Uninvented Words

We don’t have a word that describes those moments suspended between the fearful and the brave, the ugly and the beautiful. Moments like this for me have involved animals. Perhaps other languages have that strangeness of feelings covered. Like funerals when you want to laugh, and weddings when you want to cry.

And a cat I saw the other day. It had been hit by a vehicle, no doubt, and dragged to a nearby snowbank. A tabby who looked like he was asleep, but the bright red blood on the snow told his story. The sleek fur of the cat and the invisible wound bleeding his life onto the hurting-white snow, his owners still unaware of his dreadful fate. An awful and indelible portrait. Savage beauty.

And speaking of cats - I was between cats once. Working cats as it turned out because my house became plagued with mice.

Mice have terrified me since I was three years old and one ran across my bed. I had them mixed up with rats in my imagination and thought they would eat my nose right off my face. I could hear them behind the skirting (base) boards of my bedroom in the ancient old house in which we lived. My father, to his credit, honoured my terror and every night would go around the circumference of my bedroom with a hammer and nails, banging fresh pieces of wood on to the existing skirting boards to keep the mice ‘out’. Then he would sing me my song and only then would I fall sleep. When I look back at those moments they are strung between the horror of another mouse on my bed and the love of my father who performed this ridiculous nightly act to keep my terror at bay.

But back to the story. The invasion of mice in my house was finally dealt with by a professional pest control service. But in the meantime, one had managed to infiltrate the piano and in the middle of the night would scamper up and down the keys playing these light tinkling glissandos. I called him Beethoven. My dog of the time, a very intelligent Lhasa Apso, had a ‘family’ of small stuffed animals that she liked to groom and carry in her mouth around the house only to regroup them in different areas. She would line them up in various locations in the house as if for a photograph. There were ten of them and they all had names. If you asked her for ‘Pooky” she would select the right miniature and bring it to you. Ditto for “Dusty” and on down the line. A dog enchanted with her own cleverness. Over breakfast one morning, I was looking at the latest arrangement of her family, poised between the living and dining rooms and realized there was an unnamed extra. Yep. It was a freshly groomed dead mouse, all his fur slicked beautifully into place by the maternal dog. Suspended between throwing up and screaming and laughing. That was me.

A condition for which there is no name.

LAUGH

The leg of the evening

I hosted my annual women’s brunch yesterday. Fourteen were in attendance. Over the years the numbers wax and wane as southern and warmer climes beckon some of the invitees. Other times, to my surprise, there is a wealth of women, thirty-six was the all time high achieved about ten years ago.

The day lingers long and lovingly, beginning around eleven in the morning and tailing off at around ten at night. After polishing off the big meal, we snack on the leftovers throughout the leg of the evening, the cheese and fruit trays, the plum pudding, the cinnamony thingies.

I prepare standard fare, this year ably assisted by the grandgirl who throws herself into co-hosting and who just may carry on the tradition as the whole event fascinates her. We had wild salmon on a long platter, my famous egg strata dish, equally famous curried cabbage, perogies, Irish soda bread, croissants, fruits, cheese, desserts, potatoes, ham, Irish tea, strong French roast coffee, juices, neglected wine.

Photo taken after the savaging of the feast.


There are many Irish in attendance so the conversation loops around our Irish experiences, upbringings and evolution, emigration, feminism, relationships, Canada, politics, passions.

We touch on those who are no longer with us -far too many.

We follow some of the tradition of my mother’s Nollaig Na Mban celebration in Ireland and halfway through we have a little meditation to the spirit of Saint Brigid and ask her to take all the trials and tribulations of the previous year and put them away so we can get on with the new year.

And then I pass around a basket where everyone blindly selects their gift. This year they were silver stones in tiny frothy lace bags with different words on each that everyone had to open and reflect on. All had particular and unique meaning for each participant.

Mine was “Laugh” and even though everyone present thinks I am a reasonably happy and content person, I recognised that I have a doom and gloom philosophy when it comes to politics and global warming. I need to lighten up and stop taking it all so seriously. I am limited - I can only take care of my own tiny section of the universe. I shared this.

And today my daughter forwarded me a very good article that I’ve taken to heart:

It would be possible to write an entire book on the psychology of disaster. Fire and flood, earthquake and tornado, explosion and collision, robbery and arrest — our response is always the same. The Irish potato famine, the 1929 stock-market crash, and the rise of Nazism were all received in the same manner: widespread denial, followed by a rather catatonic apathy. But those historical events at least reached an end.

