Louis Riel

 
Head east on Broadway.
Make a right at the Safeway.
Keep going until you get to the intersection with a Superlube.
Turn left.
This road turns into Highway 20. Keep right. Get off at the first exit.
Follow onto Goldwheat. Then to River Road.
House number 330. The red one.
On the right. The wide driveway. The vegetable garden.
The rope mattress. The part-time actor explaining
everything. The enormous kitchen stove. The wooden cradle. Winter
hanging over each word like a millstone. Summer beckoning like a faded serigraph
on the wall; the wildflowers on the table stunned with silence. Your hands
remain there, poised over a piano key; this is the wake of someone
you knew; or an office Halloween party: everyone smiling
as if into a flurry, red-eared, endearing ourselves
to our self-effacement: the soft eradication
of one more dream into the details
of waking.
 

 

A version of “Louis Riel” first appeared in Prism International, Vol. 45 No.1,Vancouver, BC, 2006.

America: So crazy, it just might work

From a right-wing, chainsaw-wielding, white evangelical country bumpkin, to a left-wing, black statesman with a Muslim-sounding name and a smoking habit: America, do you really have to be this dramatic?

I mean for entertainment value, it’s tops, but how do you manage to get anything done?

If you were an amusement park ride, you’d be the Viking boat swinging from one extreme to the other to the other, the people on board shrieking, arms raised like evangelicals, prior to every descent. Of course, in such desperate and exciting circumstances, who wouldn’t be looking for a hero, a saviour?

I suppose your large Christian base perpetuates this. With 40 percent of your current population believing in the myth of Noah’s Ark, is it such a stretch, to imagine that these same people believe that we are in the End of Days, those dark and dangerous times that precipitate Christ’s return?

Imagine God himself, on a white horse no less, streaking from the clouds, spear in hand to pierce the hide of the Anti-Christ and send him back the black depths from whence he came. (I am not exaggerating, this how it’s supposed to end). With that kind of shock and awe belief system in the hearts of many of your citizens, no wonder you have an innate need for heroics.

You have Obama now, president-elect, who flew to victory on the wings of hope. It’s my greatest fear that this hope devolves into bitter disappointment when it’s discovered that Obama cannot walk on water and crap ice-cream. Let’s face it, to say that Dubuya will leave him a few challenges to overcome is an understatement. Even in the short time he has left, Bush is still trying to deregulate and bomb as much as he can, in order to leave, as Bill Mayar put it, “the white house smouldering in flames behind him.” (So very visual and so very Hollywood, is it not?).

I suppose this could be a little bit of leader-envy on my part. In my lifetime, I can’t remember the last Canadian Prime Minister that really inspired me in the same way Obama has done. Trudeau springs to mind, but I know that he also could be divisive and petty. I’ll never forget the image of him leaning over the benches of parliament mouthing the words “fuck off” to his detractors. Where I’m from, I must concede our leaders are all too human.

Then I think, “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

Heroes and saviours, like fireman and police officers, are there to rescue us from desperate situations. Would it not be a smart just to ensure that such desperate situations don’t arise in the first place? In other words that you create an environment stable and secure enough that heroics are no longer necessary?

You’re America, of course, so my next question would have to be: would you be happy in such a stable environment?

A place of harmony, order and status quo?

A place where the expression “yippie kay yay, motherf**cker” would seem uncouth?

A place where you’d never again need a plan so crazy, it just might work?

Somehow I think you be pacing the floor within a week.

And within a month you’d discover that the people next door are evil anarchists who’ve set a nuclear device to go off under city hall!!

No, America, I think you just fine the way you are: ever the cowboy, ever the mad scientist.

As for me, despite my complaints, I liken you to a wild and crazy uncle who sleeps on the couch from time to time. In other words, it’s always an adventure having you around.