Park West

It was 3:30 in the morning. I was sitting in an apartment on the second floor, after coming from another one on the fourth floor. This one was bigger, but had no windows. The twelve dollar rounds of double scotch with a Heineken chaser ran out long ago at the dark bar up the street. Instead, we drank water and smoked. Francois rolled cigarettes with tobacco he got from Madrid, Geisha showed us her photos of prairie sunsets and wood panelled hotel rooms, our host Michael put the final touches on a giant paper mache eyeball that was to be part of his Halloween costume, and I shared some stories about a summer I spent mixed up with a destructive fellow named Mitchell. Who used to take me on all night excursions on the outskirts of the city to vandalize abandoned vehicles. It took me back many years, to the hometown.

We would cruise the highway all night long in his dad's car, stopping at truck stops for chips and pop. Myself, Mitchell, the crazy one, and Ramone, the normal one that became crazy in Mitchell's presence, formed our own little gang of misfits one summer. We didn't drink, or do drugs, we just killed time, something much more damaging. It was just the three of us, and the empty painted pavement that beckoned acts of bravado that could never be attempted in the city. Standing on the roof of a broken down car to dramatically slam an axe through the back window, or lighting fires in the middle of the road, the perimeter highway was ours all night long. You could see a car coming from miles away, giving us several minutes to stop the mutilation of whatever we happened to be smashing at the time, and get back into the car to continue driving along the highway as if nothing had happened. My brother worked just off the highway. The night shift. His job was to sit in his car with a cheap brown suit on, watching an empty mall parking lot for any signs of suspicious activity. We would often stop by throughout the night for short visits that would find him sitting in his white sports car, his eyes transfixed on the pattern of lamp posts that lay before him. Standing in the pre-dawn light of the empty lot around his car, we would tell him about our ridiculous exploits on the outlying highway before we went home to sleep.

One morning though, after I had been dropped at home after a seemingly normal night of vending machine chocolate bars, and axe swinging destruction, I came out of the shower and saw my brothers friend Cedar standing in the hallway with a baseball bat resting on his shoulder. Cedar was wild, unpredictable, and lied a lot. With my brother beside him in my parents basement, I gripped the towel as I thought about whether or not he would swing the bat at me. He looked mad. Once I convinced them both that I had been home for over an hour he told me what had happened. Mitchell and Ramone had hit one last car on the way home. It was a red hatchback sitting at the side of the highway, not far from the mall that my brother was watching. They smashed all the windows, ripped through the car for anything interesting, and finally pulled it out of gear and sent it careening down the hill that it was parked on, and into the ditch. MItchell and Ramone were so excited that they decided to make one last stop at the mall to tell my brother all about it, who oddly enough was outside his car talking to Cedar as they pulled up. Excitedly they recounted the story to my brother, and Cedar, about the car they had just destroyed. My brother said that Cedar informed them in a quiet, calm tone, that it was his car they had just wrecked. He had run out of gas and was waiting for my brother to finish work so that they could get to a filling station. Apparently Cedar began walking towards them with fire in his eyes. All Mitchell and Ramone could do was turn around and run for the cover of the car. Standing there with wet hair at 530 in the morning, I listened to my brother describe how Cedar hung onto the hood of the car, while Mitchell drove around the lot in circles screaming bloody murder the whole time that they didn't know it was his car.

Relaying this story loud enough so that I could be heard over the new Manitoba CD Michael was playing so late at night in his second floor apartment. I started to giggle towards the end of the story. So much so that I nervously felt myself begin to lose control, and have since been intrigued with the fine line between laughter and crying. I don't think Michael, Geisha, or Francois noticed how close I was to bursting into tears. I had more stories about that highway, that summer, but I decided to cut them short, for fear of indulging in my own nostalgia too much. Instead, I had to get home, it was now past four, and the sun would soon be rising. I lifted my face of the end pillow of Michael's couch and quickly found myself in bed after a short cab ride home, far away from the open grey road, and deserted parking lots that defined that summer, so long ago.

Northern Wish

Tom Thomson, The Jack Pine, 1917.

Wake up, raise the curtains
From your deep provincial eyes.
-- The Rheostatics, Northern Wish.

Why are the best days often so tightly wound with despair? It began viciously enough, with the sound of the radio dispatching the news of another captive being forced to demand this and that on cnn. They'll cut her head off.

Myself? Well I sat in the rain, and listened to sad songs. I watched the street cars float by in a wash of wet surf, and thought about wasted opportunities. By the time I got to work, I was destroyed. I could barely concentrate, but later, somewhere around 8pm, things began to reinterpret themselves under the light of the optimist in me. All that was melancholic had become angelic. The past two days have been 72 hours I will never forget. Lifting children into bed and noticing how much they've changed since birth. Listening to the sweet sound of a band hitting its rhythm in the middle of a song they have played for years. Having a drink and making eyes at women in silk dresses with naked backs wrapped in faux fur. Would these moment's exist in their clarity if they were not preceded by rainy skies, foggy windows, couples strolling arm in arm, empty cafes. and blank call display's that tell you the phone hasn't rung in three days?

