why i am not a townie

I am at the Duke, again the pint has been poured when I thought that the bar keep was serving someone else. Sadly with the near parity of the dollars I can afford only one and thus this will be short. I won’t stoop to drinking India Beer if I am not at a music gig.

Ah there’s Terry maybe there is hope…


Up the street there is a quite nice flat, it is the perfect size for me - three rooms, one to sleep in one to work and read in one to eat in. In truth it is one room to big as I sit in on the chesterfield in the kitchen. There is a deck. It is the urban equal Sullivan’s Loop.

It is a refuge. When in it - the flat is on the second floor, I can shut out the world. It proves – while I have no books here – that I don’t need much space. It is the perfect place for that in depth report about me whenever that happens – lives in a flat just off down town that is in transition but reminds him of East Baltimore – an area he never lived in.

I can walk to the Duke – and stumble back without the RNC tailing me. I have my Montréal bagel by simply wandering over – well not now as it is closed until after Regatta Day. I am quite pleased.

Then I am offered supper by a once fallen bayman who has once again seen the light. We have it outside on a picnic bench overlooking the ocean and I realise that townie life is an interior life.

I would do as much as possible outside. The reunion with the wayward Wisconsinite was on a picnic table out back overlooking the ocean, dinners and the start of the evening in Bonne Bay was out at the picnic table as the shade edged up the hills on the opposite shore - there always seemed to have been a picnic table. But even at Sullivan’s Loop when someone listened to some misinformed townie and took down the railing with a built-in table – and the clothesline – I would still sit out for my morning coffee and my evening meal. There is a deck rear deck in Pleasant Street but I forget about it – to the point that two Globes and a digital camera brochure were drenched in two rainstorms. It is not used even for drying clothes – but that it because the line is so pathetic. I eat indoors. Straining to see Signal Hill isn’t as interesting.

It is not the same as sitting on the pavement in Water Street as one is constantly moving one’s feet so that they are not trodden upon. It is forced – streets are for moving not standing. Watching the world go by seems more a begging for connexion rather than a reassurance. Sitting outside in town is like watching television – a passive activity.

It could be that if all of this were out front or the neighbourhood were like the one at Charleton Street where people are constantly out and the street is their living room, it would be different but I still doubt it. There is constant activity that can be observed without concentration.

The reformed Bayman states that she like being inside it is a refuge even there on the edge of North America. Me, I draw a line around the property and that becomes my refuge – a cod schtetl.

I like taking for granted the mixing of sounds – the wind, ocean, birds, with the occasional machine in the distance. I like watching the subtle changes in my surroundings while I am trying to concentrate on other things. Again it is odd that it is easier to block out all the activity in Water Street when I am writing than it is in Sullivan’s Loop – ask a certain CBC presenter and his attempts to finish his book and how he has to either lock himself in the back room at Sullivan’s Loop or work between 2AM and 4AM. Still the night sea is too fascinating for me.

In town it is Jacinta Wall who tells me the weather out there I look up and west.

Here in town – I do a night walk – look at how the city is quieting down – except for George Street where people seem to be desperately looking to have a good time. Unconsciously I equate the lights coming from the houses as the lights in the distance when in Pouch Cove or Woody Point, seeing places in repose, imaging people carrying on with their lives but it isn’t the same as stopping in near darkness – there is no such thing in cities – and looking up gob smacked at the sky, the longer one looks the deeper one sees, where seeing shooting stars – or is that a plane - are the nocturnal equivalents of whale watching.

Ironically, I find that my life as a bayman has me doing more townie things when I am here – I savour the pint much more at the Duke when it isn’t around the corner.