Bad Titles: journal 118 protests

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Like George Orwell, I have chosen a title that has overtaken itself. He thought 1984 was sufficiently removed from 1948 that it represented a future where Big Brother watching your every move seemed believable. But, oh George, try teaching that book in 1984 or 1993 or 2012. It is about the past now, in more ways than one. (Thank you closed circuit TV, Google, Facebook and internet surveillance.)

I knew that lesson and yet I went ahead and called my blog, 115journals.com. Journal 118 wants to act as spokesperson for itself and 116 and 117. Journal 118 is a mature and confident speaker, about to retire from active duty and hand the daily grind over to 119.

Still a bit of a whiner: “Look at all I did for you, getting you through a July of heath issues and an August of intense family vacation. And who gets the glory, 115? What did she ever do for you?

It’s just a matter of chance, I counter. Orwell reversed the digits of the year he wrote the book. I was writing in journal 115 when I started the blog.

But 118 is seriously miffed, although partly mollified by the fact I reread its whole heartfelt tale. True I found there the essence of the summer, we are fast losing here in our northern city. It caught the swallows hunting at dusk, the crickets at dark and the glory of the Farmer’s Market at Wychwood Barns.

Please accept my appreciation, 118. I hope you will be mollified by my promise to issue a “Best of 118” in the near future.

The Look of Love: paying attention

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I am sitting beside him in La Veranda Osteria, when he seizes my left hand in both of his  calling me, “Sweetheart” and gazing intently into my eyes. No wonder he has had women on several continents and the odd island falling for him. My brother has had this ability to charm ever since he ran away to Europe with a backpack at 17. At the moment, he is trying to convince me of something, some better way to live, perhaps, but I am too overcome by his undiluted attention to take it in.

Great to find this in a dinner date, even if he is your brother, but much more important in a doctor or medical practitioner. I remember sitting in a sound-proof third-floor office near LAX and being the focus of the undivided attention of my acupuncturist. She asked questions of such insight, listened with such concentration and considered me so deeply, that I felt entirely and absolutely loved. The interview itself was healing: there was no real need for needling. In fact, I have had a profound feeling of change for the better, just from talking to her on the phone. That was her goal – to be so present and available to her patients that they felt connected, not just to her  but to the power that animates us. Having felt that connection and felt it repeatedly, it became easier for us to make it on our own.

Actors and self-proclaimed gurus, who project charisma, attract us because they make use of this kind of focus although not perhaps with such benevolence. I once met an actor unexpectedly on my way down to his wife’s yoga studio and almost suffered third-degree burns from the radiance of his projection. I was gobsmacked, but I did not feel better for it.

I do feel better when I can master the trick myself. The 108 moves in tai chi give me that opportunity especially when I find myself acting as Corner. (A Corner, as you might expect, is at the end of a line and so in a leadership role.) There is a lot of repetition in such a set, but repetition with variations. For example, there are 3 sets of  “Wave Hands Like Clouds”, one of 5 of this sideways step with soft arm sweeps, one of 7 and one of 3. All of them begin from the position of “Single Whip” or “Whip to One Side”, but between the set of 5 and the set of 7, just when the sleepy Corner has zoned out, the move suddenly switches to “Fair Lady Works Shuttles” or “Four Corners”, an altogether more complicated move. I have often been embarrassed when I have missed that change, dissociated or planning dinner or gazing out the window. I was not in the now, not really present.

When I do hit that groove, I experience a mental rest, like a moving meditation from the one-pointedness. It is easier than meditation for me. The kind of meditation I practise when I am able is mindfulness, just being aware of what is going on, especially internally, observing  without attachment, as my acupuncturist would say – letting each thing go -each thought, feeling or sensation.

