I am a wildlife artist, now. I specialize in painting monkeys as they live in their natural habitat. My face has changed over the years. Most people think I look like my subjects. They say that after forty you have the face you’ve earned. Maybe so. I have noticed that as I grow older my face has a slightly brutish quality. I have a very large head and my eyes set close together, hazel in colour sink beneath two heavy brows divided with deep vertical lines that accentuate the most striking feature on my face. My nose. It slopes down in a graceful curve then flattens out towards the tip. My nostrils are slightly flared. My untended moustache gives the impression of a trail-toughened drifter, just beginning to go to seed.
I have always longed to be perfectly ordinary. Well, as ordinary as I imagine most of people I meet everyday are. I confess to feigning interest in the things that seem to matter to other people, to appear more like them. In truth, I could care less. I earn my living painting monkeys, but my passion is for a different kind of painting. I want to record on canvas the real sensations of being human what it feels like to touch, smell, see and taste. Occasionally, I’ve come close catching a glimpse in the corner of one of my pictures that awakens something like a radiant light inside me. But, I can never quite remember how I did it.
I’m not complaining. I’ve been blessed in other ways. I sell enough pictures to have a comfortable life. Living alone in a small cottage with a studio attached, I have few friends, but I’m never lonely.
My paintings have made me well known and I’m often asked to lecture and sometimes even given awards. My twin brother, Elvis, was the famous one. He’s the one most people want to know about. Part of my celebrity is due to him and it’s our story I’m about to tell you.
To begin with, my brother was a monkey. Not your run of the mill, every day monkey but a sacred monkey. Sacred monkeys believe in reincarnation you know that’s when the soul is reborn into a new body when the old body dies, so in fact one really lives forever. If it hadn’t been for Elvis, I donšt know if I’d believe that, really.
Most people who believe in reincarnation know they are born with the wisdom of their previous lives, but can’t ever remember the details of those lives. Sacred monkeys, like Elvis, on the other hand, are not only very old souls having the experience of living many lives probably beginning at the dawn of history they can also remember everything, in each life, as if it happened yesterday. Elvis began talking to me in the womb, so I was born knowing how the things I did in my last lifetime and all the lives before that were going to influence the life we were about to experience. So you can see that right from the start I wasn’t destined to have a normal life. I’m hardly able to see myself as a species apart from him. According to an ancient Chinese philosopher, "The most significant period of an individual is life spent in his mother’s womb." I have few doubts that my conversations with Elvis for nine months brainwashed me for more than one lifetime.
Mom who had a history of miscarrying babies was determined not to lose us. She spent the last five months of pregnancy lying flat on her back. The irony, of course, was that these twins she was hoping to deliver healthy, would be her ultimate nightmare. Dad said that her health concerns, however, didn’t stop her from chain-smoking or sipping those double chocolate milk shakes she loved through a straw. She coughed incessantly and gained fifty pounds. Poor Mom.
Furrowing his brow and pressing his lips to my ear, Elvis lectured me for days on end about the insignificance of the Darwinian theory of The Great Leap Forward the critical time in Earth history when man separated from the ape and called himself human.
July 5, 2004
Dear Mr. Hogg
Old age has fettered me to a snappish disposition in uncivilly conveying a "flurry of light left jabs" to your "proboscis."
I tend to think of myself as a hybrid of uglification, one between a petulant Gila monster and an imperious Common Stinkhorn mushroom. This latter being is, according to my mycological reference book, a fungus one commonly finds on the lawn after a healthily good rainfall. You will appreciate my following commentary as both a sexual democrat, and dark satirist. I look upon the erect mushroom as reaffirmation of the life forces, vaginally correct in its union with the male organ, that is in an equitable sharing of procreative power. Vive la difference! And to think that a bemused mycologist had the temerity to classify these creatures as Phallus Impudicus. Small wonder I have a fear of Latin. The forces of the Invisible World are indeed bewildering. What a proboscis on that species!
Today, however, I find myself in an effervescent mood which I owe solely to that predacious feline race. During the course of renovations to my residence, workmen laying down some flooring discovered a desiccated bird and a shriveled rodent hidden under the couch. I suspect Golda (no, not named after the illustrious Golda Meir who Mr. Callaghan clashed with in the early seventies on the CBC on the issue of the Palestinian refugees). My Golda has striking golden eyes, and is the youngest cat in the Group of Four in residence. I have a powerful respect for craft. I admire ingenuity whether it is crafting poetry, or in the adroit rhythms of mousing, and especially birding. Cats revere the Stoma dialectic: eat or be eaten.
