The Memory Lingers On

It seems impossible that a year has already passed since the world lost Wayne Dyer.

Turns out we didn’t lose him at all. Oh, his compostable container is long gone, but his wisdom and humour remain. His family has seen fit to continue updating his F***book page, delivering daily reminders and heartfelt affirmations culled from the impressive vault he compiled during his lifetime. Most mornings, Ter will rev up her device and I’ll say, “What’s Dr Wayne got for us today?”

There is always something. Sometimes it’s a repeat. Okay, it’s always a repeat, but sometimes I’ve never heard it before. It’s like he’s still with us.

I suppose it’s natural for a group of people who work together, but whenever someone in my office loses a loved one, a card does the rounds for everyone to sign. “Thinking of you and your family at this difficult time” is a popular sentiment. By the time a sympathy card reaches me, it’s been said a dozen times with different words, so how can what I say make a difference to the bereaved?

I’ve made it a practice to express condolences accordingly, but to add something hopeful for the future without a loved one in it. “We are never without those who live in our hearts.” “Keep good memories close to help you through your loss.” Things like that. I don’t know if it matters in the big picture, but I hope it puts a positive light on a painful loss.

Assuming it is a painful loss. Family dynamic aren’t the same with every clan. I have to be careful that I don’t offend—I was once scolded for suggesting in a wedding card that the bride keep a separate bank account—but my intention is never to cause harm or be disrespectful.

Of course loss must be recognized. Grief must be acknowledged in the moment. People are good at the immediate en masse, so I leave that to others and set my sights on a hopeful outcome down the road. Nothing lasts forever, right? Not life, not death, and, one hopes, not grief.

With love,

Rigged

The last thing I expected on vacation was to have to get used to a new computer. It almost figures that, at 10:15 a.m. on my first official day (weekends don’t count), I booted the writing rig ... and nothing happened.

Strangely, I did not freak out. I called to Ter:”My computer’s dead.”

From the living room: “What?”

“My computer’s dead. I just pushed the button and nothing happened.”

She appeared immediately in my doorway. “Nothing?”

“Nope.” I jabbed the button a couple more times, just to be sure. Still nothing.

“We’ll have to get you a new one,” she declared.

I agreed—but this did not stop us from sitting down at my desk (she in the chair, me on the floor) and staring at the old box for a few minutes as if waiting for it to resurrect itself.

A brand new writing box is unnecessary. A used one suits me fine. I only use it for writing, so no need for fancy software, a ton of memory, or an über-graphics capability. My first one was bought new in 1994. The second one was inherited after an office upgrade. The third and fourth were both bought used from a local place that refurbishes as well as builds new rigs, and supplies the parts if you want to build your own. It’s an odd place, populated by geeks who are awkward with people, especially girls, but the product is usually sound.

As we were going into town anyway, we left a little early and dropped by the shop. It doesn’t take long to pick a new writing computer. All I need is a desktop PC with some version of Windows and MS Office. Box No. 5 is a step up by running Windows 7; its predecessor ran XP, so I’m finally caught up to the twenty-first century. After a brief chat with the kid behind the counter, who ran a test boot to ensure that the box I bought was indeed working, I produced my plastic and set off with my prize.

We run Office 2010 on the big rig, but have neither a backup disk (we downloaded it from the internet) nor the rackinfrackin product code that would have enabled me to burn a copy. I had it once, but at this late date you must be kidding. So, back to the shop, where I’d noticed a copy of Office 2007 for home use under glass. Bought that, and another mouse since the one I had wasn’t USB slot-friendly, then returned home to finish the set up.

Starbucks is not the evil empire, my friends. Micro Soft is. Installation was a breeze, but the Activation Wizard appeared and refused to let me go further without verifying the software. Oh, I could do it later, but be forewarned: after 24 boots, “some features may not be available to you”. I couldn’t believe it (yet I could): my own computer was threatening to foil me if I didn’t comply! $%&%#&*%# Bill Gates!