When I am ill, very ill, I look forward to wellness. I think of the things I will do, what I will eat, the movies I will watch, and the places I will go. So that when the sickness finally does subside, a euphoric moment takes hold, and everything is hyper-good. Even though it's only temporary, this is how I feel right now.

Listen Listen

listen, listen
cat's pissin
where, where?
under the chair
how, how?
with his meow
when, when?
quarter to ten
what, what?
I said...

Black Top

We all know.
I was there.
I was there.
I've never been wrong.

It's the fourth day straight. My driver is a maniac, the yellow cab he drives is not his. I can tell he doesn't care. We blaze over the viaduct, the city is barren, and empty. Perhaps Whistler will be better. Hot tubs and cable TV, I am going with a 21 year old model who displays resort wear while I stalk on my machine. across the room.

If I was standing beside you, would you hug me?

The Hunters

This is how it was, rolling through the black of night on an open prairie highway. The headlights from the big red Chrysler would make the painted lines of the highway streak in front of the oversized hood emblem. The pale green glow of the speedometer dimly lighting up the smooth red leather cab as we would eat turkey sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, and sip consomme soup from a red plastic cup. It was thanksgiving, and like every other thanksgiving since 1975, I was going hunting.

Each year we would arrive at the same stretch of land somewhere west of Winnipeg. My dad, his dad, my cousin, and my brother. We would all sit in silence as we listened to my grandfathers New Yorker slowly scrape along the mud caked paths of the freshly harvested fields. There were rules. Hunter etiquette implied that you should not hunt a field that is already occupied with other hunters. Many times we would sit with the engine running, peering into the darkness, trying to look for other hunters hiding in the fields, or stray cars disguised as hay bales. Hunters always wave whenever they pass each other, by car, or on foot. They would look us over as we went by, projecting an analysing smile. We rarely shot anything. My dad and grandfather always seemed much more interested in the taste of a cold beer drunk in the crisp wind, and blackened toast covered in butter from the Coleman stove, instead of killing water fowl. They would often stop the car and comment on a particularly large flock of geese, look for a moment, and drive on. Their unloaded shotguns would rest on the front seat of the car, dangerous, but free. When I was young, I wanted action, and would often get impatient as they sat there analysing each field, watching the other hunters through binoculars. I never brought a gun myself, just didn't think of it. So I was at the mercy of two hunters who were not about to crawl through the ditch on a whim. But when we did step out, into the dawn, things would get more serious. The hunters would load their weapons, my brother, cousin, and I would converse over who would go with who. I would often pair with my dad. Lying in the hay field as the sun was rising, the sound of the stiff straw poking at my down filled Canadian Squire jacket. We would wait, hiding, as thousands of geese would fly high, too high, over our heads. But every so often, a stray flock would come through. My dad would rise, quickly, his body recoiling as the 12-gauge would fill the air with a hard, sharp, ring that flattened the ears. Often nothing would drop from the sky, sometimes something did, it didn't matter. Like true sportsmen, for us it was about being outdoors, watching the cyclical forces of nature at play. Mixed with man's destructive influence no doubt, but fascinating all the same.

When you repeat something, year in, and year out, you are able to organize time in to concentrated fragments. We all aged in that car, and in those fields. Each time I stepped into that familiar openness I would achieve another right of passage into manhood. I went from arguing over chips with my brother and cousin, to being able to drive the car, to being hungover and reeking of booze in the back seat, to getting ready in the morning with a woman sleeping beside me. It seemed as if it would never end, but as the years wore on, the trips got shorter, and the hunters would get older. My grandfather's rifle was eventually replaced with a cane, until finally, his usual seat in the Chrysler empty because he was too sick to travel. When he died, the whole thing stopped.

That must have been sometime around 1998. And while the geese continue to gather in the fields, every year, forever. So do the hunters, by remembering the thunderous chorus of a thousand birds rising out of a field all at once. The beeping sound a car makes when the door is left open as you stand on an empty gravel road to pee. The taste of canned potatoes served on a paper plate, and the way my grandfather emblazoned his name on everything he owned in huge letters with a black marker. We might not be there, but we linger, somewhere in Manitoba.

The Classic

Well congratulations mother fucker. You ought to be quite proud. Getting wasted in the bar downstairs, by yourself, cheering on a bunch of rich assholes, stuffing 25 cent wings into your face. Very cool.

Moment Fall

-- Photo by Rachel Granofsky

Everybody must give something back
For something they get.

Bob Dylan -- 4th Time Around

We rushed, from the 15 to the 5, through the cool air of which the bright sun could only shine on, but not heat. We were late. I slept in, finally waking after an intense barrage of dreams I cannot recall, nor wish too. And although I fretted all the way there, I was sure to grab the tuft of hair at the base of her neck, releasing my grip into a smooth caress across her back. One thing I have learned over the past year is that everything and anything can be lost in a moment, and that nothing's forever. So as I sent her up the steps, with a late slip in hand, I felt satisfied that I had taken a moment out of the routine, and treated it as if it was my last. I exited the building that boldly stated its birth date as 1907, and kicked at the dead ochre leaves that tried to cover my shoes as Bob Dylan played on the buds in my ears. The fall has arrived.