That’s a sentence that I have written. What does it mean, I will be asked. It means my Mom has fucking cancer. The doctor says that they got it all and the other tumor was clear.

Hip hip hurrah! That sounded great when she said it and I offered my congratulations. The lymph node’s came back clean.

It’s cancer right. Someone I love has cancer. I guess I have to deal with that. At least I don’t have to deal with cancer. My Mom has to do that!

Her Father died of prostate cancer. At the end he said they shoot suffering animals, why not him! What was her reaction when he told her he had cancer?

In the end it’s the END, there’s no quibbling about that. Let her go in her sleep, not like Dad wasting away to nothing. I wonder what it was like for him. Did he dream or hallucinate or did his mind go first?

He didn’t have cancer, he had dementia, but the last words I heard him say were “hi Peter ” then he died for 8 days till we got a call on the am of the 9nth.

Nothing philosophical to say. No catchy t-shirt slogan. Just dead or dying people who lived in this world and now live in others heads.

On my wall hangs a papier mache mask. I bought it in a small art gallery in Regina. It has followed me to San Ignacio where it resides on the yellow/green of my room dividing wall. I seem to remember the synopsis under the piece mentioning that it was a cast of the artists face.

That being the case I can only imagine it being heavily exaggerated as it is brutal of feature, and bluntly menacing. It is almost all a coarse white made further intimidating by years of dust. My ex wife would tell you that’s one of my faults, lack of a dust rag. The mouth area is painted flesh coloured with pink lips and dirty glossy white teeth.

This gives the impression that the face has been wrapped up with only that bit showing. It is a fantastic piece and I love it. All that being said the strangest thing about it is the shadow that it throws when I have the kitchen light on. I swear the darkness of the outline looks like Howard Cosell.

I have this piece of art on my mustard green wall that throws a dusky shadow that reminds me of that bombastic sports announcer. That’s what I call two for one art!

Greatfully alive. Sometimes it’s not such a clear cut thing. On some days it seems to be more in the woefully alive camp.

Have things changed in the world since yesterday? A negligible amount I believe. I guess we could argue about the stock market, threat of war, human rights abuses and all the things that regularly seem to happen along with the positive things we rarely hear about that happen also.

The millions of people that volunteer their time to help others and also build bridges in time, space and emotional understanding. Sometimes cold, hard reasoning doesn’t work as well as some empathy.

It’s easy to despair and fall into a abyss of numbness. Lord knows I have done that often enough and not seen the love and friendship around me. I am so used to constant gratification that I can’t see what is in front of my eyes and will be there for the long term as long as I work for it!

So little is required of me! I put in patience, understanding, work and understanding with no judgment and I am sure to live in love for as long as I want too.

It all starts with being grateful and not confusing what love is. Not pineing for and turning to that quick fix. Today I am greatfully alive as the thunder rolls on the clouds.

I was just little and I know you had to work, but that didn’t mean you had the right to leave me hanging. Like that time I got hit in the face with the soccer ball. I quit immediately because I didn’t believe you had my back and I wasn’t taught how to deal with pain.

You told me I wouldn’t amount to anything if I kept reading.  That’s how I was dealing with pain you bastard. You had no kind words for me , no”I love you” just get the job done! You made me drown a bag of kittens to toughen me up. Fuck you!

You left me here with no emotional tools to live my life. They tell me that I should love you, but I sure as fuck don’t like you. You never hit me except for the occasional wooden spoon and that was usually at mom’s behest. To be honest it would have been welcomed to some degree, other than to be thought of as a disappointment and disregarded.

I remember hugging you when I was forty. You were stiff as a board.  Maybe that is why I don’t have the emotional tools to love a woman.  Instead I masturbate my life away. You taught me how to work and constantly berate myself for not being perfect. Now I believe i will never be good enough to be loved, because you never could show that to me.

I am starting to see it here, but still have that fear that if they truly see me, you know like you could have and told me that my warts were okay instead of telling me that I should be ashamed of myself when i started dating a girl that had pursued me, because i didn’t have the confidence to do that myself. Even if she was 13 and I 17. She was interested in me, not like you! I am 63, a mess and I am the one who has to clean it up, because truthfully I have left my self hanging too. I wonder where I learnt that one?

Fuck for a buck with a little luck. Is that what my life has been reduced too? I have to take a little blue pill just to make it cum true. Not that I haven’t done it before!

I feel like that is all that is left. Transactional sex. Not love. I never really tried though did I. Scared and with scars. My mom still holds out hope. I don’t think it will happen and by thinking that way it won’t

I have love in my life. From friends and family, but I still yearn for the touch and caress of a lover. I am afraid that ship has sailed and it’s not coming back.

