Tag Archives: Adventure

“Elysium” — Thoughts I Have Commuting To Work

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The man smokes beside me, inside of a smoking prohibited shelter.

The smell wafts further in because he is by the open frame.

The smoke bites my throat, a threat with every breath.

Time passes with equal opportunity for survival or for death.

I don’t like it  because it has a smell.

I don’t like it because of the cancer.

Children run just outside screaming and laughing that sirens go by without stopping.

The street in the summer has people on it burning from the sun.

But people hold dollar ice creams, sucking on them like ice cubes of sugar.

Boys wearing the gang colors of a faded Miami, in tank tops that hang on their biceps

Fill the street as dusk drops on the street and the rooftops.

I remember chewing gum and sunglasses, both I use to keep me thin.

The beautiful are models, filled with certainty about the world where they occupy life as if it were space.

In summer it is too hot, so that the rain that falls is warm.

In winter I can’t feel anything but bound up.

There is no place I can be except in between, a place that I just fall into.

Elysium is absolutely perfect because it started existence as a hope and is created out of a wish.

It is a bet whether we choose to go there, or forever miss our chance when we rely on others to take us there.

It is a secret everyone knows but can’t prove is true.

The man smokes beside me, inside of a smoking prohibited shelter.

He bangs his cane loudly on the metal legs of the chair.

And I get up and push past him to escape the crowded smallness of a room with glass walls.

Perfection is always believed to exist despite the marred definition of the Greeks and the Romans.

I brush, lightly, slightly, the frame, only feeling its hardness and its immovable force, regretting my bruise.

I do not inhabit a lake of canoes and mountains.

There is nothing there.

The trees don’t talk, the water is senseless, and I have no where to drop cigarettes and ashes.

The beauty of the beach is beautiful at night, the waves rushing loud.

It is cold enough on the sand to bury the dead there, their bones becoming shells.

Adventures In Wandering

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Have you ever wandered in locked areas?  Like at school, or in a mall?  The thrill of being somewhere that you have discovered despite the best efforts of security, is tingly, and travels along the spine, and the hair on my arms and on the back of my neck raise up and stand.

Even now, I have temptations to open closed doors…. Or to try the door handle to see if it has been locked.  I will peer in, to try to see who is in the room….  To see what the room looks like… if it is in fact the Stationary Room, from which I can take a pen or two, or even a stapler.

As I have “matured” in my adulthood, this habit of opening closed doors is getting silly to play.  I am recognized where I go, because where I go that is different, and new, and worthy of door-opening adventure, are often other offices, like the office I sit in to do my job.  When going with my children, I will abstain from blatantly just opening doors, but on occasion I have found excuses to open closed doors, even when they are watching.

Even now, the biggest adventure I have had, was when I was still young.  As I get older, I find that exciting adventures are more had if you get on a plan and travel to another country.  Where things, and almost everything, is just different.  Being in these foreign countries is like being in someone else’s building.  If not their exact home.  There is some thrill to it.  But even these expensive adult adventures do not compare with my greatest adventure, yet, in opening a locked door.

I was in school at the time.  There were hundreds of buildings on campus, and I probably had been in a handful of them.  There were maybe a hundred that I could see when I walked to get to class, but I didn’t have the time of the knowledge to walk into them.  And, when during the beginning of my semesters, I would walk yet, to another building, I sometimes may have tried a door or two, and about up to half the time, the door would be locked.

About halfway through school, I decided that the main libraries on campus were becoming boring.  They were always packed with students, and the sense that I was one of the number of students that only stuck to the main and tried thoroughfares was beginning to make me feel what I knew was happening….  I was a number.

So, in no systematic way, except through guesswork, I started to pick buildings, hoping that I could walk into an open door to a library that felt a little less cavernous for the the purpose of blocking sun, wind, and snow, from the students inside.  Near the south end of campus was a stone building three stories tall, and with two bell towers.  It was greyish brown stonework with narrow, slatted windows.  The word “KNOX” had been carved into the stonework above the main door.  I guessed it was the “Knox Building.”

Well, I had seen it several times at least without deciding to explore inside.   So, one afternoon, with one of my classes unexpectedly cancelled, I needed to find someplace quiet to be.  Not doing readings until after the professor has lectured us his opinion, is not the best way to learn material.  So, with my newfound promise to read, because I had been spared, I immediately thought of the Knox Building.

