Down the Road to Eternity

by M. A. C. Farrant

  We’ll pose nude for National Geographic, part of a special feature titled, “Undiscovered Lovers of the Pacific West Coast.” Following this we’ll appear on the cover of the Canadian Tire catalogue in a tribute to long-term domesticity. You’ll be cooking hamburgers from a dazzling silver barbeque and wearing a brilliant grin. I’ll be wearing slim suburban slacks and smiling demurely while serving plates of food to Grandma and the kids. The sun will be shining. There won’t be dangerous shadows anywhere.

  During long summer evenings we’ll give dinner parties for our friends with which we’ll celebrate everything, moment by dissolving moment. Over candles and our favourite French Merlot. We’ll watch the watercolour sunset. “Look!” we’ll say, “the air is thick with metaphors!” This phrase will haunt us with its multiplicity of meanings, for years.

  We’ll do commercial endorsements for rare and thrilling music, especially cello solos that break your heart, and for golden retrievers, which also break your heart. In fact, we’ll endorse rare and thrilling passion in a big way. Even while scrubbing the soup pot, even while buying dog food.

  Together, like gladiators, we’ll battle six-hundred-pound poetic chickens, reminding each other that so much depends upon the white chickens, the red wheel barrow, the rain, and on their enormous breasts which, when metaphorically cut up and stir fried, will feed a dinner party of thousands. After the meal we’ll run the hundred-metre dash, breaking through the finish line together, arms secure around each other’s waists, laughing, coming first.

  We’ll pretend we’re a species apart and, like anthropologists, stalk couples that are dressed alike. Hanging out of car windows or climbing portable aluminum ladders, we’ll sneak up on them in streets or in restaurants, shrieking together over a rare shot. Then we’ll fill a gallery with our pictures, calling the show “Fusion.” Thousands of couples will come to look at themselves, or couples like them, on the gallery walls. Afterwards they’ll leave smiling, feeling pleasantly confirmed. There’ll be beige couples, and blue couples, and plaid couples with rakish matching tams. On a wall by itself will be our prize photo, a really interesting blonde pair. Our self-portrait.

  We’ll inhabit each other’s erotic dreams, kissing in doorways like hungry strangers, lips wet and full. Then we’ll run away together, to this house, this very house, where we’ll live nattily ever after.

  We will call it love.

  THE BREAKDOWN SO FAR

  2007

  NOW IS THE TIME

  The Christian roofer has been phoning us for six years. He has some hope that we will ask him to replace our roof. He phones regularly throughout the year, every two or three months. One year he phoned on New Year’s Eve.

  “Hello,” he said in the slight eastern European accent we’d become accustomed to. “George, here. Would you be thinking of replacing your roof in the coming year?”

  It was 10:30 in the evening. The video had just ended, and we were hanging around the kitchen counting down the minutes to midnight. We’d watched the kettle boil and were sharing a teabag: two cups, one bag. I’d brought out the festive tin of left-over Christmas cookies.

  “Not right now,” my husband told George. “I’m sorry, but we do not need a new roof.”

  We’re pleasant to George because George is pleasant to us, even if he is persistent. “Did he say ‘Happy New Year’?” I asked, somewhat anxiously. It was a lonely New Year’s Eve: the two of us, the video, the teabag.

  “No,” my husband said. “Just that he’d call again in three months. Mark that on the calendar. I’m sure George has. It’s something we can all look forward to.”

  Once George left a message on our answering machine asking us to return his call. Which we did thinking for some reason he may be ill and that we were the only people he could contact in his time of need. We were disappointed to reach his answering machine. The message said, “Hello. George here. Would you be thinking of replacing your roof in the coming year?”

  The way we discovered that George was a Christian happened during a call in which my husband, as usual, had turned him down. Then George tried a new tactic, suggesting we call him when we’d decided to proceed with a new roof. “But don’t call on a Tuesday evening,” he told us. “That’s Bible study night.”

