Sidewalk patio of the Just Us Cafe — Wolfville, Nova Scotia

Caucasian male, late 20s, with brush cut, sunglasses perched on top of head, and wearing black fleecie.

You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe, Christopher Potter (Knopf Canada)

Page 59:

It’s Not About You

Not at first did the gods reveal all things to mortals, but in time, by inquiry, they made better discoveries. -Xenophanes

Our understanding of how the contents of the large-scale universe are arranged – as a hierarchy of stars in motion – is the result of hundreds of years of scientific investigation. Whatever the scientific method has become, it was not always as it is now. It has evolved over time, in tandem with our understanding of the universe, and doubtless will continue to evolve as our understanding of the universe deepens. Science and the universe are inseparable.

My first birthday was five days after the moon landing, but my mother always liked to brag that I took my first “giant leap” before Neil Armstrong. My father, in his excitement over the Apollo 11 mission, took photographs of our bulby television set. Sadly, the pictures all failed, the screen turned to a murky green in the blinding Sylvania flash. It was cause for deep disappointment. You have to understand, he was a Navy man. He was a flight mech. in the Korean war, keeping the planes going, testing them by day, but never flying by night, never completing a mission because he was colour blind. He was nineteen.

Ami McKay

Parc Jeanne Mance, on the grass near Esplanade

Female, 20s, dark curly hair. Wearing a yellow dress, lying on a blanket.

The Flying Troutmans, Miriam Toews (Knopf)

Page 33:

That night Logan came home drunk. I heard him fall down in the kitchen. I went in and switched on the light and he said, Oh man, dude, that is a seriously diaphanous nightgown you’ve got on. I switched the light off again and knelt down beside his head. C’mon, let’s get you up to bed. He wanted to stay there.

Day. Full sun.
Noveline: People always picture angels wearing nightgowns, don’t they? But just imagine the drafts. (shudders) I think heaven would be a place where everyone could wear pyjamas all the time.
Romana: (looking over) Then I guess we’re already there.

Saleema Nawaz

Southbound, Yonge and Bloor

Caucasian male, late 50s, with short grey hair, wearing glasses, long black coat, and grey pinstriped suit, with white and red duffel bag between his feet.

Death in Holy Order, P.D. James (Knopf)

Page 135:

He had tidied away his first marriage as methodically as he tidied his desk. That silent visitation at the corner of the stair or glimpsed through his study window, the sudden shock of hearing a half-remembered laugh, were mercifully supine, overlaid by parish duties, the weekly routine, his second marriage. He had consigned his first marriage to a dark oubliette of his mind and shot the bolt, but not before he had almost formally passed sentence on it.

He’s happy. Their life together is good. He can imagine their future, hands clasped, eyes and shoulders facing front. Without hesitation, he knows their view is the same. There was that day, so long ago, when he glimpsed only the back of another’s head and wondered. He holds her close to him, his faith renewed that they’ll meet again in this life or another, forever forgiven and all hearts revealed.

30 in 30: Gil Adamson reading from Ashland. Buy it here.

Northbound, University and St. Clair West

Caucasian male, late 20s, with short brown hair, wearing grey turtleneck under hooded wool jacket, and brown leather boots.

Nature Girl, Carl Hiaasen (Knopf)

Page 95:

Fry sat down on his backpack and contemplated the obvious futility of opening an eco-lodge in a trailer park. Based on what he saw, he didn’t have high hopes for his mother’s nature mural. She had bestowed upon her psychedelic macaw the lush eyelashes of a dairy cow and the dainty tongue of a fruit bat.

Forced to take summer art classes as a boy, he spent the most hypnotic hour of his youth scribbling his name into the bare branches of a pencil crayon tree. While the children around him laboured with “Kim,” “John,” and “Dana,” to no great effect, Maximilian II finally wrote his name out in full, his tree blossoming before his very eyes.

Read my short story “Instamatic” at Joyland.ca