I’m so used to looking at things, not into them that I’m startled when I witness the space between our molecules of Being and come to realize: It’s not empty, this infinite sky, this eternal orbiting of day into night / into dawn / into the glare of high noon.
I wrote this morning in my latest revision of a fiction:
She glanced away then out the window at the sunrise he’d witnessed earlier; it had morphed into the blare of morning light the gorgeous tints of dawn burned off by the intense rays of a risen sun.
Will this epiphany of the dazzling light and its glorious host of questions well once again at at the end of day?
Can the invisible be divisible?
Is it my plight to know?
How many times can we split the atoms of our truths before we discover the ultimate germs of Infinity, Eternity, Omniscience, and Spirit?
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.
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From Flibber T. Gibbet The most mischievous elf in all Chemainus A soon-to-be-released adventure story set in MuralTown * Asterisk indicates a note below
Story Craig Spence / Illustrations Diana Durrand
Lincoln didn’t really want to go farther. He knew Nana West and Grandpa Grumps would be upset and angry when he made his way back to their house on Maple Street*. But he just couldn’t stop, and certainly didn’t have time to think. The yellow footprints hustled along at a gallop, barely visible on the crunching gravel of the E&N trail.*
“Slow down!” he complained.
But the pace quickened, as if the footprints were trying to lose him, either that or draw Lincoln on and tucker him out at the same time. He fell behind at one point, making his way up a steep grade, but rallied and caught up, hurtling down the other side.
Then, suddenly, the footprints veered off the trail, plunging into the bordering forest. Lincoln lost his footing, changing course so quickly on the loose gravel. He fell and skinned his knee. “Ow!” he cried out. But there wasn’t a moment to lose, rubbing the wound. Scrambling to his feet he peered between two boulders at the head of a trail, which disappeared beyond a stand of gigantic cedars.
For an instant Flibber T. Gibbet made a ghostly appearance, spinning wildly atop one of the boulders, taunting, cheering, daring Lincoln into the dense forest beyond the cedar pillars, then dashing ahead once again, become an infuriating set of tracks plunging into the bush.
Bushwhacked! If he could have spared the breath, Lincoln would have smiled at a remark Grampa Grumps might have made. But, gasping for air, warding off the clinging stinging blackberry canes, and trying to keep up with the manic elf, he was in no mood for joking.
Common sense warned him to stop. Give up the chase. “No way!” he rebelled, urging himself farther and farther up the Hermit’s Trail.
Suddenly, Flibber T. vanished into what seemed an impenetrable thicket. Lincoln dove in after him, warding off the clutching branches, leaves and thorns with his arms, crouching low to the ground, where glints of light penetrated through chinks in the dense vegetation. He’d only advanced a few steps when, without warning, he broke into a clearing. Dazzled for a moment, it was too late for him to react before he realized the ground had sloped away from under him. For a puzzled moment Lincoln pedalled desperately in midair, then pitched forward, tumbling down what he realized through his battering descent was a flight of stone steps.
“Yaagh!” he bellowed and thrashed all the way, amazed to find himself coming to rest on a stone terrace, looking up into the clear blue sky through an overarching canopy of trees. The teasing babble of a brook mocked from nearby.
The first thing that frightened Lincoln about the place he’d landed was… no pain? Bruised and sore as you’d expect to be, having landed with such a thump, he felt nothing. Sedated, he floated in a sort of dream, cushioned by the swaddling air, which seemed to sooth any sensations that might have made him wince or groan.
What is this place? he wondered.
He tried turning his head to get a better sense of his predicament… Tried again, but couldn’t move. No matter how hard he strained, his muscles wouldn’t respond. What’s happening! he pleaded, desperate to twitch a finger or even an eyelid… Imagine yourself a stone with a brain, able to see and hear and smell everything around you, but totally paralyzed, and you’ll get an idea of the state Lincoln found himself in.
What would you do? What could he do, but panic!
