new digs

i'm in hamilton, at the acquired brain injury program's community reintroduction unit at the old psych hospital grounds, which, for suburban southern ontario, are beautiful. in two weeks we move to the general to new digs.

reading

last week i read the _the shack_ by wm. paul young and _extremely loud and incredibly close_ by jonathan safran foer from susan. this week i'm reading the first of a trio of music books from her brother john, _travelling notes_ by neal peart.

catching up

since i've been concentrating on yahoo this week,
blogger has not been front and center,
though i've been on the web.
curious.
here are some highlights:

• went to chocolates etc., with peggy on thursday
• got news on wednesday i'm going to hamilton on monday
• returned jesus today to kathy on friday
• carlo pizzacala moved out and another carlo, who talks in his sleep in italian, moved in, and kept me up most of thursday/friday night

b'n'b

stayed overnight in stevensville,
while chloe went to reenactment at old ft. erie
though it rained much of the time

the game plan

watched this movie starring the rock with pam courtesy of the rec dept. made me think of myself as a father, especially to my neediest (wes) and my youngest (chloe).

_jesus today_

i just finished reading this book. and i'd ike to read it again.

one love

playing for change

_jesus today_

i'm on page 188.

tim's

had a small double-double and an old-fashioned plain
with the rec group, sitting indoors at tim's

trying yahoo!

trying yahoo! services this week rather than google...

tapped

just heard about a new film--tapped--from the stop dump site 41 folk--that echoes evalyn parrry's word poem bottle this! saw the preview! love it!

sue and uncle dave..

..came to visit today.

playing for change

'Playing for Change is a multimedia effort to unite musicians and vocalists from diverse parts of the globe while seeking to immerse audiences in a movement to inspire, connect and bring peace to the world through music. Using mobile audio/video units, technicians traveled the world, recording local musicians outdoors in towns and cities worldwide. In addition, musicians from all over the world are now brought together to perform benefit concerts that build music and art schools in communities in need. The special premieres August 1 and airs throughout August 2009 on most PBS stations.'

kathy

i'm on p. 58 of jt.
kathy came up to see me on her way to the bathroom,
wanting to know if i'm into the book.
i assured her i am.
she told me something of how
sister caroline passed it on to her.

'sister caroline'

--that's the name in the book kathy lent me
--_jesus today: a spirtuality of radical freedom_ (jt)--
why have i waited all these months to meet her, to receive this book?
she talked of theology from the get-go,
which is an unusual topic
--what're the odds?

playing for change

playing for change

still. here.

i. am. still. here.
still. stilted. stilton. stifled.
feeling very spacey
and not quite of this world,
like the real world is just barely out of reach
but we could reach it
if we tried
but we're too scared, too frightened,
to do anything about it --
i'm here to say, it's all right, it's okay.
watch the video

harry potter and a sundae

last night
jack, peggy, haleigh and i saw harry potter and the half bood prince
while sarah worked at the marble slab creamery, where we went
afterwards, and i had a hot chocolate fudge sundae.
we met phil, one of the owners.
he spoke of his hometown, winnepeg,
and his search for a franchise

my madness is waxing...

...like the moon,
lots ef exposure to strangers
and no answers from friends

blogging

invariably, by the time i get here,
i forget what i was going to blog about.
which begs the question,
what was so impotant anyways?

i am deluged by facebook.
how do people have time
for computer-based social networking?
since their time is finite,
what are they giving up instead?
what cyber-age choices are they making?

my mri

my mri on monday
was ordered by the abi program in hamilton
which is probably why nothing was sent
to the avm clinic.

i have yet to hear the results
of the mri.

catching up

just catching up on the 'net!

visits with the sues

lunch with sue hannah and julie and day and yes, soph.
mid-afternoon brunch in notl
catching up with sue hirst
followed by a banana split at the
avondale on stewart road
--messy but healing fun food!

digital calendar

the useful things about this digital calendar are:

• posterity
• ease-of-date
• always online

the labourious things about it are:

• if you mess up, you mess up big
• it's easy to get the date wrong
• i'm not always online

round and round

primer
the shape of a circular path moving through a dimension is a helix.
two helicies side by side is also known as a double helix.
dna, or dioxyribonucleic acid, is a double helix joined by pairs.
the pairs contain information about how to build this particular body.

allegory
although we may seem to be standing still,
we are actually moving as a pair of double helices,
constantly emitting information,
constantly seeking to join others in a
seemingly simpler state.

prince charles asks...

