abbreviate [uh-bree-vee-eyt]

Such a very fine collection of understandings I have seen; how intertwined, how logical, accessible and seemingly complete; how comfortably in line with logic, the senses, science, religion and the poetry of ancients, and how they unite them all. How they solve problems and tame mysteries, and how, when genuinely absorbed, they bring about change: how a mind is re-wired: how consciousness evolves and educates the instincts.

But how to condense them and make them teachable, to arrange them in the linear? That is some task, one whose time, surely, has come.

abbey [ab-ee]

I would very much wish to go off and apply to some monastery. I imagine it would be a profoundly appropriate and productive experience, where I would further my understandings, test them through dialogue with qualified peers, and most importantly, learn how to leverage them. And there I would be forced to develop discipline; my great downfall. That I might be further separated from the people in the world I most love, on top of the other hurdles and barriers which already separate us, would be the main drawback.

The greater problem though, is that there are no existing spiritual enterprises that I know of which I could subscribe to without hitting fundamental barriers. There are key understandings, so ingrained in my unarguable living experience, they will not bend for anyone. For instance, key Christian fundamentals are taught backwards with regards to causality, while too much useful wisdom is cloaked in metaphor. And there is such a failure to communicate Christ as a relevant and accessible role model. Buddhism, as it is taught suffers profound unnecessary contradictions, while Buddha too, is treated too much on a pedestal; like Christ, his experience presumed too unreachable. Not good. Humanism has so many merits but seems not to have done the math; has not found the joy and inspiration; has not grasped the miracle at the end of the equation.      

To create such a spiritual enterprise that is free of such problems as these; which wraps everything up in a circle of logic and universal inclusivity, would be some great achievement, and I truly believe the basic blueprints lay at hand. But I have little ability to lead people or inspire them to such great ends. The way to nourish in this present society seems to be in self-help books I suppose, while cathedrals loom about; dull and archaic.

abattoir [ab-uh-twahr]

I once decided that though I possess no evidence or testimony which is guaranteed to be truthful - or at least genuinely representative of the norm, it is fairly evident that cows, pigs, fowl, and likely other creatures, are being subjected to unnecessary degrees of suffering in the pursuit to sate the appetite of humans. I decided that it is not useful to me; not wise or responsible or in accordance with poetic principles, to forgive my own carnivorous habit without gaining first-hand experience with the matter. In other words, if I must kill by proxy, let me know the nature of this blood on my hands.

I decided I needed to find my way, somehow, into a meat-packing plant and upon witnessing the phenomenon of life becoming meat, decide what habit I should or could embrace thereafter. I decided this some years ago and still have done nothing to act on it.

New Day Rising: The Mandate

Mandate:

To champion the evolution of harmony in the universe through action, awareness, education, personal example, the creation of new - or support of existing - harmonic organizations, and/or through opposition to entities which promote disharmony. These activities shall be prioritized according to greater capacity for leverage and effectiveness.

Next step: goals.

Terri

I was either sixteen or seventeen when I dreamed of my biological paternal grandparents whom I had not seen since I was a young child. Days later I journeyed by bicycle to Stoney Creek and triggered a strange and joyful sequence of familial reunions.

Uncle Dave, just ten years my senior, had married a woman with two kids from a former, troubled, relationship. Terri was my age and Steven, just a year younger I think. While everyone in the extended family treated me with tremendous kindness, almost made a celebrity of me, it was Dave’s immediate family that I forged the strongest connection with, probably for the obvious reason that they were more in touch with teen culture. The other cousins were all younger.

Terri, Steven and I became instant friends. I slept over with them on more than one occasion. I attended my first rock concert with them. I even deep-kissed a girl for the first time in their presence; an event that no doubt bolstered my reputation, misguidedly so, in the eyes of Steven who was a prodigious stud at fifteen. They were wildly gregarious, more so than any of my current high school friends, and they treated my shyness with a good-natured, almost naive respect. “Mellow,” they called me, and, “laid back.” They seemed as pleasantly intrigued with my differentness as I was with theirs. They introduced me to new crowds and new behaviors and in hindsight I can see that my own process of emerging from shyness; one component of a dual coming-out, took root in this friendship.

