Reminiscing about that time I was walking down NE Alberta and a woman stopped suddenly in front of me then turned to give me a dazzling smile by way of apology and the word dazzling came out of my mouth and hung in the air like a caption from a silent movie then the action started again and I kept walking and I never saw her again.
Parkstreet
One o’clock in the morning I’m sauntering home after a sweet day full of coffee and conversation and enough work to pay my bills. My old black Chucks are so worn in, they have grown wings. I don’t feel the ground, every step is poetry.
The idea of detachment has been on my mind all day. I'm blissfully detached. As a boy racer makes an attempt on my life at a pedestrian crossing, I have Roger Federer's footwork, I dance around him, then forget he exists. Anger spent on fools is below me tonight.
I weave through the bustling crowd on the strip. My mind pays no attention. My feet know which direction to lead me. They can feel the unknowable patterns in chaos.
My pace slows as I approach the heavy lads between me and my home. To speed up would be to admit intimidation. My gait tells them I'm removed from their world. The sins they have to offer are in my wake.
I smile at happy couples, walking arm in arm, step for step. I'm charmed by them. I feel I have the universe on my arm. Everything and everyone are my lovers. The rhythm of my steps is the rhythm of everything, the rhythm of everything is the rhythm of my steps. How could it be any other way, if everything is me and I am everything?
My day's thoughts on detachment conclude as my journey home is complete. I have to walk through this world on my own two feet, I can make every step poetry.
Parkstreet
A student of nuance, he is interested in the hinges, not the door. A door is just a wall without hinges, without the fluid, moving parts.
Let the students of metaphysics see everything as a lock and a key, let the practical folk design and build better doors and locks. Let the artists make the doors more beautiful. The student of nuance is only interested in the subtle movement that alters reality.
Parkstreet
Was she a local?
Damn right she was a local.
Allow me to explain how local she was.
One evening, just before sunset, she told me to don my thickest scarf and come out for a walk with her. It wasn’t that cold, but she rarely wasted words, so I fetched my scarf and followed her down the stairs from our little flat and out onto the street.
She led me down a lane which turned into a slender path between old blocks of flats, onto and across the beach road, through the park, round the back of the yacht club. There was a party on at the yacht club. She saw my eyes light up, shook her head, took my hand and guided me out onto the pier.
The scarf suddenly made sense. It was cold out there.
We wandered to the end of the pier, as far as I’d gone before, but she led me around the back of the kiosk and onto the marina wall. We climbed down onto the large rocks that held the waves of the bay at bay, sat down and looked out at the water.
She produced a sneaky joint from a denim jacket inside pocket. We smoked and snuggled.
As the sun set our eyes adjusted to the dark. I saw a small movement on the rocks below us, she squeezed my hand and held a finger to her lips. We sat in glorious silence as two tiny penguins hopped and fumbled their way up the rocks. They passed right beside her. She could have reached out and touched them.
After we’d scrambled back up to the top of the wall, started walking back down the pier, I thanked her, a hundred times, for such an experience. I remarked on how close they came to her, still amazed.
“They know me”, she said.
That’s how local she was.
For Jacqueline Elizabeth Scanlon
Parkstreet
He started making origami boats. He needed something to distract him, something to do with his hands.
Large squares of coloured paper, really for children, but suitable for his large, clumsy fingers, turned into cheerful boats at his kitchen table. Why not boats? They seemed the simplest shape to begin with.
He took one in when he visited his mother, with the usual butterscotch and chocolate. She was delighted by it, delighted that he’d made it, delighted that he’d brought it to her.
So he took one with him whenever he visited, until the windowsill and the top of the fridge were covered by boats, until the ceiling fan blew boats around the room in summer, until the staff found a vast glass bowl to be filled with brightly coloured origami boats, a potpourri of the love of a son.
One day she was holding one of the boats when he came in. She wasn’t really sure who he was by then. She just knew that he brought the boats.
“I’ll have to go soon. On a boat. Will I have to go alone?”
“You will”, he said honestly, “but I’ll be here to see you away safely, so don’t worry”.
“And everyone will be there to meet you when you arrive, so you’ll only be alone for a moment”, he lied.
He had no idea what would happen once she sailed away, he just knew that part of seeing her off was telling her this comforting lie.
She pointed to the bowl full of boats. “What will happen to those?”, she asked.
“I’ll look after them.”
“That’s good. I’ve been worried about them.”
She closed her eyes.
He resisted the urge to call the nurse, watched the origami boat fall from her fingers.
Parkstreet
The young Deubussy,
Kicking a ball
Against a wall
While singing random notes
From a whole tone scale
To himself,
Unaware
Of his own
Genius.
Parkstreet
Our restaurant closed early, I can’t recall why. We didn’t care why. We were like school kids given a half day, cleaning up and getting out of there as rapidly as possible.
Somehow it was agreed we were going for supper, the Greek joint up the road. No one said anything, we all just started walking that way. And it was agreed that the boss was paying, despite no one asking her.
We stopped to buy wine on the way. Phil talked me out of my usual wine policy, cheap and lots of it, together we bought something with a price tag and an unlikely label. That label promised a hint of eucalyptus in the wine, we simply had to try it.
When eucalyptus trees are infested by insects they produce an oil that deters the bugs and heals the wounds they inflict. Some of this oil escapes into the air, when other eucalyptus trees sense it they begin producing the same oil to protect themselves.
Eucalyptus trees talk to each other.
Their means of communication, oil, is one of the reasons these trees are so susceptible to fire, but all language is dangerous.
Phil and I, both waiters, both armed with Waiters Friend corkscrews, I deferred to Phil’s skills and asked him to open our bottle. Boys playing gentlemen, he asked me to pour.
I poured.
We sniffed.
We tasted.
We looked at each other.
The label had not lied to us. There it was, a hint of eucalyptus, some of that oil had settled on the grapes at the right moment, the grapes had been handled expertly, that oil ended up talking to us, joining our table where the boss was flirting with the new kitchenhand and the usually tense chef was laughing along with everyone and the staff of the restaurant we’d occupied like cheerful bees were joining in the joy, adding their own jokes and japes. Everyone was spreading the good oil.
I fell silent. I’d read a lot about wine, drunk plenty, but I’d never felt a deeper understanding of it before. The incredible series of connections, thousands of years of improving grape stock, hundreds of years of improving wine making, vines carried carefully to a new world, that new world making the wine its own, that wine telling me of an ancient line of trees who spent their lives silently speaking to each other, speaking of insects and who knew what else? Do gum trees feel love? Do gum trees write poetry? Do they sing?
Phil turned to me, “you alright mate?”.
I smiled, told him, “I’m fine, I’m listening, I’m drinking gum tree words”.
Parkstreet
