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THANKS FOR THE HELP

28/2/2020

2 Comments

 
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VIEW ON WAY HOME FROM SHOPPING
Our bird feeder restaurant must be highly rated. Whenever we count the different kinds of birds, the sum almost always comes out to an even number. Which to us, says that the birds are bringing a date to our eatery.

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OUTSIDE OUR LIVING ROOM WINDOW
On Sunday, a friend and I snowshoed. This episode reinforced my idea that we all have an angel or angels looking after us. 

I’ve also heard, from an intelligent person, that some people need angels more than others. I think my hiker friend and I rely heavily on our angels.


​The weather forecast was for above zero temperatures. I therefore sprayed silicone on my large pair and my small pair of snowshoes. The silicone helps prevent wet snow from sticking to the metal teeth. I wear different sized snowshoes depending upon the depth and state of the snow.


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TWO SNOW STORMS AGO
Later on, I pulled into my friend’s driveway. I think I may have been whistling a tune, but I’m not sure. I jumped out of the truck, possibly still whistling, walked to the door, grabbed the door knocker and gave the door some hefty knocks.

That’s when I stopped whistling. Had I remembered my snowshoes? I couldn’t have been that stupid. I rushed to the truck, opened the tail-gate. I was that stupid! &*(!! 


My friend told me she’d borrowed a pair from the library. Ipso facto, she had two pairs. Her own pair had been slightly injured, but was still useable. 


​Thank-you angel or angels.


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SUE'S CAR
My friend told me while we were inside her closed-in porch  that she had a ski pole I could use. However, would I be so kind as to loosen the poles’ connections so they could be stretched out and made longer? 

I quickly and carelessly grabbed one pole and began to tug and turn. My hand slipped, the pole shot out to my right and bang, it smacked heavily into the window. An expensive window located on the inside inner door. 


It was close, but it didn’t break. It could have been, relatively speaking, a rather expensive and catastrophic inconvenience? 


​Thank-you angel.


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PAPER DELIVERY DOG FOR SALE
Then we were off. My friend wanted to ski along Bras D’or Lake. The trail-head begins off the road and is a straight pathway which leads to the water. It ends at a boat house. Another trail runs along the shoreline. It’s a great pathway for getting a chance to see all the rich folks’ cottages and boat houses. It also offers hikers a wonderful view of the wide, snow-covered lake. 

Oh, oh! My friend informed me she didn’t know exactly where the trail-head was. I didn’t either.


​So, we cruised along the tall snow banks until we saw a trail. We weren’t sure if it was the right one, but it was a trail. 


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PAPER DELIVERY DOG ON DOWN TIME
I donned her small pink snowshoes. I felt like a he-man as I strapped them on.

We began the trek by climbing over a large snow bank and then we began hiking through the untouched snow. 


We quickly came to suspect that this wasn’t the trail we’d been on last year. Last year’s trail didn’t run through a marsh. We slogged through the snow while staying close to the tree line so we would have a better chance of not going through the ice and water that we sometimes noticed after we’d lifted our feet.


​The lake was supposed to be in front of us, but we saw no sign of it. 


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RUNNING OUT OF ROOM
Suddenly, up ahead, I saw a white pick-up drive by. That wasn’t supposed to happen. The trail was supposed to end at a boathouse and the lake. Not a road. My friend asked me if I might have been hallucinating. Was it a cold weather mirage? I said I didn’t think so.

We finally arrived at the end of the trail without falling into the water. Should we thank one of our angels for this? Don’t know, but just in case,

​"Thank-you, angel.” 


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HEAVY WITH SNOW
There was the road and no lake. Where the heck was the lake?

​We spotted a cottage. It was to the left of us. Surprising, because the cottages were supposed to be on the right side. And, voila, there was the lake, right in front of the cottage. The lake was also in the wrong place. Who moved everything?


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ANY ONE FOR BASKETBALL
We trespassed. Broke the law. Cut through the cottage lot and found the lake-side trail. On our illegal trespass route we passed a beautiful little cottage. It reminded me of an angel’s bungalow.

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TAKING A SHORT CUT
When we got to the shoreline trail I saw the boat house. It was a way down the trail and to our left. It was supposed to have been at the end of the correct trail. 
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ANGELS'S HOUSE
Because the slogging on the wrong trail had been so strenuous we decided to head to the boat house and then take the proper trail back to the road. Where we suspected we’d have to climb over a large snowbank, remove our snowshoes and then walk about quarter of a K or so down the road so we could get back to my truck.

​Anyway, we hiked to the boat house, and then hiked back to the road.


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BOAT HOUSE
It was heavy going. However, we finally made it to the road, climbed over a snowbank and there was my truck. Parked fifty feet away. We had hiked on a trail that was only about fifty feet from the correct one. 

Thank-you angel or angels. I think.

