"What I want to say is this: - If you logically try to persuade a person that there is no absolute reason for shedding tears, the person in question will cease weeping. That's self evident. Why, I should like to know, should such a person continue doing so?"

"If such were the usual course of things, life would be a very easy matter," replied Raskolnikoff.

- Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Teddy


And for all the expensive and elaborate toys that I received growing up, the most precious is Teddy. My nana made one for each of the grandchildren when they were born, so Teddy is as old as I am. I am so glad that he is back with me: he is priceless.
I can't believe my brother has a house in Abbotsford. I can't believe that I'm 30. I am immeasurably saddened that the developers are going to kill our monkey tree and our blue spruce. What about the plum tree that was so laden with plums every summer that my mom couldn't make jam fast enough? Or the cherry tree that, annually, became infested with tent caterpillars and between them and the crows we were lucky to get a couple of hand fulls of juicy, red goodness? The basketball net where I would play 21 with my brother? The creek where we caught frogs and salamanders?
And the house. Man. There's still a dent in the drywall where I threw a screwdriver at my brother's head as he booked it down the stairs. The door frame to the playroom is still askew from the time that I tried to throw him through it. You might say we fought a little. As I was having dinner with my mom tonight I looked out, past the pool, to the garden around it and all the fencing has fallen down and is rotting: returning to the land. I don't have a problem with that. I have a problem with the fact that in a couple of months someone on a bulldozer is going to come and raze the past 25 years of my life. There's a Walmart and a Home Depot up the street that me and my brother used to sled down in the winter.
I wax poetic. The cogs of overcrowding and developers' greed push us onward.
Teddy: what now?

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