  The fact that George was a Christian interested us; we wondered how far his faith in one day replacing our roof would carry him. And because we’re not Christians per se, trying as we do to dwell contentedly in transience, we wondered what effect his faith might have on us over time. Would he be calling for the next twenty years? Would the three of us grow old together while our roof overgrew with moss and continued to lose shingles in windstorms, while we continued to gently tell him, “No, thank you, George. Not this year.” Would the presence of George in our lives become as comforting as ritual? Would his phone calls become, in spite of our secular orientation, like a knot in the thick rope of our reason that was hauling us through the years?

  The idea of our contacting him about the roof was short-lived. Before long his quiet, intermittent calls resumed. What is it, we asked each other that causes George to believe so surely that one day he will replace our roof? And how did we acquire this random person in our lives so that now his calls have become like calls from long-ago friends, both dreaded and strangely desired?

  Then after six years this thought occurred and it startled us: The true reason that George is phoning about our roof is that this is his job in life—he is a roofer—and to get jobs he calls people up. He doesn’t have a personal relationship with us at all, nor is he calling to facilitate our meditations on the nature of our lives, or even to imbue us with Christian beliefs.

  When we thought this thought we felt bad. Bad for having so blithely and self-centredly missed the obvious. Bad that for six years we may have strung along an honest, hard-working man. A decent person. We felt especially mean to have done this. Further, we felt that such meanness of spirit may have contributed to our succession of lonely New Year’s Eves, and to our transient existence being, we had to admit, a state less than fulsome.

  So we finally asked George to do something about our roof. After six years my husband called him up—it was a Saturday morning—and said, “Now is the time, George.”

  George didn’t sound surprised or overjoyed to hear from us. He merely stated in his usual calm way that he’d arrive at our house that afternoon between the hours of two and four.

  When at last we saw him we felt cheered by his appearance; he was exactly as we’d imagined after six years of telephone calls: small, meek, fair-skinned, about sixty-five years old, wearing beige work clothes and a baseball cap. His truck was new and very clean, as we knew it would be.

  He nodded to us as he climbed his aluminum ladder to the roof to look things over. From the driveway below we watched him poking at the shingles, and then take a few moments to gaze at the view. A while later we could hear him whistling “Rock of Ages.”

  When we asked him how he was getting on he called down, shaking his head sadly. “You’ll need a complete roof replacement.” He was standing on our roof in quiet triumph and telling us, “It’s the moss on the shingles. It’s the terrible rot within.”

  And then we couldn’t agree more. For the first time in six years we felt as if a load was about to be lifted. The terrible rot within was about to be removed. It was a bright day in early December with the sun glinting off George’s glasses as he began his solemn descent down the ladder. Right there in the driveway, as George drove away with the promise of a new roof before Christmas, we began planning a crowded New Year’s Eve party—loud, boozy, sinful.

  THE BREAKDOWN SO FAR

  ON THE SUBJECT OF LITERATURE

  1.

  Wondered if the vision was worthwhile or if it was dumb; a gully; an antique. Wondered if there was too much feeling about everything, too much seeing of the world’s despair. Was overfull with thinking about the tragicomic; the impotence to help or change; the indulgence of seeking perf
ectly executed moments of attention and regard; the dabbling in nuclear thought, the fabulously impossible, the impossibly rubbishy, the next uncertainty, the next fresh wind. Wondered about the necessity of gratification tricks, the increased wattage of personal pleasure to maintain, if not blindness, then the covert, sidelong view. Could not shut up for wondering.

  2.

  Referred to our former quirky nurses, the surrealists, the cubists, the beats; observed them acting like volunteer workers for the blind; suggesting the story; the validity of the inspired haul; suffering, and all the rest; tigers, even; the slow shining of expanded connections; the particular voice—thunder! And the absurd; strangeness; the laughter at our scary salesmanship, our arbitrary watchwords—silence; visuals; the scientific method; words; exile; your brother in Disneyland; cunning; song. Remembered: it’s a long walk to find a new mind. Remembered: “No new line without a new mind.”

