The Bear, #MeToo, and, well, me too....

   True story.
   A few years ago, I was walking through the forest, alone, and I came across a bear. It was a mother bear and she had a cub with her. From all I knew of wilderness safety, this was a bad combination. I stopped dead in my tracks and watched them. My mind, however, was racing a mile a minute. It was going through all the small bits of data it carried regarding bears--- their tendencies, behaviours and inclinations.
   I had been in close proximity to wild bears before but it was always from the safety of a car, stopped by the edges of mountain highways. I had never been on foot, alone, with only the fresh morning air between me and a bear.
   What I knew in that moment was that the bear was the one who would be deciding what happened next. I knew I could neither fight nor outrun it. 
   Without the presence of the bear, the situation was as

benign as you could have made it. The sun was filtering down through the treetops, the forest was moist and primeval, and the air was easy to breathe. With a bear and her cub added to the equation, however, I was suddenly faced with some terrible possibilities, the consequences of which might leave my life seriously compromised or, possibly, over.
   The mother bear saw me at the same time I saw her. Neither of us lost eye contact for what seemed like an eternity. Blessedly, the cub had no idea I existed and was intent on exploring its surroundings. Its curiosity took it across the trail I'd been on and back up into the forest. The mother briefly continued to look at me but then decided to follow her cub. I gave them a minute to get further into the forest and then I hurriedly continued on my way.
   It did not occur to me then but it strikes me now that this must be what it's like for women to travel a landscape which, as much as the forest is made for the bear, is almost entirely advantageous to men---men of many ilks and dispositions.
   I, obviously, am a man and part of a subgroup which benefits from a great many things not always afforded to women. Of all of these, personal safety is perhaps the area in which there is the largest chasm of difference. For the most part, men go where they want with no fear. Until, perhaps, you are in the forest with a bear.
   When you are in the forest with a bear, you are at the mercy of whatever natural instinct strikes them. You have no idea when (or what) they might have eaten last, what the nature was of the interaction they had with the last human they saw, or, more simply, whether they were having a bad day or not. If you are lucky, you get to safely share their environment with them. If you have picked a bad day to be in the forest, then you are maimed or dead.
   In a way, is this not the same for some, many or even all women? Whether or not it is at the forefront of their fears, is it not at least subliminally there, whispering warnings? As benign as the setting may be, if you are a woman in close proximity to a man you are unfamiliar with is it not that much different than coming across that bear in the forest? And how many hundreds of thousands of women have found themselves in the forest, on a bad day?
   

It is now the era of #MeToo and #TimesUp. In an age when communication between people is both instant and constant, women have been able to rally around these hashtags and share their stories and fears. Because of this, both collectively and individually, they have found the ability to rise up against the evil which men sometimes do and have almost always gotten away with. #MeToo has also exposed the pervasiveness of male sexism---at any given point in their lives, pretty well all women could justifiably claim to have been victimized in some way, shape or form.
   In part because of #MeToo, patterns of male behaviour have been laid bare, open for inspection, and many of us men have been found lacking. We have also been found complicit---many times by simply looking away. We have heard stories from other men about the many ways they might have abused women, or continue to do so, and we have remained silent.
   In the ongoing aftermath of all this, many men, I believe, are now looking back at their past interactions with women in an attempt to determine whether at some point they might have strayed. Some men may have done this in an effort to predict possible fallout headed their way. Other men, simply in an effort to understand how their attitudes and behaviours in the past can be changed for the better.
   As a man, you can learn if you pay attention. I have a female friend on Facebook I've known for many years. She has an amazing smile, in my opinion, but she rarely uses it when she posts photos. In the past, I have gone out of my way to point this out to her, while commenting on the occasional pic. It has only been since the emergence of #MeToo and the accompanying discourse on latent sexism, that I've come to realize how inappropriate it is for me to do this, regardless of how well I know this woman and and how light-hearted our exchanges seem. So I've stopped making this mistake and am actually contemplating an apology. It is simply not my place to offer an opinion to someone on how they can more closely live up to what my expectations are on how physically attractive I think they could be.
   This seems like just a small thing to me but I also think it is indicative of what hopefully the new climate around gender roles is bringing---men rethinking how they act and react around women. And if you are on social media and you are paying attention, women will actually provide you with do's and don'ts.
   For a moment, back to the bear in the forest. 
   I drew the comparison between me encountering that bear in the forest and women interacting with men in common, everyday environments. I'm not sure how far-fetched or unrealistic comparing those two things may sound to you but the fact of the matter is this---for that length of time I was in that forest with that bear, my life was basically upside-down. Whatever vestige of male privilege I'd carried with me prior to that moment slipped away into nothing. No amount of physical strength or intellectual reasoning was going to come between me and that bear. If the bear thought it had any good reason to seriously hurt or kill me, well, that's what was going to happen. I would have done nothing wrong but having been in the wrong place at the wrong time, with a predator. Is this not sometimes what women face? 
   I'm going to present yet another metaphor or scenario which, as far-fetched as it might sound, I think might actually be applicable. As women walk around in this world they are faced with about 50% of the rest of the population being male. Out of that 50%, perhaps 75% of men are capable of performing whatever act of violence they wish upon whatever women they encounter. As a man, I can only think of one sphere of existence wherein, on a daily basis, I might have to live my life faced with similar odds of having to face violence or possible death. Prison. 

