Obviously, The Cannons was intended for a local audience, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch for anybody who doesn't attempt to speak only in swears and vowels. Writing in regional dialect is an exercise in futility, Trainspotting debatable, and I've even written out the word as 'm o t h e r,' with a fancy (townie) 'th' and everything.

Sure sign of a class act, that. Bet he cleans behind his ears and everything.

I'll just get on, now. You have at 'er.

Dicky tipped the beer bottle to his mouth, a short swig, and asked, “How much you think I could get for the metal in one of them cannons?”

His nephew, Bryce, next to him on the curb, pushed a smirk at him. “What cannons?”

“God, you know what cannons. How many places got cannons?"

The first intrusions of dawn were folding a lighter blue into the black backdrop of the night sky. The men peered across the width of the harbour into the darkness. The lights around Signal Hill, the elderly sentinel of the Atlantic ocean, high above St. John's harbour, were little more than fireflies to them, but they knew where on the hill the cannons were and mapped them against the gloom.

Bryce shoved his sneakers out in front of him and tugged at his ball cap. “Oh, those cannons. I don’t know. Five bucks. Ten?”

Dicky’s thinning hair was incredulous. He swivelled to face his nephew, fifteen years younger, home from university that day. “Ten dollars? Holy Moses, Jimmy Hoskin’s got a hundred for that roll of copper he stole from the power lines, and there’s more to a cannon than there is a roll of copper.”

Nephew Bryce, with a big grin on his face, hummed, “Hmm. So a cannon?”

“Yes, a cannon. Those things up there on the hill what shoots big bowling balls.”

“Twenty dollars?”

“Twenty? Twenty?” Dicky pulled at the bib of his own cap and pushed it around backwards, readying for battle. “Bryce, me buddy, I don’t know what to do with you.”

Bryce chuckled and accepted the bottle when his uncle Dicky — Richard, but Dicky all his life — passed it his way. His sip was too small, as were all their sips. Their shared bottle was the last survivor from a case of twelve and neither of them wanted to finish it too quickly. It was their tether to the evening, their only excuse to sit and keep talking on the curb, so they sipped slowly, and drew no attention to their dainty tips.

Bryce lowered the bottle. “I don’t know, Dicky, those cannons are way out there, you know, not by the road. They’re down and over the hill.”

Dicky nodded. “Yeah, I know where they are. We’ll drive the truck right over, hoist ‘em in the back ... no problem. Couple cannons.”

“Yeah. Couple cannons.”

“But that wasn’t the question, Bryce me buddy. The question was how much do you think we could get for the metal in one of them. If you’re so smart, then answer me that.”

Bryce was not won over so easily. “No problem? Sure you got a problem. What truck you talking about? You don’t got a truck.”

“I got a truck,” said Dicky assuredly.

Bryce leaned in drunkenly, halfway to the dirt. “Since when do you have a truck? You got that old wheelbarrow maybe, that one that’s out in the shed. Full of empties.”

“Wheelbarrow,” scoffed Dicky. “Watch me moving a cannon with a wheelbarrow now.”

“At least you got a wheelbarrow. I knows you don’t have a truck.”

“Yes, you’re right. But I never said I had a truck….”

“Yes you did. Just then.”

“My good pal, Lundy, got a truck. We get his truck. We’re set.” Dicky clapped his hands decisively. “Just like that, see. No problem.”

Unconvinced, Bryce shook his head. “Lundy? Don’t he only got a Ranger? A cannon’s probably the full weight of that old Ranger of his.”

Dicky chewed on his lip and took the bottle when Bryce nudged his arm with it. Half full, warm, Dicky pressed it to his lips cautiously. Neither of them wanted to be the one to finish it.

“Them cannons are clamped down,” added Bryce. Less than a day home from school, he could already hear his old accent returning. The beer helped bring it out too.

“You mean at night?”

Bryce laughed. Real laughter this time, not forced mockery. “No, you goof, not just at night. You think someone’s gonna steal a cannon when nobody’s looking? They’re cemented down in concrete blocks all the time.”

Dicky was impervious to his nephew’s scorn. “Well, smart guy, if no one is gonna steal a cannon, why are the cannons cemented down?”

Bryce shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s what all cannons are like. Bolted down. Maybe because of the wind.”

Dicky lowered him a disbelieving look. “The wind?”

“I don’t know. Yeah. The wind.”

“You think the wind can knock down one of those cannons?”

“No.”

“The wind can but I can’t?”

“I know you can’t.”

Pushing back his sleeves, Dicky cocked his bicep and struck a pose. “You might know a bit about those guns up on the hill, but you don’t know nothing about these guns that I got right here. Check out these cannons.”

