I mean  who has that kind of cash

he happened to walked up and into a conversation between two female co-workers

the younger one had just said

Sure he said absently  Who has that kind of cash

Six Grand  Im saying

Six grand Cash Hellyah  Whos this

The guy who bought my implants

Wha

Yeah  The clinic didnt accept checks  Put it on a card . .

. . Or cards the other woman said

Or cardsyeah  Or cash   So he said hed be back inside a halfhour  And when he came back he counted out six grand in hundreds then folded up the remaining bills and put them in his pocket

Six grand he said

Yeah

Some kind of guy

Yeah He bought me my implants

Some guy

Yeah

Some guy got a name

Of course

she wasnt tendering a name

Must be nice said the other woman

What he said   The six grand or the implants . . . .

he was older than both women

implants werent part of his vernacular

they fit however keenly into what had long troubled him about women and their fragilitythat wasnt the word  their given-over-to cosmetics  he never met a made-up woman he was attracted to he rathered well-scrubbed and clean  women pursuing vanity(in vain) troubled him  and now it wasnt only women but men toomen troubling over how they looked all these people concerned how they appeared to matters that were truly important people who preferred artifice to remedy their in-the-mirror reflection  skewed perception  these people arduously preferring the artificial to what was real  and once augmented they believed were convinced the plastic was real  they bore no consideration or concern or empathy for people who couldnt afford plastic surgery for a childs hairlip and other visually-disturbing birth defects  or wounds

pretty shallow

he thought he better take leave of his situation before he said something untoward  or hurtful

                                          . . . . The six grand of course the older woman said Nice to have six grand sitting around and more  You did say he folded up remaining bills and tucked them into his pocket

The guys loaded

The guy  he said again

Loaded  she smiled  and then she grasped her breasts in both hands and shook them defiantlyLoaded

And Im out of hereIm sure were breaking some kind of corporate standard . .

. . Were just talking they said over each other

Then Ill let you two talk I stumbled into this anyways Was just coming up for a bit of air and instead I got a mouth full of blue air  You gals carry on though

I wish I knew someone who had six grand to give away the older woman said No strings . .

. . attached  he thought as he floated back up and into the store aisles 

What strings would he attach to a boob job he shelled out six grand forNone he thought None at all  Because he wouldnt

he wasnt keen on an eyeful a handful or a mouthful of saline or siliconeNo baby  he preferred the real thing

1159,  Thursday,  12  1. 17

1345,  Thursday,  12  1. 17

Aint Nothing Like The Real Thing  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz_D-greh8Q

it was a silver dayone of those rare days when silver supersedes gold it wafts its colouring goes between dull gunmetal grey to the vibrance of a grandmothers patient and painstakingly polished silver

beside him ran a runlet of rainwater

it hurried between an eroded edge of a tarmacked road and its earthen shoulder 

submerged in it were sensual banks of sand and silt and mixed-in organic matter 

lengths of it were clogged by stones tumbled and stolen by the downpour

the rainwater ran in a trough of its own creationa trough that wiggled its way like a drunken man head pitched forward who suffered the inertia of the descending hill and who only braked when he stumbled falling onto his hands and knees catching himself saving himself from smashing his face the clear water snatched bits of the tippling sunlight strongarmed and wrestled them to form bullion bars and brightcoins weave delicate splits and bang-out careless shards

the runoff reminded him 
                  it reminded him of when he was a boy in the city walking along curbs  above their rushing street gutters  he would drop a twig or curled leaf into the rainwater and imagine they were an Indian birchbark canoe and he inside  he paddled them across fat pools the while anxious to avoid their suddenappearing slurping vortexes  then he stroked and steered his way among the shallows over their rolling swells and fast whitewater and just before the canoe tipped up on its nose and was gobbled by iron storm-grates he saw himself leap awkwardly to safety and clutch and swing dangerously from overhanging tree limbs or sturdy brush  then pantinghis eyes bright and full of nonsense hed run back up the street to find another vessel and begin anew another mad river adventure

now  he could fathom no reason why he shouldnt play againbeing older or a man was no difference to the boy he carried inside him

so he found a twig

he walked back up the street  a street halfway across the continent from where he grew up

and into the fast water he dropped it and began a new – old imagining

he played better than a halfhour

and because this street hadnt curbs or storm drains his raucous journeys ended when the river emptied into a side street and the water spread out and up and down and flat and calm  he tipped out of the canoe into the simmering and swam easily to shore to begin again

                              as he did as a boy in the last century

the manchild and the boy are separated only by a thin gulf of Time  rescued again and again and again by the happy happy self-absorption of Memory

Memory that can leap that can fly that can impossibly hover in the sky like the comic book Superman his parents took from him   and thought they destroyed 

        

after 1300,  Monday,  9  1. 17

1550,  Twosday,  10  1. 17

Look! Up in the sky . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2l4bz1FT8U  or  The Cramps  Garbage Man  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVLpaiH2hbQ

violence is, essentially – he heard this attributed to Ray Bradbury in what he felt was an unlikely conversation between Marshall McLuhan and Norman Mailer – violence is, essentially, the form of the quest for identity

he could be forgiven his ignorance

it was broadcast on Canadian television in '68 a programme called The Summer Way

he didnt see anything from Canada not with the Democratic National Convention happening in his city and all its components searching for their identity  venal or justified

if violence can sort out ones identity

                         he assumed fear or its subtle sister-brother confrontation could inhibit ones identity  the fear that ones violence would be subsumed or couldnt possibly withstand the others 

which if not ridiculous was frustrating 

it is inevitable that ones violence is bettered by anothers and if not someone then something

you can only hope that in the long run youll win one time more than you lost  if a defeat hasnt killed you

if one withdraws  fears  remains uncontested  their true identity is not only diminished or sullied but verges on nonexistent a kind of person who insist they stand against this or stand against thatResolute!  but refuse to stand for anything

their fear is a cudgel they drag behind them can feel in their grasp are assured by its presence  but they never use it

he was too scarred to be scared

             

1313,  Thursday,  5  1. 17

0824,  Friday,  6  1. 17

The Summer Way  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuPwipHzRzc