Bodhisattva: October 1988
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| "Come up and see me sometime." The Bodhisattva of Equanimity. |
Last half of October 1988. Momentum was building, but I wasn’t reacting as intensely as I had in March. Back then, I had succumbed to the notion that all of life and love were about to be revealed to me, or in me, or else something ultimate that would leave me either utterly shattered or forever fulfilled. Having gone through all that and emerged as my good old ordinary mortal self, I now knew some things I hadn’t known then, such as (a) the sum of the digits in my phone number really wasn’t that important, even if it did match my age, and (b) when the wave crested, when the Yardbird rave-up finally subsided, I would still be here, alive, intact, flawed as ever, with lots of questions still unanswered.
Some questions would be answered, though. I might not know just what the questions were until I got the answers, but I wasn’t so anxious this time. I wasn’t treating every little detail as if it were a potential apotheosis. Maybe they, or she, or it, had taught me something. After all, I hadn’t been distracted or fallen asleep like Thomas, the David Hemmings character in “Blow-Up.” The mysterious photographs were still there; I hadn’t taken my eye off the ball. Besides, unlike Thomas, who couldn’t get anybody else to pay attention to his mystery, I now had allies; I could rely on my natural, day-to-day friendships for a lot of energy and support. Jana was encouraging me in my new pursuits. When I told her of my plans to quit my academic courses and "design my own," she applauded and contributed some creative suggestions on organizing my notebooks. She also gave me a lot of hints about good classical music and jazz I could hear at the university music library, where she now worked part-time. Besides my favourites, Mahler and Shostakovich, there were other 20th century treasures—Ravel, Debussy, Bartok, and her man Poulenc, in whom she was immersing herself in preparation for her upcoming master’s thesis. Then too there was all the jazz Kerouac had immersed himself in—Charlie Parker, Lester Young, in fact all the great horn players of that exciting era when Jack’s interests had been incubating and crystallizing.
Academic deadlines swept aside, I slowed down and took a few nights off to watch the Dodgers and the Oakland A's in the World Series. The A's had just vanquished my Red Sox in four straight in the playoffs, which almost made me thankful I didn't have to interrupt my explorations to witness what would have been the inevitable humiliation of the Sox in the World Series, yet another wearying confirmation of the eternal curse they laboured under. Maybe 1986 had taught them something—better to die quietly in the playoffs than famously and miserably in the Series.
The previous year's champions, the Twins, hadn't made the postseason, so I wasn't going to see the Harper-Newman Twins in action. The archetypal confrontation in this series was between the brash, sulky, egoistic slugger of the A’s, Jose Canseco, and the quiet, modest Dodger mound ace Orel Hershiser. The American league MVP versus the national league Cy Young pitcher. Not often that happens in a World Series any more. And to me at least, every time they faced each other seemed a contest of basic human values, ways of being in the world. I couldn’t help noticing that it was a battle of numbers, too—Canseco’s 33 and Hershiser’s 55, adding up to 88, just like those pairings back in March.
Good and Evil preparing to do battle: Orel and Jose meet before Game 1.
So, with this little booster shot of magic, I felt quite secure in my vision after all when, on Wednesday, October 19, I finally told my professors and processed the paperwork necessary to necessary to propel me into my own world. I was on my way to the library to exchange my student library card for a community user’s card—my final, symbolic act in the real world—when it occurred to me that I had never seen that Kari creature after all. She had been one of my secret reasons for returning to courses in the fall. Oh well, I guess she’s gone, I concluded. Funny—in all the recent excitement, I hadn’t thought about her at all. Perhaps she had played her part in my life when the thought of her brought me up to campus on March 4. The mere prospect of seeing her, the mere imaginary presence of that magical face, had propelled me forward at exactly the right time that day. Since then, I’d had more than enough besides her to think about, although I had made another pilgrimage to campus on the last day of classes, April 15, just to catch a glimpse of her in the distance. I remembered sitting on the grass gazing at her marvelous profile, a dark-haired Grace Kelly with her sunglasses, and reflecting on the fact that ten years earlier I'd never even seen Calgary, let alone anything like this—”this” being a vague gesture in the direction of everything that was happening to me, including this much-too-beautiful girl named Kari. Meeting people along my way. Sinking deep into the whirl of Time.
I was now in the library, at the front desk, and the nice lady was handing me my new card, my key to the riches locked in this building’s literary and musical treasure chest. I put the card in my wallet and sighed with relief and anticipation. I glanced casually toward the entrance and, oh my God, THERE SHE WAS. She and her friend walked right by me without a trace of recognition as I gaped stupidly and incredulously at her, that same rich dark hair, that strong, noble brow, the vibrant high colour in her cheeks, and, yes, the sly, tricky, delirious alchemy of her features that couldn’t be described or duplicated anywhere, anytime.
I thought about catching up to them and re-introducing my NEW self, but then I thought, no, don’t press your luck; it’s enough to know she’s HERE, where my destiny lies buried in the stacks. Then I had a crazy little thought: “Is this my reward for dropping out?” I recalled what had happened in 1978, when Barb de Léry had appeared out of nowhere to bless, as it were, my decision to let it all go. I had never had much success in the real world, but whenever I abandoned it, some unexpected, unique form of beauty seemed to materialize. Hadn’t it happened, too, in September 1987, when I felt like falling out of the world again and had gone for broke and been magically convinced to introduce myself to this Kari?
Two days later, on Friday the 21st, I was on campus again, eager to see her again. Again, like some kind of heavenly heroin(e), she had entered my bloodstream and awakened the hunger in my soul for that one face upon which the Gods had lavished all remaining traces of their divine attention to humanity. I ate my lunch at the Coffee Company and headed toward the benches where I planned to read and wait for Lisa. I looked down for a moment, looked back up, and THERE SHE WAS AGAIN, with another friend, standing almost directly in front of me. I smiled, but she didn’t see me. I walked on, ecstatic but confused. As in a trance, I continued through Mac Hall out the main exit and headed for the library. They must have taken the other exit in the meantime, because there they were AGAIN, walking in front of me now. They stopped to talk outside the library entrance, so I went inside to sit at the same bench in the link where I’d contemplated introducing myself in December 1986. Maybe that would bring me luck. But no – she entered the library and walked right by me without a hint of recognition as I smiled hopelessly up at her.