Dicky hadn’t done an honest day’s work in months. His arms were pasty tube socks.

Bryce laughed out the side of his mouth, “Don’t know, Dicky. They look more like peashooters to me.”

“We’ll see who’s got peashooters when we bust up that concrete.”

Bryce scoffed again. “Bust it up? With those arms? It’d take years.”

Uncle Dicky shrugged. “Well I don’t know about that. From what Rose tells me, you’ve been lifting ten thousand bucks worth of books all year long. A cannon shouldn’t no problem for the likes of you.” He followed his shrug with another delicate sip and passed the bottle back.

Bryce shifted on the cold cement curb. “I’ll smash those blocks like the Hulk. Carry a cannon down the hill on my shoulders. Two of ‘em. One on each.”

The blue of the sky had raised high enough to silhouette the fort watching over St. John’s harbour against the dawn. It would be a rare fogless morning, clear and sunny.

“Yep,” muttered Dicky with a nod, “good ‘ol Lundy with his truck. He turned to his nephew. “We should head over his way now. Get a start.”

Bryce shifted his ball cap. “Now, hold on now. You don’t think things through, Dicky. You never does. Lundy’s arms are like two skipping ropes. We’ll need more than just us three to move a whole cannon. The two of us plus ... maybe fourteen more of Lundy.”

Dicky tapped at his teeth pensively. “Hmm. Yeah. Might need to cut another guy in too. Still, plenty of metal on a cannon to go around.” Dicky pushed himself to his feet. “We should head on over to Lundy’s now.”

“Probably need a couple guys,” said Bryce with a grin. “You aren’t that young anymore.”

Dicky laughed. Finding the nearest scraggly rose bush, Dicky unzipped his fly and bowed himself, talking over his shoulder. “Any day you wants to pit yourself against a real man, little buddy, you know where to find me.”

“I knows where to finds you — in bed.”

“Damn right. No need to get outta bed to drop a skin-bag a bones like you. You’d think they didn’t feed you at all up there in that school.”

“Then I’d let on that you were trying to rope me into something illegal.”

Dicky feigned shock. “Sweet Jesus, you’d set the law on me, your own dear uncle?”

“Worse. I’d tell mom on you.”

Dicky straightened. “Yes, lord, that’d be worse. Rose’d kill me. Don’t you be talking to your mother about none of this. She don’t like your drinking, especially not with me.”

Bryce laughed and picked up the bottle where Dicky had laid it on the curb. The beer was low now, the foam resting against the brown bottom.

“Illegal,” muttered Dicky, zipping up his pants. “Hardly illegal, taking one of those cannons. Not like anybody’s using them.”

“What if pirates attacked the harbour? Then what would we do?”

Dicky sputtered, “Pirates? Pirates? There hasn’t been pirates around here for what … fifty years.”

Bryce wasn’t even trying to keep a straight face anymore. “You steal those cannons and we won’t have any cannons to defend ourselves if they come back.”

“I don’t want all the guns, just the one.”

“That’s not the point,” said Bryce animatedly, leaning back to talk to his uncle who was stretching his legs. “Besides, what would you do with it?”

“Money me buddy. Money.”

“Money.”

“Yes, money.”

“What money? You bring a cannon to the recycling place and they’d knock you over the head and call the cops.”

“As long as they don’t call your mother.”

Bryce laughed. “I missed your foolishness when I was away, Dicky.”

“No foolishness about it,” said Dicky. “I’d take care of it.”

“You’d melt down a whole cannon?”

“I might. I can’t say.”

“You can’t say?”

“I know a guy. He’d take care of it.”

“A guy? What guy? Some guy with a wood stove?”

Dicky tapped the side of his nose and looked down at the bottle in Bryce’s hand. “Finish that off now. I don’t want no more of that backwash.”

“You sure?”

“Give ‘er.”

Bryce tipped the bottle up, made a face as he swallowed the last of the tepid foam, and placed the bottle down gently on the curb with a hollow click. “Must be one hell of a wood stove,” he said after a burp, “fit a whole cannon.”

Dicky pushed a smirk out to one side of his face. “Must be nice being young, having all those brains. But you’re not half so smart as you thinks you is.”

Bryce smirked back at his uncle. “Smart enough to know you’d be better off melting down the stove and using the cannon to have fires instead.”

By now, the outline of Signal Hill was pushing inland. Closer to the shore, they could see that a military ship had docked in the night. A smaller boat with a searchlight was doing aimless loops in the harbour, keeping guard.

