I don't want to die in the city

He was perhaps the last of the old-fashioned lumberjacks.

He worked through old and new and crippling pains, through vicious weather, through the irritants of weaker men, through loneliness.

He survived injury and trees that tried to kill him and dullards who dared to talk at the dinner table.

He befriended the forest, the wind, the horses and dogs.

He succumbed to narrow thinking and... temptation.

He soured in prison, aged in captivity, eroded in the city; a new prison: confined to the streets, the basement market and bookshops, an apartment in the sky with his bookshelves and little gardens. He stared out the windows for years at the grid of rooftops and grey horizons and never a forest in sight.

"I don't want to die in the city," he said, but it had to be inevitable.

He respected women and indigenous peoples and animals and tired drearily of men but he took to me for reasons I don't understand. And so I tolerated him for reasons I don't need to understand. I promised we'd take a trip when it became possible. We'd go see the trees (that tried to kill him). But then I too fell to physical ruin.

A new friend took up his cause. They won a reprieve. She had a car. They fled the city, saw the trees and the lakes.

They left the shore on a boat. He left the boat and in the water he was free of the tyranny of useless legs, but not of an old tired heart. "I don't feel good," he said suddenly to her; the woman on the boat. And the water moved over him and secured his escape from the city.

I haven't spared as much thought for the Lonely Lumberjack because Grandma passed away the same day and frankly she was dearer to me.

I remember that day when Carlos brightened and dropped a shield and declared a revelation; it's okay to ask for help. And soon thereafter he released this poem; my favourite.

My entire life
I have walked
Whatever path alone
Forged ahead
No matter what
Emotions not ever betraying
My stern face

Lately, I have made
A pleasant discovery
It sort of
Crept up on me

To always be alone
Is not
Who I have to be

To bend; accept help
Is to develop
A trust

Not to be like
An old machine
That gradually
Submits
To
Rust

- The Lonely Lumberjack

Today is the first day...

... of a new era: life without grandparents. 

I was blessed to have six of them, and blessed to have one who outlasted the rest by decades. She was a living great great grandmother. Five generations living at once; four now.

She was simple, kind, loving; ever dependable in these traits; as unpretentious as it gets. She liked bingo and phone calls from relatives. She played her Nintendo (NES) for decades after the rest of us moved on. We used to meet for breakfasts on a regular basis and we thought we were near the end of the long pause; thought we were gonna finally get together again soon. But time ran out. That's okay. Little pains and hardships had long grown into major ones. She was ready to call it quits I think.

I'm grateful for all the time and love she gave me. I'm glad she is not suffering. I'm hoping my aunt and uncle are... okay. It must be real hard to lose a great mom.

Love you.

NDR

Scrambling

 Anyone remember the Avitable Scramble? Well I do. And I say we're overdue. Someone hit the timer:

1. I have a rental CPAP machine now and I'm getting 5 hrs sleep per night; that's about double my previous output over the last two or three weeks.

2. I'm hungry but I don't like going upstairs where the kitchen is generally located because stairs make my little leg hurts and I am a little suckie baby.

3. Maybe I should have tried to get some more sleep instead of trying to write words this early in the morning.

4. There is no 4.

5. HA! I love that joke. I got it from Monty Python. I use it way too often and no one can stop me.

6. Speaking of too many Bruces. Our formerly favourite Bruce; the Boss; Mister everyman-lovin' Springsteen is charging $4000 at the high end of his concert ticket pricing. Hmm. Maybe he's become a libertarian fuck-wit of the sort he would have hated back when he still resembled a human being. Or... maybe he's just senile and doesn't know what's going on.

7. There is no 7. Ha ha ha ha. It gets funnier every time.

8. So I got sad about the Lemoncloud minecraft server. My friends all seemed to disappear and my goals seemed to be looking unrealistic as they are so long-term and player turnover seems too high in this world. So I never logged in for over a month and when I came back some of my claims had been expired leaving key properties unprotected. A fair amount of vandalism occurred and the top 80% of my resources are gone. The 80% at top value. Plenty of dirt and old rusty swords were left behind. However a little bird tells me that an acquaintance may have emptied my vault and may be storing my major valuables for me. That's the kind of thing I have done for friends in the past...

9. Did someone set a timer? No?

10. Speaking of Dynamic Pricing, sometimes; rarely, it is used benevolently: In Finland speeding tickets are calculated based on your income. This is a concept which should be stunningly obvious but which never occurred to me until I was seventeen; about seven years after I became smarter and more human than the life-size petrified dog turds that we call politicians in this deliriously fucked up country that looks so great on the surface if you have not the slightest idea what is going on around you.

11. I forgive you for not knowing what is going on around you. You probably have a job or a life or kids or something so what chance have you got at doing the 48 hours or research per day it would take to unearth enough truth from the mountains of bullshit we call society in order to have sufficient awareness to - to what? To live nobly? To make all the right moves? To find legitimate happiness? Just what IS the magic formula? It changes from time to time, doesn't it? Because the planet and our flawed societal schemes continue to degrade with time, and so the "right" answers become more and more compromised.

12. Well. I hope that cheered you up a little, imaginary readers!  

P.S. I've done a little nibblet of research and can't find any reason why this Canadian baby and her hard-working mom should be booted from Canada:

Petition · SIGN TO STOP THE DEPORTATION OF FATUMAH NAJJUMA AND HER DAUGHTER FROM CANADA. · Change.org

Please go fax yourself

Dear aliens:

Still stuck on this cute but withering planet named something akin to "Dirt" by its most bombastic inhabitants (who treat both it and each other as such) where in accordance to their kooky machinations I was pushed to sending the following communication today:

Dear person or other:

I received your very excellent and efficient ambulance care on 6 June 2022 while subscribed to Ontario Works system. I currently face severe mobility and transportation barriers and not being a proprietor from the previous century, I do not own a fax machine. Thus my inquiries to the automatonic telephone nexus were met with no applicable response.

 

Would you please do me the biggest favour and fax to yourself the following info?

patient XXXXXXXXXX, XXXXXXX XXXXX

OHIP# XXXX XXX XXX XX

acct# XXXXXXX (balance $45.00)

Ontario Works# XXX XXX XXX   

your fax # XXX-XXX-XXXX

Otherwise I will wait to hear from a collections entity and I guess have someone to talk to.

Thank you again for the excellent health care; as always professional, effective and unhindered by superfluous human connection. I hope you all have a great day.

Sincerely...,

Feel free to swing by any time.