Shrug

I read a sci-fi story years ago where these aliens came to earth and landed in California.

They were amazed at how we hurtled around, locked inside chunks of steel which had no defence mechanisms in place so that when we crashed we often died spectacularly in the wreckage.

With their superior intellect they could see the San Andreas fault line and were equally stunned that earthlings would consciously live in an area that could slide into the sea without any warning.

I wonder what these aliens would make of today, where, through our excessive and unconscionable consumption of carbon-based fuel, we have now created an iceless north pole. Open water in the north pole! A north pole we can boat across!

And are Big Gov and Big Corp concerned? Very. They are wondering how to access the minerals and maybe – hallelujah!- the oil trapped beneath.

Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?

WHAT BREED OF LIBERAL ARE YOU?

Ah, another fun quiz (and my result below)~~

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Peace Patroller, also known as an anti-war liberal or neo-hippie. You believe in putting an end to American imperial conquest, stopping wars that have already been lost, and supporting our troops by bringing them home.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

How does my garden grow?

My potato trench with the stockpile of winter wood in the background.


Gee, I get depressed reading this today from the WaHoPo. Seems like the Central Intelligence Agency (BTW, I count 3 oxymorons in that last!) is getting alarmed about Climate Change as it can threaten the U.S. military installations around the world with the projected marauding hordes of starving populations, particularly in Africa.

Climate change will also affect immigration security, etc., for the U.S.

Is this what it takes to start waking everyone up?

And, as always, it all goes back to I can only take care of my own little section of the planet and here it is again:

And a closeup of my potatoes - organic, fertilized with seaweed off the shore in front of the house. I can't recall when I've last been this damn proud.

Howling at the Moon

James Henson

I see the leading climate change scientist of our time James Henson wants to put all the major oil companies on trial for their deceptions and manipulations of climate change data resulting in high crimes and misdemeanours against humanity.It appears that we are beyond the tipping point.

Pope Benedict

In another surreal outburst the Pope has decreed that only the pure of heart can receive communion. If one is divorced, one is not pure of heart. If one is a former member of the Youth Nazis in Germany, one is pure of heart.


Celine Dion

More like a screech at the moon to my ears. (Sorry fans out there!) She has won an award for the worst cover of all time - for screaming AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long

George W. Bush

In a downhome and folksy move, The Occupant is considering opening a U.S. office in Iran, a sort of a reachout to the youth of the country endeavour. Iran "sticks out too much", he maintains, now that Iraq is all tidied up and cosy. But he wants it made clear, see, it's not a softening of policy. What a relief!

Mayan King Pakal

Researchers are now saying that the previously held belief of a sudden ending to the Mayan civilization is untrue. They believe that it was a series of disasters and catastrophes that ended the dynasty over a period of perhaps two hundred years. Much like what is happening today, I expect.

Jumping the Shark

I imagine most are familiar with the term Jumping the Shark. That is the episode in a favourite and admired TV Series where it all starts to go downhill.

I'm getting a strong whiff of this from the Obama campaign.

He had the gall (on top of his "sweetie" remarks to a female reporter a month ago) to tell HRC supporters this:

"According to Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., Obama then said, "However, I need to make a decision in the next few months as to how I manage that since I'm running against John McCain, which takes a lot of time. If women take a moment to realize that on every issue important to women, John McCain is not in their corner, that would help them get over it."

And get this: from Barack Obama's blog, posted by one of his supporters on how to handle HRC and not taken down by the blog administrator.

Just slit her throat, lock her in a car boot, and drive the car into a river in West Virginia.

Ain’t gonna let no whore screw with the man

Pro HRC comments are removed from his blog whereas the above and many more of a similar sickening vein remain.

And just in case anyone has forgotten, BO steamed into town with the following declaration:



This is not looking good for the world.

Oh yeah, and he voted to let the telecommunication companies implicit in unauthorized spying on private citizens off the hook, and continue surveillance without cause.

Are any of the Obamabots coming out of their coma of CHANGE?

WHAT COMIC BOOK CHARACTER ARE YOU?

