CANUCK IN ASIA ...

GIVE ME THE TIME OF DAY

2012-01-19T03:33:00.004+08:00

Is there any sight as sad and as sweet as a solitary orange traffic cone, under the glow of a streetlight's soft golden lamp, two mute friends at attention, the night their lonely dark cloak? Perhaps the vending machine just down the road has its own desperate charm. Coffee and cokes, sports drinks and fresh water, all bottled up, arrayed in short rows. Awaiting coins. A few clinks. A deposit. Do those plastic tubes feel anything at all as they fall to their shelf just a few drops below? Surely a fate such as this must be viewed as quite grim.

Yet you, too, when looked at by night, when watched while you sleep, might possess a similar pity. Drooling, picking. Moaning, sighing. For seven, eight, even nine hours? Do we still exist when we can't even claim to pretend that we know what we do? I suppose I could set up a camera to catch every moment and gasp. Set it up right by your bed, or my own for that matter. Post it on YouTube. So the world could then see -- who we are, when we are nothing at all but our deeply sleep-selves. Could be a kick. Or a fright.

For what if we view that ourselves in that time are nothing more than slightly, presumably smelly (if not rank), robotically slow-motion, barely functional variations of a traffic cone, a street lamp, a vending machine? Kind of colourful. Mostly mute. Dull, to be honest. Oh, but our waking selves, so full of ourselves! That is a sight, you might say! (I don't know about you, but I like to think that I live just by day, but surely the night, too, has its own secret claims.)

I like to believe and implore: Don't look at me as I rest. Give me the time of day. I'll be up for you then. (Even an orange traffic cone gains more glimmer by noon.)

ENVIABLE POSITIONS: A BIRD ON A ROOF AND A PHILOSOPHER'S LONG CONFESSION

2012-01-02T18:16:00.004+08:00

This morning on my run I noticed a small black bird perched on the edge of a very large building. Just sitting there. How many feet above ground this building was, I'm not sure, but neither you nor I would lounge and relax as this bird did so well. Was it planning its next flight? Had it sat there before? Was this its usual crouch? How come I often fall to the ground while tripping over small stones, yet this bird with the brain the size of my left testicle (I'm estimating here)can somehow rest assured that its poise and its wings won't just once let it down? To sit, on the edge, of a building. Good lord. And not be contemplating suicide while doing so. That must be the mark of an ignorant kind of small genius.

Don't mind me. Just my own form of philosophical gunk. Mostly because I just finished reading a rather wise book by Brian Magee called CONFESSIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER, and it's got me thinking again about all the questions I ask myself when the lights lose their glow. Magee, a British writer, former MP, television host, and, it goes without saying, a keen philospher, examines the arc of his own life through the prism of his philosophical obessions that began at a rather young age, starting around the time when he confided to his sister that it was rather bewildering how he could never remember the exact moment he fell asleep each night, and she responded, rather exasperated, that NObody does, silly. Thus began his questioning of life and its endlessly enigmatic, befuddled, bedazzling mysteries.

I can make my own confession here, which is that I couldn't quite follow all the summaries and encapsulations of the famous philosophers he's studied and revered throughout all his long years -- Kant, Schopenhauer, Karl Popper, etc -- but he does a workmanlike shop of making even an imbecile like me get the gist of the central theories. And I'm comforted by the fact that the book ends on an almost tender note, with Magee confessing that, after decades of study, he's no longer closer to understanding any answers that have arisen from his intellcttual pursuits -- but at least he's found a way to ask more interesting questions.

Just what I like -- no answers. The older I get, the less answers I want. Just give me questions -- better questions, more colourful questions, more infuriating questions. They cause me to ask more quesions, and more, and when somebody actually tries to answer life's puzzles, I find myself exasperated, almost pissed off. "Don't GIVE me your 'truths'," I always think to myself. "Let me formulate my own lies."

Take death. One section of the book -- I can't remember which, and I can't remember who he's quoting, and I'm lovin' this because this is not school and I don't need a footnote, woo-hoo adulthood, and screw academia! -- formulates a wonderful notion concerning death, namely, that we'll never know what it's like. Think of it this way: When we're alive, it's literally impossible to experience what death will be like, as we're still alive during the pondering, and when we finally die, the 'me' that is so concerned will no longer be around to experience it. This is true irregardless of whether or not you're a religious believer or a fervent atheist; if you think there's an afterlife, whatever makes you 'you' will most definitely be transformed into another, non-material self, and if you're an atheist, well, you DEFINITELY won't be around to experience it, because there's nothing to experience at all. I find this kind of hypothesis (which he acknowledges is only just that) almost comforting. We'll never actually get to know death at all. "What a rip!" as we all used to say. Yet what a relief, too!

Magee also does a wonderful job of exposing some of the ridiculous trends of philosophy that have overtaken the academic world in the past fifty years, none of which I can articulate at length, but most of which centre upon the study of philosophy as a purely linguistic category, with the focus on 'meaning' being reduced to the semantic explanation of how words, by themselves, in conjunction with each other, create the fabric of life.

In Magee's view, philosophy has completely lost its target; by studying the great philosophers, one is grappling with the ancient concerns, fears and hopes of man from the beginning of civilization itself. Having philosophy centre itself on language itself is a ridiculous notion because, as Magee brilliantly elaborates, we live most of our lives in a non-linguistic kind of state. We eat, fart, drive, walk, talk, all of it fueled by this vague, sort-of-fluid 'ghost in the machine' that somehow forms our notion of consciousness, but rarely, if ever, is it reduced to mere words. Think about it -- the shirt you put on this morning, the toast you almost burned, the hand in your own crotch the last time you got off. Nothing 'verbal' was going on; billions of neurons were firing together and these somehow led you to take certain actions that led to other actions, which led to sensations, both good and bad (or usually indifferently dull), and words formed no part of any of it. We use words to talk, to write, but they are approximations of that invisible 'stuff' that somehow makes up our lives, both inner and outer. Your eyes our moving down this screen; your fingers are scratching your cheek; you're suppressing the burp that so madly wants out. A hundred, thousand, million sounds, sights, smells and sighs make up each perceptual moment of your day, and this is your life, and if philosophy wants to believe that meaning itself is nothing more than words doing their own linguistic form of slow waltz, well, Magee ain't havin' it. Life is about the deep, abiding, resonant questions that cause children to wonder just what it all means. Philosophy should, at its roots, allow those fundamental seeds to still sprout.

So.

Anyway.

A good book, it is. Highly recommended.

Now back to that bird.

Does it think these things?

I don't think so.

It just sits on that ledge, letting the morning grow grey.

I would like that, too. To sit on a roof. Not worry about falling.

But I'm down on the ground, with gravel my foe as my toes find a fault.

Why me? I wonder. Why can't I rise from this earth and find a perch like that bird?

Don't know.

But if I knew, I wouldn't be able to ask those questions, would I. That bird doesn't seem to question much, if anything. He sits and then soars; I fall and ask why. Who's got the more enviable position? You tell me. (Or, better yet, don't.)

THIRTY YEARS IN ONE MORNING

2012-01-01T08:02:00.003+08:00

The first morning of the first day of a new year, dark and brisk, my body alive and fresh, and I hear, as I run, the voice of a man on a phone, his tone angry and sad. I can't understand everything he's saying, but these are those familiar tones that insist what language obscures. You know the ones I mean. High-pitched, abrupt, with strange shifts downwards, almost diagonally; you didn't know voices could do that sort of thing, shift ranges so fast. As I ran I glanced to my left, and noticed that the man, physically, did not look to be perturbed, or, to be more accurate, pissed off. He looked like a hundred other middle-aged Japanese men look like on mornings such as this -- small and intent, his exercise an authentic expression of a casual, yet steady discipline imposed from within. His strides were precise and fluid. Nothing random at work. He was headed somewhere. A hat on to combat the cold. If not for that voice, I wouldn't have even spared him my glance.

Yet that voice! Here I am, at least trying to pretend that I'm feeling good as this fresh year commences, and here he is, enraged and so sad. I can barely make out him saying something about 'thirty years'. That's all I can catch -- 'thirty years'. Is it a lover who finally gave him the boot last night over beers? An employee whose own self-regard has made his old boss useless and passe? A childhood friend, I thought. Japanese often cling to their old friends. (In what other country do people in their mid-fifties regulary attend elementary-school reunions?) Somebody close, of course. You don't wield a brittle voice such as his against a convenience store clerk.

I stayed moving on the path that led straight towards the big bridge, while he took the lower route, the one that wound smoothly through trees and led down somewhere dark. I heard his faint voice ranting, but it soon drifted, then died. Some small part of me wanted to go back and help. Tell him that it was New Year's Day. Life was moving forward. The phone call was already over. But what if he was drunk? Mentally ill? Worse, what if all that rage was still valid? 'Thirty years' was all I had heard him say, and thirty years is a long time. Thirty years ago I was six. His harsh night was already heading towards the first small hint of day, but I knew that those three decades of his would not soon rise out of his ditch.

HAIKU: THIS MORNING'S MT.FUJI

2011-12-14T04:53:00.004+08:00

This morning's white-capped Mt.Fuji

boldy bisects the sky --

underfoot frosted grass, sprouting for its own peak.

APPROACHING A LIFE

2011-12-04T16:23:00.013+08:00

The homeless folk around here go down by the banks of the Tama River to die. That's what I thought. You don't see them often, but they do come out at odd times, usually underneath a Sunday afternoon's blue-sky veil. On the gray-gravel path a bicycle lazily leans against its own kickstand in a teetering balance that must last all through the night; a path made of tiny grooves in dark land leads away from the small scattered rocks and forms its own makeshift route that heads down to the dirt and cut grass arranged with what might look like some love; a few tattered green tents do their best to spite wind. I noticed all this gradually, in stages, on early-morning runs before work, when I'm still sleepy and dense. (This is my excuse.) Over a couple of weeks I started to put it all together, my own puzzle in pieces: the bike; the trail; the tent. I had thought they were all random, disconnected fragments of life that somehow collect and decay without any form or possessor.

One random morning I suddenly realized that these rusted old relics, those stone trails and ripped tents, were somebody's treasured, true things. Not talismans, but utilitarian gadgets that enabled some sway. I almost felt satisfied, the way one does after figuring out how to hook up the net after an hour full of false plugs. This was their home -- those two or three rough-looking dudes I'd seen the Sunday before last, talking in short static bursts, a warm weather laugh they'd seemed happy to share with no one each other. That was the first time I'd seen them. In the charcoal-sky before dawn, they must stay snug in their tents. I actually felt warm with my insight, like a child laying down on the living-room carpet while the sun through the window heats up his small grin.

My smug thought turned to: snug? Can a homeless person ever feel snug? I remember camping trips with my father, my dark blue sleeping-bag zipped up tight, the rain on the canvas a pitter-patter of beats that lacked a strong central rhythm. That rain was trying to arrange itself, I knew, into something consistent, almost an arc, but it was erratic, and I knew that because it lacked conscious motion it could not even recognize that this route would lead only to sad drips and slow streams of slight water. The rain always sounded that way, full of persistent dumb sorrow. It wouldn't get in. It couldn't get in. Our tent had no holes, no leaks or slight rips. I was, to be sure, snug. I doubt the homeless folk were. Snug, I mean. I had a home to return to, distant but soon. These dudes were down there for tomorrow, and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. I could beat the rain because I was already awaiting my exit. Homeless folk have nothing but entrances, and the rain, dumb as it is, can sneak through those every time.

Sometimes I thought: I should talk to them. Give them a bit of levity before they decay and get old. Allow them to josh with a foreigner, a raw bit of good mirth. They might get a kick out of me. A tale to tell. What the hell. Who can stay alive by themselves down by that stream for so long? Death could come for them at any moment, now that winter was close, their small camp no respite. My awkward dive into small talk might just give them a slight sense of chaos -- the 'gaijin' who came down for a chat and stayed for a drink. We all need that one bit of mad joy.

My dumb idea. One black morning I once again ran right by the bicycle, counted the stones on their path, caught a glimpse of the tent. I realized: At any point they could simply sneak away on the bike, take a jaunt for the day, find their way back down by the trail, and then crash for the night in their tent. Listen to the Tama River rustle and merge. Perhaps this is what they did, daily. The same way that I awake to my work and skededalled home when it's done. I had always assumed that they came down here to die. Now I wondered if they, like myself, were simply approaching a life.

THREE SORTS OF JAPANESE BEFORE SUNRISE

2011-10-24T03:57:00.004+08:00

First was the young man sprawled out face-up on the sidewalk. Staring at the stars, if he had been awake. Almost like an accident-victim, his contorted shape skewed in the pose of a man falling through air. Arms windmilling in vain, even more pathetic because his limp and spare parts were aligned on concrete. A late night, last night. More than enough to drink for one man. Best to rest on the ground by the side of the river. One can do that here, without fear of harassment from police or pickpockets. Just let them lay.

Next is the white-haired middle-aged man in a shirt the same shade, seated snug in his van, his trumpet stuck to his lips like a candy so sweet he can't bear to let go lest the sweetness dissolve in cotton-candy thin vapors. I can hear the music, his music, even through the shut door. He's not very good, is what I think. Ashamed at the thought. Who am I to judge? I played that same trumpet in high school a few decades ago. Whoop-de-do. Was even worse than him. Never once got up before sunrise to practice, let alone in a truck. There is something quite sad about soft music trapped in a car. On the road, in motion, the radio's frantic mad blare -- that's one thing. Live music practiced before work, by a man in his van. Windows rolled up. Wife at home, sleeping snug. Sneaking in a few beats before breakfast, and the lengthy train trudge into work. That's something else.

Finally: the old man strolling backwards, his strong arms rising up and then down as his path meandered behind him. What did he hope to find, walking this way? Was he trying to reverse the years in some awkward form of retreat?? Always looking ahead, but each step, receding. I've never tried it. Walking backwards for more than ten steps at a time. Takes a certain kind of confidence. Knowing that you won't be tripped up by the path that waits past your own sight. He's rewinding himself, is what I thought. Somewhere, miles away, if I just watched his slow shuffle, I'd see him gradually become forty years old, and then twenty, and then five.

They seemed almost placed there. Plucked for my own amusement and awe. I had a mad thought, as I slowly jogged past them. One of those thoughts that one has when sleep is still a cousin to dreams. I would pull the young sleeping drunk man up by his arms and slap him awake. The middle-aged musician, I might knock on the window and bond with, sharing stories of trumpets and spit-valves only waiting to be emptied. The old man walking backwards, I'd join for a small chat as we both briskly walked back to where we both started out. The four of us, together. I'd convince them to join me. We could escape this whole world before the sun even knew what was up. Go on the road. Put together some sort of a show. People would pay a few thousand yen to arise before dawn just to watch us meander around endless wide sprawls of river. I'm not sure what they might get out of it. Maybe what I did. Bemusement. An odd intrigue. Even some kind of small, morning joy.

VISAS

2011-09-25T09:38:00.004+08:00

The cook at the little Indian joint right across the tracks from Nakano-shima station asked me if I could get him a Canadian visa. This was while he was making the nan that I had ordered just a moment before. He had arrived here three years ago from Bangladesh. I told him that I knew a Bangledeshi fellow who ran an Indian place not unlike this when I lived in Phnom Penh. I don't own this, he said. I'm just a cook. When I asked where he lived he smiled a sad smile and pointed to the floor up above. Travelling thousands of miles from his wife and three kids, all for the grand goal of schlepping his way through the day in a little restaurant the size of a halfway decent living room. Waiting for that sweet bread to bake, he told me that he wanted to go to Canada, with the visa via me, if possible. Could I do that for him? I smiled and nodded. That's what I do when I don't know what the hell to say. I don't know what you do.

Same thing happened a few weeks ago in the Philippines. A cab driver, hearing of my frigid home country, politely asked if I could sponsor him for a Canadian visa. This was after thirty seconds of small talk. Can you get me away from here, is what he was saying. Essentially. You are from a place that has money, and I have no money, or not enough, so please: Give me a break, pal. I smiled and nodded. (You know the deal by now, right?)

Two different countries, a few weeks apart, two different workers working gruelling, shit-paying jobs, and the same request offered to an embarrassed Canadian. One was cooking my food; the other was taking me around town.

Thinking of it in those terms, I feel an odd pinch of shame. As if they are my slaves of some sort. Cooking for me. Driving me here and there. A Bangladeshi. A Filipino. Catering to a rich Canadian.

Of course, I'm not rich (except compared straight with them, and so maybe I am?), and while the Bangladeshi cook was asking me to get him to Canada I said a little soliloquy to myself -- that I, too, am far from home, working in a strange land to pick up some small coin. Didn't work, that interior monologue. I don't know much about Bangladesh, except that it's far, far from the Mayberry-like childhood I once knew and loved. It's also poor, an offshoot of Pakistan, and crowded with millions of folks even more poor than this chap. (I also learned from this gent that Pakistan and Bangladesh are not the closest of friends. Bangladesh and every other country? No problem. Bangladesh and Pakistan? Let's not go there.)

I took my nan and paid him and said goodbye and didn't mention the Canadian visa to him again as I headed out that small door. Same way I didn't mention it to the taxi dude a few weeks ago in the Philippines when I stepped out of his car. Everybody wants to go somewhere, I tell myself. I can't carry on my shoulders a weight I will drop. I can't give you an entrance to my homeland when my own exit is cloaked in these shifting small doubts. Such are my internal whispers when asked for a leg up. (We all have to tell ourselves something to make the day fair.)

THAT LONELY LIST, SO RICH AND INCLUSIVE

2011-08-08T19:08:00.003+08:00

As far as I can figure out, the only real reason to read anything that anybody's ever written is to either a) learn something new about the human condition that you've never quite conceived of before in exactly those terms, or b) nod your head in recognition at a finely-tuned observation, one that you've long held for yourself, but that you never suspected others, too, might find valuable, even precious.

Here's a paragraph from presidential historian Doris Kearn Goodwin's memoir WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR, a coming-of-age story combining her bittersweet memories of both baseball and a Brooklyn youth:

...The Rockville Centre Public Library became one of my favorite buildings in town. When my mother weasn't feeling well, she would send me to the library with titles of books she wanted to read. Since I now had a card of my own, I took great pride in checking out her books as well as mine. In those days, each book had a sheet glued to the last page on which the librarian stamped the due tate and cardholder's number. It was possible to count how many others had read the same book. I liked the thought that the book I was now holding had been held by dozens of others; it made me sad for both the author and the book when I discovered that I was the only one to take a particular volume off a shelf for months or even years...

I've never been to Rockville Centre Public Library, of course, but I may as well have, for I, too, used to greedily scan that final sheet of paper glued to a book's lonely last page in my high school library at Laura Secord Secondary School. I could see into the past via that card's (usually) lonely list. I, like Ms.Goodwin, also felt a little bad for the author and book, but I was more interested in those that had read it, who'd held it, who'd sniffed its small spine and drunk in its great musk. (If you don't sniff books upon reading, frequently and with no shame, you're not a real reader to me. "You're dead to me, Fredo," as Michael Corleone tells his brother in THE GODFATHER PART II. Fine, I'm not that intense about it, but still: You should snort books. I used to believe that Country Time Lemonade was the nectar of the gods, but I think the smell of books, either brand new or quite old, comes close.) Names of students I'd never meet, now middle-aged men, were still right there in red ink, forever fourteen. Once, I even stumbled upon the name of a family friend who had attended my school in the early years of the Seventies. There he was! Just a kid, like me! He had held this same book in his hands, checked it out, thumbed through it on the bus before I had even been born. Years later, at age seven, upon learning that I, too, played the clarinet, as he did, he would give me a private lesson in my backyard. Years later, at age fourteen, I would flutter the pages of a book he had held in his youth. And in those ensuing decades, only five, six people had taken out this book. It had sat there, miserable.

Where were they, I wondered? Those kids, just like me, who had checked out this same tome? Did they make it intact into adulthood? Had some of them been lost in car crashes, or had they flunked out of school? (I couldn't decide which was a scarier fate.) Were they happy? Did they still read? I imagined choosing a name at random, looking them up in the phone book, giving them a ring:

"Hi, you don't know me, but I'm a student at Laura Secord, just as you once were, and I happened upon a copy of (INSERT TITLE HERE), and the flap at the back states that you checked this book out on February 21, 1974, and I'm wondering: Do you remember this book? Do you remember this school? Are you happy with your life?"

I never made such a call, of course. Didn't have the balls. What a weirdo, they'd think.

But I still think about all of those books that I checked out of that library's narrow walls. Are they still there, rimrod straight at attention, with that sheet of small white glued so tightly in back? Is my adolescent scrawl still quite clear? Does any teenager pick up a book I once read, look at the back, even fleetingly, and wonder why, in the early nineties, I, a mere name on a list, wanted to give that ragged paperback book a fair chance? Does he or she wonder where I, a complete stranger, am in my life, and if they, too, will make it that far?

BURN BABY BURN

2011-07-11T18:32:00.006+08:00

Is there greater proof of our own finite span than a sunburn's red sting? Skin in itself, we rarely give it much thought. The occasional itch. The glance in the mirror each morning, to double check our two chins. A scab here and there, that subtle scrape and its bite. It's our own overcoat, old and unwanted. Just there, really. Only when the sun reminds us once more that we're nothing but flesh do we groan with dismay: Ah, death -- I now feel thy sly touch.

For if we are honest -- and who wants to be honest, but what the hell, let's tie one on -- the pink burn that delights is but death's lazy doorman. Surely the hesitant tilt of our head when we've kissed the sun far too long is some kind of indifferent guide to the underworld that awaits when the coffin's lids creaks its way shut. Think of it: If death is the absence of life, the destruction of comfort, a blackhead extended outwards in round steady cycles, then what better prep can we have than a slap to our skin that makes life itself but a chore? Sitting, showering, bending our knees and looking left and now right -- good God, what a pain, after a sunburn's first night. You start to resent being awake. Being aware.

The sun. The light. Give me some cold, a soft soothing touch that might still sway with a swoosh all that lies underneath. No deal, boss. No stroking here; no relief. You will crash on that couch with a groan and wish the black to come back. No more of light's brilliant booth, its cozy niche in the corner. Just give me the black, straight up, and let me be the rock.

These thoughts take me back -- a few centuries, even further. For who can imagine what it must have been like to endure such a sun when the shade had its home at the base of a tree? And only the tree? Think of that shade! What an oasis it must have seemed to the mad and the dazed and the sun-drunken pilgrims! I can go inside with some air-con, and french-kiss its cold tongue. What relief did they lack! Can I call them my own brethren, if I've not felt that red mark on each moment of time?

Perhaps there's still hope. I can discover what they might have known. Some tricks. Approaches to life, even. I could lay out on the grass, shirt off. Underwear whipped at the sky like an archer's last arrow. Quite nude. Let the sun brand itself on my skin. I could lay there for two, three hours. Two, three days. Build up some kind of resistance. Let the hurt hurt so bad that it must do nothing but morph. (Can one feel pain for so long that it becomes ecstasy's final spurt? Are they cousins, in fact, agony and great bliss?)

Quite soon I could be as red as the sun when it sets on an early spring eve. Callused, I'll be. Nothing could hurt me anymore. Impervious. Pain as both antidote and elixir. My sunburn's covert role as the lazy doorman of death might keep that door half ajar, trying to coax me to enter. Instead, I'd just lay there, sizzling.

PEOPLE -- INCLUDING YOU, YES YOU! -- ARE A STRANGE LOOP

2011-06-28T05:16:00.004+08:00

So exactly who is the 'I' who is typing these words, and, while we're at it, who is the 'you' that is scanning them now?

These are the questions that Douglas Hofstadter, a professor of Cognitive Science, delves into in his fascinating, kind of comprehensible book 'I Am A Strange Looop'.

To give you a taste of what he dishes up, a slight diversion:

Recently, while browsing through the new arrivals rack at my local video shop in the not-so-bustling suburb of Ookurayama, I came across a new documentary about The Doors, narrated by Johnny Depp, entitled WHEN YOU'RE STRANGE. I reminded myself to pick it up, either this week or next, and give it a go. As soon as I saw the DVD box, an enormous amount of memories and associations spiralled throughout my small brain. Not all of it conscious. None of them momentous. But mention 'The Doors', and what happens next?

A poster of Jim Morrison hanging in one of the Craddock twins bedrooms in Ridgeway, Ontario. (I can't remember which twin.) I must have been nine, ten. The music a backdrop. The Doors slightly different than my usual musical fare of The Monkees. Darker. Hinting at aspects of life that would remain somewhat suspect. Finding a copy of his biography, NO ONE GETS OUT OF HERE ALIVE, in a friend's basement in junior high. Reading about his life. Reading another book about him by the drummer, John Densmore. RIDERS ON THE STORM, that one was. Years later, the film. Oliver Stone's flick. Me, a film nut. A Stone nut. Anxious to see it. Shattered when THE ST.CATHARINES STANDARD, in its Thursday night edition, reveals that it will, in fact, be rated R. Me, fifteen, too young to look old enough to attempt a sneak-in. Vacationing in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a few weeks later, and disappointed once again to see that it's rated 'R' down there too. Catching up with it on video. Watching it a dozen times, probably. The music, the energy. The pulse. Eventually putting it aside. Life. Not thinking much about The Doors over the years. Hearing about this documentary on some film site a few years back. Seeing it at the video store. Noticing that it's narrated by Johnny Depp. As much as I loved THE LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER film as a kid, I wonder: Why is Depp appearing in a Lone Ranger flick next year? Good grief. Reminding myself: Rent this documentary.

All of this, from a one second glimpse at a DVD's cover.

Now, again, this wasn't all happening at a conscious, shall we say 'readable' level, but think of the neurons that fire when a name hits your brain. I say 'The Doors', and you probably have SOME kind of connection to the band, however slight. You may have heard of them, vaguely; you may know of them, dimly. You may be obsessed with them, or you may not give a shit. But that information is nevertheless stored...somewhere. You never think of it, is all. (Or so you think.)

Hofstader's book gets into the strange paradox of life -- that all of our actions are determined at a microscopic level too small to examine, with neurons and cells that make up who we are, and yet, ironically enough, we live life on the macro scale, not the micro. We eat, work, fight, fart, smile, love and groove on the surface. Because we have to. Because we don't know what's going on down there. Because we can't live life as a reaction to bio-chemical processes. We're not built that way. (Even though, come to think of it, we are, actually, built that way. It gets confusing.)

One of his most intriguing arguments has to do with the notion of a lifeform's ability to, in essence, identify aspects of life, and itself, and those relations between life and itself, and how that has a bearing on the size of its, for lack of a more concrete word, soul. A mosquito, say, doesn't have much memory, or reference -- it ain't thinking about Jim Morrison's arrest for indecency in Florida as it's buzzing around, looking for blood. A cow just chews, mostly. It probably doesn't remember yesterday's cud, or tomorrow's chance of rain. A dog or a cat has a slightly higher level of memory and association and capacity to love. Who we are depends on our ability to associate, reference, compare and reflect.

(He's hinted at this notion in regards to life, in fact, NOT beginning at the moment of conception, as there's no self-referential self existing at that particular point in time. There's no THERE there, essentially. I don't agree with him on that one, but that's another argument, for another post.)

It's one of those books, 'I Am A Strange Loop', that gives you a little bit of a jolt. A literary tilt-a-whirl. (That should have been the tagline on the back, no?) It's also one of those those mathematics or science books that I'm always suckered into buying, with the assurance by the author in the introduction that this isn't one of those HEAVY, specialized books, no; that it is, in fact, one for the masses. And the prose style is so fluid and enjoyable that I'm three pages into a chapter when I suddenly realize that I have no idea what the fuck he's talking about. Luckily, that's a small portion of the book. The greater portion does a remarkable job of illustrating the billions and billions of unconscious, sub-atomic connections that are forged by the cells underneath the sense of self that we wield.

(Did I say 'self'! Ha! Hofstader hints that the self is nothing more, in a sense, than the accumulation of cells, likening it a massive stack of envelopes he once yanked out of a box, convinced that the hard blob he felt in its centre was a marble stuck somewhere down, only to realize that the accumulation of all those paper envelopes created the illusion of hardness. All of our cells, all our synaptic firings, all of our collected connections, make us think there's a 'there' at the core of our core. He also articulates what I've always wondered for years: Why do we love our favourite things? No, really. Why is chocolate my favourite flavour of ice cream? Well, I like sweet things. Why do I like sweet things? Well, I just do. Eventually, there's no answer. It's a mystery. And if the things we hold most near and dear to us, our loves and our lusts, remain a strange septic brew, then what hope can we have to know anything well at all?)

It's interesting, is all I'm saying. This notion of connections, and links. Think of you, sitting in your chair. This may be the first time you're reading this blog. You may know me quite well. You might be bored to your gourd and wondering why you're still reading. You may have no interesting in brain surgery, or The Doors. You may be stifling a yawn, listening to Ben Folds Five in the background, thinking of a test you must take in tomorrow's wee early hours. Your crack is itchy. A billion neurons at play, right here in this moment.

I don't know what it all means, and the older I get the more I crave and draw an odd satisfaction from the questions, not the answers, but books like this one at least give me the go to give life a small poke. This morning, as I walked to the train station, the sky in its dawn was a little bit gray, mixed with a nice medley of pink. Not sure what that was all about, but it looked mighty fine.

NUM-BER FIVE ALIIIIIIVE, STE-PHAN-IE!

2011-06-12T15:46:00.010+08:00

Every so often I'll stop and think to myself: Oh, right, you're alive.

This thought, unoriginal as it is, usually arrives when I'm engaged in an act that approaches the 'difficult' -- physically, mentally, unsettling. Often when I'm running, and sweating, and spitting, and holding back the urge to piss, I'll spot a weed by the river gently being blown by a breeze. I won't feel that I am that weed, or that breeze, or even the space between both, but I will feel myself as a force, physical and tactile. How many times have I tried not to pee in my pants as I've run down a road? Hundreds? Such an urge long withweld gathers a weight all its own. From such elementary beginnings are grand notions embedded.

(So I'd like to believe. Hope to believe. Need to believe?)

When reading Japanese, my mind bends and distorts, does backflips and front-fakes. Honest and tiring, this kind of mental gynamstics. (Or is it more akin to a kind of sexless masturbation? Getting one's own intellectual rocks off to the point where the ego begins to believe that one's brain is quite bold?) I tell myself: Such exertions must mean that you're somehow still able to engage with quite alien concepts. Attack their odd foreign shapes, until, if only vaguely, I can hear through a gauze what these characters might say. If I sit there long enough, I revert. Get younger. I'm aware of myself, learning.

Learning!

I can remember the moment in life where my dad took my shoelace in his hands and told me just what to do. The rabbit going around the tree, looping around the wide trunk, diving down deep into the ground.

Learning.

That first drive home with my mum, learner's permit in hand, steering the wheel with both hands, my heart thumping its bump.

Learning.

The first class that I taught, my student an old white-haired man, distinguished and wise, a heart doctor who put the first pacemaker in place.

Learning.

Studying, turning pages, cursing, I feel myself learning, and suddenly I think with surprise: I'm alive!

For shouldn't we all be reminded that life is still here, alive in its own right, alongside our small selves that continue to believe that Time on its own is just one more straight line?

Just a few hours ago, a YOU TUBE video I stumbled upon on a whim took me right back to a point that I guess that I've never quite left. A person I'd known long before, now a small square box on a screen. Time laughed in my face. Spit in it, even. I could feel its saliva drip straight off of my nose and right down onto my tongue. Bitter and vile but also sweet with the taste of who we once used to be.

