...and this is "the maple".
Friday, August 24, 2007
Sunset from Smelt Bay
Great sunset, he says to us as we're about to leave the beach. The show is just about over and the stragglers from the neighbourhood who don't get a direct view from their oceanside decks have been walking the beach to catch the sunset, the first "good" one in several weeks because of the rain and overcast weather.
Yes, we agree, beautiful.
Too bad, he adds, now that he has our attention, that all that beauty is caused by chemtrails.
Chemtrails? Oh oh.
Yeah, he says, they're spraying the skies with chemicals to stop global warming, or maybe they're spraying the skies with anti-depressants to keep us all more or less happy.
I'm not sure what to think about either of these theories, or to take them as seriously as I take the fact that "Canada" is selling depleted uranium to the United States.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Birdwatching
Sitting on a lawnchair and looking towards the south, I saw a large, dark bird hunched on a branch of a fir tree. A raven, I thought. Or an eagle, maybe. I didn't really pay too much attention to this silouetted figure as both ravens and eagles are common on Cortes Island, so much so that I have become less excited about their appearances as they glide overhead, screaming as they clutch a mole or mouse in their claws -- or, in the case of the raven, a sandwich stolen from someone's lunchbox.
Well, I'm sitting in the heat towards the end of the day, when the sun is losing the greatest power and the sun's rays offer the memory of heat more than heat itself, and I notice this hunched shape on the tree, and mention it to Steve. What do you think that is, I ask him, a raven or an eagle?
I don't see anything, he answers, and continues to suck on the stub of a Bandi cigar and work on the cryptic crossword.
If there is a drama unfolding out there in my yard, I want to be fully part of it, so I keep looking at the fir tree until I realize that there is more than one of these hunch-shaped birds sitting in the tree. There are two, three, no five. I count them, and the more I look, the more of them I see until I count up to nine birds hunching in the trees in a small grove of cedar, fir, and spruce trees just to the left of where I am sitting, and about 100 feet away from me. The sun has not set, and in fact we haven't even begun to plan our evening's trek to watch the sunset, but the sun is less intense than it has been all day, and the birds, whatever they are, seem to be settling down into the branches. And with that many of them, I know they are not eagles. And I've never seen ravens stay that still, or remain that quiet, for that long, so I know they are not ravens, either. And the body shape isn't right either, anyway. So, I keep watching, and then notice glimmers of bright red, the colour of blood, on their necks, and then I recognize these nine black shapes on the trees 100 feet away from me are turkey vultures.
They're turkey vultures, I tell Steve. Nine of them.
Nine turkey vultures sitting in trees, looking down at one spot, can mean only one thing. Death. Because these vultures aren't swooping to the ground, I can't tell where this dead thing might be, but it's pretty certain that it is not far from where these vultures are hunching and surveying the land below. But they are just sitting there, and one of them has even opened his wings like a thunderbird and is soaking up the last of the sun.
The blackberries are starting to come out, which means weeks of picking ahead of us, unless it starts to rain and they get bogged down. We plan our walk down Hayes Road, past several banks of blackberry bushes and straight on to a public beach access where I can look for my daily piece of beach glass and water polished pieces of oyster shell art. We will pick our way down to the beach, watch the sunset, and then pick our way back up home again.
We get enough berries to satisfy our immediate berry gluttony, and then some for breakfast. Steve lies against a rock on the beach, too tired after a day of spreading plastic over the fibreglass insulation, riding his bike, swimming, and walking, to look for beach glass or polished oyster shells, so it's up to me to find this stuff, which is for my own amusement anyway.
Back at the property, one 2-centimetre by 2.3-centimetre piece of beach glass (clear) later, the vultures are still vulturing, and Steve pushes through the salal and oregon grape to find the dead thing, because by now the vultures are swooping down from the branches and into the brush and staying there before swooshing up again. But, he can't find anything and this morning I go out there and look for myself, girding myself for the possibility of finding a dead person, or a dog, or a cat. But, I find a fawn, its head bent backwards and its four legs folded into each other, looking as if it had died while sleeping, curled into a ball. There are a few holes pecked into the fawn, but mostly the botflies are having their day, and the vultures, who are still hanging around, fly off as I enter the scene, circling while I investigate.
There is of course nothing to be done, now that I know that there is no need to bring in the police, so I leave the vultures to their business, making a note to myself to return to the scene to collect the bones.
Well, I'm sitting in the heat towards the end of the day, when the sun is losing the greatest power and the sun's rays offer the memory of heat more than heat itself, and I notice this hunched shape on the tree, and mention it to Steve. What do you think that is, I ask him, a raven or an eagle?
I don't see anything, he answers, and continues to suck on the stub of a Bandi cigar and work on the cryptic crossword.
If there is a drama unfolding out there in my yard, I want to be fully part of it, so I keep looking at the fir tree until I realize that there is more than one of these hunch-shaped birds sitting in the tree. There are two, three, no five. I count them, and the more I look, the more of them I see until I count up to nine birds hunching in the trees in a small grove of cedar, fir, and spruce trees just to the left of where I am sitting, and about 100 feet away from me. The sun has not set, and in fact we haven't even begun to plan our evening's trek to watch the sunset, but the sun is less intense than it has been all day, and the birds, whatever they are, seem to be settling down into the branches. And with that many of them, I know they are not eagles. And I've never seen ravens stay that still, or remain that quiet, for that long, so I know they are not ravens, either. And the body shape isn't right either, anyway. So, I keep watching, and then notice glimmers of bright red, the colour of blood, on their necks, and then I recognize these nine black shapes on the trees 100 feet away from me are turkey vultures.
They're turkey vultures, I tell Steve. Nine of them.
Nine turkey vultures sitting in trees, looking down at one spot, can mean only one thing. Death. Because these vultures aren't swooping to the ground, I can't tell where this dead thing might be, but it's pretty certain that it is not far from where these vultures are hunching and surveying the land below. But they are just sitting there, and one of them has even opened his wings like a thunderbird and is soaking up the last of the sun.
