swimintheglory

If you were sitting in my kitchen this morning, this is what we would have done...

2011-03-22T14:26:00.007-04:00

This is what this morning would have looked like, if you were here:

I would have made you a 4-egg omelet with baby spinach, ripe tomatoes and Havarti cheese nestled inside, sprinkled with freshly ground black pepper and topped with perfectly ripe avocado crescents. Then I'd serve you a coffee (perked, not french press because I can't find my precious stainless steel press at the moment though I'm sure it's in the house somewhere...) with cream and sit you down at the table and watch you eat.

Then, when I'm satisfied that you were well into enjoying your breakfast (no carbs, we're both trying to keep away from those delicious, crispy bread rolls I just got from Trader Joes -- oh, never mind let me throw one in the toaster for you.. the butter will tame the glycemic surge... ) I will sit beside you and regale you for the next 2 hours with stories from the amazing trip I just came back from. The kids I fell in love with, the scenes I saw, the pictures I took, the footage we shot, the beauty and majesty we absorbed...

Every day that I've been away, and every day that I've been back I've wanted to talk to you, to tell you the important things. So much has happened. I wish you'd been there with me to see it.

For example, there are two young horsemen -- the best of their group -- let's call them George (for Gorgeous George Clooney) and Leo (as in Lionheart.) They'd both been banned from taking part in horsemanship class as a punishment for cutting school. For three days they glumly sat on the sidelines watching all the other boys soaking up what they were prohibited from learning.

Leo chose to help out building bars on the gates of the pens so greedy horses wouldn't bust in when the others were feeding. George just sat and scowled, his handsome, engaging face becoming more sullen by the day. When time came for them to enter the class again, George, normally the best in the class, was oddly out of sync. He kept distracting the younger boys. Goofed off with his horse. Didn't show up in neat shirt and jeans. Wasn't the sunny, smiling boy we all knew him to be.

After 2 days of this, we asked him for an interview following the afternoon class. He sat on the stone steps, looking stormily at the darkening sky, answering in fragments and half-sentences, if not in single words. It wasn't until the end that he cracked, answering the question, "What do you find difficult in the horsesmanship classes?" He answered, that other boys might be better than me." When Ingela, who was asking him the questions, answered, "but George, you are one of the best in the class. Why are you worried about this?"

His face opened up and he looked like he might cry. "Because I couldn't be in the class the last few days, and they were all learning and getting ahead of me," he mumbled.

"George," Ingela said gently. "You are one of the best, if not the best. I know you will be one of the best horsemen in Brazil, one day. I am so proud of you and nothing you ever do can change that."

You could see his face struggling manfully not absorb her words at first, in order that they not penetrate into his heart and make him cry.

Ingela continued, "This is a big lie that you believe George. That you're not good at things. That you're not great."

"But I'm here to tell you that God sent me all this way from Canada to teach you, because you are great. Because God believes in you. Because you can do it."

George didn't look at her, still determined not to cry. But you could see it took everything in him, all the awareness of a camera lens in front of him, and of the three women around him, focussed only on him, to hold his emotion.

Later, walking with Ingela and the translator back to the room where the team was lodged, he softened and let her words enter, let them transform some cold, lonely place in his heart.

And after that, in the class and for every day after until the team left, George was his boyish, sunny, joyful self.

Still on the road, haven't found a home

2010-07-02T20:40:00.006-04:00

We have been driving across Michigan for what feels like a week now. Really, it was only Thursday when we left Stratford, Ontario and headed for the Sarnia-Port Huron border. Today is Friday. But after a three-hour crawl at the bridge (why were so many Ontario-ans headed into the US on Canada day??) and then more traffic and delays today (stocking up on groceries, dipping toes in Lake Huron), we are taking what seems an eternity to get across this state.

Actually we're not really going across, but rather west and then north, and we'll cross into Wisconsin, then through Minnesota once we're north of Lake Huron. 'We' is my Dad - Robert, my little brother Matthew Elliott, and me. The two guys do all the driving and me? I sit back in the bland comfort of a beige-themed recreational vehicle, sipping water (or G & Ts), thinking about life.

I also read a lot: the latest issue of Maisonneuve magazine, in which I had foolishly hoped to be published this summer, Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed, and I'm hoping to start on Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's In the First Circle - the uncensored edition. But everything is heavy reading (AI, Singularity theory and the end of humanity in Maisonneuve, Lamb's is a novel about the hideous aftershocks of the Colombine massacre, and God only knows what horrors of Soviet control await in Solzhenitzyn!) so for a little break, I'm writing about myself.

Only…

It feels there is nothing much to write about. I am living through chaotic, colourful, life-changing events – but it seems to me they have already happened. In my head I've already been through it all, so what's the point of writing old news? I have long thought about my last year at Concordia University, and the last courses of my journalism degree. I've thought for a month about moving out of my little apartment near Atwater market, about which pieces of furniture I would take and which to leave, about what books I would give away and which would get shipped across the country to B.C., about who needed to be said goodbye to in person and who would be ok with an email, and about what last projects I needed to handle for Magnus Isacsson (filmmaker I work/intern for.)

In reality, I have been getting ready to leave Montreal since I arrived five years ago on a sunny August day, 2005. I was ready to leave when I first saw my drab apartment next to the deafening Decarie highway, and again when I found out what people at my secular university really think of christianity. When student politics and a newspaper nearly took over my life, my health and my peace of mind, dictating whether I slept or ate, I didn't consider leaving, but there wasn't much living going on either. I just existed for the next deadline, the next edition, the next workload. I lived for it because I felt my life was empty of any other meaning.

I didn't value what Montrealers held dear, nor did they care about what I valued. I felt at odds with the city, saddened by it, and mystified as to how to live at peace in it.

I got ready to leave Montreal for good two springs ago when Mom got sick with cancer and I knew she probably wouldn't outlast it. I didn't care about school or the paper at that point, handed the reins over to whoever came after me, and flew home to B.C.

And a year and a bit later when I returned to Montreal - crossing the miles in this same RV I'm in right now with only my Dad - a man shattered and shuttered by his wife's death - at the wheel, I left behind my newly discovered love, the Wildman, turned my face eastward again to face the fears of stress and strain, overwork and overload, the loss of direction I felt amid my more self-assured and hardworking news collaborators. When I got there I felt I stepped back into a city even more alien than the one I had left, and again I was preparing in my heart to leave.

To be fair, Montreal harboured me for awhile. And, thanks to this city, I learned things I never would have otherwise. I've met people I will be privileged to know my whole life. I learned about the true nature of a good bagel, what the World Cup does for Italians (and Brazilians, and Portuguese, and the French,) what people think about the Church as a whole (always with a capital "C", this church, always the institution, not the people) how to run more than 10 kms in the sun, how to push myself to write better and snappier (ok, not on this blog,) how to eat small amounts of food day or night, just enough to keep going, how to talk politics and new media and the democratization of communication until I'm blue in the face...

But Montreal has never been home to me.

I'm heading back to my native land now, back to my family ranch, to the Wildman and love, to pasturage and green fields, to cows and horses and the slow agricultural life, to long runs along country lanes, to working at my own pace, to feeling anchored and secure.

I don't know if it's "home" yet, but it will serve fairly well until I get there.

Why I was a crappy newsperson

2010-02-10T10:17:00.002-05:00

A lot has happened this week in terms of job/career orientation. I didn’t get the grant I was hoping for, the one that would have enabled me to go to Mozambique this summer and report on development issues for different streams of media. After a long wait we submitted our applications in November and heard back in early February – I’m less disappointed than I expected to be.

(This is a photograph from the inside of an abandoned CN building on the edge of the Lachine Canal. It's where I photographed Michael Pinet, a young man squatting there for nine months. - Tobi Elliott)

Hingeing my hopes on it in December, I thought my life would be over if I didn’t get it. At that point I had no prospects, no idea of what I want to do after school, no confidence that I’d be able to make money or get a job doing what I love. In fact, I didn’t even know what I loved, or where to even start looking for employment doing -- whatever. It was all a mish mash of hopeless confusion, which pretty much sums up the four years I've spent in Montreal.

Production has always been very high on my priority list (I don’t know how to say this without being cliched.) At the end of the day (another cliche, sorry) if I can’t produce something in terms of a finished article, a plate of good food, a shoot that went well, an actual hardcopy of something that wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t put brains and brawn to it, then I don’t feel alive. Already a producer, now I'm beginning to narrow down what I want to produce.

Also, I'm starting to enjoy the act of writing again. This may seem seems unrelated to film production but it's not. They are actually inextricably linked because producing films is just one, long, protracted, agonizing, step-by-step act of listening and writing... writing many acts, putting together many scenes, writing in changes, editing and re-writing. You’re just using ears and eyes in a different way. The result looks different, but you need writing skills in both.

After years of being in a cold winter of having nothing to say, I'm putting aside time that I used to spend doing other useless things, and starting to write for an audience again because I'm coming across stories that matter. Michael was a big part of that, you can see that story on my other blog. I realized that I do really well when I can tell stories that make a difference in people's lives, stories that don't exploit them for my own gain. More on that in the third part.

Secondly, I want to have a production company so I can buy lots of expensive equipment. I kid you not. The only things in life I that I really enjoy spending money on are food, magazines of the literary persuasion (or the Sunday New York Times, yum!), and computer stuff. If I had a production company I could spend lots of dough on software, cameras, soundboards, cables, dollies, the list goes on. I could see myself spending lots of money, and having fun doing it. I think that’s important in life. If you work hard, make money, you should be able to spend it on things you want to. For example, I never cottoned on to the idea of paying down a mortgage to own a house. Houses are not a priority for someone who just wants to travel. I know real estate is a good investment but honestly, I would be much happier buying a van and living out of that, or a houseboat. And a storage locker to put all my nice expensive camera equipment in.

And thirdly, I’ve discovered I have an actual skill that will enable me to tell great stories. It's possibly my only qualification or talent as a writer or reporter. I suck at research, I'm not interested in hard news or blood or guts and accident scenes, and I really am not interested in the big issues that torment the media on a day-to-day basis.

In all modesty, I must confess that the only thing I'm truly talented at is making that essential connection with people, without which it’s impossible to get a good story. Frankly, I’m not a “big picture” person, I'm all about the individual. Issues, schm-issues. I can only concentrate on one person at a time, and I get wildly excited about their dreams and vision, totally caught up in their struggle and challenge, and that’s all that matters to me. That is my universe for the day. Then, when it’s recorded or written or photographed, I am content and can move on. I’ve done my job.

Making the personal connection with each individual is a quality so essential in journalism we take it for granted. It's the one thing they can’t teach in school. There, they teach you how to structure a classic inverted pyramid news story, then how to write the classic anecdotal lead. The nut graph. The backed-in lead. I learned how to shoot a straight news piece, how to do longer form. I learned how to use different audio recorders, three-point lighting, to position mics and use a boom. I learned layout programs and film editing software... all these mechanical skills.

But I was frustrated because while I could DO anything – I can shoot, write, edit, record, package – I wasn't particularly good at any of them. I couldn't find my metier, my art. The only thing I was good at is making the connection, but I didn't realize it for a long time.

Because that was never emphasized or even talked about in class, I thought every day I must be crazy for going into journalism. None of this stuff they were teaching really fit, really mattered to me. It's mind-boggling to think about it now, but I really thought I couldn't be a good journalist because what I was learning in school and the workforce was how to use people in order to get to the story, so you could keep your job in an ever-narrowing workforce. (It’s actually not narrowing but widening, but that’s a story for another post.) It was all fear-based. Fear is the driver that keeps you motivated, keeps you on top of your sources, and fear of the competition getting the story first drove everything else. It's enough to make you want to go mad. In that exploitative equation there was no room for respect for the person and the subject of your story. It was all about you, getting your story, and getting it on the air or published.

So I felt pretty hopeless for most of my time here. I felt like the only real skill I had – connecting with people and making them feel important and valued – was no use in this field. And I tried hard, I really did. I tried to be cut-and-dried and all business, to get in there, get the story and get out. To use whatever words I had to in order to persuade someone to open up, so I could record their soundbite and get the hell out of there.

But it’s a shitty way to operate if you want to stay human... if you want to keep your heart. Operating in “the news” can actually kill a person’s soul, although there are a few good ‘uns, mostly older broadcasters, who seem to have been able to hang on to theirs.

On the other hand, telling stories, or “doing journalism” or whatever you want to call it, lets you keep your soul. It grows it. As you become connected to others, hearing who they are and where they come from, really listening... you learn, you grow, you expand your knowledge of humanity.

And that’s what I’m all about, folks. Thank God I discovered it before it was too late.

Wildman, Billy and Me

2010-02-06T11:01:00.017-05:00

There is an unusual third wheel in my relationship with the Wildman: Billy Corgan. One of my man's great loves is that alt-rock singer and the Smashing Pumpkins, who broke all the music rules in the nineties and ushered in some truly groundbreaking songwriting along with complicated, angst-ridden angry melodies. Billy had a cult following of die-hard fans whose internal emotional lives were shaped entirely by his densely-layered music – fans who, a decade later, would turn to hatred when, in 2000, he broke up the band and left them twisting in the wind.

Like children of divorced parents, his fans tried to settle into other loves, other bands, but it was always an uneasy relationship, and they longed for the day when the Pumpkins returned. In 2005, Billy took out a full page ad in Chicago's two biggest newspapers to say "... now I want you to be among the first to know that I have made plans to renew and revive The Smashing Pumpkins. I want my band back, and my songs, and my dreams." Ecstatic, most fans jumped back on the bandwagon, then off again when they realized the sound had changed, that there was little about the old Pumpkins to trigger the teenage angsty memories.

But not my Wildman. His fierce love for Billy and his songs and his heart-core emotional compositions that rattle and rage and soothe, is on another plane entirely. He has always been faithful to Billy, from the early days to mainstream success, through the breakup, subsequent solo album, and back to the reformed band. Billy's influence is writ large in his life, in music, song and poetry, in thought and inner dialogue. I sometimes think Billy expresses what Wildman would say when he is still struggling to find the words.

All this was lost on me before I met Wildman. I was immune to Billy's charms. In fact, his voice had always grated on me and in the nineties if a Smashing Pumpkins song came on the radio I would quickly switch to another channel. "Why do they let him on the radio? That whiny wail of his... geez!" Not only did I not get the appeal, I disliked him. So when I met Wildman and began to appreciate how deep his love for Billy ran, I found I had some decisions to make, and quickly.

I decided to try and appreciate what he loved about the artist, but no more. I tried hard to hear what Wildman was hearing. I never bought in entirely, didn't buy an album, but I didn't disdain the music either. I never told him I hated his voice, and even, as time went on and I listened to more advanced stuff (I still can't stand the angsty 90s stuff) I grew to appreciate it... a little.

Billy isn't the only thing we don't have in common. There's also his passion for the bike, and everything involved in road racing culture. If he had it his way, he'd be cycling five hours a day, every day, especially if there's a headwind and definitely if it's up a 30 degree hill. I don't get on a bike unless it's summer and my destination is only 20 minutes away, and the road there is relatively flat. I'm no wimp, but I'm not a sucker for punishment in the form of a tiny saddle navigating through nasty Montreal traffic, and I don't like sweat dripping in my eyes.

The third big thing in Wildman's life and lexicon is hips. I won't get into the details, because even after a year of hearing the most intimate details about this joint that so deeply impacts his life, I can't tell you much about it except there's an acetabular cup somewhere, and the ball that fits in the socket is attached to your femur, and how they work together enables you to walk and sit and run. I don't pay attention to them because they've never given me trouble, but Wildman's hips are the opposite of trouble-free. So he has gone to great lengths to inform himself about what goes on inside them, particularly what kind of devices are used in hip replacements, and he knows way more than any layman should ever need to know about surgery and what happens when a faulty hip is replaced. He's Encyclopaedia Britannica, I'm Cliff's notes.

So when I hear about Billy, bikes and hips, I'm tempted to sigh. It's not that I hate hearing about these passions of his for the 20th time, but I really don't get it.

And sometimes, it makes me wonder if we're really a good fit. If I am so out to lunch about the things that make him tick... then what will keep us together? Aren't you supposed to like the same things, have at least some passions in common? Sure, we have coffee, good food and a love of a good story (but never the same one, usually!) But the really big, stuff, shouldn't we have those in common?

At the same time, this man is so essential to my wellbeing that if I don't hear from him for 24 hours, I get itchy, irritable, anxious and mad at the world for no good reason. I wrote in my diary this morning: "He is my bread and butter, my roll of toilet paper, my cuppa Joe. I don't know how to live without a connection to him anymore. I feel like I need an IV with a constant Wildman drip of joy."

Sure, life without Wildman would have a whole lot less hip-talk, and less Billy-music, and less bike-chatter. But I would have less joy too, so much less of what has become something fundamental and wonderful in my life. I don't truly value - yet - what he loves, and if I do, it's more out of respect for him than understanding. But somehow that lack of connection with the things he loves doesn't remotely touch the deep love I have for the man himself. This love goes so far beyond what he does and what he thinks about, what he spends his time and money on, what fuels and feeds him.

The Wildman is simply the most amazing, confounding, profoundly puzzling, kinetically exciting man I've ever come across.

While Billy's whiny song blares on in the background and Wildman tells me again how much it moves him, I don't want to look away from his beloved face, so lit up with delight that I can't stand it. I feel like I'm drinking wine, watching him like this. When he talks about the device in his hip, and how he's worried about the surgeon's work, I want to make love. I fall into a dreamy trance, listening to him talk about things I can't relate to. While he waxes poetic about the most amazing ride he had, or the recent memory of conquering a mountain, I want to bake him delectable goodies and feed him baklava, my favourite dessert, by hand.

I may not understand his loves, but by God, I love him for loving them.

And what's more, I'm slightly comforted knowing that our connection is deeper than the things that make us tick. Maybe, if I've truly fallen in love with this man and not what he does, we'll make it in the long run when all the other stuff shifts or falls away. If the only thing holding us together is a profound appreciation for the other person - not their job, their pay, their passion, their style, their hobbies and their little loves and fascinations - then maybe we have a chance of enduring through all the changes of circumstances that life throws at us.

Maybe, even, I don't need to understand him at all. Maybe it's enough to marvel at "wot God wrought", to listen in wonder at what makes him tick, to try and tune in to what ignites his heart and fuels his engine... and not demand that it be the same fuel that drives mine.

Maybe it's enough to simply get lost in the fascination of another perfectly unique human being, a man who loves Billy, bikes and hips... and me.

The Hippest Man in Town

2010-01-25T23:47:00.005-05:00

A very very good day today.

The Wildman had his major hip surgery this morning. A call-out to friends and family to pray during the event generated an amazing response. Friends who believe in prayer said they would pray. Many others who don't believe that prayer does anything at all still chose to join in and offer up a thought or a meditative moment for this amazing man.

He came through SMASHINGLY! I mean, really, really great. 100% as good as we can hope for.

For those of you who don't yet know... the Wildman had a hip resurfacing done a year and a half ago. It didn't "take" to his joint, that is, his bones didn't grab the rough metal surface and grow a part of it and make it a whole, functioning joint. Consequently it was slipping out of place. If you can imagine a large metal cup in your hip, slowly nudging it's way down, pressing into bone because there's no cartilage there, causing muscle to flap over it at times... it just was a weird, uncomfortable and very often painful thing for him to go through for over a year. (It didn't stop him from cycling though :-)

Not only that, but the device they put in him was made by Zimmer, and that particular device, which his surgeon stressed to him was the very best and latest in technology, has widely fallen out of use. In some instances it has been recalled off the market and patients are suing the manufacturer in the U.S. because it apparently can cause "pseudo-tumours". Wildman found this out two months after it was sewn into his body.

And ON TOP of THAT, the operating surgeon NICKED his femur. That's right, there's a small notch in his bone that wasn't there before the surgery. Talk about insult to injury.

Needless to say, Wildman was not looking forward to this revision and second surgery, especially since the same team - although not the same surgeon - would be operating on him. It means a total hip replacement, not just a resurfacing like he had the last time that preserved most of his bone. This time the femur head came off. He was a little sad about that but had become used to the idea.

But somehow... it's all turned out amazingly. According to his sister, who was the first to see him in hospital today, he looks totally different than he did after the last surgery. She said in a text: "He is well- it was a success! The Doc called to let me know he's 100% good. He says hello, is a little bit groggy but way better than last time! I will keep you posted!"

After talking to him, I am confident that there IS something different about this situation. He has peace, and a restful spirit about him that wasn't there before. I am confident the prayers had more than a little to do with it. And I'm humbly grateful.

Thank you. I can't thank you enough.

New Hip Man thanks you too :-)

When it's really broken... don't fix

2010-01-22T06:21:00.004-05:00

There are things you can fix in life, and things you can't.

I'm not sure I ever learned that lesson. I am the kind of person who believes that if I just show up in a difficult situation... if I listen well and hear what's really going on... if I apply the magnificent might of my energy and considerable enthusiasm... if I work and exhort and convince and argue and preach and debate and enthuse and cry and sympathize and cajole and laugh... I can usually turn that wretched situation into something pretty good.

Not to overstate the case, but people usually come around to my way of thinking, eventually. (Or maybe I just walk away convinced they do, but that's another story.) Gifted as an influencer, an encourager, a jumpstarter, a catalyst– most days, I think I can do anything.

But not these days.

Right now someone very dear to me is hurting deeply, and I can't fix it. Believe me, I've tried everything I know. Silence. Distance. I can't reach this person right now - whatever is eating at them is too deeply buried for my limited reach.

Because I'm not even in their proximity, it's not like I can just show up and take them for coffee and ask questions until we get to the meat of it. I can't even get a response to a flippin' letter, a text. My friend is out there wandering in a desert, and I have no way of getting to them.

I have nothing that will help this person. I can do nothing. (As you can tell I'm still mulling over this novel idea in my head. Repeating it helps me get the message. I know, I'm a little slow.) I just cry... and pray.

It's heart-wrenching to find yourself truly helpless in the face of someone else's adversity. Amazingly painful.

I wonder if that's how my Dad felt for two years as he watched Mom get sicker. As she lost weight, energy, functionality, as he watched her vibrant personality became overwhelmed by the simple effort just to survive, and then as she slowly let go her hold on life, and died - how did he feel, standing by, hands tied?

I wonder what that does to a person over the long haul, seeing that happen to someone you love, and unable to do a single thing about it. Maybe that's part of the reason we're afraid to love. Their pain becomes our pain, only unlike our pain, we can't do anything about it.

I see many traits of myself in him.

My Dad may not talk as much as I can (!) but he's diligent, faithful, hardworking and bull-headed. He will work himself to exhaustion to get something done... and done right. He won't spare himself when another's happiness is at stake, although that doesn't stop either of us from being incredibly selfish on occasion, too. He believes if he can just do enough... work hard enough... everything would turn out all right.

But it didn't turn out all right, or not at least the way we all hoped it would. Sickness overcame her healthy system, and Mom died last January at the age of 63.

Sometimes your best is not good enough.

And that's what breaks my heart in my situation: even if I were there at this very moment with my friend in their distress, I suspect I couldn't fix what's really going on. I could make things more comfortable for the moment and help with all the practical stuff. I could cajole and make them laugh, I could distract them from the pain. For a little while.

But I can't heal the pain that's really deep inside. Distraction only works for so long before we have to face it.

Maybe it's a good thing I'm not close by, because if they really need a deeper fix than the Tobi-fix, then my presence could actually prevent them getting a hold of it.

And I just have to accept that fact.

White tongue - begone!

2010-01-21T13:44:00.003-05:00

I'm finally seeing some results of this cleansing fast I did for the past ten days.

White coated tongue! Ewwww.... that's not a good thing, you say.

But yes it is! It means I have lots of Candida, the yeasty sugar-loving micro-organism that bites you in the gut. It feeds off things like sugar and breads, which we eat in abundance in North America, or at least I do.

But apparently on this fast I'm doing, which is to drink only freshly squeezed organic lemons, organic maple syrup, cayenne pepper and filtered water (it's not as weird as it sounds, it's really like lemonade, but nicer and with a kick) I GET RID of CANDIDA!

Or at least the over-enthusiastic parts of it.

That's great news for the gut. What have you done for your gut today?

Making the most of it - or "Lemons, lemons, lemons"

2010-01-20T22:32:00.005-05:00

My tv documentary team and I are in a quandry. We had a great story for our documentary class - a great story. Tyndale St Georges community centre has been taking care of kids in the Little Burgundy area for over 75 years. We went to visit last Friday and met this amazing man who leads the recreation classes for about sixty kids who are bussed there every day from their schools. He was one of those little kids once.

He came to the centre when he was 7 years old... played and learned there the whole time he went to school... then left the area... got a few odd jobs after he graduated... later saw an ad for a position at the centre... came back and got the job as a rec director... and he's been there 10 years.

He's the sweetest man. I desperately, immediately, want him on camera. With lots of kids around him. I can just see it. It will be amazing.

I tell the team, 3/5ths of whom were not at that meeting. I convince them this is a great plan. We will interview him at length, go to his old house, get a tour of the neighbourhood, maybe talk to his mom, etc. and then get a kid in the program who could talk about what the afterschool program means to him, what his life is like, etc. Big Kid and Little Kid. It was perfect.

We talked about it at length in class. Professor loved it and decided we were his new favourite team (we'd been a little slow to begin with.) We plotted out all sorts of ways how this could wonderful for us, for the centre, for the kids-- but especially for us.

That's where it went all wrong. I may have been a little hasty in making plans without first going back to the Directrice and the rec director, with whom we'd talked on Friday, after our initial conversation. See, they sounded so positive in the meeting... but maybe not. Maybe it was me who was so positive, and I just made everyone go along with what I wanted.

Because as it turns out, both directors expressed their reluctance to each other to go through with this. "Complicated. Too many forms to get parents to sign. We don't have time. Get the other story instead. The one about the employment centre." They both had been reluctant from the start. I just didn't see it.

Not only were they blowing me off, they were telling me which story to film! Um no. I want the kids. I need the kids. I must have the kids on camera.

But since I only found out their reluctance to play ball today and not three days ago when I could have convinced them, there may be no other choice. After setting up the shoot schedule for the team, writing out our proposed story, emailing the centre on Tuesday, and finally, after getting no reply, calling two or three times... I finally got to speak to the Directrice this afternoon (Weds) and find out it's pretty much a no-go.

What is with that!?

