'Tis the Season

This scene (looking out my front door) was a meditation to me today, the pink blush of sunset tinting the bay, the very little snow we have whitening up the world like fresh laundry. It is warm - +10C. The Gulf Stream swathes this part of Newfoundland in a warm cuddle.

I am reminded of friends and relatives not doing so well at this time of the year.

One dear friend has got bone marrow tests coming up very shortly, her white blood cell count is very low and we are worried for her.

My daughter, who has MS, is going through a very bad cycle with tremors and joint pain.

My nephew has a court appearance tomorrow due to his ongoing addiction to drugs and his methods of securing them. All history now (we pray) as he has been clean and sober for over a year and we are hoping the judge will take that into account in the sentencing.

Last year another friend moved to BC with her partner to take care of her mother who was blind and debilitated due to diabetes. And her mother just died unexpectedly with the house all decorated. She died in my friend's arms as she was putting her to bed.

And all around me the shopping continues, the last minutes stresses. I'm glad I backed away from the insanity years ago and celebrate winter solstice - and very quietly at that.

A friend who used to work on the 911 lines in Toronto said it was the worst time of the year for domestic violence and suicides.

I'll be on the road on Christmas Day, heading back to Toronto for several months.

I was asking my daughter about seasonal memories and the one that stands out for us is the time we jumped in the car with my granddaughter and headed down to South Carolina in one stretch of shared driving on Christmas Eve and walked on the beach on Christmas Day. Myrtle Beach was abandoned, we had it all to ourselves and it was wonderful.

The big gatherings in Ireland were good but not really memorable. It is funny, that. I find in my family that we all revert to our old familial childish patterns when we get together, some of which should have been thrown out years ago. The big gatherings in Toronto, likewise. So much work and so much stress choosing the gifts, cooking and baking for often upwards of twenty people (who always seemed to stay over for Boxing Day Brunch!) and this total anti-climactic feeling afterwards. And the wreckage to clean up.

I'll probably celebrate "Nollaig na Mban" when I get back to Toronto. This is "Women's Christmas" which was my mother's big event of the season when all the females would get together on January 6th and dispose of the old year and welcome in the new.

Peace.

Bare Naked Ladies

Over at Medbh's there is a terrific post on the Ryan Air Calendar full of their naked or nearly naked employees - but not employees to them, of course, but referred to by their bosses as "girls". I honestly thought that sort of lingo had fled Ireland, which was one of the reasons I fled Ireland, back in the day. Silly me.

I am heartily sick of the plastic nudity around me. Mainly female flesh on display to entice the male into opening his wallet, I would think. Are men disappointed when they see an honest-to-goodness female naked beside them? I mean most of us come without airbrushing or those odd stagnant silicone breasts. Unless we've been under the knife. Which I haven't. I've been tempted a few times, to be honest, just to get rid of the loose chin. But the friends that have taken the plunge never seem to know when to stop. And that has stopped me.

One of my friends, a fairly well to do architect, has spent nearly $100,000 on her T&A along with lipo on the stomach and so many procedures on her face that she no longer looks like herself and I keep checking her, trying the find the old L lurking in there somewhere in the unnatural smoothness of her fifty-five year old face. Like a death's head. Her breasts are perma-perked and she sleeps with men twenty years younger than herself.

What do you talk about with them? I ask her.
Who's talking? She laughs at me.
Right.

God sometimes I feel unbearably prudish and wrinkly skinned (and saggy-breasted - let's not go there!)

And then, Sweet Jaybuzz, I think I've now seen it all but I haven't.

There is more to come as evidenced by this woman baring it all in her local pub to raise cash for her local football team. She's 102!!!!

Can we stop now please? Is nothing sacred?

Bali and the Forty Thieves

I've missed posting and reading posts. Briefly, power outage, telephone downed lines due to storm, followed quickly by personal flu downtime. Wobbly but vertical today. Catching some news.