The systemic collapse that we are now undergoing has no such end. There will be no return to normal. There may very well be a return to happiness, but there will be no return to "normal." We will become like the Australian aborigines: naked on the outside, but with a rich interior life. There will be no more television. And that is why it may be obsessional and ultimately self-destructive to be talking about disaster.

It would be more positive, more pro-active, to deal with survival skills, rather than with prophecies of doom. Instead of reading one more article about the fact that food prices are skyrocketing worldwide, it may be healthier to get out the seed catalogs — which are being published at this time of year — and ask oneself: Which corn is better, Iroquois White, Mandan Bride, or Painted Mountain?

See the rest of the article here.

And next I hauled out my Terra Edibles Organic Catalogue and plotted ordering and planting some new stuff for the acres on the Avalon.

All photos taken by the grandgirl

John McCain will be the Next U.S. President

The outcome of this U.S. election affects everyone in the world. If the Project for a New American Century continues its empire building mode there will not be peace in our time or anyone else’s for that matter. Not to mention global warming solutions and other dire, pressing issues.

As a Canadian, I am concerned. Water is evaporating rapidly in the country to the south of us and even though Canada has diverted much of her water to accommodate the crisis, more and more is required. Force may be used to get it. The next wars will be fought for water.

I signed a petition today from the ‘rest’ of the world to the nominees now left in the US election.

Though I’m left feeling cynical. As if these anointed will pay attention to the world outside the bubble of the U.S.

Why do I think John McCain will win the election?

For many, many reasons. But the big one is the cult-like support of Obama. To my eyes and ears this is not a political campaign. A worship of an idol, yes. And, particularly the media adulation of him beggars belief - this very same media who are bought and paid for by Big Corp. Remember? And who went after Bill Clinton’s dalliance with the fervour of a pack of rabid dogs and have blithely ignored the current incumbent’s monumental law-breaking, murdering, torturing policies which would have him impeached a thousand times over if there were such a thing as an impartial press.

I hold nothing against Obama, I believe he is a wonderful human being, given to the type of oratory that Martin Luther King used to captivate an earlier generation. At times, if one closes one’s eyes, he even sounds like MLK. He is a gifted speaker and no doubt a marvellous lawyer. But he has only been in the Senate since 2004 and he admits to some very poor managerial skills and no one, but no one, is asking him the right questions. If one listens carefully to the inspiring rhetoric, one realizes that he keeps pointing the fingers back at the audience, the hope will come from YOU.
Now, what change are YOU prepared to make?

Also, is no one else outraged at the misogynistic statements being made over and over again about Hillary. Are the so-called feminists that I have revered over the years now all retired or brain dead? It is open season on her legs, her voice, her tears, her hair, her pantsuits, her philandering husband and today, again, it was her child, a grown woman of 27. The media blasted Hillary for “pimping out” her daughter. And who can forget that most horrific T-shirt in election history: “If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!”
Where was the outcry of feminist voices? Hillary is a woman who has fought pro-bono for years for the betterment of women and children. No one talks about this. She’s got the backs of women of all ages, particularly those of the poor, and women have turned on her in stupefying numbers.

She is even criticized for putting her own money into her own campaign. Everything she does/is/says comes under a negative microscope of such epic proportions that it makes me squirm for her. But in spite of this she continues. She does not wilt, her belief in herself and her country keeps her moving. Backbone? Of steel.

In all the adulation surrounding the multiple-Kennedy endorsement of Obama, no one thought to mention that Robert Kennedy Junior, one of the world’s leading environmentalists and also a River Keeper, supports Hillary. If Ted Kennedy had supported Hillary can you just see the headlines about Chappaquidick all over again? But the media was silent when he threw his shoulder at Obama. This man was complicit in the death of a young girl then and did not notify authorities. She struggled for hours in an underwater car that he managed to escape from and he went to a hotel and slept. I mention this to show how silent the press was and is.

Isn’t anybody suspicious about this media complicity? All aboard the Hillary hate wagon and let’s all worship the untried and inexperienced Obama? Talk of brainwashing! Well, there are a few lone voices of reason out there.

