Part Three,Continued.

                      "To everything there is a season,and a time to every purpose under Heaven..."











When those two soldiers, or two policemen come to your door,you think you know what it's going to be like. How could you not.Most people are not ignorant of such things.It's been talked about before.In very few places is the possibility of such things ignored. So you think you know what it will be like. You've imagined what the day will be like, and you think you know.But you don't. You think you know how you will react, what the sensations will be, but you have no idea. You might even imagine,as you reach for the phone that you know exactly what the news will be, because you've been prepared by circumstance and situation.So you just say, on your way across the room, this is the day.It's not really unexpected. You might well be surprised.

I crossed the floor, toward my open door.Where is that damn phone anyway?I'm going to have to spent time hunting for it.But it's right there on the bed.Sit down.Pick it up. I thought I would be steady, but my fingers are not and they fumble. My father's been sick for years.Drinking,two packs a day,driving the car at ninety miles an hour. Stroke after stroke. I can barely track his conversations now.Today's the day. Some things slow to a crawl, some things speed up. I can nearly feel the house as it creaks and breathes, weathering a Calgary winter.

And then I'm talking to my sister.For the life of me, now that some time has past, I can't remember which of my sisters it was. But I heard these words:" Mom and Dad were coming back from Fredericton. there was an accident on the Berry Mills road ,and Mom didn't make it."

She proceeded to tell of the events.They'd gone to Fredericton to pick up one of my sisters kids, my nephew. The weather was bad, visibility poor. As they were passing the city dump, only about ten minutes from home, a young man just getting off work crossed the center line and collided with their van.Both he and my mother were killed. My father was taken to the hospital, already crippled with infirmity, and now with all of his ribs broken. My nephew was in the hospital as well.

My one thought, the one thing that mattered most to me at the time: did my mother die instantly?Or did she suffer? "No," said my sister. "She lived for a short time, but was declared dead at the scene." Impaled upon the steering wheel I'm told, her life pouring out onto a cold icy road. And I wondered what her last thoughts had been.My great fear is that they were "There are only moments left now...and I haven't seen my son in over a decade." There is no way to know for certain, But that's what I imagined them to be.

Part Three.

           "I am a pilgrim, and a stranger, while traveling through this wearisome land..."

Time passing.People passing. the first funeral I ever attended was in grade seven.My paternal grandfather left this world, probably too soon, for want of taking care of himself. Thomas Graham followed in the early 1980's, a man well aged, nearly one hundred. His wife, Alta Graham, my maternal grandmother followed in 1987. Her life spanned the twentieth century, and I though I'd never see her fade.But she did, of pancreatic cancer. I wanted to go home for the funeral, but did not.

In the mid eighties, a co-worker, Charmaine, called "Charlie" was taken while driving a cab at night. Stabbed fifteen times. In her casket she looked sallow and melted, and we followed a long procession of taxis to the graveyard where some small amount of ashes were place in a slot in the ground.So small! Steven Bascom passed in 2003, of natural causes. He was sickly, but what is natural at the age of forty two? In 2005 John passed of a  ruptured abdominal aorta. Aged forty six. I didn't get the news for months.He was a room mate and a best friend, but I only heard from him from time to time after I moved to Calgary.

The two policemen were gone, and it was a long way to that red cellphone,somewhere in my room, in the house I lived in, up on Calgary's north hill. Wind blew small wisps of snow through the tall yellow grasses out back, and an insidious frosty draft leaked in the edges of  my closed window. 

Part 2 continued

Perhaps one of those native spirits blew down from Nose Hill with the wind.I'm told they wander up there. Down across the houses clinging to it's edge.Perhaps it brought the dream, as I dozed yet again on this lazy Sunday,with the television on low and a cool draft seeping in my north facing window,covered in frost.

I'm in what seems to be a laundromat, with washers churning and dryers spinning.In the window something yellow tumbles past, the something blue.Up through the center of the room there is a tree growing.It's lower branches are tree branches, but up in it's crown it turns into an eagle, a huge eagle that is the whole upper part of the tree. I look up and the great eagle sees me and lifts off, flying away, through the laundromat, which has no roof.As soon as it has flown, it is replaced by another, which has grown out of the tree,and appeared as though the tree were never without an eagles body.Then I'm walking through tall yellow grass with snow blowing all around.

Slowly I awake to the muted television.I haven't been asleep that long.Beyond the door there are muffled sounds.Someone talking.I can feel the draft from under my door, and I know the front door is opened. Then shuffling of feet.More than one pair. A knock on my door, and I cross the small room. I open the door.It squeaks. It needs to have the hinges oiled. Open it slowly.

At the door there are two uniformed police officers, a man and a woman. Another draft of cold air. The woman is tall, hair done in a topknot.Her name tag says H.Broughton. She's almost as tall as her partner. Her partner asks"Sir, are you Michael T.Davis?

"What can I help you with."

"Are you Michael T.Davis?

"I am"

"We've been contacted by your sister in Moncton, New Brunswick.You need to call her as soon as you can."

"What's going on?"

"Sir, we wouldn't be here if this were good news.Call your sister"

I ask which one and the officer says her name.Then the two of them are gone.I watch them climb into their car, then turn southward down the alley.A cold wind is blowing in and I shut the door, then go search for my phone. 

Part 2 Continued

Images of the first years. Scenes and sounds and scents.Locked in my mind now, making this place home, or as much so as it can be.Images. I can see the pictures.Two buildings dropping to the ground.Burning first,inward parts melting.Soldiers off to war. Two soldiers approaching a doorstep. The soldiers are outside the door. A wife, a child, sibling or family awaits within. Two soldiers outside, they don't see the soldiers yet. Eating the evening meal.Rising in the morning.Telling bedtime stories.Once upon a time...

Rolling into town on a Greyhound.Muscles aching,dark rings of sweat and grime around the eyes,hair dust saturated. Back sore from hauling brick and timber. Settled into the seat, trying to find comfortable. Like a pile of twisted rebar, removed,cast into the corner of a lot, waiting to be hauled away, cut down maybe.Reused? Dusty blue jeans leave a print on the dark blue seat.Dust and mud and grime.In the cargo hold below, a small bag of clean church clothes. Fouled yellow bandana, covering a white spot, mid forehead, extending around.Heather sees me in the bandana and she calls me Gypsy now, has been doing it for some time. Buses are smooth these days, no rattle, no heavy diesel smoke.Quiet,like a magic carpet.Down the road, straight and true.Rock me to sleep if I could sleep. from one town to another, from green country to yellow country, both now fallow with November. Down the North Hill. What's that blacked out spot to the west? Nosehill, high and vacant,sages and tall grass, inhabited by Native spirits. Colonized all about, for grain and gas and oil.For real estate. Downtown buildings twinkle, beckon; corporate phallic symbols. Down across a tilted bridge.Lions on one end.Then left, easing into a downtown canyon. A few more blocks, then up a ramp, into a bus barn and out into bright neon lobby. A line of taxis below. Close to downtown, but not much around.A black snake of a river, running almost straight here. She waits in a drive-in pick up area,slim and lithe, grey eyes,long yellow hair.Into a warm and lingering embrace, the into a decrepit red car. Conscious of the need of water now,to wash me clean,to take away the day.A few blocks along a well traveled strip. Nightclubs.Still warm. Crowded with pedestrians.Police car flashing by. On to a dark street, one block off the main drag, behind a gas station. Hand in hand through a dark urban outback and into a building.

I can see the pictures.Hear it all too. A building starting to groan, under the weight of history, because the stripes on black flesh have not been atoned for, far away places have been colonized. Groaning and starting to tilt, their years complete, for better or worse. The silent sound of a world turning. Two soldiers outside,taking another step. Safe within, singing the anthem.Lost in studies or stories, writing of letters,not knowing of the last few hours or days of those being addressed. Scarred land and people.Water, washing clean.Two soldiers approach, another step. Shadows and tangled sheets,and a child says"I love you." Two soldiers drawing closer, removing hats and holding them,dignified in their hands. Once upon a time.It's strange for a story to end with Once upon a time.

May as well work here now.Busy streets. Rushing of in dark hours. Down on Ogden Road, the air smells of paper fiber and mash from the distillery from the treatment plant.And it all clings to a body, choking a bit at a time. Walk along the road.It's too far, and a silver van operates a photo radar in front of the metal re-cycler. Old ovens piled by the gates.A corrugated fence and a mountain of rust beyond. One machine lift, another devours.Dusty and windy in this town. Up along the tracks.It's shorter, but sometimes there are coyotes.Old boxcars. High yellow grass. Once a sirocco wind blew up on the walk home.Twelve degrees leaving the factory gate, twenty eight an hour later in a thunder of dust, eyes gritty,skin blasted. Out on McLeod Trail an olive army truck rolls by.Don't work at the mill now.Everyone hates each other, it's a wonder anything gets done. The tall foreman stares lifelessly at his peons, laughs and calls them racists.Have to leave.Going to strike him down with a board. The bottle depot oozes stink, every poison, every known drink that's unfit to drink.Pours out onto the floor.Bottles stacked in cardboard flats, soldierly, or tossed into canvas bags, like pits. Left the mill, working again ,a day later. C-Train home, conscious of booze stink,little sticky patches.Hands poisonous and black. Needing water to wash me clean.Passengers on the train, thinking me uncouth.Needing water.