Bali is a small beacon in the wilderness but it is shadowed by much evil:

This environmental criminal activity absolutely enraged me and causes me shame as a Canadian. We are tinkering dangerously to begin with on the Kyoto Protocol, Harper being the new Bush poodle.

BP is the usual corporate sleazebag, bleating green whilst destroying vast swathes of pristine forest and diverting more and more water in a world running out of it.

On the upside I was heartened to read of the fresh new Blairless England of Brown
and this wonderful news

And the strong commitment to the Kyoto of the new Rudd government in Australia is also cheering.

I'd better start printing some new placards and marching again on Ottawa.

Good Boys

No, not good ol’ boys, or good little boys, I’m writing of good men that I’ve met in the last wee while here in this microcosm of life that is Newfoundland. And I’m particularly writing of men around their mothers. I don’t have sons so have never experienced this directly.

My mother was dead before her four sons had a chance to be men around her though I did get a small taste with my eldest brother who had this jocular almost flirtatious manner with her. Her face would light up when he walked into a room and he was the spit of her own father, which helped. But I’d watch him cajole money from her or attempt to get her to intercede with Dad or tell her she was the only special woman in his life as he dropped a kiss on her cheek. She was putty in his hands.

My series of husband/serious relationships men all had troubles of some kind with their mothers. In some cases they avoided their mothers, or would vocally castigate the relationship a la Dick and Tommy Smothers, saying that Mom always preferred a brother. And in one case a sister. For some, their mothers had not approved of their marital choices or their children. I had an odd set up with my own mother-in-law. She really didn’t like my husband very much (she definitely preferred his brother) and when he and I broke up she refused to have contact with him and befriended me completely. It might have helped that I had custody of her goddesses, the granddaughters.

My father adored his mother and she him, a fact that troubled my mother greatly and had them (she and her mother-in-law) set up a lose-lose scenario where her enemy became her mother-in-law and vice versa. My mother was never present when my father and his mother interacted but I observed his courtesy and courtly attention and was bemused by this previously hidden facet of my father.

I play cards with my fellow villagers here every week and our large group encompass all ages. Many mothers and their middle-aged sons play. It is their ‘evening out’ together and in most cases the wives/daughters-in-law are elsewhere.

It is a joy to be around the kind of energy these, in some cases, crusty old fishermen, exhibit towards their mothers – this courtly behaviour I had first observed in my own father. Retrieving their lacy shawls, linking them proudly into the village hall before and after the game. Fetching them little sandwiches and cups of tea.

“Are you alright there, now Mum?”

“Ah, you’re such a good boy. What would I do without my boy?”

And for one brief, shining moment you catch a glimpse of the freckled ten-year-old boy in the face of the sixty-plus year old wind-burned, bald fisherman, himself a grandfather.

Good boys.

The world needs more of them.

Me and Mother (Big Corp. Father?) Church, Part 2

Sweet Jaybuzz, what gives here ?

As if there hasn't been enough scandals.

And this is a mighty serious business - retailing Christian tchotchkes pushes nearly 5 billion in annual sales.

Buy a crucifix and ward off the possibility that you too might wind up in a Chinese sweatshop making a Baby Jaybuzz?

With the current tanking of the U.S. economy, it might be a distinct possibility.

H'm.

Worry

Picture is of a bowl made out of local wood by my friend, "G.C."

It hit me again last night as I was driving home from meeting friends. As it has hit me many, many times over the years. The reality of worry.

A worry had been perking all the way through our many cups of coffee, stealing my presence throughout much of the night.

Why, sez I to myself do I let this happen? Let a stupid thing like a blocked up toilet in my bathroom at home interfere with a nice evening out?

