Around the Bend

 E.g. has her new blog title. When the Big Bad Science Museum huffed and puffed away her right to her title, numerous virtual hugs and sympathetic harrumphs were sent her from both her regulars and mine. Their comments cheered her considerably, and she finally sat down after supper yesterday to follow Goodbear’s advice, which was to think of her favourite journey and find a symbol in it.

E.g. decided that to her, the journey itself is at least as important as the destination. So she reviewed her photos of roads and hiking trails and boardwalks, and Jack and I refused to take Cai out until some name clicked. “The Crooked Mile?” Not metric enough. “The Long and Winding Road”? Trite. “Road to Rivendell”? Doesn’t express the techno side too well. “Footprints in the Air”? Not piscean enough. “Fred”? Some other day, maybe. “Fiddling Out of a Barn?” That’s enough beer for one night.

Finally, E.g. had a new blog title, like an unfamiliar wine. She sniffed it cautiously, sipped it, closed her eyes, rolled it around on her tongue, let it seep in, and pronounced it good. Jack accompanied her as she chose and cropped a different photo for her title bar, and then she wrote a lovely Thank-you/Introductory entry while Jack and Cai and I busied ourselves with bedtime business. You’re all invited to the housewarming — just click on the unwound road on my sidebar.

Gillian’s small heartsearching task last night has me wondering. What’s my own attitude regarding the importance of a destination versus the importance of the journey? This question probably needs more reflection, but so far I think I most agree with her in the literal sense of walking and hiking. I like to look around, admiring the leaves, smiling at the toadstools, waving to the chipmunks. I tend to walk quickly, but I’d rather walk than cycle or drive, rather snowshoe than snowmobile, rather cross-country ski than downhill.

In the more figurative sense, however, I do like to know where I’m going. I’ve been chief planner for our past several vacations. What is there to see? Where are the hostels? How many hours would we have to drive on this day? On which days is that museum closed? All those details, from the broadest to the pickiest — I love planning them. Am I showing a greater interest in process or objective, in journey or destination?

E.g. and I have been discussing several possible changes to our family situation lately. It’s occasionally been hard going, with the hardest unknown for me being not the “how” or even the “when”, but the “if”. At last, though, all the ifs have been answered, and I can relax a little. I’ll settle down now and enjoy the hike with E.g., watching for the next blaze, happily discovering what’s just around the next bend.

Good Broken Things

 Maple at the edge of our balcony

I’ve noticed some things being broken over the past few days.

On Thursday, it was a full week that my co-worker had broken her smoking habit. I kept waiting for her to turn tired, grumpy, and impatient — Thursday is stock day — but no, she was cheery and energetic all day, breaking into little snatches of song, my goodness! The change in her from the week before was incredible.

On Friday, E.g. and Jack’s mum and our mutual friend Jane and I all went out to supper. We broke bread — a long, skinny baguette, actually — in the neighbourhood chi-chi French restaurant, and the waiter broke out a bottle of Grenache to go with our dinners. It was Jack’s mum’s birthday, so while Jack was out at his youth club we enjoyed a “girls’ night out”. Our menus were in English — and so was our waiter — so he was a little puzzled when I asked in broken French for the “palourdes rembourrees”, which more or less means upholstered clams.

Yesterday, Jack and Jack’s mum and E.g. and Cai and I broke out of our usual Saturday routines, leaving the city for a drive out in the country. We went to visit half a dozen youngsters somewhere; more about that tomorrow. On the way back, we took a break at Mono Cliffs Conservation Area, hiking in a little ways until we found a nice set of boulders where we could break for lunch.

Our apartment is an end unit, just over the fence from a recreation field lined with maples. The branches of one tree touch our balcony. This morning, I was standing out there in the Spring sunshine when I noticed that the buds are just starting to break, fat and full of promise. Some of them have actually broken right open into tiny, delicate green bobbly things since I took the photo.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS TURTLE?

My photo doesn’t do justice to her details and glitter.

We went out today — E.g., Jack, Jack’s mum, Cai, and I. We left at 9 00 and returned just before suppertime. When E.g. and I got to our apartment, we found a zippered burlap bag, originally made to hold 10 pounds of basmati rice, hanging on the doorknob. Eh? Unzip, pull out a crumpled grocery store flyer. Unfold, find the prettiest little purple-and-green sea turtle. I’m pretty sure it’s resin-cast, but it’s very well done, made to look like string carefully glued over a wooden base, and it’s hand-painted and sprinkled with glitter. On its underside is a little picture hook to hang it on a wall. It’s just the same size as Seamus, the WWF sea-turtle stuffy.

