Tag Archives: Django Bisous

POETRY, AGING & WHY CONTESTS MATTER

POSTED: APRIL 25, 2020

When I sat down to write this piece it was because I received an email telling me I was a finalist in a poetry competition. I was thrilled. I was also just enjoying the idea that something else might be going on in the world than the Coronavirus. There are little green shoots starting to come up in places where its spring, and people falling in love and poetry contests. If only for a bit of the day its good to get your mind into part of the world that is not virus related or the associated end of the world financially.

So contests – I think they are great. They are a way for an amateur or recreational poet or painter or woodworker or quilter or dwarf rabbit breeder to find out what the world thinks of their work. Yes, our friends and family might tell us they like that crochet piece we did of Elvis riding a unicorn, but when someone who has been deemed to be a judge of a real contest provides some feedback on our work well that’s where we really can learn. Its also what gives us the confidence to continue on with the pursuit.

Many years ago Janice was chosen to be one of two visual artists representing Ontario at the Royal Bank Of Canada’s National Painting Competition.  It was a big deal. She did not win the top prize, but being chosen to be a finalist, the comments of the judges on her work, and the exposure in shows at some of the most significant public art museums and galleries across Canada was amazing for her confidence in moving further with her work and continuing to let her own voice come out. It is probably one of the things that inspired her, many years later to establish a poetry award at the University of Toronto.

The contest I was contacted about was not the only one I have entered. I enter a number of contests a year. Perhaps only about one-tenth of the contests Jim enters but many have entry fees so he can, and some don’t, so I can. This contest was with the Palm Beach Poetry Festival which happens near the end of January each year. The contest is for an ekphrastic poem (poetry about a piece of art) based on one of several pieces of art shown at the Cornell Art Museum in Palm Beach.  Jim had been told about it by a friend of theirs in Key West – Flower Conroy. Now Flower is a poet who Janice and Jim hang with while in KW and take a poetry workshop with each year and is by all accounts a pretty neat creature. Some of her poetry is a bit beyond me but I like it.  www.flowerconroy.com

Jim sent me the details as he knew that one of the pieces of art I would like. It is called Adhesif and I will get to that in a minute. The artist is Caroline Dechamby a Dutch painter who lives in southern France.   Her work is based on using a historic artist’s style as a starting point or muse for a current piece.

Her homage pieces to Basquiat, Van Gogh and  Rothko are shown below.

   

Now the young woman in the art is Dechamby herself when she was younger. She is now a more mature age and while some of these pieces were painted some time ago others are recent and it seems she loves to depict herself at a certain age. Many of us think of ourselves this way. We aren’t delusional and know what our actual age is but many of our ideas and our sense of self really gelled at a certain point. I have had many a conversation over many glasses of wine on this very topic when I ask a person not how old they are but how old their psyche is. For me, it’s my late 30’s. By that point in my life I had a good sense of who I was, and a really good fix on who I was not. For some people it is the age they were when their life story turned – beat cancer, a new marriage, leaving a bad career, came out of prison. For others, it is just that point when everything came together and they started feeling comfortable with themselves.

It’s also interesting how some of us don’t age other people as well. They may age but we still see them as we once did when we met them. I have a high school friend who when in something like grade seven had a crush on Jane Goodall. Well, what’s not to like there when your in grade seven: an attractive scientist and monkeys!  I was speaking to him a couple of years ago and he referenced a current documentary piece on her and I had to ask – “still hot?  And his response “as ever”.

So this is the background to my poem. I hope you like it. The art piece Adhesif is shown first so you have the reference for what the poem is about.

 

 

MODERN MASQUE FOR MONDRIAN

Piet indeed,

No piety here.

 

Her soft edges layered

On hard edge technique.

 

Abstraction of abstraction

So representational.

 

The artist with the art,

in the art, the fiction complete.

 

The photographic reflection,

One dimension, two dimension,

Three dimension, four.

 

Primary colours

Primal desires.

 

 

Comments by  Judge Stephan Gibson.

