What an interesting experience to be asked to refrain from being happy and joyful!  It sort of makes you wonder where we’re headed when the rules actually state that the outward expression of joy is forbidden.  Last night, during one of our photography workshops, we had taken the group downtown for a shoot.  It was a spectacular evening with a most interesting light and perfect summer weather.  Everyone was in a great mood, enthusiastic and raring to go.  We started at Montreal’s public library, a huge modern building in the heart of the city.  It’s a fabulous location with so much to see and do.

Before heading out to take pictures we began with a few exercises which we had decided to do just outside the library.  When a few drops of rain fell, which lasted all of perhaps 10 minutes, we went into the outer lobby of the library.  This is an enclosed area just beyond the main entrance to the library, almost like a covered terrace.  Within this area there are a couple of coffee shops, public bathrooms and the entrance to the subway station.  You are not inside the library per se, so you can actually talk, eat, drink and gather.  We were quietly doing an exercise and since everyone was in such a good mood it only made sense when suddenly one of the participants spontaneously started to dance.   It was contagious and the others quickly followed suit.  There was no music, it was just spontaneous dancing and having fun in a relaxed and really, totally quiet way.  It was more a feeling that was being expressed than it was any sort of commotion.

Not two minutes into this expression of joy and happiness, a security guard for the library came and asked us to stop. Confused about what the problem was exactly, I asked the guard to explain to me what rule we were breaking.  He told me, with a completely straight face, that we weren’t allowed to dance in the library.  After I picked my eyeballs up off the floor, I pressed him kindly for more information.  He told me, “It’s just the rules.  The rules state that it is forbidden to dance in the library.”  Usually I would leave it at that and thank them for the warning and carry on.  But yesterday I was just so stunned to hear such a thing that couldn’t resist the urge to take the point further.  Could it be that there truly are a set of rules that forbid expressions of joy???  That was how I was interpreting this peculiar warning.  You’d have thought that we had walked in with a huge ghetto blaster, cranked up the music and broken out into some sort of flash mob or something.  But no, it was simply a group of people enjoying themselves and allowing themselves to let go enough that they started to move as they were feeling.  It was dancing without music, quietly in the outer lobby of the library.  Yet this was forbidden.  Honestly, I still can’t believe we were asked to stop and I promise I will get over it…

As I stood there, fascinated, I started to imagine in my mind some committee sitting in a meeting coming up with that very specific rule.  No dancing in the library.  I can understand that while you are in the main building of the library that one must remain quiet so as not to disturb the people.  A library has always been a quiet place.  But how does wiggling your hips, waving your arms and smiling as you walk down the hall become disturbing?  Especially when you are in a part of the library where silence is not mandatory, where you can sit with a coffee and a sandwich having a conversation.  Noone but the security guards noticed.  When I mentioned to the guard that we were simply happy people and asked him if it was against the rules to be happy, he got quite a chuckle out of that.  He was definitely having a bit of a hard time himself, imposing the rules.  You could see by his reaction that he was secretly finding the rule as absurd as I did and that the poor guy was desperately trying to stay true to his job.  

I don’t envy him his job having to impose rules like that, especially given that he seemed to be more of a positive type than a curmudgeon.  He appeared to be acquainted with the concept of feeling good and the feeling of happiness.  He couldn’t stop himself from smiling at me as I launched into my disapproval of the idea of forbidding joy.  I knew he was on my side and I wasn’t about to make a big stink about it.  He really was a good guy.  It just caught me off guard and made me worry momentarily about where we’re headed with all these rules and restrictions we come up with these days.  Banish the joy and contain the people.   This way we’ll all stay in line.  We certainly don’t want joy to get out of hand and perhaps become contagious and spread now, do we?  Let us all be androids, devoid of emotion and feeling and when we finally get it that self-expression, especially when it’s of the happy kind will lead us straight to hell, then at long last we will surely cool our jets and the world will be a better place.  I think that’s how it goes?  

We went outside where it is still okay to dance in the streets and perform public displays of joy and happiness…for now.  There were police everywhere, all suited up with their crash helmets and knee pads but they were smiling at us as we danced.  Phew!

Kharim

When I returned with my freshly acquired knowledge from my new friend Brittany yesterday, I was anxious to share all this important information before I forgot the conversation.  I made myself a cup of coffee and as I went to sit down to write it all out, I decided to start some supper at the same time.  I was famished but I didn’t want to forget all that she’d told me.  I quickly put some vegetables on the stove and went off with my coffee.  As I was writing, I could hear a strange sound emanating from the kitchen and I stopped a few times to listen more closely but I couldn’t make out what the sound was.  I finished writing the story and promptly went on to working on another project that I needed to complete last night.  Finally a curious aroma wafted across my nostrils.  I got up to investigate and that’s when I remembered the vegetables!!

