Nakina Revisited (from my novel "a-Kanata!")

NAKINA (1976)

“Was maachst du hier?” was female, “Hie du!” young, “Herhaus!” and strangely German. His back was to her, his right hand reflexively slipping inside his shirt and resting on the hilt of his knife as something hard prodded him. But then he came fully awake. It was not yet dawn, but with the whiteness of the still falling snow it was difficult to tell.

            A young woman stood over him in the entrance to the clinic, appearing three times her probable girth for the thick animal-hide parka about her. A brown woolen toque exposed only part of her small pretty face. Her firmness of expression showed a sense of proprietary, a clear indignation that anyone should appropriate her turf. She wore thick fingerless suede mittens, so that her right hand gestures with the ski pole were as stiff as an Eskimo’s. In her left mitt the other pole and two long skinny skis bristled like spears. It was the first time he’d seen such equipment. He smiled up at her.

            Her face and voice softened, “Oh! I’m sorry. I shust thought you were one of those drunken lay-a-bouts from Arrowland, eh?” She leaned the thin wooden skis and poles up inside the porch and used her mitt to scour the globs of snow from their length. At the base of the ski poles miniature Frisbees had scissor cut-outs like spiked toy flying saucers, while the blade-like points beneath them were like little metal scythes. Her small black ski-boots had specially designed toe- Tongues, he noted, with holes that probably inserted into the metal bindings of the skis. “Not that they’re all drunkards,” she hastened to qualify herself, “It’s shust that Mr. Russel wouldn’t allow any of his men, eh, to... well, to sleep out in the open.” Her English speaking voice now had the softest trace of a German accent, but followed the Canadian habit of lilting and making sentences end as though asking a question. Her eyes were hazel and their lashes were still frosted with the cold. She stepped beside him and brushed the snow off herself. “You must be freezing!? Why are you in here? Why aren’t you in the hotel?”

            “Hotel? Didn’t see it.”

            “Shust down the street,” she vaguely waved through the window. “So, let me guess. You arrived on the red-eye express, eh? Are you to be one of the Klimack men, or are you headed out for the Anaconda outfit?”

            “Anaconda Iron and Ore, I think. Keith Russel’s my contact.”

            “Yes. He would be. The whole town is booming with all of this new construct-shun going on. Well, come on inside. Bring your pack. Let’s get you warm.”  She stepped past him and slipped off a mitten by biting the end of it in her teeth. They were small and white and even. Her hand, the short nails unpainted, was thin-wristed but sinewy. Strong. Then she extracted a set of keys from her parka and opened the door.

            The clinic was functional, utilitarian, sparse, and smelled sterile.

            “You can warm up by the register in the waiting room,” she announced before going in, bending to her boots and then taking them off. She handed them to him. “Take your runners off, please. I’ll shust go put the coffee on. And take these to the register too. I like them toasty when I ski back to Cordingly.”

            “Cordingly? Is there a ski hill here?”

            “Ha!” Her laugh was short and sharp, as though he should know better, “Not at all! At least, not a commercial one. But some of the steep hills on cross-country skis are challenging enough, let me tell you. No. I’m at Cordingly Lake. It’s about four miles from here. I have one of the Liman cabins there.”

            “Liman?”

            “Anne Liman. She’s this great old lady who still goes out in snowshoes on her trap lines. Owns Cordingly. Rents her cabins. Well, you wash up. I’ve got work to do.” She padded out in her thick woolen socks.

            While she busied herself in the other rooms he washed and changed in the ‘gents’ room. And within twenty minutes she was back, carrying a tray with two steaming mugs, a sugar bowl, and a small milk container. She now wore a white nurse’s uniform. It was calf-length and hung loosely about her, as though being a size too large for her wiry frame.

            He took the tray and read her nametag: ‘Nan Laurens. R.N. / B. Sc.’

            “I know B.Sc. is Bachelor of Science, Sister. But R.N.?”

            “Registered Nurse. We don’t call nurses, ‘sister’, here. Shust ‘nurse’. Or, ‘hey you’,” she laughed. “Well now, you can see who I am. You are?”

