'There' Is No Better Than 'Here'.

'Here' is a pretty good place.

I heard the most wonderful interview on the radio last week of a couple who had fled Pakistan and started a new life in Canada. In Pakistan, they were well-paid professionals, lived in a beautiful house, drove fancy cars and had servants to take care of them.

In Canada, they learned that their international experence counted for nothing. They took whatever jobs they could find, and now live at the poverty level in downtown Toronto.

And they are the happiest they have ever been. As the woman said (I paraphrase): "Now we don't have to keep up with the Jones'... because here, we don't know anyone." And they laughed, the most infectious, joyous sound I had heard out of the radio in quite a few days.

My husband and I were in our car, and as we listened to them, we fell thoughtful. You see, we'd been out car shopping all morning, an experience probably responsible for more relationship crises than just about anything else, and I was upset that the car I coveted was beyond our reach. My husband was upset that he couldn't afford to buy me what I wanted. Then we heard this couple on the radio, and while I can't speak for my husband, I was ashamed of myself.

I was upset over a car.

A car.

How stupid.

So today I stood in the sun and washed the 13-year-old car we make no payments on, which still runs, and which we can't seem to beat to death with a stick. And I told myself to be grateful for what I have and stop griping about what I don't have.

 I know a lot of people around here, you know, but not a single one of them are called 'Jones'.

Ideas Won't Keep.

It was too good an idea. It had to be tried.

Years ago, I scrawled a quotation in the corner of one of my journals, then highlighted it in yellow. I have since found the originator of the quote, Alfred North Whitehead (English philosopher and mathematician, 1861-1947). I'd like to thank him here, formally, for saying in few words something that is a driving force in the lives of many creative people.

"Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them."

 You know the feeling. It's the one that wakes you up in the middle of the night, keeps you fidgeting, annoying the person trying to sleep beside you, until you write it down. In the morning you'll find a cryptic note on the bedside table: 'DOG WALLOWING!' or 'mustard in the seams'.Sometimes, the idea doesn't let you get back to sleep until you've actually completed the darn thing. (One morning I woke up to find ten typed pages of a story outline sitting on my desk, and had no memory of doing it.)

Fantastic things, ideas. Who knows what intoxicated demon is responsible for gleefully dropping them into our heads two minutes after lights out? Creative people hate it when it's around, but we despair when the demon disappears, inexplicably, for days (or weeks!) on end.

So thank you, Mr. Whitehead, for putting the relationship we have with our ideas into such a simple phrase. And a big thank you, too, to the cheeky, cherub-faced demon who put it in you.

And so the demon Idea takes another victim.

Well, hello there, dearie!

Tags have been in my mind a lot recently. Mucking about with Facebook, Amazon, Goodreads and other sites, I have been tagging like mad. I am sure there is an art to it, and I am equally sure that I have yet to be inducted into the ranks of those who know the art.

I get the idea of tagging; I have worked retail for years in order to make ends meet, and tags become a big part of the day-to-day when you work in retail. I have, however, been resisting the trend to tag people. It seemed impolite, after all. Who am I to put a label on you?

But yesterday at my grandfather's funeral, my aunt talked about how he used to call us all 'dearie'. "Dearie," she said. "What a wonderful word to call someone you love." Yes, it is. Wonderful and old-fashioned and reminding me of summers at the cottage and a much-loved voice on the other end of a telephone line.

Then I realized that we do have tags, all of us. We are 'sweetheart' and 'honey' and 'baby'. Perhaps you are 'sweetie pie', maybe you are 'my sweet baboo'. Are you 'muffin'? Are you 'puddin' face'? Here's looking at you, exotic 'schatje'. Lucky you, 'sexy'! Way to go, 'hot lips'!

Yet I think these are not the tags Facebook is asking me for.

Too bad. I am 'dearie', and I will carry it and the memory of a man who lived 95 years, every day of them in fullness of spirit and greatness of heart. He was on top of things until the day he died, and while it saddened him that he wouldn't see his great-grandchildren grow up, his biggest regret was that he wouldn't live to see the completion of the Eglinton Subway.

Good-bye, dearie.

at Westover, July 10, 2012