Sometimes

Sometimes I suspect that people rarely ever think about photosynthesis or how every leaf is truly astonishing. Sometimes I find this bewildering. 

Sometimes I wonder if it's odd that I changed Siri's voice to an Irishman to help me cope with the psychic weight of these 2020s. 

Sometimes I wish psychology was a core subject, like language, math and science and sometimes I think this might solve all the world's problems.  

Sometimes, unless it's about mobility or herding small kids, I am so deeply confused by people who park aggressively. Sometimes I park like a lollygagging idiot. 

Sometimes I wonder if the person I'm having a conversation with is also struggling to hear and hence we're both pretending to hear what the other is saying and nodding periodically and hoping for the best. Sometimes I wonder what I haven't heard. 

Sometimes I have to give my default people-pleasing self a stern talking-to. 

Sometimes when I press unsubscribe I picture the bot(?) in charge of fulfilling my request, smirking. Sometimes I wonder if I actually forgot to unsubscribe. Sometimes I can't recall from what I unsubscribed. 

Sometimes I wonder if my DIY shortcuts are actually genius—like carpet tape works just as well as glue to install vinyl in a closet, right?—and then I remember that time my Dad renovated and left the old chimney hole in the living room floor and just strategically placed a tv tray over it. (Sometimes I wonder if environment is also genetics.)

Sometimes I wonder in my grandson L is actually an adult comedian trapped in a toddler's body and he's pissed off because he knows it too. 

Sometimes I suspect I might be the only human who walks laps around the dining room table while I read. 

Sometimes I'm 20% in the room with you, but 80% also elsewhere. 

Things that deserve the stink-eye:

A pumpkin-spider-crab, aka "Gourd." 🤣

This year Halloween felt free and I was a bit inspired by the cheery nonsense so I thought, let's give those trick or treaters pumpkin to talk about. 🎶

I'd rate my creation 8 tenths adorable and...maybe 2 tenths nightmare? One kid called it cute, another assessed it as...eww. 🤣

Free Halloween

Halloween is for kids, right? With this in mind, I thought you might appreciate this sidewalk art, produced by a kid in my neighbourhood. I adore kids art, don't you? 

I watched a clip recently whereby the person interviewed (I can't recall whom) said this about Halloween, "[paraphrased] compared to all the other holidays, it's the best day: there's no finding-the-perfect-gift, no cooking a giant meal, no extra pressure. It's freeing, it's just self-expression."

Before this, I hadn't thought about Halloween in contrast to other holidays. Sure, I've always appreciated its costumes, its candy, its movies, but the predominant purpose is someone else's enjoyment, specifically kids. That's the entire point. Right? 

Hmm...maybe not? 

Why do I feel this way? [Insert big pause here.] For me, Halloween has always felt a bit too extroverted, too turbulent, too chaotic, too... (insert English-major trigger-warning here) Dionysus and not enough Apollo. Right? 

Dear friends, I could bore you with the reasons for my childhood hang-ups here, but I will close with this: there are some things I need to unlearn about Halloween. What's that saying? "Remember that the opposite of depression is not joy—it's expression [author unknown]." Happy Halloween to all the kids today, but to YOU I say: feel free to also do your thang.

Lapels

Sometimes I'll read something and it grips me by the lapels and stares at me, demands my attention, and when I attend, it grips my shoulders and turns me another direction so that I'm looking at the world anew. 

That, dear friends, is the power of reading and why I love it.  

Sometimes what I've read is profound, and other times, not...BUT even when it's not a revelation, it can be a novel distraction prompting my (pea)brain to say, go there and poke around. Hence the rest of this (crafted before this introduction) is (mostly) stream of consciousness. Let's go:

 

I saw the following comment on another writer's blog post, one in which she had added a selfie: "you have kind eyes" (I agree) and the invitation to reply, aka start a conversation. It made me think. And think. And think. The comment is not so unusual, but in this instance? It hit different. It registered. 

My reply:

1. Is there a better compliment? Not today—at least I can't think of one—what a fine compliment!
2. Do I have kind eyes? Hmm, I don't recall anyone ever using that adjective to describe my eyes.  
3. What have people said about my eyes? When I was in Junior High the girl who sat in front of me on the bus said, "your eyes are steel gray-blue." My heart thudded.
4. Don't most people have kind eyes? Yes, kinda. In various interactions such as when the baker hands me the cake I ordered (typically transactional)...those are kind eyes, but bona fide kind eyes? There's something else there, something subtle, something beckoning, something calm yet charged. What is it?  
5. What other words describe eyes I've encountered? Playful. Mischievous. Winsome. Sparkly. Attractive. Squishy. Sharp. Dismissive. Guarded. Pleading. Cold. Drunk. (Just first thoughts...all creatives should avoid judging the brainstorming process, so I am trying not to overthink these word-choices.)
6. Whose eyes do I deem kind? My grandmother had kind eyes. But it wasn't just her eyes...it was her voice too, her proximity.
7. Do most people actually (searching for the right word here...searching...) ratify compliments, or do they (like me) dismiss them? I wonder. 
8. They seem to have big egos, so do narcissists actually need compliments? First thought: Trump. Insert barf emoji here. 
9.  Are kind eyes impossible to fake, like could someone wholly unkind have kind eyes? Yes, I think it's possible...looking at you Netflix, and your ongoing (problematic but compelling) obsession with tweaking serial killer narratives with redemptional arcs to sustain us all while we navigate this age of (legit) horror, if that makes any sense at all? Anybody?
10. What's the best compliment I've ever received? *scanning... deflecting... scanning... dismissing... second-guessing... scanning....*

Dear friends, feel free to respond to any of these questions. I'm curious about how your answers may grab my lapels. 

