115 journals

journaling, reading as strategies for survival and change

The Septuagenarian Hobbit

Posted on November 28, 2013 by joyceahowe/hood

Recently, I discovered my inner Hobbit. And no I don’t mean I found I have leathery feet with hair on top.

I am planning a trip to Brussels in December to stay with my brother. Blake congratulated me, saying it would be an adventure and I heard myself replying that I don’t want an adventure. Hobbits are notorious for their love of home. They want to enjoy their second breakfast in front of their own hearth, not go wandering over the earth on quests.

Don’t ask me how my brother, Rob, enticed me to go. He did hold out the promise of my own little apartment at the top of his house where the pigeon loft used to be. The first floor used to be a bakery and still has the wide Dutch door through which the loaves were sold. And so I was seduced.

There was a time when I set off gleefully for long summers on the road. Through Belgium, France and Corsica with side trips into Italy and Greece. In a tiny Fiat. Staying in “Clean but comfortable”, one star hotels. Laughing at getting locked out and struggling through wet laundry lines to get in the kitchen door. Amused by the timed hall lights that left you in pitch darkness half way to the toilet. Undaunted by not understanding the language.

Now I am daunted.

As I recall Belgian cuisine, while outstanding, relies heavily on bread and frites. I haven’t eaten either for some time. My brother is a vegetarian of the fish persuasion. Christmas dinner, (served on Christmas Eve) will be a huge fish stew perhaps or a steamed Irish salmon. I am ill-adapted to fishy feasts, living as I do far from the sea. Okay, I have those recipes buried somewhere in my memory or in that bottom drawer of the buffet. I’ll just have to go with a complete gastro shake-up. Years ago, I went on a family trip to Maui with the same sort of reservations about hotel food, but the astonishing thing was that the laughter at every meal rendered my digestion better than it had ever been.

But with some things I won’t take chances. My buckwheat pillow is going with me in my carry-on.

The Cure for Fear

Posted on November 22, 2013 by joyceahowe/hood

Okay, I should be asleep. I need to be. I want to get up early. Things to do. May actually be getting something, (When am I not?) But I have this great opportunity, which I am going to lose tomorrow. I am uncertain and afraid. Tomorrow I will call my oncologist. If my appointment is moved forward to next week instead of the week after, I know the lump that we’ve detected needs further study.

Blake and I were sitting in Starbucks in the lobby of Toronto General, gazing back at the Art Deco facade of Princess Margaret Hospital from which we had just jaywalked.

“Even if I do get an immediate call-back it could still be A or B. That would have to be determined,” I say.

“Or it could be C,” Blake quips.

“Oh, it could very well be C,” and I have to laugh.

Yes, well, we have just spent two hours waiting to hear Blake’s test results with regard to C. They weren’t bad, but then they weren’t good either. It’s the usual seesaw game of prostrate cancer. Knock down the PSA score and the testosterone with hormones. Ease off. Watch the PSA rise again. Today, it was decided that it was time to go back to the heavy ammunition. Not easy news for the manly Blake, but excellent news in that the drugs have improved since last time and he is line to get this extremely expensive medication for free.

Not many men in the clinic bring along their ex-wives probably, but Blake’s young second wife was carried off by cancer two years ago. So he and I are embarked on this mutual study of mortality.

Much else has been happening this week. My brother Rob underwent knee replacement in Brussels. My daughter and her husband declared bankruptcy and their home is about to be foreclosed on. True this “disaster” has opened up their lives and led them to a prospective mountain home. My grandson, Leo, who has to get his driver’s license or lose his job, has his own test redo to deal with. I had enough fear to go round.

So I kept up my mantra, “I love you and I trust you.” Initially, I just mouthed the words, but gradually I realized what they meant. Driving down to the hospital today, I found it had morphed into, “I love you. I know you are pure love. I trust love.”

Blake and I, out of nothing but pure love, created a home, two children and careers that supported us. An excellent foundation for this present project.

At home, afterward, I read Rumi’s poetry (Rumi: The Book of Love, trans. Coleman Barks). One section is called “Tavern Madness” and the poems in it are about the ‘drunkenness’ of the overwhelming contact with the divine. Dinners in our home were full of such non-alcoholic ‘drunken’ conversations, full of revelation and confidence in our vision of life.

Rumi says: I didn’t come here of my own accord
And I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

I love the way, poetry lets you work things out for yourself. And I love the idea of surrender to the steady shoulder that is capable of supporting my staggering self.

