Day Four … Rows And Flows Of Angel Hair

“And ice cream castles in the air.”  So said Joni Mitchell, a Canadian singer-songwriter.  And that was my life behind the wheel yesterday as I crossed a lot of prairie on my way to Weyburn, Saskatchewan.  The flatness of the land embraced the vastness of the sky.  Clouds billowed.  Others wisped their way across my windshield.  I was enthralled.  Sometimes, as I was rocking and rolling to my tunes, a shaft of sunlight burst through a break in the clouds to say hi.  “Pay attention, Bruce.  The songs are nice, the lyrics and melodies transforming, but look past your nose to the beauty of the world.”  So I did.

Then all those clouds would just go poof, and I was left with an empty blue sky.  Maybe somebody had called for a celestial coffee break.  First of all I was disappointed but then the blueness seeped inside. and I got to see another vastness … of the soul, of all our souls.  Compared to our daily routine of tasks and responsibilities, there’s a silence of love that falls upon us all.  The sky didn’t have little flecks of darker blue activity in it.  It was all one.

I also loved sloughs yesterday.  They’re pronounced “slew” … little ponds ringed with tall grasses and usually populated by small ducks, or so my prairie memory told me.  I started seeing the waters in southwestern Manitoba but there weren’t any birdies.  I was sad.  Where were the ducks?  And then … “There’s one!”  Happily, their numbers multiplied as Scarlet floated west.  I was happy.  I’ve been in some environments where it seems that the wildness, and all its creatures, have been squeezed out.  Not yesterday.

Then there’s the world of pumpjacks, the devices that pump oil from the ground.  They look like the mechanical beasts  from The War Of The Worlds.  Their elongated heads continually dip down towards the earth.  At one point, there was a slight rise to my right, and two of the pumpjacks were silhouetted on the horizon.  I could just imagine what was going on over there – assorted Saskatchewanians being devoured by the aliens.  Horrifying!

Did I mention yellow?   The greens and browns are usually muted on the Prairies but once in awhile a mass of canola blasts my brain.  So bright.  Another time I passed at least two miles of sunflowers, stretching to the ends of the earth.  They were all lifting their happy sunflowery faces, welcoming me to their land.  I nodded back.

***

Okay, how about a pleasant interlude?  I’m staying with my friends Henry and Louise in Weyburn.  It’s morning and I’m sipping my coffee.  Here comes Louise.

“I think we have enough milk for cereal.”

(Why not, Bruce?  Go for it.)

“I once put a box of cereal on the floor and stomped on it.  I was arrested for being a cereal killer.”

(Giggles)

***

One cool thing about travelling is that you come across things that jolt you, things that the locals probably don’t even notice.  Such as logging trucks and “Do Not Feed The Bears” signs in northwestern Ontario.  Somewhere east of Weyburn, I saw this billboard:

Do you have a problem getting your casing to the bottom?

Truthfully, I’ve never really thought about the problem.  Things seem to be working fine.  But it’s nice that someone wants to come to my aid about such a delicate personal matter.

Now, Henry and Louise.  Henry and I went to social work school in Ottawa and were roommates.  One evening, he was clearly distraught.  “Bruce, I’m getting old.  [25!]  I need to find a woman.  [Sex is great but I think Henry was especially referring to a life partner.]  I’m going to the lounge at the Chateau Laurier to find someone.”  So he did.  He met Louise that evening and invited her to dance … and so began a waltz that’s lasted 43 years.  Wonderful.  Last night the three of us sat in a restaurant and laughed and laughed.  Love means being able to pick up with friends where you left off … in our case, in 1980.

Quite often, I forget my life.  Someone says I did or said something years ago and I have no memory of it.  For instance, I’m pretty sure that I didn’t walk around Ottawa one day with a roasting pan on my head.  I mean, really.  What fool would do something like that?  Henry told me that I used to say “Go shit” a lot.  Hmm .. that doesn’t sound like me.  Then he added, “No, you were saying ‘Gauche it’ as I was driving, as in ‘Turn left.'”  Okay, it’s coming back.  Louise and Henry also reminded me that I went to a Hallowe’en party in 1972 wearing a sleeping bag over me.  Ahh … I remember, especially the part about having trouble breathing.  My costume was actually an orange mummy bag.  I came dressed as a penis.  Think I called myself The Pumpkin Pecker.  These added details were news last night to my friends.  We laughed.