Is this what it's like for women, in a man's world?

   These are not numbers which will ever change and I doubt that many of us view life this way. But, for many women, this is a reality and for many women it will become a reality. As men, we need to understand our role in all of this and come to grips with some of the changes which need to happen.
   This will probably screw us up. How we treat women (how we treat people, in general) is something we started to learn basically as we were lying on our mothers' bellies for the first time. We learned from how our mother treated us and then watching how she was treated.  We have witnessed the many ways power can be used. We have spent our lives watching how the people around us used or abused relationships and we have formed behaviours around all this which will now be difficult to change. There will be confusion and there will be anger and we will rail against what seems to suddenly be an injustice we don't understand.
   Make no mistake about it, though, women will force a change.  Women will save themselves. Along the way, men will need to provide fewer reasons for women to be wary of us. We will need to come to grips with masculinity also meaning protecting, enabling, and respecting as much as it does anything else. We can do this if we just think. What we can't become, or continue to be, is the bear in the forest.
   
   
   

   

Strange Boy

   It was this past All Hallows' Eve when the Strange Boy appeared, literally plopped down in our midst, almost from out of the darkness of nowhere.
   It was the spacesuit which held him apart from all the others who'd trundled up our steep wooden steps. Some otherworldly force (his Dad, I think) had enabled him to levitate past those foreboding steps and land there in front of us.
   He had never been there before and looked about at this strange new place, our entranceway, in wonder and possibly a little bewilderment.
   When he landed among us, I was in our kitchen, cleaning up a few of the leftover dishes from dinner. Doralyn had gone to the door when this Strange Boy arrived and it was her loud, gasping ohmigod which then alerted me to the presence of something new and wonderful in our house.
  I investigated and came face-to-face with the visitor from out there, as well. I had the same reaction as Doralyn when I saw him--my jaw dropped a little and the rarefied air he'd brought along with him caused me to inhale fully and deeply.
   He looked like he might have been one and a half years old and had simply one of the most the beautiful, tiny faces we had ever encountered. This same face peered out from his velour space helmet and as he looked up at us his mouth dropped open, in wonderment, as well. He was not quite sure why he had landed here and he alternated between staring up at us and then turning to his Dad's voice coming to him from outside. His visit was brief and, insofar as he had obtained quite a bit more candy than any of the other kids had, his mission was complete. Back out onto the launching pad of our porch and then flying away into the darkness, and his Dad's arms, he went.

   I returned to the kitchen sink and the almost-completed dishes. It was here that I began to feel the effects of the Strange Boy's visit---suddenly my eyes began to well up with tears and this choking sensation took over my throat. This tiny visitor had done something unexpected in the short time he was here and I was at a bit of a loss as to exactly how this had happened.          I am not totally immune to the cuteness of young children as I encounter them but, for the most part, this entails complimenting parents on how adorable their child is, and maybe squeezing the odd chubby cheek or two. This Strange Boy was different, however. 
   I am still at a bit of a loss as to being able to adequately explain how I felt while he was here. A part of me wanted to envelop him in our world and, if had stayed with us, that might have been fine. It also could have been that he was a bit of a time traveler, that somehow he was perhaps connected to my kids when they were that age. The other possibility with this theory was that he came from the future. All I remember was that he didn't seem sure why he was there and, as much as his father thought he had just landed for the candy, I'm not so certain either how and why this Strange Boy came to visit, from out of the dark and past the stars.

Coffee: Part Three

      This morning I went to make a coffee. I have been brewing myself a coffee in the morning for about...well...a hundred years now, non-stop.
   In the olden days, I used to throw a coffee filter into the basket of my coffee maker, add as much of my favourite coffee as I wanted, a cup of tap water, turn on the coffeemaker and I was done.
   These days, I brew my coffee in a Keurig. You take a k-cup, throw it in the machine, press a button and in about thirty seconds you have a cup of coffee. And that's about as simple as it gets and, seemingly, way simpler than it used to be, with my coffee maker.
   Here are the catches, though.