Me, thinking that we actually age, get mature, become wise. Deluded. Watching that video, the 'past' became 'now', and my 'here' became 'then', and I thought: I'm alive! (A childhood memory intruded: cracking open a cold and fresh can of that fruit drink FIVE ALIVE, pulling the metal tab, taking a gulp, burping with the kind of long belch a ten-year old enacts with great pride, saying: "Num-ber Five aliiiiive, Ste-phan-!" A ritual of sorts, every time I drank that great drink, me repeating the line from Steve Guttenberg's eighties classic, that dumb robot from SHORT CIRCUIT activating its self and its own sense of space. Now kind of close to profound.)

Life, an unlikely ally against time's nefarious means. After being surprised by that video, nothing made any more sense, true, but life had once again announced its brash self with a slap to my cheek. The thought wasn't filled with any kind of straight joy, or suffused with pure dread. I just understood: I'm here. Life is with me. Life as my buddy. Where you been, old pal?

HAIKU 13

2011-05-25T11:18:00.003+08:00

the urinal's edge, where I tip and then tap:

an open window invites

a morning bird's mocking tweet

HAIKU 12

2011-05-16T05:47:00.004+08:00

the head crow and his cronies

brazenly peck at these stuffed plastic bags

my collected debris: discarded, devoured, savored.

HAIKU 11

2011-05-08T09:46:00.006+08:00

tiny bats thwapping balls

add an echo to shifting shoes-on-gravel --

these schoolyard sounds, receding

HAIKU 10

2011-05-05T06:17:00.002+08:00

this rickety train's wheezy rattle

between a baby's shriek and an old man's wail

moves me still

HAIKU 9

2011-05-03T12:52:00.002+08:00

the train rockets out of the tunnel

a tiny girl shrieks into delight --

the peek-a-boo day, pouncing

HAIKU VIII

2011-05-02T18:13:00.002+08:00

the few pink flowers pinched between digits

as his hurried small steps gather time

and space, plump in my palms

HAIKU VII

2011-05-02T18:11:00.003+08:00

through a glass clearly

the boy's insistent wave

greets myself or the dimming sun

HAIKU VI

2011-04-30T11:03:00.002+08:00

a dozen boys on bikes

caress baseball cap brims --

lucky rabbit-foot hopes under grey-bellied clouds

HAIKU V

2011-04-26T05:57:00.005+08:00

the ground's reluctant grind

an earth's tectonic sneeze

this midnight shift

HAIKU IV

2011-04-24T17:42:00.003+08:00

an April wind sneaks

in between mismatched buttons --

black chest hair, defenseless

WHAT WE MUST WITHOLD IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE CERTAIN ILLUSIONS REGARDING OUR STATES OF MIND AND BODILY EMISSIONS

2011-04-23T08:58:00.006+08:00

If Jennifer Lopez let loose a fart of epic proportions just as she was getting ready to rip into another exhausted contestant on AMERICAN IDOL, what would be the repercussions? Let’s assume that they have somebody, on post, in the control room, hovered over the control panel, ready to push that red button down the instant somebody accidentally, or intentionally, utters a profanity. Wouldn’t the same principle apply to an excess release of gas from one of their million dollar celebrities? Think about it. The next day, wouldn’t all the headlines remark upon the fact that Ms.Lopez farted, live, on national television. What the article wouldn’t say is that everybody reading that article, writer included, farts, what, twenty, thirty times a day? But nobody talks about it. Not truly. When we were kids, certainly, when such bodily emissions carried a certain weight, implied a kind of half-skewed pride, we’d joke about such stuff all of the time. And we continue to do it, in certain company. Not in public. Yet I have no doubt that such an occurrence – said incident being The World’s Most Famous Latina, Lopez, letting it rip, long and wet and loud, amplified by the microphone, further amplified by the newfangled stereo systems that people install in their homes so that they can hear whiz-bang-golly-gee sounds far removed from that of a singing star’s flatulence – would titillate the gossip pages for a good four, five days. It’s not often that the real stuff of ourselves is displayed to the world

I once stood not four feet from Jennifer Lopez, years ago, during the Toronto Film Festival, when she exited the Four Seasons Hotel and signed autographs in front of her patiently waiting limousine, and somebody offered her flowers, and she thanked them in what seemed like a sincere voice, and I remember thinking that I had never seen a more beautiful person in my entire life, a flawless beauty, a kind of take-your-breath-away beauty, which is cliché, I know, but beauty is cliché, and your breath kind of did disappear for a moment or two, and it was a kind of elemental, picture-that-comes-with-the-picture-frame-beauty far more beautiful than that which she had so far projected across any kind of silver screen, but at that moment she might very well have been holding within her a fart of David-Lean-epic proportions, and if I had known that, then, would it have made a difference to my judgement of her exterior illumination? If President Obama, or, god forbid, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, were to burp or fart in the presence of the Queen, at a reception for the upcoming nuptials of the young prince, let us say, only days after Ms.Lopez committed the same heinous act on an American variety show, would the press wonder just what the hell the world was coming to? This is what I’m asking.

But we withhold stuff every day. That’s all we do. Keep stuff in. Have you ever talked to anybody recently about all the times that you flick snot out of your nose? We don’t even have a dignified word for that gunk – ‘snot’, ‘boogers’. Seriously. At least the Japanese have the good sense to call it ‘nose water’. How can we talk, with dignity, about something that has no proper certification? Or that feeling you get when you sense that the person in front of you couldn’t care less about what you’re saying, that they’re merely biding time, killing time, disentangling time, waiting for you to finish so that they can go back to thinking about what contorted images they will masturbate to later that night.

Or perhaps I’m being too judgemental. They might, in fact, be bored by what you’re saying because they were recently diagnosed with the ‘big c’, which is now an HBO series starring Laura Linney, which is just what I want, a ‘dramedy’ about how living with cancer is full of giggles and ‘life-lessons-learned-the-hard-way’, all very funny, all very earnest, undoubtedly worthy of multiple Emmy nominations, all designed to enable viewers to subscribe to HBO and thus keep the financial situation of its executives in a relatively stable state of being. They, too, have noses to pick, and one needs well-manicured nails to unearth some of those nuggets. Of course, there are undoubtedly hundreds of other people who would work on a show such as that, and, statistics would say, a fair number of them must have people with cancer in their lives. The grips, the caterers, those kinds of folks. Some of them probably think the show is exploitative, no matter how well it’s done, or precisely because of how well it’s done. Others might think it gives them exactly what they need. A few more might be so tired of dealing with disease that they couldn’t care less. (Shouldn’t we say “I couldn’t care MORE?” Wouldn’t that actually be more snidely dismissive?) Regardless of their genuine interest in a show that provides them with a paycheck on a bi-weekly basis, they still have to spend the bulk of their day keeping ‘their thoughts to themselves’, withholding farts, stifling burps, not letting anyone know that a subtle feeling of disappointment has been fluttering within them since around the age of sixteen. Maybe eighteen, depending.

I’m not saying that Ms.Lopez is the kind of person who would actually fart on TV. Don’t misunderstand me. She is a professional. She was a ‘maid in manhattan’, not in real life, not as far as I know, although she may very well have been, at one point in time, but she starred in a movie bearing that title, and anyone who could summon the stamina to work on a script of that calibre must have intestinal fortitude of the fifth degree. She wouldn’t allow inside gases to exit outside of herself, not while ascertaining the extent to which covers of Rod Stewart tunes from the 1970s constitute an original voice for this new millennium.

Must be tough, sitting there though. Her mind must wander. She must have to shift cheeks every now and then. A sight such as that must worry the guy in the booth. The one with the red button. He’s probably thinking mostly of swear words, of people muttering ‘motherfucker’ under their breath, but occasionally, I’m sure, flatulence and its (potentially) unwelcome, rank wave must wander through his bored mind. He has his own issues, but he doesn’t talk about them. And he trusts her, Ms.Lopez. He can recognize that she’s the real deal. A woman who keeps herself to herself. She knows that bodily functions have no place in prime time.

HAIKU III

2011-04-22T07:14:00.001+08:00

echoes of black dress shoes

rushing over grey pavement

lends slanted rain a granite edge

HAIKU II

2011-04-20T05:36:00.003+08:00

an old man's grunts

lumber yanked from a faded green truck

white cherry blossoms, lazily downward drifting

HAIKU

2011-04-19T06:27:00.003+08:00

Morning crows squawk

as my pen hovers

a haiku dictionary's plastic gloss

AS WE AGE

2011-04-15T06:50:00.005+08:00

The other day on the bus to Kikuna I saw a girl mouth along to a voice that was fake. A recorded message, feminine and polite, always lets you know to a tee what next stop lies ahead. You can remember its tone and its words after a few round-trip rides. The girl's friend was sitting beside me. Standing, rocking slightly from side to side in that nonchalant way that young people do simply because they are young, this girl matched her lips' motion to each word that she heard. It wasn't exactly unconscious, this action, because she started to smile just a bit as she performed her small act. She and her friend then started to talk all about what all teenage girls talk about. I'm not exactly sure what those topics might be even back home, in Canada, let alone here, in Yokohama. Yet I might have a clue. So I tell myself.

When I was their age, I took the bus just like them. The Niagara Street bus. I caught another bus first, at the Geneva Street stop, and then I transferred again at a point I forget. Or did I? Did I take just the one? Forgetting my hometown's bus schedule does feel just a bit like betrayal. ("I'm sorry, St.Catharines! You still own most of my heart! But the bus lines do blur after sixteen long years away!") The important memories do tint, though the details might fade.

One morning my friend and I sat on the bus as it did its stop-and-start shuffle. We looked across the aisle at an old man who had seen better days. One assumes. He did not look like he was seeing many good days just now. My buddy looked at me and said: "That'll be me and you some day, Scott." (Or did I say it to him?) We both laughed. I even remember the point on our route where this conversation took place. Just past the mall down the street from our school 'Laura Secord'. We both laughed. Knowing it was true, that we, too, would one day be that old. Knowing, as well, that that day would not come for a good many years. Still. It was nervous laughter. Sometimes at fourteen you can surprise even yourself with a hint of a truth that you secretly suspect most adults might already know.

I think about that offhand, off-the-cuff comment two, three times a year. As I age. I thought it about the other day, three thousand and more miles away from those streets that did give me my start. Watching a Japanese girl talking to her friend on a bus as they came home from school. She wore a dark blue jacket and skirt. A brown bag with a musical note stiched right into its corner sat there at her feet like a dumb patient pet. She listened to an adult's voice on a speaker, and mockingly mouthed what it said. Then she returned to her conversation, to her adolescent concerns, in a language that bops to its own special beat. I couldn't understand everything she said. Perhaps she muttered to her friend about the old foreign man that sat right there before her. Just another day on the bus. I wondered if she and her pal might for some reason remember that ride, twenty long years from now. As they age.

A FORM OF CRUDE BALANCE?

2011-04-10T17:35:00.002+08:00

What’s unsettling about the earth shifting and shaking, bopping and quaking beneath the bed that upholds the awkward arch of your back and your head's constant swivel is not at all what you think might finally just make you break down. I've learned, over time, the most terrifying truth of life, or at least my life: You can get used to anything. Even the ground, groaning. Even yourself, bored by the monotonous length of this more than minor upheaval. No, what worries me most is a certain form of cohesion. The world can contain and uplift so much pure contradiction.

A few days ago, a quake while I slept. It lasted, lingered. I awoke, wondering if I should step right outside and watch the building sway in its bend. Instead, I lay on my back; closed my eyes somewhat tight; tried not to count in my head the long length of each shift. Soon it was done, and I could sleep a bit more. Way up in the north I’m sure a score of people did shudder. Survivors. Me, I didn’t survive anything. I almost welcomed my dreams. They would probably be but benign. I felt guilty for going right back to sleep while all those poor folks in Sendai I'm sure stayed up with their fears. But I slept. You can get used to anything.

Something else: Today, on the street, coming towards me, a young woman in black, strolling, striding, smiling. Just like that. A hell of a grin. She was in a world of her own. As we all are, but when somebody smiles just like that, I wonder in what special realm do they wander. Perhaps she was thinking of whom she might meet in a moment for hot tea and a scone. Or last night’s lover’s soft touch, a small playful taunt at her tit. Or a comedian’s punchline, its sharp wit still a pinch. She seemed to be in cahoots with life.

That earthquake’s steady rumble, and that pretty stranger’s sweet smile, somehow co-exist in this life, and that separate union confounds me. One should not share space with the other. Or do they only appear in the first place as a form of crude balance? Can we even casually grin with small joy to begin with if life holds no peril?

Perhaps she, too, was awoken, like me, by that tectonic grim burp. I doubt she was smiling then. Her thoughts, a rising wave of dread. Yet a few days in the future, a kind of happiness. Persistent, even brave. So tenacious that even I, a stranger, felt the force of its joy straight across the length of the sidewalk, a kind of life all its own, fluid and real, as tactile and invasive as the boldest of tremors.

THAT SWEET PLUME OF WINTER, THAT GREEN ROOM SO LUSH

2011-03-25T19:42:00.004+08:00

Last night before sleep I remembered a room. Somewhere in Tokyo. Something to do with a ticket. An Air Canada office, overlooking a lake. Or a body of water at least, of that I am sure. Everything else, vague. Over a decade ago, I suppose. A minor change needed to be made so that I might be able to fly. I’m picturing green. The lobby’s colours. A deep, comforting green. Not the shade that a doctor would wear while excising some cancer. More the tone of some seaweed on an ocean’s wide floor. Exotic, almost. I remember sitting there. I remember that. Ticket in hand. Everything else, a blur. This memory saddened me a great deal, the same way in which one suddenly becomes full of odd grief while reading in passing of a stranger’s quick death. If I can remember its vibe, but not the details in full, then what good does that do me, and to what end is its aim?

At one point in my past that small room had some weight. Decisions would have to be made in between those four sheltered walls; the keys of a computer would go clickety-clack, with such rapid red force, that receptionist’s nails striking letters as a mason hits stone. My life had to be guided in that room. If that air ticket could not have been altered at all by her touch, the set paths of my course would have had to be broken. I don’t remember feeling nervous, but I do recall a sense of proportion being weighted, almost on scales. Is there anything worse than the slow pace of bureaucracy? Have a seat. We’ll be right with you. Won’t take a moment. Read a magazine, if you like. All of these dull remarks in an English that slants. The silence, full. Is there any more noise to be found than in a room lacking sound? The hum of the lights; the steps in the hall just outside the closed door; the soft snap of some gum in an overhead office. All of this, blaring. Everything had consequence.

Last night before sleep I remembered that room. Its function, perfunctory. All of that green, though. Soothing. Even if my purpose was bland, that room had some juice. I could have lived in that room, was what I thought. Not for a year, or even a month, but for a week, why not. Something to do with that dark green. Life so often evolves into gray’s oldest chum. A green such as that could lift me right up.

Drifting off, I realized that it didn’t bother me – that I couldn’t remember precisely my purpose for waiting. So what if the memory’s details had died? How many days as a whole have decided to exit my brain? This one over a decade ago has stayed in some nook of my head that is rarely swept clean. It could be one of those random days of my life that recurs like a fever one gets every year as each spring starts its swoon. Dear reader, do you, too, have memories like this one that linger half-empty? Do you wish you could crawl into their space and remember that self? Perhaps reading this post will prepare you for more – your old locker’s three digit combo, or the smell of the breath of the first person you kissed, or the sweet plume of winter on a crsip Christmas Eve from a stroll in your youth when a sung carol was king. (Do you sometimes wonder about those lips of that soul who you kissed long ago, that first brush with another? Hoping that she or he thinks of you too, during random moments at work, when the meeting drones on?) Memories emerge, don’t they. Ten years from now, or twenty, or if I’m lucky, fifty, I might still recollect that same random green room. It could act as my good-luck charm for sleep, my go-to embrace.

WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, BILLY JOEL

2011-03-21T08:19:00.003+08:00

Where have you gone, Billy Joel? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Doesn't it? I do, anyways. Who else can make sense of this world in a way that will linger? That will allow us to sing of our horrors with a melodic fresh vibe? Only the Piano Man, who proclaimed with such verve that the fire in our lives was not lit from his flame.

Is WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE the oddest tune that's been written since all songs have been sung? A collection of names and events, linked only by eras. From the fifties to eighties, a miniature history of much that has come to define how we look at our lives.

Doesn't it? No? Am I the only one out there who wishes that all life and its options could be stripped down to a size that might fit into some song? Joel did it once; he can do it again. Think of it: decades of existence, encapsulated. Right there, in your mouth. You can lip-synch to those words and navigate down through decades. All within three minutes. A few generations' touchstones and highlights, aggressors and heroes. Beneath your tongue. Manageable. Some might argue that I love this small song because it brings back my youth. When life had a limit, three minutes and change. When history could all cram into a chorus, plus verses. When the world was as small as my own fragile hopes.

So, Billy. Please. I need someone like you to arise one more time and make life once again a song we can hum. How is one supposed to make sense of a phrase like 'Operation Odyssey Dawn'? Is that the name of a new album by BOSTON, or a military action designed to inspire a rising new day of sheer hopeful delusion? Who thinks of these slogans that align with our wars? I need Mr.Joel to make all this a ditty.

He left off with 'rock and roll the Cola Wars, I can't take it any more!' Yet he's still around, and has been, for the past two decades; he's taken it, endured, evolved. He needs to rhyme the Internet and September 11th and FACEBOOK and TWITTER; he must us give some sense that life is still just a jingle. Otherwise, I might be left with the notion that some things in our world are too large and opaque to squeeze into a single. And I'm not sure that I want to believe that.

HEART FELT: FOR PAPA (Lyman Roddick 1921-2011)

2011-03-18T18:06:00.002+08:00

(Thinking of Uncle Lynn, Mum, Uncle Dale, Ted, Samantha, James, Leigh Ann, Faryn, family. And Nanny, of course.)

When I was twelve or thirteen years old, at my grandparents’ house on the boulevard in Fort Erie, I found a paperback copy of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE in a box of old books in the basement. This wasn’t the plain red edition that we all would read in high school; this was an older version, one that proclaimed on the cover the dangerous contents inside. Having read my fair share of Stephen King and Clive Barker, the odd profanity failed to frighten me much, but something else gave me pause: the book’s pristine condition. It looked like it had just emerged right from the Fifties through some sort of wormhole. I shouldn’t have been surprised, though. After all, I had found it right there in my Papa’s small basement; he kept everything, from spare tools to old cans, and they always somehow looked more fresh than the newest of goods.

Once, when I was twenty, when they were living in Brockville, I helped my grandparents move down the road to a smaller new house. Another basement discovery – boxes of TIME magazines dating back to the thirties. Hundreds of them. Having cultivated my own collection of cardboard boxes full of a thousand and more plastic-bagged comics all throughout my childhood, I said to my Papa that his stack was quite cool. He answered: “You’re the only person who’s appreciated why I’ve kept them all these years!”

That wasn’t quite true. Papa was an eccentric, and we all knew it, even though his life at first look seemed so much like the men of his time. After growing up in small-town Ontario, he fought all over Europe during the Second World War, returning to Canada with his young British bride, inadvertently ensuring my own (and my mother, uncles, brother and cousins) very existence on earth. After retirement, instead of kicking back on the couch, he decided to build us all a new cottage; well into his seventies and eighties, he could be found climbing far up a tree that stretched straight into the sky. Even though in his sixties he’d suffered a spill from a ladder while working on the garage, I never worried he’d stumble or fall from the branch of a tree; anyone who would even attempt such a climb at his age must possess some kind of rare grace.

His opinions were many, and he let them be known. Cross-talk with his brother and children over dinnertime meals always reached a decibel higher than comfortable conversation suggested. There were usually all manner of new magazines and old books scattered throughout each room of the house, Canadian history and politics in particular, a favourite lament. Once, crashed out on my bed, I was flipping through the latest issue of Macleans’, ‘Canada’s Newsweekly’, and came across a particularly opinionated letter. When I saw that the writer was ‘Lyman Roddick, Brockville, Ontario,’ I did a genuine spit-take; even far away from the table, his voice could be heard. Indeed, when I first moved to Japan, before the internet slyly invaded our lives in impersonal ways, I used to receive care packages from him -- newspaper stories and clipped-out articles of interest that he thought I might like, some passages underlined in deep red, with a wry comment alongside.

I last saw him on the day before Christmas, in his small room in the Veteran’s Wing of Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. He sort of knew who I was. Time had taken him away from us. He was never the most demonstrative of men. When I was a child and even well into my teens, we always said hello and good-bye via a hardy handshake. At some point in our lives, a small shift in affection broke down certain walls, and on Christmas Eve I bid him farewell as I had done for a decade, with a short, heartfelt hug.

AFTER SHOCK

2011-03-16T08:52:00.000+08:00

In times of great loss, a huge gap must exist between what happens in life and the words that we use to describe these events -- those enormous horrors that rend us alive even as they strip down the small selves we take great pains to build up. All the familiar terms are employed to describe what we think are the wounds that we need to soothe, then embalm: ‘horrible’, ‘tragic’, ‘unbelievable’, ‘shocking’. The TV news anchors, blow-dried and tucked tight, repeat these dark words with a grim kind of relish, morose and dumbfounded, their visage of choice. We mirror their faces. Watch each report with a sigh and head shake. Again, we repeat: ‘terrible’ and ‘so sad’. Onscreen, a town is washed out in a sea of floating white cars, the odd house bobbing in place, a cartoon brought to life. Better, for us, to sigh and then moan; vocabulary tends to diminish such sights. How futile words now become when we’re faced with such truth! A mere linkage of sounds that we utter and mutter; a delusion – that they give adequate form to those feelings that live in our heart’s steady flutters. One might as well belch and then fart and proclaim such gas to be fire. All of it false, these esophogeal attempts at outlining a void.

Not that photos do better, though they certainly try. In TIME magazine, a young woman sits weeping, surrounded by remnants of life itself tossed asunder. All manner of objects, misshapen and bent, encircle her form as her face tells us voyeurs that life offers no hint of a justice for all. One could stare at this picture for days and find nothing that speaks of providential salvation. ‘Humanity’s pain at nature’s indifference’: This could be the bold-printed headline used to sell some more mags, for is nothing more pure than the media’s ravenous need to milk pain for its profit? If it all made us feel better, perhaps I’d be slightly less harsh. Yet we gorge on this display of artistic entrapment, grotesque and well-lit, another’s misery framed for maximum aesthetic pride. Does a secret cheer clap its hands when we witness such pain? I wish it were not so, but I suspect otherwise. Our own empathetic fresh sorrow somehow makes us feel human. We can be in a rut, but feel lifted by pain. Give me more news, shots, glimpses. Guilt that they are not me, that I am safe here, while they are dead there. I can now be aroused.

I retreat to my own sophistries to justify such confusion. Let’s imagine: There is a God up above who watched all this go down. He let it happen, essentially. Thousands are dead, lives dissipated, dissolved. Let’s be specific: A woman has lost her fiancée for good. Five, six years from now, she will love again. She might even feel again. Out of this union is born a small child. This girl will grow up to become that one gifted doctor who cures cancer for good. Millions will live because of her special gift. Had this tragedy not happened now, in our year of eleven, had her mother’s first love not let go of his life, she would have never been born. Still a notion.

Are twenty thousand lives lost at this moment worth the birth of this child? I wonder. It’s an argument I’ve used twice before in the past: the Holocaust, a necessity; September 11th, mandatory. Ludicrous at its strange core, and blasphemous to boot, but not having much of a faith to consider, I often lay awake in my night and consider a deity’s strange plans.

If we truly can’t know why these events must occur, then we must think of the means to allocate some dimension. Words fail to express anything more than dry comfort food; pictures stir our emotions, activate petty tears. If there must be some lord who looks down on this mess, I prefer to think that a plan is in place, that a baby exists, fifteen years in our future. This child is mere sperm and an egg not yet ripe. A woman has lost all she loves in this world; a nation is torn; nuclear threats hover high. Yet a baby’s fresh spirit is, even now, biding her time in some celestial womb. I can hear her soft confused cries. Not yet, I want to say, to soothe. Not yet. Soon enough you will arrive and destroy that disease that so needs to be gone. The world will rejoice. You will close a circle that began with a sea’s violent rumble.

Silly, I know. A strange kind of gamble, to believe that all this raw horror might give fruit to some joy. I suppose, at root, I can’t process reality. A child’s curse and great gift. An adult must focus on that which is concrete and frail. No time for outlandish odd wishes when life demands more.

And yet.

As a child, walking home from school, from my own certain pine grove, I would grab at the air to catch what we called ‘wishes’, those stray wisps of plant life that first floated, then spun. Do you remember those? Damn, I do. I haven’t seen one of those in a long, long time. Have you? Been even longer since I tried to grab one. Are they still out there? Hovering above all those uneven cracks in the earth? Even there? Especially there? If I should happen to see one of those odd angular shapes drifting through air in the bluest of skies, I will snatch it and hold it and wish, wish, wish.

ALTITUDES

2011-03-10T20:10:00.000+08:00

You can notice the change in the air when the bus makes its stop. The first stop. This is only ninety minutes or so outside of Baguio, but as you soon as you step down off the bus the air makes its move. Not so much a slap in the face; more of a dunk in the tub, quite sudden and shocking. You aren’t expecting this, even though you’ve been here before. The day always jumps you. Baguio at its best is warm but not hot, the air as fresh and as raw as my Canadian past in the first days of April, spring just being born, still eager and raw. Up there in the mountains, the clouds’ silky wisps kiss the peaks' frozen tips, and the air follows suit, a soft peck on your brow and your neck, refreshing and intimate. The bus is its mirror, a moving chill tomb. Why this has to be so, I always forget, in that roving trek down from the peaks to the valleys. By the time you hit the rest stop, the winding roads are now done, that circuitous descent giving way to flat roads. The air, too, is as smooth and as straight as a line stretching far. Not much character. Hot and thick. The country from here is the tropics in full. Every time I step off that bus to unkink my stiff legs, I’m surprised by the heat. It seems to shout out in its temperate voice: You’re alive, and you can come out of one mood and into another.

CHICKEN LITTLE

2011-03-09T10:58:00.006+08:00

Probably my favourite moment in THE HANGOVER arrives when Ed Helms awakens after a night of epic Las Vegas partying and groggily takes note of a chicken wandering around his smooth mammoth suite. Such a small example of incongruous forces at play; there are, after all, few places in life where a live chicken feels right. A cognitive clash starts to ring its small bell at the back of our heads – these worlds should not mix, not the realms of a penthouse and the stride of a fowl. The five second (or so) scene is a harbinger of small sorts; surely what follows will feature even more odd intersections that cross the clear norms of what we hope our boundaries will be. It kind of sets up a buried theme of the flick, which might be: when we forget what we do, what’s done will come back. I don’t think they ever explained where that chicken came from, or how it got to be there in that room, but no matter – its mere presence was enough to ignite endless fires. And I’m here to testify that the film doesn’t lie.

The other day I came back into my room right after my run and had the fright of my life as a gift from some gods. A chicken’s soft cluck was enough to make small sounds with great pitch hurl straight from my lips. One doesn’t ever expect to find a common farm animal announce itself and its presence right there on your bed. Take it from me: THE HANGOVER’s filmmakers knew that a dissonant sight is enough to create a great panic. Chickens will do that.

It must have come through the window, which is always half-open, because I locked the door when I left only ninety minutes before. And it was not a total surprise, an inexplicable event, because there are always chickens wandering around near the house, living out their lives’ tiny span in unknowing dumb cheer. Still: To come into a room that you know is now empty and have a chicken instead as its sole occupant? Well. Obscenities might have been said. (Why the mind must reach and then grasp the worst words that one knows when in fear or great anger I’ll never quite get.) The chicken, too, seemed to blurt out its own kind of swear words. If I was scared, it was petrified; in situations like this, surely chicken-language must have its fall-back profanities. (If I’m wrong, and chickens, in fact, do not speak in grammatical phrases of their own special making, and instead are reduced to those gobbles that are indeed only gibberish, then I feel for them, those future hot wings and afternoon sandwich-bread fillers. What a way to move through life. Enunciating only sounds of pure nonsense that mean not a thing. Unlike us humans. Wait.)

You feel like a fool. An idiot, at best. Here you are, ostensibly an adult, a university graduate, respected pillar of a community (at least in your own mind), and you find yourself navigating the best way to remove from the bed a scared shitless chicken. If I had grown up on a farm, milking cows at first light, branding horses’ large hooves and feeding pigs their gross slop, a task such as this might be a chore and a bore. In my world that I’ve lived, it’s instead an example of life’s absurd turn of tides. One can plan, but existence will, without fail, at one time or the next, deliver a chicken for you to deal with, have a go, best of luck. Should I pick it up by its chest? Will it peck? Do chicken’s beaks draw blood right away? As I made a soft lunge it leaped up to the dresser and then onto the closet. Where it was stuck. Wouldn’t move. Terrified. After a few minutes I heard someone making clucking noises, which perplexed the bird more, and I realized that man was myself, and I thought: Good lord, I’m a knob.

Eventually, order prevailed. A chicken-expert arrived, and the bird was returned to its wild, not five feet from the house. How little it takes to disrupt our weak worlds! To access our dumb fears. I realized once again that life is a game that requires simple rules. Otherwise, some primal part of ourselves starts to whine ‘it’s all rigged!’ How can I contemplate Libya’s near ruin at all when I’m faced with a chicken camped out on my turf?

Certain worlds shouldn’t clash, but they do, all the time. At least we can restore our own orders with effort and time. Even a chicken’s wild flight must come to an end. The sky would not fall. Equilibrium can come to a disordered plane. That’s what I smugly believed as I sat down on my bed. I hadn’t yet noticed the light-pink oval egg perched right on top of my pillow.

MY OWN FORM OF KURTZ

2011-03-07T11:19:00.001+08:00

Dustin Hoffman looks out through the glass at his Berkley so narrow. Everything that he seeks is contained in that gaze – Elaine, his future, his life as he wants it, framed in that view. As a film, THE GRADUATE is filled with a dozen shots such as this, perfect compositions that place us right there in its action. Each small moment is crafted as if life itself had some style, or a groove, or even simply a point, well-lit and soft-scored by a soundtrack that Simon and Garfunkel saw fit to give voice. At various points while watching this flick, I wanted to somehow physically find myself right there in those rooms, staring at each small window, drifting in that blue pool. Actually go there, I mean. Hunt down those filming locations, the spots where they shot. An odd obsession of mine, unfilled. (My fantasies tend to involve artforms brought to life – my life.)

Is there a medical term for this type of delusion? I have wandered inside the old stone of Japan’s ancient Buddha, and ascended the steps of Cambodia’s temples at Angkor, but I admit that the thrill was soft and quite dull when compared to the joy that I felt while entering the wide mouth of Camp White Pine’s paved parking lot, the filming location of Bill Murray’s MEATBALLS. Not far from a cottage in northern Ontario, where we leaped off the end of short docks and into our lives. A fifteen minute drive, the parents acquiescing to the kids’ whiny pleas. Around the resort, just cottages and tall trees, but there, to the right, the tennis courts where all those crazy hijinks ensued! And this path is the same one that Tripper and Rudy ran down as they trained for the young boy’s final race! Oh, the joy. To have stepped into that world, where film became life. If your own life as a child revolved around screens of wide silver, then ‘life’ as a notion needed celluloid in some form to feel tactile and real. For a few minutes, I felt that Bill Murray, camp counsellor, might somehow still be there, a raucous spirit at play, waiting for us to acknowledge his gags. I was convinced: The sweet joy of that film could be bottled and stored in my mind’s dusty basement, a firefly now trapped in a tight mental jar, if only I stayed long enough in that place, rewinding and playing all those scenes that had been filmed right there under my feet. But the filming had happened a long time ago, thirteen or fourteen years in the past, and I wasn’t the one driving. We had to go. Leaving Camp White Pine was its own small form of death. A quiet, easy exit into a kind of real world. Nothing from the past of the film was there any longer, no cast and no crew, no music or montage, and seeing the camp as it was struck a knife in my spine: I realized: This is all real; it’s the movie that’s fake.

