Reviews, Thoughts

The Elixir of Reading for Introverted Souls

Truth. Justice…and a lil bit of Norah Jones.

Truth and justice are big words, I know. I like a catchy tagline so you’ve just gonna have to live with me until I get to the meat and potatoes. You see I was listening to Norah this morning and it got me a) singing along while fighting with the dishes and b) thinking about my own introversion.

I am a natural introvert. I’m not a cave dweller that shuns the outside world entirely, let’s just be clear about that. I enjoy the company of people from time to time, but generally when I have the weekend off the first thing I do is catch up with myself. I’m old in the sense that I didn’t grow up with instant speed internet. I still remember the electronic whirr and squawk of our dial-up modem crawling through electronic packets. As a teenager, I remember picking up to call some girl I had a crush on and my step father yelling from the other room. Yes, he was on the internet. By the time I had heard the garbled squeal of cyberspace through the receiver…the show was over. I broke the connection, which meant my parents had to disconnect and wait for the modem to work it’s magic all over again. If you were born after 2003 you are probably confused at this point. You should probably get your parent’s to explain this to you. I did my best.

So apart from high school and attending church every Sunday, I found the easiest way to escape was through reading and writing poetry and stories. I enjoyed reading. I think the first big ‘aha’ moment came from the world of Redwall Abbey. The author is Brian Jacques. If you enjoy stories about mice and badgers waging war and defending there homeland, I highly recommend you try it out.

As a teenager my fantasy taste grew to other authors like Terry Pratchett, Terry Goodkind, David Gemmel, and Terry Brooks to name a few. Anyway my point is reading became my happy place and it still is for the most part. I love to get engrossed into another world. I’ll skip to my early 20’s…

A friend of my father’s was clearing out his house and gave me a whole tote of second hand books. A few weeks later I remember telling a friend about it and he was welcome to borrow two and try them out. I think I may have even given them to him, I’m not sure. We’re talking 13+ years ago so my memory is a little hazy. He didn’t exactly strike me as a reader but I took a chance. He had a look through and found two that interested him. A few years went by and I thought nothing of it. I had actually forgotten about it. I bumped into him at a pub by chance. We were outside in the beer garden and out of the blue he brought up the fact that he had read both those books. I remember a flash of excitement sautéed in gratitude that leapt out of him as he told me he’d really enjoyed them.

I was surprised he’d read both of them. I’m not exactly a poster child for educating the nation, but that encounter did get me thinking. Maybe this was the first time in a long time this person had really introverted? Reading is pretty much an introvert’s elixir aka drug of choice. Well, it’s definitely mine.

I’ll circle back to Norah Jones now. I did promise…

As a teenager I donated the majority of my soul to heavy metal. Then there was the remainder of me that was looking for something gentler. I couldn’t listen to as much Chopin and Liszt. My mother played many of their pieces on the piano. Quite frankly, it would bring up decades old baggage I wouldn’t be able to quash fast enough. Trust me, it’s a long story. I think it was my Dad who told me about this person called Norah Jones. Then in 2004, her Feels Like Home album came out. I scraped together the pocket money I could find and bought the CD.

Feels Like Home played from start to finish on my itty-bitty boombox and sometimes even my discman, good god I feel old saying that word out loud. It’s the perfect version of country with a little jazz sprinkled here and there. That’s the best way I know how to describe it.

My point is you should give it a shot. If you don’t like it, it might teach you to introvert…or at the very least wash the dishes.

PhilosopherPoet

Additional links to the album:

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Documentaries, Reviews

Escape from Kabul (2022) – review

Cellphones are everywhere. We can see things as they happen, sometimes gut-wrenching portraits of human suffering fall into this category. I recently watched HBO’s documentary Escape from Kabul (2022). Before I get going I want to give you this…

DISCLAIMER: The following article may not be easy to read. There will be descriptions of violence against women and children. My aim is not to be gratuitous and dance while being covered with blood. I want to try and paint (i.e. review) this film as honestly as I can without skimping on some details. Oh…I should mention that there will be spoilers strewn everywhere.

Brief summary

Some of you may be aware that the Trump struck a peace deal with Afghanistan back in February 2020 (see my list of sources at the bottom of the article for more details). Since the Obama administration the U.S.A. had slowly been losing it’s control of the country. In another PBS documentary I saw there was an estimate that in 2019 the Taliban controlled 80% of the land.

