Month: January 2014

The Great Silly Season Post That Never Was

Silly One

“Silly season roll out.  Dumb concept so it must be worth millions.  It’s true.”

“The thief who, just before Christmas, steals two big bottles of “Grey Goose” vodka and nearly gets hisself killed. Drops one.  Runs off with the other bottle, right through south bound Cambie Street traffic. Already a lot of jay-walkers just outside there, across that busy little street.  Not the first time the thief has struck.  Here earlier today, apparently.  Here in November too, because I’m sure it’s the same guy.  I saw the idiot running, jaywalking across Cambie last month.  Exited south entrance, headed directly east across Cambie Street.  Last seen heading east, walking quickly on the south side of 40th the other side of the Cambie Street boulevard with that two litre bottle of vodka in his dumb right hand.  If any of that makes sense you’re ready for “Silly Season”.  That bang sound or loud pound is the thief’s body, or perhaps his leading forehead, hitting the glass and aluminum entry door he’s trying to get out that doesn’t cooperate.  It doesn’t open automatically, like it’s supposed to.  Because it’s, like, the “In” door, crackhead, not the “Out” door.  Welcome to the best time of the year.  This is how it was gonna be.”

“But then you think of the poor fool doing the stealing.  It must be terribly exciting setting up his booze robbery.  Times it exactly for just before closing.  You want to catch the guy and give him a whipping or something.  You’d like to do something but there’s nothing to do.  It’s of no concern.  It’s a write-off.  The Christmas songs are pouring out of the radio and you’ve caved.  You’ve admitted it.  You’re laughing in silly season and it’s on.  Here it comes, a great big fat white guy.  He can’t be all bad. Fuel it with a lot of hard work. alcohol and drugs and enjoy.  And steal safe, kids.  Don’t go running into “In” doors when you’re trying to get out.  Aim for the “Out” door.”

“I’d wondered if it was me who should volunteer to go just outside there and clean up that smashed ‘Grey Goose’ bottle.  But we were being let out by the manager ten minutes before the official end of our “shift”.  That always means hooray, let’s run.  But it seemed anyway the mess was being left for the early morning crew coming in.  They’d deal with it.  Or graveyard.  Anybody else but this shift.  “Thanks.  Seeya.  Good-night.””

“Next time on “Silly Season Roll-Out”.  More thieves vandalizing vehicles at your own building!  Idiots need Christmas money too!”

Silly Two

“Darktown Silly Roll-Out.  No one remembered the rain.  That it could.  It’s been so dry, but not anymore!  Streets paved with rain and jaywalkers.  Was that today?  Seems a long time ago.  Cut cut and cut.  And sirens at 12:35 a.m.  I like that whooping one.  These copper friends of ours are really trying to nail someone right now and I hope they get their prey and I hope some of that pile of dead rats includes some of the rats that broke into our car park last night, smashed windows on five cars and got nothing.  This is just the start.  What does Silly Season bring?  It brings lots of things.  It brings the rain.  It brings pain.  It brings silly attempts at sincerity, and sometimes succeeds.  It bleeds.  It’s just getting started.  And, oh no, you know, I gotta go!”

“I know you guys like to party.”

“‘Oh, yeah.’  It was Raz earlier and he seemed to be dealing with a lot of people he knew, and who knew him.  ‘And there’s all this Hindi flying about and you can’t understand nothing, ma’am.  May I offer you car service?’  “Punjab,” he says.  “But I was born here.  Oh yeah, I’ve been back five or six times.”  Raz is a hand shaker.  He’ll want to shake your hand five times a night.  We are all his brothers.  He’s hands on.”

“You end up partying because of all the success you haven’t had.  That’s Silly Season.  Just gotta take a break, you know, from all of the last year, which has been the usual hell.  Gotta celebrate and don’t worry, some of the time you’ll feel like it.”

“I was fall-down drunk.  I don’t remember any of it.  It was silly season, you know?”

I Want You Green
Go Green

“So that’s it.  And I’ve been trying to write a song about it, a new, world class Christmas song.  Goes something like this…”

“It could be that I’m drinking too much, but I’m too damned drunk to care.  She left me.  It’s Silly Season roll-out and no one seems to care.  I saw you this morning, you were passed out by the fire.  The kids were playing hopscotch and I was sitting in the car.  It’s Silly Season roll-out and no one seems to care….”

“It’s awful.  It needs George Jones, but he dead.  It’s think of all the alcohol flowing through all the bodies, the cases and cases and jugs and jars and bottles bottles bottles and the millions of dollars of contents pouring down all those throats and gizzards and guzzling and chuckling and vomiting and coursing through all those veins and capillaries and exiting all those tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of urethras having done its work and putting paid to all the flowing and going and all of it flushing and washing away, washing away until next time.  Until next time.”

“I think it was the bears saved us.  The teddy bears on an endless ride buckled in all proper in the back seat of our car in perpetuity that saved our car from getting a window smashed.  Cars on either side weren’t so lucky but they had no lucky bears, no lucky rescue teddy bears along for the ride.  Ted and Dumper.  Ted was a used bear, a gift from a friend.  Dumper we found in a trash can, poor little guy.  We hauled him out and put him through the wash cycle and he came up sparkling. Little sparkling things in his fur.  Dumper saved us.  The thief looked in, said ‘Ah, that’s so cute’ and went on to the next vehicle.  It’s silly, but explains as well as any other theory, so that’s it. Saved by the bears.  Saved by the sparklies.”

