Facing backward has its charms

I’m on a train to Ottawa, facing backward because that’s just how we roll in this country. We’re freshly back from a trip to Japan for the last few weeks, so this train experience is certainly a little jarring.¹

But we’re passing scenes of icy fields and trees, and “Canada through the train window” is maybe one of my favourite views of this country, so I’m feeling more charitable than complain-able. And hey, facing backward means, as my dad pointed out, that you’re always seeing where you’ve been—a chance to reflect, always welcome.

For this vacation, I experimented with a mini newsletter sent to a smaller audience of folks I know personally. (I tend to be a bit private about travel while it’s happening, but am happy to share about it once done!) It was a ton of fun to write, one short piece a day with pictures! Once I’m back at a laptop and less jet lagged, I’ll convert them to an archive and create a dedicated space on my site where any can browse it—will include that in an issue in the coming weeks.

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While away, I disconnected from news entirely. It was a good move: in the weeks leading up to our trip (momentous ones in world news, as it feels every week this year has been), I was compulsively flipping between news sites every time I opened my phone—it was not a good way to be.

But, of course, some news gets through. I hear there’s an election on? Public servant hat remains firmly on around here, but that’s fun! Tariffs are, I assume, still capriciously (dis)appearing on a whim? Increasingly worrying signs of [pick your topic]? Plus ça change, it feels.

Turning away from the news for a bit, I’m happy to report, didn’t leave me feeling at all information impoverished. Give your brain space to take in and reflect on something else, and it will.

These last few weeks, for me, it was the observation fun of travel, plus Sarah Bakewell’s Humanly Possible, a characteristically well-read exploration of humanism. (Bakewell’s How to Live, on Montaigne, remains one of my top shelf books.)

When despairing about the state of the world (despair that reading the news quickly inspires), reading about the lives and thoughts of historical humanists has been an inspiring antidote. Some things I’ve learned:

• Pleased, but in hindsight not surprised, to learn that E.M. Forster was a humanist. (Forster authored one of my favourite novels, Howards End, which I first read by randomly pulling it off the shelf in my local library in… middle school? early high school?) Vonnegut, too, though that quickly becomes apparent in reading his essay-ish books.
• Bakewell explores the tension between humanists’ supposed concern with and attention to the human condition, and their frequent inability to reckon with how common a feature violence is in human life. An example: “Erasmus seemed to underestimate the real depth of human attraction to violence, unreason, and fanaticism—probably because of his own cordial personality. Immune to the thrill of battle and the intoxication of radical ideas himself, he simply could not understand why others found them so powerful.” (151)
• For centuries, medical students learned anatomy by studying not-quite-accurate texts, with maybe the chance to see a rare public autopsy—where teachers had to make up explanations for why the texts (which were treated as the highest authority) didn’t align with the real body before them. (Dissections were so rare because they were long banned, then deeply feared, because of beliefs that a mutilated body would persist into the afterlife—unsurprisingly, only criminals or the poor were put on the table.) (123–35)
• Humanists have long been persecuted for their beliefs, resorting to allusion and allegory (among other devices) to distance themselves from their positions. (Which didn’t always work—many died for their beliefs.) This partly explains the often elaborate, nearly overwrought style of books from previous centuries—they were trying to hide their true message.

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Anyhow! We’re somehow a quarter of the way through the year. (Apologies, if I’m the first to break the news.) An election’s on, the news will drag us down, and much else will attract our attention—some of it deservedly so!

But the weeks ahead can also be ones of regrouping, of starting to expend that energy stored through the winter; enjoying the earthy smell of soil uncovered after a winter’s rest; seeing and (hopefully) feeling the sun for more than half the day; and so much more. Let’s live them as richly as we can. All the best for the week ahead!