IN (5)

There were indeed moist-looking rust-coloured stains running along the junctions of the asymmetric arrays of ceiling tiles. Not that Carson wanted to pay attention to this. He'd had some experience with plumbing in his past. In fact he'd re-plumbed the kitchen and bath of a house he and Petra had bought as a fixer-upper. How long ago was that? But he had no intention of letting on that he might know something about it, or be able to make sense of whatever it was the lurked above the sullied facade of white. He'd never been employed in any capacity as a maintenance man, still it crossed his mind that he may blogged about solving a plumbing problem, or worse he could have answered a question posed by one of his family members on Facebook. Surely that wasn't what they'd called him out for. They must have prospects more skilled, more apt, than he was to do this kind of thing. He'd been a marginally successful teacher in a middle-school - Grade five. Of course he'd been only too willing to give it up in favour of lying on a divan, porting IN, and allowing the dictates of his own conscious desires to take control. Had he betrayed himself? There had been the odd moments when he'd imagined buying an old house or some other interesting building, in some still secluded corner, even a desolate wilderness outpost away from the continual streams of noise in which everyone else seemed to find comfort, fix it up and live as a romantic on his own Walden pond.

"You're thinking it, aren't you?" says m-Carmel.

"Pardon? Thinking? What?" 

"You've slowed up, but I can still sense residuals of your INthink. You're thinking about those stains aren't you, and plumbing, and what's caused the problem, and maybe even a little bit about getting your hands on something that needs fixing."

"What?"

"We knew you would. Well I knew it. I called it. Most of the DIKCs didn't think so. They thought that we had to go with someone who had been one in unINlife, but I said that you didn't want someone who was jaded. Who had gone IN to get out of whatever they had been doing. You'd want someone who had been interested in it, but didn't do it for a living. For money. That would never work. They'd never do it without some demanding some kind of this or that for their troubles."

"Wait. What? What are you talking about?"

"Hey, don't worry about it! It's going to work out just fine. Once you see the options and the setup we've got to offer. You're going to like this I think. Maybe it was only twenty-eight days, but I was pretty confident of my call."

"I thought that I, that I was the one who wanted, you know, OUT."

M-Carmel turns to him now and touches him for the first time. She takes hold of him with both hands just above the elbows and, at arms length looks Carson in the eye. "You need to believe meon this. You did make the call for unIN, but when you come out your options are narrowed to what MCDIKC thinks is most expedient. They'll lay out the options. I'll be there of course to steady you, and offer clarifications, but you're going to have to make a decision that's kind of irrevocable."

"So I'm OUT, but I can't just leave and start again?"

"It's just a few steps to the unIN debriefing lounge. We'll sit there and relax. You'll have something to drink, something to eat, and I'll lay it all out for you. That'll help I think. It'll be all right, you'll see. Maybe I said too much too soon."

IN (4)

"Follow me" says m-Carmel, who surprises Carson when she ushers him out of the room into what he expects to be blinding sunlight and heat coming off of the patio. In fact she leads him along a grid of hallways

making more lefts and rights than he can track.


"What's happening?" he says as he tires and stumbles, catching a foot on the carpet.

M-Carmel turns to help him up. "Sorry," she says. "You've been slipping between IN and OUT too often. The stats are against you now, and since you haven't been able to go completely IN we thought you'd be okay just walking out of the room."


"How long has it been?" he says.

"Twenty-eight days. Not long really. Your situation presents the classic anomalous pattern of an m-designate. That is, you want IN consciously, but you're unable to maintain it. We're still understanding this process. All we have to go on, really, are patterns."

"So you mean that's it for me?" says Carson.

"Well, it's pretty clear to us. We can usually tell after a month."

"That a person will go IN?"

"Yes. After a month the patterns are clear. It may vary from one to three months before one goes INpermanent, but your patterns have been clear. If we hadn't been quite so busy I'd have taken you out yesterday, but you weren't in real distress until today."


"So this is it then," he says. "It's not going to work for me."

"Doesn't look like it."

"And I'm not the only one, I suppose."

"I know, I know," says m-Carmel with some exasperation. "We all hope that going IN is going to, you know, save the world from conflict. That's what a lot of MCDIKC people say in public.They remind us that it will be like Facebook or Twitter in 2011 - cause a permanent springtime for humanity - absolutely change things. But ..." she gestures with both hands now, pointing off into the distance, "now we have this."

Carson follows her hands, but cannot get a grip on what she means. What her speech reminds him of, though are the ecstatic online messages of the various experts. One pre-eminent theologian turned cultural activist delivered the first online speech to reach over one billion views. She said things like "IN would answer the problems of ethnic and religious strife, she said, because it would move humans toward one another." Or, "Once we were all IN we'd recognize the commonness of each others consciousness and that would finally move us into spiritual oneness." She spoke of how social networking had only been a whiff of the in-touchness that IN offered. "We are heading toward the ultimate metaphysics of being and knowing one another," she concluded. "We will overcome the constraints of the body. We will detoxify the earthly environment by removing our bodies from it, and placing them into everlasting pods of holy-oneness. I will be IN you and you will be IN me!"

"What's this? says Carson, facing m-Carmel.


"This," she says with a smile, looking up at a stained ceiling tile, "is either a leaky roof or a plumbing problem. Nobody knows for sure, because nobody knows where to look."

