I looked up into chocolate eyes. Like mine. But much darker. A face soft, smooth, rounded. Shortish hair curled in disarray. She spoke. “Hi. Are you Lyle?” “Yes.” She said, “My name is Monick. I am assigned as your Occupational Therapist. Do you know what Occupational Therapy entails?” “No.” “The official party line is that…

I pulled my Oldsmobile into the small dirt parking lot. I would come here often when I wanted to feel lighter, happier. The parking lot was reached by a very potholed dirt road running off of fourteenth street in Calgary’s northwest. The parking lot overlooked the district of Huntington Hills where I had lived aeons…

Here is what I wrote in my diary July 20, 2010. I have been in severe pain every day since i came back from the mountains 3 weeks ago. Basically the pain starts at 2 or 3 in the morning and goes for 12 to 14 hours. I’m not sure how long I can sit…

I was wandering around the Calgary Zoo. I hoped that the visit would cheer me. I started my zoo day, as I usually did, with a visit to the tigers. They weren’t out today. So I wandered down to see the elephants1. I got lucky. Their keepers were putting the elephants through their paces. Kamala…

The Death Spiral It was a woodframe building capped with a green metal roof. A solar panel was mounted on the south facing section of the roof. The large windows at the front and sides of the building were framed with 6 inch wide pine boards. Below the windows the wall was studded with randomly…