Today’s headline:  Dr. X Has Been.  That’s right.  Came over for dinner the other night.  Dr. X is an interesting story.  He came back into our lives in the last couple of years after we hadn’t seen him, really, for at least twenty years.  He was around and so were we but we sort of spun out of each others’ sphere.  We have a lot of history with Dr. X but it is old history. Dr. X got married and had a couple of children.  We met his bride, once, years ago.  We knew that for years he has been selling and buying and developing millions of dollars in residential real estate around the west side.  One day we stumble on him in the neighbourhood.  The Real Estate Board building isn’t far from here and it turns out he is frequently in the neighbourhood.  His girlfriend lives across the street from us.  His marriage went bad but he still lives under the same roof as his wife.  Now his older child is at university and his younger just graduating from high school.  He and his family have moved frequently over the years, house to house within his area of operations, you might call it.  We have studied what Dr. X has told us about his life and have concluded that there is something rootless and transient in it and that money doesn’t buy happiness.

Dr. X contacts us after several weeks of not hearing from him and he appears down in the dumps.  He says he is going in for surgery this week.  When he comes for dinner he gives us something of the details.  He had an altercation with his son that led to physical contact and Dr. X managed to stumble backwards on a staircase in the family home where the fight was taking place, tearing the Achilles tendon in his left leg.  He already has a world famous chronic condition that causes his left hand and forearm to tremble uncontrollably, and now this.  We feel for him which is why we thought a free meal of excellent food and a couple of glasses of good wine wouldn’t do him any harm.  He’s an old friend with problems.

His phone rings at one point in the evening and he says he needs to take this call, but doesn’t move from the sofa.  We get a little glimpse into real estate arcanum.

“No.  He owns other properties so it’s not like a fire sale or anything like that…  ”

“It’s all under RS-5 zoning…  ”

“No.  It has to be in the 1.7s before he responds.  What are you people looking for?”

“2298.  Subject this, subject that…  No.  A low-ball is not gonna’ work.”

“If you people are looking for someone desperate, forget it.  This guy is very fair.  I’d like to take your offer tomorrow.”

“Buy the property first then look at the plan.  He wants the land to be separate from the plan.  Do that and you’re looking at going through ten months with city hall…  ”

“Yes.  Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2.4…  ”

“The plan is stamped and ready to go…  ”

“Maybe he’ll go for it.  Maybe he won’t.  But anyway, just write the offer…  ”

“This guy doesn’t want to deal with that.  He’s not desperate.  He’s got other projects.  He wants to enjoy his retirement.  If the price is right, if the bidding is right…  ”

“Dunbar.  The length.  The depth.  It’s still an advantage.  50 by 120 equals more property tax…  It’ll be a new home on a slightly smaller lot…  It’s convenient to stores…  It’s walkable…  There’s a community centre…  ”

“2598.  2518?  No.  Too many low-ball offers and now he wants to just take it off the market…  Again I ask:  Who is your buyer and what are they looking for?”

Good question.  Dr X. leaves surprisingly early.  Last time he was here he stayed and stayed.  We had to give him the rush when it was near midnight.  He moves slowly with his sore foot.  I shake his hand.

“Take care, Dr. X., and don’t worry.  You’re gonna’ be fine.”  States gives him a hug.

April 16, 2013.  We’re driving east on Twelfth past the hospital at about five o’clock in the afternoon.  The sun has just broken through the clouds.  There’s an older white guy in a wheelchair stopped on the north side sidewalk.  He’s wearing a white T-shirt and blue sweat pants, has an enormous gut and a really bad haircut.  His round face is shining in the sun.  I Look a little closer as we pass and see that his left arm has been amputated below the elbow.

“Diabetes, I’d say,” I say to States, sitting beside me on the passenger side.  “And I think I’ve got problems.”  And it’s true.  I think I’ve got problems.  But I don’t have this guy’s problems.

