Memories of being chased by an angry, toothless monk

This is my second post for today. Upon finding the above photo which I featured in my other post, it brought back some monastery memories. Mount St. Benedict (monastery) is up the mountain, a few minutes from where I live. I don't go there often now, but years ago I used to go almost daily to breeze out, relax, think, etc.

Years ago one of the monks (Bro. Tony) asked me to come and help him develop ideas for turning a house of interesting monastery artifacts into a museum. While perusing the items I saw the wooden chair (seen in above photo). I was drawn to its simplicity and presence. I saw myself driving around with it in the car, taking photos of it in different places, either empty or with people sitting in it, interviewing them. When the monk (Brother Tony) saw my interest in it, he told me I could have it. It had been made ages ago by an old monk and no one was using it.

It did end up being a part of some of my projects - the most recent being "Out of the Box" (2008) - a short documentary created by teen schoolgirls, an HIV positive woman and myself.
But ... the classic memory that this chair brings back ironically occurred on the premises of that same building that Bro Tony was turning into a museum. Years before, it was lived in by an old Monk - Brother Cornelius (as a friend and I discovered later). My friend Salim had come to visit me on this particular day and we had gone traipsing up to the Mount to explore. Upon reaching the building, we spotted many fruit trees in the bushes below. We clambered down the steep incline, and, "trespassing", proceeded to climb trees, picking fruit - limes, plums and if I remember correctly, one or two mangoes. Praedial larceny.

We sat in the trees, eating fruit, talking and, when finished, we clambered back up the hill, our hands full of 'produce'. As Salim was coming up, he stopped (I think to hand something to me). All of a sudden a hand shot out of a nearby window and grabbed him - I think by his shoe. A dark, grimacing, twisted toothless face with red eyes was at the other end of the arm. Salim managed to twist his way free and the two of us pelted down the hill with our limes in our hands.

"Pelt the limes away! Pelt the limes away!" Salim shouted as we ran.

As we pelted them into the bushes we became aware of the sound of a vehicle speeding up behind us. We looked back to see the dark toothless man, pursuing us in a white pick up truck. We ran into a bushy track at the side of the road and, thinking we were safe from him, stopped, breathing sighs of relief and exhaustion.

Too soon! He had parked his pick up truck at the other end of the track and was advancing towards us brandishing a large piece of wood. We stood there as he neared us, mainly grimacing at Salim. He said: "Gimme de limes! Gimme de limes!"

"Turn out yuh pockets!" he shouted at us.

We turned out our empty pockets.

With one last grimace, he told Salim: "If you wasn't wit a woman ah woulda beat yuh here today!"

I had forgotten about that until I saw this old photo of the chair today. Apart from a few small details (like which part of Salim was grabbed by the hand), I remember the day vividly.

I saw Brother Cornelius years later. He was older, in a wheelchair and didn't look as terrifying. I don't think he remembered me.

Follow Your Heart

Standing in the river

This morning I was up early as usual and headed out to buy some fruits and vegetables. However, instead of just going to the fruit stall around the corner, something told me to go further. It was a lovely clear morning and because it was early, heat was not a deterrent.

The roads were quiet. I found myself heading into more rural distructs, enjoying the breezy quality time with myself.

I ended up at Salybia (at least one hour from home, for those who don't know it), where the river meets the sea. There were enough people on the beach for it to not be 'deserted' - a small family of what looked like three tourists, an elderly man bathing in the river, two men at the fishing depot, a woman in the refurbished building with toilets and changing rooms, a man selling fruit at the corner of the road. (I bought a coconut, watermelon and paw paw from him after).

I got out and walked along the beach. I have a knack for seeing rainbows before they appear and knowing when there are heart shapes in the area. My heart radar was strongly telling me that I would find a special one, so I kept my eyes to the ground. I saw nothing in the sand. But when I got to the river, I found this (see below video). As I saw it, I couldn't help but say "Thank You!" aloud. It made my day.

Spontaneous Wet Adventures and Goodwill Fashions

(Canada chronicles continued ...)

Goodwill Fashions on the 504 bus to Dundas West Station

On Friday, after the sunny, smiley day in Tinto, I went to visit my new friend, Kaspar, just off Roncesvalles Avenue. As we sat eating and talking, we heard an unexpectedly loud roll of thunder out of the blue ... or rather, out of the greyish-black. He quickly suggested that we go for our walk to see the nearby "beach" (i.e. Lake Ontario) before it started to rain.

Luckily I had my army raincoat with me. He had an umbrella. As we headed out, it was drizzling, but we thought nothing of it. The wind began to gust and his umbrella was bending back, so we stopped at the Goodwill thrift store at the corner to see if there was a raincoat he could buy. No luck ... but the rain and wind seemed to be abating. We proceeded to 'the beach'.

It took us 5 minutes to get there, on a bridge over the highway. It was about 6 p.m. when we hit the edge of the water, which was grey and tossing with little white caps. Kaspar walked ahead and I lagged behind, taking photos and picking up stones and sea glass. Pretty soon the rain started to pelt and the wind picked up considerably. Even the gulls (one of which almost crashed into Kaspar) were having a hard time flying. The raindrops began coming at us almost horizontally.

