Fountain Pen Mojo

In Grade 3, we graduated from pencils to fountain pens, which involved cartridges, ink-stained fingers, and much-blotched notebooks. Yes, there was a learning curve, but the process of writing was transformed. Cursive in pencil felt childish; cursive by nib, sophisticated. Writing suddenly felt worldly, and I suddenly felt like a man of the world: confident and strong. This early sample of my penmanship, bold if calligraphically imperfect, is undoubtedly the only one that survives today. I’m certain that the one I affixed to my love letter to Catherine Deneuve, sent c/o Chanel No. 5, Paris, France, (never answered) did not. 

Inspired by Doodling and Artless. The image is an AI approximation to prevent (sadly) identity theft.

Just for Halloween

The day after Sam moved out, she took a sledgehammer to that gawd-awful wood panelling in the basement. And there it was. No body—just a head with empty eyes, leathery skin and long thinning hair. Female, she supposed. Old and abandoned like her. Smelling of nothing but dust. This was years ago, and Cleo the Head had been with her ever since—more faithful than the kids who never visit and great emotional support. Better than a pricy therapist. Every night, lying in the dark, Cleo whispers to her of all the things she could do with that sledgehammer.

Inspired by Old People Smell. Image by ChatGPT.

Old People Smell

Now it’s all about Kareishu. True, I have been stuck in an airless room with genealogists—and there is a certain bouquet—like dandruff and neglected WindRiver polar fleece. But on the other hand, my octogenarian in-laws are all fresh laundry and Wesley Methodism. So what does this Kareishu smell like? Funky towels? Peppermint? The inside of a purse? Ageism? Apparently, you can combat it by being fastidiously clean with yourself and everything your decomposing wreck of a body touches. Luckily,  I have Neal’s Yard products. They contain frankincense. The same stuff they used to embalm mummies.

Inspired by: Roy’s mummy. Image by ChatGPT.

Apartment 1203

Growing up in the Married Student Apartments, one of our neighbours was wrapping up a Masters in Museology, while the other was working on his Doctorate in Medieval Studies.

     1205 took me to see ROM’s storage facilities, grabbed a random cardboard box off the shelf, and pulled out a mummified head.

     1201 showed me—by scratching it out in the playground’s sand, no less—that cursive writing, and the seemingly arbitrary forms I’d been taught in school, had in fact evolved to lessen the need for a scribe to lift his pen from the paper.

     And blew my twelve-year-old mind.

Inspired by Fountain Pen Mojo. Image by ChatGPT.

Thoughts on this Day

We are fortunate to live in this place and time. I’m thankful for friends and the history we share. I’m thankful for the spirit we muster in the face of malignant evil and ignorance at home and abroad. I’m thankful for the peace we have enjoyed, as fraught and fragile as it is. I’m thankful for the food on our tables, yet I am acutely aware of how lucky we are to have it. That luck can never be taken for granted: the best “luck” is the product of the goodwill we engineer collectively. To the world, happy Canadian Thanksgiving.

Inspired by the calendar. Image by Georgi Kisyov.

Doodling

At McGill, I would diligently take class notes (with pen and paper, of course), as the professors pontificated. But then I’d get distracted and start inventing typefaces in the margins. Then I’d sketch the professors, or other students, or what was outside the window. Then I’d blink and stop myself and get back to work. But why was I doodling? Why was I so distractible? I finally got my answer last week when I read a letter Dad wrote to Mom when they were both 17. Taking up half of the second page was a doodle. So, apparently, it’s genetic.

Inspired by Artless. The image is of my Dad’s doodle, the caption reads: “You would love my daughter even if she didn’t have any money? That’s all, son. You can go now. I don’t want any idiots in my family.”

Artless

I was terrible at everything to do with crafts. I dreaded art class and was embarrassed by my pitiful uncreative renditions. In hindsight though, what an avant-garde concept to have a class dedicated to art.

     I was however obsessed with cursive writing. I loved those booklets with the lines and would sit for hours trying to perfect the B’s, F’s, and the S’s.

     Ironically, one might consider it art these days, given no one sub-30 can read it. I’ve watched many stare at cards blankly, politely smiling with thanks when for all they know I wrote screw you, and your birthday. 

