Happy Whatever Days!

   Here and there on Facebook these days, I've come across a variety of posts wherein opinions have been offered as to whether we should be saying "Merry Christmas" to one another during this festive season or perhaps should be using the more politically correct "Happy Holidays". I've also run across people decrying the use of "X" in "Xmas". Then there is "Jesus Is The Reason For The Season" and "Let's Put Christ Back In Christmas".

   I get the point people are trying to make. There is a pretty general feeling that we've gotten away from the "true meaning" of Christmas and have simply given in to the commerce of the season. As North America becomes even more of an ethnic cultural melting pot there will be more and more pressure to homogenize the Christmas season so as not to offend sensibilities along the way. This is difficult for many of us to accept. Not only has Christmas lost much of the significance it had for us as kids, we are now being told it's not acceptable to share our Christmas spirit with people using traditional greetings anymore!
   Honestly, I refuse to get angry about this. If I feel like wishing someone a Merry Christmas, I will simply do that. If I happen to know that the particular person is of a different faith and celebrates the season under a different name I will try and use that greeting, if I know what it is. If I don't know what it is, I might revert to something a little more generic.

   Christmas already has a pretty tenuous grip on my happiness, as it is. As a kid, naturally enough, I was always excited about it. As an adult, though, there are way too many stressors to be dealt with. Family get-togethers are almost impossible to co-ordinate, multiple work parties need to be scheduled around, perfect gifts need buying, and any pre-existing tensions are only heightened at this time of year. The list goes on, I don't think I need to itemize them totally.
   Every year I tell myself that whatever it is about Christmas that bothers me the most I won't fall prey to it again this year. Then, before I know it, I find myself just as engaged in the whole Christmas merry-go-round as I have been all the other years.
   It's not that I object to celebrating Christmas. What I would like to be able to do, however, are all the things I'm not feeling like I'm being forced to do. Whatever they are.
   Okay, I've gotten away a little bit from the whole "Merry Christmas" versus "Happy Holidays" thing I originally wanted to write about.
   When I really think about it, me wishing someone a "Merry Christmas" isn't as much a supposition that they will be celebrating the same kind of Christmas I will be as it is a wish that they will simply enjoy the same kind of feelings I hope to enjoy during this particular time of year, no matter what kind of religion they observe.
   In this way, were a Jewish person to wish me a Happy Hanukkah, I would still get their meaning or intent. And still be as thankful for the sentiment.

"Neanderings" Turns Two!

   Next week marks the second anniversary of "Neanderings". As with most marked passages of time, it has arrived much more quickly than I might have imagined. About a year ago I sat here and mused on "Neanderings" first year so now some thoughts on its second.

My Dad, Kenneth Baker

   First off, I blogged a lot more in Year Two, probably twice as much. Very early on in the second year, my Dad became ill and eventually passed away. For better or worse, this had me blogging almost constantly. As much as anything, I was attempting to keep Dad's friends and family abreast of what was going on with him. At the same time, it was a very cathartic process for me and I'm glad I had that kind of outlet. I think that many of the people who were reading these particular blogs likely and hopefully were discovering the same thing--the string of them ended being pretty well the most well-read blogs the past year.


Cristopher Hitchens

   The blog post, however, which topped them all in terms of readership was the one I wrote last December entitled "Death of an Atheist". This chronicled the passing of Chris Hitchens, a well-known writer and avowed atheist. At that time, I'd recently read a book of his called "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" a book in which he attributes many of the society's ills to organized religions around the world. Currently, this post has been viewed close to 300 times, whereas most of my other posts average around 20. I am not sure why it's been so popular, it might have had something to do with Hitchens' celebrity status and people who were doing random searches on him ending up occasionally at "Neanderings".
   For much of the rest of this past year I simply continued to write about whatever popped into my head--as the blog description says, "random thoughts on random subjects". This took me to such places as coffee shops, storage units, doctor's offices, hospital rooms and football fields. You got snippets of opera, poetry and song. Sex and death popped up every once in awhile and you found out how I feel about some of the Christians in the world. I talked about saying goodbyes--both to kids who have moved and cats who have left this world. You read about me walking and you read about me running. I offered my opinion on some current events and and I blogged about blogging (about blogging!) I even blogged about coffee mugs, for goodness sake.