IN (3)

When someone OUTs and starts to cry the minders appear in a relative instant. In no less than thirty seconds (guaranteed) a minder appears in whatever form the OUTer has most often projected under sexual arousal. Carson's minder enters twenty-one point seven seconds after the aural sensors detect a second sob. This information, combined with the data triangulation of the visual sensor image of his posture, his stored-data-profile, and the length of Carson's current OUTmoment leads to this med-long length response time. The minder-centre (MC) data-inference-kinetics-control (DIKC) or MCDIKC must, of necessity, pro-rate its data - a sort of triage of urgency. Urgent-minder-action (UMA) is determined as necessary based on MCDIKC data triangulation, with priority based on an aggregate DIKC score. For those who are IN it is comforting to know that within thirty seconds of OUT-distress, a fantasy-generated-minder (f-gen) will appear, suited to take you back IN in whatever you'd like, or is most expedient.

Thus Carson cannot help but turn to m-Carmel when he sees the auburn-haired voluptuous female approximately his height and age enter. Through his tears he recognizes her, his f-gen, wearing a loose-fitting shift that one might have seen inmates or staff at a mid-twentieth century asylum for the troubled. Assessing Carson's situation as less than urgent, m-Carmel sashays around the perimeter of the room before reaching him, now seated on his INdivan. She runs her fingers along it and sits on it before turning her gaze up toward Carson who cannot take his eyes from her. By the time she seats herself he involuntarily steps toward her too and seats himself beside her. "I think I need something," he says. "Help, I think. You can help?"

IN (2)

Carson remembers Christmas, but he can't determine whether it's a placed-mem, a group-mem, or a bona-fide self-mem. To be honest he's not sure if lately he's been coming OUT more or going IN. The hard thing about all this was discerning self-mem from group-mem, and just now when he looks out over the silken tan-red sand and verdant leaves of the palms outside the window he imagines the sand as snow and the trees decorated in lights, and the ring of carols, faint in the air as if sung by a troupe of church choir devotees out spreading good cheer a wave of nostalgia buckles his knees.

Anticipation. The word itself flits across his mind-screen. He doesn't know how else to say it. What was that sense that was both desire and withholding? Need? Not quite so malevolent, yet still a kind of necessity. Does he remember sitting in a chair, in a car, in a church pew, waiting for the call to run to a place where what - what would it be? What does he desire? What does he need that he cannot not have? At least not when he wants it. What was this twist in the gut called hope that he now, he realizes, feels?

IN (1)

A desert expanse waits outside the room windows, but that only encourages Carson to return to his INdivan  beside the others arrayed in a fantastic digital design. The  room, unlike the dystopic images from many of your choice of twentieth century films and novels, was bright, coloured in waves of pixels and windows to the outdoors. It was not unpleasant at all, and there was choice. There were real options for those of us who had not as yet fully opted IN. 

Carson had to admit at this point that he was likely more IN than not. He hadn't paid attention to this stats lately. He recalled Petra suggesting that this was the first sign that he would go all  IN at some point. Whether or not you simply felt that it took too much energy to check, or whether it was the fatigue that comes from continually confronting the possibility of loss, not knowing how much time you were IN indicated something, she said. "It means that you've got a preference. That you're leaning toward IN. That you go OUT for a break, but you know you're going back IN. That you're always measuring the time that way." This memory was from a while back. Carson can't be specific about it. He's rummaging about in his mind for the last memory he's had of a conversation with Petra. Was that it? Smiling, he thinks that he might try google it. Of course it will be logged, to be found somewhere ing the v-base. Every room had one. He turns from the window to Petra lying on her IN-divan beside him. He wants to touch her, to awaken her. Only his respect for the freewill protocols stop him. From withIN he's can invite her OUT, but she retains full right to her bodyspace.

You'd think that since most were IN for most of the time that the scan would not take long. Still the range of vocabulary people use during an OUTmoment is quite narrow. What word could he search that would be unique to that one conversation? His memory reels. Resisting the siren call of his INdivan he stands at one of the upright datadocks and keys in 'Petra.' Ten thousand and twenty-two results, beginning with the most recent whose first frame includes Petra and the form of a woman named Naomi. Carson realizes his error immediately. Now he'll want to know more. How many OUTmoments has Petra taken since the last one they had? With whom? Was she forgetting? Why wasn't he? He refines his search prompts: 'Petra,' and 'INtime.' 

As he waits he feels the room fill with the unison susurrant breathing of the INs. This was touted as one of the marvels of going IN, that to Carson had seemed so banal at the time. One brochure header he'd read went: "go IN, get INtune!" How long ago was that? His self-mem was in decline. Bits and pieces - pastiches - unassimilable bits. A headline or an image without context. How long had he had these questions? Didn't he have a recollection of the datadocks being busy? Of having to go IN if he wanted to get data-time? Why was he the only one standing now, in the bright light of the sun? Why did the white sun seem so near? And the sand outside - had it always so fully surrounded the room?

The desolation was expansive and gorgeous. Blue sky. Tan-red sand sifting in the wind around the trunks of trees that remained a miraculous green. He thought he remembered talk of subterranean irrigation. He thought he remembered talk of the appreciation of this new aesthetic: barren-lush.

          

It's what you want

Holding it there on her lap perfectly wrapped in red foil with a gold bow, it’s weird how she goes on talking like she’s got nothing for you. Outside the snow falls like lace lifting in the wind. What if I just take it? you say. She smiles back. Do you dare? Well that’s the crux of it right there isn’t it, because these days everyone has the courage of their desires. Even without understanding this you'll do it. All you can do is watch.     

