The hardest decision I ever made was walking past a bathroom when I had Montezuma’s revenge. I mean, what if the next bathroom was two blocks away? If you’re not familiar, Montezuma’s revenge, refers to a severe form of dysentery that travellers experience when they consume food or drink contaminated by bacteria or viruses they have never encountered before. The unique name, Montezuma’s revenge originates with an Aztec king, Montezuma II, who welcomed the Spaniards into his city as guests and served them food and drink, causing explosive diarrhea, and for some, death. Lucky me, I didn’t die.
Daily writing prompt
What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? Why?
Let’s face it, during the holiday season we all either wear our fat pants or wear a stretchy waistband; nobody wants to take Uncle Patric’s eye out with a button popping off at eighty miles an hour. In our family, the holiday season required plenty of food and social drinks. We traditionally included cabbage rolls and perishke with dill cream sauce for the big meal; these dishes represented the Ukrainian side of our heritage. We also had shortbreads and fruitcakes for dessert to represent our Scottish and English heritage. My mom, wearing her little apron with her large bottle of wine at her side, had been in charge for years. However, things change, and for many years now I have been the head hash slinger. I prepare all the finicky treats with as much swearing and cursing and moaning and groaning as possible. Recently, I have realized that this is merely an indication more gin and tonic is needed and represents all the alcoholics who fell out of our family tree at Christmas time, or rather into it. Cheers.
Daily writing prompt
Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?
If my body did not require sleep, I am one hundred percent sure I would capture a nest of mice and measure up their teeny weeny feet to make them form-fitted Dutch-style clogs. Upon completion, I will set the nest of mice free where my husband is sleeping and wait and see how long it takes before the clog-thumping mice become more rambunctious than his snoring. Once he’s awake and I am thrown out of the house, I will commune with a local bat colony and learn echolocation, enabling me to run through the forest at night without hitting a tree. And that’s just the first night, who needs sleep?
Daily writing prompt
If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?
Pursing the craft of writing requires determination and a certain understanding that failure is a step to success. So, when I think of all the writers who struggle, I laugh. It is not a cackle of cold-hearted humour but a laugh of harmonious hysterics. And we must laugh, because it’s far less painful than banging one’s head against a wall. A day without laughter is a day with bandages on our heads.
And so, I commend all writers on their continued dedication to writing. Storytelling isn’t a craft for cowards; it is for people with golden scissors in the pocket of their pants. A tool to cut well-loved sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. In fact, well-written stories are the result of a bloody and thorough scissor slaughter. My novel, for instance, is beginning to feel like Frankenstein— a cobbled together horror of life.
In the end, dear fellow writers, the only way to finish is to keep on writing. Which oddly doesn’t always mean going forward; often times, in a banging your head against a wall situation, you need to go back to the beginning. Ugh. However, don’t give up. Whether it be forward or back, movement is the key to success.
Be the flowing words; be the vibrational hum; be the silence and the song. Warble on and tell your stories of deep longing in a world of shallow breaths. Go outside and walk upon the earth; take notice of the trees and the sky. Pause to listen to the screams of silent masses, and then come into yourself and gather up your gifts and share. Stories are you; they are me; they are everyone we see. Endless tales of wonder and laughter and banging our heads against the walls.
Today, while I ponder over the difficult choice of whether I prefer the mountains or the beach, I have safety on my mind. Mountains have forever been a stellar subject for monologues about awe-inspiring beauty, and I agree they are. However, there is a beastly side to the mountain views. First off, narrow ridges and sharp cliffs provide plenty of opportunities to fall and kill oneself. Secondly, the generous nature of loose rocky slopes offer us all the opportunity to be buried free of charge. Thirdly, there are a variety of wild things in the deep, dark forests and inky crevices along the trails, perfectly safe, of course, until they are not. Yet all those little things will not frighten me off; mountains provide far more solace and opportunity for quiet musing than for death-defying walks.
