Moonstone: I'd never slept in that tent without you and when I set it up and crawled inside all the intense energy that had radiated out from us the summer before, up and down the Atlantic coast, still hung there and the stains on the tent walls from the mud and the spattering rain and the dried grass and old crushed insects and spattered wax on the tent floor brought everything back to vividly.
2: A Perfect Setup.
Moonstone: Around nine-thirty in the morning, Al and I sawed up logs for the bonfire and then carried them down to the firepit. I started to build up the bonfire, to get the coals ready for the cookout that evening. One large log, that Al's father, Frazer, helped me heave onto the fire, turned out to be filled with some sort of ant and as the flames began to curl up over one side of the log the ants began to pour out the other, teeming madly over the wood looking for ways to escape from the heat. Frazer and I, wanting to do what we could, began to put long branches up against the ant's end of the log, in order to give the ants a highway down the grass. About the half the ants didn't ever get the point about the escape route and they fell into the flames, the other half escaped into the grass…but who knows where they would go without a home.
A few minutes after this, I opened my first beer; with the intention of getting as drunk as I possibly could before the night was through. It was a brilliant day, and (after two months of hard practice) I sat in with a bluegrass band, playing banjo, and was able to keep up with them and (after a lot more drinking and a lot later in the night) I apparently sang lead vocals and played lead guitar during a rock and roll set. I do remember doing the set and I remember some of the songs I sang, but there are things that come to me now and then as flashes from that forty-five minutes up on stage and I'm like "Oh god, how awful!"
Later still, back at the bonfire: there is another jam going on. I'm so drunk by this point that I fall off the bench I'm on and lie down in the grass. The rest of the people there leave me alone until they go to bed, but then, half awake I hear them debating whether they should move me. Some think I will be fine. Some think I might catch fire. Some try to divvy up my limbs and drag me back to my tent. They carry me a ways from the fire and ask me if I can get back to my tent. I assure them, from my position face down in the grass, that I can.
I know where my tent is and I am slowly crawling toward it. Often I am unable to get myself propped up on my elbows and knees because the world is spinning and any position other than face down makes me want to vomit. I've been mixing wine and beer and gin and I start to think maybe I ought to have just stuck with one. The long grass is still wet from the afternoon storm and I can feel it soaking into my clothes. I lie down and decided to rest a bit before my next push. My tent is still a good 500 metres away, but I can feel its aura glowing like a beacon, guiding me in from the stormy ocean.
A while later, a straggler from the bonfire finds me in the grass. "That's how far you've made it so far?" she says incredulously. "I'm fine," I insist, "I just like to do things at my own pace." Nevertheless, she picks me up and shoulders me to my tent. I sleep on top of the blankets with my still shoe covered feet hanging out the door of the tent.
In the morning, when I wake up, I discover that my arms and face are covered with stinging, very itchy ant bites. I must have gotten them during the long stretch that I was stretched out by the fire. What were all those pissed off ants doing hanging around the bonfire? Don't they have a home to go to?
3: A Chance Encounter.
Toronto: I went out with Barbara to get some Chinese food and along the way ended up hanging out with her roommate, W., and going for a beer with him and having a long talk with him; largely because Barbara claimed she was sick with the famous sore throat of 2009 and wanted to go home. This wouldn't be so unusual in and of itself except for the fact that W and I have been blood enemies for the last five years and have not spoken at all. Still, we hung out and it was pretty gentle and pleasant because after all we used to be friends and one only has so many friends in this world or people who we can tolerate so maybe this is a good thing. Along the way, walking on College street we had a curious chance encounter…but I think I don't want to talk about it.
4: Back in the City of my Birth.
Ottawa: 6:00am. No longer to stand my growing awareness of the floor and the ache in my back, I get out of bed and push the nozzle of the electric pump into the air mattress that we are sleeping on and flip on the switch. The room is filled with the roaring vacuum sound and the mattress begins to reinflate.
"What the fuck are you doing?" says LQ, jolted out of her sleep.
"Trust me" I say. She makes a sound that is a lot like "arrgh", but with more suffering infused into it.
"There," I say moments later, climbing back into bed and taking her in my arms again. "Now it is just like you are sleeping gently on a cloud."
"Yeah," says she with annoyance, "an awake cloud."
5: Perseids.
Ottawa: 11:30pm: One hour spent, one meteor seen… "I think," says LQ, "that this whole Perseids thing is just a conspiracy by the mosquitoes to lure victims to the park."
6: Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jog.
On the 417 East. She drives and I read to her from a volume of Rilke as we go. We stop in a field to sleep for a while and I go down to a nearby marsh and cut some bulrushes with my pocket knife and the sun is getting low and the light hangs in thick golden tresses over the long fields of corn. I come home and clean the cat shit off the living room floor. I drink water. I play my banjo. Things here in Montreal are the same.
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