on the intimate intricacy of fiction

For some reason the air conditioning in the conference was set to an Arctic temperature. All throughout the day I wrapped my thin cotton scarf around my legs, my shoulders, my legs again, trying to get warm. Wishing I could go home. J offered her closing reflection while I stared at my knees; they were mottled and blue, gooseflesh prickling under my hemline. Wearing adult clothes again, listening to adults talk about professional things and pretending to fit.

The conference ended and I slipped from the Arctic to the Sahara; the hot asphalt in the parking lot felt soft under my heels, my seatbelt buckle burned my fingertips. I was still shivering as I cranked the air conditioning on and opened all the windows. Hot air and cold air merged. It takes time to adjust. I was hot and cold at the same time. It gave me an irrational little prickle of annoyance.

I turned on the radio. I listen to CBC when I'm driving, like an adult, but not because I am an adult. Only because I cannot, can NOT bear Nira Arora. Michael Ondaatje was being interviewed. I wonder if you know he won the Blue Metropolis Grand Prix. (Why would you know this? I only know this because of CBC, I only know this because I cannot stand Nira Arora.)  

He was reading excerpts. He was answering literary questions. Eleanor Wachtel asked him about Running in the Family and I realized I could not remember what it was about. At all. By this point the air inside my vehicle had reached something I could breathe, making it possible to roll up the windows.  Making it easier to listen more to Ondaatje and less to the world outside. 

Eleanor Wachtel asked Ondaatje about The Cinnamon Peeler and he talked about why it existed and I wondered if I could remember that part of the book, because I remember loving that part. I wondered if it was still somewhere inside me. (I hoard these kinds of things inside me, buried maybe under the dusty metal wheel full of slides.)

 I did not have to try to remember it because Eleanor Wachtel asked him to read it. (This is another reason I like CBC, because it has the attention span for a long poem. If T.S. Eliot was alive, Eleanor would invite him to read all twenty stanzas of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.) 

The Cinnamon Peeler is a beautiful haunting poem. I breathed in Ondaatje’s voice. 

My GPS woman's strident voice cut in to announce that we were to follow Hastings Street and I crested that slight incline and began to descend upon East Hastings as the cinnamon peeler described me bathing under rain gutters, monsoon. 

Here on the upper thigh, (GPS says go straight for 11 kilometers) … There are 11 kilometers of road and sidewalk ahead of me swirling like a rock concert - - but they are not dancing to music. Their tents have been taken. They are just swirling... aimless, listless, homeless. (.. but we don't say homeless.) 

The cinnamon peeler helped the honey gatherers. I say it with him, this is how you touch other women. It is so hot outside. My breath is caught... as if not spoken to in the act of love. 

The zombies are staring through the windshield at me. The air inside the car is unbreathable again and I am shivering. They know I see them. They know I know them, hungry ghosts. It is not an accident to seek another route when you aren't distracted by Michael Ondaatje. 

Sometimes you end up here when you let yourself drift. Sometimes these ghosts break through the calm. My heart has lifted and crested and crashed. The GPS lady interrupts Michael Ondaatje again to tell me we are approaching the highway. (.. ... As if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.) This is how I get home.