Monthly Archives: January 2014

Septuagenarian Hobbit Has Ultrasound

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My hobbit attitude is getting out of hand. I could say it’s the weather that’s making me a stay-at-home. And my age. My muscles are prone to spasm and never more than when there is a windchill of -30 C (-20F). So much of January, I’ve been hunkered down indoors, reading my Christmas books and watching my Christmas DVDs. I’ve even eschewed tai chi classes in favour of moving the furniture and practicing in the living room. But yesterday I had to go out.

I had an appointment for an ultrasound of my right breast. I first mentioned my oncologist’s concern about my right breast in The Cure for Fear https://115journals.com/2013/11/22/the-cure-for-fear/   Evidently, right breast felt that left breast had got altogether too much attention in the past and had started acting out.

When I wrote The Cure for Fear, I was convinced that I would know the scope of the disaster the next day. As it turned out, I didn’t. First the results got delayed. Word-processing of results is no longer done in-house. It’s moved off shore or something. Possibly there is a “typing” factory in South Asia. So my first appointment got cancelled. Then I made the trip to Streetsville, an hour away, to be told that the doctor had had an emergency and wasn’t there. But, not to worry, said his assistant. The results were okay. When I finally got to see the doctor, two weeks later, he was distracted. I tried to ask a question and he said, “Can’t you see I’m reading?”

OK.

I waited silently.

There was, apparently, a little party going on in my right breast: a swollen lymph node, a cyst and a small lump, all nicely lined up at 10 o’clock. After careful examination, Dr. ____ gave me the choice of having a biopsy right away or a further ultrasound in 3 months. Breaking my silence, I said, “Depends on what you mean by right away. I’ll be away the rest of December.” And so, it came to pass that I ended up with this appointment at the end of January. (How is that 3 months, anyway?)

First thing I did when I got home from the oncologist was fish out the reports from 15 years ago when left breast was getting all the attention. There I read that a small benign lump had been detected in my right breast at 11 o’clock. I hied myself off to my G.P., report in hand. I was careful not to speak while he was reading. Could be, he said. Might be the same lump lurking there all these years. Couldn’t be sure. Sure enough to get my hyper-vigilant, worrier off the case. I flew off to Brussels where I very nearly forgot it.

Yesterday, I arrived at the hospital early. Just as well since I had to drive nearly to the top of the parking garage. Like many others, I feel that I am a co-owner of this garage its tariff is so steep. Since I was so early, I decided to wipe the side windows, which I could barely see through for the dirty salt residue that had been whipped up off the highway. I wet paper towel with windshield washer fluid and wiped them down. Don’t try it. I seem to have forgotten everything I ever knew about driving in a Canadian winter. When I came out to drive home 2 hours and $12 later, the windows were covered with dirty swirls through which I could not see at all.

I’m used to the check-in procedure here now, having checked in at least once a year since the year of the left breast. I even manage to find the ultrasound waiting room, and get myself into one of those nice gowns that tie in the back. It’s inconvenient to have to carry my clothes and my long winter coat, which sit next to me while I wait. And wait. And wait.

No problem. Someone is texting me pictures and CP 24 is on the television set. It’s true that I am a little unsettled by the fact that everyone who comes in after me is immediately whisked out of there for their test. The announcer on the news channel tells me that Dufferin County has declared a state of emergency and closed all its roads. Whoa! That’s north of here but still, has the weather changed that much since I came in? Then “Code Blue in Cardiology. Code Blue in Cardiology”. Then there’s the mayor on the screen, looking like a candidate for a Code Blue himself and being served with papers alleging that he engineered a jail house beat-down. Not that Mayor Ford gets much airtime because Justin Bieber is back in town surrendering to police on a charge of assault. I tear myself away from all this hair-raising excitement. No one else waiting. Four people, presumably ultrasound technicians, are chatting away in front of computers. And I’ve been left here in limbo? It’s like a really bad dream I once had. https://115journals.com/2012/07/20/i-dream-of-etherica-life-changing-dream-2/

Finally, we get down to the task at hand, with apologies because they are so busy. ???? The good news is that the gel is warm these days. It takes a long while. It is clear that the cyst is alive and well, if cysts can be said to be well, but deep breathing helps with pain. This is taking much longer than usual. At last, the technician says, “Why are you here?” For one moment, I think “Wasting taxpayer’s money.. do you think we are going to pay for this?” But I explain about right breast’s recent party mode. “Well, I see the cyst but I can’t find anything else,” she says and tosses me a towel.  She’s just broken the sacred code of technician silence. “Oh, thank you, thank you. You’re so kind to tell me,” I cry, only just restraining myself from throwing my arms around her.

