Select Hops

A Bridge

2011-04-28T10:04:00.001-05:00

We lower to bridges, whatever the bridge must cross. Before the bridge is built, if we can find the photo we see ourselves half-submerged in a tropical river whose name is also lost in that watery sac known as memory. Our diesel truck has stalled, mid-crossing. We should have waited a little longer for the river to subside, rivers rising or falling before our eyes--where else would it happen--in response to rainfall conditions higher up. As it is, we spent hours there, eating papaya, sleeping, staying out of the sun if we can.

(Once, an Irishman, my predecessor as driver of the school truck, stalled in this same spot. Remembering a drunken afternoon with an Aussie, the main mechanic at the government station of Kupiano, Papua New Guinea, while he (the Aussie) overhauled the engine on one of the his trucks, the Irishman managed to dis-assemble the school truck engine enough to pull the injectors, dry them and the cylinders manually, put it all back together, and drive on to Moresby with a truckload of schoolkids. (Maybe I've got the diesel mechanics wrong here, but it was a remarkable performance by this Irishman, Watson, who normally wouldn't know how to hitch a lid to a teapot.))

I hear they've built a bridge there now. Maybe this one we'd have to rise to.

When you get right down to it

2011-02-12T10:31:00.000-06:00

A track can be downright intimidating if you get close enough. Close enough to feel the heat bounce off the snow. And it does. And I did get close enough. Close enough to feel the after-touch of feathers. Smell the after-scent of willow. The after-here.

I saw a donkey in Kelowna

2011-01-08T10:38:00.002-06:00

I don't think he used his legs much anymore. Didn't need to. His authority came from the bulk of his neck, the heft of his hee-haw, the thick-jawed resonance of his glance. He ruled the paddock from his lean-to in the south-east corner below which a dozen sheep roamed, creating paths in the snow and not straying from those paths (thus acting like sheep, I'm tempted to say, except that their owner--the human owner, not the donkey--said every year their paths are in exactly the same place, meaning, he claimed, that the sheep selected the most logical path given the topography of the paddock, not just because one sheep walked dumbly along and the rest followed).

At feeding time I wondered, was the donkey oatey? No, more like cornstalks was what they all ate, even the sheep (following the donkey).

I spoke to that donkey in Kelowna. If it was after dark when I drove by, returning from kicking some brother-in-law butt on the shuffleboard table up at McCullough Station, the donkey would let me have it--a variety of rusty hollers for which the word "hee haw" doesn't come close. ("He's an excellent watchdonkey," his owner had told me.) By day the donkey couldn't have cared less if I spoke to him or not. Get outta my face, he seemed to say.

Time out

2010-11-02T20:17:00.006-05:00

Listen. Move your legs. Don't take a penalty.

Buy into the system.

Remember. Short shifts. Change on the fly.

Keep it simple.

Boot Heel: what Leaf fans say to Sharks

2010-10-28T09:35:00.001-05:00

I didn't notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in the left boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.

It's one of those moments when Huck Finn stops his fooling around with Tom Sawyer and gets serious: That's his Pap's boot-print, no doubt about it. He's heard Huck has come into some money and has drifted back to town to beat it out of him if necessary.

Last night in class I asked, for the fun of it, what Halloween costume they'd choose, if it had to come from Huck Finn or Catcher in the Rye. "Don't forget about the minor characters," I added, (having already planned my own costume: Ernie, the piano player Holden encounters on his Saturday night in New York). "And be ready to tell us about your choice."

Half the class was missing because of the weather, and four of the remaining nine students picked Jim, the slave Huck travels down the river with.

Noreen didn't pick anybody. "I didn't understand the question," she said.

Between one boot and the next

2010-10-24T16:54:00.007-05:00

"One small step for [a]
snowman

one giant
leaf

pressed beneath [a]
heel."

Blue

2010-10-04T22:48:00.003-05:00

I went nuts shooting floats one day along the waterfront in Vigo.

Couple of gulps, I'd say.

Between one boat and the next.

Blue tip: my eye on it.

Beyond tired

2010-09-18T10:59:00.007-05:00

Gull. Darned
bird eyes
my lips
as they
wrap
around the
sandwich so
I rip off
a crust
toss it
down
and within
the time
it takes
to say
I quit
the bread
disappears
in two
convulsive
gulps
the closing
bill a career
ending
with a sharp
black tip

Depends on the horse

2010-09-16T20:39:00.002-05:00

No horse is a holer. No horse.
They notice. Even at speed, see.
(Sure, that many holes
how could one horse
(rather two, they'll bite
each other, run around,
graze ten miles a day,
wait for Marilyn, is she
English today or cowboy, how much
does her family want her to do?))

Pick out the hoofs first.
Spook, never know (the guy
kicked in the head, he was bending
down, that's all) oh yeah
that's how it happens said the horse
woman today.

By definition I'm a holer

2010-08-29T16:15:00.007-05:00

Yes, a person who makes or bores a hole is a holer, or so says the OED. There's truth in it, believe me, for every step I take eventually leads to a hole and here I am again. The hole, like most holes of note, seemed small at first, but quickly deepened. It's many-layered. That's just the way it happened to go down.

Manhole flower do flow

2010-08-27T12:55:00.000-05:00

I know where it is, want to go down, hear light & power do pow. The hands that pick at the edge of the hole will pull the iron aside. Climbing I'm, in that order.

I'll know what works when it's not distinct from sensinging. None of this haven't been looking, been too busy writing. Above ground, that would be.

I wear my light & power hat, cleated, created, look up for what I need. I was the first one here.

Look here

2010-08-22T10:40:00.003-05:00

When you get right down to it, a face tells all. Pollen clinging or not, it's a representation of human countenance. Something to be admired or despised to some degree, or so says the OED. Sometimes you have to get down on your knees to get a good sense of things. That's where I'm at, but not for long. Something will stem from this. It always does. Face it. I'm no little pansy.

pool loop

2010-08-16T18:49:00.000-05:00

Picking the water in front of me and pushing it behind proved this morning to be a system that works. Left me gasping for breath at the deep end of Wascana pool, though--clinging there, a peach to a tree, sack of breath attached by hands and feet to to the edge.

That shadow had been mine, ripping wave-shaped over the bottom.

I'm upgrading to the tandoori salmon for lunch at the Fireside Bistro, I remember thinking.

Nothing but back and forth after that.

Stewing

2010-08-12T17:01:00.005-05:00

I just picked a handful of Tiny Tims for supper. There's an army of them ripening in a pot on the front step, some red to the point of splitting. The plant is as tall as me, its branches sagging wherever they lack support. That's most places these days.

The trees all around stood still as I picked. Not a whisper. I don't really trust those trees. Not anymore. Some scientists believe trees communicate with each other. I can just imagine what the willows are saying, especially after what happened to the birch. I suppose tomatoes communicate, too. They sure raised a stink as I picked them off.

Stone way

2010-04-08T11:22:00.001-05:00

Trouble in the hedgerows. They're disappearing as people give up on them (I've noticed many shortcuts, for example, such as a couple of bands of barbed wire introduced among the otherwise sparce rows between paddocks) or just knock them down. It's a serious enough issue to generate an island-wide rehabilitation project, including appeals to the diminishing band of people who know to grow and maintain a proper hedgerow.

Or we can walk by stone fences. Near Hawthornden, south of Edinburgh, the walk from the house to the nearest pub, bus stop, trailhead or cottage for sale passes between a stone fence and the roadway. It's narrow enough already, but the fence is so old, and the plant life so wedded to it that the fence has been persuaded to heave and give and generally sag--a strong, controlled kind of sag--toward the road. If you're approaching one of the saggy bits just when the next Skoda comes along from behind (no sidewalk on the other side) you'll want to stop or at least turn sideways, that or come between the Skoda and the road.

Under where?

2010-03-17T19:06:00.006-05:00

Under there. That's where I keep the stone. Where the stone keeps.

Needless to say, the stone will never come between me and a passing ship. It's not that kind of stone.

And if a dream brings a salty wind ashore, or a salty wind brings a dream, the stone is too far inland.

Don't count on the stone to notice.

Don't count on the stone to care.

Stones don't.

Underwear

2009-12-23T16:27:00.001-06:00

As in (but it's no sin) what I put on first on a day like this, the kind of day that makes me change the subject.

