When the Wolf Comes Home

Every once in awhile there are moments in time that you know are significant in some way, a whisper of an idea, seeing or hearing something profound. Or a feeling that maybe you're supposed to remind yourself of something very special...that you are missing something you don't remember.

One such occasion happened to me just about 5 years ago now. A night that was supposed to be about celebration that had turned to a realization, to resignation...and has brought me to where I am right now. I'll say this...life is never uninteresting.

On a night that my ex and I were celebrating our 19th wedding anniversary with a night away, a movie and a dinner out we ended up on opposite sides of the table staring at each other over souvlaki as if we were complete strangers. And I guess, in essence, we were. Later on that brisk evening, walking out of the theatre after seeing the movie Cloud Atlas, I found myself feeling like I had seen or heard something profound. Maybe it was a line in the movie, maybe it was the movie itself, I wasn't sure. And in that moment, as we walked back to the hotel, I was trying to articulate my thoughts when I was jolted back to reality..."I didn't like the movie." What? What did you say? How could I feel a seismic shift in thinking and she nothing at all?

Now, I'm not saying that her dismissal of my thoughts on the movie were the reason for us separating, I felt it was inevitable before that fateful night, but it is true that we separated two weeks later. A moment, frozen in time, when I realized that I could not, would not, live like that any more. I'm not casting blame on her here either, this was a failure on both our parts to be what we each needed to be for the other. We grew apart, we didn't talk to each other, only at each other and we stopped dating each other...our mojo gone. Lost in the years of doing what we were doing. No relationship can last in that sort of vacuum...the wolf had come home.

"There's bound to be a ghost at the back of your closet

No matter where you live

There'll always be a few things, maybe several things

That you're going to find really difficult to forgive

There's going to come a day when you feel better

You'll rise up free and easy on that day

And float from branch to branch, lighter than the air

Just when that day is coming, who can say, who can say?

Our mother has been absent

Ever since we founded Rome

But there's going to be a party

When the wolf comes home"

We all carry baggage around with us. The things we have done, things done to us, feelings hurt and spirits lifted, we are, as I have said a few times now, the culmination of everything that has happened to us up until this very moment. To my way of thinking, that wolf is us not making peace with our past and how that failure has helped to shape us. Which reminds me of the adage "you can't know where you're going without knowing where you've been."

These lyrics come from the song Up The Wolves by The Mountain Goats, which I heard on the show The Walking Dead...how's that for profound imagery, we the walking dead waiting for our wolves to come home, with either the sweet pain of death releasing us or finally realizing that all we have is what we have and our happiness comes from within first. 

I wonder what my next profound moment will be. Where will I be? Who will I be with? What is going on in the world? Not knowing is painful but exciting all the same.

And five years on, what was it that turned my world ever so slightly? This quote is as good as I can offer....

"Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the Theory of Relativity and Principles of Uncertainty: phenomenon that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday I believed that I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. At each point of intersection, each encounter suggests a new potential direction."

...and maybe that is good enough for today.

Ciao
D

Expectations

In the annals of music there are some pretty horrible songs that give credence to the idea that being strung out on coke or comfortably numb on Willie Nelson lead people to believe that their musical journey is pure magic. All the proof you need is here High AF Of course that is an extreme example but I believe you get my drift. And to be fair, one persons version of nails across a chalkboard is another's theme song to their life...that's the way it is right. Which leads me to The Stanfields, a band from backwoods Nova Scotia that broke out with a small local hit called The Dirtiest Drunk in History of Liquor. Yep...you read that right. I hated that song. A waste of digitized space pure and simple. I wouldn't pay money for their music, much less see them live. Didn't give them any thought what so ever.

Until I was forced to see them live. They were opening for The Trews, another backwoods Nova Scotia band that I did like. And you know what? They were great! First, they didn't play that song but more importantly they played an acoustic show which opened up the music to me in a way I didn't quite expect. And my was I pleasantly surprised. So much so that I mused about suggesting they permanently ditch the electric version of their band. Of course, as is often the case with music, an opening leads to new discoveries and an appreciation for things I knew little of. They are a pretty good band of songwriters with a hard and true view of life that they cast a light on in their own way. I so love that about music.