Today the three of us will see what beckons.  Scarlet gets to rest.  We’ll all have fun.

Day Three … Terry and the Monsoon

I started my travels yesterday with a visit to the Terry Fox Monument near Thunder Bay.  A long and winding road carried me past orange cliffs and stands of birch trees to the top of a hill.  With leafy lawns to the left and right, accented by picnic tables, I walked out into the open, with a 20-foot statue of Terry facing west, hobbling along on his one good leg.  On the walls beneath Terry were lots of writing carved into the stone.  I didn’t read them.  I sat on a low wall and gazed up at the man.  Terry ran about 25 miles a day for 143 days, starting from the east coast of Canada, to raise money for cancer research.  He had to stop near Thunder Bay when the cancer overwhelmed his body.

My eyes were wet behind my sunglasses.  Thank you, Terry.  He was a Companion of the Order of Canada because he wanted to “improve our country”.  And so he did.  And so do we all, with the little kindnesses we show each other, with letting someone else go first, with putting an arm around a friend.

I watched the folks who joined me on the outlook over Lake Superior.  One cyclist took off her sunglasses and wiped her eyes. Some folks, though, didn’t even look at Terry.  They came for the view.  Most people hardly glanced at the statue, but spent minutes reading the various messages.  Only a few lingered with the young man, no doubt imagining his pain and determination.  I wanted everyone to “be with” Terry, to let his humanity touch theirs, but that was not to be.  And it’s okay.

When I want to meet people, and there’s a couple or a group, I’ve discovered a surefire way to do it … ask them if they’d like me to take their picture.  At the monument I asked, and only about half of the people said yes.  I was sad that the others didn’t choose to record their closeness with loved ones.  “I don’t like having my picture taken.”  “No, we don’t need one.”  Okay.

For the folks who said yes, I had to sit on the stone floor to get both them and Terry in the photo.  Several people were amazed that I did this.  I don’t know why.  It just seemed like a natural thing to do.  No one left out.  We had good conversations.  One of the women I met lives three kilometres from me, in Port Stanley.

On the road again.  Somewhere north of Thunder Bay, I saw a storm greeting me in the distance.  I switched Scarlet’s digital display to temperature – 28 degrees Celsius.  Then the rain … intermittent wipers, regular wipers, fast speed wipers.  A logging truck leaned a little on a gentle curve, with the water leaping off the logs.  The temperature gauge started dropping and didn’t stop till it had reached 21.  During all this, I was listening to songs on a CD that a friend gave me years ago, including “Language of the Kiss” by The Indigo Girls.

“Oh the fear I’ve known, that I might reap the praise of strangers and end up on my own.”  Yes, I have felt that.  The wind blew and the wipers frantically swept the rain away.  I was alive, so very much.

As the storm said goodbye, I drove on, fixated on the temperature gauge.  22 … 24 … 26 … 28.  There was something about returning to the previous state of being that I liked.  Actually, the physical world so often offers me symbols that help me live my life.  I’m glad about that.

A dead black bear cub lying on the gravel beside the road.

A fruitless search in countless marshes for a moose sighting.  I know they’re there and maybe that’s good enough.

Slurping a chocolate walnut waffle cone in Vermilion Bay, followed shortly thereafter by a hunk of chocolate walnut fudge.

The corridor of asphalt through stands of welcoming pines near Kenora.

Waiting and waiting for the Prairie to say “Hi” west of Whiteshell Provincial Park in Manitoba.

And then …

A jolt of lightning touched the twilight horizon to the west, turning the length of a horizontal cloud a brilliant orange.  I turned south towards Steinbach as the storm hit.  Wipers on high right away.  Couldn’t see the ditch.  Barely saw the middle yellow line.  Slower and slower. Tailgated by some two-eyed monster.  And I was happy (really).  I was so engaged in life.  I knew that my guardian angels would see me through.  The Frantz Inn was on Highway 62, east of Steinbach.  All I saw ahead was darkness.  Had I passed it already?  I pulled off onto a gravel road and stopped.  A phone call to the hotel revealed that I had a kilometre to go.  And so to the parking lot.  Gas gauge reading = 0.  “There you go, Bruce.  Yesterday’s fantasy came to pass.”  I raced for the lobby and was immediately soaked.  After the paperwork, I ventured back out to get ta-pocketa off the trunk rack and into my room.  Since there was a lull in the liquid action, the task was accomplished sweatlessly.  Thank God.  As I re-emerged from the building to get the rest of my stuff, the hurricane had recommenced.  I threw my body into Scarlet.  And there I sat, for at least half an hour, as the rain threatened to destroy the windshield.  But I was safe.

