I got no more chances
I’m down to my final strike
Bottom of the ninth
Down a run
Slow it down
Step out of the batters box
Deep breath
I can do this
Don’t think home run
A single up the middle will do
A base on balls
Maybe I’ll crowd the plate
Lean in and take one for the team
Look confident
Feel confident
Yeah right
Fucking bullshit.
I felt like horseshit
I didn’t even have time to shave
Or brush my teeth
Half a roach in the ashtray
One last hit to calm my nerves
And then that’s it
I’m walking away
Wish I had a fucking bottle with me
Straight shot with the toke would get me straight
The bullshit thing…well…I’m waiting…I wasn’t always like this….well…I’m waiting…okay, okay calm down…when I was a teenager and my mom and her friends used to party and smoke weed in the living room, I’d be making protest signs on cardboard in my bedroom…
SECOND HAND SMOKE KILLS
YOU BOOZE YOU LOSE
Fuck man, I had my shit together back then. Funny, but those were the times to cut your teeth on vices…a rite of passage…a given. Get fucked up and then get serious. I did it the other way round.
Started in my thirties. Now I’m 42 and can’t go a day without a toke…or a beer.
Woke up this morning in a puddle of puke, with a piss stain on my bedroom carpet…yeah that’s right…YEAH…no exclamation point…savage, hollow…Christ…anyway ..
Divorce happened 2 years ago.
Went to work on the pipeline expansion in Northern Alberta…couldn’t tell you much more than that as me and The wyld Boyz, as we called ourselves, got into the drink and cocaine pretty heavy.
The Wyld Boyz liked to tell the story of me shit kicking a bunch of Indians in a McDonald’s at 2am….yeah…you know, something to be proud of…hmmm, yeah…
The Wyld Boyz liked to tell the story of me riding the bucking bronco…without puking I might add…at Steve’s bar…got so good I got a plaque and a picture that sits behind the bar autographed by me…not bad, I could use that one.
The Wyld Boyz liked to tell the story of me with a few of the Northern Albertan ladies.
The Wyld Boyz liked to tell these stories and more on the internet…cocksuckers, set up a blog and sent it around…and then wondered how my wife found out.
Now here I am 2 years later sitting in my car, drooling over half a joint and getting ready to go to a daddy daughter donut day at my daughter’s school….the day combined dads, donuts and a pick up basketball game in the gym.
Haven’t shot hoops in over 15 years…weeds making me crave some donuts though.
I opened the car door and almost left the keys in the ignition.
The sun was hot.
Fuck I felt bad…like fucking gutter water.
My ex had a bunch of mommy spies around…had a sneaking suspicion some fathers were on the payroll too.
Took a scan around before I crossed the street…
A dead black cat with its head exploded appeared in front of me…fuck me!
That’s gotta be like 50 years of bad luck or something!
I made the sign of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost.
I’m not religious but I liked to cover my bases when trotting around.
Ex wasn’t either, and then she was.
Anyway, who gives a fuck about her…doing the cross mime made me look like I was on the up and up…and if some of her cronies were watching, shit would look tight on my side of the fence.
I walked up some stairs and headed inside to the main office.
Fuck I hated schools.
Fucking prisons.
If I had my say…but I didn’t, not now.
Noticed some happy posters of donuts pointing the way to where I had to go. A teacher walked towards me. She passed and smiled.
I winked and she stopped smiling.
Why did I wink? Now she thinks I was trying to pick her up…that I wanted to fuck her. She’s gonna talk to the principal…security would get involved. She’s probably my daughter’s teacher for fuck sake...I’m going to get arrested…further disgraced.
I slipped into a boy’s bathroom and locked myself in a stall to get my shit together… head was fucking pounding.
I sat on the toilet seat with my head in my hands.
“Ohhhh gawwwwd!!!” The dude next to me moaned.
Jesus fuck!...sounded like someone beating off in there. Can shitting be that pleasurable? Maybe I should be open to this…change my perspective and re-examine my bathroom habits…
In college my girlfriend stuck her thumb up my ass and to this day I’m still not sure If I enjoyed that or not?
Gay men have anal sex and enjoyed it, so why couldn’t taking a big shit be just as enjoyable?
Fuckin premo weed Jeremy, my high school connect gave me…I wonder if it’s laced?
“Hey fuckface, there is no next time,” I mumbled out loud.
Wait a second…did I say that out loud?
I think I said that out loud…Fuck…should say something?
Last thing I needed was to start some shit in an elementary school bathroom.
“Ah, sorry I didn’t mean to say that out loud…I was thinking…I was talking to myself…”
“Brent?” A familiar voice said.
Fuck that sounded like…
“Raymondo is that you?”
“Brent! I thought you were some crazy fuck! Let me wipe and I’ll be right out.”
I opened the door and went and washed my hands.
I took a good hard look at myself in the mirror.
Jesus Murphy, look at me…unshaved…pimpled…yellowed teeth with food in them…blood shot eyes…greasy haired…not too far off from catcher in the rye…fuuuuck…for real…why was I growing my hair out again anyway? I never looked good in long hair…looked like a greasy fucking hippy that never washed his hair…would that be so bad anyway?...being a hippy…get a little hippy girl, cruise around in a VW microbus…go to some rainbow gatherings…chase some rainbows?
I heard the toilet flush and then the other door slammed open.
“Hey man…you got any dope on ya?”
Raymondo….right…last time I saw Raymondo we were drinking heavily and I remembered a prostitute egging us on to give each other a blowjob. When we woke up the next morning with our pants down and our wallets missing, we couldn’t remember a goddam thing. We hadn’t talked about that night since it happened. But I can guarantee you we both laid in bed some nights wondering if we had each other’s cocks in our mouths?
Rather…my eyes glanced down at his crotch…“Don’t even go there,” the crotch said.
I turned to Raymondo…“Smoked my last joint…I’m done with that shit.”
“Bullshit, you fucking junkie.”
I watched him adjust his tie. “Nice suit Wall Street,” I noted.
“Whatever…nice Occupy Wall Street .”
Occupy Wall Street…the gall. “What? A man can’t wear a Peter Tosh shirt and jeans?”
“Oh the man can, but it looks like an advertisement for an old hippy that smokes weed and goes to anti nuclear rallies.”
“I happen to have a serious problem with nuclear power.”
“It’s a clean fuel my friend, no carbon. Isn’t that what all you Bob Marley fucks are bitching about?”
“Chernobyl, okay? I don’t want my daughter’s daughter having 4 hands and 3 breasts.”
“Yeah, yeah…it’s donut time…see you on the court…I’m dropping 20 on your dead beat ass.”
“Get the fuck out of here, I’m not even playing.”
“Whatever you say fat boy,” He said and tapped me on my belly before leaving.
Fatboy? Hardly. A little belly, hardly fat though…out of shape sure…
I stood sideways in front of the mirror and sucked in my gut and then stuck it back out.
I did that a bunch of times until I started to giggle.
Feeling good again, I stepped back into the hall and found my way to the gym.
Half the court was laid out for the donut/kid/parent/socializing business and the other side had a half court hoops game underway with some keener dads.
I saw Zoë’s dad taking it hard to the hoop, bricking the layup and then screaming to a non-existent ref for a foul call.
Calm the fuck down guy…Christ does he think NBA scouts are watching?
Now he’s in the face of the Asian dude that fouled him. Bumping his chest…foam spittle flying…look at his face…red as a fucking beet.
Last thing I needed was to get my buttons pushed by this fuck face.
“Daddy, daddy” I heard my little girl’s voice calling for me.
Ah here’s my little angel.
Her name was Star Mild Temperatures Beautiful Cloud. That’s her full name. Now calm down, I know…let me explain…
First off, she came to my ex wife in a dream and told her that she was to be called Star. Can’t argue with that right? Right???? Okay, and her last name was Beautiful Cloud. We wanted her to have her own last name…be her own person and not be tied to some male lineage…bullshit male stuff. Beautiful Cloud because there was this really crazy spaceship looking cloud right above our yurt when my ex gave birth…it was pretty trippy…really beautiful.
Now her middle name was a bit of a joke…I’ll give you that. You know when you name your kid or your dog and they kind of become that name…grow into that name? Like if you name your dog Mischief, the dog becomes real mischievous or you name your kid Phoenix and they become real fiery types. So we thought it would be funny if we named her Mild Temperatures and then maybe the weather would always be mild and pleasant.
Sound theory…and it’s true…though it does help that we live on the west coast and not in the prairies…but there it is…
Star mild temperatures beautiful cloud.
Beautiful.
“Star…my little sweetie pie,” I said and picked her up and gave her a big hug.
She had on her angel fairy wings and I was careful not to hurt them. Let me underline that, cause I guess one time…or I was told…I was drunk and it was reported that I put the wings on and tried to fly off the top rail of our balcony and well…let’s just say my wife…yeah…well…yeah…okay.
“Daddy I’ve had 3 donuts already…a chocolate one with rainbow sprinklers…a long one that looks like a submarine, but with yummy cream in it…and one that had strawberries in it, but I don’t know what it was called.”
“Wow, those sound good can you show Daddy where those yummy donuts are?” And I meant it…I was suddenly so ravenous for a donut. I wanted to rub them all over my naked body and eat until I puked…kind of…but not really.
“Over there. Daddy…”
I followed her finger and there I saw…Christ almighty would you look at that? I don’t know if what I was seeing was real, but there was a beautiful woman, or the face of a beautiful woman, and not just beautiful…but like one of those times where you’re like ‘I’ve been with this chick’…chick…not the word, I meant…but I mean, like another lifetime or something…you know what I’m talking about? Anyway it felt like I knew her…but all I could see was her face, cause she was wearing a big inflatable donut costume and bouncing around and handing out donuts and napkins.
“Who’s that?” I whispered to Star.
“That’s my teacher”
“Your teacher!”
Are you fucking kidding me?! Star was 7 and in grade 2. My grade 2 teacher was a 193 year old woman that wore full length dresses in various shades of grey…a sweet old thing…but…goddam how times have changed…this teacher looked like fun!
We waited in line. Star was saying stuff to me but I wasn’t paying any attention…I was locked into the donut of my dreams.
Of course someone budged in front of us at the last second and started yammering about how his son should’ve gotten a higher grade last term.
Fucking kidding me…Grade fucking 2 pal! World’s gonna end….fuck out of here…who gives a rats ass about grades? Practical survival skills are what kids needed to be learning these days…gardening…starting fires from scratch…but what do I know…I tell her mom these things…but she just gives me one of those looks.
Finally fuck face left…I put on a real positive vibe…chipper…introduced myself…even got in a couple of half decent donut jokes. Star’s even helping the cause…doesn’t hurt she’s stuffing her face with donuts…teachers laughing…I’m thinking green light and I’m gonna ask her when get this…a basketball comes flying out of nowhere and hits me in the head and I’m…out…cold.
Or so I’m told…cause at the time I had no idea what the fuck happened. Anyway, I woke up and focused my eyes…the teacher had a frozen pack on my head. I could see her hair now that she had the donut suit off.
“You used to have dreads.” I mumbled out…mouth dry.
“How did you know that?” She asked with knitted brows.
“I don’t know.” And I didn’t know…where the fuck did that come from…how would I know that?
I pushed myself up into a seating position. God awful fluorescent lights…white room…cot…some kind of school injury room.
“Where’s Star?”
“Her mom came and got her.”
“Christ on a crucifix.”
“Did you see how Christ died too?” She asked seriously?...not sure though?...
“On a crucifix you mean…isn’t that what we’re all told?”
“But did you actually see Christ on a crucifix, like you saw my dreads?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said Christ on a crucifix.”
“I said it as a type of swear word.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
An awkward silence…long and drawn out…she must be fucking with me…I don’t know though…my head was fucked and I wasn’t in the mood for comedy routines…just the straight facts.
“What happened?”
“Zoë’s dad threw a bad pass and it hit you in the head.”
“Why…who? How did donuts and basketball come together on this day, anyway?”
“I don’t know. It’s always been like that at least since I’ve been here.”
Probably a cop who played ball in college and thought he’d cement his name in school lore by coming up with a daddy donut basketball day.
