Imagine yourself a tiny flea
Upon an elephant’s back,
Where every gaping chasm
Is really just a crack,
A crooked little wrinkle
In Behemoth’s leather skin,
Careful how you tread; you might fall in.
Or maybe you’re an atom
Inside a nuclear jar
Your nearest next door neighbour
Might just as well be a star
Because a fraction of a fraction of a fraction
Of an inch
Is a measure beyond measure…
And yet, it’s not a pinch.
It's a finger on a button,
and a mind that will not flinch.
We’re tinier than tiny
In this greater scheme of things
Fodder for the canons
In those places anthems ring…
But stop and think a moment,
If you only will,
There’s space between the drumbeats
To shout, why must we kill!
(Written for the tens of thousands who have died
and the untold thousands yet to die
in Russian President Vladimir Putin's war)
It’s been a long time coming, but my proof copies of The Boy From Under have arrived… now the work begins!
So much has changed since I typed ‘The End’ onto the concluding page of this novel’s first draft. From a writer who believed his work was done once those two words were appended to his manuscript I have morphed into one who believes the creative cycle is never really completed, and that his books have to be actively and joyfully promoted and shared.
The first step will be getting proof copies into the hands, and minds, of beta readers and reviewers. If you want to join that helpful group, let me know. Alas, I only have five print copies to share, but I’ve posted an online edition of the book too, which will be free for all you betas out there.
If you like psychological mysteries, I think you’ll find the Boy From Under an intriguing read from front cover to back…
North Cowichan Council made the right decision last night when, by a 4-3 margin, it decided to uphold the principles of the municipality’s new Official Community Plan.
But the tenor of the debate left me feeling we’re not yet at the point where we can say it made this crucial decision for all the right reasons.
Municipal politics have never been more complex or important than they are today, and the 2022 update of our OCP is a case in point. As a document that will guide decision-making for the next decade or so it will have to be read and re-read for its full reach and implications to be appreciated.
It speaks to environmental issues from a global-to-local perspective; provides guidance on essentially humanitarian issues like homelessness; looks to sustainability and stability by focusing on a ‘regenerative economy’.
If you wanted to design a course in principled decision-making, it would make a pretty good syllabus. Perhaps the day will come when historians look at documents like our OCP and say, ‘It was ahead of its time.’ Hopefully the survivors of the environmental and social degradations we are now witnessing won’t end up saying, ‘It was too late in coming.’
Councillor Bruce Findlay, whose motion to offer a two-year ‘amnesty’ to property owners whose land was removed from the municipality’s Urban Containment Boundaries, said he was acting on behalf of the people who elected him.
That’s old school any way you look at it. The election’s over, councillors are now tasked with thinking and acting on behalf of all the citizens of North Cowichan, and (here’s the rub) to do that job properly in the 21st Century they have to place their decision-making in a global, humanitarian context.
I voted for a council that takes all that into consideration when it approves zoning, influences community policing, builds a road.
Note: I am a board member of the Chemainus Residents Association, and attended the Feb. 1, 2023 meeting of North Cowichan Council from that perspective.
Had a little fun after discovering our jam jar more than half empty the other day!
My good friend Zeno says to me
you can have your jam for free,
nothing’s lost except by halves
the future never meets the past.
So in I dipped my eager blade
to test this wondrous promise made.
I scraped about the empty glass
for evidence of my repast.
Alas, the jar seemed quite remiss
and jam on toast was sorely missed.
Well, never mind, dear Zeno said.
At least you have your daily bread
and I assure you not a bite
will frustrate future appetite.
For once you’ve swallowed half that loaf
half remains, and half’s the most.
Munch and chew to hearts content,
the boundless half remains unspent.
Alas, I’m left with meagre crumbs
and a whole whose parts are not its sum.
CraigSpenceWriter.ca
Sound carries meaning.
A prayer carries meaning.
The words Happy Birthday carry meaning.
Listening to Lama Pasang chant Tibetan sutras
For my brother, Stewart, my thoughts and wishes
Expand across a continent, over mountains
Flowing into rivers and oceans,
And farther yet, on to distant shores.
They expand to encompass as much as I
Am capable of.
For Stewart to have long life… and happiness
I must think of
His partner Miao
She must be happy, too.
And his children, Sky, Joel, Sarah, Jesse, Josh, DarDar
And his siblings Lynda, Stephen and myself.
And all his many friends.
Then my reach must overflow, encircling
The families, friends and relations
Of all his family, friends and relations.
And beyond yet again, the chant reverberates
A rejuvenating echo
Heard by the children of his children’s’ children
And the families of families’ families
And the relations of relations’ relations
And the friends of friends’ friends.
And beyond again…
In all places
Children
Families
Relations
And Friends
May dwell.