“This spare, brief, thirteen-line poem delightfully engages the artwork—and the reader’s ear, with its slant rhyme use used to slant meaning in relating its sly view of Dechamby’s equally sly piece. Right from its opening, “Piet indeed,/No piety here,” (lines 1-2), the slyness and engagement with the artwork happens—and continues, “Her soft edges layered/On hard edge technique” (ll. 3-4)—the abstract objectification of art and the model immediately coming into view, “Abstraction of abstraction/So representational//The artist with the art,/in the art, the fiction complete,” leading the reader to what the eye feels and not only sees, the epiphany, “Primary colours/Primal desires” (ll. 12-13).

Wonderful.”

 

 

So that’s it. To see the other poets pieces check out: https://www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org/news/art-couture-winners/

Django

P.S. as always I don’t have a problem with anyone reproducing my poetry or prose but please attribute it to me.

AT REST IN MALTA

Posted: April 21

This is just a short post to let anyone who cares know that we made it back to Malta, and are now self-Isolating / quarantining for the next couple of weeks. Captain Ciara is in a better state, and we are just hanging out, and eager to start to think about more than sailing for a while. It’s nice to be able to open a bottle of wine. When we were so focused on sailing and going around the clock a nice glass of Amarone was not really in question.

One real positive of this is that Ciara and I have become closer. I don’t know how much of that relates to being side by side in battle with that MSF trip, and how much relates to my trip to Ireland to see her ex but we are kind of functioning like an old married couple who have been together forever.

Thanks to those who sent me emails of encouragement over the last six weeks. I think that I am going to get a chance to get to more of my usual reflective posts on various topics now that I can move beyond the journaling of what was quite a hyper sailing exercise. I forget to remind people that I can be reached at:  djangobisous@bell.net

Django

CAPE VERDE – THE SEQUEL

POSTED: April 2nd

So why am I writing from Cape Verde? Well, we were less than a day out on “the big sail” when we learned that a Brit with a private plane in Cape Verde could fly our passengers to London and they had secured seats on one of the few commercial flights still going to the U.S. from London.   We turned around and headed back to Cape Verde and well, here we are. Our passengers have headed off to the airport and we are gearing up to sail back to Casablanca and then to back to Malta. We are trying to do this quickly as we don’t know what restrictions there will be and we don’t want to be without a port to wait out this virus. At least we are well stocked and have been well paid for our efforts.

Ciara’s spirits, on the other hand, are a bit frayed. So we have a pretty reflective bit of cruising to do over the next couple of weeks, but other than the first few days will do it mostly as day cruising. Not the crazy twenty-four-hour day-after-day business we have had recently.

By the way, for those of you who read these posts to keep up with what Janice and Jim are up to, I can report that they made the decision to scramble back to Toronto from Key West on March 16th and by March 17th mid-day were on the road and completed the three thousand Kilometer trek in record time (well a record for them) two days later. At this point, they are still in quarantine at home.

Django

CAPE VERDE

POSTED MARCH 31, 2020

Well, that took a bit longer than planned. We made it to Cape Verde on the 29th.  Our sail from Casablanca had started with really tough weather and associated tough sailing but we had some better bits near the end.

The Morgan fellow we were picking up turned out to be a female Morgan so we jumped into a bit of a rethink of the quarters again. Morgan turned out to be pretty resourceful at sourcing food provisions and supplies and methanol and had a good stockpile for us when we met her.

As we set out for the big sail across to The Bahamas, Ciara did her teaching thing but actually had and has,  Alisha doing most of it as we learned from our sail from Casablanca to Cape Verde this Millennial is a quick study and a bit of a natural sailor.

What is a little tougher is that Ciara just received news that her ex-husband committed suicide. It seems that at some point shortly after I was there he went into the barn, swallowed the wedding ring, took off his boots, made some cuts on the soles of his feet and ankles and then while standing on a chair, used zip ties to tie his wrists up to the beams above and then kicked over the chair. This is a very slow way to die and very scary stuff. I have a hard time taking out a splinter so it must take some serious control to cut your own feet and then hang there waiting to bleed out.  It turns out that he died of a heart attack from the blood loss and they don’t know exactly how long the process took.

