Gambit walks into the house. Lei lives here with his mother still. With his older brother and younger sister having flown the coup, Lei is the last one remaining. The last one yet to grow up one could say.
"Is your friend here?" asks Lei's mom from upstairs. She can't even see who's walked in but recognizes the voices from below. She sits in her favourite spot in the living room planted right in front of her tv and watching whatever asian game show or soap happens to be on. And sometimes its in different languages which she does not even understand like korean or japanese.
"Yes. Gambit is here." answers Lei to his mother.
"Oh good." Lei's mother gets up and walks over and looks down the spiraling staircase. Gambit and Lei stand at the bottom taking off their shoes.
"Hi Gambit. Oh... you look different. Your cheeks look fatter" says Lei's mom.
It snowed this weekend. When I got to the nursing home, I walked in and told Hazel as such. Her response was "I wonder if it's going to last more than twenty seconds". She would soon regret these words. We got twenty centimeters of the white stuff.
As I stood there with the shovel, scraping the semi-packed snow with the loose fresh snow, thousands and millions of the little white flakes continued to fall down on me. One by one covering me from my head to toe. Yet I continued to slave away pushing it all off the sidewalk and onto the road over the curb. This went on and on until the whole sidewalk was cleared along the length of the house. I figured the large vehicles on the road would just slide through it and mash it all up. While shovelling the sidewalk at the front of the house, I could hear the sound of the buses engine revving away so I headed back to the other sidewalk to look. There it was, stuck. I walked around the back and to either side. The people in the bus were staring at me half soaked and covered in snow holding my shovel with my wet hiking boots on. Then I thought to myself, could this have been my fault?
Outside the pitter patter of rain splashes like static on the screen. Chilly nights and brisk days are upon us. I have not seen too much of the light of day. The fish is gone and Elden fights no more. The bowl is empty. The water is dry. The rocks are bare. The energy is gone. Quietly I break. Cracks form. Time turns. Into the secret garden I go.
A piece of mint chocolate lay half eaten on the floor. Not too far above is the open hand of an outstretched arm of Lei passed out on the couch. Fingers covered in chocolate, his guitar sits beside the couch with the amplifier still on. The strings are all stained not from sweat or drinks but more chocolate. You could still here a small buzz coming from the amp. In the days and weeks that led up to Xmas, the amount of chocolate grew and grew. A box from friends. A box from work. A box from the relatives. A box from the store just because they were irresistable. Make that three boxes. I was weak. Then finally on the eve of one of the biggest holidays of the year, fate stepped in to teach him a lesson.
The smeared gob around his mouth was no longer the rich, sweet mixture it once was. Now it was just mostly dried powder stuck to his skin, maybe even high in cocoa still. Though probably not quite the eight-five percent content as stated on the wrapping. On this evening, Lei died from chocolate overdose.
*snaps out of his dream*
I'm so tired. My biological clock is all out of whack these days. Getting up super late only to rush out to meet friends or take care of some small errand at the nursing home. Then there's the tiny bit of gift shopping to do. I watched Gambit pick out his gifts for his family while I proceeded to almost finish off purchasing what remains of the chinese zodiac Swarovski crystals. All that is left is to find the rabbit. Finding this last piece may prove to be rather difficult.
At the xmas party, the gift exchange was a bit of a flop though funny still. The set of four martini glasses I bought turned out to be only three. I never checked the contents of the box and just wrapped it up blindly. On the receiving end of things, I got one of those battery operated massagers in the shape of a big bee. The four legs vibrate when you press the nose. This is almost identical to what I put into the gift exchange at last years party. I guess you could call it karma...
I wasn't much in the mood to celebrate this year. On the eve of xmas, I picked up a small gift set consisting of eye liner, lip gloss and finger nail polish. A friend recently suggested the lip gloss and nail polish set. Remembering back to the image of the young girl's eyes when I first saw her. The rain had ruined her make up and the mascara had run down her face. I wanted to get the eye liner in the set.
This would be the only significant gift that I would buy or give this year for someone being deprived of what many people have. It was quite late but I drove out to the house anyways. There it was still, way up on the hill protected by tall trees. My truck was parked at the bottom of the road. The bottom of the drive way. There was nowhere else to go from here but up the long driveway and to the house. Walking up the long set of stairs I saw no one in the windows. There was also no sound from inside the house yet the xmas lights were on.
*ding dong*
The blurred image of a person appears through the old stained glass. The kind you'd find in a house built some thirty or forty years ago but not the classical type with different colours held together by those lead beads. The door opened and an old woman appears.
"Hi, can I help you?"
"Hi, my name is Lei. I'm the person who helped Jade when she got into some trouble a few weeks ago. She came to my home that evening... I wanted to give her a gift."
"I'm sorry, she doesn't live here anymore."
"Do you know where she is now?"
"She was sent to Saskatchewan."
I left and drove back home. I felt stunned, shocked... I felt empty and at a loss. Xmas day, I was invited over to a friends house in the evening for their annual gathering. Just to spend time together and have a few drinks. They would bring out the good stuff like the hundred year old bottle of cognac we had last year. This time I felt tired and didn't want to drink.
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Gambit is flying back later today. Another couple of friends are flying today also. I booked my own flight to Montreal today. Leaving on friday at midnight, I'll barely get there in time for new years eve. A week to forget and start fresh. A week to explore the old city and its streets. A week to take some pictures again.
