#IDON'TCARE

#IDON’TCARE

Sometime between the ages of eighty three and eighty four you get an epiphany that strikes you like a hammer blow. Suddenly your eyes are opened wide and you realize that all your struggles to do the right thing and to make the world a place better than when you first entered it are totally in vain and basically immaterial. It’s all been an illusion.

It’s been an illusion since time immemorial. Look at the biblical reference to Cain and Abel where Cain murdered Abel. Nothing much has changed since then. Occasionally the Abels of the world get a little high falutin’ and give the Cains of the word a thing or two to think about, but it doesn’t happen often enough. Well and then there’s the politicians of course. Take Marc Garneau for example. He’s going to study the information on seat belts in school buses before he makes a decision on whether or not to outfit them with seat belts. I would challenge him to sit in a school bus while getting T-boned by an eighteen wheeler at full speed. It’s a shame that all that education and world experience has affected his judgment.

And another thing to think about is that big long drink of water we call our Manitoba Premier, instead of diddling with his little pet projects he ought to be opening up the port of Churchill to overseas traffic, saving thousands of dollars in shipping to Europe and Asia and giving the United States the opportunity to stick the Panama Canal to where the sun don’t shine. But he likely won’t do that either and the U. S. will come along and scoop the whole business up, leaving us blowing in the wind.

Well, you can see why I’ve come to the conclusion that #IDON’TCARE. I can’t do anything about it anyway so why bother? I’m just too old for that malarkey!

Another excerpt from the Square Bear

The animal began to separate into two with a ghastly crackling and groaning. The sounds were so abrasive to Epp’s ears he had to look away. Dealing with the animal’s pain and agony was overwhelming and his heart was bursting with sympathy for it. The cold air streaming upwards had stopped and the two animals turned on Epp as if to attack him. They stopped at his feet, suddenly realizing that he wasn’t the one who had hurt them but rather the one who had freed them from the cold. With that they staggered outside in to the snow.

The hut was now completely empty and the flue had cleared. Outside, still dark and stormy, the two broken bears stumbled toward the long house. Epp had the presence of mind to go down to the cellar to bring them some fish – something they hadn’t eaten for a long time. They attacked the food ravenously and then continued on to the long house. It was just near the entrance where the two bears fell down dead.

Epp noticed it getting a little lighter out and peered up at the chimneys. There was considerably less cold air rising from them. Bears- single bears were milling around everywhere, from one to the other, sniffing and smelling each just like they do when meeting for the first time in the wilderness. It was an amazing scene, as though they were greeting one another after a long absence. And the cold air rising had all but stopped. Epp went back outside to see the snow had slowed to a light fall and it was getting lighter out too. Through the mist of the snowfall Epp could make out the sun behind it. Everything was returning to its present day existence as though a freak anomaly had just passed through and vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

The individual bears began exiting the long house, stopping at the two dead animals lying at the doorway. They lingered there momentarily before passing into the darkness. The cold air now gone from the long house literally stopped the snow from falling though the wind still blew from the sea. It seemed to be blowing the snow away and the darkness was lifting. Epp could now see a bit of the sun and it was getting lighter out. The stormy weather was blowing itself out toward the east.

The Elder bent over the two dead bears and said a prayer, giving thanks for their sacrifice and scattering incense from is pouch. He sang a blessing song for them and strangely they started to diminish their presence, evaporating into thin air until they were gone, completely vanished. It was obvious to Epp that they had been dead for a long time, kept alive only by the spirit of Aakulu who had waited there for his sister Aleka. Now they were gone without a trace. Epp could not believe his own eyes.

This was too much for Epp. His years of archaeological training had prepared him for most things but this was more than he could handle. Firstly, he could make neither head nor tail of it and what’s more, things were happening here that flew in the face of his whole belief system. The other bears had just run off and presumably continued their lives while these just vanished. He had a sudden desire to put all this out of his mind and just do some farming somewhere in the area. Of course that wasn’t possible now in this weather but nevertheless it was a yearning he felt longingly. But wait a moment. He had dug up a lot of earth around the roots of the trees he had removed earlier. The soil was now loose and he knew just where it was. If he spread the seeds on the snow where this spot was, when the snow melted the seeds would sink into the ground, germinate and grow. If it worked, he’d call it winter wheat. What a great idea!