"February," she says. "In Manitoba. Canada. North America. The Northern hemisphere. The Earth. The Solar system. The Milky Way. The Universe."
"Right. Thanks, Rebecca," he says. "I knew that. The question was rhetorical, if you hadn't noticed."
"Sure George. Rhetorical. Is everything ironic around here? I make an obvious reference to a pre-WW2 American play set in the midwest, and you have to go and snark on me? What's eating you?"
"Everyone's so phony these days. You never know when someone's gonna come out of the woodwork with some declaration about this or that: foreign policy between the USA and China, Ronald Reagan's failures, Maggie Trudeau's nights with the Stones, Bob Dylan first arriving in NYC 50 years ago, paying for bandwidth use, getting a picture of both sides of the sun simultaneously. Something like that. Something momentous. You know?"
"Okay. Your point?"
"Well it's all so huge these days. The weather's the worst ever. The polar bears are dying. You've never been able to eat Ethiopian food for this cheap. There have never been so many concussions in hockey, or football. Kids have to wear helmets to curl."
"Hey George. I'm serious here," says Rebecca. "Really. What's your point? I mean there's no snark in this question. I just want to know what's really bugging you?"
"Really?" says George. "You really want to know?"
"Well, I think so," she says. "You know, if it'll maybe help. Like maybe you just need to get it out."
"I can't nail anything down!" he says. "It all just keeps moving. Coming around. You're supposed to aim and shoot, to be precise, to have a direction. To know where you're going - what you're doing. But it all just changes on you the minute you think you've got it. You know what I mean?"
"Maybe," she says.
"We're just all so small. So insignificant. But we're making these decisions, about what pants to wear, or what to say to a friend, or what word to type next - like 'asparagus' - there. I didn't even decide this. I just wrote the first word that came to my mind: 'dilettante'."
"I think you're taking this all too seriously."
"Exactly! You know. Exactly that! The other day I'm out with friends and this guy that I've worked with walks up. Like he's working in another division now, but he's actually pretty close to retirement. Like he says that he's going to retire after the next full year. So that means he's going to stick it out for another year and a half. And so I say to him, you know, to make conversation: What'll you do after that? And he says that he's a few months and credits away from getting his therapeutic hypnosis certification. That when he's done he hopes to do that during his retirement. What? I say. Could you explain that? And after a few minutes of explanation I realize that I've asked for more than I might be able to give, but you know what? I keep on giving! I keep on listening. I totally stop talking to my friends who are still sitting at the table with me and try to tune into what he's saying. I feel like I owe it to him somehow. And he goes on about how when he takes people in he takes them on a journey above their lifeline. It takes me a few minutes to realize that he's talking about something like reincarnation. Like he'd take me out of my consciousness and then have me, in my mind, fly over my soul's lifeline, which could take me back to medieval times, or even to the time of the Greeks, and then he'd ask me questions like where's my future, like in what direction is my future, and where's my past, like in what direction is my past. And then he'd ask me to name the main source of my anger or discontent (my memory could be totally failing me here), in my timeline, and he'd ask me to land there. On that spot in time. I could end up in a village in Kazakhstan for all I know. It could be in the dead of winter. And then, when I'm there I'm supposed to find what makes me angry and, I don't know, get over it! You know. Confront it or something. Realize it for what it is, and then decide to move ahead. Yeah. To get over it! Then he'd call me to fly up over my timeline again, and come back down in the present and then he'd take me out of the trance and we'd talk about it."
"What?"
"Yeah. I know. I think that's pretty close to it."
"No kidding."
"Yeah, and this guy's actually pretty cool. Pretty smart. Really smart actually. So I just listened. I mean I like him and everything, and part of me is intrigued by this stuff. Part of me thinks it might be real. It might be more real than whatever we think is real now. I don't know. Everything's sort of up in the air for me these days. You know?"
"Not really."
"So everything really makes sense to you, and you've got no major questions about existence or about what you're doing today, and why, much less what you might be doing say, in a year from now?"
"Well, it's not that I don't have my doubts, but look at you! You're a bit of a mess right now, because you're thinking about all this stuff. I mean really, can you actually find an answer to your questions?"
"Yeah. Good point. There's probably not much point in going on about it, eh?"
"Tomorrow we die."
"Maybe I'll end up in Poland. In a village. As a gardener for some five hundred year old church that tourists visit on tours. And I'll know the tour guides speech about what's important and what the church has in common with other churches in the area, and what makes it unique. While she's giving the speech inside the church I'll be outside weeding the flower beds and mouthing the words, maybe speaking them along with her. She'll be about five foot three, with dark hair and green eyes that sparkle. She'll only smile occasionally but when she does I'll be entranced. One day, after a tour she'll come back to thank me for keeping the grounds neat and she'll offer to buy me a drink and lunch at the village cafe, and that'll be the beginning of our lives together. Nothing will change really. During the tourist season she'll give tours and I'll tend the grounds. And at the end of the day we'll meet at our apartment on the third floor overlooking a valley, the green hills rising just beyond the winding river that the road in and out of the village follows. We'll have supper together and then go for walks, or read, and then go to bed to start it all over again. In winter we'll just spend most of the time inside. Then it'll be tourist season again and we'll start it all over again."
"Sounds nice to me, but ..."
"Yeah, I know. It's not going to happen."
"Or it already has."
"Don't mess with me, okay," he says.
"Whatever. It'll be Spring-time soon enough," she says.
Ride report:
in: -24'C wind NW 20 ks
out: -21'C wind NW 30 ks
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