Faces on Public Transit

She sits on the bus alone. One hand clutches her cane; the other clutches the handbag in her lap. The shoes on her feet are sensible. It is a warm day, but she wears a sweater and a scarf. Her hands are old. The backs of them are spotted with age, lined with wrinkles and protruding veins. The skin around her knuckles is swollen and sore. She wears a wedding band on her left ring finger, like her knuckles, the skin around it looks swollen and sore. Her face holds a look of sadness; it almost appears to be a permanent expression.

The bus jostles and she looks up as a hand grasps the bar above her. She sees the well manicured nails, the bright red polish. She remembers painting her nails that color when she was a young girl. She had borrowed the polish a girl down the street, Sarah something. She can never keep track of names anymore. She remembers her mother’s angry reaction when she saw them. The paint had barely had time to dry. She remembers the way her mother scolded as she rubbed her fingers raw removing the red polish. Her mother had said only tramps wear red polish, and no daughter of hers was going to be a tramp. It was the first time she had heard the word tramp. She didn’t understand what it meant at the time. She remembers how her cuticles were red for days afterward; from the polish and her mother’s scrubbing.

Since the moment she got on the bus, she has been staring down at her hands; examining each age spot, each vein, and each wrinkle. She stares at them not because they are ugly, but because to her they are beautiful. The life she has lived is written all over her hands, in each wrinkle, with each age spot, they tell a story. The problem is, these days it seems, they are telling a story no one seems to want to hear anymore.

Lakeside Reflections

Everyone is packing up their bags, loading up their cars, tidying up, checking to make sure everything is once again the way it was when we had arrived.

I decide to wander down to the dock, make sure we had left nothing behind by the water. I slip out quietly, making my way down to the lake alone. It was hard to take it all in. So many things that I wanted to retain in my memory, the moment, the way I could capture it in words later on, once I had returned home. The closer I came to the lake, the quieter it became. The sounds of my friends preparing to leave fade away to quiet whispers behind me.

Even though we had spent the last half hour packing up and getting ready to leave, it isn’t until I step out onto the dock that I realize the weekend has finally come to an end. I take a seat at the docks edge, with my feet dangling over the edge into the coolness of the late afternoon water, and look out and listen, absorbing everything within the nature that surrounded me. The lake, which only a few hours early had been boisterous with the sounds of children at play, motors from various power boats, and the joking and laughter of my friends, was now silent. The wakes from passing boats had died down and the waters surface was as smooth and still, a mirror of glass. It reflected everything around, making it look like there was an upside down version of our world below the waters surface. I stared down at my reflection in the upside down world. The only ripples were from the calm movements of my feet in the water, fading away as quickly as they had formed. I ran my fingers over the water, breaking up my reflection on its surface.

I sat there at the edge of the dock, my arms wrapped across my chest and listened to the subtle sounds of nature around me. The chirp of a frog behind me, the splash of a fish amongst the lily pads to my left. The boats were all docked and put away, their motors silenced until the coming weekend. The children were being packed into cars, eagerly awaiting their return. Even the sounds of my friends above, loading up their cars, had begun to die away.

After a few minutes Andrew came down to join me. He slipped off his sandals and sat down next to me, letting his feet dangle in the water along side my own. We smiled, silently reminiscing about how we had started our day almost the exact same way, coming down to the waters edge with our orange juice and coffee, while everyone else was still asleep. We had spent the morning watching the lake come alive, and now we watched it in its tranquility. We sat there together looking out over the water, not wanting to go home, not wanting it to be over.

Not too long after the rest of the weekends stragglers found their way onto the dock. We sat, or stood, looking out on the lake, telling stories and sharing memories from the weekend. No one really wanted to leave, but we knew that the time for our departure was closing in on us. Eventually, we’d turn our backs on the water and wander back up the hill, get into our cars, and head out to the highway, until we found ourselves back in the city once more. But for now, even if it was just for one more minute, we admired the beauty of nature around us, trying to lock every sight and sound into memory, to hold onto through the week ahead.

Fall. Choke. Repeat.

