It was a microburst, and the whole thing was over in about three minutes. There was a sudden blast from above, around and beyond, and it felt like the Mighty Thor had just hammered the earth and summoned forth all elements of sky.

The wind was haphazard and suicidal, as if careening out of control down a hill, and it gathered the falling rain in unequal, horizontal batches and then smashed it against whatever surface stood before it. The big tree in front practically shattered, and as it scattered before us, we could see one of it’s massive branches wheeling through the sky, and then in just a moment or two, it all stopped, and everything was quiet and strange and wonderful.

The power was out, and all the people living up and down the street came tenderly from their homes to marvel at the fallen landscape around us. Jones, so small and alive, jumped in puddles and walked amidst the rent trees like the jungles they were.

There was a clear, cooling wind that felt like it was coming off foreign waters, and people gathered before their homes to share their stories.

In this densely populated part of the city, we catch glimpses of our neighbours rather than actually know them, but with the storm all obligations of habit and place and order seemed to vanish. We were free of that, sort of, and it was like we could no longer pretend we were strangers.

The neighbour who never waved, the organized looking one with the yoga mat and unfriendly ponytail, well, she waved at us for the first time. Buck, the almost-old man who lives alone next door, the one I thought was an asshole until I discovered he was partially deaf and never heard me saying ‘hello,’ was like an 11 year-old. Excitedly, he rode about on his 30 year-old CCM bike, returning wide-eyed to say things like, “You should see Bernard Street! Trees everywhere!” Dogs now on walks, pulled comically massive branches along behind them. Couples, happy to be without power, happy to know they were lucky enough that being without power was a fun little, adventure rather than a life-altering catastrophe, headed out for dinner. And the basement tenant, as thin and mysterious as a pirate, came up and surveyed the scene. After deducing how to solve the most immediate problem, he got a small handsaw and began to wordlessly cut the fallen branches of the tree, quickly clearing a path on the sidewalk– the ash never once dropping from his cigarette.

All of us now, after something so unexpected, powerful and unknowable, felt a sense of shared, mortal vulnerability. The stable, trusted world we had imagined had been revealed a flimsy thing. Lucky for so many reasons, we all lingered together outside, comforted by the other, like ancients around a campfire, small and humble beneath an endless sky.

While driving along Bloor he started to talk about how much things had changed. This, a safe conversational starter for men past a certain age.

What used to be there.

What’s there now.

All the things we had known and lived.

And so we shared our wonder at the velocity of the world overtaking us, of all the businesses popping up on the blocks passing by and the real estate prices that had long since soared beyond our reach. Each aspect of this conversation revealed an unresolved bitterness in the man, a sense of having missed out, and then a car cut him off. He slammed his fist on the steering wheel, “DID YOU SEE THAT ASSHOLE?!”, he shouted as he accelerated into traffic. I tried to say something neutral yet supportive in tone, and then in an attempt to distract him from his rising fury, I asked where he’d most like to live if there were absolutely no limitations.

After some struggle, he offered up San Diego, but this only served as an entry point for a long, detailed story about being on a cruise ship with his ex-wife, getting ripped-off at the bar, and the fist fight that ensued. “They didn’t know who they were dealing with,” he said to me, his voice a cold, flat hiss.

And then we came to a red light and stopped. It felt like the barometric pressure had changed, that some destructive potential was either gathering or dispersing inside the car. And so we sat there quietly, lonely now in ways that could not be acknowledged. And beside us at the red light a beautiful young woman idled on her bicycle. When her eyes accidentally fell upon us, she quickly averted her gaze, just as we knew she would.

And then the light turned green.

She stood up on her bike and pedalled confidently away, into the future, I guess, and there was something so sad and beautiful in this, that neither the driver nor I even thought to speak for the rest of the ride.

(Photo credit to the great Lincoln Clarkes)

After being rejected by two guys and then seeing me approaching, he said in a voice that was both inviting and reproachful, “Hey man, don’t be like those guys, why dontcha buy one?” I shook my head, and this brought out his bitterness, “ You’re not in a hurry, man, you’re not doing anything, I can see that!”

He was right, but it still felt like an insult, like it was intended to be an insult, and as I sat down to have a tea on front of the Common, I was now acutely aware that I was no different than any of the other drifters who composed the street at this hour.

A young homeless man with a big, spacey grin on his face and a huge backpack slung over his shoulders came down the sidewalk. Everything made him happy, and when he saw my tea he beamed as if he had just seen a mystical object. I thought he might reach down and take it, but a display bicycle in front of Curbside Cycle caught his eye. Fashionable, with a big, wooden delivery container at the front, it was just sitting there, one of those art objects that got people in off the street to talk to the engaging staff.

The homeless guy just got on this bike, and silently, practically invisibly, turned into traffic and vanished into the city. It was astonishing, this, like something imagined rather than seen. Curious to see how the world would unfold without intervention, I did nothing. Nobody did anything, until one of the employees happened out of the store, noticed the missing bike and had events explained to him by a preoccupied deliveryman, who pointed down the street.