“Smart enough for that to be sure,” said Dicky, arching his back; “a woodstove’s no thicker than the tinfoil inside a pack of smokes, but not smart enough to know that Lundy hides a case of beer in his garage in case of emergencies.”

“Emergencies, huh?”

“Yes sir, for all kinds of emergencies. Floods. Earthquakes, or two good fellas with grand plans who don’t got no beers to bring it all together. All Lundy needs  is a good emergency for waking him up. Even a bad emergency that sounds good at the time would be good enough for Lundy. He’s not particu-lar. But, I don’t know ... I can’t think of none right now. No emergencies at all. Certainly not no emergencies to do with cannons.”

Birds were yawning noisily in the trees around them.

Dicky peered out over the harbour. “No sir, I thought there for a minute that I had a dilly of a yarn about stealing some cannons to make a few dollars off of them, but now I knows the error of my ways. You’ve convinced me, Bryce ol’ buddy. Stealing cannons, it simply ain’t possible. I ain't keen enough to know what they’re teaching you up there in that school, but I guess it’s working, because you got me convinced — and I’m hard to teach, I am. That’s what the ol’ nuns used to tell me mother.”

“Well —”

“Yes sir. You’re one smart lad. We would need a dozen stout men to move a cannon, probably a backhoe with a driver, a crane with an operator, and the man from the Department of Works who oversees all the stealing done in the city, just to take a one of them. After a crew that size got their cuts there wouldn’t be much left of our little cannon for us, and hardly enough beer to wet our lips for that matter. Lundy don’t keep no more than twelve around at any one time ... a good measure, that. So no buddy, we can’t be at no cannons. Not this night anyway.”

Reconsidering in the light of new information, Bryce shuffled. “We could —”

“Nope, nope,” said Dickie, “I’m already sold, smart feller. I think it’s time we should be moseying inside now before Rose sees you’re out and strings me up.”

“We could call Lundy. I got my cell.”

“Well I hope you knows Lundy’s number, and can figure out where he stashes his case, because I’m going to bed. Goodnight, me boy.”

With that, Dicky took a circuitous route across the street and disappeared up the concrete front steps of the house. The door slammed – it had been sticky, opening with suction, for years – and Bryce heard Dicky thump over the coffee table in the living room. 

His mother’s light flicked to life in her bedroom window, first a dull yellow, then brighter.

Bryce looked out over the water one last time. A little blue fishing boat was making towards the narrow mouth of the harbour and the choppier cradles of the ocean. Bryce could see the colour of the morning now, the dark green bushes of Signal Hill, the white froth candles of the far waves. The little boat squeezed between the rocks of the harbour mouth, raising higher with each passing second against the lightening sky. Down at the docks, the thrum of huge motors was building.

Bryce picked up the bottle they’d perched on the sidewalk. He threw it into the bushes and sighed. No way to sneak in unseen now, not with Dicky stumbling about the living room like a frightened bird. Bryce waited a few moments for the light in his mother’s window to darken, but it never did.  

Failed stories. Every writer has them. 

Born of good ideas which just didn't quite pan out, they sit in the literary junk drawer for months and years. Every so often, in moments of boredom or with pulses of meandering creativity, they're taken out and turned over again, and they're never quite BAD, failed stories, they just don't quite deliver on what they originally advertised.

Inevitably, looking at the story again, it's thought, Well, this isn't so bad. A few words get added here and there to strengthen images, dialogue gets a bit of a tweak. I'll just make this chap a bit sassier. Generally, any alterations are chalked up as being telltale for personal improvements in the craft since you last looked.

Yet ... something about the story still doesn't quite work, and again it goes back into the dusty drawer with old bits of overheard conversations and correspondence which you once thought was clever.

For me, The Cannons is my failed story. I have bigger failures, but The Cannons is the most successful failure. The other failures don't even have the luxury of a literary junk drawer. They're bricked up behind a wall down in my dank literary basement, never to see the light of day.

I don't dislike The Cannons, but something about it never quite works for me either. I wrote it for the Cuffer Anthology Contest in St. John's a few years back. The contest basically wants a pretty written advertisement for the island, geographic masturbation if you will, but when I think about Newfoundland I think of the widening separation between the generations, the grizzled old beards with hands like baseball mitts down on George Street passing the pink Republic of Newfoundland headscarves holding the ipods. I wanted to reflect upon that in some small way, but the constraints of the original context -- 1200 words -- might have squeezed it a little too much.

Originally, I had intended this post to go in a different direction, but once underway, it essentially ran on a parallel track to my previous entries about leaving the house and having large and melodious thoughts descend upon me.

I guess it's all the trees around here.

All week I've been editing and writing, writing and editing. After a few days, the mental body is bled white of attention and needs repose, inaction.

