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?
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
SPOTTERS
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
DANGEROUS ASSES DESCENDING: A CAUTIONARY TALE (WITH HAMSTERS AND GERBILS)
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.
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.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
LIFE APPROACHES: A LOVE STORY (HARDY BOYS EDITION)
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.
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.
Friday, January 28, 2011
COST OF LIVING (first part of a fiction)
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
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
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
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
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
-- 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.
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.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
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.
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.
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