Pigeons and property

 
Oats talks about how Germany is mostly rental and the power property, owned house, has over people and tells story of his life in the condo where the condo has rules that must be followed. In his fourth floor condo he had blocked the balcony with a box and the condo manager. Called him to tell him if he does not remove the pigeon he will report him to the board. Oats then moved the box and saw that there was a “baby” (pigeon). 

Oats wrote on the same ‘warning’ that he’d comply and remove the pigeons. But added that if he’s fined by the humane society, he’d forward it to the condo management office.  he will remove the baby, he will be writing a letter to the Humans Society. So he didn’t hear back from the manager and four months later when the pigeon was fledging, learning to fly Oats put the nest? into a box and took it downstairs where the adult pigeons found it and happy ending. Winwin win.

Amazon Story

 Nancy tells the story of how Amazon does not accept returns and she knows this because, because--

parcels started arriving at her doorstep with her name on them even though she does not even have an amazon account. Trying to get through to them was an entire show and they could not explain why she was getting parcels. Nor was she getting charged. She has stacked all the stuff in her house: "stuff I dont want, I dont order, i didnt even know existed." She has not opened those boxes: "I haven't opened them and if police show up"--she stretches out her hands--"I will say, here you are, maybe you open them!"

Alex says maybe it is her future self sending the stuff back to her :)

Taking the Stick for a Walk

As the stick has not been for a walk for a long time. I took it for a walk through the evening because I had been breathing in student work all day and I had to go get it all out of my hair. When I was in the street, I realized the wind had been fall cleaning too: driving the leaves out and around, and dousing the street with rain that funnelled the leaves into the road. It was a lovely evening, tinged with strangeness, one of those seldom moments that everything is striking and new, so very rare and for the first time, as if never before. The streets dappled with a fallen tumult of wet leaves, the darkness that drives people indoors, the lights of cars rubbing a passing flicker against the silver fenders of audis resting in driveways, the arms of the trees in the wind: anything was first first, first the sight of it and then fading into the thing itself that took shape in the darkness, recognizable only by dint of some forgotten familiarity. It was all, I dread to say, so fresh. The skylight in a roof, pressing the silver of the indoor lighting into the night sky. Then the accent of a wood fire and the bright blue face of a big screen TV through the window pane of a passing house. The slickness of the street and the leaves sighing away. The bare ground where the Scottish thistle had prowled all summer, now grit-level. So much of summer stripped low. And of course, the tattoo of the thorn stick, emboldened now that it was taken for a walk. The pumpkins let loose on the porch, hunkered down. The indistinctness of things barely coming into shape and then moving on and the rich, moist smell of rotting leaves in the time-wearied poem. And the man in the street, dancing a jig out into the headlights, a reedy cartoon contour on a jolly drug. He would dart out and step and backstep in the very path of the incoming headlights, so they would have to slow down and swerve with bemused caution. Then he would dart back into the street and jump out to wave to the next stream of cars. It was a night where everything was preparing to go, away. The crescent moon fanning herself with the crown of a bare tree in the soccer field. It was a night of wet, damp withdrawal and I was part of it and it suited me just fine and I wish I could remember it forever but like the leaves and the wind it is already slipping away from me, yet again. But maybe it was the stick that had called it all forth. A stick happy to be part of the fall two days before Halloween. Which I was glad to have felt, however sparingly, as I feel most everything in life these days.

Electric Fall

Isn't it odd that I come back to the blog the day after I woke up in the middle of the night and sure enough, there was no power?

I marvelled at that, no power. The line between us in dissolute comfort and the centuries before, stumbling through darkness, is that current that flows or does not through the wires at the mysterious bidding of a distant switch. And now someone had thrown the switch, and for an hour, there was no light. I lay listening for that distinctive ping that announces the presence or return of an electronic liege of some sort. And then the light went on in the bathroom and we were back in the world of the predictable, safe within the perimeter of the electric.