So, as usual, I concocted an excuse and hopped in the car. It was more about driving on a sunny Saturday afternoon listening to the Pixies loudly than about shopping.

See HERE for the excuse -- holy horsepills.  I'm keeping them as noseplugs.

Hopefully the same company doesn't manufacture suppositories.

My town is small, and it didn't take me long to get where I was going. Never even got to Monkey Gone to Heaven.

At the bookstore, after having been browsing for only a few minutes, I looked up and thought, What the 'colourful colloquialism' am I doing?

At home, I edit books all week. Then, when I have the time, I write for myself. After that I flirt with twitter and bat my eyelashes at people in writing forums, visit Goodreads, write emails.... Words and books. Books and words. Editing and writing. Writing and editing. Paper dolls of ideas hooked together page to page.

Then when I need to get away from it all, I go to the expletive bookstore....

Up one rabbit hole and down another.

So I got out of there and went to another bookstore.

I went to the grocery store.  A woman pulled up by the entrance and, without getting out of her big truck, asked me if I knew what time the store closed.  I walked over and checked the time on the door for her. Had she been waiting for someone to come along so she could drive up?

The avacados in the grocery store were actually not rotten unlike the store downtown where fruit flies flitter nonchalantly around the bin. My people are not known for their great love of strange fruits and vegetables. But roll a potato through a crowded room and watch as fights break out.

Strolling near the frozen meats, I decided that I was now old.  I had a new benchmark for comparison.

With school having started, there's many young people around, and I can no longer distinguish between kids of college age and kids in junior high. Sometimes when I go out for gentlemanly libations and get dragged to sports bars and dance clubs, I think the young folk I see with their beers and umbrella drinks would look more appropriate holding Pokemons and Barbies.

I passed a blonde girl of perhaps eighteen, shopping with her cell phone to her ear. I thought, Typical.

Bear with me. I'm building to some semblance of a point.

In line for the express cashier, the line wasn't moving, very expressly not moving. A kerfuffle was afoot about the price of an item. Calls were being made for the secret knowledge of special grocery sages, the cashier's face a tapestry of ignorance and apology.

I drifted back and forth to find an express-er cashier, and finding none, floated back to the line I'd left to find two young gentlemen had supplanted my place in line. Fine. That's fine. I left. All is fair.

I couldn't tell how old those guys were either, but for one of them, at least, I could tell his future.

In five years time, young man, you shall become bloated with beer, sodas, and bad eating habits. To hide your baby face -- like the baby head from Toy Story with the crab legs and cyborg eye -- atop your man's body -- and really he did look like he'd attached the Gerber Baby's head to a grown man's body, I can't emphasize that enough -- you will grow a goatee, and wear a silver chain around your neck as a sign of your ascension into manhood. You will then wear your shirt-neck open so everybody may gaze upon it and marvel.

So it is written....

Then an employee was ahead of me in line, apparently taking her break, and joking with our cashier, lingering for laughter. 

Then the same girl who had been talking on her cell phone five minutes earlier got in line behind me, still talking on her cell phone. And I thought, Typical.

I found I was a little mad at the cashiers and their fraternizing, and at the girl behind me talking on her phone. Why can't you take that thing away from your head for five minutes?

And then, for the second time, I thought, What the 'colourful colloquialism' am I doing?

Firstly, I was vexing towards this girl on her cell phone. Meanwhile, the entire day I'd been slicing snapshots out of life, mentally saving them, sifting and sorting them, and adding clever captioning and dialogue, meaning to feed them to twitter or blogs or forums -- or merely to the moving scrapbook that is any piece of literature.

In fact, I couldn't go twelve seconds -- to choose an arbitrary number -- without picking up people by their lapels, shaking them to see if any interesting words would fall out, and placing them gently into my artistic picnic basket for later.

For you tech geeks, think of that as my rudimentary meatspace sandbox. Human 1.0.

Though I was not physically connected to my vices and devices, I nonetheless was carrying them with me. My proclivities had become as much as part of the functionality of the software as the actual written code.

Annoying girl with the cell phone, you and I are one.

Secondly, I had ire for the people ahead of me in line, as if they didn't have enough problems with having to wear beige uniforms all day.

I guess, almost as a bi-product of my first point: with technology, we're used to being able to control our worlds -- or at least the perception of our worlds -- in ways we were never able before. This applies doubly for those heavily invested in social media.

If I want to be amused, if I want to be maudlin, if I want ... anything -- or if I want the things that bother me -- politicians, rocks stars, advertisements -- if I want them to cease, I can make them stop existing in my immediate cone of attention.

