This is Natalie Hampton.  Years ago she had a deep problem.  She felt the pain of it and didn’t stop there.  She acted.

Seventh grade.

Natalie Hampton walked into the cafeteria holding her tray, eyes searching for a place – any place – to sit.

Every table was taken.  Groups laughing, talking, locked inside their own worlds.  She already knew how this would end.  She’d tried before.

The rejection was instant.  Loud.  Public.  So she sat at an empty table in the corner.  Alone.  Again.

Have you been there?  I sure have.  And I’ve been on the other side of things too.  Once my emotional maturity started showing up, I became a welcomer for the alone ones.

Back to Natalie.  She created an app called Sit With Us, finding a way for teens to link up online, and at the table.  Brilliant!  And talk about viral …

Messages arrived from everywhere – Morocco.  Australia.  England.  The Philippines.  France.

Kids who’d been eating alone finally felt seen.

…

Today Sit With Us operates in 30 countries.  Natalie – now in her mid-twenties – remains CEO.

Now kids everywhere can open an app, find a table, and sit down knowing they’re welcome.

***

One person

A stabbing pain

A creation

And thousands of teens touched

I read marvelous words from Darlene Cohen this morning.  She talked about physical pain in a way that I’ve hardly ever glimpsed.

And I thought: “Write about this in your blog, Bruce!” 

And then I hesitated.  “I don’t know” showed up …

I realized a basic fact: “I’m not in pain right now.”  And my head started shaking “No.” 

I need to reflect on Darlene’s thoughts when I’m in the middle of experiencing what she’s talking about:  It hurts!

Of course, I don’t have to do it that way, but it would be far more valuable for me (and I expect for you) if I was living the life experience of pain in the moment.

And so I will wait for the nausea, or the dizziness, or the muscle ache to return.  Because they will. 

It might be tomorrow or it might be three weeks from now, but the speaking will be spoken.  Today something else was alive.

I left Canada three years ago, and now I’m home in Gent.  So deeply home.

As I look to my future, I know that I’ll visit my Canadian friends again and again.  But I have no desire to slog through deep snow and shiver in -20 Celsius temperatures.

So … I’ve had the thought: “I’ll never throw a snowball again.”

Wrong!

Five centimetres have landed, and it keeps falling!  Magical.  It’s the first time for me – Gentian snow staying on the ground.

I made a snowball on my way to The Cobbler this morning.  I dropped into various stores, threatening friends and employees with my white weapon.  Nobody seemed impressed, and I didn’t launch the ball towards any face.  No one thought it was funny.  Oh well. 

My snowball ended up in the sink at The Cobbler.  Upon leaving the building, I made another.  I came across three young boys doing what Canadian kids do – having a snowball fight.

I stood nearby with my hand behind my back.  I picked a victim.  And when he was focused on his friends, I wheeled around and launched!  Missed his head, got his chest.  Lots of laughs in every direction.

Okay, this may be a “one-off”.  Perhaps I won’t see this much snow in Gent again.

But what fun in the moment of now!

Have I ever said goodbye to someone for the last time when we were looking into each other’s eyes?  When we knew we’d never see each other again?

I don’t think so.

I stayed in my wife Jody’s hospital room as she was dying.  I said goodnight to her, not sure of her awareness of me in the moment.  And then in the middle of the night she stopped breathing.  Jody died.  No goodbye together.

In October, 2022 I sat alone with my friend Jo till about 1:00 am as death came near.  I said “Goodbye” before going to bed, but Jo was in and out of consciousness.  He died after I’d left.  No conscious ending together.

In April I visited many dear friends in Canada.  I said the magic words “I love you” over and over again and said “Goodbye” as I got into my rental car.  But it didn’t feel like an ending.  I thought I’d be back … sometime.  And I still think that.

So I’ve never said these words to an alert companion:

Goodbye, dear one.  You’ve made an immense difference in my life.  I love you

The moment will come …

Actually in my living room

Years ago I watched part of a Bruce Springsteen concert on Blu-Ray: London Calling.  I was disappointed.  Because of a curfew, most of the concert was during the day.  It lacked the mystery of nighttime, the energy.  I love Bruce’s concert performances … but not this one.

Last night I decided to give the Blu-Ray another chance.  After all, I’d spent good money to buy it.  Try again.

Woh!

It was nearly three hours of high octane Bruceness.  The E Street Band was rockin’.  Incredible guitar riffs from Nils Lofgren.  Deep saxophone solos from Clarence Clemons.  Bruce hopping off the stage to be face-to-face with front row folks as he belted out the lyrics.  The whole shebang was a blast of Born To Run pizzazz …

The highway’s jammed with broken heroes
On a last chance power drive
Everybody’s out on the run tonight
But there’s no place left to hide

Together, Wendy, we can live with the sadness
I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul
Oh someday, girl, I don’t know when
We’re gonna get to that place

Where we really wanna go and we’ll walk in the sun
But ’til then, tramps like us
Baby, we were born to run

And the crowd!  50,000 gyrating human beings, sometimes waving their arms back and forth in unison to Springsteen anthems.  The camera work caught the magnificence of it all.  Well done.

***

How can it be?

Black and white

It was …

“Something which baffles”

Before moving to Belgium, I’d never heard of anyone whose first name was “Puck”.  Times change.

For the past two years, I’ve followed the cycling exploits of Puck Pieterse from the Netherlands.  On the road bike, riding the cobblestones of Flanders and up to the mountain passes of the Tour de France.  On the mountain bike, navigating rocks and tree roots on steep slopes.  And through the winter mud of cyclocross.