Argh. Sigh.

Moving on to Lessons learned:

1. Never assume someone wants to go along with your story and be interviewed, just because you're eager to interview them.

2. Follow up immediately after initial meetings with potential interviewees, just so you can kill those trolls of doubt that always start yammering at them as soon as you leave the room.

3. Never leave it as long as three days before you contact them again, and...

4. NEVER make a plan without getting consent. Even in your head. Go with the flow. Let the interviewees give you your cue. When they say yes, you make a plan.

Because by golly if you force someone into an interview or on camera just because you've set it up and scheduled it, and they feel they have no choice... it will be crap.

They will be crap on t.v. Your story will be crap.

And you will come out having learned a lesson... but on the wrong side of the camera.

Thank God I've found this out beforehand... when we still have a month left to shoot, edit and package the thing!

(Rough Cut due Feb 15. Get moving girl!)

A plug for my tv crew's blog "Fabric"

2010-01-20T11:33:00.001-05:00

20 Jan 2010

You can find our progress on THE show about Montreal, debuting April 2010. The show is called "fabric", and it’s going to be really really cool. I’m setting up interviews for it right now.

http://fabricmontreal.wordpress.com

Watch this site.

Hey! Maybe you can help! If you know someone who was in the manufacturing industry in the 80s and 90s and watched it all go down, send me an email at tobi.elliott@gmail.com.

Argh! Somebody tell me to quit!

2010-01-19T09:24:00.003-05:00

Allow me the privilege of venting and whining a bit. This page is the only place I'll get sympathy, because nobody feels sorry for a sane person whose fridge is full of food, who voluntarily deprives themselves of food until they're horribly miserable.

I sooo want to quit this damn fast. I mean, I want to quit this damn cleanse - fast!

It's day seven of a ten day dietary cleanse. I haven't eaten since Tuesday night last week, which makes six WHOLE days without food, going on seven (well... except for that tiny sliver of flatbread last night - I didn't really eat it... it sort of went down whole...)

I'm seriously wavering on whether I want to go for the full ten days. Can I last until Friday? I've started getting woozy again during the day and if I don't drink the lemon juice mix my head empties of all thought and I just sort of stand dully on the sidewalk or wherever I happen to be until someone jostles me forward to get me moving again. Not a pretty picture.

I do not feel as exhilarated as I did at the start.

Isn't that what a cleanse is supposed to do? Make you feel exhilarated? Above it all? Able to leap mountains in a single bound? I most definitely do not feel like leaping.

I find I'm trying to rationalize my way out of this. For example:

Friday I have a dinner with a possible TV story subject, so I imagine how awkward it will be if it's just him eating and me looking longingly at his plate while voraciously drinking orange juice.

So maybe, in the interest of journalism, I should break the fast Thursday night so I can at least eat a plate of veggies Friday and not... make him feel uncomfortable.

Or... salad. Salad really gets me because it's not really a FOOD. I see those little shredded bits of green, crunchy leaves, essentially water+nutrients and think, You're not food, you skinny little thing, you! Salad is merely the healthy appetizer before you get your plate of food. It preps your stomach to receive all those hot, nourishing meat dishes, those dripping, calorically abusive pasta sauces, those decadent, naughty, lovely desserts, and those oh-so-essential after-dinner coffees...

Shouldn't I be prepping my stomach?

I sigh. I take another gulp of lemon-maple syrup juice. It's all lies.

Either do, or don't do, as the wizened Yoda would say. If I'm doing this thing, I'm doing it.

I will go on. Just for today.

Shudder. I must face the Eliminax tea next. You can only imagine what that's like....

Remembering Mom

2010-01-17T00:42:00.003-05:00

One year ago today.. well, actually yesterday since it's past midnight here in Montreal, we held a funeral service in Abbotsford for my Mom.

She died January 7, 2009 of cancer.

We really miss you Mom. Donna. You are irreplaceable to so many people. We still feel the space in our lives where you used to dance and laugh and cook wonderful food.

Hope you're dancing in heaven today.

Lots of love, always your daughter, Tobi

letter to you...

2010-01-17T00:29:00.004-05:00

Having started up another, slightly more professional blog at http://tobielliottjourno.wordpress.com, where you can find nifty articles and even some pictures, I haven't visited this site in about six months.

I'm at a loss of what to write. How does one do this personal journal thingy again?

Soooo... out of sheer laziness and a frank desire to sleep sometime before morning, I've pretty much cut and pasted a random letter to a friend who tells me I never write. I never write, it's true. And here I am, botching my own journal. I should be shot by a party of journalists who hunt for lazy creatures like me... people who ONLY go to school and don't have a job on the side, intern at a news agency, blog five times a day or wear perfect makeup, ever. I should be shot.

Here is my lazy excuse for a journal. It's not even funny I promise.

Hi friend,

How are you today?
I'm good. I'm fasting, haven't eaten for awhile so am probably a little hyper and abnormal. Please ignore it.

Fasting and cleansing, that's what I'm up to. Master Cleanse with organic lemon juice and maple syrup and cayenne, it's marvelous, you should try it, I've done it once before and vowed to do it again so started last Wednesday.

I love it. 10 days. No food, just this and herbal laxative tea to keep everything coming out. And, occasionally when I can stomach it, a litre of salt water to flush everything out -- ohhhh it's horrible! Anyway I'll spare you the details.

Man Update: still with Wildman. We're good. I like him as my very best friend, not sure we'll make it all the way and be together all our lives (ie. the M word) but frankly I don't care, as long as we're friends I'm happy.

He's having surgery on the 25th, 8 days to go. Lots of people are praying but would appreciate if you'd add yours too... because...

This operation is to replace his right hip, and it's pretty invasive and traumatizing, however he will be able to walk with a walker straight away. Only thing is he had a bad experience last time, which is why this same hip is being redone, cut into again, and even more bone being sawn off. So pray/ask/meditate on his behalf for peace and confidence that the whole thing will be A-OK. Surgeon, the device, the saws, the operating room, the recovery, everything... thank you my dear!!!

Back to me: My birthday yesterday was so so. Would have been much better if you'd been there. As I couldn't eat or drink, there was no party to plan or places to go out. I went to school in the morning, an interview at 1, an electrolysis treatment at 230, a meeting with a friend who will become an interview subject at 400 (be warned my friends!), a meeting with another friend to see a wild, fantasmic, feel-good Indian film, 3 idiots, that nevertheless will have you covering your ears in the dance musical scenes, then a meet with another friend at 10, then home at midnight and finally, FINALLY to bed.

I was a tired bunny this morning. And I had no maple syrup left so had to shlep to the shop and buy some but since it must be organic was hunting to find it. So was spacey until 11 am when I could finally drink my drink, then had lots of energy and housecleaned until 3 when I took a bath, then read and answered emails in my bathrobe and helped someone with a letter they were writing and then skyped with xx (finally! only second time since September) then talked to about 5 more people then wrote more emails and basically didn't leave my room at all and now it's midnight and a half and I'm still here... writing letters... to you.

And that's my life in 24 short hours.

Agent? Agent? Anybody here a literary agent?

2009-07-23T14:48:00.003-04:00

Book report:

As of this week I began the (scary, somewhat intimidating) process of sending out query letters to prospective literary agents. Agents, for the uninitiated, are the champions who negotiate contracts with publishing houses and film studios, work the marketplace on your behalf and basically launch you into the world of the written world. I didn't know of their actual existence until about a week ago, and then I was frantic to learn everything I could. They are scarily essential to anyone wanting to publish a book that will be read by more than their circle of family and kind friends.

So here, forthwith, is the letter I've sent off to the first of I-hope-not-too-many agents in hopes of grabbing their attention. Maybe they'll even ask to see a synopsis, or worse, an entire manuscript. (*shiver*) Better get back to editing...

Dear Ms. X,

We are looking for an agent for our adventure fiction novel. Our story is based on actual events that took place in 2005 at Turkey’s largest racetrack when a natural horsewoman– the author, Ingela Larsson– a total outsider to the closed, male-dominated circles of horse racing in the Middle East, was invited to fix a troubled Turkish Thoroughbred, Wolf’s Son.

The book is called Wolf’s Son - A novel based on the life of Wolf's Son, a racehorse. The word count currently stands at approx. 90,000. As there has been considerable interest in the possibility of a movie based on the book (directors in L.A., the U.K. and Italy are already asking for the completed manuscript) we are looking for an agent who would not only be able to secure international publishing contracts but also pursue interested filmmakers and scriptwriters.

Below, we've outlined A) a brief summary of the book, B) the authors' biographies, and C) the first thirty pages (the prologue and two chapters) of the manuscript. We will forward a complete synopsis of the plot if you’re interested in the project. Your agency is the first to which we've submitted a query and sample of the manuscript, but we do plan to approach others in the next few weeks. If we receive an offer of representation from another agency, we will let you know in order to give you a chance to extend an offer as well.

We thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

Sincerely, Ingela Larsson and Tobi Elliott

(I had to check my name three times to make sure I spelled it right.)

Will post samples from the most exciting chapters in the coming weeks... Keep your eyes peeled and appetite whetted...

That's why they call it 'Puppy Love'

2009-07-21T18:35:00.006-04:00

The truth of it is, my sister is just not completely herself without a dog to love... And both of her lovely dogs had died this year. The last one, Annie, had gone just last week after breaking her shoulder. Hmmm... I thought. We probably shouldn't wait too long to get her a new puppy. Annie's death was pretty hard to take on top of everything else that's been going on.

'Everything' included losing my mom, losing her first dog, Arnie, getting laid off, losing another friend to cancer... it had been an all-round shitty year for my sis. She'd be the first to say so.

Her birthday wasn't until mid-August so I had to make up a list of justifications for springing a dog on her early. The clincher was actually going to see some pups. After checking out as many ads online as I could, I got a call back from a lady who lived right around the corner from us in Bradner. They were practically next door to the Farm, and man, once I saw those puppies, I completely fell in love with the entire litter's blue-eyed adorableness. That's why they call it puppy love.

I vowed to cajole her husband, B. until he crumbled.

"B., they are really really cute. Devastatingly cute." I send him pictures. "Do you think she really only wants a chocolate or a golden lab?"

"Hmmmm... this is S. we're talking about. I think she would pretty much love anything with puppy breath," he says slowly.

We make covert phone calls back and forth all afternoon, coming bit by bit to the same conclusion. I let him say it first.

"Yeah, Tobs, I think we should get one right away," he says eventually. Man! It was sooo hard to twist his arm! Unbelievable, what a tough-nut that guy is!

"SWEET!" I yelp. I think it was thinking about puppies all day that made me do it. B. convinces me to call S. and invite them over to dinner. Then we could somehow get them next door and look at the puppies. Done! Brilliant plan!

Not so much. S. didn't want to come over. "No offense, Tobs, but I just don't feel up to it. I'm sorry, but I'm feeling really low. Can we take a rain check?"

Damn! Double, double damn! And this was the day we actually had a real meal prepared, with all the real ingredients and stuff. This wouldn't happen for another three weeks! Whatever. I arrange it with B. that I'll come over later that evening and convince S. to come for a drive all the way out to our place. Hah. No idea how to do that, of course, so I start praying. What was a little sister to say? Jesus, help.

I go over to their house around seven o'clock, thinking furiously the whole way. When I get there I swiftly lay out my brilliant pretext to get S. to come out to The Farm right away: "S., I need you to check something out."

"What? Why?"

"Ummm, I can't tell you." This wasn't going so well. It had sounded better in my head.

"Now?"

"Yes, it's kind of urgent," I flap my hands urgently, indicating urgency. "It's something I need you to see it in person. You can bring the boys if you want."

She looks at the Mike's Hard Lemonade into which she'd been drowning her Annie-related sorrows. "This sounds bad... is it good or bad?" she asks, suspiciously. Evidently S. doesn't like not knowing what's going on. I am surprised. I thought she'd go right along with my super-brilliant idea.

"Ummm...." I say, thinking hard. "It's not... TER-rible. But I do need you. We need your advice on something."

She sighs, big-sister like, nodding her head, probably thinking, What would these crazy Elliott kids do without me? What happened? Did they explode something in the pool? Throw the BBQ out the upstairs window? Suck gas out of a car with the vacuum cleaner, again? Honestly! She stares moodily at her Mike's, probably thinking they should go off and be alone somewhere. Somewhere private. Somewhere where there were no Elliotts.

"S., it's really important. I wouldn't ask you if it wasn't, I know you've been having a rough time. Please."

She sighs again, a bigger one this time. I wonder if she's contemplating throwing Mike at me and making a run for the basement.

Even though B. was in on the plan he pretended dumbness. "Well S., sounds like we should go check it out... I mean, a drive this evening might be nice. Yeah, come on boys, get your things." I think he deserves an Oscar. I mean, it was really well played.

The boys chime in, thankfully. "Yeah, let's go!!" I'd already asked them to go along with whatever I was saying, although that meant they bugged me sotto voce every two minutes to tell them what the surprise was all about.

"Alright," S. says, saying goodbye to what's left of Mike with one long, chugging swallow.

We get in the car and drive to The Farm, S. and the boys in my car and B. trailing us. As we drove up Bradner I called J. and M. to let them know we were close so they could come over too. As we drive right past The Farm suddenly S. has cottoned on to something. I think Mike tipped her off. "Hey! Is this a surprise or something? What's going on?" she asks. No, it was more of a demand come to think of it. Whatever. She's my older sister and she's getting a puppy and for once in her life she can just NOT KNOW something ahead of time. "Nope, nothing!" I say cheerily.

In the backseat the boys are practically vibrating with barely suppressed tension. K. lets out a giggle.

"Ah, no. No surprise," I said, lamely. I realize again how much I suck at making up excuses. I don't think I'll ever be able to have an affair, I suddenly realize. "We're just going somewhere else. It's not far."

We turn the corner, then another, then turn into a driveway, nearly mowing down the group of people standing in the driveway. I was suddenly scared they were there to take the last of the pups and I/we would be left without. Lab puppies ready-to-go and under $800 were harder to find than consistent sizing at Lululemon. For some reason that fear made my foot push down harder on the accelerator than I meant to. Thankfully they scattered.

We pull up behind a car and S. says in genuine confusion, "What's going on?" We're in somebody's strange driveway and there seems to be no reason for it.

To my left I can see a little black pup ambling around on the lawn. Thank GOD! There is still at least one left. I point to him. "See, we're going to see some puppies."

S. looks at me with her big baby blues wide open, and then abruptly bursts into tears. For one awful moment I'm afraid I've made a terrible mistake. It's too soon. I shouldn't have brought her to see black puppies. She's going to fall apart!

"S., we're just going to look at them. I thought you could pick one if you want him, the whole family is in on it," I'm totally babbling. "But if you want another one, like a chocolate, or a golden one, we can wait, but I wanted to let you know we want to get you a puppy for your birthday, it's from the family, everyone is in on it, M. and J. and Mom and Dad VW and your other sister... "

I've spilled half my bottle of water on my seat and am now sitting in it, awkwardly trying to comfort S. over the drooling mama dog that has meanwhile hopped into the car with us. The minute I opened my door she bounded across to us, tits wildly flapping about, leapt into my seat and jumped on S. as if to say, "Hey there! Welcome! Come check out what I made!" Then she jumps off again, leaving S. crying harder than ever.

"I can't look at them, I can't!" she sobs. Tears ran down her face and I felt such compassion for her. My poor sister! We had to convince her to get a dog!

"S., yes you can! Just have a look, we can get it for you if you want. And if it's not what you want then we'll find another one for you. It's an early present," I said, as gently as I could.

M. and J. had meanwhile pulled up and thank heaven for that, because our brother M. can give hugs that make just about anything all right again. He envelops S. in his arms and then they slowly head over to the shed where the puppies were sequestered. K. and B. Jr. had long scrambled out and were excitedly running amok with the chihuahua and the mama Lab, and divebombing the lone Lab baby that had been left out.

The visit couldn't have taken more than half an hour. It took that long for S. to get over her shock of what had just happened and get used to the idea that maybe, maybe she'd be able to fill one of those empty doghouses sooner rather than later. Three puppies romped and played with the two boys, scrambling after their heels, licking their faces and biting their ears and generally making a delightful nuisance of themselves. We had two to choose from, a boy and a boy, a red collar or a brown collar. They were both equally cute, equally puppyish and equally perfect. When S. started trying out names for the one in the red collar I knew we'd settled on something, and it was going to be ok. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The boys were overjoyed. B. was chuffed he'd made the right call to get her a puppy right away, and S. was almost swooning, totally in love. All was as it should be...

They decided to come pick it up the next day to give themselves time to get ready, set up a cage or a fence for the little guy to run around in. All the way back to The Farm we discussed names for the little guy. I'll tell you what they settled on when I know....

It's been awhile folks

2009-07-12T22:31:00.004-04:00

I think I'm ready to approach this Page again.

I must admit, this empty space
this very space right...

HERE

... really intimidated me for awhile.
For about, oh, five months or so.

Even the thought of it totally did me in.

"An empty page."

I couldn't think of what to fill it with, even though there was so much to say.
What to write?

- Mom's death?
- the arrival of my first Love, Mr. WildMan?
- the tumultuous implications of having a Love?
- my family and their slow recovery from losing a central figure?
- the on-again-off-again drama of a stunning, mind-boggling, unlooked-for, kaleidoscopic, once-in-a-lifetime relationship?
- the "I love you so much I can't live without you, WildMan", and, "why don't you get the hell out of my life I never want to see you again," kind of emotions?
- my kickass garden and its luscious crop of tomatoes?
- the erstwhile pristine blue pool we slowly let bloom with green algae while Dad is away?
- the pleasure and pain of writing a first novel, hating a first novel, and falling for it all over again when said novel reinvents itself as a newly-interesting little something (it's like a girl with long hair putting it up in a complicated twist after wearing it down for so long you can't imagine her as anything else but Girl-With-Long-Hair, and then she looks like a different girl, but really isn't)?

There was so much swirling around in my little life –
so much that compressed itself into such a few short months –
so much to say and yet –
I had no words for it.
None fit for public consumption anyway.

I have not been a public person for many moons now, and that suited me just fine. It was enough just to live my life and keep to myself, my WildMan, my family and a garden.

And a book. You'll hear all about that little adventure, you will indeed.

But for now, it's enough to know that I'm ready to be public again about this intensely internal process, and let you in to the little stories of what I've lived along the way.

Welcome back to my Page. Are you ready?

The twist in the Tale

2009-02-17T13:30:00.009-05:00

(I realize this post's title is so well-used it could be called insipid, but in this case I think you'll forgive me when you see how well it fits the story you are about to read...)

It's been a ridiculously long period since my last post but I plead extraordinary, mitigating circumstances.

I could give a million excuses for my absence. You, the public, would be most easily satisfied if I justified my lack of communication with an appropriate tale of woe, such as how hard it was to pick up the thread of life after losing Mom... or how my own sadness is tangled with my Dad's depth of sorrow... or how I worry about my uncertain future... or how I've struggled, not just with grief, but with the sheer amount of housework required by a massive country house Mom kept faithfully for 27 years... etc., etc. Poor Tobi. However, those excuses, while all true to a point, are not the actual reason I've left off writing.

To wit, my excuse– the truest reason– is... I've been caught up in a love story.

It started virtually the day my Mom passed away. Before the funeral (which was beautiful and cathartic by the way), someone came into my life in such a manner that I was immediately dumped from the pages of my sad story and plunged into the utterly unfamiliar territory of a most satisfying kind of story, a Story of mythic proportions involving heroism, courage, the saving of Princesses and the capture of a Beauty.

You'll forgive me if I say that I've been too staggered by the abrupt change in circumstances to know how best to tell it.

Talk about strange timing. One significant person streams out of my life, leaving memories of gentle touches and kind eyes, and just as I'm about to plunge headlong into a season of wet grief and tearing sadness, I'm thrown entirely in the other direction, straight into the arms of an unexpected, healing, joyous experience instead. Who can predict Life's strange turns? When can we say the Story is over? Who decides when one chapter closes and another one opens?

To say the least, the latest twist in my Story is almost surreal, and certainly it can be called strange, even uncanny. But it is also Glorious... Enchanting... Exquisite and terrifying all at once. I half-hold my breath even now, in awe of what beautiful gifts God might have for me just around the corner. Would that I could live every day fully torn by expectant delight at the marvels that can come without warning, even in the midst of terrible grief and suffering!

(Go see the movie Slumdog Millionaire if you need a graphic illustration of this truth.)

So stay tuned for an amazing, incredible adventure of a Story - one that has never been told, and never been equaled. For every love Story is unique and deserves a telling, and every one of them has a message for us. Every true story that provides a glimpse of redemption in the cold crippled world we inhabit also carries a seed within in, a truth that if grabbed onto and deposited into our heart of hearts gives us the opportunity to live our lives more courageously, more deeply and more joyously than ever before.

I'll tell you all the story someday.

Once more, apologies for leaving you hanging but... all will be told in due time.

What would change if you knew you mattered?

2009-01-15T05:07:00.006-05:00

I am speaking at Mom's memorial tomorrow. I have been up all night thinking about it- well not yet 'all night' as it's still only 2 am, but still, I can't sleep until I get something down. Since this seems to be my only outlet these days, for better or worse, here are my scrambled thoughts on Mom.

For the only first and last time in history, friends, intimates of Donna and her far-flung family will gather for the sole, heartrending task of honouring and loving her. The focus of the memorial will be to remember her person, her gifts and life and look on what she left to this world. We will try to stay upbeat, focusing on her life, not her death. We will comfort one another and cry and release a lot of pain and emotion. We will think about our own lives, the lives of our kids, parents, friends, aunts, boyfriends, sisters, fathers, and what, possibly, we mean to them and they to us. We will think, perhaps fleetingly, on what others would say if they gathered at such a memorial, for us.

What can I say in tribute to this woman? What will properly express what her life meant to me and to so many others? Should I talk about her accomplishments, her ability to connect with people, her talent for painting and capturing light, her mouth-watering cooking? Should I talk about her love of kittens and all things soft and furry, her soft heart and sparkling eyes, her houseplants and violets, her bitter cold war against clutter? Should I point to the four grown kids she watered and grew with love, the endless, countless hours of care she lavished on us at her own expense, the twice, thrice, four times daily trek to town from our home in the country on our behalf? Should I talk about the hour-long bathtub sessions where it seemed she retreated almost daily for a much-needed repose from 1979 (when I was born) to 1995 (when her youngest turned 10), her love for essential oils, natural foods, organic everything?

How do you sum up a life?

I'm puzzled. Frankly, there is no possibility of a 'sum up'. There are no easy words, there is no obvious, single story to tell. She was a complicated woman. Sometimes I think she was more complicated than most, but then again she was my mother.

The problem is, I feel that Mom's legacy to me is due not to her accomplishments or talents, but to something I considered a weakness in her. How do you tell that to a crowd?

The weakness I saw in my mother throughout her life was her need for love. I described in the previous post how badly I judged her for it and tried, and failed, to live differently. I failed because my life has completely changed in the past week because I finally acknowledged I NEED. It has been a drastic, rug-pulling, startling shift on every level, but that is a story for another post. I can tell you though that no lesson my mother tried to impart to me during her life has had the impact of what I learned just before she died.

So let that encourage you. Maybe your very most secret weakness can be someone else's turning point, their awakening, their unveiling.

Mom's weakness was for love. She was a sucker for it. She would melt if anyone gave her a good hug, a spontaneous and heartfelt compliment, a word of praise or thanks. She was deeply grateful for encouragement and affection, and gave it just as delightedly to those around her. She - and this is the part I judged most about her - didn't shy from asking for love or attention or affection. Whether it was teaching her husband how to hold-and-hug her instead of resorting to catch-and-release, or talking and talking and talking and talking and talking to us kids until she got around to her point and figured out what she was trying to say (sort of like this scrambled post when I think about it), or pursuing the hearts of friends with frankly honest letters and embarassingly open phone calls... Mom demanded to be noticed, appreciated and loved.

She wanted to know that people loved her, simple as that.

But it wasn't a one-way street. She loved people so much, she couldn't get enough of them. If you could have crawled into her skin to see her heart you would have seen the faces of thousands of people she has loved. How I wish she was here to see all the people who are coming just for her, to love her and say goodbye and weep at her absense. She would have loved seeing them there for her.

I believe I will try something different at the memorial in her honour. She's not here to listen in to our accolades of her specialness and tributes to her vibrant life. I probably didn't tell her enough while she was in front of me what a wonderful person she was. So maybe, instead of telling everyone else that, I'll encourage everyone at the memorial to do something a little risky, something they have needed permission to do, but had always meant to get around to anyway.

I'm going to ask everyone to tell someone close to them, you matter to me.
You are important in my life.
You are loved. You are special.
What you have to say is significant.
You are heard. You are wonderful.
You are something the world has never seen.

Wouldn't it be amazing if we didn't wait to tell our nearest ones that they're wonderful and they make a difference in our lives? Think of how much of a difference it would make to your day, your week, if someone told you that. Would it change the way you see yourself? Would you maybe start to realize that your words have impact, and consider more carefully what you say? Would you wonder that if people are really hearing you, maybe you need to say things of a different nature? Would you be awed and humbled that people really could see into your heart, and start to see into their hearts with new eyes? What would change in your life if people told you, you really really matter to me?

Maybe it's trite, maybe it will sound hokey, maybe a lot of people are already doing it to their everyday beloveds. Maybe they don't want to take advice from a thirty-year-old (Yay! It's my birthday today and I can't tell you how little I feel like celebrating) who is just learning the basics. Well tough. Because if even one person can acknowledge that someone they've taken for granted for a long time actually means a great deal to them, I think Mom would be pleased. She'd say right on. So I'll do it for her.

xox
Mom, I love you.
You were great.
You were loved.
You were wonderful.
Your love changed my life.
Your words mattered to me.
You shone, you radiated, you were luminous.
You impacted the world and everyone around you, just by being you.
Thank you for your life.
xox

Mom's last lesson

2009-01-12T00:14:00.007-05:00

This story is a little complicated and a bit long, and it doesn't have many (any) pictures to accompany it, so you'll just have to make up your own. But it's 100% true, and I think it needs to be told because it has stayed lodged in my mind as something significant. I think if you bear with the length you'll see what I see at the end, and you might even grasp what I call My Mom's Last Lesson. Here goes.