Strides

   I wrote about running more than once in "Neanderings" and realized after awhile that I had all sorts of thoughts on the subject. I then thought why not start a whole new blog, devoted to my running adventure? This then became "Strides", my other blog, which began back in late October. So far, it's been a fun blog to write and I'm enjoying it!
   So that about caps it off for Year 2 of "Neanderings". I've blogged a lot but the one thing I haven't done is make any inroads on "serious" writing, whatever that means. I guess I'd really like to write something that has a story to it, even something short. This, however, would require a little more discipline and time management than a blog does. I can blog in front of the T.V., with wife and kids hovering about, and answer the phone and e-mails all at the same time. I don't think this would work well for story-telling. Discipline, discipline, discipline--where do I get me some?!
   Anyway, cheers to you all, and many thanks for reading and the occasional comment or words of encouragement. It is nice knowing you're not writing in a total vacuum. If any of you have ideas for blog material then please pass them on. In the meantime, enjoy the holiday season and we'll talk soon!
  
  

Forgetting

   I am almost sixty and my mind is changing. It has been for quite awhile now and the process has been a fairly slow and gradual sort of thing. More than anything, I am forgetting.
   Forgetting is nothing new to me but now it is happening in the blink of an eye. It is happening in the space of time it takes for something to travel from my left hand to my right or for me to walk from one end of the room to the other.

It's not THIS bad........yet.

   It takes almost nothing to distract me these days. A fleeting thought will do it. If I could control the fleeting thoughts, I would. I want nothing more than to replace empty toilet paper rolls but the fleeting thoughts prevent this. I want to close the kitchen cupboard doors when I'm done with them but, again, my own thoughts get in the way.
   It seems I have no way of prioritizing what goes on in my head, no way of placing one thought process above the others even long enough to simply to get one thing done.
   I realize that this is not an uncommon occurrence in the aging process. This does not particularly console me. Even though some of the time it is mildly amusing, when you begin to extrapolate it becomes downright terrifying! For that reason I try not to extrapolate too much. I try not to think about just how much worse this could eventually get. I sometimes envision walking into a room, not knowing why I walked into the room, not even recognizing the room and being frozen there, so unsure of my thought processes that I have no idea what to do next.
   At the best of times, my mind has not been organized. I have never been one to make lists, create reminders, use datebooks faithfully or make copious plans for the future. Eventually you learn to cope, though, and if your friends, family and co-workers are aware of your special abilities in this area you can get by not too badly.
   It seems, however, that the best of times may be slipping by. My forgetting from one second to the next has impacted me finally, and not just the people around me. I have had the opportunity to watch my Dad's mind slowly fail in his later years and I can see myself headed there. I think I could live with the speed with which his Alzheimer's crept up on him, if it happened to me the same way. But what if it happens to me so much faster?
   I am at the point now where I have adopted a what you see is what you get kind of attitude. People will occasionally ask me to do something for them at some point in the future. I take care to remind them of how tenuous an arrangement this is. Generally we come up with some kind of plan for reminding me closer to the time. People have come to understand this about me, for the most part.
   For my part, I have made some attempts to re-structure how I think. As an example, if I am driving to the other end of the city and know that one I need to make one or two stops along the way I stop thinking of it as a trip across the city and I start thinking about it as a trip to the first place I need to stop at, on my way. And then I hope that I can maintain this mindset long enough to actually make that stop. If I set my car keys or travel mug down somewhere unusual, I will try to make a special note of the uniqueness of that spot. If I take my car keys out of the ignition but then need to sit in the car for awhile arranging things, I put the keys somewhere on my person so that I don't end up  locking them in the car. I spend a lot of time stopped in mid-action, contemplating the possible results of that action.
   Memory aids are great--if you remember to use them. I have a date book that I use principally for work. It is, however, only helpful if I remember to take it with me, remember to input times and dates, remember to refer to it, remember where I left it and remember that I have one. There are electronic reminding devices--cellphones, i-pods and watches that will all message you a reminder of important events. If you can remember how to program them.
   Most of the really important things, I remember. If they are part of a routine, this makes it easier. Routines sometimes get interrupted, though, and my ability to remember then becomes an issue. If you are a hockey player, there is nothing much more important than your helmet, stick and gloves. At various times, I have forgotten all of these. If you are headed off to work, there is nothing much more important than your wallet, watch and phone. Once again, at various times, I have left all of these at home.
   When I look back at all these instances of forgetfulness, what seems obvious is that I forgot mainly because my routine had been disturbed. Perhaps I forgot my hockey gloves because I set them off in a different area to dry. Maybe I forgot my watch because I had to set it down on a counter to wash some dishes. Somehow or other I got on to the next step of my routine, things seemed normal, and I let the house without something important.
   What is the very worst of all this is that a fading memory takes along with it some self-worth. People, particularly your loved ones, see you differently suddenly. You seem less trustworthy to them. Perhaps an important responsibility is shuffled on to someone else's shoulders. You are checked up on, sometimes needlessly, sometimes necessarily. It is sometimes hard not be viewed as foolish, rather than forgetful. It does not mean that you are any less loved, it just feels uncomfortably different than the way it always has.
   This, then, is my ongoing struggle. I try to do things which occupy, and therefore strengthen, my mind as much as possible. I count blogging as one of those things. I love word games and puzzles. I am quite willing to explore whatever holistic approaches there may be to retaining my memory. My contemporaries are aging as well and I can see subtle little signs in other people of some of the same things I am experiencing. This leaves me feeling a little less alone in all of this.

