The Woman Who Knows

I can't tell you what happened to me, she said as she slid the sleeve of her white down filled parka up over her elbow. All I can tell you is, they were supposed to protect me, and they didn't. I was there to help.

She was in the seat in front of me, her in the aisle seat and me at the window, and her window seat was inclined back so we had an askew vee notch through which we could talk, if we both leaned forward. Neither of us was inclined to sitting side by side.

I was married for seventeen years but he would disappear for months at a time. He'd say he was going to Subway for a sandwich and then be away for six months. Then he'd walk in the door and say "Hi!", like nothing strange had happened. It came with the territory. Part of DHS.

Once you are in you are never out. If they knew... well.... you just cant talk about it. But, she perked up, I d love to get a job as an eighteen wheeler diver. I could drive down to Nevada. I could live in my truck.

She spoke not much above a whisper and the roar of the greyhound diesel engine made it so I would see her lips moving and realize she was speaking. She never raised her voice and forced me, in my curiosity to lean forward to hear her. She had a gentle Quebecois voice, more toward Parisienne, I thought, but for a woman who had to be careful what she said, her need to speak was unquenchable, so I listened.

Yeah, she smiled as she spoke. She had lovely dental work. I wondered if her face had also been damaged in her traumatic incident. It had been two years ago, and her recovery had taken place in Montreal.

They botched my arm. They are useless there. I hate Montreal.

She had been on the Plateau.

The people there are miserable, she declared matter of factly. They will never help you and they just steal and damage your property. I hate it. And they come to your house and annoy you. Over and over.

But she loved Nevada.

Of course, the Seals could not tell the absolute truths about what they did while driving their eighteen wheelers in the gigantic underground cities of the Nevada desert. But in Las Vegas, and Reno, she knew these men and laughed with them as they told the kinds of stories that only DHS military could share among each other. They were so good looking and it was a great place to be. She loved Vegas where, as she quoted Sheryl, she would encourage some cross town trucker to demonstrate his might.

But along her whole life, between Maine edge Quebec and Florida she had been marked as special. A remote reader and employed as such. Not for pay of course, but she was known and beckoned, since she was fifteen, and called to service. What she hadn't seen! What she didn't know! The otherworldly was her specialty. Most of them didn't know how to read the future so they needed her.

She was particularly proud of her conferences. She was aware of the work of the Andromeda Counsel, and the Pleiadians, but mostly was proud to have been seen with writers and leaders, the forerunners of military paranormal intelligence. And she whispered this.

She was recognized.

You should go to these conferences, she told me lightly and with enthusiasm after I said that I too had abilities in premonition. She seemed to think I wanted to be included when in fact, I want to be apart. But, she qualified her enthusiasm, I go to check out my enemies, not to be recognized for my abilities. I am special.

Yes, I trumpeted. So am I. And I once had a lover, seventeen years younger than me, and he was special too, he told me so.

At first she didn't believe I was special, so I had to convince her. I told her of my premonitions. Well, a couple of them. I told her of my Irishness. I told her of my acceptance of my crop circle chasing friend. I guess I did want to be accepted.

Oh! She chuckled as the bus rolled across the shield. I think this forest has been flattened, just like the woven grain in the crop circles. She knitted her fingers illustrating the phenomenon, searching for the English words as we passed infinite black spruce between Eagle Lake and Ignace. She gazed at the lakeside hotel in Eagle Lake. Oh! Where are we? I recognize this. I stayed here once. As the sun set, and the sky darkened, she laughed at the dancing lights in the sky that looked like UFOs.

You see those exact ones on the internet, she said, but anyone can tell it is just a reflection of the lights from the other side of the highway, through the windows. Lots of people fake them on the internet. But they're not the real UFOs. We see lots of them in Nevada, every day. It's common there. And lots of them are man made. Just by the military. But you never know. Aliens aren't little green men, you know.

Did you see Obama's shape shifting bodyguards? It is very cool. Check it out. Some think he's reptilian. You never know.

Hey! Did you hear about that underground volcano they fracked? Now houses are collapsing into the ground everywhere, and the military is pretending they don't know why. And they stored all of that nuclear waste down there, by Louisiana and Alabama. There's gonna be a big explosion.

I wondered aloud, do you think it will just be radiation, or will it be like a bomb?

Whatever, she shrugged. It will be bad.

And everything has a training exercise, you know. She had lovely eyes. A lovely woman, but she didn't think so, even though she had found a lover to put rose petals and candles in a spa bath of a Vancouver five-star hotel. But he left her there. He never came back to the room. He never would touch her. And she'd flown there from Vegas to meet him. Not a great date. She wouldn't meet him again.

But nine eleven and Fukushima, they all had training exercises. It is all part of the plan. They have to reduce the population. That's the plan.

Do you now, some people think that it's the reptilians behind it all. Aliens, you know. Even Obama. And Mrs.Obama. I m not saying I think that. You should check out the internet. Its pretty funny.

But around site fifty two, there are lots of UFO sitings. All the time. Hey, I even saw the laundromat.

What laundromat?

Shhh. She looked over her shoulder. There was a chap further back in the bus who had spoken to her shortly after I got on. He had not acknowledged her since. I started to wonder if she knew him. He did not smoke with her at the smoke break stops.

In Florida. It was all one family and they all married beautiful Dutch girls. They went to the laundromat to learn to fly for nine eleven. There were maps on the walls and they would use the dials. That's how they trained them. I knew one of the guys. They needed me there. They said they could find me a boyfriend and I could find the information and use my skills. I have prevented many disasters. I have saved millions of lives, but they don't want that anymore. They just want to see what I know so it doesn't spoil the plan.

She paused and looked back at me, eye contact through the gap between the seats. The third man was sitting about four seats behind us.

You see, she continued, when it is planned, if you give truthful information about the future, that could screw up their plans, it will cost them trillions of dollars and they wont be happy, not at all. They will hate you.

I was nodding. Isn't that the case in almost anything, I asked. The bosses only want to hear what they believe is true and what fits their plan.

Oh, no. This is different. You will just disappear. It happens all the time.

She liked to counsel. But when I pointed out that she did like to help people and she did have good will, as when she did hope her long lost husband now in Laos had not been harmed by Hiyana, she began to call me a granola. I thought that was like being called a Pollyanna. She seemed to prefer to be delivering darker truths than hopeful ones.

It will happen in December, she was predicting for me now. Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Northern Alberta will be okay, but that's about it.

Last time, about two thousand people survived, but then there were only about nineteen million people in the world. This time...