Anyhoooooo, their song Vermillion River is what brings me here today.

"What would they say if I went back empty handed?

They won’t know who I am for all I know

But I know they'd compare me to my brothers

And laugh behind my back if I went home"

This line caught my attention. The idea of living up to expectations and the effects that has on us and others around us specifically. I think of my daughters and what it means to live in a world that bombards them with images of the perfect body, the perfect clothes and the perfect hair. I think of my son and the just as ridiculous notion that a man can't be vulnerable and must join in behaviour they know to be simply wrong so as to fit in. I think of people around me striving for someones notion of what it means to be happy...the white picket fence, 2.2 kids, two cars in the garage and a labradoodle at your feet. No wonder advertising is such a huge business, because someone has got exactly what you need to help you on the path to happiness. As if that was actually possible through things; I've got a Swatch, I'm happy as fuck now...woooohoooooo

From an early age we are all subjected to expectations, not all of them are material and some are quite benign but they are there. As parents we want our kids to grow up healthy and successful to maybe have an easier way than we may have had. That's cool, I can dig that. What I can't dig though is living vicariously through your kids..."little Jake there is going to make the NHL...hey ref!!! What the hell are you doing....did you swallow your whistle?" Sound familiar? When my kids were in basketball I knew it was a thing to do for them, it wasn't the path to their future success. I didn't bank on their NBA signing bonus. I hoped that they would learn to play a team sport, have some fun and exercise and simply enjoy the game. While I could not care less for basketball, two of my kids loved it, so I sat in the stands like a good dad and politely cheered them on while my butt went numb on the bleachers. All around me there were pockets of the vocal parents that had other ideas in their heads. Talk about pressure from expectations and the downright rude behaviour that followed with these wannabe superstar parents. You should have seen the dirty look I got at the end of one championship game that our team lost. I went over to the other teams coach, shook his hand and congratulated him on his teams play and his coaching...they were better, plain and simple, and a lot of it had to do with his approach. When I turned to go back to my "side" I was greeted with side way sneers and whispered condemnations...you already know what I was thinking GFY.

That is not to say, by any stretch, that I am the perfect dad...far from it. For some reason I was too hard on my son when he was younger. And I have been guilty of being shocked and a little dismayed when one of my kids got less than their normal results on a test. I suppose when you get used to the high marks that they have been bringing, a B+ seems like a problem might have been brewing. Thankfully those days are long gone for me and I have chilled quite a bit, but I do think of them as my lapses and failures as a positive role model. I suppose those would be my own Leave it to Beaver expectations on myself. Funny.

Expectations can become like prisons if we let them dictate to us, surround us like walls and make us feel like failures if we haven't busted through them, exceeded those expectations. And maybe none more so than the ones we almost willingly place on ourselves. You know what I'm talking about. I have to have this career and earn this much money. I have to go to Cuba every year. I need this car and that watch. If not, I must be a failure...my friend or my sister has those things, I suck. And those are just the materialistic ones. The ones surrounding success of the emotional and intellectual variety are really draining if you allow them to get the better of you....making for hard miles ahead. I say no, what do you say?

Ciao
D

Land of Confusion

A whole year. A year of his sucking the oxygen out of the world while we listened to his ridiculous press conferences and easy as pie Fox interviews. His crazy tweets picking fights with just about everyone, supporting "nice people" Nazi's and still, for some reason, fixated on Hillary Clinton. Do you think he has a thing for her?

Yes my friends a year ago we went to sleep with fear in our hearts and awoke to America asking the world to hold its beer while they did the most ridiculous and scary thing ever...elected Donald Drumph as president. God knows I could rant on for a few minutes easily on the abject failure that this moron is, but I don't think I will. Instead, let us discuss those things that we do not know.