Fuck did I need a six pack, a bag of weed and a couple of John Candy comedies right now.
“Okay, I gotta go…it was nice meeting you…”
“Sarah.”
“Nice meeting you Sarah and thanks for the ice pack and the donuts and…”
Ah what the hell, the day was fucked anyway…
“Hey, would you like to go to the…library sometime?”
The library?
“The library?”
The library? Where the fuck did that come from? I guess I was thinking wholesome…teacher, library…can’t invite a teacher to the bar, or the casino…but the library? Well, what the fuck…I said it.
“This isn’t a plot to get me to fall in love with you so that I’ll give your daughter better marks is it?”
“Has that actually happened to you?”
“Twice.”
“Twice! It’s grade 2 and the world’s gonna end!”
“Wait! You see the world ending…did you see that?”
“Yes, no…no I mean…yes the economy is going to collapse…a fossil fuel crisis…food shortage…but I don’t know when…it was a figure of speech….are you fucking with me?”
“The economy is going to collapse! No more fuel! No more food!”
“NO! YES! I mean, fuck my head…I don’t know if you’re fuc…I mean, joking with me…but I’ve gotta go…my head…let me…do have an email or phone?”
“Nothing no…passenger pigeon.”
“PIGEON?”
“Joking…here’s my number call me, when you’re feeling better.”
I smiled. It’s true. I felt better. Love…a magical elixir. I got home and rolled up my last remaining nugget of weed into a fatty…turned up some Bob Marley and felt my consciousness drift away into the astral realms.
JESUS
FUCK
My futon’s on fire!
I had ripped the smoke alarm off the ceiling in a drunken rage the week before, cause it always went off when I cooked on the stove or had a hot shower.
But my Asian landlord was always sniffing around, so I had to have the alarm on hand so I could quickly screw it back in.
He claimed he didn’t know much English, but I think it was a put on so he wouldn’t have to fix shit.
He was always laughing and saying “fucky” and opening up people’s doors in the middle of the night.
One neighbor down the hall told me he heard his shower go on while he was asleep, and when he went to inspect he found the landlord sitting naked on his toilet…
“Fucky, fucky…soooo fucky,” the landlord said and laughed.
His name was Mr. Wong but we all just called him Mr. Fucky. I mean, I didn’t really know what the fuck he was really saying…it probably wasn’t “fucky”…probably trying to pronounce some general greeting, but that’s what it sounded like.
He had a gold front tooth and a yellow convertible. Fucker was getting fat off our rent, which he would raise 10 or 15 bucks out of the blue, but trying to talk to him about it usually resulted in such misunderstandings that you just gave up and waved him off.
Why am I talking about Mr. Fucky anyway? Oh yeah my futon was on fire! Fucking delayed weed reactions, man. I got on the ball quickly though…rushed into the kitchen and grabbed some baking soda and a glass of water and rushed back out to knock out the flames…done and done.
Phew, that was close. I opened the window and aired out the place…sat down on the side of the futon that wasn’t burnt to shit.
Okay, handled that emergency smoothly…now let me get back to what I should be thinking about…Sarah’s tits…I liked that. Made my penis move a bit…but then a stray thought of washing dishes entered into my head…my dick went limp…work called…fuck you!
I quickly got ready and then ran outside and hopped on my beater of a bike. Had 3 bikes stolen in less than 2 months, so now I rode this rusty beast that no one outside of an insane person would fuck with.
Gas prices were cutting into my pay check, so I only used the car for Star related activities. Hadn’t re-insured the car either, so that bad boy was illegal to drive around.
What a ball and racket car insurance was. Who needed it? Take my chances. I’m a real careful driver, even more careful when under the influence. And even if I’m in a little fender bender and it’s my fault, I’m speeding away. They get my license that’s fine. I stole those plates off some fucking redneck that fucked me on some shrooms I bought off him in bulk.
Rednecks are always trying to fuck someone over in a business transaction. It’s their entertainment. Later they’ll drink their budweisers and sniff their cokes, load their guns and fuck their sheep thinking it’s their overweight wives…ouch…yeah…I mean…
We had this redneck across from us when my ex and I had our yurt back in the rurals. Bob was his name. This guy was a piece of work. He liked to grow his weed and sell it to the Hells Angels, which went to his head, cause he thought he was this tough son of a bitch…with his 15 dogs that barked day and night. Fuck those dogs…wrote a bunch of poems about those dogs. Bob…he became such a problem, with his evil dark side of the force energy that I tried to move him with my mind. For three days I’d pick him up in my head and place him in a house that was for sale further down the road. Well that didn’t work…seemed to make him even more grumpy…just a big grumpy donut. In the end, we were the ones that moved. Anyway, I didn’t want to get involved in some drama that would link our karmas over many incarnations. Fuck that.
Why am I thinking about that fuck anyway when I should be thinking about taking Sarah to the library? The library…still cracks me up…anyway…
I cruised my way to work through some neighbourhood streets…less cars…no hills…took a sharp left and cut into a back alley and locked my bike up around a hydro pole.
I entered the restaurant through the back door. The smell of rice bowls and coffee hit my senses.
Straight up? I worked as a dishwasher. A 42 year old dishwasher. I actually told people that I was 26. People could deal with that...if I said 42 they’d think I was bullshitting them…that I didn’t look like 42…that I looked like I was in my twenties and that in the silence that followed I knew what they’re thinking about…why am I washing dishes at 42? When they’re all like 22 and thinking they’d never be washing dishes at 42, cause they’ll be in a job that makes them so much money…yeah…okay…anyway, so I just skip all the bullshit and say I’m 26.
But for the record, I’m a 42 year old dishwasher. I know, I know. Jesus I know. I’ve had other jobs, a million other jobs. Some with better pay and prestige…some with ladders to climb…some with snakes to slide. But here’s the real kicker…I’m a poet…a writer. Okay there it is…laid out on the table, with the nice silverware…an unpublished poet at the age of 42. I reached a point where it was all or nothing and I chose all…or nothing, depending on how I looked at it some days. And that’s why I washed dishes. Cause washing dishes took very little mental activity. After awhile your body washed, sorted and put things away, while your mind could roam. I disappeared into my imagination and when I got back home, I wrote it all down. Does that make sense? It doesn’t to my father and that’s why I lied to him and told him I was working in a law firm…doing this and that with filing cabinets…data entry on the computer. I told him I got a salary with medical and dental benefits and most importantly to the old man, I was putting money away into some RRSPs. I could retire with the peace and security that only money could bring.
I told him stories of some of the cases that the firm was dealing with. Juicy stuff that I swore him to secrecy with…stuff about the Prime Minister and his addiction to prostitutes and Nag Champa. My dad lived in Saskatchewan and I never visited, and I didn’’t pick up the phone so I didn’t have to swim in too deep with the law firm bullshit.
What am I going to tell him? The truth? That I drove an uninsured car with false license plates…that I fucked up my marriage because of booze and weed? That I’m a dishwasher who has dreams of becoming a famous poet…that is currently working on a poem called THE DOLLAR SIGN IS THE NEW AND IMPROVED SWASTIKA, which if completed will be met with complete disinterest…which will cause me to sink further into my addictions?
Anyway, back to dishwashing…Amy…the girl that worked the shift before me was a high school student with special needs. She liked to show me pieces of food that she’d collected during her shift. Food she’d found on plates or dug out from the blocked drain. I’m usually pretty positive with her. Encourage her you know…actually I don’t know. She’d take the food she’d collected and put it into a Tupperware dish and take it home. I asked her once what she did with the scraps and she invited me over for dinner.
“Well you have a nice night Amy…I’ve got to get going here…the dishes won’t wash themselves!” Stupid fucking joke but it did the trick. She took off and left me alone. Nobody gave a fuck about me. The cooks were cooking and hanging out in their cooking clique. The waiters were waiting and hanging out in their waiters clique. And there’s me on my own little island. Lying on the beach…staring up at the clouds drifting by. Dreaming. And then it’s time to go home. Easy. It’s like I’m paid to dream. And that’s what I tell Star…
“Your papa is paid to dream.”
“Can you show me how?”
“Sure, all you gotta do is close your eyes.”
“But not go to sleep right?”
“Right…close your eyes and tell me what you see?”
“I see a pink elephant smiling at me.”
“Very good…see, you’re a natural.”
When Star was in grade one I went to the career day thingy they had. You know the one where a parent got up in front of the class and tooted their own horn for a bit…I’m a doctor… I’m a cop…bullshit stuff that pissed me off, cause I was an inch away from being a deadbeat guttersniper…anyway…I got up there and told them I was a dreamer…it was a huge hit…the teacher was dubious…but the kids fucking loved it! I felt like a superstar and wrote a few pretty good poems off the adrenaline when I got home.
Woa…easy boy…yeah…anyway…light, light…I am the light.
CRACKED
HEAD
I knew this guy who would read the cracks in the concrete, like it was the newspaper or something.
No shit.
“No shit,” he said.
He was badly cross eyed. It threw me off so much I just looked at his nose when we talked.
Said he was a “former activist” and then got into “pharmaceuticals.”
After a stint in prison he began to wander all over the country. Further east in the warmer months and then back west when it got to be winter.
He talked about seeing invisible UFO’s in the daytime sky.
Said they were “tiny” and that they were “floating around our heads” as we spoke.
His name was Charlie and he was my friend.
He had a huge mane of unkempt black hair. Matted and dreaded. Leaves and twigs and fuck knew what else was in it.
He wore a really worn leather jacket and carried an assortment of filtered water bottles…canteens…containers. He wasn’t going to die from dehydration that was for sure.
I’d seen him from time to time on my bike travels. Crouched and running his finger along a cracked sidewalk.
I’d stop and shoot the shit if he was in a good mood.
On this night, it was after work and I was biking home and he was in the middle of a busy intersection checking out a crack.
“Hey Charlie!” I yelled.
He didn’t hear and I wasn’t about to venture out into the traffic.
Maybe he was the Nostradamus of my time, and could tell when a major earthquake was coming or if a prime minister was going to be assassinated.
Didn’t know if it was anti-climatic or whatever…I was tired and biked on…got home…turned the oven on in the kitchen to warm up the free food I scored at work…pasta that fell on the floor. Nobody else wanted it. Fuck it, their loss.
After eating I hopped into a steamy shower. Got into some comfy clothes. Ate while watching a movie I stole from the library. Smoked a bowl. Drank a brew and next thing you know…
The nice part was that I fell into a raunchy sex dream. The Tibetan goddess Green Tara, was fucking my brains out. But then my brains really started to ooze out… “No, no, please…I want to live!” Then Tara’s head turned into 6 snapping hyena heads and that kind of fucked me up…
I screamed awake with a king sized boner and would’ve beat off, but the ending to my dream turned me off and my dick fell limp.
You know what?...fuck…I mean…fuck me…a vivid fucking dream like that needed a session of wake and bake to deal with and sort out.
I brewed up some coffee. Organic fair trade and not that slave plantation shit...and rolled up a fatty.
I blazed and inhaled deep.
I blew out dragon smoke…began to think on things.
Maybe Sarah was Tara? But Sarah wasn’t Tibetan or green.
I knew who the hyena heads were…my ex…fucking right it was! She had 6 different hyena personalities too…anger, jealousy, backstabbing, manipulation, bad breath and bad makeup…that didn’t make sense or add up, but fuck…yeah…I don’t know, she was alright…in the beginning…you know…I wouldn’t have married her if she had 6 hyena heads! Her heads were more kitten like when I first met her…like when I was a teenager I had a bunch of kittens…never got any of them spayed or neutered and so they fucked each other…fucked each other up, more like…the kittens would keep getting weirder and weirder…some would die early…others had 3 ears or an extra toe…most of those cats went wild. I was going to keep one named “pumpkin” but a psycho pit bull next door chewed him up and then dropped him on our welcome mat for me to find one morning…summed up my life at that time pretty perfectly.
Well, that trip down memory lane was fun wasn’t it? Yeah fuck…fucked up… there could be a reason why I’m a 42 year old dishwasher slash struggling poet.
