“I haven’t passed along my advice on becoming a great writer, have I?”

“No, I don’t think you have, Peter”

“Hold this,” he says as he hands me his awkward camera bag, handbills and papers falling out from all corners.

“A long time ago when I sailed around the world - oh, you should do that! Sail around the world, see all the ports. And travel over land too! - I landed in South America (silly me, I thought I could spend just a few weeks there and see everything not realizing South America is an ENTIRE continent! - it took me six months just to get to Lima, Peru!) - anyway, I ran into a fellow from England. He asked me where I was from and I proudly told him British Columbia - he was English you know, so I made sure I said Brit-ish Col-umbia. He asked what town I was from and I said ‘oh a small northern town, you likely wouldn’t have heard of it.’

“’Try me,’ the fellow said and so I told him: ‘Fort St. John.’

“’Well!’ said the old Brit, ‘I know of Fort St. John. You must know Maude Simons!’

“And I did, I knew her - she was an old witch who was only looking for a slave. I told the old Brit this and his face fell. But I was young and ignorant. I thought nothing of it. Months later talking to my father I recounted the story of the Brit who knew of Maude Simons and I told my father how I’d said Maude was an old witch who was only looking for a slave. Oh did my father yell! He said: she’s neither a witch nor a slave driver. She is the reason we have a printing press in Northern BC!

“Turns out, my father told me, as a young woman, Maude lived in the southern states. She was charged with the responsibility of packing the horse bags which were sent up to soldiers in Canada leaving for the war. She’d always dreamt of seeing Canada and marrying a Canadian cowboy and so in one of the packs she slipped a note that said:

I have dreamt of marrying a Canadian Cowboy. If you will marry me, please write me back.

“Sure enough, within a few months’ time she received a response from a lonely cowboy from Manitoba. Those Americans, they don’t know much about Canada, but Maude packed her things, hopped the train and found herself in Vancouver where she instead met Mr. Simons and fell madly in love, forgetting of course about the lonely cowboy in Manitoba. Mr. Simons owned a printing press and when they were pushed out of Vancouver during the war, the moved farther and farther north until they settled in Fort St. John. They hauled the press all that way!

“Now, something interesting you should know about Maude is that she had no higher a reading level than the third grade. But whatever was written when Maude’s fingers hit the keys was what was pressed. The typesetters weren’t able in those days to make any corrections. And so, if there was an 8 instead of an apostrophe, people became accustomed. They knew what she meant. Maude and her husband started the Fort St. John Post which became the Alaska Highway News, which was bought out some years later by an eastern syndicate.

“Now, here I was a young journalist in the Amazon Jungle turning redder and redder as my father told me this story about the great Maude who’d move from the states to escape the war to start two of the most successful papers in BC with only a third grade education.

“So, I wrote to Maude. I asked her to give me what advice she could to a young journalist stuck in the Amazon. This is what she wrote….”

He handed me an oversized piece of folded paper, creased and worn from being carried in the confines of his coat pocket, shoved up against hand bills and notepads, pens and lens brushes.

“Don’t read it now,” he said. “Take it with you. Read – errors and all – when you have time. There’s good advice here. And you’re not much different than a young journalist trapped in the Amazon you know.”

I took the paper, shoved into the depths of my purse, forgot about it until I got home later that night.

The letter, it said:

Lillooet, B.C.
February 1, 1975

Dear Peter;

I was happy to hear from you and sorry to know your dad had to find the travelling the hard way. He was always a rugged type and I am sure once he got home and back to his own feed box, plus neighbours et c . he’g soon get over it and only a pleasant memory left.

I am an old lady now Peter, 87 last summer and do not expect to give much advice or results on anything I do. I remember oyu as a bumptious and self confident sprout and I am sure to get into the journalistic game, all you would ha ve to do is just enlarge on what you wrote to me. I would think the Alaska Highway News, which is now owned by some eastern syndicate, would be glad to gave your copy, specially ff you make them see your predicaments , relative to some co0incident, mountain, highway, hill or muskeg, down deep there in the Peru country.

