For The Last TIme

A poem I wrote in response to my cancer diagnosis.

I want my friends to know
that I will die.

When is not important...2 days?
…20 years? ...63 months?

And I want to start dying
today - now in fact -
I've waited too long.

As I sit here for perhaps the final time
in the evening sunlight under this tree.
And every breath becomes almost my last.

And tonight, I’ll savour
scallops in white wine
as if it's the last time I may taste them.

And tomorrow, if I'm still alive, I will
walk to the club on College street
that always plays latin music.

And dance like there's no tomorrow.

How sad these people around me,
obsessed with only living -
careening through life.
The forward momentum they must maintain
somehow so strident, predictable.
With no idea where their mad
rush is heading.

No such craziness for me.
I'm just hanging around
balanced,
like a man who loves mountains.
The long climb up thrills him -
so does skiing all the way back down.

Ah, the sweetness of being mortal,
knowing I'm more ephemeral,
unique,
than the mountains the sky, the sea,
even that old tree over there.

How peaceful I feel sitting in a bar
enjoying what could be my last whiskey.
(Pleased I asked for an eighteen-year single-malt for the occasion.)

And that woman Anne
- eight months ago -
surely I need to send flowers now
in case she’s my final lover.

And I want my friends to know
that they will die.
I want my friends to start dying too,
to join me in dying.

And we'll sit there laughing, reading poetry to each other,
for maybe the last time.

Happy with our dying
and our living.

Thoughts Around my Recent Cancer Diagnosis 6

I have had many things given to me in my life. Many have been very wonderful. Somethings have been painful, causing misery in my heart. But this is how everyone's life is, and I'm not sure if I would want to live a life that was all bliss. Now I have been given cancer. And cancer, with all its physical misery, fear and uncertainty is just another event in my life. Rather than focusing on the fact that the splendid life I was living just two months ago is largely no longer available to me, I can look to see how much fun a cancer patient can have, perhaps even finding out if there's any fun in being a cancer patient.

Thoughts Around my Recent Cancer Diagnosis 5

"Cancer connects us to one another because
Having cancer is an embodiment of the
Existential paradox that we all experience:
We feel that we are immortal,
Yet we know that we will die."

-Alice Stewart Trillin


Started chemo today. Will find out in about a month if I am in remission. Not cured. In remission. Maybe now I will feel a little less immortal. That's good.

Thoughts Around my Recent Cancer Diagnosis 4

My first night in the hospital getting used to all the routine. They took me for a CT scan this morning and the orderly asked me if I could walk. Not quite that bad yet I thought.
Lying in a bed, being fussed over, served food. Letting others explore my body. It's all very passive. Stuck in a well oiled bureaucratic hospital machine. Wearing hospital garments and tethered to an IV pole. Easy to start seeing myself as a blob. Stop being grounded. Lose a sense of my own vitality. Feel sorry for myself.  Become a patient.
It's all about attitude. My attitude. And as always I have the ability to form that attitude. Do I let my situation and environment dominate me, or do I live in this place the way I want to live, within the possibilities.
Can I still be something bigger than this place?

Thoughts Around my Recent Cancer Diagnosis 3

Being admitted in a few hours. Chemo starting for a week tomorrow morning.

Was wondering today why I had been so nervous to give cancer a thought over the years. Learning about it a bit, how to avoid it, what it is, what treatments are available would hardly have been worse than avoiding the topic out of fear. People I love have died from it of course, but then it's unfortunately a fact of modern life.

All that sugar I ate (ha ha).

For some reason I kept thinking of "Subvert the Dominant Paradigm" all day.

Thoughts Around my Recent Cancer Diagnosis 2

Checked my beehive today, they are doing really well. Nothing like an Ausgust hive of 60,000 bees busy as hell to give a feeling of energy and effulgence.

Feeling tired. Got very emotional at one point when I mentioned how many wonderful people like me and are rooting for me. I sometimes have felt very emotional.

Talked to Alix my nurse, may get in tomorrow.

Spent afternoon with Brian, Neev, Eron and Debbie. Had dinner with Nathan who is coming to see me every day. Got a great card from (his) Anastasia, designed and painted by her. Seems I rock like Jack White and Ash Grunwald. Two (temporary) tatoos inside. Thanks Anastasia.

