June 30, 2014 Denoument

As I write, I am sitting at Manchester Airport waiting for a flight to Washington D.C. and then to Toronto.

Yesterday afternoon, the results for my lumbar puncture came back negative.  I was discharged soon after.  What I actually had, I think, is a nasty stomach bug and a migraine.  My stomach is in knots and my head continues to hurt on and off.

Arranged for a train ticket from Nottingham to Manchester.  Booked my flight to Toronto.  Booked my hotel in Manchester, close to the airport -- or so I thought!

Before leaving the hospital I visited my sister who is still in ICU.  She was awake and doing much better since I last saw her two days before.  She was able to communicate by mouthing her words.  She can write somewhat.  Seeing her for only 15 minutes, I tried to be as reassuring as I could and said good-bye with only a little bit of guilt but a lot of relief too.

The train ride from Nottingham was unremitting torture as I had the stupid luck of sitting beside two lovely looking kids and their inattentive mother.  The kids received sweets to placate them and tirades to try to shut them up.  Neither reinforcers worked and mom was very occupied with her phone.

The hotel I booked was not as close as it first seemed and a taxi ride of £20 was needed to get me there.  I took a looooong shower to soothe my aching back (from the lumbar puncture, three needles all together) and went out for a quick bite to eat.  By this time it was 10 p.m.

Managed to speak to Marsh to inform her about my arrival in Manchester and fell into a almost undisturbed sleep.

Are you kidding me? June 28, 2014

I have spent the past few days disconnected from the world.  Have spent a lot of time with my sister's 2 daughters and their partners and kids.  My sister's prognosis is uncertain and she continues to need help to breathe although less so now.  She is making tiny bits of progress each day which is heartening.

I had been feeling somewhat tired and this was followed by an unrelenting headache and symptoms that felt like the flu or gastro-enteritis.  This started on June 26, 2014.  My birthday of all days!  By yesterday, June 28th, I was feeling so badly (fever, headache, nausea, lack of energy, achy joints) that I went to a walk-in.  After assessing me at the clinic, the nurse called for an ambulance and I was admitted to the same hospital where my sister currently is.

They suspect meningitis and are conducting tests to exclude this.  I am much better as I write (June 29th) this due to rest, antibiotics and pain medications.  Last night I had a CT scan of my head.  I assured the technician there was nothing in there for them to see....nevertheless, had the scan.

I may have to put up with a procedure called a lumbar puncture today.  It involves putting a needle into my lower spine and drawing spinal fluid to determine if there are any signs of infection (higher white blood cell count, presence of bacteria).  A doctor who seemed very tentative in conducting the test was beginning the procedure on me last night, when I called the procedure off.  He was not inspiring any confidence in me of his abilities.  The last thing I want is someone who is unsure of that particular skill of theirs poking around my spine.

Crazy turn of events.

I worry about Marsh and the kids being on their own after all this time and of course, miss being with them at home.  Hopefully, I can return to Toronto soon.

I was also expected to return to work on June 30th or July 2nd.  But this seems less and less likely and is also worrying me.

Toronto to London to Nottingham June 19, 2014

On June 17, 2014, I received a call from my father informing me that my eldest sister and her husband, who live in England, had been in a car accident and were in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital in  Nottingham.  My sister was not able to breath on her own and my father asked me to fly to England.  Although it remained unspoken, the understanding was that her situation was desperate and there was (is) a real possibility that she may die due to her injuries.

At the time, it was unclear whether my sister was in London or Nottingham.  I did not have the name of the hospital she was in or any other details concerning her prognosis.  Nevertheless, by the afternoon on Wednesday (the 18th) I had booked a ticket to Gatwick Airport.  And then the calls began to pour in: First from my sister’s youngest daughter and then her two older sisters.  Between the three of them, they had me, as they might say, “all sorted out, yah?”  Before I left Toronto for England, Shamina (middle daughter) had made a reservation at a hotel in Nottingham close to the hospital.  Azra had offered to have me stay at her place in Nottingham and Azmina had offered to have her husband drive me from London to Nottingham — a distance of 170 miles.  In the end, I took a cab from Gatwick Airport to Nottingham as it turns out to be cheaper to drive than to take the train.  Plus, the added headache of schlepping my baggage from the airport to London and then changing trains in London to go to Nottingham would not have been worth the effort.

