Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
I just cleared the door from the concert… I have only one word. Go. If you ever have a chance to see them, go. Their musicianship; their cameraderie; their joy in performing; their choice of material; their glorious singing voices….. When Lianna first opened her mouth to sing she was standing in the audience not five metres from me and I thought an angel had dropped out of heaven to sing.
Kopper, mil beijos for thinking of me, it was frikkin great.
I made waffles and strawberries for breakfast.
I have a very long list of things to do and zero desire to do any of it.
Kopper and I are off to a show in North Van tonight. She has a clothing swap at her place today as well, which is very good of her and her housemate… it’s a community building thing. I need to get rid of some clothes myself now that I’ve brought more into the house, but once again that would involve working.
At some point Jeff and I will step out into this dreadful rain and get some carpet and some computer stuff. Possibly also some food.
Take a Nap (the last choon). I put percussion in (basic 2-3 rumba rhythm).
Margot is in her teenaged years now. She’s being very naughty and a hog for the wrong kind of attention. I’ve been playing with her as much as I can.
I have returned to the land of my furball, who trotted to the door as soon as I came in at 11:15 am yesterday. I did laundry and lazed about.
Paul was providentially making a pork roast for the masses and me, Keith, Kate, Tom, Peggy, Jeff and Paul all sat down at a table yesterday and pigged right out. It was a succulent roast, and in addition to being highly edible, prevented me from having to actually, you know, like, cook on my first day back, although I did do the meat for tacos tonight.
Prior to inviting us over he said on the phone, “You sound really tired; you should take a nap.”
I was laughing as I hung up the phone. So I wrote a song. It’s a vaguely Latin sounding thing which is supposed to have mariachi style brass. (Added later…. it’s E B7 which is according to the magical internet – is a simple latin chord progression. )
There are friends
We run to when
We’re looking for advice
And the quality may vary
But the concern is nice
There are friends who give us
A verbal kiss
Others deliver a slap
But I like my friend Paul’s advice
When he says TAKE A NAP
Take a nap, dear
You know that you will feel much better
Have a glass of water first
Maybe put on your favourite sweater
This go go go
This rush rush rush
It’s a capitalist trap
If you want your life back
Prove it:
Take a nap.
I know you can’t hear it, but the mariachi brass is very nice.
Yes, Catherine’s many forays into Mexican and Central American food during my stay left a big mark on my psyche; I’ll be shopping today for ingredaments for the feast this evening. I detect a trip to Granville Island Market in my future. I can hardly wait to try my tortilla press. And there is nothing in the fridge. No beer, no milk, little veg, no leftovers; I have my work cut out for me.
I’m trying not to drink alcoholic beverages on Wednedays and Sundays; Dave fed me beer on Wednesday so I skipped last night.
I suppose I should talk a little more about my vacation. More:
I had another fabulous day of lovely eats, hanging around Queen St with Catherine and looking at cool shops, picking up another luggage bag, hanging out with Tammy and eating sweetbreads at the Auld Spot on the Danforth, and so to bed.
I am trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my last day in town.
The vines and the tree growth are so lush in Catherine and Colin’s back yard that they don’t have to hang curtains in the bed room. It’s lovely waking up with the filtered green light.
I miss my guitar. I miss my bro. I miss my kitty.
Jeff reports Margot is independently going through the cat door which installed after I flew out here. He also apologizes in advance for any lapses which may have taken place in her grooming; I’m sure it will be fine. I hope she still recognizes me.
What a stupendous dinner Catherine cooked us. In no particular order, fresh free range turkey larded with herbed sweet butter and lemon zest; roast carrots and parsnips; home made gravy; home made cranberry chutney; smashed potatoes; mixed fungus lightly sauteed in butter; spinach; bread rolls; two different kinds of dessert, one being bread pudding (walnut and raisin bread) and the other scratch made pumpkin pie which is really squash pie and you should have smelled the kitchen when Catherine was grinding the spices, both dishes with a side of whipped cream, did I mention gravy?, three beers (over the course of the evening), and an amazing squash and saffron rice casserole, except the squash was the container, and it looked like it had dropped in from Mars for the evening. No stuffing; Catherine said that it was a food safety issue, but I still think I’ll stuff my next turkey because I do make good stuffing if I do say so myself.
In a pleasant state of repletion, I now seek shelter in my comfy bed.
