I cannot bring myself to live my life today

because of depression. A shunt, brought

down on my brain (how it feels), stops the

blood from powering my will. I cannot

lift my speech in to metaphor or illustrate

the emotion of a flower. I cannot make

nonplus associations - highway sprawl, a

landscape of freightened empathy. The

American Designer & his famously soft

hands, rolling pocket change down a

charitable penny syphon, waiting for

his number to be called.

I dream of going to Norway. I suppose

the shunt is not just a tired metaphor, it

is an entire, sprawling countryside. I

dream of the Lofoten Islands: running

one hundred miles, up & over Higravstinden

tracing the thermaling shadows of

cormorants & eagles. I dream of training

my body, endless, to rise & fall with

the arctic contours of a midnight sun.

I dream of some final surrender. In Svolvær,

unpinning my warpainted bib number.

Handing it off to you, for safekeeping.

The snowflake landed on her nose. All I wanted to do at that point was laugh at the ineptitude of the blow. I grabbed him and threw the idiot to one side.

“Don’t you touch me! Who the hell do you think you are!?”

I stared at him with scorn. “I don’t care who you are either you over-privileged prick!”

“She had the nerve to suggest that I should get a spine! Me! Here of all places!”

“So? What’s so special about here? It’s a room, in a fucking collage!”

I could see I was upsetting him, just as much as she had. He had tears in his eyes. God, what a pussy!

“This is a safe space you…”

“Safe space?” I sneered. “There’s no such thing as a fucking safe space in the real world, why should you have one here? She’s right. You’ve been coddled for too long. You need to experience some real life. You need to grow a fucking backbone.”

“But she upset me! She had the nerve to disagree with me! It’s against the rules to disagree with me here and now you’re doing it!”

I shook my head and turned to her. She was clutching her sides in laughter. She nodded at the door.

As we walked out and slammed it behind us, I turned to her.

“What did you say he disagreed with you so violently he tried hitting you?”

“Hit? Pah, he couldn’t punch his way out of a wet paper bag.”

“But what did you say that got him so riled up?”

“He was going on all self righteous about how the next Bond should be a woman. All that bollocks about the patriarchy and crap. I just kept prodding and prodding. Pushed his buttons. Set off all his precious little triggers. Wound him up to breaking point until he lost his temper. Trolled him, if you like. It didn’t take much. Just as well no-one else was in there, he would’ve been kicked out, getting into such a state he tried hitting a woman.”

I nodded. “And if I’d not been there?”

“He would’ve left the room with two black eyes and a bloody nose, clutching his groin and crawling.”

"Quite right. Let’s get a beer."

I have embarked upon a long journey to the deep jungle for an expedition. It’s three planes in total.

The third plane lands at a small airport at a remote village, where I am to meet a driver who will take me on to the next outpost along the river, which is my final point of departure for the jungle.

When I disembark from the plane, a serious-looking native man arrives in an old beat-up cream-coloured buggy with insect screens for windows and an unhealthy rattle in the engine. We exchange introductions and he informs me in broken English that he will drive me to the village.

As we drive, I am dismayed to see a military guard and many labourers with heavy machinery clearing away vast swathes of ancient rainforest in order to build up the town. Thus far they have constructed a manor house, a town hall, a walled garden, and most of a promenade.

I interrogate my driver about theit work, but his response is one of frightening apathy. He shrugs, and makes a poorly-articulated reference to the wealth of the growing economy. I try to engage him in argument over this, and to articulate why I feel that what they’re doing is so wrong, but he does not acknowledge my concerns.

We arrive at the manor house which sits at the approximate centre of the village. It is disproportionately large for the other buildings in the area, and its style and opulence are almost an act of slander against the rest of the village. The thing is entirely out of place, standing on a sore of naked earth, yet framed by the lush, steaming mountains.

From there we turn onto a rough and winding road which leads through a tract of thick rainforest for another hour at least.

Some way on, in the thick air of the jungle, the pressing undergrowth opens out into a small clearing by the edge of the river, where a single small wooden shack stands half hidden under the hanging branches. In the water stands a degraded-looking pier with a single mooring post.

My driver says that this is as far as he can take me, the rest of my journey will have to be on foot. Thanking him, I gather my supplies and set out.

His engine fades into the mist, and I am suddenly alone, surrounded by the exotic sounds of foreign wildlife. I head along the track, which for its first leg runs parallel to the river which flows on the right, with my compass, roughly following the path I have plotted on my map.

