Free Fall Geography

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got a sense of place?

I love to graphy, write, about the geo, land. More accurately, I like to see if I can use the power of words to conjure up a space-time location. 

Here are some Free Fall pieces where, using a timer, we get a prompt, then rush along with no time to check whether the geography is politically correct—just get the words out!

We rush without expectations … then it’s so much fun, so surprising, to go around the table reading aloud.

It ain’t free fall if it’s edited.

Here are some geo pieces, the first 1-5 being prose, and then ending with number 6, a poem.

1 Prompt- 

highway of words

Sometimes people came to the block at the back of the hospital. The morgue. Sometimes they were found in the desert after buzzards were seen cruising. How sad, to die alone on the lonesome prairie. And how beautiful was the land, for those with ample water and supplies. Georgia O’keefe settled here to make her paintings that now sell for millions. A beautiful land, but cruelly unforgiving.

Take the road to the next town, and what do you see? Can you paint it with words? Scrub grass as far as the eye can see, grass with life enough to feed animals, plentiful enough to feed buzzards. So yes, the great plains are alive. Sandy spots, rocky spots, and table sized rocks. Table rocks, they call them, straight like a table with their worn strata.

Also collecting the sun’s rays are dull green bushes with dull waxy leaves, the stems dry and hard, growing up and out, like miniature versions of those great trees of the African savannah. And smaller barrel shaped growths with spines all over. So many vines and branches to catch, delay, claw and discourage foraging. Only because the barrels have such a succulent centre, a centre unseen.

You roll along the road with your water and repair kit under a blue pitiless hot sky and what is unseen is: your dreams that draw you on. Somewhere ahead is an air conditioned cafe with ice cream, and colours unknown to this dusty land.

2 Prompt- 

east or west

There I was, standing by my jeep in the middle of the prairie, on the shoulder of the Queen Elizabeth II highway. Somewhere lost behind me was Cowtown, somewhere ahead was the Capital. The highway had a soccer-field sized strip of grass between two strips of pavement, each of two lanes. And it was  real grass, watered by the province. The real native grass was on the flanks of the highway, feeding brown cattle.

My jeep popped and cricked as the engine settled and cooled. Strange, that down in Arizona a little road would have a speed limit even faster than this modern piece of engineering. Perhaps our speed limits are a compromise so people won’t go too fast when the roads are slick and dangerous with snow. But now it was summer. I stood and looked and wondered where I should go, east or west? To the west was the town of Sundre, with a nice used book store. I have found some treasures there. To the east was a gopher museum. The gophers were stuffed and outfitted with cutesy little jerseys. Also there was a disco in an old quonset hut. The hipster in me said, “go east”; the bookworm in me said, “go west.” I like hipsters, but all of my favourite people would go west.

3 Prompt- 

creepy

It was creepy. To my left was the F.B .I. office. To my right was the I.R.S. Strange to think that someday my children won’t know what those initials mean. Strange that all the I.R.S. produced was paper, paper and more paper. They didn’t make anything. Didn’t grow anything. And now the place was dark inside. Nothing could grow, but it was creepy.

I was armed, of course. An old army M-16 slung on my shoulder. No sidearm—I couldn’t be bothered to lug the weight. Part of what made it creepy was that no one had fitted the building up to the old power grid. Why would we? Even the old government workers wouldn’t have any sentimental attachment to it. People squat in the strangest of places, but no, not the I.R.S.

I made my approach across a wide cement plaza, covered in an inch of snow. Which was a blessing. I could see no footprints. Which didn’t mean anything. Most folks these days used small doorways. To the side or back. Office buildings were stupid, All that plate glass let out too much heat. I walked right up. The clock was stopped at 8:20, of course. The time it happened. The doors, to my surprise, were locked. Didn’t everyone just rush out?

I stepped close to the door because it had started snowing again. No wind. Just little flakes falling, drifting and spiralling a bit in their own air currents, self-made by their little snow flake arms. I had seen actual snowflakes like that, landing on my grey rifle as I was waiting for a feral dog to appear. Now, I just wanted to get in, find an address, and get out. I figured some former taxpayer might still be squatting.

4 Prompt- 

a big umbrella

These day it’s a cutesy fashion to have small umbrellas. I don’t get it. In my day umbrellas were the proper size. From Japan these days you can order a transparent umbrella: boring to them, really cutesy over here. And big. The Japanese say it is very romantic to have two people under one umbrella.

