Process

I said when I started my blog that I was doing so more to keep myself disciplined about getting something out there everyday. Instead, I write when the mood strikes and I find it impossible to do otherwise. The creative process is nothing if not the constant learning, inventing and re-visiting ideas and thoughts to examine whether you have something to say or not in your writing. There is no deadline, I tell myself as I sit down to the keyboard or pen and paper depending on my mood. It's just a blog entry, not a submission to a publisher, I say. So why does it seem so important to try for a piece each day?


I'm not good at forcing myself to do things. I either do or do not, to paraphrase Yoda. To bid an idea come may work for some writers, but I'd rather have it come and bid me join it. This is how it works for me most times.


I need food in my stomach. Words come more easily if there are no rumbles of protest from within. I need fluids - coffee, herbal tea, water - in steady supply. Music before and after but never during the writing itself. Quietude must prevail. Sometimes it seems like the best flow comes right after meditation when my mind is clear and open, relaxed and present.


I've been working with great love all morning on another piece, an essay about my  late grandfather. I am happy with the first draft and have left it to gel some before I return to it to edit, repair and polish. I'm frankly a little sleepy and hungry from digging in my memory for glimpses of him, his mannerisms and habits. It is a good feeling, almost like an in-person visit with him. I wrote and wrote.


And really, that's all I needed to do.

Fifteen Films

I decided to revisit a question posed to me awhile back about 15 films that have resonated with me in my life. They would not classify necessarily as my favorites, but each in its way marked some insights reached.

1. Wuthering Heights (1970) - the version with Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff and and Anna Calder-Marshall as Catherine. From the swelling theme music, to the moody moors, I was so enraptured by this timeless love story at 17 . . . my God, the scene at her grave! My God, those Brontë women!

2. Cabaret (1972) - Berlin at the rise of the Weimar Republic; LIZA! Joel Gray as the comically lascivious MC of the KitKat Club. Sexy spectacle against the backdrop of troubled times in pre-war Germany. I was horrified at the violent anti-Semitism and drawn in by the sexual ambiguity.

3. Apocalypse Now (1979) - Coppola is to blame for me falling in love with Laurence Fishburne, I'm just sayin'. A journey into the true "heart of darkness" with a loose basis in Conrad's novel, Apocalypse Now was perhaps the first movie that put the atrocities of war and its insanity into a "big picture" perspective for me. Humanity and savagery are not always opposites.

4. Some Like It Hot (1959) - Lest you think I am all about the serious drama, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in bad drag can still get me convulsed with laughs. How do you escape from the mob when you were witnesses to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre AND get to spend time on tour with Marilyn Monroe and an all female orchestra?? (Tony was actually pretty cute as "Josephine"!)

5. Peter Pan (1953) - Although my first Disney movie was an afternoon matinee of "Bambi" at the old Paramount Theatre in Kentville with a babysitter, Peter Pan remains so memorable for me for two reasons: 1. Sometimes little girls don't want to grow up either, and 2. I wanted to then, and still want to fly!!! "Second star to the right and straight on till morning . . ."

6. Sophie's Choice (1982) - The novel damn near killed me, yet it remains my favorite, or one of them. The luminous Meryl Streep has so many accolades and honours, but never was she more deserving than for her role as Sophie who must do the unthinkable -- choose.

7. A Fish Called Wanda (1988) - John Cleese and Michael Palin are as funny as in the Monty Python films in this little number. Jamie Lee Curtis looks hot and Kevin Kline is conniving. Diamonds are stolen, double crossings abound and (egads!) fish are eaten alive!!! Will always picture Ken with French fries up his nose.

8. Halloween (1978) - I don't go to or rent or download scary movies. Everyone who knows me knows that. This movie is why. I saw it with my (then) husband and another couple at the Oxford Theatre on Quinpool Road. All of us came out into the daylight (yes! it was a matinee) terrified and looking for Michael Myers over our shoulders.

9. Forrest Gump (1994) - The soundtrack alone would be reason enough for me to love this movie. I was not so much taken with the little truisms and gems that his mama taught him, as with Forrest's life moments, and the fact that there is no moralizing speech about cognitively-impaired people. I could suspend disbelief for almost 2 hours and go to Viet Nam or shrimping with Forrest.

