Snippets From Our Last Day In Canada...

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Pissing off the fourth floor balcony. That image left my head upon waking this morning. I couldn’t tell you why. Logic never figures into my dreams. Or when it does, it means I’ve gone lucid, and the dream shortly thereafter escapes me. But in the shower, “Pissing Off The Fourth Floor Balcony” seemed a worthy title for a stage play. I want my sort of theatre—my “brand” of theater—to shock. At least, I do right now. And you’ve got to be tasteless if you want to shock these days. Howard Stern shows us the way… 

* 

A spider’s spun another web between the ironwork that holds up the balcony’s railing. The gusty winds and torrential rains must’ve blown away the web it spun yesterday. Wont the sun show once over Stratford? Christ, writing about dreary weather is itself dreary. 

* 

Dust Blood—that’s the new title… of something. 

* 

You don’t see a lot of older couples loving each other. At least, I don’t. And by “loving,” I mean hugging and caressing in public, as younger lovers do. Not that I really want to see that sort of thing. I’m only stating a (very narrowly perceived) observation. When I finally find love, I hope it ages like a bottle of Domaine Rene Rostaing Cote Rotie La Landonne from 1978. And should I ever marry, I pray never to feel stuck with my wife. 

* 

Pop only laughs out loud at money jokes. 

He tells me grandma wanted to go into the hotel business. That way, she’d meet a lot of people. Pop tells me he wouldn’t want to go into the hotel business. “People come and then… boom! They’re gone. People are always coming and going.” 

* 


I love the retractable ballpoint pens from the Prince of Wales Hotel. They write so smoothly. 

* 

And I ask Pop, “Of all the places you’ve visited, to which would you return?” 

He replies, “Oh, well there are places I’d like to go back to, and other places where one time was enough.” 

I ask what he likes about Stratford. He refuses to offer an opinion. He tells me he hasn’t spent enough time here. He won’t even provide his initial impression. 

27 July 1997ish* 

*[02/19/23: “-ish” due to the fact that the year was neither specified on the page, nor anywhere in, or on, the notebook; and the author’s memory is unreliable.] 

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