I had been planning on following through with Brittany’s healthy advice and add some anti-elephants to my veggies.  I wonder what she’d have to say about the polymers that I mixed in for additional flavour.  Would the anti-elephants be strong enough to offset the pollution I’d just folded into my meal?  And that was the end of yet another perfectly good pot. Fortunately I only take out my pots and pans every so often…

For years people would ask me why I never hosted dinner parties.  Eventually I got tired of the question and I told people that they were more than welcome to come over but they’d have to bring the ingredients and cook them too.  And so they did.  And that’s when they stopped asking me the question.  A friend came over one day, many years ago.  He’d brought all the ingredients to make some sort of chicken casserole.  I led him to the kitchen while I sat in the dining room with a bottle of wine.  He starts by gathering up all the newspapers that I had spread out on the stove top because he wants to turn on the oven.  He couldn’t understand why I read my newspapers there.  What better place is there to read the newspapers?  After all, it’s the perfect size to open up the newspaper completely and the stove is at a perfect height to be able to comfortably read the paper from top to bottom without having to move it.  And the bonus is that there’s a perfect reading light positioned just above the stove!  What else does one use a stove top for anyway?  As he’s preparing his concoction, again there’s a strange smell starting to emanate from the kitchen.  He looks around and finally opens the oven to find a pie plate with a full quiche which has been reduced to half its original size.  I think for a minute or two and then remember that time about a month before when I’d come home famished, plopped a store-bought quiche in the oven and then wondered sometime later that evening why the oven was on. I had shut off the oven but never bothered to look inside.  I’d completely forgotten about my quiche.  That was the story that circulated and marked the end of people asking me to host dinner parties.  People got the point that it would be at their own risk.  While I’ve always been insured, I’ve never owned a defibrillator.

What I’ve never openly admitted is that I can actually cook as long as nothing else has my attention.  Some of us have kitchens quite simply because either they come with the house or we have newspaper subscriptions.  Tonight I opted for raw vegetables and they were divine!

Kharim

When I realized this morning that I was completely out of salt, it became imperative that I rearrange my day to make sure I had time to get to the grocery store.  There are a few things that I must never run out of and salt is one of them.  Off I went to resolve my crisis with the intention to be in and out in a matter of minutes.  As I strolled down the main aisle on my way to the salt, I remembered that I also needed oil so I took a little detour.  I turn into the condiments aisle and I stop momentarily as I witness a most interesting sight.  There was only one person in the aisle, a young child standing up inside one of those mini shopping carts for kids.  She seemed very focused as she stood there, both feet firmly planted inside her little shopping cart, while she hung onto the shelf.  I looked around and no parent was to be found in the immediate vicinity.  

I walked closer and started humming out loud to make sure I wouldn’t startle her. Who knew how secure that shopping cart on wheels really was and what exactly was she so intently doing?  As I approached, I noticed she was reading the labels on the bottles of oil where she was very strategically positioned.  You could see her lips moving as she read out loud to herself.  She then took one of the bottles off the shelf and carefully placed it in her cart.  That’s when she noticed me.  I smiled at her and said hello.  She smiled back.  I was most curious so I asked her if she’d found what she was looking for.  ”Yes!” she very proudly answers and goes on to tell me, as she’s pulling herself out of her cart, “we need olive oil because it has anti-elephants.”  Well now I’m fascinated.  Not only is this kid some sort of acrobat, but she is versed in anti-elephants!!  I show my interest in her knowledge and say, “Ohhh, that’s very interesting.  What are anti-elephants?”.  She immediately explains to me, “they are very healthy for you and they fight the pollution”.   Now it’s time to find out more…I tell her my name so I can ask a few more questions.  I find out that her name is Brittany and she’s six and a half but her father says she’s seven.  Her birthday is at the end of May.

“What else are you shopping for today?”, I ask.  She pulls out her sheet of lined paper where she’s carefully written down five items.  ”Now I have to get eggs that come from the chickens that are allowed to play in the playground and then I will get the cookies.”  I see that on her list it is simply written “eggs” and then “cookies”.  So she is remembering all the special instructions, or perhaps she has learned about everything she is ingesting.  ”What kind of cookies?”.  I am expecting to hear the benefits of the cookies but she tells me,  ”Oh this time I have to get the kind my brother likes which is chocolate chip.”  I ask if they have anti-elephants in them.  ”Nope!” she replies, completely seriously.  Well it’s been a good five minutes now that we’ve been in conversation and a few people have come down the aisle and straight past us. Finally I have to ask, “Did you come alone?”.  ”No, it’s too far.  I came with Daddy.”  Where is he?  ”Oh he’s getting the other stuff.”  And that was it, I wished her a fantastic day and thanked her for teaching me about the anti-elephants.  

Brittany made me smile today.  This kid was on a mission and nothing was going to stop her from risking life and limb to get that bottle of oil that had the anti-elephants in them.  I picked up sunflower oil. When I got home, I had to look it up to see if it’s as rich in anti-elephants as olive oil and yes indeed, I will be getting my anti-elephants.  Phew!  Next week I’ll be sure to get the eggs that come from the chickens that went to the playground.

