Re-webbing the novel....

To make it easier to read, especially for those of you who have just picked it up, and with the intent of eventually presenting it as a downloadable document, I've decided to re-format (only slightly) my novel Rates Of Exchange which I have been delivering here a chapter at a time. I've linked it to the directory in the sidebar and after I've driven it around a bit I'll put the tweaks on the navigation. Let me know what you think.

I've nearly finalized the reshaping of the galleries for the photography section and those revisions should be coming soon as well.

Above left: False Prometheus Confined 2008

Rates of Exchange, Chapter 7

I decided to go outside and stretch my legs, get some fresh air. I took the stairs outside my room and crossed the courtyard. On a whim I walked through the lobby area, entering via a glass door that has stickers for various agencies giving approvals of Frank's efforts as a gracious host. It's amazing what credentials you can buy. If you have money.

I didn't see Frankie but the desk girl looked at me oddly and then looked away as if she hadn't seen me. The main doors were open and wedged and the cool morning air was freshening the lobby. I walked up to the desk and asked the girl if Frank was in. She stammered for a second and at first I thought of a speech impediment, but then I realized that she didn't know what to say. She eventually got out that Frank wasn't around today and wasn't taking calls anyway. I just looked at her for a second hoping that she would think about that last piece of information. She blushed and rearranged some papers on her desk. I thanked her and walked to the main doors and stood in the opening, in the shade of the breezeway but feeling the growing warmth of the air that would heave the day into the blaze of the sun by noon. I thought about going back for a jacket but changed my mind when a little Honda pulled in to a stall to my left. I turned to look at it and out of the corner of my eye I saw the desk girl looking at me out of the corner of her eye while she spoke quietly into the phone. She didn't have the cheery falseness that people who are speaking to customers have, just the forced deadpan of the amateur. She looked away from me and the terminator of the breezeway's shadow crept a little to the left. She sneaked a look back at me and shook her head as she spoke. I couldn't hear the words but I turned slightly so that I was looking more directly at her. She blushed and turned her back to me. I smiled, more inside than out, and turned back to the little Honda. Frank's daughter, Helen, fresh out of university, fresh out of her little car, looked at me and smiled. She was wearing jeans, a jean jacket over a dark blue blouse with what looked like a thousand tiny vines of grey flowers in the print. Her hair was dark, that kind of black that is almost blue.
She stopped in front of me.
I smiled back.

"Hi," she said.
"Hi," I said.
"It's a beautiful morning."
"Yeah. It is. No contest, though."
"Thank you. Um..."
"I was thinking about breakfast."
She paused. "What are we talking about here?"
"Protein, carbs, maybe some fat. Basic biology." I said.
"Oh," she said.
"There's a problem, though,"
"What's that?"
"I don't know what's good in town. Have you eaten yet?"
We still hadn't broken each other's gaze.
"My father says I should stay away from you."
When she said that, her head tilted slightly, to the side. Regarding.
"You always do what your daddy tells you?" I winked. "Come on, I'll buy you breakfast somewhere in public. It oughta reduce your risk."

She smiled. Toothy bright. I let my eyes fall to her mouth. Just for a second.

"I won," she said, smiling more now.
"What are we talking about here?"
"You'll see," she said as she took me by my arm and we started walking out of the parking lot.

The sun was in our eyes as we reached the road and turned left. Helen still had my arm and I liked that. I felt good muscle under her jean jacket as we walked.
I looked back at her car and happened to see Frank at the window of his office next to the lobby glass. Well, well. He was holding a phone to his ear and he put it down at the same time the desk girl put her phone down. Just before the angle blocked my view, the desk girl looked out the open doors and caught my eye. She turned around quickly and disappeared through the door to Frank's office. Frank shut his curtains. I continued down the street with his daughter on my arm.

Portrait - Whiskey in the Bar

Group Captain Grahame "W" Wilson - Convair 580, Alberta Canada 2008

Portraits - Aerial Fire Fighting

Cameron McCulloch - CL 215 captain. Alberta, Canada.