As if created for just such an occasion, two young men rocketed out onto the street from the store and sprinted off after the missing bike. They were built for this. Not for violence or displays of virility, but because their native disposition was to act, to confidently not be a bystander. A pretty girl came out from the store and watched after them, standing on a concrete city planter as if a pedestal and staring off into the horizon after her knights. And there was something beautiful and heartbreaking in this, and in their return five minutes later with the purloined bike, and once again the winners having won, the loser having lost.

Good afternoon, everybody, happy Wednesday! I hope you all enjoyed the poem I posted on Facebook today. It’s about an Amish girl and snow, really sweet. I thought I’d take some questions, but first I want to address something that’s being weighing heavily on my mind.

I have done some things that are contrary to my values. I tortured some folks. I understand why it happened, and I think it’s important that we all remember how lonely, frightened and angry I was feeling after the Twin Towers fell. I was really furious, drinking pretty heavily at the time and the truth is that I wanted nothing more than to lash out. I think many of us were feeling that way, and I know that my partner-in-torturing-folks, Vera, certainly was.

But remember, Vera, who is a patriot, was under tremendous pressure at that time. She was working really hard at two kitchen jobs, unsure about whether to get back with her ex and had just had her bike stolen.

That’s quite a bit to handle, and she was simply doing the best she could under difficult circumstances. However, having said all that, the simple truth is that we did some things that were wrong.

Waterboarding violates my ideals and values.

Nothing, not even finding out where Vera’s stolen bicycle was, and if it was her ex who stole it, is worth violating our values for. Vera and I crossed a line, and this needs to be understood and accepted, and we, as drinking buddies, need to take responsibility so that hopefully we don’t torture any more folks in the future.

Kids, let me say to you, torturing folks is wrong. It’s not what Michael Murray stands for, and it’s my hope that this sad series of incidents over the summers of 2011 and 2012 and 2013, remind us once again, that our character has to be measured not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard.

Fun fact: The name Barbados is derived from the Bearded Fig trees once found in abundance on the island.

Fun fact: There are only three known ghosts on the entire island.

Fun fact: Barbados is the birthplace of Rihanna who lived here until the age of 16.

Fun fact: If a beach hustler with a gold tooth asks you if you want to buy a coconut or a seashell, he might mean cocaine or weed.

Fun fact: Bicyclists in Barbados do not wear helmets and shoes appear optional.

Fun fact: You will only see white women, as if in a movie they once saw, jogging on the beach.

Fun fact: Tiger Woods chose to have his wedding in Barbados in 2004.

Fun fact: Chickens roam as freely on the streets of Barbados as squirrels do in Toronto!

Fun fact: It is embarrassing to have your wife pull you to shore from an undertow when you were pretty sure you didn’t need any help at all, especially when cool looking locals playing dominoes were watching.

Fun fact: The people of Barbados have a long ingrained history of Christian principles.

Fun fact: Homosexuality is illegal in Barbados!

Fun fact: Some women in Barbados dress like superheroes– like those who wear capes and control the weather– for church on Sunday.

Fun fact: The middle-aged British women who sun on the beach all prefer reading crime mysteries to any other genre.

Fun fact: Sand crabs are faster and more perceptive than you’d think.

Fun fact: Finding an artificial flower petal washed-up on a gorgeous, dream beach is entirely dislocating.

Fun fact: The Six Million Dollar man is not a cultural reference widely understood by most Bajans.

Fun fact: Women who look like they might have worked at Coyote Ugly back in the day really enjoy the attention of beach hustlers.

Fun fact: Squid are also known as Seacat in Barbados.

Fun fact: Sometimes it is easy to mistake a night diver’s flashlight exploring the water just beneath the surface for sub-aquatic UFO activity.

Fun fact: In Barbados, one drives on the left side of the road, which is easy to forget, especially if you only have your Learner’s Permit.

Fun fact: Sometimes a monkey, as fast as a demon, will dart in front of your car.

Fun fact: Monkeys are not supernatural and can be killed upon impact with your car.

Fun fact: Monkey deaths are very upsetting.

Fun fact: The monkey face is very human and expressive and it is heartbreaking to see a dying one reach out to you with its little monkey hand on the side of a tropical road.

Fun fact: My wife can’t stop crying and I am pretty sure she now hates me.

I’m a big fan of the Proust Questionnaire that runs in Vanity Fair each month, and I was wondering if you’d answer one of the questions for me. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Christopher Alexander

Dear Mr. Alexander:

This one is easy.

Confidence.

Only assholes are confident. At a certain point in your life, likely when you yourself were an asshole but only suspected rather than knew it (think your 20s), confidence probably seemed like the cardinal virtue. It was the one thing you truly wanted to have, what you hoped beamed out of your eyes like James Bond sex lasers.

