Sigh

So, today's post was supposed to be a thought out lighted photograph of Ruby, her fresh from a professional grooming. Lots of searching for a groomer (new one, that is), lots of discussion both before today's visit and again before the grooming that we are trying to grow Ruby's coat out to full length -- Porties ARE LONG hair dogs, after all and they have glorious coats. And Ruby has the wonderful wavy version of the coats, that's got a nice Rastafarian look about it.

This cut today is worse, at twice the price, than the disaster which was the last grooming. She now looks NOTHING like a Portuguese water dog and the months of growing out are now on some idiot dog salon groomer's floor. I know I'm prone to embellishment but not in this case; nothing at all like a Portuguese water dog. It's one of those dog cuts where one feels bad for the dog. That she is a working dog is even worse as the fraufrau look of her will seem even sillier when she's ass deep in mud and snow and grass roaring through the hills of the Rosedale Valley or having her ass kicked by one of the twice and three times her weight dogs she likes to run with. Ruby has requested the stupid kerchief tied around her neck by the groomer, which we pulled off of her immediately, be tied across her eyes so no one recoginizes her :)

Does customer service and competence exist anywhere anymore? Everything about the cut that is just wrong is precisely what I articulated several times I did not want. Even after the cut I was being told what I really wanted (oh, you don't want your dog's hair to be long").

For my Christian readers, might you say a prayer to St. Roch that Ruby's hair might grow back with some alacrity :)

Lost and Found

I have always been moved during Remembrance Day ceremonies.

First, as a kid because it was a day that was given a sense of profundity like no other in our house -- from the polishing of the service medals the night before, to seeing my father as flag bearer in the parade or hearing him bark orders to the colour party, or stamping his foot with a smack and snapping his hand to his forehead in a salute, to the loud, alcohol fueled Legion blazer wearing vets around our kitchen table later in the day.

As a young adult I kept that profound respect for the day and the tears normally came with The Last Post wavering from the bell of a cold trumpet or the lonely squawk of a piper. Not aware at all where the melancholy came from I cried simply 'cause it was sad.

When my father died, him doing so with some significant sense of relief on my part (the anger and resentment of a "lost boyhood" ran deep) one cold day every year in November became a healing catharsis for me vis a vis my dad. I came to, well not forgive him exactly 'cause it was his job to be my father and he screwed it up royally, but to understand and give him a break, as it were. He died a broken man in many many respects and that the ultimate falling apart essentially took so long is in a convoluted way a testament to the strength he had, as misdirected as that strength was. It was the strength to keep the war at bay for much of his life; to hide it from himself so he would not just collapse in on himself and so that he might spare those around him, perhaps. I believe his war experiene simply caught up to him; its demons consuming him via his reticence and refusal (inability) to do much at all about it. It was during this period of coming to terms with a dead father I didn't "know" but was resentful of, that I often broke down completely during Remembrance Day ceremonies -- weeping, slobbering yes, for the stupidity which are war deaths, but much much more for my father's loss and for my own resulting from his loss.

I have noted over the past few years that while there remains a strong emotional significance of the day for me -- both as a day of remembrance of war sacrifice, generally, but also as a day to connect to the one thing that allows me to hold onto my father in a positive, respectful way -- I have not been emotionally connected in any true sense. This year in fact I found myself feeling as if I was at the service simply because I expected as much of myself and not much else. A bystander with a 3 cent poppy stabbed into my coat near my heart.

Then with the service all but over, from a couple of blocks away (I attended the Soldiers Tower service at UofT) large guns were fired. The concussion was such that even at that distance it felt like a physical push and car alarms went off in a nearby parking lot. What that powerfully violent firing of the howitzers did to me was to "knock the scab off" and I found myself weeping for my father (the wartime and post-war versions) and for those who faced and fired such weaponry in the theatre of conflict, and selfishly for myself mourning the man who should have been busy being my father but wasn't, as I hurried to try and get a photograph of the guns firing.

Lest we forget.

Hanger on

There area always those who, thankfully, buck the trends; stick around longer than they might otherwise be expected to, while others have drifted on at the hint of the first breeze...

Mind(s)

Sadly, it's been ages since I've taken what I consider a photograph (versus pointing the camera and hitting the shutter for a snapshot or two; the shot posted here qualifying for the latter).

Out of desperation at not actually taking a photograph I've thought about in advance of the shutter release I was playing with the features of the D3 the other day. One of those features being multiple exposures -- in the old days you simply didn't advance the film and shot again (many cameras configured to prevent you from doing just that then).

Anyway I wasn't (I thought) feeling particularly akin to what this double shot captured, but apparently a photo is closer to truth than my conscious assessment of my own mental state...

Can it be?

My political cynicism is not absolute; I voted in the recent federal election, after all, something resembling hope (or a want to punish a shark eyed idiot, perhaps) drove me to the polls despite a surface belief nothing would change.

One thing is surely true of me, the me of the last decade or so, and that would be my Political disinterest.

So it was with some surprise that this morning -- having purposefully not followed the results last night -- that my chest tightened, a catch in my throat appeared along with tears this morning when I saw the headlines in the paper boxes during Ruby's walk: A man of colour, an African American was President elect.

Holy fucking hell.

We'll see if change will result -- an America as envisoned by Jefferson come true, again -- or if the System (the ruling class) simply has a darker face. But the result is amazing (even if symbolic) change enough this morning.

A black man in a white house. There is reason for faith after all.

Glitter Nurse

The health care system could use a little more glitter, me thinks.

Church Street, Halloween, 2008.

boo

Pinhead. Church Street, Toronto, Halloween, 2008