My Keurig, in action.

  With a Keurig, you end up with a garbage can full of non-recyclable k-cups. The reservoir runs out about once a day and you have to either haul it to a water source or haul the water source to the reservoir. I use water from a Brita filter and filling the reservoir with Brita water completely empties the Brita pitcher. You cannot fill a Brita pitcher all at once--you need to wait for the first batch of water to drain through before you can put in the last batch. With a Keurig, you get one cup of coffee, which then immediately begins to cool. So that I can save a little money, we purchased re-usable k-cups which I then can fill with my favourite coffee  but I can only do this after I've emptied it out from the last time I used it and then rinsed it thoroughly.
   Okay. You tell me. Which system seems easier to you?
   If, by any chance, you replied "coffeemaker" then you might have something there.

In storage---at least temporarily.

   The other drawback to a Keurig is that it's a one-cup-at-a-time kind of a system. If there is only you and you only want one cup, then I guess this is okay. If, however, you have friends over or you're pulling an all-niter and anticipating needing several cups of coffee, then a Keurig becomes problematic.
   There is something both inviting and soothing about a brewed pot of coffee---the aroma tends to fill the house and even the sound of it brewing acts as a savoury precursor to the actual act of consuming the coffee. There is some comfort, as you drink, in knowing that more is waiting there for you, warmly, in the pot.
   So I am at a crossroads, coffee-drinking-wise. In the social scheme of things, it seems like a step backwards to return to the coffeemaker. Pretty well everywhere you go, there is a Keurig on a counter, sitting there, glistening. At the same time, I occasionally miss the "good ole days". Is there room for compromise---Keurigs and coffeemakers, side by side, on the same kitchen counter...?
   

Backing Up

   My wife, Doralyn, likes to back into parking spots. I prefer to just drive straight in.
   She enjoys the ability to drive right back out and be on her way and I enjoy the ability to back out into a wide open space, with no fear of scraping bumpers, bushes or buildings.

You're safe...

   Somehow or other, after having driven for the better part of forty-five years, I have never mastered backing up. I always find it subtly disorienting, having to shift around in my seat (I'm not as nimble as I once was), using mirrors (how truly trustworthy can they be?) and using my backwards death protection...er...depth perception... in order to get me and my car properly aligned and in the right spot. It's pretty well akin to asking me to look at three things at once when I generally have my hands full with one. 
 



You're not safe...

   I would get better if I did it more often. My skills are such that, with enough practice, I think I would be an excellent backer-upper. But, really, what adult practises backing up?
   My brother-in-law, Mike, can attest to my poor backing up skills. One day back in the early seventies, not long after we'd met and he was at our house in London visiting, I walked out to the driveway, hopped into my mother's car and promptly backed it up into Mike's Datsun 240Z--a sporty little car I had suddenly made less sporty. I'm not sure how you walk out to a driveway and back into a car that's  parked directly behind you, in the summer, in the sunlight. It's not like I clipped it while trying to drive around it---no, I drove directly into it.
   Mike would also be quite happy to recount the tale of me backing Doralyn's car down the concrete steps leading to one of the lower levels of the resort Mike and my sister, Jayne, own in Parry Sound. We had been staying in one of their cabins and, on our way out, I had been trying to back up and drive out forwards up the short hill leading away from our cabin. I totally misjudged where the steps were and ended up driving down the first two! It was only by the grace of Mike's pick-up and a sturdy chain that we were able to be extricated.
   These two offences are the ones which stick out in my mind the most but they do not account for the countless close calls where I avoided obstacles on the left only to discover how close I'd been to disaster on the right.
   This is why I drive forward into tight spaces, if at all possible. I don't even have a good handle on my own driveway. I can't tell you how many times I've backed one of our cars into the driveway only to discover I was now angled thirty or more degrees to either the north or south and quickly had to re-arrange things before being spotted.

 

   My new Honda is equipped with something I've never had before---a backup camera. Oh joy, one more distraction while I'm trying to do the backing up thing. Backup cameras are excellent if you're trying to avoid the suicidal maniac who was waiting for you to hop in your car so he could throw himself down behind your rear bumper. Apart from that, checking your mirrors and looking back over your shoulder should really be all you need to do.
   I guess I need to leave you with words of advice here. If you happen to see me driving toward you some day, then have no fear, the world is unfolding as it should. But if, perchance, I happen to be driving backwards.......                                

