WTF?

"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception." (Aldous Huxley, English author)

            I ask myself almost every day. It's been 22 years but it is still the fresh hell that it has always been. So many questions. So few answers. As if the death of my partner hadn't shaken me to the core. Enough was enough for me. I'm not sure if it was the Bipolar activating or the encompassing grief that came with his demise. Something crossed over in me and led me into that so-called tunnel. I remember popping the 100x10 mg Valium I got from my doctor the day before. I then drove into the cemetery but that's about all I can remember. My next awareness came several days later when I woke up in the hospital. Obviously, my suicide attempt had failed miserably. I was so pissed off it hurt. It didn't matter that "it wasn't my time." All that mattered to me at that moment was my own failure. I couldn't even kill myself properly.

            My plan had been a sure one. In fact, I made sure. There was no way that it could possibly fail. I premeditated with precision and much research. I secured all that medication. I thought I knew what I was doing. The tunnel, it showed me the way. All I had to do was off myself and that seemed easy enough. I guess I am not very good at it. This was not the first time I tried to say goodbye and goodnight. Like bad foreshadowing, my survival seems so certain now. What happened before and after this event has little to do with anything. February 19th, 1995 stands all on its own. It is set in stone, this mystery. For years now, it has followed me. Over and over and over again, I have questioned exactly what happened that night. I need to know, I want a clearer picture. The not knowing, it haunts me.

            I long ago realized I could never find an answer to any of my questions. I had to learn to live with the unknown, a fact which has never satisfied my inquiring mind. For both myself and the doctors who examined me post-suicide, one thing was clear. I should never have made it through that night. Indications are that somewhere in the ether I may have passed away like I had planned. I defecated and urinated like any good corpse would. My body temperature lowered to a dangerous degree. I might even have been frozen, thanks to the deep cold of a Canadian winter, mid-February in Stratford, Ontario. You wouldn't have known it from any part of me. I was fully intact. The night was clear and cold and was supposed to ravage my exterior while the interior slept forever. With only a hoodie, jeans and my footwear to protect me, I laid down right in the crispy white snow and continued my descent. The footprints from my car showed investigators the way. I did survive but no one has been able to elaborate on just why the cold did nothing but encourage that survival. There were suggestions by the Coroner that it may have actually slowed down any metabolizing, inhibiting the Valium from doing swift damage. The stupid junk worked well enough to blind me to that night, for life, but it wasn't strong enough to kill me. All I was left with was me.

"Some days are just bad days, that's all. You have to experience sadness to know happiness, and I remind myself that not every day is going to be a good day, that's just the way it is!" (Dita Von Teese. American entertainer)

            My brother told me you could see the outline of where I laid down in the snow that night. You could follow the footprints all the way back to the car that I had left running in a snow bank. The door and my wallet were open for anyone who might have happened upon the scene. The grave was undisturbed otherwise. My trail was the only trail and stopped dead where I tossed myself on the snow and dirt. He duly noted that there was no clear indication of how I actually got from that freshly dug grave to the other side of the cemetery where I was found midday on the 20th. I spent 15 hours in that cold and unforgiving bleakness, well unforgiving for everyone but me. It's poetic justice being the only corpse to ever walk out a cemetery. There was no frostbite, no frost burn, no damage whatsoever. There was nothing but waking up absolved. There was just no consequence for any of my actions. It didn't seem fair to me that other people get to go but I am not welcome. I took the entire experience personally.

            It just goes without saying, if you've had a near-death experience, that indicates you have come close to death at some point during the process. To be frank, I am still not sure if the one I experienced that night was real or live to tape. All I know is what I remember and all I remember is what I know. The details are unimportant but if I believe in what occurred during my state that night, then it explains a few things about my location when I was found the next day. In my NDE, one of the figures present informed me that I could not go forward, that I had to go back and that "it was not my time." Apparently, even spectres get to patronize me. He came forward out of the light and he lifted me, easily, with no struggle whatsoever and he carried me away. While I don't recall any destination, I know that I was found around noon in the only spot with a clear view of the cemetery.  It was like I was planted there. There were no footprints to tell of any tale that might have happened. There was absolutely no indication of how the hell I got to that spot. There was only my body, unconscious, in peril and quite frozen. Although I have never been able to rationalize the event, the evidence seems to point in one clear direction. Sometimes you cannot know what happened and that in itself can change you. We all flounder in the unknown.

            One of the doctors who treated me after this incident told me the story of a rugby player from Scotland who passed out on the field of play. He was rather drunk and was not thinking clearly. He spent the entire night laid out on the grass. His uniform was of little protection from the overnight weather and the morning dew. It wasn't a frigid night by any means, with a low temperature of 4°C. Next morning, they inconveniently found him already quite dead from hypothermia. The same doctor then told me about a homeless man who slept on a public grate mid-winter and survived a severe drop in temperature to -23 °C (not including the wind chill factor). The man did not fall victim to the unforgiving Canadian freeze. Despite having minimal protection from the cold, and the 10 cm of snow that covered him as he slept, he got up and walked away come morning. One could argue it was the subway vent that he slept on that heated him enough to survive. Perhaps the snow insulted him enough to save him from an icy fate. The same exposure would have killed a lesser man. The same conditions that ended that rugby player probably would not have killed someone else. Perhaps, one might conclude, life is  random and often makes no sense. Sometimes things just happen and trying to explain why they happened is a fruitless effort. There is no apparent rhyme or reason to this universe. Sometimes the way it is just is. There is nothing fatalistic about it.

"People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." 

(Isaac Asimov, American writer)

            I try to go back and pick out the lessons from my history, the ones that I missed the first go round. I try not to dwell in that otherland, I just visit it on occasion (quite often as I am writing). When I re-examine the day that I died (so to speak), I have more questions than anything else. I wish I had firsthand knowledge of what happened during those lost 15 hours but I do not. It is a blank page for me. All I am left with is the unexplained. As if existing isn't mystery enough. Any conclusion is guesswork, backed up by little or no evidence. My experience is to the contrary. What I can recall from before the event and after the event melds with a foggy place. It is a blindness that comes over me and I am abandoned with nothing but even more questions. I have had to surrender to the predicament. There is that penetrating light. There are the figures and the tunnel and the experience that saved my life. At this late stage, it is a little too late to go hunting for answers. I will never have them, no matter how I search. Sometimes in life things are easy. The rest of the time is a challenge for most of us. I want to remember. When I think back on that cemetery and that night so long ago, I may never come to fully understand what may or may not have happened. Regardless, I am still here and able to try. Sometimes we aren't supposed to know, that's why they call it blind faith.

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

(Donald Rumsfeld, American politician)

Photo

http://digiday.com/series/wtf-ad-tech/

Ha! Ha!

"It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly."

(Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright)

            When I think back on my High School years, I often cringe. I generally assume it's that way for most of us. As a product of 1960s breeding, I spent the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s trapped inside the walls of Strathroy District Collegiate Institute. Located deep in southern Ontario, Canada, it was pretty much your standard fare when it came to white skin and middle class. There was only one black student my entire tenure. Most of my friends drove their own cars, the privileged treasures of a well-off family and a 16th birthday surprise. While I was not the most popular, in any sense, I was not at the bottom of the social ladder. I had many friends and for most of the 4 years I attended classes there, SDCI was refuge to one degree or another. I hated it but it allowed me a freedom to explore my budding homosexuality. At times, I was popular for seedy reasons. In recent years, Facebook, Twitter and varied social media platforms have granted me access to people I have not seen or heard from in over 30 years. It has been, to say the least, an experiment that went from good to bad to ugly. I am still surprised at just how literal, and occasionally sad, that statement really is. Things always change, and boy, so do people and not always for the better.  

