Liam Dynes

I think I know why I’ve felt kind of on edge lately.

I’ve been obsessing (to put it mildly) with politics and such accompanying folderol. And not even politics that concerns me – the American kind. Well, ok, American politics affects everybody whose legs touch the ground when they walk, but still, it’s been a tad all-consuming.

Not that I don’t have valid and passionate points of view on all of these things, even to the point that I’m wondering if there isn’t a little Sam Seaborn in me somewhere, just waiting to bust out and put words in somebody’s mouth who is trying to do a little bit of a greater good. There’s a whole hell of a lot of greater good out there to be done, and these (soon to be anyway) duelling election cycles on both sides of the border are definitely whipping up some long-dormant activist/progressivist (to invent a word) part of me, combined with relapsing into our West Wing phase from last summer.

I’ve really had a thing for soaring oratory lately, to say the least.

But I don’t think the intensity of my concern has stemmed from anything Stephen Harper, or Stephane Dion, or Barack Obama, or Sarah Palin, has been doing or saying.

It has to do with about seven pounds of fuzz buried in a backyard in Richmond Hill one year ago today.

We put Kaylee down almost one year to the minute as of right now, and it was essentially my first real, adult encounter with a decision of that much pain and weight.

And my brain tends to work in cycles.

In about grade 8, say second week of May, I had a really, really bad day. I got pissed off, for possibly the first time as an individual of any kind of real self-awareness, at 13, and to that 13-year-old, it felt pretty epic. Dudn’t matter what it was about, but it was something that mattered to me, and it felt terrible. Things worked out alright in the end, but for about a day and a half, it was markedly unpleasant. For a kid whose primary creative outlet and inspiration since about the fourth grade was Star Trek/Spockian/Data-ian stoicism, that much emotion was tough to process. Then, about a year later, second week of May, grade 9, I start getting really edgy, this time for no real good reason, until I remember what went down the last year. Same thing happened, each May, for about 3 or 4 years, in diminishing amounts.

Seems I’m doing it again, but without a dying cat to obsess and agonize over, I’ve surrogated my weird annualized anxiety onto something, anything, else. I imagine I will still care about both countries’ elections in a couple days’ time, but probably not as obsessively as I do now. No matter who wins either election, I will still be able to go to work every day, come home and hug my lady and my cats, and listen to the music and enjoy the stories that make my life what it is.

Thankfully, I’ve got a bit more (a bit) self awareness at this point, 15 years later, and a pretty stellar lady to go home and hizzang with. But who knows, maybe some of this awakened passion can lead to something constructive. At the very least, there will be a day to relax this weekend when we host folks to enjoy our garden’s harvest.