So that’s the end for now. Mr Death isn’t knocking on the door for this green-eyed girl just yet.

Just One Evil Act: Elizabeth George’s latest

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I searched in vain for newspaper reviews of Elizabeth George’s most recent novel, Just One Evil Act. There are plenty of reviews by readers on Goodreads, but the New York Times, the L.A. Times, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail not so much. And readers were less than kind.

Their main beef was the novel’s length – 719 pages, but they also go on at length about beloved characters, Lynley and Barbara Havers, acting uncharacteristically. Many of them recommended better editing, particularly with regard to the “excessive” detail of the Italian setting where the major crimes occur. In short, they felt the same irritation I did as I read it.

I began with gratitude. There was another Lynley mystery to occupy my imagination during a particularly cold and wintry season and I got it from my sister for Christmas. So thank you, Elizabeth George and Georgia, the latter of whom confessed that she had actually ready my copy, but she is such a tidy reader I couldn’t tell.

Now, it’s true that, of late, both Georgia and I have complained that George’s books are getting too long. It seems as if she actually enjoys -how to say this politely?- fooling with the reader’s brain. As she is reported to have said, she doesn’t take the reader’s feelings into account. She is capable  of killing off a beloved character even while said character is pregnant. She can then go on to devote her next book to a sympathetic examination of the murderer and then drag us through the husband’s resulting breakdown. Clearly, we do not own the characters. She does and as their creator, she is capable of dispassionate distance.

What are we to make of the fact that Inspector Thomas Lynley, 8th Earl of Asherton, opens the novel, as part of a shouting crowd of 200 in Brompton Hall, he and his man Denton, cheering on Kickarse Electra, one of Bristol’s Boedicia Broads, a roller derby team? Totally out of character, a chorus of reviewing readers say. Not so fast, say I. People fall in love unpredictably. Frankly, I can’t even remember Daidre Trahair, large animal vet and, evidently, the owner of a seaside cottage that Lynley broke into in the previous novel. Lynley can, and is willing to pass Denton off as a pal so as not to intimidate Daidre. Daidre who is tall, athletic and given to plain-speaking as well as roller-skating violence, is the antithesis of the well-bred, beautifully turned-out, shopaholic, Helen, Lynley’s late wife.

Which brings to mind Barbara Havers, Lynley’s partner in crime solving. Never well turned-out, given to wearing t-shirts with printed slogans such as “No Toads Need to Pucker Up’ and red, high-topped training shoes with white socks, Barbara lives in Chalk Farm. a district in London, in a converted carriage house behind an Edwardian Villa done into flats. In the first floor flat lives Taymullah Azar, a microbiologist, whom Barbara has loved from a distance for many years and many George novels. That love has been sublimated into his daughter, Haddiyah, now 9 years-old, who has been kidnapped by her mother, Angelina. Initially, Barbara is determined to find the child and return her to Azar, even though Azar was not married to Angelina, was not named as her father on her birth certificate and has no legal claim to her. To do this, Barbara enlists the help of a shady private detective, Dwayne Doughty and his side-kick, Em Cass.

At a certain point, Azar tells Barbara that Doughty has hit a dead end and that seems to be that. Suddenly, Angelina arrives back at the flat, a passionate Italian lover in tow, demanding that Azar return their daughter – who has been kidnapped in the Italian town of Lucca. Time for key characters to fly there, including Lynley, who falls victim to Barbara’s machinations and is assigned as a liaison officer. These machinations involve a tabloid reporter, Bryan Smythe, to whom Barbara feeds the story.

