The only thing it said was, “Stop.”
Intrigued, I called the number to investigate and see who had left the mysterious message and what it might mean, but was immediately sent to a voicemail box that gave no indication of who, or what, might reside at the receiving end. Not wanting to give up on this communication, I texted back. These are the messages that ensued:
*********************************************************
Unknown Texting Entity: Stop
Me: Stop??? Stop what???
(One day passes)
Me: Can’t stop.
Me: Won’t stop.
Me: Maybe in the name of love. Maybe I will stop in the name of love.
(Another day passes)
Me: No. Changed my mind. Will NOT stop in the name of love.
(Two days pass)
Me: Is this the Instant Pot?
Me: You can see into the future, can’t you, Instant Pot?
Me: Is it true? Is it death by water for me? The Tarot reader said it was, but I’m not sure I believe her. I think she might have been unreliable. She was weird, smelled exactly like a Harveys. Very suspicious.
( One day passes)
Me: And I’m never even in the water.
( One day passes)
Me: My wife told me that the Instant Pot cannot send texts, so sorry. I guess you’re not the Instant Pot.
( One day passes)
Unknown texting entity: Just stop.
Me: STOP WHAT???? YOU’RE KILLING ME HERE!!! JUST KNOCK OFF THE MEAN GIRL BULLSHIT AND TELL ME WHAT IT IS I HAVE TO STOP DOING!!!
Me: Sorry. I don’t normally lose my temper like that.
Me: I haven’t been sleeping well.
Me: Lots on my mind.
( Two days pass)
Me: You’re a demon, aren’t you?
Me: I always knew a demon would pick me to seed.
Me: I knew this would happen. Ever since I read The Amityville Horror when I was eleven.
Me: That’s when I created a portal for you to enter into my life, wasn’t it?
Me: Fuck it!
( One day passes)
Me: Well demon, as you can see into my soul, you know that I’ve wanted to stop for a long time.
Me: The problem is I can’t stop.
Me: That’s why I haven’t been sleeping well.
Me: I. Just. Can’t. Stop.
Me: It’s all I fucking think about.
Unknown Texting Entity: Paske, gen anpil moun ki rebèl, plen diskou sans ak desepsyon, espesyalman sa yo ki nan gwoup la sikonskripsyon. Yo dwe bese, paske yo ap deranje tout kay ki nan kay yo lè yo anseye bagay yo pa ta dwe anseye-e ke pou dedomajman pou malonèt.
Me: Is this you, Jen?
Me: Are you fucking with me?
Me: If so, this is NOT funny.
Me: So not funny.
Me: I just had to take two Lorazepams, you fucker.
(One day passes)
Me: Okay, this is Michael’s wife Rachelle writing now. Listen, if you actually are a demon, why did you start off communicating in english and then switch to whatever you switched to, when you saw my husband start to panic? Why not just continue with english? Seems like a rookie mistake to me.
Me: I think you’re a false prophet!
Me: Demon! It’s Michael here again! The above, the blasphemy about you being a false prophet? That was written by my wife, not me! I would NEVER say that about you!!
Me: Rachelle here, demon. Could you make yourself useful and tell me where Jones put the car keys? And if you’re the reason why the remote is always disappearing, you’d better knock it off. Don’t think I won’t holy water the shit out of this whole place. I will. And I have a Bissel steam cleaner that can suck you right out of the sofa.
It’s a real ghostbuster, so just consider yourself on notice.
]]>It was a cheap, addictive entertainment.
Like Netflix.
Like porn.
Like the buildup to the Super Bowl.
The big event, as far as most media was concerned, was the landfall in Florida. This, it seemed, was the point to which all of our lives were leading, the apocalypse that was sure to prove whatever it was we needed proved. Days, perhaps even weeks before this happened, there was wall to wall coverage promising cataclysm. I learned to fear the “Cone of Uncertainty” and “Life Threatening Winds,” I listened to talking heads as if they were debating some sport, and I watched relentless loops of footage of nature destroying any puny mortal concerns that stood in its path.
And as the hurricane carved out it’s terrible path, each demolished, little island a grim foreshadowing of what was about to happen to over-populated and under-prepared Florida, the hurricane was simultaneously a prophecy of doom and a trailer for a Hollywood disaster film. Almost giddy, each day the broadcasters revealed– in all its punitive majesty– another verse in this Book of Revelations.
