My friend from college, Shelley, and her identical twin Sheila, just last month moved in together to the other end of the building with their fiancé, Stanley. Just a few weeks before, he had taken them both to dinner at CeeShee’s, in the west side of our city, and in front of stunned diners, proposed his unconditional love to each of them. Apparently, he couldn’t live with just one or the other. The two sisters giggled at each other, knowingly. They exchanged a look and a smirk. Finally! He had finally understood! They formed a triangle and he was the bottom layer of their pyramid.
Down on one knee and in between the two, and with a chuckle and a tilted head, Stanley recalled that unusually cold November morning the three of them met…
As always he woke early, but with the distinct impression that no matter what he did to get to work that day, his tardiness would be inevitable. He climbed out of bed, could feel the frost on the window, looked out and realized the black sky was white with snow. Underneath his balcony, the snow stretched far and wide, and up about three to five inches. This being Vancouver, Stanley knew the city by now was completely shut down.
The Skytrain only being a few blocks away, he braved the slippy sidewalk and entered the platform at Broadway to absolute chaos. People were scattered everywhere, shivering impatiently, cursing the white stuff, waiting for trains that had shut down miles before they rolled into the station. Typically, the staff struggled as to how to respond. No one seemed to be prepared; few gloves, no scarves, sneakers and barely any toques were worn. Stanley, who wouldn’t set foot far out his door without his morning coffee, kept his hands warm with his overheated cup. People were yelling people were wailing and people were screaming, but there was some laughter as well, and fortunately, Stanley’s ears pricked up at the sound of his siren’s giddiness.
When his eyes met hers the snow in his sneakers suddenly warmed his toes. She smiled and asked if he was aware that the bottom of his coffee cup somehow soaked through and spilled down his pants. All he could do was nod, as he noticed she spoke but he did not understand--as by the sight of her, he was completely entranced.
She introduced herself as Shelley, and upon doing so, she made a beckoning call that reached behind Stanley and wrapped its way around him until Sheila stood right next to her sister. They were on route to their culinary arts program at the Art College downtown but somehow found themselves in the midst of all the morning chaos. It’s too bad because that day they were to spend designing desserts. Sweet, creamy and mouthwatering crumpets that would have thawed the entire school.
Stanley didn’t say anything because his jaw seemed to be broken. A voice out of nowhere, possibly a man walking by, mentioned something about breakfast, and thirty digits later, plus a few more to direct some voice box extensions, and the three of them sat at one of the coffee shops up the drive—the furthest from the trains.
They used flimsy napkins to dry the snowballs from their hair. Stanley, ever the former class clown, at one point threw himself down to the sidewalk for a dawn filled angel delight. To his surprise, Shelley and Sheila followed his lead, laughing all the while. In between feigned coughs—the odd sneeze or two to carry along their bluff, they exchanged stories well into the afternoon, of snowmen and snow forts from their pasts…
My friend from college, Shelley, and her identical twin, Sheila, invited me in for tea as I knocked on their door the day after they settled, the first week of spring. They told me that sometimes they face scrutiny in public, as strangers tend to jump to judgment. Stanley does not come in between them. They do not need to take sides. Instead he nurtures the equal sides of them he adores. To them, this is all they require in a partner, and if they have to take turns--while the other takes five, then life is just that.
We see them wander down the halls these days, the three of them, arm in arm, hand in hand, and we smile and wonder if their version of love will ultimately last.
Ldm
Friday, May 25, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Just East Off Main
4 a.m. and the cat belts out another ballad on the balcony for whoever is coming home late from work. It pleases him, his voice—his audience of unsuspecting east end dwellers. It’s the full-moon fueled spring-tour. Sausage sings the blues! He perches himself atop the railing outside my bedroom and if his latest love song doesn’t drag me out of slumber, perhaps the early bird rummaging through the bin below will. I slide open the window and throw a growl at him which only resembles his medley. He stops, looks at me with irritation. I have interrupted his show--his worldly expression. I turn back…and he waits…waits…until that moment when I am almost back…just about there…and he starts up again. Renewed vigor.
These days I live on the other end of the neighborhood to which I initially moved. I only lasted a year. My neighbors there scared me to death. Their domestic disputes were as in vogue as the johns parked out back. Never really a stranger to the city, nor sheltered enough to think monsters only exist in fairytales, each night in bed I still anticipated their attack. They would scratch their way through my walls. I’d wake to the lot of them, all staring down at me with their black eyes--claws as hands, lifeless smiles--a carefully inserted rubber tube draining me silently of blood….