Kharim

On the heels of Monday’s article (Who says it can’t be done?) on a whole new way of turning one paper clip into a house, Paul Vasarhelyi was inspired to do some trading himself.  He’s having a grand time of it and taking it all in his own direction.  Paul decided to start with a yellow clothes pin which he ended up trading, within hours, for a family heirloom.  He’s invited whomever wants to have a bit of fun to partake in his activities and he’s got a fantastic sense of humour to boot.  If you want to follow the trading or even jump in and do some trading yourself, Paul has started a Facebook page called The Yellow Clothes Pin.  He has also planned an event to meet up in one year with anyone wanting to spend the next year trading to share the results.  

It’s fun to see people inspired to do something fun and different.  There’s just so much talk about all the horrible things going on in the world that we lose perspective on all that’s right with the world.  And there’s really so much that’s right with the world.  It’s a shame that we have to dig to find it and when we do, it gets clouded by all that stuff that just brings you down.  So if you want to check out a little bit of happiness and just plain fun, or if you missed Kyle MacDonald’s trading game, go check out Paul’s fan page and get in on the fun he’s having with anyone that wants to have some fun too!  And while you’re at it, check out his photographs…he’s documenting his trading game with photos that he’s creating to take the fun to another level. Just the pictures alone will make you smile.  I “borrowed” the photograph he created with the family heirloom he received in trade for his yellow clothes pin.  Paul’s looking for his next trade…

Thanks for the smile Paul!!  I hope you had some fun today!  :)

Kharim

PS:  I fixed up the commenting system so you can easily post your feedback again.  Sorry for that other experiment I tried which was far too complicated.  It’s easy again now.  Yahoo!!!

It’s amazing, when you think about it, the number of times that we hear things to the effect of, “this is the way things are done”, or, “well if you want to succeed, you need to do things a certain way”.  And often, we hear these types of things said with such conviction that ultimately we don’t much bother to question it.  After all, let’s face it, it really is so much easier to just accept these things than to take the time to question them, right?  We’re so grateful for the help and guidance and probably a part of us also simply assumes that all those that came before have drawn these conclusions after much effort, trial and error.  But every so often, and fortunately for that, someone comes along to remind us that all that maybe, just maybe, it might be worth questioning a few things once in a while.  You never know, there might actually be another way to arrive at the same goal, a different way, an easier way, a more exciting way…  Of course, the intention is always a good one when we’re given the type of guidance that dictates how things have always been done, and because of that, we believe it.  

A friend of mine told me a very fun story the other day and I find it both fun and inspiring.  It’s a story about a 26-year old unemployed guy whose dream was to own a house but he didn’t want to have to actually pay for it.  Can you imagine having such an idea?  Clearly he must not be thinking straight, right?  Hello!!!  Well…did you know that out of one little  paper clip you could create a house?  Kyle MacDonald, a Montrealer, really challenged the status quo just to see what would happen.  Imagine telling someone such a thing, that you want to own a house but not pay a cent for it.  You would more than likely get a response something on the order of, “Yeah right, dream on!!”.  Now, imagine holding up a little red paper clip and telling people that you are going to trade that for a house!  Can you hear the reactions???  It might even be suggested that perhaps you consider seeking a little bit of therapy?  But MacDonald locked in on his idea and thought about how he could reach his goal.  He then remembered a game he used to play as a child which involves trading; it is called “Bigger, Better”.  The point of the game is to trade something you have for something else but you need to trade for something bigger or better.  MacDonald decided to take his favourite childhood game and play for some more interesting stakes.  How could he start with something small and end up with a house in his name…

What’s fun about his idea is that there are a couple of criteria that needed to be met.  Whatever the trade he was making, the person he was trading with had to really want what he had to offer.  In other words, it had to make their life better or make them happy somehow.  They had to feel excitement about the trade so that everyone would feel like they’d gained something.  Well, in just under a year and in only 14 trades, Kyle MacDonald started by trading his red paper clip and did in fact end up finally making a trade for a house, in Kipling, Saskatchewan!!  That’s quite phenomenal when you think about it because in the majority of cases, when one decides they want to own a house and assuming they fully expect to pay for it with their own money, it often takes more than a year to realize the dream.  In fact, would it not be fair to say that the majority of people who own homes are living in homes that are mostly still owned by the bank?  In exactly 12 months, MacDonald fully owned the house he ended up with after trading his little red paper clip for a pen in the shape of a fish! And he had a great time all the way to his goal because the second criteria that he had set was that he promised to meet all the people he was trading with in person.  His story is extremely fun and completely defies all convention.  He ended up traveling throughout Canada and the US to make his trades and meeting and becoming friends with Alice Cooper and Corbin Bernsen. 

I find that this story is a great example of showing that there are always other ways of doing things and that you can actually have fun along the way.  We get to thinking that there is only one way to do things or that just because things have always been done a certain way, that unless we follow in the footsteps of those who have succeeded before us, we don’t really stand a chance at success.  But there are so many ways of doing things and realizing our dreams and it’s exciting to know that there can be ways that are actually fun.  To me this story reminds me that life is an adventure and that if you really want something, it’s worth going after it even if people are intent on telling you that it’s not going to work if you do it that way.  How do they know if they’ve never tried it themselves?  Imagine how much fun we could have and how many different stories we’d hear in our days if we all had the guts to go against convention and the status quo and try something different?  Just the thought of it excites me.