And then, next thought, when has a worry actually actualized itself, inserted itself into reality?
When?
And I laughed out loud as I drove.
And came home. And got the plunger out again and rammed that sucker into the toilet and next thing, it flushes. Duh.
What makes me this way?
Well, the last time the toilet got blocked my genius of a handyman was out at the fish for a week and unavailable and I couldn’t get anyone to fix the toilet (nobody from the nearby town would drive out) until I dragged myself literally into the publicity of the local shop and bawled my question out loud after four days of using a bucket.

“Anyone here can fix a toilet? It’s really, really badly blocked!!” When I’m whipped and beaten and down for the count I lose all pride. I become shameless. Not a bad thing.

Well, the town drunk who is a you-have-to-be-desperate-to-hire-me kind of fellow volunteered. And he sorted me out. Early in the day before the fairies took him. He had to take the whole thing off the floor. What some people do for a living - or a bottle - has me in awe. I mean I used to gag changing my babies’ nappies. I tipped him well for his efforts. And knew who to call the next time. At his mother's. He's 55. Doesn't believe in wasting money on a phone when he can use his mother's. He doesn't live there. She has ways of getting hold of him. She even lets him borrow her truck if he has housecalls like mine. But I was sorted. No worries.

No matter what, I get taken care of. Time and time again. Septics, wells, wiring shite, no firewood and no chainsaw, no backdoor. It all gets taken care of.

So why, why, why do I worry about insane stuff?? Stuff that has no intention of ever happening?

Like my gentleman caller. I worried for a while he would make some kind of move on me. I haven’t the slightest shred of attraction to him (maybe the way R felt about me, there’s a thought!). So sometimes I avoided him. All for the worry of losing his friendship when I was forced to reject him. Jaybuzz, the insides of my brain frighten even me.

Well, in the last few weeks, I’ve helped him a few times with his computer issues and he gave me one of his beautiful hand crafted bowls (picture above, taken a few minutes ago), a loaf of his home baked bread and told me he is very much open to having a friend like me and he’d like to cook me dinner and talk some more and play a spot of cribbage, maybe. I do not feel threatened in any way. We have the most interesting conversations (ship wrecks, WW1, artistry, words, poetry, paintings, aging) and never once has he even touched me.
Worry.
Never happens.

The Wise Words of George Carlin

***Picture was taken today of driftwood on the beach by my house, just as sunset enveloped us***

I thought this worth repeating, even though most of you have probably seen/heard it before.

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbour. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...

Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.

Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.

Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Luscious words

"The Dictionary of Newfoundland English" is a massive tome, 770 pages plus a forward. And I read it like a novel. Many words have the scent of Ireland about them, words of my grandparents and particularly the words of my great-grandmother who was a cranky old wan, disliked by many, but kind to me. "I only have room for the one," she said to my grandmother and her daughters, "Just the one great-grand one!" and she pointed to me and that was it. She refused to have the other great grandchildren around her.

She made a bit of an effort with me. She'd call me her "angashore", not quite the equivalent of "dotey pet" which was used by my Granny. Angashore might have been a bit of a step down from dotey pet but coming from the Great and Fearful Nana S., this was a total endearment. Angashore: a weak little thing, a thing to be pitied, coddled, protected and fed, in a correct translation for that era.

Newfoundlanders have made of the word their very own.
Here, in the dictionary we get:
Angashore, Angyshore
(1) A poverty stricken creature
(2) A weak, sickly person, an unlucky person deserving pity.
(3) A man regarded as too lazy to fish.
(4) An idle, mischievous child or person.
(5) A migratory fisherman from Newfoundland who conducts a summer fishery from a fixed station on the coast of Labrador.

In the tradition of Gaeilge, the Irish language, words beginning with vowels were aspirated (an h put in front) when used in complex sentences. Angashore was packed on board the fishing boats leaving from Wexford and Cork sailing for the new found land, along with the bait, hooks, nets and lines way back in the seventeenth century.

And it emerged at the other side of the Atlantic, sometimes, as "hangashore", thus the new definition in (5) above. A stationary fisherman: "hang a shore".