To Judith Parker (Ottawa), Andrea Przygonski (Adelaide) and me, up above Spray river near Banff (in our overwear). I'm holding the backpack I used before the one I seem to have lost in the last 24 hours. Picture taken by Gwen Davies.
I know there's not much I want to say about underwear on the internet, but how we do layer ourselves for weather as snowy and cold as today's.
I'm inside.

Socks

2009-12-20T14:35:00.005-06:00

There's one pair for inside snow boots, one pair to replace that pair when they've gone the distance, one pair to throw in the corner because they were the wrong pair to begin with, and the car pair, which have especially loose elastic. And it never hurts to have a spare. They're all on top of the dresser for now. When I pack I'll know at least I got the socks right. Leave the duds and the oddballs in the drawer. That will be my New Year's resolution.

Settings

2009-12-02T15:56:00.000-06:00

There's one for snow, one for distance, one for corners and the car coming back. The bus--Route 3, Hillsdale--says (on the schedule in the bus stop behind me) it will be here in five minutes but I'm damn near frozen in time already. People are waiting for me downtown.

There's a setting for hands in my pocket and jacket zipped up tight and a Maple Leafs cap (no ear flaps). And one for sidewalks, which this time of year begin to store up their heaves for next spring. East is a setting; just off to the right is one.

Colour is a default setting but I don't blame it for that.

Freeze-up

2009-11-24T13:35:00.009-06:00

So there we were out in the bush. As usual. I was taking photographs of everything. Trying to fit everything in. The wasp nests. The frost. H was watching mayfly nymphs being swept from under the ice and into the culvert. It's a long way to May, I heard him say. At least I think that's what he said. Just at that moment the creek moaned. The lake moaned. It went on and on and on. Everything stood still. Black spruce. Willow. Alder. Heads bowed. Everything flushed.

He sees his breath, says his breath

2009-11-18T12:22:00.002-06:00

I reached (for) McNiven. I found frost and a streetscape of leaves and parked cars, including my own, which I had parked first in front of the piano teacher's house, then further along, on the north side, in the sun. None of that needed finding, nor did the geese, the university students walking through, the blue sky pale. But I looked anyway, past the care home where McNiven school used to be; past the empty field to the northeast end of it, looking for signs of goalposts; past the fronts of houses to the rears.

The hydrant at Darke and McNiven
says 1958.

Itching to get on with things

2009-11-12T11:27:00.002-06:00

It's hard to trust a morning this bright. Even the birds are glancing around, no doubt wondering what's up. And something is up. You can tell by the way the semis on the main drag are gearing down. As if the brightness is slippery.

I've seen such days come and go over the years. If you stare into the brightness long enough, you'll see someone coming down the street. Hood up. Small white dog on the end of a leash. It sniffs a rock, raises a leg. Everything golden. And it's then you realize it's time. Time to bury your head in your work.

Should we

2009-11-05T10:24:00.000-06:00

There was much debate before the City closed 25th avenue at Bell street. "All the traffic will come screaming down Bell," said people to the south. "Much safer for our children," said people to the north. "As far as we're concerned," said the City after a while, "25th street at Bell is now closed. It no longer exists."

Now people cut through--students heading to/from U of R, dog-walkers, shoppers heading to/from the Safeway a block west, kids with spray paint cans alive in the easements that lead to this space. I've harvested rhubarb that grows outside the fences in three or four locations here. All kinds of plants grow beyond all kinds of fences.

Every decade or so, I'm guessing, someone builds a new stretch of fence along the former-25th. "I suppose it's time," they say. "Should we keep the sign?"

Leaves take a seat

2009-10-25T15:56:00.008-05:00

The show can begin. A matinée. I play the lead. I can play anyone. Just ask a poem. And I do.

ACT I

SCENE 1

Enter I. Carrying a camera. Stops to look down at a dead junco on the deck beneath the kitchen window. Black and white, head covered in leaves, its feet curled around the inevitable.

I: Take its picture.

I: Forget it.

[Exeunt.]

Yesterday ends up today

2009-10-24T10:03:00.006-05:00

I had to get dressed to answer the door. It was just the neighbour kid ringing doorbells as her mother led her down the hall. A day so ordinary, full of this and that, ends up taking up a good half page of someone's notebook, usually my own. Bought a thera-band, tied my left leg to a table and pulled toward the wall. Went to see my daughter's play and found myself in the spotlight next to her during one of her entries when she, playing Alice, chats with an audience member. ("I'll remember that for a long time," she told me later. I said I would too.) Watched the beginning of the one film Charles Laughton directed, which begins with pastoral New England autumn images (in black and white) zooming slowly to a dead body found inside a shed. Found a stump in the easement behind Monroe. That's where to find things, I guess: behind, inside, at the edge of, pulling someone's leg (usually my own).

Yesterday my friends bought a house

2009-10-22T08:58:00.001-05:00

It ended up in my dreams. I was sitting on the floor beneath the window, lost in the icing of a Nanaimo bar from the Tall Grass Prairie Bakery, when the knock came. We all looked at each other. No one moved. The door swung open on its own accord. There stood a letter carrier basked in light, holding a large envelope. Is there a Brenda Schmidt here, he asked. I stopped chewing. We all looked at each other again. Of course there is, he said, answering the silence. She makes everything about her.

Later I walked the easement, hoping my knee wouldn't act up

2009-10-05T11:26:00.003-05:00

The two high school boys who pulled their faded red Datsun in behind me on Newlands this morning weren't in any hurry to get to school. They talked non-stop, laughing frequently as they opened the trunk, fiddled with their backpacks, sipped their Tim Hortons beverage. They took turns waiting for each other. I'd engaged in similar talk/laugh display myself, back when I was a teen-aged boy and my best buddies and I shared a language only we could love or even understand.

That much I observed through my rear-view window. I rolled the window down a crack, hoping to hear some specifics. I heard a dog bark, a garbage truck drive by. The morning itself sounded drizzly, raw.

I've been here before, I thought. A morning like this, a boy like this. A block and a half from where I used to live.

After the sun salutations

2009-09-30T09:23:00.002-05:00

Downward-facing dog. Disobedient as hell. Some poses are like that. Some people only bend a certain way. I suppose being mindful of one's breath does not include watching the cat ignore the forward plank, the upward-facing dog. She did crank her head around when I stood up after that darn downward-facing dog. She had that look on her face. That why on earth are you disturbing my sleep with that nonsense look, the same look she gives when I read my work aloud. But maybe she was just warming up, too. Doing some daybreak yoga. As I did my last half lord of the fishes, she shifted her weight into her eyes and held my gaze for five deep breaths. The condescending pose. Perfectly executed.

This morning

2009-09-29T18:21:00.002-05:00

The traveller wakes up in Hillsdale, dreams howling. He and his three sisters start out in four cars, he thinks it’s crazy. In his car is the old family dog, too weak now for any of the out-of-control doggy stuff she used to do. He’s just driven through town, stopping briefly for a train. He scrambled for the next open page of his notebook to write down the locomotive number. His notebook is jammed with pages from a tabloid Jeanette Lynes had given him earlier.

The dreams blow through Hillsdale from the south, carrying traffic noise, cars driving off, a condiment supply truck at the back door of some hotel. And someone’s idea of an empty paper cup a-tumble in the parking lot. The traveller feels morning in his face. He re-composes his list of things to do, the one he was working on while lying in bed, before the storm of dreams. Read Barbara Guest and that photography book. Transcribe the second half of his interview with Mr. Gentles. Transcribe the Parker street piece from yesterday. And make a note of what he'll see later on a van and trailer: Prairie Boy Windows.

This wind

2009-09-27T16:06:00.001-05:00

Can't think when it's this windy. It's the wind of sleep. That's all I want to do. Almost a tent-ripping wind. Like the wind that whipped that night. Twenty years ago now. Maybe more. Harvest underway. Waves of grain dust. I woke up in a gust, nose to nylon, rolled over, let the tent rub away.

These pages

2009-09-07T10:42:00.003-05:00

Flailing about at the desk of my mountainside studio--a smash of binders, piles of paper, books and other debris--I uncovered a "Leighton Studio, Michael Evamy [the architect]" guest book, first entry Mark Jarman, July '98. All the way up to Christine Wiesenthal, July 20-Aug.2, 2009.