It’s a useful technique when I am beset by anxiety or depression or pain. If I sit down, just sit, not cross-legged or full-lotus nor even necessarily straight-backed, but easily, and observe what is going on in me, I gain some distance. I am watching what my mind is doing and so I am now in the role of observer, not sufferer. I am no longer my discomfort. I can stop spinning. I have heard that the goal of meditation is to still the mind. I don’t aim that high. But if I pay attention to it, it stops screaming in agony, like a crying child when her mother holds her and gives her her attention. It may well be that there is no solution. The grief cannot be assuaged. A fearful situation cannot be resolved. A physical pain is intractable. No matter. All these things are more bearable when looked upon steadily.

It doesn’t even have to be a look of love. Did my acupuncturist actually loved each of the parade of people who sat before her? (Of course, she did me.) She became absorbed in them so that there was no longer a separation between her and other. No other in fact. In the same way, I can reclaim my anger and self-loathing, my fear of ageing and death, whatever negativity is plaguing me. Once reclaimed, these parts of me seem to shrug and get on with life.

It is these negative feelings that prevent us from focusing, both on others and on our own mental health.

Eckhart Tolle has written several books, including The Power of Now to extoll the virtues of focusing. Jon Kabat-Zinn has told us how to heal ourselves through mindfulness in Coming to Our Senses. I have read these and others and found them inspiring, but it is simple practice that gives results. Like tai chi. We don’t really need to read more. We just need to do it.

“Attention must be paid,” Arthur Miller said in Death of a Salesman. “Pay attention,” our parents and teachers admonished. Yet we seldom do. We need something like the little bell that Buddhists sound during meditation calling out, “Be here. Be now. Wake up”.

Love is just that: being conscious.

The Hungry Ghosts: Chinese All Souls Festival

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As we approach the temple building in Chinatown, we can see smoke rising from the tiny courtyard, smell strong incense and feel a fine spray on our faces. Through the filagree of the metal fence we catch glimpses of red-robed figures and hear their chanting. My friend peels off at this point, allergic to such strong incense and smoke. Entering by a side gate, I come upon other chanters in light blue robes, coming down from the temple on the third floor.

Inside the tiny office area, I am pointed toward the English list. The Chinese list looks to be more sizeable. The man before me is busy adding a folded package containing a paper sports jacket, paper dress shoes and a paper cell phone to his bag of paper money. I know these customs having attended a Chinese funeral, although the deceased also received genuine Scotch whiskey to help her on her way. When it is my turn, I am greeted happily. “We didn’t know you would be here to burn your own!” But I eschew extras. I am sending only these ersatz silver and gold bars to my parents.

For weeks, we have been rolling this paper money at our tai chi club and sending it down here in huge green plastic bags. The money has been redistributed into the small parcels, such as the one I hold with my parents’ names and their memorial plaque number on the label.

“You know what to do?” asks the volunteer in charge of the English list and she proceeds to remind me, but I do know what to do. This is the sixth year that I have burned an offering.

“Why don’t you do it for Aunt Mae?” Georgia has asked me. Aunt Mae got us through our tough young lives.

“Aunt Mae doesn’t need any help,” I reply.

Perhaps our mother doesn’t either, for when she left, she never looked back. She went so completely and utterly that her leaving left me questioning my beliefs, questioning them all the way to a two-week hospital stay.

My father, on the other hand, hung around, offering, for example, financial advice: buy lottery tickets. Those who have read my memoir, Never Tell, will understand that he was the sort of parent, one is better off without.

I climb to the third floor, clutching my paper sack. Through the door to the temple I can see more blue-robed chanters moving about among what surely must be “graven images” of the Quan Yin and Confucius and other Buddist, Taoist and Confucian “saints” or holy beings. They are large and colourful and delight me, but today my business is in the anteroom where the memorial plaques are posted. Mine is #588 and easily found.

I stand gazing at this innocuous slip of yellow paper, bearing my parents’ names and the name of their native town -Hereford. How strange to see it here, amid these gaudy red and gold trappings, above this altar covered in dishes of food: fruit, pastries, rice, tea, pots with many sticks of incense, and beautiful flowers. Hereford of rolling green hills and low mountains, Hereford Hill that lies under slope-shouldered Hereford mountain and looks down over the Indian and Connecticut Rivers, a wooded place that is turning its back on cultivation now, turning back to dark and tangled forest.