Yet the true cinephile is a persistent strange dork, and understands that the ‘real’ world of our lives, and the ‘fake’ world of each film, must intersect at some point, a collision of collusion. Movies are, after all, made from the stuff of real life – buildings composed of hard concrete, vehicles formed of raw steel. There are remnants. Things left behind. By going to these places, standing where the actors once stood, one can link oneself to each film, insert one’s own soul into cinema. It’s almost a religious quest.

And I know I’m not alone. Scouring the net, one can find an ambitious young Canuck who has spent a day in L.A. visiting various locales from the first BACK TO THE FUTURE. Ah, now there’s a man after my own private heart! If I had my coin, I’d run up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, practicing my Rocky Balboa quick jog. I’m convinced that I would find some teenage version of myself still preserved in those places, visible only to me, not hidden, but hiding.

Of course, I need not go that far. Right now, I’m in the Philippines, and weren’t PLATOON and APOCALYPSE NOW filmed right here in this green? And isn’t a jungle a suitable metaphor for the quest one must take to link life and the cinema? Perhaps someday soon I’ll slip on my backpack, slap some mosquito repellent on the base of my neck, and then wander away through these forests so thick still foreign, searching for my own form of Kurtz, that misunderstood madman whose own logic felt sound. I think he might even be waiting for me.

EGLINTON STATION FOREVER, RIGHT HERE IN MY HAND

2011-03-05T11:20:00.002+08:00

A few weeks ago, I picked up copy of Walker Percy’s 1966 novel The Last Gentleman at a used bookshop here in Baguio, and just now, crashed out on the bed, idly reading, lazily turning the page, I came across a subway transfer receipt for Eglinton Station on the Yonge Subway line in Toronto, a line I used almost every weekend for four years while attending York University, a station I wandered through on probably more winter nights than I’d like to remember. (Is there a more lonely, windy, grimy example of life than a Toronto subway station in frost?) How many Canadians are here in this northern Philippines city? A handful, if that. The thousands of other Filipinos or expats who could have picked up this book would have overlooked this same ticket, crumpled it up straight away. Yet for me it’s a crude talisman, a link between worlds. Taking me out to another.

In secret, we think: All space and its sun revolves around us. Alone. As adults, as semi, sort of grown-ups, we tell ourselves that we are mature, reasonable, empathetic humans; we know that there are others, too, who orgasm and excrete at irregular intervals, but most of us believe that we alone are the world. How can we know what the other is thinking? We sneeze, fart, fondle, sigh. I cannot know how these acts feel for you. So we move through this life, estimating. Tangible touches, those approximate links. If I stroke your hair, tweak your nipple, smell your breath, I forget, for a time, my own beating heart. Yet humans are messy. Just give me some kind of memento to hold in my palm. A subway transfer will do.

I should keep them – all of those boarding passes and bus tickets that I find in old books. I should hoard them – these connections between strangers and countries that litter my tomes. That I throw away with indifference. Where is that person who casually stuck this faded white transfer between this book’s brittle pages? Is she taking a bath, or is he yelling at his hyper twin boys who won’t go on up to bed? Are they happy, miserable, content or confused? Did this book at one point give them what they needed so much? I would like a box of these random placeholders from paperback books. They might fill certain spaces.

Or, and this is reaching, but I’ll stretch nonetheless -- perhaps this paper transfer was mine, long ago, in my youth. It’s possible. I don’t remember reading The Last Gentleman at any point before now, but my university days began seventeen long years ago; I read a lot of books in those years, most now forgotten. Perhaps I clutched this book between frigid fingers on a February night in my just-started twenties. It might have kept me company as I rode out from North York to catch a show right downtown. If I’m not mistaken, Eglinton Station, was, for a time, the last subway stop that led to my school; at this final junction, I would have gone up the escalators, danced on two feet to fight away that fierce cold, and then hopped on a bus, fifteen minutes from there to my school and my dorm up the stairs. Casually, I’d have slipped this paper transfer between the book’s middlepages. After reading it, I might have given it away, to a used bookstore or friend. Forgotten about it. (After all, one has a lot to think about at age twenty-one.) Fifteen years later, and half a world in between, it comes back to me hardly touched, almost pristine. I hold it up to my nose. I smell it. I snort it like coke. It smells bland and indifferent. It could be anything. Belong to anyone. I want to weep. Someone before me, if not me, has used this thin strip to mark their place in some world. I hold it and rub it and wait for a genie. None comes, so I am left with its presence, its light weight in my palm.

FOR WHAT I MIGHT HEAR

2011-03-03T10:24:00.001+08:00

The month is now March, heralding the end of the ice, but the calendar insists on a warmth that is rare. Not for here; not for the Philippines. Where I come from, the Canadian winter is slowly deciding to call it a season, but this island I’m on never got with that program. Here in the north, it’s cool in the morning, cool in the night, with the random odd shower to liven the mood, but how cool can it be if t-shirts and shorts are the norm that I need? All the day long; all the year round. Something right out of a TV commercial, where ocean waves and ice tea conspire for my coin. A life where the sun’s yellow rays might be shrouded by clouds or gray skies, but exposed skin won’t freeze up after only two minutes. No silver clouds in small clusters breathed out from one’s lips. A steady stream of snot snorted up and then back, up and then back? Not here. Back home over Christmas I noticed my teeth chatter for what seemed like minutes on end, and this common facet of winter seemed rare, almost nostalgic in nature. Years since I’d felt my mouth go off in that manner. Chalk it up to the shock of the wind and the ice that gave form to my bend, greeting me with good cheer, a blunt form of face-smack. Welcome home, you’ve been missed!

Nature and nurture, indeed. Let the sociologists debate those two rigid poles of self-growth from which our minds might then sprout; a childhood in Canada offers other, more flexible angles of proof. Why don’t the academics consider the sound of a skate on the ice as it stops with a slice? You repeat that, over years, a dozen winters, let’s say, and you have an approach to the world that is clear and quite neat: The balance required to start and then halt on a frozen slick surface says more than enough about a life’s subtle needs. Or consider: the snow’s sudden melt. Spring as a bully, demanding some time. A thick sweater discarded, a thin coat your new sheath. Toques with small pom-poms replaced by a cap. Gloves stashed away in the drawer, your fingers now able to flex in the air. That first hint of warmth, when long pants are an excess. If you want to know how the human mind and its heart might react to life’s sway, a southern Ontario season could be a good start.

Now, I’m not even sure what season it is, which, believe me, is an odd place to be. Right here in my ‘fall’, the rain returned each day around three, for an hour’s shower and cleanse. Every few weeks, a typhoon might stop by for three days or four, cutting power, wreaking wrath. The skies would be dull and ash-dark for a good month or more. No winter to speak of, and now here in March summer starts in a month. I can’t figure it out. My body resists. Add to this confusion seven years in Japan (with bi-annual returns as I write), and two more in Cambodia, each nation chock full of dry and wet seasons and regional quirks that come complete with their own cliques of strong winds and deep deluges in circadian rhythm, and what do you have left? A Canadian, one who wonders, whether or not he can weather all this weather for much longer at all, this annual mishmash of seasons, this timepiece that ticks past each unbearable snowstorm and godawful rainfall, and yet each change of tide, I admit, does tend to wash in oddly shaped conks on the beach, ones that I still, more often than not, even after all of this time, dust off and inspect and hold close to my ear for what I might hear.

A CARTOGRAPHER'S SPRAWL

2011-03-02T10:50:00.001+08:00

The world as it is often seems too large to know. The endless depths of each ocean; a languid sprawl of rainforests; those arrogant mountain peaks, straining to scrape the sky’s blue-streaked wide bottom – each of these spans is a trap, a dead end’s final wall. Even the length of my room hides untold floorboard wood puzzles. If I can’t even guess how one brick of this house somehow mingles with mortar, what hope can I have to decipher the globe as it is?

Nevertheless, I scheme. I invent alternatives. I concoct scenarios, imaginary escapades whose fruition is doubtful, and so I blame the world as it is for their unlikely rate of success. Put it this way: I envision a day, not long from right now, when I will begin my strange quest to make all Earth my own. If life as it’s lived consists only of footsteps, left turns and backroads, quick strides and slow shuffles, then, given time and its minions, I might trod upon all the streets and byways that lead from this room to out there.

It’s simple, as most complex plans truly are. I leave my front door, knapsack on back, water bottle in hand. One foot lifts itself up, and the other soon follows suit. Repeat. Again. Repeat. Again. You’re with me, I know. It’s nothing alien to our human instincts. All travel consists of one motion, xeroxed. That being true, what remains consists solely of intent and time, in equal good measure. We have a limited number of hours to use; the routes that we choose thus must follow such limits. If we lived all of this life on red Mars or Uranus, or on one of those planets where each day wastes hour upon hour before night finds its groove, our travels would surely consist of less forms of small grief. Here, with the ground that we have, and the daylight that we lack, we must select where we go, to limit our fallout.

Even so, my mad endeavor’s true roots have a core of discernment. How can one decide that this place over here is truly worthy of us? There’s a vanity at play in each interlude of pure wander. We expect the location to give us ourselves in some way, a reflection of hope, some excitement or thrill. Something, at least. It does not exist for itself, but as our natural mirror or twin. “It was a fabulous place!” means it got our rocks off. The earth, by itself, exists for that sly tingle – signaling: some sex might be near. We visit those waterfalls or small towns so that our palate or crotch might find a form of sweet touch.

Yet: What if we sought not fulfillment but presence? Nothing exotic; nothing startling. Just, the planet. Every road and dirt path somehow leads to each other, and I believe, without proof, that one could tread upon all of these paths that exist, if patience became our pure goal. All the paths, ultimately. It would take most of my life, but if I started quite soon, I might just pull it off. Rip the rails right from the ground and have the tracks be my feet.

You see: I want to see every street that exists in each country, the works. I would not linger; I might not even pause for one second’s small span. Only glimpse as I cruised. Time only wields certain weapons, and one must not waste their blunt force. Would I use Google Maps? Not at all. Turn it off. Shut her down. I’d instead ask the locals to tell me where each unpaved road ends and transforms into blacktop. Take a snapshot of each sign, the street names my new buds. Start here in east Asia, and walk my way counter- clockwise.

In fifty years time, I’ll slowly step into the court that holds my true childhood home, not seen since nineteen, and now my last resting place. In my backpack, a hundred notebooks or more will be filled with street names, the world cataloged and contained. Everything will have been seen by myself, underscored and processed. In a way, at that end, the world will at last have become all my own. Of course, I won’t recollect the underfoot of every swamp or quicksand that I dodged in my travels, but when I knock on my old door, I hope to hear that the footsteps approaching from inside have a familiar soft echo.

SHOW AND TELL

2011-02-28T18:29:00.010+08:00

Sometimes random moments from life will return with full force. Just now. Me, in the car, age five, lounging in the backseat, flipping through a full-colour, hardcover book featuring Bert and Ernie, along with who knows how many other of their Sesame Street, plush-doll pals.. Somewhere in Niagara, near my home in St.Kitts. Beamsville? Grimsby? Driving through springtime, sunlight slicing its path through the rear window’s small square. One that I often lean against and lean into at night as I watch the moon chase our small car halfway home. The next day a Monday, me in Grade 1, at the front of the class, using this book as my show-and-tell prop. Proud that it’s a hardcover, and not soft to the touch.

Why now, this memory, as I reached for the fan to fight February’s thick heat? (Welcome to the Philippines.) I wasn’t thinking of books, of childhood; I wasn’t thinking of anything.

Alongside this stray recollection, another one soon arises: me with a Mcdonald’s Happy Meal toy, a blue plastic spaceship, a UFO shaped like a spiral, on each window a sticker, the shriek-happy faces of Ronald Mcdonald and friends. I particularly liked that peelable touch, the stickers; all of his buddies together, riding off into space. Something about them all being safe in one spot, awaiting adventure. Again, in the backseat of my car, that invasive hamburger smell perfuming the air, and me with my spaceship, imagining lift-offs.

That, too, became a show-and-tell moment – that Mcdonald’s space-shuttle, unique and short-lived. It wouldn’t be available forever. I had to flaunt its short life-span for all of my friends. Where it is now, I can’t say. That’s all in the ‘ago’.

Oh, please give me these touchstones, again, and again. Such warmth and great feeling. Such majestic emotion, a child’s one true trump card against adulthood’s grim slog. I recently finished Nobel Prize winning German author Gunter Grass’s new memoir, Peeling The Onion, in which he recounts the events of his life with a perplexed tone of candor. He can remember so much, and yet recall so damn little. Some events, crystal; others, only quartz. Opaque. He in his seventies, looking back sixty years; me, in my thirties, the early eighties my young time. The past is not only a foreign country, as a great author once said; it’s also a black hole, one that receives much raw data, but emits precious few signals. Yet still stuff leaks out, and I learn to slip through that hole, all at once, an accident.

If only show-and-tell still existed as life took away our small joys. Me, you, in a room. A small-town Ontario Legion hall all decked out. Soft drinks and hot coffee in Styrofoam cups. Folding tables lining both sides of the room. Metal chairs in neat rows. We all could take turns, the old folks starting first. Talking about the best things in our lives from the week that just passed. Flashing the odd souvenir we picked up from Sunday drives through small towns, or the latest new gadget, nabbed for half-price right downtown. Polite applause as we left the small stage.

I imagine a small kind of miracle as I take to the stage. As I begin to speak, as I open my bag, as I pretend what’s inside is a prop worthy of awe, down from the ceiling will float a blue plastic toy, all those Mcdonald’s friends in their spaceship, not lost at all but just waiting. For me and this moment. Three decades on, it will return to my hands. I will stare at those stickers, those portholes that feature Mayor McCheese in his suit and purple Grimace peeking out. An urge to hurl this ship like a Frisbee will come and then pass. Instead, I’ll clutch it tight, hug it, even fondle its ridges. Wondering if its descent is a fluke, or if it could not have come back until the memory had come first. If it will not return unless I give voice to its thrill. And if this is all true, I will tell everyone there of the joys of my past, staying still on that stage, until the book from that backseat spring drive will somehow pop up.

CLIPPINGS

2011-02-26T11:44:00.003+08:00

I used a nail-clipper for the first time in a good five, six years on my toes the other night. Watching TV, pretending to condescend to the auditions on AMERICAN IDOL, but secretly sort of enjoying the program, rooting them on to false dreams of redemption. I realized that the keychain that I twirled had a tool on its end. I flicked open the clipper, took a gander at my feet, whistled a little bit. Not the prettiest of sights, those feet, not the kind of transformative view that cause sentimental people to compose memorable poems or eulogies that might last. (But a blog post, well, what the hell.)

I’d almost forgotten how to use a nail clipper, that’s how long it’d been. Which is not to say that my toenails were swirling and conspiring against each other in a grotesque foot embrace; I didn’t look like one of those Indian holy men in the Guiness Book Of Records, those emaciated souls who always seem to hold the title of ‘World’s Longest Fingernails’ or ‘No Sleep For Ten Years’. The nails were probably shorter than average, if a little ragged. You see, I belong to that subspecies of humans who pick the nails on their hands and the ones on their feet. (I’ve been known to chew my fingernails, but not my toenails; I have standards. Not many, and they’re usually quite low, but I do have them.) If you’re grossed out, that’s your right; just remember: what you, yourself, tend to do with your body’s strange parts, when you think you’re alone, and that nobody is watching, could very well cause your close friends to freak out. (You know who you are.)

Oddly involving, clipping is. For a moment or two I felt like a young Ralph Macchio, snipping and shaping his bonsai tree to perfection. (I then realized that I am currently eleven years older than Macchio was when he filmed the first Karate Kid film, and that I’m nineteen years older than the actual character’s age. Me, almost two decades older than Daniel LaRusso? That’s a little absurd. I remember quite clearly watching that film at a theatre in Niagara Falls at age seven, the same weekend I moved from the only house that I’d known; wasn’t that just a few weekends ago, or a month, at the most? Looks like 1984 must be a bit farther back in my life than I’d like to believe) There’s an odd kind of Zen that descends when minute tasks are engaged. The tiny clicks that I heard almost felt sort of soothing. Something was getting done. Needless parts of myself were disregarded, abandoned.

Someday, someone might just figure out how to invent a similar gadget, one that is used exclusively for our soul’s excess layers. Stuff is accumulating there. I can feel it. Except here’s no Mr.Miyagi to help me wax on or wax off, to teach me the crane kick, the right kata to use. Think of it: we never see our nails growing; they edge onward, at night. During work. While we eat. Creeping, creeping. Stealthy, almost. Stuff attaches itself to our hearts the same way. Over time. Slights, grievances. Frustrations, anxieties. All of our hurts, swelling. Bruising, even. Only we can’t spot them grow; they linger, then fester, always unseen. There must be a physical means to erode all that pain.

Not a pill for the pain; not some stupor we willingly enter,then hide deep within. I’m thinking of a wand of some sort, one warm to the touch and quite soothing to stare at. Almost like a benign light sabre. When dark thoughts start to build, the kind that spread fast, one wave of that stick will release a form of good cheer. Such joy will dispel and disperse all that black useless gunk that rides rampant around our mind’s endless linked circuits. A holographic display will present ebony raindrops that fall from our heads to the ground in grand showers. All of our fears, dissolved. Like toenails, they’ll grow back, slowly, with force. Then out comes the wand, and we’ll clip them once more.

Until technology deems my warped wish viable, I guess I’ll have to stay vigilant, to keep tabs on my thoughts. Look for barnacles and growths that might someday become foul. Make my soul my own bonsai, and my will its plant-cutter. (Or, at the very least, think of my spirit as my big toe’s growing nail, and my humor, weak though it is, as its makeshift nail-clipper. That, too, might work.)

BURDENS TO BEAR AFTER DREAMS THAT DO FADE

2011-02-20T10:28:00.003+08:00

I awoke with a cry from a strange and disturbing dream last night, convinced that I would remember it come morning, as its unusual hybrid of horror and hilarity unsettled something deep within me, but when sunlight emerged, the dream subsided, and I wondered if this was what would I feel like in those moments before death, the details of life forgotten completely, odd, intangible emotions the only remainder to guide me wherever it is that we go when we go.

Something to do with Germany. Something to do with children, two of them, a boy and a girl. Blonde-haired, the both of them. As a child, I had a recurring nightmare involving a golden, curly-haired boy, and a black, mammoth, sponge-like creature that swallowed me whole, again and again, nightly, and perhaps this dream from last night was a sequel of sorts. A reckoning.

And that's it, essentially. No details, no plot, no narrative thread of any kind whatsoever -- all of it, gone. All that I'm left with is vague and quite primal. Fear, basically. That kind of low, lingering dread that builds in your stomach and rises like vomit. I've yet to watch a film, or read a book, or listen to a song, or argue with a friend, and be left with the kind of terror and panic that a bad dream can build.

They start somewhere else, beyond our own skulls. These dreams. If an afterlife exists, if we've all been here before, and might come back once again, I'm slightly convinced that our dreams do emerge from that place, or one of its offshoots. They do not peek their way past waking life's mortared bricks. Emotions in dreams are stronger than those lost in life. There's something wondrous and frantic about such a blunt supposition. This might imply that we live our strongest felt selves while asleep on our pillows. Think of it! If we're lucky, seven or eight hours a night, with drool leaking from lips, our farts and soft moans unheard and ignored, and this is the state that arouses our most intense forms of touch. Not physical, but the force that one feels when a lightning storm starts its crackle. Sex, spite, tender, torment, ecstasy, despair, a motley arrangement of humanity's pulse. Can we get that from life? Intermittently, I suppose. But we need sleep and our dreams to relish these vices. And I think they may drift into our nights from those voids that await us all after death.

Even the bad dreams I often want to keep close. Don't go, I think. Stay, I plead. Give me all your details, and I'll cherish them so. Of course, this is not the means by which nightmares are enshrined within our soft psyches. They must exit forever, so that their power endures. All of our books and our movies are nothing but grasping attempts to recover those visions that move us in slumber. Imagine a dream that would last for long months and then years: Would its power be dimmed, or else would it rise and then build like an endless orgasm? Unbearable, or exquisite precisely because of its lack of release?

We let them go, though. I suspect we must. Imagine remembering each of your dreams for all time, from birth unto death! Surely a waste, no? I often consider our nighttime reveries as nothing more than stray junk, the mind's masturbation, their meanings all moot. Other times, usually at night, often when I can't sleep, I reverse my own theory, and declare that these dreams are gifts from those gods that we can't see or perceive when daylight burns bright. Or perhaps they are a small present I give to myself. My sleeping self is a self quite apart from the "Scott" that roams through waking life. He tempts me to loiter in dreams, embrace their strange moods, and upon waking I wonder: Which existence, which weight, has more burdens to bear?

YELLOW OR BLUE?

2011-02-18T11:22:00.001+08:00

“Yellow or blue?”

An overheard question, aimed not at me. Between kids. Those children who play outside the small school in the church that I pass every day as I walk up the hill to the highway. In small groups, the boys over here, the girls over there. A natural division – not unlike amoebas that split, a sheer physical proof of instinct’s enigma. Not always separate, they often join forces to play versions of games I might know if I stayed in one spot and studied their moves, but what kind of a man would pause for such sport? One can’t watch children at play anymore without creating suspicion. So I quickly move on, content to let their raw laughter relay their good will. And sometimes I hear stray words in their cheer that first linger, then echo, a stray phrase of English, my past brought up front.

“Yellow or blue?”

Referring to what, I’m not sure, for recess forms it own subtle world. I suddenly recall from my past small hands clutching paper, ten hidden fingers merging and moving together as a voice counts out -- slowly, in rhythm -- the numbers I gave him. This paper looks like a fake flower, the size of one’s fist, with separate folds as its petals, small symbols on each. These are numbers, crude drawings, colours. The kid holding that paper tells me I must give him a number, from one straight through ten. If I say ‘four’, he will count quickly out loud, as his hands shift and bob, the paper opening and closing like a fish on a dock gasping one final breath. (“One-two-three-four.”) I must choose again, another number. (“One-two-three-four-five-six.”) Another number. (“One-two.”) A final choice. (“One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-NINE.”) The game is over already. The folds are unravelled. Something is written in ink underneath that last petal. A joke? A lewd sketch? What did we get for our stake in this game?

So many moments, clouded. How can I forget what once brought me such mirth? Even back then, I could never quite get how that paper was shaped into something so layered; I could never do it myself, manipulate those few separate folds into one common unit.

In class, when the teacher’s head faced the blackboard (which in truth was dull green), someone would slip out that geometric time-waster, and off we would go. Don’t make me fold it myself; just ask me to play. But what was its point? How did we win, or lose, or were those terms not the point? All I can remember is not wanting to choose, worried about what I might find, that the colour I chose might betray my own instinct and leave me with naught.

Other games, at recess: hopscotch, played with a pink plastic puck of some sort, and marbles, always marbles, the purple wine bags loaned to us from our parents the cloak that contained all our gems, those small orbs and pure gems. These games I recall, with uncanny clear vision, but the details and rules have slipped right away. Hopping on my right foot over chalk patterns on pavement that lay outside my homeroom’s side window, or getting down on one knee to line up my marble’s one chance to roll straight on to schoolyard’s faint glory. (Save the Steelie for that one, that giant silver of power, five Gobstopper’s in size.) Mini-movies that my mind can replay with clear vision, Blu-Ray in clarity, the picture just perfect. But the actual restrictions we followed to determine a winner? Gone, if they were ever there at all.

“Yellow or blue?”

So simple: choose a colour, on that paper, and all will be opened. The folds will be made flat. Sometimes I think that if I could figure out the exact rules of that makeshift toy’s easy game, other gates might be opened. If someone offered me the chance to play that same game at my present old age, it might unlock certain doors that are now firmly shut. I would recollect how to keep score on a hopscotch’s small court; I might be able to kneel with my marbles and know now for certain just who got to shoot first. These inconsequential moments from age ten and under would suddenly return, vivid and actual. I could collect them like comics, stuff them away in sheer plastic. “Oh, that’s how we did it,” I’d mutter, those small moments I’d once feared lost and forever now back with a gloss that gives me my sheen.

If I hesitated way back then, that final crayon-coloured small fold a source of pure fear, I would not do so right now, knowing all that’s at stake. I want to see what awaits me, when the paper unfurls. A joke or a sketch, each would be ecstasy. But who would suggest such a game at my age? I can’t think of a soul.

I almost pause on some mornings, to stop at that school and join in their games, to tell them: Please remember quite clearly how each one is played, for soon you’ll forget, and what is lost can’t be found once you give up the search.

I don’t say anything, though. I let them play. I fear they would not understand the intent of my words, the spirit that’s offered. In the end, it’s almost unfair to interrupt anyone’s recess, so short is its span.

(TWO AT A TIME, TWO AT A TIME)

2011-02-16T19:13:00.003+08:00

A black iron gate, open no more than a nudge, leading up and away from a winding paved road: an entrance or exit? Such a path could be used to get in or get out, but let’s up my own ante and imagine a gun, loaded and cocked, the tip of its barrel quite cold and intense against your soft secret scalp. You have to make a choice: Is this gate designed, at its core, to let someone in, or keep someone else out? You cannot split hairs, or else the gun on its own will do a fine savage job of splitting your own greying hairs with a force that will render yourself as a being considerably moot. You have to answer, definitively: Is it, primarily, at its core, an entrance or an exit? A simple question, ostensibly. All questions are simple, essentially. They simply pose varied thoughts. It’s the answers that give us such diverse forms of grief.

Perhaps a scenario or two might provide some relief. Imagine yourself out for a nice walk in the country on a night with no moon, while a car with no headlights hunts you down to your death. One can presume its intent, for the car is revving and grinding and moaning behind you, a mad beast in great heat, its prey none but you. Everything is dark, including your hope. You can feel its approach the way you would a great love who might soon lick your ear. A part of you almost craves this encounter with cold twisted metal, savage and brief, if only to compare its brute smash with your love’s slender tongue. A touch is a touch. That side of your shape is small enough to stay deep. The other lines of your rectangle recognize this great doom. For some reason or other, you soon might be dead, so it’s better to flee, or at least find a small haven. On your left as you sprint, you spot a gate open quite wide. The golden light from the lanterns that shine from the black spokes of the gate give you a glimpse of a road leading nowhere but up. To a house? A private club of some sort? If you try a sly dash and run right through that gap, you might soon reach a home, a school or convent. If you entered right now, would that car call your bluff?

Consider.

Another situation, only this time you find yourself anxious to reach a wide road, two lanes or more, just down some stone steps from your house on a hill. Something is going on in this house. Something has always been going on in this house. This house is your home, but lately this home is also a grave freshly dug, awaiting your coffin just as grass prays for rain. The past few months have unleashed memories deep from within. They bubble up in your brain, just like fizzy froth in cold glasses poured from pop cans freshly popped. (Something to do with fathers and mothers and touches so wrong. And were those brothers of yours on guard duty as well? Did they man the lookout, awaiting their turns, while evil acts were shyly performed with the fondest of slaps in closed fists? Awful, intense moments, refreshed.) You decide you must leave, and at only fourteen, if that! Thirty-six steps to the gate, not one more nor one less. You have skipped down these large stones all your life with such glee. Now you focus not on your stride, but on that gate so damn close, cracked a few inches wide. If you do make it out, life will be wide, not subtle nor strident. Everything will be open. You think, as you start your descent, that you can hear the voice of your father, calling your name, anxious and angry. Thirty-six, thirty-four, thirty-two. (Two at a time, two at a time.) The smell of fall taunting your nose. Thirty, twenty-eight, twenty-six. (Two at a time, two at a time.) Your mother’s voice now, fading, but still shaded so dark with that skewed tone of joy. Twenty-four, twenty-two, twenty. (Two at a time, two at a time.) The gate always remains unlocked in the day, but for some reason you fear that this day might be different. (Two at a time, two at a time.) You can now see sections of pavement through the gate’s iron bars. (Two at a time, two at a time.) If you reach that highway, you can flag down a car, hop in and be off. Everything will alter.

So.

An entrance or exit? One can’t have it both ways. There are priorities in life, choices to make, regrets to endure. These examples, I know, are extreme in their tilt, but is your life and its slant so different in angle? Eventually, you have to choose. You must decide, perhaps daily, what is more important and vital: to enter, even dwell, through those gates up that hill; or that you must, for your life, elude and escape, down those steps, to the road.

Everything else in this life, if not an entrance or exit?

An epilogue, almost.

DOORS THAT DESCEND

2011-02-15T20:33:00.003+08:00

Something about the scale of it all. She is so small, and the houses around her, while not mammoth or wide, gather in space and dwarf her small steps. I rap on the window, knuckles on glass. She stops her swift trot, tilts her head. Sees me, smiles. Points her finger towards some spot that must loom quite large in her quest. Totters off to the door that is waiting wide open. She steps out of sight before I can see if she enters or not.

Such an immense tiny world that exists for those under age three. Green trees and gray posts soar high to the heavens, while doorknobs and light switches remain far from her reach. Everything is above. No wonder children lurch, grab, seize! They must snatch what they can, from spots they can touch. Everything else is out there, distant. Inside, outside, everything up.

Soon life will reach down to greet her and her kin slightly more than halfway. The houses will seem slightly less grand, as doors can be turned and windows unlatched. No more need for that chair and its dangerous small wobble to aid in her search for sharp pointy toys. She will have to do what I do when I want to feel small -- look up at the sky, and hold up my arms, and wait for an entrance I hope might descend.

MORE TIME

2011-02-14T12:38:00.002+08:00

I need more time. Who decides when the hours we use should shift into days, and from there find their way into weeks and then months? Almost a stumble, despite the sun’s rise and the moon’s silver fade. A lethargic descent of light into black, the stars that ascend almost piggy-back their position onto dusk’s purple scale. Each day’s subtle end, and the night’s drifting rise, resemble a play performed for the first time. Awkward, jumpy, long and then short, the seasons deciding these stops and their starts. Held hostage, we are, to such few fickle muses. The advent of frost, and the spring’s glistening dew, a cyclical pattern that demands our assent. If we refuse and play coy, what choice do we have? Time gives us few options. Put on a sweater, or take off that coat. I need larger lags. I want longer days. I demand hot lengthy nights that open themselves up to what I might inject.

I need more time. Sometimes, most times, this one selfish wish feels more like a stray taunt. I’m cursing the seasons, then expecting some backtalk. Raging in vain against each year’s rapid sway. Only yesterday, kindgarten’s front doors opened themselves up to my whimpering sobs, while just last week I first stepped into Cambodia’s heat, that metallic fresh stink of fresh diesel and dust. Tomorrow, an old folks’ home will embrace and hold up my doddering steps, while next year my grave will be freshened by flowers and rain. I demand time and its minions, those stealthy small bandits, to stop stealing those moments I neglect to revere. Give them back, all those gaps. If you do, I will stop questioning your tick and profaning your tock.

