WHAT A LONG STRANGE ROAD

   
I have not blogged in a while, having suffered through an extended bout of PTSD these last months; Present-Toronto-Stress-Disorder. 

A while ago we put all our worldly belongings into storage, and set out on a six month long adventure, hoping to change our lives en-route.


During this journey we've carried keep-sakes and photographs to remind us of friends and experiences. 
These pictures are of some of those reminders. 
Our other belongings remain in storage four years later. 

When my mother died, that sad event affected so many things. A by-product of her death is the continued care of the ninety-two year old Crankiest Pensioner ever. 

It's daunting to return to a childhood home, a place with few happy memories, to look after the architect of that unhappiness.  But this is where we remain today, at least for another week or so. 
   

                                                                




Cranky? Honestly, how cranky can a ninety-two year old be? Aren't you exaggerating just a bit? No. No I am not. Imagine a man who loathes others' happiness so much that he presses cat-faced coasters in front of the television to block out the exuberant smiles of a victorious Andy Murray. CP dislikes genuine joy. It makes him very mad.

It must be war-time residue, that perpetual anvil dangling over his head, that causes him to yearn for the end of the world. It is a betrayal that the place still exists at all.

CP has made it plain he does not want things to continue on after he's gone. He would like the entire planet to just disappear the second he leaves his mortal coil. While he dislikes pretty well everything, he does not want to miss a moment of misery. Dickens couldn't invent a grimmer character.

His favorite TV viewing is the Weather Channel, the section where they show catastrophic events from around the world. Tsunamis, blizzards, floods, and ice storms, you name it, he loves them. 'How close is that to us?' he asks hopefully about the Costa Rican hurricane. 'That volcano erupting on the other side of the world could wipe out Etobicoke'. He's optimistic the lava flow will somehow find its way from Mount Etna to Toronto.  

Just when I had gathered the strength to blog again, the wind was knocked out of me by the election. A bout of Permanent Trump Stress Disorder displaced my pre-existing Present Toronto Stress Disorder. 

Perversely, this election cycle should bring great joy to CP, someone yearning for the end of the world could actually glimpse it now. But the fates are toying with him. The downside of the onset of dementia is that Cranky Pensioner has forgotten there ever was an election. Something that could have made him so happy is beyond his grasp. 

 
So how do Husband and I maintain our sanity in this situation? Well, as mentioned, we carry with us keepsakes to remind us of friends and experiences. Photographs are an obvious and easy take-a-long. Pictures flicker across our computers as ever-changing screen-savers that bring smiles and good memories.

We travel with fabrics from trips to India, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere, as well gifts given us by friends. The Pink Cottage was decorated with them to give us a sense of home. And now here in Toronto we do the same. Our personal memorobilia does battle with the unfriendly reminders of an unhappy childhood that lurk around each corner. Old versus new, and new is winning.

A bonus of this time in Toronto is returning to school and renewing old friendships. 

Much life has happened in the ensuing years and the opportunity to catch up with friends, some not seen since high school, has been amazing. We've also made excellent new friends and created great new memories that we'll take along with us on the next leg of this journey. 

The only constant is change. Even though we cannot wait to get back there, Post-Brexit England is not the same place we left last November. Post-Election, the US is not the same place we left nearly four years ago. And, when we leave Toronto on our reprieve, it will not be the same place we landed in last year.











Cranky Pensioner, while still praying for the end of the world, is being pacified by his burgeoning dementia. The roar is leaving the lion. In its stead is a person who has actually expressed some gratitude for the care he gets. It's nice to finally see a grateful person emerging from his casing of lifelong anger. 


Alas, I speak too soon. The other day I heard uncharacteristically hearty laughter coming from upstairs. Some newfound joy in life perhaps? Turns out a soccer match had been rained out and the players milled miserably around the field while sodden fans trudged out, some huddled under umbrellas, others comforting disappointed children.  Cranky Pensioner was beside himself with glee.

    

RETURN TO THE GULAG... OR DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

From This....

I had the strangest dream.  I dreamt Husband and I were living in a village in Somerset in a pink cottage.  Sheep roamed the field next to us, and in the spring lambs bounced across it like puffy ping pong balls.  Peacocks called at the backdoor for mealworms before bedtime.  The countryside was surreally green.  We knew lovely people and went to parties lit with fairy lights.  We walked for miles, learning the landscape.  But then I woke up somewhere else entirely. 