"i wonder is it the case that the problem lies first and foremost not in what we do but in a fracture within us that leads to a limited view of what and where we are in the natural order. and that therefore we need urgently to look deeply into ourselves, and at the way we perceive the world and our relationship with it." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8141490.stm

the slab and brock

my brother-in-law, jack, took me to the marble slab creamery for a double-chocolate-and-peanuts-in-a-waffle-bowl around 3. then a tour round developments at brock.

t-o

dr. wallace,
co-director of the avm clinic,
confirmed dr. o'kelly's diagnosias that
not a lot is known about how the brain functions and
why i have cognitive impairment in the mid-brain
and he said the official word from dr. sharpe,
world-renowned ophthamologist--
the official word about my case is
'weird'
they wanna check my shunt
they wanna lookit my mri
they're grasping at straws
and i'm feeing kinda lost in all this...

look

look.
i wanna tell you what gnaws at the bottom of my heart.
i'm not good enough.
especially now, that i'm afflicted,
changed,
not the same as i was before.
it's not simply a matter that i can't *be* what i did before,
i can't *do* and that bothers me.
i guess what i did was a large part of who i was--
i know the enightened among us stress that being trumps everything
so this is another lesson i've learned--
i'm not as enlightened as i thought i was--
far from it.
at this stage in life i am pretty lazy.
i'm pretty venal, too.
there's stuff i know i should do for myself
but i could hardly care less,
but i'll do it for you.
is that love or is it vanity?
i'm too close to it right now
to give you an honest answer.

lots done

and its only the middle of the week.

passing the time

i've been here most of the day.
i got outside for a bit before the rains came,
but mostly i've been online looking
for the new torchwood episodes--
without much success.
every once in a while i think of others
and fantasize for a moment how they might be
struggling through the day
and i don't feel so alone...

my blogs

http://redsaucer.blogspot.com/
http://peterladage.blogspot.com/
http://manfromplaid.livejournal.com/
http://ca.geocities.com/anabananapants/

the day

started off with a morning trip
to the st. catharines general for an mri.
i just tried to relax the during the trip
and let the pros do their thing--
i knew my job which nobody else could do.
i wore headphones and listened
with some interest
to easy rock during the procedure.
near the end they filled me with a traceable chemical.
afterwards the nurse brought me a coffee
and we chatted back to the shaver.
after lunch i explored social networking
with uncle malcolm,
and after supper a round, old white man
toured me around a gaming site.

crazy

i'm definitely crazy living here...
gotta get outta this place
if it's the last thing i ever do...

shaving some more

i shaved before my shower,
it's not a close shave but it'll do.
and i took care not to cut myself.

what day is it?

wasn't sure if it was sunday or monday.
knew i was sleeping in for reason.

trip to the td

peggy and jack picked me up
so that i could neet justine and open a td account.

pat and sue

i'd been outside for a while,
was warming up between the payphone and the bench
when pat and sue came along.
sue and i talked mostly of her eventual retirement.

noodles and chat

yesterday,
went to the noodle house on geneva near church.
had noodles and a long chat.
resolved to go it alone, for a change.
but i still need to
see the kids while they are growing.
wes may forever be growing.
is that a fault? is that *his* fault?

dear god

dear god,
i believe
you exist for your own purpose
i exist for your purpose
that's about the limit of my belief in your
ineffability

shaving again

i scraped myself
and cut me too
but it's done, and i did it myself
[hopefully i won't need a nurse for the cut]

fort erie racetrack

the rec group
--melissa, kelly, harold and ruth, pam, judy, susan, and me--
went to the racetrack, today.
i went principally to pass the time.
i'm still uncertain about reality,
but i think the longer i'm here,
the less likely i am to discern what is real.
the question remains,
where to go and
what to do next?
this feels like a solo project
but the kids are aging by the day...
maybe it's too late for me and i just don't know it
maybe it does matter and the answer is staring me in the face
but i choose to ignore it...
i have to find out which,
and find myself,
and find the ultimate reality,
hopefully all in one!
...or, maybe there is no answer
what a conundrum!
can i do it alone, solely? or,
do i need help?
and, if the latter,
and what is she telling me?

wheelchair repair

sherri looked at my chair at 9 am

all morning in bed

i was up all night because of my roommates' restlessness,
so after going to the bathroom in the eary morning
i spent all morning in bed.