I need more, time.

FEVER DREAM/TILTED FRIENDS IN DAYLIGHT

2011-02-09T21:28:00.007+08:00

Some kind of a fever dream. Not with slick cliche sweats, nor common moans and odd murmurs, those words in our sleep that reveal our dark hearts. Perhaps not a dream at all, but the dream of a dream, the memory of something too harsh for daylight. Some sort of a nightmare that thrilled as it frightened, made me sit up and cry out with a shriek that was akin to the wail that that one makes at an orgasm's last gasp. Awake, shuddering, unsure if my tremors were welcome or sordid. Wondering if I had been asleep at all, or merely dwelling within a dormant section of self that embraced the night's dark. Leaning back down, head on the pillow, neck craned to the right as I struggled to watch the sun as it started to slant its rays through my room. Shadow and gold, tilted friends in daylight.

Within less than a minute, this fever had passed, had just faded away like the impression of hands on sunburned purple skin. Flesh so used up by the light that its tone was the tint of the juiciest grape, a colour that belonged on the side of a can with the word 'Welch's' writ large, its logo so fierce.

As for me, I could all too easily drink from a glass with a liquid that dark, masochist that I am, but no one outside of my self was allowed to stroke my own skin with that similar shade. Something repulses, when a skin the same colour as those old 'flesh-tone' crayons slowly descends into pink and then red before landing at last in this lavender offshoot.

I once wore such a strange natural coat that masked my true skin, my young body, betrayed. Throw in some sweet sun and the ocean's swift dives and five hours later, a slow melt had begun. My skin like pure lava, hot to the touch.

I remembered that day as I lay in that bed, my fever dream slowly fading, that day by the beach, that same night when the shower's harsh pulse stabbed small knives in my flesh. I felt them as blades, those piercing soft streams. I almost screamed in the shower -- what a horror film cliche! The agony, after some days of stiff-moving propulsion, eventually left, and my skin's light drab colour reluctantly returned, and that week of pure pain soon faded away. Never gone, only stuck back in that gap in our brain where our most agonizing thoughts tend to bury themselves. (Though they always dig themselves out and rise up through the earth.)

Was my skin purple now? No, not a bit. It looked almost fresh, healthy and young. I had the urge to kiss my own wrist to taste my own self. Surely this was a hint that my fever dream (if it had even been such a beast!) had now dissipated, its forgotten small moments now merging and morphing with the dust motes lit by the sun that shot through my window and claimed this small space, those meek dots in the air that drifted with lazy sweet ease across my bare world.

I would have to get up, scratch my balls, take a leak, start this day. (Oh, the mundane, humiliating steps we must take to stay human!) How many more hours until I might sleep once again? Too many. That fever dream might return that very same night. Making me gasp, almost choke. I spat up only air, the fear was so great. I could not breathe, I wanted it so.

REMOTE CONTROLS

2011-02-08T10:11:00.002+08:00

In this morning’s first hours, faint echoes of children: laughing, singing, taunting, and even these jibes are not all that distant from glee. These sounds drift through the window and circle the room before quickly nestling in silence like chicks at ease in their nest. Anticipation and frustration war with each other in one minute’s short span. Emotions erupt; reach a peak; disperse. Joy, boredom, hilarity, horror – I hear them all, daily, making me marvel at time and its more devious routes, the backroads and by-ways that divert our attention and squeeze out our best years.

Aging induces a certain abstraction of hours that leeches out those compressions that emotions rely on. Were an adult to act as those children do, as all children do, flipping from rage to compassion, confusion to clarity, heartache to true love, all within a few random moments of a morning’s fresh start, calls would be made, appointments set up, medication prescribed to control such small shifts. After age ten, life itself (and its minions) won’t allow you to wave such unwieldy sensations.

Not within fifteen minutes, at any rate. If you were to extract those same moods and spread them all out, give us a few hours or days, a week or a month, that range would allow a certain leeway. A frustrated cry at the heavens for a traffic jam’s grind; a manic laugh of delight at a Frisbee off-course nailing your friend in the nuts; that feeling of joy that arises when one day winter decides that spring might now be the victor – you can feel all of this, provided: it not be in one hour, these emotional firebombs. Everything must be spaced out.

The result? A constant restraint of our own natural instincts. Better to let the boob tube perform its tired tricks as we live through its daily assortment of phantoms and fools. Let them on that screen live a heightened charmed life; we will allow the remote in our hand to decide which emotions we’ll sample. (Could there ever have been a more appropriate name than ‘remote control’ for the wand that we use to detach from our passions?) Or else we glide through the net, clicking and scanning and giving ourselves a few seconds of snorts or eye-rolls. Everything condensed, constrained. Something inside us, diminishing.

Children begin life so tiny but soon harbour, contain, even covet such impossibly grand and outrageous attachments to living they must unleash these large urges – and all within minutes! We adults, sad to say, seem to shrink with the years, learning etiquette’s mode of elongating our yearnings. We let out what we must, warm thanks or fuck-offs, in bursts of expressions that just approximate appreciation or hate, love or its shadow. As we age, something insists: Space it all out.

I have a plan, though. It might not work, but I suspect that its daring alone could ensure its survival. (The more illogic our goals, the greater the chance the universe might comply with our dreams, for the cosmos as well has an odd sense of balance.) Perhaps you might join me. If all the energy that’s out there never truly dissolves, as science and physics still seems to insist, I can contain the laughter of children and unleash it some day. Each morning I’ll set out a jar by the window, so the sounds from the school will land smack dab in its centre. I’ll screw the lid on so tight that no laughter might leave. I’ll do this each day for all the days that I’m granted.

At some point far in the future, when my body is withered and my brain a gray blob, when life has dissolved all my circuits and denied me my joy, I’ll reach once again for those jars, reach and then grasp, grasp and then twist, twist and then open. All those bottled-up laughs and great gasps from the past will then exit, in grand leaps and great dives, the birds from that nest finally grown and now soaring with wings that are mighty and full of their own sense of force. All that energy, preserved and now free. Once I’ve been revived, these sounds of pure life will dash through my window’s small gap, soar to the skies and spread out into the world, their collective upsurge a sonic assault that will attack all lost hopes and demand time’s surrender. A cacophonous melody, ablaze with the squeals and grand sighs of a thousand children at play. Finally, nothing condensed; nothing restrained; nothing withheld.

CLOAKED IN WET FROST

2011-02-07T09:46:00.003+08:00

After the shower, his body half-dry, his towel tied precariously around his pencil-thin waist, Perry popped his forehead’s first pimple between the thumb and index finger of his bony left hand, pinching tight, twisting almost like he was giving himself a purple-nurple, but this was not his nipple being tugged but the first honest and actual zit of his life, and looking at his small but intent movements in the bathroom mirror that hung over the sink like a glassy, glossy judge of all that he was and all that he probably would never turn out to be, he was kind of surprised at how much stuff could be squeezed out of something so tiny, red and white gunk suddenly splattering on his forehead in a rapid wet burst, almost as if he’d squished a bug on his brow, it was that unexpected and quick. A ruthless urge to smear that stuff across his finger and take a lick as he would with leftover ketchup on his plate after the fries were all gone came and went as fast and annoying as a mosquito’s low whine or a great fart still unleashed. He didn’t end up tasting this weirdly personal and glossy combination of various liquids, but he did spread it around his forehead for a little while, wondering what the white of the pus and the red of the blood would look like when they both merged together. Didn’t look like much of anything, turns out. Just a vaguely pinkish blob, a bland colour he might have accidentally while created mixing some paints in second-period art class. A tiny, slightly disgusting combo of internal juices, exposed. Perry stared in the mirror at that tiny section of his face now momentarily scarred, and he watched himself watching himself, and he wondered if this is what happened the moment you died, that somebody on the other side identical to you gave you the once-over, added things up. Decided what you were ultimately worth.

Vanessa’s annoying whine seemed to hike its way on its own up the stairs, quickly followed by his mother’s fervent declarations about something or other that thankfully lost its way in the ten-step short rise from the kitchen to the bathroom. If Perry eventually did get judged as to whether or not he was going to that fluffy-cloud-wonderland up above, or the pitch-fork-firestorm down below, he figured that the second option, should he be sent there, might turn out to be less of an excruciating eternal-burn and more of an unending sonic combination of a) his older sister's low moans and b) his mother’s endless proclamations and dissents, an unholy duet that would serve as the background chorus and curse for all eternity's song.

Well, fuck it. He wasn’t there yet. He tried to tune out his family’s morning ritual of vehement defiance intermingled with the occasional crunches of cereal and toast, settling on a lesser frequency, one almost inaudible. That zit hadn’t made much of a sound when it went, and that was the sound he was looking to dwell in for awhile, the sound of pretty much nothing at all.

That empty-echo sound he was after suddenly reminded him of something noble and gross. The other day, Tuesday or Wednesday, while walking home from school, Perry had seen a dead rabbit on the side of Highway Six, its dirty white fur all bloody and pink and almost the same colour as his freshly-popped zit. Probably been bounced off a car as it hopped across the road. Roadside gravel its grave. The eyes perfectly still, with that glassy, puzzled gaze that all rabbits seem to have, dead or alive. He saw a lot of dead animals each year by the road, small dogs and big cats and even the occasional deer, but this one had kind of got to him. Just sprawled there. In that oddly empty January silence. The same way he had wanted to take a taste of his pimple once it was gone, he had been tempted to bend down and rip off a hunk of its meat, bring it home, cook it up. A form of respect, almost. It wasn’t going to do anything anymore, that rabbit. Eating it might have been a way of performing some sort of mild grace. Once you were gone, you were gone, so whatever was left had to be used.

Perry told himself that he should probably go out and get dressed, but he lingered at the mirror, the way he sometimes did in the hallway when the blondes and brunettes passed on by, pretending to fiddle with the click of his lock’s rigid combo. Studying himself now, in the same shy and coy way he’d study those cheerleaders, those big-boobed bouncy sprites who seemed to glide straight out of his life and into other realms of existence. Did they, too, stand before mirrors and ponder their pimples?

A great sense of loss and confusion moved through him, almost like a wave of pure puke. Now that the zit was gone for good, he kind of wanted it back. Too many firsts were happening all at once. A couple of weeks back he’d found the first pubic hair of his life sprouting on the edge of his sac, solitary and black, alone in its sway. It was kind of like losing a tooth. That same feeling of loss and elation. Something was gone, he wasn’t sure what, but something else giant was coming, and he wasn’t quite sure what that would be either. If he plucked that dark hair from his testicle's edge, would others emerge to take its small place? For some reason the scary but thrilling sound of a train gathering speed sounded clear in his head.

Now this pimple had arrived and then left, and what was next stayed unknown. There was a whole constellation of budding blackheads now spread across his rather ample forehead, and he supposed they would soon sprout and mature into full-blooded zits. Would he kill all of them like he’d killed that first one? Run them down like that rabbit on the edge of its road?

The steam from his shower had now filled up the bathroom completely, clouding the mirror. He could see only part of his face, the left side. Or, rather, the mirror’s left side, which made it his right side, in real life. Why were mirrors designed to reflect life only by way of its opposite? He stared at his half-face in that frame and decided to stay in this spot until the whole thing got misty. Let all this condensation on glass cloak his face in wet frost. His mother’s rants of the morning and his sister’s grand sighs still offset his raw poise, but he accepted their noise as he would department store muzak. All he wanted right now and forever was to just stand here and stare until what he saw staring back was completely covered in cloud. He wasn’t sure how long that might take.

FAULTLINES

2011-02-05T07:44:00.002+08:00

Dividing my time between Japan and the Philippines, both countries great fault lines tend to form my true fears. Two different nations, islands afloat in a vast dangerous sea, where quakes can occur with the ease of heat lightning, flickering and flashing and fading so fast. This makes their inhabitants either rare optimists or just common plain fools, their constant delusion a willing forestall of upcoming pure carnage, or else the remnants of a faith not yet dismantled by time.

Fifteen years ago, a big boom shook all of Baguio, toppling hotels, demolishing houses, its ease and false rage like a child lowering his fist to smash misshapen sand castles. Need I mention Japan, and its history of shakes and small quivers that long to be quakes, each rumble an audition of sorts, a test of tectonics, a possible prelude. I have been in buildings up high when the frame starts to tilt, a slight steady shift to the right, a quick return to the left, a sequence repeated, a life in its sway. One expects such a sensation atop a surfboard, small waves underneath, but to feel a modern glass edifice forgo its own strength, that firm grounding beneath that holds up all above, makes one question the wisdom of progress in all its false forms.

When the ground opens up and takes down its steel tenants, we can guess that the game is fixed from the get-go, because the ground always wins. Right? You can’t punish the earth. It just sits there. We rebuild with great fanfare and small acts of exertion, a daily grind of construction that defies all our good sense. Everything lies beneath us, waiting. I’m not saying malevolence and pure spite can be found underfoot. Yet nature, too, has a form of slight vengeance that could mirror our own. Not controlled by an intellect, or a crude form of rash instinct, but simply innate, its proof of existence the sum of its actions. Concrete ripped in fine slashes like xacto knife cuts in notepaper. Stepping over these cracks, the width of small chasms, a child’s game brought to life.

Even writing down such small fears feels like a sly taunt to the gods. If I say it out loud, acknowledge my own anxious voice, perhaps nothing will happen, the ground will stay put. For sometimes I worry. I wonder. Selfish wonders. That tiny shames could grow large if the end arrives at odd times. If ‘the big one’ occurs while I’m stuck in the shower, or merely having fun with myself (or another!), what a way to go out! Naked, hopefully erect. (Strange thoughts, tiny notions, contemplating these exits, but a human does think of absurd final rites, and I'm simply human: does one’s hard-on die down right away when life fades straight to black? Or does it linger straight up and damn proud, even as your soul shifts its course? To be found buried in rubble is a fate cruel enough, but with a salute such as that poking its way through those rocks! Do first year med students get quizzed on such stuff?) The smallest of shames, magnified by the scale of a country destroyed, ten thousand lives torn asunder. The loss of small children and old people, smothered slowly to death, wars with a vision of lovers deeply french-kissing as ceilings quickly fall down. What a sight. I could draw a thousand of these hopeful images, and pray that each portrait might give nature some pause before havoc becomes one more option to choose.

Best not to brood on these endless stray paths. I am not a fatalist, not exactly, but I know that nature has random whims we are foolish to judge. To be stuck between two worlds all too similar, each land containing the mad schism of earth’s own divide, is to recognize certain fates that might well come to pass. One can wait.

I also believe in the sweet whim of chance. Those misshapen cracks in the ground, the earthquake’s zipper-like indentation – perhaps those gaps are like breadcrumbs, leading me back to a place close to home. All of nature’s senseless designs must, I can dream, be aligned with a great many and varied gracious muses of fortune, so I suppose I will have to hope that luck’s infinite footprints can on that shaking day be seen by my own squinting eyes. If this vision is clear, I could then follow these random slight imprints, and stable ground might be found.

GRANT'S ROUTE

2011-02-03T07:50:00.003+08:00

Grant approached each of those gravestones with reverence and glee. He often asked himself: How could one not experience awe upon touching that granite? Paradoxically, he also could not deny the small starburst of joy that rose up from his stomach and tickled his throat each time he advanced. He felt a strong need to unite these two extremes of emotion, the profane and the holy, a small synthesis of some sort that might extinguish his guilt. For one should not experience joy on one's knees at the home of the dead. Yet he did, along with the sense that each plot below ground contained scraps from the cosmos. The infinite, extracted.

That God's own small expansion chose its great spread in the guise of a green-grass studded park, filled with bright flowers that bloomed with a fierce vivid pride, seemed poetic and random, a grand joke lacking mirth. Grant came three, four mornings a week to Fairview Gardens And Lawn, and each visit confirmed his own confusion as constant. Why should the final resting place of the dead be so fragrant with scents that engendered such hope? Each rose that he sniffed filled him up with the sense that his life might bring joy. An elongated happiness, extending through years yet to come, with friends he would make in the months from this moment.

These thoughts, as he wandered the paths that wound through this large park. Other thoughts, however, invaded his space and refused to give way. All well and good, that the flowerbeds he enjoyed brought a certain peace to the living, but what of the dead, who were housed here for good ? Did those bones underground understand his small joy? Would they care if they could? How is it fair that the cramped darkness they dwell in, submerged in raw dirt, is offset above ground by petunias that bloom with such inborn intent? Does it make a difference at all to those skeletal fragments who patiently wait for their winter to end? Questions like these -- what Grant hoped he might answer by coming here often.

Nonchalance was his preferred mode of action, a kind of concerted, casual bereavement. He imagined cemetery staff taking note of his strolls: Yes, yes, a sad gentle chap. Comes a few times a week, he does. Kneels before various headstones. Family members, I suppose, or friends. People do tend to lose a lot, as life goes along. Can't really blame him for paying respect, though he's here more than I am, and I'm here quite a bit.

However, it became hard to vary one's stroll and disguise your ambition when days became weeks, with months soon to follow. There were various groundskeepers and guards always poking around; he often gave them a wave, certain that this semi-friendly gestures of theirs meant they had unearthed his true plans. Soon he understood that was silly -- they couldn't care less who came in or stayed put as they mowed lawns and locked gates. This was an open space, a public space; as long as you weren't pissing on gravesites or lurking on after dark, you were free to roam or stay still, your choice yours alone. They weren't watching anybody, let alone him. Besides, the whole grounds were quite large, winding well past the main gate and the large staff building beside it. He needn't worry about his naturally strange way of walking, that truncated shuffle-step, or the habit he had of bending down at each grave, his left knee first to the ground. Nevertheless, he always took care to look dour and crestfallen, and he began to vary his route, starting each day at different graves and small gardens, a cautionary pose. Eccentricity had its own form of action, and he eventually acquiesced to its arc.

Lately, the gravestones around the big pond demanded his touch. The cemetery had two ponds: a small one by the road that the the ducks never went near, and a larger body of water far from the park's gates, whose surface held charms only ducks might decipher. Why the ducks didn't want to even sample the smaller pond's water remained an enigma. To Grant, anyway. Perhaps nobody else considered such thoughts. Grant did, because spending the bulk of one's time in the realm of the dead made each day a pursuit of old patterns ignored. Ignorance was not bliss, but neglect's sordid cousin. The headstones near this pond would not join that sad family, if Grant had his way.

To begin with, a child. Always bad, to start with a child, but there was a concrete order in place, literally, established and solid, so what could he do, the dice had been tossed. (Who threw those dice in the air from the get-go was the question he longed to ignore but could not quite dissolve.) He always proceeded from the left to the right, the logical path; this procession, no matter how basic, gave him some form of a grip on a slippery gamble. (To examine these deaths, even half-removed in this way, required a kind of control, no matter how fragile.) The first headstone was small, barely waist-high, as thin as the slice of white bread he'd wolfed down for his breakfast. At first he refused to believe it was stone at all; it looked more like scrap paper dyed gray, and almost as fragile. Grant reached out with his finger, then pulled it right back, as if he had felt the heat from a flame reach out for a singe. He was afraid that his touch might topple it over. Scolding himself -- don't be a ninny, you fool! -- he tried once again, and this time he touched stone, the letters, the name:

HAROLD GIBBS
September 24, 1944 - March 21, 1949
OUR SON AND OUR BROTHER
NOW AT REST WITH THE ANGELS

A light breeze ruffled his hair as he traced each letter and number with his finger's soft tip. Was it the wind of the season, announcing its start, or eternally young Harold Gibbs, reaching out from the heavens?

SPOTTERS

2011-02-02T07:51:00.002+08:00

We all took turns being the spotter. He was the one who stayed in the back, just behind the boat's driver, watching the water to prevent a quick death. Of course, your ostensible role was to shout out to the skipper 'he's down!' when the skier smooched waves; our actual role was more blatant and grim -- make sure that your friend does not somehow die on your watch. Not that we thought in those stark, gruesome terms. Consciously. I don't think we thought about much of anything out there, let alone death. Consciously. Yet it was a good role to give to a teen who has barely begun to sprout hair on his pubes -- that of an aquatic designated driver, of sorts. One felt as if life had bestowed upon you a certain regard.

The way it worked, the skier would sit in the water, bobbing. The life-jacket you wore let you sit on your butt in the lake and just bounce like a buoy, with the yellow rope stretching out from the boat now lined up between your two skis, your knees half-submerged, the triangular-handle, identical in shape and size to a pool table's racker, clutched tight in your hands as your fingers found grip. Clutched as one would a baseball bat at the plate, with a similar kind of nervous anticipation, only here you controlled all the motion to come. You started everything. When you were ready, you gave the o.k. Usually: "Hit it!"

Then you were up, almost like that. Years of practice had make a two-ski start pretty basic. The boat had to rev rather quickly to allow you some lift-off, but if that boat gunned it good, you could spring up like a pogo stick bounced on pure rock. On top of a lake, riding the wake, feeling light, almost vapid. Eventually, after a fair bit of cruising and coasting, you might decide to lift your right leg to signal a drop -- that semi-reckless urge to go slalom, letting one ski simply slip right out of our foot, with all the ease one might have as one kicks off a flip-flop. You moved your bare foot, pink and now dangling, behind your wet ass and into the slot on the back of the one ski you had left. Balance now became its own form of gravity. Often, you fell, face-first, fast and blunt. The sensation not unlike ramming into a closed door, only at a car's racing speed, with your body declaring a pretzel's strange form has its own charm you should trace. Once you were down, your arm would then raise, waving. (What's that old line -- 'not waving, but drowning?' Here, the opposite.) Signalling: All is okay, I'm still here, not yet dead. Full motion to stop, an instant's harsh curve. I often wondered if this was how a page's sentence must feel when attacked by a period, so sudden and final, all that rhythm now blunted.

The spotter must see this. He should notice everything. If he doesn't, the boat's driver will think that the skier's still skiing. The boat will keep going. If you get too far away, it becomes physically hard to see your friend in that water, alone, floating. (An orange life-jacket's glow only extends a short space.) You, the spotter, are supposed to sit there and wait for a fall. That's all you're there for.

And there is always a fall, each time, no exceptions. Either the skier crashes into a wave and goes flying in spirals, or he finally gets too damn tired, dropping the rope, sinking right down. An odd image, that -- to see someone on top of the water slowly sink like a fruit slowly dipped in some chocolate. Smoothly, the lake wrapping his shape in its whirling wet cloak, a rapid descent. There's nothing that you, the spotter, can do. Only watch. That's your position.

Sometimes, as a spotter, I'd drift away from my duty. Only for a few moments. I"d reach my hand out, over the side of the boat to stroke that wet joy. When a boat is booming, the rush of the waves on one's skin has a crisp restless slink that creates its own suction. You almost feel that the water might grab you and yank you right out of the ship. Alas, the boat is too fast, the water too fluid. As long as you stay in your seat, the overboard option is moot. I'd stare transfixed at the water, white and blue in its tint, the sky and the sun's gentle gift to perception. The roar of the motor and rush of the waves both combining to make my own mix-tape of sound. Please let me stay here forever, in a boat on the water. When the boat slowed down to a stop, so, too, did the waves. No more rush on your forearm from that collision of motion, only placid water so still it almost felt plain and disheartened. I wanted thrust, action, immersion. Was that too much to ask from a life still just starting?

A slight bump would jolt me right back to my self. My friend was now in front of my gaze, behind our small boat, relying on me to make sure he stayed safe. I felt adult in intention, not yet mature, but beginning to fill up with life's small rewards of ascension. Soon, I, too, would be floating on those same skis by myself, and this seat would be filled with my friend's own tired focus. He, in turn, would look out for me. Roles reversed; each integral. There was something ennobling within that shift of duty.

Yet both of us still young enough and dumb enough to hoot and holler when a great spill off the skis was performed with dumb luck. Mock-clapping and shouting 'good job!' with great glee. Teenage snorts all around. Levity our one goal. Necks getting red with the summer's harsh sun, that slow aching sting our one proof of good health.

Dusk fast approaching, though. Our mums both cooking dinner back on the beach, the grill getting ready, our dads kind of bored by the boat's endless circles. Enough time, if we're fast, for another short spin. Both of us still agile and eager, but there's also exhaustion's first yawns, in spurts, almost stealth. You can only stay up for so long on those skis before your arms get all weak and your legs just give way, letting you sink.

DANGEROUS ASSES DESCENDING: A CAUTIONARY TALE (WITH HAMSTERS AND GERBILS)

2011-02-01T08:02:00.007+08:00

There have been those times, rare but intense, when life as a hamster has seemed an agreeable option. A blue plastic wheel to while away life's endless days, and stay fit as one spins; a bowl full of water, to sip at one's leisure; a bed of brown woodchips, a comfy mound to crash on when one's legs are all sore from tense hours of exertion. Does not this sound like a comfortable means of existence? Boring, you might think, but I say: Don't judge. Boredom might be pure serenity's price. My grade-school experience informed me quite early: tragicomedy divides its rich spoils between humans and animals in equal measures of farce.

Can we even compare our own lives in this realm with a gerbil's strange trip? Here is the point where a confession must come: I'm not sure of the difference between a hamster and gerbil. There. I've said it. More educated readers may snort with derision until snot exits nostrils in short spurts of disgust at my small feeble brain, but what can I say -- tomato, tomahto. I get that they are two, separate sorts of small mammalian creatures, but to define that distinction? I haven't a clue.

As a child, TV Ontario featured a series called Hammy The Hamster, a live-action saqa of grim hamster drama -- up close, if not all that personal. In memory, these episodes usually consisted of our young hero, Hammy, floating on rafts through perilous rough waters, probably filmed in some sink the size of a red picnic-size cooler, with stagehands off-camera creating illusions of building-high waves with a hair-dryer's weak gust. Nevertheless, he looms large in my mind, Hammy does, and that, I admit, is where my whole image of hamsters most likely was formed -- those large, brave animals that embarked on adventures alone in the wilds of Ontario.

A gerbil, by contrast, is a small, meek creature, a portrait of helplessness that cries out for compassion; weak, almost feeble. Perhaps this (admittedly biased) conjecture on my part stems solely from one childhood encounter with gerbils, hilarity and horror intertwined ever since.

In Grade 4, our teacher gave the class a gerbil to take care of, to nurture and love. (This same teacher was obsessed with everything Garfield -- the cartoon and the books, the mugs and plush toys -- and she she often told us funny tales of her life lived with a woman named Gracie. I couldn't figure out why a grown woman was living with another grown woman; in my small world, I had never heard or seen of such a thing. Only a decade or so later did I suddenly piece things together.) One student fed the gerbil at lunchtime; another changed its water bowl during recess; another would clean out the cage -- you get the idea. This was seen, I'm sure, by the adults as a chance for us kids to learn responsibility, even ethics; after all, one only gains empathy and caring through concrete forms of endearment. To achieve such a goal, selected students could take our gerbil home for weekends and holidays. Grand idea in theory; potentially disastrous in practice.

Which it was. One student -- G.Atkins, I believe, if my memory is spry -- brought our pet home for a Saturday and Sunday of good-hearted frolic, only to tell us on Monday, teary-eyed (but just slightly!), that his little sister had sat on the couch and smooshed our gerbil to death.

What an image! Comedic and tragic, together, at once. Please imagine a tiny young girl plopping down on her couch's comfy cushions to watch some cartoons, and cruuuuunch! Her eyes growing wide with alarm, she stands up and looks down. Confusion turns to surprise; shock shifts to horror. Her first encounter with the death of a loved one, and by way of her butt! The sound of a neck slightly snapping, and her tush somehow still feeling the slight touch of its fur. The carcass is wedged between plush purple pillows, small neck at an angle, craning, but still. The girl leaps up the stairs, screaming. Her mother, concerned, quickly follows her back down to the rec room, views the mild carnage, stifles a smile and a sob and a laugh none too small, and kisses her daughter's head softly, twice on its top. Shhh. Shhh. It was only an accident. Everyone will understand. The gerbil must have slipped out of its cage through a door left unhinged. Went for a roam. Discovered how comfy a couch truly is. And met its cruel fate between a child's cheeks of pure doom. A girl under age five who pees her own pants is awash in urine and shame, but to accidentally kill the pet that's on loan from your older brother's whole class? By sitting right down on its head? I can only imagine.

Nevertheless, I'm sure that that tiny critter who died for us all led an enviable life. Short, yes, but I'm cautiously confident that gerbils and hamsters live condensed little lives, complete with all the great joys and small sorrows us humans endure. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that the death of that gerbil may well have been worth it, in life's grand senseless scheme, if only because it gave a group of nine-year old kids their first true glimpse of dark death in its most nonsensical form. That poor gerbil's demise provoked sadness and pity -- but more than a few chuckles, too.

I asked myself: How COULD such a death be both funny and sad? Ridiculous and tragic? I, myself, sat on a couch quite often, every day after school; if a giant woman had sat on my head, and I'd died from her rear end, would my classmates have laughed at my death as they'd done with the gerbil? Don't we now, as adults, regularly roar at other peoples' pratfalls and misfortunes on YouTube, and forward them straight off to friends so they, too, can mock their small stupid slips, their pathetic pratfalls?

Perhaps the hamster is on to something. Once you escape from the cage, you run the risk of being smothered by buttocks, asphyxiated by farts. Best to stay safe inside, where there's water to drink, gentle woodchips for rest, and a wheel you can run on, endlessly, forever.

Unless life itself is our own wheel that we tread upon daily, and there's no cage to begin with, no wire mesh to protect us and shield us from danger's delight. In that case, dangerous asses are everywhere, descending at random. We better keep looking up.

LIFE APPROACHES: A LOVE STORY (HARDY BOYS EDITION)

2011-01-30T07:44:00.010+08:00

Oh, allow me to dwell for a time in that book's brittle pages. I recently found it jammed in a box here in Baguio, stuffed far down below, a reprinted small replica of my own self's treasured start. Of the story itself, I could recollect not a word, but that cover! Young Joe Hardy, brown brushcut clipped tight, bends down on one knee to stare with concern at the dark footprints beneath him on the airport hangar's dirt floor. Older sibling brave Frank, black-haired and akin to Beaver Cleaver's big brother good Wally, frowns with confusion, while a policeman kneels on one knee far off in the corner, a piece of stray driftwood clutched tight, this enigma's stray heart. In the doorway behind them, a radio tower off in the distance waves its red flag, while the rear of a plane behind Frank lets us know where we are. I could, and I have, stared at that cover for hours, for who says that one's greatest awe must be found only in sunsets, or a nipple's small suckle?

Suddenly coming in contact with the physical presence of books that I've read as a child always fires me straight back to my first years on earth. This one volume right here, Hardy Boys Number Nine, The Great Airport Mystery so poignant, smacks me head-on with a blunt psychic slap. I feel almost physically stung, as if I should rush to a mirror and search for red cheeks. I don't remember the first Oh Henry! I ate, nor the first Tab cola I slurped, but Hardy Boys Number Nine -- what a raw scab I still scratch! (If it was another book altogether that still makes me so hard from the thrill of one word kissing another, a sensual string of illicit language liasons -- so be it. A false romantic view of one's past is hardly a sin to be scorned.)

