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They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Lawrence Binyon
Inscribed at the Scottish National War Memorial
I was there, at the memorial in Edinburgh, back when I was with NATO, stationed at Elgin and Lossiemouth. Then I was young, now I am young at heart. Many years later, not so young, I was in a mountain art gallery and I suddenly realized the lads I knew then would never know art. I left abruptly.
By the way, one day at Canadian Forces Base Wainright, I was seated with some married sergeants (of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry) over lunch, and they were talking of going to art sales (maybe at cruise ships and hotels, I forget) and collecting Persian rugs. (Like in the film Gardens of Stone) So yes, if soldiers live, they may learn to enjoy art.
I was at Free Fall Friday some weeks back.
Prompt retiring soon
I honestly thought of going an “extra” year, call me greedy, but no. Oh, and call me a good saver, but no. Life is uncertain, my client’s health is uncertain, and when I think about retiring it’s like Pacific rollers, or an approaching train, or whatever gets me excited. Ya, I’m doing this, even though I haven’t told the government yet.
Also, I’m retiring because I don’t know how spontaneously I am allowed to be about going on pension: Knowing bureaucrats, not much. So now what? I gave my boss an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of dates and plans and how to fill in for me. So that’s a form of commitment, even if it’s not for… let’s see… nine months. Wow, time to start getting excited.
OK, not excited about being a starving pensioner like my friends. Right now we’re like teenagers in that I am the only one who drives, and we go MacDonalds. Ah, but I have no debts, and I own my own place, mortgage free. You can do that, pay off a mortgage, if you live in a very small place.
I’ve already looked into travel. How about Toronto? In my economical all-paid-off hybrid car? I see it takes five nights to drive there, five nights back, and if a hotel is 100 bucks then that’s a thousand dollars. Ya, but if I fly I have to pay big bucks for a rental car, so it all evens out. Normally I like to drive to a place, park the whole time, and take transit, but that is for places I know. I don’t know Toronto, or whether it is feasible to get around the way folks do in smaller places like Edmonton or Vancouver.
Things I want to know: Is there really a Greek town? Do ethnic communities really avoid using English? A guy at work says he had to leave Toronto so his boy would speak English, not Ukrainian. This I want to see for myself. And I want to see real live “Eastern creeps and bums” to see why in Sam Hill so many of them vote for that guy with the nice hair do. Call me western, but I prefer candidates who “mean what they say, and say what they mean.”
What else? I will be able to go to festivals. Visit small towns and linger there more than I do. I love towns with cheap old hotels from before the war, the Great War I mean, so I can read Daniele Steel during the commercials for Star Trek on the Space Channel.
I suppose if I got myself an “elder hostel pass” the road to Toronto would be doable. Might keep me young to mingle with the young punks—although I’ve heard the kids don’t know how to mingle anymore: apparently they are all cocooned away in their digital devices. I just had to laugh when I was in a futuristic escalator overlooking the vastness (turbine hall) of London’s most visited attraction, the Tate Modern. Over half the people I gazed upon were on their devices. Over half!
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Sean Crawford
High River
November
2022
Footnote: My New Zealand pen pal, Derek Sivers, once proposed that when meeting people, you could act like this could be their last day on earth. Meaning, I guess, to see them as precious. The opposite extreme is to be as uncaring as billiard balls glancing off and going in separate ways. Like those poor and unemployed transients from far away.
Betwixt the extremes is me, thinking everyone is temporarily able bodied, and temporarily alive. Meaning, I’m not so shocked when things happen, not if I’ve acted all along with respect and valuing, behaving as if each day is a fractal of the year.
