Cosmo (19 page)

She stands and walks to the window. The rising and falling of the circular winds push the raccoon's cries into a place firmly beyond her reach, into a place of unknowing. Her sense of powerlessness wells like tears. But rising now to meet it – her inability to stop the pain or the crying, her failure to be of comfort – comes a resolve to wait it out, to be vigilant. To be awake, and to bear witness. Though she is tired – tired now in great bone weariness – she has her imagination, and her will to wait, and the company of the dying thing, and the deep gulf of night, even with its wind and cold, and she knows the animal has her quiet, purposeful attention, however distant.

She thinks briefly of her morning, of the coming light, of work: a three-pointed star of pain and weakness. But she closes her eyes and presses her forehead against the glass, and with Chris – Chris with his drunken horizon, his youthful, pathetic flowers, his coming dawn – imagines her own clear space, her own clean air.

And suddenly and with great clarity she imagines skies that are wide, and blue, and empty.

THE LAND OF PLENTY

 

 

 

Date: February 9, 2005

To: Szychszczecin, Gary ‘[email protected]'

From: LNC ‘[email protected]'

Subject: Re: Advertising Arrangement

Dear Gary,

I've been considering your offer. It's a deal, man. You'll be helping me more than you can fathom. Sincere thanks to you (and your father) for thinking of me in my time of need.

So how about we jump right in. How's this, for instance:

If I decide to buy the small veggie subs (and by small, I mean the modest six-inchers), and I politely refuse those thin bricks of processed cheese (American cheese, they're called in happy commercials) or even the smallest dollops of mayonnaise or oil (called ‘sub sauce' by those in the know) or other fatty and high-caloric sauces (Chipotle Southwest, say, or Sweet Onion, light of my life), and I have this assembled and rolled in Nine-Grain Bread with its roughish, earthy exterior and thin particles of flax seeds, then I can begin a new life – not necessarily a longer or more worthy one (for who can foresee the stupidities and vagaries of time: public transit dragging, falling ice, penis tumours, high-profile legal betrayals), or even a life remembered by a generational fetish group, or one preserved in pigeon-shit-splattered iron and bronze or in the pages of rotting, useless books that stand with jutting chins before the last fire or storm wipes away their synthetic inks, but a life that is now and then touched by beauty, and goodness, and occasional mercy, because SUBWAY, you obviously know the secret – that life is shit.

I know this isn't what you're expecting. But I think it would be a refreshing change of tone. You don't need to coddle people into eating your sandwiches. Plus, you know, it will keep up appearances – I have a reputation to maintain.

Forgive me if I sound defeated. Obviously things have changed: the thought of only $150,000 in savings stretched across another decade (but who knows – I may live for only another year) has necessitated some changes to my lifestyle. I have taken to using public transport – a Money-saving venture, surely, but one that maintains a sense of realism: there is no chance of transcendence on the subway, is there? Can you imagine me pressed into the common dark of the Metro, the local routes, the shuttles of the
STM
? Amid the armpit webs, the sneeze radiuses, the slow dawns of groping recognition? It's a weird scene. It's got me jumbled.

I forgot ugliness was
ugly
, Gary. Last night I hobbled from the subway to your SUBWAY dodging the usual spurs: black ice, passing Bixis, hurried elbows, my jaw chafing on my coat's cashmere caresses (reminding me to savour what's left of these luxuries), and wincing at the scream the buses make in their hot and endless suffering whilst ferrying the shapes. You know the type – shapes with eyes and noses and ears in the way, blocking my shuffle up the kneeling (condescending) bus steps, enduring the squeak and shoulder pain of bags and garments under the grey lid of the concrete sky that poets and pop stars call beautiful, and fording the rivers of filthy slush and cold that make the shapes miserable – all in search of your SUBWAY or some filthy route underground.

A study in ugliness: just last night I was treated to a withered mass weeping at the back of the bus, plastic bags slung under her parka'd arms, her Polish, razor-slit eyes as black as mass graves or as the charcoal sketches of a mother intertwined with lifeless children, hideously and unchangeably dead, mouthing words like oh g-d I missed my stop oh no oh g-d no please no I missed my stop oh g-d no. And the rage simmered and boiled beneath the parkas and bags of other shapes because of her pathetic blubbering and illogical outpouring of ancient emotions. I trembled here, worried I might encounter a sighting, a fan – someone for whom I would beautify, or reflect, or make lyrical, this dark bouquet of humanity. No one noticed or saw me – lucky. So I left her in the swirl and scream of another transfer while the concrete sky sucked tears from my eyes and the yellow light of your SUBWAY loomed on Mont Royal, beckoning me home.