Long story short…the U.S. had to get as many people out (of the airport) with as little bloodshed as possible. This documentary shows events, less than two years ago, that happened at the Kabul airport. Things didn’t go according to plan.

No one wins

If you’re watching this hoping for either the Taliban, or the Americans to be victorious…you’re gonna be disappointed. On August 15, 2021 the Taliban officially take over the country. On the same day many of the top government officials in Afghanistan were flown out of the country and given the VIP treatment isn’t that nice?

On the next day the floodgates open…
People are terrified of the Taliban and flock in droves to the airport. The Americans have a skeleton crew to begin with, so managing the sheer waves of desperate people is nearly impossible without some aggressive measures. What happens next comes from a result of desperation mixed with sheer terror.

There are so many people swarming the airport that the biggest concern of the military is that the airfield will be over run and planes will be unable to takeoff. They cope with this by flying a helicopter very low to the ground to push people back. Dunno about you…but I’m not in the business of taking a helicopter blade to the head before I jump on a plane.

This story blew up on the news media. In 2021 you probably saw that infamous C-17 cargo plane trying to take off while people were clinging to the outside of the plane. Yes, you heard me. Most of them did not let go once the wheels left the ground. In the film you see bodies falling off the plane while it’s in flight. Other people were run over on the airstrip because they didn’t get out of the way in time.

Here’s a direct quote from a Washington Post article about a young dentist on Aug 16. (The full article can be found at the bottom under my list of sources.)

Desperation drove some people to cling to the wings of airplanes as they took off. Fada Mohammad, a young dentist, fell to his death on Aug. 16. His remains were found on a rooftop four miles from the airport. A teenage soccer player also died after plummeting from a U.S. aircraft.

The scale of suffering

It’s hard to put into words because it’s so divorced from reality. Many people were crammed like sardines waiting to get into the gates. They waited 4-5 days in the sweltering heat, with no food and little water.

Here are some examples of the casualties:

  • People were trampled to death (this includes children and infants)
  • Many died of heat exhaustion.
  • Near Abbey Gate people stood in a canal of sewage for days. (if you stood in it, it would go up to the middle of your chest).
  • Afghans were shot with rubber bullets from shot guns and other riot gear.
  • Afghan Special Forces shot and killed civilians to clear the airstrip.
  • Hundreds were cut up by razor wire that was used to control the crowd. (I remember watching a kid – no more than 11 years old – grab onto it like the last tree branch at the edge of the cliff.)
  • Mothers gave their children away to U.S. troops.

I would like to say that was all the suffering that happened. Nope. A few days later on Aug 26, a bomb goes off…

During the panic to try and get people organized and processed before the deadline (Aug 31), another group of militants had time to observe and disrupt things. A group called ISK (Islamic State-Khorasan) claimed responsibility for the attack. They were the Islamic State’s arm in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If that name draws a blank in your mind, they are fueled by similar ideologies as ISIS. Oh yeah…the former is also called ISIS-K. Should’ve mentioned that earlier but now it’s too late so you’re just gonna have to live with it…mmmkay?

The bomb killed more than 170 people at the airports perimeter along with 13 American troops.

The good, the bad and the convenient

There is a silver lining to this tragedy. The end result was over 122,000 people were airlifted abroad. The whole event left me with a bag of worms of feelings. So much suffering to rescue a fraction of those people. That’s about all the good I can get out of it. Wait a second, there’s one other thing…

This documentary uses a wide range of interviews. I’ve gotta tip my hat to the filmmakers that chose to interview the U.S. military, several members of the Taliban, civilians who endured those conditions and escaped and others who did not. I’ve spoken about a lot of the bad. So much so that I’m craving a cigarette way more than I should. So I’m gonna start to wrap up this article but talking about the convenient. By that I mean a few facts that the film either left out or got wrong.

I’d like to preface this next part and say that I do recommend the film for whose who are able to endure it. I suffer from curiosity and I went and did more late night googling on the topic. They’re in a numbered order because I like numbers. They make me look official.