I bow, the parcel tucked awkwardly under my arm. I choose a joss stick, light it on a candle, bow and stick it in the sand of an incense pot. I bow again. I don’t want to leave.

I am 76 years-old, but I am also 2 and 4 and 5. I am living through the Great New England hurricane and watching my parents build a load on the hay wagon and walking the dirt road with my mother and fishing the trout stream with my father.

If they were alive my mother would be 95. Her mother lived to that age. And my father, 98. But they have been gone for 44 and 24 years. Most of the family is profoundly grateful and it certainly has made life easier. No one else, Georgia or my visiting brother, wants to be here with me.

Downstairs, I am waved toward the back parking lot where a small iron burner stands ready. Two of my favourite instructors are there to feed the fire. They are my age, perhaps, although their wiry small bodies are in such good shape, it’s hard to tell and they are teaching another Chinese man how to do the tor yu as one of them pokes my bundle into flames.

I stand watching it burn, leaping up in bright gold and red flames, dying back to black ash and leaping into flame again. My eyes are watering. Must be the smokey wind.

I am feeding the hungry ghosts, my father who waited his whole life for a windfall, my mother who loved beautiful things -cranberry glass, cow pitchers (!), my father who sought some adrenaline high to fill the emptiness of his orphaned heart, my mother who sought solace, a gift to soothe her battered soul. And my own. My ghost is still more or less grounded here for the time being, but I know its tendency to wander, howling in the wilderness.

It’s all about me as usual.

Measured against the forests and the granite, the myriad lakes and waters, the un-reckonable ages, I am just a flame. These steadfastnesses support me, not I them. I can flicker and go out and reignite. I owe my life to Something greater.

When the fire has died down to black, I thank the men and walk through the back gate to my car, which still has a lot of time on the meter.

Septuagenarians in the Wilderness: part 3

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Everything changes.

The cast of characters first. The young family exits. Errant parent is waiting in the parking lot of the hibachi restaurant to carry partner and children off. The next day, the twenty somethings rush back to their busy lives. On the holiday Monday, two more leave with the dog, so for one night, Georgia and I have the cottage to ourselves, while my niece retreats to the cabin. No dog, no kids! Not even any trains hooting at the crossing!

On Tuesday the cast begins to swell again as two of Georgia’s friends arrive. On Wednesday, I sit by the phone waiting for my brother to fly in from Europe. His first call on landing assures me he had lost his luggage. On the next call, he has found his bag, but his rental car has no GPS. On the third call, he is on the road, ignoring my route instructions and on a highway I don’t even know. Here is a man who can fill all dog/kid/train deficits. (See post I dream of Etherica.)

And the season changes.

What had been high summer abruptly becomes early autumn. The temperature plummets overnight and it begins to rain. It hasn’t rained for nearly 3 months. It is so dry there is a fire ban and holiday fireworks are cancelled. It is so dry that some trees have already turned orange in early August. Now it rains steadily. One could say relentlessly.

This doesn’t stop the daily production of gourmet meals nor even shut down the barbecue on the deck. Rob grills teriyaki salmon while someone holds an umbrella over him. Nor does it stop great conversation. He hasn’t come home for 3 years, so we have a lot to catch up on. And it doesn’t stop reading. I finish an early Lynley mystery by Elizabeth George in record time. There is even some canoeing, which involves much tipping, drenching and subsequent recovery. But it puts an end to beach sitting. The canopy and umbrella -wearing an improvised neck brace- look sad and wet. No high flying sallies!

Even the birds seem too wet to fly. I come upon a covey of quail feeding on the edge of the woods, softly mewing to each other, utterly unafraid of me. It’s their woods.

Driving back from the village I drift to a stop: there is a deer standing in the middle of the narrow dirt road, calmly gazing at me. By the time I have found my iPhone, she has quietly vanished into the trees.