The blackberries are starting to come out, which means weeks of picking ahead of us, unless it starts to rain and they get bogged down. We plan our walk down Hayes Road, past several banks of blackberry bushes and straight on to a public beach access where I can look for my daily piece of beach glass and water polished pieces of oyster shell art. We will pick our way down to the beach, watch the sunset, and then pick our way back up home again.
We get enough berries to satisfy our immediate berry gluttony, and then some for breakfast. Steve lies against a rock on the beach, too tired after a day of spreading plastic over the fibreglass insulation, riding his bike, swimming, and walking, to look for beach glass or polished oyster shells, so it's up to me to find this stuff, which is for my own amusement anyway.
Back at the property, one 2-centimetre by 2.3-centimetre piece of beach glass (clear) later, the vultures are still vulturing, and Steve pushes through the salal and oregon grape to find the dead thing, because by now the vultures are swooping down from the branches and into the brush and staying there before swooshing up again. But, he can't find anything and this morning I go out there and look for myself, girding myself for the possibility of finding a dead person, or a dog, or a cat. But, I find a fawn, its head bent backwards and its four legs folded into each other, looking as if it had died while sleeping, curled into a ball. There are a few holes pecked into the fawn, but mostly the botflies are having their day, and the vultures, who are still hanging around, fly off as I enter the scene, circling while I investigate.
There is of course nothing to be done, now that I know that there is no need to bring in the police, so I leave the vultures to their business, making a note to myself to return to the scene to collect the bones.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Identity
I feel like I am very far away from St Petersburg, now, living in a place where I put my baseball cap on backwards, don't wash my hair for days in a row by choice, where I walk on forest paths instead of concrete...
We're sleeping in a tent, cooking in a camper, washing in a lake, walking down to see the sunset every night at Smelt Bay, and eating a lot of spinach salad. The pug toddles around the property, and luckily we have a sawdust covered meandering path between the cabin, which we are getting ready for drywalling, and the camper, where pug spends most of his time watching for stray bits of food to fall his way. I concern myself with important things like "is there any beach glass here on this beach?" or "should I close my eyes while I am lying in the sun, or keep them open?", or, "pass me another beer, would ya?" The pug just looks at me, though, when I say this, and I have to get up and go over to the camper where the Swedish made propane fridge looks after chilling the Argentinian beer that was on sale. Take one out. Put another one in. Adjust my baseball cap. Think about ... nothing.
I realized this morning that I could take my laptop to the power shed across the road and sit on a rock next to a plug and write. But six pileated woodpeckers flew through the yard, and I forgot about writing. I briefly thought about the Russian soul and came up with a blank. The Russian soul? What is?
We are almost out of bread.
I want to build a round domed building on the property. I imagine myself sitting in the middle of it, and I imagine windows all the way around, and rain falling in the middle of winter.
What does it mean, to grade a paper?
We're sleeping in a tent, cooking in a camper, washing in a lake, walking down to see the sunset every night at Smelt Bay, and eating a lot of spinach salad. The pug toddles around the property, and luckily we have a sawdust covered meandering path between the cabin, which we are getting ready for drywalling, and the camper, where pug spends most of his time watching for stray bits of food to fall his way. I concern myself with important things like "is there any beach glass here on this beach?" or "should I close my eyes while I am lying in the sun, or keep them open?", or, "pass me another beer, would ya?" The pug just looks at me, though, when I say this, and I have to get up and go over to the camper where the Swedish made propane fridge looks after chilling the Argentinian beer that was on sale. Take one out. Put another one in. Adjust my baseball cap. Think about ... nothing.
I realized this morning that I could take my laptop to the power shed across the road and sit on a rock next to a plug and write. But six pileated woodpeckers flew through the yard, and I forgot about writing. I briefly thought about the Russian soul and came up with a blank. The Russian soul? What is?
We are almost out of bread.
I want to build a round domed building on the property. I imagine myself sitting in the middle of it, and I imagine windows all the way around, and rain falling in the middle of winter.
What does it mean, to grade a paper?
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Like the Last Episode of the Sopranos
I don't care what you think, he tells me on the phone yesterday, just tell me what you did.
Okay. Those words, an inaccurate quotation from my brother, who I shall call Donald the Guileless in this blog, jerked me back to the Dashboard of this blog, mostly because he also said that reading the last entry in my blog was like watching the annoying last episode of the Sopranos, and that he felt abandoned.
Well, I wanted to tell him, not much happens up here on Forbidden Plateau, despite the promise of the name.
Of course he knows, Donald the Guileless, that not much happens up here, having once admonished me for living in such an out of the way community. But I think he was frustrated when he said that, having become lost on the one road that leads to where I live.
But in a way he's right. Not that I abandoned anyone who may have been reading this blog, but that I abandoned the trip to Russia, because it is now, I realize, that the comparisons are starting to happen. Now, when I drive into town, or walk down Forbidden Plateau Road, or shop in a grocery store, walk into a museum, look into the water of a river, answer my email -- now, when I do those things, I am thinking of Petersburg, and what things were like in Petersburg.
But oh, I won't tell you what I think, I'll just get on with things. Like my morning walk.
The story goes like this:
I now wake up every morning, my legs shuffling around in the bottom half of the bed, anxious to get themselves pounding on concrete, the way, I think, they pounded on the concrete of Petersburg, to the point that my hips ached. I'm missing that aching feeling, and when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I want to do is get outside and walk on the concrete sidewalks.
I have had to settle for the pavement of Forbidden Plateau Road, spurning the spongey wooded paths of Nymph Falls Park and opting for the harsh density of road. It's like this: when I walk in the woods, I keep imagining, smelling even, the musk of a black bear, or hearing the connivings of a cougar, and now that the pug is too old to come on walks with me, I have no bear or cougar bait, becoming instead the potential main target for any predator. When I walk the paths, I am in a state of constant arousal, the hair on the back of my neck sticks up, and I keep looking behind me, or into the woods, for the bear or the cougar.