Portraits - Restaurateur

Sergio - General Factotum, Rigoletto's. Edmonton, Canada

Portraits - Aerial Fire Fighting

Engineers Steve Copeland and Sean Jensen replace a wingtip. Southern Alberta.

Portraits - Aerial Fire Fighting

Air Attack Officer Greg Boyachuk in front of his ride. Northern Alberta

Portraits - Aerial Fire Fighting

Fueler, loaderman, and a pilot wait for the next forest fire call. Air tanker base, northern Alberta.

Mr. President, please....

Chicken Little, come in, over.

Chicken Little, do you read? Over.

Intersection Set # 52

Rates of Exchange, Chapter 6

There is only so much I can see from my window. Less than what I can see from my balcony. I walk back to the bathroom and stand on the lip of the tub and look at the exhaust fan mounted in the wall above the splash tile. It's about 8 inches on a side. A friend taught me that if you can get your head through, the rest will follow. I have cause to know that what he says is true, but there is a twenty-foot drop on the other side of the wall. In full view of the forecourt. After I replace the grill on the inside wall, I go back into the kitchenette that doubles as a sitting room. Another hundred push-ups with my toes on the counter-top. I think about Frank's daughter and lose count. The rules of the game say if you lose count, you have to start from zero and you can't stop until you get to one hundred. I stop thinking about Helen and get to a hundred - really closer to one hundred and eighty. Collapsing to the floor, it dawns on me. The snake. Like the metaphorical lizard in ancient sculpture - I thought that this was sexual. But it isn't. It is, and it isn't.

Intersection Set #9

Rates of Exchange, Chapter 5

A Lebanese family is gathering at the hotel for a wedding. When I drove into town looking for the Easy-Way, I saw the stores, the street names, the women in headdress. There are strong families here with deep roots in the community. They stand on the balcony, men and women in western clothes, all of them smoking - except the kids. Head cover. That takes me back. Someone is smoking Turkish tobacco. The scent jars me into a very specific memory.

Frank and I are sitting across from each other at a rough work table. There is only one light - a candle in a lantern - and our faces are barely visible to each other. Around us in the shadows, hoists, strapping, paint, tools, and workbenches barely revealed. Like the curtains or rugs or dresses in a painting. There is the smell of resin mixed with the gentle tang of the sea. And Frank's Turkish tobacco. Light and scent contrasted with the soft lapping of small waves too gentle to be open water. Faint light dapples on the water under two large doors, betraying moonlight outside and segueing to darkness in the channel that runs through the middle of the room. A sixteen-foot aluminum boat moves gently in the slip. Exfiltration time.

"Less than we thought of the uncut stuff. What about the displays?"
"Mm, 'bout the same. But good enough at that." His voice echoes around the stone walls. He takes a deep breath. Looks at me. And the subject changes. "You know the drill -"
"Yeah, In two weeks Monday at the station. Then Sunday, then Tuesday next....until I see you."
"Good lad. I don't need to tell you..."
"Yeah. Keep stum."

Frank passed me an envelope and I pocketed it. Money. Then he tossed something at me. I caught it in my left hand as I was pulling the zipper closed on the dough. A little brooch. Emeralds, rubies and sapphire set in obsidian and gold. An eagle. My eyes went wide. "This isn't...?" The idea that any of the loot would be near us now raised serious flags.
"No, no, lad. It's from an old friend and I've had it for a while. But don't hawk it. You should find a girl for that." I missed the contradiction. And I had two years and six months to consider that.