I wondered if she was worried, and why she would move to BC where it was destined to be a grave calamity. It's too cold. Flat and clear response.  She might have said, unliveable.  Again, she was focusing on Nevada and her breath deepened. She told me about the stones that roll around in their own power and about the guy who broke the sensor wires.

If you walk in that desert, they know you are up there.  The sensors are everywhere.  The natives got a lot of money from the government when they built that underground city. And there are underground cities everywhere, even in Manitoba.  They are ready.  She seemed to have a plan of her own.

Once I have my own truck.... You can never leave once you are in.

I was not sure if she was escaping or chasing her past.

It will be best to be part of the military, she pronounced. Then her eyes lit up. They have everything set up. The camps. For millions of people. Everyone will get a dot. There are three colours. Red is for the military and gun owners and known detractors. They will be taken to a special chamber and just shot right away. Light blue is for non-violent types who can be re-educated and yellow is for the placid ones. And everyone will have biochips. Do you know what that is?

Yes. I nodded. I had seen the movie.

The grid will be gone. It's already planned. They have to depopulate.

I wondered, this time silently, how the biochip information could be shared without the grid.

She was relocating. Determined. All the way to Vancouver. I thought she wanted to get away and told her where she could find some pirates and survivalists but she was not interested.

I already had to postpone it once, she said. Frustrated. I signed up for my course for October twenty-eighth but had to put it off. I had to get rid of my stuff. I still have a lot, she seemed to be boasting. Five really heavy cases.

Oh! Did it cost you a lot to bring that much luggage?

A hundred and thirty over and above my ticket. She tisked and shook her head. Personally, I thought that was pretty cheap shipping across the country, but she seemed to think it was a lot.

With her gimp arm, I wondered how she could manage the hauling.

I've dropped and ruined five cell phones because I can't feel it with this hand. But in another breath, she had no qualms about launching forward with her scheme.

I'll just put my cases in a locker and then find somewhere to stay. My truck driving course starts right away.

Can you drive an eighteen wheeler with a paralyzed hand?

She used stretch rubber to exercise her fingers, four times a day, and could not straighten her wrist. There was no feeling in the fingers.

Oh yes. I can definitely do it. Until I get my license, I'll work at a serre. Oh, I piped up again, I also work in horticulture. Isn't that a coincidence! I wondered again about her injury, knowing the heavy lifting of garden centre work.

There was so much spilling from this woman's mind. She hated the Bushes; father and son. She had had every conversation.

As the bus ride was ending, I surreptitiously wrote her a letter. She was eating goji berries and popcorn twists and taking every cigarette break greyhound would offer.

I didn't start smoking until 2001 she answered. I had an apartment and they made me use it as a safe house. Do you know what a safe house is? She asked. I had seen that movie, and I knew. Well they sent me a room mate who needed protecting. She was hallucinating.  It was so funny. It was because of the drugs they prescribed to her. She was screaming about people she saw above and tried to cook a brownie in a tea towel.  It was a lot of work, she was so noisy. Finally, I had to tell them I couldn't keep her. She was off her rocker.

The safe house incident must've been what started her smoking. She didn't rightly confirm that. But she did say that all of her worldly goods had been sold off from a storage locker that someone else had forgotten to pay for two and a half months. Down in Vegas. Lost. Everything. But she had no qualms about ridding her most recent home of households as she spat Montreal into her past. Her five heavy suitcases were her life. She wanted to be closer to Nevada.

It is only about six or eight hours from Vancouver. My passport is not current.

Which one? US or Canadian?, I asked. No response. I thought about her cross border trucking.

Sometimes the conversation would wane, and I would turn back to my writing pad, or my sudoku or the crossword puzzle. She had dark aqua green headphones and a matching mp3 player.

What are you listening to? Her response was delayed, the only time there was a delay and no bright eyed desire to relay critical information. I thought it might be training pod casts or Pleiadian lectures. She'd told me that Barbara, the Pleidain vessel, was not a legitimate channeller, and I told her it was my friend who was the big fan. I just was in the same room and let it wash me over.

1920's and 30's Jazz she answered, "I like that." I thought, it's not Sheryl Crowe.

Then she announced that she had brought her cat, with her, and that surprised me as I envisioned a kennel crated and hidden below the bus. She saw my expression. No, she clarified. Ladygirl is incinerated. Fluffy is dead too.

Oh, ashes. Phew, I thought.

I told her of my dog, and she told me again about how the RCMP was supposed to have protected her but they failed. Dobermans. It was a complicated situation and she was not alone. "I can't say anything'" she repeated.  "But you must get a good pension for the injury," I rationalized.  No. She hadn't been paid.  She was just being helpful.  They should have protected her.  She wasn't alone. This might have been the trauma that destroyed her arm.

They were going to amputate it, she said. I wondered if it was a gun injury.

She'd had a gun confiscated once. A green air gun it was. Idiots.

So, I wrote her a letter. Just a short letter. Then I folded it and folded it until it was the size of a sugar cube and half as thick. Then I pulled a long hair from my head and tied the folded letter flat with the hair and held it in my hand, waiting for the moment. The smoke break.

Aren't you coming outside? Oh I always have to stretch my legs. I hope I can get some clothing from my bags below when we switch buses. I stink. I need a truck stop shower. And she stepped off the bus to smoke with the Thunder Bay recycling centre manager who'd left his estranged partner and their daughter in his house to go and work the Alberta oil patch. To start over. Another one on the bus.

As I watched them light up, standing in the skiffs of snow on the crumbling asphalt in front of the bus, I stood up into the aisle. I looked at the other passengers. The third man was still on the bus, but he was listening to his headphones and looking out the window. He wasn't paying attention to me. She had a navy blue duffel bag on the floor in front of the window seat, away from the aisle. I looked again at the few people who had chosen to take this break on the bus, instead of outside. Quickly, I leaned into her sitting area and unzipped her bag, the one at her feet, only two inches, just enough of an opening to drop the letter in.

In the letter, in all kindness, among other things, I reminded her that ordinaryness is the new exotica and that she should find an old cat and make a friend. I'd written the letter before she told me about her cat. I hadn't know she was a cat person, but then, since I'd boasted about my own paranormal abilities, I smirked to myself about my little talents. Not pride though, moreso chagrin.

I had transposed the letter before giving her the original. After it had been safely deposited, with my DNA, I returned to my notebook and reread the letter. It was true. The letter had been written to me.

