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Tuesday, February 06, 2007

1st Draft of My Novella: "The Peace We Really Seek"

If you gaze for long into the abyss,
the abyss gazes also into you
.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

1.

Tara continued to spill her guts to me over the recent infidelity which she had committed. Despite my attentive façade, my eyes were lost in the ragged aura formed around her fine, ebony hair by those strands which saw fit to divert from the uniformity of her tumultuous and foible mane. Never having been in the grips of a serious, committed relationship, my ability to connect to her experience was impalpable. True, I had had many women spanning from my mid teens to my present mid-late twenties. I was rather amazed at how one could simultaneously find sex both spiritual and prosaic as I did. Sexuality. A mammoth of creation via societal traditions, upon which so much was at stake.

“So what do you think?” Tara asked, her eyes dark and heavy with guilt. The air in the café carried within itself a wafting sensation of comfort. I liked it here. Perhaps, even as we age, we never lose that impressionable sense of warmth and security which greets us upon conception and keeps us safe for the first nine months of our official existence. Organic, that’s how I would describe this place with its tables and chairs of weathered wood, earth tone flat based paint and punk rock bric-a-brac.

I asked her whether, in the act of the infidelity, things felt, for lack of a better term, “right”. It is through such questions that individual ambiguities come into being. Being beasts limited by syntax, where words such as “hate” may apply to one’s dislike of brussel sprouts to justifying, or perhaps merely explaining, acts of genocide. They say a culture’s language evolves according to that culture’s needs. Hence, the many words for snow utilised by the Indigenous Peoples of the Canadian north evolved from necessity while, in the lower provinces, we simply referred to snow as being “snow” or “wet snow”. Needless to say, I felt little surprise when Tara replied “I don’t know – I’m so confused”. After all, this is Generation X – you know, the one’s who “don’t know” and entire premise for existence has been recycled from an instructional manual for an entirely different machine altogether? I am surprised that each successive generation is capable of surviving given the preparation that we are given in life. It’s kind of like your parents, teachers, etc. are raised on a maintenance manual geared toward troubleshooting and maintaining the engine of an AMC Pacer. They pass this down to you, but you are BMW Roadster. Perhaps most ironic of all, it was your Grandparents who were the Pacers, your folks are really VW Bugs, so each level of life instruction becomes more and more detached with each generation. This would obviously account for the datedness of those adhering strictly to Biblical teachings!

Prodding deeper, mechanic as I am, I queried, “Is it that you don’t know how you felt or does the confusion rest in you don’t know what you should have felt?”. I could see her pale face strain as her inner workings struggled between her natural and conditioned inclinations – the spoken and the inner dialogue at odds. We sat in silence, hands both resting on the ring stained, dark grained wood surface of the café’s round table. My focus was now a blank stare, enveloped by the clinking of small metal spoons and porcelain overriding the Andante of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 1.

I returned to my conscious perceptions as Tara heaved a heavy, stale sigh and again said “I don’t know”.

Tara and I had known each other since the first year of our Undergraduate studies at Dalhousie University (established as the first non-denominational university in Canada I believe, back in the 1700’s – how many generations is that now?). We shared our brooding over the inadequacies of our first year Psychology professors and his inability to communicate to anything of a higher evolution than Freud’s cigar (needless to say we had both sided with Jung in such matters, sharing a common fascination regarding his theory of symbols). Our relationship had evolved from one of casual sex into one of those friendships which never seemed to extend beyond philosophical musings in a café. I can’t recall exactly why the sex had ended. There were no specific landmarks or symbols signalling a transition from one state to another – no border. There was never really a commitment. Still, in its own way, there was a relationship. Our only interactions were now over coffee, though our dialogue always knew a deep and profound intimacy.

It was in her third semester of studies when she met Jeff, then a fourth year History major. I had the occasion to meet Jeff once or twice and found him very much to my liking. In fact, it is odd I never got to know him better as we both shared an interest in the era leading up to the First World War. We would dissect characters such as the infamous Ludendorff and Haig. How the German idea of spreading their version of kultur across Europe might not have been all bad. How, despite the strong move towards Socialism during that time, it all seemed to die with Jaurés assassination, causing the blinders and banners of Nationalism to reign high. Somewhere amidst all this, people still found the time to create Jazz, make the Blues popular and completely ruin Classical Music.

Tara and Jeff had a church wedding in Halifax the year proceeding Tara’s graduation from the Faculty of German, a course of study she found rather easy as she had been raised in a bilingual household, her parent’s having immigrated from just outside of Munich in the late sixties. I had been to Munich; a beautiful Bavarian city with its Olympic Stadium, BMW Museum, and beer gardens where hardy German woman in their national frocks would carry inhuman numbers of beer steins between their podgy fingers amidst the savoury, sharp odour of bratwurst and sauerkraut, and repetitious, carbonated polka tunes. Not a cold place like Berlin, for example. I can remember walking in the city centre there and being gunned off by small blonde hair thugs and terror tots, five years of age, who seemed to be saying in unnatural Swartzenegger brogues “I’ll be back…”, even though Arnold is Austrian and the children actually looked only and said nothing.

I had also studied a year of German at Dal, but lacked any sort of proficiency, so following G.B. Shaw’s advice I became a teacher but couldn’t get a job and had to sort out an alternative source of income which is a meagre existence by twenty-first century Halifax standards.

As with all weddings, the affair was more for the benefit of the parents. Then again, what wedding isn’t? I honestly believe that if one can coordinate a wedding, then directing a play or big production would be a piece of piss.

Still, it was a good party.

In any case, up until this confession of recent infidelity, I thought the couple to be rather happy.

Tara drew a slow sip from her café americano and then lit a cigarette, releasing the smoke from her lips toward the floor at the side of our table in a tight spiralling funnel. With her eyes still staring downwards she pleaded to herself “I wish I could just stop thinking about it.”

Being a firm believer that we all contain the answers to our questions, I felt the slightest cramping of awkwardness here, as I was momentarily distracted, picking two stray dog hairs off the leg of my pants. By listening and, perhaps the odd prompt, I felt perhaps that she would dig beneath the conventions of her upbringing and societal conventions to find the essence of what was right for her… Sod the manuals of instruction! The manuals are what make dating and marriage suck. I mean, how often do friends break up or necessitate certain structures that must be adhered to regardless of personality type or values. If we were to de-institutionalise sex, then so much else would make sense and be more practicable to the human condition.

…Pity the leather couches in the room’s corner were not vacant, as to perhaps enhance this self-perceived professionalism which I felt competent to demonstrate. Alas, the worn wooden chairs with their rigid etched spiral rails would have to suffice.

After a few moments of passing silence measured in the expanding coarse grey ash of her cigarette I asked “are you happy with Jeff?”

“I don’t know” she replied, “it’s all so complicated”.

My mind recycled a concept from a de Bono book I had recently read which elaborated on society’s contentment with complexity and the general abandonment of the search for simplicity. Marriage and monogamy are certainly two conditions present in our society which has been the root of many unhappy lives – certainly the whole idea of “for better or worse” weighs heavier on the worse side of the metaphorical and metaphysical scales than the better. I had often contemplated marriage, not as in committing the act for, as I have stated, I have never been engaged in any relationship of significance and am more proned to say sod it all, but rather as an ideology. Certainly to question marriage is in fact to question all the constructs which conform to create and constrain our society. If we were to analyse sexual intercourse, for example, on the one hand it can be an enormous and spiritual act. Alternately it can be viewed as simply the friction creating a pleasurable sensation, just as having one’s back scratched or having a massage. The values of such acts lie only in where we place them. Therefore, could not sex be an activity engaged between two people just as a game of chess or sharing a dish in a Chinese restaurant? Certainly, if we were to simplify our assumptions regarding sex, this could very well be our findings.

“Why is it complicated?” I asked, finding another dog hair on my leg. As I shifted my weight, the heat from my bottom appeared to have caused the chairs weathered seat’s shellac to become sticky.

“I don’t know whether or not I’m truly happy, if it’s a sense of wanting to explore greener pastures… I don’t know”.

I could empathise with Tara’s confusion surrounding happiness. Here, in the enterprise culture, we are constantly bombarded with romanticism’s of happy families on the television, life’s problems solved in a thirty minute sitcom and fulfilment being obtained simply by the material possessions of clothing sold by the GAP or by drinking Coca-Cola. How would it be possible to ever know how we feel when, from birth, we are indoctrinated with appropriate feelings and manners? I recalled a quote I had read some time ago: “Nothing we ever get, see, taste, smell, touch, hear or think about, is going to bring us the peace we really seek”. So how are we to seek our true selves and this inner peace? Much of our search is like learning to drive a car and then being expected to make our separate journeys by flying a plane – the tools and means to the end are all wrong. Still, if we are not to seek, then we could never truly find, could we? Again, even once we learn to drive or to fly, to do so efficiently requires a well tuned craft, and, hence, the proper manual which has been lost to heraldry, leaving us to struggle.

“What is happiness?” I asked her.

“What do you mean?” she said, as if startled, the tip of her ash crumbling to the floor in defeated silence.

“How do we know – really know – when we have reached a state of happiness?” I replied.

Tara thought for a moment, her eyes scanning the space above me, perhaps expecting an answer to fall from the matted, grey tiled ceiling. “I suppose” she began “that one is truly happy when their body feels weightless – as if all burden or regret has vanished and left the body as a mass of weightless molecules”.

I watched the soft, shadow laden smoke from here cigarette wafting gracefully, almost weightless, upwards. However, thinking back to an old Harvey Kietel I remember that smoke is not weightless. He tells a story in this film, about a guy who wagers that he can find out the weight of smoke. Someone takes him up on the bet. So the guy, most meticulously, weighs a cigar. Next, he lights it, very carefully tapping the ashes into a tray as he smokes the cigar down to its end. He then weighs the ashes and cigar stub, subtracts this amount from the original weight of the cigar and voila!

The concept of weightlessness was one I had sought through my Yoga practise: the premise that one may allow the body to be supported and lifted by the inhalation and exhalation of breath. Despite my efforts, I could never reach beyond the cold toffee stiffness and unrelenting tensions of my daily life, embodied and manifested throughout my physique. I could never remove the weight from my palms to my feet, for example, when doing asanas such as the Downward Facing Dog. I remained under this weight – the weight of my socialisation. To remove this load would, essentially, cause one to be free.

I nodded in agreement with Tara. “What do you think?” she asked, almost as if asking my approval. This, I observed, is a natural tendency of our culture. Whenever we proposed a concept or abstract idea, we required the agreement of another to support our thoughts and defend ourselves from being freakish. Acceptance- that seems to be all that we really want isn’t it? That’s why we buy into fashion – be that the fashion we eat, wear, watch or think.

“Weightlessness is a wonderful definition” I replied. “Whenever we undertake something, we consider the consequences of our actions: who will it affect? Is it morally good or bad? Is it acceptable? The tension of such questions embodies itself in physical, and perhaps even spiritual tension or, as you aptly put it, weight.”

“So you think that we should just be then?”

“What choice do we have in the matter? Try as we might, to understand the whole universe leaves us understanding nothing at all, if not rather mad. If you seek only to understand your Self – who you really are and where you fit, the whole universe may become more relevant or make a bit more sense. You know, like how true believers in Christianity and Islam see themselves in creation – with a defined and specific roll or path. Perhaps we are more foreign to our selves than we are to each other. Get my meaning?”

“Kind of like the Serenity Prayer – ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change’ yada, yada, yada? That whole Buddhist… or is it Taoist? Anyway, that thing about some things just are now get over it because nothing can change it so make the best of it?” Tara was smiling at her ability to paraphrase things with pinnace.

“I suppose. Guess it’s just a wee bit more complicated if you’re not a true blue member of the flock” I smiled.

Do I really believe any of this?

“Yeah, but to acknowledge that and then actually accept that…”

I sat in silence, my eyes traversing the rutted and ringed table top as the music now was a string piece which I recognised but did not know.

“Yes indeed” I exhaled at last.

A moment of silence descended around us both, blocking all the residual atmosphere of clanking, clinging and strings. Perhaps these are the moments, I thought to myself, which embody that rare glance into one’s self.

“So, then, are you happy?” I said at last.

“I really can’t say” replied Tara after a brief pause. “Perhaps I have been. Perhaps in the time before my memories began to stick, when I was young and care free…”

“Sure, you’re still young” I chuckled. Tara replied with a smile through her tightly stretched lips. “Yeah” she replied, stubbing her cigarette out in the ashtray in a succession of sixteenth notes, allegro, crushing the cherry embers until there was only charred black amongst the exfoliated grey ash.


2.

