And I still think so

I etched this out a few years ago. Time to check in and see how I am doing.

Rules o’ life to be aspired to

1. A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears of past experiences. Ha. Not very successful in that regard. Not crippling but irritating. Spontaneity, how is that defined?
2. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment. This is an aspect of me that has vexed all my life. I have had wonderful adventures through everything from travel to sex and a whole lot in between. Yet, I often feel I am not right in the moment. I can look at photos of say the Cook Islands, Hawaii or London and think that I was there and it was lovely, but did I get the full impact at the time. I can think of women I have ‘been with’ (a polite way of suggesting torrid intimacy) and the memories can be delicious, but did I fully appreciate the moment or moments? God. I hope so. Otherwise, what a waste
   
3. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment. Ties in with the preceding item. But the point being, it is an ‘ability’. Have I learned to do so. I hope so – sorta, kinda. It’s a learning curve thing. It’s all about being ‘present in your life.

4. A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others. They gonna do what they gonna do regardless of what you want so let it go. This one is tougher than it seems.

5. A loss of the ability to worry. Worry is an ‘ability? Who knew?

6. Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation. We get into depressive episodes of dwelling on the negatives. I know I sure as hell do. Take the recent and hideous American election. Nothing I can do about Trump being the leading fuckpig of the known universe, so I extend my appreciation to the Obamas and their inspiration and that leaves me with hope for the world that there are others of their ilk.

7. Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature. I love a walk in the woods with my wife and dog. I adore my friends; some of them perhaps more than they know or more than I have told them.

8. Frequent episodes of smiling. I smile a fair amount Smiling and laughter I do believe are good for the soul and mental health.

9. Letting things happen instead of forcing things to happen. I have gotten better at this, I do believe.

10. A willingness to be vulnerable and show emotions. I have always been vulnerable and emotional and I accept that. Latterly I have noticed that the cries of babies make me misty. I like that.

11. A giving and receiving of love without strings attached. As the great Hank Williams said: “Unchain my heart and set me free”. And that’s what it’s all about – freedom.

I once thought that Richard M. Nixon was the vilest person to hold the office of US president.

That was then. This is now. In comparison to the Trump-dump, old Tricky Dicky, he of the perpetual five-o’clock shadow, was a pussycat, a mensch. So I was wrong. I thought then that the US could not stoop lower. But now they have gone and stooped as low as is possible. If they can stoop lower then stop the world, I want to get off.

At one time ‘Tricky Dick’ declared “I am not a crook.” Pretty darn debatable. We all knew that. Even arch-rightist Barrie Goldwater ultimately concluded the bozo was indeed a crook. And as the story played out he was eventually turfed from the presidency.

I write these words out of bias. I detest Donald Trump. I revile everything about him. Nothing new in that. I have despised him for years. And no, I am not anti-capitalist. But I am also pro-honesty. He is a profoundly dishonest man. You know how you can just get an instant hate for certain people? Trump is one of those. I hate his bullying tones; I hate the way he looks; I hate his abusiveness. I never watched his disgusting TV shows in which some people – I guess – were entertained by his abuse of those he deemed inferior. The sad aspect of such a narcissist is that he didn’t recognize that in the eyes of decent folk he was inferior to the welfare ‘bum’ who panhandled on street corners.

There have been a number of US presidents during my time on the planet. Some IS liked. Some I disliked. I wasn’t hugely keen on the Bush clan (pere et fils) but they were saints compared with Trump. Surprisingly (perhaps) I thought JFK was overrated whereas LBJ was unfairly granted short-shrift. And Jimmy Carter was just too damn nice for a horrible job. A good man, but a kind of poor president. I am, however, a huge Obama supporter and have been from Day 1)

We carry on, I guess, with an elected swine who is as dishonest as the day is long and hope to survive. I send a message of love to my dear American friends.

Photo on a Facebook entry shows a woman seemingly in the throes of amour atop her male partner and, as somebody aptly pointed out, she is wearing a bra. Who does that at such an intimate moment? Nobody I have ever encountered.

Yet such modesty is still rampant in TV-land. This is akin to the regular depiction of the woman parting the bed after coupling and heading off to the loo, during which process she either wraps the sheet around herself or is inexplicably wearing panties. How did consummation take place, one would be well to ask.