Soon enough I am deep in the midst of the jungle, far from any sign of civilisation. After several hours have passed, I find that the track I have been following has all but vanished beneath me. I go on pushing through the pristine undergrowth of the jungle, following map and compass, but with a gnawing sense of concern.

That’s is what this is about, I remind myself. I’m not here to find anything except my own mental boundaries. I’m throwing myself into a challenging situation in order to encounter myself. I’m leaving my comfort zone. This is exactly what I wanted to happen. The concern and unease I feel is what I would expect in a situation like this. It reminds me that I’m alive.

I relocate the river, except that now it’s on my left, instead of my right, which is strange, but looking on the map, I see that this is the place where the river loops back upon itself several times, like a snake. More problematic than this is that in the direction I wish to go, the forest is impassable, flooded.

Later, I find a narrow ridge leading uphill between two thick screens of towering arboreal growth. To the left, the bank of the ridge descends steeply and out of sight, into the raging river. The ridge brow is wildly overgrown with all sorts of strange and unfamiliar vegetation. I am no botanist, and I cannot tell which plants may be unsafe to touch, but I climb atop the ridge anyway, and run along its length. For hours I run along the ridge, careful not to fall into the river, and watching my compass carefully, aware that I am travelling in the wrong direction, and will have to correct my course later.

Suddenly I see something looming out of the trees ahead, on my right.

I draw closer and see that it is a house. But it’s much more than that. It’s an enormous mansion, of a size like which I’ve never seen in my life. There are hundreds of windows arrayed just along the one of its sides that is visible to me, which is built directly in line with the ridge on which I’m running.

I come closer to the wall. It looks as though it was built very recently, and with an exceptionally careful standard of construction. The wood is all carved and painted, and does not look to have weathered a day.

The windows are all at head height, and so I peer inside one of them. Inside, I am astonished to see that the room within is filled with glass objects.

There are some simple items of furniture, beautiful wallpaper, and intricately detailed fixtures carved over the doorways and in the skirts of the ceiling. But of residents, of any people at all, there are none.

Overwhelmed with curiosity, I climb, extremely delicately, into the window.

Inside the house, it is even more beautiful and strange than I had thought. I look around me. There is not a single empty surface in view- not a square inch anywhere to be seen that is unoccupied by some delicate, fragile glass ornament. They cover the tables, the shelves, the chairs, and the floor, into the hallway, and out of sight.

The ornaments are varied and eclectic, and no two are the same. They are of every size, shape, subject, and colour. In just a brief glance, I see a white horse, a red-breasted robin, a box with ribbons, an iridescent black spider, a pink and green python, and a chimpanzee weilding a banana.

I wish to explore the house, but if I take even a single step, I risk crushing some of the beautiful ornaments. Indeed, I fear that making even the slightest motion may cause a chain reaction that could destroy the entire contents of the house, and also kill or wound me in the process. It is all I can do to breathe without knocking anything, so delicate is the glass, and so densely and particularly arranged.

I decide the best thing to do is to go back out of the window again, and carry on with my journey, so this I do.

I follow the ridge to its end, where it emerges from the forest, and finally sinks, burying itself into the waters at the point where two rivers meet.

Both are wide, raging torrents. I don’t remember seeing this on the map.

The one on the right is a river of fresh water, in colour murky brown, for the silt it carries down from the mountains.

The one on the left is a river of salt water, in colour deep blue, and clear, as it flows from the ocean, flushed by the tides.

There is a clear frontier where the waters meet and mix, creating beautiful and dynamic patterns of brown and blue, curling into each-other.

I gaze into those waters, with my feet in the shallows, at the place where they meet. The rivers are so wide, and so deep. I wonder with great trepidation what great and fearsome creatures may lurk below the turbulent surface.

The snowflake landed on her nose. All I wanted to do at that point was stare at her. I told her to wait one second. I had never seen a snowflake quite like this one before. As a matter of fact I wasn’t quite sure it was even a snowflake. My friend said it tickled and started to lift her hand up to swat at her nose but I stopped her abruptly.

“No!! Don’t do that Kelly!” I said to her rather sharply but I didn’t want her to hurt whatever it was. But I was positive it wasn’t an ordinary snowflake.

“ Jess, my nose is freezing and it’s burning! It’s just a snowflake!”

“ Let me show you something. I’ve got to get my phone. Hang on. Don’t move”. I ran into the house as fast as I could. And of course my phone was no where to be seen.

