Larry Gibbons
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Shackwacky - Chapter and Verse

31/3/2015

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I’ve just finished reading a science fiction detective novel by Sherry D. Ramsey. That’s a lot to say in one breath. The book is called ‘The Murder Prophet’. Now, it was a novel that made me look forward to going to bed. Because that’s when I read novels. The book, in a few sentences, is about Kit, the main character, who’s trying to solve a mystery before a millionaire named Aleshu Coro is murdered. The threat was made by the mysterious Murder Prophet.
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Many of the characters in this book, including the animals, have super powers. Power to tell whether somebody is lying. Power to tell if somebody is using their powers. Power to change a person from one thing to another, including themselves. Anyway, lots of different powers. I particularly enjoyed a delightful side character, a goose by the name of Trip, who had a very special power. The goose liked to practice killer ninja moves, could talk and was active throughout the novel.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book. It was a good read and can be ordered through Amazon.ca as a Kindle or paperback edition at 
http://www.amazon.ca/The-Murder-Prophet-Sherry-Ramsey/dp/0993897304/ref=tmm_pap_title_0   


***
My god, but haven’t we had enough snow? For what we are once again about to receive we are truly thankful, amen. NOW GO AWAY! Enough is enough, and as I’m writing this blog, in the living room, with Buster lying on my foot, and at the end of March, I’ve just heard that we are to receive another ten to fifteen cm today. Hallelujah!

                “One must have the mind of winter
                              To regard the frost and the boughs
                              Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

                              And have been cold a long time
                              To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
                              The spruces rough in the distant glitter”
                                                        Wallace Stevens, The Snowman
snowy woods
Our Trail to Road
***
WARNING!! THIS PART OF THE BLESSED BLOG WAS INSPIRED BY A SEVERE CASE OF ACUTE SHACK-WACKINESS!
And I did go to bed one night. And I had a dream. I dreamed that I bought a )(*&^ snow blower. And thus I woke up and declared, “Lo and behold, I’ve just had another friggen nightmare.”

But I did go out and purchase a snow blower, anyway. Although my mind was shouting at the top of its voice, “Larry, Larry, my son, verily, verily, you will be verily, verily sorry and will surely repent of your stupid deed in buying a cursed snow blower when you were warned against such a stupid action. Thou faithless servant.”

And verily, and thus and therefore, I discovereth, over a short time, that my dream was true. Because verily one friggen wintry morning, I couldn’t get the friggen snow blower to move. I did pull and push all the sacred buttons and levers, but it would not budge. The wheels desisted and resisted and so I had to pull the son of a blower through the deep snow, to the fair entrance to our driveway, where I left it for the snow blower purveyor to pick up and take to his holy little motor workshop.

And lo and behold and verily, thus and therefore, he phoned me and told me that my snow blower, Grinder, had frozen his bolts off and that’s why Grinder wouldn’t move. So, they got him all nicely warmed up around their pellet stove and gave him a cup of hot W30 oil and cinnamon. Then they delivered him back to our abode.

And lo and behold and verily, thus and therefore, the snow blower did blow snow for a few very brief occasions, until the snow got too heavy or icy or wet or white or some damn snowy issue, when lo and behold, hark the herald snow blower angel asked me, “Did you know that your snow blower has stopped blowing?” And how would I not? And I said to god, “Why, god?” And I asked the same question of the snow blower man, “Why, snow blower man?” and he said, “Hark, I think you probably broke a belt.”

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So, verily and thus and therefore, he came to our snow-stuffed lane and picked up Grinder and did take him away, while I stood in six feet of snow and waved my frozen glove and fingers bye-bye at my disappearing snow blower. Then did I thus whisper under my breath, “And don’t come back, you unreliable son of a beech.”

But verily and thus and therefore, they couldn’t find a replacement belt. Not until the snow was ice and too much for poor Grinder to remove. So, verily, thus and thou and hark, when they finally did find a belt, verily many weeks later, and they put the belt in and delivered it to me, the snow was unmanageable and so verily, I did dig out our little, blessed, metal toolshed and put the snow blower in said toolshed so it could hibernate in the summer. And I told the snow blower not to move a bolt, nut or screw or it would be turned into a pillar of salt. 

The next winter, I verily, thus and therefore, took the snow blower out to prepare him for some certain upcoming manly snow blowing. But verily, I smelled the odour of gasoline and the snow blower would not verily start.

So, verily, thus and thou, I picked up my feet and took up my phone. Phoned the snow blower purveyor. And lo and behold he came and he picked Grinder up and then verily in not a verily long time he told me that some cursed mice had built a forty-room condo in Grinder. They had built a restraining wall against the gas line and thus it had broken asunder. And lo and behold, thus and thou, I ordered him to hand them their notices and then fix the gas line.