FUN STUFF, HAT TIP SHAKESPEARE'S SISTER


Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 85% Batman 70% Supergirl 60% Green Lantern 60% Iron Man 55% Superman 50% Wonder Woman 50% Robin 50% The Flash 50% Catwoman 40% Hulk 30%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Blog Jam

Sunset on the Bay, taken by me


10 LOVES

(1) I love the way my dog does a stately paddle in the sea every night. Just for the sheer joy of it. Head thrown back and this grin on her face. She lets the hair of her belly just touch the water and she lifts her paws high, throwing me an eager eyeball: try it oh two footed one, just try it!
(2) I love the way we all left the community hall after cards last night. It was after ten. We stopped suddenly, as one, and looked at the remains of the maroon sunset striking the still water like a paintbrush below us. My, said Myra who is 91, isn't it grand to be alive? Grand indeed.
(3) I love the way the conductor of a fabulous youth choir Shallaway was spontaneously invited into an Ireland-Newfoundland meeting I was at today and cried as she talked of how her dream became reality and her choir now tours the world.
(4) I love how I rush about tidying up and rectifying really bad areas of my house before the cleaning lady gets here tomorrow.
(5) I love watching the boat building across the bay and how they water tested this large vessel they were working on this evening with all these other little boats running around it. Like a mother duck with ducklings.
(6) I love the smell of the fresh mown grass and the forget-me-nots that are everywhere around the house.
(7) I love how my value has risen in the village because I now have a potato trench with actual potato plants pushing up through it.
(8) I love how certain friends 'get me' as I 'get them'. It is so easy to talk to them. Like shorthand for soulmates.
(9) I love how I'm beginning to tell tomorrow's weather by the colour and condition of the water in the bay tonight.
(10) I love the feeling of this old book that arrived today from the states. Thanks to Abe Books.
It is called "Newfoundland and its Untrodden Ways", a 1907 tome by J.G. Millais that I have wanted for a long, long time. It is bound in red leather and comes from Stanford University Library. Gorgeous doesn't do it justice. It has many old, old photographs and maps and drawings, some worth framing if I can get good copies.
I quote from one paragraph near the beginning:

"St. John's is a quiet old-world place, something between a Canadian town and a Norwegian fishing village. On one side of the beautiful harbour are endless codflakes and a few sealing vessels, and on the other is the main town, built on the side of a steep hill, where electric trams and lights add the one jarring note; but the whole atmosphere of the place is charming and without noise. They discourage the American spirit there, and the man who wants to hustle soon breaks his heart. Business men stroll down to their offices at ten o'clock, and have always time for a cigar and a chat."

I am looking forward to tucking into the rest of it. The interior of Newfoundland, the vast unknown, has always intrigued me.

FLASHBACK

In light of a fresh onslaught of gay bashing reported in the media, I bring you the following:

I was having a lovely evening, having dinner with two of my favourite people – a gay couple I love and respect.

We used my car to get to and from the restaurant and I dropped them off on the street opposite their apartment which happened to be plonk in the middle of Church Street – aka ‘Gaytown,' Toronto

As they were crossing the street in front of my car, another car passed with four yahoos hanging from the windows.

“Faggots!” they screamed at my friends.
“Bum-fuckers!” they yelled.

The rest was unprintable.

My friends neither acknowledged them or even let on they had heard but carried on walking, holding hands, heading into their building.

I called them from my cell phone, I was so upset I was crying. These are good people, kind, caring, volunteering, tax-paying citizens. They’d take my previous dog on vacation with them when I went on my annual trip to Ireland. They’d bring photo albums back of her adventures while in the Maritimes. And she always arrived home with a new dog collar, usually loud pink, usually rhinestoned.

“My god!” I said to them, “Are you guys OK? Did you hear that? I’d like to kill those bastards!”

“Oh, relax,” said Jim, “It’s alright. It happens all the time. You get used to it.”

And what Jim said is what resonates with pain for me all these years later.

Added later:
sorry for the mixup on the comments section and thanks to everyone for reading and commenting!

