delible ink

[Another friend's story has come to an end.  Too soon.  She looked mighty as she migrated throughout the apartment, settling rarely, when she did in her brief dormancy suggesting of adventures innumerable, unread pages so many that the very prospect wore you down.  She wouldn't be shelved.  Wouldn't rest.  Wouldn't abide it.  Yet now she sleeps.  And now - again - I'm struggling to find the words to write my own epilogue at the end of a novella that should have been a tome.  I search for words and, finding not new, I find these.  Another's.  (The memories are razors, my friend, still sharp as the day you left.)]

I apologize; you would have been disappointed.

One of your first lessons, so simple,

You said, “Just write.”

But I didn’t know how.

Worse, I didn’t even try.

Though I did look, I swear;

Searched within myself for something to say.

I found nothing.

Found only quiet hopes,

That silence could articulate an altered reality.

I waited in that silence for days,

Listening to the world around me,

Witnessing it speak in spectral colours,

Then sigh from day to night.

A comet, dancing low across the sky.

You were there in all of it

But you just sat quietly and smiled.

You offered me no words.

No hint of how to say good-bye.

[I posted this about a year ago on a previous blogging platform. Recently, I had the occasion to sing my brother's praises to a new friend. One of my favourite activities. Got me to reflecting about the dude and, coincidentally, I came across this. So here it is again. The words and sentiments only concreted with the passage of another year.]

Quiet night, Sarah Harmer through the pipes, a glass of Tuscan red to my left. A recognition of neglecting my ink and the plan to post a daily photo (daily original text a little too temporally ambitious these days). Check folders of recent shots and find this one. Choke up a little.

It’s late and I’m too far from creative, too long from honest to attempt an articulation of what my brother means to me. Your reveal is that we split at the wrong age and took some time finding each other again. And since have been creating connection in shared blood stained the colour of black ink.

My brother is salt – hard, course and pure. He works his fingers to the bone, his soul to the limit. His depth cannot be measured with the tape on his belt.

He’s about to come in from the rain and embark on a new path, persuing the career of teacher to match his inherent skill. He will succeed at this as he has addressed everything life has handed him: full in the face, unwavering, the strongest of the strong.

Your big brother is in your corner, M. No towel necessary, no words. I’m just here to watch.

And smile. So proud.

Scene 1

I haven’t run in months, but I recall the last time I tried. Underscore tried. My heart just wasn’t into it. Wasn’t up for it. Couldn’t do it.

So I started going around in circles. Started spinning towards a former life. Bee-lining towards past and future at the same time. For reasons not understood, I couldn’t run, but I could ride.

I have felt, through the process, reborn.

Scene 2

She, on the other hand, wasn’t ready to be born.

Had made up her mind that she wanted to stay a little longer. Wanted to stay in that place of comfort. Surrounded in the most complete way by mother’s loving embrace.

Mum, though, knew better, knew that the moon had spun nine times and it was now time for a straight line into a new world.

But something was twisted. Fate was crooked. Time was bent upon itself and the clock ticked too many times.

And when she arrived, all was silent.

Scene 3

My phone rang in the dark of night, no voice on the other end of the line, only tears dripping words careening in bursts to an abrupt stop in my ears.

“The baby’s not coming.

She’s in distress.

There’s no heart beat.

They’re rushing ____ in for an emergency c-section.

I don’t know what’s happening.

They’ve revived her, but she’s on life support.

They don’t know if she can survive off the resuscitator.

Even if she can, they don’t think there’s going to be any brain activity.

We’re not allowed to hold her.”

Scene 4

A day later we’d bridged the gap of geography and I was holding my friend close, the strength of my grip belying how useless I felt. He’d cried his eyes dry in those 24 hours. He’d aged a decade. He’d watched his dreams extinguished in a short stretch of cruel hours. And I hadn’t a clue what to say or do to make it better.

So we ran.

Scene 5

We’ve always run. We ran into each other. Our shoes have tied us over the years into a shared experience, a shared set of values, a shared love for one another. We’ve run in earnest, we’ve run angry, we’ve run – so often – like children that age left behind. Heads thrown back, mad zig-zags tracing our route through streets and trails, laughter left like bread crumbs to mark our way.

Running, in short, is the force that brought us together and the glue that’s held us there. Though life often these days seems to be trying to pull us apart.

Scene 6

I haven’t run in months, but I recall the last time I tried. I had no plans to try again soon as I make a habit of not running headlong into heartbreak. But heartbreak met my dear friend at the door. And the only way to leave this pain behind was at a run.