While the cinematic world has become more honest and graphic in its depictions of what a lot of otherwise respectable people refer to as ‘fucking’, TV seems to have a long way to go in terms of getting real. And in that I don’t mean just real in terms of the wanton behaviours of rampant horndogs but also in terms of the behaviors of good God-fearing Baptist sorts who also doff all their duds when they are fulfilling their nuptial duties. Some of them may “ utter the odd dirty word when it gets good, as long as they are not blasphemous words. I don’t know if “Oh God!” at a high point qualifies as blasphemy.

No, much of television, in lieu of being honest about sexuality, has lapsed instead into nudge-nudge innuendo, or rampant vulgarity. I hate vulgarity because it is suggesting that broadcasters and the people who make this stuff still think human sexuality is a kind of icky thing and must be regarded with an excess of juvenile humor. Juvenile humor is a misstatement because it is rarely humorous, just juvenile.

By television here I am referring to regular network stuff, by the way. I know that HBO and other ‘pay per view” options are more frank and candid as pertains to full frontal nudity (complete with naughty bits) and graphic sexuality. All of which means it’ll cost you money to see the spicy stuff, and therefore you just may as well porn-surf.

I also notice that UK productions aren’t quite so nicey-nicey, and that can be rather satisfying since British production values and writing are usually superlative.

This left us in North America a couple of years ago with the sluttly pseudo-sexuality of a Miley Cyrus – who is a smart little minx since she knew her fakery would get all the neo-puritans cranked up and maybe secretly turn them on. It seems to be either Miley or coupling with vampires.

In conclusion I can only say the inclusion of undies in scenes of sexual behavior only indicate to me that a lot of people are not comfortable with their sexuality.

What a pity. It’s really rather fun.

First let me set the record straight regarding my philosophy of getting along in life: I believe with all my heart in the power of forgiveness.

There have been people in my life who have done things to me I deem unconscionable. But, to balance that, I have done things to others that might be regarded in the same way. And you know, it’s probably good, for a time, to have a profound mad-on for an individual who has shoveled dirt on you. And in the case of some situations, I find myself still picking out bits of grit. But, you know, that’s the way life goes.

But forgiveness is powerful in the sense that it liberates the psyche and it stops a former enemy from having control over your conscious and unconscious thought processes. Wanna be free of impediments, then forgive-forgive-forgive.

Added to which, hatred is deemed to be a sin, and for good reason. Hatred, if unchecked, can lead to: wars, homicide, suicide, drug abuse, depression, and so on. It’s a negative emotion and not one to be trifled with. Hatred is hatred. It’s nothing to do with not liking somebody. No sin in that. Some people just irk a body, even piss a fellow or girl off, but hatred is different, and it’s relentless if left unchecked.

I have forgiven virtually everybody who has hurt me in my life. If the person is dead I have written a posthumous letter stating my case and offering my amends. Likewise I have done it in person to some, and the results have been marvellous. The air was cleared and a new freedom dawned.

Of course, such an act of contrition doesn’t always mean you come together with the other person. Sometimes it’s still better to move on, but there is no impediment to your personal freedom, and that’s what it’s all about – just like the hokey-pokey.

That being said, however, I know I shall never be a candidate for sainthood. And that is because there is one guy I will not forgive. I have no such plans. In fact I take pleasure in hating him. He’s not my nemesis for he has no power over me, but my utter contempt for this person keeps me honest in myself and I happily wish him nothing but ill, even though I know my cursing of him will never give him a crisis of conscience because he has none.

What he did was some terribly dishonest things to me and ‘used me’ relentlessly and spent the whole time sporting a double-visage Janus mask. He invented duplicity.

And in saying the above I don’t wish him dead. It’s good for my soul to have him around. I was once having coffee with a friend and during our conversation I outlined my antipathy for this guy in no uncertain terms. I then looked around the joint and realized the guy was sitting not too far away and was definitely within earshot. I then turned to my coffee companion and said:

“God, I hope he overheard me.”

And that, friends, is what a truly gratifying hatred is all about.

Since I wrote this a few years ago the E&N continues to live in an alternative universe and despite assurances to the contrary, it remain moribund, Is there hope for it? I remain hopeful, but I was also hopeful that Hillary would win the US election, and look how that turned out.

Before you proceed with this it’s important, though not vital, that you understand a little bit about the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railroad. I have included this for a smattering of background and also because I like history.