Huh? I know right, sounds crazy but by now you have come to expect that from me. I'm OK with it so you should be too. Splattered across the internet and in newspapers alike is the latest scandal to take our attention away from whatever the last scandal was, the Paradise Papers as they have come to be known, is the latest whistle blowing exercise in trying to pull back the sheets on the murky world of the uber rich and supremely powerful. And like the indictments of Drumphers the week before it got me to thinking about what we don't know.

When 9/11 happened and the world got a little more fucked up, the scary part was not knowing what we didn't know. Who was whispering what into the hairy ear of George W Bush? What was really going on with the Saudi's and who the fuck was Osama Bin Laden? I feel that way now. If rich people have this level of exposure with these leaked documents can you imagine what else is out there? The level of douche baggery it must take for the wealthy to go to the extremes they go to in order to hide their riches from the tax man is almost unbelievable. For sure it's rotten to the core and needs some actual attention paid to it, not the candy ass crock of nothingness that politicians will spew forth in an effort to look like they're doing something but actually are doing less than nothing.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

Monsieur Cohen had it right on, as he often did, the rich get rich and the poor can suck it. The notion of the American Dream has, for the most part been destroyed...by the very people that realized their own version of that dream. Armies of lobbyists, politicians bought and paid for by secret and not so secret donors all in an effort to advance someones agenda...usually not yours or mine. The system is rigged against us not because people are against us per se, but because those doing the rigging want more. And in the absurd reality that these people live in, they can justify their actions by saying things like it will help the middle class or trickle down economics will solve the problem or my favourite one, let the market take care of things. Except when we need handouts, bailouts and laws designed to protect us. I feel a throat punch coming on!

Personally I think the things we don't know would scare the crap out of us first, but then would probably result in some form of revolution. The population out there would finally be forced to stand up and be heard. That, my friends, is what the scares the powers that be in China the most, that their billion or so people begin to realize that they really don't have freedom and thusly deciding that today might be a good day for a walk down to Tienanmen square. The June Fourth incident, as some call it, was at its height a million people trying to be heard. In a country of 1.4 billion people that's a drop in the bucket. What they don't know helps to keep them in line. And the powerful in power.

What I find most objectionable is the fact that these douche canoes are actually taking away from the people that need the most help. Our tax system is supposed to be about providing for the general community as a whole. Roads to drive on, planes to bomb the shit out of people and a health care system that doesn't bankrupt you for having a kidney stone. These people have some guile to attend fundraisers and contribute to the arts while being 'philanthropic', all the while literally hiding money from the system that would actually eliminate the need for your local hospital to fund raise for a new MRI machine. At best its objectionable, at worst illegal and immoral. Maybe I should say it should be illegal...the loophole brigade works very hard to make sure it's "legal". But it is immoral without a doubt. 

Will it change? Probably not sad to say. It's been going on too long and just enough of the table scraps are being dropped for us to gnaw on to keep us quiet. All they have to do is hunker down and withstand any assault, we have to tear it down brick by fucking brick. They're fight is a lot easier. Ours is almost impossible.

Ciao

D

The Dark Arts

Two days ago when I first started to write about what was on my mind I was going to title it "Dear Fuckheads 2.0" because I was angry. Pissed and frustrated with extreme stupidity and downright meanness. But, I had time to calm down and allow the garbage to fade away from immediacy, I didn't allow it to couple together with other similar things, such as Drumph and his daily displays of buffoonery and bad drivers that seem to get in front of me all too often. In other words I let time give me another view and approach.

I think by now we all have had to deal with people in our lives that seem to have but one purpose, pissing us off, screwing with our lives or simply standing on our necks trying to choke us out while attempting to elevate themselves somehow. I will tell you that I simply do not understand these people anymore than I can understand why anyone would support Drumph. I truly don't get it. What would cause someone to act in a such a way? Is it a character flaw of some sort? Were they treated this way and they figured that's the way to do it? Did they fall and hit their heads on something hard? I don't know and don't care, most of the time. But I will admit it got to me a little this week, reminding me of a quote from the movie Hannibal

  "People don't always tell you what they are thinking. 

They just see to it that you don't advance in life."

