Returning to the edge, overlooking the mighty Niagara Falls is like returning home.
The boats are somewhere, there, down below me. They move silently along, at the base of the roaring waters, both boats on the Canadian and the US sides. Ours is now called Hornblower and what used to be the Maid of the Mist in Canada is still what they call it in our neighbouring country, or so I am told.
We went on it, some of my earliest memories, but enough was enough and I was afraid. I didn’t want to have to don the plastic raincoat and board that thing, going so close to such a fiersome force. I’d had enough of that.
Then, as I grew, we’d return to Niagara Falls often, and my family would tease me:
“What do you think Kerr…want to go on the Maid of the Mist?”
Ha ha, and the joke went on like that for years, right along with my fear of boats of all shapes and sizes.
Well, ownership of the boat tour company changed hands in recent years, but I was determined to tackle my fear, as I entered my thirties and was determined to live like I hadn’t been living, which meant proving to myself I could step foot on that boat again.
I did it, but my favourite myth of the Indian princess who was going to be forced to marry a much older Indian chief, though she was revolted by him, well that story haunted me and still does.
Legend had it, she fled her situation and ended up hearing a far away voice on the air, calling her toward the waters at the top of the Niagara River. So, she followed its irresistible call and it led her into the river and over the Falls she went, to join the Thunder Gods behind Niagara.
I was captivated and am glad I did tackle my fears a few years back, and then I was recently listening to an educational podcast called The Secret Life of Canada
and it spoke of the history of the Niagara region and some of the culturally insensitive stereotypical stories white people have told and retold about Natives, how wrong that was, how offensive.
The story of that Indian maiden will stick with me, but I am always willing to learn about how to be a better human being, more sensitive and empathetic. We’ve replaced Indian for Indigenous in the language here in Canada and we must work for a better country, for everyone.
I now stand, happily, at the railing above and look down on those silent tour boats, but I will admit that I feel drawn to that place, whenever I am nearby, and hear the thundering sound.
Even if I end up an even older version of a maid myself, I am not about to follow those invisible booming forces to an unfortunate, tragic end. Though I do disclose that I feel a strong tug on my back, every time I move to walk away from Niagara Falls.
I may sometimes label myself a passive person, but there are moments when aggressive stances are needed.
Animals in the animal kingdom instinctively sense it, know where it lies in another creature and how or if they can derive any sort of benefit from it.
Human beings are creatures too, of habit, while the wild ones wander.
Personalities are coloured and varied shades of what makes us human, alongside the animals in nature.
I could Google the passive writing voice and read for days and days, but when I go ahead and write, may not always recognize what it looks like.
The term “passive agressive”
means one thing, when both words are put together, and another on their own. I guess this is the point, the neat thing about this phrase, if you want to call it that, about language in general as well.
Wow. I haven’t taken this Saturday blogging prompt quite so literally in a while.
I think of my fear (rational or not) of an angry swarm of bees. I think a swan, who appears docile, until you get too close.
The fight face of a country or government, put forth by a world war, by a civil one.
War and peace. Is Canada so well known for one instead of the other. Or warring tribes in Canada’s long lived past.
On another lazy Saturday, I ask myself: What is Russia really up to, with the latest election results?
I do wonder, not as much about their people, but about that government itself.
I need to take my suspicious eye off of the country next to my own and think about other places. People or entire nations, I stream of consciousness ramble my way along, all the while, hoping to avoid the inevitable, those who ooze what it means to be aggressive.
A man who was never widely known outside of Canada for his musical abilities is now gone. Maybe, though, he was meant never to have worldwide fame, but instead to be Canada’s musician and to do what he did, to speak powerfully about how we’ve treated Indigenous people in this country, Indigenous youth for more than a century.
I am thankful Canada has a leader who can show emotion.
A friend died, a fellow Canadian, and I know people still thought it silly that Justin Trudeau became emotional.
Why not?
He is human, isn’t afraid or so unfeeling and dead inside as to let his emotions out, and I will take that over other options, in other countries, right now and any day.
I am thankful for a comforting and hopeful yet bittersweet mid week medical appointment.
I felt a true disappointment when I realized she was coming to the end of what she, herself, could do to help me.
She is one of the best physicians I’ve ever seen and that is not always so easy to find. She did her best for me and I could sense she felt truly bad that I wasn’t feeling better from any of her treatment ideas. Again, hard to find, feel from some doctors.
