Friday, November 20, 2015

tim.


on a dark, foggy, rainy, unwelcoming day staying home was the obvious choice, get some writing done. so that was that. i was happy with the decision, happy to stay in my pyjama-type stuff, happy to remain dry and cozy. a half-hour later, however, i was in my trusty old truck trundling off to town.

i headed for chelsea. that was far enough, i reasoned, on a day like that. anyway, chelsea is cool. chelsea is where beautiful people go. but, for some reason i didn't stop there. i did steer the truck off the highway onto scott road. i even geared down, slowed as i approached the parking lot. but then i slid right on by 'biscotti'. i asked myself why(?) why(?) i turned onto old chelsea and bumped along the yet unpaved gravel road, but bounced right on past 'le saisons.' i asked myself why(?) why(?) my right foot seemed to have taken over. i was no longer driving. i was driven. i found myself crossing over the alonso-wright bridge, circling 'round and shooting straight into the 'tim hortons' lot. maybe i'm just not cool. i know i'm not beautiful. but, sometimes i just gotta go to tim's.

there are times when nothing will do but that i go for a tim hortons coffee. i'm not proud of it and, honestly, i don't even particularly like the coffee. it has no punch, no soul, and the donuts will kill ya softly. still, there's something terribly soothing about those places, like macaroni and cheese. it's ok to not be ok. it's ok to look like you've seen better days. you can be missing a few teeth, to dress like you've just come off an oil rig. while people elsewhere may be smack in the middle of being wonderful, at tim's people look over when you enter with smiles that say: 'yeah, bud, it's ok.'

before the tim hortons was built in wakefield my buddy and i staged a mock sit-in in front of the huge 'tim hortons opening in spring' sign. we held up molos coffee cups and took photos. those were the days when molos cared. we thought it was hilarious because of all the hubbub swirling 'round the franchise threatening to open here. nobody paid much attention to our shenanigans, the inevitable happened and life went on.

soon after, it dawned on me that tim's is at least one place open later than 6:00 that isn't boozy. it's open all the time, in wakefield. who knew? i'm there right now and it's 4:57 a.m., now 4:59... the drive-through is already busy. the people coming in have a look about them as if to say: "hey, i work friggin hard with seriously messed-up hours while barely making ends meet. i have no friggin dental plan, my kid needs skates and my wife needs some company. if i wanna extra large double friggin double and a honey friggin crawler i damn well gonna have one." 

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

The Note.


During the fall of 1978 I seriously wanted to leave India. I simply wasn’t having a good time. I was miserable. Of course, the fact that I had Malaria may have contributed to my state of mind.

I was stuck up in my cabin on the hillside far from the hermitage. Once or twice each day someone would look in on me and bring some food I wouldn’t eat. Otherwise, I’d be alone with a fever that made me sweat profusely, chills that made me shake uncontrollably, medicine that made me retch, and thoughts that made me want to be anywhere else. I cursed my decision to go to Mumbai. That's where I contracted the disease. I could've kicked myself for living so far up the mountainside. It was too isolated. I couldn’t understand why my teacher hadn’t sent even one lousy little message in the whole two weeks I'd been ill. I really wanted to leave.

Malaria is a rather unpleasant experience. I do not recommend it as part of ones life experience. And the anti-malarial drug, Quinine, might've been worse in those days than the disease itself. It became increasingly difficult to face that bitter crystalline monster of a pill each day. My mood grew darker than the monsoon skies until, on the tenth and last day of my medicine, I’d had enough. Rain poured down onto the slate roof as I reached for the last pill. Nobody else was there. It was just that pill and me staring at each other. My teacher clearly didn't care and no one would ever know whether I ate the thing or not. I tossed it into a glass by my bed and rolled over.

It was a wild night outside and I was perfectly resolute, quite satisfied to avoid the horrible effects of the Quinine no matter what. I couldn’t sleep. I felt pretty bad but, at just about eleven thirty, a lady walked in the front door soaked to the bone. I remarked that she must’ve been mad to trudge all the way up to see me in that storm. She agreed, was clearly not happy. She thrust a note into my sweaty hand and said: "Guru insisted I bring this to you immediately." I was a little surprised. That was the very first acknowledgement that he even knew of my illness. I was positively shocked, however, once I read the note: "Dear Nathan; Take the last pill and you’ll be better by the morning. Love, Guruji."

I reached for the pill, swallowed it with some difficulty and some water, and in the morning I felt much much better.