A Christmas Story - Part 2

The elves of the North Pole are some of the most serious creatures to go about on two legs. The fact that they take everything so lightly tends to hide from the ambitious their deep connection to reality. Moreover, the elves have a constant, positive care for everyone and everything around them, but to the self-centered they appear as complete sycophant idiots.

Thus Bert, chief secretary and messenger of all Santa's messengers (there being fourteen of them), who seemed somewhat frivolous and terse with Harrie Pawter's cagey disappointment, called a tryst with Coswald, Codger, Lodger, Roger, Patton and Flabby. He approached each of them individually in the Supper Hall the night in which Pawter smashed a toy; for though no elf but Pawter knew of the smashing of the toy (after which he promptly cleaned up the pieces and secreted them away), Bert did catch that unmistakable whiff of...directness - he had no other word - and that particular lack of twinkle-twangle.

But who is an elf to judge, one might ask. Who is even Santa to judge? Bert was not judging Pawter, not suspecting any dark  motives. Only he set about as any elf would: not to expose (for they know not how) but to prevail upon the charm of twinkle-twangle, and putting it where it ought to be. This was the purpose of the tryst he wished to hold with the elves to whom he gave notice in the Supper Hall.

Being not at all direct in their ministrations, the seven of them actually held the meeting three weeks later.

"Harrie is such a worker!" began Bert to the other six. "Wouldn't you agree, Codger?"

They were seated in Bert's living quarters - a modest space of squat, rounded arches and rounded corners: the interior, like most of the elves' homes, had no sharp, hard edges. Windows were rounded, yet not perfectly circle; the walls and the aforementioned rounded corners were not plumb; the low roof flowed like a wave.

Codger said, "A terrific worker is Harrie Pawter!" The others couldn't help also answering in the affirmative. "In the shop for flying toys, under my administration of worker-cum-inspiration, we could not imagine how it would be without him! Yet, there are moments in which he seems to get away, so to speak, from the inspiration that flows out to one's other fellow workers - you know the inspiration I refer to; and I wonder if maybe I'm not giving enough...inspiration - that maybe he's just a bigger hole to fill, if you catch me..."

"He does seem direct, but what could he be with more twinkle-twangle!" said Flabby in a burst of sincerity.

Roger joined him with, "And more: think of the ideas that would happen in only Santa-knows-where of all the workshops!"

Coswald snickered with delight. Patton chuckled. They had such hopes for Harrie the Elf. In the firelight they hatched a plan that, to be honest, was really no plan in the sense of being manipulative - no hatching to bring about Harrie. They just started admiring Harrie Pawter, more so in fact than in any other time. So they decided to bake him a big cake; a towering cake of many steps leading to a pinnacle with some kind of surprise on the top and a surprise inside the cake - many surprises, of all kinds of sweet jellies and creamy textures and rummy fruits, and they would bring this cake to Harrie's house and blow a trumpet at his window and dance around the cake when Harrie opened the door!

They did this the very next night. They spent all day baking the cake. They brought it to Harrie's house, blew a trumpet, and there was nothing. Pawter was not in any of the workshops that day. He was not in any of the streets. They blew the trumpet and shouted his name and the smell of the cake flowed through the window they opened. But there was nothing. So they opened the door. They went into every room. They looked under every object. They looked into every closet. No one was home.

Harrie Pawter had vanished from the North Pole.


End Part 2.

A Christmas Story - Part 1

Santa Claus was drunk in his jacuzzi, brandishing a great bottle of fragrant liquor that came from Elf C-sector 3 of the the North Pole distillery, while bellowing his loud "Merry Christmas everybody!" as practice for the coming festive season. Mrs. Claus was in the jacuzzi with him. It had been a hard day of work and the elves for the time being were not to disturb him with updates of the ongoing duties.

"Ho! Ho! Ho! Maaaaaahhhrryy Chrishmush everybody!"

The bottle caught the edge of the tiled jacuzzi with a sharp clink as he swung his arms out in gesticulation.

"That almost broke, honey. Now, now, I must say, that was the best one yet. The jolly gusto is ever with you."

Santa took another long, deep swig from the bottle by way of self-congratulation.

"Ho! Ho! Ho! Maaaaaaaaaaaaahhhrry Chrishmish evvvreeybodeeeiii...."

"Oh deary, you'll do just fine. The night-sky will reverberate and snow the wondrous crystals in response."

The bottle went as vertical as the pole marking the North Pole, and the liquor went down his gullet like dishwater down a sink when the stopper is pulled.