I just love the evolution of language and I particularly like the special connection for me in this one gorgeous word.

On Writing

A hard to get along with dose of writer’s block is behind me. I try not to put judgements around that anymore, it just is, it happens to all writers, I had a hard time with it but don’t we all.
It’s behind me now is all I can say and I’m living and writing to tell about it and there’s a bonus of a couple of new stories for the collection. The characters stir and stretch for a while, sometimes it takes a while for them to introduce themselves. They’re shy. Or in the case of this new one, who remains nameless, she’s always made a habit of waiting so she took her own sweet time coming over and then took another long ream of it before she filled me in, just a little on what exactly made her this way. Not that she had any understanding of it at all, even after her years of therapy. But I thought I could understand it, and have compassion for it and hope that my precious readers do as well when they finally get to meet her and not be as impatient with her as I was at the beginning. For an ideal life for someone else could be far, far from what we’d want for ourselves.
Some people are meant to react to life most of the time. And some of us are gifted with a proactive gene. I know I’m the latter, I was born that way but then it got submerged for more years than I’d like to think about but when it blossomed again, I was pretty thrilled to welcome it back. I’d forgotten about it, you see. Thought it dead and buried. But it was only sleeping. I had put all those years of excellence: winning writing competitions and publishing the school magazine and writing school plays behind me. I diminished them by telling myself I was under twenty then and those were childish things. I put them all away.
And they all woke up about ten years ago. And I started writing again. There were huge globs of it inside me waiting to see the light. And before I knew it, I was published and people were writing to me and telling me I’d helped them in some way to get their own feet stuck by the side of the fire when they’d been out in the cold so long.
And that’s it, I say. Now you’ve got it, there’s room for all of us, it’s a nice big fire giving off loads of heat.
And I quote myself at myself and whoever else would care to listen:
“It is only because I’ve felt the deepest cold that I appreciate so much the warm sunshine”.

The Gathering

***spoiler alert***

Anybody up for discussion on the Booker winner of this year, Anne Enright's "The Gathering"?

I just finished it and overall I enjoyed it very much but was a little confused in parts.

Jem (one of the twins) appeared to be female in parts of the book and male in other parts. Perhaps deliberate?

At times, I was gobsmacked at her sentences, at her use of language and metaphor and the way she describes love and hate and the endless variations in between.

The dark Lamb is always moving in the shadows but had such a profound effect on all who came in contact with him.

I loved how her perception of her family changed with the introduction of Rowan.

Overall I would give it a 9 out of 10, a totally enjoyable read, at times even sublime.

What a relief!

It was all just a huge scam!

We can all bask happily ever after!

Distractions

I was appalled to read The Guardian on line today and catch Climate Wars Threaten Billions when prior to that, over breakfast, I was reading Cold Rush, the Coming Fight for the Melting North in hard copy Harper's. As you have to subscribe to read Harper's on line, I'll sum the very long article up : There is a battle going on for access to the magnificent new trade route opened up by, yep, the Big Melt. Canada is trying to defend her rights to three coastlines now, rather than the two we've had. But when confronted by the neighbour down south has backed away with the plea (I'm again summing up here):

"OK.OK., alright, you can borrow it, but you're going to have to tell us about it before you use it, eh? When you remember, if it's not too much trouble, eh?"

Meanwhile Canada is patrolling the waters and trying to stay out of the way of the new warrior tourists who are busy venturing on to the lands that were formerly frozen tundra and icepacks.

My head hurts so bad after all this, that I go back to sit in front of the fire and work on my niece's Christmas gift.

I say to her a month ago: Would you like me to knit you something?
Yes, she says, knit me an afghan (lap blanket, couch throw, to those uninitiated to the finer arts of knitting stuff).
And how would you like it? I say.
Like all the colours of the waves on the ocean of Newfoundland, she says, every single one.
Righto, I say.
And here it is.

