Pink Dawn

I arrived in Goa like a screw jostled from a machine, ricocheting from airport to airport, sleepwalking through glacial immigration lines, and filing claims forms when my luggage failed to join me. The Qatar Airlines staff told me it would “probably” arrive within three days, that such things were common. It was the first of many times I put my trust into strangers and hoped for the best.

I bounced into a taxi to Arambol, my mind rifling through the missing pack: a sleeping bag, malaria pills, a mosquito net… Important things. I looked to the landscape outside, hoping something might catch my attention or calm my thoughts.

I’d forgotten how dark Asia can be at night. Shadows swished as our headlights stirred the road, sliding snippets of strange stories before us: a man crouched on the side of the highway, hands on the back of his head, a picture of desperation, defeat, or despair; a group of tourists huddled around a barrel fire, laughing, as if the road were a stream, the parking lot a campground; a chain of vacated police checkpoints, their gates thrown open like a dare, or a threat. The taxi roared through it all, revealing secrets, judging nothing.

Thinking this a good opportunity to pick up the local language, I asked my driver how to say a few basic words. But in the snaking darkness, he wasn’t in the mood to teach, and I wasn’t keen to learn. So we fell quiet as my mind wandered back to my missing luggage. The medicine, the clothes, the gear…

A honking, blinking van burst through the silence. I’d heard stories of ambushes against just-landed travellers and had dismissed them as fear-mongering sensationalism. But on that black, empty highway, tired from my travels, mourning my lost luggage, and unsure of where my accommodation was or if my booking was confirmed, I was uneasy, unable to assess the danger.

Both vehicles stopped and ignited their hazards. The alarm car’s driver shouted as he stepped out of his vehicle, his words tripping over each other in staccato bursts. My driver responded with equal urgency, leaving the taxi.

Hidden in shadows, I was grateful for the dark.

They walked to the back of the taxi. More shouting. The car began to sway, and a scraping grated from inside the car, behind me. There was a thump, a few final words, and then the alarm car revved its engine and disappeared back into the dark.

My driver returned wearing one sock and stinking of petrol. Wordless, he lurched through a four-point turn and hammered the taxi back towards the airport. It took five minutes to extract an explanation. We’d stopped for petrol at the beginning of our trip, and in his haste (or exhaustion), he’d left the gas cap at the pump, sloshing gasoline over dozens of kilometres of unlit highway. He’d plugged the hole with his sock.

So we backtracked, screwed the cap on, and then back-back tracked towards Arambol. By the time we reached the village, it was almost dawn. We strained to find signs, people, any indication of where my guest house might be. We disappeared into narrow, labyrinthine streets for an hour. Searching, searching. Finally, a hand-painted sign pointed the way, and my driver nodded in its direction.

When the taxi reversed to begin its long journey back, I stood in a dusty open space in front of a four storey villa. The name of the guest house, God’s Gift, was embossed in pink all caps above me. There was an unlocked gate that led to a motorcycle and scooter-filled courtyard. Lost, exhuasted, frustrated, I began to wander.

And then, for the first time, I saw daylight in India. Sunrise melted night’s shadows, revealing a landscape I’d waited six months to see. Distant hills rose into red-pink cliffs covered in scrubby patches of green. Coconuts burst from palm trees that twisted between crowded buildings. A hazy cloud tinted everything pink. The sand, the walls, the sky, even the trees. Like the world had been dipped in tea.

A few days later, a friend told me that that sunrise was a gift from God. He was joking, but he was right. India has a way of turning darkness to light. Usually when you need it most.

I didn’t know what had called me to India. I didn’t know what I was searching for or how I would know if I found it. But I’d followed my gut this far, and now it was telling me to leave the hut. To see what else was out there. So I collected my bag, stepped into the courtyard, and let the pink dawn swallow me.

The Calm In the Storm

For Rog

It was warm for late October, the moon bright and heavy. From coast to coast, reports burst from beaches transformed into levees by fast-moving backhoes. Photos of empty subway platforms, fortressed storefronts, and slickening sidewalks filled click-hungry feeds. Leave now, they said. This could be The Big One.