Ter brought me my phone and wisely left the room. I dialled the 1-800 number and got Siri’s boyfriend, who walked me through the eight-part activation and confirmation sequence. You’d better believe I wrote it all down for future reference! There’s no point in stroking out over it, I know. What really matters is that I’m up and running. I spent the next hour or so configuring my defaults and setting up my files, then shut everything down—including myself—for the night.

I was up, however, at 6:30 this morning. Guess I needed some quiet time to wake up the newbie and see if my default Word settings stuck. (They didn’t.) I’ve reset them and hope they’ll stay around now that I’ve actually written something using the new template. I am also planning to write a completely new story while I get familiar with an unfamiliar system.

Only it’s not unfamiliar at all. Now my writing computer mirrors my work computer and the similarity is so unsettling that I chose to switch up the colours just to remind myself that this computer means fun!

John the Divine

The father of my unborn children is playing in Vancouver tonight. Ter asked me if I wanted to go—the timing was right to make it a fab birthday gift—but after the briefest hiccup when my heart rate spiked, I reluctantly declined.

Of course I’d love to see the band. They’re my all time good time band, and Nile Rodgers is opening for them, but I’ve reached the stage where the peripheral hassles of a concert in Vancouver exceed the joy of being there. Paying the ransom to get off the rock, finding a hotel at the height of gouging season, fighting big city traffic—ugh. The adventure is no longer fun.

Besides, last time the boys were in town, I almost got into a fistfight with the twit beside me. She and her string of stupid girlfriends kept tripping to the washroom during the show, resulting in an increased flailing that finally obscured so much of my sightline I had to elbow her out of the way. I won that one, but the residual remorse of being pushed that far has lingered. I didn’t regret the elbow. I regretted that it was necessary. And if any band is going to attract a gaggle of stupid girls, it’s Duran Duran.

So tonight, I’m running a concert DVD (not sure which one yet; I have most of them) while they play live across the strait. Tomorrow, I’ll pull the set list off the internet and burn a CD of it so I’ll have the recorded version—not live, but close enough—of the gig. In time, one hopes, some form of the tour will be released on DVD and I’ll add it to the collection. It’ll be worth having because one thing is certain: they will play songs from their most recent album, sprinkled among classics arranged in new ways. I’ve always said the cool thing about a Duran Duran concert is that you know what you’re going to get, just not how you’re going to get it.

During a recent interview with CBC Radio, John told the story of remarking to Nick Rhodes that none of the current Top Ten features a conventional bass, to which Rhodes drolly replied, “Let me introduce you to the (something or other) synthesizer.” The same sort of thing occurred in 2007, when they hired Timbaland and Nate Hill to produce Red Carpet Massacre—these guys are known for running bass samples through a synthesizer, so JT came to work on the first day and had to ask the question: “Hey, what am I going to do on this record?” Genius that he is, he figured it out. His instinct has made him one of the best players in the biz (no bias here!), so the bass on RCM does more than set the rhythm. It’s actually part of the melody.

He loves his bass guitars, but he has embraced the new technology and now plays a synth bass for a few tracks onstage. I know: I saw it myself in 2007, after I slammed the girl next door back into her seat.

“Dark Side Light”

Ru Note: When I posted this photo on F***book a few weeks ago, Nicole commented that she sensed an imminent writing exercise. I hadn’t planned on one, but since she mentioned it, here it is:

If you heard the boom, you probably didn’t know what it was. I didn’t; not until the stars faded and I found myself speeding along the same street in different light.

Familiar ground helped as my brain adjusted to unfamiliar details. For one thing, the sky was blue. It took me another two blocks, racing through busy intersections, to notice the hood stretched out before me was silver. More than silver. The mirror-bright finish was pure, solid chrome—and as soon as the sun’s white-hot reflection ricocheted into my eyes, I knew for sure what was wrong.

