ON THE BOIL

I am becoming my dog, my horrid little dog, my fifteen year old Maisy, the darling character dog who wakes me every morning with her pacing on the laminate floors at 4:30 am. It has become a routine. I am starting to anticipate her in my waking dreams.

it is three something and I should be getting up to relieve myself, but hesitate as it might wake her. In my dream, I am walking up a hill. Buses pass me. The Crime Bus. One of the buses is decorated as the Crime Bus. Perhaps there is a guide on the bus, describing all the top crime spots in our city.

I enter a small grocery store, so small that it is only one small room. Lots of old produce and dusty cans. I am buying what is called a “basil pod.” The mustachiod Angelino grocer says he is sorry about the quinoa. He is now required by law to sell me some kind of quinoa product along with any purchase of fresh basil. This is not the usual loose leaves of a normal basil plant, but basil balled up into a pod. A sprout protrudes from the pod. It is vaguely hairy.

The quinoa also doesn’t look like quinoa. It looks more like a small urn of oil and vinegar. In the dream I leave the store disgruntled, walking down a hill while cars are speeding past me. One crashes into a parked car. I witness the crash, the metal bending, glass shattering.

Is everyone ok? There is a family in the car, children in the backseat. I should stop and see if they are ok, but instead I keeping walking.

I am crossing the street. Cars and bikes and all manner of wheeled objects are speeding past me. I freeze in the middle of the street. A speeding bicyclist narrowly misses hitting me. He stops and shouts,”Why did you freeze there? I could have hit you.“

I can’t tell if he is upset that he almost hit me or upset that I froze, causing him to miss me by an inch? Does he get points if he hits me?

I am shaken. I wake to the sound of the dog pacing again. Slightly moaning on this slightly morning. I get up, relieve myself first, then bundle up to take her out. She is panting, excited to get out. Obviously she needs to go. Instead of my usual choked anger at her for waking me, today I am a co-conspirator. We are part of something vast, larger, unrecognizable at this point in the game, but clearly, shit is happening.

Literally. Now literally shit is happening. She is relieved. She runs across the street and pees in the grass. Fortunately I had gone inside, or the call of nature might have netted me a public indecency charge.

Now that would be rich. If I were to be charged for public indecency, when our downtown streets are filled with human excrement, people with no pants shooting up in public, all kinds of disgusting behaviours that are now just part of the scenery. The drug related overdoses far exceed anything wrought by Covid. This is your apocalypse, promised for so many years, now is delivered as promised.

We accept the unacceptable. A city on the boil. The other night, my wife and daughter and I went to a comedy show at a licensed establishment. They wanted to see ID. My wife is 66, but had forgot her drivers license. They were not going to let her in. It’s the law they said. The law is for you to determine the age of your patrons, I think as I seethe. ID is for those who might be under 19, not over 65. The manager finally relents and lets us in. Says she should be flattered. We are now supposed to be flattered by idiots who have no common sense. It’s the law.

It is said that getting the crab drunk before throwing it into the boiling water, will make the meat more tender. Of course, everyone loves to be drunk before being boiled alive. Who doesn’t love to have tender meat? That is the new logic behind our world on the boil. Frogs are falling from the sky.