Whew.  Life in Manitoba is lots of fun.  I mean that.  May I be so vividly alive for the rest of my life.

Day Two … NBD

It was a long day – 12 hours on the road – but miracles beckoned me left and right.  Small, dark blue lakes with expanses of white lilies.  Two Mennonite women riding their bicycles in long flowered skirts, one with a helmet over her bonnet.  Towering slabs of vertical rock, turned pink in the early evening sun.  Life was so big.

And then there was Bruce Mines, a tiny town on the north shore of Lake Huron just east of Sault Ste. Marie.  I thought it was pretty special that they’d named a place after me.  And there’s a sign for Bruce Bay!  Gosh, I’m everywhere.  Even though I couldn’t see any further evidence of Bruceness as I drove through, my rich fantasy life kicked into gear.  What if there’s a Bruce National Bank?  Or “Get your oil changed at Bruce’s!”  Or  Bruce’s Family Restaurant.  I bet they were all hiding just a block off Main St.

Along the north shore of Lake Superior, with its grand vistas and mini-islands, the road swooped, dropped and climbed.  I could feel my body move with Scarlet as we floated along at the speed limit – 90 kph (55 mph).  I got very excited when I looked in the rear view mirror to see a semi-trailer pounding down the slope behind me.  Every 10 kilometres or so, there was a passing lane but meanwhile friendly drivers were on my tail.  I decided to not let them dictate my well-being.  On I went at 90.  Then the passing lane, and the semi would blast up the hill beside me, its huge white mass blocking the entire world to my left.  I loved the power, the speed, the impossibility of that beast roaring past me.  Up and up and up.  I tell you, I just about had an organism!

Then there was my bladder.  I had neglected its needs when I stopped at Pancake Bay for a decadent chocolate peanut butter waffle cone.  They had only one size – huge!  Anyway, there I was motoring towards Thunder Bay with a liquid problem – one was building up and the other was running out.  The arrow on my gas gauge was moving towards the E.  Meanwhile I was discreetly pushing my thighs together.

I reckoned in White River that I had lots of gas and could just zoom on through.  The sign said 85 k to Marathon and Scarlet told me I had 107 left.  Piece of cake.  Surely no self-respecting retired person would stop at the station in White River.  C’mon, Bruce … push the envelope.  So I pushed, in one respect, and contracted in another.  Then another sign – 60 (compared to 80).  More squeezing.  Gosh, this was turning into an heroic quest.  Later it was 25 and 40.  I had visions of 10 k left, 5, 1, and even limping into Petro-Canada on my last fumes, with Scarlet coughing to a stop only feet away from the pump, with the nozzle just able to reach the gas tank.  Ahh.  What would I do without fantasy?  The truth was that the digital display read 18 when Marathon and I united.  That’s okay.  I had fun.

I have to admit that my first stop at the station wasn’t for gas.  I stood at the appropriate spot for quite a long time.  It would be indelicate of me to share the details so I don’t think I will.

This morning, I’m visiting the Terry Fox Memorial before winding my way through the woods of northwestern Ontario to emerge on the Prairies at Steinbach, Manitoba.  I’ll let you know all about it tonight or tomorrow morning.  I hope you’re enjoying my journey.  I sure am.

P.S. 1 … Nothing But Driving

P.S. 2 … 83 seconds, while pales in comparison to my 130 seconds achieved just off the I-75 in Michigan in 1990

Day One … Riding On The Wind

I’m off to Western Canada and to all the joys that await me.  I’ll be sitting in the living rooms of many fine people.  But not until Friday.  Before I get to Henry and Louise in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, there’s a big chunk of Ontario to meander through.