Ordinaryness: The New Exotica

Dear woman,

For a special person to be ordinary is to shed the furniture and possessions of who you have been, to cast the exotic memories to dust and laugh in the face of the future with others who appear not to care, and who live for today.

Trivial matters become poignant and the simple breeze on your face becomes your raison d'etre.... next to laughing.

Sister, find an old cat and become a friend.

~~nel

The Preferential Ballot

It is early April, 2013 in Canada.  It feels like late February, were it not for the long spans of daylight we are enjoying.  Still a metre of snow in my yard.  Crusty, dirty, crystally snow.  Rubber boots, where are you?

Today six candidates for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada presented their final blast, live online.  Voting begins at midnight tonight.  I listened to all six candidates.

I am registered to vote. I am not a liberal. In fact I am an anarchist. But I am a hopeful person. We need change.

6^th Presenter. Martin Couchon

Pointing his finger at the camera he addressed the current PM and said, “Canadians are gonna bring you down!”. I don't know how he got Mumford and sons as his musical theme. The site crashed so I missed the beginning of his speech. He says policy is central and presented his policy platform. 1. political reform? I forget. 2. Environment. 3. Justice. 4. Social Equity. 5. Respect culture et nos artistes. He is running in the spirit of renewal. He sees an inclusive organization and a transformed LPC. We CANnot, MUSTnot WILLnot take it anymore. He will get the current government out. He ran against Mulroney in his riding. Good speaker. Gave a good presentation of history, reminding us of our universal values.

3^rd Presenter. Joyce Murray

She has a live band introducing her. Two vibe players and a drummer. World beat music. Many endorsements in her intro – Axworthy, Suzuki to name a couple. Her platform: DEFEAT HARPER. She has an MBA. Is an Environmentalist. A child immigrant from South Africa who attended Expo 67. She said selective ridings, only those whose local riding associations concur, will engage in selective candidate platforms (co-operating with Green and NDP) to assure that in those close ridings, the Conservatives will not win. Strong presenter.

4^th Presenter. Justin Trudeau

Big pre-produced intro showing throngs with urban pop. Hope & Hardwork needed. This is just the start. “Let me be clear”. (ugh). He is telling us what our true values are. He's the son of Quebec and the Grandson of BC. He will “never use western resources to buy Eastern votes”. His presentation gave a sense of history and of time. Was sincere. Gave a Miigwetch at the end. Not doing it for Pierre, but for his kids. We work for the future, not from the past.

2^nd Presenter. Karen McCrimmon

Strong physical presence walking, with no podium. Bagpipe intro. Stark. Female piper. Clear talker. Vet. Pilot. From the “heart” was her theme. Canada is less secure, not more secure with the focus on military. The governments policies have made Canada less secure because of the environment degradation and struggling communities. Strong with ordinariness. Excellent speaker. Many poignant stories and firm ideas.

1^st Presenter. Debra Coyne

Used some song as her intro. Kind of a song of a hopeful thing. Her platform is one Canada. Good jobs, and best economy. She was the first speaker.  My remarks were fewer. Environment is important. Sincere. Clear and very professional speaker.

5^th Presenter. Martha Hall Findlay

Had a soul train anthem as her intro. Really loud, poorly produced. Feel Proud. None of the voice-under said much. Good speaker. Well groomed. Cdn Designer dress, she mentioned. Declared underdog – as was PET 45 years ago today. “You know where I stand. You know where I stand. You know where I stand.” Do we? “Clear vision.” Is it? Sounded PCish. “I have been clear."  She wants better government. Did a scenario of the PM debate in 2015. Acerbic.

I am voting in the order I've listed them here. Probably for five of the six candidates.

I might have to drive to my summer home to get my PIN so I can complete ballot because I think that is the address I put on the supporters' form, and the PINs are being sent by Canada Post.  Nice support for the government corporation there.  I will drive the 3 hours.  Thanks to the LPC for letting me engage.  Today, I felt some hope.  The first in a long time.

Sorry about typos - this is a "journalistic" story... even further away from my dreamworld than the non-fiction that sometimes scatters my thoughts.  Please comment here with spelling errors and typos and I'll fix them one by own.

Miigwetch.

Our First Nations - A Commentary. A Solution

Our First Nations People.

I am not a young person.

I am born from settlers to Manitoba. Immigrants from upper Canada who came to Manitoba for “the” land. For the better life. My grandchildren will be  sixth generation here in Manitoba, seventh if you count great grandpa Archie's mom, Barb. She came once, but went back to Ontario in the end.

Me, I'm fourth generation settler. Today, I say I am descended from perpetrators of the colonial atrocities that paint our landscapes and our minds. My mind has spent a lifetime staring at a lack of congruence. There was no fit. No explanation. The language of my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles told a story. The friends in my classroom showed evidence of a story. But the stories didn't fit one another.

I am a baby-boomer. Born in the middle of that burst of fertility with older kids to bully me. A middle child with the gawkiness to never feel the belle. I became the loud mouth prankster. But as an Aquarian, I was a thinker and a feeler, and so I observed.

A life time later. I see a solution. The congruence that gave my mathematical mind the purest of satisfaction in grade eight geometry, under the able eye of Mr. Doctoroff, now, has again generated a ker-plunk-it-fits notion that offers explanation to the societal damage that has run rampant in my world, in my life, seemingly to no avail.

But it is over. It shall end now. And the solution is simple. It is in the language.

Just as in my lifetime I saw language used as an indispensable tool to change attitudes, policy and behavior, I intend to live to see language step forward and alter the moral landscape of Canada. Gender neutral language has improved the lot of younger women, in my lifetime. It takes time and it takes education. But we now talk about the letter carrier, the firefighter, the sales rep, the police officer. Some uninformed still show their ignorance by teaching their children that men are the ones who own the title on these kinds of occupations. But more and more, children will correct their ill-informed parents. Slowly, the language is reflecting the changes in attitudes about women. Sexist attitudes. Gender equity. Equality. No, the problem has not disappeared, but now we can see the perpetrators clearly and they are cowering toward the corners with their out-dated attitudes. In Canada.

And racism. In Canada we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms to protect our religious and ethnic identities. School children learn to identify racism. Canadians celebrate March 21 as International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. School children participate. Parents who are not racist, participate too. And in Canada we have June 21 – National Aboriginal Solidarity Day – an opportunity for native and all other Canadians to celebrate native culture in Canada. So, attempts to erase blatant racism exist. They have been only marginally successful. A series of multicultural celebrations – entertainment, pride in culture. This is all good, but it has never crossed the divide that cuts so deep, it has been almost impossible to see the other side. While, at a turtle's pace, cultural education has crept into mainstream education and entertainment, the root of this lack of congruence has really never been addressed.