   We are rather at the mercy of our brains. I know that forgetting can sometimes come across as uncaring, spiteful or malicious but I am trying to learn not to accept the responsibility for this. It is what it is, I truly intended to change the used-up toilet paper roll (in fact, I was almost looking forward to it) but this just didn't happen. I know that many times I have changed the roll and I have started the dishwasher and I have attended the meeting and I have brought my mug safely home and, for the moment, I am happy with this. The quintessential me is still in here, alive and content with who I am and this is something which will not change for a very long time!
   
  
  
  

Bond

Sean Connery-the original Bond

   This week, we have been inundated with Bond--James Bond. This as a result of all the hype over the impending release of the latest Bond film, "Skyfall". It has received nothing but rave reviews and even I am looking forward to seeing it.
   I have yet to see any of the Daniel Craig "Bond" movies. This has been more of an oversight than anything as I have been quite intrigued and will likely be checking them out soon, one way or the other.
   In the meantime, it is quite interesting to surrender to the hype and investigate it, at least a little. The Free Press here in London spent the last week publishing surveys such as who was the best Bond ever, who was the best villain, the best title song, etc.
   I have been watching James Bond movies since they first came out, back in the sixties, and I have seen all (or at least large chunks of all) of them. As importantly, I have read all the Bond books written by Ian Fleming. I read them with the same kind of passion as I'd had for the Hardy Boys books. It's almost as if they were the next step up in the puberty process and they were pretty heady stuff for a young lad such as myself!
   Because of this long association with Bond, it is interesting to watch the recent goings-on, the surveys and opinion polls. It is particularly interesting to listen to people try to rate the all-time best Bond portrayal. This is not the first time this has happened, there have been enough different actors playing James Bond that it kind of lends itself to this sort of thing.

Daniel Craig, the "new" guy

   In the past, whenever the question has been asked, the general consensus was that Sean Connery was the quintessential Bond. What I find fascinating now is that this seems to have changed. According to the surveys, now Daniel Craig has taken on the mantle of being the best Bond ever and "Skyfall" has been described as the best of the Bond movies. Now, I haven't seen "Skyfall", nor have I seen any of the Craig performances so I'm not really in a position to offer an opinion. My feeling is that Craig is more than acceptable as James Bond and I am interested in seeing him in the role.
   Acceptable as Craig might be, for me, there will always be a soft spot for Connery. They say that your favourite Bond is your first Bond. Sean Connery was the actor who laid out the Bond template and he is who I visualized as I was reading Fleming's books. In the interim, I have appreciated Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton and, to a lesser extent, Roger Moore--all of whom have played Bond more than once. I hesitate to even mention George Lazenby.
   What they are currently saying about "Skyfall" is that it has not only the wild action you've come to expect from a Bond film but also extremely strong, three-dimensional performances by the principal actors. This has not always been true of Bond films. It also takes the theatrical Bond back closer to the Bond depicted by Ian Fleming.

