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.
It’s really just a big sandbox at our local park, but there are boulders in it and the children had carved little channels out of the dirt and filled them with water so that they’d become mysterious and winding rivers. It was the first warm day of spring, the first truly beautiful day after a very long winter, and Jones could not have been happier.
His smile first emerges in his eyes, quickly spreading from there into a wide, unprotected grin in which every tooth is made visible. Standing like that for a moment, he then threw his arms up and squealed– his joy a secret that must be shared—and began racing about Spooky Island in delighted circles. Our radiant beast, so fresh and hungry, so nourished by each day.
And not far away some other child’s parent was blowing soap bubbles. Catching the light and glistening, the undulating bubbles rose up and drifted just out of the reach of the children beneath. In their pursuit they sounded like chirping birds at a feeding, each one amazed by the miraculous gifts appearing around them.
In that moment it was hard to imagine anything more beautiful than what was before us.
Just a few hours earlier, in a different part of the city, a Van Attack had killed 10 people and left even more injured, and people were feeling weird. But nobody was talking about it at the park, nobody was on their smartphone looking for the latest update. No, it was as if a spell had been cast and all of us there were suspended within some magic bubble, one that existed beyond the reach of the actual. We spoke only of the world we stood upon, the world we could see, hear and touch. Anything else was too much, or perhaps even a sin, and so together we became the simple creatures we needed to be, and stood in the light for as long as we could before taking leave and returning back to the worlds from which we came.
]]>Each person sitting there was alone, each one with an empty seat on either side of them. They had arranged themselves in such a way as to suggest that human contact, or even just the proximity of another person, was a potential catastrophe, and that they might shatter into a million pieces if a stranger’s eyes, voice or touch happened to fall upon them. And so they all sat there– the respectful, fearful space between them somehow more visible than not– and across from them was a wall-mounted TV broadcasting the news of the day, but nobody was watching. Instead, people were looking down, focused on the phones in their hands and the transportive, less mortal moments it provided.
To what worlds, be they small or large or imaginary, were they journeying?
To whom were they returning?
And then I was called forth to have my test done. Stripped to the waist, I lay on a cot while the technician began an ultrasound of my heart. Music, as if from across a body of water, played faint and mysterious in the background. My eyes closed, I lay there just as still as a prayer. She spoke softly, when she spoke, and her touch was so very tender, so holy. The test proved a little bit challenging, and our ams and torsos were entangled like it was a game of Twister so that we could feel one another’s body rise and fall with each breath. It was so very intimate and so very lonely, and in that strange intersection I wanted her to put down her instruments and just hold me. I wanted her to tell me that Yes, everything was going to be okay, and to see the truth of this in her warm, unblinking eyes, and thus blessed, be released into the beautiful life from which I came.
Being generous and broad of heart, Rachelle has given access to our account to members of her family so that they can piggyback on our subscription and not have to pay to use the service.
What follows are the texts I received from my wife when I brought up the subject last week:
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Rachelle: Oh, if it says the account is already in use when you try to watch, it means that someone in my family is probably watching.
Rachelle: We gave them access to our Netflix, remember?
Rachelle: Look, they do a MILLION things for us, you can just wait half an hour before you watch Arrow, okay?
Rachelle: I know you relate to the lead in Arrow. I know.
Rachelle: Yes, you got an arrow in your foot when you were a boy and ever since things have “changed.”
Rachelle: Of course, of course, it was certainly life-defining when you encountered a practice arrow that bounced harmlessly off your foot!
Rachelle: Must have been like meeting Bigfoot or seeing an angel!
Rachelle: Look, I’m not diminishing the arrow-harmlessly-bouncing-off-your-foot experience.
Rachelle: I know it doesn’t have to draw blood to hurt, or to alter the course of a young boy’s life.
Rachelle: I’m not mocking you.
Rachelle: Okay, yes, of course I’m mocking you!
Rachelle: Lordy, you can really be difficult, you know?
Rachelle: I know you REALLY love the show.
Rachelle: But honey, you’re unemployed and can watch it anytime you like.
Rachelle: Okay, I guess you can’t watch it when somebody else is using our account.
Rachelle: Yes, sure, game, set and match to Michael “Destiny’s Arrow” Murray.
Rachelle: And yes, I know that your fantasy baseball team is named “Destiny’s Arrow” to honour this pivotal moment in your life.
Rachelle: Leeches???
Rachelle: Are you really calling my family, the family that does so many kind and thoughtful things for us, leeches?
Rachelle: Un-fucking-believable.
Rachelle: Remember when my dad drove all the way down to Toronto from Alliston because you couldn’t open the patio table parasol?
Rachelle: Or when my mother typed out 150 pages of your Fantasy novel—Destiny’s Arrow–because you thought you might have a variation of carpal tunnel syndrome?
Rachelle: No, I don’t think autocorrect changed Peaches to leeches.
Rachelle: I simply do not believe you.
Rachelle: I think that you’re lying to me.
Rachelle: Yes, I think you lie all of the time.
Rachelle: Really?
Rachelle: Well, when we met and you said you didn’t have any “emotional baggage.”
Rachelle: When you said you were 5’9, that was another lie.
Rachelle: That you were good at sports.
Rachelle: Do you want me to go on?
