I started my move back to my family home today through the harrowing and narrow two lanes of the Gardiner Expressway after getting the finger by a man in a Dodge because I waited to make a right turn on a red light at Broadview going on to Danforth because I was uncertain as to whether the women with the walker was going to cross.  I am in no hurry to get to the next red light.

He shouted, “learn how to drive asshole”.

I pulled out a gun and I shot him dead.

I am a cyclist, so I shot him with my love gun.

No, I slowed down, mindfully, and looked over the Don Valley where I had many adventures with Otis my best buddy dog and the rodents he loved to chase over the years and smiled at the emergence of the leaves and the memory of my dog’s companionship. The return of the sensuous.  Revisiting joy. The spell of Spring.

When I got home, I noticed a mouse caught in the sink trying to get out, but unable to make that leap into our avocado green home. I scooped him out with a mug I used to drink hot chocolate from when I was a kid when they had different coloured marshmallows and paint had lead in it and life was oh so mellow and things were, simpler.  And Barbara Streisand had an afro.

I tossed him like an East German shot putter and he landed and bounced.  I set the mouse loose on the lawn.

I did not engage the mouse.

I did not empower the mouse.

There was no centricity in the process.

I set him free.

I then put on shorts and took my ARVs which have made hivamanageablechroniccondition and did it in the form of one word without taking a breath, sounding distracted, dismissive, or as Mona would say disingenuous.

Eye on the prize.

The prize is the next red light.

The mouse was suddenly scooped up by what might have been a raptor, we do have a Merlin (Falcon columbarius) in our neighbourhood.  That’s for the Swedish T.A. from Churchill whose name escapes me but joyous grin doesn’t.  And never will the memory of kayaking with beluga whales, the northern lights, the polar bear outside the door. Churchill, Manitoba. Evergreen and The Way We Were, it’s true, it’s the laughter we choose to remember.

Nature can be ugly and cruel and such is the beauty of nature.

Life can be cruel, within that lies beauty.  It if weren’t both, there were not be good days and bad days, there would be no joy, no tears.  There would be the same. Status quo.

“I will be happy when”.

When the light is yellow?

You are happy.  The ups and downs make the happy exhilarating.

All of you, keep making life beautiful so that it can be ugly and cruel but conserving  the resiliency so that all may return to its splendour.   Nature is resilient.  Lakes become clean. Mistakes forgiven.

The ecos self-heals, with or without us.