“My feeling,” I said, “is hard and cold and physical. It’s like I’m your plumber; I’m one-track; step out of my way, I’ll fix your toilet. It’s like when I go to the mall they have to close the mall down.”
A blister on my hand burst and blood spewed over Dr. B.’s tan mohair suit. I noticed his pants had a perfect crease. He looked like a giant. He was slim, regal. He was elegant. His eyes scrunched and there were wrinkles in his forehead.
Dr. B. is really smart with his rescues such as when my lack of confidence gets me into jams. He told me to keep singing so he could stay awake. He said, “A worthy goal is – why not aim for the top of your competence?” He said, “Sleep well tonight,” and wished me great happiness. He said, “Here are some dog cookies to take home and, if you don’t have a dog, give them to someone deserving.”
Feathers, Dirt, Bugs
It happened earlier in the day. I got into a fight with Angela and freaked myself out. Come bedtime we were like two cats curled on separate pillows.
Then the raven, its darkness flying through the open window. It settled in bed between us. The raven’s beak inches from my neck. The raven interrupting my dream about lifting a bus over my head to throw at Angela.
But the bird’s presence charmed me. I thought, Hey, a raven has got into bed with us, maybe we’re being honoured in some way. It took up a lot of room. When I touched its wing it felt sharp like the teeth of a chainsaw.
Still, it was really hard to understand where the raven fit into the family drama. I tried to think about that. How ravens, along with crows, magpies, and jays, belong to the family of birds called Corvidae. How I belong to the group of people with the thinnest skin. How ravens are more intelligent than border collies. How I’ve often thought Bandit was smarter than me.
Angela didn’t know the raven was in bed with us because she didn’t wake up. She spent the night curled and battling on the other side of the bed. With the raven lying stiff between us. Some people have even less, I thought.
For the first time it seemed funny about my name being Matt. It was like I’m matted together with Angela and it was painful being pulled apart and then to have a large bird lying between us.
Angela and the raven slept but I couldn’t. Crows shooting laser beams out of their eyes like superheroes – that I could understand. But a raven using my bed as a nest?
Maybe I’d caused the raven to materialize, I thought, it being a crazy, negative reaction to fighting with Angela. Maybe the raven was the dark side of me.
I guess I drifted off. In the early morning a bunch of burly, tattooed men threw tomatoes at me. Which woke me up. Angela woke up, too, and pulled the covers back. The raven startled and flew out the window. Angela screamed, said something about my bizarre pets, and fled to the bathroom.
There wasn’t much of the raven left to prove it had even been there: a couple of feathers, some dirt, and several grey bugs. I think it was the bugs crawling across the white sheet that got Angela screaming. Bugs the size of earwigs.
It might be utopian, but I like to believe in the great zone where two people can reach out and communicate while under the same covers. Minus a raven.
I decided to use the bus I’d dreamed about earlier in an abstract and poetic way. I’d tell Angela that when she came out of the bathroom. I’d say I wasn’t trying to go over her head. I’d say I was fighting with her to say just anything.
The Moment Contracts
She is dancing to Latin music in the kitchen – salsa with the tomatoes, tango with the broom. Sixty-five beats per minute. But something is wrong. There’s a man who is striding past her with a frown on his face and a book in his hand. For the time being he doesn’t love her. That’s clear! She is too something – extreme. In fact, she has just been saying there’s nothing lost in being extreme. What you get is the expanded moment – wider, deeper. But something is wrong. He is slamming the bedroom door and the moment contracts. Now each of them is a monster, violently different from the other. They have done the dream of love to death! And then what happens is the moment passes. She turns up the music.
Did I mention it’s summer?
Part Two
A Bit of Sharp Eyeing
Walking by, she knows her bare legs are good.
If someone leaning against a brick wall looks on, no problem.
Otherwise a Blank Canvas
This picture is the most complex thing I have ever done. It’s of me organizing the playroom. I know there’s too much colour, too many detached limbs. But look in the top right-hand corner. That’s where the children hover as a smudge of pink looking down on the scene like cherubim.
A striking part of the picture is the toy soldier lower right. He’s making a speech to the dolls, stuffed animals, and assorted blocks of wood that are sitting on toy-size conference chairs. The key to the security of the playroom, he’s telling them, is patrol ships, subs, a fleet of destroyers, and jets with missiles.
The donkey with the torn-off ear sitting in the front row taking notes is me. Have I got it right? There’s the alleged threat to the playroom that must be countered and there’s the playroom inhabitants wondering if they’re even alive?
Everything else in the picture is a production: the wolf off-picture scratching at the playroom door to get in; the heavy dew that arrived the same time I began the picture and has never ceased blurring the edges; and the clueless soldier of fortune scurrying about in the overlit background. He’s just been poisoned and is trying to find the antidote within the next half hour.
No Kidding!