Before leaving Toronto I learned that the hotel I was staying at looked really nice, at least on TripAdvisor.  My sister’s condition was somewhat improved and she was to go for an operation to repair injuries to her stomach.  Her ribs, lungs and liver were also effected to the point that they were not functioning.  Scary stuff.  But crisis is a mode of work I am familiar with and so my attitude has been to almost downplay the severity of the injuries until I physically see my sister.

Air Transat:  Remind me never to fly this poor excuse for an airline.  Their seats are narrow to the point where my 5'5", 145 lbs frame could not find a comfortable position with which to recline, relax and sleep.  My seat cushion was so old and beaten up that as soon as I sat on it I could feel the hard bottom of the chair.

My niece had arranged a cab to pick me up and ferry me to the hospital in Nottingham.  A place called the Queen's Medical Centre which serves the same role in this part of England as Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre does for much of Ontario -- It is a recognized and highly regarded trauma centre.  "Being the largest hospital in the East Midlands, it has a busy accident and emergency unit, and is the primary destination of the Lincolnshire & Nottinghamshire Air Ambulance, for more seriously injured patients. Being part of the University of Nottingham, it can call on the choice of highly qualified doctors in their respective fields. It is the East Midlands main hospital for acute cases." (Wikipedia).  The cab ride took about three-and-a-half-hours.  I napped and chatted with my Indian cab driver.  Cost: £150.00.  Ridiculous and yet necessary considering the circumstances.

My sister had been brought out of the operating room where they worked on her bowels.  When I saw her she was in Intensive Care, intubated, with many tubes coming out of her.  Her bowel had been stitched back together and she was not breathing on her own.

Officially Tired

I had written this little post back in February, but never got around to publishing it.  So here it is.  The clouds have lifted since that time. phew!

I am either tired and plagued with a low-level cold or the winter blues have come early. One of the reasons I dread winter is that inevitably, every winter, sometime around January and definitely in February, my energy levels dip to the point where it seems impossible to keep up with my work AND my home duties at the same time. Lethargy, a feeling that I am physically sick in a flu-kind-of-way, and a general inexplicable malaise sets in.

I'm sure that to my wife and other observers I seem not to be paying attention to details, slow on the uptake, cynical in my outlook and lacking in enthusiasm in general.  I know what motivates me at these times: socializing with friends, regular vigorous exercise, concentrating on a single project for which I have an enthusiasm.  The project could be putting together a newsletter, working on my blog, or patching and painting a room.

Another thing that helps is getting away to a warmer locale for scuba diving or just a jaunt, as I've done in the past, such as Miami, The Bahamas, or a similarly warm spot.  Even if for two or three nights.  The sunshine, warmer air and the complete change in scenery re-charges me long enough until March ends and brings with it the, usually false, promise of warmer weather.

So here's to all you depressives out there; you emotionally labile; sun-starved; grey-sky-hating curmudgeons!  Hang in (for yourself) and hang out (with friends and family); make events of the uneventful; and day-by-day you will find yourselves closer to your ideal in every way: shorts and sandals, pools, crickets and late night ice cream cones on the steps of some little church in a residential neighbourhood.

Brushes with Illusory Superiority

Last year, on a rainy weekday afternoon, I stood outside one of the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health's (CAMH) buildings having a smoke with the father of one of my clients.  The client was an in-patient and I had just completed a visit along with his father.

As we stood under an overhanging bit of cement to avoid the rain; at the side of the building and far from any doors or windows, a young lady, dressed in nurse's garb, approached us and informed us that CAMH was a smoke-free facility and that included the side of the building, in the laneway leading to an underground garage.

I thanked the 20-something nurse and instead of moving on she decided to stand 5 feet in front of us and told us, "You need to put your cigarette out or leave the property."  Words were exchanged and she asked where I worked and I asked her if she was with the CIA or was even a security guard?  I tried pretending to ignore her and looked back towards her (still five feet from us) and looked startled to see her.  "Are you still here?" I said.  She told us the all important smoking rule.  At some point I ignored her.  The father of my client simply stood smoking his cigarette with not a word said.

