Wednesday, July 13, 2011

The Shape That Nothing Takes

Oh, Canada, oh!

I went looking for you tonight again, and the traffic mowed me down like a forest fire. I survived, as I feared I would, and I am here to tell the inevitable tale of exhiliration on the highway, of having taken the first three steps on the stairway to heaven, only to fall flat as usual, earthbound.

I find myself on my back, a fallen snow angel, with my long blonde hair spread out all around me, struggling to detach my wings from the sticky snow under me.

Your absence cuts the night like ice.

How I have held myself against you, how you have carved your imprint into me like a maple leaf in fudge, time and again, time and again, making me come, and come, and come for you - and yet you would not be here with me now?

I am haunted by the Buddhist saying: he who suppresses desire does so because his desire is small enough to be suppressed.

Your desire for me tonight is small enough to be suppressed? I find the idea intolerable, and yet I believe, almost superstitiously, in the saying as an accurate yardstick of the truth.

The fact is that you are not here; the fact is that you have the ability not to be here tonight; I have no such ability and yet I am here too; I am where various dead poetesses once were, but I can reason my way out of a night like this. They could not survive until the morning. I however can sit here and converse with you and pretend that you are the devil and that I am an immortal soul trapped in an eternal night of privation, removed from God, devoid of the All-That-Is, yet alive, yet hopeful, if cold. Hopeful that Messiah will come before the morning comes, even if knowing that no more morning will ever come. I am in awe of this eternal night: I exist in it like a bat out of hell, refusing to cease to exist.

To be alive is to require an extraordinary tolerance for discomfort; not all of us possess this trait. I should go easy on the suicidal poetesses. I have learned over my time here, to endure.

You seem to be all about endurance and forbearance. You seem to demand it of yourself and of others. Have I not told you that there is such a thing as too much self-control? Will you not believe me?

Your warrior monk culture of abstinence compels and scares me simultaneously. Is it a wonder that you people seem to be struggling to procreate? Is it a wonder that you must pilfer the world's best and brightest, to infuse your geography with hope, to convince yourselves that you are growing, when in fact all you are doing is grafting upon yourselves the foreignness of trees from other countries?

You have no natural greenery anymore. Everything you possess has been contaminated by your excessive tampering: your biotechnology that you love more than your biology itself. Even your politicians admit that there is window cleaner in their blood. Your arctic seals are not free of it - it is impossible to escape the consequences of the better life that you have offered to whom it may concern.

Yet I sit here and I dare to love you despite everything that everything has become, and it is unendurable but I persist, sober, awake, undrugged, without the benefit even of an anaesthetic for this brutal operation that has become my work; unless you count the music. The music does count.

My need for you emanates from me, a tropical heat in the midst of this horrifying winter solstice. It spreads its radiation around me, forming a shield, and it keeps me warm. This is the secret of my survival: my love for you is making me live, and not die; I am able to love, and love, and love, infinitely into infinity, love to the end of recorded time, love to the core of the universe: love that reaches God, is mine. And so it has occurred that I have become immortal even in my flesh as I sit here, and that nothing can destroy me anymore. It is frightening to be this alive.

I have tested the thesis of the indestructibility of my love. I have sat down in the midst of the busiest street in the city and hoped against all hope that the cars could run me over, but they did not: they drove straight through me.

That, my love, was when I knew that the trouble we are in is deeper than the abyss itself. No-one is supposed to be this alive in this dimension. Something in the universe is screwy, and I am it. What am I going to do? What are we going to do?

I can but sit, and wait. It has been a long night so far, but there has not yet been a dull moment in it. We shall have to see how we, I, get through it. I know that I am alone, but I know that you must needs exist also somewhere in this eternal night, because I can feel you, I can feel your radiation enveloping me, it is from you, this night heat, I cannot be doing this alone. I am alive because of my love of another, and that other is out there somewhere, I cannot be in love with nothing. Or can I?

Is it possible that I am simply in love with the conceptual impossibility of nothingness? The shape that nothing takes, when it is you?

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Open One Below

Once upon a time there was a speakeasy on the Danforth, dark and dingy and secretive, with a black and red sign that pointed straight to it. On the sign, it said, Open One Below. I always wanted to go inside, but I was too scared.

On this particular night however, there were scarier things on the Danforth than that sign. That sign was only one of the many signs that led to its inner darkness.

It is hard to explain the events exactly, as they did not completely occur on the street level out in the open, as it were, but rather in part on the astral plane, and therefore not in sequence as we usually understand it.

This whole tale is hard to tell, which is why it took me so long, and it really does not have a beginning or a middle or an end, and this in itself is of course a problem.

Everyone who knows anything about telling stories, knows that a story has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. I really don't know where to start with the devil: is it the swarthy night I saw him on the Danforth, so full of his liquid rebellion against God, or is it the night he came trotting past my house, chewing gum, kissing me sleekly in the midst of his eternal jog which he was taking for his punishment, kissing me without skipping a footstep; or is it the night when he got out of his car, a short little man bearing his black umbrella and wearing his slick little business suit admirably along with his balding pate - I mean, which devil do you prefer?