Beaches, ahhh, beloved beaches— aren’t they a delightful oceanside retreat. What could possibly be the downside of such a glorious spectacle except for a tiny tsunami, which could possibly sweep us out to sea? And yet, besides daring to walk beside the largest serial killer in the world, water, we must also consider salt water, the most excellent conductor of electricity. The itty bitty lightening storm dancing in the distance might toast your tootsies too, not to mention, stop your heart. Last but not least, who doesn’t love strolling along the beach picking up seashells? Beware, my fellow crustacean lovers; there might be a poisonous snail living inside that cone shell. This small creature has 30 confirmed kills. But don’t let this stop you from enjoying your favourite sandy haunt; the odds of anything happening are slim.
But seriously, life’s too short to worry; just enjoy it all.
In the beginning, we started out as wide-eyed innocent babies hoping to be taken care of, because, well, to be frank, we were pretty useless. We enjoyed those days in the lap of luxury, yelling at our moms without getting in trouble, life was like a vanilla milkshake, sweet and dependable. As we grew and found our feet, we crawled and then tottered and then walked about. Eventually we discovered the joy of crayons, creating marks with wax sticks of color at first on paper, and then if unsupervised, on walls and books and table tops. Crayons then got switched out with washable markers, and then we discovered blue fingers were pretty cool too. If we were fortunate enough to have a stable home, our early years stayed pretty magical right up until we entered school. It was then, that society hit us square in the face with the blunt end of the crayon. We lost our sparkle of wonder through assimilation and sameness. The feeling of possibility was crushed by preconceived expectations of curriculum and hard and fast rules; line up little citizens, work hard but not too hard, have ideas, but not too fresh of ideas, and of course, don’t fool around. Please remember, the government and corporations are depending on you to become compliant, dead-eyed, spending above your means, tax paying citizens.
Cynical much? Yes.
Is everyone is thriving in the robot factory? Rise and shine, eat, have a big poop, go to work, eat lunch, work, come home, eat, watch TV or play video games. Oh damn, we need to replenish our supplies, buy food and toilet paper, wince at the price. Once in a while we might mindlessly buy a product we saw advertised a hundred times on TV, such as a box of super duper band-aids in the shape of a power saw. Then, while we wait in line at the till, we notice some other hogwash item we don’t need and purchase that too… unless we have filthy hogs and an oozing cuts. But who am I kidding, no one procures hogwash anymore, we purchase mammal-lather, it’s far more inclusive. Those are the little items though, perhaps the most expensive and pointless purchase is the ego investment. You know, when we buy something just because our neighbour has one. It’s a plot. We need to keep up with the Joneses, because we understand the Joneses set the bar. (Shhh, don’t tell anyone, but I heard through the grape vine that the corporations install Joneses on every block— two when sales are slow. The banks love the Joneses too, especially when it’s steak night.) The Joneses spark up their barbecue and soon the scent of barbecued beef enraptures the entire neighbourhood. Suddenly credit limits are raised all around suburbia and barbecues ignite simultaneously on every deck in the neighbourhood. Credit approval is now required upon purchase of beef.
There are times though, that we rouse enough energy from our dead-eyed corpse-like bodies to indulge in exercise, socializing or artistic endeavours. Then for a short span of time we become momentarily free from our robotic life and we feel light and energetic, in tune with our bodies and our surroundings. We fervently promise ourselves we will do this lovely soul lifting activity again. And then our well meaning promise gets obliterated through our scrolling compulsion on social media, Tic-Tok, twitter, Facebook, and then out of the blue, Tinder dings and there is a robotic request for meaningless soul sucking sex. Empty soul deflating information continuously being downloaded into our psyche. Is it any surprise that, bam! Suddenly, we are back on autopilot in a lacklustre state, dull-eyed and sniffing the neighbour’s steak from afar.
Truth? We are our own worst enemies. We get bogged down with all the well-meaning shoulds, coulds and woulds in our lives. It’s a stalling energy. I should do that. I would do that. I could do that. The trouble is when we use those words they all come with a big fat BUTT on the end. Oops I mean BUT. So, why do we hesitate? What keeps us from achieving? Is it worry or fear? Or a lack of focus? It isn’t easy to yank yourself from the daily grind. We have been expertly manipulated into compliant, dead-eyed, tax paying citizens who seldom look up from their immediate needs. First off, we need to understand how we lost the wonder of our existence? If we can answer that inquest, we will have a starting point to making better choices working towards the accomplishments we desire. Questions are the answer. Are we actively choosing the things we do or are we just choosing them because it is the way we’ve always done it? Change begins with self-reflection.