Ride report:

in:     (brought in the car for new struts)

out:  -12'C wind 10 ks S

Under no moon

George wakes up after a dream. It's 4:37. The night is cold and clear - stars but no moon. The temperature has fallen from above zero to minus 15. That's what they'd predicted, that's what happened. Under no moon. If I were brave now, he thinks, I'd get up and start writing. I'd write down this dream. I'd start with the large two-and-a-half-storey clapboard siding house with the veranda, and the family of five living in it. The trusting community wherein no one locks doors and the psychotic killer finds a place to wage his campaign of terror. The scene wherein the young girl, the middle daughter, cowers in the bathtub only to be found and without hesitation or soundtrack of warning sliced and hacked by the killer's strangely small sickle-shaped blade, her face and neck bearing the brunt of it, the blood minimalist in this scene as she kneels before him and then, still moaning despite the near complete removal of her face, falls forward on all fours at the killer's feet. Meanwhile the rest of the family, without George of course, has fled the house and stands in front of it, on the lawn, as though it were aflame, hugging one another, waiting. For what? The dream gives him this image as it closes, and he awakens: his wife and two daughters huddled in terror before his house while he, presumably from the front door, under cover of the veranda, exits. Who is the killer? he wonders. 

If he gets up now to write he'll make good use of the day. The dream is a gift. The exit at the end an obvious entrance into story. Into writing. You'd be reading it right now if George had heeded his own best advice. Rather though, he sighs, gets up and goes to the toilet, relieves himself, and returns to bed, the sheets damp from his sweat. Chilled now he pulls the comforter closer. He was hot, now he's cold. Beside him Rebecca awakens and says, "Can't sleep?"

"Dream," he says. "Nightmare. Stupid. A slasher."

"Ouch," she says. 

"You?" he says.

"No, just my neck. I slept funny I think."

"I should get up now," he says.

"Time?" she says, looking up. "Oh! It's almost five!"

"Yeah, I could get up."

"I can't," she says, "I should be sleeping on my back, flat. Not like this."

The radio wakes him at 8:13. He's had a second dream. This one's about being late for work. George doesn't want to think about it. He lies and waits for the ecstasies of the sports announcers, and then sits up, dresses, and heads to the kitchen to make coffee. It's Sunday, thank God. 

Ride report

Rode to Altona, then to Morris (for Steak'n'eggs at Burkes) with JS. Steven started out with us but 13 ks in his derailleur hanger broke and he called for a ride (and generously encouraged us to ride on). It was a good ride, though we'd misunderestimated the wind direction and speed - it was from the NW and so we had to ride into it for a good bit. Otherwise the temperatures were right, as was the breakfast and the company.

 

Pictures of children (fiction)

He buys the scooter and has it delivered. It's perfect. Italian and cream and tan and parked outside on the front walk. Leaning there, nonchalant on its stand, it makes even Winnipeg under the elms look like residential Paris.   

Still, the shine is off. Neither of them wants to admit it, least of all he. There is always a way to avoid it, though in her eyes the signal flickers. If however, you don't keep your eyes open wide when you greet her with a kiss, you'll never notice. 

The question is whether he understands his need to continue, or how this, his most recent effort, might only be an attempt, yet again, not to lose. Does he understand the question? We do, but Vincent's awareness has become, in some way, our question too.

For instance, he's just read the latest New Yorker, to which he subscribes on his ipad, and on it he's chuckled at the cartoons (which he reads first, always), in particular at the one with the caption: "We realize it's a win-win, Jenkins - we're trying to figure out a way to make it a win-lose." 

The men around the boardroom table get it. So does Vincent, but not in the way that will be helpful for him, and for us. Meredith might get it too, but she would never read The New Yorker on her ipad. She'd want to know what Babble or dooce would say.

Wistful, she'd enter the blogger's world hoping for pictures of children. The one of the two girls standing at the front door, backpacked and bundled for the trip to school. Herein lies our first clue. It's obvious really. Embarrassingly so. 

By that time (fiction)

The rocking of the boat is significant enough to alert Mr. Sawatzky, but it's too late. This trope weighs heavy on the-boy-in-the-striped-shirt, named Paul, who, at this time in his quest to do what Jesus would do, has waited. Rather than being a harbinger in action, he has chosen to wait, to watch, to know what will happen, to be implicated in it, to suffer within it. The frantic pulling of the starter cord, the futile mechanical noises and the clenching of a jaw. These things comfort him. He hides them in his heart. Surely he hopes to reach the shore once more, but the simple satisfaction of knowing his fate has calmed him. 

In the news later in the week no one will know that the boy understood what would happen before it did, well before it did in fact, or that he chose the paradox of silence in the face of destruction, even the possibility of his own. If we all could know of his silence and inaction we might see tragedy. Catharsis. We might see reason and cause. More than sympathy, we could realize that had the right person acted at the right time, disaster could have been, would have been, averted. The scientific view of things could have won the day, though there would be no fanfare or self-congratulation. Only the young hero thanked by the heedless, now grateful, father.

But what would this do for you really? Assuage your fears of a numb and nameless universe? Certainly Paul, the-boy-in-the-striped-shirt, finds no gain in once again being right and helping others avoid destiny. Where's the betterment for anyone in these scenarios? Shouldn't we let the chips fall? Shouldn't we nod and wince at the train-wreck, the highway mishap, the slipped disk and subsequent back spasm. It happens. It should happen. It must happen. The universe wills it. 

It only takes a few hours for the searchers to rumble down to the bridge where the truck is parked, note it, launch their boats and head up and down stream at once. At the downstream rapid would-be rescuer James Friesen, familiar with the river, lands his boat and walks the shoreline. Fifty yards later he picks a child's sneaker, blue with two gold stripes, still wet. Ten yards farther he picks up a fishing rod. Sure now, but heartsick, he approaches a monstrous cottonwood sweeper looming over the fan of the current on the outside of a bend that turns the river back East. Its overreaching  inert forking limbs have caught something larger. James wills it to move, to sound out as he approaches and calls out, to return his call with a plea for help, but the life in that small down-turned body bears its witness in silence.        