This negative energy was feeling like an anchor. Time to use my superhero skills and channel it all into my swastika money poem.
Let’s see…time to bring the fire…time to turn the heat up…leave nothing for the vultures…let it all out…fuck you…yeah…FUCK YOU!…that’s more like it, next level shit…here we go…let it go…let it flow…
The money sign
Is the new and improved swastika
There, I wrote it
From the inner slums
And a drug deal gone bad
All the way to fake wars
Created
So the U.S. could take over Baghdad
Everything is for money these days
Can’t do a fucking thing
I wonder
If someone is
Paid by the hour
To make the sun shine
Stepped outside the other day
And the sun
Asked me for a dime
10 cents a minute for it to shine
FUCK
MY
FACE
fuck…FUCK MY FACE!
WHY? Why do I even write when I’m high?
WHY AM I ON THIS FUCKING PLANET!!!!!!!!!
Okay, okay…let’s get down to some fundamentals here. I’ll refer to this then, as the fuck my face list. Straight up, bottom line…#1, I need a girlfriend. I need a girlfriend because it helps to bring balance into my otherwise selfish life. I want an ecosystem. Instead I live my life like the fucking tar sands. My life is like Fort McMurray. I needed a few more birds and beavers. Mango trees and an afternoon strumming acoustic guitar and making string bead necklaces.
Bottom line #2…I needed to cut down on the dope and the drinking and focus on writing. The trouble with being a poet is that if you’re unpublished you tend to get a little insecure. You back yourself up with saying stuff like “F. Scott Fitzgerald was rejected hundreds of times.” But after awhile…it just eats at you until your confidence is like swiss cheese. You began setting traps for the mouse that was eating your confidence away but it’s getting away every time and worse it feels like it’s just fucking with you. You become like a glass house…fragile…really, really sensitive…and you get to being so strung out that all it takes is for a car to honk at you or a dish to break and you’re left huddled in a corner with a cigarette and a bottle of Jagermeister…yeah…right…what I meant to say was…
…that you’re in such a state…shaking and trying to hold back your tears….and you’re in such a tizzy…that you go home and guzzle down a 6 pack in 6 minutes…make a Cheech and Chong sized joint…make a run to the liquor store for more reinforcements…go to the videostore for any kind of comedy they got…come back home and disappear.
But, you’re not a ghost and so you reappear again. And that’s when you begin to pick up the pieces of your shattered life.
On that note I think I’ll give Sarah a call! Best to call a potential lover when you feel like a black hole.
Her phone rings.
She picks up and says “hi.”
I put on a real chipper voice “Sarah, hi…Brent here…Star’s daughter, I mean husband…her father…hahah…I’m all those things to her…not husband though…that’s too weird…yeah…well…how are you?”
Silence.
Jesus, she probably thinks I’m drunk and stoned and just plain out of my fucking mind! What an intro! Couldn’t butcher that any worse.
“Oh hey Brent, sorry I had to put the volume down on the tv.”
“Yeah no problem, what’s on the old boob tube this time of day?”
Silence.
Boob tube! For fuck sakes man let’s keep things on the straight and narrow. She’s gonna think I’m all sexed up, all horned up! Keep it simple dude!
“Just an exercise show I watch.”
“Oh like sit ups and stuff.” Solid…keep the momentum bro…
“Yeah jumping jacks and stair stepping…they do it somewhere where there’s palm trees and a beautiful blue ocean in the background. For some reason it puts me in a good mood…so I watch it every morning. Sometimes I just eat my breakfast while I’m watching. What are you up to?”
“Oh…”
Oh me?...little old me…well Sarah, where should we start…straight off, I’m just recovering from a fucked up sex dream with a green Tibetan deity, followed by smoking some morning weed to get over the trauma of the dream, followed by a depressing trip into my past…and an even more depressing trip into my present…to tell you the truth I feel like dog shit and so I decided to give you a call.
“Oh me? Just waking up…you know meditation, yoga, organic orange juice…every day type stuff.”
“I meditate and do yoga too!”
“No way!”
“What type of meditation do you do.”
“Oh ummyeah…yeah…”
What type of meditation do I do!?...fuck my face…the only meditation I’ve ever done is to sit on long public bus rides and the only yoga moves I’ve done is to bend over and pick up a roach up off the floor.
“Could I give you a call back, someone’s on the other line?”
“Sure no problem I’ll be here for another hour or so and then I go to the school.”
“Okay, yeah I’ll call you back in 2 minutes.”
Click.
LIES…all lies!!! Starting this relationship off real good here. And did you hear how nice she sounded? A real sweetheart and I’m feeding her nothing but grade D bull shit.
Can’t I just be normal? Would it hurt me to be normal? To tell the truth? What bro…tell her all the fucked up shit that’s in my head? Introduce her to the demons and ask her if she wanted to come out and play with a walking Stephen King novel. Oh c’mon…stop being so fucking dramatic…I’m not a crazy person. I could have told her about Charlie and his cracked philosophies or how I ate free pasta because it fell on the floor. Could’ve had some good laughs with those stories. Instead I get into meditation, yoga and organic orange juice, which I don’t even drink because it costs too much…anyway…fuck…now I just gotta get out of this yoga pretzel I’m in and then it’s nothing but the truth so help me Green Tara, from now on.
I grabbed my cheap little lap top off the kitchen table and held it up to the window in such a way that I managed to snag a free wireless connection.
Googled up meditation…found out I liked to do a simple breathing meditation where I focused on my in and out breath. No thoughts, just breathing. I searched up some yoga poses…flying lotus, downward dog and I gave Sarah a call back and told her what I had just learned.
Next thing I know we’ve got a date at a nearby meditation center and a second follow up date with a friend of hers that teaches a type of yoga that I already forget the name of, even though she just told me and I knew I should have written it down but I got lazy and now it’s going to cost me, because I sounded like I knew the type of yoga she was talking about and now she’s going to expect some kind of intelligent discourse on this stuff. She’s probably a deeply spiritual person that believes in reincarnation and stuff that the Dalai Lama says…fuck my face…I’ve got 3 days to get myself in order…3 days to become a meditation and yoga master!
I’ve got a lot of work to do. Starting right now!
On second thought…well…let me fire up this bong and think about the work I have to do. I don’t want to just run around like a human with its head cut off. I need to think on things….a course of action…a game plan. The medicine from the herbal plant allowed me to pause and put everything into its rightful place, where everything was going to be all right. Now if I could only find that lighter I could really get into that everything’s going to be all right place. But, maybe I can’t find the lighter for a reason. Maybe I should grab a 6 pack, return the movies and when I come back the lighter will be right where it’s supposed to be.
I wondered if that wasn’t what meditation was all about? Maybe it’s all in the letting go. Letting the lighter go. Letting the lighter go so that the lighter would be found. I should write that down. Yeah…replace the lighter with something else…like prayer beads or something…and then tell Sarah about this little bit of diamond wisdom that I came up with.
The fine art of letting go. Shit sounded tight!
And hold on…what if I didn’t go to the liquor store? What if I went to the library instead? Got some meditation and yoga books and then when I came back home, the lighter would be there.
Replace the library with the liquor store?
L for library.
L for liquor.
More wisdom…more like crazy wisdom, cause I don’t think I can use L for library or L for liquor for anything…and I don’t know really what that means?
Okay, simplify time…maybe I can let the lighter go. Hey the letter L is in lighter too!
Library
Liquor
Lighter
What the fuck…what does this mean?
Maybe I should call Sarah back and tell her what I’ve found out.
Tell her I’ve been meditating on a few things that begin with the letter L. No I won’t call her, I’ll just put it in my pocket and save these little nuggets of gold.
There we go. Empty page. Clear the mind…where was I?...okay…yeah…I was looking for my lighter.
Where is that fucking thing…I just had it!
The thing about it…after all that talk…all those theory’s and philosophies…is that I spend the next 2 hours tearing my place apart for that fucking lighter.
They should make lighters that when you press a button it beeps and you know where it is, like you can do with phones.
I wonder if anyone’s invented that…a lighter that beeps? I’m writing that down too.
Shits flowing today! Got a date set up…two dates! Got some brilliant conversation topics to talk to Sarah about, and I might just have an invention that will lift me out of poverty!
I like today.
And to top it off it’s my day off!
And the cherry on top…it’s my night with Star!
Fuck yeah!
CHUTNEY
I’m a Gemini through and through. It’s like I have two heads…two brains…all the time thinking…contemplating…opinionating. Analyzing this way or that…like a tennis match, I knock the ball from one head to the next. Sometimes I watch the game…sometimes I take part. Play on one side one day and on the other side the next day.
Sarah told me meditation could help with that. Calm my brain. So did weed and booze I wanted to tell her, but…
A friend of mine just got a radioactive raccoon dog from the Chernobyl area. I hadn’t seen it yet, so I went over to see it.
Now, getting into Darren’s place was a major pain in the ass. You had to call him from your cell phone when you got to his apartment because the buzzer wasn’t working. But, I didn’t have a cell phone so I had to get to a pay phone…a pay phone that worked…and call and then run back over. Sometimes he would forget and I’d have to go back and call…sometimes I didn’t have change so I’d go into a Tim Horton’s and get a donut…sometimes even though he was there I’d only get his answering machine. I’d then leave a message that I was downstairs and hope he would get it.
When I got up to his floor I never knew what door he was using because he was always switching from one of two possibilities.
I’d have to do the code knock on one of the doors I picked…but I couldn’t knock too loud because he didn’t want the landlord to hear, even though the landlord was usually inside smoking weed, so I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. So I’d do the code knock, but the tv was usually cranked so it was tough to hear. Finally if it all went smoothly…rarely…he would look through the peephole and ask “who’s there?”...like we didn’t just go through this whole song and dance… “Brent” I’d say…and he’d open up what sounded like a bunch of chain locks, and deadbolts…the door would open and I would be allowed inside.
He was never alone…there would be a minimum of 3 people…usually at least half a dozen, including a woman with minimal clothing cooking up what Darren called “when east meets west, fusion food” although the only food I ever saw him eat was stryofoam take out portions from a place called “Dangerous Dans” which included heart attack portions of poutine and a burger that for a topping had mac and cheese.
There was one couch that always had some dude passed out on it that would randomly rise up take a toke and say something pretty interesting and then curl back up and fall asleep again.
There was a big tv that either had sports or a tv drama on…there was a little tv that had video games…there was a computer that someone would be surfing the net with and someone was always rolling up a joint on the glass table.
Darren would usually be in Hawaiian shorts with a spray bottle in hand. He had just completed a secret room where he grew pot. The door to the pot room was invisible and you had to push on it in a certain spot. If you wanted to have any half decent conversation with him you went in there.
The main room had a thick haze of weed and cigarette smoke. My asthma would roar to life in that room. Which is why I’d go into the secret room as much as I could.
We became friends in university. I say university loosely…cause I only lasted 2 months. But during those two months we bonded by stealing cans of soda from vending machines, ripping off pizza from the pizza delivery guy and creating a game where we went out near the highway, hid in the ditch and fired rocks at cars with our slingshots for a variety of points.
Positive past remembrances…yeah…which reminded me that I came to see the raccoon dog. I looked around but couldn’t see anything through the haze.
No one I asked seemed to know what I was talking about and they all found it hilarious until the commercial break was over and the show they were immersed in came back on.
So I went into the secret room to ask Darren. The plants were big and healthy. A jungle. I couldn’t see him at first.
“Darren?” I called.
“Over here man.”
I followed his voice to where he was standing over some plants, caressing the leaves.
“This plant right here, I’d given up for dead. But no word of a lie, I started to sing to it the other night and it has bounced right back.”
Darren loved to grow. It was his wife and kids all in one plant…sometimes I did a little trimming for him and got some bud in return.
“Where’s that raccoon dog?”
“In the cage over there,” he said pointing underneath a table.
The face of a raccoon looked at me.
“It really does have a raccoon face, but why the cage?”
“Cause it’s lost some marbles. If I let it out it’ll go for your balls, so I brought it in here to mellow the boy out…let him inhale some of nature’s medicine.”
“And how’s that working out?”
