.

"touch my rod!"

"what?"

"for luck. just touch it."

he laughs. last March, he went fishing off the coast
of Georgian Bay in the middle of the night, navigating
icy waters in the dark, just him and a buddy in the
boat, no life jackets when his friend stood up to cast
a line a little too vigourously, capsizing the boat
and everything in it. afloat and treading water for
three dark hours, hypothermia setting in, until a
neighbour coincidentally heard them shouting and
rowed out to rescue. he spent two months in recovery,
in hospital.

"I thought I was going to die, I really did. "

he pauses.

"I used to think life jackets were a waste of time,
but now I talk to kids about safety. "

the image of him talking to kids, with his fast black
car parked outside the school, machismo spilling
out of every available cell, amuses me. he catches
my disbeleif with a nod, shakes his head and adds,

"things can change so fast. you know?"

we talk a little longer by the docks with the clink
of sailboats in the background, this south-of-france-tan
kind of guy, the one who almost ran me off the road
a few weeks earlier, his car passing mine quite recklessly,
illegally, this same guy who is now preaching safety.
he pops the lid on his red toolbox. I note that he is
carrying the kind of gear one might take on an extended
fishing expedition to Alaska, stateoftheart material
out of which he pulls some photos wrapped in plastic
and shows me an image of himself holding a very large
mouth bass; it spans the full extension of his arms.

"this is why I do it. for the shots. and if I hadn`t shown
this to you, you wouldn`t have believed me. would you?! that
I really fish?!"

three times he starts to walk away and three times he turns back
to talk a little longer. eventually, he casts his line near me
and within seconds, literally seconds, the line pulls taut. I
watch him reel in an 18 inch bass, another bass, that he laughs
at. he says

"see?! first cast! you are definately good luck. first cast!!"

I watch as he pulls the fish off his hook and slides a finger into
its mouth, carrying it like this as he walks over to show me. with
his free hand, he sets the timer on his blue waterproof camera,
then moves in front but suddenly raises the fish towards me,
composing a photo of himself with the fish (and me somewhere
in the background). then he walks to the water and gently slides
the bass back in, looking back to say,

"I always put them back."

this gentleness surprises me, unnerves me a little as he adds

"first cast! I like that. a good title for a song.
or maybe a painting."

apparently he does both and I have no doubt that he will
actually use it as some form of creative expression, this
experience as inspiration. and all this from the man who
almost ran me off the road and nearly drowned himself.

"that's karma.", I say to him.

in a completely different context and earlier that same day,
I am talking to a neighbour, an older gentleman who has been
married to the same woman for over 40 years, no children,
and worked hard all his life at an ordinary job, someone who
promised himself a new car upon his retirement. I can tell by
the quality of his skin that he drinks alot. his is a raw
unhappiness trapped inside a good heart. but this week, he
finally purchases a new car, literally has it less than a
day when we speak. he says,

"alot of rain we've been having, eh?"

"yes, alot."

"you'll never bel ieve what happened to me. I just bought
a new car this week."

"congratulations!"

"yes, well. I was driving it this morning on the lakeshore,
just passing under a big tree when it fell on my car. just
fell on it. not even a day old!"

"what?!"

"the storm. it must have knocked things loose and landed
on my car. what are the odds?!"

"unbeleivable. do you have insurance?"

"yes. but it just goes to show you. you never know."

he shakes his head, clearly incredulous and repeats,

"you just never know."

from you never know to things can change so fast.
I think about these two conversations, how they
oddly relate to the notion of marking time, to lessons that
float in the ether, hovering there in the karmic vortex of
casual exchange, subtext for the grander scheme of one's
own life (if one is open to it) and wondering just how much
our daily words affect each other. like the tides that flow
in and out, like casting lines and reeling them back in,
are we incessantly catching things of equal proportion
in the process?