My Rules of Life---Part Eight

The Dream Book

I thought to wind the series up with this post. I could add a lot more of my ‘rules' but won’t for the sake of brevity.

Interestingly enough, I’ve been receiving a few private emails on this series and I’m only too happy to offer a compassionate ear and a sharing of my own life story. I never deem to give advice as everyone’s journey is so different and it’s always a question of finding one’s own way through life with the answers rolling in of their own accord.

At least that’s how it was for me.

I call them the 2 X 4’s of life – and I’ve been thwacked over the head by them on more than one occasion. There’s nothing like pain to grab my attention and force me to change – my outlook, attitude and circumstances.

I started to write an observation book one time on this whole concept of clinging – whether it is to a person, a place, or stuff. Or pre-conceived ideas. I’ve seen the clinger cling so tight to the ‘clingee’ that it either literally or metaphorically explodes. I’ve seen people stay in unhappy partnerships and heard both sides of the reasons. Which don’t amount to a hill of beans really but involve keeping him or her ‘happy’ or ‘secure’ while the other partner says the same thing. And there you have it – two desperately unhappy people clinging for dear life to the false concept of each other’s happiness until the whole thing implodes, as it inevitably does.

I had a dear friend clinging to her house as it represented the only security she had. She couldn’t afford to take a holiday or go to the theatre as any spare change went to paying down the mortgage. Then her house caught fire with the insurance company paying for the fortune in repairs less the deductible. This was followed within a year by the house being flooded. All the new ceramic tiles peeled off the walls and the floors like yesterday’s newspaper.

At this point she said f*** it. I’m just going to have a good time. And she did. And she’s never been happier.

In my time I clung to dreadful jobs and desperate relationships, friends who betrayed me and poor real estate choices. I would take care of you long before I would take care of me. I slowly learned that life was not about clinging to stuff but about realizing dreams. And the amazing thing was that the dreams didn't have to cost much materially and most were actually free.

About fifteen years ago I heard of the concept of The Dream Book. One buys a large blank journal and proceeds to go through it all page by page, each page headed with a dream. No matter how silly, infantile or hopeless seeming.

I felt a little foolish, taking all those pages and listing a dream on each one, some were childish, some were what I thought impossible.

Part of the process is on the first day of each month I go through each and every single dream and if there has been an effort to achieve even a minuscule part of that dream I write it down. It reinforces my belief that anything, literally anything can happen to make these private ephemeral thoughts come closer to a reality.

For instance, one of my pages said “Write”. I hadn’t written anything apart from my journal since high school.

I followed this with what I had written, where I had submitted it and then my first publication about ten years ago as a columnist in an Irish magazine.

Then my short story collection was picked up by a publisher, my cards were ready for sale, I had a win in a recent Irish poetry competition and a recent request from a new paper here to do a column for them. I write all these things down on the page to reinforce the power of the dream once it gets focussed on every month and then making room for it to move into my life.

Another page said “Open Up Kitchen”. I’d always had these tiny hemmed in kitchens and I love to cook. So I saved my money and a couple of years before I sold the Toronto house I had a wall taken down to open up the kitchen. And one of the first jobs I had done in this old house was to, yes: you guessed it, take down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. It’s symptomatic of opening up my life.

You get the idea. I’ve a hundred dreams (for now) in all stages of development and on a bad day I can look inside the book and realize, hey, there is some magic after all, I did run that marathon in my fifties!

Blog Jam

"Spindrift" by friend Tom Sears.