Ciara is more than a little shaken by the whole thing. She is, of course, relieved that her nightmare with him is finally over but equally stressed that my little trip to help her ended up with a resolution that still puts some stress on her. Now in some ways, she will never get away from him, but at least not live in fear.

So as we headed off we envisioned the next few weeks as just days and nights of hard sailing but with four to work the boat and me to cook and keep us organized I was feeling pretty confident. I have heard Captain Ciara say more than once to the group that “this is not November”. What she means is that the tradewinds for this route are ideal for crossing from north Africa to the Caribbean in November or December making that the chosen time that most serious racers or recreational sailors take this trip on – not in March. Well we don’t get to choose our timing for most things in life so why should this be any different?

You probably won’t see anything posted here until we make it to The Bahamas and we are in quarantine there.

Django

A MOVING TARGET

POSTED: Casablanca  March 22

It was a real push to Tangier/ Gibraltar and we all took our turns and did it in four days. Aline left us there and we took on a few more provisions and headed to Casablanca. Our trip was quite unnerving as we would hear the news each day and the confirmation of another airline canceling service to the region. Two nights before, Morocco had canceled all flights in and out. A few emergency government-arranged extraction flights, including a Canadian one, happened on Friday the 21st, and on our arrival in Casablanca, two of the doctors who did not make it onto those flights joined us. So at this point, we have gone from a contingency plan to an actual plan for execution.

Earlier today, we set sail again, now with two passengers, heading south toward Dakar, Senegal to pick up two more but learned this afternoon that one is going back to the Gambia, and the other caught one of the last flights from Dakar to Cape Verde to make our sail shorter.  So Cape Verde is our new interim destination and we expect to be there in six days. For those not familiar with the geography of the region, Cape Verde is off the west coast of northern Africa and is both a point to stop and take on provisions, and the last stop do any repairs before crossing to the Americas. It is further south than we would usually go but not as far out of the way as Dakar and does break up that long sail.

We have very good weather and Ciara has started her little class with Alisha and Benji on sailing basics. Alisha is a dietitian by training and Benji is a general practitioner. Benji has done a bit of recreational sailing and Alisha has never been on a sailboat but she is young and very fit.

We have many days on the ocean ahead and on a boat this size with what eventually will be five of us, the provisions are going to get pretty thin if we don’t hit a good pace when we leave Cape Verde. That pace will depend on the weather, which we can’t control, and the discipline of the team, which we can, so Ciara is all over that one right now. She won’t take the time for an overboard drill but will tell them how to do it. As we will always be on the move whether under sail or by power, her “on-deck” protocol is a simple rule – if your anywhere on the deck you are wearing a PFD.

The fellow we are meeting in Cape Verde has our provisions list so he will be sourcing that and we should be in port for only hours.

Wish us luck – the weather forecast is about as bad as it can get within the band of it still being safe to leave.

Django

WE ARE PUTTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER

POSTED: MARCH 15, 2020

Holy crap things are changing fast. Shortly after I got back from Ireland to Malta, Ciara, and En Plein Air everything was locking down with COVID 19.  Borders were closing, airports shutting down and her friend from MSF had been contacted by that organization with a job for us.

The simple plan is that we are to become the “contingency plan” for getting some American MSF doctors home to the U.S. if the commercial flights all get canceled and if any of them miss the emergency flights they expect will be sent by some countries to pick up their nationals from Africa. So the idea is that we sail to Casablanca, which has the largest international airport in the region, to learn if we are getting any of the doctors there, and evaluate what has happened on the flight situation and then potentially sail down to the Western Sahara to pick up three American doctors who are working in and around Senegal for the sailing to North America  – probably the Bahamas or another friendly (non- U.S. port.). We can’t be in U.S. waters. That’s a long story from En Plein Airs’ past.  From there they can make it back to the U.S. with other help.

