16 May

From despair to where … Misery, that’s where!

This is where I wake up. Or, more precisely – Misery Bay.

Mooching around under permagrey skies, skulking about with an overpowering sense of deja-vu.

Before the awakening, a sleepwalk from my quarters to Mac’s Bay, tripping over logs and floating over dead trees, which seem to be desperate in stopping me from getting anywhere, blocking my path and daring me to press on, egging me on to make use of the few outdoor skills I have. Hey, I have a Swiss Army knife!

When the cold and the wet starts to penetrate me, I slowly start to come around to new thoughts.

The few birds up there in the canopies are gossiping and bantering and giggling with each other about the sole human being they’ll see here today, which is apparently funny for them but not for me.

The bleakness of the sodden, spongy, root-covered ground, blanketed in the forest litter of a long harsh winter, all smothered in grey. When was the last time these creaky trees saw anybody?

At a brief opening in the woodland mess, behind the forest curtains, a glimpse of Mac’s Bay – dull grey, semi-circular, with water of a colour that implores ‘forget me, you haven’t seen me’. It’s a guilty colour, I figure; Mac is a dirty bastard.

Led me to a dead-end trail, and it’s all I can do to traipse backwards through the moss and the logs and the detritus and piss-taking birds up there above me, always unseen – all because the coastal trail has fallen into the water, sent the hole nine yards down to Davy Jones’ Locker.

Perhaps I should have followed suit, I might be more coherent than the state I am in on arriving in Misery Bay. This is not for the love of misery, or anything in particular.

Although at least I get the opportunity to eat my cheese sandwich under a dry canopy, while counting the billion grains of sand in front of me.

If I follow the green trail now, I am swimming.

Instead, I hold the Misery Bay sign aloft and give out a weak smile for a selfie, a testimony to no-one in particular – or maybe to the elements, determinedly.

Quite rightly, this is something approaching misery, although is it real or perceived is a question that leans in and whispers about ghosts and drownings amidst my fog-strewn all-thinking surroundings.

It’s difficult to compete with inanimate objects and paper-thin airborne philosophies that all Know Better, in fact Know Anything.

This time I’m returning along the limestone path to anguish, and on this occasion there are minimal blockages and even wooden walkways up ahead for my convenience.

At the deserted visitor centre, signs I need to pay attention to telling me things in words and pictures I never previously knew.

I’m here for free because the ticket machine cannot process all of the recurring error codes. It’s just possible nothing is awake, yet.

No tourists, that’s for sure. But many Friends of Misery, supposedly. That is a piss-take, surely (sad face).

The company we keep is the folk who lurk in amongst the unfriendly, uninviting scenery, away from the city, away from a kind of accepted normality. I could live here, maybe; I could be a friend of woe.

Meantime, I jump in my motorised oven to warm up – all dials and buttons and everything I can possibly switch or push set to gas mark magma / hot lava.

The twisting approach into Gore Bay is more like an automotive water slide today.

Up on the opposite hillside which wasn’t there last night (lit up now through the murk in Sicilian ghost story torchlight flashes), an unpaved road to a lookout over the bay and the town below – an incident which reverts me to black shivers.

It’s all I can do to fly down there, past the rusting skeleton of a 1960s baby blue Chevrolet wagon (doors open) and the long-since deceased hallowed boats, to dive into the brewery for a reviving beer and a spirited sing-song for a crowd of one.

The Split Rail, a bobble hat, the camo cap, a yard of ale; dank, tall tales.

We’re all auditioning just to get by … but then, I just wanna get along – with a good beer, preferably.

Landlady and I are the only ones clapping at the man with the guitar who is singing his lovelorn croons from a tablet propping up the bar. The things folk will do to get a drink – yet his private performance is not worthy of any more suds, by all accounts.

Across the CBD, Codmothers is an unfunny pun waiting to knock me out with the local catch, up a flight of stairs.

I swiftly bring myself around to this way of thinking, which is served up to me in a brightly-coloured plastic basket, which I figure may well have been fished out of the lake along with my perch.

I don’t think I can lie low here … I’m in a town controlled by the Fish Mafia for Chrissakes; an organisation which has been sunk many times, but keeps resurfacing – now loud and proud.

I’m not taking the bait, so I settle my tab on credit, making this an an experience I’ll be paying off for some time yet.

Exit through the double doors, back to Kagawong in my motorised oven, returning to the well-worn path up around the waterfall. That bride is still pissed.

Back at the ranch, a spaghetti incident, and a gifted Hot Wheels model car – for good behaviour. The shop here is a gallery, with Seasick Mark waiting on the porch to excitedly show me.

Inside, the Japanese modesty screen hides a killer in the corner, a quiet assassin on the senses.

A wheel of fortune in the century-old bay window, surrounded by all sorts of future collectibles. And yeah I’ll call this for what it is – an entrance through the gift shop.

Without saying anything further, I climb up the steps to my digs, to find two additional paying guests who may have had a shower I don’t know why would I?

They have driven here in a Hyundai Coupe from Kitchener, and are now wanting to go to a McDonald’s which is not right and I say so. I should have sent them to Mac’s Bay, ha!

Instead, I say get yerselves down to Buoys in Gore Bay.

They laugh at this because I say it in a British accent, and also because I’m repeating someone else’s recommendation, which apparently makes my advice really really quite funny, like really funny, so totally dead funny.

The things you’ll laugh at to engage with strangers …

When the appropriate time arrives, I take my beer to the harbour, where the local cops are looking for a bust.

I hide my tin of ale in the conveniently-placed primordial cupholder, middle of the rocks.

They skirt around me with suspicious eyes and then drive off, resolving that I’m just another crackpot gawping at the unreal sunset. I am, but I’m doing this WHILE DRINKING A FRICKIN’ BEER!

Canada, you can’t tie me down – I’m a teatime insurrectionist!

Over on the other shore, the B-52s are letting rip, while above me in the lit-up sky a massive white eagle of a cloud that will look after me tonight.

When a cool chill begins a gradual descent from up there, the breeze drags me and my cold one back to the balcony, to rubberneck the ongoing drama of the filmset cityscape.

In amongst Lynchian fantasies, tribal drums now pounding and pumping, slowly becoming louder and louder. Could this be a pow-wow I wonder however when Mark appears he tells me it’s just Steve playing it loud to piss off the neighbours.

(… what neighbours? … who’s Steve?)

I stand my ground on the first floor, or possibly the second floor – I haven’t decided.

Yet Mark just knows the only reason I’m here in town is to see his hot rod, and I don’t know how this happens but I glide down the stairs, fully caped, and end up in an adjacent garage gawking at and listening to and mesmerised by a ’37 Willys Sedan with a Canadian army helmet on the engine cover and skulls everywhere. And obviously Marilyn Manson is over in the corner there by the cobwebbed window.

Fffrrrrrr-aorrrrrhhhhh, rrhharrrr-Arrrr-Arrrr.

We will wake the neighbours (what neighbours?) with this V8 garble which is filling the otherwise muted grass moon sky.

This is an artwork with an engine, alright; one that grumbles and roars yet also sings and swoons in a series of stuttering baritones.

And I wonder – why am I allowed to see this?