“ Jess!! Jessie!! Hurry! Help me!! Somethings coming toward me!! Jess!!!!” Suddenly Kelly’s voice went from a loud and desperate attempt to warn me of the monstrosity behind me to a low and almost inaudible muffle. What in God’s name is her problem. She’s always so dramatic. Or just being silly. It’s not like this little snowflake creature is going to hurt her. I just want a pic!

I began to bend over to grab my cell phone from underneath the couch. It had been plugged into a charger the entire time which would be perfect for all the pics I was about to take. As I began to walk back toward the front entry of my home I could feel an icy cold sensation wrap around my neck. I suddenly felt a chill come over me and was shivering uncontrollably. I was in an enormous amount of pain. I tried to reach for something. Anything to release this monster thing off of me. It was white with sharp crystal like jagged blades of ice coverings its exterior. It had no face. Or none that I could see. It was like this cluster of icicles rolled up into one giant ball of sorts. And it evidently wanted me for something.

I began to scream at the top of my lungs. I had to get it off of me and to my friend.

“ Kelly!!!! Kelly!!! Omg Kelly!!” She was slumped over and lifeless looking or at least from what I could see from afar. I only could hope that she was merely passed out and not dead. I silently prayed as I continued to yell for help. But nobody would even hear our cries for help. We were all alone. My brother had my wolf dogs so we had zero protection. Nobody lived near my neck of the woods. We were desolate and severely remote. People came out here only to look for big foot. I just thought it was all a big hoax. Something to get people into our town to boost revenue. But maybe this thing was real? Maybe this ball of whatever it was that had a strong hold on me was in fact this big foot in disguise. I couldn’t breath and was so cold. I ran towards the fireplace. The only thing I knew to do was to throw myself into the fire. Despite the hold it had on me I began to step into it head first. It flew off of me before I could make this morbid entrance into the fire. “ Thank goodness! My trick worked. I could feel sweat beads rolling down the sides of my face. I felt sick to my stomach. I was worried about my friend. I had to make sure she was okay. It was safe now. The ice monster was gone. I grabbed her and carried her inside. She was slightly blue but she did have a pulse. She was going to be okay. I placed her on a pallet near the fireplace to keep her warm with about 4 quilted blankets covering her. She seemed like she was at peace and would make it. I turned on the news immediately. I needed to see if there had been some sort of ufo siting or anything. It was hard to believe that as far out as we were that we could even get the news but somehow it was on one of four channels we had via my handmade antenna. . A headline came across the tv. “ Attention! Stay in your home if you live in or near Delia county. There have been reports of mass killing from what people are calling the abominable snowman”.

I dropped my hot cocoa I was holding spilling it over me. “ Omg!!” I then heard thunderous pounding on the door. My friend was sound asleep despite the deafening noise. I yelled it for it to go away and it kept pounding and within seconds there he stood. The snowman. The ice man again whatever it was. I ran towards my bedroom and grabbed my shotgun. I knew how to shoot to kill and aimed towards him and shot again and again. Snow flew everywhere. Ice blades shot through the windows and broke furniture. My friend finally woke and was screaming at the top of her lungs. I collapsed from terror and exhaustion. My friend came to my rescue and hugged me. All that was left of him was a giant puddle of water. And a destroyed home. But i killed him. He was gone. No more snowflakes would land on my friends nose ever again. At least not that one anyways.

We sit at the kitchen table, caught in the lull of conversation. Too early for lunch, too late for breakfast, he rests his head in his hand as he tilts his coffee cup to watch the milk’s foam collect on its walls. I study him, his focus not on me or the cup but turned inward, noting how his eyebrows raise when he inhales, but just barely. I knew that, once, years ago, but miles apart for months at end have blurred these specific traits for me, half-erasing memories like water on fountain pen. I had missed him, and dreamt of this for seemingly time eternal, but he has changed—I have changed—and today is not what I imagined in my many, intricately detailed, daydreams. He looks up from the cup, meets my eyes. His green flecked with brown, mine a dull blue. He almost seems mournful, as if he lost something intangibly irreplaceable, and I suppose I, too, feel that way.

“Cal,” he says, letting the coffee cup come to a stop. Now stationary, the frothed bubbles begin to pull apart, and the coffee begins to flatten. “I missed you. A lot.” So did I, you idiot. “Christ, I missed you so much my heart hurt.”

