Bukowski, wish me luck

This morning sleep stops. 
Early. 
Shhhh. 

Dangle left leg. 
Roll hip. 
Straighten arm. 

Ten pads of flesh feel for the floor.  

Now, tighten abs. 
Rise. 

Release the mattress from its burden. 

Close the door. 
Pause.

Heat pump on. 
Woodstove lit.
Kettle set. 

The coffee maker clears its throat. 

Fire flames. 
Steel box pings. 
HVAC thrums. 

What's left of the moon stares down 
At the little lamp strapped to my head. 

Outside, 
Lunar light sinks to earth. 
Ignites the cool cold air. 

Inside, 
The lamp 
Sighs of shadows. 

In this chair, 
Bounded 
By the tinder of poor old Doug Fir. 
Unbound 
With moonstruck fancy.

There are no shoes or laces. 

Bare feet kick up dust,
Discover uneven surfaces, 
File unrecoverable reports, 
Soften, 
The resolution daylight brings.  

On the progress of causes and the causes of progress

This gallery contains 2 photos.

Dear Reader. I share with you this day the epidemiology of John Graunt. Graunt’s 17th century calculations of long-gone Londoners was …

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Spontaneous

Not just another teens-in-suburbia apocalypse story. Its treatment of young love touches but never gropes. Its metaphorical scope spans a contemporary singularity of fear that invokes the end of self and replaces it with a communal engagement with sorrow and the denial of hope. Spontaneous tells us how things like the Parklane High, Sandy Hook elementary and Utoya island massacres are wound into the collective memory and trajectory of a dawning generation. Spontaneous expresses what “Night of the Living Dead” did for the olders in our world. Life is cruel.

Am I going to blow up today?

“Beware the Ides of March” or What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic

The release of Arctic Change on Pi Day places climate change in a spectacularly critical context. Why? Because it focuses on a fragile beautiful place: the Arctic. The writing is clear, the graphics precise, conclusions dire. I’ve pasted the key messages below. If you’d like your own copy of the report, you can download it here.

JT Thought JWR Was Hopelessly Demoted

 

A friend called it right after the Globe and Mail broke its SNC Lavalin political interference story in early February. “I am speculating,” said G, ” that JT will get the boot and JWR will become the first Indigenous prime minister in October.” Well, well, well. Wouldn’t that be an interesting outcome!

Just four years ago Justin Trudeau was feasting the the table of gender parity. A balanced blend of boys and girls representing Canada in Cabinet. In one of his more memorable memes, Justin explained his break with sex bias by stating “because it’s 2015.”  It wasn’t much of an answer, but it made everyone happy.  A barnyard of political mugs broke into broad smiles, heads nodded, knowing glances were exchanged, thumbs pointed up.

By uttering those three words the Prime Minister signaled a break with the past and stoked pith into the audacious bonfire of his vanities.  Voters began recovering from Fin de siècle fatigue, cheered that life-under-Harper had ended, and revelled that a member of the lucky sperm club would soon be our leader. It was a beautiful love triangle made from equal doses of Justin’s good looks, machine politics and national regard for his dear departed father.

So it was that Canadians, flush with post-electoral regard, agreed “Liberals will be different this time.” No more piles of post-APEC pepper sprayed youth, no more prime ministerial choke holds, no more Shawinigate, or sponsorship scandals. No more thuggery. Just sunny ways.

Oddly, or perhaps fittingly, Trudeau’s penchant for showing off his 21st C bona fides may be the sword that he and his party fall on during this October’s election. His Cabinet appointments constructed a cult of fairness around the Prime Minister and the diversity of Cabinet Ministers clearly showed how consistently unrepresentative Cabinets have been since, well since Confederation.

So gender-parity in Cabinet was a big deal. But, it’s an even bigger deal today because it’s 2019,” and the Prime Minister has thrown one of his hardest working Ministers under a large red bus. Silly JWR, she made the mistake of asserting her independence as Attorney-General. There would be no DPA settlement for SNC-Lavalin as long as she was A-G! So it was that on 14 January 2019, Jody Willson-Raybould was sworn in as the Minister for Veteran’s Affairs.