Or was it right?

I peeled around an unexpected corner and stopped the car. My heart continued to pound, fuelled on adrenaline and the thrill of the … chase? Was I the hunter or the hunted?

Only one way to find out.

I sat behind the wheel, squinting in the glare off my car’s opposite-of-onyx hood, and wondered if Brise had come through, too.

It was a chilling thought.

Voodoo Medicine Man (4)

how the wrist grounding point feels!

There are four main “grounding” points in acupuncture: one between the first and second (or is it the second and third?) toes in the top of each foot, one in the soft spot between the thumb and forefinger on the top of one hand, and the fourth between the tendons in the underside of the opposite wrist. This last point is a particularly shallow spot and tricky to hit; if I didn’t trust my voodoo medicine man implicitly, I would never ever have gone there the first time. He tells me it’s important and (I don’t know why) I believe him. Our compostable containers may generate their own current, but matter is bound by physical law, and one of the dandies is that electricity should be grounded or bad things can happen.

Anyway, once placed, the points are activated in the same manner as the lug nuts on a tire: top left, lower right, lower left, top right. My guy tries to spare me as much as possible, so we always get the shallow wrist point over with first.

The first time this point was activated, a small star exploded in my palm. More than a mere carpet shock but less than a lightning bolt, it was so intense that my thumb and two fingers were numb through the next three points. Adding insult to injury, my guy likes to shake them up after twenty minutes, giving each point a little twist to keep the energy humming. I’m pleased to report that the intensity of this little point hasn’t gone supernova in some time, though it remains worthy of a summoning breath before it’s activated.

Last visit, my voodoo doctor set about placing the grounding points—but this time, he reached to start with my right wrist. I gave him a quizzical look and said, “We usually do this one on the left.”

He caught himself at the same time. “It’s the right wrist on a male patient,” he told me.

I could have said, “Gee, thanks,” but I find the subject fascinating so chose to pursue the line accordingly. “Really?”

“Yes. Right on male, left on female.”

The human body is a universe unto itself. I pondered this in silence for a second, until he followed up with something that had me howling from more than the zap of an activated acu point:

“I don’t know how it would work on a trans-gender patient.”

Food Porn IX

“Whopper Wednesday”

Remember the Pepsi Challenge? Folks were asked to choose between two colas whose labels were hidden. Those who chose Pepsi got on TV and those who chose Coke were never heard from again.

An impromptu malt ball challenge was recently held at work. It came up as a result of the salt/sugar snackies I put out for my co-workers each day—there is always a bowl of chips, cheezies or pretzels, and a smaller bowl of fruit chews, chocolate or gummies. I try to accommodate preferences, but one day I put out my favourite Maltesers and caused a controversy.” These aren’t as good as Whoppers,” my ungrateful minion declared. “Whoppers are better.”

“You mean the cheapo crap malt balls from when we were kids?” I asked, duly offended.

“Yeah,” she replied. She made a face. “These are too oily and not malty enough.”

That’s stupid, I thought. According to my palate, Maltesers are light, crunchy, and plenty malty. “We should do a challenge,” my minion suggested.

Damn straight. Confident of a landslide Malteser victory, I set about preparing the test lab. Two identical bowls. An equal number of malt balls in each. Shiny, uniform Maltesers on the left, muddy cheapo Whoppers on the right. On appearance alone, the Maltesers would win. My minion and I invited three people in our division to take the challenge.

All three liked the muddy cheapo Whoppers better, but my malt ball motto is “never say die.”

Time to expand the target audience.

I knew for a fact that my tea fairy would side with me, so off we went to her corner of the floor. When she wasn’t at her desk, we pigeon-holed the co-op student and asked her to take the challenge instead.

She picked the Whopper.

My tea fairy Treena rounded the corner. “You missed the challenge!” my minion crowed.

Bewildered and despairing at a missed opportunity for treats, Treena looked at me. “What challenge?”