Being strong and capable is not a problem for me. You need something organized? I'll do it. You need to fit thirty random strangers in a room and feed them and make a party? I'll sort it. Your dog just vomited all over the carpet and ate your homework and destroyed your love life? I have a fix for it. You need someone who will push past tiredness and irritability and get the menial tasks done way past bedtime? (as long as it's not cleaning my own room) Get Tobi. She's available 24-7 for whatever you need.

But what I do have a problem with is admitting that I'm weak. In fact, you will find your ever-willing Tobi to be suddenly unavailable when she's struggling with needs or hurts of her own. Let's call it the Chronic Martyr. Its mantra goes like this: I'll be there for you, always, but I won't allow you to be there for me, because frankly, I don't need your help.

That mantra for me was forever turned on its head the night before my Mom died.

Something people have been trying to tell me for a long, long time but which I haven't seen until now is that I act like I don't need anybody. It's true. If you cross-examined me on a witness stand I would tell you in all honesty that I don't believe I need anyone or anything in this world, that I can get on just fine by myself, and that people just don't matter as much to me as I seem to matter to them. I am an island of self-sufficiency.

While I recognize that since people give me gifts all the time, and since I am the recipient of a remarkable number of donations of the sort that you could say I actually do need, such as lifts into town, say, or money or food or lodging or a bed or help with a broken down car - this could seem to be a bit of a logistical problem. But due in part to my remarkable brain and my incredible lack of ability to process statistical data, I have rationalized it with the argument that what I receive as a result of other people's largess or kindness of heart is either pretty much my due, or that I could have done without it. So therefore, I need no one. I certainly won't go begging for help. If someone has something to give me, that's great. Otherwise, I'll get along just great on my own, thank you very much.

What does this have to do with Mom's last night, you ask? Well, let me tell you... it all started with a tantrum.

It was comical, really. I had been with Mom since the morning, knitting peacefully by her side, occasionally stretching out on the couch for a wee nap, and catching up on a serial from my favourite publication, the NYTimes Magazine. Mom was quiet for the most part, in and out of consciousness for the most part, unable to settle down to sleep. She was vocal but what she managed to say didn't make much sense. It was clear there wasn't much time left. When other siblings began to arrive that evening, I left to give them some time alone with her and went home to collect a few things as I was coming back later to spend the night.

Wonderful Tobi. What a daughter, what a splendid, sacrificing model of daughterly love. Sometimes I make myself sick with my saccharine sweetness, but that's ok, because I was about to be upstaged by my own stinky humanness. We are never so purely good that we can't be brought right back to earth with the very simplest of things.

When I arrived back at the hospice it was after 9 p.m. What I hadn't known until that moment was that the all-access card I had been given to get up to the restricted area had one tiny, itsey restriction along with it: it didn't open the main doors to the hospital after 9 p.m. I was locked out.

I was baffled. How could I be stuck outside, in the snow, and the rain, with no way in? I was meant to be sitting with my mother, I was supposed to be... in there... I had access... what the--?? Confused, I tried waving the little card in front of the reader about every five minutes, hoping that as if by magic the machine would forget it had rejected me and give me a welcoming green beep. No dice. I tried roughly pulling on the doors, then, fearful they would burst open upon me, crushing me like a Coke machine that was rocked one too many times, I stopped. I pondered. I knew my brother and sister-in-law were upstairs with my mom because I could see their car in the parking lot. They would be down soon to let me in. I would just have to wait.

I paced to keep warm. I sat. I stood. I fruitlessly checked both bags and all six pockets for my cell phone, knowing already I had left it inside. I walked in circles, checking the lobby clock every ten minutes. I waited for an hour. No one came to the doors. I was completely alone, totally helpless, unable to accomplish my mission of being at my mother's side.

All of a sudden, at about the hour and twenty minute mark, I burst into tears. Tears not of pity or sadness or resignation, but of rage boiling up inside. Quick as a wink I went from a calm, rational saint of a daughter into a complete raving banshee, spewing sailor-trash language and kicking the pillars and walls around the door to vent my frustration.

"%*#&& YOU!!!!! &*#^^% YOU!!!! You are a sucky, impotent, uncaring God, and I #$**%^&# HATE you!!! #*$%@!"

It was all directed at God. I felt abandoned, betrayed, alone. HE had let this happen, hadn't He? HE could have prevented this little scenario, or could have sent somebody down by now as I had been fervently praying for the past hour. HE could have given my little magic swipe-card an extra boost and had it open the door. I mean, I believed in miracles, couldn't He just do ONE measly little miracle, goddammit, since He hadn't healed my mother, and now that I was in a true bind and needed to BE WITH MY DYING MOTHER, couldn't He fucking DO something about it??? Fuck. Like, cut a girl a break here, Big Guy!!!

I was so mad. I don't think I've ever become that explosively mad in such a short amount of time. It was like the perfect storm had hit and I was being whirled around by my ankles, flailing with all my might at an unseen enemy.

And all of a sudden, I started thinking of something entirely different from my current situation. I realized what I was actually mad about wasn't that I was stuck out here in this forsaken place, unable to summon help. It wasn't because my mother was dying (which would seem to be the obvious answer, but no, I didn't seem to have a problem with it at the time.) It wasn't even because I was tired and miserable and just wanted to fall into a bed...

... it was all about Montreal. I was raging because I was still disappointed with God for not having backed me up in Montreal. Because He had just stood by and done NOTHING to prove His existence, or to comfort me with His presence, while I lived there, I felt I had failed miserably to "represent Him" in that city the way I thought I should. Because every other belief system that I encountered, or the lack thereof, seemed so much more relevant in that culture than my own, I had pretty much abandoned my faith and run with the unbelieving masses, and it was ALL because He couldn't be bloody bothered to reassure me that He was, in fact, still God and tell me that I was merely suffering a temporary loss of vision.

I had felt totally abandoned by Him. Betrayed. Every I left Montreal it was like, "oh! there's God again! I guess we're talking now!" and every time I returned it was the same thing: within a week I would utterly believe that He no longer existed, that I alone was in charge of my destiny and that no one could help me. I was alone. He had left me again.

After about fifteen minutes of raging and weeping and nearly frothing at the mouth in my desire to curse God and His indifference – truly if anyone had seen me they would have kindly directed me to the emergency entrance, which, unknown to me was not more than five minutes away – all of a sudden I stopped. I couldn't think of any more swear words, and I was tired. I had nothing else to try but listening.

"What do you have to say, God?" It was no longer the challenging, angry, defiant tone I had directed like a lance at Him just a minute before, but a weary, sad question. I just didn't know what else to do. I felt so very alone. I waited in silence.

In a completely different voice from my usual "inside-head" voice, I heard one sentence drop into my consciousness.

When did you ever say you needed Me?

Gasp. WHAT? Did I just hear--? You--?

In that same instant that I heard it, even as I weakly protested it, I recognized the truth of the statement. I knew I had never truly admitted I needed His help, or anyone's help for that matter.

There's a big difference between expecting someone to back you up because you think it's your due, and humbly recognizing that without them you really don't stand a chance, and you need them to be there for you.

When I went to Montreal, it was with a secret sense of entitlement that God was on my side, dude, I was in with the Big Guy upstairs. I had been burned out - again - from working with the homeless and drug addicted in Toronto's East side, and I thought God owed me a break. He would accompany me to Montreal, because I was His good girl, and I deserved His backing. Hadn't I just worked my ass off day and night like a freaking saint for people who society had all but given up on? Yeah, He owed me.

Sure I knew in my head I needed God, that He was my joy and my source of life. I knew that faith sustained me like nothing else and that without it I was as good as dead. But I never asked for it. I never told Him I needed Him.

And then the dots connected together like a trail of lights in my mind. Need. Neediness. My mother. Judging her. Judging people who needed love as weak. Vowing never to be helpless or needy. Never admitting I needed love. Because needing anything was... wrong. Weak. Selfish. And I hated weak, needy people... people like... my mother.

I was winded, felt all the air sucked out of me, and was left saddened, humbled, aching. How could I discover this secret hate, hidden inside me for so long, on the night that I had to be there for my mother, the person who seemed to be at the very source of this hate? How could I go up there and love her and be tender with her, when I secretly still despised her for her life-long need for love, a need that was rarely or completely filled?

In those few brief seconds, I listened like never before. I felt God say some other things about my mother, like how it was ok with Him that she needed love. That everyone did. That some people were so intent on getting that love-need met that they looked just a little too much to people around them to fulfill that need, and they placed such high expectations on other people for their own happiness and security, that they would never seem to get what they wanted, or needed. He said that my mother was no different than anyone else on the planet, only was a little more forthright in asking for what she needed. And that I had no right to judge her for needing love, when we were all starving for the stuff.

And I knew that I had to forgive my mother, not for what she had done, but maybe for what I thought she had done.

Maybe she hadn't done anything wrong after all.

Maybe I had – again – seen her with the wrong eyes and judged against her tender heart.

Maybe she was simply a courageous woman who asked for the love and understanding she knew she needed, and maybe the problem lay with those around her who judged her as weak for admitting she needed them, or that they mattered.

Maybe I had trapped myself with my own judgments, becoming an impregnable fortress in my desire never to appear needy, and had thus prevented God from coming as closely or truly to me as He wanted to, because I could never admit I needed Him, or anyone else.

This was a dizzying thought. Was that really why I felt He had abandoned me all those years in Montreal? Was it perhaps I who had left Him out, and not the other way around?

I didn't have any more time to process the thought as my brother and sister-in-law were on the other side, coming through the door. I mumbled a few hasty words, apologizing for having left my phone inside and ran in, up the elevator and into my mom's room.

She was quiet, and seemed asleep. I quietly made up my sofa bed and brushed my teeth, then climbed on it, sitting beside her, and held her hand. She knew I was in the room. She made a few moans, trying to speak and I whispered, "Shhh Mom, it's OK. Don't try to talk. It's Tobi. I'm going to stay the night with you, and be with you. Don't worry about anything, I'm here."

And for about an hour I sat there watching her, mourning the woman I had misjudged and misunderstood for most of my life. I quietly asked her forgiveness for having judged her as needy, for speaking up because she wanted to be loved. She seemed to hear me, because she started trying to talk again. Her effort hurt me to watch, so I calmed her down, tears dripping and snot clogging my sinuses.

"Mom, you're really beautiful, you know that? You did great, while here on earth. And you know what God said to me? He said it was ok that you needed love, He said that we all need love, and that we all need each other. And now I know it's ok for me to need love too."

"You can rest now. I love you." I put her hand down and lay down on my bed, my head not more than two feet from hers. That would be our last conversation this side of the veil.

And she rested, breathing shallowly and calmly, while I sat by her side, marvelling at the timing of the God whom I thought had forgotten me. He had never left. I just needed to humble myself to see my need of Him, and He was right there, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

And this courageous woman before me, her body bruised, used up, swollen with toxic fluids, her skeleton visible through the sheets, gave me one final, essential lesson before she passed from this earth. She showed me that we're all pretty much helpless infants in this together, that it's ok to need love, and that in our flawed humanness we are endowed with a perfect right to ask for help when we need it, which is always, and that we can get it either from the Divine source or our fellow humans or both. It's all the same.

It's ok to be needy, we all are, was Mom's last lesson to me. I fell asleep then, at peace, and she passed on to the next world a few hours later.

I didn't think it would be this hard

2009-01-09T07:02:00.003-05:00

Grief is surprisingly flexible, seemingly able to catch one at any hour of day or night instead of limiting itself to normal hours of operation between 2 and 6 a.m. It's kept me up since I turned in at last night. It's now 4 a.m. and I am out of options: it's either write or keep not sleeping for the next four hours.

To be honest, I thought I had prepared myself for it. For grief, that is.

You see someone sick for so long- in Mom's case for two years- you think you get used to it. You get used to seeing them through a haze of sickness and the possibility of impending death. You get used to the new normal each month or so, when some other part of your once-vital mother begins to fail. You get used to seeing the massive amounts of drugs she takes in so her body doesn't feel the pain that it's actually in. You even get used to thinking that death would be preferable to having her live like this, and to thinking of a future without your mother, and to making plans without her, and to the half-guilty thoughts that creep in about how you will "get on with life" when... when...

...but ha ha! surprise! You are simply not prepared for the reality that eventually sinks in that... she's... not... coming... back. And baby, when you start to get to the good memories, forgetting for a moment the relief that death brought her from her suffering and pain, when you start to remember all the good things that Mom meant to your life, oh baby, that's a whole new level of pain.

It doesn't help that I'm living at home with my dad where every room in the house was decorated by Mom... or that we're surrounded by her paintings... or that we're going through never-before seen pictures of a wide-smiling Mom with four variously-blonde babies... or that I am calling up friends of hers who start sobbing on the phone and telling me what she meant to them... or that I remember every five minutes that I was the last one in the room with her alive. You just don't know how to prepare yourself for that stuff.

I don't know when I'll get to the other side of this lake of absence that used to be my mother. We used to sing this song as kids, my Dad was great at leading us into it, and it goes like this:

Going on a lion hunt...
going on a lion hunt. (kids repeat)
But I'm not afraid...
but I'm not afraid.
I've got my trusty gun...
I've got my trusty gun.
And my sword by my side...
and my sword by my side.

Shhhhhh! (Dad interrupts)
What's that? It's a lake. Can't go under it... can't go over it... can't go around it... we have to go through it!
Swim, swim, swim, swim, swim....

I'm still swimming, and I'm hoping I don't sink.

While I slept, she awoke

2009-01-08T00:22:00.005-05:00

Mom died this morning. I was so close I could have hugged her, held her hand as she passed from one state to the next, but alas, I was asleep.

I stayed the night in a pullout bed near her and woke every few hours to check her breathing. At 7:30 am, she was breathing. At 8:00 am, she was not.

It was as simple as a cessation of breath, a quiet exhalation in the middle of her sleep, and then she was gone.

Gone...
gone from a bruised body of pain
gone from the nearness of loved ones
gone from her fridge of photos and magnets
gone from the scenery she loved to capture on film
gone from her cookbooks and journals and notepads dating back to 1978
gone from her worn Bible and woolly slippers and deep burgundy armchair and pink wardrobe...

Gone from here, but this morning in another land far, far away, in a place some people call our true home, she....
awoke clothed in a body of splendour and light
awoke in her own room, close by her forever Love
awoke to look upon her loved ones with new eyes, new heart
awoke to walk through scenes of beauty that are living works of Art
awoke to giggle and read over her life's story in IMAX-ic panoramic storms of colour
awoke to cuddle in an armchair of comfort, compassion, delight and grace, never to be in pain again.

Rest well, Mom. You deserve it.

Donna Blanche Elliott
February 5, 1945 - January 7, 2009

I am loath to say goodnight

2009-01-04T20:25:00.005-05:00

Our last conversation yesterday night, after a day of near total silence, as I bend over to kiss her goodnight:

Mom: "I have a very big imagination."
Me: "Why do you say that?"
"Because I’m seeing lots of pictures, lots of things in your face."
"Like what?"
"Like a ship in your nose. … It’s weird."
"And in my eyes?"
"Lots of things, all kinds of things in your eyes. You have a lovely face."

I'm instantly crying. "People say I look like you."
"They do?"
"Yeah."

Tears are falling on her sheet. "Mom, are you doing to die tonight?"
"No. I decided to quit a few days ago. My mind says 'yes', but my body says 'no'."
"You fought for a long time. You did well, Mom, really well."
"I know. But I gave up a few days ago, I quit…"
"But your body didn’t get the message yet."
"Nope. Guess not."
We kiss, mouth to mouth, and she asks, "Did I kiss right?"

I want to break down right then and there. Always, nearly my whole life it seems, Mom had kissed me with a slightly-open mouth and soft lips. Being an extremely reserved person (as I thought befit my coolness), I suddenly decided one day I disliked this kind of kiss, and when I got old enough I told her that. She never forgot it… and now she’s asking if she kissed me right. God. Any kiss from you is good, Mom.

We say goodnight, and I bawl some more. Haven’t cried all day, but at this sudden lucidity, when she tells me things I long to hear, the wound opens again. My mother is leaving us, and tonight I am loath to say goodnight.

**********************************************************************************
“Idle hands are the devil’s playthings,” goes the old, somewhat cynical saying.

So it's a good thing we can keep hands busy with something like knitting. Geez... I wouldn't want to be a plaything of the Devil.

Maybe doing a little something a little bit useless... does something after all.

There must be something about the repetitive act of knitting that frees the mind to contemplate. I'm sure that if sensors were hooked up to my brain while I knit, they would light up brilliantly. Because I have all sorts of thoughts when I'm knitting that I don't have when I'm staring at a square box with LCD lights flickering across it.

And I'm equally sure the lighting up is due less to the magical powers of knitting wool than to the fact that any kind of handiwork requiring the fixed attention of the pedantic, organized side of the brain (like a wee Swiss clockmaker, I imagine the left side of my brain staring fixedly at the rows I knit, making sure each one is even and true, that they all add up to a sober, square, uniform pattern pleasing to its ordered personality) thus frees the rest of the free-wheeling, spontaneous, right brain part of the mind to wander at will.

One of the fiercest contemplators I know works alone putting up siding on houses for a living, and he’s daily coming up with some of the most fantastical pensees you could hope to hear in a year. I think there might be a connection. So I knit furiously, still waiting for my million-dollar breakthrough idea, or revelation of the next ‘it’ thing or trend...

Yes, I think that must be it. Mindless handicrafts are fertile brain stimulators. Go forth and multiply, ye mindless handicrafts!

I took up knitting because there is little else to do at mom’s bedside if she’s not in the mood to talk, which is more and more often these days. It seems disrespectful to pull out a laptop and write – which, it must be admitted, is what I would do if I had my way – or text message someone, or browse Facebook, or read an out-dated magazine, or stare gape-mouthed (and drooling) at a cooking show, or do any of the things I normally turn to in order to make time pass more quickly. But it just seems rude to waste time in front of someone who has so little of it - of time, left.

Some days I knit for long periods of time because she keeps insisting she wants to sleep, and wants the room to be quiet. But I know she isn’t really sleeping; her eyes are open and every so often she draws in a deeper breath in order to make a weak cough, and every 10 minutes she sips ice-cold water. I don’t think she’s really sleeping, it’s more like she's resting her brain, marshalling her thoughts in order, deciding which to talk about when she has the strength.

Lately, there have been so many people wanting to come and visit, to share memories or last thoughts or whatever that she seems exhausted, as if calling up memories and making the effort to keep up any semblance of conversation takes all she has. And that’s even after we limited visits to immediate family only. (She has four kids who all want quality time with her, and then there are the spouses and girlfriends who come for support, and the two grandkids and Dad and me. It’s difficult to know when you’re visiting for her sake or your own. Should we let her rest? Would she rather we stay? We try to make a schedule. It doesn't work. Each day has it's own challenges and must be taken as it comes.)

Mom herself doesn't know quite how to tell us when she wants to be alone and when we can come. After a lifetime of making sure that everyone had what they needed... every kid finished their peas and carrots... chores were distributed equally... toys were not being torn in two... dance practices were attended on time... horses and cats and chickens and dogs were fed and watered... three meals a day were produced and consumed, I guess Mom is not used to being waited on, being taken care of. Maybe that’s why she finds it hard to sleep when anyone is in the room, even though that’s what she wants, and even though my knitting needles make not a sound.

In the past few days, she has said she just wants it all to end, and for the waiting to be over. "I'm bored." How ironic. Mom decides she needs to go now because she's 'bored', not because her body has had enough.

Meanwhile, those of us who will be left still want those “precious moments” with her, and we eagerly wait for time with Mom to have those meaningful chats. But she’s not often able, and so we wait, and pray, and I knit.

The price of Time

2009-01-02T18:13:00.003-05:00

This period of waiting, of watching mom's condition, is a bit like following the roller-coaster markets of October. A surprise surge puts everyone at ease for the moment, maybe it's over, maybe the markets have stabilized, but stock-holders and bankers know deep down that this is not the end... the downward trend will continue. A ghastly 7,000-point drop on the Dow the next day puts the gas on the panic again, and everyone's belief that this is truly the most horrible month in the history of trading, is doubly confirmed.

Time contracts and expands according to mom's condition. Three days ago when she lapsed into a sudden weakness and her mind couldn't process simple questions, my brother asked if I thought he had "time" to go to away for two days to celebrate his girlfriend's birthday. Three days ago, the cost of Time suddenly rose and everyone wished we could have bought more earlier in the game.

Then she improves. Not enough to get out of bed, put on a shirt or work the remote control, but enough to make a joke or two, talk about how bored she is in bed and tell me I'm too "anal" with my knitting. The price of Time drops again and we gulp a breath of relief, for now.

It's costly, this waiting, but it's a gift. Every day with mom is a reprieve– from what we don't know, but we're relieved to put it off for now.

This is no time for ironic distance

2008-12-31T02:41:00.002-05:00

30 – 12 – 08

My second shock of the month, after having miserably failed at pastry-making last week after a lifetime of creating light, edible pies, came as we visited mom this evening. There was such a dramatic change in her condition since yesterday that the pain of this new shock drowns out all previous sorrow. I would make fifty thousand leaden pie-shells if I could have avoided seeing her so completely inert today.

It is one threshold of grief at a time.

Yesterday, she could at least make conversation and eye contact; today she barely acknowledged Dad and I were there, and for a full hour couldn’t wake up enough to say anything. She dozed through the whole visit and didn’t make much sense when she could speak. I am thankful for pain-blockers, because I can’t imagine the pain she would be in right now if not for the constant drip of morphine.

Her stomach and belly area are so distended it looks larger than a large pregnant woman’s belly, and she is shaved and bare below her waist for the catheter, which was put in last week. She has liver spots all over her frail, punctured skin, scabs where the tissue just couldn’t stay together anymore and red pinpricks all over where the vessels couldn’t hold in her blood. Wispy, thin grey hair, shrunken cheekbones, eyes watery and half-closed, tongue whitish and thick, this is nothing like the woman I knew as my mother.

Part of me used to scream silently throughout the last two months, “Get this horrible thing over with”, as if it was an act in a play that must be quickly closed before another could begin. I used to wish people wouldn’t pray health and healing and life for her, because I could see it increased the tension between her will to live and her body’s obvious determination to collapse. She wasn't at peace, as people supposed. She was torn between two very real realities. I wished she could just be left alone: her battle wounds are too deep, let her alone to sleep. I even wondered even at times, if I was willing her to die, selfishly wanting to get on with my life. I have never been good at waiting, especially on other people.

But now that it’s come to this point, when we seem to have lost the most essential communication tool- a mother’s voice- a purely instinctual resistance rises up in me to check all my previous philosophical acceptance. Death is not natural, by any means. We resist it however we can, we fight it off by any means necessary. I don’t want her to drift away, I don’t want to be left with those one-sided conversations with her, I don’t want to stare into her unresponsive, lifeless face. I am in agonized rebellion against what is happening.

This must have been how she felt all this time, for the two years and more that she fought off this cancer... a desperate need to fight for time, to rally her strength again and again, a passionate desire to resist the light going out.

Tonight, I feel the fight for her, because I don’t think she can, anymore.

A modest proposal

2008-12-18T13:24:00.002-05:00

I'm back in southwestern BC for my first winter after living for over a decade in hardy cold-weather cities like Toronto and Montreal. And yesterday, as I was driving back from Vancouver, locked into what turned into a four-hour love affair with the TransCan Highway on a commute that should have taken an hour at best, I remembered something that made me smile nostalgically even as my stomach growled from hunger: no one here knows how to drive in snow.

Cars and pickup trucks dotted the ditches from Port Coquitlam to Abbotsford. It took us over an hour to crawl four km across the Port Mann bridge because semi-trucks trying to climb the hill on the other side had to pull over to chain up. Cars tailgated, fishtailed, swung into each other's lanes without warning. It was a scene of snowy carnage.

I myself was hit at an intersection in Vancouver as I was turning left - having been stuck in the intersection with nowhere to go because I didn't want to run over any pedestrians - when a beefy Ram 1200 barrelled through the intersection because he had a green light, notwithstanding the fact that I was actually in the lane at the time. Buddy, there are times when you don't need to share, and I think it's logical that a Volvo and Ram cannot fit into a single lane. Common sense dictates you do not just "Go" because the light is green, you use your eyes to see if the intersection is clear before proceeding. Sheesh.

Therefore, I'm proposing a change in transport laws. Everyone who has rear-wheel drive or has no snow tires, as well as anyone who has ever rear-ended another car because of snowy conditions should convert to sled-dogs to meet their transportation needs.

I'll admit to being old-fashioned and just a tad country-girl. But with a recession/possible depression in the works, and the Big Three about to go up in flames, isn't it time for a return to a simpler mode of transport?

Besides, dogs are a heck of a lot more cuddly if you can't afford to heat your home, then, say, an eight-cylinder pet who guzzles gas and exhales exhaust.

Faith: what it is, and is not, to me

2008-11-30T17:11:00.021-05:00

Today, around the world, the Season of Advent is being celebrated in Catholic/Christian circles.

Today, from pulpits in churches, in school gyms, in basements and in homes, people are searching for new, eloquent terms to describe the "Christmas season" and flogging mercilessly the question– apart from the decorative fluff, the lists of presents, the round of visiting friends and families, the database of cards to be addressed– What Does Christmas Really Mean?

And that has me thinking about what I believe. Not about Christmas, no. Sadly, I have nothing to add to the debate there. I've heard the Baby-in-the-Manger story enough times that little of that starry night in Bethlehem remains in shadow, and the idea of Santa was debunked a long time ago (sorry to anyone under 5 reading this, but then again you probably think 'debunked' has something to do with the time your older brother fell from his bunkbed to the floor in the middle of the night.)

I am thinking today, as I often do, about Faith, and how I might describe "my faith" to someone, to anyone, should they care to ask.

- Yes, I'm a Christian.
- Yes, I believe in Love, and Justice, and Mercy, and Truth.
- Yes, I believe I'm infallibly, incurably off-target much of the time, but I believe there is a Plan, someone has made up for it already with something called Redemption, and I believe Jesus is enough.

That's a whalloping lot of belief to hang your hat on, and maybe seems insubstantial to someone who thinks the whole notion of faith itself is a shaky proposition at best built on half-baked hopes and an uncertain grasp of history.

Being one of those introspective types of people that likes to think about why I believe something, or where I got some particular idea I hold to be true, or what attracts and repels me to some ideas and not others, I think about this a lot.

