A Funny Little Convergence

   The past week and a half has been a little strange--just odd little things happening at strange times.
   I turned sixty just recently and those milestone birthdays tend to make you think back on things in your life just a touch. My boss of over thirty-one years just announced recently that he was retiring. I am in no position to retire myself but his announcement, as you might imagine, has led me to look back at my working life as well. Listening to him talk about his retirement plans has also made me just a little wistful as to what my plans for the future might be.
   Then, as I'm standing in a Tim Horton's with one of the people I support this past week, the lady ahead of me recognizes my voice, turns around and it is Irene, one of the Alice Saddy staff who worked there back when I first started. I hadn't run into her in probably eight or nine years. She, as well, is just in the middle of preparing for retirement and was amazed that I still worked at Alice. We chatted briefly and then went our separate ways. This, of course, gives me pause for even more reflection on my life.

"The Beatles Are Back" into my little convergence...

   The day after that, I get the chance opportunity to attend a performance at Budweiser Gardens with Doralyn. For the past few years, she and a friend have been purchasing a subscription to "Broadway in London", a series of musical performances put on at the Gardens. That particular night, Doralyn's friend was unable to attend and I became the fortunate recipient of her ticket. The performance we saw was by a group called "Rain",  a Beatles tribute band. I was happy enough to go but was somewhat prepared for this show to possibly be mildly lame--honestly, how do you do justice to the Beatles? Well, I was blown away. They looked like the Beatles (from a distance) and, more importantly, they sounded like the Beatles. Part of the multi-media presentation involved film clips from the early years of rock 'n' roll, leading up to the arrival of the Beatles. Beyond that, there were also film clips from Beatles T.V. and concert appearances. Some of what I saw was stuff I'd seen the first time around, particularly the T.V. footage. I was wowed, even more so than concerts generally make me.
   It struck me as I sat there in Budweiser Gardens, that this, then, was yet another convergence of my past with my present.

12 hours a day, six days a week...

   Earlier on this week, a picture of the merry-go-round at Springbank Park showed up on Facebook. It was a picture taken many years ago when the merry-go-round was in its original location, near the river bank. I spent the summer of '72 running that merry-go-round and its sudden appearance on Facebook struck me as yet another criss-crossing of time and memory. Doralyn was five years old that summer and tells me that she used to ride the merry-go-round all the time, if you want to count that as a convergence.
   Now that I think of it, the week before last, I was with another person I support at the Bay in White Oaks Mall and we were buying something in the menswear department. We were served by a gentleman named Ken, at least that's what his name tag said. Ken doesn't know it, but he and I go back about 40 years. Back in '70 or '71 my sort-of girlfriend at the time called me up, terribly excited. She'd just been to the Simpsons store downtown and had seen a salesclerk who looked just like Art Garfunkel, of Simon and Garfunkel fame. At the time, she and I were huge fans of Simon and Garfunkel and she just had to take me downtown to show him to me. We made it downtown and had to lurk around the menswear department until this guy made an appearance (I think I pretended I was shopping for something) and when he finally showed up I had to admit that he did look quite a bit like Art Garfunkel. Well, that was Ken and Ken still works in the men's department, more than forty years later and, in fact, served us two weeks ago! I guess that counts as a bit of a convergence, although, frankly, I wasn't even thinking about that chance meeting when I sat down to write this blog post and I suppose the fact that Ken was my Dad's name and Ken is the name of my aforementioned boss who's retiring seems almost irrelevant.
   I suppose all of the above could simply be coincidental. I can't help but think, though, of all those old stories about ancient prophecies which predicted that, on a certain convergence of events, monumental things would happen in the universe.
   I'm not sure if I'm prepared for monumental things to happen in my life and I don't know if any of these intersecting occurrences are the slightest bit significant. I suspect they are all merely incidental chance.
  Unless, of course, they mean that soon someone will arrive in the world who is all-knowing and powerful and who can use their abilities to steer us all toward world peace. And that his name will be Ken...? Who knows?

