Duty

I took my chainsaw to the farm field to tend the stream and deadfall. I got lots done, most of it while standing in the water wearing my very fetching hip-waders, and wielding man’s genius that is my trusty red slice-o-matic homelite that barges through thin or thick like butter. Anything impeding the water flow got chunked and then piled in the bush, or rolled off to the side if it was too, too heavy.  Later in the afternoon, I was aware of how tired I was. Not tired enough to stop–I kept going until the chain happened to fall off. Probably a good thing. At that point I still had all the same number of limbs and digits that I woke up with, so the universe looking after me again? I’ll take it. 

Why all of this effort? To be honest, I am pulled to this place by a duty to something dear and deep. Without any beasts grazing and beasting around under the canopy, the undergrowth has become overgrowth–it is unruly, and those trees that I used to spend hours playing under when I was a kid, are not happy. Over the years, I’ve done my best to save them from the bastard vines that scurry up their trunks, defoliate them, and then pull the whole tree to the ground, but things are still not right. It’s more than the vines. It’s like they know. They exude an energy toward me when I’m there as if to say, 

“Was it something we did? Why aren’t you here anymore? And what is going on with everyone? We miss you…and we’re sad.”

I am sad too.

Adventures with Humans–A Night Out

I am in the city  for an evening of symphonic and choral music. Earlier in the day, I had committed to a hearty regimen of Olympic-level wallowing. I had been sulking in a hot bath, thinking about how I would fully embody the genre of miserableness over the day’s later hours when a little voice suggested that I,

 “get my then-boiled ass out of the tub, throw on a dress, and get to the place!”  

My younger son is stepping in to play in this orchestra and any chance to see either of my guys play is a delight, so I go. Traffic is kind. There is only one car fire that slows flow for a few minutes; I arrive in perfect time. Delighted.


The event is in an industrial-looking, unappealing church. I take a seat in a pew a few rows back from the front. An older couple joins me and the fun begins: 

The man makes no effort to whisper. He talks about how ugly the building is, mentions something about “terrible people,” paces for a while, and then returns, hollering about how old the people in the audience are. His annoyed wife sits, trying to lure him to his seat.  I wonder how I will refrain from throttling him if he should speak while my son plays notes. I kicked a man once for texting during one of my son’s performances. It felt amazing. I recommend it.


The room fills. There is good space between me and the difficult couple until a woman squeezes through and fills it. She is short and solid, with a head of hair that reminds me of a serving of crispy noodles. She has had a drink or two before arriving–I can spot this a mile away. She is by no means drunk, but she is relaxed. The top of her head comes just to my shoulder as we sit, so she looks up at me like some kind of aged toddler. She wears large glasses, and seems to consider me as an oddity from behind them: she looks, and blinks, and stares. I wonder if I have a starfish stuck to the side of my face, or some kind of creature waving to her from my left ear that only elfin folk such as she can see. I greet her and we talk. She is upbeat and kind; an orchestra subscription member who attends all of the performances. 


The drama at the far end of the pew continues. Loud Man, now seated, yells to his wife, that he “…HAS BROUGHT BINOCULARS!” My new pal does not acknowledge the commotion. Instead she removes her shoes and gets comfortable with her bare feet pushing up against the back of the pew in front of us, doing her best to avoid the bibles of course. I buckle-in for the ride.


The orchestra plays. Thankfully, Loud Man quiets down. My pew pal looks up at me and smiles each time we clap for the musicians. I am tempted to go get her some milk and cookies, or promise her a puppy. During the last, longer symphony before the intermission, she falls asleep. Peripherally, I see her slump, then deflate towards the wife on her left. At a certain point of collapse, she resets only to tip again. She startles up and awake during the applause at the end of the piece, acknowledging its greatness as if she had not missed a note. 


Intermission comes and Loud Man’s wife, a member of the choir slated to sing during the second half, heads to the green room. When it is time, the many members of the choir walk onto the stage. I guess that there are upwards of 80 people in the choir and I love each one; they are all of the shapes, and heights, and ages. I imagine some as the matronly stalwarts of their sections, throwing disapproving stares at anyone missing a cue, or singing in an improvised key. There is a knot of men in the bass section that I immediately imagine as the selectmen of any village in any bucolic novel written by some easterner. I love that they are here, despite whatever their lives are like at home–love, health, wins, losses, births, deaths–but all here to sing. 

At one point during the choir’s entrance,  I hear Loud Man say,

 “Oh, there she is. She’s there. She’s always there, and after fifty-five years, it’s getting boring.” 

I set my jaw so as to not laugh out loud. 


The last choir member to enter is a woman navigating her way with a long white cane and the help of her choir mates. I notice this, but in case there is any doubt, my pal alerts me:

 “Oh, look. That woman there with the cane? She’s blind. She can’t see. She’s being helped in right now.”  

I smile, delighted with how entertaining the evening, then let out an audible “HARF,” when I notice Loud Man glaring through a stubby pair of binoculars. His wife can’t be more than thirty feet straight ahead of him but he is staring with a kind of fierceness, as if charged with guarding the coast from enemy submarines. I fully expect to discover him later, glaring from horseback with a pith helmet on his head, threatening to blow his cavalry whistle.

