The Ghosts of Jay MillAr (4 page)

the back roads of South Western Ontario so deep within my back,
rolling up and down my spine, the tiny mice, mushroom the size of
my head, how many times have i been in the woods near Tilbury Ontario, noticing
how the leaves have changed ever so slightly over the period of a month.
how many times have i driven past the ostrich farm there, and past
the small, flat graveyards and the slanting gas stations?
Sunday afternoon mosquito buzz jazz monotone. Windsor Ontario
would eventually become a heightening of my own consciousness, a long drive
that allows old friends to find each other at the end of the country. The Bruce
Peninsula under my knees, resin and rainwater, chipmunks and rattlesnakes.
every species imaginable will eat out of your palm there, take what you
give them, (thank you), the cliff we climbed up from Miller Lake grew smaller
every time we returned, became less of an adventure, more of dreamfact, the birch
trees would shrink over the years yet we could still peel the bark away
in large, paper-like strips to start the fire, in a rowboat with my dad
and the mist as the sun appears, it was about five a.m. I'm sure this
is a place in Eastern Canada, though in my mind it has various qualities
like that of a dream, wide awake, just as the sun opens up the fog a crack.
dad rows the boat and my hand drags through the blackish salt water
to the sounds of such strings. Point Peelee is here too, undoubtedly
beneath the soles of my feet. Matt and i spent hours skipping stones into
the flat grey surface of Lake Erie while Hazel gathered shells and rocks
polished by time into her skirt, in the water where we meet ourselves by
chance along the way, speaking to the various species of birds present
there at seven in the morning watching no, feeling the wind rustling through
the lush foliage. Western Canada somewhere not entirely transparent,
ever, never ever there, each morning i would rise at five a.m. to check
the trap lines, sometimes sitting and watching the pinkish clouds hover
above the cool wet morning conifers and rockslides like old gods reborn and
walking between the mountains, during the day i would race the ridiculous
silver
RVS
up and down the hills on a borrowed bike, i could finally feel
small in the midst of the world, so huge i could choke on the wind.
hiking up the sides of mountains i would stop for a moment to look down through
the lake to see the very centre of its cool gravity, you could sit there and
concentrate openly listening to the ominous call of the pika
hiding among the rocks, the very creature my father had studied for years in that
landscape, yes, i say, raising my hand, i am present and looking around.

and where am i?

i find in the end but what am i to make of all my feelings? i might think of
my first memory but it is
ALL
memory, all those highschool weekends on
mushrooms with Matt, on mushrooms with Peter, on mushrooms with Chuck,
walking the streets of London Ontario, at the cottage watching the lake just
sitting there, shining in the forever setting summer sun and angling the air,
we were all looking down the road, it seems, all the time,
squinting to see ahead, as far as we could see. i would find myself
years later down that road in a room with Hazel, Stefan, Rob,
Joe, and Sue, all of us on mushrooms, even now, looking down these roads
there is nothing there…     nothing…     looking at myself
now from the doorway in the sun. it all becomes comforting.
it all becomes the same thing while i am busy waiting out the while of each moment.
what happens but what has happened? which branch should we sit on, looking
at how far it recedes into the future? we were amazed

at how far we had come, at how we had arrived, and still are. amazed,
looking at the sun, or at the leaves falling peacefully in front of the Runnymede
United Church, November 12,1996,11:42 pm or at the lawn in front of our house
and the huge white mushrooms that have grown there all summer, this morning
nothing but dull frozen lumps on the frozen ground, among the frozen dying leaves,
when you look at the angles of fieldrows driving the highways of
South Western Ontario, there is always that quick glimpse of a straight
empty row of dirt that reaches into the distance as it is replaced by another

at the exact moment you saw it.

all the adventures we had had along the way, and as such they would be
replaced by dreams, dreams and the occasional moment of speech.
the cornstalks we walked through to find the lights of fire trucks, all of us standing are
the fire, looking up we could not see the stars, although later
we could realize we were not really seeing, weird wonderful waking dreams
in which those rooms would actually fold up with us in them.

we were standing… somewhere…          pure magic
on fire with being, the Sunday afternoons of our lives, the trees,
their branches and their leaves, together they are the energy
of the world, waiting to be touched and then to fall away, the time
travel and such incarnations, it all becomes the earth waiting to catch us

and hold us tenderly,

where memory becomes a solid of eternity.
²¹
for we were walking

along the side of the road when suddenly it struck us that we were

walking along the side of the road and it stopped us

right in our tracks, stopped us all where we were…

Coda:

wide open.                   we are ready to embark into

imagine…                   its is so nice to look there

(Our minds glass eyes and mist, youthful, on fire with being…)

boring the reader to death it was our duty

to watch the windows do whatever.               in the afternoon

there were many beautiful photo opportunities

between places and the sound                        so still, what creates

a pattern in the human mind                and where am i?

