Enlightenment

Picture is of Cape Spear, Newfoundland, August 2007
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I felt like pluralizing the above title but decided against it, why contribute to further deterioration of the language - and at my crusty age I should feel ashamed of the temptation.

Answers to life's puzzles come in their own good time. Like the ongoing teaser of the great R puzzle. Now resolved. A further conversation with him last night showed his heart very clearly is in another direction. My investment in the whole thing was entirely removed this morning when he forwarded me a Christian YouTube film about this 13 year old boy whose elderly cow gave birth to a calf and broke her back in the effort. He had to shoot the old cow but as he stood there afterwards in grief the voice of God came into his head to tell him that God had endured the loss of His Only Son so could understand the sorrow.

I was snapped into reality really, really quickly. My mind riffed off on this. God voices in the head have gotten the world into a lot of trouble. See George Bush and his God calling him into war. See The Crusades. See The Holocaust. See the Irish Famine. Then I had the thought that given a Goddess and the same wonky scenario would She have had the same enthusiasm in torture-slaughtering Her daughter for the good of womankind and our 'sins'? While watching and having the power to stop it? Just puttin' it out there.

The R switch has been turned off for me. I found this whole film (and his admonition for me to get out the Kleenex first before watching!) appalling, the brainwashing of the young boy, the attempt to thread the two similarities of sacrifice vomititious in the extreme. Far from R's intent. He was 'inspired'. Another dream bites the dust.

I must admit to shedding a few when Hillary got the nomination in NH last night. I'm not a Hillary hater like many, I've felt from way back, when she was Bride of Bill, that she was the better 'president'. Opportunistic, yes, aren't they all in the cutthroat and Hollywoodized politics of our Southern neighbour? But looking at all the Democratic candidates since the outset, for my money and the future of the planet she is by far the best choice. I absolutely cannot see her sacrificing any more youth to this undending war on so-called terror, her past votes be damned. Politicking. And we need more women in politics. We need more of an equal gender balance however we get it. Compassionate people get slaughtered out there in the voting trenches. Given a chance, I think she will do her best to clean up the mess and initiate universal healthcare and education. If the pot hasn't been totally licked dry by the Incumbent and his cronies.

Remind me, who are the terrorists again? They are currently patrolling the Persian Gulf. How would the U.S. react to Iranians patrolling their war ships in the Gulf of Mexico? Little speedboats wouldn't be it. Nuclear warheads more like. WW 3 for sure. And the bought-and-paid for MSM falling over themselves to pontificate on the threat of the little speedboats on their own waters against those "benign" humungous battleships? There's money to be made in tham thar war zones!

Mixed Signals?

I had a lovely dinner with R on Tuesday at his insistence. He was pacing the lobby of the restaurant when I arrived and rushed to hug and kiss me.

He was very insistent on a table rather than a booth and then to my astonishment sat beside me. The backstory to this is that when he was with me in NL I had talked of my last great love who had always sat beside me rather than opposite me in restaurants.

He said he had a huge apology to make to me at the outset and that was for the ignoring of my birthday when he was with me. All the way back to TO in the plane he had beaten himself up for this and many times since. I was gracious, of course, and acknowledged the depth of his remorse and also the fact I had forgotten it, which was true.

He could not keep his hands off me and apologised several times, telling me he had missed me so much. He told me had been seeing a woman who had since dropped him (and I was so pleased I had intuited this on the dry spell of e-mailing!) and also that he had an eye on another and didn't know what to do. I queried him on experience in the dating scene prior to his marriage. Just about zero. I said maybe he needed to lighten up and just date several women and not think everything was a huge commitment. This hadn't occurred to him. I'm not surprised at this as I miss the bleeding obvious so many times that I never condemn it in others.

I told him of my gentleman caller and how lovely it was to feel like a romanced woman again. As he was touching me (mainly arm stroking) I realized how much I miss that kind of intimacy, not so much the boinking but the touching. He seems to trigger that in me. I hesitated to tell him this - I've never dealt well with rejection - so didn't and in hindsight I'm glad.

We had a 3 hour dinner and at the end he hugged me many times, told me how much he appreciates me and how he felt so much better having had a chance to talk to me.

I should add he is an only child, always has been, parents now dead so no one in direct family to talk with. I think he sees me as a very loved sister. The women he is attracted to are age appropriate also which pleased me no end and of course makes him look more attractive to me.

But the thing is, I get a little worked up when I'm with him. It could be attraction, it could be a freshly woken kind of lust, or just the need of intimacy.

Oh, and he no longer wears a wedding ring and I did comment on this and he was delighted I noticed.

I keep thinking of that book ~





~ and just letting go of any romantic notions while still being his close friend. Easier said than done.