Oh, there are many people who know the truth. Do not misunderstand. There is no hidden truth. It is very plain and clear. That is why the solution is so simple.

The settlers came for land. Immigrants then came for commerce, for a better life in the cities and villages that surrounded the land. Other Immigrants came to escape the atrocities or economic inequities of their native lands. To Canada they came. To this land. To live among people who had been here since time immemorial. From a European perspective, from an Asian perspective, there was more than enough land. The newcomers came with European and Asian land attitudes. Blissfully, the settlers believed what was in their best interest. They chose to be blind to the breeches of the law. Language barriers prevented two way communication and the victims were segregated. Perhaps some sinister devious leaders, with their own best-interest at heart, thought everyone would forget. Myths were even created. “Yes. I will put a nickel in the collection plate for the poor savages.” “I am clean, I am righteous.” “My behavior is civilized.”

It took generations. It took education. In the mean time the situation grew from unjust to immoral. The law is clear. The treaties are clear. The governments have failed to uphold the Canadian end of the Treaties. Why? In the name of economics of course. What flows into my pocket is mine, no matter the source of the plenty. Economics: the illusive shell game that blames when it fails and worships predictors who have nothing but theory to support their dogma. Ignorant politicians signed away their morality in the name of the churches. One diversion after another. Blaming the victim. Building racism. Building anger among the victims. Decade after decade. While the world watched.

Meanwhile, in Korea, a small peninsula, a life-time across the planet, people were also suffering occupation. The Japanese in their quest for an empire had invaded Korea. The women were raped and forced to become comfort women for the soldiers. Korean athletes were forced to compete in the Olympic games, under the Japanese flag. Citizens were forbidden from using their language. For almost six-thousand years, the Korean people had inhabited the peninsula. They knew their history, they knew their culture. They had created their landmarks and were one with the land. They had one strong weapon that for fifty years of occupation, kept them whole. Hangul. Hundreds of years before the invasion their leader had created Hangul, a collection of twenty-four characters that brought the written word, in phonetic form, to ordinary Korean people. Their language would never die. When the Japanese quest for imperial domination ultimately failed, the Korean people were left with a land that had been raped of resources and left as a hinterland. Decades of rebuilding began. And Korea was a nation of one people. All native to Korea. This was their land and they did rebuild. And only now, in recent history, has immigration become apparent in Korea. Many Korean women marry English teachers, or business men. Many Korean men marry South Asian or Chinese women. Korea is struggling to adapt to this immigration. The native population of Korea of course, creates the law in the land, and granting citizenship and voting rights to immigrants is a very new concept. It would be laughable for a Korean person to imagine South Asian or North American immigrants taking over the government and the landscapes and the laws of their land.

I am not old, but with luck, I soon will be. I have though, lived long enough to see social change, for the common good and exploitative change as well. I have a strong enough perception of time to realize that these laws and agreements were not created so very long ago, only a hundred years in some cases. Time does not erase law. Families have memories, when they have been wronged. Cultures have deep roots and hold fast together. The Korean people held their land and their culture.

In Canada, this too shall come.

We have a gigantic component missing from having a satisfying life. We left our native land, or our ancestors did. They came to Canada. We look to one another for camaraderie and teach our children about the nature that covers this northern expanse of the planet. Still we nurture a society that is broken.

They are not invisible. These are our native people.

I am an English teacher. For the past seven years, I have helped Korean people improve their ability to speak English. I am old enough to have studied grammar in school, and that is helpful when explaining this most inefficient of languages. One exasperating element of English is the determiner. Determiners are comprised of a collection of small words that define a noun and give it more specific meaning, without requiring detailed explanation and elaboration. The most common determiners are the articles, a, an, the, and (no article). But there are many others. This, that, those etc, is another collection of determiners. Also, the ones that grant position, first, second third, etc. or quantity: two, four, six, or ratio: a third, half, all, both, some. Next, other, last. Many, few, much, little. Determiners are very important to our language. There is one group of determiners that gets confused with the pronouns, which actually replace, rather than define, a noun. These, the possessive pronouns, are determiners, despite their description as a group of pronouns. His book. Their Mercedes Benz. Your mistake. My eureka moment. Our First Nations people.

Our First Nations people offer us thousands and thousands of years of connection to the land. We have lost this. Many Canadians go on pilgrimages to the Czech Republic, Chile, Ireland, Italy, in search of our roots. We walk among the citizens of these nations and see people who resemble us and feel an interesting fit. Here in Canada, this is absent from our lives. To feel at home, here, in Canada, we need Our First Nations people. They can help us celebrate belonging here. We can feel connections to our world by making Our First Nations a part of our meaning. They are already in their native land. They welcomed the settlers and the immigrants to this land, and made well-informed treaties to protect the future for their grandchildren and great grandchildren and beyond.

Just as the settlers preferred to believe our first nation people were savages who had no concept of the land. Just as the governments preferred to believe that taking children away from their parents was somehow civilized. Just as modern corporations prefer to believe that the resources they are exploiting belong to nobody. Nobody at all. We, as complicit descendants of the exploitation have preferred to believe that was then and this is now. But none of these self-serving myths hold water. Because of the lies and immorality and injustice, we, as descendants, benefit from white privilege, whether our ancestors took land in cities or as farms, whether in recent or more distant history. It is all one. We came to other peoples' land. Now we are here. As Canadians, we are beginning to acknowledge our original people, our native people, as a treasure of knowledge, culture, spirituality. As people who have an age old connection to the land, a connection that too few immigrants and settlers' descendants choose to explore. It is not secret. The knowledge remains and is willingly shared.

Our First Nations exist. They did not go away, just because we wanted to believe they would.  That attitude is akin to the peek-a-boo mentality. The treaties have left sovereign nations. Nations of youth, perched to take their position, in this land. Nations of youth with legal treaties. It is not our native land. It is our First Nation peoples' native land.

Beginning today, never speak about the First Nations people, speak about our First Nations people. Use the apt determiner. Without our First Nations, Canada would have no culture of our own.

The social and economic injustices that the past centuries have stricken on our First Nations will not be made right soon. Slowly, the ones who feel entitled and the corporations who are not people at all, will be shamed into the corner as we use that simple possessive pronoun as a show of our participation in building the path to justice. We rise and walk together, in pride, with Canada's native people. Our first nations. The First Nations of our chosen land, Canada.