I must say hello to Christine, an old classmate from U of A, early 90s or so. Now she runs the creative writing part of the English department up there. "So many friends and admired authors in these pages," she writes. Indeed. Next week Robert Kroetsch shows up. I was thinking last night that I'd like to introduce him to, say, the printmaker from Adelaide or the translator from Indiana as my elder but have to check about appropriate use of that term. Anyway, he's long been one of the giants for my own writing practice, all the way back to Nelson, in '82-'83, when I read a Kroetsch poem in Grain and, encouraged by Fred Wah, dropped Kroetsch a line, asking about the poem. He replied in a most cool way. Later I included an essay on Kroetsch in my MA thesis and in my (unfinished) PhD dissertation, around the time I shared a German class with Christine.

Packing for a trip back in time

2009-09-04T16:47:00.001-05:00

Must remember the letter. The printout from Google Earth. A shovel. GPS. Comfortable jeans. Tweezers. Empty containers with tight-fitting lids. A sketchbook. Camera. Batteries. Binoculars, of course. A chair with sturdy legs. Band-Aids. And water. We'll need plenty of water.

For Evamy, a Leighton Studio

2009-09-02T17:28:00.005-05:00

The studio sits in a small clearing of spruce and pine forest and faces a gently sloping ridge a few metres to the south. Not having much look (I meant luck) at my keyboard, I went outside and climbed the ridge to a larger clearing at the top. Someone had fiddled with the rocks, laying them out into letters and other media events, which I didn't bother to read. They meant about much as I did. Back at the keyboard, I put a bride and a mountain together, a highway and a suburban park. My teacup was empty but my window full.

Sweet

2009-08-24T18:36:00.001-05:00

So yesterday we sat on the rocks and picked blueberries like we do every year. Enough for orange blueberry muffins, pancakes next weekend and a few cups to freeze for later. We talked all the while. About the usual. Birds, bees, bugs. All hands. In and out of ice cream pails. And then I spilled. Ideas, plans. On and on, filling my mouth as I went. The words came out tart and wild. No bear in its right mind would go anywhere near that kind of talk.

Tar

2009-07-02T17:59:00.004-05:00

I heard a scuffling out my window this morning before 7. I looked out to see a pony-tailed man in an Adidas shirt lengthening an aluminum ladder he'd pulled from the rack of a truck. When he leaned the ladder up against the building and began to climb, like some bar graph heading for its max, he would have passed two feet from my window, had I not given him a stout "who goes there". I knew the roof had been re-tarred last year, and told him so. "Number 24, right?" he hollered down to his mates. Yeah, well number 24 is next door, and I told him that too. Down he went. Much reverse scuffling with the ladder. By the time I'd folded my Toronto Maple Leaf PJs and gone for an orange, ponytail was about to climb again, one building over.

PS: The tar looked like pudding, the kind you can believe.

Hypertension

2009-06-23T19:13:00.003-05:00

The town is draped in rain. It has been for days. Just now, as I bent over, trying to touch my toes, I watched a raindrop running down the window. It looked like mercury rising in a sphygmomanometer as the cuff is inflated. Overinflated in this case. As one would expect, my thoughts turned to salt. The latest studies. Sodium warnings. The Globe is full of it these days. Still upside-down, another drop catches my eye. I think of my stethoscope. Wonder where I put it. It's been years. I'd like to place it over the artery of a day and release the pressure. I want to hear the Korotkoff sounds. The auscultatory gap. I want an accurate reading.

Linen drapes in this old hotel room

2009-06-14T09:21:00.004-05:00

I moved in on Thursday and began to sink deeper into the city immediately. Couldn't help it, except by walking myself silly. Those are the pantlegs I wore last night along Howe to catch Vertigo at the Pacific Cinemateque. This is the pile of books I left behind, cluster of empty Stellas minus the one I smuggled into the reading, too cheap to pay eight bucks a pop. One more cache of coins, enough to get me to the airport three hours from now, adds up to $2.50. I've been working on puzzles, I guess, because I can see the empty squares next to the garbage can by the bathroom. Sticking out the bottom of the armoire: a tuft of shirt I wore yesterday morning and afternoon taking K. down to Granville Island, chatting up Grover Covington, the CFL Hall-of Famer, whose bus #19 took us there. This city has taken me, all right.

A squirrel in the attic is nothing new

2009-06-11T20:04:00.003-05:00

So, on the weerkend in the cabin, as the squirrel did laps above us, we just carried on eating Jiffy Pop. Our greasy fingers had no idea how cold they'd be by 2 a.m. How bad they'd ache. Had no idea they'd be quivering beneath seven blankets, dying to dial the park's emergency number. No idea they'd still be clutching the covers at sunrise. As the squirrel does a couple early morning warm-up laps, a couple sun salutations. How they'd clap at 8 a.m when the maintenance man hits the pipes and the natural gas goes up in flames. How they'd whip the curtains open after. Find the squirrel staring in.

A knee, anatomy

2009-05-29T22:33:00.002-05:00

This morning I took a trip around the edge of Wascana Lake, took a copy of The Hockey Sweater to a couple of visiting Leaf fans, took in some garage sales with my youngest daughter (who found three chairs for ten dollars, a popcorn maker, a pot).

All if this inflamed my left anterior cruciate ligament, which I've treated with sunset, Sambuca, Journey to Portugal, Blue Jays baseball, Gilda, and the last two or three swallows of today's wind.

I don't know what's gotten into my body these days, other than the days themselves, about 21,000 of them. I could list everything else about today and still end up with one thing: an ache in my left knee, which is the last thing this day will ever see.

On the way to my vanity

2009-05-27T18:25:00.008-05:00

This morning the corner of the bathroom cabinet door spiked me in the forehead. I staggered a bit, thinking what a crappy way to die. Of all the doors to leave open. And only myself to blame. So I sat down on the edge of the tub to collect myself. Mostly I didn't want to topple onto the toilet. A head-on with The Thomas Crapper would be just my luck. I've heard enough stories about people meeting their maker that way. No way I want a last name like mine stuck to a story like that.

The town and the city

2009-05-26T15:21:00.003-05:00

The town, as one of its last acts, had yielded a loose spike I found on a walk back to town along the rail line that runs near the dam. In the city, as I drove through the Golden Mile parking lot, one of those huge pick-ups backed up into my path, the driver not looking my way at all. When he did, I spread my arms to say "Come on, take a look." He rolled his window down and leaned toward me: "Want me to come down there and tune you up? Fuckin old prick."

24 hours later, I'm still scrambing to regain the depth of things, what with all the errands and unpacking, and the idiots out there.

In lieu of a pocket-sized spike belt

2009-05-25T10:39:00.003-05:00

It's common courtesy to slow down when you meet people walking along a dirt road. Wouldn't want to stone them. And most people around here do slow down. They raise a friendly index finger and nod as they drive by. The dust is minimal. But there's always the odd wise guy. The type that steps on it. Drives down the middle. The type that makes you head for the ditch. Or where the ditch should be. Where the dogs poop. And sure enough, you almost step in it. And it takes everything not to raise a finger of your own. But you know better. You know eyes are waiting in the rear view. Waiting for just that. Just wait. Next time those eyes will get the full rear view.

Dinner

2009-05-23T00:17:00.002-05:00

We were just talking about that very thing, how if you were ever struck in the face by a beaver's tail the way the surface of some meandering river is--home to three generations of innocent swimmers, gentle nourisher of nine-hole courses--your eyes would widen; until now you hadn't realized the terror of the world. Yes, and my neighbour's daughter had left a stack of fenceposts out back of his place a while ago. "Did you get the fenceposts, dad?" she asked later. "What fenceposts?" he said. Turns out the beavers had hauled off every one. Worse, the timber turned up a week later in a fancy new dam all the way over on the east side of town. With a crude sign chewed into a length of poplar: Timber Courtesy the Bamfords.

But that's old news. It's been common in these parts to steal a couple of chickens, then invite the people you stole them from over for chicken dinner.