“I don’t know, shall I open the cage and see?” He said with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
Being a dog lover, I thought it was a bit cruel to have it in a cage…here then was a chance to act on my principles.
“Yeah, open her up and let’s have a look at this so called bad boy.”
Darren smiled and walked over, bent down and slowly opened the door…
“Easy Chutney, easy boy.”
“Chutney is its name eh?” I said thinking of samosas, which made me want to pick some up at the Indian spot on the way home.
“Can’t go wrong with a little chutney in your life can you?” He said standing back up, and clearing the way for Chutney to come out.
He was the size of a raccoon…dog body with raccoon face and paws…he came out and sniffed.
“That’s it, take a deep breath boy.”
I walked over and slowly put my hand in front of its nose to sniff.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Darren said with big eyes.
“Why? I thought you said he only went for the balls?”
“Balls are his favourite, but he likes to go for anything.”
“C’mon, give him a chance Darren…let’s bring him out and show the rest of the gang…look he just licked my hand…didn’t eat it…and he’s wagging his tail…maybe the medicine worked…maybe he’s cured?”
I felt vindicated. Like I had just saved a raccoon dog from a life in a cage.
Darren opened the door and we went into the main room.
Nobody noticed until commercial break, then a guy known as Chauncey B did a double take.
Then the landlord looked up from rolling.
Even Sleepy rolled over on the couch and opened one eye.
The dude playing video games…Jarvis I think his name was, pressed pause to turn and look.
The half naked Vietnamese woman stopped the fusion cooking to come out.
And there we stood, and there the little radioactive raccoon dog named Chutney stood in all his glory, saved from the cage.
My good deed for the day was done.
I went around the room high fiving everyone, except Sleepy who was back snoring. Mission accomplished…I was ready to head on out to go get those samosas and go home when a strange feeling overcame me.
I turned around and found myself locked into the eyes of Chutney. His pupils were red. Were they red before? I hadn’t noticed…maybe he was having a reaction to the smoke in the room…why else would his eyes be red? I couldn’t look away though…I was locked in …I could see in the periphery everyone had started to watch the tv again, including Darren.
I tried to look at the tv too, tried like you would normally try but I couldn’t look away. Chutney wouldn’t let me.
What the fuck was going on here?
Chutney’s eyes separated from its head and floated towards me.
Everything else…the people, Darren, the apartment…disappeared.
The eyes blurred and then swirled until it came to rest in this shape…
The image burned into my retina until all I could see was that symbol.
I screamed.
When I came to I was lying on the couch next to Sleepy. I was spooning him like he was my wife.
The room was silent and dark.
I took away my spoon and sat up.
Red eyes appeared before me, and I flinched but it was only a hallucination.
There was weed on the table and I rolled a joint and smoked it.
Darren came out of the secret room and joined me.
“What the fuck happened?” He asked me as he inhaled the joint I passed to him.
“Your dog hypnotized me with eyes that were red and then changed into this weird symbol that I’ve never seen before.”
“We thought you saw a ghost or demon, everyone was pretty freaked out.”
“I don’t know what happened…where’s Chutney?” I asked getting the joint back and taking a few sucks.
“Back in his cage. He seems alright…at least he didn’t go for your nuts man.”
“I wonder what that symbol was that I saw.”
“Can you draw it out?” Darren asked and then turned on a black light.
“I sure can, do you have paper?”
“Yeah, got the back of a High Times magazine and a pencil.”
“That’ll do.” I drew it out and handed it to him.
“Nope never seen anything like that.”
“Barbury Castle, U.K…1999…crop circle called the leaping dolphins…connects us to dolphin energies…promotes universal peace and love.” Sleepy mumbled in his sleep.
“Dolphin energies?” I said with a cynical tone. “Why would your raccoon dog from Russia be trying to connect me with dolphins?’’
“Fucked up shit that Sleepy just said there bro…on your own…wish I could help you out but I gotta do some transplanting…make sure you close the door quietly on your way out.”
“Yeah, no problem.” I finished off the joint with one last contemplative hit…ashed out and breathed out. “Crop circles…dolphins…maybe I do need to go to the library after all.”
CIRCLE
JERK
JERK
I couldn’t fall asleep when I got home and just laid in the dark and thought about dolphins. I hadn’t even seen one in nature. Can’t say I had thought about dolphins at all in my life. The Miami Dolphins football team had a dolphin leaping on their logo. But id never liked the dolphins as a football team. Promote peace and love? I was to promote peace and love? Or Chutney? Or me and Chutney were supposed to tour around the globe?...like the ex-presidents Bush and Clinton…promoting dolphins…promoting love and peace…everybody loved dolphins right? Wait a second I did have an encounter with a dolphin…West Edmonton mall had a dolphin show…where the dolphins did tricks. I was visiting my dad in Edmonton that summer…I was around 14 I think. He took me to the mall and we were walking around and the dolphin show was just about to start and so we stopped and watched…one dolphin caught my eye…he was pure white…albino like…he was doing crazy twirls and flips in the air…now it’s coming back to me…there wasn’t just one white dolphin there was 3…
…and at one point they came together like the symbol…but they stopped in mid air…they froze…smiling…I remember I fainted and woke up in a room…my dad was sitting in a chair looking worried…he told me what happened…I said I was fine…we went home and that was it…now that same symbol has returned back into my life…why? And that same symbol is also a crop circle? A crop circle by who? Aliens? My Gemini mind raced around and around that racetrack until the sun started to rise.
I picked up the phone and called Sarah…
“Hello?”
“Good morning, it’s Brent…are you still interested in going to the library with me?”
PATCHOULI
It was my weekend with Star and I was looking forward to it. I got a whole bunch of dolphin nature books and videos from the library. I was hoping we could go through them and see if the symbol appeared.
It was only recently that I was given Star for weekends. Usually it was only one night a week. But the judge had seen that I’d been trying to get my shit together. Steady job, meditation, yoga, library, girlfriend who was a teacher and so I was given one weekend per month. My ex looked none too happy but that wasn’t my problem. Though repairing our relationship to something along the lines of civil was in my game plan.
Sarah recommended that I take “Tara” as my spiritual mentor and so I also got a library book on that.
I also grabbed some stuff on crop circles and labyrinths and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. They were all connected in some way. Connected like a labyrinth…I just had to readjust my brain in order to see the meaning…the pattern.
“Look at you?” Raymondo said to me earlier during his daily 3 martini lunch. “Next thing you know you’ll be swearing off the booze and dope and going straight…avoiding your old pal like the plague…because I’ll be temptation island.”
“Let’s be honest here…I’m a bit of a fuck up, no?”
“Yes, you make me feel good about myself Brent. That’s why I hang out with you.”
“Thanks. You know you don’t have to be so fucking honest all the time.”
“I’m a hedge fund manager…I lie all day to people…I don’t want to lie to my friends.”
“Cheers then my friend.” I said and sucked back my non alcoholic beer.
But Raymondo was right. I was a fuck up. But I felt the momentum…the mojo for the first time in awhile. Got a weekend with my daughter, got a job, got a girlfriend, got a deity, got a little mystery to solve. On top of that the swastika poem was flowing. I had a nice little run going…I was keeping stats. Every time I toked and drank. Made me aware and conscious of my actions. Next I could work on what moved me to drink and smoke. My thoughts. And further on down the line the emotions behind my thoughts. Meditation man. That shit works. And I’ll tell you another thing that works…having sex while meditating…takes it to another level!
The door buzzed Star was here.
She told me mummy got a new boyfriend and they were moving to Portland.
I was in shock. My first thoughts were along the lines of kidnapping. After that came murder.
“Are you coming to Portland too daddy?” She asked.
I washed my face with my hand. I didn’t know what to say. I stared out the window vacantly.
“How long…do you know when mummy is moving?”
“Soon,” she replied and climbed up onto the futon next to me. “Can we make some popcorn and watch dolphins like you said?”
She had big brown eyes like her mothers. The rest of her face looked like me. Her hair was in pigtails and the dress she was wearing reminded me of rosy cheeks when you blushed.
“Of course…I like your shoes they sparkle.”
She swung them up high and paused so we could admire them. They were like Dorothy’s slippers from the Wizard of Oz. One of my new teachers, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said in his writings…”first thought, best thought.” It felt like a game so I asked Star to tell me the first thing that came into her head…
“Patchouli.”
“Patchouli?”
“That’s mommy’s new boyfriends name.”
“Get the…” fuck out of here I almost said but put the brakes on hard. Patchouli?…let me guess…loves granola, wears sandals year round and drives an old VW van with a surfboard on top…patchouli.
“What were you going to say daddy?”
“Neat name, I’m sure mommy’s really happy,” my voice said dripping with sarcasm. But the great thing about sarcasm is that little kids don’t catch on, so you can get away with it.
“Your turn daddy, what are you thinking?”
I’m thinking about this new guy Patchouli and how he’s stealing my daughter away from me just as I’m getting my shit together. How I was going to wring this little fucker’s neck.
“Daddy?”
“Huh…oh yeah…Patchouli.”
“That’s what I was thinking…you can’t think the same as me daddy.”
“Ummm…dolphins then.”
“Let’s not play anymore and eat poopy corn and watch dolphins!”
“YEAH!…let’s have some fun!”
Yeah just let it go and enjoy the weekend Brent. Talk to your ex wife on Sunday night and see what the deal is. Maybe Star has the information all wrong. Maybe Patchouli is the babysitter or the pool cleaner? Maybe it’s not Portland…maybe it’s…oh for fuck sakes there’s no other possibilities here! She’s been fucking a guy with the same name as a stick of incense and they’re fucking off to America with my daughter!!! America...the economy’s about to go to shit down there…millions homeless…millions hungry…anarchy…guns…police state…Jesus…I don’t want my daughter living in a police state…where ¾ of the population is in jail…a curfew, Christ! I’m not going to sleep tonight with these wound up thoughts…I need to smoke some serious weed when Star goes to bed, get right fucked up…straight to the head…that’s great brent…first sign of stress and you relapse…get some fucking backbone man…strengthen that will…just a toke then…bullshit…Star’s here, you can’t be fucking high, what if she needs you while you’re drooling and comatose. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know…how am I supposed to work this anxiety and stress off though…take a bath and drink some chamomile tea? Sit and meditate? Fuck I need a drink…about 16 drinks…what time is it? The cold/beer and wine store is still open…I got that dial-a-bottle number kicking around here…just enough to take the edge off…I won’t go overboard and black out I promise…who are you promising? Fucking Gemini mind…back and forth…either do it or don’t!...just end the yapping…well give me something practical to do instead of smoking and drinking? What do you mean practical? How about just not smoking and drinking? Is that practical enough…check those crop circle and labyrinth books and see if you can’t figure out that dolphin symbol…write some poetry about the situation…shouldn’t be too hard to be inspired right now…your right…those are good ideas, thanks…no problem…just do me a favour?…what’s that?…nothing, nothing, nothing…Patchouli…can you fucking believe that…Patchouli…
BUT
WHAT?
I started to notice that I took the same routes when I moved around the city. I never varied when I rode my bike to work. I took the same side streets and the same roads every time. Even if I was walking or driving I took the same routes. If it was a new place I hadn’t been to before I would experiment a few times and then the route pattern would sink in by the 4th time or so.
It was interesting to me and so I mapped it out. To my surprise the places I went to and the routes I took matched perfectly within a labyrinth system.
Seen from above it would look like I was moving within a labyrinth.
Did everyone move within his or her own labyrinth? To their jobs and their homes and other places they went to regularly?
Regularly is the key word here. I’m not talking places you go to once in a while or only go to a couple of times. If you measured that it would resemble the chaos theory or some other sort of quantum equation.
But what if you mapped out the regular movements that you took on your day to day journey?
I wondered. I drank 4 cups of coffee wondering. My new drug. I took out my notebook and looked at my stats. In the last 30 days I had smoked weed 10 times and had some booze only 6 times, but within those 6 times I averaged more than 4 beers at a sitting. In the last 7 days however, I’d smoked 2 times and drunk only 3 beers. Not bad. Definite improvement. But I needed to go further. I heard that if you go something like 21 days without something then your habit and addiction will be broken. Your mind and body will have gotten used to new ways of coping and enjoying life. I think I’m ready for 21 days. It’ll be tough cause there’s nothing like beer and weed after dishwashing. Nothing like beer and weed after talking with the ex too!