Is it believable that Barbara, who is a good detective but obviously a bit of a loose canon, would go so completely off the rails? The implication by several other characters is that she does it out of her love for Azar. I find it easier to believe initially that it was more out of concern for the child, but as things progress, it is harder to rationalize that. Whatever the motivation, the thing that bothered me was her profound stupidity. Reporters can’t be managed. Blatant disregard of police protocol is bound to come back to bite badly. Still, it is clear that she has weighed the loss of her career against the happiness of Haddiyah and her father and decided to risk all.

The initial kidnapping mystery is resolved in the first half of the book. More or less. This is thanks to a lovely new character, Chief Inspector Salvatore Lo Bianco, of the Lucca police department. Salvatore is separated from his wife and daughters and back living in a tower with his mother, where he escapes to the roof at sunset. His superior, Piero Fanucci, il Pubblico Ministero is stupid and corrupt and removes Salvatore, from the kidnapping case as soon as possible. But Salvatore is one of those detectives that doesn’t let a little thing like an official order stop him.

A second mystery develops in the latter half of the book while the details of the kidnapping are being wrapped up. By then, Lynley has returned to London, but Barbara jets off without authorization, the sleazy reporter in tow. While Lynley was fluent in Italian, having spent time there in his youth, Barbara is not and her interactions with Salvatore are puzzling to both of them. Irritating or amusing depending on your point of view. I was more amused and, for the most part, I enjoyed the local colour, detailed descriptions of the walled city of Lucca and the farm where Haddiyah and her mother live. I did get sick of the constant comments about Barbara’s lack of professionalism. Okay, I get it and now she’s doing something even worse. I can see that. You don’t have to tell me. Yet, she is instrumental in solving the second mystery, handicapped by language and attitude though she is.

The end of the book is a real surprise and has lead some to question its feasibility, but it’s just weird enough to appeal to me.

I hope that Barbara and I have seen the last of Taymullah Azar, frankly. I’m not sure how much more of Daidre I want to see either, although I reserve judgement there. I do know that, like most reader/reviewers I want to see Barbara and Lynley working as a team again and I would like more than the glimpse of Simon St James and his wife Deborah.

Doesn’t matter. Elizabeth George is not about to write to order. Given her ability to create well-rounded characters like Salvatore and genuinely mysterious plots, I will probably forget how she annoys me and buy the next book hot off the press.

Winter Blues

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“Pile Driver Blues” was an a cappella opus, I made up one weekend when I found myself trapped in a San Fransisco airport hotel during construction. I sang it to a two year-old as I pushed him in a stroller around the concrete. Next door was the infernal, 12 hour a day, ground-shaking pile driver. It was not my last encounter with the blues. January seems to breed them.

Does it pay to examine their origin closely? Holiday hangover? Weather fallout? Economic downturn? Legitimate grief? Fatigue? All of the above? Information is always useful, I suppose, and may provide perspective.

The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, the treatise on ancient Chinese medicine, sees it as a good and necessary way to slow us down in winter so that we get enough rest to consolidate our strength.

Early this morning, my sister Georgia, alerted to my winter blues, phoned to prescribe Northrop Frye’s Double Vision Chpt. 3. I was taken aback, to say the least. I was on my way to a tai chi class, however, so I tabled the suggestion.

Two hours later, I was back home, stretched and invigorated, but bluer than ever. I tried a nap and woke up ready to try her idea. I found Double Vision on-line and began reading. What do you know, she might be onto something.

Chapter 3 is called “The Double Vision of Time” and begins with a description of the tragedy of time. “It seems probable that the basis for consciousness … is the awareness that the uneasy pact between body and soul will dissolve sooner or later..”  The body’s drive to survive makes us suppress our consciousness of this as much as possible or, at the very least, to convince ourselves that we are not going to die at once. The result, however, is a “subdued anxiety”, or quiet desperation, according to Frye, scholar, critic, a fellow Torontonian, and 78 years-old when he wrote that (1912-1991).

Ordinarily, we see time as horizontal and linear, comprised of past, present and future, although all attempts to grasp “Now” prove illusive. It barely emerges from the past before it vanishes into the future. Moreover, its progress involves a kind of repetition which Frye describes as parabolic as is clearly demonstrated in Shakespeare’s seven stages of man, beginning and ending in helplessness. (“All the world’s a stage..” As You Like It II, vii) “Thus the tragic aspect of time in which every moment brings us toward death.” The double vision of time involves superimposing a vertical dimension, in which all time exists at once.