We are hoping the Americans can make it north to Casablanca or at least to a point along the Western Sahara to meet us as if we are going as far south as Dakar, Senegal it will add another week to what is already a three week trans Atlantic trip, and that’s once we make it to Casablanca. The trick in all of this is that one of the Americans is a recreational sailor and one has done some sailing so Captain Ciara will get some relief. When doing the transatlantic there is no port you’re in each night (duh!) so to make the trip work you are under sail the whole time and that means the bodies on board are all in a cycle for taking their turn.

We are moored in Valletta Malta and over the last two days we sourced our provisions for this leg, loaded up, and tomorrow morning with the sunrise will set sail to Gibraltar / Tangier. The big challenge is always finding a good grade of methanol for the hydrogen generator. A lot of the other provisions are pretty straightforward. Ciara and Aline also sourced some medical supplies as they expect there will not be many available when we make it to Casablanca and if we have one or more on the boat who are sick this is going to be one messy trip. It’s been a while since we have done “real” sailing and even the trip to Casablanca will take five days if we are lucky and more realistically seven days.

It’s a bit of a crazy plan and one that is going to take more than a month of sailing from this point to get to The Bahamas.  The part that is as nuts is that all of this is tentative – if they can get commercial flights for the doctors they will, so we may have almost a week of hard sailing only to find that they have been able to get flights out of Dakar or Casablanca. We are dropping Aline, Ciara’s friend in Gibraltar and she will make it north to Lyon France where she is from.

At least we are being well compensated. A donor put a substantial sum in our account just for the leg for us to get to the western coast of Africa to pick them up so even if it is aborted we will have made what we made for all of last year. If we do end up doing the trip across the Atlantic they proposed a very generous fee, so the financial aspect is all working.

The exciting part for me is that the days with Justin, Amy, and Sven were the best of times for me, and this feels like we are back doing something meaningful. So it’s not really like putting the band back together but it has some of those elements. Its also nice in this crazy new world, where we won’t have bookings as its hard to “social distance” on a boat of this size, to be getting paid as I don’t know how we will survive otherwise.

It will also give me a chance to process my experience in Ireland with Ciara’s ex-husband and to try to find a way to explain to her how badly it went. Until then I will just try to hide some of the bruises.

So stay tuned. My posts may be scattered, not well-edited, and short for a while.

Stay safe.

Django

A TRIP TO IRELAND

POSTED MARCH 9, 2020

Europe, even southern Europe, is not very hot in winter. The south over the winter is at best, temperate,  and if you are from a northern climate while it is nothing like the extreme cold in Scandinavia or The Baltics, it’s not the season anyone is looking to pay to go out on a rickety old boat in the ocean. So sometimes I use the time to get some things upgraded or repaired on En Plein Air as we did last year in Greece, but other years it’s the time for me to catch up on some things, like going back to Canada, seeing some people, seeing my neurologist and doctor and dentist.  I look for an inexpensive place to moor for the winter season, and now that Captain Ciara is on the scene she is part of the decision making as well.

So my plan for this year is to do that Canada trip in April but right now, as I write this, I am sitting on a train, and using the train’s wifi, on my way to Ireland. Ciara is staying on the boat, which is currently moored in Malta, and she has one of her female doctor friends visiting from Medicins Sans Frontieres.  That’s the organization Ciara worked with for many years when she had to get away from her ex-husband. I don’t know if her friend is more than a friend but they certainly seem close so I hope they have a good time while I am away. Malta is not hot in March, but relative to Europe it’s pretty nice. The temperature when I left was about 17C but sunny so if you are doing anything where you are moving around its short sleeve and shorts weather but not first thing in the morning or later in the evening when the sun goes down.