Couldn’t she at least acknowledge me? Had my impulsive introduction the previous September spooked her that much? Not that it mattered, as I drank in her heavenly features like some potent elixir. Three seconds of her face were worth a lifetime of jobs, books, movies, theories and accomplishments. My life was complete. I’d seen her again. And yet it wasn’t. I had to see her one more time, of course. But when?
This was March with a twist. I felt the Experience gathering around me and within me again, but now that I knew just how powerful it had been without this woman, I wasn’t sure whether I could survive a fresh onslaught of magical connections with HER as the locus. For Pete’s sake, what did they think I was made of, some kind of titanium alloy?
Monday afternoon came, the 24th, and I was in the campus post office mailing my mother’s birthday present, when in walked long, tall Will, the thoughtful religious studies student I had talked with back in the fall of 1986. I hadn’t seen him since then; he’d been away again pursuing things meditative and Buddhistic. I was a bit surprised that he remembered me; I had thought at the time I must have seemed rather dull to him, with his intense and exotic Zen pursuits. Now, of course, I associated him with Kerouac’s Dharma Bums and the whole East meets West thing. That, combined with his connection with 1986, made this chance encounter seem strangely symmetrical to me. The symmetry was doubled as I spotted later, in several locations in Mac Hall, posters for a special screening two days hence, on Wednesday the 26th, of Leni Riefenstahl's infamous Triumph of the WILL.
I was already on alert that day. At noon hour, just before I left Carswell, I had walked up to the reception area and been jolted by another unexpected echo of the past – Laura Clapperton, standing there, buying a book. Of course, she looked different now, with her hair cut short – looked much older than her 24 years, in fact, and why not? She was deep into law school, having a baby, getting on with life. I congratulated her on the latter, but her response was properly diffident, since, of course, I hadn’t exactly got on with things myself. I was still at Carswell, still utterly strange and inconsequential. Of course, I was concerned only with the possible symbolism of her momentary return, this keepsake of 1985, as it were. We had never become even remotely friendly after all, Clapperton and I, and this was one of the things that haunted me regarding this Kari character. Was I just going to embarrass myself again and come off as weird and marginal?
Well, marginal as I was, I had to ask myself, what exactly had been Clapperton’s part in the whole thing, in the end? The excitement she had awakened in me had been of its time—1985—and she no longer struck me as someone I could ever have been attracted to. This was understandable, and mutual, I’m sure, but meanwhile, she’d left behind her name, and in particular those three middle letters, “p-e-r”, that had come in so handy in March. All those uncontrollable, unprecedented intimations back in 1985 just to deduce “Clap-ton” and “Har-per” in 1988? I wasn’t about to second-guess the Gods on matters like this. It had been, as Lisa would say, “dashed clever” of them.
In any case, all these echoes and musings were keeping me in a receptive and anticipatory frame of mind. So anticipatory, in fact, that I leapt ahead of myself without even knowing it. On Wednesday morning, I walked over to my dependable sounding board, John McDermid, and announced to him, totally without thinking, “John, it’s this dark-haired girl again from last fall. She’s back, and she’s got me spooked.” I told him of my recent sightings and her complete unresponsiveness. “But you know what?” I continued, for no other reason than that it sounded good, “Tonight I’m going to be up there, and she’s going to walk right up to me and talk to me. In fact, she’s going to tell me her life story. Her bloody life story. And then we can get on with whatever this is.”
“Just as you say, Pete, so shall it be.” John, as usual, managed to sound totally bemused and convinced at the same time. I was neither; in fact, I seemed unconscious of what I was doing, and yet strangely focused. I remember there being a sort of bubble of unawareness around me that day, as if I were only dreaming it. Thus, I hadn’t got as excited as I might have when, on the C-Train on the way to work, browsing aimlessly through my Yardbirds biography, I discovered that KEITH had actually consciously named the group after JACK KEROUAC and not, as I had assumed, after Charlie Parker:
So, with this little booster shot of magic, I felt quite secure in my vision after all when, on Wednesday, October 19, I finally told my professors and processed the paperwork necessary to necessary to propel me into my own world. I was on my way to the library to exchange my student library card for a community user’s card—my final, symbolic act in the real world—when it occurred to me that I had never seen that Kari creature after all. She had been one of my secret reasons for returning to courses in the fall. Oh well, I guess she’s gone, I concluded. Funny—in all the recent excitement, I hadn’t thought about her at all. Perhaps she had played her part in my life when the thought of her brought me up to campus on March 4. The mere prospect of seeing her, the mere imaginary presence of that magical face, had propelled me forward at exactly the right time that day. Since then, I’d had more than enough besides her to think about, although I had made another pilgrimage to campus on the last day of classes, April 15, just to catch a glimpse of her in the distance. I remembered sitting on the grass gazing at her marvelous profile, a dark-haired Grace Kelly with her sunglasses, and reflecting on the fact that ten years earlier I'd never even seen Calgary, let alone anything like this—”this” being a vague gesture in the direction of everything that was happening to me, including this much-too-beautiful girl named Kari. Meeting people along my way. Sinking deep into the whirl of Time.
I was now in the library, at the front desk, and the nice lady was handing me my new card, my key to the riches locked in this building’s literary and musical treasure chest. I put the card in my wallet and sighed with relief and anticipation. I glanced casually toward the entrance and, oh my God, THERE SHE WAS. She and her friend walked right by me without a trace of recognition as I gaped stupidly and incredulously at her, that same rich dark hair, that strong, noble brow, the vibrant high colour in her cheeks, and, yes, the sly, tricky, delirious alchemy of her features that couldn’t be described or duplicated anywhere, anytime.
I thought about catching up to them and re-introducing my NEW self, but then I thought, no, don’t press your luck; it’s enough to know she’s HERE, where my destiny lies buried in the stacks. Then I had a crazy little thought: “Is this my reward for dropping out?” I recalled what had happened in 1978, when Barb de Léry had appeared out of nowhere to bless, as it were, my decision to let it all go. I had never had much success in the real world, but whenever I abandoned it, some unexpected, unique form of beauty seemed to materialize. Hadn’t it happened, too, in September 1987, when I felt like falling out of the world again and had gone for broke and been magically convinced to introduce myself to this Kari?