So, she is always open to seeing me, if I ever need something, but has given me suggestions for what to try next and where to go.
I really did feel sad when I left her office this time. I guess that is a sign I’ve seen too many doctors in my life.
I am thankful for the ability to go into my local bank and deposit a cheque I earned all by myself, into my account.
This shouldn’t be such a big deal for someone my age, but it is.
That’s just the honest to God truth of it. More where that came from, but my fear is always there that it won’t last.
The pressure now feels compounded, though still thankful, this week anyway.
I am thankful for a writing group evening that started out moodily and ended wonderfully.
I must have been in a bit of a mood, myself, but the personalities of the writers in that room soon brought me out of my funk.
That’s why I go. Sure, it’s nice to write and hear some good old stories, but it’s those minds where the ideas for said stories come from that I am most grateful for, why I keep on going back.
I am thankful I was able to keep up with my first evening of secretarial duties.
We had our first official meeting of Ontario’s chapter of Canada Federation of the Blind.
I wanted an app to record the conference call, but I couldn’t be sure any were accessible and so I took notes. I did better with that than I thought I would.
We have multiple issues I feel are important enough to take on and hopefully tackle, to make even a slight difference.
I may never have a child to leave behind, but I do want to leave behind something. Maybe I can make a difference somehow.
I am thankful for a day of rejection and acceptance.
I pitched to two places. One came back thrilled for me to tell my story and the other had to pass.
I had a feeling on the second one and it hurt at first, but what I have to say isn’t right for every place. It might be the wrong time, though I would like to write about being a woman who may never have a child, not because I don’t want one, but for several different factors.
This writing journey brings both acceptances and rejections, and from what I’ve heard and read, it isn’t always about the writing. Sometimes it’s timing or luck. I’ve been very lucky this year so far.
I do like the lessons I am learning, over and over again, and I hope that sting of rejection will continue to happen and teach me that it isn’t the end of the world and that maybe something else can come along another date and time.
I am thankful for a lovely dinner with family and friends.
My mom went to a lot of work to make everything look nice. She is a lovely hostess. She put coloured peppers in the chicken. She baked a new fluffy casserole recipe for the yams. She put time and attention into welcoming a new friend into her home.
We all had a lot of fun and laughs.
I am thankful for wine.
And the wine I had with the evening didn’t hurt any either. It was nice to be able to wind down, at the end of a busy week, wind down with wine.
I am thankful for a short walk for mail.
I still haven’t been sleeping well and I needed a brief Saturday morning walk in the sunshine, with my neighbour, down the street to the mailboxes.
It was a beautiful morning and I came home refreshed and fully awake for the day.
On a day like that, it isn’t so bad that my mail doesn’t come right outside my door anymore.
I am thankful for the attention a dying man brought to what Canada’s next 150 years should look like.
Gord Downie cared about his country and knew he was leaving it and leaving this life. He wanted to take a step toward bringing us all together before he went.
I watched the live broadcast of the concert he put on a year before his death. It is a sad story, what happened to this one boy and so many other boys and girls and their parents and families for so long.
Different circumstances of course, but I see it as Chanie Wenjack was a symbol of so many other children here in Canada being forcibly removed and reprogrammed, just like Anne Frank went on, after her death, to symbolize all the children during the Holocaust in Europe during World War II.
I can easily imagine being taken from my home and forced into residential school. What a scary thing, especially if forced to speak another language and be separated from everyone and everything you know and love.
What were Canada’s governments and churches thinking?
I think about language as I sit in the quiet room of my local library on certain Wednesday nights. I am trying to come up with a bit of story to read out loud at the end of my writing group and I want to use the right sort of words and sentences.
Anne Rice is one who believes in adverbs, even though many so-called writing pros condemn the use of them. Ugh!
How am I supposed to know what is the right way to go?
I’m just glad I’ve managed/mastered the English language this far, when I wish I’d focused harder and done better at learning French when I was in school. I am proud that Canada is a multi-language nation and it can only serve as a benefit.
My family doesn’t all speak Polish or German. I wish we did. My father’s parents didn’t teach him their native European languages, by speaking them at home when he was young. I think they were so focused on learning English, as still fairly new to North America, that they couldn’t be bothered. I hope they didn’t feel any sort of shame surrounding the speak of their birth countries, being recent immigrants to Canada.