I'll stop there – no more rants from me. It's just the thought of this, until the aching end. None of the comforts of old age, eh? No nest egg like your father's, no last summer idylls; simply dole lines, coupons … But back to the task at hand: how about we end that first riff with this:

Believe me, brothers and sisters. I'll be dropping in to buy the six-inch veggie subs because if I choose the healthier options, I will lose weight and become healthy physically, and we all know mental health is a by-product of physical health.

Good? Let me know. It's great to be on board. And pass on my hellos to Dad.

Sincerely,

L. Cohen

Date: February 12, 2005

To: Szychszczecin, Gary ‘[email protected]'

From: LNC ‘[email protected]'

Subject: Re: Advertising Arrangement

Dear Gary,

We know things, man. Even with your
PR
, your corporate sponsors. Even with your cautious resistance to what you know is cutting edge. As pigs, we understand that existence is ignoble, hobbled by gooey mouth sores, pained erections, bladder infections, metal knees. Take your dad's body, now as bent as mine, but once so fresh-smelling, so strong. I have hooked my thumb and forefinger around the shriekingly white roll of flesh that now wraps my middle, given it a vigorous and horrified wiggle in my mirror's black reflection. Asked myself, what is this shit? and received no answer, save for the slow crunch of tires on midnight snow, my pulse's agonized march through these seventy-year-old veins. When did I become so doughy, so weakened by sloth's slackened jaw, gluttony's whimper and suck? It's enough closing my legs, averting my eyes, fighting the urge to pinch and punch. It's enough, Gary, without the raw remembrance of Money.

Money, Money. That sweet departed bitch.

Which is, I should say again, so generous of you to promise. And yes, sure, I don't have to say ‘life is shit.' It's implied, anyway, with or without the curse. We're here about Money, after all, and not some sense of artistic integrity. Let me give you a lesson, if I may. Money is a proper noun; it should never be left so commonly lower-case (as SUBWAY, magisterial, is always written in all-caps). I used to imagine Money in a different way, as you might easily recall (I gave back awards, remember? Can you imagine me refusing the Governor General? Your father can, in any case). But that was a different time, a separate peace. I am now living post-Money, acutely aware of its absence, writing gospels and testaments to its return.

If only you could remember back, Gary. Your dad must have told you stories. There was Money when I was a child, when we were children, vague but comforting, padding the walls of the Belmont Victorian, the Westmount streets, falling through the leaves in the parks and ravines, painting the creeks with a golden foil. There was Money in the clothing business my father left behind when he died, Money in the Canadian Jewish Congress, Money in the gold watch that felt cumbersome and heavy in my prepubescent hand. And there was Money, of course, in McGill University, where polished heads (your dad and I among them) debated and sweated; Money in Columbia, in New York (the lonely skylines, the Manhattan imperium of the fifties) where I learned to fear the Law. All of existence seemed to conspire to keep Money and me as one thing. I was given Money's golden key, and all happiness lay before me as a ripening vineyard, the spice box of the earth.

And so blessed, I said Money didn't matter. I aspired to Money's rogue antithesis: art and song. Leaving school, I worked in factories, posing as a prole. A mentor published my first, most precocious poems; a growing Canadian house published a second round. I dipped into the Money from my father's inheritance, living without labour, and fled to Hydra, where Money preserved my stasis between the blinding white buildings, the cobalt sea. I lived against a wooden desk, a tiny window and four clean walls, bare of ornament. Women, sensing this rejection of convention yet the safety net of old, untapped, unceasing Money, unpeeled and parted in oiled assemblies. The bronze limbs basting in the light of Parc La Fontaine. The chestnut skin scampering from Greece's furious sun for siestas, for rest of wine-weary heads. It was the sexual revolution. It was the end of Money's dominion. I didn't need to talk about Money. I would talk about senses, morals, sins and music. I would indulge.

Today, I think back to those days of pleasure with a psychological, if not scientific, interest. If the brain can release the chemicals that make us happiest, who are we to stand and refuse? To instead weather, golem-like and insane, the groin-jabs of life's cruel, steel-toed boots? Money was created for pleasure, or at least freedom from pain; which amounts, squarely, to power: those in power dole out, rather than endure, the pain that marks this human passage. And what pleasures could I have afforded, what pains avoided, without the gilded walls of my Moneyed youth?

Each vinyl record a revolving golden coin, spinning out its riches, roaring out its privilege through the radio's cough. I worked in factories because it seemed noble, only to flee to Warhol's Factory in the Big Apple. It was the place to be; Nico and Joni and Judy all liked me. I could pluck a tune, give a poor performance a kind of ugly grace by putting my poems to song. So I slithered to Nashville, the Isle of Wight and Montreux, picking across the broken jaw of Europe, where bronzed imps played peekaboo among its shattered teeth. I arranged beautiful, strong-throated women to coo and cry over my once-nasally voice, now ground down into the dust of ten thousand cigarettes, a crushed urn of espresso. And after the love affairs, the Spector nonsense, the children, I turned gloomy, sad. Another lesson for you: time moves so quickly. All privilege makes us tired – tired of maintaining the illusion that we live for art's sake. I became the fedora-wearing prophet of pessimism. Mocked by people who'd never read a poem, watched my movies, heard entire songs. I retreated like an exile to a mountain to pray, telling myself that $400,000 a year for the rest of my years was a modest budget. Let my millions grow in investments, in bonds, accumulating for Adam and Lorca and their children.