This got me to thinking about how the world seems to work on some levels. We see it everyday, people that walk this world seemingly in constant conflict...fists together in the universal sign for butting heads. As if it only makes sense for them when there is chaos of one sort or another. Dripping poison into other peoples lives without regard of consequences or retribution, karmic or otherwise. I have to tell you, the idea of schadenfreude was probably born in the embers of this fire. Recently, one of these people in my life had some comeuppance visited upon them in their own work world, and while I generally let things go and move on with my life, I did do a little mental happy dance at the thought of his self inflicted misery. Hubris...it's a thing.

Drumph will soon see what this all means. Slowly, too slowly, even some of his enablers are seeing that the orange turd is full of shit from any angle you look at him. He is in constant combat mode. The dark arts of division, diversion, deflection and distraction lead him to point at the Democrats and Hillary for all sorts of "high" crimes, throw his own people under every bus around, lie about everything - "believe me" and, as Hitler and his goosestepping Nazi fucks did, find scapegoats for all the ills, real or not.

This douche bag is on a completely different level when it comes to the dark arts, in the hopes of hiding his own short comings and abject failures, he uses division and distraction as very real ways to point everyone else in another direction, in the hope that people won't notice that he stands there with no clothes on. And while his particular brand of idiocy requires medication to get through I think the everyday common type of bullshit we all deal with from time to time is what we should be wary of. It is more directly poisonous to us and certainly more widespread then we give credit for.

So. What do we do? Throat punch the lot of them? As appealing as that is I think the authorities might have an issue with that particular approach. I wish I knew what to say here. I'm as guilty as anyone for reacting badly, if justifiably so, in these scenarios. I admit I get my back up when I have to deal with a known fuckhead, it may very well be a natural response. I just wish I was a little better at letting this particular shit slide down the drain.

Perhaps understanding where the other person is coming from and what they have dealt with can open our eyes to other ways of dealing with as issue. We really don't know what the other person is going through, and while it doesn't excuse them for their bad behaviour maybe it helps in finding a way forward.

At this rate I'm going to rename this blog Reflections in Real Time...hmmmm, sounds like a Hip line somehow.

Ciao
D

Photo courtesy of Marguerite

Music to My Ears

There is a certain almost indescribable and surprising beauty to the sound that a busy kitchen makes. At least to me. A cacophony of noises that range from pans skidding across cast iron burners, plates being stacked and arranged, steaks sizzling on the broiler, knives flashing across cutting boards and the distant hum of the dishwasher running through its never ending cycle. Punctuating this rhythm section are the constant barking of orders and responses, colourfully interjected with a patois that can make a sailor blush. Music emanating from a battered hotel room clock radio with a coat hanger as an antenna, genres ranging from ear aching rap and country to classic rock and a shocking amount of ABBA, provide the background soundtrack.

From my office I can sense, by the sounds coming from the kitchen, when something isn't the way it should be or if there is trouble brewing in the near future. The dishwasher has a squeak in it and I'm thinking ball bearings on the washer arm. Grinding noises from the fan in the walk in and I'm thinking the fan motor may be on its last legs. Uncharacteristically quiet from the team and I know something isn't quite right. This super natural power serves me well as I have learned to keep my finger on the pulse of my work place by mere noise. Things like the following happen on a regular basis....I walk out into the main kitchen area, just observing really as the team gets ready for service. "Brian? Yes Chef. Do you need me to slice some tomatoes for the line?" The look on his face was brilliant. "How would he even know that?" was the whispered commentary as I sliced up a few toms for the boys. Truth is I didn't know for certain but I know my kitchen and I know my team. I love doing that. I think it helps build an aura around me that helps in my management style. As if nothing can be pulled around me because chances are that I would know. And I would.

I think the best noise though is the sound of laughter. The jocularity and hilarity that accompanies people that work with sharp knives and raw meat while fermenting under the dull glow of too may shifts standing beneath fluorescent lights...it is something to behold. I have seen first hand how a joyless kitchen is something to avoid at all costs and I work to ensure that my team is here to work hard for sure, but also to have fun while they are doing it. Why live in fear of a crazy ass chef that might fly off the handle for a piece of misplaced parsley when you can open yourself up to some self deprecating humour and you know, laugh a little while you work. What a radical idea...have fun at work.