Thoughts Around my Recent Cancer Diagnosis

August 23 / 2015

10 days since diagnosis with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Hopefully admission to Princess Margaret Hospital is tomorrow.

I have been nervous about the topic of Cancer (ha ha Tropic of Cancer) for many years now, since my father and three friends have succumbed to it.

Hearing the news 10 days ago was obviously a shock. For several days a feeling of dread or doom in the stomach, sinking feeling, hard in the middle of the night. Confusion trying to figure out a way to relate to all the feelings / thoughts that go through my head. What is the “right healing attitude” I should have here?? And do I have it?

A lot of time spent initially contacting family and friends in an ordered fashion.

The yoyo between thinking of getting through it and what if I die. I did not ask my contact at the hospital what my chances were, hoping I could maintain a middle path of “What will be will be”.
Someone told me to be angry and smash plates, which I didn’t feel. I felt this is my life now, and so still enjoy it. At times I felt good, even excited at the intensity, and that bothered me too, as if I was too accepting of the whole thing. Not knowing my chances pushed me to try to be completely open to the future. To try to be ready for anything. Then my nurse told me I had a good chance, so now I’m more hope and less “zen” about it. But often still that little flicker of dread in the background. I have enjoyed making up a fantastic list of all the great things I want to do when I get out.

I have received some excellent guidance for how to handle this which I gone over and over.

I could die here. Strangely still something of an abstract thought. I have had a life four years longer than my Father, and a dear friend from the past died over thirty years ago, but somehow this sort of reasoning means nothing. So many of my (our) ideas about life are trite. I feel very grateful for the life I have had, so frankly I’ve not done a lot of feeling sorry for myself yet.

It is a challenge.

I look at people walking past on the street and they seem so confident, in control, almost smug about their lives. Assumptions. Entitled to being alive. I felt the same way recently. Now I am grateful for so little. Just sitting in the sun is great.

The social connections I have had in the last 10 days have been insane. It seems I am connected to so many great people, and have connected to some I’ve not talked to in years. At times this was draining, and sometimes I felt I had to “cheer people up”. Not be too heavy. There was a fear of isolation so maybe I was over extending myself in my insecurity to mitigate against that. Wanting to be normal so others would be normal. I’ve been phoning, texting, emailing, Facebook posting and messaging, skyping and plain old meeting for dinner. Although sometimes tiring, I think this is good. 

And I’ve had so many arrangement to make, it’s been busy.

Someone referred just now to my "Health Adventure", that seems good to me. Although maybe there is some denial in there.

Often very tiring. Hard to climb stairs without lots of hemoglobin to supply oxygen to my muscles. And often waking in the night, feverish, pillow and pj top soaking.

Got a close haircut to pre-empt the chemo hairloss, glad I did it as it's like the new me having some sort of control.

I have also gone out of my way to milk the situation for any humour I can. Again perhaps my insecurity and desire to not alienate people. To cheer them up and cheer me up. It’s been good, although I sometimes suspect people are being too tolerant of my jokes.

Thanks to all who have made me feel so loved. I am very grateful.

My Father: A Life in Uniform

Eric LaTrobe was born in Canada in 1898, during the reign of Queen Victoria, of parents born in Engand. He was no doubt raised to revere Britain.

In 1899, Sir Baden Powell, a popular English hero of the Boer War, published a military training manual, Aids to Scouting, which was soon rewritten as Scouting for Boys and helped Baden Powell create the Boy Scout movement. My Father put on his first uniform as a Boy Scout in what was initially an organization with military overtones, the “scouting” for instance being a synonym for reconnaissance.

In the first decade of the Twentieth Century, European nationalism ran high, and many countries were spoiling for a fight, a chance to engage in the glory of war. When Britain declared war on Germany, on July 4, 1914, there was cheering in the streets of Toronto. Shortly after, at the age of sixteen, and without telling his Father, Eric enlisted to fight in the Great War. You had to be seventeen, and his Father was angry when he found out, but refrained from informing the Army. Was he proud of his son for wanting to do his bit for the Empire? Everyone knew the war would be short. No one knew what awaited the young men.

