Pescatorean precipitation

Even in our charmed corner of the world, the erratic shifts in the rhythm of the year's weather rock us and scar us.

I walk down Chester Street, where the ancient plane trees arch in knobbly nobility.  This summer, the sidewalks and neighbouring verges are littered with scraps of bark, roughly the size of business envelopes.  Occasionally, I'm witness to the plummeting of some of them, clipping the pavement, and - so far - not my head.  It's probably only a matter of time.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a stranger sight at my feet: about half a dozen tiny iridescent blue fish scattered across the concrete.  It was a hot Sunday morning, and the flies were already arriving.  I carefully picked my way between them, wondering where on earth they'd come from.

The Resident Fan Boy, on his way to church earlier, had witnessed the fish-fall.  He told me he heard a splatter, and caught sight of something falling from a cherry tree.  He thought for a fleeting moment that a bird had had stomach trouble - then he saw the fish, and nothing else.

They festered for a day or so, getting stomped and crushed, while attracting more insect life.  I found other ways to cross and walk, until a thundering hailstorm scrubbed the sidewalk clean -- while setting off several more wildfires up-Island.

I'm praying for a less biblical September.

Wild horses

On the morning of the Resident Fan Boy's birthday, I pack away my journals after taking my coffee cup to the baristas' sink.  I swing my packsack on to my back and step out into the shade of the coffee shop patio.  The early September morning is cool, but the sunshine bounces off the trees and buildings across the street on to the naked body of a tall, thin young man, prancing and rearing like a mustang as two police officers attempt to handcuff his hands behind his back.

It is an arresting scene, in every sense of the word, surreal and silent, except for the sound of his bare feet beating against the side walk, as he jogs on the spot, tossing his shaved head.  I hear his expelled breath each time he falls to his side in vain resistance.  His forearm is bleeding.

Not one person behind me speaks.  They sit transfixed at the patio tables with their untouched lattes.  I am also rooted to the spot, not knowing where to look, my way blocked.

The officers get him as far as their car, parked in the middle of the north-bound lane;  he's dropped down on his side again, and I hurry down the block to pick up a prescription for Demeter.  The lights on the squad car flash red and blue behind me, and I pass more people, some becoming aware of the drama.

I say nothing about this to the pharmacist, and, making my way back, I see more police vehicles, and about a dozen officers gathered in the decks that the coffee shop erected for more outdoor seating during the pandemic.  The naked man is now in the back seat of the police SUV; someone is leaning to speak to him through the window.

A young woman, who had been further down the sidewalk when I started out, now stands quietly by the curb, gazing intently with the air of one bearing witness.

I continue up the hill, as people appear in shop doorways, murmuring to one another.  There's a corn cob in the centre of the sidewalk, with two of its fronds scattered to the edges.  I pick it up and place it on a bench, not knowing what else to do.

It's not until I get home and sit on my couch, gazing out into the street, that I realize how upset and miserable I feel.

Be careful what you wish for

Sometimes I rise in the morning, make my preparations, and stride out into the morning, emanating energy. 

Sometimes. 

On those mornings, I cudgel my brains for what I've done differently, and I never have an answer. 

It's on a morning such as this, that I take my accustomed place at the coffee house and tackle my journals and correspondance. (I also fall down social media rabbit holes, but let's not go there right now.) 

Perhaps it's my energetic aura that draws a young woman to stand by my table. 

"May I interrupt you?" she asks, as I look up quizzically from the webs I've been weaving. 

"I want to be like you when I'm older." 

I swallow my befuddlement at this, and manage a grin. 

"Be careful what you wish for!" (Gawd, she has no idea...) 

She says something about being on an eccentric path already.

Great. I'm exuding eccentricity as well.

And if you saw him now

It's not like I didn't see this coming.

But on this spring evening, after stumbling across the news, I head towards bed sadly, remembering so many songs.  Many will have their own favourites.  

This one happens to be mine.

 

The old man has come home from the forest.