But if we didn’t have the space program, we wouldn’t have velcro for bondage gear. Or telemetry for hospital monitors. Or an image of the planet taken from the moon. What’s with the and/or? It isn’t science that rapes women or starves children, it’s people. Science is merely a set of concepts in the human toolbox; it can be forced to experiment on human beings or it can feed the world. It can support elites and distort our relationship to our planet or bring cheap desalination to thirsty peasants.
The biggest reason I support the space program has nothing to do with the benefits to science, and everything to do with how I feel about the pictures that we get. I feel the pulse of pure curiosity. I cried when I saw the video of an explorer landing on a moon. My humans did this amazing thing, and I’m proud of them.
Violence to self and others is part of the human toolbox as well. I don’t believe for two seconds we can eradicate it – I’m not even sure if we can channel it. I hope that science can help us with that. If you have eradicated violence in yourself, please remember that to be consistent in all this, you might want to consider abandoning any advances from the space program that have benefited you personally to teach the peace that you appear to believe is injured by the space program misallocating the resources of our finite planet.
Here is a partial list. http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html
Less politely, sex travel & death. You were probably on a wireless internet connection when you wrote your tragic screed, and if you are immune to irony you cannot make yourself proof against mockery.
http://www.stevey.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/50-years-exploration-huge.jpg
So after I left Deb and Jim’s place (such a nice house, but of course like most homeowners they see it as a succession of chores) I drove to London.
It took me from 9 am until 7:15 to drive 506 kilometers. It should have taken six hours, tops. It took from 12:30 to 5:30 to drive from where the 115 meets the 401 to Guelph. Words cannot describe my irritation; the combination of it being the Friday before the long weekend, the weather and the continuous construction along that stretch of road fixed it so that in the words of Dorothy Dunnett, I explored tedium to its petrified core.
I got to Oakridge in time to register, then went to the Greek Canadian Club and arranged to stay at a motel on Fanshawe Park Road called the Lighthouse. At this gathering, there were 400 people… at least … and I didn’t recognize a single soul. Not one. Nobody, uhn-uh, personne. I bought a zipper hoodie with the reunion logo on it for $20, not unreasonable.
But for reconnecting, not so much. Went back to the motel and decided to patronize ‘The Black Pearl’ a watering hole attached thereto, run by a married couple and their hot and hotter daughters. The place is the size of two big living rooms back to back, and the place is closing in two weeks because the owners of the motel did not renew the lease.
It was the last Karaoke Night at the Black Pearl the next night. I filed this away, in case the dinner dance out at the Western Fair building was a write off.
It was. I came, I ate (I’d paid for the fucking meal, after all) I greeted Barb, the one person there I recognized, and my god wasn’t she just the picture of a nicely done up middle aged lady, including having maintained her girlish figure. I drank one disgusting vodka plus sugar water which made me feel like hurling, and immediately drove back to the Black Pearl, where I grabbed a seat at the bar and watched the set up and singing. There was a guy who channeled Frank Sinatra. There was a guy with a voice… well, I told him to his face that if Tom Waits gargled a bucket of gravel before a gig, he’d sound like that. Since he didn’t know who Tom Waits was this meant nothing to him, but the guy standing beside me spit out his drink.
I drank four beers, sang two songs, went to bed. Or tried to. About ten songs have tried to land on me in the last little while (car trips); I wrote out lyrics for one and the rough sketch of the melody for the other, and then worked on the homily a little.
Drove by the old place on Oakridge Drive. The two maple trees are still in the front yard; everything else is different.
Drove by Sue’s old place. It didn’t look any different except the trim is a different colour.
Drove by University Hospital. It has nice new signs that look expensive and are very high off the ground.
Drove by where the Golden Pheasant Motel was, the first place I stayed when my family moved to London. It isn’t there any more. There’s a lot of nice new houses.
Drove down Dundas Street and said hello to ‘the strip’.
Drove past Tak Sun.
Drove past where the Three Little Pigs used to be. It’s still a family restaurant.
Drove past Jeff’s old place on Oxford.
Drove past where I used to live when I was working at the hospital. I moved out of my parents’ place the day of the Jonestown massacre. A fair piece back.
I passed Windermere but I didn’t go up that road. I would have gotten very nostalgic and weepy. I learned to play guitar in the married students quarters when I lived with my parents and they were going to Western.
Had tea and a lovely visit with Phyllis. She is grimly determined to keep as much of her mobility as she can, but it hurts. She is still as keenly intelligent and interested in the world as it goes by as ever she was; nobody just meeting her would give her 85. She looks 20 years younger than that to me. Her cat Smokey is ADORABLE and allowed me to fondle him rather a lot more than most cats will on first acquaintance. I miss MY little furball rather a lot.