The thing is, I've discovered, when I walk on the road, I don't imagine cougars or bears stalking just out of sight and sound. I figure they are deeper in the woods staying away from the roar of motors. Not that there are that many cars on my road -- I counted 1 this morning, and 3 yesterday morning -- but that there is the potential for cars. And, I tell myself, the bears and the cougars know that.
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours trawling for good "walking" music on iTunes. I sat in the Comox Grind, drank coffee, and looked through the iMixes for music that I could listen to while walking up the side of Forbidden Plateau. I found the Nike sports mixes, and scrolled through those, but only found stuff claiming to urge me on to build bigger muscles, including one mix of "college" cheers. Nope. No college cheers for me. And no buff.
Why do I need walking music? Forbidden Plateau, right outside my front door, is more or less flat, and when I turn right at the end of my driveway, it continues flat for a short while, then gradually it begins to climb at a greater and greater incline...but really, it is gradual. There are a couple of places where the incline is even greater, then it flattens out again, then begins to climb again. It's actually ideal for walking, and would be even more ideal with music that has a number of different "paces" in it. So I looked through the iMixes to see if I could find something designed for Forbidden Plateau. I did find something that had a number of tunes by Styx on it, but I think Styx must be one of those bands from the 80s that I never really paid much attention to, being too busy with children and school to pay much attention to rock.
So, no Styx. No downloads.
This morning, though, when I woke up, my legs already walking at the bottom of my bed, also already playing in my head was El Norte, from Gotan (anagram for Tango) Project's album Lunatico. When that finished, I started to "hear" a few other tunes from that album, and then I realized that I had discovered great walking tunes. And that I already had them. I jumped (yes, I mean jumped) out of bed and pulled on the sweaty walking clothes that I had left in a heap on the floor after yesterday's walk. Sneaking past my deaf pug so that he would not awaken and feel bad about being left behind, I left the house plugged into my iPod, and started to walk.
(Get this: Amor Porteno, the first song on the album, is perfect for starting up the walk. A relatively slow pace, it is not so intrusive that you feel you have to slow down to stick with it. And because the words are in Spanish (no giving it the good old college try, here), if you don't know Spanish, you can imagine anything you want. After a few warmup minutes of Amor Porteno, you get Notas, perfect for walking to. Diferente moves it up another notch, but don't be deceived by the awkward beginning 30 seconds or so. When she starts singing, you are with her and walking, and when the bandoneon starts to play, you'll be swinging your arms and singing along, in Spanish.)
I'm walking along and then the left side of my headset begins to cut out, and I immediately fly into a "fuckin' technology" rage that is way out of proportion to the problem -- compared to the results of no hot water or only dirty hot water or only dirty cold water pouring out of the shower head in Petersburg, a broken stereo channel would appear to be minor, and I started to feel abashed about my simmering anger at Apple, at the makers of my headphones, and then found it curious how I could be so accepting (if also somewhat annoyed) of not having clean hot water, but apoplectic at not being able to hear Gotan Project in stereo. (Is this too close to being a thought?)
I had to fiddle with the plug and learned that if I don't plug the headset all the way into my iPod, the stereo miraculously works again, but then I have to hold the headset and iPod in a certain way at a certain angle...ha! What problems, I think, but immediately STOP thinking, since I am supposed not to be thinking, because if I think too much, I will have nothing to write about. Look, I tell myself. Look at what's happening around you on Forbidden Plateau Road, and writer about that.
Criminal is playing on my iPod by this time, which I am holding in front of me the way that an orthodox priest holds a holy book out in front of him as he comes into the main part of the cathedral from behind the iconostasis. I am a holy woman, blessing the world with my iPod, and nothing is happening out there. Nothing. There is a slight breeze. The clouds are moving in and soon the sun will be covered. Yesterday two deer walked out of the woods in front of me and with their almond shaped deer eyes watched me walk closer until I had penetrated their comfort zone, and they moved off silently. No deer today, and I walked up to the new subdivision, Views of Forbidden Plateau, to the pace of tango, and stopped.
No thinking, I think, remembering Donald the Guileless' instruction. No thinking. I turn around and head back down the hill. The bandoneon is frantic with the notes of La Viguela, a drama not matched by the environment around me.
As I approach a curve in the road, a dog appears from the other direction. He is black and grey, walks with purpose, his head, which is framed by a black mane, is looking down, so he doesn't see me. He looks, I don't know, military, in a black and grey sort of way. A few seconds later, two more dogs appear, twins, short haired, butterscotch, long tailed dogs with square noses. The three dogs are playing some sort of game; they've done this before, I can tell, by the way the three of them stop and stand still when they notice me coming. The three of them stop so still and stand and watch me coming towards them, and the black one moves off to the left, off the road, to stand on some grass. He looks suspicious of me. And while he doesn't look threatening, he does look as if he wants to question me about me presence here on his road. Domingo starts to play on my iPod, giving me confidence, and I quicken my pace and walk towards the dogs. Who will move?
The black and grey military dog continues to move up and around to my left, and as I pass him he will be able to close in behind me, and it occurs to me that it would be ironic if I were to be mauled to death by three dogs. So much for my love of dogs, I think, and just as I'm picturing what people would think if they found me mauled to death by dogs, and what would happen to the dogs who would be accused of such an atrocity, the two butterscotch dogs start wagging their ridiculous tails and grinning. They are happy to see me: a break in their usual people-free routine, I'm thinking, and they are anticipating a cookie, or a pat on the head, and their bodies start to be wagged by their tails and their rib cages look like rubber as joy infuses every ounce of their dog-being-ness and all thoughts of having my tibula dragged off into the woods disappear and I turn to the military dog, who is still eyeing my suspiciously, from behind me, now, and apologize to him for distracting his two goofy friends, who probably are the main reason he has any fun at all, and I keep walking, now to the gentle piano of Paris, Texas -- and the two goofy dogs disappear up a driveway before I get to them and I walk the rest of the way home, getting to my own driveway just before Alice Blue Gown starts to play and my left headphone starts to crackle.