For most mortal beings, her change in portfolios could reasonably be described as a hopeless demotion. The first of many descents from the pinnacle of political power. Instead, Judy Wilson-Raybould spoke truth to power and illuminated a backroom where obedience and influence merge with money and privilege.  A place where more than 80 meetings took place, where new “wrist-slapping” legislation for re-mediating corporate offenders was cobbled together, where calls for such agreements were attributed to non-governmental organizations, where a scheme to include a justice measure in a budget bill was hatched and where “veiled threats” of one sort or another were uttered, registered and remembered.

The central disaster of the PM’s folly looks a little like a scene from Grease. Justin isn’t the same Justin that Jody met at the beach this summer. “Tell me more, Tell me more…!” Turns out the boy with the curly hair, the big brown eyes and the hard-to-explain cough when speaking English – leads a double life.  He is Prime Minister of Canada and the “representative from Papineau.” He, like the Liberal party’s many legacies, is tightly bound to conjunctions of “if,” “and,” or Butts.

On 12 February, Jody Wilson-Raybould chose to resign her Cabinet post, sought counsel from a former Supreme Court justice, and encouraged us all to “stand together for the values Canada is built on.”  There is no easy way for Justin Trudeau to explain her resignation, particularly after her no frills/no holds barred description of the texts, e-mails, phone calls and personal meetings that she saw as political interference with Canada’s rule of law.

The fallout may be catastrophic for the Liberals. The PM’s missteps could result in a minority, or perhaps majority Conservative government. Or as G has speculated it could mean the end of Justin’s short career as a political potentate and foist a crown atop the head of an honourable, Indigenous woman. Why? Because she has demonstrated she’s ready and capable to do the job.

 

 

 

A Day of Life

I find myself up early these Fall mornings remembering the recent past and wondering about the near present. Nature is so tidy.  The rains begin. The fire ban lifts. Beauty, mirth and elegance preside over a feast of decay and darkness somehow illuminating the wonder found everywhere.

Here, Garry Oak leaves hold on while Big Leaf Maple, Poplar, Cottonwood and Willow conspire a slippery roadside compost. The Merlins have gone. The Crows have dropped the last of the walnuts on asphalt laneways. Rufous is humming elsewhere while Anna stays a while longer. Tree frogs make only silence til March and the impossibly soft eggs of so many Painted Turtles are safely buried beneath the beach at Stowell Lake.

Within this natural order came Sunday’s annual burn. After hours of sorting and heaving, the pyre drifted from flames to coals throwing heat evenly from its metre-wide circumference.

I puttered with a pair of pruning shears. M. leaned back in a plastic garden chair and entertained me with lists of jobs done, food prepared and activities waiting. I reached deep into the limey-green stalks of fern and looked up at the gleaming healthy canopy of fragile fronds.

My mission. Reduce the presence of Periwinkle and other root-creeping invasives that  made a home here decades ago. The pruning ritual satisfies and humbles. Every year it relegates a large pile of unwanted growth to a heap that suggests – for several months – that eradication has been successful.

Many annual burns in this area of the yard have infused the soil with carbon. It is rich and black which perhaps explains the weed-family preference for this particular spot. Despite the cover provided by our largest cedar the earth was damp. For a couple of days the rain had fallen with impressive force.  Crawling along I peered into the shade, soiled my knees and was pitched from forearm-to-elbow.

When M. called for quiet her voice conveyed happiness, excitement and a familiar kindness. There followed a point. At the base of the cedar a row of five California Quail stalked one another across our rain-dropped septic field.

I admit that my first thought was dismal. I thought how their numbers had dwindled since summer. Then, mammas and papas were followed by 20 and more chicks. A cock would find high ground with hens and other cocks forming middle and rear guards. Together they guided the covey into or out of hedgerows, through fences, across roadbeds or into ditches.

Now the 20 or 30 were five. Three cocks, two hens. All plump and all searching for clues to several unknowable questions. As they veered our way I released my hand from the clippers and let myself sink into dark, cool dirt: a form-fitted mattress that, on a summer’s day, would have made for great sex and drollery. A place where guttural gasps and hilarious laughter would complement two lives thriving.