Eventually, both of us smokers stomped out our cigarettes and the nurse-enforcer moved on with more choice words.  She ostensibly left to go to call a security guard.

That was then, a few weeks ago I drove down to Kensington Market to have some grilled cheese sandwiches with the kids.  We found a parking spot right in front of The Grilled Cheese!  It was, unfortunately, a little tight.  Nevertheless, I tried to sneak my Nissan Versa into the spot...misjudged my distances and ended up bumping the car in front of us.

As soon as I bumped the Corolla in front of me, a man in a mini van one car length ahead of me lowered his window and craned his neck out and looked back at our car.  The kids started chattering all at once and I was a little embarrassed and wondering what to do next.  In the 30 seconds after the initial bump, a lady appeared at the front of my car, near the Corolla I had hit. She had exited from the mini van which was now parked on the opposite side of the road on the curb.  She began to harangue me: "Are you going to leave a note?  You hit this car, you know?"

"Yes I know, I'm in the car!" I say.

Nevertheless, she continued, "Are you going to leave this person a note?"

At this point, I fully rolled my window down, with my kids trying to disappear into their seats, I ask, "Yes, I'm going to leave a note...is there any reason why you're assuming I won't leave a note?"

"Well I hope if someone hit my car someone would do the same for me!"

"Do you own this car? And why are you assuming I won't leave a note?" I ask

She repeats, "You should leave a note for them!"

"Is there a reason you think I won't do the right thing?" At which point she walks away looking exasperated.

I pulled my car out of the spot.  Parked across the street halfway on the curb and start writing a note for the absent owner of the Corolla with my name and phone number and stick the note under the Corolla's wipers.

So...what was the reason for this haridan's harangue?  Why was she so concerned with the absent owner's well being and not that of my car or my kids?  Why was she not trying to help me to get out of the tight squeeze I'd gotten myself into and instead chose to try to publicly shame me?

As to the anti-smoking zealot: Do you know this woman?  She usually carries a re-usable mug for her Starbucks coffee.  She drinks chai tea, likely with a squeeze of Yak's milk or something equally esoteric and "all-natural" and, of course, "organic".  If ostriches could give milk she would be on this next.  She does not know that Chai is Tea.  The irony of ordering chai-tea or tea-tea is lost on her.  She wears a Columbia or MEC jacket and goes to the salon to have her hair highlighted every 5-6 weeks and thinks it is fair trade to pay at least $100 for the service.  At lunch time she will eat pistachios and a leafy green salad with sunflower seeds sprinkled on top and the latest brand-name Greek yogurt on the side.  She definitely rides her $800 bike to work everyday and insists on bringing it into the building to keep it from getting stolen.  Her glasses are name brand and funky and cost almost as much as the bike.

She grew up in a well-to-do family in a large house.  She is well educated and dedicates herself to her work with a single-minded intensity; lest someone should accuse her of not being genuinely dedicated to the betterment of mankind.  She may even be union steward, which only helps to buttress her belief in herself as all-good.

Who, really, was this 20-something woman? How did she come to the place in her life where she feels it is within her ambit to tell a close to 50 year old and a 70 year old where to stand and how to do it?  Where was her fear of getting clobbered?  How can she feel so entitled and self-righteous that she is willing to, with no immediate effect, to stare down a couple of old guys for a full 5-7 minutes?

One possibility for the behaviour exhibited is an assumption on the part of  people to a natural superiority over others based on the assumed status, sometimes economic (they look poor, dress poor, they're white, they're white trash), sometimes racial (they don't know any better, they're black, brown, etc. therefore need to be told how things should be or they are naturally criminal and we are not).

Another possibility is a the Dunning-Kruger effect: " cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate."  This article from Psychology Today doesn't speak exactly to my rant or conclusion but is interesting reading nevertheless.

As to the owner of the Corolla, he called me two days after the accident and said that since the bump scratched his car in one spot, he was willing to settle for $50. I countered by suggesting that a cheque for $100 would be more reasonable. He was grateful and I mailed the cheque the next day. 