Inspired by I fold. Image by ilbusca.

I fold.

The girls in Grade 4 showed me how to make noisemakers out of paper, then fortune-tellers and water bombs, flapping birds and pagodas. Our library had a book by Shari Lewis (of Lamb Chop fame) that taught me how to turn that water bomb into an Easter bunny you could stuff full of jellybeans. Robert Harbin’s books took things more seriously and introduced me to the Jackstone, still the most complicated thing I have ever folded from a single piece of paper. 

     Today, I own a half shelf of origami books and a pack of 500 sheets I’ve never opened.

Inspired by Paper, Scissors, Cloth. Image based on a photo from Folding Paper Puppets.

Paper, Scissors, Cloth

When I was a kid, I had several pen pals. Those letters were fun to receive, but I was particularly drawn to the æsthetics: the cancelled stamp; the air-mail envelope with its barbershop edging and blue stationary; the thin crispness of it all. There are still some things in life that hold that allure: sachets of tea, a wrapped Band-aid, cakes of unopened Ivory soap, a box of amaretti, brand-new skeins of wool, Kleenex, seed packets. Maybe I am drawn to their old-timey paper? Their vulnerability? Unprotected by plastic preparedness, they reveal themselves thoughtfully, one unfolded corner at a time.

Inspired by Notice. Photo by Laurie.

Forgotten Lessons

I recently trod the battlefields of World War One, where hundreds of thousands died horrible deaths. Thousands more bore wounds, visible and invisible, for the rest of their shortened lives. War is hell. Today those battlefields are peaceful, the land is productive, and the fallen, the thousands of fallen, are remembered. Yet the lessons from their deaths are not. 

      Clausewitz called war the continuation of politics by other means. We learned after 1945 to extend politics and avoid war with diplomacy, multilateralism, and rules-based institutions. That consensus is now crumbling. War is hell, and we are drifting inexorably towards it.

Inspired by Already Committed. Photo by the author of the Belgian grave of an unknown soldier, nationality unknown.

Notice

The minutes and hours click by as you scroll on your phone, bored and interested at the same time. Your eyes begin to blur and hurt, you look up, hours have gone by—days maybe—what have you done recently?

Who have you talked to? Did you notice the breeze? The taste of Autumn in the air? The edges of leaves turning gold? The raptors on the wing—riding the thermals? You haven’t? Where have you been? This isn’t criticism. I, too, have trouble being present. I, too, feel numb of late. I, too, let the world pass me by. 

Inspired by September Mourn. Image of what you might be missing right now, by AI (for the irony of it).

September Mourn

Last Monday I saw a skeleton with a Halloween sign, and I felt myself becoming Laurie’s recycle-bin-lady. This is so wrong. But why do I care. It’s a pervasive state of being where we can no longer be contented with the beautiful lingering warm days of September. There must be something more to do, to be over the top about and spew hyperbole. I miss the peaceful Septembers we used to call (inappropriately) Indian Summer. It was a time of reflection as we prepared for the Fall. Halloween wasn’t even on our radar until mid-October. Patience was still a virtue.

Inspired by Don’t Quit Your Day Job. Photo by Wendy Whelan.

The Fear of Skidding Out

Cycling up the new asphalt on Sorauren last week took me back to the town where I first learned to ride, where every summer, the approach to road renewal was to spread a thin layer of tar and a second of very fine gravel, with the expectation it would slowly work its way into the existing surface. The immediate result for a nine-year-old boy, though, was a coin-toss between the most awesome skid ever and one nasty bloodied knee.
     Decades later, I can still feel the thrill my first bike gave me, still haunted by the fear of skidding out.

Inspired by The End of August. Image by ChatGPT.

Already Committed

Dad volunteered for the RCAF in 1940, but they made him wait. Impatient, he joined the army. He landed in Normandy in July 1944 and was deployed to the front. The Allies had a German army encircled near Falaise; the enemy was intent on breaking out. In the fog of war, Allied aircraft mistook the advancing Canadians for Germans and bombed them. It’s called “friendly fire” these days. Shortly afterwards, during a lull in the fighting, a much-forwarded letter arrived for Dad from Canada. The RCAF had finally accepted him. Years later, he related this story with a rueful shrug.