How does my understanding of Faith work itself out in everyday life?
What are its component parts?
What are the peripherals?
What is essential and cannot be done without?

Being also a gregarious, extroverted kind of person, I also tend to think quite a lot about "my particular faith" in the context of other people.

What ideas do they have about this idea of faith that I have?
What preconceived notions, or fresh take might they have about it?
If I were to articulate it, would there be obvious holes of reason and consistency they could point out to me?

So I decided to list the things essential to "my Faith". It is by no means the Apostles' Creed, and is likely too vague for some in my community, too narrow for others.

But it's what I know of Faith thus far:

1. Strangely, the first aspect that I think Faith cannot be without is Courage.

To me, Courage means one does not let fear rule, but rather you dig and dig until you unearth the deepest desire of your heart, and let that dictate your
course of action.

2. Vision: I see it, I run for it.

That sometimes means crying till the eyes clear, till the heavens open a bit, until earth and all its blunted desires and tangled passions recedes, and you glimpse again the path you were made to travel.

3. Faith tells me it's utter folly to leave behind a sense of Adventure.

That means having a single-minded determination never to let the day-to-day tasks squeeze out the joy; the awareness that even in the midst of the mundane, there is an adventure waiting for those with eyes to see it.

4. Valour:

having the strength of mind or spirit that enables one to encounter danger with firmness, drought with resilience, bleak hope with staunch resolve.

5. Freedom:

not only the ability to act boldly because nothing of necessity, coercion, or constraint inhibits your choice or action, but also to live freely in such a way that one is a stepping stone to others, lifting and urging fellow man to aspire to greater freedom, while still respecting the liberty of others.

6. Joy: moored to an anchor that bestows peace...

A peace wherein mind, body and soul are set on doing the single thing it knows it must do in that moment.

In doing so, one begins to forget entirely its corporeal aspect, entering fully into the doing with all the body's strength, the soul's might, the mind's focus, so that every simple action becomes an act of worship.

7. Character: a cactus in the desert has a most formidable outward character yet hides a deep well at its heart for the thirsty.

Character means: unyielding to compulsion yet totally yielded to love; utterly resistant to self-pity but achingly vulnerable to compassion; unaware of Self's accomplishments, failures and faults and somehow blessedly caught up in the One's perfection, redemptive, complete Sufficiency; incomparably grieved by injustice and hate but irredeemably wrecked by every glimpse of grace in the face of trespass; single-minded in overcoming difficulties, yet distracted enough to help others in their straits.

That is all I know for now of Faith. Feel free to add to the discussion, I'm curious to know what "your Faith" cannot do without.

As for what Christmas is really all about... the ruling intellectual consensus seems to be that it's not about the presents, while the general feeling about the malls is that it... still is.

A small story of Coffee and Housecleaning

2008-11-28T11:49:00.017-05:00

Ahhhh... Coffee... can I stretch out my deep sigh of content a bit longer?

I love coffee.

But this morning, my love reached superlative heights because of a small change in routine.

As I brewed my usual cup of two long shots of espresso with a dab of cream this morning, I found myself talking to the Barista machine.

"This is an AMAZING cup of coffee!"
"I have never had a better cup of coffee!"
"It's gorgeous!"

Strange, because I'm usually very appreciative of the first cup of the day. And there was nothing different in the way I brewed my coffee this morning ...
except for the choice in cup.

Usually, I am very strict about my choice of coffee cup when I'm home. I only use one mug, one squat, chipped, broken-handled, green pottery mug that's about three inches tall:

For some reason I'm really attached to this mug and have never in recent memory– which, if I really push it, goes back about two years, had my coffee in anything other than this mug. This morning however, after three weeks of having coffee in my beloved green mug, I was forced to choose another. And as a result I had a revelation.

In the tall glass, I saw the most beautiful cup of coffee
I'd ever seen. In fact, it was so beautiful I could scarcely believe it was I, and not some olive-skinned, black-haired girl from Parma who had produced this marvel of a cup.

Creamy-mocha coloured espresso dripped in slowly to fill the tall glass... a steady two inches of soft, white crema layered the top before gradually filtering down, turning silky, dark brown as it descended, dropping like a curtain on the layer below... the heavy inch of cream near the bottom, biding its time to be stirred in... a single, thick ounce of pure, black, unadulterated espresso at the bottom, still caught in the narrow aperture from when the first few seconds of water were forced through the pressed grounds....

Ahhh... gorgeous.

A change of glass can make all the difference in seeing beauty for the first time.

And in a way, that's how my time here at home is turning out. Having lived away from home for 12 years, I often returned for a visit with the same critical pair of eyes I had when I left at 18.

I see the messy piles of unsorted photos, the papers from seminars 20 years ago, the old, broken appliances that no one has thrown out, the books that clog the shelves that haven't been read since they were new; I throw my hands up in despair at the half-started projects, the evidence of good intentions all around, the garden that's fallen into decayed disuse; I groan when another box of empty albums surfaces, when receipts from 1986 spill out of hidden folders, when the bits and pieces of six lives lived in a rambling barn of a house float to the top like so much flotsam.
Every time I have come back to my childhood home with eyes opaque, with a chip on my shoulder, ready to criticize how I would have done it better, I dig in and try to impose my version of order into at least a corner of the house.

I try to fix things, pile the papers in different piles, shift boxes of school-age drawings to another room, shuffle books into alphabetical order, put the beans and dried peas into pretty jars for display if we're obviously never going to eat them...

And I lock horns every time with my mother because this is her house and things are in her kind of order.

And every time I would leave home moderately to extremely frustrated because I couldn't change anything.

But I'm learning you can't change the past.

And a compulsion to fix up your childhood home won't do anything to heal you from the trials you faced, and often failed to conquer, while growing up in it.

This time round, it seems my eyes are a little more open and I am beginning to see the beauty around me, even when looking at the unchanged mess. Ironically, this is only time I've actually been asked to go through some of the piles, to help sort and categorize the very material that's driven me crazy in the past.

But as I sat on the floor a week ago, with a cardboard box ready to be filled with junk on one side and the first of dozens of piles on the other, I thought about the implications of what I was about to do. This would demand careful, respectful diligence, something I probably wasn't capable of a year ago. I went through that first pile slowly, following the paper trail of my mother's life for maybe the first time.

I saw everything with new eyes. The exhaustive research she's done into food allergies, ADD and hyperactivity disorder when we were trying to figure out why one of my brothers was so... reactive growing up. (He was pretty much just artistic, as it turned out.)

I wonder at the hundreds of pages photocopied from naturopathic journals and magazines on digestive enzymes, plant fibres, aromatherapy treatments, the evils of growth hormones, cookbooks on whole foods... from a time before 'natural' was in vogue and green was the new black.

I see the books from workshops and seminars on parenting they both attended from the time I was born right up to when the youngest sibling was born, when they evidently decided to give up on books and just try to keep their heads together with three kids and a teenager in the house. They just wanted to parent well.

I sift through spiritual workbooks full of exercises, reflections, breakthroughs, notes on "how-to", books that were bought to help them grow.

I find the stash of home videos we made when the recording machine was a foot long and had to be hauled in a special bag because it was so huge, made to accommodate VHS tapes. I find more pictures than I'll ever find time to look through, more papers than I know what to do with, more stuff than I hope I'll ever have. I go through them carefully though, this time.

Because this is the record of our years as a family, and suddenly it's very, very precious. I hesitate over what to throw out. With new eyes, I begin to see beauty in the layers of accumulated stuff.

Suddenly it's not "her stuff", "their mess", it's our stuff. I become grateful, even relieved that someone cared enough to catalogue our growing-up years. It's extensive, sure, overwhelming and over-the-top, like everything done in this family, but it's what we have.

A different coffee cup lets me see the beauty in my usual cup of espresso. A new pair of eyes is a gateway into the very precious, very rich layers of our family.

Don't worry. I've still been able to throw things out. Here are three boxes of six that we've hauled away so far:

I think I'll need another coffee.

Off to the races

2008-08-13T12:14:00.005-04:00

I am sitting in hot sun on a balcony that overlooks a swath of green trees. The sound of the Alaska Highway is muffled just beyond it. It's hotter than Abbotsford at the moment, but the breeze makes it bearable. Here, the weather changes like a woman undecided. For the fall fair in Dawson Creek on the weekend we had 32-34 degree searing heat one day, with thunderstorms and 20 mm of rain that night, then it was rainy and dropped down to 10 degrees the next day, only just clearing up for the chuckwagon final races on Sunday night.

In my Cruiser Chick capacity, I go to events in the community and do three live cut ins in the radio programming each hour. So even though it was chucking down rain all Sunday afternoon, I advertised the tiny thumbnail of blue sky like crazy to the good people of Dawson Creek to get them out to the fair and rodeo.

And it worked! The fair's organizer told me during the races that she was very surprised to see the grandstands so full. I took it as a "job well done" pat-on-the-back... then took the rest of the night off to enjoy the races.

The tenting area was full of muck, trailers and trucks. The track was graded and groomed to perfection about four times a day in all weathers - I know this because I hung out with the grounds crew - and people wandered the fairgrounds in their cowboy hats and Wrangler jeans with hands full of mini-doughnuts, beef-on-a-bun and blissful looks on their faces. The World Professional Chuckwagon Association was out in force, each group with its own contingent of 16-20 horses and a wagon or two, enough fodder and straw to feed and bed them, and their outriders strutting around like kings of the chuckwagon track.

The races themselves were heart-palpitatingly exciting. Four horses in harness, with a wagon rattling behind them, race hell-for-leather around a half mile track in just over a minute, drivers yelling and raising the reins over and over again to draw an extra half second of speed from their ponies. And they do this over and over again. it's better than a horserace because it's so dangerous. If the back horses misstep or go faster than the horses in front, everyone gets tangled up and the wagon can come crashing over horse and driver, injuring or killing them. This weekend I heard that two horses had to be put down. One guy was telling me that as he ran out to a wreck one year, he passed a bloody mass on the ground and as he picked it up, he realized it was the driver's scalp! He lived to race again, and was there at Dawson this year.

Cruiser Chick did her part getting people out there for the most exciting event of the year. Now I'm not sure what we have to look forward to. Summer is nearly over... whatever will come next to thrill the pulses of Dawson's residents?

"Good Morning, this is Tobi Elliott"

2008-08-04T17:46:00.005-04:00

A modest beginning for what promises to be a stellar radio career, to be sure, but who can claim to have been thrust into stardom from anything but modesty? And I can't be anything but modest by starting out at 101.5 The Bear, 98.5 EnergyFM and CJDC 890 AM, three stations that serve Fort St. John under the benign umbrella of Astral Media.

This week I began my introduction to the world of public radio. A wincing, sidestepping, unglamorous introduction it was too, more like a crash course in public humiliation than a gracious easing into the realm of public broadcasting.

Day One, last Friday, found me at station where I was thrown into the mechanical arms of a system called Newsroom 4.4, the workpony of editing suites. It has the nifty appeal of all PC-based op systems to someone who has been raised and breastfed on a Mac.

For a minute I'm discouraged. The audio editing can't even do a simple cut and paste, it will only delete parts of clips. This is bad. This is worse than the free Audacity program they get the first-year wannabe broadcasters to use in school. Don't despair, Tobi, you can do it, I whisper to myself a dozen times a day as the thing teaches me a thing or two about patience and conter-intuitiveness. At least it can drag-and-drop audio files, for which I'm profoundly thankful.

Day One also saw me riding shotgun (why all the cowboying allusions, you ask? you'll see...) with the station's other reporter as he went to film an interview with.... the Romanian Cowboy. I kid you not. He is a regional wildcard in the televised Country Music Television Karaoke Star contest. He was as cute and as straight up as they come - all Eastern European blue-eyed and endearing accent, and singing Alan Jackson in a plaid shirt and big buckle like the best of the Westerners up here. He's got himself all pumped up to win in Regina, from there he'll take his act to the finals if he wins.
On CMT Karaoke.
For all the nation to see.

Sigh. Why do people need movies?

Day Two: I woke for an early Saturday with the station's news director. We recorded five newscasts between 7 and noon, along with six weather tidbits and a road report. The weird thing (for me) was to discover there's NO ONE in the station over the weekend except the news guy/gal who gets to record the casts. It's all pre-programmed, from the disc jockey's shouts of "Well, we've got a great half hour coming up for you, with ZZ Top and Def Leopard in the mix..." to the stations sting IDs, to the commencials and promos. I knew it was mostly recorded before, but didn't know that a station could pretty much run itself for 36 hours. Of course, things go wonky every now and then, so it falls to the reporter who's in for the morning to check that all is lined up properly and the newscast will be aired on time at the top of the hour.

Which means, dear friends, that Tobi gets to play deejay on occasion. Oh the cackle I give when I can dump Bryan Adams because the playlist is going long.... or the glee I feel at being able to torment listeners with another rendition of Sarah Mclachlan's "Blackbird" because it's one of the shorter songs and clocks in at a sweet 2:21 min.

The news announcing part of the job I didn't get to until the next day, Sunday, when I was on shift with the other reporter. He banged out a newscast in 20 minutes, did the weather and then settled back while I took the reins.

I sweated through the newscast, choosing stories. Do I go with 'five killed in an amphibian airplane crash in Port Hardy'? Or 'the woman who was doused with kerosene in Clearwater'? What about happy stories? Can I slip in the fact that Canada won the firework competition that weekend in English Bay, or is the second mention of fire just going to cause a groan to rise from listeners?

Then I worked up an even greater sweat in the recording booth. Who knew it was a tongue twister to say "RoadSafety and Services Officer in Prince George"? Or that I would sound like a hallucinating fan when I tried to overcome my hatred of this year's Stanley Cup winners and pronounce "Detroit Red Wings" in an acceptably neutral fashion?

Incidently, I also didn't know that I would enjoy reporting sports so much, just because it's such a challenge to work my way through the heady mixture of foreign names of players and coaches, and even stranger terms like "dropped down to go into the series for two and three" and "came in second for a one-two for Canada" and other things that just pass me by in a frothy haze as I'm reaching the end of my reading-out-loud-in-an-exciting-yet-mature voice for the news in sports.

And that's only 4 minutes of reading to get through, five times a morning. All different and re-written so it sounds like the dear listener out there is getting a fresh batch of news every hour. I usually do each cast at least twice over, and sometimes as many as five times over if I've got enough time... then there's the FTP server to worry about, making sure all the casts get transferred to Kelowna, from where they flit off to stations unknown across BC... and then I need to run back and forth between both soundboards at either end of the hall to make sure the playlists aren't acting up and my newscast won't play at 10:36... and then I have to remember to record the afternoon weathers and overnight forecast... and I tell you - it's just a busy busy day at the station in the morning!

And before I know it, it's noon and I'm done, panting and realizing I've already worked over five hours and can go home and yippeeeeee.... I'm a radio chick for real, now.

Introducing.... Cruiser Chick

2008-07-29T23:31:00.007-04:00

When last we met up, Tobi the Turrible had been heading back to the Valley from a round-BC camping trip, in which she and her valiant friend the South African encountered with aplomb young bears beside moose kills, photographed big horn sheep and mountain goats, climbed upon a glacier in the howling wind and racked up over 3,000 kms in the little blue car. Worn but happy, we arrived back in the nick of time to get the South African on her flight, at which point our heroine promptly buried herself in the garden for a few days, having a great need for alone time and dirty fingernails and church in the compost heap.

Since then, I have moved 1,300 kms north, undergone a translation from Garden-Girl to Cruiser Chick, and (possibly) shifted plans from going back to Montreal in order to finish the schooling this fall, to staying up in the land of unbelievably big trucks and excessively beautiful sky to work for a trio of teeny tiny TV and radio news stations for the Peace region. And, in the process, I've managed to crash both the living space and the theologies of a family of five... but they are apparently still willing to have me around. (more on this later...)

Waaaay up here in Fort St. John, I'm happier and more at rest than I've been in years. I haven't lived in a city smaller than a million in over a decade, and I find myself now in this po'dunk town of 20,000, where over 50% of the men have grease ingrained in their palms and 100% of them have a ball cap on their heads... Where, in this "hub of Northeastern BC", the oil flows thick and millionaires are made faster than McDonalds' can make burgers... Where people go bear hunting not for sport but for food, and fathers teach their daughters to shoot at coyotes who encroach on their lawns... Where hockey is played, not watched on TV, where everyone drives a truck and the only thing standing between you and abject poverty is a gigantic Supercharged 600 HP V-8, with a cab raised 36 inches off the tires, mudflaps as big as doghouses and a massive chrome fender up front capable of busting through a small thicket of trees, and a bed frame that has two quads mounted in case of emergency....

Truly, I couldn't have gotten much farther from my university ideals, the language of sustainability this and environmentally-friendly that, and the rarified city air that breeds a particular kind of contempt for anyone not born in the city but unfortunate enough to be from one of those "industry towns". This is the true North, the last Frontier, the land of the pioneer and the self-made man, the ends of the earth. I have truly arrived. I am so happy to be here.

The job is frankly a dream, though most wouldn't think it so. I get to be the summer "Cruiser Chick" who goes on air every 20 mins and talks with breathless excitement about the deals in flooring at one of the station's sponsors, or the A&W float she's blissfully slurping up (another sponsor) on a hot day, or the farm equipment retailer (sponsor) who is selling his living quarter trailers at cost because he just has to get rid of them. I get to be the one handing out 50 wristbands to the Dawson Creek airshow and seats to the VIP tent, courtesy of another sponsor, of course, tickets to the Grizzfest at Tumbler Ridge, and free Mama burgers at A&W.

But lest ye laugh at another humiliating summer job and the desperation that must have driven me to take it... hear this. I love it! it's shocking, but I feel like Santa on speed, like a most glad-handing politician sans agenda, if you can imagine that, like the girl next door who gets to meet an entire city via the airwaves of their favourite country western station. They get to hear me as they bale the hay, buy their seeders, mow their grass, muck their horses and milk their cows. Radio is incredible, never have a felt such a connection to a body of people I don't know, or more affection for them!

So that's the first part of the job. To talk me into it though, they had to agree to take me on as an intern in the radio stations doing news, but then they turned around and said they'd pay me for that too. Why not, they don't have anything else to do with the money. And now they want to keep me for the next year, hire me on as a videographer for the TV station and who knows what else. They are crazy, but they have the money and connections and I'm just... up for anything.

School.... I'm not sure what is happening in September yet, but my feeling is that I'll delay going back for a semester. There are a couple of reasons for this... One, I don't feel ready to face Montreal yet. Maybe it's cowardice, and maybe it's wisdom. I feel like for the first time in five years I have a real relationship with Jesus again, can trust Him and want to go forward into life with Him, but am not ready for the inevitable rocking that Montreal gives me and the way is shifts everything beneath my feet until I don't know what I believe anymore. Just want a few more months to get stable... cause I don't think I can handle losing Him again.

Secondly, things are looking up for this little job of mine, they look like they're getting ready to hire a videographer for the TV station, and may make room for another reporter. This is why we go to school folks, is to get a chance like this, and if I'm handed a job, even here at the end of the earth, I'll take it and go back to school later.

Thirdly, I really like where things are going with this family I'm staying with. God has a plan here... it's quite strange to think of this within a week of being here, but God is up to something here in Fort St. John, and I feel like this family is right in the middle of it. I don't want to miss the chance to pour into them if that's the thing to do at the moment. Now I know those of you who already are shaking their heads, saying, "Ah Tobi, you are just waiting to fix someone up, aren't you? And now that you've gotten semi-healed up, you just can't wait to turn on to the nearest unsuspecting people you can find..." Granted, I love to be in the middle of the crucible with people, right where things are shifting and crashing and rising again out of the ashes. Granted, I love to see people healed up and be part of the process... Granted... I can get distracted by that at times.

But I feel like this is different... like I'm the privileged one who is being given a chance to see something of God really take off... and I don't even know what that something is yet. All I know is that this couple is significant in the Kingdom, that they have paid a high price to be here, that I like them an awful lot and admire their values... and that I want to be a part of .... whatever this is. If that means delaying school for a few months... then I think it's worth it, just for this, just to see this unfold, it would be worth it. It's even worth the snow and -40 weather.... Brrrrrr....

And last of all... I don't think I can get into some of the courses that I need to graduate and complete my program, such as Advanced TV, a year-long course and if I can't get in there's no point going back for another year because that would mean two years more. So I'm planning on doing some online courses now so that I can just breeze in next year and finish it all up in the style I want, PLUS I'll have the experience under my belt that most students would kill for.

And besides, the whole point of schooling is to get you to a starting point so you can find your way through journalism land and eventually get one of these jobs everyone says are rarer than a puffin in Africa. I know a degree is useful and you just never know where you'll end up and what you'll require when you get there. So for now, my mantra is: Get equipped, get equipped, get equipped!

Ahhhh.... have to run and hop in a truck now.

Love and effervescent giggles...

Cruiser Chick

The new job

2008-07-25T00:17:00.004-04:00

The Day is upon us.

And it was decreed...
Tobi must work.
And work she shall.

And Tobi Elliott shall be called Tobi Lee...
And she shall adopt the tone of a country-bred girl....
And she shall call them forth from the radio...
And she shall be bountifully excited, joyful for the people...
And she shall bless their businesses, and court their princes, and cry out:

Lo! I bring you tidings of great joy, for unto you this day I bring you news of deals in...

Flooring tiles! Hamburgers! Turbo diesels! Vacation spots! Gym openings!! Gas coupons! Amazing specials that you just have never seen before! You have to come down and check it out!

.... shall she say onto them.

And she shall dip her feet into the waters of Dawson Creek, and declare it "Good" and spread the knowledge onto the people of "Beat the Heat" for their edification and glorification and non-dehydration. And she shall be overflowing with creative ideas for the general health of the community, and bestow upon them her beneficence and gentle good humour.

This shall be a sign onto them, that every hour at the twenty, every hour minus the twenty and every hour less the ten, shall she appear to them, and yet not appear, be among them and yet not with them, be here and there and everywhere, speaking to them as from the Heavens, handing out gifts from the Sponsor Angels and the Astral Media gods, and everywhere she goes, the multitude will cry out and the people will follow and children will weep and she shall be called...

Cruiser Chick.

God bless the Cruiser Chicks in this world...

Rocky Mountains, ho!

2008-07-20T23:47:00.001-04:00

Gonna get me a little blue car...
gonna drag along a nice foreigner...
gonna get me an iPod and some radio...
gonna swing round the land and see some mountains now...
Gotta go now.

On the return leg of the trip that saw Dianne and I put 3,000 kms on the little blue car - from Abbotsford to Kelowna to Revelstoke, from Lake Louise to Jasper to Fort St. John, from Dawson Creek to Grande Prairie through the mountains again and back to Bradner - we took in every sight with greedy eyes and delved deep into an adventure we might never experience again.

Driving through the spectacular Rockies in every conceivable type of weather.... basking in the morning sun near Athabasca Falls– where, strangely, Bull Trout are the only fish found ABOVE the Falls, yet 14 other species are found BELOW it (how did the Bull get up the Falls is a question I'd like answered one day).... climbing to the Columbia glacier in a stiff, snow-whipped wind when everyone else was wisely hurrying down from it.... stepping out onto it ("Dianne! get back! What are you...? Oh hell...") after crossing the DO NOT CROSS, DANGER CREVASSES!!! signs.... napping as my little blue Golf zipped through the gloomy, post-sunshine drizzle because my South African friend is now so confident behind the wheel (I think I dreamed of Jesus in the fishing hold during a storm).... then finally cruising into Lake Louise to get the very last campsite available out of something like 400..... sigh. Happiness is my portion today. If I don't see a single human, I'll still know God loves me.

Here's today's rabbit trail. Ready for it? It's called:

Destiny, WALL-E and the EZ-Chair of Obscurity

Pixar-Disney's WALL-E is judged by some to be the latest take on what the mass consciousness of America really fears. A NYT opinion writer groans that it has more relevance than the presidential candidates debates, and beats closer to the heart than all their rhetoric. I saw it just a few days ago and was mightily unimpressed because it didn't seem as cutting or witty as the animations of late, but have come to see that it may actually have some deep things to say. It's a child's fantasy of what could happen as "adults" let their ignorance get the best of them, choosing to stay locked down in blissed-out apathy instead of rising to be purpose-driven humans and take back their authority on earth.

In the movie, humans have retreated to a super-advanced mother ship where they drink their meals, are too large to walk and spend their time talking online to acquaintances they have never met. Some don't even know they have a swimming pool on board, and others have lost the ability to engage in basic conversation. Having left planet Earth, ruined presumably by their excesses, they've been floating in space for 700 years. Their salvation and eventual return to Earth to recolonize what was once theirs by right, and to redeem what was destroyed, comes to them in the form of a green plant growing in an old boot, carried in the mechanical arms of an ancient trash-compacting robot.

Now beside the obvious "Save the environment" appeal to the younger generation (doesn't it seem like no idea can get off the ground unless it has a green stamp on it these days? The movie is interesting to me because it speaks to the choices we make as children of destiny. In it, the Captain of the ship has to choose between staying with all he has ever known, or to rise to something new and unheard of. I like it because frankly, as crazy as I am about change in the world, I'm not all that thrilled sometimes when it comes to challenging my preconceived notions about what I'm actually capable of. More on this in a mo'.

Basically, there are two options. The Captain can choose to stay slumped in his EZ-chair, hopelessly convinced that

because no leader before him ever did anything worthwhile, why should he?

that because there's no evidence of greenery, there won't ever be life back on earth,

that because the planet was so thoroughly blasted by their own stupidity, it's totally irredeemable,

that because there's no way they can go back and change the past, it's too late, it can't be fixed,

that because they could never conceive or imagine someone like their own bloated, wired, unfit, slobby selves ever doing something great or even semi-good for the people, they will again just pass the buck and sink into obscurity yet again... forever confirming his own suspicions that he was good for nothing all along.

Or he can choose to rise to the impossible,

he can change, grow, learn, aspire and hope,

he can challenge the laws and strongholds he sees at work around him,

he can lead others to a freedom they didn't know they wanted,

he can rise from the EZ-chair of cringing insufficiency and damned insecurity and be the son of destiny he was called to be.

Ahhhhh, what a dream. Thank you, Pixar-Disney.

But he struggles of course, because there's a stubborn auto-pilot who has different orders and continually tries to subvert his authority, and because he's basically alone, with the exception of a few robots who don't know what it's like not to obey orders. How do you decide to make a dash for freedom if you've never known it, and have no one to help?