Being someone that has always bristled at authority I look for people to work with that share my sense of humour and adventure. When I dumped a pound of salt on my bosses burger before he grabbed it for the road I knew there was a good chance I was in for some sort of retribution....it took a while for my shorts to defrost that night. Just saying. Which leads to the practical jokes and impromptu funny things that help to bring that laughter. Be it my helium antics, sending naive newbies on a mission for the electric egg peeler or bacon stretcher or the classic drained egg in the face gag. There is no end to the ways that make you laugh in the bowels of most kitchens. I'm smiling foolishly right now at the mere memory of the chopping flour incident.

It's no wonder to say that the way I am now is in a large way due to the world I have worked in for the past 30 plus years. It has shaped and reshaped me into the somewhat sarcastic, often brilliant, shit disturber that I am. It's been quite the ride so far and the music continues to play.

Ciao
D

Scars

"All my nerves are naked wires

Tender to the touch

Sometimes super sensitive

But who can care too much?

I get this feeling...

Scars of pleasure

Scars of pain

Atmospheric changes

Make them sensitive again"

I'm an idiot. Wallowing in my own ignorance and my own self described good life I have come to believe and even live by certain ideals that may very well be insensitive and even hurtful to people I care about. I have written extensively here about living without regret..it's almost a mantra with me really. And while I still believe that and will continue to live that way I must sound so bone headed insensitive to some people when I preach my sunny ways. On a long ride along the shores of eastern Nova Scotia with the fall colours muted but still a sight to behold, inlets and coves and heads slipping by only to reveal another magnificent vista just around the next bend, I had my ignorance shown to me in full glory yesterday.

In a case of "walk a mile in my shoes" I didn't realize that maybe, just maybe, my proclamations of living life abundantly and without regret might be insensitive to someone that has suffered loss greater than I can possibly imagine. That maybe I should calm my self down and think about the person I may be saying this to. Stands to reason that not everyone sees life as I might and it stands to reason that I couldn't possibly know what another person is fully going through...I am truly sorry for this.

I thought a lot about "scars" last night and today. The seed planted, without fanfare, when I noticed a few marks on my dining room table that weren't there before. My table was scarred. I looked to my arm with my one good eye where I sport an ugly reminder of surgery years ago. I have numerous scars on my body that have stories attached to them. I'm waiting to go in for eye surgery again to fix some scar tissue. But they all pale in comparison to the scars on my heart. Those aching and sweet mementos from my past that can bring great joy and great pain in a micro second, triggered by just about anything. A scent, a word, a colour. Those are the scars that I am talking about...the ones I may know and the ones I couldn't possibly know in the people around me that cause feelings of deep regret, of deep pain. Not the ones that you can take a lesson away from, a learning opportunity...that's a different beast all together.

"Each emotional injury

Leaves behind its mark

Sometimes they come tumbling out

Like shadows in the dark

I get this feeling...

When I think about all I have seen

And all I'll never see

When I think about the people

Who have opened up to me

I get this feeling..."

I rationalized that I really haven't had traumatic things happen to me. The worse thing that I have had near me was the death of my best friends son. A terrible time and truly all I can say is that I can't even imagine - but this happened to him, my pain was secondary if that makes any sense. Even my diagnosis of a rare and often fatal fuck off cancer thing didn't change my thoughts on the subject. I was laughing and making jokes about it by the time the elevator got down to the main floor of the building I was in. So maybe this outlook has spared me in some way...I really don't know. 

Everyone is going to have their own way of dealing with hard and painful times, their scars will be theirs to own, to live with. And maybe they are too much, too overwhelming, too raw to ever not think of them and be in pain because of them. And than I come along smiling with my no regrets...ugh

While I will continue to live as abundantly as I can, leaving regret aside as much as I can, I hope I can be a little more aware of my surroundings...not so casual in my ignorance.

