Waving Not Drowning

Maybe he won't call. Maybe the phones are down. Across the city. The country maybe, because he could be anywhere. Asia, Africa, Antarctica. Some continent beginning with an A. Like Americas. Do they all begin with A? Why aren't there more variations on a theme? Who decides this stuff? Hank would know. Hank knows everything. Names of capital cities, solutions to quadratic equations, how to peel a mango with your teeth without getting all the stringy bits caught up in the space between them. Especially the front two. Hank can rewire a broken lamp, drive a double clutch long haul trailer, climb microwave towers and install sattelite dishes for radiowave transmission and speak fluent American Sign Language. He makes stellar profiteroles, too. Hank's a truth teller. The truth according to Hank. Hanks speaks truth to power and damn the torpedoes, screw the consequences, he will be heard. That's what makes Ziggy nervous. More often than not, Ziggy has to clean up after Hank. S...

It's been 3 months and she's slowly getting better. Rae comes in every day, checks in with the ICU nurses and spends about an hour, maybe 2 if she's got the strength of will. She rolls the reclining sleep chair over and sits next to her mom's bed, surrounded by a ventilator, all kinds of monitors and machines, flashing, beeping, keeping score. Today's a good day. Her levels are high, whatever that means. This seems to be progress. The nurses are exceptional. Patient, kind, and above all, frank. No bull, no patronizing, just the facts with a wry sense of humour and a seemingly endless supply of answers. Whether they're the ones Rae wants to hear or not is a moot point; at least they're communicative. The doctors on the other hand are elusive, cryptic. Disinterested and halfway out the door. It makes Rae crazy. She doesn't speak their language so she stumbles and sputters. On a bad day Rae weeps openly, embarrassed by her complete inability to articulate w...

Somewhere it's 4 am. Chris reaches for the light and knocks the phone charging on the shelf above him onto his head, nearly taking out his eye. Technology will kill us all, one way or another. He flicks the lamp on and the bulb takes a minute to warm up. Suddenly his room is bathed in a cool blue fluorescent daylight. It's supposed to keep his SAD at bay but in the wee small hours of the morning he's looking to fend off the maelstrom in his head, the anxiety-making lists and concerns, plummeting his brain into a deep well of grief and anger, self doubt and relentless repetition. For months he's been in this cycle of sleep, insomnia, sleep, insomnia. In the early days he'd roll with it. Read, masturbate, make a sandwich. Maybe cereal, mug of tea. He would write, brief notes, trying to remember the anxiety dream that would run on an endless loop, thinking that naming it would end it. Then he thought maybe he was creating a deeper imprint, detailing the horror of it al...

If one day she wakes up, gets dressed and decides that's it, it's over, she's done and simply gives up,  will she disappear?  And if she disappears, then what? Does it really matter? How to be alone in public. How to disappear in full view. How to restart, or reset. Not re invention. Begin again. Today and everyday.  A do over. A restart from a completely different place. Three steps left of here. Twelve degrees north by north west. Down under. Up and over. Get on a plane, a train, an automobile or just start walking and end up somewhere, nowhere, anywhere but here and start anew.  Fresh. How many people start again. After it all falls apart. From the ashes, arise and take flight.  T hen disappear. In plain view.  Sometimes it's a freefall. Sometimes the ground comes up and swallows her whole.  Sometimes she loses sight of herself. Begin again.  Go so deep, so dark, get so irretrievably lost that the only way out is through. Onwar...

Opening the freezer the blast of cool air rushes over her shocking her system. The sweat on her forehead momentarily stops streaming down her face, where it's been pooling in the crook of her collarbone. So much sweat. She's a human salt lick, the dog can't get enough of her. Every time she lays down on the ceramic floor he slobbers along the length of her arms and legs til she gathers enough energy to shove him across the tile and out of range. It's supposed to be autumn but this freak heat wave is more reminiscent of Chennai in January than Winnipeg in October. It can't be good. Everyone on the block struggles to replace the air conditioners they packed away 4 weeks earlier and trees that are crusty with dried up burnt orange foliage are starting to bud again. If this is what menopause is like Darcy's moving to Alaska. There are more men up there anyway. Four to one ratio, she heard. Maybe when she hits 50 she'll pick a winner. Lord knows she's a total...