Terri, in particular, was guileless and cheerful in her manner and would probe without reservation into whatever subject suddenly interested her. It is much to her credit that I felt so comfortable around her, despite my normal reticence, that I was happy to engage in any of her questions about my life, experiences or opinions.

This friendship did not thrive for a long time though. Seventeen is a volatile age and we three were headed in very different directions; Terry to early motherhood and myself toward an alternative lifestyle – so they called it. Steven was so friendly and so generous in his own way, that all the stories of his juvenile delinquency seemed a joke to me. Surely he was done with all that. But I was naive at the time. I hadn't yet realized that criminality was far from the absurdities portrayed by Death Wish flicks and the like. I didn't realize that our struggle to thrive within the umbrella of the law, with all of its shadows and secrets and compromised ethics, is not so different from the alternative; the struggle to thrive outside of the law, under a different set of codes. So it was a shock to me when my new cousin, immediately dear to me, vanished into that world; a world I have only come to begin to understand three years ago, upon employment with Corrections Canada and subsequent volunteer work with troubled men.

Terri and I crossed paths infrequently over the last 27 years and her cheerfulness was a delight each time. We always mouthed intentions to get together some time but we never did. It was always something that sounded great but was never a priority; like so many other great things in life that are easy to put off for the sake of more critical affairs. What a mistake, I realize.

I was deep into the Liberal Theologian’s struggle with breast cancer and the more dire emergent cancer, when I learned that Terri was in the same boat; breast cancer running from bad to worse.

One week after L.T.’s passing I forced myself to attend the funeral, and was glad I did, and then I set my thoughts on Terri. I needed to visit her. I needed to talk to her about our old teen friendship and how awesome it was for me and what it meant to me. Yes, just as soon as I get a little time off from work.

But of course she couldn't wait that long. My opportunity to inject a few joyful moments into her deeply difficult experience has expired.

My dear Aunt Karen, and to some near degree if not the same, my Uncle Dave, have had their second of two children slip through their fingers in one way or another. This is crushing to me emotionally. It is an unbearable contemplation; parents losing children. At L.T.’s funeral I did not face her parents. I knew there was no way I could do that without falling apart in front of them and I knew they wouldn't want to witness that.

But I have wanted very much to see my uncle and aunt for a long time now. I haven’t seen them really, since Biodad’s funeral, another blunder of mine; another total absence from a person’s final stage of life.

For the same reason as L.T.’s parents, I dread facing my uncle and aunt, but more so: I want to see them. I don’t want to lose them from my life. So I will try to see them and I will try to be strong as a rock.

Wake Owl

I'm pretty pumped about this band. If you haven't heard of them yet, you're in for a treat. Their 2013 debut EP, Wild Country is just dynamite; every track a delight. Their recent album, The Private World of Paradise is nearly as compelling. Here's the fourth track, Vacation, which is too good a song not to have a video on youtube, so I put one together myself. Hope you like it:

If you dig that, check out the second track, Candy. It's even better.

Still with me? Now you're ready for the EP: Wild Country

abatis [ab-uh-tee]

What follows is a week of entries from the guest log of a cottage that my friends and I rented. It seems pretty normal at first:

Saturday August 11

Wow! What a beautiful cottage and a beautiful lake! We love the Paper Birch trees. It’s so nice and quiet here! We heard loons calling from far away. The windmill and the water cooler make a subtle symphony of strange noises!

Sunday August 12

We swam and played games all day – all four of us. Some chipmunks came by. Heard the loud call of a heron as he soared low across the shoreline. Beautiful! The setting sun makes the lake look like wine!

Monday August 13

Had breakfast in town. Bought a big bag of peanuts and fed the chipmunks all day. A moose came by! He seemed to check us out for a bit and then wandered away.

