What the radio told me.
I left Bangladesh and headed for some higher ground. Bangladesh is basically a flood plain. I was in my cot in the guest house in Katmandu, when I got the next key. It said, when you wake up you will be back in Toronto. You’re traveling days are over for the time being. You have successfully broken down your past personality. You have done this through breaking all of your old habits, forgotten your old comforts. You may go back to them now. You are ready for Phase Two.
Schwartz and Schwartz
Another day in Schwartz and Schwartz, pass the fish ’n chips. And the vinegar. And. Hey, pass the fuckin butter now that you’re up. Got a roll. Long march, baby. Bring it on down. Christ. Bring it to Papa. This is lunch. My ear on fire from having it pressed up against some third world telephone receiver all day. I before E...Rules rules rules, so much to learn. I finally got it all figured out. It was all jumbled together in my head like some kind of horrible horrible Indian bus pile up, north of Bombay, early morning. We slow to take a look. My desk hotter than the seat of my conservative pinstripe slacks. Matches in my pockets. Never know when one might come in handy. New gig, back in the saddle. Look out the window, across the street at the stew bums, junkies, vags, assorted lowlifes, riffraff, and street urchin. Western civilization sliding fast. Should be soaked in gasoline over night, throughly cleansed and then...Hey buddy, got a match? Sitting near the radio, all day, there on the window ledge, looking like it wants to jump. Me, listening but not hearing it play dumb ditties, pap, dull rap, cry for help and money. Hell, if you got money, you could buy better help than me. Maybe give it a little push. Someday it’ll all make sense, maybe. Someday a web archeologist with really cool eyeglasses will dig up these diaries and say we were a bunch of raving loonies. And then Ill have the last laugh.
Schwartz and Schwartz is in a hundred year-old house, not the best part of town, long way off, yet near dead centre. Three Sailor Road. Painted on bricks a cool and conservative, thoroughly modern cream-flakey paint. Inside the wallpaper stained, holes drilled in floors and floorboards telephone and computer wires, cables, snake, hang and dangle though which. Three floors. Creaky floorboards. Up and down the stairs countless trips worn into the carpet. Worn, goose turd green carpet clashing nicely with the monkey shit brown wall dividers. Soothing my tired nerves. Rat a tat Whoooooo But from my battleship desk, titanic deck chair I peer over the suicidal radio, out the window, across the street past the hundred year-old house painted bird-egg-blue and I am master of all I see. Nice. Extra nice. Victoria Street, jammed with bread trucks and rusty cars, humanity of the western world at its finest, strutting their stuff on the way to cash a check or something, just hang out maybe, clothing matching the seasons, grey raincoat, dull blue bomber jacket with raging fur around the collar and cuffs. My eyes drift, fall back on the radio, all the faint silver writing on it looking like triangles, lines and circles, I assume is some sort of ancient North Korean script. Looks like this thing spent the 70s in the head of some leaky pirate ship in the straits of Malacca. Oh the stories it tells. I pry my ears away when I hear …Clair yell up the stairs something that sounds like COocOFOffffeeee. She must be on the jelly side of the family. Elected to go to the corner on a coffee run, I lace up. Avoiding the immigrants I pass, eyes averted, into the relative safety of WeeZees Coffee, good name, this guy should be in an oxygen tent instead of making Kapachingo. Thats how he says it anyway. Flemmy. Still hacking up french mustard gas. Weird. Old bastard, with marks on his head and a late night movie accent. The radio is on my mind. Cant be turn off. I unplugged it when I went down to WeeZees for coffee but when I came up the steps and saw it sitting there on the ledge I somehow knew it would be on again. It was, on another day in Schwartz and Schwartz.
I'd rather walk a mile for a camel, through a dry and cracked lakebed with my shorts on my head, than run to WeeZee's again for a flemmy cup of joe. Old hackster.
The radio pulling me down, playing the same tired old tunes and whimpering in the fading half light as ribbons of northern air seep through windowpanes chilling it's wires, plastic and nobs. I can beat this thing. I got living to do.
