From a Fifth Floor Window

Thick ribbons of fog 
slide silently through trees and brush.
Time breathes and stands still.

Broad blankets of fog
rest softly on roof tops and spires.
Birds hush and fall silent.

Air laden moist and damp
washes streets and sidewalks
Softening whooshing buses and cars

Stepping into the gentled air,
my own breath slows and softens.
Thoughts settle and hush.

“The mist wandered absolvingly past all it touched,

Yet hung like a stayed breath……..”

~ Philip Larkin

The Lure of the Pumpkin Field

The Lure of the Pumpkin Field

Hmm…. Pumpkin - Mother - Nothing - Candles. How was I supposed to put those words together in an essay?! How old did that teacher think we were anyway! Ten? I hate substitute teachers - well, especially the ones that give weird essay assigments. I’m sure she was thinking mothers and pumpkin pies. Or maybe something dorky like ‘My Favourite Jack O’Lantern’. Well, I’ll tell her a story that is completely different and won’t have anything to do with carving pumpkins and sticking candles in them.

~~~~~

"My essay is about learning what I want to be when I grow up. And road trips. Not far, just short jogs down the highway to the ferry. And it’s about finding out I wanted to be a farmer. My father made frequent road trips to the mainland to pick up supplies for his small business selling small engine parts. He attended meetings in Vancouver and sometimes would go into Washington in the States.  I didn’t want to understand the ‘small engine repair business’ and am only now just understanding it a little bit. I was rather a disappointment to my dad until recently. He had hoped that I’d take over the business. But fate, and my father’s need for mom to pick him up at the ferry at Swartz Bay, intervened on my behalf. I always wanted to figure out how things grew and changed from a small seed to a plant, and in my mom’s garden, to delicious strawberries and thin, crunchy asparagus. It all started when I was really just a little kid.

Our drive to the ferry took us past Michell’s farm out in Saanichton and their vast field of pumpkins. At Hallowe’en, our little family took a trip out to the field to get pumpkins for Hallowe’en and for Thanksgiving dinner dessert. But the very best time was early in the morning when grey shreds of fog still hung low. The sun was just over the horizon. It was pure gold - golden sun gilding the clouds with gold leaf and a brilliant orange gold expanse of pumpkins reflecting the morning sun. Each time I saw that awesome sight, I wanted mom to stop the car and just let me stare until the brilliance of the morning faded into day. And I wanted to be the farmer that planted all those pumpkins, tending them until their vines spread over the ground, flowered and they gifted the year with their marvelous fruit. 

So, what am I going to be when I grow up? A pumpkin farmer. I’ve learned that pumpkins really are fruits, even though mom cooks it like it is a vegetable some time. Not only that, a huge pumpkin is a berry and belongs to the family Cucurbitaceae. (The teacher should be pleased with that big word.) I’m also learning a bit about business when I work afternoons in my dad’s business. I’m learning how to repair small engines, while I study repair for bigger engines. Earning a bit of cash, learning how engines work - after all one day I’ll have a tractor to repair."

~~~~~

I guess I’d better quit dreaming now and go over this essay again. I’ve probably got grammar things and verb tenses wrong, so I’ll try to fix it before I hand it in.

“The entire fruit is already present in the seed.”

~ Tertullian

Waiting and Wondering

Stretching through a day ~

Yawning into the long night

Minutes and hours ~

tick, tick, tick past

Sitting ~ pacing ~ huddled in bed

Jagged edges of past and future claw inside a mind

Present moments in time too raw, too real

In the too dark, too quiet night ~

Through scrabbling, scratching bright noisy day

hours and hours slow and crawl

Innocent clock sitting high on a wall

Moments tick past one after the other

Hope whispers softly in open spaces of time.

“When you have lost hope, you have lost everyting. And when you think 

all is lost, when all is dire and bleak, there is always hope.”

~Pittacus Lore, I Am Number Four

Too High a Price

Today’s news was as always ~ wars, economics, brutality, global politics and yes, murders. There were ‘good news’ stories buried amid all of the debris that clutters our world. However, until this evening as I write my blog post, I did not understand the full impact of the today's murders of cartoonists, humorists and journalists at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo.

This blog that I post each evening is, in the grand scheme of writing and the writing world, miniscule. It is not even close to the world of journalism. But the very fact that I can, not only write my opinions, stories, poems, muses ~ anything I choose ~ and post my blog in a public forum is because of the freedom of speech inherent in our society. Until this evening, I had taken this liberty for granted. Sadly, although I could define ‘freedom of speech’ in a very limited way, I had not really even thought much about it. There is a time always for deeper understanding. When the price for that understanding is the brutal murders of so many others another world away, that price is far, far too much.

My heart goes out to all the family, friends and colleagues of the Charlie Hebdo organization. The magnitude of your loss is so much greater than what I can even imagine.

