My Thoughts at Thirteen
Going through old papers and memorabilia, I ran across two pencil-scrawled smudged pieces of lined paper—my grade eight speech. I’ve typed it here as I wrote it.
It’s interesting for me to look back and hear my thoughts at thirteen. I was innocent then. Going to church with my father, obviously believed in God, was probably studying for my confirmation in the Lutheran Church.
That never happened.
A year later my world imploded and God did not survive the Father-Daughter War.
But, what I see here is my mini-INFP voice coming through and the genesis of the writer/poet. Decades later, I’m still looking for answers to these questions, though not in the bible. And I’m still asking “Who am I? Why am I here?”
I’m glad that I preserved something of who I once was. Although that little girl still exists, she has changed drastically. Experience does that.
Grade 8 Speech (12-13 years old)
Mr. Sellers and Class.
“Why are we here on this earth? What are we to do while we are here? What happens to us after we die? Is there something greater than us? What is re-incarnation? Does re-incarnation really happen?
Even the great professors and scientists of our era cannot answer these questions. The people of our so-called ingenious world, who have worked vigorously inventing A-bombs and hair bleach cannot answer these questions. Great doctors and philosophers cannot answer these questions. They have made up theories. The Earth people changed through the ages from amoeba to reptiles to apes and finally to human in the form of cavemen. All we can do is have faith.
Should the religious point-of-view be mixed with scientific theory? “Faith of our Fathers. Holy Faith.” All we can do is have faith and believe. The religious opinion cannot even fully explain why we are here and what will happen to us after we die. We cannot obtain straight-forward answers to these questions from the Bible. We do know however, that we are here and while we are here we are to do God’s will. But what is God’s will?
It states in Luther’s Catechism, we are to fear and love God, our highest superior, and love our neighbour, which is everyone in the world. These are also the two greatest commandments God gave through Moses.
What happens to us after life? A children’s verse tries to answer this question.
“I am but a stranger here. Heaven is my home. Earth is but a desert drear. Heaven is my home. Danger and sorrow stand round me on ev’ry hand. Heaven is my fatherland. Heaven is my home.”
What is this heaven? The dictionary says heaven is “the atmosphere; the dwelling place of God; the home of the blessed; God himself; supreme happiness.” Living on this earth now, we are either living in heaven or hell. Heaven is being with God and hell is without God. After we die, our soul or the spiritual and immortal part of us continues either being in heaven or hell. Heaven is a feeling towards God or to be with God—not a placid place in the atmosphere made of fleecy clouds, the entrance being gates of pearl, and strangely inhabited by angels dressed in white and playing sweet music from their harps.
I sometimes wish it was.
However, we must not let our dreams and wishes get too far-fetched. When we die we will be buried in the ground and the immortal part of our being, our soul, will go to God wherever he is.
As for the question, “is there something greater than us?” a children’s hymn tries to answer this. “God is great and we are small, but we on his name may call. When we fold our hands to pray, he hears every word we say.”
Yes, there is something greater than us. God, whom we worship in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. God our creator. God, the supreme being who created man and woman with his own breath of life. Who was lonely and wanted something and someone to reign over. Our great God of love and salvation. But God is not always pleased with us, although he always loves us. When we are disobedient as Adam and Eve were, and when we are tempted by evil and we do evil; that is when God is not pleased. But redemption is possible by admitting defeat and going humbly to God asking for forgiveness.
We are born. We live a normal lifespan of seventy-five years. We die. We go to heaven or hell. Will we have another opportunity to relive our life? Will we come back as another human, animal, or plant? To live life’s problems over again? If you can answer yes to both of these questions then you believe in re-incarnation—to be made over again. The Bible does not mention anything about re-incarnation. However, after the Day of Judgment, we may come back to Earth.
Can the Bible, which people have been studying and reading for millions of years be wrong? One big lie?
If so, there are going to be many disappointed people in the world. The statements I chose to present to you today come from the Bible.
Will we live from day to day or will we die and float away?
If we are good upon this earth, will afterlife be another birth?
Life on Earth is one big question—to die or live, God only knows.
We are curious human beings, but no one knows where we will go.
Thin Air by Ann Cleeves
I’ve been a Shetland fan for the last few years and have watched all three seasons on Netflix (multiple times) but I’d never read any of Ann Cleeves’ novels.
I chose Thin Air (which is book five in the Shetland series and not on Canadian Netflix) mainly because it was available at my library, and it was in paperback. I like paperbacks best. They are lighter to read in bed.
The woman’s writing blew me away. Reading Ann Cleeves is like being wrapped in a silky merino wool blanket. I can see why there is a cue of holds for her novels. I couldn’t wait to snuggle down in my bed every night and immerse my mind in her comforting prose by the light of my pink salt lamp. I don’t know exactly what it is about her style that affects me so much. Perhaps, it’s the detail.
