Driving Minnie's Piano (14 page)

^{I saw this guy on TV from
Carlsbad, California, talking about this thing that happened. He
thought there was a problem with the bridge of an expressway. He
heard an odd noise each time he drove over it. He thought something
was wrong with the bridge but he let it go. One day, the bridge
fell down and it killed someone who had been driving over it. He
said he'd never keep his mouth shut again about something he
thought was wrong. He became a great and tireless complainer in the
high hopes that he could save someone else some
grief.}

^{I identify more with losers
and victims and people with problems than I do with successful
types and the obnoxious winners of the world - the sports stars,
the Emmy-award-winning actors and the blatantly wealthy. But I'm
not always good at following through with my altruistic
nature.}

^{Yet something about the death
of Kevin Shawn Coker makes me feel more connected to people. And
it's all tied in to feeling some personal loss of a fellow surfer,
a member of my extended family of surfing.}

^{But I wasn't
even here that blustery Saturday. I was in Paris, staying at a
cheap hotel on the Left Bank. I could spit into the Seine out my
window if I wanted to (but I didn't). I was there as part of
another tribe, one of writers and readers, part of some gargantuan
book trade show called
le Salon
du Livre
. I liked the family
feeling of being embraced (well, at least acknowledged) by people
whose lives were tied to writing creative thoughts down on paper
and sharing them with an audience. And while in Paris, I hunkered
down on a bench along the Seine and studied that brown, sluggish,
depressed little river that has been so romanticized by novelists
and filmmakers over the years. The river is imprisoned by high rock
walls. The water moves along in a dreary European sort of way,
without any real enthusiasm. It doesn't smell that good. But it was
the only body of water available to me and so I mediated by its
banks and felt homesick for Nova Scotia, for an animated ocean, for
waves, for sweet-smelling sea air, for surging salt water and for
my next chance to go surfing.}

^{And although I was treated
well in Paris, I felt disconnected and anonymous for the most part.
Not a lot of eye contact and people spend way too much time just
sitting around in cafés and bars drinking minuscule cups of coffee
or glasses of red wine. I think that would lead to a sort of
lethargy that is alien to the energized Nova Scotia creative
mind.}

^{So I was glad to get back
home. About a week after Kevin had drowned, I went surfing at the
spot where he had disappeared and I caught some fine early morning
waves in his honour. I apologized to the wind and the sea for not
having been around to lend assistance or give advice. I knew the
innocence of surfing here was gone for good but I still felt a
strong, powerful bond with the sea, the indifferent sea that gives
and takes. And it's almost a backhanded reminder that caution and
caring are the greatest of human responsibilities that should not
be shirked.}

^{Spring Surf}

^{Spring in Nova Scotia could be
dull if it wasn't for the waves. The sky is a low, soft curtain of
grey wool and the sea is the colour of gun metal as I pull my car
to a stop at a small crescent pocket of sand on the shoreline of
the Atlantic forty-five minutes from downtown
Halifax.}

^{The snow on the ground is
melting but some of the boulders along the shoreline are glazed
with ice. I ease my surfboard out of the car, take a final tug on
the zipper of my drysuit, inhale deeply, and then sprint across the
sand and into the sea. Within seconds I've lost contact with
mainland life and I'm back in my element.}

^{I take slow, easy strokes and
watch the dreamy kelp undulate back and forth beneath me in the
frigid clear water. I see my breath turn to smoke in the air. I
watch a head-high wave form like a dark monument, sliding towards
me, breaking from a perfect peak thanks to an unseen reef of rocks
beneath the surface. I realize for the first time that when the
wave hits the shallows of the reef it's laced with slivers of
ice.}

^{This happens in the spring.
The ice breaks up in a nearby inlet, sifts out to sea and then
winds drive it back towards shore. No icebergs here. Just small
sargassos of slush ice and infinite variations on the traditional
refrigerator ice cube.}

^{I'm still paddling but safely
out of reach of the wave as it goes critical, bowls out and then
sends a shower of water and ice into an emphatic cascade. There's a
hollow place forming big enough to squeeze a Nova Scotian surfer
into if he had the right set of tools and I'm hoping I'll soon have
a chance with this wave's cousin. When the frosty lip touches down
on the mother sea, all that blitzkrieg of ice sounds like a box of
fluorescent light bulbs dropped from a second-storey
window.}

^{I find my destination: the
middle of the cove just outside of the peak. I sit up on my board,
scan the headlands still whitewashed in snow and genuinely grieve
that winter and its frosty Nova Scotian sidekick, early spring, is
just about gone. Summer is soft and easy here. Winter is hard and
slick. I sometimes prefer the latter and I'm happy that the big bad
Canadian winter doesn't give up without offering me this particular
gift: a day of sea and ice.}

^{The water around me has soft
cotton balls of melting slush mixed in the mosaic of dagger ice:
some long and pointy like stilettos, other chunks cut clean like
pizza slices. There is no wind to muck up the design, only waves
pulling themselves up from the deep, waves that have trundled
silently here to these shores from maybe three hundred miles away,
from storms that will have no effect on these shores . . . except
for their generous outpouring of waves.}

^{I study the waves, wait for
company. It arrives as if on schedule. An adolescent harbour seal,
little more than a pup, pokes his dark nose up a few metres away.
He flicks his doglike head once and stares at me with those big
obsidian puppy-dog eyes. Although I know he has sharp teeth capable
of punching easy holes into my mortal flesh, I expect he's
satisfied with whatever fishy breakfast he's already had and
considers me an ally, or at least a curious diversion. He slips
down into the water, passes like a dark shadow beneath me and comes
up to survey me from the other side.}