Not a happy morning for worms or white elephants

 On a rainy January weekend, scores of robins swooped and scattered along the streets of our neighbourhood, all male, their red breasts flashing as they spiralled down to the grass before soaring again.

It was not a happy morning for worms.

Distracted by the aerial circus, it took me some moments to notice the odd object left by the curb, and a little longer to register what had been scrawled upon it in white.  It was some kind of plug-in electrical fireplace, and I wondered what the story behind the inscription was, and if it was anything like what happened to us about twenty years ago.

In the pre-breakfast hours of a grey morning in Ottawa, the Resident Fan Boy and I had struggled to the icy curb with an ancient and extremely heavy television set that no longer worked.  

When the RFB headed off to work at 7:30, the set had vanished from the sidewalk -- then reappeared after the garbage and recycling trucks had lumbered up the hill.  Evidently whoever had made off with it had discovered the television was not viable, and had decided to return it to the exact same place.  I've never figured out if this was misplaced helpfulness or petty vengefulness.  We were certainly ticked off.

Cursing our unknown malefactor,  we staggered back down to the basement to store our burden for another month, when the next appliance/heavy furniture pick-up was due. 

We labelled it carefully this time - multiple times in proper English, not cod-Dutch, or whatever that white writing on the fake fireplace is meant to be.  

A hell of a place to find heaven

This has been one strange Christmas. Not awful, but not one we'll forget in a hurry. Details later.

In the meantime, here's one of the odder Christmas songs I've encountered. It's called "Joseph, Better You Than Me", by The Killers, released in 2008.

The vocals are provided by lead singer Brandon Flowers, with guest vocalists Elton John and Neil Tennant (of the Pet Shop Boys).

 

[Vocalist: Brandon Flowers] 

Well your eyes just haven't been the same, Joseph 

Are you bad at dealing with the fame, Joseph? 

There's a pale moonshine above you 

Do you see both sides? 

Do they shove you around? 

[Vocalists: Elton John & Brandon Flowers] 

Is the touchstone forcing you to hide, Joseph? 

Are the rumours eating you alive, Joseph? 

When the holy night is upon you 

Will you do what's right? 

The position is yours 

[Vocalist: Elton John] 

From the temple walls to the New York night 

Our decisions rest on a child 

When she took her stand, did she hold your hand? 

Will your faith stand still or run away? 

Run away 

[Vocalist: Elton John] 

When they've driven you so far 

That you think you're gonna drop 

Do you wish you were back there at the carpenter shop? 

[Vocalist: Neil Tennant] 

With the plane and the lathe 

The work never drove you mad 

You're a maker, a creator 

Not just somebody's dad 

[Vocalists: Brandon Flowers, Elton John & Neil Tennant] 

From the temple walls to the New York night 

Our decisions rest on a man 

When I take the stand, will he hold my hand? 

Will my faith stand still or run away?

And the desert, it's a hell of a place to find heaven 

Forty years lost in the wilderness, looking for God 

And you climb to the top of the mountain 

Looking down on the city where you were born 

(Oh, the years since you left gave you time to sit back and reflect)

Better you than me  

Better you than me, yeah 

Well, the holy night is upon you  

Do you see both sides, do they shove you around? 

Better you than me, Joseph

Making waves

There are waves of fatigue, and waves of fear.

The Resident Fan Boy was awash in a tide of terror in the wake of a too-close-for-comfort encounter in the park. 

While I was mixing flour and lard for tourtières this afternoon while battling off the fatigue of a slowly healing arm, elder daughter hastily did some last-minute Christmas shopping through a haze of jet lag, then met up with her father and sister for lunch, followed by a walk in the park, where younger daughter loves to feed the ducks.  She told me this story first, with the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter supplying details later.

As they walked along one of the small lakes in Beacon Hill Park, a man approached, bellowing at all he passed.  Sadly, this is not that unusual an occurrence, but usually shouty, deranged people in Victoria are not screaming at people we can see.  This guy was making eye contact.

Swearing vociferously and continually, he observed the Resident Fan Boy looking anxiously at younger daughter, and spat, "Don't look at her; that won't protect you!"

