"I'm
telling you I don't know how she does it. It's some kind of conjuring trick.
She's even let me skip rent for a month. Always she's got lots of money to
spend. Nothing is beyond her except silliness. It's like she goes out at night
and comes back with dollar bills in her hand, that's almost what it's like. She
even said I could quit working, yes she said that. I wish I knew her secret.
Once I asked her about it and she just laughed and touched me under the chin.
She's my best friend. She's simply marvellous."
***
Wouldn't you
know it. David and Linda and me
were sitting in a cafe talking about the old days when I glanced out the window
and say [XXX] and XXX walking past. Hadn't seen them in ages.
Then they see me, they come in, and I don't know their names.
[XXX] says,
"Hi, John!"
"Hi."
(Maybe they'll mention their names if I introduce them.) "This is David
and Linda."
[XXX] says,
"Hi, I'm Brent."
XXX says,
merely, "Hello."
Conversation
goes on for some time. Then they leave.
David says,
"Who were they?"
I say, "I
really wish I really knew."
***
The Blob
Today I poured a
third of a teaspoon of hydrogen peroxide into my left ear, desperate to clear
it before going to Bala Saturday.
The peroxide
bubbled away as I read a book.
I went to the
shower and blasted water into my ear.
Then—oh
miracle!—a huge blob came out!
I grabbed it
before it ran down the drain.
It was black
with some ochre streaks mixed in.
"Mary,
look! It's out!"
I showed it to
her.
"It was
probably in there for ten years."
She said,
"Oh."
I popped it in
my mouth.
Mary puked.
***
This idiotic
fool walked to the streetcar
The kingly 504
Noting the birds
and the children
Singing a song
with bundle on stick over shoulder
Took an offered
transfer though it wasn't necessary
Being polite
right
The streetcar
diverted at Parliament
And this idiotic
fool thought naught of it
Having a metropass in bundle
But
At the
So needed the
transfer after all
But where had it
gone?
Pocket?
Other
pocket?
Bundle!
Opened the
sweating bundle
Riffed through trembling objects
And found it
there finally
This
idiot and fool.
***
The
This
is the month of August.
We
are going there once again.
We
will be off soon.
It'll
be quiet, eventually.
But
first, for two nights, we will have guests.
Friends of ours.
What
will happen?
Who
knows?
I
am writing this on my new Kindle Fire.
I
am using simple ideas now.
I
don't want to break it just yet.
It
cannot give me a word count, so I am just going to guess.
I'm
probably at about sixty-five words now.
(I
really don't want to break this thing.)
There
will be canoes and swimming involved.
Seven
nights altogether.
Maybe
that's enough talking for now.
I'll
talk to you tomorrow.
Today
went by internally, with much less happening on the outside.
Made
breakfast, watched the dog run around freely for possibly the first time in his
life, drove into town for milk and yogurt, jumped off the big rock for the
first time in three years, made David build a quality fire, played a game on
this here machine, started folding another lionfish, ate salmon and mussels and
vanilla ice cream smothered with liqueur, listened to David and Mary sing,
cleaned David's clock at poker, all the while drinking Coors Light.
As
I said, everything that was important happened internally.
Hoo-boy, now I've done it.
I
was out somewhere with John Wakaluk--was that the
cause of it all?
I
had all sorts of assignments to do, including one I'd been neglecting for months.
I've been neglecting it for years, too. I've been hoping the teacher had
forgotten it, but I've evidence she hasn't this evening.
And
now, on top of that, I mentioned tamarinds to my father--only because I didn't
know what they cured--and I rented a videotape that had something to do with
tamarinds.
Then,
this evening, at about three, the doorbell rang. I went out of my room to
look--it was my father at the door.
Some
time later, my brother and my mother came to my door. My brother made to hit me.
'You asshole. Why'd you do it?'
My
mother said, 'That movie you rented. It's about cholera. You know how sensitive
you father is about public health issues.'
I
hadn't known. So now, for years, my father in my dreams will be mad at me for
some stupid video!
And
I still have that assignment to deal with!
The
Rolling Thunder Review of 1974 I believe was when Bob Dylan performed the
version of
This
is an arcane gag. You see, Leonard is actually one Leonard Finkelmeister,
one of Dylan's friends from his younger pre-fame days.