Now, Mr. Hogg, what do you make of those wee kills? Is it a sign that the Grim Reaper is nearby waiting to cast his spores in my direction? Or is it a hopeful sign of my next Mineralization, perchance a born again mushroom satyr nourished by the soil’s natural Viagra? Once again you have touched a fermentative bubbling in my troubled psyche.
February 6, 2005
Dear Mr. Hogg
Very little of my poetry has to do with loving another human being.
There is virtually little romance in my poems regarding the human condition. However, there is an intimacy in my metaphysically-flavoured poems, on subjects as varied as bees, birds, and cats and now I have graduated to doggology. In my poetry I have an interest in the sexuality of the natural world. You on the other hand, have more than a casual interest in the romantic human world. You say there is sex in my poetry, but no intimacy? Perhaps I have, unbeknownst to my senses, muffled the sexuality in my poetry with image clusters? Intimacy is foreign to me in a poem. Intimacy should be confined to the bedroom and toilet. Never in a poem. I couldn’t care a whit where Love has pitched his mansion... Here I mean to give no offence to Ireland’s greatest bard, the Immortal W. B. Yeats whose influence on my poetry is forever etched in my graying mind. Sex, like bacillus and blue mould is all pervasive both in life, as we witness it in the mundane, going by us like a bee or bat, diurnally and nocturnally, and as it is reflected in literature. Still, you will have to explain exactly what you mean by your bizarre suggestion that I am "the Georgia O’Keefe of verse." How indeed does this linkage relate to my "Great vulvanting flowers" that the burly trucker drivers" among bees fuck and pollinate? Sweet Georgia and me? It is a mystery wrapped inside the vulva of a hollyhock. Oh, intimacy where is thy sting? Too much sweat and foul bodily odours associated with intimacy, not to mention eerie orgasmic shrieks from the conjoining couples. I think copulations should be over with quickly. Dogs have a better sense in the social economy of fornication than the teeming copulating masses in protoplasmic proliferation. You honour me, relating as you do to my bee poems "bzzzzzzzz zzzz...a fribulation of the legs...pouch bag filled..." Unsullied by intimacy," as you put it. Intimacy is a blight on reasoning.
A Ghost Dog in Love
Purpled in silk, and reclined on an organdy couch
you stirred in your dream to the touch of this beast
painting your lean oiled thighs with a spirited tongue.
"I’m all furry inside," he cried, his brazen paws knew
the terrain, as though they’d been there before: a fragrance
climbed to his nostrils, and then awakened his large grey eyes;
"is this some bouquet for a ghost dog in love?" he moaned.
"It’s the apple-scented breath of my soul," came your reply.
"I must have it," he growled, and pressed his wet long snout
to her throat, finally coming to rest, asleep at her breasts.
Fate wears an amorous collar tethered to a platinum leash;
yet they who resist Lechery’s adorable perfume have no pulse
or breath, but exist as phantoms padding stealthily into a bog;
whining and barking they sink into the briny muck of Eternity.
Martha Bátiz Zuk - ANTS (an excerpt)
I had insomnia and spent the whole night killing ants.
Since Tomás died they’ve taken over the house. One long row of little black specks moving along the wall, scurrying back and forth from the window to the kitchen table. They’ve invaded the bathroom, my closet and the cupboard too, even though it’s empty. Some of them were speeding nervously along the tabletop, as though they figured the freedom I had unwillingly granted them would be short-lived and they wanted to enjoy the remnants of the feast of sugared wax and ground cocoa. Others, who had reconnoitered the rest of the rooms more thoroughly, decided to set up camp in the drawer where El Flaco is. I don’t like to look at those, so I never go near there.
When I first decided to go on a diet, we’d hidden some cookies on the shelves of the armoire, underneath the mattress, even inside the old tape recorder with no batteries. It was Tomás’s idea: at some point, when I was unable to cope with my hunger, they might be a help. Then he died and I forgot about them. They must be spoiled by now, but the ants like them anyway. They walk onto them, eat their fill from the tops of the cookies, then haul the crumbs off to some place outside the window. I haven’t discovered their anthill, but I know it’s there in the yard, maybe near Isabel’s rusty swing. The grass has grown high and uneven and it’s covered with dry leaves, because autumn arrived a few days after I made up my mind not to leave the house, and I haven’t swept or raked since then.