 

I Am A Blasphemer (Apparently)

   In my most recent post, I talk about the idea that you need to consider who is going to be reading or listening to the things you write and say. You then need to understand that the things you say and do may bear some consequence.
   In an extremely ironic twist, just a couple of days after I wrote this, a comment popped up which was attached to a post I wrote last year called "Christians in the park". There is a link to that post here, if you weren't one of the ones that read it the first time around. Essentially, the post described my distrust of groups or individuals who seem to have used Christianity as a cornerstone for either their own gain or as part of a political agenda. I then cited examples, as quickly as they popped into my head, of some of history's worst offenders.
   The person's two-line comment appeared at the end of the post but I have since deleted it, thinking that readers might attempt to link back to its author's blog and give the person a sense of audience he or she might not deserve. The comment described the post as "pure blasphemy" and then added that "God will surely repay" me. In my brief reply to this person, I quoted one or two nice things I did say about Christianity and then left it at that.
   The person who commented did so anonymously. You were able to follow a link back to his or her own blog but it was a blog in title only, had no content of its own and did nothing to actually identify its author. I also have no idea if its author read my follow-up comment, which has since been deleted as well.
   In my three years of writing "Neanderings", this is actually the first truly negative comment I have encountered. Because of this, I was initially taken aback. I then had to remind myself of my own warning to others---be prepared for the consequences of what you say and do.
   I have personal friends and acquaintances who are Christians and who demonstrate this and espouse it on a regular basis. I have never received a negative comment or even an inquiry from them as to things I've said about Christianity in the past. It could well be that they simply have not followed the blog (not everyone I know actually reads it) and therefore have never questioned me about it. Apart from this particular post, I have written on the subject several times in "Neanderings". I think this is because I often find myself wondering about, for lack of a better term, the "meaning of life". I wonder what, if anything, lies beyond. Because this is an underlying current, I write about it. I attempt to be fair when I do this and I attempt to explain myself clearly.
   If you go back and read "Christians in the park" very carefully, you hopefully will get the point I attempted to make. I can see where it's possible that someone might consider it to be "blasphemy" if you only were to consider some of the associations I make in it and if you only read the accompanying pictures I culled from the internet. It could be that the post is viewed as tainted simply because of those things.
   If anything, this episode has reminded me that there is an audience out there and that they may have strong opinions of their own. My biggest discomfort here is that the person who left me the comment chose to do so anonymously. I, on the other hand, do not have an issue with identifying myself. My best guess is that the person leaving that comment considers themselves to be a Christian. If he or she is a Christian who feels it's appropriate to anonymously attack (at least it felt like a bit of an attack) another total stranger's beliefs then I feel as though they might somewhat easily fall into the category of yet another person or group with an agenda of their own who props it up under the guise of "Christianity". Which is to say, under what I understand a Christian to be, that they are probably not one at all. In trying to take a truly Christian approach to anything, I understand that one of the best things to do is ask yourself what would Jesus do?
   I have a bit of a hard time imagining Jesus attacking me over a blog post.

Sleep

  

I still haven't figured out the whole sleep thing. I used to take sleep for granted as I've been doing it since Day One and every single other day for over sixty years now. It's the same with breathing, I do it all the time but I never take it for granted, I have a pretty good idea what the purpose of breathing is and why I need to do it so much.
   Sleep is different. Of course it gives the body an opportunity to rest and that is important but why can't you simply rest your body by plopping it down in an armchair for six to eight hours and leave it at that? Why is there a need for the human body to periodically enter a state of unconsciousness simply so that it can carry on the next day?
   Even scientists are a little vague as to why sleep is necessary. One theory has it that animals, in an attempt to avoid predators, would choose to remain still and quiet at times when those predators were out and about, in order to avoid detection. When evolution took over, this adaptive safety measure became sleep.
   Another theory is that sleep evolved as an energy conservation technique---you saved up your energy for when you really need it ie. hunting.
   Brain plasticity and the ability to grow cognitively are also touted as reasons sleep may be necessary.
   In all of this, though, there is still no hard and fast reason why sleep is necessary.
   What strikes me, though, when I really think about it is that sleep, unlike nourishment, does not simply produce a cause and effect relationship. It seems to assist the body with physical revitalization but this is not all that occurs when you sleep. You dream when you sleep.