In another poem, Rumi says, I am the clear consciousness core of your being, The same in ecstasy
As in self-hating fatigue.

And so, I came around to an open heart and fear dissolved.

Toronto’s Mayor, Rob Ford: view from Etobicoke

Posted on November 14, 2013 by joyceahowe/hood

Illustration by Richard Johnson on front page of National Post, Sat. Nov. 9, 2013

I live in Etobicoke (sounds like Etobicoe), Mayor Ford’s home territory, one of the suburbs of Toronto that were unceremoniously mashed together some years ago by the reigning provincial government. Etobicoke is the west end of the mega city and Scarborough, where I brought up my children, lies in the east end. To the north lies North York, wouldn’t you know. There are diverse other subdivisions and tucked up in the south and centre, right against the lake is the old city of Toronto.

It is easy enough to find its centre, Queen and Yonge, the old city hall, red, Victorian with its tall clock tower, where certain courts hold forth and across the way, the present city hall with its clam shell and two curving towers of unequal height.

When it comes to Etobicoke, there is no there there. I mean there is no centre, I can see, but I do not see it as Mayor Ford sees it. I’ve heard rumours that there is a town hall where Etobicoke used to actually determine its own fate, but in the seven years I’ve lived here, I’ve never figured out where it is. I haven’t needed to.

Herein lies the rub. The people here are alienated I hear. They are sick of being pushed around by those uppity “elites” (please tell me it isn’t true that some say e-lights), those gravy train wasters from the city centre. That’s why they embraced their native son, Rob Ford, who had pledged to stop the gravy train, reduce spending, privatize garbage collection and put a subway in every burg.

Unhappily, he was unable to discover enough waste to trim the spending significantly, although he has put some of the waste management in private hands. His project to extend subways into hinterlands, which very likely cannot produce ridership to support it, will entail a tax rise.

But that’s not why you know about him.

You know him as our crack smoking, gangster associating, drunk driving, lewd talking mayor. You may have heard about him first last May when Gawker reported that it had seen a video of him smoking crack. Our Toronto Star reported that it had also seen the video, which was for sale. The entire summer was taken up with speculation, along with jokes on late shows and denial by the mayor. Meanwhile one of the guys the mayor was pictured arm in arm with was shot and killed. A police investigation ensued. Houses were raided in Operation Traveller. Arrests were made. Gradually, these arrests moved into Mayor Ford’s circle and heavily redacted documents were released. Media outlets went to court and this week a judge released a much fuller version of the documents.

Mayor Ford, who stubbornly denied all allegations, has taken to public admissions that get worse and worse. Yes, he may have smoked crack once while in a drunken stupour. Yes, he may have been badly inebriated at a street festival and on St Patrick’s Day. Yes, he may have driven drunk once in a while. Yes, he has bought illegal drugs in the last two years. Today he may have reached a nadir -let us hope- when he used sexual explicit language while refuting a claim a woman had made. But wait, he was back out there at the media scrum apologizing for that, wifey by his side.

No, he will not resign. No, he will not take a leave of absence. He charged at Councillor Minan-Wong, yesterday during a council meeting, with evident intent, only to be stopped by brother, Doug Ford, also a councillor and, ordinarily, as rude as the mayor.

Oh, make it stop! Make it stop!

Apparently, Ford’s policies still have the support of 40% of voters, but candidates with the same platform are already lining up for the mayor’s race in 2014. Only 20% still support Rob Ford himself. They are probably my neighbours. They are decent, forgiving folk who are careful with their garbage.

I didn’t vote for him. I’m one of those “elites” in his mind. I dislike many things about him personally and our politics are different. Initially, I felt a good deal of schadenfruede and even laughed. I’m not concerned about Toronto being mocked and vilified on the world stage. It’s a big city, all grown up. It can take care of itself. And I love a Greek tragedy as much as anyone, but NOT IN SLOW MOTION.

The Urban Woods in Early November

Posted on November 10, 2013 by joyceahowe/hood

This week I stuck to the bike path for brisk walks rather than rambling up into the woods.

I passed the culvert where the path into the woods begins.

I continued on down the paved trail covered with yellow and brown leaves that sent up the acrid smell of fall.

Eventually the oaks came into view. This small wooded parkland contains the remanents of an oak savannah.

The sky above them was dramatic.

(Click on pictures to enlarge.)

Jack Reacher Reaches Virginia: Never Go Back

Posted on November 6, 2013 by joyceahowe/hood

Last year I posed the burning question -Will Jack Reacher ever get to Virginia? https://115journals.com/2012/11/04/jack-reacher-will-lee-child-let-him-get-to-virginia/ I can now answer that question. Yes.