Stopped at the Husky on the 401 for steak and eggs and now I’m safely ensconced at Catherine and Colin’s.
My, something sounds like a blowtorch. I must go investigate.
Registration for the reunion stops at 7:30 pm, so all I have to do is get to London for 6:30 and I should be fine. I didn’t get hold of Liz and will therefore be spending the night in a hotel, which, as long as it has wireless internet, is fine by me. Funny to think of not having crash space after all these years… but I’m not bunking in with my elderly ex-mother-in-law; to invite myself at this point to crash with somebody who likes a little more warning than I had the skill to provide would be rude in the extreme.
It will be a long drive. I imagine I’ll be doing a lot of singing in the car!
I had a lovely, lovely visit with Deb and Jim. We ate at Lapointe Fish Restaurant; I had pecan pepper tuna and it was the ne plus ultra of om nom nom.
Be careful who you pick on. But definitely don’t pick on THESE GUYS.
Here they are celebrating Jenn’s graduation from Brown.
Damn, I didn’t phone Sandra when I got in to tell her I was safe, what a jackass. Oh well, she knows how easily entranced/distracted/daydreamy I am. At some point I will have to thank Clem for the princely gift he made me upon my arrival. I actually have thank you cards packed away someplace. Anyways Chipper thanks for the tip about route 8, I’m sure you were right when you said it would shave at least half an hour off the elapsed time.
Jim and Deb made me a very wonderful welcome, and I got to meet Winnie the Wonderdog, who is just as charming and lovable as a pitbull can be (as advertised & she is one of the prettiest dogs ever and very expressive) and also Zoomer, who, at 11, is a sober and friendly individual. Winnie just had her first birthday. She got CAKE at the doggie park, the lucky little canine.
Dinner (of COURSE I have to talk about dinner) was yummy pasta shells with home made sauce with sliced chicken draped over it, plus mixed veg, plus PERFECTLY cooked garlic bread and strawberry rhubarb pie a la mode. Jim presided over the concoction of this savory collation…
Then we sat about and chewed the fat until we realized we were all tuckered out (and Jim had to get up at hours ungodly) so after getting the key to the wireless and extracting a promise from Jim to bang on my door so I can join the folks for bird seed (what we call Red River Cereal) and coffee at six tomorrow morning, I am now doing up my daily report prior to unconsciousness.
Driving through the rolling hills of Eastern Ontario while the sun dances in and out from behind the clouds and the hills sing with colour and then the trees shake golden coins into the air and I chase the shadow along the road while all the trees lose the light and become… something different, less lively somehow… it made me feel very wonderful. I figured out how to use the cruise control, so my back is fine. I was within five minutes of my predicted arrival time of 5:30 so I am very pleased with myself.
Deb and Jim have a house full of lovely pictures of family and many pictures of Jenn. She is such a beautiful young women; one can always say that about the children of friends, but there really is something special about her. There’s a picture of her with her dog Nolan, another pit bull rescue, that makes me smile every time I think of it, Nolan with her immense scary mouth gaping open and Jenn laughing. I really like the house, the colours and the layout feels so relaxed and comfy… Deb says, “Just don’t look in the basement.” Which makes me laugh, because that’s how I feel, too, what with all my boxes still strewn about and unpacked.
I thank everyone for their hospitality so far and feel so contented. When I think how I agonized about getting her and how incredibly anxious I was about the travelling, I am inclined to poke a great deal of fun at myself. Sooner or later I have to quit worrying about things. Worrying never helps. Planning does!
Very cold and windy today… got blown all over the show by great gusts of wind. The Rent-a-wreck Impala dances around like a Westphalia when it gusts.
The meal last night was yummy, and myself and Sandra and one of her guests, a fabulously entertaining individual named Clay, had a pleasant chin wag. I recognized him not by his face, which I hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing previously, but by the bottle of Grand Marnier I had been advised he would be clutching. We made one toast with the orange elixir, and I only had another couple of beers, so it was a much less libatious evening for me than last night especially when I knew I was both driving and working the next day.
Sandra is the happiest I’ve ever seen her. Last night she took immense joy in sharing a piece of art with me. There are a couple of reasons this is important.
It’s a great piece of art. Within minutes I could relax because I knew I would be listening to it again.
