It’s a Tapsalteerie World

My parents would occasionally ask me if I kent what a particular word or phrase means in the Scottish vernacular. Having been raised by a pair of Fife accents, I consider myself fairly familiar with the day to day lingo, and much of what I grew up hearing is now part of my own patter. Hence I was often able to respond with the correct definition. “Peelie-wally”, for instance, was how Mum once described the maraschino cherry in a tin of fruit cocktail, so when they tried it on me some years ago, my answer came easily. “It means puny and pathetic.”

According to my copy of The Pocket Guide to Scottish Words, it actually means “pale and ill-looking”, which is close enough.

A couple of years ago, one of them (I don’t remember which, but they were both present and smiling) asked me, “Do you know of ‘tapsalteerie’?”

I had to stop laughing before I answered. “No, that’s a new one!”

“What do ye think it means?”

I didn’t have to think for long. Sounding it out first, I took a stab with, “Topsy-turvy?”

Bingo! It means upside down, in a muddle, and confusion.

It also describes my world of late. My dear mother was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer shortly after my June 10 post and on the 29^th ... well, the world went tapsalteerie.

It’s righting itself one step at a time – closer to two steps forward and one back, really – but eight weeks on, there is progress... I think. It’s a process, right? The spiritual being having a human experience? Well, shoot. What is more human than birth and death? I’ve just been lucky to avoid dealing directly with the latter until a couple of months ago. I had hoped, perhaps with some hubris, that my belief in the Big Picture would have eased the grief of mortality. Colour me humbled. Despite my unshakeable faith that she is safe, loved, and more available to me now than she ever was in the flesh, the vacuum of Mum’s absence from this world still sucks out loud. I haven’t cried so much since forever.

She left orders that I neither weep nor wail, to which I confess, “So much for that!” None of it at CR, though. This not the place—but if anything I learn as a result of wading through what seems an insurmountable loss can help somebody else, it’s worth sharing. I began this blog four months before my mother knew about it, and while she may have been my greatest fan (not to mention a quarter of my audience), my quest for enlightenment and creative expression must continue for as long as I am here. It’s my journey, after all. I’m so grateful she was with me for the greater part of it. She taught me to be wonderful. She let me be myself, yet she lent me traits so reminiscent of her that the best compliment I can receive is, “You’re just like your mother.” Whether or not she understood or agreed with me, she read every post on this darned blog and took pride in my gift with the written word. She was exactly what I needed. She was the best.

It’s a tapsalteerie world without her, but I’ll get used to it in time.

Thanks, Mum.

With love,

Compliments to the Chef

Farewell, Tony (1956 - 2018)

Life strikes again. This time, it took out Anthony Bourdain, so it’s hit closer to my heart than more recent celebrity deaths.

Ter saw it first, via Google news. She called to me from the Ocean Room, and though I didn’t hear what she said, something in her tone alarmed me. I got up to go see her, saying, “What?’ as I went.

Her voice was closer, coming down the hall. “Anthony Bourdain is dead …”

My own mind immediately interrupted: A heart attack finally dropped him in his tracks.

Ter appeared in the doorway, her face stricken. “… by apparent suicide.”

That’s when the tree jumped in front of me. I took the blow right in the chest and for an instant couldn’t breathe or think or speak. Everything froze. Then, in the next frame, “What??”

It will always be a “Where were you when?” moment. As usual with such moments, the death itself isn’t the issue. It’s the manner of death. Without getting into morbid details—most of which I neither know nor care to know – I am gutted that a man who lived life so fiercely, who had faced and survived his demons, who braved the streets and back alleys to discover magic in the world’s most dangerous places, who seemed, in short, indefatigable, chose to end it.

There was nothing false about Tony Bourdain. He wrote honestly about his tumultuous, drug-addicted youth and spoke his truth at every opportunity. He was cynical, pessimistic, abrasive and hilarious, but he was also warm, generous, respectful and genuinely grateful for (if not somewhat perplexed by) the life he embraced with such incredible passion. He was so interesting, yet his gift was to make other people in other cultures in other countries interesting as well. He had no fear of the dark, that’s for sure. He did his best to shed light in the shadows, to bring attention, not to the differences that divide us, but to the similarities that bind us together, whether he was in Iran, Russia, Lebanon, or Pittsburgh.