Elder daughter and the RFB closed ranks, and guided younger daughter past. Younger daughter, her high clear voice ringing out from the spectrum where she lives, declared:  "That was unacceptable!!"

Her father and sister gently hushed her, and she protested:  "But he shouldn't be using those bad words!"

The deranged bellower was now walking away, but with each of younger daughter's comments, stopped, turned, and glared.

Walking steadily, and speaking softly, elder daughter and the RFB explained that the man wasn't well.  Younger daughter accepted that, but when I asked her about it on her return a couple of hours later, she repeated solemnly:  "It was unacceptable."

"I know," I nodded, "but his mind isn't working very well.  Every day must be pretty scary for him."  Perhaps even as scary as it was for the Resident Fan Boy and elder daughter for that one awful moment of being taken for the enemy.

Love the Guest is on the way

The Resident Fan Boy has taxied out to the airport. Elder daughter left Heathrow at breakfast time in Victoria. Her bed's ready. Just gotta get out the towels, pillows and facecloths.

Fading

Elder daughter shows up tomorrow. 

This is fabulous, of course, but I'm nowhere near ready, so seized the opportunity today to locate the box with the Christmas wrapping bags and stockings in it, which I stored under several boxes in a corner of our bedroom.  My rationale was that, instead of having to retrieve it from our storage locker, it would be more accessible.

I hadn't factored in the possibility of a fall, and the consequent pain and fatigue.  Oh, I'm getting better.  By centimetres.  I find that every time I tackle a project requiring actual energy, I'm reduced to a quivering mass in less time than it takes to accomplish the task.  This is a heckuva problem, considering Christmas is coming, and this requires finishing gift-shopping, wrapping said gifts, preparing Christmas tourtières, and cleaning the damn house.

It's still a shock when the fatigue wipes me out like a chalk drawing.  It's a bit like being pregnant again.  To what am I giving birth? (I have a nasty feeling it's a much older version of myself.)

Meanwhile, the Resident Fan Boy has noticed more people are asking him to speak up.  He didn't think much of it until younger daughter, who has the hearing of a fruit bat, and can hear what we say from her bedroom with the door closed and our television on - particularly when we're discussing her - also starting asking him to speak up.  His fellow cathedral volunteers opine that this is wide-spread, and a result of a combination of isolation and ZOOM meetings.

I guess that, along with everything else, our diaphragms are atrophying from not having to talk boisterously to one another out of doors.

No wonder I find the cyclists at the coffee shop so loud and obnoxious.

I'm dreaming - oh gawd, I'm dreaming...

 Struggled awake from one of my "failure dreams" in which I've failed to prepare for something, my injured arm aching dully.

I don't need an analyst for dream interpretation.  I'm terrified and frozen, as Christmas bears down on me like a bright SUV -- or a horde of cyclists.  I'm healing, slowly and steadily, from my fall two and a half weeks ago, but I tire easily, and find myself slow to attempt even the least labour-intensive tasks.

Elder daughter arrives in two days; American Cousin arrives in a week.  I'd so hoped to have everything prepared by then.  I haven't even finished the damn online shopping.

Among the things I have been doing is uploading my favourite Christmas videos on to the Resident Fan Boy's YouTube channel, so we can watch them on the large screen television.  In doing so, we've discovered that the RFB really needs to sign into his YouTube account, rather than just watching without doing so.  Apparently, if you don't, the algorithms decide what might appeal to you, and put them into your "Watch Later" file.  The RFB was horrified.  I had to show him how to delete stuff. I'll spare you.

Most of my favourite Christmas offerings have shown up on my blog at some point, but I don't think this one has, probably because it's usually viral during the holidays, and is customarily shared without giving credit to the animator.  Mind you, it's not that easy to give credit where credit is due, because there is surprisingly little information about Joshua Held online.  I gather that he is an animator, film-maker, and writer.  He was born in 1967 in Tuscany.

I leave you with this, as I've got a lot more procrastinating to do.  (I'm sure you've already seen this anyway.)