I woke this morning with visions of supper dancing in my head. It’s my birthday you see! I was going to be picked up by friends at four thirty and then off to what I had been told was a fine restaurant.

I was so looking forward to it.  I had to fill the day to get to four thirty though.  I went for a walk that involved sweat and time. This took an hour and was completed after I had frittered the morning away.

I then took a taxi to Remo’s and watched football for three hours. Chatted to folks, drank a few lime juices and generally had a great time.

I again flagged down a taxi with a couple of others riding in it and got dropped down town San Ignacio. I wandered around town killing a little more time. As I walked I met a lady that I didn’t know who questioned me in short order about my relationship status and then implied she could be my “friend”!

I told her that I had enough friends and walked away.

I went home and waited for my friends to pick me up for supper. I had a lovely meal and outstanding conversation. I related the story of being hit on by this person and said if I had taken her up on her exchange of money for sex I would have probably crushed her as she was tiny and anorexic.

I was given a ride home and instead of going in I decided to go for a walk. Who should be the first person I meet but this lady! Two kilometers from where I had first met her. I said  “have a nice day” Turned around in shock and quickly strode away.

Was the world telling me that I needed to get laid?

I am so dam dog tired! I hold on to my tablet for dear life, even as I slowly drift under the threshold of consciousness. To be rudely awakened as the tablet hits the floor, even as my traitorous fingers clutch the empty air between them.

Do I get up and go to bed you might ask? Ah, but no! I still cling to the thought that I am getting something from the experience even though I have lost the last few minutes to my closed eye’s.

Yet still my mind clings to the hope that I will glean something from the next clip, or show that I am watching. Deep down though my subconscious must realize that trying to read anything into it is failing miserably and I just need to sleep and let my mind process the things in my experience of the day, so that I can get on with tomorrow.

So will I go to sleep and let the R.E.M. begin or will I continue to fight a futile and pointless battle to stay awake and be all the less balanced for it?

I was sitting at the counter of an open air bar in Bullet tree, Belize when the bartender, originally from Texas, introduced me to a band called the Deep South from Regina, Saskatchewan. My birth place. As Alanis Morissette sang: isn’t it ironic.

They tell me I have feelings. I guess that might be true. Once in therapy they gave me a list. It was quite long. I can barely name a few.

I have been numb. I suppose that’s a feeling, right?

I get feeling good and run for the numb. I don’t know how to react to/feel the good. I am not comfortable there. Why is that? Like I don’t deserve it. I haven’t worked hard enough for it. Is that what you gave me?

Must I keep myself immersed in something to feel like I am something? Therapy told me I can be okay being me. That is enough. When has that worked? I grew up in a home where performative actions were what was validated. I don’t know another way.

I want to be like my cat. He comes and inserts himself into the space between my tablet and face. He knows I will pet him because he has that intrinsic value.

Do I feel that? No. If only I was so easily placated as by a rubbing of ears to make me feel.

Often I feel like it’s just whining. Do I need to hurt myself or others to feel? Do I need to eat till I feel full/complete? Why do I feel lost being me?.

I find that lately I have taken to watching content that touches on the past, although it seems like it just happened a few years ago.

Perhaps it is about a news story that pops in my head. The time I came home from school and found the paper on the front porch. Picking it up and reading that Charlie Manson and his troop of crazies had butchered Sharon Tate and her friends.

I lost some of my innocence that day standing on the concrete steps of my chidhood home.

It might be hearing a song that takes me somewhere, puts me in my first car on a hot summer day in Regina. At a friend’s house stoned out of my mind, so lost in the music. Lying in a row boat in the perfect sun on Headwaters lake outside of Peachland.

Eating a meal that was special, the taste, texture, aroma, atmosphere and presentation. Reading a story about one of my heroes dying, so many now! Reliving the past glories of Canada’s sporting accomplishments. The day I watched part of the 72 series in a lumber shop office, because even though my Father wanted to work all of Canada stopped!

I watch, listen, taste, hear and experience these things with mixed emotions, but what l do most is cry. The nostalgia for the victories, losses, sounds, flavours and events that I have loved, hated, felt numb in, enjoyed and raptured in all lead me to that place, tears.

I am sixty three and when I am gone there will be no one who has experienced these moments like me. I am continuing to make moments. That’s what living is, right? I just moved to Belize. I volunteer at a cat sanctuary. I watch and converse with people who make beautiful things. I eat food in a new way, but those old memories still have that power to make me shed tears.

I don’t know what else to say. Sometimes the emptiness is overpowering, sometimes I feel love, sometimes a nameless aching. Sometimes a comforting familiarity.

So if you come across me at some point and you see that my eye’s are leaking, come ask me. I will share apart of my life that you might be able to relate to and we will have a shared memory to keep us warm.