“Maltesers versus Whoppers,” I replied.

She scoffed. “That’s no challenge. Maltesers are better.”

Yes! High-five, Treena!

My minion folded her arms. “Sore loser.”

“Not really,” I replied. “Since everyone prefers the cheapo crappy malt balls, it won’t cost me so much to feed y’all.”

But sometimes the kids eat what Mum likes because Mum likes it and she doesn’t care about them. A few weeks later, I put out Maltesers. My minion popped one and rudely interrupted my conversation with the office manager. “Hey!” she exclaimed. “These are the losers!”

I arched a high brow. “You mean Maltesers? So they are.”

Her brows lowered. “Even though the majority of people prefer Whoppers?”

“And no one has ever gone broke underestimating the taste of the general public,” I retorted.

I may go broke trying to elevate the taste of my public, though. It’s a hard thing to admit defeat, so any malt balls I’ve put out lately have been Maltesers.

Both Eyes Blind (Part II)

After my eye exam, I walked out of the doctor’s office and into a blaze of full summer sun, amplified a zillion times because my pupils were cranked to the max and my vintage Transition lenses barely darken at all anymore.

Augh!

Literally blind, eyes streaming despite the lame shade of my hand, I bumbled my way back to work by cutting through malls and the View Street parkade. Gaining the sanctity of my office, I immediately dimmed the lights. I sat in the dark for a few minutes, then decided to post the eyeball pic on my F***book page to make my misery selectively public.

Co-workers started coming to see how I was doing. Our office manager stood silhouetted in my doorway and asked if I recognized her voice. “I’m blind, not deaf!” I snapped, trying not to laugh. My program cohort told me that my eyes were creeping her out and maybe I should just go home. “Can’t,” I replied. “I have a coffee date in an hour.”

Surely my pupils will relax by then.

Wrong-o. The only reason I got to the café alive was by falling in with a gang of tourists as they crossed the street. I stayed with them down the block to where my coffee buddy stood on the corner, waving like a lunatic when she spotted my work clothes in the shorts-and-tank crowd. I don’t remember much about the conversation except that it distracted me from how frikking bright everything was, and when just before we parted, I leaned in to ask if my pupils looked any smaller. She peered close, then gave a rueful smile and shook her head. Great. My return route was directly into the sun. Walking downtown with your eyes almost completely closed—actually, my left eye was completely closed—is hazardous without the added bonus of blurred vision. At least I didn’t bump into anything, and even as I blundered in the same general direction as the traffic, I was clinically amazed at how white the world appeared. The only colours in evidence were the rainbow rim of every globular shape in my path. Honestly, it was like a grand mal Horner’s episode! (Ru note: when the syndrome kicks in, my vision goes a little warped and blurry. It’s like looking at light through a prism. It doesn’t last long and, more importantly, it’s not painful.)

Back in the sanctuary of my shadowed office, computer work was out of the question. This did not stop me from coaching our office manager through how to upload documents to a Sharepoint site or IMing Ter to let her know how I was doing. I finally squinted through running a database report to give me a paperwork project for the afternoon. With the aid of one desk lamp, I managed to get some of it done before Coffee on the Wall.

My eyes felt little better and the pupils were still huge at 1:30. We found a shady spot in the library courtyard, partly for my eyes, but mostly because my wee sister is on medication that will make her burst into flame if she gets too much sun.

Geez, I wondered aloud, how long before my eyes get back to normal?

“It takes a while,” Boy Sister said, sympathetically, “but when it starts, it doesn’t take long.”

A half-hour later, I widened my eyes at wee sister. “Are they any smaller?”

She made a scrunchy face. “Not much.”

And I’d hoped they were shrinking because the tears had stopped.

