Category: Crows

Houdini

20/1/2017

Mountains on Warren Lake Hike

On Saturday, four of us tried to hike around Warren Lake, a gorgeous trail located in the Highlands National Park, not far from Ingonish.

Did you note the phrase, ‘tried to hike’? Please consider this blog introduction to be a brief reminder to self and to others to always read the sign-board, located at the trail-head, before you begin hiking the trail. We didn’t.

I didn’t because I expected to read the same warnings that are on all the sign boards, like: Don’t run if confronted by a coyote. Make yourself look big. Play dead if you are attacked by a bear. Make a loud noise. Fight back if attacked. If charged by a moose, say five Hail Marys and find a big tree to dive behind or find a big tree to dive behind and say five Hail Marys.

Anyway, not one of us did more than turbo eye-ball the sign before we all cluelessly ventured forth and found out, after covering half the trail’s distance, that we couldn’t get over the fast flowing, very cold river which separated us from the rest of the trail. BECAUSE THE *$%^& BRIDGE WAS GONE!

The sign we didn’t read was this one:

***

I have decided to change my behaviour towards another of God’s wee creatures. Mice. It is one mouse in particular who got me to change my ways. I call him, 'Wee Houdini'. This little mouse is escape talented.

Now, I want to declare, right off the top, that the mice around here have been troublesome. Take, for example, the year I stored my spanking new snowblower in the tool shed and the mice, during the summer, chewed, twisted and bent the rubber gas line into something more amenable to a mouse’s needs. First time I needed the blower, for snow-blowing purposes, guess what? It wouldn’t start and it was off to a small engine shop where they replaced the gas line. The next winter, when I wanted to use the snow-blower, the belt broke. It was off, once again, to a small engine shop to fetch a belt. I’d decided I’d be the man and install it myself.

So, there we were. Me putting on the belt and Sue, using needle-nosed pliers to surgically pick wee mouse faces, feet and other sundry pieces of mouse body parts out of the belt housing.

Apparently, when I’d started the snowblower, the belt had torn the crap out of the mouse nest and the poor mice. Very sad and most disturbing, if you let your imagination run freely.

Oh, and by the way, no matter how many people tell you that moth balls keep mice away, all I can say is they haven’t worked for us. Maybe our mice wore gas masks. Who knows? But when I placed moth balls around the snow-blower motor and other parts, all I got was mice construction.

Once I sprinkled moth balls around in my hockey bag, before I stored it in the tool shed over the summer. When the next hockey season began, I received some cute remarks from a couple of hockey players after unzipping my hockey bag in the locker room let the sweet, delicious odour of moth balls escape.

One guy, who sat beside me, said, as he was breathing in the moth ball scent, “I love the smell of moth balls.”

Another fella said, “The smell reminds me of my grandmother.” Now isn’t that cute? And he was one heck of a big hockey player.

So, I can imagine a mouse saying, “Moth balls remind me of the old Christmas cake I munched on in grandma’s cupboard.”

BUSTER WATCHING CNN AND WORRYING ABOUT THE FUTURE

One year I decided to rid the tool shed of mice. So, I got the traps, baited them with peanut butter and set them in different locations in the tool shed.

Every morning I’d check to see how many mouse pelts I’d captured. I’d find dead mice in traps, traps that hadn’t been touched, traps with live mice in them or a missing trap. The last scenario was the most worrisome. Where was the trap? Was there a mouse caught in it? Was it suffering or dead? Quite an existential dread would often overcome me.

I did this for a few weeks, but because of the above worries I decided to let the mice enjoy the tool shed. In order to do this, I made sure all our valuables were in sealed plastic containers. Of course, this disappointed the crows, who’d quickly learned that mouse steaks were appearing on the lawn like clock-work. Every morning a row of crows would perch along the telephone wires waiting for the morning breakfast bell.

Sorry crows. Life is complicated. All nuanced up to its ass. You help one species at the cost of another.

The crows settled for the seeds dropped from our bird feeders

This year, when we knew there were mice in our trailer, I bought some simple and cheap wooden traps. I used peanut butter as bait and put a few traps inside the cupboards. These little traps were hair triggered. A light touch with a feather would cause them to viciously snap their jaws shut. But not, apparently, fast enough.

This one mouse was good. Really good. A Houdini. Because in the morning when I checked to see if I’d caught a mouse, I’d find a fat nothing. Always a big fat nothing. The peanut butter licked away as neatly as if done by a professional safe-cracker. No snap, snap, dead for this critter.

This happened three times. So, I bought another trap. A plastic one.

What you do is load the peanut butter bait inside a little compartment which has a hole in it. Then you place it under the sink, where you know they’re congregating for meals.
What should happen is that Houdini would smell the peanut butter, his addiction would kick in, and he’d carefully and stupidly stick his head into the little hole, causing the box to lift up, which would release the jaws of death and BAM!! Houdini is floating with his harp through his own personal heavenly portal.

The next morning there was the trap. It’s jaws had gone, chomp chomp, as per instructions and by the blood staining the area around the trap, the chomping had been down on a mouse. However, there was no mouse. Houdini had escaped again. What a guy! What a mouse!

That’s when I changed my tactics. I went to the hardware store and bought a live trap. It doesn’t kill. What happens is the mouse enters the trap through a cute little foyer, walks up a ramp, steps off the ramp and is face to face with a tantalizingly delicious dollop of peanut butter. However, when he is finished chowing down he is trapped. Because the exit is sealed.

The next morning, there he was. Inside the trap. Now, do you know how far you’re supposed to take the little fella before you release him. Two miles. Two friggen miles!

The other problem was that we were trapped in the trailer. Because we live in a snow belt, and by the way, for all those who think they are getting accurate weather reports about our area, forget it. For an accurate forecast of our weather conditions you will have to go to: www.twilightzonegrabursnowhoes.com!

THIS GUY DIDN’T GET THE CORRECT SNOW FORECAST!

It was very hard to walk two miles, since our road was basically closed. Plus it was very cold and I didn’t want poor Houdini to freeze his little ass off. So, I got a box and cut a door-hole in it. Duct taped down the top, put toilet paper, tissue, and newspaper inside the box along with some bread, peanuts and cheese. I put this box in a bag, along with Houdini and the cage. Strapped on a pair of snowshoes and merrily flip-flopped through the snow, which was in some places up to my waist. Trudged on for maybe half a kilometre.

Took wee Houdini to a nice little place, which I won’t describe, but I will say it wasn’t a place that was owned by anybody I liked.

Houdini's New Home

Struggled to the back of the little building, put the portable home under the structure, covered it with some snow, so as to weigh it down and then opened the cage. Houdini popped his head out and then ran like hell.

The problem is, I didn’t take him two miles from our place and, NEWS FLASH! NEWS FLASH! I caught another mouse last night and this morning I found the cage, empty and with the peanut butter all licked away.

Is Houdini back? Has he held escape workshops and do we now have a whole crapload of intelligent mice who have escape diplomas? Are we, although living in a forty-five foot trailer in the woods, actually witnessing Darwin’s theory of evolution speeding up?

Why, last night, I said to Sue, “Write it all down, my love. We’re going to be more famous than Darwin.”

“Write it down yourself, my love. I’ll edit it. That’s my job.”

Evolution. Houdini...and sometimes I wonder which way I’m evolving.

                         Where has he gone, my meadow mouse,
                         My thumb of a child that nuzzled in my palm? --
                         To run under the hawk's wing,
                         Under the eye of the great owl watching from the elm-tree,
                         To live by courtesy of the shrike, the snake, the tom-cat.

                         I think of the nestling fallen into the deep grass,
                         The turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway,
                         The paralytic stunned in the tub, and the water rising,--
                         All things innocent, hapless, forsaken.

