Lazy as I am, I thought, dammit, I don’t want to unload those dishes at all!

Then I thought, would I unload the dishwasher if knew that would bring instant enlightenment?

Of course. Who wouldn’t trade five minutes of housework for release from the bonds of earthly suffering?

Then I thought, what if it took unloading the dishwasher a thousand times?

I stood still for a moment and thought about that…

Then I unloaded the dishwasher.

Self portrait, autumn 1990

I got a scanner recently. It’s amazing it took this long. As a former photographer, you’d think I’d have had one ages ago. I like to think I was letting my thousands of analog images – slides and negatives – age, like wine or whiskey.

Or cheese.

Speaking of cheese: for some reason one of the first negs I wanted to scan was this one. Call me self-absorbed, but I haven’t seen this shot in a long time — yet it’s been on my mind.

There aren’t many pictures of me I really like. There were far fewer in the days before digital cameras. This one, a self-portrait taken in the early days of my photography degree at Concordia University, was a rare exception.

Looking at it again now, at last, I see why. My cheekbones look good, I guess. My ridiculously thick hair is interesting instead of irritating, or as someone once called it, offensive.

The simple symbolism of a young photographer breaking the frame appeals to me still.

But it’s not a portrait of me anymore. Not even a likeness. This is an image of a young guy I used to know, or thought I did. Today  I can’t read his thoughts at all.

He’s all action, moving everywhere. He doesn’t sit still for anything and it’s hard to tell what he stands for.

He doesn’t know anything yet, but he thinks he knows everything.

If I could sit down with him over a beer he’d probably find me interesting enough, but he’d keep interrupting. And he’d be the only one drinking.

I doubt if he’d see himself in the man he’d one day become.

And I’m not sure I see the man I am inside that boy of 21.

Addendum: I still wear that grey fleece pullover.

These days, there seem to be two kinds of weather.

There’s the ordinary weather, which is what we call the combined factors of temperature, humidity, and wind speed in the atmosphere. That’s what you see when you look out any window.

And there’s the virtual weather, which is what I call the combined factors of news, opinion, and gossip in the media. That’s what you see when you turn on a screen.

Real weather, which we used to worry about a lot, has becomes less and less of an issue for most contemporary urban Canadians.

We don’t need to worry about what’s going on outside our windows, because we’re going to drive or take transit or a bus or a train or a plane wherever we go, and wind up in a climate-controlled building when we get there. For the brief periods we actually spend outdoors, we can wear state-of-the-art clothing to keep us warm, or cool, as need be.

Virtual weather, which we used to be quite ignorant about, before communication brought the whole world to our screens, is now a constant issue. Whatever may be out the window, what we see when we open Windows is bound to be concerning.

Which means we get other people’s weather to worry about.

A typhoon brewing over the Pacific Ocean is a common source of anxiety, whether we’re affected or not; whether we know anyone there, or not. Same with floods and fires and hurricanes, all around the world.

But virtual weather isn’t just weather. It’s also political tension in the Middle East. Or the state of the economy of Greece. Or who’s snubbing who in Hollywood, for that matter.

These things worry us, just like the weather used to do.

And you can’t dress for trouble overseas, or possible immanent economic collapse.

With the real weather, you dress for it, avoid it, or embrace it. “Go play in the snow,” my mother used to tell my sister and me, and we did, and we loved it.

With the virtual weather, we mostly just worry.

The real weather is now balmy and snow-free across much of Canada in January.

Good thing we have so much virtual weather to worry about, or we might find ourselves enjoying this.

That’s because fifteen years ago tonight, I moved to Toronto to start my life anew.

I’ve often said I was born at the same moment my daughter was, in June of 1996. That’s my way of describing the complete changes in my life and in myself that began with her arrival. But it’s probably more accurate to say her birth was the moment my truer self was conceived; I wasn’t actually born until New Year’s day of 1997.

My (re)birth was, as births often are, a struggle and a mess. I was a father living away from his child; a husband about to be divorced; a dreamer whose dreams had failed. It was a pathetic state to be in, and it was mostly my fault. It was certainly entirely my responsibility to make it better.

I was twenty-seven years old, and I needed to start all over again. So I did. I asked people to call me David, rather than Dave, to put the past that much further behind me. “David” means “beloved of God.” Having spent much of my youth angry, in cynical alienation from my own good fortune, I needed to remember the blessing inherent in my name.