And so my Father, in the uniform of the Canadian Overseas Expedition, went off to war at sixteen. I still possess the dogtag he wore for those four years, which gives his unit as the 42nd Brigade. It seems the 42nd saw action at Ypres, the Somme and Passchendale. It is certain that in those places my Father missed nothing of the stark horror of trench warfare. Years later he told us little, but we were shown a scar on his knee where a piece of shrapnel had passed through, and I believe he had a nasal condition caused by breathing traces of poison gas. If there were psychic scars, we never noticed them.

On returning in 1918, he took some education, then moved down to Detroit to work on a car assembly line. After that he spent some time living alone on a boat, drifting on the Mississippi or Missouri rivers, working odd jobs. I seem to remember a dog and a pirate bandana, but that may be my childhood embellishment. His family lost touch with him for a while. If ever there was a war to induce what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, World War One fit the bill, and I can only imagine that some of this activity was my Father dealing with his inner feelings.

Back in Toronto, he became involved with the Boy Scouts again, this time putting on the uniform of a leader. This probably included his war service ribbons. He met another leader, a young woman 12 years his junior, called Ivy Rose Lyon. 

They were friends, I have no idea if anything more than that was acknowledged between them. The depression ensued, my Father was mostly unemployed during this period, and this may have made him hesitate, with his Victorian outlook, from pursuing my Mother.

Then in September of 1939, Canada declared war, and my Father went off to fight the Germans again. How he felt putting on army wool khaki, experiencing the smell and feel of it again, I have no idea. He was assigned I believe to a desk job in England because of his age, but also manned a Bofors antiaircraft cannon at night when needed. 

With the Normandy invasion approaching in 1944, the Allies realized that few of the American or Canadian troops had ever been under fire, and so an attempt was made to go through records and find World War One vets to put in the first wave onto the beaches. They failed to find my Father in time, and so he was not there for the Canadian landing on Juno Beach, which with 50% casualties, was the second highest death trap that day.

After the war, my Father returned home, married Ivy Rose Lyon in short order, and I was born in early 1947, my Sister three years later.

I remember him as a quiet man, a gentleman, who always had a pipe in his mouth. He loved his family, the outdoors and the local church, and became a Scout Leader again, back in uniform and now wearing service ribbons from two world wars. He starting the First Whitby Sea Scouts, with my Mother as leader for the Cubs. I grew to be a member of each. He passed away in 1962 at the age of 64, his last two years being plagued with sickness, but the proceeding fifteen, I suspect, being the happiest of his life. His world, at least for a little while, was a sane place.

The Bushel Basket, Folk Music, and an October Evening

The other day I took some audio equipment to a repair shop run by a guy named Ted Syperek. Of all the people I know, excepting my Sister, he’s my longest acquaintance. I met him at the Bushel Basket Coffee House.

In 1965 some friends and I decided to have a coffee house in our church basement in Whitby, Ontario. We named it the Bushel Basket, I designed a logo, and we put out the word. We arranged tables, stuck candles in Brio bottles, and on the first night, John McKibban and I got up and sang a Beatles song to my three guitar chords. At this level how long this might have gone on before boredom would have ended it, is anyone’s guess.

But just a few weeks later the door opened and in walked about a dozen strangers from nearby Oshawa, friends from a folk spot called the Green Door. Mostly musicians, these people proceeded to entertain us with some amazingly good music, and become regular additions to the basement event.

I soon knew...
Dennis Delorme (aka Reverend Orval Rutabaga), a multi-instrumentalist who later became pedal steel guitar player for the award-winning country-rock band Prairie Oyster. Paul Grady wrote songs that were recorded by three national acts and had his own career. Macbeth Swackhammer, a man as eccentric and wonderful as his name, proved to be a consummate blues harmonica player. Chris Cuddy (aka Jeremy Dormouse) is still active in the music scene. T.R. Gleecoff became a local radio DJ. Of the three Shaw siblings, Karen became my first serious girlfriend. Then there were the Aiken brothers, John Gurney, Ellen Hunter, Penny Sidor, Kathy Reid, Rick Gullison, Zeke Mazurek (aka Fiddlin Zeke Zilch) and many more. And Ted Syperek.