And that's what happened on Forbidden Plateau today. Nothing. As I write this El Norte is playing. It seems a good concluding statement as the bandoneon whips around, playing with the driving bass.
Okay. Those words, an inaccurate quotation from my brother, who I shall call Donald the Guileless in this blog, jerked me back to the Dashboard of this blog, mostly because he also said that reading the last entry in my blog was like watching the annoying last episode of the Sopranos, and that he felt abandoned.
Well, I wanted to tell him, not much happens up here on Forbidden Plateau, despite the promise of the name.
Of course he knows, Donald the Guileless, that not much happens up here, having once admonished me for living in such an out of the way community. But I think he was frustrated when he said that, having become lost on the one road that leads to where I live.
But in a way he's right. Not that I abandoned anyone who may have been reading this blog, but that I abandoned the trip to Russia, because it is now, I realize, that the comparisons are starting to happen. Now, when I drive into town, or walk down Forbidden Plateau Road, or shop in a grocery store, walk into a museum, look into the water of a river, answer my email -- now, when I do those things, I am thinking of Petersburg, and what things were like in Petersburg.
But oh, I won't tell you what I think, I'll just get on with things. Like my morning walk.
The story goes like this:
I now wake up every morning, my legs shuffling around in the bottom half of the bed, anxious to get themselves pounding on concrete, the way, I think, they pounded on the concrete of Petersburg, to the point that my hips ached. I'm missing that aching feeling, and when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I want to do is get outside and walk on the concrete sidewalks.
I have had to settle for the pavement of Forbidden Plateau Road, spurning the spongey wooded paths of Nymph Falls Park and opting for the harsh density of road. It's like this: when I walk in the woods, I keep imagining, smelling even, the musk of a black bear, or hearing the connivings of a cougar, and now that the pug is too old to come on walks with me, I have no bear or cougar bait, becoming instead the potential main target for any predator. When I walk the paths, I am in a state of constant arousal, the hair on the back of my neck sticks up, and I keep looking behind me, or into the woods, for the bear or the cougar.
The thing is, I've discovered, when I walk on the road, I don't imagine cougars or bears stalking just out of sight and sound. I figure they are deeper in the woods staying away from the roar of motors. Not that there are that many cars on my road -- I counted 1 this morning, and 3 yesterday morning -- but that there is the potential for cars. And, I tell myself, the bears and the cougars know that.
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours trawling for good "walking" music on iTunes. I sat in the Comox Grind, drank coffee, and looked through the iMixes for music that I could listen to while walking up the side of Forbidden Plateau. I found the Nike sports mixes, and scrolled through those, but only found stuff claiming to urge me on to build bigger muscles, including one mix of "college" cheers. Nope. No college cheers for me. And no buff.
Why do I need walking music? Forbidden Plateau, right outside my front door, is more or less flat, and when I turn right at the end of my driveway, it continues flat for a short while, then gradually it begins to climb at a greater and greater incline...but really, it is gradual. There are a couple of places where the incline is even greater, then it flattens out again, then begins to climb again. It's actually ideal for walking, and would be even more ideal with music that has a number of different "paces" in it. So I looked through the iMixes to see if I could find something designed for Forbidden Plateau. I did find something that had a number of tunes by Styx on it, but I think Styx must be one of those bands from the 80s that I never really paid much attention to, being too busy with children and school to pay much attention to rock.
So, no Styx. No downloads.
This morning, though, when I woke up, my legs already walking at the bottom of my bed, also already playing in my head was El Norte, from Gotan (anagram for Tango) Project's album Lunatico. When that finished, I started to "hear" a few other tunes from that album, and then I realized that I had discovered great walking tunes. And that I already had them. I jumped (yes, I mean jumped) out of bed and pulled on the sweaty walking clothes that I had left in a heap on the floor after yesterday's walk. Sneaking past my deaf pug so that he would not awaken and feel bad about being left behind, I left the house plugged into my iPod, and started to walk.
(Get this: Amor Porteno, the first song on the album, is perfect for starting up the walk. A relatively slow pace, it is not so intrusive that you feel you have to slow down to stick with it. And because the words are in Spanish (no giving it the good old college try, here), if you don't know Spanish, you can imagine anything you want. After a few warmup minutes of Amor Porteno, you get Notas, perfect for walking to. Diferente moves it up another notch, but don't be deceived by the awkward beginning 30 seconds or so. When she starts singing, you are with her and walking, and when the bandoneon starts to play, you'll be swinging your arms and singing along, in Spanish.)
I'm walking along and then the left side of my headset begins to cut out, and I immediately fly into a "fuckin' technology" rage that is way out of proportion to the problem -- compared to the results of no hot water or only dirty hot water or only dirty cold water pouring out of the shower head in Petersburg, a broken stereo channel would appear to be minor, and I started to feel abashed about my simmering anger at Apple, at the makers of my headphones, and then found it curious how I could be so accepting (if also somewhat annoyed) of not having clean hot water, but apoplectic at not being able to hear Gotan Project in stereo. (Is this too close to being a thought?)
I had to fiddle with the plug and learned that if I don't plug the headset all the way into my iPod, the stereo miraculously works again, but then I have to hold the headset and iPod in a certain way at a certain angle...ha! What problems, I think, but immediately STOP thinking, since I am supposed not to be thinking, because if I think too much, I will have nothing to write about. Look, I tell myself. Look at what's happening around you on Forbidden Plateau Road, and writer about that.
Criminal is playing on my iPod by this time, which I am holding in front of me the way that an orthodox priest holds a holy book out in front of him as he comes into the main part of the cathedral from behind the iconostasis. I am a holy woman, blessing the world with my iPod, and nothing is happening out there. Nothing. There is a slight breeze. The clouds are moving in and soon the sun will be covered. Yesterday two deer walked out of the woods in front of me and with their almond shaped deer eyes watched me walk closer until I had penetrated their comfort zone, and they moved off silently. No deer today, and I walked up to the new subdivision, Views of Forbidden Plateau, to the pace of tango, and stopped.
