Feathered creatures work the water,
while I, patient, watch.
I am eager to observe their day
and have left the busy street behind
to sit for a moment’s education.

At random, sometimes in pairs
these (terns, I believe) sudden swoop and dive.
A colourful kite might do the same
when a tied on rag tail is
either too long or too short.

Watching the birds, I remember
a farm field fading from usefulness
where weeds, victorious
bent to a wild March day
and Papa, with his children, went to play.

He was, then, a young and pied piper
who teased with an endless ball
of string that played out
until a bright, white kite
kissed grey clouds, ominous in every way.

Each thumping heart swooped,
in kite unison,
and dove easy toward depth,
rose again aloft until the string
broke.

“I will bet she’s over Jackson by now!”
He said to soothe.
Not every dive is successful.
Not every smiling beak rises,
full of silver wriggling fish.

April 13, 2021

It seems, most months, that the month is half gone before I even find a chance to get all of the bills paid! Sometimes, the month is half gone before I get out of bed! Wow, time sure moves quickly. Time moves so quickly now that I am able to witness the maple tree out front as it makes it’s usual, seasonal change. It is not a slow, imperceptible change the way getting older can be. The Maple is unfolding itself before the eye and she is not alone. Stunning transformations are all around us at this time of year. Sure happens quickly! Lots happens quickly. The young neighbours down the lane drive quickly! Too quickly! The heart quickens, from time to time. The occasional quickenings are what make life, life.

I like the word ‘quick’ because of it’s other, more poetic connotations. The bringing to life by use of a defibrilator is to ‘quicken’ someone or, even more accurately, to plant a seed in fertile ground and surround it with the fuel of life is to quicken the flower. The breath of God quickens the spirit. I say that, knowing in my heart that God is not an entity in the way we know reality. God is not a ‘being’, a ‘beast’, an ‘aura’, a thing. God is but God is not and both statements are true at the same time. I don’t feel phony or a liar to say such things. I don’t believe as in the ordinary sense but I can say things like the spirit quickens to God’s touch and mean it…sincerely. To quicken a thing is to bring it to life. Simple. The awareness of God is the touch of God and that quickens the spirit, brings it to life.

The quick are the living. The dead are the dead. I am no longer as quick as I once was though I am alive. This does not mean that I am dying slower or (quicker) than I was after the moment of birth. Dead IS the direction this whole business is taking but I am not, yet, near dead. I am in-between, the way living is, the way life is, the way this mid-April morning and it’s weather is. No, I am not dead and yes, I am not as fully alive as I was only a little more than one year ago.
It is very trite, very much a platitude to say that not singing is to not live fully. It is, in particular, an odd statement, maybe presumptious “I am not fully alive when not singing,” when I say it. That is true because I am not a deeply trained or highly skilled singer. I don’t work as hard at singing as the claim might indicate I would but it is still a valid self-assessment. “I don’t fully live without singing.” That is all. I am not as fully alive today as I was more than a year ago, when I vibrated the rafters and quickened the still air of a concert hall.

Time is quick. Time is quickening. Time is not dead. Time is moving so quickly that I have lost more than a year to still and masked air. I am in-between. I am living but sort of leaning in the direction of not being as quick as I once was. I am losing time like an old clock. This wearying clock lost more than a year of quickening. Hahahaha. The chimes, the singing can’t be revived or restored to it’s last backup point. Ah well. That I am still quick enough to look forward to the not-so-far-off resumption of down-pitch or up-pitch singing is a wonderful thing.

…and God? Why did that come into my conversation? Well, I can tell you this much: Whatever God is, is what you can see. If I look out the window and notice my Maple tree mostly open already…um..God? Yeah, it’s in the quickness of spring, the quick unfolding of the Maple tree, the neighbours in their darn quick black car (somebody’s gonna get hurt!) God is hardly an invisibility. Just change your glasses and you can see. Personally, I have drifted over into the ‘cheaters’ section at Shoppers…a higher number of magnification. I had to change. A little change like a change in point of view and voila!

