Chagal4's Blog

So while we’re on the topic of music I’ll just cut in here with Willy Deville. I don’t remember when I first heard Willy but it was quite a while ago. I have always loved lounge lizard bands. Most of them never amount to much but they play their hearts out in smokey rooms that smell like stale beer and bad dreams. They often play to ten drunks nodding into their chests in a  personal dance with secret steps learned years ago. Mink Deville was a few miles higher than that and Willy was some kind of cool dude that couldn’t be reached by any earthly means. To say that Willy was as fucked up as a road killed snake would be stating the obvious…but it was also irrelevent…irrelevent then and irrelevent now. Listen to Willy singing the acoustic version of “You Better Move On” and you should feel moved to burn half of your more recent CDs.I know there are and have been hundreds of singers and thousands of songs over the decades of radio and recording. Everyone has a favourite or two or more. I have many favourites. I grew up within hearing distance of Motown and I remember Stevie Wonder when he was “Little Stevie Wonder” playing “Fingertips” on a wailing harmonica. I remember Willie Nelson when he wore a suit . Music has been the sound track of my life and it has carried me through the forest of foolishness and the valley of tears. It has raised me from the fiercest funks and walked down paths of broken glass as I laboured in the paper mills of bureaucracy. Waiting for surgery recently I had a night or two of quiet despair. Dark wings seemed to be beating the air over head and I was sweating raindrops in my bed. I could have listened to anyone then…and as a mini detour here…I suddenly realized the genius of all those Gideon’s Bibles in cheap hotel rooms waiting for the right moment . Well it happened that I pulled the ear phones on and found Willy Deville telling me I better move on…and I was hooked. When I read somewhere that someone said that so and so had changed their lives…Elvis or Bob Dylan or  Aerosmith or John Lennon I never sneer. Inspiration is where you find it. I watched my best pal, stoned on acid, spend two hours staring into the threads of a tattered cat stained carpet declaring it was a universe of beauty that breathed and moved in a a magical rythmn. Well hell yes. All I know is that there was passion, emotion and a sense of something timeless in that voice…Willy Deville . R.I.P. Thanks dude…that night you chased away the demons, got me on my feet and slowing dancing with secret steps learned long ago.

