Winnipeg, The City

Winnipeg, the city-- is filled with a deep snow that patiently waits to swallow you up and a restless wild wind that tries to blow you into pieces. The snow piles on top of itself all winter, first ankle, then shin, then knee deep, making roads and sidewalks taller, mailboxes and houses shorter. The snow moans, crunching as it gives way under your foot. Sound splits the frozen air and travels without hindrance. All around you hear the crunch of boots in snow and the clack of feet on icy walkways. The air itself sparkles with dazzling flecks of frozen water vapor. It stiffens your nose hairs and eyelashes after only a moment, giving each breath drawn through your nose a tingling sensation. Time seems to smear away from you through the cold and wind and snow, crunching along with wind sliced ears and frozen-faced.

But I arrived in the summer to a city full of heat and clinging humidity; which harried my lungs and instantly lined my forehead with beads of sweat. I stepped off the small plane out onto the airstrip with my carryon slung over my shoulder, my white shirt sucking up next to my slimy skin. The drive downtown to the mission office was heady, sliding down slanting city streets, jumbled at strange angles with five or six streets coming to a head at any given intersection. The buildings whizzed by, exactly like any American city, except all the restaurant signs had a small red Canadian maple leaf tucked somewhere in the logo. The air-conditioned car was pleasant, and I felt relaxed and tired. So tired, I relied on nodding at people and ignoring the assault of questions. I read --without comprehension-- page after page of training materials without comprehension. Without comprehension I took each booklet, pamphlet, registration form, name badge, phone number, and reminder and slid them into a manila envelope, which bulged with its load.
Then we went to a house, which was cool and big and full of comfortable furniture. There we ate and talked, though I mostly sat still and listened without hearing. That evening we met our trainers, the person we were to spend the next six weeks to three months shadowing 24 hours a day. Mine was a short, stocky and pink fellow who cut and combed his hair meticulously everyday. He laughed often and smiled even when his high adle hernia was trying to kill him.

But that was in the summer, and by the next winter, which, by the way, comes in August, I was the trainer and the easy sort of blowsy air of the damp summer had frozen into all those shimmering ice crystals that blow around in that knifing wind. It was only six weeks since I'd been greenie-busted, but I had become the trainer. I tried to emulate my own trainer by laughing often and smiling always. I learned to cut hair, and I even tried to be a bit pinker. But it was winter and that snow kept sucking the world down and that wind kept trying to slice parts of me off.
The kid I was assigned was Andrew Jones, a thick droopy guy whose coarse dark hairline went halfway down his forehead. His eyes were deep set dark and slithery. He had come from Arizona, where a month before he was wearing shorts and barbequing in his sun soaked back yard. He had no gloves or coats or boots when he arrived, and I had to take him down to the mall to buy some gear. We bought thermals together across the street from our apartment at Zellers, and then I bought him a drink out of the coke machine outside the store. He drank it in great gulping swigs, which were followed by glum, stomach rolling, slumps of silent “oh poor mes”. He sat on the brown wrap-around couch under our window, which was thick with ice. Our heater was positioned below the window, melting the ice outside enough for it to run under the mal-fitting track, and then would shut off allowing the ice to freeze again inside. We couldn’t open or shut that window in the winter, but why would we want to with that wind waiting to get in and cut us up.
When we didn’t have anyone to teach we tracted door to door. That is when the time would span out flat in front of us as we crunched to a street we’d chosen from the map that hung on our wall. We didn’t have a car, so we rode the orange cubey buses that swayed and bounced like hammocks strung between two wobbling towers. Then it was walking. Walking through snow- loose white knee-high sand that clung to our pants like barnacles. So as to keep our gloves on, we used the spines of the books we carried to knock on door after door, their bottom corners becoming frayed, standing like proud flesh after a few doors. Many saw us out of their windows and ignored us. Some opened their doors a crack, telling us we shouldn’t be out in such weather, letting a warm waft of air out to tease our red noses and cheeks. Then they would shut their door again, rattling their sagging wood porches.