Now, I can see that God isn’t Uncle Carl, Uncle Carl is not longer quick. I can’t see Uncle Carl anymore except in memory. God is what you and I do see, even when not looking for anything and not finding anything. It is a mystery and a further mystery to find a proper sort of pronoun. God is transitional. They are in-between. None can deny the mystery…therefore a proof …and time? Yeah. Time is quick, always will be. Best get to it and hasten the singing, make it quick. I am slowing down, just like the neighbours had better do!

I have been away from my kitchen desk for three weeks. Today, I cleaned it up a little and sat down to start again. I have been spending my time over-indulging in food and drink but I haven’t been baking. I haven’t been cooking. I haven’t engaged in the myriad daily things I usually do. I haven’t been creative. The recording equipment sits idle. My daily habit of one thousand words went by the way side and I, lately, haven’t written or improved a poem either. What is that all about? Where is my Muse? Did Covid get her down? Ah…yes, I truly think so.

It hasn’t been a totally dull few weeks of either relaxed or stressed emptiness. I have had some excitement, here on the ranch. A little floppy heartbeat and an hours-long visit to the emergency room a few weeks back kept me busy. The lubs and dubs got mixed in with assorted other piled up, used laundry and my tub over-filled. It was a brief and I think harmless bit of messing around with health care that hardly cost a thing. There were meds that I ended up paying in full for but I am hoping that, with my new pills and some determination, I might be able to get back in the laundro-mat of life and start hanging out the dirty clothes again. Isn’t that exciting?

I am always too honest when I write. I have had friends say things like, “..is that ME?” or, “…I’d be careful what I said if I were you, folks won’t understand.” Yeah, I should be thinking ahead to what folks want to hear and not just gabbing to hear a voice of some kind. I might do better to consider the tale and who is going to hear it. I used to be good at saying what a given person might want to hear. Isolation has changed my sensors, some don’t work as well anymore. That I have lost an ability to discern means I have to pay better attention to what I am doing. Words sent out onto paper often miss my intended mark. It is much easier to tell a tale that I think someone wants to hear when I am with them, in person. I can witness the flinch that indicates a wrong direction, a stepped on toe. On paper, it is just me and the truth of the situation. I get lazy enough to just forget the rules and I type for the heck of typing, dream for the heck of dreaming, imagine for the heck of imagining. That the familiar and true, my over-emotional self leaks in is somehow inevitable I fear. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing?

You can’t undo the past. You can’t fix much of what you screwed up but it’s best not to dwell. Regret is a green fur-covered dish best thrown out. You will get sick when you eat of regret. Still, I do have my writing experience regrets. I have been foolish on Facebook more often than I want to remember. One unforgettable series of comments meant that my whole ‘end of church’ scene was orchestrated with the very public dips and snaps, hearts and likes, angry faces and teary faces of Facebook ’emojis’. My anger, my upset, my confusion lashed out in the worst ways. I remember calling the old church ‘ST. Mark’s by the Cess-pool’. That wasn’t kind, wasn’t intended to be but it was accurate. On it’s surface as well as the undertow meanings, that was an honest name. The church was, after all, located on the shores of Lake St. Clair…an industrial cess-pool of sorts. Of course, my comments didn’t go over well with the properly concerned parties. Things turned into a rout of mud and other effluent slinging. The sorry story cost me people I believed to be friends. Ours was a battle indeed that might have done well as a FaceTime event. We could have sold tickets, I bet. Juicy to the last drop of quasi-sacred blood.

At this point, St. Mark’s and any other church are again closed to my heart. I am, at 70, very uncomfortable just to walk through the doors, virtual or otherwise. I can’t see past what I’ve known as treachery, cliques and power struggles. I can’t let go of pre-judgement. I know I would carry my over-size baggage right along with me into the crowded sanctuary.

Since my ideas of God and what The Bible is run counter to what appears as the prevailing view, I was always a tenuous churchmouse at best. I laughed out loud, I created a noisome prescence. Had the church not been a bit leaky, a bit drafty, I’d not have found myself in. Now the old and hole-y baseboard has been replaced with a new piece. I don’t think I have the sharpness of tooth to chew my way in again. I may have lost that community for good. I don’t know that I could ever sing there in future.