For most, confidence is just another manifestation of bullying. It lacks generosity and usually ends up being a self-referential imposition thrust upon the unwelcoming– like an unbidden boner at a dance class.

Don’t get me wrong, self-assurance is good, it’s inward, but confidence needs an audience, and that audience has to be subordinate. The gift of intelligence, for instance, is to help all those around you feel smarter about themselves, not stupider. The confident person, the one so determined to lead, to write the year’s most decorated novel, get a prestigious teaching position and then marry a headstrong and winsome PhD candidate from old money, all the while snickering at the small humourists working on the margins, never sees this. The confident person wants to win, and there can be no winning unless there is also losing. They solve your problems quickly, mathematically, rather than talk to you about them. They wear sunglasses at stupid times. They are crippled and broken inside and you should throw rocks at their BMWs, for that is always, always, their car of choice.

And the holy ones who ride bicycles are even worse.

Please send all letters to Bitter Writer to mm@michaelmurray.ca or post in the comments section of this page.

On Lowther Street, a young mother cycled by, her child towed along behind her in a little trailer. She was so happy, healthy and competent looking that I thought she could put out fires with her mind. She was simply glowing, as if the sunlight was radiating out of her rather than falling upon her, and the fact that her child was actually screaming didn’t seem to diminish the gratitude she had for her life one bit.

On Bloor Street I saw a supremely confident man. He was wearing a perfectly tailored suit and sunglasses, and with his hands tucked deep into his pant pockets he strode down the street chewing gum. His facial expression was fixed, as if posing for unseen photographers, and I looked warmly toward him, trying to get him to acknowledge me, but it was not possible for he was projecting ever outward, letting nothing of the world around him in.

When the dog and I returned home there was a street couple resting on the edge of the pathway to our apartment. He was defeated looking, bearded and hiding beneath a ball cap while she was round, ruddy and loud in appearance. They both had huge knapsacks on their backs. “Hey team!” I said, as I moved past them. They nodded, sheepish, maybe a little defensive, and then inside from my desk I watched through the front window as she secretly passed him a big bottle of whiskey. The amber liquid sloshed in the bottle, was then caught by the sun and for an instant appeared luminous and divine– a small, perfect miracle unfolding before me.

There were a few other people standing around watching the bin.

A woman walking a poodle, a consensus builder, I think, said, “We should call 311!”

Street guy: “You mean 911, lady.”

Woman: “No, 311, it’s the number you call when you have a city related question or see somebody committing graffiti!”

Street guy: “Committing graffiti?”

Woman: “ The garbage bin is city property, they must have a protocol for such an event!”

I decided to show some leadership.

Me: “ No, this isn’t a situation for government intervention, this is a time for us to come together as citizens.”

Woman: “I still think we should call 311.”

Me: “I’m going to put out the goddamn fire.”

( this is the bin that was smoking)

Street guy: “Who made you boss? I think we should just let it burn, man!”

I ignored him, reached into my knapsack and pulled out a bottle of water. I then poured all of it into the burning bin. Nothing happened.

Street Guy: “Nice job, Superman. You just poured your water into the recycling slot instead of the litter slot where the smoke is coming from.”

I put my hands on my hips and sighed.

More smoke was coming out.

Woman: “I’m calling 311.”

I pushed open the litter slot and peered in. I couldn’t see a thing.

Once again I put my hands on my hips and sighed.

Me: “I’m out of water.”

Woman: “I’m taking my dog away, this is becoming a dangerous situation.”

Street guy: “ Dangerous situation? I live on the streets, now that’s a dangerous situation!  This is nothing! Somebody flicked a cigarette butt into a fucking garbage can and now you two think the world is about to end!”

The woman quickly walked her dog away.

“Did you call 311?” I shouted after her.

She did not respond– she was gone, like a ghost.

Me: “I’m going to buy another bottle of water.”

Street guy: “Fuck the one percent. You’ll buy water for a pretend fire but not for me, and then you’ll pour that water down the wrong slot again.”

I went into the local corner store and bought two bottles of water, but when I came out the man who was running the food truck parked in front of the smoking garbage bin was spraying it down with a hose. He looked like an older, angry version of one of the Mario Brothers. When he saw me holding the two bottles of water in my hands that I had just bought he gave me a disdainful, pained look. And then he shook his head, rethinking something, “Come, come, I give you a free slushie, you do the best with what God gave you. What flavour you like?”

“Blue,” I said.

“Blue,” he repeated, “on the house.”

Dear Madeline:

I came across you at age 11 on Monday. You said hi. I said hi back.

You were riding along on your bike, with a possibly pink helmet on and a white, short-sleeved shirt. I was huffing uphill, so you were coasting down. When I looked up, you were smiling at me, smiling about yourself, was my impression. It looked like your eyeteeth had just grown back in after losing the baby ones, so maybe you were even younger than 11. You said hi, perfectly calmly. Made me smile. Pretty sure it was you.

Love,

Elizabeth Tevlin