And there it was, hiding in plain view, something I could not have experienced until I was older, ’bout 75 or so, seems about right. I smiled as the thought grew in my mind, as I was driving down to the Fuller Lake Arena that morning,
This is an excerpt from my book BUBNA. It is an historical fiction about the Countess Bubna-Litic, who opened the original Hotel Eldorado in Kelowna, in 1926. Back then it was called the Eldorado Arms Inn. Just a few years earlier Prohibition had come to BC.
My injury was not insignificant, including a serious head wound and what I thought at the time was a broken arm, or shoulder. The pain was very severe but I immediately found myself being held safely in the arms of my wife Mac, reminded once again as our family has been on many occasions, that if you can possibly swing it, marry a nurse. They are so handy to have around at moments such as this.
It was 1919. The ‘war to end all wars’ was finally over and the world had survived a global influenza epidemic, the two historic events taking an unimaginable toll worldwide, wiping out entire generations. Optimism was in short supply. The cattle business had continued to thrive adding to the Countess’ vast wealth but as challenging as it was, it was not enough. She wanted more.
Authors note: I spend most of my summers in Deep Bay BC. It’s a beautiful secret and I know how lucky I am. It is easy to imagine times gone by and the people who were there and make up stories about them. Fumiko is an imagination. Ainsley is not. When I wrote this they were both ten.
So let me be clear this is not just a miserable old man spitting into the wind about ‘this modern world’. This is a 74 year old man observing that for all of our extraordinary capacity to communicate we are running the risk of losing our ability to communicate. We have allowed machines to replace our ability to communicate and we have allowed the makers of these machines to persuade us that they are better at communicating than we are. It is brilliant marketing but it rings hollow.
So here’s my thesis. I think old men are undervalued and unseen for the most part. So for the past few years I have been watching old men, observing them in their natural habitat. That became all that much easier the moment I became an old man myself.
Writing for profit is a fool’s game. I don’t, I write for myself. Some of my writing is profound, some is important, but most of it is neither of those two things. I am at my best as an observational humourist, filtering the mundane through the ‘amusing’ lens and writing.
David Sedaris is a great American observational humourist and he has unknowingly guided me as I spelunked my way through many a dark, confusing writing tunnel. He taught me to stop worrying about inspiration. He says that human beings are very funny, hilarious at times. The knack he says is to get better at seeing it. He is right, if I have grown as a writer it is because I am better now at ‘seeing’ us as we are, simple and complex, shallow and profound, tragic and hilarious. We are endlessly fascinating, a never ending source of writing inspiration.
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