April 11, 2013.  BC Book Prizes Soirée.  ZZZzzzz…  I take the time to drink a Löwenbräu and, knowing no one, and for no reason, leave after less than fifteen minutes.  Well, what the hoot, I went.  I showed the flag.  I scanned the field of greybeards and drove our crippled ship home.  Come on, Esteban.  You only saw one grey beard.  It was that you knew no one.  Even if they unanimously, and they were, they had to be, kind, caring, intelligent human beings passionate about literature, you knew no one.  And you felt you could have a better time on the upper deck than at a bar on Granville Street, with the unknown.  So go.

Earlier Confederate States was applying unction to a slight, temporary blemish, like a zit or something, on her face just to the right of her beautiful mouth, with a Q-tip, at the bathroom mirror as we discuss the situation.  She’s heading in for an evening shift.  She’s in a phlegmatic, doubting mood.  I know why.  Me.  In the last five years I’ve cost her tens of thousands of dollars with my neediness.  She’s okay with it.  She just isn’t immediately buying into my latest brilliant idea.  It’s just an idea.  She’s skeptical.  She should be.

April 9 2013.  Rain.  A cool spring and a cool afternoon.  I get the call and go, the four to eleven.  The usual grisly slog and for what?  For the hundred bucks, youth.  It’s sad.  The security guard shows me the little jack-knife slasher he’s taken to carrying.  He tells me he’s been called as a witness for a mug facing charges downtown including for an attempted armed robbery here last summer.  The dolt’s little crime spree included pepper-spraying a gas station attendant that night before he came in here, and then some other piece of idiocy, I can’t remember precisely what, after he left here with no money.  Who are these people?  This perp was white, male, middle-aged with a medium build.  The till jockey, a she, hasn’t been back since this individual stuck a gun in her face.

April 8, 2013.  Should I contact these clowns that sent me a card nearly a year ago telling me they looked forward to reading my submission, but please be patient?  This is an issue.  Just how patient do we need to be around here and what if we’ve spent most of our lives being patient and it’s made no difference?  It’s like the people who’ve said to me:  You’re a good guy, Esteban.  And they’re right.  I am.  But what good has it done me?  I mean, look at me.  Being good has afforded me nothing.  And what, anyway, would be the motivation to be patient any longer either?  Is it not wiser to reflect on the distinct possibility that, as already experienced once with this outfit, and it is a well-known outfit, my submission, which they asked for mind you, has been booted, dumped, barbecued, shredded, misplaced, thrown away, stomped on, lost?  Nobody has a year to sit around on your pleasure, youth, whether you reside in Toronto or anywhere else.  Serious get.  So it continues daft.  I spit on the memory of my literary ambition.  “It is all a darkness”.

April 2, 2013.  Guestworker, airport.  What?  I said guestworker, airport.  The guestworker doesn’t query.  The guestworker goes where the guestworker is needed.  The guestworker goes because the guestworker needs.  The guestworker does not like being needy, but the guestworker is.

So.  Stand around in a wind tunnel ten hours.  Well, a wind tunnel, yes.  What the hell it’s an airport, isn’t it?  No planes come flying through, just buses, taxis, limos and vans.  It’s a service industry scene.  And the baggage cart wallahs wrangling long trains of baggage carts from their collection points back to the International Reception Lounge (IRL), pulling them along riding an electric-powered buggy through the so-called VIP entrance-exit.  It’s a fairly dingy wind tunnel around here, that never sees the light of day.  It’s cold and the concrete is cold, the asphalt is black and there’s a surprising number of cig butts lying around despite the no-smoking signs.  This tunnel could use a bath.  Where are the pressure-washer wallahs?  The walls are dirty and so is the floor.  Very VIP.  But the people are friendly.  There isn’t much for us to do but that doesn’t matter.  We’re here.  We’re on station.  At our posts.  And we don’t care a hoot for nothing.