It was on one of these endless days, wading through loose knee-deep snow that we approached a small two-story house in the middle of Edison Avenue. Jones was complaining. Cold. Bored. Hungry. Toes feel fuzzy. Hear heart in ears. Eyes hurt. He was a week in, home sick and miserable, and we still hadn’t taught anything to anyone. It might have been early afternoon, because the sun was bright, though low on the southern horizon. Our knees were tight, our shins cold and our feet frozen. Half way down Edison we spotted a bus.
“One more house” I said, “then we can hop that bus and get warm”. Jones didn’t say anything, but he followed me. The house sat squat, blown snow sloping up along its cream-colored wood sided walls. The snow along its walks and on its cement steps was as deep as the snow that covered the lawn. There were no track marks in the snow leading to or away from the front door. There were two windows looking out toward the street. Like most houses in the neighborhood, one would be a small office, or a converted extra bedroom or perhaps dining room. The second window would be a sitting room. The kitchen would be in the back of the house, as would the garage (if they had one) connecting to a small dirt path that led to the alleyway between Edison and Kingsford Avenues. Thick twisty icicles hung from the edges and corners of yellow eaves like giant wild opaque carrots. We cut our way through the snow leaving four jagged snake trails until we found the stairs where we had to coax our knees to bend enough to climb up to the doors. First there was a black metal door with a thumb push handle missing a large square pane of glass and screen in the middle. The second door was of solid light brown wood that stood resolute when I tapped it with the bottom of my book.
I looked down the street at the bus that was shuffling its way toward us-- with red-cheeked faces looking out of the boxy windows that lined its grime covered orange sides-- anxious to get on and out of the wind. Just to be somewhere warm, somewhere moving made me jumpy and ready to abandon this quiet house. Almost I turned to go to the bus, ready to flash my bus pass and find a seat among the blue and white splatter-patterned seats; to loosen my coat zipper, and pull my gloves off. To flex my red fingers and feel the heat of my blood pound feeling back into the tips; to look around at the slack faces and dreamy glittery eyes on the bus, bobbing and leaning together in that collective, uninterested sway; to sit for a time and find that rhythm—both the swaying and the squrunching hum of the engine and hydraulics—and loose my thoughts.
Then the door opened, and a man appeared, framed by the missing panel in the outside door. As soon as the door opened I was hit by a wave of hot humid air, thick with must and tobacco odor, which cut sharp tingling sensation onto my chapped nose tip and cheeks and made my eyes water. The wet air that rushed out of the house froze in front of our eyes, making millions of tiny frozen ice flecks dance like winking rainbows.
The man said immediately, “I’ve been waiting for you guys to show up.” And then disappeared into his dark, hot, house, saying, “come on in” as he went. I tried the thumb push, but couldn’t budge it. So, I pulled my cold-tightened legs up and crouched my back, making my single-strap bag slide around to my front. I squished in through the missing door panel, and spun as I stood, my trailing leg pulled straightly through, to follow our host, hoping to be neither left behind nor seen by him. I suddenly hoped also that I hadn’t unwittingly ditched Elder Jones, who was a bigger man than I, in that small entrance. But then I heard him huffing and clumping into the entry. I followed our host down a dim hallway, lined with old pictures and wood-burned poems, into the living room. In the corner, directly across from me was a brown couch with the posture of an old hound. He motioned for us to sit down. I stepped around a brown, lacy-carved wooden coffee table that looked heavy and greasy. It had two tiers. On the top of the table was a jumble of tabloid magazines and TV guides. On the bottom level were more magazines, a brown homemade looking ceramic ashtray and a small tub of tobacco. On top of the tobacco sat a cigarette roller and several white unrolled cigarette papers.
Our host sat next to me and Elder Jones sat in a worn yellow chair; whose arm was touching the arm of the couch, next to me. Our host sat at an angle, his knees tight together, his feet parted on the ground, toes pointed inward. He wore brown moccasins and white socks that disappeared into gray sweat pants. He was thin, and his loose white t-shirt made him look even thinner. Pale, hairy, stick-like, arms poked out of his sleeves, like aspen limbs covered in a dark brown moss. His head was set akimbo on the tip of his neck, from which grew several wisps of long hairs. Along his neck and chin and cheeks he had a dark short days growth of stubble. His nose sat beak like above thin white lips. His eyes bunched along the bridge of his nose, the inside corners tipped up; the outside corners drooping. His skin was naturally swarthy, but ashen gray from lack of sunlight. His brown hair parted on the side, falling down to one side in a thick greasy thatch, and flipping out the other way in a few thick strands.

the story continues here

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I found this podcast in iTunes and thought I'd pass it along. Wise man once said, "writing is a conversation".

http://www.americanwriters.com/

The Plastics We've Become

A Poem For Ryan

Plastics....
corporate shills, peddling our masters wares.
We're on a road that started in the land of endless ambition and ends in obscurity.
It goes to that gaping void that,
on a brighter day,
in a simpler time,
opened its maw and sucked --in lighter news-- President Clinton up.

Its a road where the foot that falls in front of yours is startlingly yours as well.
Like heavy tar boots splattering your liquid life with each step...
leaving a trail of your mulched soul along behind you.




Our dreams of senility at 18, and toothbrush brawls: gone cold, smoothed over to the touch.