The media, of course, profited from our obsessive fear, and turned the volume up as loud as they could. The more clicks the better, and if it was terror and anxiety that ushered in these clicks, so be it. At one point a rain-soaked reporter, bent and staggering against the elements, conducted an urgent interview with a man who had not evacuated. Clearly the reporter was hoping for some Florida Man archetype to emerge from the scrub, a guy who looked like Kid Rock and was armed with a crossbow and some alligator mace, and wasn’t going to let some “lady storm” tell him what to do.
Instead, the reporter got a genius cardiologist, who with astonishing knowledge, detail and reasoning, explained precisely why it was safe to be exactly where he was. He was calm, too, not a trace of panic to him, and he made the reporter look like the very bad actor he was.
That the media manipulates and distorts news events, or even creates disaster porn, is nothing new. When 9/11 took place I literally could not take my eyes off the tv.
It was the most riveting thing I had ever seen, and it was a rating’s sensation. Now, with all our various technologies even further entrenched, this sense of chaos and anxiety has become a permanent, immobilizing fixture of our lives. The media, desperate to make a buck, feed us all the worst case scenarios, whipping us into a frenzy of panicky, dependent consumption.
My level of excitement had reached such heights that when Hurricane Irma finally struck Florida, I was actually disappointed–like I would be if I saw a movie where the trailers were better than the actual product they were selling.
This is completely perverse and backwards, but there you have it.
It is instructive when you’re caught in the swift currents of one of these types of stories to look up beyond your computer screen and out the window.
Remind yourself that we are actually living in the safest time in history.
( https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-10-23/world-actually-safer-ever-and-heres-data-prove )
Go outside, for surely something beautiful will fall to you.
]]>Although it wasn’t total in Toronto, there was about 75% coverage and a friend of ours decided to invite some people over for a picnic and watch it from a blanket spread on the grass.
I never much thought about it, but I suppose eclipses have always made me a little nervous. Beyond the typical anxiety about accidentally looking up at the sun and having your sight destroyed forever (as if a punishment for seeing a Goddess disrobe),
or the fear of suddenly being seized by a compulsion to look up at the sun and having your vision destroyed forever, there is also the certainty that somebody is going to draw an apocalyptic line from the prophecies of Nostradamus to the activities of Donald Trump, always leaving you to wonder, “Is this going to be it, are these my last moments on earth?”
And so there was a slight unease in the city, as if something in our organized, convenient and mechanized lives had been thrown just a bit off kilter. What we had always relied on, what had always remained fixed in our lives, was about to shift out of place.
Looking up through the glasses at the retreating sun was weird. It seemed like clockwork, the perfection of the orbs, the synchronicity, all suggesting something made by design rather than accident, and I found that I could not watch for too long. I suppose I was worried about my eyes, but I think there was something larger to it, as well—I had to look away. It was all too big and mysterious, boundless in all directions.
And on the street passing by were people we’d call over to have a look, and they did. Cars stopped, strangers smiled and people gathered around our little blanket.
It reminded me of a city-wide power failure. Released from the secure and known, people were at a kind of liberty, uninhibited and accessible in ways that Tuesday afternoon Torontonians typically are not.
And as the eclipse reached it’s full extent, you could see that the light in the city had changed. It had grown thinner, like somebody had started to turn the dimmer down, and the air felt cooler and lower to the ground, as if a fog was rolling over the streets. I noticed that I didn’t hear any birds at all, and the recognition of this secondary vanishing made me feel like I was on the edge of something.
And so it was that we watched.
All gathered together, by chance and design, each one having traveled through bad weather and heartbreak, each one certain there would be more to come. And at this spot we took comfort in one another. Each one of us so small– our lives precarious, vulnerable and now, in the midst of something that reached so far beyond us, so very much the same.
You might be astonished, as I was, to discover that there is actually quite a bit about baseball, specifically the Toronto Blue Jays and their playoff run, in it. Here are some of the standout passages:
*************************************************************
Song of Solomon 2:9
Marcus Stroman, my beloved, is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look! Here he comes, leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills!
Mark 14:51
A young man ran out onto the field after the 5th inning wearing nothing but a linen sheet over his naked body; and they seized him. But he pulled free of the linen sheet and escaped naked.
Leviticus 27:20
And after the pitch, which was surely out of the strike zone, was called a strike by the umpire, Josh Donaldson, the great rain maker of the Toronto Blue Jays,
turned to him, “Satan’s servant, if you do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, then in my anger I will be hostile to you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.”
Samuel 23:12
But Edwin took his stand in the midst of the diamond, and Lo, the ball soared deep into the night, and the LORD worked a great victory.
