March Approaches

The month of March makes its entrance like a thirteen-year-old who doesn’t know how to brush or (dare I say) wash his hair or even how to move. Messy, dishevelled, awkward, unpredictable. Cool one day. Too hot the next. Full of bravado. Always uncertain. He’s easily hurt and quick to lash out, but also equally quick to forgive and melt your heart.

He sheds his skin overnight and grows it anew in the morning. He is alive with possibilities and hope and energy. I breath more deeply in the early Spring and feel more keenly the change all around us.

Inspired by flipping over the page on my wall calendar. Image by Copilot Designer, prompted and edited by Roy Schulze.

Promised Land

Ricky’s twenty one and Jackie’s nineteen
but she’s done things he’s never dreamed
She’s got a devil’s smile, angel’s lips,
she’s drawing blood just swinging her hips
She says, “Boy, why don’t you tell me what you’re needing.”
He laughs but his heart is already bleeding.
She says, “I’ll show you something you don’t want to miss.”
He says, “You can have my soul for just one kiss.”
So she pushes her mouth to his
And she takes him by the hand,
takes him by the hand.
She takes him in her hands
And brings him to the promised land.

Recycled, and upcycled/inspired by Deep Thoughts. Photograph by Fred Ni.

Deep Thoughts

Dear Bra,

     I remember when we first met. You were thrust upon me in shame. Society could not bear the nipples of a pre-teen. But our relationship blossomed, and we became inseparable, wire tight.

You introduced me to Victoria’s Secret and encouraged me to be the biggest version of myself. I introduced you to hordes of fumbling man-hands. We went on to have countless escapades together.

     We snapped ties over the pandemic, and I let you go. Bouncing from place to place and brazen at the office. Soon to realize society could neither bear the nipples of a mid-life woman.

Inspired by Dear Diary, Well Spent, Seinfeld, and Jack Handey. Photo by unpict.

Well Spent

Remember that part in Flashdance where the blow-torch lady is talking to the guy she likes, and while she’s talking, she’s taking off her bra without removing her sweatshirt?
     Of course you do.
     But was that in the trailer? Or maybe in one the clips they took to the talk shows? Because I don’t have any memory at all of actually seeing the movie, but I sure do remember telling my brand-new girlfriend that I didn’t think she could do it, and she bet me a dollar she could, and then she did it, and I had to pay up.

Inspired by He’s a Maniac. Image from wikiHow.

Dear Diary

Chris and I sit in an Ottawa bar and read her old diary from 1976. At first with theatrical angst, but then more thoughtfully. Here we are nearly fifty years later, older but immutable pals. I love that we’re here together, and that she had the foresight to bring a pen so that we could add a postscript to the story. I scratch out a paragraph alongside that girlie writing of hers. For a laugh, we write like we’re thirteen, leaning heavily into our words so that they press through the page, ghost writing our message onto the next day.

Inspired by He’s A Maniac. Photo of Christine’s Diary by Laurie.

Travel Hygiene

Things are different when you travel. Firm standards become fluid. Take laundry. A seasoned traveller avoids it entirely. A shirt you’d never wear two days in a row at home can easily last a week on the road. Change your socks, certainly: on Day 2, wear the left one on your right foot, and the right one on your left. A third day is not advisable — just stop wearing socks. Or underwear. If you must wash clothes, a cursory rub with hotel soap will suffice; use shampoo for stubborn stains. Then hang it all to dry without blocking the view.

Inspired by Travel. Photo by the author.

Picture This

We drive along Lakeshore, passing by the garbage-strewn encampments and cracked pillars under the Gardiner. We turn down the New Cherry St. and over its just-opened bridge. He points to where the experts are carving out a new mouth of the Don to protect us from floods, and where, next year, the parks will be, and the new marsh (for the overspill just in case). They’re building in fish habitat and chimney swift nesting logs. They’ve got native plants going in — manufacturing a wetland to replace the larger one our city founders destroyed in their wisdom and drive for modernity.

