Everything is heavy and still, but on occasion a gust of wind brings the scent of water. From the lake, from the sky, from places unimaginable. This water that will soon rain down upon the entire steaming city. This water from which we are nourished, from which we are comprised, from which we were born. How old is it? Is it forever?

Jones hands me a stick.

, you know, the spot where you see www.michaelmurray.ca and type in “ Men can” followed by a space, the autofill will provide you with these five suggestions:

Men can get pregnant
Men can have babies
Men can have babies now
Men can have periods
Men can cook

There’s always one just-past-middle-aged man– usually with long grey hair pulled back into a pony tail or up into a samurai knot– executing some interpretation of a martial art using a huge wooden stick or some such. Whenever I see one of these men I am forced to imagine their apartment, and I do not like that. I do not like the fabrics and odours and screensavers

that puts in my head, and so I’ve always kept a kind of hostile distance from them.

Our park, the park where we take our son Jones to play every day, has one of these guys. He is pudgy, dresses all in black, and looks like somebody whose life had been taken over by Columbine ninja fantasies a long time ago.

As such, I have not yet chatted with him, and have chosen instead to make fun of him behind his back. However, since my completion of pulmonary rehabilitation I have hired a personal trainer and I now work-out in this park, which brings me in direct competition with the Columbine ninja for the creepiest man in the park. Yesterday, he was stationed, with his collection of magic sticks, by the bench where I now work out.

This is the conversation that took place:

Me: Hey there, what are you up to!?

Columbine Ninja: ( Continues his maneuvers without saying a word.)

Me: I’m about to work-out. Here. By this bench. This one here. Is that okay with you?

Columbine Ninja: (Raises one hand to shush me)

Me: (Begins to pull out resistance bands from a Shopper’s Drug Mart bag)

Columbine Ninja: You must never disturb a warrior when he is training.

Me: Are you a warrior?

Columbine Ninja: ( Does a maneuver with his big stick, strikes the branch of a tree)

Me: Nice.

Columbine Ninja: The true warrior is invisible to those who cannot see.

Me: Yes, of course, I should have known that.

Columbine Ninja: Not all who wander are lost.

Me: Are you a part-time life coach or something?

Columbine Ninja: I am a student, not the master.

Me: Uber driver?

Columbine Ninja: I am a student of Kenjutsu!

Me: I think you work at a weed dispensary.

Columbine Ninja: Anata wa seik? shite imasu.

Me: What was that, Klingon? That doesn’t impress me in the least.

Columbine Ninja: I wonder why it is that you have trouble breathing? Is it because you fear life? I think you are a scared man. In Kenjutsu they teach you how to control your breathing, how to master your fear before it masters you!

Me: I only have one lung.

Columbine Ninja: And all you need in order to live a failed life is one excuse.

And then the Columbine Ninja just walked away and I commenced the most melancholy work-out in history.

Excellent form, though.

These are the text messages my wife sent to me the other day:

*********************************

Rachelle: How’s the pulmonary rehab going, my love?

Rachelle: Oh, I’m so glad to hear that you’re dominating the warm-up exercises!

Rachelle: Yes, you are a natural leader, it’s one hundred percent true!

Rachelle: What’s The Flower Pot?

Rachelle: I see.

Rachelle: So you sit in a chair, and then move one of your legs as if you were lifting it over a flower pot?

Rachelle: What a strange name for an exercise!

Rachelle: Well, I don’t know. Maybe something a little more macho, something like The Grizzly Stomp or The Sumo Crush.

Rachelle: I like The Grizzly Stomp, too. You should write that down and put it in the Suggestion Box.

Rachelle: You already suggested a Cosplay night! Interesting idea, Pickle, but aren’t all the other residents elderly?

Rachelle: I see, that’s good thinking on your part, you can make your oxygen tanks look like rocket packs!

Rachelle: You are very creative, it’s true, and as you say, you are the Wayne Gretzky of The Flower Pot.

Rachelle: Really? The physiotherapist asked you to lead the class yesterday?! How flattering!

