Ships in the Night

“Do you like it?” she asked. 

     He contemplated his plate. Lentils, barley, an obscure Andean grain, stirred with tofu. It tasted like the vacuum of space. “Mmmm-mmm,” he replied. It might have been a moan. 

     “It promotes a balance between the fungi and yeast in the human gut and bowel.” 

     His own gut roiled dangerously. 

     “Everything in it is hand-raised, low-volume organic. You can tell by the taste. Mass-produced food is completely tasteless.” 

     Truly, it was mouth mush, but he agreed, thinking, oh, for a saltshaker. He took another forkful and admired her chest through the corner of his eye.

Inspired by A Work in Progress for the botany, and Films versus Movies for the relationship. Photo by Commercial Eye.

A Work in Progress

In the garden, after the April rains, Marty bent her head to whisper encouragement to her one drooping trout lily. She apologized to her struggling tea roses for planting them in the wrong place. She lamented how few trilliums she had left and tried to make her daffodils stand up straighter. She swore at the lily-of-the-valleys now spiking out of the earth, volunteers she had been warring with for years. And she greeted the crocuses like long lost friends. It was not a neat garden—more slap dash than thoughtful aesthetic—but it was all hers.

Inspired by Spring—at last! Photo of trilliums by Nancy Kay Clark.

Walnuts Two

Ask a kid why there are letters on his iPhone’s keypad, and you’ll get to tell the hoary tale of how they were originally conceived to make telephone numbers easier to remember: first to identify your neighbourhood—like our first number in the WAlnut exchange—later as a marketing gimmick, like 1-800-FLOWERS . . . an appealing idea to a nerd like me. Except 922-1469 gave me nothing, nor 487-7557, not even 925-7719 (back when you got a new number every time you moved). The fourth, finally, gave up two: LEVI-COP, which made little sense; and JET-YAMS which made no sense at all.

I’d have never even heard of the Walnut exchange, if it weren’t for a history teacher of mine who was working on a side-hustle he called Memory Power, a way of making up memorable images to remember less memorable things. In class, I offered up my phone number as a test, and he came up with a scenario involving Charles I, who was executed in 1649, laying his neck on the chopping block with two walnuts on his head. All well and good, I suppose, if it weren’t for all the history stuff you had to remember to get there.

Inspired by Perpetuating the Obsolete. Image by Microsoft Bing’s Image Creator.

My Funny Valentine

Back when I was young and churchy, I used to sing in the Ste-Anne’s choir. Occasionally, our choir mistress Theresa would give me a tiny solo. One time it was a hymn dedicated to Psalms 113:9. I warbled, “Once the barren wife, now abides in her home as the happy mother of sons! Hallelujah!” I’m mortified about my role in promulgating that woman’s-fault-boys-are-best garbage-speak. And it makes me think about the catchy but toxic tunes I sang as a young guitarzan: Summerbreeze. That’s Alright Mama. Delilah. It Must be Him. My Sharona. Don’t even get me started on Mungo Jerry.

Inspired by Deadline Comeuppance. Photo of Debbie Reynolds as Sister Ann, from The Singing Nun (1966).

Deadline Comeuppance

The word “deadline” has its origins in the US Civil War. At the notorious Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Andersonville, Georgia, commandant Henry Wirz declared a do-not-cross line around the prison. He ordered guards to shoot any Union soldier who crossed, touched, or even fell upon this “dead line.” By the 1920s, the term had been adopted by writers to refer to a time limit, although few editors enforced it with the sick panache of Wirz--who was tried and executed as a war criminal after the Confederate surrender. His brutal comeuppance puts deadlines, and pushy editors, right where they belong.

Inspired by Deadline.

Deadline

I was at a writers’ workshop years ago, led by Canadian writer/filmmaker David Bezmozgis, when during the Q&A, a woman in her thirties (with presumably youngsters underfoot) asked him how he keeps his writing on track without looming deadlines. Obviously, she didn’t have a “wife” to take the kids off her hands. As a hungry-to-be-published writer with wavering self-discipline, I was interested in hearing his answer. Bezmozgis replied with a slow eastern-European fatalistic shrug: “You do have a deadline. It’s called death.” I burst out laughing, and have remembered that reply every time I find myself procrastinating.

Inspired by A Tragedy Subverted. Photo by Towfiqu Barbhuiya.

A Tragedy Subverted

How do you follow a story like that?—so tragic and so sweet. And it’s not like this is the first time I’ve been stuck. Nancy once wrote of a snowmobile accident, which I decided to follow up with a similar winter tragedy on Grenadier Pond. Toronto’s mythology practically begins with the tale of the soldiers who fell through its ice on their way to defend Fort York, and searching the Toronto Star archives, I’d found my own tragic tale of two boys who’d told their friends they were skipping school to go skating, and who had never come home.

Wanting to give it a twist, though, I took on the voice of the kid who had snitched to their principal, and so made it into such a jaunty thing that I actually felt some shame for what I had done. What if these two boys missing had actually died? What if they’d never even found the bodies? I felt the boys’ joy as it turned into fear. I felt the anxiety of their families, waiting to hear from the authorities, waiting for someone downtown to find them, or the even longer wait until spring when the pond ice cleared.

Inspired by La Petite Princesse. Image based on this one by Dawn Hudson.