  3.

  Wondered if it is tragicomic that the times we are having now appear on TV in rapid collage, sometimes animated; that our authenticity, as a result, is frequently robbed; that the speed of duplication between what we are and how we are presented further erases reflection, distance, and history; that we are forever here in the lukewarm soup; that there is a living paradise but it’s looking dour; that Blake is standing at a low window mourning, not the craft, but the content; that Lorca is fondling his rosary of deaths like an obsessive-compulsive; that irony is eroding fast, like sandstone; that the Dadaists continue to go mad; that, both fearing and yearning for anonymity, many now abandon their art with a grunt.

  4.

  Assembled the mental health equipment: arrested hopelessness; understood the short rules of meditation and deconstruction; kept skepticism intact; removed self-indulgence; maintained connection to the universe; maintained manoeuvrability; stood witness. Understood the risks: reducing experience to a focus, a narrative arc, the solipsistic, the short light story; suspending thoughts and minds; sweeping aside the large, the inanimate world; regarding dreams as unworthy; exalting over never-lived-in days; nominating oneself for results, for masterpieces; allowing the quest for celebrity to overtake and becoming lost, eaten; keeping Buddha like some high-end perceptual pet.

  5.

  Admired Norman Levine and Peter Handke, wandering about on trains, and in cities, looking out windows; noting details; the outside world revealed precisely—small events closely observed: snow melting; a parade of hats at a train station; a butterfly’s wobble; glow worms; a red-tailed hawk flying across a field of snow. Working at their desks in some high room, alone in winter; draughts through the window frame; a storm brewing, sheet lightning. A kind of exaltation prose, but precise, not hysterical like hunger; prose that tends the fire and the shop; about the fascination with things; in living errant; in randomness and beautiful days; the distinctive now, including moments of sourness; imagination; record keeping; great dread; wild laughs, trembling sweeps; the eye trained for memory; understanding the face of horror but letting the saint be large. Remembered that Chekhov is behind this notion.

  6.

  Described the irrelevant. Trained the humour. Removed blinkers. Kept the furnishings spare. Feared history. Shunned electronic truths. Shunned money. Remembered that the history of love has resulted in one melody. Traipsed after some Chinese man’s sayings, some Indian’s, some woman’s. Traipsed after an audience. Celebrated both the nightmare and the delight. Trapped experience with words. Exploded, on occasion, with pandemonium. Attempted to melt self-consciousness. Canvassed door to door with song. Scythed moribund visions. Memorized the times. Specified edginess. Maintained aspects of the idiot, the faithful brain. Caught the train. Missed the train. Was found guilty. Was found innocent.

  7.

  Considered the ideas we funnel into art: the sexual ones; the lives of resurgence; absence; playfulness; merriment; weird fantasy; fakes; fresh views merrily running; making reckless irony enlightenment, a spectacle of encounter; making it very shiny; filling it with heart; spending the world; making melodies of essential truths; creating symphonies, Czeslaws of wonder, everyone with a measure of delight, everyone capable of levitation; remembering former artists and the singular stroke, O’Keefe, for one, and the sublimity of her vision; remembering the lovely black recourse of Burroughs and the days spent in cafés bemoaning the brass consciousness of others; remembering Nabokov’s grim monster of common sense and how it must be shot dead; constructing a mental aerobics with stories that include love and the slap of explanation; that include nerve, unadorned; finding what excites, finally, like something pure …

