Author: Lorne Mallin

This morning I woke up to a light dusting of snow, the first flakes of this winter. Then for the fourth day I did my morning practice. It was a day to take care of business, including going downtown to sign a stack of cheques as a director of our cohousing community’s development company. And I picked up a wifi printer I plan to use in my new home.

Born in the Old Country – Winnipeg

I always say I was born in the Old Country – Winnipeg, Manitoba, where my parents, Hy and Molly Mallin, were also born. We moved to the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby in 1947 when I was nine months old. My sister was born in 1950. My dad sold TVs and we had the first TV on the block in 1952. All the neighbourhood kids crowded into our living room.

We were a secular family. But I believe that because my mom’s father, a Russian-born Orthodox Jew named Abraham Shuer, also moved to Vancouver, I had some Jewish education at a weekend Hebrew school. I became Bar Mitzvah at his synagogue, Schara Tzedeck. And then I dropped Judaism, typical for Jewish teenagers.

I found expression in playing saxophone and writing poetry. Burnaby South High School offered an extra English course in journalism. I could see it was possible to be a writer and make a living. At the University of B.C. in 1964 I spent all my time working on the student newspaper, The Ubyssey. When Simon Fraser University opened in 1965, I launched the first student paper, The Tartan. The Vancouver Sun offered me a part-time job as a reporter. Just 18 and writing for a big daily; I was in heaven.

At 20 I travelled by train and ship to Israel to study Hebrew. There I met Betsy, an Irish Catholic-American, on a kibbutz and we ran off to Paris. We lived together for five years in London, Vancouver, New York and Beirut, and then were married for only six months when we lived on Quadra Island off the coast of B.C.

Being alone over a winter on Quadra led me to look inside for the first time. And when spring came, for the first time I marvelled in the miracle of creation in the sweet blossoms on the apple trees, the tiny strawberries growing on rocks high above the water’s edge. At 27 I began searching for who I was and found some tools to work with in a mystical school called the Arica Institute.

I was part of a group opening an Arica teaching house in Toronto in 1975. But teaching meditation and other workshops did not pay the rent and in 1977 I was hired as an editor at The Toronto Star. In the Star’s cafeteria, I met Shoko, who had immigrated from Japan, and we were married within a year. A few months later, I got a job at The Province newspaper and we moved to Vancouver.

More tomorrow.

 

 

“Click on me” to the tune of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me”. Judging by the plummeting number of likes, readership dropped off a cliff when I stopped posting directly to Facebook yesterday. Today I’ll present the link from my blog in a way that may attract more friends to read on.

Today’s photo is the brunch I laid out on my sun-splashed dining table for an old friend who visited late this morning to talk about internet dating. I served omelettes with goat feta, Kalamata olives and fresh tomatoes, beside the Moroccan carrots I made yesterday, with a side salad of baby power greens. He brought my favourite poppy square from Sabra kosher deli. He is tentatively entering the world of online dating and wanted to learn more about how it works. I’ve been mostly single since 1993 and began online dating about 1997; I have a lot of experience on a number of sites. No enduring success, but I did meet my last girlfriend on Match.com.

At brunch, my friend asked how my heart was able to handle date after date in the search for a partner. Facetiously, I said I’ve become insensitive, but more seriously I said I’ve learned to be emotionally resilient. In university days, we rubbed shoulders in classes and campus events with many people we could potentially get close to romantically. But outside of that environment there are much fewer opportunities to connect.

Of course, I keep my eyes open doing the things I love, like tennis, sacred chanting, music festivals and being involved in my spiritual community. But internet dating sites give me access to much wider circles of possibilities. First meetings are usually at a cafe, and if there is mutual interest, we may move on to a first real date. With no spark, we can wish each other well and try, try again. I’m not looking for perfection, but I remain optimistic that I will meet a wonderful woman who I can connect with on every level – emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual.

This afternoon, I drove to the Savary Island Pie Company in West Vancouver to meet M., who I had written to through OKCupid. She’s an attractive and interesting woman, but I could tell she wasn’t interested in me. That’s never clear until you actually meet. In any case, we may play tennis sometime, and she suggested one of her friends might want to meet me. You never know.

Yesterday’s post drew a comment from Pat, who I met on a press trip for travel writers: “How about a background profile. Who is Lorne Mallin and what got him to 69.” I’ll take a crack at that Monday.

 

 

 

 

Changes already – I’ve modified how these posts now appear. Instead of writing them as Facebook status updates, I’ve set up this simple WordPress blogging site and then I’m putting a link to each blog post in a Facebook status update. So I’ll own the content, not Facebook, although I’d still love to get your encouraging likes and comments on Facebook. At least for now as I figure this out.

Leaving the home I love

The photo shows just a portion of the expansive ocean view and spectacular sunsets typical of what I enjoy from my light-filled, eighth-floor apartment in Kerrisdale, a leafy West Side Vancouver neighbourhood not far from the University of B.C. The southwest vistas that nourish my being will be very hard to leave. The place I’m buying in Vancouver Cohousing on the East Side at 510 square feet is 40 percent smaller, has almost no direct light, and what I see is the apartment across the courtyard.

Now I’ve always said that if I couldn’t have a view, I’d like to be in a courtyard setting. There’s a beautiful mountain view and acres of shared space in our huge common house, including a studio for yoga and other activities, shared office space, guest rooms, community kitchen, lounge, and much more. And most especially, there are the amazing people who make up this collaborative, self-selected community. Over the almost four years we’ve been developing Vancouver Cohousing, we’ve made all of our decisions by 100 percent consensus – everyone agrees – increasingly efficiently, without going crazy, and with lots of hugs and laughter. In my life I’ve had a lot of acquaintances, but not many close friends. In cohousing I’m looking forward to deepening my friendships in our community.

Part of the reason for moving into cohousing is in lieu of partnership. The search for such a connection led me this afternoon to another blind date, this time with S. from North Vancouver, who contacted me on Match.com. Truth in advertising this time. We had a very nice conversation at the Elysian Room cafe on West 5th and will probably do it again.

This morning I woke up before 7, in time to see Canadian men’s tennis No. 1 Milos Raonic lose an exhibition final in Abu Dhabi to Spanish No. 1 Rafael Nadal in straight sets. At least I put in more than an hour on the treadmill desk watching it on my computer monitor. Then I did five minutes each of chanting, meditation and yoga, before preparing a Moroccan Spicy Carrot Salad for the kiddush lunch after Shabbat services at Or Shalom, my spiritual community not far from cohousing.

 

 

Last night a friend asked if I was aware I was posting in Public mode. This morning a family member questioned why I was chronicling my life on Facebook: “Does it have to be public? A) Facebook owns all of your content, B) privacy and C) security reasons.” I suggested I might post instead to my lapsed blog site, and then update my status on Facebook with a link to each post. Please help me navigate these new waters. Any advice? In the meantime, I’m posting now in Friends mode.

Today I turned 69. This is the first of an intended year of diary posts marking the experience of entering my seventh decade on the planet on the leading edge of the baby boomers. I’m inspired by Globe & Mail writer Ian Brown, who did something similar on Facebook when he turned 60 and turned his posts into a new book, “Sixty – The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?”. I’ve edited and designed books, written a small chapter in one, but never created a book of my own.