One more hike back to the office before quitting time. I was dousing the orbs hourly with the drops I’d got from the doctor; they were burning and scratchy and blurry and by the end of the workday, I wanted to cry except my tear glands had packed up and left town. I took a final look in the mirror before I left work, half-fearing I’d get on the wrong bus and wind up at UVic instead of home, and did my eyes deceive me? Probably, since it looked as if the left pupil was almost back to normal while my right was stuck at full throttle. I looked like David Bowie. How the heck had he managed with one pupil fixed and dilated for most of his life? (I read somewhere that it was the result of a blow to his eye when he was a young ’un.)

As luck had it, I ran (figuratively) into a neighbour at the limo stop, so she got me onto the right bus without a clue that I was guessing at pretty much everything; how I picked her from the crowd would have been a miracle except that she saw me while I was still trying to figure out if I was seeing her. I was safe in my comfy chair with a cup of tea and a cookie when Ter came home, and by then, all that remained of my Big Eye Stuffie impression was the dry scratchies when I blinked.

So. What did I learn from this experience?

From now on, I book my annual eye appointment in November.

Both Eyes Blind (Part I)

This is what I get for waiting eight years between eye exams. I didn’t mean to let so much time pass, but who does? Life has a way of happening when you have other plans. In the grand scheme, I reckoned my vision would tell me when it was time for a check up, and that time came last week.

Since my last visit, my optometrist got married and had two children. She’s a lovely young woman, very gentle and soft-spoken, and she knows my history so well that, though I had entertained the notion of starting over with someone new, it made sense to remain with her and take my lumps for being remiss in making regular appointments.

“Welcome back, Ruth,” she said, opening with a smile and lump number one. “How have you been?”

I was pleased to report that I’ve actually been pretty well. No health disasters, no prescription drugs, and no family doctor required in the past near-decade. But my glasses need updating, and have done for almost a year. My Transition lenses don’t transition that well anymore.

“You’ll be amazed at the advances in their technology,” she said, lobbing lump number two as if it was a softball. “They change really fast nowadays.”

We did the field and focus tests. She’s already aware of my misaligned eyeballs and how my brain has given up trying to interpret letters on a screen when my left eye is called upon to transmit the image, but gods bless her, she tried to encourage me. I guessed wildly at the top line and nailed it (from memory, but she didn’t have to know that). “How about the next line?” she asked.

I sighed. “I know they’re letters, but I can’t tell you what they are.”

“Can you tell how many there are?”

“No. I just know they’re there.”

“Try the first one.”

“Ummmm … ‘K’—I think.”

“Good! What’s next?”

I hemmed and hawed, stalling for time until the magic happened. Suddenly, my brain switched sides and the string emerged in a triumphant rush. “ ‘K’, ‘O’, ‘V’ ‘H’!”

“What’s the one between ‘K’ and ‘O’?”

“There’s one between ‘K’ and ‘O’?”

My doctors all think I’m a riot.

She played with lens options and finally settled on a prescription that turns out to be a little better for distance and should clarify the written word at closer-than-arm’s-length. So far, so good.

Then came the drops to dilate my pupils. I was warned when I made the appointment, but I thought the statement to bring my sunglasses applied to prescription shades, which I don’t have on account of the aforementioned Transition lenses. Besides, my office is only two blocks over from the eye doctor’s; how bad could it be?

Fifteen minutes later, I was back in the chair with the lights dimmed while she aimed a thousand watt penlight directly into my brain and I tried not to scream.

Forget love. Light hurts!

But she got the reading she was after—no sign of diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol or glaucoma, and my corneas are thickening in accordance with my age, yippee aye ay. In short, nothing out of the ordinary. She gave me some drops and sent me on my way with my new prescription and a more forceful lump number three: “See you next year.”

to be continued …

“Diva XI”

A rumour spread that she wanted to reconcile with Tony. Vera called to offer a chance for rebuttal.

“Tony is a drunk,” Ellie said, her eyes on the printed snippet in a rival gossip column. “I deserve better.”

Swain caught her having lunch in her dressing room and couldn’t resist telling her that Dane Seward had been looking for her in the commissary. “What’s the matter, Bond? You avoiding something?”

