Category: Musings of a Mile Grinder

 

 

 

 

 

This photo of US president Donald Trump was in the newspaper today, alongside a story about how he is talking tough on Qatar. According to Donald, Qatar deserves the harsh treatment it’s currently getting from its Middle East neighbours.

From his upturned face, the tight set of his mouth and the steely squint of his eyes, you know he means what he says – even if he doesn’t really understand what it means.

I was struck by this pose. Although I find it ridiculous, as I do virtually everything about this man, it reminded me of someone. A similarly self-absorbed and overbearing “tough guy” type – Benito Mussolini. Il Duce!

Does anyone else find this resemblance somehow telling? Do either of these characters look like they have any doubt about their righteousness? And what about being open to the ideas of others? Nope.  They’re both autocratic morons. One a fascist dictator, the other a wannabe.

 

My sisters and I recently put our 87-year-old mother in a care home. Although we initially dreaded the thought of her languishing in a charmless institutional environment attended by indifferent care staff, we have been very pleasantly surprised. The staff are friendly and caring and the facility cheery and bright.

In such a place, with all of its everyday busyness providing a focus for her interest – the comings and goings of visitors, the ministrations of care staff, the various activities for residents – my mother appears quite content. She has always enjoyed being in the company of others, although these days she is merely an observer.

My mother has virtually no memory. When my sisters or I visit she does not know our names. But as we sit with her we can feel, rising from some dark cranny of her mind, her awareness of our familial connection and her comfort in our presence.

The other day I asked her how old she thought she was. She paused and said, uncertainly, “nineteen?” Sometimes I prod her to remember details from her past. At such times she might mention her sisters. If I provide specifics about our family to help stir her memory, she will say, “I seem to remember something about that.” But she doesn’t really.

In the care home where she now lives, my mother has a roommate. Violette is originally from Quebec and prefers to speak French, although she knows English. She is a good match for my mum and they seem to get along well together.

I asked Violette about her age and she said, rather firmly, “cent treize” (113). Although Violette appears to still have some command of her faculties, her grasp of reality is obviously tenuous.

Who are we without our memories? What is our experience of life if we can’t recall things that occurred just minutes ago? When my mother gets up in the morning does she wonder where she is? Or does she experience each day, each moment, as unique and new? And what about Violette, sleeping in the bed across from her? Does my mum wake every morning wondering whom she’s sharing her room with?

Although such memory loss is a terrifying prospect to me, my mother is not distressed. Like a Buddhist monk, she seems content to be living in the moment. With no memory of her past she is egoless, untroubled by questions about who she is or her place in the world. She appears content with just knowing that she is. I exist, therefore I am. And apparently that’s enough.

There is a group of islands near to where I live. These islands have been zealously protected from development and, in comparison to nearby and heavily populated mainland areas, are remarkably unchanged from when I first started visiting, in the 1970s.

Back then they offered a tranquil refuge for hippies, artists and other social misfits. In summer, middle class families from the city ferried across the strait in numbers to tinker about in their modest cabins.

Today, with rocketing property values, the islands have become a playground for the rich and the comfortably retired, who own fabulous dream homes and enjoy what island realtors call a “Mediterranean climate.” This is a significant claim in a large northern country famous for harsh winter weather.

The photo at left shows the entrance to an island property owned by one particularly generous and community-minded family. The property consists of a peninsula, perhaps a mile long and a few hundred metres wide, bounded by trails fronting the ocean on both sides. It is a uniquely beautiful piece of island property and the owners, in a magnificent gesture, welcome people to walk the trails. The sign at the always-open gateway offers them just a hint of legal protection: “Dangerous trails. If you proceed you do so at your own risk.”

This is an outstanding example of civic generosity. By way of contrast, there are several small, privately owned islands in the area plastered with “No Trespassing” signs on every point of beach access. The owners typically don’t live on these properties. They’re occasional users, and employ caretakers whose responsibilities include chasing would-be picnickers off the beaches.

I have great respect for the owners of the peninsula property with the open door policy for visiting walkers. Clearly they are accepting legal risks by allowing public access to their trails. But  on an island the vast majority of visitors are members of the island community, so the risk is small. While the benefit to the community and the good will it expresses are immense.

I live in a part of the world that was among the last regions to be understood by geographers. There are some who argue that Sir Francis Drake ventured as far north as British Columbia during his global circumnavigation voyage in the late 1500s, but it is more commonly accepted that Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to chart this coastline, sailing north from their outposts in Mexico in the early 1700s.