Wow! What a storm! Magnificent! The lightening on the water plays tricks with your eyes. Looks like faces emerging from the lake!

Tuesday August 14

There’s some trees down from the storm. A few have fallen across the lane way. There are strange footprints all over the beach. I think Stevie is playing a joke on us. Belinda and I played Scrabble. Amber and Stevie played a game called Trouble. The chipmunks did not come today.

Wednesday August 15

Worked on the lane way most of the day. At this point there are quite a few trees blocking it. Came face to face with a bear. It was huge. We stared at each other a long time before it ran away from me. It’s so very quiet. The setting sun makes the lake look like blood.

Thursday August 16

There’s a big puddle in the kids room. It rained heavily all night – which softened the ground. Made it easier to dig the holes. Ideally they should have been deeper but there’s so much work to do. So many trees to chop down for the driveway. All work and no play makes Brian a dull boy.

Friday August 17

Filled in the three holes. It’s so quiet. Even the windmill and the water cooler are silent. Played solitaire. Won 66 times. Lost 600 times. There are puddles all over now. They look like wine.


Okay. I confess: I wrote all these entries in the log the first day we arrived, before we fell in love with the place and knew we'd want to come back every year. Luckily the owners weren't offended! 

abate [uh-beyt]

So much suffering has dissipated since my withdrawal to the loft. I say my days in the loft because someone I respect immensely once warned me that poetic pursuit sounds pretentious. Oh well. Pretentiousness is everywhere. Humans are wired for it in spades. My own has become a rare pretentiousness. I consistently allow people to believe I'm duller than I am; daily declining to offer crucial insights except where I predict it might be heeded.

Embarrassment, guilt, insecurity, jealousy, sorrow, confusion, hate, rage, indignation, confusion, anticipation, disappointment, shock, suspicion, hate and rage, to name a few breeds of suffering. And lonesomeness of a pedestrian sort. All of this has diminished to some great degree or another.

What has grown in me instead in such joyfully unanticipated abundance: Freedom, peace, understanding, patience, tolerance, clarity, insight, forgiveness, empathy, love. And a lonesomeness of a different sort. I can't seem to find anyone who views both the universe and the human being in fundamentally the same light as I. Sometimes I think Neo sort of understands my perspectives in general, while sometimes I doubt that I have made enough material available to him; or that he has absorbed enough of it, or that his own perspectives allow him enough trust in them. It is not his priority to be another me. But I dearly wish that he would experience (or continue to experience) as similar a migration as possible. I wish this for everyone. It's just that I'm accustomed to thinking of him as the most likely candidate of anyone I've met.

Waiting... waiting...

This will sound phony; cliché, but it’s true. I sit there session after session watching and hearing her long laboured breaths and thinking each one is the last. There is a static pause between them. Is that it? Is it over? Every time… No. One more… And now? Now is it over…?

Suddenly I find myself rising from the chair and hear myself uttering “I can’t do this” and I’m walking down the hallway purposelessly, having no conscious will to do or say what I did, but animating like a puppet. Pure instinct perhaps. I realize that I am driving myself completely crazy.

She is asleep or semi-conscious all the time now and her only infrequent whispers are to assert her will to die, or else to answer “No [I’m not in pain].” I must confess admiration. I never imagined she had the strength to face the end this way. But what do I know?

The doctor has warned that she could go on this way a long time. Even without eating or drinking, the accumulated fluid in her bloated limbs could supply her body for weeks. I’m aghast at the morbidity of it.

And so it lasts all day and into the evening. Visitors accumulate. I beg off to grab a few hours of sleep. I will come back and take the night shift, perhaps alone again with this silent new friend who does not resemble the Liberal Theologian.

At 1 AM I awake and prepare to return. I check the phone and see I've missed a recent call from Monica.

Relief and dread. I call her back and receive the news. It’s all over.

It’s all over.

So I go back to bed and lay awake until dawn.