I have an idea. Let’s all buy a box of crayons, a massive box containing all the colours we can imagine. Now, let’s draw. Draw badly, draw and scratch and scribble and draw some more. Then write. Write badly, just write and write and write. Let’s keep going until we find our childlike joy and remember who we were before we were crammed into the dead-eyed tax paying citizen role. Let’s learn new things and new ways of doing things and most importantly, let’s’ be kind to one another. On that note, Happy New Year to us all! Let’s make this a year of bright eyed living and actively create the life we desire.
“If anyone asked me, “What is hell?” I would answer, “The distance between people who love each other.”
The Minds Journal
Normal differences of opinions used to be an elephant in the room, slightly awkward, but dealt with in due time. These days, there isn’t merely an elephant in the room, but it’s more like a dinosaur, and the space between loved ones is enormous. Differences which typically would have been discussed are now off limits. Ears are closed and hearts are blocked. Severe damage and even the death of many relationships has become just one more type of casualty in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Discussion of the dinosaur was forbidden in many house holds; a stance supported by media and politicians who consistently inflated the size of the dinosaur during every morning and evening news cycle. Belittling and name calling others with a differing opinion was encouraged and even applauded. Many of those shamed individuals held their tongues and ignored their trepidations to keep the family peace. Sadly, when people feel unsafe to voice their concerns they inevitably become disconnected and distrustful of those relationships.
Some worried individuals did not heed the giant beast keeping them separated from their loved ones, they simply wiggled past the weighty dinosaur, and leapt into a discussion. Unfortunately, all too often it resulted in a challenging and fiery argument, sometimes erupting to the point of flaming eyes, spitting words, and boiling blood. The outcome of those types of conversations were doors slamming, phones clicking, and the dinosaur moving swiftly to take up even more space than before. Family members or friends ousted.
A civilized pachyderm would have been preferable, a dawdling being that mused self-reflectively while painting naked in the moonlight; an embarrassing but approachable subject. The Tyrannosaurus Rex, on the other hand, crashed around unpredictably flashing it’s ticker-tape death toll, and bellowing terrifying threats day and night; an intimidating subject to broach.
What a nightmare these last two years have been on kinship and connections. So many lives in ruins. I spoke with a lady outside a grocery store a couple months ago, she and her husband discussed the dinosaur regularly. It became an insurmountable block in their relationship. Their marriage ended. Name calling and shaming happened, just like it’s done on the news and by the politicians. Unfortunately, it was done everywhere and done by both sides of the argument— family and friends being banished for wrong thinking, and family and friends being banished for playing follow the leader.
Oddly enough, if you step back and ask yourself why the division became so large, the answer is the same—It is because people cared. Everyone had the same concern. Everyone wanted to protect the others. It was simply done from an extremely opposite viewpoint. There was no hate, or ill intent by those with the unpopular opinion, there was only concern at an absence of facts and an absence of information on potential harms.
Today we are entering the season of spring, it’s an ideal opportunity for fresh beginnings. It’s time to set the dinosaur free. It is time to turn our energies toward the things we’d like to see happen in our world. We all want health, prosperity, and the dignity of being heard, and we want it for all. It’s time to step away from those things that tear us apart and put our focus on those things that bring us together. Love heals and fear divides, let us find the exit to hell together.
Melancholy is a common occurrence and perhaps even more common these days. This meandering affliction has flitted in and out of my life in an erratic flow, mostly concealed and locked up tight. And within those months—and even years, I felt utterly exhausted and completely incapable of succeeding at any task. Yet, somehow, I pushed through, numb and only partially engaged. Fat with anxiety. I found myself operating on autopilot, completely unable to plot a course for my future. My lifetime of gaffes and blunders replayed throughout my waking hours on and on like the relentless refrain of an old song stuck in my head.