   Is dreaming, then, also a vital by-product of sleep?
   If sleep were to be truly restful then there are lots of times when I would not want to have been dreaming when I was sleeping. I have awoken from a sleep beset by dreams which, rather than leaving me rested, only caused anxiety or fear, based on whatever it was I dreamt about. This does not seem restful to me.
   I wonder why we dream, then.
   As much as scientists have been unable to pin down exactly the need for sleep, they also have failed in the same way to discover the need for dreams.
   Dreaming occurs when you are the most deeply asleep, this occurring during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Some theories suggest that dreaming is a result of the brain trying to process the increased stimulation of the limbic system, the part of the brain which involves emotion, sensation and memories.
   Another suggestion for why we dream is that the brain, much like a computer, is simply trying to "refresh" itself. Another is the possibility that the brain is responding to and trying to interpret external stimuli in the waking world. As an example, a radio might be on somewhere and somehow the song on the radio becomes part of a dream.
   These are all theories and no-one really knows why we dream and why we sleep. Personally, I see sleep and

dreaming as the brain's opportunity to flex its muscle just a touch and show us that it's actually in control. It transports us out of the everyday flotsam of our waking lives and gives us little glimpses of what our hopes and desires are. It takes us places and puts us in situations we would never have entered, on our own. Dreams make us question our self-worth, sexuality, imagination, motivation and self-control. They show us our fears. Our brains, when we are asleep, screw with us.
   When I was younger, I tended to listen to and appreciate orchestral pieces of music. I heard these pieces in school and my parents had a couple of albums which highlighted them.
   Occasionally, as I was drifting off to sleep, I would hear music in my head---grand, sweeping pieces of music that I seemed to be in charge of and could propel in whatever direction I wished. These were always wonderful, semi-conscious moments. As an adult, I found I had the ability to sit down and compose similar music, with almost no formal training, apart from a few clarinet scales in Grade Nine. It's almost as if my brain were bridging some kind of gap between my own little dreamworld and the waking world I am familiar with.
   One of the other theories as to why we dream is that it provides an opportunity for psychoanalysis. It gives us the opportunity to look at a dream and try to figure out what it says about us that we might not already be aware of. I have some pretty weird dreams (we all do) and sometimes I have no idea what they're all about. Generally, though, if I really think about it, I can figure out why I was dreaming what I was dreaming. Often a dream will reference some occurrence from the past, even if that occurrence couldn't possibly be more inconsequential. It is up to us, then, to try and decipher the meaning of that dream. Possibly that inconsequential occurrence was a little more significant than we thought...?
   If I could choose to have dreamless sleeps I'm not sure that I would. I believe that a dream is as valid an experience as anything that might happen when you are fully conscious. They sometimes will show you a different way of looking at things. They might inspire or provoke you. Even the ones which scare you might tell you something about yourself (whether you like it or not!)
  
    
  

Halves

Fail!

   This is a picture of a stick of butter I cut. Although I was not trying to be too precise at the time, I was trying to cut it in half. As you can see, I failed. 

   Unless I actually measure, I do this a lot. It's the same with Freezies, the long ones. I like to cut them in half and eat each half separately. Quite often (as a visual exercise) I try to be as precise as possible when cutting them, so that I get equal portions. The end result is always the same and quite resembles the two butter sticks.
   What has happened when you see a result like this is that two mistakes, rather than just one, have actually been made. You have cut one portion too long and you've cut the other portion too short, all in one fell swoop.
   When we have two kids who both want part of the same thing, we have one kid cut it and the other kid pick the portion he wants. I love the beauty of this, it's a very self-governing kind of arrangement which takes very little parental involvement. Of course, I would want to be the kid choosing the portion, if at all possible, for the above reasons.
   Wouldn't it be nice if international disputes over land claims could be settled the same way? One country could draw the dividing line and the other country could pick the parcel of land it preferred. Can you imagine?
   I love symmetrical things you can fold in half. Actually, I like folding anything, symmetrical or not, it's one of those little OCDish things about me, and probably a whole other blog post topic.

This person gets ALL the luck!

   I love sheets of paper folded in half because this gives you continued options for folding in quarters, eighths and so on. The best part is, everything lines up, another little OCDish thing about me!
   I also enjoy cutting or tearing things in half, putting those two halves over top of each other and then cutting them in half. And so on.
   I appreciate sporting events which are timed in halves and quarters, such as football and basketball. Hockey and baseball throw me off just a touch, for the same reason.
   Twins and quadruplets are good. Triplets and quintuplets, not so much.
   I always enjoy meeting someone's better half for the first time, although it would open up the conversation somewhat to be introduced to someone's better third.

Yes!

   Some things have half-lives. A half-life is the length of time something takes to decay to half of its original value and is a term mainly used in physics. My brain passed its half-life awhile back and my body is now catching up.
   Colloquially-speaking, adding a half to something exceptionalizes it. A vacation is a vacation unless it is a vacation and a half, in which case it was a wonderful vacation. Barring sarcasm, of course.
   So there you go, hopefully I've gone a little way toward demonstrating that there is a world of difference between the halves and the halve-nots. Here's hoping you half a wonderful day and save the rest til later! 
  