Ter followed him as a foodie. I followed him as a writer. We both adored him for his unvarnished sincerity onscreen and in writing; we’ve collected his books and TV series, and even had our photos taken with him when he stopped in Victoria on two different book tours.

Of course I know nothing about his personal life beyond what he revealed as he went along—and that’s fine because the details are not my business. What he brought to the world, to my life, is all that’s important. My loss is the world’s loss; hardly the same as the black hole he’s left in the hearts of his family and close friends. And while some people are now calling him out for the selfishness of his leaving, I will not judge him. Only he knows what pushed him to end it now (before it got worse?). I must reconcile myself by myself. And I will … but I’ll miss him.

His caustic New York attitude and sometimes harsh opinions inspired me to view his light as more of a dark, but he was definitely a light being, and like most light beings, he was a powerful spirit locked in ongoing battle with equally powerful contrast. In the end, contrast won. My invincible tough guy road warrior swashbuckling hero has surrendered. Another light gone out.

The sun rose this morning. It always does, after all. So the world is as bright the day after as it was the day before—but one thing is notably different without him.

It feels colder.

The Horror of Romance (or the Romance of Horror)

I want to write a romance.

There. I said it.

Not one of those formula romances, of course. That’s not my style. Besides, I tried it once, and I couldn’t keep the characters in line. You’d think two-dimensional people would be easy to manage, but my people were, ironically, too-dimensional. She was too independent and he was too conflicted, so I decided to write a vampire story instead.

That story turned out to be a romance. Well, romantic. She was independent and he was conflicted, but somehow the love affair worked. Too bad it ended tragically. When one party is immortal and the other one isn’t, it’s kinda doomed from the start. Mine worked without a happy ending because, quite frankly, paranormal romance is a genre unto itself and I can’t stick to that formula, either. I have utmost respect for authors who can follow those rules. Trust me, it’s harder than it looks.

You know who wrote great “outside the box” paranormal romance? Anne Rice. She set a new standard for Gothic horror with a romantic slant—or was it Gothic romance with a horrific slant? In any case, her work with vampires and witches was phenomenally fabulous, crazy romantic, deeply, sensuously, gorgeously written, and it gave me permission to blow off the doors when developing my own style. She was my example, my mentor, my yardstick, and my escape. I learned from her while reading everything she wrote.

So why was she not included in the top 100 of PBS’s Great American Read? Anyone? Anyone?

Naturally, I couldn’t resist tuning in to find out how many authors I recognized and which books I’d read (more than I thought and not as many as I’d hoped). After the show, I came away with a lengthy reading list ... and some big-time bitterness on discovering the literary Queen of the Damned’s legendary Vampire Chronicles did not make the top 100 while Stephenie Meyer’s horrific-for-all-the-wrong-reasons Twilight series did.

Weeks later, I’m still not over it. In truth, I may never be over it. Twilight led to the Fifty Shades of Grey debacle (which also made the list, gods help us) so I guess it gets points for inspiring a new voice, but I believe it’s also responsible for destroying an eternal genre and lowering the bar for writing in general.

I know I sound hysterical. I could be overreacting, I suppose, since vampires are rarely out of fashion for long, but comparing Interview with the Vampire to Twilight is like comparing cream to dishwater. I also understand that lists are completely ego-based and of no value in the grand scheme, yet it truly pains me that the writer whose work first obsessed me then compelled me to become the writer I am (undiscovered and pretty darned good) was sacrificed in favour of a writer far less deserving of the placement.

So, in dark and stormy tribute to the incomparable Anne Rice, I am setting out to write that romance.

Grrrrr.

Bookish

After he helped Ter and me move by hauling countless boxes of books up the stairs to our suite, my then thirteen-year-old nephew declared, somewhat belligerently, “I’m getting you guys an e-reader for Christmas.”

I have one, but it’s safe to say it won’t replace hard copy books in my life. There’s nothing quite so relaxing as a rainy day, a pot of tea, and a fat, luxuriously-written novel. I must confess to being more discriminating in my book selection these days; space is at a premium at home, not to mention the scarcity of reading time after a day at the office relegates my mental capacity to something akin to a squashed apricot. Still, I love to read. I love books, real books; magical, wonderful, lavishly written books about characters who compel me to think, feel and live their lives with them. Books inspire me. They take me to faraway places. They introduce me to new friends and villainous enemies. They teach me things. They stretch my imagination. It’s true what’s been said about reading: “One who reads lives a thousand lives. One who doesn’t read lives only one.”