Say it out loud. Our First Nations. Our First Nations people. They are part of who we are, because we live on First Nations' territories, going back thousands of years. Our gardens grow on it. Our asphalt populates it. Our imaginary boundaries try to divide it, but this can never be so. To our First Nations, it is one land. It is one land, thanks to Our First Nations.

That simple linguistic adaptation from the First Nations to our First Nations, every time, every where, in every situation. Not those people, our people. Part of our culture. An indispensable part of Canada and our identity as Canadians. Our First Nations. Learn them, name them: Mohawk, Haida, Dakota, Cree, Ojibway, Blackfoot, and many more. These are our First Nations and their people are Our First Nations People.

Miigwich

postscript:  a condensed version of this essay was published in The Uniter in January, 2013.

Death's Yawning Door

I have a love/hate relationship with Lars Von Trier.
Today I watched Melancholia. By coincidence,
today, I also came across the holographic version of
a bit of a story I had scrawled back in January of this year.

It could be called an apocalyptic dream, kind of like Lars's.

Death's Yawning Door

A dream is all, but the key was its recurrence – over quite a long string of time. I do drink many recurring dreams and this one began amid a pod of self-esteem deflaters, where folk you admire and aspire to, ignore you and laugh gregariously together, in your presence, without having any apparent awareness of you – but I diverge. That time there was the road – a raised freeway, but not clad with noisy speeding stinking cars and trucks, more so, lined with colourful shops full of fabric and barefoot folk – all scurrying under a hot summer urban sky.

And the other relevant recurring transportation dream element was the waterway to a place I could see, or rather reach, from two directions; from a South beach – sometimes with the sense of Nice and other times, the sense of Fish Lake – but boaters would arrive to the beach from around the point to the Northwest where the destination lay. Or, I could find this fairly hidden spot also through the bush, again with two personae – if landscapes can be said to have that – through the dense bush of an adjacent wilderness lake, or through the thin strip of woods skirting a farm country lake. Regardless of the approach, in this case, as always, it was isolated cottage country of modest cabins and people with boats moving East, through lagoonish or muskeggy labyrinths of streams and clods of rich North delta-like vegetation until the tributaries became themselves and I felt relief. My destination.

Somehow – further East – there seemed to be more action – population – in hind site I knew that this place had been special – perhaps a portal or a gateway to something. A hideaway. But as dreams evolve, so do ideas... and dreams of my brother, long since dead, began to occur and like many modern Canadians, he too covets the cottage retreat but, as he was unique, he covets in his own secret and private ways. And I, always eager to please, want to see him be pleased – especially with me. But that is not important to him and so I have to observe.

And the water is always near by.

Suddenly – not in a thriller movie sense, more in a dream sense – there is a dangerous or evil presence and many folk are ducking, hiding, and even fleeing.

The dreams vary through this phase. Sometimes it is renovation or socialization that gets interrupted by the darker mood and the joy somehow diminishes and a sense of urgency ensues.

And this time, I had to call my inner heroine to save myself. From the enclave of safety, I was cast to the water. Fresh water. But vast as the sea. The sea overtook the place and still there was no fear when for sure there were shark fins. A line of them. So I road a fin to avoid being lunch. The water raced toward a parapet with an open yaw and in I went. The water filled and filled the warehouse room so of course there was no air and I was to drown. I could see the mossy blue light above and feel the shame, disappointment of it. The exact instance when it filled, and I was near the bottom of the vat, the East wall of the warehouse unhinged with a clink and fell back into its eternity in one move. The vast water moved out and left me alone with view of a compound and that hot urban sky. I cowered back and hid at the corner, near the unhinged wall – quite skeptical, when quickly and deftly a tall skinny man, a friend, wearing a green coverall, a disguise, put his arm around me and walked me away from the water world along a massive brick wall on our left – that would have been North - toward who knows what. There were others he was hiding me from. They did not expect me to be there. My friend was a social friend. Someone who had seen me before, who knew me and remembered me. A connected person who I had not really known.

So maybe it is all a spiral.

Who we hope to know and who we accidentally ignore. Who notices our lives and who cannot see through their thoughts to engage.

And maybe life is even a series of spiral passages. It's over. It's dead. And finally. It begins again, this stupendous adventure, planting itself over and over until whenever toward where ever, in dreams painting a backdrop for our every day life. I love my life.

Jan. 21, 2011
Nancy Ellen McLennan

Spell Eight Ender

The crime was done. The curlers were amazed and cheering.
“Hey!” boasted one of the victors. “Ya’ know the only thing that’s harder to get than a twenty-nine cribbage hand? An eight-ender! Yes!” She roared and raised her victory fist.
It was documented. It was sketched for immediate re-photograph.
Over coffee, everyone sat and discussed how the end had unfolded.
A few of the curlers who’d given it up lamented. “How could we let this happen?” They lined their woe with could-haves and should-haves.
The winners talked of the many times they’d tried and almost achieved the illusive eight-ender. The moment would not be forgotten.

At the same instant, a bleak wind swept the Irish landscape. Inland for miles the North Sea’s pelting force could be seen in the whet of the trees and the grey of the air. The transit corridor had now become multi-fold, for trains or cars or horses or bicycles or foot traffic. Haste was the only assurance inside it, but the pastoral view from the hectic corridor was the same as it had always been.
Despite the impossible deadline, Liz felt in control and in charge. She knew she had to depart and go to the site of the grave. She would go even if she was meant to be late and all was lost. She had to hear the voice and sense the truth. It was the only choice.
Dean’s hair flew in the wind. He panted with the urgent message from Wanda as he approached Liz in the chaotic corridor interface. “I will move forward with the crowd and let them believe that we are lost,” he said. “I will take the message to the front and then we can make our move if he disembarks.”
They each visualized the private cruiser moored off the coast in the waters north of Antrim and the private darkly people there in wait. Then with strength, they shook it off, gave one another an encouraging smile and headed to their separate loading docks. “Hey!” Liz called at him through the crowd. “Don’t look so worried. Repeat it! Always message over might. Go with the people my man. They will turn with us when the time is there.”
Can granite actually cast a stoppage of time? Who would have known that those rocks of stone carried more than weight? Certainly, an aged curler could describe that time shift, the purity of the 8-ender, and the silence of the cold draw. These days though, too few remembered that it was always more than just a game.
Liz left the noisy shuttle train and an amiable chap pointed across the field to the local cemetery. Access was widely open to view by day and as luck would have it, the sun was breaking through to make the approach most obvious, so she could not feel small. The grass was golf course perfect and the walkways were English garden quaint. There was not a soul between the train dock and the refuge of the cemetery oasis three hundred meters overland. She was resigned. She would amble slowly and enjoy the unexpected bursts of sunshine. If her quest had been intercepted, surely this would be where they would meet.

