Author: catchmydrift.blog

I've had a career as an elementary school teacher. During that time I wrote for newspapers and magazines. Writing is a part of my daily life: It's a way to understand my thoughts, reach out to the world, offer an opinion and record my passage. I take joy in words as other artists express themselves through dance, acting, sculpture or paint. A single word can evoke powerful visions. I see life as a celebration. Like all humans I am complex and curious even while some have called me conventional. I follow my father's belief that everything can be awesome, if you choose it to be. I'm a work in progress, just like this blog, now with 300 postings of thought and ideas. Social media, like pen palling or ham radio connections of yore, can be a positive way to build that great, vast realm that is human consciousness. Leave me a comment if you are so moved or Substack https://mrrobertthompson.substack.com/ or on Bluesky @wh0n0z.bsky.social

Re: Anxiety

A week ago, I had an episode of high anxiety. It woke me up; A feeling of dread. There was nothing imminently dangerous. I lay still, controlling my breathing until I fell back to sleep. And now, just last night, my bride comforted me in the dark when I woke her with a vocal exclamation loud enough to wake the neighbourhood. I had had a feeling of someone, a body, falling on me. My voice gave a “Huh!”grunt. It was an affront!

When does worry merge with the high traffic lane of anxiety? I can be fretful but I’m not necessarily anxious. With all the stressors in this present time it is easy to be filled with angst. Yet that is what makes a feeling of panic so confounding: When there is no real monster at the door it feels stupid for being fearful. Feeling threatened is different from being threatened. I have no reticence to talk about the fear within because feeling scared is real. Any counsellor will tell you that if you feel it then it exists. Trouble is you can’t grab this particular monster and wrestle it to the ground.

There is debate in our community over a school program allowing police to be present, within the halls of learning, serving as liaison officers. Such programs have been in existence before and are still active in other municipalities. The trouble is that many students are learning from other sources that police officers are not to be trusted. Media continually has news of armed forces going beyond the notion of serving and protecting. The appearance of an authoritative state makes me and others nervous. Thus, the anxiety in the school community is justified. We all have a role to play in educating children how to interact confidently with strangers. It’s not the job of someone wearing a badge, a protective vest and carrying a gun. That’s not a comforting presence, it’s intimidating.

Protesters and police. Liberals and Conservatives. Workers and Rich Folk. We are a class society and school has been cancelled. We have trouble getting useful information because we are bombarded with manufactured truth. Science and Education are no longer respected. Everyone is choosing a slogan and getting it tattooed on their skin or printed on an item of clothing. Our self labelling lowers the anxiety level because now we feel defined and less alone with our thoughts of impending doom. Still, trying to decide which side you’re on or who to vote for or where to shop creates tension that we may be taking for granted.

There are valid reasons to be a nervous Nellie or Norman in our stratified culture. Our technology puts us all up close and personal to global struggles. On a good day, a day when all things seem smoothly running, that’s sometimes the day when I suddenly feel surrounded by doubt, then doubt feeds worry and worry brings anxiety. I’m internalizing a vast amount of shared grief.

Good thing I have someone to lean on, when I’m not strong.

Re: Break

Break and its homonym Brake can give me trouble when I am writing. I can imagine ESL teachers using this pair of words as examples in a humorous writing assignment. And sometimes the meaning within the sentence can give me pause to wonder why a third word hasn’t been invented to provide a better illustration.

Take Breakneck Speed for example. These two words clearly describe a perilous situation requiring brakes to be applied before physical damage occurs. “Gimme a break!” Is something shouted in exasperation, but is the person asking for time out or for someone to halt the forward momentum of the monologue as in “Shut up!” A work stoppage is not a break from routine but an effective strike action to put brakes on unfair labour practises. If someone  breaks a dish while cleaning up there is no R&R involved, just more work. Why does destroying something and taking a vacation get described by using the same word, same spelling: Break!