The music begins. A hired-gun–a trained soprano soloist takes her place and belts out sounds remarkable to be human-made. I look for similar sounds coming from the choir. There are none that I can hear, but the performance is still lovely. For a brief moment, I want to strangle the percussionist for lagging while playing tambourine, but this is my only impulse I have towards real violence during the evening.


The performance ends. My pal puts her shoes back on. “I hope to see you here again,” she says, rises and in the process of putting on her coat misses belting me in the head while stretching her hand through her sleeve, only because I dodge at the last second. 


The lesson here? –Always get out of the bath.

Mud

I recently changed desks. The process required that I move a few piles of papers that were rooted, it seemed, on my old desk. Rather than simply move them to my new-to-me antique mahogany battlement, I sorted through the piles and in this effort, a single sheet, like a falling leaf, swung through the shifts to rest directly beside my computer on the top of the desk. On the sheet is written a paragraph from the last page of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, that I had copied by hand years ago:


Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and hummed of mystery.


I love this. I love McCarthy’s writing. It was this line from All the Pretty Horses, that drew me to his work:


He thought that the world’s heart beat at a terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of the multitudes might be exacted for the vision of a single flower. 


To be clear, I am not a fan of violence, and as a curiosity have no dogged interest in New Mexico, but I have read everything that McCarthy has written because of the beauty of his sentences. To me, he writes as if composing a musical score, echoing it up off of the desert floor, or the squeak of leather horse tack. His words slow me down, and like most wonderful music, I listen with my heart. It is as if it strains to get to the words before my brain does, to punch out of my chest and meander in and around them as if the sentences were split-rail fences reaching deep into the world. Difficulty arises if I allow my heart to hang out on the fences for any length of time–the vulnerability of this; I am a sitting duck for self-doubt, and mean judgement–some, of my own rutted imaginings, but not all.


It is synchronous that I should find the paper with the paragraph on it right now. I was feeling flung into spring without any grounding–a flailing idiot, scrabbling along the tired path toward happiness which I am beginning to realize is nothing but a chimera. It is a relief to grok this, and in this discovery it occurs to me that it is peace that I’m searching for instead. My definition of happiness involves unhitching and leaving the deep mud of reality, the smell of it, far away and medicating into the oblivion of the world’s games. I’ve tried this and it does not work. It is the mud that I need; all the rest is tiresome and laid with brutal traps that require, over and over again, devotions of worthiness and an insane willingness to maintain a persona of lesser-than in order to win entry. Peace is better for me. A personal peace has no traps, and asks only for sincerity, authenticity. Peace comes from a direct link with nature and an ability to walk in, heart-first. The problem is that, unless I am careful as hell,  this vulnerability leaves the heart open to all of this meanness percolating through the ether lately. That is a real problem that I do not know the answer to, and I can’t be the only one. 


 I have no idea what is coming. 



Would you mind sending me a little sign that you have read this piece to the end? Thank you.

Reset

I went to the gym today. I go a lot. If I didn’t go to the gym, I would be a raging alcoholic, and if you’ve read or listened to any current events since the pre-Trumpian era, you could not blame me. All around the world, small-dicked Napoleons are popping up as if it was a climate deal that caused a hatch of them. Don’t get me wrong, Trudeau is not the leader we need–I am not defending him, but the conservative party(purposely lower case) is not the answer. That’s like getting rid of your gardener because he lost another fucking rake, and then hiring a company that specializes in BURNING EVERYTHING. Theresa May is my pick. She’s smarter than you. She’s smarter than most people–Agh, I wasn’t intending on writing about politics. My intention was to tell you about a thing I saw and a thought I had. I will begin that now:



I’m at the gym, giddy that I might make it through another day as a human. I’m in the middle of a weight workout. Oh it’s not a big deal. It’s maintenance stuff so I can continue to open jars of pickles, carry my groceries up the stairs, and should I ever again be offered the possibility of sex, feel good about the prospects of that one, medieval role-play that I have always…but I digress. I’m standing, resting between reps, and I find myself staring at the south wall. It’s fewer than ten feet away from me, decorously painted in the gym’s thematic blue and black. There are electrical boxes on the wall. Lots of them. And I am intrigued. There are at least three, tall, thin black boxes of different sizes, mounted one beside the other. There are black pipes–larger than Rob Ford’s meth pipe, but smaller than the exhaust pipe on Doug Ford’s stupid asshole van–that run from one to the next, but also straight up the wall. There is a larger metal box, higher up. It is beige, and has the pipes running in from below, and then a couple running out the top. Some pipes run up into the ceiling and into oblivion, heaven, I imagine. Others run off to the side. One connects with, or possibly runs behind an enormous logo sign. At least I assume it’s a sign. It could be some kind of portal. Probably.



What caught my eye, was the western-most box the size of a good slab-cake, that had a blinking red light on it. The light was so small that I hardly noticed it at first, but once found, I could not look away.  This light, this cute little beacon–what was it for? And were all of these other boxes and conduits arranged just for this light? Was this THE LIGHT? The reason I thought that, was because the eastern-most box, all in black, had a pie-shaped switch that pointed to ‘ON.’ But below ‘ON,’ was–  

                                                                OFF.