But that night, in a home facing the still-placid waters, the chattering screens were dim. If there was wind, it was the gentle breeze of an autumn night. If there was dampness, it was the dew caressing the harbour. It was then, in that unseasonably peaceful place, surrounded by love, that he passed.

It was a moment only he could have chosen. Always able to find the calm in a storm, always able to craft moments of fragile, perfect beauty. I knew him briefly. Only a glimpse, really. But from that glimpse I met a rare being that held the world with soft strength, an egg in granite hands.

Born and nurtured by the north Atlantic, he loved its vastness, its primal power. He understood that loving the ocean meant accepting its occasional tumult, refusing to howl when its roiling stirred the waters beneath him. That same life-force also brought unmatched beauty, adventure, joy.

It was this acceptance that characterized his writing, smothering jagged shards with pillowy softness. His last letters reflected the person I remembered: a man of strength, dignity, and elegance. He maintained these qualities even in the face of serious illness, the greatest storm he’d ever seen. The Big One.

In a world where noise too often overwhelms signal, his voice was a spike of clean clarity. Don’t shout at the storm, and don’t to try to contain it in a cup. That salty sting is just the ocean being the ocean. Instead, set sail, accept the waves when they come, and enjoy the endless expanse of infinite horizon.

I picture him out there now, sitting in a boat, bouncing across playful waves. A pink sunset inspires his pen to move, and with sweetsoft words, he stirs the scene into a warm fog. Finished, he closes his eyes, smiles, and breathes in the sea. Finally at rest, at peace.

Darkwake

A few weeks ago, a woman emailed me to see if I was interested in reading some of my poetry at a Nuit Blanche event she was organizing. My friends at Diaspora Dialogues had passed her my contact, thinking I might be a good fit, but I wasn’t so sure. I hadn’t released any poetry into the world for some time, and my older writing was starting to feel, well, old. Still, I was curious and flattered, so I called her to learn more.

She said her recent work explored technology and the relationships people have with and through it, pulling on the sinewy wires that lash our hearts to the machine. Something inside me hummed awake. I’d been fiddling with the machine, too, and I’d managed to jostle a few words from between its gears. Maybe I did have some writing to share after all.

I warned her that the pieces were quite different from the writing that had earned me the introduction. I wasn’t even sure I’d call them poems. But I liked them and I thought they were a better reflection of my current obsessions and voice.

She invited me to her studio to read them.

A few days later, I was walking down an unfamiliar laneway in a familiar part of town – one of my favourite Toronto pastimes – with a couple of pieces ready to go. The metallic sky hinted at the first autumn decay, but the streets still swaggered with summer, as if sheer force of will could keep the city smoulder aglow.

I found her door, took a breath, and knocked.

Within minutes we were sitting on couches, continuing our conversation. We held the machine up to the light, turned it over, spat on it, cuddled with it, broke it down, and reassembled it. Our creative energies aligned, like we were playing music. Or dancing. I said I was ready to read if she was ready to listen.

I pulled the tether from my pocket, brightened its darkwake face, and swiped the words alive. I apologized for relying on a gorilla glass retina display for my words, but she shook her head, smiled, and waited.

I lowered my hand to minimize interference and to meet her eyes. And then I told her about the weeds, about the stars, about the tether. I told her about being lost in transit, about loving and hating my cyborg life. I told her about fantasies of spraying graffiti over policy and pasting hand-drawn maps over CAD.

When I finished, she laughed and told me the writing was perfect. It was such a humbling endorsement of my work, of words that had emerged from a place I had long thought ground away.

But there was a problem: I wasn’t going to be in the city for the night of Nuit Blanche. I’d been invited to a sweat lodge near Collingwood, and nothing was going to keep me from participating, not even sharing this accidental poetry. She refused to let me consider, telling me she find another writer. There would be other projects, other collaborations.

For an audition that didn’t lead to a reading, it was as successful as I could have hoped. Before I stood up to leave, left me with a question, speaking words that wormed deep:

“Do you think you can memorize it?”

I made my way back to the sidewalk, the tether asleep as I re-merged with the sweating citystream.