It’s raining and two in the morning. I walked Ethan to the skytrain double pace march then wandered softly into the warm night. Interaction with satisfaction and feeling alone. My mind catalogues who I could visit downtown, it’s a short list these days, but a sweet one to ponder. The seawall is lit but barely in some places and lies in darkness if you know where to look. I didn’t stop walking but turned when I remembered my bicycle at Tyler‘s. Travel simpler on wheels and pedal power. Past the miniskirt hookers on their way to a penthouse party, (the disco lights were visible from the water), I stall, colour caught, a flower under a bench shrouded by the plush dark. I’m not sure how I saw it, but it’s there and I pick it up, stiff green stem and pale pastel pink. Eostre colours, goddess blessed. Behind me the scrape of another human, but I ignore them. I feel a match for predators tonight, the feet are likely a saturday night phenomenon. My bike has a flat tire after I unlock it, so I put it back and blow a kiss to the window. Nevermind, a thought discard, easier than litter to throw away, it’s only more night walking, drenched in moist air. My flower was a wand, shredding the night before me in night-time Strathcona, old wooden houses and interesting lights. A neighborhood of artists, the oldest in the city. There are hidden gardens here, I’ve seen them. I’ve sat in them at night with musicians from San Fransisco and talked about style, how I’ll grow into having it, how they wear what the company bought for them, what Burroughs was like to work with. Disposable Heroes in a strange city but under the spell of good people and jazz. That house is by a corner, but the challkboard is gone from the door. No more fridge magnet letters to say hello with, to post poetry with piece by piece. I suppose they, whoever they were, have moved.
The tenements before the train tracks are scary viewed at night. In the daytime, it’s impossible to see how small they are, how it’s like slave galley housing, how the church looks fenced off in a plot so tiny as to take down the tower any day now because it’s displacing too much air. Two stories, three stories, cardboard closet box apartments lit so brightly with orange sodium as to trick the eyes into believing in daylight. Over the tracks are a pathway, a crosshatch industrial tube of a cage. The metal catches at my shoes. It feels sticky and releases the soles with a careful tiny sound of rubber. On that I danced, swooping over the empty tracks hoping to catch the screaming sound of a keening unhappy train. Howl sadness dying in the rain. I stopped, suddenly, on the other side and a block later there were people on a porch. Good friends, it looked like, perhaps they’d had a party and they were the only ones left. Think a candle and one chair, invariably with a girl in, everyone else on the steep stairs. Wine. There were others coming from inside as I passed and one of them, emerging from the black doorway said “Good evening” and I replied, “Good evening,” back while holding the flower to my cheek. I resolved to buy them ice-cream ten steps later, around safely the corner and another block to the gas station.
When I returned, they had arranged themselves comfortably on the front of the house and were smiling confused when I brought them my gift. “Thank you for being kind,” I said, “This will seem odd, but I bought you ice-cream. I was getting some anyway. I do hope you like chocolate.” They didn’t ask me to stay. I don’t think they knew how but unexpectedly I felt very empty, so I didn’t do it for them. Finessing such a thing is simple, intruding without intruding is an easy skill to me. They’re talking about me now, I’m certain, and if I’m lucky, they will recognize me on the street some day, (I would never recognize them), but tonight I did not feel like abruptly becoming fascinating, inserting myself into lives, no matter how little effort would be involved. I feel instead like I want candlelight and my lover with me. I want the window open to let the cold air in and wet body heat to warm us in spite of it.
Larry called today from the Interstate on his way home from MomoCon, which was an unexpected joy in spite of his driving with a broken arm on the phone in the dark, (which leads me to worry slightly). I only regret that I was dulled from my work and distracted by the children’s incessant Second Coming chatter. His sound is lighter than I expected, but I’ve his cadence now, and the flavour of his vocabulary. I’m sure, like with whimsical Dee, it will infect everything of his that I read and take part in. It’s a silly impulse, but I was surprised at myself for not recognizing his voice.