I left the café and decided to stop on my way back home for a bite to eat. Ever have one of those days when no matter what the time it always feels like late afternoon? When late afternoon finally comes around, you think “finally” so you go to chow down on a po’boy sandwich with sweet potato fries and a bottle of Stella on the side, eyes looking at the waitress in a greasy spoon, young enough to be your student and you want to give some kind of fucked up carnal lesson, because, hell, she’s at least twenty-one and legal. So you sit there, sip the beer, fingers get sticky from the sauce slipping off the bun and greasy from the sweet potato fries that you know will be seeping out your pores until morning when you wake up with that phlegm-feeling you get after tuckin’ into a deep fried meal, and glass of beer ebbs a satirical coolness and teases with its texture of round, perfect glass. The waitress brings over the cheque and your fortune cookie for desert, cause you’re stuffed- even if you could afford something after all that. The cookie snaps and crumbles into two sections and several insignificant crumbs on the try where my well-worn VISA card was waiting. I pull out the piece of white paper that has printed: “someone you know is waiting for your praise”. My first thought goes to God, but figure it can’t be him or her because I don’t believe in that kind of stuff, so I reckon it’s got to be someone else. As I get home and open the door that serves as a common entrance to the house that has been sub-divided into six bed-sits, and the neighbours dogs great me at the door with their sloppy tongues and shake’n’shrapnel fur and I get it, though I don’t get how this guy is permitted to keep two medium sized mongrel hounds in this house where there seems to be amnesty to the no pets rule only for the mice in the walls. So, I fill their bowls, as the dogs really belong to everyone in the house, give them a tussle on the head, and they seem happy and eat while I need to take a shit, amazed at the speed of the grease lightening those fries must be because I already went once today in the morning, and here we go again. So I sit and read the paper about the shit and chaos that Hurricane Katrina is causing in Louisiana and how George Bush, the second edition of that particular family’s legacy of world domination, doesn’t give a fuck about the poor folk washed away because they’re black and I figure he must have enough cannon fodder in Iraq already, and figure he must not be planning another invasion, therefore is leaving them to their anarchy. That’s it, I shit and do all the post shit stuff and thank the god in whom I don’t believe that it’s finally six o’clock because that’s what time it’s felt like all day.
3.


I was born on the 25th of December 1973 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. My Mother had had two miscarriages prior to my birth, and more misfortune was to follow upon her fourth and final attempt to have a baby when my sister, who was to be named Helen, came out backwards through the birth canal and suffocated or was choked to death by the umbilical cord that had fed her life, ironically, for the entire gestation period. I can discern little of this time, as my knowledge comes from that which I was told at a very young age.

The first several years of one’s life are contrived and/or derived from what others who were old enough to remember tell you. In this manner, one’s initial years on this planet are much like the History read in books; prone to bias, stretched by imaginations, manipulated and misunderstood. Arguably all reality is based upon perception, so, even if we could reproduce our infancy, it would be little more truth than that which we were told by our elders. It is from this that our social conventions eliminate our individual selves.

My parents divorced when I was roughly eighteen months of age. Having no personal recollections of my Father as, upon separation, my Mother gained custody of myself and re-located back to her native Nova Scotia, I only knew him, as a child, from the horror stories related to me by my Mother. In her eyes he was a monster.

Her eyes…my eyes?

Then again, he was the ex-husband of my Mother, therefore, as in such cases, I did not expect her to paint him as a saint.

My Father worked for an oil company on “the trucks” in Edmonton. This was the extent of my factual knowledge of him – this and that his name was Gerry. According to my Mother, he was also an alcoholic, possibly into drugs and a womaniser. I heard tales that, when I was an infant, full of colic and on the verge of death from numerous ailments ranging from measles to god knows what, that I did not even have boots for my feet. Instead I would wear plastic bread bags. My Father would arrive home, reeking of booze, and, as I lay on the floor bawling, “kick me with his steel toe boots”.

I can recount nothing of this.

Nothing implies no thing and, therefore some thing…

In hearing my Mother recall these horrors, I am caused to reflect on how that which one can not even remember can force ones emotions. It is rather like nationalism. Take Northern Ireland for example where, in the 21st Century, people are still shedding blood over the Battle of the Boyne. I did not hate my Father as a child, but, like the Bogeyman, he was a spirit whom I hoped never to encounter. A peripheral ghost.

I finally did meet my Father in the summer of 1990. I was preparing to fly to New Zealand, out of Vancouver where he had re-located.

Van is a horrible town. It is more of an urban splatter than mosaic which seems, to the visitor at least, to sprawl purposelessly for infinity. There is the irony of lots and lots of holistic style joints and retreats, etc. You know, that whole organic market derived to help the wealthy baby boomers live forever because my generation sure as hell can’t afford the stuff! The home of Lululemons and free range this and that’s. It seems that the mountains are almost like a tasteful pink flamingo upon the manicured planes of the wealthy… Perhaps this is why scientists tell us that an earthquake will one day consume this place, and cause it to be reclaimed by the cosmic forces who placed the aforementioned allegorical pink flamingos in place!

Anyway, when in Vancouver I had arranged to stay with a good friend of mine living in Kits, Leslie, whom I had met while studying French at Université Laval, in an effort to break up the long flight. Leslie suggested that we contact my Father, since I had never met him. She went on to look up my old man in the local directory. I was rather against the idea, primarily out of indifference. He was, at that point in my life, simply a non-issue –as I said: a ghost. Leslie insisted, however, and, after much persistent nagging, I telephoned my Father.

“What will I call him?” was the first thought that came into my head. Mr. Palmer? Gerry? Father? Dad? It’s interesting in that I had said the word “Dad” many times throughout my life: “my Mom and Dad divorced when I was eighteen months old”, “I’ve never met my Dad”, “hey, how’s your Dad doing?”. But when addressing my biological Father, the word took on a strong, nearly Biblical weight, like how a devote Christian might say the name of God or a Muslim, Allah. Secondly, I had not the foggiest idea what I would say. In hindsight, the whole things seems rather humorous.

I dialled the number. After one or two rings, a man answered. “Hi” I said “may I speak with Gerry Palmer please?”.

“This is him”

“Oh…er…hello. This is Mitchell…um…your son”.

“Oh…hi…” he replied in a voice completely placid with shock.

“Hi” I replied a second time, “how are you?”

“Good. Well, actually I have just had a heart attack.”

“Literally or figuratively speaking?” I queried.

“No, literally. About three months back.”

What could have made for a better ice breaker than that? We continued to chat for a bit after this, joking lightly about his heart attack and the shock of me phoning out of the blue. At the end of the conversation we had arranged a meeting for the following day.

My Father pulled up in a big old rusted Buick on the low velocity corner where we had agreed to meet. The conversation flowed rather smoothly, and I was surprised how this man, whom I had never met, knew all the members of my family and of where I grew up. Perhaps even more difficult to believe was that this was the man who had had sexual intercourse with my Mother and thus produced me. He asked about numerous Aunts and Uncles, was surprised and saddened to hear my Uncle Carlos had died several years previously, my Uncle Roger recently and that my Uncle Peter was in a bad way. I languished to hear my Grandfather, of whom my first middle name was in honour of, had only passed away a few months previously. My full name, Mitchell Eamon Christopher Palmer, comes from my maternal Grandfather, Mitchell, my paternal Grandfather, Eamon, and Christopher because I was born on Christmas Day.

After a brief drive to his home, I had learned that, after splitting up with my Mother, he had remarried, had a son by that marriage, divorced and had been living with his present girlfriend for the past eight or nine years. Inevitably, the subject of him and my Mother came about. I immediately interrupted his shaky “You’ve probably heard from your Mother that I…”, stating that the past reiterated by either him or my Mother would simply be nothing more that propaganda, blended with fiction spread over a thick slice of bias which I had no appetite for. Quite simply, we had to take each other as we found him. If harm had been done in the past, the amnesia of my infancy was the perfect opportunity for a fresh start. I was not letting bygones be bygones – I simply could not, as an educated person, cast judgement on a case where I could never know the facts. I did not know what the bygones which were to be bygones were in the first place. And that was that.

The result of my four hours spent with my Father was that it put a face on the bogeyman. I saw him as a man in his late fifties who had made mistakes, both minor and major, just like every one of us. Despite a positive first impression, to this day, I have had no contact with him. I do not know whether he has died of a second heart attack or if he has made a complete recovery and fresh start to life. When I think back to that day, perhaps there is never a better instance of Shakespeare’s quotation in As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. Perhaps the face on the Bogeyman was simply an intricate mask, similar to the one I certainly must have donned. I never contacted him again, not because of mistrust, ill feeling or anything of that sort. I just simply never made the attempt.

Perhaps Peter Ustinov said it best in that “…the great thing about history is that it is adaptable”. Such is the story of my Father. The fact is, he will always be a character in my life who seems more fictitious than real. For my Mother, he served as a tool to cement my loyalty to her. History is a masquerade.



4.


The last drops of Laphroaig were draining into my glass with a Zen-like water dripping on slate with a bamboo orchestra in the background when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Palm-man! How you doing?”

I recognised the voice immediately as that of my friend Trevor. Trevor was a security guard aspiring to become a policeman. His aspirations, however, were doused by an ongoing battle against depression. Compounding his problems, his wife had just left him with their 18 month old daughter, Sandy.

“Not so bad, just unwinding with a bit of Scotch.”

“That stuff’ll kill you man.”

Trevor was an utter and complete teetotaller who not only abstained from drinking, but insisted on lecturing anyone who did drink with a diatribe on self-poisoning, etc. I didn’t half wonder if the odd drink might have spared him from some of his woes, not that alcohol is a cure to one’s ills, but I think that I’d rather use the odd drink to battle my woes than cerebral cocktails brewed and marketed by the big drug companies.

“Whatever. So how’s it going?” I inquired while making myself comfortable with my drink as I knew that this would be a long conversation. Trevor’s ex – that is to say Shelley, who was in the process of becoming his ex in between bouts of trying again, fistfights with Trevor and the usual hot and cold flashes two totally fucked up people undergo when ending a long term relationship and holding offspring as the proverbial tool of negations/blackmail.

“Ehhhhh.”

Fuck I hated this. Trevor would call, offer a salutation and then expect me to fish for the conversation. This would be great if I were a psychologist who was getting paid by the hour, but I’m not. I am just this guy that everyone seems to unload their problems on and humour them with quotes sequestered from other people’s thought and present them in a mosaic of my own making.

“So,” I began my fishing, “are you and Shell still calling it quits.”

“Yeah.”

“So, tell me, what’s happening?”

“Basically, I’m buying her out of the house and her half of the car payments”.

“Is that good?” I queried, knowing full well that Trevor had not been working for some time now, off on WCB. They didn’t have two cents to rub together as Shelley had also taken leave from her job.

“I guess” he replied with no sense of emotion whatsoever.
Silence.

“So, how’s Sandy?”

“Don’t know. Shelley hasn’t let me see her in a few weeks. Says she doesn’t trust me with her.”

Though, in my mind at least, Shell was a nut case, Trevor had confided in me some months ago, in the throngs of his depression’s darkest days, that he was having “suicidal and homicidal” feelings. Nothing like having that kind of stuff confided to one’s self, especially knowing Trev’s security officer geek complex of having a total and complete fascination with guns, weapons in general and anything quasi-tactical used by SWAT teams or special forces like the SAS, GSG-9 or SEALS. To his credit, Trevor did try to get help, but was turned away at the psyche clinic he had visited because they were booked solid and that he’d have to make an appointment another day.

“How do you feel about that – I men, I know that’s a dumb question. I feel like a fuckin’ Sun reporter going up the sole survivor of a horrific crash where all his friends and family have been gruesomely killed and asking: ‘so howdya feel?’, but I mean….you know?”

“Eeehhhhh.”

After exhausting all my bait and continuing along this line of provoking Trevor to open the tap and let it all out for another five or six minutes, he changed the subject.

“So, Dave bought an AR.”

Dave was another security geek type like Trevor, only he was some two hundred pounds larger than Trevor’s wee 230 lb frame, and also recently divorced with a custody battle waging between his wife and him over their four year old son.

Having about as much interest in guns as I do in Daniel Steele novels, I replied “oh yeah.”

“Yeah, it’s the Colt 9mm carbine version. Of course Dave sent it right to the gunsmith to be modified – have the barrel cut back and stuff.”

“So, how much did that set him back – he just declared bankruptcy a few months ago, didn’t he?”

“$2100.”

“What!” I half-choked. This scene might have been more dramatic had I been taking a swig of scotch at the time, but alas, this was real life and not a Hollywood flick. “How in the hell did he afford that?”

“I put it on my credit card.”

I remained silent.

“Yeah, I put it on my card and Dave gave me his Remington 303 shotgun and the old FN rifle he had.” Trevor didn’t posses a FAC, I new that much for certain as he had told me this before and how he regretted not having one and how he couldn’t get one now on the account of him having homicidal and suicidal fantasies. One of the issues Shelley had with him was that he owned illegal blow-guns and numerous scary looking knives which I agreed, crazy or not, shouldn’t be in a house around a small child.