Ride report

in:       -3 wind 10ks W

out:     -1 wind 25ks WNW

WWJD

The problem with being like Jesus, or just channeling his spirit here on earth is that there's so much pressure to be right. Not that you have to be correct about everything, but your intentions, those have to be right. By definition as soon as they're off, you can no longer be Jesus incarnate. That's just the way this kind of thing works. So Paul's sitting in the prow of that aluminum fishing vessel, if indeed it makes sense to call that stubby-nosed bow a prow, and he's watching things unfold as he thought they might. They're drifting. The other three are entirely engrossed in fishing. Indeed, they are fishing out of the water a slimy two-foot jackfish that the older brother has hooked. They are completely into this endeavour. To the three of them the world is conflated to this fish, that hook, their net, and the gunwale over which they work.

As he watches the riverbank he notes that they likely have drifted farther downstream than the last time the father started the engine, turned the boat around and nosed it back upstream to the spot where they'd put in. He notes that, relative to the shore, the boat and the water appear to be moving faster. He turns around to look for an explanation as to what he imagines to be an increase in the sound of the river, and notes a disturbance in the water. At least he thinks it's a disturbance. He knows that if he was Jesus he would know for certain whether it was a disturbance or not, and whether or not the disturbance in the water was enough to be alarmed about. It's a reminder to him that he is not, in fact, Jesus, but just trying to see the world that way.

Given this realization his confidence wavers, which serves to exaggerate his fear of what he now fully believes awaits them downstream. What would Jesus do? Should he fall asleep in the front of the boat and wait to be awakened? Should he step overboard and walk to shore (believing that the rippling water will firmly support him as his running shoe touches it - a kind of water to wood miracle)? Should he suggest that they throw their lines over the other side of the boat? Being like Jesus gave him understanding and invincibility, but doubting being like Jesus gives him nothing but questions.


Ride report
in:      2'C wind 10ks S
out:   7'C wind 15 ks SSW

       

It's late

They smile at one another. It's awkward, but not the kind of awkward they'll regret later, the kind of awkward that they'll look back on remembering that conversation. The weight of it. The momentum. In a few years they'll look back on it from separate places. This moment will become that common bond that will, in fact, become their undoing. 

For now though they've just had drinks and they both want to go to bed. For now the only inkling of distress is in this man's far-flung reverie of another life. For now she shrugs, brushes her teeth, splashes water on her face and scans the mirror for blackheads, and uncertainty. It will be all right, she'll think. We'll go to bed and we'll make love and fix it, he'll say as he sits on the toilet. We'll wake up. We'll continue. 

This is what they both will think. And in the end they'll be right, which will surprise them.

Ride report

in:     -3'C wind 15ks NW

out:   6'C wind calm

   

A prophet in his own town

Paul thinks he may be Jesus. At least for this day, and at this time, with these things happening on this river, in this boat. He thinks of those stories of Jesus in boats on the water. When he calmed the storm, when he walked on the water, when he told them to fish on the other side of the boat. He rehearses what he might have to do if things go wrong, which he' s sure they will.

It's happened before when he's had this feeling. He and his friends are walking down the Main Street in the small Canadian town they live in after school. They notice the friend of an older brother of a boy whose Dad owns a car dealership in town driving a racing style Japanese motorcycle with nearly one thousand cubic centimetres of piston displacement. The boy whose Dad owns the car dealership says to the others how powerful the motorcycle is, that it's just as fast as the ones they actually race with in Europe. Paul watches the teenager on the bike scream by, engine whining, gears shifting, so that the front wheel lifts and the biker rides the back wheel. After watching the it pass Paul says, "That guy's going to crash," and thus it comes to pass, with all of the boys watching, that the bike's front wheel indeed dips, rises again, then dips and falls to touch the pavement. The rider has turned the wheel off of straight such that it grabs the pavement and wrenches the whole bike over to the left. The back wheel whips out to the right and slides along blacktop until the rubber catches and grips and by force of momentum the bike lifts up again into the air, tumbles once with the rider still on it, before the forces of nature rip him free of it and he rolls, then slides along the grit and fine gravel that accumulates along curbs on the edges of streets. The bike bounces along and at last scrapes to a stop too.

"Whoa!" says the boy whose father owns a car dealership, "did you really just say that that was going to happen?" The other boys generally smile and laugh and congratulate Paul, who squints at the scene unfolding up the street.

"It's going to be okay," he says and smiles. "It's just a lesson the guy needed to learn about how not to ride." With that Paul becomes a celebrity of prediction - a prophet in his own town. The boys spread his story around town and tell of other close calls like it that he's predicted. They tell the stories with such conviction that Paul starts to think before he speaks.

Ride report

in:        4'C wind 25ks NW

out:     6'C wind 35ks WNW

Not even if he was hungry

Out on the river the boy with the striped shirt begins to consider another facet of his Christliness. The boat drifts downstream, the motor idles and occasionally engages, at the behest of the vigilant father in order to steer around corners or avoid sandbars. The boy in the striped shirt is grudging in this observation. It won't be carelessness that causes this disaster. There will be little room for schadenfreude or "I-told-you-sos" here. So he waits and watches and he does not fish.

