Recent Attempts

On Sidewalks, Drowning, Pierre Bonnard, etc.

August 25, 2025

The neighbour kids are up on the roof, armed to the teeth with super-soakers. Little warriors, on the look-out for foxes. We’re overrun with foxes these days. My daughter even dreamt a fox got in the house. Did you ask it what it wanted? I asked her. It wasn’t that kind of dream, mom, she said.

Here we are in the last days of summer, in the kind of beauty that’s totally free, costing nothing but the moment or two spent dwelling upon it. Kids in ripped-knee jeans, playing hot-wheels in the yard. Their older brothers out on dirt bikes, rippin’ through the sand-pits. And the foxes too, peering around the far corner of the chicken coop, grinning widely. They’re in on the game.

Here I am, again, watching the sun setting on concrete. The same red sun. The same scarred sidewalk that’ll carry me into old age, God willing. I’ve always loved sidewalks. As Pierre Bonnard said, I have a morbid sensitivity to surface.

There was a terrible drowning accident last night, in Yellowknife. I’m thankful, at least, there was no violence. His bones did not break. His body did not bleed. He just drifted slowly away, further into the lake, further into sleep. Can death be as gentle as a hammock in the breeze?

Here I am, in the shadow of death, in the kind of beauty that costs everything I have, and more. When you let the terrible facts of an accident gnaw at you, when you let them shatter (again) your illusion of control, when they cause you to wonder what world might exist across the lake, on those further shores, you’ll inevitably understand that death and beauty walk hand in hand. These end-of-summer days are beautiful because they are temporary. Our lives: brief candles, quick flashes in the pan, split-second diamonds that sparkle on the lake. Necklaces! Tiaras! – Gone! This is why we dance so hard to the last song on the wedding dancefloor, right? Especially if the song is “Hey Ya!” or “Mr. Brightside.” The more inane the song, the better.

Pop songs are America’s prayers.

Bonnard stippled all colours together to describe a surface. He could never choose just one. His scenes dissolve as you’re looking at them, because he was an excellent artist. Children chalk hopscotches on the sidewalk that look like rickety old ladders. The ladders are always crooked because children are excellent artists, too. Remember Robert Frost’s ladder? It was pointed towards heaven, but he could feel it wobbling.

Do you ever push a finger under your eye and over the ridge of bone to feel the sockets in your own skull? I did this often as a child. Every single time, a thrill ran through me. I was not a little girl! I was a Halloween skeleton!

I cannot reach into all the haunted houses in all the haunted cities of the world. I cannot even reach all the little northern girls named Aurora. I wish I could give them all their very own princess dress, their favourite colour of popsicle. I wish I could pause their lives, let them stay small a little longer, before entering the cycle of at-risk behaviours, opioid fatalities, sobering centres. For some of us, there are more snakes than ladders.

And some of us turn loose thoughts, stray lines of songs, into psalms. Use me for a snake-wrangler, Oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. In the sweet by and by, can we meet on that beautiful shore? Open up my eager eyes, ‘cause I’m Mr. Brightside.