macblaze.ca

3:4

The denizens of this street moved in and out of pockets and subtle groupings that seemed to appear gradually and reappear as identifiable subsets the longer you watched. Nothing so simple as rich and poor, or Caucasian and Asian, there seemed to be certain pairings that repeated themselves as the crowds moved back and forth. They would slowly collect a certain kind of following like an excited nucleus grabbing wild electrons and forming new elements.

Eventually this pocket of people would begin to shed members until it lost its critical mass. Then it would collapse and dissolve back into the flow until another pairing occurred and the whole process repeated itself. It added an energy to the neighbourhood that was immediately discernible but very hard to identify without the patience of our watcher.

One of the common factors of the initial group seemed to be age. The first pair were almost always age mates although soon that was an indiscernible distinction as others joined in. They could be very young, like the disheveled 8- and 9-year-olds who stopped to taunt each other. Very soon parents or relatives joined the group, followed by siblings and curious teens. The internal cohesion provided by the children’s interaction held the group together for several minutes before members moved on with  their days. Some left the area, some entered through the doorways shutting out the energy of the street and some just drifted away, amusing themselves and waiting to be drawn in once more in the conversation of the street.

But it was the people who were not a part of this current, who had not yet entered into the flow, that interested the man on the curb. He was waiting for those who were not yet there and who patiently awaited their addition to the stream of humanity that formed the essence of the day.

3:3

The street ran east-west. Descending the hill, the street was the west side’s most prominent feature. At this point in its route it had entered an older part of of town with old stone buildings worn by time and displaying that gritty grey colour that comes with decade of grime and exhaust. On either side the views were blocked by 5- and 6-storey tenements, some bearing a sordid appearance from years of neglect and lack of care, and others showing a more elegant face to the street, with touches of colour and signs of recent work.

More significant were the front doors of the buildings. Those that housed the rising middle class, the more recent immigrants to this old neighbourhood, had portal-ways of gleaming brass and worn but well oiled dark woods with neatly printed numbers on cards by the buzzer. There was even the occasional doorman in his somber uniform, always under a canvas canopy bearing a stately name as if to guarantee the building a more prestigious place amongst its fellows.

The older-looking, more worn buildings bore names too. But they were etched in the sandstone above the doors’ archways, often defaced or covered over by some later alteration. No doorman or covering adorned these entrances; instead they were distinguished by the multiple coats of peeling paint often producing a motley, shabby look. Such doors reminded passersby of the cracked and worn skin of man whose entire life had been exposed to the elements. The metal work was often missing, leaving gaping holes and cracks in the facade, and any glass had long since been replaced by bits and scraps of wood and plastic. Here and there one of the doorways would display signs of long past work, half-hearted attempts to halt or overcome the harsh markings left by time’s passage. But the door was always a reflection of the spirit of the building; it could not escape its legacy and could not avoid its fate. If the spirit of the building had not changed, if the destiny of its occupants had not evolved from their basic struggles to survive, then any attempts at beautification remained nothing more than a dispirited plastering of cheap makeup, doomed to smear quickly, leaving behind a mockery of the beauty it sought to create.

That was the neighbourhood that the man stood in. A place of transition and inequality. A segment of the whole that was neither here nor there, and not soon likely to find its place. Yet most of this remained unnoticed. It was the nature of the people on this block of the city that the man was most aware of. It was the pressure of their existence that pushed upon his senses. And he would not turn away from them; he would make no attempt to shut them out.

3:2

A man stood on the corner of 17th and 9th; not back against the building nor in the shadow of the boulevard trees, but right on the corner, his bare toes hanging off the edge of the curb like a surfer’s riding the crest of the perfect wave, perfectly in balance, poised in the moment. He swayed gently to an internal rhythm, making no move to step back nor step forward onto the street, and he stared out, eyes absorbing everything but looking at nothing but his own soul. The frenetic movement of the city’s cars and trucks going about their day’s business buffeted him in their wakes but he swayed and bent without staggering or moving off his spot.

The man watched and waited as the sun slowly moved the shadows across his view.

Duty and obligation are two different things. Duty is that which you believe you must do for the betterment of the society you are participating in; obligation is a personal debt between two or more parties. Many feel that the ideas are synonymous, yet they draw internal distinctions based on the nature of the burden; this distinction leads to a sense of arbitrariness where a clear delineation actually exists.