"C'mon Paul," says his friend, the older brother. "It's not hard. It's fun!" Paul only imagines that time that he watched his older brother catch a fish and he had to try to hold it for him, while he prised the the hook out of its mouth. The slime of the scales and the sharp edges of the gills stay in his memory. He can feel them on his fingers just thinking about it. He can't imagine anything, even hunger, that would cause him to want to put himself in a position where he was the one catching the fish and asking for help to pry the hook out of that gasping maw. For an eleven year old he dwells more on discomfort and trouble than courage and adventure. 

As if on cue the rod the younger brother holds dips and he yells and the father smiles and leans forward, picking up the net in one hand and touching the bending rod with the other. "Take the line in slow," he says. They all watch as the boy listens and slowly reels in the taut line until the jackfish appears at the side of the boat to be netted and lifted into it. Together father and son unhook the fish and set it free again. Paul watches. Though his anxiousness recedes, he cannot see the point in this, much less the fun. What would Jesus do, Paul thinks, if he was a fish?

Ride report

in:        5'C wind 20ks NW

out:   10'C wind 15ks NNW

Someone else's business

Two things about the brothers' father: He is borrowing the boat; he does not know the river. Knowing that the boat is borrowed, the boy in the striped shirt infers that the father knows less than enough about how to use it, or drive it, or whatever it is you call the operation of a small aluminum fishing boat. Already he'd watched and been asked to help, and tried to do so but only uselessly hung on to the gunwales of the overturned boat as the father heaved it by the stern backboard off of the back of the pickup, righted it, and then dragged it across the gravel and down slick clay bank, the three boys hanging off of it as it slumps down to the water. Then the boy in the striped shirt scrambled back up the bank for safety's sake, turning around expecting to see his friends beside him only to watch them whooping and heaving themselves into it. The father is already back at the truck hoisting the outboard motor up from the truck box, and then lugs it down the bank.

The boy in the striped shirt simply doesn't believe that this exuberance will end well. The Spring run-off has swelled the Pembina such that it is obvious even to this inexperienced skeptic that it is running fast. Too fast for all this nonchalance. But the father and his sons complete their preparations, load their rods and the picnic lunch into the boat and call out, finally, to him to "C'mon, let's go!"

He inches and slips down the bank, gingerly grabbing at and following the gunwales as he gets to it. Once he climbs in, the father pushes them into the water and hops in himself as the current catches the boat and moves them offshore to the centre of the river. The boy watches with concern as the father climbs past him and over benches to reach the stern. He lowers the propeller into the water and pulls the starter cord three, four, five times before it sputters to life. Drifting with the current now the boy says, above the put-put of the motor, "Is this the direction we want to go?"

"Yup," he says, smiling. "We'll drift down with the current, then tool back upstream and drift down again." The boy tries to return the smile. "It'll be fun right boys!" the father says. "We'll follow the river and catch some fish." The boy in the striped shirt wants to be this romantic. That would not be the word he'd use, not at this age, but he'd understand the sentiment that living in the moment would be a less troublesome way of managing this day, or any day, but he'd have no facility to get there. At least not at this time. In fact, not for another 20 years would he have this facility. In fact, the gravity of this unlikely knowledge weighs on him. It's like a mission. It's like he must be about someone else's business.         

Ride report

in:       16'C wind 25ks SE

out:     27'C wind 50ks SE

Meanwhile he keeps smiling

Two brothers, the tall one and the short one, stand in front of the 1975 Chevrolet Silverado. The short one, younger by 5 years, hitches up his short pants and grins lopsided at the camera his father aims back at him, while the tall one watches and mugs too, for a snapshot that includes a friend wearing a vertical striped shirt - blue, light blue, yellow, green, red, white, and so on. The friend's strewn hair, terse smile, and shoulders hunched forward into the wind mark his reluctance.

There's a river to the left of them that you don't see in the picture, and that he watches out of the corner of his eye. It weighs on this boy's mind. He's seen the boat he's supposed to sit in and he's known all along that there will be fishing going on, and that in itself gives him a low in the gut feeling - not unlike a millstone, or a carp, catfish, or northern pike that turns and reels in the river. 

Of course some of these thoughts I'm articulating for him. I doubt, at the age of 11, that he knows the name of the fish that swim in the Pembina. It's the namelessness of things that daunt him - the murky water, the myriad rivets lacing the hull together above it, the unlikely sputter of the 6 horse Mercury. How long does it take to fill a boat to sinking if a rivet fails? If 2, or 10? 

The 2 brothers, already scrambling down the bank, heave themselves over the gunwales. They yell, Dad hurry! Let's go! They sit on the benches and rock the boat. They look up at him and tell him to get in. He hates them for it. 

     

He reconsiders, with gravity

Whether or not there are alien visits and interventions he thought that it was possible that he'd been visited. That that was what had caused that thud, that noticeable bump which had, perhaps, made his house shift and tilt. This was the work of an extra-terrestrial visit. He allowed himself to imagine it. Then to think of it fully, completely, as an act of another kind of god. For would this not be a better signature of meaning, even of insignificance? Can there not be solace in both? That a house shifting beneath him, somehow suddenly tipping over at the behest of unseen geologic demons, might not also be a house touched by the unfathomable force of creatures un bound by these physical boundaries. Gravity? Attraction? What of them? Strange solace for him perhaps, but he began to hope for, look for, the signs.

Was his house not brighter, more electrified, more vivid since that bump? Did his toast not pop sooner? higher? Was it not more perfectly browned? Did the slices of five grain harvest whole wheat veritably leap out of the slot into his hands? Was the clover honey not more zesty, in its essence grapefruited with tang, the butter beneath it creamier, more mild, so receptive? Had he in fact, in the moment, in that moment of thunder, been transformed?