Elder Revelation or HawHeyWhoYah!

I'm a fan of Padraic Colum and have always admired his poem "The Old Woman of the Roads.
I was forced to learn it in school but over the years, it comes back to me and I get this overwhelming feeling of gratitude. Maybe the Sisters of Mercy knew what they were doing, making us memorize all those poems!



Picture is that famous old optical illusion of the young woman/old woman.

I've come to this conclusion:
This suits me: The age I am, the distance I am from everything that used to be important. In this place I now call home, I’ve always felt as if I received a second chance to live. I play house here. I only put up my own artwork, or cards from friends, or photos I like, or my mother’s embroidery. Even the odd poem gets a wall to itself. I use mismatched china and mismatched chairs. And boil a ratty old kettle on the woodstove for my tea. I invite people I like in to my house to share meals with me. And show them some chairs from 1860 that someone found and gave to me, as there were only three of them. Who’d want three? Well, me. I’m so far away that no one can check up on me.

I find I don’t really truly miss the familiar as much as I’d thought. I’d lived on the same street as my daughter and granddaughter forever it seemed. I co-parented my granddaughter to all intents and purposes and saw her every day and she did her homework in my Toronto office. I even went to her PTA meetings when her parents were working and did the parent teacher thing all over again. I thought one day, I might be doing this for my great-granddaughter, who knows. Does it ever stop? You’d think I’d miss the grandgirl. People tell me I must miss her dreadfully, all the daily doings. Well, yes. And no.

It seemed like every time the phone rang in my old life, someone needed something from me. Nearly always. I got tired of that. Call me selfish. I won’t justify myself. My grandy-friends, left behind, complain about all the demands on their time. They’re the sandwich generation, taking care of their senile parents and their rambunctious grandchildren, sometimes all in the same day. They’re fed up. No time for themselves at all. Lucky, lucky you, they say to me. You got out.
Self-preservation has always been my strongest suit. I make no apologies for that. Enough sacrifice, I say. Did I mention I called off two engagements, negated them, because in each case a daughter took a dislike to the situation and threatened to leave home? That’s how enmeshed I was. How much I didn’t know myself. I thought taking care of myself meant keeping my daughters happy no matter what the cost to me.

Now I’ve disentangled myself. I’m left to my own thoughts, my own books, my own writing, my truly, truly own space. Yes, it would be nice to share it with someone, a soul-mate of my own choosing. Maybe that will happen, maybe not. Meanwhile, I think I’ve gotten to know me and like me and honour me for the first time in my life. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

It’s alright actually. And we all deserve a bit of the alright.

A Double Life (or on second thoughts, make that a triple or more).

(Photo, taken by, ahem, me, is of Cape St. Mary's, Newfoundland & Labrador, home to - literally - millions of seabirds) Cape St. Mary's


I think many of us are leading more than one life these days. I know I am. And the odd thing is they are all weirdly separate. I say weird, because I’m an old fart now and these simultaneous multiple lives of mine weren’t even imaginable just a few short years ago.

I can be consulting with a client in China (and China is soooo economically hot right now!) for a couple of hours in the morning, while he is having his late dinner. I can be writing an article in the afternoon for an Irish magazine, I can be taking photographs of the ocean at five, trying to capture a hitherto unseen shade of blue on film, and by night, in front of the fire, I can be designing a new knitting pattern or chatting with knitters (or Knitwits as we call ourselves!) around the globe - one in Connemara, on the West Coast of Ireland, I particularly enjoy.

And what has made all these parallel lives possible? The wonderful world of the internet of course. The World Wide Web.

“You should be written up, Mum,” my eldest daughter, who is extremely high tech, says to me, “You must be one of the few sixty-mumbles who has so utterly embraced the information technology highway.”