Rachelle: Yes, I am sure it was a great honour that everybody else was bitterly jealous of! I’m curious, did you get to choose the music for the work-out?

Rachelle: That’s great! Who did you pick?

Rachelle: Oh.

Rachelle: Well, it just seems like an odd choice.

Rachelle: I didn’t know, Tori Amos just seems weird to me. Complicated, annoying.

Rachelle: Sorry. I am trying to encourage and support you, my love.

Rachelle: Really?

Rachelle: Right in the middle of the stretch she said you had a very small flower pot?!

Rachelle: OMG, That’s hilarious!

Rachelle: I mean nasty, just nasty.

Rachelle: 90 is old, and aging can make people mean.

Rachelle: You’re probably right, that smart-alecky Yvette lady likely had dementia.

Rachelle: Because it’s not your class, honey.

Rachelle: That’s why they wouldn’t let you “expel her from your program.”

Rachelle: Well, I’m glad you put her on notice, anyway, and sorry that everybody is now calling you The Little Flower Pot.

Rachelle: Think of it being like Dear Leader, a term of respect and fear.

Rachelle: Well of course I miss you terribly, but I’m struggling along. Even had a little party last night to fight the loneliness.

Rachelle: Probably less than 25 people, I don’t remember.

Rachelle: He might have been there, not positive.

Rachelle: Oh, you’ll get a kick out of this!

Rachelle: He brought his Porsche over the other day to take Jones for a ride, and Jones just loved it! I’ve never seen him happier! It’s astonishing Pierre doesn’t have any kids because he is just SO amazing with them!!

Rachelle: Yes, you’re amazing with Jones, too.

Rachelle: Sure Jones misses you.

Rachelle: Well, he’s still not really talking yet, so he missing you in a kind of subconscious way, I guess, but I can tell that he really does miss you!!

Rachelle: Tonight?

Rachelle: Oh, Steve needed to take somebody to the magazine awards at some fancy hotel and Jen is out of town, so I have to go as his date. Barf.

Rachelle: He was nominated in two different comedy writing categories.

Rachelle: It is a shame none of your work was nominated!

Rachelle: No, I have no idea why Steve won’t accept your Facebook friendship.

Rachelle: The world is mysterious.

Rachelle: Never mind that though, what are you up to tonight, my Little Flower Pot?

Rachelle: Fish stick night! Yum!

Rachelle: You’re my favourite fish stick, you know.

Rachelle: It’s true.

Rachelle: Don’t ever doubt that!

Rachelle: You will always be my favourite fish stick! xo

1:40 P.M. EDT

MR. SPICER: Good afternoon. First off, yes, it’s true. Arby’s will officially be designated “America’s Roast Beef, Yes Sir!” After expert negotiations, President Trump will be signing an executive order this afternoon that will establish a formal marketing partnership between Arby’s and the United States of America. We hope and expect that this will prove mutually beneficial to both parties for years to come.

On a personal note I want to say that I worked at an Arby’s when I was a teenager growing up in Rhode Island back in the 80’s. We used to have quite a few vacationing gays come in looking for an affordable and delicious meal, and although most people were scared of their disease, I never had a problem with them.

I found them to be a very tidy people. You could always tell which table they’d been eating at because it was just so clean.

Anyhow, Arby’s makes the best sandwich in America, as President Trump knows, and if you’re ever driving by an Arby’s you should stop and try one of their Roast Beef Gyro’s.

The classic thinly sliced roast beef is topped with lettuce, onions and tomatoes, cool creamy tzatziki sauce, and authentic Greek seasonings all hugged by a warm pita. Nothing says “I am an adventurous eater and interesting person” like eating a gyro at Arby’s.

$4.29.

A great deal. The kind of deal that only President Donald Trump could negotiate for America.

You’d be an idiot not to buy that gyro.

A real, goddamned idiot.

On another note, drug abuse has crippled communities across this nation. In 2015, more than 52,000 Americans — that’s 144 people a day — died from a drug overdose. And a lot of those people were white. Keep in mind that this all happened under Barack Obama’s watch. I’m not saying he orchestrated this White Holocaust– although we have received a variety of intelligence reports indicating that might be the case– I’m just pointing out the facts so that you can make up your own minds.