I left at 4:15 this morning to give me lots of time to reach the Chi-Cheemaun ferry that runs between Tobermory, Ontario and Manitoulin Island.  My first adventure was in the dark near Lucan.  Two baby raccoons scampered onto the highway, their four eyes shining in my headlights.  They must have been terrified to see those two big white things.  I slammed on the brakes and watched as my sudden friends threw themselves back into the ditch.  Someone behind me in a big vehicle was following too close and came within a couple of feet of crushing my bicycle ta-pocketa, who was hanging from a rack behind Scarlet’s trunk.  Oh my.  Thank you Jody, and other blessed beings for keeping my bike and me safe.

Up the Bruce Peninsula I floated at the speed limit.  Pass me if you need to.  I’m tired of going fast in life.  Such beauty all around me.  More and more coniferous trees until the water revealed itself in Tobermory.  I didn’t get much sleep last night so coffee and breakie was a relief.  And then, in a newly alert state … “Wow.  I’m on a road trip.”  Out and about.  Neither here nor there.  Following my nose, not to mention my map.

As the ferry left the tip of the Bruce Peninsula, I leaned over the railing on the top deck and found myself in a conversation with a lovely woman named Lori.  She and her two kids are on a vacation from Kentucky.  Lori is so hoping that they all get to see the Northern Lights.  Yes, may you see the shimmering green sheets in the sky.  Lori is also determined to get her son and daughter away from their “devices”, to have them gaze in awe at the water, the lights, the meadows and the trees.  To just stop, look and listen.

I told Lori about my wife Jody, about her presence in the trees and about the book I wrote about my dear one.  She was happy to receive a copy, and wiped away a tear or two.  Then it was family lunch time in the cafeteria so we said goodbye.  During the last few minutes of our talk, I became aware of another entity, one that was hovering nearby.  A single seagull followed us on our voyage.  For at least 45 minutes, I didn’t take my eyes off him or her.  The birdacious one sometimes came as close as five feet, checking me out with his right eye,  Then he’d swoop down towards the water.  After that he’d wheel high above the ship, but always returned to be nearby.  There were about 15 people on my high deck and perhaps 30 on the one below, but aside from a kid or two, no one seemed to notice our local acrobat.  Texting, reading, talking … all good things, but the curled wings working the winds was mostly an unseen miracle.  Such a loss of the present moment.

Maybe I’ll be an athlete gull in my next lifetime.  I sure was taken with this virtuoso flier.  It felt like there was a link between the two of us.  I know, you could say that he just wanted food, but I’m sure it became clear after a minute or two that I didn’t have any.  And still the seagull stayed.  I was glad.

Within ten seconds of the announcement asking us to return to our cars, my friend was gone.  Just poof!  Oh, the mysteries of this physical life.

This is fun.  I hope I have Internet access every day during the next six weeks so I can tell you what my eyes see and my heart feels.  Tomorrow I venture along the north shore of Lake Superior, visit the monument to Terry Fox, who fought so hard to run across Canada for cancer research, and finally lay down my head in Thunder Bay.  See you then.

Love Floats By

In the late 80’s, I was a waiter at a fancy restaurant in Lethbridge, Alberta.  I was engaged to Jody and loved her very much.  But I loved another woman as well, not sexually but as friends.  Marianne worked at the restaurant too.  One night a group of us went out dancing after our shift.  And I got to dance to “The Lady In Red” with Marianne.  We were quiet together, just holding each other.  It was tender.

It’s been at least ten years since I’ve seen Marianne.  She’s married and happy in Lethbridge.  I phoned her a few months ago to tell her that I’m coming west this summer and that I’d love to see her.  Answering machine.  And in the weeks that stretched away … no response.  So I phoned again.  Answering machine.  No response.  And that scenario has repeated itself several times.

Do I let Marianne go or show up at her door?  The Buddhist in me says to let her go.  She’s on her path and it looks like it’s not going to intersect with mine again.  But then there’s the part of me that wants to thank her for being kind to me all those years ago, and wants to hang out again.  I don’t know what to do.  I’ll be in her neighbourhood for four days.  How strange it would feel to not even try.

There won’t be a resolution in my mind tonight.  I’ll just let the discomfort and uncertainty sit there … all the way to Lethbridge.  There’s no right answer to this.  My love for Marianne is still there.  Maybe her response is not important.  Maybe what goes out from me is all that matters.  What comes back is through the grace of God.

Ecstasy

I’m having appointments up the ying yang – fun lunches and suppers, maintenance for both of my cars, and yesterday a complete physical from my dear doctor Julie.