“My God,” I thought. “I’ve found it. I’ve found the great switch of things, which was mentioned in the Bible and in the Lee Valley Catalogue. Or, wait, it was NEVER mentioned in the Bible. I haven’t seen the latest Lee Valley so you’re on your own there.”  Can you imagine? 


“Jesus, what’s going on down there?”
“Well, Dad, the world is fucked, and the idiots have the keys.”
“Son. Language.”
“Sorry DAD, but things are so bad that it’s just a cluster-fuck. Oh damn. Oh…GOODNESSS. Sorry DAD. ‘Fuck,’ is, I’m sorry to say, the best word to describe the scene.”
“Well, DID YOU TRY TURNING IT OFF AND ON?” said God.


You see? I wasn’t paying attention that day in religion class (Sorry master David W.) but I think it seeped into my subconscious. Could it be? Is this the very switch before me? Here, in the middle of my two sets of 15 reps? 


Wouldn’t’ it be nice? Can you feel it? Imagine being able to reset the world. Just walk in to my gym, pull the switch and start again. 

Fuck.




Would you be so kind to throw me a note if you have read this piece to the end? Thank you.

Quaffle and Contrast 

It’s been thirty-five years since I have been on the McMaster University campus. This day, it is the site of the 2019 Canadian National Quidditch Championships in which my younger son is playing, with the UofT Centaurs, so this day holds a trifecta of draws for me: I get to see my son, I get to learn about quidditch, and I have the opportunity to see how I feel about being back here. 


It is early spring, and the day, weather-wise, is one of my least favourite types. It is cold as ice–a hard cold that tastes of sidewalk and iron; clear and sunny, but with a wind hinting that winter can still step back in and get up your skirt in a heartbeat. I’d rather the snow. These high-pressure days, and all of this landscape bleakness–grey trees as yet unleafed, makes me nuts. Before leaving, I throw my warm winter jacket into the van and I am grateful of this when I arrive at the campus. I wear it all day, much of it with the hood up against the wind and then zipping and unzipping  the jacket part in response to the fickle temperature; when the wind dies, the sun is warm and calming, but when the wind rises, it is like the playground bully who pushes you off the swings. What a complete bastard. 



I arrive on campus and promptly lose my way. Nothing is familiar. If the expansive green lawns are still here, I don’t find them. All I see are buildings crammed in next to each other and more being built. I am mildly disappointed, but frankly, this feeling may be influenced by my relative indifference about my university years, threaded as they were with an unhelpful sense of bewilderment. I had not come anywhere close to figuring out myself or other people, and the experience here represented more of a holding pattern than anything serving to catapult me ahead in a direction. I was still reeling from my early years and still, to this day feel that I would have been farther ahead and better grounded if I had been raised by wolves. 



I find the pitch where my son is playing. His team, as most of them do, looks to be possibly a random selection of passengers on a bus. Attire for all teams today is a smart uniform, but often tweaked against this bitter cold with long johns, or some type of leggings, under shorts. There are all different body types which is part of the glory of quidditch–there are many different abilities required, plus, the general vibe is chill and inviting. I speak with one player who played in Australia, France, Switzerland and, I think Sweden. I mention this in case you foolishly surmise that the game is not popular.



Quidditch is a running game. Better put, it’s a fierce haul-ass, dodge-and-sprint game for most positions. There sit three hoops on standards at either end of the pitch. Players run with brooms between their legs–a standard length of plastic pipe I think, held in place with one hand.  The intent is to put the quaffle, a slightly underinflated ball close to volleyball-size, through any of the opposing team’s hoops to win ten points. Each team has a keeper and three chasers who are charged with running down the field, passing, dodging, weaving and being generally keen to accrue points. Their damnation comes repeatedly at the hand of one, or both of the opposing team’s two beaters who throw their bludgers at them. A  bludger is a softer, more rubbery ball similar in size to the quaffle. Once the player is hit, he or she (yes this is coed) must immediately disengage from play by putting their free hand in the air, dismount from their broom, run like hell to their end and touch a hoop before they can remount and run back into play. To be clear, a beater can hit a keeper or a chaser, but he can also hit an opposing beater who might be winding up to hit one of your chasers aiming to score. Anyone is fair game, and therein lies the strategy and the finesse; the flow can change in a blink. This is very much heads-up ball. 


There is more:


At the seventeen-minute mark, a player walks onto the field dressed in yellow. In any other sport, you might consider him an attention-seeking fan intent on disrupting the game in some way. You would be incorrect here. This jaune player, the only one not riding a broom, is the elusive snitch runner. He has a snitch tail–a yellow ball in a sack that resembles an unfortunate scrotum–hanging from the back of his shorts. The snitch runner belongs to no team, no land, no country.  He, or she, is, quick, stealthy, and/or inhumanly mighty. His task is to defend his snitch tail from being deftly plucked by either seeker from each team. While regular play is going on, these three players are lost in their own drama, scrutinized by their very own referee. Grabbing the snitch tail wins you thirty points for your team and typically ends the game. The overall scenario is like having a rugby-basketball-track meet on the field with a separate, exhausting  wrestling match thrown in. 