Personally I think he was at his most devilish that night on the Danforth.

I learned about the causes for his expulsion from heaven before I ever was taught how to read the Bible. I knew the history intuitively. It was because he wanted to exist in the flesh like we do: it was because he wanted a human woman, someone like me, and who could blame the man, except that he wasn't a man, but an angel, a being destined to exist in the other dimensions, to dominate his sector of the spheres, not to mess around in the blood and muck of physical existence - of course he was wrong to do it, and yet I can say with conviction that I comprehend his motivation.

My brother Lucifer and I have a long history of mutual comprehension. Indeed I daresay that he loves me too.

Meeting the devil on the Danforth is not something you talk about very often. It is something you prefer to keep to yourself until you're absolutely sure all the shrinks have cleared out of the place; meeting the devil on the Danforth is just not something you freely admit to having done, even if it did happen a long, long time ago.

When I say to you that I met the devil and that he spoke to me in fluent Greek and that I understood every word he told me, and that I had a vision involving the Pope on that very same night, and that I realized the connection between the Pope and the devil even then, you may have to understand that none of this has anything to do with fiction, but I am not insisting on it.

I am telling it to you as fiction simply because I do not want you to believe in any way, shape or form that I am even remotely suggesting that any aspect of it could have "really" happened. Look: I am not stupid.

I mean: when you say "really happened," what do you really mean? In what precise sense do you mean "really," and what do you mean when you say, "happened?"

Define: "really." Then, define: "happened."

I don't want you to think ... well, badly of me.

I don't want you to start thinking too much, because that is what they say got me into the troubles in the first place.

I'd prefer you think any number of things, but not that.

Anyway, it was a cold and rainy night, my favourite kind, just the kind of night in which I used to love to go for lonely walks on the Danforth. Just the kind of night in which I enjoy testing the limitations of space and time by sitting in the middle of the Danforth at its busiest point and making the cars pass through me.

To be precise, I love to sit among the speeding cars on that bridge across the Don River. I sit down somewhere at a point before you reach Castle Frank, but I can't say exactly where. I would not dream of recommending that anyone else test the thesis. I do not recommend this as a place to sit, as a rule, as such, and I wish to make this very clear, but I'm telling you that, in a sense in which "really" and "happened" are just things for us to think about - I really did love to sit there.

I am also telling you this just as a story because I don't want you to believe in the devil as such, in any other sense than as a possible, plausible character. I don't want you to have any actual faith in the devil, because that would be playing directly into the devil's hands. It is just something I've been saying for twenty years: cars passed through me on the Danforth, and I met the very devil on that beloved street, and he always carried a black umbrella with him at all times, except that other time when he was on the eternally linear jog for his punishment along Dundas Street; the night in which Dundas Street became an infinite line stretching into eternity from left to night, with negative integers to the left into infinity, and positive to the right, into infinity: I met the devil precisely at point zero on his jog, the spot in front of my house, the house with the open door, and that would be the only time when he would be allowed to kiss a woman, and the only woman brave enough to kiss him, would be me, the only woman qualified to kiss him: the only woman with the guts to do it and to live and tell the tale, so that all may know for all time that he got what he deserved.

I found it exceedingly curious that he was considerate enough to chew Dentyne. It was the aspartame kind (even though he knows I detest those nutrasweet things). The devil knows full well that sugar ferments your breath; therefore it was the right choice, all things considered. His mouth was, accordingly, perfectly fresh.

That is why this is a novel. It is not a journal or a diary. These are not the annals of my travels through space and time. These are made-up stories, right?

Right!

It could just be proof of how awesomely good the drivers in Toronto are. That is what I would prefer you to think in any event, if you do think anything of it at all.

If I personally enjoy playing in the traffic, it doesn't mean that I am suggesting it is fact an enjoyable way to pass the time.

Besides, playing in the traffic is a solitary sort of a game. It's really not a sociable sort of thing at all. It wouldn't work if you took a buddy along. It wouldn't even work if you went on your own.

I went there; that is not to say that you can.

I am probably an adept, but I do not in fact know what I am doing.

I don't even know what an adept is, so please do not make too much of it.

Anyway as I was saying simply in a manner of speaking, as an expression, it was a cars-passing-through-me type of a night. I was having a tremendous amount of fun walking about in the rain, inadequately dressed for the occasion (one must be; one cannot go on these excursions in proper coat and boots! No, one must be barefoot; and there again, it is a metaphor of course, just like my conjugal love for Canada!) and if ever anyone suggests that I did any of this for real, I shall remind them that authors write all sorts of things for the entertainment of their audiences, and every student of literature (not to mention any student of the occult) knows that one never, ever assumes that any of it ever happened as a matter of fact.

As a matter of fact, it never happened.

The Office Romance

The woman could not be accepted among them; she was naturally subversive, her presence too disturbing by half. She always insisted on looking her best, and this in itself was somehow offensive, even if every other woman looked her best also.

