Gumption and Endurance

It is the hockey playoff season, and Alberta is in political turmoil.  Also, the May winds are blowing, which aren’t that special if you ask me.  But if you ask Crazy Dave, of the Wind Blown Hair, he will tell you the winds are special for blowing around hair..

There are places I can go in B.C. and in the mountains.  I’ve been there before.  It is as though from the prairies, into the interior, amidst all those rocks and trees, it is as though you have entered a new world.  HEY-O RIVER!  More or less dangerous, especially with all the hungry animals coming out now looking for sandwiches.  I don’t have any sandwiches, thank-you.  Search someone else’s pockets.  And you know how bears search: with their noses.

Political upheaval, soul turmoil, unkempt robes. As it is, as only my situation can allow, I will sit there on the divan on the uppermost floor, with a toothpick at the ready, and my rifle in the corner, and a book in my hands, and several high powered reading lamps nearby, and a water source just down the hall, and something like a beard on my face, and maybe a cat on my head, and a box of marbles to clack together if I feel like it, and I’ll just sit there, friends, losing myself, within myself, within the dark depths of Gao Xianjian’s forceful imagination.

And I will pick my teeth, friends, I will make sure they shine, so that if a passing ship should blink it’s lights, I will be ready to take that swim (sharp and shiny teeth, you know;) And if that’s all I have right now then I will take it.  And the ocean can take me.  And I can take some fish in my teeth.  And chew on them around a crackling fire.  With hobos nearby.  Who compliment me on my shiny shiny teeth. “How his teeth do shine,” they will say.  And it will be true.  If one of them has to fetch some kindling out in the outer dark, I will just have to smile at them and the way will be all alit.

Because what else can we do?  We work with what we are given.  Endurance is not measurable, and I would argue that gumption isn’t either.  Gumption and Endurance, there beside me.  I ride them both by doing the splits, like Jean Claude Van Damme.  Sure, I am worried of wayward trees which threaten to whamp me in the privates, so I have taken the liberty of getting the path cleared, and Endurance and Gumption know when to stop their galloping, otherwise it would be off the cliff with the all of us, and those horses can’t fly, although they think they can.  We know better.  We are the Riders!!!  HEY-O RIVER!  HEY-O RIVER!