My Uncle had shot himself a few years back. I tried, but failed, to write a song about it once:

Lester laid himself to rest
with a shotgun whose shell he ate
a man married for fifty plus years
dead at 88
no one knows what was at play
what wisdom made his mind
knowing not selfishness or pain
of the widow he left- what was hers to find

He had such a full head of white hair too…

I didn’t know how to respond. “What does he need with an AR or you with the other guns?”

“They’re just to putter around with. Go out to my Grandpa’s farm and shoot coyotes and whatnot”.

I was single, living in a bed-sit with my only dependants being the mice who infested the walls of the old room, so I wasn’t one to give lectures on responsibility. Still, given that Trevor hadn’t been working for some six months and Dave had declared bankruptcy a few short months ago, dropping $2100 plus on a rifle was far from being sensible.

So how does one tell a friend who you think is in severe danger of going off half-cocked and possibly going postal on his ex and child before turning the weapon on himself? I made a conscious mental note to self at this moment to avoid watching American newscasts.

“That’s a lot of coin to be dropping on a gun, especially at this juncture of your lives.”

“Eeeehhhhh.” Trevor paused. “So, the doctor says I’m okay to go back to work”.

“Really?”
“Yeah. He doesn’t know that I quit my meds, but I’m feeling really good.”

I was feeling really nervous at this point. Here I had a good friend, despite our differences in life, although we agreed, he more religiously than I, that Nirvana was good, (I was hard pressed, however, to acknowledge Kurt Cobain – one of Trevor’s heroes- as a pioneer, much the same way that a Muslim will acknowledge Jesus as a prophet but not as the son of God) who was being treated for a fairly serious mental illness including thoughts involving death to self or others, who has just purchased (illegally) three guns, for all intents and purposes. Enter now the arm jerking back a stiff shot of scotch.

“So, you just quit the meds altogether?”

“Yup!”

“Well, how do you feel?” my god I’ve got to sack that guy from the Sun!

“Fine. I mean, I feel pretty good.”

The continuing lack of any emotion whatsoever was ringing like a smoke detector near a hot shower on a humid day – flags were flashing up in my mind with almost every word.

“So, you just offed them? No side effects or anything?”

“Yeah, I felt like I was going to die a couple of times, but now, except for the odd bout, I’m feeling pretty good. I’m going to the gym and all that stuff again too.”

“The gym is good” I replied. Fuck, where do I go with this? “Don’t you think that you should have consulted with your doctor on this? I mean, you were on a pretty high dosage – can you not have, like, a seizure or something just going cold turkey?”

“Eeehh.”

“Fuck man!” Sometimes I felt like a fucking priest. Like Trevor was somehow vocalising all of this to me as in some kind of perverse cleansing. Either that or simply to freak me out with worry.

Nothing else materialised from our exchange, other than my parting nightmare of a Sun reporter interviewing me as I stood, overlooking the scene of three dead bodies of a murder-suicide asking “so, you knew the victims in this horrific tragedy. How do you feel?”
5.


I am not certain as to why my Mother continued to use her married name after separation from my Father. Perhaps it had something to do with the times. In the early 1970’s, being a woman with a child and no Father carried a serious negative.

I remember watching Three’s Company in the 1980’s and laughing at all of the antics Jack Tripper had to perform, pretending to be gay, simply so he could live with two women. Today, shacking up and co-ed living arrangements are as common as Westerners in Prague!

I feel, however, that social stigma was not the main reason for remaining Mrs. Palmer. For my Mother, the title of Mrs. Somebody carried more respect and dignity than Miss Nobody.

I can not comment upon the relationship my Mother had with my Father. Based on my childhood, I am certain that there had been significant turbulence in my Mother’s life. This turbulence was certainly agitated by her relationship with my Father, if it was not the source. I was told of severe abuse – that my Mother would sleep with a piece of knotted driftwood next her in bed at night, with the neighbours key in her slipper, in anticipation that my Father might come home and in a violent mood. I am certain that there is some truth in this, but how much, I will never know. Certainly, even if my Father was a saint, the psychological trauma my Mother must have endured through two miscarriages and breech birth of my sister explains her unbalanced condition which I endured throughout my life. I also have my suspicions that her Father, whom I never met as he died in the early 1960’s from the shrapnel he absorbed in the First World War as part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 64th Overseas Battalion, in France and Belgium, was somewhat abusive. Finally, my Mothers lack of education (though she worked over twenty years ironically as a care giver) also caused her sense of low self-esteem.

It is for the reasons, or rationalisations, provided here that has shaped the love-hate relationship I have had with my Mother. Though I can clearly see how her instinct was established, there is part of me who resents her. The other part of me, perhaps more rational, is that part of me who feels compassion and sympathy for her. I guess my attitude toward her is much like Meursault’s in Albert Camus’ L’étranger, captivated in the opening paragraph:

Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas. J’ai reçu un télégramme de l’asile: “Mère décédée. Enterrement demain. Sentiments distingués.” Cela ne veut rien dire. C’était peut-être hier.[1]

I remember the metallic-like, thick taste I used to get in my mouth when my Mother would strike me. Perhaps it was the iron releasing itself from the small blood vessels which would crush upon when she struck me. This was her reaction to nearly everything, whether my behaviour had warranted severe discipline or, as often was the case, when I had done nothing wrong. I remember dropping to the linoleum of the kitchen floor with my forearm up to defend my face as she would come down heavily with the wooden spoon across my mouth. I can imagine, as I look back, that it must have looked rather like a hockey fight when, one player down on the ice with half his jersey hauled over his head, is getting pummelled by a much bigger player who is still on his feet. Unlike in hockey, however, there was no referee to break up the fight, nor was there and penalty.

I would receive such beatings at least four times in a week, and threats of such things at least twenty times: “Get over here right now or I’ll give you a beatin’!!” she would bellow out. Thinking back, the sheer barbarism of her words makes me shudder. Off setting the beatings were multiple mouth washings with pink, toxic tasting dish soap. I remember it was this horrible pink liquid which often stung the lining of my throat and my nasal cavities. Quite often, the soap would accompany the wooden spoon.

Despite it’s horribleness, the physical side of my Mother’s abusive behaviour does not really affect me. When I look back to those times, I cringe slightly, but do not feel like it left me with any traumatic scars. Perhaps, given the neighbourhood I grew up in which was largely comprised of black welfare families who did not care too much for the white folks, and vice versa, it toughened me up somewhat. No, what did leave a scar was the constant psychological abuse.

My Mother was always in the grips of a deep depression. Again, I link this to the days with my Father and her lack of education. I remember her always breaking down in tears, screaming and going on. Inevitably, much of this was focused on me. I can remember her always ranting about jumping off the Angus L., which was the Angus L. MacDonald Bridge, located 150 feet from our duplex and linking Halifax and Dartmouth with its millions of steel rivets and forest green spans, bound by safety orange metallic ropes weaving the structure together like a spider’s web in a flexing mammoth for commuters. This would come up at least on a bi-daily basis. One rant she had scripted and used repeatedly was “I’m going to jump of the Angus L. boy, and you’ve driven me to it! And if you dare cry at my funeral, I will come back and haunt you until the day you die!”. This still gives me chills, so you can imagine the impact it had when I was four or five years of age, still holding firm beliefs in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and all the rest. This type of abuse continued straight through my early teens, until I moved out to my Brunswick Street bed-sit with its mice, cast iron and ornamented wood stove cast in 1888 and illogical radiant heating system in the ceiling, just outside the downtown core in one of Halifax’s predominantly black welfare neighbourhoods, on the other side of the bridge.

I think that part of my Mother’s real problem was a lack of self-confidence and socialisation. Again, this is why I feel she remained Mrs. Palmer, as opposed to reverting back to Miss Bruckner. To this day, whenever she says something, it is always prefaced by “Like so and so says…”, never expressing a view to be her own. Again, just as Tara looked for approval of her ideas, my Mother required some validity which she regarded to be higher than herself. Very much a fundamentalist in an odd sort of way really.

If I could say there was any one thing I initially resented from my childhood, it would be the fact that my Mother denied me the opportunity to ever have a real family like on T.V. Our problems never resolved themselves in twenty-two minutes plus eight more of commercial time to whet our consumer inclinations. It wasn’t until I began to see the propaganda value of all those shows perpetuating happy families and the American dream. Perhaps this is why I haven’t committed myself to a serious relationship or feel an emotional deadness toward most things we are supposed to feel festive about. It was her and I. When Christmas came, there would always be something to groan about. Every year she would compare the price of what I had given others and what I had given her. If ever I spent more on a friend or relative, there was a screaming match, followed by threats of suicide and hauntings. To this day I resent Christmas.

As far as the scars obtained throughout my youth, I would say they have manifested themselves in a sense of low self-esteem and sense of self-destruction. I know there is an unbridled rage within me – a demon that I have always failed to exercise. Like a romantic vampire, perhaps I distance myself from those I care about, knowing that I may potentially drain them of their blood’s passions and curse them with the immortality which consumes my personal existence. Yoga…
6.


I decided to pay a visit to my good friend Brian, an immigrant from Ireland, who had a lovely place in Sambro, a small fishing community on the outskirts of Halifax situated on the craggy grey coast. The fog there was markedly different from that which you experience coming off Halifax Harbour. The absence of latex, absorbent cotton and raw sewage tend to taint the whole sea experience, though not as badly as one might assume as the Halifax fog and see breeze is still one of, perhaps, ironic comfort and romance. Comparing the Sambro fog, I guess, was like comparing a smooth glass of Langevulin single malt to a Johnny Walker blend – both can be nice and have a desired aesthetic effect, but one journey is much more pleasant than the other.

When I arrived three year old Liam was sat on the tawny, shag family room carpet playing with the Barbie doll and red plastic Corvette brought to him this past Christmas by Santa, better known as his Father. There would be the cycle of a few seasons before his Grandfather would get over that one. What a row resulted when Grandpa rang from Rathmines on Dublin's south side on December 25th!

Brian recalled the conversation with a smile: "Lord, Mary and Joseph! What were up in that block of yours when you bought him that bloody thing you bloomin' gobshite!" his Father ranted.

"But it was what the lad wanted for Christmas Dad!"

Brian’s Father must have gone on about it for hours, saying how the boy wouldn't turn out "right", whatever that was to mean, "that Canadian cold must have froze that wee bit inside that noggin of yours" he exclaimed.

Still, there sat Liam, Barbie's halter bikini top half off behind the wheel of her scale sportster,

In Dublin’s fair city
where the girls are so pretty…[2]

defying, to an extent, the prescribed persona of a young boy. Brian, Nimvh and I were in the kitchen preparing the evenings tea, looking out at the Atlantic pounding away with the never ending patience and determination known exclusively to Nature at the stony, rugged coast of Nova Scotia's sea etched shore. The kettle was giving off a metallic and distressed rumbling sound as if possessed, steam lifting as the temperature increased within its shiny silver casing. Nimvh was preparing the boxty while Brian was bent over next to the door sill, sweeping the sticky tar muck trodden upon the floor by his muddy boots. I held the meat knife, worn wooden handle in my hand, preparing to cube the red flesh which would serve as the tender filling for the forthcoming meal. Their elder child, Emer, was sat at the kitchen table, eyes like that of a deer caught in a set of car headlights, absorbing to the best of her attention span the lessons of the week. This evening it was how to count money. No matter how hard her Father tried to explain four quarters is a dollar as are ten dimes, etc., Emer would always start with the pennies. I found it somewhat reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground…

"Right, give us eighty-four cents then" her Father would say.

"One, two, three..."

"Emer, look! Why don't you take these quarters and..."

"No! No!"

"Emer..."

"No!"

Finally he would sigh, throw up his hands and let his daughter count. Eventually she would see through the logic, rather than making up the difference after a deficit in rusty red pennies. Still, what makes sense to the mind of a six year old doesn't hold universal to someone on their mid-thirties!

Good God, what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic if, for one reason or another, I don’t like these laws, including the “two times two is four”?[3]

"Put it away love" said Nimvh, "and we'll get tea ready for the table." Mother was the law in this household. Sure, she was there to police the place all day; swift dealer of justice. Not so easy for Brian. Out working all day, home and over run; easy pray to the pitfalls set by his children. Pitfalls they knew were known by one parent, but could be got away with the other. Alas, such are their selected or assigned roles; the characters they have unconsciously decided to play.