Apple

Nowhere NEAR finished...

   There are really only two ways to eat an apple. Now, I'm talking about apples as a snack only because, of course, there are many ways to cook and eat apples and they are all delicious. For my purposes today, I am talking about heading out to the kitchen because you've got a food hankering, taking a look around, and then deciding that an apple would be a healthy choice.
   At this point you have two basic options---you can cut up the apple into slices or you can simply grab the apple, wedge it into your mouth, and start tearing off chunks. 
   If you cut up the apple into slices and eat it, it's gone.
   If you decide to eat it as is, right out of your hand, it will last forever.
   And ever. And ever.
   You can never actually finish eating an apple when you eat it that way. You may think you've finished and you may set it aside and go back to what you're doing but then, maybe twenty minutes later, you're looking at that apple core again and you can see one tiny little bit of it still left. And if you can get at least one corner of a tooth anchored on to it, then you  still have an apple you can eat.
   You may look like a beaver or a raccoon while you're doing this, rolling around a little stump of a morsel with your tiny little paws, but you're still eating that apple.
   At some point you may feel like you're truly done with it and you'll set aside. You might even throw it out. If you don't throw it out, however, and just leave it where you were sitting, it's possible that it will still be there the next day. It will be all brown, for sure, and you'll think to yourself oops, I forgot to throw that out but then, looking at it, you'll think to yourself whaddya know, there's still a little left and you'll munch on it again. It's a renewable food source.

STILL some good, little bits!

   Have you ever been rooting around under the furniture or maybe behind an appliance, looking for something that rolled under there and you find an old apple core, fermenting? And have you thought to yourself hmmm, if I just wiped off the dust bunny I could pry off one more bite? Sure you have. And, if you're like me, you went ahead and did it. Because apples last forever.
   If you take an apple, peel the skin off, carve a little face onto it and then just set it aside somewhere where critters won't get at it, you will eventually have a little person. It will look like a wizened, tiny old man or woman but you will be able to dress it up, put miniature spectacles on it, maybe a little cap or bonnet, and you will have a small version of a human being. And this human being will last longer than you're going to because apples last forever.
   There are places in the world where famine is a perpetual problem. It has occurred to me that apples would be the solution. Why not airlift apples into these places? I'm not thinking tons and tons of apples. I'm thinking likely one bag would do.
   In retrospect, I wonder why there are other fruits and vegetables at the grocery store. You eat a carrot, it's gone. You eat an orange, it's gone. Same with celery, grapes, potatoes, squash, you name it, once you're done eating those other foods, they're gone. Not so with apples.

The Future

   I've heard that, in the event of a nuclear holocaust, the only livng thing able to survive will be cockroaches. I can envision a tiny cockroach supper table, with little cockroach kids and a cockroach dad sitting around it. The cockroach mom walks in and places a huge tray of food on the table and all the cockroach kids moan "Aww, mom, apples again...?!"

Kika In The Bar

   Last weekend, Doralyn and the boys and I headed to Uxbridge, Ontario to stay for a couple of days and help Doralyn's brother, James, celebrate his fiftieth birthday.
   Part of this celebration involved attending the King Henry's Arms pub in Uxbridge and watch James perform along with his band, Fourplay. Fourplay specializes in vintage rock and comprises some very talented performers. The evening itself was billed as James' birthday party.
   As part of the birthday celebration, James' daughter Shakira, aka Kika, and his son, Zoey, got up in front of the audience to play and sing a number. Zoey played the guitar and Kika sang. The song they performed was "The A Team" by Ed Sheeran. If you're not familiar with it (I wasn't) then check it out on You Tube. Their opportunity to showcase their talents came between Fourplay sets. The bar was packed and the crowd had really been rocking, dancing and singing along with the band. When the band stopped, the crowd essentially maintained its boisterousness, completely unaware for the most part that two young performers still had a song to do.


