Insights

Well, Monday got off to a rocky start. I was up at 4:00. I fed the pets, lit the fire and read the book I’m loving (John of John) until Doug was up, then we talked and I made him breakfast until it was time to leave at 9:00 to take him to the ferry terminal.

After dropping Doug off, Sheba and I went for our morning walk in the big meadow behind the farmers’ market. It’s public land and stunningly beautiful at any time of year. It is an enormous flat slab of sandstone, probably two acres big, and it’s covered in various kinds of mosses. 

Then we came home. And what did I find here? Doug’s phone, to which he is very attached. It was too late to catch him, so I thought to get quickly to the post office to send it via priority mail, but I only had Doug’s old address and the email I had for his partner, Luc, was not working. I was quite stressed, but then I got a text that Doug was able to send from his Apple watch. He sent me his address and now the phone it on its way to him via priority post.

When we came home from the post office, we went for our afternoon walk and then I came home to have a soak. Later, Pete dropped by with some cuttings from his garden for me to plant, and we had a nice chat. It was such a gorgeous day! We had bright sunshine and a lovely warm temperature of 17°. 

I was slightly nervous about Doug’s visit, because of all my guests, he’s the one with whom I’ve spent the least time. However, from the get-go, he and I had a great weekend. He’s extremely well mannered; that’s what stands out to me. He likes conversation, he’s gay, and what we did here, talking comfortably and endlessly, largely on personal issues, is how we met.

I found myself on a lounge chair on the side of a large swimming pool in Palm Springs, and Doug took the chair beside me. This was forty years ago. I was with Steve, my partner, and I can’t remember if Doug was alone or with someone. We started talking, and over a couple of days together we talked like we did this weekend.

He’s a very interesting conversationalist. He’s an open book—at least to me. We’ve been talking together off and on for decades, and a strong trust exists between us that allows us to talk safely about anything. And he does dishes and is a very tidy boy of seventy-two years. He said he’d be back more frequently. That’s why I can honestly say we had a very good time together.

•

I don’t, by nature, like series on streaming services. But when a good one comes along, I eagerly watch it. I’ve swooned over many. But last night I was scrolling on TUBY and I saw Harry’s Farm as an option. I didn’t notice that it was a series; I assumed it was a documentary film. Within seconds, I was hooked and then happy to realise it was a series.

There is no intro. It begins in media res; we’re off and running from the first frame. It reads close to being a home movie. This film will not be, in any way, close to anything you might imagine. All I’ll say is this: what hooked me is the scale and the objectives. 

He shares startling statistics about the state of family farms in Britain. Massive agricultural multinationals are taking over farming and I’ve very sympathetic to his concerns about that. It’s not a series for many, if not most people, but my ex brother-in-law was a farmer and I found it extremely interesting to learn how our food is produced.

•

My first great insight of the day: I’ve been trying to find the best way to describe Sheba’s character, and yesterday I came up with this: She is independent but dependably cooperative. She accepts love and gives a loyalty. I wanted to come up with a succinct summary of her character because I knew what she wasn’t: affectionate. I’m vigorously affectionate with her; she asks for it. I am useful. I scratch backs and she cannot get enough. I massage. I’m a whore for love.

My second great insight of the day: Sometimes I’ve wondered if I didn’t have a modest does of OCD. My first hint was when I was eight, Don and taken me and my best friend Doug Downey up Grouse Mountain. Don was there to work. He was a sportswriter for the largest circulation newspaper in Vancouver.

He gave a bucket to Doug and I and told us to fill them from the acres of alpine wild blueberries growing around the lodge while he did his thing. When we re-assembled, my bucket was full to the brim, and I hadn’t eaten a berry. Doug’s bin was empty and he vomited a sea of blueberries in the car on the way home.

Everything has its place in my home. I like things clean and tidy (but I exempt my car from the kingdom of clean), but you should see my fridge! It’s beautifully tidy! But in truth, tidy is the objective. The right way to describe this drive I have, is to say that my mind craves order. Tidiness is a symptom.

I wrote, above, that Pete came over and gave me some plants. I put the flat in the shed so the roots wouldn’t dry. And when I did that, my brain added “(plant Pete’s plants” (hey, not a bad tongue twister) in the garden. It became another thing to do., and having things to do means my world is not in order. They had to be planted; I could not allow plants to die by my priorities, and only when they were plants would order be restored.

Another thing that made me wonder about me having OCD was when, in high school, I joined the debate club. Why did I join such a nerdy club? Who knows, I have often wondered, but I know why I stayed: I loved it because I was the king—perhaps, queen—of the castle. I was captain and a debate champion. 

For me it was a game. I was in an academic program but only arts and English classes interested me. I hated sports. I stood out at nothing except debate club. And in math. UBC at age eleven. Fuck yea! These successes were compensation for knowing that most of my achievements failed to meet the expectations of my teachers and counsellor.

Consistent with a psychological drive for order, was a logical approach to solving problems and mentally filing information. Math is nothing but problems, and for me, as I said, problem solving was a game. I felt like a hockey player who wins by hawk vision on the puck and the locations of his teammates. In both math and in debating, I kept hawk’s vision on the intellectual through line of the argument/problem to win the jury’s decision or find the correct answer to the math problem.  

When I got to university and took creative writing, we could often negotiate subjects of our assignments. I earned the right to write an essay for a psych course about what made me so good at debating. It was my heartfelt belief that capacity was coming through me. I did not believe I had anything to do with my ability to win. I felt that I was merely a conduit. Of what? From whom? It didn’t matter. What mattered is that I felt I had no intellectual part to play in my success. 

Why? Later in life I would come to know that unless I was onstage, I detested being the centre of attention. On stage there is order. Backstage there is order. Order. Cues. Marks. Timing. Position. Etcetera. The same every time.

Life, however, is chaotic, especially and extremely so since my breakdown. Living means exposure to a cacophony of triggers. It made life challenging to navigate for a sensitive young man, and worse, much worse, post breakdown.

•

Today is cloudy. I have a Zoom session with Dr. S. today, and I shall finish reading John of John. Sigh. I’m so sad it is going to end, but I am going to re-read another of his books, Young Mungo, next. We’ll walk and I’ll soak too.