Skip to main content

Scene

Scene; pen and ink on paper (old math textbook page), 7.5 x 4.5 inches.

Seen or Heard, Lately:

x} My breath, this morning.

x} A syringe, on the sidewalk.

x} Some kid channelling Meatloaf -- the black trench coat and the black t-shirt and the black jeans and the headphones and that certain bemused corpulence, barreling along.

x} Sticky black midges. In clouds. In thousands. You walk through them and listen to the miniature hailstorm, pinging off your coat, off your skin. Then it's a straight line to a sink, and digging them out of your ears.

x} The Telephone Girl. First she was at one pay telephone -- and anyone who uses a phonebooth these days gets my attention -- and then she was at the next one, all in the course of my walk home the other night. Like she timewarped ahead of me. Both times she seemed scrambly and frantic with her big manilla envelope. But she still looked okay, and I thought she might even be middle class, until she turned away from the phone to talk to a guy who pulled up on a bicycle to light his cigarette, and then I saw her dental work. Ah yes -- it's really the dental work that separates the masses.

x} Slogan on the side of the school bus -- DRIVING YOUR FUTURE. I fucking hope not. These rotten kids are going to have enough to worry about, what with all the speed-feeding of information and wrong-choice disposable jobs and big lies and big reveals crumbling the brain every second week and houses that cost a million jillion dollars and never mind the cottage. The only person I want to be responsible for me is me. When I can no longer do that, you can bring out the firing squad.

x} The man who passed me on the sidewalk in that moving-wall way of the large and insane and leaned in to tell me to HAVE A NICE DAY. Why? Do I have to? Why would you phrase it as a command like that? What if I don't want to? What kind of play is that, anyway? Scene 1, Act 1: Everyone is having a very nice day. Oh, brilliant. That's something I want to see. What's next -- fucking kitty kats? Why not just say "I hope you have a good day" and be done with it? At least that leaves the receiver some room for day negotiation, for making the day into any 'good' thing he or she sees fit. Maybe my best 'good day' or even 'nice day' is chasing bushels of screaming cats down blind alleys with a flame thrower. Is that valid? Would you still wish me a nice day then?

*Not* Seen or Heard:

x} The decorative stone that C placed in the front yard. It looked like a leaf. I told her not to put it there, that it would only get stolen. No it won't, she said. You're so cynical about the neighbourhood.

Comments

  1. I love your observations. Oh, the glaring class differences of the grill. Have a frabjous day?

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. i like the kid channelling meatloaf the best.

    ReplyDelete
  4. what kind of a day have you had?!

    Like hearing about your observations. Gosh, what do I see around here? lots and lots of cat and dog poo, um, rubbish dumped on the street, flowers sprouting up amongst the urban concreted spaces, and I hear so many sirens - city life eh?!

    One day you will come to UK and see an exhibition ;)

    Amelia.x

    ReplyDelete
  5. I loved your acerbic observations, my husband always tells me to be careful when I leave the house..how did I get to be my age and seemingly intact if I didn't choose to care about my existence? I know he means well, like the other artists who instead of commiserating with me on rejection from shows tell me to cheer up and do more art..because someday it will happen for me! I want to run screaming from the room! Have a nice day..I will not be commanded to have a nice day..boy the teenager in me gets her back up and I have to bite my tongue before the back talk ensues! Oh and I don't even know where a pay phone is anymore..you are so right..if I do see someone using a pay phone I think "What?" I could be so snarky today because I am sick.

    ReplyDelete
  6. LOVE the way you write!!
    funny enough - i saw somebody today using a pay phone!! it was just a second as i watched this man, on my way passing by, but instantly it created a sort of little story in my mind. a snapshot concerved in the memory. quite similar as yours with the lady which could have been middleclass until you saw her dental work. i didn't see the guys dental work, but his jacket said the same.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous6:50 am

    Too funny! I think like that...strange for a female probably. (minus the flame thrower cat killer part, even though I do not at all like when they get into your garden and do their business...Wear gloves people!) I do think someone will steal things I put out in the yard..that's why it's usually planted into the ground only.(Although if they ripped it out of the ground I wouldn't then be surprised) I found a butterfly shaped rock AND it's out THERE in the garden EXPOSED to all the Thieves, but I suppose I'll chance it. HAVE a NICE day...whatever that may mean to you.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Kristen8:36 pm

    Did the stone survive? i once planted some beautiful dahlias and pansies out front of our townhouse..I camee out in the morning and every single flower was gone, as well as the "dog shit bucket" we used to clean the yard...the buggers had used it to carry away my beautiful flowers. Bastards.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I hope today was as nice or as not nice a day as you saw fit to make or not make it. that sincerely cracked me up.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the indisputable weight of the ocean

People are always telling me that my work is too dark. So I've put up this sunnier story, but even it has a shadow, as its original publisher – a fine Atlantic Canadian literary magazine called the Gaspereau Review – is no longer in business. ---------------- It was a simple enough thing and that thing was simply this: Edmund Kelley was a gentleman. Of course his mom called him her 'little gentleman', as in 'Oh Edmund, you are my perfect little gentleman,' which did seem to hold to a certain logic that these type of things often follow, considering her affection for him and the fact that he was, after all, only ten years old. Still, Edmund himself was not particularly fond of the diminutive aspect of that title. Gentleman was enough; gentleman summed up the whole thing rather nicely, thank you. He was definitely a more refined version of your average child. He lived in a state of perpetual Sunday m

Oona Balloona (doesn't care about new tables)

Well, it's Friday, and since I'm pretty depleted in the chit-chat department, I might as well put up some pictures of Ol' Giggles At Ghosts before Grandma starts sending me hate mail. Man, what a goofball. At this rate it's going to be, like, eighteen years before she has gainful employment and moves out of the house. I mean, come on . * * * * * C is especially crazy and frantic today. About two months ago she decided that she no longer liked our dining room table (take that, dining room table! no more BFF for you!). Since then she's switched the dining room and kitchen table (and all the rest of the furniture in the house -- about thirty times, but that's another story) as a provisional solution while she scoured area stores for an upgrade. And she thought she had found one, on Wednesday, at JYSK ( Whatever , I said). But when she ordered it, JYSK called back to say that they were really low on stock, and that the stock they did have was damaged, and

some paintings to keep you company

  at the stations of seeing ; mixed media on cradled wood panel, 24 x 30 inches.   $350 local.     At the Stations of Seeing I expected something on the level of poetry moving the machinery within but instead it was wreckage and difficult instructions Recursive Procedures for Life Structures and that sort of thing. IF—THEN—ELSE where the option is optional CASE, which is multi-situational DO—WHILE the function is zero BREAK and LOOP again and again until failure. please CALL, if you can, or while you are still missed. . . . I went away for awhile, for various reasons, and now I am starting to come back. Where I finally end up is anyone's guess, but one of the stations on the path of that return is a willingness to sell my art again; this post is about just one of the larger paintings I currently have for sale for clients and customers in the Kingston area. A good place to start. The prices for these works are lower because the transaction is personal, easier — come by my stud