The Green Man Diaries

Flash. I am back in Toronto. It is after 2AM and my friends are helping me bring my stuff back to my apartment. We go eat at Fran’s afterward.

Flash. Ges is giving me a Tarot reading. He warns me about falling into old behaviour patterns, about getting trapped by Toronto. Morgan and Mike Bailey join us and we sit at Spadina and Bloor and talk about ourselves. I forget to call my sister.

Flash. I am picnicking with my friend N. I am going to Chicago.

Flash. Now N is my lover. We are having an affair: her boyfriend doesn’t know. I am struck by the suddenness of it all. It feels like I was just hanging out with Ges and Morgan and Mike a minute ago.

Flash. I am not going to Chicago.

Flash. N and I are at Futures, talking (heh) about communication. It’s easy to state facts, I say, but difficult if not impossible to convey a nuanced emotional reaction to those facts, or at least to cause a similar reaction in the reader or listener; one almost needs a sort of telepathy. N points out that that’s what art is for. Or sex. If we can’t capture ideas straight on, maybe we can reach around and catch them from behind.

Art or sex: but I’m still struggling with my art, and neither of us are telepathic yet.

Flash. I burn my fingers on Morgan’s censer.

Flash. I wake up next to N. Weren’t we only friends just a little while ago? Where has the time gone? I begin to perceive a sequential unfolding of reality. This is the constant changing of the Trip. This is time speeding by while the moment remains eternal.

Flash. It’s Monday evening, and I was supposed to leave Saturday morning. Ges warns me about getting trapped. I am not going to Chicago. N and I are lovers. N and I are friends. I forget to call my sister. I burn my fingers. I am back in Toronto.

I wake up next to N. Where has the time gone? We are on the beach in the west end, and it is night time. The sky and water meet seamlessly at an invisible horizon. Someday soon, in a flash, I will be back on the road – maybe headed east to Montreal, maybe south to Florida and New Orleans, maybe west through the Rockies. But for now I am in Toronto, in the incommunicable present, and this too is part of the Trip.

Is was and ever shall be, world without end, etc. Amen.