Gareth believed he had a duty to his family, but he actually had no obligation to his father as an individual. He had long ago stopped making an effort in that direction: he owed the man nothing; all debts incurred by right of being his progenitor had long ago been replayed. But family was bigger than the individuals, and relationships between members always affected the whole no matter how one might wish otherwise. This was the conclusion Gareth had come to during his months living on his own and he’d now set his foot on a path that, after a lot of self-reflection and not a little staring at the beaver curled up under the lemon tree, he believed was his duty.

And family was just a gene thing. Gareth’s family had always included a wide range of people outside his bloodline. “And apparently now includes someone outside my species,” he mused to himself.

Gareth turned to Rowan, smiled and said, “Family is weird, you know.”

“I do. I really do. Remind me to tell you about my Aunt Beth one time. And her parrots.”

“Parrots? Pah! Large rodents beat birds any day of the week.” Gareth paused, and then continued, “Thanks, eh. Really, I mean it. I just, well, I needed someone there more than I thought, and I’m glad it was you.”

Rowan tilted her head back and said to the dingy brown roof of the cab, “Y’all are welcome. T’was nothing, really.” She took a long slow breath and turned to study Gareth’s profile as he stared out the window. “It really was my pleasure.” she said so softly that the sound was lost in the low rumble of the taxi.

“So, a beaver, huh? Guess y’all could think of it as an insurance policy. Pelts gotta be worth sumthin’ in a pinch,” she said with an evil chuckle and rubbed her hands together in her best sinister man style.

Despite the obvious joke Gareth found himself shocked at the suggestion. “But … he … oh.” Gareth allowed the ridiculousness of the suggestion to bring a giggle to his lips and retorted, “Hell, you don’t sell something like that, you make a hat out of it. That’s where the money is. A big one like a coonskin hat with the big-ass tail hanging done the back. Fashion-forward, baby. It’ll be all the rage at the clubs.”

Rowan could see the hysteria lurking in Gareth’s eyes and mimed turning the beaver tail hat around and lifted it up to play peak-a-boo with the imaginary appendage. “And this here’s a piece of tail you can play with in public and not get your ass arrested.”

Gareth snorted. “And … and … you can bury your face in …” The rest of the sentence disappeared as laughter took over. Within seconds he and Rowan had dissolved into a teary mass of snorts, giggles and body-wracking laughter that had the cab driver staring into his rear-view mirror with a glare of consternation.

It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t even particularly dirty. But it was what Gareth needed, and Rowan was more than caught up enough in the emotion of the day that she was swept along in the crashing waves of mirth and hysteria.

2:28

The beaver looked Edward in the eye and said, “We’ve had this conversation before. I realize that now. What makes you think this one will end any different than any of the others?”

“Ah, so you think this rising awareness of the past puts you in a position of power somehow. Do not fool yourself or waste my time. Truth is such a subjective thing and you do not, cannot, grasp the reality that lies behind the thin and brittle enamel you have naively tried to cover it with. I am here to learn a few things, reinforce a few perhaps forgotten rules, and deliver what Gareth would euphemistically refer to as an ’attitude adjustment.’ You, my aquatic friend, will, answer my questions, and then sit there and listen to your lessons. Then we shall decide how this ’conversation’ will end.”

The air in the room seemed to grow denser as Edward delivered his message to the beaver and he found himself shrinking down into the cushions ever so slightly. Edward noticed and dipped his ears forward before proceeding.

“Now, to the matter of Barney. You have been interfering again. It went unnoticed this long due to your admittedly clever obfuscations and my lack of recognition of who I was dealing with, but that is done now and we shall proceed with repairing whatever rents you may have made in the fabric.”

Edward paused.

“Now, tell me where Barney is and what, precisely, you did. And try to keep the lies to a minimum. I don’t have time for your typical nonsense.”

2:27

“Barney,” Meredith called from the kitchen. “Dinner’s on the table. And the buns are just out of the oven.”

Baking was the one thing that Meredith had loved doing with her mother. Most times she was more inclined to be out in the fields or tinkering in the shop with her father, but when there was dough to be kneaded or bread to be baked, Meredith would generally doff her covies and clean up enough to be allowed to join her mother in the big kitchen.