  1. The Americans were not the only troops at the airport
    • Only the film doesn’t directly say there were only Americans present. Through the interviews of various military one can be fooled into thinking that the Americans were the heroes. There were actually 37 other countries assisting during this process. (See the wikipedia article link in my list of sources.)
  2. The Taliban sprayed bullets in the crowd to control them.
    • This I read on an IMDB review. I can’t verify it 100%, but on the other hand I can’t dispute it either.
  3. The airport ran more efficiently after the U.S. withdrawal.
    • This comes from another IMDB reviewer who says they live in Afghanistan. Once again I cannot verify it’s authenticity.
  4. There were still Americans in Afghanistan after August 31, 2021
    • There are a number of news articles that confirm this. You will have to do your own digging if you don’t believe me.
  5. Aug 29, a US drone strike kills 10 civilians.
    • Did I hear you cringe when you read this one? It’s pretty hard to paint Americans as heroes when they screw up an operation. Their intel said this was a car of explosives sent by their ISK buddies. Nope. Wrong again. 10 civilians including small children kinda wrong.

Final thoughts

  • Don’t watch this late at night before bed. Trust me.
  • If you’re anything like me this film will live inside you for several hours afterwards.
  • Is the film flawed? At times. Just don’t shoot the messenger before you have time to appreciate the message.
  • Religious extremism isn’t going away anytime soon.
  • I still need that goddam cigarette once I’ve finished writing this.
  • Feedback and comments are welcome.
  • I hope I’ve made enough sense to interest you in this film.

PhilosopherPoet

Sources

Image credits

The following are in order of appearance:

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poetry, Reviews

A brief analysis of Celestial Music (by Louise Glück)

Celestial Music
Louise Glück

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she’s unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I’m always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
According to nature. For my sake she intervened
Brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down
Across the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains
My aversion to reality. She says I’m like the child who
Buries her head in the pillow
So as not to see, the child who tells herself
That light causes sadness–
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
To wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person–

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We’re walking
On the same road, except it’s winter now;
She’s telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
Look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
Like brides leaping to a great height–
Then I’m afraid for her; I see her
Caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth–

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It’s this moment we’re trying to explain, the fact
That we’re at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn’t move.
She’s always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
Capable of life apart from her.
We’re very quiet. It’s peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition
Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering–
It’s this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.

*       *       *

The poem opens by talking about a friend who believes in heaven and “literally talks to God”. This is a conversational journey between two friends who discover a caterpillar being eaten alive by ants. On a superficial level the poem pivots between discussion of God and nature. If you read deeper into the poem you will notice Glück is struck by her friend in her own dreams. In reality the friend criticizes her for being oblivious to God. In the dream world that same friend takes on a more maternal role. The title of the poem is born out of the dream world when the friend explains, “when you love the world you hear celestial music”.


Simply put, the friend is obsessed by God and heaven. Glück’s mind daydreams in nature and this is where she finds her spirituality. Even though the two friends have contrasting views of the cosmos, this doesn’t deter them from their friendship. One could argue that nature is the medium which keeps them together. Apart from the death of the caterpillar the pair are also struck by the sight of clouds, the sunset, the silence interrupted by the sound of a bird and the implied effect of nighttime on their surroundings.


The poem ends with many layers of self reflection. While Glück is able to sit quietly and (on some level) embrace the caterpillar’s death; her friend acknowledges it by drawing “a circle in the dirt”. We are told that the friend wants to make the ugly death beautiful. Because poem is written in the first person…we never get to fully understand what made her draw that circle. Maybe Glück has the poet’s curse of seeing an image (or semblance of meaning) in almost every emotion and ripple in nature. What if I told you that the friend drew the circle because that was her way of giving the poor creature a “funeral”. It was her way of saying goodbye, wasn’t it?


If you are left with more questions than answers by the end of the poem…you are not alone. The themes of God, friendship, motherhood and forces of nature are all woven along the same path. It is an ambiguous one. I tend to learn more as I walk.