April 4, 2013.  That was the week that wasn’t.  Paid handsomely for doing not very much at all and axed two days early but paid out in full.  In the aggregate, closer to what I’m truly worth, guestworking or otherwise.  My valuable time, which is all I have.  It was an interesting few days in Airport City, all told, but I’ve enjoyed better pizza.  The seating arrangements were excellent.

So go ahead.  Go through the motions.  Pretend.  Act like nothing’s happened.  You’re still you, right?  Even if it’s not the you you wanted.  You hoo!  It’s still you!  Hello!  You’re still beautiful.  You’re a thing of beauty.  Don’t worry about it.

Take the air.  It’s not a bad day.  Yesterday you survived a four hour briefing and, in spite of everything, today is a good day to be alive.  One more day.  Just one more day and you can fix this thing.  Give yourself a chance.  Renew that library book.  Don’t go into debt to the library.  They’ll come and beat your head in.  Librarians are hard people.  Take it easy.

March 29.  Good Friday.  What’s good about it?  Just about everything.  You nix going out except for groceries and now are in process of soothing the spirit with a nice cheese soufflé you’ve got on the bubble.  The skin is peeling off your hands and you are battling back with deluxe hand cream to combat the dryness.  This goop’s got everything in it except morphine.  The fingers love it.

So the clock rolls and you head into your dumb-ass job.  You are buoyed, somewhat, by the thought that each time you do this it’s one less time you will have to do this.  That’s philosophy for you.  Take a picture.  You’re on the two to nine-thirty and it passes without incident.  No shootings, no stabbings, no grab and dash artistry, no ignorant peasantry out to light your fuse.  The peasants, it seems, have taken the night off.  Good for them. You get through.  Back home the scab about the size of a dime on your lower back the last month finally peels off.  You did nothing wrong and it doesn’t matter.

March 30.  Easter Sunday.  I find a car under the straw of my Easter basket after taking all the candy eggs and little chocolate bunnies out.  But this isn’t a dream of my childhood, is it?  A little plastic car, two-tone, orange body, black roof, just what I wanted.  What ever happened to that car?  There always used to be some sort of additional little treat under the straw of your own, personal Easter basket Easter morning.  If you were lucky.  If you’d been good.

March 16, 2013.  That’s right.  Mad Journal.  Upper deck.  Home office.  Five PM.  Get out of here.  A bit of breeze is rattling the glass in the railing outside there as I enter these immortal words.

I remember hearing that sound the first time I came here when we were looking at the place, that kind of lonely, lost sound, perfect for melancholics, that little rattle rattle rattle, like a lost ghost.  Because except for the distant sound of traffic on the bridge going downtown, this is a quiet place, which is why you can hear that.  And pretty private too.  And that must have been why we moved in.

The suite was an estate sale and the owner had ended his own life right here in this upstairs bedroom, apparently.  We never, uh, made too many enquiries, but that was the story.  Downstairs that afternoon I remember there wasn’t much furniture in the suite.  Most of it had already been moved out.  There were two large, framed paintings on the small living room’s walls.  One was a print of “Scotland Forever” and I can’t remember what the other one was. I think it was a naval theme, HMS Victory or some such.  I remember feeling proud of myself that I knew that print was a print of “Scotland Forever” and also that the original had been painted many years after the scene it depicts, the charge of the “Scots Greys” at the battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815), and that a woman had painted it, which has always struck me and probably a great lot of other people down the long years, as remarkable, considering the era, and that the original was much larger than this print.  That’s right.  The sun never sets.

The dead guy had been in his forties or so and lived alone.  You see what happens when you start to think about things, when something triggers a memory?  Do we get that we get it, mein apen?  We are sentient, living beings and we remember. Sometimes memory is all we have, which isn’t much when you’re stuck here, day after day after year trying to understand and I mean understand.  And what you understand is that, ultimately, there is no understanding.  There just is, and isn’t.  And it can get painful beating yourself up over it.  So stop that.

