There’s a certain quality of the silence… Friends whose funerals I didn’t attend… Eternity hits home and haunts at us…  My mother, God rest her soul…

The sunshine left, a shadow grew               A heartbeat echoes, I never knew               The sun returns, a shadow stayed          

     I listened hard, strange music played        Then a thought, a smile grew                        Exactly the way to remember you.

Dennis Mantin 

Sitting on Tom Fraser’s back porch, the birds sing and the Sun shines while Zylia sleeps.

She’ll be up soon and everything changes; I will leave me and focus on her. She’s asked Tom to be her Grandfather and it looks like he’s acceptable. My little girl is putting down roots in Nova Scotia in her own special way.

I am very grateful for all we’ve been granted.  Thank you God! Thank You Tom! Thank you Zylia!

Dennis Mantin 

I have returned and I am in love with Nova Scotia and Cape Breton again.

I apologize for the confusions and pains of youth in me to all my family and friends. 

Having apologized I will feel no need for further apologies unless personally requested…

Into the day! Head up, regrets few…

Dennis Mantin 

I am constantly amazed by how my perceptions from when I was younger are in error.  I also believe that this might be the norm for most! At least it’s the norm for me.

I went into an abandoned house this weekend that was the home of my Aunt and Uncle and the vacation destination for the rest of us; and I remember it as a massive sprawling house that  now I see it is really a quite small quaint 3 bedroom cottage. 

I have travelled on highways and got to most destinations in a mere 2 to 3 hour’s and not the painful wagon journeys of my youth. 

How much else am I getting wrong? After 15 it was alcohol, between 11 and 15 it was grief… before that some combination of childish delusions and some reality….

I may owe more apologies than I realized. 

Dennis Mantin 

Toronto is my home and It’s been so long since I’ve been to Nova Scotia… I really forgot how beautiful and peaceful it is here. It’s quiet and less busy. The air smells different. The sounds of birds fill the air.

All this has been here long before I arrived and will remain long after I leave. It’s just now I have a comparative.

This was a great place to grow up… Thank you one and all who made it possible.

Dennis Mantin

I’ve heard it said, ” If you want to find out how spiritually fit you are, go for a trip on the public transit system. ”

For air travel, this is a factor of 10 to the public transit system, due to an inherent sense of entitlement that accompanies jet travel and at least for me I am out of my comfort bubble. ( I extend this discomfort to most.)

The first time I flew was from Sydney to Boston when I was 13. I thought then that planes could fly because God willed it… As I sat on the tarmac in my window seat , I saw the rivets on the wing and realized that planes flew because of the skills of people I assumed had a  similar deportment to my drunk uncles. 

Terror ensued!

LANDED!!!

Dennis Mantin 

A Truth: When you are young and you are really really angry … what you are is really really afraid. 

 If you asked someone what they were afraid of they might know; probably wouldn’t know; but most likely they would lie about it, if they did know. This is what is so important about the anger. Ask anyone what they’re angry about and you will get TRUTH. 

Make a list of what you are angry about. Use that list to find your fears. 

You will probably need a grumpy old bastard or a therapist to help you with that. 

Once you know your fears; you can find the source of those fears. It will most likely be a fear for security or a fear of being made to look stupid. 

I have belonged to an anonymous gathering of grumpy old bastards who I have received much help from… However my fears these days are that we’ve become so anonymous that no one knows where to find us.

Just listen. 

Dennis Mantin 

I am leaving tomorrow with my 6 years old daughter to visit my mother’s grave in Cape Breton. Something I have not done in at least 35 years. 

This is her wish and idea… She’s been talking about my mother Margaret since she could talk and claims to have met her … 

I have learned not to bring logic and reasoning to such affairs and accept what I have. I have a beautiful girl who wants to go on a trip with me to visit her grandmother. 

I am blessed. 
Dennis Mantin 

I met him around 2005 in Toronto. He sat bumming money on the sidewalk at 205 Spadina. From what I could see he was a 1 legged alcoholic crack addict.

I would step over and around him on my way to work where I was the caretaker of a commercial building that housed empathetic organizations such as: Canada Helps, Roots of Empathy and the David Suzuki Foundation. Most of the the people who worked at these organizations stepped over Joseph too, during the course of their work day.

After 2 weeks of stepping over Joseph and choking on the hypocrisy, I asked Joseph what he wanted. He said, ” I need a place to live and I’d like an electric wheelchair. ”

It took 7 months to get him a place to live and many calls to his city staff worker who I never met. A week after Joseph was supposed to move into his place he was still on the street.  I asked him why… He told me he didn’t know how or where to get the key. I called his worker and strongly suggested he could deliver Joseph his key.  The worker said. ” He’s able bodied… He can pick it up himself. ” 

” Can you tell me what’s able bodied about an alcoholic crack addict with 1 leg? ” I asked. After a long pause he managed. ” I guess you have a point. ”

Joseph died a few years ago. I lost contact.  A friend of his told me and thanked me for my efforts. 

He told me he lost his leg because of a snake bite somewhere in West Africa, where he was from.

 For reasons I can’t explain I didn’t believe him. He got his wheelchair months before he passed. 

It’s this that I think of when I think of how the government spends tax dollars  

Dennis Mantin 

It’s the smell that I notice first                 Then it’s the sounds in this urban park where this tree moss grows… Stretching from the roots towards the canopy of this gorgeous maple. 

I am becoming a tree lover not dissimilar to those I used to ridicule for their frothy dissertations in the past… It’s just that here in the city these accidental moments of solitude and serenity that appear here; I am more aware now of what this means. 

I didn’t grow up here. I grew up in the rural; where the tree moss was everywhere; yet I didn’t see forest for the trees.

Dennis Mantin