10. Belle de Jour (1967) - Catherine Deneuve is stunning as a prostitute who entertains clients only between 2 and 5 p.m. There is a surrealism peculiar to Luis Buñuel's films . . . some sado-masochistic scenes . . .

11. The Blues Brothers (1980) - The team that was Belushi and Aykroyd brought Jake and Elwood to a permanent home in my heart. Their "mission from God" antics coupled with stellar soul, blues and R&B soundtrack keep it on my list. Those horns, too. Damn.

12. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) - I wanted the UFO to land near me. I still do. Richard Dreyfus was childlike in his obsession to build the mountain out of shaving foam and mashed potatoes. I can hear the 5 tones even now . . .

13. Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) - Jessica Tandy, Mary-Louise Parker, Mary Stuart Masterson and Kathy Bates pulled me right into the shifting narrative between Idgie Threadgoode's life and loves in Whistle Stop, Alabama, and the present day struggles of Evelyn, the unhappy in her 40s housewife. The electricity between Ruth and Idgie as young women is palpable, and I cheered at the rescue from the abusive husband.

14. Stand By Me (1986) - I've seen this movie more times than any other on this list because I used to show it to my Grade 9 English classes every year to help illustrate that we are all different in our backgrounds and upbringing, yet we share bonds in our comings of age that are undeniable. Stellar performances by River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell and Kiefer Sutherland. "Chopper! Sic balls!"

15. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) - Yes, The Acadia Cinema used to have midnight showings for years for university students and fans! Words like "cult classic" seem too limiting for this brilliant parody of the science fiction/horror genre. No one and I mean, NO ONE, can rock fishnets like Tim Curry . . . Sure, sure . . . I know when to put the newspaper on my head, throw toast, and how to dance The Time Warp. Doesn't everybody?

Could I add more? Without a doubt, yes I could. I was told not to think too long or hard, so I didn’t. This list is the result of that brief consideration.

Le mot juste

I learned a new word today but I am afraid to use it for fear that someone overhearing me will think, My God she has a strange accent or That’s not the word she really meant to use. The word is ‘parlous’ and it was in an article in the New York Times used to describe the economy -  “  . . . he was dead-on about the parlous state of the economy, even though he was affluent and not directly threatened by it.”

It stopped me in my tracks. I read many diverse things in the run of a day, but this was my first encounter with the word parlous. It seemed relatively easy to decipher from a contextual standpoint. The economy has been anything but healthy for a year or two, so parlous must mean uncertain. I went to the Oxford English Dictionary online to find these synonyms: grave, grievous, hazardous, jeopardizing, menacing, dangerous, perilous, risky, serious, threatening, unhealthy, unsafe, venturesome. Ah, yes. I was right.

Then I spotted the very thing that could make me look and sound a fool if I were to begin using this useful word. Perilous. Hey, that sounds very close to parlous. Someone will surely think I meant to say, or worse yet, write perilous.  A deeper look would be required to root out some etymology so I would at least have a defense prepared if someone challenged me. Oh, what fun!

How I love words! A dear friend and mentor of mine told me once that I truly was a wordsmith because of the way I continually sought out new ones to add to my vocabulary. It is a bit of a point of pride for me to find the right word, le mot juste, for a given situation.

I do my research though. I am fearful of being called to task for improper usage by some pseudo-scholarly type. That feeling of scorn brings back a memory of fifth grade and being asked by Miss Wright to remain after a geography class about indigenous peoples. It was 1964, and well before political correctness, so she and we would have called them Indians. She had written on the blackboard the word teepee as one of our spelling words. Why I felt it necessary to do what I did next I do not know to this day. I had done plenty of my own reading from books in our home about native culture, and had read this same word alternately spelled tipi many times. So, I asked Miss Wright if I could use the other spelling on my test as it was an accepted form.  She said an emphatic no and her face grew red.

When I compliantly remained after the others had left the classroom, she explained through gritted teeth that although the word might very well be spelled tipi in some books it was spelled teepee in the book we were using and that was the way we would spell it on our test. I still wasn’t satisfied. Then she ended this little lesson with a caution. “Don’t try to look smarter than your teacher, Catherine.”