Something I have come to know is that singing is one of the main things for me. It’s the biggest draw for church. When I sing, since I am not very good on my own, I need a choir to back me up. I suppose it is a selfish thing but singing on Sunday kept me going. Being in the choir at church and being in the choruses outside church were groups I felt a part of, akin to. I had community. Not having community is a disaster for me. Without the net of community, the more natural solitary things, like writing don’t work their best. Not singing, not talking with folks, not drinking with folks, not eating with folks delivers a blow to my ambitions, creative. I get lost too easily. I think this is true for many. The lockdowns are freezing us all.

I sincerely hope we will thaw, re-start at some time, near future. There is a warming spring on our vast horizon. There have been enough re-starts, enough greening springs in my life that I can at least recognize that. Whether Spring comes quite soon enough is the question. I am struggling but I am still alive. You are still alive. World has not disintegrated, even though it does appear that way. I just sat down and wrote something. It is a good day. Perhaps one good day leads to another. Perhaps we sing again before the laundry cycle finishes? Yeah. I hope so. As far as church goes? Well…best not to predict, eh?

March 30, 2021

While yet another of my close cousins has passed on, there has been no evidence of earth slowing it’s rotation or speed through universe. Nor has earth shown a visible lightening of it’s load. Argument, desire, life and laughter still resounds the hills. My cousin was a complex man but earth has no lesser burden with him gone. He will be missed by many and there will be no spring in earth’s step, though there is Spring in the air.

My time with cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents is slowing down to a memory of each -one-by-one. Many are no longer quick, though not all are dead, yet. That is still a future thing. A near future or nearer future, a certainty. A sooner than later. Our old world is winding down, disappearing more every spring. Winter has frozen off the elder branches, made room for the new shoots. Someone cut the bejesus out of the lilac, in preparation. The process continues however much slower for me. To the slowing of my time? no trees witness or celebrate such an event. They dance but they dance not for the slowing. They are dancing on the March-clean atmosphere of re-awakening as I write this.

I am just now thinking that a spring breeze must feel a bit like massage to a tree. Mmmmm. A stretching of the winter stilled limbs. A rejuvenation. A little exercise of tightened things, causing their canopies to blush with the hint of life. It is a light colour that suddenly appears one warm-ish day when the sun is just so. It is so funny that the vast number of emerging buds has the power to shut down a north wind. Fragility, en masse, takes down the captor.

I can’t see much serious change, year to year on this little laneway where I live. The major events to remark upon are all hum-de-dum ordinaryness. There is a very pregnant neighbour lady on one side of the laneway and a recently vacated womb on the other side, behind me, in the other row of houses. The neighbour who has junk piled everywhere is still smiling and cheerful, still picking his way around the stacks. The new couple speed rapidly in and out, trying to hit something but haven’t been successful yet. Not even the thousand squirrels have surrendered a life to the tire. The mayor still grumbles her way in and grumbles her way out. There is still the little boy who calls me Uncle whenever he sees me. I shout back, pleased. The struggling grass is… still… Skinny, Shirtless Guy is… still…

I have one less living cousin, one more dead one. We can pack up a few more things, get them out of the way. Clear a bit of space. When my time has slowed to a stop, or your time has, maybe, it’s possible to pass some stuff of value along to be used again. If we are lucky. If we are smart. If we learned a thing or two, there will be some useful stuff to pass on. I know there will be stories to tell for a while, before the tale-tellers lose their command of speech or their ready, listening ears. When spring hits us each year, I shall tell the tales, ribald or otherwise, with abandon. That is all I can do. Drink deep of the day, dark or otherwise, friends.

March 25, 2021

Good news for some, is disappointment for others. I am not going to die…LOL. (at least not today). I am back to feeling normal, as far as the heart palpitations go. There are only mild symptoms, the kind I have had as long as I can remember. A little extra hard lub mixed in with the dubs. Whew! So, it went away again, just like it always does. My bad to complain — so, I won’t. I will complain about the vertigo, instead…hahahahahahahah. No kidding, it’s bad today. I can hardly move without dizziness and I have almost fallen twice. Ooooops. I almost fell last night, too. I should be careful…no one is likely to find the body for at least a few days. or….