Oh snow blower, you break my heart. How many ways do you verily have thus? And the tiny little snow flakes fell, each one a different shape from its brethren, and I got out my snow blower and did blow and blow for about an hour when suddenly the snow blower wouldn’t move forward on command. So I verily, thus and therefore investigated and behold! I found out I had broken a breach pin. Which meant that only half the sacred augers were going round and round. So that was why I was rolling up a gigantic snowball on one side of the snow blower while the other side was not valiantly blowing away. So, I went again to the snow blower man and I bought another breach pin and installeth it myself.

The snows continued to fall and the world grew all white and my eyes began to see strange colours from the all white, everywhere, top and bottom and side by side and the ice came and the ice left and Grinder and I did manage to make it through the rest of the winter. Hallelujah!

And verily, thou and thus came the winter of 2014-2015 did arrive. And the snow felleth and felleth and felleth and felleth and felleth and felleth and it did raineth too and raineth more and more and the ice got thicker and the snow higher and verily I got to use the snow blower twice before it stopped.


I verily, thou and thus, decided to check it out myself. I very carefully read the manual. I worked on the snow blower only long enough to feel I had accomplished something or learned something and then I would verily quit before I went into a crying tantrum. Because verily, verily, I have little patience with disobedient servants.

And, after cautiously working on the said Grinder, I managed to find the problem. The belt was rent asunder. And I verily spotted little mice feet and mice faces and mice other parts sticking out of the holy inner sanctum where the belts do their business. And I, by myself, did replace the belt.
Deep snow
Path from Woodshed to Trailer
Then more snow did fall. Then some of it melted and froze and melted and froze and I got, maybe, three snow blows out of my snow blower and my new belt that I put in all by myself. Although, Sue did hold the snow blower and did use a tiny pair of pliers to pick out the tiny pieces of mice I missed and some of their bits and pieces of nesting material.

Then, one fine morning, I went to the woodshed and tried to start Grinder. But he wouldn’t start and lo, I pulled and pulled and pulled until my puller was exhausted.

Lo, I took a rest and then returneth and pulleth some more. And suddenly the engine did start in a violent rush of engine power. And then all was silent.

It was then that I witnessed, in a vision, a burning snow blower. And I took off my tuque and came forth and lost the race. (Probably heard that one somewhere, right?)

And verily, thou, thus and disgustingly, the engine man phoned me and told me that my engine was as dead as a frozen parrot. He said, “You must have got some ice or snow in the engine that melted and then froze.”

“But it’s a snow blower! Isn’t it supposed to get snow and ice on it and in it, fgs? My truck and Sue’s car get ice and snow on them and they don’t blow up their engines. My lawn mower     doesn’t desist because it gets grass in it. So, what the hell are you saying?”

“Well, let me put it this way. There were a lot of parts that wanted out.”

He then explained that when or if I get a new motor, I should probably keep it covered or inside. And maybe brush the snow off, because it can melt and run down into the engine and then freeze. Then you get the results I got.

I’d like to put it this way, if I verily may, “What the hell is the use of a snow blower if you have to keep snow off it after you finish with it, set mousetraps inside, lay moth balls around all its internal and external organs, place a hot water bottle on it before you go to bed, make sure it’s tucked in on a bed that can pass military inspection, don’t push it too fast if the snow is thick, and make sure you don’t snow blow slush because it can freeze the wheels and the inner sanctums? That’s what I have Buster for.”

AMEN

We now use shovels and snowshoes and to hell with the snow blower.
Shovelling snow
Lots of Shovelling
***
“The light made the snowballs look yellow. Or at least I hoped that was the cause.”
             Gary D. Schmidt, The Wednesday Wars
dog on snowy porch
Buster on Watch Duty
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Neighbourhood Watch

10/3/2015

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For some reason, I feel blog thirty-five has some kind of significance. A finality of sorts. I’m just not sure what it might be.

A wandering friend of mine once gave me a blog warning. He said, “Be careful you don’t write yourself out.” I know writers who have stopped writing their blogs altogether, or cut back to the point where their blogs are almost non-existent. I wonder if one reason is because they wrote themselves out.

One thing for sure, we’re bombarded with words. Words, words, words. Often treating them as if they have almost no value.  So, with this little blog disclaimer, I plod on in the Land of Blog and present you with blog thirty-six. In which I try to write something interesting without depleting my creative urge.

In his book, ‘The World is Sound’, Joachim-Ernst Berendt included a quote from Sukie Colgrave discussing Confucious as follows: “...while words contain genuine meaning which reflect certain absolute truths in the universe, most people have lost contact with these truths and so use language to suit their own convenience. This led, he felt, to lax thinking, erroneous judgements, confused actions and finally to the wrong people acquiring access to political power.”  
***
Bible
And first up to bat is this. Last week, I finished reading the whole Bible from the front page to the back page and everything in between. I will admit, however, that I did occasionally skip a begat or two, but for the most part I read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations. And I read plenty that wasn’t preached about in my church. I also found verses that would back up almost any Christian denomination and I discovered ones that would make proselytizers turn red in the face.