my life is like a poem

my life is like a poem.
the first time, you approach it
like a serial event,
but after that you revisit certain parts
in their entirity

shaving finale

man, i look horrible,
and isn't the whole behind point shaving
to look good?
so i asked nancy if she'd trim me up,
which she did,
and now i feel good.

shaving redux

i tried shaving again.
what a miserable failure!
i cut myself,
i left a couple of patches behind,
and i lost interest part way through.

lazy day

today was a right lazy day.
so lazy in fact there doesn't seem much to recall.
i didn't do anything or
go anywhere
with anyody.
there's some laundry happening--
oh boy!

shaving... again

it's been about a week since knifedge has touched my face,
and my beard is growing in.
when i look in the mirror
i'm reminded of my hairiness
and i feel i should do something about it.
but what can i do
but lay low?

red roof inn riding stable

i and the rec group went to the red roof inn riding stable in notl. it was very good to be outdoors.

t.o. trip to see the ophthamologist

i went to toronto with my sister. we avoided church and politics and she played ladysmith black mombazo most of the way and back. the orthoptical assistant didn't crack a smile until the end, the ophthamology intern missed a crucial piece about my nystagmus, and dr. sharpe informed me that eye surgery would happen a year from now and would only have about a ten percent effect on my ataxia. i'm bummed.

everything's up in the air

i have a new room,
new roommates who have new and serious problems
--one doesn't know who he is,
one spits up in his sleep,
and one not only needs the commode, he needs the lift!--
am i so far gone that i'm in with this lot?
no! i'm trying to elevate my doings
to a new level!
for example,
i folded my clothes
after doing the laundry--
but even that is problematic in that
i don't have the drawerspace i once had.
why is it that
as i get closer to reality
things get harder?

pastor kitson

what, with jim kitson leaving and all, do you think? (i read an old post from april '06)

moved again

i got moved again,
to room 102
with ernie, doug, and carlo as my roommates.
all septagenarians, or older.

tickles my fancy

i'm goin' where the sun keeps shinin'
through the pourin' rain;
skippin' over the ocean
like a stone
--harry nilsson
http://design-milk.com/

shaving 3

i took last night's band-aid off this morning and haven't bothered with my ear since. i hope it stays that way.

pay no attention to the posted time...

...it's really 1:05 p.m.

laundry

just doing the laundy, as constant and mundane as brushing one's teeth. speaking of which....

sunday visits

• i try to sleep in but i'm up really early. i can't take it and go back to bed after breakfast
• sue - i'm up too late for church, so we go to tim's and commune under the gazebo. afterwards, i feel guilty for her driving all this way, and for secular events. but we have a commitment for next time.

shaving 2

but it does matter, after all.
i cut myself badly enough
that i needed the attention of a nurse
and now i'm wondering if,
like a premature fall,
i'm ready for prime-time

mariposa

this is mariposa weekend.
it feels weird not to be involved.

shaving

i like the look of me clean-shaven,
but i'm no longer good at shaving. today,
i've cut myself on the right earlobe.
i've learned with shaving
and with handwashing
that it does't really matter.
i hope.

goals

i've been thinking of
re-setting my goals for some time,
making them more achievable.
who knows what tomorrow may bring?
joanna came by today
and we talked about more immediate goals.
to prove my point,
i fell this evening
doing bar exercises--
i didn't hit my head and
i got up right away.
i have a tentative release date....
i guess i'll shoot for that and
lay low for a while

antivivisectionism

the brain that changes itself is a good read, except it treads on my antivivisectionist ethics.

while the portrayal of the two peta activists as loners and lovers may have some merit, doidge gives no balance to it.

he calmly writes of sewing up monkeys' fingers and kittens' eyelids, then 'sacrificing' them and doing autopsies to see what changes have been wrought in the brain.

i'm perplexed what to do with the knowledge gained in this reading.

in the larger scale, i'm perplexed what to do with compromised knowledge in general. is all human knowledge compromised?

maybe i should fergetaboutit.
maybe i should keep it close and personal.
maybe i should be firm and stand for what i believe in.
maybe i should join the 21st century and disavow peta.
as i said, i'll sleep on it.

predictions of events yet to come

i read
in the brain that changes itself
how the writing of
one person affects an other in a
future space and time.
how can one possibly predict
with any accuracy
from our low vantage point
the future?

sign

"NO ISOLATION
PATIENTS IN
DINING ROOM OR
ON COMPUTERS."
sign on computer box, almost totally ignored by me.

my saturday

i've had a quiet day outside
and reading lamb by christopher moore.
pushed myself hard
in the self-grooming dept.:
teeth and shaving.

ruth over richard?

although conventional wisdom may hold that
richard is stranger than ruth
for blogging i find
ruth is strange enough

story 1 part 3

I thought about God all the while we swam back. I rested on the deck, which my grandfather had built, decades before, when I was a little boy. My grandfather died not long after that. I am sure he did a lot of living between the deck-building and his death, but I do not know about this time, so the deck-building is firmly connected to his death in my view. I rested and Glen brought me my guitar. I wrote a song about diving into the water and racing the bubbles to the surface, like being charged with the inevitability of God in your life. It is a good song, but I have not performed it yet.