"Ho! Ho! Ho! Maaaauuuuiiiiiii Quishmish evweeebodiiieeee...."

"Should we roll in the snow?"

"Nah, nah...oh sweety pull the bell now."

Mrs. Claus reached for a rope lever just behind her and within seconds a pert elf came through a hidden door without a handle.

"Oh, the cinnamon has come in a swirling burst of twinkle-twangle!" said the elf excitedly.

"Good! Good!" said Santa as he threw the empty booze bottle away into the distance of the snow where it dashed into crystalline pieces of never-cutting glass. These pieces became one with the frost and the ice, for the frost and the ice were something of the glass that held the booze of the North Pole. The elf began sniffing the air with delight.

"Ah!" he said, "That's the lemon-guava with the secret spice #5!"

"Yes, it is--er, it was", said Santa, and started laughing. "Bert, now tell me, how has Ernie come along on those chocolate coffee beans?"

 "He's all done. He's ahead of schedule. The aroma from the coffee roaster went down three shops and the D-Sector 8 elves came up with a new and brilliant idea for train connector tracks."

"Yes, I thought it would do something like that", said Santa with a sly, knowing grin. This sent Bert into a fine fickle of happiness, such that he gathered himself up and gave vent to a question that he had been hesitant to keeping plying Santa Claus with, but which nonetheless had been growing in him to ask.

"Now come, Santa! I keep wanting to put the question to you; what elves are going to be at the sleigh launching; what elves will ride with you? The time has come certainly to decide. There's Bob and Hank and Roger. Pawter they say has performed some marvelous feats in the past years of the workshops, and his name seems to come up quite a bit in the talk of elves when they start whispering about who gets to go this year - among a host of others of course: there is Tom, Poppy, Giles and..."

"Pawter eh? Harrie? Harrie Pawter? No..." Santa fell to deep thought. "No, no, not him. I'll take George for sure, but not Harrie. Roger, yes. Tom, yes..."

He heaved himself out of the jacuzzi and grabbed a towel from a peg, wrapping himself. "Codger, yes. Runty, yes. Jimminy, yes. Cricket, yes. Filbert, yes..."

Bert's face fell. He realized that Santa was not really answering his question but was just rattling off names of elves for no particular reason. Santa stopped, turned with a smile on Bert and said, "Come Bert, let us call the elves to supper time!"

No sign anymore was there of drunken stupor. Or perhaps one just couldn't tell whether Santa was drunk or not, for he was always so merry. But that was also the way of liquor in the North Pole under the Santa-Elf distillation process: you could drink and drink and get really smashing drunk without either loss of sense or the repercussions that one gets from heavy drinking. Isn't that wonderful?


Down several candy cane poles from Santa's house, Bert came to the shop for flying toys - Elf B-Sector 2. Coming up the pathway he could hear the merry din from within. On opening the door a host of elves were fully engaged in something like an orchestration or dance, each elf looking to his own business, but all woven together by parts of toys that went flying from one end of the workshop to the other, one hand to the other, in a continuous flow that was hypnotic to behold.

There were two dozen elves here at work. Bert, who was one of Santa's messengers, rang a special bell. All the elves knew what the sound meant: suppertime!

"There is only 6 months more until Christmas Eve, as you all I'm sure know," exclaimed Bert. "Codger, are we up to speed?"

"We are ahead of schedule", answered Codger with glee. Being ahead of schedule was fairly regular in the North Pole. Though being ahead of schedule was ever treated as though it was a pleasant surprise.

"Dandy!" Bert said, clapping his little hands. "It's to the Supper Hall! Wash up!"

Rounds of cheering went up as the elves began bustling out of the shop, in groups or pairs. Bert cast a glance to one in the exiting crowd that was approaching him. "Hi ya Harrie! Delightful evening isn't it?" said Bert, giving him a wink.

"Bert, Bert, what did Santa say?"

Pawter had a directness about him that tended to set him apart from the other elves. He could rattle out more toys in less time than anyone, and yet - and this was a frustration to him - somehow time in the North Pole favoured the efficiency of no one particular elf. Being ahead of schedule happened like the falling of snow, and it was ever surprising as a burst of twinkle-twangle.

"Come now, am I to ride?"

"My Harrie, it's my special pleasure to tell you that Santa..."

Here Pawter's face blushed and grinned with the bliss of something long hoped for and sought after being eminently satisfied.

"...that Santa has given you the noble task of feeding the reindeer before the sleigh launch!"