There was no note. Who could have left it? E.g. guessed that Robert had come across it on his travels, but he doesn’t read my blog. It obviously wasn’t Jack and his mum, because we had picked them up and dropped them off today. What a delicious little mystery!

Our car lives in the underground parking garage. One of the things we had done today was get groceries, so we were coming up to get the bundle buggy when we found the anonymous gift. On my way back out with the buggy, I saw Coco, the German Shepherd, with her daddy Michael. Hmmm.

Michael and John were two of the judges for the Name-and-genderize-the-baby-sea-turtle contest. They don’t even own a computer, but they’re very fond of us; the other day they had given us a stained-glass rainbow flag. Their nextdoor neighbour is moving out, and they’ve acquired a few pretties from her. Maybe…

I think Michael must have seen me getting the groceries, because I was no sooner inside when the phone rang. It was John, asking if I’d found little Seamus.

“I thought it must be you guys! She’s beautiful! And her name isn’t Seamus; I think it’s Isabella.”

“Bella,” John mused, “that’s a good name.” It was then that I remembered that one of his nicknames for Coco is “Bella.”

Copywrong

I arrived home from work last night to find E.g. hunched at her computer, causing hundreds of tiny stick figures to become tiny stick corpses, each lying in its own shiny little mosquito-drop of blood. E.g. is the one who writes the “exploratorium” found on my blogroll, or at least she has been until now.

She told me she had received a note from Exploratorium, the Exploratorium, a science museum, asking that she cease and desist from using their name for her blog.

I could see the museum’s concern. There’s E.g.’s blog, practically at the top of the list, the seventh item on Google page four. Anyone might be misdirected. And heaven forfend that she increase in popularity enough to move up to item 46! The museum might as well close its doors now.

Okay, I’m ranting. The museum is completely in the right: E.g. is infringing their copyright. I’m snippy, though, because E.g. had been very pleased about “inventing” her blog’s name, and last night she was feeling all crumpled inside like someone had insulted her baby or torn a limb off her apple tree. It made me want to rise to my full height, reach up and punch that old museum in the toe.

But they’re in the right. There’s nothing for it, then, but to look for a new name. I suggested a few:

• Muirotarolpxe;
• Explorservation;
• Gillian’s Eye.

E.g. will come up with one on her own, of course, and all will once again be right with the world. But the situation got me thinking: What if the Estate of King Solomon contacted me, and told me I was commiting plagiarism? What if Home Depot claimed prior patent to the designation of their Right Blue armchair, and told Bonnie to change her blog’s title? What if Checkers Restaurant in Ottawa decreed that Checkers’ owner would have to name him something else?

Since I would hate for any of my blogfriends to be caught unawares, I decided that this morning I would, as a service to you all, prepare a list of alternative titles. And just to be on the safe side, for those blogs with tag lines, I’ve included modifications of them as well. Here goes:

Kibble Cup Owner’s World — spreading the buttoned wool sweater dog vibe worldwide.

Cooooodyyyy Beeeeeeeeaaar’s Friiiieeeeeeends!

A Singular Instance of Quotidian Ephemera

The Aged Catsup — because fridge cleaning isn’t for sissies.

Thegreatlyappreciatedindiverseenvironmentalecosystemsand -theirinhabitantsbothvertebrateandinvertebrate — visit Aristotle.com for applicable aphorisms.

The Correct Shade of Cyan — Recounting a lifetime of participation in underwater dives. No whelks were harmed in the making of this blog.

Some Reflections Concerning Life in the City — about seeking and perhaps finding a salvageable or inherent integrity or beauty or other positive value in omnes res.

Gareth Tedi blog – Canines of Celtic origin.

Voice of either the Testudine or Streptopelia turtur, depending on Your Preferred Interpretation of the Ambiguously-termed Lifeform

Hmm. Some of the above proposals may need some tweaking.