In case Isabel might come back, I’d always set three places at the table. Tomás never resigned himself to her being away, and he was insistent that everything should be impeccable to greet her when she returned. It was out of the question to get rid of the swing or any of her other things: her photographs, books, the doll with the matted hair, and her clothes all remained exactly where she had left them. After Tomás died I tried to keep up the routine, but setting two places instead of three and seeing that every afternoon one of them was left undisturbed began to depress me, so I stopped doing it. Now it seems useless and stupid to clean a place where I’m the only one, and I don’t even sit down at the table to eat any more. Until recently I only used the table to prepare the candles, but the sugar ran out, I ate the cocoa, and everything else is full of ants, so there’s no way I can continue casting the spell.
Besides, after today it won’t matter.
I began doing it in secret, a few days before Tomás died, to see if I could get Isabel to come back home. I knew how important it was for him to see her again; that’s why I did it. I went and bought several packages of tallow candles, and with a wooden toothpick I’d write the names of Tomás and Isabel on them over and over, in tiny letters, until they were completely covered. Then I’d coat them with the sugar and cocoa mixture and light them while reciting the Lord’s Prayer. At first I did just one every night, so that Tomás wouldn’t notice, but when he took a turn for the worse and couldnšt leave his room, I’d fix up two or three and leave them burning until dawn.
I sent Isabel a telegram, but she didn’t answer. "Maybe she’s taking a trip," I told Tomás when he asked about her again, although I knew for a fact it wasn’t true. I knew she was in the city and she didnšt come home because she still hadn’t forgiven me. The smell of smoke and medicine soon filled the house, particularly after I closed up all the windows to keep out the draft. The odour got worse when El Flaco returned, but by now I’m used to that too. The ants were able to get in through a tiny hole in the sill; a spider wove her web a little higher up, near the crank. Until yesterday, the spider was the only one concerned with the ants.
Joe Davies - WHAT SHALL I PUT IN THE EARTH TODAY (an excerpt)
There is nothing left to say about the beauty of this time of year, my astonishment is nearly always the same. The leaves come back, the green returns, the warmth, as if winter never happened. Knowing how short-lived it is, something like panic sets in, to soak it up and pray it is a hot one so that by the time September looms the cool evenings might make themselves welcome once again.
I grew up in rooming houses, my formative years were spent in a skinny Toronto house with five rooms set aside for boarders. Those top two floors always had a particular smell, like an empty bar, stale cigarette smoke, beer slop. The floors were bare, the halls echoed, the steps in the narrow stairwells creaked, the bare bulb jutting from the wall shed light but never anything like warmth. It wasn’t anywhere I wanted to be. The men who lodged up there often intimidated me. Strange then, that as I grew older and moved away from home I should seek out exactly this kind of place to live in. It is cheap and certainly there have been few other options, but the fact remains I have never sought any other type of living arrangement. I’ve never had a roommate, never moved in with a woman. I can’t say I enjoy guessing who’s ring it is in the bathtub or wondering whether the pile of unwashed dishes will ever get any smaller. Perhaps what’s happened is that I’ve grown accustomed to having other people around to keep me on my toes. Perhaps I require this. Perhaps this is who I am.
I do not smoke myself but do not mind when others do.
One day, as I walk down Harewood, some kind of bird I don’t know jeers at me the whole way.
Back in my room I’ve planted some seeds in a small tray and put the tray in my window and watered it. I’ll watch what grows.
I used to have a book when I was a kid, about a boy who plants different things. 'What shall I put in the earth today?' he asks. 'Buttons,' he answers, 'I shall plant buttons. I will grow a button tree.'
In my coat then, from last fall, a handful of acorns. I’ll not throw them at any birds, whether they jeer or not, but shall think about it.
The leaves along one street, name escapes me, all red. Not fall red, spring red. Red maples.
It’s around the corner from there I see the girl at the bridge. It’s not really a bridge, she’s not really a girl. It’s part of the road, the creek runs under the road, hidden. The creek is covered over all through town, crops up here and there, and this spot, where the girl is, the road is torn up, has been torn up since last summer while they consider fixing something the walls containing the creek, the entrance to the parking garage, the foundation of some old building and the girl, dressed in a white leather coat, worn open, belt dangling, and white leather boots, leans over and looks into the water rushing along underneath, and from where I am, coming along the sidewalk, I can see her perfectly well, know who she is, a bartender in one of the places I sometimes go, one of those people who rides the cusp of beauty and ugliness, knows how to carry herself and is never more beautiful than when she’s taking your order, taking your money, meeting your eyes and looking away as if tired of the whole thing and coming back later with your drink.
Today she is on the bridge looking into the water below, leaning over the new railing, and I watch as she purposefully lets something drop from her hand into the water. I watch as she rights herself, casts a single glance over her shoulder and walks away up the street, white belt, undone, swinging at her sides.