We all sat down to the creaky oak table, Liam parking Barbie and the Corvette next to the stove, directly in the path of his stumbling Father's feet. Nimvh had prepared a beautiful meal, unlike Brian's Mother who always made her boxty too salty and rich. Still, Nimvh hadn't been that happy since the family immigrated to Canada three years ago. The mildest winter was more severe than Ireland's worst, she missed her friends, the social life and so forth. She missed working, her job as a lab technician, the most. When she and Brian resolved to have a family, they agreed that Nimvh should give up work for a few years, not that there were a whole lot of employment opportunities in the Halifax area as the emigration facts will testify. In their eyes, and rightly so, children are the responsibility of their parents, not of a day-care or au pair. She never regretted having children, but resigning to a life of child rearing and domesticity doesn't always sit well regardless of motherly instincts and yearning.

Brian loved the kids, but like many men, loved his independence. Being the sole bread winner now was also an added pressure in these difficult days. The move from Ireland didn't affect him as much. As far as he was concerned, especially in regards to the children, there lay no future on the other side of the pond. It’s ironic that he would end up here, in what was essentially the Ireland of Canada. That is of course not counting Newfoundland which was more the Northern Ireland of Canada, only the people there seemed to have got it right, abandoning the petty hatreds plaguing the county of Ulster.

He was a poet-grafter and knew nothing other than this. Still, he wanted a different life for the kids; college education and a life that had more to it than labour and little satisfaction. He wished to be young again, but be damned if he could remember such innocence and new beginnings.
I remember a conversation we had once. Brian was once a Judoka, green belt I believe, discovering the Art over here as there were no Gaelic Football clubs to be had. He quit, upset with club for some reason or other, and partially, I believe frustrated with himself.

“Got an email from my old Judo club. They've increased their schedule for adults from 2 nights per week to 3 nights and 1 afternoon. It's $250 for the year and I'm thinking about re-joining. I miss the martial arts and I know that I got frustrated with Judo before. Perhaps it's me trying again to find that "thing" to make mojo flow...”

I listened to the poet as he began his soliloquy, chuckling at his use of the word “mojo”. It seemed somewhat out of place.

“That "thing" has sent me into deep contemplations on life. It seems that up to the end of our teenage years that we are trying to define our selves - the who and what we are. Then, when that self has evolved (usually climaxing with self-confidence), we mate - each side of the partnership buying into the other, melting them like a tempered metal into an "us" that consists of both personalities, balanced, and thus somewhat altered. Then career kicks in and you go from being "Joe" to "Joe-the-plumber" or whatever. That leads one into being modified-me-in-us-the-plumber. Then children come, you live vicariously through them, becoming parent (mom/dad), and thus modified-me-in-modified-us-the-dad-plumber. Is there no wonder why we lose a sense of our selves? Further to that, when we search again, as we did in adolescence, for self we realize that now we are modified-me-in-modified-us-the-dad-plumber searching for a self that is no longer the band or sports playing adolescent, but, now rather a mid thirties or early forties entity. So now we become modified-me-in-modified-us-the-dad-plummer-seeking-mid-thirties-self (this is worse than making words in German!). The fact is that modified-me-in-modified-us-the-dad-plummer-seeking-mid-thirties-self can not shed those things which he/she has become, but still has the quandary of defining the latter part to carry on with any sort of happiness/satisfaction/sanity. The question now becomes how....”

“Brian,” I began, “are we not already doing the same exercise from day one? We are a baby who cries, a toddler who wants etc. The human condition does not change it just evolves. In the end we are many things that are not our true selves. The old analogy of actors in a drama comes to mind.” I paused, partially for effect, but also because I could see me shooting holes in my theories already and realized much of what I was saying wasn’t what I truly thought insofar as I’m not so certain what it is that I truly think. “I think we have to accept our role as the actors, and be aware that we are. So for example if I am playing the part of superman, it is not in itself tragic, it would be if I truly believed I was superman, I am just doing the best I can in the role I have been cast. As we grow we audition for and get different and what seem like better parts, hopefully we play well acting with dignity and honor. I am, of course just guessing that this is how it all works, but I believe we can feel energetically, intuitively and creatively when we are on the right track….I've heard meditation helps.”

“....Well, burst my bubble I thought that you were Superman...” Brian laughed.

Unphased, I continued, picking at a few stray dog hair nesting on my sweater’s sleeve: “We are the culmination of our experiences and therefore ever-changing, but I also believe that there is an integral kernel of sorts that defines one's overall entity, and that entity (soul/spirit/pure self) can be subjected to torture when the self must exist in a way or environment where masks or roles become the actor. Just when two hydrogen particles have an oxygen added, we have water, yet those elements comprising the whole are still finite in their being. This is what I'm getting at. We can all become water in a way, but seem unable to identify that which makes us water and thus impurities alter our overall quality and taste. I stress again that meditation (and Yoga) are perhaps the best ways to discover this. However, part of that process is figuring out the process. One can say "meditate", but first, one must find meditation.”

Brian laughed and gave me a slap on the back. Sometimes his silence spoke volumes over my tirades, perhaps in that his silence was better grounded in being than all my philosophical reflections on the subject.

Soon, Brian and I sat drinking our brownish Tetley tea with Nimvh, while the children, Liam leaving more of his supper on the tablecloth than in his belly, were back at it in the family room. "Did the truck work all right?" Nimvh queried.

"No, I've still got to get it in to the shop sometime this week, I think there's a leak in the hose or loose clamp. That's why we get no heat." Brian was a magician with a tool in his hand.

"Could be the cold."

"Nah, got to be a leak." Brian paused..."It has been awfully cold though." We all rendered a gentle laugh.

“Have you had enough?” Nimvh asked me? Smiling, I replied “Yes, I’m blocked – great meal Nimvh!”.

Emer then burst into the kitchen blurting "Da! Da!"

"What's up love" hushed Brian, deflating his words as his eyes bowed down to empty.

"Liam's got the letter "O" stuck up his nose!" she squealed with a partial giggle symptomatic of a child taking great pleasure in the misfortune of an other.

"He what?" he raised his eyes, perplexed, Nimvh leaning over on the table to his side. I sat there, my gazed fixed upon the inspired youth.

"Liam's put the letter "O" up his nose, now it's stuck!" she said with an air of a president addressing the nation, jubilant.

Brian in the lead, the family briskly headed for the family room where Liam was sat next to Barbie, halter completely off now and resting a few feet away, on the floor, long blonde locks haphazardly sweeping her shoulders and their precise specifications. He had an expression on his face of puzzlement, half of wonder and half of confusion regarding this particular predicament. "Liam, what have you done?!" queried his Brian. Liam looked up and muttered something incomprehensible. "Bollocks" murmured Brian to himself.

"He's got the letter "O" stuck up his nose" chanted Emer gleefully.

"Liam" attempted Brian once again, "what is it you've done" bearing great and exacting emphasis on each of the monosyllable words. Liam looked at his Father again blankly, raising a finger to his tiny, pale, freckled nostril and muttering something incomprehensible. Eyes rolling toward the ceiling, his Brian ambled forward toward the boy with an exaggerated gait as if to say "bloody hell you little gobshite". "Here" he firmly stated, taking Liam's small rounded chin gently in his stubby fingers and tipped the boy's head back so he could see the difficulty.

Lodged up in the right nostril, Brian saw a small piece of something obstructing Liam's nasal passage. "What did you do?" he said.

"He stuck the letter "O" up and..."sang Emer.

"Okay" dealt Nimvh, "what do you mean letter "O"?"

"The letter "O"! The letter "O"!!" hollered Emer. She pointed with her tiny finger at a box of red wooden beads used for making necklaces, etc. In the meantime, Brian was telling his son "blow out Liam! Blow out", to which his son repeatedly sucked back the bead further. "Liam, out! Out! Blow out!", the frustration welling up further. I stood there, a typical rubberneck, trying not to laugh.

Seeing her husband had lost complete control of the situation, Nimvh moved in. "Here, let me have a go" she said. With very little fuss Brian stood up and left for the kitchen to do the dishes with Emer on his heels, but I remained in the odd green doorway of the room – a parlour of green which is common in the local older homes but absent from any paint swatch I’d ever seen at the local hardware stores, entranced by the whole scene. From the wicker weave craft box on the bookshelf Nimvh found a box of wooden toothpicks. Taking one out she held Liam by the jaw, gave the command to "hold still" and went to work on removing the bead. This was the second time that Liam had something lodged in his nose. The first time he had stuck a dried bean up his nose. His Mom rushed him to the emergency department only to have the obstruction fall out on its own accord while waiting in the reception. The toothpick jabbed at the tender nasal lining once or twice causing Liam to draw back his head suddenly. "Hold still" ordered Nimvh's gripping voice as she held his jaw harder, causing his chubby cheeks to pucker.

Finally, after a few more pricks and pulling Nimvh managed to get a hook on the bead and, gently nudging, the tiny ball fell to the carpet. This was inevitably proceeded by a detailed and personified lecture concerning all the cons of sticking things up one's nose. After swift judgement, Mother and son quickly reconciled to an agreement of terms and there was peace.

I followed Nimvh into the kitchen as she carried the oval blue bead stuck upon the tip of the surgical toothpick like Celtic warrior might have held the head of the conquered after battle. Brian looked from the cupboard where he was putting away the plates. He shook his head. It was during these times they missed their local back home, the freshly poured black pints with heads of yellow cream. "You got it did you?" he smiled at Nimvh.

"Aye" she hushed. They both smiled with the affection of newlyweds toward each other, each shaking their heads. We all laughed.

“So what else is new?” Brian asked me. I contemplated telling him about my conversation with Tara earlier that day. I wondered if either Nimvh or Brian had ever committed infidelity.

“Nothing really” I replied, “and you?”

“Works been pretty busy as of late. I’ve got a few side jobs on the go too to make a few extra dollars, but I just play about with that.”

Brian was a jack of all trades really when it came to construction. Back home in Dublin one learned all aspects of the building trades as opposed to the specialist system known to Canada. There were no framers or finishers across the pond, simply builders.

“So, do you want a beer?” Brian asked.

“Sure.”

“What’ll you have – we’ve Keith’s and Guinness”

“Is the Guinness the draft in a can or bottles?”

“Cans.”

“Okay, pour me a Guinness then.” I absolutely loved stout, though didn’t care for it in bottles. The invention of the widget, that small canister inside draught cans which made for that on-tap taste, was a mark of our society’s genius.

Brian and I sat over our black pints while Nimvh went off to read in the living room.

“What do you think causes us to get married ? – you and Nimvh seem pretty happy.”

Brian laughed “Bloody hell, you’ve not even got a girlfriend and here you are speaking of getting married? You’ve not been looking through one of those overseas bride catalogues have you?”

“No, no!” I laughed, though I was partial to the Victoria’s Secrets catalogue. That, in my opinion, was much better than any porn which, in all honesty, did nothing for me other than make me feel sorry for how far people were willing to degrade themselves for a few bucks or a sense of whatever it was they gained from performing such acts. “What I mean is why do you think we enter into exclusive or monogamous relationships?”

“Who knows. I guess it’s what we’re brought up to do. Besides, you need that stability for the children and…”

“But what if you’ve no plans for children?” I interrupted. “Then why would we make such commitments?”

“I suppose it all comes down to trust; a bit like a pledge of allegiance I suppose. If you’re going to share your intimate self with another, you want to be certain of some stability.”

I listened to Brian’s words and realised how unlike the stereotypical tradesman he was, though I realise that my perception of a typical tradesperson was in itself an unfounded and inaccurate assumption. I nodded. “What about sex then? Why is that so exclusive to relationships and not the same as going to a hockey game or whatever?”

Brian shook his head and just laughed. “You’re fucking twisted” he said.

“But seriously” I almost implored, “isn’t sex simply a nice friction: A slips into B, wiggles and feels good?”.

“Do you really believe that?” Brian asked. I thought for a moment and realised how uncertain I was.

“I don’t know. We’re brought up thinking sex is such a big thing. Then I remember when I lost my virginity… It was interesting. I must say sex is, for me, something arising from a special moment, but it is also a moment I think a couple can walk away from and keep it as a pleasurable experience – like a piece of cheesecake from the Cask of Amontillado fashioned basement of La Cave on Blowers Street.”

Brian looked at me. “Sure, there are people in the pubs who get into each other’s knickers after a few jars, but that’s not love”.

“I’m not talking about love though” I hastily said “I’m simply talking about sex”.

“You’re mad.” Brian finally exhaled, followed by a long sip of the lovely black, bitter-sweet beverage.

The remainder of the evening remained warm and pleasant; a contrast to the weather which was becoming intensely worse outside. It seems that people world over feel that their climate is uniquely unpredictable, quipping “if you don’t like the weather, then wait five minutes”. The weather in Halifax is extraordinary though, and when it winds up – oftentimes in minutes - it can be a force of pure and unbridled fury.

