Oh Yeah! It was (sorta) like Lightning!

Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz is playing. As part of the grade eight end of school party, Christine, Carolyn, Cheryl and myself performed an interpretive dance to that tune. We wore cut offs, white T-shirts and tinfoil lightening bolts and were backed up by boys dressed in full KISS drag. Mike could inhale butane from a lighter so he got to be Gene Simmons, and bless him, stayed in character by shouting sexually charged remarks about our behinds. This was 1976 and I was thirteen, so any complement, however boorish, worked. In that moment, I was truly a Fox on the Run.
Photo: Cheryl Dowhan Metcalfe

Barcelona Bouquet, Part III

Someone brought them through security. They were screened and cleared. No threat, those stalks, those thorns, those thin-skinned petals.
      The two protagonists weren’t there in the departures area. They couldn’t be. Who would bring pink roses through security and then present them? That happened when they said goodbye. The recipient smiled and placed the bouquet in a bin and collected it on the other side. Then, did they wave? Blow kisses? What could the giver see?
      The recipient proceeded to the gate, bouquet in hand.
      There, it was dropped or tossed away.
      Again, I looked around, this time for callousness.

Photo by Ron Thompson at Barcelona Airport, August 2013
See how it began here.  The next instalment is here

Barcelona Bouquet, Part II

They were limp, but not yet wilted. Had I been five minutes earlier I might have caught the scene.
     It struck me suddenly that they might still be present.  
     I glanced around with keen new interest. There: those two, canoodling in the lounge? Or the couple in the coffee shop, huddled over their phones, ignoring each other? No, neither pair was right, not for the bouquet’s colour:  not for pink, for sweet thoughts, gentle emotions, hope, happiness, affection; for innocent love not yet erupted.
     The flowers were carefully chosen. How did they get there? How did it come to this?

Photo by Ron Thompson at Barcelona Airport, August 2013
See how it began here.    See what happens next here.

Ode to Mary Jo

“Wild and wooly” the term used by surfers when expressing oceanic conditions.
     For me it is the state of affairs when I see your hair, a lush black mane peppered with streaks of gray going white. Convoluted at the root, springing haphazardly aware of its surrounding at all times, reflecting the architect that you are. I often wonder how long it actually is since the coiled nature tightly taut never seems to grow. Its origins thicken, striking a buoyancy that parrots your walk. A subterranean layer peeking out, projecting a weathervane-like form predicting inclement conditions days before the storm lands.

Photo: Cec Lepage

Barcelona Bouquet, I

If they could only talk, what sad tale would they tell?
     Not quite red, nor white: what did their giver intend? And where they lay, upon the concourse floor:  what did that signify? Apology rejected? Love’s hopeful gesture spurned? Or bon voyage, a last call from the gate, and hands too full . . .
     People milled, waiting for flights to Moscow, Majorca, Toronto, Istanbul, paying no note yet keeping a respectful distance. Even those rushing for gates treated those forsaken flowers like a sidewalk crack. Something had just happened and they’d seen it. I looked around but no one met my eye.

Photo by Ron Thompson at Barcelona Airport, August 2013
See how the story continues here.

Portrait of a Marriage, I

“It’s more gravel than grass, just as I remember it,” said Mrs Seabolt as the Seabolts wandered disconsolately along a hot little street alongside the Jardin de Luxembourg.
     Mr Seabolt could not bring himself to agree. It was a matter of principle to him that to bring one’s wife to Paris on one’s tenth anniversary called for no apology. Further, he positively liked the Jardin. Even more than its broad vistas, he liked its modest gravels. He admired the industry with which the children sailed their boats upon its pond, though he knew better than to call attention to it.

Image: S.M. Tunli.

Big Fat Fun with the Metric System

Some American politicians are arguing that sending “Fat Letters” home to the parents of obese children could be harmful. Sweet Jesus. I can tell you that being a Grade Three Dumpling was no psychological chicken pock but rather the mental version of Quint’s leg. I still remember when Miss Hogue decided it would be a pedagogic wheeze to have us step on a scale in front of the class, read out our weight and convert it from pounds to kilograms. Mortified in my elastic-waisted crimplene, I prayed Zimbo would tire of the front-row commentary before we got to the “L”s.

