Synopsis of The Edge

Anthony Hopkins Character seems to remember everything that comes into his mind, he can't help it, which makes him a genius. He's also very good with money, which makes him a billionaire. Alec Baldwin Character is a razzy New York photographer who is secretly sleeping with Anthony Hopkins Character's trophy wife. There are other people, and all together they have made a short trip to the arctic to celebrate Anthony Hopkins Character's birthday and so Alec Baldwin Character can take some sexy Injun photos of Anthony Hopkins Character's Julia-Roberts-hot wife. Alec Baldwin Character seeks a subtle opportunity to shame Anthony Hopkins Character by surprising him excessively in a bear costume in front of everybody. Anthony Hopkins Character falls down. The next morning, Alec Baldwin Character is behaving like an important artist and demands to fly north so he can take a picture of a pig-tailed native man named Gus or Gert. His assistant is a soft black man. Anthony Hopkins Character and Alec Baldwin Character are having repartee in the plane; he turns to him and says, "So how do you plan on murdering me?" At that moment, they run into a flock of birds. One of the birds smashes through the window, another gets mangled in the propellor and splatters them with blood. The plane goes out of control, hits a mountain, and flops into a lake. Alec Baldwin Character saves himself, while Anthony Hopkins Character maintains his presence of mind enough to rescue the flares and the assistant, but the pilot is dead. On shore, they use a flare to start a fire. They warm up and begin having explosive, confrontational interactions. Anthony Hopkins Character explains to them that most people who die in the wilderness die of shame. He utilizes his genius to make a compass, but his belt buckle throws it off, and fifteen minutes later they've walked for a day and end up in the same place. In the mean time, a bear has chased them and Anthony Hopkins character loses the bag with the flares. Anthony Hopkins Character is ashamed. Alec Baldwin Character smokes a cigarette by the lake and laughs loudly-yet-inwardly at Anthony Hopkins Character. Then the bear eats the assistant. The two run away, but the bear is hunting them. After several days, Anthony Hopkins Character says, "I'm going to kill the mother-fucker." They make spears and goad the bear into a stream, where Anthony Hopkins Character uses the weight of the bear to puncture him. He sighs. He has always wanted to do something unequivocal. They make bear-fur costumes. They walk in the snow. They come across a cabin with a canoe and a map and whiskey and a gun. Anthony Hopkins Character discovers that Alec Baldwin Character has been sleeping with his wife. Alec Baldwin Character decides to kill Anthony Hopkins Character. He leads him outside at gunpoint, but Anthony Hopkins Character tricks him into stepping into a hidden pit that serves as a bear-trap. Alec Baldwin Character has a big stick through his leg. Even though he has tried to kill him, Anthony Hopkins Character wants to rescue Alec Baldwin Character. He loads him into a canoe and paddles down river to civilization. They stop at the edge of a lake. A helicopter appears, but at that moment Alec Baldwin Character dies. At the end, reporters want to know how everyone died. Anthony Hopkins Character is emotional. He says, "They died saving my life."

Confession

I have, for a long time, swallowed caterpillars, and burned ants off my hand with cigarettes. I have watched people take their passage through trees, shouting orders to themselves like unexercised pets, suddenly free to crash upon the spectacular grass. I judged their silly, stupid voices, modified to wink at the predatory birds, which ignored them. I shook the roots out of my fingers, to please a friend. I called down curses with every passing airplane that mimicked thunder. I have hid inside a world two inches high. I swallowed the last shallow breath in the diary of a saint. I have seen what is required, only movement, and I have remained quite still, except for my hands, which shook.

Camper

News from the Wood

Two years ago I moved to London, Ontario. Now it's two years later and I'm still here. This second year has brought with it the intrigue of repeat seasons. Two falls, two winters, and now two springs. Spring has been tripping around for a few weeks, peeking through windows and staging mock-drownings that always get a lot of attention, but she couldn't keep up the ruse and on Friday she made it clear that she'd stick around for a few weeks anyway. No promises. I celebrated the occasion with a return to the Wood.

In my early days here, all I knew of London was the Wood, some empty trailers across the tracks from the bus station, and a crappy all-night internet cafe on Dundas Street called Head-2-Head Games. While in Montreal, I had settled it in my mind that I required a beautiful idyll, and the Wood was predestined to be the terrain of my solitary capers. I made the discovery on my very first day when Ted sent me over there with Sky to transplant some plants back to his garden. He calls it the Wild Side, but I never did feel right about that. A Wood just isn't wild, it's something else.