And then Frank was gone. Faded to black in the shadows of the walls. An alley door I didn't know about. I didn't like that. Never enter a room without having a secure way out. - or knowing how others may get in. I snuffed the candle and let my eyes dark-adapt for an hour. Then I pulled an electric trolling motor from under the table and carried it to the aluminum boat. I turned my ears back up and listened. Nothing. I hung it on the transom next to the big outboard and checked the battery. I pulled the boat to the two doors and waited again. Nothing. A little swing on the counter-weighted door opened it and I was in the canal. The trolling motor whispered its little song, inaudible at six feet. A left, a right, and then I was in the Canal Grande. A wait in the shadows and then a right off of the Grande, and then three lefts put me on the open water in sight of the Lido. Through the channel and straight out with the wind at my back until the battery died. The lights of the Lido were still visible but between the wind and the time of day... I tossed the trolling motor and battery overboard and released the lever on the Honda outboard, dropping the big motor into position. I cranked the sixteen-footer southwest to intercept the coast where it curves south. Well south of the city. Dawn was breaking on my left. An hour later I beached the Springbok in a thicket, walked into town and bought a Trenitalia ticket. Ancona, Milano, over to Paris. I breathed easier in France. Two weeks of sight-seeing went by too fast and then it was time for the settling of accounts. I wandered down to the gare on Monday. September 12th. I didn't last a minute. For two-and-a-half years after that my only glimpses of the sun were framed by high walls and razor wire.

I watched Frank work his wedding party. He was good. Maybe a little heavier than when I'd seen him last, but still socially nimble. He glanced around making sure nothing would disturb the family's big day. He followed them towards the lobby at the end of one arm of the "U", almost directly beneath me. He must of felt my eyes because he looked up and the smile came off his face. Only for a second. Then it reappeared, only not quite to the eyes. With a wave as if I was just another guest, he disappeared into the lobby. An idea was beginning to form at the base of my brain.

Rates of Exchange, Chapter 4

I lived in Vera's trailer for a while. She got sick a lot in that last year, before the end, and couldn't do her show all the time. The owner was a thoughtful man and so when I did her show in her place he covered Vera's marquee with a sign that read, Reptilian Love - Man and Woman in the Garden of Evil. Vera's sister did the show with me but she wanted nothing to do with me, Vera, or the rest of the deal. She was there for the snakes. I was there for Vera - we were lovers, sort of. About a month into our affair she started coughing blood. Just a little at first and then more. A year went by before she would see anybody about it and when she figured out what the doctor had to say she didn't want to be... close to anyone. She barely spoke any English but she managed to convey to me that she didn't want me to catch what she had. I couldn't seem to convince her that that wasn't possible so we became separate. I moved out of the bedroom and onto the couch. Together but very separate.

Ivan the strongman carried a torch for Vera and started spreading the rumor that it was I that had made her ill. Eventually Vera couldn't leave her trailer, much less do her show. She passed away at about 2 am on the longest day of that year. I was there and made all the arrangements - I spoke enough French and the rest of the troupe wasn't really that interested in dealing with officialdom. But I didn't think that an unmarked grave on a roadside somewhere was fitting for the Snake Lady so we pulled a little money together and put up for a bronze marker and an urn. She had folks back Stateside - up in North Dakota - who would take her remains in the family crypt.

I walked out of the crematorium with Vera's remains in a heavy-gauge plastic bag in a cardboard box that was about four inches on a side. She rode the carrier on my motorcycle back to the fairgrounds. I pushed the little 400 up on its stand and turned in the dust. The rest of the troupe emerged from various places around the grounds and approached me. I couldn't move. They stood in front of me - somber faces and hands hanging limp at the ends of their arms. Vera's sister, Stasia, smoked. Everyone had put on their best clothes and they looked like something out of one of those old Italian films that Vera used to watch. The ones shot in Rome before and after the second world war. One by one they all came and paid their respects to Vera, right there under the arch of the little midway. Then they all walked away to their trailers. The last was Gorno, the owner. He handed me a folded piece of canvas that I immediately identified as Vera's marquee. He said we should talk but not tonight. I went to our trailer and I put Vera's remains in the urn and placed her on the little fake fireplace that she had decorated with scarves and little forms of Ganesh and Buddha and other, more obscure, deities. I lit some incense and sat for a while looking at the place where over the course of two years I had come alive. The place where I had watched the one thing I loved die. I felt free, I felt empty, I felt invisible - as if I could do anything and nobody would ever see me or know who I was. I fed the snakes.