No thinking, I think, remembering Donald the Guileless' instruction. No thinking. I turn around and head back down the hill. The bandoneon is frantic with the notes of La Viguela, a drama not matched by the environment around me.
As I approach a curve in the road, a dog appears from the other direction. He is black and grey, walks with purpose, his head, which is framed by a black mane, is looking down, so he doesn't see me. He looks, I don't know, military, in a black and grey sort of way. A few seconds later, two more dogs appear, twins, short haired, butterscotch, long tailed dogs with square noses. The three dogs are playing some sort of game; they've done this before, I can tell, by the way the three of them stop and stand still when they notice me coming. The three of them stop so still and stand and watch me coming towards them, and the black one moves off to the left, off the road, to stand on some grass. He looks suspicious of me. And while he doesn't look threatening, he does look as if he wants to question me about me presence here on his road. Domingo starts to play on my iPod, giving me confidence, and I quicken my pace and walk towards the dogs. Who will move?
The black and grey military dog continues to move up and around to my left, and as I pass him he will be able to close in behind me, and it occurs to me that it would be ironic if I were to be mauled to death by three dogs. So much for my love of dogs, I think, and just as I'm picturing what people would think if they found me mauled to death by dogs, and what would happen to the dogs who would be accused of such an atrocity, the two butterscotch dogs start wagging their ridiculous tails and grinning. They are happy to see me: a break in their usual people-free routine, I'm thinking, and they are anticipating a cookie, or a pat on the head, and their bodies start to be wagged by their tails and their rib cages look like rubber as joy infuses every ounce of their dog-being-ness and all thoughts of having my tibula dragged off into the woods disappear and I turn to the military dog, who is still eyeing my suspiciously, from behind me, now, and apologize to him for distracting his two goofy friends, who probably are the main reason he has any fun at all, and I keep walking, now to the gentle piano of Paris, Texas -- and the two goofy dogs disappear up a driveway before I get to them and I walk the rest of the way home, getting to my own driveway just before Alice Blue Gown starts to play and my left headphone starts to crackle.
And that's what happened on Forbidden Plateau today. Nothing. As I write this El Norte is playing. It seems a good concluding statement as the bandoneon whips around, playing with the driving bass.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
The Sicilian Mushroom Farmer & Life When Nothing Happens
Can't sleep. It's 1 am, Toronto time, and after a hot bath (but not hot enough) and a few hours of sleep, I woke up suddenly at midnight and lay around on my bed and played the "can I fall asleep again" game, and then when I lost at that, started to "measure" the width and length of my bed by trying to see if I could reach my arms and my feet , one to each side and end of the bed. If you know what I mean. Essentially what that means is that I have to see if I can reach my left arm to the left side of the bed, my right arm to the top of the bed, my right foot to the right side of the bed and my left foot to the bottom of the bed. If I can manage to do that, then I have "won" and then must think of something else to do before getting up to check a minor fact about St Petersburg in my guide book. Something about a tower. So I lie in bed for a bit longer and watch a circle of orange light pulsating on the ceiling just above the desk; it's the reflection of the orange hibernation light on my laptop, and eventually I am lulled into getting about and telling you about the Sicilian mushroom farmer.
He was sitting in my aisle seat on the flight from Milan, the flight that I booked six months ago to ensure that I would get an aisle seat so that I could stretch out my legs from time to time and ensure that I don't get swollen ankles. So, he's sitting in my seat when I get on the plane, and when I point this out to him, and his long greasy grey hair, he moves into his best "look how generous I'm being to you and letting you have the window seat" mode, and insists that I take the window seat.
No. I say, pointing to my boarding pass. I get the aisle seat.
No. He says, pretending not to understand that he is in the wrong seat. I get the aisle seat.
No. I say. You window, me aisle.
One of the flight attendants notices the imbroglio and appears and the two of them start to speak in Italian.
Madame, the flight attendant says to me. This gentleman would like to sit at the aisle seat. Would you mind changing places?
Yes, I say. I would mind. (A month practicing proactive and reactive aggression in Russia has served me well).
Another rapid conversation in Italian and the gentleman in my seat, the one with pants whose waist is too small to fit around his real waist and is therefore cinched around his hips with a tight belt, into which is stuffed a generic cotton short sleeved shirt, he gets up and pouting, I kid you not, he was pouting, goes to the back of the plane where he sat in another aisle seat, also not his own, yelling many words, none of which I could understand except for one which sounded suspiciously like "tourist". In my imagination I constructed his anger something like this: this is Alitalia, I am Italian, I should get what I want on my national airline, but instead the better seat goes to the tourist...
Hm. If you can call row 34 a good seat.
To add to this commotion, there was a family of 5: two parents and three children who had been engaged in armed combat since before getting in the boarding line in the terminal, whose seating assignments would have ensured a continuation of: the two boys arguing about which one of them wanted or didn't wanted to get along with the other; one of the boys grabbing on to his youngest sister's long unkempt hair and pulling it over her head and giving her a "hairdo" by tying the strands into knots; the other boy grabbing on to the suduku puzzle between his brother's teeth and flapping it until it tore, then denying he had done anything wrong; the littlest sister, of course, as the youngest in the group, was doing nothing wrong. Ha ha. Oh, I forgot to mention the parents, a couple in their late thirties, perhaps, good parents, Torontonians, probably make a lot of money, tired from their three weeks with three children in Italy and trying really hard to keep it all together: you know, polite to one another, making logical "corrections" to their children's behavior, smiling at one another, talking about their plans for tomorrow, when, apparently, all three children were heading off to summer camp (hm, I wonder why?).
So anyway, this family of five was to be separated from one another, and while I could see in the parents' eyes some sense of relief at the prospect of not having to sit with these three children (who, by the way, were actually quite funny), combined with the knowledge that really, they could not in good conscience impose these three on the kindness of strangers. So, when they got on the plane, while one flight attendant was managing me and the mushroom farmer, another was trying to rearrange things so that this family of 5 could all sit in closer proximity to one another.