Inspired by a battlefield visit and battles past. Image from the Warfare History Network.

Golden Brown

Fall smelled like new Woolco clothes, a PVC school bag with yesterday’s banana. Fresh Crayolas. Then Avon perfumes (samples) and lined-paper diaries (with lock and key). And on Mondays, a freshly-scrubbed Mike, the boy who sat ahead of me.  Later, cafeterias and university course catalogues off gassing cheap acidy papers, promising much but delivering little. Fast forward ten years to the first (perfectly burnt) toast before kindergarten. Fifteen more years to Canadian Tire and dorm smells and sad/happy Tim Horton’s. Ten more years to slower coffees and Saturday’s Globe dampened by a window left open to let September in. 

Inspired by The End of August. Image—Cat’s paws and pencils—by the Author.

The End of August

I confess I don’t know what to write about. Not one clever line or idea has come to me. I’m in that dull transition phase—my breath held—before the onslaught of September. I always feel like this at the end of August—after the quagmire heat of high summer, just before everyone comes back from vacation and the school across the street is once again alive with children’s voices. I have shut off the screens. I am in the backyard listening to the cicadas, anticipating that perfect bit of coolness in the evening. I am wondering what comes next.

Inspired by not much really. Image is of Nancy’s overgrown, late-August garden.

Ungilded

Walking past the US Consulate in Toronto recently, I spotted a plaque in a bed of greenery. It celebrated a unique friendship that was forged over many years through many painful challenges. 

     Dear America, we’re honoured you deemed us the “best neighbours any nation ever had.” (Ask yourself if that applies to you.) 

     “Neither terrorism nor any adversity will conquer free peoples.” (That sounds ironic now.) Yes, we were with you in your then-darkest hour. (Who knew it could get darker?)

     The plaque (bronze, not gilded) was almost overgrown. Perhaps that’s a metaphor. Perhaps it will soon be taken down.

Inspired by domineering belligerence, imperial grandiosity, and a stunning ignorance of history, economics, and geopolitics, which culminated in the imposition of yet more punitive US tariffs on Canada on August 21. Photo by the author.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job

Everyone but me is retiring. I had no plans to until I met Joanne from Kingsville. Joanne takes daily walks around the subdivision—the one behind the Zehrs—and returns deliciously scrappy.
     One day, she fired up her Facebook and posted that she counted seven—SEVEN—recycle bins that had been incorrectly placed, barcodes facing in, handles facing out, some left teetering, most lawlessly crooked.
     “Folks!” she PSA’d, “the barcodes should FACE the street!”
     She is my C.A.R.P. lodestar. She completes me. I want to hold hands and walk about, our feet pale as chicken meat in low-profile Mephistos.

Inspired by Weird Sudden Changes. Image from the Kingsville Ontario Recycling Schedule.

Weird Sudden Changes

The way I see it, maybe me and my planet are just growing old and decrepit together. And maybe the summers are getting hotter, because I sure as hell don’t remember sweating like this when I was a kid, or maybe I just didn’t care, and I just never noticed the weight I was putting on—that is, until the moment my innie became an outie; because, just like the planet, it is just me getting older and more prone to weird sudden changes.

     Oh, and if you haven’t already figured it out, I’m pretty sure I’m getting dumber, too.

Inspired by Just Weather. Image by the Meta AI.

Just Weather

“But temperatures are rising…”

     “It’s summer. It’s supposed to be hot.”

     “But I mean, we’re setting records. In Europe, this year’s all-time hottest temperature is 2° higher than last year’s, which was 2° hotter than—”

     “Yeah, Europe. Who cares about Europe?”

     “Glaciers are disappearing. Rivers are running dry. There’s drought everywhere. Hundreds of wildfires are burning out west right now. Up north, too. The air’s poisonous.”

     “There've always been fires in summer. When I was a tadpole—”

     “It’s raining ashes in Michigan today.”

     “There. You see? The rain will put out the fire. Really, kid. It’s just weather.”

Inspired by A Little Bit of Magical Thinking. AI image created by Angus Peterson.