I stop before I go up the steps to the cottage and enjoy the trees, tall, slim, steadfast in spite of human intrusion, breathing peacefully, exhaling something healing.

Then it is Friday, time to go. Time to pack the cooler, the suitcase, the duffle bag and the dozen or so bags of groceries, pills, books. And that’s just my list. There are 4 cars to load. The fridge has to be sorted. My niece sits in front of the open door and Rob holds a garbage bag. If food is still edible, it goes back to whoever brought it. Some of it is unidentifiable and that goes into the big garbage bag. When they need someone to break a tie, they appeal to me.

When the fridge is empty, Rob and I suit up for a rainy run to the dump. When we arrive we study the sign detailing hours of operation. The landfill site is open 6 days a week. Can you guess which day it is closed? We decide not to tell Georgia. When I talk to Rob on the phone next day, and ask what he has done with the garbage, he replies he’s just going to leave it where it is and return it with the rental. As usual, I believe him for a split second.

Meanwhile Georgia and my niece have been cleaning the bamboo floors and making the beds with clean sheets. The beds are no problem, but carrying that mess of bags out to the cars involves a good deal of wiping up footprints. By now we don’t notice how wet we are, but an idea is blossoming in our minds: for the price Georgia paid, she shouldn’t have to play char as well.

We are ready to go, standing in the rain, realizing we don’t want to head off in three different directions yet. We decide to eat lunch together. We form a caravan, Rob in the middle, Georgia in the lead, to look for a restaurant up Parry Sound way. As soon as we hit the highway, Georgia jack-rabbits off so fast that Rob can barely keep up with her and he’s a European. I squint through the rain to keep them in view and we race up hill and down dale on rain-slick roads. So much for the stereotype  of doddery, slow old drivers! It goes on and on. I’m getting hungry. We pass a closed restaurant. We pass a boat dealership in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly, a sign tells us we have arrived at Highway 400. We pull onto the shoulder. Georgia and I get out and converge on Rob’s open window. We cancel lunch. Anything to stop the rain pouring down inside our collars.

One by one, we head south on the freeway. Slowly I am remembering that there are no exits with services for many miles and I am down to 2 bars on my gas gauge and starving. Half an hour later, I see an exit offering gas and food. It’s the exit to the railway town we left an hour ago. CANNOT go back there.

I assure myself that I still have a quarter of a tank and surely it can’t be that far to the next gas station. It is. I do see an exit to the Wahta Mohawk cranberry barn, a source of cranberry muffins perhaps but not gas. I sail past. It’s no use, music doesn’t distract me. Anxiety is creeping up on me in spite of self-talk. I can’t talk me down. Well, it’s 2 p.m., me answers back. You haven’t fed me. What do you expect?

Much later. Much much later, a gas sign and a fork and knife sign – the bed sign is irrelevant – and I swing off the highway into Port Severn. Which way to go now? Something tells me left. Yes, following a curving street, I come upon a marina advertising the Driftwood Cafe. Me first, car second.

The Driftwood Cafe has a screened porch for a diningroom. Very chilly. But look, I am being ushered onto a side porch with closed windows and heater. Oh, bliss! I am looking out on the marina basin where a fountain of water is rising in graceful curves and falling back to its source. A mist hangs over the boats. Here the Trent-Severn Waterway ends its 400 kilometre journey from Lake Ontario, in Georgian Bay across the highway.  I am in a watery world.

While I wait for my hot Tom turkey sandwich on ciabatta, I register my dismay at being on my own so suddenly.

When I was 2 years-old, I lived in an old farm house with 3 generations of my family, the only child. I liked it. When I fell head over heels downstairs, my great uncle caught me in midair. When my mother got sulky, my great grandmother helped me set my doll’s table. When we moved into our own house, I used to build domino towers with a level for each set of grandparents. My mother hated the idea.

Perhaps we have lost the knack if we ever actually had it. I noticed that someone turned the toilet paper roll the other way around every time I put it on. Correctly of course! Or was that just paranoia? I did catch someone rewashing the sink I had not only just washed but announced as well. How do the sister-wives manage?

