ALMOST THE 70'S

Well, here l am mere months away from seven decades on the earth. I must say, "that was quick". Now what? What have l got left and where do l go with it? I am glad to be driven to create, to draw, paint, muck around in the dirt...whatever. So far, l envy no one. I truly enjoy my life and what l do. I have much to be grateful for. My troubles seem to begin and end with my fellow man. I suppose l should just quietly create...l say that, as if contemplating an alternative when l have none. None l wish to pursue at any rate. My brothers and sisters on our earth are legion. Since l expect to live a normal life span, the few "tic-tocs" l have still clicking on my clock are few and precious....so here goes: 

The secretary to my dentist called last evening to remind me of my appointment the following morning. We made small talk and with a mildly (well, duh..) attitude l assured her l would see her at 9:30 in the AM.

The chill l got at seeing the caller ID on the home phone at 9:45 the next morning can scarcely be described as l began falling all over my self in an attempt to apologize and hope l could jump into my car and.....well.........they can squeeze me in in mid March. 

It's funny how, instead of thinking that l'm getting "drifty", l do my damnedest to recall that l've always been like this, so it' s OK. ..what's with that?

My good neighbour swept me up this afternoon to go have a couple of beers with he and some of his friends. Fun, but, man, l have a couple of those schooners and l'm off to the can at least twice before everyone else has had three or four. Cripes, are they peeing on the floor? If you poured all that beer into a plastic bag and tried to tuck it into your pants or wherever the bladder is...well damn how do they do it?

We decided to just use our wood stove here for heat. I suppose our first electric bill was the major influence. We pulled the breaker on the baseboards and instead got in touch with our inner "keeping the fire going all night" thingy. Well, l like it ok, and there seems to be a symbiotic relationship with the stove and the demands influenced by my prostrate. Every 3 to4 hours as l trundle from bed to bathroom, l stop by the wee stove and feed it another log or two. Oddly, l even kind of like it. 

As the weather gets damp and chill, the novelty tends to wear off. I feel the joints in my legs and fingers as l feed the fire. UNLESS!! .... I have my morning smoothie with ginger and turmeric.....plus, our garden still has kale, celery and parsley. That, and avoiding wheat (almost impossible but getting there) seems to be doing what they claim....reduce inflammation. 

I'm signing up to teach a bunch of classes this spring through the fall, mostly watercolour with adults, but also a couple of week sessions teaching drawing with kids. These are my battery chargers. 

We are going to the warm sunny weather for all of February. I love it, but the crocus are just emerging, the witch hazel is blooming and some early iris are smirking at me. Don't do it all before l get back eh?

The Ending of 2014...don't tell me what happens.

   I've heard a lot of people say how fast time flies as we get older. Certainly my parents did. Well, I hope I'm finally on on some threshold of acceptance so I can just go on without the constant amazement. Cripes, time flies!  At this rate I'll be dead before I get a chance to notice I'm gone.

This post needed a picture. These are our neighborhood bears. 
                The mom and her 2 wee cubs

My friend Marco once said regarding death, "I just hope one morning l wake up and I'm not there"

   My parents, Dad passed last September. Mom is still here. She has the room across the hall from where dad was. Just before her birthday in November, my sister Nancy said, "Mom you are having a birthday soon". "I am?" says Mom, "How old will I be?" "95 Mom.". "Well, says Mom, I'll probably live to be a hundred". That kind of triggered these ramblings.

    As I age, I find it more of a challenge remembering dates, you know, when shit happened, when I'm supposed to do what, when.... and even what day it is. I clearly remember, like it was yesterday, my Dad asking over and over what day- time- month-even year it is. This from an ex- air force pilot. At the time, we made light of it, but now I'm smack dab on the border of it. So... here's where I'm going with it: Ever since I touched the hem of the garment of "enlightenment" (in a manner of speaking)  ... the profound reward, goal, understanding, is, was, and always will be: Here we are. The Present moment. Or perhaps more honestly, '"Here I am". This is all there is. NOT, this is all there was, or, this is all there will be. ....nope, simply put, This is it. So how come it goes by so fast?  