Transition.

It’s a word I’m quite fond of. It seems to envelope me lately, being back in the big city of Toronto ‘n all from my little village in Newfoundland.

I am sorta wearing my grandgirl lately, she packed her bags and landed up here


with me on Wednesday and I dropped her off home today but am picking herself and a pal up tomorrow. We have missed each other most dreadfully. She and pal are going to help me sort out my lockers (my stuff, my stuff, as George Carlin would have it) and then spend overnight up here in this fancy schmancy house I am house-sitting for four months.

I’m in the lap of non-owned luxury here down to the whirlpool tub and monster flat screen TV (my prior opinion confirmed, 400 channels and nothing to watch). Lots of security to protect their stuff. Remote controls everywhere, for light dimming and fireplace tuning and built in speakers everywhere music selection.

I’ve landed smack dab in the midst of someone else’s life. A very respectable life.

Family photos everywhere and well thought out pictures of places visited, hills climbed, mountains skied, seas swum. Being the under-the-rock-peeper that I am, I keep speculating on what secrets they must carry, mother, father and their now adult and living away from home children. One of each naturally. Male child older, naturally. It is so darn perfect this house. A kitchen that belongs to Martha Stewart, bathrooms designed for creative purposes involving candles and expensive lotions. Clean and organized but not neat enough to make you barf. Tilley people I call this couple and their like. You know, lots of khaki clothes and those hats that float and ne’er a cross word passing their lips. Ever.

I think if I had to live this life all the time I would quietly prop myself in a corner and open a vein and bleed out slowly.

Which confirms yet again why I was never marriageable material. I should have taken the alternative plunge at an early age in Ireland and become mistress to a series of wealthy old men who wouldn’t bother me much, being of pre-Viagra vintage, and been indulged in all my mad passions for writing and art and music and travel and eccentric conversation. But in the era I emerged in Ireland, I would have been ex-communicated both by my family and the Church. And that would have bothered me then, being pre-feminist and unenlightened as to the misogynistic ways of the Baby Jaybuzz 'n all and no clue as to the acquiring of the means to provide the afore mentioned lifestyle to, by and all for my little ol'self.


I spent today with a dear friend out in the 'burbs, admiring her new paintings, winding up late in a Scrabble Game in front of the fire with grapes and cheese and polish sausage and really good pale Christmas cake and chai. I am blessed.

And more on R when I process what happened on Tuesday night over dinner.

2007 ~ 2008

Naw, this is not a good resolution list posting. Or bad resolution list for that matter.

This is always a time of reflection for me, the turning cusp of the year, looking over and slightly behind at 2007 with its dreams and aspirations, its joys and sorrows and ahead to 2008, looking like one of those piñatas, ready to be broken open but slowly and carefully and over the long stretch of twelve months ahead (with one bonus day – it’s Leap Year!).

2007 Sorrows:
Personal
A dear friend moved to the ether in the past year. I will never hear him sing “Mammy” again or hear his wicked Scottish jokes.
Another friend of forty years is so careless with our friendship that she never emails, writes or calls back while I am away. But she is also careless with herself and even though extremely wealthy lives in squalor, so I have my answer. Nothing to do with me but how she feels about herself. A life lesson learned late and very slowly.
Global
Ongoing wars, famine, genocide.
Water shortages, global warming, common welfare being run for profit - health, education, water.


2007 Joys:
Personal
I find hard to count, there are so many. And I realize more and more as time moves on that none of the joys cost any kind of money. They are the whales that frolic, the hiking with the grandgirl, friends who come and stay, fish stews bubbling in the cast iron pot on the cast iron stove, writing, reading, knitting, ‘visiting’ and being visited, card games in the village hall, walks on the shore, the hope of one last great love, a gentleman caller who bakes for me and makes me a bowl and ‘visits’. The wild lynx on my property in Newfiondland, the bluejay who hops on the railing every morning, the gros-beaks who flood the trees in extravagant streaks of yellow, the otters who come and play at my front door.
Global
Code Pink, Al Gore, Keith Olbermann, Rick Mercer, Michael Moore, The Green Party, Fellow Bloggers


I just finished a lovely road trip with my daughter, and I'm staying in her house for a few days until I move into another Toronto house I will be taking care of for four months while the owners are away. I want to see two movies tonight, New Year’s, and as the grandgirl’s plans have fallen through (oh, the uncertainty of a 13 year old’s life!) she is probably going to come with me. Which would be lovely.

I am kinda laying low, observing R come to the surface again, now that I am back and he wanting dinner with me tomorrow night and emailing me every day for the last two weeks. I am really, really curious as to where he’s at, but I don’t nurture any hope after our week together in the summer.