            “Adam Broadford. Pleased to meet you.”

            She nodded. Her hair was cropped short, page boy style. They sipped their coffee. She looked to be about seventeen or eighteen, her figure slight and her body coltish, but she handled herself with the forthrightness of a mature woman. She wore no makeup that he could discern, and her skin was weather-bronzed. He kept quiet, waiting for her to ask him where he’d come from.

            “Well,” she commenced, and drained her mug, “I have things to do. You may use my phone,” she indicated with a jerk of her head. “It’s six-thirty, but Keith, Mister Russel, will need to come and get you before work starts anyway. Everything comes alive at seven a.m.. So shust go ahead. Use it.”

            And within a few minutes, ‘shust’ as she said it would, the whole town came alive. Adam watched from the clinic’s windows as cars and trucks and pick-ups, their exhausts’ pluming white smoke, slowly slipped and slid along the scoured tire-ruts of the thickly white-caked roads. Various sizes of men, hunched against the cold, came out from the hotel and picked their way through the snow drifts to their snow-piled vehicles. Some bent at the grills and then unplugged long extension-cords that snaked up like thin black mambas from burrowing under the snow; it was as though the electric cars were being charged overnight? Then, once the vehicle was started, they climbed out again, left it running, and with a long-handled brush commenced sweeping the piled up snow off the windshields and the bonnets. Or ‘hoods’, Adam corrected himself. Across from the clinic other vehicles slowly arrived, parked, and the men coming out of them just left the engines running, pluming thickly white from exhaust pipes. Yet more men, their quick breaths like cartoon puffs of wool in front of their mouths, joined those going up the steps and entering the Greasy Spoon. Further along, even the Hudson’s Bay store was apparently open for business. 

            “Nan?” Adam called, putting down the phone. “Thanks! Keith said to get some breakfast and to wait for him across the way.” But there was no response.

            He searched for her, and then from a widow saw her coming across the road from the Hudson’s Bay, a brown paper bag in hand. Running like a white-frocked snow angel, she wore nothing other than her white uniform and a pair of suede mukluks.

            “Hi,” she volunteered as she dashed in and stood over the radiator heater, rubbing her hands, “I shust needed some more coffee and while you were here to hold the fort I shust ran across.”

            “No gloves? No coat?” he marveled. “You’ll freeze to death.”

            “Today?” she shook her head. “This is nothing. It’s snowing. It’s warm. Wait until it’s really cold.” She removed her mukluks. “You will need to buy a coat. Is that thin shacket all you have?”

            “Yes. And this jersey.”

            “Well. The Bay has everything you’ll need. Everything. Now, excuse me, I must work. See you later, maybe.” And she walked away.

             He picked up his pack and headed out into the cold. ‘And if this ‘isn’t’ cold, as she shust tried to tell me,’ he shuddered. ‘Shust what have I let myself in for?’ 

             The heavily clothed men inside the Greasy Spoon had that distinct sense of knowing one another that, as usual, had Adam feeling at once very alien. He stepped inside to an almost instant hush as various heads turned to take him in. In his sports jacket, with his running shoes, no toque, no gloves, and his thin trousers, he felt conspicuous, almost ridiculous. His battered old pannier-pack at his side felt like a foreign thing. He swallowed. The men stared, curious, but not aggressively. There were about eight tables seating four or five men each in an L shaped arrangement around a bar counter behind which a matronly woman now paused to eye him too. She suddenly smiled across at him. “Been expecting you, eh! You must be Adam?”           

            He nodded.

            “Hey there,” she called over to the crowded corner. “Dave! Here’s our new man, Adam. He’s the guy Keith told us about, remember? The one who was a stowaway on the ship, who knocked everyone off the grease pole.”

            “Looks too friggen frozen to harm a flea!” a voice teased, “You sure you got enough backbone in there to fight at all, fella?”

            Adam smiled into the expectant eyes of the crowd, “Hell no,” he tried, “You mean Keith didn’t tell you? Only way I could get across the pole at all was to get everyone to hold onto me and drag me across. Truth!”