Kika and Zoey in the King Henry's Arms

   In spite of all the noise and lack of attention, Zoey began to play and Kika began to sing. They could barely be heard. I was not surprised, given the nature of small-town bars, that people would just continue on in party mode, in between sets of a rock band. I was however very annoyed at the total lack of respect for the two performers who were trying to do a special song for their Dad on his birthday. I was about thirty seconds away from raising my own voice above the din and telling people to shut up when the reason for this blog post happened.
   Kika's voice took over.
   Her singing got a little louder and, all of the sudden, its pitch and timbre rose above the general cacophony and stopped people. Without any outward admonition that I could hear being directed at it, the crowd ceased its rowdiness and listened to the song being sung. The quieter they got, the more forcefully the song took over.  I found this very gratifying and, honestly, quite magical.
   You need to understand that Kika is a 13 year-old girl. She is tall and willowy and you can imagine that at some point in the not-too-distant future she will be causing havoc in the hearts of young boys. But on a Saturday night in a downstairs bar in Uxbridge, Ontario she was just a mere slip of a girl standing up to a crowd of celebratory, partying drinkers and, in an ephemeral moment, stopping them in their tracks.     
  
  

Turning Sixty

      About a week ago, I turned sixty. Anywhere from about fifty-eight on, I started to consider myself as being sixty so the fact that I was now chronologically sixty seemed rather anti-climactic.
   So here I am in my sixties. Still, it doesn't seem that different, as a matter of fact I feel as good as I've felt in a long time. This due, at least partially, to having taken up running and cutting out as many wheat products as I can keep track of.
   I do need to recover from my birthday just a touch. The fact that my bro-in-law's fiftieth followed right on its heels has made for a lot of extra eating this past week and I'm sure I'm up a couple of pounds. Good news is that Spring is almost here along with a whole bunch of added opportunities to get out there and be active.
   A lot of people were surprised when I told them how close I was to being sixty. Apparently I don't look like I'm that old, which is fine by me. I suppose it's also likely I don't act that old, which is also fine with me. Myself, I'm not really sure how people in their sixties are supposed to look and act anyway. As a teenager, I always thought of people in their sixties as sedentary and senile and ready for retirement. Anyone in their seventies or eighties was essentially worm-fodder, on hold.
   What it boiled down to was that I figured things stopped when you got old. Sports stopped, sex stopped, creativity stopped. A person's viability stopped.
   Well....not so!
   For me, the only thing that's changed is I'm a little balder, a little greyer, the hearing's gone a touch and I occasionally wrestle with my memory. The balding and greying's been going on for years now so they don't seem all that new. The hearing's kind of new but I expect it can be fixed and the memory can also be worked on.
   I am surrounded by many more young people than old and this, I think, has slowed the aging process a touch. My peers are young, or at least younger than I am, and I feel a part of their group. Apart from the occasional reminder that I am as old as their parents, I tend to forget I am as old as their parents.
   I have had a couple of philosophical talks with people about the aging process and turning sixty. During these a couple of the old standbys have been spouted. One of them is you are only as old as you feel. Another one is sixty is the new forty. Personally, the new standby for me is feel what you feel and don't try to attach an age to it! Do what you feel like doing and if that thing you feel like doing is something you did when you were a teenager then that's fine. If that thing you feel like doing is something a grandparent might do, then that's fine too. In other words, don't feel like you need to act your age.
   I don't think I'm saying anything that's new here, either. The aging process has changed so much and there are so many of us (I am one of the Baby Boomers) reaching these milestone ages at the same time that old adages are for the most part out the window. I play in a ball hockey league full of twenty and thirty-year olds and the last thing I want from them is their respect because I'm an elder. I want to be jostled and I want to be checked and I want to be covered when I'm open because, if I'm not covered, I'm going to score on a goalie who's thirty-five years younger than me. That's just me being me and not a sixty-year-old, I guess.
   I am a product of good genes. My Dad was kind of an ageless wonder and I hope to emulate him. Doralyn, my wife, is fifteen years younger than me but, frankly, looks as though she could be thirty years younger. This, as well, helps keep me young. It is also incentive to be healthier and doing what I can do to be a little more vital. There are days when being more vital is a bit of a struggle but, hell, I'm sixty, dontcha know?!
   With all of this, I am now considering life at seventy and beyond. Honestly, I don't feel any different at sixty than I did at fifty. I can't think of a truly good reason why I might feel any different a decade from now. Frankly, I'm more worried about my mind than my body. What might be developed in the coming decade, however, to improve both our mental and physical states is up for conjecture but I'm betting it will be life-altering. My aim is to simply be there to find out!
  
