Premonitions

What will your life be like in three years?

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What will your life be like in three years?
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What will your life be like in three years?
Well now, that depends on several things. I love the fall. Who doesn’t love the fall in New Brunswick? The trees changing color, warm by day and cool at night, then the leaves falling off the trees and blowing here and there with the wind. I stood in the garage yesterday and listened as the north wind herded rustling, complaining Maple leaves down the roadway past my house. The sound of dry leaves bouncing and skittering. Pure fall magic.

But when I fell on Thursday night, it was a different kind of fall. One moment I was a tree, standing free on my own two feet, the next I was a sawn-off log, tumbled to the ground. When trees fall, they often bleed bark or sawdust, if they are sawed. I just bled blood. On the floor boards, on the carpet, on my shirt. I had just painted the painting above – Prelapsarian – and there I was, lying on the floor, having fallen myself.

And there I lay, fulfilling my own prophecy – Postlapsarian – lying bleeding on the ground. The fall was stunning and I was stunned. I managed first to roll over onto my tummy. Next I managed to get into the push-up position and from there I was able to draw my knees up. Kneeling, I reached out to the spare bed and started to try and haul myself to my feet. But I was spent and exhausted and drained.

I called out and Clare, dear woman, came to my rescue. She helped me to my feet, staunched the bleeding, mopped up the floor, and the carpets, and me. Then she went to the medical chest and bandaged me up so I would heal and wouldn’t bleed all over the bed and my pajamas. What a mess. What a bloody mess – and no, I am not swearing, I am only telling you what I saw. Blood everywhere.

So, what will my life be like in three years? I hesitate to think about it. Maybe I’ll be in a garden somewhere, helping the trees to grow their leaves, so that the life cycle may continue. And maybe not. Right now, I feel very, very fragile. I just don’t want to think beyond the current moment.

What’s something you believe everyone should know.

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What’s something you believe everyone should know.
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What’s something you believe everyone should know.

I think everyone should know that the world, as we see it right now, is a very troubled and troubling place. Everyone should also know that there is no so-called “silver bullet”, no single answer that will solve everything with the wave of a magic wand.

These two points are tied in to a third – that the world is filled with smoke and smoke screens. Misinformation, disinformation, manipulation, lies, downright lies, and AI statistics now rule. There is no longer a clear pathway to follow and there is so much downright tribalism and hatred that there are few safe places, save in the middle of a person’s own little tribe that protects while allowing no challenges to whatever truths their authorities present as being true.

Voltaire once persuaded Candide to say that “everything is for the best in the best of all worlds.” Personally, I wish those words were true. It is equally false to say that “everything is for the worst in the worst of all worlds.”

As I type these words, the first snow of winter is falling outside my window. It covers my garden with a thin, white blanket, soft, and fluffy, and wet. All the flaws of my late fall lawn are covered up, tucked away, lie buried beneath that blank sheet on which neither animal, nor beast, nor bird has yet set foot.

I imagine it as a clean page, a fresh beginning, a new start, a moment when the world can change and a new future history can be written starting now. I do not smoke, so pipe dreams are something I have not experienced. Alas, I fear that such a dream is nothing but a pipe-dream, a castle in the clouds, a chateau in Spain, as some say.

“Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, over and over, and over again. Then the snow settles. The winners write their stories on blank pages. The losers all disappear into the mists of time. But those mists contain the ghosts, and the myths, and the fairy-tales, that turn themselves into truths reborn, and the same merciless battles begin again.

Then the snow of memory loss starts to fall and the world is presented with another blank page on which to write. Alas, instead of a new future history, the old stories, the old myths, the old falsehoods emerge once more from the miasma and the world again becomes a very troubled and troubling place, and so it goes on, secula seculorum, for ever and ever, amen.

How much would you pay to go to the moon?

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How much would you pay to go to the moon?
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How much would you pay to go to the moon?

Exactly the same amount that I would pay to visit the Titanic in a Titan – zilch, nada, rien, nothing. Too risky. Not worth it. Too much carbon emission to damage the world around me. It’s only a thin envelope of air up there – pointless damaging it further. We have problems enough anyway.

And how much would it cost to fund a rescue mission if something went wrong? How much did it cost to search for the Titan for five days? I haven’t forgotten Apollo XIII, even if other people have.

No way, my friends, no way. No common or garden human being in his or her right mind would ever get into something like that. I notice you say ‘to go to the moon’. Is it a two way, return ticket, then? Does the lucky traveler also get to come back? Or is it a one way only trip and a journey of no return?

Don’t bother answering those questions. I am quite happy viewing the moon through my bedroom window. I wouldn’t go, even if you offered me a free ticket. Thanks, but no thanks. Not on my watch! I am not moonstruck!