Moved

I haven't attended an arena concert since 1991 (Sting), so the Sarah McLachlan concert this past weekend at Edmonton's Rogers Place was...overwhelming, good overwhelming. She performed with the band Tiny Habits; combined they just might be the sad song music therapy epicenter, lol. For a guy who read this book as a beacon to the shadows, let's be honest...all the feels, all at once. 

Things have changed since 1991. Mostly me. This time, sober, conscious, I brought a well functioning (mostly) frontal lobe. But my brain still wanted to play games. The venue? The crowd? Yikes. Massive. This introvert's initial reaction? Fear. And the Dad in me kept waiting for the event safety spiel, lol. But soon I forgot because somehow, Sarah made it feel cozy. 

I have a list of musicians I've longed to experience live: Sarah was third. She's a one-of-a-kind Canadian treasure of a human and her concert did not disappoint. Imagine being a child with hearing loss and becoming a global award-winning performer who used her mastery of sound and voice and language to change the world. (See the Lilith Fair documentary.) 

I had hoped she would perform her cover of Joni Mitchell's song River (Mitchell is the #1 artist on my list). Yet with every hit, old and new—her voice like a weighted blanket—I soon forgot and then she sang a favourite: Ice Cream. 

Years ago I sang this song to my kids at bedtime. If you know it...your love is better than ice cream...better than chocolate...better than anything else that I've tried...that might seem fitting but this song—deceptively simple and upbeat—is also dark, and most importantly, honest...but everyone here knows how to fight...how to cry...it's a long way down to the place where we started from.... That's why I love the song: it juxtaposes exuberant delight with that abrupt anguish inevitable in all our relationships, the mirth and the melancholy. She did not sing her crushing song from Toy Story 2 either, but she did sing a song she wrote about her relationship struggles with her daughter, entitled Gravity. Oh wow. 

While waiting to vacate that massive arena, a stranger asked me what I thought of the concert. Sheepishly, I told her I cried a few times. She nodded and smiled, "you were moved." I'm still moving. 

Dear friends, what's moved you lately? 

Things one should never outgrow:

Thank you M, L, i, and little m. 

 the still life—however you define it. 

Thanks to a delightful week of playing with and tidying up after my grand-turkeys, I have discovered toys arranged in both haphazard and intentional (?) ways. 

What's happening here? Is this still life some sort of a minikin movie set? Or perhaps a precarious attempt made by tiny labourers to repair a massive dinosaur statue? Or is it a time-traveling Lego robot attempting to tap a dinosaur on the shoulder? Maybe warn him about that huge asteroid? Hmm....

Whatever the artist's intention, the still life invites closer inspection and contemplation. Children have a way of reminding us how joyful it is to pay attention to the world, to notice, to wonder, to imagine, to discover, to be curious. They can also make us long for the still life—a little peace and quiet, ha. And then (at least for me) to wish for them to return and liven things up because a (still) life is nothing if not fleeting. We only have so much time to compose our stories. 

As the inimitable Oliver Jeffers said, "The universe is not made of atoms; it is made of stories." Dear friends, what (stories) are you noticing? 

Things that deserve the stink-eye:

Yes, I have 4 snow shovels. Don't ask. 
If you live in the North,
are you prepped for Winter?

 the forecast.

Our current high today in northwestern Canada is 4 degrees Celsius. With the wind? -5! Tomorrow's high? 2/35! 😢

Hence, the snow-shovels are out of the storage shed again. Sigh. 

Dear friends, this is not flake news. 

Things one should never outgrow:

Thanks for the reminder, L. 

politeness, charm, civility. 

Potty-training is challenging, but my grandson is teaching me a few things I suspect we should all review periodically.  

After his first BM in the toilet, and before he received several Smarties, my grandson (altogether sincerely) had this to say about that first flushing, "Bye-bye poop. Have a good day." 😄

 

Prescription

One of my favourite actors, Robin Williams famously portrayed Dr. Oliver Sacks in the film Awakenings. It seems to me there's a lasting alchemy in this convergence of two humans who greatly impacted the world.

A doctor, a professor, a writer, Dr. Sacks described himself as "agonizingly shy" but he developed a strong bond with Williams who much admired Sacks' gentle genius approach to neurology, informed by science but rooted in human connection. Williams loved that Sacks saw people, not patients and it's clear Williams infused this character trait in his film performance. 

Dr. Sacks wrote about his own struggle as a patient in his book, A Leg to Stand On. After a serious hiking injury, Sacks felt "legless" and disconnected from his body. Unable to walk for months, Sacks ruminated on his lost identity. Many years later, no doubt Williams ruminated in a similar manner as he secretly battled a form of dementia and its inevitable impacts to his quality of life and his legacy. Sadly, we all know what happened next. 

I miss these men in the world. 

Dr. Sacks' legacy is in his writings. He describes methods whereby a patient might cease to feel "the presence of illness and the absence of the world, and come to feel the absence of illness and the full presence of the world.” But how? The film Awakenings explores this, but Dr. Sacks promoted a more everyday method to achieve the full presence of the world: he prescribed garden visits. 

Is there a better place to at least temporarily forget what bothers? Dear friends, just wondering: have you been outside today? 

Quilted

In Canada, September 30 is National Truth & Reconciliation Day, also known as Orange Shirt Day. Most schools and government offices are closed. 

In my community, to recognize and partake in ongoing reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and settlers, local school children designed quilt squares which were knitted together and displayed in solidarity.

If you're unfamiliar with this growing Canadian tradition, watch this CBC Kids video featuring the founder of Orange Shirt Day, elder and author Phyllis Webstad. Confronting racism, her story and growing activism has changed our country for the better.