The shadows of evening

http://cowbird.com/story/91402/Shadow_Of_The_Evening/?featured=1

Like grey wolves lurking in the shadows of evening, just out of sight you sense them, but they wait quietly. There is no rush. They will get the chickens no matter what fences you build with love and and planning and determination. The chickens are toast. Night after night they will come for more, the wolves. The hen house will persevere for years sometimes, the squawking alerting passersby of the angst. But those grey beasts, they have cunning. Into the darkness they will vanish their prey, the few remaining of the roost ever more timid to crow their glory. We may shelter the chickens in homes of benevolence, but the spirit of the wolf knows no walls thick enough to deter it's hunger. The last of the flock will be taken. Only then will the wolf den move on to a another conquest.

That is one flitting perception of dementia. As my wife smiles the biggest heart felt smile imaginable at the littlest wee bit of attention, I bring her a morning tea, my heart breaks. I wish to run away, to hide from the knowledge that she will never again put down my idiotic rantings with one small word of wisdom. She will only smile, the introspection of her soul growing ever deeper as her eyes concentrate on that inner world, her place of refuge it seems, till I break the spell once more with that wee bit of attention, “Madam, would you mind some scrambled eggs and toast for your breakfast?” And she smiles, somewhere deep inside knowing that I jest, and answers with a soft “Yes,” and I wish to cry.

This morning she brought to her place where she sits near by me, three pairs of 'dry' jeans we purchased at the 'Valued Village' just yesterday. I had hung them on the line in our cats bedroom to air a bit, the smells of used clothing, even though new looking, being overpowering. The meds for dementia have helped her memory, but the facilities to make cognizant sense of those memories often need a helping hand. We will launder those jeans later, and she will be so proud of them. It is for those meaningful episodes in our routine for which we live. The outside world has lost it's significance. She asked me for the longest time what day and month it was, and we would find it on the calender, and five minutes latter she would ask again, a compulsion of sorts. But no longer. The day of the week is irrelevant. The season is noted by the amount of sweaters and jackets she puts on when she gets outdoors, since it is not 'cold' enough inside the house to dress. I'm not an arguer, I just put lots of stuff in a bag and let her adjust her temperature as she sees fit. So far it works. Tomorrow probably not.

The need to think for two people, my dilemma. I spent my whole life avoiding my own better judgment, and now I'm thrown into this awesome duty our civilization imposes on caregivers not to screw up. “Did you go #2 today my deary?” “I know you don't like bathing, but it's been two weeks my deary!” “Just one spoonful of peas my deary, please, no not in the garbage!” “Did you take all your meds?” as we rummage through her purse to find the ones she doesn't like which she sneaked there when I turned away one second. One second! And as I sit for a moment to try to remember what the agenda is for today, I look up and meet her eyes which break into the great big smile which makes all worthwhile. “How did you know my name was Vicky?” she quietly asks. “Well my deary, we've been married for over thirty years, I'm guessing you let it slip once upon a time,” and she gives me that look of incomprehension, thirty years being a time frame much to vast to fathom.

I used to walk the neighbourhood every evening, that masochistic adventure of an arthritic sojourner exercising those squeaky painful joints. She would watch the tele, lost in her world of déjà vu. That was ok for several years with only minor problems to face when I returned. But then I started to come home to destruction, my desk and bookshelf contents on the floor. She did not wish to be left alone so I began taking her with me wherever I went. We took the car because she can't walk very far. My exercising dwindled as I used to walk everywhere putting in miles a day. So now we play 'a game' as she puts it. She sits in her chair and I walk back and forth, wearing a path in the flooring from the far bedroom window to the kitchen window at the other end of our abode. She meditates upon this adventure, uttering a single quiet word as I pass by. Sticks out her tongue at me, she does, in her more lively moments, so she shyly tells me, us laughing at the treachery. When the lack of attention from my introspective thoughts overwhelms her she quietly says “Holler,” and I know it is time to sit her up straight and give her a big hug and some much needed attention before I continue on my journey.

The wolves will come for yet more chickens. They just wait in the shadows biding their time. Makes an old fool mature a tad. But an old fool can dream. Bicycles built for two, riding off into adventures in reckless irresponsibility, her spirit riding in glory on the seat in front. Perhaps I will someday have that freedom once more. I will take her with me on journeys to the far ends of our country and laugh at the wolves lurking in the bushes. Old fool I am.

Adventures of a neurotic soul

In a creamy dreamy world we are in an enclave, an old fashioned manufactory of sorts, tables and benches with odd spindly looking machines and wares of some unknowable variety scattered in rough piles here and there. No one seems to be working, they're standing in an unkempt group discussing something or other. So we wander on through the shop and out a rear door onto a path, a dirt path in a neighbourhood of dwellings, tin and tile roofs divided by narrow yards cluttered with fences and gates and pathways between the homes. Our path is higher than the roofs on a bit of built up dike of sorts, odd in a rather dry region, the path as the major thoroughfare to the world at large.

We take a slight venture through a narrow walkway between some houses, through the open gates where cats and small dogs play with children who treat us as part of their domain with little acknowledgement. We find our way back to the built up path trimmed with unmown grasses, being detoured by a myriad of fences and miscellany of no drastic significance, finding ourselves dealing with a less than well healed individual who would wish to trounce us of some cash for a pile of corrugated tin, us finding a hole just large enough to squeeze through to our freedom. We wander further along to come to a more suburban locality, with streets wide enough for vehicles of the four wheeled sort although there are none to be seen, and we wander along from one intriguing district to the next, the roads becoming ever more wide to allow for two lanes of motored four wheel vehicles although there are none to be seen, and the homes become much more 20^th century in their construction with concrete sidewalks leading to locked doors.

We wander on, finally arriving at a cul-de-sac on the edge of a vast prairie, endless fields of grasses, tousled heads to go to seed for a new generation. We wander that cul-de-sac searching for that little home where something of a familiar nature might impinge on our awareness, but it is in vain. That home does not happen in this local. Into the grass fields we wander, coming upon a set of stairs which lead to, in their stairwell, a floor of hotel rooms, and a bellhop who turns out to be a modest unnameable fling from our remotest past who leads us to our room, number 306, but we are distracted by some fascinating reflection in the window at the end of the hallway, and we gaze in lost oblivion at the miles of grasses below, blowing in the breeze.

We venture back down the stairway and embark on a journey to a distant city where we once abode, in disoriented younger times when life played itself out in episodes ill guided by hormones and insurrection. Our spirit glides along by default, sometimes on foot, other times on a bicycle, following the roads built by civilization often leading to impasses in squared miles of dirt trails in bush with no thoroughfare ever forthcoming, and back to the main arteries we must detour in this flight across the continent.