                                                                                    Theodore Roethke, The Field Mouse

Enormous Waves in Green Cove in Cape Breton Highland National Park

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Cabot Trail 's Magic

9/12/2016

1 Comment

Cabot Trail

Before I begin this blog I want to answer a question which I received from one of my blog readers. She asked me why the dog in my last Maritime Mac blog looked so much like Buster.

The answer is my Maritime Mac stories are re-enactments. It’s just too difficult to track down all the actual dogs which are in Maritime Mac’s large extended family. The real Bradley, who was in the last blog, is a border collie. His day job, is as a security guard at a sheep farm. He was not available.

Also, it can be very expensive to pay a dog to sit for my photographs although I have begun to use the social media to try and find other dogs who might like to make a few bucks. Luckily, Buster has offered to pose for the blogs and for this I’m thankful.

Now, onward and upward with Blog 61.

***

One morning, last week, I woke up and the very first thought that came to my mind was, “I woke up. Whew!”

Now, are these the thoughts of a person with a healthy balanced philosophy on life or the thoughts of a hypochondriac? I’ll let you decide.

A clue. Last week I went to a chiropractor. The doctor handed me a handful of forms and a pen. It was a questionnaire. On one sheet there was a list of disorders. I was to indicate the diseases I have or ever had. My god, just give me a loaded gun.

Since this check-the-illnesses-off event I have been gradually dredging up, in my memory, each and every disease listed on that sheet and have had to try, super hard, not to believe I’ve contracted all the listed maladies. There is a down-side to having a good imagination and I can actually create believable pseudo symptoms. I’m that good.

But what does this have to do with this blog? A big donut hole except for the part about waking up. That fact is relevant in everything I do.

You see, I awoke, without my glasses on. I never need glasses to see in my dreams. Perfect twenty-twenty vision. But in the awake world I have a seeing ailment. I need my glasses.

Anyway, that morning the outside part of our bedroom window was not the colour it usually is when it is out of focus. It was white out of focus. Lots of white, so I asked Sue, who was awake. “Is that snow or fog?”

Our Snowy Cape Breton Highlands

Sue can see better that I can without her glasses.

“Snow, dear.”

“Nuts. I was kind of hoping it was fog.”

However, it was pretty, and when Buster and I went for our tromp, there was a Christmasy feeling to the morning and that’s not a totally bad experience. At least if you’re lucky enough to not have a life that makes Christmas feel like a deep black hole you may never be able to climb out of.

PUTTING DOWN ROOTS

But, what does all this have to do with the story I’m going to tell you? Not much, except to say that, after I’d asked Sue to give me the early morning window report, beeping sounds reverberated from somewhere near or in the kitchen and to hear them we had to be awake. I assumed it was Sue’s computer.

“Is that your computer, my sweetness?” I asked.

“Jeepers. You want a weather report and now a beep-beep report, my love?”

Anyway, a few minutes later, when I walked into the kitchen, I found Sue and she told me she figured she knew where the beeping sounds were coming from. The stove.

So, I checked the stove out. The timer was the first dial I suspected. I turned it on and off, so I could make the timer go beep, beep, but when it beeped, it didn’t sound at all like the beeping sound we were hearing.

I then checked the oven light switch, looked inside the oven, looked around the oven and etc. etc. And when we heard the beeps again they still didn’t sound anywhere near the stove.

One problem was that the beeping sounds only happened about every three minutes and both Sue and I have trouble localizing sound, which made it even more difficult and puzzling.

Every three minutes we’d hear the beeps and they would sometimes sound like they were coming from the oven and then they’d sound like they were coming from behind us and then they’d sound like they were coming from below us. Good lord!

We were pulling out drawers, hoisting boxes, checking our pockets and shining our flashlights into tiny, never before explored, kitchen crevices.

I even found myself looking in the broom closet where I actually checked the broom and ironing board for expiry dates or, get this, expiry warning lights.

No expiry dates or warning signals here!

After one beep-beep, I found myself looking at the microwave. Looking to see if it was looking guilty, and it was, so I set it for three seconds. Poked the button on. Put a water glass stethoscope to its nervous window and listened to the sound it emitted. A definite heart murmur, but not even close to sounding like the beep-beeps.

“You may go, Mr. Microwave, but don’t leave Cape Breton until we’ve solve this puzzling beep-beep thing.”

Another beep-beep and these seemed to come from near the front door. So, we removed the little flashlight which hung from a hook. Looked to see if it had a blinking light. It didn’t, nor did the dog leash, Buster, the candles, the scissors, any of my hats. Not a friggen thing.

So, I dropped to my knees and crawled under the table where I checked all the black worms and snakes that poked out of Sue’s computer and other creepy looking electronic gadgets. Anything, that looked guilty, expired or had a friggen light flickering. Nothing.

CREEPY ONE-EYED FOREST CRITTER

The next beep-beeps sounded like they were coming from the floor next to the stove. Where I found a possible suspect. A dust-covered fire extinguisher that was hidden behind a bag of recyclables and looked kind of electronic with all sorts of warning labels on it and I had hope it would have an expiry date or a flashing light.

I picked it up, gave it a close examination, looked for anything that look beep, beepie. Nothing, but it still looked suspicious so I set it on the table and waited to see if it would beep, beep.

Three minutes later: “Damn it! Not the fire extinguisher.”

By this time we were beginning to think it was my deceased friend who’d dropped around for a little more fun. That’s another story.

“Why don’t we each park ourselves in a different part of the kitchen and wait to see who’s the closest to the beeping,” I said. Really didn’t sound like much of an option and, to tell you the truth, this whole thing was becoming not fun. We were gobsmacked. (What a neat word).

“I think I’ll take a shower,” Sue said.

“Okay, my dear. You go ahead.”

“Thank you, my love. Please don’t turn the cold water on while I’m sudsing myself up or I will get burned. I hate that.”

“Don’t worry, my love. I will set Buster’s treat stool in the middle of our beloved kitchen floor, sit on it and wait for the beeps.”

“Thank you, my love. That is a very good idea.”

“See Spot run. Run Spot, run.” An excerpt from my Grade One Dick and Jane reader. It is from this reader that I learned how to write the proper and sparkling dialogue you are reading in this blog.

Blue Jay in our Tree

Anyway, if you ever drop around our place you will see, in front of our trailer, a picture of two crows, and written underneath the crows are the words, “Two Old Crows Live Here”.

Yes, two old crows, bouncing around the kitchen, in a forty-five-foot trailer, which is tucked in the woods, is situated on a flood plain, and in the winter, is regularly pounded by heavy snow, because it is also located in a snow belt, and yet, these two old crows can’t find the bleep’n beeps.

“We are hearing these beeps, aren’t we my dear?”

“I think so, my love, although Buster seems to be totally uninterested in the beep noises we think we are hearing.”

However, we finally solved the puzzle, but I think there were at least two reasons why we had so much trouble finding the two beeps.

First, Sue threw me off by telling me she thought the beeps were coming from the stove. So, I spent a lot of time on the stove. This kind of put a block in my mind about what it might be.

Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, both of us have trouble localizing sound.

However, the answer to the beep puzzle was forthcoming because, while Sue was showering, I heard the sound once again and it happened while I was leaning on a kitchen chair. Hanging on the back of the chair was Sue’s purse. And inside the purse was her cell phone, bless its little heart.

You see the chair and the hanging cell phone were equidistant from every part of the kitchen. Almost dead centre and this was the reason why the sound was hard to localize.

So, Sue’s cell phone had been, all this time, heroically shouting out for all us old crows to hear, “My BLEEP’N BATTERY IS NEARLY DEAD. NEARLY TITS UP. NEARLY GONE TO THE GREAT HUNTING GROUND IN THE SKY. PLEASE ATTEND TO ME!”

