Alles hat ein Ende... Nur die Wurst hat zwei.

Once a year my mother and I have our tarot cards read. Not only is it great fun (we can be as self absorbed and anxious as we want to be for over an hour) but a tarot-session is about a third the price as a visit to the therapist, and the restaurant where we go serves great tempura. I ask you, does it get better than divining and fried food? Not in this life. During our most recent visit, the medium decided to forego the tarot cards as he had decided, upon reflection, that they got in the way of the psychic energy that flowed between himself and the client. This was perfectly fine by me. After all, I come from a race that has always been keen on leaving out the middle man, both in religion and retail. Besides, who needs cards when you have imagination and a wireless connection with the divine?

So then the time came when we had to decide who was to have their reading first. Of course, we each insisted that the other begin, not because we were being polite, but because we wanted to get the other's reading over with. You see, it is quite a trial to be polite and listen attentively when someone else is talking, but not talking about you. It is best to get this over with as soon as possible. Of course, my mother (being of an artistic disposition as I am) is of the same opinion. And so she smiled and looked at me with her " remember that I am your mother and I gave birth to you and I was in labour for 70 hours, indeed, it was the longest labour of 1979 at the Women's Pavilion" look. And so, my reading began.

The medium said that I was about to begin a new phase of my life, and that I must prepare myself for by "improving my attire" and "dressing the part". I took this to mean that I needed hand-tailored suits, or at the very least some off-the-rack Canali. My mother thought
that this was just a metaphor and had more to do with self-confidence. I tried to tell her that
you cannot help but feel your best when you are wearing deluxe Italian upper 200 count wool.
She adjusted the collar on her burlap cape and we moved on.

Apparently, in this time of transition, I will also be saying goodbye to many friends. This is true. As I write to you , Soula is preparing for a concert of Mozart arias at the Berlin Philharmonie,
Wade is on a plane to Quebec City where he will sleep on his friend's couch and learn French in an immersion program of his own design, and in a few weeks Randy will depart for Shanghai to set up an office for her boyfriend's engineering firm.

And then there is Arvedt, who has been recalled to Berlin to work in the protocol office, arranging travel for Chancellor Merkel.

The other night, we were sitting by the ocean, and I was eating Malaga ice cream, which is my favourite. Malaga is like rum-raisin, but the raisins are soaked in rum which for an obscenely long period of time, and then folded into a custard with an obscenely large number of egg yolks. Really, it should be banned. Eating it makes me feel like naughty and rich, like Catherine de Medici, who fit both descriptions very well. Along with the dinner fork and the corset, she is credited for having introduced three important things to France that define it to this day: gastronomy, high heels, and riots. She also introduced ice cream. I can see her now, in her bodice and stiletto heels -- Nero-like -- giving orders to carry out the St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre of Protestants while nibbling on a delicate strawberry ice.

And I am troubled, because while the Huguenot sympathizer in me hates her, the foodie in me cannot help but worship. Had it not been for vain Catherine, the French would still be eating things like goat udder stewed in hyppocras. Worse, they'd still be eating like the English.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, Arvedt. Arvedt was not eating Malaga ice cream. He was telling me about his camping trip to Saltspring Island, which is famous for being infested with mice. Arvedt hates mice, and so he told me how spent the evening lying down in his puptent wearing his bike light as a bandana and throwing morsels of cheese and trailmix to the rodents... not so that they would go away, but so that they would stop for a moment and eat. At which time Arvedt would hit them:

"Oh gott. Means like, the mices were everyvhere, and I kept hitting them with cheese and trailmixes... I said to myself, Gott, if I die now, it would be okay."

I stared laughing uncontrollably, but he looked at me with a straight face and said

"Why are you laughing? You have never had an experience such as this?"

We started to talk about the coming months, and I asked Arvedt how he felt about leaving Canada. He smiled and said

"Well, you know, in German, we have this silly expression: Alles hat ein Ende. Nur die wurst hat zwei"

Which means: Everything has an end. Only a sausage has two.

I wonder what Catherine de Medici would think about that!