Like Joe Hardy, I too, have an older brother, and I'm quite sure that this book was his before mine, but after me, let me state: no else stroked its firm spine, unless they silently scrounged my own bookshelf while I slept late at night. Something about that cover. Perhaps it was the sight of the two brothers themselves, our own doppelgangers (I wished!), intent and determined to solve this odd crime, despite their young age; or the soft silver glow of that police officer's badge; or the strange looming sight of that immense plane in the background, the painted blue wing on its side outlined in red trim -- all, in some manner, mysteries I might unravel, if only given a chance.

We all invent our own memories. Sometimes we're not sure what was actual, or merely an old photo's transmission. Yet that rising, tickling sensation returns when I stare at this book; images, arising. Myself at age six, tracing its cover, scenting its pages. (If you do not instinctively smell the whole breadth of a book before flipping it open, I'm not truly sure you can understand my obsession; if you neglect such a sniff, in truth, I feel pity.)

And a hardcover! These books were designed for my own meagre age and poor reading ability, but its binding bespoke an adult's large world and obsessions. If I might read such a tome, could I step any closer to Carson, that late-night treat for grown-ups? Dare I enter these pages, and possibly discover those secrets that lay just beyond nine-thirty at night? Only hardbound books might offer a look at a life that was more than mere noisy cartoons, or connect-the-dot outlines of vague shapes in blue crayon.

Before the orgasm erupts with all its new frantic shivers, what's the closest cousin we have to such spasms within? Whatever life force it is, I'm sure that I nudged it awake upon cracking that cover and finding a page near the front listing more excitement to come: What Happened At Midnight, While The Clock Ticked, The Witchmaster's Key and The Sting Of The Scorpion. Holy smokes, what a find! Such a future to follow! Not to mention the charcoal-style drawings beside the title page's bold print, offering a hint of adventures immense and unlikely, but present, right here between this back cover and front stacked so solid and firm. All I need do was open up.

So, that was some kind of a start. I soon read Hardy Boys books with abandon, in a literal sense -- all of real life as I lived it soon became a quaint backdrop to tales of domestic excitement, tarted with danger. Each story concluded with a foreshadow and tease -- the name of the next book in the series, embedded within the current adventure's last page, a crafty publisher's trick, not that I cared. Another, another, another. Give me more, again, better. The desperate lover's sad plea.

How long did it last? A year, probably less. A short, intense affair, myself submerged in another's embrace. After I devoured all those Hardy Boys stories --ignoring Nancy Drew's similar series with a quiet resolve -- I felt a great guilt descend, and I relapsed back to my first love of comics, and stayed loyal to them, more or less, stoned and drunk with their undemanding old magic, for a good four or five years.

I betrayed this vow only the once, and my heart still hangs low, drooping. For it involved Nancy Drew, and her escapades were for girls, end of story, enough. Please don't give them as gifts, I silently pleaded to unsuspecting grandparents and friends. One afternoon yard sale at the end of Grade Three, I rummaged through paperback stacks on somebody's front lawn until I found a new find: a tattered TV-Movie tie-in, a late Seventies relic, both Hardy Boys and young Nancy Drew teaming up to fight crime, with eight pages of dumb heartthrob photos stuck square in the middle, glued to the spine. Should I allow Nancy Drew to enter my world? Was the potential reward enough of a lure? Tormented, I finally decided to give it a go. After all, the Hardy Boys were her friends. Perhaps she had more grit than I could know or suspect. Begrudingly, I decided to accept her role in this tale, but it felt forced and unwanted, a betrayal of self. My first glimpse of compromise.

This, on the same day as my school's annual spring Fun Fair, Pine Grove Public's hurrah, not the summer itself but that courtship's first dance. Wandering around the transformed parking lot, a makeshift carnival on tarmac. Blue cotton candy inhaled straight from tiny white sticks, each lick and quick chew staining my tongue shades of sky. (Why do we eat other foods, yet inhale cotton candy?) The spring afternoon fading quickly to dusk, me walking home under shy purple skies, my face painted clown-white, crimson lips as an add-on, and that Hardy Boys find clutched between sticky fingers, skeptical, but excited, too. In Nancy Drew's own brave decisions alongside Joe and Frank, I might discover I'd been wrong, and this was enticing, a thought adults might consider.

A 1993 reissue, this current edition of The Great Airport Mystery's copyright states. 1965, 1957, and 1930 are the other reprint years duly dated, an entire century's vast sprawl reduced to small type, the years themselves slinking backwards in reverse incremental incarnations. Were we to somehow enlarge that white space between those four bloodless dates, a magic glass magnifying, our old house might arise from those random blank gaps, 10 Bayshore Crescent returned, restored and in full.

The year, 1980 -- or '81, at the latest. An ordinary evening, distilled. The family room is downstairs, just below old-fashioned doors saloon-style in design. Next to the fireplace squats our black-and-white television, just turned on and still warming, its small silver dot growing wide and inclusive, the CFTO news jingle announcing the hour; my father sits leans back on the couch with the paper all spread, as his pipe smoke slowly slinks through the room's cosy charm; my brother beside him, holding his small plastic glass of ginger-ale mixed with grape, an evening's great treat after street hockey's demands; the warm scent of roast chicken slowly cooked in the oven drifts down from the kitchen above, as my mother hums softly to the radio's tune, puttering and putting our whole lives in their place. I wander in from the toyroom, restless and bored, the Silly Putty's soft squish in my palm my lame attempt at delight. On the corner of our small oak coffee table, a new hardcover book made for children sits near its edge, forgotten, almost falling. Intrigued, I move forward. From now, life approaches.

COST OF LIVING (first part of a fiction)

2011-01-28T12:32:00.032+08:00

After the war, the three of us left alive from our regiment decided to split the cost of living by renting an apartment together in downtown Toronto. It was a one bedroom, one bathroom, one kitchen, one everything. I volunteered to sleep on the floor. Nobody else objected, but after the first couple of nights, when they awoke in the morning to my nude sprawl on the rug, they suddenly gained a quick case of propriety. Terrence said that we could alternate – he’d get the bed Mondays, I’d get it Tuesdays, Martin on Wednesdays, or we could switch the order all up if some night one of us brought a broad home. (They still had enough of the military ethic in them to believe that a system of some sort could solve almost anything. This, despite what they'd lived through for themselves for the past three desperate years. Proof enough, for me, that the army squeezes the good stuff right out of you. Injects its own stream of self-serving poison, that racket does, and all too eagerly.)

I finally told them: Fuck it. Just give me the floor

Harsh cold and discomfort: my bedfellows of choice. I had spent a good many months sleeping on dirt and all of its natural cousins, and I had grown to enjoy, even require, hard rocks as my pillows. Could cracked kitchen tiles be any worse? Even the gouges those stones made on your neck and your ears offered their own form of love. The rain made you wet, the snow made you shiver, the sun’s rosemary heat burned you quite red, but those stones, at night, nicked you with edges that snapped you awake; compared to the weather, they at least served some sort of purpose. I couldn't find much else that did.

The pain from those nights spent scrunched up on granite didn’t even feel all that bad. Almost desirable, even. I grew to relish the sudden jolt out of dreams that shot me straight up out of my sleep and awake into the night. It reminded me that I hadn’t bought it just yet. I often thought of those stones’ sudden scratches with every shift of my neck as akin to own girl’s lengthy red nails back home in Fort Erie, sharpened to talons just to test my soft skin. Made sense. She could get rough sometimes, and needed to see how much I could take from what she might give. The rocks weren’t any different. Smelled better, too.

Two years, off and on, of sleeping like this made white sheets and warm blankets an affront to my manhood. Give me a stray spot on the floor beside our small fridge, I told them. You pussies can have all the rest. They accused me of trying to play the tough guy. The war’s over, they said. You can relax now. At least take the couch. I told them to fuck off and let me sleep where I wanted. If 'playing the tough guy' was my one secret ploy, it wouldn't be enacted by arguing over who got the goddamn bed. The fridge’s dumb hum every night was bad enough; I didn’t need their daytime preaching in my ears, too.

For the first few weeks after returning to Canada, we all just kind of moped around. We were not unlike kids that had just been yanked inside from our recess five minutes too soon. We ate, boozed, screwed around, almost by rote. As much as my roommates insisted that they were ecstatic to be free from the army’s tight grip, I sensed a different truth from the stares they would suddenly put on like cheap masks from the five and dime store back home.

One afternoon I woke up from a nap and saw Martin staring out of our tiny kitchen window, looking up at the snow that had steadily been falling since breakfast, a wide ruffled blanket extended like cotton. Giant, white flakes. We’d seen a lot of that stuff up in the moutains in Europe, and it had always reminded us of home. Now we were here and it didn't remind us of anything. It just was. Cold and wet and ugly.

I could tell by his gaze that his mind was already back there. He had a half-mournful, half-pitying face, but grotesque in its pose, exaggerated and false. I’d never seen anything like it. Almost as if he was imitating what somebody sad was supposed to look like. Something that looked so blatantly false must surely be real.

“Tell me this,” I said. I leaned up off the floor and swiped some solid sleep from my eyes. I was so hungry that it actually looked almost edible. Army food will do that to you. “Ain’t you the one who told me to get over it? You aren’t going to find anything out here that we left behind over there.”

He turned around and took a look at me head-on. I could see the one-quarter Metis in his face from that angle. Depended on the light, usually, but I spotted it this morning clear enough. A kind of natural cloak to his face that matched his black hair. I was going to make a crack about him scalping me, my usual jibe, but I shut my mouth before the words sneaked out. I sensed a shadow or two.

“I’m just looking at the snow, boss ,” he said. “Watching it fall.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” I said. Already thinking about how I could get the hell out of here for good and somehow make him feel better. I was too exhausted and indifferent to offer advice. “Looked like you were getting ready to jump out and start some other kind of life, depending on how the drop went. This is only four stories, you know. There's a chance you might actually live. You telling me you survived Hitler and Hirohito in order to break a leg on Yonge Street?”

That made him smile, but Martin’s smile had never done much for anybody, let alone himself. One of those half-hearted grins that made the other person wonder what lay underneath all that forced joviality. Anybody who forces a smile once too often can never truly look real ever again. Something else I picked up overseas.

UNIBROW II: CORRINE

2011-01-28T07:47:00.008+08:00

-- Continued from 'Unibrow'. (Scroll down for the first installment.) A small-town 7-11 has been robbed, and an employee, Travis, was shot and killed. Employees are being questioned. Stories aren't jibing.)

Wait. Cameron said that? What a tool. Complete, Canadian Tire, power drill, tool. First of all, I wasn't the one that told him about Travis getting shot. I dont talk to Cameron if I can help it. Cameron, like, invents these conversations between us: "I was talking to Corrine, and she told me... Blah, blah, whatever. He thinks we have this, I don't know, bond. Our shifts usually don't even overlap all that much, maybe twice a month, but I know for a fact that he tells everybody at the store all the time that we were talking about whatever it is that pops into his whacked little brain. He just says shit.

Did Cameron tell you that we used to go out together? Or that we were even, like, friends? Jesus, what a knob. I've known him since, like, Grade Four, and I dare you to find one, single, person in the entire town that would tell you we went out for, like, as long as a day. An afternoon, even. We had some of the same classes together, sure. Chemistry, Math in Grade 11. Maybe Canadian Studies, I don't know. It's been awhile. He might have been there. I didn't, like, keep track of his presence. He wasn't on my radar, basically. I don't think he was ever on anybody's radar.

Wait. Who told you that? Kimberly? Oh my god. I know she was the one that told you that story. I know it was her. Not many people know it to begin with, so it has to be her. She hasn't liked me, since, I'm not even joking, Grade Three. I can't believe she told you. Like that little fact has anything to do with Travis, like, dying.

Well. I'm not going to lie to you now, because first of all, I don't lie. Like, to anyone. Let alone cops. Second of all, it doesn't mean anything, so whatever. You know already, obviously. I gave Cameron a handjob, like, three or four times, max, okay? Big. Effing. Deal. If he thinks that, like, constitutes a relationship, and if Kimberly does too, they, are, lunatics. I barely even remember it at all. Not because I'm, like, a slut, like I've had a hundred guys or anything, not because of that, but because, like, he's not the kind of guy you'd really want to remember. For a thing like that. Nothing special in that, like, genetic category. I think you get what I'm saying.

And it was, what, like seven years ago? We used to go watch the football team play. I think it was, when was it, fall of Grade Ten, maybe? I was supposed to be cheerleading, but I, like, twisted my ankle in practice, so I was out for a month. It still hurts when I stand on it for too long at the store. Anyway, I went to the games, just to see how all the other girls did on the sidelines. Cameron tried out for the team, and was cut, like, I'm not even kidding, the first hour. That's what he told me. So I ended up sitting beside him on the top of the bleachers a couple of times. I think he, like, manoeuvred himself beside me. We started talking and stuff, whatever. Like I said, I've known him since we were, like, nine. It's not like I could just ignore the dude. And it gets freaking cold in November, especially with the wind whipping all around the bleachers, and he wasn't as bad looking then as he is now, so, whatever. Stuff happens. It was all, like, discreet. I mean, hardly anybody ever came to our football games to begin with. I never saw any of you guys there. And it's not like we filmed it. And God, we were fifteen. And it's not like I even blew him, and if Kimberly says I did, she, is, mental, because that, never, happened. Probably in Cameron's dreams, it did. His dreams, my nightmares, right? Maybe in her dreams too, for all I know.

I only heard about it later, when I came in for my shift after the shooting. Vincent said that Cameron said that I was the one who told him that Travis was shot in the face. Yeah, in the unibrow. I totally didn't tell him that, because first of all, I didn't talk to Cameron at all after Travis was shot, not once, and second of all, Travis didn't even have a unibrow, so why would I, like, explain it that way? I guess Cameron is telling everybody that Travis looked like Bert from Sesame Street, which is ridiculous. I'm not saying Travis was getting ready to apply to be on The Bachelor or anything, but the dude did not have a megabrow on his forehead, and he was sure as hell better looking than Cameron himself.

Who, by the way, was constantly putting Travis down, telling him he was dumb and shit. He did the same thing to me whenever I saw him. I was reading one of the Twilight books at the till when he came in for his shift one night, maybe the third one in the series, I can't remember, and he was all, "ugh." I'm like, "fuck you Cameron!" I never see him reading anything. He just wanders around town with the stories he makes up in his head. That guy's still stuck in the past on the bleachers with me. That's his little fantasy, and he's making fun of me for actually reading a book?

Anyways, I don't want to talk about it anymore. Any of it. I just don't. You work with a guy for six, seven months, and he gets shot in the face, it just, I don't know, it makes you all sick inside. Then you add on top of that, the fact that people you've known for years are making stuff up about you, telling people you told them shit that you didn't, it just makes me even more, like, ugh. Bad enough we have to work in the same store where our co-worker, like, died.

And I don't see what any of this has to do with the fact that Travis is dead, and that the guy who did it is still out there bopping around. I don't know if you think some of us are bullshitting you, for whatever reason, but I told you already, I don't lie. Ask anyone. And if Kimberly was the one who told you I slept with Cameron, I will do more than bitch-slap her. I know you're the police, whoop-de-do, and I shouldn't be saying that, but I'm serious. She thinks that because I work in a convenience store, and because she went to college in Kingston, or wherever, she's, like, a better person than me? Please.

Oh, oh, oh, here's a tip: Why don't you haul her bony little ass back in here and ask her about Cameron again, alright? Ask her about what those two did in high school. All's I'm saying is, I'm not the only one who was good with her hands. Word gets around. Despite what she might think, I know stuff too.

TIME CAPSULES (A small sort of memoir)

2011-01-27T07:47:00.003+08:00

This all happened at a small cottage complex outside of the tiny town of Callender, Ontario, not far from North Bay. Our families vacationed together there for a few summers in a row while I was in my mid-teens, and, since we knew that we'd most likely be back once again only one year from then, us kids decided to stuff an empty glass jar full of knicknacks and notes, then bury it as far as we could underneath that small beach's soft sand. Relatively deep. Not so deep that we couldn't dig it up with our shovels and find it with ease.

It felt like an odd, safe adventure. I can't remember everything we put inside -- notes to ourselves, some chocolate and candy, a few pages of ads from the local newsweekly -- but I do vividly recall writing a short note on scrap paper, something about the young serial killer who, along with his wife, had recently haunted my hometown and destroyed many lives, while I studied for math tests and played house-league hockey. The whole sordid tragedy had seemed so unreal that by burying this news it might act as a talisman. Smother all that bad mojo, perhaps. Turn back time, even. Life had accelerated too much.

The next year we returned to the cottage, and somehow we managed to find the same spot where we'd buried our jar exactly twelve months before. I seem to recall a map of some kind that we'd kept for a year in a junk-drawer or used book. Perhaps we simply made a good guess, took a shot with our shovels and got ready to dig. It wasn't that big a beach. The point is, we found the treasure. Under an hour, it took us. After taking our turns, I can't remember which one of us finally struck with our spade that small, solid shape in the sand. Doesn't matter. We all laughed with a strange sort of joy, those carefree mad cackles that only adolescents can shout without any shame.

A whole year had passed in our lives. (Twelve months at age fourteen or fifteen is quite an ordeal.) A Canadian winter, endured. Two semesters of school, over and out. Hockey games and track meets. Novels read, essays written, trumpets blown, guitars plucked. Four whole seasons had passed over that Planters peanuts jar with our junk, stuck under the ground with no light to befriend. Dark. Quite cold, probably. I almost felt sorry for all of our stuff, stuck inside that small tomb. We'd all been through so much that year, and this jar had been jammed in a hole way down in the earth. At least we'd found it. Gave it a chance to bathe in some sun.

We took the jar inside to the kitchen, cleared off the main table, twisted off the tight top. We all felt like magicians, unveiling our new trick for the whole world to see. No fresh smell of peanuts emerged, just dry, airless must. No matter. All the same stuff as last year, those random trinkets of time, but now they seemed new, somehow reborn. So were we, briefly. Our selves from the past had given us a small gift. Tiny things we thought were important had now become valid once more. Completed some circle. It was a joyous ten, fifteen minutes.

One of our small gang from the cottage ended up dead, either that year or the next, or the one after that. Tony. Big, goofy, funny Tony. My friend's friend. Fell asleep at the wheel, bounced right into a tree. Coming back down the Boulevard late at night, on the way home from Casino Niagara. Him and his other buddy, gone. Both of them seventeen, eighteen? As we lived in two different towns a highway apart, I mostly knew Tony from the summers we'd all spent on that beach hanging out, but still. Beach volleyball bonds kids together, as do thick chocolate milkshakes served in big metal mixers served straight from the kitchen.

Another thing: There was a private house right next to the resort, with girls our own age who sometimes strolled over to our beachside campfire at night. (Were there two girls or three?) I remember one evening, when all of us guys stared straight up at their small, second-floor window, a tiny rectangle of light that lit up our darkness. Occasionally, one or two of those girls would slowly, casually, stroll in front of the window. Getting ready for bed, brushing their hair. Toying with us, or so we liked to think. I even exchanged letters with one of those girls, a shy, tiny blonde, for a few months after that summer and well into the fall. At some point, the letters ended. I'm not sure who stopped writing first.

We never buried another jar. A few years later, I went off to university. None of us have been back to that cottage since we all were seventeen. Tony died soon after that. My other friends from that time, almost my brothers, I've not seen much of in years. The occasional party, a wedding. Time does that. It buries us.

All of those moments: a malleable glass that forms my own mental time capsule. Us standing in sand, gazing up like young fools at that bedroom's soft glow. Us sitting on logs, roasting marshmallows, listening to Steve Miller on tape, the Space Cowboy's sweet voice. Looking into that fire. Talking about jackshit. Ribbing each other. Under a northern Ontario night, its stars bright, almost winking.

BABY, LEAVING

2011-01-26T07:47:00.005+08:00

In my beginning, bewildered, I knew only softness and pain. My body lay still on a cushiony surface, surrounded by walls that had built me a fence. I was more than protected; I was trapped, and enjoyed my small prison, that tiny plush world. A bright rounded light shone straight down from a spot far above. Soothing and constant. Odd sounds on all sides intrigued and bewildered -- laughter and moans, small murmurs and sighs. Meanings beyond me. Clear comfort I had for most of time's tick, but distractions soon entered this closed sacred place. Shrieks -- my own, but containing within a force all too foreign. My throat shouted them out, yet their escape was short lived, for soon they returned, and I would wail once again. Despite this discomfort, a strange sort of ease often descended and rested, lingered and stayed. Were it not for a fierce, ragged flame that slowly ignited my insides with an uncommon fire, singeing my essence, I could have remained, over time, calm and content in that rectangular bubble.

For life was so novel! No language to curse out my confusion, or give praise to its virtues. Sensation itself -- all that I had to express simple needs. Tears, tangible: filling up all my vision, dribbling down my small cheeks, a regular spring, reliable. The roars from my mouth, the leaks out of my eyes, even the steady stream of hot shit exiting out of my anus, rancid but mine, were all solid proof I contained my own magic. I was nothing but tactile emissions; everything else, shades of shadows. A mystery with myself at its centre, the question mark's small, round dot.

When, inevitably, the light went away, the dark came back full. In that black for so long, I almost forgot light's true worth, its warmth and transparency, its unselfish bright wrap. Then it returned, garish but welcome. In each new burst of pure yellow -- grand faces that trembled. Soon, I supposed: someone other than me. Touching my skin and my hair. Stroking, but cautious. I felt their great fear, almost physically transferred. I was somehow limited. Separate. I began to sense that my own world must somehow soon grow to include those large forms looming so high and up there. Me. Them. Together. Life? If this was its truth, why this great hurt far inside, was it all just for me?

Next, often, pain. Quick and steady, slicing through insides. Agony intense, my cries gaining speed, gathering, soaring, achieving a strange manic pitch whose great height cancelled sound. These noises all merged with that round bulb in the sky that hung down from high up. After: nothing but silence. As sweet and as dense as the darkness it brought, this sound all but swallowed, the light sucked away, a full black embrace, lasting and firm.

UNIBROW

2011-01-25T07:38:00.001+08:00

Travis pissed him off, most likely. The guy came around the store about one, one-fifteen in the morning. Wednesday morning. I wasn’t working that shift. I didn’t even know Travis was working, actually. I don’t think he was supposed to. Somebody told me – I forget who, Corrine, probably – that Travis took over from Morgan, who usually worked the Wednesday night shift. Needed to look after his mom, I think. She was in one of her moods where she can’t stop crying. Starts cleaning out the fridge with Lysol from six o’clock to sunrise. I don’t know how Morgan puts up with it, but he does. Strokes her hair and everything. Talks softly. No wonder he ain’t got any kids, dealing with a mother like that twenty-four seven. I can’t say for a hundred percent certain it was Morgan’s shift, though. I don’t know everybody’s shift. I mean, shit, half the time I don’t show up for my own shift. Hard to keep time altogether in my head.

But somebody, I think it was Corrine, told me that the guy asked Travis where the potato chips were, and Travis told him they were in the second aisle, near the back, and the dude asked if that was the second aisle from, like, the right, or the second aisle from the left, depending on where you were standing, and Travis kind of rolled his eyes, just a little bit, but boom. The guy took out a gun and popped him. Cranked open the register, grabbed the cash, vamoosed right out of there. They ain’t caught him yet, but I’m pretty sure they will. Hope they will, anyway. I’m working tomorrow night. I don’t want the guy swinging back on some kind of a comeback tour.

You know, Travis had one of those, what do you call it. Where your eyebrow ain’t nothing but one big line? The unibrow, right. Guy shot him right in the centre of that unibrow. Everything scattered everywhere. Travis had that effect on people, pissing them off like that. All that sarcasm. I used to tell him, not everything’s a joke. Not everyone’s got the sense you got. Or the sense that you think you got. Cut people some slack sometimes, because you ain’t exactly, what’s his name, that black-hole dude in the wheelchair. Hawking, right. You ain’t exactly Hawking, I’d tell him. You work at a 7-11 like everybody else. A customer asks you a dumb question, just answer it. That’s all. Answer it. No need to eye roll.

Corrine, I think it was Corrine, told me that they were still finding little bits of brain, like, a week later, tiny gray chunks in between the cigarette packs above the counter. Travis never had much of a brain, but still. Can’t help but feel for the guy. Nobody wants to see that stuff right near the cash register.

THIS AFTERNOON, ALL TO HERSELF

2011-01-24T09:22:00.004+08:00

A dozen children rushed back to the school when the bell rang its ring. A movable sea of dress shirts in white with their children inside, and blue skirts with red trim almost stroking the ground. Fluttering together, almost like birds in their flock. Slightly uphill they ascended, their school on a slope, rocky and jagged beneath their quick hover. The small gate shut. Clunk. One left behind, against the wall. This afternoon, all to herself. She stared quite intently at the ground, Supergirl using her laser-sharp aim. (How quiet the day is, when children depart!) She rushed forward, knelt down, sighed. Picked up her prize, quickly. Wrapped it around her fingers. Her own gem. A plain rubber band. Time to return. Only twenty seconds behind her schoolmates' smooth entry. Who could notice or care? She hiked the ten feet uphill to the door with a dance in her bounce.

THINGS I DON'T UNDERSTAND

2011-01-23T09:40:00.003+08:00

Quantum physics. Regular physics. Thermometers. Telephones. Why McDonald's burgers always taste different than Wendy's burgers, or Burger King burgers, no matter the restaurant, all over the globe. (Is it the cows themselves? The seasoning? The freezing technique?) The internet. The stock market. How trees are made into paper. Why we don't feel the earth hurtling around the sun. Why humans feel the need to dream little stories about our lives while we sleep, ones in which we are almost always the main characters. Why we can't keep our eyes open when we sneeze. We dreams. The physical matter expelled from physical friction. Air travel -- the mechanics of it, the unlikeliness of it, floating above the clouds. Why we love the taste of food, but not on our own (or others') breath. Toothpaste. Time itself: who decided that one second is one second, and not four or five, and why is time different on Mars than it is here on earth? (Or so I've heard.) Light-years. Black holes. The concept of space having no up and no down. Mr.Rogers' popularity. The Kardashians' popularity. The fact that this blog, according to my 'stats', has more readers in the Netherlands than anywhere else in the world. The fact that one or two people in Russia or the Ukraine regularly seem to read it. The fact that what's inside of my head can enter your own through some taps on a keyboard. That compassion exists, despite this mad world that we wander through, year after year. That I can talk to you in this way, and that you might even be listening.

BARBERTALK

2011-01-20T11:25:00.005+08:00

He heard from his cousin in Canada that the air was so cold at night that you could leave out a glass of water for just a few minutes and soon it would freeze, become solid ice.

Maybe so, I said. Montreal can be cold.

A customer from Canada had come only yesterday. He said that haircuts back home could be two or three times what one would pay in this city.

More than that, I said. Ten times as much, even twenty.

He whistled and snipped.

He had married a Muslim, he told me, and so he had converted to Islam over ten years ago. She was from Mindanao, down south. Where Manny Pacquiao was from. The boxer.

I said that I knew him quite well. Had even seen him train in Burnham Park here in Baguio just a few months ago.

He told me had seen me running around town. But it was too cold here to run, he said. Better down south, where the air was much warmer. I said that, for me, this cold was my spring. He laughed.

Muslims make the best barangay chiefs, he told me. They don't drink, so they can patrol their own neighbourhoods and stay out of trouble. Alcohol is the cause of too many problems here in the Philippines. People drink. Get into sexual stuff. Rape not good.

I nodded.

He whipped off the sheet that covered my chest, an act that always reminded me of a magician's tablecloth sweep, a soft thrilling whoosh.

If I win the lotto, I will go to Canada, he said.

I smiled. Wished him luck. Gave him a tip because he said that my new short haircut made me look younger already. (At what age did I begin to care about seeming youthful at all? Two years ago? Five? Just now?)

Fifteen minutes. In and out. He told me his life.

LAUGHS CAN'T BE LOST (I HOPE)

2011-01-18T11:13:00.003+08:00

How many laughs have we got left?

The elderly narrator of Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead casually notes at the start that he takes a laugh when he can get it, never knowing how many chuckles he might have remaining. (Or words to that effect; she makes the point better than I do.)

This observation kind of startled me.

What a scary, wondrous notion -- that our laughs are limited, as fragile and finite as eggs in a carton. At some point, of course, we all end, but to think of laughter itself as doomed to extinction evokes in my heart a strange picture of loss. I imagine a boatload of laughs, small but still tangible, pulling away from a dock and heading far off to sea. Their close cousins -- the sigh and the sniffle -- waving goodbye from the pier as their kin take their last voyage alone. An absurd observation, to be sure, but I sometimes see my own thoughts as physical forces, so why can't I extend the same courtesy to a guffaw or two?

Nobody remembers their first laugh, and I doubt that few remember their last, but all the ones in between! Most laughs must linger. Kids must chortle their small asses right off at least a hundred times in one day. (In between their equally abundant shrieks of pure sorrow at life's unfair course.) Multiply that number each day long into adolescence; tone it down quite a bit as the decades pass by; then look at that number and marvel indeed at how long and how often we laugh through the years. To even consider this notion of laughter as something that might end with our death is more troubling than death by itself, at least in my mind. Laughter should stay, is all that I'm saying.

For is anything more curious than where and just why our laughter arises? A goofy picture or joke that one finds amusing may enthrall no one else. What is it, inside us, that needs this small burp of pure of joy that takes us out of ourselves? Perhaps a laugh is an organ that must arise when it can. A bubble of joy; the soul's own orgasm of levity. Something that levitates, a laugh is. We feel it rising like puke, but what a difference in taste! I could suck on a laugh like a candy for hours upon hours, like grape bubble gum whose flavor refuses to slacken or rust.

I've long been fond of a little game that nobody around me seems to find all that funny, namely: If you had the chance to find out what the last words that emerged from your mouth before dying would be, would you actually choose to know what they were? What happens if you say yes? Some celestial procter might look at his book, find your name on the list, and spout out a sentence that sounds something like this: "Ah, right. Mr.Spencer. Here you are. Your last words before dying will be: '"Is that orange for me?'" And I would be horrified for the rest of my days, wondering, each time that I held an orange in my hand: "Is this the end?" Or what if your last words were: "Sure." How often do we say 'sure' on a weekly basis? Surely hundreds. (See?) Every time you uttered that sound your breath would escape. Or what if your final sentence said: "I don't quite care for brownies." But you love brownies! What situation would arise where those words would be spoken? To know one's own preference and foibles is how we somehow manage to move through life with a modest amount of false hope. Knowing our last words might convince us, instead, that life is a joke where we are the butt.

Which brings me back to the laughter.

It's my newly built theory that laughs can't be lost. They come from somewhere within, and are released into the world from our mouths like smoke from a cigarette, smoothly and swiftly and soon without form. No laugh truly dies. It is transformed into motion and invited to roam through the world's endless sky. All those laughs up above, immersed in the clouds, transformed into rain, pouring down on the world even after we're gone.

A MILLION IRISH AT PLAY, GIGGLING

2011-01-16T10:02:00.003+08:00

In my better moments, I like to consider myself a reasonably educated young lad, but to discover, at my age, five years short of forty, that one's own language contains common words in rotation that furrow your brow and give you great pause is a humbling experience.

Humiliating? Well, I wouldn't say that. (Though I brood on it here.) As Spike Lee says in Mo' Better Blues: "I went to school; I can read." I would like to believe that my language is familiar, even intimate, with parts of myself that increase with age or experience. We've been through a lot, English and me. (Or is it 'English and I'? More confusion continues.)

