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Stormy in Trail
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 790
And, without notice ("Next Week", I was told) he's moved.
I don't know what I expected. "Extended Care", I imagined a room of his own, communal facilities, a nurse or helper to ensure he was getting his laundry washed, the care he needed.
Wow.
This was not it. Similar to the hospital, a room, shared with 3 others, curtains for privacy, elevated hospital beds, a locker for his possessions.
If you've never been to one, go. Now. This is what it's like to be old and poor. And the people there - any of them - all of them - they need company. Anyone. Everyone. This isolate the elderly, remove them from the community - it's a dystopian nightmare framed as socialism - it's fucking hell.
Fucking bloody hell.
It was good I had my son along, because it was a pretty quick agreement that if things get to this point - and - never say never, life has that sense of irony, and - I bear witness, I'm a smoker - and hard-living alcoholic - and - if you knew me before I became one you knew how unlikely it was - so - grim, but possible - take me up the mountain, let me out with a backpack, a few packs of cigarettes and a bottle of Vodka, and don't organize a search party for a few weeks.
'cause I can take care of myself.
And taking care of myself would be better than this.
I think Stormy agrees as well, only he doesn't have the nerve. I get that. It's not an easy decision. Never an easy decision, and - framing it with the right presence of mind - this - well, Buddhists spend their whole life preparing. It's not an easy thing.
The home, grimly connected to the hospital, we're arriving close to lunch, 11:00 AM, there's a couple of dozen people in their wheelchairs in front of the TV. The big communal TV.
This is grim.
None of them alive, even vaguely, merely old with the blood pumping through them via hidden mechanics under their wheelchairs, gaping, dead smiles and grimaces, it's a fucking horror show. You could easily imagine them being kept alive solely to give their pensions to the home. And his room - like at the hospital - shared with 3 others. It's what I imagine a hospice to be like, only I have no word that he's dying, only - well, this is no place for the living so I have to presume the worst. And the literature I read - well, dire, true, but not so dire as this.
Halloween should be celebrated here. They would like that. The ghouls of old age and infirmity.
And to think I had hopes he would lead their art classes.
I tell my son afterwards, he gets it, he's in agreement, it's a living will of sorts, dad's last big prospecting trip, he can drive me up the mountain and pick me up in a week.
***
Today day, grey and dismal, raining, the clouds are smudging into the trees a few hundred feet above Nelson. Read the paper, missing people, always, it's seasonal, you know, intuitively, instinctively - why and how - and this grim settling of spiritual beliefs, this reconciling of good Karma, bad Karma, lives well and poorly lived, people victims of the pandemic, economies well out of their control - and feeling the pain of everyone that lives here - and dies here - it is legion - it's the pain of affordable housing, jobs, decent pay, security, friendship, it's the loss of the old world, in with the new, it's the same pain felt the world over, only here - it's under a magnifying glass, everything is - well, more than ordinary. More than it should be.
Today, again, this time via the bus, almost four hours on the bus for a 40 minute visit.
(Refinery/Smelter above Trail. No matter where you look...)
The trees, the white birch and evergreen and the others, fruit and nut trees with overgrown moss hanging from every limb, against the immediate closing in of the fog, white, grey, claustrophobic, I imagine, riding, a corpse hanging from every tree, for this - lush as it is, it marks the end of days.
But today he's lucid, I find him - not in his room, or in the communal area watching TV, not at the art table doing art with the rest of them, but off on his own at the end of a long corridor in his wheelchair looking out the window. He's glad to see me - it's been 3 weeks since he had a cigarette. Actually, it was last Sunday, and I correct him gently, but I know, I know, it doesn't matter.
I wheel him outside - he wants a cigarette. They took his cigarettes from him when he first arrived - and - really - why? I understand, not indoors, but here - at the end of his life - to deny him what he regards as a luxury - is wrong.
That's it.
We go outside and make it off to the edge of the parking lot. He's got a plan. A SCHEME. Stormy's scheme. That I'm going to bust him out of there, we have to leave his wheelchair - he can walk fine - don't you know - he's been keeping it secret - THEY don't know- and -
We're gonna take all of his money out of the bank and drive to Campbell River and live with my son....
Hmmmm.
I'm not so sure about this. It would make a great movie - for sure - or biography - or documentary - but - bloody hell -
Maybe not. Maybe not now. But I get it - we gotta bust you outta here!!! (And - spoiler - they have a passcode at the elevator - so that residents don't escape!!!!"
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1057
My son here for a few days to visit, time to catch him up on Culture. I'm forever recommending him books and films, and he's forever making notes never to see them, so - trapped in my company for a couple of days we take in a few classics.