A note on the text

I wrote this with a few things in mind. It serves as a short and simple explanation on the poem. I found it difficult to stay succinct. Poetry analysis tends to make me stabby. I fell in love with poetry through reading and scribbling on scraps of paper and many journals. I think poetry gets dissected in primary school and butchered in high school. I think very few people find meaning by staring at the entrails. If that’s your thing…you’d be better off listening to some Cannibal Corpse.

a few things worth mentioning

My original idea was to help a few plebeians decipher what this poem is all about. I also suffer palpitations of curiosity. Trust me…there is no cure for that. With that said I’ve decided to end off this post with some additional reading for those who find a few internet articles exciting at midnight. Before I get to that I’m gonna include a little more background on the poet.


You see she uses what I like to call the “unspoken voice”. I like to think of it as the gaps in silences rather than the words themselves.


In her essay from Proofs and Theories, titled “Disruption, Hesitation, Silence,” Louise Glück says:

“I do not think that more information always makes a richer poem. I am attracted to ellipsis, to the unsaid, to suggestion, to eloquent, deliberate silence. The unsaid, for me, exerts great power: often I wish an entire poem could be made in this vocabulary. It is analogous to the unseen for example, to the power of ruins, to works of art either damaged or incomplete. Such works inevitably allude to larger contexts; they haunt because they are not whole, though wholeness is implied: another time, a world in which they were whole, or were to have been whole, is implied. There is no moment in which their first home is felt to be the museum. … It seems to me that what is wanted, in art, is to harness the power of the unfinished. All earthly experience is partial. Not simply because it is subjective, but because that which we do not know, of the universe, of mortality, is so much more vast than that which we do know. What is unfinished or has been destroyed participates in these mysteries. The problem is to make a whole that does not forfeit this power.”

PhilosopherPoet



Further Reading


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Rantings

emails & heretics

I got the sudden urge to write. Goddammit, I’m gonna do something about it. I go through two types of writing phases…journaling and death-twitch typing. I’m sorry I have to subject you to the latter. I do know that you’ll persevere and keep on reading this to the end. Because this isn’t about me falling into the trap about writing about writing. I find that nauseating and I’d get more pleasure from running outside to stick my head in a snowbank and scream. Oh man, would I scream…

I’m here to type feverishly about something that happened today…between me and the internet. I logged onto my iMac and did my usual scan of social media sites, and deleted a few old emails. Deleting old emails sometimes means reading old emails, and that can be a baaad idea. I was scrolling through my old sent items and came across a few letters I sent to my ex girlfriend. I’ll call her Michelle for the purposes of anonymity.

When I come across an old memory I haven’t completely dealt with…I become a dog with a proverbial bone. Instead of deleting the emails I sent her, I copied the first part of her email address, opened my Twitter tab and searched. No luck. I typed out “Michelle Smith” and hit enter. Now I know you’re smart enough to know that Smith isn’t her actual last name. My point is if it was Smith I would’ve had the same abysmal odds of finding her. Still this didn’t stop me. I clicked on a few profiles, looked to see if the profile photo’s resembled the girl I once knew.

There’s only one a few things I’ve learned about my self when I start playing spy on the internet. I rarely get what I want and I waste time out of my day. This isn’t the first time that I’ve been chasing old memories like the wind. There’s something about the current and it’s intensity that grabs me every time. I think I’m getting better at catching the warning signs. This time I only spent about 15 minutes or so before a feeling came over me that said: Jon, you should think about doing something more productive.

That’s exactly when I got the itch to write. I was feeling a little restless and between things. I couldn’t shake off that feeling and decided that writing could very well be the cure that I needed. It was. I know that writing things down isn’t for everyone. For some it would take the same fortitude and patience I would have to summon to sit through an NFL game, completely sober.

I do it to get my thoughts onto the page, and it calms down the squirrels in their cage. I have a theory that people who struggle to finish a book, or sit down and write a few pages are the same people that struggle to introvert. It still blows my mind when I come across people who hardly ever pick up a book and read. I think it’s pure heresy and should be considered a crime against humanity.

Maybe that’s just me?

PhilosopherPoet

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Rantings, Thoughts

colours & spoons

Pink bothers me. It makes me feel too much before I’m ready. Yes, you could also classify me as a visual learner. I’ll give you another example because I’m venting and it feels right…

I was newly sober and I received a birthday gift from my brother. It was a calendar. It was not the manly kind. No cars. No guns. No girls. It was full of kittens. Yes, you heard me. A calendar full of cuddles. At this point my brain flick-flacked between poles. Warmth, annoyance, awww, and the sense this doe-eyed creature caught me where it’s vulnerable.