It should be noted that I was brought up in a strict, Bible believing family. The Bible was the word of God, and it was the final word. And, even now, I receive greeting cards from family members with Bible verses included, no extra charge. I believe, yes, I believe, they are submitted to help me find the road that the sender is presently following.

“Wait up, you guys.”

“Well then, hurry up, Larry. We told you to pick up the Cole's Notes on the Bible. How many times have we told you this?”

Now they tell me they told me. But hey, I kept wanting to stop and inspect all the interesting sights and sounds along the side of the road.

“Hey, what about all those roads we keep passing? Where do they go?”

“Read chapter and verse, Larry. It’s all in the notes you don’t have. Ignore them, Larry. Stay on the main highway where it’s safe.”

Ah, let the folks toss away. They probably do it because they really care, but it can be a tad irritating from time to time. I have a feeling that most of the verse tossers have read lots of the Bible, but I bet you that very few have read it from the front page to the back. Maybe one reason is because they’re afraid they might see more than they want to see.


Picture
***
A few days ago, we went to Sydney. Our first stop was a used bookstore we frequent on the main street. It’s called, ED’S BOOKS AND MORE and it’s owned by this fella who, strangely enough, is called Ed. Ed loves books and misses nothing. I know this because of what happened last week.

We walked into his book store. Ed said, “Hi Larry, I have something to show you.”

I was impressed he’d remembered my name. He held a book in his hand. It looked like some kind of yearbook.

“I have a school yearbook here and I think you might be in it.”

I glanced at the book and then at him. I said, “It wouldn’t be me. I went to high school in Kingston, Ontario.”

He opened the book and showed me a picture. There I was. Dark short hair, thick black glasses, and looking like I was straight out of a Stephen King movie.  He had somehow got hold of a 1968 Loyalist High School yearbook. Boy, did he floor me! Ed then gave me the book as a gift.

So, as a gift back to him, I’ve mentioned his bookstore, and I’m mentioning his toll-free phone number, which is: 1-855-264-2665, his not toll-free phone number, which is: (902)564-2665 and his email address, which is: edsbooksandmore@eastlink.ca and his address, which is: 446 Charlotte Street, Sydney, NS. and a picture of Ed and his store. Oh, his store is also on facebook.
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That night, I went through the book. Looked at all the class pictures. The memories rushed at me like a herd of radicalized terrorists.

Because, you see, nineteen-sixty-eight was the worst year of my life. Bar none. No death, divorce, firing, injury, bad relationship or life decision can or ever will compete with nineteen-sixty-eight. He is the winner. Hands down. The year of the big bottle of nerve medicine sitting on the kitchen table. The religious skirmishes breaking out like revivalistic measles.

Well, I have to admit, there were two female students amongst the class pictures who could have made that year a hell of a lot better. And, there was my grade one sweetheart. Yes, it started that early.

It was awfully nice of Ed to take the time to keep it for me. That’s Cape Breton for you.

***
A brief note.  Grinder, my snow blower, needs a new ticker. The motor is dead.

The mechanic made a funny comment, if you can find it comical when your almost brand new snow blower has a dead motor.  He said, “There were a whole lot of pieces in your motor that wanted out.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself. He should write a blog.

I have just dug out two pairs of snowshoes from our tool shed.
snow shovelling
My New Snow Blower
***
Picture
Let me see now. I think, with regard to Buster, that I left you with an image of Sue standing on the middle of an icy Gold Brook Road, with her telephone cord make-shift dog leash dangling in the air like an empty fishing line, while Buster hoofed it after a large snow plough monster.

But Buster is a Buster. No more appropriate name for him could be had and he makes us laugh a lot. Sue told me that Buster is the funniest dog she has ever owned. I think I have competition.

He also is a bit of a pain in the ass from time to time. For one thing he might be putting a bit of a strain on our relationship with the neighbours. They have a big dog and many cats. Their dog likes to wander down to our driveway and drop off unstamped, brown wrapped mail. He also likes to paint our hub caps and snow banks a peculiar yellow colour.

Yesterday, Buster spotted the big dog standing on the road, watching us return from our early morning pre-Buster’s-breakfast forced march.

Up to this point I had been able to keep Buster from heading down to the neighbour’s house. Not this time. Not with the big dog staring at us. So, Buster took off. I was worried that there might be a clash. But instead, the big dog ran to his porch. He then barked at Buster.

The neighbour came out and began to yell at Buster while she reeled her dog into the house.

While all this was going on, I was stupidly standing by my lonesome shouting, “Buster, come here!”

I was hollering at Buster, the neighbour woman was hollering at Buster and her dog was barking at Buster. Buster was oblivious. Totally.

But you know, I think all Buster wanted to do was play and sing and dance with the big German shepherd dog.

However, after the woman had got her dog into the house and then hollered at Buster some more, Buster finally did comply, like the good dog he is.  But, before he complied, he lifted his leg and whizzed on our neighbour’s porch railing. Then he came to me. But he came to me with the name Buster and a Buster he was.

All the way home I would periodically shout, “That was bad. Bad boy, Buster.”