After a few more hours passed, we bid a good night and I made the winding trip over the Old Sambro Road, bordered by stunted shrubbery and glacial placed boulders freckled with yellow and green papery moulds along the coast, unable to see the thrashing waves crashing a few meters away for the night – black as the Guinness Brian and I had drunk with pleasure and ease – back to the lights of Halifax and my lonely radiant heated Brunswick Street bedsit.




7.


Dream:

I go up to a faded blue Valiant parked in front of my mother's stucco green duplex on Faulkner Street. Inside my friend, Bronwyn's, father sits with a group of girls from an Anglican Sunday School in the back seat. I sit in the front seat with him and talk about Rugby League while the girls sing psalms from a service I might have attended in my youth.
8.


What was it that Jung had said about dreams? There was no fixed symbolism and interpretations could be established through a series of dreams. State of mind – individual states of mind were also factors. But how could one assess one’s state of mind if their identity and mental state was a reflection of something externally projected?

Every morning we wake up in a state similar to that of Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, only we are too distracted to acknowledge this. Like we don’t exist… I don’t exist.

I had awoken with the sensation of despising freedom. Could I even call it freedom. After all, if we are free to act as we will, but at a price, then can any of that be deemed freedom? Again, another word misappropriated by language, a confused symbol, laden with bitter irony. Better to call it choice.

Claustrophobia began to overwhelm me. I had the sensation that I was shrink wrapped inside my skin, suffocating. Conversations echoed inside my head, bouncing amongst the airtight walls. I remember and old friend, Graham, who once drew a sheet of saran wrap across his face stating this is what vegetables at the grocery store see…

“Focus on breathing” I told myself – “yogis don’t hyperventilate”. But I was hyperventilating. Some deep rooted anxiety began to well to the surface and I could not contain it, yet was also unable to release. So often I had felt a similar experience while practising Yoga. I would focus to the greatest depths of my ability to release my lower back, but to no avail. In fact, such efforts were so intense, other parts of my body would constrict and tense.

I began to panic over the whole issue of choice. The whole concept of choosing one’s path became a symbol of all the paths that would, henceforth, be restricted. I thought of Tara and the confines of marriage, of Brian and how he must lend a great portion of his being to his children. Then I saw the curse of my own existence – irreversible – of the childhood I would never have. Something, within the darkness of my slumber, had erupted inside of me. Like the psychic palm or Tarot Card reader who saw the true route of their existence.

Pacing the ragged carpeted floor of the bedsit I plugged the kettle in, awaiting it to boil. As the translucent steam began to rise I remembered Tara’s words about “happiness” being a sense of “weightlessness”. If this were true, at the moment I felt very much like one of those old cast iron kettles found perched over the hearth of yesteryear’s fireplaces, black and heavy.

Placing my mug on the cold ceramic counter, I poured boiling water over my bleached gauze teabag, stirred it with a tea stained stainless steel spoon, removed the bag and sat on the ledge, looking out the window at the grey misty morning. A seagull was perched upon an adjacent ledge. I met its eyes; rimmed green retina.

Happiness.

Weightless….

Leaking hoses, no heat and what is the true product of 2 X 2?

Heat. A into B, friction, feels good.

Children. Monogamy and children. Animals mating for life….

Life.

Life.

Life sentence… sentences translated into other languages… other languages –

Even more than English. More than German. Weightless.

“It’s all a matter of syntax and where the accents fall” I told myself.

Fall. Falling.

Falling like a Mother of the Angus L.

Pleasure like a piece of La Cave cheesecake.

Seagulls plummet in flight, but never truly fall – perched on a cold concrete ledge…

My mind snapped away from my thoughts like an old television set being turned on – a crisp click and visions of the world slowly fading in until things could be perceived with clarity.

I looked around the room as if it was all new to me - Jamias vu is how it’s been described; opposite of déjà vu - as if I had simply appeared in some foreign place where each familiar shape is viewed within a new context. Why, for example, does that picture look good on one wall and yet completely different on another when it is still the same picture? The elapsed time was more of a mere state of being rather than an issue. A bridge between manifestations, spanning like the Angus L.

Perhaps it was the context or manifestation of my self that was causing this anxiety. Like a rush of embarrassment in retreat, I felt the opposite of a flush, like a weight was removing itself leaving me composed rather than stifled, hot and red.

Syntax; inner and outer dialogues…

I reflected upon the moment just past, feeling a completely different person straddling the span of an instant. Had a release valve been triggered?

At that moment I felt as though I realised my own inner sufferings.

All life is suffering, don’t you remember what the Buddha said?

I had faced, ever so briefly, some of the ugliness that dwelled within my self. That, no matter how much I despise choice and that freedom comes with a price I am a part of everything, not beyond and above it.

All life is inter-being, nothing is independent.

Nothing implies no-thing and, therefore, some thing…

I realised I was nothing, that I was weightless. That happiness was a matter of syntax and watching where the accents fall.

Pronunciation.

I now pronounce you husband and wife until death you do part.

Nothing lasts forever….

Nothing implies no – thing and, therefore, something!

The grey, mist veiled Halifax morning. A whole city – a whole corner of the earth shrouded opaque with one seagull perched upon an adjacent ledge. Grey is not unhappy, nor is it translucent. Grey is simply grey, void of any emotion – weightless. Weightless as the letter “O” up your nose. Grey on soaring wings of a sea bird.

…What was the point in recognising any of it after all?

I read too much. I’m not certain whether or not that I’d agree that ignorance is bliss as ignorance does not necessarily result in a state of euphoria. Still, when one does become too consumed by the trappings of existence, to the point where it becomes a fixation, then, perhaps, to never think about thinking, to never tangle oneself into the sticky web of metacognition, is a good thing. I remember different takes I had read on theories by Camus and Sartre, pontificating on death.

Because we die, life has no meaning.

Because we die life has meaning.

All life is suffering.

If we don’t know suffering, how can we know joy?

(…was that the Buddha or Heraclitus? Perhaps it was both…)

It is amazing how such simplistic statements could lead to such a chaotic embroilment of notions and thoughts. Do we accept our suffering in conjunction with life having meaning, simply to survive the valleys of our existence? That, to me, sounded too much like religion – blind faith, the opium of the masses. …Amazing how we could view myth with such clarity yet still support the perpetuation of religion…. Perhaps one does need to experience illness to appreciate their wellness, just like we can say that evil shows us the good in our world. But what are all these trials amounting to other than the dust that will become of our bones? We may argue that our dust leaves a legacy, but, if all will one day transform itself to dust then was any of it to a purpose?

My thoughts yielded themselves to Tara. Tara, so distraught because she had cheated on Jeff. She was suffering, perhaps of guilt, perhaps of feeling caged by marriage or, simply, because she felt that she should suffer.

2 X 2 = 4

My head began to once more contort itself into a cerebral knot, inhibiting any further thought on the issue. Where am I going with this I asked myself, does it or doesn’t it mean anything?

It’s funny, I began to think, how, no matter how we empathise and identify with others that over our entire existence, the only perspective we will truly see is our own. The world around us is interpreted through echoes, never permitting ourselves to actualise anything for what they truly are – not even our selves. Am I the only who thinks this way? Am I mad?

We are all the centres of our own little opaque universes. Each views themselves as the protagonist – the main player in their own private drama. All those people one passes along the street – mere faceless extras, yet each in their own spin-off dramas where I am a faceless prop in their story. Perhaps this is where the truth lies in life having or not having meaning, in that life has the meaning we apply to it in our own little worlds, but that meaning goes to perish along with us. Could it be as simple as that? I thought about playing the role of an extra – but they don’t even know me….

I sipped my tea and thought of my Father’s face with my self imposed hue of ambiguity. I had spent a day with him, yet probably could never describe him. What changed in his world after I left that day? What role was he in my world?

Mother.

How did my Mother view me? How could she have done those things, those cruel comments and fiery hands lashing their abuse? This caused me to remember an alternative version of the classic story “The Three Little Pigs” I had come across, written from the perspective of the Big Bad Wolf. The Big Bad Wolf, though an antagonist in the main story, had a perspective of his own. What was my Mother’s?

I began to feel an overwhelming sense of calm – near peace perhaps. I had come to a sense of awakening that I couldn’t quite explain nor full comprehend, but it was an awakening felt strongly by the inner self, not the thinking self. Perhaps this is what the Yogis were teaching about listening to the body and quieting the mind.

If I could transform this feeling into words, it would be, simply, that nothing really does matter but this is not a bad thing. I had been either dwelling on the past or getting twisted up over the future while totally neglecting the present. None of those things matter: 2X2=4, Barbie, Camus… All that does matter is the moment and being happy within that moment – that is the peace which we seek. I could not control the players in my life or in my past any more than I might manipulate the future.

Syntax.

Quietly I placed my mug on the cool ceramic tile and moved toward the finger marked, mirrored medicine cabinet. The shelves were cluttered with numerous holistic and natural tonics and remedies: Siberian Ginseng for stamina, Gingko Bilboa for the brain, Devil’s Claw for inflammation, St. John’s Wort for the blues and your standard bottles of Vitamin C, Cod Liver Oil, etc. Observing all the tinted bottles I was surprised that I didn’t rattle when I walked. I took out the bottle of Imovane prescribed to me a few months previous by my doctor to help me with my insomnia. I poured the contents into my palm. Twenty-three and a half light blue, egg shaped tablets clustered along the lines, seemingly purple on the pale pink palm.

Eggs.

Chicken….

What came first?

The letter “O”! The letter “O”!!!

I questioned the dreams which might dwell within each small generic pill while my mind, like a coin, fluttered and flipped back and forth, back and forth, back… and forth….

What if all your dreams came true at once? Is that, perhaps, the peace we really seek? Or would such an occurrence be akin to Icarus when he flew, higher and higher toward the sun. Had the solitary gull ever attempted such a journey or did it accept it’s survival via scavenging and feasting at landfill sites?

Scavengers. Perhaps that is an apt description of what were are, no different from the gull perched outside. Scavenging for the truth, for meaning – creating our ego centred worlds.

My palm closed over the egg shaped pills, entombing the dreams together until called upon to take me away from my conscious mind.


9.


The metallic ringing rattle of the telephone ruptured the morning’s calm.

“Hello?”

“Hey Palmer, it’s Tara. What’s up?”

“Nothing sexual… you?”

“Please, don’t go there. Anyways, nothing much…”

“Anyway.”

“What?”

“Anyway. There’s no S”

“Whatever!”

“Hey, I used to go out with this girl once and she was always saying ‘there’s no S in anyway’. It kinda stuck.”

“Right. Anyway-ya, want to meet up for coffee later this morning?”

“Sure, when and where?”

“Let’s see… it’s quarter to ten now…. what about eleven-thirty , the usual spot on Spring Garden?”

“Sounds like a plan. See you there… how are things anyways”

“Anyway –ya – fine I guess.”

“Huh?”

“You said anywayzzzzzz…”

“No I didn’t!”

“Did too!”

“Didn’t.”

“Did. Anyway –ya, see you at eleven-thirty.”

“Right-o. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Syntax.

I’d written a poem about Tara, near the end of our romantic run, and thought back to it:

Patchouli scented, cigarettes,
A Marxist manifesto
Surplus shirts and red beret
Taking on the world
Idealist iconoclasts
with the best of intentions
petitioning the peasantry
challenging convention
Tolstoy over cheap chardonnay
nighttime never ending
minimum wage and mortgage free
this is how we were…




10.


The Lowest of the Low’s “Hallucigenia CD had replaced Mozart this morning at the café, though this detracted nor added to the organic atmosphere of roasted beans, warm bodies and second-hand smoke. Things were generally pretty dead, given the time of day, but isn’t death a major part of the whole organic cycle – crowd composting. Perhaps, for some, the serenity of a violin concerto was preferable over the thundering bass and guitar mixed with the acoustic melodies of such ditties as “Night of the Living Assholes” or “Beer Graffiti Walls…”.

Hey sad ‘n’ blue
What are ya gonna do
Blow yourself away
Or tie up your own left shoe?[4]

Tara had not arrived as of yet. I was five or six minutes early anyway. I draped my heavy tan canvas jacket over the back of rod iron chair at a table near the back window, away from the draughts which liked to lick one until covered in goosebumps at every entrance and exit through the plate glass door.

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men an women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances[5]

I was greeted with a smile by the young player behind the counter

The twisted punchline said
“they’ll understand you when your dead”
Say that your not angry,
Just “savagely disappointed”[6]

and I ordered a medium blend coffee, Guatemalan in origins I believe. Tara was just coming in as I was making my way back to the table.

“Hey” she said “am I late?”

“No, right on time”. She began to respire heavily as she raced the sweat that follows one during the cooler seasons when the environment changes suddenly from the frigid temperatures of the outside to the climate controlled and usually excessively warm indoor microcosm.

“Be right back.”