Photo from The Globe and Mail

Thou Shall Not Jeg

This long weekend I will be streamlining my closet. Scarves, shoes, bags, clothes – all to be assessed and sorted. Like Moses I’ll be parting the sea into Keeps and Peeps, casting out the oversized Goth-Pirates, the Maya Angelos, the ghetto Kate Lanphears. I’ve always blamed my enabling seamstress mother for my costume dressing; her nimble fingers churning out miles of handkerchief hems during my Stevie Nicks phase, and later, yellow plaid pants and shoulder pads when I was all about the Talking Heads. But as July was rather revelatory, I must now take responsibility for my own sartorial poutine.

Photo taken from Femmepirical Evidence.

Corn Queen

This week I worked on the Kettle Point reserve and stayed overnight in Sarnia. Since I’m directionally-challenged, finding my hotel became an Escheresque exercise of tootling, asking for help, doubling back and asking again. Yet, I didn’t mind because I was almost home. Lambton County isn’t much different from Tecumseh, and I’d forgotten what it all smelled like: The cornfields, the humidity, the freshly-cut grass. When Kathy and I sold Peaches and Cream from the back of her mom’s truck down on Manning Road we charged a buck a dozen. Thirty-five years later it goes for $5. Still a deal.

Image from tecumseh.ca

Mrs. Gorse’s Golden Years

Mrs. Elizabeth Gorse’s years passed with Free Church orderliness, and what was once a dutiful if uninteresting character paste hardened into a Liberty-printed chrysalis of self-satisfaction, with room for only the occasional incredulous Daily Mail snort and maniacal bouts of gardening and laundry. Still, she developed these rhythms honestly over time, and before domestic chores prevailed, any twinge of Six-Form loneliness was cured by intense doses of field hockey and Pitman shorthand. Elizabeth was never, ever fun. In fact, once back in Mrs. Bagshot’s primary school her classmates attributed an awkward splosh of her milk ration to a missing humerus.

Photo: Laundry Line (Hampshire, England)

A Brave Bird

Today on a run I almost stepped on a squat little robin. He hopped out of my way just in time and I stopped to take a look. The first trip from the nest? The first flight? He was still getting the knack of it, and his momma was not happy with the interest I was showing. She screeched and squawked and fluttered past my head, and I got her message. See, she had more than herself to consider; that’s why she stood her ground. That’s courage, not attitude. And I did what all reasonable animals do: I ran away.

Image:  Copyright ©2009 Maria Langer at Flying M Photos

I was Heckled by Anarchists

Sure, people shout at me all the time from their cars as I stubbornly cycle along their roads. I’m used to it, and I’m not too proud to admit that at least some of the time it’s for something I’ve actually done wrong. But then there was the summer the anarchists were in town for their international convention, and as if that weren’t already oxymoronic enough, the group I encountered were crowded into an old gas-guzzler chugging along Harbord when one leaned out of his window with a broad smile and shouted: “Hey, get a load of Mr. Appropriate Technology!”

Illustration by Aesthetic Apparatus.

Potato Protocols for the Aliens’ Arrival

After years of scouring outer space for radio waves or other signs of intelligent life, we’ve found them. The aliens. Lo and behold, they’re on a mineral-rich, Earth-type planet and resemble nothing so much as Yukon Golds. A sack of ambassadors arrives Wednesday at UN headquarters for trade negotiations. Grocery stores and restaurants must remove potato products from their shelves and menus. (Citizens, no stockpiling the Pringles!) Idaho and PEI are to be stricken from maps, replaced respectively with extra Montana and with water. And children, if you’re overheard singing “One potato, two potato,” you just might get skinned alive.

Image: Agustin Berrocal.