What makes a good neighbor?

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What makes a good neighbor?
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What makes a good neighbor?

I am not sure what makes a good neighbor, but I am learning what makes a bad one. This cheeky little fellow has taken a liking to my garage. When he finds the garage doors closed, he gnaws and nibbles at the outside woodwork and tries to chew his way in. Not a nice neighbor.

Earlier this summer, I had problems with my windshield wiper liquid. The right side squirted well, and cleaned the passenger side nicely. The left side slowed down to a dribble, and then stopped. The rear window wiper, on the other hand worked well. No problems at all. One day, both the windshield wipers stopped squirting. Press the button – no liquid at all. I checked the reservoir – half full – and topped it up. Then I tried a pin in the tiny nozzles beneath the windshield. Sometimes they clog up with dust and block the flow. Nothing.

I decided to take my problem to a professional. He raised the hood, looked inside, took one sniff and said “Mice. I can smell the piss.” He told me to leave the car with him, at his garage, and that he’d call me later. He called and drove to the house to pick me up. On the way, I asked him “Well?” “Wait and see,” he told me. “You won’t believe this.”

When we got to his garage he showed me the evidence – a huge red squirrel nest, complete with a winter supply of food, nestled beneath the hood of my car, between the hood lining and the actual engine. The squirrel had chewed his way through the plastic tubing that linked the washer fluid to the wipers. He was shaking with laughter. I was devastated. Cost to me to repair my naughty neighbor’s activities? Well, I won’t tell you – because I don’t want to shock you – but it was quite a bit of money, not enough to be covered by my insurance.

When I got back home, the naughty neighbor was sitting on the roof rafters, inside the garage, chittering at me, chattering away, and scolding me. “I’ll get you, you little varmint,” I said. But he only chattered more loudly. I saw him coming in early one morning and he fled into the woodpile along the wall. “I’ll get you,” I said, beating at the spots behind the logs where I could hear him.

I went online and sought some solutions. One suggestion was to use cinnamon. So, I dug out a packet of cinnamon powder, spread it on the garage floor, across the doorway, and waited. Within minutes, a chattering began in the trees, outside the garage. An angry, nervous chittering and chattering. Then the garden went silent.

I keep renewing the cinnamon. The garage smells lovely. I haven’t seen or heard a squirrel for days. Has this actually worked, I wonder? Watch this page if you want to know the answer to that question.

What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

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What would you do if you lost all your possessions?
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What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

When I look at the growing number of refugees across the world, I wonder what would happen if such a disaster fell upon me. Then I look at the forest fires, out in Western Canada, in BC and Alberta, and wonder what we would do, what we would we pack, how would we manage, if the order to evacuate our home came suddenly upon us. When the Bocabec fires burned in New Brunswick, I felt the stress and distress of several of our close friends who were forced to evacuate. Then I thought that, really, it’s not a question of if, but of when. And this was my dream.

            … with my angel … face to face … the one I have carried within me since the day I was born … the black-one … winged like a crow … the one that hovers over me as I lie asleep … the one who wraps me in his feathered wings when I am alone and chilled by the world around me … the one who flaps with me on his back when I can walk no further and who creates the single set of footprints that plod their path through the badlands when I can walk no more …
            … ‘the truth’ my black angel says to me … I say ‘he’ but he is a powerful spirit, not sexed in any way I know it … and yet I think of him as ‘he’ …awesome in the tiny reflection he sometimes allows me to glimpse of his power and glory … for, like Rilke, I could not bear meeting his whole angelic being face to face … as I cannot bear the sun, not by day, and not in eclipse … not even with smoked glass … when earthly values turn upside down and earth takes on a new reality … wild birds and bank swallows roosting at three in the afternoon … and that fierce heat draining from the summer sky … I remember it well … and the dog whimpering as a portion of the angel’s wing erased the sun until an umber midnight ruled … a simple phenomenon, the papers said … the moon coming between the earth and the sun …but magic … pure magic … to we who stood on the shore at Skinner’s Pond and sensed the majesty of the universe … more powerful than anything we could imagine … and the dog … taking no comfort from its human gods … whimpering at our feet …
            … I saw a single feather floating down and knew my angel had placed himself between me and all that glory … to protect me … to save me from myself … and I saw that snowflake of an angel feather bleached from black to white by some small trick of the sunlight … and knowledge filled me … and for a moment I felt the glory … the magnificence … and there are no words for that slow filling up with want and desire as light filters from the sky and the body fills with darkness … and I was so afraid … afraid of myself … of where I had been … of where I was … of what I might return to … of my lost shadow … snipped from my heels …
            … I don’t know how I heard my angel’s words … ‘the time of truth is upon you’ … ‘all you have ever been is behind you now’ … ‘naked you stand here on this shore … like the grains of sand on this beach … your days are numbered by the only one who counts’ … I heard the sound of roosting wings … but I heard and saw nothing more … I felt only midnight’s cold when the chill enters the body and the soul is sore afraid …
            … ‘it is the law’ my angel said … I saw a second feather fall … ‘and the law says man must fail … his spirit must leave its mortal shell and fly back to the light’ … ‘blood will cease to flow … the heart will no longer beat … the spirit must accept and go’ … ‘do not assume… nobody knows what lies in wait’ … ‘blind acceptance … the only way … now …  in this twilight hour …  now when you are blind … only the blind shall receive the gift of sight’ … ‘all you have … your wife … your house … your car … your child … everything you think of as yours I own … and on that day … I will claim it from you and take it for my own … now I can say no more’ …
            … the sea-wind rose with a sigh and one by one night’s shadows fled … the moon’s brief circle sped from the sun … light returned, a drop at a time, sunshine flowing from a heavenly clepsydra filled with light …
            … birds ceased to circle … a stray dog saw a sea-gull and chased it back to sea … and the sun … source of all goodness … was once again a golden coin floating in the sky …
            … on my shoulder a feather perched … a whisper of warmth wrapped its protective cloak around my shoulders … for a moment, just a moment, I knew I was the apple of my angel’s eye … and I hoped and still hope that one day I might meet him again and understand …