“Oh thank you dearest, for finding the beep.”

“You’re welcome, my sweetness.”

And Buster, who sensed a break in the ambient emotional stress that had laid its harsh hand over our forty-five-foot trailer, proceeded to his treat stool and stood on it and looked up at his myriad bags, boxes and plastic wrapped assortments of doggie treats.

“Woof, woof! I believe I deserve a treat, my dearest care-givers. I have had a rough morning trying to figure out what the hell you two were doing.”

                                                          (my master is an idiot
                                                                        how freely I admit it
                                                                        he used to have a thinking-cap
                                                                        but someone must have hid it)
                                                                                                      Abigail Thomas, Doggerel

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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Missing Out

19/9/2014

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I’ve spent years hiking, mostly by myself. Because I love being alone in the forest. Sitting on a rock, a log, or any piece of natural furniture is more comfortable for me than reclining on expensive furniture in places where I have to be careful about what I say, how I say it, or what I might knock over or spill. However, some couches are more pleasant than others as butt resters.

And lately, the folks up here have decided, and have spread the word around, that I’m a trail guide. Even though I’m not as familiar with this area as I could be. And I’ve met some interesting people on the rugged Cape Breton trails.

Also, I’ve never stopped being amazed at how helpful and friendly the folks up here are. They accept us for who we are and last Sunday we even received an email from a fella who said that Cape Breton was a better place because Sue and I had made it our home. Well, that nearly knocked my socks off. Both of them.

As many of you know, Sue struggles with some chronic diseases, one of which can impede her ability to walk far. But, she gave it the old college try and actually joined our group on a hike to the Uisgeban Falls. It’s a magical place and she didn’t think she would be able to make it all the way. But she did and that’s a feather in her emotional cap. The big surprise was that her post-hike pain was no different than it was before she hiked the trail. I’m sure many of you are happy to hear that.

Sue's Favourite Tree on Uisgeban Falls Trail

Which brings me to the mentioning of a new book that was recently published: the second edition of “Guide to Cape Breton Highlands National Park”. The author is Clarence Barrett, a retired Highland Park warden. His first edition was very popular. To write this updated edition, he once again hiked all 26 official park trails and then rewrote his descriptions.

If you’re travelling to Cape Breton this is certainly a book to add to your library. Here’s a link to Parks Canada’s information about the book: http://www.capebretonpost.com/News/Local/2014-08-24/article-3845394/New-park-guide-edition-being-launched-this-week/1

My old Mac

I got a new computer for my birthday. Happy birthday to me… and that’s one of the reasons that this blog is late. Excuses, excuses, excuses. But, I have been tearing my ^*%&^%$ hair out trying to get up to speed so I can just plain sit down on my asteroid and write this blog and other things that I tap out on a computer keyboard.

However, I do try to get a blog out every two weeks or so. I know folks who have a blog out almost every day. Which I’ve heard is an excellent way to keep your readership up. It might also be an excellent way to empty your idea coffers, or at least mine.

One thing I try to do is respond to comments made on my blog. If you don’t get one from me then it’s because my comments didn’t get through or my website machine wouldn’t let me. You see, I’m relatively new to the blog world and sometimes I try to respond but I can’t get it to work. I think it’s because I don’t have all the blog ins and outs down pat. So, I apologize now for any comments I haven’t been able to respond to. I tried. Really.

Oh, and if you write a response please make sure you add your email address if you think I don’t have it. It’s supposed to come to me through the website, but doesn’t always seem to make it.

Anyway, back to the new computer. Cripes, I got so used to my old Mac. It’s twenty years plus old. It’s been everywhere, man. Had lots of sticky fingers tapping and thunking on its keyboard. Had plenty of little kids playing computer games on it and it has been dropped once or twice.

My New Mac

Oh woe is me, though. It’s not easy trying to master this new computer and I will give you an example.

I am, if you haven’t already suspected, a person who uses more of the creative side of my brain than my not creative side. Surprise, surprise.

Now as you might have read in an earlier blog, I bought myself a new camera. Only a little over a month ago, I think. It’s digital with all the funny-pictures-on the-screen stuff and with knobs, buttons or cranks spotted all over its smooth, black body.

And I have, as mentioned earlier, become known as a trail guide. So this means that I get to guide hikers into the forest. And, during the hike, I take pictures so that the fella who runs the recreational activities in Victoria County, (that’s the county I live in), gets to see pictures of the hikers and the beautiful places we walk in. He often posts them or pins them to his ‘wall of shame’.

So, I go home after a hike and hook my camera up to my new computer. Sue used to do this but now this technologic fledgling, who is me, has jumped off the tree and has ever since been wildly flapping his wings, bouncing off pixels and leafy start buttons and repeatedly crash-landing into digital bushes. Over and over again.

(*&^@%#$%&!!!! I mean, Sue used to be able to take my articles from my twenty-something-year-old computer and put them into her computer and her computer would translate the ones and zeros into an understandable language and then send it out over the internet or print it out for me. Now her computer looks at my new computer’s efforts, shrugs its shoulders and spits out these nasty, impossible to understand, bits and pieces of bits.

Yesterday Sue, whose computer acumen and expertise I trust, looked at one of my attempts and its pathetic appearance on her computer screen and said, “This is scary.”

Does one have to be a mind reader to understand some of the computer jargon?

I’ll give you a specific example.

To get the pics to my computer I have to hook my new K50 camera up to Mac. I use a thin black cord called a USB cable. The next thing I do is turn on my camera. Why do I turn on my camera now instead of before? I don’t know. Because it’s says in the Bible somewhere?

Then there’s a little box that pops up on my computer which I have to click on to IMPORT my photos. I was told this was the button I had to click on using my mouse. And that’s another story. The mouse, that is.

The pix are then supposed to slide along the inside of the cord and pour into some empty picture station where a tiny zit gets them to line up and stand at attention in order of entry .

This IMPORT box did not make sense to me. So I asked Sue where the EXPORT box was.

You must use your imagination to see a vision of the expression on Sue’s face when I asked this question. But come on. I took economics in high school. I was taught that if you live in Canada and you ship products to other countries you are exporting them. If you are receiving products from other countries then you are importing them. Do you understand?

You see, my photographs are coming from my camera. My camera was here first. I figured that I was therefore from the Camera Country. Oh Camerada, we stand on guard for thee, and I was sending out pictures to the strange place called MacBook Pro. So therefore, am I not exporting pictures?

So, how the hell am I supposed to know which place is my country and which place is not my country? How can I sort out import and export if I don’t know this? For poop sake, I’m dyslexic and this doesn’t even begin to make sense to me.

Oh god, I have so much to learn about the camera, let alone the computer. Have you noticed a change in mood in this blog? A little more hesitation in the sentence structure? Words that don’t sound so appropriate?

Where the hell is the thesaurus in this new computer? Maybe it dropped out when I took Mac out of the box. I mean when I buy a hammer, I don’t want to have to spend a long time learning how to use it before I can bang nails into wood. I just want to bang nails into wood.

Then there is my stacked-to-the-throat-with-new-gizmos camera. I’ll tell you how much I have to learn about this wonderful toy.

A friend from Australia was visiting. She has a good quality tiny camera. A quick shot thing which you can carry in your pocket like a pet Chihuahua. Anyway, we were talking about our individual cameras. I think we got to talking about the flash. This is where I pulled out the manual for my camera. It’s thick.

She asked me, “How many different languages is your manual written in?”

I said, “One *&^% LANGUAGE. English.”

It’s a friggen Stephen King novel full of Cujo mumbo jumbo. Like import, export, four way controller, JPEG, RAW, Button Customization.

I have been told that I should take up writing manuals for people like me. Ha.