What a sorry tale of Money.

Your boys made my complimentary sub this evening, Gary. I watched them weave it together, the hands of eunuchs, little sculptors in training. I ate it at home, spying out the window at the night's ice, but I was warm, hunched over the dribbling bun so recently raised from your ovens. And with each bite, a line was scored ever deeper into the broken earth. As on Baldy, when I offered prayers to nothingness and stripped my bloated soul of Money's sinful chains (another Moneyed privilege I was only too happy to indulge), my resolution stands. We can work this out, man. People will love my endorsements. They'll be charmed, baffled, in love with the irony. So how about this (a longer ad, maybe, or a serial web thing; imagine throat singing as background):

Brothers and sisters, if I stick to the veggie subs, stripped of their sweet processed cheeses and oily condiments, the artery-jamming steaks and fatty chicken strips (the temptations of egg mayo, for starters), and I complement such discriminating, self-denying eating with regular cardiovascular exercise (such as organized jiggling or repetitive squatting, heart-rending, puke-inducing), and I avoid the chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies rising tumescent and spheroid to imbue the restaurant air with the doping scents of home life and childhood, standing as half-true, half-mythic residuals of something that once was, once breathed; and yes, I avoid the Doritos and Lays salty-crisp products that line the self-serve rack near the soda fountains of bubbly Coca-Cola products and their safer, wiser, diet alternatives, such as Coke Zero and Diet Coke, then I may lift myself from the muck of the quotidian, the venial, the curse of the white flabby roll around my middle. The curse of the pud, my friends – Cheetos-fuelled, beer-braced, blind and albino.

For what can SUBWAY suggest for a shape drowning in a vale of tears? For a shape tiptoeing over the cracked concrete, eyes averted like a beaten horse in a burning city, nosing ­nutrient-deficient roots, riderless skin stretched over starved ribs? Eating the suicidal microwave dinners, the gift-wrapped meals reserved for local masturbators and the criminally insane? It suggests something incongruously fresh, my friends – making it new, renovated, redone. It means getting clean, bathing in baptismal soda water that wipes away the sins of your personal dirt, dislodging each vile image stored in your overheated brain's pixie-filled spank bank. Let us commend their practice, brothers and sisters; let us rub each sub topping [and here I'll rub my fingers and thumb in the universal sign for dough, dollars, Money] between our minds' fingers like prayer beads of some dismantled religion …

Watch the way they cut the bread, toss the open loaves into the ovens. Watch with delight as they coax the ingredients into being. Take the cheese slices, for example; watch them take advantage of their natural isosceles design by tessellating the triangles to provide maximum sandwich coverage – something so often overlooked by common sandwich artists. Take the tomatoes, say, those exacting slices without excess seeds or bloody innards – simply the most appetizing shades of supple crimson, recalling barrack row upon barrack row of hothouse hydroponics, rich and water-bloated earth, a hazy humid flush. Sun-dappled, pliant to thumb, to piercing nail. Cuts of green peppers bursting with cell-trapped moisture, irregular design of bell-blossom and tapered tip, sitting St. Patrick's Day green on their soft beds of shredded iceberg lettuce, green-white and holiday-pale, adding fibre and refreshing addition to any encompassing bite. Cucumber discs slung onto the rising assemblage, their slick towers of vitamin A and B and antioxidants tumbling over the edge of the bread in bounty and gladness, in cucumber and pickle too-muchness, in supper-table providence. And it's all for you and me, paying customers, the receivers, and I am for this small suggestive millisecond happy, not because of a vaunting ambition or achievement or because I can in any way avoid the void, the shit-filled abyss we skirt in the groaning commute through our meagrely allotted months and decades, rubbing against skin for warmth and avoiding violent shapes, collapsing our way out of time, but for the reassurance and small comfort of daily improvement, of sticking to a goal, of ironing out a weakness in the flesh because that's all I am and have: this, this pud, brothers and sisters (here I will point to my stomach), the dross of which
SUBWAY
is helping me burn away through study and discipline and through the salty, meat-replacing consistency of green and black olives – the marbles and jewels of the sub, nestled between tomato and green pepper, in rocky clusters or lone, noble outposts, onyx and emerald rolling in excess onto the cutting board, forgotten by a plastic-gloved swipe into the attendant trash bags. And yes, let us take jalapeños and banana peppers, those vibrant reds and screaming yellows, spice to light the tongue with end-of-days passion, with a deep burn that cries plucketh me not!