I’ve read bodice rippers and murder mysteries, high fantasy and pulp fiction, biographies of mediocre people brilliantly written and autobiographies by brilliant people who couldn’t write worth a darn. I’ve even dipped a toe into poetry and, under duress, tackled the occasional non-fiction tome. But the point of this post stems from a curious dawning about the last few books I’ve bought:

They’re about books.

Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 is a one-off with a specific message (I’ve only just started it, so I can’t pontificate on that message - yet). Genevieve Cogman’s The Invisible Library is a steampunky/alternate fantasy series that revolves around a place where important fiction from multiple worlds is collected and stored in order to keep those worlds connected and balanced (easier said than done, of course). It’s rollicking good fun in four volumes so far; as usual, I discovered the fourth first and had to rewind to get the background.

What gives? Why am I suddenly discovering books about the importance of books? Farenheit 451 is older than I am, but The Invisible Library was published in 2015. Have books always been in danger? Maybe so. Every time technology advances, the fear of books losing their worth seems to rear its head. Radio, TV, the internet, smartphones, you name it – each one of them has been perceived as a threat to literacy and books in general.

Literacy is definitely under fire, but books? Paperback or hardcover, the printed word doesn’t seem to be going the way of the dinosaurs anytime soon. While touted as the solution to packing Thomas Hardy around in your backpack, e-readers have hardly replaced those weighty beauties of old. Yes, they’re convenient in transit, and mine sure came in handy at the hair salon yesterday, but overall, I still see tattered pocketbooks in play at Starbucks. What a relief. As a writer, I needn’t fear imminent extinction. Technology has provided a vehicle as portable as those beat-up paperbacks, but some things can’t be replaced. Books are important. Books are a comfort; a tangible, sensual means of taking a trip without leaving your comfy chair. And browsing through amazon’s Kindle store is not nearly as pleasurable as browsing the shelves at your local (emphasis on “local”) bookstore.

Find the perfect escape, make that purchase and carry it home. Brew that tea and curl up on that couch, lift the cover, smell the paper, run your fingers over that title, turn the page … and disappear into another life.

Mother of the Bride

The hoopla, hysteria, and controversy surrounding Prince Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markle this weekend has been exhausting. Whether or not you cared, you were inundated with information about her family and speculation about the gown, the guests, and the gospel choir—all parts of a ceremony that was touted to tip royal tradition on its ear, as if the bride being an American divorcee of biracial heritage wasn’t enough to raise both eyebrows and hackles among the British aristocracy (and beyond).

Naturally, Ter and I got up at crap o’clock to watch it on live TV. Neither of us wanted to risk stumbling onto reviews of the dress before we’d seen it ourselves, though I confess I was more curious to see what the groom was wearing. He’d looked so fine at William’s wedding in 2011 that I couldn’t imagine him outdoing himself on Saturday, but he was, in a word, dashing.

Anyway, the gown was surprisingly modest, the guests were a pageant of taste that inspired everything from applause to oh-my-gods, and the gospel choir was riveting. From start to finish, the event planners nailed it. Poor Harry looked about to faint more than once; if not for Meghan holding him tightly by the hand, I feared his knees might have gone on him. I suspect the bride is generally more confident than the groom in any wedding, given that he’s a supporting player while she is queen for a day.

Not so on this occasion, though. The Queen was the queen and the groom a royal prince. That’s competition for any bride, but this particular one handled it pretty well. Besides, as the broadcaster stated, “She entered the chapel as a commoner and left it as the Duchess of Sussex.” A pretty good trade-off for sharing the spotlight on her special day.

What can her mother think of it all? This ordinary woman, a social worker from California, journeyed alone to the UK for tea with Her Majesty, and sat by herself while her daughter married the world’s most eligible bachelor in front of a gazillion witnesses. What in the world must have crossed her mind during the ceremony? Love, naturally. Pride, obviously. Some consternation, I imagine. After all, her only child is now a member of the British Royal Family. That must be like losing your labour of love to a corporate giant, though with this merger, you have to wonder what’s in it for her. Meghan’s life will never be the same, but Meghan will be fine. Harry’s family will circle the wagons to keep her safe—but what of Meghan’s mother? What becomes of her now that her daughter is a duchess?