In urban situations, I make a practice of identifying good Spots: accessible rooftops and obscure corners of ill-kept parks and the like. A good Spot is either a secluded nook or an unfrequented vantage, a natural location for small gatherings of more or less licit intent. Occupying a Spot conveys a delicious contradiction, that of being sheltered from the normal world while simultaneously in danger of being discovered by it. Transitioning to the sub-Urban environment of London, I made a magnificent discovery; not only are good Spots no less frequent and possibly more frequent, but there are other things too: Territories, Realms, Fields, and of course, Woods.

In my case, there was only one Wood (later I discovered a real Forest, but more on that another time). As to the geography of the wood, it occupies a space along the river between two bridges that has gone undeveloped because it lies in the flood plain. To get there, you follow a dirt path from the bridge behind some houses about three hundred yards, descending a slight slope to the level of the river. The trees break and there are some strange humps of earth whose origin I never could imagine. Cross a marshy field and a small foot bridge, and hang a right. Now you're in the Wood.

One of the chief attributes of a Wood is that it has a number of different Spots. Thus, in my wood, there was the Lightning Tree, where I built my Tree House, which was really more of a Watching Deck; the Swinging Tree and the Duck Pond; the Fire Grove; the Banquet Field; the Hidden Road; the Ruined Fort; the Jumping Ridge; the Bamboo Thicket; and most importantly, the Hollow Tree. It is beyond the scope of this short account to describe any of these places in detail. Continuing past the Wood, you get to a train bridge and the Hobo Fire Pit. Following the train tracks across the bridge yields a panoramic view of the entire Wood -- an essential feature for me its proprietor -- and eventually leads directly to the liquor store and the empty trailers.

In those early days at the glass studio, I was still living with my master and I had some money saved, so I didn't have to work a second job. At that time I was able to work late in the studio so I often spent my afternoons in the Wood, enacting the fantasies of Brother Fox (who has now retreated into obscurity), hiding out in the Hollow Tree, and building my tree house. It was hard work, dragging scrap two-by-fours and old palates back there on my bike and clamoring around the Lightning Tree. Eventually, through long hours of labor, I established my benevolent rulership of the Wood.

If the wood is enchanted, the source of enchantment is certainly the River. I discovered this in the spring of last year when the floodwaters receded. The flood had brought with it numerous marvels; foremost among them was the great snail shell bounty of 2008. In the fall I had done a window of a snail and subsequently discovered a quantity of snail shells in the Lightning Tree. I took this to be a token of appreciation from the snails and possibly an appeal for me to be their champion, a role I accepted gratefully. But nothing prepared me for what happened in the spring: thousands and thousands and thousands of snail shells, blanketing the ground all through the Wood. I gathered scant hundreds in a state of awe.

As if this weren't enough, the flood had restored to the trees their old leaves that had fallen in autumn. The first time I witnessed this and realized what had happened, I felt as though I were walking through a dream. For about fifteen minutes, anyway. Returning to the Wood on Friday, I again felt astonished by the sight of these elegant bundles of brown, tied to the branches with stalks of grass and bits of colored string and unspooled tape from old cassettes. The snails were there again, in their unimaginable abundance. It seems the Wood represents some special moment in their life cycle, whether it be cemetery or staging ground for unhoused snails. I must ask a scientist about this.

But not everything was as it had been. My tree house is gone. Not merely destroyed by Older Boys, but absolutely dismantled and carried away. Not a stick of wood lying around. They practically sowed salt into the ground, but I don't take it for maliciousness. The human tragedy is rarely so decisive, I can't imagine my little tree house merited such joyless attention. Rather, I think some little kid fell out of it and cracked his skull or broke his collar bone, and the parental authorities came to preserve future children from similar harm. I hope it was traumatic for everyone. I broke my arm when I was eight and it was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I like to imagine the concentration of the Dad as he heaved up into the Lightning Tree with a saw and a crowbar. It would be sombre, irritating work, and probably cold. He would have cursed Brother Fox, if he'd known, but the fox is long gone now.