We arrive in that distant city through some perplexing perseverance, and ascend a stairwell in a dormitory where we once sought escapades of enlightenment in the unhinged past. It is with some confusion as to which floor to venture into, the residents seeming polite enough, but in a very different plight of consciousness than that which we possess. We head on through a hallway and into the halls and chambers of discourse, to be smitten by the confusion regarding issues of religion and edification. So off into the big city we adventure, investigating a lowly apartment complex with doors which no longer close squarely to hide the ravages of poverty caused by life's complexities. Our room is entranced through the rooms of other residents who hide their modesty under quilts and ragged blankets and who try in vain to ignore our passage.

We morph along, out into the squalor and five way intersections of convoluted traffic snarls, who shielded in their motor cars in their journeys between work and play, bypass the scumbaggy downtown folk. Weaving through the cluttered sidewalks we hit upon the loneliest drag imaginable, a decrepit nauseating stretch of filth enlivened by dark and foul smelling doorways with the odd lurking character. We enter one, an oriental couple's eatery of sorts within which we have never seen another customer, and they emerge from their rear dwellings to fry up hamburger on toasted bun with few fixings. Next, into a hotel we navigate, a hostel with interior balconies reeking of stale spilt and regurgitated liquors of unknown qualities. We take a room, paid in advance by ill gained credit and enter the elevator. The door opens to a spacious conclave, with college students between classes enjoying the freedoms of expression lounging in brightly coloured chairs.

We walk the long hallway to the far end where a set of wide stairs takes us down to the entrance, a confusing revolving door with mirrors in place of clear pains within and without and by the time we navigate our way out the world is lost of it's purview. Onto the sidewalks we continue, finding the rear entrance to an enticing huge underground mall. Down the escalator we descend to pass the kiosks and thriving stores which fulfill the dreams of the realms of ear pierced, nose pierced, belly button pierced, tattooed from head to toe, almost stark naked with hair the colour of the rainbows on a mystical planet, the descendants of Adam and Eve masticating on the apple of sinful idolatrous obsessions, but jealousy gets us naught. We continue along, the halls becoming more and more barren as we approach offices with ten foot high clouded glass doors with embedded black lettered signage, obscuring their secrets to the outside world.

It is here we find a back stairwell which leads down to a tunnel, the mother of all tunnels. It starts at roughly eight feet wide and eight feet high, nicely tiled floor, soothing cinder block walls, park benches to rest upon. Mile after mile it snakes along, heavy metal doors appearing every quarter mile or so to open to another identical section. We walk along for the better part of a day, occasionally passing a seated stranger lost in thought and often wearing a brightly coloured hat. A section with small venues selling trinkets and fast foods seems not out of place as we journey on. Through another set of steel doors and the tunnel begins to adorn itself with roughly carved walls through clay and rock, the path becoming ever narrower strewn with boulders and debris. The steel doors seem replaced by narrow cavities, smallish holes in rock which one must crawl through into the next even narrower section.

On and on we venture, squeezing by strangers as they approach from the distance. Then looming in the distance we begin to sense some fresh air and our expectations heighten as we approach a circular chamber carved from the earth, rough walls reaching stories high to the light above. Rope ladders with rungs cut from dead boughs hang from above, never reaching the conclave. Souls clamber up and down, some dropping to their fate on the cold rock floor beneath. In the conclave is a bottomless cavity to the bowels of the earth, a modern elevator taking us down, stopping at every subterranean level, doors opening to an ever more challenging array of pillars and beams supporting the structures above. The elevator finally thuds to a stop on the bottom level, seems no one has come this low in millenniums, and the door opens to a rocky den, a steel doored crypt the subject of our supplication. It is locked.

Mystery upon mystery, it is now open, our crypt, the brightly lit the interior holding a key, a gem of great significance to no one in particular. Into the vault we climb, gem in hand and emerge from a wooden attic through a trap door into a closet where we stealthfully make our way down a narrow wooden staircase to the main floors of an oldish wooden mansion where we can blend in with others, never divulging our good fortunes.

da

The wizened mind, it performs miracles when it comes to formulating coherency. Now take 'time' for instance, that tempo of an hour glass pouring out our life's seconds into the shades of Hades, it is but mere delusion that there is a present in which we live. We live in a continuum as luck may have it, the present being an aberration of human arrogance as our twiddling brains robustly seek gratification in and for the moment. Take the ancient gnarled peduncle of a tree. It lives not for today, but for the millions of generations in it's past as it stands and as a continuum to it's future generations, not once wincing at the human peeing on it's roots.

And take even truth for that matter, 'the truth' is merely an accident of inference. The human mind espouses to infer from it's lifelong vigilante on the savvying of it's surroundings that there is an ounce or two of limpidity to the universe. The universe is what it is, truth be damned. High five to the 'truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth' we lament, yet we infer the truth, as much as our wee minds can grasp, whilst all is really relegated to the sins of commission. There is but commission, and all judgment is based on the inference thereof, disdaining human nature.

Our wizened soul must quixotically assert that there is nothing beyond the senses, consciousness is an emergent property, and that it is foolish to seek what cannot be seen. Life is what it is, yon masses, let a man live happily, let him feed on saffron even though he run into debt, debt relinquishing it's stature to that of truth, that mere accident of inference. Yet we rally forth in our utilitarian social dilemma, our debtor's prisons and bill collectors holding the key to the mysteries of our human hornswoggle. I am in debt, therefore I am, the only postulate of 21st century acumen.

Wisdom lays in the denuded enjoining of pleasure and avoiding pain as far as possible, pain's rhapsodies only useful in providing livelihood to priests. Pristine pleasure requires relinquishment of the moment to live the past and future as one, amusing the omnipresent component to our theosophy, and relinquishing the moment to it's just place in a kaleidoscopic holographic universe where time portrays itself as none other than an aggravant of human awareness. Let one's eyes roll back then in blissful cantatas, abandoning all to the thrill of iniquitous illusion.

Every day we encounter our self awareness, sucking in our egos a tad to envelop humanity as a somewhat supercilious playground for our boffo. But we can relax, our sentience is also but illusion. Evolution has merely played it's cards out teasing us with it's shenanigans. We are but star dust, ad hoc critters in the fecundation of the grand scheme of merrymaking. Self awareness's only purpose is to make us hump, to proliferate the jocularity we refer to as life. The moment is but illusion, consciousness that much more so. The id, the ego, the superego all cherish nothing but the sack, our consciousness nothing more than the callous gnarled bark of human parturience.

We must, to embrace fully our unity with the dust of our stars, take out our mats and meditate upon the verisimilitudes which deceive us. Ohmmm, ohmmm, this moment has been and shall forever be, ohmmm, ohmmm, all is but commission, ohmmm, ohmmm, light of the universe engulf my being. Ohmm, ohmmm, this moment has been and shall forever be, ohmmm, ohmmm, all is but commission, ohmmm, ohmmm, light of the universe engulf my being. When we awake one fine morning unaware of day month or year, when we awake one fine morning oblivious to human truth, that mutilation of the obvious, when we awake one fine morning enraptured by the stardust which pervades all, viewing humanity from the azureous beyond, we will have completed the circle of our universe's epic cycle. Out of nothingness to return to nothingness. So be it.

