Hot, weighty, muggy summer clings to the air still as we enter the second week of September. Ocean mist drenches every leaf and grass blade and my denim jacket as I stride down our gravel road. I want to take off my shoes, but the terrain is just a little too far gone to merit such pain and risk, even for me.
“Why do public pools close after Labour Day?” my son asks. “It’s still hot!”
“It’s still summer,” I tell him. “You’re right.” We’re not big on public pools, but I wouldn’t mind stewing in cool, clear human soup right about now.
It’s warm upstairs, in my bedroom, where I write and sew. I need to make a ring for a lady in France; that process should only take half an hour, tops. However, I’ve already spent a good thirty minutes sifting through my fabric scraps and assembling all of the tools I need to do this tiny bit of work, and my sewing machine is still taped inside a cardboard box.
It’s so dusty that you can feel it in your throat. So dusty that the walls need to be wiped down.
I’m still unpacking. It’s going to be a while, as I cuddle kittens and unscrew burnt lightbulbs and rearrange fans and lamps and furniture in an earnest effort to minimize heat and maximize inspiration.
I set up my drums yesterday; Yamahas neglected for weeks - nearing months - as I grew so preoccupied by things that aren’t music that I forgot I was a musician until somebody asked me “what I do.”
“That’s a good question,” I told her before listing various things that bring me joy and give my life meaning.
Crows converse, and they’re louder than the big highway on the other side of the forest. I carried a dead garter snake up the road to my house at seven in the morning, marveling at its bouncy weight and the fact that I have never touched a snake before in my life. Not for lack of desire to do so; it’s just never happened. That rebounding, rubbery reptile conjured a lot of interested sympathetic smiles as we honoured it, in our way, with admiration, wondering how it died. Not by car tire, but by a small puncture wound near its middle - a small bite? A chipmunk (they are fiesty)? The very same crow whose call quieted just as I wrote this down? Somebody left it for dead.
I’ll never know, but it’s time to sew. I write “Merci” on the French customer's thank you note, and feel disingenuous despite knowing that I studied French for nine years; I can still read and write the language passably. It’ll take all of my willpower not to get sidetracked by the two plastic bins that need tucking away and the laundry in its basket and the wall that desperately needs sanding and painting and the hundreds of pieces of art that still suffocate in Canadian Tire boxes, unaware of just how much daily inspiration their presence will provide when they’re hanging on our walls.
Or maybe they - and the snake - are aware of the pleasure they bring us and the tragedy of their lives, and ours.
Who’s to say?
I prepare the ring and ready it for the post office, but not before remembering that I set a pot of homemade yogurt in the upstairs hallway linen cabinet to ferment exactly 24 hours ago. The oven lightbulb burnt out, and I improvised knowing the result would be the same. With a small portion of my homemade yogurt I'm obliged to make a smoothie with and organic fruit blend of mango, peach, banana and orange.
The combination of words rings melodically in my mind like a song long forgotten-
Mango
Peach
Banana
Orange
A series of fruits I've said in order countless times before. It must have been at a job? The Smashing Pumpkins “Adore” album briefly flashes in my mind. Then Darcy’s star-shaped nipple guards. Bald Billy Corgan’s Victorian trench coat.
MangoPeachBananaandOrange
Ah, I realize. It was at Williams Coffee Pub. A little chain cafe in a university town, where I worked closing shifts with my friend Michelle, a boisterous girl I’d been afraid of in high school. She'd offered me my first cigarette and I'd liked it, rocking out to Bullet With Butterfly Wings and various Rage Against The Machine tracks until the entire place was sparkling clean from toilet to kitchen. The cafe where I went on first dates, worked until 4:30am, and smoked joints on the patio, laughing and wondering what the hell I was ever going to do with my life. The place where I discovered local punk bands, and started going to shows. The job that took me from adolescent wonder into silvery-naive early adulthood was also the place that required me to serve “Chilly Willies” to drunk dumbass teenagers in the dead of night.
“What flavour do you want?” I’d have to shout over satellite radio and squeals of laughter from across the dining room, and clanking glasses and the din of 20 people waiting in line.
“I dunno,” a girl would giggle and slur, having just migrated hiccupping-drunk from Patty’s Pub next door. “Was your favourite?”
With a sigh and a longing glance at the clock above her reading 12:30am, knowing she needs my help, knowing I’d be home eating pizza and watching late-night black and white horror movies in less than an hour, I’d tell her the truth: “Mango, Peach, Banana and Orange.”
Cool,,,,,,😎