Pawter audibly choked. "What! Er, the - reindeer...feeding? Do I go with Santa's ride?"

"Other elves, as yet to be confirmed, will ride with Santa. You, Harrie, will feed the reindeer for their journey."

"I am out of the ranks of those yet to be confirmed?"

"Yes."

Bert, perceiving Pawter's obvious disappointment, added, "But so am I, 'out of the ranks' as you put it, though I see no reason to see it that way. And so are a great number of other elves, speeding Santa along his way! Suppertime!" Bert gave him a great smile, turned and left for the Supper Hall.

Harrie Pawter remained, stunned, alone, in the empty shop. He glowered into space. His face grew more strangled with an awful look by every second. His hand reached for a toy airplane that had just been completed.

There in the shop of flying toys something happened that had never happened in the whole history of the North Pole, neither by accident, and certainly never on purpose: an elf broke a toy. Pawter threw the airplane down to the hard floor with a furious violence. The toy smashed into flying pieces in every direction.

"Damn him! Damn him! Damn the man! DAMN HIM TO HELL!!!"


End part 1.

Swimmer and Flyer

"Tell me about swimming, and I shall tell you about flying", the bird sang to the man.

And the man said to the bird, "More - I will tell you how man was made for walking on water."

The bird said, "I always thought you were exceedingly strange creatures; made for something as strange and contradictory to you as walking would be strange and contradictory to the whale who, having walked on land, was then made to fly."

"It is so", said the man. "At first when the Man Catcher took me to the tides, he slung me on his shoulders. They were such big shoulders, and I was but a thin little waif. He swam with me on his shoulders and the water seemed shallow. I was convinced it wasn't all that deep when he took me far from the shore."

"Or rather you did not need to think about it."

"One way of putting it," said the man. "The Man Catcher then unslung me from his shoulders in the water and held me as I learned to swim. The water's depth then started to dawn on me."

"Like the great curve of the earth as you go higher in the air," said the bird.

"Maybe so. But then he let go of me in the water while I was only still learning to swim. I was always thinking I was always learning and therefore never ready to try and do it. There is no ready, really. He let go of me. And I swam. But you know, together with that excitement and confidence of strength, I can't describe how horrible the thought of the deepness of the water was. The water suddenly became very, very deep. And monsters from the darkness below were suddenly, in my mind, free to come up and devour me."

"A horrible thought", said the bird, shuddering.

"Yes. Then when I was most tired - we were so far out from any shore - I started to panic. 'Surely you will carry me on your shoulders, Sir, for there is no way I can make it back to shore!', I said, quite sure that he would not let me drown from losing my strength. But with that, the Man Catcher said, 'Well, if you're tired of swimming then get up and walk!' And I said, 'But how can I possibly start walking on water when I've only just started swimming, and when I am so tired out at that! You're asking too much! How?!' And he answered, 'Just like this!' And with that he climbed out of the water and started walking around on its surface like he was dallying through a quiet meadow. He put his hand out to me. This gesture took away my fears and I took it. Swimming suddenly became a thing of toil - a mean feat. I was walking on water! But you know, I cannot describe how very deep, how bottomless the water then became, with no guard - not even the thinnest glass - against the fathomless abyss yawning directly under my feet. The walking was so simple, but the abyss was at its most real!"

Then the bird sang, "The higher we fly in the air, you know, the more we feel he sustains us, and we become like nothings - nothings sustained and kept from annihilation by him whom you speak of, sustained by his very own being. We seek not to understand ourselves, but only as he understands us."

"Yes," said the man. "When I walked on water, the less I concerned myself with myself, the more I was available - because I was so small, so at times like nothing - for the administration of innumerable riches and for receiving the depths of His love. And by the way, those depths of love made the abyss below my feet something like a puddle - or rather, all the facets of its depths were revealed, even though unseen."

"The earth is revealed to us in like manner. It is then we are usually asked to descend back to it and sing our songs."

"The walking on water", said the man, "was something I thought might be attainable by thinking the waters more and more shallow, and me, more and more practiced, until one day I could just step out and walk. But it was very much the opposite: the water became deeper and deeper, and my knowledge and expertise less and less so."

"It is then heaven is revealed to you in like manner, for the Man Catcher emptied himself to death, abandoned, and you attain the song that is so ancient you have never sung it yet."

A Halloween Tale

One Halloween, Frederick wanted nothing more than to go trick-or-treating as a werewolf. When or how the vision came into his head is uncertain, but the apparent lack of any concrete origin - either through advertisements, films or television - did not diminish the power, the frightful vividness with which he was determined to become a werewolf, out of the blue as it seemed.