“Maybe there is no glory in an eight-ender,” said Kevin with some strange disappointment. “They must feel so humiliated about giving it up.”
His team was only briefly aghast by his pensive outburst. Their glee could not be deflated. While they buzzed over the moment, he slowly walked toward the door leading to the empty rink of sheets. As it closed behind him and he re-entered the silence of the curling ice, he could hear the clank of glasses and the buzz of aprés curling through the viewing glass. All else was silence. He strolled to sheet five and walked over to the yellow stones, kicking them aside till he stood above number eight. It had been his last rock, the one that had clinched the moment.
He glanced up toward the viewing area to see whether he was being watched. Two kids on chairs were pointing at him from over sheet two. Their faces and hands were pressed against the glass, leaving a nonsense chore for the caretaker after the festivities were done. Inside, at the far end of sheet one, the ice-maker was lifting the score and placing the numbers back in the bin for tomorrow’s draw. Over by the payphone, through the glass, Ronnie, perpetual Ronnie, could be seen leaning in his chair, half snoozing in the din, looking toward the partiers. Beyond him, a few early birds had their coats on and were making for the door, but the party was definitely on, and there was not much attention to the ice, especially with the excitement of the eight-ender.
Kevin juggled the number eight stone out of the pack and kicked it toward the hack. He knelt to clean the rock, as he had, thousands before.
“Damn!” he thought. “My broom!”
In his haste to appear nonchalant he had walked out onto the ice without his broom. He’d stashed it under the table where the party was on. He had never done this before and became panicky. How could he re-throw his rock? How could he finish the spell? He knew he’d best not attract any extra attention. Would the delivery succeed? Would it scatter the point? He’d have to proceed and take the risk.

Liz realized how she must have looked as she stepped off the train dock. She had been through so much and the sense of urgency was exhausting her.
“Stupid stupid shoes,” she remarked to herself as she looked down at her feet that housed tacky white sling-backs, a throw back from the sixties; retro, they were called now. She’d spent yesterday evening at kareoke in Newcastle and had sipped several rums too many. But the rum was no burden. She lit a smoke as she started toward the spruce circle that was her destination.
“Anything, anything, not to be noticed,” she said to herself. The walk felt like eternity. The skin on the inside of her lips and cheeks felt prominent as time slowed down. She heard her spine as she turned her head from left to right.
“Yes,” she thought. “Time, time, play with me,” she prayed.

Wanda sat back and smelled the wind as the masses of train travellers moved toward the north coast. “I feel quite safe,” she softly whispered to the wind. “Momentum is neither force nor might,” she reminded herself.

Dean’s despair did not show as he moved forward with the crowd of people gleefully hoping for a glimpse of the mysterious craft. The crowd was a hopeful crowd, he thought. Could they be swayed? Would they care? Would it matter? He knew he was a worrier and so usually he lacked the special sensitivity. He knew then, that he simply must trust and listen crisply for cues. He listened for Wanda in the wind and wondered how she knew the people would be in motion. She always knew.

“What part does the broom play in the spell anyway?” Kevin consoled himself and weighed the value of privacy against the purpose he’d been granted. He had a critical role.
He could hear the voices in his head, “Deliver that stone. Deliver that stone, son. Just deliver that stone. A clean draw.”
He decided to stay put and take advantage of the privacy with only the oblivious ice maker at hand. He would deliver it without his broom. He crouched and tilted the rock. He wore no gloves and gently placed his hand on the smooth cold surface, looking at the new porcelain insert on its underbelly.
“Does it feel warmer? Does it feel different? What is my role?” Poor Kevin was driven to carry the task that had been handed to him from his mother and grandfather and curling uncles and aunts as long as any of them could remember good living room craic. He did know what he had to do. Could he carry it out for them all?

Liz could see the dew on the grass as she approached the glen. The stones were becoming apparent. She casually threw her cigarette into the dewy lawn and entered the shade of the shrubbery and majestic spruce circle. She was surprised that so many of the stones were being overgrown, some flat foot stones were barely visible. The cemetery was marked by soft white limestone for the most part. She relaxed with the bird songs, knowing from the stories that they sweetened when the time was richer. The creatures did not mind at all. She glanced back at the transport corridor and saw the motion but no apparent interest in her. How would she know? How would she know? She lit another smoke and sat on the arbour beside the gate, feeling relaxed and hoped that was a good sign.

Ronnie tilted his chair and giggled to himself. He couldn’t believe that destiny had placed this in his hands. This was his seventh eight-ender. No, he’d never been on the ice but he’d always hung around to be there, just in case. Never before had it mattered. But funny, he had never doubted. And now, here, in this prairie town, he was called to intervene. The children were fighting and giggling and jumping from chair to chair, banging the glass as they dodged one another.

Boom! Screech! Liz looked through the trees to the corridor. “Damn traffic,” she thought. The flashing lights at the station vibrated blue indicating a halt to all except bicycle and foot traffic. “Thank god we’re not in an air corridor,” she mumbled.
“Yah,” she heard a reply.
“Hey, Ronnie, my man! I wondered.” She took a slow drag on her smoke.

Kevin’s heart was pounding. Not a good sign. His assurance was wavering. He felt isolated and alone, like the big forget.

Wanda’s job was almost done. “We can survive it quite easily if the voice is muffled,” she spoke silently.
“Gordon,” she mused, “he cannot hear you. Ronnie is awake and we have smiles to carry us. There is no glory in annihilation. There never was. There never will be.”

Liz crunched her smoke under the heel of her sling back, stood and walked onto the wet grass to find baby Ricky and give him a little kiss. She had been given her instructions.

Kevin nervously glanced over his right shoulder and then his left as he settled into the hack to deliver. The kids were jumping around. The old guy by the phone was still rocking. The icemaker, was sweeping off the bottom of his lambskin down at the far end. “ Just do it,” he whispered to himself under his breath.

Dean thought he sensed, the crowd around him in the coastal access corridor had become, in some way, less focussed. The seaside was in view and the boat could be seen moored about 500 meters out. The sun was breaking through after days of rain, and the wind was abating. His heart was still pounding but an inexplicable happiness rather than fear was fuelling its fury.