When I arrive at the pitch and began watching the game, I think the whole broom thing is goofy and makes players look silly. Within fifteen minutes, I don’t notice brooms any more. I am caught up in the strategy and how physically demanding the game is. Having the broom requirement is actually kinda neato because it forces players to use only one hand to manage the quaffle, the bludger, or any tackling they intend. This takes the very big, and the very strong down a notch and allows for anyone to flourish with speed and dexterity. There are turnovers, outs-of-bounds, and penalty cards¬–referees are serious and unforgiving about proper contact and behaviour: Absolutely no neck-or-above contact, or tackling from behind. Players can sub out.  No helmets, but mouth guards for all.



I am completely caught up in the action–holding my breath, leaping and cheering at a gain, or kicking the ground at a close throw. When this match is over, my son and I go into one of the main buildings to get something warm to drink, and I find a remarkable display of contrast laid out for me: Here in the expansive atrium of this building are close to three hundred young adult males seated around endless lines of computer consoles. They are players in a Mario Cart competition, and in my usual, slightly judgmental form, I am horrified. I immediately make grand, sweeping assumptions about each player’s poor diet, complete lack of exercise, linty hygiene and minimal social skills. I want to grab them all by a collective ear and drag them outside to the athletic fields to challenge a snitch.  You are invited to roll your eyes. To be truthful, I still have not played a proper video game. I know they are not the worst thing ever, but when I consider them along with the shock of meeting anyone who does not know how to throw a frisbee, I am certain of the apocalypse.  I know my assumptions are flawed, but the dissonance between the good quidditch, and the bad video game paradigms I find comical. Whoops, I did it again. I wish I was sorry. 



I leave before The Centaurs play their last match of the day, because I am frozen. They are going to be playing as the sun tags out leaving only the stadium lights for comfort. They are tired but clearly still having a blast and that’s the best. Mario Cart is wrapping up just in time for none of the pale players to have to see or name the sun, –but all of  the coffee places are closed. Maybe that’s what I get for being dismissive. That’s okay, I will survive. The day is a win: I am always happy when I’m hanging out with either of my two sons, so this is a delightful given. I discovered that quidditch is fun, fierce, and is a thrill to watch.  As far as being back on campus is concerned, I find that I have no strong emotions. It was a nebulous time and my studies kept me busy but ignited no passion or fire. Yes, I got a degree in English here, and yes, I am a writer, but my passion for words and the craft came not from the classroom, but from life events–the hardest ones. Was tuition a waste of time and money? I can’t answer that. Taking the money and traveling the world might have given me more spine and grounding, but I’m not sure that back then I had the courage for it. The wolves were no help. All we can do, I suppose, is keep our heads up wherever we are.

Night-think

It is 2:30 in the morning. I wake up fully, as if an alarm has gone off, but there is none. A flurry of hard energy runs through my whole body and slams into the top of my head like a car hitting a wall. I look at my clock. I see the fierce digital numbers lit, as I consider them, by demon-stoked fires. 

“What the hell,” I think. 


I remember the coffee I had had late in the afternoon, and blame it for destroying this sleep. I vow to become loyal to herbal teas somehow, at least in the afternoons. Coffee never used to bother me the way it does now; my system, evolving into age–devolving is a better word, no longer tolerates the caffeine delivered in that sensuous, warm, rich flavour. Now the relevant parts turn the once clarifying energy into anxiety. I am betrayed and lost forever.



I look around my room. My thoughts begin to run, and I notice my inner bastard wrenching up the boards of my self-confidence. We talk:

“So, computer trouble yesterday, eh?” he says.


I groan. I feel a fleet of rototillers in my stomach, grinding me from inside. Cortisol shoots through my veins. 


“Yes. Odd password trouble, but the nice person at Apple fixed it, mostly,” I mutter.

“But after, that thing happened on ITunes where it…”

“I know, I know. It wouldn’t accept the new password, OR the old password. Thank you  
very much for reminding me,” I snip.   


The bastard continues pulling up the boards. With each one, I grow more anxious.


“You’re going to deal with it in the morning, right? ‘Cause you couldn’t go ahead and 
just reset your password last night. ‘Fraidy cat,” he chides.


“Look, I’ve done just fine in the past, but I’ve also had things go south, so I’m a little
apprehensive about the process now,” I say defensively.

“Well you’re older now, and likely…”

I cut it off. 

“Don’t even start.”


Earlier in the day, I had had a physical assessment at the gym. The trainer was kind, but where I used to feel mighty and fit, I now felt invisible. He considered me as just another gal in that age group that struggles with physical decline. He didn’t even hint at the fact that, before menopause, I had likely been this close to actually flying!  Now it was time for me to step aside and suck it up as nature deconstructed me–stripped me of my tone, and by the way, nobody really cares; there’s hockey on tonight.  


I’ve been noticing my shoulders wrinkling like overripe mangos. I feel thickening around my middle like I’m wearing a subcutaneous corset of cheese and not in a good way. Everything seems to be giving up and giving in to gravity–racing for the ground. 


        I am a walking glacial meat avalanche. 