I thought she seemed a little sad at times during the ceremony. She held herself with dignity and maternal pride, and though tears are expected from the mother of the bride, I couldn’t say for sure that hers were all for joy. When she returns home, leaving her child behind, what happens to her? Can she resume a normal life, or will every move she makes be scrutinized and critiqued, reflected back on her daughter and vice versa, for the rest of her days?

She raised Meghan to make a difference, but I doubt Meghan’s mother saw this coming. Who would? And as the Duchess of Sussex rides into the future with Prince Harry at her side, I sincerely hope that her mother can live in peace, unmolested by the media and/or opportunistic friends. I hope that she finds comfort in her community and joy in her inevitable grandchildren. I hope that her daughter’s destiny gives her no cause for stress or sadness.

I wonder if Doria hopes the same.

“Ghost Story”

They tore down her house. She disappeared for a wink and when she returned, it was gone. An empty lot, littered with wreckage from the home she had known, welcomed her like the gap in a grin left by a knocked out tooth.

So many years, so many memories. Shades of those who had gone before, of lives intertwined by blood and circumstance, bonds formed over decades—all destroyed in a day.

She recalled neighbours in the suite below her attic penthouse: the tech boys hauling their big screen TV into the yard for playoff barbeques; university students burning the midnight oil while cramming for exams. She had banged on the floor when the stereo got too loud and slammed her closet doors to let them know they weren’t alone in their space. Her favourite had been the brown-haired girl who had shyly smiled but never said a word as she passed in the stairwell.

Gone; all gone, and now where would she go?

Time has a funny way of passing. Too soon, she came back for a visit and found the gap in the street’s housing smile filled by a new construct, out of character with its neighbours and occupied by a family of immigrants, her attic penthouse replaced by a little boy’s bedroom, blue with sailboats painted on one wall.

She sat in the armchair near the window and watched over him while he slept. One night he woke up and looked straight at her. She smiled. He blinked twice, accepted her presence, and went back to sleep.

It’s not the house, she decided. It’s the people within it that make it a home.

Ghost Story (Preface)

I’ve heard it said that we don’t have history in Victoria. We have nostalgia. Whichever it is, we definitely have ghosts. I know because I lived with them at Rockland. For seventeen years, Ter and I shared our heritage suite with phantom freeloaders who probably considered us to be the interlopers until they got to know us. Okay, until they got to know Ter. She’s the more attuned of we two; I lived in blissful ignorance for almost a year before she confessed to encountering the red-haired kid the day after we moved into Number 16. Completely freaked out, I demanded to know why she’d said nothing at the time.

“Because I didn’t want to freak you out,” she replied.

I’m fairly sure my Freak-O-Meter would have hit the apex no matter when I was told, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because we’d signed a lease, but I was grateful that she had seen the little guy first. I didn’t see him until sometime later, when we got new neighbours and I spied him flitting into the kitchen from the corner of my eye. I’ll always remember the shock of that bright red hair.

There were other entities, too, though I never saw them. They felt more comfortable revealing themselves to Ter, who respectfully acknowledged their presence and went quietly on her way. As well as the red-haired kid, there was a young girl in the long dress and an older boy with dark hair. We called the three kids “Harry”, “Ron” and “Hermione” after the trio in the Harry Potter books. The house had served as a girls’ school, then a boys’ school, so we reckoned they must have been students. Some years in, we learned from a neighbour that the house had also been an old folks’ home. “That explains the old woman,” Ter remarked, at which my Freak-O-Meter spiked again.

“What old woman????”

“I don’t know who she is, but she’s pretty bitter,” was the nonchalant reply.

Yeah. Ghosts. Whether by history or nostalgia, Victoria has them.

A co-worker’s mother recently sold her house. It’s not a heritage house, but it’s the house my colleague has known for her entire life, so there was a legitimate fear that the new owners would tear it down for development since that’s what seems to be happening in this city of late. It bothers me for more reasons than the architechtural oddities popping up like mutant mushrooms throughout the neighbourhood; and while I sympathized with the potential loss of a colleague’s childhood home, I am most distressed by what happens to the ghosts.

Where do they go? What do they do? Are they tied to the structure or the land? I guess it depends on the ghost, but the conundrum sparked the writing exercise that is tomorrow’s post.

Enjoy.