But that’s a whole other story.

I want to use my new word. It might be a parlous decision, but I feel well-armed.

How do we know?

Recognition. That moment of awareness, of feeling familiar, surprises and comforts at the same time. From the time of infancy, we recognize even the blurry outlines of our mothers’ faces and respond with a smile that signals: Hey, I know you. You are part of my world. Our ears let in the sounds of their voices, the musical mobiles over our cribs; our tiny fingers know the soothing touch of our favorite toy or satin-bound blanket. This process goes on with smells and tastes until we are sure that our world is a fairly benevolent, predictable place, if we can believe our senses and trust our memories.

Recognition has a deep-rooted connection to memory, and is an area of brain function that fascinates me, particularly having worked with people both young and old for whom this function is impaired. Learning to read for example: the ability to recognize letters and to pair them with a sound or phoneme is so basic, yet not every child does so with equal ease. I have been reading studies that look at genetics, protein chemistry, neurophysiology, neuroanatomy, neurobiology, animal models of learning and behaviour; in vivo test systems for a very broad range of behaviour and learning phenomena. For some, it takes the magic away from memory and learning to look so closely at the science – the role of cell recognition processes in normal and dysfunctional plasticity, learning and memory with the aim of developing compounds with a beneficial effect on diseases involving cognitive impairment – but having the ability to read about this research excites my synapses and makes me want to spend time with and ask questions of the people studying this.

What makes it such a natural step for one child to recognize the letters  ‘y’, ‘a’, ‘l’ and ‘p’ and then decode the word ‘play’ based on their order of placement, while another will struggle mightily to identify the ‘a’ even after having seen it again and again? Well-intentioned parents and teachers have tried for years with our limited knowledge of learner-styles and readiness factors to help teach reading with greater and lesser degrees of success.

That same child however, who cannot recognize letters, much less decode words from a printed page may have impairments to her visual memory, while she can sing every word to every verse of many songs she has heard only once. Another can perfectly reproduce dance steps or skate with a stick deftly moving a puck to score goal after goal. Auditory and kinesthetic memory skills are not only intact, but well-developed.

The sheer amount of information available on memory, recognition, and the areas of the brain responsible for them is enormous. I am just another humble explorer who wants to know more about its mysteries.

That tasted like more . . .

Glom. The word is in the dictionary meaning to grab onto someone or something or to be strongly attached to something. It’s also the one I use to explain the way in which I eat certain things that . . . well . . . simply must be glommed. Eaten all at once, in a single sitting. Glommed.

This is not to say that the act of glomming something precludes actually tasting it or savouring it. Speed is not the key factor, rather the obvious satisfaction of the eating -- the putting the food in the mouth, closing the lips around it, allowing the tongue and roof of the mouth to caress it, the teeth to detect its density or lack of resistance, awaiting the actual instant when the taste buds kick into gear and send the message loud and clear to the brain -- this is good. I need more.

The mere word sounds messy, but glomming need not involve wet cloths or newspapers spread on the table surface. Great finesse and care go into each bite so that nothing goes to waste. This is no food orgy to be compared to the scene in the movie Tom Jones with Albert Finney and Susannah York slurping and devouring dishes with unbridled lust. Apart from politely licking one’s fingers to get that last smear of sauce, a good glom does not require having a shower afterwards.

Some foods should never be glommed. As much as instant gratification is my middle name, I prefer to partake slowly and over a period of days to make some delicacies last. Excellent cheeses, for one example, should not be consumed all at once.  What a treat days later to find you have more of that mild, creamy Wensleydale to enjoy! I avoid glomming most pasta, too, but for reasons more to do with comfort than appetite or economy. Cannelloni or linguine just seem to make me full so fast, that I only eat them in small amounts. Certain seafood, like scallops, is just too rich to glom.

