Life, the Universe, and the Bits In-between
I remember reading something somewhere about one's
life amounting to little more than the dash between the two years (years of your
birth and death) on your headstone.
"Oh, dear" I can hear you all saying, "another
depressing blog entry." Not at all! (... and in fact, I'll remind you that
there's only been one depressing one so far, and that wasn't so much depressing
as it was a tad on the pessimistic side.) No, this is not that kind of blog
entry at all, although I have to admit that there's a bit of heavy stuff coming
up so be forewarned.
Today would've been
my sister's 37th birthday. She died nearly three years ago of breast cancer.
(I've probably mentioned that before--sorry to be repetitive.) The dates are
easy to remember; if you can remember August 7th, she died exactly a month and a
day after her 34th birthday (September 8th). She looked radiant at her last
birthday party which is remarkable considering she was quite riddled with cancer
at that point but completely unaware of any serious problem other than some
nagging and increasingly bad pain in her side. Her boyfriend, who she had just
moved in with, had bought her diamond earrings and a necklace with matching
diamond pendant. She had recently had her hair cut, was wearing this grey-ish
evening dress sort of thing (that's the best I can do: I'm a guy--don't know
chiffon from meringue), and frankly just looked amazing... and quite different
to any way she had looked at any other time in her life, I thought. She seemed
to be in the process of reinventing herself when she died... career, appearance,
and goals in general.
I was invited to a
party on an acreage over the weekend. You hear the term "acreage" a lot up
here, and I always thought the term had some great significance like, for
instance, the word "farm" which involves a
farm house
with farm
animals, some
farm tools
or machines and maybe even like... uh... you know, the
farm part
where the
farmer
grows stuff. It turns out, though, that an acreage is just a larger-than-normal
piece of land with a house on it. In the case of this acreage, the piece of
land was about seven acres--wooded and gorgeous. It was a camp-out (although I
wasn't able to camp) being thrown by some friends of the captain of the pool
team I'm on... extremely nice people, and an all-around delightful time. We sat
around a campfire a little bit from the house, and we talked about the internet
(our host, Steve, runs a wireless high-speed ISP out of his backyard...
literally! The transmission tower is in the woods behind his house), we talked
about music (I put on some P-Funk and it did
not go
over well), and we talked about hunting, fishing, and camping. Inevitably, the
conversation swung around to people they all knew (who I didn't), and what was
going on in their lives.
Somehow, there
seems to be a greater sense of life and death up here--circle of life kind of
stuff--and I wish I could put my finger on it, but it just seems to be something
that everyone's more in touch with here than in California. Is it maybe because
Albertans drive like shit and there are so many road fatalities? Maybe it's the
harsh weather up here or the fact that there are so many farms around? (Yes,
people do occasionally fall into combine harvesters.) Could it be the sparse
population density or the tendency people have to gossip or share their stories
of the unfortunate? I remember Jake (captain of the pool team and my connection
to everyone at the camp-out) relating a brief, but harsh,
story.
"Yeah... you know that fella Tom,
eh? Yeah... he was on his way up to Fort Mac, and he died, eh. Hit a moose on
the highway, and it came through his windshield and kicked the shit out of him."
He started chuckling to himself and added, "not much left of his face, I guess,
eh. That moose give him a real kick in the teeth." Of course, Jake is the guy
who an hour before had gashed his hand on a piece of wood then wiped the blood
off with a piece of newspaper, balled it up, and stuck it under some kindling as
though nothing had happened. I'm sure he's the kind of guy who'd stitch himself
up without hesitation after first sterilising the wound with a red hot
poker.
And then, there was Jake's story
of Kevin, the man who wouldn't die. He'd just checked himself out of the
hospital after three weeks of reconstructive surgery to various parts of him.
He was in a pretty gruesome motorcycle accident, from what I can gather, but
left against the advice of his doctors 'cause he'd had enough. "Shoulda been
dead," said Jake and then shortly after, with a laugh, "'course he shoulda been
dead last spring when he crashed his Ski-doo, eh. He's a wild man, that
Kevin... wild man." All of this just furthers my suspicion that Canadians
are
Australians of the north... 'cause doesn't that just sound like an Aussie thing
to say? Anyway...