Two days later, on Friday the 21st, I was on campus again, eager to see her again. Again, like some kind of heavenly heroin(e), she had entered my bloodstream and awakened the hunger in my soul for that one face upon which the Gods had lavished all remaining traces of their divine attention to humanity. I ate my lunch at the Coffee Company and headed toward the benches where I planned to read and wait for Lisa. I looked down for a moment, looked back up, and THERE SHE WAS AGAIN, with another friend, standing almost directly in front of me. I smiled, but she didn’t see me. I walked on, ecstatic but confused. As in a trance, I continued through Mac Hall out the main exit and headed for the library. They must have taken the other exit in the meantime, because there they were AGAIN, walking in front of me now. They stopped to talk outside the library entrance, so I went inside to sit at the same bench in the link where I’d contemplated introducing myself in December 1986. Maybe that would bring me luck. But no – she entered the library and walked right by me without a hint of recognition as I smiled hopelessly up at her.
Couldn’t she at least acknowledge me? Had my impulsive introduction the previous September spooked her that much? Not that it mattered, as I drank in her heavenly features like some potent elixir. Three seconds of her face were worth a lifetime of jobs, books, movies, theories and accomplishments. My life was complete. I’d seen her again. And yet it wasn’t. I had to see her one more time, of course. But when?
This was March with a twist. I felt the Experience gathering around me and within me again, but now that I knew just how powerful it had been without this woman, I wasn’t sure whether I could survive a fresh onslaught of magical connections with HER as the locus. For Pete’s sake, what did they think I was made of, some kind of titanium alloy?
Monday afternoon came, the 24th, and I was in the campus post office mailing my mother’s birthday present, when in walked long, tall Will, the thoughtful religious studies student I had talked with back in the fall of 1986. I hadn’t seen him since then; he’d been away again pursuing things meditative and Buddhistic. I was a bit surprised that he remembered me; I had thought at the time I must have seemed rather dull to him, with his intense and exotic Zen pursuits. Now, of course, I associated him with Kerouac’s Dharma Bums and the whole East meets West thing. That, combined with his connection with 1986, made this chance encounter seem strangely symmetrical to me. The symmetry was doubled as I spotted later, in several locations in Mac Hall, posters for a special screening two days hence, on Wednesday the 26th, of Leni Riefenstahl's infamous Triumph of the WILL.
I was already on alert that day. At noon hour, just before I left Carswell, I had walked up to the reception area and been jolted by another unexpected echo of the past – Laura Clapperton, standing there, buying a book. Of course, she looked different now, with her hair cut short – looked much older than her 24 years, in fact, and why not? She was deep into law school, having a baby, getting on with life. I congratulated her on the latter, but her response was properly diffident, since, of course, I hadn’t exactly got on with things myself. I was still at Carswell, still utterly strange and inconsequential. Of course, I was concerned only with the possible symbolism of her momentary return, this keepsake of 1985, as it were. We had never become even remotely friendly after all, Clapperton and I, and this was one of the things that haunted me regarding this Kari character. Was I just going to embarrass myself again and come off as weird and marginal?
Well, marginal as I was, I had to ask myself, what exactly had been Clapperton’s part in the whole thing, in the end? The excitement she had awakened in me had been of its time—1985—and she no longer struck me as someone I could ever have been attracted to. This was understandable, and mutual, I’m sure, but meanwhile, she’d left behind her name, and in particular those three middle letters, “p-e-r”, that had come in so handy in March. All those uncontrollable, unprecedented intimations back in 1985 just to deduce “Clap-ton” and “Har-per” in 1988? I wasn’t about to second-guess the Gods on matters like this. It had been, as Lisa would say, “dashed clever” of them.
In any case, all these echoes and musings were keeping me in a receptive and anticipatory frame of mind. So anticipatory, in fact, that I leapt ahead of myself without even knowing it. On Wednesday morning, I walked over to my dependable sounding board, John McDermid, and announced to him, totally without thinking, “John, it’s this dark-haired girl again from last fall. She’s back, and she’s got me spooked.” I told him of my recent sightings and her complete unresponsiveness. “But you know what?” I continued, for no other reason than that it sounded good, “Tonight I’m going to be up there, and she’s going to walk right up to me and talk to me. In fact, she’s going to tell me her life story. Her bloody life story. And then we can get on with whatever this is.”
“Just as you say, Pete, so shall it be.” John, as usual, managed to sound totally bemused and convinced at the same time. I was neither; in fact, I seemed unconscious of what I was doing, and yet strangely focused. I remember there being a sort of bubble of unawareness around me that day, as if I were only dreaming it. Thus, I hadn’t got as excited as I might have when, on the C-Train on the way to work, browsing aimlessly through my Yardbirds biography, I discovered that KEITH had actually consciously named the group after JACK KEROUAC and not, as I had assumed, after Charlie Parker:
Unlike Lennon’s man in the flaming pie, Charlie “Yardbird” Parker didn’t float into the room and name them, but it did so happen that Keith, being their nearest equivalent to a genuine beatnik, had read the collected works of Jack Kerouac and had come across the term “Yardbird” meaning a hobo who “rode the rails” and hung around railroad yards. It was, as it turned out, an instantaneous hit . . .
Here it was, in the same book with the weird photographs twinning me and Keith, April and Monica, April and Jana – an unexpectedly direct connection between Keith, the Yardbirds and Kerouac. Not that it was all that improbable, but, sheez, how could I have guessed? And how could I have missed it before? It was like working forever on two completely different chunks of a jigsaw puzzle and then accidentally finding the piece that links them together. Bongo Daddy-O: Keith as beatnik, 1965.
Though it was only October 26, a steady wet snow was falling, so after work, on the way up to the university, I stopped by my apartment to change into my winter jacket. Walking homeward from the C-Train alongside the old Vendome Building, I looked down and noticed a smooth, plump golden apple just lying there on the sidewalk, its skin glistening with droplets of melted snow. “Hmm, nice apple,” I mumbled to myself, “Must’ve fallen out of somebody’s grocery bag.” I continued on home, changed my outerwear, and when I returned the same way 10 minutes later, the apple was still there, by now crowned delicately with a haphazard laurel of unmelted snowflakes. It was now irresistible, so I scooped it into my bag, blissfully unmindful of its uncanny resemblance to the apple of March 4 – the one Monica had shared with me, Eve-style – as I headed toward the fabled university, and Lisa.