Notes
Lincoln has been lured from Mural #36 The Hermit, onto the E&N Railway Trail in Chemainus.
Flibber T. Gibbet leaves yellow footprints wherever he goes, but they can only be seen by people who believe in elves, and the vanish quickly ‘like invisible ink’.
Click up above for a Video Reading Excerpted from the children’s novella, Flibber T. Gibbet, this story-within-a-story sees a quick-thinking squirrel trying to avoid being eaten by a predatory, but not unsympathetic owl.
Ptero was going about his business one evening, searching for nuts, berries and tasty insects to eat, when – whoosh – Bubo, the owl swept down and snatched him up in her talons.
He struggled and squirmed, but she held him fast in her powerful grip, and he knew he could not survive long. He had to think quickly if he was ever to see his nest again.
‘Bubo!’ he gasped. ‘Bubo, why would you bother eating a scrawny little squirrel like me. Winter has just ended, and I’m not much more than a skeleton right now. Let me go, and I promise to return to the very branch you snatched me from in three month’s time. Then I will be plump and delicious, and make a mouthful… er, a beakful.’
Because squirrels always keep their word, Bubo agreed to Ptero’s request, and returned on the appointed evening to find his prey, plump and well-fed, on the same branch where they’d first met. Bubo swooped down and carried him off again.
‘Bubo,’ Ptero pleaded this time. ‘Why would you tear me to pieces and eat me up now, when it is the season I am preparing to make many meals for you?’
‘Explain yourself, and be quick about it, for I am hungry,’ Bubo demanded.
‘It’s springtime, and I must mate. Soon there will be many of me scampering amongst the branches for you to catch and eat. Three more months, and I promise to return so you can me carry off a third time. But by then there will be many more like me for you to feast on.’
To Bubo this made good sense, so he returned Ptero to their favourite branch. ‘I shall see you in three months my little friend, then – sadly – I will have to gobble you up, for that is my nature,’ she said as she flew off.
So Ptero met a mate, and they had a family, and after the three months past he returned for Bubo to catch again.
‘What am I to say now,’ Ptero fretted, shivering with fright. He thought, and thought, but no new ideas came to him before Bubo glided silently overhead and snatched him up a third time.
‘So Ptero,’ the owl said as they flew away, ‘what reason are you going to give me tonight to keep me from my dinner?’
Ptero had nothing to offer, so he went limp in Bubo’s talons, closed his eyes, and prepared for his grisly fate.
‘Before I devour you, let me ask a question,’ Bubo said.
Eager to postpone what was surely coming, even for a heartbeat – and I can tell you, a squirrel’s heart beats very quickly when he is afraid – Ptero replied, ‘Please ask, and I will do my best to answer.’
‘What time of year is it, my scrumptious little friend?’
Now, to Ptero this seemed a silly question. But he pretended to be puzzled, and took as many wing beats as he possibly could to answer. ‘It is the season of long days and warm weather,’ he said at last.
‘Indeed,’ Bubo agreed. ‘It is also the season of abundance, is it not, when an owl can catch more food on a single night’s hunt than she could eat in a week.’
‘True,’ Ptero agreed.
‘And what season will arrive in three month’s time?’
‘Why that would be the season of falling leaves and withering fruit.’
‘So what might a wise owl do – and there is no such thing as an owl who-hoo-hoo isn’t wise – what might a wise owl do with a bit of prey, if her stomach and larder were already full, but winter was on its way?’
Ptero hesitated, fearful of making a guess. But he finally screwed up enough courage to say, ‘He might return a little squirrel to its branch and come back again in three month’s time, when his larder and belly will both be empty?’
‘Ah!’ Bubo hooted happily. ‘Excellent idea. Why, if you weren’t shaped like a plump little rodent, I might mistake you for one of my kind.’
And so for many seasons Ptero and Bubo have been getting together for their pleasant flights, and neither has figured out in all that time why one should eat the other. You could even say they’ve become good friends.