This was the era of tremendous interest in folk music, both the traditional music reaching into the past of America and Britain, and new offerings with personal or protest themes from astounding songwriters. This was the era of Bob Dylan, Eric Anderson, Richie Havens, Phil Ochs, Donovan, Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Hamilton Camp, Dave Van Ronk, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Gordon Lightfoot, Tim Buckley, and a Canadian poet, Leonard Cohen, who much to our surprise came out with some music, singing his songs in a rough voice.

There are certain sweet qualities to folk music. When someone sings a personal song or a cover of something like Cohen's Suzanne, using an acoustic guitar played with a gentle finger-picking style, a pensive spell hangs in the air. On the other hand a number of people on stage with several guitars, a fiddle and mouth harp, performing some blues or jug band tune, creates awesome manic energy.

I was not the happiest teenager in those days, convinced that I was an academic, social and athletic failure at high school. The folk crowd was almost the only place outside of my family where I felt accepted and affirmed. This group helped fan the flames of my life-long love affair with music. And I'll never forget Dennis, who I idolized, surprising me one day by saying he thought I was cool.

In 2001 I got a call from Paul Grady, who wanted to do a Bushel Basket reunion. Using the new function of email, the two of us contacted almost all the people from thirty-five years before. The response showed me I was not the only one for whom the Bushel Basket had been important. 

The event took place in the original church basement on October 13th, with a crowd of original members, augmented with spouses and offspring. People flew in from the States and the West Coast. There was a meal, an impressive evening of performance, and great joy in reunion. It was a real pleasure to see my son playing guitar in an ensemble for one number. And Paul recorded the event on CD for us as “An October Evening”.

I am far from upset these days when an audio component needs attention; it’s an excuse to go and see Ted, another Bushel Basket alumnus. 

A Month in Australia 3 - Yollie and the Joeys

Beck and the oldest Wallabie

Susie Q and me. I'm in love!

1/29 The day is mostly rain. Despite this, and perhaps because we did nothing the day before, Jan takes me out to visit South Head, ont of the three promontories that mark the entrance to Sydney Harbour. The other two are called, strangely enough, Middle Head and North Head. We cross uner the harbour through the tunnel, past the CBD, Central Business District, and into what’s known as the East Suburbs.Our route takes us past various bays such as Rushcutters Bay, Double Bay and Rose Bay. At Rose Bay I see something I like and Jan stops so I can photograph a long line of Moreton Bay Fig Trees, sitting with huge trunks black with rain.

We visit the peninsula of South Head and identify the headlands of Middle Head and North Head, covered with trees and houses,  that mark the entrance to the huge harbour. A large tanker sails out. On the way back we stop on the seaward side and I find a huge rock cliff in the rain with high waves coming from the ocean and breaking on the rocks in white fury, then pulling back in jade green and white mass. I keep my camera in a plastic bag and get some shots even with the pouring rain.

1/30 Jan drops me off at the central railway station and I’m on the train to Melbourne, a twelve hour ride. This gives me a look at a good amount of Australian countryside. I see my first Kangaroo, standing nonchalantly at the edge of some scrub, unaware it’s a first kangaroo.

                The land is quite hilly coming out of Sydney, but flattening out toward the Melbourne end. It consists of vast expanses of pale brown lifeless grassbroken by solitary trees. I see little cultivation but sheep sheep sheep everywhere, grazing or sitting in the shade of a tree.There are cows and horses too. The ranchers single story houses look basic.

Austarlia seems to have not tried to modernize itself in quite the same mindless, ruthless way as North America. There are still lots of Victorian facades around and the tramcars in Melbourne seem to come in four versions, from huge streamlined new to a modle that looks to be from the 30’s or 40’s.

2/1  The next day I walk along the wide Yarra that flows through the town. The water is full of boats, sculling teams, and black swans.There are some wonderful large modern sculptures in all the park and public squares I go through. I visit the cottage of CJ LaTrobe, an ancestor who was the first Leautenant Governor of the state of Victoria. I wander around the huge Royal Botanical Gardens. I’m hot because it was cold and windy in the morning, so I took a rain jacket over my short sleeved shirt, but now I’m afraid to take the waterproof jacket off because of the brutal U- charged Aussie sun.