Yet I read two books recently, one after the other, one fiction, one non-fiction, both by Irish writers -- The Untouchable, a novel by John Banville, and Are you Somebody?, a memoir by Nuala O'Fablain, and both contain words I've heard not once my life.

Here's a list:

dosshouse; chilblains; taoiseach; striations; embrasure; ostrichism; saurian; greensward; osseous; phthisic; propinquity; crapulous; benison; posy; pachydermal; cerculean; incunabuke; bridly; ferrule; oleaginous.

Still with me?

Some of them are vaguely familiar, but not familiar enough for me to hazard a guess as to their precise definition. And, let's be clear: these were not extracted from tomes that were made for scientific consumption, or computer textbooks -- these are words spliced and excised from books that are meant to be read. Enjoyed, even.

At first, reading the Banville book, coming across a couple of new words, I thought nothing of it. Happens from time to time, right? And the dude's Irish, so what the hell. You could read the sentence twice, three times, suss out the context, whatever. Do what I've told my students to do, and do what I've done with Japanese so damn often: Figure it out, take a leap, make an educated guess, figure out the context. All that dross.

Yet.

As the novel went on, so, too, did these new words extend and invade my meek fractured psyche. New to me, they were. Apparently, not new to the Irish! Readers, obviously, who were assumed to be comfortable, even casual, if not intimate, with the nub of their nuances and cant of their subtext. I've always believed that the great British writers have had an education that soaks them in words and their textures in a way that puts us colonials to shame. Reading books like these two, mass-market texts designed to be loved, only confirms my essential, intrinsic smallness.

We all understand that there's technical words that elude and escape our comprehension and ease. Leave that lexicon to the computer programmers and mechanics who fix our lives faults. And good riddance, I say! Who wants to be locked inside the confined, stifling cell which contains a computer's vocab, or a car's thousand parts.

But a novel!

I retreat into a novel or memoir to breathe a new world, to relax in a stream that flows through the falls and rough patches but lifts me aloft. Instead, with these new words! What to say? I'm dragged right back down, into the overflowing whirlpool of my own ignorance. (That wet, drowning place!)

I guess I must make it my challenge. Not to be intimidated. Not to cower. To attack these fresh definitions and syntax with a warrior's raw spirit. Approach them, cautiously, in the same way a hunter steps softly towards his close prey. Confident that soon a shot will ring out, and the deer will be his.

(And I'll pretend that I won't hear the muffled, giggling guffaws of a million Irish at play in the language I love, the one that still shows me who's boss.)

NOT NEARLY FROST

2011-01-13T08:16:00.003+08:00

I saw three street kids bickering on Session Road in downtown Baguio yesterday. One of them had something that the others also wanted. Money, food. Something. They were dirty, shoeless, frantic, laughing. None of them over puberty. Teeth yellow. Smiling, though. Their smiles vacated their faces when the arguing entered, but soon they were back. They carried their grins with the same relaxed ease as they did the tattered black sacks slung over their shoulders, miniature Santa Clauses with nothing but coal in their stockings. Almost identical to the way I used to lurch my hockey bag over my shoulder, on cold winter mornings as I raced the ten feet from the car to the rink. Eager to get out of December. Into some warmth.

I can imagine these same boys on the streets of St.Catharines, taking the bus to Bill Burgoyne arena. Toques on their heads, in the Leafs' blue and white. The white breath of winter steaming out from their mouths like small gentle puffs of cigarette smoke. Hockey sticks in their hands as they descend from the bus and delight in the hour on the ice that soon will be theirs. After practice will come some X-box and sweet cocoa, with math homework to dab at in front of the tube. They will slip into bed and soon snatch some sleep, while January's mad howl, juvenile and whining, seeps through their windows and resides in their dreams, a faint, haunting shout that will wake them and make them wonder what they just heard. A pillow flipped over, and they'll slide into sleep once again. Tomorrow morning: a history test and a lab, and some assembly or other. Pragmatic concerns that no night nor its wind can decipher or alter.

Those dirty street kids. Here. On these streets. Never touched ice. Back home a few weeks ago, on the outskirts of Ottawa, I saw a teenage boy wait for the orange bus that would take him away for the day. He looked bored, irritable. Sick of the winter snow and the wind, and the Christmas break that had yet to begin, and might never come. Highways and farmland, nowhere's domain. Anywhere but here, he seemed to be thinking. Take away his toque and his scarf, and his jacket and knapsack, and drop him right here with these boys straight from Baguio. Stinking, streaked with grunge, grime. Sockless. Walking on pavement, their toes sliced by stones. Pissing in alleys. Rummaging through tin cans for food, some scraps for a snack. The park as their home; a bush as pillow, with thorns in the ear for a late-night tickle or two. Getting cold at night, but not nearly frost.

I can hardly imagine them meeting -- that Canadian kid and these young Pinoy boys, in some realm of existence much kinder than ours. A collision of worlds. (Three meals a day, with chips and pop in between!) Stuck in a room, the smell would be strong, the stink of some skin that has never sought soap. Would that stench be the grounds for some kind of detente? Perhaps it could be used to break that strong ice, a conversation's sly start. Kids are kids, after all. They must have a link they might relate to together. Give them a desk, some chairs, forty minutes. A few Cokes. They have similar anxieties, hopes, disdains. Three are homeless, discarded, rummaging for food, a quick high, while the other is pissed at his high school's computers. (They're always logging off, crashing. Parking lot is always full, too.) The weather is different, the seasons inverted, mutated, but other than that: what a world of connection!

If I left them alone, flashed a large smile, gave them space, four kids the same age, something might shift. The malleability of youth, and all that. We are all one people, that deal. A dialogue might commence. Some downcast eyes, coughs, sighs, sure, but kids are kids. Eventually they'd connect. Might even bond over tall-tales they could tell of illicit booze they'd once snatched, the Canuck from his mom, the Pinoys from some gutter. They'd understand their commonalities. Realize that they are not so distinct from each other, as society insists. A bath and a comb, some shoes and fresh socks, boxers or briefs and a white-buttoned shirt -- given these gifts, who could tell them apart? Who?

(If you answer 'I could', then I suspect we are doomed.)

MY STUFF WHEN IT'S MINE

2011-01-12T09:14:00.004+08:00

Oh, give me a taste. A swig. Just a swill, straight from the bottle. I won't leave you no backwash. I ain't wired that way. I'll just down it all in one gulp. Pretend it's like water. Might make me wince, but shit. That ain't nothing to be shamed about. Hell, I wince when I swat a fly off my wrist. Just the way I am. If it hurts me, physically, and it hurts me, mentally, I'll kind of shut my eye a little bit, my right one, like I'm winking, and that's how you'll know. That something's got to me. A drink like the one you got, I think it might make me shudder. Like when you take a piss and you can't help but shiver. Never could figure out why that happens. Kind of a wake-up call to your body, I guess. If you see me shiver like that, a piss-shiver, when I down that poison you call a drink, well, it might just make your day. Give you a laugh or two. I know you like your drinking. I like my stuff when it's mine, too. But I could use a drink of that swill you're hoarding like a cub with her pups. You still got half a bottle left. I ain't going to sample but a third of a third. I get a little, you get the rest. I don't know if I can make it through the rest of the night without a shot of that warm stuff. It's cold out there. You want me driving around in the cold without some of that fire in my belly? Just a tiny taste or two. Can you give me that? You want to refuse a man a drink? You think Jesus in the desert, if he was pounding back the jay-dee, the Molson's, whatever poison he preferred, would neglect to provide a snort or two for a thirsty beggar who crossed his path? I ain't saying you have to be pure like him. I mean, I don't think he even drank at all, unless it was wine, and even that, he turned to water, from what I heard. Or the other way around. My head's getting to me. Wind's too cold. Shut the window on your side, if you can't even be bothered to liquify a friend. I'm just saying that there are worse things you could do than give a man a drink when he asks for one.

SUBTRACTIONS OF SELF

2011-01-11T07:47:00.004+08:00

What do I get when I give out some coins to a bent-over old woman, haggard and brown with the ray's of a lifetime's harsh sun? What does she want? Some cash or some contact? Shuffling through the park, clad all in purple, her bonnet bright blue, her big stick for support: is this where we all go, when time takes us down? Our only connection a tug on a sleeve for some cash, just a bit, thank-you please.

(Putting yourself into somebody's mind is a game played by fools, by us, the humans, earth's ultimate knobs. We read books, watch movies, write poems, sing songs, punch teeth, stab ribs, swap tongues, lick ears, flick nipples, and all for the sake of some kind of transference. Good, bad, whatever, whenever. I can feel what you feel; you can sense my true love; I must show my great anger; you will know my wild wit. We can't know anybody (let alone ourselves!), but we crave a constant kind of touch, vicious or tender. Sometimes both, together. If only for variety, originality's poor cousin.)

I give her, this old hag, somebody's grandmother and lover, some coins. They drop in her hands like metallic m&ms. She looks at the colour of these shapes, the faces, the value. Checking their worth (and her worth? and mine?). She leaves. I watch. She's played her small role, to beg; I've completed my part, to give. She's done what's been built to do -- accept. She slowly stumbles away through the park, towards others like me. Ones with clothes that fit well, and hair freshly trimmed, and washed, and smelling of soap store-bought just days ago.

A little after noon. Six, seven hours more of sunshine to go. (No daylight-savings time over here! One can beg for one's dinner for hours upon hours! Woohoo!) More than enough time to gather more loot. I feel guilty for giving. One would think the opposite emotion would hum. Yet if you give, just so that your own errant guilt takes a form of sabbatical, who's kidding who? A remorse will grow, then fester. ("Oh, aren't you a kind one! Compassion's true friend, valiant and noble! Portraits deserve to be painted of your humane strong visage! To think! He gives twelve cents to the wretched, and asks for nothing in return! Write a song for this man, melodic and resonant! Let's build a statue in the square, marble and gleaming!")

Oversimplifications abound, of this sort, when charity runs its fingers through the long hair of excess. A simple act should -- should it not? no? never? -- result in simple rewards. Giver gives; taker takes. One plus one, and the answer is two. Instead, what I find when I age is that math plays no part in this human(e) equation. Additions result in subtractions of self. Ostensibly generous acts make oneself feel petty and vain. Multiplication divides. The other stays 'other', with 'myself' cut in two. (Three? Four? I've never been good at math.)

Sunny new days, in this place, as the year begins. No more resolutions or goals, not on this day. (If only, connect!) Old ladies in rags, hunched-over and half-dead. Caked in their own dirt, hands out and begging. Or simply asking. For what, I can't say.

WATCHING KIDS FIGHT

2011-01-10T07:22:00.004+08:00

A bonk on the knee by a fist tightly clenched. With all the force of a judge's gavel, banging its verdict with a small hollow echo. A pinch of skin between thumb and forefinger, enough ouch to enrage the most hearty of hearts. Children can endure unaccountable hours of boredom, if required to by edicts on high from parents' tight lips, but the flesh of one's flesh, squeezed like a zit about ready to pop? Cries like a coon trapped in iron cages may ensue. Mewls, almost. More than tit-for-tat, the fight that will follow. It's everything in us, our spite, even hate, unleashed in pure form. (No additives needed, not at that age.) Nothing filtered, withheld. An easy access to instincts us adults smother, then bury. (Except in dreams, where pure sex and raw violence torment us sweetly.)

This ease of approach; this fearless unleash of all that is fluid and direct might almost be sacred, if its agents weren't kids. Those tiny love munchkins! Those smiling cherubs. Those angelic small masks that we pose for so long to get photos that erase all signs of the truth -- that, beneath those great grins, the most forceful of smiles, natural and honest, all our old impulses, ancient and ready to rise, (should they be summoned) still exist. Each child knows what we dampen, and wipe clean away upon waking like green slinking snot. All the red rage. They bring it forth, the kids do, with a spit bubble's gross ease.

We've all lost what they enter into with nonchalant fuss. Biting, pinching, kicking, taunting: What we express through lovemaking, 'safe' and quite coy, a 'roleplay', we call it, trite and all plastic, harmless and staged with awkward poses and angles, they dive into with relish, expectant and proud. In waking life, should we try such attempts at clumsy violence against our neighbour -- that prick -- the police would be called, with forms to be filled out. (In triplicate!)

Kids, though. Kids can go at it with the strange grace of a grass blade being pulled from the soil. (Some tiny life has been severed, but no matter! There's more fields of this stuff.) To give in to those dark impulses we big-folk stash away (like coins in a pig to extract, later, when the collection has grown with the weight of our postponed deposits), why, that's what these tiny blessings of ours, these young creatures of flesh can call up, with no second thoughts of remorse. Blind, black rage, aimed at that other, one who shares their own blood, their same smile and forehead. Their breakfast, their toys, even. The ultimate defense, this primal mad swing: You may want what is mine, but it's mine, so retreat. A sensible, some might say moral reaction. Only later, we learn, to divide our sweet pleasures with those we love most: I'll give you this, and thus expect more of that; you grant me those, and I'll allow you all these. A bartering of small treasures, that our ego allows in the name of 'civility'. (What we must lose to exist, in this society of family and friends!)

What is taught to the young'uns, so they, too, might become the empty shells of us adults, who monitor emotions and rescind our base impulses! Not entirely useless, this shell with no stuffing. Think of a seashell on white sand, for example. You can fill it with with junk, knickknacks and such, hear the ocean at all times, its wind mournful and empty, evoking empty beaches at sunset, its tide sneaking out. (That this wind that we hear is an illusion, a crustacean's odd gift, a sea lacking water or presence, is a reality best left unexamined this time.)

Still.

To be full like those children, full of rage and entitlement. Willing to defend a small truck or blond doll with the wrath of a god newly spurned. Almost noble, that impulse. One we must forfeit for life in a world of kickbacks and compromise. That often, if not always, a child's selfish rage is replaced by a smile and a laugh that so readily erupts like a firecracker ablaze with its own frenzied light is small proof that our best selves will ignite after all. Given space, time, and just enough prodding, and the gentlest of sparks.

MISSING TWELVE HOURS

2011-01-08T08:00:00.003+08:00

A loss of twelve hours should not linger so long. That feeling of departure. Leaving one land, aloft in the air, suspended in space, a leap over time -- the stuff of our lives, modern and vital. What is half a day's absence, in light of this thrill? One life left behind, replaced by another; a journey through sky, swiftly but strangely. This motion of movement, a light-year in brief. (The plane rattles and shakes like a train shifting its tracks, with the difference of 'up' and the descent of 'down' giving a carnival touch to the entire trip, the strangeness enhanced by the absence of any outside sign of progression. Through a bus window we watch a world slowly passing us by -- garter snakes in their grass, poor people in backyards, laundry on lines, the stray sight of a skid-mark streaking some stranger's old gotchies being blown by the wind like a fart's quiet soft flutter, but a plane ride is a ride where all movement seems forced, bionic, a roller coaster's coy hustle. In we go, up we rise; shake; occasionally, lurch. (Are we nothing more than martinis?) Down we descend. Another country to greet us, the runway's pavement our rude and quite bumpy cheek kiss. We are here. Yet something from behind still demands we take notice.

To end at a place so remote from our origin is an experience we shrug off, a twenty-first century perk, life vital and viable. After all, what strange joy can a jet ride give us in full, when the click of a mouse and the drain of accounts gives us a world of new plastic stuff to stack our self-worth. (And to think that a computer's small mobile console, attached to a cord, should now be aligned with a gray furry rodent! Man has come quite a ways.) Left behind, mute, like a dull child who can't keep up with the pace of a his classmates' quick wit: a piece of our souls, a small slab of self still stuck at the airport back home, refusing to board.

Now: in this warm place, in mountains above small wisps of white clouds bearing no hint of dull ash -- just a few days before I was elsewhere indeed, squat in a cold space, crunching through snow, the sky not blue like today but instead shrouded in gray, that colour of rubber erasers all smudged and dark-stained from sweaty good use. (Erasing the unnecessary.) Twelve hours ahead, I've somehow leapfrogged through time.

Where did they go, those hours? Literally, I mean. Lost like loose lint from my pocket. Somehow I've convinced myself they still exist, in some form meant distinctly for me. Locked up in a vault that gamely shuttles its route on its own from my homeland to Asia, straight above that Pacific. (I gave up this part of myself to that safe, somewhere over Russia.) Inside its shut doors, buried beneath my own memory, a crude form of a bridge, could, if erected with care, and the right brand of tools, serve as a track that might make crossing over an option. Back and forth, from time to time. I could link two separate selves across that wide ocean, for I think, with the passage of years, they might just get along. If I could find those missing twelve hours, multiplied.

My grandfather's dementia, my niece's sweet laugh and my nephew's mad crashes on carpet, manic and joyous, my overall family's understated good heart, and the sound of my skates on a rough patch of ice as a puck leaves the blade of a crudely taped stick, slicing cold air, Canadian, its jab -- all of this stuff, I'm convinced, exists in some form almost Platonic in structure, above the earth's limits, preserved in that space where lost time resides as a taunt that we turn to at night, when sleep slips away.

Perhaps those hours we lose from such long forms of crossing intersect with our lives at stray points in our future. (If the door to that safe in the sky somehow cracks open.) I often wonder, on some future flight, bored by the movie, sick of the small salty pretzels couched in slick plastic, if I might look out my window and spot, for a moment, those hours I've lost track of over the years, hovering, then drifting, just past the wing. They will exist as physical, floating things, those memories I've missed out on, and the real ones, preserved. New memories as solids, as concrete as brick. Only these moments would act as small forward regressions, highlights from life that I somehow missed living. Surely, if we lose twelve hours of life simply in some kind of movement, within those minutes themselves exist what we might have enacted. Laughs had, friends met, kisses granted, promises exchanged, vows destroyed. Snow that fell, dew that glistened. The natural stuff.

I think those hours are there. (Existence, as a whole, cannot divert or discard its treasures with ease. I'm betting on this.) That time that was taken I'll make do my bidding. Dreamer that I am, in my own lunatic logic, I can hoard those hours again, crack the key to that vault that soars through the sky, examine its treasures to see if I left any life far behind. In those minutes I might find something I can take forward, even covet.

TRUE PATRIOT LOVE

2011-01-04T08:03:00.004+08:00

A rectangle of white, bordered by red, centred within by a leaf all in crimson. Maple in tone. The sight of which gives my heart a small jolt. From a young age, this surge of affection for all that I know, encapsulated so neatly in such an odd form. A tree's own debris, one that falls with the cold that defines our wide land? Why should this stir a young soul with an erotic full force. Perhaps we latched onto our country as we would to our mates -- because it was so damn familiar, recognizable. There.

Being abroad for so long only intensifies notions of sweet special access. This land is my land, not your land. I come from a zone that activates my emotions with notes from a song. I know, I know, you don't have to shout: you do, too. But this is the thing, the 'thing' you can't get -- my place is better, and fuller, and musical in shape, almost aquatic in tone. It does things to me, this place does. Your so-called 'country' may do the same, but not to me, and that distinction exists as the fence I can't cross. You stay on that side; I'll stay on my mine. We'll both sing our own songs, and tear up together, but I won't look over your way, and please, don't glance at my path.

Perhaps this truth that I sense is not as plain and banal as I once believed with such force; that we all hate our own neighbours, and despise those small gaps that remind us of us. My neighbour's fence touches my grass five inches too far; China's ships coast through waters too near to Japan. Cambodia fears (with a fury!) that Thailand covets its land; Canada grumbles at the States' indifferent ennui. The fences look different, their paintjobs unique, but come on. Let's be real. We don't like the looks of those folks in that house next to ours. That's all we need to be real to forge our small hatreds. I once saw this as simple, but now I think not. Something within us demands an allegicance to the land that sustained us.

Yet I think of a 'me' born in my country of birth, but elsewhere, a place that smells of fresh piss, and booze bottles uncapped, freshly drunk, then discarded. Hallways that echo and moan with the clump of tired shoes. Guns fired nearby; drugs snorted so close. My country exists as nature's playground and small lab, but the cities, too, are valid and squalid in equal small measure. Suppose straight from my birth: my land as that building, decrepit and dangerous. When I saw the police patrol those dank streets each night (or not!), what I would think, as a child, of this country so wide? Not for me, that breadth; not for me, that 'nature'. (Of course, urine is natural, as is the need for another small swig of that tiny brown bottle.) If I lay out in bed, and stared at my ceiling, and heard the fresh fight of the couple upstairs, would I feel the pride in my land that sticks with me still?

For now, I'll let the question subside. Easier that way. Best to stare at my flag, and feel that small lump in my throat and know it's not cancer. Instead, it's my country's sweet song rising up from within. Reminding me of my youth, and my hopes that this ground that I tread on allowed me to dream.

Easier that way.

ALMOST AN EXHALE

2011-01-03T08:38:00.004+08:00

Into this new year we enter with awe. With trembling? Or resolve. Does the sound of the clock's tick as it tocks past its midnight leave us with dread, or a sense of remorse, a nostalgia for all that we did not get done in our past. Or: something larger, richer, the hourglass turned upside down, the white tiny crystals beginning their descent into the hard pit that awaits their quick fall. (Going into one door always leads to such thoughts.)

We know it's all arbitrary. The dates themselves; our lives, especially. One moment begins where the other must end. Your life finds its true groove just before it completes the last spin of some cycle that conveniently, intentionally, winds up its rotation where you least expect locks on a window that will open no more. I'm born, you're born; he croaks, she lingers on. Bitter at life for letting her live. Is there a pattern at play? Literally, I mean? A round of parcheesi for one, whose rules and small pieces are kept by a God as a child covets toys? Perhaps chance is the facade that masks its own pattern. With God as the artist who paints this sly shield. Protecting his board game, while we turn to mystics for solace and booze for some syntax, a grammar of empathy that gives us our due. (Or what we think we deserve.)

Yet there are moments when thoughts such as these feel as futile as punching the wind and expecting to hear a low moan in response. Life has a whack of its own, silent but present, that tempts me to doubt my own cynical ploy. The cool air of winter infects our old bones with a constant assault almost cheerful and coy in its relentless sharp jabs. How hot is the room that we enter after such a chill joust! That warmth of a house that welcomes us back from December's raw kiss, tongueless but slick with its own frigid spit. Off goes the coats, down with our gloves, our hands rubbing quickly, starting some fire.

In that moment when winter is shown the slam of a door, something inside of me shifts and then settles. Almost an exhale. A battle has been, if not won, at least postponed. Hot chocolate awaits. The clock by the fireplace does its slow thing. Mechanical, yes, but constant. Progressive. Spring, far off, approaching. I can feel time as my ally, at least for that moment.

Happy New Year.

June 2, 1962

2010-10-15T19:46:00.003+08:00

An old musty book will always have charms, but one whose front page has a date handwritten in ink wields a strange special power that yanks me back to a past. Not my past. Not your past. Somebody else's past. That person who owned this same book that rests in my hands once had a strong urge to mark and reflect on a time that is dead. Days long ago can't help but die out like a species whose end is unfortunate but still real. Time takes everything, eventually.

June 2, 1962.

That's the day in red ink that is written on the first fresh white page of an old copy of D.H. Lawrence's Women In Love I picked up in Baguio a few weeks ago. In neat, legible script. A women's script, is what I'm thinking. Some stranger who I'll never meet once had a new book, and wanted to write that day down for some reason that's lost.

I'm already mourning. Who, I'm not sure, and what, I don't know. My father was thirteen, almost fourteen years old on that day. My mother not much older. Me, not yet here. It was a day that I'm sure had some sunshine to lighten one's mood. The book's owner was looking for a something quite serious. You don't dip in and out of D.H.Lawrence. I hope he or she found what was needed and wanted.

1962! The Beatles were not yet the Beatles we know. John Kennedy was still alive with the hope of all hopes. The moon was a crater we'd not yet embraced. Vietnam just a country, and a far away one at that.

Oh, I wish this woman had jotted down her first name, and not just the date. (In my mind she's a woman, young and carefree, her school year all done, the summer arrived with a blaze of bright sun.) She may still be out there, this woman. If she was, let's say, twenty at the time of her short simple jot, she now would be sixty-eight years old, with most of her life already lived and endured. She is no longer young, but I can imagine, today, at this moment, she is reading. In her bed. On the couch. Content. Anonymous, but alive.

As I type these words on this screen, quickly, in order not to forget what I so want to say, I hope she feels a strange twinge in her head or her heart. A jolt from her past, from her hand in mine and back once again. That same hand that held a red pen with a strong central grip. An odd psychic shock may give her a zap. Women In Love, she'll think. Why, I haven't thought about that book in quite some time.

And then she'll stand up and stretch and pour her parched throat a good glass of water. Just a thought, passing. But enough of a moment to link us somewhat. That book is still here, I hope that instant can whisper, not in words but in essence . It's still here, and so am I, and so are you.

WE ARE ALL STEVE MARTIN'S ORIGINAL AUDIENCE (IN THE COSMIC SENSE)

2010-10-06T19:42:00.003+08:00

In Steven Martin's wonderfully entertaining and insightful (as the critics might say) memoir Born Standing Up, he discusses the origin of his early stand-up routine, a performance that left the audience more than a little puzzled, if not pissed. Martin had once learned in a university class that the punchline of your classic joke was designed to relieve the tension that had been built up through the telling of the tale; Martin's genius was to ask: What if you didn't release that tension at all? Told punchline-less jokes, in other words? Today we're used to comedy that comes in various abstract, even unfunny forms -- but Martin was one of the first to make jokes that were so bizarrely unfunny, in the conventional sense, that they thereby reached a whole new level of hilarity that had never been truly seen, nor attempted, in the western world. He pulled our legs, and it took us awhile to figure out what, exactly, he was yanking, and why.

Which gets me thinking: Is God doing the same thing?

Perhaps we -- meaning us, the world, the galaxy, the universe, space and time and all its divergent variants -- are merely a joke without a punchline. All of our searching leads back to ourselves. Most of are yearnings are left unfulfilled. We have learned more about science than any other culture in the history of humanity, yet the divide between believers and rationalists has never been wider. Everything is separated.

Most of our thinking is that of the traditional-joke variety: we set up (or are given), a scenario, and we follow it through to its inevitable conclusion. The result is usually not funny -- but it's always there. The test is taken, the score comes back. The vows are made, the marriage is legal. The punch is thrown, the cops are called. Cause, effect, period. The result may make us uneasy in the deepest parts of ourselves, but we are given an ending that decides things for us.

Except.

That greatest of endings, our lives, remains a mystery. The final punch-line we're waiting for, dreading, longing for, evading. A great joke is all about withdrawal, withholding, not giving up the treasure we hold dear, so perhaps the last moment of life will leave us in stitches.

I wonder.

What if we're all part of a grand cosmic scheme whose plan is in part a joke left untold? We may be Steve Martin's original audience, writ large, for eternity. Waiting for the gag to begin. Bewildered when we realize that the act has not only begun, but it's over, and the headliner has already moved on to the next puzzling bit. Time is so relative that even a god may contain within his pinky finger a span of light years that passes for him in the length of a piss. Perhaps this god is telling a joke whose answer, when (of if) it's revealed, will puzzle us even more than we're puzzled already.

I just hope that it's at least a little bit funny.

REVIVALS

2010-09-26T17:56:00.003+08:00

Strange are the weeks when the days bring rain on a regular cycle. Round about three, four o'clock. Every day. Often a light, sometimes heavy, the rain comes down and does what it does. Slickens things up. Cools things off. Departs an hour later, waving goodbye with its wispy wet fingers and promising to return as soon as it can. I wait for its arrival as one waits for a friend who picks you up without asking.

Relatives are always strange, but 'strange' is also relative. It's only odd because I come from a place where the seasons are textured and tailored to suit everyone's fancy. Don't like snow? Wait four, five months -- you'll get some spring sunshine to melt off your slush. Hate the heat? Be patient, child -- the fall's crimson colours will dot the sky in scatters of vivid small dots, making everything cool, or as much as it can. (Don't believe me that the leaves somehow affect the weather that arrives? That's your pregorative. Me? I trust in the illogic that transcends all our convictions.) Where you are born is where the world sets its standards and your own sense of balance.

What to make of place that has, for me, only two valid seasons? A wet one whose water is sporadic but steady; a dry one whose heat is intense, flawed but not fatal. And up in the mountains, here, in the north of the country, the weather is pleasant, almost cordial in nature. Down south, five hours south, in the heart of Manila, the heat is a jacket that rests on your shoulders. Not the bludgeon-style heat of Tokyo in August; the Philippines' heat will sap your energy, to be sure, but also leave dignity behind as nature's one courtesy. You can still feel like a person in the heat of this capital. I can exist far up here in the country's one north, or shuffle around in that heat but not drop like a dog at the end of a hunt. These seasons perplex me, but not because anything about them is especially complex, or peculiar, or even intrinsic -- weather is weather, wherever you are -- but because my body's own rhythms are jolted, then broken. I knew that time has a way of breaking such standards; until I travelled, I didn't know that distance, too, could punch a little damage.

Invigorating, though. Early October, with shorts and a t-shit. The prospect of the Christmas to come and a sun that's still shining. Something inside me knows that I'm still quickly aging, that the mirror's harsh truth is vivid and valid, but living away from my home, from weather's bored clockwork, provides a tilt to the years that somehow allows my dead youth to revive, then endure.

ALL BEFORE LUNCH

2010-09-24T18:21:00.002+08:00

Rare are the days when scenes from a cop show come into your life. The boys in blue do not often ask you to help lift a corpse that was found in the alley beside your fish shop; the detective in charge, with his bedhead of hair and an unlit cigar dangling from tiny pursed lips will not ask you questions and look for deception. The police that we see are usually driving quite slowly through quiet side streets, or pulling us over to ask for I.D. Would we want it any other way? To ask for upheaval is to invite the untidy, and who wants more chaos in this fucked-up old world?

Unless, of course, such an intrusion is an oddly benign interruption that surprises, then perplexes, then gradually shifts into that pleasantly puzzling offshoot of the status quo that every so often asks us to pull up a chair and take in the show. No matter how brief it may be.

Just beside the Jollibee chicken franchise at the corner of Session Road a group of old and young women sit and sell fruit. Fresh fruit, I'm presuming, with varying varieties of bananas and strawberries, apples and oranges, alongside some other small food that I don't know how to quite name. (One of the unexpected pleasures of living in various Asian countries is that you come across an inordinately astounding numbers of fruits that you didn't know existed.) They sit there so often -- meaning, constantly, forever -- that I never take much notice of them, unless I decide to grab a bunch of bananas for an afternoon snack.

Last Friday, though, I sure as hell caught wind of what they were up to, and I suddenly realized, roundabout the time the police truck slid to a halt with a surprisingly quick jolt, that there are layers to life here above and beyond me. The truck stopped; a handful of men and women in faded blue uniforms leaped out, if only half-heartedly; the young women behind him, the ones with the fruit, leaped up from their perches and, giggling, grabbed their boxes of goods and raced across the street and somewhere not here, laughing the laugh that you laugh when a game that you know is played well and played often.

And me, standing there, watching two forces at work, two groups that were partners in one all too strange new game. Strange, for me. A game, for them? I don't know. What I saw was this: A handful of cops jumping out of their ride in a half-hearted, half-assed, completely half-whatever manner. A few of them seemed to have billy-clubs raised; a couple of them looked like they'd rather be watching cartoons or cockfights. Their gait was casual, their pace rather slow. They didn't run so much as lope. This all happened in the span of five seconds and ten feet. (Life's confusions usually are that short and that narrow, I'm finding.) Within that time, the ladies bundled up their boxes of fruit and raced away -- 'away', being, literally, ten, fifteen feet away. Within sight of the cops. Who didn't chase them. Who watched them run. Who smiled and laughed themselves. And me, wondering.

