The Intergalactic Time Travel Mystery

The other day there was a wasp in my room. I sat there on my small couch and watched it buzz around for a while, as wasps tend to do. It circled around, making noise, and examining the myriad of popcans that are always littering my desk and side tables. Eventually I watched as it flew down beside me, and dropped into my empty Iced Tea glass on the coffee table.

As far as wasps go, I think I feel similar to how Carl Winslow felt about Urkel. I don’t care what they do as long as they stay out of my house and don’t make annoying noise next to my ear. As I watched this yellow-and-black bug wander around the bottom of my glass, a feeling of vengeance and loss came over me, and I did something madly vindictive. Without even a second thought, I put my copy of the Norton Anthology of English Literature (Volume A) on top of the glass, effectively trapping the wasp inside.

I did not feel guilty until later.

Weeks before I met the wasp, on September 29, 2003, Hurricane Juan rose from the sea and attacked the city of Halifax. It brought with it two deaths, multiple injuries, the loss of power, phone and internet for several days and a broken and twisted mess of tree branches, telephone poles, smashed cars and shredded concrete. At 11:30 p.m., as the winds were just picking up, I ran across the campus of King’s College wearing jeans and a T-shirt, weaving to avoid swaying tree branches overhead and soaking myself with rainwater. As the lights in the windows surged and died, I was filled with the giddy feeling that something big was happening.

My past recollection of events is, like yours, I’m sure, nothing more than a collection of memories. Not all of which fit together.

There’s only one thing right now that I can’t bring myself to write about, and I’m not sure if it’s because I have nothing to say or because I’m afraid of what I would say were I to let myself go. Sometimes I feel trapped. Just bound in this constricting jacket of my own feelings and emotions that caused me to hurt one love to save myself but at the same time makes me feel completely alone with every bitter breeze that touches my arm. And makes me play the same songs on repeat until they stop resonating with me at all.

The day before the Hurricane I sat in a sparsely-populated bar and watched a bald man with a Hawaiian shirt wander in. He wore sandals and carried a bucket filled with roses. He stood, looking unsure of himself as he scanned the patrons, walked forward a bit, and left. In front of him, a band plays. Earlier, a lone man in a green shirt danced alone. It was a physical dance, filled with sound and fury, its loneliness eclipsed by its defiant nature. I wanted to write a story about time travel in that bar, and for five minutes I did.

I tripped over a fallen branch as we walked down the shattered Halifax streets. It stuck out over the sidewalk. I stumbled without falling, dropping only one hand to steady myself against the pavement. As I righted myself and continued walking down that street so covered by fallen branches and twisted power lines, I tried to recount the number of storms in my life.

“I’m getting a new car this week,” my Dad told me as we walked across the Bayer’s Lake parking lot.

“Really? I didn’t think you were getting one,” I replied, referring to his frequent test drives this summer, all of which ended with him deciding to keep the Chrysler mini-van we’ve had for like 8 years.

“I didn’t think I was,” he said, “but the van starting crapping out so I had to get one soon.”

“What kind of car is it?” I asked, curiously.

He paused. “It’s a blue one,” he said cryptically.

“But what kind is it?”

“A sedan,” he said. “A GM.”

“But what KIND is it,” I pressed him.

“Oh,” he said. “It’s a Cadillac.”

I laughed. “You have an OLD MAN’S CAR!”

After the storm, I spent a night in my room trying to come up with things to say to the person I always know what to say to. I was cold, and she left. And I wondered how I had changed so much in only a few months. I tried to remember things, but all I could remember was storms and faded memories that would not connect.

I tell myself I like words because I can control them. With other things — like painting, or sports or even academic success — there’s this element of luck. Of random chance. Words have nothing to do with luck. They simply are as I write them to be and if they come together to form something good, then it’s only because I’ve placed them that way. I tell myself that, but then I see myself here, sitting on a bed watching Bottle Rocket for the umpteenth time and wondering what these words I’m writing really are and what exactly this means. This thing, whatever it is, that drives me to put things together and then write them. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what this is.

My Dad’s Cadillac speeds down the road to Minden as I listen to a Harry Chapin CD for reasons I’m not quite clear on. The spedometer is digital, and that’s my favourite part of the car. I keep it at 88 for the whole ride, just to see if maybe I’ll start to travel back in time.

Thirty minutes ago I thought about the word home and what it means to me now. I spend half the year in one province, and the other half in another, and there are elements to both that truly feel like home to me, but still — it makes me feel scattered. The fact that if someone were to ask me the question “Where do you live right now?” and I’d have to think about it a bit to find the answer disappoints me a little.

Twenty-four hours after the wasp came into my room, I gazed through the side of the glass and watched as he still flew, going from the bottom to the top and back again, vainly fighting against the book resting atop him. I did not think. The jacket felt hot around my shoulders. I picked up the glass and walked over to my window, where I set the wasp free.

He caught himself in the October air and flew again, immediately turning back around and coming back inside my window. I turned, put my keys in my jacket pocket, and walked out the door. I went home for Thanksgiving.