2/9 We visit Hobart at the south end of the island

2/10 Beauty Point, Tasmania

I go for a 5 hour hike along the coast by myself and visit a place called Copper Cove.

After dinner we are visited by Yolanda (Yollie). She comes in with two plastic cages, and a large bump in the middle of her bosom. One cage contains a baby wombatcocooned in several flannel pouches. I similar arrangement in the other cage contains two baby wallabies. The bump in her bosom contains a “pinkie”, a baby wallabie so young as to not have hair yet, and just two days out of its mothers pouch. They are all marsupials found in the pouch of their respecitve dead mothers after the mother was killed by a car.  

                I hold the wombat, then the pinkie. All the animals are unsure of themselves in the bright light and unconfined space. The wombat twists and turns against me and moves up my body. It has serious claws. Yollie says she knows its stressed because the pink soles of its feet have turned red, it goes back in a pouch. The oldest wallabie seems more relaxed than the rest and keeps its head out and give my finger a sniff. I hold the pinkie, it is almost fetal, with dry and loose skin. It continually twists and turns in the flannel with its long hind legs, with a huge middle toe,  vigourouly poking in all directions. Yollie later lets me name her Susie Q. I try unsuccessfully to give it a bottle, Yollie takes over, having to feed pinkies every 2 and a half hours, 24 hours around the clock she’s good at it. Beck,, my cousin’s daughter, feeds one of the older ones and Jo feeds the wombat.Then Yollie double wraps them all in tight flannel, the pinkie immediately stills against her bosom.

A Month in Australia 2 --- Bush Walk

My Cousin's eco-home in Tassie.

1/24 Sydney  My Sister Jan drove me 76 km up the coast to a beach town called Terrigal. The country north of Sydney was beautiful, often very hilly with green bush covering the slopes and vistas of the Hawkesbury River. We had lunch on the beautiful beach, full of families on vacation, then we climbed out on rocks at one end. It looked like low tide, and a large plateau of sandstone lay exposed to the sun, with only a few deep pools still full of water. I had a marvelous time photographing the soft rock, which water had sculpted into fascinating shapes, often given interesting variation by veins of harder rock or rows of small white limpets hiding in the shade.

1/25 Nephew David and I visited the Sydney Bridge, first underneath the North end at Bradfield Park, then along the harbour in both directions to get a view, then back and up and over the bridge. An amazing structure, at 3770 ft long and 440 ft high at the apex. Afterward we walk into the Rocks, the “old town” with narrow streets full of old buildings now shops cafes and very elegant. I take the double decker computer train back to Artarmon, noticing how the stops look like English train stations. Australia seems like a young, extroverted country, with lots of innovation going on. I learn one of the train station in the downtown has been kept in its Victorian décor, even to the extent of the advertisements.

I find Australians very friendly, architecture and design seems very bold and inventive, and I see some high tech solutions unknown in Toronto. At the same time there is a sense of the past being cherished, both pioneer origins and British origins, that seems more evident than any in Canada I've seen at least. Australians seem to love good food (I mean really good food), festivals, sports, outside activities, the arts (especially music and sculpture), and social events.

1/26 Train to Melbourne, 12 hour ride

1/27 day in Melbourne, meet Cousin Lou at Airport, flight to Launceston, Tasmania

1/28 At Lou and Jo's place in Beauty Point, a day in Launceston, meet Cousin Robyn, headache

1/29 Shopping for sleeping bag in Launceston, Tasmania

1/30 Bush Walk      Cousin Lou and I drive several hours up onto the central highlands. Lou has equipped us with a lot of fine gear, and I realize that you can have five thousands dollars easy on your back as you hike.

We reach The Lake St Clair national park center as it rains. and book a boat. This twin outboard, 15 seater takes us up the lake (one of the deepest in Aus) to the other end and a dock where we find a hut. Many of the surrounding peaks have received names from an early explorer who was an enthusiast of Ancient Greece, so there is Mount Olympus, Narcissus Point, etc.

