His pitches were comets from distant and never imagined galaxies. They were rockets, they were bombs, they were terrifying, curving flourishes that made you think you were watching the astonishing dazzle of an alien technology. It was a new kind of physics, one that allowed him to perform stunning feats that lifted us from our lousy, mortal shells,.

He was a blazing fire, a goddamned Demi-God.

Fernandez died in a boating accident on Sunday at the age of 24.

( This is a photograph of Dee Gordon, Jose Fernandez’s teammate. Gordon is known for his speed, not his power, and he is so thin and little that he truly looks like a child out there amongst the gigantic professional athletes. On the first game back after his friend’s death, in his first at bat, he hit a home run, and as he circled the bases he wept like a boy. As he said later in an interview, “I ain’t never hit a ball that far, even in batting practice. I told the boys, ‘If you all don’t believe in God, you better start.’ For that to happen today, we had some help.”)

Three times, Jose attempted to defect from Cuba to the US unsuccessfully, and after each failed attempt he was put in prison where, still a boy, he shared space with hard and dangerous men. In 2007, at the age of 15, he made the crossing successfully, but not before somebody on his boat was washed overboard. Fernandez, operating on the pure instinct of a boy that age, when right and wrong seem clear, and your body, your entire life, is still radiant and unlimited, dove into the night waters to save the person. He had no idea who had been swept into the ocean, and with each stroke he took, an eight-foot wave grabbed him, lifting him up into the shifting darkness above, before splashing down and submerging him again. The person, somewhere before him, bobbing in and out of sight, was his mother. He got to her, told her to hold tight to his left shoulder, asked her not to push down, and slowly swam her back to the boat.

Imagine that.

Imagine doing something so great with your life.

His baseball career was short and beautiful and joyous. It was something to behold, each start an event I got excited for, anticipating it the same way some other people might anticipate a new Game of Thrones episode or a Bruce Springsteen concert.

He was, in a word, awesome, and his death was a tragedy for the communities he lived amongst, and even beyond, even to a 50 year-old white guy living in Toronto who found himself trying to explain to his wife why he’s crying about the death of some pitcher on his fantasy baseball team.

The boat Fernandez was on the night of his death was traveling around 55-60 mph. He was with two of his friends, both around his age, and it was late. It would have been dark, black even– nothing but the feel of water beneath and sky above. Everything beautiful, the wind and spray and stars in his face, infinity spreading out in all directions…And Jose Fernandez, soon to be a father, moving into the future with such velocity, confidence and hard earned momentum… And then the boat hit a rock jetty and all three of the men died on impact.

Just like that.

They would not have known what had happened.

Our lives are so brief.

We’re all speeding through the dark, the beautiful and the damned, alike, each one of us luckier and more vulnerable than we could ever imagine.

The nurses found him elbow deep in the garbage can, sifting through the spent trash as if it were the soil of his native PEI. He was harvesting anything that felt like a potato to his hands,  and then dropping whatever it was on the floor by his hospital bed for later use.

Whether it was a sleeping dream he was having or a waking one no longer mattered. Lost on the rolling seas of dementia, Marcel had passed into the timeless overlap of memory where reality is nothing more than an unbidden chemical spark from deep within the mystery of his receding brain.

Marcel was harmless and never given to rage, and the nurses seemed to love him, treating him more like a pet than a patient. You could see the gentleness within him, the shapes of the men he used to be who now pushed against the diseased exterior: the fair trader, the husband, the guy who was always the first to dive in off the dock, the grandfather who did corny magic tricks and loved fishing.

Now in his mid-nineties, he wandered the corridors half-dressed. Like a poltergeist given form, he drifted in and out of the rooms on the 14th floor as if living all the lives contained therein, with each visit subtly rearranging the small articles he came upon, always setting this new house in order. The expression on his face that must have once been so clear was now lost and uncertain. He seemed blinded, a subterranean creature guided through these alien and unnaturally smooth corridors not by sight but by scent, called to this strange transit by a timeless ocean that only he could discern.

Dear Iceland:

You know who I am.

I am Leonardo DiCaprio.

My resume speaks for itself. I am arguably the greatest actor of my generation (sorry Christian Bale), wealthier and more powerful than many small nations and have a Klout score of 88.2. I can make it rain.

You should know that I am a HUGE fan of your work as a weird island nation and am really impressed with your buzz. You’re punching above your weight, little guy, and you’ve got some great PR people in your corner!

I think that the two of us could do some great work together and with that in mind I’d like to attend the Iceland Writer’s Retreat this year in order to research a role for a film I hope to shoot in Iceland in 2016.

What is Leo DiCaprio’s project you ask?