“Erase, erase, erase.” That’s what my sister used to say after she said something that didn’t go down well or that she had regrets about. She was a smart cookie. I didn’t erase my comments above and I didn’t erase my comments on Facebook when the church was firing me or edging me out. Now, they are sworn enough as enemies that the priest pretends not to see me when we bump into each other at public events. He would rather pretend that I not exist. He would rather pretend that I am like Santa Claus? I am currently convinced that the priest would rather pretend a lot of things. That is his problem and none of my business but it leads me to certain other ponderings.

I am disappointed. There is no Santa Claus, no matter the pretense. No matter the hype. Santa Claus was Uncle Carl, then and someone else’s Uncle Carl now. I am shocked at the truth. I don’t understand the willingness of people to engage in the charade. I am aware how foolish that is of me to be still shocked and bothered at 70 years age. I should have given up any emotional response to the truth long ago. It follows, though: I haven’t given up an emotional response to the truth of the tall tales and pretenses of the bible, either. I guess that I am disappointed in the Jesus and God story not being wholly credible. Or… maybe I am more disappointed that the church (in my experience) has twisted the tales of the bible, altered the meanings to suit an interpretation and called that truth, pretended that was fact. Just as it bothers me that my former priest will pretend I don’t exist, it bothers me that he pretends Jesus has super power. Jesus is dead and gone…no stone rolled away and revealed anything other than an old tomb, dead body and possible (some say) mark on a shroud. End of story.

I have a Facebook friend who writes a column/page called Snarky Bible. His writing is a synopsis of the books of the bible, it is entertaining, cynical, irreverant and spot on. He paraphrases the books in modern terms and condenses the meandering to concise paragraphs that read the way an action video game plays. It is, essentially, exactly what the books contain. This one rapes that one and throws the other one down a well. Somebody climbs up a mountain to get away from all the noise and sees a bush on fire and some other stuff. He comes back down the mountain with a book and gets mad that the kids had a party while he was gone so he breaks the book and has to go to get another one. All the while, redemption and eternity await like a champion score.

The stories of the bible are a historical record, inaccurate and prone to relate belief more than fact. A reasonable person, I think, would see that. If we, in our modern, developed age cannot agree on an accurate count of the dead bodies after a mass shooting — how can we expect a hand-me-down, millenia old poetic history to be truth? Literal truth? Come on. By the time I step up to the bible, even it’s words have been changed (for clarity? or to promote an agenda?) The big three of the west and near-west and near-east all have their own idea what the same books mean, who wrote them and why. This fact disturbs me, since each of those religions claims to be telling the one truth, the one story. Each insists they know what is so. Each swears these books to be telling a somewhat different absolute truth. (Even the books themselves admit to two truths or more–witness the two ways the earth and man were created in Genesis.) They are just books, folks…just books.

What is true and is wonderful about the bible/torah/qu’ran is: It gets folks thinking about things that matter. Who we are, where we are, why we are, where we are going. Those questions have not been solved by science and not by religion. Science is closing in on what we can understand but it doesn’t have the answer. Religion is less precise than science but has a more colourful and human sort of incomplete answer. I like both ways of looking at the things we cannot and will not ever understand or know…not until the end. That end is coming for all creatures, all growing and living things. That much IS true, verifiable, undenied. My bet is on something halfway between Science and Religion on life’s other side…but we will see, won’t we? I won’t see yet. Not today. It certainly felt as though I were about to get my wings or horns on Saturday. I didn’t. Ah well. More discussion, then? Cuppa tea?

March 22, 2021

Today’s date should figure out which it is going to be: 22, 20, 21? I am at yet another of those silly crossroads where I have to figure out what it is I am going to be. You would think I was living in Venice, on the island, with little bridges everywhere you look. Up we go and over, yet again. Ha. I have had some interesting life experiences, some fun times, some thrills, some spills… Today, because of an ER visit on the weekend and some residual weakness/breathlessness I am reflecting on living. Ha. It is so damned fragile and so damned persistent. A human being is hard to kill and easy to destroy. Isn’t that odd?

