Films About Ghosts

I waded in the calm blue sea, squishing wet sand between my toes and letting my mind flit from idea to idea like a honey bee who lands on every little blossom he sees, but rests upon each for only a moment.

As I waded, a bright, colourful object surfed right up to my toes.  I bent to retrieve this offering...it was a child's discarded yellow balloon, now bereft of air, partially filled instead by the waters of Lake Ontario. 

I held the balloon, and all of a sudden I saw her, as clearly as if she was standing there in front of me.  She was 3, or perhaps 4 years old.  A little girl in a pale green sun dress, with a floppy yellow hat and oversized, heart shaped sunglasses.  She had dark hair, pale skin and a splash of freckles across her cheeks and nose.  Gripped tightly in her little hand was a piece of white string, and trailing behind her like a forgotten pet was the very same shiny yellow balloon I now held lifeless in my hand, dancing to and fro upon the gentle September breeze of my mind's eye.

She wore no shoes and left perfect tiny footprints in the cool, damp sand.

She was our daughter.  Yours and mine.

All in a moment I saw what could have been.  I see what is and I see what will never be.

As I walked back to my car, alone, I pressed the deflated yellow balloon to my lips.  Then, I let it go. 

I can accept the path that I walk upon.  I can embrace my solitude, embrace being alone and apart. 
All of the Love that I Need is In Me Now.

I will embrace the path that I walk.  It is not the path that I would have selected, but it is the path that has chosen me.





This is a true story.  Please tell me how it makes you feel, for I don't know how to feel about it. 

Vacation Shuffle

Today is the last day of my week off...a rainy day fit for nursing my sore back and possibly working up the motivation to dust my transformers collection before returning to work tomorrow!  Because of this, I barely managed to scrape together my favourite comics for the week back on Tuesday and have absolutely nothing prepared for today!

That's okay...the universe provides.  Here's a short list of things that I think are cool from the last week:

1.  On Tuesday, I woke up to realize that I had not smoked a cigarette in over a year!!  Labour Day, 2011 was the last day I ever smoked tobacco!  Of course I talked about that HERE...This week was SO much better than that one!  I never realized it before, either, but I have to thank my fellow Fruitless Pursuits writer,  Suzanne, for being the first one to recommend rewards for doing well in my quest not to smoke.  This led to my famous comic-book-rule...using my nerdiness against (or rather FOR) myself by replacing an addiction to nicotine with an addiction to DC Comics!  As you probably know, I started reading comics when I stopped smoking, right in time for the beginning of the New 52...I made a rule that if I smoked during a week I could not buy that week's comics.  The collector in me cannot have that...thus, I have every issue of each comic I collect for the last year, and haven't smoked a puff.  Phew!

2.  You know how I love to support independent musician and artist Danielle Fricke, right?  We've all seen her videos and heard her awesome album, "Hello Little World".  Well, for a while now she's been working on a new project with her new band, Snow Mantled Love!  All of their hard work has paid off, as....well, listen to the lady herself tell it:



3.  I've been up to the cottage my Grandfather built before my father was even born a few times this summer, most recently this week.  This seems unremarkable, unless you consider that this summer is the first time I've visited the place in a decade!  That's a long story, but suffice to say that those days are now gone.  It's great to see the place again...a place that's been near to my heart since before I even started forming memories...the first times I visited were as a tiny toddler...one of my favourite photos ever is of me and my grandfather in the boat when I must have been 1 or 2 years old at the most...Making the Cottage the only consistent real estate/backdrop to my life in all of these years.  There's nowhere else in the world that I visited as a toddler that I can still go back to now...

4.  My this is long!  Not to worry.  I came up with a few new ideas over the course of the week.  Some of them may end up on the Internet!  Stay Tuned!

Well there you have it...back to work tomorrow, assuming I can rotate my back, which didn't like the car ride home yesterday...must be getting old...oh well.  Have a good week!  Peace and love in September and Always...

What do I want??

 I'm so jealous of people who feel that they have a calling in their life.  Particularly if they've pursued that calling and are now making a living by it.  Even more so if said calling is STILL not "work" to them even after they've been doing it for a while!

I've never really KNOWN what I want to be.  My mom asked me once when I was sixteen or seventeen "What do you want to do when you grow up?" and my answer was something like, "I dunno, hang out with my girlfriend and play guitar?" or something along those lines. 

Well, I still play lots of guitar, although I've never made a dime at it, or even tried to, and that particular girlfriend has more or less refused to talk to me for over a decade now, so obviously it's about time I reassessed the situation...

Perhaps it's a little too late, now that I have a career that pays well, offers job security and has a good pension.  I'd be an idiot to leave that behind in this day and age to chase some whimsy, even if I COULD determine what I actually want to do. 

So what I need is to figure out something to do that's more fulfilling that what I'm doing now, and that I can do while still keeping my job with the T.T.C. as well. 

You're going to say "Gee, Mike, you WRITE constantly!  Why don't you do that??"  I can hear you now...

That's a great question...one that I usually brush off with some excuse like "I don't have the inspiration to write more than these little Internet articles," or "I just don't have the time and energy to invest in a large-scale project."

Excuses, indeed!  Both of the above statements are true, BUT also pretty weak.  I WOULD like to write, but every time I start a large project I abandon it.  Why?  I can think of two reasons:

1.  I am lazy.  I'd rather watch TV or something.
2.  I am afraid of failure.  I don't want to invest a ton of time and effort into writing a 500 page novel only to realize on page 485 that it SUCKS! 

These are both lousy reasons not to do something!  I know from personal experience over the last couple of years that my laziness is easily combated by just a little willpower and adherence to a routine.  I also am completely sure that just because I don't know if something will work out or not, that is NO REASON not to try it.  Even if it fails horrendously, failure is only training for success!  What else am I doing, anyway?  Watching reruns of Modern Family and eating chocolate?  Ok, that IS fun.  However, if I actually get off my ass and accomplish something, that's even MORE fun!  Also, reruns of Modern Family will always be there, and I can eat chocolate and still type one handed!  Any other excuses, brain?  Hah...I thought not...

Huh.  So maybe I DO KNOW what I want.  Interesting!  However, will I act on it?  If I don't, I'll have to live with my own hypocrisy.  I hate that. 

Well, stay tuned!  Perhaps this is the start of something...larger.

R.I.P. Jerry Nelson (July 10, 1934 - August 23, 2012)

Love you man!  My full tribute at Fruitless Pursuits.  Jerry Nelson.  Wow.