We, us personas, who inhabit this piece of human real estate as these enlivened jesting possessors, vow that we believe, belief being here inferred, this to be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help us our human coherency, as we create in enthralled rapture, our mystical staircase to the heavens of contentment unto which death shall depart us to, or has departed us to, or is departing us to... oh well. Yes, and you thought you had problems.

Regional benevolent self-sufficient sustainability

With a spirited Canadian election chewing away at our persuasions, where crendenda gain a respectable solemnity as we rationally debate their virtues, it gives that little bit of freedom gained about once every four years to dream of ideologies relegated to naiveté at times in betwixt.

So today we will harp on a throw of sociological philandering, cunning enough to knock the boots off yer granny and those industrious door knocking campaigners who are want to set foot in our disgustingly progressive neighbourhood. Terminology being of utmost importance here, we will name this ideology 'regional benevolent self-sufficient sustainability' as opposed to 'regional autonomy,' autonomy invoking scenes of flag waving, canon toting madmen exhuming plumes of delight as they ravage their contiguous populations. Yes, if'n these weary campaigners do endeavour to defeat the mutilated intercom to traverse the rickety fly infested staircase to your third floor pad overlooking the dumpsters and human components to the thriving underground markets along with their wares, just nail them with the biggie when they partake of your most pressing political issue, 'regional benevolent self-sufficient sustainability' and watch those smart Pads droop in dismay.

It is a mouthful, this regional benevolent self-sufficient sustainability, but it begins simply with each household doing what it can to exist of it's own puissance, as may be befitting, in terms of food and shelter. Just to enjoy a bowl of homemade soup made with veggies from your apartment window's handsome homemade flower box with your family or friend, and the rows of fuming diesel truckers long hauling Californian cauliflower irrigated with chemical and radioactive laced fracking residues will slow to a trickle and the ten lane highways will wizen away to become the antiquities of post human humour. And to further thwart your local version of corporate America, you might lavish in amazement at how many chickens and veggies you can bargain them out of for fifty bucks at your local Hutterite colony. Get on your bike someday and give it a try, invest in a wee trailer, camp out overnight if it's aways, go with a buddy, take yer granny.

In our naiveté we will assume that refugee crises are caused by a lack of food which is caused by a lack of rain, or overly zealous overlords who cannot quite fathom the multicultural aspects which the arbitrary boundaries of western imperialism have imposed upon them. Populations who are well fed and housed are seldom overly rebellious. Invading these areas or dropping bombs on them does little to bring forth the much needed moisture, it only aggravates their ability to produce food, and in cases were these bombs actually take out the odd overlord a replacement seems to pop up overnight, overlords being a dime a dozen. Dumping piles of weaponry and humanitarian aid on these regions does little in the long term to increase food production. What they really need is regional benevolent self-sufficient sustainability, and it begins at home, right here in your own neighbourhood.

But we must be weened. Yes it is true that we western inheritors of the earth have fathomed the purpose of humanity, that is to drill baby drill, to use the vast resources our good earth has provided for our leisure. But better than building walls and fences to keep them out, these hoards of refugees, we must ween ourselves of all our good fortunes and amenities till we have nothing they could possibly wish for. We are, gladly, on the right path, giving away our resources to rising autocracies so they can entice the refugees into their regions, outsourcing our jobs to rising nations so they can provide employment to their new citizens. We can reverse the naiveté of our social programs and force ourselves to live within our means, actually having to work for our supper of cabbage soup by growing it in our handsome homemade flower boxes. All it takes is a few more years of corporate hornswoggle and we've got it made. Our present government types are doing us an immense favour here, yes we must be weened.

So give yer granny a shopping list when they come calling, those campaigners. Get some real conversations about what matters to Canadians happening here, it only comes around every four years or so:

a) Are you keen on regional benevolent self-sufficient sustainability?

b) How benevolent are you in your powers as supreme representative of our constituency?

c) Will you grow lettuce to help our riding achieve environmental self sustainability?

d) How large a human population do you think is sustainable in our riding?

e) Will you live next to affordable housing to support those among us with mental health issues?

f) Do you have any ideas on promoting human dignity to alleviate crime?

g)Would you be willing to sit down with radicalized individuals to explore their issues?

h)With modern technology, do you really have to travel to Ottawa to represent us?

i) If COMER wins at the supreme court level, will you support their goals?

In our naiveté we do have a drift here, not? Education, research, and communication are invaluable to our present predicament as top predator on this planet. Regional self-sufficiency is key to cutting the excess of consumerism, the waste of shipping needless products. Save our limited resources for future generations who will hopefully be able to build on our present endeavours in their search for utopia. Regional self-sufficiency does not mean the hoarding of knowledge, good technology can be adapted for many purposes. Study, learn, share your findings, and go home at night and tend your garden and your chickens, oh but for naiveté.

We have lost control to the present helm of Canadian political autocracy, a dogmatic braggart who somehow manages to evince populism while flaunting the extreme wealth of the oil industry and their membership in the .0001 per cent club. Stephen Harper is a one-man sideshow and taking the car keys away from him isn't going to be easy, if it can be done at all. Now he calls Syrian migrants criminals and extremists (in the process alienating at least one quarter of the world's demographic), dismisses global warming as a "sustainable hoax" and seems to want to conquer the world with six CF-18 fighter jets. (Misquoted from Neil Macdonald on McDonald the Trump, CBC News)

Seated in opposition we have a watered down version socialistic reform, Thomas Joseph Mulcair. It is tough to cajole a brain washed anti-communist demographic into believing the New Democratic Party will not transform the armed forces into goose stepping enforcers of the communal way of life, but Mulcair even vows to balance the budget. Mulcair has stated that he is "an ardent supporter of Israel in all instances and circumstances,”while also stating that he is also an "ardent supporter of the creation of a Palestinian state". Pretty hard not to find something to support in that one, no matter what your stripes. Oh but to walk the thin line between corporatism and rigorous, science-based environmental impact assessments.

Then we have Justin the Trudeau, that youthful delight, envisioning a Canada built on the hopes and dreams of our juvenescence. Those liberals though, just can't separate themselves from their corporate beneficiaries, basking in the age of enlightenment, rejecting notions of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, the Divine Right of our Queen. Young Trudeau loves his Keynesian economics where when the market fails to properly allocate resources, the government is required to stimulate the economy until private funds start flowing again. Trouble is, these private funds, those corporate wheedlers, they flow them right out of the country into their 21^st century offshore subsidiaries. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation would be safe though, yes the creative endeavours of Stuart McLean would be safe and Dave could bask in Canadian glory. The environment though, who knows?