***

         Let’s stop and think; Let’s know and feel

         That things like these are truly real,

         Yes, think how very rich are we

          When all the best of things are free.

                                            John Martin, “These Things Are Free”

***

Texting

I do think the virtual world is amazing, but sometimes I think it’s too enchanting and addictive. For example, there have been many times when I’ve been sitting outside on the patio of a local coffee shop. I’ve sat and watched the tourists and the locals bustling about or sitting at the little metal tables, drinking their drinks and eating their treats. Many of them, and I mean many of them, (sometimes even including me), are staring at their little prissy machines. Using their fingers to punch or rub commands into the magical virtual world that is hypnotizing so many of us.

Sometimes I’ve seen young couples at tables under romantic lighting, texting. And I’m sure they’re sometimes texting to each other. Whatever happened to the touching of hands? Leaning over for a little kiss? Rubbing your footsie up your lover’s leg? Now it’s being done with pixels.

“Oh honey, ooxx.”

“Yes, baby, XXXXXOO.”

“More, more.”

“XOXOXOXOXOXOIIIIIooooxx”

And while this human interaction in all its forms are going on, I’ve watched the crows, sitting on the power lines above the street, or on the post office roof or the steeple on the church, cawing their asses off. I can tell there’s some form of drama going on up nearer the sky.

They’re making different sounds or are buzzing each other and generally making a racket. I then take a look around at the flocks of pristine viewers and non-pristine viewers and nary a one is paying any attention. Not one. All caught up in their people or virtual world. Maybe some are even looking at the crows through their virtuals or are gazing at pixel crows on Google.

Which makes me think. Gets me wondering what would happen if this natural world, to which we don’t pay much attention, just vanished? How lonely this world would be if everyone was totally focused on the virtual world and on the human world and paid no mind to the real time world of wild others.

And what would happen if it got to the point where everybody was almost exclusively hooked up? Got to the point where we would all, for example, be checking the weather on our machines or on something imbedded inside our eye balls. Swirling our fingers down the little doo-dad screens, or poking ourselves in the eyeballs to find out whether we are going to get snow today, while outside our window there is a hell of a snow storm dumping all over our yards.

Just wondering.

“What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.”

Chief Seattle

Sunset on the Skyway Trail

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"Guess What I Found?"

7/8/2014

2 Comments

This is blog number twenty-five and I’m still trucking along. Even though I was warned by a friend to be careful that I don’t write myself out and have nothing to contribute to my other writing tasks. Maybe that’s why I only write a blog approximately every two weeks.

However, this blog might be a little early. Maybe. Because we are going to a cottage on Antigonish Bay for a week and I might not get to do any blogging there.

Anyway, I have a little story for you. If I were going to give it a title I’d call it, ‘GETTING A NEW STOVE’. And I’ll juice up the story by adding this little tantalizer: Boy, oh boy, was Sue ever glad to be getting rid of our old stove. Which only had two working burners. Because I had removed two fuses. Because we couldn’t turn one burner off. And when we removed that burner's fuse, we found out that the other burner had suddenly decided to jump ship and be a copycat. So, out came two fuses.

Country life includes a variety of wildlife!

I’ll start by saying we always have mice to contend with. There are lots of mouse stories, like this one from a few nights ago. That particular night I went to bed. Which I do pretty well every night except long ago when I was younger.

I opened the closet door to put away an item of clothing. I’d tell you what the item was but I don’t remember. However, on this night, I was greeted by a foul odour. A something-decomposing odour. And this jarred my memory.

“Yes, now I remember, at some point in time, I had placed a loaded mouse trap in the closet. Because one night we had heard plenty of activity going on in there.”
So, I rummaged through the shoes and whatnots and there was the trap and the mouse.

Yeck. I picked the trap up and carried it outside. Where I dumped the mouse. Which I knew would be a healthy breakfast for our young crow family. Then I sprayed a nice-smelling spray into the closet.

A few days later we went to North Sydney and bought a cooking stove. It was to be delivered the next day.

The next day, while we were waiting for the new stove, while I was outside painting the trailer, and Sue was preparing the old stove for removal, I heard Sue shout, “Guess what I found?”

God, I hate it when I hear Sue shout, “GUESS WHAT I FOUND?”

Guess what Sue had found? She had found, with her little eyes, a well-roasted mouse in the oven. How long had it been there? Had we, when we chowed down on the last roast chicken, actually been consuming roast chicken à la smoked mouse?

And that’s why Sue was never so glad in her whole life to get rid of a stove and the memories that went with it.

***

Well, I now have my new K50 Pentax camera. So, for the rest of this blog I will just post some pictures I took with the camera. I hope you’ll enjoy this pictorial journey around parts of Cape Breton.

Between Inverness and Mabou

Buddy Lee near Mabou

Shrine at Mabou

Someone feels very protective of this area near Uisgeban Falls!

Uisgeban Falls in Dry Season

Uisgeban Falls Trail

Misty Morning at Lake o' Law

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Weird or not Weird?

17/5/2014

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Cabot Trail in May 2014

I’d like to apologize for being so late with blog number nineteen. “I’m very sorry.”

And I’m aware that blogs are supposed to pop into the invisible yappy world at least every two or three weeks. Because if they aren’t out there, the magical graph which indicates how many people have read my blog, flattens out and then I get feeling like a nobody.

My excuse for being late, by the way, is that I was in Ontario visiting my family and friends.

Peach Tree Inn in Kingston, Ontario

First thing I had to do when I began to write this blog was remember how this blog-writing thing works. Because the city makes me crazy.

But not at first. I love driving into my old city haunts, rolling down the 401 and seeing the swamp on the east side of Kingston. Love seeing my family and friends.

Love the Peach Tree Inn with the big room. Two honking big beds, a large bathroom with a gigantic mirror. Now that’s some thrill, and the room has a window which nearly fills in one wall. It overlooks a gorgeous river of cars, trucks and motorcycles. With weird and not so weird people sauntering, power walking or running along its shore.

Who is weird and who is not weird? That’s a philosophical question that often tickles my thinking organ. And when I got thinking about this while I was in Kingston, I’d take a walk into the washroom and stare into the big mirror. Weird or not weird? Weird or not weird?

Then I’d be off to the little refrigerator for a cold beer. And the room had a microwave, a desk for the laptop, a table to sit around, two big drawers, a couch; the luxury was almost too much.

While in the city we visited this store and that store. This pub and that pub. This mall and that mall. Always with the gorgeous river flowing by. Rushing onward towards who knows where. And that’s another one of those weird brain-tickling questions that is hard to answer.

Then back to the hotel and to the big bathroom mirror. Weird or not weird? Weird or not weird?

Anyway, it took a few days of hurrying here and there before my brain began to curl into itself like a tired, nearly popped out baby in the womb. And my healthy Cape Breton routine of not drinking many glasses of beer a day ceased. My regular Cape Breton exercise program flabbed up. I began to do circles every few steps. Like a rat in a concrete shoe box with mechanically placed holes punched through the top.

Signs and rules. Rules and signs. Don’t park here. Don’t stop here. Don’t do this and don’t do that. Do this and do that. Scents galore. Good and bad. Tiny areas of grassy retreats next to tall buildings sprinkled with discarded dreams.

Well, you get the picture and when I finally saw the ‘Welcome to Cape Breton’ sign on the Canso Causeway, my mind and body stretched and yawned like a cat released from a cage.

Can you imagine me living in Toronto? I did actually live in Hog Town once. For eight months. Eight long, stuffy, depressing months.

***

I was reading a piece in a book edited by David R. Boyd. The book was called ‘Northern Wild’. The essay was called “The Subtlety of Land”, written by Sharon Butala.