Here’s the house he ended up with… If you want to read more about Kyle MacDonald’s story and all the trades he made to end up with his house, check out his blog called one red paperclip.

What do you think of this story? Would you do something like this?

Kharim

Someone once told me, a long time ago, that crazy people are afraid of crazy people.  Of course, what one defines as “crazy” is always relative but it’s always a bit scary to meet up with what we feel is “crazy”, especially when it’s a person who’s displaying such behaviour.  But apparently, if you’re more crazy than they are, then they are afraid of you.  Did you know?  It was many many years ago, somewhere in my teens, when I learned this little tidbit about craziness and I had the opportunity to test the theory only a few years later.

I was in my early 20′s and had gone out to a party.  In those days, for reasons I no longer recall, I insisted on walking everywhere.  It was rare that I drove.  I enjoyed the walk, no matter how far and regardless of the weather.  Perhaps it was the fact that a long walk home in 20 below type weather was enough to sober me up completely so I could make it to work no problem the next day.  The night of my discoveries on craziness though was a beautiful summer night, perfect for a walk.  I was living alone at the time and about a five mile walk from the party I’d just left.  It was 2 am in a midsized town where they rolled up the carpets around 6pm.  Not a soul on the streets and forget about hailing a cab for they were done for the night.  At that hour, you needed to use a phone and call for a cab.  So it was just me out there, until I heard footsteps…

Normally footsteps didn’t much catch my attention but for some reason that night, my little antennas went up and I wasn’t feeling quite so safe.  So I immediately adopted the first rule of fear: never let on that you are afraid.  I maintained my composure and my pace but I did tune my ears to hone right in on the signal, something like the Bionic Woman would do.  That is all I was listening for.  I was on a smaller side street and decided it was time to head towards a main drag.  I turned onto another street and noticed that the footsteps continued to follow.  At the next block, I turned up another street and again those footsteps followed.  Now I was seriously starting to be convinced that I’m being followed but trying very hard to believe that this is just a coincidence.  I’m two blocks away from a main street, one of two in the entire town.  I decide to take a weird route that would make no sense, basically doubling back on my trajectory down another street.  Noone who was intent on getting somewhere specific would take that next turn heading back in the direction from which I was originally coming…but the footsteps did.  That time, when I turned, I looked out my peripheral vision and caught a glimpse.  He was a male, twice my size.  Now I’m sweating and feeling somewhat screwed when suddenly an inspiration kicks in.  I remember the tidbit about crazies being afraid of crazies.  At the moment it’s the only thing I’ve got to work with so what the hell, let’s give it a try.

I walk straight up to the next telephone pole and I stop in my tracks and face the pole.  At the top of my lungs I belt out, “No!!! No!!! No!!!!  I’m going to rip your fucking head off.  I already told you that I can’t stand horseradish so why the fuck did you have to pour ketchup all over it?  You fucking idiot!!” and I kick the telephone pole a couple of times and walk off.  I listen for the footsteps.  They’ve stopped.  I continue walking and about 30 feet later, I hear the footsteps again.  I stop in my tracks and turn partially sideways and fling my arms in the air and yell, “Get out of my way before I shove your stupid brain in the meat grinder and make burgers out of you!”.  I continue walking and stop at a fence which I start violently shaking as I scream, “If you don’t start calling me by my name, I am going to call the police.  I’ve told you a million times that my name is Daffy Duck and I can’t stand penguins.  Now leave me alone.  I’m going to piss on your noodles before my friends come over.”

At this point, I stop my tirade and decide to be “normal” again since I’d been normal for quite a few blocks before losing my marbles.  I quietly walk and listen.  The footsteps seem to have subsided.  Less than half a block later, I hear them again but they are farther away.  At least that’s what it sounds like.  Hmmm, I may be onto something with this attempt at crazy but I continue to stay calm and keep walking for a bit.  I take another turn to head more in the direction of where I live since I had been doubling back on my tracks through all this ranting.  This character had followed me all the way back to where I first started hearing the footsteps, so I was convinced there was some possible malicious intent.  A couple more turns and I’m now headed towards home but not wanting to be followed all the way home.  The footsteps are further away but still there.  It’s been a good five minutes since my last rant and I stop at another telephone pole for a short burst, “Fuck you, you ugly beetle!”.  I carry on.  Another minute later and I quack a couple of times.  I quite enjoy the quacking thing so I walk and quack once every four or five steps.  Finally I give it my all and go for broke.  I stop again and launch into a full blown tirade of swearing, quacking, flailing and kicking everything in my vicinity.  Either someone is going to wake up and call the police (this was way before cell phones) or this theory is finally going to work and I’ll be able to breathe again.  I went on plenty long enough for the footsteps to catch up to me and I had no idea if he was coming or not because I was creating such a commotion.  I was fully in character now.  I eventually exhausted myself and stopped.  What was interesting though was that while I was feeling quite alone, the fear had completely dissipated.  I turned right around and that guy was nowhere in sight.  I stood there for a good couple of minutes, scanning the area without moving from where I was.  Was he gone, or was he now hiding?  He could have been right behind the bushes for all I knew.  I’d been making such a racket, I wouldn’t have heard him creep up on me.  I heard nothing.  No breathing, nothing.  