Forget the kittens and let’s talk about black. I still wear it. It’s a background blend that makes me feel safe. I like the shadow effect. I’m an observer instead of an embarrassing lamp post. Black makes me feel detached like the swirl of milk that hasn’t sunk into the guts of the coffee. Side note says…I maybe sober and yet I still chug a liter of coffee in the morning. Murder in the morning doesn’t look good on the resume. The kittens stuck a spoon in the works. I’m getting better at it. Now I love the kitties. I might learn to accept the spoon.

Now I need to talk about spoons. Relax this isn’t going to be a one star customer review because I’m bigger than that. Well…so far. I’m gonna be fancy and say catalyst. What happens the moment you get stirred up? Does it make you wanna throw rocks at cars? Maybe I write an angry letter. Every sentence progresses. First it’s barbed wire, and then bed springs that got into a fight. I crumple up the paper and burst into tears. I walk outside and suck on that cigarette like it owes you a mortgage. A wind hits my face and the tears turn cold and soft. Now everything is going to be okay.

My problems are as significant as a spoon. This also goes for success too. Courage comes before the drop and after every storm there’s that sun that holds me close. Okay, so this is a spiel about life. If you’re about to yawn go do it outside. Compliments are another thing. My ego is a young tree that sways in the wind. It rarely stands still. Tug-o-war is far more exciting. One more story, kiddo. I promise.

It’s time to dig. Ever cleaned out your french press (coffee-ma-jangle) with bare hands? Old grains cling to me. Much like my past, it takes a while to rinse off. I had this thing. It’s a pretty big thing. I want to feel cared for by others. I want that sunset friendship that’ll ripple into memory. Then I get a compliment out of nowhere. I bristle and wish I could beat that person with a heavy telephone. This is the way my brain works. It’s immune to spoons.

Let’s wrap it all up. I need to go eat more chocolate. I spoke of colours and spoons. What I meant was emotion in a tight spot. I can hear you saying – what happens next, genius? I need to accept the spoon I cannot change. Tides will run through me. I can never guess the direction. I know it will carry me until I see a message, somewhere.

I’m okay with that.

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Philosophy, poetry

being

i need to be high up to
know my feet are on the ground

i want my memory to
be stoic as a gravestone

i imagine a bird
will shit on it
and maybe i will
have wrinkles of moss one day

it’s not over until the old lady
comes with her bucket & brush
on Sundays
she gets lost in the sound of scrubbing

this is her music

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Humour, Philosophy, Rantings, Thoughts

When I inhale

I just felt like typing. I like the speed of my fingers when I do it. There’s a rhythm to it. When my fingers click on the keys it feels like thoughts galloping. You can’t make a mess like you can in a journal. I like to doodle skeletons that were left in the rain. Outlines or shapes and ideas that need more time around them, to find themselves. Maybe one day they’ll start a narrative.

I should will give you an idea of some of the things whirling around in my head. I’ll talk about smoking. So here’s a timeline to get you familiar with where (and why) I am here now…

I got sober. I stopped smoking weed and gulping down alcohol because, at the time, my survival depended on it. My future did not. In the first three months my brain lit up. Every kind of repressed voice, emotion and colour shot to the surface. My brain was a living and chaotic kaleidoscope of feelings, anxiety, energy and something worse…unpredictability. Years of substance and alcohol abuse kept me unconscious and unmanaged. Both of these play out in early sobriety. I can’t stop something small from making me cry or panic in seconds. There’s something else too. I can’t bring this to a dead halt without having a drink. I can dig deeper now I have some distance from the experience. I realize part of the reason I drank in the first place was to sedate the cerebral squirrels in their cage.

Two things happen after three months. The first is the anxiety, mood swings, and feeling “driven” starts to dissipate. Thank fuck. The next thing is I begin to realize that addiction is here to stay. You can move houses to change the view, but there will always be a storm. I don’t know why. I get this feeling that I always will have this urge to “tap out”. I used to use the words “take the edge off”. (I never used this phrase when I was smoking. It felt like I was apologizing for something that wasn’t there.)

