passing time

It is friday just like that. I didn't notice the days changing from one into the next. We had been in a slump for the last few weeks, hell it's been months. Everything's gonna be ok I've been saying to him at strategic low points throughout the day. We are gonna be alright. Winter is not particularly our friend and only exasperates the feelings of entrapment. Waiting on a small gold mine- the mythological liquidation of my parental estate looms over us cradled within the hollows of overcast skies. Just a matter of time and we will breath easy, pay off the master card, the personal loan, buy off part of the mortgage for one daughter, help pay the studies for the other and finally purchase a piece of land of our own. Often times we keep ourselves busy drawing, quilting, writing cover letters and sending off resumes, painting, reading, cooking and running bubble baths. Hot brandy has been our maintenance drug of choice. At almost twelve dollars a pop, we gradually incorporate a compensation plan to stretch the time between alcoholic shopping excursions; we smoke grass from our apple pipe. The grass has been gifted to us from our one local good friend who lives a couple of tankfuls of gas away. Local is a matter of perspective I suppose.

These are on our good days. And there are many. There are many of the other kind too. The kind of day where I can't bring myself to open a book, pick up a pencil, scour the meagre help wanted or when I am feeling too fat to make onion and herb sour dough fry bread. After stumbling through meaningless internet sites, flicking alternately through my friend's pages and my own, hitting my stat counter and updating fb, after hitting the cbc commentary a zillion times I often find myself on mls; the real estate property search engine.

Obliged for its gift of promise, I revisit my 'favourites' that I keep hostage in my top right corner, I take them out to gleam and glean and dream, I take them out to hypothesis and speculate. My little dreamboats of broken houses and barren lands, north facing, east facing, dilapidated workshops and greenhouses, boasting mountain views and crackling creeks. Sitting on the living room floor of our rented trailer home, cushioned by the pumpkin coloured wall to wall ply, I imagine a beautiful life with birds and goats and donkeys and bees, All this immediately and for free with a click of my computer key. It's my fix my mania, my addiction, my need, my inclination, my habit. It gives me all the hope I need.