In the icy square outside the office building, no-one spoke to her. She was condemned from the very word get-go, sentenced to be alone with her eloquent sentences swirling about her inexplicably naturally blonde head, her undyed siren hair swirling about her like a halo of foreign origin. She was the type of angel that could lead entire governments to their fall; he knew it, and he would have no part of that sort of thing.

Tattle-tales and snitches peddled conventional wisdom about the water cooler inside the building; she went outside to smoke. They were duly rewarded and eventually promoted. She, on the other hand, would remain a mere speed typist; the explanation from the brass above being that they could not do without her flawless, inevitably accurate, self-editing 100 wpm: no other secretary in the office could ever manage that; therefore she could never be promoted.

He knew that this was only an excuse on the part of management; yet through it all he stood, tall and solid, sure of himself at all times, as decreed by their unspoken social contract; the one she had not signed.

Through it all, love receded like the hairline of middle age.

Monday, June 20, 2011

My Creditors

My creditors are lovely, lovely people.

They call here almost every day, so faithfully, an ever-optimistic crew of people who actually believe in me. They have high hopes that I will recover from my temporary cash flow crisis, and they let me know that they have faith in me.

Really, with creditors like these, who needs friends?

There is Alex in Vancouver. He has a soft, mellifluous voice to match the memorable 1-800 number he calls from. Always a joy to see it pop up on my screen. He believes in me so much that he has said any payment, no matter how tiny, would keep the account open.

Unlike my friends, my creditors never fail to return my calls. They are never forgetful, always reliable, always cheerful, and even when they are not so happy, yes even when they get angry with me, I know it is only because they care about my financial recovery just as much as I do.

I have a good relationship with my creditors because I actively pursue them. Unlike other debtors, I call them up before they call me: I call them first and say "company so-and-so has advised me that you are the collection agency currently holding my personal debt to them; I wish to advise you that I am doing everything in my power to attend to this matter promptly; I wish to make a good faith payment as soon as possible but I do not have a mailing address or contact information for you other than this phone number; also, I do not as of yet have my file number; please return my call at your convenience." I will admit that I am a model debtor, and that good debtors make for good creditors; but even so, I never fail to be impressed with the adorability factor amongst my creditors.

The other day, when I got a new job, the only person who congratulated me, was the creditor representing the company that is currently pursuing my biggest credit card debt. When she said "congratulations" her voice was so warm, her tone so heartfelt, that I actually believed she meant it.

I was touched.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

The House

In the beginning, there was the house. I knew that I had to find the house: it was here in this city somewhere, and it had my name on it. It would belong to me unconditionally; all I had to do was to find it.

Thus upon my arrival in the city of ice, I started looking for the house. I went out every day, trundling through the rainy October streets, neighbourhood after neighbourhood.

I looked in the West and I looked in the East. I looked them up and down, the streets: I looked at Euclid and I looked at Palmerston. I looked at every street that connected perpendicularly with the Danforth. I looked on Logan, Pape, Eaton. I searched up and down Coxwell for the house. I went to sit on the doorsteps of many houses, particularly ones with For Sale signs on them, to test to see if the doorstep felt like mine. None of them did.

The houses started playing hard to get. They changed their numbers randomly. Suddenly, I would see a number 57 right next to a number 123. They were obviously playing a game with me, hiding from me so that I could not find the one true house that would be inevitably, undeniably, rightfully and eternally mine.

In the night, the houses flew into outer space. I knew that that was their game: that was what they had to be doing in order to rearrange their numbers. They would go on their tours of outer space and then they would arrange with one of their buddies to swop lots. They would leave their streets as soon as their occupants were soundly asleep, unaware of their shenanigans. Then, just to confuse me, they would casually descend again just before dawn with smiles on their housey little faces, wide grins spread out over their arch little doorways, their windows winking at one another.

The houses thought I did not know what they were doing, and that I would end up questioning my own sanity as a result, but I was too smart for them. I was right on their case, right into the game myself, and I decided to get the better of them by arranging to be in different ones at different times, the ones most likely to go on space journeys according to their previously established behaviour patterns as far as I could discern them.

Although they were somewhat unpredictable, I could tell which houses looked as if they could be up for a jaunt, and so I would contrive to befriend their owners for a few hours in the afternoon, just so I could continue to sit inside in the evening and pretend to be asleep when the owners themselves would check out to the astral world for the night. That way, I would get to see outer space for free, I figured, and not only would the joke be on the houses, but I would become the most distinguished space-time traveller in humankind for my awareness of the capabilities of houses. It worked, although I never actually felt the houses move. They are amazingly smooth travellers when you consider how unprepared they are for the atmospheric changes around them.

No other humans knew what the houses were up to, for I did not tell anyone. The houses themselves were too dumb ever to figure out that I knew their game, or even that someone was awake inside them while they detached themselves at their roots, retracted their foundations and fired up their systems to go shooting the breeze among the stars. Ah, what fun we had, but they never realized it even once! They would have been shocked to their foundations, had they known that I was on to their little space-time continuum traversing thing, and that the gig was in fact up, and worse: that eventually I would tell all the other humans on the planet what they get up to, at night.

Houses are really, really stupid things.