My meeting with Lisa was sparkling that day, too. We were practising her French vocabulary, which she’d written on pieces of scrap paper from her father’s office – all dated March 1966, which reminded me of the Yardbirds’ trademark hit, “Shapes of Things,” with that line in the chorus:
Back in Mac Hall, I settled in with Jack. It became clear right from the start that Visions of Gerard was intended as both an apotheosis of nostalgia for childhood and an adult statement of religious conviction, a vaguely stated but strongly felt synthesis of East meets West, Catholicism and Buddhism:
Just then my Zen acquaintance Will arrived at the Coffee Company, walked over and chatted with me again briefly. Well, it was comforting to know that some people could tackle such meditative disciplines; perhaps their depth compensated to some degree for my shallowness. I would have to stick to my own idiosyncratic Experience and make the best of it with what I already had, I mused. Speaking of which, I remembered suddenly, snapping my fingers, what did I do with that apple I found? I should eat it before I forget. I rummaged in my bag, fished it out and proceeded to do just that.
I had no sooner finished with this delicious Gift of Fortune when out of the corner of my eye I spotted three or four young women coming my way. The only thing I noticed about them was that the one in front had that unmistakable jaunty, magical, metronomic walk, the walk that could belong to only one person. Yes. It was HER again, with yet another small cluster of friends, all having just rounded the corner and heading purposefully for the Coffee Company, the handles of their badminton racquets jutting upward out of their knapsacks like so many bayonets of the Army of Wholesomeness and Good Health. Why did they have to be so darned healthy-looking? That was a vital part of their charm, of course, and it wasn’t their fault it made me feel like some schizophrenic wino. Well, to hell with it, I said, fixating for dear life on the word “Will.” I am WILL, and I’m not going to fly apart here, I’m going to retain my molecular structure long enough to catch her eye and smile at her one more time.
It was a near thing. I was just about to lose my resolve and cut out when she finally got her coffee and turned around. She was looking right at me again, but nothing seemed to be registering. This time, however, I had managed to fix her gaze for a few seconds, long enough muster a shy, apologetic smile for her. Now she saw me, and just for an instant she hesitated, as if in mid-air. Was she trying to decide whether to stay or get away? She looked as if I’d caught her in mid-thought and she wanted to recall what she had been thinking about before she went any further, before she walked away to join her friends.
She didn’t walk away, though. Her gaze came back to earth, lighting on me, as if she’d just remembered what she’d forgotten, and it had turned out to be ME. She was staring at me in wonderment, her mouth partly open now and shaping itself into a disbelieving smile as she strode toward my table, tentatively at first but then with unmistakable purpose, smiling and shaking her head. “HI!”, she exclaimed as she got closer, “I didn’t RECOGNIZE you!! How ARE you?!”
So that was it. She had forgotten who I was until just now. Maybe something in the way I’d smiled had brought back my introduction the previous September. Then I realized with an inward chuckle that with her transcendentally ravishing looks, guys must be hitting on her all the time. What I had experienced the previous September as a once-in-a-lifetime, epoch-making, door-opening spiritual resolution she probably remembered as just another tiresome encounter with another besotted young male – something that probably happened to her on a tiresomely regular basis.
Yet here she was, talking to me. And boy, was she talking. She had graduated with her BA in Psychology in the spring and had spent the summer travelling in Europe and Russia. (Russia! So maybe she was of Russian ancestry after all. I made a mental note to ask her when there was a break in the torrent of conversation, but that break never came.) Upon her return, she had lucked into a job teaching ESL for the Catholic School Board, despite her lack of training. She was excited about this because she was considering teaching as a career, and she loved kids. When she asked me what I was doing, I mumbled something about taking some time off before returning part-time. I was just trying to keep the conversation going, and telling her exactly what I’d been up to since I saw her last didn’t seem feasible somehow. Or wise.
I mentioned Dr. Klassen, in whose class I had first encountered her. I mentioned I wouldn’t mind taking his other course sometime – the sequel to his introductory Canadian Social History. Well, she had taken that one, too, before she took 331 with me. She then devoted a good five minutes to describing the great paper she’d written for that course, the topic (a comparison of several religiously based prairie pioneer communities), her research at the Glenbow Archives, all with the vague implication that I might want to read it sometime. I indeed began to think that might be a good idea, but I just couldn’t keep up with her. She had such a cool, bright voice, such a sly, sweet, clever smile (about three of them, actually, and she would hit me with them in quick, dazzling succession) that I was enthralled, even more so when I suddenly remembered after 10 minutes of this that I had PREDICTED IT THAT VERY MORNING. It hadn’t occurred to me since, but now here she was, telling me her life story, as it were. Was this really happening to me?
I wished she would stick around for an hour or so and tell me everything about herself, from Day One. Her friends a few tables a way were growing restive, however. She glanced sheepishly over at them several times, and at one point even beckoned them to come and meet me, but they were having none of that – they wanted to get going. So, inevitably, she excused her charming self, said she had to go, it had been REALLY great to see me, and she hoped she would see me around. Then she apologized because she couldn’t recall my name. “Peter, it’s Peter,” I replied eagerly, “and you’re Kari, right?” She seemed surprised and delighted that I remembered her name. “Wow! You have an amazing memory!” was her reaction. Yeah, I said to myself, as if I’m going to introduce myself to a woman as radiant and charming as you and then forget her name.... But, yes, she was right. I really did have an amazing memory now, in more ways than one.
Their destinies await them: The fateful CC, unchanged since 1988.
So Kari left, joining her friends. She talked briefly and excitedly with them, perhaps about me. Even with all my vague mumbling, I must have made a decent impression, because just as they were leaving, she turned around and waved at me again. “See you around!” Wow. What a turnabout. No acknowledgment at all, and now this. Well, maybe she really hadn’t recognized me before. Or maybe she had felt awkward about not recalling my name. Maybe I had made a good impression the previous September.
She had certainly just made an impression on me. She was obviously a bright, healthy, positive, motivated young woman, swimming confidently in the stream of life, going forward and enjoying it. Now, in the shimmering afterglow of her miraculous return, it seemed clear why I had sought her out in the end, and why she had struck me dumb with such force in the beginning. She not only represented, she incarnated, she was, so much in life that I had missed, that I had failed to be, had failed to believe I could ever be. Now there seemed to be some sort of mysterious, real connection between us. Did this mean I might be closer to her than I thought, that what I had missed might not be lost forever, indeed, that it might be orbiting again within my grasp one more time? More to the point, did it mean she might see something in me that she had missed, that I might have something to bring to the equation besides my humble deference to her astonishing, timeless beauty and charm?
