“Diva”

"Land Use Application" by Nancy Ruhl

Ellie stands on the pavement as a soft rain starts to fall. A cup of tea and kitty await in a tiny one-room flat, but she lingers on the sidewalk, remembering.

Cocktail parties photographed in black and white.

Holiday dinners hosted for friends and rivals alike.

Poets, artists and musicians clamouring for a muse.

Dancing with diplomats and presidents.

Lovers by firelight on long lazy weekends.

Flashbulbs and fashion, fizzy champagne and fenders on limousines.

Diamonds and pearls.

Then she grew old.

The grande dame of her age, once elegant and proud, now faded and frumpy, unsteady on her feet.

It’s another’s time, now.

She shuffles on her way, shoulders rounded in the gently falling rain.

If those walls could talk.

I Got the Music in Me

They say that the printing press was the most important invention in history. If this is so, then the advent of recorded music must be a close second.

Ter and I met in 1982. Our mutual musical history began then, with Duran Duran, Def Leppard, Tears For Fears, Michael Jackson, and a host of others. When we tune into the 80s music channel, almost every song conjures a memory that starts with one of us saying, “Do you remember …?” We laugh and reminisce and wonder whatever became of So-and-So when it seemed at the time that we would always be in touch with our friends. Good times, bad times, hard times, doesn’t matter which. Pick a song and we are transported instantly into our shared past.

Tune into the 70s channel, however, and we have discovered buried treasure. Music was less homogenized back then. Folk rubbed with rock, disco dropped in, and pop was often schlock, but everything got airtime because radio had yet to become “formatted.” It was fun, even though I was battling my bones and Ter was in her turbulent teens during most of the decade. We didn’t know each other then. One had no idea that the other existed, in fact, or that the scene was being set for the destiny point when our paths would cross and the adventure would begin.

We hit the 70s channel one night, just because. Oh, we laughed. We laughed … and then the memories surfaced. Not mutual ones, of course, but the fossilized ones unearthed by songs we heard while growing up in our separate worlds. “These Eyes” is her favourite Guess Who tune. “No Time” is mine—but she and I both remember the pink and orange label on the old 45, even if neither of us could name the company that owned it. The 70s channel inspired a different question from the 80s. Instead of “Do you remember?”, one of us asked, “Where were you?” and wow, we had a blast bringing each other up to speed.

I generally stream my silly jazz station at work. With thirty channels to choose from, there’s always something to fit my mood. My membership, however, also covers jazzradio.com’s sister station, radiotunes.com, which features a gazillion channels spanning pretty much every genre in existence. Last Friday, for the heck of it, I picked the Oldies, and O-M-G, everything they played dated from my elementary school years or earlier! It was the perfect playlist to file by!

So, whether at work, at home, or somewhere in between, music has proven critical to my existence. It fires up my imagination and grounds me at the same time. Of course I appreciate the value of the printing press—what writer wouldn’t?—but if I had to choose between TV and my stereo …

“Queen of Hearts”

Look at the size of her heart.

You can’t miss it. She wears it on her sleeve. She couldn’t hide it if she tried.

It’s just too big.

It’s been broken. It’s been stolen. It’s been shattered, double-crossed and stomped on, but it’s still beating.

“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”

She has no idea who Rumi was, but he thought of her.

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.”

She knows this better than anyone. Has it stopped her?

It has not.

She has figured out that the wound is also the place where the light leaves you.

She may be little, but her heart is huge. It is open. It is the portal through which her inner light shines to make the world a kinder, more compassionate place. She offers it freely, without fear, giving and forgiving in equal measure.

She is the bravest soul I know.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

“Perspective”

On the way to his first day at preschool, Tommy sat in the back seat of the car and hummed quietly to himself. His mother said nothing, but she kept one eye on his face in the rear view mirror. She had done all she could to prepare him for the experience. He had met his teacher and toured the daycare centre in advance, at least two of the neighbourhood kids were in his class, and though they weren’t friends at present, she hoped they might form a pint-sized trio of Musketeers once they all settled into a routine. He had helped her to pack his lunch and pick out his clothes the night before, and he had been awake ahead of the alarm this morning. All systems were “go”—except for the humming.

Tommy hummed when he was nervous.

He was a brave boy, though. Her little man had solemnly assured her at breakfast that he would be fine. The humming was a sign of nerves, but it was also a summoning of strength.

She blinked to clear a rising mist from her vision. The centre had her work and cell phone numbers, his dad’s work and cell numbers, his grandparents’ home and cell phone numbers—and everyone knew to dial 911 in an emergency. She had cleared her calendar to be available if the school called, though her own mother had advised that she stop hovering else the boy would sense her anxiety and act out because of it.

