It’s simple I know, but I’ve always wanted to be in the centre of celebration. Any celebration. Okay, not the centre maybe, in the way of self-approval. Even outside looking in at gatherings of like-minded people sharing a single moment of togetherness, gladness, harmony.
Or: across the street from it, watching, catching the overall glow of it.
Or: okay, outside the province even, hoping to get a ride to where the celebration is before it’s called off for rain or supper, and I’m left picking up trampled handbills and trying to blow up punctured balloons among echoes of abandoned gaiety and airborne germs from all the hurrahs that were not mine. Then going to a bar and getting shit-faced before going home and stepping on a rake that closes up my eyes for the rest of summer. That kind of thing.
Wait, now. . . . Is that a parade?
GORDON PINSENT 