She wrote: “Some years later, when I was an established author, I said to a Toronto reporter who had asked me a question about him, “My husband is a true rural man.”

“What does that mean?” the reporter asked, his voice full of skepticism.

“It means,” I said, “that he understands the world in terms of wild things.” I was a little surprised myself at my answer, having been called upon to explain something that until that moment had seemed self-evident, and realizing that, caught off guard, I had hit on the heart of the matter.

The reporter’s pencil stopped moving, his eyes shifted away from me, he reflected, his eyes shifted back to me, and without writing anything down he changed the subject. When I told this story to a writer-naturalist friend, he said, laughing, that for the reporter my answer ‘does not compute.’”

For me the city does not compute.

***

Flying Squirrel

I did manage to get two hikes into the Frontenac Provincial Park, a beautiful park north of Kingston. Twenty-two lakes dot this park. One of the places I love dearly. One of the few locales that kept me sane while I lived in Ontario.

My first hike was made with a long-time friend. At one point he stopped to knock down an old branch. While he was giving it a good shaking, a small animal scurried out of a hole. Scampered up the branch and sort of glued itself to a higher place. It looked like a red squirrel and it kind of didn’t look like a red squirrel. Upon further observation we decided it was a flying squirrel. I haven’t seen too many of them.

My friend took this picture of the flying squirrel and very kindly emailed it to me.

***

Orange Tape on Moose Skull

Oh yes, I think I have to make a correction. It’s about blog number eighteen. My blogs are nothing but pure accuracy and when I make a mistake I feel obligated to correct them.

In blog eighteen I wrote that I used bright green trail tape to mark my paths. That was wrong. I used bright orange tape. At least the "bright" was correct.

***

One day, a sunny day it was, with the snow slowly melting and the wind not so frigid on my face, I sat in my woodshed and gazed out at the world. At our little mobile home. Smoke curling out of the chimney. I was content in the knowledge that Sue was inside, most likely performing some computer miracle. I sat and watched and listened to the river and the host of birds who were chowing down at our feeders.

I tossed out some pieces of biscuits. Bird edible. I waited for a creature to swoop down and beak up a quick snack. The food was close to where I was sitting. This, I knew, would make the creatures nervous.

Hungry Crow

However, we have a crow who hangs around. Last night I even dreamed that he was outside our bedroom window waiting for us to feed him. He’s getting to be a semi pet. I think I gave him a name but I can’t remember what it is. I can thank the city for that. Would you know if I gave the crow a name?

This crow flew towards the woodshed. Did a fly pass or two and then landed about six feet from me. He grabbed a piece of food. But surprised me by not immediately flying away. Instead he grabbed another piece and another piece. About four or five, altogether. Looking like a hungry guest at one of those places where starvation sized sandwiches are laid out on plates for the guests to daintily pick up and swallow with a glass of fluid.

He took off, carrying his booty. He flew it to his gang, the five or six crows who hang out here.

These crows seem to get along. They seldom fight or rush at each other. Hold few food fights. Instead they all eat their own food. Like a good Christian family at Sunday dinner.

***

I’ll close this blog with a picture of one of our neighbours. He is a collector, a long-time resident and like many of us up here, a person who has managed to stave off elimination.

May the force be with him and with you.

Our neighbour

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Literary Angst at the Bird Feeders

6/4/2014

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I, Larry A. Gibbons, hereby declare that as of Sunday, April 6th, I have received more than enough rain, freezing rain, ice pellets and snow.

I, Larry A. Gibbons, also hereby declare that my snow blower is useless. Unless I can hire a team of moose to pull it through the above mentioned precipitation. Snow blowers detest ice pellets underneath their wheels. Confound them!

Larry's Daily Occupation

I, Larry A. Gibbons, also hereby declare that after clearing off the snow plough’s many big dumps, along with the sky’s larger dumps uponst all the sundry acres of paradise for which I am responsible, that I have, as of now, fired myself from snow removal. I will continue to be available for minor wood splitting and spooning of sugar into my piping hot tea.

I, Larry A. Gibbons, also further hereby declare, that I was not friggen impressed by the April Fool’s joke of another snowstorm. Ha, ha, and who else is laughing?

Finally, I, Larry A. Gibbons, hereby and finally declare, that this is my last hereby declaration. Which I hereby declare to be declared.

Have you read “Cape Breton Christ”, written by Denise Aucoin and published by Breton Books? I have, and although I’m not much for writing a technically proper book review, I can say that I enjoyed this book. It was a comforting and uplifting read. The thing about this book is that it’s a short novel written in the form of a poem. And I loved the ending. I won’t give it away, but I’m reasonably sure that if Christ were going to pick a place to live, he might very well decide to settle down in Cape Breton. It’s an island with a big heart. Here’s a quote from Denise’s book:

“not for one second am i about to suggest
that our baby Christ came to be born
in the middle of mabou
or bridgeport
or any other such community on cape breton island
what i am announcing is that
in the sacred and incredible act of creation
our beautiful island was immensely blessed
by the heart and hand of god
over five hundred and seventy million years ago.”

I’m not a person who has settled into many new places. So I don’t have the skills down pat on how to burrow into a new environment, while keeping the connections back in the last place piping hot and fresh. And, being reasonably sensitive, according to some observers, I worry about keeping the old emotional ties strong back in Ontario, while working on building new emotional bonds in Cape Breton.

One niggling worry is that my associations in Ontario are feeling the strain on the psychological threads of friendship that were nurtured over so many years.

So, hello to all my friends in Ontario, Alberta and Michigan.

C’est la vie, mes amis. May we someday enjoy a Gamay together at our favourite aunt’s place.

Rona Lightfoot-Celtic Piper

Life is a koan. Don’t you think? One of the biggest koans might be the viewpoints held by non-Aboriginals versus those of the Aboriginals. Whew, a tough one, and the puzzle is quite apparent up here in Cape Breton, where different colonial cultures live side by side with the Aboriginal population.
On Saturday, I was talking to an Aboriginal friend who lives off the reserve. This offers him a different set of problems from
those who live on the reserve.

So he deals from his unique perspective with the intrinsic views of the non-Aboriginals and with those of his culture who live on the reserve. If that isn’t a rock to the noggin, problem-solving puzzle, I don’t know what is. His attempts to fit the pieces together must have his synapses firing fast enough to burn down a meth lab.

I was thinking, what if this fella was a writer? He’d have lots of emotional material to put into words. Because, as you know, I believe writers need at least some chaos and uncertainty in their lives for them to have the material to incorporate into their blood and guts creations.

However, it may be difficult to write about a crisis such as a relationship breakdown, if you are in the midst of one. But once you’ve put it behind you and are trucking on down the road, well, the pen will, at some point, be ready to burn, baby, burn.

Many writers, like myself, get discouraged. Sometimes I’ll read a short story or a novel and I’ll think, “Shit, I can’t write like that. Hell, I don’t even think like that”.

Take many of the literary magazines. So many of their stories have been diced, spliced and sautéed into an urban gruel. They’re the ones that seem to grab the publishers’ attention. Put a character in a bar, a bedroom, a downtown apartment, a subdivision, a jail or a whore house on Yonge Street and your odds of being published rise. Of course, I know this is not always true, but these thoughts do occasionally bounce around inside my skull.

And hell, we live in a forty-five-foot mini home in the forest. My main conversations are with crows, squirrels and Ben, the dog down the road. Now, I’ve seen birds and squirrels getting amorous. And I’ve seen a crow eating a dead squirrel while the squirrel’s family members run up and down the branch trying to get a look at who it was that was killed and is being devoured. We suspect the perpetrator was the black cat who creeps up to our house in the early morning and waits for breakfast by our bird feeders.