Had his senses not been replaced? Was he a not new man? What should he think about this now apparent overwhelming everywhereness of light and love being showered on him by sun and sky as he steps outside and proposes to himself that a walk, even a run, or a bicycle ride might be in order? To what other force might he owe this lightness of the Spring air? This whatness of the wind? Its effervescence in his hair? Can he not smile? Is his house not nodding in agreement? Is it not jaunty? Cannot the universe speak in more than whispers?

Ride report

in: 3'C wind 10 ks W

out: 9'C wind 20 ks W

He thinks back

To those moments when he's known better, he lifts his glass. To distract himself he picks up his guitar and plays. Open-strings ringing he plays a modulating progression that begins in the minor, works its way down through four positions to end on the same chord, fretted at the conventional place on the neck. The conventional voice for the chord. He plays to inspire. He plays to forget. He plays to remember.

As he remembers it, the house was always level and square. The doors opened easily and swung shut with a light push. The windows slid without effort. The plastered corners of the ceilings were seamless and clean. He kept the cobwebs down. He got up into the corners to keep it clean. He knows those corners and, for the six years he's been living in this house on 68 Dunsworth Avenue, he's loved this house. Now though, he feels like that house has left him.

The cracks are appearing everywhere. The plaster is separating in the corners and fissuring like lightning strikes across the walls. The doors are stiff and scraping. Yesterday morning when he gripped the side-door handle to step out to pick up the daily paper, the door would not budge. Not until he put his shoulder to it, was he able to get, and then not without a creaking complaint from the jamb.

Things are shifting. He's sure of it. The house has always been fine, but now when he walks to the front walk and turns to look at it, he sees the north side nodding. He sees the foundation along the south wall pushing the soil up. Heaving at it. He sees the wooden siding boards separating in places and compressing in others. There is a major force at work here. He can't remember another time when it has been like this.

He does recall another moment though, a time of a subtle shift. Was it a year ago? He'd been too tired to care at the time. You know what that's like. You see something. In fact someone else points it out to you, so you know you're not really making it up. It's real because someone else, someone you trust, someone who has no reason to mess with you, or wish bad things on you, tells you so. You know those moments don't you, when a friend confirms the worst.

"So your house is in that zone," his friend John says. And he says, "What zone?" "Haven't you heard?" John says. "That area between the rivers, you know, where some guy who got laid off by the city says that it's like the two rivers want to join one another. Like they're looking for a way to join into one, underground!" "What?!" he says. "Is that even possible?" "Possible and even likely," says John, nodding with the kind of certainty that makes you doubt it.

"So what would that mean?" he says, going along with it. John's just a bit of an alarmist, he thinks. And he's concerned for me. It's okay to listen to this. He's my friend. When he's done I'll sit down at my laptop and find the truth. Or I'll make a few phone calls. Better safe than sorry, he thinks. "It would mean that some houses in this neighbourhood could start to sink. That the soil underneath them would be eroded. That they might just drop out of sight.

"Drop out of sight?" he says. "That's crazy! You're making this up. I mean ..." "Yeah," John says. "I know eh? It's nuts, but I swear I heard it. There was a whole CBC radio show about it. They interviewed the guy, and then they tried to interview the city people responsible for it, and they refused to do the interview!" "Crap!" he says. "Really!? They wouldn't clear things up? You know, debunk that kind of idiocy!"

"No man," John says. "They refused the interview, which left everyone listening to this guy who sounded really worried. Like he said it's possible that it's been happening for a while already and that some of the houses may be already sinking. You know. Really slow at first. Maybe getting a little crooked." "You're full of shit, man!" he says. "What is this April fools?" "No man," says John, his voice lowering, "I think we should check your basement."

A year ago in Spring they walked into his house, he and John, and down into the basement which was unfinished, which John said was a good thing so that they could really see what was going on. It was a typical concrete basement. The house was about sixty years old. The concrete looked old. But that made it look solid. That's what he thought. John tut-tutted a bit. He said he didn't really know that much about foundations, but he thought this one didn't look reinforced.

They looked into the corners too, and all over the floors, for cracking. For seepage. For any signs. John looked really. He stood back and waited. He couldn't look. Didn't want to. You know that feeling don't you, when you know that something might be bad, but if you don't look for it, if you don't see it, then maybe it won't be bad. Maybe it won't be there at all. That's what he did. He hung back. See no evil, he thought.

John told him that there didn't seem to be anything to be worried about. Then, smiling and sighing he said how he figured it would be okay, how solid this old house was, and how grateful he was that John cared enough to do this with him. "No problem, man!" John said. "It's what we do," he said. "It's what friends do." Then they went up the stairs and sat at the kitchen counter and each drank a beer. It was the first warm day of Spring. It was a good time for a beer.

But he doesn't want to remember that day today. He wants to move forward. No. He doesn't really want that either. He doesn't want to go down into his basement. He doesn't want to phone John. He's been living with that planted seed of an idea of catastrophe for a year and now it's germinating. It's growing. Rooting pushing at his foundations and creeping in. Spreading the walls apart. Making things unstable. What's he supposed to do?

He remembers that time when he was working on the bathroom five years ago. He'd only been in the place for a year. He still loved it like a new car. He was redoing the bathroom. What could be better. He'd launched into it with fury, tearing out the sink, then the toilet, then, with some difficulty, the tub. It was a small empty room when he'd finished that first day. That's when he'd realized that he'd have to use the neighbour's bathroom for the next week.

Which he hadn't prepared them for, but they were gracious enough to say yes anyway, even with the occasional panicked and desperate waiting scene, while the teenage daughter did her hair, or whatever. She smiled at him when she walked out. He was sure she'd taken her time. He was sure she thought he was a loser, even though he was only about nine years older than she was and he already had a programming job at the telephone company.