            Men instantly creased the corners of their eyes at him. The man called Dave stood up. “Yep. That’s our new man all right. Adam, is it? Come set yourself over here. Say hello to Beth.” She waved. “Say hello to the boys.”

            There was a brief silence, then some of the more outgoing of the men came forward and shook his hand and introduced themselves with names like Tom and Harry and Jim and Eric, who limped in a plaster-casted leg, and Jason and Jacque and Rod and Guy, “pronounced Guh-eee, you hear!” Almost all, except for Eric, were older than himself. Many were bigger, stronger looking men.

            Soon he was seated over at Dave’s corner table. A plate of eggs and toast and bacon and sausages materialized, along with coffee. Despite being a vegetarian he ate gratefully as the others finished their meals. He noticed that he sat upright, formally, with his palms over the handles of his cutlery while the others hunched down, fisted their forks and stabbed down at food. The men also cut up their entire plateful, put down their knives, transferred their forks to their right hand and, mouth now quite close to the plate, commenced a fast-paced and fork-fisted shoveling. Except for a tall, skinny man; he wore an air of dignified elegance.

During the meal Dave introduced the men around the table as Naresh and Li, and Cho, and then, “I’m Jon,” the skinny fellow grinned, his accent most English, “without an ‘h’, if you please”. Next was an Ivan, who most interestingly wore a cowboy hat, of all things, and then came a Ted, and finally, the big old Indian, No-Tongue.

            The privilege of meeting such a diverse bunch did not escape Adam, but he could not bring himself to give voice to it. He was glad of the opportunity to shake their hands, even though he felt awkward at reaching across the table to do so. Never in Africa would men of such different ethnic origins have been allowed to eat together, much less to be introduced on equal terms. Naresh, a handsome man in his thirties of East Indian descent, was the Project Surveyor. Li and Cho, brothers from China, were in their forties. They had come from British Columbia, on the West Coast, because they were ‘powder monkeys’. “Blast Supervisors, like me, once,” Dave informed him, holding up his mangled left hand. The forthright gesture, and the sight of Dave’s stumped hand, with only its scarred thumb and third finger remaining, spoke volumes. Dave was a congenial, big man. “I’m the foreman,” he introduced himself. Jon, the lanky Englishman, was, “Fourteen years here, serving as bush pilot. Although it really should be ‘lake pilot’, shouldn’t it?” he explained dryly.

            “Let me guess,” Adam grinned, “You fly a ‘lake plane’, not a ‘sea plane!’”

            “Touchè.” Jon quickly winked, a sense of camaraderie developing.

            Ivan, strange in his cowboy hat, was a thickset man, of Ukrainian origin, who’d come from Alberta, “beef country, out West”. He was a back-hoe operator. He had steady, appraising but kindly eyes as he paused in his methodical forking. Ted, a solid looking man in his fifties, was a big Dutchman, in charge of Transportation. “Really the ‘Chief Mechanic and Grease Monkey,” he explained with a big grin. He’d been in Canada “Thirty years now.”

            But the one who fascinated Adam the most was the reserved and somewhat aloof looking Indian, No-Tongue. Yet he wore clothes no different from the rest of them. At about fifty, or maybe even sixty, the quiet man gravely nodded and stared Adam down. He’d been in Canada “...for-ev-er,” he answered, using monosyllables.

            Dave, a touch patronizingly, added, “Our friend here, No-Tongue, is our Algonquin hunter and trapper. Aren’t you, my friend?” No-Tongue ignored them. Dave turned to Adam, “He just happened to come back with Jon last night. Need more bullets, No-Tongue?”

            The man gave the slightest of nods.

            Jon asked. “And you, Adam, first time in Canada, we presume?”

            “The neophyte! Measured in hours,” Adam smiled.

            “No!” No-Tongue suddenly shouted. His beaked nose and sharp chin hawked down imperiously as he rose. His talon-like yellow-nailed finger pointed directly at Adam’s chest, “This is a spirit that has been here long, long before.” And then, quiet as a panther, he padded out. For a moment all was silent, and then the gradual clink of finishing breakfast continued.

            “Curiouser and curiouser,” muttered Jon.

            “Ha!” Adam laughed. But the men around him did not.