So I await my lunch as the rain does its pathetic fallacy thing and mirrors my mood.

I will no doubt see Rob several times before he flies back. I will talk to Georgia several times a week as usual. I will go back to the tai chi club, which is family in its way. I will have Blake for dinner. I may even go sailing with him, but just for now, melancholy settles in.

In the kitchen 6 young people, the cook and wait staff, are drawing straws for some unpleasant job and shrieking with laughter. They’ve got plans for the late night hours after closing time.

Oh, give it up my friend. There will be warmer, dryer days. There will be other summers. There will be other burning chef’s hats. We’re a good way yet from closing time.

Septuagenarians in the Wilderness: part 2

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There is, thank heavens, no 15 minute wait at the train crossing. The crews apparently take the opportunity to climb down from their freight trains in this little town. Unfortunately, this means that the train’s mile-long tail blocks the road to the cottage. Today I quickly turn onto the road that runs parallel to the tracks and it changes from pavement to black top to gravel, getting ever smaller. Signs warn me repeatedly that the tiny dirt road is now private so what am I doing there and, moreover, I am ordered to stop for snakes and turtles neither of which I see. Finally, after the usual panic that surely I have missed the hidden turn, I find it and bump over rock and hillocks into a clearing in the woods where the cottage sits basking in the sun.

Beach picture from previous year

I step out of the Yarris into 95 degree heat with my usual grace after long sitting and hobble around until I can get things stretched and operational. Then I carry my Tim’s tea around the cottage down to the beach where I can see the others. On either side of the clearing, a 50 or 60 year-old wood of birch and maple and beech stands, unmoved and calming.

There are 4 children playing in the water and 5 adults sheltering under a white canopy, one of whom is my sister, Georgia, the founder of the feast, for it is Georgia who has rented the cottage with her carefully saved substitute-teacher’s pay.

The cottage can sleep 12 in its 2 bedrooms and loft, but there is also a brand new cabin hidden in the woods where the children and their parents are staying. It, like the main building, is fully screened against insect predation. Both have screened porches and the larger one has a big deck looking out on the lake.

A group of 6 has been there already for a week. Georgia and my older niece arrived yesterday. My niece moves from the bedroom she has shared with Georgia and re-makes her bed in the loft, not an easy choice to make because the loft is open to the noise of the main room below. She is honouring her elder.

The Wilderness Effect

I have shared houses with my daughter’s family and never experienced the wilderness effect in them. They were in Los Vegas, however, the last place on earth for the wilderness effect. Even though there were just as many people and emotionally charged events – a memorial service for grandpa and a wedding, there were no meltdowns. Plumbing disasters, inconvenient babysitting expectations, varying standards of housekeeping, but no need for interventions or group therapy sessions.

On the other hand, not one of our camping trips in the High Sierras passed without it. Others at the same campsite above the Kern River dealt with the wilderness effect by drinking copious qualities of beer and howling like wolves to scare off bears. In our camp, usually on the 3rd or 4th day, we found ourselves sitting in a circle listening to an older child express his angst or holding a screaming younger child or shaking heads in disbelief when gran nearly perished from insomnia. (Something about the altitude and all those stars wheeling overhead.) It must be all that fresh air, all this patient trees, the safety net of the family that brings it on.

In this case, it starts with wind. Saturday morning, Georgia has just come up from sitting under her new orange umbrella, 4 others are sheltered in the shade of the canopy and the children are hunting mussels in the lake. I am in the cottage with a view out the glass front. Suddenly, the umbrella’s neck is twisted and broken and the children watch in disbelief as a great funnel of sand flies up. Those under the canopy shield their faces. The canopy, metal frame and white cover intact rises, hovers six feet over their heads, turns on its side and speeds thirty feet across the clearing to land 15 feet up in the trees.

True the cottage sits at the end of a long stretch of water, wooded on both sides, that forms a wind-alley but this is ridiculous.

