I remember my grandma used to tell me about Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood who participated in some pretty spiffy sea battles with a giant statue somewhere in England to commemorate him, and by her accounts was my great, great, great, (etc, etc) grandfather.

I wonder if 200 years from now my great great great grandson will be sitting on his grandmas lap and told stories like “Did you know that your great great grandfather had the very first gmail.com account with ‘dbockman’?” “Gee willikers grandma! You mean not even dbockman3722837483828383??….woooow….”

Bedtime reading for my 5yr old son these days is Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories, and I’m not sure who’s enjoying it more; him or me:

The ticket agent was sitting at the window selling railroad tickets the same as always.
“Do you wish a ticket to go away and come back or do you wish a ticket to go away and never come back?” the ticket agent asked wiping sleep out of his eyes.
“We wish a ticket to ride where the railroad tracks run off into the sky and never come back–send us far as the railroad rails go and then forty ways farther yet,” was the reply of Gimme the Ax.
“So far? So early? So soon?” asked the ticket agent wiping more sleep out his eyes. “Then I will give you a new ticket. It blew in. It is a long slick yellow leather slab ticket with a blue spanch across it.”
Gimme the Ax thanked the ticket agent once, thanked the ticket agaent twice, and then instead of thanking the ticket agent three times he opened the ragbag and took out all the spot cash money he got for selling everything, pigs, pastures, pepper pickers, pitchforks, and paid the spot cash money to the ticket agent.

I commute to work on the West Coast Express which is a train from Mission, through Maple Ridge where I get on, Coquitlam, along Indian Arm, Port Moody to downtown Vancouver. As an amature shutterbug there are so many mornings where I wish I had my camera and was not moving at 80 or 90 clicks behind glass on my way to work. Foggy mornings with the sun coming up sillouetting mill work on the Pitt river, a Heron that sits in the same spot on the river every morning, ships at anchor and the bustle of the port with the mountains behind.

This morning was agony though. Picture this; sun coming up with the light making fresh snow-capped coastal mountains almost glow against the gradient expanse of pink to azure, an oil refinery in the forground looking like a future city with all its little lights still on in the dusky inlet and a huge flame burning-off one of its many stacks while the moon, magnified by the horizon, enourmous and crystal clear goes behind the pure white top of the mountains.

Agony…if only the train and tracks weren’t there, replaced by me and my camera.

I haven’t made up any goals for quite some time. For some reason it was something that over the last five years or so fell by the wayside with a lot of other ways of tracking and fasttracking my life that I’d been enamoured with. But going through some old papers last night I found a bunch of lists on assundry things including 1 and 5 year goals from about 8 years ago and it was both reavealing and bemusing.

I was quite pleased that despite the lack of transcription the goals apparently didn’t just go away because much of the list was still pertinant and I was able to check much of it off (although the list was more than 5 years old it still had some pretty lofty goals that I’m pleased to have accomplished…like being crushed under the weight of a mortgage-yay!)

The best part was some of the lesser goals…books I’d aspired to read, people I’d wanted to keep in touch with, fitness goals and such. Thats where the bemusement comes in.

Even though I don’t necessesarily feel compelled to keep writing down goals as some secret to success I think I will.

If only for the entertainment value 10 years down the road.