            “Most I’ve heard No-Tongue say in a long while,” Dave commented, lighting a pipe, then went on, “Well, Keith said for you to wait here for him here, eh? But we gotta go. See you later Adam.” 

            With Dave’s rising men everywhere hastened to gulp down coffee and stood up and wolfed down toast slices and made for the door.

            Within three or four minutes the Café was cleared.

And then in strode Keith.

One's Worst Enemy!

My first vehicle and first spring in Canada, 1976. (A University of Cape Town T-shirt)

Seems guilt is worse than reality. We take ourselves along with our mistakes into the months and even distant years of our future, regretting that the lessons we learned were at the expense of others, and presuming that a person still holds it against us, or at least feels that we still are somewhat unworthy of their affection, consideration, liking. The insecurities can debilitate. What if you, the one who was immature, unthinking, uncaring, wrong, were to run into the person so slighted, betrayed, injured, in the grocery store, the social gathering, the reunion? Or do we just shrug off the past, put it down to immature experience, and trust that the other person also just accepted that we each get bumped along by the progress of life?

There is a certain agony in me for the things I've said and done in the past. It comes up unexpectedly, and rides me awhile, and I churn over the incident and shake my head at myself and click my tongue and offer a prayer that I be forgiven by the person I've wronged, even as far back as forty or more years. Recall happens occasionally when driving, whether behind the wheel of a car or just in my power-chair. Recall happens when something in a movie, some phrase, some vision, some feeling surfaces to remind me that I once said or did something hurtful, selfish, egotistical. It happens not so that I'm depressed or rendered miserable as a general state of being, but rather as checks on my insight, as reference points by which I might not repeat the errors, like lessons needed to learn the map of my own potential. If only others hadn't been hurt!

One such lesson occurred back in early '76. Behind the wheel of my new V8 Dodge caravan, the gravel of the Northern Ontario back-road churning up and spitting rocks beneath the tires of the speeding vehicle, I selfishly showed off some of my driving skills. Two women and a young man roughly my own age were my passengers. No seat belts in the back, those days. The man's wife became progressively uncertain, and eventually over-stressed or emboldened to secure our lives, asked me to slow down. She must have had to repeat herself several times, since the moment that I still regret is when I actually, in my 24 year old arrogance, looked at her and barked, "Shut up. I know what I'm doing!" Virtually immediately, as is my wont, I examined my rude outburst. But too late. Perhaps I even slowed down a smidgen. Perhaps I even sped up a bit. But the damage was done. I do not recall if I apologised. The relationship between the couple and me was forever tainted, I felt. I had not only growled; I might as well have bitten. My apology, now, is very late.

Cannot tell you how many times I have mentally rerun that road. I could almost, some 35 years later, find the precise spot on the slip-sliding surface where I said it. But lest this sound too self-conscious, I mention it as but part of the great meteorological soup of ingredients that are within anyone's makeup. We are the sum of all the parts. I happen simply just to keep agitating at the stuff in my own stew. And each peppercorn can pack a punch, if chewed all by itself. Nor do I hereby suggest that anyone spend one's time invested in the past rather than the present; the point is, when the past surfaces in the present it is worth within that 'now' truthfully to examine that moment of the past, or why did it surface?

So, 35 years later, I happened today to make contact with the lady and her husband in question, and in relating the event received this precise wording: "We chuckled as we can't recall the driving event as u do." Wow! Goes to show; we are own worst enemies, ha! Now, what about...?

Bear Bait (part two)

I was not yet old enough, even at 50 something, to react more considerately. When the Christmas gift to me of a stuffed toy black bear from a friend was glanced at with a fair amount of disapproval (or judgement) from the 80 something year old man, three seats away from me, I might have realized I should have curbed my intensity of affection and appreciation. We were some 12 or even 16 people at the present-swapping, all adults, except for the two children, about 6 and 8. And even though the little boy and young girl worked at being our Christmas elves, distributing the colourfully wrapped gifts according to names, they themselves received no presents; their own gift openings had been done on the night before. It put them very much in the role of onlookers. And the young girl's eyes were now glued to my brand new black bear. "It's really a reading-book pillow," I explained, holding it to my chest and miming at flipping over pages.