Much of the rest of the morning is spent debriefing and fishing the canopy down with oars.

Dinner at a hibachi bar, in a town an hour away, is scheduled this evening, to celebrate Georgia’s approaching 70th birthday. We have reservations for 14. Three more, including Georgia’s other grandchildren are expected to arrive soon.

I am on the screened porch when I hear an uproar from the cabin.  One parent arrives, very het up, seeking intervention. A passionate difference of opinion has arisen over appropriate child discipline.  The most objective of our group is sent forth to reason. One half of the blended family, having secured the car keys, departs precipitously, leaving the other half without transportation. A less objective person, that is to say a mother, makes the trek to the cabin. The remaining children and parent are whisked away for lunch in the aforementioned town.

Those of us left behind contemplate the wilderness effect.

I make a quick trip down the private road and over the tracks, to buy Georgia a bunch of Gerber daisies and a bottle of Moet & Chandron. I stow them in the cabin to keep them out of sight. When I carry them to the main cottage later, I meet an exasperated 7 year-old.

“What are they for?” she asks.

“They’re for Grandma Georgia’s birthday,” I reply.

“I guess you didn’t know my birthday was on Wednesday,” she says.

“I didn’t,” I reply. “Sorry. What would you like for a late birthday present.”

“I’d like to find my pink dress,” she declares and stomps away.

Alas, it turns out that her pink dress had been carried off by the departing parent in hastily packed luggage.

As a fitting end to a perfect day, the hibachi chef sets his hat of fire.

More to come.

 

 

 

 

 

Septuagenarians in the Wilderness: part 1

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In this part of the True North (strong and free), we say that we are going to the cottage -we never say my cottage or our cottage – as if there were only one and half the population of Toronto ended up there. Well, actually, it felt as if it had last weekend.

And we always say cottage, not camp as my Quebec relatives used to.

We leave Toronto and head north on Highway 400 toward Muskoka, a pleasant trip at 11 a.m. with the aforesaid half of the city’s population and every service centre en route closed for renovation. One has progressed to a well graded site of sandy soil, surrounded by a high wire fence. Factor in my age and you have a tense situation about 90 minutes into the trip. Ninety minutes on the road and I have gone about half as far as I should have, but what the heck, the sky is a beautiful blue with an occasional puffy cumulus or a long thin diaphanous strip of cirrus cloud and the iPod shuffle is mixing things up in an entertaining way: the Rolling Stones, Dylan, Adele, Eric Clapton, Glenn Gould, the Stones again, Bach’s violin concerto, the Stones again. What the!

I battle a woman who is driving half on the paved shoulder and talking on her cell phone. Every time I manage to get out into the middle lane to pass, she speeds up. We are moving  at 60 Kph, half the usual speed, all three clogged lanes. She has left a gap that would fit 2 eighteen wheelers and she is weaving back and forth from the lane to the shoulder. Hey, what’s happening to my sunny-mood-in-spite-of slow traffic. Then mercifully and magically she is no longer there, I have made my way past the only sizeable town and wheeled off to a Tim Horten’s. LIke the cottage, Tim’s is a national treasure. You can use the washroom and buy a beverage, although Tim’s is more famous for its doughnuts.

Good thing I stopped because the land is no longer fertile farm land, but the ancient granite of the Canadian shield, great rock faces that the highway slices through and little lakes. There are no exits at all for many miles and certainly no friendly doughnut shops. But there is almost no traffic and what there is, is moving a good 25 kph over the speed limit. Three and a quarter hours after I left home, I make the left turn that takes me into the railway town, which has re-made itself into a summer destination.

Where’d Y’ Go?

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I know Journal # 118 wonders too. Far from the nearest WiFi connection is the short answer. The library in that little rail town had one, but its hours were so weird I never caught up to it.
As for #118, I’ll get back to you. Living with an ever changing family of up to 17 left no time for reflection.
Coming soon: Septuagenarians in the Wilderness.