Going out in the world, this no longer applies, and frustration is the response that gets triggered when immediacy is not allowed. One has to actually put up with what is happening in the functional, physical world of interacting people made of squishy bits, teeth, bones, and toenails.

Take a deep breath there.

Often, I think brains need enemas, or at least an accessible and safe RESET button.

I let the cell phone girl continue her so-very-important conversation. I laughed along with the socially apt cashier. This new-model monkey then went home to dinner.

A bit of a continuation for Doesn’t Get Out Much ...

... born of brief reliefs from the heat as the fan panders by, energy spurts of teeth-rotting tea in dark-roomed afternoons, of lots of eye rhyme and incandescent slurs against the neighbor children doing their devil-worship beneath my window.

I believe I am jealous of the technical prowess of the latest writer I’ve discovered, slapping back the only way I know how -- by eating chocolate and typing.

That'll learn 'em.

A bit of background and then thoughts on the clichés of writing, maybe art. Though there are many, I’ll stick to the applicable -- with many asides, as much meat stocked on the perimeter of the plate as the middle.

As stated in my previous Doesn’t Get Out Much, I work from home. People give me their apple slices of life; I chew them over and regurgitate. We call that freelance copy-editing.

When I’m done editing for the day, I meander to the edge of the white space at the bottom of this page -- and every page like it -- and hang from the last loops and whorls of the a's and q's, the rare bottom bars of the z's, stretching them down as far as I can.

I’ve been remarkably successful at this of late, discovering how much easier it is to unroll a regular story of woes than a literary work with themes. It goes quickly.

I work as much as I can. Forget the sunlight, I have my monitor's pale glow; scritching on paper for the wind in the trees; a nice earth-tone beige colour, my desk. At heart, it makes me happy.

Yet I know it’s not healthy. It's more a life for a pupa than a person. 

... being an all-encompassed creature inside your artistic cocoon is almost what a writer has to be these days. One cannot just write. It’s not as simple as that. One has to make content, writing’s slut cousin.

Flirt with twitter. Sidle up to forum users and slip them my room card. Share contacts, measurements -- you show me yours I’ll show you mine. Play footsy with my emails. Freshen up in Photoshop. Try to smell nice for Google Analytics.

Content.

This is the puzzling cycle of pablum prescribed to fledgling writers these days. More-experienced writers, perhaps as a joke, slip them a piece of paper with instructions: ‘How to be a writer: Step One: make content. Step Two: Rejoice in the success of your content.'

Unfortunately, the majority of content makers misconstrue these instructions as Outdo even the most vexing spambots in the proliferation of your content! Really belt it out there! Loud and proud!

Usually, the recipients of a content-maker’s devotions to his promotions are other content-makers, which then leads to reciprocation, and escalation, until it’s all stirring together in a whirligig of droning voices and canned laughter, like the soundtrack to an old Hitchcock movie.

Any reader who accidentally gets sucked into the maelstrom swears never to go anywhere near it ever again….

Back to the cliché of the created world seeming more real than the real world.

Actually, I’m going to go with the ungrammatical word, ‘realer,’ here. Because it’s not my supposition that the real world seems irreal to the artist. It’s that the created world seems real-er.

Walking back from the store, not allowing myself to accept the cliché that a construct of my mind could seem realer than what I was actually seeing, perhaps I laughed a little too quickly. Often, I aim for the median course when the sacrifice of aiming high without a safety net (Being in the arts, actually doing art) gets to feel costly on a relatable level (No money, aging without palpable success).

Because, not long after, I had a very interesting moment.

It was but a pip, a tenth of a second. Crossing the road, I looked down the street. The row houses were colourful and interesting, every postcard of Newfoundland that’s not a whale or a puffin exemplified.  I saw them lined up like drunken friends leaning against one another, and I recreated them.

None of this will I ever do with the real houses.

In that moment, the houses I had created with my snapshot were realer for me than the houses that existed in the world.

I don’t know who lives in the real houses, but if I want a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses to live in my created snapshot house, until I actually go and ring the doorbell for myself and the real-life tenants answer the door to become a part of my external reality, that’s who lives there.

Similarly, the landscapes I've created recently with my shut-in literary splurging -- and which consume most of my mental idling -- have this sort of invaded property about them. I can concoct histories for every stone, consecrate closets and cupboards with meaning, switch the semblance of rooms in an instant.

The people that inhabit them, I can crawl inside their ears if I want, or tell you what they had for breakfast.

When they were nine.

I have no external wireframe for the reality houses, but possess a solid blueprint of the fantasy down to a cellular level. The created is realer than the blank.