It is to be the blockbuster of 2017. It’s to be called Written in the Ice, and I will star as an ex-CIA operative who has made a break from the dark world of Black-Ops he mastered in his past. Having been given a new identity, Leonhard Jónsson, now a fisherman and aspiring writer, is living a humble village life in Iceland.

He is crazy talented and charismatic, but he’s suffering a form of PTSD and has writer’s block. However, this lifts when he attends the Iceland Writer’s Conference and meets a quirky, hipster Icelandic woman (hotter and younger than Bjork, but suggesting Bjork) who believes she communicates with elves. They have sex.

Through one of her nocturnal communications with the elves, (she falls into an automatic writing trance but must be naked for it to work) she is given a secret for renewable energy that will save the world from global warming, but before Leonhard and her can get the secret out and save the world, evil government forces and big oil seek to kill them and destroy the information.

It will be the best movie ever, sweep all the awards and be a “Titanic” success for the Iceland tourism, but for me to properly play all the dimensions of Leonhard Jónsson, I will have to attend the Iceland Writer’s Conference, free of all expenses for myself and my staff of 28.

A few other requests:

For the process to properly work, I need to be in the presence of lots of beauty. Please ensure that the class is populated with beautiful women. I cannot stress the importance of this enough.

I will require a beach, and if it is off-season, then I will require that it is artificially heated so it simulates the tropics.

I will need a helicopter and a yacht.

I will only attend 45 minutes of the conference each day and will not be required to “turn in” any work for grading.

Legal immunity from the laws that govern Iceland will also be required.

Nobody is permitted to look directly at my man bun.

Looking forward to working with you, and my lawyers will be in touch shortly!

Regards,

Leo

The seals of Rollo Bay would only allow us to come to within about 20 feet of them before clamoring off into the water. Slightly hurt that they didn’t love and trust us more, we’d sit watching, pleading with our eyes. Alien and mysterious, arrayed in undecipherable formations, they just bobbed in the water “They know so much more than we do,” Rachelle said to me.  And after about an hour, as we motored away, one seal bulleted along with the boat, always watching, a decoy to lead us away from the greater pod now settling back on the sands.

Prince Edward Island is stunningly simple and beautiful, a sort of land that time forgot– like a place in a movie rather than a place in the world. We stayed with some friends at their cottage on Fortune Bay, near Souris, where their families return each year to effortlessly entwine like forest. Children and dogs run freely about in an endless golden summer, while the adults, smiling and just slightly melancholy, watch from beyond.

A sweet man who looked like he belonged on a rum bottle played acoustic guitar in front of the fire singing Farewell to Nova Scotia:

Farewell to Nova Scotia, the sea-bound coast,

Let your mountains dark and dreary be,

For when I am far away, on the briny ocean tossed,

Will you ever hear a sigh or a wish for me?

He sang it slowly, a eulogy rather than the typical jaunty, Irish Rovers kind of celebration. His east coast voice was thick and true, and the song was beautiful and heartbreaking. His wife watched keenly from the sofa, her hands pressed together hoping that he would speed up the tempo, but he didn’t, he didn’t, and somebody’s ghost lingered long after the song was finished.

One night I was speaking with a middle-aged woman about the royal family, and how in spite of it all, she cared.

“They’re not just celebrities, they’re a family and their presence ties them to my family. It’s visceral, organic, and there’s not a woman my age that didn’t weep when Lady Diana died. Oh, the poor thing– beautiful like a fawn– the eating disorders, the unhappiness, and then when she became herself, her death. And so I’ve followed her children, so alone, really, and when I heard William and Kate had their baby on the radio I was so moved I had to pull over and text my sister, and all up and down the highway, other cars were doing exactly the same thing. ”

A beautiful and sophisticated couple from Montreal rent a cottage in the area each year. All of the men have secret crushes on Pierre, while all of the women have secret crushes on Louise. One night they shared a Quebecois song from the 70s with us as we sat out on the steps of the cottage. Louise, wrapped in a blanket, sang along from her perch, while Pierre, in a voice from some film you never forget, translated the words for us, and through this translation the song took on many voices, becoming a history made manifest, a poem still unfolding as the stars wheeled above.

*With thanks to Victoria Bazan and Rob Hyndman, who provided most of the photographs and everything else. ( And to many, many others, too.)

The person on the other end of the connection was just going to get taken advantage of, “fucked-over and left to rot, dammit!!” His manner was so florid and over-the-top that I wondered if he was actually communicating with anyone other than himself, the phone serving merely as the magic portal for his interior dialogues.