Buster, who was now in no mood to dilly-dally, because he knew he had a well-earned breakfast waiting for him at the homestead, would, every time I rebuked him, turn around, and with furious growls, make play charges at me.

It went on like that until we got home. Then I told Sue the story of big, bad Buster while Sue prepared a nice breakfast for Buster. Who enjoyed his tasty breakfast.

Meanwhile, I searched our forty-five-foot trailer for my other slipper.

Buster is Buster.


Snowy Trees
Winter Beauty Along Our Path
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Worth Fighting For

29/10/2014

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I began this blog in Kingston. My spanking new computer set up on the hotel room’s wee round table. A large steamy window to my right. An air conditioner clinging to the glass. Its rusty, damp air invading our room and lungs.

Today, we’re back in Cape Breton. The wind is shaking the trees loose from their leaves, and Grinder, our snow blower, has already had me down on bended knees with grass, wood chips and mud dampening my clean blue jeans, as I performed some emergency surgery. This involved the loosening up of his little paws to make it possible to get him started. Which would give us a fighting chance of holding off the relentless attacks of snow which use our yard as a shortcut.

These days, I find myself standing on the porch, gazing out over the huddling mountains, looking at the sky and wondering if the snow forces are already formed up and ready to rush over the mountain and plunge us into another winter battle.

And Skippy, the squirrel, is terribly quiet. He wasn’t when the wood was first delivered, but now, since we’ve returned from Kingston, we haven’t heard a swear word from him. I think he used his time wisely while we were away. I wish him a cozy winter in behind the many stacks of firewood.

Finally, because this is my twenty-ninth blog, yeah, I decided to take a little time to rant. Use a few words to spout off. Get some irritations off my chest because there are times in my life when a rant is about all I can do.
Little Salmon Lake
Little Salmon Lake north of Kingston, ON
TIRADE NUMBER ONE
First, I would like to say that this is not directed against all marketers, nor all those who try to help writers and me in particular, including all my friends and colleagues who give me their kind support.

However, I have had some irritating personal experiences lately. Also, I have read and listened to authors and other artists discussing this topic, so I think that my spouting off isn’t uselessly spinning towards a distant galaxy. May the force be with you, Hal.

One night, at a bar, I was talking to a fella. We got to talking about art and writing and that sort of thing. He’s a playwright and has a movie floating around called, ‘21 Brothers’. I haven’t watched it but it can be found at these establishments: Amazon, Hunes, Shaw and Cogeco and DVDs are available at HMV and Amazon. I’m planning on watching this movie and I believe it has been positively critiqued.

Anyway, he was talking about sending the movie off and the marketers getting hold of it and, well ———, I don’t want to say too much but there are a lot of sharks out there in the Marketers’ Ocean of Despair.

I’ve been exposed to the forces that be and if I’m going to protect anything, beyond my family and friends, it’s my art.

You see, my writing isn’t based upon how much I sell, although I’m definitely not against selling.

It’s not based on becoming a famous writer. Do I have to worry?

I write because I love to write. I’ll admit that I enjoy hearing that my writing is being read but that’s secondary to the actual writing.

However, like my friend who made a movie, artists are under constant pressure. Pressure from their own creativity and emotional foibles. Pressure from the marketing world where there is always a better way presented to get the readers’ attention or a more profitable place suggested where they can feed out their work. Many of these folks are willing and eager to take your dollars to help you become known and re-known.

Then there’s the occasional acquaintance who thinks he knows the best way for you to get your work known is to get it on the big screen.

For some, it’s just because they want to see you become successful, but for others it’s an attempt to own your work or at least ride on your coat-tails to some pre-conceived marketing success. I’m not sure how fast the ride would be if you hopped onto my coat-tails.

I once asked a fella, ‘What is the difference between a writer and most of the marketers and critics?’ I was actually surprised when he didn’t have the answer.

The answer to this quiz question is, ‘Writers write’.

That’s the thing about writers. They write and they’re not always so proficient with the selling part.

Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with searching for help. And many of us have the creativity to think outside the box and sell our work, but that takes energy. Also, there’s a certain amount of anxiety about single-mindedly spouting off about our work. Which, I think, might be wed to the sense of nurturing and mindfulness we have for our inspirations?

One piece of advice I have heard about writing is, ‘Don’t talk your story out.’ Why not? Because it can sap your need to write. The little or big story you’re going to tell gets out too early and like wine bottled too soon, it’s watery and tasteless.

The emotions and ideas must soak in time and thought and when they’re ready, and only then, can they be fruitfully and organically lifted out of our minds and placed full-bodied unto the paper or screen.

Maybe one could also say, “Don’t market your vision away.” Too much emphasis on marketing can flatten the writing energy. Some selling needs to be done, but I’m not willing to use up too much energy doing it. I’m not willing to twist and turn the mystery that drives me to write in the first place, so I can grab a chunk of readership. I like to call my marketing efforts ‘soft marketing’.