The top part of my body and my head were dry under the hooded raincoat, but the rest of me was by now soaked! My jeans were stuck to my legs and my trackshoes were flooded. I began to laugh, envisioning myself attempting to head home sogging wet on public transport. The wetter I got, the more I began to laugh, with the growing realisation that I would have to stop at that thrift store on the way home and purchase dry clothes.

Other than a pair of black winter boots with sheepskin lining, the only footwear that looked like it didn't belong to a very large man, a petite woman or little child was a pair of black slippers with Canada written on them. Compared to the other shoes available, they looked brand new/never worn (still had stickers on them) and were only $1.99 (no tax to be added - I guess because it's Goodwill). I removed one foot from a waterlogged sneaker, peeled off a soaking sock and slipped in. Perfect fit ... (and actually I quite like them).
The pants I bought ($5-something) were long, black and straight-legged with convenient pockets and a waterproof, almost leathery appearance. They're not pants I would have bought on a regular day, but I knew they would fit me and didn't have to try them on there. I wonder who they belonged to before.

Back at the house, I slipped into my new, dry ensemble, drank a cup of Kaspar's hot orange and ginger tea with honey and, at about 7:30 p.m., headed out to get the first of two buses, feeling like a Goodwill fashions bag lady: long black leathery pants, black Canada slippers à la Maple leaf, striped woolen hat (which luckily I had in my bag, as my head was feeling cold), khaki jacket and brown vest, napsack on my back (containing laptop), large green market bag in one hand (bearing wet sneakers and jeans), bag slung over shoulder (stuffed to capacity with wet raincoat, wallet and other paraphernalia). Thankfully Toronto is a place of diverse and layered fashions, so no one gave me a second glance. In my slippered feet and still feeling slightly damp, I was glad that it wasn't too chilly and was no longer raining.

I came straight home, made some soup with kale, bulgar and tomatoes, drank that and, after pottering around for a while, went to sleep, still chuckling at it all.

(P.S. I am scheduling this to be automatically posted on Monday. By that time I will be on the way to Montreal, where I will have no internet unless I go to the little café down the road).

Pitching stars

Source of image

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Last night I went stargazing and camping with some friends up on top the hill at the Tracking Station in Macqueripe. Although we had set up the tent upon arrival, we ended up sleeping outside on the tarpaulin, under the open sky. It was not as cold as I've experienced in the past being up there at night, but it was still nippy. Thank goodness for the sleeping bag.

One of my friends had brought his guitar, so we were singing some of our songs under the stars. I sang my song "Infinite", because the first line is: "I want to be the stars in your eyes ..." (apt for the setting).

Our guitar renditions attracted a little boy who eagerly crossed the dark field to be with us. "I play guitar," he announced. "I"m going to lessons." We handed the guitar over to him, he played some chords of popular songs, then invited his little sister and teen brother to come across as well. The teen brother, who was quite a good guitarist, played some popular songs and he and his siblings stayed with us until after midnight.

Every now and then someone would cry out: "A shooting star!" and Mitch, one of our friends, would say: "Don't call it a shooting star. That sounds too violent. It's a pitching star."

I was perhaps the only person who hadn't seen any yet. The little girl (who had seen quite a few) and I lay on our backs, looking up, waiting for more. Eventually I saw two, almost immediately one after the other. I made the same wish for both. These stars weren't the falling kind. They were the kind that zoom horizontally across the sky ... kind of like a huge Cosmic Being 'pitching' stars instead of marbles.

Sunday

On Sunday my riding pal Keshia and I left very early and went driving through the country. One last adventure before she checked in at the airport for midday to head back home to the States.

We went exploring lovely San Rafael and environs.

I didn't carry Synchronicity. I carried my Canon A620 (Love Bee) whose LCD screen conked out ages ago. There's no way of seeing the menu or operating anything like video, macro, changing ISO, using manual settings or even seeing if the battery is running down. The only thing that can be done now with that camera is to look through the viewfinder, click and hope to get something. Sometimes the photos don't get captured at all, sometimes they come out really dark, sometimes they're okay.

Here are the only shots (except for another one of the church) I took that morning which weren't almost completely black.

The old church at the triangular 'roundabout' in San Rafael
How ironic. St. Michael, meant to protect, needs to be protected himself (from vandals)
Cow traffic on a forested road

Words of wisdom in the bush at the roadside
Light rain as we head out of 'the bush' and to the airport.

Wuthering Maracas

In the life guard booth at Maracas
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On Friday I went to Maracas with my friend Tamara. Our last jaunt, as she returns to Toronto tomorrow. It was a grey day and the waves eventually got so huge that they were coming up the beach and partway up the little red plank leading up to the Life Guard hut where we were 'camping out'. One English tourist even thought we were life guards and asked for advice on where he could swim and what the red flags meant.

I love the colours in the above photo. Moody and windswept, like the tropical, ocean version of Wuthering Heights. I was thinking that ... then googled Wuthering Heights and found the Youtube video of Kate Bush's song of the same name, which I used to love. Ironically, the colour scheme is very similar to that of my Maracas Day photo.