My mom learned German, as my grandparents always spoke it, but a certain dialect of the language. My grandpa used to tell me stories of how he didn’t even speak English before going to school. It was always German in his home as a child.
My mom speaks some and understands it. This allows her to speak to my uncle who visits from Germany every few years.
I was recently blown away by the beauty and rhythm of Spanish, as I prepared to travel to Mexico. I tried, for months, to learn some so I wouldn’t be totally lost when I went down there. By the end of my week, I’d gotten better at recognizing what was being said around me, but I would have needed many more weeks there to be able to speak any with much confidence.
Language is hard. It is one of those things that gets harder and harder to learn as you age. I am so set on learning to play the violin, at age 33, that I can’t possibly fit in learning any other language on top of that.
October 1st is the start of Blindness Awareness Month.
Okay, so SoCS usually means Stream of Consciousness Saturday, but well Saturday, Sunday, either way.
Many visually impaired people, writers and bloggers specifically, are blogging every day and many are speaking about one particularly controversial hash tag and campaign making its way around Twitter and social media lately.
I re-blogged about this just a few days ago, and though I don’t mean to rehash or restate, I figured I would offer my own thoughts on the whole thing.
I thought about these very topics. Blindness means I face many awkward situations, all the time in fact. I try to improve my social skills and interacting with a mostly sighted world, but I often struggle to fit in and feel like I am seen and yet that I don’t stick out, stand out, and get in the way.
I often feel as if I am in someone’s way, but I recognize this is often more in my own head. The thing about the world is I skip past a lot of the more awkward situations, simply because I don’t see that they are even taking place at all.
🙂
As for the idea of a sighted person putting on blindfold for a few minutes and attempting to walk or cook or whatever, I thought on it awhile, as I pondered the thoughts of others.
There is a lot of awkward nonsense going on in the world these days. Why should anyone with a visual impairment feel like they must always be cast as the awkward ones in this nonsensical world?
They state that their mission is “leading the fight against blindness” and they are doing that through social media campaigns like this one to raise money:
People who are blind share stories and videos of how they do certain, every day tasks, and then their friends or relatives who are sighted will put on a blindfold and try those same tasks.
I know people are curious. I’ve often been asked how I pick out my clothes or how I use the stove. I get that. Most of us don’t mind answering a genuine question when asked. It’s just a fine line when it crosses over to patronizing.
I know foundations who raise money and do research to fight blindness are needed and necessary. I get that also.
I am often told I over think things or am too sensitive, and perhaps I can be, but perhaps that’s an easy, bandaid response for a bigger issue. I often can’t tell the difference anymore, and not sure I ever could or ever will.
😦
On one hand I hate the statement put out there of fighting blindness, like it’s some enemy that needs to be destroyed. I should understand language and its uses better than anyone, but I feel icky when I hear that. I am fighting a constant battle with myself, never mind some war against blindness in a wider context.
However, I would take a cure, sure I would. If it were real and lasting, but blindness isn’t quite so simple. I want attention put on finding ways to stop progression of or slowing down of retinal eye disease. That’s what I have and I often wonder what my life would be like if a cure were suddenly found. Would it be the answer to all my prayers of life? Would it automatically make things easier?
Yes and no, I think the correct answer is, which isn’t really any answer at all to my satisfaction.
So I could rant on and on about this, such a giant thing that I cannot contain, to hope that someone somewhere will understand me, after all I don’t think some lousy blindfold is the answer.
Apologies if this post is long and rambling, with a few links thrown in for good measure. I feel like I am always apologizing for something, to someone. Stop it Kerry, stop it.
But going back to some of my “In The News and On My Mind” posts I’ve shared on this blog in the past, I’ve usually opened those with a line from a woman I know on Facebook who is also blind and living life well. So Here’s her take today, to start:
“The Foundation Fighting Blindness is doing a screwball campaign in which they have sighted people wear a blindfold for a few minutes and try to complete some everyday household task. Naturally, they’re lousy at it, because they don’t have any training. The FFB then has them share their horrifying experiences under the hashtag “how eye see it”, the idea being that blindness is terrible and scary and must be stopped. Well, obviously, we can’t have that rumor going around! For the next week, I’ll be stealing this hashtag to share cool stories about blind people’s actual everyday experiences. If you have a story I should share, send it to me in a message. Today, I’ll share my story. I’m 27 years old and live independently in a gorgeous little apartment in Austin. I’m happily married, work in the field of higher education, and have a wonderful close-knit family and group of friends. I love yoga, hiking, music, poetry, and have recently taken up martial arts. My life is abundantly rich, and has not been diminished by labels or other people’s preconceived notions. This is #howIseeit.”