... despite all of
this talk, it was an incredibly peaceful evening... out under the stars... a
fire crackling away in front of me... surrounded by good, friendly people with a
seemingly unlimited supply of stories. God, this is starting to sound like a
cheesy beer ad. "There are good times... and then there's the high life."
Trust me, it was pretty neat.
And then
the Northern Lights started. I'd seen them before but never this clearly. They
look almost like a Red Tide--the bioluminescent plankton along the coast of
Southern California that, when agitated by the crashing waves, glows an
incredible green as the waves hit the shore. If you've never seen the Northern
Lights, I'd try to swing up north at some point in your life to catch them. If
you've never seen the Red Tide in Southern California, I recommend catching
that, too. But sitting there in the woods, watching the light dance across the
sky and then streak and cascade towards the trees, I realised that I had a
pretty damned cool experience to add to my "dash"... you know, the one between
the year I was born and the one I'll die? Yeah, I'm back to that
again...
... because I remember arguing
with my sister around about 1990 about moving out to Pasadena. "Once you're on
that work-rent treadmill, you'll never get off you know. If you really want to
be an artist, stay at home with mum and dad." Well see, that was my plan. I
knew I needed studio gear and more experience and I'd be damned if I was going
to go serve food or stock shelves when my time could be better spent working on
music and freeloading off my parents. She moved anyway... and then just a few
years later, she decided to move up to Seattle. I was sorry to see her go,
tried to talk her out of it again ("if you want to pursue anything in the
entertainment business, L.A. is the only place to do it"), and yet, I was quite
jealous--she was living her life, following a path, and I was staying at home
practicing.
She forged a terrific life
for herself in Seattle through the following nine and a half years. I went and
stayed in her place; she was spending more time at her boyfriend's than at home,
so she let me have the place for six weeks. It was late summer of 1997, and
there were a million things to do in Seattle. Still, I spent most of my time
with Joanne and her friends. After a few weeks, I decided that I was going to
move up there myself, but my career conspired against me as I started "The
Journey of Allen Strange" shortly after returning to L.A. and had to stay in
town. Still, the point is that I was proud of her--the friendships she had
forged, the place she had found, and the life she had put together for herself.
It would only be four years later (with some genuinely non-envious,
well-balanced, rational prodding from me) that she moved back to L.A. to stay.
She floated for awhile, became discouraged again (as L.A. always seemed to do to
both of us), and then, towards the very end, kinda seemed to figure things out
and start making changes.
So on my
sister's birthday, I'd like to acknowledge the respect and admiration I have for
her for filling her "dash" with so much. She followed a path in her life,
against everyone's advice and admonitions, and did so with an apparently
carefree and easy attitude regardless of the poverty she might have faced, the
loneliness at moving away from her family, or, in the end, her illness. I
remember one point, as her condition was just starting to worsen, when she
opened a bottle of 7-Up. They were running one of those under-the-cap-prize
things and, having nothing else to do, she read the rules on the back of the
bottle first. Everyone in the room was engaged in a conversation about
something-or-other and missed her opening the bottle, looking under the cap, and
saying, "you have won... a free biopsy!" No bitterness and no self-pity--just
that wry outlook on life that she never lost, even in her final days. Ah, if
only we could all face our trials and tribulations in life with such levity
and... well, you know what I'm saying: She
rocked.
But as I sat there in the woods
watching the Northern Lights, I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps Canada is my
Seattle... that perhaps, albeit a little later than my sister (and with a wife
and two kids!), I've finally cast off the bullshit, decided to ignore my critics
and cynics, dismiss expectations (my own and other people's, both) and just "go
for it". Joanne didn't know where her move to Seattle would take her (other
than Seattle, of course). I'm not sure what this move to Canada is going to do
to, or for, me... but watching the Northern Lights, I felt like, in some part, I
have Joanne to thank for that... for inspiring me to follow my gut and to really
do something with my "dash"; you know... the bits
in-between.
Posted: Mon - August 7, 2006 at 06:25 PM