Man-eater cleaned out her desk, filling her white, low-milage, seven-year-old toy Tercel's trunk and back seat with bags and boxes of stuff she will never need again. Never needed. Cleaning out drawers, cleaning off tabletops. Hey, look at this. Memory lane, this holiday-moded passenger casually dressed and passively uninterested, listening and watching. Nothing as boring as someone else's fading dreams. The meandering roadside scenery strangely familiar yet all the signs in an unreadable script, the roadside peasants obviously peasants but with different beliefs, diet and dress code. The smiling cow jumps as the clouds pass over the moon. This is man-eater country. Man-eater stuff, like memories, hers to drag with her to the new gig in Funkytown and other destinations, undecided, yet unknown. A change is as good as a slap in the belly with a wet kipper, as the dish runs away with the spoon. Life in Schwartz and Schwartz is a monotonous clutter of keyboards and phone calls. Life on the outside is a harsh cold water shock. Tick tock. She left this cat, a green garbage bag of old business cards, datebooks, knicknacs and paddywacks. I put it safely out back.
Schwartz and Schwartz will be exceedingly unusual without the comings and goings, talking on the phone, wasting time, going out for a man-eater smoke, looking for her sunglasses, hanging up her coat, talking nonsense. And then we will forget her. She took the radio.
A 2000 piece puzzle, apparently, a World War One battle in France, edge pieces missing. Start with any two that fit together. French puzzles, the man-eaters territory annexed, swiftly conquered by this cat, along with her expansive desk and comfy chair. As man-eater moves on, to fresh killing grounds, I lean back with my insulated hiking boots, Panchaio purchased, dripping salt, sand, dirty slush into the second drawer from the top, peering with one eye at a small piece of world history, squinting, having no clue where this one goes. One eye blind. Listening to The Hawk FMs 4 oclock double shot of Led Zeppelin, yeah, I brought in a replacement radio, the cheapest, nastiest-looking one I could find for under 30 bucks. Zellers. The second floor of Schwartz and Schwartz was just too wind swept and barren, strewn with wreckage, without irritating tunes to distract. One eye blind, its true what they say. The other senses step in and compensate, move in to fill the void. Guessing my way through, providing vague answers and dim suggestions as I sift through the wreckage of a doomed, third-world, stinking salt mine air disaster. My ace? Cats always land on their feet. The perimeter of Schwartz and Schwartz has been secured. Tell the marines to stand down, baby. Opening a Jazz bar, I call Gandis Jazz Bar. I keep a pot of curry stewing in the kitchen sending exotic smells to clash with the overall ambience. Jade comes in... ...If you had a boyfriend, I’d be jealous I say. Have you ever cheated on your wife? she raises an eyebrow. No, you’ll be the first. Oh yeah, not so fast big boy. Always and eventually like this with her. Goes especially great with Coltrane.
The clock radio clicks on, a morning show, chatter, commercials, 80's music and stupid games to win dinner for two at some ho humm restaurant. Todays five in ten contest, name five kinds of cookies in ten seconds. Peanut butter, chocolate chip, coconut, uhm, uhmm, the male host, Skip, makes the sound of a buzzer. Irritating myself awake. I listen to a new tune (the first in nine years, says Skip) by Sade. I remember her face on a cassette box, reminding me of Amsterdam, one of six cassettes Kathy carried around Europe, belting out an off-key riff in a train station or a shower stall. Soothing music when done right. The female host, Wendy, says something predictable, "I bet that really woke you up". Skip makes snoring sounds. I prop myself up against the headboard, ragdoll, grab my blue framed, plastic glasses, look out into the dim early morning half-light. Dawn cracking, yellow on blue-black sky, brown-beige on white-grey moonscape. The wind whipping snow bullets across the frozen tundra. I hear the girls downstairs, watching ytv and playing with the new tabbies, Sweiswei and Jingjing (water and gold), Auspicious names for kittens. I pray they don't follow Striped October to an early grave. Downstairs in dilapidated slippers, I forgot to set the coffee maker, make that first, then the lunches, call the girls for breakfast. They want toasted, Montreal smoked meat sandwiches. I have granola. The missus appears, brushes the girls hair, with every stroke Mattie yells Owww, stroke, Owww, stroke, Owww. I smile and look out the window at my neighbors shepherd, peeing in the snow, as I fill my thermos with strong, black, supermarket coffee. A I'm approaching early middle age. Mellowing more. He observes and takes pleasure in simple things. Life is easy. Easy like Monday morning.