I am sure if you didn’t try to write, jut tell, such as being a tool push comparied to one at Baldonnel, or you missed the feed-bag with a stubborn switch and late fot e for the dinner you were so hungry for, would make good readin for the oil Patch.

Sit diwon and tell. That8s all I ever did on the paper. I never went to school longer than the 3^rd readers, and I sure you could wrap rigsn around me. Be natural, say what you see, or act, then qualify and they will likely be sending you a gumdrop for the effort. I gave the AN to our son Dan and Georgina and a Dutch boy we important from the Hague. They sold it for a lot of dough and Dave Radler, is the president of the deal. I have no desire to ever leave home. We saw the Orient to the Equator in 1937, bombed out of Shanghai etc and etc to Lillooeet has some of everything all the other places, either too mch or too little. Thank you for your letter. Dont wait, just start in and with all the curle-cures on your penmanship, better print you copy by hand, on lines and only on one side of the paper. God bless and good luck,

M.

Lillooet Publishers Ltd.
P.O. Box 100
Lillooet, BC

SN P. Jarvis
c/o Geographical Service-Intercontinent
Line 23-Helijosh 780
Madre de Dois
Apdo 2953
Lima, Peru

**

xoxo

M.L. H’art

All your colours, mutating just under the surface – they’re so hard to predict. I see blue pushing over veins, crawling over the bones of your face, creeping under the first layer of skin, lifting and shape-shifting, poking fun at my inability to read you. You look so different, when you change like that.

The asperity of truth a mangled interpretation of chrominance, the saturation and hue a sliding scale of reality, the red flushing your hands is burning, hot – the red, it makes me shy away from your touch, makes me think that burn is designed for my cheek.

The comity of us is interrupted by the green spilling into your eyes, biting and sharp like razor teeth ripping through soft belly, pulling sinewy guts from the pit of an empty stomach, nothing but shredded muscularis dripping liquid unease.

Up your arms like a vine crawls a black as deep as winter night. It seeps out pores, soaks into the thin fabric of shirt, stains you like oil. The ornamental colour hides you in the background, manipulates until it matches the flower-pattered gaudy wallpaper pasted up five decades ago by a small sad woman with too much time, too little satisfaction and a budget to blow on furnishing fulfillment in a well-decorated home. Your ephemeral colour, it’s as muddy as her reason for choosing the valium pattern in the first place.

Reclined comfortably amongst these colours lies you: the bones and teeth and flesh of you, the waste and acid and germs of you, the boring and simple and plain colour of you – the less drastic, less shocking, less impressive you.

The languid charm of your shifting state enervates the need to know you, the real you, the you who picks your nose and drools on your pillow and squirms when speaking in public; the you who bites your nails and stutters when angry and cries when watching long distance telephone commercials; the you who sneaks through the drive through late at night for two cheeseburgers and scratches your scalp despite the flakes and skips showering in favour of sleep.

The you no one else sees.

xoxo

M. L. H’art

If your heart broke tomorrow, I’d turn down the blinds and pour you a stiff drink, hand you the controller and let you play until your frustrations were reduced to pixels of blood and fantasy. I’d not even block your end sequence so you’d feel good about the up, down, left, left, roundhouse combination that tore off my character’s arm and slapped it to the floor.

I’d not remind you the bills had to be paid and the garbage had to be taken out or that we had company coming tomorrow because I’d do everything I could to stop you from crying; when the clouds broke open and brought down the rain I’d tell you it was Mother Nature sharing her sympathy and I’d invite you to sit up late to see the moon roll over the night while you thought about how things could be and I’d tell you how much you mean to me.

I’d not wake you up in the morning to go to work; instead I’d let you sleep the whole day through though I know we’d need the money and I’d make your favourite food for dinner even if it was only mushroom soup from a can.

But you find your brave face in the bathroom mirror every morning and your brave face, it tells me you don’t need me and my little words of encouragement because those words can’t convince you of anything – not of happiness, not of fate, not of life lessons – and so I stop the words and let you walk away, your heart trailing on a kite string behind you in the mud, still breaking, still leaking, still aching.