Rest Your Eyes on Lake Bell

Lake Bell has by no means replaced my perennial boyish crush on Julia Roberts, but she is a close second.  While she is beautiful, it was her turn as a marine biologist on a TV series entitled "Surface" which made me think, hmmm, what a "pretty woman."

And then, as I looked her up on the IMDB website, I came across this little promotional video which she made for her Maxim photo shoot.  I know, I know, you think Maxim and you think flesh and pervert, but this little promotional video is all Lake Bell -- That is, well, you'll see.  She definitely is not beautiful or sexy just for her looks.  She's got a great sense of humour and if you care to look it up, her movie, still out in the repertory theatres in Toronto, which she wrote, directed and acted in has won some impressive awards.  The movie? In a World won the screenwriting award and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival.

Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
2013	Won	Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award	Lake Bell For its laugh out loud comedic moments, its memorably drawn characters and its shrewd social commentary.
	Nominated	Grand Jury Prize	Dramatic Lake Bell

Here's the promotional video for Maxim, or follow this link or this link if the embedded video doesn't work for you. 

Vidivodo.com : lake bell - maxim photo shoot  : lake_bell maxim tv

Duck Season? No Thanks!

It's not often that the Common Urban Urbane Domesticated Male gets to bag an animal guilt free. Kill a squirrel and the nice old lady across the street will be sure to call down the full weight of the law upon you.

Vermints like raccoons are plentiful and offer easy pickins but the freshly turned dirt and traces of lime inevitably attract choppers overhead.

The workaround is to go away on vacation, leave a banana on the kitchen counter and return to a house full of fruit flies. Easy peasy, prayers answered.

Wasn't me that started the weaponization of the flower vase; t'was the boy.  What's that sayin' 'bout the apple not falling far from the tree?

In order to succeed at this cat and fly game, you need a large container (wife's flower vase/coke or whiskey bottle or some such thing). A piece of paper rolled up conically and taped so it won't come unfurled. And a bit of Saran Wrap with a too small a hole pocked in it for your conical paper.

For bait, any ol' smelly bit of fruit will do. As will a bit of vinegar with banana pieces. Peel or actual banana; makes no difference to yer prey.

The pictures explain this better than all these high-falutin' words.

My boy and I...we caught us 20-30 fruit flies in under 3 hours.

A microwave is a wonderful and discrete tool. BUT, for the record, we jus' released them to the open air and sat down to a few beer after. 

Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Updates

I was looking through my posts over the years with Tarah and came to the realization that even the most mundane posts are actually very meaningful in retrospect. For example, one of my older posts had to do with what Tarah was saying (pronouncing badly) as a toddler and what this actually meant. Seemingly silly but now, with Tarah next to me, a time machine of sorts that helps us spend meaningful time together and remember things that we would have both forgotten.

And this brings me to the reason why I have not written a single post in such a long time. Besides feeling pressed for time, I've actually been thinking that there is nothing "important" that I have to write about. But things, like photographs taken with 110 camera in 1978, become important when viewed through the tunnel of time.

So here are my seemingly mundane updates -- for the record:

1. I am undecided this year as to what will be our summer getaway. Last year we rented a positively decrepit old cottage and went camping into the interior of Algonquin Park. This year, I'm thinking, lazily, that a city holiday (Ottawa, Kingston or London) would be just the right kind of relaxation and entertaining for the kids. So, in a word: undecided.

2. I have been working, very slowly, on a series of connected vignettes, a story in moments. The main character is revealed, as is the absent son, through these short passages. I'm not sure where it's leading or if I will ever finish it. I may be borrowing my friend's cottage for a few days to try and write some more.

3. Work is still stimulating. The dearth of resources and the unrelenting stream of hard-luck stories is daunting. The system only gives the illusion of a single inter-related piece of work. Like farmer's fields seen from the window of an airplane, the illusion is of a single large quilt; the reality is each field is individually owned and used for very different purposes, with only a vaguely common purpose. There is, it seems, no one person or group of persons, who understands how the system is set up and what parts of the system are servicing their clients well and which parts are failing them.