It was not very far.  The weather was overcast, but not too cool yet.  I went up the dozen steps up to the two arched doors and pulled…..  Yes, it did open.  Inside, it was dim, and the ceiling was high.  So, from this look, I knew the main floor was two stories high.  There were no electric lights, just rows and rows of column windows.  Slatted so that the surface of glass was not large.  The foyer was not too big to make me feel too small.  It felt roomy, and if it had been lighted, probably I would feel a welcome.  There was no one around, so, when I say I got that thrill, this was it.

I really had not idea how big the building was, and is, but I was not in a hurry.  On my left, once I took a good look, I could see through another couple of arched doors, which had slatted windows build into the middle.  It was familiar to me.  It was a chapel, very large, with tall arched ceilings reaching three stories, higher than the ceiling in the hallway.  No one was inside, and it was quiet, and I swore to myself I knew the smell of a church chapel.  I lingered only a few seconds, looking straight at the altar, then to the smaller alcoves on the left and right.  When I turned to come back out, to the right hand side of the main doorway, was a wall with a row of windows, and out the windows I could see a courtyard.  So, with no real choice, I turned to walk forward into the building, more.

By the time I had walked around the main floor, passing many doors, I was unable to find any secret or excitement.  The doors were locked, or obviously, there were stairways that led to the basement….  I was not tempted to do that.  I decided to go through the doors that led to the courtyard.

When I entered, only fifteen minutes into my adventure in the Knox Building, I was met with an empty place.  There were stone pathways, and greenery planted into the lawn and along the surrounding stone walls of the building.  It was quiet.  No pigeons.  A bright day, without the shining sun.  No rain.  And no sound.  It was an outdoor library!  Unfortunately, again,  I was not tempted to sit there and study.

So much for my experience.  I had enough of mousing around, and just went to one of the libraries I knew.  In the end I got in a good forty-five minutes of reading before my next class.  Adventures like these are getting fewer, but I keep remembering the adventures I have had.  I will remember the smell of was candles as the wax is still hot.  And the idea of a lit candle as the flame dances, because close to the flame, it is very warm….  Leading to hot.  Now, if I glance through my bookshelves at home, I remember the marathon readings I did, and, I am glad that now, I can take all the time I want, to finish a book that I am reading.

My Favorite Friends

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Daisies have white petals and yellow centres.  Much like the Cadbury Eggs, a filling of white and yellow surrounded by chocolate.

The field and the hill are scattered with them, growing in small bunches, and, swaying in the wind.  They are the most beautiful weed, and if you encourage them, they will cover the lawn.

When this happened in our backyard, in the summer, I stood with a lollipop in my mouth, sucking, and gazing at all the daisies.  I felt as if I had a daisy in my mouth, its sweetness filling and savoured.

I remember one day, because I was wearing my favourite dress–a baby pink, A-line flare.  I lobed that if I crouched down my dress would spread outward and cover my feet.  I looked like a pink bell.  I spent those days, in my pink bell dress, laughing.

The days were always sunny, and warm, but not too hot and humid.  I also remember because the freezies we had didn’t melt and become sugary water in blue, purple, pink, or yellow, those colours of the rainbow that taste like colours of the rainbow.  Now, in these summers, water droplets cover the length of the long freezie and make holding and eating one a slippery mess.  I love the cool blueberry in my mouth, and the quite cool sensation of holding something frozen, but keeping dry.  Those days, were a long time ago, and the earth has made so many rotations that it has probably rotated out of that particular orbit.  Alas…. Time changes everything!

One day, many years later, when I didn’t wear the pink dress any more, my boyfriend came over to our house.  It was an ordinary day, except that it would be the first time he came to our house.  I was excited, as he had casually just called on the telephone and said he would be riding his bicycle over and would be arriving in the next half hour.

It was summer, and I was quickly …  maybe I was in a panic….  I was trying to decide if I should wear something a little more suited to seeing my boyfriend, who was quite brand new at the time.  When he had called I was lounging around in an old pair of shorts and just any old t-shirt.  Part of my consideration was what we would be doing.  If we were going to go out for a walk in the ravine….  Then I wouldn’t really have to change into anything “nicer.”  I was not exactly making enough money to purchase all sorts of hiking gear, so, wearing any old pair of shorts and an old pair of sneakers would probably be all I needed.