Yeah…I can remember back in those hazy fifties when I heard Fats Domino sing that tune for the first time. I was just a skinny ass kid and I loved the song but I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. A lotta water under the bridge since then. Yesterday I was sitting here moaning about the pain from recent surgery and the perils of mixed medication when two things caught my attention. First was a news reader saying that it was “blue Monday”…and then it was Baby Doc Duvalier showing up in Haiti to help…which to my mind was a little like hearing that Satan had dropped in to the seldom visited tenth ring of Hell to see how things were going. If there was anything that signified “blue Monday” for me that was it. They say that Blue Monday is the most depressing day of the year…if you don’t take into account politics, economics, natural disasters, the neighbours endlessly barking dog, miserable days at work (assuming you have a job)and the various visitations of ill health. It’s that day when you wake up and realize that you’re in the dead of winter and there are at least two more months and more of miserable weather to come. You’ve already checked all of the cheap flight web-sites and your dreams have that sand and sun and soft sea breezes wafting over the gentle surf  feeling…and then you wake up. Some people love the winter, can’t wait for that first snow fall…a lot of people actually. I’ve never been a member of that club. Coping was the best I could manage and I got pretty good at it. Learned to ski, bought down clothes and long underwear, forced myself out the door on the coldest days. Now I’m older and I don’t feel the urge to try as hard as I used to. The winter  days I look forward to now are the ones when they say the weather isn’t fit for man or beast…I say bring it on, settle down with my favourite snacks a glass or two of sherry and a good book and check the window now and then to make sure I’m not tempted to go outside. Yesterday and today fit the bill nicely here in Ottawa. Yesterday was cold enough to freeze the verbs out of a sentence and today it warmed up a dozen degrees (always a bad sign), snowed a bit and threatened freezing rain. Now, there are few things that will make my heart turn around and run backward faster than freezing rain. For those who have never experienced it allow me to give you a cautionary tale.  Near enough to twenty years ago my lady and I being ambitious and younger, decided to move here to Canada’s capital after a short stay in Toronto (should have stayed) and, for me, nearly twenty years in Vancouver (really should have stayed). We had no kids, a nice car, and decent house close to the centre of the city. There was no garage but I could park right in front of my door so…things were cool. I knew there was going to be a lot of snow so I thought it would be a good idea to get one of those car covers…tailored to fit your personal vehicle. I looked all over Ottawa and they had none, which should have raised a tiny flag of concern…but hey. I called Toronto and sure enough they had just the thing, deluxe model, breathable, made of some new miracle fabric..kind of a subdued grey colour. I drove down to Toronto the very next weekend and picked it up. By the middle of November it had snowed a couple of times and I ran out, fitted the deluxe tailored cover on the car and watched the flakes pile up from the living room window. Come morning I went out, whipped it off and shook it…car looked like it spent the night indoors. People walking by the house smiled at me and my cover and I smiled back. Friendly town, I thought. One night the end of November here comes a freezing rain warning. This can’t be good, I thought…better get that cover up. It rained for hours…I watched from the window as that miracle fabric shaped itself in a perfect image of my car…covering it from bumper to bumper in subdued grey comfort. Then the bottom fell out of the thermometer. It turns out that “snow proof” and “water proof” are two very different things and that freezing rain soaked through that miracle fabric and formed a half inch of blast proof skin. People came from blocks away to see the ice sculpture as they always will when colossal lunacy is on display. When I could get them to stop laughing I got a full range of advice from friends and co-workers. “Try a hairdryer” they said. It’s minus twenty and I’m thinking “hairdryer?” . Where the hell do I get one that would dry off a Mammoth? The car sat there for days, a source of ridicule and embarassment that had me thinking…H-M-m-m …how about a gallon of gasoline and a match? The advice pilled up and I was beginning to think that was it for the winter…the car would come out in the spring.  And there I was sitting in the kitchen watching Lou Lou boil water for pasta when the light bulb went on in my head. Three hours and many pots of boiling water later I had my car back…had stashed that custom made, subdued grey, son-of-a-bitch, in the darkest corner of the basement (might still be there, even though we moved over ten years ago) and learned a most valuable lesson about Ottawa winters. When they say freezing rain…don’t put a cover on your car…stay indoors until it’s over…better still, try not to be here when it comes. Alas it’s too late to be elsewhere today. Could be worse…I could be in Haiti on Blue Monday watching that monster grinning at the cameras.

Well, yes I have cancer. Funny (not at all) how I managed to avoid putting those words together in a sentence for nearly four months…even though I knew. It started innocently enough in my case…like a peck on the cheek from full tilt monster. There was this little thing on my back…looked like a bite or a blood blister…didn’t hurt…didn’t itch…didn’t go away.  I checked it every week or so to see whether it would do something… get bigger maybe. After three weeks I got worried, not much, just a little. It was the beginning of summer and the sun was shining…I was riding my bike. The birds were singing, trees were greening, the ladies had hung up their heavy winter coats. ..so who wants to go to the clinic and ask about this little bite thing?. I did. Two basal cell carcinomas had popped up on my body in the past five years so even though this didn’t look like they did…I was past sixty-five heading for seven zero, I have fair skin and blonde hair and I’ve spent a lifetime in virtual and willful ignorance  about getting as much sun as Canada’s climate allows. The first basal cell was a frozen alarm clock that woke me up…stood me at attention and slapped willful ignorance out of my head. So here’s a tip…see any unusual spots on your body that don’t have legs or wings…that hang around for longer than they should (everybody gets a bite or two now and then) , it might be a good idea to see the nearest health care professional. I did. Now here’s the second tip. When they tell you not to worry “it’s probably nothing” and send you away, do not file it under “forget about it”. Go back…go back twice…be a pest…insist. Three perfectly good health care professionals were sure that it was nothing to worry about…tiny little thing. It was a melanoma and there’s a fifty/fifty chance that it will kill me within the next five years. It didn’t look like a stray bullet and if it was six inches to the left…I might not have seen it at all. You could argue that the clinic staff should have recognized what it was sooner…It pissed me off for a couple of weeks…but what? We can’t go back and start over…They did eventually do the biopsy and they jumped into serious mode with a treatment protocol that has been quick, courteous, professional and sensible. A surgeon was found within a month and I had two procedures within another month. That was two months ago and I’m having another operation tomorrow. In those three months I’ve learned more than I ever wanted to know about melanoma…in part from the oncologist who explained at length the relative merits of Interferon. I don’t want to diss the chemo route but his pitch on it for my situation was kind of like having a used car salesman telling me that a used pick up truck that was a year newer than my ten year old S.U.V. would get me a ten percent better chance of good gas mileage. And by the way…that’s a maybe that comes with a year of  having the flu. Not a year in which I would get the flu…A year in which I would wake up every morning with the flu…for a ten percent chance of better gas mileage. H-H-H-M-M-M. I think I may have to revisit that possibility at a later date.

