A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.

I live in a small town, on a dark wet and cold little island.  In this isolated little place where people don’t seem to be able to get outside and do enough physical activity in the sun, people turn to rumours.  Sure maybe it happens in other towns too, but here it seems to be particularly virulent.  The rumours here are not only prolific but they seem to metastasize on their own and sneak into every corner of the community.  

The grains of truth are small –  and somehow people I don’t even know are coming up to me in the grocery store and telling me that I’ll like working for Michelle at the hospital....  (apparently  I applied for a job there - (I didn’t by the way)).   Others are asking me what we are asking for our house.... (um – it’s not for sale – but I suppose for the right price almost anything material is for sale – would you like to make me an offer I can’t refuse?). 

The whole process has given me some interesting insights into just how fast, how far and how wide rumours travel.   Maybe it’s just I don’t get out much anymore to squash the rumours?  What can I say my days are pretty full.  But I did manage to get out last night... a fun little jaunt.

The North Coast Immigrant and Multicultural Services Society is hosting a series of free workshops to celebrate diversity in our community – I decided to partake... we were supposed to focus on what brought us here, or our journey to this place... this little island in the mist. 

My evening in a white room, with overhead florescent lights, bare walls and a concrete floor  amounted to this- a desperate reach for colour!

Why an Octopus?? Well it was really a long journey... but I think at the end of the day it was fish... and more specifically invertebrates – crabs, octopi, shrimp, clams and the things that crawl in the sea, not the ones that swim - that brought me here.  I came for 4 months, and stayed for 9 years – where the future will take me has yet to be determined.  What will take me there, is also a mystery.  and the rumours it will create remain to be gossiped about....

When you are in trouble, people who call to sympathize are really looking for the particulars.  ~Edgar Watson Howe.