Two dams, bad

2009-05-21T17:26:00.005-05:00

What's with the beavers this year? Lodges like high-rises. A million mouthfuls of mud per story. Maybe more. It's hard to say what they can pack in. Regardless, they must know something. I know the guy who unclogs the culverts along the West Arm Road. The beavers keep him busy. You couldn't pay me to step into his chest waders. Heck, some of those beavers weigh more than I do. I'd hate to make one mad. Even the slap of a tail knocks the wind right out of me. Needless to say, every time we drive down that road, I picture the guy. I'll picture him again tomorrow. And again. Dam. Dam. Water up to his armpits. What if his foot gets caught? What if his waders fill up? What then?

Feet

2009-05-20T09:28:00.002-05:00

How do you cope with signs of advancing age? This morning I woke up with sore feet--and me with a big trip around the golfcourse planned before they turned the sprinklers on! I needn't have worried, even about my knees, because my feet covered the 1st hole in 262 steps, instead of the usual 267. I was over par on the dogleg-right 2nd hole, however, but that was because I detoured into the willow-ravaged rough looking for golfballs (finding a Beaver XKE in mint condition). In the end I was 31 steps under par for the 9 holes. Good job, faithful feet. A double dosage of asparagus lotion shall be your reward.

Optical zoom

2009-05-18T14:03:00.003-05:00

It's an acquired haste, they say, that gets one into trouble. That gets things rolling. In the ditch along the Mystic Lake Road, a stump, or stumps, depending on how one views willow that's been sawed off, waits in a slump of dead grass. Waits for someone like me. So there I am. At my age. I take a stump at speed in the medial aspect of the right knee. Another in the lateral side of the right lower leg. And I fall, twisting, holding my left arm high. Fall onto my left shoulder. Breathless. Grass in my eye. And H is beside me. Are you alright? The camera, I finally gasp. Did I break the camera?

This river you can walk on two sides

2009-05-16T22:52:00.003-05:00

This morning I tromped through the dew around the perimeter of Eastend's Streambank golf course (two-thirds of which follows the contours of the Frenchman river). Gave myself a lesson in perception: I think I'll find a golfball now, I said, and right away found two, a TC Tour 2 and a Dunlop. Got my socks wet, though. Made the sound of -lf, -lf, -lf walking back home.

Postscript (next morning):
The Dunlop rolled from its temporary home on a shelf overlooking the kitchen sink over the edge, straight into an empty cup!

Just ducky

2009-03-31T11:31:00.002-05:00

It's the last day before April. Water everywhere. The snowbanks are sinking quickly like the playoff hopes of the Oilers. Oh well. Yesterday, as I tried to find a puddle-free place to walk, I declared it was time, high time in fact, that I buy myself a pair of ducky boots. Ducky boots! came the reply. Not this again. Before long, my foot finds another puddle. My sock soaks it up. I'm all growls. I hate getting my feet wet. The way a wet foot looks when you get home and finally pull your sock off. No way to warm up after that.

That girl

2009-03-13T11:50:00.003-05:00

Recently one of my sisters--how delightful to have sisters--asked for photographs of our mother with us and our kids over the years. While digging through my box of pics I found one of myself in my heavily bearded phase, also known as my Letter Carrier phase, Calgary, mid-70s. My walk included a swank crescent along the Elbow River. You had to be rich (or, in the case of one of my Education profs, exceptionally beautiful) to live there.

I loved the job. It paid well, and once I got to know the route I could have it all sorted and delivered and be home by 2 or 2:30. Let the summer recreation begin.

I got to know a little girl named April Waters, age 5 or so. One day when I rounded the corner to her street I could see her on the sidewalk in the distance, dancing or gesturing wildly or something. This continued for the several minutes it took me to walk up to every mail box, walk back to the sidewalk. Eventually I realized that what April was doing was standing under a spruce tree, throwing pebbles up into the tree every few seconds. "A magpie is trying to eat the robin's eggs," she said. "I'm keeping him away."

Two tails

2009-02-25T13:34:00.003-06:00

Tonight might be a good night to go out, set up the spotting scope, and look for Comet Lulin. I wonder which of its two tails I'd wag my finger at. I can already see the yellow dust tail on the left, hanging there like a coyote's in a snow-covered stubble field as it waits for a vole to move beneath its paws. And I can already see my breath surrounding the scope as I look at the glowing blue ion tail on the right, a tail that reminds me of another breath. The breath of a little girl. A little girl hiding inside a fort, waiting to pelt the enemy with snowballs. My aim was good. Even then. Even then I was always right. Always pointing away from the sun.

Is it getting any juice?

2009-02-02T08:57:00.004-06:00

That new I-shaped plug on the end of my block heater cord sure hurts--his 'n hurts--where it dangles in the cold. I need a remedy, a meddler in this pressure, Old English fur, fur a reason. I need a big side and a little side.

A Bobcat, hired to clear snow, bent the powerpost for suites 24, 25, and 26. Three days later the landlord, who in summer drives from the back door of the building to the dumpster in his riding mower, showed me new bolts in the post. I've edited this post, he said. Go upstairs and turn on.

New plug-head (yellow), old cold. I ape my body's winter.

Today, between two naturalists

2009-01-02T22:23:00.001-06:00

-Look. Otter tracks.

-What the hell?

-You got me.

-That makes no sense.

-None.

-The thing must have been stoned.

-Must have.

-Why in hell would it do that?

-No idea.

-Must have hurt.

-Yep.

-Seriously. It must have been stoned.

-Look there.

-No way.

-Fraid so.

-How did it manage that?

-No idea.

-Stoned I tell you.

-Had to be.

How the hell do you get there?

2009-01-02T10:16:00.004-06:00

temperature falling street

bent sidewalk street

cut-through street

get married in the park street

run over a tree street

who's that trumpet after midnight street

look out Mr. W's looking out street

Jack and Gladys's kid street

shovel the driveway street

pull Dad's army jacket out of the garbage street

'62 Olds street

start with potatoes then grow grass street

fight for the first push on the new mower street

baby pines on Arbour Day street

one block east of two new schools street

The wind chill is really nothing

2008-11-23T11:56:00.000-06:00

A magpie just flew by. Going by its tail, I'd say there's a crosswind. It was definitely experiencing turbulence. It's that kind of day. Environment Canada sums it up quite nicely: "Day: Periods of light snow with the risk of freezing drizzle. Amount 2 to 4 cm. Wind northwest 30 km/h. High minus 4 with temperature falling to minus 9 this afternoon." Actually that forecast sounds much like my year so far. Only the temperature has dipped much lower. Oh well. I have a down-filled parka, serious mitts, wool socks and big warm boots. Hell, I can take it. No problem.

Damn those speedbumps between lanes in the mountains

2008-11-14T09:02:00.008-06:00

I like to cut corners when I drive, especially in the mountains on that curvy stretch east of Golden or down in the Okanagan valley south of Sicamous.

In the city, driving to work, trying to use my brakes as little as possible, I like to cruise at a constant speed, 35-40 kph, all the way from eastbound on University Drive to my parking spot south of Luther, through three left turns and one right. Fine. But this morning brought a brief lining of snow, just enough to turn already timid drivers into papercups on wheels, braking 40 feet in front of where they don't need to brake at all, driving 20, peeping with their signal lights pathetically. That means I have to brake, drive 20, stay wide on my turns (but peep only if necessary). If I can roar past, as my 35-40 seems to be to their 20, I'll throw a glare, maybe broadcast my personalized horn-tone (the opening brass chorale to "All You Need is Love").

Back in my office, before I do anything else, I have to look north out my window at the grey sky and geese.

Had

2008-11-12T21:48:00.000-06:00

Squirrels are a bit too bold for my liking. However, I do admire their work ethic. But not so much of late. About a month ago I watched the squirrel take its usual shortcut over the shed and down the tree to the bird feeder. But it didn't stop there. Down to the ground it jumped and two leaps later it was under the barbecue cover. That's when I became alarmed. From where I was standing it looked as if the squirrel was in there beating its head against the cover at high speed. Why not against a tree, I thought. It's that thought that alarmed me. But whatever. Then out the squirrel popped, retracing its path up the tree, over the shed and out of sight. This went on for quite some time before I told H about the poor squirrel's disorder. I'm guessing too much heavy metal in its diet, I said. Or maybe arsenic poisoning, though I don't know if the squirrel is showing other symptoms and I'm not sure if beating one's head against a barbecue cover counts as a neurological disorder. So H stood there with me the other day and, sure enough, the squirrel disappeared under the cover yet again. Then came the repeated thumping. So sad, I said. After the squirrel left H shook his head. Checked under the cover. Who knew it had such a soft lining? Yes. Had.