It must rustle the leaves of distant forests
Live in the songs of heavenly birds
Survive the shimmer and flash of fins
Arise in the twitching of earthly noses.
It’s a chant that goes beyond
Anything I am capable of…
Except Hope…
Always Hope…
Wishing long life and happiness, Brother
To you and all our world!
Luv Craig& Diana & Family
Maria, Aaron, Laurence, Cathy, PI Pirelli… Crystal Doer…
Crystal Doer?
He hadn’t known any of these people two weeks ago; now they crowded his thoughts.
Victor closed his eyes, relaxed.
“Crystal Doer?”
She drew closer, a shadow taking shape within his darkened room. He half expected her to materialize in the midair between him and the billowing curtains, or to hear her voice threaded into the night sounds of the city. Could she be alive? Out there, after all these years? Her parents still hoped. She’s run away, they kept telling themselves. Someday she would come to terms with her demons, then she’ll come home.
She’ll phone from a town at the end of a long dirt road where the nightly entertainment is watching the Northern Lights. “Mom!” she’ll say. “Dad! Can you forgive me?” And they won’t even say a word. They’ll just cry, longing to hold their babe in their arms, to splice together the severed ligaments of their crippled lives.
Yeah, and now for the sappy music and credits, Victor objected…
You cannot have a name!
“What?”
The voice had no locus. It simply materialized inside and outside him and one and the same instant.
He says you can’t. So I’m going to call you Emanon – noname in reverse – because if you say something backward it makes no sense, yet it exists. I’ll still be obeying, but I will have a sound that means you and ‘not you’ at the same time. Do you understand?
If I even thought of a name like Billy, or Jake he’d know it. Even thinking about thinking it is dangerous. He senses disobedience the same way a hyena sniffs out molecules of sweat. You must never reveal your secret no-name to him. He’ll beat me and you within an inch of our lives if he ever finds out.
“Who is he?”
She didn’t answer. Her spirit faded, a weak signal obscured by the shifting electromagnetism of the city.
“Who is he?” Victor shouted after her, but she was gone.
He stared into the misshapen gloom of his bedroom. Am I going crazy? Had he become a medium for the long-lost spirit of Crystal Doer? Was he infatuated with a decades old photo of a dead girl?
Victor kicked the sheets away, freeing himself from their tangles and rolling out of bed. The room had become a locus of insanity, a place where reason wobbled, flew apart, the shrapnel of what had been tearing into the gauzy fabric of reality. He wrapped himself in his housecoat and padded down the hall. The inky well of False Creek, its shores encrusted with the garish phosphorescence of the city, came into view through his patio window. He stared down at his chosen world. At first nothing seemed out of place. Granville Island, the Granville Street Bridge, Burrard Bridge, all the meaningful structures that triangulated his sense of who and where he was remained in place. But…
You’re out there, aren’t you?
Crystal didn’t respond. Quiescent now, she’d become a presence perfectly merged into the dark interstices of his universe. When you speak, you become a point of absolute being; but your silence is everywhere.
He’d never thought such a thing, this connection to a certainty beyond belief. Crystal Doer’s spirit had broken free from the black holes of time and space, and he was the only human being in the universe equipped to pick up the irregular pulse of her background signal. She cried out for…
“Justice,” he pronounced, aware of the sliding door’s glass vibrating in harmony to the word. The world as he knew it was imploding, everything bending and buckling under the influence of an irrational new gravity.
His apartment was an art gallery of sorts, the collection crowding every plausible space. Maria zoomed in on an image, unable to make it out at first. Her eyes widened as the black and white photo resolved into a composition of skin and hair… the base of a penis standing erect in the wrinkled landscape of its scrotum.
“I warned you,” he called from the kitchen, his voice accompanied by the tinkle of ice cubes in a glass. “I don’t usually invite clients to view my collection.”
“You took these?”
“Guilty,” he confessed. “That’s Richard, you’re looking at. Self-styled Richard the Great. Intelligence is not his most prominent feature, but he compensates with his Grecian physique. I’ll introduce you to him someday and become instantly jealous.”
A breast cupped in a caressing hand; a face contorted in orgasm; tongues touching. Maria moved from portrait to portrait, fascinated, shocked just enough to make her tingle. The images merged into a sensual collage as she moved down the hall.
“They’re exquisite! Disturbingly so.”
“Not everyone would agree with that review,” he said, handing off her tonic water on his way down the hall. “A lot of people think they’re porn.”
“And what to you say to that?”
“They need to adjust their definition of sin so it doesn’t exclude the human body as an art form… every part of the human body, and every act we mortals engage in that quickens true ecstasy in the neural network.”
“Wow!” Maria teased. “I haven’t even got past Art Appreciation 101, but I think I get it.”