Lucky us. Quails 1 through 5 turned in our direction. Perhaps it was the warming fire, perhaps the newly disturbed earth, the scattered bits of mortified branches. Perhaps the simple quiet of our Sunday morning. As Quail approached the purposelessness they exhibit from a distance was reconfigured by proximity to their pitched peeps. Logic said these sounds were fuelled by respiratory tracts and articulated within passages formed of delicate beak.

But logic was confounded by their social anatomy. A secret sonar resembled speech acts. Bold articulations of a freshly evolved intelligence sounded among them. The heaving bellow of their breasts droned and jib-like topknots whistled.  What echolocations choreographed last-minute course-corrections?  Which crash-avoidance system freed them from crossed paths?

M. and I watched. We nodded at one another, smiled and saw them dance for us. We saw them respect a boundary they’d drawn around our presence. We saw their nature lacking the panic of roadside sightings. Then, in a fit of decisiveness they turned away and followed the fence line to another direction.

 

It rained yesterday

Clouds; Atmosphere; Time – Matthew Metzger

It rained yesterday. The drops started early evening. But the threat was settled that morning. At 5:00 am stars in every direction. Soon cloud cover was complete.

The air settled yesterday. I wore a lovely sweater. Damp weaving moisture with warp to weft.  I wondered, “is this morning’s wet exceptional?”

All day clouds jellied. Their authority muted the minute and monstrous sounds of the village – dogs and diesel engines, birds and braking bicycles, chattering children and chainsaws… In quiet I typed, composing logic and process that I hoped others would recognize and return.

As my burrow closed-in, I laboured. Atmospheric pressure sank, heart rate dropped, blood thickened. A single moment within moments stretched out hours of meteorological time. Then rain.

Hiking with Duck Tape

This summer I was lucky to be part of two wonderful walks into the back country. Both illustrated why duck tape has been on every NASA mission since the early Gemini days (~ 1961).

Vesta sticks to her guns!

The duck tape origin story goes something like this. During World War 2, a mom and munitions factory worker, Vesta Stoudt, thought cloth backed adhesive would be a superior way to fasten boxes of ordnance.  She was correct.

Her good idea found its way to a Johnson & Johnson affiliate where they adapted an existing medical tape product. A waterproof polyethylene (plastic) coating was added to the cloth with a layer of rubber-based gray adhesive bonded to one side.

Usually, I carry two rations of duck tape on a multi-day hiking trip. I wrap several meters of tape around the outside of a Nalgene bottle and I wrap about one meter around a pencil. This covers large and small jobs and lets me store the precious tape in different compartments.

This tape went unused until this summer. Occasionally I would look at it, estimate its total weight and then think about something else. But during our Yukon trip I totally exhausted both sources. First, one of the people we were hiking with broke a pole. After about 30 minutes of figuring, we cut the end off of an oak stirring spoon, wrapped the spoon’s handle in duck tape, snuggly inserted the taped spoon handle into the two pieces of graphite and taped over the two pieces. It worked.

My boots were the next order of business. Both started falling apart – one more so than the other. Without any shoo-goo on hand, I relied on the remaining supply of duck tape to solve this very important problem. I rationed the remaining tape to secure the midsole and heel sections of the tread to the leather boot. It worked.

Fine and dandy. But did I re-supply with new duct tape for the second trip? Er, no. Luckily my friend H had his own pencil wrapped in duck tape. When falling on a sharp rock created a wide split between his ring and pinky finger it was duct tape that more or less permanently secured the gauze and butterfly bandages to his left hand. This promoted healiing and gave him latitude to swim the remaining 3 days!

So simple message: Go hiking, have fun, bring duck tape.

