Writing – Jaunty-Rabbit

Just another day…

Hello lovelies, I don’t know where any of you are located, but I am in Portugal. Right now I am sitting at a table in a cafe in Lisbon, just down the street from Parque Eduardo VII on a wet Tuesday. I normally spend my Monday’s and Friday’s here, but today I am filling in for a colleague that wasn’t able to staff the cafe and co-work space today. They are very nice and I have really enjoyed getting to know them since they started working here. I have had occasion to chat with them several times and found them to be quite charming and engaging. Much smarter than myself. Much younger too.

While I am now retired and taking my foot off the accelerator, to coast the distance to whatever is in store for me, they still have their foot – pedal to the metal – so to speak. I wish them luck. This is not a world I would like to navigate. It has become something of a mystery to me. How did we end up here? How did it come to be that these things have passed. I guess it’s my generation’s fault. We raised them. Fed them the bullshit that they believe. Caused them to suffer while we tried to make it through. Gave them a participation prize when they should have gotten a swift kick in the ass. Maybe not. I don’t really know what happened. I’ve read so many differing opinions, from economists, psychologist, realists, politicians, you name it. Everyone has a theory about why we are where we are. I don’t. I see truth in most of them, except for the aliens one.

Bottom line is that people are people and when push comes to shove, most – not all – most are only concerned with their own well being. That’s why there’s poverty, inequity, greed. All the seven deadly sins. If you believe that sort of stuff. Me, I just think people are generally rotten. Again, my qualifier, most people. There are always exceptions. I am no saint, I have my flaws, I try to provide for myself and my loved ones. Sometimes at the exclusion of others. So yes, I am guilty as well. That’s why I try to do the small nice things once in a while. Like fill in for a colleague when they need to take a day.

Since I’ve started working here, I have met a number of nice people. Truly nice people. Very sincere, salt of the earth people, as my grandfather used to say. Generally speaking, these people don’t have hidden agendas. These people that I’ve met. They can’t afford to. They are marginalized, victimized, hated, reviled and discarded. Many are not only outcasts but refugees. Unwelcome in their own homes, their own countries, their own families. So they come here. And make a family, a family to support each other. Openly and honestly. And without judgement. So when someone needs a day to do whatever, then I can fill in for them.

I’m nearing my seventies, never thought I would say that. But at a time that most my age are sitting around watching television, or sleeping. I am here working. Not for a living, but for support of the community that has been my home for most of those years. I have learned a lot in my time, from literally how to build a house, to how to plan an event. To filming movies and television shows, to directing and producing projects. I have been very fortunate to be able to be surround by beautiful creative minds all my life. and some of it has rubbed off on me. I’m lucky. So why not fill in for someone. I built some shelves while I was here because they needed the space for the coffee cups and other supplies above the coffee machine. They didn’t buy the shelves. I had them and gave them. and put them up. Why not. I get here in the morning and clean up, empty the trash, clean the toilets, wash the dishes. Whatever needs to be done. Hang some curtains. Make some racks for donated clothing. Not enough though. But I do what I can.

Why? Because this is a House. A house for people who have been marginalized, victimized, hated, reviled and discarded. Not because they need me, but because I need them. Because this house is a home. And I am happy here, and it’s just another day and it’s never enough.

Paris – Original version

10:30, I still have time, his train doesn’t get in until 11:50. I sat at my table in front of La Lamarck, a small café that I frequented on the days when I felt stifled by the Parisian gloom of winter. He’d been gone for some two months now, back home to take care of left over business from his family. The Parisian pedestrians wandered by, no doubt wondering why I was sitting outside on yet another cold day in Montmarte. The weather had turned unseasonably cold this year, beginning to chill in early September, when he left. Maybe it wasn’t the weather, maybe it was my mood. Nonetheless, I sat at my usual table, smoking my Camel Blues and sipping at my Café Latte. Waiting for the hour.

This happened to be the café that we found on our first trip to Paris some twenty years ago, I was just a boy then, or so it felt. I was twenty-five, and it was my first trip to Europe. A gift from him. He had always spoiled me, in one way or another, never asking for anything in return, except for me to write. He had hoped that Paris, indeed Europe would inspire me to write my first novel. To finish it. It did. Our first trip was short, but it was a lifetime in memories. It had inspired me for my first, second and third novels. Such that I decided I wanted to live here.

After returning to the states after that trip, I wrote, like a dam had burst, spilling its restrained contents far and wide. Wiping out everything that had previously stood in its way. The writing came and never stopped. Twenty years of being successful at what I loved, at what I am. All during and before, he stood beside me, catching me when I fell, lifting me, holding me, encouraging me. That first novel was about us, and our time together, but I had envisioned it as being limited. I had predicted that I would go my own way and that we would accidentally meet up at a bar in Calgary, watching the aurora borealis. That he would have gone on with his life, and I with mine. That wasn’t the case, we moved to Paris a year after our first trip here. He had come home from work one night and said that we were leaving and never looking back.