I do feel it’s simplification for someone who does not live with blindness to put a blindfold across their eyes for a matter of minutes and try to tackle something they won’t feel they could handle without their sight. If they had it all their lives, a few bloody minutes trying without will only muddy things up even more, further blurring the lines between reality and something else entirely.
It feels pitying to me. It feels dumbed down. It feels wretched really.
You panic when suddenly all your world goes dark. Of course. Nothing is how it is compared to if you’ve had time to process and work out solutions we have worked hard to find for ourselves and our independence.
Debates began popping up on people’s social media and on FFB’s Facebook page, in the comments, from both sides. People have accused Foundation Fighting Blindness of blocking or deleting comments that oppose what they’re trying to do with #HowISeeIt and FFB replied that it must have been a misunderstanding, but they usually put the blame onto Facebook and their rules for commenting. Things are getting ugly. People don’t feel heard. It’s impossible for something like this to speak for all. I just want to share opposing views and keep the conversation going.
The point was made that the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge may have had similar responses. I don’t know how many ALS patients felt about it truthfully. Not sure you heard much about that amongst all the screams of shivering cold horror and shock captured in all those videos that went viral. Money was raised. A good thing. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth I suppose.
But that challenge did not have people living in wheelchairs, unable to move. See the difference?
I see all sorts of lives lived by those who are also blind. Some are doing life more successfully and happily than others. But that’s no different than the rest of the population.
I first heard about a Twitter campaign going around known as How I See, which I wrote my own post for here several weeks back:
Life is neither, sometimes one, sometimes the other. No different for me.
When I heard #HowISee vs #HowISeeIt, I admit I was originally confused and wrote on FFB’s Facebook page, asking for clarification. I did not jump to participate or to get anyone sighted in my own life participating either once theirs was explained to me.
Some more well known visually impaired advocates are taking part in #HowISeeIt, by helping spread that message of FFB, such as a UK poet with RP (Retinitis Pigmentosa):
Of course, different people are going to have different opinions on which hash tag campaigns, websites, and organizations are doing good work and which are furthering myths, stereotypes, and negative views about what blindness is and what it’s like to live with.
I have watched many of her awareness videos on her YouTube channel and she has been working with The Foundation Fighting Blindness Canada since she was young.
This may not seem like stream of consciousness writing exactly, with all these links inserted, but I knew it would be close enough, as I feared before I began that if I started to write about my own thoughts on this topic, I may never stop.
Here are a few places where I think we’re on the right track:
Of course I mention all sides because I don’t necessarily think there is a total right or wrong here. People with all sorts of experiences deserve to feel how they feel about these things.
I just make it work with where I’m at today and keep as much positivity and hope alive inside as I know how.
“I can’t get no peace, until I dive into the deep, blue lullaby.”
—Blue Lullaby, The Jellyman’s Daughter
Of course everyone can recall, with at least some detail, just where they were on the morning of September 11th, 2001. Most then speak of staring at the television, watching the horror unfold.
I remember the feelings. My father driving my sister back to college, starting to hear things on the radio in the car. I went into school, my teachers listening to radios and talk of World War III. That was my fear, but although I watched the news with my father all evening, our family just recently acquiring CNN, I wondered where all this might lead.
I wonder now when people speak of not getting that image out of their minds, but even then my vision was bad enough that I wouldn’t see those towers fall, people jumping for their lives, to their deaths. Am I less affected somehow, because I didn’t see it with my own two eyes?
What about anyone, such as children born after 2001, like my niece and nephews, who weren’t alive yet to know that day? Well, I suppose it would be like Pearl Harbor for me and also my parents. It’s the way I’ve heard those who witnessed that describe the feelings, but the difference being that lead to war for the US, a world war that had already begun for Europe. This time there has been no declaration of another world war, not in the 15 years hence, and hopefully never again.