To be clear, the trainer wasn’t a bad person. He was young–an innocent. He simply said the words describing my new paradigm. What the hell was I expecting?  There was no way he could feel the degree of my disappointment. How could he? He saw the external me, sitting in a chair nodding, smiling, and answering his questions. He couldn’t see what was going on inside–the Greek chorus commentating on my wretched, howling inner shadow, clawing at the hem of time, hissing at Sharon, the harpy goddess of wrinkles and dry skin, and vowing a comeuppance to Allistar, god of weakening muscles and disrupted sleep (the beating I will give him when I see him in hell)!  What I wanted right then, during the assessment, was a moment of silence or some kind of ceremony that would ease my pain: a shot of whisky, the slaughtering of a goat, or perhaps a demand from him for me to wax about the days of party-lines and carbon paper. I was tempted to describe some of my experiences goddamn it:

Do you know that I held a dying woman at a crosswalk? Do you know how fast I used to be able to ride? Do you know that I can curl my tongue into the shape of a cannoli? 

 I abstained though. I realized at a gut level, that it wouldn’t change anything except launch me into membership with the pathetic. And do I really want to have that jacket in my wardrobe? So now, in the middle of the night, my already delicate psyche shrinks before this slaughter of my self-worth. 


                      I feel under siege.


The bastard is relentless and quashes any attempts I make to calm down. I take a deep breath but the rototillers are many and I am denied ease. I think about turning on the light and reading, but doubt that I can concentrate alongside this internal tear-down. I get out of bed and go sit cross-legged on my couch to meditate. I focus on my breath. I refocus on my breath. My mind keeps pinging back to that fucking jacket. 

       “Look at where you are living and how much your life sucks,” says the bastard.

I ignore him and concentrate on meditating deep enough that I can lose track of this reality. No luck. I open my eyes and stare at my salt lamp. 

Yeah, that salt lamp really changed my life! Thanks for nothing!  

I give up and go back to bed. I am angry that the computer dealio upsets me so much. The bastard is still pulling up boards. I let him. 


“Do your worst, you meddling asshole. I hope you get a sliver,” I murmur. “And blisters.”


He bangs and pries and wrenches. I begin to fall asleep, wondering why the bastard, or any voices that I hear in the middle of night are always whispering doom and demise. Why is it always bad, dark, entropy-inspired cranks that take the night shift? Why the hell isn’t there a brigade of outrageous unicorns that gallop into my head and sing about how wonderful I am so that I awake refreshed, happy, humming show tunes? Do they not have my address? Is this a union thing? Jesus.


 Morning comes and with it a slathering of dread, but the good thing about having your inner-self reduced to a pile of wood and old nails during the night is that  it provides a boundary to navigate from: 

If you’re at a point where things couldn’t get much worse, why be afraid? 

     "You're aging–big whoop. Everyone does, so get over it. And why are you letting a stupid computer problem terrify you–you with your cannoli-tongue!"

 This is a better voice–like waking up with Samuel L. Jackson beside me. I leap out of bed and walk to my computer. 


      “Bring it on,” I think. “IT’S JUST A THING! IT’S JUST A GODDAMNED THING!” 


I turn on my computer and get myself a drink of water while the screen comes alive. I tip the glass toward the back of my teeth and feel the water run down my gullet–through my inner hallways and rooms where the boards and rototillers were during the night. 


“Let’s get this over with, shall we?” I say.

...And...everything...is...fine. There is no glitch. My computer acts as if it doesn’t know what I was talking about. 

Problem? No problems here! We’re all shiny and keen to compute for you all day long! 


Life is a ridiculous joke. I am taking my mangos to the goddamned gym.

Knot

Recently, I had a friend take a close look at my left eye after noticing extra red near the lower lid. I had been out skiing in full sun that afternoon and was worried that I had somehow done damage– more than was already there. Initially, when I was around 10 years-old, I had burst a blood vessel in that eye. Here’s the tale of that:


 It was a summer night on the farm. Mom was sitting, smoking a cigarette in the enclosed porch that ran down a chunk of the side of the farmhouse. I was sitting with her. My father must have been away on business and my two siblings were away wherever. My grandmother, an ogre of solid and terrible mental brutality was staying with us as she did now and then. She was elderly and hunched, which doesn’t mean anything, except that it fit slim with her personality. She was never the sort you would look to for comfort had you skinned a knee, or given yourself a sliver during a noteworthy tree climb. This was in stark comparison to my other grandmother, my mom’s mom, who was kind, birdlike and delightful, so I knew nice was possible.  I don’t know what the hell my father was thinking, having the ogre stay with us. She wielded judgement and cruelty down on my mother like she had the right, which she didn’t, but my father didn’t stop her. He couldn’t. Or wouldn’t–I don’t know exactly. She was mightier than all. Yes, she was a lawyer, and a suffragette, but she was also a bully and an asshole. The woman had woven the limitless potential of her two brilliant, sensitive offspring into straight-jackets that imprisoned them in mere ideas of themselves–suffocating anything full and vibrant. She cheated the world on that one. I am told that even her husband, my grandfather, shrunk from her–walked a few steps behind in order to keep and hold the little bit of himself that she allowed. I wish I had met him. He died the year that I was born.