   I wish it was easier to remember that my anxieties stem from fear and a sort of regret. Fear of what might happen, regret from how I may have handled what already did happen. Nothing whatsoever to do with where I live and breathe right now.  
 This is where l live, create, think, sleep, eat, worry, wonder, paint and write and go kaka  This moment is also where for some reason, l seek the news of the world. I listen, watch, worry and wonder. How can we possibly be so stupid? Why are we doing these things to each other and our beautiful planet? 

I once took a look when I was younger. I travelled across the Atlantic on a steam ship. I worked in a sawmill between art school classes and saved enough to take off. A buddy and I went across Canada on a train. We got passage on a ship from Montreal to Liverpool. We hitch-hiked England and Wales and made our way to Germany where we bought an old Opal van thingy for $100. We were looking for good hash and God. We found bits and pieces of both. Denmark, where the kids stoned us. Portugal where we ate fresh sea food on the beaches, Spain, where, in Ibiza,we dove in the clear, clean Mediterranean  speared octopus for the family that housed us, ate fresh bread sopped in olive oil and drank red wine before dancing with the unattainable beauties in the discos. Took a silly sea sick side trip past the straights of Gibraltar to Morocco to buy kief to sell to the Ibiza hippies, but chickened out just before the return border crossing. We stopped by the side of the road and unscrewed the headlamp and took out our pathetic kilo and gave it to a shepherd. One of those aforementioned past regrets. Not so much the loss of good smoke, but more the misunderstanding we have contributed to in the Arab world.  We could have at least chilled enough to smoke a bowl with him. Wandered through France and Italy, then the incredible Yugoslavia, which is no more, at least not in the Communist form it was then. Over the mountains, slipping and sliding in the snow and down into Greece where we did a sketchy black market deal to clear the Opal from the passports and jump aboard a new (1969) VW camper wagon belonging to the girl I later followed to the other Communist country we called "the Love Family" . But back then, we were part of a very organic wave of seekers following the Beatles and other heroes of our generation onto the overland trail to India and possible spiritual enlightenment. If all else failed, there was certainly lots of very good hashish. If it was good enough, we could even sense God smiling at us. We had our clues on the quest. "God is Love" was a doozy. We were just beginning to flex those muscles and they were sort of saving our lives. Seems no matter how tense or scary a scene we found ourselves in, being open and loving won the day. 

Anyway...Turkey- pretty fukkin scary at first. Then we settled down. This ain't Europe. A hub of civilization for thousands of years. So much to learn and absorb. We actually had nothing to offer other than awe. We were tolerated in proportion to the amount of respect and interest we showed. I slowly got that.  Iran- scary at first. warm, generous, hospitable, Tehran was beautiful. People took us up a mountain where they were skiing. We got an inner tube and had a blast. The Persians were wonderful.  Afghanistan- scary at first- These powerful tribesmen were very respectful and generous as well. It was cold and freezing there in November. We dropped down into the lush plains of Northern Pakistan and were blown away by the green fields, warm air, flocks of parrots, and really fine hash. We had problems with the paperwork on the van and Pakistan would not permit us too continue into India. 
We were stuck in a small village for almost 2 months. Hands down, this was the richest part of my journey. Our host would collect me in the evenings and I would walk on the dikes separating the wheat fields with my new friend, Mehboob and we would talk about God. 

Recently I read that memories are not directly retrieved, but instead they are associated with the last time you talked or thought about them...or something to that effect. I thought it important to throw that in here because although these memories are part of me and make up a very fond picture of my past, they are, by the same token, a recollection of a recollection of a story of a time when I was creating myself. I've tweaked and twisted and stretched the events to my advantage in an attempt to have something I've come from...grown out of...some things wonderful and bright and others dark and ....well...dark. Things inflated, things suppressed all in a tangle of sweet and bitter, aerating the compost carefully placed around the little tree of my life. 

So here I am, such as l am. Stories I tell from the past are memories of memories of memories. They are fun and have a lot of possibilities due to lack of first hand witnesses. I try, however, to be as true as l can and hope they are somehow worthwhile. All this to illustrate the only truth available to us all. Listen, can you hear it? Love it. It's all we've got. 
Let's make nice in these precious few seconds.

