I'm trying to avoid metaphors. It isn't easy.
Drying the breakfast dishes, I stand in front of a kitchen window wild with the birds, buds, and promise of an April marsh morning. This should bring, as with all Spring things, comfort if not full joy, for it is the beginning of the good time, the warm time, the time of hope and plenty.
However, something horribly metaphorical is intruding and refuses to go away. For the past quarter hour, a solitary canoeist has been pinballing his way up the stillwater that connects the Portbello portage to our lake.
He is in a cheap plastic canoe, too high at the extremities, too low at the gunwale. It was not designed by anyone who knows water travel. He is in the wrong seat, too far aft and with knees and shanks clearly visible as he flails the water, first two strokes on one side, then two on the other. He pumps his paddle mightily, smiling as the light wind kites him from left bank to right. The stillwater is about half a klick long. He will paddle at least a full kilometer before he clears it.
This is a person who has no idea that he should be further forward in the canoe, should be kneeling, keeping the bow down, or that there is any such thing as a proper canoe stroke. He wears no life jacket. There's one in the canoe, because I saw some bankside bushes lift a yellow PFD off the front seat a while back. He rescued it, stared at it a moment, and placed it in the bottom of the canoe.
I have been fighting my instincts since I first saw him coming. My urge is to run to my point, launch a canoe, and paddle out to meet him. It would take only a moment to show him how to balance his canoe. In five minutes, I could give him a steering stroke that would cut his effort in half. In a gentle way, I could point out the advantage of wearing your PFD when you canoe solo.
The problem is, I've done this before and I know what will happen. He will be insulted, think I'm nuts, not have the time, or tell me he has been doing it this way all his life and he sees no reason to change. This is a man who is certain he knows what he is doing and will not be told otherwise.
I may know what will happen when he leaves the comfort and shelter of the stillwater, passes my point, and meets the windy end of a five kilometer lake. An hour from then, I'll be watching him beating back and forth across the lake, wondering why he's making no headway. Or I'll be doing a deep water rescue. Or calling the RCMP to report a drowning.
Drying the breakfast dishes, I stand in front of a kitchen window wild with the birds, buds, and promise of an April marsh morning. This should bring, as with all Spring things, comfort if not full joy, for it is the beginning of the good time, the warm time, the time of hope and plenty.
However, something horribly metaphorical is intruding and refuses to go away. For the past quarter hour, a solitary canoeist has been pinballing his way up the stillwater that connects the Portbello portage to our lake.
He is in a cheap plastic canoe, too high at the extremities, too low at the gunwale. It was not designed by anyone who knows water travel. He is in the wrong seat, too far aft and with knees and shanks clearly visible as he flails the water, first two strokes on one side, then two on the other. He pumps his paddle mightily, smiling as the light wind kites him from left bank to right. The stillwater is about half a klick long. He will paddle at least a full kilometer before he clears it.
This is a person who has no idea that he should be further forward in the canoe, should be kneeling, keeping the bow down, or that there is any such thing as a proper canoe stroke. He wears no life jacket. There's one in the canoe, because I saw some bankside bushes lift a yellow PFD off the front seat a while back. He rescued it, stared at it a moment, and placed it in the bottom of the canoe.
I have been fighting my instincts since I first saw him coming. My urge is to run to my point, launch a canoe, and paddle out to meet him. It would take only a moment to show him how to balance his canoe. In five minutes, I could give him a steering stroke that would cut his effort in half. In a gentle way, I could point out the advantage of wearing your PFD when you canoe solo.
The problem is, I've done this before and I know what will happen. He will be insulted, think I'm nuts, not have the time, or tell me he has been doing it this way all his life and he sees no reason to change. This is a man who is certain he knows what he is doing and will not be told otherwise.
I may know what will happen when he leaves the comfort and shelter of the stillwater, passes my point, and meets the windy end of a five kilometer lake. An hour from then, I'll be watching him beating back and forth across the lake, wondering why he's making no headway. Or I'll be doing a deep water rescue. Or calling the RCMP to report a drowning.