The grandgirl just read me a marvellous short story she wrote about Zimbabwe and a mother and daughter there. I was moved to tears and profoundly affected by her writing and recognise her awesome talent and take a teensy bit of credit for all the writing projects we have been doing together since she could read.

And here is my wish for all of you out there in Blogland for 2008 – an Irish Blessing.

May you always have
Walls for the winds,
A roof for the rain,
Tea beside the fire,
Laughter to cheer you,
Those you love near you,
And all your heart might desire
Cosy beside you.

Look Carefully

at the NASA photo above and you'll see a little white dot. This minute speck is Earth seen from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it exits the solar system, nearly 4 billion miles away.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Currently I'm in: Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.
Why: Waiting for daughter's flight from Toronto.
Listening to: Maddie Prior, Steeleye Span ("all around my hat")
Watched: A lecture by Naomi Wolf on The end of America
Weather is: Unbelievably mild
Planning: A midnight picnic of seafood and salad
Wrote: A strange story of a marriage which falls apart.

My wish for everyone out there: Go mbeirimid beo ar an am seo arís!

Which translates to: May we all be alive this time next year, which was said as a prayer during the nights of Advent when the candle in the window was lit by the youngest of the house when I was growing up in Ireland.

Thank you all, my faithful blog readers and writers!

Happiness is an inside job

Picture is of the boats on a beach at sunset not too far from where I live.

You know what? I’ve come to the conclusion that most worries and anxieties never ever happen if we don’t pay too much attention to them. If we do pay an inordinate amount of attention I think there is something about the laws of attraction that actualizes the worry for us. A subconscious willingness for the dreaded event to happen – the husband to leave, the money to be gone, the job to disintegrate.

“If only” is the mantra of those who believe that they can’t create their own happiness from within.

If only the kids were grown, if only I was retired, if only he didn’t drink so much, if only she’d lose weight, if only she wasn’t on my case so much, if only the mortgage was paid, if only I could get that Mercedes, if only I could have that big house in the burbs.

I was thinking of a good friend of mine, A, who never seems to be happy. She’s a lovely woman, from my neck of the woods back home. Generous to a fault, puts her money where her mouth is politically, socially very aware. But never, ever happy.

Her mother died when she was nine and she took care of her father and younger siblings and became a teacher. She had a doomed love affair in Ireland. He went off to be a priest and subsequently it didn’t agree with him and he left the priesthood and married someone else. By that stage she had long moved to Toronto and had married a second best. She had three children in three years, a pair of twins following a singleton. Husband was an abusive alcoholic and she left him.

A raised the kids by herself with the help of friends. She‘s the type of person that everyone loves. A brilliant pianist and wonderful conversationalist, active politically, a committed feminist.

When the kids were in their early teens she was at an Irish party and who should walk in but her old love, H. He was a visiting lecturer at U of T. Their love was reignited and within a year he had left his wife and four kids in Ireland and moved to Canada to marry her.

That would make A happy, yes? Well, no. His youngest was still very young so H would spend Christmases and part of the summer in Ireland (staying with his ex-wife). That didn’t make A happy. She felt she deserved all of him. She understood about the kids but thought they should come to him for the holidays. He wanted to be there in his children’s home to give them what they were missing during the year.

This, to me, was the classic example of everyone putting themselves out to make others happy with no one happy as a result.

In the past few years H has been diagnosed with a slow terminal illness and A is now worried about money and the fact that her kids are now grown and have moved off to other continents doing amazing work. She had raised them as socially aware, compassionate world citizens. She had hoped the kids would be around her forever, geographically speaking. A has got a great job, so does H, they have loads of money. But not in her mind.

I came to the conclusion that no matter what happens, A will never be happy.

Like a lot of others. The classic case of always feeling there is something missing. Like the enlightened priest said about confessions:

Isn’t it odd, he said, that when a prostitute comes to the confessional all she can talk about is God and when a priest comes in all he can talk about is sex?

What would make you happy? My ex-husband said to me, way back in the day, I gave you everything you ever wanted: a daughter, a house, a dog and a piano. And you’re still not happy. And he was right.

I still had to grow up then and learn a lot of life lessons that were painful But it is only through pain we grow and I know for sure we can’t skip around it to do that, but we have to walk through it.

How can you be happy, they now say to me. You live alone, you must be sad there is no one there to share your life.

I’m very happy, I say, if HE shows up, all well and good. But meanwhile there’s a life to be lived, and it’s my one and only wild and precious one so I’m going to live it. I make a choice to be happy every morning.

And it’s got nothing to do with my kids or my house or my stuff or my car or my other. But everything to do with how I’m feeling about ME today. And if I’m not feeling that good about me I’d better take a good long hard look at myself and fix what’s ailing me.

'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...