Epilogue

She put all the doctors on their heels and has left them shaking their heads in wonder. She got off that respirator in no time flat. Spent three horrible days on ice in the intensive care unit, the discomfort of reduced temperature designed to minimize other stresses. She’s giving every indication of awareness and cognition. She’s home now with her parents. She’s a miracle.

Friendships born of sport are also a miracle. Something about that shared – it seems so trivial compared to the past few days – suffering we do out on the roads and trails, the common experience that leaves our bodies humming at a resonance frequency drawing us closer together and holding us there. Something that transcends words. So useful when words won’t come and, if they do, seem so empty.

That run we took amidst suffering, amongst friends, was supposed to be a gift from me to him, a distraction of footfalls to drown out the pessimistic words of those that thought they knew better. But it was also a gift to me, a reminder of what had been pulled from my grasp and then, by my choice, been left behind. Certainly a far more minor miracle, but through all this riding I’ve been doing in recent weeks, our short outing the other day told me that miraculously my running has come back to me. I won’t let it go again. I’ll fight to keep it. I’ll fight for the friends that it has given to me.

Just as dear Ela will fight for – and win – the life she deserves.

As a one-car family sometimes headed in two directions, I had to borrow my wife’s girlfriend’s car today. Her car, a vintage VW Beetle affectionately named, Ibi, was equal measures less technologically current than my vehicle and more viscerally enjoyable to drive. I felt my coolness factor going up by degrees with every groping shift of the manual transmission, grunting turn of the non-power steering and characteristic gurgling purr of her engine.

Given what she did for me today, I figured the least I could do in return would be to give her her own iPhoneography photo shoot.

These words came to me, not from me, but when they struck me deep in my organs I needed to spread the impact. I’ve changed a word or two for reasons of the author’s privacy.

I’ve been gone, as you know, looking for time away to recalibrate.  Instead, I found myself drawn to the resonant frequency of my mother and played her my best rendition of the dutiful son.  There was another sound while I was there: the telephone ringing with the offer of the Golden Ticket. You’ll recall I told you I assumed that that show had also already left town.

So I went for a hike to think things through.

For some reason, the sun was shining in an uncharacteristic way and I looked across the Sound to Peaks in the Olympics that I had summited many summers ago – Mt. Constance, Mt. Mystery, Mt. Deception – fitting names for my meditation.  Still just Spring and clad in an abundance of snow.

I know that world – of snow washed pure in the thin air – a sterile environment.  I recall the steady crunch of crampons and ice axes in the hard pack.  And the long glissade down after so much effort to gain so much height.

And I thought of the path chosen and how many years I spent trying to find that road through the woods.  And now having found it, I reckoned that it would be very difficult to glimpse it should I go astray again.

So I was polite in my refusal…”If you had called me even a few short months ago, my response may well have been different, but I have made some choices…”  declining the Ticket, the different elevation it would provide, and the not so splendid isolation.

And so onto the road less chosen.  Eschewing financial security for the adventure of saving the planet one small case at a time.

Keep on trekking, my friend.

How many of us recognize the right path when it opens up before us?  How many see it again, many miles down the road, looping to rejoin, offering another chance at its adventures? How many have closed their eyes at this point?  Or turned them downwards, seeing only the step next taken…

Keep on searching, my friends.

sunday night and with that ifidon’tthinkaboutitmaybestayupallnightperhapsmondaywon’tcome andicanjustkeepthinkingreadingcreatingdoing thing going on.  weightless, i’ve floated between reading a lackluster article on the social side of boomtown fort mcmurray’s oil rush to being near tears at the oil continuing to rush out of the ocean floor of the gulf of mexico, rushing onwards towards sensitive shorelines of ecology and local economy to getting up to speed on a new term and my new trade to observing art in its many beautiful forms.

so that last link, the graffiti.  victoria “urban living” mag boulevard arrives gratis, periodically, with my sunday TC.  today was the day.  and in it was one article that caught my attention: the rather ripped-off entitled “War of the Walls,” a piece focusing a bylaw officer’s paint remover on  the victoria graffiti scene.  no, that’s not correct – the article focuses on the graffiti and the nuisance it causes; there’s no scene painted.  near the end, the author gets something of a second opinion from locally legendary ex-writer peter allen (check here for what he’s up to now) and with the opinion came an insight from allen that clanged:

According to Allen, …[it's] a graffiti writer’s job to hit forgotten areas. Graffiti is like a neglect indicator: the more graffiti, the more an area needs attention.

i closed my eyes and envisioned a walk through the city, searching for places we’ve forgotten, places now calling for attention in kaleidoscope hues.  could taggers be considered the leucocytes of urbanity, the first-responders to locations of neglect and illness?  will we find, nearby, decaying human tissue?

i thought also – again – of the definition and evaluation of art – what makes tagging a public nuisance while other outdoor art forms are heralded (no question mark).  realizing the depth of my ignorance on the subject, I sought out (also now inactive) local writer Effect (that’s his stuff leftmost in the “forms” link, above, and his tag, below).  the chat with him was illuminating and expanding, and i was sent away with a reading and viewing list i’ve scratched at, but will need time to make a more permanent impression.  there’s an article here – and perhaps a collaborative project – but the ideas will take a while to get out of the can and up onto the wall.

Professor Babikov sits at his kitchen table, feeling every decimal of gravity’s 9.80665 metres per second squared pushing his bonyness deeper into the hardened surface of a long forgotten garage sale.  Discards.  Acceleration to an abrupt stop at the bottom.

Don’t stop, dammit.  Bounce. Return to that high place about the Earth where potential energy will scare the superpowers.  You’ll fear me when my brain catches light!

Out of his reverie he looks left at his whisky, bought cheaper by the litre.  The bottom of his glass still amber with one last sip.  Lifts, inhales…and holds.  His residuary burning for a moment at the back of his throat.

30

Thirty years ago the Monday before last, on April 12th, 1980, 22-year-old Terry Fox began his Marathon of Hope.  I was 5 years old.  For reasons I can’t explain, I have spotty memories of my childhood.  I can’t tell you I remember taking notice when Terry dipped his toe in the Atlantic near St. John’s, Newfoundland, to start his run.  I have no recollection of following his progress as he ran his daily marathons from the east coast to Thunder Bay.  If I was going to remember anything, it would be the nation’s dismay at the news that Terry’s cancer had spread to his lungs and he was going to have to stop his Marathon, or, too-soon later, that we had lost our national inspiration to a disease with which we were all only barely coming to grips.  I don’t.  I can’t conjure any first-hand memories of those moments of wonder, solidarity and anguish.  All I have of those months is the fuzzy image from a mind’s eye’s peripheral vision – I want to remember it all, but mostly I’m left with a feeling, the intuition that this young man changed my life, as he changed many others. [...]

—> CONTINUE READING

It’s Saturday morning and, in a ritual being played out on roads, tracks and trails around the world, it’s workout day. For me though, today, nursing a phantom gimp knee (I’m not going to even get into it it’s so coincidentally random and infuriating), Saturday is a morning for spectating. And in this world of continuously streaming digital media, that means following the ≦ 140 character workout reports of various friends and strangers while trying to focus otherwise on a Saturday of photo editing. One that just caught my eye, from a runner habitually found near the pointy end of local road races, reflected that “3:01 [min/km] is definitely not half [marathon] pace anymore.” Though the less fleet-footed mortals amongst us (me definitely included) might come up a little short on sympathy, dreaming of a day when 3:01 for any kilometer was or would be a success, but there’s a valuable truth for all of us in this slowly slowing runner’s observation.

To run well and to run happily, each of us needs to run in the now.   [...]

—> CONTINUE READING

I’ve grown with dogs – grown from child to man, grown fond with time passed, grown melancholy when they’ve passed, grown – increasingly – old. Something I’ve not needed to grow is my understanding of the happiness dogs bring.

Nevar, my guy, is himself growing old. He’s no longer up – physically – for running the trails. His old man has never been up – tempermentally – for moving at a pace slower than a run. But, as we age, we learn, we accommodate, we find a pace to share.

For us, lately, it’s the pace of an aimless (or directed by errands) wander through town, gazing in windows (both), buying coffee and dog cookies (me) and wizzing with random abandon (him…honest). As we travel, I watch where we’re going, what he’s getting into, where he’s aiming (not there!) and, most enjoyable, watch the faces of those we’re passing.

As they approach, their eyes follow the orange leash to my dog, observe his curiousity, see his smile, feel the happiness of his exploration. And, with few exceptions, whether directed at me or into the anonymous air in front of them, they smile.

Nevar wanted me to mention: You’re welcome, it’s his pleasure.