Walter White, a Macbeth for our time

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I’m on the point of cancelling a week at a cottage. So far my satellite company has not posted Sunday’s schedule and I can’t set my TIVO/PVR to record Breaking Bad. I am supposed to leave tomorrow morning, but how can I go away and leave Jesse at the mercy of an ever-worsening Walt?

I know. I’m deranged. That’s what comes of watching Season 4 in its entirety and the first  4 episodes of Season 5 in 4 days.

I’m catching up. I saw only an episode here and there in the first 3 seasons, but when Season 5, episode 1 proved incomprehensible -what happened to Ted and why is it Skylar’s fault? how did Walt blow up the meth lab? what happened to the little kid?- I decided to back track to season 4. By a miracle, I actually found Big Daddy Video up on Dundas St., next door to a shuttered Blockbuster. (I haven’t made the jump to an Apple box and Netflix obviously.) There was a flaw in my plan, of course, because there were things I didn’t get about the beginning of Season 4 because I hadn’t seen Season 3. Never mind.

What I want to say is that Walt is a latter day Macbeth, a good, highly competent person who makes a choice to go over to the dark side.

Macbeth is the charismatic leader of King Duncan’s army and has just successfully defeated a rebellion against the old king. The throne of Scotland is not strictly hereditary, Duncan’s son is young and inexperienced and if Macbeth had not been so impatient, he might well have become king without resorting to violence. In addition, he has the three wryd sisters plotting to make him the devil’s agent and his social-climbing wife calling him a coward if he does not take the knife to Duncan, his cousin and a guest in his castle.

Walt has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, has lost his job as a high school chemistry teacher and, therefore, has no medical insurance. He has a teenaged son with physical disabilities and, at this point, a new-born daughter. Knowing he is going to die sooner rather than later, he wants to provide for them and what better way than to become the cook of the purest methamphetamine possible.

Walt’s wife Skylar is not instrumental in pushing Walt into a life of crime. Initially, he keeps it a secret from her. But by Season 4, she is in on the act and is laundering the money, always cash of course that he is making. And she is making decisions that are equally questionable.

Macbeth has a good friend in Banquo, who is almost his equal in Duncan’s army, just as Walt has his former student, Jesse, almost his equal as a chemical genius. Banquo and Jesse enable an exploration of the theme of loyalty, although Banquo doesn’t survive until Act 5 as Jesses has.

Duncan, the good, mild old king has a polar opposite in Gus, the cold, meticulous target of Walt’s homicidal urge.

At first after the initial murder, Macbeth’s true nature asserts itself and he is appalled by what he has done. Lady Macbeth imagines that she is not so lily-livered and goes back to the murder scene to plant the knives on the drunken guards. After that, Macbeth grows in evil, committing or commissioning murder after murder, reaching his lowest point when he has children slaughtered.

Surely, you say, Walt would not stoop to that. Watch Season 4 very carefully. And what about all those meth heads that hung out at Jesse’s?

Walt’s brother-in-law, Hank, the DEA agent takes the role of nemesis, the agent of justice, and has only narrowly failed to catch the cook of pure meth, nicknamed Heisenberg. Macbeth’s nemesis is Macduff, he who lost “all his little ones”.

The trouble for viewers is that they actually want the hero (protagonist is just such a long word) to succeed. At least at first. And what does that say about us?

True most people have gone off  Macbeth by the time Banquo’s ghost crashes the banquet, although we may falter momentarily when Lady Mac, who was not so tough after all, kills herself. “My way of life is fallen into the sere and yellow leaf….” By the end, Macbeth is dead as he should be, a truly tragic figure for he could have been so much more.

Walt is getting nastier and nastier and more remote from human relationships. Even Skylar is afraid of him. Without a doubt, the second half of Season 5 when it arrives next year, will bring us Walt’s demise as well. Will we still be cheering for him?

Hey, I just remembered. The cottage gets the same satellite service as this place does. I’ll just have to arm wrestle the remote away from the other 10 people staying there.