42 - Sunday, September 29, 1991 -— North Shore News LIFESTYLES Accumulated years give lines extra poignance DIARIES ARE OK for the young. Keen to grow up, every manifestation is deemed worthy of record. At our ave. a diary is mostly a weather report. A “journal now, has a bir more class ~- gets beyond the “train crowded, missed Junch"™’ in- to possible philosophic reMection — good for one’s biographer it you're thinking immortality. My favorite forms of — self- preservaiion is a commonplace book, which displays other peo- ple’s thoughts and assessments. It can therefore be a_ less self- conscious record of one’s personal trail through life. What one once thought was the essence oF truth or beauty or suf- ficiently funny to preserve, reveals the significant blazes on the legend of a lifetime journey. The first page of my own, kept going some 40 years now, bears James Baldwin’s statement: ‘'I can conceive of my own life as a journey towards something I do not understand, which in the go- ing towards makes me _ better.’” Following that is Andre Malraux, with “Art and culture relate Man to time, sometimes to eternity, and make of him something other than the most favored denizen of a universe founded on an absurdi- ty.” Then there's a tine from Robert Ardry: ‘‘We are six feet high and seventy years Iong.’’ Adjacent to this is a gem overheard in a lunchroom: ‘‘He stood there grin- ning like a horse eating thistles.’’ Made me laugh for a week. Stiil works. As does this cherished rejoinder from my husband: ‘‘I’d rather not go to the bank, thanks. It gives me withdrawal pains.’’ Alice Munro, that master of pith, in her short story collection called ‘‘Something I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You’’, says “Women ... they have to believe that more is going on than seems to be going on; that is part of the trouble.”” Eleanor THE VINTAGE YEARS The jaw drops that she can so simply uncover the female essence. Some of what F’ve copied into these pages is simply celebration of the use of words. That Viadimir Nabokov can write ‘“‘Where sun-flecked crosses were measuring something terribly large with their arms.”’ Or from the same man, ‘*... the constant feeling that our days here are only pocket-money, farthings clinking in the dark, and that somewhere is stacked the real wealth from which life should know how to get dividends.’’ Accumulated years give like that an extra poignance. Just ambling through these bits and pieces puts me into a ponder of life and how | am coping with it. A prod here from Jose Ortega Y Gasset — ‘‘We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness. It is always urgent, ‘here and now’, without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point blank.” lines ‘dollars, ‘case of childish iilness or family Can'tomiss fascinating baseball sarvon: He tlied out, You feel bike aooused car Git othe end af a season) He's out, from here te next Wednesdas. fle looked as though he'd some here an a raft AN fot of my record stems from my fife companion's sense oof humor. (A sense of humor has a fot to do with fite-companionship, kiddo.) Told that a TV newsman had used “effort™ as a verb, which had enraged my fiterate friend and stung her to telephone about it, she replied, “‘f can just see it verberating at the noun hour.” There are pasted into these Pages some clippings, for instance all the words to **Deck Us All With Boston Charlie, Walla Walla Wash and Kalamazoo."’ Blessings on Al Capp. And of those weeks when Linus was doing a mural of the Story of Civilization on the ceiling of Snoopy’s dog-house. Mostly, though, it’s quotations, pungent and fitting, from far and wide; from Homer and Henry David Thoreau, from Nadine Gordimer. Stuart Cloete is here, and Pad- dy Sherman on ‘‘dynamic apathy” and Albert Camus and Thomas Wolfe, the first one. The results of making and hav- ing such a book are to provide one with a refuge, an exploration, a memory, a conundrum, a smile, a surge of envy any time one takes it up. Dear Readers: A kink somewhere rather skew- ed the Sept. 22 daycare column, inasmuch as it was designed to point out differences in cost of same. The sentence was deleted in toto: “My monthly charge was five adjusted downward in holidaying.”’ Now you get the drift, eh? NOTICE TO MOTORISTS PORTEAU BLUFFS ROCK SCALING PROJECT SEA-TO-SKY HIGHWAY 99 The Ministry of Transportation and Highways advises that there will be 212 hour weekday closures on the Sea-to-Sky Highway at Porteau Bluffs, 25 km north of Horseshoe Bay, from Monday September 30 until Friday Novem- ber 1. The closures are needed for rock scaling, bolting and blasting work. Closures are scheduled as foliows: Monday to Thursday 10:00 AM —- 12:30 Noon 1:30 PM — 4:00 PM There will be no closures on Friday afternoons, weekends, Advance Poll- ing Days or on Election Day. For further information, please contact the Ministry of Transportation and Highways 24-Hour Road Report at 525-4997 (Greater Vancouver), 938-4997 (Whistler), 371-4997 (Kamloops), 860-4997 (Kelowna), 855-4997 (Abbotsford), 380-4997 (Victoria). In all other areas please call 1-800-663-4997. Province of 10:00 AM - Friday 12:30 Noon British Columbia 4 Ministry of Transportation and Highways Hon. Lyall! Hanson, Minister Dr. Dyan Leishman is pleased to welcome a new associate, DR. KIM KLOTINS joining her in the practice of Veterinary Medicine at the LIONS VETERINARY CLINIC Lonsdale at 29th Ave., North Vancouver 986-PETS (7387) Practice dumted to pets. including cats. dogs, birds and fish. Houseralls and evenings appomtmernts available. RUN INTO | CAR PROBLEMS LATELY? 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