I've been back in Stratford for a couple of hours now. My visit to my parents turned out to be very nice. Generally visits with them are quite exhausting, but not this time. Yes I brought my laundry as usual, as well as my grocery list. But what didn't happen was the offers of my mom to do basically everything for me. I realize that the offers are made out of love, but I am an adult after all and can do things for myself. Perhaps gentle winds of change are blowing at my folks' place. I truly appreciate using their washer and dryer, and their car to run around London and do my errands. Cool. And I still appreciate mom's care packages. They really help this cash-starved writer out. But the nicest part happened as my dad dropped me off at my place.
"When are you coming again?" He asked.
"The week after next," I replied.
"Good. It will be nice to see you."
He helped bring my groceries and clean laundry to the elevator, and he was off back to London.
Yes. It was a nice visit.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
A Visit With My Parents
I love my parents. They're great. They've seen me commit countless stupidities, and still they haven't disowned me. You see, I can be a bit too much to handle sometimes. It's just me. I don't purposely go out to be an idiot, but life happens and idiocy does too.
I had a nice chat about nothing in particular with my dad on the way from Stratford to London: it's about 72km one way. No sooner had I walked in the door than mom asks if I'm hungry. I look thin. I really should eat something. I told her no, that I ate before dad picked me up. She wouldn't give... I have a secret weapon in this kind of situation. It's called Winners & Homesense. I said we should go. All thoughts of food evaporated and we went window shopping. That's kind of it: just another ordinary day. I'm taking a break from writing until tomorrow evening. I'm still not happy with the ending to "Storm Drain". If anyone reads this... make your way to that short, short story and let me know how the ending feels to you.
I had a nice chat about nothing in particular with my dad on the way from Stratford to London: it's about 72km one way. No sooner had I walked in the door than mom asks if I'm hungry. I look thin. I really should eat something. I told her no, that I ate before dad picked me up. She wouldn't give... I have a secret weapon in this kind of situation. It's called Winners & Homesense. I said we should go. All thoughts of food evaporated and we went window shopping. That's kind of it: just another ordinary day. I'm taking a break from writing until tomorrow evening. I'm still not happy with the ending to "Storm Drain". If anyone reads this... make your way to that short, short story and let me know how the ending feels to you.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Storm Drain
Storm Drain
By: Gaspar Bartko
Copyright Gaspar Bartko 2009
In Honour of My Mother’s Birthday.
I had that dream again.
It was raining and I was sitting in a large old open-ended cardboard packing box. Even though I had dragged the box under the cover of a bridge to get away from the rain, it offered little shelter. The downspout from a storm drain channelled the water from the bridge deck above me and sent it falling in a spraying torrent on and around the box making it seem it was raining harder than it really was. I couldn’t move out of the wet. I just sat there in a trance looking over the miles of sodden summer grass and scrub that grew on the flood plain of the river.
Everything was sopping wet: the sky, the ground, the cardboard cube around me. The humidity penetrated everywhere and I was a passive sponge, soaking it all in. My hair, once blond, platinum blond from summer sun when I was a small boy, was grey. It was matted and plastered to my skull from the dampness and slid its unwashed, greasy way down to my shoulders. It parted over my face revealing skin that had the ashen, jaundiced pallor of the terminally ill or the terminally drunk.
I was wearing layers of shirts made of navy-green flannel, pants of industrial polyester twill, and somebody else’s old shoes. Everything was pilled and torn and damp. There was no fresh newness about my clothes for everything was gathered from dumpsters and the reject piles at the back of the Goodwill store. Over the years the layers of cloth had moulded themselves to my form. Time, sweat and accumulated filth had reinforced them making them surprisingly stiff and strong. The clothes had become my armour and my prison: keeping others out and keeping me in.
I had no family to speak of. We had drifted apart. I hadn’t had contact with any relatives or friends in years. I just had memories of sensations of what it was like to be in someone else’s company. Sometimes, though, while dumpster diving for clothes, or waiting apathetically in a soup-kitchen line, a passing voice would penetrate the shifting layers of my consciousness and trigger a moment of clarity. A fleeting and vivid memory would become tantalizingly real.
I would remember a particularly special time in Czechoslovakia where I was born, and spent the first eight years of my life. It was August and I could feel the heat of the blazing summer sun trying to penetrate the cool shade of the immensely tired and old apricot tree under which I sat. The tree grew in the middle of my grandparents’ dirt back yard and, as all ancient things, surprised everyone as it managed to renew itself each spring, and bear sweet fruit each summer. I was facing away from the house under that comforting tree, as it shaded my impossibly blond head from the sun. I was hugging my legs tightly against my chest with my chin resting on my little-boy knees. My eyes were staring trance-like into the infinity of the potato fields that were the outer boundaries of my universe.
My mother’s voice softly sang to me from seemingly far away.
“Gaško, kde si?”
I heard her footsteps coming lightly, dustily near. The dry airy sound gradually drew me back to my childhood present, now past, the nearer she came. Closer and closer. Finally she was beside me.
“Tu si moj mily.”
All was soft and warm as she knelt closely by and wrapped her arms around me. The sounds of the small world of my grandparents’ yard slowly came to me: crickets chirping, hens clucking, the dog barking at the other end of the yard.
