Category: Serenities

Sorry February

I want to thank you for that, as one of my mentors once said.  I want to thank you for your graces, February, and sorry I didn’t get back to you a little sooner.  It’s the Canadian in me.  And I was thinking about that.  Where was I this morning?  Yes.  Driving wonderfully, hitting the greens beautifully and making good time, which is important, but not always guaranteed.  I was thinking I’m so Canadian.  It hit me hard.

It’s tough.  It’s tough realizing what you are, and how little you can do about it.  Canadian.  Born but not bred.  A wild, uncontrollable baby and it’s never changed.  February’s half over and it’s like I’ve been avoiding it.  Like I don’t care.  I’m sorry about that, Feb.

Boredom is a terrible contagion.  Plus when you stumble onto the ‘Apathy’ app.  It’s new.  Check it out.  Works great.  Create an account and you don’t have to give a darn about a whole bunch of stuff.  You can care less.

I should have got here sooner but just didn’t feel like it.  It’s terrible.  It’s February and all this darkness is so tiresome, but give the month a chance and maybe it’ll add some lightness and everybody should be encouraged but they don’t have to be if they don’t want to because they’re on their own and and and…  That is an example of a run-on sentence.  Remember those?  Run run.

Everybody needs a break and that certainly includes February.  February’s a good kid and is getting brighter all the time.  Sure it is.  It’s a wonderful month.  Sometimes you just don’t want to think about it.  Everybody knows what that’s about.

If only it was true.  I don’t know what happened here.

DSCN9844But February is great.  I love this month.  It’s still the start of the year.  Brand new days.  Get to be born and re-born.  Just like a lot of other people so you feel that sense of community, that compulsion to isolate yourself.

February, more surprises are in store.  We’re gonna find some new categories!  We are!  And a bunch of other changes you can’t get too hyped about either because they just may never happen.  Thank you for hanging in there.  “I realized changes needed to be made.  I couldn’t make them”.

But you can make them.  Changes are in the offing.  The offing.  Where exactly is that anyway?

Newly Discovered Islands In The Sky
Newly Discovered Islands In The Sky

Makes about as much sense as anything else around here.

Gordon Heselton Veteran Page

GWHRight again.  Thought I knew that.  Never volunteer for anything.  It’s a good idea.  And you don’t.  Or try not to.  And you work on that for a few days but then you succumb.  You’re ready to  get it on.  You enlisted.

It’s  1941.  You don’t care.  You’re living on East 21st Avenue and it’s time.  If you look like a clown in a circus it doesn’t matter.  There’s something important here.

427 Squadron RCAF.  Of course it is.  Take your pick.  Emden.  Hanover.  Berlin.  Stuttgart.  The whole smozzle.  Fly your kite and expect to get through.  It’s 1943 and these Officer types have enlisted you.  Pilot Officer.  You got through.

For some reason, and for years, you yourself think about it. They Gazetted you a DFC and Christmas wasn’t even here yet.  And you’re still wondering, who the heck was it?  Bit of a mystery there.  Bit of a genius up there in the ‘tumbling mirth’.  Stupid expression.  That much is obvious.  They don’t hand these DFC things out on street corners.  You were less than modest.  You had to be drawn out.

You made it.  That’s the big thing.  30 big ones and thank you very much.  Combat flying.  I hate that word “combat”.  It was sort of like how the Americans talked.  Great flyers and very brave.

Anyway, I came back home and they buried me in Burnaby with by beloved War Bride. Good place to have them do that for you.  Love Burnaby.  Served us well sixty-six years.  Okay , maybe a few less.  It’s  our children.  And our children’s children.

Thanks for flying Heselton bombers.  We’ll get you to where you’re going and get you back.  It’s what we do.  We’re good and we’re lucky, but most importantly good.  And lucky. We always fly high.  If there’s one thing the Heselton bomber would like to do it’s fly higher!

Lets get in the clouds together!

2014 Heselton update.  Veterans hospital Burnaby aetat. 94

 

Heselton Family 1942
Heselton Family 1942

Things were fuzzier then, but let’s not forget.

500

Looks like it’s all about the numbers now.  Five hundred can be a tough slog.  500.  How many things do you do 500 times?  One right after the other?  Never, right?  What, you’ve kept track?  Counted them all?  Maybe you should think about that.  Think about what you’re doing keeping track of it.  But it’s okay.  It’s the last chapter. The struggle with numbers is over.

I was on the floor and I wasn’t lying down, but I should have been. Or he should have been.  It was 500 and I wanted to kill him and would have except I’m not a killer.  I went to get my jacket and walked out of the damn place.  Sounds a bit overblown.  Maybe it was.  The hick, the slovenly white man in shorts with the fat gut, stood there with his mouth open.  You hear it everywhere in this town.  The sound of silence.  Means nothing.  It’s night and it’s Vancouver and the testosterone’s flowing.

DSCN6269

What a night it’s turning out to be.  I’ve never counted 500 of anything before.  Certainly not the last time I was doing anything of consequence, and it went on for years.  How many 500s is that?  500 + 500 + 500?  On and on.  Ridiculous.  Things you’ve done.   Forget it.  Not worth remembering.  At least not right now.

I wasn’t counting because I didn’t care, but time is shorter now.  It’s worth remembering.  I’m interested in what I’m doing and how many times I’m doing it.  Especially the grind this is, that I thought was behind me.  Wally the grinder.  He found me again.  I hate that guy.

Something like being in prison and waiting to get out, even if you don’t know what prison is like because you’ve never been.  Not that one, anyway.

DSCN6067

500 times.  500 miles.  Galaxie 500.  Fortune 500.  Indy 500.  500 Episodes. That’s the one I’m always worried about.  The 500 episodes of my life and what that’s going to look like.

‘If I’ve said it once I’ve said it 500 times.’  The actual quote is, ‘If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a 1000 times.’  Blab on.  It’s over.

It’s just a number.  I had to go back to my high school Latin text because I couldn’t remember, and I used to love Latin, what the numeral is for the concept, the number 500, and I wanted to include that.  D.  It’s D.  It was disappointing.  I thought 500 meant a lot more than ‘D’.  I dumped that idea.  Roman numerals are making a comeback.  Just see.

Everybody knows MMXIV.  It’s a very good year.  Sure it is.

500 means something.  You first learned it back in arithmetic, probably your best course back then.  If you counted enough numbers you got to five hundred.  Loved arithmetic.  A lot of it was on the back of your old scribblers or note books that they used to hand out, or they magically appeared from your parents or something.  Maybe you were forced to buy them yourself.  ‘Hilroy’.  The tables.  All the tables on the backs of the notebooks.

Not only was I unsure if I’d ever find another job, I never wanted any job ever.  Not supported by the evidence, tough guy.  Same goes for interviews.  Despise interviews, but who doesn’t?  Everybody’s tough and interviews are something you have to tough out.  Why wouldn’t you?  Resumes especially.  Loathe them.  But I had one, sort of.

Honestly.  When you start out you can’t conceive of something as huge and ridiculous as 500.  That it’s going to happen to you like that.

More important things are at work here, like this special day.  Happy birthday!