As I grew older, my list of botches grew longer and longer. And then, when people confided in me with their own troubles, I oddly found myself automatically adding them to my own litany of unravelings or downfalls to solve. At best, this idea seemed absurd, as if I could also resolve their issues? Soon, in any conversation, I found myself begging in a silent voice, “Please don’t ask anything of me with your expectant eyes and anxious energy, for I cannot carry your burden too.” In reality, I’m confident that if they had known my thoughts, they would have assumed I’d lost my ever-loving mind and would have responded, “But I haven’t asked you for a thing.” Deep down, I would know that this is true. However, being raised the middle child in a dysfunctional family, I constantly strived to improve things for everyone else. I felt it was my job. I was forever on guard. As soon as I’d enter a room, I’d read the emotion gathered there; if it proved tense, I’d either try to defuse the bomb before it exploded or run away before it did. Unfortunately, by constantly focusing on others to maintain a smoother path in life for them, I neglected to plan a clear road for myself.
As time went on, what should have been joyful, celebratory events with family and friends turned empty. I acted within the play. Despite the good-humoured grins and laughter that were thrown around like money in a casino, my smiles were consistently hollow, and my laughter was forced—a pittance at the penny slots. My feelings contracted. The space inside my heart reserved for warmth and caring iced over, and in actual fact, the slow pulsing core of my being became more desolate than a prairie field in the depths of winter— icy, rigid, and filled with emptiness.
Those were the darkest of days. Today, the sunlight pours down, creating dancing shadows on the ground. My smile is an expression of my heart, my future unfolds as I choose. This is our one guarantee in life: everything changes. So, if you are feeling that your life is pointless, overwhelming, and beyond repair, believe me when I say it is not. We live in a world of opposites: up/down, rich/poor, cold/hot, happy/sad, and on and on. Nothing is stagnant. All around us, every day, everything transforms, including you.
So, if you find yourself at the bottom of a dark and despairing hole, please remember… The light of spring will come again. The dull, lifeless grass will manifest into an iridescent carpet of emerald green under the warmth of the sun, a kaleidoscope of flowers will bloom, and the gophers in the burrows will foster little ones. A better future is here.
I, for one, believe in you. Perhaps you are wondering, “How can you believe in me?” You don’t even know me, and I reply, “It’s because you are human that I believe in you.I trust in your heart—your love, forgiveness, and kindness. I believe in your creativity, in your tears, and in your future joys. I believe in the contrast in who you are. Even the most evil-minded individual holds the capacity to become giving and loving. We all have the potential to transform and grow.
We falter, we fall, we bleed, we lash out, and we learn. If we can be strong enough to accept our pain without blaming the world or those around us, we grow. Our power lies in the love we give, not in the love we hold in our hearts. Our gifts are the love we offer in a smile, in a letter, in a devil’s food cake. Humans are magical creatures because they possess the ability to overcome. Let us overcome.
Life begins in a womb, or in a room, depending on your view, I suppose. But without a doubt, we all exist as the result of a big bang; the merging of two completely separate things; an egg and a sperm, and then lo and behold, out of this unification pops a brand new energetic being.
Human babies are quite unlike baby lizards, which hatch from an egg and are completely independent at birth, eating ants, flies and small worms. Brand new people are utterly incapable of doing anything except crying, flailing and losing their poop and unfortunately some people will continue this well into adulthood, which isn’t to say those people won’t ever change, because they can. Humans are capable of advancing their position in life through self-determination, unlike a lizard, which will always be a lizard.
I’m not going to lie, it’s a bit unnerving comparing people to lizards, it puts me at risk of having a raging reptile or a pissy progenitor on my doorstep. I’ll put a pee-pad on the landing. Now, back to my weird, and over-simplified comparison, the most obvious difference between a human and a lizard is that people have a desire to determine their own path in life and can actively plan towards attaining that goal. In essence, we try, we fail, we try, we fail, we try, we succeed and we grow—remove the pee-pad. Whereas, lizards simply live in the moment fulfilling their own needs; eating, drinking and fornicating.