And secondly, even if you can believe that freedom is available, how can you conceive of choosing change when you know your limitations so well that all you see is patterns of the same things happening over and over again? Trapped by your own humanness, most would choose the EZ-chair of obscurity when faced with such a daunting task.

I know from first-hand experience why it's so hard to imagine gaining the courage to grab a hold of the life that's available. I've figured out by now (only taken 29 years!) that it's not the world that holds us back because we teach people how to treat us. And it ain't the devil's fault, no sirree... though he likes the credit and does a good job of presenting reasonable arguments. He's just doing what he's good at, lying and deceiving. And it ain't Jesus' fault that He was small in my eyes, nope, He's been doing great at this saving and redeeming thing all His life and it's what He's good at!

It's me. I do it to myself. I hold myself back from dreaming the dreams God has for me because I think too little of the creation He made, too much of the mistakes and omissions I've committed over the years. I think too small of myself, too little of the dreams He's put in there. I think more of myself, and too little of those who might need my skills and zest for life and love of the challenge, and mope about because I'm too little to do anything...

Waah, waah... Tobi, get off the EZ chair and get to the task. Be the Captain, if that's what Destiny says. Be the robot that hangs onto the plant in an old boot, if that's your task. Smash the auto-pilot and free the children, if that's what needs be done.

Helop me out here folks, because I'll need a reminder of the choice between the EZ-chair and the Truth. I know the journey is just begun, that I have lots of mountain cliffs to scale and ravines to swing across, and I'll need many, many reminders along the way to destiny of that which is possible.

And I promise I'll kick you out of your EZ-chair in exchange.

In the channels and between chunks of Elephant

2008-07-15T00:22:00.000-04:00

Reached Skookumchuck Channels, just saw them at high tide, totally cool, really rushing, though no kayakers out today. We're at the Backeddy Pub now having dinner and they kindly let me use their wireless. Dianne is reading to me from a book with a heavy accent, I can barely understand the words. Her South African accent trying to wrap itself around a deep South Louisiana accent of a negro boy... Kind of funny... I look like I've never seen civilization, somehow she looks still pretty good. She's gorgeous even in the wilderness.

It's raining today, totally typical BC, but beautiful nonetheless. Going to possibly camp tonight though the rain might send us indoors. Not sure yet.

Elephant for 3,800
- recipe from Dianne's great-great-great Grandmother

1 Elephant
Salt and pepper to taste
Brown gravy
2 rabbits, that's optional though
(they're harder to catch, they hop every whichway, elephants are big, clumsy - not much room to slip though your fingers, you know)

Cut elephant into bite sized pieces.
This should take about a month.
Cover with brown gravy. Cook over kerosene fire for 4 weeks at 465 degrees F.
Add salt and pepper to taste, this will serve 3,800 people. If more guests are expected, 2 rabbits may be added.

Do this only if necessary, as most people do not like to find "hare" in their stew. There's another reason to go with carrots then...

Mommy fall down

2008-06-30T23:14:00.000-04:00

Today Mom fell face forward to the floor because her legs were too weak to hold her up. She called out to me in the garden and I helped her up. She was pretty shaken up and had a gash on her forehead and nose.

She's been pretty good so far this year, meaning she's come way beyond where the doctors had hoped she would, beating every expectation to smithereens. After the second round of chemo, she's felt weak, but yay! no hair has yet fallen. It feels like that would be the most traumatizing part of the whole cancer-experience: more than the liver riddled with tiny tumours, the visible fact that hair is falling out makes it seem real.

The cancer is not behaving "normally," according to the new oncologist, which is why the last chemo treatment didn't work. Well, I say, "Hallelujah for strangely-behaving cancer cells." We like that news. The more it can baffle the traditional expectations, the more hope we have that a greater good is pushing those cells back.

She gets lots and lots of prayer, so much so that I know it's making a difference. We just keep going at it. More prayer, more naturopathic medicine, more doctors and chemo... must keep fighting.

Never give up, never surrender.

Love prevails.

Be-BOOKed!

2008-06-20T12:00:00.005-04:00

I am writing a book with a friend.

Sometimes I hate the book
other times I think it's brilliant.

Sometimes I read what I wrote a year ago
and wonder who was living in my body to produce such crap.
Other times I realize that you can't properly see a work of fiction till
you get far enough away and wonder how long it's going to take to get
far far away from this book in order to see it clearly.

We read aloud to each other and I think to myself:
'It sounds like a child's story, meant for 12-year olds.'
Then I write something that I think is nigh on Proustian in its brilliance
and Twain-ish in its wit and Homer-esque in its profundity and I think that
I'm on the right track.

Then again, maybe not.

It's hard to write a book.

Writing doldrums

2008-06-06T03:27:00.002-04:00

I'm having trouble manifesting a sense of purpose these days– scratch that, for the past month or so.

Ever since the grandiose dream of "building a newspaper Concordia deserves" passed with much fanfare and no small relief on my part into new, eager hands, I've phaaffed about to find something to grit my teeth about, dig into, get down and dirty with. "I need another project," the Ms. Fix-It inside me is whispering, mantra-like.

Days pass. Much of what I've accomplished in three weeks here can be summed up as chauffeur, cook and gardener. I've been faithful at getting Mom to her various appointments, decent at cooking the daily supper meal (ranging from uninspiring but yummy, to inspired but wildly strange) and have the gritted-teeth patience to put up with a steady drizzle over, around, during and between my bouts of mad gardening.

Creative Non-Fiction Writing - a contradiction in terms if I ever saw one, which is what I really wanted to get done this summer, gets done in a haphazard fashion, or not at all. Every day that passes I lose the motivation to start a project or finish a piece of writing. How do freelance writers do it?

It will be interesting if I could ever legitimately call myself 'journalist'. Right now I feel like a writer philanderer. I dabble. I flirt. I play one writing affair off another and then go back to my old steady, the personal journal where no thought goes unexplored and no avenue of self-absorbed breast-beating and wailing gets edited for clarity or content. I'm positive my old flame, the Journal of Deep Thoughts, contains the secrets of the universe but since I can't bring myself to read through it, they shall remain a secret.

It's just easier that way. Public writing is so... gauche. Much better to think I can write in private and live happily deluded than bring those thoughts out to the feeding trough of public opinion and risk creative annihilation.

Frankly, (side note: I was talking to Frank the other day and asked him if he minded his name being used with such abandon. He looked confused.) I'm frustrated and discouraged at my lack of ambition. The family troubles actually provide an excuse to do nothing career-wise. I know I'm capable of much more than this, and maybe this little letter-to-self is a way to get myself in gear. My mom will get better. My dad is coming home from hospital tomorrow. Soon, there will be no excuse because I'm not needed in the way I want to think I am.

Soon, I'll begin working and playing with words again in the manner in which I was accustomed. Soon, I'll stop being excuseful and begin to be purposeful. Soon, I'll work up the courage to dump my words in the local community paper, turning aside with only a small wince when I see how they fare.

In the meantime.... I think I'll go back to the Old Steady because there's still some wailing to get out on the way to the public trough.

The sad drama of daily country living

2008-06-01T21:13:00.003-04:00

Funny things happen when stress builds up and has nowhere to go. Some, like me, just work harder and push away the voices that say it's long past time for a mini-vacation. Some, like someone in my family who won't be named, take a mini-vacation from their head and end up for a time in the psych ward.

So it's a good thing I didn't get a job just yet (yeah, as if that were the plan all along, Tobi). Because now I've got my hands full with mom who's still weak with cancer (but getting healed more and more!!) and someone who just needs a week in the hospital to rest the head.

To be honest, running this particular household isn't so bad. Mom places no demands at all on me– dishes are optional and the lawn will get cut whenever it stops raining, and she only makes a few non-optional requests: to make the occasional strawberry-rhubarb cobbler, remind her to take her pills and do some grocery shopping. Everyone knows Tobi loves groceries. I'm not kidding, I'd rather shop for groceries than clothes, any day.

And you should all know by now that there's nothing else a country girl like me would rather do than tend a ten-acre farm, a house-sized garden and a football field for a lawn. I had a wide grin on my face yesterday as I rode the lawnmower over the six-inch high lush grass – in a bikini – and I only cursed about ten times when the damn thing choked up every five minutes because the grass was too... lush. Grass-stained fingers are small price to pay for the privilege of smelling fresh-cut grass and making freeform swirly patterns with the mower. Of course, byt the time two hours had passed and the rain started up again, only half the grass was cut, but hey, more fun for tomorrow.

What other adventures? Oh yeah, burying farm animals. Boy have I missed that little chore from childhood. Got the chance to indulge in a little walk down the childhood memory lane, which included hours of uncontrolled sobbing, the stroking of wet, muddy fur, much babytalk to a mute and deaf little creature, and then the choosing of an appropriate gravesite and digging down to lay the limp corpse of a beloved former pet to rest.

Oh Thibeau! Little marmalade cat that brought me so much comfort in Montreal, you just didn't know about the bad Bradner dogs that were just waiting for a sucker like you to come along.

Joking aside, I was heartbroken to lose my little friend last Monday. I don't know if I can get over the regret for letting him out into the forest Sunday night, then not going out in the rain to look for him. I figured he was OK out there, had learned enough to be able to at least climb a tree if he was in trouble. He was a city cat, sure, but the streets of Verdun were mean and every night the air was rife with the sound of cat-fights. I knew, or thought I did, that he could defend himself.

But I was wrong. I went looking for him Monday and followed an animal trail down to a little creek and there, stretched out in the mud, was a brown cat. My first thought was, "Poor little cat bit the dust. I wonder whose it is?" Then I got closer and found I was looking in disbelief on my own beautiful, bedraggled friend. He was already a little stiff, but not quite enough that I was utterly convinced he was dead, even though he had four clear bite-marks encircling his head. I picked him up and made my way back to the house, crooning and talking to him all the while, thinking I had to clean him up because his fur was all dirty, and that maybe there was a chance I could nurse him back to health.

I won't go into anymore, because the way I cried and went on would make this into a sad Black Beauty kind of drama appealing only to children. But suffice it to say that I felt I had lost my best friend, the only one who really saw me in every state of ungrace and ugliness in Montreal, and loved me unconditionally through it.

I will miss him greatly. Here's to you, Lil' Beauty, Tibeau.

The beauty of concise-ity

2008-05-05T17:33:00.004-04:00

Having learned virtually nothing about brevity and the art of being concise during my year as an editor, I have decided to remind myself of some golden rules of communication. In a strange turn of events, I'm adapting some rules to live by from an article I just read in the Montreal Gazette, a paper I have very little respect for, from the "Working" section, a part of the Saturday edition I normally never read. Such is the strangeness of life.

Herewith, for your education and my own, are six Principles of Effective Communication, adapted from Donna Nebenzahl's article called 'Why do some ideas stick? And others don't?', which itself was just taken from Chip and Dan Heath's book Made to Stick. Poach, poach, poach, yes, we're all poachers here. However, even though I'm shamelessly poaching other's ideas, at least you can rest assured that if I ever abscond with yours, you will be attributed.

#1 Simplicity. Get rid of all the baggage surrounding your idea. Express your idea in a way that is both simple and profound.

Huh. If I'd followed that rule, I wouldn't have written three analogies to describe my sick body, none of which were very good.

#2. Unexpectedness. Surprise people, violate their expectations, lead them to the precipice of anticipation and then turn them in a completely different direction.

Think news teasers before the broadcast, counterintuitive images like razors inside Halloween apples, you get the idea...

#3. Concreteness. Proverbs succeed even if they're flat out wrong because they give the listener an image to grasp.

This is where I most often fail at communicating. I love words so much that I forget I'm in service of the reader and not my vocabulary. And I love big words, and multiple variations on complicated words, so it makes it easy to forget that imagery is so much more telling and memorable than piles of verbiage. 'nuff said.

#4. Credibility. Give the listener/reader a reference so that your unexpected idea hinges on something they can trust. Either that, or you should be so believable/credible that they can make the leap into what you're saying, just because it's you who's telling them.

This concept I have less of a problem with as I am the most credible person I know. Anything I say or write is very believable, very. And if anyone tells you different, you shouldn't believe them.

#5 Emotions. You need to care about what I'm communicating in order to remember it. Appeal to the more profound motivations, such as honour, civic duty, patriotism, love... you know, all the stuff that's so easy to work into the average speech.

Thus, for my ideas to stick I will start telling sad stories that people can relate to. Or I
will just recite lines from Robin Williams' Patch Adams. That will make them cry.

#6 Stories. The right kind of story is a simulation for real life. We rehearse stories in our heads to practice how we will respond to life, and we perform better when we encounter that situation. (Not sure how that helps with communication, but anyway, here's a better one...) Using STORY over ARGUMENT in communication will cause it to "stick" with your reader because while an argument implicitly asks people to "evaluate your argument, judge it, debate it, criticize it, and then argue back, least in their minds ... a story ... engage[s] the audience, you are involving people with the idea, asking them to participate with you." (excerpt from Made to Stick)

So my new mneumonic is: SUCCES
Oh bother. How trite. I actually thought it was going to be something memorable. Who's going to remember to be SUCCESful in the frenzy of writing?

3 weeks of hangover? I hope not...

2008-04-15T00:56:00.007-04:00

It's possible that I could still be suffering from last Friday night's end-of-term Journalism Student Association's farewell dinner ... three weeks later. But perhaps it's more likely that maybe I'm actually sick.

Yes, I think I have to admit that I am, in fact, not nauseous and headachey from the leftover wine I drank at that momentous dinner in mid-April, but am possibly suffering from a string of infections my body has stealthily harboured since January and which have only now popped up to say hello. They are polite little buggers, seeming to arrive on the doorstep of my sinuses one at a time, giving me a break of approximately 2 hours to prepare tea in between visits.

About two weeks ago, my body let out a huge, sagging gasp that sounded a little like, "At LAST!" (no, it was not a noxious emission) and all the stored-up strain from four months of cruel slogging, not dissimilar to a trans-Siberian trek without a pack mule (see previous post "Trudge, trudge, slog, slog"), come leaching into the bones and muscles of my now-pitiful frame.

Some "immune system" I've got here. The picture that comes to mind is this: my body stores bad bacteria like so many Mason jars full of precious Jelly beans, lined up all nice and pretty on the shelves of its pantry, letting them lurk in darkness until the conditions are right before the door busts open to reveal a riot of colourful infections and broken glass littering the floor. No holding back for these infections. They just strew themselves about the place any old way.

Enough with the comforting colourful analogies. I'm sure you're fed up with reading what my storehouse of infection looks like. On to actual plans and reality. In all the snotting and gasping, there were a few minor things left to tidy up:

One more staff party to throw together in my last duty as outgoing Editor in chief ...
one exam to study intelligently for, in between popping Advils and drinking odd combinations of whatever I can find to blender with protein powder ...
one set of taxes to do, which I had fully intended to get done waaaaay earlier but which ended up, despite my earnest efforts, being mailed at 4:45 pm on April 30 (see post on "Reforming a procrastinator", which has yet to be written) ...
one week to pack up the half-life I have strewn around this itty-bitty room in Verdun ...
one week to fit in all the fun Montreal-ey things I didn't do this year, to give away bikes and clothes and things, and meet for earnest, one-last-drink gatherings with friends.

I'm leaving, you see, and to be honest I'm not sure I'm coming back. After my body finishes expelling all the evil Jelly beans of sickness, which I fully expect to be sometime around 9 am the day I leave Montreal later this week, I head to Stratford to visit some dear friends for a week of walks and wine, puttering and cooking, writing and laughing. I'll be toting my marmalade cat, who hopefully will refrain from being the whiny bastard his mother was on the drive out to Montreal three years ago, a bag of books, a bass guitar, and hopefully as little as possible of the ratty wardrobe that made it through this soulless winter. If I never see that three-holed, saggy-bottomed pair of jeans again, I shall be very happy.

Then, waving goodbye to the dear friends, I'll fly home (with a doped-up cat, who will, with much prayer and earnest entreaty, not yowl the entire cabin to desperation) to my dear parents' home on the range in the Fraser Valley, BC, there to become all brown and happy, salty and waterlogged, coated in manure and dirty-under-the-fingernails, and live happily ever after in a motorhome built for five... and figure out what to do with the rest of my life.

Trudge, trudge, slodge, slodge...

2008-02-27T23:24:00.004-05:00

This has been the month of euphoria and abject depression, of caviar and coffee dregs, of sky-rocketing success and fingernail-breaking ditch-digging. In the words of someone who wrote better than I ever will: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

This newspaper business is driving me crazy. I have no life. I have newspapers all over my room and my clothes are stinky and old. I have no relationships outside the paper. I drink with paper people, I eat with paper people, I sleep with paper people... really. We do sleepovers after production night, on a table in McDonald's early that morning.

I have no drive for anything other than newsprint. However, I just don't have the passion for the paper that I did last semester, and I'm beginning to realize that my entire life cannot consist of the success or failure of one 28-page bit of newsprint every week. I cannot continue to live in a cycle of a work week that begins on a Friday afternoon and ends on a Tuesday night, and my life as a student begins again on a Tuesday morning and ends on a Friday and then my work week begins...

But all this sacrifice seems to be doing something. Our paper looks better than ever. We have never seen such fast pickup. People love the covers, the layout redesign is sexy and our stories are... relatively sound. We still get more letters to the editor over mistakes than issues, but hey, at least the readers respond.

At the same time, at the very point in time when I should be rejoicing in my paper's success, I am despairing whether we can finish the job well.

Editors are showing signs of exhaustion, and I've been told more than once that they can't keep up with my expectations or the rate of change at the paper. Three have dropped out since January for personal reasons, and I've been doing layout, acting as features editor and now as arts editor to fill the holes.

We have three meetings a week, in addition to our drinking-on-Friday night and Monday's production night, which for me begins at 10 am Sunday morning and ends at 7 am Tuesday. I've spent literally every waking minute thinking about this paper, but no matter what I do, we still finish production around 7 am every Tuesday.

Yesterday, I was in a fog of tears, trying to figure out if I am truly crazy to keep doing this job, or how I can change it so I can do it and still live. I don't see how though because I'm Tobi, I'm driven, I'm not going to give up until either they pry my cold fingers off that keyboard in the office or the paper is so perfect that I can leave with a clear conscience. I don't see any way out.

If I relax my standards, I will be betraying all that we've worked for this past year and what everyone has come to expect. If I push for more, I will keep hurting the dear volunteers who give their time here. If I keep things stable and just let us continue on this plane of good-but-not-yet-excellent, I will get... bored.

OK, not quite true. Because no matter what, in my life at least, I've found that something will happen, inevitably, to whallop my brief moment of peace into a galloping pace again. Something like....

The network will break down.
The computer will develop a logicboard problem.
The network will break down, predictably, at 4 am just when we try to send the last page to the printer.
The computer will not stop playing bad hiphop at 6 am.
We will discover a crucial error that necessitates a "stop the presses!" call to the printer at 7 am and raises the heart rate of everyone in the room at the thought of the consequences had it gone in.
The printer will decide it wants to be a sculpture.
The graphics editor will decide she wants to write.
The news editor will decide he wants to be a photographer.
The opinions editor will decide she wants to write in favour of using bananas to prove the theory of relativity.
The politicians will ignore us.
The politicians will rail and abuse us.
The politicians will try to recruit us.
In a case of mistaken identity, the military will try to recruit the other newspaper for the Canadian Forces, which will lead to riots and burnings of newspapers, in particular our newspaper, and we will be blamed for the scenario for having printed military ads.
The corrupt elections of the student council will consume our foes with righteous wrath, and we will have to take the logical, more moderate stance to spite them.
The beer will go sour at Brutopia.
The craziest night of the year, postering night for elections, will fall on a night that I can't possibly afford to spend the crazy amount of time required to cover it.

Dear God.

That's next Monday.

I suddenly need to travel again. I long to hop in my '79 VW campervan (Lil' Honey!) and drive south, go someplace warm where there's jazz all night long, where I can write uninterrupted about things that I care about, where the looming failure of other people, of deadlines, of crises, of drivenness, of stress and striving and strife, are far far away. Where I can be a little Tobi and not The One Who Must Decide, where I can...

just go.

Oh bother.

The inevitable recap

2007-12-27T01:43:00.000-05:00

As this year wraps and draws to a close, I can't help but do the cliched thing and take a moment to think about everything that happened in it. Honestly, since it's been harrowing and traumatic and altogether too stressful, so my friends tell me, I've tried to avoid thinking about it let alone writing about it, but the newsletter-writing elf in me will not be denied.

Besides, the public is clamouring for it. You are clamouring, aren't you?

Here below, you have the short-and-sweet version. The long version, since just about all my stories verge on the long-ish side, which, if you know anything about writing and good journalism, is about as bad a habit for a news editor to harbour as is the habit of stringing together run-on sentences and dependent clauses and phrases that just barely hang together thanks to some complicated two-stepping by the overused punctuation family, will follow in the next post.

Meanwhile, here are the juicy bits to keep you interested.

Last December, a month-long race through Israel, Palestine and Egypt; back in Montreal for tired, lonely days of bad weather, sullen school and stress as news editor at campus paper; go to BC for summer to rest and garden; discover heartbreak as mom gets cancer; take 1,700 km trip to northern BC; return to Montreal for school: 5 classes, 1 job; become newspaper's Editor-in-Chief; run campaign for more money while revamping paper's structure, questions arise from teachers as to my dedication to schoolwork; barely win referendum question, and any meaningful celebrations are eclipsed by exam studying; last week in Montreal: vote in new editors, write exams, throw a party and exit stage West for BC, Christmas, mad shopping and jollity.

And here we are. Caught up? Fuller version to follow tomorrow.

Stressed? Not quite. Just pass the vitamins and I'll be fine.

2007-10-23T03:12:00.000-04:00

A good friend wrote me an email the other day that expressed concern for how I’m handling the multiple, high-level causes of stress my life has exhibited lately. With all that and the pathetic diet and sleep regimen I'm on, people are getting concerned. I guess I’m writing this blog as a response.

How am I handling things? I guess you can say things are a little intense.

It’s true that my mom still has cancer, and that’s a devil of a thing to fight. I felt like I was going to die this summer. Not fun. It’s still not fun - going home at Thanksgiving and seeing her in pain like she is, is not what I like to do. But because our time has become that much more precious and our relationship more real, and because we can both see one another for who we are without the blinders on, and because she is just so alive and beautiful and vital, I’m happy to be her daughter, so I’m not complaining.

It’s true that I’ve gotten in a fight with my sole peer competitor and it doesn’t look like it will resolve anytime soon. He’s Italian, I think that has something to do with the grudge-holding, and it's true that I hate fighting and I love to get along with people who are my opposites and especially my competition, and he’s the only person on this entire campus who can really commiserate with me about the madness of story production and newsmaking, and this one scenario has made me more sad and mad and repentful for an entire two weeks than anything else and cost me more in self-respect than anything else ever has, but it’s a good thing. I'm not upset. I’m glad I can get into a really big stinking fight with someone and say my piece and then say I’m sorry and then wait and wait and wait to see how it gets solved, because somehow, someday, I know it will.

It’s true that my new job consists of revamping – again – a once-sorry and weak newspaper publication into a powerful voice for change and a vehicle of expression, without the money to do it properly, that I have the responsibility of training 10 people who were taught not to meet deadlines, that I need to ramp up excitement and gather volunteers for a campaign to bring our paper more money and exposure, that I’m in competition with another paper over the same resources and materials and news on the same territory, that I get challenged every day by people’s lack of vision and willingness to push a little harder, while at the same time I need to do my job as a reporter and get the news and deliver it professionally. But I’m definitely, definitely not complaining. There's too much to do.

And it’s true there’s the piled up schoolwork from five classes, my lonely cat Thibault who thinks I know him no more, my dozens of projects hanging about, the housework that hasn’t been done in five weeks, the beet borsht that I had to throw out because I couldn’t find time to eat two gallons of it, the too little time I have for relationships anymore, the walks I don’t take and the sunshine I only see from inside buildings and the newspapers I pay for and can’t read and the bike I don’t ride and the food I don’t savour anymore and the half-drunk cups of coffee that scatter my days and all the other things that usually matter to me that … just don’t.

Because you don’t know how incredibly happy I am. Or you wouldn’t ask if I’m stressed. How can I be stressed when I’m doing something I never dreamed was possible?

I honestly never knew you could do something you loved so much. I didn’t know that you could loose your passion entirely into something and, rather than see it get swallowed up in a gulf of misery and a thankless well of poverty, you would see it take wing and fly. I didn’t know before this year that I could be so happy doing a job that I could cry.

I didn’t know that I could be in a place when nothing really matters except the great glory of getting the job done, of inspiring and gathering people together in a common goal, of sweating it out every week for two days straight as we piece this crazy, patchwork quilt assortment of stories and pictures, only to emerge triumphant at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday morning with 24 pages safely sent to the printer and the satisfaction - no, the joy - of knowing it was done well. Why would I be stressed?

I’m in the enviable position of having the dream job. Absolutely, one hundred percent the dream job at This Point in Time for Tobi. It’s amazing, a revelation actually, that a job could be so much work but be so rewarding that you could do it over and over again with joy. I love the people I work with, the stories we tell, the opinions we cast, the influence we carry, the dramatic build up of excitement that everyone feels knowing we are on our way to being great… Why would I be stressed?

But I will take my friend's advice on one thing. I may be in love with my work and think I need no sleep. But I will take that B vitamin complex.

On my way to distributing the paper this morning, I will take that pill and sing my thankfulness that life can be so grand as to give me a newspaper and the B complex vitamin.

Thank you Jesus. I'll take it, I promise.

Ache before the Big Day

2007-10-09T12:19:00.000-04:00

Bah! I just about can't take it anymore. My insides have been shaking for 5 days straight. I'm not normally a nervous type of person - high-strung, wired, caffeinated, touchy and dramatic, yes, but not nervous - but I am in such a state of nerves I can't describe it. I can barely type.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, The Paper I Love, ie. The Concordian, will elect its new Editor-in-Chief. Will they pick me? Do they like me, trust me that much? Will they ask me to lead them? Ooooh, I'm as nervous as a girl at her first dance.

