“Happy”, as you know, is a relative term.  One can be happy when the hammer stops beating them on the head.  And so it is that I write this, the ‘happier’ blog.  The hammer has stopped.  It’s not that bad, really.  I am definitely happi-er.  I can breathe once again.  The cold is passing.  Thank God!  Life is good again (relative to what it was on Tuesday when life flat-lined for the better part of the day).  The poor old pudding is more like the poor old bowl of phlegm but at least the consistency is the same.  Gooey. She’ll firm up after a few days, I am sure.

I was thinking of what I am writing in this blog (a bit overdue don’t you think?).  So far, it has just been a daily journal of our living off-the-grid with a bit of a rant or philosophical view thrown in for variation now and then.  But there is more.  I could add extra stuff…………you know………like, off-the-wall as opposed to just off-the-grid…………..?

I.e., there is the spiritual aspect of it all………….(weird, eh?).  A kind of ‘change’ from living in the urban so-called here and now to the rather airy-fairy idea that there is more to it.  Life is bigger than that.  Somehow.  I have few ideas as to what that phrase, ‘more to it’,  might mean but there is no question that I now have a stronger sense of the mystery of life than I once did.

There is the ‘outside-the-box’ view of what is going on, too.  Once you live outside the boxes of the city, you tend to see things differently.  Especially political, economic and social things.  I suppose that accounts for much of the weirdness that passes for political or social discussion out here but there is no doubt that rural people see the world differently and they do so simply because they are far away from the centre of it.  There is a rural tangent to the theory of Relativity at play here.

Put another way: rural people don’t believe anything the media says.  Nothing.  They trust the government as much as a chicken trusts a fox.  They have, for the most part, given up on institutions and social systems and attempt to rely entirely on themselves and their immediate neighbours.  And yet they follow the news (from the sources they don’t trust) and have strong opinions.  Some of the opinions are crazy.  Some are not so crazy.  Some feel right on.  My point: I have changed with them.   Not as fully.  Not as dramatically.  But definitely I have changed my point of view of ‘our world’ as a result of living remote.  So has Sal. 

Different topic: I have a job I have to attend to.  It will pay.  We need the money.  So I will be gone from the island for a bit (not from the blog).  But, last night we heard the weird little ducks screeching and wailing like wounded mountain lions (a very strange phenomena) and we stepped out onto the brightly moonlit deck to hear them better.  The fog was rolling in low and the water was like glass.  The moon was casting shadows.  It was mystical in the extreme and, with the weird, crazy ducks a-howlin’, pure Halloweén.   I almost decided not to go. 

But I will.  I will leave paradise and put on a suit and live in a hotel and make a few bucks.  I am doing it for two reasons: the client needs the help and I think I need the money.  The first reason I am sure of.  The second reason is like happiness – it is relative.  We are fine.  A little more ‘fine’ must be better so I need more.  I guess. 

I have my doubts about reason #2 but reason #1 is enough.  I’ll be in Vancouver in November, I think.