And then there's Green Party Lizzy, Canada's symbol of tolerance to the tree huggers of mother earth. Has her hands full though, attempting to single-handedly overthrow the fortunes of 'drill Stevie, drill,' championing a coalition of the delectable smorgasbord of would be caregivers of our nation. We love Elizabeth May. She gets into this regional benevolent self-sufficient sustainability a wee bit. Family-owned and operated farms of small to medium size which constitute the most reliable, high quality, and economical food production system, now and into our uncertain future. Ensuring Canadians have more time for friends, family, and community engagement. Re-investing in our national rail systems, building more train cars in Canada, increasing train speeds and phasing in high speed rail where feasible. But Lizzy, Canada needs hobos, transient farm workers who will fill the labour needs of those small family farms across our vast nation. We must envision an option for those of us who opt out of the career oriented doldrums of executive type want-to-bees. Just keep those trains chugging slow, Ma'am, hast causes waste, and hobos can't all run that fast.

What a queue of actors here. Lucky for them social media was still on the horizon during their war years. The next generation of would be politicians will be hard pressed to find candidates who've kept their expletives to themselves. What a dull world that will be. Makes you feel for future generations, that and rising sea levels.

But this naiveté. Shall we just give up, relegating our great-great-grandchildren the freedom of growing their radishes on the delta of the mighty Mackenzie River, sailing those oil tankers right into the good town of Hope on the high seas and avoiding all that conflict over Burnaby Mountain, creating a vast network of canals throughout Montreal to give those voyageurs a new hold on life in their gondolas. Or shall we get up tomorrow morning and facing east to the rising sun in emotional communion with the natural forces that be, prostrate ourselves before our star the sun in communion our primitive beginnings, with our mythologies as rationalizations of natural phenomena, and ask for guidance in how to best thwart the efforts of corporatism to warm our earth with it's generosity. What a choice. Oh well, a few short weeks and naiveté can be relegated to the next great upheaval of political pandering, hopefully four years hence, as we allow our newly elected divine representatives to muck with our mother earth. But for now our naive crendenda can lavish in respectable solemnity, as we fathom the postulates of regional benevolent self-sufficient sustainability. And as logic derives from postulates and never has and never will change a postulate, so too politics derives from postulates, and never has and never will countenance logic. But for naiveté.

Said mechanic on sufferin succotash

Was like the three stooges, this one for all and all for one, this trinity. The dangnabit, the sufferin succotash, and the holy crow, each one could run havoc with the niceties of society and never bat an eye. Interchangeable they were at a whim, yet each could make it's own mark in the context of sublimation. This hangover from the Victorian era, this rejection of all profanity forcing the common people to develop a wide variety of malapropisms to avoid swearing on holy names just made them swear. Not that it made much matter to the outcome of the atrocities which were commented on. Not that the authentic version of the father, the son, and the holy ghost had any great impact on stars of the heavens over the eons.

Said mechanic had been raised to view all observable phenomenon in light of the trinity, and conscientious objection, not to mention avoidance of oaths and secrecy of the ballot. It made not much matter in which direction observable phenomenon impacted the state of earthly affairs, they could be readily explained by the attestation or rejection of the aforesaid principles. So off to school he had ventured as a young lad, to deal with his abc's in light of the trinity, and conscientious objection, not to mention avoidance of oaths and secrecy of the ballot. This appreciably public school was a rather diverse environment, however, within which these principles could be attested to with unqualified devotion. There seemed to be people on the earth who didn't give much of a damn about any of them, a damn which seemed to go a tad beyond the attestation or rejection of these high principles. There did seem to be this realm of hypothetical speculation about things, not always in tasteful terms, and he'd been told, sternly, that it was risky to hypothesize, especially in this manner, in light of fire and brimstone.

The trinity was the most grasped concept of the three in this little public school, a little square and many windowed abode which hid among the fox tails and quack grasses along an unfrequented prairie road. Even the catholic types who chopped off the Lord's prayer somewhere in the middle lest the rest of it interfere with their Friday fish understood about the father, son and holy ghost. Conscientious objection was a bit of a stretch though, with black and white photos of the local young men who had lost themselves in the second world war plastered all across the back wall of the one room enclave with a cupboard for plasticine, and rub sticks and triangles for percussion sessions in the corner. And secrecy of the ballot and avoidance of oaths was just a bit of tomfoolery when everyone knew who your daddy voted for, even if it wasn't John Diefenbaker he swore allegiance to.

To be a mechanic was just so black and white. Either the cultivator shovel bolt came unscrewed when forced with a wrench or it broke, there was no in between. If the gas tank was empty, the tractor would not run, and whether you beseeched upon the holy spirit or not, you had to fill the tank. If theology could only be so simple. Jesus the Son of god or the preeminent prophet? Could this not be like a grade five bolt verses a grade eight bolt in your cultivator shovel? A grade five bolt snapped when you torqued on it and a grade eight bolt snapped when you hit a rock. You were screwed either way, malapropism or not. Son of god or preeminent prophet, fire and brimstone either way. Sufferin succotash.

They had arrived on the vast Canadian prairies in the luxurious vestibules of the Canadian Pacific Railway toting an odd admixture of trunks and bundles enwrapping their worldly possessions. They were sore amazed when the seeds they scattered forth on the freshly plowed prairie sod sprang up and multiplied with a passion. Their longing for the chance to turn the other cheek to those Makhno anarchists now somewhat aligned with the Russian Red Army on the steppes by the Volga River soon evaporated in the fresh prairie breeze. Catherine the Great had, a hundred years or two ago, invited a reprieve on that disconcerting habit of conscription, heralding forth a somewhat rocky abeyance from repelling the blood of plundering thirsty legions in exchange for some economic prosperity. But these new liberating anarchists gained no humiliation from the concept of turning the other cheek, and economic prosperity was a delightful way to fill their growling tummies with buns and borscht from the ovens of these healthy Mennonite women. So with not much left to lose, a few treasures were packed up and they headed for the Americas. Canada, having a great constitution involving the subtleties of freedom of religion and a good deal on open prairie, was an ideal destination.

Opa Heinrich, being a slim man, and not a rich man, had supplicated to the Father on behalf of his growing family as to what more adventures this earthly pilgrimage had in store for them. Born in 1887 in the growingly overpopulated Mennonite villages of the Molotschna on the northern slopes of the Black Sea in what is now the Ukraine, he had travelled as a toddler by train and then horse and buggy eight hundred miles to the north and east to the land of the Bashkirs who used this unbroken prairie to pasture their herds. They named their new home Neu Samara where they established their villages living in sod huts and breaking the virgin prairie which had been every year set ablaze over it's vast reaches, an eerie spectacle to behold, to provide fresh green shoots for the Bashkir's livestock. In two decades they had gained enough prosperity to build wooden homes and mills and a school for each village. They even built a hospital. Then came the Great War.