A nihilist’s dream—standing in the rain on a KIA lot on Marine Drive looking for a white Suburu.  It doesn’t get more arcane, desolate or nugatory than this.  KIA.  KIA.  Who would buy a KIA?  We’re only here because someone told us the damn car was on this lot.  We’re not terribly interested in the thing but we decided to go out and look at a couple of cars and it’s supposed to be here, driven here to be photographed, for ads, we assume.  We were directed here by Richmond Suburu.  Not many people can say that and it is futile, friends.  It’s useless.  It gets so bad I run back to our gamey Buick for our umbrellas.  Killed In Action.  Killed In Action.  All I can ever think of when it comes to KIA.

A fine young car salesman in a spiff silver suit begs us come in out the rain to his showroom and he will look for the errant Suburu.  “I’m Dean,” says the smiling white man, sticking out his hand.

“Steven Brown,” I shake.  This is my accountant, Confederate States.”

“Hi, Ms. States.”  He shakes.  “Yeah, Richmond Suburu.  That’s our sister dealership.  You’re sure it wasn’t Richmond KIA?  That’s usually where we take car pictures.  That’s our sister dealership too.”

The guy at Richmond Suburu definitely said the KIA dealership at Marine and Cambie.  No matter.  Maybe it was the sound of the jets continuously screaming overhead.  We’ve already looked at a couple of Suburus and are losing interest in the brand.  I’m secretly holding out for a decent, not too elderly MDX.

The Killed In Action showroom.  The vacuity and emptiness of a shiny piece of tin for $35,000.  You’re gonna spend 35 grand and this is your new toy, your dream machine?  Not good enough, soldier!  Not near good enough.  Three different people ask us if we want a coffee three different times.  No, but a couple of steaming hot bowls of pho might be nice, even if it’s Killed In Action pho.  The dude behind the counter to our left is speaking Spanish to a gentleman on our side of the counter.  “Fleet sales,” I’m thinking.  “Fleet sales!  The only thing that makes sense is fleet sales!”

“Yeah, it’s definitely not here,” says Dean after spanking around on the phone a few times and finally getting the ‘Lot Manager’.

“No worries.  No way at all.”

Docksteader’s only half a block away and we walk down there.  Across Cambie from KIA is a gigantic hole in the ground, a construction site.  This hole is so deep you can’t see the bottom of it.  “West Side Address!” blasts a big billboard.  Well, dudelettes.  It’s the west side for what it’s worth, but you’ll still be in hell.  “Bring your love of traffic starting at $249,000!”

Docksteader is the same.  We can’t find the car we’re looking for, the Forester.  And we’re car virgins, see.  We only buy a car every ten years.  When that happens you sneak onto the lot, tippy-toe around, hide from the sales people.  There’s a vast inventory of new Foresters but we can’t find the used one we came for and aren’t interested enough in asking.  Madness?  Mebbe.

Wilderness Park.  What is it?  It’s a disaster.  An obscenity.  It’s the novel as catharsis.  It’s what should never have happened, but did.  Now it’s here and no one can make it go away.  Live it.

Kevin Walter.  What’s his problem?  He applies to jobs he can do in his sleep, but they go to people who are already asleep.  What?  I thought he worked at the “Plant”, that strange sounding but somehow familiar but definitely conflicted enterprise on the campus of the “Great Institution”, GI for short.  You know, where boredom lays a daily whipping on sanity, self-respect and the puzzling conundrum of where to buy a coffee.  What happened?

Edward Cream of the “Heavens Devils” (HD) motorcycle club, the rock star gangster.  He has a problem.  He grew up in Surdell, that massive, sprawling burg east of Vancouver (VCR) where you can get ahead if you’re early, try hard and are ready to die, as well as kill.  Have you ever wondered if two shots in the head might be right for you?  Ask your doctor.  It worked for Ed.  He was brilliant for awhile and will be dead a lot longer.