Well, it was time to continue walking.  It had been over 45 minutes now and not a car went by, not a soul appeared, all this commotion and not even a cop.  I was fascinated.  I walked all the way home and never heard the footsteps again.  A few years later, I made a small revision to the tidbit I’d learned that I still claim to this day is what saved me that night.  I came to the conclusion that those who are apparently truly “crazy” will never hurt you, but that there is a fear of “crazy” out there and that fear is experienced by those who know exactly what they’re doing.  I’ve decided that not only can “crazy” save you, it is also a great way to dissipate fear.  And I assure you, it is exhausting.  In the end, I slept very well that night.

What’s your take on the theory that even those with malicious intent will stay away from an apparent kook?

Kharim

Fortunately for me, I take cream in my coffee.  I opened the fridge to get the cream this morning and within seconds of closing the fridge door, I stopped in my tracks with an urge to open the fridge again.  Clearly I’d seen something that didn’t quite jive and sure enough, as I stood there with the cream in one hand and holding the fridge door with the other, I spotted my eye glasses on the top shelf in the fridge.  I wasn’t sure when that happened but can you imagine my good fortune?  Had I taken my coffee black, I’d have surely been all day trying to find those glasses that are all too often elusive.  They were a bit cold on my nose but I was excited that for once I wasn’t going to spend half my morning trying to find my glasses.  When I opened the cupboard to get the jam for my toast, I discovered the empty plate I’d used last night for my snack but I didn’t find the jam.  As I brought the plate over to its rightful place in the dishwasher, I found the jam.  A full pot of perfectly good jam, upside down on the top rack of the dishwasher.  Thankfully my coffee was now ready.  It was time to start with that and hope that it would clear up any remaining confusion as to where things go.  I was a bit disappointed about my beloved jam but the excitement of having found my glasses first thing this morning gave me great joy.

They sell jam at the Walmart now so I’ll pick some up later when I go get a new set of drinking glasses to replace the four I managed to break last week.  One almost every consecutive day with a couple of break-free days in between when I was busy sweeping up the coffee grounds that flew all over the counters and floor, not once but twice.  Some weeks are more exciting than others but now the Spring cleaning is complete in the kitchen.  I remember now that I’d taken my glasses off last night when I decided to attempt to fix the air conditioning.  It was 80 degrees Fahrenheit and although I do like my house on the warm side, I don’t remember a time that I was adamant about flipping the switch from heat to cool at the first signs of Spring.  I’ve decided that it was the weather in here that created all the confusion in the kitchen last night.  As it turns out, there is nothing wrong with the air conditioning, it’s just that the building doesn’t turn it on until the 1st of April. 

It was still 78 degrees this morning so I sat with my coffee in front of the open window, lamenting the fact that the ice has melted on the lake and the fishermen are gone, when the phone rang.  I rarely answer the phone and far less at that hour but this morning I did.  The man on the other end asked to speak to the “woman of the house”.  I broke out into uncontrollable laughter and couldn’t stop.  He hung up.  What kind of a question is that in 2012???

Kharim

How often have you watched a movie or a show on television and thought to yourself that whatever just happened in the scene could only happen in Hollywood?  What happens when life becomes the movies?  Every year around this time the first really beautiful day brings everyone out of hibernation.  Suddenly you remember that you actually have neighbours.  On Sunday I swapped out my slippers for my sneakers to go investigate who are the people in my neighbourhood.  People were washing the signs of winter off their cars, out for a walk, riding their bicycles, the barbeques were going, the smells of Spring filled the air, new sounds I haven’t heard since the Fall were grabbing my attention…there was a whole new dynamic.  For the first time in four months, I didn’t feel like I was the only one living out here.  I was quite enjoying the walk while saying hello to people and stopping here and there for a chat. 

I had to bite my tongue as I walked by person after person who was shoveling snow off their front lawn and out into the street.  With the weather we’re having this week, all that snow is bound to be gone within a matter of days.  Every year I see people shoveling their front lawns. It’s the first really beautiful day since the Fall, weather wise that is, and it’s more than warm enough to be out in shorts, it’s Sunday afternoon when you could be enjoying the sun and pretending it’s summer.  Yet it’s as if you haven’t had enough of shoveling snow, now you’re going to do your whole front lawn.  It makes me scratch my head but then again, perhaps it’s a form of meditation that I’ve yet to try…  What do I know?