"Courtney, hurry up- just ring the bell and hold up the box. Come on, honey, we have half the street left to do and Daddy's going to be home any minute expecting dinner to be ready. Don't be shy, the Martins bought 3 boxes last year. They're home, honey-see the light on in the living room?" Susan gestures by jerking her head repeatedly to the left. She looks like she's having a small seizure or suffers from a spastic tic. The pressure. The picture window has the drapes halfway drawn. She knows everyone's ignoring the bell. Becky Lo and her Tiger Mom did a wide sweep of the neighbourhood last night and early this morning. Who pimps out Thin Mints before work? Su's just pissed she didn't think of it. Damn Girl Guide cookies. They're going to be the ruin of her. Last year she was on the hook for 15 boxes. They're like crack; she can't keep them in the house and there was a quota Courtney wasn't meeting. Not good. Courtney is not a peop...

Chinatown. Mid afternoon. Sunny, crisp, cool. Autumnal, changeable. Harvest season is coming in, streets are busy, stalls are overflowing with unrecognizable dried herbs and creatures, plants and fungi. A Ford F250 covered pickup with three Mennonite women huddled intently around the back latch is parked in front of the giant Chinese housewares emporium. Bonnets, aprons, full length muslin dresses, whispering as they struggle to unlock the back hatch. Three different attempts, three disparate ideas gently being negotiated. Inside, aisles team with glassware, pottery, housewares, $600 blenders, an assortment of rice cookers. The wide brimmed pilgrim-like fedora dwarfs the Mennonite man's head as he pushes his cart down the aisle of mops, brooms, rat poison and wastebaskets, weighing his options for cleaning supplies. Rumspringa for adults involves retail therapy at asian owned and operated kitchen supply stores. Who knew. The next aisle over a twenty something man dressed for a Febr...

"How do you fight with a girl, huh? Tell me, cause it ain't right, you being like that with her. It's different, you know. I wouldn't take it, no way, that's straight up wrong is what that is. You need to shake your head, that's what you need, bro. No way you treat a girl like that. How you think she feels, hmm? You treat your sister that way, defensive and downright mean? Yeah, you're mean, bro. You dismiss her and don't respond. You disengage. That's fine with me- I get it, you know? But to her? No. Passive aggressive and you call her out on it? Pfffft, come on. I mean, I've listened to you go on and on for the last what, 8, 9 months- but this anger, man. You have some spooky anger issues in play and honestly- I love you, man, you know I do- you need to check that because the two of you make each other crazy and she's a good woman, dude. You know that. But you shut her down and check out and then you play with her, always play. Enough with...

Round and round and round and round, an amusement ride she can't get off, centrifugal force gluing her body splayed out like roadkill to the carpeted walls of the cylinder. So much force holding her up. Bev tries to pull her head off the wall but she strains her neck with the effort. The 12 year old kid across from her is grinning like a banshee as he rotates himself in a perfect starfish pattern so he is completely upside down. Just wait til this comes to an abrupt stop, she thinks. Then who's laughing? You'll drop flat on your head, wonderboy. Garrison reaches his hand out and grabs Bev's wrist, clawing and scratching like their cat in the kennel on his way to the vet. Get me out of here! he hisses off voice. Bev manages to rotate her face to her left, sees Garrison's eyes wild in panic, his face a perfect shade of chartreuse and sweat pouring off of him in sheets. Bev takes a second to question if it is in fact raining in here. Poor Garrison, wanting to show her ...

Kindness matters. Say Yes. Say No. Be brave. Have courage. A closed door means an open window. Everything happens for a reason, you just don't know what the reason is. Be thankful. Be grateful. Be, do, strive. Don't act, just breathe. Intuit. Say sorry. Never apologize. Know everything. Know nothing. Understand. Ask questions, question answers, be immovable, be flexible, commit to change. Be the change. Have a heart. Don't engage. Let people be. Help out. Give away everything you own. Stop consuming. Buy this. Now. Try something new, try everything once, the good things twice. Be careful. Travel. Nest. Explore. Turn inwards. Laugh out loud. Find stillness. Peace. Get angry. Take action. Be accountable. Never take responsibility for anyone else's feelings. Be an empath. Take care of each other. Protect yourself. Guard your heart. Give it away. Blow things up. Plant seeds, cultivate ideas. Tear it all down, start fresh. Share the news. Teach. Learn. Meditate. Go for a run...