Art #1

Stealing Gloves

This morning I watched a man leave his gloves behind as he exited the bus, and I didn't say anything. I had more than enough time to process what was happening before he got off. He even stood in front of me for several seconds, waiting for those ahead to get off, giving me time to reflect on what was happening. I had enough time to realize I wasn't going to give him the gloves, to feel ashamed, to wonder why, and still more time after that. It was as though I was in a trance. "Hey friend, you forgot your gloves." Nope.

I had been watching this man behind the protective shadows of my prescription sunglasses for the entire bus ride. He was a swarthy mesomorph in his late forties, not fat but he had a punching gut and a wide-legged way of sitting. His cheeks were flat and smooth and grey and his eyes, which he squinted constantly, looked wet at the corners, as though he'd spent his entire life staring into a cold, hard wind. He was seated with one arm around his girlfriend, a thin, pretty woman prematurely aged by smoking. They were comfortable with themselves and each other. As we got downtown, he made some good jokes to his lady about her needing to get a haircut and the benefits of cutting your hair. He was, in short, a man: droll, threatening and tired. He must have been frustrated when he lost his gloves.

The surprising thing that happened next was that I suddenly found myself getting up, walking down across the aisle, taking the gloves, and returning to my seat. I took the gloves! I put them on; they were comfortable. They're black leather with black cloth on the back and an elegant strap around the wrist. They're nice gloves, I still have them. They might be the nicest gloves I've ever owned. And the only thing I can conclude is that I cunningly stole them from a man I'd coldly observed, admired, and then screwed out of a fine article of handwear. Amazing! When I got to the studio, I showed Ted the gloves, saying, "Look at these excellent gloves I found on the bus."

Don Quixote Speaks to Don Lorenzo

"So far," said Don Lorenzo to himself, "I should not take you to be a madman; but let us go on." So he said to him, "Your worship has apparently attended the schools; what sciences have you studied?"

"That of knight-errantry," said Don Quixote, "which is as good as that of poetry, and even a finger or two above it."

"I do not know what science that is," said Don Lorenzo, "and until now I have never heard of it."

"It is a science," said Don Quixote, "that comprehends in itself all or most of the sciences in the world, for he who professes it must be a jurist, and must know the rules of justice, distributive and equitable, so as to give to each one what belongs to him and is due to him. He must be a theologian, so as to be able to give a clear and distinctive reason for the Christian faith he professes, wherever it may be asked of him. He must be a physician, and above all a herbalist, so as in wastes and solitudes to know the herbs that have the property of healing wounds, for a knight-errant must not go looking for some one to cure him at every step. He must be an astronomer, so as to know by the stars how many hours of the night have passed, and what clime and quarter of the world he is in. He must know mathematics, for at every turn some occasion for them will present itself to him; and, putting it aside that he must be adorned with all the virtues, cardinal and theological, to come down to minor particulars, he must, I say, be able to swim as well as Nicholas or Nicolao the Fish could, as the story goes; he must know how to shoe a horse, and repair his saddle and bridle; and, to return to higher matters, he must be faithful to God and to his lady; he must be pure in thought, decorous in words, generous in works, valiant in deeds, patient in suffering, compassionate towards the needy, and, lastly, an upholder of the truth though its defence should cost him his life. Of all these qualities, great and small, is a true knight-errant made up; judge then, Senor Don Lorenzo, whether it be a contemptible science which the knight who studies and professes it has to learn, and whether it may not compare with the very loftiest that are taught in the schools."

"If that be so," replied Don Lorenzo, "this science, I protest, surpasses all."

"How, if that be so?" said Don Quixote.

"What I mean to say," said Don Lorenzo, "is, that I doubt whether there are now, or ever were, any knights-errant, and adorned with such virtues."

"Many a time," replied Don Quixote, "have I said what I now say once more, that the majority of the world are of opinion that there never were any knights-errant in it; and as it is my opinion that, unless heaven by some miracle brings home to them the truth that there were and are, all the pains one takes will be in vain (as experience has often proved to me), I will not now stop to disabuse you of the error you share with the multitude. All I shall do is to pray to heaven to deliver you from it, and show you how beneficial and necessary knights-errant were in days of yore, and how useful they would be in these days were they but in vogue; but now, for the sins of the people, sloth and indolence, gluttony and luxury are triumphant."

Rebar Intervention #1