Like an snapshot of a bunch of people you don't know standing in front of a car or house you've never seen before, time stands still in Schwartz and Schwartz. It's a lightless, I-max, timewarp into the late seventies/early eighties. The furniture and the wafting radio tunes eerily and undeniably confirm this. I squint and count on my fingers in the dark, three months already since I first saw with my own two eyes how fast shit could travel through a warm goose, how slow an Eastern European Wheezey could pour a large cappachingo (extra mustard gas foam on mine, please), and how hard it is to move a mountain. In Schwartz and Schwartz, the pace of change is glacial, as the world on the outside rushes on to oblivion. Three months. Time flies (like geese do, only faster). We're having a great time, making money doing stuff we like to do, each of us with our own quirky slant on life. Boston Cream, the farmgirl, says things like "I told my boyfriend he has to marry me, shit or get of the pot" I smile and say "multiple choice, eh?" Minky likes to read me my horoscope and glance at my crotch. This routine, I like. I haven't had so much crotch-glancing since I worked in a coffeeshop below a gay bar in Perth. And the grand poobah, the best boss I've ever had, we talk about movies, past adventures and asian food. He calls me, or leaves voicemail that meanders and ends inconclusively. He goes out everyday at 2:30 to get the mail, a hamburger, large fries and a coke. I call him boss, as in... "Hey boss, what happen to that quote for the Tate account?" "Ahh, gee... Tate, ya ya Tate, Uhm... it's ahh here somewhere..."
Dirty grey snow giving way to dirty brown grass. Days getting longer. Nights shorter. The kids get up with the sun. They climb into bed with us as the sun climbs over the trees and gets into bed with the sky. In bed, the kids squirm, kick, talk and play with the cat, who gets up with the birds. Striped bastard. Early to rise. Time for leisurely breakfasting, sitting on the sofa with a cup and a radio, time to brush our teeth and tangles, play outside before the whistle blows. Expanding parking lot, at Schwartz and Schwartz. I prop my window open with a reference book. Cool, fresh air, street and bird sounds. The sidewalks, streets busy again. Northerners coming out of a slumber, eyes blinking, foraging for life. At lunch time, I go to the gym, as I promised myself. Getting healthier, fifteen times a month. Good value. I watch the news and spandex. Interest rates fall as I climb 75 floors on the stairmaster.
Like visiting in-laws retiring to the sofa after enjoying an especially well-boiled meal, spreading out, hogging the TV, bathroom, computer, playing new age music and making a lot of noise, leaving the door open, letting in flies, joshing each other in machine gun Taiwanese, Hiiii oooooy rata tat tat and long distance phone calls to their cousins in Ohio, yak yak yak, hiiii oooooy rata tat tat, aiiii, Im sitting on the sofa, sure is hot here, is it hot there? Cant go home. And, summer in Schwarts and Schwartz has become as dreary and tasteless as boiled boneless chicken with white bread and ice water, a great meal if you dont like flavour, watching what you eat, live to be a hundred and wear out your welcome wherever you go. Troublesome people breaking my stride. I pour vodka over ice. Monday morning in Schwartz and Schwartz, only one on the barren, stained monkey-shit-brown industrial strength carpet, wires and cable running under foot, through the ceiling, second floor floorboards, my thermos and radio my only friends today, everybody was king fu fighting, ha. I take my shoes off and pour another cup.
Monday morning in Schwartz and Schwartz, Peanut’s day off and Minky isnt coming in ëtil eleven o'clock, from her wild weekend of boating and blowjobs, threesomes and king size cigarettes. "Oh man, what a weekend" shell say, just two of us upstairs, on Schwartz and Schwartz’s second floor, she'll be wearing dollar store sunglasses and drinking from an extra large Tim Hortens coffee, double double. "Ya wanna see some pictures?" I turn the radio to "the Hawk ñ home of classic rock", and get a nine o'clock double shot of Supertramp. I'm, getting things done, down to business with a steaming cup of homebrew, fresh from my trusty stainless steel buddy, my hardware store, top of the game Therm. Christ, I drink a lot of coffee. I need a friend like you, Therm. Smile on. First off the agenda: a report to the Pud on last weeks activities, untrackable progress to recount to bozzman Pud, the scrutinizer, we exchange pleasantries as we circle each other, looking for weak spots. Ask an innocent question, get turned around into an inquisition. Small red eyeing me from behind papers, reports, folders and mail on his desk. Im walking Spanish over to the faxing machine, after mail slotting said report. Monday takes shape, without interruption, busy behind the eight ball with a Titanic problem, sinking me thinking I should jump ship, ride the iceberg south, into obscurity. At lunch, to the gym, then wolf a roast beef sandwich and a bunch of baby carrots at my desk, refining, putting a new spin on a project that is going down the drain, with Minky, bagged out, the Peanut is talking to her mom on her own home phone, I suppose. "Buy me some cookies while youre there", shes saying, no doubt, "Ill pay you for them later".
