Fogs

[Halifax at night]
Pang pang pang pang Pang goes some metal tapping in the distance, a streetlamp swinging its metal bulb back and forth, but there is no-one dancing beneath the light here. Just the moon and me and the bones, white clouds slipping down into the deep sea of the blue sky. A quiet storm is brewing, because I hear the wind change the language. I feel that nothing is lying under my feet, and I float through the mist without thinking, just gliding, like a spirit.

I was gliding up Henry street when I decided to stop beside a garage, the loading dock near the Arts building. The man with a flashlight came out of nowhere. He came out of a building, but noiseless, like a ghost. There was something else. I never turned around, never saw his face. His eyes bore through my back as he quietly recited his line: "Please move, I'm closing this now." These were our final stage directions, we walked off in opposite directions, in silence.

Then I started thinking about time. Your breathing conscious life and your memories are on two tracks, like a double helix, rolling off at the edges. The only future is the instant when you realise past life and present meet, because there lies the pattern.

I continued walking beside the side-walk and a bear-horse-dog looked at me with onimous eyes. Laer on I saw a dog that looked like my dead stuffed animal. It was a strange evening.