            I suppose the most surprising part of this social media experience is the way our memories of how things, and people, were back then stands in contrast with who they are now. It can be scary to come across the girl you dated in grade 9 on Facebook. An addition of a husband and three kids is one thing but my God, what happened to her? How did she get so old and so tired looking? She is the same age as me but she looks more like a grandparent than my peer. I'm that old myself but I certainly don't look the part. Maybe I'm blessed with outstanding genes but that's beside the point. She is not alone in her state of decay. Almost every single person I knew back in high school has turned up on social media. Almost every single one of them looked half a bullet away from rigor mortis. It's difficult to be humble when the best looking guy from school now weighs 320 pounds and has pock marks the size of gumballs all over his face. What a shame. I used to sit back in English class and watch him emote sexy. I had it bad for him which is, apparently, no longer a problem. Whatever happened to him, it wasn't merciful. It seems to have worked out this way for almost everyone I knew back when. I got better looking with age and they all seem to have fallen into a vat of butt fucking ugly. I still shake my head when I come across one of them.

"The beautiful has but one type, the ugly has a thousand."

(Victor Hugo, French poet)

            There are exceptions to every rule. For the most part however, this new standard,

whatever happened, is more the rule than the exception. There are a few stray exclusions that I have come across. One of my closest friends in high school now has children older than when we once knew each other. She still looks good for being a grandmother. There is our mutual friend. I had no idea he was gay back in the day. He looks the same, if you ask me. One of the guys I had gay experiences with (during that time) added me to his Facebook one day around a year ago. He sure looked good, I have to tell you the truth. Unfortunately while the exterior was intact, something stupid his way came and seems it to have settled in to stay. I deleted him a few months ago when he started posting homophobic comments on his timeline. I guess it's true that the louder they scream, the harder they suck. It must be embarrassing to look that good and be so ugly on the inside. The same cannot be said for most of my former classmates. It's hard for me to believe just how different reality is from how I thought it to be. I spent years punishing myself for not being better like them when the very people I was emulating in my head were big losers just like me. I had no idea that the aging process could do such harm to so many. Even the teachers I once idealized, or hated (it all depends on the class they taught), met up with the same infusion of erosion.  

            A few years ago, I attended my nephew Matthew's graduation at the new high school, just out on the edge of town. SDCI is no longer, replaced by a seniors facility. The grounds are the same but the entire scope of my teen years has been levelled and removed. It's weird to drive by it now. The change is so noticeable. I felt exactly the same when I saw one of my music teachers at Matt's graduation. It's not that he was some regal lion back when I hated going to his classes but whatever he has been eating has not done him much good. In the day, I was intimidated by him. I may have even been frightened of him at some point, I am unsure. Now, before me stood a mockery of that man. I had no idea how short he turned out to be. I had no idea that grey hair was a fashion statement. I kept forgetting that he was well over 60 years old now. I kept flashing back to when he was my instructor, not just the decrepit fat pig that stood before me. When our eyes met that day, I looked him up and down and then I laughed right in his face. I have to admit it was poetic justice. I have to admit it made me feel pleasure that he looked so bad. I have to admit the entire experience made me feel rather good about myself. Later on, when I saw him conducting the orchestra during the program, I felt like Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons. I had to contain myself from yelling out "Ha! Ha!"

            There was the lesbian priest who somehow found a way to make me feel like a heathen. She managed to transform from a lovely young woman into a really obese ugly old man, and all without surgery. Blocked. There was the buddy of mine who accepted my friend request, then deleted me less than an hour later. I can't help it that he doesn't like "the gays." The "gays" don't like bald skinny men who look 15 years older than they should. Blocked. After a few days of reminiscing, the girl I played euchre with for three years during my incarceration at SDCI asked me for money. I should have known that look when I first saw her profile picture. She had been quite the looker in her day but now she seemed more like a crackhead than anything remotely like she used to. Blocked. 

One woman accused me of not returning her calls after I had sex with her in grade 12. For the record, I have never taken my tugboat to tuna town. Blocked. One old pal used to park his bike at our house and walk each morning with me to school. We were teammates on the swim club for years. The years had not been kind to him. Honestly, he looked, in his photo, like a cancer patient at the end of treatment. For a Canadian, he sure likes his Donald Trump. Blocked. There are so many faces, so many memories and yet I fear they are for naught. Apparently, you can't go home again because the house is dishevelled and really, really wretched. All in all, I have come out of the experiences feeling quite pleased with myself and who I turned out to be as a person. Don't think I don't realize how lucky I am that at this point in my life, I haven't turned.

"Never pick a fight with an ugly person, they've got nothing to lose."

(Robin Williams, American comedian)

            Often, I look back on my life with a sense of regret and shame. The things I did as a young man are not the things of legend. In the greatest sense, they left scars and not just for me it would seem. The ripples in the water make splashes at the shore. Time has gone by and the world changes, even if we believe that it won't. Some people are stuck in the pain. Some move on, never to look upon it again. I prefer to witness these experiences and attempt to learn the lesson from them that I am supposed to. I pay attention so that I might see clearly. I am simply an observer, a reporter who relays his perceptions. Don't shoot the messenger. I can't help it that you look like that.

            I have tried to touch base with my past and I have tried to rekindle many of the relationships that were once successful for me. I don't think people like to visit yesterday let alone relive it more than a quarter of a century later. With the noted exceptions, I am no longer friends with anyone I knew in high school. It is sort of sad, in a way. I think it is fascinating to explore a person you knew so long ago. Most people just aren't interested in such silly things. Any interaction is for amusement and little else these days. While I try to be modest, my self-assurance tells me I am better just for the trying. Any lesson I might learn from all this is lost on me. I'm not sure there is a clear one to be found. I can only assume that I am not alone in all this. I have to wonder why so many people I once knew turned out the way they did. I could venture a guess and say that when you are ugly inside, it shows through on the outside. You can't go back but you can carry it with you and let it weigh you down. There is a reason I haven't had anything to do with most of these people since high school. There is a reason I don't have anything to do with them now. I am proud of the man I have become and I don't need a bunch of miserable uglies reminding me of the asshole I once was.

"Everything is not black-and-white. I'm really interested in the gray area - not justifying it, not glorifying it, not condoning it, but at least having people see there's a genesis for every event in our lives. There's some divine order to it, whether it's ugly or beautiful." 

(Isaiah Washington, American actor)

Photo

http://bighugelabs.com/onblack.php?id=133946204

No More Cry

"Ben, the two of us need look no more

We both found what we were looking for

With a friend to call my own

I'll never be alone

And you my friend will see

You've got a friend in me"

            Charlotte was my very first pet. The tiny standard white mouse marked the beginning of a lifelong love affair. Yep, a love affair with rodents, almost always female rodents. From the different coloured mice through gerbils and hamsters and finally rats, my life has always played host to one gnawer after another. There were brief moments in time that my life did not contain these creatures. More often than not, especially in the last 15 years, I have incubated each tiny beast like it was a cat or even a favourite dog. I am unsure as to the reason for my deep appreciation. Perhaps the introduction to the species as a young child defined my want; I got Charlotte when I was 5 years old. Perhaps my exposure to film and television featuring Mickey Mouse or Tom and Jerry cinched the deal. Motion pictures like Willard may have inspired a unique fascination for me. Each little puff was always easy for me to grow attached to. There have been so many, dozens and dozens, and each little lady found a place in my being. Each one also fell away like all things do. I spent as much time in the losing as I did in the loving.  Without fail, life always managed to steal them from me.