Furthermore, as a non-lizard species, we have the unique ability to use introspection to hone our personal progress and develop compassion for our fellow human beings. If we cut beneath the superficial mask we wear for appearances sake, each individual soon comes face to face with their own inner workings, including their deepest fears and most vile inclinations, in doing this time and time again, everyone eventually discovers we are all capable of doing dark deeds in difficult circumstances. This revelation leads us to find empathy for those who struggle. The idea of compassion doesn’t exist for lizards, they simply view the smaller lizards, the less powerful lizards as a source of food to fill an empty need.
The progression of any society is intricately linked to the empathy the people display for their own fellow man. I came across these paragraphs in a book, the words buried themselves inside my heart and mind, irretrievable shrapnel from an explosive idea.
“Hammer cocked, a round in the chamber, finger resting lightly on the trigger, I drew a bead on whoever walked by—women pushing strollers, children, garbage collectors laughing and calling to each other, anyone—and as they passed under my window I sometimes had to bite my lip to keep from laughing in the ecstasy of my power over them, and at their absurd and innocent belief that they were safe. But over time the innocence I laughed at began to irritate me. It was a peculiar kind of irritation. I saw it years later in men I served with, and felt it myself, when unarmed Vietnamese civilians talked back to us while we herded them around. Power can only be enjoyed when it is recognized and feared. Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those that have it.” .
This Boys Life: By Tobias Wolff
This scenario gnaws at the reality of our time. Do you think the leaders of today promote self-determination, fearlessness in the face of adversity and compassion for others, or do they actively participate in shaming, name-calling and enjoy the predatory feeling of having their finger on the trigger? Will the babies born today be encouraged to live their lives to their highest capacity as a human or will they be limited to the barest minimum like a lizard?
Lance Corporal Alexander Antoniuk, February 19, 1924 — December 31, 1944
Enlisted: March 2, 1942 in Edmonton, Alberta. He served in the military with 4th Princess Louise Dragoon Guards, R.C.I.C. His body lies in the Villanova Canadian War Cemetery in Italy. He fought for freedom; for the freedom to voice an opinion without being attacked with name calling or shaming. He fought for the freedom for a citizen to refuse an experimental treatment without being coerced or pressured into taking it, and he fought for the freedom from censorship and government overreach.
In the covid years, the people who have followed every mandate cannot understand why some of us think some of our freedoms were taken, but I ask those people, with respect and love, “How would you know your freedoms are gone unless you use them?” Put the shoe on the other foot for a moment, what if you used your freedom of choice to reject a brand new medical treatment, and for that you lost the freedom to travel, to eat in a restaurant, to go to a movie theatre, and perhaps even your job. Would you notice your freedoms gone then?
Earlier this week, the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act (formerly known as the War Measures Act) for the first time since 1970.
As a reminder, the War Measures Act was invoked in 1970 because the Quebec nationalist group, Front de libération du Québec, set off over 200 bombs across Quebec, kidnapped a British diplomat, and kidnapped and murdered the Deputy Premier of Quebec, Pierre Laporte.
We highlight this most recent usage of the War Measures Act to explain the extremely high bar required to invoke this massive expansion in government powers, and even then its usage was opposed by the NDP on civil liberties grounds.
Since 1970, Canada has faced many crises in many different forms.
The Emergencies / War Measure Act was not used to resolve the Oka Crisis, a series of protests where multiple deaths and hundreds of injuries occurred, the Calendonia land dispute, the extended blockade of pipelines and railways in 2020 and 2021, the September 11th attacks, or even the COVID-19 pandemic itself.
This is because the Emergencies / War Measures Act contains extremely strict rules about when it may be used.
Just one of these many restrictions says that a crisis must “exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it” before the federal government may step in and take over.
The crisis must also be of a nationwide nature, not restricted to just a small geographic area.
Given all the border blockades across the country were handled and ended by provincial governments before the federal government even invoked the Act, and the only remaining protest was the one in Trudeaus own backyard in Ottawa, the trucker protest clearly failed to meet that criteria.
Freedom is not given by a bureaucratic enterprise. We must remember we are all born free, and any chains that bind have been slapped on populations through trickery, dogma and persuasion. Tragically, my great uncle Alec and so many others gave their lives in support of a country that no longer exists.
Sharpenedink 