Sandra had an interpretation of the work of art that not a single other person has been able to distinguish. At least according to the internet… I looked.
Her interpretation was amazing. Accurate. Spooky as all get-out.
The work of art had direct relevance to me and everybody in my family.
More when I’ve processed some more.
It appears that the weather will be perfect for transplanting trees (which Sandra needs to do to help delineate a new campsite) and once breakfast is complete we will go deal with it.
The light right now looks very strange, I’m going to walk around with the camera for a bit.
Sandra has a life size walking doll here, a refugee from her childhood which she found in a box in her mom’s attic. I will have pictures at some point.
The colours in Madawaska and environs are so stunning, and so exactly NOT what you get in the fall in Vancouver, that I feel like I’m high just from looking at trees.
After we got going yesterday, Catherine and I went to a very nice El Salvadoran restaurant (ate there last time). This time I said, “I’ll have what she’s having’ and thus ate my first tamale (om nom nom) and I also had a burrito and pupusa. It was really really awesome.
Then we walked along Bloor to Long and McQuade, where I acquired two thunder drums, one of which I donated to Sandra upon my arrival. Then, off to Rentawreck, conveniently at the end of Catherine’s street, and into the car to get to Madawaska.
Today has been a day full of colour, incident, work and fun. The most wonderful stuff that happened today I can’t talk about because I don’t have the permission of the folks involved, but trust me, YOU would have been laughing your ass off in that “I really shouldn’t be laughing” way.
Last night, however, was given over to food. I purchased chèvre with cinnamon cranberries, Raincoast crisps, 73% cacao chocolate, chocolate covered marzipan, Rooibos chai shortbread cookies, and about a pound of almonds, which, along with some very nice potato vodka and the final beer in the fridge, made for a lovely, chatty evening. Sandra introduced me to pickled hot peppers (Indian style) which, tossed in generously over the beef and cabbage curry, made for a wonderful and very fashionably late dinner.
Clem was here and we hung out briefly but he had to get back home to get enough sleep to deal with a root canal today.
Today, after planning her day like a military operation, it all got shot to hell and we didn’t actually follow the plan due to those damned extenuating circumstances and we ended up driving to Barry’s Bay and Combermere, the first for beer, wine, banking and comestibles, the second to get used windows and frames transferred from Vivian’s house to Larry’s house. Larry is Sandra’s special friend, and I got to meet him when we picked him up from his workplace for a late lunch at the Ash Grove Inn, which looks out over Kaminiskeg Lake (and the colourful trees scattered thereabouts). Our companion was another local, a gentleman named Gary who is developmentally delayed. Larry is (in addition to his other gainful employment) his worker. Watching Larry deal with Gary was absolutely wonderful, and also very funny. Gary would rather have fun and socialize with Larry than stay home and watch tv so Larry has tremendous leverage with respect to consequences for behaviour. All I know is I make more noise in restaurants than Gary …. and make more mess eating…. so I am a chastened individual today.
We stopped for a smoke break by the lake after lunch and way off in the distance, I saw a man staggering down the road. First thing I thought “Drunk off his keister.” Larry informed me that the gent had a progressive neuromuscular disease, which really put my current very small concerns into even more stark perspective, and although he did not try to engage any of us, he hung out with us and smoked a cigarette while we watched the scenery and took pictures, which I hope at some point to be able to share. I didn’t take my camera, and now I hear it’s going to rain and blow like a bastard tomorrow, so I may lose my chance to take pics of the colour.
Larry is as good looking as a movie star, ps. He had a full bushy beard and masses of hair until recently, and when he shaved it off Sandra went eep! when she saw him, which must have been amusing.
Anyway, we went to Vivian’s. Vivian had all these windows left over from a reno, and some were to migrate to Larry’s place (conveniently located next door so we walked those frames over but put the glass in Sandra’s Jeep) and some here to finish up a cabin renovation.
The Lodge has had MUCH work of an improving kind done around here. The little slough that bred mosquitoes is long gone; the number of campsites has been increased, there are various new buildings for storage and tools and boats, etc., but the heart of the place is still the same, and I am grateful beyond words to be here.
I don’t think I mentioned the breakfast Catherine made me the other day. Four kinds of fruit, full fat yoghurt and toasted brazil nuts chopped on top. Best breakfast I have had in many moons….
Tonight prime rib and veg. O frabjous day! Tomorrow planting trees in the AM unless it’s really bucketing. Then off to see Deb in Ottawa, woo hoo!