A few hours later I woke up completely disorientated. I couldn't see and my throat was clogged with smoke. I fell out of my chair and crawled to the source of the pounding that I had first thought was my heart. I found the door after a few detours; it's amazing how little you know your own home when it's burning. When the door was opened a blast of cold night air rushed over me and for a moment I felt as though I could levitate. Hands grabbed at me pulling me toward the cold air. I thought of Vera.

I woke up in Vera's sister's trailer. She explained that the troupe had thought that I wanted to die and had set the trailer afire myself. Then Gorno came into the room and said that he had gone to Ivan's trailer to discuss business with him but couldn't find him. He was walking back to his trailer when he saw Ivan running from the end of our trailer and flames licking up the outside. After Gorno sounded the alarm, he went looking for Ivan. Couldn't find him.

Vera's sister put the urn in my hands. It was blackened in spots but the temperatures in the trailer hadn't destroyed it. She said, "I have the snakes. But Max. I can't find him. His cage..." She gave a diffident shrug and performed a motion with her hands. I knew she meant the six-foot female constrictor named Maxine. Vera's sister didn't have the female pronoun in English. Not a big snake. I switched to German. "Ivan's missing," I said to her. "Yes, Maxine and Ivan," said Stasia.

Homage - Heinrich Boll & White Objects in Space

Und den



Barbershop & Pool Hall ~ Northern Alberta

Nude in Two Dimensions on Beach

Math joke.

The Phone Rings in a Patina of Nicotine

Rates of Exchange, Chapter 3

I dreamed of fire. A house. And a lake. The fire was set in the grass but it burned the wrong way when the wind changed. I don't know why the fire was set. Firefighters came. Nobody was in the house; everyone had left the house the day before. It burned to the ground. There was a child's tricycle in the bedroom in my dream, but it was out of sequence - I saw it after the fire - unburned - but it was an image of a condition which could only have existed before the fire.

I woke up and thought about the images. Trying not to let them fade. I read somewhere that the memory of dreams fade quickly because they originate and exist in a temporary neurological mechanism; to be made permanent they must be re-routed through different cognitive centres of the brain. I know a carny who keeps a notebook under his pillow to record his dreams in. Unsatisfied with its proximity to his dreams in its place beside his bed in his trailer , he told me that he felt that with the book moved that much closer to his head, it would be easier to get the dreams down - they would already be imprinted on the page in some more lasting version of the ephemeral and he would only have to trace the pen over lines already written. He showed me an old cardboard suitcase full of notebooks. Full of his dreams. For a moment, it shimmered and undulated with the power of one subconscious, recorded, collected all in one place.


The fire department was here early this morning. Before dawn. The smoke alarm woke me up and I walked out on to the balcony. I looked across the "U" and saw Frank pulling some smoldering curtains out of a room on the far end. and the firemen arrived about thirty seconds later. My body bucked for a second when I remembered the dream. Was I dreaming about me and Frank and the job two years ago? It seemed a crude metaphor. Or was my subconscious just warning me about the fire in the hotel? I brushed that away in a self-conscious moment. Who's fooling who, here? I know why I'm here, I'm just not sure how I'm to go about it. That makes the dream more likely an augury. Or maybe my conscience is talking; I've kept her at a distance so far but college has just made her sharper, more in focus. maybe it was a bad move to...

This is all pointless - I don't need to know about what Frank was doing at 4 am. I don't need to figure out what she really wanted to do with Lyman's Cat. I only need to figure out the how of the immediate future. Long-fermenting intent brought me here - intent will carry me beyond the immediate. Right now, within the next 24 hours, what I need is a plan for the immediate.

Rates of Exchange, Chapter 2

The insurance man got the call at about 4 AM. "Go down to the Easy-Way on 15 and have a look around. The story's a little confused. The firemen are still there - talk to them and see what you think." "I'll talk to them in the morning," he said. "They'll be doing mop-up." He replaced the phone on his bedside table and lay back on his pillow. His wife stirred next to him - muffled loyalties to warmth and safety. He turned on his side to face her, the face he had been married to for 25 years. He stared at her for a few seconds. Sleep took him about a minute later.