Squirrel peeking through our window

And the chatter on the street is there’s a new crow in town. What is the inner angst of this rogue crow? Why does Ben choose to poop on our laneway and not on his own? Look out, literary magazines. Here comes an award winner.

But, really, there are so many good writers out there. Urban or rural. Which leads me to a point about my marketing savvy. By the way, don’t spend too much time trying to find my marketing savvy, because I don’t have a lot. And, I don’t know if I will ever get myself worked up into a marketing frenzy. Which, I think, is a problem for many writers. Because the various forms of social media, with their unlimited potential, are so powerful that writers feel they have to be involved in it all the time. If not, they worry they are going to be left behind by a massive herd of social media-savvy key-tappers. Which must have some deleterious effects on their energy to create.

Here’s an example of my marketing enthusiasm. When I was a kid and thought as a kid and didn’t look at myself in the mirror very often, I used to have a paper route. The newspaper would hold subscription drives. I hated the door-knocking, the persuading and the rah-rah sessions. I did, however, win a raincoat at one rally, but they had to draw twenty times and there were only about twenty-five carriers in the room. Plus it was a dry summer. Ha.

***

I’m also humble about my vocabulary. Which isn’t gigantic, although it’s growing. People generally use the words they heard when they were growing up. So, if you hear a lot of words when you are a child, you will most likely use them when you’re older, along with the dialect you heard.

Note, that doesn’t make a person with a larger vocabulary more intelligent, but it will open up more opportunities for them. My warning to those with a big vocabulary is to not resent having to drop your vocabulary by a thousand words so you can communicate with the likes of me. Because isn’t it the luck of the draw as to what family you have or don’t have? Just buck up and enjoy your view.

Stephen King has pointed out that a person shouldn’t wait to write until after they have acquired a greater number of words. The words will come with the writing and the reading. However, you must read.

***
Finally, what amazes me about writing, is that the creative activity involved in this pen to paper thing, opens us up to universal bits and pieces. Maybe because a writer is someone who keeps an eye out for these messages and surprises. Most writers are always on the job. Therefore they recognize more clues and bits of unusual info.

Like last week. I was travelling down Disheartened Highway 104. I was questioning my vision and my style and indulging in other downer thoughts, when I stumbled upon a Walter Whitman poem. It’s called, “Quicksand Years”. (I do this stumbling thing all the time.) Here’s the poem:

“Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither,

Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me,

Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possesse’d soul, eludes not,

One’s-self must never give way-that is the final substance-that out of all is sure,

Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains?

When shows break up what but One’s Self is sure?

Does this poem say a lot about what your own soul has to express? Have you stumbled on any creative aids?

Have a great week!

Cabin across the road from us

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A Nutty Conversation

18/3/2014

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Cape Breton Winter

You may have noticed from reading my last fifteen blogs, that my life isn’t normal. But then, how could it be arse-tight conventional, when we live in a forty-five foot, what looks like an industrial trailer, situated in a snow belt, at the base of the Highlands? Is that possible?

I try. Oh, how I try to be cool and not draw attention to myself. However, sometimes, because I live in the bush, (where I like being), I find myself going into the village and spraying my conversation at everyone near and far. It’s as though the words are stored up and when I get a chance to use them, I do. Then I return home and run the conversations over in my head, and holy crow! Did I say that? Did I say this? What a moron!

So, no matter how hard I try to act like cool, deep-voiced Gregory Peck, I fail, and I will give you one example of my not being cool. Only one, because I don’t like making my blog too long. (The blog regulations can be found in the blog/twitter/selfie manual.)

Last Tuesday night. Yes, let’s take last Tuesday night. I’m chewing on another weather-related decision. I have plenty of them. This time I’m asking myself, do I or don’t I drive to the hockey arena? Because it’s pounding snow out. However it’s not windy. So probably not going to be blizzardy.

Anyway, at seven pm, I decided to drive over the lonely, snow- and-ice-covered mountain road to Baddeck.

Now, as I may have mentioned, my snow blower, Grinder, was in the hospital for quite a time. However, it was recently returned with a new problem. Now the augers won’t stop turning, even when I’m not asking them to. But they do turn, which is an improvement of sorts.

I said to Sue, “I’m used to buying a second-hand piece of machinery and having it gradually accumulate a list of mechanical eccentricities, but I’m not used to buying a brand new machine and having it, almost immediately, fill out a roster sheet of problems.”

Snowed Under

So, the lane isn’t cleared of snow and our vehicles are parked two hundred meters down at the end of our lane. That means I need a flashlight, because, when I return from my hockey game, the spruce-bordered lane will be as dark as a horse’s artistic tendencies.
Well, I drove to the arena. It was a nail-biting trip at times and I saw two separate places where it looked like a vehicle had gone off the road.

Whenever I’m in the arena, I somehow morph into becoming a hockey player. In my mind, I take on my hockey player persona. A combination of Gregory Peck and Davy Keon. He was a great centre for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

I turn on my flashlight. Poke its light around in the back of Basque’s cap so I can find my two hockey sticks. I find them, pull them out, then fetch my hockey bag from the front of my truck. I like it to ride in the cab with me. It’s a good conversationalist and the truck heater warms its contents.

I decide, rather than putting my flashlight back in the truck, which I always do, I’ll put it in my pocket. It's warmer in the arena and therefore the battery will be stronger and more energetic.

I haul my sticks and hockey bag into the cold arena and then into the warmer locker room. Because of the bad driving, only three players have arrived. It’s getting late. I plunk my equipment down. I’m pumped. I’m the man. The not-really-so-good-any-more hacker player. Ready for the game, if there is going to be a game.

As I’m standing in my straight and true hockey pose, a fellow hockey player casually says, “You have a flashlight in your pocket.”

Big deal, I think. I pull it out of my pocket, to show him it really is an authentic, two-battery flashlight. But when I take it out of my pocket, I’m surprised, and somehow not surprised, to see the flashlight shining forth in all its brilliance. My goodness, I must have looked funny, strutting around while the flashlight shone out of my pocket. Like a walking lighthouse.

Last year, one fella, who had only shown up for one game, asked me if I had stayed in Cape Breton and played hockey the whole year. When I said, “Yes, I’ve played the whole year in Baddeck,” he said, “Oh damn! I missed all the fun.”

Now, what did he mean by that? I think I know, but it’s not just me. I have a weird computer too. It’s over twenty years old. Maybe twenty-five years old and I bought it second-hand a long time ago.

Do some of you want a name for my computer? Okay, how about “Percy Macintosh”?

Percy has a word-changing feature. You know, if I want to change a name from “Tom” to “John”, I just fill in the existing name and the name I want to replace it with and hit Change-all. Then my whole manuscript has the name “Tom” changed to “John”. Can be a thousand “Toms” and they will all zap to “Johns” in a matter of seconds.

One day, not so long ago, I decided to change a character’s name from “Ken” to “Calvin”. Hundreds of Kens lurked inside my manuscript. So, I clicked on “Edit”, wrote in “Ken” and “Calvin” and hit Change- all. Voila, all my Kens were Calvins, and I was hoping it wasn’t too traumatic for Ken, and for poor Calvin, who must have felt a few pounds heavier.

Everything went well. Except, Percy is very, very efficient. Possibly too efficient. So he conscientiously changed all Kens into Calvins.

Example: She hung her tocalvin around her neck.

Example: She said to poor Bob, “Sorry Bob, but I am already spocalvin for.”

Example: Larry wasn’t a very good hockey player and ended up with a brocalvin arm.

My god, it changed every darn “ken” in every darn word.

“Oh, excuse me, Mr. Computer, I think you have a flashlight sticking out of your stupid pocket.” Hardy, har.