My parents stood behind me, as they’ve always done, though I only began to realize it properly at that moment. Close friends rallied to set me on my feet, and when I took my first wobbling steps along a straighter path, a thousand unseen hands reached out to help.

In an incredible turn of events, I learned that the old home I had landed in —where I was sleeping on my uncle’s couch as he renovated the place to sell it— had been in the family since it was built in 1888. With nothing but debt to my name I swore I’d someday buy it and make it lovely.

The journey from that point was first excruciating, then difficult, then challenging, then satisfying, then exhilarating as, over the course of years, I put my life habits in order and began to make headway.

Five years later, I managed to buy that beloved old house I still live in today, and I’ve been grateful for its warmth and its special story ever since.

My daughter has grown into a bright and elegant young lady, one who has taught me to love and to be smart and silly and accepting and indeed, to be young myself even as she gets older.

The folks have happily retired to the west coast, where they live the dream of walks in the woods and travels around the world.

Relationships have come and gone, each a stage in my evolution I suppose, but the one I’m in now is the one forever. I know it because it’s as natural to me as breathing, and yet I still give thanks for it as if it were a gift of providence. After all, it is.

I have a community all around me, good honest work to do daily, the CD I’ve always wanted to make heading for the manufacturers, and a novel in the making. Forgive me if that sounds like bragging; it’s just that fifteen years ago I could not have imagined such wonders. They are miracles to me.

Fifteen times the New Year has tolled for me here. That’s fifteen mid-winters to turn toward the inward things, lose the self and find the centre of the soul. Fifteen years to see the seed that lives in the heart of things sprout and turn toward the sun.

Fifteen years of new beginnings, and each day is a birthday. I try to celebrate them all, but this one’s special.

May all your days be as blessed as these ones have been for me.

Happy New Year!

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?
It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags.
And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store?
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?

It’s an extraordinary bit of storytelling, and a prelude to the unforgettable climax of the story, wherein the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes and he achieves a state of compassionate enlightenment.

Remember, too, that in that state, the Grinch, now free of all attachment to stuff —and to his own previous grumpy perspective— happily descends on the town and gives all the decorations and presents and Jing Tinglers, Flu Floopers, Tar Tinkers, Who Hoovers and other assorted stuff back.

The result is to find himself embraced by the community, and placed at the head of the table, next to dear Cindy Lou Who (who was no more than two) where the Grinch, the Grinch himself! carves the roast beast.

It’s great stuff. I love it. It’s a beautiful and meaningful and lasting story, and a perfect mythic framework for understanding the “meaning” of the holiday in a spiritually secular way. (In other words, there’s no theology; just a celebration of togetherness).

But when it comes to the actual, versus the mythical holiday, I wish we could cut right to the chase —and by that I don’t mean the part where Max the Dog, an antler strapped to his head, is lashed and driven before the Grinch’s sled, groaning with its swollen bags of stolen gifts.

I wish we could just agree, in advance, on the basis of past viewings, that since Christmas doesn’t come from a store, we don’t need to go to the store in the first place; that if it came without ribbons, we don’t need to get all wrapped up in ribbons again this year to realize it.

Heaven forbid I should be the Grinch, at least, the pre-epiphany curmudgeonly Grinch. But can’t we just start with the ending this year, and go straight to holding hands and singing in a circle?

Fah Who foraze, Dah Who doraze
Welcome, Christmas, come this way
Fah Who foraze, Dah Who doraze
Welcome, Christmas, Christmas Day

Fah Who foraze, Dah Who doraze
Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer
Fah Who foraze, Dah Who doraze
Welcome, all Whos far and near…

And those minutes spent ascending – in silence or awkward small talk – are what finally puts a person in his or her place every day.

For me these days, that last little stretch takes me to the eleventh floor.

There, a short walk leads to an unadorned cubicle, plain beige with walls surrounding the desk on three sides, intended for my privacy. Their real effect is to act like a horse’s blinders, to prevent me looking out at the lake, and instead to keep my eyes on the virtual horizon of my computer monitor.

Still, there are windows all around, and if I remember to stand and simply look, the view is quite breathtaking —especially as the building is octagonal. It’s amazing how different and glorious familiar things look when your perspective is from above, and a few degrees off the cardinal points of the compass.

Just yesterday I swung open a door, and surprised a peregrine falcon hawk resting outside a wide window, on a ledge, high above the street. It took off  calmly with a quick, casual flap of its wings.