I have a copy of an old map dated from 1745 that labels this part of the world as “Parts Unknown” and shows California as an island. Although it was confirmed by 1700 that Baja California was a peninsula, the common notion of it being an island was perpetuated in many maps until 1747 when King Ferdinand VI of Spain officially acknowledged its connection to the mainland. (Until that time the Spanish had kept secret their geographic knowledge of the west coast, in part to protect their hold over the region from their enemies – particularly the English.)

One consequence of the relatively recent “discovery” of this region is that it is not overly populated. My roots here go back to the 1890s, when my grandfather’s family arrived from Newfoundland. At that time the total population of non-indigenous people in BC was under 100,000 – scattered across an area almost twice the size of France. Today the population is nearly five million, well over half of whom live in the southwestern corner of the province.

Another consequence of its recent emergence as a known place in the world is that BC still encompasses vast regions of largely undisturbed wilderness. I think about this whenever the proposal to build an oil pipeline from Alberta’s oil sands to BC’s central coast is discussed. Such a project would intrude heavily – with roads, services and human population – into a region that has not seen any real change since the end of the last ice age. It may be a romantic and idealistic notion, but I think it’s worth preserving some of our pristine areas from the onslaught of economic development.

There is a large cemetery close to where I live. It is the oldest cemetery in the city, with graves marking the passing of people from the time when this metropolis was little more than a village. In the absence of any large parks in the vicinity, the cemetery is a favourite spot for locals wanting a quiet walk away from the streets and traffic.

There is no longer any space left in the cemetery grounds for burials. Families who want a memorial for someone who has died must settle for a small plaque on a dedicated wall. I assume the plaque covers a niche holding the cremated remains of the departed, and I wonder at the need for this custom of a permanent marker for the dead. That said, I do find it interesting to read the details on those headstones that provide more than just names and dates.

In my family we have had two significant deaths: my father, 35 years ago, and my father-in-law, ten years ago. Both were cremated, neither was interred. We took my father’s ashes up a local mountain and tossed them into the wind. It seemed an appropriate idea at the time as he had been a geologist and worked all his life in mountainous, remote locations. My sisters and I were young and didn’t appreciate the need for ceremony to solemnize the occasion. We just hacked the plastic urn open and started in. It was an unsatisfying and undignified way to deal with his remains.

My father-in-law’s ashes are still with us, in an urn in our basement. Rarely thought about but intact. Like our memories of him.

Last day in Troncones. Lasting impressions will include the incessant onslaught of the ocean pounding onto the beach. There is a continuous surf here, all day, all night. The noise of it is an assault on the senses, like listening to the cannons of Napoleon’s army at Waterloo, or the thundering jet engines of an airliner as it slowly lifts off a runway.

At first the pounding surf provides a bit of drama to the scene, but over the course of days it has become a wearing, irritating and constant presence – like living next door to a job site, with heavy machinery at work 24/7.

However, there is a positive to the constantly roiling surf. The waves attract formations of pelicans that fly in perfect formation, like air show combat pilots, skimming the ridge of the cresting surf. It seems they do this for fun. They don’t break formation to catch fish, for example. They just glide effortlessly along inches above the breaking waves, occasionally taking a wing beat, each in turn, to maintain momentum.

In our week here in Mexico we’ve only gone swimming in the ocean twice. The challenge is to get past the roiling surf to the calmer water beyond. The oceanic push of the incoming waves and the powerful back-pulling of the water as it returns make just wading into the sea a chore.

We were further discouraged to try the water after discovering the kind of creatures we were sharing it with. A few days ago, sitting on the beach with drinks to watch the sun go down, we were surprised by the sight of a large fish suddenly leaping out of the water, just behind the breaking waves, it’s body twisting exuberantly in the air as if filled with the joy of the moment.

This was not just any fish. It was at least four feet long, with a streamlined, predator-like body and a white belly. It was a shark. Over the next half-hour we saw it leap into the air four more times – apparently just for the hell of it. The next night, again at sunset, we saw the same fish (presumably) do the same again.

Eight years ago Troncones made the news when three surfers were attacked by sharks, all within a month’s time. Two of them died. The suspected culprit was a 10-12 foot Bull Shark. I couldn’t find any reports of shark attacks here since that time. I also found no reports of sharks in Troncones making a habit of playfully leaping out of the surf at sunset.