In practical terms, we can free ourselves from time by “genuine achievement” in everything that matters and that can be accomplished by the building of habit through “incessant practice”. Practicing the piano, for example, repetitively playing scales and practice pieces eventually allows us to break through to the freedom of accomplishment. Thus we come to an “enlarged sense of the present moment”. Experience and awareness are one. Now we are in the “Now”. This intensity is spiritual connection, the vertical dimension, enlightenment.

Right. I think I get it. I do have a number of practices: tai chi, journal writing, cooking, blogging. If I just keep at them, with intention, I’ll break through to a timeless moment? And such a moment will surely be free of the Blues.

How the Light Gets In: Louise Penny’s latest

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At the beginning of her new novel, Louise Penny thanks Leonard Cohen for generously allowing her to use a line from his song “Anthem”. Cohen tells us in that song that “There is a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.” I have read all nine of Penny’s novels, so, presumably, I must have enjoyed them. And those lines by Cohen struck me from the first time I heard them as a neat summation of how good comes out of bad. Why, then, do I dislike their use as the title of her ninth and latest Armand Gomache mystery, How the Light Gets In?

Reviews, including one in the New York Times ranged from very positive to rhapsodic. Fans told of staying up half the night, of being totally emotionally engaged, of how they had waited breathlessly since the dire conclusion of book 8, The Beautiful Mystery for the resolution of this book. My goodness, I thought, and here I’ve been sleeping soundly oblivious to Gomache’s terrible suffering. I was so cold-hearted that I plodded through the book in my usual three days, closing it up at my regular bedtime.

How the Light Gets In, unlike The Beautiful Mystery, is set once again in the village of Three Pines, a place that cannot be found on any map, hidden and sheltered by wooded mountains where cell phone towers and internet connections cannot penetrate. And, despite its high body count over the years, an idyllic place with its village green, its outdoor rink, its used bookstore, its gourmet bistro with two fireplaces and its eccentric but helpful villagers. When he isn’t solving the latest murder there, Gomache retreats to it for solace, something he greatly needs now that his department in Quebec’s Sureté has been dismantled, his reputation is in decline and his good friend Jean-Guy Beauvoir is a drug addict.

Three Pines is south-east of Montreal in Quebec’s Eastern Townships.  I am familiar with this area. More or less. I recently made a sentimental journey back there to my birthplace. (See https://115journals.com/2013/09/11/septuagenarians-on-the-road-3/) While I was there, I stayed at Auberge Ayres Cliff (https://115journals.com/2013/09/14/septuagenarians-on-the-road-5/ ),an excellent hotel, every bit as cozy as the one in Three Pines, although much more on the beaten path.

When it comes to the willing suspension of disbelief, I’m a hard case. I spent my first five years freezing and starving in the hills of the Eastern Townships, albeit in a place that couldn’t be found except by those who had been there. True we were on a hill farm which produced a bumper crop of stones every year. Over the hill and down the valley, there was rich land with fat herds of dairy cows. Presumably, the hilltop soil had been scraped off our high land and deposited there. One of those farmers held the mortgage on our place. In the end, it seemed better to move to town.

But okay, I’ll go along with this Brigadoon-like village. I’d even like to sit by one of those two fire places drinking hot chocolate and eating hot buttered croissants. (No wait I’m gluten intolerant.)

Something I won’t dispute is fear of the Champlain Bridge. Too long, too high, too confusing with those changeable lane markings and too prone to traffic jams. In the opening chapter, a woman driving across that bridge comes undone. Some time later, her body is discovered dashed against the rocks beneath. It used to be the bridge that took you from Montreal across the wide St. Lawrence to Auto Route 20 and so into Les Cantons Est. Imagine my delight when I discovered this past summer that a new bridge allowed me to cross the river without going near Montreal.

Another thing I won’t dispute is the corrupt reputation of Quebec’s construction industry and its bureaucrats or some of them at least. Whether it is believable that they could be quite so dastardly or that the dastardliness could reach quite so high is a stretch. (Whoops – I seem to have lifted “dastardly” from Marilyn Stasio’s New York Times review.)