It happens so fast your mind barely has enough time to register.

One moment you’re in total control, or at least trying to convince yourself you are, the next you’re in mid fall. You try to figure out exactly how you lost the edge before you allow yourself to give into the sensation. Or at least, before you try to convince yourself that you’re giving in and not being forced into the fall.

You remember thinking it was a good idea at the time. What could go wrong? Right? It didn’t look nearly as difficult from your warm, dry, safe seat on the boat. But now that you find yourself floating in the water, some thirty odd feet behind the boat, a tow rope in hand, trying to find a sense of balance which the large bulky skis on your feet make more than difficult, you begin to question whether you are actually capable of something so seemingly impossible. And then the motor starts and you actually begin to move and you know in an instant that things are not going to end well.

The boat has barely started but you know almost instantly that you are losing your center of balance. You could fight it, try to stop yourself, but what’s the worst that could happen? A little extra water in your lungs? A little bruise to your ego? Well, I say bruise away. What’s the fun of never falling down? Where’s the unexpected journey?

In reality, your body is about to fail you, and the sooner you accept it and stop fighting it the better things will be for you. Prepare yourself, you are about to do a face plant into the surface of the water. There is not enough time to block your nose or to take a deep breath. The water will shoot up your nose in the burning, uncomfortable fashion that water has of entering a place it should never have been to begin with. You will resurface sputtering and choking, looking in all directions to find the skis which moments before had been on your feet and now manage to have traveled several feet in opposite directions. This is all inevitable. It cannot be avoided.

And yet some how, after you survive all this, after you have managed to swim around like the awkward duck you are, regain your skis, and clumsily stumbling about to put them on again, you will make another attempt. They yell instructions to you from the boat. Something about your shoulders and your feet. You nod and pretend like you completely understand but in reality their voices are too muffled by the wind and the water in your ears for you to have heard much of anything at all. You square your shoulders and attempt to lean back and balance, because you think, at least your pretty sure, that this is what you heard them tell you to do. You try to focus your mind, you are determined that this is going to be it, you will be successful. And then the boat begins to move, and once again you find yourself being pulled forward, except this time you feel your body start to emerge, not quite out of the water but close. And you begin to think that this is going to be it, your actually going to fully surface, and then the confidence is gone and you feel your upper body being pulled off course, face smacking into the water, leaving you with no choice but to let go of the rope.

You will try again, maybe only one or two more times this afternoon, but you will try again. If not today, then on another day, you will make it out of the water. And on that day, in the instant that you realize your entire body has surfaced, your skis are skimming across the surface, and that you are essentially skiing on water. You will then throw your fist up in the air triumphantly, subsequently causing you to lose your center of balance and once more you will find yourself falling, face hovering inches above the waters surface, about to smack into it harder then you ever have before. And it will feel great!

And sometimes, through an experience like this you learn something about yourself.

Today, I learnt this...I making wiping out look damn good.

Echoes of Raindrops

Its raining and I hear the drops echoing on the roof of my building as they fall, against my bedroom window, and slightly through the wall behind my bed. I love the sound of raindrops as they hit. They fall without pattern or structure, in a random rhythm and I love the sporadic quality of them. Tonight, I close my laptop and my lights and I will lay down in my bed and just listen to the rhythm of the falling rain.

An unfailing case of writers block

The cursor blinks on an empty word document, slowly, almost as though it were taunting her. She’s been staring at it for hours now, waiting for inspiration to strike, waiting for the right words to come to mind.

She begins to type, pure nonsense really, if only to have something on the page. If only to have some semblance that she has accomplished something. Then she backspaces over it all, like she has already done several times before. Why is it that the things she wants to say aren’t coming out the way she wants them too? Today of all days.

She has no looming deadline to cause her writers block, only her own personal agenda. Her own particular need to write something of substance. She wants to finish something, get her feelings out before the day is done.

She continues to stare at the blinking cursor. It blinks torturously slow. She can almost hear it taunting her, You...have...nothing... With each blink a new word whispered into her ear. Stop...trying...to...create...something...out...of...nothing...