A fire burned away, just across the river,the day after leaving the bottle depot. Talk of poor air quality.An exploding propane tank, a fireman being knocked down a latter. It the lawyers office, downtown. Everyone at the window, staring.Brown haze to the south, but how far? Better go look.Close to home...just across the stream.Multiple buildings. Cinder block apartment building.Springtime. Geese on the lawn, sometimes aggressive. Smoky inside, worse than the mill. Chopper in the sky, low. Talk about evacuation,maybe. River flowing by, Hell just beyond. Looks like a war zone. They parked the fire trucks along the road in the days just after the building tumbled, flying maple leafs and stars and stripes both.People honked, stopped to donate money to the families, right there by the roadside. Now the trucks are working, the neighborhood burning.Too close

Working.Food warehouse.Produce from Mexico. a scorpion scuttling across the floor.It came in with a load of watermelon. Stomp it flat, ruthless. Working,a linen factory. Shop steward says"I don't mind blacks...everyone should have a couple tied up in the back yard."He's unbearable, and he's a shop steward, ex-military.He lives to beat the system.Believes nothing good at all. Selling drugs on the side, locker covered in porn.Unbearable.

Talk radio.Iraq, Iran.Syria. Right wing all the time.Does any mercy exist in this town? "People are homeless because they choose to be. The Arabs hate us. They hate that we are free and successful.Why should peanuts be banned from a school just on account of one child? We have to close our borders. Don't work, you have no right to eat.Why shouldn't I jump queue to get the medical help I need, if I can afford to? And have you seen those palatial shelters? We need to stop making things so soft on people who won't work." Man walking down the alley.See him from the window.There is some kind of a thing growing on his cheek, blue and puffed up.Tumor maybe.Plastic garbage bag.Into the dumpster he goes.Looking for bottles and cans.Stomps the cans flat in the ice and show.Muffled...sounds like a gunshot in winter air.

Flood waters rising.Evacuate today, maybe in a few hours.Serene river's angry now. Apartment door left open again.Won't stop the water anyway.Might stop the crackheads if it was closed.Water creeping up.A bit muddy running from the taps.Won't wash me clean now.Cant drink it.Pitching sandbags end of the street.In the rain. The bridge just downstream is nearly awash.Waters rising.Then a cop comes by,with a city worker.Knocking on all the doors.Needles on the floor.One hour.Have to leave.Too much water.

Then up the North Hill.Number three bus.Sometimes late at night there are small race riots, really just fights on the bus.It's high up here.Not going to flood.Neighborhood looks hard and nasty. Three miles to work.Coyotes and skunks, and gopher holes.Jackrabbits. Rough cut here,for a city.Sidewalks just end sometimes. Walking underneath planes.Work is tolerable.Walking works out the kinked muscles, from pitching boxes and a flimsy bed. Hard to sleep, to get enough rest. Strong and able but feel unwell sometimes.Look up at Nose Hill. A few roads look like ruts. White piss stained porcelain.Beer cans.Stiff necked Mormons. Living behind a door, sleeping in cold winds of winter. Two buildings, two soldiers and the rest of the world.Approaching.Looking for water.

Part 2 Continued.

So now it's turned from a day with some urgency about making myself ready for church,to a rather lazy Sunday morning of laying around and watching television, and likely drifting off back to sleep sporadically throughout the day, watching a race and trying to fix something decent for dinner. Life is actually boring here, and,I think ,not sustainable.I can work every day I want to, it's so damn busy here, and in fact I've worked every day that I've wanted to, and a good many that I'd rather not have worked. Unloading the trailers is rather profitable because of the way it's paid out, but it's not much of a job.It requires no intellect at all, and those who employ me to that end expect me to have none, and treat me accordingly at times.It's been about five years since I've taken any classes, which bothers me.I think of applying to University Of Calgary for a class or two, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.Calgary has never really been a community that I've accepted as having any permanence.People ask if I like it here and the best I can manage is that it kind of suits me right now. I've never told anyone I like it, and I've never come to view it as home.The whole "Home" thing is just kind of way up in the air right now.If I were completely truthful to myself, I'd likely try to deal with this issue,before the economy turns again, as it always does, and Calgary becomes not the place to be.I really should try to figure out where I'd like to live, because this isn't really living, it's just being.

My most memorable day here in Calgary was, of course the day that defined the era we are now living in.A cool, trending towards warm Tuesday morning in September.I'd gotten up early like I do most days. At first light I was already up and about.One of my first thoughts of the day was that it was my nephews birthday.I looked outside to the usual sights and sounds.A black squirrel running nimbly along the overhead wires.The creak of a dumpster lid swinging open.The Hollow and distant metallic clink of cans being tossed out onto the pavement.Just a bit farther away,the gathering of early morning traffic out on Twenty Fifth Avenue.

I was in the habit of keeping the radio on a talk radio station all night, dozing and waking,then listening either syndicate old radio shows, or the talk show  host from Nevada that talked the night away of subjects having to do broadly with the paranormal. As I was gathering up some fruit for breakfast, listening to the usual commercials, the weather, and traffic reports, the news of a plane  hitting The World Trade Center.I tried to visualize New York City, and as I did,  it occurred to me that it was most likely a small plane, since all of the larger planes seemed to fly out over Harlem, and there was never a lot of air traffic over downtown Manhattan to the best of my memory.Likely a plane running into mechanical difficulty after leaving Newark, or perhaps while attempting to land there.The usual local fare continued for a while. Still no real details, though the morning host assured us they were watching the story.

Then that terrible other shoe had dropped.A few minutes later.Another plane, the announcer said had hit the other tower, and I knew this was not ordinary, in fact I knew that there would be no more ordinary days for some time, and when ordinary returned, it would be of a vastly different kind, a much less preferable reality. That day had come by which time would be divided into the time before and the time after.I kept no television in that apartment down by the river, so I listened to the story take over the airwaves the way a malignancy takes over a body.At the last minute that would allow me to still get to work on time I walked out into a glorious fall morning and walked over to the C-Train, catching a southbound to work. The conversation is what I most noticed, how it seemed and angry,electric whisper, alternating with near silence, minute after minute.

At work the television was on in the lunchroom, and it was turned to full volume so that it could be heard throughout the shop.I poked my head through the door and saw for the first time that vision now etched forever onto the retina of every person living at the time. It was slow in the shop,very few customers coming in and they were all talking about the news of the day. I got a lot of chances to leave the floor and stick my head back into the lunchroom, to watch those terrible images.Two of the worlds tallest buildings penetrated by large aircraft, burning, then plummeting to the earth in the middle of Lower Manhattan. I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have been there gazing up at the scene, watching the fires.I wondered how far away I would have had to get to escape the falling rubble.The best I could do was think that I would be unable to outrun the debris before it overtook me, that by the act of being there, I would be consumed.

I guess in a sense I always knew a day like this would come.But I wasn't prepared for it when it did.Outside, emptying the trash from work I was most keenly aware of the yellow jackets swarming around, a malevolent presence,and I swatted them away to avoid being stung.When I went home, there was a man at the train station hawking an extra addition of the news paper, something I'd never seen happen before. But the most unsettling thing was the absence of planes overhead.I was born into the aviation age and had no conception of a time without planes. The birds and insects that filled the sky seemed so awesomely loud, so much more noticeable, so eerie.

That's the world we live in now.I can conjure the scene in my mind without additional stimulus,the exact pattern of smoke and flames,bodies dropping to the ground, seeming to take so long in doing so.the Americans are in Iraq and Afghanistan now and Canada is in Afghanistan.Soldiers are dying as politicians pledge to restore us to a greater state of security. I can see the pictures.Two buildings dropping to the ground.Two soldiers arriving on the front step of of a home, changing the world still further for some young wife and her children.

I roll over uncomfortably on the bed and set the television to the right channel.It's nearly race time but I'm thinking I will likely sleep some more. I'm seeming to be tired, much more so than usual. I've got work to do tomorrow and the luxury of rest right now.So maybe I'll use it.    

Part 2, continued

By now it's getting on to about nine o'clock, and I'm still thinking of heading off for church,so I sift through the bag of clean laundry for something presentable to wear. It's a clear enough day, but with a cold biting wind, even though the actual temperature is not that cold. But it's the kind of wind that tends to blow a lot of trash around here in Calgary, so maybe I'll wait and go to church tonight. Center Street Church has two morning services, and I've still got time to make the first one if I hurry. I look out my bedroom window and see the snow swirling around.In the far back part of the yard,a jackrabbit is nibbling at little sprigs of yellow grass, and I think I can see the start of brown fur growing in on his back. Early spring? Spring is never much here on the prairies it seems.It can go from twenty below one day to thirty degrees Celsius the next,and that will be the only transition at all. Sometimes it stays cold well into May. I don't mind the deep winter, but not getting much of a spring before the heat descends has always bothered me.

As I'm watching the rabbit, and a pack of noisy magpies,I decide to lay back down on the bed for a bit, and it's not long before I'm dozing. I don't really sleep much, but by the time my eyes open up again, it's too late for the first service at Center Street Church.So I roll over, and with the TV remote,switch to the channel listings.My TV is normally on whenever I'm home, day or night. After watching all the listings scroll past on the screen, I find that The Daytona 500 is on.I guess that settles the issue of church until tonight. In truth, I've gotten a bit ambivalent about church attendance of late.But, I tell myself it's alright, because I still believe and I don't really need to attend church to live a Christian Life. But in my heart, I know that's not quite true.