Well, yes and no. I meet my compatriots out there blogging well into their eighties. My good friend Miriam, seventy-five, was forced into going on line. By whom? Her mother, who is ninety-three and says it’s the only way to keep in touch with her great-grandchildren and Miriam should be ashamed as they are her grandchildren. Miriam’s mother gave her some lessons on the fine art of e-mailing and now she, too, climbs on board every day.

What I truly love about all of this multiple personality way of life is that I can work in my underwear if I want, and be anywhere I want, which for me is by the ocean in an outport of Newfoundland most of the time, and at any time I want, like 2.00 a.m., which for an incorrigible nighthawk like me works out beautifully.

I still have a lot to learn about I.T., but I suppose being ready, willing and able is half the battle.

And PS, I used to be sooooo jealous of you guys who could link so effortlessly.....and I finally did it, see above, wahoo..

Now if I could only figure out how to link and list my favourite blogs, I'll be, like, so totally insufferable...

Aging (Dis)gracefully

I couldn't resist posting this, sent to me by a friend today......

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN GUILTY OF LOOKING AT OTHERS YOUR
OWN AGE AND THINKING, SURELY I CAN'T LOOK THAT OLD.
WELL.. YOU'LL LOVE THIS ONE.
MY NAME IS ALICE SMITH AND I WAS SITTING IN THE
WAITING ROOM FOR MY FIRST APPOINTMENT WITH A NEW
DENTIST. I NOTICED HIS DDS DIPLOMA, WHICH BORE HIS
FULL NAME.
SUDDENLY, I REMEMBERED A TALL, HANDSOME, DARK-HAIRED
BOY WITH THE SAME NAME HAD BEEN IN MY HIGH SCHOOL
CLASS SOME 30-ODD YEARS AGO.
COULD HE BE THE SAME GUY THAT I HAD A SECRET CRUSH ON,
WAY BACK THEN? UPON SEEING HIM, HOWEVER, I QUICKLY
DISCARDED ANY SUCH THOUGHT.
THIS BALDING, GRAY-HAIRED MAN WITH THE DEEPLY LINED
FACE WAS WAY TOO OLD TO HAVE BEEN MY CLASSMATE. AFTER
HE EXAMINED MY TEETH, I ASKED HIM IF HE HAD ATTENDED
MORGAN PARK HIGH SCHOOL.
"YES. YES, I DID. I'M A MUSTANG," HE GLEAMED WITH
PRIDE.
"WHEN DID YOU GRADUATE?" I ASKED.
HE ANSWERED , "IN 1975. WHY DO YOU ASK?"
"YOU WERE IN MY CLASS!", I EXCLAIMED.
HE LOOKED AT ME CLOSELY. THEN, THAT UGLY, OLD, BALD,
WRINKLED, FAT ASS, GRAY-HAIRED, DECREPIT
SON-OF-A-BITCH ASKED, "WHAT DID YOU TEACH?"

Shore Thoughts

It has been a solitary life, these past few days here. I’ve wanted it that way to get at the book, now that reminders are coming in from the editors. And something stops me and I let it.

I walk a lot by the shore with the dog. I’ve started to follow the example of my neighbour down the way and pick up the bits and bobs that float in with the tides. The ubiquitous water bottles, shot gun shells, plastic bags, chip bags, motor oil bottles. I don’t take any great pride in this, it just is. Part of my responsibility for the planet and this tiny section of it.

I observe how water changes landscape on an extremely intimate level. It has been heavily raining and it stopped today and I watch the many residual streams and rivulets pour into the bay, altering the landscape, washing out some muddy bridges and building new ones. Creating new moats and demolishing old islands of shrubs. The power of water!

I pick up kindling for the fire and collect some interesting twists and turns of driftwood. I compose wonderful poems in my head that vanish before I can get back to the house and put them on paper or computer.