A few weeks ago, I was in the trailer by my lonesome. Sue was in town. I went into the bedroom to get something out of the closet. I opened the door and heard a funny chirping sound. It stopped. I hit the closet door. It chirped and squeaked. It stopped. I kicked the wall. Heard a cackling sound. I went to the other wall, near the phone, which broke down last week, gave the wall a knock and heard the tattling, crackling, dripping noise. My god, do we have squirrels or ghosts in our walls?

I walked to the living room. Listened. Nothing. I stomped on the floor. From the bedroom came the weird, playing-a-horn sound, a squeak and something like the sound of dripping water from a tap. I walked back to the bedroom and as I went to knock on the wall, a crow flew away from below the window.

It was our friendly crow, who now had decided to hold a conversation with me through the walls. This crow often follows me down the lane and along the road. As a matter of fact, this crow followed me around the first day we moved in. He must have been curious.

One afternoon, he was sitting in a spruce tree sounding off. The tree grows close to our woodshed. I went there to fetch some wood, and when I opened the door, I found a poor red squirrel, standing in the middle of the room. He was pleading with me not to evict him.

You see, the wood pile is getting smaller. So, I was literally about ready to break into his home, hidden in the last row of wood. Poor squirrel. I felt sorry for him. And maybe the crow did too, and when I went to bed, I got worrying about whether I should make another home for the squirrel to live in. It was still very cold out.

Squirrel gnawing for minerals on our old moose skull

I even said to Sue, “Maybe next year we should buy three and a half cords of firewood. That way, the squirrel will have a permanent winter home. Rent-free.”

Which I know sounds rather funny to some folks, because what many folks do is pop them off for trespassing. Which makes me wonder about who was there first, but I won’t go into that.

So, see what happens when you live in the bush too long? But maybe it’s good to have shining flashlights in your pockets and peeping-tom crows, and snow blowers that don’t follow new snow blower rules and computers which are overly conscientious. Because it means there will always be wacky material to draw from. At least enough to keep this blog going.

Anyway, I like surprises, inconsistencies, wackiness and the humour that arises from these incidents.

Sydney Cox wrote in his book, Indirections for Those Who Want to Write, "Humour frisks the minute to make incompatibles unite. (We earnest people - whom atom bombs and dated obligations to salvage civilization keep on the jump and on the dot - miss that “waste of time.)"

Have any of you found yourselves being wacky without trying?

View of our road from halfway up mountain

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Blood, Ink and Words

3/2/2014

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“One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my children,
I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)
Walt Whitman

From reading the above poem, I would have to believe that Walt Whitman would have agreed with the idea that we write from the gut and not from the head.

So might Salman Rushdie, who wrote: “...the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.”

And what is my opinion? I think that emotions are at least as important as logic and knowledge. Maybe more so. That feelings are to our creativity, as firewood is to our wood stove.

And sometimes that can cause a problem or two. Because writers flirt, play, manipulate, tease and struggle with emotional material. Like a lion tamer, who tries to get the lion to do this and that while said lion growls, hisses, roars and even charges at the tamer. Now most of the time the charges aren’t carried to their final possibilities and the lion backs off. But sometimes the lion doesn’t drop his eyes and back off. Isn’t obedient. His attack is for real. Then you have trouble.

Definitely out of the cage!

Which is, as I previously said, one of the writer’s main sources of literary fuel.

If the lion gets you then you’re emotionally bleeding. A lot or a little bit, and the lion may be out of his cage. Outside your writing office. He’s free to roam wherever he darn well pleases while you try to wrangle him back into his cage. And doesn’t he just love to cuff you around when you’re trying to sleep? Like a cat toying with a mouse.

Chaos is defined in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary as: “utter confusion” or “the formless matter supposed to have existed before the creation of the universe”.

Chaos is like having a truck dump a pile of building supplies onto your front lawn leaving you to figure out which part goes where. And winter is coming. And you’re low on money.

What happened to our driveway?

Chaos plays willy-nilly with our normalcy. And yet it’s what writers play with. It’s their construction material. The bricks and mortar of the story that will get the pen smoking, or in this era, the keyboard.

Hazardous Activity

I think that writing should come with a hazardous material caution manual or sign. “WARNING, WRITING CAN LEAD AN INDIVIDUAL TO A FEELING OF BEING LOST. IF EXPOSED TO WRITING CHAOS, PLEASE WRITE IN YOUR JOURNAL IMMEDIATELY. WASH CHAOS OUT WITH AT LEAST AN HOUR OF EXERCISE PER DAY. TALK TO SOMEBODY YOU TRUST. WRITE ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE. GIVE IT TIME. HAVE A BEER OR TWO BUT NOT MANY MORE. MOST OF THE TIME.”

I’ve also both heard about and experienced the problems that arise when writers try to write about emotional experiences they are undergoing in the present. For example, if you’re going through a divorce, it’s difficult to use those experiences and the emotions in your writing until the sensations particular to that situation, have had time to settle and work themselves out.

Or, using the wood metaphor, until the wood has had time to dry. When it’s at its best to get your wood fire turning your stove pipes red. Otherwise, the wood is too green. So can your present emotional experiences be too green. It takes time.

Emotional chaos can come to anyone from a whole variety of experiences. A new job, the death of a loved one, a lost relationship, a new relationship, a loss of faith, a new faith, or from those places that have long been locked away. The hinges coated with rust and the door heavy with moss and age.

However, when a writer gets it sorted out and can begin to write about it, then the writing will be the real thing. The blood will be on the page and what reader can resist reading stories written in blood?

And writers have an advantage. They’re used to dealing with creative chaos. They can write it into something meaningful to themselves and to others. Get the mangy old lion cornered.

When creative or personal chaos strikes me, I look at the sky, the mountains, the trees and the ocean or lake and I see how immense this universe is. It’s easy when you live in Cape Breton to see this immensity of the universe. Then, if I’m lucky, I can allow myself to let go and be gracious about the chaos that is supply teaching for my usual rascally rabbit muse. And I write.

As they say, the tree that bends, lives to grow another day, or something like that.

According to Grinder, (whom I am going to have to wake up today, before the rain turns the snow into mush, and then the cold turns the mush into )*(&^&^%^$% ice), “The snow blower whose shear pin breaks is a snow blower who will live to blow snow for another day.” I couldn’t have put it any better myself.

Sunday Drive on Cabot Trail

And where is our soul while all this is going on? Don’t worry, it’s safe, even if it has to go into hiding for awhile.

John O’Donohue, Irish mystic and Connemara poet, wrote:
“The light of modern consciousness is not gentle or reverent; it lacks graciousness in the presence of mystery--when the spiritual search is too intense and hungry, the soul stays hidden. The soul was never meant to be seen completely.”

Tolstoy wrote in his book, Anna Karenina: “He was nine years old, he was a child; but he knew his own soul, it was dear to him, he protected it as the eyelid protects the eye, and did not let anyone into his soul without the key of love. His educators complained that he did not want to learn, yet his soul was overflowing with a thirst for knowledge.”

So hang in and believe that some day it will be a bloody wonderful story.

***

Speaking of chaos, have you been listening to some of our skilled politicians lately? The ones who seldom spin a lie, but rarely tell the truth? Now there’s a Zen koan for you.

"Cawcus" Meeting

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Write? Right!

4/1/2014

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And now down to business.

Plenty of us writers have a heap of trouble when it comes to turning off the negative brats who like to sit on our shoulders and tweak us with kick-in-the-gut comments. A friend told me about one. No matter what she writes, at some point, the brat will begin to whisper comments like, “Why bother, it’s all been said before.”

And it’s a good one. Smells rational. Makes some kind of sense, and listening to her tell me about her brat’s writing downer was enough to get my mind chewing on it. Forced me to take up time worrying instead of creating. Actually my tiny brat has spoken this exact kick-in-the-ass comment quite a few times.