Okay press monkeys, let’s play a game.

I want you now to imagine that terrorists killed 144 predominately white Americans each day. Imagine them in their orange jumpers. On fire in cages and stuff.

If that was the case there wouldn’t be a terrorist left on the planet under this administration. We would have killed them all. And their families. Even their pitiful animals. But as you know, you can’t always drop a bomb on your problems, perhaps even more so when those problems belong to your own people, and so President Trump is working on a joint initiative with Pfizer to create a new and safer opiate for all the despairing Americans who lost their manufacturing jobs to illegals. Pfizer, an exemplary company with revenues exceeding 50 billion per year, will be familiar to many of you in the press corps because you gobble Zoloft and Viagra like candy.

If it wasn’t for Pfizer, half of you would be on the street.

In other new, President Trump has Tweeted Direct Messages to the King of Saudi Arabia, the Prime Minister of Japan and the Acting President of South Korea concerning the United States’ military strike on the airfield in Syria, and oh, look, there’s Ivanka!

What a vision in a floral print!

Stunning, just stunning.

That Ivanka Trump line is really something else!

Let’s give her a round of applause!

Okay, we’ve run out of time and the questions will have to wait for another time! Please help yourself to the Arby’s spread at the back of the room! Thank you all very much for attending!

Friends;

I am sorry for any broken limbs and shattered teeth that my enthusiasms may have caused. It was not my intention to hurt any of you, and you should know that Father Russia loves all of his children.

I must thank you very much for this training session. I needed it. Sometimes, the stresses of a global Alpha can be intense. Sometimes, you must break something or you yourself will be broken!

(Waits for applause to subside)

A man does not have it easy in this world, let me tell you.

But I am not here to speak of the unknowable hardships and cruelties a man such as myself must endure. No, I am here to congratulate Ezio Gamba for the powerful and autocratic judo lessons he has dispensed to the national team! He has made you all super hardcore, and that is the Russian way!

We are too hardcore for the Americans!
(Cheering)

We are too hardcore for the Japanese!
(Cheering)

We are too hardcore all the feminine states of Europe!
(Cheering)

We are hardcore!!
(Waits for applause to subside)

And Ezio, much of that is due to you, and I thank you.

I will tell you something you would not guess, but it is not conducting surveillance operations or gassing protestors where I feel most at home.

No, it is on the judo Tatami. It is there where I am my powerful true self.

I am a master of all flesh in the Tatami. There, in a tight embrace, I can unleash the unmeasured furies of my passion!

When I was a young and confused KGB agent, it was judo that provided me with a safe spot. It was there I could be my masculine self and share my physical feelings with other men, but elders grew concerned at the disorienting and often unsettling intimacies of the matches, and so they set me up to fight with Lyudmila.

She was very mannish looking and a formidable opponent. I did not know she was of the females until much later, after much rough combat. We were eventually paired in matrimony and an off-spring was made in the dark of the Russian night.

The American song Islands In The Stream played, I remember.

Yekaterina.

A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.

Our daughter, it is the one good thing Lyudmila and I did together. She is better than any judo moves we ever made, and I am not ashamed to say I would kill with my hands any man who would think to violate her with his primitive heterosexual urges.

No longer paired with Lyudmila, I was free to practice judo with whomever I liked, and those were glorious times for Vlad. Such beautiful judo! Truly, it is the sport of love.

Anyway, my old female partner has gone on to marry another man, a man 20 years younger than her! How about that?

I could have him killed, but I will not. He will suffer with Lyudmila as I suffered with Lyudmila, and I will continue to be the most powerful Alpha in the world, enjoying judo with as many partners as I choose!

You must eat the pain, comrades!!!

Long live Russia, and long live judo!!

For years there’s been an obdurate, official position that there is to be no negotiating with terrorists. Negotiation, or worse, capitulation would lead to utter catastrophe and societal ruination.