The night conceals a draft

2008-11-11T20:48:00.004-06:00

My daughter will phone from her aunt's car on highway 11 next Sunday night, returning from Saskatoon. I'm just guessing, trying not to say too much in advance of the truth. That's a tactic I learned this afternoon while reading about 83 pages I must have autosaved every two or three minutes in July of this year.

If I know what's there without reading, why read? If there's no cut in shortcut, why take it? What I saw today should be pressed to the ground and over-driven, boldly, italically. It should be swung round Chaplin Lake to Ernfold and Morse, never read but in a town called Raven.

Home again, home again

2008-11-01T17:12:00.000-05:00

I got home on Tuesday night. Nothing is the same. Things seem to be building. I swear each day is many stories high, each with a ledge on which to stand and off which one could easily jiggity jig.

Today is much the same, only several stories higher. I climbed out of bed early, my feet restless. Ready to go, but going nowhere. Wooden parts, tangled strings, no central rod to make things easy. Just a poorly manipulated marionette in bad pajamas, casting an unrecognizable shadow on the wall. I thought of Plato as I curled up with the cat in the sun room. A given. Nodded off as I waited for the deadbeat sun. Each time I drifted off, I woke with a jolt. That feeling of falling. As if I'd let go. As if I'd cave. Then I remembered. There are strings attached.

With those strings in mind, and all those stories, I climbed in the car and went uptown. Had coffee and a tea biscuit with raspberry jam. Yes, jam. As I ate, I was conscious of my hand's path to my mouth. Back and forth it went, smooth and effortless. Hats off to the puppeteer, I thought as I took the last bite. Only one sticky finger. Overall, I'd say the performance was fairly convincing.

Smoke lifting straight up

2008-10-27T08:31:00.002-05:00

Having discovered that facing down relieves sinus pressure, I've rigged up a harness (out of bungie cords and slats from a futon frame I found in the alley) that suspends me from the ledge over my balcony. My neighbours are used to my contraptions--one of which did, after all, defeat the pigeons this season--and so far no one has spoken up at the sight me attached by my shoulder blades, tailbone and mid-calfs to this device.

This morning offers that cold purple hue low in the west, through which the 7:42 WestJet descends. I sneeze when I wobble, jerk when I cough. Otherwise, not much moves but the Loraas Disposal truck, picking up dumpsters while traffic is quiet. Somebody shows up for work at the TraveLodge.

By the time I work through this box of Kleenex, it will be time to pulley free. For now, I'm one thick layer of frost, I'll tell you.

Cast

2008-10-14T17:07:00.001-05:00

This afternoon I shoved my ballot in the box. And what an ugly box it is. Perhaps that's why I take such care with how I dress on election day. It's certainly not a day to wear black, not that I wear much black anymore. It no longer works. Looks like hell against my aging skin. No, today called for something much softer. Today I chose my favourite jeans and my favourite jean jacket with my favourite sweater underneath. Around my neck was my favourite scarf and on my feet my favourite shoes. As I stood behind the line, waiting to make my X, I felt pretty good about the way things look. I still do.

Pure speed

2008-10-11T12:37:00.002-05:00

I try to keep a light crust between the sidewalk and the bottom of my running shoes. Doesn't always work. Running through the underpass I heard travel mugs drag at my feet. Next bridge I came to a train standing still, no word from the locomotive. After a minute and half of pure hell, I pulled ahead of the train for good. Rusoda, cherry, black ash--a tree garden fell away as I sped past, the train labouring just to keep me in sight.

I caught the train again on the way back. Even facing the other direction, it was no match for my smouldering shoes, which cast a wake of black rubber necklace. I got all the way here; the train has barely budged.

Light and flaky

2008-10-10T16:47:00.001-05:00

It snowed today. Melted as soon as it hit. Like the cinnamon-apple scone I just ate. It hit my tongue and it was done. H made the scones yesterday. I don't understand how such strong hands can make something so delicate. It makes no sense. I keep eating them. Keep asking for them. Just trying to figure it out, I say. And it's true. Each bite melts in my mouth. And as it melts, I take comfort in that buttery cliché.

I don't need to worry

2008-10-09T17:50:00.006-05:00

So I opened the window, sensed a flyway. Twitter of leaves where the gull flies. Apples with larger mouths than mine.

I'm one giant bottle of fine, fresh air like this. I'm a breeze past your shoulder.

That view in the window is me switching leaves, falling at the rate of thirty per unit of sidewalk.

Spellbound

2008-10-08T17:27:00.014-05:00

I spent the entire day inside, watching it rain. Just watching. Watch is just one vowel away from witch, I said to the cat at one point. But then I said the words aloud again and again - watch witch watch witch watch witch - and realized, shortly after the cat turned her ears back and started giving me that you're-off-your-rocker look, just how wrong I was. Still, I kept watching. Grey rain. Grey sky. Yellow leaves falling. Letting go. Being released. Given the means to descend. And so brightly.

Beaver bus lines

2008-09-30T11:45:00.005-05:00

Where the rigs park every weekend--far corner of the hotel parking lot (parkin glot, as I sometimes spell it), the corner closest to me--sits bright and empty in its yellow lines. One rig takes up eleven or twelve spaces. Most of the time the bus or semi is left to idle, as if were the driver to shut it down, six months of deep freeze would descend, or the vehicle's vital fluids would seize.

I've taken to interviewing the drivers, finding out what made them do it--agree to park a bus, and open one door, and walk around, pulling at compartments, smoking.

(Note re what not to wear when interviewing bus drivers: hoodies with the hood up, when they're wearing blazers and ties.)

There comes a time

2008-09-28T12:32:00.001-05:00

The other day, a rainy day much like this one, only rainy elsewhere, I was on the phone with D. We're so much alike. Always veering off, trying new things. Somehow the conversation jumped from drums to construction. I told him I'd like to be a track hoe operator. I've been watching one work just outside of town, digging up muck. I love the way it moves. The way it whips around so smoothly. Not sure if I could control the bucket, I said. Looks a bit tricky. But I love heavy equipment. Scrapers, loaders, graders, crawler tractors, excavators. Bring it on. So now, as it rains, I'm looking over the heavy equipment operator course offered by SIAST. It's mighty tempting. Especially for someone who wants to build a new road. Leave a mark. Run a big machine.

Oh yes and windy

2008-09-27T11:45:00.004-05:00

"We've got the best air in bluegrass music," Del McCreary on the radio almost said just now. He meant that the near trees whip against the walls of the College I work in. Further out, south edge of the parking lot, others don't know whether to backflip or bow. All that comes between Wascana Lake and the tall poplars across the road is shove after shove from a wind that's pumped for winter.

Once in a while, a visitor to this city comments on the weather. "Cold," usually about does it. Before the decades-long dome of pesticide that floated over the south end, it was always, "Mosquitos are bad." On a personal level, I'm tired of explaining why I don't mind the cold on my bare legs in early April or October. How many ways can I say It's Regina, it's October. What kind of breeze did you expect?

Such wind is my new physician. I'll turn to it for news.

Bad landing

2008-09-22T17:28:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you fall hard. As if you were cruelly pushed from behind. Getting back up takes time. Like the time we were playing tennis a few years back. H hit a crosscourt return. Quick-footed on court, I thought I could run it down. I almost did. But, on the dead run, I fell. Fell fist first onto my racket hand. Racket in hand. Fist first onto hardcourt. Bones broke. I remember letting out a quick scream as the rest of my body landed. And then one more. I remember H at my side. The look on his face. I told him not to touch me. I wasn't sure what was wrong. And then I began to laugh. I couldn't stop. Shock turned me into a twisted, giggling heap. Eventually I got up, still giggling. Said I'd be ok. Refused to go to emergency. I spent a sleepless night wondering why I fell. What I did wrong. Some time the next morning I gave in to reality. Saw a doc, then walked home, my bright white cast still drying. I'd refused the prescription the doc offered. No need, I said. Damn thing's broken. It's supposed to hurt.