But all that interest ended in August.  I came home from a meditation retreat in the USA with a renewal of identity as a Buddhist, and a falling away of some previous passions, such as cycling races in Europe.

Puck disappeared from my life.

And now she’s back.

It amazes me how I let go of my connection with her, my admiration for the athlete, but more so the human being.

Puck smiles.  She congratulates her opponents.  She does wheelies on the bike.  She recons cyclocross races on the Internet before the big day.  Look up “Zonhoven” on YouTube, a grunt through the snow before the cyclocross race that’s today!

Maybe it will be too cold today for mud but here’s a cyclocross pic of Puck at a warmer time.  Definitely a dirty athlete!

***

How could I let go of such an enthralling sport?

How could I let go of such an inspiring person?

It doesn’t matter … I did that

And now the return

I sang two songs at Salvatore’s last night – “Remember When The Music” and “Song For A Winter’s Night”.  The first was a lament that we don’t get together in living rooms anymore to make music … with our guitars, fiddles and voices.

Remember when the music
Brought the night across the valley
As the day went down
And as we’d hum the melody
We’d be safe inside the sound
And so we’d sleep
We had dreams to keep

The second is a Canadian winter love song, full of snow and soft light …

The fire is dying now, my lamp is growing dim
The shades of night are liftin’
The mornin’ light steals across my windowpane
Where webs of snow are driftin’

If I could only have you near
To breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
On this winter’s night with you

***

And now my voice turns towards Friday, February 6 – the next Salvatore’s evening.  It’s time to choose another song to learn.

And three words come: “When I Dream”.  The lyrics are sung by a woman.  The recording is of Nanci Griffith.  And I yearn to sing my heart as a female heart.  It’s beyond understanding another gender.  Somehow it’s even beyond empathy.

But I want these words to emerge from my mouth:

I can be the singer
Or the clown in every room
I can even call someone
To take me to the moon
I can put my makeup on
And drive the men insane
I can go to bed alone
And never know his name

***

Make it so, Bruce

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=EFKzkEpNejw&si=SEbih_OfFjdfvOYe

(Lydia and Luc)

My dear friend Lydia and her partner Luc invited me to join them, her children Lore and Baziel, their beloveds Florian and Margot, and Lydia’s mom Marie-paule.

On New Year’s Day in Maarkedal.  Lovely.  I was eager to go.

On Tuesday, December 30 I got a text from Florian, saying that he was looking forward to seeing me on New Year’s Eve.

Huh?

I wrote back, saying that I was invited to come on Thursday, not Wednesday.

And then my mind slowly unravelled, remembering past times when I was excluded … and knowing that this was another one.

On New Year’s Eve I sat at home, imagining the party that everyone but me was enjoying.  The sadness enveloped my body and soul.

Luc picked me up at the Ronse train station early Thursday afternoon.  I was still sad.  Then he mentioned that on Wednesday evening he and Lydia had been at her friend Ann’s place.

Huh?  I thought about the party I wasn’t invited to.

The one that didn’t exist

Florian had simply got the date wrong.  My mind did the rest.  Silly mind.

The eight of us had a marvelous time on New Year’s Day … exquisite food and drink, lovely conversations, and Lydia gave me a bright red tie – my favourite colour.

(Sigh)

I am humbled once again

And included

As so the year begins.  Will it be like most years … some things better, some worse?  Hopefully an overall improvement by the end.

Or …

A transformation, as in “a marked change in form, nature or appearance”.

I look back at my life and marvel at the changes.

In 2003, Mike Weir won the Masters, one of the most prestigious golf tournaments.  A few days after, he was back in Canada and I was one of many at an event where Mike was celebrating his win.  I was an obsessed golfer, both on the course and in front of the TV.

Now it’s 2026 and I don’t care about golf.

***

I was hiking on a trail in July, 2017, face-to-face with the Canadian Rockies.  I loved the mountains, with a long history of exploring the wilderness.  I was living in a village in Eastern Canada.  Maybe I would stay there forever, or perhaps a mountain town would beckon.

By the way, Europe was something I saw in movies.  I had about zero desire to actually go there.  Future vacations sounded like the Caribbean.

Now it’s 2026 and I’ve been living in Belgium for three years.  Huh?  I’ve changed countries.

***

What then are the chances that something radically different will enter my life this year?  Unlikely?  So were Belgium’s appearance and golf’s disappearance.

I’m up for it, whatever the it is.  Perhaps I have a future in exotic dancing!  (Hmm … okay, that’s a stretch)

But I sense something is around the corner

Waiting to be discovered

This morning I was reading in Tricycle magazine about the city of Chiang Mai in Thailand.  The article was aimed at the Buddhist traveller, and described six temples and other holy sites.  The writing was an immersion for me even though I’m 12,000 kilometres away.

I grew up in Toronto, Canada – certainly a multicultural city, but also one where about 50% of the residents are Christian. 

Tricycle has a series of articles about Buddhism in various parts of the world.  Here’s what the magazine has to say about Thailand:

92 percent of its residents are Buddhist!  A completely different spiritual world from the one I know.

I’ve spent a few weeks in New York City.  On one of my visits, I stayed in the borough of Queens, where 150 languages are spoken.  Marvelous.  For New York City as a whole, here is the breakdown of religions represented (in 2014):

So … my Canadian and American experience has centred on the dominance of Christianity.  What would I be feeling walking the streets of Chiang Mai?

And in June or July, an spiritual immersion of another type is on my menu.  I’ll be attending my friend Prabigya’s wedding in Nepal, where about 80% of the population is Hindu.

Time for my eyes to open more widely

Time for the brand new