At one point in my walk, I was approaching a house as a guy came out the door.  He walked to the driveway and got in his car.  As he was pulling out, I stopped to let him go by.  He drove out onto the street and started driving up the street when he immediately slowed down again and pulled into the driveway of the house right next door to the one he’d just come from.  A woman was standing on the front steps drinking a beer.  When he pulled into the driveway, she walked down the steps and up to the car and got in with her beer.  He pulled out of that driveway back onto the street but this time facing the other way, back towards me.  He drove down the street and pulled into the driveway of the house he’d originally come from.  I watched and wondered.  Had he forgotten something?  He turned off the engine and both he and the woman with her beer got out of the car.  They walked up the walkway and back into the house with what seemed to be the owner of that house.  The owner had originally followed the guy who drove the car out of that house and then also watched him as he got in his car, drove to the house next door to pick up the woman drinking her beer and then drive back again.  I was so convinced that there was more to this drive up the street to pick up his girlfriend that I stood there another few minutes expecting them to come back out of the house.  But they didn’t come out again.  The two driveways were no more than 100 feet apart and it was a very warm, sunny day.  “This only happens in the movies”, I thought to myself.

A few blocks later, on a completely different street, a potentially interesting scenario was playing itself out.  As the sound of a chainsaw drew closer, I arrived about two houses away from a tree felling scene.  I was trying to piece together what was going on.  One man was standing at the foot of a fully mature pine tree that had to be easily over 100 feet tall.  He had the chainsaw going at the foot of that tree.  It looked like he was trying to cut down the tree in one cut at the bottom.  The tree was right beside the driveway and in the front lawn about 20 feet from the house.  Another guy was in a pickup truck and there was a very thick rope tied around the tree and to the back of the pickup.  As the one guy cut through the tree, the other guy was pulling the rope tight with his truck.  He was looking back at what he was doing rather than forward to where he was going.  As it turns out, the grand master plan here was to pull the tree while the other cut it so that the tree would fall forward and onto the neighbour’s property (he was the guy with the chainsaw) which was free of any obstructions.  Sounds like a good plan, good enough to stand there watching a while longer anyway.  The driver keeps pulling on the rope and as he is looking back, he ends up driving his truck right into the fire hydrant that sits at the front of his property.  The hydrant snaps in half at the base and water starts gushing up into the air with such a force and pressure.  He is startled but immediately puts his truck in reverse to get off the hydrant.  As he backs up, back towards the tree, he creates slack in the rope that’s tied to the tree and the tree begins to fall…backwards, and right onto and through his garage (his house is no more than a year old).  As it hits the garage, the entire tree slides back a few feet into the driveway and smashes through the back end of his pickup.  That’s it…tree down, garage down, truck totaled and fire hydrant flooding the entire property!  All this in less than five minutes.  I never believe it when it’s in the movies, after all, it’s just Hollywood.  This was real…

You’d think we spend the winters thinking up bright ideas for when we come out of hibernation.  Down a different road, there was a family who’d decided to move. Clearly they’d had the time to come up with a really efficient plan.  They were going to get the whole thing done in a matter of hours, saving themselves the packing and unpacking and all that comes with settling into a new home.  Who’s got time for all that?  Location is where it’s at and that’s what they were going to change.  There it was, their entire home loaded up onto the back of a truck, still fully furnished.  It was a rather sharp turn as they were pulling out of the driveway and the wheels on the back of the truck didn’t quite make it around the ditch.  That was it, the house ended up in the ditch.  I wondered what the state of the toilet was now.  I don’t know why my first thought was about the toilet.  I guess I couldn’t quite wrap my head around leaving a house intact and moving its entirety to a new location.  Now there were several men walking around the truck and the house assessing the situation.  After a good 20 minutes of pontification, once again, rope and cables came out.  The guys worked furiously running cables from the back end of the house to the pickup truck that came to help.  They didn’t much like that I was taking pictures so I put the camera away and stood back to watch.  In my mind, a little pickup truck does not have the power to pull a house out of a ditch but since I’m not familiar with horsepower really, I wanted to see this.  The pickup spun its wheels and the cable drew tight.  Not much seemed to be happening with the house.  Eventually, and it didn’t take long, the cables snapped and the pickup ended up in the ditch on the opposite side.  An hour later the predicament was still the same so I continued my walk.  

And now I know who are the people in my neighbourhood…they’re the people that you meet, when you’re walking down the street…

Kharim

At some point in my early 20′s it seemed that suddenly everyone I knew was not only convinced, but adamant about the fact that I should take up some form of meditation or yoga.  I could not see what the big broohaha was all about but people would openly suggest these practices to me.  It was as if it was high time I got with the program and “it would do you a world of good”, they’d assure me.  You know how it goes, after you’ve heard the same suggestion over and again from all kinds of different people, you figure maybe you should at least give it some air time and look into it.  I didn’t specifically have any major aversion to the concepts of yoga and meditation but honestly, I would just quietly think to myself, “It’s not for me.  Thanks but no thanks.”  I could not see the draw and as far as I was concerned, I was far too busy with my millions of other “fun” activities and just the idea of taking a whole hour, nevermind the suggested 15-20 minutes, out of my day would stress me out right there.  I quickly learned that if I so much as whispered that I didn’t have time for such endeavours, that was a sure-fire way to get an entire spiel on all of the benefits I would receive by treating myself to such activities.  I was apparently exactly the type of person that would benefit from meditation or yoga or something. 