I am startled sometimes by how full life is and how unexpected the surprises that come my way.
I was invited to a workshop on Thursday, held in a community hall about 150K from here, given by a very inspiring, and as it turns out, quite well known U.S. professor, author, lecturer John McKnight. He had much to say on community development and enrichment, enough to give me an article to write.
He was succint in his analysis of the difference between Canadians and Americans. He said he was astounded to see workshops advertised on the Chicago transit system on how to become "Americanized". He said could you imagine that here, in Canada? And we all laughed at the idea of how to become "Canadianized". Here, he said, you celebrate differences, which is what community is all about. And he then proceeded to share with us how we could improve on that. What made successful communities (less government, more associations) and how to make it all come about.
The event was catered by volunteers who provided a marvellous homemade lunch and endless coffee and tea. Through the windows we could see the crab catches being hauled in by the fishers, the many boats on the water, an iceberg floating on the horizon. On the wall was a huge banner outlining the twenty one reasons it was the best place in Canada in which to live (#7: most eligible bachelors per capita. Me: Where are they?!)
Yesterday I was invited to a BBQ, a last minute kind of thing, everybody was involved in the food preparation and the meal was wonderful. I was startled to ascertain that a most attractive couple who were there were refugees from Iraq, she's an engineer and he is now the local doctor in an outport. We talked of emigration and invasion of sovereign territory and the distinct line that bifurcates your life when you cut your ties with the past and forge a new life in a distant land.
They were an extraordinarily articulate and intelligent couple and meeting them took the devastation of Iraq to an up close and personal level.
Today I took the day off and attended a new farmer's market, a short classical concert, Musica Terraqua, at The Rooms and read (and finished) Jodi Picoult's "Change of Heart". A modern metaphorical messianic tale. I like Picoult's unusual novels. I recommend this one.
Tomorrow it's back to a slew of work that has arrived here and needs urgent attention, playtime officially over.

An Farraige (The Sea) (La Mer)

Off Signal Hill, St. John's, NL, May 2008

The power of the sea awes me. Always has.
At times, I feel her running through my bones. Calling me down.*
I live by her now. When I’m away from her I miss her like a lover.
I love skimming across her in a sailboat, the slap of her waves on the sides, the flap of the sails above, the cawk of seagulls in the distance and reaching over the side to touch her silence.
I love leaning out over the deck of the ferry, any ferry, and seeing her below, the trailing white wake churning behind. The prow slicing the blue depths ahead. Then, later, she rocks me to sleep in my cabin.
I love the power of her iceberg that can pull down a Titanic, and end up innocently, in a small bay (picture above, taken May 31, 2008) slowly unfolding into her mother’s arms.
I love her greed, taking away even more of the shoreline from here, altering headlands and laneways.
I love the gifts she carries, the smooth wood, the clamshells, the feathers, the kelp, the shifting stones.
I love her fury, her temper roaring behind a wall of storming water.
I love how she plays with me, wrestles with me, carries me like a baby.
I love her bounty, the sea creatures she offers us.
I love her white horses, often racing by my window, manes flying.
I love when the fog rolls in and she immediately turns a welcoming grey.
I love the sparkling diamonds of her as she rolls around on a sunny day.
I love how she responds to the moon, her mother, running to meet her, then flouncing off for another adventure.
I love how she has given us life.
And how she can take it away if we continue to insult her.





*
Sea-Fever
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's likea whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
John Masefield

My Rules of Life---Part Seven

ACCEPTANCE

I used to struggle with just about everything and anyone given a small difference in basic philosophy or principle or possession. There was a lot of fear around the unknown, around perceived differences between you and me. The worst inner battle would come around circumstances. Why did you seem to have it so easy and I would be demented from trying to make ends meet. Life was always so unfair.


I was in the habit of always comparing my insides with your outsides. I'd see you so lovely and confident and think, I could be so much more given your looks and your brains and your relationship and your career and even your car. Life was tinged with an air of dissatisfaction. I'd bring an air of judgement and condemnation to any place, person or event I didn't quite approve of. For whatever reason.



There was never enough of this world for me. If I could have slightly more, then life would be a whole lot better.

I little realized that there would never be enough. Happiness, for me, I learned, was a completely inside job. I could never find it out there. It was in that indefinable space within.

And how did I find it? Through a long process of tearing down every faulty tenet of belief I had held so dear and letting go of all the preconceived notions of how I thought the world, with me in it, functioned.