"Ah-roooooooooooh!" he howled in wolfish rebellion at his mother who had been making other suggestions to him: Why not as Harry Potter? Why not as SpongeBob? Why not as Barack Obama? Why not as a marshmallow? Oh pumpkin, a marshmallow would be so cute!

"Oh mommy, those are all so stupid! I want to go as a werewolf! Ah-rooooooooooh!"

His face was thrust up at her and ravenous with an appetite that would not be dissuaded. Frederick's mother simply had to give in. "Alright pumpkin," she said. And they searched together for a costume that very day and eventually found one at a Halloween specialty store called "Spirit Halloween".

The costume was very wolf-like and just Frederick's size. They did not need to search for long in the store, as it seemed to be put there in the open just for Frederick, like the very materialization of his vision, down to every tuft of wild, dark brown fur. He was fitted into it. It had padding inside that increased Frederick's volume, but not too much. When the wolf head - frightfully snouted with white fangs like ivory and pointy ears with hair spilling out of them like tumbleweeds - was placed over Frederick's, he became deeply excited.

"See mommy! Werewolves never need to get cold at night! Ah-roooooooooh!"

The saleslady who had helped them thought it was perfect. "Oh, how scary you are!" she said. To which Frederick made slashing actions with his clawed paws towards her while spontaneous snarling noises - new to Frederick - issued from the snout. "Oh, it's just perfect!" she said.

Then he finished by howling, "Ah-roooooooooohhh!"

"Oh pumpkin, you're so darling cute!" Frederick's mother said. "But don't go howling too much, pumpkin; you might hurt your voice."

"Ah-ROOOOOOOOOH!!!" Frederick belted back to his mother's suggestion to not howl too much.


The night before Halloween, Fredrick's mother had her girlfriends over, and they all sat in the living room discussing an episode of The View they had all watched in the morning. They were talking just like the women in The View. Frederick had just come down the stairs from his bedroom and at the living room entrance made his way quickly past like he was avoiding the piercing of horrible scanners, like he was avoiding The View. There were eight of them in The View, which was presently radioactive with a blistering feminine core. And sixteen eyes were set within The View, turning this way and that. One either avoided it or needed a radiation suit to live within its precincts - or a wolf suit.

Frederick was at the end of the hall going just into the kitchen, and was thinking of his wolf skin, up in his bedroom, where he had felt so comfortable, lying in bed reading, with the wolf skin just across from him.

Frederick's mother called to him. Frederick gave out in dread; he summoned his powers and squashed every molecule of his being into an invisible iron ball in the small pit of his stomach so as to endure The View. All the women's faces turned towards Frederick when he came to the living room entrance, that just a second ago he had slid past as a flitting shadow. And all eyes in The View had seen the shadow flit past.

There at the entrance he materialized and became immaterial at the same time. His mother asked him questions about school, about homework, about chores - and then about his wolf costume, which made his face burn red.

"Oh, you should have seen him in the store when he first put it on, howling this and that; he certainly likes being a werewolf! Maybe he'll put it on and scare us."

Frederick went up the stairs to his bedroom in a cloud of humiliation. When he came back downstairs to the living room entrance, the women were immersed again in The View, and were not quite prepared for what they saw. For Frederick came downstairs without the costume on, but just the wolf head enclosing his head. This effect, clashing against his normal clothes, was strangely creepy. He stood there.

"This is my wolf mask", he said. His head inside of it was a blazing hot pink thing.

"I hope this werewolf doesn't get shot with a silver bullet!" said one of the women in The View. "Where's the rest of it? Or are you in the middle of transforming? It is after all a full moon tonight!"

"Oh, it is too!" said another of the women in The View.

Frederick became excited. "And then I'll come back down here in all my hair and gobble you all up, you pack of witches! Ar, ar, ar, ah-rooooooooooooohhh!"


The night of Halloween came. School that day was tingling with excitement and anticipation and a crisp blue sky. The winds were blowing through town, and increasing as day wore on. No rain was expected. The first of sundown spilled about. Leaves blew along the streets; as evening came down and families had finished their suppers, jack-o-lanterns were lit in front of doorways and bowls of candies were got ready.