Then Lucy and I went shopping

2008-09-20T16:41:00.002-05:00

Running east along the north side of the creek west of Albert Street, I wondered why no one had a boat on the water. It's the damn climate, that's why. But on a day like today, with the colours and air chippy and fresh as a blown tin can, why not get out there, watch the leaf-play, follow one breath with another.

I stayed on the north side, packed gravel, rather than cross the bridge to a paved path at about Cameron Street. Past several possible exits to the north, I kept going right to the Albert Street bridge. There the path veered left behind some houses. I followed to a dead end, hard up against the bridge on one side, fence ahead and on the left, everything overgrown. After a moment of debate, I climbed a light standard and hoisted myself over the bridge railing onto the west sidewalk of Albert Street, looking as if I'd just climbed out of bed, I think.

I did see a couple of kayaks on the lake, a rushed sky, my own body running.

Attention

2008-09-18T23:54:00.004-05:00

I stopped typing the instant I heard the rumble. It was strong. I was scared. It sounded like a blast, but it was already well past 9 p.m. and they never blast that late and the rumbling went on too long. Then I thought, no, please not an accident. But the sound was a bit south of the mining complex. I was confused. Then another rumble. I recognized it then. Thunder. A thunderstorm in mid September. It turned out to be one of the worst storms of the year.

I hadn't checked the weather forecast today and had no idea we were under a severe thunderstorm watch. We'd been out for a walk earlier this evening, on the road west of town. As I walked my mind turned to Dewdney's Acquainted With the Night, which I've been reading, and because of it I was looking southeast, in the same direction from which the rumble would later come, waiting for night-rise and loving the word penumbra, a word I found in his discussion of the dawn of night. I wanted to watch the night rise, the rising of the penumbra, but I was struck by what the sun was doing. How it was throwing giant spruce shadows onto the sand piles. With a wrestling match like that going on, who'd pay any attention to the sky?

Public property

2008-09-14T15:14:00.003-05:00

My plan to photograph wherever someone has blocked a Hillsdale easement (a practice--the blocking, not the photographing--allowed over the years by the City) begins behind our old family home. For the last 32 years it's been owned by someone else. Only this summer did they replace the original fence.

If I click enough zoom into digital version of a photograph taken in July, 1961, I can see that house even before the fence was built, when for landscaping Dad tried potatoes. (To prime the gumbo for grass, was the theory.)

The past peeks from most corners here. It's a secret space, what the mind turns to, west between Anderson and Uhrich.

If anyone looking out their kitchen window wonders what I'm doing out there in the easement back of their property line, I'll show them what's in my camera: landscapes, twelve feet wide.

The creeps

2008-09-10T22:55:00.004-05:00

Motion-activated sprinklers are downright creepy. There's one near a house along our walking route and when we walk by it spits at us. Even when we walk in the middle of the street it spits and spits. I always make a point of looking the other way. I don't want the occupants to see the expression on my face. As if they're looking. As if there's more than one. Tonight when I looked the other way, just before the sprinkler started spitting, I thought of Stephen King. It felt as if I were walking into a scene he'd written and something really bad was about to happen. A few steps later the spitting stopped, but it took my imagination a while to catch up. A couple blocks later it was still on my mind. I tried to snap out of it by picking up the pace, but the faster I moved the more it spit. By the time I got home I was drenched.

Afternoon one

2008-09-07T15:39:00.004-05:00

Lucy said she's never stood so close to a train. This was at the "last spike" site near Craigellachie. I took three snaps of her there in her denim dress she'd bought in Kelowna. Looked like she didn't know what to do at first, the fence between her and the train. She could have stood closer.

She kept us going all that day and most of the next before losing a bit of energy with two or three hours to go, around Swift Current. That's when she hauled open the log I occasionally use on road trips and wrote down the first couple of (locomotive) numbers.

Today's she's out helping a friend film some kind of scene/installation downtown west of Albert Street. I'm not sure of the details other than involves a lot of running.

They're running west of Albert, cutting through alleys to the next street, ragged like flag, in cameras.

Sometimes the train wakes me

2008-09-07T11:16:00.004-05:00

Most times I don't hear it, but when the pressure is right and the wind is from the right direction it sounds as if it's right across the street. Like this morning. It's likely not the slag train for it's electric and goes about things more quietly. I have no idea how many times a day it hauls slag to the slag dump, east of the tailings pond. In the past we'd sometimes head down the garbage dump road, crawl up into the rocks and watch the molten waste flow into the pond like lava from four small volcanoes. And I would stand beside H and ask him again what it was like to be so close to something so hot. He had worked as a brakeman on that train. I asked him again this morning and he gave the same smile. The same story.

Regina traffic

2008-09-03T16:57:00.004-05:00

The day after I'm home from Vancouver and back, my body starts to react. Someone shut off the lube pumps and went home. Feels like I'm wearing a wooden box.

I drove my lower back through fog, thick rain, frost, night, stale Fresca and 3,500 km first with Tom (who insisted on driving the last 45 km from Chilliwack, which took two hours) then with Lucy, who always finds that last couple of hours from Swift Current to be the toughest. To help, I asked her to start the LocoLog, a listing of locomotives: where they are, which directing they're heading, the date and time. "When you encounter 8809 again in three years, you'll be thrilled," is how I put it to Lucy. "I don't think so," she said, but she got the log going anyway.

In the Main and East 19th Avenue area of Vancouver, stores full of hundred-year-old furniture stacked to the ceiling stand next to the hippest indie record store in the city (judging by its mention that very day in the BC edition of the Globe). Neglected house and yards back onto the newest of renovations, in either case the houses having been owned by the same family for three or more generations.

By comparison the prairie seemed open and alone when we crossed it. And today Regina traffic hardly moves.

Overdone

2008-09-01T22:36:00.003-05:00

I'm not a big fan of meat, but you know how it is when you're out for a run and the blood is pumping. You smell every damn steak out there. When my heart is humming along I bet I can tell you exactly how well done each steak is on the fly by. Last night the medium rare rib eye on 3rd Avenue stopped me in my tracks. Time to pull it off, buddy, I thought. But no, the bbq kept smoking, no one in sight. I moved on, knowing how it would end. Tough.

The good life

2008-08-25T11:58:00.002-05:00

32,000 km in, I looked under the hood of my '06 Matrix for the first time. To my surprise, design modifications had resulted, apparently, in the rotation of the waterpump and fan belt 90 degrees to the left as I faced them. I could hear a high-pitched peach. That was Friday.

This morning I handed over the key to the boys at Taylor Toyota and ran home. The first leg took me south through the warehouse district until--what the H.!--no sidewalk on the east side of Broad. By the end of the second leg I'd passed downtown. One more leg to Hillsdale.

Here I considered the principles of urban development, whereby the developer calls for a new bridge to feed its planned subdivision south of Wascana creek in the 50s. The City refuses; the developer builds it anyway, a quarter-mile east, and tries for the next 20 years (without sucess) to the get the City to pay for it.

I crossed that bridge when I came to it and splintered on home past houses new in '59, easements fenced shut.

Baffling

2008-08-24T14:09:00.000-05:00

You cannot baffle sound, I said as H stopped for the light. That's not the right verb. A van idled in front, its exhaust heading east as I went on. Muffle, yes. But baffle? No way. How can sound be confused? Dementia? Too much to drink? Pulling a rabbit out of a hat might do it, I said. That's always baffled me. As we followed the van down the street he told me about baffles in mufflers. Oh please, I said, shaking my head, I'll look it up when we get home. That was Friday.

A little while ago H walked in, told me he's off to Canadian Tire. Needs a few things. He went over the list. I wasn't really listening. Drive carefully, I said like I always do. On his way out, he stopped. Turned. Hey, did you look up baffle? I faced him, gave him the what-a-waste-of-time stare, then pulled the OED down. What I found baffled me. He grinned and sped off. Teeth baffled the growl.

Dotted lines

2008-08-21T11:07:00.004-05:00

I've taken to placing my face on the windowsill while I play backgammon on the internet. I've tried it a number of way, pointing the face left along the alley or, for a moment, 80 degrees up. Sometimes I stand there behind it.