It’s a bit of a marvel, looking back on it. I was so preoccupied for so long with my concerns about the issues and concern for LT and concern for The Daughter. And never once during her living cancer experience did I spare a moment’s thought for the hole that would be left in my own life. All the great talks we've had. All the helpful psychological views she shared as I pored over the sufferings of my friends and loved ones and the wards of my charitable work. I will miss all that generous input and advice and the brave transparency we made of our lives to each other.

Trust. We had magnificent trust in one another. Not perfect, of course, for that is only possible for two people who have entirely escaped the matrix of illusions, but... magnificent.

Strange I never once, until now, thought about her coming absence and all the best things about her and all I would miss.  I think she once accused me of being in denial that she was dying. She may have been right. Perhaps I still am.

Let's get on with it

The white-haired woman lays lifelessly in bed, surely farther on then Liberal Theologian. The Earnest Chef heads right for the poor women’s doorway before I can warn him it’s the wrong room. But then I recognize the bed-side man who’s holding the patient’s hand and it’s LT’s father. It’s me who was wrong.

“Should we stay?” I whisper to him, “Or would you prefer to be alone with your family?”

“Oh – stay,” he says. So we sit and I take LT’s other hand. It’s hard to know if she recognizes my presence or not. Every visit she continues to decline.

More family are in the hospice’s lounge area and they come and go regularly. The daughter has already visited today. She’s working this evening; a line-up of students to tutor in their homes. LT makes rare communication attempts to ask for her daughter. “She’s coming back in the morning,” we keep telling her.

Eventually I must go move the car in accordance with limited free-parking roulette, and upon return the Earnest Chef pulls me back out to the hallway. His face is pained. He reports that she is expressing her desire for things to end.

It’s like a blow to the head. Instinctively my hands move to protect my face. Or maybe I’m trying to hide from it. Suddenly we’re embracing fiercely and weeping.

“I want you at the end,” she says. Her voice is a mouse whisper. “I want you at the end.”

“Of course,” I say, squeezing her hand just ever so barely. She longs for touch but so easily interprets injury. 

“I want you at the end… I want you at the end…” I am touched but not flattered. She wants us all at the end, I know. But I also know that she will not, in the end, be capable of fully grasping who all is present and who is not.

The nurses confirm “a marked deterioration” over the course of the afternoon. “Her daughter should be informed,” they say. But I have already left her voice and text messages with the Earnest Chef’s cell phone contraption.

I’m heart-broke over Dog Whisperer. She is probably LT’s best friend of all. But hospitals are a torture for her. Do I send word of the developments so that she can agonize over it? So she can beat herself up over the attempt-to-visit-or-don’t-visit equation and all the pressure and perceived guilt around it? I feel I have no choice but to be forthright and send word but I bail out a little and send word to her family: private messages to Earth Writer and Aqualad. Of course, they tell her as they must.

I am holding her hand when her Mom and Dad each come to say goodbye and “see you tomorrow” and “I love you.” I drop my head low so they don’t have to see me falling apart for them.

After the extended family have all departed LT speaks a few words. “It has to be tonight,” she squeaks. "It has to be tonight," and The Daughter winces and hides her face.

“It’s not time,” everyone says. But I wonder about that. It sure looks like it’s time. What is left for her? And what is left of her? She won’t eat or drink or open her eyes – except once she becomes animated: She raises her hands, goes rigid and barks, “I want Monica!” Monica is a friend and a nursing student who has visited earlier in the day and will return tomorrow. It’s late in the evening and we have been trying to dissuade LT from these feeble repeated demands to see Monica.

Finally I am alone with LT. Perhaps I will stay the night. But then Monica arrives with her mom. Someone relented and texted her and she came. She holds LT’s hand.

“Okay,” says LT. “Let’s get on with it.” And we then realize the significance. But Monica cannot provide the desired assistance. Merciful it might be, but it’s still called murder in the Magnificent Wisdom of the Law. There is no machine to unplug. Only strong narcotics.