Inspired by Grasslands. Inspirational illustration by Waterfront Toronto.

Grasslands

Paint a picture of the grasslands
Take a photo of the soul
Over ritual plains and rivers
Heavy winds are this way blowing

Running with the storm
Climb quickly to the highlands
Because the sea, she will come
At the end of this long day

Send home your sighs and wishes
Send home your fruits and sun
Remember all your days here
Remember every last one

You surrender nightly
On a road not taken lightly
You will travel with Her
To the end of this long life

Into the fold of Her embrace
With thine own body
Come find grace


Inspired by Travel. Photograph by Fred Ni.

He’s A Maniac

It was a still and grey afternoon. Perfect weather mood for a Saturday matinee. We left the theatre jacked to put our moves into place. That’s what Flashdance does to you. It started to sleet as we crossed the parking lot of Fairview Mall.

A man was approaching us in a trench coat. We noticed him but didn’t “see” him as we tried to croon the lyrics to Gloria. He trotted by our diagonal, halted, opened himself up and exposed his hairy bits. A flasher. Perhaps he saw the movie too and came out with a different kind of feeling. 

Inspired by St. Clair West. Image from Flashdance.

St. Clair West

We seemed to be hitting it off, so I offered to get her home. All I really wanted was to extend the evening a little, a walk through the snow, and maybe enough time to screw up the courage to kiss her goodnight. 

She lived past that middle-of-nowhere entrance to the St. Clair West station—a long way from Yonge, but then she had said she liked walking. And I don’t know why, at the door, I declined her invitation; nor, given she’d just asked me in, why she turned away as I kissed her.

     I took the streetcar home.

Inspired by La Vache Qui Rit. Photo by Evan Schaaf.

La Vache Qui Rit

Back in my card-carrying PETA undergrad, I played a rainy-day game called “Splash the Bunny”. I’d drive my Dodge Dart dangerously close to someone wearing a fur coat and tsunami the hell out of them.

But why? Was it rebellion against my French-Canadian roots? Or because my dad trapped muskrat and raised greyhounds for the Florida circuit? Residual guilt over that kippered bathmat that was once a Reitman’s fox jacket? I don’t know why I did these things, but I did, and afterwards I’d sink my sophomoric arse into our leather chair and chew a cheese sandwich with quiet complacency.

Inspired by Snow, Slush, and Honour. Photo by Laurie Leclair.

Snow, Slush, and Honour

Sully was running late for an 8 A.M. That was the thing about beer league, you took ice time when you could get it, even 10 P.M. He was still annoyed about the game. A guy had snowed his goalie. Sully’d levelled him for it. You never snow a goalie. It’s against the hockey code of honour. 

      Sully was late. He sped up. The road was messy. Slush had pooled everywhere overnight. He whizzed past something colourful and glanced back in his mirror. It was some doofus with a rainbow umbrella, shaking his fist at him. Sully burst out laughing.

Inspired by Beneath the Snow. Image by Bristolpost.co.uk. “Snowing a goalie” is this.

Beneath the snow

New snow covers all sorts of eyesores—garbage, dog poo, the debris of life littering my yard, general dilapidation. A wonderful façade until the inevitable southern Ontario thaw and freeze, thaw and freeze. By early March, the old snow has solidified into chunks of black guck at every street corner. Then, forced to see this mess and ugliness, I feel the necessity to clean house. I can’t ignore anymore what isn’t working. It has to go. I seldom make resolutions, but when I do, I don’t make them in the New Year. I wait for the clear light of Spring.

Inspired by Fifty Words for Snow. Photo by Cristian Bortes.

Fifty Words for Snow

It had been snowing again when I fell asleep, then some hours before dawn I was awoken by a bright light. Maybe a car had pulled into the driveway and one of its headlights was shining in through a window. I opened my eyes and saw, instead, the swollen moon casting its light over a field of snow-silvered grass.