Seems like, somebody was going through the motions. The usual bunch of somebodies, maybe. Official, anonymous ones. They were told, I'm guessing, to go check out what was going on at the corner with the fruit-sellers, who, presumably, were not supposed to be there, had no permission to be there, and yet were there, as they've always been, every day, forever. I've seen the same thing happen with English schools run by Koreans and staffed by the locals. Somebody comes to inspect the place where nobody is supposed to be, yet the people who shouldn't be there are informed of this inspection, and so they hightail it out of there before the inspectors come to inspect. Simple. Circular. The rules are followed and then flouted in a few easy steps. You do what you're told to do.

And me, thinking I've come up with a solution. That I've figured it out. You look at the foreigners as they look at you, and you devise your own theory, and hope that it's true. If it's not, who cares? The day's first few moments have offered a new set of standards. Chips in the china of this still foreign land have been spotted and pondered, and all before lunch.

CONSTANT SOFT FUN

2010-09-08T17:29:00.003+08:00

Nine dead (or was it eight, or was it ten?) including the gunman. Blown away. Shot through the heart. A bullet in the head. The details all differ, there to be tracked down and mourned over, discussed with the calm of yesterday's strange weather. I haven't done it. The specifics, I mean. I'll leave such a morbidly clinical task to the police and the families. I speak in generalities, initially, because to mention the names and the weights, the heights and the hair colour of all these poor vicitims begins a long process whose end has no end. How do you classify a person's whole being? Alive, that morning, deceased by their usual bedtime that night. Who can collect all the dreams and sweet heartbreaks that filled each of these souls as a child fills his bucket with sand at the beach? To, and I quote (from whom I'm not sure, the nameless and faceless void of our culture), 'count the human cost', is a process which, if done properly, must topple us over with its own absurd weight.

The cynic inside me throws down the newspaper and rolls his tired eyes, disgusted at the incompetence, at mismanagement, at tardiness, at laziness, at the slow-burning rage of a policeman who turns his own gun on those people he once swore to protect with his life. Dismayed at his own disgust. For here we have weariness, writ large. An oversized example of a soul -- the gunman's -- that has been battered, if not destroyed, by the life that he chose, corrupt as it became, and a soul -- this writer's -- weary of people in general, their weaknesses, their selfishness, their cruelty, their indifference, all that contains and surrounds them, and this comparison between himself and a killer can only disturb this writer even that much more further. Who wants to compare oneself to those that have lost the will to succumb to life's subtle disappointments or grand it's-not-fairs?

For modern psychology insists that we look at this mind and this act and probe them with care, to seek out the dark secrets that led to this end. Perhaps not literally, of course. This man's brain, I am certain, which once was attached to a body that fell to a sniper's swift bullet, is still in the head, in the grave, in our earth. No need to weigh it or slice it to see who he is, the true self, organic in nature, tactile in tissue. No Einstein -- not here.

What is so special about a man who kills eight other souls and their spirits? Nothing! Yes, of course, indeed, it goes without saying, as a matter of course, a bus full of Chinese from Hong Kong held hostage all day in the plaza where the nation's new president spoke mere weeks ago has a quality of pathos, albeit a tabloid one, that creates a good story, international in scope, and allows an example of provocative themes to unfold as we sit comfy on couches: the safety of SWAT teams untrained for such chaos, unfolding live on TV, while countries away these hostages own relatives watch their hurt loved ones while we munch on our snacks. A story that demanded an ending in blood. (Isn't that what prime-time TV offers on each weekday night?) Which we get -- a sniper's sure shot that takes down our mad foe, but this movie-type climax takes place only off-screen! A disappointment as precise as the one that we feel when finding the car window half-open after the first storm of spring.

Suddenly, it's over. In the rain, in the confusion, in the tilted camera angles that hint at access only partial and skewed, we're left with exhausted announcers to fill in the blanks that lead to an anti-climax that offered us death, muted and distant. The days that come soon will give us our fix: nations at war with their words and their sorrows, a movie script's denouement played out for much too much long. We've long since left the theatre behind to piss our sweet piss in the lobby's dank toilets, but the story goes on in the endless end credits that rise up from the screen and into eternity.

What are we left with? A third-world country's soft pleas for understanding and patience. Perhaps I'm not as angry as I should be. I've grown familiar with the pace and the lag between my home and this one. And something larger is at play, even greater than nations, and their frequent huge squabbles. We are, in the end, left with a man and a gun, and a bus full of people. Fill in the name of a country, and watch what would happen. To quantify how to deal with a man at the end of his rope is tantamount to predicting our own fragile ends. We work with our brains, and he works with his, 0nly he has that trigger he can so easily pull. Ba-boom. Cosmic questions of life are reduced to gunpowder. Tour bus heroics end in dark endings. To make sense of the senseless? To prevent one's mad rush to his doom?

I can't follow these roads, for I know not where they lead, nor, should I follow them, how to get back to the start of this land's constant soft sun and its light that can soothe as it burns, turning white skin to red in subtle slow shades.

WORDS CAN'T INFER

2010-08-20T14:03:00.003+08:00

A thump to my head almost took me down. A tiny door I knelt before, like a Catholic at mass. Not low enough, for my head was bonked as if that ledge itself shrunk down to whap me a good one, just for spite. A hole too small for a hobbit? Perhaps. My head was scrunched into the base of my neck like the top of a toy pushed down too far.

A kink in the neck is a kink like no other; a tilt to the left, a nod to the right, both unleashing a pain that is anything but erotic. I felt my neck for the first time as something potentially, if not probably, destined for a quiet and violent destruction. As easily chipped as a potato chip itself. (With none of the salty flavour, although I can almost taste stray flecks of neck-bone floating around the inside of my mouth, like dead fish being flushed into their final sad circle from life.) Would one's own bones crunch like the sweetest of cookies? Perhaps that's a tradeoff I could one day pursue -- a stunted head on a hunched back, if only to taste my own fragile of forms.

Ah, but to taste one's own taste is a taste much too curt. A blunt, almost incestuous feeling of intimacy occurs when the tip of your tongue is coated, if not sprayed, with something within, and the taste of my bones would be a taste far too fearsome.

For me, today, my neck better, that something-to-savor was blood red and sweet. My face had implanted itself so askew on the pavement's hard edges. First I felt the trip, a hazard of running that occurs all the time, but this time extended the fall or a stretch far too far. I have probably fallen ten, twelve times, tops, in two decades of runs, but this one was tops in terms of tough spills. Painful spills. I use phrases such as these to add elements of grace to that which is coarse. Language can, and should, serve as a means by which we surround and enclose the most violent events, turning life into something more ready for us to examine, reflect upon, muse over, but life was not made to be written, and the whap of one's fall on a path made of stone seems to mock the notion of replicating experience as ideas once removed.

No.

For a moment I felt as if my teeth, or a few of them, had been launched free from their gums like a gun's anxious ammo. The blood came at once, and with it the pain. The taste of my blood was reminescent of youth, of falling down a slide while my brother and cousin came quickly to help. This is my childhood, I could have thought at that moment when my cheek kissed the rock. I didn't think that, only forging this link, because words come only later, if ever. A fall to a sidewalk leaves the intellect behind.

How often have you tasted blood in your mouth in the years of your life? Two times? Three? It's an almost welcome sensation, to lick its slow drip as it forms and then builds. Tastes savored before, but not again, grow dim in our skulls. Here was this blood, but my teeth were just fine. No cracks, chips, or chunks to be found amidst stones on the ground. However, the side of my face had its own, almost artistic flourish; the cuts on my arms are almost already scabs. To look like this, and not have been mugged, is a wound to one's pride of the highest order. At least with a mugging there's the prospect of defence, however feeble it might prove to be. A violation, a violent act, brings out pity, and self-pity directed at one's own deep-cut offers a cool rag on the fevers of one's soul. But to wield such sharp cuts from one's own trip-and-fall? From a tumble to the earth over one's own two left feet?

Together with the unfortunate-incident-of-the-head-in-the-doorway, I'm starting to think that terra firma has traps that spring just for me. Or, if I cannot convert blame to this more tactile, if absurd, form of currency, I must now admit that I am at fault in an earth of my own reckless making. With welts on a knee, and scrapes on my face, I can only confess: The pain from this pen, the maddening vagueness of language, and the agony of words that emerge all too late, are but a joy, a gift, a candy unwrapped when compared with the pain of a face falling flat on its front. Words can't infer what reality simply thumps so well and so deep.

FINGERS AS TALONS THAT NO LONGER DIG

2010-08-11T09:22:00.004+08:00

Were time a tin can I would crush it with glee. Use my fingers to squeeze every last bit of life out of its smug, seemingly impentrable metallic facade. Drop it to the earth. Force the soul of my shoe finish it off for once and for all.

As a child, in Canada, Coke cans were made of a metal so tough that I would spend minutes on end trying to dent their red glares. Round about age ten, eleven the type of metal was changed, became easier to crease, to curve, to push, to to force an impression like fingers in dough. At that point, every can I drank could have its own coda. Me at the end, belching the burps that only Coke can provide, with the can being crumpled as my one coup de grace. My signature move, that crumpling. Gaze down into those clunky blue recycling bins, and it was easy to spot which cans were from Scott. Diet Coke's crumpler, par excellance. Those old, pre-metal-shift memories of can after can lying misshapen and bent leave me angry, almost sullen, because the bastards who switched one metal for another made me realize that life was changing too quick. The sudden resilience of inanimate objects foreshadowed a time when life would not bend.

I stopped drinking pop over five years ago, telling myself that the syrupy, sugary gunk that I craved was merely an easy injection of caloric goo. But, no. There are other, larger forces at play. The Cokes, 7-Ups, Tabs, A&Ws, Pepsis, Dr.Peppers, Fantas (oh, Fanta, how I loved your sweet fruits with unvarnished glee, coming home from a soccer match on a midsummer's eve, the family all stopping at Avondale's gate, Lakeshore branch, soon to be razed to give rise to a church, and me, with a green bottle of lime to light my way home in the early evening dusk), all were symbols of what my strength could become, my fingers acting as talons, tearing their metallic flesh with what felt like ease. To keep on drinking from unbendable cans was like sleeping in childhood's bed all one's days.

Gradually, inevitably, my strength gave way to the pop taste's true power. Aside from the cans, no longer easily crushed, mundane realities of waistlines and beer bellies became suddenly here, accumulated examples of time's last revenge. Gone went my cans of carbonated bliss. Still are the days when I wander through markets, letting my eyes linger on row after row of colourful cans that once gave me joy. Now their white labels and logos seem like smiles all too mocking, ever-fresh glares that remind me that though they stay still in infinite racks, and though they soon will be drunk and discarded like gum gone too stale, my middle-aged fingers will never, not again, squeeze them and crush them without any effort. Someday, far off, should I fall off my wagon and seek one final sip, I sense on that can's surface an 'accidental' gash will act as a final fuck you.

ROOF SOUNDS

2010-08-09T09:30:00.003+08:00

An unknown animal scratching, clawing, biting and probably burrowing its morning through the roof over your head is an unsettling sound at six a.m. We think of a roof as a benign protector, so lofty but banal in its almost perfunctory functionality. We take little, if any, actual notice of its presence in the beat of our lives. There are those nights (more frequent in number as the calendar turns its pages with the wind) when we stare through the dark at a spot in its centre and wonder where shall I go. There also nights beyond number when rain softly drips off its indifferent eaves onto grass far below that drinks it all up. Usually, however, the roof does what it was built to do -- form a chapel of protection against all that can harm us: the heat of the sun, the cold of the sun, the sky with its weight that would crush us with grandeur.

Yet, that animal.

Nibbling away, skittishly, almost nervously, in a panic, at...what? A tin roof sectioned by blocks of years-old wood? What is it doing, eating? Could the crunching of wood possibly be satisfying for even the most desperately hungry of animals? If such a beast (for I dub it a beast -- anything that would rob me of sleep must shelter such savage tendencies) needs the blunt, tasteless flavor of mortar to aid its digestion, perhaps its problems loom larger than my own.

Yes. That may be the only way I can scrounge up some sympathy for this invisible creature lurking above, who conspires with the dawn to snatch up my sleep. If the animal is deranged, mad beyond measure, convinced with its instinct that beneath the roof lies the home of its children -- if that is its goal, then the animal can flee without sanction. Perhaps, at the base of its little mind, there is a place at the bottom of the roof where its infants, hungry and hopeful, await. That could explain its persistent scraping, as if it was surprised that this metal was not like the dirt of the earth that is easily dug.

I lay in bed and grant it that grace. That of a mother searching for a child. Should such a mother -- rodent or canine, bird or beast -- succeed in its quest and fall through a hole and drop on my bed, I fear two worlds would be shattered beyond repair. This animal would soon learn that I was not what it labored so long to find. And I would understand, at my own late age, that a roof cannot insulate the most fervent of quests.

SAD GRIT

2010-08-06T10:59:00.003+08:00

Traffic clogs the early morning streets of Baguio like hair in a drain. Only, when a sink is stuck with fragrant follicles and the accumulated, worthless collection of chin hair sprinkled randomly around the porcelain a tip of the tap will unleash water to go do what water does best -- disperse the flotsam of our lives with a forceful, almost gleeful blast of pure intent. Into the pipes, out of our physical lives, another morning ritual done, forgotten, after the piss and before the tie is tied. The gurgle of the bright green mouthwash acts as an interlude between the shave and the familiar, almost comforting sound of our own piss spraying the toilet.

No such mechanism of ordered division exists on the roads of our lives. The pavement that pushes us along. The yellow and white lines we obediently follow this way and that way, left to right, pass here, not there. These divisions are supposed to make things work. But the chrome of cars tucked all too tight into stationary positions of fumes and withheld mechanical fury, the augmented anger that inevitably arises from within the pit of one's stomach and the hood of one's car. Not the rage of a man learning his lover has left him for a smarter, but lesser, man. No, this is the percolating, daily drip of rage that somehow shoots upwards from within, out of one's stomach, detouring around the heart and egging its way into your throat and out of your prim, pursed lips after day one hundred and four of the constant inch, creep and crawl of machines in motion, as fast as an old woman with her walker doing her best. (And only seven miles to go!)

Something about the exhaust sickens these souls as they head towards work that will weaken them more. Black, brown, grey soot belches outwards from the backs of these cars like farts from an ox. There must be no regulations on these jeepneys and Frankenstein shitboxes. They barrel past the sign that claims this town as 'the cleanest city in the Philippines', belching their smoke as the ephemeral equivalent of a proverbial poke-in-the-ribs that counters the sign's claim with a visceral 'who are they kidding?'

No one.

I run by like a thief from the scene of his most ingenious new crime, bobbing and weaving between the gap between bumpers of cars that are still, avoiding eyes through the windshields that will, I know, glare with sad grit.

SUNDAY MORNING

2010-08-01T09:04:00.003+08:00

A couple of chickens mindlessly clucked in greeting as I walked outside of the house in the early morning heat, their beaks pecking the indifferent pavement. (Are birds our original zombies?) Even with cut-off heads, I imagined that the birds would still chirp through the spray of blood that jetted from their former bodies and splattered the earth on which their skulls still rested. Sometimes the stupidest among us are the friendliest. And sometimes the friendliest of us are the wisest. Running through the streets, I am greeted by a "Good morning, sir" from another jogger struggling through a body's stubborn rebellion on a Sunday morning. Why am I being dubbed 'sir' by someone whose age is older than mine? Politeness to a foreigner seems decidedly odd, almost condescending, but no -- it is a form of welcome, a statement that declares that this country and its road are as welcome to me as to a native-born son. (This is the interpretation I choose.) Further along the road, past the hotel whose name I always (willingly?) forget, a horse is tied to a post while its owner eats at a tiny eatery with the humble sign of 'Samson's Cafe'. That such a tiny roadside chow shop, little more than an outside shack, deems strong enough, vital enough, to bear the name of Samson is a thought worth laughing about while simultaneously giving respect towards the bravado of its owner's ambition. Why not live large? And whose is the horse? In this area, there are horse rides given to anyone willing to hop on board and bear the bumpy ride. Something inside of me thinks up a secret plan. I will slowly sneak up the horse's side, unleash the rope, set the animal free. It will ride riderless through Baguio's hills. I will become a hidden hero to the animal kingdom. Instead I take note of the blue and yellow saddle that lies across its back, wondering what that number means, and if the horse misses home. On my own way home, I run by a young girl muttering to herself as she plucks petals off of a flower, leaving behind soft white traces of her tracks on the sidewalk, as if she were going on a long trip into the forest and wanted to remember how she got there, and how she would return.

ONLY ASKING TO BE SEEN

2010-07-29T11:35:00.002+08:00

Aren't the most prominent nightly news anchors and the sleaziest porn stars pretty much in the same position at this point in our warped media world? Turn on any American national newscast, morning or evening, and the female anchors seem to look exactly like any other triple-x starlet leering at you from a million and one 'illicit' websites. They both want you to tune in and shut down that part of your brain that responds to actual, complicated stimulation. Better to watch pretty people talking, no matter what it is that they are actually saying.

Who becomes a porn star? Who becomes a news anchor?

The former position, at least, has the novelty of what was once considered risque and is now deemed mainly mainstream. Performing that most intimate of acts, with strangers, for money, while being filmed, in order to be watched by other strangers. There are levels to this endeavor that form scaffolding within our psyches that wobbles whenever we try to walk across the various logistical explanations that come into play. More than money is at stake. One's soul, one's sense of self, one's relation to one's body -- all of these factors form the psychological backdrop to the face-in-ecstasy that is being faked for our pleasure. The danger involved may be fake, as artificial as the green grass on the fields within the steel domes of that other favorite American pastime, baseball, but danger is relative. The possibility of being exposed as a porn star tramp by one's own grandmother back in the generic gentility of midwestern America surely has a whiff of danger and excess that proves titillating for the most bored of transplanted California twentysomethings.

A newsanchor's job is, on the surface, bland and inoffensive. A pretty person reads the news. Who would aspire to such a position? Granted, we live in a world that does not exist outside of a screen. If you are not on it, you are not in it. The world has been reduced to that which we can flick and change at a moment's notice. Reality moves and grooves to the blunt touch of our index fingers. To be on that screen is to own a little slice of reality, no matter how fluid and impermanent such a position might be. Securing a nightly position in that world is akin to a queen sitting on her throne while her subjects listen obediently to every word.

One can never adequately enter into someone else's head, but think of the psychology of such an ambition: I want to have other people watch me talk about the news. How bizarre! To be a producer, to shape a story, to write it up and send it out -- this goal I can understand. Perhaps most CNN anchors do this nitty-gritty dirtywork as well? But to be an anchorperson, alone.

Even more interesting is the national characteristics inherent behind each pretty (or not-so-pretty-face) that smiles daily at us behind their plastic screen. In Canada, the women are usually pretty, but not gorgeous. On the BBC, the women seem as if they could be found at your local library, behind the desk, reminding you not to be late with your returns. Japanese TV personalities, I was told, often have exceptionally large ears, because that is deemed 'cute'. American anchors most often seem to have stepped off of a nudie film or the nearest plastic surgery clinic and into the comfy chair that holds their butt while they fulfill their life's ambition of being watched reporting on earthquakes and plane crashes before switching to stories about cute abandoned puppies finally having found a foam. A malleable personality bobs and weaves from tragedy to comedy with the turn of the head, the flick of the hair, the widening abyss of her smile.

In Grade 3 a teacher informed me that she could see me hosting the evening news one day. Even then, the notion baffled and perplexed me. Why would she think I would like such a role? I wanted to write, to be a motorcycle cop, to make movies. Was my true destiny to read the news?

Of course, even now, perhaps, somebody has randomly found this blog and is sitting reading these words and wondering why I think what I have to say is so desperately important that it must be read by strangers. I find that I can't answer that imaginary inquiry. All ambitions have roots in our psyche that our too tangled to unravel. YouTube channels are filled with videos of people giving comments on every imaginable topics, with insight far more substantial than these meager words.

Doubt creeps into my conscience. Who am I to scorn the dreams of others? I suddenly realize that both the anchorwoman and the adult actress are looking into cameras only asking to be seen. On a grander scale than most of us, but the intent is identical to our own daily wishes, and my own attempts at immortality: Look at me and I will know that I am alive. A face unseen is a face left dead. A shout without an echo is the saddest sound of all.

COINS IN THE AIR

2010-07-28T12:55:00.002+08:00

Consider a coin being tossed. One person has guessed heads. His opponent, having little choice, waits for tails. The penny or nickel, dime or quarter does its erratic dance. It rises up in an erratic, almost enigmatic arc. All eyes are waiting for its fall. Which each step as it descends, time not only seems to slow down but also fall down, as if fortune itself seemed destined to tweak time's pace and render it moot. The coin would fall at its own sweet rate, outcome be damned. The people are mere players in the object's own plan. When one's moral fortune rides on the end of a bet, theories of relativity gain force with their weight.

Between two, such a bet is a mere divergence. Imagine a flip simultaneously taking place all over the planet. Two sides (multiplied by three billion) facing each other and raising their eyes upwards. The end result will decide a bet; settle a wager; allow one to start while the other must wait?

How much money would this be, soaring through the same sky? Add up the currency and you have the concentrated input of a multitude of half-starved dreams. Who gets the ultimate balance of such hopes and desires? Which accounts will swell with the unearned pride of luck, chance's kindred soul, if not identical twin?

Shall we watch the coins fall slowly to earth? Some part of me recoils at the sight, as if they were beautiful birds whose wings' bring colours had faded and whose fate was sealed. If one can imagine all the coins in all the countries landing on all the hands stretched out to catch them, then what else can one conceive? A coin that can't stop flipping, I suppose. A coin that sways from head to tails and back again with a tempo that tempts the harshest of hearts. This luck shall be spread, such hijinks suggest. For if a coin cannot be coerced into choosing one side or the other, then perhaps time itself can be tempted to ignore its more outrageous demands.

A series of coins tossed end upon end, with observers on hand to watch and to wait. Billions of us, waiting it out. And waiting. And waiting. Perhaps it is best for the coins to hold sway. If the coins do not land, then luck has no domain or dominion. If the game cannot start, the game cannot end. If we watch and we wait and refuse to buy in, then who is to say whose coin shall be best?

LIFE AS A PARADE

2010-07-23T04:58:00.002+08:00

A convoy of light blue cars, Cadillac in tone, glide through the streets. The drivers are impartial, blank-faced functionaries wearing dark black suits and plastic smiles. Seated on top of the back seats are older men and younger women, the men bald, the women with flowing blonde hair, middle-aged in texture, turning to gray even as this day bumps forward. Everyone is smiling the smile of the bored and the glum. Glumness is squeezed out of this forced joviality like toothpaste from a tube, bit by bit. Strutting beside the cars as they inch along the roads of the tow are dozens of gleeful, almost anorexic teenage girls, confident in their newfound, safe-for-consumption sluttiness, blonder by far than their mothers and aunts who sit in the cars beside them. Metal batons are twirled and caught. Then twirled. Then caught. Everything is repeated and nothing is forced. A natural, almost magnetic flow can be detected in the force field that surrounds this annual ritual, a shared understanding of roles and duties that binds and attracts as inwardly it repels and even disgusts. The high school marching band brings up the rear while its members watch the rears of the cheerleaders in front of them, thinking of what could poossibly arrive later on tonight, once the trumpets are shelved and the pom-poms are all arranged neatly in rows on the shelves of changing rooms that stink of sweat and farts and underarm deoderant smeared with human guck.

On the sidelines, the grown-ups take pictures while the children secretly wonder what this fuss is really all for. Does the brassy bold sound of the band's blatant boom, rising and falling with predictable oomph, make up for a day absent of games? Probably not. The older children's eyes, from age eight and up, stray from the scene and stare at the sky. Ice cream is eaten by overweight mothers who wish they were young. Their husbands stare at their families and wonder why the tushes of schoolgirls intrigue them so much.

The parade keeps moving on while all stand so still. Everyone expects a grand finale, a final push, an end to the march that will elevate their energies into something grander than middle-class pride. Instead the local furniture store has a float that breaks down with the burst of an overburdened tire. A boy and his sister sit on a couch and roll their eyes at their sudden misfortune. A punctured wheel has made them the sad spectacle of their friends and their foes. The rest of the parade can't help but move on, while they wait on a sofa, picking their noses and holding in burps, watching cotton candy sticks and half-eaten cones casually fall to the ground with heartbreaking splats.

DANGEROUS GAMES OF GIVE AND TAKE

2010-07-22T05:23:00.000+08:00

Why are we constantly at war with our bodies? Or, if such daily skirmishes are not out-and-out battles, there is still enough of a remnant of mental shrapnel lodged within our fragile psyches to make us believe that a firefight has gone on somewhere between our brains and our limbs.

This morning I awoke at what I thought was my usual time, my correct time, one that operated according to is own reliable rhythms since my alarm clock fell to the floor a few days and thus was rendered, as the Greeks say, kaput. After my run I realized, while flipping on the TV: It's an hour later. I've lost an hour. An hour has been stolen from me, by myself.

For a moment or two I felt a sense of acute violation, if not actual betrayal, the way a wife must feel when coming across an unfamiliar scent on the collar of her husband's shirt. I've always relied upon my body to wake itself when necessary; I can't remember the last time it's failed me. (This 'it' referring to a strange and squishy conglomeration of blood and cells, neurons and veins that, apparently, from what I'm told from television, makes up the sum and total of 'me'.)

Not that my day has been rendered completely moot. Nothing much has changed. True, for the first time in four months I took a train that was later than my normal departure time; the faces of the people across from me were uniform in their sleepy, reluctant gazes. My legs felt slightly sore from my early jog, and my throat thirsted for chocolate milk. These are familiar, almost welcome sensations.

But a wonderful, wicked sense of bitterness crept out of my soul and into the world. I almost wanted to punish my body for failing my pride. Not sitting down would wound my limbs. Refusing to drink would inflame the ego of my thirst. Perhaps I could teach my cheeky body a lesson, punish it for sleeping in that extra hour. Within me the spirit wants to play a dangerous game of give and take with the flesh that houses its essence.

WEAKER IN TEXTURE, FRAILER IN TONE

2010-07-21T04:57:00.002+08:00

Perhaps heat is not the antithesis of cold but rather its antagonist. Imagine, if you will, life as an element -- a brazen force of nature that emerges from an existence unknown to even itself. Alternating its state as a less-than-sentient-being with a powerful, driving extremity that precisely, almost diligently slaughters all in its path like a laser run amok. Heat and cold, light and dark, wind and snow: all arbiters of our own daily temperments. We enter into their extremes not against our will but rather against our better judgement. A sane person would do everything in his power to exist in a realm where conflict is minimized. Instead, we step out into that darker world only to hurtle down jagged slopes with hunks of wood strapped to our legs. We swim into filthy water to rise above it on equally fragile chunks of timber. Nothing stops us from pursuing our own entry point into ego and the bottomless desires of our rather bland consciousness, where 'fun' and 'folly' coexist as equal partners in our endless quest for the novel that is new without being disturbing. Is it any wonder that I wonder about nature's fiercest forces doing battle with each other while we frolic amidst their raging skirmishes, as if the elements themselves were mere obstructions to our own eventual, inevitable, entitlement?

Put another way: the rain looking at an umbrella. Would the rain, if consciousness were contained within the DNA of each and every drop, tremble in senseless fear at such a device, or would its individual droplets of laughter reach such a hysterical level of uncontrollable mirth that the collective sound of a billion raindrops laughing in unison shake our sense of nature itself? Think of it! A storm execretes its forceful, prideful burst of water. We attach a flimsy barricade supported by metal (or plastic! ) as a kind of cone which will keep us dry so as not to stain or soil our precious leggings. The same rain that falls on the top of Mount Everest and eventually sinks to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, where it floats around inside of sunken ships where wartime skeletons lay so still, also must bounce off of the top of a Japanese schoolgirl as she rushes to meet her friends at McDonald's. Can we blame rain and wind, air and snow for getting bored with the frivolity of our lives! Even the elements need some lusty sexual thrust to their existence on this earth.

Which I is why I see such natural, ostensibly benign forces turning against each other -- heat resenting cold, snow sneering at sleet. Each imagining the other to be weaker in texture and frailer in tone. One can glimpse daily battles in the sky, the ground, the ocean, the field. Where apples fallen from trees have not fallen, but been pushed. (Bland brown bark fiercely jealous of the shiny red that glows so bright.)

I fear that a certain apocalypse is arriving on a daily basis. (Or perhaps it has been here since the first ray of sun angrily forced its way through the most stubborn of clouds?) One that humans, in all our useless egos, will not even suspect, let alone detect. We watch the night ram the sun into submission and think: Of course -- such is the way of life. Fall sucking summer's sweet nectar dry makes us mourn our own lost weekends, but what of summer itself? Who mourns for its complete eradication? When the wind whistles at my window tonight, I will wonder if it is taunting or pleading.

MUSES

2010-07-20T04:56:00.003+08:00

Even nature has its muses. The weed looks up to the flower. The flower admires the tree. The tree, with all its many-branched attempts at pseudo-superiority, secretly feels inferior when glimpsing the occasional plane soaring past what had once been thought of as its own private, ultimate height. (The tree is not aware that the plane exists separate and above from nature's plan. Faced with such knowledge, confronted by that metallic evidence, who could guess if an oak would topple with the unfair indignity of it all?) Even the sky sometimes seems to want something more. Can it spot outer space a world away? The creativity of the cosmos finds itself at work in the ego of the plant and the dirt, the grass and the twig. One supports the other like a teammate who covertly desires the better player's place on the team. Secretly one suspects that the strange, melodic hissing one sometimes hears in the country at night, spreadout and sourceless, is actually an accumulation of nature's envy, each blade of grass and drop of water diligently moaning against the burden they equally share in each other's growth.

MYSELF, MIRRORED DIM

2010-07-19T04:57:00.002+08:00

When I was in high school I wrote a story about a shadow that steps away from its host and forms a life of its own. An entity that created havoc in the lives of all who dared cross its murky, ephemeral path. Much carnage ensued. Perhaps. The details are vague, and, dare I say it, shadowy in my mind. Adolescence itself often becomes a shadow from our past that cloaks itself under the black weight of its own dimness. What matters is that the shadow was evil, as shadows are often assumed to be, much the same way that a snake is a source of slithery dread, no matter how indifferent it may actually be to our nervous human lives.

Yesterday in the dazzling sunshine of a Japanese afternoon I spotted a shadow on the street, silently, blatantly stalking me, reminding me of that tale written long ago. Suddenly things became halfway clear in my memory, the way that a car at night is lit -- but dimly -- when one opens the door and sits near the wheel. I remembered my fourteen year old self walking down the long street that led to my house, the night dark and moon-free, passing under streetlamps,
seeing my shadow brilliantly lit against the night. Such a spooky sight! Thinking of it now, decades later, a country away, in daylight in place of night, only added to the eerie distance that lengthens our lives.

I suddenly felt oddly at peace with that shadow. After all, it had kept me close and held me tight for years on end, when much else had fallen aside in the inevitable refuse of time. Day or night, it slinked by my side. What could be ominous about such a loyal, cordial companion? Had its mere darkness given rise to the bigot lying at the base of my soul? It was but myself, mirrored dim. Faceless, featureless, a sideways-thin cutout that never bled solid. A benign reflection of what I always was.