The streets received the outfitted children and their parents. There were Spider-men and Bat-men; Han-Solo appeared, and his enemy Greedo - who in the film Star Wars Han Solo shot dead without Greedo ever shooting first. Princesses of many types went out into the night. Frodo came with the Ring; Gandalf also. One lanky high-schooler was wrapped in toilet paper, head to toe. Many, many, many zombies lolled about with little imagination. Abraham Lincoln came forth with a hammer and stake and a distinguished stovepipe hat; southern Gothic vampires in league with the national bankers fled from him and his powerful, stable, efficacious Greenbacks. That night, in the midst of all, there was one werewolf, prowling. Always the wildest among the wild: the Werewolf, lone as the solitary mad moon.

Frederick never said, "Trick-or-treat" when people opened their doors. He always unleashed a rousing, "Ah-roooooooooohhh!" instead, without thinking about it. His excitement drove him on and on, from house to house, his mother always some ways behind with her girlfriends some ways behind their own children.


Then Frederick approached one primly kept house with a neat solitary jack-o-lantern, warmly lit: a frightened cat with erect, electrified tail, was carved into it. The little Wolf-man rang the bell. A sturdy old lady opened the door immediately, and Frederick howled before her with his sack already three-quarters filled, opened up to receive more goodies.

The old lady was calm and steady, and she could see through masks. Her eye was not sharp and keen - only steady. She said, "Now, I thought you were supposed to say 'trick-or-treat!' young boy. That's the only way you get candy on Halloween."

Something about her slow steadiness irritated the little Wolf-man. That, plus she did not give vocal attention to his costume, which so many others that night had complimented through many a 'Ooohh, ahhh! A wild werewolf is on the loose!'

Frederick reared and howled some more. Then he growled fiercely as only a Wolf-man knows how.

"Now surely a good dog can say 'trick-or-treat' on Halloween night", said the old lady.

"I'm the Werewolf of the night and I want candy or I'll blow your house down!"

"But this is made with bricks! Now only say, 'trick-or-treat!'"

"Ah, shaddup you old bag!"

And with that, Frederick put his foot through the face of her jack-o-lantern, then pulling it out he brought it smashing down on top, extinguishing the flame inside, stomping and stomping the pumpkin in a kind of dance, with an insane giggling laughter; then he madly ran off down her driveway with his wolf face thrust up towards the moon, howling, "Ah-rooooooooooooooooohhh!!!"

Unfortunately, at that moment, a silver Mercedes was coasting at a fair speed down the road, and Frederick, his head turned up to the moon, ran to meet the car: issuing out of the driveway's end Frederick did not know what the blow was, what struck him. For all he knew, some monstrosity from behind the night appeared and grabbed and hurled him and his "ah-roooooooooohh", which, being caught dead, was brought to a sudden stop. He flew through the air. And only this did his mother just see, starting in her periphery as she talked with the neighbour ladies: a car screeching and a lorn wolf shape. Then she saw all of it. His body struck the pavement like a canvas sack filled with porcelain plates. His candy was scattered.

An instant of night quiet hung over the street, into which suddenly burst his mother screaming, "FREDERICK!"

When the ambulance came, two latex gloved lady paramedics were stealthy in getting the broken werewolf into the vehicle that had set the street dancing with red lights. It wasn't there for more than a few minutes.

As the ambulance drove away, the old lady came out from her house and gathered up Frederick's scattered candy.

Fortunately, the medium padding within Frederick's costume, in the end, saved him, though only just. Even all that hair went into saving his life. If he had dressed up as Harry Potter or as Barack Obama, it would've been game-over for Frederick.


"And if you had dressed up as a marshmallow, everything would have been A-okay, wouldn't it pumpkin!" Frederick's mother was beside the hospital bed in which he lay, bound in various bone-healing structures.

"Some more candy mommy!" said Frederick. The old lady had managed to get Frederick's candy bag to his mother at the hospital. His mother had been bringing out candies every now and again for him to eat.

"Oh, here's a tootsie-roll, pumpkin."

"Gimme a tootsie-roll, mommy." Frederick thought about this for a moment, then he added, "Give me a tootsie-roll, Toots."

"Now pumpkin, you shouldn't call your mother 'Toots'. It's not appropriate." She held aloft the tootsie-roll.

"Tootsie-roll, tootsie-roll, tootsie-roll! Gimme, gimme, gimme!"

"Alright pumpkin, here you go."

She unwrapped it and fed it to Frederick. After chewing on it, he opened his mouth saying, "Gaaaawww - look mommy - a turd! In my mouth! Gaaawwww!"

"Ugh! Pumpkin, that's so naughty!" she said. And she started tickling him, saying, "Tickle, tickle tickle tickle!!!"