  
  

Coffee

    Coffee is my friend. I think coffee is friends to a lot of people, so this is nothing new to most of us. I'm not even sure when it was I started drinking coffee, I believe I was in my mid- to late twenties. My parents were coffee drinkers and I have vague recollections of sipping from the dregs left in their cups when I was quite young and enjoying the taste.
   Most of the coffees I had in the beginning were of the social variety, getting offered them after meals and whatnot. I don't think I even started making my own til after I was married and started having children (probably needed it by then!)
   I do have a fairly clear memory of my first coffee "rush"--it was one of those holy cow, so that's what they were talking about kinds of moments. All of the sudden I could feel my eyes getting a little wider and my awareness picking up and my senses heightening. I thought this was pretty cool. And legal, too!
   I think that I've built up a bit of a coffee tolerance these days, I very rarely get that same kind of rush anymore, but I still enjoy the coffee. I can even drink it fairly close to bedtime and it doesn't seem to keep me awake. Occasionally it keeps me awake enough to make it bed.
   There is a bit of a feeling that I'm reconnecting with something whenever I sit down to a coffee. This might be because it is such a social drink and there does tend to be someone with me when I'm drinking one. At the same time, I get a very similar feeling when I'm drinking one at home, alone. I can be sitting there in the livingroom, at loose ends, and then it occurs to me that I can have a coffee. It almost seems like a revelation, oddly enough. Then, when I take that first sip, it's like settling deep into an easy chair and life is fine all over again.
   I spend a lot of work time with various different people I support, visiting coffee shops. There is the occasional day when, by the time the work day is over, I've had perhaps three or four coffees. At times like this, I feel as though I'm never going to want to see another coffee again. And then the sun rises on another day!
   I am somewhat undecided on whether I drink too much coffee or not. I occasionally see warnings about the effects of coffee and then I see other sources saying it's good for you. As with most things, moderation seems like the best way to go. This is occasionally hard to do with coffee, though.
   I am also not one of those people who goes for fancy coffees--espressos, cappuccinos, lattés and the like. Nothing intimidates me much more than a trip to Starbucks! No, I am quite unapologetically a regular coffee kind of guy. I drink regular, I take it regular, and I drink it regularly and usually drink it with the "regulars".
   Hard to say what life might be like without coffee. I certainly remember when I didn't drink it. In fact, I remember being a bit if a tea granny when I was a kid. If worse came to worst, I imagine I could still drink tea. I just wouldn't want to. Life without coffee would also mean life without coffee shops. I find this very hard to imagine--it just seems as though much of the social fibre these days revolves around visiting coffee shops. I'm not sure whether this is because much of Canada becomes a cold weather country for large chunks of the year or not. There is something about a regular stop in a Timmies that seems to connect you with your community. Likely because if you've stopped to drink, you have also stopped to talk. Not only do you talk to whoever you might be with but you also end up vicariously taking part in all the audible conversations around you. A lot of the time this will keep you on top of current events but some of the time it also keeps you abreast of people's private lives. Most of these conversations are eminently forgettable but, in their own way, they are also slightly reminiscent of your own life and are a reminder that we are all interconnected.
   Coffee has us in its grasp. Generally, it is a loving embrace and one to be both nurtured and cherished. My search for pics for this post took me to Google Images, where I simply typed in "coffee". More than any other post I've done the same thing for, the images which appeared before me were all inviting, warm, mellow and friendly. I almost got a caffeine rush just looking at them and I would heartily recommend doing the same search yourself, should you need a gentle break from whatever your laptop is assailing you with these days. On top of everything else, there is no fickleness to be dealt with, for sure, coffee will always be there for us.
   As I'm finishing off this post, I'm also finishing off my morning coffee. Breakfast, coffee and the newspaper constitute my daily morning routine. If, however, circumstances dictated that I could only have one of the three, I would most certainly choose the coffee. I'm really not sure why this is. I'm not addicted to the stuff (although most addicts would tell you the same thing about whatever it was they were addicted to), I simply would describe it as a strong preference.
   So there you have it, my little ode to coffee. Written, for the most part, while I was drinking one. I would not have imagined that coffee could become a whole blog post. I guess I am a writer who is invested with his subject matter! I also think I'm addressing this to the many like-minded out there, you know who you are. Meet me at Tim's and we can discuss it!  


  

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.   

"Would anyone like to sit on the purple couch?"