Esquimalt and Nanaimo are two towns on Vancouver Island, off the west coast of British Columbia, which is on the west coast of Canada. I am being geographically precise just in case you, the reader, know little about the area. If you don’t gain this basic understanding of the place then the stories you are about to read won’t lose any of their charm whatsoever, but you’ll, at the same time, feel better situated.

First, understand that Vancouver Island is not islet sized. It’s the largest island on the west coast of North America, being four-hundred-and-sixty kilometres long and around one hundred kilometres wide at its most girthful point. The kilometers reference is used, by the way, since that’s the way they measure things on Vancouver Island. So, anyway, it’s a big place, relatively, and compares in size with the Netherlands and Taiwan. Well, the Netherlands isn’t actually an island, but you get the drift.

The E&N these days is part of a national passenger entity known as Via Rail. Via Rail is something like Amtrak, only even less efficient or caring. Via does not like the E&N and there will be more snide and bitchy editorial comment about that later.

The E&N, appropriately enough, is named for the Island communities of Esquimalt and Nanaimo. Esquimalt was created in the mid nineteenth century as a Royal Navy base, and it continues with its military function to this day. Virtually a suburb of self-impressed Victoria, the provincial capital, Esquimalt was chosen as a natural starting point for the railroad in 1883 by coal baron Robert Dunsmuir due to the naval base and in recognition that naval vessels needed coal for fuel. Dunsmuir’s main coalmines were to be found around the mid-island community of Nanaimo, so it was obvious that the terminus should be in that fledgling town.

Ideally the E&N was designed to complete the agreement with Ottawa that brought British Columbia into the Canadian Confederation and it was deemed a part of the Trans Canada Rail System. Needless to say, and in terms of that agreement, the rail line was short-funded and cheated from the get go and Ottawa’s agreement was not honored by, of course, Ottawa.

In 1905 the E&N became an aspect of the Canadian Pacific Railroad and it was extended at the south end into Victoria proper. A reality that Victoria, for some bizarre reason, has been fighting against ever since and continues to do so. As an example, the new and largely unneeded Johnson Street Bridge in that city makes no provision for rail trackage. That notwithstanding, northerly it was extended to the west coast deep sea port of Alberni and eventually, by nineteen fourteen, to its current northernmost terminal, Courtenay. Just in time for the First World War. And Courtenay has remained to this day as the northern terminus, despite the fact the line was surveyed through to Campbell River some forty-five kilometers further north.

In its heyday the line was well-utilized hauling freight and supplies to and from the communities served by the grand total of fifty-three stations en route. Until a highway link was established connecting those communities, the E&N was essentially the only way to travel. But, rubber killed the railroad, as it did in so many other parts of North America and rail use continued to decline throughout the years of the twentieth century.

Any rail service is, of course, a carrier of goods and it’s in that freight haulage where the money is made. But, there is also the passenger service, and that’s where railroad romance is realized and perpetuated and that’s the area in which this much-beleaguered line is connected to the tales that follow here.

It’s not the Orient Express, the Royal Scot, or the hugely long coast-to-coast rail lines in Canada and the US. It’s a clunky, bumpy, swaying two hundred and forty kilometre ride, twice a day, up and down the Island. It’s much spat-upon by the funding-purveyors and generally disregarded by politicians at all levels and has stopped and started more times that most would care to remember. The ancient Budd cars are victims of their age and if one is familiar with the sleek railcars to be found in places like Switzerland and France, one can only weep a little bit and think we should be so ashamed.

But, despite the adversity, it is Vancouver Island’s much-loved and far too little used own Toonerville Trolley, and there is romance and adventure to be found therein, despite the fact it’s not a trolley, and assuredly with all due respect to the creator of those earlier animated tales, Fontaine Fox.

I have opinions. Of course I do. Opinions that I hope are moderately well-considered and founded on as many facts of the situation that I’ve been able to discern.

I even have politically-motivated opinions. Not necessarily mainstream politically-motivated (I am suspicious of party politics since most of the views held by parties are more about the parties than they are about the well-being of society).

And generally I keep my opinions to myself while admittedly sometimes being susceptible to a knee-jerk response. In that I am human and in that I often find out I’ve been wrongheaded when more information comes my way.