  
  
  

Hypocrisy

   I attended a funeral the other day. It was a fairly standard sort of affair, a United Church minister officiated and the funeral itself was for another minister. There were Bible passages read and alluded to and prayers said. I listened to the readings attentively and bowed my head during the moments of prayer.
   At the end of the service, the friend I was sitting beside asked me how I felt about all of this, seeing as how she was aware that I didn't believe in God. I suggested to her that this might be a good blog topic and this has led us to where we are now.
   This is not the first time I have been asked this question but it is the first time I have been asked by someone other than myself.
   I do give myself a little flak for participating in religious ceremonies such as weddings and funerals. I attended a candlelight service this past Christmas Eve and I argued with myself the whole time. I argued with myself before, during and after the service but, at the same time, I understood the process I was engaged in.
   It's a process called getting along with your friends and loved ones.
   In a world where you sometimes need to pick and choose your battles, there is sometimes room for accommodating people important to you. In a perfect world, your friends and loved ones will already be aware of your thoughts on such matters and will appreciate the fact that you might be sacrificing a small morsel of your principles in order to join in with them.
   That being said, I still feel hypocritical sometimes.
   Part of this feeling stems from the fact that I do spend a little of my time scrutinizing people who practise their faith religiously. I find myself looking for inconsistencies and motivation and contradictions with what they think, do and say. I'm not really sure why I do this. I'm not really sure why I pick out the religiously fervent when there are all sorts of other groups or individuals who are seemingly inexplicably driven by their beliefs, as well.
   The difference might be that religiously fervent people are involved in a process which has them engaging in all sorts of ritualistic behaviour, policies, guidance and decision-making  based on an unwavering faith in unseen forces, invisible and unprovable deities, and word-of-mouth ancient legends. I find it impossible not to scrutinize this, just a touch.
   The very faithful set a high bar for themselves. I am not a theologian in any way, but even my basic understanding of some of the tenets of different religions around the world tells me that it would be very difficult to faithfully live up to any of them, on a regular basis. This, then, opens up even more reason for scrutiny as you occasionally seem to come across people engaged in behaviour which runs contradictory to the stated beliefs of their religions. This just seems hypocritical to me.
   Is it any less hypocritical for me, then, to do the reverse, to  observe religious practices and to visit places of worship in which I have no belief? It is times like this when all the self-argument starts.
   Had I not been so clear about my disbelief in God and lack of faith in organized religion so often in past blog posts then my friend in the funeral home would not even have thought to ask me how I felt about participating in that service. Because I have been so clear on this issue, though, she must have felt as though questioning me about this was equitable and fair. I cannot and would not argue with her. If I am going to feel enabled to speak out then I must be prepared to engage them that hear me. 
   In the same way, I am spurred on to question the vocal faithful, the ones who praise their deities openly and freely, even more than I might question the ones who go about their faith silently yet demonstratively. Perhaps it is because they seem so willing to engage.
   Whenever I do a blog post of any kind, I like to include a picture or two, for visual appeal. Tonight I went to Google Images and simply typed in "religious hypocrisy". More than any other image search I can remember doing, I was assailed by the sheer anger many of the pictures portrayed. The topic is clearly controversial, heartfelt and, apparently, simmers within large portions of the population. Frankly, I felt that posting many of them here would have tainted the issue I was trying to present. I went back and omitted the word "religious" and got what seemed like a much calmer response. This obviously tells you something.
   Whether at some point I might change my personal policy about participating in religious services is up in the air. I am not against standing up for what I believe in but, at the same time, if my mere presence and participation in some form of service will add to the collective ability to assuage people who desperately need it then I can only see myself continuing to do this.
   This being said, though, now that I know that I am occasionally being listened to I may have to start walking the walk. 
     
