Saturday, October 17, 2009

inside the walled city





why they allowed me in these walls I will never know. they built them to keep monsters like me out.

but I have a bit of time to describe the basics surrounding my adoption to the Lachance family.
you see, I got lost. maybe you will be facetious and say I am always lost but this time I was only sort of lost. I was going in the right direction (east and north) but on the wrong road. then I got gas. the next time I got gas in a town called Tetford Mines (coal mines perhaps) I went to unlock the cap and it wasn't there. Ah, I was so cold the last time I got gas that I ran back to get in the cab and well, I never put the cap back on. Now, I did not like my last cap for simple reason that it was a mess and the gasket was broken and because I had to unlock it as though some one were going to siphon gas out of my tank.
so I went to a few "pieces du auto" stores and got no love. when you say "1969" when the guy asks the year they usually stop typing and shake their head. "1969??" yes.
no luck even though the one I lost was a new one. the original long gone.
so I tried the ford dealership (let me tell you finding the dealership with only french guides was a treat.) no love there. no love at the next auto parts store. It is snowing inside my gas tank. do I tempt fate and put a rag over it? No. I gotta find a cap...even though I don't know the word for fuel cap. the last parts place wanted to order me a fuel tank at the cost of $1000.
I pass a decrepit junk yard. Garage LaChance. german shepards barking. broken water coolers. overturned cars. windshields on the ground. in short, the kind of place I love.
I show the man what I need. He is fast and covered in grease. He runs to a bit that is towering over some old tires. the dog is barking at my heels. viscious barks, frothing.
The man mimes that it won't bark. he only speaks french. this is the sign of a good man. He gets like 5 caps and takes them all down. puts on one. two. then the third one is such a perfect fit in both size and color that it could be the original cap. beautiful. low profile. I will take a picture of it.
then he says, through his son Patrick, "Do you Believe God?"
"I believe people believe in god."
You will eat with us. yes?
well...
I have 4 daughters. yes?

This is like a movie set in the 13th century

ok. good. they are big breasted? I hope. I will buy the youngest and prettiest.

good. a deal then. wine? as the canonballs fall on our walled city. we discuss wedding plans.

so I go. we eat chicken torn from the bone. I play the piano and guitar and demonstrate how to play Pachabel's Canon in D on both as a duet so patrick and the pretty isabelle can play together. great mounds of wood are outside. canned strawberries. bread. tea. it is freezing as we discuss god. they pray for me. I am a son of Jesus.

Gotta go now. more later. this is fun.

quebec city



the border guards must still be scratching their heads...a guy drives all the way from the number one exporter of cheap drugs (mexico) to the opposite corner of Canada and all he is bringing is a mexican foot fetish magazine? That defies all logic. Pierre, go ask him what he is doing here again.

"He says he is going to run with the arctic wolf."
"Que?"
"The wolf. HE wants to run with the wolves."
"And he carries no drugs?"
"Non."
search the vehicle again.
so they dig and dig.
the ultimate came when they found my spare vehicle key. they really had to dig for that key. but it was inside the car. Pierre showed it to me.
"What is this?"
he wants me to freak out. they had found the key that unlocks the drug stash. no.
"That is my ignition key. it is an extra in case I lose the other."
"But, pardon me for asking, it is inside the vehicle. why?"
I shrugged.
"Because the windows are easily opened. If I lose the key I can get into the van but then I find the key and I can start it."
Pierre blinked so I added with a smile. "But that's just between me and you. Our little secret." I wink.
He doesn't know what to do. The absurdity defies his border guard mentality. it isn't possible that there are people like me out there who are so outside the law that they don't even break it. He is probably praying that the dog will find drugs. they might even let me go just because I will fit some classification. but as it is he returns the key to my door. no drugs. some mexican porn. some granola. a moldy cucumber. dancing with wolves. my insane 1977 polyester grandpa pants. the beard. we should kill him now.
but they are nice.
"you will like Labrador. No I have never been there. no one goes to labrador unless they are in the military and training for arctic warfare."

Now, in part two I will describe how I was adopted by a junk yard owner named Monsiour Lachance and brought to see the light of God and eating dinner with his 4 daughters and 2 sons. we read Corinthians and some of Acts II. in french. it was quite an experience. I read Mathew. The part that stands out is when they got a minister on the phone who asked me where I was going when I died and I said "I don't know where I'm going when I wake up."
he didn't know what to say so I added,

"Have you read the Illiad and the Odyssey? Because there is this god named Athena and Zeus. And they take the form of people. Are you Athena in the form of a christian minister? Come on. Be honest."
that killed the conversation.

all for now.
quebec city is special.
here's a pic from Franconia notch.
Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.