They are calling for illness. They are saying things will turn sour, that happiness will begin to cost. That it begins in middle age when there’ll be no new thoughts, when relationships will be debated. Not only that, but mental rain will not cease falling. Jokes may lead to happy impact but the passion position will be mixed. And there’ll be bereavement every birthday. We will sicken at the sight of a flaming cake. Furthermore, fat youth will regularly knock us over. No one will invite us to big, sweaty dance parties. And though social factors will suggest we become a new bride or groom, it is uncertain whether love will reduce our misery.
Who knew this train was coming? Oh the toothless old! Watch out when you’re on the tracks, they warn us. That light heading your way isn’t the full moon.
Espresso
When Leonard Cohen left Main Street he travelled by train. He’d sit alone in a darkened car with the window open. It was cold and silent and windy in there. Now and then he’d toss a handful of words out the window like they were scraps meant to feed hungry birds. People started collecting the words and pasting them onto coffee cups.
Years later he abandoned the train for the cleanup crew.
Now he’s wet mopping a barroom floor as patrons, youngsters, and every Zen moment just drift away. He’s merry. He’s smiling broadly. But we’re still hungry, still collecting his words and pasting them onto coffee cups. There is considerable debate as to why this must be.
Geese Like Carpet Bombers
We had a barn. And they would put up a white sheet on the side of the barn and Mom had a projector. That’s how we watched movies in 1992.
As a result I have always felt like a small, cold guy watching events from a dry field.
As a further result I now mainly focus on this box. It contains a National Geographic picture of the full moon set against a black sky; seventeen paint samples to represent the many shades of dried grass; and another picture, one of nine Canada geese flying like carpet bombers in a movie about the Second World War.
But I’d rather be in another world, a car commercial or something.
Wanting Cake
It’s funny out today. There’s a mild grin in the air. It’s like the chirping sparrows are really laughing their heads off. Like the gulls overhead are cawing ha, ha, ha. I don’t know what’s so funny. It’s my birthday. Is that what’s funny?
As usual, I wind up at Mother’s for my birthday celebration. Mo
ther is one of those special spring-loaded ones. It’s vital to weave in her influence here. “Aren’t you glad your days of youth are over?” she asks.
Two bottles of meal replacement later I am corralled in the grocery store lineup behind old Harry and wanting cake.
“Zora’s without love or a dog,” he tells me. “What a laugh!” Zora was forty years ago for Harry.
Under Mother’s influence, thoughts begin forming. Lipstick and a hairdo from the days when I was flesh-coloured is what I am thinking. Some old-fashioned fertility to disarm Harry even if we’re both overripe. It’s still the twenty-first century, you know. We’re nowhere else yet.
White Sheet over Old Idea
In the Museum of Last Words a film clip of Superman’s foster father is playing in a repeating loop. He’s watering the flowers at the side of his driveway. It’s a black-and-white day on a suburban street. The flowers look like weeds.
A girl rides by on a bicycle and after that Superman’s foster father clutches his chest, drops the hose, and falls to the ground. We hear his shocked whisper, “No!”
Superman with his superpowers is on a mission elsewhere. Too late, he will swoop down and take his foster father in his arms. His super cry will shatter worlds. He sounds like us, then – felled by comprehension.
How Wondering Is Essential
I mention how moments of ecstasy leave me wondering if I have a chemical imbalance.
She says it’s the same for her.
I mention going berserk with exclamation marks from just looking out the window.
She says, “No way! Me, too.”
I mention abstinence from alcohol and caffeine, and using supplements like fish oil and vitamin D to strengthen my brain.
She says, “Same here, plus flax.”
I mention simple, unadorned reality.
She says, “Absolutely.”
We both mention rocks, raindrops, clouds, and birds, especially birds.
She mentions how she’s always wondering.
I mention how wondering is essential.
She says she’s wondering if the time to be brilliant is now.
I say, “It certainly is.”
She says, “Here goes,” and gives me a red leather pouch with a black stone inside.
I say, “Thank you.”
She mentions the stone has been blessed by a Native elder.
I say, “No shit.”
She says, “Now we are sisters forever.”
I mention it’s a prime moment but the soundtrack is missing.
She says she agrees and then whistles.
How the Lighthouse Meant Something
We can’t remember where we were going in such a hurry. Last I knew I was hearing one of my kids telling his friend, “I don’t know what’s worse, catching your parents having sex or smoking a joint.”
After that it was an old guy having dinner with his still-lucid wife. That would be us. What will happen next? Madame Tussaud, herself a wax figure, said beware the three crows – accountant, lawyer, priest – but I go further. I say beware Virginia Woolf and her hopeless clarity. She said she meant nothing by the lighthouse but I’ve never believed her. That lighthouse is the unknown shining back at us.
How Some Rewrite Their Epic Poems
We are all fine people here. The landscape is lovely and the weather is soft. Someone is always on duty. Usually it’s the solver of problems and this is a nice touch.
At three the bell chimes and we gather for tea. The evenings we weather. They’re not always lush. Some of us have candlelit dinners with our sane old wives. Others rewrite their epic poems.
I don’t know what is worse, a tumbling marriage, an uplift bra, or a sane experience. Sleep can be bad. I, for one, no longer dwell in fast times, urgent needs, or confusing moments. For example, in the last dream I remember I was overhearing nothing.