The old man gestured, "Here, let me see it." I cradled it over to him, and he plucked it from me and promptly pushed it into the little girl's arms. "You have it!," he said to the child, and her eyes went wide. In a moment I have repeated many times over in my mind, where instinct and self-preservation, selfishness and materialism, symbolism and sentiment all coincide in a precise moment that defines your action before you pause to think, I blurted, "No! Sorry, that's my bear. I'll get you another." The room went silent. But  then the giver of the gift and the mother of the child as well as my wife all rose to my defence, and with caring phrases pointed out to the child that she could not have things that were not meant for her. Yes, there were tears. Yes, one of the younger women who had lived in that family house most of her life fetched down her own old teddy bear from the top shelf overlooking the kitchen, and gave it to the girl. And generally the situation was saved, though to this day I wish I had reacted differently.

The thing for me was the history behind the gift. Back in July of 1977, within a year of being in Canada, I'd had to shoot a bear. Me, who always has loved teddy bears, had to shoot a real one. And though I collected teddies, and used them in some musicals I directed (as in Frederick’s, in Pirates of Penzance; and one for Tom, our big lone guard in Iolanthe) I had never come across a black one. But sometime just before Christmas, about six years ago, my wife was pushing me past a stuffed toy display in the mall, and there he was! A black bear! Perhaps I had already told my wife the story of the shooting, or perhaps I relayed it then, but she realized I liked the thing, 50 something though I was. So she told her friend. And her friend went and got it for me for Christmas. And I was touched at the gesture, the thoughtfulness, the... How we do defend ourselves!

Boundaries are healthy. Little girls learn them. Men, it seems, keep having to relearn them. Animals may even learn them too. Many a dog stays in its yard. Socially we extend ourselves but have a 'none of your business' clause. And Santa Clause, though believed to be real by many a child, eventually maintains a boundary of belief in even the sternest of adults; come let us celebrate with presents and egg-nog, but preferably without egg on my face. The generosity of Christmas overwhelms emotions, budgets, and constraints. But for a real black bear, back in '77, as well as for a stuffed-toy, some 30 years later, the boundary had ended with me. By what self-righteousness did I lay claim to being right? Surely there were other ways to discourage the real bear? And surely there were other ways for me to handle that Christmas too? But we balk, at boundaries.

Friends Pat (police constable), Sandy (teacher), Jay (Nakina's principal) before the hurricane, 

and just before my surgery.

The cabin after the hurricane!

That poor Cordingly Lake cabin bear became this rug!

Bear Bait (part one of two)

"A life unexamined is hardly worth living," my friend reminds me. She and her husband lounged at my dinner table last night. And she hugged my bear. My black bear. In fact, she took so much to the furry stuffed object that we grew animated with its implications. Snugged up against her, like a child, or a pet, it did not reciprocate, respond, wriggle, writhe or judge. It did not of itself move. It had no life. Yet it engendered from most holders a warmth, tenderness, and sense of care endearing to watch, especially if not given to scoffing. Even my manly friend, veteran of sports and an inveterate campaigner of 'keeping things real' was at pains not to mock. It was, after all, the old story of my once shooting a black bear after a hurricane that had brought about having this present. 

Nakina, Northern Ontario, autumn, 1977. Food was scarce for the bears. My wife at that time (nurse to the one-horse town) and I had a rented log cabin beside Cordingly Lake, three miles out of town. No phones. No electricity. An outhouse. No running water. And the small two-roomed cabin had a 15 degree slope to the floor. Heat was by a wood stove. Mice were frequent. Even chipmunks vied indoors for potatoes that rolled. But we did not quite expect the bear to come inside. Still, the local game warden warned me, "A bear comes through a window, panics, and goes through a wall." So I got a bigger rifle, a World War Two Lee Enfield. Besides, in my condition then, with a full plaster cast from my waist to my neck, as well as my wearing a silver-wired neck brace, and holed up day after day in the isolated cabin, I was rather a sitting duck, if you'll pardon the expression.