The map is not the territory

My good friend A. and I turn 60 this year. Our spouses, M. and S., rewarded us with an early birthday present – a treeline to tundra walk into the Yukon Territory’s Tombstone Range.  Like other back country adventures here too we received advice about what to watch out for. While many people cautioned us about Grizzlies no one mentioned Gravity. The Ogilvie Mountains are a study in applied physics. Apparently, switchbacks have only recently been discovered in this part of the North and most trails tend to go straight up. Those that trend in a downwards direction are frequently (and I mean frequently) punctuated with boulders (small to massive slides that resemble rivers of rock) over which the intrepid hiker must hop (and occasionally leap) to successfully cross. The rare moments when we reach a saddle or levelling in the trail are a perfect salve. Boots off, feet deep in glacial water, pans of just melted ice soaking sweaty heads, hard cheese and hard sausage gobbled down. We repeat this ritual for five blissful bluebird days.The slopes we trek and the summits we reach are deep-fried. Daily temperatures average 25 to 30C. At times, it is like walking on the lid of a slow-cooker. All of the steepest climbs are glorious. Each 100 meters or so the wind increases, the temperature drops – a lovely gift to the blood-pounding beauty of our healthy hearts. Going down, our tootsies compress further and further into the aptly-named toe box of our boots. Deceleration impresses the soft skin of our feet. The knitted architectures of our socks, once removed, show off neatly lined ridges rising up from lithe dermal valleys. Discoloured toe nails predict imminent loss. Specialized blisters forming. Fleshy digits bonded to one another.At the top of mountain passes we are awestruck by this Yukon. Craggy, gnarly peaks – Monolith, Tombstone –  recalling medieval ramparts and crenellations thousands of meters tall. Spires pointing to infinitude, caves homesteading wizards, dwarfs, hermits… Your choice. Massive cirques littered with scree and talus. The brittle body of upper earth crushed against a green bottom. And as we look down on this forcefulness, witnessing its brutal beautiful outcome, we step into it. We walk off a cliff. First, tentatively. Feeling gravel and sheets of shale give up their place on the mountain is unnerving. Plotting long angles we temper the suicidal slippage of each step. Then glee. Our requirement for traction and certainty is replaced by the confident joy of momentum. We ski to the bottom. Each of us four begetting her or his own avalanche of expectations.And as we cross over this lost horizon we find a Shangri La. Eternal life bubbling from the coloured, flattened stones of sourceless creeks. Borne into patches of blueberry. Swept along the endless merger of contiguous valleys. Tiny juniper and wind-shaped willows willfully forgetting the weariness of winter dormancy. Fireweed standing together in a common statement of generosity. Prairie crocus singly clinging to the dried solitude of untrodden earth. Cottongrass reminding every living thing how delicate and dominant snow must needs be. Lakes. Cold blue steel lifting hot grey stone. Sirens to our puny human desire for intensity. Four naked bodies driven to draw breaths deeply from this tarn. Wet whispered sun sonnets recovering what was lost on our way here.This North, these days, are bug-free. We see them, they see us, yet they seem pre-occupied with some other mission. Birds too. The odd sparrow here and there, a family of ptarmigan pandering to indecisiveness, a tiny hawk swooping overhead at 1500 metres, two ravens calling forth the sun. The near absence of flight, both entomo- and ornitho-logical, inspires us to flee our itinerary. Though back country campsites are beautifully outfitted (Yukon Parks provides fantastic pads for tents, ropes off camp trails, and shuttles barrels of poop, pee and grey water out by helicopter) this is not where we need to be. We head for ‘the shire,’ a large verdant Yin butted against a rock-ribbed Yang. Here, deep lichen-flecked moss lightens each barefoot taken, inhales our sleep-over impermanence, and saturates our nostrils with sudden prehistoric aromas. As morning breaks we see too how our ground cover sustains the bull Caribou who for the next two hours nibbles, strolls and lopes in the shallow dip below our tents.You will recall “the glee.” The rock skiing. This occurred in Glissade Pass. To glissade means “to slide down a steep slope of snow or ice [or loose rock].” To my knowledge there is no climbing term to describe the ascent of a scree field. While “motherfucker” captures some emotional elements of the act it doesn’t fully describe the technical challenges involved. In any case, upon leaving ‘the shire’ we immediately climb a large talus slope and regard 300 meters of very steep walking. Our approach is simple. We plant firm, purposive footfalls, make deliberate pole placements, rid our consciousness of self-doubt, and don’t look down. As the pitch sharpens, loose-packed stone gives way to broken rock and walking more closely resembles scaling. We scan, we estimate, we grunt. We severely kick footholds into the mountain only to feel them give way when transferring weight from one foot to the other. We learn that hand-holds, although comforting to look at, are liable to break, and thus dangerous. We are a slow-moving, genial hive-mind. We encourage  one another, suggest easier, more stable routes, and occasionally curse as one. But at some ill-defined point, our common experience dissolves. Our position on the mountain clarifies one thing: we are on our own. Or are we? After two hours of climbing, ten meters separates our company of adventurers from the top of the Pass. And at this point our good will and some unknowable karma produces the most beautiful avatar. A lad from the Dolomites crosses the ridge like he’s sprinting over a massive piece of crumbling polenta. His happy face shining, his helping hand extended.Physically, this hike was arduous. Mentally, we pushed past all existing comfort zones.Aesthetically, incomparable. Spiritually, affirming. Thank goodness for the Yukon Territory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Travel in the North