It was a mantra that echoed, even boomed in our heads, and to so much as question it was to let the terrorists win. It’s all a little bit counter-intuitive, because on an personal level, we all know that if somebody we loved were taken hostage, we would negotiate, doing whatever we could to bring that light safely back into our lives. When the stakes are intimate and truly meaningful to us, we only care about the results, not the precedent we’re setting in achieving that result.

In acquiescing to the Guardians of Peace demands and agreeing not to release the movie The Interview, Sony was acting in self-interest.

They were not concerned with freedom of speech or following the US government’s rulebook on dealing with terrorists, or even protecting the vulnerable part-time employees who’d be working in the threatened cinemas over Christmas, or anything else that wasn’t a part of their bottom line.

A corporation is not a moral agency, and it exists for the singular purpose of making money, and whatever serves that interest, whether it’s long-term or short-term, serves the corporation. In tatters and reeling, their internal system almost destroyed, Sony made a rational, tactical decision. Put the movie on the shelf for now and see how it all played out.

What’s interesting is that when money, when the unencumbered progress of private enterprise was put in peril, objectives were met. Now, all sorts of smoke and mirrors surround this, but it reduces to the valuation of corporations over actual humans.

One could argue that the dominant species on the planet are actually corporations. Single-minded and constantly feeding, they’re boundless, traversing and devouring landscapes and cultures like a predatory science fiction behemoth. They must feed, and in so doing behave in a very reptilian, even predictable (if strategic) fashion. Although they may, very weirdly, have some of the same rights and responsibilities as human beings, they’re not human beings and don’t serve the broad interests of the species—they’re just seeking to metastasize, and any concessions that are made to modernity, social progress or environmental stewardship, for instance, are done purely to ensure they’re continuing to maximize profit within an evoloving host.

The lesson to learn here is that when an economic system is disordered, as was Sony’s, then a meaningful tactical response was achieved. Our hearts might break to see hostages taken in a coffee shop in Sydney or journalists executed in a faraway desert, but the terrorist’s goals are not achieved until what really matters is threatened, and that is the free market. Corporations, massive, powerful and ubiquitous, perhaps more powerful than nations, remind me of dinosaurs, and the cyber attacks now threatening them are a virus to which they might be vulnerable, and could ultimately cripple the entire species.

And so for first-time director Aaron Wilson, who debuted his film Canopy at the festival, it must have been a validating and exciting experience. The movie has a very simple premise. An Australian pilot gets shot down while battling the Japanese over Singapore and improbably bonds with a Chinese soldier similarly trying to elude capture.

The central characters of this film—which is almost devoid of dialogue—aren’t really the actors playing the roles, but the jungle in which the story unfolds and the hyper-accented soundscape that surrounds them. Wilson is trying to do something different here, but in so doing Canopy comes across as more of a concept of a film than a film itself, an interesting idea in theory, but in practice maybe not so much.

It’s impossible to see this movie and not think of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red line.

I don’t think that there’s a film on the planet that compares well to it, and Canopy is no exception. Although Canopy is beautiful to look at, it never establishes an emotional grip on the audience, relying too heavily on the mechanisms of filmmaking rather than the film itself. For instance, after a spell, the wordlessness of the movie becomes burdensome, a cinematic imposition rather than an organic necessity of circumstance and disparate languages. Clearly, the director wants us keenly focused on the canopy of sound covering the silent action, but he points us so intentionally in this direction it’s as if we’re following a neon-signs-lit detour route.  The acoustics swiftly become a clumsy, almost naive contrivance that is master rather than servant to the film, pulling us away rather than in.

Perhaps if the actors were more expressive or physically compelling, the director’s reach wouldn’t have so exceeded his grasp. As it is, in spite of its lyrical flourishes and allusive passages, the movie has a constructed, almost humid weight. As we move from one poetic war trope to the next, as if in some theme park yet to be invented, Canopy does little more than ask you to like it.

