A Rain of Frogs

It is important for me to pause for a moment and reflect on this website. I hate the term blog, despite the fact that A Rain of Frogs is indeed a blog by every definition of the term. Nonetheless, I choose to call it a site. It lends credibility, at least in my mind.

More than 200 posts ago, this site was born out of frustration. I was experiencing the most significant creative block of my life, and I was feeling drowned by a project that wouldn’t work, no matter how hard I tried. I needed to step away, so I registered the most bizarre domain name I could think of.

At first it was just posts about the project that was upsetting me. Then it was posts about current events that upset me. I felt compelled to release my pent-up frustrations, and through that release, found my creativity returning. I started posting some (admittedly awful) poetry, some fictional creative writing. And I continued the catharsis, continued to purge my demons.

Readership grew. I wrote about the death of my cousin. With that came readers that knew me well, extended family members and friends. And with them came apprehension. I began for the first time to worry about the things I wrote, that they could be misinterpreted, that people might get hurt.

I won’t have that. I don’t want to shackle my writing with concerns for others. So I am posting this now. Sometimes you might read things on this site that are fictional. Sometimes what ends up expressed in text is a warped, twisted version of reality. Sometimes its a warped and twisted version of fantasy.

I don’t make a note of what is fiction and what isn’t on this site. There are reasons for that, but I won’t go into them right now. All I ask is you try not to take things personally, try not to judge what you’re reading by your knowledge of the writer.

There are stranger things than a rain of frogs. Don’t give up on me.

“You’re good.”

Her voice pulled from my daydream. “Good at what?”

“Your drawings. They’re creepy and delicious, really show your inner thoughts. You’re good. You should do more.” she responded.

She was baffling. An innocent child, a jaded old woman. All at once. She’d been like that since we’d met. It had been almost four months since Amy and her red canvas shoes first came into my life.

When we talked, she’d cut to the root of a thought, to the most fundamental and raw heart of the most uncomfortable topics, without malice, without even trying. Sometimes she carelessly uncovered old hurts, and made them bleed again. And sometimes when Amy did that, it felt really good.

“Stop staring at me like I’m Jabba the Hutt or something.” She threw a pencil and smiled sweetly. “Draw something beautiful. Draw me.”

She was ten, like me. And like me she hated this town. We hated its emptiness and pointlessness. Hated how it was a tiny deadly version of the hopelessness of the rest of the world. My sister once told me I was too young to be as cynical as I was, and I had to look it up to find out what it meant. Amy was every bit as cynical as me, just much better at expressing it.

“You only love my for my body.” I said, and began to draw.

“And you only love me for my mind.” she answered. With a girlish toss of her hair, she jumped up and crossed the pine floor to where I was sitting and looked into my eyes. I could feel the seriousness there, the gravity of her light-grey stare. “They don’t think we feel. They forget we’re people, just like them. They think we’re just kids. They’re wrong. Your feelings and my feelings are just as real as theirs are.”

Then she punched me on the arm and skipped over to the ladder. A moment later she was gone.

Canada recently leaned far to the right and elected a Christian Fundamentalist government on a slight majority. The party was elected on a moderate platform which upset hardline right-wing supporters of the party. Some long-time pro-gay Liberal supporters voted for the Conservatives in hopes of a more stable Parliament. After all, its not like any party would commit actual political suicide and roll back gay marriage rights. Right?

Keep this in mind, all of you who voted for the Conservatives because they believed there was no way they’d ever do something like that. An unpopular, controversial federal budget was passed in Parliament yesterday by a recorded unanimous vote, despite no vote being held.

Due to a technicality, which was most certainly exploited by the Conservative government, they were able to pass the budget without a vote.

Don’t think they’ll do the same with gay marriage? This is a government that preached transparency, then limited national media access to the Prime Minister because the national media was “anti-conservative” and was muddying Stephen Harper’s image. This is a government that sent MORE troops to Afghanistan despite the majority of Canadians not supporting military action there. A government that capitulated to the United States over in a trade dispute in which the WTO clearly ruled in Canada’s favour. A government that just short-circuited the parliamentary process in order to destroy national child-care programs and “get women back where they belong”, at home looking after their children.