Your brave face doesn’t believe me when I tell it I’d do just about anything for you – even scare away the birds on the balcony or take out the butt bottles without complaining – and your brave face tells me to go away, to push off, to get lost because your face doesn’t need help from someone like me, someone who doesn’t know about real love and real pain and real sacrifice.

I wish I could borrow your brave face sometimes like when I borrow your black skirt with the ruffles that makes me feel like a career woman in an old VHS who conquers the business world with wit and a stern look in her eye. My face, the one I find smeared across the pillow case every morning, it’s squishier, the bones weaker – it needs your words sometimes, even if you don’t have them to give.

Did you hear me when I told you you don’t ever know newness without ripping through the memory first? If I could pluck the words out of the air with those rusting tweezers under the bathroom sink, I’d plug them right into your ear so they’d get stuck like the chorus from the song on the radio you hate even though it’s catchy and the same four lines run around your head every time you hear it, so you’d sing those eleven words again and again and again.

But I worry you wouldn’t let me close enough to get them into your ear, past the wax and pride and dug deep enough into your mind you’d remember I only want to help.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

We used to play here in this parking lot, pretending to be super heroes. Remember? My cape, it was shiny blue and gave me powers. We’d play, you and me; I’d run bare foot across the pavement, jump at you trusting you to catch me mid-air, twirl me, make me fly.

We’d battle, epic blow after blow – pow, take that, aha! Zounds, foiled again – minor bruises from a major storyline unfolding in front of the late night, the moon a witness to our silly game of pretend.

A whisper of wind, light laughter, the shake of rustling leaves let through the window screen, the only negativity caught by the net of the dreamweaver.

But the game, the sounds – they’re changing.

Deep base, monotonous thumping, speaker boxes competing with loudmouths, profanity reaching sticky fingers above drunken nonsense notes, choking the late night until its breath is interrupted, until it wakes with a start and charges up out of bed.

Watching over a parking lot filled with the uncertainty of an uneven energy, the late night remembers when I showed you my super strength, but shakes a sad head at the moral panic of the selfish herd taking up residence in the neighbourhood, pushing out the pretend.

Loud and agitated, the mob moves uncoordinated, its self-seeking behaviour an emulation of anxious rivalry. The night – it prays no one makes the wrong step, says the wrong word.

The mean world, it’s getting meaner and meaner still and the conformism of violence is spreading like an illness. This swarm of people are armed with an insatiable lust for revenge.

One wrong step, one wrong word and the bloodshed of one man spreads across the parking lot washing away the late night fun and laughter we shared with the moon, pretending to be great, pretending we could save the world from sudden danger, pretending the threat of violence was far away, was somewhere else, was not threatening our own backyard because we, we were infinite.

The swarm, it scatters, fear forcing the herd through clogged exits, breaking the geometry of pack mentality, leaving only a few pieces for the cops to pick up. But the cops, the cops don’t get there till the man in the street is nearly dead and the parking lot is almost empty.

My cape? Oh, it’s balled into a blue mass in the back corner of the closet, tucked away from the reality of an unforgiving pavement soaking up the blood of an urban battle without point because, my cape?

My cape tenders no protection here anymore.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Pregnant clouds angry with the weight of rain, dark and brooding, they say: it’s okay, little girl, you can cry. Waging my pink umbrella against the elements, it’s so easy to blame those wet spots on rain drops. Rubber boots slick with sadness, splashing around in the mucky emotion bubbling up over the curb, I am a kid again, purposely puddle jumping, trying so hard to splash you but instead drenching my new dress with mud stains too tough to get out the first wash through.

I never did appreciate getting covered in mud.

Sadness to madness, emotion creeping up like the blistering sun showing its brave face after the crack of thunder has quieted and the spill of rain has dried up, the pavement a massacring ground of drying-up worms with nowhere to hide, the umbrella and boots fallen soldiers on the lawn, I kick up naked feet and dance, dance, dance in the middle of street.