Glen brought me the guitar as he tidied the tiny livingroom; he did not know where the case was, so it was easier to bring the guitar to me. The livingroom needed cleaning because we had been living in it for the past day-and-a-half while it rained. I was going to join him, but first I needed to get this song out of my head and down onto paper. Glen knew that without me saying a word; someday he would make a good partner, but for now he was stuck with me, and I with him. Glen is moody, and it does him good to have his own space, whether it is his room or the miniscule cottage livingroom

story 1 part 2

We rested in the middle against the slimy rocks, and as always our conversation turns to God.

"What if God didn't mean to enter the historical record until Jesus was crucified?" I asked. As conquerers, the Romans kept records of everybody they killed; it was one way of getting your family geneology done for free.

"Then God doesn't reveal himself to everyody."

"That doesn't make sense. God must be known to everybody just the same."

"Why?" wondered Glen, for the first, but not the last time. Then he fell to his usual line of inquiry: "There must be another way."

"Come on," I said. We had about half mile to go to the diving cliffs still.

I break clear of the surface and take a huge breath in. I look up at Glen. far above me. When you jump, I tell him silently, make sure you jump out as much as you jump down. There may be rocks near the cliff just under the surface of the water.

Glen jumps. He picks up the conversation from the rocks as if an hour hasn't elapsed.

"The trouble with you is you want evolution and revelation."

"Yeah, so?" So was my challenging point.

"They don't go together, evolution and revelation."

"Says who?"

"Says a lot of people."

I reach the base of the cliffs and scramble up the right. "The Bible doesn't say so," I counter, going up a mere fifteen feet before turning to jump. Glen scrambles after me.

"The Bible doesn't support evolution."

I jump. A few seconds later, Glen is next to me, bubbling and laughing.

"It doesn't disprove it, neither." It's my story, damnit, and I'll tell it the way I want it.

"So then, it comes down to a matter of interpretation. Which, I suppose, is a matter of faith," he said, dejectedly, though it was hard to tell while swimming. He knew where faith led to in our friendship. But I propose a different topic, just to keep him off-balance.

"Maybe Jesus shows up in different places to different people at different times. He is God, you know."

"But he shows up in a specific place with a specific purpose at a specific time."

I swim over.

"Yes, in our version of the story. Come on. Even if you don't believe in evolution you gotta admit there were others living in far reaches of the globe at the time."

"Like the Amerindians?" he offers weakly.

"Yeah, where are they in the Bible?"

I continue.

"See? The Bible is too narrow to be the inerrant word of God. That's a lie made up by a bunch of priests with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo."

This time he reaches the cliff-face first and scrambles up. He jumps from very far up, and sails over my head.

"I don't know," he calls out. He hits the water, arms already flailing. He breaks the surface and adds,

"You've got to give the Bible more scope."

story 1 part 1

I jumped from the cliff to the shimmering water forty feet below with glee and wild abandon. I jumped not ever having jumped so high. Down into the water I went, legs and arms akimbo to slow me, to make sure I get to the surface, which is now all I want to do.

My friend Glen jumps from nearly half the height, maybe twenty-five feet up. He's done this before. He has nothing to prove, to himself or to me. We have swum half the length of the lake to get to the diving cliffs. It is shallow in the middle where the rocks rise from the murky bottom to give rest to the gulls and ducks and other birds of the air.

visit with nancy & millie

the visit with nancy & millie
was pleasant and boring.
what else can i expect?
millie is 91 and nancy must be about 63--
am i looking at karen in the future?
except that nancy is not karen,
just as i am not don or craig.

