These days...

have been difficult. Explaining would swerve dangerously close to clotting self-pity, suffice to say the real world is kicking my ass.

Days like Sunday are the worst: when I have nothing pressing to do and nobody I want to talk to is in this city and in the silence that is my current stereo-less existence, my mind jerks around the salmon that I reeled in last New Years Day. It jerked around in a frenzy for fifteen minutes, pulling my shoulders out of joint and demanding my numb fingers function. Then it settled down for about five minutes and I caught my breath and methodically reeled it in as the boat trolled back and forth in front of the wall of cloud that sat on the hills of Sooke. We repeated the saga, my salmon and I, for about four cycles, before I got it close enough to the boat for someone to scoop it up in the net and deposit it, writing and gasping on the aluminum floorboards of the boat.

Reeling my mind in took until four in the afternoon when I gave up. Let 'er spool out behind me as I walked down Bloor street into the wind.