From Vol. 1 No. 5, 1999

Celebrating the tenth anniversary of his bar-mitzvah, Jerry Green sat alone on the balcony of his second story apartment wondering how the wind works. He had little to go on. The simple breeze moved through this mind casually, and Green realized that this subtle sweeping of thought was more of a nuisance than a nuance. He had no idea where the wind originated, and as far as he was concerned it was not much of his business. It was way too early for conceptual brainwork.
His mind drifted to the enlivening of the neighborhood below him. Sunny, warm and clear out for the third day in a row, the little community just west of St. Laurent Boulevard showed little sign of idlesse. The whole neighborhood was humming. Green was content to be apart from it all, and just watch.
He had woke an hour earlier to the buzzing of coasting bicycles, and decided within his first minute of consciousness to spend the day stoned, spying on his new neighborhood. Nothing would escape the drag of his eyes. Having moved in just two weeks earlier, the breadth of the community had yet to be fully absorbed, and today being special, Green decided to kill two birds with one stone.
He was feeling whimsical.
Ten years ago to the day he had become a man. A man in the most inane sense of the word, he thought, but in the eyes of his family, school and synagogue, a man nonetheless. Ironically, he felt the world hadn’t started for him yet. Growing up without the political ferment that aggrandized the Quebecois of his generation, there was nothing for him to prove, he thought. His targets of rebellion were bantam by comparison. Miniscule.
Ten years ago he had read his piece from the Torah, the most sacred body of Jewish principles, and in return received thirty-five pen and pencil sets. Not much of a coup, he suspected. Most of them were given away as presents to his bar-mitzvahed peers during the following months.
Immobility. Something was lacking.
Six years after the seminal day, he was shaving, and not even regularly. Taking himself seriously as a man could be nothing more than an irreverence. He waited, embattled. That lasted just inside of a month. Romantic curiosity aside, he learned nothing about himself. In his mind, a doghouse of unfulfilled lewdness, he was before he ever had a cup of coffee on St. Denis Street. A flagrancy that shamed him, and defered the incultralization of Jerry Green, he believed. Expiation came, eventually, after a residential spell in Toronto. Of all places. Today, though, Green convinced himself that he had made progress. Gilded finally with the self-assurance that previously had left him feeling raw and repugnant, he could honestly say that he was content. He was a man.
In truth, manhood was not on any list of priorities for him, and the lack of conviction prior to today’s accomplishment was a pretense of hindsight. He liked round numbers, and “ten” was a customary retreat for nostalgic perusing. That, and the fact that he was looking for any excuse to smoke a joint by himself.
Smoking a joint independent of extra mouths was the real icebreaker into manhood. An experience hospitable to the creativity of the mind. Man and nature interpenentrate. To Green, this was more exceptional than putting on a talith or phylacteries. This fed his spirit. This fumed out the concessive tendencies from his system. This was an act of fortitude. He was flushed after a few tokes.
“This stuff is strong,” he declared between legitimate coughing spasms. These transitions are never easy. The hash didn’t knock him out, but there was a quicksand effect on his senses. Accustomed to passing it around a group or at leas one other in time to catch his breath, to recess, Green’s resolve crested. He was exploring new territory in self-sufficiency.
He couldn’t finish the entire joint, though, and spent the utmost of his high looking for a piece of tin foil to wrap the remaining three or four puffs in. Only millimeters survived. But he didn’t get a chance to smoke often, so naturally he sensed that saving the rest for later was a good idea. Maybe he’d want it in a day or so. Who knows? It pays to be frugal with hash. It wasn’t that cheap arcade or metro station hash either; it was clear stuff, he had been told. True enough. He was pleasantly debilitated.
“Dope’s the missing force in my life,” he said with a sardonic swish of his lips.
The previous trepidation he had for smoking by himself was an impasse no more. An uncomfortable paramount of sensible thought. An hauteur that had left him settled on his haunches far too long. Drinkers drink because the have to, he told himself. It’s an aberration of the common ache that secludes the unreasonable. The same applies with drug addicts, rogues and poets. People like us, who’ve been hurt and misunderstood too many time, are always on the lookout for provocative ways of keeping our minds from imploding. Rearrangement. This is what Green spun through his head as he moved to the balcony to watch the world maintain its insuppressible course without him.