Summer 1991 (In Search of Lost Time)

    I'm 19. It's my first co-op work term, in Ottawa. Because I've never lived anywhere else and because it's close to downtown and reasonably cheap, I move into the YWCA. It's a lot like how I imagine living in a dorm would have been if I'd not ended up going to university in Calgary and living at home. My parents, overprotective even when I'm at home, insist I call every night. I tell them about my job (revising pamphlets for Health & Welfare Canada), the city (lots of museums and galleries, especially near Parliament Hill), and assure them that I'm taking my medications, that I have enough money, that I'm having a good time. I don't tell them that I spend most of my free time when I'm not at work or sleeping riding around on random OC Transpo buses deliberately getting lost; that I'm subsisting on noodle packets, fruit, cereal, peanut butter straight from the jar, and coffee because most of my kitchen stuff got nicked and I can't be arsed to cook anyway. I don't tell them that, alone, unchaperoned, and with no friends  here yet, I've never felt so deliriously, incredibly *alive*.

    After about 3 weeks, I've got a pretty good idea of where everything I want to see is, how long it'll take to get there, and that I *really* fucking hate the Y.  It's not the communal kitchen or bathroom facilities that bother me so much as the fact that I've already decided that I'm going to be spending all my time near the Byward Market, and also the punk girl in the adjacent room keeps bringing her boyfriend round for noisy, enthusiastic sex on work nights and I do actually need to sleep for at least 6 hours a night.  So I start looking for a new place, and find what appears to be a walk-in closet in a shared house 5 minutes from the Rideau Street bus mall for $250 a month.  The other girls in the house are tolerable, the landlady only shows up to collect the rent, and I don't really intend to spend much time there anyway, so it suits me fine.  

I start experimenting with becoming someone else.

Goodbye Hobbes

I have a problem letting things go.  Anyone who knows me knows this.  I've kept cars, relationships, and computers out of sentiment long past when they were actually worth the expense / effort / software jury-rigging required to maintain them.

I am trying to let my cat go.  He is 18 years old.  His eyes are clouded with cataracts, his gait is stiff in the mornings, and he's diabetic.  He also has what the vet believes is a tumour on his head, just above his right eye.  It's this last thing that might be the thing that makes me give him up.  Because although he can still jump up onto the bed with me at night, and his appetite is healthy, and he still enjoys lying in sunny patches around the house… 

There is a point - I've seen it in other animals, just before they died or were put down - where the spark goes out in the eyes, and they move as if they were only looking for the perfect spot to lie down and not move again.  And when someone asked me whether it wouldn't be kinder to have him put down… no. Because he's not at that point yet.  But if it's cancer, then that changes things, because I don't want to stand aside deluding myself that he's fine as it consumes bone and tissue and nerves.  I want to say goodbye before he starts to look at me in reproach because I won't let him die.

But really, I want my boy back in my arms for one more day / week / month so that my love will travel with him on the final journey into night.

Last Known Sighting

Highsummer golden light and we are caught
Between shadowed forest and brilliant tidestruck beach
Memory carries hallucinatory clarity
But it's not good enough for proof

Which amounts to a skittering muted recording
(That could be anything)
And a grainy pixellated photo of
You stumbling towards the shuttered trees
And me with a handful of scrambled magnetic wails

Through the Rust and Gasoline (dreamtime rehash)

It's raining, and it could very well have been a solid forty days and nights for all the difference the passage of time makes here.  Time is marked by the starting of fires and the slow rise of greasy black smoke into the slightly paler clouds.  It's marked by the slow change of steel to reddish powder and by the transmutation of bright copper wire to burnt verdigris.  Occasionally, it's marked by the sudden collapse of dysfunctional machinery into a tangle of useless scrap.

There are marks on the ground as well.  Muddy prints of boots tracked through the mud, filling up slowly with iridescent-skinned water.  It smells like oil and burning jet fuel with a faint hint of contraband and cordite. Sometimes it smells like rotting garbage or burning meat.

It's still raining.  You're shivering in the crumpled husk of a Lear jet, waiting for the pilot and not seeming to realize that he's slowly liquefying in the cabin up front.

Somewhere half a mile up, a vulture angel with steel wings circles lazily.

Sideways to the Sun (dreamtime)

Just dreamed about our old place in Saskatoon - S. and I were driving down the street, and as we passed the seniors' residence I noticed that it was covered in ice. It looked like someone had dropped a full payload from a water bomber on it, then flash-frozen it as the water hit. Which would have been weird enough, but it was summertime, so really the ice should have melted / be melting. We parked in our old spot and got out, and it looked like all three of the old buildings were in the process of being renovated - lots of scaffolding and plastic sheeting flapping around in the hot, dusty wind. It was the weekend though, so none of the workers were around.

When we went into the building to have a look around, it looked strange - all the walls facing onto the hallway had been knocked out, and the floors had been raised nearly half a metre, but there were clearly people living in the apartments even though an entire wall was missing and they had no privacy or security as a result. Our old place was even worse - parts of the roof had also been removed and the wind was blowing the plastic sheeting around. I also noticed that there was a gap between the outer brick wall and the inner wall. I pushed aside a loose panel of drywall and climbed into the gap. There was a narrow staircase (more of a ladder, really) going up to the attic. S. followed me up, and as he blocked the light from below, the air shuddered slightly and the dust seemed to glitter in the darkness.

The attic was bigger than you'd expect, looking at it from the outside. Better lit, too - a sort of golden late afternoon light filtering through the vents at either end and cracks in the brickwork and roof. It looked like there were a bunch of homeless kids squatting in the space, except after looking around some more the place looked more like a pub / arcade than a living space, and the kids looked... fey, for lack of a better term. Delicate, angular features, strangely coloured eyes, slightly pointed ears - the whole nine yards. The older guy behind the bar was, rather stereotypically, a troll - huge and craggy and distinctly blue-tinged. I noticed that there was a massive stone hammer on a rack above the bar. Good security. I didn't order anything (I think I meant to ask him some questions about what the deal was with the building), but he just handed me a mug full of something. It turned out to be wine - specifically this ludicrously expensive Chateau d'Yquem that a friend of my dad's brought over one evening for no particular reason. It was ice-cold and tasted like sunlight and apricots and orange blossom honey.

"You can't stay here," he said. "Go back to the world and stop them before we're driven out forever."

I was swaying slightly and turned around to tell S. what they wanted, and then I realized that he couldn't see any of this. I saw through his eyes and the attic was cramped and dusty and stuffy, and there was nothing up there except some construction supplies. He hadn't seen the ice on the other building either. I had no idea what to do next. I tried to give him the cup, but it turned into an old bird's nest in my hand.

Coming Down Like

Thunder calls to thunder, sometimes

This salt-stained and wine-dark storm in stuttering motion
Quickens at the warning of rolling lead-grey shifting 

To swirling absinthe halflight
The elms outside trembling and swaying 

Into one another like lovers
As the hail rips through
We watch from behind guttering candles

Shivering glass

One eye on the stairs to the boiler room
One eye on the sky