Robert Ballantrae, the writer.  His problem?  “Hycroft Mansions”, that “corporate retirement doghouse” he’s been banished to.  It doesn’t matter if he didn’t see it coming.  Poof!  It’s here.  Live it.  Live the pathos.  Robert has two daughters who visit.  Kevin Walter is married to Barbara, the elder, Edward Cream was shacked up for a decade out there in Surdell, incongruent though it might sound, with Billie, the younger.  Oh, that Billie.  She’s a wild one.

An inhuman, pitiless bureaucracy?  The phenomenon of unhappy workplaces?  The revelation that you never thought it would come to this:  bringing a gun to work for personal protection?  Are you putting us on, Kevin Walter?  The phenomena of gangsters in our midst.  The phenomena of dementia and love; of looking for a way out.  The phenomena of age, falling apart, the need to do your nails; losing your hair and twenty pounds.  The compelling story of crêpe paper skin.  Does it all end in tragedy or everybody goes home safe?  There’s only one way to find out.

Wilderness Park is the story of Kevin Walter, white guy, and his search for answers in the province of British Columbia (POBC).  It’s about the Lower Mainland and how it grew.  It’s about a weakness for acronyms.  It’s about a relentless, hammering sales job.  It’s about a slaughtered Devils kingpin with a bizarre secret.  It’s anarchic, witty, profound, tragic, humourous, funny, profane and shocking but real, so real.

If you’re in the area you must visit Wilderness Park.

Around four we drive to the booze store.  I’m holding down a part time job there in these mad times and, as there’s been no work for a month, feel a need to show the flag. The security guards, who for some reason love me, want to shake my hand. It could be they have been impressed with my consummate talents as an actor. I pretend I’m not affected by the travesty of me working here, and they enjoy the performance every time out. I’m here to look at the sheet to see if there’s any shifts coming up.  There are none.  Zeros are easy to keep track of and, on second thought, I do exit with a six pack of Löwenbräu for safety. You know how it is when you can’t stand the thought of running out.

You can get away from pretty much anybody you want except maybe yourself, I was thinking, as we come down Cambie Street.  As usual, driving our twenty year old hulk, I’m also preoccupied with all the flash cars in this town.  Next to us for half a minute is an example of the brand new Lexus ES350.  Tail lights reminiscent of some recent Beamers, I’m thinking, craning my neck to see the driver and sole occupant.  Wow. It’s a mature white guy. Why the heck didn’t you get a better colour than this stone gray? I  want to ask him. I wonder if he’s happy with his magnificent piece of tin.  I’ll never know.  Heads off in the right lane.

Black Dog Video and we labour long and hard.  Half the movie titles sound the same and most of them have the same actors and actresses in them.  I think there’s some kind of thing to lose the word “actress” for something else, “actor” like the guys, or something.  It’s just something I’ve noticed.  But “actress” and “actresses” are beautiful words and they’re usually about beautiful people.  Why would you want to get rid of that out of some ape-induced sense of gender equality or whatever is going on there?  They’re actresses, apes.  Actresses.

It’s funny how when someone dies before they’ve even quit work it upsets their retirement plans.  Okay, forget that.  Enjoy your retirement, ape!  It’s maddening all right. R.I.P. G.W.

The Pie Queen is here tonight and we are looking forward to a magnificent hoedown.  It’s been too long.  I head downstairs sure that she has made great progress in the making a pie idea, probably has the flour out of the jar by now, and when I get there see that the pie has not only got itself together but is already in the oven baking.  Sheesh yeah, exclamation point!  Fastest Pie Queen in the west.  Watch yourself around her.

We watch “Skyfall” or “Downfall” or “Upswing” or whatever it’s called. It’s a bad cartoon. Why are you the spic in every damn movie now, Javier? I’m still looking for a copy of “Iron Sky” though. That is a brilliant piece of work.