"I've stood upon my mountaintop

And shouted at the sky

Walked above the pavement

With my sense amplified

I get this feeling..."

Photograph courtesy of my dear friend Marguerite 

The Cedars of Lebanon

Psalm 92

It is good to praise the Lord

and make music to your name, O Most High,

proclaiming your love in the morning

and your faithfulness at night,

to the music of the ten-stringed lyre

and the melody of the harp.

For you make me glad by your deeds, Lord;

I sing for joy at what your hands have done.

How great are your works, Lord,

how profound your thoughts!

Senseless people do not know,

fools do not understand,

that though the wicked spring up like grass

and all evildoers flourish,

they will be destroyed forever.

But you, Lord, are forever exalted.

For surely your enemies, Lord,

surely your enemies will perish;

all evildoers will be scattered.

You have exalted my horn like that of a wild ox;

fine oils have been poured on me.

My eyes have seen the defeat of my adversaries;

my ears have heard the rout of my wicked foes.

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,

they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;

planted in the house of the Lord,

they will flourish in the courts of our God.

They will still bear fruit in old age,

they will stay fresh and green,

proclaiming, “The Lord is upright;

he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”

Those of you that know me know that I am, how to put this, not religiously inclined at all. In fact I am pretty much anti religion. So you know that I am not suddenly filled with the holy spirit and have decided to rejoin the ranks of the sheep when I put this Psalm down in this blog. I started thinking about the imagery of the Cedars of Lebanon, or the Cedars of God as they have been referred to, so I went to the source to see what was what with regards to the religious meaning. So here is Psalm 92 for your perusal. 

I have included the whole thing so as to not be accused of cherry picking a line out of context. I think there is more than enough of that already when you can take a line or two and use it as a basis for blowing yourself and a crowded market up in the name of destroying the infidels or attacking an abortion clinic or denying basic rights to homosexuals...more than enough. 

I've read through this a few times and I have to say it pretty well encapsulates what I think is wrong with religion in general. Blind acquiescence, righteous superiority and an appalling lack of plurality. It literally makes me mad to think of people that I know and have known that bandy about their particular "ism" as a way of raising them above the crowd...a massive throat punch here. And to be clear, any "ism" would deserve the wrath of my disdain. This is not simply geared to religious zealots, atheists as well, who seem to believe that their lack of belief in God makes them better than everyone else. 

So while this started as an idea around the beauty and strength in these cedars I got pulled into, by my own self of course, a diatribe on the failure of man trying to convey God. Because that is what religion is to me. Man trying to explain the meaning and purpose of God. How arrogant of us to presume that we can know this. How did we ever get here? Crazy I say. 

But wait. Maybe I can help steer the conversation back to what I wanted to talk about.

In grade four or five I had to illustrate and put words to something in nature. I chose a tree and drew the worst picture ever of a large tree with roots reaching down into the ground. I somehow showed the roots reaching for a pool of water in this picture, badly I am sure as I have never been good with the visual aspects of any artfulness I may have. But the words must have worked because I recall the teacher telling me it almost made her cry. I spoke of the struggle that the tree faced everyday for the simplest and most powerful need to us all....water. 

Those roots sought out life giving water, all the while growing stronger and going deeper, providing more sustenance and more stability, ensuring it's growth and longevity. In turn allowing it's influence to spread, helping the forest to thrive and grow. Purifying the surroundings, fostering growth of other living things and offering protection to others still. The Cedars of Lebanon, the Great Forest of the North, The Boreal Forest, The Rain Forest....we are these things. We men and women can be all these things to our brethren. 

So unlike the co-opting done by the religions of the world we can take back the tree as a symbol of inclusion, of life and of plurality. Not for the righteous but for all of us. Churchill said that "history is written by the victors", well, if this is true, then the chapter around the soul of us all needs a re-write. Not based on winning, as this implies someone losing, but on the simple idea that we are equal and part of this world together. Those roots reaching down as a foundation for us all while the limbs and leaves reach up to show us the beauty around us.

Brought to you by the riot of colour at this glorious time of year right outside your window.

Ciao

D