Ask anyone who has ever shared a table with me; I am a slow eater. Ever the last one finished, I’ve had to threaten to stab several people in the back of the hand with my fork if they reach for the remaining two shrimp and three noodles of my Pad Thai. “Cate, are you going to eat the rest of that?” I’ve heard that question more than I care to admit. Their dessert is being brought to the table and I am still finishing my entrée. The server is hovering, waiting to clear my plate away and put my dessert and coffee down. This is a common scenario.

So, it’s not in public that I glom, not usually anyway. With family and friends, it is accepted more, I suppose, because we agree on the glommability of certain foods:  a huge bowl of fresh, sliced crimson strawberries in late June, with just a sprinkle of sugar to pull the juice out even more; homemade macaroni and cheese, (accept no subsitutes!) with sharp, old cheddar morsels suspended throughout and buttered, crisp breadcrumbs browned on top.  Chocolate chip cookies, warm and gooey from the oven, accompanied by cold milk in a glass with condensation drops on the outside, are perfect for glomming with abandon. Ribs. The crispy bits stuck to the pan after roasting a lovely leg of lamb or the crackling on roast pork. 

And so, in the comfort of our homes, in the kitchens of our siblings, cousins and friends, I unapologetically glom. And so do you. You know it.

I just want to put this away . . .

The tidiness of my surroundings is very closely linked to my state of mental health. I didn’t need an expert to tell me that.

I have neat-freak friends for whom the joke about having CDO rather than OCD (because the letters are in alphabetical order, as they should be!) is so fitting that I am tempted to buy them the T-shirt. I don’t think I am quite that disrupted in my functioning if there are some tumbleweeds of pet hair hiding under the stools at the kitchen island, but if I want to get other things done, I really feel better if I put my world in order first.

My head is just clearer and my demeanour much more pleasant when things are where they should be and there is not a layer of dust over everything within a fifty foot radius. That is not the easiest thing to achieve with two English Springer Spaniels who are constant steady shedders and four cats who leave evidence everywhere of their blissful existence.

Could I do a commercial for Dyson vacuum cleaners? Honey, I could be their best spokesperson. Got my campaign all ready: Dyson sucks. And never stops.  Did I very nearly go nuts when our machine had to go to Toronto for service for two weeks? Nuts enough that when my sister-in-law offered her unused Dyson, I wanted to drive the hour to Bridgetown to get it immediately. There’s just something so satisfying about the visual proof of seeing all that dust and hair inside the cylindrical body of the machine! Yes, I am waxing poetic about a vacuum cleaner.

I don’t like clutter. While I haven’t gone for the stark, streamlined not-a-thing-on-the counter look, there are far fewer things in plain view in our kitchen, a catharsis made possible in part by our complete renovation in 2008. I have better storage now, so things have a place. Although the island can become a catch-all for whatever’s in our hands as we come through the back door, a quick rearrangement, a five minute sort each day, and it is bare again.

I recycle all the incoming paper as soon as it is dealt with – bills, magazines, newspaper. If too much stuff is allowed to build up, I get antsy and I can’t do much of anything else until I right the situation.

If all around me is in chaos, my brain feels that way, too. Sure, I have used this unease as an excuse to put off other tasks that I didn’t want to do (think grading essays!), but there are many pleasant things that I delay doing until I ‘straighten up a bit’.

Go ahead and laugh at me, all ye who dwell comfortably with disorder and the flyers from last month. And yes. I make the bed everyday as soon as I get up.

What was that again?

You can’t make this stuff up.

Rather than get all bent out of shape about it, or call it a pet peeve, I have to laugh when I see or hear what people do with the English language, both spoken and written, to make it even more mystifying. It’s no wonder that new immigrants to Canada get confused.

Bear in mind that I was a high school teacher for thirty-two years, and that I taught both French and English for much of that time, so it is only fitting that my eye picks out these gaffes. You don’t mark eighty research essays miss the syntactical errors, misspellings and incorrect word usages if you’re any good at your job. These days, however, my lips are not pursed in consternation as though I had been the one who failed to teach the writer or speaker the proper way; rather I am often chuckling and shaking my head when I read a really good example. It makes me wish I had had the presence of mind to write down and save more of the gems from my teaching career.