I quote Erica Jong:

As a senator she has learned compromise and negotiation. She has gotten to know red America as well as blue. If she could win over the rednecks in upstate New York, she can win over any American. She knows this country is full of "security" moms as well as soccer moms. Since she is a woman, she has to show she's ready to be commander in chief. Hence her "triangulation" on Iraq and her signing the absurd Lieberman-Kyl resolution, which calls on our government to use "military instruments" to "combat, contain and [stop]" Iran's meddling in Iraq.
By the time it came up she must have known the Cheney-Bush war profiteers would never embrace even partial peace. She had to win over her America and theirs.
Who ever got elected in the United States without moving to the center? Not Ralph Nader the narcissist, nor Ross Perot the spoiler, nor certainly Adlai Stevenson the "egghead," nor Ronnie Reagan the red-baiter from Hollywoodland. Dubya presented himself as a "compassionate conservative" and our dopey press bought it. They inflicted him on us because they thought Al Gore was a nerd. The right-wing media barons happily smeared the better man for no good reason. Noam Chomsky predicted all this 25 years ago, when he said that the concentration of the media would rob us of real news.
It certainly has. We can read all we want about Britney, Paris, Heath, Tom Cruise, the Spice Girls and all their buds -- dead or alive -- but we can't read about how many children have been maimed in Iraq, or their dead and legless or armless mothers and fathers who were shocked and awed. But we know it's happening. And we feel the great weight of our complicity.

I look into my crystal ball and with dread, predict what’s going to happen to get the Republicans back into the White House and the 100 Year War promised by McCain.

Obama will win the nomination and then he will be torn limb from limb by the ravening hordes of the so-called impartial media. (Just remember what they did to Gore and Kerry!)

The brilliant attack dogs of the Right will begin the prolonged lynching:

· On his colour - why doesn’t he ‘own’ the white side of his family, his mother’s side?
· Why does he have the middle name ‘Hussein’? Isn’t that a Muslim name?
· Isn’t the black side of his family Muslim?
· Did he not attend a Muslim school?
· Isn’t he on the Muslim side of the war on terrorists?
· Isn’t this how the Muslims are coming after us here?
· His father has multiple wives.
· He is for legalizing drugs (marijuana)
· He was a drug user himself
· He has no experience in fixing the economy.
· He’s never been a manager.
· And on and on and much, much worse.

And who’s left standing after all of this: Good ol’ Vietnam Vet, 100-year-war waffling (on just about everything – check him out!) John McCain. Everyone’s grandpa. Bush's very own teddy bear.

And I’m praying I am so wrong on this but my intuition tells me I’m right on. Please let me be wrong.

{Sorry it is such a long post but I feel so strongly that the world is headed for such a monumental collision course!}

TGIF and a Joke to go with it!

In the fine tradition established by Grannymar, I decided to post a joke here to cheer us all up, particularly us snow-bound Torontonians. Enjoy!

You Don't Have To Own A Cat To Appreciate This One! You don't even have to like 'em!


We were dressed and ready to go out for the New Year's Eve Party.

We turned on a night light, turned the answering machine on, covered our pet parakeet and put the cat in the backyard.

We phoned the local cab company and requested a taxi.

The taxi arrived and we opened the front door to leave the house.

The cat that we put out in the yard, scoots back into the house.

We didn't want the cat shut in the house because she always tries to eat the bird.

My wife goes out to the taxi, while I went inside to get the cat.

The cat runs upstairs, with me in hot pursuit.

Waiting in the cab, my wife doesn't want the driver to know that the house will be empty for the night. So, she explains to the taxi driver that I will be out soon, "He's just going upstairs to say goodnight to my
mother."

A few minutes later, I get into the cab. "Sorry I took so long," I said, as we drove away. "That stupid bitch was hiding under the bed. I had to poke her with a coat hanger to get her to come out! She tried to take
off, so I grabbed her by the neck. Then, I had to wrap her in a blanket to keep her from scratching me. But it worked! I hauled her fat ass downstairs and threw her out into the back yard!"



The cab driver hit a parked car.

Thank you!

Thanks to the most excellent blogger HULLABALOO for this unexpected little gift on this oh-so-stormy-snowy night in Toronto.

Drowning in our own Waste

I was alarmed to read this in The Independent today:

It seems that in the past year this plastic garbage swamp, floating in the Pacific, has grown from an area the size of Texas to an area twice the size of the continental U.S.A. .

Why should we be concerned?

Well, any seafood you eat is permeated with this crap. Not to mention the minced seafood fed to the ground that nice salad left and that roast chicken....?