Monday in Schwartz and Schwartz, favorite day, slow start to a slow week, a little late, but so was Trish who walks to work, cross the center of town, sun or snow, always late, around the block if shes early. Minky already on the second floor, putting on her eye make-up, bottles and jars spilling out from a little see-through bag, overstuffed. She is peering up close into a convex mirror. Shes all she really has. (Not much, but what a package.) "Morn", I said, opening my thermos and hotmail, checking out jobs. At ten oclock when Minky goes for a smoke, quickly fire off two resumes. Tap tap tap hhssst. Tap tap hhssst, looking for a future. Get some work done, but mostly answer the phone, look out at the rain, move papers and folders around, throw stuff away, stuff I should have done something about but now its too late, crumple it and arc it over my left shoulder, bounces off corner walls, in. Organizing. At lunchtime, to the gym and sweat the beer and bar-b-q ribs of a weekend well-spent away, on a cardio machine, watch the news, subtitled over "the edge", a middle-of-the-road steeltown radio station catering to a top-40-non-disco-pop-type-listener, the pretenders, sting, tragically hip and a bunch of music Ive heard everyday for the past year but have no idea who it is. Sweat through the top half of my blue T-shirt. I notice that I am the only one wearing blue, in a rolling sea of white. Without the gym, Id be shipwrecked. The afternoon flies by, busy with routine work and high voltage adrenaline surging through my body, run down the stairs to the fax machine, run up the stairs to the lunch room, run down the stairs to check my mailbox, up the stairs to my desk, make some calls, down the stairs, have a word with Poo Bah. "Christ on a popsicle stick", he says. "The printer was late again." "What was his excuse, this time?" "He blamed it on the courier." "Yeah right. Thats the problem with this country", I say, starting to overdue it, (but lousy service I cannot tolerate), "No one is willing to take responsibility for anything, pass the buck, hide down a hidey-hole, behind some lame excuse. I mean...really, would it be too much just to say, ëHey, I made a mistake. Im so sorry..." The Poo Bah is busy with work though, cant be drawn in, I go back upstairs, put on the radio
Phone rings. I ignore it. Four oclock, time for a double shot of Led Zeppelin, then Im going down to Wheezeys for a cup of coffee, double double. I could use the sugar.
Ah...Schwartz and Schwartz, familiar territory, yet unseen by this cat for awhile anyway and then today briefly, exercising an option again to work soho, with the wicked witch back in the east, breezing through ol salt to pick up messages, send a fax, exchange pleasantries with Pud about projects and well well well, asking about my weekend now, (on Thursday), as he sabotages my impeding bonus, putting a new spin on an old contract. Hah ha ha, I dont care. Do whatever you want. Money does not drive me. It stands in my way, in the way of a speeding maniac, singing loudly with open windows and a busted radio with a co-mind its own, chased by jazz police dogs, I take in the scenery with my peripheral vision only.
Nice. I love the impending fall.
Minky has given up carbohydrates and cigarettes, Monday manic Tuesday Wednesday Thursday manic manic manic, an exercise mat stashed beside her desk, working up and off a lather at ten, twelve, two and four, (formally smoke-breaks), now her hands fly around, knocking eye make-up, files, flying pens, off desk and onto the brown, monkey-stained carpet. She has sex on her mind, talks about it constantly, crotch glancing.
…clair off Tuesday and Wednesday with migraine, back today and avoidably grouchy. Growling low.
Peanut chattering away like a monkey, after a weeks holiday, talk talk talktalkchatter chatter talk talktalk
Boston Cream growing a moustache, looks good on her, cannot carry on a simple conversation with beginning and end, good-bye, go away, stop hovering.
And Trish...ahhh..Aliens live life and love around us.
So, soho I go, with a pot of Earl Grey, Coltrane talking with God, Jin Jin sleeping in a sunbeam, and this cat tapping away on another award-winning project, thinking of starting my own jazz-thought jihad.
God is great.
Yeah, but so are the shapely asses of university girls, shopping together, debating, and buying a lot of mock-Italian food and orange juice.