Ronnie stood up and walked toward the glass behind sheet five. The partiers remained oblivious. The kids thought he was walking over to give them hell so they jumped down, crawled under the bleachers and started giggling.

Liz looked for granite. “Right,” she thought. “The angel, the dove, and the granite. Of course! They would test time. Ricky, where are you?” her voice lingered softly as if she was playing a wee game of hide-and-seek. She spotted a red piece of polished stone, half buried with the grass and soil of time in the cemetery. She pushed back the grass with her shoe and saw part of the inscription. The year was seventeen something. “Hmmm,” she thought. “It has been a while since the last one.”

Kevin did feel awkward without his broom, but he had come this far.

The crowd began to disembark from the coastal corridor and to Dean’s surprise, they moved casually in small groups, quietly enjoying the wintery seaside nature, paying little or no attention to the vessel that had seemed to be the focus of the journey.

Ronnie knelt and called the kids out from under the bleachers while reaching into his pocket to see if he had a loonie. “What’s your name son? Whose kid are you?” he barked gruffly.
“She’s a girl!” pouted the younger of the two. “I’m Garret and she’s my sister, Ricki.”
“We’re Gordons,” said Ricki.
“Ah fine then,” said Ronnie. “Come ‘ere. I got a loonie for each of you so you can go an’ have a piece of pie from the canteen.” He kissed each coin. As he placed them in the children’s hands he gently patted the tops of their heads and turned to see Kevin in his awkward back swing.

Liz pushed the dirt away and saw baby Ricky being lifted by an angel. She gave him a little kiss. Stood and lit a smoke.

Wanda leaned back and closed here eyes with a relaxed sigh.

Kevin counterbalanced the best he could without his broom, slid the draw forward and rotated awkwardly clockwise as the stone left his hand with acceptable draw weight. Not pretty, but delivered. He thought.
The yellow handle was released with an in-turn and rotated gently toward the rings at the far end.
The children ran to the canteen to collect their pie.
Ronnie returned to his seat, content that he had done his duty.

The flags on the boat anchored off the north shore of county Antrim stood outward in the wind. Fully clear to Dean who held his breath as he watched them rise to their wind position. Would the people see the banner Gordon? Would they be eager to heed? The February sun off the northern Irish coast was cold yet the people had been drawn to see one disembark and perhaps carry on.

Liz ambled back toward the train deck, prepared to accept either score.

The rock slid upon its own accord into the house. Twelve foot. Kevin stood and watched, feeling somehow small for the glory of the attempt to deliver for an unknown master.

Three banners: blue and red and yellow. Dean watched. The blue and red caught gusts and gathered themselves into nothing, tangled in the lanyards of their poles. The Yellow remained taught with the wind.

Eight foot. Four foot. Still moving.

Wanda sat upright, then stood wide-eyed and stern. She lifted her arms, palms open to the wind.

Ronnie glanced over his left shoulder and met Kevin’s indifferent eyes. He knew he knew.
Still moving. Biting the button. Beyond the button. Four foot eight foot. Still moving.

The crowds surrounding Dean on the coastal transport corridor were laughing and spirited and quite disinterested in the yellow banner, now moving naturally with the wind, its erection passing.

Slowing. Back twelve. It stopped with a bite of the back line.
Kevin shrugged and started walking down the ice to kick back the rock. The ice maker beat him to it with the six foot wide lambskin sweeper. He looked up sternly at Kevin as they approached one another at centre ice.
“I got it Jack,” said Kevin lightly.
“You got nothin’ Kevin,” said Jack, head down has he swept along the sheet four side board toward home.
“Maybe not.”

As the sun set and the crowds dispersed, Dean watched to be sure. The ship called anchor and set northward after the horizon.

Going Home - A Possible SciFi Story

Going Home
by Nancy Ellen McLennan

I had an awake dream two nights ago. I could not return to sleep after awakening at 3 a.m. Ultimately, I rose at 5:45 and at the time I thought I'd been faced with a revelation. A secret revelation. A shameful one. Well, one that would take courage to declare.

I arose as a new woman, resolved and calm in my new understanding of our world, but unsure how to handle the change, unsure what responsibility to take.

I laid there annoyed by my neighbours who in their understanding of the world had decided that the glaring porch light on the back of their house, the one that had lit my kitchen for the past five years, since I arrived in this town, was not sufficient to keep the bad guys away.

I wondered if the crux had been the sudden and unexpected death of our mutual neighbour, Harvey. Word of his death came days after his passing in a casual remark from a fellow neighbour.

“By the way, did you hear that Harvey died?”
“What!”
“Harvey. You know. The native guy in the little house?”
“What! You're kidding? What happened?”
“I dunno. He wasn't feeling well and he went to the doctor and they sent him home. Then a couple of days later he died. They took him away. They were checking-out the house.”
“Oh shit. He was a pretty good guy.”

Harvey Guiboche spoke with an accent: OjiCree. He lived long enough to see his native language officially recognized by the Manitoba government. Folks thought he was drunk, even when he wasn't. He kept his hair long and was happy and chatty all the time.

We were neighbours and both had small dogs. Baby, his little dachshund type mutt would bark territorially at Gia, my small poodle, when we passed their house, along the lane, after our long walks. Harvey would laugh and talk about how vicious Baby was and to be careful. The dogs liked each other and Harvey and I had a good respect too.

Since his death, his son moved into the house with his wife and son. Baby stayed and they brought another dog, a tied-up small rottie. The diamond willow carvings in the yard are to “pass the time”, says Harvey's son. And the grandson is cheerful and chatty, like his Grandpa.

I cannot be sure, but I think the arrival of new neighbours, being more active and a younger family, is what marked the need to move the motion light off the porch and onto the garage.

Nobody would call it racism and maybe it wasn't. Who knows what kinds of fear ring in the hearts of an elderly couple in a small central Manitoba town? Who knows what conversations pass between husband and wife for sixty years? Did it start in the home, after watching the horrors of TV news, or while discussing the reality behind a story of local mayhem in the weekly newspaper? Did it start among the men at the 10 a.m. coffee clatch down the street?

“The cops were at the house across form Jack's again last night.”
“Yah, I heard it's a crack house.”
“Those goddam natives.” or
“They got that guy they were looking for. They found him over at the house down from Brad and Shelley’s. Did you see the cop cars?” or
“Jeezus. I wish the cops would come down on those assholes beside the school. Who needs that shit?”