(Jack-boots) The dream you bury
(Dog-hoops) Is the torch you carry
(Bad news) But is it necessary to fade away?

Tara returned with a steaming mug and a bran muffin whose texture reminded me, perhaps appropriately, of a freshly passed meadow muffin with its muddy grass lid, glazed in butter. “So how you doing?”

“Not bad” I replied. “Usual psychological neurosis, but that’s nothing new. How are things going with you?”

She raised her head, tilting it back a bit and shaking her black curly locks with eyes rolled upward. Her throat looked so smooth, sensual, pale against the knitted crewneck of her dark olive sweater.

“That good?”

“I don’t know. Jeff’s been really pissing me off.”

“How so?”

A haze is in bloom, alone in my room
And the only relief is that you’re not here too[7]

Tara drew a quick sip from her americano, “I don’t know, he just is.”

“Mmm.”

“It’s just… I don’t know – he’s always around.”

“Well you do live together – you are married.”

“I know, I know. It’s just since… well, you know.”

Brendan’s afraid, that Sheila got laid
She crashed and she burned
all the plans that “he” made

“Since certain acts were committed between you and a non-husband bloke.”

“Exactly. I mean, we didn’t do anything wrong. Well, we did, but it didn’t seem wrong. I really shouldn’t be pissed with Jeff, but… fuck! Look, I love him and things were going great, but then this all happens and now – Aaaargh!”

“You long to live, yet you yourself entangle life’s problems in logical confusion. And how importunate, how impudent your antics, and how frightened you are at the same time! You talk nonsense and are pleased with it. You make insolent remarks, yet you are constantly afraid and apologetic. You insist that you fear nothing, yet at the same time you try to integrate yourself.”[8]

“I don’t know what to say… it’s pretty messed up” I replied.

“You’re telling me.”

“Well, let’s look at the essence of the whole affair – pardon the pun.”

Tara glared at me, a black tuft straying down across her forehead and bouncing off her eyelashes, batting it away.

“No, seriously. Okay, so: you love Jeff, yes?”

“Yes.”

Sometimes I feel like a clown,
sometimes I feel like a saviour
I guess that don’t justify my anti-social behaviour[9]

“Right. So, do you want to be with him?”

“I don’t know. I just want to be.”

“Yes, but do you want to be with Jeff – that is the question.”

“Fuck. I don’t know. I just don’t know where any of this is going.”

“Hey, that’s all part of life’s journey – hard to get lost when you’ve no clue where you are or where you feel your headed.”

“I know. Anyway,” Tara reached into her bag and pulled out a package of cigarettes before even considering her muffin, “let’s talk about something different. I’m just going to have to figure this out I guess.”

The streets full of glass, the night of the living assholes[10]

“Okay. I’m here if you need to talk”

Don’t “waste your energy” on me, you fuckin’ phoney p.b.[11]

“Thanks.” she replied through tightly drawn lips as she held the small orange flame to the golden-brown tobacco, inhaling the smoke through her throat and into her lungs, breasts rising ever so gently.

Sometimes a cigar…

“Right then. Hmmmmm, let’s see. Me….”

…is just a cigar.

“Yeah, what’s up?” she exhaled, smoke, soft and grey, climbing above our heads like cherubs returning to their home cloud, nestling in the cavity of the room near the yellow stained ceiling.

“Not a whole lot. I was over to Brian’s the other night and his youngest got a bead stuck up his nose.”

Tara laughed. It was nice to see her smile. She used to smile a lot. Her teeth were straight, white and even, despite her bad habits of smoking and black coffee.

“So what happened?”

“Nothing much. Nimvh got it out with a toothpick. It wasn’t the first time and probably not the last.”

“That’s hilarious!”

“Yeah. They’re quite the crew.”

“Happy families.” sighed Tara.

“Mmmm” I replied, fingers knitting along the ceramic handle of my stained ivory coffee mug, “happy families.”
“Trevor Called.”

“Oh yeah? How’s he doing, poor guy. Is that crazy bitch still playing her games?”

I proceeded to give Tara a synopsis of Trevor’s situation and made mention of the guns.

“Fuck Palmer, you’ve got to tell someone!” she vibrated.

“I can’t rat out a friend though.”

“I know, but if he does something stupid… I mean the guy’s not stable. What if he off’s Shelley and Sandy? Fuck, you’d be criminally negligent – I mean now we would be criminally negligent!”

“I can’t argue that. On the other hand, you tip off the authorities, and he’ll know that it’s me. Then what? Am I a psychologist? No. So, the authorities do nothing on that front and I get labelled a rat and lose a friend. And who knows, maybe he is okay. I know he’s breaking the law buy having a gun…”

“Guns” Tara interrupted.

“Okay, guns, but that will get both him and Dave in shit and all based upon our neo-psychological analysis.”

We sat in silence for a second – one of those reprieves of noise where even the background music is silent though it remains playing.

“They’re both security guard wannabes – fuck, if they want to be cops someday then they should have more sense than all of this.”

“Consider your sources here, Tara. They talk a big game but do you think that they’ll ever really apply themselves when they can satiate their dreams by buying all the cool gear through mail orders and army surplus stores?”

“I know, I know, I know…” Tara paused

“Besides” I interjected, “what if he is crazy and learns it was me who tipped the authorities, or even if he thinks that it’s me and you make the call and comes gunning after me? It’s not like he’d face jail time. I’d just fuck-up his dreams or at least give him the excuse for not going for it. Then, I’ve got two hundred and some pounds of crazy mad bastard wanting my ass.”

“But if he were to kill Shell and Sandy we would be bearing the guilt in the courts and in our hearts. I couldn’t live knowing that we knew this stuff…”

“…I know, but what can we conclude without distorting it with speculation?”

“He’s had homicidal and suicidal thoughts in the past” Tara stated, almost pleading, “he shouldn’t have weapons. If he had applied for a FAC they’d deny it him because he’s not stable.”

“You’re right. He is making plans for the future though – returning to work, the cops…and the thing is, if the doctor says he’s okay than he’s the authority figure. We’re layfolk whose opinions and diagnosis don’t mean squat. Besides, he wouldn’t need a gun to kill Shell, he’s got knives out of his yin yang. I think it was a spur of the moment kind of thing – you know, like Dave said ‘tell you what, I’ll give you the guns as part of the deal if you put the AR on your card’ and Trevor said ‘sure’. He said he was buying tons of stuff off Dave for dirt cheap, like kabongs and tomahawks and whatever else Cold Steel manufactures.”

“You should still talk to Brian about this – he’s a smart guy. He’ll know what to do, or at least offer us a fresh perspective.”

“I’ll give him a call”, I promised, though really felt like the situation had exposed itself in its harsh nakedness, offering no alternative that was without carnage in some form or another.


11.


I stopped off at the NSCAD art shop down by Historic Properties along my way home, if nothing more, then simply to browse. The potential of the blank sheet of paper. To think, every masterpiece begins on a similar surface, untouched by hand or mind. What is the destiny of such a virgin? What hand shall apply their craft by way of brush, pencil or keystroke? What work of art will transpire or what creases will etch themselves in disgust when words fail to serve their meaning or description fall short of their subject? What revolution will be caused by words printed upon its face, or what perpetuation of bureaucracy? What?

Liam ?

Emer ?

I looked at the blank books, wishing that the gods or my Mother had granted me just the slightest inkling of artistic ability.

Dreams. Always dreaming dreams.

Dreams and forgotten services, psalms.

Alas, neither words nor the shaping of figures came easily. Likewise, music. Even at my present age I had often framed myself on the silver stage of the bathroom mirror, lip syncing favourite tunes, imagining the certain flavour of the week, possibly the black lycra clad girl with the abs and chestnut brown hair from the gym who I had often observed on the Stairmaster, or the alternative looking twentysomething with the trendy thick framed plastic glasses who worked on occasion as a barista at the coffee shop. Even the artsy girl behind the counter here might be a suitable candidate for a serenade if her face or a specific moment became memorable.

Faces.

What is the relationship between the face and identity. We are so often classified according to appearance: black, white, handsome, ugly. The physical – the fashions: punk, jock, preppy, geek. Jung had argued our identity in the early years was a mirror of our parents. My god, was I my Mother? At one time I was a growth in her womb – another organ, feeding with her liver, her lungs, her psyche. Then, as we become of school age, we become that which we are subjected to in the classroom and school yard… But where does it all begin? Who casts the shadow or projects the sound – establishes the juxtaposition?

Faces.

…Like I don’t exist.

Faceless faces…

Mirror of what?

Sadly, my face is not one of someone who could be a famous singer. It was just me: rounded face of medium complexion, light brown hair with a cowlick which made any hairstyle look not quite right, green eyes, slightly more narrow than normal but fairly well centred, framing a rather ordinary nose.

Mother?

Then there was the body. The angora curls which covered my chest, shoulders and back like moss rising from the depths of an overgrown forest floor. I had attempted to shave his body once or twice and even endeavoured to wax one time – tea towel clenched between gritting teeth while a (now ex-) girlfriend ripped strip after strip of the cursed locks – but this merely resulted in ingrown hairs and ugly stubble, not to mention welts worse than any razor burn.

No, I am simply an ordinary man, not exceptional in any way whatsoever. My apartment was a testament to all attempts at proficiency. Bookshelves, lined with an assortment of language books (but other than greetings and one or two expressions in French, German and Spanish, English was my only language of fluency), books on How to Play a variety of instruments, likewise accompanied by the instruments themselves: guitar, tin whistle, recorder, harmonica. I had managed one or two children’s songs on the whistles, nothing at all on the harmonica and the chords G, C and D on guitar. Other How to books included drawing the human figure, painting with acrylics and even cross stitching.

I made for the shop’s exit, feeling like the piece of paper that had been crumpled and discarded. It was a cold day. Christmas wasn’t too far off, soon followed by New Years. Time yet again for resolutions.



12.



I decided to make an evening out of a German bottle of Dr. Zenzen Kabinett and a compilation tape I had made featuring some of my soulful favs: The Waifs, Billy Bragg, The Pogues, Jann Arden, etc. It’s amazing how in touch one can become sitting alone in a dimly lit room where the silhouettes and shadows of exterior urban lighting dance upon the putrescent white walls, wine in hand while acoustic instruments massage the air creating a sensation similar to a sexual energy. Funny thing is, I am normally a red wine drinker – Gato Negro or Szekszárdi Vörös… This white was very good though…

“Be in your feet” my Yoga instructor would always say. Interesting. It’s funny in that my Yoga practise can be translated to so much in everyday life. It’s amazing the sensations one is able to perceive when they pay attention to their bodies; so much going on unawares. We can say the same about life.

Happy families.

My feet didn’t seem to be of a normal shape, attached to the ends of my ectomorph frame – large gap between the big toe and its neighbour – nothing like the feet I had seen in magazines. Fred Flintstones feet. I think to the child I was. The time when life was about playing games and understanding limited itself to the simple facts. Facts like flowers needed rain, the sky is blue and snow is cold. Is that how I really saw things? Did I see the letter ‘O’ and alternatives to 2 X 2 = 4 ? Did I question the wooden spoon as it scorched my baby skin or did I accept that it was a law of the universe not to be questioned? Did any of that exist?

Be in your feet…

Tara. Is Tara my Father messing around? Did my Father simply feel right at the time be it slapping my Mother or sleeping around?

My eyes. The world, my world is through my eyes only.

Some flowers need water daily. Others, such as cacti, prefer more arid conditions.

I’m drunk.

I wonder how I’d react if the phone rang and it was the Police or a hospital saying “Your Mother is dead.”? Would I cry? Would I be angry? Would I feel inconvenienced like Meursault? “How do you fee?l” questions the newspaperman from the Sun

… the blood red earth tumbling onto mother’s coffin, the white flesh of roots mixed in with it, more people, voices, the village, the wait outside the café, the incessant drone of the engine, and my joy when the bus entered the nest of lights which was Algiers and I knew I was going to go to bed and sleep for a whole twelve hours.[12]


No.

No, I wouldn’t feel anything at all. We are all dead. We are all scavengers, scrapping some kind of meaning from life so that we can feel guilty about slipping A into B and fuck the letter ‘O’ because 2 X 2 simply equals four and that’s that.

Be in your feet.

Halifax Sun headline reads: “Son Meets Mother’s Death Like Vulcan, Halmark Representative Besought with Grief as no Suitable Card Expresses Sentement of Nothingness”.

The law of the universe. What is the law of the universe? That all live only to die? To recycle oneself into the compost pile we call planet Earth? Manifest in ever passing moments which can not be realised until they are no more, making hindsight a product of the past?

I began to sip deeply from my crystal glass. The yellow-gold liquid sharply dry and fruit tangy. Billy Bragg was singing “St. Swithin’s Day”:

With my own hands
when I make love to your memory
it’s not your fault
but your memory touches me like a fire…[13]

My body was overwhelmed by a mixture of emotions. It was as if my entire being was a scream: rage, frustration, ecstasy.