If I were to have cried at the end of this strange week, would anyone be all that surprised? Whether from having to make more decisions about my health, to decide on medication coverage and possible effect on my transplanted kidney, which is coming up on twenty years. My fear, no matter how unlikely, ratchets up ever higher. Or from the fact that time rushes by, ever faster, as my niece enters an actual number grade, her brother soon to follow their cousin, who himself just began junior kindergarten this week and oh how little they seem for that first day. Perhaps it’s that I can’t possibly manage all my email and technology issues on my own which required having to accept help from one who knows so much more, or else maybe it’s that I realized I can do more than I thought I could. It never ends. Or from a painful part of being Canadian or a sombre day for the US, fifteen years after-the-fact.
And so I let all that sink in and I let my gratitude germinate and I feel all those overwhelming things and then I move forward and I find my list of thankfuls.
I’m thankful that I get to see my first big concert of a violin player live.
I’ve loved the sound of the violin for years, but now more and more I hear it everywhere. Wherever it appears in a television or movie’s soundtrack I zero in on it immediately, sometimes still uncertain, but at my core I know that sound.
I’m thankful that I found a doctor who seems to have a few suggestions for possible medical treatments.
After a while, you feel like you’re losing it and maybe you should just suffer silently because nobody could possibly understand. At this point, I take what I can get with my health, which sounds bad, but really I don’t believe, in spite of all doctors have done for me, that they have all the answers or can cure everything.
The question then becomes: how much can I put up with, how much do I just need to accept, and how then to focus on the good things in my life?
I’m thankful that I got to attend a truly unique and wonderful secret performance.
Secret gigs and intimate concerts, all around the world – in 271 cities.
My brother and his friend have been playing music all around their city this summer, but this time they were scheduled to perform at something truly special and I just had to check it out for myself.
This wasn’t only a gig to them. It was held in the bachelor apartment of that friend of my brother. I happened to know where the show was being held, but only because M had volunteered to host it. I still had to apply on the Sofar Sounds website and wait to see if there was a spot left for me.
Intimate doesn’t begin to describe it. There were at least thirty people, mostly twenty-something’s, all crammed into a small house apartment in London, Ontario last Tuesday night. It was air conditioned, but this made little difference once all musical equipment was set up and everyone filed in to watch the three performances.
It felt lovely to me though, even though I was overheating and realizing I was possibly the oldest person there, at thirty-two. It was just so wonderful to see the love of music and the teamwork that these young men and women showed to bring people together through music. It frankly restored my faith in people, younger generations, or any generation for that matter.
I’m thankful that at said secret, exclusive performance, I got to learn of a duo I’d not heard of before, one I likely never would have heard of otherwise, and one which included cello.
This young musician couple from Scotland were on tour in Ontario and they were happy to be playing at their fourth Sofar, after Edinburgh, Hamburg, and Amsterdam. They were a team also, in the guitar, mandolin, and the cello he played, and her singing with him backing her up. They played a nice mix of Scottish music, bluegrass, and even a Beatles cover with a brilliant new spin on its classic sound.
I m thankful my niece started grade one and my nephew began junior kindergarten.
I was emotional all week, thinking about it, how my niece is learning how to read and write and next it will be my nephew’s turns.
I was emotional as I saw people I started school with, more than twenty-five years ago now, sharing the news of their own children’s first days of school, on Facebook. I was emotional because time flies and that’s both a good and a bad feeling, with nothing to be done about it either way.
I’m just lucky that my niece and nephews have access to all the tools they need to grow and learn in the right environment.
I’m thankful for new members and old ones, at my writing group, who share their varying perspectives with me.
I get to witness the different writing styles, experiences that are unique to each individual writer in that room, and they trust me as one of the few they feel mostly comfortable reading their words out loud to.
This is a term that just happened to come up at the most recent meeting and I’ve decided that is how I will refer to this group from now on. I am a huge fan of names and titles for things. Saying “writing group” or “writing circle” just never has had quite the same ring to it.
I’m thankful my ex could make a dent with my email problem.
I have collected thousands and thousands and thousands of emails and my ability to stay on top of that, deleting or organizing, it got away from me. It was so bad my computer’s voice program couldn’t even speak anymore, making it impossible to check my own email. It felt like a runaway train.
I resist these things, such as calling in the expertise of an IT ex boyfriend who knows his stuff. I don’t like to be a bother to those who are currently in my life, let alone those who chose not to be.
The hard part is that someone is a decent enough person to want to help anyway. The worst part is knowing that decency exists always.
Dent made, but still I feel like I can’t quite get a grasp on this, which feels like a silly complaint to have really.