From there we hike inland for four and a half hours. The trail is nicely laid out and includes boardwalks over swamp areas and suspension bridges over larger streams, but still involves constant stepping around rocks, puddles and snarls of tree roots. The rain comes and goes. We pass through several meadows of button grass ringed by gum (Eucalypt) trees that remind me of some of the terrain in The Hunter. An old injury on my left shoulder causes me considerable discomfort because of the pack load. We pass into an area of forest called a Myrtle forest, with huge old trees, mostly not gum, thickets of striking Pandani (Giant Grass Tree, a palm-like rainforest plant endemic to Tasmania (like countless other things)) and lots of green moss on everything. A few Pademelons (small Kangaroo-like Wallabies) peer at us from the bushes. We arrive at the hikers hut and Lou decides not to pitch a tent because of the wet so we claim the lower teir of one of the sleeping shelfs and cook our dinner and try to dry some gear. I am exhausted. There are perhaps ten other hikers in the hut.

The next morning we leave most of our gear in the hut and head up the Pine Valley trail around nine, its cold and I thankfully wear the gloves that seemed overkill as we packed two days before. We get a lovely view down Lake St Clair at one point with some blue sky patches, then some rain starts again The track up is steep, at one point we are climbing up an old rocky stream bed. I find having a hiking pole very handy to maintain balance. As we get higher the Gum trees reappear with some alpine flowers. We finally come out close to the top, with huge lichen covered boulders in an endless field and short gum trees shrouded in a fog. This is The Labyrinth and as we move around to the back the weather clears up and we can see mountain peaks with dramatic pillars of basalt, and two tarns below. Then as we stop for lunch it begins to snow, followed not long after by sun again. A pair of Wedge Tail Eagles fly high overhead and a Skink basks on a rock. By the time we get back to the hut, it is six and we repeat the routine of the day before and end the day.

The next morning we head back to the boat pickup point, the load is lighter and Lou has taken some of my camera gear, so my shoulder suffers less. Then into the boat and down the lake for a cappucino at the Park Center and the drive home. Lou points out an Echidna by the side of the road and we get out and investigate, it looks like a cross between an anteater and a hedgehog or small porcupine, but is actually from a unique order of mammals, Monotremes, that it shares with only the Platypus. We finally approach it, it digs its front into the bottom of a bush, and we touch it briefly. On the way back Lou pulls over across from an area burnt-out by fires a month before and I spend an hour stumbling around in the black debris taking photos.

I feel fine the next day and am amazed at the amount of rough terrain I have covered with a pack, it seems far beyond what I thought I could do, and the only explanation seems to be that I was enjoying myself and surrounded by beauty. The three days are a thrill and I feel very grateful to my Sister and Cousins.

A Month in Australia 1

A Lorikeet demands food on my Sister's balcony.

A Flickr slidehow is found here.

1/19/2013  My Sister Jan’s family apartment in Artarmon overlooks North Sydney and a wonderful assortment of trees, palms and other tropical growth. Because of the recent heat, I expect a brown, desiccated landscape, but it rains the first day, the temp is low 20’s (it was 46C the day before, I luckily arrive with a “cold” front) and the vegetation is green, the recent fires apparently being caused by the growth of grass and underbrush after two years of abundant rainfall (and often started by young pyromaniacs). The trees are rich with avian life including hysterically laughing Kookaburras, Rainbow Lorikeets, Willie Wagtails, Noisy Miners, Pied Currawongs, Friarbirds and let’s not forget Galahs. A pair of beautiful Lorikeets land frequently on the balcony or window sills noisily demanding handouts.

1/20  The second day My Sister takes me to downtown Sydney, an area Jan lived in for several years.

The city is huge, modern, affluent and sophisticated…and spectacular. Several long bays crenellated with coves brings sailboats 20 km inland before meeting a fresh water river. The past is well preserved in old colonial buildings and parks and it all reminds me more of London or Paris than New York or Toronto.

We visit the Rocks, a downtown area of old sandstone 19^th (and one 18th!) century buildings, and some cobblestone streets, now full of businessmen, shoppers and tourists. Sydney is well preserved, and they claim to know the exact spot where Captain Cook planted the English flag in 1770. There are many beautiful parks full of palm, fig, banyan and eucalyptus trees, numerous huge old colonial buildings and vistas of the water, Opera House and Harbour Bridge.