Silence. What is silence; inner stillness? Are these states of being or simply the screams muffled to the point where we can ignore them? Our first sound in this life is a scream, coming so natural from our indoctrination-free throats. Still, when someone screams we are startled, think the person mad or in agony.

The photographs that hold us together
will surely fade away
like the love that we spoke of forever
on St. Swithin’s day

Because we are to one day die, does life have or have no meaning? No wonder our essence is captured in a scream. We scream when we are born, when we die, when we are angry, when we are surprised, when we are happy, when we cum, when we’re frustrated… we are the product of screaming. Then, to find the silence which we portray in our everyday lives is to suffocate our selves. No wonder we’re all so bloody mad – lost – confused!

A few moments lapsed into the place where time drains itself into memory. Refilling my glass, I cranked my small stereo up to the point where the speakers were issuing a tin-like buzz with the lower bass notes. It was Bob Mould of Hüsker Dü hammering out “Too Far Down” on his acoustic guitar:

…And you don’t want the emotion
‘Cos the taste it leaves is for real but
Nothing’s ever real until it’s gone
And I might be too far down
Is this just another thrown away
Or is this the end of the whole stupid road…[14]

If ever one felt concordant with sound, my scream – the central pillar of my essence – was fortified and one with this sound. Perhaps this was the screams true nature : music. Perhaps this was all the contorted faces of musicians when they coupled their words with sounds and strength of reverberating frequencies. Perhaps our silence need not exist as something which suffocates our screams. Perhaps there is no need of silence whatsoever. Music. Bob Marley, you were a genius: “One good thing about music, when it hits you feel okay”.

Bob Marley is dead. Died of cancer.

Bob’s music still lives. Somewhere, just as the butterflies flapping of wings forms on the other side of the world as a typhoon, Bob’s music – all music – lives on, but everyone hears things differently.

I had often contemplated all the radio waves around us. It was interesting how, despite not listening to popular music in the 1980’s I still knew all the words to the songs – they surround us always in the air.

Be in your feet. Observe what happens in your body.

Television too. I didn’t have cable television in my flat, however, my fuzzy screened 14” still pulled four channels from the air via the metallic rabbit ears which stood like fencers foils on the box’s top. If all those pictures are floating out there, then so is Bob’s music – both Bob’s: Marley and Mould! So are each and every scream made by myself as well as all living things from time immemorial. That is reality: the echoes of past screams. Reality is one’s perception of existence. Existence is the fabrication of nothingness into being. Nothing implies no thing and therefore some thing. Thus, all is an echo !

Echoes. Echoes. Echoes.

You long to live, yet you yourself entangle life’s problems in logical confusion.

If we are seeking peace in life – in Yoga – in meditation – how may it ever be realised if we are echoes of screams. What is the peace we really seek if not silence?

And how importunate, how impudent your antics, and how frightened you are at the same time! You talk nonsense and are pleased with it.[15]

The bottle of Kabinett was nearly depleted. If I could describe my state at the moment, the word I would use is horny.

Syntax.

It’s all a matter of where the accents fall.

Sex.

Is it bad that sex should be the foremost emotion at such a moment?

You make insolent remarks, yet you are constantly afraid and apologetic. You insist that you fear nothing, yet at the same time you try to integrate yourself[16]


Tara acted upon her sexual impulse – on the moment. The sex we had before she began to date Jeff was of no consequence, but now, with this other fellow and Jeff, consecrated in holy matrimony… timing. Timing….

Trevor.

How may an echo time its reverberations – concordant, discordant? How? A sharp gunshot, made dull as it distances from the point where the powder is sparked by the primer.

What is the nature of the scream? From what or where is its energy derived?

Sex. Sex.

Be in your feet. Listen to the breath.

Exhaling cigarette smoke: grey, spiralling, weightless, tight, energy filled curls…

Sometimes a cigar is just…

Would it be wrong to have sex with Tara again? Timing. Can one own an echo? Do echoes have ethics? Or, perhaps, are ethics merely the silence we are taught to seek so we may live quietly like corpses, never feeling the wind of a wave emitted by an emotional power?

Smoke and white wine…

I wanted more A slips into B than Tara, but my feelings were not completely mechanical; an hint of the spiritual lurked within each echoed pang as it painted and sculpted my consciousness. Perhaps, on some level, I was in love or connected to her – syntax yet again, the limits of language. Just feel, just feel! Still, I knew that Billy Bragg had summed it up in that it would be “with my own hands” that I would “make love to” her “memory”.

Memories. Words and wooden spoons.

Spoons rhythmless, not like Bob’s guitar nor even like mine.

The cassette player made a final click as the tape came to the end of side B. I looked at the red neon numbers of my alarm: 23:53. The bedsit was quiet as a bedsit can be, save the odd creak from the hundred and fifty year old plaster walls and whirr of the 1970’s refrigerator which, on some level, might have sounded like “Om”.

Click.

I moved to the light-switch, switching the stiff black plastic lever down and went to bed where I took some time to touch myself before drifting off to sleep, which emanated from my feet.

13.


Dream:

I'm in my Mother's home town. I go into a gym, sparsely populated with old oxidised weights, divided into three rooms... I'm speaking to some lady in navy lycra and can't stand up. The manager arrives, I start listing off my relatives names. He nods and oh's in recognition. Then a man approaches with a lanky, grey cat and throws it into a lake. He then walks into the reflective clear water and they both swim away.

14.


I woke up the following morning feeling slightly dry, but not really hung over. The stained glass azure of the empty Dr. Zenzen bottle sat as a church window on the counter, reflecting the many hours of sunlight which had come with the distant dawn.

Another day.

Another partial day, but as all days are comprised of momentary manifestations, are not all things both partial and complete at the same time? I had to work at one o’clock and it was already half past ten. As I made my way to the kettle to make myself a cup of tea, I began to recall through a translucent fog, my dream of the night just past.

Rust… river… weights… a man and a grey cat…

Heraclitus had said something of how one could never put their foot in the same river twice as, by the second time around, both current and water, as well as the foot, would have changed within itself.

BE IN YOUR FEET!

The weights. Rusty.

The kettle came to a boil and I poured the hot liquid with its trailing stream of steam into the mug with a sense of déjà vu – like this scene repeats itself every morning. That my life was a repeating circle – a letter ‘O’- like Odysseus’ eternal ramblings.

My life is in a rut. I can depict this rut in the mental image of a muddy, gas infested WWI trench, cluttered with blood, the mutilated dead and pungent faeces. I needed to teach. I needed to be like Jack Black in the School of Rock flick I saw last month – not too bad for Hollywood pulp and Joan Cusack was so hot. Perhaps this is the nature of all lives, only we so often become preoccupied with the day to day trivialities that we fail to acknowledge this. All I seem to do is think – to obsess – to find, or at least to try to find answers. We are all a proverbial Sisyphus who lack the common sense to jump in front of the rock as it rolls down the hillside and end all of this nonsense!

Sense.

Why do we even bother attempting to make sense of anything? Who are all the great philosophers and spiritualists kidding anyway? Sense is merely a convenience contrived so work – big business – and religion can perpetuate themselves.

Religion. Business. Schools. All institutions. We are all institutionalised. And rightly so as we are all truly deeply disturbed; we are mad. Our entire evolution is limiting itself in idioms and koans of morality. One is even snared in this trap if they declare themselves and Atheist.

Can an atheist be a moral individual or have a purpose?

An Atheist is interesting as he/she defines himself ironically by what they do not believe. Many a theist, a believer in the existence of a God, would declare an atheist of weak principles and prone to commit evil or immoral acts as the atheist has no fear of the Creator’s judgement nor a belief in divine law. In the purity of ideology as it pertains to our textbooks and theology/philosophy classrooms, this argument holds validity to a point: remove negative consequences and you remove deterrents; fear God and you wouldn’t dare mess with Him, correct? When the reality of human nature is injected, the argument tends to crumble. After all, are our prisons not full all over the planet with individuals who have committed atrocious crimes against their kind? Our classrooms themselves are prisons! We may also site many events both past and present where devout believers have taken their interpretations of varying scriptures and used them to commit evil acts. In fundamentalist sects of Islam in our present day, young men and women act as suicide bombers to carry out their interpretation – and the interpretations of many Imams – the will of Allah. Northern Ireland has seen its share of Catholic priests supporting IRA terrorists in their murderous campaigns, as have the likes of the Presbyterian Minister Ian Paisley supported Protestant paramilitaries in their crusade against Ulster Catholics as Brian and his family will attest. Then there is the former Yugoslavia and present conflicts in Nigeria. Crusades, Inquisitions; the list is as long as our history.

St. Augustine wrote in De Libero Arbitrio “If you don’t believe it, you won’t understand it”. This emphasises the subjective nature of the human mind. It is our interpretation of something which shapes the images and beliefs we hold, be that determining if the cup is half empty or half full or if the Christian Commandment of “Thou shalt not kill” is instructing us not to kill other people or to refrain from eating meat. I am not contesting the existence of a divine morality, but rather Humankind’s ability or inability to perceive it in its purity of form. Francis Bacon wrote “It is true, that a little Philosophy inclineth Man’s Mind to Atheism; but depth in Philosophy bringeth Men’s Minds about to Religion.”

Institutionalised!

One must also contemplate the platforms of other ideological non-spiritual systems of belief. Communism, for example, on paper is very similar in its attitude toward creating a harmonious society where all share the wealth and are provided for – equality straight across the board. Communism, like many religions, however, has not been represented very well when put in place in the hands of men, succumbing to the syndrome which George Orwell described as “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”. The Theist may argue it was the lack of fear in a supreme judgement that caused many to become corrupt and murderous. Alas, there is many a past Pope who shares bloodstained hands along with Stalin. Perhaps Trevor would become another in the statistical list of murderers, though remain an unknown through the greater annals of history.

Must call Brian….

We view life along the lines prescribed by Confucius and Socrates in that all our experiences and perceptions are organised, categorised and defined in a system which becomes our basis of knowledge and understanding of all that is. Therefore, one might state that we have created all that which we believe. Those who believe in a Supreme Being or God will dismiss this statement stating that there is a divine law and order of things, though perhaps the mortal individual is incapable of truly seeing this divine law and order as to see is to perceive a something, rather than to truly see that object. Even a person seeing their self does so through a specific lens rather than being able to perceive one's self, or anything else for that matter, in their pure essence as the essence of something in its pure form is impossible to perceive. To say that perception of this form is possible is contradictory as perception alone foregoes divine truth. Stating this, can even the theist be a moral individual?

Grey areas.

Contemplate religions such as Wicca, Taoism or Buddhism. Buddhism, for example, is a religion of free thought, which provides teachings to attain the highest state of spiritual liberation. The Buddha himself, the founder of the religion back in the 6th Century BC, was, however, a mere mortal. The central premise of Buddhism, as with Islam, Christianity, etc., emphasises peace and loving-kindness toward others. There is not, however, a god in the Buddhist religion so much as all is of creation and creation is all, interconnected. In my opinion, a Buddhist is more of an agnostic than anything and perhaps more in harmony with the non-visionable order of things than any other doctrine of belief.

So where does that leave the Atheist? …And Tara? Me? Can one perpetuate good in the world and live in harmony without believing in a god? Can we find a purpose?

I decided that I would not go to work today. I would not go to work out of spite. Like the Underground Man I was becoming a spiteful person, even though I knew the spite would make no imprint on the institutionalised world. If anything, I would be crushed by Sisyphus’ weighty stone, but be condemned to survive beneath its crushing weight.

Fuck it! I would go to the liquor store, transform money into wine – my Ambrosia - and return home and bond with Bacchus!

15.

I don’t think I really like myself. Then again, I’m not so sure who the self is that I don’t like. Sure, identity crisis is something we all go through, but, in all honesty, I think that my crisis is my identity. I’ll give you and example: I like literature and philosophy, sport and punk rock. I have a wardrobe that represents all of these particular genre’s as expressed through fashionable trends. Now the academic in me can swing both ways with the Black Flag or Boston Bruins t-shirts. However, when wearing a major league franchise logo, I feel more jock’ish, wanting to train in the gym like a madman and be all of that. I usually feel sickened by this at one point, revert back to the independent band look and rise my fist up against the fascist corporate machine, only to self-talk stating “fuck Palmer, grow up!”. So, at any one given time, my chest of drawers will be comprised of bands that rock or by my attempts to be “one of the boys” and go mainstream. It’s like I’m stuck.