Finding a church in Calgary was not really easy. Not like in Edmonton, when I just walked into a church and knew it was going to be home as soon as I did.I started out going to The Full Gospel Church in Mount Royal, more or less as soon as I arrived in town, and it was a very good church.I was also attending a small assembly of Evangelicals that met in a United Church basement just a few blocks from Janet's place. Janet worked until five o'clock on Sundays, so that's usually where we would attend together right after she got home. In truth, I never really felt like I fit in there.I would also go to Bible study with Janet on Wednesday nights, at the house of one of the pastors from that church. Eventually after Janet and I got to the point where we were arguing most of the time,she asked me not to continue going to Bible study. I told her I didn't really want to be somewhere I wasn't welcome...especially if that place was Bible study.I didn't think the whole concept of Bible study lent  itself to proclaiming certain people as being unwelcome, but that's what Janet claimed I was. Later, I was told she had had her eye on one of the other men attending that Bible study. I guess that would have explained things, had I bothered to ask, but by then Janet and I were just about finished for a host of other reasons.

Shortly after I moved into my old apartment,I began attending a Baptist Church in Bridgeland, just across the river from downtown. It was quite a walk, though I could get there on the Ctrain in just a few minutes. Usually,though, I walked. In the beginning, it seemed like a really good church, but I soon found out that there seemed to be some rather unchristian things going on there, and that I was the center of some rather unholy attentions.

There was this woman in that church named Beth, and she was one of the first people to greet me on the first day I came. She welcomed me warmly, but by the time service was over, she was hugging me, and I felt rather uncomfortable with that, as I'd only known her for an hour.I didn't bother to say a thing about it though. I continued attending that church for a few months, and thought it a reasonably decent place to worship.Except for Beth, who was rather a clingy type. I even considered becoming a church member, until I was talking to one of the other people going there one day just before services started. That person told me, straight out that Beth had set her eyes on me, and that moreover, it wasn't the first time she'd done that in the last few years. I became instantly rather queasy,to the point that I really wanted to just leave. First, I had no interest in Beth at all, except as a Christian sister, and, given what I'd just heard, I wasn't really sure she was even that. There was the possibility that the person telling me this was doing so for motives of her own, but that raised even more questions. Still, I'd come to see Beth's behavior for myself, and thought it really inappropriate. But the gossip was a concern too, something else that really shouldn't be happening in church. I didn't want to deal with Beth, having just come out of a bad relationship, and I hardly had any more inclination to put up with other supposed Christians calling her a tart.So I simply stopped attending that church.There were, after all a lot of churches I could attend. Somehow,though, I hadn't really seen that churches are in fact institutions filled with deeply flawed people.I naively expected a higher standard of conduct from church people, than what I encountered the rest of the week.

For awhile, the line between church and work got a bit blurred. That all started on Palm Sunday of 2001, when I attended a church up on The North Hill, not far from where I live now. This was not an ordinary kind of church at all.In fact, it could have been right at home in the backwoods of Kentucky, or West Virginia, or maybe even New Brunswick.About the only thing missing were the snakes, and by the time the service was half over,I began to wonder if they might be appearing at any moment.I was rather comfortable with many Pentecostal churches, though I don't hold with all Pentecostals in terms of doctrine. But this place was way over the top, with half the congregation running about talking in tongues, and even barking like dogs, supposedly possessed by The Holy Spirit.It seemed very disorderly to me, undignified even, more about charisma than about scriptural substance, and by the time I left, I was sure I wouldn't be back.

On Monday morning, I went into the day labor office, and was immediately sent out to a place that processes linens and floor mats.I wasn't really paying close attention to the fact that other people in the office had already refused to be placed there.I thought that they were just lazy, but I wanted to get out to work, So I signed up and went. What it turned out that they wanted to avoid was that there were a number of people working there, and even some of the managers, who were deeply involved in that church I'd just attended the day before. Moreover, they were not the least bit shy about suggesting that I should go visit that church.

I never made any declaration of my religion when I got to that job placement.In fact, I never do.I try to follow a simple rule in the workplace.It's that old adage that anyone who has ever taken a creative writing class would know: "Show me, don't tell me." So I just went about my work and, at the end of the week, the place offered me a full time position, which I eagerly accepted, having just come off of a seven month long temporary job at a grocery warehouse, and being unemployed for all of about two days. In retrospect, it turned out to be the most toxic work environment I'd ever been in.I don't even really want to think about it right now. But being uninclined to attend the same church as management did, I just never seemed to fit in there, and was never convinced that it was not because of that tendency. In fact, I'd likely have fit in better if I'd not been going to any church at all.On top of all that, it was a unionized shop, and I wasn't willing to accept the union as my church either, insisting instead on thinking about workplace matters using my own intellect rather than being led around by the nose by a shop steward. So I really didn't fit into that side of the equation either.In all, it was a rough eighteen month stretch, and I was nothing so much as extremely relieved when it came to an end.

The whole concept of church shopping had never been a part of my experience until I came to Calgary.My mother always attended her own church, one as close as she could find to where we lived.And she almost never attended any other church.I think she thinks that it's up to the people in the church to make things work, and she never gave any thought to not doing so. Then ,in Edmonton, I just happened to walk into a church after I became a Christian, and that church became an almost perfect fit. But by the time I got to Calgary, it was just a real challenge finding a good church.In fact, it never really crossed my mind that this was likely closer to what happens to most people looking for a church, either for the first time, or when coming to a new town. So I just set aside the actual attendance of services for awhile. And as of today,mid February 2006, that's where I find myself.Really, I guess it's just a convenient excuse for not trying  to fit in better.
     

The Memoirs & Misadventures of Mones: This opinion piece will self combust

The Memoirs & Misadventures of Mones: This opinion piece will self combust: So In light of yesterdays events and a few posts and articles I’ve read. Rather than complete a long dramatic Facebook status I’d like to d...

Ghost Stories and Haunted Places: The Haunting of Fort Matanzas

Ghost Stories and Haunted Places: The Haunting of Fort Matanzas: When you are visiting Florida it is easy to forget its history.  It is easy to get lost in cities and beaches and theme parks. However, t...

playingwithmycamera: the splendour of fall

playingwithmycamera: the splendour of fall: It's mid-October and I thought I'd share some recent photos of our gorgeous fall colours here in New Brunswick.  The weathe...

Changeless Friend: Musings on Art - 3

Changeless Friend: Musings on Art - 3: Photograph - Ivan Fernandez

Part 2 Continued

Aaron is up and using the bathroom again without bothering to close the door.Time to set some boundaries here too. I'm fairly sure he has a significant drug habit, with all the pain he's in. But mostly he keeps it out of the front yard.there are no dealers coming to visit, and that's a good thing. Aaron heads back to his room.He looks like Hell today, so I know he's been out all night.

Long before the flood, in June of 2005, things had been deteriorating around the home place.I thought I could put up with most of it, but it was seeming such a heavy load.Here I was paying good money to rent a place that I loved mostly for the location.I loved walking down to the river with my guitar, or just going for a walk in the park to the north. But the place was physically falling apart, and at some point it started attracting a really bad clientele. I should make plans to move  I thought, around the late summer of 2004.

Calgary, like most other cities has a big problem with illegal drugs.Only here it's fueled somewhat by affluence.A lot of guys go out to the oilfields to work and are only home every few weeks. There are a lot of people working construction in town as well.And both are fairly well known as having a lot of drug use.In he case of the oil rig workers, with them being gone a lot, there really is not much of a   community.They often just land in town for a few days,with a lot of money and a big urge to party. Since the building I lived in was one of the cheaper accommodations available in central Calgary, it attracted a lot of these sorts of people. Not only those sorts, but also the people who service and abuse them. For a while some of the empty suites started to fill up. The one right beside my own brought in a new tenant,and that brought a whole bunch of new problems. From the beginning, the suite had a lot of visitors. By a lot, I mean sometimes thirty to forty a day in just the few hours I was there. And since I was working forty hours a week, I wasn't there, and awake a lot.

With my new neighbor, there came a series of other incidents. I began finding hypodermic needles all over the place.Mostly it was on the front lawn, but I started finding them in the building too. this had never really been a problem before, but by late 2004, it was. I even found one in the washing machine, down in the laundry room. Along with all of this there came to be signs that people had slept in the laundry room as well. And, worst of all, I began getting late night knocking on my door.The few times I answered, it was always someone looking to buy, always in a bad state of affairs, coming down off a high. It got to the point where I would sometimes get more than one visitor nightly.Once there was even a girl there holding a crack pipe and saying"I've got no money, but if you fill up this pipe, I'll do something special for you."

"No Thanks."

"Oh come on...I just need some shit. I'll be good to you."

"Why don't you just be good to me anyway.Just leave me alone and get some sleep...before I call the police."

Calling the police in Calgary is never a really good idea, because I've found them to be pretty much a useless entity, unless you've actually already been murdered, or your biggest pet peeve happens to be speeders which they hound incessantly with photo radar.Mostly, they just seem to be tax collectors.I know that calling them because of all the drug traffic is not even likely to draw a response.So I don't bother."I can put up with this...I can put up with it...I really can...just stay in my own suite and leave everyone else alone- who am I trying to fool."

Eventually I put a sign up on my door that said."This is not a crack house, nor a whorehouse,so please don't bother me. Please find the suite you want.It's not here." It usually took no time at all for someone to yank down the sign and throw it on the floor. One day someone replaced it with one of their own. " Why don't you move out and leave the rest of us here alone...you obviously don't like it here." It was held in place by a hypodermic needle stuck into the wood of the door. Things were, as the saying goes, getting real. They were about to get a whole lot more real.

After Sam left, a couple, maybe even a husband and wife came on as caretakers.They were decent enough folk, quiet and clean cut, with a rather no nonsense approach to running the building.The premises were cleaned daily and one of them was always home. For the most part there was not a lot of dealing going on on the second floor, because they lived right across from the suite that brought in all the traffic. So the traffic moved outside, which was a bit easier to live with. But then, they came to be expecting a child, and ours, despite a great deal of childish behavior happening, was an adult building. So off they went.