MEANWHILE, in another part of the plane, a couple from somewhere had sat together in two seats that were together, husband and wife, and seemed to think it was logical to expect that that was okay, since the two seats that they HAD been assigned, in completely different parts of the plane from where they were sitting, were not together, and they wanted to be together. This meant that the two women who were assigned to those seats had on their own decided to sit in two seats that were empty when they got on and found their seats full.
MEANWHILE, in yet another part of the plane a man is yelling at a woman with whom he had agreed to switch seats, because when he got to the seat that he had agreed to switch into, he found that the seat back was broken and could not recline, and he did not want to sit in a broken seat, and wanted his original seat back. She did not.
AND, towards the front the plane, another man who was separated from his wife by seat assignment but not by emotion, was lobbying yet another flight attendant to get his seat switched to beside his wife, but the person on one side of his wife did not want to switch, and the person on the other side agreed to switch, but not to the middle seat in the middle aisle, which is where said man wanted to switch from.
In short, what we had on Alitalia 652 from Milan to Toronto was one great big logic puzzle and so the amusement for the hour, while I sat in my aisle seat and wondered if the seat next to me would remain empty, was to watch the flight attendants work this all out with diplomacy and without losing their tempers.
We left about 30 minutes later than scheduled, and by the time the plane took off (and by this time I was thinking, "please don't let me die with this group of people"), sitting beside me was an Italian man who refused to look at me (somehow I had been presented to him as evil and uncooperative, but how could I have explained to him I had just been in Russia for a month?) as we taxied down the runway and who made several hundred signs of the cross in rapid succession, concluding each by kissing his fingertips and bending his head ever so slightly towards the seat back in front of him.
Half an hour later my man with the long hair wanders back to the aisle beside me, the stub of a partly smoked cigar stuck into his mouth. Unlit, of course. He gestures to the guy who has been stuck beside me and indicates that he wants his seat back, so guy beside me jumps up and leaps over me (he is small and agile) and I get up to let pouty back in where he sits with this cigar butt in his mouth and looks sideways at me from time to time. I ignore him, using my best cool aloofness face.
But you know, the guy is a character. I can see that.
I had ordered a "vegetarian" meal which on Alitalia means that you get a lot of vegetables, both in salad form and cooked. On Air Canada it just means you don't get anything at all, same as the omnivores. Vegetarian and other specialty meals come first, and the flight attendants run up and down the aisles with these meals, trying to match food preference to seat occupant, a task made much more difficult by the seating changes at the beginning of the flight. But I am one of the earlier matches, since my seat has not been changed and I am easy to find. I eat my boiled spinach, boiled carrots, and boiled rice. Mushroom farmer beside me checks his watch. I eat my pickled carrot, pickled radish, pickled asparagus tips. Mushroom farmer checks his watch. I drink my water. Checks his watch again, and lifts slightly out of his seat to look around to see why I have food and he does not. I eat my cheese and cracker. Mushroom farmer calls out to flight attendant, demanding to know why I and others around me have food and he does not. I eat my bun dipped in olive oil. I look at him. He is checking his watch as I look (and continues to check his watch every ten minutes during the 8 1/2 hour flight), and then looks back at me, rolls his eyes, and makes a motion with his right hand than I can only describe what you would do if you wanted in a charades game to indicate that you were pantomiming a movie. So, he does that, and I come to realize over the course of the flight that he does that to express his reaction to things he does not like. So, he did it that first time to indicate that he thought this whole business of distributing food was stupid.
He did it again when they put his meal in front of him, at which time he took the cigar stub out of his mouth and put it into a cigarette box which he kept in a small kitten decortaed paper gift bag on the floor by his feet. And every time he did this motion with his right arm, he would look at me and roll his eyes.
It wasn't long before I realized why he needed an aisle seat. He is restless. Every20 minutes or so he would need to get up and walk up and down the aisle. As soon as he finished his meal, he was impatient to get rid of his tray and so jumped up and grabbed both his tray and mine and took them to the back. Without asking me, by the way. He just took it. I hadn't even had my yogourt, and pouf! Off with the tray!
Three hours into the flight he asks me in Italenglish where I am going and where I have been. I respond in Englitalian and so we begin our relationship, an abashed truce, wherein I discover that he is a Sicilian Porcino farmer on his way to Toronto to help some Canadian mushroom farmer be a better one. A mushroom consultant?
I find out that he is divorced, had one daughter who died, and that Sicily is 300 kilometres across. His name is Tore, short for Salvatore. We communicate using the maps provided in the Alitalia travel book, drawing lines, question marks, happy faces, exclamation marks, and stick figures.
Just over the halfway mark in the flight, I offer to trade seats with him. He is driving me crazy by getting up and down so often, and although it is not a bad thing for me to get up out of my seat so many times as it will help to prevent my ankle from swelling up to the size of an avocado, I really want to sleep so that jet lag won't interfere with my time in Ottawa. So I offer to switch seats, and he is so happy that after we make the switch, he grabs my left hand and I expect him to kiss it, but no, he flips it over and reads my palm.
Five hours into the flight, after having "smoked" his cigar a few times in between putting it into the cigarette box, he once more removes the cigar stub and puts it into the cigarette box, but this time he pulls another short and stubby cigar out, this one in a wrapper, and unwraps it, and puts it in his mouth. I'm just not sure what to think or say about this.
Six hours into the flight he sees my iPod, and asks if it is a phone. No, I tell him.
Seven hours into the flight he asks me if he needs a phone card to make a phone call.
No, I say. You probably just need a couple of coins.
Do you have a cellphone, he asks.
Yes.
May I use it.
....um, yes, okay.
He wants to use my cellphone as soon as we get off the plane, but I'm not really wanting to hang back in the corridor while he chats away on my cellphone. No, I say. Wait.
We get to the immigration line up, and he wants to use my phone there. No, I say, as I have heard a security guard yell at someone for using their cellphone in the line. Wait until you get through customs, she says. So, I tell him no. I don't want to get yelled at, especially not at customs.