 It was quiet that night except for the frogs in the pond telling tales to each other. My grandmother was enthroned in the living room listening to the radio. There was a window into the living room at the west end of the porch, and light from it reached toward us. The wallpaper in that living room had repeated forest scenes on it, so you could think that my grandmother was a dark beast camped on a trail somewhere, collecting brittle bones, and throttling whimpers from unsuspecting prey, but the piano in the near corner of the room broke that image. It was mom who played. She could launch into some Gershwin, or Bach, and would often stop in the middle of cooking a meal, walk to the piano with her apron on, leaving whatever cut of beef she was busy destroying to roast or boil unmonitored toward its leathery end, in order to sate her desire for music. Mom wasn’t a great cook. She was a better pianist, and I was going to say that this wasn’t useful here, but really it is. I think her thriving, the creative arc that she had foolishly assumed that she could continue, was flattened when my grandmother got at her. The whole party seemed to stop–three great kids and a mother who all seemed set on having fun. 



This night, mom was clearly bushed and fed up with all of it. “I just don’t want to live anymore,” she said, to me, her young daughter who had no business fielding such a line. In those days, I was busy reciting TV commercials by heart, mimicking Don Adams from Get Smart–basically trying to be a kid. But I took the line, “I just don’t want to live anymore,” lofted without any reason for me to doubt. I stood and moved myself into the living room. I can’t remember if I walked, or ran–I just seemed to get myself there somehow. Then, up and out of me came a wash of rage and hatred more powerful than I felt my child-body frame could house. I was out of control, and hollering enough to bend the drawn trees on the wallpaper. I remember the look of fear on my grandmother’s face–that terrible, pruned face. I stopped when my nose started bleeding. I was crying so hard that I had difficulty seeing. The next morning, I noticed the knot of blood vessels in my left eye. 



Through the years, I would see the knot, remember that night, and then lean the memory up against other terrible events that happened through the years like records in a milk crate. Each one had a specific feeling to it, and each had been set in motion by the thoughtless, arrogant monster, even posthumously. I hadn’t thought of it much until the other day, flagged by the seeming ocular irritation. The beats of that specific night on the porch are still clear and brutal; those kinds of things live lush lives in memory, the body wrenched out of childish play with unfair emotional violence, and the experience stored and locked at a cellular level.



How idyllic and lovely would it have been to have had skiing in sunshine as the only scenario brought to mind by my concern.

Pulse

This was a day of contrast, simple as that: two different scenarios–both could have tipped toward scintillating, or both a slog, but I got one of each. What was the deciding factor in each scenario you ask? Service and the people serving the service. I will tell of it here:


Today was symphony day. I had tickets for me and my mother to see and hear the Toronto Symphony play the goodly notes of Shostikovitch’s 5th at Roy Thomson Hall. The performance, stellar and moving though it was, is not the focus here except I must give a shout-out to the whisper-impaired couple two rows behind me who felt that part of my ticket price included the thrill of listening to them talk out loud during the delicate, sacred beginning of the Shosti piece. (I turned and silently summoned a world of misfortune and uncontrolled flourishes of skin tags on them and their progeny. I may have spit fire.) Aside from all of that, the afternoon was wonderfully enjoyable thanks to the legions of Roy Thomson Hall floor staff. Each one we came upon was eager, kind, and witty. Even the young man tending bar was in a good mood and played along when I asked him which wine paired with Shostakovitch. Our seats were on the third level, in section “C,” which I took to mean Celestial, and the journey to them took some doing: we rode two escalators, and scaled several small flights of stairs–all challenging for my mother so we took our sweet time. During that journey–that measured ascent–each attendant we came upon made us feel glad we were there. We had conversations by saying words and then listening. One of us would say something, and then the other person would reply. Together, we explored an idea or sentiment! You’ve likely seen this in movies or possibly experienced it yourself. It’s called communication I think. It was like we were human to each other! 

"Sounds fun," says my inner writing prompter.

It was!

"Then what happened?"

The symphony was a matinee, so we were ready for dinner when all of the applause was over. The area restaurants were all full, so we drove out of the city and ended up at a casual dining, cottage-themed, Turtle Jack’s . 

"And?"
…

"Well?"

You know, I’m not that hard to please. Show me that you’ve got a pulse, and I’m on your side, but Turtle Jack’s was somewhat…

"What?" 
…

"WHAT?"

DISAPPOINTING! We were hungry, happy initially, but also tired. We walked in the door and nobody was there to greet us. NOBODY for longer than was acceptable unless the deal is that you go for the fridge and help yourself. There’s casual, and then there's this. 

"So? What did you do? Did you hurl the bowl of mints into the fire, shake your fist and spit bees as you stormed out in a huff-and-a-half? Did you?"

No. Someone lovely showed up, so I figured it was simply a hiccup and everything else would be fine. That’s what I thought. But it wasn’t fine. We sat at our table, figured out what we wanted, sat for a bit, changed our minds, went back to our original decisions, wondered about the menu font, if there really was a person named Turtle Jack and what kind of terribly deformity might he have to deserve such a title. I think it was the manager, or someone appearing managerial who came to our table and lit the little tea light. Ambiance! We had ambiance now, so I figured that THAT was the sign that things were going to swing on track. There was fire on our table so our presence had been acknowledged.