Fate had it I survived, and now dwell in a…humble building, some twenty-odd years old, just east off Main St. There are four of us: my roommate, her Kitty, and good ole’ Jezebel--always eager, and always so giving! Just down the stairs and outside the front door awaits a haven of markets, restaurants, bars (just one worthy of mention; of course) and coffee shops… so much coffee that it will rot your gut until you give birth to your very own bean farmer. Those smoking crack in the alleys add to the finish and are there to fulfill whichever addiction hasn’t yet been satisfied. It is eclectic in nature. All the countries of the world on one eighteen block stretch.
Six stories tall, mine is the fifth. The top floor consists of two penthouse suites, both with huge patios overlooking the distant downtown core. We are not far. Ten minutes away? Once you cross the bridge, any one of them, just a left on Broadway and east for a bit until you pass Main. You will see it…The Wylland Estates. On your right… the street with all the big, looming trees.
Suite 527. We are the corner-end, one of those big trees hanging above our balcony, above the garbage directly below. In the evening, we get the last bit of the sun’s rays… stretching out as far as they can to give us some loving. This is the end of the building where most noise complaints are directed. If we are home, chances are our music is loud and echoing past all the other apartments. The boys and their girlfriends above us, the constantly exchanging occupants to the left of us, the karaoke crazed couple one floor down and to the right of us, the sports enthusiasts across from us, and, of course, us two plus the cat…all compete for ownership of the corner. Jezebel remains a silent witness. Together we all share an understanding. If the party keeps you up, it acts as an open invitation to join...your first beer on the house. Sometimes the parties will merge and the cat will run away and hide.
Somehow though, Suite 527 has not once received a single complaint. Ours have always been re-routed around us, perhaps to the hot deck above us, which by now has been hit with dozens of eviction warnings. We, as far as our landladies are concerned, have a halo protecting our 990 square feet. We are angels, of course--pure and innocent (and holier than thou!)
I have heard many things…. Raccoons fight the alley cats and once in awhile the skunks. The homeless converse about our garbage. The thirsty beg for water. The drunk beg for mouthwash. The children race on their bikes. The man runs after them for his wallet. The police scream surrender in the middle of the night. There have been fights and quarrels. There have been screams, people laughing, people cheering, people crying, people banging and people banging around. One man in the building across serenades us neighbors with a loud burp each night, routinely timed to go off just before the 9pm cannon.
And then there’s Chichu… a lone being on the quietest of nights, breaking the peace with his gabble. The sound travels throughout the neighborhood, in between the buildings; down the alleys and past the other cats perched atop their balconies, rehearsing their very own songs. It finds me, and I follow my muse up the drive. It leads me home--crawling, in a drunken stupor, overworked daze, or just relentless anticipation for the future.
Ldm
These days I live on the other end of the neighborhood to which I initially moved. I only lasted a year. My neighbors there scared me to death. Their domestic disputes were as in vogue as the johns parked out back. Never really a stranger to the city, nor sheltered enough to think monsters only exist in fairytales, each night in bed I still anticipated their attack. They would scratch their way through my walls. I’d wake to the lot of them, all staring down at me with their black eyes--claws as hands, lifeless smiles--a carefully inserted rubber tube draining me silently of blood….
Fate had it I survived, and now dwell in a…humble building, some twenty-odd years old, just east off Main St. There are four of us: my roommate, her Kitty, and good ole’ Jezebel--always eager, and always so giving! Just down the stairs and outside the front door awaits a haven of markets, restaurants, bars (just one worthy of mention; of course) and coffee shops… so much coffee that it will rot your gut until you give birth to your very own bean farmer. Those smoking crack in the alleys add to the finish and are there to fulfill whichever addiction hasn’t yet been satisfied. It is eclectic in nature. All the countries of the world on one eighteen block stretch.
Six stories tall, mine is the fifth. The top floor consists of two penthouse suites, both with huge patios overlooking the distant downtown core. We are not far. Ten minutes away? Once you cross the bridge, any one of them, just a left on Broadway and east for a bit until you pass Main. You will see it…The Wylland Estates. On your right… the street with all the big, looming trees.