Rachelle: Look, if you send my parent’s a bill for $3.50 each month, “so that they can carry their own weight,” I will kill you in your loud, nauseating, snoring sleep.
Rachelle: Be back from work around 7:30, please be dressed this time.
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There was only one person in front of me in my checkout line, and behind her a small pile of groceries on the conveyor belt that I presumed belonged to somebody who had just gone off for a moment to grab a forgotten item. Just as the person in front of me was finishing, a woman came speeding into the line from around the corner. “Excuse me, “ she said, “those are my items there and I just had to run off and grab a few things, can I go ahead?” This is what I expected, and I told her it was okay. She pulled out her phone, made a call and started to unload a shopping cart that tuned out to be completely full. Talking about Vail on her cell, she leaned toward me and said, “ Actually, I have a little more than a few items,” and then she continued on about partying with Goldie and Kate at some resort.
Me: “ Well, you can’t do that.”
Mean Woman in Expensive and Stupid Hat: “You said I could.”
Me: “No, that was for a few items, not an entire cart. You can’t just use a banana and a few pumpkin seeds as a placeholder and then fill up an entire cart. That’s an awful thing to do. It’s immoral.“
Mean Woman in Expensive and Stupid Hat: “Jillian, I’ll have to call you back, there’s a dick here I have to deal with. (And then she hung up her phone and turned sternly toward me) It’s just a few items, lighten up, okay? Jesus, you must be a real pleasure to live with.”
Me: “Damn it, I am a pleasure to live with! I’m whimsical and my wife and I laugh a lot, I’m just not going to tolerate your entitled behaviour, okay?”
Mean Woman in Expensive and Stupid Hat: “Really, you laugh a lot? Sure, I bet you laugh while your wife just rolls her sad eyes, questioning all the crappy decisions that led her to this sorry place in life, as you continue to babble on about your day bullying women at the grocery store. “
Sutapa, the cashier: (Laughs)
Me: “Sutapa? Really? I thought for sure you’d be on my side!”
Sutapa: “I was just laughing at something that happened earlier in the day.”
Me: “You’re lying to me Sutapa, I can tell. “
Woman at the back of the line: “This drama is just making everything take longer, it’s exhausting, and now there’s bad karma all over the place. Will you two please just get it over with!”
Mean Woman in Expensive and Stupid Hat: “Bully.”
Me: First of all, I’m not a bully, expensive hat here is a bully, and doesn’t anybody care about justice? Is this the way you’d want your children to act? We can’t let her win!”
Woman at the back of the line: “Fuck, stop it! Just figure it out!”
Me: (To the woman at the back of the line) That, was a pretty big karma bomb you just dropped. (And then to the mean woman in the expensive and stupid hat) You want to see how much fun I am? How about we decide by Rock, Paper, Scissors?
Surprisingly, the mean woman in the stupid and expensive hat agreed to this. I won, utilizing the paper strategy, and I have to say, it was the smallest, saddest, most lonely victory of my life.
I had no idea.
He’d told me that he was going on his Hajj and that as he wasn’t sure when he’d be back from Mecca, it would be in my best interest to find another teacher.
I turns out this was a lie. Alpas never went on a Hajj and all the while has been teaching other students. Let me quote from the letter I was forwarded after trying to find out if he was back and ready to continue with our lessons:
“Instead of concentrating on the road Mister Murray seemed to prefer willful nattering, thus presenting a constant threat of an accident, endangering both his instructor and his inspectors newly repaired vehicle.”
“On numerous occasions Mister Murray was watching female pedestrians instead of the road, presenting a serious risk for an accident.”
“Mister Murray frequently asked inappropriate questions about my religious practices that made me feel very uncomfortable.”
“Mister Murray has shown no willingness or ability to learn and in my opinion is unteachable.”
There’s an awful lot I could say in my defense. For instance, the reason my driving skills never progressed was because Alpas was a HORRIBLE instructor. Also, Alpas frequently took one of his “obligatory” five daily prayer sessions during our one-hour class, and it appeared to be nothing more than a cigarette break where he stood around and smoked with cab drivers in front of the mosque. However, I’m not a mud slinger so I’m not going to get into a fight here, and Alpas, if you happen to be reading this I want you to know that I wish you nothing but the best and maybe some veneers for your teeth.
And so I’ve been assigned a new driving instructor and his name is Tarik.
He’s a bit of a dude.
Even though he has an emerging bald spot on the crown of this head, he spikes his thin, black hair. When I met him he was wearing wraparound sunglasses and had the earpiece from his phone dangling off his ear like a status symbol. The ring tone to his phone, which had a screen saver of him doing a chin up in an undershirt, was Bad Boys, the theme from Cops.
He was the anti-Alpas.
One of the first things he told me was that I had a gift from God when it came to driving. This was something Alpas never thought to tell me. Tarik was impressed by my confidence and my ability to accelerate through yellow lights, traits that are very highly valued with dudes.
Tarik also told me about all the sexy students he dated, and how Asians, East Asians and Pakistani people were absolutely the worst drivers on the planet. But I think the best part of the experience was getting a nickname. Tarik dubbed me “Fire Chaser,” (this because we spent the hour long lesson in pursuit of the source of a fire that was burning in the city—it was on Wellesely Street!) which is a super cool nickname, way better than “Nibblet,” which was what my old floor hockey team, the Jesus Cobras, called me.
They can suck it.
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