When you have broken a promise damage has been done and emotional repairs are needed. Perhaps your lifestyle, when it comes to your relationships, has been too fast and loose and you need to apply the brakes before more trouble comes your way. When it comes to romantic friendships we all know that breaking up is hard to do. In that case, maybe taking a break from normal routine is the best course of action before it’s forced upon you.

I’ve shared this conundrum of two spellings, too many meanings with others and they think I’m rather overreacting. When I was working on the details of this blog page I asked my 95 year old special mom what she thought. She is a whiz at spelling so wasn’t challenged by my ideas, just a bit exasperated by the reason behind my niggling point. She chewed on it, literally working through the rest of her breakfast, put down her utensils and calmly said, “That’s just the way it is.”

In Thunder Bay, Ontario the residents celebrate Spring Break, not by travelling to Florida or Mexico but by gathering in around Port Arthur to watch the winter ice break. The floes come apart making a noisy, metallic, crackling sound: Like a cross between pinewood in a fire and a waste metal recycling plant crushing cars. It’s big news every year since many container ships have had to put the brakes on their movement up the St.Lawrence River.

“Hold your horses!” I suddenly imitated a grumpy Abe Simpson bellowing to his son Homer. In my imagination I’m saying this to myself to put the brakes on this hamster wheel of thought. I then see a donkey, stubbornly taking a break and braying about his plight carrying loads so heavy he might suffer a broken bone. I picture this cartoon mule with his scrawny neck extended, and a speech bubble above his head, not saying HeeHaw but “Braaayyk!”

‘Brayk’, a new all-purpose word, meaning; ‘I’m tired please stop’. Take that, Spell Check!

Re: York

I’ve learned to pay attention to symbols. I don’t always know their meaning at the time they present themselves but I get a certain pause that tells me to look again. I wonder if I am getting a message from my future self or simply a memory of something. Maybe something like a time capsule where the thought was packaged for future viewing only.

Anyway it might explain why I woke this morning to a nursery rhyme about a grand old Duke of York who had 10,000 men. When I came down for breakfast I was captivated by the way my bride had hung her sun hat over a chair post that had a cotton New Yorker book bag tangling. I continued to stare at the story created by hat and bag and chair. A memory came; of rushing to see my father after learning he was taken to a hospital in Maine. The journey required me to fly from England and catch a Grey Hound bus leaving from downtown New York at 2 in the morning. This mega-city was awake, bustling even, as I sped on foot through Times Square towards the subterranean depot.

I buttered my toast humming a medley of songs about the city that never sleeps: Barry Manilow told of how he survived by keeping the New York City rhythm in his life. Rod Stewart harmonized in a melancholic ode to a girl he hopes he’ll see tonight on a downtown train. Neil Sedaka chimes in to say he loves the place he calls his home. My breakfast ends with me tap dancing with Gene Kelly and his pals in a scene from On The Town; “The people ride in a hole in the ground.”

My English roots mean I’ve eaten sizzling hot Yorkshire Pudding (roast beef is a meager meal without its presence pooled in gravy on the plate). I’ve even been to the old Roman City of York with its magnificently preserved Cliffords Keep and the majestic cathedral York Minster. The latter construction is a massive structure that dominates the city yet the walls have carvings that give the building the lightness of lace. I feel a pull to both Yorks; the old and the new. I would like to live in either city to resolve the emotional tug that comes from anything York-ish.

Picking up the latest New Yorker magazine, I linger with the manuscript in my hands, looking at the cover art, hoping it holds the promise of unravelling the mystery that is symbolism. My love of magazines notwithstanding (the power and beauty I find in words written there) yet this magazine is a flimsy structure despite the heft of the title page font: New Yorker. “This has meaning”

Perhaps I am crossing borders to my Angle ancestors when I speak the word York as in some mystic chant to summon images of hunts for wild boar. The symbolism that draws me to that city; a geographical place but more than that. I wonder if there is something coded in my DNA.