The point was, that he'd panicked the next morning, looking into that empty room and realizing he'd never installed a toilet or a sink or a tub before. He almost sat down in the living room and cried. He might have. He couldn't remember for sure. But then he'd said to himself, You know. You can do this. You'll learn a lot. You've got time. And if nothing else, you'll hire someone to fix it. Which is what he did at the end of that week.

And then he went over to the neighbours to ask whether he could use the bathroom for another week. Or more. He couldn't be sure when the contractor would show up. Now though, he's on the edge of that moment again. The edge of thinking that there is a problem. Maybe a big one. But he just can't be sure on his own. He picks up the phone. He puts it down. He picks up his guitar. He strums a chord. He tries to sing a song he's learned a year ago, from memory.

He gets through the first verse, and then he has to stop. He can't remember the words. The chords are easy, but the order of the words just escapes him. So he keeps playing what he knows. He wanders the whole house playing that one verse and the chorus. "I'd rather be, in a deep dark grave ... than to live in this world in a house of gold ..." He even descends into the basement and plays there, in the lightbulb's glare.

With the cracks widening and water beginning to pool, he plays through to the last line of that first verse, "Don't they know, on the judgement day, gold and silver, will melt away."

Ride report

in: 4'C wind 20 ks W

out: 13'C wind 30 ks W

Georgie wants to go for a bike ride

Sharon says she can’t leave the Barbies hanging from the front stoop rail, or from the trees in the back yard. Georgie doesn’t understand the concern about the neighbours, or about how to present ourselves to the public. She doesn’t concern herself past what’s in front of her now and though I’m with Sharon on the public image thing, I know Georgie. So now she rides with Barbie lynched and dangling from the handlebars. When she walks around the house, or outside, Barbie drags and bumps along behind her, abused and dust-covered like that American soldier in Somalia.

It’s nearing the end of the Summer heat as we pedal along. I suggest a destination – a playground, or the garden market – but Georgie says, “Just ride, Daddy. Just ride.” So we keep to residential streets and the occasional back alley. The crickets are out too. They dot and skitter hop across the streets.

“What are they?” says Georgie.

“Crickets,” I say. You know that chirping sound you hear at night?”

“Yeah Daddy. They make me awake all night sometimes.”

“Well, not all night.”

“Yes Daddy. All night. I can’t sleep. It makes me cranky. Mommy says so.”

“Well if mommy says it …”

“It’s true,” she says. “and I’m going to kill these crickets. For keeping me awake.” She veers left, then right, back and forth, with little success.”

“Careful,” I say, anticipating an over-the-handlebars-accident in the middle of the street.

“Daddy! Just watch!” she says swerving and bearing down, head low over the front bars, focussing on the prey.

It happens. It always does. It’s only after the fact that you analyze it with silly observations like: without warning, or sooner than you think, or in the blink of an eye. Ridiculous. We know these things happen, yet we take some seeming pride in suggesting that we were surprised. That we couldn’t have imagined it. That the world has somehow caught us off guard. Like we’re blithe idiots swerving to and fro on the street looking for crickets to eradicate. Then the front wheel t-bones and we feel ourselves lifted head first over the bars, hands thrown forward to minimize the damage.

Georgie picks herself up without crying. That’s the most worrisome part really. Palms scraped, embedded with road grit, knees scudded too, and she stands up without a tear or a sob and berates the crickets for evading her, and causing this discomfort. She jumps after one that is running along the curb. She picks up the Barbie by the string and flails at it. Without success she picks up her white-wheeled, pink and tassled bike and gets back on. “Stupid crickets, “ she says. “Stupid, stupid crickets. If you didn’t live my life would be okay. I hate you.” She rides off without waiting for me, as though I’m not even there.

I am though. Right then I am no place else but with her in that stomping rage. In that sullen attention to constructing a world and then destroying it. Right at that moment I am in her head nodding my understanding and wincing with approval. I know her. I know myself. I don’t know the way out.

Rode 57 ks (the Rosetown loop). Wind was negligible. Averaged 31 kph.
Stopped to talk a former student riding his bicycle toward Plum Coulee, on the 201.

Out of obligation

Or was it a sense of failure that made him write the letter? He dove into it anyway.

It went like this:

Dear friend,

I hear from friends of yours that you're still trying to get by. You're still in school. You're still doing all sorts of stuff that won't do you any good though, because you know it and I know it that there's not much point in being enrolled in a school if you're not actually interested in going to school.

I've seen your facebook page. Sure I'm your friend there. Who isn't? So I thought I had permission, you know, to look at your photos. Your wall. Your messages. Whatever I could. Some people call this creeping. That makes it sound so sad. So silly. But you should know that I'm doing this because I care. What's a friend if he doesn't care?

Do you understand that I can't read what you write there, on your wall, for every one of the 345 friends of us to see, without wondering "Why did she write that?" Without wondering whether it makes any sense at all? Without wondering if you thought about who might read and get the wrong impression?

The other day you wrote on your wall:

I'm sipping a mocha latte half caffe at the corner 2nd Cup on Edmonton missing u. They're playing 'Funeral' - Band of Horses. What to do? - posted from my Blackberry

I couldn't make it out. There's talk of hipsters. Blackberries and iPhones. Why do you say these things to all of us? Who is u? Why is the music selection the establishment's shuffle music machine has chosen significant? What if every 2nd Cup establishment in all of North America was on the same system? What if they were all playing "Funeral" by Band of Horses at the same time (taking into account the different time zones). What if some other depressed student is listening to "Funeral" at 3359 Mississauga Road North, in Mississauga (obviously), and texting the same dreary half dark, half white, half sweet version of their ennui? Or someone in the 48 Kenmount Road location, in St. Johns, Newfoundland?