             People get attached to their pets. There is something so safe when adopting an animal. It is like adding another member to your family. It is not the size or species that defines their place. It is our relationship with them that connects us. It may be a bird or a ferret, or even a rattlesnake, but for many people pets are as significant an addition as any child would be. Of course, not everyone is a friend to the animal kingdom. Men do the most terrible things to those we consider innocent. They murder them for food. They abuse them for fun. They continue to test with them. Some men even rape them, each beast unable to give their consent. These people are the ugliest people of all. Like the guy who locks his dog in a car on a hot summer's day, it seems easy for them to cast away a life they clearly do not see as equal to their own. There is a cavalier disregard that appears quite rampant. One of the saddest parts of living, for me, has been watching creature after creature suffer at the hands of evil men. I much prefer when we embrace our fellow travellers and let them lead us in the light.

            Some were smart and some quite stupid. Each rodent had its own personality, its own style and quiet grace. The smaller the beast, the greater the tender. An increase in size usually meant a higher IQ and a nasty habit of biting. I suppose I got tired, early on, of handling the frail things when all I wanted was a more hands-on approach. Smaller mice evolved into gerbils and then gerbils evolved into hamsters. For a few years, each mini-teddy bear was more than enough. When I discovered the rat, I discovered much joy. Such intelligent and social beings, each one was a unique and singular entity unto itself. The first girl, a plain white pink-tailed damsel, crawled and played with me in the security of our bathroom place. Savannah set the course it seems, the standard I continued and tried to replicate. I even graduated from one friend to several. Each time one passed away, I replaced them with another. I felt sorry for them living all alone. Well knowing how social rats tend to be, I felt obligated to keep more than one. At one point, for almost a year, I had three little ladies living in the large metal cage on top of my antique wardrobe in our library. In the end, I had no idea the trap I had set for myself.

"Ben, you're always running here and there

You feel you're not wanted anywhere

If you ever look behind

And don't like what you find

There's something you should know

You've got a place to go"

            It  may have been foolish letting things with much less of a lifespan enter my heart. Watching one pet after another die has been torture for me. It has been a privilege to know each one but it brought me great sorrow, each and every time. It may have been easier for me not to care, to never get involved in the act of compassion. I am very aware that there is a price we pay for loving and the bill comes due at the whimsy of time and eventuality. Each one jumped ship every year or so, for the most part in February. As if that month wasn't bad enough for me, to have a constant shrill from the toll reach me, over and over, was not only a challenge but a mere harbinger of the reality that comes from each day we exist within it. Although the pain may not equal the loss of a parent or spouse, or even a child, the attachment to each and every critter hurt as much as any mortal passing might bring. It seems, luckily, that the hurt fades quicker than it would with any human relationship we might have had. Even the victims of a harsh death seemed easier to 'rat'-ionalize given a little time and space. The pain may not last as long as it does with most human deaths but it still hurts the same, at least initially. One after another, these tiny morsels of fur met their end.

            Most of these gnawer deaths were simple and seemingly easy. It may ache the same but there is something to be said for a quiet, private passing. Finding a body at the bottom of a cage is simpler than having to put something down. I can appreciate the mercy gained from age and the symptoms that come with it. Unfortunately, doom is not always a friendly face. Even age does not necessarily determine cause of death. A few of the rats I have kept over the years did not die gracefully. I've been informed, over and over, that the large growths which sprung up about their lower extremities were a result of inbreeding. Ovaries, a bringer of life, also can bring disease, mutation and great suffering. Watching something you love transform into a mass of tumour was not my favourite part of these experiences. Eventually, the foreign invaders sucked the very life right out of a few of my little ladies. One victim, Emily was her name, died in the bathroom on a Saturday morning. When I went to clean the cage, she sat up on the floor, amidst shavings and pieces of food, and those lumps burst open like a giant zit. Blood poured out from her and her end grew near.  You could hear her pain and see her torment as she spilled out all over the place. I reacted without having to think. I grabbed her, clutched her hard, and submerged her into the toilet. Her suffering met its end by my hand. She was the last pet I was allowed to bury on my parents' property. After 40 years there, there was just no more room. That pet cemetery is full. Up on the hill she sleeps with all the cats and the dogs and all her brethren. I would rather she was buried in my backyard, up beside Emma and Ella, in the corner by the new spruce tree. There is no real marker in this cemetery. There is only a quiet place, a simple place, a place where they can be safe and rest easy.

"I used to say 'I' and 'me'

Now it's 'us' now it's 'we'

I used to say 'I' and 'me'

Now it's 'us' now it's 'we'"

            When I put my previous pets down, it was easy to justify the act because of their health or age or situation. There is something to be said for dying "au naturel." You think the mercy one grants to our pets would make it easier to say goodbye to them. It is never easy. It is what we agree to when we love something. Putting that something down, having to mercy kill it in a literal manner, embedded a guilt I wish I did not have to know. Since then, I struggled with the idea of halting this torture. I decided that with Eden, one last rat, I would no longer keep any type of rodent or gnawer of any form. I just can't separate from  the attachment I make with each one. Their time here is so brief compared to cats and dogs and even most aquarium fish. Previously, not one of the critters I have collected over the years lived to see their 2nd birthday. Most died somewhere around 18 months, tops. I could not help but take it subjectively, over and over, death after death, decade after decade. I just can't take it anymore. The constant bombardment of grief is one thing but watching something you love fade in slow painful motion is something I can no longer expose myself to. When Ella, Eden's dark chocolate coated sister, died in early fall 2016, the die was cast. I bought Eden's coffin almost right away. I made the decision to no longer indulge but for the life of me.

            It just fucking figures. Almost immediately after Ella's passing (at the bottom of the cage, I might add), Eden began to show a tumour growing rapidly under her immediate right front paw. I said to myself, "It won't be long now." All these months later and the damn thing holds onto life like I do. Often a distant, territorial beast, the death of her sister turned her into a moody crank. When the growth started growing, she turned from crank to miserable bitch. I loved her anyway. First thing in the morning, every morning, found me covering a saltine cracker with whipped cream from a can. Every morning she supped, her tongue flicking bit after bit past her fuzzy white face. I thought for sure she would not make it through Christmas or New Years. I then found myself readjusting as Valentine's Day passed but she didn't. For awhile, one day she was fine and the next she wheezed heavily, looked weak and even let me pet her, a feat I rarely accomplished in the almost 2 years she has lived here. Ironically, the last rat was the longest rat. I've had Eden, I believe, weeks longer than any other rodent. These days, she sits in her box with her pretty green shroud and waits for internment. The winter cold will keep her but also restricts her from joining her family out in their frozen corner spot. I am a little saddened but I am glad it will be the final pet burial I have to attend. I have decided that both cats will be cremated and put on a shelf. If I never have to buy another coffin or drown another friend, my days will be better, much better.

 "Ben, most people would turn you away

I don't listen to a word they say

They don't see you as I do

I wish they would try to

I'm sure they'd think again

If they had a friend

like Ben"

(Ben, Michael Jackson 1972)

           

            I am not afraid to love something or someone. As a matter of fact (and revelation), I have spent my life doing just that. I am not afraid of commitment. I thrive in those conditions. I find it easy to maintain. I am loyal to a fault, whether man or beast. At this point in my life, I just can't imagine going through this type of experience every year or so. It's not fair to me to put myself through it. I know very well it would be easy to carry on just like it has been.  I know there will be great temptation. Something has got to give. With the exception of any fish I might one day bring into my life, I will never own another pet smaller than a shoe box. I can't do it anymore. It hurts much more than I imagine it is supposed to. I am trying to embrace my limitations. It's the only way I can manage to keep a little peace in my life. I will miss it, I will miss them. I would have thought it would be harder, considering all the laughter and joy these multi-coloured buggers brought into my life. Each and every one meant the world to me but from here on out, there will be no more cry.