horizontal and reality

while still horizontal
i seem to have a firmer grip on unreality.
so the mornings are good,
before i rise,
and the evenings too.
in between are the hard times
and then the horizontal times seem too simple.
but in the cool of the day,
the rest of the day seems too complicated.
which is real?
how can i, from the inside, tell?
when the tv starts messing with archie,
is it the real archie-show,
or is it a version just for my ears?
[later...]
it's 8.30 in the evening on sunday night now,
and i type first off to stave off boredom,
complication, complicity, and other word play.
i type to avoid the awful tuth that i'm alone
('no you're not!' calls the god from the corner).
i type to pass the time.
i type because it's the most creative thing i can do right now.
i want to create because i've been all input these
many months,
and some output wells within.
i want to create because i'm reading a wild novel,
lamb,
and i want to respond in kind.

i blogged but (off-roading at the strawberry social) ...

i blogged, but something happened and i lost it all
so i'll start again, but it won't have the same flavour.
i wrote something about
how i had difficulty getting ready to go,
how i left my shirt and shoes for when julie arrived
but imagine my surprise when sue dropped in,
and julie stayed in the hall while
sophie stayed in bed (where she remains).
[backstory: sue is julie's mother,
sophie is the dog;
sophie is 8 or 9,
julie is in her early 30s,
and sue in her mid 50s.]
sue and i got on a clean long-sleeve shirt
and my doc martens for going out in the rain
and away we went
to notl via st. david's
where we stopped at st. andrew's cemetery
for the strawberry social.
i went 'off-roading' across the lawn
and had a strawberry crepe while
julie and sue had shortcakes
and we stopped at the tim's at
glendale and the north service road for
coffees and a tea (for julie)
and a pee for me, ahhh... that feels better...
back to the shaver, to my room and laundry,
and to this blog...

i could be here forever

(a ramble)
i feel like i should blog forever,
that the moment i stop i'll never start again...
i guess this comes from feelings of paranoia, from
having been outside for so long
that i reached my inner feelings
but i've got selfish concerns, like
i hope i don't make a mess tomorrow.
i should say
my thoughts are with my kids, too
what are they doing? how are they doing?
i might be here for the rest of my life,
my right temple, my left collarbone,
my left lip, and my breadbasket remind me
that it's really real.
what am i to do?
adjust,
settle in for the long haul....
do something different and daring than
what i've done for the past
eleven months
like what?
and what about the annoying constants
like fingernails and toenails and beard
keep growing and teeth need brushing
--what about flossing?--
but above it all the mind needs entertaining.
the beauty of the internet is
(as i've blogged elsewhere) is that it's
ubiquitous
and somebody has quipped,
nobody knows you're a dog
to which i might add,
nobody needs to know you're a crustacean
no one needs to know you're mad.
if stephen hawking writes whole books
one synthetic letter at a time
why can't i maintain a simple blog?
what does it mean, to settle in for the long haul?
to build relations with people that depend on technology,
on transport or telephony or the internet?

the heroic ultimate last move

i had a long session with bonnie followed by a short session walking,
and the walking seems mad--
if it isn't, why am i doing it?
so, a way out of this madness is to face the walking--
or, if there is no way out, to go with it, all the way...
to the end, to the last step,
to the heroic ultimate last move

i'm desperate, but am i that desperate?

i'm thinking about getting out of here,
desperately so, that it might appear to karen,
and might be my reality,
that i'm transferring my affection to karen to get out of here.
we've been down this path before, with corinne.

the difference for me apart from whether i love karen,
is that our kids are involved
--and chloe has four years of high school,
and wes--well, who knows?

this may be wes' pupose in my life,
that karen and i are never fully separated.

now, do i still love karen?
can i see us ten, twenty, thirty, even forty years hence?
can i see us together where i might otherwise fall apart?

laughing at life

i feel like i'm overdue for a daily retch
i feel angry with these old biddies behind me--
how dare they laugh at life?
living is serious stuff!
but how serious should we approach it
given how ignorant we are?
or should we always be serious despite our ignorance?
or do they feel they can now sit back and laugh,
having lived to the fullest on the inside,
the neverending collective mythos?
is this where i'm at, in the merry month of june (oh-nine):
wondering if everything should be serious,
or filled with paradox, humor, and change?

evening ramble (undecided)

i spend much of the day undecided,
or decided only for the convenience of being decided,
but really, if pressed, not decided--
undecided whether this is real or not--
right now, if pressed, if really pressed, i'd say it's a bit of both
real for the things around me, but unreal in my responses to them

rebirth story (i figger)

i figger
i'll save my longer posts under the pseudonym of red saucer
i figger
they'll start without map or compass or heading and find
root along the route
i figger
they'll find their way home
i figger
i was born to create, to take the word offered to me and mould it while it was mine