No Brainer

I watch my neighbour cut their grass. They purposely leave the grass cuttings on the sidewalk.

It’s odd given it takes about 60 seconds to sweep it. We can’t be that lazy. Maybe we just can’t be bothered.

We’ve grown tired, impatient, indifferent. We prefer ChatGPT to human.

We are promised AI will make our lives easier. It does everything faster. We won’t have to think!

Endlessly chasing time against the certainty it’s escaping us.

We don’t have time. We only have now. And in that now, we’ll have no brain.

Inspired by Rosehill and Dale. Image by That Lawn Dude.

Rosehill and Dale

On the cycle to school, there’s a hill you will want to avoid. But don’t worry, I know a secret route that lets you attack the slope on calmer streets, in smaller steps, and at just the right angle to lessen the pain.

     Andrew discovered it; then shared it with me halfway through Grade 9. But he hasn’t lived here for decades, and I don’t think I’ve shown it to two (maybe three) other people . . . still—and I just looked it up—goddammit if Google hasn’t somehow figured out every single turn, and is now telling the whole fucking city!

Inspired by This One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Image by Gemini.

This One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

She said she was a dancer. A spoken word poet and a character actor. She’s a local fixture, marked by a tall, beaky, avian strangeness that teeters on madness. The kind of conflicted late-model Boomer who bower-birds her bike basket with plastic flowers.

Chirp chirp chirp
. . . and then angry-peddles her way through a day care group.
“You little Pieces of Shit, stay out of my pollinator garden!”

Out comes her phone and the offending tiny turds are captured on video to be played over and over again, once she’s nesting and in the mood to ruffle her own feathers.

Inspired by Blurry Memories. Illustration by Tom Cooke.

Blurry Memories

In my prairie hometown, on a Saturday night, there was often not much going on, and we teenagers sometimes crashed wedding parties. These festivities usually had open bars stocked with rye distilled by an enterprising uncle of the bride. There were several unwritten rules: you made a cash donation to cover the freight; you could drink and dance, but not partake of the meal; and you couldn’t throw up more often than the groom. Such a bacchanal was where I mastered the polka at high speed, and ingested sufficient moonshine to suffer the first and worst hangover of my life.

Inspired by Building Community Through Dance. Image by Moyocoyaani.

Building Community Through Dance

The instructor puts on a reggae tune and counts us down: “Five, six, seven, eight . . .” All twenty beginner students take the first steps in unison—some confident, some not. Half way through, this middle-aged woman catches the beat, gets low with the rhythm. Hips sway. Feet ground on the good earth. Body twirls round and round. Arms and hands are raised to the darkening sky, her eyes bright and her face smiling. She lifts her head, letting her hair swing. The first droplets fall. But let it rain. Let people watch and stare and judge. She doesn’t care. She’s dancing.

Inspired by 7 Minutes. Image by Dmytro Kolin.

7 Minutes

It’s hard to find good humans these days. I found one a week ago. She asked for directions to the UP platform. I walked her there and was about to turn away when she asked if we could ride the train together. I said yes. We sat, we conversed—not in an obligatory way but with genuine curiosity. We looked at each other, we listened. I walked her to the Via. She hugged me and I reciprocated. We didn’t exchange names, we didn’t have to. No, this is not a love story—just a story of humans without phones.

Inspired by The Oakville Pietà, Image by Frank van Hulst.

When I’m Sixty-Four

In a few days, I’ll be the same age my mother was when I gave her a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but only because 27-year-old me found it amusing that Side 2 offered up the perfect age-appropriate birthday song. 

Turns out, on its release, John Lennon was 26½. Paul McCartney would turn 25 in a few weeks. Ringo would be 27 in a month or so. And George had only just celebrated his 24th.

And yet those four cheeky pups had the gall to think that they’d have something to tell me today about growing old.

Inspired by To the Bitter End. Photos by Michael Cooper.