What this ramble is all about is the fact that I, of late, have been hit on Facebook and in emails by no small number of petitions in which those that send them want me to back their drive for whatever.

All I can say is, good luck with that. Especially as it applies to my involvement. I generally don’t rally to ‘causes’, even well-principled ones because, mainly, they are causes and there are some who subscribe to certain views with whom I do not share philosophical principles. So, I don’t want my name to be included with theirs in some sort of a general mix.

I make my own decisions. Well, sometimes my wife helps, but you know what I mean.

Part of this philosophy – if it is indeed a philosophy – is based on the fact that I’m a longtime journalist so in order to maintain credibility I like to play my cards close to the chest so that nobody will question my objectivity.

My friends run the spectrum of politics and God love them for it. We live in a democratic society and they are entitled and if such individuals have political views I don’t share, but they are otherwise human beings I value, then I don’t give a rat’s-ass how they vote or what causes they rally to.

It reminds me of the time when I had an ongoing newspaper column and was stopped on the street by a reader who, while gratifyingly a fan of my column, wondered why I never declared myself politically.

“Why should I lose half my readership?” I asked him. “Those that don’t like my politics will simply stop reading me and I will forever be seen as biased.”

Now, on FB, for example, I will share items with which I agree, or I will ‘like’ certain postings by others, but my likings are based on general ethical principles and philosophies rather than partisanship.

Otherwise, what I believe really shouldn’t matter a fig to anybody in terms of whatever respect they might have or might not have for me as a person. I may fully agree with a stance taken by a friend whom I respect, but I won’t necessarily rally to a cause.

Maybe I’m a coward. Maybe I should be prepared to be more ‘out there’. I possibly don’t want to commit because somebody might offer a counter-argument that is closer to my actual belief system.

In saying all of this stuff, I do have a belief system. I think it’s largely situational in the sense that one-size fits all arguments make me wary. You know, it’s a bit like believing or not believing in God. I admire those people who can come right out and say they are atheists. Gee, I’m not sure I want to do that. What if I’m wrong and there is a God and He gets me for that? Then I’d be damned to perdition for a bit of sophistry.

So, maybe there is a God and He understands that I evoke His name when I need a little help and my friends or loved ones just aren’t cutting it in my foxhole.

Same with politics. I think most human generated philosophies reek, but I tend to believe in democracy and agree with Churchill (as if he needed my agreement) that democracy is the best of all bad systems.

Case closed.

I won’t be so vulgar as to say I soiled myself yesterday morning when the final Trumpian tally was in, but suffice it to say I was happy I had visited the loo before switching on the TV.

Of course the proverbial writing was on the wall before I went to bed the night before as poor old Hillary was desperately trying to make gains in Florida and North Carolina. It didn’t look good and I thought by the time I turned in: “The cocksucker is going to make it. I know it.”

Without reservations I wanted Hillary to win. And some felt she deserved to. Guess I did, considering the hideous (boorish, crass, vulgar, bullying) alternative. But I didn’t think she necessarily deserved to. First, I never really liked the woman especially. She just didn’t resonate. I saw her as fiercely ambitious and self-motivated. Some of this goes back to her forgiveness of Bill when he stuck his wayward dick where it shouldn’t have been. She should have dumped him then, and it was obvious she thought the optics might hurt her. The ambition was there and it was a ruthless ambition. So, she chose to stay the course, hoping to capitalize on it when the day came.

Now don’t take it that I am disparaging her skill set. She is a brilliant person and probably far more talented than her one-time wayward spouse. But at so many levels she blew the opportunity, and it was nothing to do with her sex. She played it wrong. She seemed to have little idea of whom she should be wooing. She held rallies that trotted out musical and Hollywood names. Why would an unschooled and/or unemployed Rustbelt denizen give a shit what George Clooney thinks? Michael Moore called that one right when he opined Trump was appealing to the unwashed, and likely unschooled, at a visceral level. The PhDs may have loved her, but the rube from a Kentucky hill shack would have seen little to embrace. But, hit him with a dude who thinks with his pecker and isn’t afraid to go out and hang with the unscholarly and you have Trump ‘trumping’ with the right cards.

Trump always reminded me of an 8^th grade loutish bully. A Ted Nugent of politics. Well, shee-it, that is the kind of pol our Kentucky friend (or West Virginia, or Michigan) friend is going to relate to. A guy who calls it like it is, Hillary can’t call it like it is because she likely doesn’t know where it ‘is’ and she showed it in her campaign. She was bound to be uneasy with the ‘dirthead’ ilk.