I think about friends and friendships and how sometimes I’ve been a “filler-friend” for others who drop me when they meet someone new. R has done this to me. From a daily contact for a very long time, to zero now that he has met someone. He did not tell me this. A mutual friend did as I was puzzled by his unresponsiveness to my emails. I must admit to being hurt. And saddened. And I try not to let my heart harden up to any future friendships with the males of our species. And I reflect on my male friendships that survive. And the female ones that always do, come hell or high-water or the best new lover in the world.

I sort many things out on these long shore-walks. And bring my life into today and the moment and doing the next right thing like picking up another tossed plastic bag on the beach

And speaking of heaven.....

Me and Mother Church

There were many nudges along the way. Many ‘clicks’ – you know, that little ting, like a bicycle bell, a little alert that the world and more specifically Mother Church was not as sane and sanctified as all around me believed.

I think my first awakening, or more a little frisson, was at the Catholic Convent School I attended. We would go to mass in the convent chapel on a fairly regular basis. None of us were allowed near the sacred place, the altar. We couldn’t touch anything, the vestments, the altar cloths, the hardware, or go anywhere in front of the altar rail. The nuns, of course, were allowed to launder and steam-press the precious linens, and they did so in gratitude and humility, being the brides of Christ.

They couldn’t serve at Mass. But my ten-year-old brother could. He was an altar boy and had higher standing than any of the nuns and of course stood head and shoulders above us, the convent girls. In the eyes of Mother Church. My filthy, nasty, little brother was now on Godplanet while those of us sans penis were consigned to the trash heap outside the altar rails? Ting.

And then there was the matter of my mother’s last ‘confinement’ – a lovely old-fashioned word. She was forty-three. I was thirteen. On a blog entry a while ago, I wrote about an experience she had with a ‘young pup’ of a priest, whilst in this pregnancy:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Bit of Mutton


My mother told me many things,
When breathing deeply of the morning air
As we walked together to First Friday Mass
So our souls would be saved at the last minute.
No matter what we did in between.

Our Lord had promised this, you see.
If we made nine of these First Fridays in a row.
And we did. I don’t remember the masses
I remember our walking and talking
And how we would breathe together.

She would swing her arms and look to the still
Early sky. Breathe, she said, breathe.
It’s good to get the early oxygen into the blood
And leave all the men in the house behind us.
It’s a change for us women to be alone together.


She believed and carried me on the wings
Of her belief in Our Lady first and Our Lord second.
Until the great man behind the red curtain
Told her it was a sin to eat meat on Friday
Even though she was expecting her last.

She was forty-three then, saying she was thirty-nine
And had an irresistible craving for the meat.
She was outraged she told me, that this
Young pup of a priest could tell an aging
Expecting woman her soul was damned.

Forever, she said to me, in spite of the
Nine First Fridays, for eating a piece of meat.
She would burn in hell for all eternity.
How could he know, this young pup,
Of varicose veins and a tired swollen body?

Life is a terrible mystery, girleen,
I don’t know what to make of it at all
I just can’t make sense of him telling me that,
Me old enough to be his mother, that I was
Now damned and going to hell for a bit of mutton?

I got up and walked out of that box so I did.
I did not want the penance or the forgiveness
For this great sin. I walked all the way out the door
And came straight home this past Saturday
And I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------But that wasn’t the end of it in this pregnancy for my mother. In those days, in Ireland, when women had difficulty in childbirth, when labour ceased or there was fetal distress or a myriad other challenges, and the woman happened to be Catholic, a Caesarian section was forbidden by the Catholic Church in collusion with the College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Dublin. The procedure approved was the Symphysiotomy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphysiotomy. See the section on Irish women.

My mother had horrific side effects after the birth of my sister. Her pelvis was shattered and she was unable to sit, walk or stand for six weeks. My sister had to be bottle-fed and my brothers and I took turns with this as my mother was unable to sit and hold her baby and my father was of the era where his masculinity would be suspect if he was ever caught holding an infant. After several months of agony my mother had another operation which involved breaking her pelvis yet again so that this time the bones would knit correctly. She never fully recovered and was not too long for the world afterwards.