My pals have been just plain fucking super. They are supportive, solicitous, concerned and there for me.  They keep track of my surgical dates, send me notes of encouragement and love. They make me cry and I’m proud to know all of them. BUT I’m not gone yet. I don’t want to sound terse or joke about this…their consideration and concern means more than I can repay… and at the same time it scares me a little. I wake up in those late nights of uncertainty and wonder if their care and concern means that I’m fading like a shadow.  Well, not yet at least.  I suppose the fact is that it could happen any time and in a lot of hideous ways. I’ve had a heart condition for more than a dozen years that I was convinced would be the taxi that took me to the other side. It may still. or I could slip off an icy curb…or a twenty pound Canada Goose could expire in mid flight…plummet in a perfect trajectory…smack me in that sweet spot between my helmet and my shirt collar while riding my bike…no…that is a little less likely. The point is that I’m not ignoring the fact that I have this cellular terrorist in residence…but I’m going to do my best to live my life as normally and with as much determination as I can manage for as long as I can. I expect that I will get sick…I expect that I’ll catch colds and have stomach problems just like everybody else…but I don’t want my friends to imagine that I’ve got one foot on the platform and the other on the train. Not yet….it’ll come…don’t know when. When it does I expect there will be time to do and say what we need to do and say . Until then I just want to say I love all of my pals….I love that they care and take the time to turn their thoughts my way. It is a precious gift that I appreciate so much…but for a while yet …let’s talk about the normal things, the weather,  vacations, things you’ve read, shows you’ve seen, the absurdity of politics, the misery of  poverty, the evil of greed and graft and the outrage of people dying in forlorn places for reasons written on personal agendas in glass towers. Lets talk about art….and love. Blues

That I was on a small ship…rocking wrong and making me sick.

That I had been shot in the stomach by an invisible bullet

that left no obvious wound but it hurt like hell.

That there are people…more than a dozen, standing in the street

talking about brown shoes and argyle socks.

That several hundred small stupid birds were lining up in the sky

waiting to arrive at my window

to sing out of tune at the top of their lungs.

That I had actually slept with Claire Du Bac when I had

the chance more than forty years ago.

That one of my legs is secretly shorter than the other

and little by little I have walked my life in a great

circle.

That I had a dog named Tippy who could talk to me.

That it rained so hard one day that whole parts of me

were washed away like sins in the River Jordan

and I woke up a much thinner person

though not narrow in any way.

That the obnoxious sound of telephones ringing rises into

the stratosphere and collects there like shards of

black ice.

That my left hand went to sleep and dreamed.

That I suddenly looked good in hats.

That I had been a soldier in several previous lives

to no particular avail.

That I was able to stand on my head without using my hands.

That politicians of all sorts gather in church basements every where

and talk about nothing important, wearing faces

from a birthday party for bad news.