In the beginning the first few cigarettes gave me a head rush and a calming feeling. After a while that rush became harder to achieve. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? My body adapts to whatever I throw at it. I’ll confess something out the gate, numbnuts. Of course I was aware of the cancer thing! The most obvious thing to me is lung cancer. I thought I’d be more transparent and I just googled some of the shitty things that happen. Such as:

  • smelly hair
  • anxiety and irritability
  • yucky teeth
  • bronchitis
  • chimney coughs
  • heart disease
  • horrible vision
  • lung cancer
  • constricted blood vessels
  • chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
  • loss of appetite
  • increased risk of blood cancer, meh
  • etc, etc, ad nauseam.

Confession no. 2 – I didn’t care about the data above. As long as I could tap out for a few seconds and get the squirrels to stop scratching…I was okay with that. Remind me to come back and talk about COPD. I have a chilling story about that. Anyway I got the flu and my body and old ideas had a standoff. I was standing outside in the morning with a chest full of phlegm. Yes, I was hauling on a cigarette. Smart, huh? Even though I was feeling like dog’s balls, a part of my brain played that same narrative. You need a little more and you’ll feel better.

It turns out I had to test that theory. Four cigarettes later I sounded like a bagpipe full of bees. This culminated in a sentence or two. What the fuck am I doing to my body? I’m just making it worse. Dunno about you but I have the habit of waking up when I’ve pushed things to the limit. As well as the flu the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging. The weekend is a mixture of me cursing myself and contemplating my own mortality.

This anger morphed into action and I went to the pharmacy to buy some nicotine gum. This post got me pretty charged so I threw a piece into my mouth hole while I wrote the previous paragraph. I know you’re gonna ask about the gum. Everyone does. It’s not the same as cigarettes. It gives me a bit of that hit until I get this weird metallic taste in my mouth. It feels like I’m chewing on electric tinsel. Maybe that’s the point? Maybe they want me to throw it away like a guilty sock I jerked off into. I don’t want anyone to know…I just want to be done with it.

The first few days I was consumed by invasive thoughts. I like to refer to it as unwanted advertising. I need a smoke, I need a smoke. Look how nice the weather is bud! Perfect breeze to light your cigarette in. I don’t care you threw them all away. Look for someone puffing and ask them for one. You can make a plan shitbird. Thankfully the flu clawed at my energy levels. I slowly began to recover and feel less rotten like the underside of a log.

Turns out I’m caffeinated enough to share one more story with you. The old man with COPD. Easiest way to describe it is “smoker’s bronchitis” or emphysema. Both of these phrases get caught in your throat before they roll off your tongue. I worked with him while doing a part time general labour job. A carpenter tore up old flooring and I was the lemming that carted away all the debris.

At first the child in me bristled when I had to do simple things while he sat in the car. For example, close the trailer door or put cones around the car. Only when we were on lunch did the mallet of recognition smack me. It didn’t feel good. Now before I tell you how this happened, I need to point out one more thing. This man is fat. I can see you flinch when I spew the f-bomb. No I’m not talking about chunky, either. I’m talking about “when you get in a car and your stomach touches the steering wheel” fat.

During our lunch he picks up his wife and drops her off at home. I watch him waddle into his house. It’s dark inside. The couches are adorned with dog blankets and a glowing fish tank gives the living room a pulse. Apart from the trickle of fish and his dog that bounces around like a fresh tennis ball…everything else feels heavy. I come out of the toilet and I find, this man I’ll call Mike, folded on the edge of the couch.

Oxygen tubes curl into his face. He says something to me like “I just need a few minutes.” I watch his eyes get lost in the blue hue of the fish tank. I figure this must be a form of meditation for him. I ask him about the other tank in the room. I try make my question sound cursory and wondering. He shrugs it off like small talk he’s intercepted many times. I still remember one of his lines. “If you want to keep smoking, this is what you’ve got to look forward to.” At the time this didn’t cause a reaction. Later on it throbbed inside my head.

It’s time to leave. I walk out of the house and get into the car. I watch him take careful steps. The car door clicks. He climbs in and starts huffing and puffing. It reminds me of when I was a kid in the swimming pool. We’d play a game to see who could hold their breath the longest. I’d give up after my lungs were burning and I gasped to get my breath back…you know the rest.