“You okay, bud?”

The humming stopped. “Yup.”

She turned the corner and drove half a block. The daycare was on the elementary school grounds but stood separate from the school itself. Hordes of kids in shiny new outfits and sporting shiny new backpacks ran riot over the playing field, screaming and jabbering with excitement at starting an equally shiny new school year.

Tommy stayed quiet in the back seat.

His mother pulled up to the curb near the daycare building. The crowd was smaller here, both in number and in height. Every child was attached to a parent, some by the hand and others in a full contact body hug marked by a keening wail. The teacher was on site with a couple of aides. All were engaged in prying the more stubborn barnacles from harried adults. “They look scared,” Tommy observed.

“You can show them how to be brave,” his mother suggested.

Tommy resumed humming beneath his breath. He continued to hum as his mother shut off the engine, got out of the car, and rounded to open the rear door on his side.

“Come on, bud,” she said. “It’s show time.”

He clambered obligingly from his seat. He stood at ease as she fastened on his backpack, then he gave her his hand for the walk to the door. His palm was cold against hers, his whole hand engulfed in the circle of her fingers. His little tiny hand …

She blinked again, and sniffled. Tommy appeared not to hear. He walked resolutely at her side, looking neither here nor there but straight ahead as if none of the other kids existed. One of the teacher’s aides came to welcome him. “You’re not Miss Leung,” he said.

His mother winced. “Sorry. His manners are usually better than that.”

The aide smiled. “It’s just first day jitters.” She put out a hand to Tommy. “My name is Cindy. I’m so happy to meet you, Tommy. Will you come with me to see Miss Leung?”

Tommy gave her his back and locked onto his mother’s leg. “Sweetie,” she chided, “it’s okay. You can go with Cindy.”

“No,” he said, firmly.

His mother fought a rising sense of panic. She held him off and crouched to eye level, cupping his serious little face in her hands. His eyes were starting to shine. Crap. “Remember what we talked about, sweetie? You’re safe here; it’s okay. You can go with Cindy to see Miss Leung and I’ll be back to get you at five.”

“Promise?”

She nodded and kissed him. “Promise.”

Tommy gave her a long, slow look before he turned and gave Cindy his hand.

* * *

She called the daycare at noon to see how he was doing. She was told that he was fine. She didn’t believed it; the image of his stiff spine and squared shoulders floated over every page of the report she was writing, and she had polled every mother in the office to gauge normal behaviour on a child’s first day of preschool.

When she picked him up at five o’clock, he gave her the silent treatment all the way home.

“How did it go, bud?”

Nothing.

“Did you like Miss Leung?”

Not a sound.

He wanted no dinner. He endured his bath without a word and went straight to bed. He neither offered nor demanded a good night kiss; as soon as she tucked him in, he rolled toward the wall and stayed that way until she switched off the light.

She called one of the other mothers in the neighbourhood. “How did your boy do at school?”

“He stopped screaming as soon as I was out of sight and became someone else’s kid for the rest of the day. How was Tommy?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t said anything all night.”

“Maybe he’s processing.”

“Maybe …”

“Look, I didn’t hear of anything traumatic happening today, if that’s what you’re worried about. As far as I know, it was a normal first day of school.”

She stopped by his room on her way to bed. He was flushed and loose-limbed, splayed across the mattress like the proverbial rag doll, and she wanted to burst into tears at the sure knowledge that he was mad at her though she had no idea what she had done.

Her ex was scornful. “Relax, will you? It was only his first day at school. He survived. He’ll survive tomorrow, too. Jesus, if you hadn’t wrapped him in cotton wool at birth—”

She hung up wondering what had duped her into mating with the guy.

The next morning, Tommy refused to get out of bed. He was slow to wake up and when she asked what he wanted to wear, he said, “I’m not going to school today.”

She turned from the closet. “Why not?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Tommy, why not?”

“You didn’t come to get me.”

She stared at him. “What?”

“You said you’d come at five and you didn’t.”

What was he talking about? “Sweetie, you’d still be there if I hadn’t come when I said I would.”

“You said you’d come at five,” he repeated.

She was generally grateful that it wasn’t Tommy’s style to pitch a fit, but her logical preschooler was sometimes worse than her neighbour’s hysterical one. “Don’t you like Miss Leung?”

“I like Miss Leung.”

“And Cindy? Do you like her, too?”

He nodded above his folded arms. Her stubborn little Vulcan, she was torn between smooching and swatting him.

“Tommy, I don’t know what you mean when you say I didn’t come at five.”

They stared at each other for a few minutes, deadlocked. Then he sighed heavily and barely restrained an eye roll before he said, “I counted. One, two, three, four, five.”