There are no editors on Facebook. In fact, correcting others on their comments or observations will get you called a grammar nazi or worse. So I don’t. Not on the page, that is. I fix it in my head. Can’t help it.  I do the same when someone misspeaks. Wait. I do correct my son who thanks me for it, usually. I’ve noticed that he is a lot like me when he sees Caesar misspelled as Ceasar on a menu – he has a mini seizure, rolls his eyes and points it out.

So it’s a thankless position to be in, you see. No one applauds your efforts to keep the English language protected. No one except the person who sends you his draft of an essay, resumé or story to be proofread!

What a source of free amusement language misuse is!

Commenting on Facebook about a recent court sentence, the writer said it was “president-setting”. I laughed out loud. On the same topic another poster observed that we don’t have judges with the “convection” to hand down stiffer sentences. A little more heat transfer, Your Honour, please.

My glee knows no bounds when people use no capitals or punctuation whatsoever, leaving the reader to guess the gist of  “she got one too bad you didn’t come over shes mad you know”. You work on that one.

And no worries, I’ve done my time in the red-pencil universe. I may wince now and then, but all in all, I’m just smiling and loving how people express themselves.

Start where you are . . .

The wind is gusty and more snow than I imagined covers the north mountain landscape here on Bennett’s Bay Road. Winter behaves differently near the Bay of Fundy above the protected nooks of the valley below. Last summer’s brown grasses and weeds poke their heads through this most recent dusting of snow. On the evergreen trees, their bows swinging ponderously in the wind, white clumps cling. The thermometer reads plus two, though the calendar page asserts that it is January.

This place is truly a marvel in all seasons . . . having seen it awake and green last spring, then lazy and hot in summer’s height, all ablaze in autumn when that hillside to the east has bronze and yellow stands of hardwood in amongst all those firs, and robed in the snows of winter, I feel connected to more than just the rocks we have collected from the earth here.

This spot is part of where I am from.

For a hundred years, families with the same last names as I read painted on the mailboxes now have travelled over this mountain from their homes on the bay shore, past these mountaintop farm fields and down over to Canning, Port Williams and Wolfville. The paved two-lane road I am parked alongside was once little more than a buggy path. From communities like Baxter’s Harbour, Scots Bay and Hall’s Harbour where the ships and fishing boats conducted their commerce, the citizens took long wagon trips to ‘town’ for dry goods, medical care and secondary schooling.

Its history compels me and fills me with a sense of my part in the universe. My tiny, tiny contribution during the time I have to spend on this earth is so insignificant unless I can leave some positive work behind.

How tangible is my work supposed to be? Is it enough to live life with intention and compassion in one’s spirit? Unless mindfulness is brought to action . . . I consider the Dalai Lama’s teachings, as I put the car into gear and begin my turn around.

Waste not, want not . . .

Disposable? Not to her.

Nana’s tea towels had been washed and line dried so many times that they were soft as clouds and held as much water, not like the crisp ones with so much sizing and starch that call out from store shelves today. Bed sheets were much the same, perfumed from the fresh air where they blew free from fabric sheets or softeners.

Careful tiny stitches held fast the occasional patch, but throw them away? Not on your life.

I am sure a grandchild still has her tea can with the painted black, gold and white, faux-Asian motif, scratched and scarred from endless hands in and out for bags of Red Rose. Always it sat there on the shelf, just above and slightly left of the back burner of her stove, no newer or fancier a container ever considered.

Pyrex measuring cups – I wonder when those were invented? I know without hesitating that hers were the same ones from as far back as I can remember in the fifties until the time of her passing in 1998 with their barely visible red paint lines indicating the quantity in fractions of cups – no metric there! Nana’s cooking and baking were done with loving care with the same cookie sheets, pie plates and loaf pans she first had as a bride. When one of her daughters would offer to purchase a new set she wouldn’t hear of it. “Why, when I have perfectly good ones?”

Raising a family during the Depression meant everything had to be used until there was no more use to it, or it broke or plain wore out. Hers were not the only children who wore washed and sewn Four Roses or Purity flour bags as underpants or slips. Suits and overcoats were re-tailored under her skilful hands into dresses and coats for her girls.