Shock ignites my eyebrows. “Are you okay, Mike?” He gives me a proverbial shrug telling me it was just part of his routine. It wasn’t a game for him anymore. It was ingrained into his life. I thought about this for days afterwards. The logic played out into chilling patterns. I chose to ignore it. I’ve come to realize significant change comes when I’m at the edge of my own precipice. This doesn’t apply to all change otherwise I’d be a walking dumpster fire. And I should elaborate on the whole edge-of-the-cliff thing…

That precipice is where my urges and logic intersect. You can be fancy and call it consciousness. I like to think of it as intuition or knowing. It’s kinda like poker. You play for a while and the betting goes up. Three people fold. A small thought gnaws at you. It’s time to put down the cards and walk away asshole. There are other games to play.

Or maybe I’ll just step outside the house to feel the wind touch my face again? A few houses down I hear a kid yell and another laugh. I’m exactly where I need to be.

PhilosopherPoet

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Canadian nuances

Canadian nuances: Part 8 – I choose concrete

“Dress dry, there’s a storm coming tomorrow.”

The next day I arrive at work. My muscles complain like misplaced teenagers. I cradle a gas station coffee. With every sip the bulb behind my eyes flickers. The short answer is a smattering of subcontracted crews are building a multi-million dollar hotel. The long answer comes to me like as sobering slap. In the wrong hands…this could be chaos.

Pillars of cement stand out of the ground. Hedges of rebar hug the wall and they remind me of angry spears.This is no LEGO set. Only a hammer will fit in your hand or maybe a drill of some kind. Most material be it concrete, steel beams, scaffolding even the garbage can needs a few men (or sometimes a crane).

It all started with a hole in the ground. (Let me try that one again with dimensions…) It all started with diggers and giant trucks haulin’ ass to get the sand outta the way. This isn’t grandma digging a hole for her little seedlings. These are men strapped in high visibility clothing yelling at each other in the hopes the message is heard above the shriek of a circular saw. This is a two story underground parking hole.

 

I’ll rewind to the beginning…

I arrive on site and watch men work below me. I stare up. A white fog blocks the view of the mountains. I’m told that is a snow storm barreling towards up (around 12pm). My brother comes back, puts away his phone and asks me, “do you want to bash out concrete or patch up some holes?” I choose concrete. (Later I find out this is the tougher job.)

I walk to the far end of the site. There are no flat surfaces to stand on. You know those metal rods you see in cement? Well, these parallel rods (or rebar) are all I have. My boots clunk over tons of them. I get on my knees and start bashing at shards of concrete. It’s Friday…the end of a long week of roofing, lifting, swearing and trying to absorb as much detail as one can.

The bottomline is I worked through the snow and got the job done after an 11 hour day. At 6:35pm I go to a local bar and order a shot of jager plus a pint. I down the shot which lights up the old kindling in my eyes. I tip the bartender with a toonie that giggles when I put it down.

C’est la vie.

 

PhilosopherPoet

Standard
poetry

thought closet

fix your thought closet
some hangers i will not reveal

yesterday i lent you a green one
its shoulders bent on the ends
plastic ones bother me, the
curled head juts out, with
the eyes of a mother.
she looks for laundry.

i look for a jacket to hide
my feelings. neither of us win.

the cupboard will outlive us.
heavy sweaters
pressed t-shirts
and a lego man
are all shards of stories.

the closet remembers, and
creaks when it closes.

 

 

PhilosopherPoet

Standard
poetry

A stranger’s bed

for Sarah

We lay in a stranger’s bed.
Just the two of us, an old
painting hung behind our heads
and listened to the stories, my
awkward hands, limp on the mattress.

I watched the freckles dance on
your face when you laughed. Before bed we
both removed our glasses.

Between sentences we studied the other,
our naked faces learning a new
language. All over again.

On the second night, I was worn
down by work. Your voice trickled
in excitement, turning each page of intimacy.

I tried to stay awake and listen to
your stories. My eyelids rocked open and
shut like an old boat.
I did not make it to the end.

I asked you in the morning about
it. You said I slurred a sentence like
a sailor, and then nothing.

You turned in the current of duvet, and
waited for waves of sleep.

 

PhilosopherPoet

Standard