I approach the bridge, lean over, peer into the waters running underneath and begin to wonder what it is she might have dropped. The possibilities seem nearly endless.
Andrew Pyper • THREE STORIES IN ONE ROOM (an excerpt)
They say the room is haunted. The front-desk clerk chipper, caffeinated, too young for the coil of fat choked up over his collar is very up front about it, grinning away and telling me about a figure in a dark cloak that sometimes shows up at the end of the bed in the middle of the night. There’s also been reports of an icy hand slipping beneath the sheets, the temperature dropping so low you can see your breath, voices that wake you from a dream to whisper your own name into your ear. Off-the-rack Amityville stuff.
"So if I see a ghost, are we talking discount?" I ask the clerk, who laughs like I’m the sharpest wit he’s ever had the pleasure of checking in.
"A lot of people ask for room 202 specifically."
"Why?"
"I’m sorry?"
"Why do you think they want to stay in a haunted room?"
The clerk’s grin falters, but only for a half-second. I’m teasing him, he decides, and there is nothing he likes more than being teased.
"I suppose they’re just into being scared. "
"Good for them, " I say. "But I see anything dead tonight and you’re paying for breakfast. "
• • •
The room itself wouldn’t have said "haunted" if not introduced as such. The tasteful historical print of horse-drawn carriages on what I take to be the street outside a hundred years ago. The cabinet where the TV, coffee maker and booze fridge live. A desk with nothing on it but one of those tourist magazines full of steakhouse and jewellery store ads. In fact the only unique aspect of the room is the wide mirror on the wall opposite the end of the bed. Lying there, it is impossible to look straight ahead and not see yourself reflected back at you. Now, fully dressed, it shows the gum stuck to the sole of a shoe. But later, under the sheets, it will be a puppet show. Just my head on the pillow, trying not to look but seeing all the same.
I check the messages on my cell. Reisert, the Winnipeg rep I’m meeting with tomorrow, has "come down with something." He’ll see how he’s feeling in the morning, but if "this keeps up," he’s "afraid" he’ll have to bail on the whole day. Reisert, the only reason I’m here. Now "under the weather," though I don’t believe it for a second. When you do what I do for a living, you get to discern the real sick calls from the running for cover. In this case, the undiagnosed nature of the condition, coupled with the hammy, I-can-barely-speak phone message, has given old Reisert away.
Poor bastard. He knows his days are numbered. What he doesn’t know is that security will make sure he’s out of his office tomorrow by noon sharp, no matter what budget cuts he promises or new initiatives he cooks up or brain tumour he claims to have. Išm here to fire him, and the fly-in breakfast is a courtesy, nothing more. The same is true of Dennison in Calgary on Wednesday, Bunting in Edmonton on Thursday, and Mac-Reardon in Vancouver to cap off the week. We’re consolidating, centralizing, streamlining. And I’m the Grim Reaper flying executive class, picking up the tab for one last Eggs Benedict.
Standing by the window, the open cell in my hand, I think about calling her. She’ll see it’s my number and won’t pick up, but it wouldn’t stop me from leaving a message. A "Whose cock are you sucking now, slut?" or "I’m fucking watching you," perhaps, but the problem is, I’ve already used those and all their variations, and I don’t want her to think I’ve been reduced to repeating tired material. Just this morning I was still wondering how to hurt her, what threats I might make to destroy the balance she seems to have instantly found without me. But now, looking out at a different town from another expense-account hotel room (my true home), I’m already defused. Less pissed off at her than worried about something larger, vaguer, a cosmic injustice. I know how Reisert feels, or is going to feel. I’ve been fired too.
There’s another guy, I know it knew it for the last couple of months but I still didn’t see it coming. Why? It’s not like I deserve loyalty, being disloyal myself over the years of move-in girlfriends and near-marriages and other failed tests of commitment. Even she deserves better than me, and still even right now I’m surprised she’s gone. And scared. Because I turn forty-two next month? Because my parents are both dead and my brother hasn’t replied to a Christmas card in seven years? Because lately I havenšt been able to look at myself while shaving, so that I end up slashing my face like I’ve been barbered by Freddy Krueger? Who knows. But something about the quality of this day the taste of the air in this very room has signalled that things are never going to be the same. The scary part is that I have no idea how much change is coming my way. Has already come.
• • •
Midnight Stroll will be available (after the launch) for sale direct from the publisher at: www.ExileEditions.com - as well as from Chapters/Indigo, and various independent book sellers across Canada.
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