Leviticus 18: 19
Thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness on game day, nor eat too much honey.
Samuel 15:3
This is what the Lord Almighty says… ‘Now go and strike the Texas Rangers and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey and batboy.”
Kings 2:23
Then he went down to Texas from the suburbs of Toronto to see the mighty Jays bring sorrow to the Rangers; and as he was going into the stadium, some youths came from the street and mocked him, and said to him, “BLUE JAYS SUCK! BLUE JAYS SUCK!” So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.
Revelation 12:7
And there was war in the Roger’s Centre. Joey Bats and his angels fought against Rougned Odor, and the Dragon and his angels fought back.
Isaiah 40:31
But they who are patient at the plate and let pass the false strikes of Ranger serpent Yu Darvish,
the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary.
Song of Solomon 2:3
Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is Troy Tulowitzki among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Finally have the night to myself to work on my novel. The window’s open, I’m drinking Jack and Coke and the KKKat is purring on my lap. #LifeIsGoodButForTheBlacksRuiningAmerica
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Kolby, a sensitive, young White Supremacist and gifted tattoo artist is the main character.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Lost vision in his left eye due to a hunting accident and wears an eye patch. Some say this is when he got “the gift.”
@KuKluxKlanUSA: He goes into a trance whenever he’s inking, and the tattoo he creates foretells the future of the person who gets it. It dooms them to their fate!
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Working title: White Tattoo Prophet.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Minorities are ruining America!!!
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Taco Tuesday’s at Pigglys!! $2 each!!
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Ate 19 of ‘em. No one else even close. #WhitePride!!
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Stained my hood a bit, but it was worth it.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Hood is very hot, especially when engaged in competitive eating.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Will take it up at next meeting, as I know I’m not alone in this observation.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Aryan Brotherhood will do anything to KKKeep America pure!!!
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Not afraid to stain our hoods for the cause! #AmeriKKAForever!!!
@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA Are you sure tacos are Mexican????
@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA Thought for sure they were American.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA Really? Kind of like Mexican pizza pockets, I guess.
@KukluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA Well, shoot.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Illegal, lazy, dope dealing Mexicans trying to take over America with their sneaky and delicious food. FIGHT BACK AMERIKKKA!!
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Salma Hayek would make a good sex slave. #SubjugateTheirWomen!
@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA My cousin was a sex slave for two years. Said it wasn’t so bad.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA: Said the food was pretty good and she had cable.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA: No, I’m still single.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA: Tried a few dating sites but nothing worked. Considering Tinder.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA: “Looking for sweet girl who’s also not afraid to die for the cause!!” This is my profile pic.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA: Yeah, thanks bud, I’m sure it’ll work out, too!
@KuKluxKlanUSA: The White Brotherhood will never die!!
@KuKluxKlanUSA: I really do hate the black race, but I have to say, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is one impressive man.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Kind of wish he was white and had an incoherent rage against all minorities. That would be cool.
@KuKluxKlanUSA: I mean, if he just applied his intellect to hate and violence instead of astrophysics, he could really make something of himself, you know?
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Also wish Will Smith was white! What an actor!!
@KuKluxKlanUSA: And Denzel. Denzel rules. (That stare. OMG!)
@KuKluxKlanUSA: Babe (White!) of the week:
@KuKluxKlanUSA: KKKristmas is coming up soon! Don’t forget to pick up your Ladies of the KKK Kalendar! All proceeds go to hate.
Thin and trembling, he had a big, bushy grey beard and a pitiless look that suggested a hard, unforgiving life. Anti-social and hostile, he shot me a dismissive look when I was first wheeled into the room. “Goddamn it, “ he rasped at the nurse, turning his body away from me as if disgusted, “ what have you done with Carole? I want Carole, not this guy!” In spite of his fulminating, it was clear that he was not used to getting his way, and without further event he carried his disappointment back behind the separating curtain to his small bed.
Suffering a very serious respiratory disease, each breath was a battle for him, his life reduced to a war that he struggled angrily through everyday. His middle-aged children, bearing Tim Horton’s coffee, appeared every morning when visiting hours began and left much later at night. They talked quietly but without tenderness, as if jockeying for position as their father neared death, and when the nurses walked out of the room they whispered racist jokes to one another. It seemed a display of solidarity rather than love, and embedded within was the unspoken and unsentimental hope for reward.
