In the air tonight…
When I was in elementary school my teachers often didn’t know what to do with me…
I was known as a divergent thinker…
So one year I was moved directly from grade five into grade seven…
as an answer to an uncategorical problem…
In grade seven we learned about negative numbers…
For some reason this concept made me cry… I could work it out on paper… but I always wondered where the numbers went… and why they had to be negative…
I could never find the words to explain the torrential rainstorm washing out my eyes during math class, to my teacher…
At eleven everyone names you hormonal… or too sensitive…
This is a common way of dismissing depth, feeling, and
historical connection…
So to avoid explanation, when negative numbers came up, I would just leave the portable and walk in very large circles around the school field… which would become a lake in the winter… and sometimes stand at the edge of the field visiting the Shetland pony who lived alone, so it seemed, on the other side of the fence…
My friends and I were all fascinated by this pony because it had a penis that could almost reach the ground… not one of us had ever seen anything like that before… William Gibson hadn’t envisioned the World Wide Web… and porn was still fairly soft… and as far as I knew it didn’t involve male subjects… but then at twenty-one, as a Canada Customs officer, it was required duty to search for and assess permissibility or seizure of suspected materials… and I discovered that there had been a shocking change in content…
I lived several houses down the street from school… and once in a while my dad would open up my parents’ bedroom window and my sister and I would get to do target practice into the back yard with a .22 rifle… this is before they built the subdivision behind our house where Phil Collins’ ex-wife (the first one) and their children used to live… and way before the event of the Agricultural Land Reserve and global warming, when on rare occasion, the possibility of skating on frozen puddles presented itself…
When I was in high school I hung out with a group of really nice boys…
I remember sitting in the basement of one boy’s house watching Top Gun, the year it came out on video… played on a first generation VCR… this friend said he was going to fly a F-14 Tomcat one day, and he did… but even though he wanted it, he was never given permission to put his hands under my shirt…
This viewing was a slightly uncomfortable experience… but not nearly as uncomfortable as the time when the buddies were all over at my house watching All the Right Moves, on our first VCR and colour television, and my dad came down to the family room to demonstrate how he could make a male elk ejaculate by mimicking a mule on his bugler…
Thanks Dad…
Did they teach you that in dad school???
Everyone always thought my dad was SO cool… he said things like ‘adhesive’ instead of glue… and he could dress a moose with his bare hands…
At 16, even though I had an exceptional sense of humour, I wanted to die…
Stories out of my life…
Did you see the beautiful dusting of snow and the stripe of light running across the North Shore mountains at sunrise this morning???
Up the hill at SFU, I learned in my class today, that the first fall of snow marks the beginning of Winter ceremonies for the Coast Salish people…
Marking the beginning of a new cycle of transformation…
The ceremonies continue all winter until first frog song…
People go to creeks to listen for calls to mark a NEW transformation cycle to begin in Spring…
Imagine what it would mean if not one frog made it through the winter…
Just before lunch I made a silent powerpoint presentation on Pitseolak Ashoona…
One of my classmates commented to me as I was packing up…
Your use of silence forced me to pay attention…
Thank you for creating it…
Sing a Summer song...
Stop watch…
Last night,
in aisle #3 of Choices on Cambie,
I got kicked in the shins…
For dancing,
like this,
What I am... what I believe in...
Ladies and gentlemen,
the weapon…
And the lame man he gonna' fly...
Early this morning I was minding my business,
while washing up some of last night’s dishes,
when Little Gem (7yrs) asked me from the dining room table,
under steady light,
while eating her Honey Nut Cheerios…
Mama, What’s a milestone???
I had to think about it for a minute,
and I had to admit that the business I was minding,
had everything to do with accomplishing a difficulty…
A milestone is when you’re changed somehow…
Like when you were a baby and you started to crawl,
and walk,
and say your first word…
Or when you asked your first big question…
What was my first big question???
It was when you had just turned three,
and we were eating apple pie at our friends’ house,
and you said to them,
while they were holding their second child on their lap,
How come you guys are two moms???
I remember that…
Do you remember the answer to the question?