I’m thankful that a favourite blogger and writer of mine has returned, after a fruitful summer off, to blogging and writing again. And who has made her return by sharing something I did not already know on her blog.
I’m thankful for peace where I live, where my family lives, and where my niece and nephews can grow up without being directly impacted by war and violence.
I recently listened to a news story about hopes of a cease fire in Syria and then a man who was a child soldier, speaking on Facebook, about the plight of his people in the country of South Sudan.
No country is perfect. None is spared completely, forever.
I’m thankful for my country, both that I and others can recognize the bad that’s taken place and still celebrate what we are as citizens and what we could be.
Next year isn’t only the year I celebrate my twenty-year anniversary of my kidney transplant, but as a much broader celebration, it will be Canada’s 150th birthday.
So, on September 10th, CTV, the national television broadcaster asked Canadians to film a minute of their life, a reason they are proud to live in this country. All clips will be compiled together. Sounds like a lovely pride project.
I mention several reasons, just here in this week’s TToT, why I am proud to be Canadian. This doesn’t mean I think we are a perfect country or that we shouldn’t try to learn about mistakes of our collective past and make an effort to do better for the next 150 years.
One musician is doing just that before he runs out of time:
***
STATEMENT BY GORD DOWNIE clickable
Ogoki Post, Ontario clickable
September 9, 2016 clickable
Mike Downie introduced me to Chanie Wenjack; he gave me the story from Ian Adams’ Maclean’s magazine story dating back to February 6, 1967, “The Lonely Death of Charlie Wenjack.” clickable
Chanie, misnamed Charlie by his teachers, was a young boy who died on October 22, 1966, walking the railroad tracks, trying to escape from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School to walk home. Chanie’s home was 400 miles away. He didn’t know that. He didn’t know where it was, nor how to find it, but, like so many kids – more than anyone will be able to imagine – he tried. I never knew Chanie, but I will always love him. clickable
Chanie haunts me. His story is Canada’s story. This is about Canada. We are not the country we thought we were. History will be re-written. We are all accountable, but this begins in the late 1800s and goes to 1996. “White” Canada knew – on somebody’s purpose – nothing about this. We weren’t taught it in school; it was hardly ever mentioned. clickable
All of those Governments, and all of those Churches, for all of those years, misused themselves. They hurt many children. They broke up many families. They erased entire communities. It will take seven generations to fix this. Seven. Seven is not arbitrary. This is far from over. Things up north have never been harder. Canada is not Canada. We are not the country we think we are. clickable
I am trying in this small way to help spread what Murray Sinclair said, “This is not an aboriginal problem. This is a Canadian problem. Because at the same time that aboriginal people were being demeaned in the schools and their culture and language were being taken away from them and they were being told that they were inferior, they were pagans, that they were heathens and savages and that they were unworthy of being respected – that very same message was being given to the non-aboriginal children in the public schools as well… They need to know that history includes them.” (Murray Sinclair, Ottawa Citizen, May 24, 2015) clickable
I have always wondered why, even as a kid, I never thought of Canada as a country – It’s not a popular thought; you keep it to yourself – I never wrote of it as so. The next hundred years are going to be painful as we come to know Chanie Wenjack and thousands like him – as we find out about ourselves, about all of us – but only when we do can we truly call ourselves, “Canada.” clickable
It’s painful for me when I hear about stories like these, boys like this, lives who mattered and who deserved to feel safe in this country, like I’ve felt. These are things I too would rather not have to think about, as I can plead ignorance growing up, but I can’t continue to bury my head in the sand any longer.
Canada in a day is a great thing, but it’s truly impossible to sum up what Canada has been, what it is now, or what it should be or could be or might be in the future. It’s important that I speak for both here. I want my blog to be a place where I show both sides of our Canadian coin.
For the first sound I heard the other morning, as I awoke.
The cooing of the morning dove.
I love that sound and it was fitting, for what was to come, along with the April rain.
For different viewpoints, from a friend.
We had a nice early morning talk, when we both couldn’t sleep.
She knows me as only one of a few blind friends. She thought a site called “The Blind Writer” would get me read. She was only trying to help.
Not my thing. Had to follow my heart, but the site could turn into something, even if I don’t take on the name myself. There are lots of writers who don’t know what they are doing. That word “blind” can mean many things.
For a lot of interesting writing discussion.