"Stop it mommy, that hurts, that hurts, that hurts!!!"

"Oh, yes, sorry pumpkin."

"What other candies are there mommy?"

"Well, here's some Sweet Tarts."

"Sweet Tarts, sweet tarts, sweet tarts! Gimme, gimme, gimme!"

Frederick's mother held it aloft like a carrot before a donkey, and said by way of extortion, "And what are you going to dress up as next year?"

"A marshmallow! Ah-roooooooooooohhh!!!"


THE END

Forlorn Riches and the Wayside Rich

First corn country, then cougar country. The past month has been an hour's drive in the morning - not me doing the driving - east to Chilliwack's mountains to work a defunct property, now up for sale, belonging to the Archdiocese of Vancouver.

It's just within the mountains and the view of the higher, farther mountains while working is enough to make the most strenuous labour a breeze. Though the heat of summer sinks in around us, there are, up at their peaks flush against the cobalt, the small open faces of the snow fields.

The property has six hundred feet of snaking driveway and it and the rest of the place was overgrown with grass and weeds. So it was mowing and weed-whacking and heavy pruning; tearing out huge shrubs from the front of the house.

Swallows are everywhere, lunging in and out of the vacant carport and equipment barn (equipment no longer there). On the low branch of an old Japanese maple there is a robin's nest with wan fledglings in it. On the open ground, a sudden toad appears, like a cake of dirt only a minute ago woke with life and legs. Snakes in the folds of grass.

While the immediate grounds assure one of their year or more of emptiness, with the drowsing back porch and lichen-ridden trees, bushes, the rotting fence posts, rusty water from the outside tap and vestiges of forgotten children's toys, there is a redounded age to the estate, in the way of outliers; in the realm around the failing fences, like border watchmen looking in upon the land's core of abandonment: they are the massive red cedar stumps. An archipelago of them throughout the nine acres, among the waist-wading waves of the field grass. Huge trees long ago cut down, their vast rooted seats still annunciate, through the decades of decay, the clear steeple-flow, fissured shape of their living years, widening in great girths towards the veiled floor.

And from each one of them, from the truncated top of each, a whole new, slender tree stretches up - or a clump of them - and sends down tethering roots like fossilized tentacles, along the fodder walls of the stumps.

Some are hemlocks that grow on the old red cedar stumps; some are alder or birch. Some are of the same kind they grow on. A few have virtually encased their pedestals.

At this terrible thickness of the Old, and not knowing how much of it and what of it has vanished, and not knowing how old exactly is the New that grows on it: this is where you arrive at life.

***

The other night I had a dream in which it was discovered that I had not the full amount of credits necessary to my high school graduation, and that I had to go back to high school, strangely almost eleven years now after the fact, for half a year to make them up. But at school there was of course none of the people I knew in my secondary school years. Even the ones who I was not on acquainted terms with would have been preferred. For all the people were somehow fallow and insubstantial, and none of them breaking, either desirably or undesirably, into the sphere of my own little world.

No wonderful sense of having attained seniority after the initial years of abject fear, when the old high school was still standing next to the newly built one, not yet being torn down, and which was still used for gym. The one which we walked to - from the new to the old - where the locker room was permanently permeated with decades of dirty sweat smell from countless teenagers and young men before us, and which was home to certain horrors: the towering seniors having their raucous ways. While I managed to escape for the most part their showmanship of strength, I still remember the awful sight of one featherweight kid receiving such a bad wedgy that his head pushed up the ceiling tile.

No gawky, zitty tall kid giving you your weekly Charlie Horse passing by.

No occasional thrill - and nicotine rush - at the smoke pit between classes.

No sense of emergence after the first early dark years.

No headlong crush on a girl who was so mature you thought for sure she was two years your senior; and then the smiting of bewilderment on discovering that she was in fact one grade below your own.

No quiet chuckling with friends in class over the physical habits and body language of the woodwork teacher, having discovered that all of you have observed the same thing for some time; and then the teacher doing that very thing you were chuckling about in front of you and your friends right there and then, seeing it all at the same time, and then the bemusement turning into louder, quaking laughter; and then the teacher continuing in his observed habit before you all for an extended period of time, unaware that he is becoming timelessly burned into your faculty of pure observation and giddy awe, as grand and clear-cut as any renaissance painting, and then the laughter so full and so hard it was like your guts were going to split open.

No sense of first time achievement in school history, when, behaving so badly as a whole class on one of those musky rainy afternoon's, the substitute teacher simply abandoned ship and went home, thereby forcing the principal himself to take over.