Better start thinking about how you’re going to explain to your gay friends that they’re no longer married because the party you voted into office thinks being gay is an abomination.

I grew up in what my grandfather called a faceless house in an utterly nondescript subdivision. The whole town was nothing more than a bedroom community for big-city workers, equally and oppressively faceless.

The house was at the edge of that town, close to the farm fields to the south and west. Out my window, I could clearly see the Niagara Escarpment, which town parents were constantly telling us was the same cliff that Niagara Falls tumbles over. We all oohed in the right places and secretly hated that dull rock face for being the only thing of interest in this mundane town.

At one time it had been a vibrant farming community, but cheap imports from Mexico and the southern States eventually took their toll. Once grand farms were abandoned and left to rot. Twenty years later they’d become even grander subdivisions, remarkable for their utter lack of character, but for now thousands of acres and dozens of abandoned homesteads dotted the countryside.

A mile south of our house was the closest abandoned farm. Unlike most, this one was still in possession of a silo, tucked up close to a small barn and almost hidden amongst overgrown trees. The round dome-like roof of the silo could be seen peaking out overtop. It had suffered damage from one of the many wind-storms that frequented the area. Maybe a third of the dome had been torn off and tossed down to the ground below.

When things would get bad at home, I’d escape there with sketchbook in hand, to draw or just lay back on the uneven plank floor and watch the sky wheel over my head. I found the silo compelling and mystical. I felt drawn to it, as if I were part of some grander plan when I was there. When I couldn’t sleep I’d sneak out at night to climb its rusty ladder and number the stars. I’d try to smoke cigarettes and read books, oblivious as any nine-year old to the dangers of both fire and cancer. I found Shakespeare up there, when King Lear and I were first introduced.

It was my secret place. Long before anyone else had heard of it, long before anyone had thought to make an uninspiring movie about it, I had read of Burnett’s secret garden. In the silo I had found not a walled green space but an ivory tower to call my own.

I was careful to keep it clean. I had managed to drag a derelict and splintery lawn chair up to the top, along with several boxes to use as end tables. In a rough and strange way, the silo was more home to me than the house of my parents. My room at home was a typical child’s disaster, but the silo was my sanctuary.

The 19th Annual Becel Ride for Heart

I am only going to recap a very tiny part of the Becel Ride for Heart that my family took place in yesterday. My seven year old daughter wanted desperately to come in this ride this year, to be like her big brothers, but she cannot ride a two-wheeler with enough control to handle a 50k ride. So we got her one of those trail-a-bikes – basically the back end of a bicycle attached to mine via a long curved neck. It allowed her to pedal, while I did the steering and the making sure we didn’t fall over. She did wonderfully, and I have to say she most definitely pulled her weight on the ride. I am most proud, and I’ve never seen her look so happy.

Weather

This spring has presented some truly crappy weather. Oh, we get five days of beautiful sunshine, and sometimes summer-like temperatures, but only from Monday to Friday. The weekends have featured rain, hurricane-force winds and small-craft advisories and warnings that conspire to keep me from getting to know my new sailboat.

The Rain Test

Last week’s post about Captchas developed a lot of interest – more than many of my posts have in the past. It was a refreshing change. I encourage any and all who are interested to play around with the idea, to see if there are any fundamental flaws (I haven’t found any yet). If its implemented anywhere, I would appreciate being notified (and sent a link so I can see the implementation too). If its a more accessible way of keeping spam-bots from saturating the Internet with meaningless advertising, then I’m all for it being used. Just make sure you call it a Rain Test. Attribution would be appreciated too!

Manifest Irony

Yesterday morning, on my way to the charity bike ride, I was passed by a very slick, very sexy, very yellow Porsche 911 Turbo. It was obviously meant to go fast. It had the widest rear tires I’ve ever seen on a car, the fold-out whale tail, the dark tinted windows, everything. It was perhaps two inches off the ground (to obviously reduce drag). But the feature that most stunned me was the trailer hitch.