Backing Up to Gimli

March 8, 2025

TALES FROM GIMLI’S WATERFRONT CENTRE back to 2018  REVISED 

March, 17, 2025

what I’m trying to say is there are moments my brain seizes up completely, not willing to leap anymore synaptic gaps, these moments often accompanied by a blank stare and a complete inability to choose anything, like, always backing up.

These socks. Why these socks. Socks. Why socks at all, why capital letters why sentences. Just stoop. uh. stop? But why socks? Ok no socks now what about feet those are still attached hard not to take them or better they take you where you are going. Wait a minute. I have a prosthesis Don’t need feet, got my wheelchair, my buddy my body and my back is doing crunches not authorized by the physio,

I want a stretcher like my mother had in her basement, that you grasped with your hands over head and with your feet stretched out under the other end; this apartment has just enough room.

I heard somebody explain the size of our elevator doubling as a service elevator say for moving, was actually there to accommodate stretchers and paramedics, or the mortician from Bardal.
 

SELLING ALWAYS BREATHE IN KELOWNA AND ELSEWHERE.

I have just submitted my book Always Breathe to the buyer at Mosaic Books in Kelowna. They have become my favourite indie bookstore in the Okanagan, I’M NOT JUST SAYING THAT. I can actually get there from where we live, whether in my power wheelchair, or accessible van. I did a big book buy when the retail taxes where lifted.

I will also check with The McNally’s stores in Winnipeg and ask them as well. It’s a well known fact. The number one reason books sell, because they are on the shelf in bookstores. Yes, the stores look more and more like a page filled with “Buy with 1-click” buttons, but that was and is under the evil Jeff Bezos. I try to avoid the Amazon retailer.

Always Breathe, (Aka My Book) will be available for purchase next week, retail price is $20. It is more than my new poetry collection. There are actual sentences and paragraphs and my favourite “He was the kind of guy” sayings. The one I’ve noticed is repeated more than twice “He was the kind of guy who thought the weight of the world was on his shoulders: until he checked, and it was his suspenders holding up the weight of his pants.

SAVE THE DATE

March 1, 2025

ALWAYS BREATHE
Launch APRIL 9 2025

We are booking the Kelowna Art Gallery for the launch of Always Breathe Wednesday evening,  April 9th
from 6 to 8 pm, with show and tell at 7pm, showing my new book with poems, stories, and artwork by Murray Toews, my collaborator in Winnipeg for two decades plus. We will have  bonus merch Dispatches from the pain room with my words and many more drawings by Murray Toews. WE are building the shopping cart next week but Always Breathe will be $20. with free shipping until my 70th birthday April 3. My older books are much younger than that now, Love & Surgery $10.00. All other books, chapbooks, $5.00. Shipping will be $5.00; but this is all to be worked out next week. I’ll send out announcements when we are ready to sell, free shipping for preorders until my birthday. The image to the right is by Murray Toews, featured in the cover of the 186 page book! It’s a “blistering, candid, memoir ,” says Armin Wiebe in now of the blurbs on. the back cover. I’ll share more with new posts as we reach the launch date. 

 

I LOVE MYSELF TODAY!

February 24, 2025

Not like yesterday! sings Bif Naked. That might be one apt title for my synaptic gaps and changeups  in Always Breathe  my first real “indie” book, a better way to approach an auto-fiction or an autobiography. I made the choice when two years ago I nearly lost my autobio, to graph here there or anywhere. There is a great fear of opioids, and not enough understanding about how they reduce pain and suffering.   

DIGRESSION: FEATURED IMAGE 

The image to the right is by Murray Toews a friend and frequent collaborator in Winnipeg. Throughout these blog posts up to my Always Breathe launch on April 3, 2025, I will develop the story, most likely not included in the 186 pages crisply printed by Friesens, and talk about how the 186 page book was made. It’s a good story, and encourages everyone to buy a copy for themselves because it is a “blistering candid memoir,” a blurb by Armin Wiebe who has read the book from A to Z. . More about Armin when I post his full blurb from the back cover. Oh, yes, that is me pictured, in one of many different representations by Murray Toews. 

 

There are new “ists” entering medical parlance, like “hospitalist” which serves as a General Practitioner working g in hospitals because we don’t have enough general practitioners to keep them without using capital letters, and they are needed to write a  certain degree of prescriptions. Then we have “addictionists”somebody, usually in a hospital, with the thankless job of supervising the prescriptions and use of opioids and other such like medicines, with the lovely “other duties as assigned” (yes I made that up) to treat patients who take opioids for pain management, and are not to be considered addicts. Try getting others, even doctors to believe I use opioids to manage my pain. Still, the addictionists are charged with the responsibility  of reducing the number of opioid users in BC, which counts one less user whether dead or alive.  No I haven’t checked yet if the fact is true, but it stands to reason, especially what passes for reasonality in my woods. But think about it. You are treating one addict, who stays clear for a year; You treat an addict who dies in ICU without a DNR soon after admission. One less addict. two less addicts, though the good news story is 50% treated successfully, but 100% stopped using.

I still take opioids for severe pain. There are some now choosing Medical Assistance in Death or is it dying. instead. Either way you stop breathing. I was within a hair-breaths of dying by accident. Poorly {press robed, spell check mistake} prescribed,  unsupervised, first dose of Methadone because my addictions used only one treatment. Switch to methadone or I don’t treat you. Well, with that choice after losing my GP and none to one had at a moment’s notice, its was my only choice.  Thankfully my wife noticed I had nearly stopped breathing and was “unresponsive” thankfully with our publicly funded health system, they came and rescued me, but the story was just beginning. The book was already called Always Breathe, after the close call, and a reminder that the health professionals at all levels in ICU for six days did not think I would pull through. They also told my wife, that with the initial loss of oxygen, they were not guaranteeing what a Victor Michelle would get back. Many days I am reminded that time slips away, and there are jokes in the book Always Breathe my biological clock is running out.