No discovery that you actually love English class - and Shakespeare.

There was, needless to say, none of this, nor the accompanying feelings, in the dream, as everyone in the dream seemed very conscious of not doing anyone offense, though not in any sensitive neurotic fashion. All the foibles of my own soul and personality that normally would butt against the foibles of others were, through the very absence of that ordinary jostling, not thereby dissipated, struggled with, or grown out of, but imprisoned within me and focalized so acutely it was as if everyone was aware of the aspects of my inner being. But they regarded it silently amongst themselves, coldly; not conspirationally and maliciously, but with common, steadfast indifference.

It was like they had attained to something we have been seeking which we need, and attained it with some kind of horrible perfection, but everything else about them, at some point in time, had been completely sucked out. And so, in spite of this emulative unity, there was through it all a sense of a great watchfulness, closing in.

***

As I drove home one night after Adoration I turned onto a four lane highway; two going in one direction, and two in the opposite. I was in the fast lane doing 80 (that's kilometers) steadily. It is the posted speed limit. A truck had come to behind me, tailgating.

Typically I pull into the right lane, if I'm not already there, which I usually am, but this person was pissing me off. So I stayed in the left, and kept it precisely at 80. There was a semi-truck in the right lane beside us, (which was part of the reason why I was not in the slow lane, as I was originally trying to get around the truck, possibly without speeding) so the truck behind me couldn't pull out and get around me.

The driver flashed the high beams, filling the rearview. This only hardened my will and I slowed down, a bit, and then went back to 80, keeping it there, on the nose. The driver flashed the high beams a second time. Still I didn't budge. The whole time the driver was behind me, he was tailgating in a way one would call aggressive, interrogative and endangering; the driver was as close behind me as any tailgater could get. He punched the high beams a third time. I refused.

Then, instead of high beams, police lights exploded in the rearview. I pulled over, fighting off a jab of panic and fear. Strangely as I waited for the cop to come up to the car I was quite at peace. The cop came up to the right side of the car and tapped hard on the passenger window. I opened the door.

He asked for my license and after some words which I forget, started on the reasons why he pulled me over. He was a medium-weight cop, with a certain nasally tone; but these two characteristics did not in any way subtract from the sense of power he wanted to exude. He talked quite loud in what was something between an air of tamed devil-may-care and aggression:

"You didn't like the way I was driving behind you like that, huh?"

"Well uh…"

"Is that why you slowed down like that, you didn't like the way I was driving behind you…why didn't you pull into the right lane?"

"Well, I was going to, but the semi-truck was there and I was waiting to get behind him…"

Which was sort of a lie. Though the fact is, once I had turned onto the highway my intention was indeed to get in the right lane, which is the lane I always drive in, detesting the ludicrous speeds which people drive at.

At no point did I even attempt to mention that I was doing the maximum speed limit and that if I had sped past it he could have given me a speeding ticket instead, and are you just pulling me over to show me who's boss, and are you saying that I should have gone over the speed limit? Okay, okay, I could have gone into the right lane after slowing down to get behind the semi-truck, but what, may I ask, was with you doing the endangering driving right up my rear, when I was in fact doing the maximum speed limit? That is after all what the fast lane is for: doing the maximum speed limit, without going over it, though nowadays doing the ultimate posted speed limit in the fast lane doesn't cut it for most drivers who I mostly regard - as far as they are in their vehicles - as batshit nuts, animalistic and oblivious in their squint-eyed minds. I had no reason to do anything to correct the situation since I was doing the maximum speed limit in the left lane, while it was you who needed to correct the situation by slowing down - sir.

I'm not that stupid.

When he had gone through all the motions of authoritative power and found that I was not going to offer resistance to that power, he went into soft lecture mode, once of course asking me where I was going [home] and where I was coming from [White Rock] and- White Rock? Were you drinking tonight [no] and what was I doing in White Rock?

"I was at church."

Four syllable terms for worship of the Blessed Sacrament that resides in perpetual exposition would simply have prolonged the ordeal.

"Yeah? The church is open this late?"

***

The adoration chapel is part of the church, not separate from it. You get to the chapel along the side of the church, going under eaves that look east on slightly down-gradating grass, almost a knoll, dotted with evergreens, and after the sward there is a forest.

There have been many nights in recent weeks when a little coyote would run about on the grass, sometimes keeping his distance, sometimes coming up to the eaves warily and the lights under them, before darting back quickly to the cool darkness under the shades of the spruces to resume his skipping.