One day I did decide to give it a try and I went off to a free trial meditation class.  I figured I may as well learn how to do it properly.  I was still in my 20′s and as far as I’m concerned I gave it an honest shake.  It turned out to be the most exasperating and stress inducing hour of my life.  First there was the intoxicating smell of at least 50 different flavours of incense burning combined with some very shrill, supposedly relaxing, whiny middle eastern music playing in the background.  I had to grab a yoga mat from the back of the room and lie down on that thing.  Right there that was it for me.  It was going to be absolutely impossible for me to relax on that mat because now I was completely preoccupied with where this mat might have been and who’d been on it before me.  Eventually I calmed myself down as I told myself that there was no harm here, I can bathe later, so just relax and get back to my original intention.  As I’m listening to the instructor telling us to breathe in and out and in and out, suddenly I get an instant headache when he walked by me with his incense thrower thingie and I got the most potent whiff of that smell.  Voila, instant headache.  Now I’m angry because I felt it was unnecessary.  Here is this idiot telling me to clear my mind while he fills my nostrils with this potent concoction of this wretched stench.  Meanwhile my ears are being filled with the sounds of waves and birds, which I abhor, and bloody tweet tweet tweet and twang twang twang in my ears.  Talk about a shock to the senses.  And by the way, there are no pillows.  You’re lying flat on a creaky, crooked floor.  An hour went by and I finally rolled up my mat, threw it back on the pile and flew out of there, absolutely furious.  It took me a week to get over it.  Meditation schmeditation!  I was going back to my activities.  That was the end of that kind of following influences and trendy shit for the rest of my 20′s.  Every time someone would suggest meditation from that point forward, I’d blow a gasket.

It was somewhere in my late 30′s’ when I decided on another attempt at figuring out what all the broohaha was about with this meditation.  This time though, I decided to learn it on my own and Chapter’s was just the place to do that.  I could get myself a nice strong cup of coffee and a piece of chocolate cake while I sat comfortably on a clean chair, with my shoes on, leafing through all those books in the “alternative” section of the store.  I eventually found something that seemed like a rather simple set of instructions so I bought that book and headed home.  It would be another few years before I actually gave it another try.  I quickly realized that actually this meditation stuff is not so bad after all.  I could lie on my bed, close my eyes, and think about all the things I was working on, had to do, was going to do and how much I couldn’t wait till my 15 minutes was up so that I could get on with things.  It wasn’t long before I came up with the brilliant idea of killing two birds with one stone.  I took to meditating in the car on my way to work.  At every red light, I’d close my eyes and “meditate”, opening only one eye every few seconds to see if the light had changed.  I would take deep breaths and it was amazing how much power I had in my voice when the light turned green and the idiot ahead of me hadn’t started moving yet.  It didn’t take me long to master the fine art of meditating in the car and I was quite proud of myself but I still couldn’t see all the benefits.  I figured I probably needed to practice some more…

A few years later someone explained to me that the whole idea of meditating was to clear my mind of all thoughts for a bit, quite simply because it is relaxing “to simply be”.  Hmmm, well I could understand intellectually but how on earth could I have no thoughts at all.  And frankly, don’t we do that when we sleep?  Why do we need to stop our days to do something we spend our nights doing?  Besides, I have found all kinds of ways in my life to “relax”.  I was getting the point of it but I wasn’t.  Lately though, I have come to new conclusions.  When I have my coffee in the morning, I look out onto the lake and it’s a spectacular view.  I just sit there and watch in fascination because there is something that goes on on that lake that I don’t quite understand but find mesmerizing.  Men show up there with a huge drill and a bucket.  They walk out onto the ice and drill a big hole.  Then they put a stick in the hole, turn their bucket upside down and sit on it watching the hole.  They sit there for hours, all by themselves in the middle of the lake and stare at the stick.  Nothing ever happens.  Every so often they get up and shake the stick and then sit right back down.

I’m older now and I feel I have put in a pretty good effort at trying to understand why on earth I would want to meditate.  Stop the mind, they say.  These guys at their fishing holes have got me to thinking.  Clearly my mind is active and not stopped as I wonder what they are thinking about while they sit so peacefully on their pots all day long like that staring at a stick that is doing nothing.  I’m fascinated at how long they can just sit there but I’ve come to a bit of a conclusion about things.  This activity does seem like it fits all of the criteria of a meditation really.  If you sit there all alone, staring at a stick for hours, is that not a form of meditation?  While I’m sitting there watching them sitting there watching a stick, I am not meditating…I’m wondering what they are doing and trying desperately to figure out the draw.  I noticed over the course of many days of observing this phenomenon that I only see men going out there to engage in this activity.  At first I was smiling to myself and concluding that no woman in her right mind would be interested in this really, after all, we have better things to do.  In fact, we do multiple things at the same time, all the time and we pride ourselves on our ability to multitask.  We even feel we are the superior race, as women, because we multitask while we don’t understand how men can have no thoughts at all most of the time.  But this ice fishing has brought me a new level of understanding…I think.  Maybe, just maybe (and I shudder to suggest it), men have figured out something that we women haven’t.  They don’t need to engage in some form of organized and structured meditation because they easily “meditate” most of the time.  Men have this amazing ability to think about only one thing at a time and even better, to think about absolutely nothing for extended periods of time.  And from what I understand, that is what meditation is all about…stopping thought and clearing the mind.  So while men are annoying us women to no end with their “mindlessness”, to the point where we start looking into things like meditation, are they not simply meditating and therefore reaping the benefits that we haven’t yet figured out?