As he slipped through the various layers of consciousness, the mental shaft finally taking him past the threshold of deep sleep, his eyes began the rapid cycling that indicates the brain's preparedness for the dream-state. He was uncomfortable - as much as he was able to perceive that - but not physically.

"Dip him in sugar," said one uniformed presence to the other. Or was he talking to him? HIs heart began to pound. "He's ready...." said the other. A bell sounded.

The insurance man woke up with the covers around his neck, sweating. His heart thudding heavily in his chest and blood roaring in his ears. His wife reached across him and shut off the alarm.

The Easy-Way motel was a long curving structure set back from the highway by about a thousand feet. The original structure was a stick-built box with various pseudo-art-deco embellishments under the eves and gables. The new owner of the spot had seen the value in the undeveloped hot springs behind the motel and razed the original. He kept the name as a tip of the respectful hat in the direction of the locals. He rebuilt the sign in the original style, but bigger, and used deeply varnished rough-hewn local timber for the face. The new motel was decidedly upscale in the tradition of the luxury hotels owned by the railways where they found a market for city dwellers in the the high mountains. Glaciers and staggering peaks formed the line to the north, all of it visible from each of the room in the arch. A night there would relieve the average citizen of a week's pay. The locals, with that wisdom that is peculiar to people that live by weather and season, still referred to the place as the Sleazy - Way.

The insurance man pulled in to the motel forecourt and sat in his car for a minute. Nothing looked out of place except for the fire department van parked around the side. He saw the fire chief sitting in the van filling out paperwork on a form holder clipboard combination much like the one he would use today. The insurance man got out of the car and walked over to the chief. The chief nodded at the insurance man - they were distantly related by marriage and not much else but they had the easy friendliness of having spent much of the same parts of their lives in much of the same places: the Legion, the bowling alley, Rotary.

"'Morning Dale," said the fire chief.
"'Morning to you, Frank. Cold wind today."
"Yep. Outa the north. Just comes down that mountain. How's Doris?"
"Fine, fine.... Francine? She's graduating this year, no?"
"Yep. Don't know that that's the end of it. Talkin' about a master's degree..."
"Ah. Good, good. So, what happened here?"
"Well, just a kitchen accident. Stove fire. Guest boiled a pot dry and the handle collapsed on another burner and smoke alarm kicked in. The owner was first on scene and hit it with water, it scattered and the curtains caught fire. He dragged those outside. I've got them in the back if you want to see them. Weird thing though. Other guests said they saw him acting all weird in front of the room and so we asked. Well, he swears she saw a snake and ran out the front door. Wouldn't go back in but he knew he had a pot on. Not much damage. Some smoke. Counter top range needs replacing maybe."
"Okay...... The insurance man shook his head. Snake, huh? He a weirdo?"
"Aw Dale, I dunno. Everybody looks different these days, you know how it is. At these places you can't tell the investment bankers from some smack with only a skateboard to his name. But I can tell you, I've never seen a snake up here. Ever. Maybe he was having whattya call them, a flashback?"

Dale thought that that was true. He looked at Frank and thought that at least you could tell with him. Straight guy. Normal. Nothing weird there. But Frank was right. You just couldn't tell these days. He sighed. "Okay, I'll call you later if I need to see the curtains."
"No problem. There's a set in there that didn't get touched. See ya."

The fire chief put the FD van in reverse and backed into the forecourt. The insurance man turned and walked inside to find the manager.