The young men including Opa Heinrich had to serve in the Russian army and formed hospital units while the unconscientious peasants battled the Germans, and the Russian army took to domiciling their Austrian prisoners of war with the kindhearted Mennonites for lack of better quarters. Then came Lenin's Bolshevik October Revolution of 1917. It was quit the horse race with the Bolshevik Reds on the inside and the Allied Whites on the outside and the Makhno anarchists bringing up the middle, them all making pit stops to exchange their weary horses for fresh ones from the Mennonite barns. By 1919 the Reds had gained a wide lead over the Whites in the region and gave the Bashkir's, who had newly established their own republic, the autonomy to run their own affairs. The Neu Samara Mennonites threw in the towel with these factional conservative Muslim herders in hopes for a bit of freedom.

The Neu Samarians had strongly to suffer from this because the local administrative unit needing an organized bit of infrastructure set up their administration in the Mennonite villages which had to accommodate the employees in their houses and perform cartilage services. In 1920 within the scope of so called communism the now controlling Soviet government took the grain away from farmers, so that not even seed was left, and there was in 1921-22 in the whole country a big hunger. In Neu Samara, with no seed to plant, there was this big lack of food too. Hunger weakens, and many villagers fell ill to typhoid and malaria. Because the government realized that it could go on so no more, more freedom was let to the farmers within the scope of a new economic policy. In 1922 the farmers were allowed some sowing grain and the situation returned to normal bit by bit. Many Mennonites had no trust in the Soviet government any longer and used this opportunity to emigrate. So truly tried and tempered by the Holy Spirit, Opa Heinrich embarked with his young family to the Americas. By horse and buggy, by train, by ship, by train, by horse and buggy, more virgin prairie.

Said mechanic had been privy to the intrigue of the layers of premises to persuasions, persuasions being the views of Opas wherever they habituate. There are methods available to this custom of preserving persuasions, the most natural one being blandishment. When flattery fails drastically in this theoretical indoctrination, damnation may be the only resort, avoiding bloodshed. The excommunication of dissenters, often self imposed, can lead to their fruitful analysis of the premises to persuasions. It can lead to a soul lost in the wilderness of human apperceptions. Often it leads to both. One could surmise that it must lead to both, that you can't have one without the other, but this would just be a layer of some premise. Said mechanic was just such a soul lost in the wilderness of human apperceptions. Whether this had led to a fruitful analysis of any premises would be to build on the vagaries of accepting certain premises, those layers upon layers built upon certitude.

Now Menno Simons, in about 1527, having become a priest in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, and having overcome a phobia for reading from the good book in case it subjected his world view to turmoil wrote in retrospect "Those two young men (the other priests of the place) and myself spent our time daily in playing, drinking and other diversions, in all vanity. At length I resolved that I would give myself to reading the New Testament attentively. I had not proceeded far therein ere I discovered that we were deceived.” Now there's a layer. Sounds like a soul lost in the wilderness of human apperceptions leading to some fruitful analysis. The greatest lesson to be learned here for all young Mennonites is not to concern yourselves too much on your Opa's views on playing cards and drinking during your formative years. The Holy Spirit works in wonderfully mysterious ways, if one partakes of that layer.

Our humble precursor of Mennonitishness, our Menno Simmons, hacked through several layers of ontological speculation, depriving the Roman Catholic Church of some of it's human collateral. The first layer to fall was that of transubstantiation, him having first hand experience with wine not turning readily into blood having honoured the principle of not giving that which is holy to dogs. The second layer to fall was the myth of salvation through baptism, mainly child baptism, that the act of baptism which by itself could save a miserable human life from fire and brimstone. Possibly gaining some insight from Parmenides who reckoned that apart from truth all else belongs to the vagaries of human opinion, Menno surmised that human opinion must align itself somewhat with the truth in order to circumvent fire and brimstone, fire and brimstone being a truth on the layer he gravitated towards. You must believe and be baptized upon that belief. Menno Simmon's third great layer of malcontent with the established premises concerned pacifism which morphed into conscientious objection, and Menno was proficient at this game of avoiding the ravaging savages of mankind, always one step ahead of his demise. This is a game which Mennonites have continued to enjoy, and has oft led them far afield.

The good book which Menno Simmons read from was the New Testament and it involved this tale of Jesus who was born unto mankind and garnered a bit of a following. The tale built upon the history and shortcomings in the search for utopia of a Semitic tribe who prevailed in a bid for the lands inward from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. This tale was written down from the oral history about this presence who made a remarkable impact on the lives of his peers. Archaeologists and linguists and historians have delightfully treated us to many layers of speculation regarding his life and the playful diversity between the varying sects who entertained the common folk among this tribe with their precepts considering themselves the chosen of YHWH, the god who is, and who had brought them to this land they called Canaan. It does seem that Jesus and his precursor John the Baptist were at least very knowledgeable of, if not affiliated with the Essenes, a rather reticent sect who had communities in many towns and villages.

Said mechanic had felt in his heart for years that these Essenes, or a portion of them, were actually the early Christian community with the persona of Jesus being a somewhat emancipating figure leading to a more openness to the world at large with the teachings predicated by this community, possibly somewhat of a Zealot instigating a pacifistic revolt against the mighty Roman Empire. The analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls and modern day explicating of the gospels and early testament had done little to disparage him of this view. Early Christian writers were stone dead quiet on the use of the name Essene but were keen on using the concept of “The way,” a phrase which embodied both the god and the spiritual path of these intertwined communities. It seemed the early close followers of Jesus way were privy to many intrinsic postulates of the secretive Essenes. Jesus spoke in parables to the masses but explained these allegories only to his closest disciples who seemed to have some knowledge of his less epochal tendencies, the more epochal tendencies being to heal and mingle with heathens even though he was want to nuance these folk with higher philosophical reasoning other than “Your faith has set you free.” Humorous really, to subvert the masses with the good works of righteousness.

The masses came to hear Jesus message in awe of the miraculous healings he enacted, at least that's the way it came to be presented in light of aligning with the prophecies of old, these feats being consistent with the higher levels of cognizance supposedly achieved by some Essenes. In view of the marvels purported by the pagan religions, the Christian's god had to outdo them just a little, eh? Whether Jesus parents, Joseph and Mary, were a part of the Essene community is a gander, but they did purportedly journey to Egypt on the well travelled “Way of the Sea” where the Therapeuts, who were closely linked with the Essenes, had a community. And Joseph and Mary were from Nazareth, except that the place was tiny, tiny if it was populated at all, and they were in likelihood Nazarites, Nazareth being a name given to the community of Essenes some of whom where Nazarites, and Nazareth being a well known local in the good book for such a tiny, tiny place, but my oh my this gets convoluted.