Photos

Sydney and Sybil

Summer 2013

Eden

Autumn 2016

Too Soon

Dead End, part two

            The age-old question of why bad things happen to good people is a little one-sided. You never hear people asking why good things happen to bad people. The truth is that "the rain" falls on both the good and the bad, the just and the unjust. Tragedy filters through our lives like strings of cotton candy. It may look all pretty but it does nothing but leave a sticky residue (and often makes you fat). We spend our lives cleaning up the mess. We forget the real tragedy that awaits us all. It's a no brainer, everybody dies. We mostly try not to deal with it. We put it away so we don't have to think about it. The difficulties of life tend to find a place amongst our living, but impending death is a stranger we do not want to get to know. It is the inevitable, a looming date we will never really encounter. Life itself is the constant reminder.

            I have always believed that the fear of death comes from our conditioning. A lifetime of "you're going to hell" would make anyone cringe. We push the idea, the very concept aside in hopes that our forced ignorance will somehow free us from our own mortality. At least, it will free us from thinking about our own mortality. You can try and block it out all you want but just living in itself can act as the admonishment. Death is part of our daily lives even if we don't want to hear about it, or see it, or think about it. Often, an event occurs that cements our doom, even if only for a small amount of time. Something always renders our "blindness" irrelevant. Although the death of someone we know well may be much more than some reminder, the deaths of others, particularly celebrities and the like, tweak our fear and act as harbingers of our very own destruction. The more renowned, the greater the recognition. The greater the recognition, the more we pay attention. Duly noted and all that jazz.

            When Gilda Radner died on February 20^th, 1989, the laughter did not die for her spouse Gene Wilder. He carried on, saddened it seemed, but not silenced. When he himself passed on August 29^th, 2016, I felt sadness. I also felt some form of joy for them. I wished they were together once again. The entire thing was a reflection of sorts. With my mother long gone, my father merely waits for his reunion; soon it says, soon. I am always aware that he sits waiting to die. It is crystal clear that his end is coming near. It might not be tomorrow. It might not be next week. It's coming all the same. In a way, my projection of the Wilder's reunification rings of my hope for him. Sometimes the sweetest sorrow can be the gladdest fate. When I was sixteen, going on seventeen, I loved the 1965 film The Sound of Music. The truth be told, I still do. When I was younger still, I would stand in front of the stereo system playing the LP over and over again. I can sing you any song from the soundtrack, word for word, note for note. It all started so long ago. Even then I could have envisioned the death of Maria or Gayorg (they were old). It had come to be expected. When Liesl (Charmin Carr) departed us at age 75, on September 17^th, my mouth fell open. Realizing that the Van Trapp children were starting to die off, I stood to attention and got the message loud and clear. I had to ask myself, "Who's next?" The reply is fitting. "You are."

            As a Canadian, you would think I'd have felt something when Leonard Cohen died on November 10^th. I hold some respect for him as an artist and his contribution to music and popular culture in general, but I didn't get it. Some of his songs are classics but only when performed by another artist. If I want to hear gravel trucks unloading their junk, I will find myself a quarry. Too soon? I felt the same way when another fellow Canadian, Alan Thicke, died on December 13^th. As a teenager in the 1980s, I sat up night after night in a Bipolar state. For awhile, In the Thicke of the Night was the only original programming on air in that time slot. Nothing he did afterwards, especially Growing Pains, made me like him more. As a matter of fact, his later career only strengthened my dislike. I never bought into his "nice guy" facade. Both of these homegrown departures merely brought it all home for me. God was killing off more than just the Americans. Even when we have disdain for a person, we can be affected by their death. Not all road signs are painted in pretty colours.

            The end of 2016 was met with blow after blow. When Florence Henderson died on November 24^th, the bell rang out and the final round began. Here ends the story of a woman who played Brady. For a little while, a month or so, it seemed like Carol would be the last goodbye we had to experience for the year. It tricked me, presenting itself as a nice gift from the day-to-day gloom and despair so rampant in the previous 11 months. The gift we received came on Christmas Day with the exit of George Michael. I suppose, in a literal manner, it was apropos being it was his last Christmas. Too Soon? Like some sick crescendo, the entire matter came to its head on December 27^th with the passing of Carrie Fisher. We had been given a heads up when she was taken from that airplane and put in ICU. You could just see what was coming. Flashes of Princess Leia met the news that she had passed away from cardiac arrest. I have a deep fondness for this woman. She is a familiar face and a voice that cried out through this insanity. Her words moved me. Her life was an example of how to rise above almost anything. Unfortunately, you cannot survive death. Tell that to her mother. It was a one, two punch right in the face. It was so sad, so sudden and so strange and weird. The very next day, Debbie Reynolds, while planning her daughter's funeral, suffered a stroke then died a few hours later. How surreal, how tragic that it should all end this way for them. I'm not sure of any lesson watching this experience holds. Is it a testament to the love between a mother and  her child or is it a warning regarding the cost of that love? On the road to heaven or hell, sometimes we think the road map is wrong and the signposts in error. If we stop to take notice, if we study them and compare them, they still point in the same direction. 

            What a year 2016 was. I am not alone in my gratitude that it is well over and done. I don't remember such a tear-sodden, mournful year, not ever. It was seemingly unending, taking far too long to be over. Day after day, week after week, one dead body after another floated to the top of the pond. Eventually you could walk across it, usually on the heads of one celebrity after another. Of course, millions of other people died in 2016. Children, loved ones, even our pets all passed away in the same diverse manner. Grief is a subjective thing. It doesn't follow any arrows or signs. There is no warning. There can be awareness. There can be recognition but not everyone is so gracious in their mourning. For many of us, it would appear, we give more time and energy to strangers and their demise than we do the very people we have in our lives on a day-to-day basis. The death of the rich and famous trumps, in many cases, the senseless onslaught the rest of the world has to deal with. Most people just don't get it. When someone dies, when we are affected, it is a lesson, a harbinger we can use to be more sensitive to the life that we lead. When we don't learn from it, we repeat it. I wonder if we get the chance, on the other side, to whine about our regrets in the same manner that we ignore them on this side of living. We certainly seem to care more about David Bowie or Prince than we do about Fidel Castro or Harper Lee. Celebrity death is now a niche market, with surges in sales long before the body even starts to rot.

            On June 12^th, 2016, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a senseless rampage inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. It hit very close to home for me. I certainly grieved and recognized the event  much more than the passing of Glenn Frey. It did not linger so with the rest of the world. In a few days, it stood merely as another attack, another senseless display of what hate and ignorance can really do. The shrines were removed and we only mention it in recap. The other day I saw a docudrama about how the world changed with all the pointless deaths in the entertainment industry during the past year. Their death is the point. In the end, it seems we only care about someone's life when they are already dead. No one gave a fuck about George Michael until he croaked on whatever might have been in his mouth at the time. The North American market, perhaps not exclusively, seems to thrive on instant gratification. I think we project what we are afraid to feel on those things we think we are familiar with, but at a distance. It's easy to care about the corpse of Robin Williams or Joan Rivers. There is no real investment so we think we have nothing to really lose. We feel like we know them but it's a lie we tell ourselves to feel better.