It's the replacement that brought most of the more serious problems with him.I knew there were some big problems as soon as the guy got there.I was told that he had just been released from prison, and it was easy to believe because he was a tough looking character.He could well have been sixty, or maybe only forty, but all used up.I'd see needle tracks on his arms all the time.So I resolved to just keep dealing with the building owner at his office.That had seemed to work well up until this point, and it kept me from running across this character very often.

But it was during this guys rather short tenure that some really unsettling things began happening.At first, I couldn't quite discern that anything really was happening, but I would just have a really odd feeling that things were not quite right when I got home. It had never really occurred to me that anyone might actually be entering my suite, but I came to the conclusion that it seemed to be true. I'd come home and there'd be wet footprints on the carpet, even though it hadn't started raining until after I'd been at work three hours. Or there would be some silt in the bathtub, and maybe a shampoo bottle would be sitting in a place where I  thought I hadn't put it.Once, a can of beans seemed to be gone.But it could all be just my memory getting bad.It had never really been great in the first place. I could convince myself that that was true, because I didn't really know what to do with the alternative.Denial seemed as good an option as anything. But the incidents, if that's what they really were, kept right on happening, until I was almost certain I was having unwanted visitors. If I said that to anyone, I'd be called paranoid. Hell, I'd even think myself paranoid.But even paranoid people are not immune to people messing with them. Besides, it was already known that keys could be given out to people who didn't belong there.But that was so long ago...

With all of this going on, I decided to set things up for whoever my unauthorized visitor might be. I determined to find out if I was having visitors. This involved setting up items in such a way as to be able to tell, upon my return if they had been disturbed.So I would take the shower head and point it askew, either toward the ceiling, or toward the edge of the tub so that it would spray all over the toilet and floor. I'd lay out towels on the toilet seat just so, so I knew exactly what position it was in.The same with shampoo bottles, and soap, and books laid out on the couch or coffee table, and cans in the cupboard.And before I left, I would take pictures of everything with my phone.

This was all going down in the winter, and there was a lot of slush and snow. So one day I come home and find the carpet all tracked up again.But I couldn't really say for certain that I hadn't done that myself.I had my set up items laid out, and eventually they gave me an answer.Because of the pictures I'd taken, I was able to locate things to within an inch or so of where I knew I'd put them.And, as it turned out, on at least one occasion, things had been moved. This was more than unsettling, but still offered no real proof.

Then one day I came home, and someone was moving all the things out of the caretakers home.The man in the next apartment over was moving his stuff into the caretakers old suite, while a couple of men were moving things out.The man moving in was the newest caretaker. I stopped to make his acquaintance, and he told me,shall we say, the rest of the story: It seems that people had been getting unwanted visitors.According to the new caretaker, the owner had just fired the old one, the guy from prison.The story was that he had been allowing homeless people access to suites for the purpose of catching a few hours sleep and perhaps using the bath or shower, or even the stove. The extent of this whole thing wasn't really known, but the new caretaker told me about how it came to be discovered.The man who owned the building, also owned a couple of other buildings.It was in one of those buildings that he went one late winter day to show a suite, only to open the door and find it occupied by several homeless people.They quickly explained to him that they had no keys to the place, but had been let in by a man who claimed to own the building.He as charging them a nominal amount to occupy the suites, but there were also a fair number of people using several vacant, and perhaps occupied suites as well. So the end result was what I witnessed when I got home that day.

By now I was convinced I should move.But where to.And I hated moving in winter if it could be avoided.I knew to my satisfaction that there were some really disturbing things going on here, and I began not feeling very safe.I also got very irritable, and rather more reclusive than normal.Still I was convinced I was not being unreasonable about things at all.There were some real problems here, and I thought it unlikely that much would be changing in the very near future. I decided to wait a few more months.

Now I've been living up on The North Hill for about six months and the future here seems unsettled too.The Mormons, the distance from downtown, the drinking , the mess in the bathroom, the lack of privacy, that infernal Ikea bed- all are starting to bother me. Someday it will just all gather into a critical mass and I'll be out of here.But where to?I guess I'm just a generally dissatisfied soul, a malcontent maybe.Maybe I'll just find another town, maybe I'm a bit of a wanderer.Maybe I'll head east someday.

Part 2 Continued.

The Mormons approach me even though I've asked them not to.Why do they not get it?the invitation to be here was not given by every member of the household, nor is the hospitality extended from every member.I make a note to tell the landlord that conducting Bible study, such as it is,in the house's common areas is really inappropriate, and if they cannot observe a few basic boundaries, they need to not be here.It's time get a handle on this situation before it becomes too overbearing.

When I first moved to my little apartment on the banks of the Elbow River, it was my refuge,my hideaway.Nobody ever visited me there, and quite frankly, that's just the way I wanted it. I did socialize occasionally, but always away from home. When I retreated to my apartment it was to gain some solitude, because I was, and am a person who sometimes needs a lot of space. So, for awhile,my apartment was a perfect place. The river just down at the end of the street was glorious no matter what the season, so the location was ideal too.

Nothing ever stays the same for long, or so it seems.I should have cued in the night that Janet showed up with her own key to my apartment that there was something seriously dysfunctional with the way the building was being run.But shortly after that little run in, the building caretaker was relieved of her duties, so that seemed to solve the problem.But only for a short while. Replacing the older woman was a young Arab man from the apartment directly below me.He had the unfortunate name of Osama. Unfortunate for the times that is.While he called himself "Sam", and, I suppose who wouldn't in a similar set of circumstances, I heard others referring to him as Osama a number of times.

The problem with Sam was that he could never be reached for anything when you needed him. Either he wasn't at home, or he was entertaining one of the long line of females who I saw coming and going from his apartment.Literally you could not reach him even on the day rent was to be paid, and the inevitable result was that the landlord, an Egyptian man who maintained an office not terribly far from my apartment would show up a day or two later looking for not just the rent money, but for twenty dollars in late fees for every day the payment was late.The first he showed up on my doorstep,I counted out the cash for him and made sure to let him know that nothing other than the rent would be forthcoming.I pointed out to him that he hired Sam for a reason, and that part of his duties was to collect rent.For that he had to be reasonably available to tenants, and he was not. The following month, I brought the rent to his office, about fifteen blocks away, while there was yet nearly a week left in the month.Then, on rent day, Sam shows up at my door demanding rent, saying that he will no longer accept late payment and promising eviction.I patiently point out to him that he cannot evict me.Only the building owner can do that. Then I show him my rent receipt.He accepts it, as he really has no choice, but says that my bypassing him is unacceptable. I firmly tell him that this is a matter of my discretion and if I'm being required to deal with him, then he needs to be available.

The following month brought more problems with Sam.Clearly the guy was caught up in the idea that being the building's caretaker gave him some degree of power over other people, and that did not really sit well with me.I got along well with the buildings owner, and could think of no reason not to just deal directly with him and shoot Sam the bird as I passed by his door. I chose appeasement as the better option though, because antagonizing Sam could mean that were I to have a leak in the plumbing or some such thing, that the problem might go on at length. But I've never really agreed with appeasement as a policy at any level, so it was so hard to do.Kind of like asking a dog to stay when the room is filled with nice juicy steaks. Instead, I am by personality the sort who likes to set reasonable boundaries and insist on them being observed.Moreover, I see nothing unreasonable about this.Good boundaries are what defines good relationships of any kind, and certainly good business relationships.When I approached Sam with the rent money in hand, two days before months end, he said flat out"I don't have time for you now."

"Well", I replied, "You need to make time.You need to do your job, because in the end of things,you work for your customers.And I happen to be one of those customers."

"Today is not rent day.' he screamed at me."Come back at the appropriate time, or not at all.I'll just write up an eviction notice for you."

"Go ahead Osama...lets see how that works out for you." By this time his latest live in had appeared at the door.She was a short, blonde trashy looking woman with an equally trashy mouth.

"Don't you ever call me Osama again, you fat bastard."

"Why not, it's your name isn't it. I've never been much into diminutive forms of address."

With that he ran at me, throwing a punch that missed by a mile.He was followed by Miss Trashcan, also throwing punches, calling me a racist woman's body part, and telling me that the building owner was an Arab as well, and would toss me straight out the door.

By this time I'd truly had enough of Osama's boorish,disrespectful behavior and decided appeasement be damned I would set the both of them straight without further ado."Listen Lady,your name around here is Bimbo.If you haven't already figured that out you will soon enough.Lets be clear...you have no power in this building.And Osama...the next time you throw a punch at me you'll end up in a jail cell, with a possible stop at the hospital on the way.Now go away and leave me alone.You don't exist.From now on I'll deal only with your boss. Got a problem with that you can go to Hell, but believe me,leaving me alone is your best option.If you do that,I'll guarantee you'll have no problem with me."

So I wondered down the road to Harry's office, cash in hand and paid him. I explained to him what had happened with Sam, and, having cooled off somewhat apologized for having called him Osama, saying that I realized it was likely inappropriate.

"I wouldn't worry about it" said Harry, "It is his name."

Even so, I was upset at myself for having used the term in the manner in which I had.I felt that I needed to keep a cooler head than that.I did insist,though that henceforth, I would be stopping by Harry's business office, or calling him on the phone with rent, or any other matters of concern.He said that was fine, and it became our new arrangement.A month or two later Sam was gone, having antagonized a lot of other people in the building as well.The truth was that our particular building had rents almost one hundred dollars a month less than any of the buildings on our street. Yet nearly a quarter of them were empty in a rental market with less than a 1% vacancy rate. That should have been my second cue as to what was happening.But I missed it too.I thought that with Sam gone, the situation would improve.I was dead wrong.




