What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?

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What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?
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What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?

I have a couple of priorities, of course. I am not sure which is #1. Maybe I’ll ask the readers to tell me which one my top priority should be.

I guess my first priority is to wake up. That is very important at my age. A couple of my friends went to bed and never woke up. So, I guess an important priority, perhaps #1, is to actually wake up.

Having woken up, my next priority is to roll over, sit up, pull back the blankets, and actually attempt to get out of bed. This isn’t always easy. My back sometimes stiffens up overnight. Or else my hips don’t want to function. Then there’s the gammy knee I hurt playing rugby all those years ago. Then there’s the quality of the light – do I need a light on? If I do, I must reach for it without cramping up. Early morning cramp is not a good thing and really complicates the next step.

If I am in the high bed, then lowering legs, touching the floor with toes, and using arms to push up the rest of the way is relatively easy. But if I am in the low bed, I must turn sideways towards my bad knee, place my feet at an angle, and do a one handed pushup in order to find the right balance to get to my feet. That means watching out for slippery carpets. I do not want to fall. Sometimes I call on the aid of my faithful teddy bear and, by half throttling him, I manage to get that extra leverage.

Oh dear, I forgot another priority – condition of ageing bladder. All of the above activities are dependent upon the state of the union. If that is a problem, then I must call for assistance – and I hate doing that.

Next priority – the trip to the bathroom. I wish I hadn’t said ‘trip’, because sometimes I do. The effects of that can be a sudden grasp at something solid, a stubbed toe, a twisted something or other, or, worst of all, another fall. We certainly don’t want that to happen, especially if we are suffering from what Max Boyce [remember him?] once called ‘twisted legs and tails’.

Other priorities follow when we have reached the bathroom. I won’t go into those. Nor will I mention the perils of the return journey, the difficulties of getting dressed, the embarrassment when I fail with the patented sock-pull machine and have to wiggle my socks off, one by one, and then put them on again.

So, here I am, fully dressed, standing at the top of the stairs… one hand on the hand-rail, one hand on my trusty walking-stick, and down I go, hopefully one step at a time.

So: What’s my #1 priority tomorrow? You tell me. Which would you choose? And before you answer, just remember Dylan Thomas’s words ‘for whether we last the night or no, is surely only touch and go’. Touch and go, tip and run – I remember them well. And luckily I remember waking up this morning. I would hate to face the alternative – not waking up.

¡Qué será, será!

¡Qué será, será!

“Those who the gods would destroy,
            they first make happy.”

Twenty-four hours
            after our power came back,
it had been gone for 52 hours,
            we lost it again.

And happy we were,
            cleaning out the freezer,
            draining the water from the bath,
            packing up the pots and pans.

We sat down for happy hour,
            a drink before supper,
            and zap – the power went.

Promises, they made,
            estimates of when the power
            would return – 4:30 pm –
            5:30 pm – 6:30 pm –

Now we don’t know
            when it will return.
            The power site says
            “No estimate available.”

I write these words by candlelight.
            The battery on the radio
            just failed and now our cell phones
            are rapidly draining.

