I call this place Ferndale because it was on Ferndale Road, a bit of a semirural outpost in Richmond, but not too far away, being walking distance to the mall. The road runs east-west between Garden City Road and Number Four Road, a distance of a half mile or just under one kilometre. The properties in those days were all long one acre lots that met in the middle of a huge rectangle framed by four roads. The houses were mostly modest looking bungalows or bungalows with above ground basements (Richmond is at or below sea level), built mostly between 1920 and 1960. Now it is all spanking new condos and townhouses.
My own backyard was part of a birch forest that stretched right across the rectangle. I made trails in the back, cutting through the salal and Himalayan blackberry. The trails were roughly circular or oval in shape and gently snaked through the bush. It became a precious sanctuary and daily I walked around in this outdoor labyrinth in prayer and meditation. I also took walks around the block, a distance of nearly two miles every morning as a kind of daily prayer walk. This was often complicated by untethered and vicious dogs that lived on both ends of the street and would frequently come charging out barking to threaten and harass me. I have always known not to back down from an aggressive dog and I think this little survival skill many times kept me from getting bitten or worse. Still it was bothersome and I think in the long term traumatizing.
I did not have friendly neighbours. The fellow next door to me, on my first or second day of occupancy was using a power drill on his house. I was experiencing a power failure and had not yet discovered the location of the fuse box (on the exterior of the house above one of the bedroom windows). I wondered if he had also been having power troubles or might be able to advise me on what to do so I approached him and politely asked if he had any power troubles. He began to yell and swear and accused me of accusing him of putting out the power in my house because of his drill and he told me to go away and never bother him again. I apologized, walked away, and we never said another word to each other, civil or uncivil for the several years we were next door to each other. I hesitate here to suggest that we were neighbours since there was absolutely nothing neighbourly about this poor miserable and angry little man.
The fellow living next door to him on the other side was a particularly odd man, old and Dutch. One day he cut across the property between us and stood by the fence while I was taking a walk in the new trails in the back and started to scold me for not buying the property where I was living. He kept a brace of beautiful white pigeons. He would periodically let them fly around the neighbourhood. Given that I almost always felt a peculiar strong intense and angry tension in the air that would break just when the white pigeons went flying I became strongly persuaded that he might himself be involved in some weird kind of witchcraft or dark practice and that he was using his birds for divination and auguries. I came to know him as Witchie-Poo and I really began to wonder about him when periodically I would notice white feathers strewn around in the trails I had made for a prayer labyrinth, often particularly concentrated on the wooden cross I had made at the far corner.
Another strange feature was the desiccated carcasses and half-carcasses of dead birds, previously dried that I would find laid on the trails of the labyrinth, beginning with one that I discovered within my first week of occupancy underneath a board next to the house. When I told my landlord about it he admitted to having placed it there, saying he thought it was ugly and wanted to conceal it. So, I also began to suspect my landlords of some kind of dark or occult practice. To this day I suspect them still.
My new life was not without its charms. For the first time in my life I had an entire house (four bedrooms) to myself. It was unfortunately a bit under furnished but I still did well. I had two beds of my own for two of the bedrooms plus two more that were given to me by my father as well as some carpeting. I bought other carpeting second hand and soon had floors with mock oriental carpets of red and blue and other carpets of gold, white and moss green. Two of my armchairs helped fill the living room along with a divan made of bricks, wood and cushions. The walls I covered with woven cabana mats and strategically arranged art prints of bird and nature themes. It was a small humble rambling house that I had somehow succeeded, with my very limited skills to make habitable and beautiful.
For heat I relied on the two oil stoves: in the kitchen a cook stove and in the living room a heating stove. The fuel was a bit expensive but the rent was incredibly cheap. I didn't get phone service until February, two and a months after I moved in. The solitude and silence were wonderful but I was beginning to yearn again for more human contact. I would soon be getting more than I bargained for.
No comments:
Post a Comment