Pickup: A Horror Film with a One-word Script

One piece of advice for writers — and if it’s good enough for Little Women’s Jo, it’s good enough for me — is to write about what you know. I wonder how such counsel might work for horror films? I have watched very little of that genre myself, but today I thought I had the makings of a good one. So I played around with e.g.’s camera, which is currently wearing the macro lens, and came up with this series of unretouched movie stills. What do you think, do I have the start of a decent portfolio?

“AAA–

–AAAAA–

–AAAAAAAAA–

–AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA–

–AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA–

–AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA–

–AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaa–

–aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa–

–aaaaaaaaa–

–aaaaa–

–aah.”

 

(Wordless Wednesday) Turtle’s Container Container

Seer Nonsense (a quiz)

Yesterday I posted a (somewhat heavy) entry on fortune telling. My views on it, and those of two commenters, emphasize slightly different things. I see fortune telling as a kind of Rorschach test: What do I personally see, or prefer to see, in this inkblot? Goodbear sees in it a hand extended in hope: There is a future, Virginia, now just set your right foot on that outcropping, there’s only a metre more till the plateau. Eyegillian, on the other hand, snuffs warily at the fortune teller’s robes, seeing her as a dream-reading, dictatorial career counsellor. Our views are different, but none of them are indifferent.

Today, on the other hand, is laundry day, so it’s time for something a little lighter. I thought we might continue the fortune telling/personality sussing/career advising theme with a quiz. I am making it up as I go along. There will be no “If you said yes to questions 3, 7, and 15, you are an INFP” sort of evaluation at the end of it. It’s just a random set of questions to help you reflect, ponder, smile, dream… Ask your partner what they think your answers add up to.  Try it on a co-worker. Predict your friends’ answers, then see how good a fortune teller you are. Imagine how your pet would answer them. But please, no squabbling; they’re supposed to be light-hearted.

 

The Who-Do-You-Think-You-Are Quiz

1. Fill in the blank. “Congratulations! You’ve just won a weekend in ________________!”

2. You have won your choice of three 10-day trips. Which would you choose?

• a) A luxury cruise through Scandinavia
• b) An eco-tour expedition in Costa Rica
• c) A hotel suite in a city hosting the World Cup

3. This autumn, your boss is offering to pay tuition for any evening course you want to take. You’ll sign up for _____________________.

4. Your workplace plays commercial-free satellite radio. You prefer listening to:

• a) the pop hits of your teens
• b) classical music favourites
• c) jazz greats
• d) show tunes

5. You’ve just come from an exhibition of Canadian art. Your favourite works were the ones by:

• a) Paul Peel
• b) Emily Carr
• c) David Milne

6. The fire alarm in your building has gone off for the second time this week. You’re alone in your apartment. You:

• a) curse, and exit the building
• b) don’t curse, and exit the building
• c) curse, and don’t exit the building
• d) don’t curse, and don’t exit the building

7. You’ve just had the most amazing first date! First, your suitor picked you up in a:

• a) fully reconditioned 1975 Corvette Stingray
• b) half-ton pickup truck
• c) partially solar-powered Volvo

8. You went for supper at:

• a) your favourite local
• b) the new vegan eatery that’s been getting those rave reviews
• c) a fabulous French restaurant

9. Then it was off to the cinema to watch an excellent:

• a) romantic comedy
• b) documentary
• c) historical drama
• d) futuristic thriller

10. Afterwards, you went to a watering hole (where you both drank responsibly) and you chatted for hours. You relaxed as your date ordered:

• a) coffee
• b) tea
• c) beer
• d) scotch

11. Your discussion of the film centred on:

• a) this and other films by the same director
• b) the motives and behaviour of the characters
• c) the visuals: setting, costuming, special effects
• d) a comparison of the film’s portrayal and your knowledge of the subject or the book that the film based itself on

12. Your date dropped you off at your door with a warm hug, and the statement that it’s his/her policy never to do more than that on a first date. You think:

• a) What a sweet, old-fashioned kind of respect!
• b) What a weirdo!
• c) What are you doing tomorrow night?