You see, I want my little bubble of magic to be sitting comfy and cozy, on a soft patch of grass, her privacy protected by a mountain of wild forest and wind. Covered by a thin veil of gentle mist, faintly perfumed with fir and spruce scent, camouflaged and chameleon-like. Suckling on the universe’s unfathomable ocean.

I want it to be only as clear as will allow it to remain a heartfelt enigma. A contrast to the eager grasping of our society as it attempts to get hold of everything that is worth anything.
Throwing out a little bafflement never hurts. So, as with a good poem you have read, you have a sense that the poem has no solid mental perimeters. An awareness, faint but present, that there’s an idea or emotion that hasn’t yet been fully plumbed.
TIRADE NUMBER TWO
Something else I’ve noticed. This may be because I was born into a rather black and white religion. It was my difficult and harsh departure from this form of thinking which instilled in me a terribly strong, tenacious need to defend my little creative piece of turf. Besides, trying to separate any artist from control over his or her art is like trying to take a bone from a hungry wolf.

And it’s because of my black and white background that I have become an expert at recognizing when my creative vision is under threat. I might even have to consider myself hyper-sensitive.

And guess what? When I hear somebody tell me that they know what’s best, that they are certain they are correct when it comes to how I should write, what I should write, how I should market, the existence of a pink elephant hiding in the back of my truck, or anything else for that matter, I realize there are a hell of a lot of black and white thinkers out there besides those who are labelled fundamentalists.
Picture
***
“Besides, what you love, you will protect.
That thou lovest well remains,
                     the rest is dross
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs
                       or is it of none?
First came the seen, then thus the palpable
Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee"   
                    Ezra Pound, Canto LXXXI- libretto
   
***
I believe that many artists see their art as some form of commission. Maybe even as prophetic.

William Noble, in his book ‘Conflict, Action and Suspense’ wrote, “It’s pretty well acknowledged that readers “hear” as well as see words on the page. That is, word sounds and word images play in the readers’ minds even as their eyes scan the words. Some have referred to this as “the music of words.”

So, using this quote as an introduction, I’d like to quote another section of an Ezra Pound poem.

“Go, my songs, to the lonely and the unsatisfied,
Go also to the nerve-wracked, go to the enslaved-by-convention,
Bear to them my contempt for their oppressors.
Go as a great wave of cool water,
Bear my contempt of oppressors.
Speak against unconscious oppression,
Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative,
Speak against bonds.
Go to the bourgeoise who is dying of ennuis,
Go to the women in suburbs.
Go to the hideously wedded,
Go to them whose failure is concealed,
Go to the unluckily mated,
Go to the bought wife,
Go to the woman entailed."
          Ezra Pound, “Commission”

North River Falls
Hike to North River Falls, Cape Breton
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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.
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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!
shovelling snowLarry'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.


Picture
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.
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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 LightfootRona 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.

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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 at window
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!
snow buried cabin
Cabin across the road from us
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A Nutty Conversation

18/3/2014

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Cape Breton WinterCape 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 underSnowed 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.”


Picture
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.

Picture
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 gnaiwng on moose skull
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?


PictureMountain view of Gold Brook Rd
View of our road from halfway up mountain
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Shack-Wacky Hype

24/2/2014

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Picture
A few days ago, I was snow blowing the long path to the tool shed, where I’ve been storing ?????.  I’d started clearing out the snow before the sun had even rubbed the sleepy dust out of its corona, so it was dark, and I was thankful for the headlamp on ????. You see, the weather person had called for rain. Which meant that when the temperature dropped, the rain-gorged snow would become as hard as a stale all-bran muffin.

You may notice the question marks in parts of this blog. That’s because I’m curious to see if you readers have been paying attention to my fourteen blogs. Feel free to leave a comment with the names represented by the question marks! I also think I’m doing this weird question mark thing because I’m feeling frisky. Because I’ve managed to compose fourteen blogs, this being my fifteenth. High five! Fourteen, about to become fifteen!!
Picture
So ???? was shining his light forth into the darkness, while the wind whipped snow back into my face, because it couldn’t figure out where the heck it was going. As ???? blew the snow into the air, more snow filled in the path behind me, and as I inhaled the sweet scent of snow blower fumes and mouse pee, I asked myself, “Is this hell or heaven? Did we make the right move when we up and left ???? to settle in the Cape Breton highlands? Where there are only two kinds of flies, black flies and snow flies? A place, where even when the day is sunny and bright and not a cloud hovers over my head, the snow gently falls from the sky, albeit at an angle, and alights upon my just cleared patch of home turf.” And I thought if I listened carefully, shut the snow blower off for a few friggen seconds, I might even hear the mountain winds blowing through the bare trees. And if I was really, really quiet, I might hear those tall, rounded, tree-covered mountains tee-heeing and having a great old time. For much of our snow is booted our way from the other side of those mountains.