Recognition. She didn’t have to recognize me, but she had chosen to, finally. Not only that—she had descended because she wanted to spend some time with me, try to establish a rapport. Returning to Mac Hall, I impulsively, ecstatically wrote in my notebook that I felt like John the Baptist, which I guess made her You-Know-Who. Well, that wouldn’t go over too well. Then I had a better thought, one that fit the atmosphere perfectly. Something I’d been reading in Kerouac just before she descended had made me feel my old dream again, had come closer to putting it into words than I’d ever done—good ole’ Jack, with his uncanny little-boy reveries:
The mischievous, satirical irony of the Western bourgeois sage with the sparkling china and the country house wasn’t lost on me – it just made her new nickname that much more fun, and more accurate, come to think of it, considering the age-old, misty reveries of middle-class comfort and bliss her return had awakened in me. Would I be there to see the image of my contented face sparkling in her china? The thought seemed premature, if not totally ridiculous, and yet, hadn’t I once considered the mere idea of meeting her just as impossible? Anything might happen now.
Fate had just dealt a new card into my hand. I had to figure out how it fit in with what I already had. There was an odd symmetry in what had just happened. Kari and her lookalike image, the postcard of Peggy Ashcroft, had been symbolically connected to the whole Experience only on March 4, when they led me up to campus for the climax of my “Blow-Up,” my manic vision. Otherwise, their connectedness was purely intuition on my part – a hunch based on the intensity of my attraction. So, in a diagram of my little secular cosmology, I might draw a dotted line pointing from Kari to the Perfect Vision of March 4. Laurie, having witnessed my manic account of said vision, introduced me to Kerouac, who had become a real preoccupation of mine despite his being otherwise unconnected with the Experience. Like Kari and Peggy, his connection was purely intuitional – he was not factually linked. So, in my diagram, I would draw a dotted line pointing from March 4 to Kerouac. Now, on this very strange day, October 26, Kerouac had finally linked up with the pattern of March 4 – had got his pedigree, so to speak – through my discovery that Keith had used one of Jack’s words to name the Yardbirds. On this same day, Kari herself had become one of the facts of the Pattern, returning (and finally fulfilling, in a sense, my expectation of seeing her on March 4) while I was reading Kerouac, and, like Keith naming the Yardbirds, I had just named her “Bodhisattva” after one of Jack’s words. So, in the diagram, both Kari’s and Jack’s lines would now be solid, not dotted. And, until now, all the time Kari had been present, Jack had been absent, and vice versa. Their periods of tenure in the Experience had been almost exactly complementary – until today. Now they were both “in solid” with the Pattern and, through my Bodhisattva nickname, with each other. Not only had my hunches been right, they’d been symmetrical.
Though it was only October 26, a steady wet snow was falling, so after work, on the way up to the university, I stopped by my apartment to change into my winter jacket. Walking homeward from the C-Train alongside the old Vendome Building, I looked down and noticed a smooth, plump golden apple just lying there on the sidewalk, its skin glistening with droplets of melted snow. “Hmm, nice apple,” I mumbled to myself, “Must’ve fallen out of somebody’s grocery bag.” I continued on home, changed my outerwear, and when I returned the same way 10 minutes later, the apple was still there, by now crowned delicately with a haphazard laurel of unmelted snowflakes. It was now irresistible, so I scooped it into my bag, blissfully unmindful of its uncanny resemblance to the apple of March 4 – the one Monica had shared with me, Eve-style – as I headed toward the fabled university, and Lisa.
My meeting with Lisa was sparkling that day, too. We were practising her French vocabulary, which she’d written on pieces of scrap paper from her father’s office – all dated March 1966, which reminded me of the Yardbirds’ trademark hit, “Shapes of Things,” with that line in the chorus:
Come tomorrow,
may I be bolder
than today.
I’ve got a hundred and fifty things,
Now all I’ve gotta find is you-ou.
I’ve got a hundred and fifty things,
Now all I’ve gotta find is you.
And if the Nazz don’t help me, baby,
You’d better forget about me, too.
Back in Mac Hall, I settled in with Jack. It became clear right from the start that Visions of Gerard was intended as both an apotheosis of nostalgia for childhood and an adult statement of religious conviction, a vaguely stated but strongly felt synthesis of East meets West, Catholicism and Buddhism:
Amazed recollection that from the very beginning I, whoever “I” or whatever “I” was, was destined, destined indeed, to meet, learn, understand Gerard and Savas and the Blessed Lord Buddha (and my Sweet Christ too through all his Paulian triangles and bloody crosses of heathen violence) – To awaken in pure faith in the bright one truth: All is Well, practice Kindness, Heaven is Nigh.
All is Well. All Shall be Well, wasn’t that what Julian of Norwich had to say? There was March 4 and my Yellow Flower vision again. That brand of Catholic mysticism would seem to be the Western part of my “East meets West,” I reflected, but what about the Eastern part? Buddhism seemed too alien, abstract and serious for a guy like me. Maybe Kerouac’s vague, literary gloss on it would suffice. And then what?Just then my Zen acquaintance Will arrived at the Coffee Company, walked over and chatted with me again briefly. Well, it was comforting to know that some people could tackle such meditative disciplines; perhaps their depth compensated to some degree for my shallowness. I would have to stick to my own idiosyncratic Experience and make the best of it with what I already had, I mused. Speaking of which, I remembered suddenly, snapping my fingers, what did I do with that apple I found? I should eat it before I forget. I rummaged in my bag, fished it out and proceeded to do just that.
I had no sooner finished with this delicious Gift of Fortune when out of the corner of my eye I spotted three or four young women coming my way. The only thing I noticed about them was that the one in front had that unmistakable jaunty, magical, metronomic walk, the walk that could belong to only one person. Yes. It was HER again, with yet another small cluster of friends, all having just rounded the corner and heading purposefully for the Coffee Company, the handles of their badminton racquets jutting upward out of their knapsacks like so many bayonets of the Army of Wholesomeness and Good Health. Why did they have to be so darned healthy-looking? That was a vital part of their charm, of course, and it wasn’t their fault it made me feel like some schizophrenic wino. Well, to hell with it, I said, fixating for dear life on the word “Will.” I am WILL, and I’m not going to fly apart here, I’m going to retain my molecular structure long enough to catch her eye and smile at her one more time.