Re: Photo

My bride has a new found passion. She’s been loving her cell phone and its photographical features. She goes to a photo club once a week to share her work and gain knowledge about the art form. I love it when she shares her homework with me; discussing the theme for the week’s assignments, showing me her latest on-screen captures, scrolling through the dozens of shots of charmingly photographable subjects while deciding which one has just the right composition.

I love the Kodachrome Song by Paul Simon; “makes you feel all the world’s a sunny day!” The lyrics conjure a picture of happy times. Times of the past seen through the lens of a camera. But before we get too sentimental let’s remember that those cameras, not the ones now compressed into our digital devices, used to be lugged around by a shoulder strap that dug a groove in your neck. I’ve owned all kinds of photographic devices. I started with one of those little brown boxes called Brownies. The film was expensive and therefore precious. I remember counting down the twelve shots, one by one until I turned the roll in to a developer who would give me single photos, on magical paper, that would remind me of how much fun I had at the beach. Back then, I kept the scalloped edge photos in a biscuit tin just like my mom had once kept her sepia coloured treasures of ancient family poses.

Photofinishing is not just what horses do in a close race. My former father-in-law used to have his own darkroom, thereby expressing his creativity while saving film processing fees. He died before the digital age but he would have had all the photoshop style software and apps to go with his hobby for sure. As I got older I was happy to transfer all the heritage slides onto a flash drive as a Christmas gift for my now grown three sons. Memories they can share over social media platforms. Pictures that are now part of The Cloud; that awesome computer photo and data bank that makes my head spin: “it’s a wonder I can think at all.”

Along with my first child I purchased a second-hand SLR Canon camera. I became the Family Photographer, with all the honours and responsibilities that came with that title. The device itself weighed several pounds and as I collected lenses and filters I needed a small suitcase to carry all the equipment. I call this time My Slide Period since I felt I was becoming a true artist of film. Mounds of slides required a filing system. A projector and screen were purchased for family fun. I entertained guests who would always seem polite and interested. Not!

My passionate wife is learning new skills and experiencing the world in a creative way, all because of a device that lets her send a message plus photos to people anywhere in the world. There’s always a new improved IPhone, promising astounding photo features.

“I can read the writing on the wall.”

Re: Worst

I had an incident involving insurance and it made me spiral to thoughts of worst case scenarios. As clouds of worsening doubt gathered about, I found surprising comfort in ranking the worst moments in my life in one paragraph. The effort convinced me that my current situation was not that bad. I just had to get a grip.

Making a list of tragedies and traumas sounds depressing but it did offer me a sense of control. Control can sometimes bring a certain calmness. If you like order in your life then putting things down on paper offers perspective. The list I made that day was revised several times. That’s a cool thing about judgement; our sense of a moment’s impact more or less changes as we gain the wisdom of hindsight. I call it My Best Worst List. This summary list became a therapeutic accounting of the crappy moments that I wish hadn’t happened, but did.

My first wife died of cancer when we were both only 50 years old. That was entered as the worst on my self-therapy list. I suffered clinical depression 7 years before that, making it second on my collection of lifetime worst events. A simple surgery went wrong so I had a hellish night in an emergency room. A family trip was once aborted due to a flat tire that nearly killed us all (I was driving and I still have chest pains from the memory of that experience). My sister ending her life prematurely is on my list. I had a best friend who bailed on a European hitchhiking trip AND being my best man at my wedding, which was a total bummer. In grade nine I got the one/two punch of my parents separating then we moved to a city AND I had to go to a new high school. Too cruel!

Bad things don’t have to happen before we know what the good times feel like. Pain is pain in the moment. Time heals if we don’t focus on our suffering. Feeling low is normal and it doesn’t have to be linked to one happening. Identifying something on a scale of bad to worse is the first step to understanding the bigger picture of your life. For me, sometimes it was a matter of encouraging myself to hang on for-one-more-day. On the worst days I felt lucky to have someone provide the guidance to see the way ahead, out of the gloom. Humour helps at the right time, delivered in a positive way. Silliness tends to lift me up before things get worser.

