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.
“Here daddy, this is your stick and this is mine. We will drag them through the rocks!”
We drag the sticks along the sidewalk. Jones is a shark, I am a laser beam. Earlier he was an astronaut robot dancing to Toots and the Maytals. He is a shape shifter. A shaman. A spirit guide constantly forming and reforming, announcing himself to the world in all his various guises.
A young Asian woman attired in perfectly executed variations of pink passes by. Focused on the phone before her, she does not see us. A ghost floating through the humid day. As real as a cloud. Jones drops his stick and runs into some bushes. He is drawn to every green thing. All the branches, all the leaves, all the flowers, all the replicating versions living within–everything different, everything the same. And he rummages for a minute before emerging with three tiny snail shells cupped in his hands. His eyes so blue, so big.
He knows this is a miracle.
“This one is the daddy, this one is mommy and this one is Jonesy.
Something happens to the weather and it begins to spit and we are beneath a tree, the sound of water drops falling on the leaves above.
Jones wakes up early from a nightmare.
“Hulk was fighting Spiderman and it made me upset and I cried.”
His heart so pure and simple, still so light.
Outside, it is just starting to snow. As I push the stroller up the street tiny snowflakes hit our faces. Impossibly intricate worlds dissolving upon contact. And Jones is happy, his tongue out, trying to catch them all. Joy now, all residue of his nightmare obliterated. The rest of us, the adults, we can travel decades, lifetimes with ours.
A woman passes smartly by. She is fresh, ready for work, for whatever might emerge into her day. This is the best version of herself that she is offering the world, everything still immaculate and hopeful at this hour. She smiles when she sees us, her lipstick perfectly red, perfectly expensive. And Jones points past her at a Santa Claus that sits on a roof, and beneath there is a large sun room attached to the house. Inside there are two nuns, both of them wearing African dresses, all golds and browns and bright white teeth. They are decorating for Christmas and they are happy, smiling and chatting with one another as they hang tinsel from a tree. It was as if somebody were saying, “Here, I give you beauty.” And to see this moment, to imagine the journeys that brought these women to this sweet, almost invisible point in time was a gift that had been laid in our path. Like light flaring unexpectedly before us, an encouragement for this, and all the days to follow.
]]>A cold morning.
The wind down the empty street invigorating, almost inspiring– a reminder that we are of this world, and not the other. Such deep in the bones gratitude in these moments. The day still brand new, still a kind of wilderness. A field of potential stretching endlessly before us. Jones sucks on a green lollipop. His favourite colour on account of the Hulk, the creature his three year old body most yearns for, and above us the sky is changing. The clouds tumbling. The blue of the sky often indistinguishable from the overcast grey, and all around us the stripped trees and withered vegetation. Jones wants to know where all the leaves have gone, and as I am explaining he sees a tree in a yard that’s been decorated for Christmas. He points and shouts, describing the colours and shapes like the miracles they are. And as we look up and through the tree, a cloudbank rolls away from the sun and for a moment we are struck blind by the radiance, and for the rest of our journey ghost lights flicker before us like answered prayers.
]]>There is a task before you.
What do you desire from this task?
Describe what happens.
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I am about to take Jones to daycare.
I want something magical to happen.
I want us to see a UFO or a burning bush, I want an owl to suddenly appear before us, it’s wings spread in revelation.
There is very light snow covering the patches of grass lining the sidewalks. The grass, still green, pokes through it–a kind of stubble. Jones thinks he sees a dragon in a window so we pause to get a better look. We are blocking the sidewalk and I sense a person coming up behind us. I shuffle to the left and mumble an apology. A college-aged woman stops and smiles, stands before us. She is beautiful in the morning. Long autumn hair. She could have stepped out of a magazine. Or a forest. She is smiling, waiting, waiting to help, I realize. I tell her we’re okay and she says something charming and warm, and then vanishes like some spirit in a dream. All the lives she will pass through. And coming toward us is a young man, a student. He is running, loping easily down the street just as natural and easy as a cloud drifting in the sky. I know him. He is the son of a man I went to university with 30 years ago. Suddenly the past opens up on the street, and I am back at McGill with his father, his dad running toward me with a baseball after collecting an errant throw. And then as his son waves at us I am summoned back, watching as he runs beyond us and into his future.
***********************************************
Notice what you feel:
I am walking back from daycare and I have my eyes closed. It is the morning, still fresh, and I am noticing the fine, barely perceptible sparks of rain that fall on my face. It feels like something mysterious and alive, something benevolent. I am noticing my breathing, how I labour with it and have to consciously inhale through the prongs in my nose. I feel the oxygen tank on my back, how it pulls against my body, my muscles tightening, growing tense. I open my eyes, now concerned that I may be veering blindly toward someone on the sidewalk, and I see my street, a ribbon separating the red, brick homes on either side, and the impossible leaves all around them, jewels spilling from a treasure chest, wet and almost shining.
Notice movement:
I am in motion. All of me, everything contained within and without, and all the world around swirling like mists. Everything in constant motion, even the rocks, everything in the process of degrading and reforming, everything sightlessly churning. I push Jones down the street in his stroller and an airplane passes loudly overhead, contrails streaming behind. Jones yells and points, his pupils expanding in the wonder of recognition. A cat slinks out of a bush and looks at us, considers things, and then begins a cautious journey across the street, each step the brushstroke of a great artist. We pass by a woman walking two dogs who pause to rummage through the rubble of some broken jack-o-lanterns on a lawn. They look up at us like the shadows we are, and then we arrive at daycare and a bird, unseen, chirps smally from a tree before emerging and rising beyond us in flight.
