A beautiful woman in a sundress,  her hair still wet from the morning shower, was trying to unlock a door. The sun was falling upon her, the wooden porch, the entire red brick face of the home. She didn’t have the right key and was struggling with the lock, with how her morning was assembling itself, and she tossed her head back in frustration. Tiny, almost imagined droplets of water were cast from her hair and caught in the sunlight, and everything seemed to stop for a moment. 

And then a raccoon, having slipped from night into day, emerged from behind a tree. With his detached animal knowingness he stared directly at us. Jones, astonished, squealed at the miracle, while the raccoon, keeping to the shadows, disappeared back into the night of some protective greenery. Up at the corner, at the mulberry tree and raspberry bushes,  so many berries had been crushed on the sidewalk that they looked like paintball splatters. There were berries hanging above us and growing from the earth beneath us, and it was like we’d passed into a different realm and were now moving through a fertile, green tunnel. As I was picking a raspberry for Jones, a woman sprinted by us toward the subway. Plugged into her iPhone, with a knapsack on her back and a briefcase in one hand, she was ready for the big meeting, ready to present the best version of herself to the world. She was moving fast, like an athlete who still retained her running form from college, days that had recently started to feel further and further away. 

An older man, immaculately dressed in wardrobe that looked from another century, ambled up the street coming to pass a college-aged woman wearing a bright yellow dress. Her face was still new, and she carried with her a pronounced, heaving limp that was mysterious and beautiful and sad, and when she smiled past us, there was the unexpected scent of clove cigarettes and skin cream. A butterfly then appeared and it was a sign. Perhaps a spirit guide, and Jones declared that we must follow it, and so we did– everything around us like still lingering dreams from the previous night, only now beginning to fade into the waking day.

There’s construction up on Dupont, and if you’re walking on the north side of the street and want to avoid it, you need to pass through the entrance to the subway station.

The doors are always a little bit difficult to open, as if vacuum sealed, and when you do a whoosh of warm, subterranean air greets you. It was raining outside on Tuesday, and a tense, somewhat overwhelmed looking student approached. Perhaps she was far from home and lonely, perhaps everywhere she looked she was facing an obstacle, perhaps she hated this life that had called her. Perhaps anything.

Plugged into her iPhone she looked so remote and sad, so invisible in the loveless expanse of city, but when she opened the door a warm gust of air came upon her. She closed her eyes as her hair lifted and blew back. Her face unclenched and a look of relief fell over her, and it was as if she had just travelled back to wherever she had been happiest. And for a moment she was transported, becoming something glowing, before stepping on the escalator and slowly vanishing beneath.

In talking to a doctor about this, it was suggested that I try Mindful Meditation as a way to help ground this impulse, the idea being that I’d learn to live more attentively in the moment and bring some stillness to my life. I should state that that I am the opposite of a Mindful person, by which I mean I barely exist in the moment, possessing an analytic mind that almost exclusively inhabits the future or past, and that slowing down and not thinking—just “being”–is virtually impossible for me.

Before the classes began, I had an orientation session. The waiting room had rugs on the wall, constantly flowing water, plants and little statues of Buddha all over the place, emitting an aggressively, “mindfully” organic ambience. The woman who walked out her office to greet me had a creepy tranquility beaming from her eyes and looked at me with unnerving sincerity. She spoke in an even, robotic voice that never varied. It was creepy, like Nurse Ratched, and it made me nervous, and the more she talked in this manner, the more anxious, almost angry, I felt myself becoming.

Her: What are you doing?

Me: (Hastily putting away my iPhone.) Not being Mindful?

Her: What would a Mindful person be doing?

Me: Experiencing the fabric of the chair I’m sitting on?

Her: That’s good Michael, now follow me.

Me: You know, the music in the waiting room surprises me.

Her: That’s interesting, Michael. What is it about the music that causes you such anxiety?

Me: Well, it doesn’t make me anxious, it was just something I noticed.

Her: (Silently staring back at me, waiting for elaboration.)

Me: With the whole Buddhist thing going on here, all the fountains and enforced serenity, I did not expect AM radio to be playing.

Her: I see. What did you expect?

Me: Maybe Brian Eno, some gentle, distant gongs, perhaps, but certainly not somebody excitedly trying to sell me cars, you know?

Her: Have you started your Happiness Jar?

Me: No, I forgot. I’ve been really busy.

Her: You haven’t been Mindful.

Me: No.

Her; I want you to think of something you’re happy for, write it down on a piece of paper and put it in your Happiness Jar when you get home, okay? Michael, tell me, what are you happy for?

Me: My iPhone.

Her: How about this blue, shining day, this day that just is, are you happy for that?

Me: (An angry sigh, and words now tense) Yes. I am happy for this blue, shining day, dammit.

M: I’m going to assemble our barbeque.

M: Yes, I am.

M: Yes, I’m serious.

M: No, Chris isn’t here. I’m on my own.

M: Really.

M: Just me.

M: Don’t be condescending.

M: All the pieces are spread out before me in the backyard.

M: No, I can’t put them back in the box.

M: Because I threw out the box.

M: And the instructions.

M: I don’t need them. It all looks pretty obvious.

M: I can intuit these things.

M: Yes, like I can intuit the presence of a ghost or when a waitress has a crush on me.

M: You’re very funny.

M: Do we have a screwdriver somewhere?

M: I don’t know what type of screwdriver, one that works, I guess.

M: Really? Screwdrivers have names?

M: Phillip is a funny name for a screwdriver.