In summary, and after a bit of time to think it over, I’ve decided that it’s not heaven but a hell of a lot of work. I’m reminded of the last verse of Cape Breton poet Aaron Schneider’s poem, “Life at Sea":


“We’ll stay with the storm,
run before it stoking
and steaming, while each day asks
what tied us to this frozen helm
horizon a great white wave?”
FYI, the snow blower is in the shop for repairs and I have to drive through a snowstorm to find out what the doctor has to say.
ski trails and mountains
Skiing on Snowy Ski Trails Beats Snow Blowing!
As I said, this is my fifteenth blog. Fifteen. Not a big deal for some bloggers, who seem to zip one off every day or two. When I first started writing this blog, I was given some advice. These are the two suggestions I remember. 

One fella said, “You have to watch that you don’t write yourself out.”  His fear being, I think, that writers could put so much of their writing energy and content into the blog, that they wouldn’t have much left for their other creative endeavours. His advice put a bit of a scare into me.

The second piece of advice sounded more daunting. It was that I should put the blog out fairly often. Once a week at least. So I could continually be in my readers’ faces, waving some new Larry tidbit.

Picture
Holy crap, Batman. I’m not even on facebook. I can see the value of facebook, but I’m not comfortable with it.

My emails are person specific. One email per person. All personally tailored, with a bit of gossip for this guy and gossip about the first guy to the second guy; each email hand-made with person-specific snoop and chatter. Very few of my emails are generic, mass produced or consumer friendly. So, as you can see, I wasn’t prepared to pump generic tidbits into the blogosphere.


I also worried that if I became too prolific, I might be disrespecting, neutering and trivializing my emotions, ideas and teeny bits of wisdom, by semi-obliviously tossing them into the mass ocean of talk, words and images. Which scream, blare, humour, whisper or sing from anything that has a screen or a speaker. Besides, I don’t think I have an unlimited amount of ideas, news and knowledge to feed into this hungry sea which often seems to have the memory of a goldfish.

Also, I have read in more than one book about writing, that you can talk a story away. Not run out of the ideas or feelings required to write in a blog, but yap away the creative power needed to write something complex and powerful.

For example: I enter a shop. I see a small, older woman in a tiny, cluttered room. She’s selling second-hand books and clay figurines made by her husband. The store is empty. She’s waiting for customers, sitting behind an old cash register and drinking coffee out of a small white styrofoam cup. It’s not hard to tell that her business isn’t doing well. The room looks shabby and dusty and she looks shabby and dusty, but also sad, lonely as hell and a little bit desperate. I can feel her melancholy. I also sense a story bubbling up in my mind. It begins to simmer. Empathy for her plight is stirring it up.

And I know that my muse, who lives under our trailer, can feel it too. Which means he’s probably working on the story while I’m doing whatever. Like when I’m frying eggs and boiling water or clearing snow off our laneway. I think I’ll write a blog about snow clearing some day. Ha!

So, let’s say I meet this woman, and then a little while later, I get together with some friends at a local pub, and while quaffing down a beer I tell them about this lonely woman I saw at this shop. I discuss a possible story. Leak out a few plot ideas. Blah, blah, blah. My friends might offer their opinions and the story becomes muddied, mutated and mangled before I have time to sit in my writing room and keyboard it out.

The next day or so, when I sit down to write this story, guess what? The story has been partially gutted. My emotions,  which were fresh and eager to be penned, have fizzled like a wet firecracker. Damn! 

I’m not saying the story has vanished. It might still be there, but the fire may have been partially talked away. And as I said in my last blog, a large part of fiction writing, at least for me, comes from the gut. It’s not really a rational process. 

Maybe it’s because when you leak out or pour out a story idea you partially encapsulate it or frame it. Nothing my creative muse hates more than a framed idea. Gutless, and when I invite my muse up to my writing/Black and Decker drill and saw/Sue’s files/our vacuum cleaner storage unit/office, to join in the writing project, well, he’s ticked off. 

“Hey dude, you’ve already blabbed that story out. So what do you want me to do? Warm it up and send it out as second-hand crap? Go pencil yourself.” 
Larry's Office
My Office
Anyway, as you may know, I spend a lot of my time in a little trailer in the forest. Trying my best to be hip with the hype and not go shack-wacky. Maybe I should say, worrying about getting with the program, but not often actually doing it. And I don’t really want to end up doing what Salinger did. He wrote his last works and then hid them away. I guess writing them was enough for him. Where was his marketing savvy? What was wrong with him?

Sidney Cox once wrote, “Do not try to write a poem until you want to.”

Diamond in the roughDiamond in the Rough
So, maybe writing too many self-promotional words in order to get my writing out there, or talking too much about what I want to create, can mute my desire to write.

I know that as with everything in life, when you create, you’re walking a fine line. Because the diamond in the rough is super hard and yet as fragile as a spider’s web. Choosing not to run as quickly as the hare might fail to get a writer so much into the world’s  hungry, obsessive gaze, but it might also be a way to save his or her writing self by keeping the flames hot.


