There have been a few times in my life that I've known what might be considered tragedy. The phone call about the suicide. The call about a cousin who died of a heart attack at 35. Seeing my 43-year-old sister unconscious being wheeled away in an ambulance, never to see her again, wearing a summer T-shirt that said, "Life's a Beach" on the evening before she died. Depressions that seemed like they'd never lift, and wouldn't have, without the support of others. Feeling let down, yet again, by a man. Well, that's not a tragedy really but after a while that reality does take on a tragic quality.  Events that change us (and in spite of the pain at the time, the change has not always been for the worse).

Sometimes however you hear of other people's tragedies, people you really care about, and its as if in their anguish, which is palpable, you experience a taste of mortality that's too strong and you really don't know what to do with it and where to put it and it changes you slightly. And, if it does that to you, the mere bystander, what must it be doing to them? And, you don't know what to say and suddenly you are acting a little different over the phone with people you can totally be yourself around, laugh with, spend the most amount of time with and receive support from and now, because of the situation, you feel somewhat helpless to know how to help them.

Driving on Salt Spring is dangerous. The  deer are waiting to pounce. There are blind curves and invisible ditches. Especially at night. There are other drivers who act as if they are the only ones on the road expecting you to be the most defensive driver in the world, especially on back roads that sometimes have small hills with no center lines and just the slowing down and the hope that the other person coming towards you is as far to the side of his side of the road as possible as you are to yours.

The drinking and driving laws have changed significantly  to the degree that most of us, unless we were to pledge from this day forward to never have a drink when we are driving (which seems like the wisest choice), could look back at our past behaviour and not wonder, had we been caught, would we have passed the breathalyzer even though we'd had two glasses of wine and felt perfectly fine.

I don't know the full circumstances or the details of the event that happened on Saturday night. I do know a bit about the outcome and I can only imagine the ramifications in the lives of a lot of people as a result. Really good people who have had, at least temporarily, their optimism and possibly their futures altered because of an accident.

And, in that thought my mind goes to Pema Chodron's books When Things Fall Apart and Start Where You Are.  No doubt it seems trite to even mention a book but words of comfort and our thoughts matter and sometimes they are all we have to wrap around us and lead us to our future - one day at a time - when on the outside there is nothing tangible that can change where we're at.

 

"Only to the degree that we've gotten to know our personal pain, only to the degree that we've related with pain at all, will we be fearless enough, brave enough and enough of a warrior to be willing to feel the pain of others.  To that degree we will be willing to take on the pain of others because we will have discovered that their pain and our pain are not different."

Salt Spring Market: Matching People to Photos

One of the best things about The Salt Spring Saturday Market as a vendor is not that you can make money but it's in the interactions you sometimes have with people who buy your stuff. I took this photo last Spring some time in the early evening. This baseball was sitting atop one of those memorials in the Ganges graveyard that have plaques on the front. When I saw it, I loved the way the light was glinting off the top right hand corner. I like the look of it as well; so worn and well-loved, no stranger to a bat.

I was wondering whether someone placed it there because one of the people who had died and whose plaque was on this monument were serious, serious baseball fans or whether it just ended up there because during a baseball game at the park across the street it got hit out of the park in a home run where all the players cleared the bases.

I love the shot but when I matted it as a small photo, I knew it would have to be a die-hard baseball fan who would find it appealing enough to purchase it. 

The man who ended up buying it was wearing a Bluejays cap.  He didn't tell me but when he left his wife told me that he 's a director on the board of the Blue Jays charity called Jays Care.  He's got some role in broadcasting as an Executive Producer. 

It's nice for me to think that my photo will be sitting somewhere that matters to someone who cares about baseball and does good things through the charity that's part of that team.

In Character on Walker's Hook

Mr. Ron

Last night I decided against going to Derek Lundy's talk on his new book Borderlands and decided a little fresh air was in order instead.

I walked down to my favorite dock. Even the air felt quiet. The sky, the air, the water. All's quiet. I sometimes feel like this is my island; all mine. Especially at this North End. Often, on my walks, there will be no one.

While I was coming back from the end of the dock, a couple with their little boy named Henry stopped. He was a teacher, she was an organic farmer. They own a farm in Sonoma County, California. "She had worked in Hollywood," he said. "She didn't like that much. Then, she went to the school U.C. Santa Barbara, some organic farming course that's really well known he said. He was a teacher. They were renting a cabin on North End Road.

"It's like a fairy tale here," he said.

What do you mean? 

A fairy tale. You know. It's not real."

His wife went to the end of the dock to be with Henry. I noticed, looking past the father that she was showing Henry how to use a small point and shoot camera. 

When we walked back to the end of the dock, Henry had disappeared. Now, I see how fast kids can disappear. I could feel their momentary alarm. Henry was hiding on us in the bushes.  He came out after a while.

Walking back towards home, I came across this man with his jaunty hat and his handle bar mustache. He had a cane and if I'd had more time and been a little bolder I would have found a way to take more than one photo.

"Why do you want to take my photo?" he asked laughing.

"Because you have a great face."

"Less than 10 minutes and I've had my photo taken twice," he said pointing down the road to a black suburban.

"The guy from the paper just took my photo. He had me posing and everything,"he said.

I looked down the road and I saw an arm stick out of the truck and wave.

"It would be a joke if you got a better photo than him," he said.

I realized it was Derrick Lundy. I laughed.

I really need to start taking more photos of people I thought to myself.