It’s spooky at night in the hospital. The directionless sound of heavy equipment rolling down the hallway echoes off the walls, and suddenly, startling you from sleep, nurses wordlessly appear, their flashlight beams passing over unfamiliar walls like spectres. The rooms here, they’re not haunted by the past, but by the present.
And in this nocturnal climate, the man changed. He refused to sleep, choosing instead to sit in a chair at the end of his bed, breathing heavily and staring hard. Frightened of dying, of the darkness of night, he talked to himself until dawn, his unknowable interiors made briefly audible, cryptic fragments shaken loose from his speeding mind:
That dirty slut is going to end up in jail.
I’ll be back in the mud again.
There are only four directions in this world.
The meadows will never get greener.
And sometimes he’d move about. Bent like a terrifying hieroglyph or a primitive cave painting, he’d tilt into view, looming prophetically, and existing between worlds he’d stare furiously through me, holding fast to the small things that remained to him before eternity swallowed him whole.
]]>
“Leon, C’mere, dammit! I’m talking to you, you get your ass over here NOW!!”
Leon, who was leashed but still in effortless control, didn’t seem in the least intimidated or concerned by her threats and continued to poke about beneath the benches in the park. The woman, part of her face frozen by paralysis, the rest twisting in fury, was yanking at the leash with her one good arm from a wheelchair. “Come here you dirty bastard! I’m not telling you again! You won’t be nothing but a ghost when I’m done!” The dog would not give, and this woman– so angry and wounded– was like some horrible avatar burning through the middle of the summer day, and it was just too much, so the people walking by averted their gazes, as if the possibility of something so ugly, true and near, so heart-breaking, did not exist at all.
Live, his songs become crazed, feral creatures. Having broken free of their studio imposed straightjackets, every piece he plays becomes bloodthirsty, an unpredictable, ever escalating apocalypse unto itself. Honest to God, his shows are as much of an assault as they are anything else, and you always feel a little bit like you’ve just born witness to a terrible crime.
Bent and crouched low at the edge of the stage, his black-clad arms waving and pointing to the summoned crowd, Cave was a spidery prophet. The stories he imparted all carried danger and urgency, more condemnation than warning. It was primitive, as if shadows of incredible passion and horror were being cast angrily upon the wall, and there was an utterly brilliant, almost supernatural feeling to it all.
Behind him and singing in support of all this was a small choir assembled from grade 5 and 6 students at a public school here in Toronto. There’s really no conceivable way that they could have known anything about Nick Cave or had a clue what they’d gotten themselves in for when they signed up to sing with some pop star at a downtown concert hall, and I could not stop imagining what was going through their heads. It must have been traumatic and nightmare-inducing, like seeing a train, gloriously in flames, skidding off the tracks and shuddering toward you at a million miles an hour, while you, pitifully, tried to pedal away on your bicycle.
Astonishing, just astonishing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdau-45Rpxc
(Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds performing Stagger Lee in Montreal March 22, 2013)
(My brief 10-second video of him performing the same song in Toronto the next night. Note the bad seats.)
]]>
I have to say, never in my life have I seen such a dense concentration of hipsters. Children, less than two years old, wore vintage Star Wars t-shirts. Facial hair was artful and complicated, with moustaches waxed to fine, compelling points– as if they were trying to win arguments. Every couple we came across seemed to share a small dog and a colourful sleeve of tattoos that suggested a fondness for roller derby.
The event was actually quite small, existing within a chain link fence that contained no more than 20 tables, and as we walked around and around in circles, it felt very much like being at a hipster Merry-Go-Round. All looking like subtle variations of one another, we trudged around and around, picking up the same tired retro bric-a-brac that we always picked up, and then, unimpressed, putting it back down. Part of this repetitive carnival vibe was likely due to a big silver Airstream Yacht that sat there like the main attraction.
Inside this recreational vehicle was a fortuneteller. She was reading Tarot Cards and there was a small, nervous, two-person lineup outside. A young, Indian man with a meticulously ordered mustache, a scarf wrapped fashionably around his neck and t-shirt depicting a robot with antlers, chewed his fingernails. Behind him was a fabulous black guy dressed sharply in white. He was wearing a Bowler hat that was tilted so precariously, so precisely, that if he were to have moved an inch or relaxed his posture just a little bit, it would have surely fallen off.
It was difficult to ascertain what truth they hoped might be revealed to them inside the RV, but all of the lives on the grounds there, so studiously documented on Instagram and unfurling before friends in frenzies of vinyl proofs, felt static, as if everybody was now trapped between irony and discovery, fated by some Greek God to walk the same circuit again and again and again.
]]>