4. Tarah is learning to swim very quickly and, Seth says, she can now ride her bike.

5. Seth attended a video game programing camp at Seneca College and is now off for two weeks. We have seen three movies this summer and this may be the summer of movies for us.

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Developmental Services in Toronto

I have just started another blog as a pared down, non-jargony attempt to explain Developmental Services in Toronto.   A lot of the information in the blog may be relevant to Ontario, but I'm planning to write with people in Toronto as the target audience.
Please follow the above link and let me know what you think or, especially, if there are any glitches with the blog.

What Am I Reading Now?

What am I reading? Funny I should ask! I am currently reading a bit of science fiction by the name of The World Before. This is the third book of a series of six by Karen Traviss. Collectively, the books are known as the Wess'Har Series. The series revolves around a planet so far that it takes 26 years to get there from Earth. So, yes...cryo-sleep is a must. The destination planet, known as Wess'ej, has a native species of squid like beings, a settler race of militarily powerful aliens who are in a protector role vis-a-vis the planet and it's original inhabitants. Additionally, there is another race still which covets the planet, as their home planet and it's inhabitable moon are over-populated and denuded of any other species. And, of course, the story follows the human interlopers, who are sent to colonize the already hotly contested planet.

I believe this author is most popular for her novels based on the the Star Wars universe and a series of books based on two popular video games: Halo and Gears of War. So, if you're geekier than me, and this would include knowing the above games and being interested enough to read about the fictionalized back story to a video game, than you will probably enjoy reading these other popular series.

Traviss can definately write a believeable yarn and explores issues, at least in these first three novels, such as ecological balance, immortality and the tendency of humans to treat virtually everything (living or inanimate) as a commodity to be bought and sold.

City of Pearl is the first of these novels and sets the scene for next five novels which are essentially one long story. So starting at book three and then going back to read book two will spoil the plot surprises you will encounter in earlier books.

Okay, so yada-yada-yada....would I recommend the books? Yes, but with a caveat. I find the story, even for science fiction, a little implausible. The idea that the protagonist, a hardened female cop (even in the year 2039) can become part of another race and then become it's de-facto leader is a little hard to swallow. Having said that, Traviss can obviously write; she has a ton of books published which are popularly followed and the universe she creates in this series is very believeable.

1. City of Pearl (2004)
2. Crossing the Line (2004)
3. The World Before (2005)
4. Matriarch (2006)
5. Ally (2007)
6. Judge (2008)

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The Dictator Speaks

Admiral General Aladeen: "Why are you guys so anti-dictators? Imagine if America was a dictatorship. You could let 1% of the people have all the nation's wealth. You could help your rich friends get richer by cutting their taxes. And bailing them out when they gamble and lose. You could ignore the needs of the poor for health care and education. Your media would appear free, but would secretly be controlled by one person and his family. You could wiretap phones. You could torture foreign prisoners. You could have rigged elections. You could lie about why you go to war. You could fill your prisons with one particular racial group, and no one would complain. You could use the media to scare the people into supporting policies that are against their interests."

-- The Dictator

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My Favourite Swim Spots (2)

I recently went to see the extraordinary and beautifully rendered movie, The Life of Pi. The film is adapted from the eponymous book written by Yann Martel. The protagonist in this story within a story is the curiously named, Piscine Molitor Patel or Pi. It turns out that Piscine is named in honour of a pool which was a social hub in 1930's Paris: A pool which Pi's uncle visited and fell in love with. The uncle's love of swimming got me thinking about all the places where I have swam and how these various pools which I have visited have had an impact on me.

...

In the years following high school, while deciding on the direction which my academic life would take and trying to cope with the disappointments of a lost relationship, I began to have dreams of swimming. I don't want to over-play these dreams, because they were not all that frequent, nor were they all memorable. In fact, I can only recall a handful of these dreams: Chief among these was a dream of me gliding powerfuly and effortlesly underwater. At some point in the dream, I approach a large boulder on the edge of an underwater cliff, I kick it and the boulder rolls off the edge and disappears out of sight into the darkness. So, for what it's worth, this imagined pool of water also holds a special place in my mind as a pool that I once swam in with the strength and conviction which escaped me in reality.

