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Posts Tagged ‘Michael Murray’
Chez Lucien, Sunday night
Overhead fans are rotating at different speeds and a 65 year-old man, looking for friends, wanders from bar stool to stool.
He’s holding a pint of beer and telling jokes that he memorized 40 years earlier. He puts a song on the jukebox and goes over a couple sitting at the bar.
They’re both in their mid-50’s, and have likely been driven indoors by the rain that’s plaguing the jazz festival. The old man puts his hands on their shoulders–a beneficent presence– and begins to sing along to the jukebox—It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s a serenade, a gift to the lovers.
The woman wears a t-shirt the colour of jewelry, of perfume. The man drinks from a rock glass, the festival pass swinging from around his neck. They’re happy with themselves, that they were selected for a song, that they were cool and charitable enough to indulge the old man as he teetered around them. The old man slaps them on the back, releasing a smoker’s laugh, and moves on to the next person.
They both watch him as he leaves. The man puts down his rock glass and runs the back of his hand over her cheek, down the side of her neck, his fingernails lingering on the spot where skin meets shirt and her cleavage disappears into suggestion. She’s staring into him, exactly like she’s supposed to.
A younger couple, but not that much younger, come arm and arm into the bar. Dripping wet, they shoot tequila, swagger like cowboys back into the night, the sounds of jazz echoing through the parking garage across the street.
Michael Murray also blogs at: http://www.michaelmurray.ca/blog/
For a variety of reasons, I have a large network of friends on Facebook, including some people that I’ve never actually met in person, and others I haven’t seen in years.
Still, although we don’t always communicate directly, I feel like I know them all.
Over time, through my random encounters with their status updates, their lives take on a coherent form, one that has an actual presence in my life. In a very passive way– not entirely unlike absorbing the ambient gossip at the local corner store– I find out who is going through a tough time or training for a race, or who might be falling in love or looking forward to a walk in the sun.
However, more important that the particulars of a life, is the general point of view, the general disposition toward the world, that each person unwittingly reveals. Although you don’t find out how people interact with the world, you do find out how they interpret the world around them. In a weirdly sincere and poetic way, you discover character.
Some people are habitually angry, always pissed off at the government or the forces that caused the hot water heater to break. Other people reveal themselves frustrated and tired, exhausted by the demands of their children, while others, the vast majority, express gratitude and optimism for the small pleasures of the day.
Sam thanks everybody for the generous birthday wishes.
Lucy thinks life is pretty sweet when you can sit outside in the sun drinking coffee with a friend.
Benedict is wondering what it means when a small dog stashes all her kibble in a slipper.
Christine is enjoying CBC radio and the smell of soup on the stove while she does some administrative paperwork—all is good.
I’ve always taken great solace in these people, and have grown very fond of their quiet and benevolent presence. When I see their avatar pop up, I feel like they’re quietly sitting in the room with me, and I get the same comfort from them that I would get from seeing a familiar neighbour out, once again, raking the leaves.
Michael Murray also blogs at: http://www.michaelmurray.ca/blog/
Chez Lucien and The Manx
Waiting for friends at the Manx on a Friday night, I realized that the place has always had a knack for making me feel either very included, or very excluded. Sometimes, I walk in and am swept up into things, becoming a part of an ever- expanding table full of people in excellent moods. On nights like these—with a three pint buzz– everybody seems witty and at the top of their game, and I feel like I’m at a terrific party where I’m making all sorts of brilliant friends.
The Manx is one of the undisputed arts hubs of the city, and all the people who work there carry with them a sort of hipster celebrity. They’re not waiters, they’re artists and musician and poets, and I always find myself hoping for their approval, which is an utterly demoralizing thing to realize.
The bar itself was designed to facilitate conversation. There are no TV sets, nor is there any ambient music playing, save for the fuzz of death metal pushing out of the kitchen. If you’re there on your own, there are no distractions from your solitude, and looking around at the clubby atmosphere, it can be easy to feel like a customer sitting amongst a bunch of friends. When this happens, I always feel needy and awkward, like the last person being chosen in a game of pick-up basketball.