I got up, slid open the patio door an inch. Cold air. Months later, life would again push out from the earth and unleash its cacophony, but at that moment, I listened to the night’s frigid silence and counted to fifty.

Inspired by If Only. Photograph by Fred Ni.

If Only

If only we paused Netflix and took ten minutes to clear that measly strip of snow, so our elderly could walk.

If only we didn’t treat our streets and parks as giant ashtrays, so our children and pets could scamper and play.

If only we picked up our dogs’ excrement instead of pretending we didn’t see it, so our new neighbour to Canada didn’t ruin a pair of winter boots.

If only we ceased judging each other from our front windows and addressed our own hypocrisies.

If only we could all be nice. That would be different. Let’s be different.

Inspired by Be Nice. Image by Nick Fewings.

Be Nice . . .

With the house came an extra sixteen feet of responsibility I hadn’t anticipated—not after years of soft apartment living, insulated from the rigours of the Toronto by-law that compels landowners to clear snow from the sidewalks in front of their property.

The city plows the streets, sure—often pushing snow back over the curb—still we must guarantee a safe passage for our fellow citizens no later than twelve hours after the stuff stops falling . . . or do as I do and follow the forecasts in the hope, that if no one disturbs it, it will melt on its own.

Inspired by tonight's oncoming storm, Ben Wicks, and this commercial from 1985.

You’re Not Funny . . . You’re just a Nudnik

“Horseshit” was dad’s word. Mom, with her Enfant-chien-de-merde preferred her own strangely compounded French. My Detroit cousins cursed in Yiddish, and although I didn’t understand a word, it was funny and I wanted in. So, I tuned into The Tonight Show and boned up on Shecky Green and Don Rickles. Finally, over a holiday dinner, I tried my routine on the Goldsteins. Raising my milk while hoisting my own polyglottal pétard, I shouted “Uncle Al, you’re the biggest schmuck around!!!” Schtum. So much schtum. And that’s when I learned that Context and Timing were the two pillars of comedic vulgarity.

Inspired by Salty in Certain Circumstances. Image by Chris W. Bissell.

Salty in Certain Circumstances

Dad was not one for salty language. He dropped occasional mild blasphemies and a scatological term of German origin in moments of crisis, like when he did carpentry. Otherwise “Aw, hell,” was as coarse as he got, “hell” being acceptable, him not being a churchgoer. When Platoon premiered, he claimed to be appalled. “Soldiers don’t talk like that,” he assured Mom, which was striking, because I’d served in the reserves and knew how soldiers talked; and he’d been in the army all through the war. He definitely knew the richest, most expressive Anglo-Saxonisms. He just chose not to use them.

Inspired by Get Out of Bed. Image by Chloe Cushman, National Post.

Get Out of Bed

Hearing is muffled after a blast. Saturated by bright flames, your eyes hurt and you shut them tight. You swallow smoke. Taste it on your tongue. Your body is covered with sweat and ash. You lie amongst the debris wondering if you should just give up—knowing there are more conflagrations in the future. We are the ones who stoke this hot bed of hate and indifference, so perhaps we should lie in it. Perhaps we deserve annihilation. You think there is nothing good left. But then someone’s hands help you up and you begin to cough out the poison.

Inspired by Happy MotherF’ng New Year. Image by Roy Schulze, with lots of help from Image Creator.

Happy MotherF’ing New Year 😊😊😊

The fuel burning furnace shot out a spark. I see it land on a newspaper pile and catch.
I tell my housemate this.
They say, “You’re an extemist.”
I say, “You’re anti-science.”
We smell the smoke now.
But the fridge door still leans against the wall.
I’d wanted it mounted left.
They’d wanted it mounted right.
Fire alarms go off now.
I take one down, remove the battery.
They grab a broom, smash the other.
I hold a knife to their throat. “You’re a fascist fuck.”
They hold a pot of boiling oil over my head. “You’re a commie cuck.”

Inspired by Bravo, F! Illustration by Fred Ni.