First of all Art Bell & David Paulides - The first - host of Coast to Coast AM Radio - excellent listening for the long drives, and the second, for his unique take on Missing People in the wilderness. (Missing 411).
Which are wonderfully disquieting things to listen to when you're up too late driving someplace too far and you need interesting company.
Which - while briefly here - and having listened to any number of the episodes - are easy to dismiss as the ravings of a lunatic or mental illness - but there's always the "What IF?".
By which I mean, what would you do if you saw something truly inexplicable? Like a close encounter with a Bigfoot - or UFO? Would you tell anyone? And how do you communicate experiences - such as "enlightenment" for example - via language to someone that hasn't shared the experience? How would you persuade them?
***
Anyways, those two, merely to share a taste. Follow this up with "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" - Season 3, Episode 20 of the "X-Files" - with which he's not so familiar, but my personal favorite, which addresses the theme of "Truth" when dealing with extraordinary events, "Truth" as told from the various points of view and biases of the several witnesses who were there.
***
Follow this with "The Evil Dead II" - which I've reviewed and recommended elsewhere here - and to him - only *busy busy boy* he's not yet seen.
He gets it. Or - at least he gets why I like it so much - for a completely schlock horror/comedy film it touches quite a few nerves. My nerves, at least.
***
And now to: "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover". Starring - a very Sexy Helen Mirren, Tim Roth, Michael Gambon, etc, etc.
I billed this as "The Unicorn Chaser". My bad.
So, over thirty years since I've seen this - and - it upset me then - and upsets me still now. But I'm better able to make sense of it.
By which I mean I "got-it", when I saw it, the bullying privilege and bungling incompetence, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, etc, etc, BUT - Another 30 plus years in the world and I'm really getting it. Wow. Revise the accents, update the dialogue (and food - no more fine cuisine, use Chick-Fil-E and Taco-Bell,...) and here we are...
7 Years fine dining in Calgary. I get it.
It's a masterpiece. Don't read the reviews, they've been done by half-wits and eunuchs, cuckolds and idiots, watch it, it's trying, it's difficult, it's cinematically the equivalent of watching all of Van Gogh's (or Rembrandt's or Vermeer's) paintings in a single viewing, their life's understanding distilled into a movie, the aesthetics, the dialogue, the characters, it's never been more relevant - or topical.
The boy (so he says) loved it.
Cabeza de Vaca - Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1005
Which is the first person narration of Cabeza de Vaca's 8 years in North America. One of only 4 survivors of the 1527 Narvaez expedition (from 400 initially) he became one of the first Europeans to cross North America, his odyssey saw him taken slave by various of the Native tribes as he worked his way from Florida to Mexico City - plain speaking, he embellishes nothing - yet, given his ordeal he is remarkably precise about locations, times and distances, as well as offering some cultural insights into the peoples he met.
I love this sort of stuff - History is much more interesting when told to you through the eyes of it's witnesses.
Chapter 21
Five Christians quartered on the coast came to the extremity of eating each other. Only the body of the last one, whom nobody was left to eat, was found unconsumed. Their names were Sierra, Diego Lopez, Corral, Palacios, and Gonzalo Ruiz.
Chapter 23
THE ISLANDERS wanted to make physicians of us without examination or a review of diplomas. Their method of cure is to blow on the sick, the breath and the laying-on of hands supposedly casting out the infirmity. They insisted we should do this too and be of some use to them. We scoffed at their cures and at the idea we knew how to heal. But they withheld food from us until we complied.
Chapter 35
They said that a little man wandered through the region whom they called Badthing [Mala Cosa]. He had a beard and they never saw his features distinctly. When he came to a house, the inhabitants trembled and their hair stood on end. A blazing brand would suddenly shine at the door as he rushed in and seized whom he chose, deeply gashing him in the side with a very sharp flint two palms long and a hand wide. He would thrust his hand through the gashes, draw out the entrails, cut a palm's length from one, and throw it on the embers. Then he would gash an arm three times, the second cut on the inside of the. elbow, and would sever the limb. A little later he would begin to rejoin it, and the touch of his hands would instantly heal the wounds.
Read the Wiki Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81lvar_N%C3%BA%C3%B1ez_Cabeza_de_Vaca
And, should you be stuck finding the book read it online here: https://www.google.ca/books/edition/The_Journey_of_Alvar_Nu%C3%B1ez_Cabeza_de_Va/RMQRAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover or here: http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/cdv/rel.htm
The Wolfpack
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1335
The Wolfpack is a 2015 documentary that tells the story of six brothers and a sister whose father confined them inside of their 4-bedroom, New York City apartment for almost all of their lives.
Read the Wiki here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolfpack
Not a great documentary, but an interesting one, by virtue of it's subjects.
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