Speaking of Patchouli…Portland is on hold. Patchouli’s yogi told him that there is still more ground to be dug…literally and figuratively, at the ashram he belonged to. Star or my ex didn’t tell me this…I have my sources…a network of trained assassins at my beck and call.
Anyway, things were good…great…I was seeing the magic in life. Raymondo told me I was acting all born again and I’d be back on the sauce in no time.
I wanted to quit dishwashing. I wanted to become a magician of sorts. But what could I do? I was looking at things all wrong. I was looking at jobs = $...when I should see jobs as something else…but what?
I needed more clarity. I took out the picture of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche that I had been carrying around and asked him what I should do?
“But what!” he said.
“But what?” I said.
“But what!” he said.
“But what?” I said and then folded the paper back up, cause that conversation was going nowhere but deeper into a riddle that I wasn’t going to solve anytime soon.
I went to my fridge where I had a naked pin up of Tara. Underneath her picture was a list of what Tara could protect me from…fear of fire, lions, elephants, snakes, jail, floods, demons and robbers…an eccentric list, but I’d take it.
I guess I was looking more for what kind of career I should put my energy into but… “But what?” Chogyam would have said.
Maybe an astrologist…wait a second…Glen from work said he dabbled in astrology. We were hanging out in the back alley smoking a joint during a break one time and got to talking about how it was so hard to see the night sky in the city…all the lights and buildings that cut off the view…and that’s when he got to talking about his tour in ‘Nam…Vietnam…every night while on patrol he looked at the stars…got to know the planets intimately… “They spoke to him,” he said…kept him alive…told him when danger was approaching. Glen was the night baker and everyone thought he was a freak…he would mumble out run on sentences…hard to know what he was saying sometimes so you tried to read his lips but his beard was so wild it covered his mouth, and there was always something in his beard that caught your eye…bits of food of course, but sometimes you swear you could see little crystals…or little bugs…you’d get caught up in looking at the shit in his beard and you’d totally miss what he had to say. And you couldn’t look at his nose, cause it flared a lot, you couldn’t look in his eyes, because all you saw was a skull and crossbones…his hair was a greasy mess. But for all of that he made one mean muffin…people would come from all over the place for those muffins. Toss him on night shift, and keep him out of the way of everyone…just make muffins.
I went that night to find him at the restaurant, but he wasn’t there. Hadn’t been there in days. They couldn’t fire him though cause there was an uproar when someone else tried to bake the muffins. Now they covered for him, said he was somewhere in Transylvania and hope he returned…they gave me his last known address and I went to check it out.
It was pitch black on the street cause there were no streetlights…it was on the other side of the tracks and we all know what goes on, on the other side of the tracks, don’t we? Actually I don’t, so I wasn’t scared…just mildly irritated that I couldn’t see the house numbers, very well. Tv screens flared blue through pretty much every window…out of every window in fact. People got tvs and computers in use in every room now it seemed. I found the house and stood…the only house that was completely dark…a two level home. Gate squeaked with rust…no garden, muddy lawn. I walked up the front stairs. Thought I saw movement from the window next to the door…and then I did see movement as the door whipped open and I found myself looking down at a semi-automatic rifle pointed at my face.
“May I ask ever so kindly what the fuck you’re doing…here.” Glen’s voice said from the dark.
“Hey man…uh it’s me, Brent from work…the dishwasher.”
“I know who you are…and that wasn’t the question…for the last time…I’m asking what the fuck you are doing here?”
“I came to see if you could give me a…ah…um…astrology reading…help me with some career choices perhaps?” I said clenching my ass cheeks so I wouldn’t shit my pants in fear.
“Oh, yeah sure…c’mon in.”
What the fuck?...quick change to sweetheart…he grabbed my hand and led me through the dark, down a flight of stairs and through a door.
My eyes quickly adjusted to the black lit room and the heavy smell of ganja.
On one of the white walls was the projected image of a scene from Apocalypse Now on pause.
“Seen it?” Glen asked lighting up a big, meaty looking joint.
“Yeah, my mom took me to see it in the theatre when I was 5, hid my eyes behind my hand most of the movie, but it’s one of my favourites.”
“That’s the real shit, right there.” He passed the joint to me and I hit it hard, too hard and I started to choke.
“Easy man, easy…got some cola to wash that smoke down.” There was a 2L bottle and he poured out some and passed it to me. I drained it and felt better.
“How did you find me anyhow…thought that was classified?” He said as he turned the movie off and turned the stereo with some Jimi Hendrix on. “That’s the real shit right there,” he said taking back the hooter and settling into a big lazy boy recliner that looked like it was from the 70s.
“Not too classified info, no, they found it on your application you gave them.”
I looked around. Red and blue Christmas lights ran around the ceiling.
Various guns and knives were mounted on one wall.
“Used all those in the shit and then had them smuggled back. Anyone lays siege on this bunker and they’re going to be eating shit for brains.”
“You’ve had some problems with your neighbours then?”
“Who me? No, I was just saying if…hypothetical you know…I don’t want it to happen, I’m a man of peace now…saw too much death and horror. Just saying if…pull up a chair man and let’s take a look at what we got.”
I dragged a stool over from a bar area that had a variety of store bought liquor.
Glen picked up a remote that was on the table and pressed a button…the Christmas lights went out and the ceiling was filled with stars.
A lighter was flicked and a large candle in the shape of Jesus was lit.
He looked into my eyes and I looked into his.
“Archery.” He said.
“Archery?” I replied.
“I see you with a bow and arrow.”
“Archery, really?”
Really Glen, what the fuck…how many joints have you smoked…how much war have you seen…smoked and seen too much I think, to come up with archery…but, hold on a second here… “I thought you were an astrologist…but you sound like a psychic?”
“I dabble with all the mediums, I use the one that best fits the person and the situation.”
“But I don’t…I mean archery is going to play a significant role in my life…going to bring some meaning and pay the rent?”
“Archery.” He said with confidence.
Fuck this guy’s just as bad as Chogyam and his “but what” routine. “Could we just take a look at my Gemini sign, my moon in Leo and my…”
“I see Sagittarius.”
“But I’m Gemini, I don’t…”
“Hence the bow and arrow.”
“I’m not, this isn’t…”
“Close your eyes and visualize the bow in your hands…the arrow being drawn back…what are you aiming at? That’s the next question…a question for another time…that’ll be twenty bucks…I also except weed, hash and DMT as payment.”
“Twenty bucks…fuck man…you didn’t…” and then I remembered the guns and the knives and the skulls in his eyes… “I mean thanks…good information I don’t have a 20 on me, but I’ve got a hunk of hash in my wallet here.”
“That’ll do…I accept your hunk of hash as payment…can I book you in my day timer for an appointment next week, where we’ll go deeper into your past lives and figure out your connection to archery and how to move forward from there?”
“You know what Glen, I’m swamped…I’ve picked up extra shifts…I get my daughter more…new girlfriend…can I get back to you on that?”
“Yeah, okay, just give me a few days heads up…here’s my business card.”
He handed me a crisp card that read “Glen…for all you extra needs”
“Extra needs?”
“Guns, drugs, past life, tarot, palm, all kinds of stuff.”
“Extra stuff.”
“Yeah, extra needs,” he said as he was breaking out another fat joint but I was still high and needed some fresh air.
“Extra needs sure…speaking of extra needs…people are really fiending for your muffins man, are you coming back to work soon?”
“Muffins man…I am the muffin man…the muffin man…the muffin man…”
“Okay, I gotta go, but I need some assistance in getting out…pretty dark.”
“You need backup!” he yelled and leaped to his feet, grabbing a semi off the wall.
“Yes, please.”
“Cocked, rocked and loaded…better tuck in your pecker, cause where we’re going they’ll use it for a hot dog.”
Hot dog? Penis hot dogs?
“Where are we going Glen?...please…where are we going where they’ll use my penis for a hot dog?”
“Ssssh…follow the red dot…let’s move.”
We moved out of the room, up the stairs and I was quickly shoved back outside…with the door slammed behind me.
I didn’t fuck around and began to sprint as far and as fast as I could out of there.
Jesus that dude was trippy.
I won’t be recommending his extra services to friends and family that’s for sure.
Archery? Can you fucking believe that?
Unbelievable.
I was so jacked up from the weed and the experience I walked all the way home, took me two hours. I was exhausted and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
And when I woke up the next morning, the previous night felt like a dream and that’s the way I wanted it to be.
STEPHEN
KING
I always forget I have potato chips in the cupboard. I brush my teeth and then I see them. Then I have a predicament…do I eat the chips?…and if I do, do I brush my teeth again…or go to bed without brushing…or do I not eat the chips and go to bed feeling snackish. Now, if my daughter had been here we’d be busy finishing off the bag, but she isn’t…they went to Hawaii on some kind of business trip. Patchouli’s probably some kind of cocaine cowboy underneath his ashram personality mask and went to Hawaii to solidify his connections. Whatever, who cares about Patchouli…truth is my ex has mellowed and we’re actually talking again…nothing crazy…straight stuff… “like we’re off to Hawaii…Stars coming with us…we’ll be gone for 2 weeks…I’ll give her to you for an extra couple of days this month.” Straight goods, but it was better than before, before it was “fuck you asshole, talk to my lawyer.”
I’d actually been getting a postcard from Star every other day, pictures of surfers and ocean. Gave me something to look forward to when I opened up my mailbox.
I invited Sarah over for some hot dogs and pop. We talked about mushrooms and basketball. She used to be a heavy hallucinogenic user…she said “that watching Woodstock while on mushrooms was a life changing event.”
“You could actually see the Holy Spirit entering into Jimi, Janis and the others…their instruments, their voices were channeling something from another realm…something was communicating through them at Woodstock.”
Plausible…I mean, once you realize fully that we are on a living planet that’s moving through a living outer space that’s filled with other planets and galaxies…dark energy and all kinds of other possibilities you begin to think differently. You tend to take things like a dishwashing job, not too seriously.
“Why don’t you teach?” Sarah asked me as we sat at my fold out table sipping on some cream soda pop.
“Glen said my true calling was with archery, and I’m thinking of honouring that.”
“Archery!?” Sarah said and laughed hard, causing soda to come out her nose.
“My feelings exactly…hey you want to watch some dolphin nature videos? I’m trying to see if I can find anything on this leaping dolphins crop circles symbol that Chutney the raccoon dog transmitted to me?” I said and pressed the play button on the vcr.
“You’re a bit of a weirdo, did you know that?” She said coming over and sitting on my lap.
“Turns you on doesn’t it?” I said putting my hand up her shirt and feeling her braless breast.
“Mister Brent, you are naughty.”
We made love on the couch. I peeked over her shoulder as she straddled me. 3 dolphins had leaped out of the water and crossed each other in the air like the symbol.
“OH MY GOD, SARAH!!!” I yelled at the tv, but Sarah thought I was really turned on and began to hump harder which did in fact turn me on.
We lay on the couch and watched the leaping dolphin scene over and over. I paused it exactly at the spot they all crossed.
“What do you think?” I asked her.
“What does your intuition tell you?”
“That Darren is going to call and tell me something important, pertaining to Chutney.”
10 minutes later, the phone rang and I picked it up…
“Darren.” I whispered to her as I cupped the phone.
Sarah looked at me with big eyes.
“How does it feel to be dating a Stephen king character?”
“Depends on how it ends?”
FUCKY,
FUCKY
“Chutney’s gone.” Darren said right away.
“What do you mean?”
“I went to take him out of the cage last night and he wasn’t there.”
Christ the guys half baked and can’t remember where he left his dog.
“Maybe you left it at one of your girlfriends’ places?”
“No.”
“Maybe one of your friends took him for a walk?”
“No.”
“A really long walk?”
“He was there, now he’s gone.”
“Maybe he got out of the cage somehow and then your door was open and he accidentally got out.”