It's been two weeks now. Fourteen days. No word, no signs of other life. She's rationed whatever supplies she could scrounge but is worried about water more than anything; the iodine tablets are disappearing and her biggest fear is dissentry, some sort of water borne illness that ravages her system, explosively and painfully. The art of being alone has somehow transformed into an extreme sport with life and death consequences. Time is paramount. Never has Teresa felt so ephemeral as a human being. Helpless. Stranded on this island of her own volition, lost somewhere between her original coordinates and god knows where. If she's being honest with herself, this is a choice. She didn't have to set out alone. The thrill and damn it all to hell of independence quickly tires when the day to day realities of complete autonomy weigh heavily on her entire being. What to eat, how to dress, what direction to move forward in; at what cost to not only herself but those interdependen...

Oh dear, at what point do you think it's a good idea to plant yourself directly in front of me like this while I am trying to get my work done, hmmm? You see this shiny box of emanating light? Yes, this is why I sit here, day in and day out, tapping away on this little pad of raised squares, occupying my hands in such a way that it is impossible for me to spend any time caressing you. I know, it's entirely unfair on my part but really, we've been over this a thousand times if we've been over it once; you are in my way. This is not the time or the place for you to crawl onto my lap or lay in front of the computer and extend your paws onto the keyboard while I desperately try to manoeuver my way in and around your yowling, talkative feline self. Enough with the purring already. Regardless of how cute you are, and we agree on this fact at least, this is not the time or place for copious amounts of catcentric attention. I know, I am a lousy cat mother, selfish and cruel and...

She walks around wide open, a raw nerve, her skin peeled back like a banana exposing her inner workings to the world. Here's her heart, beating arrhythmically, sloppy valves out of sync. Ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thrum-thump swoosh. Her lungs inflate to the point of bursting, capillaries tentacling out, blood red spider webs blown out, grasping for air then tightening back up, compressing her organs against her spine. Each gust of wind, every molecule of dust, speck of pollen sticks to her like glue, synapses firing off at breakneck speed, each atom overwhelmed with the constant transformation. She feels too much. Mia is overwhelmed by the sheer force of her emotions. Empathetic to the point of immolation, her head and heart duke it out for dominance while her autonomic nervous system is at war with itself. Life is pandemonium. She is powerless to disconnect. Engage, engage, engage. This entropy of self is consuming her. Moments of exquisite ecstasy are too painful to live in. People ...

A certain stirring lingers deep in her gut. Nat can't shake it but for the life of her she can't name it, either. Hour after hour of plugging straight through and now she hits the pillow at night and wakes up oblivious to her surroundings. At least she's sleeping. Deep, dreamless exhaustion. If only she'd strung herself out like this months earlier she'd have saved herself the anixiety of insomnia and long dark nights of the soul, counting down minutes til sunrise and the dawn of a new day. Another cycle completed. The world keeps turning regardless of how mired in stasis Nat is. There's hope in that, she thinks. She charts the shape of the moon. Full, half, quarter, crescent. On cloudy nights she draws the curtains and drowns herself in Rachmaninoff, headphones cradling her ears on the pillow. When sleep won't come the music lulls her into a semi catatonic state. Nat's not sure it's restorative or meditative but it drowns out the interior noise whic...

Kirk hops in the car, kicks it into first and drives it up onto the hoist. A older model, Japanese, efficient, functional. It's a class thing he's noticed, a certain demographic of drivers that religiously choose European and Japanese compacts over anything locally made. Brainwashing, in Kirk's opinion. Mass marketing by and for elitests who believe foreign is always better, no matter if the actual car is built and assembled in Hamilton. Kirk's the troubleshooting guy. Been fiddling with cars since he could crawl. Started driving at 8, sitting on phone books, bench seat cranked all the way forward as he peeked above the dash. Three on the tree, an old powder blue Ford pickup, screeching down dirt roads alongside the lake, county highways to the dunes where they'd drag race up and down the beach. Sand does some hardcore damage to engines hence the early learning curve. Fix it or get fixed, if you know what's good for you. Kirk never much cared for owning his own ...