None of it had anything to do with Harvey. Not really. But racism is a nasty disease. It generalizes and sneezes into peoples' minds and comes out their mouths and it spreads into ears and out of other mouths across kitchen tables and from pillow to pillow. It lays dormant and silent and festers and manifests itself in action, if not force.

Just like greed, the second worst disease. Together they create an irrational fear and compulsion for an old couple to protect their property.


So they moved the single, motion light across the yard and attached it to their garage so it would flood the yard and their back porch. But as luck would have it, the westerly spot light shone straight into my upstairs bedroom window.
As a kid, living in the city, I used to listen to the city transit buses pass the front of our wartime house on Manitoba Avenue. But there was more. I would feel the gentle rumble of the house, a small, but unmistakable vibration of the Red River gumbo as the heavy vehicle passed. And of course, I could smell it every time, during the hot summer nights. Most of all I remember the lights. I could never figure out the math. I would hear the bus first and know it would pass us in a few seconds, so I would watch.

The street light on the corner cast a distinct series of shadows across the slanted ceilings of my bedroom. I tried to memorize them. I tried really hard as I anticipated the bus. And then it would begin. It was a transformation of probably fewer than five seconds. The shadows would move. The light would change. It was all very geometric. It wasn't smooth and gradual because the lines of the ceiling would cause the shadows to suddenly drop, or lift. Light would flash on one spot and move across, or up, or simply pop out of existence. It was a pattern. I knew it was, but I could never remember how it went. East to west, top to bottom, with the bus, but that's all I could truthfully discern. It was a fond memory.

Now, in a different bedroom with a slanted ceiling, I was laying awake at 3 a.m. looking at geometric patterns of light and shadow on my walls and ceilings. This time they did not move. It was on and off. On and off. On and off. And again I began to seek the math but instead of shape, I measured duration. The longest dark respite I received from the brilliant spot was ninety seconds, of the intervals I counted. I was struggling to find sleep so I did not count them all. Fifteen seconds. Thirty-one. Seventy-one. I woke a time or two with my hand over my eyes. I pondered moving my end table and learning to sleep on my left side instead of my right so the light would be on my back. I mourned not seeing the gradually dawning morning light every morning as indeed, I mistook it for another flash from the spot.

I contemplated what had been triggering the light. Cats no doubt, or maybe skunks. I must remember to keep my trash behind closed doors.

I didn't sleep as the light penetrated my sleeping quarters. I needed thicker eyelids. Maybe I could find that night mask from La Senza somewhere. It was frustrating and on this precipice between deep sleep and wakefulness, with my mind playing its usual rituals of figuring and pondering and yes, wakeful dreaming, that is when, thanks to my fearful neighbours, my gut began to churn as the revelation reached my consciousness.

For several weeks I had been grieving. On April 20, oil began bleeding from the earth's skin, into the Gulf of Mexico. Skin, protected by a layer of salty seawater had been probed and punctured and now it bled. Preserves, hidden within the crust of the earth for millennia, offering gravitational balance to the globe as it drifts through space, were being pulled through a hole, forced into the sea, and the flow was finding its way to the surface of the water and ultimately to sea shores, where alien to the touch of air, it would agglomerate and mingle and separate and smear itself. It was not malicious. It could feel the imbalance and the chaos of its new configurations, but unfortunately, it had no choice! Gravity was pulling it up. It knew that somewhere else on the globe, some land was sinking to fill the gap it had vacated. It really did not like the light and preferred the pressure and solid security of its cave-like origin, but an accident of existence, a species of existence, had a curiosity beyond logic and a persistence beyond rationality, an unnatural disease of greed that had driven it to find a way to set it, the oil, free from its silent balanced bastion beneath those tropical waters.

And I continued to grieve. I felt helpless though I told my friends to have hope.
That day, I had read a post on my facebook site that spoke to some hope and some grief. The next day, I spoke to a woman who concluded that we were powerless. The post was from Toronto. The woman was from Korea. And I am here, in Manitoba. The grief is global. There is a global connection. A global thought.

“We are all suffering from the disease of greed,” thought I.

It is like the racism. It spreads. It affects the innocent and it affects the perpetrators. It is insidious. It masks itself so folk think it is good and aspirational. It divides and separates to station for conquer.

But why? What is the ultimate goal? To puncture the earth's tender skin and cause its blood to pour and build an irreparably imbalance on the planet? To make life worse for sand and grass and song birds? To make the fishes run away?

There was no reason. It could only be explained as an infection. A disease. Or possibly an infestation.

And that was the revelation. Humanity is indeed an infestation.

A few weeks ago I read about Stephen Hawkings sending out a dire warning that “we” need to be cautious about alien onslaught. That it could be really horrible. Immediately, Paul Hillier retorted.

“Phshaw”. They have been here already. They are among us. “There is no doubt,” said he. He cited evidence that much of our technology, from the pyramids to the computer chips could not have been, were not to be credited to humanity.

I thought of the passage that Doris Lessing wrote about Martha, stumbling through the filthy populated streets of 1960's London, looking at the creatures with air holes and talking slits on their faces. With hair poking out hither and thither with eyes that wonder independently of the rest of the creature, of the stink and filth among them.

Then I realized. It made clear and honest sense. Humanity is indeed an infestation. Planted on this planet possibly to eradicate it from elsewhere where it was simply doing too much harm.

Unlike the bees or the ants, these creatures were quite large. The question was how long would it take for them to send their drones and their workers and build their hives and manufacture their nectar. How long would it take before the factions and the hives were formed and the renegades hid and the synapses became broken and lost in quests for power and supremacy?

Humanity had destroyed before and would do so again.

I thought of James Cameron's movie, Avatar, and the story stolen, or invented, or borrowed – or that we all knew, that there is really only one mind among us.

The grief is evidence of that. As implants, vain curious unusual beings, and continually regarding all stones and plants and clouds and creatures as “others” it became clear that, we are implants, striving to fit and belong.

The quest for power, the greed disease, the separation disease. These true diseases of humanity that have nothing to do with bodily functions have become paramount now. It took about six thousand years. The universal experiment is coming to a close. The pessimists’ thesis will fail to be rejected.


Finally, after two and a half hours enduring the punctuation of dark with fear, the light in my window turned midnight blue and then charcoal blue and the motion light stopped detecting the cat and I rose to greet another day.

No wonder they have never found the missing link. I wonder where home is. I wonder what it used to be like.

May 15, 2010