holding onto leaves

--“Tu-Bishvat higea, chag ha elanot, Tu-B’ishvat Hygia, Chag ha Elanot”

One day on Tu-Bishvat, the Festival of Trees, a classmate’s mother came and gave us each a plant clipping. We decorated little pots out of egg cartons and carefully patted dirt around our plants. We promised to keep them warm in our jackets on our way home that afternoon because although we were celebrating the beginning of a new growing season in Israel, in Ottawa, where we lived, Tu-Bishvat invariably fell on a blistery, freezing February day.
This was another of the gentle ironies of my childhood.

I attended a non-denominational-but-more-or-less-meet-in-the-middle-Conservative Jewish day school for six years. My mother insisted that I go there in order to get the Jewish education I was unlikely to get at home. When my brother and I were younger we insisted on lighting the candles on Shabbat, somewhere around dinner time, and in the mornings on the way to school we sang our morning prayers in the car, but eventually my atheist father broke down and hung blue and white lights outside our house in December. They were the colours of the Israeli flag, he said, and contrasted nicely to the green and red on our neighbour’s houses, and besides, Christmas is about goodwill, not religion.

I always loved Tu-Bishva’at, even though it felt weird to sing about budding trees and then trudge outside in my bulky snowpants and build forts in the yard. Mostly I liked the songs and eating sweet things, which is why I liked most festivals, but the year we were given the plant clippings I took it seriously and nursed my little clipping to life. I thought it was beautiful: its leaves were purple and green, green and purple, each leaf confusing me with how one colour bled into the other. My father helped me transfer the clipping to a larger pot and probably watered it most of the time. With his help it grew and grew. We had it for years.

My classmate’s mother had given us a choice of clippings from two types of plants that day. Most people wanted the bright green and comforting squishy leaves of the rubber plant. I chose clippings from the other plant. She told me it was called 'The Wandering Jew.' Later I would run away. Gypsy, nomad.

in 4th gear

Driving from Fernie to Lethbridge
leaving the mountains and the sun behind us
heading east into flatter land
both of us regretting the mountains
there was peace in that truck.

He told me about seeing his first hay bale on the road,
the guy at the gas station he meets every week, how comfortable he is driving:
this is how it feels to shift, speed up before taking a hill,

I felt safe with my brother
safe in his cowboy truck
windows rolled down
sun beating on my right arm
I saw my first grain elevator after Crowsnest Pass, after the sign welcoming me to Bible Country.

"What was the name of the town buried when the mountain slid down?"
Such devastation. Frank Slide.
Boulders the size of trucks, the size of his truck, covered
the town, laid it flat.

I didn’t think mountains could fall apart, self-destruct like that, collapse

I guess anything can collapse, anyone can collapse
but the difference is what you take down with you
as you fall apart, as you fall down

we made it out of there alive
two streaks of cloud
with the sun behind us

The coulees, Lethbridge Alberta

coulee  "ku li" - [koo-lee]
1. Chiefly Western U.S. and Western Canada. a deep ravine or gulch, usually dry, that has been formed by running water. A coulee (or coulée) is a deep steep-sided ravine formed by erosion, commonly found in the northwestern United States and southwestern Canada. Most coulees were originally formed during the rapid melting of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age.The word coulee comes from the French Canadian coulée, from French word couler meaning "to flow."

The coulees:
moon scapes, tumbling deserts
erosion and rivers, creeks ran here, carving out these hills.
See the oases out of shrub: ponds and green, green trees and calm

- not like the stones and trees of your mountains,
not like the space you feel when riding, not like that stop, that emptiness -

But

an apple tree in a yard, a dog and a house,
building some peace somewhere, some place,
maybe if even just to get back

10 hours to kill

In this city of sprawl and oil money I am surprised to see green space everywhere
empty green space
even as the city vaccums up everything around it: hills, fields, forests, homes
even as the north is an empty hole, insatiably being dug up

and the people here move just as fast: they are jogging around me, not walking

I stop.

The elderly woman knows this is the prettiest spot along the river
I sit on the bench next to her, wanting and not wanting to disturb
Prince's Island faces us, a crumbling rocky beach, shrubbery, a bicycle

It's quiet.

She has returned after 25 years away,
she is new here now, it's a new city,
but she knows this one spot to return to, at least.

18 August 2006

"Bye, love. Next time you look out at the sea, think of me.
[Click]
I always wanted to take you to the sea."

There was the sound of a plane, and the smoke curled out the window.

I pushed the cigarette out. Tried to breathe.

False Face

It’s getting harder and harder to take off the mask.

When I first started to work at Storyworld, I wasn’t able to look at myself in the mirror after I was in costume. It was too weird. It was disturbing for me to see my reflection from beneath that plastic mouse face. The costumed body did not look like mine, even if the stockings and dowdy red dress didn’t really change my shape. It was weird, and I always looked away when I walked past mirrors.

I developed a ritual: when I was getting into costume, I would put everything on except for the mask. I would then close up all the bottles and tubes of moisturizer, water, whatever I had used, clean up, and even turn off the lights, all before I could put the mask on. Then I would hold the mask up to my face, so that I could see in the mirror that it was distinct from my face, and then I would close my eyes, pull the mask on without looking, and leave the dressing room in the dark, eyes shut, until I was clear of any known mirrors.

The second I was in the hallway, door shut, I could open my eyes. Somehow, I would begin to see differently, as if I had different eyes, just as I would instantly begin to walk differently, as my character walks. My body adjusted to the costume right away. So why couldn’t I look at myself? Maybe it’s that I was terrified of watching the transformation. I couldn’t bear the deceit.