We have an alarming tendency to overly complicate politics. Often we don’t recognize the simplicity of the fact that relationships between two or more people are politics unless you’re a peculiar kind of schizophrenic …in which case you can be a whole political debate alone with a mirror. The model for most civic politics is the lower grades of an average highschool. I would have said grade school but one can’t afford to offer excuses of true immaturity to some of the things these folks get up to so high school and puberty seem about the right intellectual age to work with. This doesn’t mean that the people involved are all adolescents…merely that the way in which they approach decision-making from election campaigns to street names to garbage collection pretty much highschool. When you consider that the training for most politicians is actually being one…you realize that by necessity the processes need to be as simple as possible to provide enough latitude for the successful campaigns of the occasional idiot with money who chooses to get elected. Idiots without money need not apply…they don’t get elected…they get hired. After a lifetime of observing the seemingly mystical pronouncements of politicians at all levels in my country I realizes that I was making the mistake of thinking that they actually knew what they were doing. In fact they’re just like the rest of us and “knowing what they’re doing” is a relative term. It’s possible to know what you’re doing today and have no idea what the impact will be tomorrow…or two weeks from now. It’s equally possible to have no idea what the impacts are in any direction. These days almost everyone has a tame expert or two or more to give some expensive perspective on things like implications. It’s quite a good gig…being one of these experts. You keep up to date on your field, read the research, dress appropriately,  host the correct social events and kiss the best placed anatomy parts and you should do well enough. The advice doesn’t have to be taken…or if taken will probably be deflected by other advice from other experts but you’ll want it to be taken seriously enough to let the politico know that he or she could not answer even the softest lob in your field with hitting you on the speed dial.  So much for experts.

What complicates politics is that there are too many politicians. Back in the day when life was worth more than a plugged nickel if a serious threat arose the people would send the politicians to the benches and call in the meanest bear in the woods and make him boss. Admittedly, getting rid of the guy was almost always a problem…unless you could find an even meaner bear in the woods. That seems to be the way that royal families get started. Alas, along came capitalism and the reign of money and we now have more politicians than fleas on a junk yard dog. We have so many that half of them are out of work if not out of gas. And they all talk at once. I’ve attended parliament , federal and provincial and I’ve attended city council meetings. I know these people often work long hard hours and they’re often dedicated, committed and conscientious people. But attend parliament just once and you’ll go home stunned. The hallowed halls of rich wood panelling and the rows of benches with padded seats…the speaker’s chair rising above the floor in majestic omnipotence are far and away more impressive than the jabbering juveniles occupying the place.

It’s our expectations that are at fault. We want to believe in the wisdom of those we elect while at the same time we want them to so much like us that even when they’re acting in their own self-interest, they’re also acting in ours. We don’t want to think that they could be corrupted by the power and wealth of big corporations or interest groups because we don’t like to think that we would be…Bullshit! of course we would. It doesn’t stop there though. A peculiar thing happens to politicians that has nothing to do with corruption and everything to do with the complexities of the problems confronting any level of government today. If one enters politics from business one is used to the types of problems confronting business and they can be daunting. Yet it’s a major mistake as we’ve seen over and over again for business-people-turned-politician to assume that the solutions from business will work as effectively in government. The number and range of perspectives, interests and concerns combined with the speed of technology and communication are what drives the political process into the boardrooms of consultants. By not understanding this we also can’t understand why our representatives don’t seem to be representing us. By not understanding this we lose faith in the politicians and eventually the political process. We become convinced that people who really are like us…who really can represent us…cannot be found or cannot get elected. There are certainly times when our political processes have been unduly influenced by powerful professional  lobbies who are not acting in our best interest but rather in the best interest of a profit margin or private agenda. One need only ask how long we had to live with the knowledge of the life threatening effects of tobacco or chemical pollutants while our politicians were just as aware as any of us…and did nothing. By doing nothing…by being influenced by the tobacco lobby for so long…they were complicit. They are complicit now and our disenchantment and dislocation from our political processes excuses their complicity. These are the failures of democracy.

Can we take on the lobbyists? Some activists say that we can and set out to tackle it in any way they can. I say …more power to them…but I’m thinking the answer to one lobby is not another lobby. It seems to me that we need to start lower down the food chain. We need to look in our local communities and educate ourselves on the issues and concerns. Could be the garbage pick up…snow removal… local policing. We already know more about these things than we realize…we just don’t want to bore ourselves or each other by talking about it. But if we do manage to talk about it a bit our knowledge increases…our opinions mature. we discover just what it is that pisses us off. Then we’re ready to help the local politicians make decisions that reflect our reality. I say… all power to us yokels!