While studying at the University of Toronto, I signed up with a drive-away service to get to Florida on the cheap. The deal was, I would drive a car to Florida usually for snowbirds for a hundred bucks and gas money. The snowbirds would fly ahead, I would meet them in their town and hand off the car to them. The cars going south were mostly luxury vehicles which always made the drive down easy. The motels along the highway were in surprisingly good shape and, even more surprisingly, only cost around twenty or thirty dollars. It was on my second trip down to Florida that I stayed at a hostel in Miami Beach for a few nights. Each day I would have a leisurely breakfast and then stroll a few blocks to a small grocery store, load up on some fruits and vegetables, a drink or two and some Marlboro Lights and head to the beach for the day. Miami Beach, at least close to the ocean, has not changed much since those days. I would lie on the beach until late in the afternoon, swim sporadically in the ocean and munch on treats with not a worry in the world. Later, I would use the public transit to make a foray into Miami to a shopping mall, gallery, or to catch a movie. Swimming in South Beach, who could not love this, at any age?

Back home in Ontario, my love of canoeing, especially into the interior of Algonquin Park, has always dovetailed with my love of swimming. I have gone into the interior (solo), with friends, with my wife and more recently, with my son. Aside from the experience of camping and canoeing, each trip to Algonquin has always carried memorable moments of swimming. Chief among the joys of swimming in a northern lake is the obligatory swim au naturel. This last summer, however, the fact that an aggressive snapping turtle called our bit of the lake home, made skinny dipping that much more, um, novel.

A natural extension of my love of swimming above water was to learn the skill of scuba diving. On one of my three trips to that most slothful of all Caribbean nations, The Bahamas, I went diving to a reef near Freeport. This was six years ago and, despite the fact that I have gone diving off the coast of Zanzibar, was

the most memorable dive I have ever had. At a depth of 30-40 feet, the water was glass clear and the reef was full of colourful life. Best of all, Reef Sharks were plentiful and although the ones I spotted on this occasion were only 5-6 feet long, they were impressive enough in their ability to effortlessly glide with speed around the dive group. Scary impressive.

In 2009, I visited India with my trusty cohort, Anwar Sumar. Yes, that Anwar Sumar! The temperatures all across India were consistently at thirty celcius and above, and swimming ( ironically, a very humid sport) was always a welcome escape. In New Delhi, in Mumbai, Goa and Bhubaneshwar. Yes, that Bhubaneshwar! What Bhubaneshwar? The same Bhubaneshwar no one has ever heard of. A city in the eastern reaches of the sub-continent, close to Calcutta; a city full of Hindu temples built in ages past and still in use today.
It was in Bhubaneshwar, after a long day spent chatting with people I will likely not see again and was, in retrospect, glad to be rid of, I spent the late afternoon hunting down a gallery in town and then returning back to our hotel with my loot. Exhausted, I left the hotel room to grab a coffee and a slice of cake, as it began to drizzle in the central courtyard. I hunkered under the sun umbrella and sipped my coffee, ate cake, had a smoke and waited out the rain. I got my chance to swim a half hour later in the infinity pool pictured here. The pool was all mine and I thoroughly enjoyed treading as gently as I could so as not to disturb the glassy appearance of the water. A great moment that I still remember as clearly as, well, water.


Now we're into the home stretch...The Taj Mahal Palace and Towers is a 105 year old heritage hotel located at Apollo Bunder opposite the Gateway of India. A hotel which describes itself as "offering luxurious rooms and suites with sea and city views spread out over the traditionally built Palace wing and the modern tower wing."
Picture if you will, another courtyard: This one has high walls crawling with tropical greenery and large (palm trees) and small (no clue) plants all around. To one side of the ovalish pool are tables and chairs and further in a covered-but-open-to-the-surroundings-restaurant occupied, on this night, by not one person. The lighting is mostly coming from inside the pool with a few yellowish globes around the pool. It is late in the evening and the blaring of car horns, car engines, motorcyles can be heard in a muted way just on the other side of the walls. If you stood atop the walls on the street side you would see the The Gateway of India, leading to the Indian Ocean only just across the street. And there I am, half naked at the snazziest of all hotels in India. Swimming around in that pool on that particular night with no one but me in the pool....the feeling was pure bliss and I savoured it and tried to fix the scene in memory knowing fully that this was one of those once in a lifetime moments which I could never re-visit or re-create.