M: Are you making that up?

M: Whatever.

M: I found it.

M: Geez, there are a lot of little pieces here.

M: And they all look kind of alike.

M: No.

M: No, I am not going to turn on the webcam.

M: You’ll just have everybody at work watching! I know you!

M: Remember how the pastor said you had to believe in me?

M: Well, he said something like that anyway.

M: Just believe in me, dammit!

M: Oh, hell.

M: Do we have any Band-Aids?

M: Very minor accident.

M: Wasn’t expecting the dog to jump up on me while I was attaching the black thing to the silver thing.

M: Really muscling it, you know, and then Heidi started to lick my face.

M: It all just kind of sprung back into me.

M: Knocked my glasses off.

M: Might have lost part of a filing, too.

M: No.

M: No, I’m not positive, it could have been an old piece of a peppercorn.

M: Actually, I think I would do well on Survivor Island.

M: Probably finish in the top three.

M: Fuck!

M: A squirrel just took off with a small black thing.

M: He’s sitting on the fence with it. Mocking me.

M: Mocking squirrel fled in the face of barking dog.

M: Small black thing now gone.

M: Feeling flushed. Hate global warming.

M: Going to lie down and turn on AC for a bit.

M: Yes, even if AC does contribute to global warming.

M: Return to project later.

This is a recent email that I sent to him:

Slobber!

How’s it hanging, Mister Touchdown?

Things are pretty great in our world, one reason being that Rachelle just introduced me to a new App on my iPhone called Draw Free. It’s way cool, like Pictionary for your phone. You play with a friend, and each one of you gets a word you have to draw out using your finger on the screen of your phone, and the other one has to guess what it is. Here’s my drawing of Bruce Lee, pretty awesome, eh?

We should play sometime. It would be an awesome drinking game and I’d fucking love to play a kind of adult version (NO HOMO) with you!

Anyway, the real reason I’m writing is that an acquaintance of mine was in a library the other day and he wrote this about the experience:

“Hoards of youth in the library today. Dozens & dozens. We’ve got to do something about young people in the library. Will lead to trouble.”

Just thought the Mayor should know.

Keep well, Slobber, keep well!

Michael Murray

Mur:

I am completely fucking in with the Draw Stuff game.

Art was one of my favourite classes back in  school, and my teachers thought I had talent. I used to paint kick ass Star Wars scenes. I did one watercolour of Luke and Princess Leia that was so out of the box they made me see the school psychologist. Miss Hancock. Jesus, she was hot. Boner City, man, Boner City.

I’m glad you brought this library shit to my attention. The last thing we need are libraries jammed full of teens. That would be a shit show. I’m tough on crime, and I’m not going to help create an environment that would make things easier for crazy shooters. Libraries should only have a couple of nerds in them at a time, while the rest of our kids are at football practice, learning how to drive or at home on the Net. We need to shut down the library gravy train.

I’m going to launch a campaign called Library No More. It’s going to be fucking awesome. We’re going to have pro athletes on board and look into the idea of mobile libraries, kind of like the ice cream truck, only with books. We can shut down libraries all over the city, and then service those areas with the library truck once a week.

Dude, can you come down to City Hall so we can talk more about this? And let’s play that Draw thing! Why don’t they have that in bars, anyway, like Karaoke for drawers? Drawaoke, they could call it. Fuck, my brain is on fire with ideas! It’s a Rob Roll!! A Ford Fire!! Gotta cancel all my meetings and stoke the flames!!

Slobber

She looked a little bit like a turtle, and as she stood there on the platform she reached her hand back into the car, which was then received by the hand of a tiny, incredibly ancient Asian man, who also looked a little bit like a turtle. Delicately and with her guidance– his skin as thin as dried paper– he emerged onto the platform like royalty. The woman then let his hand go and hurried off into the day, her lack of sentiment somehow beautiful, even inspiring.

A thin, teenage Indian boy sat beside his mother. Plugged into his iPod, his body language was awkward and secretive, as if attempting to fashion a world that was impenetrable and separate to his square mother. He pulled out a Burger King Whopper from his knapsack and a boyish smile began to accidentally illuminate his face. His mother’s eyes– instinctively falling on her boy– began to smile. He was too skinny and needed to eat more, she thought to herself.

Nearby was a large and pretty young woman in a flesh-coloured dress that she somehow managed to spill both in to and out of. A gold necklace with the name Chloe, written in kind of perfume bottle script, hung from her neck. She had narrow, concentrated eyes and toenails painted the colour of bubble gum. Intensely focused she was playing a game on her iPhone, furiously thumbing the screen, the tip of her tongue protruding just a tad through her teeth.

At Rowe Farms on Bloor Street Rufus Wainwright was idling through the various products they had for sale, lingering on the organic milk. Which one to pick? He couldn’t decide. He couldn’t have seemed any more bored–ennui poured off him like humidity, like song.

An elderly woman was standing in front of me at the cheese shop. I asked her what sort of cheese she thought I should buy. She was utterly thrown by the question, but after she had made her purchase and regained her composure, she took the time to pause before leaving, “ You have a nice cheese, then,” she said to me.

Back on the street a beautiful young woman in a pretty pink dress was being pushed along the sidewalk in a wheelchair. It was so sunny and clear, and the light was catching her hair in ways that made it appear to glow. There was something holy in that moment, and everybody on the sidewalk seemed to understand this. Like pedestrian clutter, we all parted and stepped back as they passed, each one of us smiling and nodding, murmuring our small gratitudes.