EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

Carry On (as You Aren’t Quite Were)

During my quarter-century career in advertising, I sought only muted recognition for my efforts. Silence was golden: no criticism or complaints from clients or colleagues. Clichés exist because their sweeping generalizations are fundamentally true. This is the era of John Lennon’s ‘Nobody Told Me,’ these times are “most peculiar, mama! Whoa!” Nazis and God knows what else have moved out of the paranoid bathroom in The Dakota and taken to the streets. No news is good news.

My family and friends snicker at me because I’m a tad particular. I embrace routine. Disruption disturbs me; I require an existing, standing structure. Two of my close friends are self-described serial entrepreneurs. I’ve no idea how they derive income from their vertically integrated eco-systems and I wonder how they sleep at night, so many unknowns churning in the mental hopper. It’s stressful enough working for someone else. My career courage levels never revved into the red zone, I’ve always known my limitations. I bide my can-do spirit for writing and household chores.

I enjoy sprinkling sweeping compound on the Crooked 9’s garage floor and then sweeping it up. I grasp the absurdity of raking leaves on a crisp and blustery fall day, but I enjoy the process. This past Thanksgiving, with the temperature dropping, I’ve been reminded of the small comforts of normalcy. I’m no longer a slave to the grind, but routine, the mothering arms of the mundane.

I haven’t actually seen Stats Guy since some time in August but he was on the phone the other day and we were talking baseball. It’s October after all. His hometown Los Angeles Dodgers are in the running to win the World Series. I phoned my former neighbour Forest at his downtown seniors’ residence. Once we were past the formalities of autumn holiday greetings, the lousy food he’s forced to eat and the nature of the Christ in world religions, our conversation pivoted to his beloved Oilers. Edmonton’s hockey club could use some decent goaltending and a quarterbacking blue liner. Oh, and 30 goals from the fourth line.

There were other reassurances too that our globe and my little world wasn’t completely off its axis, hiccupping like a knuckle ball into an insane, funhouse distorted, parallel universe. The clutch on our 2006 CRV went pfft, mercifully in front of the Crooked 9. The Motor Association’s tow service was prompt and courteous – as usual – a membership well worth paying for. And it was business as usual with the dealership’s service department. Ooh, the problem may involve the flywheel. Turns out flywheels are not merely props in flea circuses. Honda parts are in stock but less expensive after-market parts? Well, gee, they’re difficult to source and there are warranty implications. Just like third party supplier exploding airbag recalls, I suppose.

There’s a note on the next page of the kitchen calendar reminding me to change the furnace filter. The furnace has been running more frequently of late. It’s a machine like our vehicle. Mechanical parts are going to wear out. Every fall I wonder if its seasonal start-up noises are the same as last year’s. And so I worry: does that clank sound familiar? What about that rattle?

One of my favourite Bruce Springsteen songs is ‘One Step Up,’ a sparse and subdued wrist-slitter from the mid-eighties: “Woke up this morning, the house was cold/Checked the furnace, she wasn’t burnin’/Went out and hopped in my old Ford/ Hit the engine, she ain’t turnin’.” Back then his lyrics about a dying relationship weren’t quite so exactingly literal as they resonate today between my 2020 Edmonton ears.

Recent news from E Street is heartening, sparks are flying. A new Springsteen album featuring the full band which now has more members than the Alberta Motor Association is due a week Friday. “When the change was made uptown and the Big Man joined the band/From the coastline to the city all the little pretties raised their hands!” The two songs I’ve heard hark back to the creation myths of ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-out’ and ‘Backstreets.’ Fifty years along an endless highway these bittersweet tracks are wistful but not nostalgic rockers. Perhaps Springsteen read the Teaneck, NJ leaves and decided now is not the time for his earnest and dour Raymond Carver solo persona. What the world needs now is the popular and familiar because nobody can remember what that was.

The patio chairs have been stacked, tipped over and tucked into the exterior crawlspace beneath the kitchen floor tiles. I’ve cut the peonies back to stalks and hung their supporting rings off one handle of the upturned wheelbarrow on the north side of the house. Today I ran the gasoline out of the lawnmower’s tank. It’s that most wonderful time of the year, when I don’t know if I’ll need a snow shovel or a rake. This is the sort of uncertainty I can embrace, cope with. I’m here, I’ve done it and I’m doing it.                        

             

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of absurd musings since 2013. Sign up for e-mail alerts from the Crooked 9, use that thingy on the right. The second wave and winter are coming; you’ll need a distraction.