            If the good things in life are supposed to make us more aware of life, then shouldn't the bad things like death make us more aware of death? We embrace birthdays and anniversaries, all the while dancing, endlessly seizing the day. We tend to shun harshness, using death as a means to satisfy our overwhelming ego. Most days, for the best of us, it can be a challenge to even give a shit let alone carry the baggage with us as we skip across that pond. It is not only the best part of living that should make us take notice. The departure of someone we care about, or convince ourselves that we care about, may not evoke dancing, but it bears attention just the same. Sometimes, if we let it, all that bad stuff helps us to recognize all the good stuff. For me, it's all just too soon. I doubt very highly, at least from my personal experiences, that many people think like this let alone act like it. In my experience, death has become like fast food. We say we don't have any part it, and how bad it is for us, as we shuffle off to a corner and down two packs of fries, a double Big Mac and a diet Coke. We only want it when we want it. When we are done, so is the need for it. Death has become disposable, a refuge we can cry within for a day or two just to make ourselves feel better. All it does is give us gut rot.

            When I was a child and my first pet, a white mouse named Charlotte, died, I buried her in the yard then I went and got me another one. The year 2016 was much like this early experience. If you waited long enough, you witnessed that everyone is replaceable. Sound bites and video clips are the new obituary. Hasbro should put out a new game, Celebrity Hopscotch. A different dead star's face glued to a stone for throwing sounds like a plan to me. It's the game of chance that makes no real difference.

            I had dotted all my I's and crossed all my T's and moved on to the next depressing topic. I figured that several blogs about the death of celebrities in 2016 would pretty much cover it all. Life always has a way of surprising you and not always for the better. Fate doesn't need just one year to rip the heart out and squish it. Weeks had gone by without much ado. Although Canadian SCTV actor Tony Rosato died on January 11^th, 2017, there were no signs of any real crushing to come. The silence was much needed and we all caught our breath a little. On January 25^th, any promise of hope was dashed against a hard cold reality. Death stops for no one. After a week on life support, Mary Tyler Moore left us all behind. From the moment I heard the news, my soul cried out for the world I use to know. Many of my first memories are from watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show, every Saturday night, with my mother at my side. I followed her career, she became a mainstay in my entertainment bubble. I knew it would be like this for me. Who would turn the world on with her gone?

            I fell into a deep depression. The end of Mary Richards meant the end of the way things used to be for me. She was the last bastion of a life already so long gone. Her passing seemed to awaken a heavy sense of futility in me. I started to question any reason I should have to carry on with the life that I was living. I felt useless, a coming victim to the whimsy of God or Jesus or even the Devil. I lost any sense of it all, any comfort I may have artificially created regarding mercy and fairness and compassion. For over an hour, I cried heavily. It all flooded over me like a wave of recognition. The loss of my mother, the impending doom of my father, the lingering traces of Doug, all hit me like that proverbial brick wall. I suppose, as someone put it, I had an existential crisis. The finality of even Mary seemed to shake me to the core. The next day I found myself standing in the very same place I have always stood. Turn it off, make it lesser, try to feel nothing. I would never have imagined such an extreme response to such a sad predicament. Her dead end meant a final end, at least to the world I once relied on.

           

            We go through this life alone and we die alone. Along the way, there are warning signs, markers if you will, that remind us of our own mortality. Without them, we would be mostly blind to the reality of being a human being. We often have to live in denial to make it through even one day. We are all eventually going to meet our Maker, whether we take the time to recognize this is irrelevant. Death waits for no man. When your time is up, your time is up. It matters little if you think you are going to live forever. We form attachments as we gather moss. People we don't even know become more important than most of the people we do know. Their death can be as traumatic as any other similar experience. It can touch us and in so doing, it can reach us with the message it holds. You have to seize the day. You have to seize your life. You have to seize everything.

Photos

http://shakeitup.wikia.com/wiki/File:Bye_Gravestone.jpg

https://www.vice.com/en_se/article/the-graves-of-the-rich-and-famous-in-los-angeles-will-make-your-apartment-look-pathetic-1229

http://www.suggest-keywords.com/bGlsYnVybiBldmVudHM/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/396879785891907755/

https://www.pinterest.com/explore/carpe-diem/

Sources

http://pix11.com/2016/12/28/the-full-list-notable-celebrity-deaths-in-2016/

Dead End

Part One

            The year past, 2016, was not a pleasant 366 days, especially for many celebrities. It appeared as if they were dropping like flies. It's all relative, as death constantly circles us throughout our lives. We are rarely aware of that fact. We do not recognize our own mortality until something rings true, reminding us of this very thing. Last year was more like in your face with all this death. The constant prompting by forces unknown, taking this one and that one, made 2016 the year of the dead end. So many famous people passed, right before our very eyes. The list is rather grand, considering. I cannot remember a year filled with so many renowned expiry dates. We can't take it with us, and apparently, neither can the well known and well off. This cascade of doom can act as an admonisher, duly noting that everyone loses everything when our time is up. No one can escape it. It doesn't matter who you are, in the end we all meet our dead end.  

            From Pat Harrington, star of One Day at a Time, who died January 6^th, to William Christopher, Father Mulcahy on MASH, who died December 31^st, the year signalled a different kind of commemoration. Every other day or so (it most certainly seemed), another famous, sometimes infamous, soul would leave it all behind. Mass media and social platforms carried each passing as if a digital epitaph, an almost engraved memorial with an almost instant gratification of sorts. It was a strange mosaic. So many famous faces flashed before us in a seemingly endless display of mortality. Each familiar name blended with sound bites and clips of their legacy. It seemed a constant throughout the year. It was perpetual, a daily harbinger of what was yet to become. Not since the death of Whitney Houston on February 11^th, 2012 have so many voices cried out in such a song of grief and sorrow. Each obituary found yet another soul added to the pile that was 2016. How sad that we need help recognizing the futility of living. All these dead icons only act, or at least should act, like a warning signal to our very own demise. The rest of us do not leave in such a grand display.

            It was like pulling quills after a porcupine attack or ridding oneself of the stink after you get sprayed by a skunk. Nothing could stop the lasting effect. You just couldn't escape it. David Bowie died on January 10^th and the world began to take notice. It was like Jesus had died. It was everywhere, people sobbing, memorials building, tributes layering on top of each other with no end in sight. Harper Lee died, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, one of my favourite books, and I started to take notice. When Bowie passed, I could not have cared less. Sure, he had a few songs I danced to in the 80s. He even touched my life back in 1977, as I sat watching him and Bing Crosby deliver, for the first time, the now classic Peace on Earth/The Little Drummer Boy. It was clear that his death touched many in the most intimate of ways. You could sense their pain as they publicly displayed their affection. The entire event was a harbinger of what was to come and who was to go. When Harper Lee died, the world did not cry out in the same manner. I did. The event was a little like losing a pet or your first love. She had been with me ever since I was a boy and despite the sequel to Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman, my favour never waned. Her death affected me, not deeply, but enough to notice.

            A few days after the death of Bowie, British actor Alan Rickman did not leave us with a "yippy ki-yay motherfucker." As with so many of us mere humans, the cancer did its best and won the race. It was at this point that I began to wonder just what the hell was going on. The next day Dan Haggerty, best known as Grizzly Adams, lost his battle with cancer of the spine. In the 1970s, I watched that show for its entirety, using the theme song Maybe as a way of collaborating with my Mother (who accompanied me) and as a mainstay in my repertoire at the time. This demise chiseled away at my grief, a reminder of my Mom and losing her just years before. It was a lamppost, a lighthouse, a beacon that reactivated my sadness (not that it needed any help). It churned it all up, stirring the pot. On my sister's birthday, January 18^th, the pot boiled over and spilled more doom. Glenn Frey's death convinced us all of this new precedent. All over the internet, on every television channel, in print and on radio, the cries of a dying generation venerated the former Eagles band member. It seemed that Jesus had died all over again. Voices cried out into the night and relief failed to come in the morning.

