A Guide to Nowhere, Part Three

Hi. This is the third part of a series my label in Japan asked me to write about living in rural Nova Scotia. The forthcoming Japanese translation will be available here.

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“There is no way of comparing the time of the hare with that of the tortoise. Except by using an abstraction which has little to do with either of them. The life span of a hare and the life time of a tortoise are prescribed in their cells according to a very different rhythm. It was [humans] who introduced a common, abstract time and then organized a race to see which of them would reach the finishing post first. The time of the galaxies has nothing in common with the time of the butterfly. Except that [humans] observe both of them and then invent a time to place them both in. But with this time, [humans], like no other animal can tell the story of the creation of the world.”

— John Berger, About Time (1985)

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I sat half-awake in the waiting room of the mechanic's for the fourth time in two months. Francine, who dealt with the customers and ordered parts, and who I'm sure had other responsibilities as the shop’s only clean-handed employee, was trying to fix the pellet stove beside me. I handed her a bottle of hand sanitizer from the windowsill and my lighter to jumpstart it. Snow from the previous week's record-breaking storm blew around like pulverized glass under the streetlight outside, and the clouds feigned purple as the sun decided whether or not to rise.

The phone rang and I was left to watch the stove. I overheard Francine say her last day was in a couple weeks. It wasn't my business, but I'd gotten to enjoy her company enough to lessen the sting of my dying van, so I asked her about it. She answered me in a strange new voice.

She had cancer. She had been waiting for the hospital to call her back with a treatment plan for months. She was tearing down a wall in her house to take her mind off of it. She showed me pictures of the renovation on her phone, and I showed her pictures of my daughter.

Other customers came in, and everyone took turns delivering their best performance of the exasperated resignation reserved for waiting rooms of inconvenient but ultimately benign procedures.

As I paid my bill, Francine looked me in the eyes and said she enjoyed having me as a customer. I looked her in the eyes and said she would be okay, though neither of us were convinced. Then I drove away and and cried without restraint, like children do everywhere and adults do in cars.

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I had planned for that to be the saddest part. I was going to talk about how the crocuses and daffodils are sprouting in our backyard. I was charting out the hopeful arc of springtime as a metaphor for the interconnectedness of birth and death. Then I got a phone call, and found out Adrian was dead.

Adrian, from my last letter. Adrian, my dearest friend, my brother, my teacher, had crashed into a semi truck that morning.

Then I found myself once again in a car, howling like a wounded animal, asking every object in existence what had happened to my beautiful boy.

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The flowers are still blooming. The ocean has mostly thawed. I swam in a river. The sky is light until 8pm. It is undeniably spring. Life will be born again and forget that it was ever pronounced dead.

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Adrian loved the woods. He could tell you what an area looked like 100 years ago—what had been clear cut, what had been a field—which trees were vulnerable, and which were waiting for an opportunity to spring up in the next 100 years.

He'd be telling you this, and if you were lucky, you could see the unified cycle we call birth and death unfolding before your eyes.

I could make a metaphor about fallen trees becoming the foundation for new growth, but all I want to say is that a part of Adrian will see with my eyes and work with my hands and think with my mind and love with my heart for as long as I live, and in that way, this is a benevolent universe.

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That said, I just got laid off, so I’ll be getting to know the benevolence of our social welfare system as well. If you or someone you know is looking for a designer, writer, or musician, reach out.

Otherwise, I plan to be futzing in our garden and convincing people I can swing a hammer until the money runs out.

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Our daughter is 15 months old. She is running around and climbing on the couch and speaking in broken but totally comprehensible sentences. Several hundred times a day she asks us “what is this?”

It's a seemingly simple question. But, with extensive repetition it becomes a koan, a path to understanding. What is this? Always different, always new. “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

I once had a dream that I met Suzuki Roshi, who said that quote. We were in an abandoned restaurant in an alcove of a subway station. I asked him what he was doing there, and I noticed how small he was. He smiled, we bowed, and I woke up.

“When you hear the wake-up bell, you should jump out of bed right away. You shouldn't lie there. Otherwise, how can you ever face death, which always comes suddenly?”

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May we all jump out of bed every morning. May we express the depth of our love in everything we do. May we take notice of the beauty this spring.

Goodbye Adrian. I love you.

IV