I watched it for some time, as it soared over the city, in a gorgeous gyre that owed nothing to the works of man below and all around.

A pane of glass and the power of flight were all that stood between us, way up there in the thin air of the eleventh floor.

It was one year ago today that I was told my position, Director of Social Media at Canoe.ca was being eliminated, and I was unplugged and off trail whether I liked it or not.

I liked it. I packed my bags and left at the end of the day, “kicking stones down the road”. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

That was the culmination of more than a decade spent working for major Canadian media outlets, and I knew I’d had enough. The loss of my job struck me as an opportunity to get clean and clear, and to feel what it felt like to fly free.

I won’t lie: it was really, really difficult. I’d gotten very used to that substantial, biweekly paycheque and all that goes with it. But getting out of the rat race was something I’d always known I’d  do, and I chose this time to do it. Or it chose me. Either way, it was the right time to do the right things.

I learned to be more mindful about my money. I paid much closer attention to my health. I gave up drinking. I was reminded of the depth of true friendship and the support of family. I remembered to give thanks for all the abundance at hand. And I had the opportunity to experience and nurture new love, which blossomed into marriage.

I was able to give more thought and clarity to my relationship with my daughter, whose life is changing as, or more quickly than mine.

My heart would not have been prepared for such journeys, distracted and numbed as it had been for the past several years, had I not been free to spend this time wandering in the wilderness.

That goes for my creative work too. With my attention freed from quotidian commitments, I finally had the energy and focus to enter the recording studio. The result was that I made a new CD, which I’m very pleased with, and will be launching shortly.

I got the opportunity to do more, and better gigs than I’ve done before, including a summer spent at seven different folk festivals. I found a week to do volunteer work up North easily.

And, just recently, I learned that yet another blessing had emerged: I’ve been awarded a Writers’ Works in Progress grant from the Ontario Arts Council, to turn a story I wrote for my daughter a couple of years ago into a full-length novel.

Now I have the time to do it, the energy, the space, the support, and the sense of possibility. I can feel it moving through me, along with so much else. It’s sublime.

All because I got sent kicking stones down the road.

Lucky me!

I’ve just returned from a trip to Nothern Ontario, and here’s the wildlife report: Along Highway 599 between Pickle Lake and Ignace, at least, it’s high season for roadside red fox sightings.

Not like last time I went, in springtime, when there were bears and moose both in abundance. There’s nothing much for moose to browse on along the highway now, with the leaves down and snow covering the dead grass. And the bears have no doubt lumbered off to bed for their long winter’s naps.

So red foxes are the main tourist attraction on that stretch of road, and from what I could see, that suits them fine. They seem to delight in watching the world go by, as the sun is rising along the lonely northern highway.

They see you first, of course, from a safe perch on the shoulder, but you get a good minute or so to look at them if you’re lucky, before they trot away out of sight.

Red foxes are handsome creatures, especially in their winter fur. They have charming faces with almost cheerful expressions. And they’re smart, too. You’d never see them at all if they didn’t feel sure they had a good head start.

You catch sight of a fox and and there it goes, making its merry way off down into the ditch and out across some frozen creek-bed, casually glancing back over its shoulder to watch your vehicle disappear.

That’s how it is with red foxes. You get a fleeting glimpse. You’re intrigued; you want to see more. You try to follow it, as far as your eyes can track it, but that’s all you can do. After you’ve seen a few of them that way, you may be in awe of the spirit of the red fox… but you don’t know foxes.

And no matter how many times you see a fox running the other way, along the side of a highway, you’re never going to get a real understanding of foxes that way.

Not when you’re moving so fast. A fleeting glimpse is all you get. Time to take a quick picture, maybe, if you’re lucky.

Funny, though, how long you can mull over that one brief moment, and how you find yourself longing for the next.

Folks came from as far as Parkdale, (though most were from within walking distance), many sporting knives, some in costume, all gamely trooping in to carve (or to watch the carving of) jack-o’-lanterns.

At left is the one I did, complete with what I cheerfully refer to as scrofulous tumours. I’m not actually sure what that means, but it sounds as delightfully awful as it looks. The pumpkin came that way and I serendipitously made use of the fact. Note, too, the rag-mop hairdo. That’s another bit of serendipity: the innards of this pumpkin were spaghetti-squash-like, and I put the gunk to good use.

