Zsuzsi Gartner - Better Living Through Plastic Explosives

There is, of course, the recourse to a public tour 8 to gain entry and then staging a distraction while I spirit Pudding nearer the chamber. I can practically hear my friend Ingrid, who is an excellent slam poet, spit, “Permission is for losers.” 9 Besides, I am a wanted woman.

The security, though, is not what I had assumed. The sprawling and tastefully landscaped site comprises several buildings without, if the diagrams are to be believed, fibre optic security or even electrified fencing around the perimeter. An invitation to a reckoning.

This mission gives me a feeling of liberation I have not felt in a long time. The big question now is: Do I share the details of my plan? Or do we proceed on a need-to-know basis? My attempts at a military style of discipline have been met with a degree of resistance. After so many years of establishing my authority, I perceive a growing slackness among my followers that bespeaks, if not quite insurrection, then some form of unconscious revolt.

Sam sits astride a cedar log massaging Dodge’s shaved scalp as if it’s a crystal ball and she’s divining the future. What does she see? Herself and Dodge surrounded by the emaciated children of an orphanage in Chad or Pune, or by bald little babies of their own in a stucco fourplex in East Vancouver? Is that a path to happiness for either of them?

“Velcro. There’s an example,” Dodge says. “Think of burrs sticking to a dog’s belly fur. Think of the entire planet as a humungous R &D lab. There are sustainable air-conditioned buildings inspired by the study of termite mounds, wind turbines based on the humpback whale’s fin.” Dodge, it seems, intends to study biomimicry. This is not something we have had time to discuss. Much like the Sam liaison.

“Would God approve?” Sam wonders out loud. She doesn’t appear to require an answer from Dodge, who just closes his eyes and sighs with pleasure against the circling pressure of her fingers. What about me? What if I don’t approve of his misplaced faith in science?

Why does no one think to offer me a massage?

Cinders wants to know what I’m going to do about the cougar The Kevster has spotted. They never used to question, especially Cinders. I would say jump and Cinders would ask, “Horizontal or vertical?” ( You’re O.K.-I’m K2 , Golden Agouti Press, 2010, p. 156.) Now it’s become all why, what, when? Perhaps the anomie that has been creeping through the general population has gone viral, infiltrating the spores of the various fungi that proliferate here and compromising the morale of my troops.

Need I say, look it in the eye and show it who is boss? Need I say, winners are not eaten? Winners bite, chew, and disgorge what they don’t need. I learned this lesson from a boy cousin what seems like an eternity ago now. We had been arguing about who was the real creative genius, Elton John or Bernie Taupin. 10 He tore my cherished poster of “The Desiderata,” designed to evoke an illuminated manuscript, from my bedroom wall and crammed it into his mouth piece by piece, gnashing ferociously. When he was done, only a gummy strip with the words Go placidly amid the noise and has- hung from one of his incisors. Above my desk the Hang in There, Baby! poster curled upward from the wall, masking tape in petrified clumps, a Siamese cat clinging to a telephone wire with a frenzied look on its face. “Eat or be eaten,” my cousin growled. “Kill or be killed.”

Ricky had what you would call charisma. But he didn’t enjoy what you’d call a successful adulthood.

Cinders has wet herself rather than dare venture outside of our little enclave. I think we’re long past due for a visualization circle.

There was a time, back in high school, when I would have described myself as a Christian Existentialist. A believer in God, albeit one who believed not in personal destiny, but rather in personal responsibility. I was a somewhat gloomy girl who wept during the singing of “Kumbaya” at school assemblies. 11 Our Catholic school was remarkably progressive, thanks to Vatican II. It was through a lanky, good-natured religion teacher that I discovered Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , and Carlos Castaneda and his Teachings of Don Juan . It is to Mr. S. and to Cousin Ricky that I owe my metaphysical awakening.

We hold hands, because there is nothing equivalent to the holding of hands to pass on currents of self-generated electricity and intensify our energy fields. I sense that placid Sam may be a weak link. Pudding, on the other hand, standing between Felix and me, has a charge that could fire up a fleet of cross-Strait hydrofoils.

There is a strong wind sweeping across the tops of the trees; I hear it rather than feel it. More than a whisper, less than a roar. And a smell settling in not unlike that of a cabin that has been closed up for the winter. It emanates from our little group, a reminder that none of us have bathed for almost a week.

“I’m thinking about nachos with the works,” says Dodge, “the kind they have at Tinseltown in that flimsy cardboard dish with the melted cheese product bubbling like lava.” When his eyes are closed it’s easy to imagine Dodge is still a child, filled with wayward charm and bereft of the flinty humour. It is impossible to tell if he is being genuine, but as no one starts giggling we move on.

“I’m thinking about a handheld electronic device,” Felix says, his lisp prominent and endearing, at odds with his preternaturally advanced vocabulary. “Even an old Nintendo DS.”

“That’s the spirit,” I say. I had forbidden anyone to bring a cellphone or nano-to preserve the purity of the retreat, I told them. If the new President of Amerika is forced to survive without her BlackBerry for security purposes, then so can I.

Cinders says, “I’m thinking about Pudding saying her first word. I’m thinking it should be, ‘Howdy, Pardners!’” Cinders has a thing for cowboys, which I’m not sure is age appropriate. She opens her eyes and looks at me, and I give her an encouraging smile and squeeze Pudding’s hand. Technically speaking, my eyes shouldn’t have been open either, but chances are good Cinders will not broadcast my flouting of the rules. “That’s two words,” says Felix.

Even Sam seems game, although typically opaque. “I’m thinking about a dark path easily traversed.” I cannot help but admire her correct usage of traversed . For someone I have never seen poking her button nose into a book, she is very well-spoken.

It’s all going so nicely when The Kevster plops down onto his butt and leans back on his elbows, legs splayed. When did his legs get so long? “I want Dad.” He draws it out so it sounds like Duh-ad .

Do I say, “Was it Dad who stayed up for nights on end rubbing your back in soothing circles as you writhed with night terrors brought on from DVDs you know you shouldn’t have watched at Calvin’s house?” (The mole people ! I never could understand what could have been so terrifying about the mole people.) Do I say, “Was it Dad who drove out to every cheap-plastic-off-gassing Walmart in the Lower Mainland in monsoon rains because you had to have a Dark Knight costume?” Do I say, “Do you think Duh-ad gives a shit?”

To my credit I merely drop Pudding’s hand and shake off Felix’s sticky grip and walk off in the direction of the unseen coastline. The ocean is out there. Somewhere beyond this increasingly oppressive foliage and the gnarled trunks, these optimistic nurse logs and fecund mulches, is the edge of Amerika and beyond that the rest of the world. It has been a very long while since I’ve felt anything approaching the sting of tears. Now is not the time to succumb to a pitiful nostalgia. But, unbidden, “Buffalo Springfield Again” 12 rises from somewhere inside me.