“It coulda been great.”

Silly FourAuf Wiedersehen

“Coulda been great!”

 

January Sunday

Have you ever gone to a free poetry reading and when you arrive there’s a sign on the door, “Sold Out”?  It happened to me.

Some days you just have to get motivated for poetry.  For weeks I knew the reading was coming and planned to attend, but, at the last moment, I wavered.  Should I?  Will I?  It wasn’t quite a case of, “Do I have to?”  I was bending, but I got out.  I left a little later than I should have all right, and was taking public transit.  I wasn’t even sure what bus to take north over the Cambie bridge and ended up waiting at the wrong stop, which pushed the clock further towards the 3 pm start to the reading.

I was waiting on the east side of Cambie around the corner from the entrance to the “Canada Line”.  A bus pulled in.  It was the “Downtown, Granville Island”.  I asked the driver, “Do you go downtown or to the island first?”  “The island,” he said.  “You have to cross Broadway over there to go downtown.”  Right there I thought again of bailing but pressed on.

For some reason I was feeling apprehensive or ambivalent about actually making it to the reading, the “Dead Poet’s Reading Series”, to which I’d contributed in September at the old “Project Space” venue on East Georgia Street, reading poems by Malcolm Lowry.  What was I worried about?  I didn’t know.  I was on edge.

When I finally got down there (Vancouver Public Library, Main Branch) it was about seven minutes to three.  The library guy (I recognized him from November, he was the guy who had introduced the audience to the Series’ new venue, the VPL) was just putting the sign up on the glass door to the room on level 3.  I think the sign actually said, “This room is now full.  See you next time.”  Or something close.  I turned around and left.  I didn’t try to barge my way in.  “Hey, I’m an important guy.  I’ve presented at this series!  Where’s my seat?”  All the seats were taken and I could see that.  There’s only about 40.  The readings only happen every other month.  I’ve felt myself that the organizers are on to a special thing here and that it could take off on them.  Obviously, they need more room even now.

I went down to the DVD section on the main floor and checked out “Dawn Patrol”.  I didn’t think I’d find it, but there it was.  It was some consolation.  I’d been wanting to screen the 1938 Hollywood epic again due to my research into Mick Mannock, States’ ancestor on her father’s side, the top scoring fighter pilot in the Great War.  Really?

So now what?  It’s Greytown, soon to become Darktown.  You know what I mean.  I’m back at Cambie and Broadway.  I can see that the guy is still sitting there on the sidewalk on the west side around the corner from the entrance to the “Canada Line”.  He was there earlier when I was waiting for the wrong bus.  A native/first nations guy wood carving.  There were wood shavings around his position and he even had a little dustpan and broom, presumably to sweep everything up once he decided to pack up.  I decided to go over there and see what he was doing.

He had a couple of examples of his work propped on top of his backpack which was sitting on the concrete next to him.  He had a freshly lit cigarette going in a small, round ashtray also on the concrete.  “Are you selling these?” I asked him.  I was all bold now and ready to engage whereas earlier I seemed to be unsure of things generally, trepidatious, as we used to say (incorrectly) back in grade school.  Sure we did.

“This one’s twenty-five dollars, that one’s forty-five.”  I picked up the twenty-five dollar objet.  “Eagle and frog,” he said.  It was about five inches long and an inch and a half or so wide, a pale blond piece of wood carved into some of those familiar totem motifs we’ve all seen, the eagle on top of the frog.  “I’ll take twenty.”

That was good because besides a semi-expired transit ticket what I had on me was one twenty dollar bill, one of those bright, crisp new ones.  “I’ll take it,” I said.  The other piece was nice too, and bigger.  It was the size of a coffee cup, a solid piece of red cedar with the image of a single entity.  “Do you have a card?”  I asked.  “What’s your name?”  The guy, he wasn’t young, past 60 at least, said he didn’t have a card.  He told me his name but I didn’t quite catch it.

“Seventh generation carver,” he said.

“Steven Brown,” I said, and we shook hands.

“I’ll sign it,” he said.  He took the $20 and the totem and turned it over and signed it in pencil.  ‘Eric Williams’.

“Eric.  Thank you, Eric. Where you from?”

“Nitinat.”

Nitinat.  Nitinat Lake.  Vancouver Island.  I knew that.  “It’s a talisman, Eric.  It’s good luck.  It’s great.  Thanks.”  I was walking away but then turned back.  “What is it, spruce?”

“Yellow cedar,” he said.  Ah, I was going.  Yellow cedar.

“I know about yellow cedar.  Did some logging back in the day.  Wakeman Sound.  Kingcome Inlet.”  Eric nodded.  “Should I put a little oil on this or something, to protect it?  It’s raw wood.”  Eric nodded.  I put the talisman in the breast pocket of my raincoat and walked away.  It was starting to.

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Next on samoyeddogs:  The great Silly Season post that never was.