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My Favourite Swim Spots (1)

I recently went to see the extraordinary and beautifully rendered movie, The Life of Pi. The film is adapted from the eponymous book written by Yann Martel. The protagonist in this story within a story is the curiously named, Piscine Molitor Patel or Pi. It turns out that Piscine is named in honour of a pool which was a social hub in 1930's Paris: A pool which Pi's uncle visited and fell in love with. The uncle's love of swimming got me thinking about all the places where I have swam and how these various pools which I have visited have had an impact on me.

My very first memory of swimming is from when I was about 8 years old. My father would take me and my youngest sister to the pool of a hotel in central Dar-es-Salaam. It was here that I first learned to swim and then progressed to diving off a board. (My father grew up in Yemen and has often recounted tales of swimming in the sea and being stung my jellyfish and other creatures). The hotel which we frequented was, I believe, The Agip. Often after our swim we would retreat to the shadiest part of the poolside restaurant and order what seemed like a luxurious lunch. Sometimes liver and onions and other times egg salad sandwiches.

A few years after my experience at the Agip Hotel's pool, my family and I arrived in Canada. I was ten years old at the time and we lived in a condominium which had the de rigeur swimming pool and sauna. My father and I would often go down to this pool and then end by warming up in the sauna. For many years after these initial swims, I frequented the pool: Sometimes in the summer with my friends and later, during a time of turmoil in my life, on my own, daily and obsessively. It was here that I began to use the pool to do lengths, oggle middle-aged women and watch the snow-flakes outside while I swam in the relative warmth of the pool. It was also here that I began to close my eyes and float on my back and, for a few moments, exist without effort. I also began to execute a move: the move that involves spinning in the water. The spin always gives me a sense of being a part of the water...it is a move of pure contentment, sensual, luxuriating.

Later, during my high school years, a few of my friends and I would gather our money and rent a cottage up north for a week. It was at the first of these cottages on Lake Redstone that another memorable moment in my swimming life appeared. At Lake Redstone, we fished and swam (someone must have cooked because no one died) and we fished off the boat provided by the owner.

One afternoon I went out in the row boat with a mask and snorkel. Memory being what it is, I remember it as being the quintessential summer afternoon in cottage country. I rowed the boat along the shore, left the oars in the water to slow the boat's drift and stuck my masked and snorkeled head over the back edge of the boat and watched. The image of sunlight streaming along the bottom of the shoreline is still clear in my mind. Huge tree trunks, massive boulders and tiny fish flitting about, while the sunlight painted various corners: now here, then there. It really was idyllic. And, being naturally sentimental, I still think about that cottage, on that lake and on that beautiful afternoon.

Next: Swimming at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai and sooo much, much more!!.

 

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I walk the lounge

I walk the lounge filled with chestnut brown chairs
Seeing none empty
I circle back,
a plane with no clearance to land

Tiring of the scrape-thud-scrape
of my suitcase,
I wait, check-in

Why are people who help people
never as helpful as they could be?
I fumble for ID, empty my pockets
mumble apologies

Then there you are
serendipitously, next to me
Smiling that sly smile
waiting for me to notice you

Unbelieving: Why after decades of absence
have we met, like this?
With no chair in sight,
or a coffee worthy of the name?

Nevermind.
We seat ourselves
in a quiet hallway
Legs crossed on the floor
between us the detritus of our lives.

We recount and reminisce
stare at the floor now, then the wall next
You tell me where you've been
we proffer our secrets
layer by layer

Nevermind all that, you say
Let's come back around
to the simple joy of having met.
Let us enjoy these few moments
with both of us suspended
between our separate lives

The speakers declare the end.
In three tongues no less!
We make doomed promises
embrace with no tears shed
until we turn
to go our own ways

 

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