one art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look (Write it!) like disaster.

- Elizabeth Bishop [1911-1979]
















The above -- taken on the streets of South Beach, Miami, by a vacationing Sarita who narrowly avoided a Floridan death by transport truck in the process. "Imagine," writes Sarita, "you were the person that lost that key... you get to your house, reach in your pocket... and all you find is a hole!" I'd like to take this time to point out that holes are people too.

And below, besides his and Kate's feet, Paul's well-timed discovery on the Bruce Trail, near Steel City's psychiatric hospital. The kind of photos that deserve their own soundtrack.

it's called paydirt

Here's one for the history books: last night, walking through the alley behind my apartment (the same apartment I was told by my landlord, the bastid, we'd have to evacuate by August) toward the Civic parked on Dovercourt, Armen and I came upon a veritable cornucopia of stray items. (Yes, I hate myself slightly for using the phrase "veritable cornucopia.") The experience was akin to finding yourself turning around and around in somebody's disarrayed walk-in closet. Check it out! First off:















Across the way from this hastily thrown-off boot, we have a full ensemble -- a button-down shirt! jeans! a T-shirt! and -- can you believe -- thermal underwear! (To be fair, yesterday was unseasonably hot, even for May, and anybody could be forgiven for shedding unnecessary layers.)





















And next, evidence of a wardrobe change for the missus as well:















(That's a floral-patterned nightgown, if you can't tell, and extra points for the person who spots the soiled garden glove beneath it.)

Armen pointed out that the wary proprietor of Billy's Souvlaki Place, who was eyeing me from inside as I crouched down to snap the next pic -- another T-shirt, you betcha -- may have suspected me of doing reconnaissance for Health Canada. But nothing could stop me then!















It has just occurred to me that we might have stumbled across the scene of the perfect crime. Clothing scattered variously throughout a sketchy alleyway. A missing boot. Circumspect shopkeepers. But none of this prevented the Svadjian heir and me from passing a perfectly pleasant evening at the Royal Ontario Museum and surrounding environs. Or from traversing the same path on our way back to my pad, where we alighted on the reason the phrase pièce de résistance was invented:

Did you catch that? No? The Little Mermaid puzzle, folded double. And after all that work.