                        Happy holidays

Such a Chicken

Several mornings ago I heard a loud commotion outside. It sounded like a chicken in distress. I went to the front porch and sure enough, a chicken in distress. It looked like a Bantam hen was being harassed by a black cat. I tossed a rock at the cat and the chicken showed its gratitude by hanging around for a couple of days. I like chickens, they are fun to watch, moving about with that mechanical sort of  stop-start way they have. Always cocking an eye at a potential snack just before the peck. We worked together in the yard. Me weeding, she pecking and poking away at anything freshly turned over or uprooted.

 She discovered nasturtium seeds that had dropped below the scraggly plant and appeared to have some sort of culinary chicken revelation, went a bit ga-ga, gobbling them right up. The shine went off the relationship when I became aware of the tremendous ability of a bird in quest of edibles to devastate, uproot and generally trash any established plants that were in its way, fertilizer deposits aside She was not an asset.

The neighborhood kids came strolling by. "Cloe, Do you recognize this chicken?" "No," she said. "That's our chicken" said Mica, "and it's a rooster". Three or four attempts at capture were met with "Is that all you got?" from the bobbin' and weavin' Bantam weight. I said I'd try to catch and deliver it for them later. After the bird settled down, I shamelessly set up a box, stick and string and baited it with a handful of raw, unsalted, shelled, organic, I believe gluten free pumpkin seeds. I poured myself a glass of our own Pinot Grigio, settled  on the porch steps and with the string wrapped around my hand got set to wait until the unsuspecting bird relaxed enough to duck under the box for the bait. It took about 10 seconds. I didn't even get to take a sip of wine. The bird went into the box, I yanked the string, the box fell, I slid the lid under the box and, Bob's yer uncle. 

I drank the wine and headed up the street to Mica's house. Mathew is Mica's dad. He and Joanne, his wife were in the hot tub. Matt was astonished that I had the rooster. He wrapped up in a towel and after I had released the bird into his coop he told me a most remarkable tale. 

This same bird had just come into "rooster-hood" and was practicing his "cock-a-doodle-do" with reckless abandon and god awful shrieks in the wee hours before dawn. A neighbor reported the racket to the local municipality. Matt had too many roosters and he couldn't give them away. They tried cooking and eating them, but the huge amount of effort, catching, killing, plucking, cooking these scrawny little Banties was a whole lot of work, so Matt resorted to what countless farmers before him have resorted to. He wrung its neck. He stared me straight in the eyes and said, "A whole twist and a half" then, "and back the other way just to be sure". The bird's eyes rolled up, it went limp, and Matt placed it in a plastic bag, tossed it in his truck for disposal and went inside to prepare for a day's work. Suddenly a great commotion broke out and he looked out in time to see our bird shrieking and running through the yard with the plastic bag hanging off him. He showed up at my place three days later impersonating a hen and eating my worms. 

This has all the earmarks of a great banned kids book.    

Amusings

What is amazing? Anything or everything? 

I am alone in the house.

I hear the rain, the quiet rain. It free-falls from gutter to drainpipe just outside the walls.

the sound is nice, but not amazing.

How strange to be 68 

And not clearly remember being 64

Let alone remember yesterday.

I’m reading a really well written book.

I have to go back and reread to remember who the characters are,

but it’s worth it.

If it was a lousy book, I wouldn’t care. I’d just muddle through and maybe not even care to finish.

But I look forward to each chapter.

I read it on the toilet.

My bathroom stays are directly connected to the ability of the author to keep me engaged.

A well written book can really mess up my day even more than mild constipation.

Not long ago I was given a book to read that looked interesting

I was well into it before realizing I had already read it.

It became less interesting.

I read the last few pages just to be done with it.

Again.

I am alone in the house because Deb has gone to help her sister in Nevada

We saw a picture of Peggy’s back after surgery

It looked like a small one rail, railroad track from neck to butt.

The stitch marks were the ties.

Something like that stays with you for a while. 

More vivid than the entire year that I was 64.

Because of the internet, Deb and I can write notes to each other

I have come to prefer communicating via email.

I get to correct stupid things I say before sending.

Once you’ve said it on the phone, you’re pretty much fucked.

I just spent quite a while looking at the last word above.