It was a near thing. I was just about to lose my resolve and cut out when she finally got her coffee and turned around. She was looking right at me again, but nothing seemed to be registering. This time, however, I had managed to fix her gaze for a few seconds, long enough muster a shy, apologetic smile for her. Now she saw me, and just for an instant she hesitated, as if in mid-air. Was she trying to decide whether to stay or get away? She looked as if I’d caught her in mid-thought and she wanted to recall what she had been thinking about before she went any further, before she walked away to join her friends.
She didn’t walk away, though. Her gaze came back to earth, lighting on me, as if she’d just remembered what she’d forgotten, and it had turned out to be ME. She was staring at me in wonderment, her mouth partly open now and shaping itself into a disbelieving smile as she strode toward my table, tentatively at first but then with unmistakable purpose, smiling and shaking her head. “HI!”, she exclaimed as she got closer, “I didn’t RECOGNIZE you!! How ARE you?!”
So that was it. She had forgotten who I was until just now. Maybe something in the way I’d smiled had brought back my introduction the previous September. Then I realized with an inward chuckle that with her transcendentally ravishing looks, guys must be hitting on her all the time. What I had experienced the previous September as a once-in-a-lifetime, epoch-making, door-opening spiritual resolution she probably remembered as just another tiresome encounter with another besotted young male – something that probably happened to her on a tiresomely regular basis.
Yet here she was, talking to me. And boy, was she talking. She had graduated with her BA in Psychology in the spring and had spent the summer travelling in Europe and Russia. (Russia! So maybe she was of Russian ancestry after all. I made a mental note to ask her when there was a break in the torrent of conversation, but that break never came.) Upon her return, she had lucked into a job teaching ESL for the Catholic School Board, despite her lack of training. She was excited about this because she was considering teaching as a career, and she loved kids. When she asked me what I was doing, I mumbled something about taking some time off before returning part-time. I was just trying to keep the conversation going, and telling her exactly what I’d been up to since I saw her last didn’t seem feasible somehow. Or wise.
I mentioned Dr. Klassen, in whose class I had first encountered her. I mentioned I wouldn’t mind taking his other course sometime – the sequel to his introductory Canadian Social History. Well, she had taken that one, too, before she took 331 with me. She then devoted a good five minutes to describing the great paper she’d written for that course, the topic (a comparison of several religiously based prairie pioneer communities), her research at the Glenbow Archives, all with the vague implication that I might want to read it sometime. I indeed began to think that might be a good idea, but I just couldn’t keep up with her. She had such a cool, bright voice, such a sly, sweet, clever smile (about three of them, actually, and she would hit me with them in quick, dazzling succession) that I was enthralled, even more so when I suddenly remembered after 10 minutes of this that I had PREDICTED IT THAT VERY MORNING. It hadn’t occurred to me since, but now here she was, telling me her life story, as it were. Was this really happening to me?
I wished she would stick around for an hour or so and tell me everything about herself, from Day One. Her friends a few tables a way were growing restive, however. She glanced sheepishly over at them several times, and at one point even beckoned them to come and meet me, but they were having none of that – they wanted to get going. So, inevitably, she excused her charming self, said she had to go, it had been REALLY great to see me, and she hoped she would see me around. Then she apologized because she couldn’t recall my name. “Peter, it’s Peter,” I replied eagerly, “and you’re Kari, right?” She seemed surprised and delighted that I remembered her name. “Wow! You have an amazing memory!” was her reaction. Yeah, I said to myself, as if I’m going to introduce myself to a woman as radiant and charming as you and then forget her name.... But, yes, she was right. I really did have an amazing memory now, in more ways than one.
Their destinies await them: The fateful CC, unchanged since 1988.So Kari left, joining her friends. She talked briefly and excitedly with them, perhaps about me. Even with all my vague mumbling, I must have made a decent impression, because just as they were leaving, she turned around and waved at me again. “See you around!” Wow. What a turnabout. No acknowledgment at all, and now this. Well, maybe she really hadn’t recognized me before. Or maybe she had felt awkward about not recalling my name. Maybe I had made a good impression the previous September.
She had certainly just made an impression on me. She was obviously a bright, healthy, positive, motivated young woman, swimming confidently in the stream of life, going forward and enjoying it. Now, in the shimmering afterglow of her miraculous return, it seemed clear why I had sought her out in the end, and why she had struck me dumb with such force in the beginning. She not only represented, she incarnated, she was, so much in life that I had missed, that I had failed to be, had failed to believe I could ever be. Now there seemed to be some sort of mysterious, real connection between us. Did this mean I might be closer to her than I thought, that what I had missed might not be lost forever, indeed, that it might be orbiting again within my grasp one more time? More to the point, did it mean she might see something in me that she had missed, that I might have something to bring to the equation besides my humble deference to her astonishing, timeless beauty and charm?
Recognition. She didn’t have to recognize me, but she had chosen to, finally. Not only that—she had descended because she wanted to spend some time with me, try to establish a rapport. Returning to Mac Hall, I impulsively, ecstatically wrote in my notebook that I felt like John the Baptist, which I guess made her You-Know-Who. Well, that wouldn’t go over too well. Then I had a better thought, one that fit the atmosphere perfectly. Something I’d been reading in Kerouac just before she descended had made me feel my old dream again, had come closer to putting it into words than I’d ever done—good ole’ Jack, with his uncanny little-boy reveries:
. . . in the quiet hour when water’s burbling on the stove the starchy Irish potatoes and hushsilence fills ears in houses announcing Avalokitesvara’s blessed everlasting presence grinning in the swarming shadows behind the stuffed chairs and tasseled lamps, a Womb of Exuberant Fertility the world and the sad things in it laughable . . .
Avalokitesvara, the Big-Time Bodhisattva, the One of the Many whose compassion bids Him to postpone Nirvana in order to enlighten others. Our returning avatar's name was Kari, which reminded me of Kerouac anyway, but she reminded me even more now of a bodhisattva. Even the sound of the word matched the light her presence had brought into my evening—light and truth, for now I knew I was onto something with this girl. She had the power to make me see her coming before she came. Now what kind of weird juju was that?! Oh, it was perfect. The name Kari just wasn’t big enough, deep enough, powerful enough for her. She was the Bodhisattva, and now I wished she would take my hand and show me where she was going, me singing the jazzy old Steely Dan number to her.The mischievous, satirical irony of the Western bourgeois sage with the sparkling china and the country house wasn’t lost on me – it just made her new nickname that much more fun, and more accurate, come to think of it, considering the age-old, misty reveries of middle-class comfort and bliss her return had awakened in me. Would I be there to see the image of my contented face sparkling in her china? The thought seemed premature, if not totally ridiculous, and yet, hadn’t I once considered the mere idea of meeting her just as impossible? Anything might happen now.