Troncones, Mexico

For the past week we’ve been staying at a vacation villa owned by an American, on Mexico’s Pacific coast. This villa, like many others along the coast here, is built in a traditional “rustic” Mexican style. Polished concrete walls and floors, wooden pillars from tree trunks, built-in-place wrap-around seating, exposed wooden beams, smooth beach pebbles inlaid in the floor marking boundaries on the pool deck and around rooms.

Everything is hand made and customized for this place. I imagine a worker with a wheel barrow full of small flat stones laying every one of them by hand into the concrete floor. And there must be thousands of these stones – probably gathered from the beach out front. The doors are all custom made, as are the tables and chairs, presumably by local carpenters in their workshops (“tallers” en espagnol). The outdoor shower is crafted from a large tree branch, found and finished for this use. There is no Home Depot convenience to be seen – no drywall, no factory finished cabinets. Even the side tables are built by hand.

Mexico – at least in the areas I know, which don’t include the major cities – is a place where people still make their living crafting useful things that others need. Although I know this is not the model for a hyper productive economy, it comforts me. It is also fundamentally not a feature of our post-industrial economies of the north. And this I find troubling.

I remember a previous visit to Mexico during which we were invited to tour a new beach house for sale. It had been built and was being sold by an American. Home Depot construction throughout. The owner touted its advantages over Mexican-style homes, oblivious to its utter lack of charm or anything that could be called artful. It was a soulless place and left me feeling depressed for the rest of the day. It also brought to mind an old Oscar Wilde quip about Americans knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.

In our modern economy there are few opportunities for people who want to craft useful things that others want to buy – excepting perhaps the current craft brewing craze. (My view on that: the day of reckoning will soon come and there will be consolidation. And maybe some blood.) In place of opportunities for making useful stuff people need, we pin our job creation hopes on the tech sector, where a mindless App like SnapChat can achieve a market value of $30B within a few years of its creation – by a couple of 25-year-olds. I fear for our future.

I heard a piece on the radio the other day. It featured short clips from various people talking about the satisfaction of divesting themselves of  stuff they had accumulated. One person spoke of the pleasure he got from giving away once-valued possessions, and seeing his pleasure reciprocated by the people who received his stuff. “Here, have this lawnmower. Would you like this fruit juicer? How about this set of tools?”

Although I believe the world divides between keepers and chuckers, relatively few people occupy the extreme ends of that divide. And I suspect many of those are obsessive personalities or otherwise mentally unbalanced. But there are many people for whom deliberate keeping or chucking behaviour is a rational choice, not a compulsion.

The keeping response is typically captured by the phrase, “this may come in handy someday” and of course requires  enough room for all the one-day useful stuff that gets kept. In the best case, all that stuff is organized and cared for. I had an uncle like that, with a garage full of wooden crates, all labelled and neatly stacked and filled with useful things held in readiness.

On the other extreme is the hard-core ascetic, who shuns possessions of any kind other than the necessities of daily life. This is the realm of mountain-top hermits and appeals to those of us troubled by mindless consumerism. The people in the radio piece said they felt little regret as they rid themselves of unneeded personal possessions. They spoke about possessions as a distraction, as clutter that filled both their homes and their minds. Eliminating clutter gave them peace.

I live with a partner who is a chucker. I am inclined to be a keeper. This is part of our yin/yang complementarity. Virtually every non-necessary thing in our home – typically something artful – is something I have acquired. My partner doesn’t disapprove of these things – she rather likes the artwork and other stuff I have bought over the years. But she has very little interest in acquiring such stuff herself.

Recently I have started to question the value of having possessions. Or at least having as many non-functional possessions as we have – which, in fairness, is not that many. But to consider divesting, unless you go all the way, means putting a relative value on each possession and deciding where the line should fall on the scale of keeping vs. chucking.

Years ago I went through this exercise in a modest way. My partner said we should get rid of some books. She proposed that unless I intended to read a book again, I should get rid of it. This was a serious test for me. I took her meaning to heart, but I couldn’t use her rule. I had many books that I knew I would never read again (in all my life I’ve only read one book twice) but toward which I felt a strong attachment. I also like to lend favourite books to friends and to my children, who sometimes humour me by pretending to read them. I ended up getting rid of half my books. And I could probably eliminate half of what remains without trouble. I know the books I want to keep – the ones that have influenced me; the rest are expendable.

The photo for this post is of something I value, but which has no value to virtually anyone else. It shows my grandmother and her sister, circa 1915, before she was married. I never met my grandmother. She died in 1924 in Nanaimo of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. In her face I see my father, who died in 1981. The rarity of this photo – there is only one other of my grandmother – is what makes it precious to me.