  


  

I Am Woman

The change I've made...

   Well...two wives, working in agency dominated by women and many years later, it's finally happened. I walked into the bathroom today, saw that the toilet seat was up and I thought to myself now that's just wrong!
   I used to hardly ever worry about whether the toilet seat was up or down. I also used to scoff at the ladies when they'd tell stories about lowering themselves onto the toilet only to find that the seat was up and they were perched there on cold, unyielding (and usually wet from you-know-what) porcelain. I always thought to myself oh god, look before you plop yourself down!
   I don't feel that way anymore. If I'm at home, I'm just as happy to sit down myself when using the toilet, regardless of my reason for using it. So, when I walk into the bathroom and see the seat in an upright position..well...it's an imposition. I now have to stoop to lower it and I've pretty well arrived at the non-stooping age these days.
   Also, after trying all the manly brands of deodorant, I've discovered that the only kind that actually works is one of the dainty women's brands. Until now, I didn't really advertise this.
   I prefer woman talk, as well. For whatever reason, I'm happier sitting around chatting with a bunch of women than a bunch of men. I can hold my own with the menfolk (unless cars are the topic) but I still would rather be with the women.

...and NOT the change I've made.

   Don't get me wrong, though. If I were a woman, I'd definitely be a gay woman, no two ways about it. As much as some men find the whole gay women thing reprehensible, it only makes total sense to me. Why wouldn't you want to make love with a woman, for goodness sake?
   Hopefully, those of you who I see on any kind of a regular basis will not now be looking askance at me the next time our paths cross. I assure you, I am essentially the same Brian you have always known. And if you'd like to believe that I chivalrously left the toilet seat down for you, then be my guest! 

Grief-Sharing

   One of my favourite blogs to check out on Sundays is called PostSecret. At some point in the future I will likely dedicate a blog post to it but not today. The reason why I bring it up is because one of the postcards they highlited today was from someone who stated that ever since their dad had passed away two years ago they found it got them very angry when, on Facebook, people "overshare" their grief for the passing of loved ones.
   There was a fair amount of irony to this as I had just, the previous day, posted a bunch of pics of my Dad to commemorate the fact that it was the first anniversary of his passing. Not only that but a friend of mine had also posted a remembrance of his Dad today, for the very same reason.
   I am pretty sure that neither of us overshared our grief. I can't speak for my friend but, for me, grief didn't even enter in to it. In my case, I was simply honouring my Dad's memory one year later.
   I also suspect that for the person who shared their secret above, this was not what they were referring to, either. I suspect that they were referring to those people who go on and on, publicly on Facebook, with their immediate grief at the passing of a loved one.
   After checking the memory banks, I was personally unable to think of an instance when this had happened within my circle of Facebook friends. I can think of other times when I have been annoyed at the seemingly endless updates on new kittens, new babies, new relationships, jobs, hobbies and bodily functions. Not so much on grief, though.
   I'd be interested in knowing if this PostSecret person felt the same way before their dad passed. I can imagine that every reference to a loved one passing made on Facebook would only strike a raw nerve after you'd just had one of your own loved ones die.
   Grief-sharing (or sharing of any kind) on social media is still a reasonably new thing. If you're a teenager, you likely feel as though it's been around your whole life. This is pretty close to the truth. For many of the rest of us, though, grief-sharing was a natural process which happened once people found out someone close to you had passed away. Rather than post something, hopefully you had the opportunity to say something in person and then get an immediate response from someone who was right there in front of you. You might even get a real hug. Very seldom did you get the opportunity to over-share your grief.
   These days, of course, grief-sharing is quick and, physically, easy. You are able to say something about a loved one and then get an immediate and supportive response. Support is always something wonderful to have at times like this and some people will crave it more than others. The people who crave it may go out of their way to get it, almost without being able to help themselves and likely also truly unaware of it.
   Ultimately, I believe grief is something handled privately. There may be a sense of relief in receiving a multitude of on-line condolences but, when it comes right down to it, grieving is a process which needs to occur deep within a person and no amount of superficial, online interaction will really get you there.
   As I mentioned before, my Dad passed away a year ago. At the time, I was engaged in a pretty heavy-duty blogging routine while I detailed the whole process of Dad's decline. This served a dual purpose--it kept his friends and loved ones abreast of all that was going on with him and, at the same time, was a cathartic  exercise for me. It is also now a record of his own end of days. I recently re-read that particular series of blog posts and it occurred to me that, more than any scrapbook, photo album or memento it got me as close to a viable remembrance of my Dad that I could possibly have wanted.   

