long awaited, breaths unbated

Merry belated Christmas and happy new year, all who wander here.

I'll make this short: Both of the showcased photos were taken by my old friend Damon, whom I met when he was a first-year greenhorn, I a weathered senior, and both of us in the play The Gut Girls. Damon's still doing time at McMaster, incredibly, living in a restored grocery store (still?) and showing the kids what's what on his weekly radio show. I’d say see his own blog for more about 'im, but I can’t seem to connect to it myself (Damon, your help welcome here). On with the show: The first pic is of, very simply, a shoe on the side of the 403. The second is of, simpler yet, a missing missing poster, taken around my old Hamilton haunts. The meta-magnitude practically split my cerebellum.

















Is it a cat who's missing here?

a-wandering they will go

Kept away from any substantial travel this summer by the demands of my literally workaday life (barring one memorable mini-golf trip to Mississauga in late spring -- no, I'm not forgetting), I've had to satisfy myself with the photos sent to me by more peripatetic folks. The bottom one was taken by one of my oldest friends, Jaclyn, at the Trevi Fountain in Rome, one of the many stops on the whirlwind European tour she took with her husband in July. It seems a gentleman has sacrificed his hat.

The first, taken by pal Guido on the Queen Charlotte Islands, is notable, according to him, for its lack of rubbish: "The only stuff you find on the beaches there, besides the shells, driftwood and seaweed, and the odd buoy and fishing net, are the flotsam and jetsam of faraway ships or faraway lands." Looks like this particular boot made it all the way from my former back alley (see post "It's Called Paydirt").

Guido adds, "And did you know that in America, there is a popular brand of bread called 'Holsum Bread'?" Word. Those who misspell with impunity will always have a special place in this heart.

wait, wait for it

Having recently moved, and buffeted on all sides by cranky Internet connections, I've not been able to properly post in a while. But, as unsinkable songstress (is that right?) Pink recently informed the world, I'm not dead. Belie' dat. Will return with guns blazing and attitude to spare -- much like the Pink lady herself, or so the free-paper record reviews tell me. Once we get this Internet bidniss sorted out, that is.

the bike issue

Last year, in early December, I returned home from a red-curry dinner downtown with the old 'mates, San and Sarita (an adventure that saw me ducking a loogie catapulted at me by a homeless man who was offended that I had no cigarettes to give him), to discover that my bicyle was missing. I hadn't paid attention to it in days, perhaps weeks, owing to the cold weather, I told myself, but in fact more likely because I had grown weary of hauling it up and down the apartment stairs, a task which in my mind had taken on Sisyphean proportions. I was reminded of being entrusted, as a youngster, with the responsibility of caring for my sister's hamster when she went away for a while; as it lived in a room by itself, its well-being began to slip my mind more and more. How did I find it when the horror of my lengthiest period of absenteeism finally dawned on me? Belly up, natch. (Crudely fashioned, paper-eared pet yogourt containers and stuffed rats do little to assuage the guilt of that early neglect.)

How long had my bicycle been gone? The severed lock (here photographed in later winter), injured but still serpentine, held its silence. John's bike, parked in the alley below, had been untethered in the same fashion. This was Toronto, and Toronto, we knew but never really understood until now, was lousy with miscreants.

My bicycle; my sweet, cherished Raleigh! Bought with travel-scholarship money, with a bell that sounded like a baby bird's first clear melody, we had been through so much: you were my mount in two university towns, my hometown for one brief summer, and finally, this evil urban centre; we unintentionally overcame London's chained iron gates in the middle of the night -- you charged straight through them like a slimmer, more ergonomic, more lovely army tank! -- and crested the dastardly hill of Trois-Pistoles time and time again; you joined me in protests against the dominance of the automobile on Steel City's smoggy streets, and whispered an apology when you lost your chain; you never once complained, never once suggested medical attention, even as you wheezed your way toward University College. Dear, dear one, for whom do you gallop now?

But from pain comes art, as we all know, and my particular loss inspired this script, which is largely autobiographical (note the in medias res beginning, very Othello):

BUT FIRST, THE WORLD
(A Play in One Act)

Dramatis Personae
L, naïve young thing
A, older and wiser cineaste

[An above-store apartment kitchen. A man and woman are sitting at the sort of table found in church basements, engaged in half-hearted conversation.]

L: The Bicycle Thief -- isn't that an album or something?
A: [shocked] It's only a hallmark of neo-realist cinema!

FIN

But not all stories need end in tragedy! I must tell you about my new bicycle, a used, wonderfully high-handlebarred beast that I took home with me from On the Go just down the street several months ago. It took a while, but I've really warmed to the ol' gal. Just look at her, posing appealingly in my bedroom doorway, ready, like me, to relocate to a home with fewer stairs...

stopgap

My public were clamouring (ha!), so I'm raising the white flag, so to speak.

Found in a hallway of 401 Richmond, before said hallway decided to assume the temperature of a heavily trafficked steam room.

I'm pretty sure a real post is in the offing. 'Til then!

strange fruit

Not lost, no; but this scene of execution -- Ghalib pointed out to me this morning that my bananas had "fallen down" -- has reminded me all day of Chinook, my ex-brother-in-law's old dog, who did use to get lost. When I was eleven years old, the rest of my family watching the Blue Jays winning one of the battles in the World Series war inside my sister and her husband's new apartment in tiny-town Ontario, I stayed out all evening with him. I had never had a dog, and wanted one almost as much as a horse back then. He was a husky, strong and eager -- though as old as the hills -- and as I stood in the middle of the yard with him bouncing around me on a taut lead, I was sure the night would conclude with me being dragged through the grass and along asphalt at last. He had no familiarity with his new home, and had been leaping over the gate that kept him in his pen every chance he got, usually managing to detach himself from his leash in the process -- hence my role, happily volunteered for, to keep him occupied and my brother-in-law from having to drive slowly up and down side streets looking for him. That particular night brought no great mishaps, either for the dog or for me, other than mild earache from the late October chill. Shortly thereafter, though, my sister reported that Chinook had hung himself over the fence in his final attempt at escape. Unwittingly, I assumed.

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.