The Use and Abuse of the English Language

Here's the rest of the story.

Now it could be me and the aging process but when I first saw this headline on BBC news today, no less, I immediately thought - is this some dreadful disease that has befallen the clergy of the Catholic Church? Or maybe they're just all aging into their declining years?

Wrong on both counts as it turns out. It seems that the numbers of clergy are on the decline.

Now what would you have assumed from the headline?

Gobsmack

Ski Dubai


Just when you think you've seen it all, there comes the time of the digital building, where you can watch both sunrise and sunset staring out the same window without moving from your chair:

Skyscraper with rotating floors.

Of course Dubai is also the city of indoor skiing. Why not have skiing in one of the hottest countries on the planet?

I have no idea what energy consumption is involved in all of this but I would venture that the enviromental footprint is mind-boggling.

The Don Valley Parkway

The DVP at night, courtesy of The Toronto Star.

This great swoop of curving roadway was one of my first introductions to Canadian life. In the late sixties it was this sensuous flow of four lanes, divided in the middle by shrubbery and grasses bringing the inhabitants of suburbia to downtown Toronto. I had never seen anything like it in Ireland, it literally bewitched me. It was like every American movie come to life. The huge finned cars apeeding so carelessly along its smooth surface, their (AM)radios blaring The Rolling Stones and The Beatles.

We were in a carpool for work, my husband and I, and we rode this exotic serpentine twice a day for a few years as we lived in Don Mills which was considered the outer limit of suburbia then. In the larger cars of those days, there were six of us. We all took turns with our cars and the week it was your turn you also paid for the parking which could amount to a whole dollar. We were all young and broke and shared our personal stories on the journeys back and forth. Not that there was much of a story to any of us as we were all so young and just starting out in independence of our parents.

Over the years the greenery in the middle was removed to make way for more lanes and an enormous expansion effort extended it to the new outer limits of suburbia.

Needless to mention, it has never kept up with the north-south traffic flow and is known by all as the Don Valley Parking Lot.

Because of where I live temporarily now, I am forced to use it, but thankfully not at rush hour (was there ever a more oxymoronic term than rush hour?)

There is a strong sense of deja-vu as I negotiate its twists and turns. I remember the old days of the car pool and where we picked up the other passengers. And I realize that was forty years ago. And how we've all lost touch. Some of us could be dead even.

The DVP has also got a reputation as being "haunted". Folklore has it that it was built along a native burial ground. This apparently explains why often a solo car will have a fatal accident, all by itself. Or two lone cars will crash into each other late at night when driving conditions are perfect. And far too many have suicided from the bridges that span it.

I get a little fanciful, thinking this could be symbolic of life itself, this DVP. The unreachable bridges overhead, carrying trains and other passengers. The depths of the river by its side, coming back through dedicated volunteers from being a dead river to a thriving and alive one. A trail has been added for joggers and cyclists and walkers by the riverside, hidden from the parkway overhead. A secret world.

I hear the summer heat presses a cloud of pollution down its whole length. Thankfully, I haven't witnessed that and I will be long gone back to Newfoundland by the time each summer rolls around.

But I do get the sense that the DVP and I are somehow intertwined in each other.

And this is my 110th Post. I missed announcing my 100th. Well, yay me!!!

Sterile Suburbia

My family came for dinner tonight.
They drove up to this suburban haven of large houses, double garages, and vast swathes of lawns from the city.
They remarked on the silence - quiet wealth makes no sound.
The trees are carefully landscaped and calibrated to enhance the neighbourhood. White birch, low slung colourful shrubbery and precise flowerbeds carved out of eye-hurting emerald green lawns.
There are no sidewalks.
Every house has got security and has picturesque ye olde outdoor lighting.
The front windows are all in darkness.
There is never any life on this street.
I assume any life takes place in the back of the house.
SUVs (and they are nearly all SUVS) are shunted quietly into the double garages and the doors slide remotely shut.
I imagine the installation of an outdoor clothesline would be a valid enough reason to execute the perpetrator.
I am a brand new inhabitee of this lofty citadel (nearly a month now) and no neighbour has come to call. One cannot meet them on the street as they are never outside. They slide into their SUVs from inside their garages and glide away to shop, to dine, to attend theatre one surmises.
There is no local shop to walk to even if there was a sidewalk. The nearest park is over a mile away. There is nothing to look at apart from across the street at another house similar in grandeur to one's own.
We discussed the sadness of it all, my family and I. And felt grateful none of us had ever consciously chosen to live in such expensive, soulless isolation.