Such a silly word.

Back in the 50’s Lenny Bruce used to fill an auditorium or concert hall with people and police.

On stage he would scream, “Kill, war, murder, rape, blood, death,” and so on.

Then quietly say to his audience, something like, “Isn’t it amazing how I can stand here and scream these horrible words, yet if I just mention a slang word for the act of making love, I could go to jail? “ He would then shout “Fuck” into the microphone and all the police would storm the stage and triumphantly march him off to jail. 

Although he eventually  died of a heroin overdose on the toilet,

He was a real cobblestone on the road to HBO specials.

I think I could write an amazing haiku right now

But I am too involved to look up the rules on Google.

Here's me just before Christmas 2013

I have to back away from the middle east, since it is beginning to make me ….what is the word?? ah yes …insane. I am also backing away from US and Canadian politics and even to some extent local politics, and instead I'm painting pretty pictures, feeding the birds, teaching little art classes, making nice with the neighbors, and making toys for my grandbabies. I also drink and do a few drugs. Yes, perhaps I am metaphorically playing my fiddle while Rome burns. But deep down I believe the only real way to effect change is to enjoy life and hope it catches on…..Oh, and being a bit simple minded seems to help.  When I think about it, I've always felt like this, it is likely chronic and possibly incurable. 

The foundation for all the "newsworthy" world events seems to have very little to do with "Loving thy neighbor" so misguided by fear and hatred and good ol' greed, that any opinions I generate all appear naive and out of touch. Yet I remain solidly in the Love thy Neighbor camp. 

My hope is in a several hundred year shift of thought and reason….I am engaged, my kids are engaged, and people I spend time with are (for the most part) engaged. It's likely to get messy which is all the more reason to keep creating a toe hold of what's most valuable to us.

I find this clip very encouraging:
http://www.upworthy.com/if-you-thought-someone-couldnt-explain-empathy-with-a-dry-erase-marker-youre-wrong

Old Growth

I just read a FB blurb describing the fate of a guy in the USA who got life with no parole in a Federal Pen for sending a friend 5 grams of LSD in the mail back in 1994. LIFE! He was 24 . He had some priors, selling small amounts of marijuana and acid in 1991. Now he’s 43. 

Something is really wrong with this. 

There has been some remarkable local press here where l live on the Sunshine Coast of BC. The events l am referring to are all about old trees. They are growing just a very healthy hike directly above where l live. These are gnarley old, un-killable Yellow Cedar about 7 feet in the butt and more than 1000 years old. What is remarkable is, that a small outspoken group of people here have made us “locals” aware that every one of these living plants could be gone in a heartbeat, cut and sold to people who don’t live here. Gone for life with no parole. 

Something is really wrong with this.

Well, somehow some of these “cut blocks” have been spared the big saw tooth for now and some have not. Here’s what makes me crazy: How could any of this even be up for debate? I totally understand people need jobs and BC has an enormous resource of trees for lumber and pulp....but l beg to hear from a rational mind a justification for cutting one, even one, of these old growth monuments. Any area above the coast that the current residents could drive their children and grand children to, so as to experience the holy majesty of of one of these remarkable survivors should be considered a sanctuary don’t you think?  Well! Who the hell am l to say such things. Just a person really, one who has lived long enought to have seen a remarkable disregard for ...blah blah blah ...all true but who hasn’t heard it before ad nauseum?  But here’s crazy: l have never met one single solitary person who thinks its a good idea to cut these trees, these last of the old growth, just moments from downtown,  these breathtaking ancients. So I ask, “Where are you? Who are you?” If these forests truly belong to the Province, the people of BC (l could be wrong about that....waiting to hear) then I’ll bet anything that the “Let’s leave the trees in this particular part of our Province” people, far out number the “Lets cut those old trees and sell them to someone who gives us the most money for them” people, I feel really strongly about this, since l have never met one single a“cut ‘em down” type , but I am completely surrounded by the tree hugger types around here of which I am one.