Most clichés are true to some extent. Applicable to real life. Many of them, we reject only because past popular movements have denounced them. That doesn’t make them false.

The irony is, I'm denying my own perceptions because I’m adhering to a structure of behavior that our current culture says is preferable ...

... when, as people, we make the constructs of our heads realer to us than what we see in the world all the time.

Ask any daydreamer. Any political idealist. Any naïve mother. Ask any racist.

I’m just making a home inside mine, and inviting people over for popcorn.

Rather than give this post a title like “The Write Way,” or “The Write of Way,” or “The Write Stuff,” as if being a quirky shut-in was some sort of professional by-product – even to be elevated as a symptom of the creative mind – I figured I’d be honest about it.

I’ve heard it said that running is great for writing, it allows time for contemplation, planning.

I disagree.

Running reminds me that I am a robot made of meat and slime. If I have neglected my slime, it hates me.

Five hundred meters from the edge of the lake is a small harbour onto the Atlantic Ocean. Also known as the Quidi Vidi Battery. Head on down to see graffiti on authentic cannons. Feel safe knowing that if the French ever attack by sea again, no problem, we got you covered.

But don’t worry, it's been at least ten years since they last attacked, and then they only sent one chain-smoker with a ferocious scowl. Frenchie, we called him. He was a ferocious one, Frenchie. The battle was mightily fought.

A girl of about fourteen was sitting one of the benches facing the lake, her feet drawn up, her head tucked down into her hoody. I was a Tortured Soul™ when I was a teenager, and didn’t really think much of it.

I won’t say much about the run itself other than it was satisfying and heroic. In my head I picture myself as a tanned Adonis holding his head high. In reality ... ever watch a Bassett Hound running towards you at full gallop?

Speaking of dogs, I’ve learned that when approaching a person with a dog, you can always look at the dog instead of the person to avoid awkwardness. Maybe even smile at the dog. That’s a tip for the other quirky shut-ins out there. The first one’s free.

Get out of my way ... damn slow people.

That great moment came when I reached the point where I knew I couldn’t fail. Arms raised like Rocky.

In my head.

Twenty minutes after I’d struck out, I flapped past the statue of The Rower again. I even ran on an extra twenty or thirty feet for good measure. My slime was satisfied.

It’s true what they say, the eye of the tiger is the thrill of the fight.

I scattered the lake’s ducks and pigeons and seagulls before me near the boat launch.

I had the guts, I got the glory, I went the distance, I didn’t wanna stop.

Just a man and his will to survive.

The girl was still there on the bench, her head tucked into an arm, peeking out when people passed, or lingered. Right about here is where I began to be beleaguered by my brain soaking up the landscape like a dry sponge. Sorry, but almost everything to this point has been opening credits and popcorn.

Right next to the lake sits a grocery store, a fancy one too, with escalators for the shopping carts and butlers for the potatoes. The week before I had gone in while still sweating like a pack mule and had left a stink-trail around the apples and avocados which hastened their ripening sharply. I didn’t want to do that again. It's hard to maintain a three foot barrier between yourself and everybody else in public while not looking like a maniac. 

I lingered by the ducks, and walked a ways around the pond, hanging over the rail of the bridge where the shallow rivermouth feeds brown water out into the deep. In the cold of the spring, my girlfriend and I would stand there whenever we brought bread. The ducks would come very close. She loved watching them, and I loved watching her be happy. I decided that I should come back soon with the heels of the loaves I had tucked away in my cupboards.

At heart, another excuse to get out of the house.

That’s when I realized, I really need to get back to my girlfriend.

I’m only thirty-four, and was already contemplating living like an old widower. All my life I’ve been secretly watching old men wandering through towns in afternoons, seemingly very interested in the dust of the gutters or the tacky frames of doorways. I’ve always thought them the saddest people in the land, sure that nobody but me was watching them.

Suddenly, I was contemplating early emulation, and realized how easy it is to fall into routines and escapism. Tired of seeing the inside of their homes, the feeble companionship of their TVs and radios, the old codgers went out into the world to feed themselves with different thoughts before they returned to their little kingdoms of boredom, happy to have seen the little flapping feet of the ducklings, the wary side-eyed glances from the mother-ducks. 

There used to be a lot more of them right after the fishery collapsed.

Either way, Boy, I can’t wait to see the missus again.

I didn’t want to think about the old men, and wandered closer to the shore. Another mother duck had ducklings held close, all of them with their heads tucked beneath their downy wings. She, too, eyed me warily, before nuzzling her head back beneath her wing. I stood there for five minutes, feeling the cool breeze sucking the moisture out of my armpits. My cotton shirt was damp and droopy. Sexy, very sexy.

