MyFace

I wake up fearful. As usual.

I decide to walk it off. I take my trash picker-upper device with me. I want to access my inner Catholic and rid the world of evil in the form of cigarette butts.

Down the hill, out of the rain forest toward the ocean. I’m headed through the heart of Roberts Creek toward the Georgia Strait. An eight minute walk.

Green explodes everywhere. The early morning slanting sun against huge cumulus thunderclouds is almost garish.

I need to soak up beauty. And pick up the cigarette butts. In front of the post office, in front of the Gumboot Café, and at the bus stop across from the Roberts Creek General Store. I exult in the knowledge that I am a fountain of tidiness. I exult in the feeling of moral superiority.

At age 13, I was told by the Holy Cross Fathers that I was too disfigured to be a priest. So I have never been given the power to forgive sins Too bad for me. But I’ve found something better as a substitute. I pick up cigarette butts.

Instead of looking for beauty, I scan the ground for trash and butts.

OK, to be clear, I only do this every few weeks. But I am not anal retentive! I keep my obsessions under control. Isn’t that natural for someone obsessed with control?

I get to the Gumboot. It turns out that someone has been there before me. A couple of weeks’ accumulation of butts is mostly gone. What a boost for my dim faith in human nature.

Onward to the bus stop. I think that this is penance for the 23 years I smoked incessantly and threw my cigarette butts all over Chicago and Bloomington and San Francisco. Like Robert deNiro in The Mission, who lashed his armor to his back in permanent penance for his sins. I have another 22 years of this to make up for the littering of my youth. Better than going to hell and spending eternity in the smoker’s bowge.

Down to Roberts Creek Pier and I can almost see people in the houses in Nanaimo, 22 miles across the Strait on Vancouver Island. High tide and heavy seas beat stray logs against the beach. The ocean is gray-green, not dull but vibrant.

OK, there is dog shit. I fantasize for the hundredth time about my plan to make little index card signs attached to popsicle sticks that will say, “Another gift from the dog owners of Roberts Creek.” I will stick one into each pile of dog poop. I fine tune the fantasy a bit by planning to laminate the signs so that they will be legible on rainy days.

Oh my god, I have forgotten about the beauty. I endeavor to self-exorcise. Begone, fantasy! And it works. At least until the next time.

Later I confess my fantasy to Laurie during our writing session. She suggests that instead of my ironic, passive aggressive approach, I do a “culture jam” by putting positive messages in the dog poop. Like “Be sure to take advantage of opportunities that come your way.” “Engage in random acts of kindness.” “Good fortune is yours.” “True love will come your way today.”

The end