And so, is a well-made sandwich.
So is a walk in the neighborhood, tooting on a little cigar. The sun goes down. Another day, another week, in Schwartz and Schwartz.
Within a block of Schwarts and Schwartz today, left turn, dont need to see them, went to the gym, then the beer store. Temples of smiling I'm, keeping me pure. Tabernacles of punishment and reward, sweat through a T-shirt and pair of shorts, buy a two-four. Life is all about balance, staying between the lines, like jazz variations on a theme. Yeah. Dig it. Still working soho, cool isolation, alone with my thoughts, with my Earl Grey, all jazz radio (sounding smaltzy today) and a chicken toasty for lunch as I check my e-mail, sweet mixed pickles and a carrot on the side. Serious need of olives and cranberry juice, rescue my lunch. Tap tap tap. Staying out and in front of the demon and the jazz police sniffers, search and destroy mission, target, ground zero, the HQ of the jazz thought jihad, God is great. But so is a perfect chip from a hundert yards out, pin high. And so is two glasses of white wine and a Coltrane cd, laying on the chesterfield. And so is a conversation gone off the rails in the gym locker room, two middle-aged naked guys talking about bikes, wet wee wees, warm from the shower. Yeah, right. Yep, working in my shorts at the kitchen table, looking out into my own backyard at the birch, swaying with the wind. Jinjin escapes for a few hours, comes back all puffed up, wild eyed, winter fur. Monday is a result of Friday in Schwartz and Schwartz. Friday, a predictable disaster, a meeting with the two Ps, Poobah and Pud, the P-heads, a quick and agile rabbit, me, chased by too-drunk yet determined shotgun totting red-necks, call it a draw, we agreed to meet again for further discussions today, but I swerved left, dodge, weave, doe bee cho, play again tomorrow. Another day... Just sick of their double talk, anticipated as a 5oooK trip to the lube shop, at least they could have fresh coffee and a newspaper, forchristsakes, instead of a stack of soiled magazines and 100 Huntley Street on the TV. "Are you watching this?" I ask the woman sitting quietly beside the magazines. "No", she looks up, startled, her eyes behind glasses, two goldfish in two goldfish bowls, swimming around aimlessly. I click it off, to another day in Schwartz and Schwartz.
The steel town radio behind Minkys desk perforating slushy Friday grey with the four oclock double shot of Led Zeppelin. A year past a plane crash landmark, a Texas McDonalds shotgun massacre. A year past being thrown from the wreckage unmarked, bewildered. I rub the stubble on my chin, look out into Victoria Street with its bread trucks and pickups doing the bumper tap out of town. Spared, dare I say, by whim? A year in a new life of a fadingly foreign street cat, yup, a year in the life of this cat looms ill spent in Schwartz and Schwartz. Another anniversary. Hmmm. I examine past days with Minky as my benchmark, my rosette stone, a barometer of these times as her salt mine anniversary is just past. A day, a year ago, a sexual dynamo shaving private parts with private detectives, Monday mornings wearing sunglasses, giving me the details when I get back with the coffee, and putting her phone on hold, going to the girls for a smoke and some cold water in the face, driving too fast in her Chrysler convertible, talking her way out of tickets and crotch glancing young officers pants. A year in Schwarts and Schwartzlater, today or so, she tells me, her new birth control has killed her libido, she has mice in her basement, how her daughter started a popcorn fire in her microwave, (the fireman was nice), her car wont start, something to do with the fucking fuel lines and her so called lover, fucked off to Wasaga to winterize his cottage. She quit smoking, gained 20 pounds (so she said, but I think she looks as hot as ever), took on a full time boyfriend (except when he fucks off to Wasaga, but hes small and boring in bed anyway). I think a lot of guys sometimes think it would be fun to be a girlie. I do when Im feeling naughty. (Naughty I remind, is very close, in the dictionary to Minky. And between them: mischief, monkey business, naked, nasty and naturally all fall, define.) Minky tells it like it is though, quashing that fantasy, yet making me wiser with deep detached and detailed knowledge, as a year later in Schwartz and Schwartz, I read between the lines, catching drifts unintended. And I compare my year and smile. Under siege, urban assault troops with modern technology and a secret language slowly, warily encroach into our periphery and we continue on, as always or at least until someone throws a serious spanner into the works, I mark a year in Schwarts and Schwartzwith a box of donuts and a round of coffees, extra sugar all around. And some cats only live once.