I have been destroyed by a few words and I have survived intense medical conditions, automobile accidents, vicious dog attacks, and stupid moves that created ‘ha, ha — ya missed me’ scenarios. I was never arrested for any of what were politically popular to pursue, so-called crimes and I probably should have been. I never went bankrupt and that should have happened, at least the once. I was never beaten to a total pulp and I should have been. Oh, yes. I deserved it. I got the thrill of the near miss and I did get thumped around a bit, maybe that warned me? Hahahahaha. Being young can be so much wonderful fun. It’s exciting, just to remember it all.

In my little corner of the world..(sort of, Le Petit Prince of Otton Lane) Just three words, strung in a row can do more damage than a speeding 2000 pounds of metal. No threat of stroke or pounding heart attack can wound more than: “You can’t sing!” or “Not your key!” The longer phrases are even more damaging: “You are obviously not understanding what you are reading. It is over your head” or “No! That is not what the poem is about!” What makes those statements all the more dangerous is the core truth. No, I can’t sing very well and no, I didn’t understand the complexities of ‘The Good Earth’ (Pearl S. Buck) or anything much of Baudelaire. All true. I liked reading that stuff, I enjoyed it but Le Petit Prince is on his tiny little blue-green space, looking off into the stars and imaging he is seeing something quite different than is there. He reads and sings and writes and it is mostly under-developed mark-missing hog wash. Hahahahaha.

Most of the time, I am concerned that I am not like the others, that I don’t understand. I compare, I measure, I worry a lot. Usually. Today, it is okay. I am enjoying some lovely soup a friend made for me. He made the soup and brought it to me because I was momentarily physically askew. Isn’t that nice? Other folks have been very kind, too, concerned for my well-being. They are sincere. They are sincere in other ways, too. They pretend not to notice that I haven’t studied Shakespeare correctly. They say, “Oh, how nice!” when I post a poem on my website. They say, “Sounds good!” when I post a video of me playing piano and singing. They mean it, even though we all know the singing and playing and writing are a bit scanty on the technique. hahahaha. Sigh. They are and I am simply grateful for the efforts of others. We like our friends and neighbours. We enjoy life. Nice.

A little boy in the townhouses behind me always greets me when I am outside. He shouts ‘Uncle!, Uncle!’ and I wave. I say, “Hello!” very cheerfully and I mean it. It thrills me to hear him call out. He is just being a little, excited boy child and doing the things he just does. That’s enough to make my heart skip a little. It skips more than the atrial fibrilation could ever cause. hahahaha. He, the little boy, doesn’t seem at all concerned that I failed in two separate marriages and that I spent all the money and ate all the donuts and got fat and now have physical problems and can’t write like Pablo Neruda or Charles Bukowski or sing like Jan Vickers or Bruce Kotowich… The little boy is very selfishly enjoying life. He accidentally spreads that enjoyment just by being and doing without purpose beyond joy. He is not calculating cause/effect, effort/reward… he is not evaluating, measuring… He is just doing. He is just being. He is just living.

There will be a day when I can just do and be. I will record a new song. I will finish the books I started writing. Those things will happen, I know that now. Those things are important, they give me a thrill to do. I always will do them, even if the self-deprecation and the limiting continues. It is just a thing. It is a thing I do, like calling out ‘Uncle’ is a thing the neighbour boy does. I can attempt to do what I do well. I can attempt to eat healthy, get exercise, be nice to people. I will be successful sometimes and sometimes not. Maybe I will work hard on my arts technique, maybe not. Maybe I will go for a walk, maybe not. Maybe I will bake something and take it to a friend, most likely will at some point. Until they come for us, we will continue. There is nothing to judge or forgive, really.

Like the proctologist said, I suppose it is easier if a person just relaxes a little. Yeah. I am grateful. It’s enough.

