HEAVY AIR

This humidity makes everything so heavy, even sleeping is a drudge task. Boss gave us the day off work on Friday. A day to just stay still if possible and say,"No more please" to the world. I stick close to home. Stepping outside, the air hangs with the stench of garbage as endless honking assaults me. So this is the outside world? I want peace. Apparently this honking is to celebrate a sporting event of some sort, is it? Really? The cars are all festooned with flags of disrespective countries. Are they foreign dignitaries? They act like assholes, these visiting dignitaries here for the G20 conference. Downtown is a ghost town, people are too scared to be downtown where armed police stand in packs. I tell my Mother my fear of working downtown, she thinks they will protect me. No. I need protection from them if I am in the wrong place at the wrong time. I work on the 16th floor.
Wednesday. Water moved in my glass. An ominous feeling of reality shifting. I believe that the military is trying out a sonic weapon on us! "Let's go!", I yell to my co-worker Karla. No elevator, take the stairs, 16 flights. She has to take her heels off, I attempt to undo one.
It was just an earthquake.
Tuesday. A great bookstore has its' locks changed due to back-rent, they've been around for thirty years, two generations.
The skies are overcast. I get a text message mere moments after writing a morbid joke. A great lady I know has died, I just visited her last week and was going to this week, too young. It saddens me, I think of the loss that her loved ones go through, and then the loss the community and the city will go through. She was that kind of gal.
Thinking on this for a while, then a friend calls and tells me that he is moving back to Vancouver, although he is uncertain of his choice, we hang out a lot, we talk of this and the oil spill and its' devastating environmental impact, rains of oil, how he read that Russian scientists stated how the chemical used to treat it will wreak utter destruction on the East Coast.
Thursday. Taking my mind off everything, the sadness of death and the mood of the city, this friend, another friend and I drive to Niagara Falls to see natural beauty in all its'glory, its' uncomprehending vastness, we get so close that we get wet, it surrounds us, it is surrounded by man-made monstrosities. These are behemoths akin to Reno. Yards away from rumbling splendour, one can pay to get a photo taken in front of a fake Niagara Falls backdrop. One can pay to see Niagara Falls in iMAX.In 3-D/4-D, what does that mean? Does one get to view four dimensions in three? Will it simplify and demystify things for us? We pay to enter a shoddy wax museum, one of several, this one is of crime and murder and slightly off the path. Flawed craftmanship,typos, succinct overviews of notorious figures who look somewhat off and not quite fully-formed.It is appreciated.