The Parting Glass

It’s that long dark slough of despond called winter in Atlantic Canada. Seasonal depression, grim news daily, that feeling of constantly being stuck between the fight or flight response. It seems at times that there are no sensations other than cold, angry, sore, tired and sad. Time to forcibly remind myself of the things that have given me joy:

Watership Down, Born to Run, The Right Stuff (book and film) Ronnie Drew’s version of Easy and Slow, any cover of Atlantic City, The Cruise of S.M.S. Emden, great character actors; David Andrews, Robert Knepper and Tom Sizemore, Henri le Chat Noir, lovely British actresses; Kate Winslet, Rosamund Pike and Emily Mortimer.
That airplane montage they show after the trailers in Empire Theatres, movies where Sean Bean lives(it happens, the entire Sharpe series, for one), kittehs, My Folks; Major Dad and the Squirrel who Didn’t Take Her Ritalin, Airfix, The Onion, German cuisine, Elvis’ Devil in Disguise, the flower duet from Lakme, The DeHavilland Mosquito, flying with the Snowbirds, Blackhawk Down (film and book), The Minstrel Boy duet between Bob Gunton and Colm Meaney in Star Trek TNG, the S.A.S., The Master and Margarita, Bitch Summits, Suzy Boggus singing Someday Soon, gratuitous alliteration, The Atlantic (magazine and ocean), BBQ ribs, The Hunt for Red October (book and film), The Nashwaak River, and, of course, my wife, who has carried me as many times as I’ve carried her. —Ivan

This article appears in Jan 15-21, 2015.