“¿Quién sabe?” Some are saying.
            “¡Qué será, será!” say I.
            Whatever will be, will be.

Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

Daily writing prompt
Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.
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Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

I wish I had learned earlier how hard it is to grow old and how difficult it is to prepare for it. My first serious rugby injury, age 16, torn cartilage in left knee. Doctor’s advice: give the game up now. Later, you’ll regret it if you don’t. My response: I’m tough. 60+ years later, my left knee still creaks and I rub ointment in every morning. My second serious rugby injury, age 20, damaged lower back. Doctor’s advice: give the game up now. You’ll regret it later if you don’t. My response: I’m tough. 60 years later, my back really hurts. I rub ointment in every morning, take pain killers, and stretch. Same with hips, from kicking! One of my rugby friends, about the same age as me, has two knee replacements, one shoulder replacement, and one hip replacement. If he’s not the $6,000,000 man, he must be pretty close.

But there is a story beyond that story. I was sent to a series of boarding schools and no, I didn’t go there willingly. In the summers, I travelled abroad to learn foreign languages that were foreign to others but became familiar to me. I never saw my grandparents as they aged. Often, when they died, I was in school, or away on the continent. I never understood the ageing process. I never witnessed the natural decay of those whom I loved. I never learned that lesson. When I left university, I emigrated, and the same sequence happened with my parents. I was never there when it mattered. I was always somewhere else. And when I was there, I heard the usual litanies: “This never happens when you are not here. It’s your fault.” Or else, “this wouldn’t have happened if you had been here.” Told to me by a close relation at my mother’s funeral. I flew back home, though it was never really my home, to be present for that.

But what is the lesson that I wish I had learned earlier? Alas, there is not just one lesson, but a series of lessons. How to deal with the ageing process. How to face sickness and ill health in age. How to face diminishment with grace and humor. How to accept the natural process that occurs whether we want it to or not. How to face the gradual decline in someone, close to you, your life companion whom you really love. How to face the fear of passing (FOGO to some) and how to pass that lesson on to our own young ones. How to face my own end and how to die with as much dignity as possible.

How often do you walk or run?

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How often do you walk or run?
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How often do you walk or run?

The painting above tells the whole story (thank you, Moo). On the left, the deer head (or is it a sheep’s head? Moo didn’t tell me) represents my hip and knee joints. On the right, the wolf’s head (or is it a bear’s head, look at those teeth) represents the osteo-arthritis that is sinking its own teeth into me and removing much of my movement. So, how often do I walk or run?

Walking, every day. I use two sticks in the outside world, or one stick and the furniture at home. The sticks are fun. I use them like chop-sticks to pick up fallen objects. And I have discovered that if I drop one of the sticks, I can stand on its rubber tip and raise the handle enough either to grasp it, or to secure it with the other stick. Wow!

Some days it is a positive circus act. Yesterday, the very thoughtful grocery store had placed the 1% milk on the top shelf, where I couldn’t reach it. I held on to my trusty shopping cart with one hand, reversed my stick and, with the handle, pulled a carton of milk to the edge of the shelf. I let go of the cart, flicked the stick, and sent the milk carton tumbling into my other hand. It took some concentration and I was surprised by the applause that came from several watchers, none of whom offered to help me. I do the same with out of reach beer cans, too. Bags of sugar on the lower shelf are much more difficult. my chopsticks aren’t designed to pick up a 3lb bulky bag of sugar.

As for running, well, my nose runs, my eyes water and run, my tummy rumbles and runs, and I move at a slowly increasing four-legged plod to the bath room, hoping against hope to get there in time. I usually do. My premonitions have become very accurate over the last few months. However, do nose, eyes, and tummy runs count? If not, well then, running rarely happens nowadays.

With the walking, though, in spite of everything, I aim for 2000 steps a day. I usually make it to 3,000, especially when I go shopping, and occasionally make it to 4,000. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the best I can do.

King Canute

King Canute

I imagine King Canute, sitting on his throne,
at the seaside, surrounded by his court
as he tries to turn back the rising tide.
Or is he just proving that it can’t be done?

In vain we struggle against the rising waves.
We piss into the wind and try to drown
the thunder with our pitiful, impoverished farts.

Some preachers preach that we are immortal,
but mortal we are, facing such adversaries
as wind, rain, thunder, and the rising tide.

Who nailed us to this cross of cloudy doubt?
I hear crass crows cawing for tomorrow, but
it never comes, and if it does, it becomes today.

Today we must count the cost of every footstep
that leads us again into the Darkest Ages,
and back to the Stone Age, sent there by a rain
of unstoppable destruction, unleashed in our pride.