Then a small cadre of juvenile ducks, probably the same guys as here in this four-month-old photograph, with no fear charged out of the water and right up near my feet, all of them watching me while trying not to look like they were watching me. Very cagey and cool, ducks. Comes from having their eyes near the sides of their heads. Popcorn kernels had been left on the park bench next to me, and I flicked them off onto the ground. The ducklings pounced on them quickly. Deciding, then, that I was a bust, they charged helter-skelter over to a nice lesbian couple twenty feet away. At the sight of twelve ducklings charging at them like paparazzi, I heard them say, Oh my god, how cute.

I’m not even going to try to describe the sound that twelve ducklings make when they charge down a walkway in unison. I don’t get out enough for that.

Right about here is where I realized I was a terrible person.

I looked across the way to see that the fourteen year old girl was still there with her head tucked down into her jacket. I also saw – though I rarely notice them, intent as I usually am on the lake – that she was sitting directly by the property boundary between the big Catholic graveyard and the walls of the provincial prison. I tagged that as interesting in a thematic sort of way.

Quick on the heels of that revelation, I had to contemplate the idea that I had passed that girl – not once – but twice, and it had never occurred to me to ask her if she was okay.

We don’t have much homelessness in our city, so that’s not a frontline thought, but for all I knew, she was hurt, or simply unhappy, and a hello might have helped. Hell, even if she were a Tortured Soul™, and was fishing for somebody to do just that, to inquire about her soul, there’d have been no harm in it.

That’s when I wished my girlfriend was around again. She’s unafraid to approach strangers and be kind.

Men around my age simply do not approach teenage girls. To do so is a breach of some kind of quiet code.

Then I thought, Well, fuck what other people think, I should be doing the right thing. I think we’re too careless and uncaring to people these days, and I try to generally spread common sense and kind words wherever I go, at the very least checking my own hostile tongues whenever they rise. To do so online in an anonymous fashion while shying away from it in the real world seems a fine line of hypocrisy.

But then I swung back the other way again. Nope. Grown men my age don’t approach young girls in public. That’s a fine line that’s drawn in our minds. If I were to walk up to her and inquire about the blackness of her soul, or to see if she had been in a fight or something – even if nobody else in the area saw – it’s likely that she herself would have thought I was a creep. No credit for not being a monster there.

We have a fear of lone men these days. We can’t be cowboys or saviours anymore, only dark menaces with dank basements in our souls. Even an act that, on the outside, appears to be as benevolent as flowers on a sunny day, is perceived as actually hiding a bubbling cauldron of base desires.

Women were allowed to approach her, I decided. Older women, especially. Older men were allowed, but would still merit being watched closely in case the basement door looked like opening.

I watched from afar, at least a hundred meters away across the lake. Anybody seeing me probably assumed I was leering at her. I wondered how many people, like me, would pass her by, and, in fact, I felt better when a lady leaned over her after only twenty or thirty seconds.  

Proud of my victorious stink, if not my own humanity, I went to the store feeling that not all was lost with humanity in general, or at least the specific humanity in my neighborhood.

Cheeze was on sale, and I decided to experience what it would be like to buy two.

(Spoiler: It was awesome.)

I don't have a snappy ending, so  I'll deliberately ruin my walk away into the sunset.

Oh man, did you see what I did there with the ducklings, their heads tucked under their wings, and then the girl doing the same thing too? 

Totally a writer.

Absolutely related.

I'm ravenously hungry. I've been writing a query letter for six hours. Finally the roar of my brain stops and my stomach is raving mad, shaking its fist at me. It's piss-pouring rain. I have no food in the house.

I go downstairs and cut off a hunk of stale beer bread with cheeze so I won't deflate into a shrunken nothingness and fall into the gutter on my way to the grocery store. I'd hate for someone to find me lying there the next day dirty and wet like one of those discarded gloves that seem to grow from roadside gravel.

There's rain, there's splashing cars and wet pant’s cuffs, but hey, I get there and perogies are on sale 2 for 1 so it's all worth it. Mmmm perogies.

It's often said that you should never shop for groceries when you're hungry. Normally the old adage rings true. But there's another adage that says Man cannot live on bread alone, and a bit of bread was all I was running on. I was in no danger of buying too many groceries. Even if I could fit them all into my shared fridge (that's another story), my hunger had rendered me desperate far and beyond the point of caring about what old wives say. I got what groceries I needed and geared up to get out.

Everybody has a mundane superpower. Mine is the ability to get drinks quick at any bar regardless of how crowded the bar is. For me the gaps in the gabbering girls and guys in tight shirts open like magic (that sounds spurious but I'm sticking with it. The magic works at concerts too). At the time I realized this I was giddy with power. It was only slowly that I came to also realize that every superpower, even the mundane ones, comes with a price.

