We all see each other passing through the streets of yellow-sunny city-town, Old Winnipeg, West Broadway, and there are too many of us, by far, though we all complain this place is too small for our visions, ambitions, too little scope here for the imagination, but I wanna see into them all today, nod, smile, let them know it's gonna be ok, that i've slept under bridges and begged change and rides in far-away cities where i had sturdy boots, but didn't speak the language...
i'm there again, front seat of a stranger's car on some weird lost highway, he and i (oddly) have the same name, same birthday (two decades apart), two older sisters, a brother 5 years our senior who is ambitious and serious-minded-- we were the gadabouts, he and i, the n'er do wells, the hobos-- he told me about heroin, the junk, about going from a $500 a night job bartending in a swanky San Fran hotel to living in a cardboard box and turning tricks--he had Hep C now--i trusted him, and slept while he drove, leaving me at the front steps of Union Station, downtown Toronto-town--
my last $6.85 for a train ticket to Steeltown, it was something i had to prove then, i guess, a way of letting go, like my friend who stood on the Osborne Bridge throwing his money into the water--a way of insisting on the end of things, of dying before our time just to prove that we were real--
and now, not so many years later, i have long, leisurely mornings, nights out with friends a few times a week, a cafe waitress who brings the paper with my morning coffee
and this city
this moment
this time,
is no better or worse than
anywhere else,
no more or less
than anything and
if there were things to
start over,
or change,
all this would be about
nothing at all,
instead it's a sunny morning,
pedestrians and traffic outside the cafe window,
all of us
glossing through these streets
like morning's glowing
ghosts.
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8 comments:
Oh my gh-d!
So good! So so good!
Man, I must sound like a broken record, but this, this is the way of the world.
You are no more and no less, so just be.
Thanks for keeping me awake Roberts.
:)
truly, I'm with a lump in my throat.
on 2nd read....did this change? hmmm, seems different. stinks of fiction. i like.
It's therapeutic to find meaning in all the seemingly mundane moments of everyday life. Doing laundry, paying bills, sweeping the floor, walking down snowy streets with icicles forming on your eyelashes, some crazy guy yelling obscenities at you from across the street.You need to see some beauty in that, at least you need to in order to stay sane.
ha! for sure.
and i'm not sure fiction has to "stink"... and nobody says poetry (if that's what this is) can't be fiction...
but all of this is true except for two rather insignificant details, one involving names, the other involving $ being thrown off a bridge (which i swiped from a patrick friesen poem...).
Stinks is a good word where I come from. Wreaks is another. To me, just means strong.
What bride did you sleep under? Or are you just talking about having a little siesta next to the river?
And begging?
But maybe this part is from the guy who worked in San Fran? Hmmm.
You never know who's talking with these post modern writers. sheesh. :)
(oh, and I apreciate that you answered my questions, not everyone does.)
heh. slept under a few of 'em-- prince george, edmonton, montreal (that SUCKED ASS!, right next to a bunch of freeways and train tracks and expecting to get robbed), and fredericton.
found myself in NB with no money (and a planting cheque lost in the mail), except for the $6.85 i knew i'd need to get from TO to hamilton where i had a place to crash until i got my cheque. that involved no actual begging, but lots of hitchhiking and lots of free meals.
it's funny-- when people pick you up hitching, they become willing to buy you food, go WAY out of their way to drop you off places, etc. it's like, for some reason, the compassion kicks in doubly. i dunno.
i gotta write about all this stuff for real, one day.
Hmm, I thought that you were referring to josey k with the money thrown off the bridge. But now come to think of it, I believe that little incident was a little closer to the ground and involved a sewage drain rather than a bridge.
Oh, Josey, how we love you so.
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