So, he sticks to me through customs. Almost walks up to the the customs officer with me, and so I have to yell at him to stay behind the red line. And it feels good, that, to yell.
We walk a bit further, and as a Canadian I am allowed through a short line, but as a non-Canadian he must go through immigration. Another direction. He tries to follow me through the Canadian line. No, I yell. Go there. And I point. Looking firm and pissed off.
He goes where he is supposed to and I go where I am supposed to and while standing finally on Canadian indoor-outdoor-carpet-covered concrete by the luggage carousel, I phone Steve.
After 15 minutes of waiting, my Sicilian Mushroom Farmer arrives, disheveled and frantic looking, and I hand him my phone. His luggage tumbles onto the carousel while he is on the phone; mine still hasn't come. He talks. Hands me the phone. Asks me if I want money. No. I say. Please go now. I think. Please just go.
He grabs my hand again, I think to shake it, but no, he kisses my hand and turns away and is gone. I spend another hour frittering around trying to find the free shuttle to my hotel only to discover it doesn't run on weekends (??). Grab a taxi, get to the hotel, and eventually lie on my bed and think about the times during my trip when I just lay on my bed, or sat in a chair, and when nothing happened and how I don't write about the periods of time when nothing happens, and so my trip sounds like a series of non-stop events. Most of the time, time just passes by, and I do stuff that is ordinary and mundane, uneventful. Nothing really happens. Then, every once in a while something does happen. But when nothing is happening, I can do mundane things like make wallpaper patterns move, or watch light shows on the insides of my eyelids.
He was sitting in my aisle seat on the flight from Milan, the flight that I booked six months ago to ensure that I would get an aisle seat so that I could stretch out my legs from time to time and ensure that I don't get swollen ankles. So, he's sitting in my seat when I get on the plane, and when I point this out to him, and his long greasy grey hair, he moves into his best "look how generous I'm being to you and letting you have the window seat" mode, and insists that I take the window seat.
No. I say, pointing to my boarding pass. I get the aisle seat.
No. He says, pretending not to understand that he is in the wrong seat. I get the aisle seat.
No. I say. You window, me aisle.
One of the flight attendants notices the imbroglio and appears and the two of them start to speak in Italian.
Madame, the flight attendant says to me. This gentleman would like to sit at the aisle seat. Would you mind changing places?
Yes, I say. I would mind. (A month practicing proactive and reactive aggression in Russia has served me well).
Another rapid conversation in Italian and the gentleman in my seat, the one with pants whose waist is too small to fit around his real waist and is therefore cinched around his hips with a tight belt, into which is stuffed a generic cotton short sleeved shirt, he gets up and pouting, I kid you not, he was pouting, goes to the back of the plane where he sat in another aisle seat, also not his own, yelling many words, none of which I could understand except for one which sounded suspiciously like "tourist". In my imagination I constructed his anger something like this: this is Alitalia, I am Italian, I should get what I want on my national airline, but instead the better seat goes to the tourist...
Hm. If you can call row 34 a good seat.
To add to this commotion, there was a family of 5: two parents and three children who had been engaged in armed combat since before getting in the boarding line in the terminal, whose seating assignments would have ensured a continuation of: the two boys arguing about which one of them wanted or didn't wanted to get along with the other; one of the boys grabbing on to his youngest sister's long unkempt hair and pulling it over her head and giving her a "hairdo" by tying the strands into knots; the other boy grabbing on to the suduku puzzle between his brother's teeth and flapping it until it tore, then denying he had done anything wrong; the littlest sister, of course, as the youngest in the group, was doing nothing wrong. Ha ha. Oh, I forgot to mention the parents, a couple in their late thirties, perhaps, good parents, Torontonians, probably make a lot of money, tired from their three weeks with three children in Italy and trying really hard to keep it all together: you know, polite to one another, making logical "corrections" to their children's behavior, smiling at one another, talking about their plans for tomorrow, when, apparently, all three children were heading off to summer camp (hm, I wonder why?).
So anyway, this family of five was to be separated from one another, and while I could see in the parents' eyes some sense of relief at the prospect of not having to sit with these three children (who, by the way, were actually quite funny), combined with the knowledge that really, they could not in good conscience impose these three on the kindness of strangers. So, when they got on the plane, while one flight attendant was managing me and the mushroom farmer, another was trying to rearrange things so that this family of 5 could all sit in closer proximity to one another.
MEANWHILE, in another part of the plane, a couple from somewhere had sat together in two seats that were together, husband and wife, and seemed to think it was logical to expect that that was okay, since the two seats that they HAD been assigned, in completely different parts of the plane from where they were sitting, were not together, and they wanted to be together. This meant that the two women who were assigned to those seats had on their own decided to sit in two seats that were empty when they got on and found their seats full.
MEANWHILE, in yet another part of the plane a man is yelling at a woman with whom he had agreed to switch seats, because when he got to the seat that he had agreed to switch into, he found that the seat back was broken and could not recline, and he did not want to sit in a broken seat, and wanted his original seat back. She did not.
AND, towards the front the plane, another man who was separated from his wife by seat assignment but not by emotion, was lobbying yet another flight attendant to get his seat switched to beside his wife, but the person on one side of his wife did not want to switch, and the person on the other side agreed to switch, but not to the middle seat in the middle aisle, which is where said man wanted to switch from.
In short, what we had on Alitalia 652 from Milan to Toronto was one great big logic puzzle and so the amusement for the hour, while I sat in my aisle seat and wondered if the seat next to me would remain empty, was to watch the flight attendants work this all out with diplomacy and without losing their tempers.
We left about 30 minutes later than scheduled, and by the time the plane took off (and by this time I was thinking, "please don't let me die with this group of people"), sitting beside me was an Italian man who refused to look at me (somehow I had been presented to him as evil and uncooperative, but how could I have explained to him I had just been in Russia for a month?) as we taxied down the runway and who made several hundred signs of the cross in rapid succession, concluding each by kissing his fingertips and bending his head ever so slightly towards the seat back in front of him.