I'm home in BC for another three hours, then onto a plane and back to Montreal. Montreal hasn't left me though for these six days I've been away, nope, not a bit. I've carried the paper here, talked my parents to death over it until they know the editors by name, obsessed over the phone to the poor editors in production, texted and called and emailed until they turn every electronic gadget off to get some peace, plagued the graphics girl, the news editors, the layout guy all day yesterday and the day before until I'm sure they're all sick of me. Everyone is afraid to write me an email because they'll get 10 in return.

Obsessed? Not so much obsessed as... I'm in love. I love this paper. I love this competition. I love the drive to make it better. I could eat, sleep and and dress in newspapers and it wouldn't be anything compared to the hunger I feel to wrap myself in this paper. I love the fact that I have something to fight for, a little underdog newspaper that is growing stronger and more opinionated and more newsworthy every week. I love transforming things, and I especially love transforming this paper.

So I am hoping, praying with all my heart, desiring and looking for nothing less than to be elected this paper's chief by the end of tomorrow night. And I'm not even going to think about the possibility of not getting it, because either way, I'm there. I will still be at every production night, still be involved in every way possible, still follow every story until they tire of me and throw me to the illiterate dogs on the street.

Then maybe I'll get some homework done.

Events unfolded rather rapidly...

2007-10-03T02:08:00.000-04:00

Through a strange series of events, the current Editor in Chief of The Concordian, the paper I've written for and invested in for the past two years, stepped down last Sunday.

By some act of God, or pride, or I know not what, I found myself desperately wanting the job. I hadn't wanted it last year. I thought I was over all that but something has changed.

I feel like I'm the right person to lead this paper. I already have been there most production nights this past month. I like to be there. I love every step of the process from story pitches to finalizing the cover. I write editorials like I'm speaking for the paper. And I have taken it on in a very personal kind of way - which may or may not be good for my health. I guess we'll see if I can handle it with grace or I will get snowed under.

There's a high chance I will get elected when we decide who we want to take on the job next week. The only other person running so far is the current Features editor, who has a leg up on me in organization but not in charm, charisma, motivating power and sheer will to work.

So the hard part is not in getting the job, it will be in keeping the rest of life in balance while I maneuver through some sticky situations. The Concordian is launching a campaign to ask students for a fee levy in November because we get half of what the other paper does and have been operating on the same budget for 25 years. So that's going to take a lot of organizing and planning and extra time to execute that I don't really have.

It also will take wisdom FAR beyond what I have to lead this paper in the right direction. It's already going strong on many fronts but there are other things I want to change.

And I very recently (the issue came out today) wrote an opinion piece for our paper contrasting the two student papers and their financial situations. Basically, I pointed out a ridiculous and probably embarassing situation involving the other paper, which they would probably have rather the student body not know, and pleaded our paper's case for a fee levy at the same time. It was a tenuous link between the two arguments, but I think it passed the rationality test. (Remuneration - thanks for the spell check David!) I'm happy with the piece and still stand by it.

But the editor of the other paper has taken it extremely personally and has now cut off all communication with me. Said he lost all respect for me, that there could never be any more communication, either professional or personal, between us, that I wasn't the person he thought I was but that I was dragging up old business, old grudges, etc, etc. I think he feels like I stabbed him in the back because over the past two weeks he and I were actually breaking some ground in communication. We chatted about 5 times on the phone, always off the record, and I enjoyed talking to him. (There's always a distinct draw for me to the opposition, whoever they are.) There was maybe even possibly developing a spirit of collaboration between the two papers.

That's what I wanted anyway. I don't like acrimony, or bitterness, or intense competition in which no one wins and everyone gets hurt. But I didn't think that being on a personal level with someone could backfire so badly when I had to write an opinion that directly confronted his paper with something I felt was unjust. Maybe I was harshly realistic in the article, even opportunistic in writing about our situation against the backdrop of theirs, but I felt it had to be done, and that it was the right thing to be done.

I'd like to think that I would have been able, had I been in his shoes, to still react civilly and agree to function on a professional level. Maybe I would have been so hurt, though, too, that I would have done the same.

I did everything on the professional level that I could have done: I sent the entire piece to him 12 hours before it went to print, told him he could have equal space in our paper to rebut or reply or state their case and asked him what he thought of it. I talked to him on the phone before we published it, we cleared up some points that were factually inaccurate. I'm confident everything in the piece is on solid ground. But he's still refusing to have anything to say to me. He seems to have taken a position which, while childish, still breaks my heart. We all know Tobi loves to be on good terms with everyone in the world and can't stand to have anyone mad at her!

So I feel terrible of course. There is nothing more I can do to break through his anger. I'm just taking a personal hit with this one and I can tell you, it's causing sleep loss. I had to have a fortifying swig of vodka before going on air yesterday because my nerves were all in a knot! My opinions, although they have always been strong, have never led to this bad of a relationship smashup before. Sucks.

Another question is, how much am I going to feel I "have" to say for the paper when I'm actually in charge of it? Is there a chance I could turn into some bullying, pushy, self-interested know-it-all? Where is the nice, gentle Tobi I used to be???

So that's the latest drama in my life. Hopefully I can update you on more as we go along, and hopefully it will get better!

I'm going to BC for 5 days this Thursday to see the family for Thanksgiving. Happy about that, of course!

Mom is doing good by the way, although there are additional aches and pains that she didn't have before, I think as a result of the chemo. I'm kind of scared to go home to see her, especially as she gets thinner every month it seems. But every moment is precious and I'm holding on to that.

So here's to holding on to hope, for justice, for relationship healing, for physical healing, for more joy for everyone!

A little more grace, thank you

2007-09-11T21:34:00.000-04:00

Are you ever, like me, surprised when things go well?

Now I'm no negativist. I’m probably the most grimly, determinedly cheerful person you’ll meet. But I do find myself a bit taken aback when things in life start being... cooperative. Not as difficult as they could be. Shockingly in-the-flow-like.

I'm back in Montreal - two weeks now - and although I got a head cold, a notice for a tax audit and a series of increasingly forceful notices about an unpaid tax bill (oops!) in the first week, then a new job, a crushingly complex story on local politics, a radio show to produce and host and five classes to figure out in the second week, I'm actually in pretty good shape.

In fact, I would even go so far as to say things have got a glow about them. Even the crummiest, most pot-holey street in Montreal (that would be Sherbrooke in N.D.G.), fronted with the ugliest swarm of random dépanneurs and markets you will ever find squashed together, even that street looks beautiful.

And the people… it’s shocking to find how different they are. I mean, the guy in my journalism class who has only ever displayed disdain for any and all religious accoutrements, well, he's still talking trash about every girl he sees in tight pants, but he seems mellower. Less overtly confrontational. I actually like him. And the chick who used to boss me around at the paper (OK, so she was the Ed-in-Chief) and who I couldn’t stand to take orders from seems less intense. Again, a little more mellowness going around.

When I make mistakes now, it doesn’t seem like the whole world is ready to pounce on me and my profession of Christ and call me a hopeless hypocrite. Yeah, I think there’s a little more grace going around these days.

Yeah, I think I can handle that. A little more grace these days.

Peace to you and yours, may the grace go round your life like a sprinkler someone forgot to turn off.

That's just the way it is, baby...

2007-08-24T17:35:00.000-04:00

It’s a beautiful day outside today in Abbotsford. I was up early enough to see the mist before the sun burned it off the fields, in the distance it still hangs over the Americans across the border. I’m at my sister Sharla’s right now. Inge and I have been here since Tuesday, looking after their two great big Rottys and a white Siamese cat while they are off in Michigan for a few weeks.

After our adventure in the Great Cold North – not yet white but quickly getting there - we were thankful to get some space in this nice, quiet place. It’s not as beautiful as my parent's place, Bradner farm, but I don’t think anyplace will ever compare in my mind. Here, we have space. The little blue car was feeling a bit, well, little after all those hours.

I think I put 3,400 kms on it in 10 days. It is a valiant, tough little engine that will go anywhere if you give her enough time, even if its peeling body doesn’t quite look up to the job. Kind of like how I feel some days!

I’m sitting at a big, round wooden table, with a huge bowl of half-cooked oatmeal piled with fresh Okanagan peaches at my side and of course, the obligatory cup of dark roast cowboy coffee (with the grounds just settling to the bottom of the cup, just the way I like it). Ruminating about the past few days and trying not to think about the short time I have left here. How to fit it all in. How to say everything that I want to while I have everyone in front of me. It feels so final. I’m going back to Montreal but this may be my last time in Abbotsford when things felt somewhat close to normal.

It’s been rough the past few days. As we drove in the dark through the valleys cut into the mountains, somewhere around Keremeos, I started to get that old feeling again. Somewhat familiar, it felt like... Pain. Lots of it. About everything. About my mom, my dad, the past, the future, the fears and the failures I think I’ve had. I’m not yet 45, I don’t have to look back on my past and process everything yet, do I? Yet there it is, my old friend.

You’d think I could get off this merry-go-round by now. Misery, as my friend Inge likes to say, is highly overrated. There’s just not one good thing about it. And that’s true. But if you’re hitting a deep-level misery that just comes up for no reason at all and won’t go away, then maybe there’s something to look at.

Usually, I’d have a good wail and sob and tell God how unfair it all is. Don’t you see God, all the pain out there? It’s not just me, it’s the whole WORLD! Why do I have to feel it all? Cry, cry, cry. Sob, sob, sob. And it would be over. But with Inge there not a foot away, I couldn’t just let ‘er rip. I might have broken something and then we'd have no way back.

And then she started to ask me questions. “What’s causing you the biggest pain? When did you first feel like that? When did you last feel that this strongly? What were you thinking of when you got in pain?”

I started to get more and more angry as she asked the questions, because I recognized this process and wanted nothing to do with it. Nothing ever works, my mind told me. You go through it today but it’s always back tomorrow. None of this inner healing stuff works. It’s too hard. You can’t do it. You can’t figure it out. There’s no end and no beginning.

So I snarled at her like a hurt lioness and told her I didn’t believe Jesus could heal anything. That I didn’t trust him at all. That I didn’t even believe he was REAL, let alone that he could help me, let alone that he could heal me for good. Of course, this was a radical departure from what we’d been talking about just that morning. Then, I was a believer, I knew my God loved me and had good things for me. I can flip as quickly as a sand dollar under water when I'm in the pressure-cooker of pain.

Inge, being the wise big sister that she was, kept poking me with questions until I told her I had a headache and drifted off just as we entered Chilliwack on the way home.

All the next day I cried and slept and felt heavy and could get no relief. There was no comfort. Nothing would ease the pain. My heart told me that everything was wrong, nothing could be fixed and that somehow, some way, I had failed at everything I’d done this summer.

I’ll skip this whole miserable part to get to where Inge and I went to a young adults group that night to speak. I heard her talk about everything she always does, how it’s possible to have one hundred percent joy and peace one hundred percent of the time. How she is not content until she is walking always in her three-foot revival. She shared about walking through everything with Jesus, every day, talking to him about everything, and I just scowled because I wasn’t there. Hadn't been there for years, it felt like.

When it came time to praying for people though, I reluctantly got up and prayed for the woman next to me... and the next and the next, and I remembered the sweetness of Jesus. As I spoke words of comfort and life to them, I remembered that he is always the same, never changes toward us, and I was likely just as loved as any of these.

Needless to say, by the time we left I was feeling pretty cheery and like I had something worth living for. By the time I got through two chicken McWraps and a blueberry sundae, I felt positively able to be a Tobi. So when we got home and Inge suggested, "Why don't we pray about this now?" I was adamant that everything was fine. Food and ministry do work wonders... for awhile.

Bull-headed and undeterred, my dear friend insisted, and so I crept reluctantly into the most difficult prayer session I have ever had in my life. No feelings, no emotion, blah blah, it's too hard, I don't believe this will work, nothing ever works.

"Jesus isn't saying anything," I said.

"You're in your own stronghold, Tobi, that's why you feel this way," prodded Inge. "Ask Jesus why."

"He's still not saying anything," said I.

Round and round we went. Hours. I stalled. I worked my way into an upside-down-on-the-couch position. Inge kept asking the sme damn questions. Finally I got tired of it and just took, on faith, that I was hearing something. We made some progress. I grumped some more. We stalled at another turn. Inge kept hacking away with endless gentle questions.

Finally, a modicum of breakthough. No tears, no good feelings, but something truthful got in there. I took it, too tired to protest any longer.

Next morning, JOY awoke me! Incredible. I felt actually good. Strange, this feeling. How does he do it, I ask you? When you're more stubborn than anyone on earth can ever be, how does he do it?

So that's been the internal adventure the past few days. I'll write more on the road trip in the next post.

Off and running!
T

Investigating healing

2007-07-26T11:22:00.000-04:00

Over the course of the next few weeks, while I'm still here in BC with the family, I want to chronicle the steps toward healing that my mom is making. Already, big progress, and I mean big progress toward healing has been made and there is more to come. Clean the inside of the house first, and the outside will follow. That's the way I see it for this case.

Of course, I know that often and with great joy God heals instantaneously, without condition or reproach, while we are still in a mess with all our unresolved issues hanging loose. He does this because he loves to, because he is sovereign and he has the right to grant incredible restoration when and to whom he wants. But I truly believe that, even more than healing my mom's body, he wants to see her heart healed and set her free her from a lifetime of inner pain. Very possibly, this would not have happened if a crisis named 'cancer' had not arrived, unwelcomed though it was, into our home.

Get real.
When mom found out she had cancer, obviously there were initial feelings of shock, fear, denial, hopelessness and anger to be got over, through which she ricocheted in the first few days. I think Mom moved remarkably fast to the stage of acceptance because she had already been processing the fact that this could be a serious illness (ie. one that will kill you) since the previous winter when she first got sick.

The first thing that became apparent to me was that mom went about getting real about repentance and getting right before God. She had always been one to pray and had always been particularly serious, some would say over-the-top serious, about sorting, probing, examining, analyzing and categorizing issues of her heart. But this was different.

Within a few days, mom sat beside my dad and talked frankly to me, my brother and his wife about how this disease was the result of being performance-driven all her life. (For those unfamiliar with Christianese, it's a condition unrelated to a four-wheeled body with a V-8 engine, but about feeling driven to perform for love and acceptance.) She laid her heart bare for us to see and for the first time, perhaps the first time in her life, I heard her admit to her failings without either casting the blame somewhere else or coming under the condemnation she had lived so long under.

She spoke with frankness, a heart-stopping, brutal vulnerability that had strength in it because it was the truth. No more hiding behind the pop-psychology labels, dosed with a heavy sense of obligation, that I had heard all my life: "adult children of alcoholics" "co-dependency", "love is a choice", "those words don't respect me", "don't judge me". While these words can all be true of certain conditions, to me they had become warped by use without love. Conditions had suffocated the love that might have flowed freely in our family and made us all more at ease, accepting one another as we are.

She admitted her past wrongs, her failure to love herself or receive love from others. It was a freeing time, of course tempered with sadness about the news about the cancer, but for this daughter, her honesty was the greater revelation.

What to do, what to do?

2007-07-23T03:11:00.000-04:00

Arrrrrrrrrrrreaaaaaaaaaaaagh-humph!

Ever feel like your inner Beastie/Caveperson isn't getting enough exercise? Like, you spend so much of your precious time thinking that your inner Aristotle is burned out, so you turn on the outer white noise image-creator machine thingy (otherwise known as a boob tube, magic box or T.V.) to bore the Philosopher to death so he will shut up and let you not think, but then you end up frustrating the purely kinetic Caveman, who just needs to get out and grunt and bang on things because that's what he does, naturally.

My Artist is also currently in a state. She is going quietly mad now that Mr. Creative Brain has gone on a nonscheduled leave of absence: she picked a fight with a keyboard, lost her scrawling pad out of spite and has let the tomato patch rot with weeds.

And don't get me started on the Voice of Majestically Maladjusted Morality that has recorded a message and put it on repeat just to torment me. He keeps saying things like: "What are you doing with your life!???? Look at all the people out there, helping other people, and you're just doing nothing. Not even writing anything useful! Farmgirl!"

Lots of parts of me dissatisfied, clamoring for attention, struggling to be acknowledged. I believe I am patently trying to ignore them all by settling for the weakest of stress relievers: T.V. and mystery novels. Pain, I hear, seeks pleasure. I must not be in pain, as I seek merely numbness.

It's not so much the fact of mom's illness -I guess I've gotten used to that because I see her every day, and even though the reality can still hit me like a blow between the eyes if I go out for a run and get too much fresh air and start to actually, oh I don't know, think about it, then it really hurts and I remember she's closer to dying than I ever though she would be, but even so we can still act normal and eat all around the dining room table on a Sunday and I can get annoyed at her because she's interfering with the way I've set up dinner, because after all she's still my mom- it's more the frustration of "What can I do?" and "What now?"

I can't do anything, not anything that will really matter. The only thing that matters is getting her healed. I haven't the hands of Jesus, last I looked. And I really, actually, completely and utterly don't know what to do: whether to selfishly go back to Montreal, where a sad, hypothermically-cold and lonely existence will likely be mine again (to cherish forever and ever) or to stay here and be daily more saddened by my mom's weakness, but gladdened that I can be with her?

I don't know what to do. But then again, have I ever? The thing is, to just do, I guess, and it will all sort itself out somehow.

Ah the blissful eventuality of the tomorrow that never comes!

Life is the point, not disease

2007-07-20T16:45:00.000-04:00

I haven't quite been able to absorb the news yet, take it in, assimilate it or make sense of it, because in spite of knowing my mom has cancer in her liver, life is going on. Disease is just trying to steal that. And we, the living, must choose to keep on living.

Cancer is a scary word only if we give it a weight it doesn't deserve. Words like 'joy', 'peace', 'healing', 'love', 'life' are so much better to focus on. Actually, there's a lot of peace in this house since we got the news. It's nice. And I'm not angry anymore.

So, while we aren't ignoring the reality of her broken body, we are all choosing to live out our time together with a tighter focus on life, heavy doses of love and attention and much tenderness. It's all we can do.

That, and prayer.

The vital link to love

2007-07-12T14:39:00.000-04:00

In a recent newsletter, Rolland Baker, who with his wife, Heidi, heads up one of the world’s most vital and enduring revivals in the dumps of Mozambique, wrote this to friends and supporters: In relationship we know we are alive, we have arrived, we are satisfied. When we turn away from relationship to pursue anything else, we lose. We have no strength to give and love without it. It is a haven, a rock, a river of living water, the perfect source of motivation to keep going.

If anyone is qualified to speak of motivation in the face of incredible odds, Rolland and Heidi more than qualify. Iris Ministries is not just a series of orphanages that feeds 55,000 people per day, is not just a ministry that rescues children from garbage dumps, it is not even about being the single, fastest multiplying church on the face of the earth. Iris represents the physical reality that explodes among mere mortals when radical lovers of God take Him at His word and seriously learn to love.

And the fascinating thing is, they don’t concentrate on having enough love and money and resources to go around the thousands of people they are ministering to, they only seek to love one person: Jesus. And since they see Jesus in the little black faces of Mozambiquan children, in the abandoned, the raped, the abused, the poorest of the poor, they continually reach out to that one.

Somehow, the love they have for Jesus is multiplied exponentially, as all they do is give it to one person. That is their motivation to keep going. it’s the restorative, energizing, awesomely powerful relationship they have with their Jesus.

And I want that.

Right now, I’m struggling to love the one in front of me, that is, my mother. She is a wonderful person, and I’m not just saying that because she might read this one day. She’s warm, funny, creative, generous, often spectacularly emotional and gave me many gifts without which I wouldn’t be Tobi. She brought us four kids up pretty good. I had more than enough love growing up, lots of room to make mistakes and learn things the hard way, lots of grace. So why am I finding it so hard to love her right now?

It’s hard to look at her and not blame her for getting sick on me. We don’t know what’s wrong, only that something is keeping her from digesting food and causing her to look like an anorexic teenager, you know, the skinny kind. She didn’t ask for her liver to get all funky on her, do a chicken dance and then stop working. She has taken care of her body her whole life, been one of the most health-conscious people I knew (for years I thought everyone’s mom took supplements before a morning cup of java and talked about her daily bowel movements over toast) and now it’s turned on her. Mom, why did you do this to me? my rebellious heart sometimes cries.

Selfishly, childishly, I want to run away, far far away. How strong beats the pulse of self-preservation. I resist even my beloved family in the wake of its tainted channel. I want to blame my mom for the disease that is wrecking her body, wrecking this home, wrecking my perfect summer. But I’ve got to see past it and know that it’s not her fault. It’s a disease. Disease is evil. Mom is not.

So, I realize it’s clearly not enough to love her from my heart, because my heart is weak and sad and churlishly blames when it should support. I can’t simply will myself to do the right things for her, cleaning the house and making her surroundings a little more pleasant, because my will has a curious habit of twisting things around and making these altruistic gestures all about me. I also happen to know that I can’t do it alone because I am truly a miserable comfort-loving creature who thinks mainly of herself. And shutting down or running away is not an option either, because life is too beautiful to miss out on, and hey, there may be a miracle any moment. Besides, I’m running out of House episodes to zone out on and even I’m getting sick of that arrogant doctor’s cynical humour.

I need help, I have realized. Rolland and Heidi and all the unsung heroes in Mozambique have got what it takes to love because they have taken and drunk deeply of Love himself. And so, after watering the garden and picking fat, purple raspberries, I will bow my head and ask for the life-giving relationship I need to love the one in front of me today.

Half a world away, I imagine the world’s greatest lovers going to bed in a little mud hut, untroubled by the cares and burdens the rest of us hold so close, focused only on getting through another day and loving Jesus more than they did yesterday. I should be so happy!

On watching American Idol for the First Time

2007-04-18T21:50:00.000-04:00

Yes I admit it, I'm an Idol Virgin.

Hey what happened?

I was, like, just doing homework a minute ago. Er, an hour ago. Somehow the TV flicked on and I've been sitting slack-jawed in front of American Idol for the past half hour. Now, I know no one will believe me when I say I haven't ever seen it before, so I'll just skip over that part.

What I want to get to is the absolutely inane it is.

No, I don't even want to talk about that, it's too obvious.

What I want to really get to is, "Why does it exist?"

Ah... existentialism in pop culture. Forget the eternal question of 'Why do I exist' for just a moment, and ask yourself, why do shows such as American Idol have a right to breath the same TV airspace as Lost?

Do we think we're kidding ourselves, that we can blow it off by saying, "Pooh! It's only a measly hour out of my life!"

Does it not seem incredible to anyone else who watched (OK, maybe it was just me watching) that the seven teenagers who are aspiring singers and performers were the first audience to screen Shrek 3 and meet Jeremy Katzinger? Gasp! Incredible! We're watching performers watch a movie!

Show me more! And then, and then! They all got to perform in a commercial! but not just any commercial, it was a special one with seven singing costumed kids running around in a FORD COMMERCIAL. Like the Dwarves performing, 'Whistle While You Work Real Hard with a Ford Tundra'.

Gee whiz! Now we even get commercials during the show! This is like a Pepsi-Coke taste test. What is the difference? Pop rots your teeth, kids.

(Up next: Commercial makeovers - Did you really mean to shoot that?)

But wait, it doesn't end there. Sadly, it went on.

Next, we got to see them all try out their "Puss in Boots" impressions before Antonio Banderas turned up to show them how it's really done. Which was kind of fun, you know, the big lanky Argentinian behind the microphone, making the kids all giggle. Like, Mousketeers fun. Why isn't this show on at 2:30 pm so kids can watch it before their nap?

And then they had some drama where one of the contestants sat in the middle of the floor because she couldn't pick the group of losers. And then I can't tell you anymore after that because I checked out. Honestly, homework got a little more interesting.

But tell me, because I'm fascinated now and I really want to know (and besides that I'll give you, like, 100 American Idol Best Of Albums if you can tell me the answer):

WHY does it exist?

Who is benefiting? The bored people on the couch, or Ford and Dreamworks?

YOU be the editor

2007-04-13T12:00:00.000-04:00

This is the first third of an article I wrote for a class. I'd like some feedback on it - NOT that you like it, but what would you take out. Does it bore you? Would you read on? YOU be the editor!

>The City Moon café is the first and last stop on the road to Jericho. Through the Israeli and Palestinian checkpoints, the rutted road runs past the café, over a dried-up streambed and past a sign that reads in Arabic and English: ‘Welcome to Jericho, Moon City – the Oldest city in the World’.

Sparse clusters of palm trees block the view – barely – of sandy pits where buildings used to stand but which are now dumping grounds for scrap metal, bits of clothing and plastic containers.

This small, broken city, population 20,000, makes up Moneer’s world. Eager for visitors to his café, empty but for ten tables and 20 shisha water pipes, the gentle-looking Palestinian serves up tiny cups of Turkish coffee, dark and fragrant with cardamom.

Moneer, who looks to be in his mid-thirties, explains in his limited English (we don’t learn his last name) that he has never left the city. As a Palestinian Arab, the checkpoint is a boundary he cannot cross – not to visit a friend, nor even for a change of scenery.

Jericho, an oasis once surrounded by orchards, whose agriculturally-dependant population relied on the income brought in by fruit exports, now doesn’t grow much of its own. In this city’s square, young men hawk their produce: plentiful piles of strawberries, eggplants, cucumbers, tomatoes and fat heads of romaine lettuce glisten in the rain. All the produce comes from Israel.

Jericho was the first town in the West Bank to come under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority in 1994, following the Oslo peace accord. And, at first, the economy benefited. But as Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from the West Bank and Gaza, Israel tightened its already elaborate security system and economic conditions worsened for Palestinians.

Now, thousands of Palestinians are cut off from the agricultural areas they own and harvest by the 60-metre separation barrier that runs through some of the most fertile parts of the West Bank.

Construction began on the barrier in June 2002 to control the flow of Palestinians in and out of Israel. According to Peace Now, an Israel-based advocacy group that condemns Israeli expropriation of land in the West Bank, it is extremely difficult for Palestinians to get permits to enter Israel, visit East Jerusalem or go abroad.

Trapped in a world of internecine warfare and limited opportunity, Palestinians doubtless have a claim to lives of suffering. But conditions are difficult for the Jewish Israelis as well: living with the state’s security obsession can be as unbearable as the reigning fear of terrorism that engenders it.

When asked if Israel’s citizens suffer under the State’s security measures, the Consul General for Israel in Montreal, Marc Attali, admits, “Yes, the regular population is frustrated.”

But he says they are in a different kind of war. “When you’re facing terrorism, you’re not facing a regular army, [the enemy is] not in uniform. They’re hiding in the population.”