“You know how tight I am about security around here man? Chutney vanished…poof…I bet he’s coming for you.”
“Get the fuck out of here.”
As Cujo flashed through my mind. That book ended badly for a little kid and a cop but the mom and dad survived. I’m a dad.
“You’re the only one he did that weird thing with.”
“It wasn’t that weird.”
“Yeah, a dog hypnotizes and ESPs you an esoteric symbol and you’re telling me that happens all the time?”
“Alright, it’s true. I’m just wondering why he would want to contact me again and how he would find me. You live a fair distance away from me?”
“I’m just saying…heads up is all…look I gotta go, I’m depressed.”
“Yeah, okay, sorry about Chutney he was pretty special.”
“Thanks.”
I hung up calmly, but inside I was freaking out! I needed to get out of town A fucking SAP. The last thing I wanted to deal with was a crazy raccoon dog from Chernobyl after me. Didn’t matter if it was friend or foe. Fuck, couldn’t Glen have warned me about this? Wait…maybe he did…archery…I needed to go buy a bow and arrow before I hit the road.
I rapidly packed…I’d call Sarah and Star from the open road. I’d travel light. Sleeping bag and tent…sleep in the car or tent in camping spots…weather was getting warmer, but still nippy at night. Wear what I got on. Jeans, runners, hoody…grab my wool jacket…a toque…c’mon Brent you’re over thinking this…let’s go!
I opened the door and screamed…it was Mr. Fucky the landlord. He was standing there and getting ready to knock.
“Fucky, fucky,” he said grinning and holding a big pipe wrench.
“Sorry, you scared the daylights out of me! I thought you were someone, something else.”
He stood smiling, and then I understood.
“Yeah, okay, go ahead…I’m going away…on vacation for a few days…fix whatever you gotta fix…use the shitter, take a shower, sleep on my bed, whatever…I gotta go.”
I sprinted down the hallway, down the stairs and out the back door. I opened the car door…threw everything into the passenger seat, climbed in and started the car.
Dead. It wouldn’t turn over. Oh please, fuck no…please, please, please…I turned the key…nothing…battery must be dead.
I glanced in the rear view mirror. My mouth went dry and my brain reeled out its fishing line into the deep end of the lake.
Jesus Henry Christ please come back to earth and save me. God please start the rapture.
Oh fuck…fuck…fuck me…I was going to be trapped in this car. I would dehydrate. I would starve. Who would know where to look, where to find me??? Wait a second. Calm down man. I’m in a busy apartment parking lot. My landlord just saw me heading towards it. I would be saved. I breathed out and closed my eyes. I opened them and screamed again…Chutney was sitting in the passenger seat looking at me. Its eyes went red and I became hypnotized again.
The symbol appeared...
I heard a gruff voice telling me to start the car and drive.
It turned over on the first turn.
Chutney gave directions and I followed in a trance.
We drove and parked and entered into Marine World. We walked right through without paying…like they didn’t even see us. A crowd had gathered around the main pool. Dolphins were doing tricks on command. Whistle blows and boards slapped against the water. We sat down in the front row like the seats had been reserved for us. We watched. I watched with no thought. A dolphin suddenly leaped out of the pool and instead of landing back into the safety of the water, it landed head first on the concrete. It smacked down right in front of us. Blood began to trickle. Things slowed. Time…movements. Slow screams echoed around me. Then the dolphin opened one eye and stared at me. The symbol came out of its eye and hovered in front of me and then entered into me. The dolphin’s eye closed and it was dead.
Wow…yeah…okay…
After that heart warming scene we drove back home. Chutney drove…really?…right…yeah…and if I remember correctly, he also tucked me into bed. I fell into a deep, peaceful sleep and woke up 2 days later.
I knew it was 2 days later because I had a bunch of missed calls on my answering machine from work wondering where I was. The last message told me not to bother coming in…I was fired.
I couldn’t fully comprehend the situation as my head was still in dream land.
I took a shower….happy not to see Mr.Fucky sitting on my toilet.
Man, you know what? I decided to just let things all go. Go with the flow. Whatever life was giving I would take. I didn’t want to fight change anymore. I didn’t want to be scared.
Tired of all that bullshit…and you know what? Of course, I was tested right away.
Sarah asked me to move in with her…ahhh, fuck…why not? We’d been going out for 6 months and things were going well on that front. She got along great with Star. I had been completely sober for a month now. Felt my will getting stronger. Felt more confident.
I even started to read some of my poems to a live audience.
Things were clicking. My new mantra of letting things go was working. I wasn’t holding on to anything…thoughts, emotions or cravings. I had a joke that I didn’t get my degree in Fine Art, that I got my degree in the fine art of letting go. People would smile, but I got tired of the joke pretty quick. I never knew how people could tell their stories over and over again. How comedians could tell the same jokes night after night. That was a skill that I just didn’t have.
My favourite topic became addiction…I was straight as an arrow all the way up to 32 years of age and then for 10 years I partied like a rock star. Except I wasn’t a rock star… just a starving poet. Actually…you know, I’ve always eaten pretty good…a lot of organic in my diet…eggs, fish, grain fed chicken. I was doing all right…you know, all things considered. But somewhere along the line I got lost in a maze and couldn’t find my way out. Got lost and I knew that somewhere around one of the corners was a Minotaur…a monster ready to do me in. Sometimes I got so scared…became paralyzed and couldn’t move…couldn’t take another step forward.
Even with a wife and baby I couldn’t find my way out.
The past…the past, haunts…
Black clouds, violence and depression…periods of euphoria that took me so high my wings burned off and I crashed into the ground, where I lay in my coffin for days. The only thing that would get me out of the coffin was to go and get more beer or weed. The first couple I would be at ease knowing there were four more. The first joint was nice knowing that there were a few more. I would become chatty, make an effort…participate. Try and mend some socks, rebuild some bridges.
But by the 6th beer and the 3rd joint I would become edgy…knowing the store was closed and I had no more. I would stop listening and begin to get paranoid…took well meaning comments poorly and would see them as threatening or harmful. Disagreements and fights…loud yelling, smashing, grabbing, throwing. Screams… “Daddy, daddy…” “…get out…I don’t ever…”
…forever, forever…
My life became a fucking disaster. No wife, no kid, no job, no home. Slept on friends’ couches in their basement…stealing booze out of their liquor cabinet when they were at work.
I’m lucky I survived…turned that maze of death into a labyrinth of life.
Opened to the magic that was life.
You know how after you say something positive about how well your life is going you immediately need to acknowledge it so you won’t jinx the good run that you were on? Acknowledge it by saying “knock on wood” or something like that. You know what I’m talking about right? Cause after I was all poetic about the magic of life and turning mazes into labyrinths…guess what happened to me…guess what I went on?
DRINKING
BINGE!!!!!
It started off with a toast to not drinking…a toast with a shot of vodka. It made no sense…no sense to make a toast to not drinking and the toast includes a straight shot of Russian vodka…no fucking sense at all...but for some reason it seemed as innocent as riding a lamb into the summer sunset with the belief that the world will turn for you another day.
An innocent toast with my friend Raymondo and believe it or not my ex landlord Mr. Fucky. I had no idea how Mr. Fucky showed up at Sarah’s, but somehow the room tilted quickly. Must’ve been my new built up low tolerance cause next thing you know we’re throwing stuffed animals outside Sarah’s second story living room window and then playing rock, paper, scissors to see who would be the one that would have to run outside naked and retrieve them. I must’ve lost every fucking round. Pulled it off every time or so I thought.
Next thing I remember is playing Super Mario Cart with some 14 year old albino dude in a strange home.
Oh yeah, and then Raymondo and I dropped acid and talked to squirrels in the park as the sun rose and commuters gave us wide berths on their march to work.
Then I remember slitting each other’s hands open with a hunting knife and declaring ourselves blood brothers.
And that’s that. After that, I can’t remember anything more and that’s what puts the fear into me.
Who was steering the ship during the times I couldn’t remember…blacked out…who had control of the steering wheel? Because it most certainly wasn’t me.
I pondered these thoughts curled up in the fetal position in bed working off the hangover from the binge before the acid trip.
The phone had been ringing frequently as I tried to piece together…as I tried to remember my actions.
I would need eye witness accounts to try and force my memory or to fill in the blanks.
I also went over anything I might have missed, dropped the ball on. Was I supposed to do anything with Sarah…wait Sarah!!!!...Am I at Sarah’s?...in bed…
I peeked out from under the covers…what the fuck? I was sleeping in the 14 year old albino’s bed.
He was still playing video games but had his headphones on.
I was naked too. Jesus fuck! Where were my clothes? Is this really happening? I hid back under the covers, my mind reeling. What if this kid’s parents came in right now…it’ll look like I had sex with their albino son…did I? Did I have sex with their son? I’ve done it this time, Brent you have fucked yourself in the ass good and proper this time. It’s a one way ticket to prison my dear boy. And I bet they just love guys that are in there for fucking poor innocent albino teenagers. They’ll kill me. Rape me and then kill me. My life is over. Unbelievable. Just the other day there I was whistling and skipping around…confident, riding that magic carpet of sobriety…no doubt I did something to sabotage my relationship with Sarah and Star. No doubt…FUCK!!!!! I should just start a new life somewhere else…relocate get a new name and just start over. Reset like a video game…fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…FUCK ME!!! Okay deep breaths…let’s just focus on the present situation…get clothes and get out of here…wherever here is.
Okay, here it goes…I opened the cover a crack and peeked out. Took a scan of the room…my clothes were in a folded pile on the floor next to me…freshly washed? Why would they be washed? Kid was on a couch, back to me…headphones on…door was behind me…okay this looks promising…clothes and door are accessible…should I grab the clothes and put them on under the covers or should I grab the clothes and sneak out the door naked but covering up with the loose clothes? Better get dressed first, I don’t know what’s beyond that door.
A few minutes later I was fully dressed and slowly climbing out of bed.
“Cocksucker mutherfucker…SUCK MY DICK!” The kid yelled at the tv.
I froze halfway out of the bed. Froze like I was in a friendly game of twister.
The kid threw off the headphones and turned around.
“Oh hi you’re up?” he smiled.
“It’s actually evening…but I do feel like some cereal…want some?”
“Ah no thanks…maybe some orange juice if you have it,” my stomach said.
“I got some of that I think…mom just did a big shop.”
I stood up and followed him out the door…
RAYMONDO
Consequences…
I spent the next two weeks, sitting and sleeping on Raymondo’s couch. I would’ve picked Darren’s but Sleepy was still on the couch. Inspired by the albino kid, I spent my last remaining money on a video game system. Hey I could’ve spent it on booze! I smoked weed, ate crappy pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner and played video games. Even Raymondo was disgusted with me.
Raymondo was the kind of guy that could party for 3 days straight and not show it. The kind of guy, people would think had been up working late on some kind of important wall street shit, before they would think he was pissed out of his mind. Somehow he could pull it off.
In university where we met, people would get excited when he entered into the room, and would yell out “Raymondooooo”…all excited because he would usually have a bag of something…grass, cocaine, mushrooms, pills.
Me on the other hand…well it didn’t take much for people to think I looked like shit on a stick. They would automatically think I was drunk instead of working hard. Somehow I never looked on the up and up. Even if I was well presented. My shadow side was well represented.
I was trying to change all that until the binge…
Sarah kicked me out…she lived in one of those co-op apartment places, which meant all the neighbours were spying on each other, which meant my little naked stuffed animal sprint outs were well documented and explained in a well worded letter to her.
Lovely… “Some time apart for you to get things together…and then we’ll see.” Her words…lovely.
Everything I’d worked for…Sarah, meditation, healing, sobriety all gone to shit…my momentum had ground to a halt…now I was in the thick of rush hour traffic going nowhere fast.
Turned out the albino kids was Raymondo’s step brother. Raymondo’s mother remarried into a lifestyle of luxury and the albino kid came with it.
Why I was there, naked and in the kid’s bed had yet to be properly sorted out.
Raymondo had a bit of memory loss as well. Seems as if he ended up, waking up in a pizza slice place, not knowing how he got there…with a big bucket of chicken being shared with a prostitute and her gold chained pimp.