A ruined birthday party can be the worst thing in the whole world for a four year old. You grow older. Tragedies mount. You learn from the school of hard knocks. It helps to share your story, comparing war wounds over a beer and liverwurst lunch. You can laugh with a soul mate while discussing the value of worsted wool over synthetic fibre. Always remember; things could be worse! I’m resolved to leave the past where it belongs.

Re: Quest

Back in the day when I wrote for my local newspaper, The Timmins Daily Press, I would often make a request of my readers to take time to wonder. My column was filled with questions about life and all of its curiosities. It was my writerly responsibility, I pompously thought at the time, to encourage some mental adventuring amongst the Tim Horton’s coffee crowd.

In my youth I thought often of going on quests. In school I loved to learn of the seafarers who cast off the mooring lines of their home port to seek out riches in foreign lands. Education in the fifties and sixties was all about studying heroes who cruised the oceans looking for new found lands where resources were just ripe for the taking. I loved looking at reproductions of the maps used and routes charted by Prince Henry the Navigator, Magellan, Vasco de Gama, Drake and Cook. Textbooks of my time as a student contained scant information regarding the indigenous folk whose presence would be dismissed by these European explorers, as one might swat a bug while sipping Pina coladas at poolside.

We only learned about the upside to adventuring in history. Kings and Popes suggested that our Earth and Seas were a place to play, to conquer, to dominate. The world was ours for the taking and if anyone else was on the beach when we landed they’d better step aside unless they wanted to be part of the servant class within our colony. White English folk were good at this questing for things that already were part of another’s culture. But the swarthy Portuguese and Spanish had their say in their day. French and Dutch also sought the resources of distant lands without questioning whether the indigenous had an opinion. Early Norse folk were romanticized as Vikings in tales of discovery but their questing objective was also narrow; land was the prize! Those inhabitants with foreign coloured skin were merely chattel to be enslaved.

The fictional character Don Quixote as written by Miguel de Cervantes went on a quest; an impossible dream to right the wrongs of man. I feel his mission was more about searching for his inner compass than vanquishing evil but the idea may be the same. Watching a documentary on rock climber and media sensation Sasha DiGiulian made me wonder what motivates some folk to do risky things. Questers have always desired to be the first, the fastest or the most innovative. Creatives also can be defined as testing the boundaries of mental and physical forms.

I hope all my grandkids become adventurers. I want them to be brave and explore the limits of their world, perhaps expanding the realms of existence for all humankind. When I was a teacher I used to love it when one of my students discovered a fresh way of thinking or doing or being. Questing can be a wondrous pastime. Life is about finding a place for yourself, not a specific geographical location or a plot of land, but discovering your unique purpose.

Re: Insurance

The insurance business is an industry that depends on our fears & doubts to drive its operating model. Buying insurance is clearly an example of damned if you do/damned if you don’t. Either way it’s hard to come out of any exchange/interaction with this business without feeling like a chump.

Seven years ago my wife and I bought a new car. It was a great deal until we sat down with the fellow in charge of wrapping up the sale. He convinced me to put another two grand into insuring the purchase against future repairs. “For peace of mind.” he asserted. “You would want to protect your investment.” He said this money could be viewed as a hedge against accidental repair costs. At the end of seven years I could get my money back if I didn’t make a claim. I signed the paperwork while foreseeing a future out of my control. It was a trap!

I’m compulsive when it comes to paperwork. I’ve spent plenty of time assembling documents, affidavits, testimonials for a variety of purchases gone wrong in my life. Air travel reimbursements, plumbing conflicts, health care overpayments, warrantee disputes, car accident confusions all have a file in my trusty steel cabinet. But the devil is in the details. During those seven years my wife and I had lots of distractions, both good and bad. I ended up misreading the refund date amidst the fine print. I called the insurance company to be told I had missed my window for a refund. But I had extenuating circumstances! They were sorry but they were bound by their policy. I stewed some more. I kicked myself for betting on a negative outcome. I said to myself, “I knew it!”, so many times I lost count. I had to find a way to forgive myself for not being on top of my affairs.