Helter Swelter

"Someone has turned up the volume of heat all over Western Civ. People are complaining like there never was a summer before, like there never was a summer this hot before this long for so many days days days dry days dry days until drought. The sun is pressing itself so close to the planet, bullying the comfortable into discomfort. I touch the balcony door and it blasts heat back. Open no windows, keep it away!

I feel I should sacrifice something on the altar of electricity to keep it coursing through this city, but I cannot sacrifice that which is of the greatest value: my sweat.

The Untraveller's Experience

My untraveller friend returned to her home, having travelled through Tronna. A bit. A bit because our options were limited. I have no car but even so, she travels best when driven by her beloved. Here, in the city, she travelled best on a street car because it moved comfortably fast. Which is to say, hardly. Not enough to make her sick. Not much. That was a relief because it was starting to look like we would be scooting around in cabs because... ...because she was terrified of the train, the subway train. It was the first time of her life and four minutes in and she came out petrified. She was probably wondering how other people did it. One million a day or more depending on your city. But she couldnt. She was oppressed by it all, whatever it all meant, the rattling WHIZZ as it tore through darkness, slamming to a quick stop. She was more articulate about the buses. The buses rocked and shambled to and fro and they were full of people with bus rat faces. Faces condemned to stony indifference to each other, relinquishing individuality. 

What a flip in perception for me who certainly cannot imagine small towns as fostering individuality, only a semblance of freedom through space. On buses people just collapse all individuality, its true, into themselves because there is not enough room to express themselves. Of course, this was maybe only a twist on the fear of absorption into the mass which she expressed, as below. Thus, I offer what the Untraveller told me about her transit sensations: among all these people she is only one of them. She is part of the crowd, insignificant. Her specialness is erased. 

I think of Poe's "Man of the Crowd," a tale, which told to her at bedtime, would be the stuff of Goyan nightmares. I think of the illusions which sustain us and individuality being one of them. But would you look at all the graves around us, too, we laughed the last day, as we took a cab to see Gay Pride. For all the untravelling, she was an excellent sport though, for to walk among the masses as much as we did that Sunday--that is major travelling, and in flip flops, no less. For coming here all the way here to see me, despite crowds, transit and city, is truly an Act of Friendship.

Happy Birthday, Jane Russell!

Summer!

summer turns me upside down
summer summer summer
it's like a merry go round
i see you under the midnight
all shackles and bows
how far will you take it
well no one knows
don't let me go
i got a hold on you tonight

oh oh it's magic
when i'm with you
oh oh it's magic
you know it's true
got a hold on you

Summer lovin' had me a blast - summer lovin', happened so fast
I met a girl crazy for me - I met a boy, cute as can be
Summer days driftin' away, to uh-oh those summer nights

Yeah! The sun shines on the shortening days! Theres a paradox for you!

The Untraveller

Ok, so this is too weird. I have a friend coming to visit me, a dear friend of many years and tequilas.

She is anxious about coming here, crossing the invisible border between me and her, on a plane, alone, seeing me for the first time in like, my natural habitat? because I have always visited her and she hates big towns, crowds, people, buses,not being in control and she has been most happily married forever.

And thats all good but---

She will travel against her will. She does not like travelling.

She is not a traveller. She is not a traveller. It astounds me that one of my best friends dreads travelling and is not familiar with the codes of air travel as well, we all are?

That there is someone like that in MY life is short of paradox. No, wait, it is paradox and that is a word and concept I do not like particularly. But it will do.

What we know to do by the time we take a seat on that plane, take off from the gate, leave the airport--the things we do not know how we know we do. Some people don't.

Is this the moment to quote a favorite quote of mine, culled from Ian McEwan's The Kindess of Strangers, which I wish I could live up to but have been touched on very tangentially, still I know what it means:

Travelling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it." -Cesare Pavese

Oh, yeah. And a gift and a skill.