I’m going to assume that, like me, Ann Cleeves is quite visual. She paints pictures so true-to-life, I feel like I can see what she is seeing in her mind, and what our hero, Jimmy Perez, is seeing in his. As a detective, Perez is a keen observer. He’s not romantic and flowery, (though he’s certainly charming and loveable) but he’s genuinely interested and his mind is always spinning around the murder case. In this passage, he goes to London to speak with the victim’s mother:
She led him into a wide hallway. The walls had been painted a deep green and there were pictures everywhere. The art was unfamiliar. Some looked like prints of cave paintings, scratched images of animals and birds. Primitive, but also amazingly lifelike. There were photos of strange dwellings growing out of hillsides, a collage made from scraps of woven cloth and two large abstract oils. He would have liked to spend more time with them, but she’d already moved on and had settled on the windowsill in a room that seemed half-sitting room and half-study. There was a desk and the walls were hidden by bookshelves. In one corner an armchair was covered with a batik throw and next to it stood a coffee table made from animal hide. There was a glass on the table and Perez thought that she’d been sitting here when he’d phoned the night before. Now she was framed by the window, so she looked like a piece of art herself. The background was a small courtyard garden, where the sun had been trapped by a brick wall. In the corner stood a tree covered in pink blooms in a pot.
Naturally there is a murder. Two, in fact. And a tie that binds the victims. There is also sea, shifting fog, ferries, and stone cottages. And most importantly, a legendary ghost. Peery Lizzie. A ten-year-old girl who got lost in the fog and drowned in the flooding tide in the 1920s. Was it murder or an accident? Was Peery Lizzie lured to her death? And how is she connected to our recent victims? However she succumbed, it is the ghost of Peery Lizzie who helps our detectives unravel the murder.
Because no one ever really disappears into thin air. Do they?
You Owe Me a Murder. Eileen Cook
This is no Throw Momma from the Train. These are high school kids in their senior year, messing with each other in ways only Eileen Cook can imagine. More psychological thriller than black comedy, it’s perhaps spawned by the 1951 Hitchcockian thriller Strangers on a Train—two strangers who agree to exchange murders so neither can be connected to the victim.
We could call this book “Strangers on a Plane.” Nicki, the charming British psychopath meets Kim Maher in the Vancouver airport when their London flight is delayed several hours. Kim is beginning a sixteen-day “Student Scholars for Change” program, along with several strangers and a boy named Connor who’s just dumped her. Kim is devastated, but she’s come along on the trip, regardless. From the outset, Connor is the boy you love to hate, as we watch him carry on with Miriam, his new love interest.
Written in first person and viewed entirely through Kim’s eyes, it’s feasible she might get drunk with a manipulative stranger and share her personal problems. She hasn’t connected with anyone else in the group. She’s lonely and vulnerable. She might even write a list of reasons, with Nicki’s prompting, called WHY I HATE CONNOR O’REILLY and cap it with AND WHY HE DESERVES TO DIE. And when, through a vodka haze, Kim hears Nicki’s tragic tale—parents divorced, an abusive alcoholic mother who won’t let her live with her father in Vancouver—she might even agree that Nicki’s mother deserves to die too.
The girls bond over their woeful stories, but it’s clear that the older, more worldly, Nicki is in control from the outset. She’s already goaded Kim into stealing a bottle of vodka from the duty-free shop. After the night of drinking and sharing on the plane, Kim awakens alone and hung over, wondering what happened. Nicki’s gone, but she’s got the list that details why Connor should die, along with her own list. Kim has drunkenly agreed that the concept of murdering for each other is pure genius though she’s stated she is no killer. Everyone contemplates killing a nasty ex, don’t they? Maybe even a mean, drunken mother? It was all just talk, wasn’t it?
After landing in Heathrow, the students find their rather dodgy lodgings in South Kensington. Part travelogue, with a scattering of historical references, Cook’s detailed, sensory descriptions of London and her tongue-in-cheek humour backdrop the text. Kim’s room is “like an attic you’d find in a Charlotte Bronte novel, one where you kept a crazy relative.” Little does Kim know that by the end of the novel, she’ll be questioning her own sanity.
Soon after arrival, the students pair off and Kim finds herself with Alex, a boy so nice, so innocent, I immediately suspect him of something heinous. Is he working with Nicki, a subtle plant? Kim finds the innocent, supportive, highly allergic Alex irresistible, and he’s appeared just at the right time. Distracted by Alex and the possibility of true love, Kim forgets about Nicki and their drunken hyperbolic rant on the plane until she glimpses her at the Tower of London. Though Kim charges after her, the ever-elusive Nicki slips into the crowd and disappears.
Then Connor makes a fatal error. At the chaotic South Kensington tube station, he confronts Kim about Alex. “If you’re dating him just to make me jealous, there’s no point.” The conversation ends in a flurry of obscenities and seconds later, someone jumps in front of the train. Kim sees the blue Nike sneaker. Connor. But did he jump or was he pushed? Why would he jump? Is it possible that Nicki murdered Connor? Pushed him in front of the train at the last second and disappeared into the chaos? Kim wrestles with the guilt of all the horrible things she’s said about him, and then the games begin.
