast and let it proof.

Gradually add 4 cups of the  flour to the wet ingredients to form a stiff batter.  Add 3/4 cups of melted lard or shortening and knead until the dough is smooth.  Let the dough rise to about double its size.

Knead in the remainder of the flour.  Let the dough rise until roughly double its size.  If the dough is too sticky, add unbleached white flour until it reaches a good consistency, as much as 4 cups.

Beat the dough down and divide it into three parts.  Shape each part into a loaf and place in a loaf pan.  Let the loaves rise to about double their size.

Bake at 350 degrees Celsius for about an hour.  Remove the loaves from the pans and let them stand until cool.

The result is a heavy, nutty, whole wheat bead that is great for almost any purpose, but best, at least in my opinion, when sliced thickly, toasted lightly, and eaten with nothing but butter.

If you would like to know more about Loonsong and their products, you can phone them at <705-368-0460> or email them at <loonsong@vianet.ca>

This Saturday, April the 10th, we will be screening Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov and also, if we have time, Vertov’s Three Songs for Lenin.  Vertov was a Russian filmmaker and propagandist who pioneered many film techniques, and was among the first to experiment with collage and other avant garde ideas.  He was also tremendously influential on the development of many later western filmmakers.  His approach, which he called Kino Pravda or “film truth”, provided some of the key ideas and the name for the Cinema Vertite or Direct Cinema movement, though his own work often differs from this movement substantially.

Man with a Movie Camera is a collage of images from soviet cities, mostly Odessa, strongly propagandistic, but beautifully accomplished nevertheless, and still powerful in its appeal.  It shows soviet citizens at work and at play, and it visually argues for the role of film in this ideal soviet world by including the camera and the filmmaker themselves among the workers as they go about their business.  Film, it suggests, is an integral part of the strong and healthy and  productive nation.

Here are some links that might interest those looking for more information about the film and its creator:

1) a look at Vertov’s storyboard, perhaps the first in documentary history, by Roland Fischer-Briand at Rouge;
2) an introduction to a participatory “global remake” of the film, with a version of the remade film that is edited daily; and
3) an introduction to Vertov by Jonathan Dawson at Senses of Cinema.

The soup that night will be Green Soup, one of my mother’s creations.

The event will be at my place, 130 Dublin Street, Guelph, and all are welcome.  We will eat at about 5:30 and begin the film at about 6:00.  As usual, I would appreciate an email or a comment to let me know that you will be coming.

Also, here are some of the upcoming films we will be showing:

May 8th – The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris
June 12th – Kordavision by Hector Cruz Sandoval
July 10th – White Light / Black Rain by Steven Okazaki

I am on Manitoulin island for Easter weekend, and I have been spending some time in the woods down at what our family calls “the camp” on Carter Bay.  This poem was written there.

A Vertical Sky

The trees make the sky stand vertical,
the birches,
the cedars,
the spruces,
the balsams,
vertical and reaching.
They rupture its vastness,
and trouble its expanse,
and urge it still higher
to the terror of its beyond.