Being the guy that he was, and probably still is, now, he arrived in twenty minutes.  He rang the door bell, and i rushed to open the door.  I had not changed…  as I just immediately made the decision that I didn’t want my little brother and sister bugging us.  He came in, and had a pop and sat and talked with all of us.  I was thinking constantly of taking off without my little tow-alongs.  My mother expected me to looke after my siblings during the summer holidays sine they were younger, but, they could survive being left alone for an hour without the supervision….  Not that I was especially responsible at the time.

We did take off not long after the pop was finished.  I asked, quite suddenly during a lull in the conversation, whether my boyfriend wanted to go to the river in the ravine with me?  My brother and sister were quick this time…  and I was grateful…..  my boyfriend immediately said quite excitedly that we should go, while my sister and brother said that they’d stay at home.  I didn’t have to be the one who said they couldn’t go.

The ravine and the river were not far away…  within two minutes we could be in a forest of trees and deep into a woodchip, pine needle floor that would lead to a small river that we could follow far, and even get lost in.

My boyfriend had never been to this part of  “Green Space” within the city, and I felt almost lost, surprisingly, as I began to think about how to show him around it.  He made it easy, however, keeping up an easy flow of conversation.  He never once asked where we were going….  As apparently, my statement from the beginning about going into the ravine and finding the river was enough for him.  This made me believe that just going to the river was enough.

There were several places that we could stand at right beside the river, and several places where the river would become shallow enough that standing on the edge we could reach our hands in and literally touch the sandy bottom of the stream. This is where we stopped and stood looking at everything surrounding us.  A few times, my boyfriend picked up a stone and skipped it across the water.  Sometimes it went far enough to go beyond just the middle of the stream.  this was the first time I had seen someone, in the flesh, do the skipping stone across the water.  It was impressive, and I felt in awe of my boyfriend.  I had thought, always, that it was just movie magic, but apparently, anyone could learn how to do it.

As we stood longer at the side of the stream, we began to notice the things just in the water.  Surprisingly, there were schools and schools of tiny fish.  They were silvery, and tiny and darted, faster than the striking of lightening, everywhere.  As soon as I saw them, I was utterly delighted.  I had never thought it possible that there would be life inside the tiny river in the ravine.  It did not seem wild enough to support any type of life.  Where would all the food come  from?

We stood looking down at them, in awe.  Suddenly, my boyfriend declared that they were definitely guppies.  Before this, I had only seen guppies in the pet store.  The ravine river was murky, from the sandy bottom and the slowness of the water which encouraged the water to be become murky with decomposing foliage.  I was very impressed.

We laughed, at the darting fish.  A few times my boyfriend put his hand and fingers in to cause the guppies to suddenly change direction, in an attempt to pick up one of the guppies, but they were incredibly fast.  It was exciting to see the quickness of silver which, given the sunlight, made a quick “spark” with the sudden turn the fish made.

As we grew tired, slowly, we suggested to each other, as we stood up again, by the side of the river, that we should go home.  My boyfriend dried his hands on his pants, and we turned around and started to head home.  This time I  did not feel myself looking everywhere in a scattered manner, to try to find something to say or to do.  I felt that my boyfriend and I had had a happy afternoon.  As we slowly walked, by boyfriend reached for my hand, and we held hands, lightly, walking without intention, out of the ravine.

We were holding hands, me in complete contentment and thinking that I had a cool boyfriend, when he let go suddenly, and running towards some thicket of bushes and trees, he picked a bunch of daisies, and offered them to me.  I was surprised by his gesture and accused him of vandalism and thievery of public property, causing the both of us to laugh.  I accepted his bunch of daisies anyway, reminding him that I had a backyard full of them at home already.

We were not a couple for more than a year-and-a-half, and i have not seen him since, but this particular afternoon is an afternoon I will forever remember, it being so pleasant, the sun being up, the way things worked without effort, and the way I didn’t feel as if I was always looking at the future and wondering if there would be future, given the sad circumstances.

I am someone who saves the things I love.  And that afternoon is saved, with the daisies and the silvery guppies.  And the memory of a kind boyfriend who made being a teenager exciting, and something that felt safe and full of being in love.