            Apparently, Abe Vigoda (Barney Miller), who died at age 94 on January 26^th, was simply an afterthought, a transitional departure, a moment of reflection post a grand event. The world barely noticed, or had enough space to, but I did. Like with dominoes, the die was cast. It seemed to start and then to cascade like so many games of chance do. The world had awakened to a new reality, one we should have recognized years before. It doesn't matter who you are, how much money or fame you have, you are going to die just like the rest of us. The victims just kept coming. I suppose it was specifically the revelation of her Bi-Polar condition that attracted me to Patty Duke. I had watched her in black and white when I was a kid but her disclosure finally gave me someone I could look to, a face rather than mere words. I then realized that I was not alone, I was not the only one. This moment overshadowed the passing of Garry Shandling just days before. I barely noted this one more name to a list from hell. I didn't really appreciate him anyway. His death was not funny, just like him.

            Whether it was the loss of Merle Haggard, the end of Joan Marie Laurer (Chyna), or the final bow for Frank Sinatra Jr., the toll seemed to never end. If God determines time of death, He went on a rampage against the rich and famous. Hell, you didn't have to be rich and famous, just one would do. It appeared the Lord of mercy was culling anyone who might have stepped in his way. When Prince died of an apparent drug overdose on April 21^st, the world seemed to stop in its tracks, if even for the briefest of moments. This monumental event for many seemed to awaken a sense of defeat in us all. God kills and we take it personally, not that we have much of a choice. The wallowing went on and on as if the man had been lost to the very image his long career had garnished. The world stood shocked and less than amused by this turn of events. This time round, Jesus had OD'd. I barely noticed all the flowers and the memorials and the shrines that grew larger each day after. My sadness had been captured on April 17^th with the passing of Doris Roberts. I remember quite well watching her play Mildred Krebs on Remington Steele. I loved her from the moment I was exposed to her. Her role as Frances (Ellen's mother) in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation continues to make me laugh out loud. Her death made me shed a tear or two, the first time and only time throughout the year. It was her role as Marie Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond that cemented the fondness I have always carried for her. Her death saddened me, moved me. It was as if I had lost a long lost friend, a kindred spirit that I didn't even know. It seems so strange to me, the affection we have for many of the characters we discover in the entertainment world. In a sense, our continuing exposure only deepens the suffering we already know from our daily lives. They become part of us and losing one, or more, or even more, initially hurts as if losing someone we know. For some, it hurts even more.

            Hollywood and the New York scene were not the only niche markets affected by the loss of its members. The sporting world, entertainment to many, suffered heavy casualties in 2016. Gordie Howe, Muhammad Ali and Arnold Palmer all met their maker but nothing stopped me deader in my own tracks than the tragedy of Jose Fernandez. His example clearly illustrates the control we often have over our own demise. On September 25^th, with cocaine and other illegal drugs in his system, Fernandez and two friends crashed into a jetty near Miami Beach, Florida. What a tragedy, what a spectacle, what a shame. So much promise, so much potential, but in a moment of stupidity he met his end.  Sometimes we create our own circumstance and, it appears, that death will take advantage no matter who we are. Whatever lessons we should take from living, there is one surefire way to make them irrelevant. Death is the ultimate consequence of our actions, the inescapable deterrent that serves little purpose.

            There is nothing sadder than someone dying in a manner that seems to have come before their time. These people we remember for the event itself, but far more of our attention fades with the passing of each life sentence. In fact, we all have an expiration date. Some deaths just seem more natural than others. Morley Safer, front man for 60 Minutes, died at the age of 84. Garry Marshall, director of many films including Pretty Woman, died at the age of 81. Zsa Zsa Gabor, well known diva and actress, finally died at the ripe old age of 99. Death doesn't seem as tragic when the late person led a full life. When children die it seems such a waste, but when the aged pass we don't sigh to the same degree. Their end may be sad. It might even be a tragedy, but with that end we add things like, "They had a long life" or "I hope I can last that long."

            If you pay attention to such things, life itself is a dichotomy. Just through the act of living, we are dying (tick tock, tick tock). Everyone will inevitably, and eventually, meet their dead end. Every green banana will ripen and turn to mush. Time goes by and so does our existence. We are often quite blinded to this fact. The doldrums of our everyday can be deadening in and of themselves. Like going bald, you just get used to it. As you go through your daily life, you forget what's coming. You don't realize that your very moment could be now. Most times, it comes without our awareness. How lovely that life has a way of constantly reminding us. No matter who you are. No matter your lot in life. You are doomed. It is by example that we find ourselves forewarned.

Photos

https://journeywithritz.wordpress.com/

http://www.arikhanson.com/2014/12/09/how-long-should-you-stay-at-that-dead-end-job/

The Stick

            I try my best to be a kind person. Tolerance and compassion are the two things I strive to maintain in my life. I have much empathy for others. Having just been said, it is no easy feat to dish out joy when this world is so fucking bleak and foreboding. In a reality so full of things and pleasure, there is often little to be joyful about. On the best day, everything can rub you the wrong way. From the moment you open your eyes feeling weary, all there is stands as every reason to just go back to sleep. People only add to the chaos. Throughout my tenure on this planet, I have noticed just how significant the retardation factor has become in my fellow man. It's hard not to experience agoraphobia, when the simple act of existing means coming in contact with one moron after another. I am not exempt from this lifestyle, especially during rebuttal, but I hope I can still catch myself from any conditioned response. In a world full of assholes, I too am often a chocolate starfish. I just want to strike out at anything that causes me grief. There are times when I interact with the public that I am mere steps away from incarceration. Thank goodness my meds give me control over that angst and violence but even they don't always inhibit the stick that, at times, appears to be shoved up my ass. This day, I recognize that I am not alone in this intrusion. It's time to purge my wooden invader. I need to say what there is to say and be done with it. I totally, unabashedly, completely have the need to rant.

            I have absolutely no respect for anyone who voted for Donald Trump. I believe anyone who did vote for him should be charged with a hate crime. His supporters are representational and self-explanatory. Hate is hate, even if you are simply overlooking it.  To validate such a man with your vote is pure villainy. Since the election, I have withdrawn my favour from almost all my social contacts that were so inclined in their commitment. If you do not condemn a person for their nasty behaviour, then you condone that behaviour. Trump's fiscal policy and agenda have little to do the character of his person. When he physically mocked a disabled man, in front of millions, that was the line for me. I wouldn't associate with that type of person in private so why would I endorse them in public? I don't care if Hillary Clinton emailed people pictures of her twat, the kind of person who does what Trump did to that psychically challenged man should be shunned, not exonerated. Someone should pull the stick out of his ass. As a neutral Canadian (sometimes), I am bewildered by the recent choice America made. I mean, seriously? I am convinced that down the line, given enough time, those who grant approval to this man will come to realize that the same condition they cast on another will one day visit them. They too will cry out at the injustice. You always get what you paid for and the price is always so high. 

            

            A few weeks ago, I was pulling into the Dollarama parking lot when I ran into a wall. The wall was a grey four-door Dodge Ram and it had grown out of the centre of a parking lane. I had pulled into the lot and into line for a spot. Little did I know this was no ordinary line, rather an all-new position the driver had assigned to themselves. She just sat there, with no signal, no indication of anything but being frozen in time. With no oncoming traffic, she could have easily shuffled around for a different approach. She fidgeted in the front seat and I watched with great interest. I just assumed she must be on a smartphone so I lightly tapped the car horn, in that squeaking, barely touched the thing way. I got nothing. I proceeded to unhook my seatbelt and reached for the door to investigate. Maybe she was in need of medical assistance, one can never really be sure.  The second I grasped the handle, she whipped right into the first empty space. She must have needed more than mere assistance. I followed quickly behind her, immediately next to her, as she opened up her door and stepped out. She was in her forties with a Prince Edward Island haircut that reminded me of every schoolmarm in cinematic history. Her glasses were oh so apropos. I stepped out and let it go. I told her harshly that she is required by law to signal before any turn, even in a parking lot. She stuck her nose so high in the air that I could see the stick coming out her left nostril. She pissed me off, not even acknowledging me, so I called her a bitch. She stopped dead and asked if I had just called her a bitch. Duh! In rare form, I told her I would have called her a cunt but I couldn't smell her from my vantage point. She practically ran into the shop. I proceeded at a distance behind her. Inside, as I stood staring at a display case, she walked past me and uttered "Wow." I replied with "That's exactly what I thought." In a little fit of rage, she proclaimed that the entire store "watch out for this guy." I went on with my duty, heavily amused at this point. It did not last. She eventually disappeared after running into each other a few more times. When I got back to my car, the SUV was gone and I assumed so was she. I looked around to make sure she wasn't lurking. I still couldn't smell a thing.