]]>This is a newsletter posted to the Super Yacht Community message board after the demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia :
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Recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia have shaken not just the USA, but the global community, too, including those of us who belong to The Super-Yacht Community.
Many of our members have been rattled by the proletariat uprisings in the US and across Europe, and have been wondering whether or not being a white supremacist is really grounds for termination.
First off, everybody should just stay calm and keep in mind that the vast majority of the people in the Super-Yacht Community are job creators, not job leaches (consumers), and so we really don’t have to worry about getting fired.
If you don’t have a job at let’s say, The Bulk Barn, then Black Lives Matters can’t take it away from you for wanting to protect history, can they?
Regardless, The Super-Yacht Community has never been an insensitive or selfish group, and we’re well aware that many of the people who help to sustain us ( Ferrari repairmen, avocado specialists, bikini makers, personal assistants, personal physicians, personal nutritionists, mindfulness coaches, topiarists, helicopter pilots, addiction specialists, nannies, hunting guides and taxidermists, high-end sex workers, off-shore bankers, professional sports teams, etc.), are still vulnerable to loss of employment and social standing due to unfashionable political beliefs.
For instance, supermodel and beloved Super-Yacht Community member Tanya Mityushina has a brother named Dimitri.
(Dimitri is the one on the far right holding the “Nog Ar Nog) shield.
He worked as a DJ at a nightclub in Miami called Waves of Fire. Here, Dimitri enjoyed multiple revenue streams and unprecedented sexual opportunities. This young man was going places, but unfortunately his image was caught on camera while he was exercising his freedom of speech at a demonstration in Virginia and this (as well as his spirited thoughts on eugenics) resulted in in his termination.
In order to combat this lynching, we at the Super-Yacht Community have decided to start a Go Fund Me for Dimitri so that he might buy his own nightclub. It is to be tentatively called Tsunami Inferno, and it will be twice as large as Waves of Fire. We are looking at a target of $25 million to help Tanya’s brother get back up on his feet, so if any of you have an spare properties lying around downtown Miami, please feel free to donate!
On a melancholy note, we within the Super-Yacht Community (no longer officially affiliated with the Illuminati) and are deeply saddened that we recently lost one of our own. Glen Campbell was a great member of our community and a transcendent talent who truly made the world a better place. He will be missed.
Pace et requiem est, Rhinestone Cowboy.
And finally, please remember, if America burns there will be plenty of economic opportunity for our community.
Nisi eliphaz,
The SYC
PS: Also, keep in mind that everybody is welcome aboard Bono’s Super-Yacht “Kingdom Come” for a barbecue next week in Fiji. And yes, Ivanka will be there, so be prepared for a little larger press and military presence than usual.
My most recent invention is a dating service called Hater Mater, where people are paired based on the things they dislike rather than the things that they like.
This is the preliminary questionnaire I have written for people using the App:
1. On a scale of 0-10, how much do you hate the sky?
2. Please choose the stupidest fucking sign in the zodiac.
3. Order these celebrities in the sequence in which you would most want to see them surreally injured in a crossbow incident:
Amy Schumer
The Ikea Monkey
Ethan Hawke
The entire cast from Orange is the New Black
Eric Trump
Adam Driver and Terry Richardson
4. On a scale of 0-10, how much do you hate the ocean?
5. Which Margaret Atwood novel gives you the worst stabbing stomach pain?
6. What do you hate more, squirrels or birds? (Please elaborate)
7. Do your parents hate you more than you hate them, or do you hate them more than they hate you?
8. Is you best friend kind of an asshole?
9. Do you find chopsticks to be infuriating and stupid and pretentious?
10. Do you often find yourself fantasizing about making over-rated Canadian author Margaret Atwood cry?
11. Which part of this passage from a celebrated Margaret Atwood novel do you despise the most?
“Who are you? And I mean really. Who are you?”
My gut tells me that if I tell her right now, in this moment, it will not be well-received. “A friend,” I say, my gaze lowering to her lush mouth and lifting. “And the man who wants to kiss you. Really kiss you. Can I kiss you, Myla?”
“You’re asking?”
“Yes. I’m asking. After all you’ve been through-”
“He hasn’t destroyed me. He hasn’t beaten me and I don’t like that you think he has.”
“I don’t think he’s beaten you.”
“He hasn’t,” she insists. “I’m not giving him that power and damn it, you better not either by treating me like I’m broken and fragile. So kiss me if you’re going to kiss me or let me go, if you don’t want-”
I cup the back of her head, and slant my mouth over hers, my tongue sliding against hers, stroking, caressing, and the taste of her, one part hunger I welcome, but the other part, the torment, I intend to drive away. I deepen the kiss, my hand pressing beneath her tank top, finding warm, soft skin. My fingers splay over her rib cage, while my mind reminds me that no matter how big she talks, she wants this escape for a reason. She has been abused, used, hurt. “
12. “Everybody loves a parade,” true or false?
13. Is Real Estate for fools?
14. When you hear the word “Mindfulness” do you want to build an attack drone or buy a magic killing sword?
15. What do you hate more, having to use a sink or writing with a pen?
16. Which superhero would you most like to beat-up in a fight?
17. Do you hate it when people say, “Good Morning!”
18. Are relationships insanely unrealistic and entirely impossible?
19. On a scale of 1 to 100, how much do you hate non-Spanish speaking people who pronounce Nicaragua as ‘Knee-ah-rah-hah?”
20. If you heard that Margaret Atwood opened a restaurant and that all the sandwiches were named after her poems, would you immediately vomit?
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