Half an hour later my man with the long hair wanders back to the aisle beside me, the stub of a partly smoked cigar stuck into his mouth. Unlit, of course. He gestures to the guy who has been stuck beside me and indicates that he wants his seat back, so guy beside me jumps up and leaps over me (he is small and agile) and I get up to let pouty back in where he sits with this cigar butt in his mouth and looks sideways at me from time to time. I ignore him, using my best cool aloofness face.
But you know, the guy is a character. I can see that.
I had ordered a "vegetarian" meal which on Alitalia means that you get a lot of vegetables, both in salad form and cooked. On Air Canada it just means you don't get anything at all, same as the omnivores. Vegetarian and other specialty meals come first, and the flight attendants run up and down the aisles with these meals, trying to match food preference to seat occupant, a task made much more difficult by the seating changes at the beginning of the flight. But I am one of the earlier matches, since my seat has not been changed and I am easy to find. I eat my boiled spinach, boiled carrots, and boiled rice. Mushroom farmer beside me checks his watch. I eat my pickled carrot, pickled radish, pickled asparagus tips. Mushroom farmer checks his watch. I drink my water. Checks his watch again, and lifts slightly out of his seat to look around to see why I have food and he does not. I eat my cheese and cracker. Mushroom farmer calls out to flight attendant, demanding to know why I and others around me have food and he does not. I eat my bun dipped in olive oil. I look at him. He is checking his watch as I look (and continues to check his watch every ten minutes during the 8 1/2 hour flight), and then looks back at me, rolls his eyes, and makes a motion with his right hand than I can only describe what you would do if you wanted in a charades game to indicate that you were pantomiming a movie. So, he does that, and I come to realize over the course of the flight that he does that to express his reaction to things he does not like. So, he did it that first time to indicate that he thought this whole business of distributing food was stupid.
He did it again when they put his meal in front of him, at which time he took the cigar stub out of his mouth and put it into a cigarette box which he kept in a small kitten decortaed paper gift bag on the floor by his feet. And every time he did this motion with his right arm, he would look at me and roll his eyes.
It wasn't long before I realized why he needed an aisle seat. He is restless. Every20 minutes or so he would need to get up and walk up and down the aisle. As soon as he finished his meal, he was impatient to get rid of his tray and so jumped up and grabbed both his tray and mine and took them to the back. Without asking me, by the way. He just took it. I hadn't even had my yogourt, and pouf! Off with the tray!
Three hours into the flight he asks me in Italenglish where I am going and where I have been. I respond in Englitalian and so we begin our relationship, an abashed truce, wherein I discover that he is a Sicilian Porcino farmer on his way to Toronto to help some Canadian mushroom farmer be a better one. A mushroom consultant?
I find out that he is divorced, had one daughter who died, and that Sicily is 300 kilometres across. His name is Tore, short for Salvatore. We communicate using the maps provided in the Alitalia travel book, drawing lines, question marks, happy faces, exclamation marks, and stick figures.
Just over the halfway mark in the flight, I offer to trade seats with him. He is driving me crazy by getting up and down so often, and although it is not a bad thing for me to get up out of my seat so many times as it will help to prevent my ankle from swelling up to the size of an avocado, I really want to sleep so that jet lag won't interfere with my time in Ottawa. So I offer to switch seats, and he is so happy that after we make the switch, he grabs my left hand and I expect him to kiss it, but no, he flips it over and reads my palm.
Five hours into the flight, after having "smoked" his cigar a few times in between putting it into the cigarette box, he once more removes the cigar stub and puts it into the cigarette box, but this time he pulls another short and stubby cigar out, this one in a wrapper, and unwraps it, and puts it in his mouth. I'm just not sure what to think or say about this.
Six hours into the flight he sees my iPod, and asks if it is a phone. No, I tell him.
Seven hours into the flight he asks me if he needs a phone card to make a phone call.
No, I say. You probably just need a couple of coins.
Do you have a cellphone, he asks.
Yes.
May I use it.
....um, yes, okay.
He wants to use my cellphone as soon as we get off the plane, but I'm not really wanting to hang back in the corridor while he chats away on my cellphone. No, I say. Wait.
We get to the immigration line up, and he wants to use my phone there. No, I say, as I have heard a security guard yell at someone for using their cellphone in the line. Wait until you get through customs, she says. So, I tell him no. I don't want to get yelled at, especially not at customs.
So, he sticks to me through customs. Almost walks up to the the customs officer with me, and so I have to yell at him to stay behind the red line. And it feels good, that, to yell.
We walk a bit further, and as a Canadian I am allowed through a short line, but as a non-Canadian he must go through immigration. Another direction. He tries to follow me through the Canadian line. No, I yell. Go there. And I point. Looking firm and pissed off.
He goes where he is supposed to and I go where I am supposed to and while standing finally on Canadian indoor-outdoor-carpet-covered concrete by the luggage carousel, I phone Steve.
After 15 minutes of waiting, my Sicilian Mushroom Farmer arrives, disheveled and frantic looking, and I hand him my phone. His luggage tumbles onto the carousel while he is on the phone; mine still hasn't come. He talks. Hands me the phone. Asks me if I want money. No. I say. Please go now. I think. Please just go.
He grabs my hand again, I think to shake it, but no, he kisses my hand and turns away and is gone. I spend another hour frittering around trying to find the free shuttle to my hotel only to discover it doesn't run on weekends (??). Grab a taxi, get to the hotel, and eventually lie on my bed and think about the times during my trip when I just lay on my bed, or sat in a chair, and when nothing happened and how I don't write about the periods of time when nothing happens, and so my trip sounds like a series of non-stop events. Most of the time, time just passes by, and I do stuff that is ordinary and mundane, uneventful. Nothing really happens. Then, every once in a while something does happen. But when nothing is happening, I can do mundane things like make wallpaper patterns move, or watch light shows on the insides of my eyelids.
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