Now Trump may be richer than Midas but, oddly, he has a common touch. Jimmy Carter had that too, and Hillary should have taken a page from his book. Likewise Bernie Sanders (the scuttling of whom might have been the dumbest Democratic move). But ultimately it was all for Hillary.

And ultimately the price was paid. And the country was left with a kind of despicable individual in the Oval Office. If weeping would do any good I would gladly weep at the dumbness of it all. .

Sometimes writing goes well. Sometimes writing goes badly. Sometimes writing goes not at all.

You know when it is going well. Ideas arise smoothly and without self-consciousness; the lexicon is expansive and the wit is superlative. I mean to say, it all just flows together and the delight in the act is palpable. ‘This is good shit. I want to share it with others.’ This is unmatched by few who follow this craft. I feel so positive I could burst.

When it’s going badly, nothing comes easily. Even clever ideas somehow cannot be expressed in a way that enchants me. I say, “enchants me” for that’s what it must do first or else I cannot presume it will enchant anybody else. At that time tiresome elements like typos are more frequent and a vocabulary that I pride myself on being relatively extensive drops to about a third (or less) of its normal potency.

When this condition persists for a while panic sets in. Have I lost it? Will I ever get it back? What is the difference between now and (say) two weeks ago when I felt I could rule the literary world? What happened to me in the interim? Why does everything I write become something reminiscent of other things I’ve written a dozen times before and my self-consciousness is not permitting me to break out of the miasma? I will write a line and think, I have written this before and I didn’t like it the last time. Self-consciousness then becomes pervasive and that cripples me even more. Racked with doubt I ask myself why I am persisting with what is apparently a mug’s game. Who told me I could write? Why do I do it?

I offer up my plaints to my wife who has heard this all before so many times. She asks, quite legitimately that, if I cannot write how is it that I’ve made a living with the process for much of my adult life? Did I somehow manage to fool the people who wrote those cheques for me? Was my byline in assorted newspapers some sort of a mistake? That affords me a little – teeny-weeny – bit of solace but not enough to get me out of my torpor. The most pervasive emotional sensation at a time of blockage is ‘loneliness’. You know, me against the world and that dead horse I’m a-floggin’ ain’t getting up. And the more I beat it the worse it gets.

The real problem with writing (or any creative endeavor) is that it’s all pure ego. It is the writer or artist not only against the world, but against him or herself. And invariably we are our own harshest critics. Ironically, in this ego-fraught endeavor, whatever it might be, the perpetrator of the public sin is all-too-often an introvert – or at least an ambivert. I don’t mind disrobing in public but somebody must tell me they like what they see for it’s painful for me to pull down my knickers for your scrutiny if I harbor any thoughts you won’t be impressed.

And that is what I mean about the ‘ego’. I’m at my best and most productive when I have somebody in my life against whom I can bounce off my stuff. Otherwise I lapse into self-consciousness and writing becomes masturbation rather than gratifying carnality with another. No, it’s not an inapt metaphor. At least I don’t think it is, but there is nobody here I can bounce it off so I’ll just have to satisfy myself that the thought expresses some aspect of what it’s about.

In that I wonder about writers like Salinger and Pynchon who have gained some sort of notability for saying “fuck you and leave me alone” to the outer world. Did they really produce brilliantly by assuming an Emily Dickinson mode of life? Salinger may have shunned outsiders in the sense of granting interviews but it is also relatively well-known that he had assorted little enraptured doxies tending to his wants and needs whilst he had them in his thrall. So, their isolationism may or may not have been entirely true.

I once, a number of years ago – while I toiled at a small-town newspaper – attempted to secure an interview with this year’s literature Nobelist, Alice Munro, who happened to live in the same town as I do. I secured her home telephone number via a mutual friend. I don’t know if the person in question remained a friend of bristly Alice because she was livid that I’d had the audacity to call her and no she did not grant interviews to small town papers, so screw you, buddy. She didn’t actually say the latter, but it was the impression I got from her tone. In other words, I wasn’t respecting her right to decamp to a little burg for part of the year. Maybe that’s how Salinger felt, as well.

I don’t. I’m needy.