at the exact moment you saw it                      and hold us tenderly

right in our tracks, stopped us all where we were…

1
After some study, we decided that these trees were actually more highly developed forms of the local fungus, since they sprouted from the same rich soil that supported all the vegetation of that area. Earlier, we had discovered some particular soil that appeared to be composed of small mushrooms that clung to each other as they struggled to grow out of smaller fungi as they decomposed. The ecosystem was obviously growing and decomposing at the same time in these intricate layers of subtle colours we could not describe. Sometimes we counted as many as seventy-two new growths that managed to sprout from a single decomposition. Other times there were only two or three. Some specimens succeeded in growing as high as our ankles, but it was the trees that were truly magnificent, and it was around their stems that we could find the most interesting samples. When we stood perfectly still we could hear spore pods dropping through the moist air from the spread out canopy of the upper branches. Some round greenish pods we found were the size of tennis balls and we took turns throwing them at one of the thick stems poking up from the ground. They exploded like soap bubbles filled with smoke, the sort we had blown in the schoolyard as adolescents. They made a soft popping sound as they exploded in the windless air. When one of these powdery clouds hit the sunlight it created rainbows of deep ambers and purples, drifting slowly through the air until they came to rest quietly upon the brownish leaves scattering that landscape.

2
Childhood.

3
Often the dreams of trees will manifest themselves in various appendages, most often in the form of mushrooms and sometimes in the form of flying squirrels. Notice how certain mush-rooms are found under certain trees. Their shapes will give you a clue as to what the tree in question may be dreaming about. (This is where we learned it.)

4
Fossil records have shown that the influence of so-called academia and institutionalized learning caused trees to have leaves that were as solid as the wood they lived upon. Trees simply had no idea of their own mortality, or cared not to acknowledge it. It was a time in which leaves had no desire to fall, nor did trees have any desire to lose them. Over time, however, with the introduction of human commerce, which began to flourish as early as the Cenozoic Era, trees learned that to ignore their own temporary forms was futile, for it was only their way of living in greed. They were witness to many other life-forms that became extinct, if not rendered completely tedious due to their strange belief in their immortality they were not capable of conquering. This is why we find such a difference between the skin (constant static) of mammals and the leaves (tempo-immortal consciousness) of modern trees.

5
It has been hypothesized in several well known papers that trees are quite aware of our fate as a species, perhaps more than we realize.

6
For some examples of tree poems, see the translations we have made that follow these notes.

7
See ‘Appendages'.

8
There should be more slow noise (music) in the world. Record the sounds of trees for hours.

9
This, of course, is true for the trees of rural landscapes, where our studies took place. It has not been determined whether or not trees living in an urban setting experience the same kind of uphoria. We suspect, however, that a tree's environment has much to do with its state of mind.

10
Many human Utopian political parties have been influenced by trees. See their shifting plat-forms, available in various fictional forms, for reference.

11
undercover all solstice long.

12
and as the leaves fall away it becomes so much easier to see through it all and into

13
       as the leaves fall away it becomes so much easier to see through it all        into

14
       as the leaves fall          it becomes so much easier to see              it all       into

15
       as       leaves               it becomes so much easier to see                all       into

16
       as       leaves               it                so much easier to see                           into

17
                 leaves                                  so much           to see

18
and as the leaves fall away it becomes so much easier to see through it all and into

19
An anonymous piece of writing discovered one afternoon in October while dissecting the consciousness of a tree and meditating upon the concept of The Opening of The ‘Field', the title of a book by the American poet Robert Duncan. There are many instances throughout the text that suggest it was written by Stokes.

20
The breath of clouds, as imitated by trees in earthly realms.

21
Seasonal Drift:. August contemplation of days, remember to slow down days again. October… days, they are, after all, only days: a surface clouds at three in the afternoon and a branch that suspends it (thought) shrink each single motions grows until it vanish into the perfectly capable blue (sea monster) (heaven) (wing gust) but it was the cool rain came down that time of year, nice, we thought, to close down the morning, the evening, and of now. (the end) to be the darkened skies of hold the holes of our dreams, all the excitement, all the lust, now is cool and heavy (closed) way down here in the just imagine what behind the clouds all our little veils falling from the trees come about their way to catch our little thoughts, we are all angels, all shy birds who watch each of us clouds out the front room window in the afternoon, from the inside out when we remember how we were absolute (happy) our dreams when they were our selves, shadows of branches at dawn.

 

Conwenna Stokes
was born and raised in London, Ontario. She lives near Poplar Hill with her cat, Jonah. Her photographs, recordings and carvings are on display at the Forest City Gallery in London.