... And This

This new place is grey and bleak and in the throes of a mostly snowless winter.  The landscape is brown and the trees barren.  

To This....

And I am in a house, a very familiar house, where I had an unpleasant childhood.  And lo and behold the architect of that unpleasantness, Cranky Pensioner, is in a room in the house, wizened and ancient, and while not entirely his old self, there are definite glimmers of his irritable stubborness.  Welcome to this new reality.  While it is a temporary reality, I must still remind myself, it is the journey, not the destination, that is important.  I think I smell a life lesson.  

... And This.

Sister has been here for great chunks of time since our mother died, and now Husband and I are performing our tour of duty.  Returning to your childhood home for a length of time is a fraught situation... on many levels, and apparently a very popular past-time. Just Google 'dysfunctional family films' and watch as relations return to the fold, and explode.

Anyway, rather than dwell on the fraughtness, better to dwell on the absurdity. Husband and I went from lurid greenness to bleak grey; from the countryside to a suburban sprawl, from BBC I-Player to TV-Ontario, from available and affordable organic everything... to the opposite of that, from peacocks to feral cats, from umbrellas to mittens, from living on a country road busy with tractor traffic where we had some wonderful neighbours, to living on a suburban street full of commuters where we know virtually no one. Quite an adjustment. 

Farewell

The Whitaker grass-
hopper
Says Farewell to the
Pink Cottage

Cranky Pensioner remains Cranky, even as he lurches towards ninety-two.  You can take the boy out of the war, but you cannot take the war out of the boy, especially when the boy was fifteen when Nazis occupied his home town, and so you end up with someone whose world view is dictated by fears from the past; a life defined by war.  When Russia recently nibbled away at the Ukraine CP was beside himself with joy at the prospect of military conflict.  War is his comfort food.  It's how he lives every day of his life... how he always lived every day of his life.  Each new twenty-four hour period lies before him like a minefield to be navigated.  Every fluffy cloud has a black lining, but much to his surprise our arrival has revealed a silver lining to CP, something entirely unexpected.

The Whitaker Grass-
hopper meets snow.

Cranky Pensioner has fallen in love... with Husband.  Husband is the son he never had, another male presence in the household where formerly he was the sole man among three women.  CP has a buddy.  Someone he can watch soccer games with.  As a dyed in the wool misogynist he now has someone whose advice he can actually seek and take, though this is rare since CP will be the first one to tell you he knows everything.... EVERYTHING.  

CP has turned into Stanley Kowalkski bellowing for Stella.  He wanders around the house shouting Husband's name; wanting to share things like his inexplicable hatred for Lionel Messi, his utter contempt for men with beards, (even when he himself has not shaved for a week and is sporting one), his undying devotion to Roger Federer, his love for kittens, his belief that raccoons are pointless, and his befuddlement on learning through commercials that women shave their legs and underarms, though I am certain he was in possession of this information as a younger man.

Patient Chilled
Husband

Patient Husband has heard the same war and work stories so many times that I can see his lips moving while CP tells them.  Since Husband is tall, and CP has shrunk, they make an unlikely duo.  The Goliath and the Gnome.  Still, it makes CP happy to have Husband around.  Just the other day they were out together shoveling the dusting of snow that graced the ground for mere moments. Husband plows the snow like a madman leaving the edges for CP to clean up.  

Coping Mechanism
One

Husband is trying to finish something he's working on, but CP follows him like a persistent puppy, making work difficult.  Now Husband has to hide to work... which isn't too difficult with CP's flagging vision. The other day Husband lay motionless on the bed and CP mistook him for discarded clothes.  In order to complete his project Husband may have to remove himself from the house entirely, perhaps take himself to the local library.  Such are the pitfalls of popularity.

Coping MechanismTwo
Back to School 

Husband and I are staying within walking distance of our old high school... we went to the same high school at the same time, but never knew one another.  We go to the same library we went to as kids.  I haven't lived in this city for thirty years and it is weird to be here.  Husband and I are two Alices fallen down the rabbit hole, here to care for the Mad Hatter.  We miss the Pink Cottage, and we will return to Somerset.  

 

The Silver Lining;
a Relatively
Snowless Winter.

As I see it, the best way to deal with this new strange chapter is to embrace it as yet another interesting and educational left turn on the peculiar road that is life. Wish us luck.   