I was in the waiting room before being called into the inner sanctum when I decided to check e-mails on my Samsung phone.  It was just me and a young woman with her infant son.

Oh, look.  A message from the president of the Elgin Theatre Guild.

“I spoke with the director of Jake’s Women and he is coming to ETG on Monday at one o’clock to audition a child for the play.   He says if you want to be here too he will audition you too!!! 

As they say in short speak … OMG!  I’m bouncing up and down on my chair and my companion is checking me out, with a smile.  Seems to me that I had a pretty good one myself.

I had hoped that the director would give me an audition during the one week I’m home in September, between my Western Canada trip and my long meditation retreat in Massachusetts.  But now?  OMG again.

I was just beside myself.  Well, actually not, since the chair was empty, but you know what I mean.  “What’s true, Bruce?”  “I am Jake, in every sinew of my U-shaped body.”  Strangely, I’m not nervous.  I suppose the fellow will have me read a few paragraphs of something, make me stand on my head, sing a little number … Who knows?  It doesn’t matter.  In the words of a martial artist, “Just put yourself on the mat.”  So I will.  Pray for me please, if that’s your way.  If not, just close your eyes at 1:00 pm and chant “Bruce”.  Okay, you don’t have to do that either.

I’m Glad I Did It

My life has been a flurry of activity the last few days.  Not exactly in tune with the meditative fellow that I see myself as.  But it’s good.

First there was SunFest.  I wanted to dance.  There were times after my tendon transfer surgery in 2003 that I thought I’d never dance again.  Last Sunday, though, I threw my body around for three hours, spaced out over the afternoon and evening.  Fast dancing, usually surrounded by more than a hundred other revellers.  I occasionally thought of my right foot.  “Bruce, you’re putting too much pressure on it with all your gyrating!  There’s a screw in that foot, you know.  If you don’t stop, you won’t be able to walk in five years.”  Or … “Bruce, you’re going golfing tomorrow.  You’d better forget dancing at the 10:00 pm show, and rest up.  Otherwise you won’t survive eighteen holes of walking.”  Such a small, squeaky voice.

I danced at the last show, once more to the group “Five Alarm Funk”.  Go ankle, go!  I gave ‘er, joyously, and then limped to Hugo, my Honda CRV.  The next day was hot and humid on the links and the whole body suffered.  As for my golf swing, it was a thing of … (something).  But I love Tarandowah – the rolling fairways, the deep bunkers, the tall fescue grass in the rough.  Despite my pain, I knew I was home.

Yesterday I limped, but I still went out to lunch with a friend, and to dinner with another.  Weeks ago, I had e-mailed all sorts of folks, asking them out for a meal, since I wouldn’t see them again until January.  I’m now in the home stretch of social engagements, with my estimated time of liftoff for the west being next Tuesday.  I’ve loved the conversations.  I’m certainly not tired of people, but I’m tired.

All good things, these dancings and golfings and yappings.  They make me happy.  Even my feet are singing a wee little bit.

Passion for the Music

I leaned on the front of the stage at SunFest last night.  Eight feet away from me was a cellist, a member of the Ukrainian quartet Dakha Brakha.  Here’s what the program had to say about them:

Three striking women in white wedding dresses and tall black Astrakhan hats … harmonizing in mighty steel-tearing Ukrainian white voice, two band members pounding drums and the third digging into a folk-pattern-painted cello with massive abrasive energy, plus a male singer wielding accordion and trombone

Indeed.

To be so close to a woman who closed her eyes, threw her head back and sang unknown words was a marvel.  She held her cello between her knees at an angle rather than straight on.  She played some incredibly high notes and would slide her finger down for the next one, creating a mournful wail.  Again with her eyes often closed.

To see those women in their embroidered dresses, wearing many loops of large grey beads around their necks, and to feel the power of the drums … Wow.  Some kind entity allowed me to experience the driving beat and the tender ballads from a few feet away.  I’ve had so many intense moments over the last month, usually with music, and I feel my heart continuing to open and stay open.  Something is happening to me.

Dancing

Long ago I ruptured a tendon in my right ankle and ended up on crutches for 17 weeks.  Jody and I went to a New Year’s Eve party that year and after dinner I sat watching couples swing and sway on the dance floor.  I love dancing.  Jody loves dancing.  It was hard.