The group at the library was a few short, but we still managed to have some excellent Writer’s Circle talk, even though our table was more of a square.
😉
Also, I asked them a question, to get their opinions, as I am starting to trust them.
I asked about what they think of me as “The Blind Writer.” They answered same as me. Just confirmed my thoughts already.
They are writers too. They love writing too. They know me as Kerry now and understand I want my writing to stand on its own.
For another successful violin lesson.
I drift a lot, when I lose concentration or a bit of the strength I’m building in my arm, but when I am in that little room I block out all the rest of life’s stressors.
For 80s music.
With the death of Prince, I am reminded why I love the music of that decade so much.
It is nostalgia and a flashback to my childhood, from the earliest days, as I wasn’t even born until halfway through those ten years, but my family was all younger then.
Seems now like a simpler time, even if that is simply an illusion.
For the newest Michael Moore film.
Some would say pure propaganda, but he makes excellent points, makes you laugh, and moves you throughout.
For our earth, and my favourite oceans, on this Earth Day.
For my brother’s completion of the year of his current college semester, for the most part.
When it began, back in January, he’d just had his accident. we weren’t sure what would happen, but he is almost done and has some big plans.
For William Shakespeare.
All this time, 400 years on, his work still resonates. Even if I don’t know it all. Something lasting the test of time must have something special to offer us all.
For literary children’s programs.
With it being 400 years since William Shakespeare, language is a valuable lesson, even language a child is too young to comprehend.
My nephew is three, already so curious, and on his way with the alphabet.
The word was “flustered” and my nephew was repeating it, even if he didn’t know it had meaning.
“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.”
That’s what my sister used to hear from my JAWS voice software, when it was really me laughing at something someone had said on MSN. Seems like so long ago now that I talked to someone I was in a long distance relationship with, back when I still talked to people on that program. Now I’ve moved on. Texting is how it’s done nowadays.
Well, most people hear the voice software built in on a Mac, which is called VoiceOver, and are baffled by the racket it’s creating.
“Is that speaking another language?” This was the latest question I received concerning the sound it makes.
My computer talks and I understand it, almost like another language. You’d likely have to train your ear to comprehend, but that’s how I do it.
A lot of misinterpretation occurs when other people overhear my computer talking to me, reading what’s on the screen. Sometimes I use headphones, so only I hear it, otherwise it can become irritating. Other times, even I get sick and tired of the electronic sounding voice babbling away.
I could hook up a braille display, to read with my fingers instead of having to listen. I haven’t found that quite as easy to do, so the voice continues.
Lots of people wonder how I use a computer. I am a pretty speedy typist, but I do better if I hear what letters I am typing, just to be sure.
🙂
If you have a Mac, try pressing Command F5 and see what happens. Even my iPhone has it.
But still my sister and I recall those days when she would hear “Hadahada”, from the next room, back when we were roommates. It did sound funny, was meant to represent my laughter, and we “hadahada” about it to this day.
“You’re twenty…something years old. It’s time to get over birthdays.”
–Don Draper, Mad Men
Oh really Don? I will be thirty-two.
🙂
On what was practically my Birthday Eve I could not sleep. I was finding it hard to turn off my brain long enough to drift off. I went from watching Friends, to Stephen Fry Live: More Fool Me, to Mad Men. I had so many thoughts swirling around in my head, so much inspiration in the words and lessons and themes, and I wanted to say everything, right then and there, but my body and also my mind craved rest and a few hours of reprieve from the onslaught.
I wondered if all the modern conveniences of things like NetFlix actually make it worse for insomniacs like myself. As much as I enjoyed all three of these distractions, I kept thinking about what it means to grow ever older with each passing year, with all the modern connections and conveniences at our collective fingertips.
Don’t know if you are familiar with Mad Men, but Don and Peggy are in the office, after hours, mostly alone. In my opinion, upon re-watching this particular episode, it seems to me to be the most pivotal turning point of their relationship, both professional and personal. It’s brilliant really, in all of its stripped-down rawness.
It’s easy to watch a show about what life was like in the 60s, to look at my own life fifty years later.
The whole episode is based, like many of them are, around an actual true historical event that took place, in this case being some all important boxing match, not unlike Super Bowl 50 of 2016 that just took place.
