Stay on the trail

I’ve been thinking on that a bit this week. Weighing the relative merits as an artist and a human being of being a good girl following rules and living up to expectations or following the muse where he leads, even that is off the trail and, as my intensely religious upbringing would describe it – off the straight and narrow.

I’ve seen some wonderful illustrations this week of how good is rewarded and renegade behaviour punished. So, I stop by Whole Foods on my way to the office to pick up some snacks and a bunch of peonies for my desk. Because of course, for those of you that know, life is short and peony season even shorter, and they don’t like being grown in pots on decks, and for those of you that don’t understand the fleeting perfection of cut flowers on your desk (hands down the most important place to have them) please either skip ahead to the lascivious bits of this blog which are the reason you are here anyway, or take a time out and Google peonies and add them to your coco gift list. “But I digress. The point is when asked by the checker how much the peonies were, I replied, “$4.99”. Now, upon exiting the store with my purchases I noted that the sign on the tub containing the peonies had in fact been partially obscured earlier, and were in fact listed as “2 for 14.99”. A moments pause, and a dumping of my bag in the trunk of my car and I grabbed a second bunch thinking that I would return to make up the shortfall to the cashier and also get a bunch for Sweet Potato, a co-worker, who has had a rather rocky soul-searching time of it lately and with some recent good news in her life needed a bit of a “you are special” acknowledgement. The checker, impressed by my honesty, gave me the second bunch at a discount. Gee I hope his boss doesn’t read this. And I go on my merry way with 10 amazing peonies and the extreme satisfaction of having been rewarded for staying on the trail.

My second story occurs again on my daily commute to UBC, at the super annoying intersection of Cambie and 4^th, 6^th – whatever the frack they call it there – where a handsome young man walking OFF the trail by crossing against the light got buzzed by a police cruiser (right in front of the police station, not the spot to disobey traffic signals people) and embarrassed in front of dozens of fellow commuters in vehicles, on foot and bikes when the cop leaned from his car window and told the guy he better stand on the centre island where he was and what kind of idiot was he crossing a busy intersection that was also under construction endangering himself and all of us innocent fellow commuters!? And how do you like that for a run-on sentence.

And so taken together, these two little events have made me ponder the relative merits of behaving vs. mis-behaving. Hmmmm. The phrase “Stay on the trail” came into the Cocoverse many years ago, when while walking about a park in our country’s capital regional district in the company of Snorro (aka the Earl of Scallion, but Snorro is shorter and thus easier to type), we observed a number of signs advising us to “Stay on the trail”. In that special way of his, Snorro stepped across the boundary, turned, and held out his hand to me in invitation. I took it. And we departed from the trail, into the trees to do what it is that people do when they depart from the trail (this is where you use your imaginations people). And thus, for two friends a new entry into the private vocabulary of intimacy burned itself into the firmament. Firmament – that’s your word for the day. Firmament – noun – the vault of heaven, where all true friendships are recorded in the language of the stars.