You never did like it when I danced in the streets.

Madness to maniacal, those feelings become a setting sun desperate to hide behind the horizon, the stars peeking eyes out to spy on long shadows; I hide from you inside those shadows. 1, 2, 3, 4…I hear you counting like you’ll find me hiding in the hall closet.

You never were much good at finding your way around in the dark.

You find me, you always do. You ask me, beg me; pray I speak though you know forcing me to freezes my feet to the ground, causes me to smack dry lips and clear a scratchy throat, paralyzes my vocal chords.

I never did like standing in the spotlight.

As I whisper you lean in close, let my breath tickle your cheek. In and out, I breathe your name and you patiently wait for me to say: it’s okay.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

Standing on the street corner beside tourists swinging cameras and kids from shoulders and hips, I am hungover. My head is thick with leftover gin. It would have been a better idea to stay in bed.

I stand, confused. This city’s strange to me; I don’t know where I’m headed.

Pulling up behind me, he rings the bell on his bike – a stiff reminder I should have taken a Tylenol or two before braving the world.

“Where you headed today, miss?”

“I’m in search of the perfect cup of coffee and something to kill this hangover.” A smile, hesitant. I think I may still be drunk.

“Hop in,” shrugging a shoulder toward the passenger cab tugging behind his bike.

“What’s the catch?”

“I don’t feel like working today. You buy me a cup of coffee, I’ll take you on a tour of the city unlike anything you’d experience with these yahoos,” he points to double-decker buses manned by sour looking guides dressed in period garb, tugging at lace and cummerbunds desperate to escape the heat.

“Yeah, okay,” I sigh.

“Climb in, little lady.”

“Right, only on the condition you please not call me little lady. Or ma’am. I’m not that young, but I’m not that old.”

“Sure, whatever you say princess.”

Weaving in and out of traffic we leave the tourist trap and cruise down residential side streets with clapboard fences and overgrown gardens. No one knows where I am or who I’m with. And what if this fellow’s only stolen me from the busy pedestrian street to skin me alive and leave me for dead in a dumpster behind the A & W, where I’ll be found by the late-night shift worker as he dumps the day’s grease trap over my quickly rotting body, flies swarming in and out of my mouth, my eyes glass marbles staring straight at the 14-year-old kitchen monkey who before that moment thought his only real problem was whether or not to tell Sarah he’d like to be her boyfriend?

Instead, we stop at Serious Coffee, a bohemster café complete with hippy-grain muffins and home-brewed dark roast. Not a bad start to curing the hangover.

“The best coffee in town,” he says, handing me an extra-large. “You cold? I’ve got a blanket in here you can use. I wouldn’t want you suffering from a chill while I do all the hard work up here,” a wink, quick and sparkling.

We tour through old China town. Pulling over, he ushers me out of the cab. Walking down a desperately narrow street he talks about the old days, about the thousands of people crammed into impossibly small places, the half addresses for half floors. We walk into the door of a shop crammed high to the roof with trinkets made of wicker, wood, tin, painted bright colors. We walk through room after room, small hallways leading into open spaces, the inventory a never ending collection of silk-bound journals and parasols. Nodding at the girl at the counter, he leads me out another door back into the street. There’s the bike, but that’s not the door we came through.

Huh. The hangover, it starts to wane.

Spinning through the market, we smell flowers and put our hands in vats of bulk grains. I splash my hands in the fountain and pose for touristy photos – broad plastic smile, standing with strangers.

Out of the market, he pedals us uphill toward the park – an open heartland of acre upon acre of gifted trees not native to the area. Eucalyptus in the middle of a west coast island. Monkey trees wrapping around Maples.

We stop to feed the ducks and even though I hate birds I let them eat right out of my hand because in the soft sunlight they don’t seem as dirty and plotting as they do in my imagination. We wander over to the gazebo – an orchestra plays and a little girl in a sundress spins circles around the crowd, her steps ill-timed and dizzy.