It often happens when I’m hot into my writing time. The story is rolling along. I’m in cruise. The sun is bursting from happiness and sun spots and I’m feeling, really feeling what I’m writing. Big time empathizing going on with the characters and I’m right there in my scenes. I’ve forgotten all about plots and subplots and themes and getting my lane-way shovelled and where the story is going. Yahoo! I’m on a ride and it’s costing me nothing.

Then I hear the clearing of a raspy cutthroat. It’s an irritating sound and a warning that something is coming. But I’m so into it that I just keep a tap-tap-tapping. Meanwhile, the brat begins to tap me on the brain or to blow into my ear and I know it’s nobody I want puffing into my earwax.

So, eventually I’ll stop typing and that’s the wedge he needs. He’s got some of my attention. I’ve heard him even though I’ve tried to ignore him. The floor is his while I try to dust him off.

“It’s all been said before. What’s the use? Hee, hee!”

Oh, but he has more than that in his nasty repertoire.

“You’re going to die before you ever get anything worth writing down on paper. You started too late. What a waste of time, all that sitting on your ass. Didn’t you know you could have a stroke? You should concentrate more on wiggling your toes and getting the circulation going. Maybe you should be doing less writing and more exercise. Ernest Hemingway used to stand up when he was writing. And you’re ever going to be an Ernest Hemingway? Maybe you should write a play and not waste your time on this short story. Get a new computer. Study a course on, “It’s Not All Been Done Before”. Turn on the TV and watch the news. Join another writers’ club. You should be doing more networking. It would be helpful.”

On and on and on. Pow! Wouldn’t I like to.

But for my friend, one of the biggest ones is, “It’s all been said before. What more can you say?”

I say, a hell of a lot. And maybe it has all been said before but not by me and not in the way I say it. Which, unless I only use Newspeak, should give readers a little different slant on the topic.

And where, by the way, are all these magical manuscripts that have recorded all that I’m going to write? Specifically? Will they draw out the same emotions that my writing will? Anyway, don’t I write because I want to write? Right? Right? Then write. Right? Right.

Crow chatting with Evening Grosbeak

Maybe the brat gets to us because we don’t have a good balance between playing and being serious. Between gravity and fun. The holy man and the clown. And being a writer means that you are susceptible to the writing brats. They’re the fighters who protect the holy grail. They taunt. They swing their emotional word swords at us as they try to keep us from the writing that only we can do. We listen, we feel the pain and they toughen us up so we can eventually say, “Go suck an orange.” Or something like that.

Saying it with a playful attitude, of course. Because taking ourselves too seriously can kill the playful spirit which allows us the space to create what is deeply important to us. Serious play.

Of course this balance doesn’t happen overnight. But like so many things in life, if you want it too much and try too hard to get it, there is a good chance you’ll fail to achieve what it is you really desire and is important to you. It won’t turn out the way you want it to. I think romance works something like this. Of course, I’m no expert.

But hey, when you’re playing hockey, fishing, building a house, shopping, making love, skiing, whatever, do you say to yourself, “Why bother, it’s all been done before?” So have eating and drinking.

I’ve just had a scary thought. Maybe that’s what the players on the Toronto Maple Leafs team say when they’re playing. Frightening thought if you’re a Leafs’ fan.

Sidney Cox, in his book, “Indirections” wrote: “It is a waste to take on more gravity than you can develop the spiritual levity to have fun with.”

***

Running out of space to blow the snow!

Abominable Snowman

Enjoy the photos and the snow. We’re trying to. Yesterday, I attempted to drive to Baddeck but turned around and our laneway is buried at the moment. Our road hasn’t been ploughed in about five days.

I drove past a business in Middle River and saw at least five boxes that had brand new snow blowers in them. And the local gas station has run out of windshield washer fluid. Not surprised.

View from Gold Brook Road

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CAW! CAW! CAW!

23/11/2013

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We’re back. With a tale of two cities: Halifax, Nova Scotia and Kingston, Ontario. Whew! Busy. So different from the life we live here in Cape Breton. On the Middle River, which, believe it or not, holds our mortgage. Because if the river decided to pump itself up and become like the mighty Nile or Fraser Rivers then we’d be carried away. High rubber boots, trailer, mortgage and all.

As we were crossing the Canso Causeway, heading toward the ‘Welcome to Cape Breton’ sign, I told Sue that it felt like we were emerging from some kind of tunnel of love. Only we would call the tunnel we’d been living in, ‘The Tunnel of Noise, Chaos and Stimulation’. Mental and physical.

The city must have had a considerable effect on my partner. Because on the way home, she mentioned that she wondered where she’d stored her gun cleaning kit. Said she had this hankering to take her rifle to the shooting range to brush up on her skills. First time I’d heard her mention this.

Halloween Aftermath in Halifax

However, only after we had arrived back at our little Cape Breton trailer did we realize just how different our life is from normal city life. I’ll tell you one of the reasons I knew. It was the story titles I was hearing from either Sue or myself.

Speaking of titles, I’ve noticed that many of the best titles that have occurred to me have come from brief statements spoken during a conversation. I think I have even recorded some of them. I just don’t know where I put the folder. Do you have that problem?

Anyway, after we got home and I’d had time to unpack and pop a cold one, I heard myself saying, “I’m not going to caw anymore.” I certainly never thought such a thing while I was watching my hat get run over and destroyed on a windy Halifax street, or when I discovered a twenty-five dollar parking ticket on my windshield. But here, back in Cape Breton, this phrase made perfect sense.

You see, I don’t think I understand crow talk. Every time a murder of crows gets cawing from trees above my head and I try to answer with my crow call, they usually flee. Cawing and croaking all the way across the land. Except for one, who remains to make sure all the crows have completely evacuated. Then he or she takes off in a flurry of caws. I have an authentic sounding caw. It’s not that, it’s just that I don’t know whether I’m cawing, “Bugger off”, “Good morning”, or “I have a hankering for roast crow”.

moose jaw

And it wasn’t long after I’d made this profound statement that my partner shouted through the screen door, “Would you pick up my deer teeth, please?”

Pick up a quart of milk, a loaf of bread or a case of beer, but I’d never heard anybody ask to have their deer teeth picked up. Not in the city. But out here, resting on our porch railing are a moose skull, a deer jaw, some antlers, a couple of old bottles and several rocks. So it makes perfect sense when you live here and there’s been a high wind all morning.

Why we need the snow blower!

However, yesterday I didn’t come up with any smart titles for what I found in the tool shed. I’d wanted to get the snow blower going. Move it closer to the trailer. Unfortunately, I’d left some insulation in the tool shed. There are a lot of mice out in the world that think pink. I pulled the cover off said snow blower. A mouse leapt out. Ran for his or her life. A ball of insulation fell to the wooden floor along with mouse doo-doo, pee-pee and some other kind of pinkish coloured liquid. Which took me a minute or two to figure out. Gasoline. The little bugger had chewed the gas line and now it has to be repaired. The title for that story: “Pass me the &%##@#&& traps, dear.”

As I stepped through the trailer door, mumbling some distinctive old English words, I smelled something shitty. The aroma seemed to be coming from my boots. I took a look. It was doggy doo. Apparently, when I’d walked to the mailbox, I’d stepped in a deposit that our neighbour’s dog likes to mail to our residence. And believe you me, we’re both pretty sure that there is a message in that soft brown envelope.

Anyway, I took the boot off, scraped most of the poop off with a stick and then ran water onto the boot from our outdoor tap.

Have to run. Sue is shouting that an animal is banging around inside our wood stove.

CAW! CAW! CAW!

Deer in Frontenac Provincial Park, Ontario

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CAW! CAW! CAW!

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