When it ended, the near-full house applauded, as if in encouragement, it seemed, rather than appreciation. The director and his key people took the floor, ready for a Q & A, and the last amongst them to do so was the lead actor, Khan Chittenden. As is often the case, he was smaller and more vulnerable than you would have expected after having just seen him up there on the giant screen, and as he youthfully bounded down from his seat, he threw up an arm to the crowd, he too hoping for more than what was received.

We sat in the third row of this IMAX 3D spectacle, and I have to say it was the most concussive, punishing movie experience I have ever had.  We were so close to the screen that we couldn’t actually see the screen, and appreciating the movie was more of a physical challenge than an aesthetic one. Strictly confined within the conventions of the genre, Pacific Rim was a living, evolving piece of abstract expressionism that came screaming out at us like some terrible flying monkey.  We could only see gestures within the film– sound, colour and velocity—all swirling and spitting before us, but never did we have a clear, overview of things as they unfolded.

Of course, this didn’t really matter, because we knew exactly what was taking place. Pacific Rim is an action flick, a B movie writ monstrously large, and it followed the formula these movies always follow. This genre is now so much a part of me that I feel like it’s coded into my DNA, my understanding instinctive and unmediated rather than the product of conscious, cognitive functions, if that makes any sense.

Nonetheless, it was still a very disorienting experience ( I wanted nothing more than to inhabit a Brian Eno composition while there), and not simply because of the shock and awe campaign detonating around  us. Pacific Rim (note the name) was a movie designed for a global audience rather than a North American one. The film was so flat and one-dimensional that it was little more than a series of symbols and cues. There was no nuance or complexity, and this was intentional, because it’s built to travel, to be easily transferrable to other languages and cultures. The primary human characters in it are a diverse array of ethnicities, and the world represented a global, cultural mash-up. You simply don’t have to speak the language in which the movie is made to understand exactly what’s going on, in fact, you might even be better served if you didn’t.

For a movie that was all about fighting, there was no real violence in it, and it was more like a gigantic puppet show than a graphic representation of what a robot three times the size of a skyscraper fighting a massive alien might be like. It was a kid’s movie, meant to move merchandize and launch a franchise that will have global appeal. Last year, I think the top 10 top grossing films in North America were all sequels or prequels. Losing market share to piracy and revitalized cable television, original one-off movies that aspire to art are not where the bottom line lives, and the Hollywood arrow no longer flies no toward the heart of North America, but is now launched like a volley out toward the rest of the world, where all the money and people actually live.

This is my response:

“ What a wonderful and interesting opportunity for a cultural exchange! I think that Rachelle and I would be very keen in such an arrangement, as working at home alone as freelance writer while Rachelle is off at work each day, has left me lonely as I have nothing to keep me company but my masculine energy.  I sure could use somebody to talk to, and as you know, I really do like to talk! All sorts of talk, in fact, and you should know I would be really happy to engage in role-playing talk if it were to help Emiko with her English!

Does Emiko like anime and manga? I do.

And shy is cute. But tell me, does shy also mean submissive? Although I love Japanese culture and the women who populate it, I have to admit that I am not up on a lot of the culture nuances. I think submissive is a good quality, as well as a complete lack of confidence and a slightly frightened deference to age.

As you know, Rachelle and I have a Miniature Dachshund named Heidi. All the Japanese girls go crazy when they see me walking her on Bloor. They run over in beautiful Asian waves, squealing and bowing and cooing and stroking our dog with their curious fingers, and it’s so beautiful I feel like I’m in a heavenly nest made entirely of Japanese girls! Anyhow, what I mean to say is that I am sure Emiko (can I call her Iko?) would just love her. However, our dog does not obey me at all, nobody does, and it would be really great if Iko was obedient in nature. (Not a condition, just a statement.)

We have a spare bedroom, but there is no door on it, and you have to pass through that room in order to get to our one washroom. I make several trips to the bathroom each night, but I am quiet and very discreet, so I’m sure that Iko would have no problem with my shadowy, forbidden, paternal presence.

In shorts (Ha! I meant to write in short!) I think we have a perfect set-up for Iko and would very much look forward to tutoring her over the summer!

Let us know if this works for you folks!

Michael Murray