“I’ve been doing this for almost eight years now, you know? Being a tour guide, it’s not a bad lifestyle – get up in the morning, talk to people, put a little cash in my pocket. It’s not glamorous, but I don’t mind. Sure I sleep in my van, don’t have much to call my own, but I did that once, I was a real greedy bastard, working the oil for more money I didn’t know what to do with.

“You think about giving up all them comforts for a little freedom like that? Sell your stuff, give up that apartment of yours, see where life takes you? I wouldn’t go back. When I was traveling, I saw a happiness in people that was never because of money, you know? Those third world countries, they’ve got nothing like we do but what they do have? That look – you know, that satisfaction. They know what happiness is. They find it every day in the people around them”

Riding along the border of the ocean, we watch kite-surfers twist over tail winds. We stop and pick chestnuts from a tree in the bluff. Up the street and around the bend, we stop at an old lady’s garden and eat flowers from the dirt, rub fresh lavender on our temples.

We go to the wharf where we watch a fat seal eat salmon right from the fingers of a little boy.

“That seal eats better than I do!” he says.

I smile.

We walk along the dock, peering in the windows of houseboats.

“Can you imagine – two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars for a boat you can’t take away from the dock. What’s the use?”

Good point.

We sit on the edge of the dock and share a smoke. Whale-watching tours heft tourists to and from the shore.

“Whales guaranteed today!” the salesman yells from the opposite side of the dock.

“A hefty promise,” my tour guide says.

Planes pilot into the harbour, landing softly on calm waters. It’s a perfect day to cure a hangover.

Back through town, we ride to the shop where he parks his bike.

“A burger and a beer: a perfect way to end this day,” he says.

“Sure.”

“Don’t say much, do you? A little shy?”

“Hardly shy. Just taking it all in. Thanks for today – I had fun.”

We talk with the other tour guides, all of them far from home, all of them in search of something the corporate world never gave them.

I contemplate trading in my plane ticket for a seat on the couch in the cab lounge, but instead we walk over to the pub and devour greasy burgers and kick the hangover with a few beers while listening to an old guitarist pluck the blues in the background.

My tour guide waves goodbye and wishes me well.

“Safe travels, okay?”

I nod.

He doesn’t ask for my contact information, he doesn’t make a move.

“Good luck in your search for happiness, little lady.” That wink again.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Aoide pokes Calliope, a song leaping from lips to page, invoking an electrometric backslide of bursting notes, translating trance beats to linguistic feats – inspiration begetting music, music begetting story, story begetting inspiration. And so continues the revolution of creative process.

Thank you, muse, for herein lays inspiration:

listen

I promise: the electric arc will be famous some day.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

postscript: where do you find your inspiration?

Drilling the toe of my shoe into the ground, I sigh, hands pulled tight behind my back; I torso-twist side to side: the defiant stance of my long dormant toddler, impatient, pouting. If it were appropriate, I’d jut out my lip. Stick it far out so you could see just how well I could pout.

When you ask what’s wrong I’d say: nuh-thingah. I’d even add an eye roll for real dramatic effect.

The third time you ask what’s wrong I’d still say: nuh-thing…but this time I’d let it trail off into a nearly inaudible, defeated whisper so you’d have to lean in real close to hear if I was saying anything at all.

You’d throw up your hands, you’d shake your head, you’d walk out of the room. I’d stomp my feet, I’d huff, I’d crinkle my face into a distorted grimace of obvious emotional pain and distress.

Action, reaction.

When you come back into my room to raise your voice, I’d thrust out my arms, splayed fingers pushing, nails desperate to dig in. You’d grab my wrists, snapping them loose. You’d tell me: listen to yourself.

But I wouldn’t have said anything yet.

Big arms around little shoulders, you’d pull me close so I could smell stale sweat caught in the armpit of the same dirty shirt you’ve worn for three days and I’d breathe deep so I could remember this moment.