So, here’s what l need to know:

• Who actually owns these trees? 
• If it is my Provincial government shouldn’t we be able to vote on their fate?
• If it is a private interest eg. logging company How did that happen? I missed that probably a century ago, but please catch me up. 
• ok l’m starting to feel like a smart -ass, but I most sincerely love these trees and I 

want to see if we could somehow understand the why and wherefore that justifies the cutting of these beautiful gifts and turning them into 2x4’s

Once they are gone they are gone just like a caught US drug dealer. 

Highlighting my lnsights-Spring 2013

We are nearing the end of March here on the Sunshine Coast. I love spring. All that dead looking stuff coming back to life. Surprise eruptions from forgotten bulbs. Everything beginning to respond to more light.  And best of all, that magical force that pulls me outside to dig and plant and prune and stand there in the middle of it all, filled with awe and wonder. 
Don't ever leave me. 

My boy, Mark and our dear Jamie came up with a new grand baby for us . His name is Cypress Benjamin Edwards. He was born February 23 with a head of hair and a sweet disposition.Home birth an hour and a half labor.  That Jamie is something else! 

                                                 CYPRESS BENJAMIN EDWARDS

Grand daughter, 4 yr. old Amirra is already taking the "big sister" job very seriously.  Deborah went down to help keep Amirra occupied while Jamie attended the little one. Mark arranged a nice private cottage on the Snoqualmie River for Deb to escape to after the long days with the 4 year old human dynamo. Although many of those evenings were "sleepovers" with Yaya (Amirra's name for Deb) 

 3 weeks after the birth, I finally got away for a short visit. I waited for the kafuffel to die down and headed south. Amirra and I spent a couple of days putting a 10 gallon fish tank together. Baby Cypress was a quiet addition to the evenings when we would come together for dinner and card games  in their little cottage. Jamie says Cy is awake a lot of the night. He's a night feeder.

                               EDWARDS CLAN (PHOTO BY JAMIE ROSE EDWARDS)

 Daughter, Josie, ... "Auntie Jojo," pours herself into the kids. Amirra loves her.

                                                 AMIRRA , CYPRESS AND JOJO

Mark has transformed my old studio space into a sweet cottage for his growing family. In trade for a break in rent, he manages the home we used to live in for us. Our tenants are connected to the Wilderness Awareness school. (see Nov 22 / 2011 for more info if you like)  

It is a very transformative experience to revisit the home I raised my family in. We moved onto scraped dirt and a brand new 1984 Double wide shortly after the implosion of the Love Family Community that we had been a part of for more than 15 years. We planted trees ,  gardens, built a pond, a wood shed, and I was familiar with every tree and shrub. Now to visit, and see another vision emerging on the land has been, as l say,"transformative". Mark is much more of a visionary . l do very well with about 4 square feet at a time . Crawling around planting little things, rolling rocks into place......He sees a bigger picture, a gift l have always admired. The whole back yard is now a fenced in chicken and duck pen. They (Mark & tenants) are building a shop and a new wood shed. There were (and I'm afraid always will be ) problems with the double wide. Most recently this involved removing and rebuilding the corner with the "master bath" . Seems this is a "no worries" situation with all involved as the kilowatt eating heaters dry away the mold and mildew to the point where re-insulating, venting and plumbing the bath and toilet back in finally become a reality. Mark employed some tenant labor in trade for rent and Bob's almost my uncle. 

                                                          AMIRRA'S FISH TANK

We have decided that in spite of the obvious fact that the place is slowly being replaced board by board as it ages, we will do our best to prop it up and carry on. Mark is close to all the people who come to live on the property. He seems able to spend enough time entertaining and being entertained, that great friendships are emerging. Amirra is a rock star when she shows up, which is almost daily, and is involved in art and stories and warm human connection with this wonderful collection of people. Was it "Julio" l just met? He was sitting at his laptop as l emptied out the fish tank for Amirra's project.... a very pleasant Spanish lad ...and I got to talk about my hippy days in Ibiza.   I see a very hopeful vision emerging as this micro community evolves, based on nothing other than a pure form of friendship ....Friends helping with what needs to be done. 

                                                   AMIRRA WINNING AT "GO FISH"

As I view the events in the world around me, wars, economic collapse, environmental disasters, greed run amok, I become more and more hopeful, that whatever fumbling attempts we can make to live in peace with those around us just might save our sorry ass.