It was about three in the morning when, consternated, I hobbled forwards in the dark. The bear at the garbage can was very noisy, very bothersome. My wife stood behind me, five or so steps from our cautiously opened front door, directing the flashlight around the corner of the cabin at the ghostly black thing, and I, a trained marksman, hefted the .303 and fired a quick shot into the ground. A growl and a roar! I clunked at the antique weapon's reload bolt. Shot closer. The bear barked, eyes blazing. My wife dropped the flashlight! Bolted! And an enraged animal and I were left in the dark. I heard the sounds of crashing, too near, directly at me, and I raised the rifle and fired and the bear groaned and took off, crashing through the bush. And I was angry that a wounded animal might be loose out there. But by 8:00 a.m. the thing was back, or perhaps even another bear, for at the low-slung window of the cabin, right between our two single beds, the bear scratched with steely-sounding claws at our window pane. And as I rolled awkwardly out of bed, pyjama bottoms and great white body-cast foreign in its cognizance, it scrammed. Or perhaps it recognized my take up of the rifle. But its hurtle took it around the corner and in front of the cabin. Hurdling the fallen trees or ducking under them slowed its headlong flight, and at about 40 yards from it, in a small clearing, I connected the sights of the rifle with the spot just behind his ear. Kaboom! He dropped without so much as a twitch. Anne Liman, the local trapper, came to fetch it in her old truck, skinned it, and froze the meat. We had hindquarters steaks from it. The skin was preserved and now, 40 years later, lives with my young friend, Sean. And there was not a mark on the bear. Through the ear, out the far eye. The army had trained me too well.

But that's not the whole story behind getting the stuffed bear. And it is not the story I retold at our dinner table. Instead, we gave the toy hugs and cuddles, and we spoke of there being no fear it would reject us. A life is examined, ours, but not that poor old bear's.

Good Grief (the Cartoonist said)

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
by John Donne

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
    And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
    "Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."                     

So let us melt, and make no noise,                                       5
    No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
    To tell the laity our love. 

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
    Men reckon what it did, and meant ;                              10
But trepidation of the spheres,
    Though greater far, is innocent. 

Dull sublunary lovers' love
    —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove                                     15
    The thing which elemented it. 

But we by a love so much refined,
    That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
    Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.                           20

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
    Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
    Like gold to aery thinness beat. 

If they be two, they are two so                                          25
    As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
    To move, but doth, if th' other do. 

And though it in the centre sit,
    Yet, when the other far doth roam,                                30
It leans, and hearkens after it,
    And grows erect, as that comes home. 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
    Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,                                    35
    And makes me end where I begun.  

Friends Forever

Forever Friends hardly need assurance. We each do what we do on our daily basis without necessarily knowing what the other does at all. Dentist surgery, even heart check-ups are par for the course. Furniture acquisition, moves from one place to another, the new, the old, the regular, the dreamed. These are the things of life that keep us going, but the details are just that. Forever friends will unexpectedly drop you a line, occasionally, a silvered and gold thread of words that re-establishes the connection, tenuously, then disappear again. But none of that really matters; it just remains important. As Sancho sings: "I really like him!"

The importance is in that we remain friends, people who know of and like one another. Caring for is another matter; it takes work. A dear friend of mine wields friendship like a verb. It is an almost daily delight of touchstones (given today's ease of email and texting), and it is neither trivial nor mundane; his interests are too far ranging to be that. But it does take the conscious effort (or will) to reach out and write. And we can hardly be expected to do that for everyone. It might take up an hour or more of a person's day! So we continue our daily fare with our friends in mind, here and there. The thoughts we give them are retrospective, a memory, or immediate, an interest in the moment. But our own lives are complex enough and so we do not continuously write, phone, or communicate. Yet were the phone to ring, an email to arrive, the feeling would be as though we saw them but yesterday.

Trouble is, the uncertainty. There are so many friends that I would assure of my interest, my affection, my care. But I do not make a verb of these feelings; they remain nouns, gerunds tucked away without surcease of unrequited intentions. The letters do not get written. The feelings do not get revealed. There is an expectation that the other will understand. There is an expectation that the other feels the same. Does the same.