“We got into a very engaging discussion about car rims and the novels of iceberg slim…we left off with handshakes and hugs. Not sure if I fucked the whore or not though. Took a long shower when I got home and wondered vaguely where you had gotten to.”
I didn’t know what to do. Luckily my ex didn’t find out about the binge and I continued to see Star regularly. Star was a little bummed that Sarah and I had broken up but got over it.
She would come over to Raymondo’s and we’d play video games and take long walks around the city.
It was around that time that I started to see the leaping dolphin symbol all over the place. Stenciled in public washrooms, phone booths, dumpsters, abandoned buildings…all over the place.
Star and I made it a game to try and find them…she said the symbol looked like “Bananas on a plate.” She’d started wearing a Wonder Woman costume with fake braces that we found in a joke shop…strange cause I had to wear braces for like 8 years and would’ve loved to have never gone through something like that and now here’s my daughter eagerly wanting to have braces…I also found a cheap Superman get up at a thrift store and we’d walk around town looking for those symbols…we had fun…got right into it…even found a bunch of cheap Superman and Wonder Woman comics and we’d pour over those…bed time stories, reenactments…I was wearing that Superman outfit so much it felt weird wearing regular clothes.
I basically couch surfed for a good couple of months. Mostly at Raymondo’s and Darren’s, but I got really stuck one time and ended up at Glen’s. It actually wasn’t too bad…he turned out to be a gracious host and cooked up a lovely chicken dinner for us.
He reminded me of my destiny with archery and I said I was keeping it in my “backpocket…” with my Chogyam photo and my naked picture of Tara.
Sad to say but I jerked off to that naked picture of Tara a couple of times…desperate sad times.
Times were tough…there was no doubt about that.
Adding to it was that Raymondo eventually kicked me out. Bad to worse. No money, no job. I panhandled on the street with a sign that said, poet for hire, will help you rhyme cat with hat. Got a few smiles and a few pennies. Ate at free kitchens and slept in shelters. Things were fucked up. The good part was I had no cash for booze, so I hadn’t been drinking and a new streak began. I told the ex I had gone on a hunting trip with Glen from work and I would be back in a couple of weeks. Choked back some tears when Star got on the line.
I’ll be honest the church signs began to talk to me…Redemption and healing…be reborn, be saved, come as you are.
The military signs also called to me to…adventure…meaning…be all you can be…get a college degree…made me stop and think about it at any rate.
I went to the library every day and read a lot. Read lots of different books…eastern philosophy, Russian literature, and the beat generation.
One day I was talking to this homeless guy that did some time in Iraq for the Canadian military, but came back fucked up and jaded at the system and so just dropped out.
We were in the basement of some non-denominational church drinking black coffee and eating stale donuts. He was going through AA and NA, kicking some habits he picked up while shooting people. He told me of a little secret society in the forest on the outskirts of the city, “an hours walk from here, unless you stop and watch the girls play lacrosse on the way.”
Anyway, he said a bunch of them lived in tents in the woods…hunted squirrel and generally lived at peace. It was for people who weren’t addicted or too fucked in the head and so he drew up a little map and invited me… “If I’m not there tell ‘em Gabriel sent you.
I back pocketed the map and went for a walk.
I had a bunch of stuff in storage.
I grabbed my tent and sleeping bag and a few other things, like cooking utensils and a tarp and a backpack.
Packed it up and then hiked it. My car had been seized and sat in the pound, accumulating debt. Good I thought…simplify. I’ll call this my Zen period…the less material goods, the clearer my mind.
I breathed in the fresh air. Practiced some walking meditation and even sat for a bit to watch some women’s lacrosse. Wasn’t too bad actually. Kept me entertained for a bit. I pulled out Gabriel’s map to make sure which streets I was supposed to take next. Wanted to get there before night.
I
LOVE
CULTS
Forest bathing is what they called it. Breathe in and out, in and out. After a few minutes in the woods, I felt recharged and relaxed. I heard the birds tweeting and the leaves rustling in the wind. I pulled out my map again and turned it over. Gabriel had drawn a detailed map of the woods…a series of trails, winding around trees, trunks and streams. The forest was 52 acres and was being encroached on all sides by housing subdivisions, he had told me. There were protests and letter writing but the local politicians were all pro business, and so things like trees weren’t conducive to the dollar sign.
I relaxed into the hike and soon came to a clearing described on the map. I stopped in the middle and looked around.
It was quiet, almost too quiet. A variety of tall grasses looked to be flattened in parts. I continued to the beginning of the forest on the other side and after climbing a series of large rock outcroppings I found the first sign.
A stenciled imprint of the leaping dolphin symbol had been painted onto a large rock in a rainbow of colours.
I touched the symbol and was so absorbed that when the howl began I leaped right out of my skin. Quickly I leaped back in and looked up.
Chutney was on the rock edge above me, looking down. He turned, disappeared, but shortly reappeared on the trail in front of me.
“Follow me,” he transmitted, and I did.
To be all honest I was in a state of shock, my mind was blown open and ready to take in anything and everything that came my way. What else did I have going for me other then my daughter…dishwashing? Failed relationships? Unknown poet? Failed writer? Library lurker? Let’s get to the bare bones here…I was going nowhere…and now…well, now I’m talking about extra sensory perceiving radioactive raccoon dogs…I’m talking about leaping dolphin crop circles…I’m talking about secret societies in the woods…and let’s not forget about the archery?! Let Raymondo have his 3 martini lunches…I’ll follow Chutney into the heart of darkness.
I kind of wish Chutney was a bit more communicative though, a bit more willing to shoot the shit you know…like where ya from? How was your upbringing? Any siblings? You know, general stuff…and then once you were on friendlier terms, breaking out the big guns…like why me? Why are you communicating to me this esoteric symbol? What does it all mean? What the fuck is going on? Stuff like that. But nope, all I get is Mr. Mysterious…follow me.
I feel like I’m heading towards a surprise birthday party or something…Sarah will be there and want to get back together…someone will have a job for me…a big time publisher will want to publish my poems in one collected volume.
We trudged and we tramped for another 10 minutes or so, through the rock and through some trees until we came to what looked like a moat…deep and wide. Chutney barked and a drawbridge came down…single file we walked across the wooden roped bridge to the other side.
Weird, irregular shaped trees, branches at strange angles…strange colours like purple and red instead of green.
We walked around the outside on a carved out path, then turned and walked back the way we came…instantly I thought of walking a labyrinth and let my mind go.
At the center we found the secret society. Tents were scattered…big tarps for rain protection…a few small crudely built log cabins with chimneys.
We walked further into the center and came to what looked like a stage. People gathered on cut out logs.
8 or so people…5 men, 3 women and 2 kids…watched a man stumble and fall…then get back up again and recite a slurred poem that sounded like Charles Bukowski.
The poem ended, the audience clapped and then began to get up and head back to their encampments.
I said hi to a silver haired lady who looked like a fox.
Soon the entire group circled me. I felt like a politician on the campaign trail shaking hands and taking names.
“Vote for Brent…not the real Brent, but close enough!” my campaign motto could read.
The kids broke through and petted Chutney, who obliged by sitting calmly and squinting his eyes in pleasure.
Friendly bunch. Welcomed me and invited me to their respective places. Guess Gabriel had given them the heads up that I might be coming so they weren’t surprised to see me.
Gabriel arrived as the others dispersed and invited me to his tent a short walk away.
It was actually 3 tents all joined together.
“No heat, but I have hot tea, wool sweaters, and minus 30 degree sleeping bags.”
“Sounds good.”
Chutney stayed outside. Content to lie by the front entrance.
Gabriel lit a couple of kerosene lamps, which illuminated the main tent.
Little nests, hand crafted by Gabriel hung from the ceiling.
“Bit of a hobby, bit of a money maker…the nests are actually designed to go around light bulbs…sell them at the farmers market in the city…give the city folk a taste of nature…unnatural natural…please have a seat…you can stay in the spare tent tonight…set up yours tomorrow.”
I sat down on a lawn chair and watched Gabriel pour some tea for us. He looked to be in his 50s, pock marked cheeks, small introspective eyes. Hair was in a mullet shape. He was bundled up with a toque, snow pants, and lumber jacket.
He passed me the tea, a blanket and a sweater.
“So you found us eh…map was helpful?” He asked sitting down with a grunt into his own lawn chair.
“It was…Chutney helped with the last part.”
“How so?”
“He helped find this place…got us over the bridge…around the labyrinth.”
“He’s not yours?”
“No, no…he comes from Russia…actually a friend of mine owned him but he escaped.”
“Can’t say I ever saw him before you arrived here.”
“Hmm…hey do you know anything about that symbol I saw on the rock a short trek from here? It’s a crop circle of sorts…something to do with dolphins.”
“I do actually. I made those.”
“Really!? My daughter and I have been seeing them all over the city and wondered who…not to mention on a personal level…that symbol has been coming up for me a lot this last little bit.”
“Not surprising. It’s been coming up for a few of us lately. That’s why we’re here. To help them help us.”
“Sorry? Help them…who’s them?”
“The dolphins.”
“Dolphins? Which dolphins? The ones out in sea or…”
“Those dolphins…all dolphins, including the ones in captivity…but the ones that have the most power are the ones from outer space.”
“Woa, woa…not sure what kool aid you’ve been drinking around here, but dolphins from outer space have been communicating with you?”
“Yes and they have been sending us blueprints…blueprints to create a new reality with.”
“Acid, mushrooms…lsd 25…”
“We’re all sober here.”
“But…”
“But what?”
“But what…did you say but what? Chogyam was talking to me about that…”
“Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche?...but he’s dead?”
“I know but…”
“You’re talking to a dead guy and you’re questioning me?”
“Yeah you got me there…okay…but what you’re telling me is that outer space dolphins are sending you blueprints in order to help us bring in a new reality.”
“You understand that the reality we are currently in is filled with suffering.”
“Yeah of course…but”
“But what?”
“But you can’t expect me to believe what you’re saying.”
“You don’t have to believe anything, you can see it for yourself…tonight is the full moon where we walk the labyrinth in its entirety…will you join us?”
“Of course.”
CREATING
BLUEPRINTS
FOR A
NEW REALITY
We all met at the beginning of the labyrinth by the bridge and walked one after the other in silence. Fins that looked like dolphins came out of the moat water and swam with us…I counted three fins.
My Gemini minds were desperate for conversation…they leaped at anything…the moon, the dolphins, the walk…what, where…who…I told them to zip it! But I could here them chattering to themselves in the background. They sounded like someone living in an apartment next to you, where you can hear the voices, you just can’t make out what they’re saying…which enables you to fall asleep or read or…but here I am, blabbering just like the twins…3 minds…the Gemini twins and me.
I felt like I had this strange karma, that I was supposed to try and attain… that I was supposed to carve out my path without getting help from friends or family, or society…fucking hard…sometimes I wish someone would be like “follow me…I see your talents and I’ve got just the thing to plug you into…” you know…this karma…like trying to get money…Christ it’s like pulling teeth in this lifetime…or gaining some measure of success with my poetry…or being in a loving, committed relationship without fucking it up…without sabotaging it. Why is life so hard for me? I don’t know maybe life’s just hard for everybody…the people who look as if things are going smoothly…who knows what’s really going on with them…who knows what challenges and obstacles they’ve gone through…I don’t know…nothings as black or white as I sometimes make it out to be…like I’m entitled to something…money is just supposed to be given…etc.
The bottom line is the present…and what a present I find myself in…all the bullshit I’ve gone through…has brought me to this point in time…I can say that I don’t have money or I don’t have a career…but it’s brought me the realization that I don’t need money or a career to make me feel alive. I don’t need to work at a job that I don’t like or strive for many years to be in a career that I don’t like…because that’s not what life is about…that’s not the magic that life’s about…magic has no dollar sign…well, it does…good magicians can make a pretty penny, but I’m not talking about making rabbits disappear or cutting yourself in half…I’m talking about when you are really craving some yogurt, but have no money…but decide to go into the grocery store anyway just to look…and when you get there a clerk is writing the word “free” on the yogurt that you wanted to buy…then you go home and share it with your daughter and you smile and laugh and say what a coincidence…what a funny, magical thing just happened…and then you think “well, if I can do that with yogurt, what else can I use that magic for?” and so it begins. The seeds have been planted, the sun and the rains help it to grow strong…take root…and no amount of setbacks could make you forget that magic…and so the bean stock grows strong and high.