Write to me and I’ll send you a topographical map of our Sunday route. Ha.


​
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RATTY AND SNIFFLES
I hope, when I’ve passed on, that folks will think of me the way Thomas Hardy expressed it in his poem:

​“When the present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay

And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
“He was a man who used to notice such things?” 
            Thomas Hardy, Afterwards

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SUE AND BUSTER ON OUR LANE
2 Comments

BEING TOUGH

3/2/2020

1 Comment

 
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GORGEOUS SNOWSHOE TRAIL
This morning I’m sitting in my yellow chair. I’m thinking about writing, writers, rejection slips, the occasional acceptance slip and all that goes with being a wordsmith and just how damn tough you have to be to be a writer. 
Because, if you’re a masochist, don’t mind being uncompensated for most of your work and enjoy rejection, then do I have the job for you. 

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DARN BRANCHES
Recently, a friend suggested my writing was similar to Charles Bukowski’s, so I’m going to quote Charles more than once.

Charles Bukowski received an extremely interesting rejection slip.


“Dear Mr. Bukowski:


Again, this is a conglomeration of extremely good stuff so full of idolized prostitutes, morning-after vomiting scenes, misanthropy, praise for suicide etc. that it is not quite for magazines of any circulation at all. This is, however, pretty much a saga of a certain type of person and in it I think you’ve done an honest job. Possibly we will print you sometime, but I don’t know exactly when. That depends on you.

Sincerely yours—-“
Charles Bukowski, Portions From a Wine-stained Notebook

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SQUIRREL'S NEST ON SNOWSHOE
I said to a friend who has published a novel and is working on another one that many writers are very sensitive and yet are as tough as nails. They have to be.

​For one thing, there are so many temptations to knock writers off their true path. However, because many writers are tough, they put up a gritty fight. Their dukes are up against the rigid existential explanations many people intrinsically accept as beyond criticism. These soulful questions do not sleep for the true artist.


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SNOWSHOE NEST SUSPECT
Stephen King wrote that before he submits a novel to his publisher he gives it to some folks to read and then they give him suggestions on how to improve it and on whether they enjoyed it or not.

​For the average writers, who are almost all struggling, it can be excruciatingly humbling and nerve-wracking to be laying your novel out there. To go from the quietness of your writing room and to plunk the novel down in the public arena, before you have even had a publisher reject or accept the novel. One thing for sure, you should trust the people who you ask to read your unpublished novel.


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COWS TREES AND ICE


And what about all the writing contests where the judges can be as fickle as a hen in a seed factory? 

I remember reading the guidelines for one writing contest. It’s demanding wordiness made me think, how can I possibly enter my story when everything has to be so perfect? The entry needed a certain font, particular margins, with no margins for error, we had to use the Voodoo special submission format, it should have absolutely no spelling errors, be grammar error free, we could only use certain paper of a specific size, no lines, be mailed only when the moon was as full as it could possibly be and on and on and so much on and on that I declined to submit. I mean, would they turf a Tolstoy story if it were written on a paper bag?

​But, do you know what the greatest irony was about this call to submit guidelines? In their document was a glaring grammatical error. Find Waldo. It wasn’t that hard.


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FARM HOUSE
It’s a jungle out there and the only thing that keeps a person like me writing is that I love writing and I’ll be darned if I’m going to stop writing because a publisher was rude, or a judge doesn’t see my story as being worth a vote or what I write isn’t the in thing, or I write like a working class writer who seldom uses the gold star words the so called cultured folks consider essential.

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SUE TEACHING BUSTER HOW TO START A FIRE
Here’s something that not everyone sees. I was in an Ontario library. I looked up my book in their computer system. I found me. And at the top was written, ‘Larry Gibbons, 1947-.

​There’s no way I want to fill in the blank at this time
.
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BEAUTY IN FRONT OF MY NOSE
It’s ironic, but being unsuccessful in life can be advantageous to your writing. This is one of the koans I’ve been wrestling with since my brain’s first synapse fired off its fledgling electrical impulse.

Here’s another Bukowski quote.

“Pain doesn’t make anything, nor does poverty. The artist is there first. What becomes of him depends upon his luck. If his luck is good (worldly-speaking) he becomes a bad artist. If his luck is bad, he becomes a good one. In relation to the substance involved.”

Charles Bukowski, Portions From a Wine-stained Notebook


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ONE OF THE CULPRITS WHO IS EATING OUR MOBILE HOME
What the heck. One more Bukowski quote.

“And the trick is to stay propped up for 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or 90 years yes eyes open while the flies get stuck in the paper and the great paintings are stolen and the faithful wives run off with unfaithful lovers, all to die in the morning, unclasped and cold and kissless.”


Charles Bukowski, Portions From a Wine-stained Notebook


I  always like to end my blogs on a positive note.


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GEOMETRIC SNOW
1 Comment

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