On the patio at the Second Cup sat three teenagers. “Did you hear about the cannibal in Miami?” the Asian girl asked. Smiling, she leaned forward and relishing each word she slowly added, “He ate the face right off a guy while he was alive!” A campfire ghost story told over steaming cups of coffee.

Two other teens, both younger, walked toward toward me. One of them was heavy and had the wounded look of a bully-magnet. He was upset that his younger brother was getting his own bedroom at an earlier age than he did. The look of hurt and anger on his face was so sincere that it was both funny and sad, and then after a moment, a little bit scary. Engrossed in his own misery, he passed by this flier posted on a newspaper box:

A little further up the street a Native man was selling dream catchers on the sidewalk. The woman he was talking to looked enthusiastic and hopefully flirtatious. She had a last-call hue to her, and braless beneath her sundress she was hoping that the sunlight was catching in all the right places. The man was looking at her, a little bit pleased with himself, “ Chile?” he responded, “I used to sleep with a couple from Chile a few years ago.”

A skate boarder, cut off by a car, shouted curses and banged his fist on the trunk. The car came to a stop and everybody on the sidewalk slowed down– curiosity, anxiety and excitement now humming like a hydro wire. The window of the car powered down and an open-palmed hand emerged followed by the face of a middle-aged man. “I’m sorry,” he said, “it was my fault. I’m getting old.” The skate boarder, taken aback, wasn’t sure what to do, so he just got back on his board and slipped invisibly into traffic, as if a fish free from the hook, now cutting deep into familiar waters.

A woman who was probably around 50 hadn’t been paying any attention to this little drama and was walking through the cluster of pedestrians stalled on the sidewalk. She had a salon tan and was wearing red jeans and jangly jewelry. Speaking firmly into her phone she said, “I love you. That’s all. I love you.” And then she flipped her phone shut and smiling to herself, or to anybody who cared to notice, walked past the Shopper’s Drug Mart and turned the corner.

Heidi got job at Globe and Mail to write Horoscope for dog. Hope you like!

Aries:

Aries dog hate leash. Think they Alpha of the pack but they not! Just dog with big head. Aries dog often scared of cats. Avoid cats this week. Cat know you just faker.

Taurus:

Taurus dog have great inner strength. Can bark for days at tree. In fact, great gift of Taurus dog is bark, which can be very beautiful if cultivated. Why wait, Taurus dog? Now is time to become great barker always wanted to become. Practice now!

Gemini:

Gemini dog famous for being stupid. All German Shepherds are Gemini. Gemini dog have dual nature and can never make up mind. Chase squirrel, not chase squirrel? Gemini dog don’t know! This week, chase squirrel!!

Cancer:

Cancer dog very good at swimming. This make them very weird dog. Heidi no like cancer dog. This week if cancer dog go swimming will be killed by Snakehead fish. It is written in stars.

Leo:

Leo dog very stupid. Think all great because often tall but really just baby-dog who like squeak toy more than blood of enemies. Leo dog disgust Heidi. This week very bad for Leo dog.

Virgo:

Virgo dog just love to travel! Pee on every tree! Virgo dog also have gift of clairvoyance. Can see future with only brain. This week must trust gift and locate missing child in well, then get many treats!!

Libra:

Libra dog must be very, very careful of cars this coming week. Be wary of squirrels! They follow Satan! Do not chase them to onto the hard black dirt of speed machines! Heidi warn you!

Scorpio:

Scorpio dog scared of growing up! Why Scorpio dog, why? You sit around with chew toy, wearing slave outfit of master! Scorpio dog have no pride, disgust Heidi! Time to start own pack! Stop wasting time on Cute Overload! Not getting any younger!

Sagittarius:

Sagittarius dog born under sign of the archer with Jupiter as ruling planet. Oh, Heidi once loved Doberman named Jupiter! So strong, leap high in air to catch Frisbee, so beautiful to watch that Heidi knew God must exist! Heidi so young and so in love, so much tail wagging! Had great time in bushes with Jupiter but never saw him again. Always wonder about Jupiter, what litter might look like.

Capricorn:

Capricorn dog must ask itself: Are you the hunter or the hunted? What “a dog eat dog world” really mean? Stop barking at clouds and take time to consider these questions. Lucky number 7.

Aquarius:

Aquarius dog really, really like people. Very weak dog lacking in character. Given to fleas, inability to control tail and compulsive gambling. Sort of dog that like Christian rock. Special colour this week Electric Blue.

Pisces:

Pisces is sign of very, very good dog! Very pretty dog! Jesus smile on Pieces dog. All week Pisces dog will have important dreams! Pay attention! Very powerful dog, so go kill squirrel and tear cat to stringy bits. Dig hole always dreamed of. You know fetch no game.