Yeats wrote:  “But when I shut my door and light the candle, I invite a marmorean Muse, an art where no thought or emotion has come to mind because another man has thought or felt something different, for now there must be no reaction, action only, and the world must move my heart but to the heart’s discovery of itself, and I begin to dream of eyelids that do not quiver before the bayonet.”
Lake Ainslie
Snow-covered Lake Ainslie
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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.

PictureDefinitely 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.

flooded driveway
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.
Art hazardsHazardous 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.


Cabot Trail
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.

crows meeting
"Cawcus" Meeting
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Deep Mechanical Pockets

20/1/2014

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bikeBuddy Lee
Some folks, when they read my blogs, might wonder why I give objects names. For example, I call my bike “Buddy Lee”. He’s a ‘he’ because his name is Buddy Lee. Nothing anatomical.

The bike I left in Ontario, I named “Pixie Lee”. She is now leaning against a cold concrete wall in a friend’s home in Kingston. May the force be with her. May she be ridden again.

I got the name Pixie Lee from my ‘Familiar’. That’s how Sue referred to our little black cat, Spooky, who seemed to be able to read my mind and I hers. At the time, I was trying to think of what to call my Ontario bike, but was coming up with some crummy names. One day, as I was leaving to go for a bike ride, Spooky, who always liked to meow at me, and who was sitting on top of her favourite perch, our kitchen’s garbage pail wash water container, meowed as I left. In the meow I heard her telepathic suggestion, “Name your bike ‘Pixie Lee’.” The name stuck so I kept it. May Spooky rest in peace.


I call my snow blower “Grinder” and my current truck, “Basque”. My previous truck I called “Clarence” and the truck before him, “Rusty”. A not very creative name, I have to admit.

I bought Clarence on a whim and prayer and drove him home through two thousand kilometres plus of blizzards and ice. Therefore the name  “Clarence”, taken from the classic Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

I bought Basque the time we were in Cape Breton and needed to return to Ontario one winter, and drove him through a hell of a winter storm. I had a broken foot and couldn’t use Clarence’s clutch pedal. Sue, at the time, had a severe concussion and Clarence, who hated tobacco smoke, had arrhythmia or some other kind of heart/motor/electrical problem. I had to trade him in for Basque. I think he understood. He presently sits in a field in the back of a car lot sharing the space with hundreds of other abandoned vehicles. I wonder how many have personal names?

cat in truck
Clarence and Friend, Columbia
Years ago, a popular song sung by the Soviet youth, had the line: “We are given steel hands-wings, and a fiery engine instead of the heart”. (From Andrei Reznikiv’s book, ‘George Orwell’s Theory of Language”.)
babyHuman Capital
  Nowadays, we humans are often not referred to as persons. We are ‘consumers’. We are ‘human capital’. We are ‘human resources’. We ‘network’. Corporations pay taxes and do philanthropy. Not people.

I name my machines to counteract this labelling by going the other way. Giving machines human names. As though I’m using language flea spray. Repelling these, ‘as we move forward, consumer, indexed, money crunching word bugs’.

I hoist my swear finger above my head. My pinky wiggling and jabbing at those who treat humans like machines. Who do it without blinking an eye or showing shame or guilt.

A wise man once said, “As a man thinks, so he is.”


George Orwell wrote that language can be used to shape human thinking. And it’s an excellent way for tyrants to make us see ourselves as cogs in a massive complex system, way too mysterious and complicated for our little spark plugs and computer chips to comprehend.

And if we think of ourselves as consumers, capital and resources, then how much respect are we going to show to other humans? What are the odds for the plants, animals and birds?  How can they withstand words and phrases which are repeated and repeated and repeated to thicken and blacken the ledger books and hearts of those with the infinitely deep pockets?

mountain scenery in Cape Breton
Cape Breton beauty all around en route to the Co-op
  “Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed.”

                                                                                            Freidrich von Hayek

AND

“It does not require many words to speak the truth.”

                                                                                                  Chief Joseph Nez Perce

AND FINALLY

“Let us put our minds together and see what kind of life we can make for our children.”

                                                                               Sitting Bull

abandoned van
Emmet T. Prospector
Cape Breton country church
Church in Northeast Margaree
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Write? Right!

4/1/2014

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Picture

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.

brat
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 and GrosbeakCrow 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.”

                                                                            ***


snowblowing
Running out of space to blow the snow!
snowy manAbominable 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.



mountain view
View from Gold Brook Road
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Living our story

20/12/2013

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What a whack of snow we’ve been getting! I haven’t been able to park my snow blower since last Thursday. Today is Thursday, which makes it over a week and I will have to use it again today. Even though I was out in the blizzard last night freezing my organs off.
snow blower
Break Time for Snow Blower
We know we’re living in an out-of-the-way place when the weather forecasters tell us that a big storm is coming and that we’re now experiencing the quiet before the storm. What friggen quiet? Is there such as thing as a storm in a storm?

You see, Cape Breton is stuffed full of micro-climates and these days my muscles are threatening to bring out the guillotine and start chop-chop-chopping off the cloudy-headed mini weather pattern’s barometers unless they cease and desist.