It's less than a week before this years xmas,
and all through the house, not a blog could be seen,
not even a word.
Liferaft is busy, Sausalito too,
gotta pay all those bills, the new place needs fixin's,
Make time for some sweat and ice skates and pucks,
Needs to be fit and get a personal trainer too.
Tsubame is stumped, time is short,
he needs to save up, before he leaves shore,
photos and photos, he needs to take more,
a young woman waits, for he is engaged.
Gambit c'est ici, Pour un visit seulement,
La premiere il est malade, la clock est tickin?
plus de l'annee passee, plus dee marche c'est fini,
Pardon le francais, il's alle au montreal.
Winter is cold, chicago is chilly,
yet brightly she is, among the stars up high,
No more teaching? No more majura?
Back in the big city, good luck and good night.
Is all forgiven? Have we all sinned?
Study those verses, keep praying n praying,
Good luck with your sister, I'm not sure what else to say,
Hope for your family and all the best to them.
The year is gone, so is my job,
So I sat around, watching life go on,
took many pictures, practiced a language I did,
There were many new faces and adventures abound.
This blog has been fun. Don't call me a geek.
Hope you all enjoyed, the pictures that I take
the companies that I stake, and the words that I place.
A merry bloggin xmas to you folks!
My thoughts are filled with things which I can not control. What should I do? Where should I go? Why should I be? Everything seems so confusing at times that I am compelled to just give up and run away. Destiny, fate, purpose and faith, what good are these?
A gust of wind blows and blows me towards somewhere which I can not see. There is no sidewalk or path clearly laid out in front of me. Just the two or three feet, that is all I can see.
The wheels keep going. The ground keeps rolling. And I keep on going.
I thought I was going to miss my flight back from Vegas. I had spent the morning back at Mandalay Bay hoping to run into someone except that in doing so, the morning airport rush appeared instead. I wish I had just kept my room at the Luxor and stayed another night or two.
There was a huge lineup for people waiting for taxi's at the casino level entrance. I went to the lower level pickup/drop off area and the lineup was one third the size but just as slow. After waiting approximately forty minutes and seeing only three cabs come, I went over to the shuttle stop and jumped on the first shuttle that came. No advanced tickets required.
Once at the airport, I and other would be passengers waited before finding out that most flights were delayed. Airport staff said that the flight control tower was the cause and others said that there was tarmac construction going on. Regardless, my flight was delayed and me being late made no difference. The only good thing was that I got switched to a non-stop flight.
Having the window seat, I was able to fall asleep before the plane even took off. A middle aged couple from South Africa sat beside me and quietly talked to themselves. When they first sat down, I had only smiled and acknowledged them. But just as the captains voice came on over the intercom to tell us that drinks and snacks were about to served, I woke up.
I watched a man in the window seat in front of me look at the stewardess as they pushed the serving trolley past his row. He wasn't saying anything but you could see the worry in his eyes through the space between the two seats. Would they miss serving his row or not?
They didn't. Then it was my row. I got my drinks and snacks and suddenly I felt the need to speak. Or rather, I needed to be entertained in some way. I said hello to the south african couple beside me. They responded in kind and we talked for the rest of the trip. Mostly me and the wife because she was the closest. Her husband was reading a book. They were an interesting couple, owned a large two and a half acre estate. Having been married for 39 years, they are both are religious and heavily involved in their community. André du Toit is a mail proficiency analyst. His wife Elzabé or Mrs. du Toit has an interior design business and recently started some kind of members forum for people to speak. Once a month they hold a gathering of up to eighteen hundred people in the banquet hall of their home. They have a business card which appears to have been made just to promote them and no business or organization. Their name is french but they have a distant Danish background. The writing on the card is partly in Africance. A language with a bit of dutch thrown into it. The card has two drawings of a bird native to their country. Tall white feathered birds with long thin legs and a long tail and neck. The bird lives on their estate. What a wonderful place this must be and their invitation to come visit should be an eye opening experience some day.
They have two sons both close to my age. Both very busy working alot. One in particular is an airplane pilot and highly sought after. Apparently, a BBC film crew from the UK book him months in advance because he doesn't mind flying around in circles repetitively. With camera operators held at the entranceways by straps and gear in hand, they record footage of various wildlife or objects from above. The doors are removed in preparation for these trips.
The Du Toit's own two airplanes. The ever popular Cessna four seater and a semi-commercial ten seater. André himself has a pilots licence but just for pleasure.
The couple always go travelling by themselves as the time alone is greatly needed amidst their busy life. They are a religious couple taking a few days off in Vegas before heading to Vancouver, then to Kamloops where a floating house boat is waiting for them.
They stayed at the Venetian the same days that I was in Vegas. During this time, Elzabé had some bronchiole problems and had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance twice. They still managed to take a helicopter tour of the canyons. Elzabé has had heart problems so I hope that everything goes well for her. This December, they want to have a white christmas. So it will probably be somewhere like Switzerland or Austria but not Denmark. I could tell that they are very strick with their religion. Elzabé had mentioned that they didn't want to be anywhere which didn't have their same beliefs. They weren't catholic but christians and some of the countries didn't have groups which follow christianity.
The plane landed and I gave them my name and phone number in case they needed anything while they were in Vancouver. They were staying at the Renaissance downtown. A five star hotel which I went to regularly last year for a series of real estate seminars. I don't anticipate any problems with them. Tomorrow they're hiring a driver to take them around.