“I missed you too.” I missed him so much my world greyed like the hairs at my temples, so much my life became a series of filler moments between the times we spoke on the phone. I missed him like flowers miss the sun at night, like owls miss the moon in the day. This, however, is not what I missed. “But you’re not staying.” He can’t stay. Not like this, not with our lives twisted and wrenched apart by fate and work and family and forced back together by train tickets and half-packed suitcases.

“Cal, I can’t. You know that.” I do know that. I also know what he says next, “I love you. I love my job. I can’t leave it behind.” Not for me, his supposed love. I understand. I’m just a man, and he is a god, a titan of industry, a mythical creator of trends inhabiting a glass-walled office in an impossibly tall building in a city of skyscrapers. I am mousy, cute, and directionless.

“I know.” He can’t. Too much a sacrifice for me. I can’t blame him. “I love you too.” I do, desperately, hopelessly, endlessly, so deeply and completely without him I can never feel whole. Yet now, in his presence, I am still missing something.

“I don’t think we’re in love anymore,” he says, suddenly small, suddenly human. I don’t either. I love him, yes, but there is one jigsaw piece that no longer fits in its slot, and I know it never will again.

“I know,” I reply, almost silently. I love him; and somehow, at the same time, I bristle towards him, on guard, defensive. Not myself. He turns his attention to his left ring finger, where the ring I gave him nestles into a worn callus years too old. Tugs at it lightly until it slides off, almost too easily, as if he had practiced before. He slides it across the table to me, and waits until I take it. A reversal of what I had enacted myself all those year ago, when we were happy and inseparable and in love. It is cold in my hands, smooth on the inside and nicked from wear on the outside. A gift I know we will never exchange again.

“I’m sorry,” he says, still small and meek. He collects himself and pushes back from the table, meeting my eyes once more before they dart away. “I’m going to go back to Toronto.” I nod. “Millie will pick me up in a bit.” He had planned. Arranged a ride to the train station. Always thoughtful. He is at the door to what was once our bedroom now, and almost turns back to say something; but, he doesn’t, and picks up his too-small overnight bag, still packed, from beside the bed. He walks past me to the front door and I breathe in his scent one last time; dull like copper, sharp like spearmint gum. “I love you. I really do, Cal.”

I turn over the ring in my hands. Pull my own off, let the bands clink together in my palm as they catch the light from the kitchen window. “I love you too.”

And he is gone.

When Dr. Frankenstein created his monster he invisioned that he was bringing to life something that would be a boon to mankind. Ultimately, the villagers with their torches and pitchforks said otherwise. Social Media is the modern day Frankenstein’s monster. It was created to be a feel good method of keeping tabs on friends and family. What it became is an all pervasive medium for narcissism and a threat to civil and meaningful social interaction.

To prove my point, let’s step back in time to that neon drenched era of the 1980′s. If back in the days of mullets and Swatch watches you would have taken a picture of the cheeseburger you ordered at Denny’s, had it developed, and then mailed it to several aquaintances you would have been correctly identified as being a fucking ass hat. No one cared what you had for lunch or dinner, nor did anyone want to see a picture of it. This is not the case today. Today, thanks to the wonders of instantaneous electronic media transfer, any ass hat with access to a smart phone can take and send a picture of his just delivered cheeseburger to virtually thousands of people in mere seconds! It seems that the advent of social media platforms has brought our narcissicm to life in a most mostrous form. The result, is the delusion that our most basic daily actions are somehow interesting to the rest of the world. We seem to have forgotten the lesson that Dr. Frankenstein’s creation taught us. The pitch forks and torches should be a reminder that not all that is doable should be done.

What’s worse, is that we also seem to need validation from our social media followers to assure ourselves that we are somehow doing something good. Of course, this has led to the greatest modern philisophical question plaguing society today, “If I do not post a picture of myself at the gym, did I really work out?” When did it become necessary or even advisable to share that post gym workout picture that displayed your sweaty, yoga pants clad camel toe? Do you need at least thirty Facebook likes to verify that you burned enough calories?

