EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

The Summer of Disbelief

Ann has three weather apps on her iPhone. I have one that functions fairly well on my geriatric iPad Mini whose operating system is beyond upgrading because planned software obsolescence wades in the same muck as disposable consumer durables; some kinda cooked up job. Anyway …. We compare the competing forecasts every morning before selecting the one we’d prefer for the unfurling day. Sometimes the digital world jives with the real world, it just don’t jibe.

There was a time when weather reports were no-nonsense, straightforward stuff. Temperatures were absolutes. Windspeeds were described as gusts. Sunny or cloudy skies. Rain or snow. Step outside and have a look. Make your own call. Be a cat – conditions may vary between your front and back doors. The UV Index became a forecast staple around the time Helios switched ultraviolet rays from a source of Vitamin D to melanoma mode. Sunbeams are now right up there with cigarettes and delicatessen meats. The newer Air Quality Index attempts to quantify why a noontime summer sky may resemble the fantastical jacket art of a used science fiction paperback.

“Rain” is one of my favourite Beatles songs. I’ve been singing that one under my breath these past eleven weeks. Ann has a better handle on the lyrics than I have, she knows the lines about the sunshine. This was the summer Ann and I decided we’d stay put and enjoy the season in our town. Little did we know it would be one for the books. Not one for a Polaroid album of warm memories so much as a compendium of photojournalism detailing flooding and broken trees. Neighbourhood weeping tiles and sump pumps are working overtime. My informal theorem of twelve lawn mows between Victoria Day and Thanksgiving holds, but only because the window of opportunity is the size of an iPhone screen. Mushroom grow in the tall, very green grass and they intrigue me: “High or die?” Best not to know.

The constant rain has been manna for mosquitoes. We have been infested by one or more of their 3600 species. I’ve been dropping poison pucks into our rain barrels and the murky pools of standing water in the lane behind the Crooked 9. This summer’s horde of bloated bombers sport horizontal stripes on their abdomens. Because I’m partially a product of my leisure pursuits, their markings remind me of the Allies’ D-Day aircraft recognition paint, bold black stripes on a white field. Equally confounding is insect absenteeism. I’ve not had to hang a wasp trap from our Ohio buckeye because there haven’t been any buzzing around this year.

Neither Ann nor I are gung-ho handymen. We manage to get chores done in our own time. Burnt-out light bulbs are a fine example. We treat them as psychologists would. Do they really want to change? I don’t procrastinate so much as gird. That process, getting my head around things, can range from hours to weeks. Sustained delay sometimes allows for things to sort themselves out minus any impetus from us. But last weekend we managed to refinish our two backyard patio picnic tables. The job was supposed to be completed before the summer equinox. The lag wasn’t laziness. We were waiting for a dry, bug-free window. Like wisdom, it was a long time coming. Then we just effin’ gave ‘er, eh bud? The refurbished tables were intended as useful surfaces for the weekend barbecues we’d planned to host. We’d anticipated our grandkids playing tee-ball and kicking around a cheap commemorative 2026 World Cup football whilst screeching like Yoko Ono. I pre-girded for that future scenario by purchasing a pouch of No Future rosin gummies. Five to 10 milligrams provide a pleasant fog of benign, almost Zen acceptance of chaos.

Endless rain has put something of a damper on sectors of Alberta’s ever-lengthening wildfire season (Alas, other provinces and territories are bearing more brunt). And the dog days of August never really wallop Edmonton. Mornings dawn as imprecise as the number of wasps I’ve counted so far this summer; single digits give or take one or two. The chill following thunderstorms and thundershowers creates fog heavier than the worst hangover over ever with the precision of a special effects machine. The fog doesn’t descend or roll in. It materializes as suddenly as the puff of smoke from one of Mysterio’s flash-bang grenades in a 1967 Spider-Man cartoon. Tuesday morning Ann and I flicked our Bics at each other on our front porch. Rustled sections of the grey, now camouflaged morning newspaper: “I’m over here, about two feet to your right.” The distance between us had never been an issue before.

Fire and rain. This ain’t James Taylor. This is climate change.

Although I keep a couple of scribblers upstairs, the basement of the Crooked 9 is my preferred place to write. It’s a solitary, immersive space. The décor inspires, spines of books and music on the shelves. Something of a elephants’ graveyard of non-trending paper. Thousands of pages of paper and reams of card stock which must remain dry. When I write and the words don’t come, or when a particular word I’m seeking eludes me, I pace. I have a route. A guaranteed stop is inspecting the collection tank of our portable dehumidifier. This summer its low voltage electric motor has been pushing the envelope of its limited warranty.

I usually place the unit in the doorway of the furnace room which is at the bottom of the stairs. A central location with a smooth concrete floor. When I’m in there fussing with it, I can’t help but take stock of our cache of furnace filters. This summer has been something of an abstract, a convenient noun for an informal grouping of consecutive months. Winter, inevitable, is never so obscure.                 

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.