Not exactly, just that I know that love doesn’t pay attention to the container,
real love just loves…
And now we live in a time and a place when it is okay for different kinds of love to make and grow a baby…
A little while later,
that same day after the dishes,
I was at a Remembrance Day soccer tournament out at 8-Rinks,
and I ran into an old friend from the late 1980’s…
He mentioned something about his twenty year old brain,
and how his mentality at the time was such that he would have sold anything to make a dollar…
He said,
I would even have sold you…
I had to laugh…
Thankfully I was never in his possession,
and this interesting turn of phrase,
along with a feeling of finale,
seemed to cut a cord,
and brought closure to some small talk…
His innocuous comment reminded me of something I was reading when I flew over Lake Sakakawea — A Shoshone word for boat launcher —
a few weeks ago…
Sakakawea,
renamed Sacajawea by popular culture,
is constructed as the shapely Indian princess with perfect Caucasian features,
who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their expedition across the American West…
Many of us,
including myself,
may only be familiar with Sacajawea — A Hidatsa word for bird woman —
from watching Night at the Museum…
But the framework of her real life,
and personal experience can only be pieced together from the journals,
diaries,
and the notes of other people,
whose economic and political purpose was to scout the American West in the early 18oo’s…
Something they couldn’t have done without her help…
How would the karma of the alleged gambling or selling off of a young pregnant native woman to a European voyageur incarnate today???
How would you know???
What would tell you???
The theory isn’t entirely comprehensible,
or well documented,
but anyone who claims to be knowledgeable,
should be open to the fact that science is beginning to recognize degrees of freedom,
and supersymmetry,
with the steady beat of dragonfly wings…
For lunch,
Little Gem and I sat in the car at the White Spot on the Lougheed Highway,
in-between games…
She said,
I can’t believe I’m spending my whole day in Burnaby…
I asked her if she thought that today could be considered a milestone…
She said,
Kind of,
because even though I didn’t plan for it,
it just happened…
I've been lost without a trace...
Awakening adagio…
Ground control to Major Tom…
Yesterday I discovered a new reading room at the Fraserview Golf course on Vivian Drive,
and an altered concept of time…
If you’ve been reading along with me we all know by now that golf has its own purpose,
and its own set of rules…
After reading a few pages about Nadia Myre and her disruption of the Indian Act,
and eating a bowl of cream of mushroom and zucchini soup,
I went outside to take some photos of the day…
Haven't you always wanted a monkey...
When I returned to my table three seniors asked me,
Are you trying to clear things up for us out there???
I said,
Are you asking me to do a sundance???
They said,
Yes,
something like that…
We want to get onto the green in time for sunset…
On Monday, November 9, 2009 sunset was at 1:30,
Pacific Daylight Time…
I told them that it was a little short notice since the request was coming in at 12:45,
but I would see what I could do,
for next week…
We lau alelo…
Early this morning I had a dream that I was floating in a cloud of chiffon,
while being bench pressed by someone who looked like Claude Lemieux…
But maybe that was a fantasy…
And then a friend called to say,
Philosophydoll!!!
Claude is going to be on the Q on CBC Radio One in a few minutes…
Didn’t you watch Battle of Blades???!!!
When you see it you’re going to die…
So just now,
on my old couch with the springs popping out of it,
Little Gem and I watched both the Sunday and Monday night episodes,
commercial free…
What a show!!!
I wasn’t watching it Sunday night because I was holding a two day old baby,
and that isn’t a gift one gets everyday…
And I’m discovering that there are more and more things worth waiting for…
Like I wonder who had the foresight to bring Katarina Witt on as a judge…
Holy smokes…
I liked how she dismissed Sandra Bezic’s critiques with a soft middle finger,
and flossed her peaches with a gold link chain while she propositioned Claude for a foursome,
or was that the night before,
It’s all become such a blur now…
And Katarina made it quite clear that she wasn’t talking about golf…
Oh, oh…
I’m up here melting into my chair,
and it isn’t my heart that’s melting…
Little Gem said,
I don’t really know what she’s talking about,
but it sounds like TOO much information…
I don’t remember Sunday night television ever being like this when I was a kid…
CBC is starting to sound somewhat like the Playboy channel,
and it’s about time Canada saw some creative seduction on its national network…
I was on Coogee Beach in Sydney, Australia in a bikini,
the day the wall started to come down around West Berlin,
and nine months after that I walked the sand in No Man’s Land,
drinking Pepsi under a watch tower…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,
Battle of the Blades IS quintessentially Canadian…
Shae-Lynn and Claude are ice-dancing out a new anthem for this country,
and the temperature is rising…
But in John Ralston Saul’s book,
A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada,
the opening line reads:
Canada is a Métis nation…
Everything is always about completion,
and despite the success of this morphing of sport making new history,
some major events are still hanging in the air,
and they are crying for resolution…
Baby, you ain't seen nothing yet...
Canuck'd 