Suite 527. We are the corner-end, one of those big trees hanging above our balcony, above the garbage directly below. In the evening, we get the last bit of the sun’s rays… stretching out as far as they can to give us some loving. This is the end of the building where most noise complaints are directed. If we are home, chances are our music is loud and echoing past all the other apartments. The boys and their girlfriends above us, the constantly exchanging occupants to the left of us, the karaoke crazed couple one floor down and to the right of us, the sports enthusiasts across from us, and, of course, us two plus the cat…all compete for ownership of the corner. Jezebel remains a silent witness. Together we all share an understanding. If the party keeps you up, it acts as an open invitation to join...your first beer on the house. Sometimes the parties will merge and the cat will run away and hide.
Somehow though, Suite 527 has not once received a single complaint. Ours have always been re-routed around us, perhaps to the hot deck above us, which by now has been hit with dozens of eviction warnings. We, as far as our landladies are concerned, have a halo protecting our 990 square feet. We are angels, of course--pure and innocent (and holier than thou!)
I have heard many things…. Raccoons fight the alley cats and once in awhile the skunks. The homeless converse about our garbage. The thirsty beg for water. The drunk beg for mouthwash. The children race on their bikes. The man runs after them for his wallet. The police scream surrender in the middle of the night. There have been fights and quarrels. There have been screams, people laughing, people cheering, people crying, people banging and people banging around. One man in the building across serenades us neighbors with a loud burp each night, routinely timed to go off just before the 9pm cannon.
And then there’s Chichu… a lone being on the quietest of nights, breaking the peace with his gabble. The sound travels throughout the neighborhood, in between the buildings; down the alleys and past the other cats perched atop their balconies, rehearsing their very own songs. It finds me, and I follow my muse up the drive. It leads me home--crawling, in a drunken stupor, overworked daze, or just relentless anticipation for the future.
Ldm
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
All Apologies
Okay. I apologize. My humblest, most sincere, and whole-hearted of apologies. Please, somewhere deep down, you must find in your heart—and aim toward me: forgiveness. Stab me with it or just pound it over my head! Forgive me! Granted, I should probably know better than to be so presumptuous to think we still all have a heart. These days, with the state of the planet, or the state or our lives, or the state of my city/your city, your government/my government, the state of schools, the state of media, or just the state of my car or my home, or the alley my balcony overlooks and the guy sleeping in the bin…. The state of my world. Your world. The state of our minds? My mind? Your mind? The state of our consciousness? Our combined consciousness! Our thoughts—my thoughts—your thoughts! The state of our realities! Our children’s realities, my roommate’s reality, our pets and their thoughts! The state of our enemies. And especially… the state of our only Queen: Mother Nature herself… Oh… what was I getting at!? I don’t remember anymore. The state of my memory is shocking these days. Oh yes, I am sorry. Really sorry…to assume you have no heart? Was that what I was digressing over?
Of course you have a heart! How else would you breathe? How else would you function? You would be a robot. A machine. Although, a machine still has a heart…it’s just mechanical. That’s all. Really. We are not (yet) mechanical, right? Sure, we all have our days when we wake, dress, chug our lattesmochasteasorvodkas, get into our cars, sit through rush hour, tap our fingers to the crap on the radio, curse the weather along with any given politician, watch from the bus windows as the idiots drive into each other, arrive at work, plop down at our desks, turn our computers on, and suddenly realize we have no idea how we got there. Mechanical? Heartless? No. Just boring.
So. Let me go on. Without a heart, we wouldn’t be putting so much effort into saving our environment. Right? Without a heart, we wouldn’t be putting so much effort into saving our nations from war. Right? Without a heart, we wouldn’t stop for the elderly woman trying to cross the street with her walker…even as we are running late for that movie we’ve been waiting weeks to see! Right? At least slow down for her? Um…? Without a heart, we wouldn’t be trying to figure how to budge our way onto Noah’s shuttle and get the hell-off-this-planet-before-she-offs-us-to-hell! Right.
Anyway. That’s not the reason I sat down and started typing. I did begin with an apology for a reason. If we always just started our sentences with a plea for forgiveness…well, after a while life would be that much prettier! I’m sorry I cut in front of you and pushed you off the road. I’m sorry I elected a loser. I’m sorry you are so annoying I had a line of voodoo dolls designed after you. I’m sorry that your girlfriend is so loud that the entire city can hear it when she gives it to you. “I’m sorry, what was your name…” works a lot better than “Who the fuck are you?” Together you can kick the empties off the bed, get dressed, maybe have breakfast--or at least coffee, and feign seeing each other again rationally, as opposed to regrettably. The birds will sing, the sun will shine, and your hangover will melt away. The apology has worked like magic! When a regret needs to be acknowledged, one must rise to the occasion and get it over with immediately! It reminds us that we are responsible, and in our hearts, we can admit that we all make mistakes.