March 18, 2021

Funny, I actually have learned a couple of lessons during my time on the lovely blue-green planet. That fact does not dismiss or mitigate the ways in which I still ignore the lessons learned. Ha. Like an ordinary fool, I go astray the mark once in a while. Occasional slippage notwithstanding, I am learning and have learned ‘a thing or two’. At times, I do look in the mirror and behold/admit that I am human. I have learned that, as a human, I have ‘Good Bob’ and ‘Evil Bob’ as part of my construction. I have learned that, while being one of Earth’s most powerful creatures, I must accept those two certain aspects of life. Though I would wish the two reconciled in favour of good, I must accept that I can’t change everything, bend everything to my will. I must also accept that each of us bipedal smart-asses have enormous power and that our power carries with it responsibility. And…I learned I must accept that there is much we cannot learn, know, understand. We ‘all gotta re-lax’.

I have discovered, through trial and error, that I am and there exists, good and bad. Those are two most important ideas that Adam and Eve allegedly learned but weren’t supposed to know. I am sorta Christian, so I got to hear about them. Good and bad get talked about a lot down there at church. In my limited knowledge of other religions, the same concepts occur. Everybody seems to have figured out we are each two folks in one. According to my early Sunday morning listening when I was much younger, A and E learned those states of being whilst eating fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Tasty stuff, apparently. In the story book, it was a snake caused all the fuss and enticed our hero/heroine with apple pie. Damned snake, anyhow! He probably opened massage parlours and made potato chips, too! If you have heard the story of A and E, you will understand my upset at the sniveling voiced reptile. Jaysus! Can’t we humans catch a break? Can’t even go for a walk in paradise without some kind of shit distracting us!

A and E passed down the lessons and I learned ’em, kinda. (…by the way…I am naked and you and the fish and fowl and other fauna are, too! Did you know that? hahahahahahahaha – so naughty!) I am one of the many capable and cunning creatures that inhabit this time and space. I am a partner and I am equal. The other creatures don’t have to learn much stuff, what they know is mostly fed to them by genetics. I don’t think they are aware of good and evil, they are innocent and just work to rule without screwing stuff up too badly. The other kids didn’t listen to that ol’ snake. They were busy just doing what it is they are born to do and not bitchin’ too much about it.

I had to learn things, because of A and E. So, I learned and I think I know about Good Bob and Bad Bob (and Naked Bob..hahahahahah) and that a part of my job is helping myself, along with all else that creeps, swims or flies. I have to find good/evil balance and we all have to work together to balance the ship, keep ‘er spinnng. Balance is important, without balance we might flop over on the heaviest side and carom off the sun or something. Without thinking about balance, everybody would try move someplace warm and easy, like the left side of the boat, where they could just slough off and chill. That’s where the buffet is. The poor innocent creatures living there would be pushed out of the way and/or eaten up for lunch.

I guess I learned, I know that my responsibility is to observe, learn, try to keep what I believe is good from being oppressive, restrictive and try to keep the bad from being too exciting or enticing. I shall try to stay in my lane and stop honking so much while all the other earthly creature traffic whizzes around me. I am not always successful but we just don’t want accidents. That won’t be in our best interests, personally or as a group. We run the lights, sometimes but we have to try. It would be nice if nobody got hurt, including us and it would be nice if we keep all other breathing things around. Their help is needed and we can’t afford to lose so many on our way through the universe. If we play it smart, if I keep my lessons learned in mind, there won’t be a lot of explaining to do when God (the manager, judge and referee) calls the match.

Uhoh…

no absolute proof of God exists, empirically or forensically. The big guy didn’t leave any measureable foot prints. There is no consensus. Science can’t prove ah-yes-or-no. My understanding of God is not yours, etc. The guy/gal/entity is pretty much subjective and chimerical. Oh, remember? I did mention that there is a lot we cannot learn or know or understand. Even our best scientists can only guess at this entire magnificent display we call living, life, world, universe. There must be fifty opinions about reality, where we come from, where we are going, how best to get there and what is all of this exactly. Well, sir.. I think if we take responsibility, try to do the right thing, try to learn our lessons, accept that we can’t know and fix everything, know we won’t be good to ourselves or others from time to time, accept that we will stop at the Green Hat on a school night and that apple pie is fattening but pretty damned enticing… it will all work out. What needs to be revealed will be. Forget you screwed up and carry on. For everyone and everything, the lights will go out and the door will open. “The main thing is to not get too ex-cited!” (old hillbilly aphorism)