But, drilling the toe of my shoe into the ground is hard to do when I’m standing in the foyer still wearing the work high heels with the scuffed toe I coloured in with the black sharpie last week to cover up the fact I don’t have the money to buy new shoes; sticking out my lip doesn’t have the same effect when it’s stained red with wine, sedimentary crumbs locked deep in the chapped crevices of the bow of my smile. Eye rolls are reserved for the backs of heads only when I know no one’s looking because obvious displays of dissatisfaction are inappropriate, you know; stomping, huffing, crinkling – so unbecoming of a lady. My nails aren’t long because I chew on them – boredom, nervousness – leaving nothing to dig with.

You reduce me, when you make me feel the way I feel. Boiled down to the basest of emotion, I’d throw down my fists on the kitchen linoleum if I knew it wouldn’t make you leave.

I don’t ever twist or jut or roll or whisper or stomp or huff or grimace or thrust or dig or throw down because I want you to think I’m cool, wicked, fun, awesome, perfect.

I want you to think none of this bothers me.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

I eat your words, every last one of them.

Your rhetoric, a thick coat of greasy lie clogging airways and pores, fills the air with this stench – the kind sticky and arrogant, fingering its way into the web of my sweater. Gluttonously, I munch on the first course, licking slippery lips after every bite. I wait with fork clenched between white knuckles for the second round, contemplate licking the plate with my swollen tongue when it’s over, plead to have more, please – please, more. The third serving rich and creamy, weird comfort in the congealed sauce slick with slutch scraped from the bottom of the pan. I devour it, sticky scraps stuck to cheeks and chin.

I eat and I eat and I eat and I eat, each dish more elaborate than the last, a little thicker, a little heavier, a little less nutritious. My stomach, it stretches with pain, lungs pulse from too little breath; the heft of digestion slows me down, makes my eyes water and my guts scream.

But, you bring more.

I’m so full I’m ill, so ill, my stomach threatens to split the length of me, spilling your secrets onto the floor between us.

You bring more still.

Dessert: finally the last course. Fingering the spoon on the table cloth, I take it up, motion from meal to mouth, inhale the last of your sickly sweet style.

You lean closer in on the table, eyes sparkling, convinced that yes, oh yes, there. Clapping your hands, victorious: she’s eaten them all.

Bowels churning, my guts heave, pushing broken, undigested language out my mouth, your verbiage a sour nostril spray of chunky chitchat and acid-dyed dialogue. I puke all of your pretty words right into your lap, unapologetically.

The body has a particular knack for ridding itself of that which is not good for it, afterall.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

Flipped ponytail, flippant remarks, she barges in the front door thickening the room with cheap body spray and naiveté. Drawing attention to badly drawn eyeliner, swiping a finger over mascara too thick for soppy eyelashes, the green shadow a stolen treasure from the bottom of her mother’s make up bag, she cracks gum and smiles bravely.

Inside, inside she’s nervous, her stomach marching lines of nausea up and down her esophagus, her thoughts a quickly confused jumble of would-haves, should-haves translated into laughter; laughter, trill and twisting – a sure sign of an inability to relegate feelings in a situation she’s not comfortable in.

The surface piercing in the exact same place as her friend’s, the mark of best friends forever – the mark they’ll both regret in four years when it’s pushed through soft skin and left a red, sore scar on a chest bone too embarrassing to reveal in low cut shirts.

Peroxide hair and grease-dark roots means she’s not slept at home in days and the cracked foundation collecting in the crevice below the piercing in her nose shows she’s not washed her face, either.

Filling dead air with puffy words, the occasional twenty-five cent vocabulary back flip proof she’s not nearly as vacant as the stereotype she perpetuates, the room is the confused energy of a confused little girl.

Sliding cell phone, giggling at sly text messages, “what?!” the insultingly effervescent reply to nearly every topic of conversation not held inside her phone.

I have to remember, I was her once; I have to remember, I’m not her now.

I smile kindly, look her in the eye, examine her discomfort, relish in my strong confidence, my clean hair, my defined standard of expectation of those considered friends. These markers of personality hang neatly around me – an aura of calm.

Her weak words and little looks of insecurity compliment my assuredness; a learned confidence is a gift worth being patient for.

xoxo

M.L. H’art