TIME CAPSULES (A small sort of memoir)

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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.