Chez Lucien, on the other hand, was designed to be a safe haven for people who are used to feeling that way. It’s just off the beaten path, and it’s simple in its’ ambition. It’s not seeking to consciously establish a home for the Ottawa arts community, but to provide a place for black sheep to go and have a drink. There’s an effortless honesty and lack of inhibition to the place, and you never feel judged there. While The Manx may make talking easy, Chez Lucien actually makes being comfortable there easy, and in the end, that’s why it will always be my most trusted port in the storm.
Michael Murray also blogs here: http://www.michaelmurray.ca/blog/
The Neighbourhood
When I got up this morning, the first thing I did was open the blinds.
Outside the window, just beyond of our balcony, soap bubbles drifting by.
On the street below a poet stood on the curb. He took a last, tender drag on his cigarette and then threw it into the street, as if disgusted with the habit he was right that very second quitting. He paused for just a minute, and then walked into a convenience store and bought a new package, which he unwrapped immediately.
At the corner, in the light, drizzling rain, a man was having an animated conversation with a crossing guard, “ Oh, it’s not like I’m without fault, but she was making a point of pushing my buttons!”
In the middle of the sidewalk, a little dog squats and goes to the bathroom. As the owner bends down to pick it up, a stranger tries to pet the dog. Startled, the animal snarls and barks, and the stranger recoils, an awkward and apologetic grin on his face. From across the street, a woman with crazy eyes begins to yell, in a kind of musical tone, “ he’s going to bite, he’s going to bite, he’s going to bite ya’ hard!!!”
Standing between two parked cars on, I have my hand out trying to hail a cab.
A cyclist rides toward me, and seeing my outstretched hand, gives me a high five, before wordlessly sailing by, soap bubbles trailing him like phosphorescence.
Michael Murray updates his Blog daily at http://www.michaelmurray.ca/blog/
A Fury of Pigeons
As many of you will have already heard, my Yahoo Fantasy Hockey Team—A Fury of Pigeons—is utterly dominating my league. It’s not even close.
You should know that I wasn’t “invited” to become a part of this league, but was randomly assigned to it when I signed-up to participate in a Yahoo league. I think that the reason I never get invited back to leagues to defend my crown (I always win), is because people hate winners. Sure, people have cited my “racist taunts” as inappropriate behaviour for the league, or my groundbreaking strategy of sending viruses to opponent’s computers, as “unsportsmanlike,” but that’s obviously just a smoke screen. All of my previous opponents, whom I have crushed without mercy, are a bunch of losers who live in loserville, and sick of losing, exclude me from their leagues.
What. Fucking. Ever.
Anyway, this year I was assigned to a 12-team league called The Orangeville/Kiruna Project. As usual, I’ve been intimidating and demoralizing my opponents with my spirited trash talking and am once again in first place.
However, this morning I received a letter from a Miss Watson, who claims to be a third grade teacher at a school in Orangeville. She claims that her class is involved in a joint project with another grade three class, this one located in the town of Kiruna, Sweden. According to her, the kids from both classes are operating this pool together as a sort of project, in which, acting as pen pals, they get to learn about each countries “unique culture, via our shared love of hockey,” and that my addition to the league was a mistake. She goes on and on and on, but to make a long story short, she wants me to drop out of the league!
As if!
Just because they’re a bunch of kids—soft kids—that doesn’t mean that I should take the foot off the gas pedal! These kids need to learn some tough lesson about life, and one of those lessons is that there will always be winners and losers in this world, and the sooner they understand that, the better. Miss Watson wrote that Mr. Ljungberg—the Swedish grade three teacher—told her that little Halvard (who only has players whose names begin with “H” on his team) has been having nightmares and has been wetting his bed, ever since he started to read my posts on the league message board. Well, if Halvard can’t stand the heat, then he should get out of kjitchen, or however the stupid Swedes spell that.
Look, I skipped grade three, and now that I’ve been given the gift to return there and dominate, like I so clearly would have in the past, I’m sure as hell not going to give it up.
Game, on, bitches!
Michael Murray also blogs at: http://www.michaelmurray.ca/blog/