   

SANCTUM; FRIDAY 13TH AND SATURDAY 14TH

It's a different world today than it was on Friday.  Things have shifted.  We are viewing life through altered lenses, and figuring out how to move ahead.  Something happened yesterday that brought this home to me.  Friends of ours took us to see a performance piece in Bristol by Chicago installation artist Theaster Gates. 

The piece was performed in the Temple Church, or rather the husk of the Temple Church, since it was bombed in WWII during the Bristol blitz.  Theaster Gates constructed a performance space called Sanctum in the beautiful wreckage of the church.  

In that space, from October 29th until November 21st, performances take place every hour, twenty-four hours a day, for twenty-four days.  The programme is unlisted so you go with no clue what you're going to see.  You get what you get. 

When we arrived a concert was underway.  A group of young musicians performed experimental pieces.  
There was an organizer/drummer, and a bassist.  The rest of the musicians were disabled with varying degrees of disability.  The singer had Down's syndrome, and a percussionist and keyboard player were confined to wheelchairs, with obvious physical and mental disabilities.  The music was cacophonous and wonderful, the sounds cleverly linked together by the bassist.  The musicians were having a great time, and so was the audience.  People smiled, moved by the sheer joy of the young performers.  There was a feeling of relief in the air.

The second performer took the stage.  She was a pretty dark haired young woman with a flowing dress and a headscarf.  She announced that her performance would be a chant, in Arabic, of a prayer... a prayer to the 'Oneness'.  It felt like the room was holding its breath.

She was visibly nervous.  The chant would be a repetition of the same sequence of sentences for an hour.  She pointed to a blackboard nearby on which she had written the meaning of the chant's words.  She explained that she normally doesn't explain, but in the light of Friday's events in Paris she felt she should.  She fiddled with her white headscarf.  She told us that she was born and raised in Reading and that her father was Iranian, as was she, but then she added that she'd gone to Catholic school.  It felt like she was apologizing for who she was, and trying to distance herself from it.  

She had performed this chant every day of the installation, but one hour later each day, facing east while she sang.  She nervously adjusted her headscarf, and said that we could join in if we wanted, that we didn't have to look east, that we could look wherever we wanted.  At this point a man got up, his face hard, he looked angry.  He crossed the little aisle to his wife, just in front of us, and bent down, and said to her, loud enough that we could hear, "I'll see you outside," and he left the venue abruptly before the singer sang a note.  

The young woman took her position, and faced east, and began her chant.  You sensed complicated, disturbed thoughts flying around the room... you couldn't help it.  You had those thoughts yourself.

I felt badly for her.  For the previous weeks she had performed this same chant.  But I would bet her performance this Saturday was received very differently from the one she had performed Friday afternoon.  You could practically feel everyone silently, earnestly, paying too much attention, trying to prove that they could be normal, even though images of the news coverage of the Paris attacks were branded in our brains.  The fact that the piece was being performed in a bombed out Christian church only added heft to unspoken thoughts.  I would like to think that we were the same as we were the day before the attacks, but it felt obvious she was in front of a room full of people trying to come to terms with what had happened in Paris the day before. 

Yet there we all were, a group of people gathered together to watch a performance in a public space, in a large ethnically diverse city.  There were no armed guards.  Nobody seemed to be frightened or nervous, except for the girl.  So, as different as things may be, we were still essentially the same; trying hard to live normal lives, trying to accept people as individuals, and trying not to let a lunatic fringe dictate how we are.

          

    

OF MICE AND GODDESSES

On a recent Sunday I went with a neighbour to a goddess festival.  Anyone who knows me knows I am not the goddess type.  A few of my friends are self-proclaimed goddesses, all the more power to them.  I even knew a divine healer once who became a divine healer because she was sleeping with another divine healer.  I didn't know divine healing could be passed from one practitioner to another like an STD, but my friend assured me it could.

Goddess on the Move

These goddesses gathered in Glastonbury dressed in full goddess regalia.  They paraded to the top of the Tor hauling an effigy of an ancient female deity.  There was much chanting and raising of arms to the sky in praise of The Goddess, with dresses and tresses tossed about by the wind.  I do not fit in with this crowd. 

All Hail the Goddess
and The Nuclear Plant

I am no fan of the diaphanous flowing gown, and floral crowns have never been my millinery of choice.  I've been told I have swimmer's shoulders.  When I wear flowing garb, I look like a drag queen, but the kind goddesses were not strict with the dress code.  And, no matter how wacky and woo-woo this all sounds, it's hard to find offence with a celebration of feminine strength.