The images didn’t strike her as obscene. They were… what would an art critic say… powerful… powerful statements of sexual freedom? She frowned. Gorgeous! seemed a more apt description, even though they were unsettling. They elicited? Envy! She was startled by her reaction. Could love actually be like that? Fluid, fearless, utterly sensuous, the distilled energy of spirit dancing. None of the exhibits at any of the pretentious galas Laurence had dragged her to came close to making her feel this way. It’s how we’re meant to be portrayed, she thought. As minor gods.
More than any other city we visited, Halifax struck me as a contrast between heritage architecture and modern design. Everywhere we went this juxtaposition of old and new intrigued me.
I have to wonder how much the terrible 1917 blast that flattened much of the city had to do with this unique overlapping of historic brick and contemporary glass? Almost from the moment we stepped out of the Rialta I couldn’t help noticing way old and new overlap.
Could it be that, as the only Canadian city to have been devastated during the Great War, Halifax has a unique architectural aspect similar in some ways to European cities?
We were fortunate to maneuver the Rialta into a parking spot right downtown, just a couple of blocks from the Nova Scotia Art Gallery, the main cultural destination of our visit.
Before heading indoors to see the exhibits on that balmy summer day, though, we decided to do the waterfront walk, a truly fantastic feature of Canada’s eastern gateway port. From the ferry terminal, we looped round to Casino Nova Scotia, then back through the city toward The Grand Parade and finally, the gallery.
In the midst of all this was a project that demonstrated just how far Haligonians will go to preserve their architectural heritage. The seven-story facade of a heritage building, supported by a structure of metal beams, was being preserved while the demolished innards were under reconstruction.
I’ve seen the same in other cities, but those stoic walls seemed a sort of memorial to what had been. Soon they will be backfilled with a future that will last, perhaps another century.
Funny, how it seems like – no matter how long you’ve been away – you’ve never really left as soon as you return and cross the threshold into that familiar place called home.
Diana and I pulled into the drive at 3298 Cook Street Oct. 11, after catching the 3:15pm sailing from Tsawwassen to Duke point. Our son Ian greeted us, along with Sophie, our retriever, who has been hoarding all our shoes and slippers since we left as placeboes for our real essence. We waved hello to our neighbours across the street, but warned of our ‘radioactive’ state and promised to catch up once we’re fully recovered.
We’ll process our tsunami of cross-Canada memories and impressions in the coming weeks, but for the moment it feels good to simply be in the centre of gravity exerted by the place that is truly our own.
We’ve put off this final Realta Road 2022 update because we didn’t want people to know we were back right away. It’s taken a couple of days to feel we’re recovered enough from our illness. Our COVID tests came up negative, so we’re guessing it was an especially virulent flu… whatever it is, we don’t want to pass on.
Now that we’ve discovered so many amazing aspects to this country called Canada, we’ll have to rediscover Chemainus and see how everything fits into our new perspective. In that sense, the place we call ‘home’ is a sort of touch stone that we come back to again and again as we plan our next excursions out onto Realta Road.
(PS: One of Ian’s friends, whom I will never forgive, pointed out that the name of our RV is ‘Rialta’ not ‘Realta’. As far as I’m concerned some mistakes were simply meant to be, and our imagination on ramp merges onto Realta Road.)
If you don’t expect challenges, you’re not on an adventure. Since we dipped our toes in the Atlantic, near the tip of Newfoundland’s Western Peninsula, we’ve faced all kinds of challenges. It took us an extra week to get from Port aux Basques Newfoundland to North Sydney Nova Scotia, first because the ferries were fully booked, then after our departure date was cancelled due to bad weather.
Having rounded the Cabot Trail and made our way to Prince Edward Island, we learned that Hurricane Fiona was barrelling up the coast and we’d best get out of its way. A quick visit to Charlottetown was all we had time for, then we crossed the Confederation Bridge, heading inland.
News of the devastation visited upon the Maritimes – and especially Port aux Basques, which we had become quite familiar with – saddened and depressed us.
The weather has turned. First we were caught in more rainstorms, then yesterday we actually encountered the first sleet and snow… not enough to stick, but enough to remind us winter’s coming on.
Finally, Di and I are both sick. We don’t believe it’s COVID, but are avoiding public places as much as possible, and may have to cancel some planned visits. For a while we could barely speak, our vocal cords were so stressed from hacking and coughing, and we are both exhausted. The worst is over, I believe, but it’s been an ordeal.
Our objective now is to make for home. We’ve checked the weather forecasts along our route, and it looks like we’ll be able to get through the Rockies before the snow flies.
Despite the recent challenges, I wouldn’t change anything about our travels. It’s been a wonderful journey, and resulted in an expanded vision of Canada for Di and I.
