Summertime

It’s summer.  I feel like a hen on the ‘Boneless Chicken Ranch’.  The little structure I had in my life has been removed.  Now I must make my own strings and pull them if I’m going to get up in the morning.  This is not a complaint, merely an observation.  In fact it’s a luxury being able to lie in bed and toy with the idea of never getting up.  But it’s perverse the way the mind works against the body’s best interests.  I have a walk in the neighborhood that I have taken many times and love.  I go quickly up 39^th Ave. to the top and down around along a country road where the crowing of roosters reminds me of Mexico.  I do stretches in the shade of a tree and amble back down 30^th Ave. looking at gardens.  Today when I got home from that walk, I drove to Bella Vista Orchard and bought some perfectly ripe peaches.  I ate one with granola for breakfast.  It was so luscious it almost burst of its own volition out of its thin peachy skin.  And yet when I wakened at about seven, I didn’t leap up eager to go.  My mind pushed hard against all the pleasant memories of that walk and tried to convince me to roll over, curl up in a new position and sleep.  It almost succeeded. 

Jessica, my new Korean friend, and I have decided not to meet again until September.  My student at Immigrant Services is going to continue to work towards a separation from her husband.  Her daughter came with her to class yesterday. I introduced them to the social worker who will help with the divorce proceedings by putting her in touch with lawyers, etc.  We decided not to have any more English classes until September.  So I’m a bike, a hike and 7 sleeps away from summer holidays in the east.  Life’s mostly a holiday now, so I should probably say, ‘changing the venue of the summer holidays.’ 

I’m looking forward to hearing about Jay’s holiday on Jeju Island.  He phoned from there one glorious morning, but I wasn’t in to hear the details.  Next week at this time I’ll be driving to Kelowna to spend the afternoon and have dinner with Bert and Peg and Rob and Joanna.  Bert will drive me to the airport, and I’ll catch the 8:30pm flight to Calgary.

I bought the ticket with Air Miles.  It’s a red-eye, arriving in London, Ontario at about 6:30am, 3:30am Vernon time.  That’s 7:30pm Incheon time. 

View from the top of Dewdrop Mountain, looking back at Kamloops and the still swollen Thompson River.  The haze is from fires in the Kelowna area, not Russia and Colorado this time.

Heading back down

A Mariposa Lily, the first I've seen and a rather rare flower in this area.

   

The neighbourhood has been quiet this week, so I still haven't turned on the air conditioner.  The days have been hot but the nights are cool.  We had a furious wind and thunder storm on Friday night.  I had biked with a new group of woman in the morning; it was perfect because it was cloudy and the ride wasn't really long.  Even though I wasn't too tired when I got home, I was happy that the rain came.  It saved me from having to water or do any other gardening.  Today I went on a wonderful long hike and again returned just before the rain and thunder came.  We had a bit of rain earlier, and I can hear the thunder rumbling in again now.  Good, I can go and read.  I have almost finished the new translation of Anna Karenina.  I'm enjoying it very much.  I've gone back to studying a bit of Spanish, in a very lazy way.  I have some great cds that I listen to as I kick back in the easy chair with a cool pack on my shoulder after hiking, biking or working in the garden.  It's so easy compared to Korean that it seems almost as if I'm fluent, which I'm not.  It's wonderful what relativity can do.

Some of the Thursday bike group at Kekuli Bay on Lake Kalamalka

The Monashee Mountains from the lunch spot on the Sunday hike up Yeoward Mountain

Some of the many anemones in the meadows on the Yeoward hike

The same anemones, but more mature ones in a more open meadow.  A funny woman on the hike told me that they call these old ones hippies on sticks.