He doesn't want to know.
I wish he'd just turn around and go back! I've stopped watching. He's almost to my point and the lake awaits him. But even if he's gone from my direct sight, his nagging metaphor won't leave. God help me, and maybe I've been teaching English too long, but this sad, almost comical, figure has become Everyman.
He is George Bush and Steven Harper, fixed in their pre-drowning courses and ready to blissfully take their nations with them; the suits in the Department of Education and our school board offices who have made holding students responsible for their work impossible; businessmen who out-source company work to the third world, not realising they've already handed control of the North American economy to China and what's left for us is a merry last dance before the fall.
My solitary canoeist is Paul Watson and other professional "environmentalists" who continue to make millions of dollars from gullible school children by milking the cuteness of seal pups, all the while ignoring that our planet's overall ecosystem is about to crash and is far more important than a few harp seals. He is stock market jerks who bid up futures on the predictions that oil, or grain, or rice may some day be in short supply, driving up prices right now even through there not a present shortage. He is manufacturers who make and consumers who buy motor vehicles, ignoring that they are shortening our wait for Earth's environmental doomsday because they want profit, convenience, and status now.
Perhaps I should rush out an confront every foolish canoeist who passes my home, ready to at least urge them to take a better course. Perhaps I should confront my politicians, harass my educational leaders, petition businessmen, sue Paul Watson for child abuse, and lead a revolt to shut down all stock exchanges as Satanic temples.
But do you know what I really think? I spent 15 years as a journalist, stupidly believing that news media could make the world a better place. Then I became a teacher for 30 years, same reason. After nine months off work, I returned in March, hoping to find things, if not better, at least the same. They are not.
Adults have been hopeless for as long as I can remember, but I always thought students, the teens, the future, could learn to paddle their life canoes straight and perhaps true. I now have my doubts, not because they lack potential, but because of the world they are being given.
In truth, I'm getting tired. And I need a long rest by a quiet lake where I see no people and don't have to worry about what they are doing with my world.
I wish he'd just turn around and go back! I've stopped watching. He's almost to my point and the lake awaits him. But even if he's gone from my direct sight, his nagging metaphor won't leave. God help me, and maybe I've been teaching English too long, but this sad, almost comical, figure has become Everyman.
He is George Bush and Steven Harper, fixed in their pre-drowning courses and ready to blissfully take their nations with them; the suits in the Department of Education and our school board offices who have made holding students responsible for their work impossible; businessmen who out-source company work to the third world, not realising they've already handed control of the North American economy to China and what's left for us is a merry last dance before the fall.
My solitary canoeist is Paul Watson and other professional "environmentalists" who continue to make millions of dollars from gullible school children by milking the cuteness of seal pups, all the while ignoring that our planet's overall ecosystem is about to crash and is far more important than a few harp seals. He is stock market jerks who bid up futures on the predictions that oil, or grain, or rice may some day be in short supply, driving up prices right now even through there not a present shortage. He is manufacturers who make and consumers who buy motor vehicles, ignoring that they are shortening our wait for Earth's environmental doomsday because they want profit, convenience, and status now.
Perhaps I should rush out an confront every foolish canoeist who passes my home, ready to at least urge them to take a better course. Perhaps I should confront my politicians, harass my educational leaders, petition businessmen, sue Paul Watson for child abuse, and lead a revolt to shut down all stock exchanges as Satanic temples.
But do you know what I really think? I spent 15 years as a journalist, stupidly believing that news media could make the world a better place. Then I became a teacher for 30 years, same reason. After nine months off work, I returned in March, hoping to find things, if not better, at least the same. They are not.
Adults have been hopeless for as long as I can remember, but I always thought students, the teens, the future, could learn to paddle their life canoes straight and perhaps true. I now have my doubts, not because they lack potential, but because of the world they are being given.
In truth, I'm getting tired. And I need a long rest by a quiet lake where I see no people and don't have to worry about what they are doing with my world.