13. You have room in your heart, home, and budget for a new pet. You’ll get a ______________.

14. The TV animal of which you have fondest memories are:

• a) the Littlest Hobo
• b) Skippy, the bush kangaroo
• c) Flipper
• d) Cheeta

15. Your favourite cartoon animal is:

• a) Spongebob Squarepants
• b) Lisa Simpson’s cat Snowball
• c) Yogi Bear
• d) Clifford, the big red dog

16. Your favourite comic-strip animal is:

• a) Snoopy
• b) Garfield
• c) Mutts
• d) Grimm

17. You would take the time to learn a language little spoken in your area, because:

• a) it’s the language of your ancestors
• b) it’s the language of your partner’s relatives
• c) knowledge of it will help you get a raise
• d) it’s an important language in a field that interests you

18. Which adjective best describes you?

• a) tickly
• b) prickly
• c) wriggly
• d) squiggly

19. Would you rather be a sparrow or a snail?

20. Name three things for which you are thankful today. ______________; ____________________; ____________________.

And I thank YOU for stopping by!

Do feel free to comment on anything that really grabbed you. Happy Laundry Day!

 

Making Fortunes

On her last flight, Jack’s mum served a psychic. The psychic offered to tell Jack’s fortune for free, if Jack’s mum was carrying a photograph of him. She was. This morning on our way to the streetcar, graciously ignoring my rude interruptions, Jack recounted to me the psychic’s predictions.

“She said I was very smart –”

“No question there.”

“And I would become very successful –”

“Uh-huh, can’t see why not.”

“And I would live in a really big, white house with ginormous pillars in front –”

“You’re going to be a bank teller! That’s terrific!”

“And she saw me standing in front of a large crowd –.”

“Just before you get hanged?”

“Well, I think it sounds like I’m going to be President!”

“Except you’ve got two passports, and neither of them is American. Wouldn’t you at least prefer Rideau Hall or Buckingham Palace?”

Then I gave him a quick recap of what Victor Hugo had to say on the subject of fortune telling back in 1831, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Esmeralda has been raised with the gypsies because they stole her as an infant. They were able to kidnap her because her mother asked them to read her daughter’s fortune, and then left the baby alone in the house while she ran to brag to her neighbours about how great her child would become. Oops.

“And you think my mum would let the gypsies steal me?”

“Oh no, she would never be that foolish. My point was that fortune tellers will tell you what you want to hear. Victor Hugo was being very clear that fortune telling is baloney. And it’s still baloney 150 years later.”

And it’s still baloney about three thousand years after the Hebrew Scriptures warned against divination of all sorts. And as with just about every other passage in the Bible, unscrupulous advantage has been taken of this one. This “proof text” has been used down the ages to rid communities of marginalized old women whose best source of cat-food money has been to carefully examine a troubled face, and tell the listener what he most wanted to hear.

Because wouldn’t we all like to know what the future holds, and better still, to know that it holds good things? Flip the tarot cards then, draw up the horoscope, tell me what my name means, find a hook for me on which I can hang my hopes! Tell me what I want to hear.

I do think that in a way, fortune telling can be helpful. It can help to clarify our desires of who we want to be. For example, my astrological sign says that I am good with languages and with numbers. I agree with the first part and dismiss the second, not because there’s any truth or untruth in either statement, but because the second part is not what I want. I want to be a story teller, not a bank teller. So my gut reactions to various occult assertions about me help me to confirm what I want. In that case, why is it such a bad thing?

I think the Bible speaks against fortune telling for the same reason that, for every claim it makes, it elsewhere makes a counterclaim. Hate your parents and siblings for the sake of the Truth; but if you say you love Truth when you don’t love your siblings, you’re a liar. Don’t let witches live; but be merciful and humble. That kind of thing. Each time I think I’ve got God securely fastened into my butterfly collection, I come back after lunch to find another empty pin. There are no “proof texts”, I think, because love is a risk. The God of Love calls us out of our security and into scary, risky places; the god of Certainty is a hollow idol.

My partner and I are standing at the edge of a canyon just now, beside a rope bridge. E.g. has seen the other side, but is afraid of heights. I don’t mind the rickety bridge, even if it is missing half of its planks, but I don’t know where it leads. We’re both afraid. We both agree, though, that we need to cross that bridge.

Okay, let’s go — you first. No, after you. No, I insist. No, I couldn’t possibly.

Maybe we could draw cards?  

Spit in the River

Pied Stilts: two adults and two chicks. Tahuna Torea wildlife reserve, Auckland. The reflection shows the length of the bill.