“You owe me a murder,” states Nicki. What will it take for Kim to pay up?
Eileen Cook is a trickster. Nothing is what it seems. Unravelling the truth from the appearance of truth is one of her specialities. Cook won the John Spray Mystery Award for The Hanging Girl in 2018. Her psychological thrillers may feature teenage characters, but their actions are mature and calculated.
Injected with subtle wit, coloured by shades of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, You Owe Me a Murder, will keep you awake and guessing right until the end.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, March 2019
As reviewed in the Ottawa Review of Books, March 2019
Writing a New Book from an Old Experience
The last few months I’ve been drafting a brand new book. It’s a paranormal murder mystery set on the British Columbia coast. In 2013-2014, I worked as a Relief Lighthouse Keeper for a year with the Canadian Coast Guard. I kept a journal and blogged my adventures here. Last summer, I went back to the Nootka Lightstation by Yuquot on the western shore of Vancouver Island to refresh my memory and take more photographs. This is the setting for Ghost Light.
Naturally, I’ve been digging into my old journals as I write and I came across this one. I’m so glad I took such detailed notes! Here, I explain a little of what lighthouse keepers do. Here’s where you can apply for a position as a Relief Keeper.
December 29, 2013: Lighthouse Keeping—Physical Rigours
When I say, I am a lighthouse keeper, most people are surprised. Unknowingly they smile. Do they still exist? How did you even think of doing that? Is there training? How did you get the job? I understand this fascination; asked many of the same questions myself, when my friend became a keeper a few years ago.
Romantic. Captivating. The Lighthouse. That fiery beacon by the misty sea is ingrained in our ancestral memory. If you’ve ever dreamed of living in a tower, stirring up a cauldron of chowder, or sipping tea as you scan the horizon for floundering ships, you know what I mean. But be forewarned. As merry as it seems, lighthouse life is not a dream.
In my late fifties, I wanted a new career, something different from my stressful, chaotic, sedentary high school teaching job, something that would allow me to think and write and create.
When the online job posting appeared at last, I applied and waited, interviewed and waited; and finally, was informed that if I passed the medical, I would be accepted as a candidate. Assistant lightkeeper. Entry level position: relief. Much like a teacher-on-call, I would fill in for someone going on leave. Variable times. Various locations along the coast. Yes please.
But, being a lighthouse keeper is demanding: physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Because stations are in remote locales, you must be in good health. If you’re on any kind of medication, you must remember to bring plenty with you. There’s no slipping out to the 24 hour pharmacy.
There are still twenty-seven staffed lighthouses on the B.C. coast, and each is unique. As a relief keeper, I travel between them, work with different Principal Keepers, and stay in different houses. Some are bungalows, some are two-storey, some are spare houses sparsely furnished; while others–especially if it’s a keeper’s residence—are cozy and comfortable. But, if you don’t like sleeping in different beds, this is not the job for you.
Though we don’t live in the light towers, we do climb inside them. Someone has to clean those windows and make sure everything is functioning as it should.
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Tower Stairs at Lennard Island (near Tofino) |
And we climb stairs, countless stairs, and cement steps, some ancient and uneven. We scramble up and down ramps, hike forested trails (whenever possible) and pick our way through rocks and boulders. It’s all hard on the hips and knees. I’m petite, so even getting in and out of the helicopter is a challenge for me.
Apart from doing a marine weather report every three hours, lightkeepers take care of the station, inside and out. Here’s just a sampling of work I’ve done in the last few months:
- Dipping diesel fuel tanks from atop a ladder.
- Helping to refuel domestic tanks.
- Dipping cisterns. Rainwater collects in a 5,000 gallon cistern in the basement and is filtered for drinking. Filters also must be changed.
- Scraping and painting buildings, decks, and walkways.
- Testing the fire pump and hoses, and checking fire extinguishers.
- Pumping up the zodiac and angling it down the high line
At one station, armed with trimmers and clippers, I battled English ivy, knowing full well that in weeks, it would be back, sucking the life out of every living thing in its path. Carving a space in the salal is a constant challenge.
Still, wearing personal protective equipment, we maneouvre and maintain self-propelled lawnmowers–my personal bane–weed-whackers, hedge-clippers, tractors, and pressure-washers. We are coastal caretakers.
You should be able to lift about fifty pounds. When I fell at the beginning of August and sprained my back, I had to stay off work until I was healed sufficiently; in fact, I had to see a Coast Guard doctor before returning to the job.
Not exactly sipping hot tea by the sea.
So, what do I love about being a lightkeeper? The adventure.
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Carmanah Lightstation from the Air |
Lift off in the helicopter! And cruising up the coast like a dragonfly.
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Driving the tractor. (That’s all my gear) |
Boating. Hiking.
Watching and recording whale sightings.
Eagles. Ravens. Seals and sea lions.
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Clouds that are never the same twice. |
The wind. Even the rain. Challenging my mind and body to perform.
Time to think and write and create.
Living deliberately, as Thoreau would say.
And especially those times when I do get to sip hot tea by the sea.