I sit in the wind tunnel that is the bus stop of Portage East at Vaughn Street – the Bay. The deep cobalt sky darkens gradually. Lights change in their silent rhythms as I wait for the number 11 – Kildonan/Rothesay. The sign at Rice Financial tells me its June 3, 10:xx, along with sporatic advice such as ‘Don’t Retire’ – ‘For Excellent Business’ – ‘Our name’. It’s like the billboard from Steve Martin’s L.A. Story, but with only incoherent phrases not wisdom.
As I mull over my day, I have fabricated conversations that will never leave my head. I find new ways to say the things I wanted to. I replay those moments of missed opportunities and try to regain what I had lost. I give out my own spotty advice in these fabrications, not unlike that east facing sign on the Rice Financial building. I do start thinking to a triggered memory of the ocean, miles away at Monterrico.
The waves on the coast were violent and large. As I learned to body surf, the waves would often pummel me like a rag doll. The occasional swell would find me on the crest, paddling air as my legs were enveloped by the salty water. Every inch forward was that much closer to shore, that much father from the rip tide. It was fast, thrilling, exhilarating. It would often end with a slamming onto the sea floor – a heavy-handed reminder of the power of nature.
Now I sit at the mercy of the power of civic transit, while the limp prairie wind floats by. I think about these memories of the ocean. Every day I am not who I used to be. Every day I am at the forefront of my life. It is the crest, out in the open. Were I to stay in the past, then I would be stagnant.
Gord Downie triggered this reverie – I swear. “Wheat Kings” is my favourite Tragically Hip song, but that doesn’t say much. Some people laude the lyricism of Downie as one of Canada’s greatest rock poets. Not me though. He just knows how to describe something personal – and I know how to get lost in songs.