Ian Fleming, James Bond's originator

   If you have read the books, you know James Bond as a very conflicted individual. He is not superhuman, he falls in love sometimes when he shouldn't, and he can be brainwashed. He is an assassin who occasionally develops soft spots for his targets. He makes copious mistakes. The James Bond of the movies has not always been the James Bond of the books. It appears as though Sam Mendes, "Skyfall's" director, has gone above and beyond in humanizing the main characters and this is why the film works.
   It's hard to imagine the Bond series of films ending. It may not end any time soon. If this is true, then, at some point, they will be looking for a replacement for Daniel Craig. Already this week, there was an article in the paper as to who Craig's successor might be. Sometime in the future, there may be a major controversy as to who was the best Bond--Craig or the new guy? Until I learn otherwise, though, I'm sticking with Connery... 
     

Carsongs

   There are songs I sing that I only sing in the car. I spend a lot of time in my car and, for much of that time, am alone. This gives me the perfect opportunity to break into song.
   I have been singing essentially the same songs for years now. They are songs that, for a lack of a better term, have always struck a chord with me. Many are songs from old albums my parents used to play. A couple of them are folk songs from a live Harry Belafonte album, "Hene ma tov" and "La Bamba". Ironically, one is an Israeli song and the other has whole sections in Spanish, the translations of which I have never actually known but they are both melodic and beautiful and I am happy to sing them anyway.

   Harry Chapin plays a prominent part in my car songbook. "Cats in the Cradle" and "Taxi" (yes, the whole thing--minus the high part) get a lot of play. I also do a specialty version of "Taxi" in high speed, it takes only about a minute and 45 seconds and is good for a giggle, although only one other human has ever heard it and he is with the angels as we speak.
   Various songs from the original album version of "Jesus Christ, Superstar" get frequent airplay, my favourite is "Hosanna" (I sound like Jesus and I sound like Caiphas...)
   There are several songs I like to think of as perfect songs. Their perfection has something to do with their message, their poetry and their symmetry. Included in this particular list of car songs is Leonard Cohen's "Sisters of Mercy", Traffic's "John Barleycorn", Paul Simon's "Duncan" and Paul Stookey's "The Wedding Song (There is Love)".
   Lastly, there are my songs, songs I've made up, some serious, some pretty light-hearted and some downright silly. Some I wrote when I was a teenager and then on into my early twenties, mostly about girls and work and many of them, to coin a phrase, angst-driven. After I discovered that my Mum's remains were interred in common ground at Mt. Pleasant cemetery, I ended up writing a song called "The Buried-In-Common-Ground Blues". I wrote this simply while driving around, without having to put a lot of deep thought into it. Generally, this is when the best songs happen. At the other end of the spectrum, I wrote a song about a guy whose girlfriend won't have sex with him because, as it turns out, she's in love with a tennis player. To make matters even worse for the young man, the tennis player turns out to be Martina Navratilova. Probably the crowning achievement of my car songwriting career has been a take-off on Puccini's great aria from "Turandot"--Nessun Dorma. In my version, the title becomes "I Knew Norma".

   Unfortunately, no one has heard or will likely ever hear any of these self-written car songs. The glory of singing in the car is the anonymity and relative privacy. I do tend to turn down the volume a touch at stoplights and in slow-moving traffic. Once I'm back up to speed, though, all bets are off.
   So if you see me in traffic someday and it looks like I'm talking to a passenger in a very exaggerated and demonstrative sort of way and you look and you notice that there is no passenger...well, that's just me and my car songs!
  
  

Fear of heights

   I believe my first misadventure with heights occurred back when I was about four years old, or thereabouts. There was a swing in a tree out behind the duplex we lived in, in Youngstown, Ohio. My dad was pushing me in it and I was going higher and higher and suddenly was terrified.
   I don't know what terrified me. I know that at the apex of the swing there was really nothing between me and the ground. I'm just not sure how I knew that was a bad thing.

don't look down

   Perhaps I fell one day, from someplace high. Perhaps I fell that day, it was long enough ago that my memory is perhaps cloudy enough to not remember the possibly almost tragic result of my ride on that swing. For whatever reason, the fear of being in a high place has been with me for a long time.
   Fortunately, I have been able to avoid situations where I might actually have to deal with this fear. Any time I have had to deal with it, it has been something which crept up on me that I was unable to plan ahead for.