Welcome, Audience!

   I know that sometimes it must seem as though I spent about twenty minutes writing the blog post you're in the middle of reading but, in actuality, it's a pretty time-consuming sort of undertaking. For me anyway.
   Some of the longer ones were likely written over a day or two and even some of the shorter ones probably took at least a couple of hours.
   At the same time I'm doing all of this, I sometimes find myself wondering who's really reading these things?
   Blogger does a pretty good job of keeping me informed as to how many views each blog post gets and it's quite fun to watch the numbers mount. I also get to find out what different countries people are viewing the blog in and what kinds of operating systems are being used. If, by chance, someone has arrived at the blog by using a search engine, generally Google, I also get to see the words they typed in for their search.
   What I don't get is names and faces.
    This actually doesn't bother me too much, I don't really need to know who's reading but it's kinda nice to know that anybody's reading!
   And, for the most part, not a lot of people are reading. I figure that one way or the other an average of about eighteen people take a gander at "Neanderings" whenever there is a new posting.
   Given the subject matter, obviously, more people will view one blog post than the other. The all-time leader right at the moment is the post I did about the death of Christopher Hitchens. Due to his celebrity status, people were rushing around the internet, trying to find pictures or information on the man. In cases like this, a lot of cross-referencing goes on and people end up on "Neanderings", sometimes even by accident. To date, close to three hundred people have viewed the Hitchens post.
   At the other end of the scale, I wrote a post on "Strides", my other blog, that only two people looked at. This particular post took a long time to write and contained all sorts of info about proper running form. But nobody read it. There are a handful of posts in both blogs that very few people have read.
   Part of the enjoyment in writing a blog is having an audience and the bigger the audience the better. The other part, though, is simply the writing.
   You have to love to write! I would likely still continue to blog even if only four or five people were reading. Back in the mid to late eighties, I was writing poetry. I went through the process of sending poems off to literary magazines in an effort to find publication. If you've ever attempted to get something published, you know how frustrating a process this can be. I did have some mild success, managing to get a handful of poems published. This, however, doesn't mean that anyone actually read them. At least, with blogging, you get to find out if you're reaching an audience. This alone helps justify doing it!
   One of the suggestions to increasing your blog audience is to "target" it. While "Strides" sort of targets people who are interested in running, "Neanderings" targets absolutely no one. I write about whatever pops into my mind that I have more than three consecutive thoughts about. You never really know what you're gonna get when you sit down to read a "Neanderings" post and that is simply the nature of the beast.

   For the fun of it, I went back through the list of blog posts just to see if there were any common threads that might make it easier to direct them at a target audience. It couldn't be done. I have never seen such a mishmash of disconnected thought and inclination. It's hard to even list examples. If you're reading the blog now (and it's fairly safe to assume that you are) just go off to the right, find the blog archive, and start picking years and months and fight out what's in there! It's kind of the definition of eclectic, if I do say so myself. Whether that's a good thing or not, audience-wise, is hard to say.