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Fidelity of Trees: Part 2
Jacob Banco
Today, a promise between Phoebe and me: no subletting our space unless both of us stay in the same place.
I promised Phoebe I’d forget that damn straw devil and its infernal maker. She says I have too much time on my hands, “Idle—the devil,” and such superstitious nonsense. I caught someone filming me while I was staking out our building. I felt my privacy evaporate, and that my behaviour was open to enormous amounts of misinterpretation (some can’t see the truth through the mediums). I have begun to seek out the trees, instead of demons and devils, like the mighty tiger and my cousin Dean.
“Keep your head down, and stay out of the trees,” my grandfather told Dean the year he got his first set of golf clubs and my sister bought a print of a snow tiger in a tree. That same year I was uprooted by my first girlfriend and began to nurture my strong dislike for patchouli, patchouly and even pachouli.
As I said, I’ve been spending time with trees, and when I do, I feel what we all know—their fidelity. We forget we don’t know trees. We don’t name them, we don’t talk with them, we don’t touch them or listen to them . . . They are not of our kind, yet they give us more than we give them. We admire them until they offend us and then we cut them down for being true to their nature—growing in their own directions. You give them attention, and they grow with you. You don’t, and they still grow but you don’t see it. Yes, Howard’s grandfather was in hospital. He thought his grandfather was withering into a trunk of the man he loved, but, like the trees themselves, Howard’s grandfather has recovered and is showing us life. As a child I loved going for walks in Central Park with my sister and grandparents and their dog, Lucky. I remember the canopies of the trees being imposing, but I would always return to one willow whenever we went for a walk. Phoebe and I were there this past weekend and I took her to where my favourite tree used to be. We sat on the ground and I told her about our family walks in the park. She told me that, given enough time, the branches of the willow would have touched the ground, making a curtain, hiding us away from the world, and that it was okay to cry over the stump that is all that is left of it.
This spring the world seems colder, distant, and yet we still welcome it, as if our kinship were excited and we were tightly fastened to the truth—trees, and their lives, do matter; and only touch can translate our feelings to weeping willows, plum trees and people.
Today Dean will be among the trees while trying to stay clear of them, my sister will love the life in every one, and Phoebe and I will watch them grow, talk with them and learn their names. Straw devils be damned because today I hope to gain more understanding of the fidelity of trees.
~JB
Taking the “Me” out of Women Doesn’t Mean You’ve Won!
Jacob Banco
My good friend caught me searching her computer for something to post. I know, terrible. I should have waited until she left me alone. So I had to make her a deal: she won’t throw me out of her apartment until after Phoebe’s temporary residents leave on Saturday if I let her write something and I guarantee to post it. Also, she doesn’t want me to edit it. So it’s all her.
First, some facts that we women have to overcome every day: we menstruate because we ate an apple, it is our fault that men force themselves on us, and our work is less valuable than men’s work.
I was in the car with my mom years ago when this other car with three guys in it pulled up next to us and asked her to pull over and made jokes about her and me. Now that I’m older I see the ridiculousness in her showing her wedding ring and screaming, “I’m married!” and I understand the patheticness of those guys. They eventually sped off. My mom was shaking. I asked her what they wanted and she told me, “They’re assholes. Stay away from ignorant men.”
I still remember that advice, but I’ve learned that even intelligent men can be assholes and think with their biology first. Granted a lot of men don’t act on their biology, sometimes to our enormous irritation and frustration, but it’s still there. Yes, women talk and think about sex as much as boys, and we enjoy it more, if we’re allowed to (some of you ladies know what I mean).
Here’s some truth: everyone is different—everyone! But some men treat all women the same.
Jacob keeps reading over this and telling me to make a point, but there is no point—this all is the point! Stop seeing us as girls or women and start seeing us as individual selves. We do it for you. We get over your shortcomings. My last two boyfriends were shorter than me and the guy I’m with now is a bit of a loser, but we laugh about it and he doesn’t make me feel that there is something wrong with me even though we both agree there are obviously things wrong with him.
There are some bitches that use really nice guys and the guys can’t see what the girls are doing, like he can’t see that she is so low. Everyone is blinded by biology, which means he’s using her just as much as she’s using him, until they fall in love and live happily every after, God willing.
I hope everyone finds love, even Jacob, because Phoebe treats you like shit!
All right, Jacob, that’s all you get from me. We women need to tell our secrets just like men need to keep them to themselves.
~ Anonymous
Stephen J. Harper
Jacob Banco
Continuing with the couch surfing, I stayed with this poor bastard. He actually sent this off!
To the other Stephen J. Harper,
You are making my life hell! Yes, my name is Stephen J. Harper too. My middle name is Jason, not Joseph, but it might as well be, the way I’m being treated, and there seems to be no end in sight. You’re probably kicking back, thinking how lucky you are to be Stephen Harper, but I’m not. It’s no fun anymore. Everyone has some problem with me and it has nothing to do with me! I went for an interview a few years ago and one of the interviewers joked, “I wouldn’t vote for you again.” It’s been downhill ever since.
In my line of work I have to travel a fair amount, but lately, since the world woke up and saw Canada win all that damn gold, I’ve become fearful of travelling because the world now knows a new Canadian name. That’s right, Stephen Harper, and don’t let me stop you from imagining the trouble it is to get on a plane when the guard has heard your name but doesn’t have a clue what you look like until you’re standing right in front of him, and then he wants to discuss your politics while the PA is demanding passengers board the flight. Some topics that have detained me over the years you’ve been in office: the tar sands, for starters; the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which is brand new but has provided lots to berate a powerful political figure about when he ends up in the passport queue with no security guards or diplomatic papers to get through the gate: tuna, polar bears, sharks, seals, salmon, even moose (I have no idea what your image consultants are doing for Canadians but we’re becoming very unpopular); and then there is the war. Out of respect I will only repeat the question a young Mexican woman asked me last week, “Whatever happened to the Canadian Peacekeepers?”
Canadians used to sew Canadian flags on their backpacks so the world wouldn’t think they were Americans, but now being a Canadian is its own burden. But you know all this better than I do. I’ll bet you have people come up to you and say they hate the HST (like the prime minister has anything to do with the provincial premiers who tell the voters one thing and then, when elected, go and do what they said they wouldn’t do), I bet you do. What about when you have to show your identification, do you cringe? I do, because I know there’ll be a joke. I don’t use my credit card anymore either, since I accidentally drove through Calgary and some overzealous, conservative storekeeper wouldn’t give it back until the police arrived, and then the jokes really began. I think one of the officers wanted to throw me in jail just because he wanted to tell his friends he threw Stephen Harper behind bars.
Intimacy issues? Yes, me too, Stephen, but it isn’t from anxiety. I was dating this amazing woman and it just didn’t work because of what you were doing, like it had anything to do with me. I’m losing confidence in myself, aren’t you?
The main point of this letter is to tell you that you’re drawing too much attention away from me and making people only think of you! If I have any influence, please, please, please do the right thing and let me get some credit for something positive in the world. Others only see Stephen J. Harper and not the rest of us, but we all matter, don’t we? Don’t I, brother-in-name? I know I can blame my parents, but for things like this it’s better to blame the man making the name than the people who made the man.
Sincerely,
S.J. Harper