“Perspective” (Preface)

A writing exercise doesn’t usually warrant a preface, but tomorrow’s post kind of does.

A million years ago, my niece was four or five, riding with me in the back of the ancient Mazda. My mother was driving and my wee sister was in the passenger seat when Brooke piped up:

“What comes after red?”

It came out of the blue, with no warning and less explanation. What was she talking about? We each took a multiple stab at answering, but rather than say yea or nay, she kept repeating the question.

“What comes after red?”

It was wildly frustrating, but the kid was having a good time. I was about to suggest a blackout, followed by a live demonstration, when my wee sister suddenly exclaimed, 

“Yellow!”

Brooke laughed with delight. “What comes after yellow?”

Mum and I were mystified until wee sister explained.

“Traffic lights! She means traffic lights!”

Well, duh.

Fast forward to the other day. I came home to a cool reception from the bears, who had heard something different in what I’d said as I left for work that morning … and a writing exercise was born.

Enjoy.

Dollars and Sense

And in other news, Sweden plans to be entirely cashless by 2030. More people than not are using plastic to pay for goods and services, and I admit, I count myself among them—for big ticket items that require some time to pay off in full. (Remember, I live from paycheque to paycheque.) And though my Starbucks card is on automatic renewal, I prefer to use cash for my café habit. Small amounts call for a fiver, or coin of some kind … and what about the office water club? I manage that account, and I can’t see me going wireless to collect dues, even though most of the members must make a special trip to the bank when I send out the bi-monthly bills.

Is it good to abolish cash in favour of electronic transactions? If money makes the world go around—and it does—I hesitate to entrust all of mine to technology. Aside from the familiar glitches that occur when Mercury is in retrograde or the network crashes due to high volume usage, what happens when the power goes out? I saw Goldeneye. I know what an electromagnetic pulse is. We depend so heavily on electricity, and now we’re practically helpless without our computers. A systems hiccup recently sent all the folks in my office to an early lunch because we couldn’t do our jobs with dead rigs.

I, Robot indeed.

Years ago, during a treatment  with my voodoo medicine man, he told me of a town in Japan where they have no technology at all, where transactions are handwritten on paper and people actually speak to each other instead of texting or emailing or whatever. His point was the irony of such a backward community existing within the borders of a technological superpower, but I stumped him.

I said, “That’s brilliant. If I wanted to rule the world, I’d make sure my people could function without the technology I sold to everyone else, then I’d do the EMP thing and kill all access to, heck, everything.”

Money has not always come in the form as we know it, but there has always been a tangible way to pay for goods and services. Debit and credit cards do not deal in tangibles, so when global systems crash for whatever reason, be it terrorism or act of God, the world had better have stashed some cash in the vault or we won’t be able to buy our morning coffee.

And that will make us all very crabby.

Billions and Billions

It’s taken me a few days to process this headline:

“Canadians are Hoarding $75 Billion in Cash”.

We are? I dunno about you, but I live from paycheque to paycheque. The only bills I hoard bear no likeness to monarchs or prime ministers; they’re all stamped with corporate logos and bear a “balance owing” at the bottom of the page.

Yet a recent report issued by CIBC Economics claims that Canadians are losing money because we’re saving rather than investing.

Question: How can we lose money that we haven’t made?

Answer: We can’t.

When the CEO of a money-grubbing corporate giant says we’re losing money, he means we’re losing the potential for money. How the number 75 billion was arrived at, I have no idea. I’m no economist. I have no degree in financial engineering. I just know that cash works, and when I don’t have a lot to spare, I’m less likely to entrust what remains to a smiley smooth-talker who promises to invest it for me, then up and disappears with the proceeds, leaving me with less than I had when I started.

I can be a little cynical about these things.

According to the CIBC report, cash holding by Canadians has increased by 11% since the Wall Street crash in 2008, and it’s hurting our economy.

In the first place, can you blame us?

In the second, uh … no. The people who run the economy are hurting our economy.

Fact: the economy is not an act of God. It is controlled by humans; a chosen and mysterious few fat cats who probably earn more in a day from other people’s investments than the investors do.

I’m not saying that all financial institutions are evil. Then again, the days of the Bailey Brothers Savings and Loan are long gone. With all the bank/investment company merging going on, it’s inevitable that all the money in the world will eventually be ruled by a single global entity, probably based in Greece to help them feel better about going bankrupt last year.

What grinds my gears is the twist on the truth employed by gigantic money-making agencies to fool us into parting with our cash. My first glance at that headline had me asking where the dollars had gone. Losing $75 billion is a whopping big accounting gaffe—until I realized that the funds aren’t really lost. They have yet to and may never exist. I’m sure as heck unlikely to see any of it in my savings account anytime soon.