   

Part 2 Continued

The Mormons are here for their Bible study with one of my room mates.I wish they would take it somewhere more appropriate, because they tie up the whole kitchen, and they never cease asking me to join them.I don't like being unkind to them, but I see their religion as nothing more than a lot of hocus pocus, and they are so damn aggressive at times. I'm not feeling to irritable this morning though, so I poke around in the refrigerator while I'm waiting for the office to take my call.Eventually they do, and as luck would have it, I score two trailers to unload tomorrow, at time and a half. I go to the front door and look out on a day that's still trying to decide what it wants to be. My throat is feeling scratchy too, and with an achy body, I think I'm starting to get a cold. Calgary weather is not as severe as that in Edmonton just three hours to the north, because warm wind often comes in over the mountains.It certainly breaks up winter, but it can make a cold hang on for a long time, with all the warm,cold cycles. I don't get sick much anymore.Not since 1990 when I got slammed with a bunch of different things all at once, and I thought I was going to die.Whatever it was must have given me one hell of an immunity to just about everything.Cold and flu I only catch in mild form, and far less frequently than in the past.Still, even in mild form, a cold can sometimes be hard to get rid of.

In all,I can't complain of my health.But I seem to have entered a period of being  rather less healthy than I was in Edmonton.As much as I'm not susceptible to contagion, I've developed a couple of other problems, one being gout, the other plantars faschitis. They both nag me these days, sometimes ferociously. I wonder how well I'll be able to walk in ten years time. I've always had legs that tighten up for no discernible reason too, except in mid summer when the reason is heat. In the back of my mind I worry about this some.

It's not so much my health that the weather messes with. Weather is sometimes unstable here in Calgary.For the whole first three years here it was dry both winter and summer.Then we got a wet summer.But the worst was just last year, when the rains came in mid June, and the Elbow River that runs past my house started to flood.We watched it for a couple of days until it rose to where it was almost touching the bridge crossing 25th Avenue. Eventually, on a Saturday night,some policemen came into our building and told us we were being evacuated, that we would have to leave as soon as we could, and if we were still there in four hours time, we could be subject to arrest. The river was up over the end of the street about two hundred feet from my door, so I didn't waste any time at all. The cop told me I should head for the residences at the Southern Alberta Institute Of Technology, as they were taking in flood victims.I got onto a transit bus, which had been provided free of charge, and it took a bunch of us there.I'd never been evacuated from anywhere before, but I immediately found it very stressful.All I'd managed to gather were a couple of changes of clothes. Left behind, among other things was my guitar, which my favorite band had signed for me. I thought and worried a lot about that guitar, but concluded it was most likely alright.Still, it stressed me out.I thought about food in the fridge that was most likely bound to rot, and about sewage backing up into my apartment.But I was blessed with a safe bed that night, and I knew that was the most important thing.

On that Sunday morning I got up to go to work, and that presented a problem.I was in the northwest side of the city and I worked in the northeast.Not normally a problem, except on a Sunday at five AM. Two hours later I could catch a bus to Marlbourough transit station.But as it was I would have to walk all the way downtown to catch a train early enough to get me to work on time- if the flood water hadn't shut the line down. So I started down the steep hill on 10TH Street S.W. into Sunnyside. When I got to Fifth Avenue, at the foot of the hill, I heard a car way down by Memorial Drive rev it's motor, and the long screech of tires.I looked up to see a car coming quickly northbound, but after it had gone about a block, it swerved toward the east side of the street.It was followed by a huge bang when the car hit a building. Right away I knew it was bad, even being a few blocks away.I continued walking toward the scene.There was no way around it. I had a cellphone but I noticed that there were already people on the scene when I got there, and the sirens were already filling up the night with what seemed like a demonic howl. I knew the alarm had already been turned in, so I decided not to get involved.If I did, I'd be delayed for hours, and I needed to get to work.I decided I'd call in later as a witness.I wasn't certain what I could offer to enlighten the cops as to what happened, but I'd call in later.As I passed by the wrecked car and building, the first firetruck was just arriving.There appeared to be about five people in the car.All three in the rear seat seemed slumped over, and the red lights on the firetruck panned over the scene.It was still wet on the road, but not raining much, and other emergency vehicles were arriving as I walked past.

On Monday morning, I was still at the residence, on a tiny, hard little bed that was wrecking my back.But at least I had a place to stay.I went off to work that morning too, and because it was a weekday, getting to work was much easier. By ten O'clock I'd unloaded two trailers and was headed home to see what the situation looked like.My street was still all blocked off, but a cop told me I could go into the building to get anything I might need.I was told I'd have fifteen minutes. Inside I could see that river water had reached and entered our front door and gone down into the basement.My suite on the second floor was still high and dry, so I went in, gathered up my guitar, tossed a roast ham and some ground beef into the dumpster and left. The evacuation lasted three more days, but the weather was improving and I had my guitar.Things could have been much worse.I heard news that three people had died in the accident I'd seen.I went in to the police station and filled out a statement. The cop said he didn't think I'd seen a lot that would be helpful, but thanked me for coming anyway.True to his word, I never heard from them again.  

Part 2 continued.

I'm looking for my red cell phone. really I hardly see why I need one.I make so few calls.I wouldn't object to having a phone,it's just the damn plan that goes with it.I get a reasonable amount of minutes for about thirty five dollars a month, but I'm always left holding onto minutes at the end of the month.If they could be rolled over into the next month,I wouldn't feel like I was wasting my money when what's left of them disappeared at month's end.So my solution was to buy a pay as you go phone for about fifty dollars at Seven Eleven. I still use phone booths to save my minutes sometimes, but there are not so many around anymore.

My phone got kicked under the bed sometime during the night, but I find it and start dialing the office,looking for a trailer to unload tomorrow.It's light now and I look out over the expanse to the east.Maybe I'll try to go for a visit later this year.It's been too damn long. I could afford it maybe, if I'm frugal.Maybe I'll take the train. I reach the office and immediately get put on hold.

It was about two years and a few months ago that my parents decided to visit me here in Calgary.I had my concerns at the time, with my father not being well, but my mother assured me that it would be alright. they would come out on the train.that sounded like a long trip, but she assured me they would book a sleeping berth and my father could spend the time resting.

My mother told me the name of hotel that they had planned to stay in, I didn't want them staying in a hotel, but my suite was not wheelchair accessible. The day of their arrival turned out to be a Monday,and after work I stopped by home,gathered up my guitar and headed on downtown.Along the way I stopped at a phone booth and phoned their hotel, thinking that they would most likely already be there,as the train was scheduled to arrive much earlier. I was informed by the desk clerk that they had not arrived, and that the reservation had been cancelled.

This change in plans seemed a bit disturbing to me as I'd heard nothing about it.I called Moncton, but got no answer.Still,I was certain something was afoot, and that most likely it was not good.My parents had not arrived as expected, and I thought that most likely meant that my father had gotten sick somewhere along the way.Perhaps he'd had another stroke, so at this point I became quite worried.I should be able to reach someone at home anytime of the day if they'd gotten back, so I assumed that they were at a hospital somewhere.But it could be at almost any hospital along the route from Moncton to Calgary.Since there was no answer at home,I ran over to the library to check email.

At the library I discovered that my parents had indeed had to turn back.My father had not had a stroke, as I had feared, but rather had experienced some sort of break with reality, during which he became paranoid and afraid that staff on the train was a danger to him.So when they got to Toronto, my mother took him to a doctor,who finally got him stabilized with medication so that they could return to Moncton on a plane.It must have been very stressful for my mother being on that plane, given what had happened, and the climate involved in plane travel at the time.Still the flight is only about two hours, and they managed to get home safely.

By the next morning I managed to track my mother down.She had been at the hospital when I'd called the night before, but I managed to reach her on my way to work in the morning.She explained that my father was in the hospital, but would most likely be released in a day or two.Still, the doctors couldn't really say for certain what was wrong.It could have been another small stroke, or the break could have been caused by an accumulation of brain damage from all the previous strokes,plus the routine stress of long travel.In any event,they'd managed to get his situation stabilized and were monitoring him.

In any event, that was the end of their planned vacation, and ultimately their last trip out west ended up being the one they made in 1990.Still,my mother made a lot of car trips around home,running after my sisters kids.That would take her as far away as Woodstock, which was really not that bad of a trip anymore,she said.There was a new highway and it took a little less than three hours. So she settled into the life of a grandmother who was very involved in the lives of her grandchildren, and the primary caregiver of her disabled husband.I marveled at her dedication and devotion, but worried that she might be getting tired.

Author's note to readers.

Because of a comment made by one of my regular readers, I feel that I must stop here to explain something that I may not have made as clear as I would have liked.The nature of this particular blog is such that there is a lot of jumping both forward and backward.The time being described is roughly a 72 hour period in February,2006.There are however,a lot of flashbacks that cover a period roughly five years before that, beginning with my moving to Calgary in November of 2000.Hence, the events being described, and attending dialogue is written in the present tense relative to that time frame only, and not to the time of the actual writing. Apologies for any confusion. 

Part 2,Continued.

The shower is hot today,and all the knots in my body are getting worked out fairly well.That's not always the case.Sometimes there is no hot water at all, and sometime knots don't  respond well to it when there is.

I guess I could call Angie. One of the girls that I jam with says I should.She says Angie is just old fashioned and thinks women should not call men.that just sounds silly to me, but it's been said I don't know a lot about that kind of thing.I'm not sure I would disagree.