An eerie awareness dawned in my little-boy eyes, as I sat wrapped in my mother’s arms under the apricot tree. And across the Atlantic, sitting in an enveloping and sopping cardboard mess, the same awareness dawned in my homeless eyes: past meets future meets past.
“Mamichka kde si?” I called out from the sodden box.
There was no reassuring answer to be heard in the rainy gloom.
Future meets present.
I awoke with a sweat-drenched jolt.
“Mother where are you?”
By: Gaspar Bartko
Copyright Gaspar Bartko 2009
In Honour of My Mother’s Birthday.
I had that dream again.
It was raining and I was sitting in a large old open-ended cardboard packing box. Even though I had dragged the box under the cover of a bridge to get away from the rain, it offered little shelter. The downspout from a storm drain channelled the water from the bridge deck above me and sent it falling in a spraying torrent on and around the box making it seem it was raining harder than it really was. I couldn’t move out of the wet. I just sat there in a trance looking over the miles of sodden summer grass and scrub that grew on the flood plain of the river.
Everything was sopping wet: the sky, the ground, the cardboard cube around me. The humidity penetrated everywhere and I was a passive sponge, soaking it all in. My hair, once blond, platinum blond from summer sun when I was a small boy, was grey. It was matted and plastered to my skull from the dampness and slid its unwashed, greasy way down to my shoulders. It parted over my face revealing skin that had the ashen, jaundiced pallor of the terminally ill or the terminally drunk.
I was wearing layers of shirts made of navy-green flannel, pants of industrial polyester twill, and somebody else’s old shoes. Everything was pilled and torn and damp. There was no fresh newness about my clothes for everything was gathered from dumpsters and the reject piles at the back of the Goodwill store. Over the years the layers of cloth had moulded themselves to my form. Time, sweat and accumulated filth had reinforced them making them surprisingly stiff and strong. The clothes had become my armour and my prison: keeping others out and keeping me in.
I had no family to speak of. We had drifted apart. I hadn’t had contact with any relatives or friends in years. I just had memories of sensations of what it was like to be in someone else’s company. Sometimes, though, while dumpster diving for clothes, or waiting apathetically in a soup-kitchen line, a passing voice would penetrate the shifting layers of my consciousness and trigger a moment of clarity. A fleeting and vivid memory would become tantalizingly real.
I would remember a particularly special time in Czechoslovakia where I was born, and spent the first eight years of my life. It was August and I could feel the heat of the blazing summer sun trying to penetrate the cool shade of the immensely tired and old apricot tree under which I sat. The tree grew in the middle of my grandparents’ dirt back yard and, as all ancient things, surprised everyone as it managed to renew itself each spring, and bear sweet fruit each summer. I was facing away from the house under that comforting tree, as it shaded my impossibly blond head from the sun. I was hugging my legs tightly against my chest with my chin resting on my little-boy knees. My eyes were staring trance-like into the infinity of the potato fields that were the outer boundaries of my universe.
My mother’s voice softly sang to me from seemingly far away.
“Gaško, kde si?”
I heard her footsteps coming lightly, dustily near. The dry airy sound gradually drew me back to my childhood present, now past, the nearer she came. Closer and closer. Finally she was beside me.
“Tu si moj mily.”
All was soft and warm as she knelt closely by and wrapped her arms around me. The sounds of the small world of my grandparents’ yard slowly came to me: crickets chirping, hens clucking, the dog barking at the other end of the yard.
An eerie awareness dawned in my little-boy eyes, as I sat wrapped in my mother’s arms under the apricot tree. And across the Atlantic, sitting in an enveloping and sopping cardboard mess, the same awareness dawned in my homeless eyes: past meets future meets past.
“Mamichka kde si?” I called out from the sodden box.
There was no reassuring answer to be heard in the rainy gloom.
Future meets present.
I awoke with a sweat-drenched jolt.
“Mother where are you?”
It's like being in Vancouver
I woke up this morning in a bit of a fog. I managed to down some coffee, which on an empty stomach is not a good idea. I looked outside and saw nothing but low clouds and rain. Man it reminds me so much of winters in Vancouver: depressing. However, I'll soldier on and finish editing mom's birthday short story and see what I come up with.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Trials and Tribulations: self-editing is hell
I finally got off my duff at about 3:00 pm today to have a second look at a short, very short, story I'm writing for my mother as a birthday gift. Why don't I buy her something? Probably because I'm as poor as a church mouse, and would rather eat.
I formatted the story in triple space to make it easier to write in my comments and such. Holy s--t, I had so many deletions and rephrasings that I deleted the whole thing and re-wrote it from scratch. And I'm glad I did too. The new version reads much better (I tend toward melodramatic overwriting)and it makes much more sense structurally. I'll post it once it's done. Wish me luck in finishin by Dec 10th.
I formatted the story in triple space to make it easier to write in my comments and such. Holy s--t, I had so many deletions and rephrasings that I deleted the whole thing and re-wrote it from scratch. And I'm glad I did too. The new version reads much better (I tend toward melodramatic overwriting)and it makes much more sense structurally. I'll post it once it's done. Wish me luck in finishin by Dec 10th.
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