July 17, 2012

Nothing much has happened to me this week, but there’s always the weather, the topic Canadians can count on to fill the void in a conversation or blog.  It’s hot in Vernon and has been for about a week now.  I haven’t started the air conditioning yet.  I think I’m turning this fact into a virtue.  I’d better be careful about that.  It’s much easier to indulge your whims when you’re alone, and I’m beginning to fear that a whim can soon become an obsession.  That way lies bag ladydom for me.  I can easily concoct a saving-the- environment justification for this particular mania; in fact I have done.  But the truth is rooted in my character.  I’m not quick to part with a nickel. I could end up wearing unforgivably old clothes and, what’s even more sobering, being found dead in my bedroom, having succumbed to heat prostration in a place with a working but unused air conditioner.  The one thing that might save me from the latter fate is the neighborhood I live in.  After spending almost 40 years on the shore of the Gatineau River where the only human sounds we heard were the babbling voices of groups of bikers riding along the road across the river on their way from Gatineau to Wakefield, I now find myself in the East Hill area of Vernon.  I have a mixed bunch of neighbors, most of whom are friendly, helpful and generally keep to themselves.  I enjoy talking with them when I’m working in the front garden or shoveling.  Aside from the odd barking dog there’s not much noise.  I’m used to the sounds of traffic on 32^nd Ave., a big truck or emergency vehicle sometimes offends the ear, but the regular pattern becomes almost like water running in the background.  And all’s quiet at night, except for one family that lives behind and one house over from me.  The woman of the house can’t seem to open her mouth without emitting a harsh sound, and the words she uses would be beeped out on public media.  The men in the place have more pleasant voices, except when they’re drunk, which they often are in the summer.  Then, somewhere between midnight and 2:00am, they match her, curse for curse and decibel for decibel.  I’ve spent two nights recently as an unwilling eavesdropper on their drunken domestic exchanges of expletives.  It just might drive me to closing the windows and turning on the air conditioning.  I may ultimately thank them for saving me from myself.

My student at Immigrant Services emailed me on Sunday night to say that she wouldn’t be able to come to class on Monday.  Part of that class was supposed to be her first interview with a worker about her abusive situation at home.  I hope she will be able to come next week.

Living alone

Since July 1, I’ve seen a full moon and impressive fireworks, gone on 3 hikes and 1 bike ride, attended a birthday barbecue, organized my finances with Dave Acheson, started the path at the side of the house, had Bert and Peggy for dinner and ngiven 2 classes at Immigrant Services.  When you put 8 days into one sentence, it sounds as if your life is a whirl.  But it’s not.  It is at least becoming a life and not a bad one.  I symbolically acknowledged this by finally getting rid of all the cardboard boxes I’d saved from the move in anticipation of an immanent return.  They were stacked in the 1/3 garage that now has the sign ‘Jim’s Eccentricity’ on its door.  I pulled them out, cut them up and used them to make the path at the side of the house.  With paving stones on top and bark all around and between, they don’t look bad.  Mo, her big garbage cans and her SUV for carrying the bark made the project possible.

I didn’t choose to live alone, but now that I am in that situation I’m discovering there are positive aspects to it.  Today in my class at Immigrant Services I was brought up sharply against the worst of the alternative.  After one hour of working on my student’s difficulties with verb tenses and the formation of questions, we took a break.  We began by going to the washroom, and, as I was drying my hands, I noticed that she was leafing through the brochures that are set up in a rack near the sink.  She took one on abuse, folded it and put it in a pocket.  As I made our tea, my mind was on what I should do.  The part of me that likes the clarity and objectivity of teaching language urged ignoring it, but something made me think that I was there for more than that.  If I didn’t try to talk with her about possible problems no body else would know about them to ask her.  So when we got back to our desk I took a few sips of tea and got up the nerve to tell her that I had seen her take a brochure on abuse.  What followed was an hour of talking, some crying and a decision on her part to get professional help.  She is married to a very angry man.  She’s managed it for many years, but it’s hard for me to imagine how.  I was able to talk to one of the social workers at Immigrant Services and set up meetings for the two of them.  The social worker is a lovely woman.  She will assess the situation and decide what additional help is needed.  All of this will be done during the hours when we are supposed to be studying English because her husband would be furious if he suspected anything.  Her daughter will be in town for the second meeting, and I’m sure she will help her mom explain the situation.  Both the daughters have suggested she should do something for years, but she had no idea how to start.  It’s not going to be easy. 

Life is much more complex than verb tenses, unless your talking about Korean verb tenses

The view from one of the lookouts on Sunday's hike up Estekwalan Mountain.

Another view from Estekwalan, showing the haze that the weather reporters say is caused by smoke from the fires in Colorado blowing north and west ?