The humidity is rising, she feels it in her hair, on her skin. A thickness weighing her down, heavy in her lungs. Sticky air, hard to breathe. The salt on her face- her own, the ocean's- commingling, a different acridity. Stings. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Bitter harsh pointed words. Communication breakdown. The devolution of care. When cross purposes collide old ghosts rise from their graves, decaying, conjured by the inability to acquiesce. Ancient rage wreaking havoc on the living ones they've left behind. Bury your dead, bury them, leave them lie. Incinerate them, blow them up into smithereens, scatter the ashes to sea. The fetid stench of death and anger dragged behind like an anchor mooring them in separate seas. Hurricane's coming and neither has the wherewithal to change course. Seek refuge, find safety, weigh anchor, head for home. Chaos reigns, self preservation at all costs overrides one for all and all for one. The shift is so minute; if either side...

Every day at 3 pm he gets into his car, a 2006 Toyota Corolla 4 door sedan in  a sunfaded navy, plugs in his gps, turns the radio on to Jazz FM and buckles himself in. Even though Curtis is the only person who ever drives his car, he checks then rechecks and adjusts his mirrors, just in case they've shifted over the course of the 8 hours the Corolla's been parked in an underground secured employee only parking lot. Monday through Friday, Curtis drives the 38 kilometre return trip from his 1970's- era one bedroom walk up apartment on a quiet one way dead end street in the city's east end all the way across town to the hip new enclave of design warehouses where he works as a program developer in the land of web design. A drone tethered to his computer in a medium sized start up company where he manages to disappear into the fabric of his surroundings. Milquetoast amongst a sea of brightly coloured walls, hyper lit screens, geometric patterned floors and dynamic, gregariou...

"How can you do that? How can you go and do that? I don't- I can't." Daphne is sputtering now, apoplectic with rage and despair. "I mean, really. Really!?! You ate the last piece of my cake . My BIRTHDAY cake. MINE. I saved that piece specifically- you ate the corner piece with my name written on it, how could you possibly think that was meant for YOU?" Daphne collapses onto the stool at the island, exhausted. She's spent every last ounce of her energy and the full weight of the loss is hitting her hard. She has been dreaming about this cake all day. All week. She had portioned it out so that come Friday she could indulge, finally, in the best part of the entire last year. A custom four tiered coconut banana dark chocolate layer cake with a hint of mocha and edible flowers. Edible flowers, for crying out loud! Pink and purple and yellow, her favourite colours. She had searched high and low for the right bakery to make it exactly the way she envisioned it...

A boy named Gren. A beautiful, long limbed, willowy boy with wide eyes, a high smooth forehead, and a dirty blonde mop of tangled waves at constant war with gravity. A shy boy. Spirited and curious but terrifically shy. Quiet. Silent. He's a runner. He runs and runs and runs. A perpetual motion machine smelling of black licorice and bazooka gum, lemonade and peanut butter, and the earthy, pungeant odour of sweaty young boy. Wormy when the ground swells after sudden rain. Old wood crumbling into dust after years of age, splinters melting in his hands they're so soft from rot. Every day he makes up stories off the top of his head as he gallops through the trails of giant redwoods, scaling walls of verdant green moss, ducking under canopies of ferns and pine, imagining the backwoods his own private kingdom. He communicates with the birds and deer and frogs and spiders and tiny red squirrels and they animate his tales in play by play fashion. Gren can't tell who's leading w...

No one likes it when Lysa gets angry. Or quiet. She's normally the most congenial, warm hearted, celebratory person on the planet. Everyone counts on Lysa to be that way because without her positivity, they're up a creek. It's a dreary job, tied to a desk in connected open air cubicles punching numbers all day. Important in it's own chain of command, being a bureaucracy and all, but no one here's creating world peace or curing cancer. Hell, they barely accomplish their limited portfolios they're assigned; that's why everyone loves Lysa. She bakes, she makes crafts, she organizes goodbye parties and maternity cards, best wishes on your promotion pies and have a lovely honeymoon in Manitoba montages that play out with their own soundtrack. Single, petite, mid thirties although she'll never tell. Her co workers obsess over her ability to function so highly and remain preternaturally happy. All. The. Time. Some say she eats children and kills small animals o...