The Past
The unsettled weather I am travelling through has not been seen in this area in 75 years. To say that it is unusual understates its impact by a magnitude. I know this because my first daughter was born in these parts 26 years ago.

On 21 January 1991 I saw her form for the first time. I inhaled her presence in the cabin that we rented on Pelican Lake in Sioux Lookout, Ontario. I smeared the thick cheesy vernix envelope that had painted itself over the pink oxygen of her skin.

When she arrived that day it was cold. I remember looking out the bedroom window at the Pine and Evening Grosbeaks gobbling seed. A thermometer fastened next to the feeder read -42C.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday
By way of comparison, I was in Kitchenuhmayooosib Inninuwug (KI) or  Big Trout Lake on January 21st this year. KI lies about 450km due north from Sioux Lookout. It was 2C in KI. The snow was melting away, baring roofs and spawning puddles on the hard clay roads.

The warm warm weather conspired with heaps of cold cold snow to create dense dense fog.  As the ceiling fell below 600 feet, flights were cancelled producing a classic case of weathered-in-ed-ness among the pocket populations of fly-in help.

About 20 hours after the cancellation of our Friday afternoon flight a dynamic emerged that in many ways resembled Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ five stages of grief. Positioned at various points in the tiny hotel’s common room I witnessed and, indeed, participated in the following:

• Acceptance. Various visitors lazily lounge in front of endless inaugural commentaries. Occasionally a droll observation about northern travel emerges. Many casual expressions of fluidity, e.g., “I’m OK with staying over another night,” are offered;
• Denial. Phone calls from Sioux Lookout paint an increasingly dire picture of the weather system’s scope. People who by now should have been in KI have yet to lift off. This information gives rise to multiple and unsolicited opinions about northern air service followed by unfounded, if not irrational, forecasts that “we’ll definitely get out today.”;
• Anger. When a knowledgeable local enters the hotel and  unequivocally states that  planes do not fly on the sabbath, the “we’ll get out tomorrow” assumption is lost. Their revelation is viewed as vexatious, toxic even. Later it inspires poetikal verse:

  No Fly Zone

  How do you know that you cannot fly from KI on Sunday?
  How do you know that you cannot fly from KI on Sunday?
  You find out when you’re weathered-in
  Weathered-in on Friday
  You find out when the agent says:
  If you don’t get out today,
  You won’t get out tomorrow.
  You don’t get out today,
  You won’t get out tomorrow.
  Cause the church is State
  And you’ll have to wait
  The Sabbath means
  You don’t play ball
  You don’t haul wood
  You don’t exert, don’t run, don’t flirt
  Don’t shout, don’t cry
  And you DO NOT fly
  From KI
  On Sunday.