Seems this gammy leg and bit of rash turned out to be “Shingles”.  Got to the doc yesterday and it was funny.  The interview was forty-five minutes after the time it was supposed to start, but one thing I had done while waiting is pick up and look at a brochure on shingles put out by makers of a vaccine for it.  And there was an image of what looked very much like what was on my body.  I mentioned to the doctor (not my regular, as he’s on holidays) that I’d just looked at this brochure.  He took one look at the conflagration around my left knee and said, “Yes, it does look like shingles.”  Caused by a virus.  The virus has hung around your body for decades, since you were a child with chickenpox, in fact, and now that you are older your immune system isn’t what it used to be and this virus manages to break out of where it’s holed up in some of your nerve cells.  It’s too diabolical.  Remember how when you were younger you were convinced of your invincibility?  It’s a bloody miracle you made it this far, apes, considering the threat level.  You are a minor, possibly insignificant entity in a vast and highly toxic conspiracy.  In its essence it is the war between death and life.  And you’re losing it.

I’m not sure what to do next, so, standard procedure, do nothing.  This always leads to something but you can’t say you really have a plan.  Plans were given up on long ago.  Plans are just that—plans.  They have no relation to reality as it inevitably unfolds.  Years ago you never made plans then, for a change, you made a plan.  You followed it like a good ape.  It was text book follow-through and after a lot of hard work you were left with nothing.  A big fat zero, my apes.  So you moved away from planning again, which is where you are today.

There goes a silver balloon, northward, at about five hundred feet.  There’s a pissed off child somewhere around here.  I can feel it.  Then the rains came.

Turns out those were the Olympic Mountains.  You know, due south of Saturna Island down there in the Olympic Peninsula and all that.  Due south of the San Juans.  Fine looking, snow-cappers in the sun.  Distant prospect of.  Do you guys know where I can get a novel published?

So I’ve been thinking about C.P.Cavafy since our last post and, to tell you the truth, much longer than that.  Who in their right mind hasn’t heard of C.P.?  Don’t answer that.  Lived most of his life in Alexandria, Egypt, which should be enough to make him interesting to anyone. Nice little town, Alexandria.  Like to drop by there sometime.

C.P. wrote a lot of excellent poetry.  For a novelist I can tell you one thing.  I seem far too interested in poetry on this blog.  But I like iconoclasts, one-offs, people that haven’t been contaminated or tamed by any school or movement, who don’t play hockey and have never even heard of it.

C.P. was steeped in history and his work shows it.  He could also make stuff up with the best of them.  He is never tiresome or obscure.  He’s witty and knows what irony is all about, the type of irony that rules lives with an iron fist.

This sampler was first published in 1910.  It was translated into English in 1975 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard and published by The Hogarth Press the same year in the ‘Collected Poems’ and in paperback in 1978 by Chatto & Windus.  I’m writing from the second impression of the revised paperback edition published in 1990.  I don’t think old Chatto and Windus’ll mind.  They’re pretty laid-back dudes.  I think Chatto scored fifty goals in fifty games one year.

Ambition, frustrated ambition, not quite what you were looking for, beaming baubles not quite measuring up.  Who doesn’t know the feeling?  A good question.

THE SATRAPY  by C.P.Cavafy

Too bad that, cut out as you are
for grand and noble acts,
this unfair fate of yours
never helps you out, always prevents your success;
that cheap habits get in your way,
pettiness, or indifference.
And how terrible the day you give in
(the day you let go and give in)
and take the road to Susa
to find King Artxerxes,
who, propitiously, gives you a place at his court
and offers you satrapies and things like that–
things you don’t want at all,
though, in despair, you accept them just the same.
You’re longing for something else, aching for other things:
praise from the Demos and the Sophists,
that hard-won, that priceless acclaim–
the Agora, the Theatre, the Crowns of Laurel.
You can’t get any of these from Artaxerxes,
you’ll never find any of these in the satrapy,
and without them, what kind of life will you live?