But I felt my fourteen year old self's thoughts clattering around the container of my skull. Such a shadow was not to be trusted. Darkness visible led to darkness tangible. The black without mirrors the black within. There is a reason why we fear that which we cannot touch. Run!

Picking up my pace, I almost believed it could be left all behind. I could outrun my shadow, leave it gasping and panting on the sizzling grey pavement. Slice it in pieces by my quick narrow strides. What was key was what was impossible: to not check for its presence. By tilting my head and moving my eye, I was affirming its existence, and we all suck on the teat of affirmation, shadows included. As soon as it spotted my eye looking left, its force would increase with confidence and glee. I had to stare straight ahead and hope it would fall. By the time I reached my small place and shut tight the door, took off my shoes and wiped down my brow, the shadow was gone. Artificial illumination left nothing but a bulb's blatant glare, yellow and welcoming. I knew that if I stepped outside even then, the shadow might be waiting, but I was sure I'd left it to die on the street like a dog. I opened the door, a little, a squidge, to quickly glance at what might be left. I shut it before seeing anything. Some things are risks not meant to be broached. Soon night would be here and the shadow would have less places to rise.

A handful of streetlamps line the road near my home, but I would not walk under them that warm summer night. Shadows know where we walk, and prey where we move. If I was inside, and still, the shadow would fail. My high school self was right. Shadows are not to be trusted. Tomorrow I would have to leave the apartment once again, but if it rained through the night the clouds might still serve as the sun's moving buffer. Outwitting the shadows is a game I can play.

OBSESSED BY IT ALL

2010-07-16T05:08:00.003+08:00

Imagine a man obsessed by collecting it all. 'All' being everything. 'Everything' being the sum of everything that has yet to be subtracted from the earth. He would wander the deserts to be found all over the globe, putting tiny golden grains in jars made of glass. Enough deserts to dry one's soul and make millions of mirages your endless true friend.

Once the deserts were emptied and the land made but barren, he could turn to oceans and rivers, seas and lakes, ponds and streams and the water from faucets. There is a limit to everything, he believed, and if he was patient enough, such beliefs would prove true. Once all of the water was put in tiny plastic bags, dwarf-size in heft, he would stand under the heavens and wait for the rain. Eventually even clouds got tired of unleashing their spew. He would outwait the weather until the weather gave in.

Pennies and peacocks, aspirin and insects, malted chocolates and craven husks of corn all twisted in shape. These, too, he would put away. Eventually, there would be nothing left but his body himself. He would turn inward. Attack the cancer that ravaged his soul. Stop those cells from dividing. Destroy them at their desperate true source.

And when the cancer was gone, he would wait for its return, its comeback, its ascent from oblivion into where it once went. Peeking into all its familiar haunts like an exile come home, he would nab those dark cells with the force of his will.

Deep inside of himself he feared this would fail. Everything physical could finally be held, but cancer itself seemed devious and sly. A shape-shifter whose intent matched its cunning black skill, ephemeral in scope, limitless in style.

Once the land was all empty and the oceans all dry, he knew the limits of failure would render him still. Immobile. Almost paralyzed. For failure was what the disease would bring forth, a tangible spring from which all else sprung high. He would have to put his physical tools to the side to begin, focusing only on the psychic descent which would let him take hold. If he could dwell in those spots where cancer was born, allow himself a comfort that others would flee, perhaps he could dig up what noone yet dared. The one single cell from which all cancers split. In a jar in his room or a room in his mind, in which all could come see, to mock and to jeer.

ON THIS STAR AND OTHERS

2010-07-15T04:55:00.004+08:00

A pink the pink of a girl's summer dress unfolded itself across the sky just before five, and I couldn't help but wonder if otherworldly beings in alien civiliations look at their own morning skies and think similar thoughts. One would hope that not all extraterrestials are slimy, slithery green monsters intent on the destruction of all races absent their own; if other worlds have life (as I suspect they must), then such lives must reach for emotional heights as high ourselves, no?

Unless, of course, their intelligence has yet to reach our intimidating levels of insight and comprehension, which a scan of the evening news programs will tell you is neither a level nor low, but a little of both -- random facts spewed by pretty people whose content we grasp but whose meaning is unclear, swayed by whichever advertisers are aiming at the particular demographic that this network covets so fiercely, like a perpetually greedy child on an endless Christmas morn. Aliens beyond the edges of our own universe may still be slinking themselves out of the ocean and onto the beach; they may be bacteria splitting into other, uglier cells. Not even being able to dream of the day when they, too, can dress up so well to sell stuff so bland.

Easy to imagine the opposite -- that their souls have grown past the point at which ours have plateaued. Scienticially, they may have already solved the problems that vex us still; spiritually, they may have found their own spirits alive and intact, or determined forever that no soul exists.
Or perhaps they are more like us than we would like to consider. Something in between a crayfish and a celestial angel. A being that lies on the beach and stares up at the stars. One that wonders if anyone else is out there, up above, and, if they are, if that should change what they do down there, on their own daily tread.

Imagining the daily, domestic life of alien reverts the mind into sci-fi cliches -- ray guns and warp speeds, flying saucers and squeaky voices. Attempting to enter their inner lives takes an imaginative leap of logic and faith that is equal to the endeavour one would have to do to fully understand your neighbour next door. (Almost impossible!)

Should the day come when our ritualized,televised morning awakens us to the flat, high-definition sight of an alien aircraft landing in Washington, much will be made of missle defense and ploys being planned. What do they want? Why are they here? All legitimate, even essential questions. I will think different thoughts, remembering the sky from this morning, its pinkness so bright. I would wonder if similar thoughts are common to all, on this star and others.

THE SEA AND THE PLAINS

2010-07-14T04:57:00.003+08:00

Into our room the two of them enter, the young one and the old one both babbling away, our past and our future united as one. At first one blames the room's poor acoustics for what little is heard -- low, muffled, indistinct tones, like notes on a piano that's slowly being tuned. Gradually comes a strange sort of relief when it is clear that neither the room nor, more importantly, oneself are at fault for this lack of comprehension. The others themselves are speaking much nonsense. (Oh, how good it feels to blame someone else!)

The boy is not more than two, if even that, and his words are a motley mixture of the real and the fantastical, one syllable guffaws giving way to extended monologues only he seems to get. (And how he so clearly enjoys revelling in his own private realm. His laughs and his giggles splitting his own tiny words into two, three, even four separate parts, so that what finally emerges is a nonsensical stream of spittle and sounds.

His much elder comrade in nonsense fares not so much better. The child's high-pitched patter is substituted by the elderly man's guttural grunts, but the pitch is the same, and the pace is as quick. It is as if the old man is eager to get it all out, clarity be damned. He, too, has bubbles of spit playing games on his mouth. There is a melancholy undertone to this sloppy style. Surely he must know that what he says is not being heard; his eyes' vacant gaze suggests a deep inner wound. A long life of dialogue replaced by a monologue -- is that wound enough?

The boy doesn't mind. Something within his young sensitive mind unconsciously goads him to keep spouting forth blab, for good or for ill, at that age who cares? Eventually, all will laugh at his witty few words. Months and years of conversation await, and soon all will know what you say and you mean.

From my privileged vantage point at the side of the room, looking at the old man, I glimpse no similar voice whispering in his tired mind. While the boy is thinking thoughts that have yet to take root, the man's firm foundations of belief and intent have already been uprooted. (Time will do that, no?) He is scrambling for words that have long passed away. What's left are mere fragments that can't mesh as one. While the boy is continually adding, something, everything, is being subtracted from the man's aging soul. He would think this a tragedy if he were aware of its indifferent intent, but his mind is a mold of the sea and the plain. Raging waters are replaced by the quietest, widest flatland, like the prairies he once drove through while heading out west. Words can't help but drown in that water and get lost in those fields.

Still. In this spare room, amidst such unlikely companions, can another, larger force be detected? For words are but hints of what hearts truly want. Perhaps this underlying desire desire for communion can tell us what sloppy speech obscures.

Let me out! the boy shouts.

Let me in! the old man pleads.

A primal, potent need to be heard by both that must come from somewhere near.

Let us leave this room quietly, while they're still chatting freely. I'm sure they will part, and only one will remain. (I won't dare say who, but I'm sure you can guess.) We'll shut the door softly, and tiptoe away. Soon that young boy will start to make sense, and most of that innocent infant charm will be gone. Before long that old man will stop speaking for good. The words will have faded forever.

Perhaps some cosmic exchange is at work. The young feed the old with their knowledge and letters. In return, what is given so freely must now pay its price. A psychic system of bartering that makes humans flow. Energy exchanged never dies; it merely changes form. One withers while the other grows tall.

If we walk down the hall at a slow steady pace, we might just hear an electric undercurrent beneath their strange words, the strike of a spark that spreads a fire both will set.

PICTURE A BOY RIGHT OUT OF ROCKWELL

2010-07-13T04:56:00.002+08:00

Picture a boy right out of Rockwell, American in tone, Japanese in technique. Scene from the street, sitting at his desk, the window his frame. A child's messy plan sprawled out in front of him: pastels and pencils, papers pens. The bare, skeletal, fragments of a mobile something-or-other yet to be built. His tongue sticks out of his mouth in that form of universal concentration that spans across cultures and must be implanted within us from above upon birth.

Somebody should be painting this, I thought, walking by, glancing quickly. (Staring into anyone's home is an oddly intimidating moment. One feels somehow responsible for an open window and a desk too close to the edge of outside. Especially in Japan, where everything is at odds with itself and each other, people and buildings bisecting each other until humanity merges with train lines in flux.)

Would Norman Rockwell have been up to the task? That essential chronicler of a midwest America that may not exist? Or, it it ever did, such a time and quite the place it must have been! One where innocence at play and adults at work somehow coexisted in a common sense of balance and trust. To extend such a midcentury metaphor of decades gone by to the Japan of today seems somehow strained, mostly because an atom bomb from the forties inevitably enters any discussion of America and Japan, no matter how long one changes the topics and forces one's smile. (There are, after all, only so many topics to talk about. Even the trivial has its depths, eventually.)

Everything is amplified by these streets and this place, where American soldiers work less than a mile away from that little boy sketching his future with the chalk of today. Mere decades okay a big bomb went kaboom. It's not unreasonable to conceive that relatives of this budding artist or engineer felt their bodies burn quickly and their life slip away in such an explosion. And it's probably certain that Rockwell himself, or those from his clan, fought and died against the relatives of this selfsame child.

Oh, the reckless complexity of the past! Let it all stay dead and done, if you please. Let us watch a boy do a Sunday's good deed without considering all that has come and all that will follow. When Americans still occupy a land all its own, such concerns find their way to the front of the line. Race, and all its mysterious, ineffable irrelevance, makes me wonder why some are born here and others there. Why decisions decided by people long dead still make us sit up and look at her skin.

For now, I'll let the boy be, and let the questions of nations lay nestled in newsprint. If Rockwell had verve, it was in the life of the faces he drew with such care. They had a life beyond what we could imagine, and so does this boy I saw for a second. Even as I write these words, he is probably waking up and getting ready for school, downing his juice and packing his bag. The past has no concern for someone so young. He will step out of the frame that he does not know exists and enter his own little world of school play.

A LOVELY BUT LONELY SIGHT

2010-07-12T04:57:00.002+08:00

A young couple kissing their final goodbyes before parting is a lovely but lonely sight. When such an encounter occurs on a train station platform, we have moved from the realm of reality to that of a cinematic melodrama, but even melodrama has its roots in the rubic of life. Cliches are enacted wherever we go, and life need not be original or novel to force its effect. Watching this scene play out activates the voyeur in all of us, the original watcher that wants to observe. I pretend to be studying the schedule of trains hanging over our heads, but secretly watch as they play out a scene for which they are the stars and I am an audience.

One suspects that something is surely amiss, for lovers at rest rarely look so languid and dreamy as they loll about in one another's arms like pups at play. Trains move in and out of their station at their regular, Japanese clip, and the couple (for surely they are two) -- he, dark-haired, she, a blonde, his male to her female watch them go sadly and expectantly, for soon such a car will subtract one and leave the other behind.

They continue to hug and hang off of each other, but the tone shifts, the levity gone, their former play replaced by a desperate embrace that reminds one of mourners at a funeral wondering what will come next. She slowly rubs the back of his skull in soft little circles, as if his stomach is painful and she holds the cure. In their t-shirt and shorts they could be any young lovers going for a carefree day out in a city not their own, but their restless intimacy speaks of a sooner parting.

When the train for the airport finally arrvies, she holds him tight and kisses him deep. The doors open. She steps inside, staying close to him still. He starts to move away from the doors and the tracks, but she grins and waves him forward for one final kiss. For a long moment his face is between the railway line and her lips that are waiting. He crosses the gap. Kisses. Leans back. She smiles. I suddenly realize that they will see each other soon. There are no tears. There are no faces with the shock of one who's been slapped. Perhaps she is going back before him, or they will meet in ten days in another far land. Things seem better, somehow, as if a child that has fallen down somewhere has suddenly stood up.

The doors close, and she blows him the kiss of cliches and the truth. He watches the train leave in a rapid-fire rush, and I watch him watch. He is smiling slightly. He walks slowly away in the mid-summer heat.

I feel guilty and alone, knowing that I will write about this moment, and that whatever they are feeling will not be conveyed. I don't know their names, so that lessens any loss of pride that I feel by this breach of their privacy.

Even standing still, my shirt is scorched with sweat. I think that this entry will somehow ennoble their spirits, allowing them to represent all those who go, and all those who will stay. Absurd, grandiose thoughts.

He walks away, and I wait for my train.

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

2010-07-09T04:55:00.002+08:00

When the players who take the pitch at the World Cup final in South Africa on Saturday nigtht are not wearing the flag of your particular country stitched onto the corner of their jerseys, a certain dispassionate interest, bordering on indifference, naturally takes root. This is not necessarily altogether a negative development. Since one's national pride is no longer (or had never been) at stake, one can develop a deeper appreciation or disillusionment with the game itself. One can be a North American and love soccer, or hate soccer, but surely that vast middle section of Canada and America (absenting Mexico) exists whereupon one can not work up a lather about a sport seen by so few and adored by even fewer. Thus watching the game at length during the World Cup tends to make one see why most of the planet pines for its holy structure, but such understanding inevitably leads to a disarray in one's sporting heart. Yes, the low-score creates a level of anticipation akin to a child at the circus waiting for the clowns to finally come out of their miniature car. Certainly, the no-time-outs maximizes the playing time and necessitates the absence of commercials -- no minor miracle in this advanced advertising age!

But what can one raised on hockey and baseball do with everything else about the game? Nothing specifically monotonous endgenders such lethargy. After all, one cannot play the sport for two years as I did from the tender ages of seven to eight without gaining a certain respect for the game's sense of space and time. As a halfback, I was a terrible player, as all children are, but I was the worst of the worst; I hung past the centreline and stared at the grass and thought about the oranges we would all eat at halftime. Sweet and juicy! Such was my limit of love for the game.

However, a game is a game, and all children love games, and all children grow into adults who remember that love, no matter how strongly they deny its primitive pull. So with Canada content to sharpen its blades while waiting for the winter hockey season to start, I can look forward to Spain taking the soccer world by storm, by hook, by crook. The stakes are suddenly high for me, as of late. An office pool randomly gave me Spain as my savior. More than ten dollars awaits. Has money tainted this beautiful game?

Only if I lose.

AN AMBULANCE IN MOTION

2010-07-08T04:55:00.001+08:00

An ambulance in motion is always a sight. Alarm bells within our souls suddenly start ringing when we hear that siren play its morbid, insistent tune. Rules are permitted to be slashed for the benefit of a life that is suspected of negligence. Traffic signals become an option for the able-bodied only, while ambulance drivers soar indifferently through colours lazily changing. Something thrilling to watch, this blatant disregard for a sacrosanct line we often don't cross. Red light, stop. Green light, go. Orange light, perhaps. Ambulance in front of all -- irrelevant. While we sit and stew and watch it go by in a blast of mortality.

And yet don't we sometimes blame the patient inside for altering the course of our own meager day? Perhaps they are to blame for their own special ill. The extra sandwich that trigged the chest to start leaking its pain. The trip down the stairs due to a distracted moment of afterglow bliss. A knife to the stomach or blow to the head can be forgiven, but our own futile natures?

An amublance at rest puts such thoughts to the side. Doors fling open. Gurneys are hastily pushed out, the people on top swaying this way and that. ('Gurney' Such an ugly, clunky word for a necessary conduit. One cannot find grace with such syntax. The very name itself implies a stodgy, ugly means of mobility. With words come emotion, and here we all fail.) A paramedic pumps one, two, three, one, two, three, while an oxygen mask lazily slips off of the mouth of a man too old to care. (Or so we would like to believe. More reassuring, is it not, to think that these last breaths of his are ones that mean naught? Until we are the ones lying inert and in pain. Watching others watching us die our little deaths. Oh, then we shall wonder how callous and cruel this species can be!)

There are dangers to living so close to a hospital. One constantly is greeted by the sad, lonely faces of people who once were so merry. Legs in casts welcome my days. Lips wrapped around cigarettes blow puffs in my face. Early morning runs bring mortality near, like a poisonous snake coiled ready to strike. And the sight of ambulances so often skirting our rules makes traffic itself seem tenuous and silly. Manmade order that masks disorder itself.

THEN ALL WOULD BE MUSIC

2010-07-07T04:55:00.002+08:00

Surely silence has layers as nuanced as noise. The still in the room when a door has been opened speaks softly of loneliness and time long left out. Pauses in talks talk stronger than shouts. More can be learned from leftover air in an unopened vault. One would not think such examples could possibly compete with the shot of a gun or the snap of a finger. Abrupt, invasive sounds that stick like a pin into the skin of our lives. Our thoughts meander like wandering muses until something startles us out of ourselves and into another mode of apprehension. This shock strikes strong, but silence! Surely the sound of nothing at all can compare with the clangiest of clunks.

Were sound to be have been a manmade invention, would we have known it to hear it? A baby in the womb, shifting on its side and sleeping the sleep that only the unborn inhabit, could not wish such sounds to awaken his slumber. Ignorance of all things auditory may have been our original state. Only later, after birth, did we hear what we heard, but it may not have been in our celestial design for good or for long.

Perhaps man was not meant to hear. If the ear had developed in a different direction, sound itself would never be missed. Certainly the whisper of lovers, the tremble of fighters, the panic of the lost and the shrieks of the bereaved make our lives vital and taut, but have you ever turned off the sound of a TV and saw what was missed? Very little. Everything is clear. Nothing is absent except the extraneous. Hockey with sound is brutal and jarring; hockey in silence contains a tingle of grace. One could almost imagine that the deaf are the ultimate inheritors of God's true intent, and all of the rest of us are merely dead weight, hearing it all and listening to zilch.

To listen! Perhaps that is the point of the glut on our heads, the wings on the sides of our faces that stick out to the air like birds in a nest. Were we to wait for the rain to land in the puddle. Should we pause to tune in to the tempo of a tree's last branch as it bends and then sways and then falls to the earth. Could we but dwell in the laugh of a child's first chuckle. If such suspension were possible, then all would be music.

READING TOLSTOY ON THE TRAIN

2010-07-06T04:56:00.000+08:00

One of the dirty little secrets hiding within the secret hearts of even the most dedicated of readers resides in the room designated as 'Unread Books'. Oh, the shame! To reach a certain age, to have lived a life centred around the printed word that leaps off of the page and onto our eyes and into our brains, and yet never to have sampled Remembrance Of Things Past! Or The Tempest! Or most of, the best of, Tolstoy!

Having delved deeper and deeper into Norman Mailer after an absence of a good many years, I was struck by his admiration of Tolstoy, with Harlot's Ghost, Mailer's masterwork, being deemed 'a modern day War and Peace' by one generous critic. (What the ungenerous critics proclaimed is better left silent.) Off to the bookstore I went, and out of the bookstore came me, arms stuffed with cheap editions of Anna Karenina and War and Peace and Moby Dick. (Not Tolstoy, no, but another honourable inhabitant of that 'Unread Book' domicile.)

Living in Japan often means spending the great majority of one's days standing on trains. You can either think, listen, or read. I prefer to read. One can read a lot on trains, if you get on early enough, when it's relatively isolated and empty, or in the middle of the day, when the rest of the Japanese world remains shuddered in office silence.

How odd! To be a Canadian, reading a Russian book from the 19th century, translated into English, while riding to work in Japan! And everything still somehow comes through. Across the centuries leap notions of logic and love, religion and sacrifice, that seem as modern, if not more modern, than the very relationships that prop us up at the beginning of this 21st century. Outside the second most successful economy in the world buzzes and hummes, and inside a metal tube I speed along, reading words that were written by a Russian gentlemen on pen and paper more than a hundred-odd years ago.

And how odd this is, no? I'm still amazed, if not grateful, for the mysterious nature of the written word, how one man's thoughts -- those ephemeral, intangible nothings that float about our brains! -- can somehow be rendered in little symbols that stab into my heart from across a distant time and space. Who declares telepathy mere fancy? And to have these letters than transmorphed into other letters from another language that signify something different -- but the same! -- so that the effect intended is the effect produced. I don't get it. But it somehow gets me, repeatedly.

More weeks of trainriding lie ahead, the tracks spreading out north, south, east, west, circling and enveloping and criss-crossing Tokyo and Yokohama like a wave of water that hems me in. If I can keep bringing onboard these metal contraptions my daily limit of words and paper, bound together, thoughts encapsulated and shot acr0ss time, I will remain happily trapped.

BORN ON THE FIRST OFJULY

2010-07-05T04:56:00.001+08:00

As the dazzling fireworks of the Fourth of July wind their way down to a black and crispy puddle of ash, I think of my day, Canada Day, July 1. I was here and they were there. Canadian, here, in Japan; Canadians, there, in Canada. Much beer was drunk, of this I am certain. Much exploding lights were seen across the sky, lighting and dazzling and doing what fireworks are supposed to do, while back at home, closer to the ground, level with the grass, firecrackers chased some kids and chopped some fingers.

I keep thinking of a little boy, in a small apartment, near where I went to school. York University, in Toronto, not far from Jane and Finch, probably the most crime-covered section of Canada (if you believe what you read, which I usually do -- to my detriment). He is probably black, an immigrant from the Caribbean, or the son of immigrants from somewhere else. Haiti, perhaps. Or he could be Vietnamese, or Chinese, or Thai. Lots of those folks there, too, in that cheap housing. Never seen much outside of Toronto, this kid. Never been north, to cottage country. Never been south, to the States. He's seen concrete and steel his whole life, even living near Yonge and Steeles, as if he needs any more affirmation that his world is a sterile one.

What does he make of his country, my country? I've been gone a long time; sometimes I wonder what to make of it, too. Does he know where we is? Does he get the country the way that I think I do? Are his dreams of lakes and waterskis, gangs and guns, a little bit of both, a whole bunch of neither? Should I care? Does it matter?

While America does what it does, Canada did what it did on July 1, and now has moved on. Hot dogs and burgers, pop and beer, chips and blunts. A day to chill and forget the rest of your life. What did that little boy in that rundown apartment do on such a day? And what will he do on each of the days from here on out?

ANOTHER ARRANGEMENT OF MEANING

2010-07-02T04:57:00.000+08:00

Words! A puny arrangement of letters. Words! Sounds that link to other sounds that are thereby supposed to link to something that dwells downward within us. Words! Mere utterings of disgust and glory that somehow give a facile sense of self to the otherwise shifting currents of our psyche, that flowing river from which we can not ever cease to drown slowly but certainly as the banks of the current of our lives sit impassively watching.

Another arrangement of meaning needs somehow to be certified by the Human Enforcement Division of the Spiritual Faculty, because words are not enough. Words are futile. Words erect barriers against the protests that lodge within our souls like houseguests who refuse to leave an agreeable arrangement. Within our stomachs dwell instincts and outrages that need to be unleashed, but the closest compromise we can concoct with the darker forces within is this bargain of vowels and verbs, consonants and connecting phrases, poor substitutes indeed for the grammar of the heart that demands some form of empathy and instead is left with slogans and sales pitches. A pity, too, that I need words to express that which cannot be expressed. I am forced to use a paper and pen, a keyboard and screen, to rage against the limits of the psyche. Would that music suffice as a form of communication, perhaps we could all hum a little ditty that would put Balzac to shame.

Even learning another language does little alleviate such anxieties, for upon such education one is gradually made aware of the prisons that are erected in the linguistic territories of all states, not merely one's own. Everything is approximate. There is no 'rock', 'whale' or 'gadget', only sounds and symbols that conspire to give us a shadowy facsimile of the original. To study another language is to delve into the mystery of language itself, but once we climb our way back through the dirt and up the rabbit hole and into the fresh blue sky of our original tongue we realize that the gig is up, the game has been rigged, the jury paid off. Multiple folds of meaning do, indeed, give us creases in our consciousness, but the end result is a paper airplane made from stronger stock that nevertheless falls from the air just as quickly as your average five-year old's attempt at foolscap aviation. What remains on the ground after the crash is merely another pile of words, different from our own, but words nevertheless, while primitive growls within us rage against the gods that leave us one step removed from the animals we secretly suspect we still are.

WHITE ARROW ON BLUE BACKGROUND

2010-07-01T04:56:00.000+08:00

A small white arrow set against a light blue background. Pointing north. Or ahead. Or in the general direction of that which lies in front of me. (Trying to follow directions has always hindered my sense of proportion and offended my inner balance.) A sign to direct those who need direction. At the same as the sign is seen a black cat dashes across the street in front of me. Out of a movie and into our lives, such are the cliches that continue. If I go ahead, I follow the sign; if I move forward, I cross that path which the black cat has streaked in my (dis)favor.

The question then becomes one of belief, options, alternatives -- all the alliterations that enhance and frustrate our existence. To believe in a black cat is no more rational than believing that an eternal old man lives up beyond the sky, or that our lives are truly and actually our own, to do with as we please, others be damned (or blessed). Yet what sway superstitions have over our rational minds! I immeditately reconcile the irrational fears dwelling in the base of my stomach with the notion that that particular black cat is the beloved member of a Japanese family, who feed it and pet it and ignore it on a daily basis, and what misfortune has ever befallen them? (Should you know this particular family, kindly don't answer. I do not wish to know.) If one lives amidst the most basic of black magic, than such sorcercy ceases to wield any evil intent. This is what I would like to believe, so it is what I choose to believe. Black cats are members of families. Hence, therefore, ipso facto, they cannot, in our modern world, be the harbingers of a dark and dastardly doom.

(Unless it is an orphan, this cat. Cast aside simply because of its wicked, wicked glare, and all that that evil gaze signifies.)

So the sign is what remains, the white arrow on blue background. Is it metal? Plastic? I'm suddenly embarrassed not to know what street signs are actually made of, as if, at any moment, a young child will pop out of the darkness and ask me why the sky is blue, and where we go when we die, and what, or what, my distinguished elder, are street signs made of? To refuse to answer would be the anecdotal equivalent of slaughtering Santa Claus with an already-bloodied machete before the young lad's wide, innocent eyes.) Can one actually proceed when one does not know where one is going, nor what one's indicator actually is composed of? Better to brave the black cat and all its (possible) misfortune by turning 'round and heading home?

BLUE TOO SOON

2010-06-30T04:55:00.002+08:00

Into summer he slid, with elegance and grace. Begone, spring's indifferent sprinkling of warmth and dew in equal, sloppy measure! Farewell, winter, whose memory even now is enough to chill one's bones to the very white of their deepest marrow! Mere months ago, true, but winter's abscence does not make the heart grow fonder. (Some truisms are not true for all altitudes.)

A deep, bubbling hot tub -- this was the summer in his mind. It would froth at the surface, be scalding to the touch of his toe, and eventually, as all summers do, as all summers must, it would give way. His body would soothe the most tempermental of pools, until access was immediate, a quick slick dip into the tub of June and July, with a dash of August thrown in for good measure.

(Although, if he were honest with himself, if he took the stand in the courtroom of his soul, he would admit, hand firmly placed on the Good Book to make the oath official, that August itself held a certain gentle grip on the firmament of his soul. For despite the roads that backed black heat like fire from the sun itself, and in contradiction to the blue skies and yellow suns that made each day the picture-postcard view of summer that we mistakenly remember from childhoods that did not truly exist, there were nights in that mischievous month, especially towards the end, when a cool came into the air that surely had no place in this season of all seasons. It was autumn's extended family, coming for an unexpected, and most certainly uninvited, visit. A tug at the back of the neck, leaving a touch of what one could swear was almost frost. A wind pushing the screen door shut, a breeze that passed the border between cool and cold and entered the country of unnaturally crisp. An occasional cloud in the sky that had the dark and bragging belly of December's lazy son. August was still ahead, but he would not be fooled so easily by its welcome, steamy embrace, not when the hug that lingered left a cool that stained one's skin blue too soon.)

THE SURFACE OF SOUNDS, THE BASE OF OUR ACTIONS

2010-06-29T04:54:00.002+08:00

By means of linguistic descent, we dwell even deeper. Jack had his beanstalk, urging him up; we have but words, tugging us north. To where? How far into the sky? From which plateau do we leap, and where shall we peak?

If such mismanaged attempts at communication start at age one, or two, or even three, as they most certainly must, then tracing back the tangled roots of our frustrated jumps into human intercourse, face to face, word to word, tongue to tongue, can begin to seem like the naive attempts of amateur anthropoligists. For who can declare, with any degree of arrogant certainty, where the words come from? From our families, our friends, our teachers, our neighbours -- all of the constellation of aggravating grown-ups who hover around our little infantile lives like bees around honey. We do not ask for language to be bestowed upon us like a plate of the finest meat laid at the feet of the most docile king. No. Language is hoisted upon us, a mugger in reverse slow-motion: swiping our words back to us one by one. Gently, true, but not without a considerable amount of damage done to our still forming, molding, musy little psyches.

Imagine a child torn between ten, twelve, fourteen different countries, passed from parent to parent and adult to adult, random and kin, with the ease of a basketball changing hands on the fastest of courts. One language is heard, snatched, gulped; another falls out of one's slick little hands and goes splat on the hardwood. No matter. Another will follow as surely as shit follows fart. Hundreds and thousands of words from multiple languages jammed together in the most unappetizing of stews. What would happen to an infant's mind? Would they be fluent in five or ten languages, or merely middling in many? Put another way, what would the nature of their thinking be? When one's sheer thoughts are as fluid as the most nimble of sperm than by what means can conception take root? Would thinking itself become a mere blip on the screen of their emotional psyche? Would such a child be held hostage by their emotions, feelings and flickers of anger and passion that have no linguistic counterpart?

Words are all that we have. So binding are they! Futile and senseless our lips can seem to be. Sounds strung together by the tongue and the teeth and the constant of spit. Somehow we are expected to forge a life of togetherness (ha!), a link between you and me based on how much saliva we manage not to expend while profession our passion and devotion to each other. Even as these words are typed my lips are tight, prim, closed. No sound is being emitted. And yet still the words come. No sounds, only words. Once again, man has found a way to tamper with the will of the gods.

Soon, in another vacant, but approaching, era, speech itself will prove unnecessary. Robotic, computerized communication will tie us together like rope on a hostage. (And the savior will be...) Children will learn to speak, but will they dive deep into the mass of their own psyche, with words as their guides, nouns as their nuances, verbs as their vectors? Or will they allow the surface of sounds to form the base of their actions?