Smudge

             

            When I went to get the Healing Centre ready for my yoga class, the room was occupied by a group having a Native style memorial for a friend of theirs that had recently died. The leftover fragrance of a smudge ceremony was still very strong. I sat in the entry room that conjoins the healing centre with the hallway and with the West Neighbourhood teen’s drop-in centre next door. The memorial was in the form of a talking circle and an eagle feather was passed to whichever person wanted to say something about their friend. . One person led them all in a singalong of the gospel song, “This Little Light of Mine” by Avis Burgeson Christiansen and Harry Dixon Loes. The circle went quite a bit past the time when my class is supposed to start. If it had been any other type of meeting, I would have spoken to them fifteen minutes ahead of time about winding down, but it didn’t seem appropriate in this case. One new student named Eleanor came while I was waiting. She said that Annapurna, my current regular student had recommended the class to her, though Annapurna didn’t show up this time. The woman that seemed to be in charge of the event came out and apologized to me because they hadn’t finished yet, but she said she didn’t think it was appropriate to interrupt the elders when they were speaking. They were finally clearing out twenty minutes into my class, and so I didn’t bother trying to set up the room as I usually do.

            The smell of the smoke from the burning sage was still lingering in the room. It’s not an unpleasant smelling smoke, but really, I don’t find any kind of incense to be very conducive to relaxed full breathing during a yoga session.

            Eleonor liked the class, but wasn’t sure if she’d be back because she finds it hard to motivate herself to do things. As I was leaving I got a call from Nick Cushing, who told me that he’d be coming around to my place after he’d run an errand. I went to the No Frills on King Street where I bought a package of cinnamon-raisin bagels for a dollar. I also bought some ground beef and chicken. Behind me at the express checkout was a woman pushing her grandchild in a stroller. The little boy looked like he was First Nations Canadian and his grandmother called him “Junior”. It reminded me of Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian”, in which the narrator is called Junior and he says that half the guys on reservations are called “Junior”.

            When I got home I tried to clean up my place for Nick’s visit. All I managed by the time he arrived was to vacuum the cat hair from most of the couch. Nick is the first guest I’ve had in the apartment since the bedbug infestation began in the summer of 2014. Now that that seems to be over though, I still have to contend with cockroaches, plus the chronic odour problem of two old cats that didn’t smell bad even six months ago. Though it could use some fixing up to make it pleasant for the aesthetically obsessed, I think I have a pretty nice place here, and not just because of the price and the location. I don’t think Nick was impressed though, as he asked me if I’ve ever considered moving out.

            We chatted for a while, over tea, and then set about to try and make a voice recording of the reading of a script that Nick has written, for an animated film called “Exile in Steeltown”. It’s centred on a group of rich idiot criminals known as the “Genitalia Crime Family”, and my character. My character, Todd Lehr, is hired by the Genitalia’s as sort of a criminal career counsellor to help the family realize their dreams of turning Hamilton, Ontario into the crime capital of the world. What the family doesn’t realize though is that Todd is also an undercover cop.

            Nick used a field-recording device to record us both as we ran through the script a couple of times. It will be interesting and fun to hear my voice coming out of an animated character.

            After our mission was accomplished, Nick took me for a beer at Tennessee, which used to be Mitzi’s Sister before it was Tennessee in the first place. I wonder if there’s a bar in Nashville called “Ontario”.

            We shared road stories of cross-Canada travels by thumb, bus and train.

            When I got home I was only a little late for my usual time of making dinner. I watched a couple of episodes of The Big Bang Theory. Keith Carradine played Penny’s father in one episode. When she called him to announce a major event in her life that he’d been excluded from, he told her that he’d backed the truck over her pet pig and killed it. When Bernadette asked Penny what they did with the pig after it died, she said that they’d buried it in the back yard, next to Penny’s grandmother. Bernadette asked why they hadn’t eaten it. Penny told her that it was an important part of the family. Bernadette asked, “The breakfast family?”