Fate had just dealt a new card into my hand. I had to figure out how it fit in with what I already had. There was an odd symmetry in what had just happened. Kari and her lookalike image, the postcard of Peggy Ashcroft, had been symbolically connected to the whole Experience only on March 4, when they led me up to campus for the climax of my “Blow-Up,” my manic vision. Otherwise, their connectedness was purely intuition on my part – a hunch based on the intensity of my attraction. So, in a diagram of my little secular cosmology, I might draw a dotted line pointing from Kari to the Perfect Vision of March 4. Laurie, having witnessed my manic account of said vision, introduced me to Kerouac, who had become a real preoccupation of mine despite his being otherwise unconnected with the Experience. Like Kari and Peggy, his connection was purely intuitional – he was not factually linked. So, in my diagram, I would draw a dotted line pointing from March 4 to Kerouac. Now, on this very strange day, October 26, Kerouac had finally linked up with the pattern of March 4 – had got his pedigree, so to speak – through my discovery that Keith had used one of Jack’s words to name the Yardbirds. On this same day, Kari herself had become one of the facts of the Pattern, returning (and finally fulfilling, in a sense, my expectation of seeing her on March 4) while I was reading Kerouac, and, like Keith naming the Yardbirds, I had just named her “Bodhisattva” after one of Jack’s words. So, in the diagram, both Kari’s and Jack’s lines would now be solid, not dotted. And, until now, all the time Kari had been present, Jack had been absent, and vice versa. Their periods of tenure in the Experience had been almost exactly complementary – until today. Now they were both “in solid” with the Pattern and, through my Bodhisattva nickname, with each other. Not only had my hunches been right, they’d been symmetrical.
Yeah, I was a sucker for symmetry. Stuff like this intoxicated me. Despite my warnings to myself about going “over the top” and expecting the ULTIMATE REVELATION, I couldn’t escape the awesome intimation that my life’s destiny was at hand, ready to unfold whether I was ready or not. On the Friday morning at Carswell, the tension bubbled to the surface in the form of another spontaneous oracular pronouncement to John McDermid. “Today”, I proclaimed to John at his desk, “I shall see the flaming face of irresistible grace.” Once again, it sounded good to me, but I had no idea why I’d said it. Nor did John. This time, he didn’t say anything; he just looked at me funny.
My excitement must have been palpable when I saw Lisa on the Friday afternoon. “Something happened,” I blurted as we headed toward the Coffee Company. “Aha, you’ve talked to God, haven’t you?” She had guessed it right away. I relayed the highlights of what Kari had told me, and how relieved and impressed I’d been to find that her beauty and poise were not merely superficial. I also told her about the mysterious apple I’d found on the sidewalk, with its echo of March 4, and the further reverberations of the Keith/Kerouac connection. “I don’t know what her last name is yet,” I announced, “but Kari Kerouac sounds good to me. Yeah, Kari Kerouac, the Kerouacka Bodhisattva,” dropping the nickname for the first time. I explained the traditional meaning of the term, how the Steely Dan song fit, and, freshly gleaned that morning, the charming etymology of the word, from the Sanskrit “bodhi,” meaning “illumination” or “perfect knowledge,” and “sattva,” meaning “essence.” So she was the Essence of Illumination, or the Experience made Flesh, depending on how you looked at it. “Whatever you call her,” Lisa observed, “you obviously have a mystical thingy for her. I hope it doesn’t get in the way. Remember, she’s only human, like you.”
I laughed uneasily and agreed. It certainly had the hallmarks of a “mystical thingy,” whatever that was. “Thingy” was Lisa’s favourite word for situations or concepts that defied easy definition. For some reason, I was particularly tickled to hear her use it now. I wondered aloud to Lisa:
“You know, it makes me wonder. . . I wonder if the apple means that my poem “Genesis” is connected to the mystical thingy with Kari.”
“You have a poem called ‘Genesis,’ too?”, Lisa asked.
“Yeah, at least I think it’s mine. Wrote it in my sleep one morning. Very mysterious. It’s like some kind of wedding poem or something. Here, I’ll show you, maybe you’ll have a hunch about it.”
I had folded it up and slipped it into my Yardbirds book that morning, so now I dug it out and began to unfold it for Lisa. One fold, two folds, there it was, and . . . wait a minute, over there, wasn’t that, yeah, wow, it WAS, and coming right toward us, no time even to warn Lisa, but at least I’d get to introduce her maybe, that cute little angel friend looks like one of the ones she was with the other night, maybe there’ll be introductions all around, I can’t believe she’s walking by JUST AS I UNFOLD THE POEM, what a script, whew, my heart’s going way too fast here. . .
So, with no time to signal to Lisa, and glassy-eyed with disbelief and goofy adoration, I raised myself slightly off the bench and smiled and waved enthusiastically to Kari and her friend as they approached. My jaunty wave and jubilant expression began to dissipate in a mechanical and, I’m sure, rather comical fashion as I gradually realized things were not going according to plan. Something was badly amiss here. She hadn’t greeted me at all. She and her friend had walked right by me. In fact, it was worse than that. She had seen me, then looked away quickly as she blushed the deepest red—crimson, I suppose would be the conventional word – I had ever seen.
This just didn’t make any sense. I gestured haplessly to Lisa. “That was—HER”, I gasped, “but she acted as if she was embarrassed or mad or something. Honest, that was her . . . you know I’m not making this up . . . what, did I wave too crazily, did I lose control there, or what?”
Lisa assured me that I hadn’t behaved strangely at all. She tried to convince me that there must be a perfectly ordinary explanation. Maybe Kari found the situation awkward in some way I was unaware of. I listened, but I was still upset. I’d come so far, it seemed, with this magical woman, and now—back to Square One? I couldn’t stand the thought of it. I had the horrible suspicion she had talked to me two evenings ago on a dare or a crazy impulse, which she now regretted. If so, how would I ever steel myself to approach her all over again? It didn’t look like she would be seeking out my company any time soon. By the time Lisa left me, I had calmed down somewhat, but I was seriously off-balance.