  THE COMPASSIONATE SIDE OF NATURE

  For five weeks we watched the video feed of the eagle’s nest. A man had placed a video camera in the nest and we along with several million people sat transfixed before computer screens and watched as a nesting pair took turns sitting on two eggs. It was exciting. Soon we would witness the birth. But mysteriously one of the eggs disappeared. It was explained via the newspaper and TV coverage that this often happens with eagles—an egg may be empty. We consoled ourselves: this was raw nature, after all. Then holes were seen in the second egg and we became excited once again—a chick was about to peck its way out of the egg. But it soon became evident that this egg was also empty. There was great sadness among the several million people. But we continued watching to see what might happen next, if anything, and were not disappointed. Three days after the second egg was discarded a new form appeared in the nest—a miniature dachshund wearing a rhinestone collar. We think—and hope—that the dog is a replacement for the failed eggs. You hear about these things, about the compassionate side of nature. For example, mother ducks adopting abandoned kittens, and so on. Perhaps it is the same situation here. The parent eagles at present seem attentive to the dog; they feed it and have in no way harmed it. And they appear mesmerized by the rhinestone collar, staring at it for minutes on end then tapping at it to see what it might be. During sunrise the collar glints spectacularly. But we fear for the dog. What will happen when the eagles decide it’s time for it to fly? Will they push it from the nest to its certain death? A rescue operation has been mounted. The world watches as firefighters, who have a well-deserved reputation for rescuing cats from trees, confer with wildlife experts. The great worry is that the eagles will be spooked by human intervention and fly off with the dachshund in a bid to protect it from predators. The dog’s name is Bismarck. His owners, an elderly couple who live in a cottage nearby, are receiving trauma counselling. Meanwhile scores of grief workers are on standby should the story end badly.

  BUDGIE SUICIDE

  We don’t know why he did it. He must have been unhappy. It can’t have been easy for him—pecking at the bell, hanging about on the pole, staring at the free birds outside the window, the robins, the gulls. Then every night the cage covered with a smelly dish towel. We wonder now if he’d been lonely for his own kind. Maybe he was pining for some squawky budgie sex. We wonder, too, at the strangeness of caging small birds. Like imprisoned souls, my mother-in-law once said.

  Day after day we’d watch the budgie hopping along the pole, cocking his head at our huge cratered faces pressed against the cage. Cheep, cheep, cheep, we’d sing, and then scream happily when he paused, seemingly in communication.

  We found him hanging from the bell. He had somehow wrapped the bell cord around his neck.

  We wonder if our monstrous singing drove him mad.

  FUNERAL

  We held a funeral for the budgie. I wrapped it in a handkerchief then dug a hole between the marigolds at the side of the house. My husband had said, Flush it down the toilet. It’s dead. Get rid of it. But I wanted a proper funeral. I thought I might experience something grand.

  I placed the handkerchief in the hole then covered it over. It was a cold afternoon, light rain. Hundreds of birds were perched in the fir trees that border our yard—crows, gulls and smaller chirping birds. We stared at the mound. No one knew what to say. Finally I said, Poor Ha
rry, and the children and I sobbed. When my husband pulled out his imaginary violin and started to play, the birds sent up a terrific screech, flapping their wings, causing the trees to tremble. A budgie requiem, thunderous, there in the rain.

  At last, something grand.

  MEMBERSHIP DRIVE

  Two members of the Ponderers Club are put in charge of promotion. Membership has been declining. They hold a press conference to kick off their campaign.

  There’s a popular misconception that pondering is limited to certain kinds of persons, the woman explains from the podium to the one reporter who shows up. Sad sacks, party poopers, doomsters, depressives. This is just not so. Pondering crosses all demographics. Anyone can ponder!

  That’s right, says the man. Given half a chance pondering could become your basic Everyman condition.

  The reporter asks: What? You mean deep thinking?

  You could call it that, says the man. But it’s much more. It’s about experiencing pits of confusion and dread very deeply, and also boring to the core of everything, analyzing meanings and reasons. Laughter, for example. Or transience. Now there’s a killer.

  Careful, Stan, says the woman. You don’t want to scare people off. What Stan means, she says to the reporter, is that ponderers weigh and think things over. “Everything in Ponderation.” That’s our motto.

  Very good, Gwen, says Stan. But what I was trying to say is that ponderers are anti-surface.

  No need to get huffy, Stan, I was only …