Rates of Exchange, Chapter 1

In the dream, I was conscious of dreaming. I could not direct the dream for some reason; perhaps my subconscious was insisting that I pay attention.
A gray snake, about a meter-and-a-half long, taken out of a box and handed to me. I held it while its tongue flicked in and out. One red eye gazed at me. What do snakes think, I wondered. The snake started to work its jaw back and forth and it dropped a small black piece of plastic from its mouth. The sound of it hitting the tile floor made me think of Lego. My left arm started to throb - the snake was tightening its grip, its scales turning red as it started head-butting my right hand while I tried to grab it behind the head. I missed on the first few attempts and it bit my thumb, hard, but it left no blood - it had no teeth. I handed it back to the other person in the room and looked for the piece of plastic. It was a battery cover from a camera. When I stood up with it in my hand, I noticed a cat backed hard up against the wall. The cat was in pain and I looked for the snake. The other person in the room - a woman - had a different snake, long and thin and white. The gray snake was in the wall and had swallowed the cat's tail and was trying to pull the rest of the cat through a hole in the wall that was intended for an electrical outlet. I reached into the closet next to the hole in the wall and felt for the snake's tail. I found it and pinched it hard. The cat bounded across the room, released. Its tail was denuded half-way up to the stub. The snake recoiled itself around my arm. I lay down on the couch and the snake curled on my belly changing colour - red, gray, red, gray... I fed the snake breadcrumbs while the woman in the room showed me various Tarot cards. The Ace of Pentacles, The Knight of Wands, Judgement, The Emperor, The Nine of Pentacles, The Wheel of Fortune, Strength, Death.

Rates of Exchange, Chapter 0

A man steps into the circle thrown by the light on the pole in the parking lot. He is about thirty years old and wears a threadbare but clean black t-shirt over faded black Carhartts, rivets glinting in the light. They cover his brown harness boots showing the brown of the leather under a layer of dust. He wears no belt but is well-enough proportioned to not need one. Not overly developed but lean and wiry. His hair is a wavy mass of brown and gold, as if it has been a year since it was cut, and falls just into his eyes and covers his ears. He carries his shoulders like a boxer on the ropes in the 11th round and moves with care. He carries a canvas bag in his left hand. It looks like a big pillowcase but darker, a stained canvas with a sisal drawstring. A moth circles the light, high above his head. The shadow of the little flying thing catches his eye and he starts - almost as if shocked - and quickly takes two steps back out of the light. He runs his right hand through his hair, pushing it back from his eyes in a reflex as he looks around the parking lot. His right hand falls back to his side. He stands motionless. The canvas bag writhes once, slowly.

Across the parking lot, a car rolls in with no lights, the gravel crunching under the tires. It stops about a hundred feet from where the man is standing, the pool of light between the car and him. A dim light comes on inside the car and the sound of a worn and rusty hinge supporting a heavy door echoes into the still air. The door is pushed towards closed but not fully - the interior light flickers every few seconds as the door settles on the switch and the car oscillates and becomes motionless again. The smaller figure of the driver is in contrast to the man holding the bag. Smaller. Tentative but holding back a nervous energy that propels a course to the man. A young woman.
She steps into the light and reacts the same way as the man did. She turns to circumnavigate the perimeter counter-clockwise and stops in front of him. His shoulders rise and fall with a sigh. She extends her left hand as if to touch him and his face tightens for an instant. Her hand falls back to her side. They stand only a foot apart just looking at each other. She breaks her gaze and looks at the bag. He extends it towards her.
"Be careful, it's heavy," he says.
"Oh," she says as she strains under the weight. "Do I... you know,..."
"No. She's been fed. Good for a month. Give or take."
"Okay." She is holding the bag in both hands like a matron holds a purse in front of her crotch - with both hands. The bag writhes again. The young woman looks down at it for a long moment, transfixed.
"Okay," she says again. Another long pause. "I, ah, I brought you something. It's in the car."