^{This whole scene has such a
reverential quality to it that I'm in no big hurry to flip into
hyper-surfer mode. I sniff the air, feel the cold seeping slowly
into my feet from a sea that is still hovering near the zero
Celsius mark. I close my eyes briefly and when I open them it's as
if I've conjured things from the sky. I hear them first. The
squadron of Canada geese is skirting the coast, travelling west to
east before turning north at the Canso Strait for Labrador. They
come in low and loud with their wonky chant until, passing directly
above me, they stop honking so the seal and I can only hear the
thud of heavy wings beating through the air. As they pass
immediately overhead, I'm staring straight up like when I was a
teenager sitting near the end of an airport runway, watching the
big winged machines taking off above.}

^{I scoop a trapezoidal pane of
ice from the sea and bite into it. Fresh water, a clatter of cold
on my teeth until they ache. And now I'm ready to dance on the
half-frozen sea.}

^{I let three waves slide
beneath me, waiting for the sun to line up with a rift in the
clouds. When the light bolts down suddenly from above, everything
changes colour. The sea is a hard surface of blue. The snowy
headlands scream out blinding white. The sandy wet shoreline glows
with some inner life and the cove of ice and water where I sit
takes on the quality of a stained glass window.}

^{Nothing for it but to paddle.
Shoreward. Through the exotic debris. Three deep strokes and I
match the speed of the incoming wave, feel its power beneath my
board. I stand as the wave sets up a long clean wall with its own
clever graffiti of ice and slush pronouncing the singular beautiful
artistry of the Atlantic.}

^{As I drop down the face of the
sea, I feel the old adrenaline rush of a smooth descent. I sense
the abundant power looming above me but glide dreamlike in silence
except for the hip-hop staccato of hard chunks of ice clanking
against my board. At the bottom of the wave is a curdled bed of
soft slush and I feel the tug of its density as I carve a bottom
turn and then argue against gravity, arcing back up high onto the
wall of the wave.}

^{I'm travelling east now with
serious intent, gaining speed, almost parallel to the wave whose
back I am riding. Behind me the wave has begun to pitch forward.
The crack of breaking ice mixes with the slurp of sea dragging up
the softer stuff, a sound that might seem ominous if I didn't have
speed as an ally.}

^{But I'm free and feeling fine
and temporarily indomitable as I slip through the vertical
icefield, a wall of water filled with heirlooms, knick-knacks and
memorabilia of the season gone by. Behind me the wave has grown
hollow and the sun has allowed it to show its true colours of blue
mixed with green commingled with those blazing diamonds. I'm a
little too dazzled by it all and lose my focus, allowing my board
to slow just a hair. I tip up on one foot and tilt back towards the
maw of the wave but recover my balance quickly and shift my weight
forward to increase speed.}

^{All my early morning
confidence is suddenly shaken as I realize the wave is spitting ice
cubes from the lip now. All a body can do is tuck in low, keep
one's head down and watch the wall get steeper and steeper up
ahead. I decide to trust instinct over reason and stay tucked,
assess the locomotive cave of sea and ice that is consuming me and
hope for the best.}

^{The best
would be a quick trip back to sunlight but instead the sea decides
to have its way with me. My feet are still dutifully planted on my
board as the lip of the wave, dense with the memory of a brutal
winter, takes a broadside punch at my wetsuit-hooded head. I feel
myself cartwheeling forward into the drink and suddenly am reminded
what freezing seawater does to the fully exposed human face. First,
I feel the small razors of wafer ice slicing at me as I connect
with the surface. Then I slip under and hear the magnificent
stereo
whump
of a wave in triumph over a mortal surfer.
I'm held under for mere seconds that expand exponentially in a
world where time is truly mutable. Then I surface, gasping for good
air and feeling the very identifiable pain of a short but volcanic
headache brought on by a Canadian wipeout.}

^{When the wave is through with
me, I scramble back onto my board, paddle for the safety of deeper
water and take deep clean gulps of air until I can focus again.
Another formation of geese takes possession of the sky above and
the young seal pops up again nearby to blink at me in innocent
wonder.}

^April

^{Sunyata, not long after she
gets her driver's license, drives her car into a ditch in Eastern
Passage and calls home an hour after midnight. She is okay. The car
has a big dent and some scratches. While it is being towed out,
somebody steals her wallet. The next day she doesn't want to drive.
In fact, nearly a week goes by before she considers driving
again.}

^{That same
week, I meet with a cartoon channel executive to pitch an animated
series idea based on a kid's book of mine called
Famous At Last
. “Fun, not dark” is what she wants. Fun and happy and maybe
the slightest bit (but not too much)
meaningful.}

^{But especially, not dark.
There are way too many dark cartoons out there, she says. My idea
is fun and happy and has lots of personality and it means something
but, oops, I inadvertently suggest it even has an “educational
element.”}

^{“We're not about education,”
the executive says immediately.}

^{“I didn't exactly mean
educational.”}

^{“We aren't into
moralizing.”}

^{Neither is Fred, the
protagonist of my book, who wants to be a Saturday morning cartoon
character. He is just a kid trying to cope with the heavy-duty,
complex adult world.}

^{And, of course, then it dawns
on me. Fred is me. I am Fred. I am still nine years old. Although
this is a problem for the cartoon channel because of their target
audience. Fred is going to have to grow up for them and become
twelve.}

^{“Fred's very sophisticated for
a nine-year-old,” I say in his defence, implying that in his own
head he is almost twelve. I realize I'm bending over for the media.
I make poor little Freddie lose three very valuable years of his
life, just like that, for a TV executive.}

^{But part of me truly is still
nine, or maybe twelve. I have not figured out the adult world at
all even though I play the games. I play games well despite the
fact that most of the time I ignore the rules. But, after all,
isn't that what a kid has to do to survive in a world ruled by
adults?}