 

The Tor is a unique place.  Look out at the vast vista and on one side you see the site of mythical Avalon where Excalibur was forged and where Arthur and Guinevere are said to be buried at Glastonbury Abbey.  In contrast, off in the distance on the other side of the Tor you can see the two lumbering reactors of the Hinkley Point nuclear plant.  Past versus present.  Myth versus science.

Welcome

Shortly after the brilliant optimistic celebration that is the goddess walk, Husband and I found ourselves at Banksy's Dismaland, a bleak commentary on contemporary society.  

RIP Cinderella

No matter how depressing, and yet at the same time amazing, Dismaland forces you to think about things like drowning migrants, economic inequity, pestering paparazzi and the absurdity of grinning dancing mice.  It spoke to my heart since I am no fan of Disneyland. The extreme visual statements in Banksy's theme park make us uncomfortable in our complacency.

Miserable Mouse Host

If Only He Were This
Easy To Be Rid Of

Dismaland Imbeciles

The disassembled Dismaland is being taken to Calais to build shelter for refugees.  So the exhibition didn't just highlight a bad situation, it's doing something to alleviate it.

Everybody talks about following a middle-path in life, keeping things on an even keel.  I try to do this, I really do, but I am consistent in my failure.  Extremes are a slap in my sleep-walking face. 

The Great Outdoors

Our current life is an exercise in extremes.  Husband and I craved an escape from the noise of downtown L.A. so we ended up in a village in Somerset with no store and more sheep than people.  We were tired of driving everywhere, so we gave up car-ownership and we walk, sometimes five miles to pick up milk. 

The Great Outdoors

We lived in a cement landscape and now we are surrounded by fields and farms, badgers and rabbits, and of course, peafowl.  

Years ago I had an extreme case of extremes.  I was hired to look after a billionaire's home-based art collection; basically just fending off requests for viewings by famous people and art scholars.  It was an amazing collection, housed in his amazing Beverly Hills mansion.  The first time I drove up to the place a voice squawked out of massive shrubbery protecting it from plebeians.  It asked me to declare my business.  I cheeped out my answer.  Gates opened, and I drove up a huge winding drive in my humble little Mazda.  The place is magnificent. The collection is stunning.  I was often the only one there, except for the house staff.

 

At the same time Husband and I were volunteering at the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row.  We tutored homeless children, one family in particular, four kids and a thirty-two year old mom.  The single moms tried to work if they had jobs, and keep their kids safe from the dangers of the street.  It was a sad and brutal existence.  Once a week I journeyed from one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in L.A. to skid row and the mission and people who had no home at all.  The juxtaposition of the empty mansion, (Mr. Gazillionaire spent most of his time elsewhere), and the crammed shelter was disturbing.  Neither seemed real; each one pointed out the incongruity of the other.

Recently Husband and I were in London and we went to Hampton Court, the former home of Henry the wife-killing VIII.  It's the epitome of opulence, with ornate gardens and a Chocolate Room designated for the sole purpose of preparing that confectionary.  Two days later we were back in our little village, which has fewer houses than the palace has chimneys, and we attended the local festival.  

Two Quid On #3 To Win

There were ferret races.  I placed a bet on the winning weasel.  Gourds were judged, beer was swilled.  There was no Chocolate Kitchen but there were plenty of fine jams and chutneys for sale from Rita who runs our excellent local farm shop.

 

This week I met a dear friend in London.  We were walking down Oxford Street around rush hour, which means you can lift your feet from the pavement and be carried along by the swell of pedestrians.  We passed the Oxford Circus tube stop.  The steps leading to the underground were crammed with people, none of them moving, standing like Terra Cotta Warriors. 

We Want To Go
Home

The tube stop was closed temporarily because of overcrowding on the platform, and it would open again once the crowding had subsided.  Meanwhile, everyone waited on the steps, staring at their phones, or at nothing at all.  They reminded me of the sheep I sometimes see out my window; an entire flock standing stock still, all staring at the same nothing.

We Want To Go Home

      

These contrasts make me sit up and pay attention.  They remind me that peculiarities and disparities and wonder and horror are all a part of life.  They wake me from my sometimes sleep-walking state, and I appreciate them for that reason.