My trip is to satisfy one of those wishes that “Django the Gennie” agreed to grant Ciara when she agreed to join me as captain. I have referenced before that her ex is a bit of a piece of work. Well, I am not going to detail all of it but from the stories she tells, he was always abusive, and when she “came out” first to herself, then to him, it really got bad. That’s when she left him which was not long after they had married. She has gone her whole adult life since that time trying to function with him ignoring court orders, being physically and verbally abusive to her, and threatening to her friends and family. She left the practice of medicine in Dublin when her mother passed and joined MSF, but still, he would on occasion find her and she would move on. What a way to live.

We all have choices in these matters – fight or flight and Ciara has made a lifetime of flight. Now you might think in this sad story this is the point where there is a turn – a point where our hero/heroine decides to fight – well that’s where you would be wrong. My task in going to Ireland is to lie to the guy and give him back the wedding ring and tell him that she has died just to get him off her trail. It’s not really the underdog winning story we all want but it’s a choice she has made in response to the reality she lives in. So I am off to a little place in southern Ireland where he lives a rural life, does odd jobs as a carpenter, and generally hangs out with others like him.

I am traveling with just a small backpack with some overnight stuff, Ciara’s wedding ring to give back to him, and a bottle of Bourbon – yeah he likes Kentucky Bourbon more than Irish whiskey so you know he is a bit messed up by that alone.

If you surveyed most people who know me, on where I fit on the Macho/ Normal / Wimp measure of fearlessness, most would put me somewhere in the Wimp category unless it is for a cause I believe in, which would push me up into the Normal category. For the task at hand, I have quite a bi-polar perspective – I am mad as hell at this guy and scared as hell as to how my dialogue with him is going to go.

I am going to have lots of free time when I get back to Malta so you should see several posts this winter. I really have a few good ideas for some food-related ones.

Django

KAYAK

POSTED: March 1, 2020

For many of us, even the word KAYAK creates a sense of being alone with nature. Kayaks have been part of my life from as early as I can remember. My mom, being from Quebec, had both canoes and Kayaks as part of her heritage and life growing up. I keep two on En Plein Air for the getting out on the water. It may seem a strange notion for a person who lives on the water to want to get “on the water” but there is something very personal about being in a small craft with almost no displacement, sitting on, and in, the water and the freedom to move quietly into little shallow areas without disturbing nature that is very therapeutic.

There are some things that have just become universal in acceptance and we hardly think about their origins or heritage but they just fit in our lifestyle – pizza, the sandwich, bicycle, umbrella and I would put the Kayak in this group as well. Unlike the pizza pie from Naples or the sandwich from the Earl of Sandwich in England, the kayak was not from a specific place but the northern regions of the northern hemisphere and the indigenous peoples of what we know today as Greenland, Canada, Siberia, Scandinavia, the Baltics and Alaska. They all used the vessel not really as much as a boat but almost an extension of themselves for hunting and fishing on the water. They were made not to a plan or set dimensions but to the size and shape of the user.

Perhaps that’s why even today they feel so personal and even when made of poly formed materials still create a sense of being a calm extension of ourselves.

Ok, so why are you rambling on about kayaks Django? Well, let me tell you.

Jim is a bit of a kayak nut. No, he is not out on the water every day but he and Janice keep four kayaks in their garage and live about a dozen doors from Lake Ontario so they go often. For him, like a lot of people, it is both the experience as well as the notion of the kayak that is important. In a busy competitive, efficient world it is a simple, calm, activity and one that just slows down the synapses that are usually firing away too quickly. It is also the link to nature that most of us need a regular hit of to keep from drowning in the modern world.

I have put in a couple of pictures Jim took when out kayaking with Janice one day. They live in the east end of Toronto in an area called The Beach and sometimes he goes kayaking there but more often does his kayaking down around the Toronto Islands which sit right off the downtown area. One day when kayaking with his son Jason an otter came up beside Jason’s boat. Now Toronto is the fifth largest city in North America and to be able to be out with the cranes and other birds, the big five-foot carp fish and various water mammals like lake otter, muskrats, and beavers is very special.