• Within a half hour those short fuses have become long faces. Depression sets in and the many legitimate and fabricated reasons “why I HAVE TO get out today” start to tumble from the homunculus. Several people get off the couch and head for their bedrooms where the sound of frantic texting overcomes the incessant and delirium-inspiring ambiance of the forced air furnace.
• Bargaining signals the end of Act One. Could we….
  • Split the cost of an air charter?
  • Engage the services of a local driver Sunday to travel the 50 or so kilometres to Wapekeka where a more enlightened parish permits planes to land on the holy day?
  • Re-arrange our massively important schedules to remove those immovable barriers that just moments earlier pre-supposed necessary, nay requisite, absolution from natural temperaments and known unknowns?

As we head to the KI airport – which we find emptied of staff and information – we realize we are exactly where we began: Will the plane fly? Will the fog lift? Will the freezing rain permit us to land should we get anywhere near Sioux Lookout? Answers are: yes, no, yes and no.

Our little group from the hotel is augmented by others. We chat, touch though do not grope, we find our commonness. Magically our frazzled selves and the pervasive uncertainty – of where we are to go, when, or how – resolve and high spirits, good humour, and occasional notions of contingency prevail.

It is 8:30 PM and having bypassed Kasabonika we find ourselves in the Pickle Lake airport waiting room. At 9:30 PM a big group boards a plane for Thunder Bay. Two beautiful young people decline to board after the pilot’s warning that should the plane fail to land in Thunder Bay they will be diverted to Regina, Saskatchewan.

We adopt them. We are ten, we are happy, we are shuttled to the best worst bar in the world. Water, beer, white wine, rye, and vodka supplement the menu’s only fare: potato wedges and chicken fingers. Long story short, we arrive back to the Sioux Lookout airport by noon Sunday.

The Sioux Lookout Airport
This place might reasonably be described as both art installation and train wreck. Its transfiguration of function into chaos is no easy feat. New construction and renovations introduce innumerable  ambiguities “How does one get in,” say, or “how does one get out?”

Similarly, its liminal state reconfigures important human dimensions of air travel. “How are so many bodies to fit in so little space?” Flight delays and cancellations redefine the temporary nature of waiting room. Children scream through a maze of travellers all the while fully expressing the low-level anxiety that an uncertain routing, arrival or departure suggests. Meanwhile one-year olds peg leg toward each other, hands waving, smiles spread widely as if compensating for the grim adult expressions everywhere else.

Passengers wear timely though inappropriate outer wear – parkas, boots, hats and scarves. Vestments hang loosely from bent skeletal forms: their bulk inspires perspiration and thankfully conceals the stink of foliation. Eyes bow to handheld devices. In this steam bath of otherness, data plans are abandoned, yearning brows lift to itch primal needs, and fleshy palms re-engage their social contract.

Monday
So, following an eventful return from KI over the weekend, I fly to Fort Hope and then back again the same day. Simply put, I witness the same passive, multi-layered cloud cover thwart the pilots and their flying machines. Closing in on our destination patches of ground appear with some clarity. Thirty or sixty seconds later that clarity is erased only to be re-introduced as a tawdry expressionist version of reality. And this cycle repeats.

Part way through the third or fourth such cycle, the happy sound of flaps turning down and wheels descending shine a light on our collective and unwarranted hope of landing at this fort. The utter degradation of the visible world unfortunately corresponds with lower altitude and proximity to our destination. We know – all eight of us – we know we will not land.

The now familiar – and impressive – acceleration of the engines signals a farewell and our collection of thoughts turn to Plan B. Heading west again my travelling companion recalls the creeping fog seen in Sioux Lookout as we taxied from the terminal. After almost two hours in the air we all fear that our time has passed. Might we safely land in Sioux Lookout?  As the protocol begins again: deceleration, nose down, scanning for lights, our hearts synchronize on a single instance of good luck.

Dense cloud provides no hint of the topography below us. The groan of hydraulics eases flaps and wheels out of their nests. Flying. We are flying, but in reverse. We are, in aviation terms, initiating a controlled crash. We’re lifting ourselves out of the ether and returning to earth.

Where exactly is the earth? There it is. The train tracks. The train tracks? These tracks are no more than a half kilometre from the airport! AND WHUMP. Our wheels find the sloppy seconds of runways bullied and bared by unwanted warmth. Pressed against glass I see the tower lights dimly welcome what certainly is the last plane to land in Sioux Lookout that day.