SunFest started last night.  It’s the world music festival in London that’s expected to draw 250,000 people to Victoria Park.  Soon after I arrived, I wandered over to the beer garden, where a group from Colombia was moving and grooving.  So were about a hundred dancers in front of the stage.  I stood just outside the fence and watched.  Most of them were young but certainly not all.  Pockets of friends grooved together.  A fellow in his 70’s dipped and dived to his wife, who moved a bit and smiled a lot.  One young woman near me gyrated in a delightfully sexual way, her purse on the ground in front of her.  The wild abandon and the sensible caution … sounds like a human being.

The leader of the band told the group to “Get down!” and 200 legs obliged.  Then it was hands to the sky.  So wonderful to see all those upraised arms – full self-expression.  I stood there fascinated.  All that energy.  All those smiles.  What life should be about.

After the Colombian folks were done, I meandered down the paths of crafts booths, knowing that I would make my appearance on the dance floor a bit later.  One of the kiosks held some marvelous creations from Bali, Indonesia.  And there it hung on a wall … a wooden plaque hand-painted, revealing a human being in full lotus meditation posture, one leg tucked into the other.  And in vibrant colours were the seven chakras, or energy centres, in the body.  Actually, the crown chakra is above the head.  I just stared, and brought out my MasterCard.  My heart danced.

Speaking of which, it was time to head back to the beer garden, and to the music of Five Alarm Funk, nine guys from Vancouver sporting a drum set, three guitars, bongo drums, saxophone, trumpet and trombone.  Hmm … guess I missed somebody.  The music was loud, raucous and so very danceable.  So we did.  I found myself next to a young woman and her boyfriend.  I heard “Hi, Mr.Kerr.”  Ten years ago, she was an elementary student at the school where I taught a blind child.  It was weird and yet wonderful to dance my heart out next to her.  Little kids grow up.

For awhile I threw my arms everywhere, but as the folks packed in tighter, my movements became vertical.  I tried moving my feet in a spastic sort of way but I had to stare at them to keep from crushing someone else’s foot.  When I mustered up the energy, I bounced for a bit, arms flopping at my sides.  Finally, my bodily organs told me to calm down or my days on the planet might be numbered.  Come to think of it, my days are numbered, bouncing or not.

I sweated and strained and joyed in living.  The folks around me were mostly young and radiant, but there were two fellow grey hairs off to my right.  Thank you, God.  Thank you, Jody.  Thank you, O powers of the universe, for letting me dance again.  It’s such a part of me.  And hey, maybe during SunFest 2035, it’ll be me and my walker showing those young’uns a step or two!

Johanna

All I wanted to do was buy some sheets and pillows.  Sleep Country delivered my new bed today but I hadn’t acted on accessory purchases.  Actually, the bed’s not for me.  It’s for my guests Renato and Geraldine, who are coming to live in my home while I roam the continent on various adventures.

I had been thinking Walmart for the extras.  Gotta save a few bucks here and there.  But as I drove into London today, I realized that I wanted my visitors from England to have the good stuff.  So I opened the Sleep Country door and walked in.

From a distance, a woman in her 60’s said hello.  A real hello.  As we talked about bedding, I felt a great peace wash over me.  This wasn’t about sheets.  Johanna was just sitting there … being.  We talked about Vancouver, where she’s from, and where I’m heading to in August.  But this wasn’t about walking in Stanley Park or strolling down Robson St.  My goodness, what was happening here?  Her stillness became mine.  Lovely.

Johanna said that there’s nothing she wants to achieve.  She’s done that.  Her daughter urges her to get out into the community and attend events, meet people.  But Johanna feels no need to do that.  She wants to be with her family, loving them.

Johanna told me that many angry people walk into her store.  They want service, they want product, they want to pay and go.  I saw sadness in her eyes as she shared this with me.  After awhile, when we had discussed the different qualities of duvets and the merits of bamboo sheets, we didn’t have much to say to each other.  Words were necessary for the transaction but we didn’t need many to be with each other.  I asked her if she would like a copy of the book I wrote about Jody.  No, she didn’t want one.  And her choice to not receive our story was so very peaceful for me.  Johanna has written her own story in the many moments of her life.

I came
I bought
I melted