What has been really hard is trying to figure out how well Angie and I are actually suited for one another. In Christianity, there is the concept of being unequally yolked with a non-believer. That, we are not supposed to do, and the reasons seem rather obvious. Relationships are really hard at the best of times.with a different value system it's nearly impossible. with marriage,and children, even more so.But,of course, there would be no children, and, I know not everyone will agree with this, but as a protestant, I am not unevenly yolked with a Catholic, because the foundations of Christian belief are present within Catholicism. And,so are a bunch of other things.

In thinking about this, and I have thought about it rather hard,I often refer to religion as I knew of it growing up.That is, I consider how Christianity worked in my own family. My mother was a church going woman.My father rarely attended church.For a while,he would come along with us,but I think that was largely a response to my insistence at the time that if church was so necessary,then he should also attend, which he never did.And if he did not, I shouldn't have to either. I was ,by about the age of ten or eleven developing a bit of an attitude toward church.But that's another story.It's got nothing to do with Angie and I,not really.

I'm sure my father has given up on God.He could pass at any time, and if he did, he would be lost.What I don't understand, but am very grateful for is that my mother has never given up on her husband.She's his caregiver, and though I've not been home in a long time to see how this situation is being lived out, I'm imagining a rather difficult man.My mother must be tired, given all she's doing for him, and for as long as she's been doing it. She's always running around, all over New Brunswick looking after my sisters kids too.I wonder how long that can go on?

The other thing that concerns me about my mother is the state of her own faith.Because, you see, it seems that she did marry my father knowing that she ought not to have, given the command to not marry an unbeliever. Still, I think God's grace covers that, and I don't believe that He would have had her give up on my father once the marriage was undertaken.And to her credit, she has been faithful and put her husband and family first since they were married.

Still, there are other things that I wonder about.Like why I never actually heard how you attain salvation from my mother, or ,for that matter, my father.I never heard the part about being born again until I was out in the world for a long while. And that makes me question just what it is my mother believes.Maybe someday I'll get a chance to sit down and talk with her about that.The other things are a little less of a concern to me.Like why there was never a Bible in our house.Or why we never went to church all summer long when we were at the summer cottage.Because it would still seem important.And it should have seemed important to her. In a way though, that makes sense.It's just that my mother never really said anything about that lapse in attendance.It seems a bit like a matter of convenience.Still, I do that too. According to my pastor back in Edmonton,It's more important to get church inside of me than it is to get me inside of the church.That's what he always said when I missed a Sunday, so I wonder if someone might have told my mother the same thing.I guess it's true, but ideally I know I have the need to surround myself with other Christian people.


At times I wonder if my mother really understands Christianity. Could it be that she is really not saved at all? I'll have to talk with her about that someday. For right now, I choose to believe that her Christian witness is seen in the way she treats others.Truly,she never has a bad thing to say about anyone, treats everyone right as far as she is able,I've never heard anyone say a bad thing about her either. But salvation is not about works.That's not what gets you to Heaven. Still, I believe that good works proceed out of a relationship with God, so thus, I choose to believe my mother is saved.Really,though, Salvation is in the hands of God, so nobody knows about the condition of another's soul.

Part 2 continued.

The Sunday for my date with Angie came.We had decided to go to The Center Street Church, just down from where I'm living now. Back then I was still living in Mission,at the dead end of 24th Avenue. The day dawned warm enough, but it didn't warm up much later in the day.What's called a Chinook wind blew in from the west.In winter,those winds, though very powerful usually have a warming effect.But it' was only fall,and relative to the ambient air,there was not much difference in air temperature. If anything the wind was rather cool and blew around a lot of trash.

Angie was a bit late, and I began to wonder if she was still coming, or if maybe she forgot my address.I thought she'd have no problem finding the street, because of it being a dead end.And I knew she had my cell phone number, so I stood out in the street waiting.

By this time, Angie and I had met a time or two for coffee, and talked most nights on the phone.In truth, I was growing rather fond of her, though I still wasn't really sold on the idea of having a steady girlfriend again.I'd been there and done that, and I just didn't think I was all that good at it. I'd been to her house on one occasion too. In all,I was rather beginning to like her,though I still had a bunch of concerns.One was all the sleeping at the festival.That planted the seed in my mind that she might be suffering from depression, and I wasn't certain I wanted to deal with that. Secondly, there was a considerable gap in our ages.I wasn't certain I wanted to date someone who was in her mid fifties, thinking that that would add up to a significant difference in values.That was a road I'd been down before. Or it could be that I was just making excuses.Angie, after all was pretty and well spoken. Most men would have found her desirable, and I guess I really did as well. But the biggest thing was I wasn't certain that she was that interested,though she certainly seemed to be engaged whenever we were together.

Twenty minutes after the planned meeting time she showed up.It meant that we had to rush a bit to get to church, but we managed to get there on time.That was the thing that really impressed me about Angie.She was as enthusiastic about church as a good place for a first date as I was.She was raised Catholic, but now attended an Evangelical church, so I really didn't see any conflict there, as far as dating and relationships were concerned.

The church service lasted about an hour and a half,and on the way out we bumped into some friends of Angie's.They were a husband and wife, and seemed to be rather surprised that Angie was with a man.The Center Street Church has a cafe outside the main sanctuary, so we sat and had coffee before heading out on our way.

After church we had planned a picnic at Prince's Island Park, in the middle of the Bow River.We had brought a bunch of food, so we decided to go, even though the weather had turned rather raw.The wind was blowing steady and it had clouded over and felt more like the first week of December, than late September.So we didn't stay long.Angie had prepared these wonderful and rather fancy chicken breasts that were stuffed with cheese, and we had a bunch of grapes and some salad.It was all a rather sophisticated meal for a picnic, and I took it as a sign that she really did have some affection for me. If the way to my heart was supposed to be through my stomach, she seemed to be trying to find her way there.

Finally we gave up on the idea of a picnic, and decided to go off to Timmy's for coffee.That doesn't seem like much of a place for a date, I know,but Angie was a coffee addict, and liked tea as well.And, it's a very Canadian place to go.I really didn't mind, because I really did enjoy her company.So we sat and nibbled donuts and talked for a long time.

Then it was time to go home.The date, as a date had been more or less successful. We were getting along famously.When we got back to Mission the wind had died down and the sun was back out, though it was still a bit cool.I asked Angie if she'd like to go for a walk along the river, and she eagerly agreed. Then, as we were walking along, we stopped, looked each other in the eye, and before you know it, we were kissing one another, in a rather passionate way.I enjoyed it.When we pulled apart I noticed one of my neighbors walking by and mentioned that I thought we'd been seen.To that Angie replied "Well I sure hop she got an eyeful." I replied that I was certain she did and that I was alright with it.We both agreed that we should see to it that she got another eyeful, and we stood kissing for awhile while the squirrels regarded us curiously.Then we headed back to her truck, which was parked in front of my building.We walked slowly, hand in hand.and sat talking for awhile before I went inside and she drove home. By now I was certain I would call her again.

I wonder if I should call Angie sometime.The problem is, I didn't really treat her all that well.I just stopped calling her cold turkey. The thing was, she never seemed to initiate phone calls.That was all me.So I asked myself if she would ever call me if I stopped calling her. I tried it out and I haven't heard from her since.That was seventeen months ago now. Maybe I'll call her, but most likely not.

If I'm going to church, it's time to get showered.By the time I'm finished the office will be opened, and I can call and see if there is any work tomorrow. The I'll have more than enough time to wander on down to the church. 

Part 2 Continued.

I doze a bit, maybe.I'm not really certain .Church.I'm thinking of going to church.I haven't been attending church much these past couple of years, but I know I should.I still believe the Christian message, I just don't like playing all the church games.You'd think that such things wouldn't happen in church.But that's wrong.

When I first started talking to my mother via email, she hadn't been aware that I was attending church regularly. She asked me what church I went to and I told her a Pentecostal one, and wondered what her reaction would be, her of the United Church Of Canada.She most likely had a picture in her mind of snakes and people babbling unintelligibly.I did'nt bother to tell her that I did not really hold to doctrine with all Pentecostals, and that was why my actual attendance in church had become more sporadic of late. In fact, I also got along tolerably well with a lot of Baptists, except for the reality of the saying that if you had two Baptists in a room together ,you had a disagreement, and if you had three you'd have a schism.Mostly I just wanted to go to a church where the preacher wasn't too interventionist in my life, and didn't mind me double checking him against scripture,which I thought of as the real final word on religion.

So maybe I'll wander on up to Center Street Church a bit later, if I can work these kinks out of my legs.It's three hours later on the east coast, so my mother is likely running around trying to get ready for church.She will be trying to round up some of my sisters kids to go with her, as it's always been her who has taken responsibility for their religious upbringing.My sister doesn't seem to believe in God, but I know she won't tell my mother that.She'll let her kids go along if they want to, and not say much of anything.I don't know what she tells them when they are at home though.Do they really have the freedom to think what they see as being best?

My father won't go to the church with my mother.I wonder what he does when she goes to church.He's sickly now, has been for years.Does someone come to stay with him while she is at church? Or can he survive alone for that hour and a half? I've grown a bit out of touch with things on the home front these past few years.Maybe it's time I did something about that. I've  known what my father thought about religion for a long time now: utter bullshit! But he would never say that to her.Before all the strokes,when his mind was still working right, he would never have considered disrespecting her views.But clearly he didn't believe in them.Still there's hope that in their alone moments she still has some sway with him, she still has a functional Christian ministry with her husband.I know she must be trying, not wanting the separation that comes with death.She worries about his eternal soul at his passing, which might not be far in the distance.

Maybe I'll wander on down to the church a bit later. 

Part 2 Continued.