Dylan
made this into a joke. Heartless prick.
You're
asking me about Franz Schubert? Well, let me tell you.
It's
deep stuff all around. I'd have to learn German to completely get to the bottom
of it.
And
even that wouldn't be enough. I'd have to build a time machine, at great
expense, to get back to
But
hell, why not go all the way? Since I'm already building a time machine, I
might as well build a replicator. I'll create a
Schubert from nothing, then inject my soul into his.
But--then I'll be nowhere, won't I? So I won't learn anything.
I
guess I'll never get to the bottom of anything.
It's
the big sky one sees here. The sky is big in the city, too, but it's invisible,
right? Similarly, the moon, the stars. The moon sets
an hour and eight minutes earlier day in, day out. It's something easy to
forget. And you pay more attention to food, too. The feeling
of water rippling over one's body, the sheer solidity of the stuff. The
long trains carrying things to places you've never heard of. Foxes
and herons and geese and ducks and chipmunks. How cool it is at
The town,
whatever its population, lives through the winter and makes all their money
during the summer months. They are rough-skinned, big bicepped,
thick legged, and the men are worse. They have one main road running straight
through plus four or five residential streets. One of them is now a museum of
the town, and Lucy Maud Montgomery. We've never been in it, not knowing
anything about the woman. (At least not me.) There's a
side-road—the original road, from before the highway—off to the east. Quaint little shops there. There's not much else to it. It
changes very slowly.
My
own computer. So, 100 words.
At the Brass
Tap, I said, "You wanted to compare distance seeing. And you were doing
that seek puzzle. So let me ask you: did you see the naked woman
yesterday?"
"Where was
she?"
"She was in
plain sight. Did you see her?"
"Nope. Where was she?"
I made canoeing
gestures. "You remember up on the shore, house set a bit back, The woman who yelled, 'Hello, ladies'?"
"Yeah."
"The woman
who was lying down was naked."
"Really? On her back or her
front?"
"Front."
"I didn't
see her."
"It was
something worth seeing."
***
Ses'na
Airplanes that are as quick as my verse
commit high overhead their great and greater flights,
While these flights of airplanes (so
great, so quick) commit my earthbound verse
To the universe and verse of their own
flights; O you please, commit such airplanes (so quick, so great)
To my great verse concerning the quick flights
of these my many selfsame airplanes; commit,
As only you can commit, these great
airplanes to my verse concerning flights so quick
That quick, O you please, you commit some
flights or great or greater to my universe and verse, O you airplanes!
***
Don't we all
want a cleaner planet? Don't we all want to pitch in? Maybe even send a
message, or raise awareness? Take a look around. Take a look at your computers,
your personal digital assistants, and your smartphones.
I bet you've got it on sleep, ready for awareness at the touch of a button.
But did you know
that if we Canadians changed their habits just a little; if we'd only chose to
shut off our devices rather than let them sleep; we'd save enough energy to
power an entire North Korean prison camp for over four thousand years?
***
Models
Boy meets girl.
He courts her. They get married.
Boy meets girl.
He courts her. She marries someone else.
Boy meets girl.
He hates her. She marries someone else.
Boy meets girl.
He hates her. They get married anyway.
Boy meets girt.
He courts her. They get married anyway.
Boy meets girl.
He courts her. She dies suddenly.
Boy meets girl.
She's his sister. She dies suddenly.
Boy meets girl.
She's his sister. They get married.
Boy meets girl.
She's a gold-digger. They get married.
Boy meets girl.
She's a gold-digger. He kills her.
Boy meets girl. The end.
***
Though I'm not
sure, and I'll never be sure, just
how deep into the desert I was, I drove that prime sports car with just a
thousand clicks on it as fast as possible. There wasn't an obstacle for a
thousand miles—or so I thought—to get in the way of my escape from nothingness
to nothingness. Just me and the car, that was all there was. It was as if I was
catching up to something that I had mistaken for the sun or the curvature of
the earth or the earth itself. Just me and the moon.
***
Now when we were
off in
21 May 2009
But you know I
just couldn't get the contraption off the ground. (Something
wrong re time and memory.) I ended up doing something else.
Reader, you try.
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