It’s Halloween night and I’m scared. Loneliness lurks like an old familiar ghost, in fact I smell it like it’s just around the corner. I have an Orwellian thought. I’ll put my head in a rats cage like Orwell’s Winston and take a walk down Hastings Street. This scares the shiny Gortex off my back. I’m close, just off Granville Street. I take an about face, away from the Japanese girl dressed up in her Mariachi outfit, away from the masks and costumes. Tonight everybody is trying to be somebody else. Tonight you can become your fantasy, the person you could never be. Its a celebration of the unreal. That’s Koko under the handlebar mustache, her empty guitar case strapped to her back. Tonight she is Javier De la Alhambra, riding off on the Tehuantepec Railway. Imagine her round trip during the night, playing for cowboys and peasants in clunky railcars. She makes a few pesos to feed herself, she finds a cigarette butt under a seat, the smoke in her lungs brings calm. She’s not lonely tonight though, she’s with her Japanese mariachi friends. Behind me now are the night-clubs and testosterone fueled bravado of Halloween in the downtown core. Ahead it gets truly scary. Ahead east of Cambie, Hastings dives towards the lost and forgotten where fantasy is a different movie. To some it may be a found pack of cigarettes or a Mickey of vodka, or enough coin to buy a few pitchers of beer in the Grande Union pub or better yet, a night-room at the Austin hotel.
I pass victory square. Its a victory for me to cross Cambie street. Keep heading east I tell myself. If you keep moving you are safe. Keep moving. If you stop they will latch on to you. I cross the street. A Long Hair yells – Weed!? I keep walking. No I don’t want weed. It’s raining and everything is dripping. Buses splash by, rain splatters off the overhang of the Grande Union hostel. The City has put up lamp posts to brighten the area up. What the light reveals is dark. I can’t see their eyes but I know there are tears in those stubbled and scared faces, smoking as they wait, leaning forlorn against the side of the building waiting for the doors to open. A man with his head in his hands blurts to the guy beside him, Another bloody hour and a half! It’s a wet wait for a lonely room in a stinky hotel.
It’s Halloween. The deeper I dive into Hastings street, the more my legs feel like jelly. A crowd ahead at the Golden Crown Pub. I peer inside as I slowly walk past. The place is packed, there are no Halloween costumes here, it’s enough just to have the clothes on your back. People are outside smoking, there are two young guys who know each other. Howze it going … howze yur Mom? Oh I’dun know, same old. Same old same old eh? People care. Caring is a currency where currency is lacking. I keep walking. It is Halloween and I’m afraid of what people will do when their minds are overwhelmed by substances. I keep moving and I pass a native guy stumbling side to side. He wobbles close to me on the wide sidewalk. I smell the boozy desperation and lurch out of the way. The streets are full of people. Little crises erupt here and there. I hear people caring for each other. There is a nylon tent on the sidewalk, an women are gathered around it. A scraggly haired woman explains the vigil she is on for her missing friend. The tent has 7 candles sitting on a chair. One for each month Sally has been gone. I sleep out here waiting.
Lonely lawn mower
There are men with shopping carts on the sidewalk under a temporary safety roof built for a construction site. They are selling what ever they can, what ever they have from their daytime gatherings in alleyways. They are selling but there are no customers. One is emerging out of a glue sniffing haze. Body shaking his hand reaches out to the wall for balance as he wobbles and stumbles, pulling himself up to lean on his shopping cart home and retail store. Then I pass it. A lawn mower. It sits angled towards a paint peeled storefront with its black metal grates. The light is dim and I smell puke and piss. I haven’t seen a blade of grass all night. There’s only one way a lawn mower can get here. I can see him now. Pushing the stolen machine through the streets. He stops between two street vendors. They sit alone with their cardboard on the sidewalk displaying trinkets, random clothing and fake jewelry. He parks his big ticket item. He is full of hope, a sale might mean a beer swilling good time. I wonder what the going price is for a stolen lawn mower in October where there is no grass? It’s hard to think straight down here. Loneliness and it’s substance abuse sidekick twist rational thinking out of the mind like tears out of a damp handkerchief. There’s no grass and there is no reason for anybody to buy it. Now it sits in the dark light angled into the wall. The salesman probably faces his own wall. Maybe he’ll be back tomorrow in the day light. There it sits. Dark lit lonely lawn mower.
Homing Pigeons
The Homing Pigeon has been bred so it can find it’s way home over long distances. At Pigeon Park it’s a different flock of birds. The benches and brick provide a temporary perch for the lost, here they find safety with the flock. Loneliness is the biggest disease down here. I’m acutely aware of it I don’t want to catch it. Keep moving I say. But Charlie John with his big brown sad eyes stops me. Gotta few minutes to talk to me? He is distracted and disoriented. I smell the beer on his breath. An argument over empty bootles erupts on the bench behind Charlie. I live down here and I love it, he says. Why would he love it I wonder? I’m looking for something. I won’t know what till I find it. All the pigeons tonight have flown here for their own reasons. Few, I suspect, stay here for their own reasons. All of them are driven by the constant demand of substances. But the real affliction is loneliness. Loneliness is the vortex that pulls this collection of pain and loss together.
Loneliness stinks I say to myself. I’m going home.
No comments:
Post a Comment