   It seems these days that if you're not a redneck, a gypsy, have ten kids or are a foul-mouthed housewife then you're going to have a hard time landing your own show on reality television.

Andrea Syrtash and Dale Curd

   In our house, we have varying levels of acceptance for many of these shows but a lot of time is spent shaking our heads at what is being presented. Much of it is simply mind-numbing, train wreck stuff. But not all of it.
   Our newest favourite show is on Canada's OWN and it is called Life Story Project. It is co-hosted by Andrea Syrtash and Dale Curd and the simplicity of its concept and the resulting insight to the human condition is what has drawn us to it.
   The hosts simply plop a purple couch down in the middle of a well-travelled area in a major Canadian city and invite passersby to sit and talk. There is a theme topic to every show and the interviewees will be asked to talk abut their life experience with that particular topic.
   This week's topic was Fear and Change. Other topics have included Love and Betrayal and Love and Regret, as well as a variety of others.

The famous purple couch

   Not every person passing by is interested in talking and the ones that do take that leap of faith have no idea what the topic might be when they take their spot on the purple couch.
   It is quite often an amazing transformation that occurs when people find out what the topic is and then realize that, yes, they do have something to say about that. Dale and Andrea have the ability to make people feel open to revealing aspects of their lives which otherwise might have remained untalked about. Quite often what occurs is that a strongly cathartic moment is caught on screen. I have yet to watch an episode that did not almost move me to tears at some point.
   What is compelling about the show is that you quite often see little bits of your own life up there. It makes you realize, no matter what trials and tribulations you've encountered over the years, that you are not alone in many of them.

Dale, trying to enlist participants.

   Often, as people finish talking about their experiences, you wish you were there so you could simply give them a hug. This week, an elderly gentleman was talking about the love he felt for his wife of many years. He wrestled a little bit with trying to describe it faithfully and finally said that part of the reason he loved her so much was simply because she wanted to be with him. He seemed almost flabbergasted by this and just talking about it brought him to tears. They also spoke with a woman who talked about her cancer experience and was asked just when it was with that experience that she started to feel the fear. This is a woman who, as she was speaking, has been told she likely only has about two years to live. In the short period of time she was on screen, though, you could do nothing but empathize and identify with her. Then you find out what her prognosis is...
   It is powerful T.V., to be certain. It is also one of the clearest examples I know of T.V. at its best. Sifting through the morass of everything else that's out there and chancing upon this gem makes the watching experience just that much more worthwhile.
  
  
  
  
  

Agendas

   A couple of weeks ago I was headed off to work and Doralyn asked me what my day looked like. I listed off the things I thought I needed or wanted to do. At that point, the list became my agenda. There was great comfort in having an agenda that seemed effortless and manageable.
   Upon actually arriving at work, however, my agenda went right out the window.
   I work with people who are intellectually challenged and the first person I went to see presented me with a t.v. which had been pulled out from the wall, a mess of wires and cables leading from it to a brand new dvd player he'd bought on his own. Nothing worked.
   When it comes to technology, I am as intellectually disabled as the next person and was of little assistance in this case. The overriding situation, however, was the conflict of agendas. My agenda included taking this gentleman for breakfast as this was our once-a-month routine. His agenda, obviously, was being able to use his dvd player.
   I was much more annoyed at the agenda conflict than he was. My annoyance, coupled with my hunger and lack of tech ability, made the situation unresolvable. We managed to still make it out for breakfast and while eating I was able to come up with a line of action for this man to follow. Doing so allowed him to hook up his dvd player successfully.
   Unless you are a single person who is self-employed, you are going to run into agenda conflict on a regular basis. Even if you do fall into this category you will still occasionally find your self in this conflict with drivers in cars, store clerks, bank managers, customers, crossing guards, repairmen, spouses and pets. In short, any other person with a mind of their own. And an agenda.
   The trick in dealing with all this is simply to realize that we all have our own agendas and that what a person is saying on the outside may belie what they are actually thinking or planning on the inside. Of course, behaviour over a period of time will give you the truer measure of a person.
   It's really not possible to walk around without an agenda of your own, they pretty well help chart a course for your day, week or even your life. Having an agenda which somewhat meshes with the important people in your life, however, always helps. They don't have to always be totally in sync but just realizing where they might diverge will get you through a lot of rough spots.
   At work, agendas can be an issue. Any time you have a large group of people who are supposedly all gathered to accomplish the same goal you're going to have to deal with agendas. Where I work, one of the agenda issues we face on a pretty well daily basis is similar to the one I described above. We, as support staff, spend time with people whose agendas can be widely variant. We have been given what seems like, both to them and to us, an unspoken power over their lives. Throughout the work day we encounter situations where it is quite easy to impose our agendas on the people we support. Realizing this and remembering not to do it are vital. It is also vital to watch what goes on with other people and point out where you think there might be a perceived agenda issue.
   A very quick work-related agenda issue story---a few years ago one of the people I work with called me at home to say he'd fallen in the bathroom, hit his head, and that he was bleeding a little. I had to drive more or less across town to go and investigate and on the drive there was desperately trying to figure out how to mesh our two different agendas. It was my day off, I had stuff to do, could I get by with just applying a band aid, etc., etc. He greeted me at his apartment door and when I took a look at the ear he said had been bleeding, I realized that he had somehow almost severed the top half of it right off and that it was only really hanging there by a fleshy thread. At this point, no real issue with agendas! In an odd kind of way this was kind of cool because when I saw his ear any sort of agenda burden I might have had on the way there flew right off my shoulder. Nine hours of emergency room waiting later, he was all taken care of!
   As I mentioned before, sometimes the trick is just to remember that yours is not the only agenda in play out there. Nowhere is this likely more apparent than right in your own family. There are as many different agendas as there are family members and if you're going to pick one to try to more or less be in sync with then I would suggest concentrating on your spouse's. Enough said, as this is likely a whole new blog topic somewhere down the road!
   Good luck, hopefully, with your agenda and trying to follow it. There's a true skill in realizing when it can be altered and when it is something which really needs to be adhered to. Don't give up your principles along the way but, at the same time, you are not alone in the world either. Not only is your agenda likely going to differ from the next person you run in to but that person's perception of what the issue even is could be totally different and wildly divergent from yours, or even a lot of people's. So take this into account and, every once in awhile, experiment with flipping through someone else's agenda for a change! 
  