What if it's everywhere? What if you're everywhere? You and your alienation. You and your tinny blue cry for attention on that painfully obviously named social network. You and your 345 friends.

I know I know, this isn't helping. It's not lifting you up. But what would do that for you? I've read your posts before. I've seen the photos of you on the deck of that cruise ship with your mom, all smiles and happiness, drink in hand and the sun's glare in your eyes - in the glint of your glasses. Is there only more to drink? Is there only one more holiday? Is there only the next trip to the doctor? Are you ever going to finish that paper? Will you ever actually try to adapt to the professor, rather than expecting her to change for you? Will you ever stand on your own?

Okay. Maybe that's taking things too far. Maybe ...

He had to stop for a moment. He scrolled up to the top of the letter. Reread a few lines. Winced on occasion. But mostly thought he was on the mark. He was hitting his stride. He would be heard, maybe even understood. So he went back at it.

... when you noted the song that was playing was "Funeral" you even knew the words. Some of us know the words too! Don't you think you're responsible for that? You asked us what to do? Well? Is this some kind of hint?

I'm coming up only to hold you under
I'm coming up only to show you wrong

Yeah, you're right. I'm taking this too seriously. It's really only my loss. I don't have to follow you like a friend. I don't have to care. Frankly, the way you keep throwing it around, I don't know what to care for? Do you see that? Do you see that by calling me a friend you've made me something I may not be able to be, when you give me such crappy information? Do you see that when you call me a friend, and then let 345 other versions of me see all the same photos and read all the same messages, that maybe that means that none of us are friends. You know. In that, Hey-how's-it-going-let's-sit-down-and-talk kind of way?

I'm assuming you were in that 2nd Cup alone when you posted from your Blackberry. Or if a real live person friend was there, then I assume you had to stop talking with him or her long enough to post that on your Blackberry. I hope he wasn't saying anything, you know, interesting, or important. I hope he didn't get the wrong impression when you stopped talking and used both your hands (thumbs a'flicking! above or below the table?) to tell the world about your misgivings. I hope they weren't singing that line about waiting for the funeral.

Nah, I didn't think so.

Yours truly,

Your Friend

He pushed away from the keyboard then, and scrolled up and down again. He read and reread. He saved the file under a name he would recognize later, in a new folder named "correspondence with friends". Would it be bravery to print it? To fold the paper in half, and then again into three panels, and fit it into a standard friendly letter envelope? Would it be courageous to stand in line at the post office behind the 80-year-olds who send and expect nothing less? Would it be extravagant to buy a stamp? To find the right mailing address? To drop it in the box? To wait?

Ride report

in: -26'C wind NNW 18 ks

out: -22'C wind NNW 13 ks

Sharpening

It was the kid's third comb this week. You know, one of those old style combs you might use to slick back your hair with brylcreem, back in the 50s. He loved those movies. Rebel without a Cause. American Graffiti. Giant. It was a comb with a long handle. It was a Goody comb. It was black, and now he stood, at the back of the room, at the pencil sharpener, sharpening that comb handle, while the other kids worked on their math.

He had a plan for the sharpened comb. The other two had been experiments. He'd stuck them into things until they broke. The first one he stuck into cardboard: one layer, then two, then three. It failed at five. It didn't break so much as bend and lose its strength. The shank of it showed the telltale whitening of structural stress. So the kid bought another one, and sharpened it, during English.

The second one the kid took home and stuck into his cat. He could do this because the kid's cat trusted him. Didn't think that betrayal was in the air. He could do this because he didn't really like the cat, but he was good at making the cat think he did, which said something about the kid's ability to act. The cat lived. The comb pierced its hide just below the rib cage because it sensed, too late, that something was up, and managed to take off before the plastic spear entered more than half an inch.

The kid got a feel for it though - what it felt like to stick something living. And that was enough. Now he would do it. Within the next three days. The kid could feel it. The question he asked himself was whether he could do it and not get caught, that is, make it seem innocent. An accident.

One thing the kid had going for him was that everyone thought he was honest. Honest and innocent. You see, the kid was small. Short, I mean. Which lent to his relative obscurity. When he sharpened the third comb during math class, the sharpener was a bit high for him and he had to stand on his toes to get enough leverage to get the handle going fast enough to make the tip sharp and to keep the plastic from fraying and fuzzing too much. For the kid wanted it sharp, he wanted it sturdy, and it needed to be sleek. He wanted it to keep sliding in when he pushed it.

The kid knew that when it happened it would happen so fast that the comb would have to be perfect. The kid also had two more in his pockets that were blunt. These were the decoys. This was part of the plan. He'd been combing his hair with the combs for the past few weeks. At first the other kids thought it was weird, and they told him so. Then some of them said it was cool too.

So by the time he stabbed Bobby Bueckert in the eye with it, everyone thought that Bobby just hadn't been watching. That the kid hadn't either. That he'd been combing his hair back with those crazy long handled combs he'd been using for the past few weeks, and somebody's eye socket got in the way. The sharpened comb never entered Bobby's brain, but they had to put a glass eye in his left socket before he came back to school.

That was the next school year though. By then the kid had moved on to pencils. He'd rub the eraser down to the metal and start sharpening that cylinder, on the desk legs, his zipper, anything that rasped.

Ride report

in: -26'C wind WNW 30ks (flatted on mile three; repaired it at June's)

out: -16'C wind SSE 25ks