March 17, 2021

It is ‘Good Excuse For Drinking’ day…and no bars open? Sigh. What is a fella to do? We have gone through a Christmas and a St. Patrick’s day without the staunchly traditional part of it… No bleary-eyed, slurred, “..but really…I thingk youware bea-u-ti-ful…” No, “…oooops….I thingk I peed my pantz”. Sigh. Doing that at home alone loses some of it’s shine. It’s not amusing and there is no one around to tell you what happened that night. They don’t know, they were home alone too. I guess that a few of the bars and restaurants are hosting a Zoom or a Facetime St. Paddy’s. That should be dangerous and weird. I think of the delay effect and folks carrying their ipad or phone with them into the toilet and not shutting the video or audio off. oooops.

Another good excuse for drinking is the blahness of lockdown. Simply knowing we are limited, closed off, shut down brings out the restlessness. There is much to do here at the house but I can’t get up and get at it, I am too thirsty. I am too hungry as well. I am hungry, thirsty and I am shifty because I know I can’t go anywhere freely. A fella can’t just ‘pop in for a look around’ and wander the shops, have a nice lunch and beer. Of a certain, none of that is a necessary thing or a thing I even do all that often when it is possible. The knowing I may not makes for a hunger to do it. The knowing I can’t go for a beer with a friend makes me thirsty. I am like a teenager who has been held under house arrest…I want to pry open the window and escape. I want to sneak off somewhere but I can only go for a drive or a walk, that will have to suffice.

The changes during our Covid experiment of lockdown are interesting. I have read that ordinary flu and colds are less widespread. There were, by one study, 292 flu deaths versus 500,000 Covid deaths over the year in the U.S. Apparently, masks and lockdowns have had a major impact on communicable disease, illness and death. With everyone masked and staying at home, I am curious how many drunk driving arrests have been and will be avoided? I should Google that, just for the heck of knowing a new thing. (Slight pause and clicking sounds) After my quick look, I find The Toronto Sun notes that in Peel region, there are 29% fewer drunk driving arrests since the Covid lockdown began. Strangely, car theft has increased. Maybe sober folk have less difficulty with the whole hot-wiring situation?

I am meandering today. I couldn’t sleep last night and I took a pill, that makes me groggy for the day afterward. Had to do it, though. I needed a rest. Hm-de-dum…tap, tap, tap…I feel thirsty.

I have been lucky my whole life. There are so many near-misses and slip-ups that led to no great trial… Amazing! I can tell ya some stories! Ha.

I once disobeyed common sense and ran in the house, playing with the dog. I was in my stocking feet, running down the hall toward the foyer and it’s polished slate floor. To the right of the entryway, a matching slate hearth wrapped around a quite nice fireplace. The hearth was a foot and one half up from the floor. I leaped up onto the hearth, still running full tilt and my feet lost grip. I flew, horizontal, in the direction I had been running. Pure luck. I landed, hard on my back, on the carpeted floor – NOT the polished slate. I looked back and decided, “Nope, better not do that again!”

Those sorts of incidents litter my past like Mr. Big wrappers…they are everywhere. An ordinary person would be hard pressed to believe I had even half a brain. “If X led to Y, then why attempt Z? Aren’t they similar? Can’t you expect a similar result?” Yeah. Perhaps, it is a masculine thing but viscerally — I am not so sure. I see folks of every description taking huge chances with their star alignments, their stocking feet and their own polished slate floors. Every day of living unearths another hard stone hearth for the unwitting. I have been lucky, so many others not so much.

Unwitting. That word has another connotation for certain. Another way of understanding would be that un-witting means, ‘doing something in a manner unburdened by availing of wits.’ It doesn’t only mean that a person is surprised by something they hadn’t sussed out. Haha. Aren’t we all without wits a time or two? What is it that causes us to say, “quick! Let’s…” just before the accident, the bankruptcy, the police incident?

