Dancing with Myself

Happy Canada Day!

I'm off to Calgary to meet up with a few friends at the Gay Rodeo.  Sunday is Canada Day and I'm throwing a party to inaugurate my 60th birthday celebration.  My actual birthday isn't until July 17, but if the Queen can celebrate her birthday the most convenient week-end of the summer, so can I.  And let me tell you, I need the vacation.

I stepped in some dog shit in the way of getting involved with some very low class people who have taken over the Redbone Heritage Foundation.  There are actually only two of them, but they're dominating the RHF right now.  Eewww!  These people are slimeball trash.  The pig who is their leader took it upon herself to warn my cousins that I have that highly infectious "happy" disease.  I think the stupid bitch was implying that I have AIDS.  I got a copy of her rap sheet from her county's sheriff's website and sent it out to my cousins.  She is nothing but White Trash.  She's got charges against her for "terrorist threats," domestic violence (as the aggressor), and half a dozen indeterminate misdemeanors.  No doubt.  Her thuggish companion accused me of threatening him when in response to his warning to the members of the Redbone Heritage Foundation that I was dying, I told him I'd dance on his grave.  These people are hysterical, and not in a good way.

The thing about stepping in dog shit is that even after you wipe it off your shoe (god forbid your foot), the smell lingers and sometimes it takes more than a single scrubbing to rid you of the lingering smell and memory of the unpleasantness.

Anybody interested can check out some of the details at My Mother's People.

 

Let's Go, Canada!

"I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again, Oh baby, I hate to go."  That's from Peter, Paul and Mary many years ago.  I'm off this morning for Vancouver.  A buddy is meeting me and then we're off to the mountains.  I'll check in from time to time providing I can find an internet cafe.  I'm not traveling with a laptop this trip, so I'm more limited for posting and pictures.  I doubt anyone will go into withdrawal because of the lack of posts. 

The contractor will tear out the old kitchen while I'm away and install the new cabinets, appliances, floor, etc., upon my return after July 11.  The countertops will go in as soon as the contractor finishes his part.  With luck and no surprises, I should have a kitchen by July 23.

I think everything has gone rather smoothly.  My back hurt for the past month from stress and tension, but I didn't lose it and get into any conflicts and there were a few temptations.  I stayed in forward motion and didn't have any attacks of ennui.  I still haven't touched my grief over Beauregard's death. I've put it in one of the little neat boxes in my mind somewhere and I'll come across it one day when I'm least expecting it, and it'll find a way to express itself.  I miss him more today than I did three weeks ago.   Until then, it'll just have to take a number, and I promise to call on it just like I've called on all the other numbers. 

Hi dee ho!  I'm off to the rodeo!

Women's Novels

5.  I no longer want to read about anything sad.  Anything violent, anything disturbing, anything like that.  No funerals at the end, though there can be some in the middle.  If there must be deaths, let there be resurrections, or at least a Heaven so we know where we are.  Depression and squalor are for those under twenty-five, they can take it, they even like it, they still have enough time left.  But real life is bad for you, hold it in your hand long enough and you'll get pimples and become feeble-minded.  You'll go blind.
    I want happiness, guaranteed, joy all around, covers with nurses on them or brides, intelligent girls but not too intelligent, with regular teeth and pluck and both breasts the same size and no excess facial hair, someone you can depend on to know where the bandages are and to turn the hero, that potential rake and killer, into a well-groomed country gentleman with clean fingernails and the right vocabulary.  Always, he has to say, Forever.  I no longer want to read books that don't end with the word forever.  I want to be stroked between the eyes, one way only, 

Margaret Atwood's Women's Novels from the collection Good Bones and Simple Murders. 

Oh just because.  Maybe because I'm going to Canada next week  Maybe because I grok Margaret Atwood.  We go way back, Margaret and I, way back. 

I don't expect others to understand, just to accept.

Oh! Canada!

Okay, the rodeo in Calgary (July 1-3) is back on the agenda.  I'm flying up to Vancouver on June  27th or 28th and meet with some buddies and then drive through the Rockies to Calgary.  The party starts on Monday, the rodeo on Friday.   Yahoo.

This is me and Joseph at the baseball game last Saturday.  I'm the one in the Canada sweatshirt.

The view across the field from our seats.

Because I Love Margaret Atwood

Today, someone did a Google search for Homelanding.  I came up number one.  I am humbled, because there is but one Homelanding, and that is by Margaret Atwood.  That I stand in her glow is a great honor.  To acknowledge this occasion and honor, I have another little tidbit of her brilliance.

Good Bones

5.  Today I speak to my bones as I would speak to a dog.  I want to go up the stairs, I tell them.  Up, up, up, with one leg dragging.  Is the ache deep in the bones, this elusive pain?  Does that mean it will rain?  Good bones, good bones, I coax, wondering how to reward them; if they will sit up for me, beg, roll over, do one more trick, once more.

    There.  We're at the top. Good bones!  Gone bones!  Keep on going.

Cheers.

Homelanding

1.

Where should I begin?  After all you have never been there; or if you have,  you may not have understood the significance of what you saw, or thought you saw.  A window is a window, but there is looking out and looking in.  The native you glimpsed, disappearing behing the curtain, or into the bushes, or down the manhole in  the main street--my people are shy--may have been only your reflection in the glass.  My country specializes in such illusions.
...
4.
As for the country itself, let me begin with the sunsets, which are long and red, resonant, splendid and melancoly, symphonic you might almost say; as opposed to the short boring sunsets of other countries, no more interesting than a light switch.  We pride ourselves on our sunsets.  "Come and see the sunset," we say to one another. This causes everyone to rush outdoors or over to the window.

Our country is large in extent, small in population, which accounts for our fear of empty spaces, and also our need for them.  Much of it is covered in water, which accounts for our interest in reflections, sudden vanishings, the dissolution of one thing into another.  Much of it, however, is rock, which accounts for our belief in Fate.
. . .

5.
Sometimes we lie still and do not move.  If air is still going in and out of our breathing holes, this is called sleep.  If not, it is called death.  When a person has achieved death, a kind of picnic is held, with music, flowers and food.  The person so honored, if in one piece, and not, for instance, in shreds or falling apart, as they do if exploded or a long-time drowned, is dressed in becoming clothes and lowered into a hole in the ground, or else burned up.

These customs are among the most difficult to explain to strangers.  Some of our visitors, espcially the young ones, have never heard of death and are bewildered.  They think that death is simply one more of our illusions, our mirror tricks; they cannot understand why, with so much food and music, the people are so sad.

But you will understand.  You too must have death among you.  I can see it in your eyes.

6.
I can see it in your eyes.  If it weren't for this, I would have stopped trying long ago, to communicate with you in this halfway language which is so difficult for both of us, which exhausts the throat and fills the mouth with sand; if it weren't for this I would have gone away, gone back.  It's this knowledge of death which we share, where we overlap.  Death is our common ground.  Together, on it, we can walk forward.
....'

These passages are from Margaret Atwood, a Canadian writer.  The above selection is from an essay by her called Homelanding.  Not bad, eh? 

(I'm just practicing speaking Canadian.)