Every scrap of wool yarn was used for socks or mitts and the remnant blended into still more. She knit some for my mother using the bits of orange left from one project to complete a brown pair she had been unable to complete. How Mom hated those ‘ugly’ mittens! One day when in a petulant fit, she put them on the chopping stump out back and took the axe to them, reducing them to scraps, and went home with the story that she had lost them. Grandmother knew better and found the evidence clinging in woolly shreds to the stump where a careless Alice had not sufficiently cleaned away the damning proof. Her punishment? No mittens for the rest of that winter. Old ones with holes were all mom could salvage from the bag of “ravels”, and those were her mittens the winter she was nine.

I hear my mother’s voice recounting this story to me at age 13 maybe as I bemoaned my sad fate at having to wear sensible waterproof winter boots when some of my friends were being allowed to wear more fashionable leather ones, tall with zippers on the side and form-fitting to the leg.

“You’ll be the only one with warm dry feet,” she said.

I’ll be the one with the dorky boots, I thought.

“And don’t try losing them. I tried that trick once . . .” and she launched into the tale of the brown and orange mittens.

Nana’s thrift and wisdom made her both an icon for the three Rs movement, and the cause for much sighing as those left to clean out her home asked, “Did she throw anything out?” While I am determined not to be wasteful, and I know better than to hoard things for someday, I could take a few more lessons from my grandmother on how to walk a finer balance in this disposable society we live in.

Oh, I couldn't possibly . . . well, maybe one more . . .

White bread. Crusts cut off. Arranged on trays with paper doilies and gherkins or bread and butter pickles.

That’s just the way our friendship works. Get us planning one of our rare and special times together and we immediately default to food, and what to eat. Our menu could be limitless – vegan delights whipped up by caterers with organic ingredients as exotic as goji berries and royal jelly from Peruvian bees. Our taste buds could savour grass-fed prime rib au jus or terrine de foie d’agneau prepared lovingly by Cordon Bleu chefs, or the freshest seafood the Atlantic or Bay of Fundy has to offer, but no.

We want funeral sandwiches.

It’s not a matter of expense. Each of us has income to spare. Nor is it pedestrian taste when it comes to eating. I’ve shared meals with these women ranging from paninis to pot roast, from satay to salads. We like variety and eating well.

I know we all can cook reasonably well, too. None of us is daunted by making dinner for eight to ten people, with several courses, and having a table that would please our mothers with its careful settings and centerpieces.

Yet when we gather, just we three, the unanimous decision for us is funeral sandwiches. You know the ones we mean: egg salad, chopped fine with bits of celery and maybe some onion powder, mayonnaise (perhaps even Mrs. H.’s homemade). Chicken, sliced white meat only, a touch of salt and black pepper, with just a smear of Miracle Whip (tangier than mayo). Lobster – oooh, yes – just chunky enough that it has not been reduced to a paste, sometime with no more garnish than fresh lemon and pepper and on buttered bread. And the pièce de résistance – rolled asparagus -- a must on any respectable sandwich platter!

        

“If there are no asparagus sandwiches at my memorial reception, I am not dying!” I have asserted to these women, so dear to me, and to my family as well.

Cream cheese and cherry? Hmmmmm . . . not a favorite. Ribbon sandwiches with cheese and devilled ham, so popular for bridge in the 50s? Not on our list. They’re too cheery, too cheeky almost for a funeral.

What better pleasure than to sit on a summer afternoon, looking out over the Minas tides, and nibble on dainty square, round and diamond shapes of tea sandwiches with lemonade or fizzy water? When the participants are two of your dearest old friends who are in exact accord that this is most fitting, few things compare.

(for Mona and Lizard)

for HT 2007

A man came to live in a blue house by a sea, a sea that changed from steel grey to kelp green, from glass to rollers and breakers in minutes. He was ageless. To some he was like a wise grandfather, while he seemed a wide-eyed boy to others. I know this because I listened so raptly to his tales every chance I got, and I watched the reactions of the fortunate others who came to sit for awhile in the sunlight of his words.

And what did he know about? What did he tell with certainty and what with wonder?