           

            There is a fine line between friends and neighbours. The two are not exclusive from each other but perhaps they should be. I learnt a long time ago not to shit where you eat. Having settled quite nicely into our home, it has been well over a year since the move to Paris, Ontario, Canada. We love the neighbourhood and the town itself. Everything here seems so quaint and unobtrusive. The promos all claim it to be "the prettiest town in Canada," and I for one wholeheartedly agree. It is a lovely place to live. The community keeps mostly to themselves and the crime rate is dramatically low, although things can seem a little "Stepford Wives" with all the very white people. In the last 12 months or so, I have become acquainted with the neighbours who live on each side of me. I speak of my immediate neighbours, not the hot guy down the road or the snotty family to our left, mere metres away from my door.  Conveniently for me, they are mostly women and so much easier to get along with than heterosexual men (for the most part). Just out of immediate reach, a family with young kids keeps mostly to themselves. One early morning, around 7 AM, one of those kids, a small blond boy named John, rang our doorbell and startled my partner and me from our sleeping. When I opened the door, he just stood there, claiming to know nothing including his own name. I invited him inside, gave him a sugary drink and a cookie, then decided to call the police. Never having seen the boy before, and with nothing forthcoming from him, I was left with little choice. The second I said anything about the cops, his memory returned and he was able to lead me directly to his front door. She opened the door half asleep but her smartphone was on. She had no idea the boy had gone missing. Without a word to me, she harshly scolded him and yanked him inside the home. There was no thank you. There was no appreciation for not calling Children's Aid. She didn't even look at me as she slammed the door closed in my face. Since then, she walks by me as if I am not even there. The boy runs quickly away whenever he sees me or my partner. She is the one thing about this neighbourhood that bothers me the most. I would also call her a bitch but I think it goes deeper than that. I don't even believe she needs to get laid properly, although if you see her husband you might assume so. I don't know if its homophobia or the proverbial stick rammed up her butt but one time I saw her yawn and you could see it.

           

            You can be as tolerant as Gandhi and as empathetic as the Christ, but something always preys on one's last nerve. I have to admit that while I have few biases towards the population in general, I can't stand ugly people. I don't mean disabled or physically challenged people. I do not mean people who do not meet conventional standards of beauty. There are certain people who just make you cringe. Just being near them is more than enough for discomfort. Often, any stick has completely disappeared. They have it all. Their body is ugly. Their face is ugly. Their energy screams ugly. They are nasty for no reason and a grimace in the most natural of ways. American uglies all voted for Trump. More often than not, you can see them coming. Their aura is more mud than welcoming bright. Everything about them cries out asshole. It seems their mission to shit on everyone else's day. Misery seems to love company. They try hard to make it so. Each moment you spend near them is an experiment in terror. They make you want to scream out as you punch them in the fucking face. Grrrrr. I try my best to rise above. I don't mean to interact with them but often I am given little choice. If you want to seek one out, all you have to do is go to your friendly neighbourhood Wal-Mart.

            I noticed his ass on the way into the store. For a moment, I thought he was a Muppet. At this time, I failed to notice the tree growing out of his crack. Mr. Lumpy, as I have come to know him, slowly disappeared into the Christmas displays. I headed towards the good fruit. We met up again in the electronics section. I saw what I wanted right away and moved towards the display. I had to say "excuse me" when he would not get out of my way. It was his left thigh that really stood like a huge barrier. He looked at me like he was rabid, then he moved directly into my path. When he bent over to reach whatever he was trying to reach, I experienced the last super moon of 2016. I shouldn't make fun. There was just that something about him that made me feel like he was trying to piss me off. His energy was dark and foreboding. His posture, then his derrière, both told tales about him. I could feel the hate flow from him as his right boob cascaded down his torso. His face was spotty. His hair unkempt. He didn't look happy and he didn't seem happy. This has little to do with how you treat other people in public. At one point, he even grunted at me as I stood trying to get to the goods. He still refused to move so I directed a few "pardon me" at his backside. It was at this point that I recognized the giant trunk hanging from his orifice. More often than not, I would have told him off but in this case it would have done no good. Ugly like this is not worth your time. No matter what you say, or how you say it, it means little in the bigger scheme of things. I decided to go around his exterior wall and re-approach when he had left the scene. I never try to pet a dog when it is growling at me, especially if it's ugly and carries a stick.

            Life is trying at the best of times. I think all of us to some capacity recognize just how connected we all really are and we all know, to degrees, that deep down inside, existence is hard for everyone. We all should remove the log from our own butt before we go pulling branches from anybody else's. It might get messy but it needs to be done. We are all guilty of such tunnel vision. We think only of ourselves, with little recognition of others, let alone consideration. Something in this modern day has turned us all into fiends who sit worshipping our own image in a river. It's not always a pretty picture. Ugly is as ugly does. Now, I can be just as big of an asshole as anyone else can. I get on other people's last nerve. I hate and I have much rage. At times, I smile at my own reflection. It's the same story for all of us, I imagine. Somehow we all seem to have something poking out of our hole. You can jiggle it if you don't remember.

Photos

http://bublbe.com/en/society/17078-vets-are-warning-dog-owners-about-the-dangers-of-throwing-sticks-for-their-pets

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/pets-health/10150473/Playing-fetch-with-sticks-can-harm-dogs-vets-warn.html

http://www.thenewforest.co.uk/discover/dogs.aspx

http://www.peacefulpixel.com/2010/04/21/dog-vs-tree/

Every Heartbeat

"Hear me speak what's on my mind

Let me give this testimony

To reaffirm that you will find

That you are my one and only

No exception to this rule

I'm simple but I'm no fool

I've got a witness happy to say

Every hour, every day"

            We all say how lovely love is. I don't mean the kind of love you have for your neighbour. I don't mean the bond you have with family or the agape love one feels towards God and others. I speak of romantic love and all that it entails. We spend almost all of our lives cherishing, cooing and recklessly throwing our feelings around all because we want to be held and wanted and complete. In fact, we convince ourselves that loving someone, the act of being in love, is a wonderful thing. We spend our entire lives in pursuit. When we do not find it, we just keep hoping, and praying, and wishing. When we do get it, we spend all our time wishing things were better and asking something up above to make it all turn out for our benefit. It rarely ever does. The truth is, the primary reason most people want love is so that they can get laid. Any emotion that comes with that motivation is hormonal yet not necessarily erotic. That is why so many relationships just don't last; neither does the passion. Once that goes, you are all on your own, trapped in a world without coitus, all part of some artificial avocation.