God's Retirement

God has retired to Niagara on the Lake.

He lives in any one of the bed and breakfasts here, as petal-plentiful as the roses, peonies and lilacs, in any of the distinctive historic building among the peonies, the roses, the lilacs, all of which mount a cloud of summer scent to please him. Of course, one would have to go through all of the 300 or more bed and breakfasts to find him, an easy proposition only for those who could afford to and those who can afford to already have a view of the Lake Ontario waterfront from their majestic porches. They are not about to leave their own homes looking for God. They have it on their own word that all is right with the world because God is in his heaven, and that is exactly the assurance God needs to keep his cover as a permanent, reclusive resident of Niagara on the Lake.

Not that he need worry. It is said that 75% of the population of Niagara on the Lake are retired folk, or folk who have come here to retire and while away the time contesting for the most dutiful of lawns, declamatory of rose bushes, and dairy-and berryfull of boards. The region has, it is said in its very Museum, put its eggs in one basket, dispensing with the chattle of cattle and instead stressing its vinyards and orchards which fruit amply, tendered to by the gentle lake clime. The hotels/ bed and breakfasts and farms share an understanding of the needs of a tourist and provide for each other, so that griddle is always sizzling, and the strawberries ripe for garnish. Sure, winters can be harsh and the harvest in question, but the region is blessed, blessed with temperate weather enough that its wines are receiving renown, and the peaches, it is said, are the best in the world.

When God is not reading a book, he walks among the peach trees, gladdened by the flutter of the wind that sets the leaves in motion, the sun he had set in motion so long ago he forgot who did it. He waves to a passing car, walks over to its passengers who want to buy a basket of peaches from him, smiles, nods, walks away and sits right back in his wrought iron chair to watch the petals fall from yet another bush and enrich the ground he has claimed as his home.

For now, of course. For though God has given up on monitoring the affairs of the world, he does not wish to grow flabby and idle and he circulates among the hospitable establishments, making up his mind himself about the state of the poached egg, and the texture of the omelette and the doneness of the steak. It pleases him that so many of the people he sees, retirees like himself, watch TV dismissively, preferring the view from the porch and having made up their own minds about the state of the world simply from the visitors who arrive each summer, credit cards flashing as brightly as their cars, white smiles broadening in faces toasted by the happy sun.

This is the world as he imagined it once, when he was younger and took his own injunctions much more seriously. Dont eat the apple, pshaw. When he first arrived in town, he winced every time he reached for an apple himself, remembering the stubborn willfulness of his past commands. He is no longer that God, and he is relieved that he has outgrown himself as an apple tree outgrows its flushed blush and matures into that very fruit. Even now, he does not want to be reminded, so he dotes on the peach because it does not belong in this land no more than he does, yet it is there, the best peach in the world, grazing the sun. And this little town, population 13,000 is where he finally settled in for the long wait.

So to keep his mind nimble, every week or so, God makes slow, deliberate rounds of the beds and breakfasts and runs his own tally of the best peach pies, peach and apple pies, peach tartes in the area, rewarding the most skilled peach growers and artisans with what is left of his blessing, so that the fruit remains as sunny as his disposition, now that he has let go, let go of the West Bank, of Mesopotamia, of the promises of a Covenant he made too long ago too hastily, and everything since.

Most of the time, God is happy enough to eat a peach, glance at the sky, especially when, as it often happens, it is cloudless and crisp, and he waves at the planes passing by, delighted to be at a distance from their roar. And then he goes back to the parlor for tea or a sip of peach wine from Josephs Winery down the road which he takes on the porch of whatever establishment he happens to be enjoying. When he is not happy with his wine, he will read a book, from back to front and gaze out at passerbys, people he no longer feels responsible for.

When everyone is asleep, he slips out to make the rounds of the picket fences, whitening into the dusk. Flowers and fruit come and go, but picket fences remain steadfast and proper.