In Copenhagen, they have a really neat kayaking programme. You can use a kayak for free for two hours but the kayak comes with a little basket and the deal is that you get to use the kayak for free but are to pick up anything in the water that doesn’t belong there. Damb those Danes have their act together!

So what has triggered my inspiration to post this piece today is that Jade sent me an email with an image of Jim back working on a project he started many years ago but is only back to now.

When they had their cottage up in the Parry Sound area of Georgian Bay, the cottage was a Scandinavian style log building Jim had disassembled and moved a few hundred kilometers and reassembled on a nice waterfront lot on a little lake.

 

The cottage was really small, particularly on rainy days with the kids, so a few years later they built what they called the barn. And just to digress for a moment it was designed by Jim and built by him and his buddy John who is a contractor from Ottawa. John is the husband of Janice’s cousin Dawn and John is more kayak nutty then Jim. At last count John had about a dozen canoes and kayaks. Now to hear Jim tell it they built the building together and to hear John tell it, he built the place and Jim just got in the way. The same was the case for much of the reassembly of the log cottage according to John.

The barn was a one and a half story building with a little living area above where the kids had their own living room, as well as a pool table, ping pong table, and air hockey table.  On the ground floor was the workshop with about a forty foot workbench where they could do crafts and hobbies on rainy days. Janice would work on stained glass, jade would work on various sculptures and painting and Jason would either work on his own woodworking projects or do crafts or help Jim.

 

The Barn, is where Jim started the kayak project he is back to working on now. It is a scale model kayak he designed that is about 50% of an actual kayak so about two meters long. The chines and struts are all pine and the cladding is pine veneer laminated.

So after a couple decades from starting it he is back at it. The grand plan was that once finished he was going to podge on images of the various trips they took as a family.  He has always seen it as a bit of a manifestation of the “life is a journey” metaphor.  There have been lots of interruptions in the completion of the project, so perhaps not finishing it is also a metaphor. Naw, Jims not that wise.

 

So I have been rambling on as I am prone to do but stick with me a bit longer. Janice and others have expressed often to me that there are not enough pictures in these little posts I do so I harassed her and she is tracking down some of a kayaking trip they did when Jade and Jason were visiting a couple of years ago in a conservation area close to their home in Key West. Lemon sharks, and all kinds of fish in the less than meter (39 inches) of water below and lots of cranes, pelicans, cormorants, and Ibis in the trees and skies above.

She also mentioned to let people know that if they are planning a trip to the Florida Keys, and particularly to Key West and want recommendations on where to stay, what to do and the best Kayaking excursion companies just drop me a line at djangobisous@bell.net and I can send you out some notes from Jim and Janice.

Django

A RIFF ON ADRIAN

Posted: February 11, 2020

Well, this is a peculiar little piece. Jim has a lot of friends, a stack of acquaintances but only a few close buddies. As time goes on as a married couple people tend to get together with other couples. As a single guy, I see it all the time. A single person is sort of not as much in the picture. But Jims (and Janice’s) buddy Adrian is an exception. They have a long time friendship with him and have seen him through various phases in his life – as a music student at university, as a musician/ composer taking his identity from whoever he was backing up, and through various romantic relationships. Janice and Jim have been in partnership with him in music ventures and in various personal pursuits.

I find it interesting that good friends don’t have to see each other constantly to have a strong relationship. Jim’s relationship with his buddy Jim H.  in Ottawa is like that. Big gaps in seeing each other and then they get together and it’s like they live down the street from each other. The same goes for his buddy and old business partner John. It took me longer to rebuild my relationship with Jim. I had been out of the picture for a long time and never really made any effort to be on the scene, but it is good to back.

So back from my ramble to the topic at hand. Adrian floats in and out of their lives, popping up at Christmas to bake with Janice or in Key West for some sun or in London with Jim when delivering art for Janice.