I read one time that Douglas Adams who wrote the wondrously inventive, witty, and often downright hilarious Hitchhiker series, among many other things, suffered from blockage so agonizing that it has been suggested the stress cost him his life at a rather disturbingly early age. Ironically, in that regard, when I first encountered him about 1980 I thought I’d give my left testicle to be able to write a tenth as well as he does.

That was early in my writerly career and I had been a columnist for about three years by that point. Now these many years later I still feel the same and am still as lacking in self-confidence. I can receive personal accolades and even win writing awards – and I have won a few – but it doesn’t make the angst dissipate. When I go dry I am filled with thoughts that it will never come back.

It didn’t get better when I discovered Bill Bryson. Yet another who makes it all seem so smooth, droll yet wonderfully informative. I want to go on rides and hikes with Bill. I once sent him an email praising him for his environmental efforts in the UK. He wrote me back! Bill Bryson actually replied! And such a nice letter. I felt as enchanted as a teenage girl getting a nod from a favorite actor or musician.

Latterly, David Sedaris has filled me with the same angst about my lack of worth. I love what he writes and how he writes it and I then tell myself that I have three virtually completed manuscripts kicking around that have gone nowhere and why is that?

Once I taught creative writing to a high school class. That was a very happy time in my truncated teaching career. Eager little faces on enthusiastic kids who actually liked the magic that can unfold with an adept handling of the printed word. Part way through the term I got a call from a teacher of the same course at a high school some sixty miles away. He let me know that he an his class were having a special writing day and he thought it would be good for his kids to interact with another group taking the same course. I thought it was a fine idea and we got ourselves a school bus and we headed down there.

I immediately liked the teacher at that school. He was an outgoing and agreeable guy, and during the course of the day he and I discussed our personal literary ambitions. He informed me that he was currently in the process of publishing his first novel. The bastard! He wasn’t a struggling hack like I was – a dabbler – a dilettante (I’d be loath to admit) but a guy who was actually in the process. And yes, that novel was published. Not only published, but to considerable acclaim and that novel was the first of many from his highly skilled and readable output. That ‘other’ teacher’s name was and is Jack Hodgins.

Well, at least when by now ‘well-known’ author Jack Hodgins comes to town he invariably grants me a chatty and pleasant interview. Take that, Alice Munro. He doesn’t yet see himself as being ‘too famous’ and needing to eschew small-town newspapers. Sorry. Starting to sound bitter here.

Whatever the case is to be for me in the future, I suspect I will persist in what it is that I do as a writer. Maybe someday Something I have penned will find it’s way between covers and on somebody’s bookshelf or in the remaindered bin, perhaps, at Munro’s Bookstore in Victoria. There’d be a certain irony in that.

Anyway, if I were to stop doing this, what would I do to fill my days. I stopped drinking years ago, so that’s out, and my wife tends to frown on adultery.

Remembrance Day comes on Friday and once again I include this commemorative piece to show my respect and gratitude towards those who went and all too often fell.

I wrote this piece a few years ago to mark Remembrance Day and (with a few updates) I felt it was thoroughly worth repeating for this November 11th.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod.

All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue;

deaf even to the hoots

Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
– W. Owen, Dulce et Decorum

Near Great Yarmouth in the English County of Norfolk, a few miles along the Beccles Road there is a placid little lake known as Fritton Decoy (pictured), so called because of a mean-spirited little ruse of olden times that used to involve luring wild ducks into large nets in a rather unsporting manner. It lies a few miles from where I lived in England in 1980-81, and I was given to driving up there just to walk through the placid lakeshore park.

Included at the park-site was an impressive little war museum. One exhibit that struck me was the wreckage of a USAAF Thunderbolt fighter plane. One sunny day back in 1944 this craft and a sister Thunderbolt were taking off to do bomber escort duty over the North Sea. Somebody miscalculated and the two planes collided and plummeted into the lake. It was only years later they were pulled out of its deep, cold waters. Along with the aircraft also came the remains of the two young pilots whose brief lives had ended abruptly that bright springtime morning.

There was poignancy about the whole thing that struck me profoundly and I wrote a long piece about it for Remembrance Day one year. I think it was one of the better things I’ve ever written, primarily because I was so moved by the whole thing. Unfortunately, I’d have to sift through boxes of old stuff to find it, or I’d offer a reprint.