I had to start with accepting myself exactly as I was in the very moment of now. It was never about the money or the wardrobe or the stuff. It was about who I was. I needed to find that. And I think I did. I had to accept the changes that happened to me. It was okay to change. Nothing was written in stone about my life. I could move through it, I could create it day to day. I could write. I could dream. I could read the books I wanted to read. And re-read them. I could shamelessly like old black and white movies.

But the other side of that was I had to accept you as you were as well, disliking the old B&W's and hating Jane Austen and really enjoying your trumpet. That was absolutely fine too. And I had to really mean it. I had to accept your wealth or your fame and not be intimidated or envious of it. I needed to wish you well in everything. I had to let go of the desire to change you. You were exactly as you were meant to be too. You see, I used to get acceptance and approval mixed up. I thought they were one and the same thing. But they're not.



And I'm still learning and still slide a little backwards on this acceptance business from time to time. But my whole life has substantially improved as a result.

My Rules of Life---Part Six

Take Two Steps Backwards

There are many challenges in life. New information filters in every day knocking all other data sideways. Irritations pop up, small annoyances, major catastrophes, job losses, plumbing exploding, appliances expiring.

I tend to get triggered by small stuff. The big stuff can be a shrug, but the small stuff can drive me crazy and I'm a gut reactor to boot. I come up fists flying before I can get a true handle on a situation.

I had to really work on changing myself to take the two step backwards and re-evaluate whatever is going on before I fly off the handle.

In any confrontational situation I find, inevitably, that I'm the one that has to change.

Example:
Today, I had to go and finalize some business taxes with some clients. They are meticulous about their floors so instead of wearing lace-ups and heavy woolly socks like I wanted to, I wore my birks which can be removed easily outside their door. So we sit at their table and go over their taxes and they both chainsmoked. Non-stop. I asked them to please stop as I was feeling unwell with it. They didn't, "oops, forgetting" as they lit up yet again. I raced through the rest of the meeting and as I left I took my two steps back and thought, here I am respecting their floors and here they are disrespecting the very air I am breathing into my lungs. There was no anger in me, just a clean evaluation. If they are not willing to hold off on their smoking while I am there, I'm not willing to jeopardize my health in their home so either they come to me in my smoke free office or they are no longer my clients. Simple. Unemotional.

Before I would have stormed off out of there in a rage, complaining to all and sundry about their continued shoddy treatment of me but next year going back to suffer once again in their home, so that they wouldn't be upset. And so I would retain them as clients. And on.

Several years ago I took this two step backwards approach to one of my core systems of belief - my religion. I examined it from a distance and found it laughably fictional and truly eccentric. I wondered why God wanted so much money from everyone when he wasn't spending it to feed the hungry and house the poor. I wondered at his childish demands on my time and his vengeful punishments for minor misdeeds. I wondered why he hated sex and gays, jews and muslims amongst many others. I marvelled at his misogyny and his insistence on us breeding ourselves into a coma and mating for life. I questioned why he had elevated paedophiles to be pillars of his church. I was amazed I had lived close to over fifty years on the planet and hadn't risen up and seriously questioned any of this brainwashing until now. The rut of cult. I was stuck in the Catholic septic tank.

And even when I'm far too enmeshed in a particular problem and can't see my way out, I take the two steps back and say, now what would you tell a dear friend as to how to handle this situation? It's amazing what I can come up with!

And I've done this for a while now. For the big issues like the invasion of Iraq, climate change, and the war on drugs.

And for the small issues like sitting unwillingly in a smoke-filled room.

My Rules of Life---Part Five

Remain Open to Change


I think being stuck in a rut is the worst place to be, whether psychic, emotional, spiritual or physical.

I know far, far too many people who are. Fearful. Always heading for the safety factor, the government job, the pension, the same hotel, the same vices, the same breakfast.

Sometimes it just feels so damn good to get out of the other side of the bed. And to move the toothpaste to the opposite side of the sink. And try on the grandchild’s cereal. And go to the funky teenage movie. Just. Because. And not to think to oneself when someone offers to do your astrology chart, I’m too old for that nonsense. But embrace it and say, yeah, maybe some mysteries will now get unravelled.