It’s true that three of Lee Child’s Reacher novels – 61 Hours, Worth Dying For and A Wanted Man, describing his circuitous journey through South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas, actually took only a matter of days Reacher time, but it took several years in publishing time and, despite the thrills, seemed endless. In Never Go Back, he actually arrives there.

The novel begins: “Eventually they put Reacher in a car and drove him to a motel a mile away where the night clerk gave him a room, which had all the features Reacher expected, because he had seen such rooms a thousand times before.” The shower would be strangled, the towels thin, the television small and old. In short, he lives in such rooms. As faithful readers know he is in constant motion, travelling by bus and hitched rides across the United States. Earlier I called him a wandering Taoist, unattached to any notion of home. https://115journals.com/2012/06/08/jack-reacher-wandering-taoist/

Shortly after, he is dumped at the cheap motel, a plain dark sedan pulls up and two heavies attempt to persuade him to leave town. “They couldn’t find you before. They won’t find you now. The army doesn’t use skip tracers. And no skip tracer could find you anyway. Not the way you seem to live.” Now here’s a quandary. The guys in the first car have ordered him to stay. But of course, Reacher isn’t about to follow orders any more. He does follow his own rules one of which is “Get your retaliation in first” and soon there are dents to prove it. Such is his welcome to Virginia.

Why was he so intent on getting there? He was following the siren call of a woman’s voice. Not just any woman’s voice, but the competent, risk-taking woman’s voice that has helped him in his travels from South Dakota. His goal is the HQ of 110th MP Special Unit in Rock Creek, a place he knows well since he was its first commanding officer before he quit on principle in 1997, just short of being laterally transferred to the end of the earth. He announces that he is there to see the current CO, Susan Turner and sets the wheels in motion the mayhem that follows.

Turns out that Reacher is still a wanted man: he is wanted for the murder of a gunrunner in Los Angeles 15 years ago and for skipping out on a pregnant lover in Korea, who is now living in a car with her daughter and wants support. Fortunately, the litigant has the wisdom to be living in a car in L.A.

As for Susan Turner, she has vanished from sight and when Reacher tracks her down in a detention facility almost as secret as Gauntanamo, she has left word she doesn’t want to see him. That only encourages him of course.

Turns out her charges are even more serious.

Reacher doesn’t get a glimpse of Susan Turner until a quarter of the way through the book. “She was an inch or two above medium height. She was small-boned and slender, with dark hair pulled back, and tanned skin and deep brown eyes.” He concludes she was well worth the trip. Furthermore she can take care of herself.

It is not brawn but ingenuity that enables them to go on the lam with no papers of their own and a “borrowed” $30. They head for Los Angeles in an attempt to sort out Reacher’s problems before they tackle Turner’s. As they sort his out, they speculate about why they are being targeted and who has the power to pull such strings.

One of the delights of the story is the “daughter”, a 15 year-old who seems as if she should be Reacher’s child. She already has powers of observation well beyond the FBI agents, the Army MPs and the heavies who follow in Reacher’s wake.

The good news is that Reacher’s face doesn’t take on any more damage, but it’s not news at all that he ends up waiting for a bus.

(I read this book on my KIndle.)

Sere and Yellow Leaf

Posted on November 3, 2013 by joyceahowe/hood

First day of Standard Time. Whose idea is it to mess with time anyway? First light it was right on the freezing mark on the thermometer outside the kitchen window. Yet no visible frost. The good news, besides an extra hour’s sleep, was the blue sky. Saturday was another day of cold rain here and Friday had winds up to 85 kph. So most of the leaves have fallen. Even the red maple down the street is half bare now.

Before

Time to draw in. Keep the house fragrant simmering bones into stock and then turning that into stews and soups or a hearty chili.

Time to put new batteries in the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Testing they’re in right, is always good for an adrenalin rush. I saved my son’s life once by presenting him with a carbon monoxide alarm, guiltily, thinking it was a poor gift –until 2 weeks later.

Time to haul out the big wool blankets and the down coats. Time to waterproof the shoes and boots.

Somehow, somewhere, the shovel I kept in the car has gone missing, but the bag of kitty litter is back in with the spare tire, ready for icy roads. The brush and scraper are in the trunk, but I still have to take out the full size broom for the heavy snow. Which surely will not come for a while.

The leaves on the lawn are dry and yellow. In the gutter, they turn wet and brown. Crank up the fiddle! Break out the grog!