A purple sky unrolls heavy clouds as rain continues to pour on Moon City, leaving just a window of blue sky hanging over the road back to Israel.
----------------------

.... more to come.

It's snowing. Either Mother Nature hates us or Global Warming is proving a point

2007-04-12T21:32:00.000-04:00

That's all I have to say.

Snowing big, fat, wet, sticking to the ground snow.

Actually it resembles November snow.

And that's all there is going on.

T

This is the end, my friends

2007-04-12T12:44:00.000-04:00

Just finished the last edition of The Concordian for the year. For the record, newspapers are a lot of work, even weekly ones. I'm not planning on joining the team next year but I'll probably stick around to help out - can't help it! I do love where we've taken that paper. It went from uncaring rag to something quite respectable.

If you want to check it out online www.theconcordian.com will get you there.

I didn't write too much this year, just a few news stories and some features on my Israel/Egypt trip (don't read the latest and last installment, called 'An Almost Blog from an Almost Journalist', unless you like stream-of-sconsciousness, whisky-on-the-rocks writing - the previous three were better put together so those who like it neat) so that's my aim for next year.

Write write write. And do radio. And take a Critical Thinking class so I can be less damn subjective when I need to.

Going to my LAST CLASS of the semester, then planning to come out to Toronto this weekend to see some old friends. So if you're one of those and you want to be seen, email me!

Holy day-Habs day?

2007-04-06T12:54:00.000-04:00

It's a good thing to be alive! Isn't it good? Jesus died so that we can be alive in him and it's a good thing. I'm glad to be alive, aren't you?

Another good thing going on today is the Montreal Canadiens are going to trash the Leafs tonight (ha! take that Toronto) and the Habs are going to the playoffs. And if we don't, Quebec will declare a national day of mourning that will bring the sobriety of Good Friday home to this hockey-religious nation more than anything else ever could. Grandma, you thought you loved hockey, you ain't seen nothing yet.

In other news, I'm trying to finish up the last assignments (final feature on Israeli security for Feature writing class; diary for Advanced Radio news; essay on the ills of globalization for class on Conflicts of the 21st century; personal take on where I'm heading in journalism for Critical approaches to Journalism) so I can go out and play in the SNOW! Won't that be fun? BC has crocuses and daffodils and we have some jolly SNOW! I'm so excited, I just can't tell you how I'm raring to get out there and kick a snowbank or two.

Also this week, I have the LAST ISSUE of the paper to put together for the year. That's right, I'm passing the torch, I will be news editor of the Concordian no longer, though it's yet to be decided if I keep on the Production position. We lost our bid for a fee levy (we asked students to give us another 9 cents per credit for the paper to survive, it would have equalled about $2.50 per year but the brats said no), so it means we need to re-structure for next year to figure out how to keep on.

We're not giving up though! This paper has been through tough times, and we've given it our best and pulled it from the brink of disaster more times than I can count. I think it's on stable ground now and we've got a good batch of editors volunteering their time, blood and sweat for next year. I'm particularily happy about the news editors I have in place: Ben Ngai is a Christian (the first I've found in the Journalism department, yay!) who wrote quite a few articles for "the other side" (the biased and un-journalistic but sensationalist campus newspaper the Link) before he saw the light and came to the Concordian. There was no coersion on my part, I swear. Ben has been at every Production night for the past few weeks and is a great asset to the team.

Steady Ben will share the news editorship with my craziest writer, Siena Anstis, who reminds me of myself on speed. She's 18, the daughter of a Swedish diplomat who grew up all over the world but calls Saltspring Island, BC "home." She's amazing, but needs to slow down a bit. So they're a perfect balance for the section, she'll drive like snot to get the best stories and network writers together, and Ben will ensure that what we're printing is accurate! It's brilliant and I'm so happy to turn over "my baby" to them.

Next year, if I decide to return from BC (there's some doubt at this point at least) I'll be totally focussing on school and start writing as much as I can for other publications (hopefully to get paid!!!!) I'll start my TV track, which takes two years, and I'll keep a hand in the radio newsroom, I hope, by getting the job as the TA that handles the soundboard for the radio show. I love all the tech stuff and want to learn as much as I can.

The other thing I'm thinking about is going to Mozambique sometime soon, maybe next summer, to try my hand at helping set up some kind of broadcasting for Iris ministries. I'm interested in working with Rolland Baker and my friend Ingela Larsson to get Iris a portable global satellite system that will send and receive bits and bytes, even in the depths of the most remote forest or on water or in the desert. I want to record the sights and sounds of revival in the African bush and be able to podcast videos and radio docs. OK, it's ambitious, but God willing, that's what I'm heading for.

So, these are my thoughts from the Baobab coffee shop in downtown Verdun, the Island of Montreal.

Salut, and much love and prayers on this holy day.

Jesus be with you.

Tobi over and out

Anishinabe natives woes continue

2007-03-18T12:00:00.000-04:00

On the side of Highway 117, near Park de la Verendrye, the only remaining evidence of the March 12 road blockade is a disturbed pile of wood chips, a wedge of dirty snow, scattered 12-foot logs and a police car.

But although Monday's 36-hour blockade, which stopped both lanes of traffic on the sole highway connecting the Laurentides with Abitibi, was taken down, the drama that precipitated the blockade is not over.

At the entrance to the off-reserve settlement where some 50 Anishnabe Algonquins live stand two giant teepee tents. Above them fly four flags: those of the Algonquin, the Mic Mac, the Métis and the Warriors.

Just inside the settlement gates, around 12 Warriors- the men refer to themselves as "les sauvages" - are clustered around a campfire. Just past dawn, it's not clear who stood guard the night before and who got some shut eye in their truck trailer.

The Métis Warriors, around thirty of them, come from all regions of Québec. From St. Jérome, just north of Montreal came acting spokesperson, Chief Mario Perrault. Chiefs Jean-Paul Laporte of Fort Coulonge, Claude Tremblay of Kitchi-Sipi, and Marcel Paul from La Sarre farther north are stand in solidarity with their Anishnabe brothers and add force to the blocade.

"We are all family," said Patrick Grenier, a Métis from St. Jerome. "We can't leave our brothers and sisters in a situation like this."

"Do you see swing sets here, or sand pits, something for the kids to pass the time?" Grenier asked. "There's nothing here. . . the houses are not finished, you [can] see through the walls. It's very humid, no electricity, its unacceptable to have these kinds of conditions," he was visibly angry as he talked about the conditions the children are raised in.

Paul Crête, a representative from the Conféderation des peoples autochtones du Quebec (CPAQ), was one of the first to come and see the community. He said he cries every time he walks into their houses.

Back in 1996, the Anishnabe had mounted a similar blockade, but nothing changed. CPAQ and the Warriors are here to draw media and the government's attention to the Anishnabe's living conditions.

And they are not leaving until they feel the government has gotten the message that the aboriginal community has, once again, reached its limits.

Because these Anishnabe live off-reserve, the homes have none of the amenities, like a Post office or running water, they would have on a government reserve. They were kicked off their Barrière Lake reserve 11 years ago because of a collective disagreement with the Chief.

They live in cabins that were built for summer, not winter. In the winter, the mothers melt snow and ice for water and during the other seasons they fetch it from the freshwater spring nearby. Although forbidden, they have to cut down trees in the Park for firewood. One resident estimated they go through 30 cords of wood per family per winter – the equivalent of 120 compact pick-up truck loads.

Stuck between a government that will only give them services if they are on a reserve, or with living off a $900 welfare cheque and building their own homes, the families have fallen through a crack as big as the ones in the walls of their log cabins. But many, like Yvette Poucachiche, would rather live here than on the reserve where they don't feel free.

Poucachiche, 37, is a soft-spoken mother of six. She is babysitting the Nottaway family's kids while their parents are away and invites us into the house.

The Nottaway house, typical of the houses here, has gaps, some as big as a hand, between the logs. No insulation stops the last blasts of sub-zero air from filling the two-room house, and only a fully-stocked wood stove keeps it from freezing. It's not bearable to think how a child would live if the wood supply ran out.

The children, at the moment, are the only ones in the house. At ten in the morning, seven little sleepyheads are still lying on thin mattresses, two in the kitchen and five in the next room. The mattresses aren't be more than 4 inches thick.

There is no sink. No plumbing. No electricity. No couches.

Poucachiche bounces her own 16-month daughter on her knee, a bright-eyed girl named Amanda who chuckles more than she talks, as she describes the typical day for these children.

"They get up in the morning at a quarter to five [and] by quarter to seven they're out of here." After almost an two hour drive (they are 150 kilometres from the nearest school, in Maniwaki) there and back, they get home when it's dark and the children are "very, very tired," she said.

"That's why we want a school here, [we] don't want our kids getting up anymore. [For] 10 years they been doing this, I don't want another decade," she says, her soft voice not hiding her steely conviction.

Poucachiche's son, Nicolas, is sleeping on the mattress nearest the door. When pressed, he says it's "cold near the window." He's quick to smile, an energetic 10-year-old who later races on foot against of the trucks down the lane, dressed in only a thin shirt and jogging pants in the sub-zero weather.

Outside, we pass an outhouse – a fixture beside every house, even if they're roofless or have only three walls. Poucachiche says, "We don't mind living in the log cabins. We like it, this is us. But our kids are going to be big, they're going to have children one of these days."

Her eyes were shiny but she wouldn't give into tears. "We've been telling the Indian Affairs that we want help for us, for our kids. And for our elders as well… who are slowly dying."

George Nottaway, an elder in their community, died from a sudden onset of cancer just Monday night, the same night the council agreed to take the blocade down. Poucachiche said he was about to be the next chief.

"I'm gonna miss him a lot, and I thank him so much for teaching me . . . to fight for [my generation] today. I'm gonna try real hard, I'm not going to quit."

She won't leave, because, she says, "It's really important for me that the Anishnabes stay together." Her mother died when she was nine and she was taken away from her family and community, returning to the Anishnabes of Barrière Lake when she was sixteen.

Poucachiche is a fighter; she didn't agree with the decision to take down the blocade. But since it was decided with a majority vote in council at a round table - as is the rule when autochtone communities have to make a major decision - she was in the minority.

"They kept talking about a SWAT team taking our men, taking our friends that are helping us right now," said Poucachiche, referring to the Métis Warriors standing guard.

"I want [our friends] to be safe, I don't want them to get hurt," she said. Then, almost involuntarily, she burst out in a tight, choked up voice, "There's been enough violence."

Back at the campfire, the Métis talk about how this is also an issue of identity. "Mr. Charest and the others are saying 'Ils n'existent pas,'" said Grenier.

"We exist. We are autochtones and guardians of the earth they are trying to destroy."

Jason Israel, portrait of a U.S.-Columbian-Israeli

2007-02-28T13:12:00.000-05:00

Tel Aviv’s main outdoor market feels quiet, but then it’s only Thursday. By Friday, the souq fills up with Sabbath-observers, scurrying to finish shopping before sundown.

Jason Israel waits for customers, propped against the open doorway of the café where he works washing dishes and serving falafels to a sparse tourist clientele. He sits down to have coffee with a customer. Technically, he should be working, but there’s no one to serve at the moment.

Every night, he returns to the gritty comfort of the bar at Momo’s Hostel. He has lived at the hostel for over a year with a loosely knit community. He and a dozen international friends hang around Momo’s because of the abundant “unofficial” labouring jobs that flow through the hostel. With his gentle, open nature, Israel makes friends easily - with travelers that have the time, that is. But he loses them just as easily. Such is the intransient nature of the hostel.

He moved to Israel from the U.S. eight years ago. After living on a kibbutz for four years, he followed friends to Tel Aviv to find work.

Adopted from Columbia, Israel looks like he belongs in the Middle East. Sometimes, though, it’s not helpful to blend in too much. Even though he’s Jewish, he was stopped 200 times in one year by security and police because he looks Arabic. It’s true: he has dusky, olive skin and black, black hair.

“Once, they came to the hostel and asked to see all the passports in the safe,” he says. “When they got to mine, even though it says I’m an Israeli citizen and my last name is ‘Israel’, they waited to question me.” After that, he grew his hair long so maybe he would be mistaken for a hippy rather than a Palestinian.

“I had a friend from Florida, after he got here, he became a little Ashanti, hippy-kind of person, he started living on the streets, saying the world was going to end.”

He jumps up when the café owner calls him. She wants him to help translate for a pair of English-speaking women.

When he sits down again, he leans forward and speaks intently. “When I first moved here, this place was crazy, the souq was crowded all the time, bars packed with people who just wouldn’t leave till the next morning.”

“But all that changed with the intifada.”

Tourism dropped by over two hundred per cent, and after the summer war with Lebanon, his life got even quieter.

At least Israel isn’t working the under-the-table construction jobs he used to. He has horror stories. Often, he would have to work without safety equipment, not even a helmet. Israel said he’s had a few “corrupt bosses, men who say they’ll pay you so much money for a job, but then stiff you.”

And he’s had to be tough to endure it. “Once, I was given a handsaw and told to cut up a 50-year old telephone pole while it was still in the ground. And then we had to dig out the stump with a shovel.” He says it took him and a buddy nine hours. They still haven’t gotten paid.

He said he stayed in Israel for so long because it’s easy to get “very lost and stuck” here. But that season of his life could be over. Israel says he’s almost ready to go back and rejoin his family in Philadelphia, and find a home.

Jerusalem-struck

2007-02-07T03:17:00.000-05:00

Dec. 24 - Outside David's Tower, Old City, Jerusalem

Words can't describe coming upon the Wailing Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem for the first time. There was something powerful in the air around the yellow sun-soaked wall.

I couldn't stop the tears from streaming down my face and I sank to my knees, overcome.

In a daze, I could barely see from the fog of tears in my eyes. The thought of those thousands upon thousands of prayers, the millions of people that have visited, cried, pressed crumpled bits of papers in the crevices in the wall, touched me in a way I didn't expect.

Maybe it was the result of all the prayers for redemption and salvation that had been prayed over the centuries, of all the faces that turned to the Wall in hopes Someone would hear. But hope, anguish and desperation seemed to hover over still, turning the it into a touchstone of heaven.

Outwardly, the scene was not so different from anything else you'd see in an Orthodox area in Israel.

Men in kippas and long black jackets, locks curling over their ears, opened their cellphones just a few seconds after leaving the wall.

Some did their prayers rocking back and forth, a meditative motion that accompanied the half-chanted words in the prayer book. Some men prayed wordlessly, propped up with an arm above the head, leaning against the wall. Some had their forehead pressed on it, some kissing it just before they left, still facing the wall as they receded back to the public area.

Soldiers in baggy green uniforms came up to the wall in twos and threes. A mother with her little girl pressed both their hands against the wall. All around me, sincerity breathed.

Whoever these people were, whatever they may say or do when they walk about in their day-to-day lives, they appeared to be serious when it came to the wall. There's something about it that inspires respect, calls forth reverence, instills a sense of holy awe. You may pray ritually, but not idly.

I walked to the women's side, the right-hand third of the wall. Interestingly, the women's side was entirely in the shadow that late afternoon, while the men's side was still washed in sunlight, with the line of shadow demarking an exact split between the two.

I passed by the free head-coverings and walked quickly by the few women calling out, "Please! Miss, have souvenirs!" and offering, ironically, bits of red string tied to a hand with the eye of Islam.

I waited my turn to approach while the line of sunlight above me slipped higher and the shadows grew longer. In front of me a group of girls, maybe just a little more than half my age, were mouthing the words quietly with prayer books in hand.

My turn came. I can't say how long I stood there, forehead pressed against the cool stone, knees shaking from the cold, tears streaming once again, my mind quiet. It was the strangest prayer I'd ever prayed.

I asked God's intervention in a place that so urgently needed the help -- was I mad? -- asking for something much bigger than I could imagine, for the peace of Jerusalem, for the peace of the Middle East and for all mankind.

The rest of the day, my photo-happy travelling companion Ingela and I walked and walked for hours around the Old City: Jewish Quarter, Christian Quarter, every corner we could get to was explored from rooftop to underground market.

It was almost midnight when we found ourselves at the Damascus Gate in the Muslim quarter, on the holiest night of the Christian year, watching the whole market being torn down and rebuilt for the next day.

Medieval, dark and dripping, every corner was lit by candles. It was oddly reminiscent of an underground cathedral.

Dozens of family members, cousins, aunts, nephews, flooded the narrow alleys to help box up the day's refuse, sweep the stone steps and splash water to wash down their shops.

Little boys maneuvered three-wheeled wooden carts down the ramps by riding the rubber tire chained to the back, using it as a brake.

A cart full of massive animal bones was pushing its way slowly toward us, piled so high we almost couldn't see the three young boys, straining and being careful not to let the whole thing slip and crash to the floor.

Small tractors roared, piled high with stacks of empty produce boxes, waiting to have carts hitched to them so they could roll out of the mess again, out of the glorious, chaotic, exhilarating, noisy, tumultuous mess and into the starlight night at the Damascus Gate of the Old City.

Tobi,

Over and out.

While I'm waiting here..

2007-02-07T02:51:00.000-05:00

Jan 24, 2006, 2 a.m., Ben Gurion airport, waiting for Inge

It’s late. And I’m tired. I could be at a Chanukah party tonight with a fun bunch of Israelis, dancing and drinking and pretending I'm Haim's aunt, but I’m alone at the airport.

I've had the last of my solitary adventures now before Inge comes: today on the way to the airport I struck up a friendship with the bus driver. Haim can't speak much English but his big heart shines through. When I said I was going to wait at the airport for about 12 hours (because Shabbat shuts down the bus system at 5pm and Inge's plane arrived at 5am) he just decided he was going to make my wait as pleasant as he could. He told me, in the sweetest, most endearing way, that he thought it wasn't an accident that he was driving the bus today, because normally he's stuck in the office as the main manager for the Egged bus system. Someone called in sick so he had to substitute on this single bus and this single route for this single hour. And so we got to meet!

Instead of dropping me off then, he called his assistant at the office and told him to make coffee while we drove through Ramla back to the station. I was just so pleased to be able to hang out with the two of them, sitting on the big countertop and drinking my unfiltered Turkish-groound coffee. Shay and Haim became like brothers, I never was so comfortable with two guys I could barely speak to.

Eventually, it was decided that I would go to their annual Chanukah party that night, posing as Haim's aunty - I forgot the name I was supposed to have - but as it was several hours away I spent the time with Shay driving about and then eating some dinner together.

We got to share a bit and when I heard of his sad breakup with his wife, I told him about the power of forgiveness and we prayed together. He said he felt better, though he hadn't wanted to pray at first because she had wronged him. It just wasn't in the Jewish nature to forgive. Funny, I thought, that's the second time I've heard that this week...

Eventually I decided I wouldn't go to the party, just wanted a little time to myself and thought the airport, with it's free wireless, was the place for it. So Shay dropped me off and I settled in to wait... and wait.... and wait... Until I get a text from Inge saying she’s stuck, maybe not able to get out of London, plane delayed 1.5 hours already. She writes: UR gr8, just gr8, ha! RB has added u2his friends after I told him how amazing ur! Jesus is so gd+he knows all + takes care of us. love u, ix.

Typical Inge, full of encouragement and love. She’s incredible. Is she ever going to stop loving? Thinking good of me? I mean, I imagine, from what others told me, that I used to be a "nice" Christian, a good person who prophesied and saw God occasionally in visions and worshipped like a mad woman... but I’m just miserable girl! Don’t they know? How can they love me, when I still can’t evangelize, when talking about Jesus freaks me out, when I can’t spend any time with this God I supposedly worship.

But then, I think, maybe for now it’s OK. Maybe I’ll let my friends love me. I'll let Inge imagine for the moment that I'm still amzng!

"So.. you're... not Palestinian. Really?"

2007-02-03T00:29:00.000-05:00

Dec 21 – Carmel Souq (Market)

The souq feels a little too quiet, not the bustling, pushy market I expected in the Middle East, but then it’s Thursday. The action begins on Friday when people stock up for Shabbat. A few tourists appear here and there, but I think they’re mostly out-of-town Israeli, not foreigners.

Well-heeled Israeli women check out fabric and dishes and produce, talking constantly on their cellphones.

A glass blower twists fantastic shapes out of liquid colour before a group of fascinated kids. A couple of backpackers wander in front of me while I stare at a basket of the biggest strawberries I’ve ever seen. I read “Mt. Carmel” on the label and make a mental note to visit and find out how they grow berries the size of lemons.

Hailing me from the one of the cafés is a guy I’ve seen at Momo’s, the hostel I’m very temporarily lodged at. Although he’s Columbia-born and America-raised, Jason Israel looks like he belongs here. He tells me he actually lives in the hostel. I have to have his story…

“I moved here eight years ago. First I stayed on a kibbutz for four years, then moved to Tel Aviv,” he began. “When I first moved here, this place was crazy, the souq was crowded all the time, bars packed with people who just wouldn’t leave till the next morning.”

“But all that changed with the intifada.”

“Everything just went nuts, all the European countries stopped sending volunteers to kibbutzes, tourism dropped 200 per cent. Then with the Lebanon war this summer, it dropped even more.”

He told stories of the chaos of the under-the-table construction world. Often, he would show up at a job and not be given any safety equipment, not even a helmet. He was given a handsaw once and told to cut up a 50-year old telephone pole, piece by piece, while it was still in the ground. And then dig out the stump with a shovel. He says it took him and his buddy nine hours and they still haven’t gotten paid.

Construction goes very slowly here. Huge, gap-toothed concrete buildings missing their windows are boarded up and abandoned. New buildings rise cheek-by-jowl beside the decrepit ones. The city feels like it’s slowly filling in the gaps, and it looks like it would take decades before it resembles a tourist destination in the Western sense. And this is considered the most “Westernized” city in Israel.

“The security takes some getting used to,” I tell Jason. I don’t like being checked every time I enter a store because I’m carrying a backpack.

Jason says that that’s nothing: he was stopped 200 times in one year because he looks a bit Arabic. It’s true, in a way: he’s short, has dusky skin and black hair. Did I mention he’s adopted from Columbia? He compared the suspicion of anyone who was out of the norm to the racism that used to be so prevalent in the southern States.

Jason said, “People go crazy here after a while… I had a friend from Florida, after he got here, he became a little Ashanti, ‘hippy’-kind of person, he started living on the streets, saying the world was going to end.”

Come to think of it, I’ve seen quite a few interesting buskers. At the entrance to the souq, not far from I was stopped to have my backpack checked out, I saw a young man, maybe 22, kneeling on the pavement, face to the ground. He had a prayer book in front of him and a plate that had collected a few shekels. When I left later that morning and passed by again at night, he was still there.

Ate a bit of lunch while sitting in what is apparently the oldest quarter of Tel Aviv, an area called Newe Zedek (Oasis). Ahhhh… hummous. Never tasted it so good. In a white stone and concrete square outside a dance school/theatre, unseen streams of water run beneath the cement. Orange trees, planted at regular intervals, have their trunks painted a uniform, blinding white.

In conversation with an elderly lady, I find out she settled here when the State was born. I offered her strawberries – couldn’t resist buying those jumbos in the end. Apparently Israel doesn’t export their best produce.

Grandma Caroline speaks Dutch, English, Hebrew and French – and German - having spent two years in concentration camps during the Second World War. She said that after the war she went back to Holland for a time. But she moved to Israel in 1948, because she was “fed up with anti-Semitism.” After working in a kibbutz for a year and a half “in the fields, with chickens, in the cow shed, the kitchen,” she married a Dutch Israeli boy.

One month before her baby was born, her husband died in a small border clash while serving in the army. After staying on the kibbutz for another five years as a widow, she married again and they moved back to Holland so her son could be educated there.

Eighty years old now, she told me she comes back every winter to Israel.

Listening to the stories of lives intersecting here in Israel, I find it strange to be in a land established on the principle of homelessness.

That night, I walked with Jason to City Hall to seek out the best schawarma. We visited the memorial for Yishak Rabin, who was assassinated by a radical religious Jew who thought Rabin was betraying the State. There are still parts of the wall where people had graffitied messages in the months following his death. I am sad to think that ideas can grow so monstrous that people kill for them.

Later that night, on the way to an internet café to send everyone a message, I got waylaid by a group of South Africans. Lior Avnit, 21, tells me the situation is so bad back home that he has a much better chance of getting ahead by coming to Israel and taking advantage of the free education and kibbutz system. I’m sure it works great if you can find some Jewish blood in you.

He’s been here for about 2 years, on and off and is moving to a kibbutz in the north in a few days.

He sees that “the right-wing, religious and military-minded people in Israel want to destroy Palestine, want to take the land back, which was bought, some it, by Israel. They’re just the same, exactly the same mentality as the extremist Arabs. But the difference is the Arab believes he will go to heaven if he kills us. But it’s the same mentality.”

“You have those on the Palestinian side who will take the help, and those - the extremists - who will take it as an insult. But why should the Israeli government expend its resources to help people who want to see their state obliterated?”

Had fascinating talk of South Africa and how the “shock integration” since 1990, the first democratic election, has left the country in ruins. He said, “we went from first world country, to bordering on a second world country, with all the traits of a third world country.”

Arrival in Tel Aviv

2007-02-02T23:09:00.000-05:00

Countless visitors, residents returning to their homeland, pilgrims looking for a religious connection and those who were just plain curious mingled together in the queues at the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv.

Today, December 20th, was probably no different than any other day for those processing the passports: there were two or three families from France, orthodox Jews with big-brown eyed and ringleted children in tow; there was a family from Sweden coming back to celebrate the patriarch's 80th birthday, and there appeared to be some Jewish Germans, one family in particular which caught my attention from when we boarded in London, through the transfer in Frankfurt and then at the border control.

This family had a beauty of a Yiddish mama herding two younger generations in formation. She was the last to sit on the plane, preferring to stand and direct her family to the appropriate seats so everyone could be together. She’s the kind of star diva who just takes no notice of her audience, though somehow managing to draw every eye on the plane not determinedly trained on material such as the Deutch Post. She sometimes took no notice of her entourage either, though she was actively coordinating their every move.

At the Frankfurt airport for example, everyone boarding our flight had to go through security check a second time. Since our flight had been late, we had precisely 48 minutes to get through the snaking queue, board a bus to take us to our gate and board the plane. There was no guarantee the plane would wait.