Nevertheless, the mystery of why a 77 year-old visitor to Three Pines is murdered on her return home to Montreal is intriguing. What does her murder have to do with her siblings? And, of course, there is the ongoing question of whether Gomache is going down to defeat as some terrible act of terrorism befalls La Belle Province.

Why do I resent Penny’s appropriation of Leonard Cohen’s line? I think it’s because Cohen’s idea belongs to the real world, which, let’s face it, is fraught with suffering and hard-earned insight. Penny’s world, on the other hand, is a fantasy, an imagined place of cozy friendship and monstrous villainy. It is the dissonance that bothers me.

Living in 3 Time Zones: a matriarch’s tale

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There were stars overhead. A long-legged eight year-old had plunked himself down in the bed beside me. We could hear the revelers downstairs, but youngest and oldest, we craved rest. The stars on the ceiling glowed in the dark and I remembered sleeping under just such stars 20 years ago in Venice Beach, California, an ocean and a continent away. This is how far my family has spread. This is how far I have had to spread my arms to keep them – what? – not safe, for that is impossible. Let us just say “to keep them”.

Technology has made the job easier in the last 15 or 20 years. E-mail was a great help, so much faster that snail mail. Answering machines and FAX machines appeared. Then long distance rates started to fall, the mobile phone came along, and texting became possible. Distances were easier to bridge.

In Brussels last week, I watched the last episode of the BBC’s David Copperfield in which the Micawbers embarked on a sailing ship for a new life in Australia. Something had finally come up, as Mr Micawber so optimistically kept on saying it would, throughout his disastrous life. The villain of the story, Uriah Heep, was also on his way there, barefoot, chained to other prisoners, to pay for his crimes. His mother cried out, “My poor boy. I’ll never see him again.” Australia was just too far then, even supposing Heep lived to get released. Letters might be exchanged, but probably only two or three a year, given the time the voyage took.

In 1945 when my father moved us from the Eastern Townships of Quebec to Hamilton Ontario, my nine year-old self seriously doubted that I would ever get back to the mountains and the family I loved. Letters were posted and received weekly, but we had no phone. In the event of something momentous like a new baby brother, we could borrow the neighbour’s phone and pay the exorbitant long distance cost. In fact, we did return the summer after my brother Rob was born, in 1947.

Rob was the first family emigrant, hying himself off with a backpack at the age of 19 to explore the world. Our mother cashed in his life insurance policy to finance his getaway. By then it was a tossup whether our father would murder Rob or Rob would murder our father. All of the three older girls in the family harboured the same homicidal urge, but were not as capable of the deed.

Rob stayed safely out of reach of familial harm in Afghanistan, India, and Turkey, where various strangers had a go at him. Finally, he settled in Belgium. Where he had a phone which I could now afford to call to tell him our mother had been given only weeks to live. He thought it was a trick, and indeed, our mother survived against all odds for another 6 years. She had that ace in her pocket though -imminent death- and he came back for a visit – 3 years after he had left. He invited us to visit him and  2 years later I did, with my young family. We formed a friendship then that had not been possible before. So I began the process of long distance living. What time is it here? What time is it in Belgium or Italy or Sweden, wherever his career as a film gaffer took him?

Just when I got the knack of that, my daughter Julia took off for New York City. No problem, same time zone. But -what’s this? She’s off to the west coast. She’s getting married in Las Vegas. And so I began living in 3 -count’em – 3 time zones.

It’s quite dizzying. Whenever I want to talk to Rob, he’s already asleep. Initially, after I returned from Brussels last week, I woke up at 4 a.m., Eastern Standard Time, thinking it was already 10 a.m., and called him then. My daughter up on her west coast mountain would be snoozing away in her 1 a.m. world. As I acclimatized to Toronto time, I kept missing windows of communication. I ended up texting Rob while he slept and getting his reply when I woke up. Julia is beyond the reach of cell phone texts at present, but I catch her at odd moments as she builds the fire in early morning.