Don’t be afraid to apologize.
Stand in front of a mirror. Open the mouth wide. Bring it down and let the lips touch. With the tongue make like a snake, and prepare the word for take-off. Practice until perfect.
I’m sorry for wasting (your) time? It’s been a while since motivation blinked open her illustrious ebony eyes, for real-life--as was beckoned--bullied itself into the spaces reserved for all those exceptional moments of beauty that knock us off our feet. Yep. It’s like a parking lot of SUVs, each resting crooked over the white line and taking up way more space than worth…and blocking our tulip gardens to boot! Like so many people I know, I am just looking for inspiration, a purpose to keep dreaming. So if an apology is in order, then it will be for taking so long to sit and write this down. Well, suck it up, I say! Honestly. Better late than pregnant! A neighbor this past Christmas slapped me in the face with the words we all sometimes need to hear: There is only time. As long as your heart is still beating, and you can still sense that there is room in there to breathe, there will always be time to get all of this right.
Forget that they tell you otherwise. In fact, forget everything they tell you. It’s all part of someone else’s state of mind.
Ldm
Of course you have a heart! How else would you breathe? How else would you function? You would be a robot. A machine. Although, a machine still has a heart…it’s just mechanical. That’s all. Really. We are not (yet) mechanical, right? Sure, we all have our days when we wake, dress, chug our lattesmochasteasorvodkas, get into our cars, sit through rush hour, tap our fingers to the crap on the radio, curse the weather along with any given politician, watch from the bus windows as the idiots drive into each other, arrive at work, plop down at our desks, turn our computers on, and suddenly realize we have no idea how we got there. Mechanical? Heartless? No. Just boring.
So. Let me go on. Without a heart, we wouldn’t be putting so much effort into saving our environment. Right? Without a heart, we wouldn’t be putting so much effort into saving our nations from war. Right? Without a heart, we wouldn’t stop for the elderly woman trying to cross the street with her walker…even as we are running late for that movie we’ve been waiting weeks to see! Right? At least slow down for her? Um…? Without a heart, we wouldn’t be trying to figure how to budge our way onto Noah’s shuttle and get the hell-off-this-planet-before-she-offs-us-to-hell! Right.
Anyway. That’s not the reason I sat down and started typing. I did begin with an apology for a reason. If we always just started our sentences with a plea for forgiveness…well, after a while life would be that much prettier! I’m sorry I cut in front of you and pushed you off the road. I’m sorry I elected a loser. I’m sorry you are so annoying I had a line of voodoo dolls designed after you. I’m sorry that your girlfriend is so loud that the entire city can hear it when she gives it to you. “I’m sorry, what was your name…” works a lot better than “Who the fuck are you?” Together you can kick the empties off the bed, get dressed, maybe have breakfast--or at least coffee, and feign seeing each other again rationally, as opposed to regrettably. The birds will sing, the sun will shine, and your hangover will melt away. The apology has worked like magic! When a regret needs to be acknowledged, one must rise to the occasion and get it over with immediately! It reminds us that we are responsible, and in our hearts, we can admit that we all make mistakes.
Don’t be afraid to apologize.
Stand in front of a mirror. Open the mouth wide. Bring it down and let the lips touch. With the tongue make like a snake, and prepare the word for take-off. Practice until perfect.
I’m sorry for wasting (your) time? It’s been a while since motivation blinked open her illustrious ebony eyes, for real-life--as was beckoned--bullied itself into the spaces reserved for all those exceptional moments of beauty that knock us off our feet. Yep. It’s like a parking lot of SUVs, each resting crooked over the white line and taking up way more space than worth…and blocking our tulip gardens to boot! Like so many people I know, I am just looking for inspiration, a purpose to keep dreaming. So if an apology is in order, then it will be for taking so long to sit and write this down. Well, suck it up, I say! Honestly. Better late than pregnant! A neighbor this past Christmas slapped me in the face with the words we all sometimes need to hear: There is only time. As long as your heart is still beating, and you can still sense that there is room in there to breathe, there will always be time to get all of this right.
Forget that they tell you otherwise. In fact, forget everything they tell you. It’s all part of someone else’s state of mind.
Ldm
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