For a man, Swain could be discomfortingly perceptive.

Then Hamilton decided to shoot the confrontation scene first.

They rehearsed for two days, blocking for camera angles and lighting. Ellie maintained an aloof composure throughout, despite the tremor in her vision from the force of her hammering heart. Dressed in street clothes, Seward retained his college boy appeal and constantly used his fingers to comb his hair from his eyes. Ellie watched him when no one else was looking, wondering why he so upset her rhythm. Handsome but not remarkable and charming without being a sleaze, he respected her boundaries as they walked through the scene. Ellie was immediately perfect in hitting her marks. Dane’s theatre experience served him as well, but it also had the director telling him to scale it back a bit, as gestures and facial expressions meant to reach the back row translated to ham acting on film. The result was a stilted performance clearly marred by every move being over thought.

He apologized to Ellie. “You’re perfect.”

She waved the compliment aside. “Hamilton broke me years ago.”

The look he gave her warned that she may have been misinterpreted.

He knew his lines better than she knew hers. Though the dialogue between the characters was meant to be heated, neither actor nor actress wasted energy on delivering that heat before the cameras rolled. Rehearsal stopped short of the scripted kiss.

Was he as relieved about it as she was?

Ellie’s character was a senator’s wife and costumed accordingly. Detective Sullivan was rough around the edges, so ragged on paper that the role seemed outrageously miscast—especially as the struggle continued to fit preppy boy into the south side mongrel’s skin. On the morning of dress rehearsal, Ellie emerged from her trailer in a silk Chanel suit and full length fur coat, tarted to a café society degree that looked completely natural on her. She walked on set in her black patent pumps and bared her teeth when Hamilton voiced his approval. “Ellie, you’re as beautiful as a tiger in the wild.”

“High praise,” someone remarked.

Ellie produced a cigarette and was immediately presented with a light. “Well deserved,” her leading man added with a confident smile.

She nearly choked on her first drag. The man standing before her was the eight-by-ten glossy she had seen in Bernie’s office, he of the firm jaw, slicked hair and stormy grey eyes. In costume, he wore a suit that looked slept in though he looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, and his voice, so smooth and precise reciting his lines, had dropped in pitch and perfection. Gone was the star-stricken prep student she had avoided all week, replaced by a veteran cop whose hands would doubtless be as bold as his shrewdly discerning gaze. Instantly, Ellie summoned the senator’s duplicitous widow and began the dialogue.

“ ‘What are you doing here? What do you want’? ”

Dane responded beautifully as Sullivan. “ ‘The DA has a case. I’ve come to arrest you for the murder of your husband’.”

Her eyes narrowed. “ ‘Arrest me? Are you sure you didn’t come to warn me’?”

He grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her closer than they had blocked. “ ‘You lied to me! You lied to the District Attorney, to the papers—maybe even to yourself’.”

Genuinely fighting for breath, Ellie gasped in character. “ ‘Is that why you’re here, Sully? To warn me from my’—? Shit. Sorry; Ted, I muffed it.”

The director was unperturbed. “Nice work, you two. Better than I hoped, in fact. Let’s take it to the set and start at the top.”

Ellie didn’t—couldn’t—move. She bravely met Dane’s fierce dark eyes and spoke with her character’s edge. “You can let me go now.”

Slowly, his fingers relaxed. He dropped the façade and smiled a little sheepishly, though something wolfish lingered in his gaze. Ellie stepped away from him to follow Hamilton’s direction, but as she turned her back she felt that gaze between her shoulderblades and had the unsettling notion that being let go would be harder than either of them imagined.

Better Times Ahead

Life is pretty good. My problems are all First World. This isn’t a negation of their existence, it’s just a recognition that problems of any ilk are relative.

Relative, not relatives.