If life were a train ride, this morning I would be travelling through the grim, barren Gobi desert, through the empty heartland of the indefinable communist Chinese soul, as the second most recent member of the world capitalist club takes another oxymoronic step towards the brink. I ride on, reclining in my Pullman passively, caring not of that with which I cannot control. This morning, I would be looking out the window, drinking bottomless cups of coffee, out of habit, boredom and because I spent the night in a too small bed, not my own, dreaming Schwartz and Schwartz dreams of windswept winter vistas, routine phone calls and steel town radio shows. Working soho, the flooring boys are here today to repair the parquet in the master bedroom and introduce the living room to a new way of life, a new style, a new outlook with wood. Handy I'm spent last night moving the furniture out, ripping up the old blue shag, screwing down the floor and thirsty work, drinking Sleemans honey brown, getting dusty after dark. After a tuna sandwich and one last cup of coffee, my train leaves the desert and enters the foothills of Funkytown. I leave the men to their work and go smooze with clients, listening to the radio in my car between stops, hoping a change in scenery will change my mood.
In Schwarts and SchwartzI continue, making phone calls, shotgun sales, guerilla marketing. Trying to bag me a big one, not just banging away into the wind. The Poobah, speaks from his mountain vista, clouded with fog, strewn with fast food restaurant hamburger wrappers, see every client in the roster in the next six months, service service service, drop in, go to lunch, give them a pen or something, give them some face time. And so I pull reports, fudge numbers, and drop in, drive all over central Ontario, listening to the radio and muttering sweet nothings to myself. The Poobah is right of course, I have been neglecting my clients, they need face time and smiling jack needs a little time with himself, a break with routine, become seamlessly rutless, which of course, is the central theme of a I'm. And Schwarts and Schwartzis up for sale, with a big green and white sign on the lawn out front, inspiring great certainty that the Pud is pulling a fast one and one day well arrive and all be out of work. Not so, he says. Hes tired of shoveling in the winter, arranging for lawn care in the summer, paying oil bills, upkeep on the hundret-year old house... He wants us all on one floor, evil eyeing us as he scratches crumbs out of his beard. Minky says she doesnt know what shell do. Schwarts and Schwartzhas good karma. Poobah rolls his eyes, (flakey tart, he thinks). Yet, I too have grown to love Schwartz and Schwartz, with its monkey-shit brown industrial carpet, Titanic boiler room furniture, its bubbling plumbing providing suitable background noise as we sink into the cold north Atlantic. No, no, its a dry land wreck, an Indian bus pile up, north of Bombay, all chrome and painted Vishnu heads, rags, clapboard luggage and body fluids, it aint pretty but this too was inevitable.
The radio tuned to steeltown, classic rock, my pencil arcs across the room into the monkey-shit brown room-divider, Led Zeppelin cries, oh baby, baby, baby. A-4 bullseye scuffed with graphite, holier than holey, four o'clock double shot, toll taking on the second floor of Schwartz and Schwartz. Broken tip landmines. Cleaning lady hating me every second Tuesday. Corner coffee Wheezey succumbed, coughed up the last bit of mustard, I guess, he's toast. Another half block to go to Seattle, gourmet mud at millennium prices. Yackety yack instead of hack hack drool. Missing that ol' trench warfare vet with his shakey hands and incomprehensible stories. Nod nod yeah yeah, gotta get get back to Schwartz and Schwartz, wheeze. Cabin fever in the hundert year old house, getting obnoxious to each other, pulling no punches, starting stuff with "Hey, how come I never see you eat fruit?" All hell breaks loose. Dreamt I got voted off. Tribe acting squirrelly, I know something is up. I go to see Colby, the kingmaker, turns out to be a real prick, sitting there smoking a Marlboro "We just don't like you. You showed up here with your loud shorts and hair slicked back, so smarmy with everyone, you're sickening. Get the fuck out." Stark reality. False reality. Fate destiny karma. Rearranging the prearranged as I knew I would. My tired view of the bird-egg blue house through trees stripped bare of life, suddenly alive again with blue jays and other birds I don't recognize. Spring. On the sidewalks, stewbums and street urchins, pan handling for bus fare in paper bags and loose joints. Wide berth, eyes avert. Life goes on in Schwartz and Schwartz.
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