Dough was the first skill she had ever had that had been elevated to the status of art form. She was handy enough with a paintbrush, had sketched many an idea on paper and could manage a half-ways decent shirt or pajama bottom on the old Singer. But it was in flour and water rolled out on the counter that she discovered the difference between skill and passion. What her mother did with bread had been the most mouthwatering form of art that Meredith had ever encountered, and she had striven to master the craft and exemplify the art. She used her mother’s old proportions and expanded upon them to create undeniable masterpieces of the baker’s art. It was a rare old curmudgeon that could resist praising Meredith’s oven-warm offerings, and even Barney was not enough of a misanthrope that he could resist expressing a real joy at the experience of biting into one of Meredith’s rolls slathered in butter.

It was, in fact, one of the very few true expressions of anything that Barney had ever allowed himself. That way ran failure and Barney would not allow himself to be beaten. But the bread, the buns, the pastries, these could not be feared. They could only be worshipped appropriately and then consumed for the benefit of Barney.

“I’ll be right down…”

2:26

The beaver, for all his apparent youth, had a long memory. He remembered the bison, he remembered a time without horses, he remembered the river smaller and faster, carving out its present valley with all the unbridled energy of youth, and he remembered the mountains when they were younger and wilder and full of things not seen today. And the beaver remembered the lodge and the murky water and sun-warmed mud. The taste of the new growth on trembling aspens in the spring, the joy of chasing silver-sided minnows in the shallows and the satisfaction of giving in to those irrepressible urges to build and create and construct.

The beaver remembered a lot of things and yet he remembered nothing clearly, and he often wondered what it must be like to be one of those whose memories are full of details. Tiny incidents, names, texture, tones and the plethora of images that paint the clear picture others claim to hold in their heads. The beaver’s internal galleries were abstract: powerful, intense and full of emotion but void of precision, awash in colour and emptied of the clutter of specifics.

But despite all that, the beaver remembered. He remembered the bunny, if that’s what he wanted to call himself, and he remembered Barney.

It was unlikely he would ever forget Barney.

2:25

The 351 was a peculiar engine. Ford had made several versions of it in ’70s and saddled each with a geographic designation that did little to enlighten the consumer, less to excite the car fanatics and nothing at all for the marketing team who were struggling with losing sales of the Mustang to the more muscle-bound Pontiac Firebird and Dodge Charger. Barney had a 351 Windsor in his 1972 Cougar and had always daydreamed it was the heftier 429 Cobrajet. The 370-horsepower engine in the one he had test driven at that car show had sent shivers up his spine as he’d opened up the 4 barrels and accelerated down the highway. Barney wasn’t necessarily a car snob; he just wanted the biggest and the best. To crush all the puny and pointless competitors until they were the mere remnants of road kill left to slowly fry on the hot asphalt. And frankly, Ford had made a big mistake with with the 351 nonsense. They should have learned with the confusion surrounding the Hemi and stuck with simpler, customer friendly nomenclature. People, as Barney well knew, were stupid.

Speaking of which, the cream Cougar was currently on its way back to the farm where someone was about to get their comeuppance. It might be Meredith’s car for the moment, but that, and a few other things about this stupid relationship, were about to change. Finally.

It’s over. There was no note, no missive from beyond. I am sober and bereft.

I must escape this room. I have been too long in its confines and forgotten too much of my fellow man. This machine, these works, they have become my life. And so I drink and forget to dream. Yet these missives have awoken something I thought long dead or untouchable. I should not let it once again slip my grasp; if I hold on to even a sliver of the dream, then these walls can no longer hold me. I can once again join that realm where man walks under the sun and interacts with his god’s universe. This is what I must do. This is what I shall do.

But perhaps a drink for courage. A moment to reflect. A pause for the reawakening and a sip to celebrate, and then we shall move forward and learn once again to live.

But what’s that noise? No. NO! That infernal noise calls me back to its clutches; it beckons me like an airy siren from hell. A slave. And I must obey: it is duty and the price laid upon my existence. So I shall have another drink and another, and perhaps dream my dreams in a crystal glass filled with the amber water of life, of the only life that remains to me. But I shall dream.

Dream …