I also added an apple eye, an incised nose, and some carefully scraped and carved teeth. I was rather pleased with the result, especially after I earned a compliment from one of the onlookers. “You’re remarkably good at this,” she said.

Well, I guess, I said. I grew up with it. Carving the jack-o’-lantern was a pretty big deal when I was a kid. My parents took it seriously, and I do too. In fact, when I went to Pearson College, (an international school where I represented Ontario), one of my contributions was to carve the jack-o’-lantern for my residence.

I remembered that yesterday when I was up to my elbows in a pumpkin, scooping the guts out onto the dining room table – which I’d wisely covered with a sheet of plastic vapour barrier – and just letting it flow.

Yeah, I know how to do this, I’ve done it before. If not every single year, certainly for enough years that it feels like instinct.

It may be silly, this ritual of carving a big orange fruit into a face. Its origins may be obscure and its meaning trivial, or mostly forgotten. But it feels familiar, and fond, and it’s pretty damn fun.

It occurs to me that this is what they call “culture.”

Chat representative Antony has joined the session and is ready to help. To start, please provide your name and home phone number.

You: David Newland

You: 416-***-****

Antony: Hello and welcome to Bell’s chat service. How may I provide you with excellent service today?

You: Hi there. For three days my phones have been out, but my internet (with bell) works fine.

Antony: Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention, and I am sorry to hear that you are having this problem.

Antony: I regret the inconvenience that it has caused. Let’s see what I can do to get this fixed for you.

You: ?

Antony: May I call you by your first name?

You: Yes

Antony: Thank you, David.

Antony: Do you hear the dial tone when you pick up your receiver?

You: No

Antony: If you have no dial tone, you may be able to troubleshoot this yourself before reporting the problem.

Antony: Please click on this link for more details!

Antony: http://support.bell.ca/en-on/Home_phone/Phone_line/I_don_t_hear_a_dialtone_on_my_Bell_home_phone_line?step=1

You: Yes, but here’s my question.

You: How can I be receiving internet and not phone?

You: There is one line.

You: Two wires.

You: I can see them at my junction box.

Antony: That’s a technical issue. Kindly note that we are from the Chat department of Bell Home Phone. We deal with the billing queries of the Bell Home Phone account. Unfortunately, we have only limited access to the repair issues.

Antony: Please hold while I report your issue to our Repair department.

You: Here’s what it says beneath the button I clicked to get to you:

You: Bell Home phone Support for phone lines, features and long distance calling. Chat with an online representative 310 BELL (2355) Hours of operation Monday to Friday Saturday and Sunday Statutory holidays 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Technical support available 24/7

You: Technical support available 24/7

You: Kindly note that please.

Antony: Yes, for the Bell Home Phone technical support, you can directly contact our Repair Department any time by calling 611 or 1-800-661-2190 from any telephone or cell phone.

You: How do you think I will call with my phone broken, Antony?

You: The button I clicked advertised Technical support available 24/7

You: That’s why I’m online.

Antony: David, I certainly understand that. That information says call 310 BELL (2355). We are from the Chat department of Bell Home Phone. We deal with the billing queries of the Bell Home Phone account. Also, we create repair ticket for the repair issues.

Antony: To know more details about the repair incident, you need to call 310-Bell (2355) as mentioned on the site.

You: Antony, why does the big button that says “CHAT” occur right next to that paragraph if it has nothing to do with it?

Antony: Or, you can directly contact our Repair Department any time by calling 611 or 1-800-661-2190 from any telephone or cell phone.

You: Well, I don’t have a cell phone, and my telephone is broken.

Antony: The paragraph never say phone technical issues are handled in chat.

You: No. It just says “chat now” in exactly the same place. I guess someone thinks I might want to talk to you for fun.

Antony: No, we handle billing issues and take the repair issues to report to our repair department. But, I am afraid, I may not be able to help you in diagnosing the exact issue. To know details about it, only a repair technician a help you with it.

Antony: I have successfully created the repair ticket for you.

Antony: Your issue will be taken care by our Repair Department.

Antony: Your home phone issue will be fixed maximum before 10.00 PM, tomorrow (Oct. 28th, 2011).

You: That’s really good to know Antony. Thanks for your help.

You: Who do I contact if the problem is not fixed?

The chat session should begin shortly, thank you for your patience.

The chat session should begin shortly, thank you for your patience.