Change continues. How I feel about some things has shifted, and that shift has resulted in an uncomfortable dissatisfaction and the prevailing sense that it’s time for Ter and me to move on.

I rounded the corner from Clover Point after work one day and was amazed to see the beauty in the above photo sitting a stone’s throw off the breakwater, so close to shore that I initially feared she’d run aground. In truth, I have no idea how deep the water is, though the Swiftsure yacht race starts from here every year, so it must be deep enough. In any event, the appearance of this one was so rare as to inspire as much concern as wonder. As I watched, however, she floated gently in a circle, presenting me with her profile and her dinky dinghy trailing aft. Ah, I thought, she’s dropped anchor … but why? There was no one on deck, no activity in the surrounding water. She was like a ghost ship, appearing from nowhere for no discernible reason, destined to depart in silence.

Twilight fell. Closing up the Ocean Room at bedtime, I saw that the ship was still in the bay, her dual masts now floodlit and the cabin sparkling with lamps set in the windows. She was the most beautiful thing I had seen in that patch of water, ever. So calm, so serene. The ocean itself was uncommonly tranquil, seemingly respective of her placid majesty. The sky darkened and she glowed more brightly, as suffused with mystery as she was with light. I was mesmerized. I was also certain that she’d be gone the next morning.

I got up in the middle of the night to check. By then the sky was so black she stood out as a constellation, a series of jewels strung in sequence to suggest the shape of a sailboat, but she was still there. She was still there at six a.m., backlit by the dawn, as stunning in silhouette as she had been awash in spotlight. I couldn’t figure it out. I had still seen no people, and the dinghy still bobbed about on its tether.

It was my day off, fortunately. I sent Ter to work and started my routine—dusting and yoga, to be followed by meditation in advance of being a writer. Sometimes I practice the meditation on my yoga disk. More often of late, I practice a mediation that Ter downloaded some months ago, but it’s on the computer so I have to set up in the Ocean Room. Just past nine o’clock, I walked into the OR and there she was, our mysterious maiden, cruising nonchalantly away from the shore on her way to … where?

Neither her presence nor its effect on me made any sense. I only know that it struck a profound chord at the time … and today I see a symbolism that could apply to our time in this locale.

She came from nowhere, she created something wondrous, then she sailed for her next port of call.

Okay, Universe. Bring me that horizon.

Head Hunting

There may be a worse place to live than America under Donald Trump. When I heard that extremist goons in Bangladesh had taken the heads—literally—of a few “secular bloggers”, I stepped back to evaluate just how dangerous my world could become if this stuff gets out of hand.

I mean, any more out of hand.

Truth be told, I could probably lose my head in some countries just for being a woman with an opinion. Make no mistake, gentlemen—all women have opinions. Just because those opinions are not expressed does not mean they’re the same as yours or that they don’t exist. My good fortune (so far) is to live in a country where my opinion is worth exactly what I’m paid for expressing it. If someone is threatened by what I think, they might want to ask themselves why.

Of course it means something to me. It’s my opinion, after all. If you happen to share it, great. If you don’t, great. You’re entitled. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I guess the scary part is when enough of a shared opinion becomes an action or a movement. When fear of someone else’s opinion becomes the driving force behind a governing body—be it in politics, religion or big business— freedom of expression is the first thing to go.

And here I am, an opinionated woman with a secular blog.