"Keep telling it!"

Okay, someone young and dressed in waiterly clothing came to our table. He might have been on mushrooms, or had just woke up from a bonkers good afternoon nap. Turtle Jack’s is cottage-themed, as I mentioned, so perhaps he had just come in from water skiing in some of this March snow melt. We seemed to confuse him. Or disappoint him. I’m not sure which. When he approached, I said, 

“Oh, there you are. We were wondering when you were going to show up!” 

 He could have apologized with gusto here, and easily endeared himself to us, but he didn't. He did manage to take our order, but it was if he didn’t quite know what we were. Again, if he had been on some kind of psychedelic enhancer and was reacting to my mother appearing to him as a deck chair, and me having a head that was a trolley with people boarding but never leaving, well, I would have understood.  He served us our drinks, and then vanished. We never saw him again. Perhaps he left to go put the water-skis away.  I hope he’s okay.

"Really?"

I've served tables before and I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but Jesus!

"Did your food come?"

Yes, we had a new person bring us our food. Okay, I figured that THIS had to be the turning point. I did. 

"And was it?" 
…

"Well?"

Okay the food wasn’t the worst I have ever had. THAT was at Shoeless Joe’s where I had a California wrap that tasted like the floor of a bus. Now to be fair, mom loved her seafood chowder, and the Greek salad was fine. I'll come clean here: I was ready to complain about the veggie burger, but in my effort to be a better person, which is why I had ordered that burger in the first place, I realize that if the service had been at all reasonable, I would have happily eaten it and not given it another thought. I would have been in a good mood! But, since I was losing my happy-and appreciated-customer feels, I convinced myself that the veggie burger was wanting, and held together with ennui and sadness–it had no pants of its own, depending completely on the condiments. That's not fair to the kitchen staff, but that was how it seemed–it happened. 


"What did you do, huh? What happened then? Did ya spike the plate of mediocrity on the floor, hurl the tea light at the bar and summon your inner demon? "

I was deflatedly unimpressed, if that’s a thing. Our second waiter brought the bill, and she seemed put out while my mother pulled cash out of her wallet. She stood back from the table as if mom was pulling bald kittens out of her purse as currency and was unsure of the kitten exchange rate. There was no polite discourse, no passing conversation about the weather, what we had been up to, or why the entry way was full of bees. I felt ignored. 


   I hate feeling ignored more than anything.


We stood, put our coats on and walked slowly toward the door, foolishly waiting for someone to thank us for enduring the disappointment, or fling even a timid, “Come again, won’t you?”

           There was nothing. Not a thing. 

The gang at Roy Thomson Hall would not have let this happen. 


                    God I miss those guys.

Thank You for Your Complicity



I am at the grocery store picking up fancy cheese and good crackers to take to a dinner, plus a new stick of deodorant so that I don’t get turfed out of said dinner. Only three items to pay for, so I head to the express lane. A sign on the near side of the belt says, 

            Sorry, please use another lane.

 I look around, wondering if perhaps I have arrived in the middle of a shift-change and the mighty-and-brave cashier charged with triumph in the speedy lane is on her way. I see no evidence of this possibility coming true, so I step into the closest line in a regular lane. The store is not that busy; the line I have chosen is not terribly long, and nobody in it has a full cart so I am not frothing-annoyed, but I do keep looking over at the express lane just in case. One or two people step into line behind me. A minute passes and one of the head cashiers comes toward us:

“Anyone paying cash or credit and not buying alcohol, I can take you over here,” she says. 

I assume that “over here,” refers to the express line since she’s standing right beside it so I accept the invitation and blissfully step toward her.

                          I am a fool. 

                              I am. 

  I think foolish thoughts, and I do foolish things. 


She leads me to the nearest self-checkout station–like you would a cow into a squeeze chute.

               I hate self-checkout stations. 

                          All of them.

                         Everywhere. 

                   With my all-of-me.

Why? First of all, the cold voice, smarmy and programmed, reeking of the psychological intimation, 

          Idiot human, how little you matter.

Second of all, and mostly, I want a human experience when I shop, and I get that here when I have a cashier. I know most of them and I like them. Plus, I often get into conversations with other people in line. The experience is pleasant. I also find it distasteful to think that I am bagging my own groceries, handling the payment on a machine that is reducing the data on all of my purchases to algorithms so that I may take my place as meaningless host; predictable, unremarkable–repeatedly offered purchase suggestions on the card loyalty site which I must always hurry to load because hell is missing out, right? And to think that I might eventually pay less if all of the cashiers were replaced with these robot check-out machines is laughable. I’m not that much of a fool.

Yet, here I am. I groan out loud, like a child,

 “I didn’t know you were going to bring me here.”  

She mistakes my displeasure for a blinkered inability to use the check-out machine. 

“Oh, it’s okay. I’ll do it for you,” she offers.

I sigh audibly and surrender my items onto the scanning platform–I am committed now. I take out my wallet. “Oh, it’s not that I can’t manage this on my own,” I explain. “I’m sure it’s easy.” I find my loyalty card, look at the screen and grok the whole process as, yes, straightforward, but I still hate it. The woman sees that I don’t need her technical support here and turns to leave.