LT finally sleeps. Monica and the duty nurses are happy with her breathing and her colour, and assure that she will sleep well and survive the night. So I go home for some rest and return early this morning. Others follow. The sun is out today, having lived to see another day, and so have we all, except that LT has lived to lie in bed and not see it.

What do you see instead behind your eyelids, sweet friend? What strange realms have drugs and decay painted in your private mind? I hope that it's some adventure. I hope that this ragged remnant of life is somehow worth hanging on to.  

The price for peace

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“Good now that you’re here.” She wastes no time before exerting pressure. I know I’m the last visitor of the day. She won’t want me to leave.

I choose the visitor chair with no arms on it and don’t remain for long. She wants us arranged on the bed, side by side so that I can hold her and rub her back and such. I immediately regret it. I don’t want this level of intimacy with her, and now I’ve set an unhealthy precedent. Now I’ll loathe to come back again and face the unenviable choice of unwelcome intimacy versus an abandonment/anxiety attack reaction should I decline. The more she demands the more she alienates. Bad all around.

She reminds me she’s dying. She says she’s going home Monday (I doubt it). She tells the tale of the cancer-sick man who survived because all his friends and family put their lives on hold and stayed with him 24/7 and pulled him through. I’m a little skeptical. Pretty sure cancer doesn’t give a rat’s ass if your friends are holding your hand or not.

All she wants is love – or the illusion of love. Somewhere inside she probably perceives the difference and is willing to settle for the latter. But the constant demands erode lovability.

“Stay,” she wheezes breathlessly, “’Til midnight.” How real is she being? As always I don’t know. As always I am caught between mercy and sticking to my principles – which all boils down to: blind compassion versus genuine compassion. This night I am strong and tell her I must go and why, and that I will be thinking about her and how to be helpful to her.  

The next night there is an inner-circle meeting. The Liberal Theologian’s daughter; my other housemate, is the key participant. She hasn’t felt like a daughter for a long time now; more a constant nurse. She’s a sleepless estranged grieving wreck at twenty-four years old, and I haven’t been shy to point that out to people. Her girlfriend is there. We’d had a one-on-one prior to the meeting, solidifying our commitments as protectors of The Daughter.

LT’s best of friends are there: Dog Whisperer and Aqualad’s other mom, the Earth Writer. And the Priest Next Door is there and the Psychologist Next Door. Both of them speak eloquently. There words are a great comfort. And Dog Whisperer speaks passionately from a place of shared experience. She cared for the dying as a young woman too and paid tremendous costs which still she can’t escape.

I am greatly relieved to find that everyone shares my views about LT’s anxieties, fears, control issues and special brand of neediness. Some of my guilt concerning my own dark suspiciousness towards a terminally ill woman is beginning to evaporate.

We have branded ourselves the support group for The Daughter. And if necessary we will help her stand against the Circle at Large: LT’s other friends and extended family – should they take up a call to arms from LT and rally for a 24/7 home-care solution, which our little alliance is dead set against.

The next day there is a meeting between doctors and key parties from the inner and outer circles. Home-care is rejected. Hospice is the destination. And the prognosis has devolved:

“We’re looking at weeks,” says the oncologist, “Not months.”

I still can’t get my head around this; why this transparency is so welcome. Who, reading this, would wish to know, right now, their date of expiry? I can’t imagine you would. So why thrust it upon the terminal, I sometimes wonder. Why not let them wake each day unburdened by ticking time clocks? Yes I know all the practical reasons and I know that in the big picture, how critical such financial matters are not. It surprises me, is all. What are the ill thinking when they ask, how much time? Are they just praying for a nice big number? Is it a regret every time; to get the answer they gambled against?

Now that the time-frame has changed the math becomes interesting for me. If we’re talking weeks, then I could conceivably commit to weekend-only duty for a short while and so not be on-call, and pull 18 hours a day, Monday to Friday for LT, taking the lion’s share of care-giving coverage. Then we just need a couple of sisters and a couple old friends to each spend a weekend with LT. The library room could be converted to a guest room without considerable difficulty. And then five others to commit to a weekday evening each week; while I sleep. And The Daughter doesn’t have to partake at all. She can get on with being daughter.