When my sister was nine months old and my mother had the use of her legs again, she asked me to accompany her for a special service in the church. Women only and the holy priest officiating.

Childbirth was considered ‘unclean’ then so she had to be cleansed from her unholy act in a ritual called ‘Churching’ – now obsolete.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churching_of_women

And I could go on, but as this is far too long as it is, I’ll stop and continue some other time.

So ask me again why I no longer believe in The Great Invisible Cloud Being?

A brilliant analysis of U.S. Politics {LINK}

Jane Smiley is one of my very favourite writers and she churns up some riveting stuff in the above link - well worth reading.

Like the late, great Molly Ivens, she is fearless in her analysis of how things went so terribly wrong in her country.

The Iraq quagmire is sucking the life out of our neighbour down south, the dollar shrinking, housing markets decimated, personal bankruptcies through the roof, no health care for its citizens, New Orleans a no-go for the people who used to live there, one out of every 150 of its citizens in jail and more jails being built every day, its military outsourced to private and for profit mercenaries (was there ever a name with such a death knell ring to it as 'Blackwater'?), and the Patriot Act in all its permutations stripping the Constitution of any of the 'freedoms' so proudly bandied about by the flag wavers. And the media operating at just about the level of a trained poodle (Blair, anyone?)

And Iran may be the next target for the bringing of 'democracy'?

Bumper Sticker seen on U.S. vehicle here in Newfoundland:

Be nice to me or I will bring democracy to your country too!

Thank heavens for Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann and Stephen Colbert who through satire and wit (and lately a healthy disgust) bring the actual truth to their audiences.

Past the tipping point? {LINK}

This blog started out, way back, as a commentary on the changing environment of the world I live in, mainly the impact of global warming. I slid into other musings and meanderings over the years but today I was brought up short with the above. I also get the feeling that most of us are not being kept abreast of the truly astounding changes in the North. A friend who goes to Greenland on work assignments every couple of months tells me that the ice is just about gone in that fair land and that now the country is being massively mined for diamonds and gold now that these minerals are accessible for the first time, and all the big corporations have moved in.

We are all the Neros, fiddling away while the planet burns up. I remember reading Sci-Fi years and years ago and all of this was foretold, not the warming per se but the complete and utter disregard for the disintegration around us by the planet's governments and citizens. All fiddling away at Walmart and tooling down the great highways in our SUVS while the airconditioning in our homes creaks out its last gasp of energy.

I know we are all saturated with reports, I know we all feel helpless though doing our best to combat it on a minescule individual level. Where are the protests on the streets?

The results of this great meltdown will be horrific and panic will ensue very rapidly when none of our services will be able to keep up with the health needs (new diseases), water depletion, flooding, massive food shortages, etc.

Now what have I done to combat this personally ( share yours and make me feel better!)

I've signed enough protests (Stop Big Corp running our governments!)
and recycling, reducing, reusing goes without saying.
I turn out lights,
I have a tiny car and drive it hardly ever,
I stopped flying (in a plane!),
I am converting my current home to off the grid,
I don't use plastic grocery bags,
I don't buy plastic containers anymore
I stopped using paper towels,
I bought organic seeds for planting a vegetable garden next year
I dug a well
I started a wood lot and harvest trees for winter heating
I try and shop for stuff grown within 100 miles of where I live (a bit of a challenge in a small outport in Newfoundland!) but this quest found me yesterday buying from a bakery that makes scrumptious pies out of local apples, Yay!
I use rechargeable batteries
I do not buy Big Box ever
I buy second hand just about everything
I bought a hand-cranked washing machine (yes, they can be found and yes it is fun!)
I make all my own gifts, all my own celebratory cards

And there's more but they don't come to mind at the moment.

Maybe there's nothing any of us can do to stop this rapid descent into End of Days.

Maybe all we can do is live in the moment and do our own little bit.