As I lay there on Christmas Eve, looking up at the stars, I thought about all the grandparents who travel great distances to be with their far-flung families and sleep as like me in children’s bedrooms. I thought about older women alone in their cars on lonely highways and on long distance flights. Like me, they may well count over 50 such trips and see the results in maturing children who know they are part of something bigger.

That something is family. I can’t help it. I have to communicate, to be there. Someone needs to hold the family together and time has made me the matriarch.

The Septuagenarian Hobbit Gets a Parking Lesson

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Oh, stop trying to make me hate you, Toronto. You’ve already got sub-zero temperatures, vicious storms and week-long power outages going for you. Why did you have send the SUV woman to give me parking advice?

I was in the under-ground parking garage at Mountain Equipment Co-op, still jet-lagged from my return from Brussels, but putting a good face on it and taking advantage of a break in the weather to return a faulty product. I had already paid for parking at the wonderfully old-fashioned booth. The attendant was happily gossiping with a friend. There were many empty spaces. I was taking the opportunity to change the carpet floor mats to the rubber winter ones, when a woman in a beige SUV pulled up behind me.

“I realize it’s hard to see the lines,” she said, “but you are parked so that no-one can use the next spot.”

I could just barely discern a yellow line when I looked down. It was covered with salt and dirt.

“Thank you so much for telling me,” I replied. “But try not to get hysterical. I’m leaving immediately.”

“I’m not hysterical…”

No, just really, really annoyingly self-righteous and hidebound and so very, very puritanical, typically Torontonian, indeed typically North American.

While I was thanking her again for rendering my day more pleasant, I was remembering how cars on my brother’s one-way street in Brussels were often parked facing the wrong direction. No tickets. No outraged neigbours. Oh, carry me back!

I’ll hate myself for saying this later, but at least our mayor is a little looser.

(I know that’s an allusion, but I figure you’ve all heard about Rob Ford.)

The Septuagenarian Hobbit Returns: New Year’s

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(This is one of a series of posts in which I have explored my hobbit-like reluctance to travel.)

The arrival of 2014 was confusing for me. My body-clock registered it at Brussels time and took me to bed shortly afterwards, but not before I received a text from my brother Rob, who had probably just set off fireworks in Bois Fort: Where are you? I have looked all over the house.

I can’t imagine how confused my fellow travellers must be. I joined their flight at the Brussels airport, half way through their journey from Delhi – mothers, fathers, grandmothers, children, babies and one grandfather. Shortly after take-off at 10:15 a.m., the lights were turned down and  most of them went to sleep. I joined them.

Even as I was swept south on Highway 427 from YYZ, otherwise known as Pearson International Airport, I felt as if some essential part of me had still not landed.

It is after 3 a.m. eastern standard time. My neighbours have just come in from partying and gone to bed. I went to bed at 6 p.m., so here I am.

I postponed the return to my home by stopping to eat. I was ready for dinner. Blake, who had picked me up, wanted brunch. Easy to get dinner at noon, but brunch on a weekday, New Year’s Eve or not, took some convincing.

Finally, I got home. The lights were on. I had carefully set the timer to put them on at sunset, but the ice storm cut the power, so the timer clock thought it was dark already. Warily, I approached the refrigerator. Four days without electricity! Nothing. No dreadful smell. My landlord had come in, I knew, and all the frozen meat was gone, but all the glass containers of stock, soup and stew were still there. For a brief moment, I thought there was a reason, but of course, there wasn’t. Refrozen they sat patiently waiting to give me ptomaine. For the third time in a year, I had lost everything in the freezer. (But global warming is a myth and all this crazy weather is just part of a natural cycle!!!!!!!)

The news showed me poor people in long lines waiting -many in vain – for food vouchers. They had lost their Christmas food and very likely had spent the holiday freezing in the dark.

I had gone with Rob to the fish market in Brussels to pick up a huge iced platter of oysters, sea snails and shrimp, destined to join turkey as our Christmas Eve feast. (The snails were particularly delicious.) I had been warm and cozy throughout. Evidently, there are advantages to travel.

(I will post one more blog in this series, in which I will explore the surprising fact that my Brussels family, whose language I can barely follow, has so much in common with my Canadian family and my Southern Californian family.)

Happy New Year.