eugene stickland  

This is me this Sunday evening. Looking into my iPhone. Maybe even looking into my future a little. I don’t tend to like Sunday evenings, which were always a family time for me, and you know, being single and all, for the most part you try to be bon vivant but sometimes the loneliness can crush you, and for me, Sunday nights can be crushing lonely affairs.

But tonight I was invited for a lamb roast at the home of my friend Michael Finner, in the company of his brother Frank. And somehow we came through the evening fine, and I feel fine, which is good enough on a Sunday evening.I’ll take it!

Earlier today, I bought a K Way at the Bay. Wow. That sure rhymes. The lovely Marianne said I should write on my blog about it, about the experience of buying a K Way. I have been blessed with the ability to make any such simple transaction into an event.  I said maybe I would. I reminded her that I once wrote a column in the Calgary Herald about Eva down in shoes. That column helped get Eva employee of the month or year or something. And if I ever go to Prague, I will be treated like a king! EUGENIUS 1! The point being, it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it with some humour and a sense of humanity about you . . .

On any account, I walked home from Michael’s place and I felt suddenly infused with a sense of joy and contentment which is hardly fashionable to admit to these days when cynicism seems to have much more currency.

It goes back to something Frank said at supper. He was clearing off a good half of a pecan pie and he suddenly looked up at a beautiful view of the Calgary skyline on a suddenly sunny evening and we had tons of wine and everything else you could ask for and Frank said out of nowhere, “Life is pretty good, after all.”

He’s right. We bitch and complain about it, but life is pretty good after all.

Usually I have some higher purpose for writing a post on here. Like the future of photography. Or poetry. Or the mysteries of dramaturgy. but tonight I really don’t. I’m not really sure on a blog like this that it matters anyway.

I’m just showing you what I look like tonight, and hoping that you, wherever you are, are having a good  night. And maybe even a good life. And that without being smug about it, feeling contented is possible.

Thanks for reading . . .