The Perfect Storm

The perfect storm will begin late Tuesday afternoon. It will have been predicted perfectly by Ted in Meteorology, a good man, a veteran of the last just war. Ted will give the storm a perfect name, offending no one. Perhaps Heather? Heather will fall as perfectly gently as icing sugar from a sieve, causing no casualties. All Wednesday, cocooning families will play Monopoly perfectly cooperatively, building empires of ecologically-friendly hotels, forcing no one into bankruptcy, leaving no child behind. Thursday morning, on each porch they’ve secretly shovelled, flocks of youth at risk will place a basket of glittery Heather cupcakes.

Illustration by Sweet Tooth Studio.

36-34-33?

Call it vanity sizing if you want, but this morning I went shopping for shorts, and discovered I’ve managed to coerce my girth back down to an indisputable 34 inches . . . with room to spare. Even more exciting, I actually found and fit into one of those elusive 33s which—even though the first wash would likely end up bringing me back down to earth—was, more importantly, simply more than I wanted to pay.

Now, I wonder if I shouldn’t have bought them anyway, if for no other reason than to mount them as a trophy over my bathroom scale.


Read the exciting introduction here. Illustration based on Cocoa Florida’s Saggy Pants Ordinance by way of the Smoking Gun.

Woodland Protocols for Canada Day

It’s July the First, and the Canadian woods resound with the call of the wild. That’s it—that high-pitched scream; the water’s still cold up here.
     Canada Day is when we reconnect with our roots: fishin’ and campin’, laying a fire—and cutting wood. Now don’t let me douse your enthusiasm, Johnny Canuck, but Safety First. Consider the photo at right. See what Hoser’s doing wrong? Right! No safety glasses—and no ear protection! And there’s one other shocking breach of woodland protocol. Do you see? Yes. He’s not wearing gloves.
     Play safe, citizens; and Happy Canada Day, wood-cutters everywhere.

Rob Ford and the Juicy Fabrication

The Star says Saturday at Taste of Toronto a woman threw juice at Mayor Rob Ford. The Mayor denies doing juice with anyone: Ridiculous, a woman he doesn’t know, an event that never existed. The Star says a witness, one Zelda Doyle, says the juice was a slushie. Of course it’d be the Star. At least those maggots aren’t saying there’s an alleged video. But . . . there’s this photo. No biggie. Rob Ford is no juice addict. If he’s in photos with thousands of women, well, he’s the Mayor. And doesn't our Mayor go to umpteen Toronto events? Folks, take Pride.

Zeno Gets Lucky

When Zeno finally landed himself a girlfriend, he soon learned she liked to take things slow. It was three dates before they held hands; months before she let him kiss her with his mouth open.
     She seemed to like it all well enough, but he was never entirely sure they had the same goal in mind. Eventually, he got to feel her up . . . over her blouse and then under. A little surreptitious grinding, then onto third base . . . but again with the over and under… then finer and finer progressions, over the next three years . . .
     . . . until Zeno finally just got lucky.

Image: La Promenade  by Marc Chagall, 1918.

Losing my edge

Every decade after my happy first, the Tooth Fairy has bestowed a new, unwelcome dental truth upon me: in my 40s, via a root canal. An uneventful one, as these things go. Only six hours passed between the throb that woke me up and the needle that dialed me down and the little saw that stole the pain away forever. I didn’t even have to get a crown. My tooth was still my tooth. Till yesterday, when I brought a loose thread hanging from my sweater to my teeth and realized I could no longer feel how hard to bite.

Tempus Tristitiam

For 24 hours now, Wicked Games has been worming my ear. I’ve always had a Pavlovian response to songs written in the minor key and anything from the Beatrix Potter theme to Townshend’s Was there Life, throws me into minor depression and inexplicable longing. When I was tiny, Puff the Magic Dragon made me cry, then Moody Blues' The Voice brought a palpable urge to escape the trailer park and become a pirate. Now with Chris Isaak’s beautifully melancholic if over-exposed-soft-porn-soundtrack rattling around in my head I want to go back in time to a place that never really existed.