A light snow was starting to fall, Geri, the waitress, came running out asking if I wanted to move inside. I smiled and shook my head slightly. She murmured something under her breath as she turned back inside. This was our spot, and he was coming home. I missed him. It had only been two months, the second longest time we had been apart. The last time he was gone for a long time was six months when his mother had passed away. We went to the funeral together, but I had to leave for New York a few days later and start a new book tour. I missed him then. But now, I missed him more. That was ten years ago. Where had the time gone? Now at 46, I longed for him to be here, I needed his encouragement, his strength. I was stuck on my latest novel, I didn’t know where to go with it.

When we had met, we had refused to define our relationship. We carried on this charade for years. Each knowing that we belonged to each other, always. We refused to define what we were, what we would be. Me always knowing that I would leave him someday. I think that he knew he would never leave me. And he hasn’t, despite some indiscretions on my part. Despite my wanting the world, my impatience, he would find a way to give it to me. I have always known that he needed me, and even more, that I needed him. We still have not defined our relationship. It is a lifetime, it is the love that I always wanted and always had.

I worry about him, I wanted to go with him but he told me he needed to make this trip on his own. It was his closure. He knew he would never return again. This was it. His goodbye to his family, his friends, his former life, and possibly to his life. At 72 now, he was becoming feeble, aged. He knew all those years of smoking would catch up to him.

I looked at my watch, 10:45, it would be time soon to leave for the station. I wanted him here beside me now. Watching Paris. I wondered, did he make the trip? Is he coming back to me or did he leave knowing he would not return here. I had thought a lot about that these past two months. We talked almost daily, I could tell from his voice that he was tired. This trip had worn him out, each day that we spoke, he grew more tired. I never envisioned this end to our relationship, I had always thought I would be the one to leave him, not the other way around. I wasn’t ready for him to leave me. Who would encourage me? Who would hold me? Who would call me his boy?

The cell phone in my pocket rang, I looked at it. It was his brother’s number. I watched it ring in my hands. I held it tightly in my hands. I lifted it to my lips and gently kissed it, as I did, it stopped ringing. I closed my eyes and held my breath.

I love Paris in the winter, but maybe it’s time to go somewhere else.

The Writer

He sat at the small table, laptop in front of him, pack of Camel Blues to his right, focused intently on the screen of the small Thinkpad. Ryan Adams played softly in the background as his fingers stroked the keypad. He leaned forward as if to see the type better. His black hair hung over his brow as it furrowed. His right hand went to the top of the keyboard, his index finger stretched out as if pointing to some casualty by the roadside. It landed firmly and squarely on the Delete key. He pressed it, keeping his finger poised on the key. The cursor moved backwards across the screen, first a few letters, then a word, then more words, backing through his thoughts, his emotions until the entire paragraph was gone.

“hrmmph.” The only sound he made. He looked up from the keyboard at the screen, then his gaze extended beyond the screen, focusing somewhere between his mind and the eternal sky. He sat like this for a while. His brow raising occasionally, deep in his world, immersed in the lives and goings on of the characters on the page, as if he was watching them in front of him, just beyond his reach. He watched. Waiting for what was to happen next. He laughed to himself as if he just played witness to a good joke. He woke from his trance, fingers poised on the keys, he types, slowly at first, picking up speed as the story he just witnessed races through his mind. His fingers trying to catch it before it disappears again. He leans into the laptop as his fingers now hit their stride. First a few letters, then a word, then more words, then a paragraph. Then another.

His gaze is at the screen but not reading the words that are appearing on the white background, his mind is still in the land when he witnessed the story unfold. Soon his fingers slow, he stares at the screen, his right hand reaching for the pack of Camels, like a scene rehearsed a thousand times before, he pulls out one. His hands so familiar with this routine that he doesn’t take his eyes from the screen. He places the cigarette between his lips, then reaches for the lighter, automatically lighting it as it approaches the tip of the small white cylinder held tightly between his lips. His hands stops at the appropriate distance, he breathes in the flame through the tobacco, inhaling the first wisps of smoke. His hand places the lighter back next to the pack of Camels on the table. His eyes never leave the screen.

He leans back in his chair, keeping his gaze focused on the words before him, leaning back in the chair, he pulls the cigarette from his mouth. As he does his lips close except for at the sides of his mouth, he breathes in through the small openings in his lips. A small sound of rushing air emanates, like a gentle whisper to a friend. His hand finds the ashtray, he taps the ash from the burning cigarette.