In my country there are laws against NOT having home or auto insurance. Insurance agents promote buying insurance as a smart thing while making profits on our distrust of a product’s viability. We are advised to believe the machine we buy will not last, the device might be a factory lemon or, worse yet, the thing we have spent our hard earned money on will get stolen. If you are insured against loss/damage or theft there will be no worries, or so we’re made to believe. Sounds like a smart thing to do, until you have to make a claim and then you wished you had read all the fine print.

In principle I want value for my dollar but I don’t wish to put a price on my being. Life insurance strikes me as just plain evil. I don’t want to think that a death settlement would be compensation for my lack of presence. I know I am approaching my expiry date but my body is not insurable in the sense that my loss can be put on some corporate ledger. Insurance doesn’t provide balance. Keep your policies! My value is intrinsic.

Re: Evil

Like most people, I choose to hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil. But it’s hard these days not to at least ponder the use of this word. Evil seems to be all around us right now. It’s written about in our newspapers, it’s demonstrated on our nightly news, it pops up on our social media sites. I think evil holds some kind of attraction yet I am puzzled as to why.

One genre of film or book I least like is horror. I shy away from tales of the bad deeds that humans do onto others. My recreational viewing and reading is a search for the best we humans can be while overcoming the restrictions of existence. Stories of evil are prevalent in any historical age and no nation is immune from showing inhumanity in policy or deed. Sometimes we Canadians get sanctimonious when it comes to our presence on the world stage yet one only needs to turn to our government’s record regarding the treatment of indigenous populations to put us in our place.

Evil lives in people’s minds. Ignorance can be manipulated by someone to promote and nurture an evil intention. Evil is present whenever I think I can use someone else to attain my goals. Use can quickly turn to abuse if the result of a personal or professional transaction is not satisfactory. Beyond the individual, entire community power structures can be created to maintain the status quo. Society quickly becomes a Them against Us scenario. The abusive power invokes fear through threats and intimidations. An evil power thrives when the community is uneducated. Even majority populations can be cowed into believing things that are not true. False narratives become integral to the structure of Evil.

Prejudice forms part of the root of Evil: That creeping thought that enters the mind suggesting that you, or we, are better than those others, over there. Evil grows. It’s an egregious event to see and hear folks suddenly turn against each other. Sides are chosen by leaders spouting rhetoric that fans the hatred. If you are not with us then you might be considered stupid, or worse, like animals. The road to expressions of indecency towards our fellow creatures is not winding, nor is it as short a distance as we might wish to believe. Thoughts of defence, turn to acts of revenge, turn to denial of the very existence of the other, all too quickly.

Blame is cloaked evil. Many could be named as prophets of hell: Hitler is often invoked yet there are others who have taken a leadership role in acts of inexcusable terror throughout history. Measuring the severity of the crime against humanity gets us a list of who to blame but doesn’t absolve those who clapped, who made deals, who saluted, who perpetrated the policy, who cast their vote. Few can say they had no role. When the finger pointing is done we are still not absolved of responsibility.

Ideologically, we are no better than our neighbour, even if someone tries to convince us it’s true.

Re: Music

I like movies that contain music, subtle or overt. I once rented a VHS tape called Evita starring Madonna and the desk clerk asked me if I was aware that the film was a musical. My look of surprise made her ask, “Do you still want it?” Apparently the tape had been returned many times because folks were put off by the fact that all the actors sang something. Apparently taste can be found in ears as well as on the tongue.