I don’t know why, but I never realized how huge the iconic Opera House is, or realized that the roof is distinctly patterned with tiles. Funny how these ubiquitous travel mega-symbols like the Eiffel tower, Statue of Liberty, Acropolis, Big Ben, Forum, Taj Mahal, Giza Pyramids or Mount Fuji seem somehow hyper-real when you first see them.

1/21  Today Jan took me to Ku Ring Gai national park.  A boardwalk led us over some mangrove swamp and then the trail headed up into the bush along the heights on both sides of the tidal river. I fell in love with the open forest with Gum and Eucalyptus trees. Lots of rock and vegetation, but always open to the sky. The trees often in convoluted shapes and sometimes appearing to ooze out of rocks. We see a beautiful black and green Goanna lizard, about four feet long, and find the huge pile of leaves that are a Mallee Bird nest. The bush is loud with cicada and shrieking Cockatoo and the continual lovely spicy scent of eucalyptus in the air. A sign points out an area of flat rock, where 23 axe-grinding grooves have been made by Aboriginals, with two bowl shaped depressions they used for water to wet the axes.

There is still some traces of an English orientation here. The row of little shops across from our local rail station have an English feel, although they have substantial marquees for shade. Like the British, the traffic system often uses roundabouts and drives on the wrong side of the road. Local names on the map are old country, Epping, Chipping Norton, Liverpool, Penrith, Paddington, Habersham. Of course other local names are Turramurra, Wooloomooloo, Wahroonga, Woy Woy, Kirribilli or Toongabbie. The suburbs we drive through remind me vaguely of Orange County or Millbrae in California, or maybe Etobicoke with palm trees.

1/22  I spend the day downtown taking photos in St Andrews Cathedral and the Queen Victoria Building, which looks suspiciously like the inspiration for the Eaton Center.

1/23 I walked through Hyde Park again and down into the Royal Botanical Gardens, a huge park near the harbour where I found a vast assortment of tropical trees of amazing shapes. What a city!! Then I walked back taking the main drag, George Street, through all the office buildings and skyscrapers. The streets are crowded, a mixture of business dress, surfer casual, or European chic in the case of many women. There are many Asians, but I only see about seven aboriginal faces all day. As befitting the major city in the country boasting the worlds 12^th largest economy, Sydney is impressive, but still has charm and great style. I’m impressed, it trumps Toronto in many ways for sure.

A flickr slideshow is found here.

Samurai at the Roxy

In 1971, a festival called Films of Japan opened at the Roxy Theatre in Toronto. For some reason I don't remember, I attended the first film, got hooked, and then attended all of the subsequent showings until the series was cancelled, halfway through the thirty-odd films.

One of the first films I saw was Samurai Rebellion. A black and white film made in 1967 by the director Masaki Kobayashi, it concerns a Samurai family slowly drawn into a confrontation with their lord. I was fascinated by the medieval dress, the interior simplicity of the dwellings of rich or poor, the elaborate protocol and intricate social systems, the highly ordered and stylized culture. The slowly mounting tension of the story finally explodes with incredibly fury. In the climax two Samurai friends who find themselves on opposite sides calmly duel to the death under dark clouds near a field of long grass undulating in a fierce wind. It was certainly one of the most powerful scenes I had ever seen in cinema at that point.

In 1971 Japan, although still notorious for it's aggression in World War Two, was just another little Asian country, known for cheap plastic toys. The first few cars from Japan had just started to trickle in with awkward names like Datsun, Toyoto and Mazda. The sole perception of quality was in Canon and Nikon cameras. There were only two or three Japanese restaurants in Toronto. But if Japan seemed quaint and irrelevant to those around me, it was no longer so for me.

Thus the beginnings of my Japanophilia. I was soon investigating the nation of islands any way I could. I encountered the woodcuts of Hokusai and Hiroshige and bought reproductions for my walls. I listened to Koto music. I experimented with a Japanese lunch item made by rolling up cold rice and various other ingredients in a sheet of dried seaweed and slicing the resulting log into sections. I visited the Japanese Canadian Cultural Center and naively bought a “Learn Japanese” manual. I read novels, poetry, biographies and travelogues. I got the first hints that all is not cherry blossoms and immaculate gardens in the Japanese psyche, that underneath lie some incredibly twisted and bizarre impulses and practices. I saw more films. My first car was made in Hiroshima. I planned to visit Japan.