And then, as I first listened to the NetFlix special, the one-man show put on by the brilliant Stephen Fry, for the 2014 release of his memoir, I thought still more about time, reflection,
Fry is a brilliant brilliant man. He is full of stories of his eventful life. Some made me laugh and some made me think. I did not grow up in Britain and thus I had no clue about his fame with another well-known and talented Brit, in the 80s and 90s, as I was a Canadian child who did not see British television programming all that often.
My first intro to one half of this dynamic duo was Hugh Laurie in his role in the early 2000s, as the perpetually grouchy and complicated Dr. Gregory House.
Then I learned of my favourite Harry Potter audio books being narrated, over in the UK, by someone named Stephen Fry.
Fry has stories to tell, about his long-time friendship and career with Hugh, one memorable New Year’s Day tea with Prince Charles (Charlie) and Princess Diana, and his childhood and discovery of the work of Oscar Wilde.
His time working on The Hobbit movies in New Zealand with Peter Jackson and his connection to Harry Potter writer J.K. Rowling make him someone of great interest to me already, but also because his knowledge of literature and his gift for linguistics and storytelling make him a man I am to be in awe of.
He begins his one-man show by going through a list of countries that showed him on screens in their cinemas, offering up some little anecdote or story of each country as he goes along. He speaks with sagacity of how the world is connected today, in ways both he and Wilde never could have imagined, and how we’re all so different yet the same all at once. I can’t help but to love him for his creativity and his genius. I want to listen to his words of wisdom and know I, too, will be alright.
I want to not let each passing birthday make me bitter or hard. I want to take Don Draper’s words and put them in the proper perspective, although the episode I reference here includes moments of pure disgustingness, with a business/personal rival attempting to defecate on his desk and even after Don proceeds to vomit horribly, from all the liquor he consumes throughout the show. These moments juxtapose nicely with those of deep, honest truth and sadness between the characters.
Don tells Peggy: “No use crying over fish in the sea.”
At one point Peggy (on turning twenty-six) is told by a colleague’s wife that “twenty-six is still “very” young), as the wife is referring to Peggy’s still good chances that she can find a man, settle down, and have a baby, but is that what Peggy wants?
It made me think about the phrase, most common for women of multiple generations now: having it all.
I don’t have it all. You might even say I don’t have any of it (husband/children/career) at this time. Not by a long shot. What are we supposed to want, at what age, and how do we learn to live with what we may never get?
Men don’t have to deal with this in the same way as women have and continue to have to. I don’t have to face some of the things Fry has had to face, but I feel I understand what it’s like to feel different in some way. I hope to use language and literature to help me in some of the same ways Fry has used it during his lifetime, to help make sense of the biggest parts of life, things I can hardly fathom otherwise.
To believe in something bigger than ourselves is to be mindful.
And thus I present the App I have found, that I love, that helps me stay grateful and mindful, that I have been using to keep track of songs and lyrics for Love Is In Da Blog and for my own love of music.
“Shazam!”
It allows you to take a couple seconds of a recording of any song you come across in your daily wanderings and it will tell you exactly who is singing/performing. Next it keeps a record of any of these songs, which has allowed me to return to so much music I love, anytime I want. It’s a right handy little thing.
I mean, I appreciate the lessons, learning these new words and such, but I can hardly even pronounce this one let alone using it in a sentence properly. This JJIJ thing is really stretching my English language and writing muscles.
but I did recognize the word “prestige” immediately upon seeing it. Do I at least score a point for that part?
🙂
I never really loved magic shows. I know, along with clowns *shudders*, magic shows are staples of children’s birthday parties, or they were. I actually did have a friend when I was five who had a mother who played a clown for events. I didn’t care so much back then. Besides, she had a candy floss machine.
🙂
Magic does have a certain prestige about it though. Allusions. I like the line that kept coming up when I looked up “prestidigitation” online and in the dictionary: slight of hand. Love that.
So I suppose my day playing Dungeons & Dragons for the first time over the weekend would have involved some prestidigitation of some sort? After all, I was a magical sorcerer. I should know all about the word.
The magic of a room full of people writing is my favourite kind of magic lately. It’s like electric current in a room when all those minds are conjuring. It’s prestidigitation at its best and its been my favourite Saturday mornings or Wednesday evenings these days.
The magic of this month has been that I could just write, jot really, and I started to see that I didn’t need to have the rest of the year all figured out in the first thirty-one days.
That’s the sort of prestidigitation I sorely needed.
Her Headache 