(In the words of Alfred Hitchcock, "First I did it [insert himself into his own films] because I couldn't afford to hire anyone else, then because it brought good luck, finally because everyone expected me to.")

Over there, the face has it pretty good, perpendicular to the alley, porous to the wind. Every once in a while a jet takes off, a family piles into their minivan.

(If I were a Hitchcock film, I'd include the hotel parking lot for sure.)

Then I'll pull it down and change it, push on the chin, rub across the forehead--anything to avoid its resting pose: a down-turned mouth, a long face.

Frown lines

2008-08-20T13:01:00.002-05:00

You can't miss the two coulees between my eyebrows. They look especially deep this morning. What's the matter, people often ask. Nothing, I reply. Just thinking. I don't tell them the coulees are the result of my mind's glacial drainage. Years of erosion. Sure, when I frown they deepen, but that's ok because it means I'm looking. That's my job. And if I look closely enough, close enough to peer into them, I just might see poplar. Chokecherries. Hawthorn. Great horned owls might hunt there, passing shadows over the deer that are bedded down. I might see deer trails, trails I'd love to follow even though I'd have to duck. There I'd be sheltered. And if I squint I might be able to see foxholes on the steepest sides. They're hard to see in the dappled light. I know. Squinting only makes the coulees grow deeper, but squint I must to find my way down.

This is a morning to build in

2008-08-18T13:09:00.002-05:00

Just my wild luck, born into a countryside where all we can love is sky and its dim weathers, as glimpsed from my balcony.

If I sit here long enough I think I've named it all but never can. Here's LORAAS DISPOSAL for the third time this month, preying on corner matter. I'm back of things. What used to be the Imperial 400 is now, or will be soon, a Holiday Inn Express.

What was your summer job? It was remembering Bomber fans at the Imperial 400, in full party blow, four hours to kick-off.

The bus is coming

2008-08-17T14:01:00.007-05:00

August is a month of rising tension. I can't remember a time when it was not. Each of the 31 days feels like another twist of the tuner. It's only the 17th and already I'm tight against the frets. Taut. The finger of summer is pressing down.

It's time. I chase down flyers. Back-to-school sales. I want to buy Hilroy scribblers. I want new shoes. New jeans. HB pencils. Prune plums for my lunch.

This morning I woke up in a panic. I was late. I could hear the school bus coming. The rising roar as it crested the hill and sped towards the farm.

Even now, after more than 25 years, I can see the bus driver's face so clearly I could draw him, one hand on the wheel, the other opening the door. I can hear the radio. The static. It's tuned to CHAB.

I'll sit close to the front. Next to the window. I know down the road I'll hear Chickenman. I'm waiting.

What I never talk about

2008-08-09T12:09:00.002-05:00

My cousin on a horse chased me through the bush back of his farm. I hadn't yet discovered that there is no nature outside us, only that inside. Instead I discovered panic. Didn't help that my cousin was laughing.

Words might describe the moment now, but no words passed between us at the time. We ate flapper pie either before or after. I took 35 cents off grandpa at Thirty-one.

Perhaps certain details have become transposed over time, turning me into the one on the horse, but I don't think so. (Either way, we're never neutral.)

Once in a while I'll offer food to some horse, which usually takes it. But first I extract a promise from the horse that it won't chase me.

Tonight we went horseback riding

2008-08-08T00:13:00.002-05:00

I can't remember what we were talking about at the time, but somehow during our walk horses came up. The imaginary ones we rode through childhood. You did that as a kid, right, H asked as he shook the invisible reins and galloped off down the road, slapping his backside to make his horse gallop faster. And it did. Likely a quarter horse. Good at barrel racing, I bet. I nudged my nag in the flanks a few times before it budged. It bucked a bit, reared up, and then took off. Off I galloped down the backstretch, slapping my backside, but H was ahead by a good ten lengths and pulling away. There's no way my horse could catch him. But it did pretty good for a Shetland.

No relation to me

2008-08-06T22:14:00.003-05:00

Sun gives way to the backside of a quarter moon. Bikers of the weekends only persuasion roar south on Albert Street. The moment I remove my glasses they roar back.

I began to work (some kind of writing work) on Hillsdale today, the day I read in the Archives about the new Broad Street bridge F.W. Hill (who died just two or three weeks ago) wanted to build to link to his development south of Wascana Lake. He went ahead and built it. This was 1959.

Suburbs in Don Mills and Winnipeg were presented as how good life in a suburb like Hillsdale could be. Taxes from the new development would allow the City to repay Hill's company in ten years, was the idea Hill proposed.

Dad and Mom and three of us kids moved into Hillsdale in August, 1961.

I've been craving eggs all day

2008-08-05T17:06:00.007-05:00

I blame the truckers. This morning, half-awake, I could hear a semi idling. Changing drivers, I imagine, or maybe the driver was grabbing breakfast at The Prospector Inn down the street. I turned over, knowing the diesel engine would lull me back to sleep as they've been doing for months now. They must have a contract to haul high-grade sand around the clock. The semis now act as my alarm. My sedative.

The cat, hearing me move, jumped on the bed and began to purr along with the engine, bunting me the whole time. I ignored her, but that only egged her on. Unable to doze back off, I began to wonder how many hourglasses a truckload of sand could fill. Simple enough to calculate if one knew how much the trailer holds and the volume of sand each hourglass requires. But there are variables. I suspect no two grains of sand were created equal. It's the matter of three-dimensional space. How much is occupied. And no two loads weigh the same. Consider the axles. No one has time for this.

After a while the semi pulled away, shifting quietly. How much time is it hauling, I wondered as the cat bunted me again. Maybe a few years' worth. Or maybe just three minutes. Just enough to fill one giant egg timer. It would take one helluva giant to turn it over.

4:30 in the morning one day in Kelowna

2008-08-04T11:05:00.003-05:00

I reached with my hockey stick to pull the trap out from under my trailer, careful to keep the thing at arm’s length. I maneuvered it onto the back of my pick-up and headed up Chute Road, which lead, I knew, to some fishing roads far back in the hills. “And there, little buddy,” I felt like saying to the varmint bouncing along inside that trap, “you and your skunk buddies can nest all you want.”

By the time I pulled over a couple of miles above the town, the sun had almost risen. With the hockey stick again, I lowered the trap to the ground and stood as far back as I could while releasing the trapdoor.

The second it sprang open, out sprang Twinky, the neighbour's cat, wild-looking as hell. He vanished into the bush and hasn't yet come out.

Under the impression

2008-08-03T12:35:00.004-05:00

These words came to mind this morning when I saw the fresh tracks in my garden. Fox, coyote, or the neighbourhood dog that pees on my peony, I can't tell, but it was running, and on the way by it must have brushed the lilies and now has lily-poo on its coat. Just like me. Damn lilies.

Under the impression. What an odd way to begin. That always precedes the assumption. We wait for it. Humour us, the utterers of these words, for we're all under the same impression sometimes. That paws sink in the mud and mud wells up between the pads and sticks in the hair should go without saying. Unfortunately there's more to it. Ask the johnny-jump-up how it felt to be trampled. How it feels. Its bloom is now ruined, the purple and yellow petals torn. Part of one missing.

So it goes. Somewhere the animal sits, resting, cleaning its feet, pulling mud balls out with its teeth. This I know. I don't even have to close my eyes to see its canines. No sign of the petal though. Not that I was under the impression that I'd see it. Not yet.

Bone Deduction

2008-08-02T17:09:00.003-05:00

Bone is a dangerous word. If I think it, I become afraid. But not at first. First it's my nickname, short for Mr.Trombone, what my high school classmates called me after seeing me front row right side in the Lions marching band, halftime of Rider games. I liked the name from the start, and soon worked out a visual signature to go with it: a cartoon bone, with two rounded knobs at each end. It was simple and effective--quite elegant, in fact. If you start pulling the endplugs off the hollow tubes that form the frame of the desks over at Campbell Collegiate, located a half mile east of here, you'll eventually come to certain documents I stuffed in there, all of them signed with Bone (the symbol, not the word).

The other bone is the dangerous one, the one I broke three times as a boy aged 9-13. A cyst in my humerus. Why my parents kept me out of organized sports, I found out years later. The cyst used to "grow back" which is why, we used to say, I kept breaking the arm. And you know how it is for shy kids. They activate fears that few others can detect. They imagine that, for example, the bone is defective, storing and eventually releasing, during the latter decades of the owner's life, clusters of harmful cells that will take the body in one direction only.