When I awake again it's just past five, so the most I could have been sleeping for was an hour.It's not nearly time to get up, and I've read all of my library books.Nothing on the television but some preachers from some mega church.

I've been dreaming again, but I'm not going to write it down this time.It was just a short dream of flying in an airplane, and nothing strange was happening. The preacher is talking about how to get God to bless us in his finances, saying that there is no need for Christian people to be poor.

Down the road there is a Mega Church.It's called the Center Street Church, though the main campus is now a few blocks off of center street.Janet and I went there once too, back before the new campus was built. It's also the place where Angie and I had our first and only date. I've always been partial to church as an ideal place to go on a first date, because if she isn't interested in church, then I guess I'm not interested in her.

I met Angie in August of 2004 at a Bluegrass festival southeast of Calgary.2004 was my fourth year attending the festival,located on an old pig farm,on a remote and bleak, yet beautiful piece of land about ten miles east of the town of Nanton. On the third week of August, I'd pack up my guitar and a tent and take the bus out to Nanton. Usually the ride took about an hour and a half, and I'd arrive shortly after nine in the morning, and start walking towards the farm.Nothing much happened there until just after dinner, so I'd have all day to get there.My feet were still limber back then, though I'd been diagnosed with Plantars Faschitis the year before. I never managed to get very far on foot, because someone would always happen along that was going to the festival, so I'd end up with a ride.On this particular occasion, a semi stopped right in the service station parking lot where the bus stopped, and told me to jump up in the cab.In the trailer were a dozen or more bawling cattle.Inside the cab, the driver sat behind the wheel, and he was accompanied by an Australian Shepherd named Annie, who eagerly came over and laid her head on my leg, barking once or twice in greeting.I scratched her ears and her stomach as we drove along, the driver explaining that he was taking the cattle to a slaughterhouse in Medicine Hat.We talked for a while,about the things you talk to farmers about-weather and crops, which he said were looking good, about a month before harvest.Before I knew it we were at the farm, and the driver was stopped to let me out.As I was getting down from the cab, then pulling down my guitar, Annie decided that she wanted to accompany me.So I said something about it not being a good idea to steal the dog of a man who was kind enough to offer a lift.He laughs, and I lift the tail wagging Annie back up into the truck.

It's only about nine twenty by the time I reach the farm, and there is not a lot to do.So I set up my tent in what I think is the choicest spot, and wander around the grounds as other cars start slowly coming in.There are a few people I know coming in, most of them in large RVs,and I talk with a number of people.The festival is an opportunity to catch up with people I know, but usually only get to see once a year.So I sit around on a picnic table, strumming my guitar and visiting my old friends from Edmonton, and catching up on a years worth of news.

Sometime in the mid afternoon, a blue pickup drives in through the gate and stops by the picnic table where we are sitting.A woman gets out and asks where the best place to set up a tent is.I tell her that small tents are usually set up along a nearby fence, and myself and whoever I was sitting with offer to help her set up camp.It's not long until we have her tent set up, about twenty feet away from my own.

It's still early in the day, a few hours before any of the bands take the stage, so we all sit around and talk, telling stories, and eating some food this woman, and some others who had just arrived brought with them.The woman in the blue truck was maybe five foot four and had a short, stylish haircut and clothes a bit more fancy than what most people would wear to a Bluegrass festival.So, as festival time drew near, she was sitting beside me atop the table, and she looked over at me and said"Hi.My name is Angela."

Angie turned out to be companionable enough, but in truth, she didn't spend much time watching the bands, or jamming later on in the parking lot.She hadn't brought an instrument of any kind, because she didn't play one.It turned out she was a retired ticket agent for a major airline, and she lived in Northwest Calgary.I was surprised that she was retired, because she didn't seem that old to me.She still had a shapely figure, and was by any account good looking if not beautiful.As it turned out, she was thirteen years older that I was.

Once the festival was underway,Angie spent most of her time asleep in her tent, and I thought that rather strange.Whenever she was up and about though,she would always stroll over to the picnic table, and her and I and whoever else was there would talk for a bit.Then she would disappear inside her tent.I never did see much of her in the pavilion where all the bands were playing.

When it came time to leave on Sunday night, Angela, who was now insisting I call her Angie told me she would drive me back to Calgary.I never really made plans for getting back once the festivals were over, because getting back just seemed to happen.I'd start out walking, but I knew almost everyone at the festival, so I always found a ride before I got too far away.

So I accepted Angie's offer.After driving into High River, for some reason I don't remember, she drove me right up to my front door in Mission District.It's there that we decided to keep in touch,to see each other again, maybe even to go on a date.I wasn't really certain that I wanted that, because I'd sworn off dating about three years before.Still Angie hugged warmly, lingering a bit longer than seemed called for, and I promised to call her.It wasn't long until I did, and we planned a whole Sunday together, starting with Church.

I rolled over, trying to get back to sleep, thinking of Angie and how she'd come and gone,thinking that I must call work to try and book a trailer for Monday, thinking I didn't trust preachers from Mega Churches who talked about how Christians were decreed by God to be wealthy, and how if you were not wealthy, then there had to be something wrong with your Christian walk.Thinking of how I would walk by Center Street Church on a Monday morning on my way to or from work, and see an armored truck pull up to the door, and leave a few minutes later, after the guards had collected a number of canvas bags.

Part 2,Continued.

This time I'm dreaming.I guess I must have achieved REM sleep for the first time tonight.When I awake I reach for a thin coil notebook to get it down, before the memory leaves me.It's a strategy often suggested to me by other writers, but one I use infrequently.Too Freudian,perhaps, too littered with sex and death,and I'm not ready to die, and if anything in the world is overrated, that would be sex.In fact,I'm not really sure dreams have much of a meaning at all, except that random neurons are firing rapidly, and thus creating illusions.But that can't be true, because God spoke to his prophets through dreams.

There is an oak tree standing in a garden.A man come into the garden and cuts off a lower limb.Then a young girl on a horse comes by, and cuts off another limb.And a very tall woman with flowing red hair comes and does likewise.The tree would soon be limbless,but for the fact that the limbs grow back very quickly.Then a baby bird falls from the upper branches, onto the ground, and a large grey cat pounces on it and carries it away.And I awaken.

Other dreams are written in the notebook too:

In a garden there is a mountain ash tree.It's late at night but there is a lot of light from the moon.There are tomatoes growing all about, huge and ripe.Under the mountain ash there is an old style claw footed bathtub, and I am in the tub with a woman named Angie.We are not doing anything at all,save for reaching out and picking tomatoes,the eating them whole.The seeds fall into the water, and the red berries from the tree drop into the water as well.They make large splashes.Angie and I are now trying to kiss each other, but we can't reach one another.

                                                                                                              Dated:06/05/05.

I'm standing on a tall ladder overlooking a sort of a square, like the kind you would find in the towns of Old Mexico.By a wall there are two tall sunflowers, and they begin to paint a white wall with spray paint, until a beautiful picture appears.I can't tell what it is, but I can't take my eyes from it;

Then two murderers enter the square, first one, then the other.They are darkly clothed, and it is night time.Far out on the horizon, the sun is just starting to edge up over the horizon, but it appears only slightly, then rises no farther.The murderers might be anyone.I can't see their faces.They might be men, or women.When the second one comes,the two meet face to face in the square,and one raises up a hand,and the other is slain and lies dead.The murderer leaves the square, only to return later, as the slain person is arising from the ground.The murdered person, now living again approaches his slayer, raises a hand, and the slayer is now slain.Then the second murderer leaves the garden.And this goes on two more times.By what means the murder takes place I cannot tell.Then the two leave together,the sunflowers die,the sun fully rises and the square is choked with rhododendron.The ladder I'm standing on is tilted towards a building,but it's top is not touching the building.

                                                                                                                 Dated:19/07/03

I am riding a fine gray horse, and we are going on a foxhunt.There is a profusion of dogs all around us.Dogs of every color and description, and they are baying.Then I become a fox,running through the fields, being chased by the dogs and horses.But they just keep on racing past me, seeming to be unaware of my presence.Then, once again I am myself,standing in a dark rainy place,and shoveling coal into a blast furnace.There are horses inside the furnace.

                                                                                                                  Dated:01/05/96

I grab the notebook and write down tonight's dream.A quick trip to the bathroom.Someone's pissed on the toilet rim again.Then into the refrigerator for a quick swallow of coke.The clock says 3:39.I'm thinking about the dream.And sometime after four Am.I drift off into fitful sleep again.

Part 2, Continued

It's not quite midnight yet,and I'm quite restless.I go to the bathroom and find that one of the other tenants has pissed all over the seat.I should say something to whoever it was,but I likely won't.The peace can sometimes be rather fragile in a living situation like this,so maybe I'll just leave it alone.I grab a [piece of yesterdays leftover pizza and take it outside, where a startle a big jackrabbit.Skunk is in the air too, so it won't be an overly cold night.A police car races past,southbound on Center Street.My legs are a bit stiff,so I take a walk down the street.Just to fortieth avenue and back.I think I'll call the office in the morning to see if they have any trailers to unload on Monday.Two full days off is a bit much for me.