I played Minna the Mouse at Storyworld Family Fun Park outside of Kilburn, Ontario. As Minna the Mouse I was married, presumably, to Micka the Mouse, but in real life I was sleeping with Pluton the Dog. At work the three of us had an overtly affectionate relationship that smacked a bit of a threesome and bestiality, but most of the children wouldn’t have known it was odd that Pluton liked to nuzzle Minna’s neck or that Micka frequently kicked Pluton "lightly" on the tail if he spent too much time with his mouse-wife. All in all it made work more interesting.
Usually all the actors would go out for drinks after work, but Jim, who played my mouse-husband Micka, would go to his house off the highway and eat Hungry-Man TV dinners with his real-life wife. I know this because once I followed him home, and thank goodness he never once turned around because it would have been awkward to explain.

I think Jim avoids our company because of his real-life wife, his middle-age, and because I think he really is jealous of my relationship with Pluton. Jim barely ever talks to Derek / Pluton when we’re not working. When they’re out of costume they could be perfect strangers, even though at work obviously it’s nothing but "Here, boy! That’s a good boy!" with appropriately affectionate doggie replies from Derek / Pluton.

But even though I am used to their coldness I still find it odd that they barely talked to each other after what happened that day, even though it happened at Storyworld, where they both work, and even though everyone else was talking about it, to each other, to the people in town, and to the police. It was also odd that neither of them was seen around the afternoon it happened, even though we had done two vignettes already that morning and had a longer playlette scheduled for later.
But what was more odd was that both of their costumes were missing along with them, and that the man who attacked me on the path between the pavilion and Minna’s and Micka’s Mouse House was wearing Pluton’s dog-head mask and Micka’s black and red mouse costume.

I never did find out who was inside.

Since then, for the past week and a half, I haven’t taken off my Minna costume. During the examination at the hospital I was very upset when they made me get undressed and put on that light-blue gown—the material, soft like paper, hurt my skin. I refused to take off the knee-high stockings I wear in my Minna shoes, even though the shoes went into the clear plastic bag along with my Minna dress, my Minna purse, my Minna wig, my Minna mask …

When they let me go I changed back into the costume. I didn’t have anything else with me. I walked out of the hospital like that.

I guess I could have just put on the dress and the shoes and carried the mask instead of wearing it. But I didn’t feel like carrying anything. That’s how I was dressed when I went first to Derek’s house, then to Jim’s house, then to Derek’s house, then to Jim’s house again in time to see him sit down to a Hungry Man TV Dinner with his real-life wife. He saw me from his kitchen window as he was filling a glass with water from the tap. I waved. He didn’t wave back, just turned back to his wife and sat down at the table and began to eat.

He didn’t wave the next day, or the next day, even though I waved each time. Even though I have made sure to come by every day at the same time to wave. To say hello. I stand in front of his kitchen window, not too close, but leaning up against his back shed, near the roses. I don’t go too close because I don’t want to scare his real-life wife. I can see my reflection in his window and I know that the costume is starting to look bad and maybe even smell—I haven’t taken it off since the hospital examination, but I want Jim to know who is waving at him. Hey Jim. It’s me. Your true love, Minna the Mouse. Remember me? Sorry I haven’t been to our mouse house lately, sorry I’ve skipped work. But I’m here now. Hey Jim. Hey Micka. It’s me.

raw

February 2006

undone she’s come undone

I cried because I saw you
unravel
in front of me

or at least that’s what I saw—
I am always too quickly imposing myself onto you, always putting my thoughts
and convictions about you onto you, and for that I’m sorry—

but seeing you unravel
was watching myself unravel—
it’s always about me, isn’t it?—
and I felt lost

I cried, and the diner was eclipsed—
the carefully built towers of honey, strawberry jam, peanut butter,
marmalade, all swirled with the smell of grease, the clatter of dishes—
I was eclipsed, and you were raging at everything,
at the white dishes,
at the scraps of bread,
at me

I cried because you were lost and because I was too
and I cried because I felt rage

how dare you?
how dare you?

I wanted to scream it and shake you until you stopped hurting us both.
Because I unraveled too.
Because I depend on you—
on your grace
on the delicate magic that you make every day without trying—
so that I can survive the day, the scraps of bread, the smell of grease

is this March?

i only know how to use words as pictures
to stand in for pictures
to stand in for how i feel

but sometimes i want so much more:
when the words fill my mouth until i choke, it hurts to write,
and all i want to do is cry

pictures of loss and feeling lost

blue

January 2006

I am assaulted by different pictures always, a kaleidoscopic movie reel, a sequence of images that usually don’t make sense together: biking too fast, Drew, scarves, LaFontaine Parc at night, falling off cliffs—I want to write them down but I know that in the translation they will be lost, not evoked the way they should be. So I look and I watch but I know the images are already gone, ephemeral, dead. And I won’t remember them again the same way. And no one will ever know I saw them.

But you are a keeper of memories, I think. Your books are chronicles to the ceremonies of each day, to the feel of each stab of cold, to the way the sun slants against paper.

You sidled into my room. Liquid. I remember holding CDs, Joni Mitchell in my hand, and getting anxious, already homesick and scared, willing my parents to leave and stay.
Your eyes glinted at me, shifty eyes that worried me at first. Now I know that they help you to see better, more fully: easier to escape if you aren’t fixed in place, easier to get a lay of the land when you keep moving.

Do you remember a talk we had in your room that year? We both told each other something we never told anyone. I remember your corduroy comforter and the warmth of your room. We were safe suddenly. I locked your truth away deep into my flesh. I will never breathe it out, not even in sleep. I knew then that you trusted me. I knew then that your trust was even more delicate than I had thought, and that I must never give you reason to take it away.

"There is my fear
Of no words of
Falling without words
Over and over of
Mouthing the silence"
--Michael Ondaatje

Me and you. For keeps.