Oh those grade eight bolts on the cultivator shovels, tough as omnipotence, but for the rocks. Said mechanic had physically attended a wee bit of bible school just past his higher school on the conjecture that he might obtain some nostalgia for his Mennonitish roots. This wee bit of a school in the heartland of the Canadian sod had developed a linguistic diversion among it's conscripts which was an undecipherable mixture of subverted English and low German to any but it's few elocutionists. Needless to say, it put many visitants in a state of awe. If any nostalgia was indeed gained here it was for the warmhearted deceit with which words can be tortured by politicianists and religionists and other extremist groups. And that grade eight cultivator bolts would have had as little comprehensibility two thousand years ago as “The way” has today. They'd assume bolts were things we sent to school, which in an allegorical sense is almost deducible. All this allegory, and then for him to say “If you have eyes see and if you have ears hear.” Sufferin succotash.

It was a movement which did take hold, however, first gaining a foothold in the Jewish communities throughout the Roman Empire and then spreading to the Gentile poor and slaves. Seems like they rather irked the Roman lords, these righteous ones, equality among the masses not leading well to the trickle down philosophy of economics administered by a prismatic pantheon. The peshers, those Essene interpretations of events so important to this Semitic tribe's fulfillment of their prophesied yearnings, lost their meanings to the pilfered Gentile converts and became taken as literal fact. Pesher and allegory. Walking on water. Driving out evil spirits. The meaning of numbers. His teaching was not keen on giving away the secrets of attaining heaven. Had to work your way up through the levels of the cabala, these Essenes, to attain to the heavens, these heavens attainable in this generation, or the next, or the next, human progress gaining the same laxness as reincarnation. “And Jesus begat the disciples go out in a boat to humanity, he went up to the heavens to pray. But the boat was tossed about by the wind and waves of this evil humanity and the disciples were sore afraid. But Jesus came walking toward them on the sea of evil. 'Take courage' said He, 'It is I, do not be afraid,' and the evil wind was vanquished.” And so it came to pass.

But they subverted them. They finally subverted those righteous ones, them having established such a following that the great Roman Empire had no choice but to first condone them, and then since the Christians had such a jealous god not willing to share his omnipotence with the prismatic pantheon, to adapt this religiosity as the sole means of supplication. It took a few centuries but they subverted them, didn't have to try really, it happened from within, human nature running it's course with the struggle for power and control, using theological philanderings cockamamie enough to blow any sane man's mind and the cunning transmogrification of chirography into a good book straight from the mouth of god, of course egged on by the democratic workings of the holy spirit, to create such a debauched volume of vetted interpretations that it could condone the hierarchy of popes and bishops and priests of the Holy Roman Catholic Empire, with no need for the masses to crave the insights of mystical transcendence as long as they brought forth their offerings and costly penance along with their confessions of mischievous deeds to keep them subdued and the high rollers high rolling. And then came Menno Simmons.

Seems us Opas have a few more layers to hack through yet. Breaking grade eight cultivator bolts on the rocks of tradition, Said mechanic can but scratch his head. Not that it will make much matter to the outcome of the atrocities which are commented on. It can lead to a soul lost in the wilderness of human apperceptions.

An excerpt from 'Said Mechanic'

I do trust that the dear reader will not take this as the whole truth and nothing but the truth, about anything or anyone in particular.

Marco from on der Feistritz

They parched through the side door with their austereness, him and his hung over cronies, ignoring the labouring mechanic at his tasks, and whipped open the back overhead to unburden their ripped club cab of it's load of dead meat. They hoisted it up not a word being said, a dusty barrel lovingly purged of it's saw dust on the cold concrete under the coagulated blood.

Said mechanic remained at his task, chuckling helplessly to himself. Three days away with humongous cases of five-star, must have polished it all off, that fine Canadian whisky. Left one in a state of comatose, did it? Must have been a scourge of cross eyed luck to shoot that thing dead. Dragged it out of the bush in dizzying ecstasy, did you, tripping intoxicatingly over every little deadfall and poison ivy bush. Lordy, lordy.

Five hours later, mangled roasts and ribs all neatly bound in waxy brown paper, a hide and hoofs for the abattoir, and a rack of antlers adjoining staring eye sockets bound for the taxidermist, teeth grinning in salvaged prestige from the cuts and curses of these veteran butchers. Lordy, lordy.

They left said mechanic to scrape up the stink and the carnage amidst the numerous retchings from overcome stomachs on the cold concrete floor. They left in pure silence, except for the drilled out cherry bomb turbo muffler, to disgorge to their wives of an admirable adventure in the bushes of a bracingly fine frosty Canadian prairie. And fore sure to pass out stone cold dead to the world for a good twelve hours.

The owner of this narcotized crew cab and correspondingly neat and tidy adventure into the intricacies of establishing a legitimate sole proprietorship by somewhat legitimate means showed up the next day to take over the responsibilities of diplomacy from said mechanic. As said mechanic pulls out a greasy envelope from his coveralls, he flatly offers “Here's six grand for that D7 we rebuilt for Ukrainian Harry. I burned all the papers I could find about it like we always do for cash stuff. He's got no complaints, says it runs real swell. He's out clearing bush with it.”

Marco from on der Feistritz he was, stuffer of the contents of the greasy envelope into his hip pocket, left home in his ripe teens from the Austrian providence of Steiermark in the rolling platitudes below the Alps to sail the seven seas as a merchant marine, stopping at every port of call to squander his hard earnings on booze and mischief becoming to his guild. Marco from on der Feistritz he was, front tooth swinging in the breeze on its hinge of a hook, created by an ingenious Namibian dental surgeon in trade for a case of Portuguese port. Marco from on der Feistritz he was, wearer of the all-weather baseball cap, fit for action in the cold Canadian prairies after meeting the love of his life while smuggling the milky blue Caribbean seas in a beastly diesel yacht. Marco from on der Feistritz he was, figured he'd live a tad longer joining those suckering Canadians after a Dominican doc said to him out of pity “Drink, drink, but eat once in a while too.” Marco from on der Feistritz he was.

Said mechanic had heard many stories, overheard from bouts of stretched fancy, shared with intriguingly flamboyant members of the Marco guild who would drop by never ceasingly to Marco's Diesel Repair for a cup of fresh coffee and a chance to view the world from the perspective of idiosyncratic ideologies based on the premise of the self made man. “If'n you hasn't made it by the time yer forty-five yer never will” was the cornerstone to any further philosophizing. Marco's first entrepreneurial undertaking on his arrival in the blustery windswept snowy streets of Winnipeg on the harshest of fall days was to single-handedly paint the whole of the undercarriage of the Arlington street bridge with nothing but a rope and harness. Those unionized city workers laughed so hard at seeing such a sight, they didn't even file a complaint. Marco made enough money to purchase a twelve inch tool box and fill it with pliers and a crescent and apply at Champion Graders for the position of diesel mechanic. Marco served honourably in the position of serviceman, learning at his leisure with the keen insight of a prodigy all about Champion graders till the company folded seventeen years later due to undermined lack of resources.