Aside from the tragic loss of two lives, I was left with the thought that I have never been called upon to do such a thing as take up arms in anger for the sake of my country.

This doesn’t make me feel guilty, but it does leave me feeling immensely grateful both that I was spared but that there were others who had, and continue to make those sacrifices. 

November 11th is Remembrance Day in Canada, and Veterans Day in the US, and I cannot help but be struck by the magnitude and horrors of the lives of those who did serve – and continue to serve. Essentially I am an avowed pacifist yet maybe there were times when such dreadful jobs needed to be carried out. I have known many veterans of many conflicts, and most are fine and decent men (and women), but at a certain level I know I cannot relate.

Then, in 2006 at almost exactly this time of year I was sitting comfortably in on of those remarkable high-speed French trains travelling rapidly from Lille, France to Brussels. It was a wondrously bright late morning. The flat fields were all that pastoral should be, with cows and sheep and hedgerows, punctuated by small deciduous copses. It was all terribly nice.

And then a thought hit me like a thunderclap to a degree that I almost gasped aloud in my seat on that train. This place that I was passing through was the ‘Western Front’ of World War One. This serene scene was the muddy and filthy, rat, excreta and corpse-strewn trenches in which literally thousands of young men from many nations lost their lives for the sake of preserving the wealth and privilege of a handful of bankrupt and disgusting little monarchies and aristocracies. This was the neighborhood of Passchendaele and Vimy Ridge, and not too far from the Somme and the Marne and Ypres.

Many years earlier I was idly looking in shop windows on a street in Amsterdam. In one shop there was a display of vintage photographs. A particular photo struck me, as it was a scene out the window of this same shop, looking into the street I was passing along. The only difference was the old picture was dated 1940, and the bustling street of trolleycars, vehicles and bicycles was instead populated by jackbooted Nazi stormtroopers.

Later on that same day we went to the Anne Frank House, No more needs to be said about that visit.

The madness of the world continues and politics remain as hideous as they always were, but please spare a thought today for those who, for whatever reasons, patriotism and love of country, or maybe even guilt or need for adventure, were (and are) in combat zones. Much of your cherished freedom rests on what they gave, including in too many cases, their lives.

God of our fathers, known of old–

Lord of our far-flung battle line

Beneath whose awful hand we hold

Dominion over palm and pine–

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!
– R. Kipling, Recessional

In a discussion with my Thursday morning coffee girls today – yes, there are three ladies and me and we meet every Thursday morning and there is nothing clandestine about our meetings; just chat and sociability – we all expressed regret that though we were all lovers of music, none of us could play an instrument.

And it’s likely too late to start now.

I was to find out late in my life that my dad could actually play the piano. His sister told me. And it made sense since his mother was a piano teacher. And we had a piano in the house. Did he ever tickle those old ivories within my earshot? Not once. Weird.

I decided when I was about in 5^th grade that I wanted to learn to play the violin. Sure, choose the most difficult instrument as your challenge, you idiot. But I stuck with it for a couple of years and I can honestly say I was really terrible at it. I still have that violin. It sits on a shelf in the garage. I once peered into its innards in hope it might be a strad. It isn’t. I believe it was manufactured by Ralph’s Violins of Poughkeepsie New York.

As time went by I realized the fiddle wasn’t as cool as the sax or guitar and by the time 8^th grade rolled around I was determined to be cool. I wasn’t, but I tried at least. Tried more than I did with learning an instrument. I merely gave up. To my later regret.

Why did I want to learn to play something? Because I suffered from the belief that those who could play also got to ‘play’ in other realms. Chicks dig masters of instruments. Don’t believe that’s true, then ask all the females who need to change to dry undies after a Clapton concert. Am I wrong?

By the time high school rolled around a number of my friends were budding musicians. And in truth some of them actually became professional musicians, or amateurs that were accomplished enough that they were cajoled into playing at social gatherings. Bastards. I had nothing to offer music wise. I don’t have a terrible voice so I could sing a bit, but my instrument mastery doesn’t even extend to the harmonica; though I am not so bad on the kazoo or Jew’s harp. Are you still allowed to say Jew’s harp? Never sure about these things in a sensitive time.

So, as a bit of advice, if you have me over sometime don’t invite me to play. I cannot. But, if you can I shall be delighted to listen to you and resent hell out of you. Jealousy is an ugly emotion.