Living up here on the North Hill is kind of isolated.There are parts of town that really have very little in them.going anywhere from here is a long walk, though I do walk downtown reasonably often.That takes about an hour.When I lived in the Mission district, I walked everywhere I went.Calgary is very spread out, but everything was handy.I'd go downtown to the library nearly everyday.The supermarket was only a couple of blocks away, and I was in the habit of buying my food daily, so that it was as fresh as it could be.Most days there was a homeless man waiting outside the supermarket door panhandling.I never gave him any money, but usually I would buy a fresh loaf of French bread and a block of cheese, and hand it to him on the way out.I always made certain that he noticed that I was giving him the same bread and cheese that I was taking home for myself.Usually I'd give him a liter of juice or milk as well, and sometimes some cold cuts.He was an old.frail looking man in a wheelchair,and he always thanked me profusely.I never saw him anywhere drinking, so I didn't mind helping him out.Many years ago,though, I was going into a night class, and a man aggressively approached me asking for money.I brushed past him, in a hurry so that I could pick up a sandwich before class, as I'd been working all day.Inside the deli,I got a nice ham and Swiss sandwich, then ordered a second one.Outside, I took it to the guy who had approached me.He grabbed the sandwich, the threw it at me, calling me a judgmental bastard.But there is no such problem with the guy at the supermarket here in Calgary. So I try to be decent,as I see decency to be, but sometimes it backfires.

I used to walk to work too.I worked at the Iko mill for a while, and it was an hours walk.In the morning it wasn't bad, but sometimes at night I'd be so tired out I'd take a bus.It wasn't as though it was a very scenic walk.It went south of the Stampede Grounds, then through a rundown and mostly industrial part of town.Ogden road meanders all over the place so I would shortcut it along the railway tracks that ran right up to the back of Iko. It cut more than a half mile off the distance.There were very few trains, so it was safe.One morning though, I came around the curve in the tracks just south of Blackfoot Trail, and there on the tracks was a coyote.I didn't really know what to do, so I just kept walking toward it at a slow,steady pace,and with tall,erect posture.When I got within about fifty feet of her, she stepped down into the ditch,and,after allowing me to pass,followed me the rest of the way to work-almost a half mile. As it turned out,she had pups holed up in a little valley on the west side of the tracks.But it seemed that she'd come to know that I was no danger.She'd follow me each morning,then we'd part ways,with me going down one side of the tracks toward the mill,and her going down to her den, which was an old oil drum.When I discovered the pups, I'
d leave early so I could stop and watch them for fifteen minutes or so before work.then one day they were gone. A couple of months later I was gone too, having quit Iko. Too much bullshit, I thought, and I could be working again tomorrow.And I was.

Everywhere else I went I walked to as well.Most everyday I went downtown, for the whole time I lived in Mission.I was still using the library for email, emailing my mother nearly everyday.Sometime I would go out for East Indian food too, right where my street met 4th Street.On Mondays I'd hurry home,jump in the shower and take off for my jam session in the East village, then walk home later at night.It was a rather rough part of town, but nobody bothered me much, at least until I started walking with a cane,a bit later on.Thursdays was a jam night too,and sometimes I'd walk, though it was a long way, out Seventeenth Avenue,into Southeast Calgary.Still,I didn't mind as it was about the only socializing I ever did. Calgary started feeling like home. Sort of at least.It was living right next to the river that made that part of town a great place to live though.But I was stuck in my thoughts that it wasn't really home, but that I really couldn't be bothered moving anywhere else.So I told myself that it fit my style at the time, and mostly that was true.But it never really was a perfect fit.

It's past midnight now,and I lay down to rest again.Saturday Night Live is on,and I drift of to sleep to some skit that I can't remember.

Part 2 continued

I think too much in the nighttime perhaps.But really what else is there to do.This bed is driving me to distraction.I pick up my guitar for a while and quietly strum some chords.There is still some rock music playing from one of the other rooms,and since it's Sunday,nobody is off to work tomorrow, so the guitar will not disturb anyone. They are probably drinking out there too, so I just stay in my own space.I wonder if I'm an introvert, and if it's really so bad if I am'

Really I do like people.Just not a lot of people.I don't socialize with people at work, because it's just not a good idea. There are two ladies there I rather like, who in other circumstances I might ask out, at least for coffee, but I can't convince myself that it's such a great idea. None of the people I live with are the sort that I would choose as friends.But they are all passably decent,so living here is tolerable.

I get up and go out to the fridge for a glass of coke.I need to stop drinking this crap.It's probably helping to keep me up at night. Looking outside,it seems that the wind has come up, and there are little eddies of snow swirling about on the street.But the television said tomorrow is supposed to be a decent day.

It's not like I have no friends at all.I'm into music,specifically Bluegrass music, so I attend jam sessions on Monday and Thursday nights,and a larger jam once a month. The people at the jams are very down to earth, accepting people, and I'm slowly learning guitar.But it's really the only place that I've found that I fit in.

I used to live down in what is called The Mission District, south of downtown,and west of the Stampede Grounds.I was lucky to find any apartment at all, but this one was affordable, and best of all it was right beside the Elbow River.The river passed right by the dead end of the street,about two hundred feet down from my door.I'd always wanted to live right beside the river, and it was great to go on down to the river and sit and play my guitar.But, in truth it happened to be the only apartment I could find at all.Still, it worked out quite well for a time.

Just after I left Janet's condo,maybe a week after I moved in, a strange and disturbing incident took place.At the time of it's happening,I had no idea that it was happening.On the night in question, I'd come home from the mill, dirty and tired out,and soaked for a time in the bathtub, trying to get the knots out of my muscles.Then I lay down on my couch- because I thought buying a bed a waste of money-and went to sleep.Sometime later I awoke.It still wasn't dark, and when I woke up, I thought I heard my apartment door closing. I got up and discovered it closed.I went to the refrigerator for a drink, and found that it was filled up with food that I didn't put there.On the counter was a note from Janet saying she'd stopped by to drop off some groceries.The door closing had been her leaving.The next day I went to the caretaker, who lived just across the hall from me and asked if she had given a key to my apartment to anyone.

"Certainly." She said."I gave one to your girlfriend."

"To Janet?"

"Yeah, that's the one"

"What in hell would possess you to do such a thing?"

"Well, she's your girlfriend.So I thought it should be alright.She said she had groceries for you and needed a key.So I gave her one.Can't see what was wrong with that."

I politely informed her that there was a reason that Janet was not moving in with me, that she was in fact my ex girlfriend, and that she had no business being in my apartment.

"So what would you have me do?"

"Well,the next time you see her, you should ask her for the key back.Failing that You are going to have to change my locks,because her having access is not acceptable.In fact I'm stunned that you would think it would be.And if you see her coming in here again, I would suggest you call the police."

I'd never really had a problem like Janet before. In fact, I had a very hard time getting rid of her.I'd broken up with a few women in the past, and when it was over,it was over.Simple as that for the most part.But Janet just wouldn't go away.I considered her getting a key to be manipulative and controlling, and in fact I started to wonder if there was anything really dangerous about her.Really, I'd have to admit, I was more than a little concerned.I gave some thought to just picking up and moving on to some other town.

About a week later,I'd just got home when someone slid a letter under my door.It was Janet, and the letter was a tirade about our relationship, saying that I was a lunatic who didn't think right, and that she was incredibly insulted that I had identified her as a danger.She indicated that it was the last I would ever hear from her, that she'd given"Her" key back. I wasn't convinced, but I could hope.I didn't know what I was going to do if she kept coming around.

As it turned out,that was the last I ever heard of Janet.Sort of.At least she was true to her word. but another amusing sort of incident took place a month or so later, that still seems to me to be so bizarre that I have trouble believing it.When I first moved to Calgary,I was not at all computer literate.But after I moved into my own place,I started going downtown to the library so I could keep in touch with my mother in Moncton. A lady at the library patiently showed me how to set up an email account,and how to compose and send email.I was quite reluctant at first, but I though if my mother could learn,in her sixties, I should start figuring out how to use a computer.So I did, slowly at first.

Now you might think that having just had a really bad break up I would have sworn off the idea of having another girlfriend, but I'm sometimes not all that fast giving up on really bad ideas.I still had this idea in my head that I needed to be with someone, that my identity required a second half.And really, everybody I knew was telling me that that was true.So I decided to try out internet dating.I'd go to the library, email my mother, or answer any email she'd sent to me, the I'd spend the remainder of my allotted hour visiting dating sites. Some of them were kind of strange,to my mind. One offered contacts for persons who were looking for friends,or marriage, and even a "meat market" So I decided to limit myself to Christian dating sites only.Except that one of them was even offering a site for people who "Just want to play." I wondered what was Christian about that.But after a while I found a site I thought might work, so I answered this huge questionnaire, that they said would help them find an ideal match for me, based on common values. Sounded good to me. So I started scanning the offerings,and found a couple of ladies to start communicating with via email.Three, I told myself.I'm not committing to anything, just some email chat.So I went to select a third person to contact.Up popped a picture of a  slim,rather good looking lady, with longish blond hair.And her name was Janet.I really couldn't believe what I was looking at.My eyeballs nearly dropped out on the floor.After having me answer a rather lengthy set of questions about my values, and what I was looking for, the computer decided that a very good match for me was Janet.My latest ex.One and the same.I'm not kidding.You can't make this stuff up. I was offered the opportunity to reject any of their suggestions, which I promptly did. I didn't give up on the idea of internet dating right there and then, but my foray into that world was short indeed.

So here I am five years later,Family Day week-end 2006, looking out on a Calgary winter street at midnight, trying to avoid my half drunken room mates, and way in the back of my mind wondering if maybe I should, or even could ask out one of the ladies at work.I even thought about going back to the e-dating sites, but that worried me a bit too.The conclusion I'd come to in that regard was that I was probably doing that because what I was really afraid of was true intimacy, and that was the cause of my worry.I thought that if anyone I met online was like minded with me about anything,it was probably that, so I got to thinking that the whole scene was a bad idea.So I stopped cold turkey. Then about a year ago, a friend I knew met a person online, and they ended up happily married. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea, but I've yet to give into it again.Maybe tomorrow.Or maybe never.