Seventeen years is quite a stretch. If'n you took home just one unnoticed piece of decorum every working day or two you would have a stash of ruffly eighteen hundred pieces by the time seventeen years had come to fruition. Lordy, lordy.

So it began, this neat and tidy adventure into the intricacies of establishing a legitimate sole proprietorship, with customers pilfered from the ruins of an unwittingly ruined fine establishment, not due to a lack of diplomacy, articulated with the correct answer for every problem imaginable, correct or not and usually somewhere in between, and usually somewhat dependant on the customer's means. It was a feat of social congeniality, this diesel repair business. You were want to create a guild of like-minded, self-made connoisseurs of repletion, of some means no doubt even though they were more often than not tight fisted. You may have to go out of your way and invest in a set of golf clubs or a horse, or perchance even a rifle, and a love for life and booze was no cumbrance to these adventures. Guilds tend to draw the virtues of good-willed folk into ties which bind beyond aesthetic differences. The sufferable nuances of this guild of Marco from on der Feistritz might lead to a spot of comatose now and then, but it got the job done.

Marco, with his baseball hat firmly planted, on the up and up, had gone out and bought a service truck which still runned, and he serviced his pilfered customers with a passion. Worked from dawn to dusk, he did, and then some. What he couldn't service on the road, he brought home to his garage, actually the garage for the love of his life's wheels, but hey, this was a venture into the virility of self-enterprise. The garage became endowed with a wee hoist, somehow, and a parts washer, and a grinder, and a Miller welder, well it might as well have a solid workbench too, why not. And some shelving for about seventeen hundred and ninety-six pieces pieces of remaining decorum just to spruce the place up a tad. Lordy, lordy.

Marco from on der Feistritz, in seventeen years, had become beguiled with his love for Champion graders. Almost as great, this love, as his love for beastly diesel yachts. Most of his now shelved decorum was made up of bits and pieces of Champion road graders, and he was proud of every one of them. His joy was complete when he could adhere one on to a malfunctioning grader and get it to purr along in harmony with mother nature once more. These Champion graders were to him like diesel yachts of the prairies, tacking through mud or snow in the vast stretches of untamed continuity. A little heaven on earth when you could climb aboard one of these craft and cruise for hours up and down city streets or down a long country road unhindered by the vagaries of common traffic.

Marco had never dreamt, leaning lazily against a pillar of the St. John parish church in Fürstenfeld as a catholic alter boy, about Canada. His dreams, while tending the cow and the hens, were more along the lines of slipping away in a little fisher's rowboat down der Feistritz were he loved to sit and fish. His dreams, as he gazed dreamily at the European map on the wall of his schoolmaster's bastille, tracing out that thin blue line, der Feistritz widening into der Lafnitz widening even more into der mighty Vistula all the way through Poland and emptying itself into the Gdańsk Bay on the cold Baltic Sea, oh what a journey that would be. His dreams, as he packed his bag and took up apprenticeship in the fine art of mechanicing in the great metropolitan of Graz, were to cruse the ocean blue one day, to stop at every port of call, to reconnoitre the whole of the earth. But Marco had never, never dreamt about Canada.

Love and marriage, yes love and marriage they go together like a horse and carriage, and Marco he caught on none too swift like, but you can't have one without the other. She growed on him though, this sweety from the cold Canadian prairies with Austrian roots who didn't mind nifty yachts, just not the beastly variety. And this smuggling business was not exactly what a fine Canadian girl with a flare for adventure in the Caribbean had quite bargained for. Well.

So Marco came to encumber the blustery windswept snowy streets of Winnipeg with his presence on one the harshest of fall days. The prairie terrain was not that much unlike the platitudinous providence of Steiermark and a bit of snow he was quite used to and he did have an all-weather baseball cap. Then he saw them. An amazing row of them following each other in their wake, sailing so elegantly, stacks puffing black smoke up into the grey heavens, ruddering wheels angled to offset the languid current of snowy drifts, careening at the mercy of the ice bound pavement, helmsmen standing attentively at their wheels on a romantic journey to some distant port of call. He fell in love, this Marco from on der Feistritz.

And so it came to pass that Marco got his self hitched, to his sweety that is, the love of his life. It was a major sustentation to the encumbrance of eating once in a while. And they settled down in the platitudinous countryside of the Canadian prairies in a dreamy burb nigh on der mighty Red River, and those suckering Canadians should count their chickens with care as Marco from on der Feistritz got his land legs in gear. With a bit of food is his belly once in a while, he enjoyed the fortuity, at Champion Graders, of unriddling the predilections of the proprietors of those yellow prairie yachts, those boats who so elegantly cruised the land locked prairie whereupon resided the love of his life. And he hatched a plan, this Marco from on der Feistritz, over the next seventeen years, to enjoin this guild of proprietors and become the proud possessor of a Champion road grader, even if it meant piece by piece by piece by piece, to one day establish a sole proprietorship and become a bona fide proprietor with all the hoopla which enjoining this guild could avail. And so after seventeen years, with an inventory of resources both mercurial and material, Marco absconded with the garage for the love of his life's wheels and rallied forth with all that he had pilfered.

There was however, shortly thereafter, a minor transposition in the continuance of Marco's Diesel Repair. Whether it was due to a lack of amenity bestowed upon the wheels of the love of his life, or just that the garage had a way of discouraging whole Champion graders from entering it's interior, the sweet home of Marco from on der Feistritz and the love of his life, this one fine day, just up and remortgaged itself, and magically there appeared on the horizon of a forlorn and thistle shrouded prairie a sizable emporium, with a wee big sign over the door which read “Marco's Diesel Repair.” And it had shelving for about seventeen hundred odd remaining pieces of decorum which had yet to be adhered to Champion graders to make them purr in harmony with mother nature, and even room for a few more pieces of decorum which had been or had yet to be salvaged from the mayhem and destruction of graders found in the depths of cold Canadian prairie ravines, abandoned for lack of caring and compassion entitled to these heroes of the contour.

The guild adjoined this venture, bringing Marco their vessels for the tender loving care needed to keep their opulence roadworthy. This guild of the opulent was rather diverse in their undertakings of leisurely pursuits. Some more career minded types might enjoy the odd round of golf to further their dealings and wheelings. Some with a nostalgia for their farming roots might partake of horsemanship in the bushes and fields and streams of a colourful prairie vista. Hunters might value the crack of a rifle on a cold fall morning in the forest edges beyond inhabitation. Car enthusiasts might glorify mankind's fascination with the workings of the internal combustion engine and the thrust and noise involved in it's proliferation, not to mention the contours of containment, both antique and modern. It took a bit of dexterity to draw the virtues of these good-willed folk into ties which bound beyond a few minor aesthetic differences.