There is nothing safe about the rut to me. It’s an illusion, like most of life. I’ve known people who collapsed and died clutching their first pension cheque (metaphorically speaking) saying, hell yeah, now I’ll head for Paris. They never make it.

Banks have bamboozled us into believing we need all this money to retire. The banks are laughing all the way to the….

I’m an accountant and no, we don’t. Unless you plan on travelling the world forever in an ocean liner like that woman who prefers it to a retirement home – sorry can’t find the link - and that’s just another rut, albeit an exotic one.

The other day, I approached an old codger who plays the accordion. I said to him, I brought an electronic piano out with me from Toronto (I know, I know, awful things but can’t find a second hand piano here yet, although I’ve put word out on the bush telegraph) and I wouldn’t mind maybe a bit of jamming if we could get a few others together? I was fearful doing it but thought damn it, I miss my music so much, it’s time to uncreak the fingers and get a few licks in before I rust away. He said, yeah, hey, yeah. And that was all I needed. Who knows how it will go, and even if it doesn’t I’m prepared to enjoy the journey back to my music.

I could have stayed in Toronto, surrounded by family, friends and assorted loved ones. Safe. But one of my dreams was to live by the ocean. Wake up to the smell, sight and sound of it. And only I could make that enormous change. Or dither indefinitely about it.

And then get too old to make a fresh start – or any other excuse I can locate in the Stuck in a Rut Directory.

Life is all about change. Try telling that to the people who are stuck and they just don’t get it.

And I resist change, of course I do, but I always go back to the thought that being stuck in a rut is like floating inside a septic tank, it’s all warm and cosy inside there but Sweet Jebus, it smells to high heaven.

La Belle France

plus ça change ?

HERE BE THE LIST!

Flag of Iceland

Every country on this poor pock-marked earth should yearn, no make that STRIVE, to be # 1 on this list.

What you might call the real Peace Train.

Well hats off to Iceland - # 1.

And hats off to Ireland, the country of my birth - # 6.

And hats off to my beloved country of choice, Canada - # 11.

AND HERE BE DRAGONS!

And where does the USA rank? Well it made the top 100 at # 97. Way behind Cuba and Rwanda. Countries were rated on various criteria such as human rights and levels of imprisonment of its citizens, etc.

The index looks at 24 indicators of external and internal measures of peace, including U.N. deployments overseas and levels of violent crime, respect for human rights, the number of soldiers killed overseas and arms sales

.

And the response of the US state department?

Commenting on the U.S. ranking, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said to realize a more peaceful and prosperous world, "Often times, you have to do difficult things and a lot of times, people don't agree with them. They don't like them."

"A lot of times you fall down in these lists but at the end of the day it is in defense of democracy and the way of life we have enjoyed over the past several decades," he added.

More here.

Yeah, we'll bomb y'all into peace. Wait 'n see.

And PS, Iraq has been bombed into last place on the list.

Aaaand PPS, Shouldn't peace be, like, the NORM????

My Rules of Life---Part Four

HAVE PEOPLE IN AT LEAST ONCE A MONTH.

Sounds like a really silly rule, doesn't it? But this is a life saver for a loner. Particularly a loner who hates housework. I joke that my standards are fairly low, one of the signs on my wall as you walk in says:
"I cleaned the house last week, sorry you missed it."
And a tea towel in the kitchen says:
"Life's far too short for housework".

I heartily agree.

But I never want to be one of those outright eccentric people you read about that has to be eventually shoveled out of their abodes, drowning in five years of newspapers and rat and cat droppings. And I often feel I could be. Like I'm a dog hair away from that. Not that there's anything wrong with what anyone chooses to do with their lives. But living like a reclusive oddball with a collection of garbage bags, cardboard boxes as decor and an excessive number of cats has no appeal for me.

