EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

Coming Up

A flip gets switched. It happens over the day of a few courses. The subtles are sign.

The transformation always commences in the staging area off the kitchen by the back door. The knee-high snow boots vanish, their uppers stuffed with my Montreal Canadiens toque, my black fleece neck warmer and my snot-encrusted mitts. My outdoor work coat, Coca-Cola branded swag from a lifetime ago and which I’m not (and understandably so) permitted to wear beyond the property line of the Crooked 9, finds its summer hanger downstairs in the laundry room.

Up from the depths come Ann’s rubber gardening sabots – the two pairs come in two colours: yellow and red. This is the time of year when Ann can walk the line, actively plan her gardens rather than sketching them on January graph paper or strolling them in her February imagination before she falls asleep, no need to count sheep. Her concerns this year are our June travel plans and yet another season of drought with municipal and provincial water restrictions looming. The going’s getting weird; the wildfire season is already underway. We don’t care if the lawn is parched, but the established stuff, the trees (our lovely birches – two of the last few in the city), the shrubs, the perennials require a wet custodian with an unkinked garden hose. Perhaps the showier annuals, usually proud in their patio and porch pots, will remain unpurchased, wilted greenhouse inventory.

Spring. Possibly. Maybe. Very likely. I’ve put two of three shovels away, but I haven’t pulled out the rakes yet. Experience tells me I’m acting too hastily and maybe Ann and I are tempting fate by wondering about the near future. But, this time of year, God, we are compelled to stretch our spines and square our shoulders. If you’ve ever seen the Rolling Stones perform, watched a concert video or listened to a live album, you know Mick Jagger unfailingly asks you a deeply personal question: “Are you feeling good?” Yes, Mick. “Well, all right!”

My unofficial spring anthem is “Fishin’ in the Dark” by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Ann knows all the words and unlike me she can carry a tune. Though “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds” I only played it four times in a row because one person’s giddy happiness may trigger a domestic incident. Now, “Fishin’ in the Dark” might be a little hillbilly, but at least it’s not a wretched sugary confection from fuckin’ ABBA and their avatars.

I feel good. Better than James Brown. I dropped the pen the other day on the second draft of a new work of fiction. It’s halfway toward completion now, the distant goal, somewhere around N between A and Z; 22 months of work to date. The December vinyl release of The Muster Point Project’s 5 KG EP for which I wrote the lyrics received positive notices and continues to benefit from radio airplay. Selling better than my books, apparently. All of this upbeat stuff is necessarily tempered by my wariness of the ides of March – which can be brutal.

There’s no portal to the afterlife. Fact is, it’s impossible for Him to let me in because there’s nowhere to go – should there be 1000 harps in Heaven, I hope Little Walter and Junior Wells are playing them. Still, these past few days, I must confess to a few “come to Jesus” moments.

I was outside on the front porch, early afternoon, basking in the spring sunshine, enjoying a cigarette, trying to bloom like some kind of Buddhist lotus. I imagined I could hear the snow seeping in to the earth. I imagined I could see its surface evaporating in the yellow heat. This time last year, the 300 Club jungle telegraph was alive. Membership in this Gang of Six is granted solely by friendships and constant, if intermittent, contact going back 50 years or more. We were talking about a proper reunion in Palm Springs, a full quorum since I can’t remember when. Ann said to me: “If you don’t do it now, the next time may be a funeral. You’ll be one down.” Somehow, it happened, came together. That trip’s first anniversary is coming up. Its countdown has been reduced to days. My God, I’m still trying to shake the desert sand from my shoes; I just got back to Edmonton last weekend. 

“Those romantic young boys …” Later that same day’s night I was home alone swirling around in the YouTube vortex. I came across live, hi-def footage shot at the beginning of this month: Bruce Springsteen guesting on stage with John Mellencamp for a duet of “Pink Houses”. I thought, “Oh, man, if this had been broadcast maybe forty years ago on The Midnight Special or that PBS music show In Concert, my joy would’ve been transcendental.” And network television in those days, when both rockers were in their primes, one and done. I watched the YouTube clip three times. As I sat in front of the computer monitor, I thought, “Man, they’re getting on.” Mellencamp especially, pasty and doughy, like a too-long-retired elite athlete or maybe Alec Baldwin yesterday. Me? I haven’t changed a bit since, I don’t know, 1984.

An envelope arrived in the post the next day. Something from Service Canada addressed to me. I jogged its contents before slitting its top with a letter opener. Canada Pension Plan registration forms sprang out. I thought, “Surely, this can’t be.” Because it’s tax season, I was able to bring the matter up during a meeting with our accountant. Should I receive CPP now or defer the benefit for a nominally larger monthly sum some five years hence? He said, “You’ve made the contributions. You can’t know how much time you have left. I suggest taking it now and enjoying it while you can.” I said, “Cigarette money.” He laughed: “There you go.”

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is awake and alive. Watch and listen to some of the songs I co-wrote with The Muster Point Project or buy 5 KG, the complete EP. Of course, you can still purchase my latest book Of Course You Did in your preferred format from your preferred e-retailer.