him.”
Mom! You knelt on the goose?
“I tried to, like, kneel his breath out of him.”
Adam, do you see how this is horrible? Sylvie in the wilderness, the wind off the bay, the silence in the wind, the struggling goose, the living goose, shot out of the sky, my mother and the thrashing goose, throttling the goose, strangling the goose, the wind in her ears, in its feathers, kneeling, at last, the better to throttle, the continued thrashing of goose, the endless moment of no-death, no end in sight, the angelic wings, spreading and contracting, spreading and contracting.
The goose does not want to go down.
So Sylvie knelt on it.
Sylvie (I thought at ten, and ever since) , don’t do it. Don’t kneel on the dude.
She knelt on it a nice long time. Who knows how long. Until the goose was finally good and dead.
Then she picked it up, flung it back over her shoulder, and waded to the other side of the marsh, where my father stood waiting.
8
06/27/09, 2:04 p.m.
SORRY IT HAS BEEN so long. Or maybe you don’t care — I can’t help but notice Chub Central continues to maintain its radio silence. The old ignore-him-and-he’ll-go-away tactic I suppose? Well guess what, Adam, I’ve done more than my share of market research on that one, and I’m here to tell you: he doesn’t. He won’t.
You’re not going to believe this but I called Gord the other day. I was feeling a little stalled since last we spoke. That goose always takes it out of me. I had to hit the couch for a while. I lay there for a good couple of days asking myself if it was really such a great idea to set aside my summer vacation for this. If this is really what I want to spend the next two months gnawing away at. Usually, I’ll take on some project or another. I’ll work on the house or volunteer at the Y to do some coaching. Not hockey, if that’s your assumption. The kids are all about soccer these days. Hockey’s time, it seems to me, has come and gone. The players stopped seeming like demi-gods around the time they started seeming more like rich, whiny babies, and the playoffs have been depressing pretty much since Gretzky left for L.A., and most kids’ parents can’t afford all that gear anyway.
Fortunately and speaking of which, the Confederations Cup is on the sports channel, so it wasn’t like I just spent two days staring at the ceiling. I first started watching soccer back when I started coaching — teaching myself about the game and figuring out how to give a shit about it — and now I look forward to the soccer finals more than I ever did Lord Stanley’s bashfest. I happen to live in a neighbourhood with a pretty big Greek contingent and they always go bananas at this time of year. I can wander from one block party to the next, being handed napkinfuls of baklava and shots of ouzo with every step I take. When Greece won the Euro Cup a few years back, there was literally dancing in my street — the party went on for days. (Oh and I’m not going to get any more specific than that about where I live, by the way, because I could be anywhere, Adam. I’m a ghost, after all. Maybe I’m on the other side of the continent from you. On the other hand, maybe I could get up out of my chair right now, take a stroll a few blocks over, and knock on your door. Who knows, right? Not you.)
So anyway, right around the time Italy was going up against Brazil I started thinking about Gord and how disgusted he would be; how he always hated soccer because Europeans played it and Europeans are by definition homosexuals, even though the Russians have proven themselves able to play hockey every once in a while like respectable hetero males. And then I found myself snickering up at the ceiling thinking how fun it would be to call Gord up and tell him that I was watching soccer on TV and describe to him how much I was enjoying it, especially that one player with the flowing chestnut hair and taut buttocks.
So one day, after a great many beer, I
Mom! You knelt on the goose?
“I tried to, like, kneel his breath out of him.”
Adam, do you see how this is horrible? Sylvie in the wilderness, the wind off the bay, the silence in the wind, the struggling goose, the living goose, shot out of the sky, my mother and the thrashing goose, throttling the goose, strangling the goose, the wind in her ears, in its feathers, kneeling, at last, the better to throttle, the continued thrashing of goose, the endless moment of no-death, no end in sight, the angelic wings, spreading and contracting, spreading and contracting.
The goose does not want to go down.
So Sylvie knelt on it.
Sylvie (I thought at ten, and ever since) , don’t do it. Don’t kneel on the dude.
She knelt on it a nice long time. Who knows how long. Until the goose was finally good and dead.
Then she picked it up, flung it back over her shoulder, and waded to the other side of the marsh, where my father stood waiting.
8
06/27/09, 2:04 p.m.
SORRY IT HAS BEEN so long. Or maybe you don’t care — I can’t help but notice Chub Central continues to maintain its radio silence. The old ignore-him-and-he’ll-go-away tactic I suppose? Well guess what, Adam, I’ve done more than my share of market research on that one, and I’m here to tell you: he doesn’t. He won’t.
You’re not going to believe this but I called Gord the other day. I was feeling a little stalled since last we spoke. That goose always takes it out of me. I had to hit the couch for a while. I lay there for a good couple of days asking myself if it was really such a great idea to set aside my summer vacation for this. If this is really what I want to spend the next two months gnawing away at. Usually, I’ll take on some project or another. I’ll work on the house or volunteer at the Y to do some coaching. Not hockey, if that’s your assumption. The kids are all about soccer these days. Hockey’s time, it seems to me, has come and gone. The players stopped seeming like demi-gods around the time they started seeming more like rich, whiny babies, and the playoffs have been depressing pretty much since Gretzky left for L.A., and most kids’ parents can’t afford all that gear anyway.
Fortunately and speaking of which, the Confederations Cup is on the sports channel, so it wasn’t like I just spent two days staring at the ceiling. I first started watching soccer back when I started coaching — teaching myself about the game and figuring out how to give a shit about it — and now I look forward to the soccer finals more than I ever did Lord Stanley’s bashfest. I happen to live in a neighbourhood with a pretty big Greek contingent and they always go bananas at this time of year. I can wander from one block party to the next, being handed napkinfuls of baklava and shots of ouzo with every step I take. When Greece won the Euro Cup a few years back, there was literally dancing in my street — the party went on for days. (Oh and I’m not going to get any more specific than that about where I live, by the way, because I could be anywhere, Adam. I’m a ghost, after all. Maybe I’m on the other side of the continent from you. On the other hand, maybe I could get up out of my chair right now, take a stroll a few blocks over, and knock on your door. Who knows, right? Not you.)
So anyway, right around the time Italy was going up against Brazil I started thinking about Gord and how disgusted he would be; how he always hated soccer because Europeans played it and Europeans are by definition homosexuals, even though the Russians have proven themselves able to play hockey every once in a while like respectable hetero males. And then I found myself snickering up at the ceiling thinking how fun it would be to call Gord up and tell him that I was watching soccer on TV and describe to him how much I was enjoying it, especially that one player with the flowing chestnut hair and taut buttocks.
So one day, after a great many beer, I
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