A couple of weeks ago we were hit with hurricane force winds and rain. So the snow left over from a previous storm began melting away and pouring its juices into the river. The winds and the flood waters took at least another six trees down. Two fallen trees also blocked our lane. Out came the chain saw.
Test question: what’s one of the main differences between a maple tree and a spruce tree? Answer: the maple tree is a deciduous tree and the spruce tree is a coniferous tree. Deciduous trees are hardwood. Coniferous trees are softwood.

See, I know the answer. So why didn’t I think about this piece of info when the chain saw was cutting and zooming merrily through the spruce tree? Why didn’t I recognize that a maple tree is a different kettle of corn? Because it is “harder”. So why did I stupidly not bother to make an undercut beneath the incision I’d inflicted on the top of said maple trunk? Which led to the maple tree putting a death grip on my chain saw’s guide bar and chain. My excuse is that I was in a post-flood-plus mice-piss-in-snow-blower-foul mood. Anyway, I used an axe to get the tree to let go while I tried to shout over the river’s incessant babbling, “Let go, you basket!”

freeing chain saw with axe
Praying for help...
The next day, I was in a small engine shop, where I had the nice mechanic put a brand new guide bar on my chain saw. And after I paid him and was heading for the door, so I could get home and wreck another piece of equipment, I heard the mechanic say, and I quote: “There’s another one here with your name on it.” Good to know. Har, har, har.

We live in a forty-five foot trailer. It falls a tad short of being a palace. Yet when I got up one morning, (as I usually do, thank goodness), and peered out of our bedroom window, I witnessed a beautiful sunny day. I then hitch-hiked to the front of the trailer, where our living room resides, put some wood into the wood stove, started the fire and when I turned around to look out the living room window, guess what? It was pooping snow. I kid you not.

car buried in snow
Abominable Snow Woman
However, there are positives. For one, I don’t need to go to a gym to keep fit. Here’s another negative turned into a positive. Our road is one of the last roads to be ploughed. Do you know what that means, aside from our being trapped? It means it’s a perfect surface for me to ski on. Up to the mountains, through a gorgeous grove of snow-laden birch, spruce and fir. Until the snow plough arrives.

A few weeks ago we were in the city, where we were enjoying its attractions. Pubs, taxis, libraries, movies, stores, malls, people, cars, more people and cars and noise and restaurants and buses and noise and smoke and fumes and a part of me was loving all the stimulation and conveniences. But the other part of me soon began to give me the elbow and clear its throat and nudge, nudge and it didn’t take me long to get the message. I was missing the quiet, the fresh air, the quiet, the animal sounds, the cawing, my snow blower farting its way down our long lane, the quiet, no exhaust fumes and nights with bona fide darkness. Where we can really see the stars when the clouds aren’t dragging their asses across the firmament.


I have a theory. Like most of my theories, it’s probably rife with error but here it is. I think that people become slightly neurotic when they are in an environment of constant stimulation. Maybe their brains close up a bit so they won’t become overwhelmed by the excitement and the constant exposure to others.

David Thoreau wrote: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

art in natureNature's Art
I’d also like to throw this quote out, seeing I’m in a quoting mood: ”Ah,” exclaimed the old man, “such is the strange philosophy of the white man! He hews down the forest that has stood for centuries in its pride and grandeur, tears up the bosom of Mother Earth, and causes the silvery watercourses to waste and vanish away. He ruthlessly disfigures God’s own pictures and monuments, and then daubs a flat surface with many colours, and praises his work as a masterpiece.”

Who needs wilderness nowadays?  Don’t we have the virtual world? Don’t we have poorhouses?

Couldn’t resist.


Here comes another quote, except this time it’s a writing quote by Sydney Cox, taken from his wonderful book titled, “Indirections for Those Who Want to Write”.

 “When you tell a story or write a poem, it is from your point of view that you select, reject, arrange, make form. The thing you write about must interest you wholly, must seem so vital that you accept no current or approved view of any item of it, but look at every constituent from your point of view...”

And maybe that’s what we’re doing. We’re living life from our point of view. Creating, just like somebody created a Walmart or a Costco. Creating something different is what makes a life or a story or a poem vital. Our story.

Hang on, one more quote from Sydney Cox: ”You can hardly fail to notice that the writers who most delight and challenge you do not look at anything from quite the angle that any of the broad terms designate.”

A brief mention of my friend and bicycle, Buddy Lee. He is miffed. Ticked off. Because he was evicted from his wood shed apartment and put into the tool shed. Which is not convenient because it’s way back at the corner of our yard. And he is sharing his living space with the bad, destructo mice who maliciously attacked Grinder, who is now living in Buddy Lee’s old bachelor pad. I just didn’t have room for both, and I specifically told my bike that he would not enjoy living with Grinder. Not unless he likes mice pee perfume.


Next blog I might try to explore why I like to give names to such critters as my snow blower and bicycle. Have I mentioned that my truck’s name is Basque?

Have a great week.
truck named Basque
My Truck Named Basque
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