This whole sense of self-complication probably sounds bizarre to most, but, then again, having on ever been me, who am I to be an authority on the thoughts and psyches of others? But literally, I can swing one way or another on the mainstream-anarchist see-saw to both extremes and end up on either end in a matter of minutes. Don’t get me wrong, this has probably made me a rareity. I am one of very few jocks who can quote Goethe and hypothesise on how corporate America is brainwashing us via the over-stimulation of inane conservatism, especially in schools where we are programmed to regurgitate and make protest in the mildest manner possible, and who knows the news and media is all a sham. Alternatively, of the anaemic punk crowd, with the exception of Henry Rollins of course, I’m one of the few who can or would even try to bench press more than their body weight. I guess, who I really am is a mosaic of all these things, but that still doesn’t tell me what t-shirt to wear: Edmonton Eskimos 2003 Grey Cup Champions or The Pogues Rum, Sodomy and the Lash now does it?

When I think on my thoughts here it all looks so silly. Then again, perhaps it’s the corporate brainwashing that is making me think that this is silly, in hopes that I will conform. My god, my mind is A Clockwork Orange on steroids! After all, what kind of rebellion would I be leading if I am so determined to fit in that exact slot: rebel. Perhaps the true revolutionary is the one who can not be classified or defined. I mean, hey, punk rockers are the same factory processed assembly line mannequins as the rah! rah! jocks, are they not? Perhaps I’m so consumed in representing the ideas and thinkers that I admire that I try to become them instead of taking what they have left and going further with it on my own….then again, nothing wins adoration than scoring the game winner on triple overtime! Let’s not kid ourselves either, Canadian people would be relieved and overjoyed if we found a cure for cancer, but that would pale in the street parties and euphoric sense of defeating the USA for an Olympic gold medal in Hockey. Honestly, can you imagine all night parties in the street for a Nobel Prize winner?

I’d be lying if I said that I wanted to be famous. I really hate being in the spotlight. But here we go again: what is it that I want? We come into life, a pure essence of potential, limited only by genetic pre-disposition. Then the conditioning begins and we are only free to react to this discipline when we are old enough to have that realisation – which could be never given on the pre-conditioning factors. So really, we are who we become but never really are who we are. So how in the hell does the Buddhist just be? I can see on the one hand how that is all that we can do, while, on the other, find that to be an existence made opaque behind an ever-changing veil.

…Perhaps if I were to simply just up and give all of one set of t-shirts to good will… actually, who am I kidding? I’ve done that before, only to replace them later with the latest designs.

…I’m going crazy. Hell, I am crazy. Almost done another bottle too. Got to lie down for a bit – or should I phone Trevor? Naw, I can’t deal with that right now. Who the hell am I anyway; always the one with advice, the quotations. I’m a fucking fraud – don’t even know when I’m lying to myself: a Jekyll and Hyde of sorts. Fuck it. Fuck it all!
16.


Dream:

I'm in this classroom, high school, before an exam. I've got my pants down and am sitting on a rust stained toilet behind my friend Darcy Ryan, trying to take a shit without being noticed. I candidly wipe my arse with a white towel, trying still to be unobserved. I'm a mess, anxiety welling up, as I wish it was over...things get worse as my skid marked boxers dip into the bowl I pull them up, dirty, cold & wet while the teacher continues her obscure lecture and I sit listening.

17.



There was a pounding on the wooden door to my bed-sit, sounding impatient as though it had been persisting for some time, fully orchestrated by the neighbour’s dogs chanting their canine chorus with the veracity of Ian MacKaye in his early years with Minor Threat. My eyes felt as though they were peering through glue as the focused in the dusky grey of the room. I was completely dressed, wearing an old, reliably comfortable pair of Levis blue jeans and faded black Ramones t-shirt, still feeling a bit tipsy.

“Hold on! Just a minute” I murmured.

I opened the door and saw Tara standing there in a posture that told me she was wound tighter than a Sumo wrestler’s top knot.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Fuck, you look like shit.”

“Gee thanks, come on in.”

“I stopped by the shop today and you weren’t there. They said nobody had heard from you. They called and there was no answer. I thought maybe something had happened.”

As the only furniture I owned was my futon, we both took a seat on the bed after Tara removed her navy and grey gortex jacket. I sat there and said nothing.

“Is there something that happened? What’s up? Have you been drinking? It’s only just gone past seven.”

“What time is it?”

“Seven. Just past. Seven-o-eight”.

“Oh.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

What’s wrong? What is wrong?

“Nothing, I just felt… I don’t know, I just felt like taking a sickey. You know, mental health day.”

“Yeah, but you should’ve at least called. They don’t know if you’re alive or dead.”

“I’m not certain whether or not I am either.”

“Huh?”

“Alive or dead.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Do you want a drink. A cup of tea? I think I consumed most of the wine.”

“No, I’m fine. Any more caffeine and I’ll be up all night.”

“I might have a beer or something…”

“No, I’m good.”

“Okay. Let me know if you change your mind.” My stomach was feeling queasy. I realised that I hadn’t had a thing to eat since the night previous. “I’m going to have a glass of water.”

“Seriously Palmer, what’s going on? How do you expect to ever break into teaching? You really look like crap.”

“Full of compliments aren’t we!” I laughed. “I don’t know, I’ve just been thinking a bit too much lately. You know, when you get bored and start going through the whole raison d’être thing? You know, trying to make sense out of life in general.”

“I hear you” Tara smiled, shaking her head as if bowed to some higher power that was observing our discussion. “Come up with anything?”

“Chaos, if that’s something.”

“Hmmm.”

“I don’t know. I’ve been having these pretty messed up dreams. Then there’s you and the whole Jeff thing. Questions of social values – struggling to believe in half of what I say if not in my self.”

“Why is my situation with Jeff on your mind so much? I think Trevor should be where your thoughts lie. Did you phone Brian yet?”

“No. Anyway, I don’t know, it just is – you and Jeff. I guess it is a symbol of things we accept in life without really questioning.”

Tara did not respond, she simply sat silently looking in the direction of the bottle Bacchus and I had emptied. It was then that I noticed that she was wearing her wedding ring. Tara never wore her wedding ring, so why now?

“You know” she started, then fell silent again. After a few seconds resumed “You know if I could turn back the clock on this whole thing I would. I got so caught up in the moment. I don’t know why, I mean obviously I was filling a need or a void… I guess my relationship with Jeff has changed and, with that, the nature of the whole relationship. What’s worse, even if Jeff is never to know, what we have will never, ever be pure again. We play around with the idea of purity – hell, losing my virginity seemed, on some levels very significant, but, on others, like nothing – almost like it wasn’t sacred because I had never made a vow to my virginity. Once you take something like a wedding vow, so pure, and then break it…”

“See, that’s the kind of thing that fucks with me” I said after a few moments had passed. “All of what you said. But what does it all mean in the bigger picture of your life?”

“Mitch, this isn’t philosophy class, this is real life. Can’t you see that none of the philosophical rantings really matter? Life is as real as it gets, even if, at times, it seems surreal, or ironic, or simply out of whack. I can make excuses for my situation until the cows come home, but nothing can change how I feel inside…”

“And what do you feel inside?”

“Confused! Angry! I don’t know! What I do know is that I’m tearing myself up with guilt, whether or not it’s because that is what the law of the universe wants me to feel or if I’m so inclined through social conditioning.”

“I guess that’s how I’m feeling about life in general. Sometimes I hate myself – it’s like there are no enduring qualities of my self or… oh, I’m not putting this right. This isn’t making sense, not coming out the way it feels…”

“So, you’re going to drink all this away? Skip off from work, lose your job and end up on the street?”

“I could crash with you” I added in a humorous, yet sheepish manner.

“For god’s sake I’m serious! Mitchell, I love talking to you! You’re a great listener and sometimes have a good perspective on things…”

“That’s just it” I pleaded, “my perspective…”

“What?”

“My perspective! What is it I am supposed to be perceiving?”

“Mitch, life is just like anything – like playing guitar: if you think too much about the act of doing instead of just doing it then, regardless of your dexterity, you’ll flounder.”

“Just do it. Like the Nike ad, eh? Like you and that guy…”

All emotion drained from Tara’s face and no sooner had I uttered the words than I wished for their retraction. Tara stood up like a switchblade firing from it’s handle sheath and made for her coat.

“Tara, wait! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

The emotion had returned to her face in a flood of tears being choked back from the brink by pride. The spiral rings of her hair looked somewhat more pronounced than usual. I was feeling completely sober now.
“Look, I’d better head.”

“I’ll walk you home. Look I’m sorry.”

Tara stood in commanding silence which I took as my cue to grab my coat and put on my shoes. I realised that I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet today and my clothes looked like crap. Still, I scrambled while Tara waited, larger than life it seemed – bigger than what could be real - by the door.

“I’m coming! Just a sec!” I closed the door, shoes yet to be tied, tattered white laces catching the grips of soiled rubber sole, and fumbled with my keys as Tara slowly moved spectre-like down the hallway toward the exit of my building.

18.


Tara and I made our journey in complete silence. Perhaps I should have brought the neighbour’s dogs alone. Through them we might breech this silence. Hell if the cosmos could use a fortune cookie to instruct me to pay more attention to my four legged friends, then perhaps my four legged buddies could sequester the silence now. I brushed some fur casually from jacket’s sleeve. My mind was made tense with her footfalls and nagging note in my noggin saying “must phone Brian about Trevor”.

It wasn’t until the walk home, when the awkwardness had relieved itself, leaving me solely in my own company (though I still could have done with the companionship of the dogs) that I noticed the beauty and quiet of the evening. The air was cool, not too damp, and the air was clear, fresh and humming with oxygen bringing focus to one’s contemplations. As I crossed down Gottingen Street, there was hardly a soul about. Odd for this time of evening, not even nine o’clock. Normally the street corners would be alive with packs of youth – blacks mainly decked out in the latest hip hop ghetto pimp fashions with ball caps on their angles that would have driven me nuts - from the surrounding low rent housing complexes, what they would call the projects in America. Interesting term, projects. Did these projects mean? Experiment? Assignment? To what? Why? Language… syntax…

Then, thought the precise moment it all began remains lost to my mind, I can remember a sharp pinch just above my lower back , slightly to the left, and a flood of moist heat and metallic flavour flood my mouth reminiscent of the aroma of mutton in an Irish butcher’s shop. I could not even recollect the sensation of falling upon the sidewalk, though there was a distinct burning sensation on one kneecap and my left elbow. I could hardly apply my hand to where, what I presume was a knife, had entered my flesh, wielded by a faceless assailant. Still, I pressed the best I could with the backs of my finger tips. In Yoga I had always been limited in my shoulder movement.

My wallet was gone, this I know, as it was not chaffing, weighted in its usual position on my left buttocks with it’s worn cowhide, tan. It didn’t make sense.

There had been a number of senseless swarmings, as the papers had penned them, in Halifax as of late; gangs of black youth attacking folks in broad daylight, rendering a fierce beating, all to no specific end other than to inflict pain. Never to be one who subscribes to trends, this did not seem to fit the M.O. of swarming as there had only been one, two perhaps at maximum, perpetrating this attack.

The sticky, slippery blood pooled around me as I lay on the ground like a glacier in the scorching Sahara sands – my form, a melting ice cube, pooling as the ice relaxed and became H2O, water. It was all so warm, yet I felt like shivering as my mind played a scene from an old animated Frosty the Snowman where Frosty withers, leaving only his top-hat and pipe in a tepid pool beneath a hyperbolised cartoon sun. There was a chaffing, wheezing sensation in my chest, like I had swallowed a mouth full of water and it had gone down the wrong way. Why did cool water seem to burn when it hit the lungs? I began to feel myself almost entirely in a physical way, like my mind was simply the place where data was displayed or acknowledged. I was a viewer. I couldn’t feel my feet. My legs tingled, as if asleep. I tried to scream but could not. I felt as though I were looking at myself from the outside, weightless, while, down the hill, behind the smoke stained white washed high rises with their makeshift curtains of blankets and flags, the lights of the Angus L. paled the darkness like a bronze aura emanated from the forgiving womb of some omnipotent goddess.

Sleep.


[1] Albert Camus The Outsider
[2] Cockles and Mussels – Irish Trad.
[3] Fydor Dostoevsky Notes from Underground
[4] “Life Imitating Art” by The Lowest of the Low
[5] William Shakespeare “As You Like It”
[6] “Life Imitating Art” by Lowest of the Low
[7] “Night of the Living Assholes” by Lowest of the Low
[8] From Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
[9] “Night of the Living Assholes” by Lowest of the Low
[10] “Night of the Living Assholes” by Lowest of the Low
[11] “Night of the Living Assholes” by Lowest of the Low
[12] Albert Camus L’étranger
[13] “St.Swithen’s Day” by Billy Bragg
[14] “Too Far Down” by Husker Du
[15] Fyodor Dostoevsky Notes from Underground
[16] Fyodor Dostoevsky Notes from Underground