If with great power comes great responsibility, then with minor power comes, well, minor annoyances. I'm superman at the bar. Give me all your liquor money, citizen, and stand back. But never, ever, pick the same line as me at the supermarket.

I go to the line with only one man with one basket. He's wearing a cap and a grubby jacket, grubby jeans. He's a grubby guy. When I moved downtown I was concerned I wouldn't have any fun at the supermarket anymore because I wasn't haunting the aisles at 2 AM. Fortunately, it turns out I don't have to worry.

The grubby guy put his basket on the conveyer, and as it moved forward towards the cashier he'd slide it back towards me. Two times he does this. The cashier rings the grubby purchases through, the grubby basket is conveyed towards the front, the grubby guy pushes it towards the back. I can't put my own purchases down because I'm feeling the barrier of politeness; his basket is there. My own is getting heavy.

Finally the cashier, seeing the traveling basket is empty, stashes it behind the counter, sliding the bar to separate the groceries down my way. I began putting my groceries onto the counter. The grubby man, having lost his grubby basket that was acting as a buffer, begins picking up my groceries and placing them at the back of the conveyer.

I stop. I don't like anybody touching my groceries. That's taboo. A taboo I heartily endorse. Although it seems a dotted line that gets broken fairly often (ask me about the old man who purposefully squished my cake). Mostly I'm shocked this guy is picking up my groceries and moving them as if he has some sort of demilitarized zone lined out near the front of the conveyer that my food is violating.

The conveyer, of course, works on a sensor. An item places on the conveyer will move up until another sensor stops it. It's not going to stop while there's items on the belt. Seeing the guy was obviously not going to stop, the cashier halts the belt. This time when the grubby guy manhandles my groceries, they stay where he wants. Neither I nor the cashier are impressed by this grubby man's attempt at perpetual motion.

The worst is over, I think. Problem solved. Our hero may return home happy with his spicy pizza.

No so.

The grubby man whips out his pen and a cheque. I look up at his tally on the blue screen. Twenty-three dollars worth of cat food, wieners, and crystal lite. It's like an odd kind of poetry seeing the same items repeated on the supermarket screens.

Crystal Lite - 250g -                          99c

Crystal Lite - 250g -                          99c

Wieners

Wieners

Yes, a glimpse into my world.

The cashier can't cash the cheque for the grubby man. She doesn't have the authority. She has to go check in with her supervisor in regards to the cheque. She leaves.

The grubby man seems nervous. He steps five feet away from where I am and begins pacing, pacing, his hands behind his back, pacing. It's over five minutes the cashier is gone verifying the veracity of the legal paper exchange and he paces all the while. Pacing.

When the cashier comes back she brings with her a sympathetic look for me as if to say sorry. Me with my meager groceries spread out on the conveyer belt, excluding the demilitarized zone near the front. Waiting. I don't look at her, though I saw. In truth, I don't mind. I've been in my room all day writing damnable dull query letters. Compared to that a good jab with a sharp stick would be preferable. I'm actually kind of amused. I'm already seeing the words 'I'm ravenously hungry. I've been writing a query letter for six hours' in my head.

She asks the grubby man for more pieces of identification, which he promptly whips out. Identifying himself is probably his mundane super power. Probably a pretty useful one seeing how grubby he is. The cashier shoots me another sympathetic look, having not caught my eye yet, and leaves again.

This time, instead of pacing, the grubby man begins to study my purchases. He never looks at me. Never once does he acknowledge that I exist. He's as leisurely as if he's pawing through the apple bin, leaving grubby bits over every Granny Red that he touches. He picks up my tuna and reads the label. It doesn't captivate him so he picks up my green bananas. They are very green. Green doesn't meet up with his measure. He puts them down and returns to his pacing, pacing.

Five minutes more goes by and the cashier returns. The grubby man's project of twenty three dollars has been approved. Proud new owner of twenty three dollars worth of cat food, crystal lite, and wieners, the grubby man picks up his bags and goes. Real life continues.

My own purchases had no duplicates, no poetry. Green bananas, spicy chicken pizza, tomato ... just doesn't have the same ring.

On the way home it was still raining. All the pretty girls had their hoods up and their pretty eyes shone out of dark cloth tunnels.

Who am I kidding? Pretty girls don't walk, especially in the rain. Who knows what monstrosities were hiding inside the mouths of those hoods?

Oh wait. I did have a duplicate.

Perogies.

Perogies.

2 for 1.

Mmmm.

So worth it.