The Call

Healy Pass, Beara Peninsula, West Cork, Ireland.



I wrote a while ago about the massacre in the land of my maternal ancestors

This morning I was going about my busy day and a little lost in thought, I was gazing outside at the trees and the strongest feeling came over me and I encapsulated my thoughts in the following words:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unblinking

This morning
The eyes in the trees
Focussed clearly on me.

Begging my return
To my mother’s land.
Beara.

Barren, beatific.
Just like she left it
Yesterday.

And I will so.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hadn't planned a trip to Ireland but it seems like Ireland has planned a trip for me.

As I grow older, I respect intuition more and more. More of us should. It gets drowned in modern life, in the wanting of material stuff, the sidetracking into the inconsequential, the gathering, grooming and guarding of the meaningless.

Obviously, Beara has something to teach me. I need to show up for the lesson.

The Reign of Cats & Dogs

Medbh has introduced me to these wonderful pics and each one makes me giggle uncontrollably, even thinking about them does it to me!

Currently two cats and a dog are sharing space with me and I admire how quickly the hierarchy gets sorted out in such matters. One of the cats has elected herself alpha and won't allow the quite large dog into the family room.

The dog is puzzled as she is a total feline fan and allows my grandgirl's cat to groom her - face, ears, in other words the complete salon treatment.

One of my cats was best friends with my dog of the time. The cat always came for our nightly walks, much to the amusement of drivers and pedestrians, there were a lot of double takes seeing the cat and dog marching along together. They also slept together. I think it helped that the cat was huge and tough, he would always swack me one if I didn't get his food down first, before the dog's. I called him my Biker Boy and still miss him, he had a great personality.

Years ago, at my daughter's, I brought my dog to meet her two cats for the first time and we were astonished at how quickly they established pecking order. In one minute, the female cat sat on the stairs blocking it and balefully watching the other two keeping them in order. My dog was in the middle, sitting in the living room and not moving and the male cat was under the coffee table, the lowest wee creature on the totem pole. Harmony reigned.

I would classify myself as a dog person, though cats have wandered into my life and stayed there for lengthy periods of time. But I've rarely been without a dog and have suffered agonies when The Day comes and The Decision has to be made. But overall every moment spent with these four-legged wonders has been worth it.

Understanding Muslims

I was perusing this post of Nick's on being British and the whole topic of race/country/religion affiliations.

It serves more to divide and distance us than anything else. And engender fear like no other. I'm so tired of the pronouncements from people who "hate" gays, muslims, negroes, etc and you turn around and ask them, well do you know any? Are there any in your circle? And the answer is inevitably, no. Most can't even take the time to get to know anyone outside their own comfortable (and smug)safety zone.

In this tiny far-flung planet, we need to celebrate our similarities and there are far more of them than there are differences.

In December 2007, over 2,000 American Muslims were asked what they would wish to say to the rest of the world. This is what they said. A music video for Kareem Salama's "A Land Called Paradise."


A LAND CALLED PARADISE.

Tolerance and understanding = beauty and enlightenment.

Fascism is alive and well in Canada!

Ezra Levant is the type of extreme neo-con we all love to hate. He publishes a ratty little magazine dedicated to those of his ilk (pro-war, let's bomb Iran into dust, let's cleanse the world of Muslims)called "Western Standard" out of Calgary, Alberta.

You remember those Danish cartoons that caused all the trouble in 2006? Well, Ezra took them to his heart and copied them in his hate-mongering little magazine.

A complaint was lodged in short order by an Imam with the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission and our Ezra was charged with "advocating hatemongering".

Here's where it all gets very interesting. This complaint was taking seriously, even though Ezra was perfectly within his rights in using the free speech guaranteed him by our constitution, hateful and horrible though that speechifying was. He was hauled up before the commission and was asked pretty scary questions by a snide little bureacrat about the opinions he expressed and why he expressed them with the penalty of being punished by law.

Ezra had a camera rolling, his wife and lawyer present and even though requested by the government to keep the hearing secret exploded it all on YouTube.

I am horrified and I hope you are too.

Enlightenment

Picture is of Cape Spear, Newfoundland, August 2007
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.