One of the biggest problems with Frankenstein’s monster was that he was unable to hide his physical ugliness. He never had the chance to show he was a big teddy bear on the inside. If the monster would have had the chance to say to the villagers, “Hey, I’m ugly, but I’m a nice guy. Please don’t shove that pitchfork up my ass,” things might have went better for him and the mad doctor. Tragically, social media has the same effect today. Like the very visable bolts in the monster’s neck, social media often reveals one’s less admirable qualities to a large audience. Of course, this has created some real downright antisocial tension in society. For example, before social media, one’s political leanings were rarely known or advertised beyond the family reunion. This ambiguity made neighbors of vastly differing philosophies decent towards each other. If I don’t know that you prefer the blue ass whipes while I like the red dick heads we can probably get along and maybe even share a couple of beers. Social media allows people to share everything with anyone that clicks, “accept, join, friend etc.” This means that a conservative may express the opinion that Hilary Clinton is a pant suit wearing mega-bitch who is as likeable as a case of antibiotic resistant gonorrhea to every one of their liberal social media followers. While a liberal may assert that Trump is a pee-pee showering douche with the morals of a tapeworm to their unassuming conservative Facebook friends. The end result is the internet equivalent of, “I’ll shove a pitch fork in your ass while in retaliation, you shove a lit torch in my ass” situation. Ultimately, both parties end up butt hurt. In short, social media allows people to expouse (agressively) potentially inflamatory opinions that used to be largely unknown. In this case, ignorance is bliss and social media creates an unnecessary pitchfork versus torch scenario courtesy of one’s WiFi connection.

Just as Dr. Frankenstein’s good intentions resulted in pissed peasants, the social media pioneers in their tech smart, common sense stupid enthusiasm created the means to feed our narcissism and start a fist fight from the comfort of our lap tops, cell phones, or tablets

If the average American believes that Tide Pod eating children should be advocates for gun control, that James T. Hodgkinson could live in a van for weeks and shoot Republican Congressmen with a shotgun and a rifle (where are the Democrats advocating for gun control that day?) that a resource officer (code name for police) could refuse to enter a high school due to an active shooter that the same people who called President Trump the new Hitler seriously want him to eliminate all private ownership of firearms (let that sink in for a second) that Delta eliminates discounts to NRA members because it did not want to enter into a political debate (thus entering a political debate) that criminals never follow any law that so many people who do not want anyone to own firearms except the police are the same people whining about how they are treated by the police to even members of Prose who (in the process of expressing their opinions) eagerly berate and denigrate (without naming specific names) people who freely and legally exercise a US Constitutional right they find offensive (let that one sink in forever), then we are already doomed. I never thought I would live in a country of people who would find freedoms offensive, speech and religion offensive, and would actively work to limit the rights of citizens. We do not need a tyrant to rise to power. We already have minions working for slavery. If I said anything that anyone may find offensive, then you have two choices. You may ignore me and live your life free from ever seeing or hearing me forced upon your person. Or you may actively work to silence me with the force of government not realizing how much power you just transferred that you will never get back. When you embrace my freedoms, all of my freedoms, you embrace your own. When you want to be a slave, do not be surprised you walk this path without my participation.

Thanks - Andy Betz.

One of my best Troll moments of 2018.

Vast-intimate Saskatchewan

tremors. A prairie spring

of aureate sound, sootswept

hatchwork in a drawstring lap

like a restless cat. These soft songs,

I watch the stove, climb inside.

Foxwarren & the sorrow gives gentler

now, after 14 hours sleep.

Do I know the artichoke?

I seem to disremember much.

Thoughts subdue the windows

like determined bluejays.

The dog gathers their broken necks

up in his maw, wades

through the yard of drunken fescue.

He may as well be laying

to rest this protean year; a sundrenched

tumulus of undigested bone.

my dear children

the loves of my life

i do not have a lot to give this Christmas

for it has been the toughest year

but i will give you this

my warm arms

to make you feel safe and secure

my strong hands

to make you delicious food

and nurture your little belly's

my loving heart

that sees all of the good in you

my soft words

to reassure you that everything will be alright

i do not have a lot to give this Christmas

but i do give you

all of my

love

We dont like arrogant men,

We like ones that are caring and loving,

We dont like ones that act superior,

We dream of one that is humble,

We dont want one that tells us we're wrong,

We know we're right,

We dispise the fact that some think we're weak, incapable, or not smart,

We can do anything that comes to mind,

Dont treat us like were temporary, and,

Maybe we wont be,

And dont think we like it when you act all strong and cool on someone less fortunate,

Dont act so serious all the time,

Remebere to have fun,

When we're around try to keep a real smile.

So always be humble, sweet, giving, caring, and a have a sense of humor and adventure.

-From us ladies

12/18/18