Well, I’m in it now, so my hesitation to “like” a particular F***book page has been rendered duly redundant. Let’s hear it for “Republican Jesus”, a satirical site that is taken too seriously by some but not by me; it’s one of those pages where the first post gets a smile, the third gets a giggle and the sixth earns a full-on LOL. I don’t check in every day—I truly do suck at social media; how does anyone else keep up and still have a life?—but when I do, I’m guaranteed a laugh at the expense of the GOP. US politics have degenerated into something truly frightening, a satire of its former self and, I suspect, the furthest thing from what the Founding Fathers intended when they drafted the Constitution. On the other hand, it’s democracy in action, a concept that people have died and continue dying to defend. And whether, in the end, it’s Madam President or Trump the Chump in the White House, the expectation for the office will be impossible. People don’t want to solve their own problems. They want the government to solve their problems, and while I agree that everyone should be educated and earn a living wage, I disagree that it’s government’s job to resolve social issues by law. Rules can be put in place, but rules are only management tactics meant to staunch the bleeding. You can’t legislate tolerance or compassion or forgiveness or respect. Those things begin with the individual, at a grassroots level in schools and neighbourhoods and communities. Those in power are accountable for spinning the propaganda that serves their own ends; however, are we not accountable for choosing what we believe and how we behave?

I know, easy for me to say in my cushy First World environment where freedom of speech meets women’s (sort of) equality. As stated above, it’s only my opinion. If someone wants my head for it, oh well.

I just hope they take it on the first swing.

Ongoing “Hysteria”

“That’s Def Leppard? What happened???”

I’ll tell you what happened. Somewhere between 1984 and 1987, the scrawny lads with bad perms and fake leather trousers morphed into bona fide rock idols. Nowadays it’s hard to recall on demand what I felt about Rick Savage then, but the better part of three decades hasn’t dimmed the spark that jumps when I revisit the video for “Animal”. I’d also bet Ter can say the same about Joe Elliott, who went through a similar maturation phase in the same time. I’m unsure which of us experienced the thud and which of us felt the ripple when the Leppard returned from the grave more sinewy and sensuous than the half-grown cubs they had been in 1983. All I know for sure is that, two days after Joe’s twenty-eighth birthday in 1987, “Hysteria” was released (in more ways than one).

I’m reminiscing because the album turned twenty-nine a couple of weeks ago—alarmingly but not surprisingly, two days after Joe’s fifty-seventh birthday—and the anniversary got me thinking about what the album meant at the time, and what it still means today.

Professionally, it was a game-changer. They had no idea what they were unleashing; this record broke records all over the place, but in our house, it also started a love affair that inspired me to write a legend. Nobody saw that happening, but I’m grateful that it did. That connection makes this band more precious than almost anyone else in my music library—three guesses on the one that trumps them and the first two don’t count!

Hormones and creativity aside, “Hysteria” is still a kick-butt and glossy rock album. It spawned something like half a dozen singles and sent the lads on a two year world tour, throwing them into the spin cycle that regrettably cost one of them his life … though I suspect he was doomed anyway. This album is a testament to Steve Clark’s rock n’ roll prowess. He lived to play guitar, and the guitar on “Hysteria” is unlike the guitar on any other record by any other band. It’s a stand alone, a work that has kept him so vividly alive within the group’s legend that the fellow who took his place twentysome years ago is still considered “the new guy”.

It is not, however, my favourite Leppard album. That said, when the band played it live in its entirety for its twenty-fifth anniversary, they brought down the house. Ter and I watched the DVD in honour of the King’s birthday on August 1. It coincided with the Victoria’s annual “Symphony Splash”, and just as the Leppard concert ended in our living room, so did the orchestra’s in the harbour, and the fireworks exploded to finish both in appropriately grand style.

The band has been through a lot since that album was released. So have Ter and I. Our paths have crossed on occasion. Gone are the days when we’d leave the island to see them, but when they come to us, we’re there. I continually lament that the set list remains stuck in the 80s, and Joe continually insists that’s what the fans want to hear. When I read in the “Viva Hysteria” liner notes that they’d wondered how to play the same songs for ten nights in a row without losing their minds, I almost lost mine. Guys, I thought, you play the first side of “Hysteria” in every single frikkin’ gig you play!

But that’s nitpicking. Sort of. What matters is the legacy to Steve; the bar that was set for every rock album that followed; and the passion that burst in the hearts of two Canadian girls on that day in 1987, when Much Music premiered the new single and one of us blurted:

“That’s Def Leppard? What happened???”