I am a recluse. An old T-shirt of mine sports an image of a Sasquatch above the word “Introvert.” That’s me. I do not like crowds and people’s conjoined behaviours within them. I prefer to hear music versus being slapped on the face with a monstrous din. A friend called to say that he had an extra ticket for a Bachman Turner Overdrive concert, probably their last one ever. Did I want to come? I agreed, then instantly had regrets. Yeah but…
So! I’ll long remember that April fool’s Monday night in Victoria. There were thousands of lumpy old farts and younger folk leaping joyously about to the music, happy and in harmony. It was an uplifting experience. Randy Bachman is now 81 years old, the band has been going for 55 years! His arthritic hands still play flawlessly. The other iconic band Randy participated in was the Guess Who and they played several of those songs as well. WOW! Happily, the band put a distinctively Canadian edge on the show. There was enough positive energy exuded to power an electric car for a year. I should also note that an opening band was April Wine, another half-century old, world-renowned, Canadian band. One opening band was Headpin, descended from yet another famous group, Chilliwack. The Pins have also been around for a long time, notorious for being the loudest rock band ever. No kidding! My buddy renomered them the ‘Pinheads.’ I came home with ringing ears, wondering what the hell I’ve done with all my years of rockless existence. Wot? Now, each morning when I’m out collecting the daily crop of doggy dna I catch myself hummimg “Takin’ care of business.”
A week later, after a brief respite of semi-sunny days, we’re back to the spring drearies. Rain.
The drier days were long enough to weed the gardens and discover an infestation of Japanese Knotweed. It is a pernicious fauna, an invasive species which tends to over-run all else. Each tender shoot rises from a massive system of underground rhizomes. And so my life is reduced to this, pulling weeds. I remind myself that weeds are merely plants someone else says are bad bur I have an ingrained sensibility. Just let it be I tell myself, but my distant farmboy instincts have their own imbedded rhizomes. Damn it all! How about the Knotweed Cookbook? Boil the piss out of them!
I sit at my desk watching sail and power yachts leaving the harbour at sunup. For all the possible reasons to own a boat, mine were spiritual. It is where my soul felt at home. I also held an illusion that I was free to leave this civilized world behind. The current madnesses out there really weigh heavily. The latest Trump tariffs have been impossed on tiny unihabited islands in the South Pacific and Southern Oceans, their only significant population being penguins. I guess when you’ve alienated all the people you may as well go to work on the birds. There is a meat wholesaler from over in mainland Canada who delivers to our local butcher. They’re named Penguin Foods. I’ve asked the driver who eats all the penguin meat but he didn’t get the joke. Wot? That, of course, makes it even funnier.
Our reluctant spring continues. Just as the world dries out enough to get to work out there, another heavy shower arrives. We’ll need that moisture come summer. I sit at my desk and watch the world go by. The rain now comes by horizontally.
“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”
…Dolly Parton