In January 2006, e.g. and I spent three weeks in New Zealand. E.g.’s grandfather moved to Auckland from England as a young man, and established a highly successful family business. When e.g. and I came from Canada to visit, one of her uncles “shouted” (paid for) our airfare; another uncle spent the day with us at Tiritiri Matangi bird sanctuary; and a third uncle hosted us at the beginning and end of our trip.

The beautiful, comical Pukeko, scouting for breadcrusts near the car park garbage can.

This third uncle is a volunteer ranger at the nearby Tahuna Torea wildlife reserve. Like Tommy Thompson Park, Tahuna Torea is, in part, a spit — this time a sandspit into the Tamaki River Estuary. Also like Tommy Thompson, Tahuna Torea is an area saved by a group of local residents from various proposed forms of destruction. In the 60s and 70s, the group successfully dissuaded City Hall from using this Crown-owned riverside area as either a marina or a rubbish tip. E.g.’s Uncle Three was, I believe, part of this original group — the Tamaki Estuary Protection Society — and has kept a hand in the care of this 25-hectare sanctuary ever since.

Pekin Duck escapees have found a good home.

The name Tahuna Torea is a Maori expression meaning “gathering place of the oystercatchers.” Uncle Three and I share an interest in birdwatching. I had been very careful to include as many important birding sites as I could into our travel itinerary, and Uncle Three was impressed at my final list of 79 species. But I’m just as impressed that a full one-seventh of them were seen within a block of his driveway.

Some eponymous Toreas (Variable Oystercatchers), gathering on the ball field that flanks the north side of Tahuna Torea reserve. Across the water is Bucklands Beach.

The Twitcher’s Apprentice

Cai carefully notes all the distinguishing field marks of this vagrant Orange-eyed Squash Goose before rushing to identify it in the guidebook.

Learning to birdwatch with Cai has been a bit of a learning curve. One thing I learned, for example, was the impossibility of simultaneously peering through binoculars and grasping the loop of a puppy-filled leash. I did manage to overcome this problem by slipping the loop around the toe of my boot. This method works best when viewing the more phlegmatic of our feathered friends; it is of no help at all for that large group of avians that I call gone-birds.

Because e.g. and I have compatible but different interests, the two of us can share Cai between us. I’ll do birdless walkies with him while e.g. sets up her tripod for skunk cabbage or bloodroot or trout lily or whatever the fleur du jour is, and then she’ll take him while I go stalk the pond or the meadow or the woods for a while.

One of the reasons e.g. and I decided on a Cardigan Welsh Corgi is that they are sturdy little animals, happy to go hiking or camping. Cai was first put to the tenting test last summer, when he wasn’t yet a year old. It was a bit of a challenge for him. Every evening while it was still light out, he would start scratching at the zipper of either Jack’s or our tent, announcing his intention to turn in. He ended each day exhausted from the sniffing and the seeing and the listening and the hiking and the swimming, but I like to think he went to bed with a smile on his muzzle.

On this particular camping trip, we were at a privately-owned campground on Manitoulin Island. Early each morning, I would take Cai for walkies while e.g. and Jack were still nestled in their sleeping bags. One morning, a family of deer startled my dog and me, and we them; they leapt across the path just ahead of us and disappeared into the woods. I thought that was pretty cool, but Cai, who had never seen deer before, didn’t know what to think. He pulled the leash taut and stood stock-still, staring after them; and I felt his heartbeat through the leash.

On another morning, having familiarized myself with the trails, I decided to risk dropping the leash in an open area and let Cai walk beside me. He did, very nicely, until we both suddenly saw — or I thought we saw — the same thing. It was a pair of Sharp-tailed Grouse at the foot of the tree. I reached for the leash loop that was dragging in the dust, but all I found was a gone-dog. Cai sprinted to the tree and up scattered a whole covey of Sharp-tails. Then he trotted back to me, wagging with pleasure at his success as the birder’s apprentice.

I was reminded of all these things this morning, as I played ball with Cai in the field next to our apartment building. Sometimes it’s just the fact of his being a dog that makes Cai help me with my birdwatching. Today was a cat kind of day — stay indoors and watch the rain — but dogs don’t do litter boxes, so out we went. Up the field, down the field, facing north, facing south, I stooped for the ball as we were facing north, raised my arm, and halted in awe to watch a small flock of Sandhill Cranes, grey as the mist they were flying through, silently heading for Manitoulin Island.