Oh, yes. The police incident (s). There, again, X led to Y, why try Z? Some of those escapades have been logged, reported, punished and some have been very funny. I was in an accident that didn’t involve my own volition. I was, in fact, waiting patiently for the light to turn and minding my own business. A loaded work van across from me suddenly started to pull through the still-red light. At that moment, a brand-new speeding sportscar approached on the right angle. Smack! The resulting spin of motorcars, ladders and other loose items did involve me. The car I was driving was incapacitated and required a tow for serious cosmetic surgery. The investigating police officer offered us a lift to the station where we could phone for a ride. We sat quietly in the back seat as he drove and after a few short minutes he looked in the mirror saying, “…first time in the back of a police car, eh?” I just smiled and nodded, there being no need of any more detailed revelations.

Ah, luck. I have lost all the money, thrown up most of last night’s beer, been fired, shouted at, beaten up, arrested, fallen from a great height onto concrete, survived an incovenient venereal disease (or two) and married/divorced twice. None of that destroyed me. It has destroyed others but not me. I was lucky, I escaped. I stand here on the sidelines, quietly munching a snack and watching the unlucky flicker across CNN. I am reminded of watching the Wildebeest on a nature program of some time ago. When a lioness stalked them, they all ran in panic. As soon as one of their number was captured, downed and dined on…they all stopped running. “Well, no trouble now…it is someone else being eaten, mmmmm, love this grass.” Isn’t that what we are doing when we watch the news?

Yeah. I have been lucky and my heart goes out to those who have not been. Sadly, improving someone’s luck other than my own is a hard thing to do. I watch the tragedies and wipe my brow in relief. As go they, so could I, so have I. Beyond putting my head down, enjoying my luck and living my life, what else can I practically do?

There isn’t much I can accomplish to ease the way or solve the problems of others but there are ways, small ways. I can shop local, I can cross in the crosswalk and look both ways before doing so, I can watch carefully for bicycles, I can say hello pleasantly to the homeless person and be cheerful to the clerk. I can set aside judgement and accept that I have, myself, done stupid things. That is a hard thing to do, as well…the setting aside judement and accepting that we are all human and most of us don’t act out of spite. Even if we did act out of spite, there is probably some silly reason, something the spiter did unwittingly.

so.. It’s okay, I can put some money in the pot from time to time and appreciate how lucky I am. Yeah.

March 15, 2021

Lots of noise at the ranch, these days. Don’t know why? My pipes rattle, the ductwork creaks and groans, I hear loud thumping all the time. What gives? Was an entire family disposed of indelicately on the premises a while ago? Maybe a drug cartel arranged the hit and it took some time for the police to clean it all up so that the previous owner could dump the place on the market. Maybe it’s that folks have come back to warn of something. “What is it Lassie? What is it girl? Thump your tail once for ‘get out, now!’, thump twice and give us a little bark to say all is well.”

I know that my ears are not improving. I have to turn the tv up loud in order to hear the tires screaming and the bullets being shot and the zippers going up and down, yet, with all of the noise, I hear myself making water? Hm. I was hitting the porcelain and the tiny ‘tink, tink, tink’ was clear as could be. I even heard it over the tinnitus (a constantly increasing din, btw). My impression is that a tiny tinkling would be drowned out by all the other noise, but no. Hm.

Just as Trump disappears, the ghosts of a mysterious past show up. Or, maybe, the noise is a sink hole preparing to sweep me and my lovely things down and out into the great lake. Maybe that is the creaking and the groaning. Maybe Toledo has turned on the pumps in order to fill the Nestle’ plastic bottles with a green algae and a couple Canadian chests of drawers? Maybe Fermi has come on-line again and started the damn magnetism up. I notice the glow across the lake from time to time. That is probably what is happening. I am almost certain of it, since my heat pipes are clanking, straining, bending and leaning a bit southwest. Of course, the noise could be caused by television and cell phone transmitters. Five G means no good, nossir. I sure hope the junk I can’t get rid of disappears along with everything else. Do you happen to need a slightly used toilet? (no warranty expressed or implied whether this device was involved in any sort of crime scene)