Kharim

Have you ever tried those funny breath fresheners that come in a little package and look like thin strips of tape?  I was intrigued by the concept and one day, standing in line at the grocery store, I picked up a package.  I’d been carrying them around in my purse for at least a couple of years and had never actually tried one.  I had pretty much forgotten that I had them until one day I had the opportunity to dig through my purse to find them.  I was out with a friend at some public establishment when she turned to me and asked if I had any gum.  I had no gum but a few minutes later I got to wondering whether she wanted a gum simply to chew it, or whether her intention was more to freshen her breath, because if she wanted to freshen her breath, for once I remembered that I had just the perfect thing in my purse.  As it turns out, it was indeed her intention, having just eaten onions, to freshen her breath.  

Imagine my excitement to be able to finally put those Listerine breath freshener paper thingies to the test!!  I turned to her and told her that I had these things and offered her one.  She’d never tried them and figured they were worth a try.  So I whipped the little package out of the bottom of my purse and handed it to her.  She took out one of the flat little papers as I’m explaining to her that they are specifically designed as breath fresheners.  ”Just put that in your mouth and let it melt”, I tell her recounting what I’d heard in the commercials.  She follows my instructions while I anxiously watch to see if she likes them.  Suddenly she has the weirdest look on her face and then looks right at me and says, “Are you fucking kidding me?????”. I’m completely perplexed by her reaction and I insist that I’m not kidding her, that these things are supposed to be the most amazing breath freshener.  She’s still looking at me, completely skeptical and the look on her face is getting more strange by the second.  So to prove to her that I’m not kidding, I take out my little package again and put one of the little paper strips in my mouth.  The strip immediately sticks like glue to the roof of my mouth and I’m not getting the flavour I was expecting…perhaps a spearmint or even Listerine type of flavour.  It’s a flavour that I can’t quite make out but it’s definitely not the tastiest thing, in fact it’s downright nasty. I’m confused but still trying to extract the breath freshening effect out of the thing.  While my friend is blurting out an entire stream of rather vulgar expletives as she tried, in vain, to dissolve this strip and get it off the roof of her mouth, suddenly an idea pops into my head.  I debated sharing my idea out loud but I went for it and said, “Do you know?  Maybe it’s not a breath freshener.  Maybe it’s soap!”.  Her eyes fly open round as saucers and she yells at the top of her lungs, “Soap???!!!!!  Are you fucking serious????” and she takes off like a bullet towards the washrooms while I dig the little package back out of my purse.  Sure enough, on the package, in tiny little letters, it says “Soap”…

Well that was it for me.  There I was, standing alone now in the middle of a rather vast lobby in this public building and I’m absolutely in stitches.  I’m laughing myself to tears, all by myself, as the people stop and turn to see what’s going on.  After a few minutes I put a bit of effort in to regain some sense of composure and start heading towards the washrooms.  With this thing of soap stuck to the roof of my mouth and replaying my friend’s faces in my mind, I just can’t contain myself and I’m splitting a gut all the way through the lobby while people watch, probably wondering what I’m on.  I finally calm down just moments before arriving at the washroom.  I open the door and there’s my friend, hanging over the sink with the water running and bubbles absolutely overflowing in the sink. There are bubbles pouring out of her mouth and streaming down into the sink.  I get myself to the sink beside her and start the same process of washing my mouth out.  Bubbles absolutely everywhere and at this point she is finally finding it hysterically funny.  We’re both now standing there, over the sinks foaming and frothing at the mouth, spitting out more bubbles than you can imagine would ever be possible from one little strip of paper.  We’re babbling like idiots at the same time and just can’t stop laughing when a very serious woman emerges from one of the cubicles behind us. You would think she would at least be mildly amused at such an unusual scene but she seemed almost offended.  She snarls at us and seems rather apprehensive to use the last available sink. Perhaps she was afraid to get too close to these two fools, full grown adults, cracking themselves up and totally out of control, blowing bubbles in the sinks of a public restroom.  I don’t know but she didn’t even crack a smile, this woman who had just relieved herself.  She was gone within seconds.

It took us a good 15 minutes to fully wash our mouths out but it was another full hour before we were finally able to stop laughing.  We walked back through that lobby doubled over and with tears streaming down our faces and right out the door.  It’s been a few years since that event that redirected our lives for a good couple of hours and I’ve still not had the guts to try out the real version of those paper breath fresheners but I was happy that in the end the soap did seem to resolve the initial reason she asked for a stick of gum.  She’s never asked me for a stick of gum again…

Kharim