Birthdays and Christmas are the worst. Missing the other's birthday would appear a total lack of care. Mike, when is yours? Mike? Michael? And you are not the only three M's on my list. I could be sending a present by post every week for the amount of people I like, would want to please. Facebook certainly alerts me to that. This week is Naomi's birthday. And since I know some seven Naomi 's only one of you, reading this, might know that I thought of you. Yes?

Point is, this is no exoneration. Nor is it an excuse for my own lack of contact. Rather, it is an examination. It is what it is. We each are engaged somehow with something in the moment, and so the days unfold, each by each. And as the years move us on there is a dropping off of familiarity, a definite unknowing of the particulars, a seeming estrangement. One old friend I recently met after a ten or so year absence did not hug me, but put out his hand; we are now somewhat strangers yet to be reunited, or not. Thing is, the liking is still there. The feeling has foundation. But the details will interest, intrigue, start a dialogue, or begin to appear dismissive. Discourse needs be interesting for friendship to flourish, it seems. Or else the typing between us, the phone calls, the letters, end. Friend?

Dawn to Dusk

'I am not my body.' Statements like that can be so misleading. In awaiting dawn I send such an email to a dear friend, and then rethink it. I resend: 'We are everything.' With some certainty I recall my childhood dissatisfaction with the apportionment of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Oneness, even then, felt fragmented. God was difficult enough to make obediences toward, why complicate things? And then there was Mother Mary, if not all the Saints, and every Religion too. Perhaps it was last night's late-night watching of Marie Antoinette (Kate Blanchet’s lavish portrayal), or perhaps it was my pained dream that so awoke and invigorated my senses this early morning, but as I type at my window and see the light emerge over the seascape before me, I am compelled yet again to type one of 'those' essays. After all, down on the dark path below my fourth floor window, though it be raining, and though the window whistles and even howls, there is by the glow of the lamplight globes an occasional dog walker, lone jogger, and some or other mysterious soul. In the dark! We are not alone. Heroism is everywhere.

Seems that some psychic instinct in me was always headed toward yoking everything all together. A conceptualization of Oneness was perhaps the foundation of my earliest thinking. Even as a child I delighted in the idea of the Queen on the toilet too. The rank and file of life felt like a dislocation. Below me now a garbage truck drives on the narrow path, stops with orange lights blinking at every container, and empties it. Plenty of packages of poop. Ever dumped warm coffee grinds into a small plastic bag and had that squishy warm goo in the palm of your hand to chuck into the kitchen-catcher? I had dogs; it felt like that. And we make coffee every morning. These are the things that yoke us together: Dog poop, Marie Antoinette, Father, Son, and Mother Mary. Holy cow!

Avoiding expletives is something one can train the mind to do. Many an adult will not swear around children; many a man not swear around a Lady; many a gentleman not hardly ever anywhere (unless that word, a word, be useful, funny, appropriate, pertinent, or relevant.) We give ourselves excuses. But dreams are unbidden. They arise and we can feel ourselves smile in them. We can be lucid. Aware. We can recall them. We can direct our own course in them, rewind, pause, and even redirect the outcome. At least, at times. But not always. Most dreams, for me, lead me by a series of transportations as vivid as flipping through a picture book; I am conscious of the disjoints, disturbed by the lack of continuity, even as I dream. But I swear I do not swear in my dreams; rather, I am more authentic with my physical frustration. My body wishes to be free of pain. What soul does not so wish for itself too? Perhaps this is the real leavening? We release bits of ourselves into the night; yet let us hereby not discount daydreams too.

This three a.m. jolt to consciousness is becoming a habit. It was the rancor in my dream with which I defended myself, due to pain, that had my heart pounding. I could not contribute toward a group-function by laying cutlery on a table. The man, I think it was my alter ego, actually lay contrite at my feet. Yet still I tossed the three pieces of cutlery at his chest. And in my dream, even in the air, I quickly transformed them from a fork, knife, and spoon to three spoons; I did not want to harm. I just wanted to have some attention, some rest, some surcease from the expectations of others.  I recall saying, "I'd like to be driven home now." I guess I just wanted to drive my point home. Painlessly.