Mama certainly didn’t think so. After waiting for five minutes at the end of the queue of approximately 200 people, Mama led her brood full steam ahead to the beginning of the line and somehow convinced the harassed German traffic controller to let them past. It still took them 20 minutes to pass through the ordnung-conscious security, but the agitation it caused everyone in the line, watching the family take their place at the head where they belonged, elevated the stress in the room to a fever pitch.

This was my first lesson in Israeli culture: no one, but no one, seems to respect the concept of queuing up. It’s just not in them. Call it a deficiency.

And the second rule, which I learned courtesy of my first friend in Israel, my Swedish seatmate by the name of Stephan, is that while everyone knows the power of the Yiddish Mama, no one talks about her. So that’s the last I’ll say about it. But now you know.

Elie Wiesel - Voice for a Moral Society

2006-11-20T13:08:00.000-05:00

Having lived through the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, battled against apartheid in South Africa, commiserated with victims in the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia and the Middle East - Elie Wiesel can perhaps lay claim to knowing the difference between a just and unjust society.

But, as the philosophy professor admitted in his speech last Tuesday, while he may know the difference, he finds it is much harder to define a just and moral society. And harder still to try and build a world without hatred.

"It is your century"

First-ranked among world peacemakers, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel gave a two-part speech: 'Building a Moral Society' and 'The Urgency of Hope' to a packed audience at the Spectrum. Montrealers of every background and political leaning filled every one of the 900 seats to hear the renowned speaker.

In a speech as remarkable for its tender storytelling as for its fearless look at the application of universal principles, he talked about the persistence of racism and hatred, the "faith of fanaticism," how humans must deal with their fear of the 'other', the indiscriminate nature of suffering and how humans must help one another to freedom.

"It is your century," he said in French to the audience. "I can only transmit to you my experiences, my dreams, my nightmares."

Wiesel expressed many times how thrilled he was to be part of an initiative that had been brought about by the collaboration of so many groups.

"It is a big challenge and a big joy, to be here at the beginning of this project," Wiesel said at a press conference earlier in the day. "I can't tell you how happy I am."

Among the organizers who began organizing the project in September were: SHOUT (Students Helping Others Understand Tolerance), Hillel UQAM, Forum Jeunesse de l'Ile de Montreal, Institut du nouveau monde and Newman House and the McGill Muslim Student Association.

Wiesel recalled the eucumenical movement that brought together Jewish and Christian religious leaders at the instigation of Pope John Paul II, and said: "But we forgot the third partner - Islam. We should have invited an Imam. It was a mistake."

Building a Moral Society

He introduced his first theme by saying he has struggled to understand how humans are expected to build a moral society when "God himself tried and wasn't that successful."

"Who are we," he asked the audience, "created in the image of God, to say that we have succeeded to build a moral society?"

It is much easier, he said, to define an unjust society. An unjust society is usually ruled by a tyrant that allows no questions, no doubt. "In a dictatorship, fear reigns�.He who holds the power - decides. The individual doesn't count."

In a just society, the individual contains "the mystery of life. In a just society, I am allowed to ask questions. Doubt is a way of living, of expressing myself. In a just society, the choice belongs to us."

Choice however, should not be equated with the word 'tolerance', which he said was one of his least favourite words because it implies condescension. "Who am I to tolerate the 'other'?" he asked. "I would like to instead use the word 'respect'. In a just society, it is respect that governs."

The Faith of Fanaticism

He spoke of the "faith of fanaticism," which he said could be seen in any war of race, religion or ideology when one side fights from "the power of the moral superiority it feels it has over the other."

"The fanatic sees the 'other' as an object. Only man[kind]... is capable of the hatred that is at once fanaticism's source and its end result."

Wiesel stressed that fanaticism is not limited to a single religion, "It is found in Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism as well. It was, after all, a fanatic Jew who killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin."

"In order to be friends, you must give up fanaticism," he said. Our relationship to the 'other' defines our humanity, according to Wiesel. "The Jew in me thinks that because my identity has importance, the identity of another is important as well," he said. He added that in order to combat the ignorance that fanaticism exploits, the moral society must be built on education.

While visiting the Southern United States as a journalist in 1956, Wiesel said that for the first time he was "ashamed to be white." He said racism was reflected even in the very law of the land, "a law that was unequal, inhuman," and decried racism as "stupidity".

After the Second World War, Wiesel said he saw hope for mankind. He was convinced there would be no more racism, hate, hunger or war. "Yes I was naive, but I thought [this] because we had understood where war leads. I come from a generation that thought, 'If we can tell the stories, the world will get better.' We are witnesses, one to another."

"But still war continues, hate grows." With passion in his voice Wiesel said, "It is a tragedy, they say, when the messenger can't communicate his message. But it's worse when the messenger communicates his message, but no one listens. It's as if he had never spoken."

Letter to a Young Palestinian Arab

In an attempt to address the Palestinian-Israeli struggle, he read part of an open letter to a young Palestinian Arab man that he had published 30 years ago.

"Suffering is not a theory, not a caricature. We [Israelis] learned that suffering doesn't confer any privilege."

Two years ago, the Elie Wiesel Foundation and King Abdullah II of the Kingdom of Jordan began to invite Nobel Laureates and social and political leaders to come together to discuss world issues. This year, they invited Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Of that meeting, Wiesel said, "Something miraculous happened. All of a sudden, they fell into one another's arms, embraced. It was one of those moments." He said they began a conversation and discussed practical issues, economics and scientific cooperation.

"And I thought it was all going to be perfect," said Wiesel, "because to me it is clear, a big majority of Israelis are for an independent Palestine."

But he sounded weary as he told the sorry sequel, "And then, Hezbollah. And everything has to start over. Of course, I must restart, we cannot stop."

The Urgency of Hope

Wiesel said that hope is a way for individuals to believe "the 'other' capable of loving, thinking, crying like me, because we're all human."

But first, he said, "We make sure our hope doesn't become the despair of others, to ensure that our happiness doesn't come at the cost of someone else's."

"It's a big principle: I am free only when the 'other' is free," he said. "When I fight for the freedom of the 'other', I fight for my freedom as well. And it's the same for hope, for joy."

Wiesel concluded by saying, "It is your century. It's up to you, you are free to decide. The lived history will end either in fear or in celebration. I wish you celebration."

World Press Photo winner: Finbarr O'Reilly

2006-09-06T13:10:00.000-04:00

The picture that won photojournalism’s best-known contest is a portrait of a young Nigerian mother’s face, her mouth covered by the shriveled hand of her starving child.
One of thousands of images photographer Finbarr O’Reilly has captured in his mission to promote Africa, to “keep showing Africa the way I see it,” as O’Reilly said at a presentation of his work last Friday.

He was in Montreal for the opening of the 2006 World Press Photo exhibit, which runs from Sept. 1-24, at the Just for Laughs Museum. Organized by Reporters Communication, a local, non-profit organization that promotes documentary photographs.

Originating in Amsterdam, the contest awarded its first prize in 1955. This year, it gathered over 80,000 images, culled from over 4,000 professional photographers from the 122 countries that entered in the competition.

The first prize, the World Press Photo of the Year, is awarded to the photograph that best marries visual perception and creativity with an event, issue or situation of great journalistic importance. O’Reilly accepted his award in Amsterdam at the end of April this year.

O’Reilly, a Vancouver native now living in Senegal, narrated a slideshow of hundreds of his photographs, taken during his two years in Africa as a Reuters photographer. Starting off as a reporter, he began taking pictures because he couldn’t get a photographer along for a trip. He turned to photography full-time when he realized that more of his photographs than written pieces were being published.

He started his informal presentation with pictures from Congo, where he said, the wealth of minerals has caused centuries of misrule, first by Belgians and then by President Mobutu. When he showed pictures of child-soldiers, he said “They know nothing but war…violence is the way of doing business.”

Last month, Congo had its first free election and O’Reilly was on hand to record the event. He warned his audience that some of the images were graphic before he showed a picture of a burned, mangled body being dragged by the militia through the streets. “The stakes were high because whoever runs the country controls the flow of money,” he said.

Some comic relief followed as his next photos showed citizens at the polls, puzzled as they looked through the lists of candidates for President. According to O’Reilly, there were 146 candidates on each of the seven pages of the ballots.

He then turned to Niger, where his winning photograph was taken. The portrait of the mother and her child was taken year ago at an emergency feeding center run by Médecins sans frontières, in Tahoua, Niger.

World Press Photo jury chairman James Colton said of it: "This image has everything - beauty, horror and despair. It is simple, elegant and moving.”

Other haunting images followed: a starving girl chewing on a stick in front of the empty beehive-shaped granaries, a dying child in a bed, followed by another of the same bed, now empty. His and other journalists’ images caused such a media buzz during the summer’s G8 conferences and LiveAid summits that Western governments finally did begin sending food and aid.

In Darfur, Sudan, he said that most of the human-rights violations are committed by government troops fighting the rebels. He took aerial photographs of entire villages burned to the ground. He said that “these stories, in places like Darfur, are quite complicated, there is not much of an appetite for it. (But) photos have an emotional impact.”

He also said that it wasn’t all tragedy in Africa. He describes Africans as a whole as a joyous people, who “laugh, enjoy life and are an incredibly strong and generous people. When I turn up in refugee camps, more often than not they offer me something to eat.”

“I try not to portray people as victims... I want to show the strength of character, what it takes to survive in these places.”

He said he enjoys taking portraits because he “likes to show the expressions on people’s faces, in their eyes. It’s the face that tells the story.”

The Wrong Bus Stop

2006-04-17T00:32:00.000-04:00

For the days when I am like an empty bell tower... for those days, I need a little reminder of who and what I am. Awhile ago I remembered, you see, and knew whereof I came and where I was headed. Now it's like I'm standing at the empty gas station where nothing's been pumped for years, watching the sun change colour and the wind blow dust across the road, wondering where I'm heading next. Wondering, 'How did I get to this place?'

For those days, I need a good shot of multi-vitamin. Something to grow hair on the chest and make me want to throw my head back and holler.

This calls for a prophet: Isabel Allum teaching at the School of the Prophets in July, Stratford last year.

<< On earth, we have the mentality that we were born with. We are from below not from above. We think things in heaven follow the way things go according to how we are used to thinking. Like coming from a foreign country, we either lose our old mentality and embrace the new, or we hold onto it and miss everything.

God comes from a different planet, world, mentality - but we miss it because we keep looking for what we know. He speaks acceptance and love, but we look for rejection because it's familiar. He says victory, but we refuse to believe it because we can't handle it.

Learning to think the way Jesus thought, ie having the mind of Christ, means replacing your thoughts with his. Then, and only then, will you start to get the way his Father's kingdom works. When prophecy comes, it is often uncomfortable as he tells you who he created you to be. At the beginning of things, you have to tell yourself everything, "this is how it is in heaven", and it's work. Through repetition, it gets into your mind so you stop yourself next time you're thinking a defeating earthly thought, and replace it with his reality.

Prophecy from the heart of the Father uses the Father's love. It brings down his plans for us, and through the love enables us to believe those plans for these seemingly pathetic people.

Prophecy from the gift are simply revelations about things and circumstances, about how things are. Not how God wants it to be or sees us.

Prophetic words are offers from the heart of God. First you have to respond. "Yes I will do it, or no I won't." You have a choice. It is not an un-optional destiny, you can choose to receive what he has for you or not. If you say yes then God can move forward and start making things happen.

Next step is to align yourself accordingly. You don't just sit there and expect it to happen by magic. You start walking towards it, making the choices that will get you there. You can't force prophecies to be fulfilled, but you can delay them or leave them hanging in the air. Position yourself in the place of availability. There is still training, equipping and preparing, and THEN God still has to release you into it.

There are so many people with unfulfilled callings. God said something but they never responded, or put themselves into training for it. If we choose no, or quit halfway through, get frustrated and walk away - DESTINY is still REDEEMABLE. God is not like man, that he would change his mind.>>

There. That's a good, stiff, breath of fresh air reminder. WE aren't of this earth, and how often I'm tricked into thinking I'm just like everyone else! It's a relief to admit now, "I'm an alien. There's no going around it."

I'm just not from this area, I think I got dropped off at the wrong truck stop. Please let me go back home.

This is a first

2006-02-27T01:46:00.000-05:00

Not to say that I've never written incredibly personal thoughts for people far and wide to read... but this time I don't know you. Interesting.

So. Some things to know before we get started.

1. Although I love writing, I, also, have, an inordinate affection, for commas.

2. In addition to that, I consider myself a free agent with the use of words. So I occasionally makle them. Inventetate. Inscribe my personality on written verbiage. Also, I like string-words. Even ones that shouldn't be put together, such as elephant-noodling.

3. Travel, Jesus, friends, good coffee, incredible, or at least easily accessesible food, is on my list of likes.

4. I don't make lists generally. This is special.

5. You may be subjected to extreme amounts of witty writing, or perhaps just train-of-thought randomness in the course of this blog adventure.

6. Facts: I'm pursuing journalism, but have no plans to write for a daily rag, no matter how much they beg me, now how prestigious. Murder and tragedy, elections and politicians can be reported by someone more interested.
- other fact: I'm listening to crashing waves on a Mexican seashore, listening to Kevin Prosch, drinking a beer and feeding a stray cat. This, would be about my favourite place on earth.
- fact: I write in the British style, so for those of you who aren't used to so many "u"s, get over it. They got to English first.
- fact: I get incredibly overwhemingly annoyed at pretty much nothing, except situations that I myself cause. So just about anyone, no matter how rude or annoying, can be my friend.
- fact: I live in Montreal. It's the greatest. Except for the lack of tanning-ability for much of the year, which is why I'm presently in Mexico.
- fact: Jesus is just about the best thing that ever happened to my life. He's so sweet. Even when I'm completely non-nice, boringly addicted to safety, totally and everlastingly going round the same mountain again and again, he still cares.

7. I have nothing more to say.

So - welcometh to my thought-home.

Busted!

2004-05-01T16:42:00.000-04:00

Sailing down the Ragged Islands, it was beautiful beach after beautiful beach. It was all bordering on the same though, and I think I'm glad something happened to break up the monotony...

After another picturesque day at another gorgeous beach, this time on Buenavista Cay, something new came into our quiet lives at around four in the afternoon. We were buzzed by choppers, both the Bahamian Defense Force and the U.S. Coast Guard, who swept low over the island and our little boat for about half an hour before taking off again. They came back at night, this time with powerful searchlights, then left us till morning.

The next day and for the next four days, it’s the same. Twice daily they sweep over us and the island we’re anchored at, no explanations. No radio asking who we are or why we're there, and no information on what they're doing with these daily sweeps.

Our only clue that it's not us they're concerned about is the one other little skiff, seemingly of no consequence, that turns up coincidentally at the same time. Three or four times a day we’re passed by this little skiff, which is carrying from one to five people. They island-hop, skipping by us, picking up and dropping guys off on the islands and obviously trying to elude the choppers.

And so the chase continued, three, then four days. Just when it's lost it's novelty and I forget all about it, we get our first encounter.

While Maciek was out spearfishing one afternoon, unsuccessfully as it turned out, I was reading on the deck of the Afterblue and all of a sudden, the boatload of rough-looking Bahamian guys appears at my side and the leader asked if I could spare any water. I quickly tossed them a small bottle, jabbering in confusion, not really knowing what to say (what would you say to people you knew were on the run and likely smuggling drugs?) and they drove off again.

The next day, after a short sail to the next cay, the boat again appeared just as the choppers come out for their afternoon sweep. The driver, evidently a Bahamian, had vivid green eyes. He hung off our boat and tried to make conversation, asking if the chopper had been there long, then had a rather strange request. He asked if we would radio the chopper and tell them he was a friend of ours. That sort of brought everything into the realm of the ‘too dodgy’, so we told him to bug off.

Probably as a stress relief, Maciek speared a treasure that night, a crab and a small lobster. I was happy as a clam. We cooked them with garlic in aluminum foil on a fire on the beach with the last of the potatoes.

Next day, we at last got in to Duncan Town, the last outpost in the Ragged Islands and in all the Bahamas, through a canal and up to the dock, a decrepit thing with at least four shells of rusting boats around it. We pulled water from the town well with a bucket and after walking the one dusty main road through the town, we poked our heads into the only grocery store. To our surprise, there was our gree-eyed friend from the motorboat minding the store! Shocked, we didn't know what to say and backed out.

.... lots of action - meet Nortel team from Montreal who are installing state-of-the-art telecommunications system on this tiny island -go out for dinner with them - end up finding about the drug bust the day before - confused night - crash on McGuire's floor, the Montreal team leader ... all is detailed on website, it's too far back for me to remember!

Leave Duncan Town at 9-ish that morning, catching a ride with Maxine, the mother of our motorboat friend, Julian (the green-eyed Bahamian.) We had coffee and Milo over at Ian's apartment, who seems sort of like Ramiro as a host. Turns out he's pretty much the mayor of Long Island, and they want him to run for government. He is very kind and seems like a great leader.

The sail out was good, anchored opposite a little beach near a bay. As it was our last day in the Bahamas, I get emotional, and cried, looking at the most beautiful beach we've been at yet, thinking how good the trip had been. The sand is so white and fine, and I thought of all the campfires and crazy fishing we'd experienced... I'd never forget it.

In the middle of cooking a pineapple upside down cake on the fire, the last boat in the world I'm expecting to come up zooms up to the the beach- with Julian and his buddy Kennedy! I am so shocked, beside the fact that I'm in a bikini, I am embarrassed to see them. And there's no one else around, Maciek is spearfishing for dinner and I can only wonder, 'what do they want now?'

But all they do is say 'Thanks for giving us the water,' Julian said we probably saved their lives. He hedged around a bit and then said thanks for not turning them in, although I protested that it wasn't intentional - we didn't report to the police only because no one called us about them - but he insisted on dropping a bottle of Bacardi Gold and a six pack of Coke into the dinghy in thanks.

As we're standing there looking awkwardly at each other, me wondering if I should tell them about baking my first pineapple cake on an open fire, Maciek came running up the beach, all pale and excited, yelling, "White shark, I saw a BIG white shark - two of them!"

He had been spearing as usual, trying to get some dinner and a shark came up to him when he was swimming over a kill. The shark came close, then closer and closer still, seemingly undaunted by the spear in Maciek's hand. Maciek said he had to actually paddle backward to wedge the spear between himself and the white! And then he turned around and there was another one! They both slowly sway away and he sped out of the water and up the beach, still in his flippers. Crazy! I'm so glad it happened on our last night here because I would NOT get back in the water again!

We decided not to leave for Cuba that night, the wind is too strong and it promises to be at least 10 knots less tomorrow. Too bad, of we're all ready and psyched up, but I am happy because I heard from God on it and I feel right that tomorrow is the day. So we had some rum to celebrate, and another few hands of rummy.

Saturday May 8 Waiting around all day to leave. Maciek went spearing again, he's got guts of iron!, and I stayed close behind, fearful of sharks. Caught only a small Jack. Used it as bait on two lines trailing off the boat but we lost three hooks when they got snapped off during the day.

I took some pics of random beachness, more "last day in Bahamas" moments. Cooked the rice and beans and a can of corned beef over the fire, had a beer semi cold. Got everything in readiness once more in case we decided to leave that night...

Later: we DID leave! At 9 PM promptly, we had the main and jib up and going fine. Avg. 5.5 knots, wind on a broad reach and screaming up and down 6 ft to 9 ft waves. The boat did so well, though she heeled over so far sometimes I thought the anchor bag on the side was going in!

It was magical, I had the most fun I'd ever had on that boat sailing that night, with the moon waning overhead, the stars bright in the dark sky, scudding clouds causing them to peep through, we took turns at the tiller, holding hard on it with the strong wind for 2 and 3 hours at a time.

Strange thoughts through the night, wondering if those lights ahead were boats, stars, what were they? Seeing them pass in front was dreay, big 'ships passing in the night.' Lots of random thoughts of people and places and books: Lucy on the Dawn Treader, Drinian the first mate and Caspian the captain, so many things tumbling around in my head.... trying to stay awake, stay dry under my big, wet weather coat, eating crackers and bread and pineapple cake for the sugar... it was such a good night, I'll remember it forever, I felt like a real sailor.

Sunday May 9th Arrived in CUBA, SI!! At around nine in the morning, we pulled into the International Marina Bahia de Vita, where a few motorboats were waiting to escort us to La Guarda. The guards were very nice, but they wouldn't let us off the boat until we'd filled out papers and papers and had visits from three officials. Only the beginning of a truly paper-ific experience in Cuba... I described it all in detail on paper, so I won't go over it now.

Next Cuba... inland.

Travel in the wake of Afterblue

2004-04-28T14:07:00.000-04:00

Heading south

Sailing down the string of Ragged Islands, our little sailboat Afterblue followed a trail of coral islands scattered like so many of Hansel’s breadcrumbs. Although the procession of uninhabited islands sported dozens of innocent, white beaches, there were no signs of life; the islands are little more than rocky humps of scrub vegetation and palm trees and little else.

To our joy, threw were also no cruisers out here, a great contrast to the noisy “cruiser daycare” of Georgetown on Grand Bahama Island. A month ago, we had been only too glad to leave after meeting the requisite number of Florida and South Carolina and Toronto cruisers who, frankly, all seemed to belong to the same club.

Every year, from the first of March to the beginning of hurricane season, over 500 boats of all shapes, prices and horsepowers flee the North to bob at anchor in Georgetown. They come for the sun and stay for an imported culture that revolves around volleyball, bridge, Coronas, BBQs and a limited library of soporific paperbacks.

But Captain Maciek Wiszniowski and I were on a different mission: we were headed to the most southerly of the Bahamas’ 700 islands, Duncan Town, the last town before making the jump to Cuba.
The Crew
A word here about cruising with someone you barely know: it is a good thing to have separate roles on board. Likely the one thing that made the three-month trip work on board this fat-hipped 25-foot lake sailing boat, was the fact that Captain Maciek and I had very distinct roles.

He was the navigator, the one who sensed the wind and knew when it was time to go, a true captain content to stay at his post, the long, polished wooden tiller, for hours on end. He had grown up in barely-post-communist Poland and could scrabble together anything from nothing. He knew how to fix the four-power outboard engine with duct tape, though he couldn’t do anything about the cooler that sucked more energy than the solar panels could generate. (We just did without mayonnaise.)

My roles included, but were not limited to: First Mate, First-rate Cook, Anchor Wench, Figurehead, since I spent much of my time at the bow, and Everything Else.

It wasn’t easy living in a snug cabin ten feet by eight feet wide and less than five feet high. No privacy. Constant bending. And everything had to be neatly stowed away or tied down, a difficult task for a crackerjack mess-maker like me.

But living with a crick in your neck was a small price to pay for the extravagance of living in the spectacular beauty of the Bahamas.

And the best thing about the Bahamas was, although the beaches were great and the mangrove swamps a kick, a thousand times greater was the myriad worlds of sea creatures below the surface.

Stalkers and sharks and conchs, oh my!
Way beyond Georgetown and past a dozen more isolated islands, where conch-diving and fishing were pretty much the only industry and where two grocery stores could supply the needs of the 50 houses of the community, we sailed down to the Ragged Islands.

Our first anchorage was at Water Cay, in a beautiful, sheltered little bay empty of either powerboats or sailboats, right opposite a conch graveyard and above a lively reef. Not able to wait to get off the boat, I swam to the island and explored for a couple of hours.

As I was about to swim back to the boat, I put my head in the water and saw to my right a fat, grey shape. Nurse shark, I tell myself, it’s only a harmless nurse shark, they never attack. However, some inbred prey-fear part of me sent my pulse tripping as I scrambled out of the water again.

Disgusted at my sissiness, I got back in and cautiously skirted the unmoving shark, but soon I was spooked again when I found I was being stalked by a wolfish-looking barracuda. Making it back to our fat-bellied sailboat Afterblue, accompanied the whole way by Mr. Barracuda, I found Captain Maciek had ‘caught’ three conch for dinner (read: scooped up a family of helpless single-claws from the seafloor.) Yay. Thanks Cap Mac.

There are few options when grocery stores are sparse, so I gritted my teeth and got out the steak knife.

I don’t mind cooking. In fact, I’m affectionately attached to the two-burner Coleman stove I set up and dismantle twice a day, almost as closely as to the anchor I heft at sunrise and sunset.

But cooking is a different thing from preparing the googly-eyed, slimy-fleshed creature and pounding it into palatability with a rum bottle for half an hour.

Which I did, (it was my turn) and which we ate, raw, ceviche-style, dripping with lime juice and onions, over crackers.

Fire Woman Conquers
The next exciting discovery was I could add ‘Fire Woman All-Star’ to my list of titles. As I started a fire to cook dinner the next day on Flamingo Cay’s beach, clouds gathered at an alarming rate and it started raining the minute I got it lit.

Leaving the fire to fend for itself, I quickly rowed back in the dinghy to pick up Mac from the boat. And that’s when I discovered what he’d caught for dinner: a pair of pretty black-and-white angelfish with yellow fins, now also with holes through their flat triangular bodies.

I shrieked, obviously, in indignant outrage, and told Mac in no uncertain terms that I thought it was wrong to kill a creature that was obviously meant only for looks. There are plenty of ugly fish out there, couldn’t he have caught one of those? His manly reasoning was that we needed all the fish we could get. And besides, there was nothing I could do about it was there? They were dead.

Fuming, I row us back to the island. The rain, which had let up for our debate over the merits of pretty fish, started up again and I ran to my sputtering fire. I covered it with a flattened corn flakes box that I had brought while Maciek laughed at me and told me he’d get the stove.

“Just wait, I guarantee it’ll blow over in ten minutes,” I said with a knowing eye to the clouds.

Maciek smirked probably thinking that a person who couldn’t tell which way the wind was blowing (he’s never forgotten the unfortunate incident when I popped my head out of the hatch to spit and got it all over my face) wouldn’t be all that accurate when it came to weather.

After the cardboard box was too soaked to work anymore, I held a flat rock over the fire, and waited. I also pondered while I waited, while Maciek stood laughing and the clouds just kept heaving and dumping their rain, I wondered why it was so important to me to be right all the time. Why couldn’t we just get the damn stove? My arms were aching from the big rock.

But, ha! Vengeance was mine! Within the allotted ten minutes, the clouds rolled over and played dead and the rain vaporized. The fire leapt up, healthy as ever, and swallowed the wet cornflakes box. And I just smiled as I wrapped those poor angelfish in foil and laid them to rest in the coals.

More to come… The Drug Bust