Sitting slumped in a restaurant booth, I watched a television hockey game reflected on the rain-spattered window. We were experiencing a late-winter gale with high wind and heavy rain. It was supposed to rage on through the night. Two emergency vehicles with screaming sirens pelted off down the highway into the gathering darkness. That damned bridge construction again! I was dejected. My effort at a simple plumbing repair had turned into a monster. We were eating out because I had to leave the water shut off. My wife is not happy with me. Neither am I.
Nothing is forever. Understanding that is a joy of aging. “This too shall pass.” So…when you see certain politicians on the tely, know they’ll be gone one day. The plumbing is corrected, the rain has ended, life goes on.
Today is another spring day. Don’t make plans, the weather will change. This morning there was a sparkling sunrise. Everything was sharp and rich with colour. In a bight a mile across the bay from my window is a house with a huge, impossibly green lawn. Beneath the lawn, down a bank beside a long dock sits an overturned canoe. Directly above the canoe’s bow, up in the treeline on the ridge behind is the pointed top of a green water tower hidden among the tree tops. It is hard to find even when you know it is there. Today into that crystal air smoke rises in laddered shafts among the surrounding forest. Spring clean-up I suppose and a moment frozen in time back to when wood smoke was a sign of civilization. Now it is part of a panorama of houses all along the shore and I wonder how it looked before the encroachment of all us crackers.
Later in the day, after a drive home from Nanaimo in a pounding rain and hail storm I sit back at my desk. The massive storm cell through which I drove now speeds southward on a westerly wind. The black mass with its dark skirt of precipitation is born in a clear sky. The surface wind on the harbour comes from the south, the opposite direction to the winds aloft. They’re shooting more movie scenes in our Downtown much to everyone’s inconvenience. One block on main street has been remade to look like a small town in Colorado. I wonder if there is not a movie set in Colorado made to look like Ladysmith. I also ponder about whatever happens to our movie earnings. Despite a very public impact we are never told where that bonus revenue goes. It is a secret. Spring.
Let me repeat some old wisdoms. “If it seems too good to be true, it is.” I’ve been trying to organize my workshop and after much recrimination decided to order a too-cheap-to-be-true tool chest. It was a scam, money out, no toolbox. When you’re low with funds you tend to take some dangerous chances. “There’s no fool like an old fool.” Uhuh. Spring.
“Flowers don’t worry about how they’re going to bloom. They just open up and turn toward the light and that makes them beautiful.”
— Jim Carrey