“Wait. Don’t go,” I say with a tone of, you-got-me-into-this-you're-not-getting-away-so-easily. 

She stops and steps back beside me. “The thing is,” I explain, as the machine accepts me as a willing player in this mindless complicity of societal slaughter, “I’d rather have a human experience here.” I look at her while my data is being processed. “Tell me a joke,” I say.

 She laughs. “Oh, I don’t know any jokes. I can never remember any of the good ones,” she says. 

“I’m the same way,” I say. “’Drives me nuts!” She laughs again. “Being human is bonkers,” I add. 

With only three items to scan on the glass slab, my check-out process is quick. “You’re all done,” my kind task-minder announces. 

“I am, and thank you for adding humanness to this insanity,” I say, sincerely. I head towards the door. 

“Have a great evening,” she says. 

“You have a great evening too,” I say.

Yes, the machine took my data, but I did not let it take my soul.

Ahem

I peeled my back away from the wall and went to the winter woods. The cold cracked the trees – loud snaps like the ones that kid used to make in algebra by cracking his knuckles. It was as if he had fire-crackers for hands.

Here in an opening, the snow-devils twirled just out of reach, leaving circular kisses on the perfect, curvy skin of new snow. Wind peeled sheers off the abandoned long shed roof, all under a glorious sun. A voice somewhere in my head said, 

        "You might not need to try so hard." 

I unclenched my jaw and expanded my rib cage with a few breaths. The best advice. 

I walked on, enamoured with this day. Full, until I noticed the coffee spattered down the front of my jacket creating some unsettling Rorschach pattern in Dark Roast, leaked on the sly through the gap of my poorly threaded travel cup lid. I cursed, quietly though.

I Too Have Watched a Spider

For the past few months, I have been meditating in an effort to learn how to undo banish the sea-monkeys of fear and anxiety growing in my gut. I am happy to say that I can do it now. In the space of a moment, I can refocus my energy and go from what would likely develop into one fucker of a belly tumour left unchecked, to a feeling of ease and expansiveness in my chest. But the feeling is not locked in yet–I am not a yogi, and so have found it necessary to be careful how I expose my senses. The safest place for me is among the sentences of my favourite authors, Mary Oliver being one of them. Oliver, 83, died on January 17th. I dove deep into the pages of her work upon learning that she had flown, and with this rather vulnerable heart chakra of mine, delighted in my love of her.



First of all, I admire the courage of anyone to write.  To compose and publish despite, or perhaps without any consideration of the judgment, or imagined eye roll of a reader is a strength mightier than Hercules. I can’t tell you how many essays I have deleted, succumbing utterly to feared opinion, and withdrawing under my desk with a bottle of merlot and a stack of Premium Plus. Did Oliver ever do that? I doubt it. Not with a twist top, at least. So, I admire her as a person.



Secondly, we might have gotten along nicely. I share her love of the fresh world. I grew up thankfully able to walk out my door and disappear for hours into fields, and forests that I came to know exactly. There were swamps, springs, aggregate hills, rich, dark-dirted crop land, grazing fields for beasts, coniferous and deciduous trees, a pond, streams, winter, summer, all my own whenever I wanted it. Now, my address has changed to my own private hell–a second story apartment, up, away from the ground. Its saving grace is that my neighbours are kind, and the space is quiet for working. Also, there are trails and forests minutes away that I scramble to every day that I can–long, multi-hour efforts navigating in the lush green growth, or the frozen, snow-covered scenery, sung to by the cold cracking of the trees. Yes, I have a favourite tree. Am I a lunatic? Stand in line, sister!  



We both built, Oliver and I; she built a small, simple house with her own hands. I built a stone wall, a bunch of benches, and a swinging seat that I’m really not sure that anyone noticed. Oliver seemed to have confidence right from the beginning. Me? Not even close, plus I have smoothie on my shirt as I write this. 



I was reading Jung, when I heard that Oliver died (I feel odd referring to her as ‘Oliver’) and re-binge-watching The Good Place during breaks, embroiled in another manic attempt to find a way to philosophically grok all of this. Yes, I had bits of myth, individuation, dreams, and symbols in my teeth, and remember, I was also continually having to stop, focus, and get rid of those fucking sea-monkeys whenever my mind wandered to anything with that political stink on it. I marched to my bookshelf, took down all of her work that I had, and tucked in.  The pressure-treated, lock-step world went away. My desire to achieve, to make good, eased, and I fell into a summer day at a pond. I am sad that she’s gone. I am envious of her life and if I could simply emulate her courage from now on, I would be happy–happier. I’m not much good at hollering, and am not near smart enough on my feet to lead warriors in to battle against these most recent despicable world leaders–


                “But I can write, damn it.” 


There. I said it.



“We are each other’s destiny,” Mary Oliver wrote*. Perhaps the key is to get dirty–to get deep into the work of it, whatever that is for each of us, and do our heartfelt best with empathy and compassion(My words). Nothing else makes any sense–plus, there are sea-monkeys.


*Upstream, p.154 Penguin Press, 2016