The two walk around the pool of light towards the car, the young woman opens the back door on the driver's side and puts the bag down on the back seat. The bag undulates very slowly and then stops. Maybe a hair of movement more.
"No. I can't do that," she says. She goes around the other side and opens the front door and lifts a casserole dish covered in tinfoil off of the front seat. She carries it to him with her thumbs trapping an envelope on top of the foil. "I brought you some food. And some other stuff." She thrusts it at him and for a moment it looks as though he wont take it from her. He does. She picks up the bag from the back seat and carries it around the other side and puts it in the front seat and closes the door very carefully. She comes back to stand in front of the man. They hover for a few moments. Then she lunges forward and kisses him once on the lips and darts back to the car, gets in and starts the engine. Not looking at him. She drives carefully out of the parking lot and turns her headlights on just as she makes the highway.
He follows her with his eyes.
When she is out of sight, he turns and carries the casserole into the darkness.
In his room he puts the casserole in the little fridge. Then sits down and looks at the envelope. He inhales the scent on the stationary and sits motionless for a few minutes, hands calm in his lap, gently cradling the envelope. He inhales and opens the envelope and examines the contents. Five twenties and three Tarot cards wrapped in two folded pages torn from a notebook. The pages are covered in writing. He lines the bills and the cards up on the table and unfolds the letter. He reads for a while and then separates the cards according to what he has read: the King of Swords on the left, then The Chariot, and finally the Four of Cups on the right. He sits quietly, staring at the cards. An hour later a power failure darkens the motel. He doesn't move from his seat.

Let Them Eat Cake

I've been mulling over the rise and subsequent prominence of the neo-con-falangist component in our society. Otherwise intelligent people are mouthing slogans and praising policies with an ardour which would have embarrassed even the most committed Comintern member in the 1960s. Support for diversion of wealth and power from the general population to a very select group of people who are sheltered thoroughly from any real vicissitudes of life is at an all time high. The people providing the most support, besides the ones benefiting directly, are, ironically, the ones who benefit the least from this shift of wealth. The structuralist view would be that the individual's view is governed or at least shaped by those with power. Is that what happens? Or are people true believers in the institution that they trumpet for? Or is it really simply Maslowian: they want protection and will blow with the prevailing wind, telling themselves that their bank, their team, their brand, institution, or cause, is in fact righteous because they desperately need to be self-convinced that their tyrant is benevolent? Is this how the populace puts up with the level of fiscal and ethical debt that it carries, both directly and indirectly? Is this how we make palatable the irresponsibility of a government that forgets its mandate? Is this how we have come to wars all over the world and peril that cannot be erased because it is set so deeply in the generational memories of the oppressed? I think of John Osbourne, living on a barge, boiling nettles for food. Even if the truth is on the losing side, to put a patch on the hole in the armor-plate protecting the intellect from reality is a fix that can't last. Wisdom wins out eventually, but not always in the material world. I don't think the most devoted functionary in post-war France ever said on the death-bed, "I should have spent more time in the office." Maybe M. Antoinette did say, at the very last, "I should have given them meat." Will Dick Cheney ever say, "We shouldn't have taken so much"?

Homeless citizen N, Toronto 2006

Intersection Set #7

The wind raises dust-devils in the dirt parking lot that serves as the courtyard of the motel. The motel itself is a bleak two-story structure faced in white vinyl tattooed by wind driven sand and dust. U-shaped, it curves around the courtyard forming a natural trap for the wind, dust, vehicles, people. The wind is between 20 and 30 knots and the song is made of sibilant consonants forming the syllables of ten thousand different words, the remnants of a million conversations upwind, torn up and scattered, like the dust in the parking lot. As the wind abates before the next gust, an occasional vowel is formed, tempting me to completion. Wrought-iron railings show undulations from guests and chambermaids standing outside the rooms taking smoke breaks, hunched against the wind. I test the railing for myself and give credence to the scenes where the prisoner bends the bars with bare hands and snakes to freedom. There is a tattooed and pierced young woman sitting in her car, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She is talking on the phone, laughing and smiling, but there are lines of deep skepticism around her eyes. The building shudders and rattles in the wind and the vent in the bathroom howls like Slim Harpo as the sand swirls like driven snow across the woman's windshield.


Late at night, the wind dies and the air is still. Occasionally the sound of a jake brake, a guttural clearing of the mechanical throat, signals the proximity of the highway. The building shakes with the lovemaking of the couple in the room below me. The sodium lights in the parking lot take up a dirty-yellow song where the vent left off.