She crossed the street and there he was. All dressed up, here on business, out with work, doing his thing, glad handing, networking, seeing and being seen. All the way from the other side of the country, he appears. No note, no text, no call. It was last minute, he says. I had no plans until I had plans. Plans that glaringly lacked inclusion of her on any level. They're not friends. Barely acquaintances. They were lovers; complicated emotionally, different levels of involvement and ability, desire to engage. She says hello. He's affable, his polite self, distant and guarded but never leads the conversation, remains firmly in response mode so in effect, unaccountable. Controlling, in his way. Wouldn't want to get emotional. Doesn't offer himself up nor make an effort to make time or space for her while he's here. Clear as a bell. She gathered he wasn't planning a call, she says. He counters with I figured you'd gather that. He offers up aphorisms of do yourse...

Please no, not now, no. No no no no no. Aw, crap. Sarah is dying. Her head is pounding, it feels like there are socks stuffed up her nose. At first she thought it was allergies- tis the season and everything- then the thick head, phlegmy couch, an absolute inability to sleep because the moment she lays her head down she can't breathe. Smothered alive by her own histamines. Underwater, drowning in the sound of her own body; her ears are plugged up so every swallow sounds like a crackling back of tortilla chips. Which would be great if she had any appetite at all. Not that she's not eating. Exhausted, punch drunk with daytime cold medicine and she shovels in some oatmeal and cups of earl grey, shots of  vitamin c. All that time dating the yogi and the best gift was being turned onto the neti pot. Excruciatingly  painful- she nearly collapses on the floor trying to fill her sinuses with salt water. What a bizarre idea. One side is fine but the other is akin to being held upside d...

Gerry insists on wearing the green cords, his favourite purple Ninja Turtle t shirt topped with his cape. Lorna doesn't really care; Gerry's worn that cape almost every day since his birthday in April. When she puts him to bed after reading The Velveteen Rabbit four times and they sing You've Got A Friend in whispers twice, she turns the light off and the constellation glows a faint green on his ceiling. She listens for the shift in his breathing, when it drops in cadence, deeper, slower. That's the moment to extricate the cape from under his pillow. Enough time to throw it in the wash and get it dried, folded and placed back where it started before she passes out from exhaustion, generally around 10. It's been a long four years. He's a great kid but this was never the plan, solo parenting. Now, first day of school in the morning. Weeks of planning, dry runs, deciding on what to wear again and again. The cords, the sweater, the jeans, the superman pajamas. Alway...

He places a cool cloth across her forehead. She's burning up, in and out of sleep, struggling. It's breaking his heart but he's so grateful to be here. His guitar lays at the foot of the bed. Gibson Les Paul Standard Gold Top, the one gift she got right. He played to her for hours, all her favourites, singing in that voice she loves, making up words if he forgot them. She didn't notice. If she did, she didn't care. She probably only hears him in waves anyway. She comes to then slides back under, the way tides ebb and flow at the full moon's passing. She's leaving him, this time for good. No more slamming doors or hanging up the phone. No cars speeding off down a dirt road, taillights fading while he stands alone in the ditch wondering how he's going to get back home. So much anger. Rage. Passion. Intensity. Disappointment and fear defined her until she exhausted him and her body in the process. Millions of cells, billions of molecules passing in the air ...

In the middle of their conversation, Ray leans across the table and injects himself into the story. Kerri stops short, caught off guard. She takes a moment to assess the situation, read Ray's tone, decipher his intent and decides against a defensive response, which is generally a wise choice. Lara'a oblivious to Kerri's sudden freeze out and gives Ray the floor. Kerri's new here; these people are not yet her people. A sprawling mass of  tables jammed together in a long row to celebrate a birthday of a new mutual friend where everyone seems to know each other intimately. She gets a sense of long term relationships, private jokes, battles fought and won and histories stamped in the ground. Boisterous, loud, rambling conversations and anecdotes overlap, cancelling each other out. Kerri's private conversation with Lara about her peripatetic childhood and father's journey in the service prompts an invasive and unsolicited query from Ray. He peppers her about her fath...