The coyote would prance about, suddenly doing hairpin turns, then springing back again in a hopping romp, beyond the St. Anthony statue, seemingly loathe to leave.

One time it looked like he had a bird in his maw, and seemed truly delighted, skipping about with his prize, or his toy, forgetting it was also food.

I like to think of that coyote by the adoration chapel at night, while the neighbourhoods that surround the church grounds remain so, so silent and empty. Rich homes; furnished homes; newer homes; homes with expensive cars and television lights; homes deathly silent under the streetlamp light.

I like to think of that coyote because he makes me think of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, having made Himself so small and accessible, abiding in the remotest corners. That institution of His Eucharist with his apostles in the upper room goes to the furthest corners where He knew He would be most abandoned, neglected; not just in missionary shacks being visited by the clutch that lives there, but the greatly populated places where He would desire the greater number of souls, and yet receiving so few.

Those neighbourhoods! He Himself, the body and blood and full presence of Jesus Christ is just down the quiet street! And the stupendous silence of the tomb that greets Him in return!

The power of He who boomed the top of the sacred mountain that struck anyone dead who touched it; that power diffusing itself so to reach our own human hearts, instead of that mountain top - our hearts taking the mountain top's place!

After the sacred thunder: the silent gift of His own real flesh for us to eat and adore that is even more a mystery of increase. Does this shock you?

It receives an impotent, barely audible guffaw from the suburbs; and the distracted mind thinks elsewhere, lest it be thrown over in the face of reality.

So I like to think of that lone, lean coyote, dancing before Our Lord.

Leavings

“It depended on the life of your eyes at that moment, how often the horse’s head and mane became those of a lion’s, ravaging and efficient, and how fast it would morph back and you knew it was a horse all along. The horse was the scarier. It was the divine dignity and stateliness gone cold with its own irrevocable power: this was bound in the horse’s over-long snout and muzzle. It was pent, pointing straight down from its erect neck. Its eyes were the impenetrable shadows of guttural caves up in a grey cliff. In the shower of lightning I did not want it to meet me.”

“You’d rather have the lion?”

“Well…yeah, I guess so. Though he was scary too…no, I’d definitely rather take the lion. But it was the horse all along.”

“You see Jeremy, the horse is that self you are running away from– no, you are indeed very scared of this self. You’d rather make compromises with the prowling lion. The lion is your ego. You want to have it easy, sitting back, watching your cubs play, which represents to you your desire for contentment and producing offspring; or killing a gazelle, which represents your sexual prowess and fulfilment; you want to be able to roar and have others respect you, which represents your desire to roar and have others respect you; eating the cubs, which is representative of your unwillingness to let your children pursue their Freudian inclinations. And you see how the lion wanted to keep coming through the horse; this of course could mean you are bisexual, but it is unclear as yet, which one will win over, that is, if the horse and lion can’t make peace and become bisexual, one will have to come out over the other...the horse is that which you have repressed. The horse is free. The lion is domesticated, but the horse is free. But this also becomes the matter of the primitive you, the self which wants to be unbarred and beat his chest and go into the wild and become one of the animals - a lion for instance. Did you by the way, have any bad encounters with horses as a child?”

“Look, Roger, uhm, Dr. Roger, it wasn’t like that kind of dream. It was like peaking your head for a moment into some other wake-up world. In fact, I knew the horse was something very much apart from myself.”

“Yes, yes, it is like that sometimes. The mind has amazing capabilities.”

“No, I mean there was some message in it…that the horse was apart from myself…I mean, that was why the horse was scary…because it was so much apart, yet I knew I would have to meet it.”

“Yes, your unconscious has I think perhaps decided upon that inevitability.”

“No, Doctor, you're not listening…"

At which point Dr. Roger was scribbling in his notebook: "Attention Deficit Disorder: Flag Red." Then he scratched his balls and put the hand he used to scratch his balls under his chin, two fingers to his cheekbone, the other two curled down.

"Now Jeremy, you must not isolate yourself by creating the illusion that…"

"Doc. Did you ever listen, I mean really listen…to a story?"

"Yes, yes", said Dr. Roger who seemed to be catching on to Jeremy, and lifted his head while closing his eyes, "Yes. The story has always been the tribal impulse beginning with our ancient ancestors who employed it as a psychological means of acting out one's insecurities and certainties and to give the community a sense of belonging, for the group mentality has always…"

But there was nothing on the leather couch but a long indentation in the process of slowly lifting like yeasted bread dough, and the door of the room closing to, as though by an invisible hand.