Dali Day in Seven Short Scenes

..the weird thing is that once you start LOOKING for surreal things, you realize that they're everywhere. So your challenge for today is notice one of them, and report back...

Prologue

Some mornings you wake up and for some inexplicable reason you are filled with a terrible sense of unease and dread. That's when you know you are in for a bad day. Other mornings you wake up and you are a melty-face clock. Then you know you are in for a surreal day.

The Day

You wake up. A honky tonk version of Pink Floyd's Young Lust ("Oooh; I need a dirty woman") is blasting in your ear. You have never heard this particular version, but it is bad, so bad it's almost creepy. "#@%$&@ CBC!" you swear, and burrow your head in your pillow. But it isn't the radio, it is a CD being played by that person you live with. You stare at him strangely all through breakfast. That someone would choose to record such a horrible version of this song is weird. That someone would voluntarily listen to it is freaky beyond all possible description. Who IS this person?? you think, and why am I suddenly so afraid of him??

You head off to the Motor Vehicles Branch to renew your driver's license. Outside the building is a sausage stand, and as you near it you realize it is being run by a pleasant looking woman wearing a headscarf. A Muslim selling kubasa? You feel uneasy. Worriedly, you look around for the "Our Sausages are 100% Beef!" sign. But there is no "All Beef" sign. You start to hyperventilate.

You get your license and leave. As you walk nervously towards home, an expensive sports vehicle rounds the corner. It is being driven by some reckless young hooligan and he is blasting music. POUND! POUND! POUND! sounds the music, and the noise is deafening.

"Mommy, that music is TOO LOUD," your oldest child says.

"Yes. Yes it is," you say unhappily, casting an anxious look at the young delinquent. You hustle your child off in the opposite direction. The punk squeals his tires and rips down the street. You look about crazily. Has the world gone insane? He has been blasting CLASSICAL MUSIC. Something with VIOLINS and maybe even a CELLO or two. You whimper unhappily. Something is definitely up. You just want to go home.

Unfortunately, when you get home you find yourself locked out and wandering around lost in the forest-like back yard like Dante's little hell-bound boy. It is forest-like back there because you have neglected to mow the grass for a while, but no matter: You feel despondent. You remember that the guy you live with has gone off to do errands and won't be back for a while. You would stay home, but your fear of sitting there with two bored and whiny children overrides your new-found concerns about the BIG WEIRD WORLD. You decide to go for a walk. Before you leave, you scrawl a message in play chalk on the front door.

Locked out.
Meet us at Flying Pizza.
Hurry, please save us.
Everything is Freaky.

You hope when he sees the message he hurries.

You walk east of Arlington Street with your offspring. A thug on an old rusty ten speed bike with curved handlebars approaches you from behind and you edge out of his way. "Thanks very much ma'am," he murmurs politely as he passes. At the Portuguese bakery a pimp and two lovely and stoned prostitutes make way for you as you walk by. The pimp helps you carry the stroller up the two stairs to the bakery and then waits for you so he can help you bring it down again when you leave.

"He's a very nice man," your oldest child whispers when you are out of earshot.

"Mmm, really swell," you murmur.

You head for Flying Pizza. Once there, you have a long and painful conversation with the man behind the counter whose English vocabulary is limited. Your order for a medium Greek vegetarian pizza with black, not green, olives doesn't appear to be registering with him. He seems angry with you and keeps shouting something. You don't get it, and would consider hanging out at the vacuum cleaner shop across the street instead, except that you suspect their pizza wouldn't be as good. "A medium Greek!" you shout. "Black, not green!" You break out into a sweat and hope your order isn't being perversely misinterpreted.

Suddenly there is a tug on your arm. Your four-year-old child is looking up at you. "I know what he's saying," she says, "He's saying the medium and large ones cost the same." And so he is. You change the order to a large pizza and the man beams at you. He was on your side all along! You think about this as you wait outside at the picnic table. Then you suddenly realize that the guys making your pizza are Muslim as well.

The guy you live with appears.

"Is it odd?" you ask after greeting him, "that the guys in there are Muslim and cooking up pork products? I mean, instead of the Greek vegetarian pizza I ordered, we could have had one with ham, sausage and bacon, no problem."

The guy you live with looks wistful. "Ham, sausage and bacon," he says mournfully and gives a heavy sigh. You sit silently waiting for your pizza. When the Greek vegetarian arrives, you decide not to take it home but to eat it right there outside on the old and faded picnic table. It is about as un-Rome-like a setting as you could find. You feel a strange longing to have an Italian man with a violin come play at your table, and the surreal gods kindly grant an interpretive version of your wish: A shirtless man carrying a large Big Gulp walks by and gives a big musical belch. You start to relax a little. Perhaps surreal days aren't that bad after all!

Then just as you are finishing your pizza, a scary-looking thug approaches your table, and you brace yourself. What will he ask for? Money? Cigarettes? A lighter?

"Say," the guy says, "Wanna buy some frozen pickerel fillets?"

The guy you live with starts to say no, but you know that you have no choice but to buy some. This is YOUR surreal day, and just the words "pickerel fillets" brought up casually on a busy urban street by a scary-looking stranger makes you feel like you're tripping on acid. Besides, you recently re-read A Year in Provence and felt a wistful sense of longing when reading the descriptions of the outdoor markets. Purchasing stolen frozen fish fillets from criminals on the corner of Arlington and Sargent is the Winnipeg West End equivalent of going to a charming French stall and sniffing melons for freshness and wandering home with a couple of freshly baked loaves in your basket. You feel giddy. "I'll take two pounds," you say. After a complicated series of whistles and hand gestures, a second thug-like gentleman arrives with your purchase. You take them home and put them in the fridge.

For dinner, you cook them up.

"What's all that white stuff?" your oldest child asks, pointing to the glistening parts.

"White stuff. Everything's got white stuff," you say, trying to normalize it for her so that she'll accept it and eat it.

"Everything?"

"Sure. If I was frying YOU up, people would ask the same question," you say. "They'd say, hey, what's up with all that white stuff there?"

"No they wouldn't," the man you live with says reasonably, "they'd say, 'Hey, why is there a small child being sauteed up in your frying pan?"

"Oh, of course they would," you say, "good point."

Naturally enough, the surreal day ends with dinner.

Moral

Embrace your surreal days, don't run away from them. And on the days when the local food bank is handing out pickerel fillets, hang out on West End street corners and look hungry. You'll be glad you did.

THE END