Making It Up As I Go Along #221

In bad form, last weekend went by without a word of my sister’s birthday. Shocking it isn’t… I’m not too good about such things.

MONDAY…
--- Hot day. Felt like 35 (95F) with the humidity. Work is pretty busy for evening shift and there is lots of lightning on the drive home. No thunder or rain but lots of dry lightning.

TUESDAY…
--- Still hot… so I decide that it’s time to get rid of the snow tires.
--- It’s my Ottawa anniversary. Three years ago today I moved to Ottawa and started working with the RCMP. It feels like fifty years and it feels like last week… all at the same time.
--- Some groceries on the way home.

WEDNESDAY…
--- Another hot day. I watch a lousy movie in the morning. “Stealth” makes you appreciate quality films… cause it ain’t one.
--- Supper at the mall with Atlas and Mike.
--- For the second straight night, I fall asleep on the couch and don’t go to bed until after 4:00 AM.

THURSDAY…
--- Cooler day. Just right temperature actually. A few of us go to the Chip Wagon where we can sit out while we eat and listen as a baseball game is played a few hundred feet away. Minor League baseball in Ottawa… on a nice sunny evening… means about 500 fans in the 10,000 seat stadium. Sports town this is not.
--- How to feel alone… most of your mail is junk (real estate flyers are the latest big one)… and messages on the phone are blank (sure sign of telemarketers)… and 8 out of every 10 e-mails is spam. It’s all happening at once too! We’re everyone go?

FRIDAY…
--- In a bit early for a meeting. Work is quiet with three of us in CNI tonight. Supper with Sue and Bill is good.
--- The next isn’t great today. I think I fell asleep on the sofa last night and didn’t do it in a proper position.

SATURDAY…
--- Wet and cool so I stay in and see if I can make my neck feel better. A horrible movie makes you want to laugh… a little reading and some baseball on TV.


Witnessing a Greatest Moment
Tired and quiet, the car rolls through the darkness. Flashes of distant storms light the sky but no rain or rumble accompanies it. This is the best time… when I have finished a night’s work and have the next several hours of night to do with as I please. Sleep, movies, reading, a walk… it’s all up to me and the city around me is quiet no matter what I choose.

And late in the evening is the time when those things that aren’t quite ordinary are possible to see. There are the flashes of lightning that remind you how there’s more to the world than TV commercials, trendy music and the artificial hustle and bustle that we all seem to feel is our meaning for life.

The world we create for ourselves is so often insignificant. The display in the sky that’s here now has occurred for all time. It even happened when amazing animals of fiction dominated the planet. These animals, that we’ve now made movies about as we fantasize as to how they were, once witnessed the same beautiful display that lights up the sky now. Did it mean anything to them? Did they look up in puzzlement? Did they cower deep in a cave? Did they have enough sense to even notice? I would think they did.

It has always seemed that animals have a better sense of nature, and their place in it, than people have. When storms come, animals seem to sense the danger. They hide away or run to safe ground well in advance of the rain, flood or earthquake. And we, in all our wisdom, sit in boarded up houses, ignoring all warnings and drowning in our living rooms as a hurricane wipes out our city.

Survivors stand foolishly on television proclaiming how “if it’s my time to go then I’ll go… but I ain’t leaving my house!” Some see this as brave and noble… I’ve always seen it as stupidity and dumb luck. Most of these survivors of nature’s wrath have to go off and get themselves a new dog or cat after the ordeal is over. It’s not that the original family pet didn’t make it… they were just sensible and ran off days before.

But back to the wonderful strangeness of the night. Back home, it was late at night that I felt most inspired. Walking the downtown streets or going for a late night drive would always invigorate my mind. There’s something about looking into the darkness and not being able to see what’s out there… it sets the imagination running.

And the simple desertedness of the city is in itself out of the ordinary. Roads are there for cars… sidewalks for people… and manicured lawns show that those people aren’t far off… yet, at night, they’re all gone. It’s almost like a scene out of a science fiction movie… when all the people have been whisked into another dimension, leaving you as the only person left in the city.

It seems like I notice things in a different way at night. The night before, after checking my mail and walking back to my place, I looked in the parking lot and noticed a striking change. For more than a year, a black car sat parked in its space, unmoved. The yellow lines were painted around its rear tire… pebbles left from wind, rain and snow gathered in a little pile up against this partially yellowed tire. I often imagined that the owner lay decomposing in their condo. One day, the smell would drift out to a neighbour and the car would be towed away while the tomb, a few doors down from me, would be emptied of its furniture.

But on the night before this one, I looked up from my mail to see the black car gone… its spot empty… and my world suddenly felt different. I had to go to the spot to make sure I wasn’t overlooking the car somehow. But there was the pile of pebbles, bare and unprotected. The car was indeed gone.

And on this night, with the lightning brightening the road for a few milliseconds at a time, I drift towards home and glance at an oncoming van. It drives very slowly and I wonder what the problem would be to have a car driving an empty four lane road at pedestrian speed.

With a flash of lightning, I get my answer. For in the lane next to the van, a dog runs with joy and liveliness. It’s a Blue Terrier and it runs smiling like only a dog can. It runs boldly in the middle of the lane. It runs as if it belongs in this road just the same as the van that drives along beside it.

Darkness brings the dog to a silhouette. Its form is seen running still on the edge of the van’s headlights. Another flash of thunderless lightning once again shows me the smile. And it’s contagious. I drive on smiling… that dog just ran with too much happiness for there to be any doubt. I know I’ve just witnessed this dog’s greatest moment.

A hundred yards further down the road another flash of silent lightning shows another out of the ordinary sight. A man runs in the middle of the same lane as the dog ahead of it. But where the dog runs with exuberant joy (I swear its paws hardly touched the pavement) the man runs defeated. It’s obvious that the man hasn’t run in a long time. His stride is short and choppy and his clothes look more like those of the couch dweller than the jogger. My guess is that a break in his TV program was the right time to let the dog out for a little sniff of a bush and raise of a leg.

But with a flash of silent lightning on a still night, the dog had other ideas.