Dollar store notebook, pen in hand, the point being to get it all down before it goes. Seven months – black hole in an otherwise cramped life. Last few days still burning. Coffin lowered into a muddy hole, the obscene waste of my fifty years gone down too, sucked out by the poor bugger’s final ordeal. Dust to dust, if the rain ever stops. (I would have opted for cremation, but it was not my funeral.)

Put R’s death on hold for now. Concentrate on what happened before he died/after I died/the time in between. Figure out what it means. Above all, foremost in this effort to record, wherever it leads – HOLD ON TO CERTAINTY. What happens next has never been so clear – the PURPOSE OF ALMIGHTY LIVING/contrast with relentless trudge from one stimulant to the next, otherwise known as the past = a monumental waste of time. By all means resist the urge to slide back, lose sight. Risk of forgetting is high. Must hold on to this precious knowledge, hold on for life.

While I scribbled the above, a toad flopped into the seat opposite mine. Stains on his crotch, greasy hair, skunky beard. To ward off conversation, I stared back. He got the message, buried his snout in the Sun. Now he’s peeking over the page, watching me write this. I pretend not to notice. He stinks. So do I, but for a reason . . . . Still making excuses. Every stink has its raison d’être. In spite of all that’s happened, kindness does not come easily. Note to Self: learn to love humanity.

Toad, still watching. Can’t do this if he intends to keep on staring. Nothing natural or literary going on here, yet crucial. Must get to the end before the train pulls into Montreal and life starts up again and the last few months die out behind my back. Head down, keep the pen moving. Avoid revision. Hide nothing. Otherwise, these pages will be blanked out/used up /gone by Moose Jaw. Don’t even know if we stop in Moose Jaw. Forgot to ask.

Where to start? That’s the hard part. The beginning – death/birth.

Lower the lights.

OPENING SCENE: a dimly lit hospital room, night, L.A. Man – middle-aged, white male (played by Kevin Spacey?) wakes up, finds himself in bed, staring at the ceiling. He looks around. Camera pulls back to reveal a lump in the bed next to his, head & body covered with a sheet, bare toes sticking out, pointing at the ceiling.

How did he get there? Distant ambulance siren arouses faint memory. Sound: a crash.

FLASHBACK: the final minutes come back to him in a rush, accompanied by a headache. Chair upended while he was on the phone.

On the other end of the line, a woman, breathing. Hello, hello? He calls her name, twice. Sandrine. She says nothing. A dog barks.

BLACKOUT

FADE UP ON Night in L.A. Not to be confused with darkness or silence. Merely a slowdown. Neon light through Venet-ian blinds casts shadow bars across the two hospital beds. Moved by an overwhelming need to piss, man staggers toward a toilet at the end of the room, a pungent cell smelling of cleanser and weakness of the flesh. Catches a frightening sight in the mirror: a thick bandage on the back of his head, sunken eyes. Souvenir of the crash, head hitting the floor. He remembers gripping the phone, ambulance, etc. The rest is vague. Something unpleasant must have happened to trigger the attack. That’s the pattern. When it’s over, the effort to remember feels like a hangover.

His head hurts. Further sleep being unlikely, he takes up a position on the windowsill and prepares to watch the insomniac city change shift.

Time passes. The man in the other bed stirs, shakes off the sheet revealing thin spikes of hair dyed yellow. A porcupine, breathing hard. Or an old motor full of snorts and gasps.

Hawwchhhhh-hhhchwwaahh.

Woken by his own roar, the lump sits up Lazarus-like, swings bare legs over the side of the bed. Feet barely touching the floor, gown twisted round his waist, he slumps, belches, raises a leg to fart. A steep staircase of wind, carnivorous swamp gas fallout – bowel talk, a common language.

The lump gropes his way toward the toilet and falls onto the seat, leaving the door open. A lumbering barrel of excrement, thunder, groans, a few choice words.

The man observes, listens, disgusted. Stays as far away from the storm as possible, crouches against the glass wall, gaze fixed on the skyline view. He makes an effort to recall the recent past, a blind girl and a dog. If not for the phone call, a semi-sober fatally blocked screenplay writer would have eaten a meal with a lovely German girl and either gone on to write a phenomenally successful art house road pic, or slept with her, or both. Or neither.

He resolves to dwell not upon the aborted future of the past, instead to dwell happily on the German girl. She was travelling alone, with dog. The phone rang. He got up to answer. Turned his back and saw her feed her steak to the dog, a scene reflected in the plate-glass door. He resolves to find the girl and explain everything:

These attacks happen under stress, nothing serious. A shot of adrenaline helps. Lovely Leni? . . . Lena. Warm thoughts are easy when the subject is a beauty. But reverie is overtaken by a battle royal raging in the toilet. Roars, then singing, more like a chant:

A chi yam Mi kwa mo yich / A chi yam Mi kwa mo yich / A chi yam . . .

Chanting merges with groans and grunts, all part of the same ludicrous ritual, the desperate struggle of shit to escape human captivity. Observer inclined to bolt but he is wearing a hospital gown, bare ass, no shoes. He closes his eyes and waits for time to pass.

A chi yam Mi kwa mo yich / A chi yam Mi kwa mo yich / A chi yam . . .