Category: Literary Magazines

BUSTER'S SUNDAY MORNING RAMBLE

12/8/2018

CANADIAN TIGER SWALLOWTAIL

A few Sundays ago, Sue and Buster, while walking down our lane-way, had a stand-off with a large male black bear. The bear was standing on his hind legs. Amazingly, Buster never barked a peep, Sue never said a peep and the bear growled nary a peep.
This adventure ended with the bear getting off his back legs and ambling away. Didn’t run. He ambled.
Sue, meantime, stayed on her hind legs and Buster on his four legs and they didn’t slowly amble back to the trailer.
Consequently, their walk was postponed for twenty minutes. Some folks might have delayed it for a day, a week, a month or even got out of Dodge City altogether.

EAGLE ENJOYING THE SCNERY

Now, I didn’t have as exciting an encounter as Sue when I took Buster for a walk, but it was rather eventful for an early Sunday morning ramble on a quiet dirt road.
Of course, first off, Buster had to stop at the cat house and take a gander at the kitty cats before we continued on with our hike. And after that was completed to his satisfaction, we were back to putting our boots to the gravel.
Our neighbour then drove up in his large pick-up, so we chatted and swatted bugs.
Suddenly, while we were in mid-conversational-stride, we were startled by the sound of a speeding engine. Within seconds an old guy was roaring his vehicle around the corner, his brakes only a distant thought.
I quickly tightened up on Buster’s leash and pulled him to the side of the road while the neighbour pulled his truck to the other side of the road.

Biking Trail Near Judique

After the old guy’s dust had barely settled, we were off again and soon Buster was sniffing around for a poo-poo place that faced north or almost north. Before he’d located the perfect drop-off point, he began yelping and crying.
I hurried through the bug-infested long grass to find out what was wrong and discovered that poor Buster had stapled his front paw to barbed wire.
I flung down my walking stick and began trying to figure out how to disengage his paw. It was tough. If I pulled his paw up it might further entrap it. Moving his paw forwards or backwards might also exasperate things and cause Buster more pain. What I did do was gently wiggle his paw sideways and up and down, and however it happened, Buster was able to pull his paw free.

BUSTER'S BUDDY

Then onwards and upwards. Buster, unfortunately, onwarded and upwarded with a slight limp. However, within a few minutes, he found a safe, clean, north-facing comfort station where he was able to unload.
When we reached the Cabot Trail, a huge tourist bus roared by. On the side of the bus was written, in large letters, CHRISTIAN TOURS.
Buster telepathically said, “I believe, Larry, that those good folks are going to a Cape Breton Christian church for a Sunday service.”
I concurred.

RIDE HIM COWBOY

As we proceeded back to the trailer we suddenly heard the sound of another vehicle approaching. It sounded like it was really flying!
Once again I tightened up on Buster’s leash and pulled him off the road. And this is no word of a lie. It was the same old gaffer, driving the same old vehicle and he was going over the speed limit. And, get this, he was backing up.
I waved and Buster wagged at him and I think he must have waved back because there was a noticeable swerve in his backing- up trajectory. We were witnessing skill at a high level.
“I wonder,” Buster said telepathically, “if there is a different speed limit for driving backwards?”
I pondered on this.
Buster and I finally arrived home, where Buster telepathically said, “Larry, I think you forgot your walking stick back at the barbed wire emergency.”
I concurred and said some other words.

Buster doesn’t struggle with carrying the newspaper, it’s the unwrapping he has trouble with.

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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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BUSTER'S SUNDAY MORNING RAMBLE

Literary Angst at the Bird Feeders

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