How Time Expands
Concerning the proper enforcement of customs, the sexual experience made into a son or a daughter will raise you straight from the ground. That’s true! The committee in charge of existence confirms this. Just now they’re strolling about the festival site wearing long green capes. Soon they’ll be awarding first prize for best compliance.
I should win! I have a son and a daughter!
My competition disagrees. There’s a broken statue called Lillian that has spawned a thousand pieces; there are owners of grandchildren who are playing bingo in an attempt to lengthen their lives; there’s the celebrity dog Rin Tin Tin that is showing off by walking backwards on its hind legs; there’s a short comic with lust on his lips occasioned by anyone’s vagina.
And the winner is?
Rin Tin Tin ... because he is immortal.
Then clouds drift by. Meaning time expands to include this gentle madness.
How She Rations Herself
I was not expressing disadvantage by having a mild helping of dinner. I love protein but I don’t lose my mind over it. This is a source of helping the world, I think, a bonus. I’m not using things up. I’m rationing myself – a bit of dinner here, a bit of lunch there. I may not eat much but I’m not afraid to be small. I don’t care how big anything is nor do I think that way. I think my thoughts in careful measure. My thoughts are not bargain basement though I’m often accused of taking my mind to the thrift store. But someone’s got to pay attention to the junk!
A few days ago I was, like, living in the broom closet. Today is better, a day to appreciate the dog’s supper, which gives me cause for a moment’s wonder. It’s just that I don’t wish to take more of the world than my share. I breathe shallow, walk sideways, ration wonder whenever I can.
How Mixture Causes Relationships
I tell my kids, don’t walk into a relationship like it was a moving truck. Take your father and me. We didn’t offer ourselves as targets to God so why should you? I’m not talking here about the strangeness of it all. Or the remarkable story about my eating sauerkraut before coming to bed. Just sex, which is something necessary in one’s life along with a knife and fork.
I also tell my kids I can’t stand relationships that are not concentrated and they shouldn’t either. That’s the beginning of selfish streets. Same for enhancing a man or a woman’s ineptitude by floating their failures past your friends. I don’t advise that, either. First you’ll be petulant, and then unnecessary in someone’s life. Finally – and here’s the chaff – you’ll be, “So what?” People will say of you, “She’s terrific. I can’t stand her.”
How I Was Wearing the Hood That Day
It was his birthday and his speech was running sour. Each of us had to become a famous old person like him, he was saying, famous among a dozen people or so. This was his advice from the age of ninety. We were drinking apple juice cut with Sprite.
There was cake, a dozen people, his speech. You, seated beside me, were still conscious, thank God. You had cake crumbs on your jacket lapels and were doing what you usually do at gatherings, enshrouding everyone with a look. It fit nicely with what our friend was saying about the possibility of a fog bank with evil intentions appearing at any moment. Or was it a seagull flying over dropping sorrow?
People said, “Oh now, not yet, mustn’t dwell.”
The times, I realized, are small because we are. Small, then pop, they’re gone. But then I looked out the window and there it was, the great hooded spring!
I grabbed your arm and whispered, “I am so in love with my piece of sidewalk!” To which you said something like, “Good.” Or was it “Good luck”?
White Suit / Far-Off Reality
My father would fall into the past whenever he looked through an open window. He’d be seeing a thin line of beach there and a pale sky the same colour as his eyes. There would be heat, too, and then the woman who was his wife laughing before a hotel mirror, her white hands with the red nails clutching a silver hairbrush.
Sometimes I would stand at the window beside him. And take in the sparkling water, the Palm Tree lounge on th
e patio serving sky and surf, the handsome suitor wearing a white linen suit escorting the woman to a table.
My father would be in the bar by then, not wanted at the banquet. And the small girl that I was would be brushing her hair before the mirror after everyone had left.
Meetings That Mattered
The woman wore white lace gloves and for a while she rode with me on a regular basis. I’d position my cab outside the hotel where she worked and tell her each time, “Thanks a lot for choosing me.” There was a whiff of madness about things when she appeared. It felt like fertility was about to happen! At first I’d leaned against the car hoping she’d take a second look, notice the he-man I thought I was. This was years ago. I remember it like a series of hallucinations, or like a title: “The Lady with the Lace Gloves.” For a while she was all that mattered. I also remember telling a bald man with a wet dog that I picked up at the beach around the same time that I had an unfettered message of hope to impart. I can’t believe I thought that back then.
This was well before marrying Thelma. “Enjoy your tomato,” she said tonight, handing me my supper, those fierce words meant to delight.
Say the Words
At the wrap-up dinner for the Love Your Package workshop the women delegates began standing on their chairs and proclaiming, “I am short in stature and proud of it!” Before long most everyone in the hall, including the five-foot-seven cheaters, had stood on a chair except me. It was plain by their stares what I was expected to do. I stood on my chair. I said the words. The place applauded. I have never known such acceptance.
The World Afloat Page 3