I take these thoughts to Dog Whisperer. She and Earth Writer and Aqualad have been such a magnificent help and comfort to me this last month, it is astounding their impact on my life, especially of late. Not just their love and their hugs but their kind ears and wisdom have so reduced such otherwise lengthy internal mental processes. They have helped me cut to the hearts of the matters with every issue and spared me so much mental math, letting me find peace so much sooner. I love them to no end. I’d put my life on the line for any of them.

Of course Dog Whisper is more or less horrified at my ponderings and eager to derail my train of thought. The hospice is the better place for many reasons. She is tearful in her rebuttals, as I am tearful in my persistence that I must go through this exercise for my own sake. I have to know that I am not letting someone down in their greatest time of need, out of my own selfishness. I have to know that I have not been rationalizing; if I could make a difference.

I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being; let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

- Etienne de Grellet

Friday I visit LT and discover that she can barely manage a short walk with me and her walker. Such a struggle that I wonder was it her last walk; if its wheelchairs from now on. She talks of great plans for us. She wants to finish editing the remaining drafts of her fantasy saga. Only the last two books remain unpublished. And she wants to finish the late addition to the series; a supplemental novel, half-finished. And she wants to finish the murder mystery novel too and she wants my help with these things. And I am on board with that. Yes, I will help! But we try to talk about this for an hour and accomplish nothing. She can never complete a single thought without slipping into a vegetative state. I realize that none of this will happen. She is mentally breaking down from the cancer and the drugs. The reality is: the final books of the series will receive cursory edits from a small committee including myself, and published posthumously.

I fear that even “weeks” is optimistic. I feel like she is slipping daily. I really hope I’m wrong. The blessing is that all my former concerns have evaporated and I am truly at ease with her. There are suddenly no boundary issues. She doesn’t ask for hugs but I give them because I want to. It seems like the drugs or deterioration have left her mentality transparent. Gone are my reservations about control issues. I am comfortable, without having to shield my higher principles (or was it an ego thing all along; fear of being controlled?). She has become more fully lovable. In a sense she may get what she wanted all along, but at so terrible a price.

“Going down,” states the elevator voice with flat eloquence. So we are. I realize as I descend that this will be perhaps my most intimate dealings with death. Five grandparents were sad to lose; truly, but that is what all grandparents must do. Close friends; not so much. Not in my experience so far. I think about Biodad’s departure. That might have been intimate had we not so fully alienated each other well before or had I not fucked up a possible reunion.

The elevator door opens and there through the windows I see the other wing; the old bricks of the original section of hospital, once called Henderson. It was there I entered this world, born of Biodad’s mischief. I suppose I am grateful for that.

abash [uh-bash]

We are high school students, sampling the world of absent-parent covert-house-party night life (and no, I’m not confusing abash with a bash).

Steven, though firmly established in our clique, is the frequent target of derision, though his habitual obnoxiousness seems to us to demand it. I’m in Steven’s room with our pal Rob who snoops through Steven’s drawers while the party’s nucleus hovers elsewhere.

“Oh my god,” he says. I look. He’s holding a pair of white skivvies pinched between two fingers. Mostly white, that is. There’s an ungodly stripe present; the epic mother of all underwear stains.    

We entirely fall apart; literally falling to the floor and rolling back and forth in helpless hysterics. That old idiom is no exaggeration; not this one time, anyway. I laugh so long and so hard that I’m in pain and tears stream down my face, an experience I’ve not had before (or would again).

Perhaps it was the pounding of our fists on the floor which brings Steven rushing into the room. “What’s so funny?” he says, but we can’t catch our breath to reply. Perhaps he spies the open drawer. Perhaps that’s why he says, “Oh. I think I know.”

Poor guy. I felt sorry for him. I couldn't stop laughing but I felt sorry for him too.