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent 

we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

~ George Washington

From Research to the Front Lines

Research takes massive amounts of time. Time and massive amounts of money. Time, money and and the power of many minds, hearts and hands. Not to mention political will and the power to implement outcomes.

Stacks and stacks of journals. Rows and rows of dissertations. Tabled in task forces with sheaves of briefs. Policies and protocols developed as wordy outcomes

Working out the research takes massive amounts of time. Time and money doled out by the holder’s of schedules and purse strings. Time, money and powerful goodness of many minds, hearts and hands. Not to mention political will and the power to ‘make it so’.

“I have found so many angels trapped inside undisputed jargon 

that I find myself digging at the words, in order to release them, 

from the books that unfairly captured their soul.”

~ Shannon L. Alder

Time for a Second Act

Time for a Second Act

Despite the very warm sunny day, the aging actor with great swaths of scarves wrapped around his aching throat, coughed and coughed. He should be reading lines! He rasped out a few words and threw his script across the floor. He had so looked forward to being across from his leading lady, the great actress Bernadette La Fleur. Her silken long legs, still deliciously slim and lovely at 70 years old, had him fantasizing and daydreaming. Carrying herself with regal grace and poise, she made him feel like an awkward teen-ager. Greggoire Mont-Blanc had Madame LaFleur on a lofty pedestal in his mind, unable to touch even her delicate toes ~ until this marvellous play was presented to him. Romeo and Juliet for Seniors had been handed him by his questionably retired agent who still insisted on finding him new parts to play.

Greggoire coughed again. A hot toddy with good Irish whiskey was all that would relieve his sore throat and aching heart. He stared dully out the panoramic window of his magnificently appointed sitting room. The great expanse of manicured lawn was empty and flat to his eye, despite the grand flower beds and fountains. 

‘Oh damn. Do people think I just hand out autographs any time they want!’ Greggoire definitely disdained anyone who dared to just ‘drop in’. How dreadfully provincial and gauche.

A long black limousine rolled slowly and silently up the gravelled drive, whispering carefully to a stop at the front door. The liveried driver stepped briskly and efficiently to the passenger door of the rear seat. As the door opened, a slow smile, just a bit nervous, played on Greggoire’s face. A black gloved hand flashing with diamonds, took the chauffeur’s proffered hand. Then those lovely long slim legs……….time had not passed them by. Should he send her away because of this dreadful cold? Or fling off his sick role for the part he had longed to play? He suddenly felt much better and decided he was quite well and ready for the next act.

“Acting is a nice childish profession - pretending you’re 

someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.”

~ Katharine Hepburn

Time Change - 2

Time Change - 2

Clyde, a tall man, still had some hair and all his teeth, considered himself an ok guy. He shrugged on his old green raincoat, stepped into his rubber boots. Time stretched long and wide ahead of Clyde. Rain poured down while the rest of the country, if news reports were to be believed, was buried in ice and snow. Clyde decided to brave the rain - the sloshing wet streets - just to feel the cold on his face. Definitely not the wet - his faithful, wide and sheltering umbrella kept him dry. Not warm, just dry. The coffee shop was open. There were others that had braved the rain…...Brave? Listening to news reports, the brave ones were driving on icy highways just to get to work. He was walking six blocks to get an Americano.

Clyde checked his watch - not very many people wore watches these days. He’d been wearing one so long, he felt undressed with out it. Four hours. He’d been retired for four hours. Seemed pretty good last week when it was something still in the future. Now? How many Americanos were in his future? He didn’t know that many people outside work. Maybe there wouldn’t be anyone in the coffee shop. He could just have his coffee and go home again. Mariel was on one of her trips. Some quilting thing up island. So what would he go home to? The television? The  news show he watched wouldn’t be on for another few hours. He’d done the dishes. Too damn quiet, he decided to go for coffee.

~~~~~ 

Six hours later, he slammed his black Queen down on the chess board. “Check mate! I got you again.” Clyde hadn’t played chess much since university years. A chess champion on the fraternity team, there had been many hours of study time lost along with a bit of money.

“Closing time in fifteen minutes.” The perky young waitress wandered through the empty tables clearing away crumpled napkins, crumbs and empty coffee cups.

“Closing time! Didn’t we just get started?”

“No, bud, you’ve been beating me for the last two hours. Now, when can we rematch? Did you know a chess club meets here every Wednesday?”

“Nope. This is my first night of retirement and you, Jimmy, are the first person I’ve met outside of work or in the dancing club my wife and I belong to. A chess club, you say? We’d better get in that rematch tomorrow night. Polish up before Wednesday.”

Clyde and Jimmy closed out the coffee shop that night and many more nights to come. When Clyde walked back home, the rain had stopped and the moon rode high in an open sky. His chess board needed a good cleaning. He'd do that tonight while the news guys were on.

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, 

and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

~ Anais Nin