  

Bump On My Head

   I bumped my head last night. I actually bumped it for the second time in a week and a half. We were hooking up a PVR and I was leaning over the TV stand to get a better look when my forehead caught the sharp corner of a shelf. Usually, I don't use this space to talk about my little nicks, sprains, cuts or bruises but bumping my head is different.
   Bumping my head infuriates me, like almost nothing else. More than barking my shin or cutting my finger, bumping my head seems like a personal affront, almost as if the universe has conspired to direct its forces against me, malevolently and violently and personally.
   Last night, had there not been a young and impressionable  lad around, I would have turned the air blue. There was such an urge to vent my anger that it almost felt unhealthy containing it. I'm sure this would surprise most people who know me, generally I am one of the least aggressive and most passive people you are ever going to run into. Nothing much fazes me. Unless I bump my head.

The damage...

   When I bump my head badly what I want to do is flip over the dining room table, yank the fridge out and send it tumbling down to the lower level, rip the doors off the cupboards, throw pots and pans, and toss a lamp or two. Basically, I want to trash the place.
   I have no idea why this is. All sorts of different things can cause me varying amounts of pain without the accompanying urge to fly off into a rage. Why I take so much umbrage with headshots makes little sense.
   There's an expression called "still waters run deep". This is meant to demonstrate that what you see as a personality trait in a person may actually belie a contradictory trait hidden below that person's surface. This may be what's happening with me--outwardly, I'm all calm and gentle while, inwardly, there is this angry beast just waiting for a good enough reason to break free.

...and the cause of the damage

   One of my favourite stories as a kid when I was six or seven was the one my mother would tell to her friends who had stopped by for coffee. She would tell them about the time she was looking out the window and saw me with a cluster of friends on top of me, playfighting. At some point, though, the playfighting gets a little too physical and I suddenly rise up from the bottom of the pile and kids go flying everywhere. Thinking back to that story now, I'm wondering if maybe I got bopped on the head or something, at the bottom of that pile.
   I suspect that there is likely dormant anger in most people, veins which are only tapped under certain circumstances. Mine, obviously, is a blow to the head, although there are circumstances under which this could happen and it would not bother me--getting whacked with a hockey stick or clipped by a tree branch while pruning, as examples. These activities involve varying amounts of risk to your noggin and these risks are self-evident before you begin. It is the random and unexpected head injury which has a whole different feel to it, it's almost as if an inanimate object slapped you on the face, called you "stupid" and then laughed at you. When this happens, all I really want to do is get back at inanimate objects everywhere, even the "innocent" ones.
   Knowing that there is this side to me is a little re-assuring, actually. It would be nice to know, if all of the sudden I was accosted in a dark alley somewhere, that there is a hidden enrgy reserve deep inside which I could then unleash on my attacker(s). With my luck, though, they'd probably hit me in the stomach...

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!