Then I realized just how ironic my pronouncement that morning had been. “The flaming face of irresistible grace,” indeed. Probably more like irretrievable grace now, I muttered sulkily. I remembered the lines from “Phantom Heart” I had adopted a week earlier: “The word is flesh in a bright red dress/To coin a phrase, it is Genesis.” Well, how prophetic that little number had been, in its way. “Flesh in a bright red dress” would be her incredible blush, and “Genesis” would be the poem I was unfolding. Yeah, that was neat, but I still didn’t know what the hell was going on, and whatever it was, I didn’t like it.
The following afternoon, Saturday, on my way to get a haircut, I met Lisa by chance on the street. She reiterated her insistence that it would all come clear somehow. She was concerned that I continued to entertain the notion that I was to blame somehow. “Relax, relax. I’m sure it has nothing to do with you. Just give it time. Think about other things for a while.”
Luckily, there were timely diversions at hand. Jana had a concert that night, so Monica had invited me to accompany her and her husband and his friends to a Greenpeace Hallowe’en party. Now this was a rather dour affair, as might be expected. Monica’s husband David and his cohort were “serious” and “committed” enough, but they were wacky funsters compared to the Greenpeace crowd. Monica, at least, was fun to be with that night. Swathed in one of her mother’s old furs and bedecked with gaudy jewellery and horn-rims, she was splendid as Doris Hecklepoffer, middle-class matron of dubious intelligence and sobriety. Her charming clumsiness and cackling wit were lost on the world-peace-and-eco-salvation crowd, of course. I began to understand why her fun side, which was surely alive and well, surfaced so rarely these days. She was too young and lively for these ultra-pious goombahs anyway. On the way, she and I laughed deliciously in the back seat when she realized she was about to wear a real fur to a Greenpeace party. As it turned out, they were the last really good yuks we would have together. Perhaps Monica sensed as much. When they dropped me off a few blocks from my apartment, she gave me a big hug and proclaimed loudly, half herself and half still Doris Hecklepoffer, “This guy’s been a great friend to me!” Well, not great enough to pry her away from her husband and his Jesuitic compadres, but then how could a holy goof like me expect to compete with Commitment and Morality and Worldly Intelligence? It was a great compliment, though, and I told her so. The pleasure had been all mine. As the car took her away, I just smiled and shook my head. What a strange year this had turned out to be.
The year was not over; nor was the evening. On the way home, walking up 10th Street NW, I met Alex Rettie, a young proofreader from Carswell. He was on his way home from a movie at the Plaza. Like me, Alex liked a drink and a good story. He also had a great sense of humour and, unlike me, an almost encyclopedic knowledge of literature. A recent dropout from King’s College in Halifax, he had apparently won some prizes there for his poetry. So at the age of 21, he was already a serious poet and had more good reading under his belt than I figured I would manage in my lifetime.
We were both at loose ends, generally and specifically, so it wasn’t hard to persuade him to my apartment for a glass of wine and some smoking and gabbing. Alex was also the only person I knew who smoked more, and with more conviction and abandon, than I did. So, with clouds billowing about us, we settled in to finish off the evening and, as it turned out, an entire bottle of red wine Jana had unwittingly left in my apartment “for us.” As we spoke vaguely of what we were doing and intended to do, I frequently referred to “what had happened to me this year”; so frequently that Alex finally asked, “What did happen to you this year, Peter? You’re being awfully mysterious about it.”
“Well, it is awfully mysterious, in fact. I’ll try to lay it out for you, but it may not be all that clear. It’s been a while since I had it all in my head at once. The wine may help, and then again it may not. So if I’m confusing you, let me know.”
And so I began. I had told quite a few people in March – Jim, Laurie and Sue on March 4, Alison and McDermid the next day, Monica on March 8, complete with soundtrack, Rick and Jana later in the month – and finally Lisa in July. Each time I told it, of course, it got bigger – more gargantuan, as Monica had put it – until now, as I brought Alex right up to date, complete with the inexplicable snubbing I’d got the day before from Kari, it seemed to point everywhere and nowhere. I could see him lose track periodically, fading into nervous skepticism even, but then I would tie a few more things together, hit him with a key photograph, and he would jump right back in, in full spontaneous wonder. I hadn’t intended to “bring him in” on it, but now I was glad it had happened. He seemed to understand viscerally what I was going through. From his literary talk, I knew he possessed a keen critical sensibility. When I had finished, and he was still fascinated, I knew I had just acquired unexpectedly a valuable “ally” whose positive evaluation of the Experience gave it new weight somehow. In short, I’d just received a very timely good review.
“Well, where do I go from here?” I wondered to Alex and to myself. First Clapperton, then Monica, and now this Kari creature had captured my soul for brief periods, but a deep, lasting personal connection never seemed to be in the cards. No matter how dead certain such a romantic destiny seemed, it always slipped away. I told Alex of my instantaneous certainty, in the midst of the cataclysm of seeing Kari for the first time, the certainty that this was another Clapperton situation, that I would never get to know this woman and that any attempt to do so would end in embarrassment and confusion for me. Hence my year-long delay before finally surrendering, under very mysterious circumstances, and introducing myself. Now another year had passed, she had returned and begun an acquaintance, only to snub me two days later. I told Alex I was beginning to feel like Charlie Brown with the football.
Such are the ways of the Gods, I mused. The Gods, or one very tricky Goddess, Alex said, echoing my long-standing suspicion. “And yet you see my plight!” I brayed melodramatically. Maybe I am immature, or fatuous, or merely irrational for my conviction that these enigmatic women “Kari’d” within their beauty some form of hidden knowledge or spiritual enlightenment just for me. After all, it didn’t seem likely that this Kari would ever know, could ever know, anything about the hidden me, the hidden dimension of her relationship to me. We might become friends in some superficial, conventional sense, but . . .
Yet, there was the Pattern, the Vision, the Experience, not to mention the enrichment of my life with literature, all virtually without conscious effort on my part. “Keep reading. Keep making things happen.” That was Alex’s advice. He was right. With all the frustration and second-guessing of myself and the Gods, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Alex said just what I needed to hear. Once again, I tried to forget Kari’s face and smile and voice and knuckled down to work.
Next up: Twin Signatures
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