One day in a light rain I found myself on a cobbled Paris street with my big black bumbershoot. Sounds exotic, but not to the French. Even before the Chunnel, British-types with furled umbrellas were boring. Approaching me was a gorgeous French lady. Not too old, not too young, not too rich, not too poor. If only I were James Bond meeting another agent. Like I had in Tokyo last year, when I used up my first life. But here I was, on vacation, in the rain, with a boring umbrella and a big boring black trench coat. I should have worn khaki, but that colour was out of style in the city when I was outfitting my travel wardrobe.

Not being a trained agent, I had no idea how to accost a native. Yes, I’m supposed to get information, but I don’t have any idea how to molest someone’s passage down a public sidewalk. There was no one else around. Not a soul. My feet went clop clop. Well sort of, I’m not a foley artist, you can imagine for yourself what sounds I made, and her too, as we approached closer and closer. Just when we were about to maneuver our big umbrellas to avoid each other, necessitating eye contact, I initiated agent contact:

“Pardon me, mademoiselle, Oo eh la Japanese store?” I needed a non-boring umbrella.

5 Prompt- 

upside down in the ditch

You know what’s weird about the big city? No ditches. So what goes along the road? Nothing. Except that every block, near the intersection, you see a little grate where the gutter would normally be. Yes they have ditches, but they’re underground.

You know what else is weird? No gutter on the grassy side of the sidewalk. Which means that all the water flows over the lawn and onto the sidewalk. That’s fine in summer. And spring. And fall. But in winter? Can you spell Ice Slick? All it takes is a slick one-millimetre of transparent ice. And zoom! Granny has a broken hip; Grandpa is swearing like he still rode a horse; Grandson is grabbing a tire iron and charging into the building to take the law into his own hands. … All for the want of a single afternoon of spade work to make a gutter.

In the smaller towns, more personal, you wouldn’t need to grab a tire iron, for you would have spoken to the owner of the big impersonal building, because it would be  a person you would know. Don’t mess with a small towner. I’m still laughing at the time some Hells Angels (no apostrophe) came through town in a convoy… with police escort…. To protect the angels from the local citizens. The black clad angels got through town in a hurry.

Back on the prairie, every town has churches. That’s with an s. By day I tune in to the station with the hog report. By night, the all-gospel station. That’s a no-brainer. If my car ends up upside down in a ditch, with my oil pan leaking, and me hanging by my seatbelt, I want the last thing I hear to be the words of my Lord. Hey, I hate to sound like an apple polisher, but sometimes Saint Peter needs a little extra nudge when he’s deciding which gate to put me through.

In a small town, Protestants turn Catholic so they can enjoy Hallowe’en, and atheists turn Christian so they can enjoy the carols at Christmas time. No, Anglos don’t turn Mexican so they can enjoy the day of the dead. We’re not that cosmopolitan here.

6 prompt- groundhog day

The sun rises and sets,

my life is routine, no bets.

The days go by, 

and here am I,

wondering where the groundhogs are.

The clutter advances like the tide,

at least I can work to have some pride.

And then my clutter departs, recedes,

but under bare ground you know there’s weeds.

Another book read, article wrote, 

speech made,

I deserve to sit in the shade, 

as the years could become a gloomier glade.

But no, these things count, don’t let them fade,

 wondering where the groundhogs are.

Again the open road, again the wondrous town.

Again the joy of leaving my burdens down,

a chance to walk like an eager clown.

Wondering where the groundhogs are.

Sean Crawford

August,

on the highway,

with a post written in Calgary,

the fourth most livable city in the world this year,

According to The Economist magazine in 2018.

Footnotes: 

~UPDATE By coincidence, this afternoon, Thursday, the CBC Radio One  Homestretch did a story on the Torrington museum, and the various dioramas that represent the town history. An older lady was amused at how many letters of protest the town got from PETA.  The interview would be findable on the CBC website. (But I forgot to post until this evening)

~AS I WRITE THIS, Camelot, the bookstore in Sundre, with a “for lease” sign in the window, is selling treasures at 50% off, even for antiques and classics, being due to close at (I think) the end of August. (Don’t delay!—there’s a separate room for ancient hardcovers) I like to take the scenic road (22 is way more scenic that the QE II, with many horses instead of only cows) north from Cochrane, after grabbing a java in the loft at Coffee Traders. If you find Camelot closed, well, then there is still a zoo and a museum in Sundre. And river trails. 

~To get your own transparent umbrella, web search J-List, an export company.

~the Chunnel is the channel tunnel, carved through solid rock-chalk underneath—can you believe it?— the English Channel, also known as la straits du Calais. Since we let the French put an e on the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic passenger jet, it’s only right that we get to use the word dreamed of since even before spaceflight. Nobody romantically dreamed of saying “Eurostar.”

Now that we have Brexit, can we take our name back?

~As for that outrageous gopher museum, complete with gopher hockey players, it ain’t going anywhere.