            Not for one second have I ever stopped loving my first partner Doug. After over twenty years of weeping at his grave, I have come to recognize that I love him more now  than when he was alive. It seems some love, apparently, when it is true and real, has a hard habit of lingering. True love doesn't die, it just changes. His death did not alter the way I feel, it fortified everything. I still feel exactly the same way now as I always have, again, perhaps even stronger. When my current partner Ben came along eighteen years ago, I imagined the two emotional states could not reside in harmony, they would not and could not co-exist within me. All these years later and I see how wrong I was. There was something so grand, so precious about my loyalty and commitment to Doug, that I could not go on without it. I held it, cherished it, despite how it ended and the act that sealed his doom.  The truth is I just never let it go. It was so significant, so special to me that I learned to live with the pain versus having the sheer freedom to move past it. I could not continue without him, so I kept him. I never once vilified him or the experience. In the end, he is now dust to dust, and nothing I have done or said can change that reality. All the love in the world has never made a difference. I have come to the conclusion that it all was for nothing and any expression I have left is fodder for a love that might as well have never been. Most days, I'm not sure it was worth it.

            My commitment to Ben is as complicated. You cannot be a little bit pregnant. Any sense of loyalty and dedication I held towards Doug has always been at least equal to that which I have towards Ben. I could not have loved either one, any more. They have always mattered just as much, just differently. I am in it for the right reasons. I always have been. As a matter of fact, it was easy to love again.  At the time, I was astounded at the simplicity of it all. Apparently, love really does know no limit. It can be consuming, powerful and overwhelming. These are not necessarily good things. Over all these years of struggle and strife, for all the time Ben and I have spent together, I ask myself if love really ever means anything. In the grand scheme of the universe, how can it matter at all? I don't despise or repel the notion of love, I simply am not sure that the pain and strife are worth the promised moments of tranquility that never come. I ask myself if I would have been better all alone. In no way do I imagine we had never happened. I would not trade it for anything in the world. I don't rue or wish it away. I just wonder if it would have been easier to have spent my life focused on different priorities. If I had never loved, I would have no need to be free from it. I would have been free from the agony, free from the struggle, free from the constant chaos. I would have been able to not feel anything, for anyone. Just as I sometimes wish Doug had never been, I can't help but think my life would have been easier without the silly, stupid thing called love.

           

"Every heartbeat bears your name

Loud and clear they stake my claim

My red blood runs true blue

And every heartbeat belongs to you"

            Since Doug's death, Valentine's Day has not been my favourite holiday. It never really was in the first place. The day itself is not the problem. Having a commemoration set aside for the expression of love is never a bad thing. Making a day of it seems very apropos. Yes, it has evolved into a commercial venture, a cultural cash grab. At base, Valentine's Day should be redundant. Why do we have to set aside a day to remember what we should embrace every day? Still, any harm it does in condoning excess is succeeded by its economic consequence. Regardless of its modern purpose, every year I am reminded of this most terrible of moments. This day has become a horror relived. Every flower, every heartbeat is a constant reminder of the sheer agony the day in question has brought me. My fortitude does not stop my mind from playing it over and over again in my thoughts. Throughout the entire gamut, I try to remember where I am now but the plague of what was is much more powerful than I ever imagined. Every year, I hope I will not have to relive it. I hope that it has faded away and will no longer haunt me come the day. Somehow it always does. Over twenty years later and I still find myself at the mercy of my memory. Sometimes the reality is so harsh that I wish I was free from it. In the end, perhaps not loving in the first place would have served me better. It would have been better for both of us, I fear.

            It was almost 48 hours after his death that my mother and I sat down to order flowers for the funeral. Nelson's Flower Shop still sits in the center of downtown Strathroy, Ontario. The small, quaint depot is welcoming and pretty, like the gifts they bestow. Tuesday, February 14^th 1995 was a Valentine's Day to remember. My Mom and I found our way to a cursed event. We sat down and waited for the attendant to help us. I was weary and humbled and trying so hard to hold on. I thought ordering a bouquet of sunshine might distract me, if even only for a moment. It did not. We sat and we waited, for what seemed like hours. The truth be told, what should have been a 15 minute endeavour turned into 60 minutes of pure horror. Slowly, then to pace, love flowed about the room like molasses. The air was thick with sentiment, heavy with an unending, in my face ruckus called love. It may have seemed much to do about nothing but every lover just made me cringe. As we waited, patron after patron rushed in to buy roses or some special gift for their loved one. At some point, the experience became less about ordering and more about hammering. Every one of them that entered made me feel like a nail was rammed into my head. Dozens of men, conned into thinking it would make any difference, came then went, pummelling my brain with mini-daggers of doom. One after another, each a deliberate assault on my senses. I could barely breathe. I could barely speak. Needless to say, Valentine's Day is not filled with wonderful memories for me. It does not find welcome every moment of the day. Every year I try to make it fit again but I am left with the pain, the agony, and most of all, the feeling that it was all for nothing.

"Classic case of boy meets girl

Moving in the same direction

You're not asking for the world

I'm not asking for perfection

Just a love that's well designed

For passing the test of time

I'm here to tell you

I'm here to stay

Every hour, every day"

            Being with someone for almost two decades means you have to make certain adjustments in your thinking. I can't always have it my way. Valentine's Day is a prime example. It is the last thing in the world that I give a shit about. I'd rather chew glass than give in to the sentiment of the day. I have to fake it. I give my partner Valentine's gifts and he does the same for me. There are cards, candies and I have even baked a heart-shaped chocolate cake just for the occasion. I go through the motions because of my responsibility to my relationship but certainly not out of some want. Every heart thrown in front of me, every cinnamon candy or sweet red rose, returns me to that torture room, just on Front Street in my hometown. Throughout the day, I feel more like Pinhead than

a man who has moved on. I am unsure why this experience, above all others, lingers with me. I don't know why I make it through the rest of the anniversaries without such a tactile and physical response. On the day he died, I am sad and empty. On his birthday, I am blue and resolved. On our anniversary, I am reflective and resigned. On Valentine's Day, I would rather rip your face off than see one more fucking flower or witness Cupid making his play. Every year I get nailed all over again.

"Every heartbeat bears your name

Loud and clear they stake my claim

Ask anyone and they'll tell you it's true

Every heartbeat belongs to you"

            You shouldn't need hearts and endearments to convince the one you love that you love them. Valentine's Day should be irrelevant. It matters only on some level of recognition. Loving someone romantically should be an action, not mere semantics. Every heartbeat should hold more than candy or flowers. People convince themselves that a few moments of thoughtfulness are the truest expression of the love they feel towards their better half. This is just not within the reality of being human. Love can be an awful place to visit and I don't understand why some people choose to live there. It is pain and loneliness and hurt and abandon. More often than not, it is rarely worth the complication, let alone the chaos. Still, despite the misery loving has brought me, I find myself carried away on clouds of wonder. I am constantly aware of all the positives that loving has brought me. There are moments from my life so powerful, so engulfing that I can barely breathe while they occur. Yes, romantic love is often more hardship than healing, but it is also the blood that flows through each of us. While I often wish I had played it safe, avoiding all that caring for another can bring, I know I would be a lesser man without it. I am not fond of the deliberate way love rips your soul from your body and pisses all over it.  I would trade it most days for some semblance of peace. It thrives within me, regardless of the constant war it rages deep inside my being. All I do know is that I am cursed and blessed at the very same time. As with everyone else's experience, love has been a struggle. Unlike with most people, it has been easy for me to find. Twice over, I have come to know how duplicity rules the heart. It is both good and bad, happy and sad. I am sure that it might not seem worth it but it turns out that in the end, it always is.

"Yeah, sure maybe I'm on the edge

But I love you baby and like I said

I'm here to tell you

I'm here to stay

Every hour, every day"

(Every Heartbeat, Amy Grant 1991)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcYIZ-cduvM

Photos

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/06/hellraiser-stories-end-novel-the-scarlet-gospel-clive-barker