This afternoon running I felt my bones haul my body round the lake. At times I could hear them grunting. Occasionally they missed a step. The bones in their plodding sleeves wanted to stop sooner than I let them.

I think I'll show up at that bone reunion, after my friends and I have all passed on. We'll remember from one another's bones.

August is here

2008-08-01T12:39:00.001-05:00

I felt it in my bones when I woke up this morning. In the joints. The articulations. I swear some bricklaying god has sucked out my marrow, mixed it with lime and sand. Read between the bricks. I am what bonds them.

It's hard. All this traveling. Growing older. The garden has grown wild in my absence. Unruly. The delphiniums are blue, hunched over. Too much rain. I don't want to deal with it. Not yet. It's too cool out there. The humidity too high.

No doubt August will be sticky. Even the books on my desk have that feel. The magazines. The papers. My manuscript. The filing cabinet. The handle. The bottom drawer sticks a bit when I open it, rattles when I throw the manuscript in. Closes easily.

Waiting for Brenda

2008-07-29T14:22:00.003-05:00

Considering where natural ends and un-natural begins, I'm taking a north breeze in the face, or would be if I sat outside. I'm thinking of tractors, three tractors in particular, three of fourteen or so in a book.

Judging by the size of the birds in this breeze, pigeons and gulls most prominent, they're doing just fine. Who needs more than a whiff of green beyond that parking-lotted, brick-apartment playground of theirs?

When friends arrive in the city, they carry threads of where they've been. Some of them have been outside for quite a while.

Air Canada Jazz lands about a mile west.

The wind makes us natural, there's plenty of wind around here.

9:00, McNally's

2008-07-12T19:02:00.002-05:00

If I were recording songs tonight live at a club for a new cd called Cityscrape, I'd be there right now rehearsing, placing the energy up in the beams to be called upon later. It would be an indoors sort of a summer's day.

A shame, I know. Clouds so fresh they stay above our eyes. The Riders won in Hamilton so the force that drives the green fuse (as we say around here, ripping off Thomas and cruising calmly the streets at the same time) shoves the rain east and hums like a new piano.

Until the last few hours, we had the same weather as the Tour de France. "Gloomy and dreary," said the commentator (not Paul Sherwin, the other guy).

So the first tune I'll play is a little thing called I'm In Love (With You Tonight). After that, we'll see.

It's cold and gloomy

2008-07-09T17:56:00.005-05:00

I spent the morning by the window, feet on the heater, the New and Collected Poems of Czeslaw Milosz on my lap. I paused after "The Journey" and watched the mountain ash waving in the breeze. I saw nothing "pure-colored" as Milosz would have it. Nothing impure either. Not a bird clung to its branches. Just leaves.

The tree needs trimming. Badly. We say so every time we back into the yard. It's at the end of the driveway and has grown so much it now brushes the car as we come and go. I should take my shears to it, but a mountain ash has a certain symmetry that I fear I'll destroy. Today's not the day for it.

I turned back to the book and realized then, after all this time, that I did not know how to pronounce his name. It felt wrong to read any further. I searched online until I found an audio clip called "Requiem for a Poet: Czeslaw Milosz." And as the tree waved I heard his name. I heard him speak. Still not a bird.

Drainage

2008-07-08T11:33:00.002-05:00

Streets are cambered, arched for drainage to concave curbs, all the way to Hudson's Bay. This morning, on a run, I noticed a neighbour draining her swimming pool through a green hose that ran into the back lane. In another yard, a Bobcat tested the space between the back of the house and a wood fence, backed out and shut down.

That's the very house where five years ago my kids and I observed the old guy watering his driveway every day to clear it of leaves, dead bugs or other debris. Every day he watered his driveway. He must be dead now, hence the Bobcat.

Many boughs hang lower, all leafed out, causing me to bend and run at the same time. More than once my cap has been swept off, the top of my scalp gouged. This morning too I ran past the bingo manager's house, a miserable junkyard of a place, no offence to junkyards.

In the neighbourhood I lived in with my parents and sisters when we were in high school, about a half-mile east of right here, the yards and trees have been nudged and coddled until the street looks ancient and overgrown.

It was bright new in '62.

Pushing daisies

2008-07-05T19:36:00.000-05:00

My new reel mower squeaks and squeals as if it's the one being cut. Maybe it's speaking on behalf of the grass, clover and daisies that I've been beheading. Daisies are tougher to behead than the rest. They just pop back up and wave bye-bye. How annoying. So yesterday I hauled out my grass whip. It's double-edged and serrated. The handle is loose. Nothing was safe. Heads flew. Petals everywhere. A gouge in my shoe. My hands were shaking.

Winding

2008-07-05T10:57:00.003-05:00

Every day up at Emma, the wind was new. Down here, it's the same patch of flags over the TraveLodge, same pages blown off my printer, same old dust off the parking lot.

I ran the sole off my ten-dollar cleats the other night. Threw the sole away, kept playing. Next pitch: pop-up between pitcher and second. Playing shortsop, I had the easy play but with no cleat on my right foot couldn't get my body going soon enough. Safe.

So I spent an hour yesterday watching Rear Window and duct-taping my shoe back together, transferring much of the dust from the shoe to my furniture. The cleats have to last at least two more games--our last Glove Story, next Wednesday, and my birthday ballgame sometime in late August.

If the wind's blowing out that night, look out. I plan to send my friends and other loved ones deep.

Today the wind is from the north-northeast

2008-06-14T21:06:00.001-05:00

When I get up in the morning I always peek through the slats at the smokestack to see what's what before the blind goes up. The direction of the smelter smoke sets the tone for the day. This morning it was coming straight at me. A wall of it. I was cornered. I left the blind down and crawled back into bed. Now, at day's end, the skies are almost free of cloud. The sun has turned the smoke into apricots. Apricots and whipped cream coming right up.

It started when I woke up to an uncertain rhyme, "boots on" and "croutons"

2008-06-13T21:22:00.003-05:00

The city was all cut up today. 19-block Rose Street, a north-south vein of downtown Regina, was blocked off for a ball hockey tournament featuring NHL-ers and local businesses. Watching from a broken window in a 2nd-floor office in the old Leader building, a woman saw Blake Comeau, former Saskatoon Blade, slash away at Boyd Kane, ex-Regina Pat.

At my son's request, I sliced three inches off his hockey stick this morning, the better for him to operate in tight corners of the ball hockey court.

Jack Semple played "O Canada" in the manner of Hendrix ripping "Star Spangled Banner" into the skies over Woodstock, 1968.

More afternoon after that: cut cake at a baby shower, drove south on half of Albert Street (the other half lifted away for resurfacing). Finally, a slash of sun out of showers around 2:30. I helped my daugher fix some plumbing and got home in time to watch A.J. Burnett take 101 pitches to get through 5 innings against the Cubs.

Right about now the Riders break out of a huddle.

By the close of business today, I will have spent money at Wal-mart, Home Depot, Aegean Coffee Shop, Sears, and Dollarama.

It's overcast, windy and spitting

2008-06-12T20:47:00.001-05:00

The only bright spot in the day is the pair of red and white high-top runners hanging from the power line in front of the neighbour's house. Size 12 at least. They've been hanging there for six months, maybe more, and show no signs of wear. Perhaps they're an offering to the god of basketball. Volleyball. The god of ugly shoes. They've been twirling all day. Around and around as if lost in thought. Laces knotted. Not rotten, but getting there. Certainly twisted.

Best of all, it's a dark baby blue

2008-06-11T23:39:00.002-05:00

I drop in to Toyota for an oil change, take a seat in the Customer Lounge. The rain piles up. By the time I get out there it will stand twice as deep.

I wouldn't mind changing some fluids myself. Felt a bit sluggish on the diamond last night. The ground balls ricocheted like hammers off a twice-bent nail.

It makes me want to buy, this rain. Maybe a V6 Tacoma to drive around town in, let rain wash my stubble away. I plan to come out clean, whatever lane I drive in. Play a little Steve Earle on my AM/FM Stereo Compact Disc.

Oh my god, the Tacoma's got a six-speed.