Many things. How long the road was from his night’s lodging to the endless highway; how brightly the stars shone over the islands under the Southern Cross. The way his skin felt from riding all day on the English moors, and the weight of the camera on his neck after hours of capturing the light playing over barn boards. The man in the blue house by the sea knew these things with the sureness of experience and the understanding that a traveler’s life brings.

Amazement would fill his eyes as he spoke of those he loved so well -- his beloved, his heart, for surely she knew him as no other ever would, as his partner and mother to his children. The firstborn, so early and small, could not stay with them for long. Fragility is never harmed by love, and loved he was. His cherished girl child, golden and kind, with an incandescence of mind and heart, how he swelled to tell of her protection of the earth! And be assured, no father ever believed more fully in the desire of his son, to make his guitar resonate for the sheer joy of the sound in the world.

And yes, he talked of many things with wonder and reverence --  of books and songs and flavours and puzzles, of myths and melodies, dreams, and things, and people, lost and found. Of glasses raised and promises, of tears and smiles, and secret dreams. Of Timbuktu and the Mekong Delta, of Gibraltar and Dublin and Baja California.

I think he knew about quality, for he surrounded himself with such an abundance of it. Not material things, mind you, but quality people, quality living, quality pursuits.

The man who lived in the blue house by the sea understood, too, what Ms. Rumphius’ grandfather told her about needing to make the world more beautiful. Not in some grand way like a painter, for I am sure he coloured outside the lines or got the paint all over his clothes and hair whenever he took up a brush. But, oh, this man knew Beauty and that she startles us, and will dance with anyone who is brave enough to ask her.

The man who lived in the blue house beside the sea has already made the world more beautiful. Even if he does not know how to keep doing so, I have seen that he has the eyes, heart and mind to keep finding ways, and the courage to ask Beauty to dance.

  Cate Smith

  June 19, 2007

You won't need those sunglasses

Don’t worry; you’re safe. My blogging rule will be to protect the (?) innocent subjects of some of my musings unless the story is already public domain, as was the last. Lawsuits give me hives.

I intend these lines to be a vehicle solely for my conjectures, supposings, questions and imaginings. So you know, the old “any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is unintentional and purely coincidental” disclaimer reigns supreme.

Completely disguising a person’s identity and persona is not an easy thing to do when what makes them stand out is unique to them, and the very thing that drew my interest in the first place. Why does she pronounce it “nucular”, anyway? He drives a Mini Cooper. So he’s got size issues.

Pseudonyms can be fun. I may play with that idea later.

It makes me laugh a little, thinking of Hollywood exposés written in the 50s and 60s with the then-stars fighting to confess that it really was her who slept with Cary Grant or him who did the casting couch tumble with Marilyn. So much for secrets and names changed.

Publicity comes in many forms, but no one will get rich from a mention in this blog, so forget it. I’m not one to level my sights on someone out of malice, so if you’re seeking vicious hearsay, look further.

'Til death do us part?

I read the paper. Scour it some days, as a matter of fact. This morning in the In Memoriam section I was curious to see two tributes to the same man who died one year ago today: one from his wife, the other from his “true love”, a woman named Marie. It set my curious mind to work, wondering if Marie was the much-scorned mistress? Or perhaps Robert’s second wife who now will find her yearly way to send daggers to the heart of the first wife by purchasing a few lines proclaiming her love for him?

Beverly, wife with his last name, wrote of times spent together in quiet simplicity and of travels, her words bespeaking a familiarity that spouses share comfortably, just by being in each other’s presence. How that must irk Marie, whose only time with him might have been stolen moments in hotels or her home. Yet, she mentions a “letter” which he wrote to her as proof of his returned affection and says they were together for the past fifteen years. The plot thickens.

Maybe Marie was his high school sweetheart, who had never ceased carrying a torch for him? The photo posted with her tribute showed a much younger Robert with darker hair and mustache; Beverly's depicts him with silver at his temples and upper lip. Perhaps, through the miracle that is technology, the Internet had connected them again in recent years and they had rekindled a romance from days gone by? But still, such a public, in your face pronouncement, Marie?

Now and then, real life offers up just such a mystery. This might be good short story fodder at some point. I’ll work on it.