I mean, what is a setback? It’s only another opportunity to let go of your fears…to open your heart and your 3rd eye to the universal eye in the sky. Society…civilization…the one built by humans is an illusion…it tricks you into thinking it’s the one and only…that its “reality” is real when in fact it’s not real at all. What’s more real? The planets or the galaxies that have been around for timeless amounts of years or human civilization which has been around for thousands of years…the earth that we live on is older than our human incarnation and yet we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking we are older and wiser than it. The earth gives us everything we need and yet we turn our back on it and try and create everything we need ourselves. For instance the earth gives us food…but no…we’ll invent our own food thank you.
Wow…phew…I had become so absorbed in my thoughts again that my mind began to spin…like being super drunk. But, instead of a room spinning, the labyrinth began to spin…faster and faster...until it began to rise off the ground…rising into the air…a blur of speed …a spinning top and I was in the center…the eye of the needle…calm…we moved…I looked down through the invisible floor, as we flew slowly across the path that I had walked that day…I noticed the dolphins the ones that had been swimming as we walked the labyrinth were now flying in a circle around me…they were speaking, but I couldn’t understand…and as we approached the meadow I had crossed they broke off and went underneath the spinning labyrinth.
We flew into the center of the meadow and stopped…I watched below as the dolphins seemed to swim in the air…playing…and then they turned and all 3 sped upward and passed through the labyrinth all around me…they rose in the air in slow motion and crossed and paused…paused into the symbol! The one I had been following…the one that had been leading me! A blinding white light caused me to shield my eyes and look away…when I opened them again I saw that it was the suns early morning rays and that I was in Gabriel’s tent.
Fuck what a trip that was I thought, and began to rise and shine.
Gabriel wasn’t around so I unzipped and stepped outside. Chutney rose up. I wondered where he went last night, I wondered if last night really happened.
A breakfast was happening next door.
I met everyone, forgot everyone’s names instantly and was soon stuffed with bacon and pancakes.
I helped with dishes in an outdoor kitchen with a man that looked to be 7 feet tall. He was drying and would turn and wink at me every now and then, but wouldn’t say anything. I didn’t know what he was up to…gay? Maybe. I had some thoughts a few times of what it would feel like to get a blow job from a man, but didn’t get turned on by those thoughts. Or maybe it was more of an insider’s kind of wink. Like I know about those flying dolphins, kind of wink.
Gabriel came up to me and told me that him and a couple of others were going to the big meadow and wondered if I would like to come, there was something that I might be interested in seeing.
Met up with Gabriel, an anorexic looking woman and a young man with big buck teeth and a lisp.
Chutney came and we kept up a quick pace through the rocky pass to the big meadow.
We walked to the center, stood in a circle and held hands. The buck tooth guy had really sweaty hands and the anorexic woman’s hand felt like air.
Everyone closed their eyes and so did I. It felt like we were spinning and taking off, like the labyrinth did last night.
I opened my eyes and saw we were indeed up in the air again.
I had no idea how we were up in the air, but I didn’t want to take any chances and let go of the hands I was holding.
I did however look down and to my amazement saw that the meadow had been carved out to form the leaping dolphin crop circle symbol.
Wow. It was pretty cool to see that.
We soon landed again and unclasped our hands.
The woman and guy headed off together to investigate something.
I started to walk the flattened parts of the field with Gabriel.
“This is the beginning…the first blueprint…the one that will bring change.”
“Who’s that?” I asked, as I had been absorbed in thought. For some reason I began to wonder how Yoko Ono was doing these days? If she was still pretty creative…I wondered if she celebrated the bed-in that her and john did…every year maybe she’d stay in bed for that whole day…
“This field is the first of many blueprints to come,” Gabriel patiently re-worded.
“The dolphins?”
“They’re helping us.”
We’d stopped and Gabriel knelt and stroked the flattened grass.
“Within this form will be an edible garden…and within the circle will be a garden that will grow food and everyone will come from all over the world and the word will spread, other circles with different forms will appear around the world and gardens will be grown within them.”
“Sounds good.”
“The world will heal, the world will evolve a new consciousness.” Gabriel said and stood up, and looked off into the distance.
“Why me Gabriel…what am I doing here?”
“The dolphins have a plan for you as they did for me and the others.”
“Which is?”
“Till the ground, spread the seeds…and care for them with love and light.”
“Literally? Or do you mean like spread the dolphin philosophy…you don’t have a hand out on that philosophy do you?”
“You have it in your heart.”
“Again, is that literally I have the hand out in my heart? I need more clarity I think…vague notions…you guys aren’t some weird dolphin cult are you?”
“Brent, do you accept that Jesus was a dolphin?”
“No…no Gabriel, I don’t.”
“The body of a man, and the mind of a dolphin.”
“C’mon now, I’ve been dealing with some off the wall stuff here lately but…next you’re gonna tell me that hamsters are magnetically structured taoists engineering reality or some crazy shit like that!”
“Hamsters have indeed been engineering reality as you know it, Brent…how did you know?”
“How did I know?! Man, this is crazy…and you’re sure we’re not high right now?”
“Life is a trip, you just have to be open to it. Most of us are hiding behind closed doors. It’s time for us to open them and air the place out.”
“And the dolphins are here to help us?”
“They are like bodhisattvas. They have returned from a place of knowing to assist us in our time of need.”
“Okay so what do they…you need from me again? Cause you know I’m unemployed and having a tough time laying off the bottle and the bong.”
“You have a daughter and a dog.”
“Yes, no…dog’s not mine…though maybe he is now…daughter yes…Star.”
“Bring her here and she’ll show you.”
“You better not turn her into a dolphin! I’m telling you straight out…this dolphin stuff ends if there’s any B.S.!”
THE
END
I told Star’s mother I’d gotten a grant to write a book of poetry, that’s why I quit dishwashing and lived in a tent in the woods with a bunch of homeless people who believe a dolphin is trying to assist them in bringing a new consciousness to humanity.
Nah, of course I didn’t tell her that last part. School was out for Star and she had more free time and so did I, and so she got to hang out with me more!
We soon spent a lot of days and nights hanging out in nature. A couple of the other kids in the dolphin cult were her age. Zeus and Apollo…what names to give to your kids!...a lot to live up to with those names. And though they still had time to grow into those names, these two brothers were pretty frail. To their credit though, they had no fear and tossed themselves around pretty good. The kids were always off having an adventure.
Star even did the labyrinth spin and fly…and that went well…she treated it like a spinny ride at an amusement park.
In fact, she said she could communicate with the 3 dolphins that swam in the moat.
That “they come in peace” and “mean us no harm.” Sounded a bit clichéd but I took her word for it.
We celebrated her 7th birthday with smores and a big bonfire with the whole cult singing happy birthday to her. It was kind of special. Felt like I was part of a family.
Something else happened during this time. I took up archery. For real, no joke! Couldn’t believe it myself.
Gabriel actually presented it to me one day out of the blue.
I laughed but took it, set up a little archery range and practiced. Found out I was a natural, bulls eye every time.
All that summer I pitched in with the crop circle garden and it was looking good. I still wasn’t sure what was going on with this dolphin stuff but it did seem like they were onto something with this crop circle garden.
All kinds of veggies and herbs were growing strong. You name it and it was flourishing…tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, squash, watermelon, kale…on and on and with pretty minimal effort it seemed too…like someone or something was helping it grow.
Pretty soon someone saw it, and next thing you know a news helicopter was overhead. Stories hit the tv, internet and newspapers. Tourists began coming by the droves everyday.
The dolphin cult kept the dolphin stuff low profile of course. Crop circle buffs from Scotland and all over the world came and were inspired to create gardens out of their local crop circles when they got back home.
It was happening.
Gabriel told me to start writing a book about the whole thing, and so I started taking notes and writing some outlines.
My life had a deeper meaning to it. I’d been stone cold sober for a chunk now. Felt physically and mentally strong. Felt good, real good.
The summer came to an end and we got ready for a big harvest blow out bash on the autumn equinox.
The energy was high and everyone focused on the task at hand. All the crops were taken and turned into food for the party or for the future, in terms of canning and preserving.
It was going to be a big end of season party to celebrate the garden.
The camp area was cleaned and readied. Events, games and food were all planned.
Star was coming for the entire weekend. I even worked up the nerve to call Sarah and she said she would come.
Gabriel called a secret meeting and we were told that the dolphins called for a labyrinth walk.
One big group walk and trip out.
It was to be a midnight walk and the ones that stayed would be the chosen ones, so to speak. Those that came for the day and left, well I guess they weren’t ready yet or some such thing.
I don’t know to be all honest, the details were vague for me…I was so busy with the preparations and I was also nervous about seeing Sarah and seeing where we stood that I didn’t even pay much attention to what the dolphins wanted.
Part of my job was to shoot a bunch of arrows rigged with fireworks into the night sky and so I was busy testing the feasibility of that out.
Well, things all got done and the big day came. A beautiful fall day. The colours of the forest were turning and it felt like magic.
A line of people soon came and it felt like the line never stopped.
Man, what a motley crew filtered in. every cross section of society seemed to have come out.
Tours were given of the crop circle garden.
Gangs of kids swarmed from game to game and even created their own games.
Some people just chilled and some chilled and smoked weed.
Others brought musical instruments and banged out rhythms while some danced.
People sat and meditated, chanted, did yoga.
People volunteered to keep the place clean, to dig piss ditches, to wash dishes.
Everyone seemed conscious and eager to pitch in and help.
The labyrinth walk was to be held on the 3rd and last night in conjunction with the full moon.
That first night a huge bonfire was made…there was a no drinking policy but it looked like some people were high on something and I’m sure nips were taken from flasks by some of the goers.
There was always some sort of event happening at the theatre…applause and laughter could be heard breaking out from time to time.
Star and I mainly walked around and observed. The kid could get pretty introverted sometimes and I was trying to stay balanced and not get caught up in any high energy vice taking.
So we had fun just hanging out…daddy-daughter.
By the 3rd day I still hadn’t seen Sarah and had wondered if she was going to come. In fact, I had written her off.
Star and I were walking with Chutney when we saw her appear out of the rock entrance.
I was excited and nervous at the same time.
Star saw her and yelled out her name and ran over to her.
When I got there they were eating donuts. I smiled remembering daddy daughter donut day.
“Remember when I asked you if you wanted to go to the library?” I said to Sarah with a grin.
“And I thought you were psychic because you guessed that I had dreads once upon a time?”
“Yeah…how are you?”
“Would you like a donut?”
“Got a chocolate one with rainbow sprinkles on it?”
“Matter of fact I do.”
We showed her around while munching on the donuts.
After the walk, Star and Chutney ran off with some other kids to play a game of hide and seek.
I showed Sarah my bow and arrow and even launched a lit firework into the dimming sky.
We smiled and then kissed. I told her I missed her. And she missed me too. I told her I had joined a dolphin cult and she laughed and asked if “she could join too?”
Later, the moon came out fat and yellow. Those that remained lit a candle and walked to the labyrinth.
Single file we moved until the spinning began and the dolphins flew.
“Daddy I love you,” I heard Star say in some way.
I picked her up as we flew over the crop circle and we watched as the dolphins flew over our heads.
It was then that I knew everything was going to be okay. I saw a flash of my future self… a successful manager of a popular donut establishment…married…Sarah pregnant…Star a few years older, beautiful and healthy. I saw my book “MY LIFE IN THE DOLPHIN CULT” on the bestseller list.
“But…”
“But what,” I heard Chogyam say.
Most importantly, eat a donut with rainbow sprinkles on top and live…fuck man, just live!
Om tare tuttare ture svaha
(GreenTtara mantra…or so it says on my Tibetan wall calendar!)
daddy daughter
donut day
Saturday march 17, 2012