   Back in 1973, my Dad and my brother Bob and I made a trip back to Gibsons, B.C. for a visit. My mum had passed away in the spring and we just wanted to connect with the family we had there. One day, my Dad, my Uncle Keith and my brother and I decided to climb Soames Hill. Soames Hill towers over the main harbour at Gibsons and provides a wonderful view of the town and surrounding islands. We set out for its base one afternoon and began climbing. At the beginning, it was a fairly gradual ascent. Little by little, though, things got steeper and the landscape more difficult to traverse. At some point, I found myself inching my way up a sheer rock face. It had been a path which simply narrowed, got steeper and then petered out into merely footholds. I had been looking up for the most part, trying to find the easiest way. There stopped being easy ways and I made the mistake of looking down. I was about a hundred feet up in the air and knew, from where I was and what was below me, that I would not survive a fall from there. I was paralyzed, almost sick to my stomach, and seemingly unable to go up or back down. Eventually, my Dad and Uncle talked me through taking very small steps forward and I finally found myself at the top of the rock face. From there, things were easy and we ended up at the peak of Soames Hill, looking out over Gibsons. We took pictures up there but none of them contain any of the real terror I'd undergone getting there.

The view I survived to see.

   I think little bits of that day have followed me around--a watermark of fear had been created which has been etched indelibly on my psyche. Part of the dynamic going on was the feeling I had that falling off that rock face would have ended the almost unbearable fear I had been experiencing. I now wonder how many other people who might have been in similar but perhaps even more dire and inescapable situations simply decided to jump and end the fear.
   I now approach high rise balcony railings very gingerly and test them before I actually lean up against them. I then am able to lean out and look over or simply take in the view. Often, however, I almost forget what I am doing and suddenly what feels like tiny electrical shocks pass up the backs of my legs as I realize once again just how high up I am. I almost imagine there is no railing and I am suspended in space, then falling.
   In what seems to me an unthinkable and almost evil  incongruity, it is much easier to climb to a high place than it is to get back down. I found myself needing to get on to our roof last weekend to check things out before the remnants of Hurricane Sandy blew through. Getting up on the roof was not an issue. My unreasonable fear kicked in, however, when it was time to get back down. I had had a dream earlier that week that I found myself suddenly on a rickety and narrow footbridge suspended over a several hundred foot drop into a river.  I was terrified and wanted to jump, to end the fear. Little bits of this dream came back to me while looking down from the edge of the roof. Jumping off the roof, in a twisted way, seemed almost preferable to the fear involved in being suspended up high for the three or four seconds it would take to orient myself on the top of the ladder. I approached the ladder more than once and had to back off. I have been on the roof several times before and had to keep reminding myself of this as I finally negotiated my way back down.

   I even found it difficult to to Google fear of heights, in order to get a pic or two for this post. It is way too easy to superimpose myself into many of the pictures you find when you do this particular search. Each and every time I got that same electrical pulse up the backs of my legs and an almost metallic taste in my mouth, in my fear.
   This loathing of heights generally does not impede my ability to function normally on a daily basis (apart from making it a bit of an adventure to clean my eaves troughs) and I have never had any particular need to address it in any corrective way. The technical term for a fear of heights is acrophobia. There is apparently some debate as to its cause and treatment. Some believe it occurs as the result of an early childhood trauma, others believe it is an innate part of a person that they are born with. Some believe it has something to do with how we process the visual cues we need in order to perform motor activities. As a brief example, the visual cues available to me at the top of the ladder (grey sky, other rooftops) are vastly different than the ones at the bottom of the ladder (solid earth being one of them).

   Fear of heights is not something I am particularly ashamed of. It is certainly common enough. And it almost makes sense, to have some level of fear of potentially dangerous situations. At least up to the point where it paralyzes you.
   So you will never see me working on a skyscraper and you will never see me piloting a hot air balloon and you will never see me rock climbing in the Grand Canyon. My friends will all be in low places and, hopefully, the only lofty things I will need to deal with will be my aspirations!