She rubs her face, combs her fingers through her hair, trying to pull herself together, to get her focus back. The cursor is not talking to her. She will not let the blankness of the page defeat her. She will find what it is she is trying to express, and the words to express it. She may sit here all night, she may backspace over a dozen more beginnings but eventually one of them will grow into something more. The ideas will breakthrough and the words will flow and once again she will find in herself the sense of certainty she’s been searching for.

In the meantime, she sits, staring at a blank screen, waiting for the something more to come to her.

Montreal at Midnight

There is something he wants to show me before taking me home. Coldplay’s Viva la Vida is playing and I find myself quietly singing along. We drive slowly up the mountain, past houses enveloped in shadows, houses like small castles, daunting and intimidating and inspiring all at once.

I could have lost myself on these streets for hours, just looking. Even when hidden in dark shadows, beneath dim street lights, each house stands alone, unique. Changing with each season; the liveliness that budding trees and green leaves bring to flower beds in spring, the intense heat and humidity that hovers in the air in summer, the burnt oranges and red of falling leaves in autumn, and then the blanket of snow that covers them now, protecting them until the life of spring returns once more.

My mind having been filled and distracted by such thoughts, I hadn’t noticed the car turn off the road, but I feel the engine shut off. I look around, seeing the stairs and thick cement railing of the lookout ahead.

We step out of the car and walk towards the railing, gazing out over the expanse of lights below. We're alone up here for the time being. Everything is eerily quiet, distance sounds of cars on the highway but that’s all. The constant hum of city life seems to have been shut off, if only for a moment.

It’s surprisingly cold, I can feel the goosebumps growing on my arms. I can feel my body begin to shiver. I can see my breath fog before me, but I’m not quite ready to get back into the car.

I look over at him and grin, wondering if the same thoughts going through my mind are going through his. I lean against the cement railing, feel the cold go right through my jacket and gaze downward, taking it all in.

I want to ask him what he’s feeling, what he sees, but at the same time I don’t want to pollute the beauty of the silent city with conversation just yet.

As I look around I notice that the only thing missing tonight are the stars, hidden by the glowing lights of thousands of buildings and cars and street lamps. I cannot see the moon but some how I know there is a small and perfect crescent somewhere beyond the glow.

And then suddenly I feel small and alone....not in an insignificant sense, but in a moment of realization of just how much there is out there that I have yet to see or to experience. He reaches for my hand, squeezes it, almost reassuringly, reminding me that he’s there, that I’m not alone up here.

I look out over the lights at my city, and I know that right now, in this instant, at this point in my life, this is where I want to be. This moment, this place, this city.

And as I look out on the city lights, I allow my eyes to lose focus, causing them to blur, and suddenly I’m not afraid of what the future may bring. Whatever comes at me, wherever I may go, the person I will become, it will all work itself out. I know that I can control certain aspects of that, but I find myself excited by the aspects that are out of my control. I am excited by the mystery of it all.

I want to say something to him, put my feelings and thoughts into words, but the words don’t come and instead I smile up at him and give his hand a squeeze in return.

I may leave here at some point, travel elsewhere, work elsewhere, live elsewhere, but Montreal will always be my home. I may see other cities, older cities, larger cities, but Montreal will always hold a special place in my heart. She’s mine in a sense, and her beauty will stay with me always.

I want to laugh at that thought, the kind of uncontrollable laughter that takes over your whole body, but I’m shivering.

He looks over at me, notices the extent of my shivering, and suggests we get back in the car and head on our way. Part of me wants to say not yet, wants to stay in this moment with him a little while longer. I’m not quite ready to say good night, but the cold wins and together we walk back to the car.

“We just looked out, across the city from our little spot on the hilltop. It was so pretty from way up there. We talked about how the lights from the buildings and cars seemed like reflections of the stars that shone out so pretty and bright, that night.”

"It was daytime."

"The daytime of the night."

Flight of the Conchords

Random thought

Some people have poetry in their heart but they just can't find the words.

Some people have music in their soul but they just can't find the notes.