I honestly believe that clutter can kill creativity and originality. A cluttered and messy house can be a reflection of the person living in it. And I get that way occasionally, piling books upon books and files upon files and not putting away the laundry and letting the dishes stack up in the absence of a dishwasher here in the outport. And between looking for missing bits of my life and stroking the same pile of files seeking the errant one, I realise what an awful waste of time clutter is, as my life stagnates around it.

So the only cure for clutter in my book is to have people in. At least once a month. It keeps me on my toes. And between thirty minutes a day to maintain a semblance of order and outsourcing the floor washing and vacuuming, I stay there. And I'm the better person for it.

And the biggest bonus of this, of course, is the vital connection with others and the maintenance of social graces. I love making pots of tea and baking scones.

Road Trip (again!)

A big mistake this, I'm in a hotel attending a conference which is about 400km from my home. I don't know what possessed me. The drive was in fog and rain and I arrived looking the worse for wear, stressed and tired. I retired to my room early.

I took a photo of my luggage before I left this morning. You'll note the trees are yet to leaf in Newfoundland. You'll observe I keep a very old licence plate on car for sentimental reasons (plate has been on five cars and is now 25 years old!). That will soon change as I need to switch the registration of the car to Newfoundland plates.

The back of the car is jammed with a small bag of dog food, her dishes, her water and her leashes. Laptop, camera, knitting, and very little clothes, just a change a day fill up the rest. I'm one of these people who never overpacks. And I can go for a month with one carry-on bag. That's my French Roast coffee in my Goofy mug (thank you, grandgirl!) and an apple. And one jacket - not rainproof - note to self, bring rain jacket always.

STUFF. It looks appallingly too much, doesn't it. And all necessary.

More Rules of Life on next post.

The picture below is one I took near Kelly's Mountain in Cape Breton a couple of weeks ago. I love the justaposition and flow of the lumber, the water, the mini iceberg and the to die for blues. Click to enlarge

My Rules of Life---Part Three

Photograph of Philip Larkin by Jane Bown



DO NOT BLAME MY PARENTS

I used to. With my handy hatchet in hand, I'd scream to the skies I wasn't loved enough, was abused, wasn't encouraged, was laughed at for my aspirations. Wasn't good enough, was too tall, didn't look like them, was a bad example to the younger sibs. And on and on and on and on. I even bored myself with it all. Until it dawned. The only dysfunction around was the face staring back from the mirror. I could remain a perennial victim or I would take full responsibility for my life.

And that was a process in itself, a long process, still ongoing. And now and again a cloud of blame settles over me and the finger starts to point outward and I am reminded that when that index finger points out, lo and behold, there are three fingers pointing back at me.

And I read, and re-read, this powerful poem by Philip Larkin, I am a major fan of his work.

This be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

— Philip Larkin (1922 - 85)

My Rules of Life---Part Two

EMBRACE SOLITUDE - FIND A PASSION.

It seems to me, in this world I inhabit, that I am perfectly content with my alone status 95% of the time. But that other 5% wherein I dwell can be fraught with loneliness, neediness, the poor mes, and the nobody ever wants me syndrome.

I was swimming around in the Chinese Astrological Charts today and found an interesting paragraph pertaining to me, I was born in the year of the sheep/ram/goat, as was my elder daughter, interestingly enough. So here goes:

Goats often do not fare well in romantic liaisons. They are very high strung and tend to feel insecure. They are worriers. To quell their uncertainties, Goats need to feel loved and admired at all times. Goats are extremely sensitive and will fret over the most trifling things. Conflict within a relationship will make Goats retreat further into their minds or physically remove themselves from the scene.

There goes that high strung thing again. And I do worry - about the teensiest, tiniest things. Never the big issues. And I am the STAR when it comes to retreating. I am hopeless at conflict.

But to get back to embracing solitude. I do. I can honestly say I've never been bored. And this is in a world where I rarely watch TV and don't have one in this house. I fill my time with reading, writing, knitting, learning, the web, blogging, planning and plotting - oh just about anything. And I love socializing but not empty socializing, there has to be meat in it. I make room in my life for many friends and keep up with them all, along with family.

I'm very happy inside my own head and I think the secret of happy solitude is/are passion(s).