Janice & Adrian get baked

So that’s the background on Adrian. On September 15th, I get this long email that Jim has sent out late at night after an art show that Janice was in. It was a fun show put together by AWOL Collective the group that Janice has shown with, in Miami, New York, and Toronto. It was on the fourth floor of an apartment building – guerilla gallery sort of thing – very Brooklyn.

A number of friends like Andre and Lee had shown up and it was a pretty good opening.

In Adrian’s busy schedule he showed up with the amazing Liz (Liz Lockrey – see Adrian’s website in Links we love).

So after the show, a few glasses of wine and some food were consumed and it’s pretty clear to me that Jim opened a bottle or two when they made it home.

Now I don’t know why Jim sat down to the computer later that night but he felt compelled to write down the poem below.

A RIFF ON ADRIAN

Licks at his fingertips

Dough in his freezer

Luna on his shoulder

Mama Bear in his heart.

 

Licks at his fingertips

Ostinatos to the schooled,

Played with conviction,

Has them all fooled.

 

Licks at his fingertips

Dough in his freezer

Luna on his shoulder

Mama Bear in his heart.

 

Dough in his freezer

For cookies and pies,

Dough in the future,

From royalties & royalty.

 

Licks at his fingertips

Dough in his freezer

Luna on his shoulder

Mama Bear in his heart.

 

Luna on his shoulder,

Friends and family too.

Living vicariously,

Without the miles of the road.

 

Licks at his fingertips

Dough in his freezer

Luna on his shoulder

Mama Bear in his heart.

 

Mama bear in his heart,

At rest, but never resting,

Guiding him always

Passed, but always present.

 

 

 

Nice poem lad. I like it. So why did I post it today and not when Jim scrawled it down? Well, today is Adrian’s birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ADRIAN! I look forward to hanging with you one day in the future.

 

P.S. as always, feel free to share the poem but please credit it to me.

PHONES RING

Posted Nov 2, 2019

A woman I have known for some time confided in me recently. She was burdened by a lot of things. She is about my age which means that she has aging parents, at least one child with issues, and is dealing with the aging process herself and her husbands aging as well.

She is not really a person who gets down much but over time that’s not as true a statement as it once was. She was pretty down when we chatted.  I hope our conversation helped. I think she really just needed to dump it all out.

This website I do is, for the most part, a pretty upbeat thing I think and while we all have reason to get down at times I try not to go there much. But my friend reads what I post here and I just wanted to share how deep she was down that day to say that some days it logical to feel down. She was, and remains, carrying a pretty heavy stress load and some of her friends and family need to understand that.

Anyway, here is the poem I wrote after chatting with her that day. Its not a happy poem and if your having a bad day, well, perhaps you should wait for my next post, but if your just cruising along perhaps reading it will bring into clear focus that the scratch on you new BMW really isn’t that big a deal, or not getting that promotion is not as important as the real issues in life.

 

PHONES RING

Phones ring.

They ring all the time.

At home, at work, in the car.

Sometimes I answer, most often I don’t.

 

News of my fathers death,

A confirmation after decades

Of estrangement.

 

Phones ring.

They ring all the time.

At home, at work, in the car.

Sometimes I answer, most often I don’t.

 

My son has died.

Finally succumbed to his demons.

My failure, but not mine alone.

 

Phones ring.

They ring all the time.

At home, at work, in the car.

Sometimes I answer, most often I don’t.

 

It will be a big stroke one day,

My husband of forty years.

He carries instructions for passersby.

I carry the weight of waiting.

 

Phones ring.

They ring all the time.

At home, at work, in the car.

Sometimes I answer, most often I don’t.

 

More tests, more results.

My doctor is inconclusive.

I don’t think it’s the cancer that kills you,

But fearing it’s return.

 

Phones ring.

They ring all the time.

At home, at work, in the car.

Sometimes I answer, most often I don’t.

 

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A couple of final thoughts from Django:

I know that was not a fun poem to read. My goal was to capture how far down she was that day.

But after sharing how she felt that day and me sharing the poem with her she seems to be feeling a bit better able to cope. If you see her, give her a hug.