So Marco from on der Feistritz learned how to golf, and to feed carrots to horses, and to polish up a long rifle, and to rip his crew cab into one fine hot encumbrance to the humours of law enforcement. And as the tie that bound beyond the aesthetic differences, Marco rebuilt Champion road graders. From out of the depths of cold, dark prairie ravines he would salvage a rectitude of rusted metal, to refurbish it with love and care and pilfered parts and industrious body work, and lots of yellow Champion grader paint, to purr once again in harmony with mother nature, these magnificent beastly diesel yachts.

It was a balmy cold day, that day, that Marco took to the helm of just such a finely tuned and freshly painted Champion road grader. As he weighed anchor from his repair yard the skies were clear and the horizons a clear blue above the white landscape as far as the eye could see. Snow blade high in the air as a main sail, Marco embarked on a journey to make delivery of this stately refitted vessel, a voyage which should take about six hours to negotiate through the system of canals and aqueducts of man's undertakings. As he sailed out into the open countryside enjoying the solitude of the moment, a puff of wind picked up a wave of snow in the fields and another slightly stronger puff blew the wave across to the front of him. A bank of grey darkness purviewed itself from the great beyond to hale ever closer obliterating the sunshine on a mission to deluge the earth in obscurity. A ceaseless wind began to howl across the open deeps, picking up a deluge of misting white powder to camouflage the side trenches from the high course of travel. Now Marco from on der Feistritz had weathered many storms and even outlived one accomplished hurricane and it was not in his vocabulary to turn back and miss an exploit into the unknown. Marco from on der Feistritz ventured forth on his mission.

The graupel came down. Sideways. Fifty knots minimum. The helmsman knobbed those wipers to super high beam, those flippin flappers ready to lift the cab from the earth, but the graupel stuck. Ice froze solid to the windshield with a vengeance. Heat defogger knobbed on high, did naught. The helmsman flew open the window and stuck forth his head. The wicked wind of the west stole his hat. The helmsman could see naught anyhow, with the graupel swirling in eddies, blocking sight of even those tilting front rudders. The helmsman steered by intuition, standing fearlessly at the wheel, feeling those sucking edges of leeway with extrapolating senses. Into the rhubarb on one side and out again to the other side, engine revving to submission, all four rear wheels locked into skid-steering unity, carrying his ship through the rising waves of profligacy. Sank into the deeps several times, he did, moldboard levers actuating in intuitive response. Slideshift out starboard, circle shift starboard, circle turn aft, blade tilt down starboard till it grabbed something, circle turn astern, skid-steer wheels grabbing a bit of gravely fastidiousness, snow sail catching the breeze to avert a capsize, Marco calmly at the helm.

He finally just parked in the middle of the channel, yellow light beckoning uselessly on the helm, anchored by the moldboard buried in the amassing graupel, and he just went to sleep. He woke to a cold clear blue sky, and drifts. Drifts ten feet high, drifts as far as the eye could see. Nothing but drifts. Lordy, lordy.

Got himself out he did, Marco, put that V-plow to some use. Nice cozy warm cab, a clear windshield, missed his hat though. Needed a stiff drink, he did, and a good meal. Some twenty odd miles he plowed an amazingly straight cut through that unspoiled sea. Must have used his compass, that Marco, there being not much else to go by. By and by he saw in the distance a puffing stack and as he neared he grinned as he saw the yellow Champion motor grader, clearing one of the main arteries of the navigational meanderings between distant towns. Sailed gleefully into town he did, for a drink, and a meal, and a hat.

Yes, said mechanic had been witness to the capaciousness of a true entrepreneurial spirit. Left him to scratch his head at times, it did, the compensation of piquancy far outweighing the meagre stipend tossed his way. Some minor interactions with the world at large may be best left untold, to be pondered by the heart till mother nature runs her course, lest mankind's young ones gain too much insight on the bents of legitimacy. He did have a way with himself though, this Marco, did he not?

To Rosa with love

Reading a little discussion on contact with aliens, I was rather taken aback by some concern about aliens respecting our copyright laws. Now there are two possibilities here. There is a possibility that this was fasciscous, but I really think he was serious, him being a science fiction writer and all. The other possibility is that I am on the wrong planet. Somehow the thought of an alien ship absconding with the complete works of Nickleback to make millions back home just doesn't irk me too much.

Now I have first hand experience with all of this having been taken on a small tour of our wee galaxy. I thought for many years it had been just a silly dream, but science is proving otherwise. Her name was Rosa, and she came to me in a dream just after I got over the little red headed girl with her soft hair. Now Rosa's beings have a science which, shall we say, is a little more organic than ours. Those black hole fuzzball thingies, they call them mouths. And the galaxies, they use the great forces of sapience and cunning to warily circle the hungry mouth at their centre. They also have this view on evolution as a great hungry mouth evolving to eat up all the other life, but we'll leave that be.

At that time in my life, just out of your higher school, there wasn't much talk in physics class about leptons, photons, and gluons, those one-dimensional strings of energy that take on their identities by vibrating in different vogues. And actually even less talk about those fuzzyball black holes now thought of as extra dense neutron stars where its neutrons have deliquesced, liberating the quarky strings to form even quirkier strings, making these fuzzballs the most consummate form of degenerate matter. Fuzzball mouths sucking in munchy spaghetti to digest the quarks, is this not anarchy? Best to walk with sapience and cunning.

Rosa's beings, they didn't travel by craft. They rode bicycles, mostly built for two. Just peddle away on up into space and off you went through the space-time continuum, navigating like the deaf, dumb, and blind kid playing a mean pinball, yes, sapience and cunning. Oh, and luck, at least that's what we would call it. They just never questioned their ability to go where they wanted, they just up and went. Time was no barrier. Backwards 2.58 billion, forwards 1.73 million, no problem. With some weird map of our cosmos in their noggins, like a holograph, they would hone in and land like a goose on wheels in some eclectic neighbourhood, to fit right in with the scenery.

Apparently evolution had left these beings in some sort of limbo when their sun wandered too close to the “mouth” and them being this culture of bicycle enthusiasts who had evolved this ability to beam from planet to planet to avoid being fried by the solar flares of a magnetically challenged sun on the edge of the event horizon, they jumped all the way to other solar systems where life had discovered a decent borscht. (Sorry I forgot to mention Rosa and her borscht, with cream, but this is a silly blog and not a book so suck it in, eh.) She showed me her sun, with a tear in her eye, a faint faint point of light far, far away, on her bicycle built for two, she did, in my dream. So we warmed up some borscht (with cream) and then off she went, on her bicycle, in my dream, and I never saw her again. But it makes one wonder, doesn't it? Did she leave me on the wrong planet?