These days, in my part of town, its easier to get sushi than a hamburger. The bin at the video store for the films of the modern director Takashi Miike is larger than those for Bergman and Fellini combined. Japan is no longer seen as quaint and irrelevant. But my interest persists. So yesterday I was pleased to find that I still possessed the poster for that film festival at the Roxy many years ago.

And notwithstanding my respect for Japan's most famous director, Akira Kurosawa, my three favourite films are still Samurai Rebellion, Harikiri and Kwaidan, all by Masaki Kobayashi.

Why Meditate ?

I have been meditating for about 12 years, on and off. I'm not sure about the benefits. I think I may have received benefits, but its not something I can point to with words. Things can be subtle but still very powerful. Maybe I'm more relaxed, maybe I'm more patient, more grounded, more content, more able to take time to smell the roses. It's hard to say. 

It's important to see what our condition is. I believe that all us modern folks are actually weird and dysfunctional versions of humanity. Most spiritual paths have a way of talking about this and the usual idea is that we each have two selves, one that is essential and exists in the moment, and one that is conditioned and focused on past/future and grasp/avoid.

Meditation is a chance for your essential self to get its time in the light, so to speak. But when we are in the present we don't care about benefits. And being concerned about benefits keeps us from being in the present moment. 

So rather than benefits, think of meditation as a chance to practice being, or to just be. 

If meditation has one obvious benefit, its that it helps us see how our mind works, and what we're really thinking about. And where our attention usually is (which ain't the present moment). As my (then) teenage son said to me after his first meditation class "Dad, I can't stop thinking!". So one of the benefits is seeing what going on inside yourself, learning about yourself. You'd be surprised at the misconceptions we have about what goes on in our own minds.

Some people meditate to have blissful experiences, or become more peaceful, or to calm down. That's fine, but when you have a idea like that, your setting a goal, having expectations, judging and rejecting anything that doesn't seem to be giving you the experience you want. But being in the moment requires that you accept the moment for what it is, not what you want it to be. Its hard because its so simple.

Even sitting cross legged on a cushion can be a trap, as I think of myself as "meditating" and being "spiritual". Better to meditate by just sitting in a chair alone in a room for half an hour and doing nothing. 

I think the only thing to try to do, when your thinking mind will let you remember, is to place your attention on some sensation, be it a sound, a visual detail, or the feeling of space around you in the room. This is "doing" yes, but it then allows you to have a few moments perhaps of "being", and surely it is a good thing to just "be" fully in our life once and a while.

Starvecrow on Street View

Today I decided to search for my birthplace.....on Google Street View. 

Since my origin was rural Ontario, I wasn't sure if this was possible, but it proved easy. Clicking down on some likely sideroads, I soon found the brick farmhouse where friends of my parents, who my Sister and I knew as "Uncle" Jack and "Aunt" Mabel, had farmed. Although we had lived in the area only a few years, we had returned frequently for a visit. I then zoomed down the road a mile or so and found the bridge over the stream where I had fished as a boy. OK, I thought, lets see if I can find the house I was born in, so I clicked down on the road at a good starting point, just east of Leaskdale. I did a quick 360 and there it was, unmistakable in its simplicity!  

A rectangular box with a door dead centre and two flanking windows, the symmetry only broken by a chimney on one end, the wood plank construction having neither the elegance or cachet of brick, stone or log. This is the house my parents called Starvecrow, because they joked even a crow would starve there. This is the house where I was born in the middle of a blizzard, with only my Grandfather to assist my Mother. My Father had gone for the doctor, but was unable to make it back in time because of the huge snowdrifts. 

A screen crop of the Street View image is above. Below is a detail from a watercolour presented to my parents and dated at what would have been around the time of my conception. It shows that a chimney has been removed and a vertical siding added to the present structure. The inscription reads "with best wishes to a happy couple, Edgar Pauliof, July 3 / 46".

Thank you Google.