#30 Walk on the wild side
March 05th, 2015
Hi, darlin,’
The world of politics is confusing.
Not all that long ago O’Bomber wanted to blow Syria to smithereens to get rid of the dictator Assad. The U.S. war machine was giving the rebels arms and ammunition in order to bring down the Assad regime. Now, suddenly, about-face! Those rebels have turned out to be ISIS/ISIL and Assad is once again a good buddy, and an ally in the war against jihadi terrorists.
Now the International Monetary Fund has said they aren’t going to loan any more money to Ukraine. They are supposed to know about risk, and investment. They’re saying no more. But Stevie Harper says, “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll loan you money.” The guy who has been pleading poverty, and telling us to tighten our belts and get used to doing more with less, is going to ignore the IMF and loan money to a country which right now seems to be doing its utmost to rip itself to shreds, a country where neo-Nazis walk around in full view wearing patches on their shirts which ought to warn anybody with more than two brain cells that they’re seeing thugs. We have to claw back pensions for our wounded vets, and we can’t afford a full investigation into the missing and murdered women. but our PM has money for neo-Nazis.
Either we are broke or we aren’t broke.
I don’t really mind contradictions but I get a tad snarky when faced with hypocrisy.
Some people say young Justin Trudeau has a chance. Honestly, that kid! He can barely open his mouth without sticking his foot in it. Me, me, it’s all about me. Me, me, aren’t I special, and precious, me, me. Where’s centre stage, me, me, turn on the spotlight… Hasn’t he already said that if he becomes PM he won’t change any of the laws Harper has rammed down our throats? So how different will he be? Well, he has better hair but surely to gawd that’s no reason to make Prime Swine at the trough! Sorry, but he’s too much like his mom, the determinedly perpetual flower child.
So here we are in a world where two out of three people go to bed hungry every night, millions die of starvation, there’s always some overpaid dick on TV trying to guilt me into sending money to help deprived children. And at the same time morbid obesity is a near epidemic, and every TV channel has a different programme or two on cooking. Mad chef, happy chef, busy chef, chef to the world.
The remedy is a Therapeutic Perambulation.
Our scruffy little village has somehow created a trail called the Leiner Boardwalk. You turn off the goat track that is our road out of town and park near the comfort stations (the loo); then follow the boardwalk into the bush.
The mature second growth trees are tall, the trunks thick, and the canopy above blocks out most of the sun so even on a hot summer day it’s cool. Yesterday it was chilly, everything was slick and shiny with moisture, the moss in full bloom and the smell of the mulch was intoxicating. Our dogs were off leash, they ran on ahead, then came back, then on ahead again, the outriders making sure we were safe.
A few salmonberry blossoms were showing, the huckleberry bushes were pregnant with new growth buds, the estuary was beyond description, but mostly, for me, it was the sight of those massive trunks reaching up, up, up to the sunlight, the pillars of creation standing firm, holding up the sky.
I felt as if I was floating.
My back is toast and I need my cane, but who cares when what you feel that with just a bit of concentration you could lift up off the path, defy gravity, and drift off across the bay.
—
Anne Cameron grows pussywillows on the western edge of Vancouver Island. She received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an outstanding literary career in British Columbia in 2010. Her 23 books include Daughters of Copper Woman, the bestselling work of fiction ever written about B.C. and published from within B.C. She has banished herself to Tahsis, a small town not far from Friendly Cove where the shenanigans called British Columbia all began.
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