I get hijacked by music. I don’t choose to have music playing while I work or fuss around the house. Music finds me when I’m going about my business though. In a store it will follow me as I look for blue jeans. I’ll chew my food in rhythm to a restaurant’s playlist. I get the music in me despite having no musical training. My musician friends are amazed when I answer their skill testing questions. Instrumentalists are artists I admire enough to pay money to watch them perform. I’ll sometimes linger by a street performer because the air itself seems somewhat different as it blends with the melody. It sparkles!

Imagine the first gasps of wonder as ancestors in caves created vocalizations or tapping sounds on bones and stuff! My perfect world has people singing or humming all the time. Paul Simon was once asked his greatest thrill at being famous. He said he is always delighted when he passes someone on the street murmuring one of his songs. Music has been described as a soundtrack to our lives and that’s probably why I get earworms of melodies that imbed themselves in my head and just won’t shake loose until I hear another tune. Who doesn’t find themselves joining in when they hear a familiar lyric from a car radio: Home where my thought’s escapin’. Home where my music’s playin’. Home, where my love lies waitin’. Silently for me.

Music is said to soothe a savage beast or breast. Speaking of which, our inner child remembers a mother’s lullaby while being fed and cradled, so we naturally associate sound with comfort and joy. But sometimes music incites when it’s linked to parades and protest. I’ll never forget marching behind a bagpipe with my teacher colleagues during strike action against our government. Anarchy can have a soundtrack too.

I may not have a cultured musicality or practised musicianship. My only music lesson was a month of violin. I’ve winced when hearing snobbish comments at a concert venue: Being a wine connoisseur is one thing but music is for everyone. Ranking of a musical piece is not a requirement for me, appreciation is key. I have trouble with some genres like Rap and my easy listening preference tends towards Folk but I love being surprised by sound. The long retired television series ‘Glee’ enthralled me. Opera may be tedious at times but it gets my respect for being the origin of the staged musical. Music in any form is to be lived.

I got rhythm. I got music. I got my gal. Who could ask for anything more!

Re: Dominion

The bible tells me so: Gen. 1 Verses 26 to 31 “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” But what if I don’t want to!

To have dominion is to control stuff and I believe it is wrong to dominate other living things. For some folk their god is all powerful, so we can be too. But really, as a hominid, I’m just another creeping thing that creepeth over the earth. The state of the planet right now only proves my point: If we had been put in charge of this place we’ve sure enough done a terrible job of it. If we were made in an image of god then we haven’t been creative enough in return. We haven’t been good stewards.

During the controlling phase of my life; when I felt things worked better by imposing order and good government, I had a small bonsai tree. Its roots were constricted like the feet of Chinese girls of ages past. Its limbs were shaped by twists of wire. Its growth was restricted by judicious use of fertilizer. I wasn’t a good pet keeper and this plant did not flourish. In the film Trees, And Other Entanglements, director Irene Taylor tells us of a famous Bonsai artist and others who attempt to represent their views of how plants should be shaped to serve our needs. It left me feeling a bit creepy.

Let’s face it, as a species we didn’t think through the whole industrial revolution period. Our machines have laid waste to the eden from whence we came. Now we find we must manage other species before the tipping point of their extinction. In university I studied for a degree in Fish and Wildlife Biology. Many of the courses described methods of farming multiple species so that these living resources could be effectively used to feed, clothe and house the ever growing and expanding human population. We were being trained to be efficient dominators of the environment’s flora and fauna. We studied how deer ate, so they could be fed better and then be hunted. We studied the salmon’s cycles so they would grow prosperous before they were netted. We studied forest growth so that we could improve tree yield before it could be harvested. We were given the licence to dominate every creature, animal or vegetable, to serve our own needs. We still fell short. We failed to be taught how to live with, rather than lord over, the Earth Garden.

Our colonizers, The British aristocracy, once ruled this land calling it The Dominion of Canada. The Crown still holds power in our affairs. The label has fallen out of favour but citizens may still proclaim allegiance during formal community events. I hope the age of possession is over. I don’t want us to be the master of all that we survey.